I Survived this Summer’s ServantFes

I Survived this Summer’s ServantFes

Yup, I survived this summer’s ServantFes event. Alright, maybe that’s a tad dramatic. Weirdly enough, I’m also getting inspired to make my own doujinshi in the process. Any way, continuing on from my teaser post earlier this week!

The event ends tonight, and I did not finish the final points ladder (so much for that final Crystallized Lore). I hope we get a breather between the end of this event and the next one (Fate/Accel Zero?). I don’t think I can handle another round of 3 back to back events—looking back at this past winter’s back-to-back Setsuban->Da Vinci Rerun->Kara no Kyōkai Rerun events (got serious burnout then).

Did ServantFed make Jeanne Archer cranky? It's Creepy Gilles, though. You can't blame her.
Did Jeanne gain some kind of low-level Mad Enhancement when becoming an Archer? That’s certainly not very saintly. Honestly, I would threaten the same thing if creepy Gilles got near me. On another note: they do look like ping-pong balls.

Event Grinding with Day/Night Cycles

The best way to describe this summer’s ServantFes is this: grindy. Also, the gacha drop-rates on 5⭐️ event CEs this time around was horrendous, when compared with Summer 2019’s original run. At least that’s how I experienced it. I think I may have spent somewhere around $100. While I did get Jeanne (Archer) and Ushi (Assassin), and plenty of 3- and 4⭐️ event CEs. I did not receive one single freaking 5⭐️ CE. Whelp, time to start grinding. I needed some of those gold-level ascension materials that I was running low on.

💢Ugh, I need Forbidden Pages and Dragon’s Teeth, STILL. FML.

Granted, I got the summer forms of Jeanne and Ushi, but I’m still salty because no 5⭐️ CEs. At least it was a great way to farm green mana prisms.

Summer 2020 rate-ups are a lie if you want rare event CEs.

The Day/Night cycles actually threw me off in the beginning. Initially, the Game Press walk-through didn’t make sense. At least until I’d played a few rounds.

Inspiration

I wanted to save this portion for last. The entire plot revolved around Jalter wanting to make her own doujinshi for this summer’s ServantFes.

Of course, that’s how she became a Berserker. ANNNND so she could get her swim-suit, too.

Yes, there’s more to the story because BB is involved but I’m not going to give up all the plot-points. And because BB is involved, there’s a lot of Fate/Extra references. I barely get those because I haven’t played the games.

There was something inspirational about the entire story. It was telling you this: “No matter how shitty you think your art is, get out and draw.”

Your Creation is Bad and You Should Feel Bad

That’s a feeling that I’ve been fighting with myself for the last 15 years. I got hung up on making it perfect that I haven’t wanted to release anything that involved ink & paper. Thinking back on it, I suspect art school had a lot to do with that inferiority complex. That also has another name: imposter syndrome. Working as a web developer for the last 10 years, I’ve experienced it first-hand. The toll it takes on your mental health isn’t great. It took me getting to a very dark place before I actually overcame it.

The Raids

As for difficulty, I think I ran the raids in reverse order. I ran the Sessyoin raid last, which was intended to be done first. She actually gave me the most problems out of all four raids.

Sessyoin Kiara Raid (Sacrilege Tetrahedron I)

You might think you can use Rulers against this boss because of Ruler class bonus damage against Moon Cancers. In this raid’s case—don’t. Sessyoin has a passive buff against the Ruler class that will wipe out your Rulers in one or two turns, even with defense buffs.

Bring a Servant that kicks out a lot of critical hits reliably. I ended up bringing my two crit Archers: Chloe and Tomoe (both grailed to 90 and with max Fous), and only failed to complete one turn. OG Mash (with Fragment of 2030 CE) was particularly useful here as well. I depended on her taunts and damage down buffs to get me through. Include a friend-support Mash in your back-line! I included a friend-support Mash in my back-line, so if my Mash was killed off, there was a support to replace her.

Don’t worry if you don’t complete the turn. You’re not losing out on drops since those will come at the end of the round.

The very final round—once you’ve eliminated the raid boss’s health bar—will drop some much-needed ascension materials, so don’t miss those either.

Note that last two tips apply to all of the raids.

The Time For Sweets Hath Come (Sacrilege Tetrahedron II)

Demon God Coconut Milk?!? Nani!?! What the Fuck?!?!🤣. I had a hard time taking this one seriously because of the name.

Game Press has a full write-up on this raid boss’s skills and NP. Now here is where you’re safe to use your Rulers (or support Rulers if you don’t have any in your line-up).

I used Jeanne and Holmes for this raid. Their NPs actually compliment one another, with Jeanne supplying a much-needed debuff cleanse plus 1-turn Invincibility, and Holmes providing defense up, Ignore Invincible & Ignore Defense, and Critical Strength up.

What it comes down to is if you have Holmes, Jeanne or Martha, or access to a friend-support Ruler, then this fight should be pretty straightforward.

👉Make sure to feed your Rulers attack-up Fous. You will want their attack stats to the fullest not only for this fight, but in the future as well.

Looking at the results of this raid, Holmes may become part of my line-up with his defense and attack buffs, along with Jeanne, now that Mash has been nerfed by Ortinax until Lostbelt 5.2, which is 2 years away still. Even then, the upgrade is only to her first skill.

Sacrilege Tetrahedron III & IV

The 3rd and 4th raids were easy but weird. Weird because at the half-way mark, the boss changes. Both these raids start off with an Alter-Ego boss, but for the last two damage breaks, the boss changes classes and actually becomes a different servant. In the 3rd raid, the boss (BB Pele?) actually changes to MHXX (Foreigner). 4th raid, boss (BBB) changes to Anastasia (Caster).

Between the two, the last two bars of STIII is going to be harder if you don’t have a Foreigner or other high-powered servant (I curse myself for being lazy about leveling Abby). The last two bars of ST IV is easy if you have a single-target Rider.

Servants to use for both?

You’re in luck if you have a Foreigner for STIII. Also, don’t bring Berserkers because of class disadvantage. I had to slug through the last two bars with Mecha Liz, Merlin, and Mash because I didn’t think to look ahead about the class change, so I just ran with it. Thankfully, I barely finished without a restart.

For STIV (which is the final raid, but I did this one first). An Alter-Ego for the first part, and like I said above, a single-target Rider like Quetzalcoatl or Ozymandias should get you through.

If you’re not at 900k points on all three points ladders by now, after the raids, they should put you pretty close.

Conclusion

If you haven’t finished and got all 4 copies for NP5, then there’s a good chance that you might not finish. There is always next year, though. I suppose I should comfort myself with that: I have plenty of event CEs for next year.

Even if I didn’t get one damned 5⭐️ event CE [insert swear-words about rates being a lie here]


Other, Non-Fate-related News

The relaunch is still on for Labor Day weekend. Ironically, that weekend I’m also planning to put my PoS window A/C away for the year.

I started a new writing project called Silent Shadow: Firestorm. It’s the follow-up to Silent Shadow: Hawk & Wolf that has been knocking around in my head since late 2005—I only finished Hawk & Wolf in short-story format 3 years ago because of the spare time I had on my hands back then. Now, though? The time feels right. I finally have Firestorm scripted, in my head at least, from start to finish even though it took me 15 years.

Seriously, that’s about as long as the Fate franchise has been around. I didn’t become aware of Fate/Stay Night until late 2009, and that was only thanks to a fan web-comic called Fight 2. Thanks to my schedule at the time, I didn’t have time to check out Fate or related works. After the mad rush to graduation, I had completely forgotten by post-graduation and my first job out of college. I didn’t stumble back in until the end of 2012, when I found Fate/Zero on Crunchyroll.

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4 responses to “I Survived this Summer’s ServantFes”

  1. […] to get that last Crystallized Lore but I simply can not bring myself to do it. I have a complete recap coming this weekend, though. So you will find out then whether or not I was able to finish in […]

  2. […] the event, of course) so basically you can do them at your own pace. Remembering my experience with last year’s raids, Sessyoin Kiara (Moon Cancer for this raid) was the most difficult. First off, you had to work with […]

  3. […] complained about the grindiness of this event last year. While the rerun was a little shorter, and the points bonus was bumped up, that did not change just […]

Jess G.

Who am I? Well, I’m a web developer by day and an anime geek/artist/pick-a-random-subject-that-I’m-interested-in person by night. My posts do have a tendency to follow whatever mental tangent I might be on. I suspect that my ADHD may be to blame for that.
Enjoy your stay!