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MMM - Avian Ally Assembles Atop Ampitheatre, Awe-inspiring Artists Acquire Attire (MOONLIGHT / LOSTROOM Collab)

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MMM Moonlight Lostroom Collab

The Modern Magus Magazine

Hey, everyone! Get out your party poppers and bring out the champagne!

Why? Because it’s the legendary Tsukihime collab of course! Look at that amazing Arcueid SSR Berserker in the gacha, and I’m certain Ciel will be a steadfast welfare for all players to enjoy! And of course, let’s not forget the original story written by Kinoko Nas...ugh.

Nope, I can’t delude myself any further. Dreams will be dreams, even if I’ve submitted Tsukihime collab for my most desired collab material without fail in the player survey each year.

So instead FGO is contributing to furthering everyone’s crippling idol addiction by making all your favourites stars on stage. It’s like they’re daring us to descend even further unto the rabbit hole.

Moonlight Lostroom Pickup JP
NA Release Date: 04/2023

Miss Crane

Introduction

So this has been hinted at here and there by minor content in the game for a while, but the real tragedy is that the wide-brimmed witch silhouette we saw in the teaser image was this girl. It feels like we’re lacking a traditional western witch period, and LB6 would’ve been a great time to see one with all the faeries being hinted at (don’t think we ignored that Medb strengthening, DW).

In any case, you too now can be a kind-hearted Japanese man in folklore who gets pulled out of poverty by a crane disguised as your new hot wife except she’s slowly killing herself by making fancy outfits for you to sell.

Y’know, the whole milf angle gets kind of slaughtered when you state the legend straight like that. Miss Crane, please go single.

Servant Data
Caster
Territory Creation (Atelier) C+

Increase your Arts Card effectiveness by 7%.
Increase your Arts Card Critical Star Drop Rate by 30%.

Item Creation (Cloth) A

Increase Received Buff Success Rate by 10% for all allies while on the field.

Overview

As the eternal saying goes, when you’re a support NP Caster, your base stats don’t really matter. But in Miss Crane’s case, she actually manages to put that into practice, since she’s the first support Caster SSR in a goddamn eternity to break away even a decent distance from the 14259 HP stat all of her kin seem to have…except Skadi. But even then she’s only a couple hundred off.

So Miss Crane is a bit more durable than other Casters, in turn for a notably lower attack state. Guess her dreams of being the new Arts crit Caster god are dead. Poor her.

She’s got a bit more to talk about on the Passives side of things. She may have the standard Territory Creation and Item Creation, but both are variants, with pretty funky additional bonuses on them - her Territory Creation also gives her a notable boost to stargen on her Arts cards, meaning on average her Arts cards will produce 2 stars each, as opposed to the “one if you’re lucky” most Arts cards get. Meanwhile her Item Creation applies its buff success rate buff not only to her, but to every ally, provided she’s on the frontline.

While incredibly niche, that can have some value, I suppose. Lanling notably has a want for Buff Success Rate Up, and I guess there’s always Hans’s NP if people are still running him as a support in this day and age. So far as practicality goes, it’s likely only ever gonna make Nero’s IP more consistent if you’re using her for an AOE farmer, or something like that. It’s interesting, at the very least.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how fine is our feathery female? On one hand, she’s as graceful as a swan:

Miss Crane brings a lot to the table at essentially the cost of taking up a slot and her presence for a turn during the battle. Her supportive effects are far from impactful, giving a significant offensive boost or clutch defensive safeguard when you may want it for challenging content. The reason I give this all praise when competing supports provide more, is because you can have Miss Crane’s benefits while also having her competitors in the formation, instead of having to compete to be present in the 3-man frontline. It’s kind of like Mashu’s unique, untouchable niche of being 0 cost. Sure, she doesn’t give the most amazing contribution for it, but no other Servant can be as ‘free’ as her.

To DW’s credit, they were very careful to make Miss Crane’s buffs universally useful. All of her buffs provide benefit to any kind of damage Servant - she makes them produce plenty of stars, then gives them Star Focus and Critical Damage Up to capitalize. She provides Attack Up and NP Damage Up instead of more niche card type buffs, and her defensive boosts are oriented to best ensure they provide protection even if she subs out for a fresh Servant. She can be run in literally any kind of team besides sheer stall and she brings something to the table. And if you’re still doing Jeanne+Double Merlin in the year of our Lord, Miss Crane not being useful to you is probably a you problem.

However, she’s also something of a headless chicken:

When we boil things down, Miss Crane doesn’t feel like a real Servant. Or rather, if you try to use her like one, not touching her NP, she’s pretty terrible. That’s not me bashing the play she’s made to enable, but more that she has to be used in that way to be viable. You can’t use Miss Crane to substitute a big name support, but supplement them, because she alone is not that great a support. In a sense she’s like the true megawhale support, since her power grows in proportion to how good your existing support lineup is.

And that brings me to the biggest negative of Miss Crane, her nicheness. She’s pretty much useless for farming purposes, is probably overkill for a majority of content, and so only has value for showy setups in CQ’s and harder parts of a story chapter. And even then, she’s 3 turns of buffs you pop on turn 1, or sub in with Battlesuit, then never see again if you win the battle. Is that really worth rolling the gacha for, or spending all the investment to raise?

So, I’m not really sure how having your Crane wife leave you gives you a bajillion benefits, but it is what it is.

Miss Crane is one of the most abnormal Servants in the game, and it makes her pretty hard to draw a firm stance on as a result. Just looking on paper, she’s another addition to the list of “attempts to be a support, but not as good as Waver/Merlin/Skadi/Reines/Casturia...and Tamamo, I guess.” But saying that would ignore fundamentally she doesn’t compete for a role with any other Servant in the game, outside of taking a team slot.

And I’m going to be real - the #5 slot in my teams for Challenge Quests? Usually I have no clue what to put there. Numbers 1-3 is the A team. #4 is the backup support should one on the frontline die prematurely. #6 is the super-durable keystone solo Servant to try and save things if things go terribly, your Heracles or whatever else.

The #5 slot? I never know what to run. And Miss Crane provides a surprisingly neat solution. Run her in the frontline, YEET her out turn 1 for your real support, now placed in Slot #4, #5 is your backup support as usual, then #6 remains your solo god. It does still mean Miss Crane ends up the last line of defense instead of the solo god, but usually that means she soaks up some hits for your important Servant, which is pretty neat.

But ultimately that’s an indulgence spared to people who already have a rock-solid selection of Servants that can’t be improved further due to the game’s limitations. For the average F2P, it’s like offering a topping of caviar with gold flakes on their Weetabix. It feels pretty unnecessary, and you should be improving the base before putting such an absurd seasoning on top.

Regardless, she does provide a new niche which no other Servant in the game can provide, and one that is flexible to almost all team compositions. If you lack Casturia or just any big name Caster support period, I recommend not looking at this birb until you have the normal supportive corner on lockdown. If you do, however, Miss Crane makes a welcome and versatile addition to spice up difficult content in the game.

Rath™ Seal of Approval.

Mysterious Idol X (Alter)

Introduction

It feels like an eternity since she actually got revealed, but hey, we have our welfare Foreigner in the game now. I have to admit, the whole idol, being Arturia, and Alter parts of MIXA don’t really appeal to me.

But the glasses? Well, I’ve heard they’re very versatile…

Servant Data
Foreigner
Entity of the Outer Realm D

Gain 2 Critical Stars per turn.
Increase your Debuff Resist by 4%.

Madness Enhancement C

Increase your Buster Card effectiveness by 6%.

Altereactor B

Increase your Debuff Resist by 17.5%.

Overview

With only one fellow SR Foreigner to compare herself to, MIXA hasn’t got the widest array of competition out there. But regardless, her edition with two X’s in the name is more offensively built, with MIXA having a notable drop in Attack in exchange for more HP. In the grand scheme of things that places her roughly average offensively for a 4* Servant, but with a decent bit more HP than most with her offensive might. So not too bad.

As is custom for Foreigners, MIXA isn’t lacking in Passives. Entity of the Outer Realm provides its traditional passive star generation and minor Debuff Resistance, Madness Enhancement gives a decent boost to her secondary card type, and Altereactor pushes her passive Debuff Resistance above the 20% mark, making her pretty resilient to debuffs on the whole.

As a baseline, it makes her pretty durable while packing reasonable offense to boot.

NP Generation
Servant Skills
Noble Phantasm
Conclusion

So how stunning is Mysterious Idol X Alter’s debut? On one hand, she’s drowning in superchats:

Even just tossing her NP out the window, MHXA’s Foreigner form isn’t half bad. She has a powerful crit skill to flex both her high stargen and Foreigner star weight, with a plethora of offensive buffs at her disposal she can hit pretty hard, and she comes packing a fire-and-forget defensive option to provide a safeguard should she have to face off enemy NP’s. Unlike some looping options out there, MIXA can hit pretty damn hard with her regular cards should she need to supplement her NP.

But hey, MIXA is very much a solid looper. She may face dependence on her card chain for CQ scenarios, but on paper she should be able to consistently 3-turn a wide range of nodes with a double Skadi battlesuit setup. While certainly not the simplest or most braindead farmer to use, she does so while pushing out very respectable damage regardless of class type, which makes her very valuable to have on the table.

It’s also worth shouting out both of MIXA’s effective damage options. While Mechanical is technically a more niche trait, a large sum of enemy types possess it among generics, while the Servant lineup is limited, but not incredibly narrow. Meanwhile, the Good trait is one of the best traits out there to hit effectively, especially since FGO tends to make a habit of throwing it on even villains when they feel like it.

However, she may be facing some connection problems (which are not her fault at all, right?):

Pretty much any semblance of consistent farming with MIXA requires LB Kaleidoscope, which is almost as much of a gatekeeper as rolling an SSR for some. At the least, I know some people who still don’t have one after playing since launch, and it took me personally until around Skadi release to have an LB Kaleido of my own. And, uh, not that I’ve blown out my credit card, but I’m something of a whale myself. So yeah, the welfare universal farmer angle is kind of less effective when you largely need a hard-to-obtain CE for her setups.

You know, I love to joke about the present Casturia farming meta completely invalidating other options, but it’s pleasant when a Quick Servant shows up and gives them a bit of a bloody nose. While MIXA hardly outclasses Space Ishtar or Summer Musashi, she does provide another accessible farmer for those who only have Skadi to latch onto, while hitting at the weight of some of the best universal farmers out there damage-wise.

Her pretty good critical damage output for CQ scenarios and superb personal NP gain is just the cherry on the cake, but it does make her more solidified as a strong welfare option to raise and put at your disposal. Rath™ Seal of Approval with a recommendation.

Outro

I could give a normal cordial outro for this MMM, or I could just take a single paragraph to get every possible idol reference possible out of my system.

That seems like a simple choice no? Like slamming a masochistic pirate against a wall which resembles a green necromancer for some reason because a fox friendzoned you and you want a relationship where a comet calls you their “Honey” in a perfect accent, while you ponder how to brainwash a devil into thinking she’s an angel before your local drug-dealing Yakuza dragon sics her gorilla wife on you for speaking kusoshit mitailike Japanihongo.

Oh, excuse me for a moment, there appears to be a death metal singer at my doorstep. I’ll surely be alive to deliver the next MMM, everyone. Until then!

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