Rabbit’s Reviews #328: Don Quixote (4* Lancer)

Don Quixote is not super. He has some things going for him, but at the end of the day, he’s a two-skill Servant in the weakest card type. It’s a shame, too, because there’s a lot to like about the guy—everything from his concept, to his animations, to his story portrayal is awesome—but his kit just doesn’t quite cohere enough for him to be worth investing much in, especially with Lancer Yu being free and still relatively recent. He could be worse, and a new support could help him a little, but this is a “pull-for-love” kinda character.

Don Quixote is a defense-leaning Lancer, which is unfortunate for a DPS. You could argue he’s meant to be more supportive—or at least a hybrid support—but his ostensible supportive tools undercut each other in ways that do not point in this direction. He’s a DPS, and he has bad stats for it. His internals are better, though: as a Quick Servant with high-hit Quicks, his star gen is solid, and he has standard Arts NP gain and good Quick NP gain for his deck. For passives, he gets E-level Magic Resistance and Riding, both of which are good passives for him but both of which are too low-level to be meaningful here. Accompanying Servant is a unique passive representing Sancho Panza, and it increases Don Quixote’s Death Resistance, which could be nice for the occasional gimmick fight, but if instant-kill is a real threat you’re still better off running a King Hassan or a Moon Cancer. For appends, Mana Loading is nice as always, especially considering Don Quixote has no innate self-charge and in fact needs extra charge to make use of his third skill. The Extra Attack buff is the second-most useful thanks to Don Quixote’s good cards, while anti-Rider damage is the least useful, as Don Quixote is not strong enough to be worthwhile in neutral contexts, even with the extra buff.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Lancer Piece
3	150,000	x10 Lancer Piece x6 Meteor Horseshoe
4	500,000	x4 Lancer Monument x16 Great Knight Medal x3 Warhorse's Young Horn
Max	1,500,000	x10 Lancer Monument x5 Warhorse's Young Horn x10 Giant's Ring

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Lancer x8 Great Knight Medal
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Lancer x16 Great Knight Medal
6 → 7	2,500,000	x10 Secret Gem of Lancer x4 Meteor Horseshoe
7 → 8	5,000,000	x8 Meteor Horseshoe x10 Void's Dust
8 → 9	6,000,000	x30 Void's Dust x60 Twilit Ritual Sword
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Lancer
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Lancer
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Lancer
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Lancer x12 Proof of Hero
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Lancer x24 Proof of Hero
6 → 7	2500000	x10 Secret Gem of Lancer x8 Void's Dust
7 → 8	5000000	x16 Void's Dust x5 Giant's Ring
8 → 9	6000000	x15 Giant's Ring x20 Scale of Fantasy
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Why do all the Traum Servants except for Moriarty have such bad mat asks? Like the others, Don Quixote takes the maximum quantity of a bronze mat—in this case, swords. He also needs a lot of dust and a fair number of medals, both of which are common mat asks and can be an issue for newer players especially.

Practically speaking, Don Quixote only has two skills. Recommended skill order is 2>1>3.

Overall, Don Quixote is an extremely bland ST Quick unit from a gameplay standpoint. He has good cards, so ideally he runs double Skadi (plus whatever third support you have access to) and let him loop. Oberon is the most flexible third support, though Reines is arguably better if she gets to NP—she provides more overall damage buffs (even beating Oberon’s burst turn unless Don Quixote has an NP damage CE) and her defensive tools and NP gain buffs help Don Quixote as well. Sadly, Don Quixote’s attack buff does not scale with overcharge, but his crit buff does, at least, helping his cards a little.

Quick can also stall, as always, with Skadi/DPS/Castoria setups. Don Quixote doesn’t have much unique value here, except in that his NP buffs will almost always be in effect and he can burn his third skill in an emergency. I wouldn’t really recommend trying to stall with this guy, and his HP demerit is particularly poorly-suited to Castoria teams, but if you want to force Don Quixote into clearing a fight he’s not suited for, this is probably your best bet.

Quick sadly does not scale down as well as Buster or Arts do. If you don’t have your own top-tier supports, you’ll want to bring Don Quixote with whatever NP charge supports you do have. Even Koyanskaya is better than nothing, since she helps Don Quixote’s Buster crits and provides decent steroids versus Man enemies. You can fill out the team with whichever free or budget supports you do have: Hans is always decent, as is Barti. Bonus points if your additional supports bring AoE buffs and can deal decent damage on their own. Laksmibai is actually a decent pick here, as she and Don Quixote can supplement one another’s buffs to help each other’s crits deal more damage.

It might be worth noting that there’s a small value proposition for 90+ nodes here as well. Don Quixote can drop a single-enemy wave, giving his NP buffs an ally. If he’s able to build 30% gauge (probably through AoE batteries on a support or DPS somewhere) he can reflect that gauge back to the DPS to enable setups that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Is it worth investing in him for? No. Is it there? Yeah, I guess.

Don Quixote’s CE choices are pretty simple: the Black Grail brings the largest damage increase, while starting NP gauge CEs like Traces of Christmas make for more flexible loopage (and doesn’t have the HP demerit if you’re playing slower). Pick whichever is best for your planned use case.

Given Don Quixote’s NP’s demerit, sticking a few healing CCs on his cards isn’t a bad idea—a bit of healing placed before his NP can occasionally stop the demerit from killing him, which you might need. Aside from that, crit damage CCs are a good idea for Don Quixote’s Buster cards, as he has decently easy crit access but pretty low crit buffs on his Busters.

Lancers are good grail targets and SRs get a lot out of a pair of grails, but honestly Don Quixote isn’t worth it. At the most basic level, he’s fine as a DPS, but he’s a two-skill Servant with a whole host of drawbacks. If you really like him, then, as always, go for it, but from a gameplay standpoint, grails aren’t likely to let him do anything he couldn’t already.

Don Quixote is a very fun character. His art is great, his concept is great, his writing is great… but he pays for that by being the worst of the Traum bunch mechanically. His bases are solid, and the right set of buffs could make him good, but for now he’s an easy pass or a trophy pull. Not much else to say.

Overall: 6/10
Single-Target DPS: 6/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 2/10
Offensive Utility: 4/10
Defensive Utility: 1/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
Windmill-Slaying: 10/10