Locusta

“Have some mushrooms, please! It’s really, really safe, there are definitely no side effects!”

A poisoner employed by the Caesar family in ancient Rome, Locusta joins the roster as an ST Arts Assassin Servant. Her skill set is heavily centered around inflicting poison and taking advantage of the poison status effect.

Locusta’s entire kit all have some relation to poison as befitting her history. Her first skill, Poison Mixing A+, inflicts 5 turns of poison on the entire enemy party, and gives herself a decent Arts and NP Gain buff for 3 turns. Her second skill, Toughness (Poison) A, is her primary defensive skill, providing her a 1-time, 3-turn Guts, a small Damage Cut across 3 turns, and a special unique effect that converts any poison damage that she takes into healing for 5 turns. Her final skill, Cooking (Mushroom) B, provides the entire party with up to 20% NP Gauge, which is a relatively sought-after skill in an SR Servant. Additionally, it allows her normal attacks to inflict poison, and it self inflicts poison on herself, which can be an advantage when combined with her second skill. To help support all her poison-related effects, she has a passive that improves her Poison success rate.

To wrap her skill kit together, her NP, Finis Fungus, inflicts poison and buffs her own Arts effectiveness before dealing damage to a single enemy, where damage increases for each poison stack on the enemy (up to a maximum of 10 stacks). The enemy also is inflicted by a Poison Damage Up buff, which doubles all poison damage taken for 5 turns. Her NP gives her relatively easy access to trait-based bonus damage, and rewards actively attempting to stack poison on a single enemy, while also benefitting from any other sources of poison provided by allies or Command Codes. However, her NP Gain is on the lower end, which means she may struggle initially with getting her NP out without further support. Due to her damage ceiling requiring 10 stacks of poison, it can require a more dedicated setup centered around her for her to function at capacity.

Taken together, Locusta is a decently powerful ST Arts Assassin option who has a potentially high damage ceiling with proper setup. Beyond her poison-based skill set, she also is useful in the party for her party NP charge, which is relatively uncommon among SR Servants and make her potentially helpful in multi-damage dealer teams. She fills in as a single target option against Riders quite well for those missing a Servant for the niche as well. Masters will see the most benefit to Locusta in the party by creating a poison-themed team, although she will still happily cook a heartily poisoning mushroom soup for any opponents on her own.

Easy Access Supereffective Modifier

Locusta’s NP gains damage based on the number of poison stacks, at 15% bonus damage per stack up to a max of +150% damage. Within her own kit, her NP already will provide 1 stack before damage, so the NP will always do have at minimum a +15% modifier. When combined with her first and third skill, she can stack up to 5 relatively easily on her own, and in solo scenarios can reach the maximum much more easily since her Cards will always be available. Any allies that provide poison, or command codes that inflict poison stacks (such as “Tragic Dragonkin Who Knew Naught of Love”) can also further improve her damage dealing ability.

Party Wide NP Charge

Being an SR with a 20% NP charge for the party is an ever useful claim to have. This makes her more comfortable to slot into parties, even those who may not necessarily have poison effects, allowing her to provide support to a multi-core (multi-damage dealer) party setup.

Low NP Gain

With a base NP Gain of 0.47%, she can have some trouble filling up her NP Gauge, even with her 20% NP charge skill. This is somewhat offset by her three Arts Cards in her deck, although having some NP Gauge support on the team or a starting NP Gauge CE for Locusta can help offset this.

Ramp-Up Time

Due to the nature of poison being a slower effect that takes place across turns, and the fact that she needs multiple applications of poison stacks to reach her max performance, her greatest claim to fame can be both a strength and weakness. It can take multiple turns to set up poison stacks, and the damage from poison itself also lends to a prolonged, slower gameplay style, which may not suit all encounters.

Locusta’s arguably most generally useful skill is her third, which has the party NP charge, making it generally higher priority than the other skills. However, her first skill also supports her overall damage and performance and is also worth leveling. Her second skill is less important, with the effects generally being defense focused. The general recommended leveling order is 3 > 1 > 2.

• Poison Mixing A+ – Locusta’s primary damage buff, levels in this skill will improve all aspects including the Arts buff, NP Gain buff, and the poison damage. The Arts/NP Gain effects are the most important reasons to invest in this skill, since in most cases the poison damage does not have a huge impact.

• Toughness (Poison) A – This is primarily her defensive skill. The health recovered from Guts and the Damage Cut effect both scale with level, although in most cases this does not make a huge difference. Leveling this skill is entirely optional, and if materials are a concern, this can be left untouched.

• Cooking (Mushroom) B – The only effect that scales with level is the party NP charge, but this effect is useful enough that prioritizing this first is probably the best choice in most cases. The other effects, which include the poison inflicted while normal attacking, along with the self inflicted poison, do not change with level.

Locusta greatly appreciates any Starting NP Gauge CEs due to her otherwise relatively low innate NP Gain. Additionally, ATK Up / NP Damage Up / Arts Up effects are all beneficial to her. Since her own kit contains an Arts buff, either one of ATK or NP Damage or more preferable, although all are still useful.

• Kaleidoscope / Winter Crystal / The Imaginary Element – Pure starting NP Gauge CEs which enable Locusta to unleash her NP more quickly. With her skill and a non-MLB Kaleidoscope, Locusta can NP immediately. Alternatively, a non-MLB one of Winter Crystal or Imaginary Element allow her to NP immediately if she has her 2nd Append Skill maxed.

• Ocean Flier / Song of the Cradle / Battle Olympia / Mission Start / Grand Puppeteer / Chaldea Anniversary / Dive to Blue / Painting Summer / Star’s Day Off / Golden Sumo: Boulder Tournament / Holy Night Supper – These hybrid NP starter CEs also provide a boost to her offensive performance. Starting with 50% NP Gauge will help Locusta more quickly unleash her NP, although she will need a bit more support or an additional turn to get her NP Gauge full with these CEs.

• The Black Grail / Heaven's Feel – These CEs are pure NP damage boosts, and provide the largest possible boost to Locusta’s NP damage.