Guide to Forever Prayer

Hi Friends! Forever Prayers are hitting LostWord for its half anniversary - it’s an exciting chance to get one friend, with a degree of choice involved! It may be a bit confusing, but here’s a breakdown: How it works is that you get offered one friend at the start of every day. You may either choose to take that friend, or pass and wait until the next day for a new friend. Once a new day starts, the last day’s offer is no longer available. When you pick a friend, your Forever Prayers end. Effectively, this means you get one friend. Deciding who to go for can be a bit tricky, so the rest of this article will break down the best strategy to use, as well as some suggestions for who to go for.

The pool of characters includes all General and Festival characters up to the end of October, but does NOT include Ultra Festival characters (the Witch of Scarlet Dreams, the Mysterious Sword Master, and the Tiny Ghost Mistress). You can be offered duplicates of the same characters. Forever Prayer resets daily at the same time as daily reset (when you get Login Bonuses and such, at 00:00 UTC). 

Since you get one chance a day, it’s rather unlikely you’ll get the exact character you want if you only go into the Forever Prayer with your heart set on a single Friend - a mere 40.14% chance, in fact. We can make those odds much better by deciding that we’re okay with getting one of multiple Friends - by simply opening your heart up to a second option, your odds go up to 64.5%! If you go for three, you have a 79.15% chance, a total of four candidates gets you a 87.8%, and lastly having a full five options will earn you a 93.02% chance to get one of the Friends you desire.

Due to the diminishing returns, there’s not much benefit in aiming for more than four or five targets. As such, pick a # of Friends you’d really like, depending on how much risk you’re willing to take of not getting any of them and having to go with whatever the last day gives you. Personally, I’m going into it with four desired options as I’m rather risk adverse. 

For nerds, the math is (1-(1-x/y)^z), where X is the number of characters you’d like, Y is the total number of characters released, and Z is the # of days remaining in the promotion. 

For the most part, you should prefer Festival Friends that you’d really like, as they are not generally available. Of course, don’t let this stop you from including a general Friend if they’re your absolute favorite - the meta isn’t really that important, and it’s better to get who you want the most rather than gunning for Festivals you might not just because some girl on Gamepress told you to do so.

Through that lens, here’s some recommendations for great pick-ups!

And for funsies, my personal choices are Shion Yorigami, Koishi Komeiji, Suwako Moriya, and Kanako Yasaka.

A potent farmer, and great for harder fights too with a mix of DEF Down and offense - though be warned a good chunk of her power comes from a Chapter 3 Act 1 Story Card that’s only farmable on Lunatic and requires setups newer players might not be able to access.

An extremely strong farmer, with a fast Last Word animation that’s ideal for the upcoming automatic refight feature. Also very good for harder fights, due to sheer damage output.

A powerful farmer and an extremely potent DEF Down unit with a highly devastating Solo targeting nuke - held back only by said Solo targeting, making her not as versatile.

The Gold Standard for good units, a great farmer and damage dealer alike. She and the units below her aren’t quite as good as the units above, but are still fantastic options.

A strong farmer, and excellent in harder fights as a nuker due to her high Hard scaling.

Great farmer and high damage dealer in harder fights, though watch out for her Killers missing out on some targets.

A good farmer and fantastic damage dealer for harder fights, but is both somewhat reliant on Killers and a farmable Story Card from Chapter 3 Act 2 which will be out of reach for newer players until they’ve been playing for a bit.

An extremely potent Solo targeting nuker and farmer, which whilst to some extent limits her, also makes her a fantastic option if you lack Solo nukers, since some content favors them.