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Forever Prayer Before Anniversary: Starting April 15th!

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Forever Prayer the Third

Right when you were done drooling over the 190 guaranteed rolls from Kourindou Roulette's renewal, the Forever Prayer event has returned for its third iteration! For those who want to look at the previous articles going over Forever Prayer, you can check them out below, but do note their Friend selection and (obviously) dates will be...outdated. As for a general overview of the event itself, you are able to pull once a day for a Guaranteed Friend. You can either stick with the Friend you pulled or wait until the next day for the chance of a different one.

The list of available Friends comes from all General and Festival Friends from game's launch in May until the end of February. However, do note that this does not include any A-Type Multiverse Friends, most notably Reimu Hakurei (Scarlet) and Marisa Kirisame (Scarlet). If you would like to see a more detailed list of all the General Friends available on the prayer, check the in-game list or look at the community listing here!

Please note that you will only be able to accept one Friend from this Prayer. After confirming that you accept them, you will not be able to get any more pulls or Friends. Each day you can Pray once, and if you did not select to keep the previously pulled Friend, they will be replaced in a queue with the newly pulled Friend. You can choose to accept the queued Friend whenever you want, and if the Prayer ends and you did not accept anyone, the queued Friend will be accepted.

Forever Prayer will reset at the same time as Daily Reset (0:00 UTC) and will last from April 15th until the end of May 9th (at 23:59 UTC), meaning the final daily pull will be on May 9th. Deciding who to choose from this range of 78 Friends can be rather overwhelming, so let's look over the risks and potential gains from this special Prayer.

Previous Forever Prayers:

Strategy (Calculating Risk)

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 27.57% 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 47.76%! If you go for three, you have a 62.49% chance, a total of four candidates gets you a 73.18%, and lastly having a full five options will earn you a 80.91% chance to get one of the Friends you desire.

For cute 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 (78 in this case), and Z is the # of days remaining in the promotion (25, as it runs from April 15th to May 9th). Do note that thanks to the ever-expanding roster (or an increase in Y), the Forever Prayer is beginning to decrease in favorable probabilities the fewer Friends you desire, so plan accordingly.

Due to the diminishing returns, there’s not much benefit in aiming for less than three or more 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. As for myself, although I own a good majority of Festival Friends, there are quite a few I'm missing, so I'll settle for at least six of the options here.

Who to Choose (FES Listing)

For the most part, you should prefer Festival Friends that you’d really like, as they are not available outside of Rerun Festivals. There are still powerful General Friends worth considering, like Tewi Inaba or Utsuho Reiuji, but Festival Friends' limited nature makes them more preferred in most instances.Of course, don’t let this stop you from including a general Friend if they’re your absolute favorite (picking your favorite over meta is a powerful take), and it’s better to get who you want the most rather than gunning for Festivals you might not truly want or even get because funny Gamepress number say she's higher than your favorite.

For the six Festival Friends I myself am gunning for, they would be Hecatia Lapislazuli, Doremy Sweet, Yuuka Kazami, Koishi Komeiji and...Byakuren Hijiri or Junko. Those last two might not be the most powerful, but sometimes you need the characters over the meta.

Instead of going over a small portion of the powerful Friends to consider, this time all Festival Friends will be listed by their Type (Attack, Defense, Debuff, etc.) along with the upgrade scroll they are related to. This will only go into the Festivals, but of course there are still General Friends that fill this role well (or for some exceptions, even better). Also note that most of the time these tags just point out what a Friend should be good at and usually does not reflect their tiering or how good they truly are.

If you are chasing the meta and do not have them yet, Hecatia Lapizlazuli and Iku Nagae are the best picks for being high tiers. Other Festival Friends have their uses, but these two are the ones who have very high usage all-around. Additionally, while other Festival Friends might be not as good as others listed, the ones highlighted each section are usually the better out of that series of Friends (unless the exact opposite is being stated). This section of the article is not a tier list analysis. If you would like one, please refer to the LostWord Tier List or the Analysis sections of a character's Gamepress page. 

Attack Type (Dragon Scrolls)

Just as the name says, these Friends are all about power: hitting hard on their attacks and buffing themselves to keep themselves strong. Usually their buffs are rather selfish, meaning they prefer to buff themselves rather than the rest of their team. A good amount of these Friends come with Charge on their skills, allowing them to attack last and allow other Friends to soften enemies up with debuffs first. (A weird exception of this being Watatsuki no Toyohime

Out of all of the Festivals included here, Yuuka Kazami is by far the most powerful in terms of raw power, though (like most of these Friends), she really doesn't provide much outside of that strength. Though that power can still be taken advantage of to efficiently farm some story card stages, a trait many use to incentivize having duplicates of some Friends for the sake of farming.

Unfortunately, Yuyuko Saigyouji is the one Attack Friend here who has really fallen from grace from the launch of the game, with her turn 1 damage being easily outclassed by others. Suwako Moriya is not the most impressive in terms of raw damage either.

Debuff Type (Cloud)

A Debuff Friend's main focus is to...debuff. The stat they try to decrease depends on the Friend of choice, but most of the time several spell effects and skills will lean toward this goal of weakening singular or multiple foes. The most ideal debuffs usually revolve around DEF DOWN to let nukes hit harder or Evasion DOWN as a counter to Evasion UP or general accuracy support.

Shion Yorigami and Sagume Kishin actually share a common debuff goal here: having a good amount of Yang DEF DOWN while decreasing Evasion as well. Shion goes for both Yin and Yang, making her have some more utility if your team has some mixed attackers.

Defense Type (Heaven)

Now, this might be a shock, but I'm pretty sure these Friends are meant to be defensive walls to protect the rest of your team. They will buff the defensive stat they prefer, usually being the offensive stat they also use more, and increase their own Focus to be more likely to be targetted. Unfortunately, the latter is usually a downfall for most Defense Friends. To keep it simple, an increased Focus makes enemies do a larger percentage of All-target damage as the Defense Friend absorbs more damage, almost nullifying their self-defense buffs at times. This makes limited Defense Friends such as Byakuren Hijiri and Kanako Yasaka very difficult to optimally use, even if they have high defensive buffs.

The best way to counter a nuclear strike a Friend can't handle is Barrier Restoration so you can constantly Graze these powerful attacks. The Friend that is by far best suited for that in this category is Yukari Yakumo, who can restore 2 Barriers every 5 turns, and for everyone to boot! Also, do not confuse restoring Barriers with healing a Barrier's status, which only removes anomalies from Friends.

Destroy Type (Serpent)

This is somewhat of a stranger category to specify, but all Destory Friends have a knack for critical hits, buffing their own CRIT ATK or Accuracy to ensure destruction via increased damage. For the most part, critical hits are usually not the most reliable source of damage, especially if CRIT Accuracy isn't buffed high enough. However, Killer bullets, which are bullets that ensure a critical hit based on the foe's race tags, are a way some Destory Friends can bypass CRIT Accuracy and ensure higher damage.

There are some good picks here, notably Koishi Komeiji (whose Water might even help in the Water EX Battle Stage!) and Okina Matara. However, Hecatia Lapislazuli is a Friend who can never do you wrong. While she might have less team utility than the best Friends, her high damage output and devastating buffs make her a very handy ally.

Heal Type (Wind)

Oh...hi Eirin Yagokoro? Heal is another rather obvious role: restoring the HP and (sometimes) the Barriers of the whole teamAs the sole Festival contender for this role, Eirin is definitely a helpful Friend in this aspect. Note that HP heals based on the caster's own HP, so a 45% HP heal to the whole teams heals everyone by 45% of the Friend who used that skill. Since Eirin has a pretty bulky HP total (which can be buffed with story cards if you truly desire), she does very well at keeping the party alive and can even add a layer of the party's Barrier after using her Last Word! It's a shame the rest of her buffs are more selfish...

Speed Type (Phoenix)

At first, you may assume these Friends buff their Agility very high to allow themselves to always go first in battle! While that can be true at times, Agility sometimes does not matter as much for turn prioity due to both Quick or Charge effects and the pre-determined priority of most attacks. (Last Words go first, then Spell Cards, then basic shots) Instead, heavy amounts of Agility UP has another purpose: increasing Slicing bullets' damage. For some Friends, the added damage may be slight, but others highly benefit from heavy Agility UP buffs. Their buffing is usually selfish, but some exceptions help the whole team as well.

Iku Nagae is a very easy exception of this, having plenty of utility from elemental and anomaly breaks to strong debuffs to just being a tough Friend in general! While she does slightly trail behind other nukes, Watatsuki no Yorihime still can be a heavy hitter outside of her Agility-based attacks.

Support Type (Earth)

Guess the Festival Friends don't feel like supporting their team. Oh well.

Technical Type (Tiger)

Last but certainly not least are the Technical Friends who...just do a lot, honestly. They are probably some of the most selfish buffers, but with their strong firepower and devastating coverage, they have a reason to focus on themselves. Basically all of the Friends in this category have some sort of utility, which is rather impressive when most of them do not even try to help the rest of the team. With their Quick status buffs, they can move first to get a good hit in before any of your other Friends or the enemy attacks.

Tenshi Hinanawi is somewhat of a fan-favorite in this category, mainly just around to hit hard but still has plentiful buffs and even some self-vitality through healing. Doremy Sweet is the most team utility-based Friend here, tiring opponents out and lowering their Evasion and Yang DEF for other Friends to take advantage of. If you want an insane Solo-target nuke, Kasen Ibaraki definitely has you covered, stacking heavy amounts of buffs to rain on any single person's parade. Although, potentially the greatest Friend in terms of utility here is Suika Ibuki, with hard (literally, with Hard scaling) hits, Accuracy buffs, and even defense debuffs on her Last Word.

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About the Author(s)

I mainly go by Neku on Discord and primarily focus on writing articles for Touhou Lostword. You can usually find me on the Touhou Lostword Official Discord (Neku#9644) if needed for edits regarding any information on that side. 

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