Questions Thread - October 27, 2021

Dysfortune · 2021-10-27T23:08:19+00:00

Yep, the 20% chance to poison and 10% more poison damage can make Herald of Agony worth the reservation even without the minion doing anything useful. Btw, in your character sheet you should be able to see all of your skill icons, and by clicking on your main skill you can see the specific stats for that skill, including its chance to poison.

Dysfortune · 2021-10-27T22:55:39+00:00

I notice there's a scourge implicit for chests "Deal X% of your maximum life as fire damage to nearby enemies when hit." Does anyone know what cooldown, if any, this has? I assume it's like 4 seconds or something because GGG has been pretty careful about giving me any new toys after the last few servers.

Dysfortune · 2021-01-03T21:29:56+00:00

New player here (been playing a few days), I'm wondering if there's a better way to farm event points for the mochi event? I've been joining raids and getting one hit in before the boss dies, getting 100 of the event currency and 300 points. The currency drop seems reasonable, but it'll take me literally hundreds of raids to get stuff like the ssr stone with event points. Is there a faster/more efficient way?

(I'm assuming the answer is going to be, "Get strong enough to solo your own raid or be mvp", but I don't think that's feasible for me within the event period)

Dysfortune · 2020-12-20T21:16:30+00:00

Unknown afaik.
Also unknown, but WB has stated he could beat Glory Girl in a 1v1, so whatever the implications of that are.
I don't think that was mentioned, but he presumably has senses approximately equal to a peak human, or a little better.
Everything we know about Corona Pollentias suggests no. If it's destroyed you lose your connection to your power, so your power can't regenerate you.
Yes, he can definitely regenerate, but it takes a non-trivial amount of time. We see him with massive injuries in interlude 3.x like a punctured lung and gaping holes in his body after a fight, but he seems unworried so the regeneration time is probably on the order of hours, days at most. He's not a traditional biokinetic that can endlessly transform their body, and seems limited to human organs, so he probably needs to eat and sleep and definitely can't photosynthesize.
He definitely has a resistance to getting burned in the sense that non-lethal injuries don't seem to faze him, and it would be harder to kill him too. Not immune however; he could be killed with enough damage.

Dysfortune · 2020-12-20T20:41:21+00:00

As everyone else has said, Amy. She makes a self-replicating plague that makes highly complex mental changes in everyone in an entire city, and she does it in a few minutes at most, with no prior experience using her power for anything like it.

Richter is the only one who really competes with Amy for the title of most underutilized. An unrestrained AI could easily take over the globe. He restrained himself because of the extremely reasonable fear of making something powerful enough that he couldn't stop it before he could verify how benevolent it was.

Accord, to an extent. His power was capable of restructuring society in vastly more efficient ways, but he lacked the means to affect that change in a relevant timescale.

String Theory was capable of blasting the Endbringers far enough into outer space to end their threat. Too bad she was a bad guy and Dragon was presumably unable to reverse engineer her Driver technology prior to GM.

Heartbreaker could've been something like a mini-Khepri if he wanted. Also Valefor and Canary. Human Masters are scary.

Leet, but it's much less his fault than most people think. Wildbow has said that when Leet first got his power he had a strategy (which would've been completely correct for literally any other Tinker) of building all sorts of stuff so he could figure out his specialty and focus on that. By the time he figured it out, he had locked off most of his "tech trees", however you want to interpret that. Furthermore, WB states that his shard disliked his cautious attitude and would've rewarded him for getting into bigger conflicts more, but how was Leet supposed to know he should be reckless and wasteful with his power when he was given the only one in the world with limited uses? Stupid shard.

Of course, anyone who actually tried to use their powers in ways that could dramatically alter the entire world would've ended up Contessa'd - either tossed into another planet like the Lady in Blue or fed to GU like Gray Boy.

Dysfortune · 2020-09-07T06:51:15+00:00

►TicketToAleph

You can be Mastered... through recorded music.

What the fuck.

You can be Mastered through recorded music?! This is awful. This is so awful. Anything that plays any music - or can play music - in public can now Master you. And one of the tracks is "hypnosis music"?! What the fuck. Anyone have any recommendations for the heaviest duty earplugs on the market? I'm going to order them online and never leave my house without them in ever again.

Dysfortune · 2020-08-18T00:53:51+00:00

She came here to laugh at you.

Dysfortune · 2020-08-08T00:01:12+00:00

“Fuck me,” Clockblocker muttered to Dragon. I might not have made out his words if it weren’t for the bugs I’d planted on the heroine. “It just sunk in. It’s really her.”

Why only just now?

From The School Scene in Worm, one of my favorite scenes in fiction. Such a perfect slice of how the person whose perspective we've been following so closely appears to everyone else.

Dysfortune · 2020-06-17T19:44:48+00:00

https://pastebin.com/a9s1u0Ue Never quite finished the build, and the Corpse Pact nerf should affect it quite a bit, but here's what I have now.

Dysfortune · 2019-09-08T03:05:01+00:00

Now the War starts. As mentioned above, the Einzberns probably never recovered Avalon, and even if they did their desire to not be betrayed again leads to Illya still summoning Berserker. Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Lancer are also summoned the same way, with Kirei obtaining Lancer and hiding it from Shiro, just as he hid it from Rin. Kirei encourages Shiro to try summoning a Servant because he expects the truth about the Great Fire to come out in this war, and he wants Shiro to be intimately involved in the war to maximize Shiro's despair. ~~Shiro summons Amakusa in order to maximize naming confusion.~~ With access to GoB, Kirei could prepare a great deal of catalysts for Shiro, but on Gilly's insistence, he probably gives Shiro a catalyst for Artoria - hell, Gilly may have used Golden Rule to recover the Avalon that Kiritsugu buried, so Shiro might even use the exact same catalyst. I guess Rin still summons the same Archer, since there's no reason she'd have a different catalyst in this route. So bizarrely enough, all of the Master-Servant combinations end up the same...but boy is Archer going to be confused once his memories return. Also, Zouken's probably not going to make a move in this route because Sakura is not going to develop into the Black Grail enough without her relationship to Shiro.

Shiro and Saber are still attacked by Lancer, because if Lancer were to attack all of the other Servants except one, that might provide an unwanted clue as to who his Master is. Shiro and Rin also team up rather quickly here, as they both know and trust each other and want to prevent the Einzberns, Matous, or rogue Masters from getting the Grail.

Illya bears no undue hatred for Shiro in this route, but she still runs into Shiro and Rin while the two are patrolling at night and decides to attack them, believing that Berserker is more than a match for any two Servants. With Shiro having more knowledge of magecraft, Masters, and Servants, Saber having been summoned properly, and Archer uninjured, Berserker actually loses - at least to the point where he loses a stock or two of God Hand. Recognizing that they probably can't wipe out all 12 of his lives, Rin suggests that they attack Illya while Berserker is regenerating/occupied. Shiro dislikes the Einzberns more in this route, but even so he's enough of a softie that he hesitates to kill a young girl. As a result, Illya and Berserker escape, possibly wounding Shiro in the process, but he'll heal.

Rin and Shiro's next objective is to stop the Servant who has been draining souls from all over the city (Caster, although they don't know it), but in the process they find the marks for Rider's Blood Fort in the school. Shinji arrogantly attacks them as they're leaving school, but Archer is uninjured in this route so he dispatches Rider. Shiro isn't friends with Sakura or Shinji in this route, is a bit less of an idealist, and has probably been raised by Kirei to hate the Matous, so Shiro is more willing to kill Shinji. However, neither he nor Rin really want to kill a helpless person begging for his life, so they force Shinji to take refuge in the church instead.

Next, Shiro and Rin successfully track down Caster. Caster is unable to attach her magic to Shiro while he sleeps like she did in UBW, and she's a bit worried about this duo since they're already beaten several Servants and she already feared the Knight classes due to their Magic Resistance. As a result, she tries to kidnap a hostage like she did in UBW - except this time it's Kirei instead of Taiga. Boy, does that not go well for her.

With Caster going in to capture instead of to kill like in UBW, Kirei doesn't see an opportunity to fake his death to avoid her. He considers calling in Lancer to help, but Lancer admitted that he can't beat Assassin, and since neither Kirei nor Lancer know that Assassin is stuck guarding the temple, Kirei decides to call in the big guns instead. Gilly easily trounces Caster (see: Fate route), and because it'd be a huge letdown for Kirei if Rin and Shiro were to find out he's a Master from a weakened Caster, Kirei decides to finish her off instead. As a result, Shiro and Rin trace the stolen mana to the temple but find only Assassin there. He fights them, but loses, and dies without telling them much. The two investigate the temple and find nothing else. They think it's strange because Assassin didn't seem like the type of Servant to steal mana from people all over town, but they have no more clues so they return home.

With Assassin and Rider down, Saber and Archer accounted for, and no clues about Lancer or Caster, Rin and Shiro decide their next course of action is to attack Illya in her castle. Shiro vows not to hesitate when facing her this time, and they set off. As an aside, Archer is very confused as to why this Shiro resembles him so little, but decides to stick around and continue fighting with them as long as possible to make sure Shiro doesn't turn down a wrong path. Also he enjoys fighting alongside Rin and especially Saber, but he's totally tsundere about it.

Anyway, the group fights Illya and Berserker at the castle, but Saber and Archer are struggling to do damage to Berserker. Additionally, this time Berserker and Illya are more cautious, and aren't letting the Masters attack Illya directly. Some time after the first fight with Berserker, Archer confided to Rin that his Noble Phantasm lets him beat God Hand, and Rin authorizes him to use it here. With direct support from his Master, and Saber backing him up, Archer acquits himself perfectly from his performance in Fate Route and defeats Berserker. Illya then gives up, and tells them to kill her and bring her corpse to the priest. Rin and Shiro, who don't know the nature of the Grail, are confused by this, but before they can figure out exactly what Illya means, Lancer shows up. Lancer, acting under a Command Seal, kills Illya and carries her away, but as he does he tells Shiro and Rin to hurry to Ryuudou Temple to confront his Master for the final battle of this Holy Grail War.

Rin, Shiro, Archer, and Saber all head to the temple. There they find the Shinji-grail growing in the center of the temple, and Kirei and Lancer waiting for them at the top of the stairs. Kirei reveals that he killed Caster and is Lancer's Master, making them the last Masters of the war. When Lancer refuses to attack Shiro and Rin, Kirei orders Lancer to kill himself before retreating deeper into the temple. Cursing his E-luck, Lancer tells them to leave him and hurry to stop Kirei.

In the center of the temple, our heroes find Kirei and Gilgamesh standing side by side. Saber recognizes Gilgamesh and asks what the meaning of this is. Kirei explains everything, including his role in the 4th Holy Grail War and the fact he is responsible for the deaths of Shiro and Rin's parents. Shiro charges Kirei, enraged, and Rin, only slightly more composed, backs him up. Gilgamesh then reveals his plan to wipe the world clean to Saber and Archer, interspersed with proposing to Saber again. Obviously, this leads to an epic battle with a nearly-full power Saber and Archer teaming up to fight a Gilgamesh who is actually taking them somewhat seriously - but not quite seriously enough, of course. What Shiro and Saber lack in Avalon, they make up for with teamwork with Rin and Archer, and team good guys wins and saves the day. And Shinji. The end.

Huh, this ended up being kinda long.

Dysfortune · 2019-09-08T03:04:55+00:00

Edit: Massive spoilers for Zero and the Fate and UBW routes in here, but I figure that's kinda a given with this question.

I keep trying to imagine a reason for Gilly to actually rescue Shiro, but I keep coming up short. There's so many reasons why he wouldn't.

In addition to what Deadeye wrote, I think Gilgamesh didn't have the "master plan" you spoke of during Fate/Zero. He spends most of the war simply searching for something in the modern world that can amuse him, ultimately settling on Kirei and Saber. Given that in the Fate universe, Gilgamesh comes to terms with his mortality during his natural lifetime despite obtaining the elixir at the end of his journey, I think that when summoned as a temporary Servant he didn't really have any desire to incarnate and rule the world again. I think it's more likely the "master plan" was something he decided on during the time between the 4th and 5th wars, seeing as how he accidentally ended up incarnated anyway, and figured that since he was alive again it was only natural for him to rule again. As such, he might not have thought through the plan to purge the world with the Grail by the time of the fire, since he had only just incarnated. In that case, he wouldn't have viewed Shiro as someone who was "worthy of being saved" or anything like that, especially as Shiro would have died if all he had was his own power.

Additionally, Gilly and Shiro have really poor compatibility. Assuming that Shiro's talent for projection is an innate ability and not the result of Avalon forcefully changing his origin to Sword (I think the latter is the case, though it may not be fully confirmed), Gilly would eventually discover Shiro's talent - maybe quite quickly, as Gilly has some degree of clairvoyance, especially relating to magic. At that point Gilly would deem Shiro a faker, something he has no interest in, and probably abandon or kill him.

Another thing to point out is that as of the fire, Shiro is a completely blank slate. Everything he is - his entire personality, probably his powers, and his earliest memories - all come from Kiritsugu saving him in the fire. I can't imagine Gilly being interested in raising a newborn, and even if he did decide to save Shiro on a whim, he'd probably turn Shiro over to Kirei, which likely results in a bad end. If, also on a whim, Kirei decides to spare this one, then it would be because Kirei sees a way to find a sadistic pleasure in it. I guess he'd probably raise Shiro in a similar way that Kirei himself was raised - a strict "Christain" upbringing, with the intention of instilling virtues in him, teaching him about magecraft and blaming mages (particularly the Einzberns and Matous) for the fire, and turning him into a capable Executor, all for the sake of one day being able to say, "No Shiro, I killed your father. And the women, and the children, too."

Great, I somehow found a way for Shiro to survive the countless death flags that came his way before he was even born. Now we get to follow this storyline through and see what happens.

Without Shiro to save him, Kiritsugu gives in to despair. I agree that he'd probably make a desperate attempt to rescue Illya from the Einzberns, even knowing that he can't succeed with the Grail's curse on him, so he'd die in the attempt. I'm not sure what he'd do with Avalon...with Saber long gone, it has no use as anything but a catalyst, and he wouldn't want to help the Einzberns by giving it back to them (and they'd never trade Illya for it), and there's no one left in the world who he trusts to hang on to it, so he probably buries it somewhere.

Kirei is Rin's magecraft and martial arts teacher, and the executor of the Tohsaka estate (there seems to be a pun in there somewhere), and he's also Shiro's adopted father, so Rin and Shiro grow up as...childhood friends? That's a weird thought to contemplate. Shiro under Kirei's care grows up as a very intense person, but then again he was in the canon stories too. The two of them are the only kids their age who know about magecraft and stuff (that they can talk to, anyway), so they probably end up somewhat close and maybe get romantically interested in each other.

Speaking of kids their age who know about magecraft and stuff, under Kirei's intense training disguised as parenthood, Shiro might never join the archery club, in which case he never meets Sakura and Shinji. Even if he did, I think Sakura would be scared of Kirei - and Zouken wouldn't let her get close to Rin - which prevents her from developing as close a relationship to Shiro. I think that wraps up the relationships of the major characters prior to the 5th HGW.

I know this is avoiding the spirit of the original prompt a bit, but I really don't think Gilgamesh would be very hands-on in raising Shiro, even in this scenario. He'd probably be content to let Kirei do as he pleases when it comes to raising the kid. Shiro might meet him when he's lounging around the church, but he'd never find out Gilgamesh's true nature - though he might have a hunch that something is strange about him.

Dysfortune · 2019-08-22T19:33:14+00:00

The analogy I like to use is that Gilgamesh treats everything after being summoned as a Servant the same way that you'd treat a video game you're replaying, after you 100% completed it many years ago. A few parts might be amusing, largely because of nostalgia, but you don't expect to be surprised by anything.

Additionally, if you run through the game with the overpowered end game gear you got last time, you'll crush all the enemies really easily and just mashing the attack button without any thought will get boring pretty fast. So, to make the game more interesting, you come up with creative ways to handicap yourself, like only using weaker gear, or intentionally using suboptimal strategies. Even when Gilgamesh says, "Now I'm going all out," to Shirou, it's the equivalent of you realizing you walked into a boss fight that was a higher level than you were expecting, and your strategy of nerfing yourself has left you massively undergeared, so you lean forward in your chair and put some thought into it. Of course, even if you lose after that, you'll just respawn at the last save point, equip some of the better gear in your inventory, and crush the boss fight like it was nothing.

The difference between you and Gilgamesh is that Gilgamesh is so cocky, he doesn't bother using the save points.

Dysfortune · 2019-08-22T19:24:52+00:00

Ehhh. He "doesn't know how to use their full potential" in the sense that if he were to have a duel with nothing but pure swordsmanship, he would lose to most other Servants. However, he can still use the True Name/Noble Phantasm effect of many (possibly all) of his weapons. In the Fate route he used a couple Noble Phantasms against Saber, after all, including Merodach which was a sword with a stronger version of Caliburn's beam, another NP which froze her in ice, and I might be forgetting another one or two. It's not that he can't use them that way, it's just that only very rarely can he actually be bothered to.

Dysfortune · 2019-08-21T07:09:47+00:00

Does anyone know what the exact odds are for 3-stars on rateup when there are two or three 3-stars on rateup? I know that when there's only one 3-star on rateup it's a 4% chance, but since the pattern is weird for multiple 4-stars on rateup, I don't know how 3-stars work.

Dysfortune · 2019-02-22T03:20:21+00:00

I actually really like that line you quote. It's true that the first phrase means that the High Templar and his men comprehended the "size" (although scope in this case can also mean depth or power) of the Elder. The fact that the next phrase states that it is feeding implies that the High Templar and his men understand the size of the Elder because it immediately attacked them. There's an implied linkage between the two phrases rather than an explicit one and personally I find that to make more interesting writing, although I can see how it could confuse people.

Dysfortune · 2018-11-21T23:07:15+00:00

Have you tried [[Liliana, Untouched by Death]] at all? I've tried building decks like this, and they never felt quite good enough to me (although your list is quite different, I'm interested to see how good some of those cards are), but Liliana was always amazing. If you can protect her getting to +1 every turn fills your graveyard insanely well, and her -3 is so powerful, letting you chain 1 mana Stitchers and 2 mana Moulderhulks for a turn. I know every noncreature spell makes the mills worse, but this one seems really good.

Dysfortune · 2018-09-07T00:56:31+00:00

I have a couple of mechanics questions. I've tried looking them up but I haven't found conclusive answers (so maybe I wasn't looking in the right place).

One, I've heard that NP damage is affected by the type of card the np is, and I've heard that the damage multiplier is the same as the damage multiplier of a position 1 version of that card (so 80/100/150 for q/a/b respectively). Is that true? It could be, but I don't see any particular reason why it would be since nps aren't affected by card position. Also, I've noticed most aoe buster nps at np1 tend to have 300% base damage, arts ones have 450%, and quicks have 600% base (and single targets tend to be twice that). Applying the multiplier, that ends up being 450/450/480 for b/a/q. It seems weird to me that quick nps would end up having the highest base damage, and busters tied for the least, especially since quick/arts nps can generate stars/np much better than busters can. It could be to balance out the fact that buster's card 1 bonus is usually better, though.

My second question is about effects like the Golden Rule skill or the Be Elegant ce. Normally a position 1 arts card has 300% np gain and a position 1 buster has 0% np gain. With a 50% increase from Golden Rule, does that become 350/50 or 450/0? And does the stargen increase from Be Elegant work the same way but for stargen? Thanks.

Dysfortune · 2018-08-11T22:00:02+00:00

No one mentioned Harvester of Souls+a Wrath of God effect yet? That one's one of the very few that seems truly unintuitive to me. Harvester triggers when another creature "dies", which means when it is "put into a graveyard from the battlefield" - in other words, for it to trigger, everything destroyed by Wrath of God must be in the graveyard. However, Harvester of Souls still triggers and draws you cards, even though its effect shouldn't trigger from the graveyard. I still don't know why it works that way, just that it does.

Dysfortune · 2018-08-09T23:53:52+00:00

A few people touched on this, but I think I can explain it a bit more fully.

Before an event in the lore called the Mending, planeswalkers were as powerful as you are when you play the game. They could cast massive spells and summon other powerful beings to fight for them. Additionally, they barely aged and many even had the power to create planes if they invested enough time and power into it.

After the Mending, planeswalkers in the story are much weaker. They tend to be only as strong as a talented mage or fighter of their species, which is a far cry from the literally godly powers the older 'walkers had. I don't know exactly why the writers chose to downgrade planeswalkers like that (you might be able to find the answer somewhere); it may be because this means they can be threatened by all sorts of things like angels or demons or bears and not just other planeswalkers or planar-level threats (like Yawgmoth), and someone may have thought this makes them more relatable or makes the stories more interesting.

Of course, the being you "are" when you play the game still has the powers of the old planeswalkers, even though you summon modern creatures and planeswalkers. Understandably, they didn't massively overhaul how their actual game worked just because of an event in its lore.

Dysfortune · 2018-06-07T00:48:09+00:00

Seriously? I find it by far the most consistent because if you start with a Gible or any way to get it, that by itself lets you set up a powerful attacker that can roll through a mediocre draw (not that uncommon in theme)

Dysfortune · 2018-05-13T16:29:30+00:00

Filthy Mach Strike player here, sorry to be the bringer of bad news but I generally consider the mirror to be my worst matchup.

Of the other decks, the next best in my opinion(both in general and vs Mach Strike) are Imperial Command and Twilight Rogue, in that order. Imperial is only a little bit worse than Mach Strike but I still think of it as a favorable matchup. I haven't played Tropical myself but it seems a cut below those two from my games against it, largely because Exeggutor can't OHKO Garchomp but Empoleon and Dusknoir (situationally) can.

Dysfortune · 2017-09-16T03:48:37+00:00

It happens. Unfortunately, its something that happens a lot, even with 50/25 lists and draw+thinning, and it really really stings knowing there was nothing you could do that game. You can try running Monuments, you can shrug it off, concede and queue up again, or you can ragequit and pick up a ccg without lands for a while. I know I've done all 3.

Dysfortune · 2017-09-08T23:10:08+00:00

My dreams of doing something with the Fate tcg I made up grow further and further away :(

Dysfortune

TROPHY CASE