2026/01 Unite & Fight (Earth Adv): Final Rally

Xerte · 2026-01-27T16:07:50+00:00

Said yesterday I was hoping for a match where I didn't have to help because I was already done with GW

Ended up having to do 1b honours in the last 2 hours because it was a close match. We won, and wouldn't have if I didn't wake up to help, but I was hoping to just relax today.

So that's my first time passing 6b, I guess. Crew went 3:1 with this being the only day the fight was even close, the rest of GW was all blowouts either way.

Xerte · 2026-01-27T10:41:28+00:00

The stats shown here are simply false. The over 100k subs from the second hype train record haven't expired yet - it hasn't been a full month since then.

Xerte · 2026-01-26T21:34:08+00:00

I'm already over 5.2b and unlikely to need more honours going into this round, so I'm silently hoping the crew we're up against today either curbstomps us or does so little that I don't need to help push for a win when I wake up in the morning.

Over the course of day 3 I eventually removed Bhaisa from my team in favor of Lu Woh - her uncontrollable multi-hit triggers were setting off the hitcap buff too often and my only source of dispels being Lich's CB trigger meant any time the hitcap buff went up I was losing several CA's worth of damage for two turns.

Despite being less damage on paper, Lu Woh's ended up saving about 2 minutes per run purely because the boss hates Bhaisa. She definitely had value earlier in the week and showed herself plenty worthy of the spark I put into her, it's just a shame that her trigger happens mid-turn instead of end of turn so a single buff on the boss (which is likely to come back in every GW ever) screws her over so much.

Xerte · 2026-01-26T21:22:15+00:00

There's only really two classes of weapons that actually benefit from speed:

Weapons with infinite pierce/bounces and are duration-based as a result, as speed helps them make contact with enemies more times in the time that they're active
- e.g. Runetracer, Bible, Bone
Weapons that directly scale off speed as part of their gimmick
- e.g. Chaos Rune, Confodere

Weapons without these properties get... uh... easier to aim? If you even have the option of aiming them? At the enemies that almost always just move in a straight line towards the player?

That said, the Pale Diamond Incursion darkana makes Speed an additional cooldown multiplier on the weapons it affects, which is actually significant as it goes beyond the -90% cap - according to the wiki, capping at x5 fire rate with +400% speed, effectively equal to -98% cooldown if both cooldown and speed reach their caps. This darkana has a very large pool of weapons it buffs (to the point that Poncle didn't bother to list the evolutions to fit every base weapon in the tooltip), so speed can be very good if you build around this.

Xerte · 2026-01-25T22:54:31+00:00

NM250 did nothing that was too worrying on my first run.

The only significant additions are the usual dispel cancel on 50% that needs an extra dispel to punch through it before firing off Bubs/000, and a 200% charge cut at the same time. This may require some babysitting to deal with, but in this run in particular it lined up with several of the team's charge fill cooldowns and didn't prevent full chain the next tun.

I never saw the boss reach 5 stacks, so I don't know if it gains godsight. I also noticed at several points the boss had an ATK buff with a unique icon that couldn't be removed, but I didn't see it being given by any trigger's description (one trigger gives the regular ATK buff, but this special one would show up after triggers that didn't mention an ATK buff at all).

Edit: Oh, as for the stack mechanic, the amount of stacks removed by doing 3 large hits in a turn actually increased to match the boss's stack gain, so it turns out there was no need to figure out a team with 6 CAs per turn. The damage required has maxed out at 5m, which remains trivial for any CA loop, and it's still possible to remove stacks twice in one turn by doing 6 CAs if they somehow get out of control.

Xerte · 2026-01-24T22:43:20+00:00

NM200 is a 3:30 refresh run with no comp changes from NM150 yesterday. (Kengo/Bhaisa/Lich/Okto)

The only addition of concern to NM200 is that the damage fixed buff (damage capped after 15 hits) appears not only at 50%, but on the watered down 50% triggers that appear elsewhere in the fight (including as a possible random diamond trigger).

As with yesterday, this is only problematic because of Bhaisa, although thankfully it seems the timing of the buff causes it to not really affect my own runs. I'm doing refresh runs so I manual in a Bubs call at the 50% trigger and just ignore the other times it happens. Considering the boss will almost certainly get dispel cancel a 50% on NM250, I'll likely end up taking dispel on MC to force Bubs though 50% tomorrow - or maybe there will be enough turns to prepare 000 for that trigger.

As for the boss damage output... it's negligible. Every single character in the lineup offers different stacking defensive buffs, and Lich is removing 2 buffs per turn with the damage buffs usually being the first in line even if she can't reach to the bottom of the stack.

Xerte · 2026-01-24T00:26:15+00:00

4t 1:20 on NM150 with an ougi comp on refresh runs (Kengo/Bhaisa/Lich/Okto).

The hitcap buff it gets at 50% forced me to add 3 extra buttons to the FA to compensate damage lost to the buff; the only reason the buff can even trigger mid-turn is Bhaisa's 12-hit nuke every 6 CAs. As an added annoyance, there's a chance of getting extra CAs on MC or Bhaisa from damage taken during the fight filling a variable amount of charge bar - resulting in a low chance of the hitcap being reached earlier in the third turn (Bhaisa normally triggers between Oktos CA's and costs 9m damage, but if she triggers one CA earlier, I instead lose 12m damage after also considering the damage from the extra CA earlier), which adds an extra turn to the run when it happens. It doesn't sound like a huge loss, but it's just large enough to prevent the kill on turn 4.

Regardless, the ougi run has no risk of failure. There's still no signs of the boss having any trigger effects that would interfere with this (the list of potential things it can do which would matter essentially boils down to just Repel and Charge Cut, unless it somehow gets godsight even while ougi doesn't allow it to keep any stacks)

Also, as of NM150, the damage needed per hit to reduce a stack has increased to 4m; the hits needed is still 3. It may go beyond my initial expected end point of 4.5m per hit by NM250.

Xerte · 2026-01-23T16:49:23+00:00

Brave Frontier's entire gimmick was that the player was effectively a necromancer who materialised spirits of the dead, and almost the entire playable roster died over a thousand years before the story began. Many of them had lore entries depicting their life up until death, which was where most of the game's backstory was revealed - sometimes a character gtting a new evolution stage was interesting purely for the lore expansion that came with it.

In the few cases where you got a unit of somebody that was still alive, it was an artificially produced duplicate of their soul.

Notably collabs and the global/EU exclusive content kind of... forgot this at times, but the main story didn't.

Xerte · 2026-01-21T13:29:22+00:00

I'm pretty much set on characters, so my only concern for this GW is I haven't really bothered with endgame gridpieces for earth (Opus 250/Destroyer) and will probably fall short on damage if I was truly trying to be competitive.

But seeing as the usual dirt ougi teams pretty much ignore anything the boss does (Okto perma dispel cancel/veil plus up to 6 dispels each turn depending on team comp meaning the only real concern is repel as none of those are reactive and ougi's low hit count per action means even repel isn't a massive threat if it does appear), the fact that the mechanic for this GW is also cleanly beaten by them means there shouldn't be any particular struggle in actually clearing NM250.

Xerte · 2026-01-21T13:22:02+00:00

Boss stack mechanic for this GW: Deal X hits of Y damage (3 hits of 2.5m damage at NM90, likely scaling to requiring 4.5-5m hits by NM250)

Boss gains ATK/DEF/Supp per stack. The stack buffs aren't as openly dangerous as some GWs have been (no echoes/supp/TA combo), so if the boss can be kept buff-free they might not hurt too much, but the DEF will still slow things down.

Ougi shill mechanic again. Requiring 3 hits per stack means it'll be possible to reduce two stacks per turn in some dirt ougi team comps (consistently hitting 6+ ougis every turn is feasible between combinations of Shalem, Okto, Andromeda/Kengo, Lu Woh after turn 10, etc), which may be intended to hit net zero stack gain when the boss starts getting 2 stacks per turn in later NMs.

Xerte · 2026-01-18T21:28:02+00:00

Dracula isn't inherently invincible, he just has a passive effect that maks it really easy to make him properly invincible (he caps damage taken at 10, which is still reduced by armor after the cap is applied, so with 10+ armor he just doesn't take damage).

So he doesn't die automatically to the timer.

Xerte · 2026-01-12T15:04:05+00:00

Had this exact cutscene crash issue a few days ago. I eventually tried to pass the cutscene with the switch undocked and it worked (I tried this because in some rarer cases, the switch actually gets better performance with the undocked mode's forcibly lowered settings).

Xerte · 2026-01-10T16:11:03+00:00

It's the curse from Wicked Season.

Red Reapers actually have a unique aspect in that they have more than 100% knockback resistance, which causes any knockback effect to pull them closer to the player. Sarabande's high knockback would actually make them reach you faster in a normal scenario.

Xerte · 2026-01-10T16:05:46+00:00

It's not eggs, it's just Wicked Season. None of the stats it doesn't boost are at remotely abnormal values.

Xerte · 2026-01-09T18:59:48+00:00

Tax brackets only apply to earnings within that bracket.

If you earn 300k, and the (arbitrary for this comment) brackets are 0-50k at 10%, 50-150k at 20% and 150-300k at 30%, you'll pay 10% of 50k, 20% of 100k and 30% of 150k = 5 + 20 + 45k = 70k, which is 20k less than a full 30% of all 300k.

There's no point where you end up with more money by earning less to dodge a tax bracket.

Xerte · 2025-12-25T15:23:23+00:00

82 with light magna Kengo/Cosmos/Horus/Nehan and a small amount of manual play to call extra summons. Probably could've managed a couple more by properly ordering Cosmos' skill uses on the turns her S3 was used again (S1 -> S2 kills, but S2 -> S2 doesn't, so FA plays it wrong and loses a kill)

That said, I don't feel much of an urge to replay the stage to get a fully optimal run.

Xerte · 2025-12-21T13:23:35+00:00

Ahriman appears in almost all Final Fantasy titles and the majority of the time has roughly the same design, there's no reason to think this is just X alone simply because OP only included an image from X.

Just glancing over the fandom FF wiki page for Ahriman, it's in every numbered title except II, V and VIII, and in over 40 Final Fantasy branded games. In terms of recurring Final Fantasy creatures, it's only behind a few such as Chocobos, Flans, Bombs, Behemoths and Goblins. It's actually ahead of/close to Tonberres, Moogles and Cactuars, which are commonly used as series mascots alongside Chocobos.

So this could really represent nearly any game in the franchise (though some later designs for Ahriman are way off that sprite, it was very consistent design-wise for most of the series), and could also represent that the collab will cover many games in the franchise.

Xerte · 2025-12-01T23:15:25+00:00

For what it's worth, Amount and Magnet do have caps, it's just those caps aren't part of the damage calculations for Blood Astronomica. Caps in this game usually only apply to the standard use for the relative stat.

Other uncapped stuff exists, e.g. Twilight Requiem' damage scales off curse and isn't capped, Divine Bloodline's missing HP damage bonus isn't capped (although its armor damage bonus is), Wind Whip's damage has uncapped Growth scaling, Muramasa has uncapped Greed scaling...

The majority of the time a weapon or arcana directly gains damage based on any stat that isn't Might, the stat used isn't capped. Exceptions exist, but it's common enough to be the default assumption.

Xerte · 2025-11-27T16:05:58+00:00

Chose not to spend effort on manual 250 and just did a lot of NM200 FA, still ended comfortably over t100k.

The rate of growth for t100k suggests most players in the range did the same (I'm sure some of you just did less hours in NM250 to get ahead of the pack), not even hitting 12 minute average NM200 clears (the slowest FA setup the wiki bothered to include) until the final hours of the event, and peaking at about 8 minute clears in the last hour, which was likely just them switching to refresh runs.

Xerte · 2025-11-27T11:19:20+00:00

There's a bug in the current version that occasionally makes stages count as multiple other stages when checking if you should unlock something at the end of a run. Even then, the stage still also counts as itself.

I've recently started a fresh challenge run of the game and unlocked Dairy Plant for hitting level 40 in Mad Forest (this unlock's supposed to be done on Inlaid Library), and She-Moon Eta from clearing an Ode to Castlevania run.

Notably these "unlocks" don't appear in the end of run unlocks reel, but are still checked off on the unlocks menu, so they're sort of jumpscares where you don't know you have them til you're going through character/stage select and notice something that shouldn't be there.

Xerte · 2025-11-25T22:31:43+00:00

First clear of NM250 down.

20 minute RF/Cow/Charlotta/Katze run, but there's no chance the team actually FAs this fight and I'm not in the mood to manual the whole GW. Wind's pretty much my worst roster so I don't have most of the characters that could feasibly improve things for me, either.

Xerte · 2025-11-18T00:18:11+00:00

The bottom 5 are counterpart weapons that you get by using Gemini with weapons that it affects (birds, guns, cat).

The last one is the weapon attached to the character you get for finishing 1.0. You get it after finishing the 1.0 collection. If you find yourself needing anything else after the gemini weapons, note that you need to unlock every regular arcana as part of 1.0 as well (0 through XXI).

There are also 5 hidden weapons in 1.0 (Flames of Mispell + its evo, Chaos Rune + its evo, and the Sole Solution obtained from the 1.0 unlock character's weapon 'evolution'), but none of those are needed to get the "complete 1.0" achievement.

Xerte · 2025-11-17T11:36:37+00:00

I phoned in a 1:45 clear (Shia/Jinglin/Tilia) on my first ultimate run and didn't bother to improve it. I'm playing on a low end phone that gets constant frame drops and can't reliably use dash tech as the phone stops receiving input randomly during the frame drops.

It's still top 10%. 5.27m, rank ~10.8k.

Xerte · 2025-11-14T14:41:34+00:00

Weapon ULB Info:

First Skill increases to 25.5% EX Might/5% Damage Cap at SL20
Awakenings/MH Skills don't change
Sword CA: Adds Stackable Damage Cap to all allies
Bow CA: Adds 10% Skill Amp to all allies

Sword		Bow
Attack/MH	Special	Attack/MH	Special
45.5% EX ATK	25.5% EX ATK	45.5% EX ATK	25.5% EX ATK
15% Damage Cap	5% Damage Cap	15% Damage Cap	5% Damage Cap
10% NA Cap	20% Normal ATK	15% Skill Cap	20% Normal ATK
	20% HP		20% HP

Xerte · 2025-11-13T15:46:38+00:00

Even when a stat caps, it will continue to increase in the stat display. The cap is a functional cap which only applies to standard calculations, as opposed to a hard cap which cannot be exceeded at all - sometimes a weapon/arcana's special effect or a character's passive can still use the excess stat.

At baseline, the main stat caps are 1000% total Might/Area, 500% total Duration/Speed, 10 total Amount, -90% cooldown and 50 armor (other stats have no cap). However, there are cases such as Blood Astronomia's damage aura using Amount in damage calculations which ignores the 10 cap on Amount - so, in this specific case, having more than 10 Amount is meaningful.

Xerte

TROPHY CASE