Fate/Grand Order – Tips for Getting Started

Beginning The Game: Tutorial and Summoning for The First Time

After you download the game and begin playing, you’ll wind up having to do a lot of reading at first.  FGO is primarily modeled after the visual novels from the Fate Series and so its very story and lore rich. Many people will tell you this is their reason to play.

Regardless of your reasons, eventually you’ll find yourself in your first battle. The game at this point puts you in pretty much your first and only tutorial segment. I would advise paying attention here as it covers some basic concepts that are necessary for understanding the rest of the game.  It’s also one of the last times the game will hold your hand regarding combat mechanics. You’ll be on rails throughout this entire experience so just do what it says and you’ll move on fast enough.

Shortly after this you’ll finally be afforded your first opportunity to summon (roll the gacha for units).  This first time summoning is special.  It doesn’t obey normal rules for the gacha system. It’s a free pull that must be done as part of the story in order to progress.  But first, we need to catch you up on the basics of the class system in this game so that you understand what you’re going to summon.

Class relationships shown above. Red lines mean deals more damage to what it’s pointing at. Blue means deals less.

The graphic above can get confusing, so to dumb it down for you: There are 7 basic classes in FGO. The Knight classes: Saber, Archer, Lancer.  The Cavalry classes: Rider, Caster, Assassin. And then the double-edged class, Berserker. The others are “extra” classes but you don’t have to worry about them for the tutorial summon and their interactions are a bit more complex. We’ll discuss them later in the guide.

Essentially just view the class system as groupings in a rock-paper-scissors type scenario. A class will have an advantage (2x dmg) against one class and a weakness (deals 0.5x damage) against another in its triangle grouping. For instance the Saber class will deal more damage to and take less damage from Lancers.  But the Saber class will deal less damage to and take more damage from Archers. 

As such the triangles work as follows: Saber counters Lancer, which counters Archer, which counters Saber.  Rider counters Caster, which counters Assassin, which counters Rider. And everyone deals more damage to (2x) and takes more damage from (1.5x) Berserker (until we start talking about extra classes).  Otherwise, they’re all neutral (1x) against each other. 

The classes do have other traits but we’ll save that for another time. The important thing is to understand that these 7 classes will make up the majority of your account’s servants. You want to have good options for every single one of them if you’re going to have a well-rounded account that can face whatever the game throws at you.

Now back to the tutorial summon, which is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, you can not pull a 5 star unit (SSR, the highest rarity) with it. Secondly, you will receive at minimum a guaranteed 4 star unit (SR, second highest rarity), from a restrictive pool of units available, as well as a 4 star craft essence (an enhancing type of equipment to put on units). As of the New Years Campaign on JP (Jan 2024 on NA), the odds of getting 4 star units and craft essences are increased for this summon as well. The pool of units also changes with the 25 Million Downloads Campaign (May 2024 on NA), so pay attention to what options are available for your time period/server. 1st Renewal: until 2024 on NA, 2nd Renewal: Thereafter on NA and from now on for JP.

Pictured above is the pool of available units for you to start the game with.  They’re known as “Servants” in fate lore, and come with various classes and skill kits to help you along the way. Servants all have 3 skills, a Noble Phantasm (NP, ultimate move), and typically ascribe to one of the 3 card types (Buster, Quick, Arts). A lot of guides focus on telling you who the best unit is. While I will offer my advice, this tutorial summon will not make or break your account. Some units can be an early boon to your progress, but it’s better to know a bit about them and decide for yourself who you’re comfortable starting with.

Each of these units is permanently available in the game, as opposed to being part of a time-limited banner or locked behind story completion, so don’t fret if you don’t get the one you preferred. Rerolling for different starting servants is an option but is totally unnecessary. Below, I’ll give you some useful tidbits about each as well as my thoughts on starting out the game with them.

Siegfried

Saber Class – Buster, AOE NP  – Nickname: “Sumanai”

Do not confuse him with “Sieg”, another 4* caster servant in the game. Part man, part dragon, Siegfried is a decent option for starting with as it can be hard to get your hands on Sabers in the early game. The saber class notoriously only has a couple of “low star” (3 star and lower) options. While he does take some investment to become good, his upgrades over the years have helped his performance significantly and given him a good niche against Dragon-traited enemies with which there are several lancer units that would overlap. His most recent upgrade (June 2024, NA)  improves his firepower and NP charge capability even more after he’s left the tutorial pool, but this does make him a good investment. After the 2nd renewal, he is no longer an option to be rolled. 

Suzuka Gozen

Saber Class – Buster, AOE NP – Nickname: “JK Fox/Saber”. 

If fox girl shrine maidens are your thing, Suzuka is a good choice.  Her Kit has an interesting blend of NP gauge charge (NP Charge), offensive capability, and charm (a debuff skill). She holds up very nicely with where the game is currently headed for farming due to that charge, and can still be a nice early acquisition due to the saber class issues discussed in Siegfried’s comments. Her 10-hit NP can generate quite a few stars in conjunction with her first skill. She also has a sure hit buff, which helps her ignore dodge that any enemy might use to prevent damage. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option.

Lakshmibai

Saber – Quick, AOE NP – Nicknames: “Lakshmi” “Jeanne D’Arker” “Jeanne-tan” “Indian Jeanne”

A “Jeanne Face” and “Saber Face” unit, she’s not to be confused with Jeanne D’Arc. This one is an AOE quick saber, something of a rarity. While her damage isn’t the best, she comes with a multitude of nice supportive effects like party-wide Attack-Up and Critical Damage increase, to targeted Invuln and healing capability. She also has a guts skill making her quite survivable in a pinch, and buff success chance which helps the party’s skills that have a chance to fail, succeed. She’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal.

Watanabe No Tsuna

Saber – Buster, Single Target NP – Nicknames: “Bowlcut Samurai” “K-Pop Saber”

Watanabe is a quality single target saber option. He’s often likened to Rama due to their similarities, but Watanabe shows the difference between a year one and year five released unit. Most of his kit has 3 turn durations, he has a good survival skill in his dodge, and the ability to shift critical stars to the cards he wants to use. While the Anti-Oni damage on his NP isn’t the widest of niches, it comes in addition to its wider cousin Anti-Demonic damage. Thankfully he has both on that NP so it’s easy to see how he can be useful. He’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal.

EMIYA

Archer – Buster*, AOE NP – Nickname: “Nameless”

Don’t confuse him with the Assassin Emiya. A familiar face for veterans of the Fate franchise, Emiya is an archer who has been improved in many ways over the years.  Often a bonus unit in events, he deals decent aoe damage with his noble phantasm, and has triple arts card-deck allowing him to card his NP gauge to full faster. He comes equipped with survival and crit enhancing skills. As of Anniversary 5, he also has the ability via his third skill to change his NP card type from Buster to Arts, allowing for some amazing gauge refund capability.

Atalanta

Archer – Quick, AOE NP – Nickname: “Nyanta”

Don’t confuse her with her Alter Berserker form. Atalanta is a fantastic quick looping (repeatedly able to fire her NP) aoe archer. Her star generation rate can be truly amazing allowing her to flood the party with crit stars after an NP and drastically increase the chance to crit. Caster Skadi and Ruler Skadi are amazing pairings with her but can be hard to acquire. For newer accounts, it will be hard to acquire adequate supports, especially at a low rarity for quick servants. She’s fantastic when you can get her in the correct party composition, but you likely won’t be able to unless you can get your hands on a version of Skadi. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option.

Zenobia

Archer – Arts, AOE NP – Nickname: “Zeno”

While Atalante certainly isn’t bad, Zenobia seems to be a quality of life addition to the starter pool for archers. Being Arts and having charge per turn, she is quite a good looper. Even if you don’t have your own Castoria to help her, one can be taken on support, and thanks to the multitude of other low star options, Zenobia can still excel as a great farming option for even the newest of accounts. She has 3 turns of increased Arts performance, stars per turn, and party-wide Attack-up (Charisma) to help her in this goal. And she also gets a guts skill, crit-star bomb, and star absorption skill to help her secure crits.  To top it off her AOE np has an overcharge effect that increases her crit-damage for 3 turns, meaning it can be stacked. She’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal.

Elizabeth Bathory

Lancer – Buster, AOE NP – Nickname: “Liz”

Do not confuse her with any one of her numerous other variant’s all going collectively by “Liz”. Liz Lancer is a capable aoe lancer who has carved out a niche for buffing other female units in the party. While not the strongest, and lacking any sort of NP charge for herself, she is a decent option for your lancer given her kit’s ability to both enhance the party and debilitate your foes.  She does however possess a good survival ability in her Guts, which can revive her one time and return some health after a hit that would have otherwise killed her.

Parvati

Lancer – Quick, AOE NP – Nickname: “Parv”

Parvati was a fantastic new addition to the tutorial summon. A capable aoe quick lancer who refunds well even outside of being in a full quick support team, she can generate a decent amount of crit-stars and charm her enemies. Parv also possesses an odd targetable charge skill that drains her own gauge, though it can be used on herself as well for a net gain. She will require Skadi Caster or Ruler to reach her full potential in the future, but she can still perform decently without due to her kit. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option.

The Valkyries

Lancer – Quick, AOE NP – Nicknames: “Valks” “Ortilinde” “Hildr” “Thrud”

The Valks are a 3-in-1 servant with each form being a different person. They’re very similar to Parvati in that they’re a quick looper if set up properly. They have a charge per turn skill to help automate that but they still are reliant on good quick supports. Otherwise, their consistent damage output will suffer. They do have a dodge to help their survivability, alongside debuff immunity and healing per turn.  But just like with Parvati you’re going to be beholden to finding Skadi Caster or Ruler on your support list.  They’re only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal.

Marie Antoinette

Rider – Quick, AOE NP – Nickname: “Marie”

Known for her trademark phrase “Wassup my homies?” Rider Marie is an amazing survival unit for an early account. While she’s really not known for her damage, her multi-hit self Invuln, healing, and charm skills help her outlast her enemies while whittling them down. She can loop against casters with a devoted Skadi support party, but this is unrealistic for most new accounts to be able to achieve. Since her NP also has the ability to cleanse the party of any debuffs on them, she can be a really hard unit to stop or bring down. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option.

Martha

Rider – Buster, AOE NP – Nickname: None

The unit I started the game with, is sadly not very good offensively. Her NP does middling damage, but that’s not really her purpose. She has a very nice kit that can both heal the party and cleanse it. Martha has a third skill you can unlock with strengthenings that applies defense down to an enemy as well as removes all their buffs. This has some very good applications and can be used to get rid of certain annoying fight gimmicks while boosting your damage output. So while a unit not known for damage in a game that largely centers around damage seems a bit rough, Martha can still be an intriguing choice. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option.

Astolfo

Rider – Quick, AOE NP – Nickname: “Stolf” “Femboy” “Monster Can”

If you’ve watched the Apocrypha series you know who this is. Everyone’s favorite cross-dressing AoE Rider. While people obsess over his personality and character, Astolfo is quite good as a starting option. His damage is not bad and he has a 50% charge upgrade to his 3rd skill making him a proficient farmer capable of 3 turning in the right setup. Unfortunately, his first and second skills only have one turn durations, but he does get a chance to get crit-stars per turn, star generation, and crit-damage on his 3rd skill. His np also pierces defense buffs, gives himself a dodge for 3 attacks on use, and has a star bomb to boot. You’ll obviously want some good quick support units to help him, but thanks to his charge he can perform adequately without. He’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal. 

Dobrynya Nikitich

Rider – Buster, AOE NP – Nicknames: “Dobrynya” “Nikitich”

Dobrynya is an interesting option to begin with. While I personally prefer the charge capability that Astolfo begins with, she’s no slouch herself. She has a 20% charge skill which by the time she’s added to the pool means that Oberon is in the game, making 3 turning difficult to achieve with her, but possible. Specializing in Anti-Dragon damage, her kit also comes with a 3 turn duration Buster and Arts buffs, A Guts skill, Debuff Immunity, and stars per turn. Her noble phantasm, while not terribly hard hitting, synergizes with the multitude of buster supports that exist. It ignores defense buffs, and burns the target while lowering its defense afterward. She’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal. 

Nursery Rhyme

Caster – Arts, AOE NP – Nicknames: “Nursery Crime”, “Cursery Rhyme”, “The Book”. 

Nursery Rhyme is an odd unit. She has a significant self-charge skill, crit damage boost, and defense up. She can also cleanse herself and use her NP to drain all the enemies it hits of their gauge. Sounds great in premise, but just like with Martha her damage is a bit lackluster. You’ll also have to give her crit-stars to take advantage of that damage boost. In an Arts party that allows her to loop her noble phantasm, she can really shine but there are certainly more damage-dealing options even at lower rarities. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option. 

Helena Blavatsky

Caster – Arts, AOE NP – Nicknames: “Helena”, “Granny”. 

Easily the best addition to the tutorial summon. Helena is often thought of as a 4* (SR) version of a very popular 5* (SSR) support named Waver. She provides a party-wide, 3 turn, all card type buff. She can also charge the party by 20% of their gauge (out of 100%). And if that wasn’t enough she actually punches well above her weight in terms of her NP damage as well. She becomes a legitimate contender against her 5* star damage dealer compatriots when she also gets a buff granting herself 30% charge with the Waltz Event Pre-Campaign. Just beware that her second skill has a chance to fail the NP damage up. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option. 

Nitocris

Caster – Arts, AOE NP – Nickname: “Nito” 

Do not confuse her with her summer assassin form. Nitocris is an amazing choice to start with due to her ability to charge her np gauge to full from 0%. While her damage itself is not the greatest for an AOE caster, she makes up for this by having the ability to death proc enemies. In fact, she is one of the premier units for this. Death memes as they’re commonly referred to, frequently work on fodder type enemies, especially of bronze rarity. Enemy Servants on the other hand are extremely resistant to this type of tactic so it won’t save you from everything. That being said she’s an extremely useful farmer and someone who would likely help carry you through a lot of easy waves of content. It’s also worth mentioning that she has both a cleanse and a guts skill to help survivability. She’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal. 

Circe

Caster – Buster, Single Target NP – Nickname: None

Circe is an interesting starting option. For years players have been stuck with only Medea as their early game option for a single target caster. While you lose the ability to strip buffs if you go with Circe, you gain greater damage potential and the ability to “Piggify” (stun) your enemies for a turn. She also has the ability to cleanse the entire party of debuffs, while poisoning and reducing the defense of enemies. All in all, Circe is a quality unit if a little low on damage herself. She’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal. 

Stheno

Assassin – Buster, Support NP – Nickname: “Rare Prism”

If you’re aware of that nickname, it’s a rather bad one for her.  But while she’s not as bad as people think, Stheno is not typically the best unit to start with. While like with the Sabers, quality assassins used to be hard to come by, over time the low star assassin pool has been improved significantly. Stheno on the other hand has a non-damage dealing NP that can cause Instant death to males, but it’s not very likely to occur. Thankfully she has received some upgrades over the years, unlocking her 3rd skill that buffs Divine-traited allies, and giving her NP the ability to also remove buffs.  In tandem with her sister Euryale (3* archer), she can be used to “charm-lock” and drain enemy bosses to deny them their ability to get to a noble phantasm, but sadly Aniplex has seen fit to give many bosses Mental debuff immunity going forward because of those tactics.

Carmilla

Assassin – Buster, Single Target NP – Nickname: None

Not to be confused with her summer rider variant. Carmilla has always been a quality starting choice. A rarity amongst assassins as a buster unit, she also boasts the rare Anti-Female niche making her a quality choice in certain fights even if she doesn’t have class advantage. Carmilla is also a vampire and can both drain her foes as well as heal herself with her NP. Strong assassins can be hard to come by in the early game, but the pool is much better than it used to be at the start of the game. Carmilla at least still stands out thanks to most of the welfare assassins being AOE focused at the moment. After the 2nd Renewal, she is no longer an option. 

Yan Qing

Assassin – Quick, Single Target NP – Nicknames: “Shinjuku Assassin” “Mr. Fister”

Yan Qing is an odd addition to the tutorial summon. He’s never been considered the best of the 4 star assassins, and while his kit allows him to manipulate crit-stars like no other, this is mostly unimportant these days due to the multitude of options available to Masters who need stars. Nonetheless, by the time he’s added to the pool, he’ll be your only option for a single target Assassin, so it should be emphasized that he gets a bad rap from the community and is a lot better than he seems. Yan Qing has come a long way with upgrades that have improved his niche damage as well as giving him an actual Quick steroid and still crit quite hard especially with proper quick support units, giving you some mileage against annoying rider bosses. He’s only available as an option after the 2nd Renewal.

Heracles

Berserker – Buster, Single Target NP – Nicknames: “Hercules” “Herc” “BerserCar”. 

Standing out amongst most other 4 star berserkers, Heracles is what’s known in the game as a “cockroach”. Namely, he’s hard to kill. For those of you who know a little bit about the classes already, this might strike you as odd. Berserkers are sort of the glass cannons of the game and are not known for their survivability. They’re effective against just about everyone, but everyone is also effective against them, giving them a very kill or be-killed mentality. A lot of early guides caught on to this fact and put Herc up on a pedestal as one of the best units to start with.

To a degree they’re right. Even to this day, Herc holds his value due to his truly amazing Bond CE and kit, though the upgrade he gets at 5th Anniversary really helps keep his damage on par with the scaling of the game. The thing that a lot of guides won’t tell you is that until you’ve significantly ascended and skilled him, Herc will still be extremely squishy like a normal berserker.  I have seen many a new player complain that the survivability they were told about hasn’t been as easy to achieve as they expected, making Herc more of a long-term project and investment for your account than an early carry. While he is an amazing solo option and backline defeat protector when at his peak potential, the question is do you have the diligence and patience to work on him over time versus taking someone who’s useful faster?

Tamamo Cat

Berserker – Quick, AOE NP – Nickname: “TamaCat”

Don’t confuse her with other Tamamo characters. Tama cat has come a long way over the years. She has an upgrade that deals with her most significant demerit, now allowing her to not stun herself on use of her Noble Phantasm, and another that gives her a much needed increase to her survivability.  This allows Cat to be a nice blend of both offensive power and survival, on a class that can be lacking at times. What you get by starting with TamaCat is an effective damage dealer against plenty of the waves of enemies you’ll encounter in the game. This makes her a decent option for farming for resources and materials, which you’ll be doing a lot of in the future. Just be careful that you don’t try to take her the distance in carding situations for too long.

Analysis

Now to address the question you’re all wondering. With all of these possible 4 stars to get… who is the best?

Well, there’s no right answer. You can start the game with all of them and do well, especially since they’ve gotten rid of some of the poorer choices from the past. My personal recommendation before the 2nd renewal is Helena because she covers not only your aoe caster department, but also doubles as a decent support. This is great both in the early game (helps your friend support unit carry) and late game when we’re working on a budget.

After the second renewal, it becomes a little less clear with Helena’s removal, but I recommend Nitocris for how much she can help a new player. You will have to invest in her some, but with pure prisms already out, getting her online quickly is very possible. Herc is still an amazing long-term investment for your account and can be brought at least decently up to speed with some early attention. Other than that, they’re all fine to begin with, so don’t stress it if you don’t feel like rerolling. Speaking of, this would be one of the points to reroll/restart if you didn’t like the result of your tutorial roll.

Clearing The Fuyuki Singularity: Tutorial Missions and Supports

Now that you’ve completed your tutorial summon it’s best to begin progressing through Fuyuki in earnest. Completion of the “tutorial singularity” is required if you want to receive rewards from most special campaigns or be able to participate in events. Some events will be locked behind the completion of other singularities (read: FGO’s term for part 1’s story chapters) that are further along, but Fuyuki is considered the baseline requirement.

Tutorial missions give you free early materials to help your account along, including Statues, Monuments and Skill Gems.  While they don’t need to be rushed, they certainly make it easier for new players to progress leveling their units, but we’ll talk more about that later. 

As you move through the story now is a good time to mention its structure. Arc 1 is considered Fuyuki through the Temple of Time. Arc 1.5 is what’s known as Epic of Remnant (EoR). These side stories are full-scale singularities on their own but are not required for completion to reach Arc 2. I recommend passing them in favor of catching up to the current story and completing them later, but you can attempt to tackle them first if you wish. They are somewhat standalone in structure (think of it as a filler arc) but do connect to the main storyline in various ways. Arc 2 is known as the Lostbelts (LB#) and is the current story arc of both the JP and NA servers. The NA server is currently 2 years behind JP, giving it clairvoyance with regards to when events and banners will happen, though Aniplex has been trying to mess with that some. Don’t get in so much of a rush that you don’t read the story though. While it doesn’t start out the strongest, it’s widely considered one of the best in the industry and definitely an attraction to playing the game. 

With that explained, I should mention that Arc 1 is fairly easy. You’ll hear stories of people just soloing content with certain strong characters. And while I can say that knowing how to solo (using a main unit and 2 sacrificial characters) can have its advantages. You should also take the time during part 1 of the story to use plenty of different units for support. Doing so will help you immensely! You’ll not only learn how the units and their skills function, but you’ll learn how to team build properly and what sorts of unit combinations are strong.

The SSR Ticket: Your First Free 5 Star Servant!

Starting with Anniversary 6 and forever after, you’ll also receive a permanent SSR ticket for completion of the Fuyuki Story Chapter. This will allow you to pick a 5 star of your choice from a list of all permanent and story-locked ones released up to that moment.  Because this won’t be out on NA for a while, I’m not going to break it down like I did the starter 4 stars. Instead, I’ll link you to my current video covering the First SSR ticket from the 20 Million DL campaign that isn’t permanent. It doesn’t cover all the options because the Anni 6 ticket has more, but it covers a bunch of them. If you miss this though (it lasts for 1.5 months) you’ll be waiting until Anni 6 reaches NA before we get another ticket.

The Anni 6 SSR Ticket pictured above.

Gacha and You: Rolling Strategies and Guidelines

To say that FGO and its gacha systems can be confusing for newer players would be an understatement. To dumb it down the game has two basic systems: Your normal Quartz Gacha and the Friend Point (FP) gacha. The quartz gacha is where all your desirable high rarity units will come from. You can use summoning tickets (another form of currency) or Saint Quartz on it, and it can yield 3 star through 5 star servants.  The FP gacha on the other hand is meant to be a more day-to-day occurrence.  You use your friend points earned from various sources, to summon and can get yields of 1, 2, and 3 stars though there are a couple of exceptions as I’ll explain later. That’s the basic rule of thumb though.

Quartz Gacha: Permanent, Story-Locked, and Limited Units

Within the Saint Quartz Gacha, there’s actually 2 types of banners. The Story Banner, and Rotating Rate Up Banners. They each use the same currencies but have different pools (rosters) of units and craft essences available to them. 

Story Banner Depicted Above

The story banner is always available and contains all the “permanent” units in the game. Denoted by the blue “Story” icon in middle-right of the screen, it will also include any “story-locked” units you’ve managed to unlock from completing story chapters. Thus your progress in the story determines the pool of available units for this banner. Early in your account’s history, this banner isn’t bad to roll, as you likely won’t have many of the units in it. Conventional wisdom would state that the more servants you own, the less desirable it is to roll. This is largely due to the fact that the story banner has no rate up or pity mechanic. As such it’s entirely possible to keep getting units you don’t want or already have, making the rate-up banners better options for most people.

Rate-up banners, on the other hand, rotate typically on a 2 week basis. There’s no hard rule about this though as some banners have lasted only for 2 days or had a unit rotation inside that lasted for one. 

They will almost always include all permanent servants and craft essences in the game but are primarily used to summon the units on rate up. The rate up units can be permanent, story-locked, or limited. Unlike permanent and story-locked servants though, Limited servants and craft essences can only be found on these rate ups and thus players plan their rolling habits around them.

Examples of Rate up Banners above. Denoted by “Limited Time” on the middle-right of the screen.

Rate-up banners are often determined by the current campaigns, events, or even story releases happening in the game at the moment. And as mentioned before, they can have unit rotations inside of them. These typically happen on a day to day basis and sometimes include solo or dual rate-ups of the same rarity unit. 

Quartz Gacha: Mechanics

The mechanics of the quartz gacha (except where excluded as stated about the story banner) are thus that an SSR (5*) servant has a 1% rate of acquisition. This is made up of: the rate up SSR having an 0.8% chance; and a permanent (spook) having a 0.2% chance of appearing. A single roll on the banner will cost you 1 ticket or 3 saint quartz each. A “multi” roll costs 30 saint quartz, gives you 10 rolls, and affords you several benefits. I should also mention that every 10 rolls you do (10 singles or 1 multi) will award you with a free 11th roll. This however does not carry over between banners.

The benefits of multi rolls are often misunderstood by people. Namely, a multi comes with 2 assurances that singles don’t. Firstly, in a multi you are guaranteed at least 1 servant. Secondly, you are guaranteed at least 1 item of 4* rarity or higher. Contrary to popular belief, they are not mutually exclusive, and they can be upgraded. So this means you’re not restricted to only 1 servant, and your 4* star item can be a craft essence (CE) or a servant.  It also means that they could be a 5 star variant too.  As such over the years I’ve seen people make claims of singles being better but never seen it backed up without misrepresenting facts or data. The only real use for singles that I can see are when you don’t have enough to do another multi and you’re desperate, or you just want to yolo some pulls.

Now there are also two other prevalent mechanics added more recently you should know about. The “paid single” summon and the Pity System.

Paid Single Orange Button depicted above.

The paid single is a new mechanic implemented with Anniversary 6. You can use a single “paid” saint quartz to complete a roll rather than it costing you 3 quartz like normal. The quartz though must be from a purchased pack of quartz (it cannot be the “bonus” amount the pack awards) and it does not contribute towards your extra 11th roll. It is also restricted to once per day, per banner. And it’s not usable on the story gacha. It has the same rates as any other roll for pulling the unit, so its only real use is in cheaping the cost of that one single for people who spend money on the game. Its merit though is based entirely on your desire to roll the banner in the first place.

Pity Indicator Highlighted in the red box above.

The Pity System is the other big addition to the gacha system that happened as of New Years on the JP server but NA got already less than a year later. Basically with any 330 rolls on a single banner, you can trigger a pity for the rate-up unit. This finally puts a cap on FGO’s most notorious system for screwing people over. Unfortunately, it still isn’t a perfect system. The good news is, paid singles and bonus 11 spins do count towards the pity. With bonus effectively reducing it to only 300 rolls being necessary. Free and Bonus quartz, and tickets given out from campaigns also count for it, making it not a spending-only tool. The bad news is, there’s a bunch of other restrictions. 

Firstly, the pity will only trigger once per banner. If you see the highlighted segment above, it means you can still get pity. If it’s different though, you’ve already triggered it and can’t get it again. And if it’s not there at all it means the banner doesn’t have a pity (I’ll explain in a second). Next, is the fact that the pity resets its progress if the banner rotates rate up units, meaning you really need to roll it all at once rather than work your way towards it. The pity system also does not carry over to other banners or affect the story banner. This is to incentivize saving, but it will take players quite a bit to save up enough to trigger it (A free to play can save up about enough for three pity rolls a year if they spend on nothing else). Lastly, it’s not going to exist on banners that don’t have a rate-up. This means banners like the story banner, class banners, or others might not have the pity, so be careful where you spend your currencies.

Quartz Gacha: GSSR

Guaranteed SSR (GSSR) banners happen twice yearly. Once at New Years and once at the Anniversary (Early August for JP, Early July for NA). While Aniplex keeps changing the conditions of these over time, they always make sure that it gives you at least one SSR. However, this also requires 15 paid quartz (it used to be 30). Now if you remember from before “paid” quartz must be quartz purchased from a pack, and it can not be from the bonus amount of the pack. Thankfully the gacha system is designed to normally use all of your free/bonus quartz first whenever you roll, saving your paid currency for last. 

Structurally, you typically have multiple banners to choose from. They’ll be divided up in any number of ways, but you only get 1 multi across all of them, so choose wisely! What you get out of this though is an extremely cheap, limited SSR at minimum. The roll is considered a typical gacha multi though otherwise, so people can get great CEs and additional servants out of it depending on their luck.

This is why GSSRs are regarded as the best way to spend money on the game. There are many people who play otherwise free-to-play (F2P) but spend money on the GSSRs when they roll around because they can be such a cheap and easy investment. The GSSRs guarantee you a 5 star unit, giving you the best bang for your buck considering you would probably have to roll much greater quantities to acquire them.

Friend Point Gacha: The Value of Good Friends!

The Friend Point gacha is the second rolling system in the game. Friend points and how to treat them will be discussed more later. But for now, just know that you get friend points from a multitude of ways, and the biggest amongst them are lotto boxes (depending on how many you grind out) and your friends using your support roster units. A single roll in the FP gacha costs 200 Friend points, while a multi costs 2000. There is no pity, no method to pay, no GSSR, and no bonus 11th spin after every 10 you do.

You do however get a free multi every day to roll as a trade-off. Though as stated before you can generally only get 3 star and lower units here with a couple of exceptions.

The exceptions are limited and story-locked 3 stars will not be summonable normally in the FP gacha, and at the moment two different 4 star units have been added. There’s another one called Angra Mainyu who’s treated differently than any other unit in the game but you don’t have to worry about him. The 4 star units have a lower rate of summoning than all the other units (exception: Angra Mainyu), but do afford you some decent options for their classes.  One of them is Saber Lily, a decent 4 star AOE saber who’s been much improved over the years. The other is Habetrot who is locked behind the completion of a story that’s close to the end of Arc 2, so not likely to be unlocked for a long time. 

A typical friend point multi. Embers, craft essences and servants all showing up.

But what’s the purpose of rolling your FP then if it gives me units everyone else has? There’s actually far more reasons to roll here than you’d realize. Compared to other gacha games, FGO’s “low star” (3 star and lower) units are actually quite good.  They certainly won’t have the best stats, and they might not perform the best in class, but most have their uses. Low stars typically have unique kits that fill niches the player likely needs. They help you fill out your roster until you can roll good units, and still help you afterwards due to party cost restrictions or having bonuses for events.  But the servants themselves are not the only reason to roll.

Rolling the friend point gacha can also give you craft essences, which are in effect your “gear” for your characters. They’ll be what you equip to augment their performance and some of them can be quite good for starter accounts. Early on you won’t have a lot of party cost to fit many of them, but later you’ll be using them all the time. On top of this, you can also get Experience cards referred to as “Embers”. Embers are the only good way to level your units, and while you can farm them by other means, your FP rolls will begin to add up over time if you’re diligent.

Silver Fou’s can also be acquired from your FP rolls and is pretty much the only way to “farm” them. Though other means of acquisition do exist. They’re used for enhancing a servant’s Attack and HP stats up to 1000. That’s not all either, as you can roll low rarity command codes occasionally (not pictured above). These are augments for your servant’s cards but we’ll talk more about them later as well.

Lastly, any servants you roll will also award you their “servant coins”. These are yet another way to further augment your units but they also are used in the grailing (palingenesis) and the new Grail Casting systems that we’ll discuss later. Needless to say, you’ll be wanting a lot of servant coins and at the moment your FP rolls are the best way to get them.

As a result, friend point rolls can be an influx of various resources for your account. Even if you don’t plan to use some of them, FGO has burning and feeding mechanics in place to afford you some benefit for them, so it’s a good idea to at minimum do your free FP multi every day, and early on to spend as much FP as you can get your hands on.