Rabbit’s Reviews #385: Andromeda (5* Rider)

Andromeda at first seems to be yet another lackluster Quick looper, with weak loop specs and low damage. Digging deeper, though, she’s actually a CQ-focused Servant with a specific gameplay niche centered around tanking and stalling out fights. She’s not so good at it as to be particularly remarkable and comes with a number of caveats, but at the very least there’s a clear design thinking behind her kit. If you don’t try to force her into the typical “kill it as fast as possible” style of Quick gameplay, she can do some interesting and potentially useful things—though that’s more to say that she can be situationally solid if you’re already committed to using her than it is a case for pulling for her in the first place.

Andromeda is, effectively, a tank. Having high health and low attack isn’t great for farming, or for fast CQ clears, but it’s useful if what you want is for Andromeda to take a lot of hits. Her NP gain is solid relative to her deck, with good Arts cards and passable Quicks. She’s also an AoE Quick unit with two 4-hit Quick cards, so active star gen is a strength.

Andromeda has four passives. Riding is a great general-purpose boost to Andromeda’s most important card, and Magic Resistance is nice for occasionally avoiding debuffs. Heroic Wish is an interesting skill, giving a small attack bonus when Guts buffs trigger, which can potentially help Andromeda close out a CQ when she’s about to go down. Swimming Skills, meanwhile, is of marginal benefit, giving passive NP gain, but only on Waterside fields. Andromeda’s loop specs are such that this doesn’t help her farm even when it does apply, though it could situationally be decent for CQs.

Andromeda is a 30% charger, so Mana Loading is her most important append. Anti-Berserker damage is also nice, since it targets a class Andromeda hits for double damage… but Berserkers are harder for Andromeda to tank, which means Andromeda’s not that good of a pick to counter them regardless. The Extra attack buff is of marginal benefit and is probably the least valuable of the three.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	100,000	x5 Archer Piece
3	300,000	x12 Archer Piece x8 Octuplet Crystals
4	1,000,000	x5 Archer Monument x29 Fool's Chain x2 Cursed Beast Gallstone
Max	3,000,000	x12 Archer Monument x4 Cursed Beast Gallstone x5 Fragment of a Twinkling Star

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200,000	x5 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	400,000	x12 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	1,200,000	x5 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	1,600,000	x12 Magic Gem of Rider x15 Fool's Chain
5 → 6	4,000,000	x5 Secret Gem of Rider x29 Fool's Chain
6 → 7	5,000,000	x12 Secret Gem of Rider x5 Octuplet Crystals
7 → 8	10,000,000	x10 Octuplet Crystals x6 Aurora Steel
8 → 9	12,000,000	x18 Aurora Steel x10 Fragment of a Twinkling Star
9 → 10	20,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	200000	x5 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	400000	x12 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	1200000	x5 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	1600000	x12 Magic Gem of Rider x3 Tearstone of Blood
5 → 6	4000000	x5 Secret Gem of Rider x6 Tearstone of Blood
6 → 7	5000000	x12 Secret Gem of Rider x2 Cursed Beast Gallstone
7 → 8	10000000	x4 Cursed Beast Gallstone x6 Sun Leather
8 → 9	12000000	x18 Sun Leather x24 Ether Light Collector
9 → 10	20000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Andromeda has middling mat asks. She needs a fair number of chains, but not so many as to be a huge hassle. She also needs Fragments of a Twinkling Star, which are a Lostbelt mat and can be in short supply, especially if other Servants need them.

Andromeda’s skillset is generally solid, with all three skills contributing to her functionality. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

Andromeda refunds about 10% per enemy in a double Skadi setup. This means she does not have the refund or batteries to loop farm CE-less, even in 3/3/x nodes—she ends up 20% charge shy of where she needs to be. With a 50% charge CE, she can farm 3/x/x or x/3/x, assuming she has the damage, but she does need a wave of 3 for the numbers to work out. With Kaleid, she can loop anything off batteries alone. In any case, her kit is very much geared towards hard fights rather than farming, and her damage wouldn’t be sufficient for farming much even if she did have the loop specs.

In CQs, Andromeda’s game plan is pretty simple: she wants to taunt and loop. These two things feed into one another, too: Andromeda’s taunt skill helps her charge her NP, and her NP makes her more resilient to attacks. If she had some form of healing (preferably in AoE) she could be a great stall unit—as-is, she’s merely “good” and comes with the caveat that most optimized Arts and Buster setups will do it better.

The best strategies for using Andromeda effectively are going to involve using Caster Skadi and Castoria to negate damage while Andromeda’s taunt is on cooldown. The slightly safer version of this strategy uses a Skadi/Andromeda/Castoria frontline with the Atlas mystic code for emergency defenses and cooldown reduction. You start the fight by using Andromeda’s taunt and letting her loop and soak up damage, and then once her skills wear off, you use Skadi’s and Castoria’s NPs to put up defenses, which hopefully last for three turns. Putting One Who Wishes for Salvation on Castoria is a particularly good choice here—since Castoria’s only using her NP once per buff cycle, there’s a good chance the overcharge buff from this CE carries you through the whole fight, and if it doesn’t, Andromeda’s probably dropped by then regardless.

Alternatively, you can stick a Ruler Skadi in the front line and use either of the plug suit mystic codes to swap her out for Castoria during the first buff cycle. This is marginally less safe than the Atlas setup, but in exchange you get a lot more damage at the front end of the fight and don’t have to stall as long on the back end. Given the team’s lack of healing, this may be preferable overall. One nice thing about these teams is neither of them requires duplicate Servants, which can be an advantage for CQs with limitations on duplicates or friend supports.

Andromeda’s pretty self-sufficient, too—she’s likely to get you through at least three turns of a fight all on her own—which means she pairs well with budget Quick supports. Barti has particularly good synergy, as he brings crit buffs (which Andromeda is light on) and, as a Rider himself, can contribute to damage versus Casters. Waver and Reines (if you have them), as well as Mash, also pair nicely with Andromeda, as their defensive buffs stack well with Andromeda’s own.

The Black Grail is the best CE for pushing damage, but Andromeda’s stall focus—and the likelihood that she’ll take chip damage along the way—means the CE’s damage demerit is something of a problem. Andromeda is likely better off with general-purpose performance buffs that help her overall damage output rather than just her NP. Imaginary Around is an unusually good pick here, as it is a full-attack CE that improves Andromeda’s overall Quicks. Starting charge CEs that also boost Quick cards, attack damage, or NP damage can also be good, helping Andromeda to get rolling faster while still benefitting her in the long term.

Andromeda’s kit is structured such that she will regularly be taking damage due to her taunt, and she has no in-kit ways to heal that off. Heal CCs are a uniquely good pick here as a result, and especially with Castoria and Skadi negating damage while Andromeda’s skills are on cooldown, even incidental healing can go a long way towards helping Andromeda sustain herself for longer.

Andromeda is not remarkable enough to make a particularly good case for grails. That said, if you’re committed to using her for hard fights, extra attack will help prop up her low base damage, and extra health will let her tank more effectively, so it’s not the worst proposition.

At first glance, Andromeda looks like another underwhelming Quick farmer—a 30% charger with an AoE NP, whose kit shakes out such that her damage is too low to be useful and who doesn’t have a niche to prop it up. All of this is true, of course, and anyone looking to Andromeda for farming will be disappointed. This is, however, because Andromeda is firmly tailored towards CQs. She can keep fire off her team while surviving for longer than your typical Quick Servant, and she can output decent damage in return.

All the usual caveats to this apply: most of the game is farming, and hard fights tend to have a lot of possible answers, so a Servant who is only useful for CQs (and who isn’t really all that unique) isn’t all that appealing. Furthermore, Arts and Buster are both much better at the stall game, and Andromeda doesn’t bring one thing (AoE healing) that Castoria stall shells are missing. Additionally, most hard fights can be cleared without stalling—and, in fact, are often easier if you burst them down instead of aiming for safety.

Ultimately, Andromeda has a clear design intent and a workable style of gameplay, which isn’t the worst thing. Compare her to, for example, Takeda Shingen, who has many of the same weaknesses (low damage, generic AoE farmer kit, etc) but without the clear gameplay concept and CQ potential to compensate. There are things to like in Andromeda’s kit—she’s just a bit too restrained in a few too many places to really stand out.

Overall: 7/10
Single-Target DPS: 4/10
AoE DPS: 6/10
Survivability: 9/10
Offensive Utility: 3/10
Defensive Utility: 8/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
Inexplicable Summer Outfit: 10/10