MMM - Menhera Maestra Mines Much like Moria, Muddling Malcontented Mummy, Meteing out Magical Malevolence (Mystery House Crafters Event)

With a base NP gain of 0.38% and a BAAAQ card deck, Tut’s 4-hit Arts cards produce an underwhelming 1.58 base Arts gain, just barely under the average, but that especially stings given he’s packing the Caster-style card deck without the Territory Creation that’s normally a given with it. Just some Arts Up would really help that NP gauge gain numbers on his most numerous card type.

As you might expect with such a low base NP gain, his other card types aren’t gonna help much. His Buster and Quick both produce sup-par NP gauge, and his 5-hit Extra is severely gimped from his low base NP gain. His stargen is at least okay for a BAAAQ card deck, but without many Quick cards he’s not going to resolve his mediocre NP gain with self-sufficient star generation.

In other words, Tut’s NP gain is going to be very dependent on skills, whether his own or his allies, and that puts him in a fragile position.

Skill 1

First on Tut’s skill lineup is Valley of the Kings. This skill has two components to it - first is the team support, providing 20% NP gauge to the whole team, as well as a +20% NP Strength Up Buff for 3 turns. It goes without saying that team gauge charge is superb, especially when it isn’t even in the hands of a dedicated support, since it effectively improves the NP’ing capability of your supports as well.

Paired with the NP Strength buff, this skill is useful for Tut himself, too. Nobody will turn down a 20% gauge charge periodically, and the offensive buff contributes to his overall NP damage, something you want to see on any offensive Servant.

The second component is a pair of buffs befitting the flavour of the skill. For 3 turns, Tut will provide the team with 30 critical stars if he triggers Guts or dies, to reflect the fact the Valley of the Kings held treasures only uncovered after the residents’ deaths. You’ll probably note this skill doesn’t actually provide any Guts buffs itself, so you can anticipate that elsewhere in his kit, but maybe Tut will be more inclined to death than you think?

The base cooldown of 8 turns on this skill is pretty good given the power of team gauge charges, though when you boil down the actual value it provides, this is one of the weaker team gauge chargers out there.

Skill 2

Next up is Amarna of Annihilation. This is your Union-endorsed 3-turn card booster skill, providing 30% Arts Up to Tut for 3 turns, as well as a 3-turn buff that inflicts 500-damage Curse to the target for 5 turns whenever he attacks, and lastly a 30% gauge charge.

Each of these effects individually accomplish separate things, but they’re all pretty solid put together. As I lamented earlier, Tut needs more Arts Up buffs for his NP gain to not be awful, and so he obliges, getting a boost to his most common card type by far, as well as adding another buff to his NP damage steroids. The Curse on attack buff doesn’t really do much on its own, but given who he is, Tut is obviously going to focus heavily on Curses, so he’s assured to have Curse Amplification or Effective Damage boosts versus Cursed foes.

Most important of all is the 30% gauge charge. Combined with his team gauge charge it means he has access to at least 50% gauge charge in his skill kit, the standard for offensive Servants, and having it divided between two skills makes it more convenient to mix-and-match with other sources of gauge charge.

Given this skill has a solid gauge charger tied to it, the 8-turn base cooldown is to be expected, matching the power of the skill rather well.

Skill 3

Lastly, we have ???. This isn’t some sort of error, Tut’s 3rd skill and his NP both have this name in-game, so presumably they’ll get their real names with story progression in the event, likely at the same time his 3rd/4th ascension arts are unlocked.

This skill is his most straightforward, but has power to match its mystique. He gets both a huge 5k HP 1-time Guts buff and Debuff Immunity for 3 turns, as well as 30% gauge charge on use.

The Guts buff is a given considering the rest of his kit, and long-lasting debuff immunity is incredibly useful in difficult content, but by far the winner here is the 30% gauge charge, meaning Tut has a total of 80% gauge charge packed in his own kit, and divided across three skill cooldowns on top of that, meaning his gauge charge capability is incredibly flexible.

Even on a basic level, it means he can throw out Black Grail NP’s with just level 10 Mana Loading and no external assistance, but he can also use his gauge chargers to fuel multi-NP loops, or run more aggressive support Servants with weaker gauge charges to get more damage output when the situation calls for it. Gauge charging skills are King in FGO for good reason, and the Servants who have the biggest and most adaptable gauge chargers are inevitably among the best.

Most shocking of all is, in spite of both a Guts buff and gauge charger being on this skill, it packs a 8-turn base cooldown like the rest of his kit. Maybe the Guts skill cooldown tax isn’t real, after all.

As I stated earlier, Tut’s NP is a bunch of question marks, but thankfully we’re here to assess gameplay, not naming schemes, so that’s no issue whatsoever.

His NP is an Arts ST NP, so thankfully we won’t be going in-depth into farming numbers, but all the same his refund will be important.

Getting into the effects, before anything else Tut applies a 20% NP Strength Up buff to himself for 1 turn, scaling with Overcharge. Then he deals his damage, with a +50% Effective Damage modifier versus Demonic trait foes. As always, this is a fairly good effective damage trait to have, as a large sum of the major mid-boss type NPC’s in the game have it, the common prey of ST Servants, and a small assortment of Servants pack it, too.

The next effects are the more…unimportant ones. This NP applies both a 1000 damage per turn Curse debuff and +100% Curse Amplification for 5 turns, essentially dishing out 10k bonus damage spread over 5 turns. Paired with his Curse-inflicting skill and multiple NP’s in a row, it’s possible for Tut to inflict some heavy pain with this Curse damage, but compared to NP or normal card damage it’ll ultimately be a minor contribution to the death of his targets.

Speaking of death, this NP also carries the Pharaonic tradition of inflicting Instant Death, both a 100% chance to his target and a guaranteed Instant Death to himself. Now, for one I’m glad that they’re making Instant Death more dependable, but even then most bosses will be ni-

Wait, he kills himself? Now that’s a huge can of worms.

While on paper you might consider this a strict downside, and in many cases, it is, but anybody who has used Arash or Chen Gong extensively can tell you, killing a Servant off deliberately is almost like a free Servant switch-in, which has its own advantages. That goes doubly with Tut’s inherent access to Guts, meaning you can control if and when he dies with relative ease.

On a single-target Servant especially this trait is pretty useful, since many 90++ farming nodes have a format with two single-target waves followed by an AOE wave 3, and being able to get the supportive power to kill a boss nearing 1m HP with an AOE NP while swapping between damage-dealers is often rough. But if your single-target damage dealer conveniently offs themselves with their second NP, then you have more freedom in Mystic Code selection, or which Servant you use Battlesuit Swaps on.

The downside to this all is, naturally, that it puts a very clear time limit on how often you can use Tut’s NP, but his kit does kind of set him up for death - all his skills make him throw his NP out fast, he drops a big star bomb each time he dies, whether temporarily or for real, and most of his kit applies debuffs to the enemy or buffs the team, so his actual presence being lost doesn’t detract from his team contributions much. Actually, thinking about it, the only thing the self-death part really hurts is his capability for drawn-out fights in difficult content and the Curse-stacking gimmick.

But let’s look into his damage output and refund, at least. With all his buffs active, his NP dishes out 40k damage neutral, a number which is admittedly rather poor, although he is lacking every aspect of the damage buff trinity in his base kit. He nets a refund of 7.4% from his NP at base, which isn’t particularly high, either.

Throwing him into a double Castoria setup with a 50% gauge charge CE, his numbers do thankfully improve notably. His NP is instead dealing 138k damage neutral, and his refund leaps up to 22%. While neither is particularly high in the grand scheme of things, he does have room to shine damage-wise versus Demonic foes, and similarly his NP refund gets high enough to set up a second NP in a row, which is realistically the best you’ll manage with him - doing 3-turn loops or longer is fundamentally not what Tut is built for, so I’m not even going to humour figuring out a setup for that.

With a base NP gain of 0.72% and a BBAQQ card deck, Van Gogh-chan’s 3-hit Arts card provides a very standard base Arts gain of 2.16. Pretty much the standard NP gain for a single-Arts card deck.

What’s more impressive is her other cards for NP gain. Her 3-hit Busters provide a respectable 2% NP gauge a pop with the Arts first card bonus, while her 6-hit Quick cards are absolutely absurd for NP gain and stargen both, providing more NP gauge than many Servant’s Arts cards do. Her Extra is also fairly good, putting her base NP gain to good use with its 5 hits.

Naturally as a Quick-focused Servant, she shines on the stargen front. Those Quicks put in serious work, but with her notably increased passive stargen on Busters, they will produce many more stars than you’d expect, especially with the Quick first card bonus in play. So she’s got both fantastic NP gain and stargen to work with on her normal cards.

Skill 1

First on her skill lineup is Imaginary Numbers Art (3D). In other words, it’s Minecraft architecture skills. This skill requires 10 Critical Stars to use, which it consumes, but in return you get a choice of Quick, Arts, or Buster Up to the team at 20% for 3 turns, as well as a 20% NP Gain Up buff.

For Van Gogh-chan herself this is a great buff to her NP refund and overall NP gain, being able to choose Quick and get a small damage boost and all the benefits of melding NP Gain Up and card boosters together. Naturally the benefits extending to the whole team is also great, though the impact will be lesser. That extra 20% NP gain will result in support NP’s being live when they otherwise would be, so it can pay off in difficult content.

The only issue with this skill is really the activation cost. Unless Van Gogh-chan has a star bomb of her own available then it can’t be used on turn 1, and it still cuts into the amount of critical stars you have available on any given turn. Thankfully she’s more than capable of producing enough critical stars to pay for it, so this drawback won’t come up very often.

With a base skill cooldown of 6 turns, this skill also comes back blisteringly fast, with almost no downtime. That makes it particularly great for longer fights where other Servants might suffer from the downtime on their important buffs.

Skill 2

Next up is Potato Eater. I’m not sure I approve of throwing around anti-Irish slurs in FGO, but hey, it’s Van Gogh-chan advocating for it, not me.

This skill holds a wealth of beneficial effects, providing her with a 3k Max HP up buff for 3 turns, 30% NP gauge charge, and 20 Critical Stars that bumps up to 30 in a City battlefield.

Your eyes are probably drawn to the gauge charger - for welfare Servants any amount of gauge charge is sacred, and 30% is the golden sum that usually makes farming, especially for Quick/Buster Servants, actually viable. But let’s not pass over the other benefits - the 3k Max HP buff is essentially healing that will almost always produce value, as it can soak incoming damage in the coming turns, or if she’s already damaged she will heal for the same amount her Max HP is raised by, improving her durability no matter the circumstance.

On top of that, the star bomb is incredibly important as I’ve already suggested - it means she can pop Imaginary Numbers Art (3D) on turn 1, and over subsequent turns it’ll allow her to keep the critical star count high in case you can’t meet the activation requirements again. The City-based bonus effect is pretty minor, but City terrain is fairly common, especially in events, and regardless of whether she gets the bonus or not the skill is pretty damn good.

Only real flaw to this skill is its 8-turn base cooldown, likely held back by the presence of her gauge charger. This may result in situations where her 1st skill and 2nd skill have their cooldowns misaligned and you can’t get the critical stars to use them on demand, but given Van Gogh-chan’s capability for star generation in Quick support setups such a scenario feels very unlikely.

Skill 3

Last on the skill lineup is Dowsing, an incredibly simple skill all-in-all. It provides her with a 2-time, 3-turn Evasion buff, as well as a +30% Critical Resistance buff for 3 turns, making the odds of any enemy landing a critical on her very slim even should they bypass her Evasion.

Having a defensive tool on hand like this is always useful, especially as the long duration means you can pop it early and reap the benefits. It’s just a shame the skill is so bare, especially considering it packs a long 8-turn base cooldown, unlike other similar Evasion skills such as Accel Turn which have short cooldowns in return for their limited benefits.

But hey, not every single skill can be a banger...unless they suddenly get a Strengthening a week after the event launches.

Like, seriously?

Farewell to the Sun now provides a scaling +30% Critical Damage buff for 3 turns for every 10 critical stars present the turn you use it, up to 50. So in other words you get +60% Critical Damage for 20 stars, +90% for 30... and so on, up to +150% at 50 critical stars, an absolutely staggering damage boost. With Van Gogh-chan's access to a star bomb off of her 2nd skill, it isn't hard to get a sizeable buff out of this skill, and if you wait for after her NP, you will likely get around 30-40 stars just off her NP's star generation, plus whatever you get from her star bomb under City terrain. It's an astounding addition that provides a payoff for one of her greatest strengths.

Rounding it all off is Van Gogh-chan’s NP, Café Terrace at Night. She truly is a Minecrafter, making her own idea of a painted scene out of blocks instead of just drawing it.

This is an AOE Quick NP with the benefits of the Welfare NP5, so naturally we’ll be looking at the farming capabilities of Van Gogh-chan with it. But first, let’s go over the effects.

Before dealing damage, she gains a 20% NP Strength Up buff for 1 turn, scaling with Overcharge, a pretty typical on-NP steroid that will aid her damage output greatly. Following that, she does her damage, with a +50% Effective Damage bonus versus Lawful alignment foes. Unlike many traits, Alignments generally aren’t given to generic enemies, so this damage bonus will only really apply to Servants, or Servant-like bosses, but thankfully Lawful is a reasonably common alignment, with a little under half of the roster having it, on top of a few select story bosses. So while it may not ever reap the benefits on most farming waves, the odds of a Servant boss being weak to this NP is pretty good.

Then, after that, her NP applies Stun to every enemy with a 40% chance, and changes the battlefield to City for 5 turns. Both of these effects aren’t particularly impactful, though for opposite reasons. The Stun is fantastic to have, but with the low application rate and the presence of Magic Resistance on many Servants and bosses, it’s unlikely to actually work, especially given many Servants with Goddess Core are straight-up immune to it. The terrain change plays to her favour, but ultimately only improves her star bomb slightly, with no other benefits unless you feel like pairing her with precisely Alice, or Nero.

…though now that I think about it, she doesn’t make too bad a pairing with Alice.

Staying on track, those are all the effects, but let’s dig into the gritty numbers. With just her own buffs active and the free NP5, Van Gogh-chan does 32k damage neutral on the dot. A little low for a Welfare, but she is capable of looping in theory, so she has ways to compensate. Speaking of which, her baseline refund is 12% with her buffs active, a little on the low side but better than nothing.

Taking those numbers and throwing her into a double Ruler Skadi setup with a 50% gauge CE, we get a better picture. In such a setup, she does 128k damage neutral on waves 1 and 2, with a hefty 167k damage on wave 3, enough damage for universal farming on nodes with lesser damage requirements. Only issue is really her refund, netting barely over 30% gauge assuming she kills every enemy in such a setup. Even with Mana loading and cooldown reduction shenanigans she can’t manage a consistent farming setup without a battlesuit swap, so let’s adjust the numbers a little. With double Ruler Skadi and Oberon on battlesuit swap, she does a heftier 263k damage neutral on wave 3, with her earlier waves’ damage numbers being the same.

While it stings a little to have to run battlesuit swaps or Kaleidoscope in order for her to 3-turn loop, the damage output is pretty damn good, and that’s not even factoring in how she can perform in difficult content with her spectacular stargen and strong regular card NP gain.