Ice Dragon

A release of Ascended Ninian or Ascended Nanna (or Ascended Deirdre) wouldn't change anything in regards to the prediction, though. (And Ascended Elincia technically doesn't, either.) The prediction was made when the assumption was that characters that received Ascended versions would not receive Legendary versions in the future and vice versa. We now know that to not be true. Since the prediction quoted is the explanation of what "10:1 odds of my Legendary Hero predictions being correct" meant with what we assumed at the time, it should now be revised with what we now know. Since we now know that being released as an Ascended Hero is not mutually exclusive with being released as a Legendary Hero, "10:1 odds of my Legendary Hero predictions being correct" now means "of the 8 mentioned characters, no more than 1 of them will end up exclusively as an Ascended Hero". Hence, getting an Ascended version of Ninian, Nanna, or Deirdre now that they already have Legendary versions wouldn't change anything. Ascended Elincia's release also technically doesn't change anything, though it does make it extremely unlikely that she'll get a Legendary version in the future, so I'm fine counting her as "will not get a Legendary version" even though she isn't actually disqualified.

Updated the lists for Askr Innes and Muspell Brave Lyn. So far this year: Embla Gordin Dokkalfheimr Female Corrin Muspell Brave Roy Askr Innes Muspell Brave Lyn Now I'm just waiting on Nephenee and Ninian. Vanaheimr outfits when?

Translation notes for Ludveck's weapon and Nerthuz's epithet and weapon. A bit late because I was busy with other things.

Helbindi's refine gives him extremely lenient alternate conditions for his weapon's skill effects, so there really isn't a reason to focus his build around the turn-count conditions. If Helbindi were being considered for premium-ish skills, you definitely already have his weapon refined (because it's otherwise worse than modern inheritable weapons). Meanwhile, Young Boyd swaps back and forth between being Charlotte on odd-numbered turns and being Atlas with a Rein Axe+ [Atk] on even-numbered turns, so there's value in focusing his build on odd-numbered turns.

Wow, they're really early this time. Here's the art for anyone too lazy to go to the page: Would've preferred Nidavellir because I like the aesthetic, but the Muspell colors work really well on the pelt over her shoulder. The slight white glow from it also looks pretty nice. Not sold on the scale armor around the waist, though. It looks like it was tacked on just to meet the Muspell design elements quota. But the art is still very pretty. As far as stats go, she has 39/41 offenses (as always, with max Dragonflowers), which is good, but not amazing, given that Summer Leonie is a Grail unit with 39/42+ offenses, giving her +0/+2 offenses over Lyn when both have a Spd Asset. Python has worse stats, at 36/39 offenses, but makes up for it with a much stronger weapon that grants +17/+10 offenses and in-combat Spd/Def Panic. Her weapon is quite underwhelming, as its refine comes from back when bows still had worse skill effects compared to other weapon types, granting only +4/+7 offenses and Dull Ranged, with 4 points of each stat conditional on Lyn having higher visible Spd than the opponent. This essentially locks her into running Life and Death 4 as her A skill if she wants to continue using her default weapon instead of being able to run the slightly stronger Atk/Spd Catch 4. As such, it's currently still advisable to run her with Whitecap Bow for its conditional Brave effect and effective +3/+7 offenses (relative to an exclusive weapon's Mt). Alternatively, she's a very good candidate for an Arcane bow when one is released, as it will certainly have comparable stats to Mulagir along with multiple skill effects. Lyn's advantage over her competition is her access to Sacae's Blessing, which disables Distant Counter on human opponents, leaving only beasts, dragons, ranged units, and units with Null C-Disrupt capable of counterattacking. Essentially, this gives her a more limited Firesweep role in exchange for not locking her into running Firesweep Bow, allowing her to perform the same role, but with the superior Whitecap Bow, a future Arcane bow, or even her default weapon, which, for all its shortcomings, is still better than Firesweep Bow, even when considering the loss of the B slot (unless you're running Seal Def 4). If the Arcane bow is released with the Slaying effect and +1 Special charge rate, Lyn will actually be quite viable, as it would let her land Deadeye while also Sweeping. They really ought to give Mulagir and Geirskogul a second refine, though. And add an upgrade to Beorc's Blessing and Sacae's Blessing. (While we're at it, the early Legendary Heroes really need another Remix, too.)

Fury 4 is a low-demand skill. Most units would prefer to focus on getting a lot of points on two stats instead of getting fewer points per stat on all four stats on top of recoil damage. Joint Distant Guard is a decent skill for dedicated ranged tanks as well as support units. For tanks, still be stronger than Def/Res Oath 4 when it is released, but Def/Res Oath 4 works against both melee and ranged opponents and also saves you the need to apply buffs with a second unit. If you're using Legendary Micaiah as skill fodder, it should be for Joint Distant Guard. You can tack on Fury 4 as just a bonus in case you need it for a challenge map sometime since both Distant Guard 3 and Fury 3 are easy to get and don't need to come from Micaiah herself. Lull Spd/Def is a decent skill, though there are more optimal, albeit harder to obtain, options for most units in that slot. Infantry have Spd/Def Tempo and Spd/Def Bulwark, and cavalry S/D Near Trace and S/D Far Trace. There are also the Dodge and Flow skill series that don't provide stats, but still make the skill slot extremely competitive. However, as others have mentioned, Bernadetta doesn't really care about her defensive stats at all, so fixing a Res Flaw is not a significant priority. A/S Far Trace is the Far Trace skill least in demand. There are very few player-phase ranged units that want Spd and bulk instead of Spd and damage. Fast units typically want Spd/Def or Spd/Res depending on their weapon type, and most slow units want Atk/Def or Atk/Res (Spd/Def and Spd/Res are also fine for slow units that aren't expecting counterattacks). Spd/Res Rein is in much higher demand. Tempest skills are rather situational, and there are usually better options for that slot, like Assault Troop and Oath skills. The only unit I can think of that actually has a good case to run a Tempest skill for general use is Young Boyd due to his weapon having an effect conditional on turn number.

A bunch of pulls this week that I haven't posted yet. This week's Arena ticket gets me Bernadetta. 41 pulls from Hero Fest: 1 Lysithea (+1 spark) 2 pity breakers Nimue Fallen Rhea 40 pulls from the Double Special Heroes banner: 3 Female Corrin (+1 spark) 1 Laegjarn 40 pulls from the Ascended Elincia banner: 1 Elincia (+1 spark) 2 pity breakers Wolf Priam Overall a pretty good haul, with the Double Special Heroes banner making up for the Hero Fest being 1 pull below average. Lysithea is now +5. Corrin is now +5. I'll be skipping going for sparks on the Remix and Hall of Forms banners. Trying to trim a bit off of my gacha spending, and there isn't anything I desperately need from those banners.

The name used in game file names (specifically, for voice files) is "Dark". The characters' internal IDs are not standardized and are (usually) tailored for the character, like "魔女" (majo), "witch", for Celica, "邪竜" (jaryū), "fell dragon", for Robin, "暴走" (bōsō), "berserk", for Ike, and "覇骸" (hagai), "hegemon husk", for Edelgard, though some are just "闇" (yami), "darkness", like Dimitri's.

For more clarification, there are three different ways stats are applied to units through skills. You can tell the difference in the skill description with the wording: "in combat": These effects are only visible on the combat forecast and during combat. They always stack. "for 1 turn": These effects are visible on the character map sprite as a green arrow upward and on the character's visible stats ("Buff"). These do not stack with each other, and only the highest value (most positive normally, most negative if under the effect of Panic) for each stat takes effect. "through its next action" or "through their next actions": These effects are visible on the character map sprite as a red arrow downward and on the character's visible stats ("Penalty", I think). These do not stack with each other, and only the highest (most negative) value for each stat takes effect. Each category is independent of the other two categories and stack with each other. Buffs that have been reversed with Panic are still considered Buffs and still count under the same category as before they were reversed.

It actually doesn't even have to be in a row. If you haven't filled in all of the dots yet, they'll remain filled even if you pull a focus unit. You get one dot every time you pull an off-focus 5-star unit. Once all three dots are filled, the off-focus 5-star rate goes away completely and is added to the 5-star focus rate. The dots will be depleted only after you pull a 5-star focus unit while in this state. (Since the units in a summoning session are determined when the session is generated, the boosted rate for focus units will last until the end of that summoning session.)

The super bonus unit is almost certainly why. My team last week had a score range of 762-776, which means that I normally only find matches in the 762-768 range with matches scoring 770 being extremely rare and anything higher than that being unheard of. The week before, I was running my +2 Gotoh, who was bringing down my score into the 754-768 range, but even after fishing for quite some time, I was absolutely unable to get any matches scoring 766 or 768 points. Giving Gotoh Harsh Command+ bumped the score range up to 756-770, but again, I was unable to get any matches scoring 768 or 770 points. If I recall correctly, the matchmaking formula is more complicated than just "here is your score range, now we randomly pick an opponent from that range", which means that the theoretical maximum score is likely not actually attainable in practice, which means that running the super bonus unit will get you strictly higher scores than actually fishing (or at least it will in the top couple tiers).

Repel already exists; it's just getting a fourth tier. It's one of the skills in the Dodge series, so it's human melee infantry only. It doesn't have a "+" at the end and isn't an Arcane weapon, so it's definitely not going to be inheritable.

And the usual translation notes: The banner name, "New Heroes & Ascended Elincia", is "新英雄＆開花エリンシア" (shin'eiyū & kaika erinshia), "New Heroes & Blooming Erincia". As usual, "開花" (kaika), "blooming", is the term for Ascended Heroes. Lucia's epithet, "Tireless Advisor", is "女王の姉妹" (joō no shimai), "The Queen's Sister". Queensblade is "女王の護衛の怜剣" (joō no goei no reiken), "Cunning Sword of the Queen's Guard". As usual, the allergies to the word "sword" are in full force. Repel is "回避・叩き込み" (kaihi: tataki-komi), "Evasion: Knock Down". "叩き込み" (tataki-komi), "knock down", is the name of the Knock Back skill. Geoffrey's epithet, "Realm's Protector", is "女王の騎士" (joō no kishi), "The Queen's Knight". Queenslance is "女王の騎士の勇槍" (joō no kishi no yūsō), "Brave Lance of the Queen's Knight". Unrelated to the Brave Lance, which is "勇者の槍" (yūsha no yari), literally "Hero's Lance". Bastian's epithet, "Crimea's Keystone", is "王国の要" (ōkoku no kaname), "The Kingdom's Keystone". Could also be pronounced "ōkoku no yō". Gronndeer is "グルンディア" (gurundia), "Gronndeer". Elincia's epithet, "Devoted Queen", is "清真女王" (seishin joō), "Pure Queen". Crimean Scepter is "クリミア女王の王笏" (kurimia joō no ōshaku), "Scepter of the Queen of Crimea". Light's Restraint is "抑制の聖光" (yokusei no seikō), "Holy Light of Suppression". It appears that offensive staff Special skills will likely follow the naming scheme of "〇〇の聖光" (*** no seikō), "Holy Light of ***" with the "〇〇" being related to the skill's additional "staff" effect. Dazzling Shift is "幻惑・転移" (genwaku: ten'i), "Dazzlement: Warp". "幻惑" (genwaku), "dazzlement", comes from "幻惑の杖" (genwaku no tsue), "Staff of Dazzlement", which is the name of the Dazzling Staff skill. It looks like they're going to be implementing multiple tier-4 skills for Wrathful Staff and Dazzling Staff with different secondary effects. Ludveck's epithet, "Rebellious Duke", is "旧体制の糾合者" (kyūtaisei no kyūgōsha), "Mobilizer of the Old Regime". Defier's Axe is "守備逆用の斧" (shubi gyakuyō no ono), "Def Exploit Axe". Nerthuz's epithet, "God of the Land", is "地の女神" (chi no megami), "Earth Goddess". Horn of the Land is "地の女神の角" (chi no megami no tsuno), "Horns of the Earth Goddess". This is a banner full of characters where I stumble over their English names because I'm too used to their Japanese names. Elincia is "Erincia" in Japanese, and it's something I constantly have to correct when I'm typing. Bastian is "Ulysses". Geoffrey is "Geoffray", which may look like it was simply misspelled, but it's pronounced exactly as it looks, so it's definitely intentional. Lucia is "Luchino", with the "ch" pronounced like a "k", and is the hardest for me to remember her English name because it looks close, but everything is somehow wrong.

I'm honestly surprised they actually implemented Parity for real on Lucia. And Kita Senri's art is amazing as always. I really like it when he does more Tellius art because it's extremely nostalgic.

This week's Arena ticket gets me Ryoma:

Don't bully the Bernie.

On my end, Fallen Edelgard is my least wanted because she's in the standard summoning pool, I already have her at +10 merge, she has no skills that are in high demand, and I already have spare manuals of her because she's in the standard summoning pool. Summer Edelgard and Chrom are my next least wanted because they are both at +10 merge and don't have any skills that I need. But both of them are likely to win their first rounds, and there's not much I can do about that. Grima and Veronica are both at +10 merge, but have good skills. Fomortiis, Camilla, and Ophelia are not at +10 merge yet, so extra copies are welcomed. Of these, Camilla is the most useful for me, followed by Ophelia, then Fomortiis.

The closest list for that purpose is the Fandom wiki's List of Heroes, which can be sorted by release date. It won't directly tell you what Book the unit was released in, but that's easy enough to figure out based on release date.

I don't think either the Fandom wiki or Gamepress has one, but if you only need to check units that you have, you can sort your barracks by version number, and it'll also show the version number for each unit you have (both major version (Book) and minor version (update) numbers). If you just need to check a specific unit, the Fandom wiki lists the version number for each unit on their page, or you can float units in your barracks to the top of the list by having them in the currently selected team before changing the sort method to version number.

Oh, how convenient. The unit I want most (Ninja Camilla) is up against the unit I want least (Fallen Edelgard). I know exactly whose team I'll be joining.

That's the entire point of Dragonflowers. They aren't actually a "make your units more powerful" mechanic. They're a "let older units catch up to newer units" mechanic. Each time they raise the base stat totals of new units, it comes out to approximately 5 points, and they also increase the number of Dragonflower levels older units can have by exactly 5. It's not that "some units need to be plus 15 or something", it's that that's what you're supposed to be doing with older units that you want to continue using. All units from CYL 2 onwards have stats totals that are approximately equivalent to modern units when both have maximum Dragonflowers, which means that the intent is that older units should be running maximum-minus-5 Dragonflower levels to equal the stats of a new unit with no Dragonflowers (though if you aren't merging new units, you can also make up for the difference with merges, as each merge is roughly equivalent to 2 Dragonflower levels). Other than that, you should also be updating the skills on older units that you want to continue using in order to keep with the fact that newer skills are generally more powerful.

Legendary Sigurd has Atk/Def Catch 4 and Fatal Smoke that are both good skills, though neither is in high demand. Atk/Def Catch 4 is really only used by slow melee units with a guaranteed follow-up, and it's already available on two units in the standard summoning pool (Zeke and Fallen Gustav). Fatal Smoke is mostly useful on Aether Raids defense, though it can be useful for player-controlled units to break specific tanks that rely on self-healing, but it's otherwise a rather niche skill. Legendary Eliwood doesn't really have much worth using as fodder. Death Blow 4 is now outdated, as Ideal, Catch, and Clash skills grant more stats and Surge and Remote skills have strong secondary effects. Flow Refresh is the most niche of the Flow skills. There are units that can run it decently well, but it's usually more optimal to use Surge for healing and get a stronger secondary effect on the Flow skill instead. Harmonized Caeda really only has Atk/Spd Catch 4 as a good fodder skill. Refer to Legendary Eliwood above for Flow Refresh. Panic Smoke 3 is pretty underwhelming compared to the alternatives in that slot, though it can be used as a stepping stone for the more viable Panic Smoke 4. Atk/Spd Catch 4 is a good skill that is in high demand, though it also has a lot of distribution, currently being on 17 different units, five of which are in the standard summoning pool, and four of which have frequent reruns in the Legendary/Mythic pool.

And an analysis that's a bit more detailed than the one I gave when his art was leaked half a month ago: With the Resplendent boosts, Innes actually ends up with 40/41 offenses at maximum Dragonflowers, which is not bad for a bow infantry. In fact, Young Innes has the exact same base stats with the only difference being that he has a superboon in Spd whereas regular Innes doesn't. He does face some pretty tough competition, though. The aforementioned Young Innes has virtually the same stats and a significantly better weapon. Kiragi has a faster 39/44 neutral stat spread and Etie has a stronger 46/41 neutral stat spread with both of them being in the 4-star pool proper and needing fewer Dragonflowers. Nidhogg might be an old weapon, but it's actually not awful. It's basically a Firesweep Bow with higher stats that still allows you to counterattack on enemy phase, but only works against tomes and dragons on player phase. While that's rather restrictive, it's still usable in Arena Assault and on fixed maps. The Litrowl effect might be outdated, but getting +2 to all stats when adjacent to a single ally is still a nice bonus over the Firesweep Bow against units that Nidhogg works against. For a more traditional role, he still has access to Whitecap Bow and actually has a Res stat that lets him take counterattacks from tome and staff units without needing to run a Remote skill, though his awful Def means that he'll crumple if counterattacked by anything else.

Quick, act surprised! The next Resplendent Hero is Askr Innes: Excellent art. Also, a unique pose for each artwork is always to be respected.

Having spent a few days not cleaning out my barracks and contemplating my budget, I've decided I'll pull on the AHR and Valentine banners first and then use whatever I have left of this month's budget (ends on the 14th) on the Double Mythic Heroes banner. Even if I'd have liked to have gotten more merges for Gotoh and Fomortiis, +2 on both is good enough for Aether Raids, and Gotoh will be rerun extremely soon anyways. Hero Fest is going to stay for a while, so I'll hold off pulling on that for the time being. And that was probably a good idea because my luck on the AHR banner was not great. 116 pulls: 3 Lyn (+1 spark) 1 Corrin 0 Lucina (+1 freebie) 1 Roy 1 Byleth 1 Micaiah 6.0% focus rate is garbage. Yes, sniping blue should result in a focus rate of about 5.5% including the pity bonus, but without accounting for off-color pulls, so it should be higher than 5.5% with off-color pulls, but not when 3 of my 7 focus pulls were off-color. Though to be fair, the Lyn rate was 2.6%, which is actually effectively average (about 2.8%), so I probably shouldn't complain too much since all the desire sensor actually denied me was 2 copies of Corrin. Lyn is now +10 with one spare to give to Ganglot for Godlike Reflexes duplication. Corrin is now +1 with the exact same mediocre Asset as the first one. Roy is now +8. Micaiah is now +6. Lucina is my 12th copy and will go to Rearmed Grima for Savvy Fighter duplication. I already have too many Byleths and nothing to do with them because his fodder is useless. Decided to spark Elise so I could at least get a guaranteed neutral copy and wouldn't have to pull for her, but ended up getting a couple of copies of her when there wasn't any other color to pull on (after getting Takumi and Leo), which was nice (and was definitely the right decision because neutral was better than any of the copies I pulled). I also specifically pulled colorless when I had the pity charge maxed out and lucked out getting her instead of Hana. 161 pulls: 3 Elise (+1 spark) 1 Takumi 1 Leo 2 5-star Hana 9 4-star Hana 3 pity breakers Brave Marth Ascended Mareeta Galzus 4.3% focus rate is good, especially since the 3.1% non-Hana-focus rate is actually right about average, so the copies of Hana effectively didn't actually cost me anything. 6.2% total 5-star rate is below average by less than a pull, which is good. Leo is an excellent [+Atk, -Spd]. Takumi is a not-so-great [+Res, -Spd]. 5 pulls on the Hatari desert banner gets me another copy of Desert Karla. Nothing from any of the other reruns. Bought an orb pack for the Double Mythic Heroes banner and watched my pity rate go up from 9.5% to 13.0% and decided I was done with this banner. I ended up grabbing a few free orbs from my piggy bank of unfinished story maps and finally pulled Gotoh at a 13.5% pity rate with no other 5-stars in the session. Yeah, I'm done with this banner. 46 pulls: 1 Gotoh 0 Fomortiis 0 Arval Final total of 158 pulls: 3 Gotoh (+1 spark) 3 Fomortiis 3 Arval 5.7% focus rate is complete garbage and is below average by 4 pulls.