PC Upgrades 2021

Actually Useful Upgrades

More Ram

More RAM more better. Main system currently at 48GiB and office at 32GiB. Could use more (especially home) but should be sufficient for now.

More SSD

Mainly for server VM use, with end configuration for home server at 4x1TB at raidz2 and office at 6x500GB also at raidz2. Should be enough for now. There’s also one extra spare 500GB drive so I guess the 500GB will stay for a longer while.

SAS Cards

Some existing SAS cards were broken and thus replacements were bought. One Fujitsu D2607-A11 which I’ve bought twice now and NEC OEM of LSI 9240-8i. The latter has ports on different place which ends up allows cleaner cable routing. It’s not as common as the former though.

Asus BD-RW

The first brand new BD drive I bought after 2013. This one supports UHD disc and MakeMKV custom firmware which allows better ripping.

Xbox Controller And Related Accessories

This is actually the first time I bought proper controller for PC ever. I also got the wireless adapter so it’s usable on Windows 8. Although now I write it I can probably connect it using bluetooth as my main system now runs Windows 10. Latency seems fine so, yay?

Also bought loads of rechargeable batteries (and the charger) while at it.

Monitor

My main display started showing ghosting so it’s time to be replaced. The replacement is an LG ultrawide 144Hz. I’ve had it in my Amazon shopping cart for a very long time and having to replace the 27″ display I figured I should just go all out. And all out I did. It replaced my whole display setup so it’s now just single display. No more annoyances of slightly different color from different displays.

Mousepad

My mousepad has gotten quite gross and broken with the main layer peeled off from its base. So I replaced it with deskpad making it easier to switch between left and right handed mouse and of course the edges are stitched. It’s also kind of water resistant. I probably should buy another one so I can swap and wash them as needed. There weren’t much choices when I shopped for it last year but there seems to be a lot of options nowadays.

Keycap Replacements

Probably my favorite upgrade for 2021 is keycap replacement. The previous one has gotten quite gross so it’s time for replacement. It’s no PBT but it’s double shot and matches perfectly with the base keyboard (Filco black).

That said I should wash the previous one so I can use it as temporary keycaps whenever I’m cleaning the main one.

Also got another set for office system. Not as good as the classic color one but still pretty good I think.

Wifi Router

The smaller one I’ve been using wasn’t quite good and has been annoying with its config sometimes reset whenever it started on network without running DHCP server. I also have another one which looks like this but the firmware is almost equally annoying. Not to mention it’s rather big and requires large adapter. Replaced them with this one. That said, I may end up needing another switch but it’ll be a 10Gbit one.

Ethernet Cards

I’ve been buying cheap Realteks new but then I realized I should’ve gotten a cheap second hand one with Intel chip which is usually more reliable. Then I got one for 750 yen and it’s been working fine, now serving as ethernet port for my internet connection.

Speakers

I’m not sure if it’s an upgrade but I got a pair of JBL 305P MkII. It’s got hiss. It’s missing accessible volume control, not to mention each unit got its own control (fixed by buying a volume knob from Fostex). Heck, it’s missing easy power switch (also the toggle is on each unit; fixed by using power board with switch). It’s also lacking subwoofer so bass isn’t as pronounced at the moment.

Thankfully the hiss isn’t usually noticeable and I can just turn it off when not needed. Subwoofer situation is a bit more annoying though I think it’s fine for now. Not like it’s completely missing and I’m not that much of basshead anyway.

As for overall quality, uh, I can’t really tell. I think it’s better. Maybe. There seems to be more details as well (which is the main reason I replaced with this).

More HDDs

I didn’t plan this one but a combination of stupid SATA cables and dying old WD Reds causing to buy three IronWolf 8TB. It wasn’t enough to replace the 4x6TB but I remade my main array from 10x8TB to 8x8TB so then I have enough for 4x8TB. The leftover drives are used for direct attach Windows backup drives.

Ryzen 5900X

After waiting a year and the price just not wanting to go down I finally got one second hand for 64k. Not the best deal but still one of the better ones.

Antec NE650

This one ended up probably not quite enough if I ever upgrade my GPU beyond mid range… which I probably won’t do. The most annoying part is I could’ve gotten 750W for just a little bit more but I cheaped out in the end ;_;

Questionable and Useless “Upgrade”s

ATX Case (and PSU)

To be fair, the case itself is perfectly fine. The problem is I ended up not needing it after combining server and desktop into one system (with server function running on multiple VMs).

Extra Ryzen System

Similar to above, I’ve got one extra set of Ryzen 3500 CPU and B450 motherboard. I’ve got no spare RAM so I’ll just sell them separately eventually (same with the case, I’ll probably sell just the case and PSU by itself). At least for PSU I’ll be selling a rather old one.

Too Many 10Gbit

Or more like I don’t need any of them now. I can still use a pair for between main and lab system but they’re not exactly needed. I need to get around selling them eventually. At least I think I should be able to recoup the cost here because I bought them mostly untested so they’re relatively cheap.

Sound Card (lol)

I had server board for desktop and the USB Audio I’ve been using was quite crap in term of loudness for earphones so I got a PCIe one. It works fine but the system has since been replaced by a Ryzen system so it just isn’t needed anymore. At least it was only 1800 yen.

Conclusion

Merging server and desktop makes a lot of setup I had redundant. I tried this kind of setup for office around 2015 but FreeBSD’s Hyper-V support wasn’t quite good at the time and I didn’t have enough HDD to store Windows backup (as I can’t use the VM to store it since those would be inaccessible in recovery mode). I also had the idea using Linux and passthrough devices to a Windows VM.

It took me so long to realize I just need to try my original Windows Host and FreeBSD VM setup again and see if it works. It sure seems to work fine now and I ended up with a bunch of redundant systems now.

Future Upgrades

With “Everything Server” now turned into “Everything System”, upgrade will be much cheaper although I need to make sure the motherboard have enough PCI-e and SATA slots.

On CPU, if I ever go Alder Lake, it’ll probably be ASRock H670 Steel Legend motherboard (open PCI-e notches yay!) and i7-12700. Or maybe I’ll just wait whatever AMD has in store for Zen 4. Intel limiting to 8 performance cores for consumer kinda sucks.

I almost forgot but this Ryzen 5900X is probably not adequately cooled. It’s currently cooled by Kotetsu Mark II which can barely cool the cpu at maximum load. Lack of airflow certainly isn’t helping either. Thankfully such load is rare and adding two 14cm fan (which I have spare of) at the top should help. I need to buy fan filter first though since I don’t fancy cleaning its inside.

RAM situation is pretty questionable at the moment. DDR4 is dying but DDR5 is still pretty expensive and there’s no telling when the price will normalize. I’ll try keeping current one as long as needed.

GPU is, well, WELL. I should’ve pulled trigger on RTX 2060 many years ago when it was still like 20-30k yen. At least I’ve got a GTX 1060 6GB which is quite a bit better than my previous GTX 950.

SSD situation is rather unknown. One NVMe drive I have shows remaining life of 19%. It was used for server and hit with some heavy write load but with now used for Windows system drive with no heavy load it should last longer? The number is a bit worrying and in worst case I’ll just replace it with a SATA SSD. Not like I need the performance anyway.

I also may need extra storage for my gaming drive.

NAS storage actually got a downgrade as I wrote above from 10x8TB to 8x8TB. I’ve done quite a lot of clean ups so it’s now at 9TB free which should last me for at least a year. I hope. Otherwise it’ll be… 8x12TB upgrade? I should start saving for them…

I’m running switch-less at the moment but it also means I’ve got no spare gigabit port which I can use to connect my laptop to. Alternative includes using 10Gbit port with Gigabit SFP (which means I need to disconnect the 10Gbit connection), using my ancient gigabit switch (more cables), getting a gigabit/2.5Gbit USB adapter (maybe no), or getting a 10Gbit switch (quite expensive though). Switch or SFP should make do for now at least.

Subwoofer may or may not coming. I need to free up space in my room before seriously thinking about it. The one I’m considering is pretty big though.

My mouse has started wearing out but I’ve got no good replacement for it. It needs to be symmetrical 9 buttons mouse with internal memory for profiles. Nothing much matches the requirement apart of the G300s I’m currently using but it’ll out of production eventually. Also a wireless one would be nice. Preferably with AA or AAA batteries. Closest one would be G903 but it’s got proprietary battery and quite expensive.

Monitor arm would be nice, I think. With only single monitor its usefulness is more questionable but I can use extra desk space.

There’s also laptop situation. Or maybe not. This X220 should hold up for a while. At worst I just need to replace its battery. And maybe its slowly crumbling frame (!).

Weekly FGO vol. 114

JP

New Year! GSSR!

Freed from Skadi curse, I can finally choose whatever I want this time around. After plenty considerations, it was down to either Arts Knights or Support 1.

Arts Knights contains plenty of both useful servants (Nero Bride, Beni Enma, Muramasa, Summer Saber, Summer Jeanne, Fairy Lancelot) and eyecandy servants (Ryohgi Shiki, Summer Saber, Summer Jeanne). Whereas the only miss would be Lancer Ryoma.

Support 1 has pretty much all relatively useful sevants and two eyecandies (Reines and Castoria). I already have Castoria more is always better (until 5).

As per screenshot above I went with Arts Knights in the end and thankfully got Summer Jeanne. At NP1 her usefulness is slightly limited but still useful nonetheless. Also I think I completed my Jeanne collection with this one. Except Jailter of course because there’s no way to get her at the moment.

Meanwhile for other updates, Dark Koyanskaya doesn’t seem all that useful so I did 11 rolls and got jack shit as usual. I don’t think I’ll be rolling for other dailies either.

Pity system is, well, finally? At 330 rolls it’s pretty much business as usual though. I’ve always consider that number to be the normal worst case scenario so there isn’t much difference apart of that it’s now guaranteed instead of still having possibility of worst worst case.

Holy Grail creation is pretty interesting…? I don’t think I will get that many coins at the moment but for now I’ve exchanged all extra coins I have. I doubt I have enough for next month. That said, combined with other extra grails recently distributed, my problem of lack of grails has been solved in one go.

And lastly, the new training ground difficulty is definitely welcome. I don’t know the exact rate but the drops are pretty good from what I can tell. As usual it’s useless if wanting one specific item (apart of skill gems) but it works great for simply stockpiling mats.

Oh right, there’s Reines rerun sometime this month. Barbatos raid should also come along which would be very useful for all those bones and dusts and QP.

NA

As for NA GSSR, it’s Archers banner as it’s got the least number of misses (Moriarty). Summer Saber would be best but as per screenshot above, Orion is still quite useful in some scenarios.

Nothing else particularly interesting here so, yeah.

Beni Enma event will also start next week. I need a lot more mana prism…

Weekly FGO vol. 113

JP

So this Tunguska is pretty difficult.

Support is story Nikitch

The final fight for third raid battle (one with 6 raid targets) is especially annoying if not using Castoria which I didn’t. The key is to not kill everyone at once for the first five. The fourth enemy which brings full charge is very dangerous when combined with the fifth one which brings invulnerability piercing. All the enemies hit hard and with the last one’s area attack, it’s very dangerous to be left alone so for the last three I try getting rid of them all at once instead.

Nikitich NP charge on last hit is pretty important as well. And as I mentioned above, it’s bad to kill first three at once so I actually skip buff for first few NP and only do it once fourth and fifth enemy appear.

As for the raid itself, well, that was a lot of Oberon. And also surprisingly Skadi.

The Koyanska raid one is quite hard and involve some luck to prevent stun (or extra skill slots). I tried a few combinations and then went to one hit kill Koyanska instead of trying to clear the whole mobs. Lobo with two Skadi and one oberon work well in this case.

NA

Finally cleared the shop so I can focus on the lottery item. The team is as per screenshot above.

The lack of fast skill animation annoyed me a lot now so I don’t really farm here and probably won’t until they bring in that update. Currently at almost 25 boxes. With some luck maybe I can have 30 boxes.

Weekly FGO vol. 112

JP

Box event has ended and raid event is coming up soon. I ended up with 51 boxes total. Not too bad but I certainly can use more. I still need a lot more skill gems.

As for challenge quest, the easy one is, well, easy. Spartacus having damage bonus for this event also helped. It’s the usual taunt and NP (and face cards). Mech Eli at the back for cleaning up second wave and lastly Castoria and Robin Hood for finishing Beni Enma.

Getting buster buff from the first wave was pretty difficult but at least it’s not essential.

The hard challenge quest on the other hand, is hard. I saw the comp above on Appmedia message board and thankfully it worked wonder. A few places suggested defeating Oni first but I think Habetrot is way more dangerous because of her NP charges. It also helps she’s only got single HP bar. No I look at Appmedia page again, they do suggest Habetrot as well so I guess either I read it wrong few days ago or they updated their recommendation.

Anyway, with lack of time to experiments I didn’t try with lower rarity servants this time.

…wait, I completely forgot that I got a second Himiko, lol.

NA

Farmmmmm.

Oh and I cleared the story and challenge quest as well.

Taking hint from myself last time, it’s time for another double Merlin. I just didn’t want to think too much. Still not easy though. I should’ve used Atlas Academy Uniform instead.

Only 8 boxes so far so I definitely need to pick up pace. After a while with JP skill speedup update, the lack of it in NA is quite annoying.

Weekly FGO vol. 111

JP

Christmas 2021! Lottery box! Mats!

So, yeah, I’ve been mostly farming here. I finally finished the Cu Caster farming team and have been using them whenever Castoria/Paracelsus can’t work easily. I still prefer Castoria setup because it involves fewer skill taps but there are also more nodes which such setup couldn’t easily work.

The event is pretty short and the most efficient node still isn’t up so I’m not sure how many boxes I’ll end up with. I’m trying to get at least 50.

NA

Astraea banner was up so I did some rolls hoping for her and thankfully she came up in 3rd roll.

I think that should sum up my rolls for now. Next one would Voyager in May? Or maybe I’ll skip it and save everything for Castoria. At least I don’t plan getting more than one of her.

In the meantime, I’m slowly going through LB5 with mana prism farming in between. I forgot that the second half of LB5 is completely separate arc and will be released separately.

Weekly FGO vol. 110

JP

I ended up skipping challenge quest using slightly saner team this time. I’ll retry next year. Maybe.

On other news, I rolled Ryoma (Lancer) from the paid gacha. I also did a few tickets afterwards and got one extra Okita Summer. A bit more of her would be nice but it’ll require at least 4 more to be able to fully max here so I decided to stop instead.

Also stopped is my paid roll. Looking back at the total, I did 271 paid rolls so far which sum up to 31k yen (excluding the bonus SQ). That’s over 10k per month which is pretty bad. Well, I did know it gets expensive over time but looking at the number it sure is expensive. I didn’t quite expect a full 10k per month either.

So for now I’m stopping it and will only be doing it for something I do actually care about.

On side note, I tried rolling Galatea with tickets and got jack shit.

As for activity, there’s nothing to do after the event so I’ve been farming the fantasy scales and QP. The former for maxing Oberon and the latter for also maxing Oberon and many other things. A 4/4/4 append skills for everyone would be nice.

NA

There’s! Nothing! Here!

Well, there’s the new Lostbelt chapter but it’s not a time limited event so I’m doing it slowly. Christmas lotto is coming up soon after all. Gotta save all those apples.

I tried rolling for Orion with like 10 tickets and didn’t get him as expected. I got a gold archer though. An Atalante. I only need two more copies of her for NP5.

Weekly FGO vol. 109

JP

I’m almost done with the event.

That said, I took easy path for the challenge quest. I’ll try that with something smarter if I can find time to.

It’s nothing 3T or NP spam or anything advanced like that. Letting Ozy spam his NP ad infinitum while protected by Castoria and Merlin cleared it just fine.

The quest is relatively easy so I shouldn’t need all that much power in the first place.

Anyway, apart of that, all that’s left for me is farming some event items. I’m rather behind at the moment and I’m not sure if I can clear it without using gold or silver apples. I’ll hold back until two or one day before end of the event which then I’ll use the apples accordingly.

NA

Apparently LB5 is coming up before Christmas here? It kinda makes sense although it also means another thing NA doing in different order compared to JP.

Apart of that, I’m still farming for mana prism. With a bit of other quests to clear the Thanksgiving missions.

Oh and I did 10 rolls for Okita (and got nothing) and then another 36 rolls for Reines. Thankfully for Reines roll I did get her and an extra Kaleidoscope along the way.

That’s a lot of rolls lost regardless so I don’t know if I’ll roll for Orion and others in the coming months until Castoria.

Diagnosing Windows Standby Problem

I’ve been having problem waking up my PC from standby. The mindless fix would be to reinstall windows and pray but I figured I should try something before resorting to that this time.

I started with the easiest way first: unplug all external devices except mouse and keyboard and monitor.

Standby worked well so I went on plugging everything back in one by one. The problem turned out to be the Xbox Wireless Adapter. Its driver has been mildly unstable and I’ve been trying to fix BSOD it occasionally causes.

In that other fix attempt, I disabled the driver option for it to be turned off to save power. I turned it back on and my PC can still resume from standby.

Cool. Now the question is will the BSOD come back.

Weekly FGO vol. 108

JP

Gudaguda after Gudaguda! Yay. The best new servant is thankfully a welfare. Her lines are rather questionable when taken out of context.

The story is still slowly unlocked every day. I think it should be ending soon? Although the talk from yesterday kinda indicates there may be some raid event involved. I have some apples but I want to save them for Christmas box gacha. Maybe if it’s got some mats I desperately need at the moment I’ll do some farm until I gathered just enough. I’m still heavily lacking skill stones and raids don’t give them out.

As for that Angra Mainyu up there, I ended up with a total of five of him when rolling for exp CE cards in friend gacha. I wish I got some SSR from paid gacha instead. One more Okita would’ve been nice so I don’t need to farm her bonds.

NA

Dead month is dead. Some login bonus stuff and that’s it. gems and tickets are nice and according to my list there is nothing for me to roll until castoria next year so that’s what I’ll do. Or maybe 11 rolls for Voyager and Kama each during their respective event.

Oh and Okita is coming up soon as well. Maybe another 11 there although I don’t think I’ll get her to 120 in NA but instead try for Morgan.

In the meantime, I’m farming for mana prisms. I still need a lot of them. At least 5000 more of them.

Weekly FGO vol. 107

JP

Cleared the event. The challenge quest was relatively easy. First get rid of Nobukatsu and then finish Nobbu.

The raid ended up pretty quickly.

A bunch of random daily bonus is ongoing as well which is nice, I guess?

And lastly during the daily paid gacha, I got one Himiko. Yay?

NA

Wow nothing. There are some daily bonus thing and that’s all.

I couldn’t do much hunting quest either due to saving apples.

It’s a Seagate

I’ve had enough bad experiences with hard drives from various manufacturers the brand stop mattered to me. The return procedure is still relevant though and so far Toshiba is the cheapest with them paying for the return shipping.

That said, I had problem with Toshiba recently with their MN06ACA800 being very slow on resilver. Thankfully their previous version is fine and I got mine all exchanged. I don’t think I’ll be touching them for a while though.

It has been a while since I bought Seagate drive with the previous one being a cheap Barracuda (SMR) 4TB. It has been since sold (still working) and the later purchases have been either WD or Toshiba.

With three of my WD dead recently, I had to replace one of them after downgrading from 6 drives RAIDZ2 to 4 drives and thus got this Seagate thing.

No problem so far and resilvering was as fast as expected.

I don’t remember last time getting this hard plastic HDD case. I didn’t even know it still exist. I thought it has all been replaced with antistatic bag and bubble wraps.

Weekly FGO vol. 106

JP

Gudaguda Himiko. CE exp cards from FP gacha. I’ve spent over 2M on it and got quite a few of them now. Also some Saber Lily and Habetrot and Angra Mainyu. And of course a lot of Nobukatsu. I’ve got almost 2000 servant coin of him now.

Meanwhile on the event itself, there isn’t much interesting. The raid started out pretty badly with the server barely responding. Half of the Nobbus being down just in few hours isn’t helping either. At least the one I’m farming for, Dark Nobbu, isn’t very popular. I don’t have many apples so I can’t farm much either anyway.

As for random rolls, for some reason I ended up with three Napoleon. And 0 Jeanne Summer after 59 rolls. That was mildly annoying but my current recorded SSR servant rate is 53 out of 4714 rolls so it’s kinda expected, I guess?

NA

Dead week is dead. There’s hunting quest but there’s nothing I particularly needed at the moment so I’m just farming with natural AP.

I sure wonder what event will be after this.

Weekly FGO vol. 105

JP

Halloween is over! Kind of! I still have to farm a bit more to get all those CEs!

The farming nodes are rather interesting but thankfully I’ve got enough to replicate the teams listed here.

As for challenge quest, it’s relatively easy. I didn’t bother to do much experiment but this one worked.

Nothing fancy, just letting Kagetora hit Zenobia until she’s down. With occasional Castoria and Hans NP as needed.

Meanwhile I didn’t notice the Apocrypha BD banner includes Jeanne Summer and Mordred Summer. Threw quite a bit for Jeanne Summer but got Fran Summer instead welp. I have some more SQ but I don’t think I’ll roll more. Or will I.

NA

Also done with Saber Wars 2 here.

Challenge quest isn’t much really. It’s just having Mech Eli hit MHXX as much as possible. Now I think about it, it’s quite similar to the JP Halloween above.

As for Round Table quest, it’s a little bit lot more annoying with Tristan’s buff removal and Gareth’s piercing NP. The formation gimmick was also annoying especially quite a few of it requires command card and crit luck.

Somehow cleared it anyway thankfully. Sure is nice having Godjuna.

The event ends tomorrow and there next one for JP is hunting quest and… Christmas. Not sure how they’ll handle the long blank space until Christmas unless they do weird thing and start it mid November.

Weekly FGO vol. 104

JP

Halloween! Thankfully all the extra copies of previous Elis can be obtained from event shop using event currency instead of rare prism. Not only that they also thrown in relevant servant coins and event CEs. One extra copy of MLB Aerial Drive is always welcome.

Story is still ongoing and I’ve been slowly reading through it. At least the farming is relatively easy with up to 6 enemies at once, making it very easy to loop.

Did some paid roll everyday and so far got one Zenobia. Yay?

NA

I’m still going through the Saber Wars 2 story. I think I need to complete some bounty quests but I’m not sure which so I’m trying complete them all instead for now.

There are two notably rather difficult quests this time, one is the Elis quest.

That said, my strategy is simple; break first bar on first turn using Godjuna and then send him back and wait until all the support finish recharging and stuff. And then back to finishing them once all the taunts are dead and no more stupid buffs for the enemies.

The other one is Round Table but I haven’t reached it yet.

I also did more rolls which I probably shouldn’t. And all I got was one Munenori and one Black Grail. And there went my 44 rolls.

Windows 8 Login Profile Image

For some reason my new Windows install isn’t displaying my profile image on login screen.

After many hours of digging it turned out the settings app which handles changing profile image doesn’t update the registry correctly. Namely it’s missing Image200. There are entries for other size but for some reason this install doesn’t set that specific one.

I’m not sure what caused it but for now adding the entry manually fixes it.

The entry is located at:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\AccountPicture\Users\{USER-SID}

I also had to takeover ownership of the key.

Edit: WAIT NEVERMIND. My other install (which I used as reference) turned to also show exactly same problem. And so does my laptop with latest updates. There’s only one system which doesn’t have the problem but I haven’t updated it recently so it’s most likely broken by one of the recent updates.

Weekly FGO vol. 103

JP

I finally started on the journey getting Okita to level 120. At over 5000 ☆5 exp cards required, it’ll be a very long while until I reach the end. It looks like I’ll be mainly farming for exp cards with occasional QP whenever there’s no event.

Talking about event, I ended up skipping most of the Halloween Trilogy Rerun. Fetched the Elis, leveled them up, and finished their strengthening quests.

Oh, I also did as many roll as I could for Okita Alter banner and got nothing. That was mildly annoying. I hope there’s nothing interesting coming up until next year.

NA

Still dead week on NA with Saber Wars 2 coming up tomorrow. No roll is planned as I’m on saving mode here as well for next year’s Castoria and others.

With mindless QP farming, I’m currently past 500M. It’s probably the most QP I’ve ever had. Not that it’ll last long once Christmas farming comes in with its fangs and other materials. I’m still missing a lot of dust though.

Weekly FGO vol. 102

JP

Halloween main interlude! I barely progressed through. I finished the first part. Two other parts remaining. That said I’ve read most of the rest’s original event so it shouldn’t take too long.

Eli’s strengthening are… mixed bags. OG and Mech Eli got pretty nice upgrade with former making more sense between the skill and her NP and the latter potentially boosting her damage further by making it easier to crit.

Brave Eli’s 50% NP reduction for skill 3 is still pretty questionable. Being less costly to cast is nice but the effect is just too random.

Meanwhile Halloween Eli’s NP charge is, well, NP charge. At just 30% it’s nothing much to write home about. There’s no shortage of Caster with NP charge skill after all. Her NP hasn’t gotten any strengthening either. Still better than Brave Eli at least, I guess.

I don’t think the date for new Halloween event has been announced. It could be as early as next week. It should be sometime this month though.

On unrelated news, I did one random roll on story gacha and nicely got Jaguarman. Finally she’s NP2. Still need 3 more. No other interesting roll so far either.

NA

Nothing week! Like, nothing. Saber Wars 2 should be coming soon. Maybe next week. It felt like I’ve done it so many times now. I don’t think it’s too difficult apart of one or two quests so it should be just some light event overall for me. I just hope I can finish it without apples although I doubt it.

In the mean time I’ve been just farming for QP. I considered farming other things as well but they’re just not very efficient and takes more time. Mana prism farming could be useful as well but more box event is coming up in November and farming QP is easier (as in it uses 40 AP compared to mana prism 30 AP).

Weekly FGO vol. 101

JP

Melty Blood release campaign! …which is Saber pick up banner.

I did paid roll just for fun and got her somehow. Yay.

Still on paid roll, I also got Achilles on his banner. Too bad I didn’t get anyone else useful on that paid roll thing.

As I mentioned last week, I redid the challenge quest with more restriction and managed to do it. I stole it from this guy here almost as is.

So, summer has ended and Halloween is coming up. The nice part is they’ll start it by having a main interlude type of rerun which is just the main story including the welfare. I don’t have Halloween Eli and Brave Eli so that’ll be some welcome addition. Oh and another copy of Mech Eli so I can have complete set of them. NP upgrade will be coming on the new Halloween event but there’s no info whether it’s free(-ish) or require rare prism like other main interludes.

Oh, I did some more rolls for Okita Alter summer and still got nothing. And I also did 10 rolls for Okita Alter and equally got nothing. Hopefully the paid roll will give me something nice this time. Or most likely not.

NA

Halloween rerun! Raid! And I’m done with everything there, including the challenge quest.

I barely paid attention to it and it just somehow cleared. It’s basically just letting Godjuna spam his NP and face card. Gudaguda Kanban is used to provide free taunt. I put Kintoki there so I can have Godjuna focus on Sitonai first and then finished by Kintoki but he ended up clearing the whole thing anyway.

Coming next is Saber Wars 2 which has no welfare but at least it’s got a Mystic Code.

I don’t think I’ll roll on this one. Or maybe just one for fun. I need all the SQ and tickets I can get for next (and following) year.

Next year top priority for me will be Castoria and Himiko. And maybe Okita if I’ve got enough spares. That’s not too bad but then the following year will be Fujino, Morgan, Koyanskaya, Oberon, and Okita Alter Summer.

Weekly FGO vol. 100

JP

I still need to finish two extra quests. And then maybe redo the challenge quest.

Otherwise I’ve been just farming the bronze treasure chest node with natural AP as I don’t have any silver and gold apples remaining.

Oh and as per screenshot above, I managed to max out one Kaleidoscope…

NA

Oniland has started. I’m slowly grinding for the points preparing for the raid. Hopefully I’ll have enough points when it starts otherwise it’ll get rather annoying especially farming for the mats and stuff.

Weekly FGO vol. 99

JP

Still summer! (although it’s almost Autumn here)

Haven’t finished the story due to busy with other stuff. I’ve unlocked the most relevant farming node for me though so I’ll be mostly doing that for now.

As for the rolls, nothing interesting showed up from daily paid rolls. Also I’m not doing Kama banner for normal rolls, just Okita.

There are still over a week left. It should be fine. At least for the main quest and store. I’m not sure if I have enough apples to clear the Treasure Points rewards. Maybe just barely.

NA

Gilfes is over. 108 boxes total for me. Still not enough exp cards to level up everyone. And I’m still missing some materials to ascend Osakabe (Summer).

As for the challenge quests…

First up is Eric. Thanks to this video linked from Gamepress wiki, I cleared it pretty quickly.

It’s just letting someone die every turn so Eric lost his buffs.

Next is Gorgon Sisters. Still sponsored by Gamepress wiki link, I followed this video. Didn’t quite match exactly but cleared anyway no problem by Godjuna.

More from linked video by same wiki, Mephisto quest was cleared in 33 turns. I don’t remember much about this one as I did it while doing something else.

As for Achilles quest, I don’t think I stole anyone’s idea. Or maybe I kinda did from this. Looking again, I should’ve tried the first turn bar break but then that’d require restarting until finding the correct cards…

But anyway the team above did it albeit taking a lot longer at 11 turns.

I vaguely remember repeating this Roman quest quite a lot last time in JP. But as there’s no restriction here, I copied this mostly as is.

I didn’t pay enough attention to the gimmick so it took a bit longer but I finished it in 14 turns.

With this, Gilfes is done and I forgot to repeat the Nero quest. Whoops.

Up next is Saber Wars 2… is what I thought but it’s Oniland rerun. Apparently it’s got raid quest with eggs and gunpowders and stakes. That’s nice.

Oh wait I forgot about the FGO Stage Banner. I did three rolls and got Bedivere (now NP3). That was nice for a change. NP5 would be the best but I’m saving my tickets and SQ for next year. If I still play the game by then.

Weekly FGO vol. 98

JP

Summer! Okita Alter Summer for some reason! Yay?

I didn’t have any SQ though so, yeah, that was expensive. Thankfully it only took over 240 rolls to get that NP3 above.

Other extras include NP4 Anastasia, NP4 Charlotte Corday, one extra Valkyrie (now NP3) and Circe (also NP3).

I have no more SQ or ticket so that’s it for me. Kind of. There are about 20 or so more daily SQ roll until it ends so that’ll be it.

Similarly for upcoming Kama banner, as I have no more SQ, it’ll be also just the daily SQ.

As for the event itself, it’ll be a while until full farming can start as the higher level nodes are still locked. Nothing particularly difficult which is rather expected for a summer event.

Oh, I also only have few apples anyway.

NA

Jaguar! I made a vaguely possibly working team and it did. There isn’t much in term of strategy especially as the only meaningful gimmick is rotating buff.

And then Moolah. Pay debt as frequent as possible and then NP away. The annoying part is when there’s matching face card, not enough critical star, or both. Or when the debt is about using NP damage boost when it’s on a support servant which means there’s no way to pay it back.

That said, Ozymandias is both tanky and high damage so everything worked out fine-ish. Oh and that comp above is a lie. Replace that Enkidu with a level 100 Cu which didn’t end up doing anything much.

MHXA! One of the more difficult quests. The strategy is kill as many snacks/enemies as possible as fast as possible. Except the one which causes debuff on death. Also save an NP or two for the Agar-agar. The side effect is the HP down to 1 and can’t even be buffed (I tried).

I use that as the point on which I need to break MHXA first bar as soon as possible. Afterwards it’s all the Cu’s turn to survive however many turns needed to get MHXA HP down to 1.

For Gilgamesh (Caster) finale, I went with this. I didn’t expect the NP def buff to be so thick it’s useless. So, yeah, I ended up just letting Ozy deal all the damages using face cards. That Nero Bride get full charge every time I killed anyone is also annoying. It doesn’t help I didn’t prepare for anything like that. So, yeah.

It didn’t even start well as killing Bunyan causes a full team debuff. Which then of course followed by Nero NP.

I wonder how I did it before. I also wonder if it’s better to just get rid of Nero first.

But hey, at least Qin saved the day getting rid the last few servants remaining (I think it was Nero and Gilgamesh).

With 2020 line up over, then it’s 2021. “Finale”. And this one is very annoying. That FGO Fandom Wiki not mentioning 1 time per turn evade buff from Fionn after first bar break is very much not helping. I ended up using two command spells because I just want to be over with this one already.

I’ll look back again and clear this proper if I have spare time.

I don’t remember how I cleared this in JP. I think it’s with Cu Alter. Or maybe Godjuna.

And lastly the Brave Eli quest. Yeah, I haven’t done the previous ones and jumped straight to this thinking it wouldn’t be too bad.

Except it was amazingly bad. I should’ve at least used Alexander or someone to remove the pierce buff etc in wave 5.

But anyway after few hours of trying I barely cleared it. Forgetting that her NP ignores def also didn’t help. I should’ve always went with NPAA in the final wave.

…and that’s it for now. There are still a few more challenge quests to be cleared.

Oh, I also rolled on the Berserker class banner hoping for more Lancelot or Herc or Cu Alter. I got none of them after 44 rolls and got Penth and Ibaraki instead. Great innit. Next year Grail Front will be slightly annoying.

As for the boxes, I’m at 68th box. I’m currently farming shop currency though so it slowed down quite a lot. I’m almost done with it though so I’ll be back farming lottery tickets soon. Or maybe the challenge quests first.

Weekly FGO vol. 97

JP

Another nothing week. Summer is coming in few days. Except it’s more like Autumn in real life.

I’ve been just farming for QP. Not really bad considering I’m farming for NA at the moment.

As for the banners, the only useful thing I got so far is Magical Girl of Sapphire. Not too bad but I need another four for best effect and bonus damage.

NA

Gilfes! Farm time. About 35 boxes so far. I’m thinking saving at least 100 silver apples for upcoming Christmas event.

Jeanne Summer worked way better than expected and it looks like I’ll be relying on her again for the last part of the event.

Meanwhile on challenge quests, I’ve been doing slowly doing them. I’ve only completed three of them.

Nothing particularly special for Touta stage. I didn’t remember how I did it before but the key is to just not attack and not using evade or guts until really needed. Attack only when releasing NP after stacking 5 or more buffs and only use defensive skill when facing enemy NP.

Brain-dead strategy for Leonidas stage. Mash for defense, Merlin for more defense and HP regen, and lastly Artoria NP as needed. If anything, the NP should be after Leonidas uses his NP, hopefully with him casting skill 1 first so the target focus only lasts one turn.

And lastly Izo stage. I initially used Sanzo to clear this but it was so wrong with her NP being useless and I didn’t swap colors enough, ended up taking too long. This one is way faster with main focus on letting Waver deal as many high damage as he can and making sure every turn ends with Arts card. Also stun from his NP sure went through pretty easily.

That’s all I’ve done. There are still a lot more left. I’ll get around doing them eventually… I think. It would be easier had I saved the comps I used last year. Also the 2019 in JP.

Weekly FGO vol. 96

JP

The Hunting Quest ended up being useful for me for all days. I used up all my gold and silver apples in the process. There are still hundreds of bronze apples but converted to gold apples, it’s only a bit over 27 so I don’t want to use too much of them.

Illya event has started… which is just a banner and some strengthening quests. The buff for Illya and Miyu are quite good though. And I have both of them albeit at only NP1. Miyu is especially better the higher her NP level is.

I’m not rolling for the banner though apart of the daily 1 paid SQ summon. Summer is coming soon.

NA

Unfortunately pre-release campaign for Gilfes only happened this week and the actual event starts next Friday. That’s two days off from my initial guess.

There’s nothing to do here apart of just farming some QP. More QP is more good. I could use some other farming but I’m just tired of the shit drop rate.

I’m saving my effort for the upcoming event. As usual I’m aiming for around 100 boxes. It’s annoying the previous year CEs can’t be reused.

Weekly FGO vol. 95

JP

Morgan banner! I went for broke and spent quite a lot to get her to NP3. I’ll continue on the daily paid SQ roll for her hoping for more NP.

Oh and I spent a bit more for Oberon later and finally got him after 252 rolls total. That was rather brutal and mental draining overall. I don’t even like him that much.

I also got a third Caster Gilgamesh, two more Fairy Tristan, one Percival, one Nightingale, and one Osakabehime along the way. That Osakabehime was a nice surprise.

I hope there isn’t anything else interesting coming up the rest of this year…

…well, summer event is coming up next month so maybe I need to hold up for a bit more.

In the meantime I’ll be doing more QP and exp card farming. Too bad there’s no hunting quest or rerun. I doubt there will be anything next week… or will there?

NA

I got four Okita Summer total. That was weird. Also annoying there’s no Lambda along the way. Nor Bunnytoria but I don’t care much about her. At least it wasn’t 6 Bunnytoria (and one Okita) like in JP two years ago.

I don’t know if I’ll retry for Lambda next year. Or maybe I will when trying to get NP5 Okita… if I have sufficient SQ by then.

The summer event itself has ended few days ago. I’ve cleared the whole thing since last week and have been just farming for QP since. Now I think about it I don’t think there’s many event which farming nodes give out a lot of QP.

As it’s over I’ve been farming for fangs. I need fangs. A lot of them. Also other mats like eggs.

Now I wrote it I realized I should switch to farming eggs so I can max Godjuna skills first. It doesn’t help I spent two eggs to unlock Salter’s Shinjuku costume.

The Salter costume was a pretty nice surprise and is way earlier compared to JP (it was February 2020). The strengthening also helped farming Camelot event quest.

Anyway, that’s it and I have no idea when the next event, loot box, will start. My guess would be pre-event campaign this Friday and then finally the event next week (or Wednesday following week).

I completely drained off my SQ but thankfully as I mentioned last week there’s nothing I’m particularly interested in coming up until Castoria which is still about 10 months away. Should be enough time to gather 1000 SQ.

Weekly FGO vol. 94

JP

More new servants! Also the pickup banner. I rolled on Valkyrie banner and got one early on. I did some more but didn’t yield anything. There was just nothing afterwards. The total was 84.

I then did 12 rolls on Sekitoba banner but didn’t get him at all. Instead I got more Koyanskaya.

And lastly on Sitonai banner, I did 16 rolls. First I got even more Koyanskaya on 7th roll then decided to just roll on and thankfully got Sitonai on the 15th. 16th was the one paid roll thing – a second Sitonai would be nice.

Another banner came up on Wednesday. It’s Oberon banner. I rolled for him as 70% NP charge would be pretty convenient. Unfortunately I didn’t get him at all and ended up spending the remaining of my quartz. The total is 90 rolls so far. I still have plenty of paid quartz so I’ll be doing one roll a day. Hopefully he’ll eventually come up. I don’t think I’ll use any more quartz or tickets otherwise. I have 24 at the moment after clearing quests and there are a few more from interludes and strengthening quests.

The outlook for summer sure is rather grim.

Oh, along the way I got not-Kaleidoscope, Liangyu, a fifth Fairy Gawain, and a second Carmilla.

I also rolled friend point gacha a bunch of times and got Habetrot to NP4.

As for the main quest itself, most of them are relatively simple.

The exception is of course the Cernunnos quest. That one is quite difficult. From what I gather people either use Himiko for long term battle or one very high damage servant buffed to the max.

I initially tried the latter but my MHXX didn’t have enough damage and it was too reliant on card draws so I then tried the Himiko method.

It worked but it still took a lot of very careful planning to pull off. I can’t even imagine how to clear it with low rarity servants. Even with welfare servants thrown in. I’m looking forward to see how this guy do it. And maybe replicate it on NA in two years.

Apparently I forgot to mention it last week but I managed to clear Demeter memorial quest using low rarity servants.

The strategy is pretty simple, clear the first bar with Lu Bu and then finish the rest with Ushiwakamaru. Alexander is required to clear the stupid def buff and Hans is the usual support.

As for Kirschtaria, I don’t quite remember how I did it. I don’t think the front line ended up doing anything and got blasted off first turn.

I did need help from a support Castoria but otherwise I think it was just having Euryale shoot her NP as often as possible.

NA

As planned, I rolled a bit on first day Bunnytoria/Okita/Lambda banner. I somehow got two Okita so I threw everything I have on that banner.

…and got jack shit. 155 rolls so far. I’ll do a bit more as I get tickets and quartz from daily login but otherwise I’ve spent everything I have. Including the tickets from clearing Prison Tower.

On the brighter side, I don’t have anything I really want until anniversary next year for Castoria. There’s also Kama right before it (or maybe afterwards due to anniversary date difference).

Back on the event, it’s mostly done and I’m now just finally spending the fever tickets for those QP.

Challenge quest was pretty easy as I went easy mode using solo Merlin. I’ve got him maxed and command coded and he cleared it without much difficulty.

The 50M QP quest on the other hand, ended up just taking a long time to finish.

Cu with event CE, Mash with def CE, and support Merlin with… Bella Lisa. Mine wasn’t maxed at this time so I had to borrow from support. This ended up stupidly simple as I only now realized that while they fire NP left and right, the damage isn’t that big. And as long Arjuna’s instant death isn’t triggered, it’s just a matter of looping Mash and Merlin’s NP. The last one took quite a long time because her class is Ruler. I should’ve equipped Mash with event CE as well.

Weekly FGO vol. 93

FGO gacha in a nutshell

JP

Anniversary! GSSR! And I rolled the banner which has Skadi in it! And I actually got her. That was nice. I finally have all the main support for each card types.

The guaranteed SR was Chiron. Could be better (Valkyrie, Fujino, Parvati, Danzou) but just getting Skadi is already a major win to me.

Now I’m free to choose whatever I like for the next GSSR that’s not Caster. Yay.

As for the free SSR, I got Tamamo for even more Arts support. I considered Sitonai and Artoria as well but went with completing support lineup for now.

All that’s left is farming some QP and caster stones and a lot of bones. By “a lot” I mean 161 of them. Also seeds. Thankfully I’ve got enough dusts and everything else… I think.

Oh I also rolled Koyanskaya and got one after 64 rolls. I’ll probably do a bit more during Valkyrie rate up day. As for the mats to level her up, just like Tamamo, I don’t have remotely enough either.

Meanwhile on the new servant coin thing, I unlocked skill 2 for a bunch of servants. I’m missing a lot of mats to properly level them up though. Also I don’t have any grails to even start leveling anyone (probably Okita) to 102+. I’m also still halfway getting Morgan to 100 (currently 94).

Looks like there are some more interesting development on the latest release of Le Fay chapter.

NA

On Sunday, got Merlin in 77 rolls. Also got spooked by Helena along the way. Also a bunch of Siegfrieds. Also one Ozymandias (now NP2).

That was overall pretty amazing roll. The extra Ozy wasn’t expected but sure is nice. He’ll definitely be useful for a lot of quests.

And lastly I did more rolls for Musashi and Osakabehime (and Carmilla). And got another Musashi Summer after 66 rolls, 11 last of which was mistakenly done using multis instead of singles. I also got Scheherazade along the way which was also not expected. Oh, and there’s Osakabehime as well. Thank god it wasn’t Carmilla. Neither are exactly useful though.

All those new servants are nice and all but I’ve got no resources to raise them all. At least the next event should be Lottery Box event. At less than 50 golden apples I should be able to hit a bit over 100 boxes.

I’m not quite done rolling yet though. There’s still Okita Summer and Lambdalilith. The plan is 11 rolls during first rate up where both are included, then another 11 during Lambdalilith banner, and finally all I have during Okita… up to NP2. I don’t think I’ll go for NP5. If I still have any sq remaining, I’ll then go on to Lambdalilith solo until NP2 of her. And if somehow I still have any left, I’ll throw the rest to the banner which has both of them.

I will most likely end up scraping for sq in interlude and strengthening quests.

As for the event itself, I’m up to date to the latest available quest. I still need to farm for item shop. Mainly gold and bronze. For some reason I’ve cleared the silver items (sans pieces).

Weekly FGO vol. 92

JP

…nothing. Have been collecting more octuplets. I’ve maxed Sanzo and now maxing Penthesilea.

FGO Fes has started but major announcement won’t come until Sunday. And probably with Lucky Bag Summoning as well.

NA

Summer 2021 has started! I rolled for Musashi and thankfully got one in 15 rolls. NP1 isn’t actually quite enough in a lot of situations so I’ll roll a bit more if I still have leftover from Merlin and Okita Summer banners. …if there’s any left that is. And if I actually manage to get them in the first place.

Otherwise, I’ll need to save some more until next year. Thankfully according to my list there won’t be anyone important until Castoria. There will be Okita Alter somewhere in the middle but it’ll be mostly for Nagayoshi. Oh, and NP2 of Kama would also be nice. Rerun of her event should be in June.

Back to current event, the plan is slowly going through the event until Merlin banner is up. Then I’ll try rolling for him, hopefully either he comes early. At worst I’ll die with loads of event CE. If it’s the former I’ll do more slow farming until Okita banner which should come next week and then finally finish the event. If it’s the latter I’ll finish the event ASAP and cry.

Weekly FGO vol. 91

JP

Finally cleared the Morgan quest. Helped by this, I noticed Morgan is very likely to attack Castoria (and Mash to lesser extent). That made coming up with correct strategy way easier as I only need to protect Castoria.

MHXA Idol was chosen for her class. It slowed things down a lot though as her NP damage is relatively low and not arts so no buff from Castoria.

With that over, I’m back to farming mats. Octuplets this time around so I can finally max Sanzo.

Oh and I counted the boxes wrong. It was 143.6 boxes total.

NA

Done with summer rerun! Well, almost. Still need to finish one more loop and a bit more of doujin power.

Challenge quest! I first tried with Arjuna Alter but he died a bit too early. So I’m back to Hokusai despite no arts buff. It took a while but it was mostly just letting Hokusai do her NP as frequent as possible. And a lot of taunts.

Summer 2020 is coming soon! Hopefully right after the rerun so it’ll be a lot of rolling fun next Sunday between NA Merlin and whatever JP 6th Anniversary will be.

Using ownCloud

Thanks to the fact NextCloud dropped Windows 8 support recently, I switched to ownCloud.

Installing the web app is pretty simple. Slightly more annoying in term of nginx rewrite compared to NextCloud but it’s fixed by just disabling “pretty” url. Their “pretty” url still involves paths ending with .php anyway. So much for being “pretty”.

There’s no problem with the desktop app either. It’s very similar to NextCloud app.

Then there’s the mobile app and here thing went bad. It occasionally crashes. By occasionally I mean it crashes at least twice when launching the app first time after not using it for a while. Opening Photos directory also used to cause crashes but apparently they fixed it recently.

That was with iOS version. Unfortunately the Android version also occasionally crashes. Not as bad as iOS though.

I’m staying with this for now until I fed up with the crashes and maybe just go back to NextCloud and use their older client version hoping it’ll stay working. Or if they finally decide to support earlier versions of Windows Server as it should also mean it’ll work with Windows 8 again.

Edit: browsing the NextCloud issues it looks like they removed hard requirement on the Windows 10 1709+ only API and Windows 8.1 will be supported again.

Weekly FGO vol. 90

JP

NeroFes is over. I gathered a bit over 120 boxes in the end. And now opening them all…

Talking about the boxes, it sure would be nice if the box includes CE exp cards. Or maybe I should’ve rolled harder during the last year’s Yamatai-koku event…

I’ll keep that in mind for NA next year.

On the other news, last part of LB6 has been released and I’ve been grinding through it slowly. That said, apparently there’s still part of the story that’s only unlocked early next month.

As part of the release, there’s the banner thing which somehow I managed to get the SSR with 4 tickets. That’s in very stark contrast with how many rolls I needed to get Morgan. This new Lancer is pretty unique in that she can do both single target and area NP. And that her third skill charges NP to 100%. 2x area NP without a separate NP charge like Nitocris is impossible but considering recent higher difficulty quests which first two waves sometimes only have one or two enemies, this could work in her favor instead.

…I don’t think I’ll raise her NP level though. It’s not Takeuchi and summer is coming soon. Also that new support with 70% targeted NP charge.

NA

Summer Rerun has started and I got my second copy of Jeanne Summer in 58 rolls. Thankfully it only took that many rolls so I should still have good chance for rolling Merlin and Okita Summer. I currently have 224 rolls available. I should get a bit more during this event. There’s also unlock-able Prison Tower which costs 5 rare prisms and will give out 9 tickets total.

I kinda want to use the prisms for bond flame and mystic code as well though so I’m not sure how it’ll go. I currently have 0 but the rerun should net me 9 rare prisms.

Oh, I also got both Ushiwakamaru and Ibaraki Douji Summer along the way. This sure is my SSR week.

I’m not sure how far I’m at the event story but I’ll probably finish it by this weekend. Or next. Next weekend is a long one to celebrate the Olympic. I don’t really care about the Olympic but hey, national holiday.

Right afterward this should be this year’s summer event.