Saber Wars: The Caliburn Awakens initially ran in January of 2018 for the US version. While I don’t remember much from back then, I was still a relatively inexperienced player in the game. There were a lot of things which are obvious to me now, that I hadn’t realized yet, such as the fact that a max evolved CEs grant double bonus. Due to my inexperience at the time, and my fairly weak collection of servants, I struggled through the initial run, and failed to properly finish. I only leveled my Altria Lily’s NP up to 3/5 and completely miss leveled my event CEs. That meant I was woefully under prepared for this revival.
The structure of this event is familiar to anyone who has played a Fate GO event at this point. You have plot quests which unlock each day, grind quests to gather resources, and “bonus” quests to gather large amounts of Altrium. The resources gained from grind quests can be used in the event shop to buy enhancement ingredients. Altrium is used to track and reward your progress.
This event is a fairly challenging grind, you need mixed parties to face most of the quests, but the only servants which grant Altrium bonuses are sabers and Mysterious Heroine X. To collect enough Altrium you will need to grind a lot. Not only that, but the fights are long. The “bosses” have hundreds of thousands of points of life, so you need to either use attack bonus CEs and sacrifice event item drops, or simply work harder and longer. At least you can easily tell who drops Altrium as opposed to items.
The story line itself is amusing at points, but I found to be largely underwhelming compared to many others. It seems like they simply wanted to capitalize on the Star Wars franchise since they were cranking out new movies. On the plus side, the story missions are easy and accessible to new players, and the teasers for future events were a nice treat.
In addition to the weak story, this event had other major flaws. First off, it’s a grind heavy quest which started on a Friday. A lot of people have better things to do on a Friday night / weekend than grind an event. The timing meant you had to go through the slower quest unlocking process when you were most likely to be busy. It’s definitely best to start these events in the middle of the week.
While that can be forgiven, the biggest flaw cannot. The grind isn’t fun. As I mentioned, you face enemies with obscenely high HP and have to choose between attack bonus and drop bonus CEs. You either need to play more quests or slog it out through long battles.To me, the grind was so painful, that clearing the event shop / prizes wasn’t worth the effort even when I had it down to a pattern. I still collected what I needed, but it definitely left me tired of the game.
The icing on the cake is that Altria Lily is a fairly useless Saber. I received her when I was a new player, and leveled her up, but that was only because I had no one better. As soon as I received another 4 star saber I switched her out. She doesn’t do enough damage to earn her keep. As she says herself, she’s a useless saber in the ever expanding collection of Sabers. Good for starting, usable for farming, not good for much else.
I found this event to be a disappointment. I’m glad to finally maxed Altria Lily’s noble phantasm, and got some needed leveling ingredients, but I will be very glad when this event ends.
How did you fare? What are your thoughts on the event? Share them in the comments below!
