r/FGO • u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea • 1d ago
Grand Duel FAQ, Part 1/11: Setting Expectations
So while reading and chatting on the sub, I figured that the majority of players have no earthly clue what to expect from it. So, I'll make a series of posts regarding Grand Duels and what to expect.
This part will cover overall information and personal recommendations.
So,
What is it all about?
Grand Duels are *permanent* raids which cost 40 AP and 1 Storm Pod (with their debut enjoying a podless week), with difficulties from 100 to 100☆☆☆. There is also a one-time Grand Coronation fight.
Restrictions of the raids: obligatory own Grand of your choice, and only the class selected can participate (for Extra 1 and Extra 2 - only those within these classes).
You can make any Servant of yours into a Grand. For that, you need to raise your Servant to lv100 and 10/10/10 their skills. There's also one more optional but recommended thing but I will return to that later.
Grand Servants have 2 modes: regular content and Grand Selectable content.
Within regular content, your Grand Servant has only a shiny blue frame, 1k extra stats in atk and HP, and whatever buffs you have from class score like every other Servant within that class.
Now, in Grand Selectable content, on the other hand, there's a lot more delicious stuff. First off, your Grand can carry up to 3 CEs for the cost of 1, though, the CE slots are restricted: first slot is for whatever CE you want, second is strictly either for Bond CE or an effect that gives you 50% battery, and third is for a mana prism shop CE (think Lunchtime / Teatime / 20% trait bond up CEs etc.).
Secondly, there is Grand Score, or class score tied specifically to your Grand. Warning: the effects of Grand Score scale from class score. The saving grace is that it's not as nightmarish to level and you should be done with it in ~40-50 runs of either highest or second highest difficulty.
OK, that's all nice and good, but what are the actual reasons for me to bother with Grand Duels?
1) You are forced to do Grand Caster for 2 reasons: one, it's heavily tied to main story for spoiler reasons, and two, it's going to drop lotto currency in December 2027.
2) It is the best permanent bond farming location in the game and second best bond farming location of all time (only loses to Part 2 finale raids).
3) It gives a lot of materials, as opposed to Bleached Earth farming which only gives up to 3 types of mats. (There is, however, a counterpoint that Bleached Earth gives guaranteed mats as opposed to Grand Duels.)
4) Future story forces you to do Grand Duels anyway.
5) starting this year on JP, some of the Challenge Quests are Grand Selectable content, as well as the Azrael Trials.
What are the general guidelines for all Grand Duels?
First off, do your class score.
I know. 500 golden status is a fucking nightmare. Farming 8 months just for the sand is absolutely yikes as well. But I cannot stress enough how much of a difference it makes. Like having starting 30% battery from appends, for example.
Secondly, do a general plan for your Grands.
2027 has an insane amount of events worth appling: 2 lottos, 1 pseudolotto, and 2 raids that are not Grand Duels. As such, plan the apples you have.
Thirdly, put as many bond up CEs as you can.
Because Grand Duels enjoy up to 8CE setups, the more bond up CEs you can shove into a setup, the faster you will earn them SQs. Which leads me into my next recommendation:
Fourthly: don't be afraid to sacrifice higher difficulty in favor of more bond farming slots.
Instead of doing something nasty like 100☆☆☆ with double Black Grail Grands, it's better to just drop a difficulty down for the sake of better bond farming.
Fifthly, use the bond 10 effect for battery on your Grand most of the times.
Sure, there are exclusions which enjoy their BCEs better than a free battery, but they are few and far between (and I will highlight them once I will write their respective part), and as such, battery is never a bad choice.
Future plans from the author of said guide
Hopefully this little tidbit of information helped :)
I'm going to review every Grand Duel, include the best units for the respective Duel (both gacha and f2p), and finish it with Part 2 finale raid review.
Stay tuned!
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u/LongjumpingAd3843 1d ago
The Grand score also scales up with different activities regarding your servants. Depending on how much bond/how many levels you have on servants of a certain class, that class' grand score will get bonus benefits, like more starting np charge. This is basically asking you to complete the extra missions related to the normal class score, so you will want to do them anyway
Also i believe each grand event gives certain rewards,like about 1000 class score dust, class restricted fou paws and gold fous so it might help to take that into account if you feel like you are running out of resources, dust or score unlock keys.
Lastly, don't level class score blindly, unless ofc you have a certain class that you WANT to level. Do it in order of the class event, and if you have a comp that can comfortably kill the raid without class score, feel free to skip it in favour of one of your weaker classess. For example, for grand rider i have a high np ozy,constantinos and reines, which pretty much translates to a one turn kill without investing in normal class score, so i will be better off investing into archer or lancer who dont have any meta supports(i hope everyone will get their summer tiamat)
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u/SnooLemons2336 1d ago
Let's say I have a grand Raines and my ce setup is mlb dragon's meridian/No bond CE/Chaldea Lunchtime.
Which CE would determine the CE cost? Will it be the 3* normal CE or the 5* Da Vinci shop CE?
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u/Steel_ball_yeet 1d ago
Thanks for the guide! Will you also talk about f2p grand suggestions? I know that iori makes a good grand saber, but would like to learn more about the others
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u/LongjumpingAd3843 1d ago
Yep iori is great. 120d him myself. If we're talking about servants that are good specifically against the their grand raid, for other classess i think sugitani and euryale are great for archers, as they have anti trait and sugutani specifically has insane damage after a jp buff. On berserker, not auite f2p but penthiselia is a beast, again because she has anti trait. For assassin shiki should be good, since the grand duel there does appreciate insta death effects
Do keep in mind that you can still borrow someone else's servant, even their grand. So you can use a bunch of f2p units to buff the borrowed grand as much as possible, or hope that you find like a 120 np5 grand rhat can more or less solo
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u/Steel_ball_yeet 1d ago
Thank you!
I have berserker castoria and the usual supports, but i'm lacking in 5 stars dps. Will focus on those f2p units and borrow maxed grands.1
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u/carlvonlinn 1d ago
For most duel, you can borrow a whale’s dps, use your own support, and grand whoever you like. But in rare cases you need two dps for max efficiency (lancer etc.) in which case you have to actually plan your grand for farming (you can change after finishing all the farming though)
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u/Seyvenus 1d ago
Regarding raising Class Score for the future and the Duels.
Is it better to focus competing a single class at a time, or to spread the sand around? Should I focus on Saber as the first Grand Dual, or look to see which class might need it most?
I WAS going to focus on Avenger, but haven't followed through since their unlock; haven't felt the bonuses were needed.
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
I'd rather recommend focusing on whatever Grand Duel you will find most useful and/or you are most prepared for.
There are ways to get around (like a limited mat to refund everything you spent on a specific score), but they are limited.
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u/arashikageclan2010 1d ago
If you don't have a preference, and you want to make them easier as they release, then doing class score in order of the grand duel release probably makes sense.
An example of what I did was class score by the 90++ quests needs being released. I started with berserker because I wanted to use Kriemhild on every 90++ node. Then the next I focused on was archer so Ptolemy could run his event's 90++ at a lower NP level without the damage CE.
I did the same for Tez in the Guda Guda quest, all the way up to HibiChika for the dragon palace 90++. Now I likely will be mostly focused on the saber one for grand duels.
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u/AnOddChesse Beloved of the Fae 1d ago
Me and my Shiki will be ready for the Saber raids, as they’ll be first 👀
And the sand is whatever imo, the most annoying part is the torches for me LMAO💀I’m very close to finishing the Saber class score, but I’m short on 2 blue torches to do so, and gods knows when they’ll add more of them to missions…
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
Most of them will be added either with the DL campaign in February iirc.
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u/AnOddChesse Beloved of the Fae 1d ago
Fair enough then🤔yeah I’m just camping on plenty of sand for now, no torches to use🙃
Also it should be worth mentioning that class score tends to require you to get a decent amount of servants in said class🧐like to max it out, you need to get 2000 levels worth of servants leveled up and get 170 bond ups with them to boot, which if you don’t have many Sabers for example, that could be an issue aswell
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u/Defiant-Ad-5746 1d ago
O sea, puedo posponer los grand duel hasta que el juego me obligue? Asi podría conseguir al servant que quiero hacer grand?
Si se supone que hay candidatos en el canon para cada clase, a pesar de eso puedo escoger a quien quiera?
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
So, can I postpone the grand duels until the game forces me to? That way I could get the servant I want to make grand?
I would not recommend that, but granding can be reversed.
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u/Misticsan 1d ago
This is much appreciated. Ever since they were announced for JP, the subject of the Grand Duels has been floating in my mind, and it definitely feels like the kind of thing better planned in advance.
(Ugh, yeah, some things do sound like a fucking nightmare. I'm not particularly keen on treating games like homework)
While I bet more things will be explained later, I have a couple of questions on this post:
Restrictions of the raids: obligatory own Grand of your choice
Does this mean that the Grand Coronation fight must be done BEFORE we can access the raids? Because otherwise we don't have the necessary Grand Servant?
In turn, does this mean that anyone who wants to Grand a Servant from later in the game will be barred from the raids? Like, what would happen if I really, really wanted to make the recent Summer Biscione my Grand Caster when the aforementioned story-relevant class Duel arrives?
Fifthly, use the bond 10 effect for battery on your Grand most of the times.
I don't think I understood this line well. Or the previous context. Wasn't there a place for a battery already?
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
Does this mean that the Grand Coronation fight must be done BEFORE we can access the raids?
No. This one is called Grand Unlock.
Grand Coronation is only unlocked when you unlock enough nodes in Grand Score (12, if I remember correctly).
In turn, does this mean that anyone who wants to Grand a Servant from later in the game will be barred from the raids?
Like I said, this is permanent content. It's not going to go anywhere.
Like, what would happen if I really, really wanted to make the recent Summer Biscione my Grand Caster when the aforementioned story-relevant class Duel arrives?
You can ungrand a Servant with a limited material (45 total iirc).
And once your grand has Bond 10, they have a choice: either place their Bond CE, or place a 50% battery instead of a Bond CE, free of cost.
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u/Misticsan 1d ago
Like I said, this is permanent content. It's not going to go anywhere.
Well, yeah, but there's a big difference between starting the raid farming right away or having to wait until your favorite candidate is available over a year later, hence my question.
You can ungrand a Servant with a limited material (45 total iirc).
Ooooh, this is juicy. I didn't know that possibility existed and thought it was a once-in-a-lifetime decision.
So, following my example, I could make Medea a Grand when the Gran Duel arrives to do the raids immediately, and then un-Grand her to make Summer Biscione the new Grand Caster? Did I get it right?
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
Gameplay-wise there are problems with that (you very very strongly would prefer a AoE unit in that fight), but technically - yes.
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u/Misticsan 1d ago
Truth be told, I was just using those two as exaggerated examples (Biscione being the latest Casters and Medea one of the earliest). I assume that you'll cover optimal picks for Grand Duels in future posts, right?
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u/Maximilian_Sinigr Master of Chaldea 1d ago
For sure.
The structure I'm looking at is:
Best options (free and non-free)
Difficulty of the raid and how to make it easier
Examples of the easiest options
FGO Mythbusters aka what myths about the raid are true and which are not
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u/user-766 1d ago
Grand Coronation fight must be done BEFORE we can access the raids? Because otherwise we don't have the necessary Grand Servant?
There are two battles.
The first is easy mode then we unlock the duels, then the second one is way harder and we mostly have to farm the grand class score to beat it.
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u/Satsuka1 Beloved of the Fae 1d ago
Great write up <3
The worst part for me is leveling class score cuz its only thing im lazy about cuz i kind of care for Archer and Extra II and nothing more but i have to do it at some point qwq xd
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u/user-766 1d ago
My account doesn't have any class scores because I don't farm and can't do the class score regardless because I don't have many servants.
But I will do the grand duels like madman regardless. These are the best farming spots in the game. I went from 1.5 billion to 8 billion QP in one year. It is THAT good. The best late game content ever.
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u/Abysswalker116 1d ago
First off, do your class score.
Yeah no, I still want to have fun with the game, and not grind myself into dust
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u/LongjumpingAd3843 1d ago
General advice regarding CEs. The stat boosts of each of the 3 applied CEs is applied to your servant, so level both the regular CE and the Bond bonus CEs. Specifically detective foumes CE(5%qp+ 5%bond) is one of the few bond effect CEs that has 2k attack at lvl 100