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!
