Pride of the Beastwoman is a farm event where signature copies are acquired from direct event map drops for players to cost reduce and skill upgrade. Notably this is supposedly the first post-awakening farm event and thus the inclusion of a God tier map is expected. I will cover the nature of this map later in the preview.

The Unit: Beastwoman Ada

Ada is a Rogue, and a pretty unique Rogue in that she does not have an assassination skill until her skill awakening kit is unlocked. When comparing Ada with Cypria it won’t take long to realize that unlike assassination rogues Ada is a tank rogue; her kit is designed such that she has higher HP with affection, giving her the necessary defensive ceiling when paired with a healer to last longer in dealing with rushes. Ada’s skill gives her overall stat boost for a duration of time that scales with her skill level unlike Assassination that usually has a fixed active period. This means that the playstyle with Ada is different from Cypria; Cypria aims to burst and end a fight as soon as possible while Ada is meant to hold up a unit while still dealing decent damage over time. Just like many farm event units Ada’s skill has a lot of scaling variables so her skill directly determines her overall usefulness. Also because of Rogue’s generally low UP cost Ada comes with 14 initial UP which is ridiculously high for the class and her calibre; she is also more relevant to CR than many other units.

Map Preview:

The event comes with 5+1 maps, with 5 actual signature unit related and 1 God tier map that comes with a completion bonus. You are fighting a beast themed event, so expect tons of wolves spawning throughout the maps as well as their signatures; werewolves, baphomets, gargoyles and a couple of humanoid units that resemble drops on the map.

The challenge for this event is UP, primarily because of how fast-paced the maps run due to the wolves. In many cases you will have to prepare blockers to hold up the wolves quick enough or risk leaking monsters. Naturally witches become a key unit in this event with their slows, while low cost multiblockers like Samurai can actually be relevant here as well since wolves generally don’t do too high damage and are low in defense allowing for Samurais to deal with them pretty easily. Heavy Infantries are needed to deal with Baphomets as well as long term rush blocks, while Bandits serve the usual burst role. Because of the existence of Gargoyles apart from witches to deal with the high defense red gargoyles you will also need a couple of archers for the normal ones as well as overall DPS contribution across the map.

In terms of difficulty, the 5 maps are relatively normal in difficulty so long you have a couple of CCs and are smart with your deployment. The same cannot be said about the God tier map however; the map has a couple of high defense werewolves as well as frequent wolf rushes that can easily overwhelm your blocking units early. And if that is not enough, there will be 3 golden wolf spawns that packs a punch on damage and will easily kill your tanks if not taken out fast enough towards the end of the map, and ironically the important completion bonus drops are mostly from these wolves. Because of this fact, players with a well trained Anya will find themselves in a particularly comfortable position since Anya naturally comes with nice defenses and blocks 2 units while dealing magic damage herself, a pretty important factor in dealing with the Golden Wolves. High AOE magic damage mages like Odette and Garania can also work wonders here, and for players who managed to get a fully skilled Solano she can be placed at a choke to deal maximum AOE damage around her thus making things way easier to handle.

Other Important Stuffs:

1)Ada, Nada
Ada is destined to be a sad tale from the get go when she was first announced. For every aspect she has advantages on the other rogues the developers somehow felt it was too much and stopped the project halfway, leaving her in a position that is neither outstanding nor unique. Cursed Blood can be such an awesome skill on a melee character and yet the cooldowns really let her down; 35-70 seconds of cooldown is horrendously high for a low cost blocker like rogues, especially when their up time are usually not high and mostly limited to early map progression. When comparing the skill with Assassination II that scales way better in terms of damage and a better overall skill reuse timer it is not hard to see why Ada is mainly used on single target miniboss blocks and rarely feature in most conventional strategies. Not to mention that Ada starts with 14C, and with the same amount of cost a Valkyrie is readily in place for deployment. Overall, with her current state she isn’t going to feature a lot in maps so think twice if you are to spend crystals on her.

Players who farm Ada usually don’t plan to use the copies to CR/SU her, rather to keep her as skill fodders for another vampire hunter that shares the same skill. It is rather sad to see a unit with potential to be one of its kind ended up in such an embarassing position.

2)Post Awakening, Free Player Sacrifices
Despite the current event being released pre-awakening free players would finally realise the consequences of not having breaks between events with slowly depleting affection items and lagging characters not being trained fully. Aigis is not very forgiving when your units are not ready for certain events; you usually end up having to spend more on crystals either on protections or powerleveling when that happens. While this issue usually don’t exist with breaks it is now since events are going to run continuously, so the usual free player approach on JP will now have to apply here as well.

This means that freemiums will have to come to terms that not all events are useful, and not all event units require farming attention. Ada in particular is an event that is skippable due to various reasons that will all contribute to low up time and benchwarming. You probably will just do every map for their SC reward, get a copy of Ada if you are a collector, then move on with daily missions to stock up supplies if you do not plan to spend SC on them later. Even the God tier map is not attractive unless the drop rate is high which usually isn’t the case, and while Rainbows are really good their accessibility is better when Grand March missions feature so there is no urgent need for them at the moment.

3)Silver Unit Drop
Silver unit drops on each map for this event is considered decent in terms of their overall use. Since CC reworks and Awakening are yet to be in place there won’t be a high demand on Pirate fodders, so the usual focus will still be on Map 2 for Witch, Map 3 for Mage and Map 5 for Soldier/Archer. If there is a particularly attractive map to farm it is Map 5, however in terms of overall drop quality these maps are skippable considering their drop rate and other priorities.

Conclusion:
Ada is not going to be mainstream, nor going to be anywhere close to gamechanging. There are multiple unit choices to replace her for various purposes and will do better than her so her overall usefulness in upgrading your current team composition is very minimal. From a freemium perspective this event overall can be considered an SC collecting event where you collect the map SC rewards then move on. In terms of map difficulty, be smart on deployments and most players will be able to pull through unscathed with the exclusion of God tier map of course.

Imprisoned Magic Swordswoman is a farm event where players attempt to acquire copies of the signature unit directly as map drops to cost reduce and skill upgrade. Farm events are generally luck dependent on both drop rate and player’s success in unit combination to reduce the number of unit copies needed to farm.

The Unit: Magic Swordswoman Charlotte

Charlotte is a unit of the Magic Swordsman class, a melee unit that does ranged physical damage that can change to magic damage on skill activation. Magic Swordsman also comes with base magic resistances to give them some sort of magic damage reduction against enemy spellcasters. This means that Charlotte is considered a ranged melee unit like Ninjas, and will see uses in various maps that are scarce in ranged slots. She is a versatile unit where due to her hybrid damage and ranged attacks she can gain advantage over several base classes in different situations like magic damage and resistance that Ninjas don’t have and ranged attacks that Valkyries and Princesses don’t have. To balance the strengths of Magic Swordsman a weaker defensive mechanism against physical damage is given, so they generally have lower defense stats to deal with high hitting physical attack enemies which is a common damage source in this game. Despite this Magic Swordsman don’t come with multiblock capabilities so their defensive frailties are manageable, and Charlotte of all the Magic Swordsman currently available in the game has the highest defense stat, further increased by her affection bonus.

Map Preview:

Not many new faces will be seen in the 5 maps that will be your source of Charlotte copies. Notably Charlotte herself will feature, with a Lich king that hits pretty hard at the last map. Otherwise, it is mostly heavy infantry, soldiers, magic damage units like witches and mages, various undead skeletons.

The difficulty of the event is considerably easier in a sense that most players, new and old should be able to reach map 3 without too much of a problem. Charlotte herself isn’t too hard to handle, although she can be somewhat annoying on your first attempt if you do not know where she will appear beforehand. She does ranged damage, and so has to be treated as a walking ranged unit in terms of unit placement to protect your ranged units particularly healers. The biggest challenge in this event is the handling of the Lich king, who does quite some magic damage and will require some serious healer attention as well as magic resisting blockers to handle.

Team Preparation:

You want 2-3 healers for this event, 3 in particular for the last map for most free players. Magic resisting blockers are widely preferred so Princess/Valkyries are favoured to deal with the various magic damage source. Skeleton packs usually come in pockets so mages can be pretty handy here to soften them up, or simply run the usual archer setup. Having a couple of witches for slow as well as single target magic damage against the heavy infantry also works. The remaining slots will be filed with general use units such as soldiers and heavy infantry. If you find yourself lacking in magic resist blockers Bandits can be an alternative replacement running swap strategies as these magic damage enemies excluding the Lich is not very well equipped defensively and can be blown up rather easily by Bandits’ high attack.

For cash players Olivie does exceptionally well in this event, given their high magic resist and the fact that the Lich has high defensive stat yet pretty mediocre magic resist giving her a big advantage. Because most monster exit points are close to ranged slots vampire hunters can also be effective here when placed at these areas to immediately kill enemies once they appear.

Other Important Stuff:

1) The Story of Charlotte and Magic Swordsman
As a freemium player Charlotte, or Magic Swordsman class in general is highly dependent on their skill levels to be extremely effective and relevant, because it is the ranged magic damage from a melee spot that is their class’ strong point. Considering that Charlotte is a 10-skill character hitting level 10 without using Sacred Crystals is almost impossible for an average luck person. This means that serious thought has to be made to decide if she is worth the money or not.

From a personal perspective I don’t think Charlotte is exceptional, despite Magic Swordsman’s general use in conventional strategies being seen as acceptable. Magic Swordsman aren’t made to tank or block so their defensive issues are usually not a big factor to consider when they are being used, rather their strong ranged attacks from a melee position. Defensive stats like HP is much preferred for this class since they are given a degree of magic resist to begin with so having higher HP ceiling would mean that they are better equipped in that department, more so since currently most enemy magic users are ranged to begin with. Looking into the attack department Charlotte is probably the weakest among the Platinum Magic Swordsman group at the moment due to her lower DPS overall.

Long story short I don’t think that established players should be spending SC on this unit, especially considering a better Magic Swordsman is under way as a trial event unit. Players who already have Sybilla will generally skip this unit class as well since post awakening Sybilla would be a better choice to most Magic Swordsman anyway. If you are going to farm this event unit though Charlotte is more relevant with higher skill level so realistically you will want her skill to be around level 8 or so.

2) Farm Targets
Even as a free player you cannot possibly not farm this event due to the major relevance of silver unit drops that is important for future Awakening content. Map 4 in particular is extremely important with Calioppe and the new female Silver Mage (Palace?) as well, being the higher DPS dealer compared to Valerie. Try to stock up these units as many as possible as they are pretty much used in all ranged magic DPS unit CC and awakening. Map 5 drops Christopher the male healer, so for players who still don’t have one this is a good map to get him since Palace also drops here. In terms of overall drops Map 4 is still the go-to farm map for this event; there literally is no bad drop for this map since they also drop Demon Crystals.

Conclusion:

This is a pretty straightforward event for most players, considering that everyone just survived Solano’s difficulty and this event pales in terms of difficulty to the Summoner event. Charlotte however is probably not good enough to justify a SC farming spree so freemium players will have to measure their SC stockpile carefully. At this point of time when Awakening is just around the corner it is probably better to start using those SCs to powerlevel your fodders and farming Demon Crystals to speed up the awakening process since the road of Awakening is long and resource consuming.

The Summon Beast in the Earth is a Trial event where players attempt to complete each mission difficulty to accumulate stars to determine the strength of the signature unit as the event concludes. Due to this reason trial event maps are usually harder to clear compared to other events, and this one is no exception. In fact, this could be one of the toughest trial event at the current stage of the game, although getting a full CR/SU unit will not require some of the maps to be cleared fully.

The Unit: Summoner Solano

Solano is a summoner, and the only free summoner available to date. The summoner is a unit class where they only attack on skill activation much like angels, but occupy ranged slots, have a wider range coverage and deals AOE magic damage. This means that summoners are heavily reliant to skill activation timings, and is one of the units that can strongly benefit from skill timer buffs. Solano’s damage duration also scales across skill with a steady increase of skill active duration and skill cooldown reduction at each level increase. This means that Solano benefits from DPS increase strongly via skill increase, and is considered a unit that is only relevant at high skill cap.

Map Preview

I find myself shaking writing this part of the preview. While Summon Beast in the Earth runs 12 maps in total, Solano requires 32 stars to be fully CR/SUed. Do not be deceived by the fact that there are 36 stars available however; the last 3 X tier maps of this event is extremely difficult to 3 star. The general strategy for most players especially free players is to 3 star 9 maps giving 27 stars, then attempt to clear the remaining 3 maps with a 2-2-1 star accumulation. This is one of the events that even free players are encouraged to purchase protections assuming they are looking forward to max out Solano, which isn’t necessarily a good unit of which I will discuss later.

As for the enemies, lo and behold, assorted goblins, heavy armors, demons or Onis, dark elves, skeletons, wolves etc. Just about everything you have seen so far in the game will be showing up except vampires and zombies. The map is particularly hard due to the number of demons involved in this event, where multiple Black ones will show up as well as a huge number of heavy armors. This is further complicated by the lacking of slots throughout the map; most of the slot locations are distanced to each other, extremely taxing the abilities of your units and their range, of which the latter is very critical in securing a number of key damage points in the maps.

There really isn’t a list of units you need to prepare; you almost certainly have to bring in everything you have, and even that might not be enough. Players without high intensity healers that are Platinum and above might find this event extremely difficult and will probably have to resort to healing protection to compensate for it. The usage of Black Karma in this event will be extensive due to the number of heavy armors and demons requiring off-HP tanks. Players with first pick Sybilla/Nanaly will also find those extremely crucial in the last couple of maps. Ninjas will also come by handy due to the lacking of ranged slots providing ranged damage from a melee position.

At this point I probably will just have to go ahead and say brace yourself. It is highly not possible to fully 36 star this event without the usage of Black units, and even with a team of Black units will not necessarily guarantee a full clear. The lack of range slots in this event primarily compounded the issue of balancing between healing and damage, and without this being resolved most players will find these maps extremely tough to crack.

Other Important Stuff:

1) Summoners’ Woes
Summoners are generally seen as a weaker magic damage unit due to their dormant periods and not being able to deal damage continuously like mages. While their AOE damage is pretty impressive in terms of radius and overall output, they serve more towards being a burst mage rather than a sustained DPS mage, which means that for summoners to be effective they have to be used in situations where there is an overwhelming rush that comes in pockets of different period of time, or positioned at places where multiple lanes will take their AOE damage at one point like a center point with 2 lanes at both side of the point. Summoners also have a shorter range than CC mages after CC albeit having way better UP cost, although because of their AOE radius their overall DPS are seen as higher than mages when there is a big pack of enemies involved. Conventionally however their usage is pretty limited, simply because mages can perform at a much more reliable state than they are in most situations.

Summoners also have the extreme tendency to rely on their skill to be effective. The difference of a level 1 summoner and a level 5 summoner skill is extremely huge due to the shortening of reuse cooldown and skill effect duration. This effectively reduces their dormant period on the map, giving them more time to deal damage and less time to recharge. Subsequently buff units like Len who reduces reuse cooldown timer also further reduces this unit’s dormant period to better their DPS output on the map.

The one big issue with summoners is that their AOE damage is centralized around them and not target based like Mages; their AOE radius is stationary from their position and not spread out with projectile on hit locations. In other words for players to fully utilize summoner’s AOE radius they have to be positioned at positions that cover main lanes enemies use, or else their AOE radius will be inefficient. The lacking of flexibility in their AOE damage radius also cuts down their strategical use as not all maps present such scenarios for summoners to shine. This perhaps is the biggest reason why summoners are rarely seen in conventional map clears and mostly used in Great March missions where the density of monsters are high and last long enough for summoners to be efficient.

2)Farm Drops
With the way how DMM is rushing things at the moment it is safe to assume that the dormant period between events are now either on hold or removed. This means that any trial event should be treated as a dormant period for players to farm experience fodders and dailies once the stars are accumulated. Apart from the few maps that drop silver units in this event the other notable farm map is map 3/4 with spirit drops. Considering the stamina cost this is a slightly better map to farm than Tuesday Dailies although the difficulty is also higher. The drop rate of other items are respectively poorer than their daily counterpart and so would not be recommended to farm.

Conclusion:

This is a pretty short preview, because despite it being a long time since the conclusion of the last trial event this trial is potentially the hardest event to date on Nutaku Aigis, and I would have to be a big liar to say this event won’t break a lot of hearts for those who want to max out Solano. I generally don’t find any expectation higher than not being able to 3 star everything on this one, and this I will concede early that showing free player guides to get 36 stars in this event is almost impossible to do. Nevertheless, it is important to try to score a couple of important star tier rewards; for example the 2 rainbows awarded at 8/12 stars respectively are solid rewards, and you probably will get Calioppe at 15 star, another critical unit fodder. For new players these are probably the most realistic targets for now; for old players going for 32 is the ultimate challenge if you are not a heavy casher, while 36 is mainly for players with multiple black units at their disposal to score. Either ways, the protections are extremely crucial for many players out there since the new protections generally give better output now, so strongly consider using those despite you being a free player if you are confident that these protections will bring you 32 stars. Remember that you most likely will only ship 9 crystals out of this event so spend them wisely.