#these banners were an Experience [tm] y'all

[murasaki-murasame]

I wasn’t exactly planning on doing any real summoning on the dragon banner or the gala remix since I still want to be able to spark on the next Halloween banner at the end of the month [if we get one], but I’m an extremely dumb idiot with no impulse control so that didn’t exactly go as planned, lol.

I’m pretty sure I already talked about my Gala Zena banner summon session before, but I can’t remember if I said how the Ilia banner went after that, so just to put it simply I only did my free summons on it and I got absolutely nothing of note, lol. I don’t think I even got any platinum prizes. The most noteworthy thing I got was a dupe Laranoa, I think.

Then we got to the dragon banner, which is where my hoarding plans started to really go south, lol. Dragon banners are usually easy skips for me, but GC was on rate-up and I wanted them so much I was genuinely contemplating dream summoning them [but I still don’t want to use any dream summons on dragons], so I decided to see how my free summons went, but I pretty quickly became resigned to the possibility that I’d end up chasing GC.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened, since my free summons didn’t get me GC, but I did get three whole Ariel dupes, which was mostly just three separate emotional rollercoasters of agony for me, lol. It’s not like I didn’t want Ariel dupes, since before this I only had one 0UB copy of her, but still. The first dupe I got came from my first daily tenfold, and then the second one gave me two Ariel dupes almost back to back, so that was just agonizing in a lot of ways. So yeah I ended up using tickets and wyrmites to chase for GC, and I ended up having to spend 60 extra summons to get them, so that was extremely painful, but I at least got them in the end. Specifically I got two copies of GC and a fourth Ariel dupe all on the final tenfold I did.

So I ended up with a MUB Ariel just from dupes, and a 1UB GC who I just decided to use stones on to get MUB. Which I don’t really regret, since I still have like 10 sunlight stones left after this anyway. Funnily enough I didn’t get any copies of Summer Sakuya, but I’d say that’s a good thing since I already had her MUB from all the copies I got of her when she came out, and she’s not the sort of dragon I want to have multiple copies of. So at least this banner ended up working out surprisingly well for me in spite of me spending a lot more resources on it than I probably should have.

I was actually planning to do the platinum summons to try and get GC instead of dipping into my vouchers and wyrmite, and I even got some diamantium to prepare for that, but then I found out that the platinum summon wasn’t actually for the three focus dragons on that banner, and was literally just ‘you get one 5-star dragon at random in each platinum summon’, so I just decided to pass on that entirely and use my regular summons instead.

I also got a dupe Xuan Zang at some point but I can’t remember if that was in the dragon banner or the gala remix.

And on the note of the gala remix, oh boy this whole pair of banners was just a one-two punch of me going through the exact same process of going “I’m gonna be smart about this and only spend my free tenfolds and save all my resources for the end of the month :)” and then using my resources anyway because I’m a dumb idiot baby. But like with how GC was the only dragon that was able to genuinely tempt me to spend resources on a dragon banner, I ended up being unable to resist the temptation of this gala remix because it had Gala Alex on it, who was the only gala unit in the whole game that I didn’t have at that point, and I was specifically hoping to be able to get her at some point. She was one of my main priority targets along with Halloween and New Years, so I honestly don’t even regret it that much, but it kinda sucked because I didn’t care about the Akasha and Melsa alts at all, and i already had a MUB Cat Sith, so Alex was literally the only unit on the banner I wanted, and I was hoping she’d be on a more exciting banner than this, lol.

Anyway, I still did all my free tenfolds first, and let’s just say that the very first one gave me a dupe Albert, which felt like divine punishment for my hubris with the dragon banner. I figured something like that was gonna come around to screw me over for spending on that banner, but I wasn’t expecting something so immediate and so specifically designed to mess with me.

I also got a Liger dupe from that summon as well, which was enough for me to get him MUB. Beforehand I wouldn’t have really cared since he’s not a very good dragon for the most part, but he’s apparently one of the best dragons for Gala Zena, so that’s cool.

I don’t think I got anything noteworthy from my other free tenfolds aside from a Siren dupe, which I’m just keeping in my inventory as a random copy now since I already had her MUB before this.

So then I was stuck with the lingering question of if I should go out of my way to chase Gala Alex, and if it was even worth it. I did some full on mental calculations about what my current stash was like, and how many more summons I expected to be able to get between now and the end of this month, to see how far I was wiling to go before I ended up with too few summons to be able to spark by the end of the month. I don’t remember exactly how many summons I had in my stash at that point, but I guess I figured I was willing to take the risk, since I decided to do an extra 20 summons on the banner, which got me . . . Catherine, lol. Because this banner really decided to pull the old ‘you think it’s one of the focus characters but it’s actually some random character of the same weapon type’ switcheroo two different times. I didn’t have Catherine, though, so at least she wasn’t a useless dupe like Albert. I’m probably not gonna use her in the long run, but I’m putting her in my water team for the moment along with Eugene.

After that, I decided to just cut my losses and call it quits. But as the rest of the day went on I kept thinking back to the question of how many summons i’d be able to have by the end of the month, and how many I could afford to spend on this banner while still being able to spark. Which included me taking into account how paid diamantium pulls give double wyrmsigils, because I’m not above taking advantage of that at this point if I need to, lol. So anyway I ended up opening the game again to do another summon session, at least until I got my next pity break.

And after an additional 20 summons, I actually somehow managed to get Gala Alex, lol. It honestly kinda doesn’t feel real yet, but I actually got her. The emotional rollercoaster of seeing that rainbow sword after having been spooked by Albert at the start of this banner was on a whole other level to just about anything I’ve experienced with summoning in this game, but at least it all worked out in the end.

Now I have every single gala unit in the game, including a MUB copy of every gala dragon, so that’s neat. Honestly half of the reason why I wanted Gala Alex was just to complete my collection of gala units. I’m not sure how much I’ll even use her at this point. But I’m still happy I got her after all this. I remember spending like 300 summons on her debut banner without getting her, so it’s a relief to finally get her. Same with how I recently got Gala Elly after also unsuccessfully spending like 300 summons on her debut banner.

I guess now I have to actually grind out a 6-star shadow sword for her, since I didn’t have one before this [since I don’t really use shadow swords often], and I also have to finally get around to figuring out how the fuck her kit works, lol. At least it gives me a reason to grind Kai Yan again, right in time for co-op double drops.

I’m honestly not even sure if I’m gonna be able to spark by the end of the month at this point, at least after seeing how heavily they nerfed the wyrmite and ticket rewards for the Accursed Archive rerun. At the end of the last banner I had like 200 summons left over, and I have a little over 2.4k diamantium, so even taking into account the double wyrmsigils for diamantium summons thing, it might be very tight. Especially since I’m planning to get the dream summon at the end of the month as well. Though I do have like a million adventurer stories and stuff to read, since I’ve only read like three or four in the past, like, six months, so if I really need to I could probably just go through a lot of that, but we’ll see how it goes.

Technically I don’t even know if I’ll be interested in sparking on whatever banner we’ll get at the end of the month. I’m expecting it to be another Halloween banner, maybe bundled with a new gala dragon, which would all be pretty tempting. But we don’t really have any idea what to expect from it, so for all I know I might not even be interested in summoning on it, which would be a bit anti-climactic at this point. But if we they give us a new gala dragon, I want to get at least one copy of them. And new Halloween units have a good chance to be really tempting, at least since they’re limited. I know the Akasha and Melsa alts were also limited Halloween alts, but I just didn’t care that much for them. Which might end up happening if we get another Halloween banner, but I hope not.

Personally my main hope at this point is that we actually get Halloween Euden as a gacha alt and not just a story costume. I know he’s gotten other event-only story costumes before, but I think this one’s different since it’s a lot more unique and detailed than the other ones, and this is also the first time we’ve ever seen it. It’s also kinda weird that it doesn’t even show up in the event’s story itself, which makes me also wonder if it might be more of a tease for a follow-up Halloween event. If he does end up getting released as a unit, I’m guessing he’ll be a shadow wand or healer going by how his design looks, which would be kinda unfortunate since those are some really competitive areas, but I’d still want to get him just because I love his design, lol.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if we get some combination of Shion, Delphi, and Shishimai alts, to go with their new wyrmprint art. I know we’ve gotten all sorts of seasonal alt designs that only show up in wyrmprints, but we did recently get Summer Amane who was first teased via a log-in bonus, so who knows. It’d at least be nice to get any sort of playable version of Shion, but I also really like how Shishimai looks in his Halloween costume.

Maybe we’ll finally get playable versions of mummy Luca or werewolf Ranzal, but I’m not gonna hold my breath.

That’s basically all we have to even vaguely go off of, but I also like the idea that maybe the new Halloween event will be a third part to the Accursed Archives event series, which might mean we’ll get Halloween Heinwald, or a story-based alt for him like with Xuan Zang.

Also, while I remember, my current dream summon candidate is Mitsuba [mainly because there’s barely anyone left in the permanent pool who interests me that much, lol], but I’m holding out until the free tenfolds end just in case I get her from one of them. If I do, my backup option would probably be Yurius. Like I said before, GC was an option, but now that I have them they’re not an issue anymore.

Anyway these two banners feel like they dragged me through all seven layers of Hell, and now i think I’ve made a contract to sell my soul to Big Chungus.