Earlier this week Fate/Grand Order revealed the changes that would be coming with the ninth anniversary on the Japan server. Highlights included the new anniversary servant Space Ereshkigal, but even she could not overshadow the event’s low point: the new append skills. Fans in Japan and North America were both outraged, since the cost of maxing a servant to their fullest potential became a lot more expensive. The phrase NeedsNP8 went trending on X in Japan, referring to having to pull eight copies of an SSR in order to max them out. Considering FGO’s hard pity is three hundred thirty pulls, it’s an ask with an expensive price tag attached. However, Lasengle heard the pleas of the community and released a statement from Yoshiki Kano, the development director of FGO Part 2, the current story arc.
In his letter, Kano expressed his apologies on behalf of the staff and himself to the fans, and listed out compromises in order to help ease the blow of this change. First he focused specifically on the new appends.
Brief recap, appends are passive skills unlocked with 120 servant coins, a currency gained by pulling extra copies of a servant or leveling bond points. When they were first added to the game, there were three bond skills, and they tend to be universal across characters, with one being a specific class advantage that switches for each character. The ninth anniversary added two new appends that are extremely strong. However, the cost of them, and the amount of servant coins awarded from pulling or bond leveling a character did not go up. Outrage sparked as the changes felt like a cash grab, or a way to make new characters that required these new skills to function at max capacity.
In responding to these concerns, the initial fix that Kano talked about implementing was to allow players to change which append skills they have unlocked. For example, a character has their third append unlocked but wants to unlock their fifth one, they can switch them, relocking the third append and unlocking the fifth, leveling it up to whatever level the third was at. This change doesn’t affect completionists, but it does give players who weren’t looking to invest more in a character, reinvest what they’ve already earned. Some have critiqued this fix as not actually addressing all the concerns, and hoping that more changes will be made in the future. Whether that happens remains to be seen.
The second part of the changes refer to the other things servant coins are used for. Servant coins help level characters up between the levels of 100 and 120, the maximum in the game. They are also used in grail casting, which are used to unlock the different max level limiters on the way to 120. The fixes being added according to Kano deal with grail casting.
All grails already created will be refunded, and holy grails will be distributed based on the maximum amount that could have been created between when grail crafting was added to the game till now. It seems a very generous fix, designed to benefit all players, not just those who have used the grail casting system many times.
While the swift announcement of these fixes was appreciated, Kano’s letter specifically asks players to remain patient as these changes might not be available for several months. FGO players good luck on your anniversary pulls if you’re doing them, or if you’re saving for Summer 9, stay strong.