Just a quick check-in for now as I wind down for bed now that I have finished today’s work.

My support set up used to have more of my Valentine CEs and I imagined making it so everyone was holding the CE of the member they were strong against once I collected all of my new ones, but the shop CEs are just better and I rushed the last few I needed to fill up with boosts for everyone.

Next step should be to finish the first shop CE and get two of the next one so I can have double MLB every class CE and everyone else holding one. But first, some chocolates given and taken.

My first one was actually from Brave Liz before I even touched the shop CEs, but that’s because I wanted to double check the rumours about voices lines and having to burn and re-acquire old CEs (it’s in JP this year), so I grabbed one that I, uh.

Wouldn’t feel bad about losing.

Sorry Liz! Love you, my first Servant! But regular listeners will know Brave Liz’s outfit drives me right up the wall.

As usual her lines were cute but her outfit disturbing.

The “first” round, after the shop CEs, went to Saber Shiki. I haven’t used her as much as I’d like these days (all of my Sabers run into the problem of “orrrr I could use Mordred who is strong and a problem-solver”), but she really helped lift my spirits toward the end of February last year.

(And since her Bond 3 line talks about not sleeping and wishing she could protect me in my dreams, I privately headcanon she can keep the room clear of the people who get joked about as sneaking into the My Room all the time while I sleep.)

(A very important service.)

And, uh, well. She worked very hard.

She went pretty all out on the set up.

I also got Medb’s tonight, as I was kind of scared to consider what she might give. After her interlude, I wondered if she could have poisoned it.....

But instead we were a dry run for Cú, or so I interpreted it. Though she also properly threatened me before she asked for the location of every Cú.

Also she had weird ideas about the holiday??
Where did that even come fr — but she rallied magnificently.

Also the gift is cute and probably not poisoned.

I believe I’ve chosen well. Gosh, Queen Medb is fun.

.......Hmm. Now that I can zoom in on the picture after I’ve uploaded it...there’s pink smoke coming out of the bottle. Is it supposed to do that??

Anyway, my powers are all faded. To bed!!

Given there are two levels above this to be unlocked, it looks like I must return to having a support in the party (read: Mash).

Lowers damage a bit, but Jalter and Ibaraki are not the hardiest, even if Ibaraki is about as resilient of a Berserker you get outside of the two “these Servants will carry you through the game” of Herc and Cú.

It’s good to get the reminder sometimes that I am not so strong as to trivialize everything. I still have to, like, think or something.

I’m just short on Lancer coins, but I had enough Extra coins to watch Jalter’s famously foolish prank. (I guess I could convert the leftovers into enough for a Lancer, but I’ll save it for later.)

.........I’m concerned.

Oh no. How awkward. Like, I guess it could be that Martha saw Gudako carrying chocolate, but given the answers Gudako can pick, I think she asked Martha for chocolate.

I got a little uncomfortable partway through. Half of the answers really look like you can go into crocodile tears and it felt super awkward, but the other half of answers were repeated panicked apologies, which is more my speed.

She brought it back around to cute, though.

And then back round to funny.

(The uncomfortable coming from the way the crying options made the whole thing look like a guilt trip, but the apologies could be interpreted as OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE.)

HOLY CRAP ENKIDU I JUST GOT DESTROYED BY HOW SMOOTH THAT WAS

I saved up enough to both give and receive chocolates from Enkidu, and I decided I wanted to give first and um. I need to cap this. Gosh. My face is so red.

Okay. I really didn't expect that. I'm still feeling a little off-balance and my heart is still beating too fast, but I guess it's time for the receiving a gift.

............okay this scene is just as intense but in a very different way??

That was also...gosh, I didn't realize that Enkidu felt things quite this hard??? I wasn't completely bowled over like when it came to their return gift, but good grief, I never had anything like that happen to me last year. Good gravy.

Don’t insult this hardworking child!!

Also I’m glad Serenity’s chocolate didn’t turn out as weirdly as I thought I heard someone claim. The poison in the chocolate is from making it with her bare hands rather than “well...there’s something unspecified of Serenity in there....”

Rider Mordred’s, however, was just as much of a disaster as I was told.

A Servant after my own heart......

She puts stuff on top, but when I have ice cream, it’s always just vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, nothing else.

goes away and hides for three days from embarrassment... mo-san.

The three days of hiding from embarrassment was my favourite part.

Poor Mo-san. She should not have listened to Mata Hari.

Jekyll is giving gifts to the staff. That’s so sweet....

The staff are giving him chocolate.... He does seem like a lovely fellow when he’s not, uh.

...either I am reading too much into that offer, or “how bold!”

nods thoughtfully
googles carnot cycle on my phone under the table

(I’ve also gotten Nursery Rhyme’s and Tamamo’s chocolates in between.)

Oh no he saw me googling.

This must be a frustrating scene for anyone who knows enough about thermodynamics and isn’t allowed to say they understand. Luckily, while I’ve heard all of these terms before, I’ve completely forgotten what any of them mean, so there’s no undeserved insult to my intelligence.

The scene ends with encouragement of my potential, which is nice.

Sometimes, I get frustrated by the game’s dialogue options not letting me say what I want. At others, the game can truly know my heart.

GRANDPA IS SO PURE!!!

I might as well get this one over wi —

I have made a mistake.

kiyolancer's choco is........................ it's a lot.

I have made. A mistake.

It sure is a lot. I did smile at the “during this revival — I mean, last year” bit, though.

I have never been happier to see this man.

WAIT A SECOND okay this is now a more normal Paracelsus interaction.

I knew I was in trouble from the moment I saw the name. Saber Shiki, please keep watch over me tonight.......

Quetzalcoatl’s swung between funny and endearing rapidly, but one endearing part was, for me, a little funny:

You came on the first 10-pull on your banner, Quetz. I’m pretty sure you did most of the work.

I’ve been quietly collecting a bunch of the CEs and, uh. Did Knife Shiki bake the lines from the mystic eyes of death perception into this chocolate heart that she made out of boredom?

(Also I keep going “oh, I have an Archer chocolate lefffff — nope, I don’t, keep scrolling!”)

So upon talking to someone commenting on a couple of Servants having to fight over bones and I joked that they could just live in Fuyuki like I do, I decided on a whim to add up how many Evil Bones I have used over the lifetime of this game.

If I added this up right, that's 380 bones for ascensions and 708 bones for skills, for a total of 1088. I realized halfway through that I don't know how many I've gotten from events and login bonuses, so this is kind of useless information, but I kept going for no good reason.

that's a lot of bones

It’s a few.

Chaotic and evil like bones, so I gotta get a lot of bones.

I’ve only gotten Vlad to 8/7/4 because he needs 18 bones for level 8 and 54 bones (along with 48 void dust) for level 9.

I’ll do it one day when I can afford to use the Crystalized Lores.

...am I missing some kind of subtext? I know that people often drink wine on dates, but this is a rather extreme reaction, I feel.

You mean I could have had 100 Saint Quartz inste — I mean, thank you, Hassan, I’m very grateful for these chocolates.

And with that, I’ve finished the “receive chocolate” side. (What about that one Arch —) I’ve finished it.

I still have a number of return gifts to pick up, but I have the coins for a number of them already.

.....A sadly good description of Jack. (Also, as expected, Asterios is a GOOD BOY.)

Okay, I was told Caster Gil was smooth this event. I kind of knew going in. But implicitly implying the quality of our handmade chocolates was enough for the king of heroes and that the low quantity was complained about due to the moment stopping so soon...I wouldn’t say smooth, but that was pretty good for a Gil.

So. At the end of this event, I will have four slots left in my CE inventory. This will go up to 8 when I MLB the second shop CE.

.........I guess I better make some tough choices.

Okay, so 1) Kid Gil sure has a formal way of speaking and 2) wow my imagination sucks why did I think of Blackbeard in an all-male swimming group?????

It made it impossible to pass judgment on the idea because most of them are fine, but Blackbeard is gross.

I mean, I'm also eyerolling at the extremely generic female swim group dialogue. My imagination...sucks!!!

i do love hassan's he's such a good dad

I LOVE HASSAN SO MUCH I wondered why there was so much cute art of him when I first started but I wonder no more.

Expanding on my thoughts on how my imagination sucks, they showed how quirky the all-male group when WE HAD A FULL EVENT ON HOW MUCH TROUBLE THE SWIMSUIT WOMEN CAUSE. MY GOSH I DID EVERYTHING MORDRED ASKED ME TO DO AND MY ISLAND WAS THE MOST RIDICULOUS THING

I know what the joke is, but I don't like the joke.

IT’S RULER MARTHA’S TIME TO SHINE.

I’m messing around with teams for various Servant types (now that I have enough for all the CEs, it’s time to start gathering for the shop) and in trying out the Berserker squad for size, I realized: the boss is divine. Ruler Martha has a level 10 skill that boosts damage against, among other things, divine. One of the shop CEs give bonus damage vs divine.

Onigashima your days are numbered.

I could probably achieve a similar effect with an extra Arts card with Nobu, but I haven’t been able to use Ruler Martha as much as I’d like. I might do the Nobunaga one later, though. I crave variety over efficiency in FGO.

Ah...it does my heart good to watch Raikou DISAPPEAR FROM EXISTENCE under Martha's punches.

i mean, they did finally start making beach outfits for attractive servant boys

They did. Sorta.

Honestly, I'm probably reacting more because I was expecting to love Kid Gil's and I just didn't.

I bought the Crystalized Lore from the store. “Who should I use it on? I should probably consult my list.”

But then I realized. For the Valentine’s Crystalized Lore, there could be but one answer:

Your heart.

......but now I gotta farm Homunculus Babies again. I guess it’s time to rebuild the Lancer farming page.

Ah, drat. It was somewhere else I was thinking of that dropped Homunculus Babies. Welp. I’ll have to get back to that before summer. But it’s worth it.

slothdere: They stole it.

I looked at this part a little sceptically, but:

Oh. Well. No, that sounds accurate.

HEALING DEBUFFS ARE OPPRESSION
TUGS FEEBLY AT HANDCUFFS
hi my first attempt of the challenge quest could have gone better

I could have taken the first heal debuff, but then there was a second heal debuff. SANZANG YOU'RE NOT A SUPPORT WHY DO YOU ALSO HAVE THIS HEALING DEBUFF???

I WANNA USE TAMAMO/MASH!!!!

BRING NIGHTINGALE SHE CAN CLEANSE

That...is good advice.

I’m still going to see if I can make it work entirely with my own Servants (Mash/Ibaraki/Liz?? Mash/Ibaraki/Vlad?), but that is something I forgot about the most Berserker of supports.

I’m finally sitting down to finish collecting Valentine’s CEs and my gosh, Fergus’s fades to black...help.

And then it’s followed by David...help again.

I fell asleep before I finished, but:

This is a promising start.

From we Spartans...all three hundred get to share my chocolates, huh. I must have been baking for weeks.....

If they’re iron training weights, why are they marshmallows.....

...is Romulus’s gift ruling me in an era of peace????

Romulus’s made me smile, but also summarizing his flowery words could go “my return gift to you is look what a nice day it is outside.”

But I liked it.

What a cute touch!

Some days, I like FGO’s dialogue options a lot.

OH NO GUDAKO AND FUUMA WORKED OUT A SNAPPING OF FINGERS WAY TO CALL FOR HIM BECAUSE IT MAKES FUUMA FEEL LIKE AN ELITE NINJA WHAT A GOOD BOY.

I BURST OUT CACKLING.

That whole scene was great.

The description is quite the mental image.

i loved shakespeare's valentine

It was actually super touching...on top of being so embarrassing.

NO ONE TOLD ME FRAN WAS IN THIS

This is one of the least disturbing people to have this revelation about, but it’s still kind of concerning.

........you better not be suggesting who it sounds like you’re suggesting.

.......Please be careful, Nursery Rhyme.

Ah, so this is how the CCC event happens.

Gosh, I am absolutely excited by this idea. Though...why are we meeting in a place like this...?

And now I’ve ended where I began. With this, I can go on to receiving Mash’s chocolate again.

.......except I’m actually completely out of space in my CEs. I’m going to have to do something about it or else pulling in Shinjuku will be painful.

I must regretfully take down my CE bomb factory, and then I will need to pick and choose amongst my other CEs later.

Mash is ready for her trials.

I had to reset a few times to ensure Mash got every finishing blow, but my story-compliant team has emerged victorious.

And with that, I have given and received every single Valentine’s chocolate.

Yes. Every. Single. One.

All that remains is tidying up the last of the shop and then moving on to the quests.

Which is almost done, but the Mana Prisma are so expensive.....

Good grief and well done, Yosie!

Yeah the mana prisms took the longest for me to clear out... the exchange rate is rough.

10 000 chocolates...truly the most accurate of all experiences of simulating making everyone in Chaldea chocolates.

...Oops, I lost track and I thought the event ended 24 hours later. Oh well, one night of overflowed AP and only 700ish of the Mana Prisms ain’t the worst.

Might make me go to sleep now.

...wait, I wasn’t wrong. Huh, odd maintenance timing, but cool, I’m fine with that.

Yeah, I double-checked the timing and it ends tonight. Well, maintenance is maintenance.

Weird, but hey, now I can get more mana prisms that I probably don’t need if I keep up my usual collecting pace and no new big thing comes in.