Appendix – Demonic Capital Rashomon Raid

(Note: The advice here mostly pertained to the original run, where death also resulted in no loot and no progress on the Damage ladder - most of the advice may still be useful however!)

The Rashomon raid event is the first raid event to be introduced on the NA server. It pulls no punches and throws newcomers into hot water straight away. Unlike many other challenge quests or hard bosses, the Ibaraki fight comes with a time limit. The moment the final boss wave starts, there is a 15 turn countdown to deal damage to the boss. Bring too much defense and the enemy may not be bullied enough to be defeated or worth your invested BP. Bring too little defense and the enemy may be victorious well before 15 turns have passed.

For raid events in particular, a team needs to be both consistent and reliable. A typical raid event often asks the player to clear some of the most difficult fights multiple times. Therefore, the success rate of a team needs to be as close to 100% as possible, with a strategy that can account for even the worst of circumstances and does not resort to command seals. Only players that possess EX-rank luck or wallets (powerful Servants with high leveled skills) can attempt to simply forego creating a strategy and go in guns blazing. Under most circumstances, a team must have some way to sustain itself for long enough to take out the enemy boss.

Since the Rashomon event will feature Ibaraki changing the class of her mobs every time the community clears a full raid health bar, being able to create teams on the fly is extremely valuable. Ultimately, new classes do tend to require a slightly different approach. As each player tends to have access to a slightly different roster, what options are available to the player will differ from person to person. However, coming up with a personalized solution to the encounter is highly satisfying.

Let’s go over each topic we want to consider in turn and then answer them for the upcoming Ibaraki-Douji event. Since it requires you to go and bully the same Berserker time and again, we can go into full detail. Remember that for the Ibaraki-Douji event, the 15 turns count limitation is our biggest worry. If you lack the damage needed to win, at the very least ensure that the team survives for 15 turns to collect all the event drops. (Note: The rerun still gives you loot if you lose.)

The Ibaraki raid is structured around 7 days of fighting. After depleting Ibaraki’s raid health bar, Ibaraki will briefly retreat and return with a different class of minions. Each Ibaraki fight consists of two waves. The first wave consists of Drunken Citizens of the class that is active on that particular day. The second wave consists of a Berserker Ibaraki and two Oni Arm minions. Defeating the arm minions rewards the players with event currency and therefore should be defeated before the fight ends. The hand demons will similarly be in the class that is active on that day.

Since the initial wave of enemies are very weak compared to Ibaraki herself, players should take care to extract as much Noble Phantasm gauge out of them as possible. If possible, try to avoid switching targets and create art chains. Since overkill vastly improves the resources command cards charge generate, Extra chains can fill a Noble Phantasm gauge more rapidly than normal.

As a Berserker, Ibaraki can deal tremendous amounts of damage with her basic attacks. Her basic team-wide attacks are especially dangerous, but Ibaraki’s buster cards can easily chunk a Servant for around 6000 damage. Defense up buffs are the best counter against high burst damage attacks. While the hands are up, Ibaraki attacks only once. But, Ibaraki can attack twice if one or both Oni Arms fall.

Ibaraki possesses a single target Noble Phantasm that deals a massive amount of damage after which she strips your Servant of all their buffs as well as add a defense-down debuff. Crucially, this means your buffs will be able to absorb whatever damage the Noble Phantasm does before the buffs are removed. Evasion and Invincibility will work without issue but will leave the Servant vulnerable to further attacks that turn.

The hands that accompany her also have a powerful attack if they fill their charge bar. The left hand, which possesses a short charge bar, will do a very damaging attack to one of the Servants and stun that Servant for the next turn. The right hand meanwhile will damage all Servants for a high amount and then seal all their skills for the next turn. For these hands, it’s the debuff that follows that is the true threat.

In terms of skills, the hands will also occasionally buff Ibaraki with various effects like attack up, cleansing her debuffs or debuffing Servants instead. Meanwhile Ibaraki can also debuff your team with various team-wide demerits. What debuff she applies is dependent on what day is active. Since these debuffs tend to be much less dangerous than her attacks, this is not a huge issue. The most dangerous debuffs she can apply are actually the buff prevention debuff and the Noble Phantasm seal. Make sure to account for them when facing the caster hands and assassin hands respectively. For more information on skills, see the event page

Ibaraki is a female magical Servant. Servants like Jack and Carmilla receive bonus damage on their Noble Phantasm against females. Similarly, Rama’s Noble Phantasm receives a significant overcharge bonus against magical enemies. Consider fielding one of these servants or borrowing one from a friend when selecting a main DPS Servant.

This event contains two Craft Essences which highly encourage setting up a team with one main DPS or two at most. These Craft Essences, The Wandering Tales of Shana-oh and Golden Captures the Carp, boost individual damage performance and team damage performance respectively. By equipping the entire team, or at least most of the team, with Golden Captures the Carp, our single main DPS with The Wandering Tales of Shana-oh can throw out some truly impressive damage numbers. Try and Limit Break the Wandering Tales of Shana-oh as soon as possible, while keeping multiple copies of Golden Captures the Carp around for the team. Only when a player has been lucky with Craft Essence drops should Golden Captures the Carp be Limit Broken. At truly high bonus damage numbers, it may be a better idea to equip one of the supports with a more standard Craft Essence like A Fragment of 2030 as the extra stars will provide more damage than an additional Golden Captures the Carp.

Thus, the basic structure of the team should become clear quickly. Protect and buff the main DPS as much as possible while the main DPS clears the field. Therefore, setting up a team that fits into the DPS/Support/Support or DPS/Support/Hybrid mold is ideal. If the player does intend to field a second DPS (or let the hybrid do it), consider bringing one AoE Noble Phantasm to destroy Ibaraki’s hands.

The Backline should be similarly aimed at keeping the main DPS alive. Bringing fresh taunts, defense ups and further offensive buffs will go a long way into keeping a team healthy and high in damage output. Fielding a final solo servant like Heracles, Cu Chulain or Nero will enable the team to also stall for a long period of time if survival is an issue. Since team cost is generally a problem with all these event Craft Essences, bringing in more of the cheap support Servants and/or Mash can help free up additional cost.

Finally, select a Mystic Code that best protects and buffs the main DPS servant. For most teams, the Chaldea Combat Uniform is the best fit. Stunning Ibaraki while defenses are down can save a team more than 10,000 HP worth of damage taken, while the Order Change ability can bring in more buffs to protect the team or boost the offense of the team. Most of all however, the Order Change ability synergizes extremely well with the Golden Captures the Carp Craft Essence. By bringing a backline servant with this Craft Essence equipped to the frontline, the team will also receive an infusion of stars which is perfect for exploiting a window of burst damage.

For the Ibaraki-Douji event, defense up buffs will have the most impact. Berserkers do so much damage that the percentage of damage reduction from defense buffs will keep Servants alive for longer than simply healing them would. Furthermore, a massive benefit of defense up is that it works as a way to reduce the chance of getting one-shotted. A healing skill or Noble Phantasm can only be triggered after the damage has been dealt. However, if Ibaraki crits or focuses her fire on a specific Servant, there may be no time to react as the Servant already disappeared. Thus:

• Always try to bring some form of defense up for the entire team to reduce the damage taken by a significant amount. Consistency is key for defeating Ibaraki.
• Healing in bursts is too risky due to Ibaraki’s high normal attack damage. Consider relying on healing over time.
• Bringing only defensive measures will make it difficult to clear the fight in time, meaning Servants who provide both offense and defense buffs are preferred.
• Preventing damage altogether is highly useful against Berserkers in general and can save servants in moments of vulnerability.
• Ibaraki’s Noble Phantasm is susceptible to effects that stun, delay or block her Noble Phantasm. Even delaying her once will result in being attacked by one less Noble Phantasm. 
• Furthermore, consider using taunts to redirect the Noble Phantasm to a protected (or sacrificial) Servant.

This leaves us with the following options:

See also the event page for recommendations

• Waver and Hans both provide very strong offense and defense buffs. Preferably use at least one of them in every team, if not both. Charging their Noble Phantasms on the Drunken Citizens and getting Hans’s Noble Phantasm rotation running, are crucial.
• David and Jeanne can protect the team with damage prevention; however, they lack powerful offensive buffs. They can be assigned to the backline as emergency measures. It should be noted that the Chaldea Combat Suit works amazing with David.
• Tamamo works great in a dedicated Arts composition. Since she cannot provide a defense up buff to the team, ideally field her with either Hans, Waver, Jeanne or Mash. Take care to not forget the offensive department, however. Turns are precious.
• Medea Lily and Irisviel provide no offensive buffs whatsoever; furthermore their main forte, healing, doesn’t perform well against Berserkers at all. They can be used, and will do decently if there are no other options, but the turn count must always be kept in mind. Medea Lily heals much better than Irisviel and can do so on demand, but Irisviel will at least prevent any freak damage from wiping out a team in one turn through her Guts - if her Noble Phantasm can be charged that is.
• Georgios and D’eon are great options if one simply needs to buy time. Georgius tends to eat up all critical stars and provides little in the way of offense. Meanwhile D’eon is less of a disruption in terms of star attraction but their Noble Phantasm remains weak. The true danger in fielding them is that Ibaraki has a tendency to ignore the taunt and blast an entire team with a high amount of AoE damage. C’est la vie.
• (Note: For the rerun, Masters have far more Support Servants to choose from, with Merlin naturally providing both massive offensive damage buffs, healing and on-demand Invincibility for the team.)

For the Ibaraki raid doing damage sooner rather than later is ideal. Because it is possible to prepare the Noble Phantasm gauge and various buffs before the final wave starts, a DPS can start the fight right away with their most damaging attacks. Preferably, throw as many different offensive buffs as possible on the Main DPS. The reason to stack as many buffs all at once is that all offense buffs of different types stack multiplicatively with one another. It should hopefully only take two, maybe three windows of burst damage to get rid of Ibaraki.

While the window of burst damage is up, try to focus all of the damage unto Ibaraki herself. Vastly overkilling the Oni Hands is unnecessary and wastes precious turns and buffs. Especially Servants with single target Noble Phantasms should ignore the Oni Hands unless a pinpoint amount of damage can be dealt to them. Always try to use all the offensive buffs in turns where both Noble Phantasms and command cards are available. The Extra chain often does as much, if not more, damage as the Noble Phantasm.

Once the window of burst damage has expired, focus on keep the main team alive. This is the time to take care of the Oni Hands individually if they are still alive. Whenever possible estimate how much damage an attack does and try to lower each hand to an HP count where a single attack can destroy them. It then becomes possible to take out both hands in one turn by target switching between the Oni Hands with the right command card selection.

Take note that the Wandering Tales of Shana-oh boost quick Servants in particular. A player with many strong quick Servants will find that the quick Servants in particular will hit much harder than normal with all buffs up.

While fielding hybrids can be dangerous against Ibaraki, having access to even more offensive buffs can shorten the fight a lot and in turn make the fight safer. Servants like Caesar, Elisabeth, Nero Bride, Alexander or Helena can provide some powerful buffs in a pinch. If fielding one of these Servants, try to field them only with a main DPS that has a similar card structure and can fully exploit their buffs. Giving critical damage up when no stars are available is rather a waste.

Finally, counting the command cards of the active team can help to predict whether the next turn will have any command cards of the main DPS Servant. However, since Servants tend to die quickly during this raid event, which reshuffles the deck, it may become hard to truly predict the next turn as the fight drags on.

(Note: The options last year were much more restricted, the underlying logic however, is still mostly sound!)

So what teams are useful for clearing the 3 BP raid quest?

In terms of budget teams, here is a base structure of a team that can consistently make it through 15 turns and dealing over, or as close to, 6,000,000 damage.

It is a support set-up entirely aimed at buffing, and most of all, keeping the main DPS with The Wandering Tales of Shana-oh alive for as long as possible.

If you lack a strong damage-dealer of your own, borrowing one from someone else is generally the wisest course of action. Try and overcompensate. Whales and grails are your best friend here. Then, add in a hybrid or a support of your own. Like so:

If instead you want to bring a main DPS of your own, just bite the bullet and select that maxed Waver.

Hopefully you do actually own some good, strong servants of your own of higher rarity. You can apply the same basic team much the same way and perhaps add in some stronger supports or hybrids. Getting skill levels to 6 is exceedingly important for raid events like these, so try and upgrade them whenever possible.

Let’s sum up the encounter:

• Abuse the first wave to build up Noble Phantasm gauges and get skills going.
• The goal is to eventually take out Ibaraki’s Oni Hands for their event currency and to prevent their nasty debuffs. Preferably, take out both at once and just before they charge their bars in order to minimize damage taken.
• Accordingly AoE Noble Phantasms can be very useful in cleaning up the hands quickly (turns are limited), but single target Noble Phantasms will assist more in reducing Ibaraki’s own HP.
• Bringing class advantage for the hands and Drunken Citizens will help clean them up quickly and with minimal damage taken, class disadvantaged Servants can still be fielded in the backline to use against Ibaraki.  
• Equip the main DPS with a (Limit Broken) Wandering Tales of Shana-oh while the rest of the team has Golden Captures the Carp equipped.
• The team should be structured around one main DPS with plenty of supports and hybrids in the front- and backline.
• The Chaldea Combat Uniform provides a great number of benefits for the Ibaraki encounter and synergizes especially well with Golden Captures the Carp.
• Ibaraki’s basics attacks are the real danger, defense up buffs are the most consistent way to protect Servants against Ibaraki’s crazy damage.
• Avoid relying on big bursts of healing and bring ways to redirect, tank, prevent or delay Ibaraki’s Noble Phantasm.
• During moments of vulnerability, while all defensive buffs are down, Ibaraki can kill Servants in a single turn. Be sure to rotate your defensive skills and mystic code defense buffs to minimize the amount of turns exposed to an unhindered Ibaraki. 
• Create a window of burst damage right away once the final wave starts. Stack those offensive buffs for massive damage - hopefully Ibaraki falls in two windows.
• Do not waste single target Noble Phantasms on the Oni Hands, preferably kill them between windows of burst damage or use an AoE Noble Phantasm.
• Quick Servants receive an extra performance boost from the event Craft Essence.