MMM - Eclecticly-Endearing and Ever-so-Efflugent, Eternal Entity of the Extinct, Ereshkigal! (Anniversary 2024)

It’s funny, before the Anniversary I had to endure a lot of hoping and coping for a Summer Ereshkigal, and somehow not only did she become reality, but as the big ticket Anniversary gacha Servant at that.

Not only that, but she’s also the second playable Beast Servant in the game, yoinking Tiamat’s number and turning her focus on the regression of Humanity to, and I’m not joking here, going through a dating sim-like affection metre with every battle, then “Regressing” it back afterwards, experiencing love all over again. Yes, that’s actually the lore of the mechanic, though I’ll be talking about the gameplay function in a bit.

As the second member of her class, there’s not much ground for comparison, especially as, thus far, each Beast’s class advantages are entirely different. Unlike Draco, who has advantage versus every Knight/Horseman class, Ereshkigal’s unique class advantage is against every single Extra class, except Avengers, whom she has a weakness to.

At least the hierarchy of Mesopotamian space goddesses is maintained, huh?

In any case, Ereshkigal has a very middle-of-the-road attack stat for an SSR in general, but has a pretty high HP stat, though neither is spectacular in the grand scheme of things.

Ereshkigal does, however, have a very stacked passive lineup to compensate. Of those we’re familiar with, she has Independent Manifestation, providing a very minute boost to critical damage and mental debuff / instant death resistance, plus a more important immunity to all Stun and Stun-like effects (such as Circe’s NP), except Charm. She additionally packs Core of the Goddess, providing some debuff resistance and bonus damage on every attack. Boy, how come Lasengle lets you have such a tacked-on immunity, while Void Shiki has nothing, huh?

In terms of unique passives, things get more interesting - her Anti-Magecraft passive slaps her with a 3-time, non-removable Debuff Immunity buff every single battle which is, well, frankly insane. Completely bonkers. I can’t believe they programmed a Servant with this. While in some fights this kind of effect can get ground down by a bunch of inconsequential debuffs, in many others this will block turn-changing effects when you need it most, and that’s on top of her just no-selling Stun, too. Continuing with the theme of insane passives, Spatial Conservation provides her with 5% NP gauge charge every time she uses a normal card, including Extra card. To phrase it differently, all of her regular cards have 5% more gauge charge than normal, which is typically a 30-50% increase in non-critical Arts card NP gain. To get such an effect on her Busters and Quicks, too, is incredibly powerful, especially since it can bypass certain fights where you get slapped with a billion NP gain down debuffs to stifle your NP gain from regular cards.

And with that all said, I’m not even done on the passives. Beast’s Authority provides her with a significant 20% Critical Damage boost versus Servants, the main source of difficult content in the game, and as for her last one…it’s a lot to take in.

ＩＩ (Yes, it’s just roman numerals) is what provides Ereshkigal with her affection gauge, as I mentioned earlier. It starts at 0 every battle, and goes up to 100, with each interval of 10 increasing the tier by 1, with each affection tier providing increasing benefits. It can only ever go up, and the gauge is increased by the following:

- Bond 5 or higher (+5)
- Deployed on the frontline in battle (+5)
- Deployed on [Waterfront] field (+10)
- Select Ereshkigal’s cards for a chain (each) (+3)
- Ereshkigal Brave chain (+6)
- Use Ereshkigal’s skills (+3)
- Use Ereshkigal’s skills before any other on a turn (+2)
- Overcharge bonus (+5 per Overcharge level)
- Ereshkigal targeted for a Master skill (+5)
- Command Seal used on Ereshkigal (+10)

So for example, if you have a Bond 5 Ereshkigal and deploy her on the frontline in a quest, she’ll start at 10 points, or tier 1 as displayed.

While these tiers don’t provide any passive benefits, they heavily influence the power of Ereshkigal’s NP, so it’s worth keeping these bonuses in mind and paying attention to your skill use order.

Oh, and support Ereshkigals will default to 0 affection gauge no matter what, so she’s not exactly enticing to place on your support lineup, unless you wanna boast about having her.

But with all that out the way, we can actually continue talking about her kit.

With a base NP gain of 0.33%, and a BBAAQ card deck, Ereshkigal’s 4-hit Arts cards provide a very mediocre base Arts gain of 1.32. Now that’s naturally bad, but with Ereshkigal’s passive 5% NP gauge per regular card used, her actual NP gain is far higher than it appears. In fact, even if she had literally 0% base NP gain she’d still have better NP gain on her regular cards than some Servants due to that passive, so she’s in a very solid position. And it’s even stronger for her non-Arts cards, with her-otherwise uninteresting Busters and Quick also providing a good amount of NP gauge. So while she isn’t breaking any NP gain records on her regular cards, her NP gain is far from a detriment, here.

On the flipside, Ereshkigal happens to be blessed with my eternal nemesis, high hitcounts on every single card, which turns into her benefit this time around. With very good hitcounts on her Busters and Quick, and a typical 5-hit Extra, she produces a good amount of stars on any chain, despite not being particularly focused on Quicks. It’s enough for her to take advantage of the Beast class’s Archer-like Star Weight and dish out some crits, if nothing else.

So how is Ereshkigal in her Beast mode? Well on the one hand, Tsunderes are the primordial soup of human weebery, and Ereshkigal manifests the twisted heart of humanity perfectly:

However, she’s also an underworld wallflower, lacking the confidence of her sister and mirror, and frankly, tsunderes are for old men who still think EVA is peak anime. Bring on the new generation!

It can always be a little rough to properly assess a Servant both while in the storm of hype, and when they have so much about them that’s unique it’s hard to throw the word “outclassed” around. Heck, even within her own class she’s basically incomparable, but that’s more because the Beast class is specifically designed weird.

The takeaway here is to look at Ereshkigal how she is, instead of making comparisons. She’s a competent farmer who admittedly won’t get class advantage often, with absolutely spectacular tools to tackle difficult content, and damage output that similarly picks up in dragged-out fights. While the majority of time in FGO will be spent in farming, it’s important to recognize you still need the Servants that can carry you through the story and challenge quests to earn those rewards and even unlock farming nodes in some cases.

And for her position as a single Servant, Ereshkigal’s Beast form is like an all-in-one deal. The issue often with investing in Extra-class Servants is, excluding Pretender and Alter Ego, their class advantages are so uncommon they won’t often have time to shine, so it can be hard to compare them to say, just a good Berserker. But often the most difficult fights in the game are Extra-class enemies, and having an offensive Servant who can tackle all of them (except Avengers) can be incredibly handy. Just so long as you keep a Mooncancer in your back pocket.

While that focus means Ereshkigal does lose power the more Extra-class options you have, she remains competitive with other Extra-class damage dealers regardless - few can boast a similar mix of AOE damage and high-power single target crits, then again the degree of utility she can bring to bear.

In summary, as always, the Anniversary Servants are well worth looking into. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.