MMM - Merry Mariner Makes Multiplied March for Mid-winter Merriment (Nemo Santa)

Technology is an amazing thing, in a fantasy depiction of our world filled with magic, dragons, and Servants who can manifest multiple forms of themselves, the thing which perplexes me the most is Nemo’s gun. It’s shaped with the mechanisms of a lever-action rifle or something, but it fires a fishing line somehow, despite not being shaped at all like a harpoon or spear gun?

Servant bullshit is one hell of a drug.

Man, the 4* Rider lineup is getting pretty full, isn’t it? Among his peers, Nemo’s base statline is pretty mediocre, with the tied 5th worst Attack stat in exchange for the 5th best HP stat. As always, offense is king over bulk, so it’s not the greatest distribution compounded by the fact that his overall statline is pretty weak - there’s a number of Servants who have significantly better attack than him in exchange for a small amount of HP.

He does have a few passives to help mitigate that weakness, though. His Riding is of a typical rank for a Rider, providing a notable boost to his Quick cards, while his Divinity will provide a small passive boost to his card damage, though nothing impactful. His unique passive, Protection of the Sea God, grants a small boost to his Arts critical damage, as well as a handy 300 damage cut when he’s in his favored terrain - maps with water nearby or Imaginary Space (which is essentially just his original form’s event maps).

None of those passives are anything amazing, but they do provide some small boosts to even out his baseline a bit.

With a BAAQQ card deck, Nemo’s a very typical Rider by the cards, but we’re more interested in what those cards generate. With a base NP gain of 0.51% and 3-hit Arts cards, Nemo’s base Arts gain is a very mediocre 1.53. Below average by a small margin, but not disgustingly bad by any means. The real issue he has, like most Servants with a low base NP gain, is that his other cards suffer much more than his Arts cards from it - his Quicks are a good 4 hits, but with his base NP gain that makes them painstakingly average for NP gain, and likewise his 5-hit Extra is very mediocre in that department. Naturally his Buster isn’t dependable at all for NP gain.

While that’s obviously bad, his stargen is thankfully a lot more reasonable. His Quick hitcounts in combo with his Riding makes for some great stargen, and equally his kit has moderate hitcounts across the board, so he’ll be producing a decent amount of stars if he has the Quick first card bonus backing them. With the Rider-class star weight behind him, he can take advantage of those stars for greater damage and NP gain, so it’s a solid perk to have.

So how is Nemo Santa on the whole? Well on the one hand, he’s got many “little helpers” by his side, sure to make this winter season a festive one:

However, he’s also simply compensating for quality with quantity - not Santa-like in the least:

I can say pretty definitively that Nemo is a superb farmer. While he lacks a massive gauge charger to make him a high-power NP independent of support Servants, with the typical support we expect for an Arts Servant, he’s a highly-competent farmer whose looping capabilities also convert well into high difficulty content, as he packs a number of tools fitting for the job there, too.

When compared to Habetrot, the ultimate hard line is that Habetrot is more flexible, capable of sufficiently farming in lower-investment compositions with setups that aren’t strictly double Castoria, and can do so even without a NP gauge CE due to the potency of her gauge charger. Meanwhile Nemo shines in truly optimized setups with the best tools available, boasting higher peak damage output that can be geared to the specific wave setup. His anti-Evil effective damage especially stands out, as it provides him with a high-damage niche for difficult content that his contemporary lacks, and one that can also often apply to the wave 3 of farming.

Even if ultimately Nemo’s role overlaps significantly with a Servant most FGO players will have trained already, he does have a number of advantages that distinguish him, and in difficult content he makes for a vastly superior offensive Rider option, with skills that are far better suited to an offensive role.

As such, I should probably assess him by assuming not everyone has a Habetrot lingering around ready-to-go, in which case…yeah, Nemo Santa is pretty amazing. A lot of his power is centered on having access to Castoria and Black Grail, but even without those things he’s a very serviceable farmer. Rath™ Seal of Approval, with a recommendation.