Rabbit's Reviews #297: Habetrot (4* Rider)

Lostbelt 6 brings back an old FGO trend in the form a free Servant after clearing the chapter. Unlike Bedivere and company, though, Habetrot is also added to the FP summoning pool. It takes a heck ton of FP to summon the four extra copies of her needed for NP5, but at the end of the day Habetrot is, functionally, a fully free Servant. There was speculation about this way back at the beginning of Lostbelt 6—Habetrot’s kit looked so weak she almost had to be free—but, as a second surprise, the fully released Habetrot has a set of changes that makes her not only useful, but probably the single-best welfare Servant in the entire game. While her supportive functionality is still not great, Habetrot is notable for being both a functionally superior Arash and a top-notch Arts looper. She’s an absolutely fantastic farming Servant who’s reasonably powerful for CQ contexts as well. What more could you ask for?

Habetrot has low-middling attack and decent HP by SR Rider standards. As an offense-oriented unit (to everyone’s surprise, including Habetrot’s), more attack would have been preferable here, but it’s not a terrible stat spread. Her internals are solid, too, with good hit-counts and reasonable NP gain. For passives, Habetrot has Riding, which functionally just boosts her Quick NP gain a little, as well as Item Construction, which is completely irrelevant since Habetrot has no debuffs at all.

As far as Append skills go, Habetrot’s Extra Attack buff doesn’t help her a ton—most of her damage and NP gain will come from her NP regardless—but the other two are really important for her. Mana Loading, especially, is huge for Habetrot, as she has an innate 80% battery, so starting with 20% NP charge lets her NP immediately regardless of CE. Her third Append Skill gives her an attack buff against Berserkers, which is excellent both because it’s bonus damage against a class Habetrot already hits for class advantage, and because Habetrot has no in-kit attack buffs, so it fills a missing buff bracket.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x4 Rider Piece
3	150,000	x10 Rider Piece x5 Phoenix Feather
4	500,000	x4 Rider Monument x5 Primordial Lanugo x4 Rainbow Thread Ball
Max	2,000,000	x10 Rider Monument x8 Rainbow Thread Ball x10 Vision Scales

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x4 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	200,000	x10 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	600,000	x4 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Magic Gem of Rider x4 Shell of Reminiscence
5 → 6	2,000,000	x4 Secret Gem of Rider x8 Shell of Reminiscence
6 → 7	3,000,000	x10 Secret Gem of Rider x4 Giant's Ring
7 → 8	5,000,000	x8 Giant's Ring x5 Rainbow Thread Ball
8 → 9	6,000,000	x15 Rainbow Thread Ball x20 Vision Scales
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x4 Gem of Rider
2 → 3	200000	x10 Gem of Rider
3 → 4	600000	x4 Magic Gem of Rider
4 → 5	800000	x10 Magic Gem of Rider x8 Great Knight Medal
5 → 6	2000000	x4 Secret Gem of Rider x16 Great Knight Medal
6 → 7	3000000	x10 Secret Gem of Rider x2 Spirit Root
7 → 8	5000000	x4 Spirit Root x2 Tsukumo Mirror
8 → 9	6000000	x6 Tsukumo Mirror x12 Fruit of Eternity
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Habetrot’s skillset is strong as a whole, but leveling-wise only her second skill really matters in most practical circumstances. Recommended skill order is 2>3>1.

Habetrot has three primary use cases: as a better Arash, as an Arts looper, and as a defensive support.

Arash-style Habetrot is probably the most interesting use case. Like Arash, Habetrot can NP immediately to clear a wave and then drop out to make room for either another DPS or another support. This can enable a number of farming strategies that are otherwise impossible, particularly for 90+ nodes that are hard to clear via traditional loop setups. For 90+ she’ll likely be mostly limited to Caster nodes—in 90+ nodes, clearing even the first wave without substantial buffs can be tricky—but she’s still another option that didn’t exist before. More important than the fact that she can do this, though, is that she doesn’t require a starting NP charge CE. This means she can run Black Grail for extra damage, or, even better, equip a drop CE. The biggest disadvantage of bringing Arash is that he usually requires a CE for farming purposes, which means Arash teams typically can’t afford to 6-drop (or sometimes even 5-drop) tricky nodes. Habetrot has no such issues and is as such largely superior.

Habetrot also, however, has potential for loop farming on her own. Since Habetrot can get to her first NP with just her own innate battery, she has much lower looping requirements than many other Arts Servants. Habetrot looping ends up functioning somewhat similarly to Skadi looping, in that Castoria/Habetrot/Castoria only needs Habetrot to refund 50% off her NP each turn in order to loop. Habetrot may struggle to do this on the first turn against 3 enemies, as she won’t benefit from Castoria’s NP gain buffs until turn 2, but a plug buffer (or a 20% mystic code charge) can easily make up the difference. More interesting, though is her potential for 90+ nodes. Habetrot’s battery reliance means she has the flexibility to loop on unconventional enemy nodes. Some of this depends on (again) whether Oberon’s kit is as-promised, but assuming he does keep his 70% batteries, Habetrot will easily be able to loop 1/2/x nodes regardless of CE, which is pretty cool.

Habetrot’s other—and less powerful—use case is as a defensive support unit. While Habetrot lacks any party damage buffs, she does have some nice crit-enabling tools, plus some solid defensive utility. In lower investment teams, Habetrot can run alongside a female DPS, help facilitate crits for a while, and then provide her third skill’s defensive buffs and die when the DPS needs some extra protection. While this isn’t a particularly powerful use case, the opportunity cost of bringing Habetrot is pretty low since she can choose when to make way for another support.

Habetrot doesn’t need starting NP charge CEs, so her CE choice should generally be informed by how much extra damage she needs in order to do whatever you’re trying to get her to do. Black Grail is always the best choice for maximizing damage, but you could also use something like Mark on a Smiling Face to facilitate easier loops (against Berserkers, for example) instead. If Habetrot is set for damage and loopage already, you can just give her a drop CE instead and call it a day.

Habetrot is in good shape even without CCs, but you can always give her CCs with useful supportive effects like healing and buff removal to flesh out her support tools. Alternatively, you can give her NP-damage-boosting CCs to help her hit slightly higher damage thresholds.

Habetrot is an excellent unit, and higher attack will let her hit higher farming thresholds. She’s a great grail pick, and any additional investment will further broaden her range of use cases.

Habetrot is yet another fantastic Servant. LB6 has brought powerhouse after powerhouse, and even some of the initially less remarkable units have jumped to being top-in-class with Koyanskaya existing. Habetrot is remarkable though in part because she both outdoes Arash and provides a free, powerful Arts looper. She does require a ton of FP to bring her to NP5—the average seems to be about 2 million—so if you’ve been using your FP consistently it may take some time to max her out, but still, everyone should have her NP5 eventually. She’s a silly good farmer, she has some CQ usage, and she’s free. No complaints here.

Overall: 10/10
Single-Target DPS: 5/10
AoE DPS: 9/10
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 2/10
Defensive Utility: 5/10
Farming Usefulness: 10/10
Diligent Journaling: 10/10