Rabbit’s Reviews #400: Mysterious Heroine XX Alter (4* Foreigner)

The last Servant on this year’s second Summer banner is another variation on Mysterious Heroine X Alter. Mechanically, she’s a pretty good ST Buster DPS, with her most notable aspect being her unusually excellent Douman and Van Gogh synergy. Outside of that, though, she mostly fills the same role—right down to being great at killing Rulers—as Xu Fu, who is on what is otherwise a stronger banner. Class differences aside, MHXXA has an extra Buster card and more NP charge over Xu Fu, but she has worse Koyan synergy, has lower steroid values if you’re willing to rig Xu Fu’s power mod, and is more dependent on appends. Personally, I think Xu Fu is better overall, but the larger point is that they’re very similar units and fill almost exactly the same role. You might want one, but you definitely don’t need both.

MHXXA has the second-highest attack and second-lowest health of the SR Foreigners, giving her high-mid attack relative to SRs as a whole. This is a decent starting point for a DPS, though it could still be better. She has pretty high Arts card NP gain and mid-low Quick Np gain, which is more or less standard for a single-Arts Servant. She also only has one Quick card, which means active star gen won’t be a strength.

MHXXA mostly has standard passives, but there’s still some interesting synergy here. Madness Enhancement is always great on a triple-Buster Servant, even if MHXXA only has a C-rank in the passive. Meanwhile, Altereactor, Magic Resistance, and Entity of the Outer Realm combine to give MHXXA about a 40% chance of ignoring any debuff that comes her way, which is quite nice. Entity also gives a few passive stars and, most importantly, it lets MHXXA benefit fully from Van Gogh’s crit buffs.

MHXXA has long cooldowns in general. Without append 5, MHXXA can’t stack her Buster buff until turn 3, and she can’t re-use her attack buff or her battery within Koyan’s buff window at all, making append 5 borderline necessary to her working effectively. MHXXA is effectively a 30% chapter when fighting a single enemy, too, so Mana Loading is also important to her functionality, though as an ST unit she can afford to waste charge in a Koyan team as long as you’re willing to reset for her cards. Beyond that, she’s a crit-focused Servant with low in-kit crit buffs, so the crit damage append is useful in a Koyan team… though it’s worth noting that MHXXA may brush up against the crit buff cap in a double Van Gogh team, and even if she isn’t hitting the cap, the bracket will be pretty loaded as-is, so Append 4 is much less valuable in that context.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x8 Eternal Gear Open Eternal Gear configuration options x8 Claw of Chaos Open Claw of Chaos configuration options
3	150,000	x8 Shell of Reminiscence Open Shell of Reminiscence configuration options x8 Cursed Beast Gallstone Open Cursed Beast Gallstone configuration options
4	500,000	x8 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options x8 Heart of the Foreign God Open Heart of the Foreign God configuration options
Max	1,500,000	x8 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options x8 Remnants of Madness Open Remnants of Madness configuration options

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x8 Eternal Gear Open Eternal Gear configuration options
2 → 3	200,000	x8 Octuplet Crystals Open Octuplet Crystals configuration options
3 → 4	600,000	x10 Black Beast Grease Open Black Beast Grease configuration options
4 → 5	800,000	x10 Mystic Gunpowder Open Mystic Gunpowder configuration options
5 → 6	2,000,000	x10 Aurora Steel Open Aurora Steel configuration options
6 → 7	2,500,000	x12 Reactor Core of Dawn Open Reactor Core of Dawn configuration options
7 → 8	5,000,000	x12 Fragment of a Twinkling Star Open Fragment of a Twinkling Star configuration options
8 → 9	6,000,000	x12 Ether Light Collector Open Ether Light Collector configuration options
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x8 Void's Dust Open Void's Dust configuration options
2 → 3	200000	x8 Serpent Jewel Open Serpent Jewel configuration options
3 → 4	600000	x10 Claw of Chaos Open Claw of Chaos configuration options
4 → 5	800000	x10 Eternal Ice Open Eternal Ice configuration options
5 → 6	2000000	x10 Cursed Beast Gallstone Open Cursed Beast Gallstone configuration options
6 → 7	2500000	x12 Heart of the Foreign God Open Heart of the Foreign God configuration options
7 → 8	5000000	x12 Remnants of Madness Open Remnants of Madness configuration options
8 → 9	6000000	x12 Universal Cube Open Universal Cube configuration options
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore Open Crystallized Lore configuration options

Foreigners, like Avengers, ask for no gems or pieces and instead need a bunch of disparate mats. MHXXA’s newest mat asks outside of appends come from LB5, so she shouldn’t be too hard for established players to max.

MHXXA has a decent, if standard, Buster DPS skillset that suffers from unnecessarily long cooldowns. Recommended skill order is 3>2>1.

MHXXA functions in your typical Koyan/Oberon teams, in which you loop MHXXA’s NP and throw in cards whenever they’re available. There’s not much to say about this, other than that MHXXA needs append 5 for this to be particularly viable, and Mana Loading provides an important consistency boost as well.

More interesting, though, is that MHXXA has Douman and Van Gogh synergy. Douman provides 100% crit damage up and 40% attack up for 3 turns, plus 30% defense down to the enemies. A Douman team will be much more awkward to run than a Koyan team, but if you want to lean into crit damage specifically, it’s an option.

Double VG is a bit more optimal than anything that uses Douman. VG provides 150-200% (depending on NP level) crit damage up to MHXXA per NP used, so MHXXA will be hitting really hard with her Buster crits. She won’t be using her NP as often as in a Koyan team, and her NP won’t hit as hard when she does use it, but in exchange you get the usual survival benefits of a VG team, with a DPS who has three Buster cards to leverage. There’s no other Servant with the Entity of the Outer Realm passive who also has three Buster cards, which means MHXXA is arguably the best Servant in the game for this specific strategy.

VG teams are generally going to be at their best if your third unit has some degree of party support, whether they’re fully dedicated to propping up the VGs (Castoria being the typical best pick for this), or they’re a damage-dealer with party utility (like Koyanskaya of Darkness). If what you want, though, is just to maximize your crit damage output, MHXXA can be a good option for double VG teams.

In a Koyan team, you’re generally trying to kill quickly, so you might as well run Black Grail as your CE. This does require a few cards to loop effectively, but the added speed will generally be worth the reset potential. In a crit-focused team, on the other hand, MHXXA doesn’t benefit as much from NP damage up and is likely to already have a lot of crit damage from supports, so Buster or Attack CEs are your best option. Since Douman and VG both provide attack up, Buster is probably the way to go. If you happen to have a leveled MLB Limited/Zero Over, that would be a great CE option for MHXXA in a Douman or VG team.

MHXXA is a crit-focused Servant with low in-kit crit damage buffs, so crit damage CCs are a natural pick.  We do also have a single CC that gives the associated card power mod against Lawful enemies and Rulers, which matches nicely with MHXXA’s NP niches.

MHXXA is a solid ST Buster unit, and a pair of grails is a cheap way of increasing her stats. If you have VG and plan to use MHXXA in VG teams, especially, it may be worth grailing her. Outside of that, she’s a fairly standard ST Buster unit with long cooldowns, so your mileage may vary.

In a vacuum, MHXXA is a bit worse than Xu Fu. They have very similar kits, but Xu Fu has shorter cooldowns and can rig her own power mod, on top of getting to double-dip niche against Man enemies. MHXXA, though, has some unique Douman and VG synergy, which is the biggest reason you’d pick her instead. Whether that merits pulling for her is in the eye of the beholder.

She’s a pretty good ST buster unit overall, but her cooldowns are annoying, her niche damage values are questionable in comparison to just bringing an Avenger, and she’s a crit-focused unit with only 30% in in-kit crit buffs. There’s just a bit too much awkwardness here to make her especially noteworthy, unless you really love Douman and VG teams, in which case she’s probably a cool addition and a good pickup.

As a small additional note, this is review number 400! Thanks to everyone who’s stuck around all these years. Who know how long FGO will last, but, to be optimistic…

Here’s to another hundred!

Overall: 8/10
Single-Target DPS: 8/10
AoE DPS: N/A
Survivability: 5/10
Offensive Utility: 1/10
Defensive Utility: 1/10
Farming Usefulness: 4/10
: 10/10