Rabbit’s Reviews #401: Kishinami Hakuno (4* Moon Cancer)

The long-awaited welfare for this year’s summer event—and for Ordeal Call 3—is Kishinami Hakuno. Like with Mecha-Liz and the summer Valkyries, Hakuno comes in two versions with identical stats. On completion of OC3, you can pick whichever one you prefer, and you get one free copy, with the rest added to the FP pool, alongside Habetrot and Saber Lily. Ostensibly we’ll be able to pick up the other version sometime in the future, too.

If you count the two Hakunos separately—since they are technically different Servants as far as the game is concerned—OC3 has doubled the number of Moon Cancers in the game, from 5 to 10. While I’m still bullish on Ciel, Hakuno is the most unambiguously strong Servant of the bunch. They’re a really solid AoE generalist, only a little below high-end SSRs in overall power despite being a free SR. They’re roughly comparable to Iyo, who just released in NA, in that they have a very rare class advantage context and can’t compete with true top-end AoE Servants, but they’re more than capable of serving the AoE generalist role for anyone who doesn’t have the few stronger options. Unlike Iyo, though, they also have a cool gimmick and some specialty utility unique to them.

Overall, the Hakunos are up there with the best welfares we’ve gotten, provided you’re willing to roll the FP gacha for their copies. Hopefully we’ll get an event with a special FP banner in the near future—maybe even the promised October event—for a good opportunity to pick up the extra NP levels.

The Hakunos have average stats relative to SR Moon Cancers, which means they have low-ish attack and high-ish HP relative to SRs as a whole. This isn’t a great starting point for a damage-dealer, but they make up for it elsewhere. They have bog-standard NP gain, and as a single-Quick Servant their star gen isn’t remarkable either. Meanwhile, they have a nice and straightforward set of passives: Independent Action and Code Cast together give a 17% crit damage buff, Code Cast provides a permanent 5% increase to the Hakunos’ Arts and Buster cards, and Moon’s Regalia gives 10% attack up against everything except Foreigners and enemy-only classes. None of this is particularly fancy, but this amounts to a lot more extra damage than most Servants get from their passives.

It’s also worth noting that there is exactly one mechanical difference between the two Hakunos: their gender. Any effects that target male Servants will work on male Hakuno, and effects that target female Servants will work on female Hakuno. This is an extremely marginal difference, but if you regularly use, say, Medb, it’s worth considering when picking which one to summon.

Appends-wise, Hakuno is a 30%-charging Buster unit, so they need Mana Loading in order to farm. Skill Reload also helps with farming, letting the Hakunos stack their damage buffs a turn earlier—though for reasons I’ll get to later, leveling Skill Reload over 6 does almost nothing, and they usually don’t need it higher than level 1. They also get a bit more out of the crit damage buff than most Servants, as they can rig their own cards and have low-ish in-kit crit buffs. It’s also maybe worth noting that anti-Foreigner attack up provides an attack boost against the only playable class the Hakunos don’t get a passive bonus against, which is kind of interesting, if not especially important.

Ascension Materials

Stage	Cost	Materials
2	50,000	x3 Saber Piece x3 Archer Piece x3 Caster Piece
3	150,000	x6 Saber Piece x6 Archer Piece x6 Caster Piece
4	500,000	x3 Saber Monument x3 Archer Monument x3 Caster Monument
Max	1,500,000	x6 Saber Monument x6 Archer Monument x6 Caster Monument

Skill Enhancement Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100,000	x3 Gem of Saber x3 Gem of Archer x3 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	200,000	x6 Gem of Saber x6 Gem of Archer x6 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	600,000	x3 Magic Gem of Saber x3 Magic Gem of Archer x3 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	800,000	x6 Magic Gem of Saber x6 Magic Gem of Archer x6 Magic Gem of Caster
5 → 6	2,000,000	x3 Secret Gem of Saber x3 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Secret Gem of Caster
6 → 7	2,500,000	x6 Secret Gem of Saber x6 Secret Gem of Archer x6 Secret Gem of Caster
7 → 8	5,000,000	x6 Aurora Steel x6 Crown of Silvery Light
8 → 9	6,000,000	x7 Fragment of a Twinkling Star x7 Moonlight Core
9 → 10	10,000,000	x1 Crystallized Lore

Append Skill Materials

Level	Cost	Materials
1 → 2	100000	x3 Gem of Saber x3 Gem of Archer x3 Gem of Caster
2 → 3	200000	x6 Gem of Saber x6 Gem of Archer x6 Gem of Caster
3 → 4	600000	x3 Magic Gem of Saber x3 Magic Gem of Archer x3 Magic Gem of Caster
4 → 5	800000	x6 Magic Gem of Saber x6 Magic Gem of Archer x6 Magic Gem of Caster
5 → 6	2000000	x3 Secret Gem of Saber x3 Secret Gem of Archer x3 Secret Gem of Caster
6 → 7	2500000	x6 Secret Gem of Saber x6 Secret Gem of Archer x6 Secret Gem of Caster
7 → 8	5000000	x6 Divine Leyline Spiritron x4 Fruit of Eternity
8 → 9	6000000	x14 Ether Light Collector x14 Universal Cube
9 → 10	10000000	x1 Crystallized Lore

The Hakunos have a completely unique mat spread—they take three sets of pieces and gems instead of the Moon-Cancer-typical two, but in exchange, they need fewer of each. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how well-stocked you are on various types of pieces and gems. Aside from that, they need some Lostbelt mats and the new gold mat from OC3 for skills.

Hakuno’s skillset is pretty strong across the board, mixing the typical Buster DPS tools with some neat personal utility. Recommended skill order is 1>3>2.

The Hakunos have standard AoE Buster farming specs—with a 50% charge CE and Koyan/Koyan/Oberon, they can tri-loop anything. Note, though, that even if Skill Reload lets you refresh skill 3 on turn 2, you’ll probably need to save it for turn 3 for loop reasons. This is the other reason the Hakunos don’t need Skill Reload leveled.

Assuming a level 80 NP5 Hakuno and a level 100 MLB Cranking, the Hakunos will do around 240k to Earth or Sky enemies on wave 3, a bit more to Man, and a bit less to anything else. This is enough for them to handle just about any node at the 90+-and-lower level, though they’ll probably never have sufficient damage for 90++. Unfortunately, unlike Ciel, they can’t really use their card rigging to help their own farming, as they have just enough NP charge to loop, so they can’t shuffle their cards without losing out on an NP, which will almost never be worth it, even setting aside the fact that their card shuffle tech isn’t totally consistent.

Still, though, being able to clear 90+ nodes is perfectly respectable for a free generalist.

As a CQ unit, the Hakunos can work in a similar team with a similar burst-oriented strategy. Their ability to control cards, though, gives you some added flexibility. You do have to be careful not to shuffle so many times that you break your loop, but you can generally afford to spend some of your batteries earlier in the fight in order to shuffle your cards and set up brave chains for Hakuno, since with double Koyan you’ll get 20% charge per Buster and (once you’ve stacked skill 2) 40%+ charge per Arts card.

The Hakunos are also a fun choice for Buster stall teams. Himiko/Hakuno/Castoria works in basically the same way it does for any Buster unit, with the key distinction that you’re much less reliant on card draws than you normally are in a team like that. By using Sparks Root, you can ensure you get whoever’s cards you most need, whether that’s extra Arts cards for more NP gain, Himiko Busters to leverage her own crit damage, or Hakuno cards to make use of their second skill. It introduces a level of interesting strategic decision-making to a team that’s usually pretty straightforward. Hakuno’s stuns help with sustain, too!

As a support, the Hakunos are in a similar position to Ciel and Summer BB—they don’t bring any party support other than card control, and it’s usually not worth sacrificing buffs for card draws. That said, if you don’t mind the fail chance, Hakuno is probably better at this than either Ciel or BB, since they split the difference between the two. Like BB, Hakuno can control cards for multiple turns, and like Ciel, Hakuno can (mostly) ensure a Servant of your choice draws their cards. They’re also more flexible in terms of positioning, since they don’t need to be plugged-out for the Servant whose cards you want (unlike Ciel) and their card control doesn’t fail if a Servant leaves the field (unlike BB).

So, when would you use this? There are two main cases: farming with cards, and getting extra cards in CQs.

Card farming is basically the same idea as farming with Ciel. Typically we don’t factor cards into farming thresholds because we can’t rely on them, but there may be some cases where being able to use Hakuno to guarantee card access might be more valuable than bringing a third support. Take, for example, a 3/1/3 90++ node. Normally, you’d approach this by looping all three waves, and you’d either bring a secondary ST unit (like Hephaestion) to help out for waves 2 and 3, or you’d just accept that you need someone capable of reliably doing ST levels of damage by turn 2. With Hakuno and a Buster setup, you can use your Koyan buffs and have your DPS NP on turn 1, plug a Koyan out for a Hakuno on turn 2, force cards to kill the wave of 1 with Buster crits, and then force cards again for an NPBB chain on turn 3. This lets you do things like run Black Grail (or a drop CE) on your DPS, since you only have to NP twice, and it can let you do more damage on turn 2 and maybe turn 3 than you’d be able to achieve in a typical Oberon setup.

This is only really worth it for Buster and maybe Quick, as Arts Servants just don’t have the card damage for this to be viable. It also comes with the big asterisk that you can get unlucky and fail to get the cards you need, especially if you’re counting on getting cards on both turn 2 and turn 3. Five shuffles should be sufficient, especially if you only need cards on turn 2, and any Buster DPS with party charge can give you even more consistency, but it’s still not a guarantee.

I’m also obligated to mention that you can apply the same premise to farming with Aoko’s AoE Buster. Unlike the Ciel/Aoko/Koyan/BB setup I mentioned in Ciel’s review, a Hakuno/Aoko setup lets you bring two proper damage supports, in exchange for being subject to Hakuno’s fail chance. My quick probability math says a Hakuno without a starting charge CE should give you about a 65% chance of getting Aoko’s Buster on the first two turns (assuming you’ll use her NP on turn 3), or a 52% chance of getting Aoko’s Buster on all three turns. A 30-50% fail chance is really not acceptable for farming, but if you’re farming with Aoko you probably aren’t worried about being optimal anyway, and event CEs with starting charge make the math a little better, so do with that what you will.

For CQs, support Hakuno’s inconsistency is a little less of a concern, since you can restart if you get super unlucky. Because the Hakunos reshuffle the whole card pool, you can use them to get a Servant’s cards more times than would normally be possible. This is nice for just about anyone—being able to NPAA or NPQQ or NPBB every turn is a substantial increase to damage and loopability—but it’s especially good for Servants who have huge buffs or high damage tied to their cards. Super Orion, for example, has his ceiling meaningfully raised by getting two or three Busters every turn instead of being limited to three per 3-turn cycle. Buster Servants will generally be the biggest beneficiaries of this, but some Quick or Arts Servants may like having Hakuno’s help as well. The big question is whether this is worth losing a proper support. Usually the answer will be no, but in some situations it may be worth it.

As a farmer, Hakuno needs a starting charge CE like Aerial Drive or Cranking. For CQs, you can also consider Black Grail for increased damage. For a supportive Hakuno, starting charge CEs are your best pick, since they give Hakuno more card rerolls to work with.

There’s nothing the Hakunos are obviously missing that CCs can provide. Crit damage CCs are always decent, especially on Buster units. Alternatively, you can give them buff removal CCs or the like to give them a bit of extra supportive utility.

On the one hand, the Hakunos are strong and cheap, and a pair of grails is an easy way to increase their damage. On the other hand, at level 80 they should be sufficient for 90+-and-lower content already, and extra levels won’t push them to meaningfully higher thresholds. Grails also don’t impact their supportive value. If you often find yourself using your Hakuno as your primary DPS in challenge quests, you might consider giving them a few extra levels, but otherwise they don’t really need the help.

The Hakunos are cool Servants. They’re totally respectable AoE Buster generalists, and while they won’t ever be able to do the sorts of things the high-end SSRs can—specifically, clearing 90++ nodes—they will be more than sufficient for most standard content. I don’t know how many players lack a favored high-end AoE Buster DPS at this point, but if that does describe you, Hakuno will be a great get.

For everyone else, The Hakunos are mostly there to be an Avenger-killer if you don’t have a favored Moon Cancer, and to be a card-manipulation option when you want that. Their inconsistency as a carp-manipulation support means BB and Ciel still have a place, but unless you’re specifically trying to set up a 100% consistent card-dependent farming strategy, The Hakunos do pretty much everything you’d want Idea Blood or Faceless Moon for. And they’re free! Hard to argue with free.

Overall: 9/10
Single-Target DPS: 7/10
AoE DPS: 8/10
Survivability: 7/10
Offensive Utility: 5/10
Defensive Utility: 5/10
Farming Usefulness: 8/10
Lunar Conquest: 10/10