Aniplex and Lasengle officially began 5th Anniversary celebrations for the English edition of Fate/Grand Order. As with other anniversary celebrations, the FGO USA 5th Anniversary brought with it a brand-new playable Servant. For players who had “read ahead” to anticipate developments based on the Japanese edition of FGO, this particular Servant was much-anticipated. She’s a Caster-class variant of Fate franchise alum Altria Pendragon (nicknamed “Castoria”, “Castria”, and “Saber (Caster)”).
Caster Altria arrived on the FGO USA 5th Anniversary limited summoning banner. She’s widely hailed among FGO players familiar with her on the Japanese version as a extremely powerful, support-oriented Caster. In that sense, she does for Arts-elemental Servants what Skadi did for Quick-elemental ones and Merlin did for Buster mains. She goes a step further by charging the Noble Phantasm gauges of her allies and having a Noble Phantasm that raises an impenetrable defensive barrier around the party.
For those in search of a surer thing, the FGO USA 5th Anniversary also opened a one-time “Guaranteed SSR” paid summon. Available for 15 paid Saint Quartz (which have to be purchased from the store with money rather than saved up through in-game missions), players can make an 11-unit summon on one of five Guaranteed SSR banners. This year, the banner offerings are arranged by debut year, with all the limited-rarity Servants from a given yearlong period sorted into a single banner. For example, Servants like Edmond Dantes and Gilgamesh (Archer) are all clustered together on the banner for June 2017-July 2018. More recent Servants like Space Ishtar and Ruler Altria are on the July 2021-July 2022 banner. Summoning on a Guaranteed SSR banner guarantees that at least one of the results will be a limited-rarity 5-Star Servant from the banner. The banner also has a higher chance of dropping limited-rarity 4-Star Servants from a given year.
Fate/Grand Order is available on iOS and Android. The FGO USA 5th Anniversary event lasts until July 17, 2022.
