Elza Awakens!

Elza Awakens!

Kind of a big deal for me today in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius. Elza, the Goddess of Creation, has awakened to her final form. Why is this cool? Because she's the Goddess of Creation. That old joke that goes, "Be yourself. Unless you can be Batman, then be Batman"? Well, if you can be the Goddess of Creation, wouldn't you want to be?

She's special because she's a 5 star base unit. Quite a lot of mobile RPGs have a "gacha" (aka slot machine) mechanic, where the units necessary to take on end game content are locked behind some sort of random draw. In Star Trek Online, the best ships come, not from shipyards, but from lockboxes that cost real money to open for a very small chance at something worthwhile. Neverwinter Online locks high end companions and mounts the same way. DC Universe Online has top-tier abilities in lockboxes. Almost every MMO I have played in the last few years -- Final Fantasy XIV gratefully excepted -- has decided that targeting "whales" is not only desirable, but necessary.

FFBE is no different. You can draw common "friend point" units, one-two star base units, for free. Every day, you can spend the cash currency ("lapis") for a three-five star base unit. Naturally, you're way more likely to get a three star. You only have a half percent chance at a five star unit. Whales will spend thousands of dollars to pull a five star.

Just on the daily half price pull, with lapis earned in-game, though, I pulled Elza, a five star base. My first in months of playing. She's not even a Final Fantasy character; she's from Brave Frontier, a mobile RPG by the same company. (We get Brave Frontier characters; Brave Frontier is getting Brave Exvius characters).

Being a five star base means she gets a six star awakening; not all units do. But to get that six star awakening, I needed to gather a bunch of rare materials (which I did during the previous event, just in case I should need them), and level her up to the five star max level (80). That took quite some time. I was just able to do it this morning because of another event that opened today, the Cactuar Dunes, which drop leveling items.

So, got her to 80, awakened her, and now she's at six stars -- but level 1. She needs to now get all the way to level 100. She also needs to get a Dual Wield materia (which I am in the slow process of grinding for; it takes months unless you spend money), and there's other materia I need that I don't have the characters for. It takes a specific character to farm trust mastery for his or her or its trust mastery reward (like, Dual Wield).

I've been using Elza all along in various events for which she gets a bonus as a Brave Frontier character or just as dark magic user. Today, the Maxwell event opened. This is another Brave Frontier boss. Supposedly she has ten million health and revives herself when he is killed and substantially heals herself every three turns thereafter. Elza is designed to be incredible at this event.

Too bad she's level 1 again, though.

(edited: Maxwell is a she.)