I don’t even have a pithy remark to open this one with – what a great time to be playing Housamo.

Apologies for the radio silence; life has been a bit hectic! I’ve written a review for the Chapter 8 gacha, but a) there are more important things to discuss, b) there’s only 2 days left to roll in it and c) I’m not really happy with it, so I’ll probably end up skipping this one. Fortunately, it’s really quite easy to summarise:

Both rarities (a pleasant surprise!) of Surtr are amazing (compares well to Aizen and Snow); Arc and Azathoth are both interesting but not spectacular.

In case you’ve missed it, here’s the Second Anniversary announcement, but the two big things from it are:

Two Platinum Salomon tickets, which can be exchanged for a 4★unit of your choice (or some items)

Some insane login bonuses, including 100 stones (yes, 100), 10 million coins, and a bunch of other things

Quite a lot of the event is self explanatory, but I want to talk about what to do with your platinum summoning tickets. The answer, as always, varies from person to person, but as a general recommendation, here’s what I think you should do:

1) Pick a unit you like the look of. For now, at least, Housamo remains a game that doesn’t require specific units to clear content; almost any 4★ unit is going to be viable somehow (Please don’t pick Eita and complain to me though).

2) If the above doesn’t apply for you (e.g. you’ve already got your favourite husbando) then pick a unit you think will fill a niche in your team. This is hard to make a general comment on, but here would be my picks:

Thunderbird (DPS/Offensive support)

Thunderbird is probably one of the easiest units to recommend, even without knowing what units you have. Giving critical to vertically adjacent allies can be a serious boost to any team, and his charge skill giving both Status Reflector and CP increase to adjacent allies is a great boost.

His Default skill combined with his LB1 means he can deal out respectable damage himself, while his LB2 gives him decent survivability. His charge skill also affects himself; between that and his LB3, you can trigger his charge skill several times in a battle quite easily.

It’s also sometimes nice to have a unit with horizontal mobility, but that’s really just an added bonus.

Seth (Tank/Defensive support)

I was a bit cool on Seth when I first reviewed him. I still think his Default and LB1 skills are a bit lacking, but his LB2 and LB3 skills more than make up for it. Combine him with a source of healing, and there’s not much in the game that he can’t tank.

Arsalan (Tank/Healer)

Speaking of healing, Arsalan’s main draw card is his Holy Oil from his default skill – he’s almost worth running for this alone. Be careful not to apply the Holy Oil buff from his charge skill, however; since his charge skill isn’t likely to be levelled, the effect from this is going to be significantly weaker than his Default skill.

Giving Fighting Spirit to allies is also a very welcome boost.

Musashi (DPS)

I don’t really have much to add to my initial review of Musashi; he’s a really solid damage-dealing unit.

If you’re really averse to him, for some reason, Ibaraki and Shuten are also good pickups for DPS.

Volos (Combo)

Volos is an interesting recommendation as he is largely an unremarkable unit (though cute!).

Where he absolutely shines is his LB2. Volos is the only unit in the game (for now?) that can give Barrage to another unit. For the most part, this is a bit unexciting, but for skills that trigger When Attacking, it can be awesome.

He’s not always the best choice to bring along, even when he does combo, but he gets my vote for most interesting unit.

3) Pick a unit you already own that will get significantly improved by +5 to their charge skill level. +5 is a bigger deal than you might expect, but I’m going to need to go into the maths a bit to explain. The formula for charge skill “power multiplier” is this:

1 + 0.5(log 10 (Skill Level))

Charge skills get improved in 2 ways when they level up – their skill effect (usually) improves, and their damage improves. Both of these components improve logarithmically, up to a maximum of 2x effectiveness at level 100.

If you’re not too familiar with logarithms, the graph of how charge skills improve with levels looks like this:

A +5 improvement to charge skill level (so charge skill level 6) translates to a power multiplier of 1.39 – in other words, the unit will deal 39% more damage with their charge skill, and their charge skill buff/debuff effect will be 39% more effective.

For some units, +5 doesn’t mean much (Thunderbird’s Status Reflector doesn’t improve with level), but for some, it can be a significant improvement (Musashi’s Diamond goes from OK to quite strong). If you’re going to improve one of your units charge skills with your tickets, make sure to look them up on the wiki before you do to make sure you’re getting the best value (and don’t spend your ticket if you’ve already got a decent charge skill level!)

4) Items (really!). If none of the above options work for you, then the item trades are not terrible value: if you’re considering this case, then the tickets are worth about the same as a 10-pull to you, or 50 stones. For me, at rank 77 with 90 stamina, the coins are better value than running the weekend 45 stamina coin dungeon with 50 stones. I definitely recommend running the numbers yourself if you’re considering this option (and remember that we’re getting a ton of free stuff from the event login bonuses!).

Hope that helps! If you’re after specific recommendations (or just want to leave some feedback), feel free to drop me a line in the comments below.