This page is for explaining any possible differences to canon FGO BotFS has, as well as making sense of game mechanics. This will get updated over time whenever new chapters release, and there will be a notification in said chapters' notes sections. Whenever something new gets added, it will have a [NEW] sign in front of it, so that you don't have to go through the whole thing carefully to spot the differences. These signs will be removed whenever something newer gets added.

It is recommended to read through at least Chapter 9 before reading all this stuff.

[IMPORTANT]

If you don't want to get spoiled for some things, don't go any further than this first chapter. Starting from chapter two of this document there will be information on certain Servants, and reading them can result in getting spoiled, thus reducing your overall enjoyment of the story as a whole.

.

Master stuff:

Mystic Codes:

From the start, only the Chaldea Mystic Code, Combat Uniform and Mage's Association Uniform are available, but more will be added in the future. Not all of the ones available in game though, and not too often.

A notable difference is the appearance of most of them, explained by a more advanced creation process, rendering large parts of the canon ones unnecessary. The basic Chaldea MC looks the same, but only the jacket itself has usable spells. The boots and stuff have protective, passive spells, but that's about it. The Combat Uniform is the female version, but consists of only the parts that cover arms, shoulders and neck. No full body suits here. Same with the MA Uniform, but it's just the male robe. The reason for the male option being chosen is that the design is just cooler = It has a hood, the female one doesn't. Truly, sexism has gone too far this time.

This also means that multiple Mystic Codes can be worn at once, like the Combat one under the Chaldea jacket, and MA one over it.

As for how a weakling magus like Ritsuka can use the Mystic Codes' spells, refer to Chapter 8 for a full explanation. The individual spells and their effects also get explained in the story when they are introduced.

As for the recharge period between uses: Take the amount of cooldown turns each spell has, turn them into seconds and then multiply them by ten to get the approximate times. Whether a leyline link to Chaldea has been established determines whether min or max turns are used.

For example: Chaldea Mystic Code recharge as seconds:

No leyline link:

First Aid: 90s. Momentary Reinforcement: 150s. Emergency Evasion: 150s

Leyline link:

First Aid: 70s. Momentary Reinforcement: 130s. Emergency Evasion: 130s

Command Spells:

This is kind of a mix of canon and my own additions. Unlike in gameplay, the Command Spells don't just "grow back" both in ingame story and adaptations. (Like how does that even work? Where's all that mana coming from?) Guda only gets three of them per Singularity before needing a refill in Chaldea, which is also what I'm going with. Means you can't just spam them. Rest of the differences come mostly from me though, since while we know that Chaldea Command Spells are inferior to normal Grail War ones, the details on that have never been particularly clear.

For a full explanation for limitations, refer to chapter 8.

From Servants in general:

Summoning:

Saint Quartz are created when a Servant's spiritual body is destroyed, their fading Saint Graph collapses, leaving the stones behind. The jewels are essentially formed of leftovers, things that the Saint Graph received with their Servant body, left behind once again when they fade from the world. Essentially, if a Servant's Saint Graph is the contents of a book, these things are the covers, not ultimately having any greater purpose than keeping the contents together. To put it simply, these stones are like someone took the covers off a book, scrubbed them clean, and left them behind as something that could fit in just about any book. This is also why they enable the summoning of new Servants, and why they are consumed during summoning. Note: [Only Servants that disappear due to excessive damage leave Saint Quartz behind, since they're created through the collapse of a Saint Graph. Servants fading away naturally, such as Cú Chulainn in Fuyuki, don't leave any.]

Each piece of Saint Quartz guarantees a new Servant upon summoning, but (much like in the game) the real issue is the number of Quartz available.

[No duplicates] Same Servant won't get summoned multiple times. This includes the same Servant in different classes, such as Cú. Thus, Lancer Cú won't get summoned since CasCú is already in Chaldea. However, there are exceptions in cases where the two Servants are technically of the same origin, but they are each distinct enough, so both of them can get summoned. For example: A certain edgelord. (Class changing will be possible in the future and will be talked about later.)

Deployment:

To start with, only Mash and one more Servant can be sent to a Singularity at a time. The reason for this, (other than balance), is that Chaldea's systems weren't designed to transport more than one Servant with a Master, since there were supposed to be 48 of them instead of just one.

The number will increase in the future as we go through the Singularities, but it will never surpass 6. Six + Mash is the maximum, otherwise Chaldea could just completely steamroll most of the story.

There will be a few more limitations in the future, but they'll be talked about in the story.

Ascension:

Servants can undergo Saint Graph Ascension in Chaldea, 4 much like in the game, but there are a few additions to this:

The materials themselves don't matter, as long as they're something solid with magical energy tied into it. For example: Nobu doesn't specifically need some golden skulls pumped into her Saint Graph to ascend. Things like dragon fangs that make sense in existing are a good example of materials in the story. Embers are still a thing, and will get some more fleshing out as the story goes on, but Monuments and stuff aren't around.

First Ascension fixes any possible lowering of a Servant's parameters that came as a consequence of Ritsuka's ineptitude as a magus. For example, Classic Seibah:

First summoned:

Strength: B, Endurance: C, Agility: C, Mana: B, Luck: B, NP: C

Ascended:

Strength: A, Endurance: B, Agility: B, Mana: A, Luck: A+ NP: A++

Further strengthening doesn't increase their abilities that drastically, but instead improves their entire being overall, like explained in the story. To explain approximately how much they improve, here's a numerical example:

Note: Don't take this example literally, because there's more to strength than just pure numbers. This is just the clearest way to explain it.

So, if we think about parameters as numbers, like E=10, D=20, C=30, then a fully ascended Servant with D-rank parameters would be around the 24-26 range. Not enough to raise their rank fully, but it's still a noticeable increase.

Servants also don't get new clothes upon Ascension, like to use Seibah as an example again, she has her armor since the beginning.

On the other hand, Ascension can unlock a Servant's "sealed" abilities. As an example, though he won't be showing up for a while since he would make some things too easy, Herc would have his usual NP God Hand as a Berserker, but by fully ascending he would be able to properly use Nine Lives, even though it's usually unusable in his class. And as a bonus, he'd get his sick ax. As another example: same thing for Achilles and his spear NP: Diatrekhōn Astēr Lonkhē. When summoned as a Lancer, the spear would gain abilities similar to Gáe Buidhe, in which wounds inflicted by this spear cannot be healed as long as it exists. Since he already has the weapon, Ascension would remove the limitations from it. Same with Lü Bu's God Force. Similar cases will be addressed in the future.

OC Servants:

There will be one [1] for each Main Story Singularity. No events. Just Main Story, with the First and Final Singularities not having one. There is a slight aberration to this in Septem, for reasons explained in detail there. (One of them being that the story is bad.)

They will never be the strongest Servant in the Chapter they appear in. Mostly 'cause that just wouldn't be fun to write, or to read. Like, imagine if the Servant added for Orleans was someone like Erlang Shen, who can just go: "Haha, mountain disintegrating eyebeam goes brrrrr" and solo the damn story.

The Saber summoned in Chapter 8 is the only one Chaldea summons. The rest will be in the Singularities before the Chaldeans get there, meaning they aren't automatically allies upon arrival. Though they will be summonable to Chaldea afterwards.

Don't bother asking for a certain character to be added in, since the particular Servants have already been chosen, most for a few years. And yes, all the way to JP's newest story chapters, though the newer ones are still mostly drafts at this point. Most Story chapters also have 2 possible candidates, in the case that one of them actually gets made into a character in the game. Honestly, really hoping this won't happen, since the replacement Servants' stories aren't as fleshed out as the main candidates, meaning I'd have to seriously rework most of the planned story structures.

If a character gets added into the Fate canon as a Servant after I've already got them in the story... Well shit. I will most likely just roll with my own versions, but might need to make compromises depending on their story importance. I've tried to keep most of my Servants on the "literally who?" category, but FGO really likes throwing some of those characters into the game without warning, so it's hard to guess their choosing process.

Each will get profiles, which will be in the following "chapters" of this document. They will be in order of appearance, so for future readers: reading them before the Servant in question is properly introduced is heavily unrecommended.

Chaldea revisions:

Actually has more staff than just Roman and Méuniere, lmao.

This will get updated more than any other section, since most of the relevant stuff hasn't actually appeared as of chapter 9.