EDIT: If you're reading this post now, after Thursday, October 15, 2026 at 20:59 PDT, and you didn't pick a servant with the SSR ticket, it's too late. You can't pick a free SSR servant from this campaign anymore. Read below to find out why.
READ THE OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT HERE FOR THE FULL DETAILS
Who should read this post?
Procrastinators and people who have been too busy IRL to pay close attention to the game over the last month!
- Any NA/English players who haven't picked a free 5-star servant from the 25 Million Downloads campaign
- Any NA/English players who haven't made their free 5-star servant permanent yet
If you already have your servant and made them permanent, this post doesn't apply to you. If you have the ticket but haven't picked your servant or made them permanent yet, read on.
What do I need to do in the next ~24 hours, by Thursday, October 15 at 20:59 PDT so I can still get my free 5-star servant?
PICK YOUR SERVANT IN THE SHOP!
Do I need to make them permanent in the next ~24 hours, by Thursday, October 15 at 20:59 PDT?
No, but you shouldn't delay! As stated in the announcement, and as shown in an infographic in the announcement, there are separate deadlines to perform each action. The deadlines are as follows:
- Thursday, October 15 at 20:59 PDT, ~24 hours from now: Exchange your SSR ticket for a free 5-star servant
- Sunday, October 25 at 20:59 PDT, ~11 days from now: Make your free 5-star servant permanent
I never got the SSR ticket. Can I still pick a servant?
No, you can't. You had to clear Orleans by Wednesday, September 30 at 20:59 PDT and claim the ticket in the master missions by Wednesday, October 7 at 20:59 PDT. Both of those deadlines have already passed. If you don't have the ticket already, whether because you're a new player who started the game after September 30 or you had cleared Orleans by September 30 but failed to claim the ticket in the master missions by October 7, you cannot select a free servant from this campaign.
Which servants can I choose with the ticket?
READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT for the full list of servants.
You can choose any non-limited or story-locked 5-star servant that was added to the game through April 2025. That means Kashin Koji is the newest available servant. You cannot pick Bhima or Marie Alter. You cannot pick a limited servant. READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT or see this infographic, which is also in the announcement that you should have read by now for a complete list of servants.
How do I choose my servant?
READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT for the procedure.
- Go to Menu > Shop > Exchange Event Items > 25 Million Downloads Campaign
- Select your servant!
Which servant should I choose?
That's really up to you, your current roster, and your preferences and priorities. None of the servants are bad and none of them will make or break your account for pure gameplay. There's no objectively best servant to choose. My personal TL;DR recommendation is:
- LITERALLY ANY SERVANT YOU ONLY HAVE 24 HOURS JUST PICK ONE ALREADY
- Your favorite
- (maybe) Waver
- (maybe) a story-locked servant
- See #1 again but with a broader definition of "favorite"
You only have 24 hours to make your choice. Don't think. Just choose. If you're having a hard time deciding, pick the first one you thought of, pick the one everyone else is telling you to pick, pick the one everyone else is telling you not to pick, or pick one at random. It's too late to overthink an optimal choice. Just pick a servant.
If you have an opportunity to do so, you should always pick your favorite. If you have a favorite servant among those available and you don't have that servant, what kind of monster would you be if you didn't pick them? Stop thinking and just pick them.
Waver (Zhuge Liang) is simultaneously the best pure gameplay servant available with the SSR ticket and one of the most likely to be set aside from a meta/efficiency perspective. He's a very good generalist support servant and he'll be getting a buff next year (ETA July 2027) that will increase his utility as a secondary min-turn farming support. You won't go wrong if you pick him. And if you both don't have a favorite and don't want to think about the merits of all of the other servants, he's a safe default choice. But as with any servant you choose or invest in based on gameplay alone, he may get sidelined if you end up using different strategies that don't need him later on.
If you don't have a favorite that stands out and you already have or simply don't want Waver, then there really aren't any clear gameplay picks. My tendency for these selectors is to consider overall gacha strategy and pick a story-locked servant because they won't spook me on other banners. For the upcoming ticket, that would mean Tesla, Lartoria, Quetzalcoatl, Medb, Li Shuwen, Cu Alter, or Sitonai. But you shouldn't let the very low chance of a spook prevent you from picking one of the non-limited servants if you want to.
If that isn't enough for you to decide, I suggest weighing non-gameplay reasons more heavily in general. Which servant would you feel best about having in your roster even if you never used them? Whose appearance, animations, and voice lines do you like most? If you find yourself with decision paralysis, stop thinking and just go with your gut feeling. Don't worry about picking the best servant. Just pick the servant you want most.
If you still can't decide after narrowing it down, you no longer have the luxury to carefully consider your choice. Stop thinking and just pick a servant. Picking LITERALLY ANY SERVANT is better than missing out altogether. Even if you already have the servant at NP50, level 120, and all appends maxed, you can get servant coins and exchange them for grails or something. JUST PICK A SERVANT.
Do I need to do anything to permanently keep the servant?
READ THE ANNOUNCEMENT to see the conditions.
YES. When you pick your servant, they are only in your roster temporarily, even if you're getting an NP level copy. To make them permanent, you must do the following by Sunday, October 25 at 20:59 PDT:
- Enhance the exchanged ★5 (SSR) Servant to Lv. 60
- Raise the exchanged ★5 (SSR) Servant to Bond Lv. 5 or higher
I cannot emphasize enough how minimal these requirements are for most players. Enhancing the servant to level 60 will cost you at most 135 non-class-matching 4-star embers. Raising a servant to bond level 5 is easy. Just throw them in your back line for every fight and they'll be at bond 5 before you know it. This is very easy! Please, please, please, for your own sake, DON'T DELAY ASCENDING YOUR SERVANT AND RAISING THEIR BOND LEVEL. The requirements are so minimal that the vast majority of players should be able to do it within a day after selecting their servant. But I know that some of you will read this, nod along understanding what you have to do, procrastinate, and then in a week, wonder where your servant went. Don't let that person be you!
The one thing that might possibly trip some people up is the ascension materials. If you don't have enough of the materials in inventory...
- ...but have some pure prisms saved and haven't depleted the supply of that material in the shop, you can just get the materials that way.
- ...and don't have enough pure prisms or have depleted the supply in the pure prism shop but you're sufficiently caught up with the main story or picking a main class, Ruler, Moon Cancer, or Alter Ego servant, then there shouldn't be any problems. At most, you'll have to grind a bit.
- ...don't have enough pure prisms, haven't depleted the supply in the shop, and aren't sufficiently caught up on the main story, keep going through the main story to get more pure prisms.
- ...and have already depleted the pure prism supply in the shop but have the new restock tickets available by completing the associated missions, use those restock tickets!
- ...don't have enough pure prisms, have already depleted the supply in the shop, aren't sufficiently caught up on the main story, want to pick Nitocris Alter, and foolishly used your new restock tickets on materials she doesn't need for ascension, may Lasengle have mercy on your soul. Avengers require normal materials, not statues, for ascension. I've done some of the research for you, though, and the sort of good news is that there's a place to farm most of her ascension materials no later than Singularity 7: Babylonia (Primordial Lanugo). You can get there as a new player if you don't delay too much. The sort of bad news is that it sucks to get Hearts of the Foreign God. The best places to farm them, at a rate of about 150 AP per drop, is are either Shinjuku or Salem. You may need to spend over 1,500 AP (5+ days of natural AP) just farming for hearts if you're starting from zero and can't leverage the pure prism shop. But at least it's possible.
Is there anything else to know?
No. Stop reading and pick your servant.
