#Fate of The Empress Guide: How to build Main Character Scholar

Author: Jiodi

Last update: 2022, August 3rd

The Scholar is the quintessential ‘mage’ of Fate of The Empress. They throw fans at people and hurt them. If you’ve read the wiki or Fate of The Empress website intro stats, etc, you’re going to have a pretty good idea of how poorly the devs understand their own game XD

So the first order of business is to go through some of the misconceptions perpetuated by the people who *make the game*. Without further ado, let’s start with what is correct, the skills.

I. Skills

• Dancing Wind: Active skill of the scholar. Hits everyone for a reduced % of the scholar’s ATK.

• Hovering Swallow: Secondary skill of scholar. Hits three enemies and leeches health.

• Gliding Saw-wings: Rage skill of the scholar. Hits all enemies for more damage than Dancing Wind *and* increases the scholar's CRIT for 3 rounds.

• Disappeared Love: A chance to follow up the active skill used with that same skill.

  • This means that if you launch Dancing Wind, there’s a chance to use it again right after.

II. Gems

MC Scholars (and most other scholars) do not use ACC. The only scholars who use ACC are Li Bai, Zhang Liang, and Lin Daiyu.

There are two basic Scholar builds, fast nuke and slow nuke. There are some niche builds I’ve used like tanky slow supportish linebreaker. For different builds you need different gems: Fast Nuke: AGI, ATK, DMG+, CRIT, RES, EVA

• Pros:

  • Hits hard.

  • Hits fast.

  • Hits everyone.

• Cons:

  • Needs heavy investment.

  • Weak to reflect shields.

  • Triggers Penguin easier.

Slow Nuke: ATK, DMG+, CRIT, EVA, DMG RES, DEF, HP

• Pros:

  • Hits hard.

  • Being slow allows for more defensive focus.

  • Great at cleaning up weak enemies after everyone has already moved.

  • Requires less investment than fast.

  • Less of a chance to hit against shields.

• Cons:

  • Weak to crowd control, needs lots of EVA.

  • Still triggers Penguin.

III. Formation

The format of ‘2 scholars, 2 guards, and 1 Gourmet or Doctor’ is recommended.

=> This is WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong. Wrong on so many levels.

It has several problems:

• Spreads damage potential way too thin: Having to spread your offensive resources across five different damage dealers is just going to just cause you to have five mediocre damage dealers. The only time this is even remotely possible to pull off is if you are one of the top world spenders and can afford to put tons of atk/crit/dmg+/agi gems and crystals on everyone. If you are a massive whale that can afford all that stuff then disregard and do whatever you want, lol.

• Extremely Limited Utility: Scholars and Guards are real good damage dealers, and some of them can do ok as hybrids but you won’t get the support and control you need at higher levels of play.

• You end up having useless heroes: When you have to spread your damage potential you’re going to see how ineffective it is the higher you get. So then you have to push those resources onto your best damage dealers, making the ones left not able to do much but stand there and eventually die.

(Actual real photo of your damage dealers)

So there are the recommended team formation for Doctor.

III.a Slow tanky build: 1 guard, 1 scholar, 2 gourmets, 1 doctor

• Guard: I almost never recommend running more than one guard except for pretty specific conditions. Guards are the most expensive in terms of required investment and running two is extremely expensive. You want your guard to be slow and hard hitting. Prioritize your atk/crit/dmg+ gems on them and use res/eva for any extra slots.

  • Good Choices: Lyu Bu, Zhan Zhao, Sun Ce

• Gourmet 1: You are absolutely going to need sustain (healing) if you’re running a slower scholar. Diaochan/Wang Zhaojun/Liu Shan/Zhuang Zhou are all really good choices for this spot. Mostly because they’re the only ones who actually heal.

• Gourmet 2: You are going to need some support beyond just healing to keep your team protected while you wind up the big swings. Jia Baoyu/Ji Kang/Pan An. I don’t mention Wu Zetian/Linglong because they also increase agility. It’s not that it’s bad, per se, just that it might not be as useful to your team.

• Doctor: Put a doc on your team for control purposes. You almost always want control. Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue/Princess Taiping/Lotus Fairy are all good candidates.

• Scholar This is kind of a wildcard slot. If you want your team to be tankier, run another gourmet. If you want to be able to control the fight a little more and have the acc run a doc run another doc!

III.b Fast damage builds: 1 guard, 1 scholar, 1 gourmet, 2 doctors

• Guard: I almost never recommend running more than one guard except for pretty specific conditions. Guards are the most expensive in terms of required investment and running two is extremely expensive. You want your guard to be slow and hard hitting. Prioritize your atk/crit/dmg+ gems on them and use res/eva for any extra slots.

  • Good Choices: Lyu Bu, Zhan Zhao, Sun Ce

• Doctor 1: Control ends up being really important for fast teams. You want a fast (and accurate) Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue/Lotus Fairy to control potential counter attacks

• Doctor 2: If you have the ACC to handle this, you can run a second control doc, preferably one that can run slower (Linglong(aka Doctor Gourmet), Mi Yue, Daji, Princess Taiping can be run slow). If not, Ying Zheng/Li Shizhen support heroes are great.

• Gourmet: It doesn’t matter how fast and strong your damage dealers are, you need a healer. Zhuang Zhou is the best healer, Diaochan is the second-best.

  • If you choose to run a gourmet that doesn’t have a direct heal, like Wu Zetian/Princess Linglong, make sure you have other forms of healing (treasure skills like Selfless Spirit and pets like Phoenie/Chinchilla) to help keep you sustained during the fight.

• Scholar: Same as with slow and tanky, this is kind of a wildcard slot. If you want your team to be tankier, run another gourmet. If you want to be able to control the fight a little more and have the acc run a doc run another doc!

IV. Pets

Your Scholar mostly has one job - to throw their fan at everyone, sometimes more than once. So to help our scholar do this, there are some great pets we can put on them. I’ll explain some of my favorite choices:

Grumpy Doggo works really well with AOE damage dealers. Attacks that hit everyone like the Scholar’s tend to do a reduced percentage of atk, so ignoring def helps to balance that out and make the attacks hit so much harder. Any scholar build will appreciate this pet.

Penguin is really good on all kinds of heroes, and the MC Scholar is no exception. Because of the nature of the retaliation skill, an MC with a penguin will use either their active skill or their secondary skill, granting you some timely leeches or a quadruple hit that turn. Bulky slow Scholars like this the most, but it can be run with any build.

Snowman This lil guy is one of the best offensive pets in the game, and is an excellent pet for anyone trying to do lots of damage. Any build loves this pet, it’s one of the best possible choices.

Peacock is an insanely strong pet. You’ll end up seeing it on almost all of my lists and suggestions. While the Peacock is great on anyone, MC Scholar really enjoys it among the MC classes. Scholar can be even more prone to dying to shields than MC Guard, as they hit everyone. Cocking your MC Scholar will not only give them one ‘get out of reflect death free’ card, but will also allow them to immediately respond with one of their three powerful attacks. Just, like, if you have a Peacock and are thinking ‘would this be good on my MC?’ - the answer is yes

Brave Kitty might seem redundant, but if you don’t feel like manually running your team for the secondary skill, then this is the pet for you. You get a ton of sustain out of your rage skill hitting and then leeching. Plus the offensive stats are nice.

Ferret is especially nice on MC Scholars because atk is an extremely important stat for classes who’s attacks use a reduced percentage. Stealing 8% atk three times is 24% of the other teams total atk, put very simply (and kind of wrongly, but it gives you the idea). Any MC Scholar likes this one.

Vixen is the fast MC Scholar pet for staying alive long enough to do some serious softening up of enemies without immediately dying to shield reflect. Slow MC Scholars should consider other choices over this foxy cop.

V. Kids

This section will be short and I will probably add on to it in the future. But this is what I recommend for all Scholar builds:

For PVP you see a ton of shields. These can be obnoxious to murderous. I almost always run at least one piercing shield if I’m going to be facing other players.

Arrow Blow hit’s so much harder the higher your MC’s attack *and* the higher the enemy's HP. This is incredibly powerful when taking on higher level NPCs, like Cascade Manor and Elites.

VI. Real World Examples

Extremely High-End (no guard, triple doc)

This team is pretty unrealistic for a lot of people to build, but this is one of the best configurations you’ll find for MC Scholar. The Guiguzi (Reindeer), Daji (Tough Raccoon), and Mi Yue (Penguin) shut down teams with such ferocity you’ll be lucky to even move. And if you do get a chance to move and manage to kill some, the Mozi (Peacock) hits hard and can bounce back up if defeated to hit even harder with his rage skill. The MC Scholar is pretty fast, but balances bulk to run Snowman. Kids are nukes (see above if you are the type to not read top to bottom). Do not run this team if you can’t invest in all of these heroes.

Dolphin-Tier Fast MC Scholar (double gourmet sustain)

Don’t be too concerned with all the limited URs, they can be replaced by SSRs/non-limited URs fairly easily (except Daji, who is her own kind of monster). This team focuses on softening up opponents with the MC Scholar’s AOE atks and Li Bai’s followup attacks. This should put enemy heroes within Gao’s powerful extra damage threshold.

Slow Nuke (double gourmet, no guard)

This squad utilizes Jia to protect a faster Daji/Mozi/Li Bai while MC and ZZ go tanky. Daji to control enemies, Mozi to soften, Li Bai to soften/follow up, and MC Scholar to clean up the board at the end of the round.

Cheaper Alternatives:

• Daji/Guiguzi/Mi Yue: Princess Taiping, Yuji

• Zhuang Zhou: Liu Shan, Wan Zhaojun, Diaochan

• Mozi: Lin Daiyu, Li Qingzhao, Zhou Yun, Li Shizen

• Li Bai: Lin Daiyu, Li Shizen, Bianque, Song Yu

• Prince Gao: Sun Ce, Lyu Bu, Zhou Yun

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