Solo Leveling: AriseFernInformation and Guide

The last character introduced with the collab, Fern, is a powerful Fire Damage Dealer that focuses on quick sessions of burst damage. Let’s discover together how she performs!

Fern is an ATK scaling Fire Mage whose kits revolve around her buffs - a lot of buffs. Her kit is actually very simple at A0, with her skills having no special gimmicks outside of her Basic Attack being a 3-stage attack that automatically activates when you begin the combo. After using her stage 3 attack, she will activate her Core Attack once. Fern is very true to her canon counterpart: she has a lot of potential that can be unleashed with experience and dupes. Maybe the era of Fire humans is upon us?

Ascension Passives

• At A0, Fern starts with the [Magical Prodigy] and [Mana Power Tracking] buff on. [Magical prodigy] increases her Attack by 10% and when her mana is above 50% she gains an extra 10% Attack and her mana consumption is decreased by 5%. Meanwhile, [Mana Power Tracking] increases Fern’s damage to bosses by 30% and increases her precision by 5%. 

• A1 is when things start to get interesting. When she enters a stage, Fern gains the [Basic Quick Shot] effect. Meanwhile, using her Basic Skill 1 or 2 activates the [Basic Focus] effect. Her other two buffs are also improved. That’s a lot of buffs, so let’s summarise what they all do at A1.

  • [Basic Quick Shot] increases the Attack Speed of Fern’s Basic Attack, Core Attack and two Basic Skills. She now activates her Core Attack once after using her Basic Skills. Using her Core Attack and Basic Skills decreases the cooldown of her Basic Skills by 25%. Suddenly, keeping her MP above 50% isn’t looking as easy as before.

  • [Basic Focus] increases the MP Consumption of Basic Skills 1 and 2 by 12%, but in exchange, it increases the damage of Basic Skills by 25%. This buff can stack up to 4 times.

  • [Magical Prodigy] now increases ATK by 20% and when MP is above 50% it’s increased by an extra 20% and Skill Mana Consumption is decreased by 10% instead.

  • [Mana Power Tracking] now increases damage to bosses by 60% and precision by 10%.

• A2 increases the Fire Damage dealt by 20%. Every time Fern uses her Basic Skill 2, she inflicts the [Fire Damage Increase] debuff on the enemy, stacking up to 60 times and increasing the Fire Damage Taken by 0.3% per stack.

• A3 grants Fern 3 more personal buffs, as she clearly didn’t have enough text. She activates the [True Sight] when entering a stage and the [Dispel Magic] and [Defense Magic] when tagging in. [True Sight] grants Fern 5% Critical Hit Rate and 10% Critical Damage. [Dispel Magic] removes all debuffs from the team when she switches in and [Defense Magic] grants Fern a shield based on 20% of her Attack and decreases the damage she takes by 20%.

• A4 grants Fern 10% Critical Hit Rate and 20% Critical Damage, and the [Fire Damage Taken] debuff now increases the Fire Damage by 0.50% per stack. No more skills for now!

• A5 Fern’s Ultimate now always deals Fire weakness damage regardless of the enemy’s element. Nice? Her True Sight is also enhanced to inflict the [Seismic Alert] effect when skill 1 or 2 hits the target.

  • [Seismic Alert] is a stacking buff that increases Fire damage by 10%. This buff has 5 stacks and when you hit the maximum number, you will lose all stacks and activate the [Seeker’s Gaze] effect.

  • [Seeker Gaze] increases Fire Damage by 60% and Defense Penetration by 10% and lasts 20 seconds - while this buff is up, you cannot gain [Seismic Alert] stacks.    

Weapon and Gear

Fern’s weapon, Fern’s Staff, increases the Critical Hit Rate and Critical Damage of her Basic Skills by 10% and 20% respectively, when maxed, but the most important part is that it grants Fern 100% of her MP back when using her Core Attack once every 30 seconds. This is super crucial in ensuring Fern can maintain a burst-like playstyle, making it a no-brainer investment.

For gear, you should either run the Armed+Expert trusted combo or infamy in team fights.

While we generally don’t go much into details on the cores, it’s important to mention that due to the way Fern works, it’s super effective to get Max MP cores on her, as it gives better returns compared to running Crit Damage or other offensive stats. You can go with a balance of 2 max MP and one MP Consumption Reduction to ensure she properly bursts with her skill rotation.

Team Setups

When it comes to teams, Fern is a Fire DPS that can spam skills faster than the rate Netmarble adds packs every patch and a 30-second cooldown to recover all her MP. Because of that, she benefits a lot from having Stark in the team since it’s a Fire breaker that also benefits from having a lot of field time. Gina is a great third member you can put in the team, but you can even run Frieren in after her buff and she’ll be happy to look over the lovebirds. 

Should you roll for Fern?

Let’s start with the usual disclaimer that collab characters are generally a once-and-done experience, meaning if you want the characters, you SHOULD roll for them regardless of meta. 

When it comes to Fern, she’s a super-powerful Fire DPS that has a lot of future potential even as a sub-DPS due to her debuff increasing the Fire Damage received by the target. This is especially relevant for Guild Boss, as usual, since mono teams are a thing and she can deal a disgusting amount of damage while supporting the rest of the team. For other PVE content, she's also a powerful DPS, but we know how prone Netmarble tends to be with power creep and more importantly, Fire is already a competitive element, meaning you might want to consider saving your resources (quite limited after back to back collabs) for elements in need of more improvements especially if you are F2P or a Light Spender. All things considered, you can’t go wrong pushing her to A5, provided you have the resources saved for future characters.