This is the one spot where progression becomes a little bit shitty, I probably said it before but I'll say again, this is one of the few actual gripes I have with this game. Jerusalem/Camelot took a long time to be released, and it was aimed around people who have been playing for a while and have basically maxed or almost maxed their servants by that point.
Which is reasonable from a certain perspective, players had many months to do so... *for* players who have been playing from the start. For new players, it's tougher to get ascension materials because events start to expect story progress and good farming locations want story progress and basically How Do I Get These Things If I'm Not Strong Enough To Get To Where I Get These Things(TM)
By all means I love the game but good lord they don't like making it easy for new players to jump in (*without friend cheesing everything). You can't replay old events unless a rerun is happening, so new players just get shorted a boatload of materials
Good news, Camelot is the last actual spike in difficulty for a very long time - the chapter directly following it is no harder, and if you can clear Camelot, you can clear it. Same goes for everything up until the currently released content. Camelot itself is just a big spike for some reason compared to what came before it, so it is a bit of a hurdle to get through, but it should actually be quite smooth sailing from there on out. You'll be able to reach the end, participate in all events, farm materials at your own pace... but you still have to deal with Camelot.
You CAN totally cheese the singularity with a friend's Herc or Cu Alter, and it's great that that is an option for people who wanna do it, but IMO it'll never not be lame that it's basically an option forced on newer players because ascension mats are hard to get which makes it unreasonable to properly raise your own team to an appropriate level for the game's main roadblock.
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Mini-rant aside, if you get stuck anywhere, friend supports can pull you through almost anything. NPC supports don't hold up very well in Camelot so you're probably expected to mainly use friends here anyways. (though in the next singularity, NPC supports start really shining, having high NP levels or even grailed level caps)