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ateamforumsfanworks · 5 years ago

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Advanced Guide - Arena Efficiency

06-07-2017, 01:32 AM

Originally Uploaded by Forum User: Shiki

This is a followup from my other guide - https://forum.a-tm.co.jp/forum/valky...ather-diamonds

I`m considering making efficiency guides that cover all aspects of the game - from quests, to onslaught, to scenario, to connects in the future as well. For now tho, I`ll write this one since arena has always been my favorite aspect of the game. On the two accounts that I play(ed) I made over 6000 arena and grand arena matches, so I doubt there is something I havent figured out that would surprise me. So let`s get started. This guide will cover the following: -Things you might or might not know about arena -Underrated heroes/stats/status effects that are hidden op -Advices on how to build your team depending on your Power score -Personal hero tier list and recommended team setups

Things you might or might not know about arena Everyone knows arena is a place where a player can engage in a combat with another player(or CPU controlling the player`s team). You earn diamonds and mana for beating your best rank in arena, and daily diamond reward depending on the rank you have at your reset. The reset is at 5 am local(player time) so it differs for each player. One thing you need to know is, once you create your account, Ateam will store your original account creation location in their database and if you change the place you reside(e.g. move from Europe to America for example), the local time will remain the one of the country where you created your account. Here are few thing you might or might not know about arena. 1. Gear skills and basic attacks can be dodged, but action skills and limit bursts can`t be dodged - rather common fact about arena. 2. When you activate a gear skill, your action skill gauge briefly stops from filling - credits to @GICN for finding it out 3. As of recent update, element limit bursts (earthen breath,ice gorge,flame bulb, black hole, divine wrath) count as pure damage (neither ATK nor MATK), thus they can bypass barriers and reflects that are designed to block ATK and/or MATK damage(luflit skill,glacial cloak etc.). Those can only be blocked by skills and gear skills that absorb or reflect the said element damage(Glimmering armor, Arte, Aegir connect dark reflect etc.). Because they can bypass reflects, stacking mages with black hole vs luflit for example isnt that bad of an idea. 4. Reflected elemental damage amplifies if the attacker is weak to the said element. I cant confirm 100% if defenders resistances affect the damage, but I can confirm for sure that attacker`s resistances affect the damage reflected. So if youre resistant to the reflected damage(i.e. Odin to light) you will take significantly less damage, while if youre weak to the reflected element damage(i.e. Freya casting grimoire of accusation skill) you will take bonus damage. 5. Very few people know about this one - defender`s team has a hidden advantage because defensive gears have higher chance to activate on the defender side. This is one of the main reasons why turtle teams are so good. Defensive gears such as Winged Helm, Glacial Cloak, Urd Staff have increased activation chance when used by the defender. The same does not apply for the attacker, so that puts the attacker in a slight disadvantage. While Ateam probably won`t confirm this, nor does any website affiliated with VC, thus giving room for speculation that it`s purely RNG, I and the few others that know about this can confirm that it exist, due to countless observation of our arena matches. 6. Round 1 hero turn order - as you know, the pace of hero transition between different turns is based on your speed stat. However, something not many people know is that, to compensate the low speed of certain heroes(primarily tanks), at round 1 ALL TEAMS USE THE SAME HERO ORDER PATTERN. The philosophy behind this is to give slower heroes a chance to cast their skills before they can get statused by others(primarily for tanks). The order is the following: First Cast - nearest hero Second Cast - middle hero Third Cast - Farthest hero Fourth Cast - Fourth hero Fifth Cast - second hero How can you use this in your advantage - I can give two simple examples on how you can use this to turn the battle in your favor: 1)Your middle hero is a mage with mani little helper at gear slot 1, while enemy second hero is high attacker(like Thor) with winged helm at slot 1. Your hero will cast their mani helper first, hitting the enemy attacker while they are in mid-animation of casting their skill, blocking them from finishing casting the skill. This way they wont have regenerate skill up for 4 turns which will help you take them down faster. 2)Your highest MATK mage and enemy highest MATK mage both have Valhalla staff at gear slot 1, but your mage is your middle hero and enemy mage is their fourth hero - your mage will petrify the enemy mage first. If your heroes have same gear, same target, and same hero order, speed stat will determine whos skill will fire off first. Additional Note: Gear skills have their own animation speed with Elysian Dress being the fastest, while Mjolnir being the slowest. Some skills activate so fast it technically bypasses enemy turn - example if your Hel is in the middle and cast Elysian dress, because of the animation speed, it will cast BEFORE THE ENEMY EVEN CASTS THEIR SKILL (e.g. tanks casting regenerate or something else). If said scenario occurs, once the enemy is out of the status effect (shade), they will attempt to cast THEIR ROUND 1 SKILL, NOT THEIR ROUND 2 SKILL. So basically you can only interrupt skills if both your and enemy gear skill actually fire off(the yellow window with the skill name pops up) 7. Multi target skills(Ranco, Canon, Wolfgang) can hit the same target more than once depending on your RNG. A fun fact- they can also target dead heroes if they were alive during the skill wind up(cast animation). 8. Gear order determines which gear skill you will cast each turn. E.g. slot 1 will have its skill being cast at round 1,5,9 and so on, slot 2 will have its skill on round 2,6,10 and so on. Underrated heroes/stats/status effects that are hidden op Starting with heroes, there are 3 heroes that come to my mind, which many people consider rather underperforming, that are actually hidden op if used correctly. 1)Loki Considered by many as an utter garbage because his skill and lb are MATK, while he`s a physical damage dealer and there aren`t any hybrid gears, Loki has 3 things that actually make him a viable hero in PvP: -High dark and light resistance - most people heavily focus on these two types of element damage so his survivability is pretty decent, especially combined with his high EVASION -His gear confuses the target with lowest MDEF. Confuse in general is very strong stat and if applied to the person with Highest ATK(which usually happens since those tend to have the lowest MDEF), its even better. -His action skill is direct counter to Luca as it does light damage and confuses humans. The only downside is that its RNG based and might not hit the right target. 2)Michelle Considered an utter garbage, she has 2 things that actually make her hidden op: -Highest evasion in the game -Her gear gives her and the ally with lowest evasion(95% chance its the tank) curse immunity - extremely powerful vs anti turtle teams that rely on curse. 3)Mani While not as underrated as the above, she`s still considered lackluster because she doesnt have charm/petrify/ w/e reliable status to hit the front. However shes extremely strong at dealing with the backline due to the fact that almost all backliners are weak to dark. Strong against turtle teams. Underrated stats that are actually OP The only stat I`ll note is Evasion - greatly helps with survivability because if high enough, you can dodge almost all gear skills and basic attacks, making your enemies waste their turns for nothing. Status effects that are actually OP -Blind - while it doesnt disable heroes from using gear skills and activation skills, it makes them miss almost every gear skill/basic attack during the duration of the effect. Sometimes this can be better even than disabling effects, especially if an enemy uses a 1 or 2 turn buff skill before they use their next gear skill, as it will both waste their buff and their offensive gear skill, thus making them have to wait another 2-3 turns till they can activate them again -Slow - one of the most underrated but arguably one of the best status effects in the game. It severely reduces the pace of transition between hero turns to a point where other heroes will be able to do atleast 2 turns before the slowed hero can even move to their next turn. This alone is a reason you shouldn`t underestimate heroes like Nautica for PvP. -Silence - while not as underrated as the above, theres one thing about silence that not many people know - not only it disables the hero from using action skills, it disables them from using GEAR SKILLS as well

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. Advices on how to build your team depending on your Power score I`m gonna break the Power score into 3 sub types: -Early game - from 0 to 100 000 Arena team Power score -Mid game - from 100 000 to 160 000 Arena team Power score -End game - from 160 000 onwards Early game Early game most heroes are still 3* and unorbed, also lack decent gears. This mean they lack defensive stats as HP, def, mdef and are fairly easy to kill. This is why at this range, heroes with AoE type of attacks (Thor, Amaterasu, Odin etc.), AoE gears(stillwater greatsword, thiazi cape etc) and the limited bursts Fimbulvetr and Thousand tomb are the your best option. Usually you will get carried by your 5* ticket hero at early stages so my best advice is to focus on them(orbing, leveling gear etc.) and give them a good bunch of AoE gear so they can one shot or almost one shot any non tank unit. Two things you need to know here; -Most people pick Thor as their 5* hero because of his overall usefulness at connects,quests and arena so it is good idea to have either Freya or Gullveig(preferably Freya) in your team to be able to status the enemy thor. -Tanks have high DEF and low MDEF due to the lack of orbs and suitable mdef gear. This is why mages are more viable early than melee. Additionally, since tanks are more fragile early due to lack of orbs/gear, they rarely survive more than 3 or 4 turns before they get killed. This is why Staff of Anguish(onslaught 2* gear that applies fear for 2 turns to nearest enemy) is INSANELY good as it can entirely block the tank from filling their gauge and they will most likely die before it wears off, if you have solid DPS. Mid game In midgame your heroes are already orbed or almost orbed. This is where gear plays the most important role. Here, heroes have abit better defensive stats so you can`t one shot easily anymore thats why in this range, status effect inflicting gear plays major role in winning your matches. Focus on gear with status effects - valhalla gear,mani little helper, vigrid, Elysian dress etc etc. while still keeping some DPS and AoE gear to take the enemy down easier. Late game At this point all the heroes are orbed, you have solid gear, skills and LB barely take half or 1/3 HP of squishy targets so everything is about who has the higher power score, luck and the most suitable heroes to counter the enemy. Personal hero tier list and recommended team setups Some heroes are better at early stages but wear off at end game(Thor). Others are weaker at early stages but scale better at end game(Thrud). And third type of heroes are very good all arounders (Odin). Additionally, some heroes have a lackluster skill but extremely powerful gear(Hel). Others are very strong as heroes but their gear is lackluster (Luca). And ofcourse some are both powerful and have strong gear (Odin). This list is solely based on their PvP capabilities and not their connect,quest or other content capabilities. Heres my list of top PvP heroes: SS tier: Luca - while I hate her to the bone and promised that I`ll never use her, shes undoubtfully the best tank in the game and nothing really stands above her. She`s also a human and female so she can wear both purity ring and hardstone, making her resistant to charm and petrify. Urd - the best healer and arguably the best all around hero in the game by far. Odin - his combination of buffing and debuffing along with his strong dark and light resistances and AoE damage make him very formidable mage, especially effective on setups that run 3 mages due to his mdef debuff. Freya - the most reliable status effect inflicting mage. Is tanky, has the best magic limit burst, high MATK. Nothing much to say Ranco - the best all around archer in the game. Her skill does neutral damage so you dont have to worry about resistances. Also applies strong status effects and her gear applies a strong debuff that is useful for connects and boss stages(cough 6-6 Forgotten memories hell mode jormungand). S tier: Thrud - tanky, targets the enemy mages. Nowadays many mages lack water resistance(Odin, Amaterasu, Rin) so shes the most reliable damage dealer from the melee heroes. Thor - while he wears off at late stages, his AoE skill with the paralyze effect can still be solid. Especially if you run abit off meta and use him as a tank - he will be able to cast his skill faster thus blocking enemy humans(beasts and elves) earlier at the battle. Young Ymir and Genesis Ymir - both of them have the same strengths and weaknesses - while they deal high damage and bypass barriers, they dont bring anything else on the table like Odin does(buffs/debuffs) to be considered as good as him. Amaterasu - Highest MATK mage in the game, AoE skill, applies defense debuff and burn. I put her as S tier because her gear is rather lackluster compared to Odin and there are plenty of heroes resistant to fire. Matisse - the MATK ranco. The reason she isnt SS tier is because she hits less amount of targets and doesnt have her own gear. Additionally, shes more of a defensive support type of ranger while Ranco can be both defensive and offensive type. Momiji - shes the hero you can rely the most on taking care of the enemy backliners, her gear is exceptionally good. Hel - main reason she is ranked high is (surprise) her gear. It can however be a double edged sword since it can both help you win or help enemy win by time out. Sif and Zato - situational heroes but they have their use especially Sif since she does light damage and heroes like Skadi and Luca are weak to light. Skadi and Niji - they are very flexible as they can be used both for offense and defense. The main problem about them is due to their flexibility, their skill design is made to be viable for both tank and DPS setup but because of that it is lacking compared to real tank and real dps skills - niji barrier lasts only one turn, skadi can status effect only aesir etc etc. Marmalade - extremely useful turtle team hero thanks to her MATK reduction. Luflit - powerful anti mage hero, sadly she is only viable vs heavy MATK setups thus making her useless against melee Hrungir - the opposite of Luflit, extremely powerful vs melee as his skill paralyzes almost all melee heroes(including non airborne dwarfs like niji). However he is easy to status effect (charm) and only hits the front row so 1-3-1 teams for example counter him hard Best end game setups for every role I can divide the roles into 3: Conventional - all around tanky heroes with good offense Full offense - very strong at offense but also easy to kill Turtle - very tanky, low damage, their goal is to stall the game until you time out Here are my personal best setups for end game: Conventional - Luca, Thrud/Saber, Odin, Freya, Hel Focused primarily towards MATK. With gungnir and good bunch of AoE and status gears it can be deadly. Turtle - Luca, Skadi/Hrungir, Witch Idun, Urd, Matisse For me atleast this is by far the best turtle setup in the game. It has everything - buffs, barriers, status effects etc. If youre gonna build a turtle team I strongly suggest you avoid offensive gears and focus on defensive ones(glacial cloaks,druid cloaks, urd staff etc.). Only exceptions you can make are spine crusher, valhalla staff and gun, and curious mask. Offense team This is all depending on what kind of enemy you face. Not recommended against conventional teams Best if you use one melee, 3 or 2 mages and 1 or 2 rangers. Best melee to use include Mia, Ayame (still unreleased) and Thor Mages - Freya, Odin, Amaterasu, Ymir, Hel Rangers - Ranco, Matisse, Momiji, Canon That concludes this guide, I hope people find it useful. Happy PvPing

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ateamforumsfanworks · 5 years ago

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New to Intermediate Valkyrie Connect Player Guide by Maxx

06-04-2017, 08:55 AM

Originally Uploaded by Forum User: Maxx

New to Intermediate Valkyrie Connect Player Guide by Maxx This guide’s objective is to get you covered with all of the game mechanics, as well as giving you good information on how to spend your in game resources in the most efficient way. It’s a pretty long guide, and part or all of its content might get obsolete as the game gets updated with new content and new characters. Also, I won’t be explaining the very basics of the genre: this guide assumes you’re familiar with mobile gacha team based RPG’s. Please note: English is not my native language, so it might look a bit fuzzy here and there. Also, due to post character limits, it will be broken in different posts. If you don't like how this forum formats the guide, this link will provide you the original file, that looks tidier: [REMOVED] Lastly, this is not a wiki. It doesn't contain details on everything. This guide's focus is to get you to play the game efficiently, without wasting time and resources.

Before starting…

Ok, you just discovered about the game, or just downloaded it and wanted to know if it’s a good game you can settle in playing for a long time. So, here is what you need to know:

It’s a Gacha game. This means a few things, such as luck being an important factor in becoming stronger, whales being quite more powerful than free to play users (but in a smaller degree than many other games). Due to this, if you haven’t already spent a lot of time playing, you might consider rerolling (which means starting over again and again until you get a solid start from your first 10x summon), especially if you happen to be starting during the Star Party event, that takes place during the last 2 days and the first 2 days of any month. Getting the hero Urd at the very beginning would be a tremendous help.

The summoning rates are quite low, and aiming for a certain hero (especially the Star Party exclusive ones) can be quite a nightmare. Anyways, the amount of free premium currency handed out is not bad, and in the long run, eventually, even without spending a cent, you’ll probably end up having everything you need to create a good party.

When adding new heroes, most of the times they try to either add new mechanics, or to add a hero with particular skills, rather than simply releasing copies of obsolete heroes with higher stats (like in Brave Frontier, if you know the title). This means that, most of the times, a good hero will always be a good hero even when they add new ones.

All heroes can reach the same potential in terms of stars, but, usually, the most common ones (1star and 2star base rarity) have lower stats and/or less useful activated skills when compared to the rarer ones, although this can be compensated with equipment.

The game focuses more on team management rather than execution. You won’t be interacting much with your heroes when they’re actually fighting. Playing manually still helps even if the user inputs are very limited, but since it’s also a very grindy game (you’ll be repeating the same battles a LOT of times), most of the times you’ll be using the auto mode. Organizing your team composition, as well as which skills they’ll be using and in which order (through equipment management) is the real key factor.

If you’re fine with these points, then it’s a good game for you. It gets updated quite often with content, and, most of the times, there’s a cool event going on, still leaving you some short periods of nothingness where you can focus all of your stamina (the resource used for running content) for upgrading your heroes.

Game core mechanics

Team building

Ok here’s the drill. You’ll be heading a team of 5 heroes towards many challenges, and here’s how it works:

Classes: Positioning

There are 3 different hero classes in the game: melee, mage and rangers, and these will determine their positioning in your team. Melees stay in the front row, Mages in the middle row and Rangeds in the rear row. Other than this basic concept, heroes from the same classes have a positioning priority that is set in stone: you can’t move your heroes around as you like. But don’t worry, most of the times (though there are some exceptions), it follows this logic: within the same class, bulkier heroes tend to stay closer to the front. So, for example a hero who’s been designed to be a tank will always stand before a melee damage oriented hero, even if they both belong to the melee class.

Being in the front means taking all of the basic attacks, but many skills (both hero skills and equipment abilities) target other heroes. There are skills that target all the heroes in a given row, or a hero in a specific position (usually the furthest or/and the closest) and much more, but usually, your front most hero is the one who’ll take most of the damage, so you want a tank to be there.

The ideal party composition is this one: 2 melees (tank included), 2 mages and 1 ranged. The reason is related to what I just explained: there are skills that target specific rows (the closest or the furthest), so, in general, you don’t want to overcrowd your rows. For example, if you don’t have any ranged in your team, abilities that target the rearmost row will wreck your mages (such as Momiji’s). Bring too many melees and Gullveig and Freya will tear them apart quickly (they both target the closest row).

However, outside of arena, chances are that you know what the enemy will be throwing at you, so you can adjust your team accordingly. For example, Hrungnir, one of the connect battle bosses, has a skill that deal damage and paralyzes the closest row, and he’s also very weak to magical damage. For him, only 1 melee in your party (your tank) is perfect.

Classes: Roles and statistics

Heroes from the same classes can have different roles, and, especially for rangeds, this tends to have a great impact on how you should be gearing them.

Melees heroes divide in 2 categories: tanks and physical damage dealers. Tanks should be built with high HP, DEF and MDEF, while damage dealers should focus on ATK first, without completely forgetting bulk, as skills that target the closest heroes are the most common ones, not to mention Hel, a hero that can banish your tank for a while, leaving your next hero open to basic attacks.

Mages are mainly used for damage dealing, but there are some that mainly focus on support. Your damagers should prioritize MATK to enhance their performance, while support heroes need some bulk, just to ensure they’re not the first ones to die.

Rangeds mostly focus on offensive support (debuffing) rather than pure damage dealing and they can either rely either on ATK or MATK. Most of the times, if they use a Gun they use MATK, and if they don’t, they need ATK instead, but if you’re unsure, just check their skill: it always deals damage trough their main statistic. They are usually bulkier than mages, and also have a lot more speed. When it comes to gear, the more important their support factor is, the more speed you want to give them. If they’re more damage oriented, just focus on their attack statistic (ATK or MATK).

The important thing about this is determining whether a hero uses ATK or MATK. With only one exception (Loki), if a hero uses ATK, then equipping him anything that increases MATK is a complete waste, and same goes for MATK users: ATK equipment is a complete waste. This should address one of the most common error that new player commit: I’ve encountered countless mages equipped with swords and warrior rings, and people doing this error are what I look for when running the Valhalla Onslaught (more about this later).

While HP, ATK, DEF, MATK and MDEF are pretty self-explanatory, EVA, HIT and SPD need some clarification.

SPD (Speed) determines the amount of time a hero needs to take a turn. Basically, with more SPD, they’ll be performing their turns faster. This is unnoticeable at low values, but one you hit the several thousands, you can clearly see it in the battlefield. This stat is somewhat important when building a good damage dealer, but not as much as their main attack stat. If you’re trying to build a support and don’t really care about damage, then SPD is the most important stat, as it’ll let you cycle that character’s skills faster.

HIT and EVA determine your chances to hit with your attacks and evade enemy ones. However… they don’t apply to hero skills and limit bursts, and also, they only affect the damage component, as the secondary effects still apply regardless of whether the attack hits or not. This being said, these stats are nice to have, but definitely not something you should aim for.

One last thing about statistics: buffs/debuffs apply to the value you enter in battle with, which is the one you see when consulting your hero’s stats under the column “Total”. You can get these from equipment and other skills, and they have a cap.

Passive buffs you get from accessories can go to a maximum of 50% per stat. They last for the whole battle and can’t be canceled in any way

Active buffs you get from equipment or hero skills have a duration in turns, and have a cap of 50% per stat. The same goes with debuffs.

To make an example of how active buffs work. Let’s say that on turn 1 you gain a 30% MATK buff that lasts 3 turns, then on turn 2, you gain another MATK buff that lasts 3 turns, here is what would happen as the turns elapse:

30% MATK buff (first buff applies)

50% MATK buff (second buff applies, but stays doesn’t go to 60% since the cap is 50%)

50% MATK buff

30% Matk buff (the first buff ends its duration)

No buff (the second buff ends its duration)

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Elemental Weakness and resistances

Just how it happens in many other games, this one also sports various elements. These are Fire, Water, Earth, Light and Darkness. However, resistances to those elements aren't fixed. To make it clear, if a Hero has a light elemental Hero Skill, it doesn't mean that he's going to be weak to darkness. Each hero has its own unique resistances, that you can check in their descriptions. You'll see 4 concentric pentagons there, that represent the resistance level. The second pentagon represents neutrality to a given element, so if the resistance lands closer to the center, it means that the hero is vulnerable to that element, while if it lands beyond the second pentagon, it means that it's resistant to it.

Star rarity frame color and level

Other than equipping them with gear, you can make your heroes stronger in 2 ways: by increasing its rarity level (the amount of stars, to make it clear), by upgrading their frame and by increasing its level

To add more stars to your hero, you’ll need its soul fragments, that you can get from summoning copies of the same hero and from running that hero’s own quest scenario. Adding stars simply adds to the hero’s base stats.

To improve its frame, you’ll need orbs, which you’ll gather from the main adventure most of the time. By improving a hero’s frame, you’ll unlock more equipment slots and add big bonuses to their stats.

In order to increase its level, a Hero needs experience. The exp you’ll get from normal quests is really little, so you’re better off running the Exp/Mana quest (ONLY WHEN IT’S 3x!!!!) or simply buying the exp with mana. If you buy it, remember that the first 20 levels are very cheap, but it ramps up quickly from that point.

Battle mechanics

Now that we have team building sorted and you know what stats to aim for when equipping your heroes, let’s see how battle works.

Turns

A turn consists of an attack action and a wait time

. All of the effects that “tick” each turn, be them a healing effect, or a crowd control effect (such as paralysis), or anything else, take place right after the attack action.

During the attack action, your heroes will perform their animation, such as swinging for a basic attack, or a different animation if they activate on of their equipment skills, or a (usually but not always) longer animation if they’re using their hero skill. If they’re using a skill (either their own hero’s or an equipment’s), they’ll shout the skill name at the very beginning of the animation. During this animation, if any of the following things happen, they’ll be interrupted, the actual attack won’t happen and they’ll go in wait time.

They get struck by a crowd control effect

They take a high amount of damage in a single hit (you’ll notice it as they’ll trigger an animation like they’ve been hit hard)

The enemy team uses its Limit Burst

The hero uses his own Limit Burst during the animation. If another ally uses a limit burst while the hero is performing his attack, it won’t be interrupted, and damage and effects will land normally right after the Limit Burst.

This is something that, of course, you can use to interrupt the enemy skills, especially when you’re running content in manual (mainly guild battles and Valhalla Onslaught). You want to avoid enemy Urd to use her completely broken healing skill? Throw your limit burst as soon as she shouts the skill’s name, and you’ll cancel it.

Equipment skills

When running an attack turn, Heroes will try to activate equipment skills.

At the first turn, they’ll be using the first equipment on their “Weapons/Armor” list. On the second turn they’ll use the second equipment and so on. This means that the order at which your Hero will use his equipment skills can be decided by putting the equipment in the right order.

This is VERY important when planning your strategy, as with this, you can decide when your party will go with burst damage, when you want your crowd control effects, when you want your tank to activate his healing skill and/or his barriers.

Of course, after the 4th turn, the cycle will start again from the first equipment.

Sadly, they won’t always use an equipment skill, and when this happens, they’ll perform a regular basic attack instead, that has a 30% chance to crit for more damage (and a possible interrupt to the enemy’s action).

Equipment skills do not have 100% activation chance. I do not have real numbers at hand, but based on my personal experience, I’d say that they start at roughly 30/40% at skill level 1, going up to 70/80% at skill level 5 (more on how to increase skill level later).

If an equipment slot is empty or still locked, that’s a guaranteed basic attack.

Hero skills and Limit Bursts

Other than equipment skills, you have the only 2 actions that require interaction from the player in order to be used (only when playing in manual, of course).

These are Hero skills and Limit Bursts

You can activate a Hero skill by tapping on his portrait once his gauge is full. When you do, you’ll force a new attack turn on your hero by either canceling its current attack turn or pulling them out from wait time, and it will perform the skill. Remember that animation time for Hero skills are usually quite long, and because of this they’re more vulnerable to interrupts at this time.

The Hero’s gauge fills automatically during wait time and during its attack turn, but only when it performs a basic attack. If he goes for en equipment skill, during the relevant animation, the gauge will freeze. The gauge also fills when the hero takes damage and when it deals a killing blow on something.

Limit Burst has its own gauge that fills automatically over time and gains a small buff when any of your heroes use their own Hero skill. By activating a limit burst, you’ll force your hero out of whatever he’s doing to perform the limit burst. If multiple heroes have access to the same limit bursts, those who weren’t selected to perform it will join, making it more powerful, provided they are not crowd controlled. The bonus is 10% to damage and 1% to stats buffs/healing effect for each hero that’s performing that limit burst (thanks to Rosa X Baldr, the game's wiki's author for this information), but the initial damage will always be calculated on the stats of the hero that was selected to cast the Limit Burst.

A small note on equipping your heroes Other than remembering to not stack up on the wrong attack stat, there are a few things to know. Even if they might look very obvious.

When choosing what items to slab on your heroes, you should think about what role they are performing. For example, your tank is there to defend the rest of your team, so giving him extra ATK is useless. Give him things that will actually help him to perform his role better.

Also, every 3 star rarity hero has access, or will have access (as soon as it gets released), to their own exclusive equipment, that comes in two versions: a 2 star rarity base that comes from mana summons, and 3 star one that comes from diamond summons, and you can have both the 2 versions on your hero. Most of the times (not always, especially for accessories), this is recommended, as, usually, the equipment skills on these pieces are very strong.

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Game content

Now let’s talk about what you can do in the game, but before doing so, in case you already haven’t done this, open up the Ranking tab (it’s a button on the left on the main menu, it looks like a crown) tap and press follow to the top 30 players you find there. This will give you access to their mercenaries, that will make everything a lot easier, especially if you’re just starting out.

Adventure quests

This is the game’s main mode. It’s a lot of short battles that can be either 3 stages encounters or a single, big boss fight. Very easy at the beginning, but it gets complicated as you progress, although, with the help of mercenaries, you should always be able to complete at least with a 1 star rating.

Win with no losses for a 3 stars rating, 1 dead hero for 2 stars, and more than 1 casualty will net you a 1 star rating.

As a reward, you’ll get mana, quick tickets, gems (1 time only rewards) and, most importantly, orb shards, which are needed to strengthen your heroes and letting them use more equipment. Because of this, you’ll be playing these quests a LOT, as orbing your heroes is a very important step to make them stronger.

Arena and Grand Arena

This is where you face other players. Well, you won’t be actually facing them, but just their teams.

Since your opponent won’t be there using its own team, both you and the enemy will be forced on automatic mode, and you’ll simply have to watch the battle.

Grand Arena is the same, except you have 3 battles (so you need 3 teams), and in order to win, you need to be victor on 2 of these battles. Before every battle, you get to see your enemy composition and power score for each one of its teams (this won’t be true anymore once you’ll get past rank 100), so, by sorting your teams before each battle, gaining ranks will be easier than in arena, but for the same reason, losing rank will also happen more often.

When you win, you’ll switch ranking with your opponent if his score was better than yours.

Once you’ve earned all of the game’s 1 time only gem rewards, this mode will probably be your main source of gems later on. If you follow this guide (or if you simply are a smart player), you’ll probably end up within the first 50 of your battle group relatively easy, and as months passes, you’ll end up being just as strong as those whales who sit on the first spots.

Hero quests

Each hero has its own small campaign of 5 quests. By completing them, you’ll earn a handy 1 time only 330 gems reward, plus the access to the quests that has a chance to drop that hero’s soul fragments. This quest can only be run 3 times a day. If you only rely on these quests to upgrade your heroes, basing on my personal experience, I’d say that it takes roughly 110 days to bring a hero from 3 stars to 5, but of course this time can change depending on your luck. It’s a lot of time for sure, but remember, once it hits 5 stars, you’re done with him. The 3 times a day limit only counts for the same hero. To make it clear, you can run EACH hero’s quests 3 times a day, and my personal suggestion is to focus on multiple heroes, the more the merrier, especially if you have bought the 30 days energy pass from the shop. At the very beginning you’ll probably have to rely on mercenaries to clear these quests.

Connect Battles

These are tied to events, but since there's at least 1 available at all times, i didn't include this under the Events section. On these, 3 players fight united against a single boss, surrounded by crystals that have their own abilities on higher difficulties. By beating him, players will get connect tokens and boss specific tokens, which are used to buy equipment. Only one of the player pays the energy bill, while the other two can join for free. Obviously, the one who pays, has access to better rewards, such as the boss' soul shard, additional tokens and a ring that's used to resist the boss' aura on 7 stars difficulty. But still, when you have 0 energy, joining other players' connect battles is a great way to gain new equipments, and thus, get stronger. If you are interested in leeching connect battles, here's a few tips to find many of them:

Ignore the skull symbol on the bottom left corner when it appears. You don't know what boss it will let you fight, and at which difficulty, so it's often a waste of time.

If you're looking for 5 stars or lower battles, open up the chat, go to the connect battle tab and, from there, switch quickly from channel 2 to channel 10, until you find a battle you can join.

If you want a 6 stars or higher battle, do the same as stated above, except that you switch only from channel 1 to 2, and viceversa.Now, the real thing is that these battles have many different mechanics, that become more important as the chosen difficulty arises. For example, Marmalade puts to sleep all female characters, while Hrungnir gets healed if you hit him with physical attacks (those who rely on ATK), thanks to a barrier that's cast on him by the crystals close to him. Also, the crystals are extremely vulnerable to only 1 element, and almost immune to all others. This means that choosing the right team is crucial to getting the job done. Doing the battle on manual might also help, but since you'll be doing these extremely often if you want to get the relevant equipments, it's a lot better if you simply run them on automatic mode while doing other things in real life.

You'll find a full list of these bosses' abilities in the in-game help section (by tapping on the question marks found in the various menus), and unless you're fine with being a burden to the players fighting with you, I highly recommend you to read them carefully, and understand which heroes (and which with equipment) you should be bringing.

Guild Battles

If you are part of a guild, then you'll be doing these every day.

On this mode, all of the guild members can battle opposing guild members in order to find a route to the enemy guild crystal, that will award your guild with victory if it gets destroyed.

On the guild battle map, there will be 3 lanes, and all of them will eventually land you on the guild crystal. Because of this, it's always better to focus on 1 of the lanes and destroy the crystal, and then, destroy the remaining lanes to get better completion %, for better rewards.

This mode has some special rules:

Once you use a hero, you won't be able to use it again, even if it didn't die in battle. Throughout the whole battle, you have only 1 chance of restoring all of your heroes with an easily accessible support skill, letting you use all of them again one more time.

Enemy teams won't heal up if you can't beat them in one try. If anyone faces them again, their hp will be the same they were left with at the end of the previous battle.

And a few tips for you:

Play these battles on manual, to take advantage of the interrupt mechanics. Use your Limit burst to interrupt dangerous abilities, and try to play your Hero skills when they're less likely to be interrupted.

Opponents can still heal during battle, so if your opponent has healers and you know you're not going to defeat him, try to use your Limit Burst right before losing, to prevent him from healing all of the damage before the battle finishes.

Tapping pause and leaving the battle discards any progress, just like the battle never happened. Useful if you think you've been unlucky. You can only do so when your heroes are still alive, when your last hero is playing is death animation it's already too late... be careful, this little trick is VERY important

As a reward from playing guild battles, you get both regular and special guild tokens. Regular can be used to get extra mana, while the special ones can be used to obtain powerful equipment.

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Events

Exp/Mana quest and Orb quest

Let me get straight to the important thing about these. These quests should only be considered when the recurring event that makes Exp/Mana 3x and Orb 5x is ongoing. If said event isn't running, just pretend they don't exist. Also, everything stated below is to be considered valid ONLY if the event is ongoing.

Both the exp/mana and the orb quest have race restrictions that change every day, with the exp/mana one having an “all races” entry on every Saturday. If you're having troubles clearing them, resort to mercenaries, but remember that, if you take a mercenary on the exp/mana quest, you'll be getting exp for only 4 of your heroes.

The Exp/Mana quest is a great tool to level up your heroes and gain a lot of mana in the process. For 30 energy you get around 11k exp per character, plus 3 or 6 medium mana bottles, which is a lot. Also, you can even get a nice stock of quick tickets if you run this quest for a while. I highly recommend running this quest rather than spending your mana to level up your heroes.

The Orb quest is a great way to get a healthy stock of the most used orbs. Run this a lot of times, and you'll be making those annoying purple planet orbs way more easily, and the same goes for wyrm orbs and many others.

On the Orb quest, only 1 race is admitted every day, so finding the right mercenaries to run them might not always be easy, but if you kindly ask in the various chat channels, you shouldn't have problems in finding them.

Valhalla Onslaught

This is one of the most rewarding events of the game, and sports some really great mechanics.

Basically, it's a an endless tower with endless floors, and you get a nice reward every 2 battles, and a very good one every 10 battles, which is at the end of every floor. Also, at the end of every battle you have a chance to get a chest that unlocks itself after some time (Clash Royale style). and here is how it works:

You don't need energy to run this. Instead, at the end of every battle, your heroes won't recover. Their Hero skill gauges will also stay at the same level as they were when the previous battle ended, and the same happens to the Limit Burst gauge, but you can heal them back to full hp and gauge for free every 10 hours, or whenever you want by paying gems (don't do that unless you're a whale).

This rule also applies to your enemy. If you can't defeat them on your first try, they won't recover, and next time you'll face them, they'll have the same hp they had when the previous battle finished.

Having multiple viable heroes is important here, but focusing on a strong all-round team might carry you further. Also you can use your friends' mercenaries here, who will help tremendously to keep your heroes in good health, or to simply solo some fights if you are a new player. You can use them only for 3 battles, but this counter resets whenever you clear a whole floor or you heal your heroes.

The battles here aren't fixed, you'll be facing other players' teams here, and if you don't like an opponent you can look for a new one as much as you like (the mana cost for refreshing the opponent is really small).

Let me tell you, finding the right opponents is the key to success in this event. Even if 2 teams have the same power score, it absolutely doesn't mean that they are equally hard to beat, and power score is the only thing that will be rising as you progress through the tower. Remember that you can also tap on the various heroes composing the enemy team to check their equipment. When things start to get harder, there are many elements that will make your battles tremendously easier, and finding them is only a matter of time. You don't need to have all of them present, but If the enemy's score is a LOT higher than yours, then you want to have as many of these elements as possible, and here's a complete list of them:

Heroes with bad equipment. Enemies with many stars and good frames but poorly equipped are a lot easier to win than teams with low stars heroes equipped with proper gear and an actual strategy. If they're using the wrong gear, it's even better. By wrong gear, I mean, for example, Mages with Warrior Rings (that boost their ATK, a statistic that's utterly useless for them)

Teams composed by only 2 or (quite rare to find but not impossible) 1 rows. This will let all of your skills that target a specific row to hit more targets. For example, if your Freya can charm 4 heroes, or even the full team when she uses her Love Machine, the fight will be super easy.

Teams composed by bad heroes. Let's face it, all of the 1 star rarity heroes do not pose much of a threat in PvP, even if they get evolved, and the same is true for almost all of the 2 star rarity ones.

Teams that DO NOT include healers (Urd, Baldr and, to a less extent, Luca), unless you're have access to branding and you're very confident with it. Healing can be quite powerful in PvP, but if you consider the special rule of this event, it's even more dangerous here. Your enemies won't heal up at the end of the fight... but this doesn't mean that they can't heal DURING the fight, and this can potentially wane all of your efforts if you already know that you won't be defeating your enemy at the first go.

Teams that do not include heroes that you know you're very vulnerable against. This include AoE heavy heroes that use an element you're terribly vulnerable to, and other heroes that use crowd control effects that might cause great harm.

You want to run this mode on manual mode, because, whatever level you are, you'll soon hit the point where, at least on the paper, the enemy is much stronger than you. And with manual, you'll have access to the following options:

Remember that your gauges will start from where they were at the end of the previous battle. This means that if the enemy is almost defeated, you shouldn't use your hero skills if you can afford to, in order to have them ready instantly for the next battle.

Watch the battle. Try to use your Hero skills right after most of the enemy hero have entered their wait time to minimize chances of being interrupted.

If there's a dangerous hero in the enemy team, remember that you can use your Limit Burst to interrupt its Hero Skill.

This is not related to the manual mode, but is still EXTREMELY important. If the battle isn't going well and you think you've just been unlucky, tap on pause and leave the battle. This way everything that happened during the battle will be discarded, and it will be just like you never fought. You can only do this while your heroes are still alive, you won't be able to play this trick while your last hero is playing is death animation. Be careful!

Let's talk a bit about the rewards.

Within every chest you'll be open, you'll find some Onslaught coins, that you can use to purchase event gear at the trader.

The final floor rewards work as follows: On your first 4 floors, you'll get rune equipment. On floors 5 to 10, you'll get an event exclusive piece of gear, from the floor 11 onwards, you'll only get coins.

The random chests work as follows: at the end of every battle, you have a small chance to get either a crimson or a ruby chest. Crimson chests need 1 hour and 30 minutes to open up, while Ruby ones need 10 hours. You can spend gems to open them instantly, but it's not really convenient unless you're a whale. You have only 3 chest slots, but all of your chests will be the opening timer, not just 1 of them. If you have all of your slots occupied, you should STOP progressing until you have at least 1 free slot, as you totally don't want to waste any of these chests. Inside these, you'll find mana, coins, and a rune equipment, with a chance of finding, instead of the rune gear, a very powerful, Valhalla chest exclusive piece of gear, and trust me, you want it. Obviously, ruby chests have better loot and better chances at the exclusive gear than the crimson ones.

Scenarios

We've had this kind of event only 2 times so far, but they might release more, so it's worth explaining.

It's a series of quests that look just like the normal story ones, but have some extra rules:

In order to get good completion rating, instead of just having to let all of your heroes survive, you have to meet some specific objectives, that are described at every quest. If you manage to get a 3 diamonds rating, you'll get an extra reward, that can be either a sphere, extra mana, some rune gear, exclusive hero soul fragments or equipment.

Some heroes have improved stats if used in this event. If you see 2 arrows points up on a hero's portrait, then all of its stats are increased by 50%. 4 arrows mean that they're increased by 100% (which really is a LOT).

These scenarios have always been a good way to get an exclusive hero plus a lot of gems and other nice rewards.

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Resources and currencies: where to get and how to spend them

Real money

First things first, let's talk about the in-game micro transactions. Obviously, I'll skip the “where to get them” part for this topic.

This game has a different approach to them when compared to other titles. Instead of giving you more when you spend a ton money, you actually have a better value when you spend small amounts. Not only this encourages light to moderate spenders to grab some packs, but it also decreases the gap between whales and f2p players. Mind you, the gap is still there, but it's not as brutal as in many other titles.

If you'll ever consider spending a bit of money on this game, I highly suggest you to get the 30 days energy pass. It's a total of 9000 energy given to you over a month, and it helps a lot. Other than that, all of the small cheap packs usually are a good deal, except those that contain rune gear, as ,somehow ,A-team thinks they have a great value...

Gems (Diamonds)

Gems are a limited resource in this game as they are the premium currency that you can either buy with real money, or gain by completing various 1time only objectives, events, your daily quests and from arena daily rewards.

One important thing is: NEVER spend them in the trader., traveling included It's absolutely not worth it. The soul shards you'll find there only belong to the most common heroes, and mana bottles and orbs are so ridiculously overpriced that it's way more convenient to simply use your gems to recharge your energy and get those by playing normally.

The main thing you should focus on is summons, with these 2 priorities:

Star Party. During this event, the game's most powerful heroes are available and you totally want those. Especially Urd. I'd say that, if you don't have Urd yet, this should be your only way of spending your gems. This is subject to change as more heroes get released, but at the moment she's incredibly good on all kind of contents, and chances are that even when new support heroes will get released, she's still be superlative on what she does.

Discounted summons. 1500 gems for a 10x summon is always worth it, and 2000 gems ones are still good.

Exclusive summons. Sometimes, banner exclusive heroes are quite good and might be worth a try or two if you want to get them. A good example is Ammaterasu, with her AoE fire elemental Hero Skill that's very good in PvP and incredibly good on Connect Battles where fire attacks are important.

If you feel like you have all the heroes you need, then using gems to recharge your energy is a strong option.

Mana

This is your main currency, and you'll get it from most of the content. You can use it to level up your heroes, evolve and upgrade your gear and perform mana summons.

There are 2 very efficient ways to get mana in the game:

Exp/Mana 3x event quest. If you actually need to level up your heroes that this quest gives, this is, by far, the most efficient way to earn mana. Remember that experience can be bought with mana, so every exp point you get here will let you save some of this currency

Connect battles (only if you host them). This is another great content to run if you need mana, and you get more connect tokens as a bonus. At 6 stars difficulty, if you don't have any hero to level up, it's even better than the Exp/Mana 3x quest.

The most important thing you can do with mana is mana summons, as this will give you access to nice special equipments and other resources, such as rune gear, spare low rarity equipment, and both blacksmith and soul tokens. To get the latter, you'll have to bring the 1 star rarity heroes to 5 stars first, but it shouldn't take you too much mana to do so.

There are times when performing mana summons is more efficient than others. If you own any star party hero, then you might want to summon when their special equipment is available, or if you'd like more rune gear to help up upgrading your gear, then you might consider waiting for the relevant event to be up (even if, until now, it's been very rare).

Other than summoning, using your mana to level up your hero is another viable option, as the exp/mana 3x event isn't always up, or you simply have only 1 hero that needs to be leveled up fast. Just remember that, while the first 20 levels are quite cheap, it quickly ramps up beyond that, and bringing a hero from lv 1 to 50 costs around 1 million mana.

Rune gear and spare gear: a brief guide to equipment upgrading

Gaining a strong piece of equipment is only the first step. Making it actually powerful takes some resources, and here's how to do it efficiently.

The resources you'll need are rune gear and/or spare equipments you get from mana summons that you don't need.

There are 3 ways to make an item more powerful.

Increasing its rarity

In order to increase an item's rarity, you need to reforge it, using the same item or a reforge (red) rune equipment at the same rarity level as an ingredient.

By increasing its rarity, you'll increase its base stats and both its level and skill level limit.

Note: Connect battle equipments require more of the just described ingredients than normal gear. From 3 stars to 4, you'll need 2 pieces, and from 4 to 5, you'll need 3 pieces.

This means that, in order to bring a 3 star base rarity equipment all the way to 5 stars, you'll need 4 copies of that item, while, for connect battle gear, you'll need 12 copies.

Increasing its level

Very simple, fuse your item with other stuff that you don't need and/or fusion (blue) gear to increase its level. If you use items of the same category as ingredients, you’ll get 10% more experience.

Anyways, if you're using fusion rune equipment, you should only use knives for weapons and armors, and rings for accessories, otherwise you'll waste them.

Increasing its skill level

Increasing a skill's level has 2 effects: it makes it a bit more powerful at each level up and, most importantly, it increases its activation chances.

There are 2 ways to do it.

The most common one is by using rune skill (rainbow) gear. Just like with fusion gear, only use knives with weapons and armors, and rings for accessories. Just ahead, you'll find a list on how many of them you should be using to increase your gear's skill level.

From level 1 to level 2: use a 1 star skill rune item (100% chance).

From level 2 to level 3: use a 1 star skill rune item (80% chance).

From level 3 to level 4: use two 1 star and one 2 stars skill skill rune item (100%), or three 1 star ones (90%)

From level 4 to level 5: success chances drop massively here, and reaching 100% chance is very though. So just use the best you have, but only do that if you have plenty of them.

The other way to get the job done, is to use, as ingredients, pieces of gear that have the same skill. Most of the times, this means using the very same item, but there are some exceptions, like, you can use those common blessed helms to increase your druid's cloak skill level as they have the exact same skill.

This mechanic will let you save some skill rune gear, and, most importantly, it will make all of 1 star rarity accessories quite good, as even if the actual stats they give are appalling even if you bring them at 5 stars, the passive bonuses they bring with their skill (and that can be leveled super easy by simply using the same items as ingredients during fusion) are pretty big, and shouldn't be underestimated.

Lastly, this is a great way to use your spare hero exclusive piece of equipments. If you want to save on skill fusion gear, you can use your spare mana summon versions of the item to increase the skill level on both the 2 versions of it.

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Tokens

This game features many different tokens obtainable from the various events, however, even with those, there are bad and good ways to spend them, so let's talk a bit about it.

Blacksmith tokens

You can get those by selling items you don't need. The only things you should sell are gold rune equipments (which serve for this only purpose) and 2 stars equipment that you don't need and you can't use to level up skills on other pieces of gear. Everything else is better used to upgrade your items.

At the trader, you should use these to buy any of these 2 things:

3 stars reforge rune gear. If you need to increase an item's rarity, this is more efficient than buying copies of the same item (this ONLY applies to item that have a base rarity of 3 stars)

3 stars base rarity items. Since they can be quite rare to find, if you see an item you want, feel free to get it. Keep an eye out for purity rings and winged helms, as they are very powerful and you might want more copies of them, to use them on different heroes.

If you have plenty of them, then you might consider investing a few to refresh the store in order to quickly find what you need

Soul tokens

You can get these when you gain soul fragments of any hero that you already have at 5 stars, and most of them will actually come from mana summons. You can spend them to buy hero souls and hero exclusive equipments.

First, NEVER use them to buy 2 stars base rarity hero souls or mana summon versions of any equipment.

I'd also suggest to not spend them on 3 stars base rarity heroes that might come out from your standard diamond summons, because eventually, you'll get all of them.

The real bread and butter here are the 3 stars version of these special equipments, and, if you have plenty to spend, soul shards that belong to event exclusive heroes that are no longer available. Yeah, they're quite expensive, but since there's no other way to get those, at least it will never be a waste.

Arena tokens

Earned by participating in the Arena.

At the moment there ways to spend them are very limited. You should spend these to get Senna or Tyr soul shards (these are the only 2 arena exclusive heroes), but once you have maxed both of them, you can freely spend them on orb fragments.

Friend tokens

Earned mostly by assigning 2 of your heroes to be the mercenaries that players following you can use, and you can get some extra small amounts by using other people's mercenaries.

Spend them to buy mana bottles.

Onslaught tokens

Earned by progressing on the Valhalla Onslaught, you should use those ONLY to buy this event's exclusive equipment. Anything different is a complete waste.

Connect and boss specific tokens

Earned by participating in connect battles.

Connect tokens should be spent only to buy bangles, powerful accessories with good statistic and very powerful passive stat bonuses as their equipment skill. Again, if you have plenty of them, you can also try to refresh the connect tab to help you finding what you need.

A note on bangles: they are quite rare to find now, mostly because the connect tab has limited slots, and boss stuff has more chances of appearing there, so if recently there have been multiple connect bosses available, you'll struggle finding those.

Boss specific tokens should be used to buy their equipments, since you can earn the soul shards easily if you host your connect battles.

Guild and Legendary Guild tokens

Earned from participating in guild battles. You can also get the regular ones by completing daily missions and if other guild members help you in the guild tab.

Regular guild tokens (the green ones) should be spent to buy mana bottles.

Legendary ones can be spent to buy powerful equipments, but it takes a lot of time to earn them and it requires your guild be at least at rank A. It gets a lot better if your guild hits rank S.

Credits

There's only one person that I'd like to thank, and it's the wiki's author, Rosa X Baldr. His wiki has been an immense help for me to know the various heroes' details, and get started with the game. You should consult it to check more detailed information about heroes, gear, suggested builds. You can find it on reddit.

I hope this guide will be helpful to make you an efficient player, and I thank you for reading.

Lastly, I'm not really bothered to protect this work with copyrights or this kind of stuff, but please, if you post it anywhere else, just state that you're not the original author.

Good luck!

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