Action Taimanin Starter Guide v1.0


Action Taimanin is a mobile and steam 3D action game based on the Taimanin franchise. It is developed by a branch of Gremory, which itself the SFW brand that mirrors Lilith. If you're here chances are you already know what this franchise and that company really are. Despite the brand's expected "renown", this particular game is still very obscure and as a result very little of this game is documented and few resources exist.

As a result, this guide is intended to be a condensed resource that includes as much information that could serve as a point of reference for new players.

If you know or have a community in a different language and would like to translate this or parts of this into your language, feel free to do so and if you need my help contact information is at the bottom of this document.

News and Updates:
https://x.com/Action_Taimanin

Action Taimanin discord:
https://discord.gg/fQTdDYQQ


What you're getting into

Welcome, new player.

If you're reading this then you likely have no idea where to go or where to start. Don't worry, that's what this guide is here for.
If you haven't begun playing the game yet and are looking to make a decision know that this game is slow paced and not very grinding or time intensive. The important events often last a whole month, it is very generous with its free resources, and the characters and costumes are set purchases with no gacha tied to them nor is it necessary to experience the characters. If you ever feel burned out you can take a break for almost a whole month and still be in time to catch up, missing out probably only minor login or weekly bonuses (with exceptions of course).

The core reason why people play this game are the following

  • To view with the characters in a 3D Environment and witness their intended abilities as per the lore suggests.
  • To experience a more relaxed story focusing on the world of the series without the pressure or expectations of the NSFW side of the franchise
  • A mobile game where the important things such as characters and their costumes are purchased for a flat fee rather than a gacha or lootbox
  • To recurringly play a 3D beat-em-up that simple to play in short bursts without an expectation for you to be glued to the game or pour hours daily into them

The necessary power to experience the game is very low, so past a certain point most content becomes trivial for any account and you will have to chase the challenge yourself. That said, there's no real need for you try and push your account past a certain threshold, so unless you plan to compete in leaderboards you will never really feel a necessity to spend gems or real money for power and once your account is stablished.

That said this game is far from perfect. The content many ways it is very shallow, the content is frankly pretty anemic and very short. Monthly content can easily be consumed in a few hours, daily and weekly tasks can be done within minutes, and updates to content are limited in a bi-weekly format and half is repeat of older events. The team developing this game is said to be like 10 people so keeping your expectations grounded is important.

The gameplay can be anywhere between button mashy and repetitive to being diverse with surprising depth depending on both the character you pick and your interest as a player in enjoying the game. Similarly, character building can be reduced to either equipping the same build for everyone or fooling around with experimental but ineffective builds depending on your desire as a player to do so. The game will not by any means challenge you or encourage you to play around and experience whatever depth it has, that comes from your interest as a player.

PVP content is basically nonexistent, you never truly interact with other players and in the modes where you participate in leaderboard for prizes you don't have control of your character, relying on AI controlling your characters. That said, the ceiling needed to obtain the most important of the rewards is very approachable, so you will never really miss out on much.

A lot in this content is missable, and a lot of power is gatekept by time. Newer accounts will struggle a lot to penetrate into leaderboards as a lot of it relies on limited gear no longer in circulation, and the ownership of gear impacts your performance a lot so older accounts have a very distinct advantage, even if you whale. However, this gap will never be truly felt unless you actively try to chase these leaderboards.

That said, welcome aboard.
We will always welcome and help new players.

Censorship and Platforms

This game has several platforms that you can choose to play this game, those being Steam or Stove for PC, Apple Store for iOS and either Google Play or Galaxy Store for Android. The biggest difference between them is censorship.
Do know that this game is multiplatform and you can share the same account in any platform so long as you bind the account to a password. So, you can play on steam at home and on your phone at work, so there's no real need to commit to a particular platform.

Platform Description
Steam PC is currently the best version of the game, it is completely uncensored and it has the most reasonable prices for the paid packages, should you opt to spend. Stove is apparently the same, but I have no way to confirm or deny this.
Google Play Currently the worst platform for the game and for many devices the only platform on Android. After a very targeted attack by google on this game it not only boasts the most censorship on certain costumes it also hides a lot of costumes, banners and packages. To top it off, it's also more expensive than other platforms on the things you can purchase. You can still view them in this version if you use a different platform to obtain them, however.
Galaxy Store The best experience for android devices right now, as it not only completely uncensored but it also has roughly the same prices on packages as the steam version. The big problem is that the store is only available on Samsung devices unless you find and install the current apk.
Apple Store The only choice for iOS devices and has the most censorship. Most costumes are covered with some form of body suit or bandage that looks awkward; however, nothing is hidden or unavailable for purchase unlike the Android version.

If you're on Android and you wish to use the galaxy version without a Samsung device you can actually download the game in google play and install the galaxy apk to get around the censorship, however I don't know the method very well so you'd need to ask around in a discord server or a forum. I happen to own a Galaxy S25 Ultra, so such needs are alien to me.

Just so you know, this game is not graphically demanding and is very compatible with weaker devices and runs relatively well. It ran like butter on mid-range phones 5 years ago, for reference so as long as your phone or your computer was released on the last 5 years chances are you can run it on the device or on integrated graphics.

Booting Up

So! you started the game. Right away you'll be hit with your first decision
Starter Pokemon

You can choose whoever you want. Remember this is a license-based game so your own personal preference and enjoyment matter the most. If you still want to be meta, the best character of the three is Yukikaze she will give you an easy time and she has a lot of potential later. Asagi gives you strong clutches early on and can cheese a lot of content but will fall off later. Sakura has the highest potential for raw damage, and has a lot of good traits, however she is more vulnerable and thus she's harder to use.

Regardless of who you choose, you'll want to pick a designated meta character later which is going to be someone else other than these three.
You may read the story if you like. Personally, I do like the story, do read it once and relax a bit before diving in. You'll be sent into a short tutorial. From there the game will take you to a brief tutorial of the menus that you can totally skip.

One of the first things you should do is preview the characters you're interested and check which are the ones that you actually want to get. Don't focus too hard on them being meta, even if your choice isn't the best of the best the game still has a lot of room for you to play around your favorites.

Preview1
Preview2
Preview3
Preview4
Preview5

Now when you first login you'll be given a whole bunch of free stuff for making a new account, along whatever campaigns or events are currently active. From the things you get as you start your account, you'll be guaranteed 700 gems from logins and monthly packages, 10 R tickets and one UR ticket. With this you can roll for stuff and begin gathering resources.

Banners have a discount when they first appear and you do need to own things for your collection so your initial short-term goal is to gather three characters, your starter, a personal favorite pick and a meta character that you can fall back on. Once you've defined who they are you can begin playing the game. You don't need to get the characters right away, just map out who exactly is that you want. If you need help to pick characters, later on I'll tell you who are the best choices for new players and which characters to avoid early on to prevent you from getting frustrated.

The game is very generous and things like weapons and supporter can easily be obtained for free over time, however having a strong UR weapon for your character of choice or a strong supporter to equip will take you a long way in the first few days. If you have well defined who you want and have the patience, I suggest you reroll.

Early Game Character Tier List

During your first few days you will receive an item called "Task Force Document IV" twice which will each let you select one character for free AND you'll also get a voucher that lets you pick specifically either Emily or Shisui.
Characters in Red squares have a lower gem cost than other characters and shouldn't be acquired with the task force document
Characters in Green squares included in the Task Force Document
Annerose, squared in Yellow, can only be acquired with a paid package for real money

DISCLAIMER: THIS TIER LIST ONLY APPLIES TO FRESH NEW ACCOUNTS WITH NOTHING. A lot of these characters actually get better with a weapon they can reroll for or once you have a stronger account with supporters or weapons that can patch up their strengths.
screenshot
S and A tier characters will get you through hard content with ease early on. Even if you don't reroll for their weapon these crazy characters can still push through with their skills, and in the case of S tier characters through their innate traits alone.
B tier characters are also very strong early on but are often not as good as the above tier characters having as limited resources or, in the case of Tokiko, has radical strengths and weaknesses that can make them very powerful but brittle.
C tier characters are pretty fine, and all of them have good weapons in the UR ticket gacha pool or flat out prefer an SR weapon over UR weapons. If you reroll for a good weapon and stick to an optimal build, you shouldn't have problems.
D tier characters have a lot of potential but you will need specific weapons and builds make them shine and overpower their weaknesses. Not impossible, but do have an S or A tier trained to fall back on.
E tier please, please avoid these early on. You're just going to get frustrated quickly because they get overpowered, die quickly, and struggle to get their gameplan going on their own and in some cases (Francis) they're just not functional characters. They can definitely be made work with their ideal weapons and builds, but it's better if you're well established and make them shine properly rather than grow resentful to a character you're supposed to like.

Character Picture Reroll Target QRD
Ragnarok Full Weapon Frigid Elivagar Freezes Targets which increases her damage and heals when attacking. She also hits very hard with huge projectiles or can perform fast melee attacks instead. Good in any build but prefers green supporters, easily the best character in the game.
Annerose Full Weapon Gundari Pay2Win, has a gimmick where she gains a lot of buffs by simply using her skills. She hits very hard and has a lot of attacks that heal her. Good in any build but prefers green supporters
Felicia Full Weapon Nightfall Very fast and very strong aggressive character that inflicts a debuff that heals her when attacking and gains a lot of speed and damage. Build her either red or green supporters
Saika Full Weapon Boost Greave Fast in-fighter that has a gimmick where she gains super armor, power and speed naturally by connecting attacks leading to massive damage and a fun playstyle. She has several moves that heal her, making her safe, and she is very satisfying to use. Good in any build but prefers green supporters
Shizuru Full Weapon Goddess of Love Mid-range character that floods the field with very wide and powerful walls of plants. Her attacks drop unique pick-up items that buffs and heal herself. Build her with Blue Supporters
Murasaki Full Weapon Hawiya Glacial tank that has super armor on her moves and has very strong healing in several skills, as well as debuffing enemy defenses, making her a reliable choice for new players. Build her with Green Supporters
Yukikaze Full Weapon Greek Fire Gunfighter with relatively short-range projectiles that also has skills that let her get in and out. Shines the most when using her skills point blank, which she can afford because her strongest move also heals her a lot. Build her with Green Supporters, her build is very optimized across all content so she can feel rather repetitive.
Shisui Full Weapon Silver Paladin Very slow but has a『 Stand 』that attacks for her, heals and has a lot of defensive tools. Has a very good SR weapon called Photon Sentry, a solid alternative. Build her with Red or Blue Supporters.
Phantasma Full Weapon Fallen Heart Diverse character that debuffs defense simply by being near enemies and can alternate between being melee or ranged with ease. Her strongest attack heals her, so build her with Red Supporters.
Tokiko Full Weapon Fomorian Edge Versatile character that has a passive skill that gains crit rate, giving her an early edge in high power builds. She lacks healing but she gains super armor and a lot of defenses and many debuffs to enemy defense making her hit very hard and clear stages fast while being tanky enough to survive. Also has a great SR weapon called Mechanical Dart Knife. Build her with Blue Supporters
Shiranui Full Weapon Ithaqua She's a slow attacker with wide strikes that has a lot of skills as to stun lock enemies with continuous area attacks or distracts them with clones that allow her to get in. Her strongest attack also heals. Build her with Red Supporters.
Emily Full Weapon Heavenly Chariot Slow, but brings a goddamn gatling gun with missiles to a swordfight. Has solid healing and a cool axe. Build her with Red Supporters or one of each color.
Sora Full Weapon Chironuppu Powerful ranged attacker that debuffs enemies that she hits and rain enemies with arrows that deal absurd damage. Can heal with a powerful shot if built with Blue Supporters or can mix green and red to optimize AoE damage.
Hebiko Full Weapon Garou Kiba Trickster character that can hide and heal while setting up a decoy, and attack out of range of most enemies. Build her with Red Supporters, although she can also be run green or a mix of green and blue. Her better weapons are event weapons (summer and butterfly) although they rerun often.
Kurenai Full Weapon Twin Sword IR & UV The adorable dung eater swordfighter. She's a hard hitter that can gain a lot of crit rate with her dodge skill and hit very hard with critical boosting skills as well as healing in a counter hit. She has the strongest normals in the game on top of boasting healing and strong skills. Build her with Green Supporters
Lapis Full Weapon Scepter of Mastema She's a defensive character has a lot of skills that buff her and her allies in 3-character team battles. Her defensive buffs and healing still allows her to safely get in while also dishing out solid damage early on her own. Build her with Red or Green Supporters.
Astaroth Full Weapon Undying Apophis High power ranged attacker that can be a bit awkward early but with a lot of future potential. With the mentioned weapon she skyrockets in power, especially on a blue build. Build her with Blue Supporters if using this weapon, although red or green builds also work well early on.
Asagi Full Weapon Muken The titular character of the series and the reason why many people pick this game. She's fortunately no slouch as she has a very strong time stop dodge mechanic that lets her cheese content. Her biggest flaw is that her gameplay is repetitive since her skills tend to overlap. Early on Green and Red builds work well but in the long run blue builds are better.
Sakura Full Weapon Unbara The lovable dork that captured everyone's heart in the first OVA and another good reason why many play this game. This one has a lot of potential to be good both early and later but she requires a lot of player input so you may lose because of skill issues she's lacking relative to other characters. Early on Blue builds offer solid healing and damage, but later on she shines at dealing a lot of damage with a green build.

Some characters prefer their SR weapons for their effects, some being even better than most of their UR weapons. Those are initially weaker but you can find merges easier by using Rotation gacha tokens, which are given away for free weekly, and reach their full potential faster. Initially, however, a UR weapon is more immediately useful.

Reroll Guide

Rerolling in this game pretty quick and easy and the advantages you can get are pretty great. So much so that if your account is only a few days old and you're finding yourself that you could be doing better

  1. Choose your starter and pick an initial character. Beat the first level, which should be take a few seconds, then skip the tutorial
    Tutorial Skip
  2. On the main screen grab the free initial gifts by clicking the icons pointed by the red arrows. Then head to your inventory as pointed by the green arrow. The main gifts are the UR Ticket and 10 Gacha tickets, as pictured below the screenshot. Then move over to the gacha in the green screen arrow
    screenshot
    screenshot R
  3. You should have around 700 gems which is enough to pull in 3 different banners with gems (banners have a first pull discount), plus whatever additional bonuses they're giving out at the time. Use them and then head over to the bottom where you can use the Gacha Tickers
    gacha banner
    ticket banner
  4. Look at your spoils, what you're looking for is a UR weapon for whatever character you want to focus on, and/or good UR supporters in the available pool. Then head over to the Account Management by clicking on the yellow arrow on the screenshot in step 2.
    sick pulls
    ur ticket
  5. If you're not satisfied with your results, select "Reset Game" and start over from scratch. If you do like your results create a password, select "apply" and write the access code and password down. You may also link your account to social media for additional gems and easier login. Don't worry it won't make posts for you or anything.
    manage account

Resetting the account doesn't delete the account, so if you're undecided you can create a password, reset the account and come back to it later if you can't find anything better. Just take a screenshot or write down your accesses, because if you do lose those your account is lost.

Not all characters have their best weapons UR, as some SRs are as good or even better than URs if taken to 5/5. You can use Rotation Gacha tokens, which we get weekly, to have greater chances at getting SRs of a particular character

What to do right away

Alright, you just got started, you rerolled what you want and now you're ready to move on. You're sadly not getting the character that you rerolled stuff for right away, sadly, however you'll get her today don't worry. First things first. The main currencies of the game
manage account

Currency Description
BP The currency used to enter Time Attack and the modes under Arena. You gain it over time at a rate of one per hour and it initially caps at 5 but you can extend it up to 15 naturally with special activities. The type of resources that you don't need it as much always but when you do, you want a lot.
AP The main currency to play the game. Most stages require an amount of this to play them so you always need it. It's maximum increases with your rank and also replenishes upon leveling your rank. You gain one point every 3 minute which is 20 per hour and 480 per day. Important to make the most out of the natural timer for AP as every minute not earning AP is losing AP.
Gold The everything currency. Everything cost gold to a certain degree such as upgrading your characters, unlocking facilities, rolling gachas, etc. Obtained by grinding for gold bars in daily quest, which can be sold for gold. A big bottleneck early on so always try to grind as much gold as you can.
Gems The premium currency of the game. You use it to obtain characters, costumes and roll the gacha. It is obtained when first clearing stages, events, achievements, logins, etc. At first there’s an abundance across modes of the game, over 10,000, but as soon as it runs dry it becomes exceedingly rare. Spend wisely.

For now, your first goal is to clear up to chapter 5 in the story mode. It might feel a bit robust in terms of text but it's endearing in my opinion. You can safely skip it, however, and you can always view it again when playing through a stage in easy mode, as normal and hard modes do not play the story. The stages aren't difficult at all so you can blaze through them pretty easily. Along the way your initial character will progress slowly and you'll unlock several other modes but focus on finishing chapter 5 for now. It may take an hour or so if you read everything but if you skip the story, it should only take like 20 or 30 minutes.

As your character levels you should be unlocking skills, supporter and weapon slots. Do equip stuff as you unlock them, especially supporters, and if you pulled a UR supporter within your initial rolls put it to use. You gain a set number of gems per supporter if you use them in battle, so it's good to fill up for your first character.

Around the time you clear chapter 2 you will reach rank 10 and get a ticket for a UR supporter. It's not up for debate, pick Tekkain Kaowu, the green supporter.
Voucher
She is a fantastic green supporter that to this day ranks among the top and she has a wonderful main effect that's a screen wide attack that can function like a mini ultimate and broadly boosts your damage for any character. The blue Amane is good however she's very specified against a type of enemy which isn't that relevant to you right now and Major also only provides defenses against a particular enemy type which is much more situational.

Once you're done with Chapter 5 of the story you can return to the menu and claim everything get a UR weapon for one of the starters. Get Naraku for Asagi, Garou Kiba for Sakura or Greek Fire for Yukikaze.
Voucher
Voucher
Voucher
From there use the resources you've just gotten from just doing the quests to upgrade your new weapon and your supporter and finish day 1 of your quests. From there the important thing that you will get are 400 gems and two vouchers for you to select supporter characters.

Even if you spent all your gems rerolling, right now You should be a few gems away from 1200. For now, head on to Daily quest. You can also do Special Mode, which is a quick minigame for 3 gems. little by little gets the job done.
Voucher
Daily Quest is where you grind materials to level up and how you interact with this on your first day will depend on what day of the week is it. There are 4 available stages in the beginning and every day one or several will be available at half the AP cost and as such you only really want to play the stages that are cost halved.
Voucher
Ore (Sunday, Thursday, Saturday) lets you grind for materials to upgrade your weapons and materials to advance your character
Shard (Monday, Thursday, Saturday) lets you grind for materials to upgrade your supporters and to also advance your character
Bead/Modules (Tuesday, Friday, Saturday) is to grind for materials to upgrade Magatamas and Facilities (more on those later)
Gold (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday) is to grind for gold, which is the primary currency for upgrades to the game and what you'll be grinding the most of in the long run.

Daily quests are easier than most stages so you can do your initial run at full AP cost to get the gems for first clear; right now you can clear normal mode on any, so 80 gems total which should be enough to get you your first 1200 gems to buy your designated character and if not you can do event quests, which shouldn't be harder than story mode on easy.

Depending on the day you started and how pressed you're for major events (which expire on the first Monday of the month and the third Monday of the month, as long as you have more than 6 days, you're Gucci), it's wise to spend your first days here grinding for ores to max level and awaken your weapon and shards to max out your first few supporters. More so than your level, it is having your gear at max level and growing your skill training what will make your character stronger. On Saturdays all 4 are active and if you make the most of it you can take your character to level 75 with maxed out weapons in a single sitting. At that point you can clear most stages in hard and grind in normal with whatever character you chose to focus on, provided you have a good build for weaker character.

Understanding your character

Alright, so you've finally unlocked most stuff that's expected of you on the first day. Let's take a moment to understand just what the hell is going on with your character in this game
Status screens
When you view your character the first screen is the status screen. From the numbering above.

  1. Type
    Your type can be one of three types. Assist, Suppress and Protect, each associated with their respective colors. The primary thing this affects is merely the type of materials you use to enhance them. The only real gameplay impact this has is that some effects affect your character's type. For instance, Lillim's event supporter obtainable in the archive only boosts damage for Protect type characters.
  2. Trait
    There're three trait or races in the game. Humans, Demons, and Machines. Similar to your type, this doesn't affect anything properly in combat other than specific effects targeting such as supporter effects. Know that Humans are the most common type and Machines are by far the fewest.
  3. Level
    Your character's level. Its primary function is to unlock functions and serves as a rough estimate of your character's growth. Contrary to popular belief, your hard level doesn't actually affect anything in gameplay, it's just a benchmark. So, a level 70 character can perform as good as a level 81 character provided their equipment and stats are the same.
  4. Awaken
    Dictates your maximum level and whenever you hit the benchmark you will have to spend resources from daily quest to gain a star and increase the cap. At first you will unlock the level cap by 10 until level 70, then by 5 until level 75 in which all 6 yellow stars will be unlocked. Awakening past level 75 will require crystals that you acquire in VR Quest, and these awakenings only increase your cap by 2 levels, but you will gain Awakening points and unlock awakening skills, which are account-wide bonuses. Awakening Skills are shared among all your characters and are the real form of growth for your account. It's wise to level characters evenly to optimize your awakening point gains.
  5. CP
    The sum of your stats. It's a rough estimate of your character's stats but the number itself doesn't do much other than dick measuring contests among whales
  6. Stats
    HP: How much life you have and its primary source is your Main Supporter. This is the raw number, however other effects multiply it such as Magatama buffs, Awakening skills, Supporter effects, etc. so it's going to be less than what you're shown in an actual stage. Since your raw HP stat gets multiplied a lot, increments to this stat have larger impact than other stats.
    ATK: Your attack power, the more you have the harder you hit and the biggest source of Attack is your main weapon. If you have 3000 atk and you gain another 3000 you will deal double the damage. Since sources of attack other than your weapon tend to be of very low impact you shouldn't really spend a lot trying to get them, so don't bother buying costumes for atk as it won't do much.
    DEF: Similar to Atk, but damage reduction instead and the primary source is your main supporter. The more you have the less you get hit and it plateaus once you max out your equipped supporters. Same thing about atk applies here, don't chase the raw stat try getting effects that give raw damage reduction instead.
    CRI: A complete and utter mystery, its primary source being your main weapon. It affects your crit rate against enemies, and through the years people have been trying to correlate how much does the increase of the stats increases crit rate with varying and very vague results. Just allow it to grow normally and don't think too hard on it, effects that give you the raw crit rate itself are much more valuable than the hard CRI stat.

In the weapon menu you'll see the following
Weapon Menu

  1. Weapon
    Your weapon and its level. The level of a weapon linearly increases its stats, once it reaches its first cap of 50 you can awaken it to revert its level to 0 and raise it again to 55, awaken it another time and unlock its maximum level. UR weapons cap at 60 after two awakenings maxing out its base stats.
  2. Magatama
    Magatama are a type of item you can equip to characters. They're a bit complicated but in short, they add stats and effects to your weapon and these effects are the biggest source for damage and defense for your character. There're four colors, Red for atk, blue for defense, yellow for crit, and green for HP. Most people stick to Red magatamas with damage boosting effects.
  3. Sub Weapon
    Your sub weapon. All it really does is give you a small fraction of its stats and whatever effects don't apply. The number of stats it gives is a percentage of its stats (Magatama included) based on their skill level. 5% at 1/5, 7% at 2/5, 10% at 3/5. 12% at 4/5 and ultimately 15% at 5/5. As a result, a 5/5 SR is better as a sub weapon than a 1/5 UR.
  4. Skill Level and effect
    The skill level or SLv of a weapon is the number of copies you've merged together. It caps at 5/5 or 5 total copies of a weapon combined together. In terms of stats at 2/5 it will increase 15% of its total base stats, at 3/5 it will gain 10%, at 4/5 only 5% and finally at 5/5 it will gain 20% of its base stats with a final total of 50% stat increase.
    In terms of effects weapons have two type of effects, Passive effects that are always effective and active effects that require a certain number of particles to trigger. Some weapons only have passive effects, dogshit other weapons only have active effects, and a few have both.
    The green text in the effects increase with skill level, every skill level granting 25% bonus to the initial effect, ending at double the original amount at max 5/5. In the case of the above image at 5/5 the passive effect increases attack damage by 2% every hit and the active effect would deal 90% plus 16% per stack.
  5. Weapon Theme
    Weapons are classified by a "theme", which mostly affects how you gain bonuses in the Armory. Some themes share the same effect, such as Rebellious weapons, those being the blue and black edgy weapons that inflict defense debuffs, or seasonal weapons like summer weapons that all share the same effect.
  6. Applicable Characters
    Some weapons can be equipped by multiple characters. Even if a weapon can be equipped by multiple characters their effects often can only be applies to one character, which is shown in the face next to the skill name. In the case of the above weapon three characters can equip Naraku but only Asagi can receive and activate its effects.
  7. Enchantment level
    The number next to the name with a + before it. You increase enchantment levels by using items obtained in Secret Quest, which is part of Daily Quest and by dismantling other weapons. Each enchantment level gives 5% of the weapon stats (calculated after the bonus from skill level) and it goes up to +15 or 75%. The cost is exponential every relevel and its very resource intensive to get them to +15, so advance them little by little. +6 is rather cheap. +9 is relatively easy to get and in terms of stat it gives about the same bonuses to a 1/5 weapon as it would by being 5/5. +12 is a good stopping point even at endgame and you don't really need to aim for +15.

Next is the Supporter Menu. I know the Skill menu is first, but it's better if you understand this menu first.
In this menu you equip supporters, which you can consider as your armor relative to other rpgs.
Support Menu

  1. Main Supporter
    This is the supporter that will apply both its primary effect and its main effects, as well apply the entirety of its stats to your character. A supporter's Main effect is listed below and it's increased only by their awakening level so as long as they reach level 60 their main effect should be maxed out at double its initial value. Most supporter's main effect is an active effect you can trigger with a long cooldown, although some either are a passive effect that triggers automatically or some have both an active and a passive effect as their main effect. Since the main supporter gives the most defense and HP, the quality of your Main supporter heavily impacts your durability in battle.
  2. Sub Supporters 1&2
    The sub supporters only pass a fraction of the stats in the same pattern as sub weapons described above (5%>7%>10%>12%>15%), however unlike sub weapons their primary effect is always active. The primary effect of supporters is increased by skill level in the same pattern as weapon skill does, increasing by 25% every additional skill level and doubling its initial effect at 5/5.
  3. Type
    Now this is the most important part of a supporter. The supporter's type determines what effect of your skills are triggered, as such in order to use a skill most effectively you will need to equip sets of supporters of that particular type. So, it's important to always keep in mind your ideal character's build of choice before investing resources and gems into acquiring supporters. Similarly, if your account favors supporters of a particular color the characters who excel at those builds will shine more for you.
  4. Stats & Skill Level
    Follows the same principle as weapons. Stats grow linearly with level, max out at 60 after two awakenings, increase in the same patter per skill level (15%>10%>5%>20%) and grow by 5% per enchantment up to 75% at +15. You need to max level to unlock formations tied to them.
  5. Affinity
    The affinity of your character grows every time you use it. It maxes out quickly and when you do you gain 50 whole ass gems. You need to also max their affinity to unlock formations tied to them.

Now, for the skill menu
Skill Menu

  1. Skill slots
    The skills that you equip to compose the build on any character. Depending on the type of supporters you equipped are the set effects they activate or if at all. All skills have set effects and they follow the same patterns on every character with most relying on 2 of a set, one relying on a main supporter only, one relying on one of each set, and one relying on 3 of a kind.
    The core skills of a build, however, are the ones that gain effects for every color of a set, and every character has one of each color. One color will always give 50% crit rate making them strong early but falling off once you can crit consistently. One color will always give 150% damage which makes you consistently do a lot of damage, and one will always grant 250% which is usually your character's strongest move provided you can critical hit during it. It varies between character which color grants favors which effect, and that changes the value of a color per character.
    Normal attack enhancers have yellow icons and they trigger under any combination of supporters.
    There is always a skill locked behind level 81, making this level the primary benchmark for character growth.
    Yes, the 4th skill is locked behind the paid pass. No, you cannot it f2p outside of limited preview items. It's not super necessary, although some characters shine brightest with 4 skills, like Su Jinglei.
    Not all skills are made equal; some are better despite being seemingly weaker and others are trash even if their traits imply they're impressive. Experiment around with builds and find your playstyle.
  2. Skill Training
    This is where the real progress of your character occurs. There're 7 attributes you can train using skill points you gain by simply using the character in stages. You can raise them up to level 25. Initially you cap at 20, however once you unlock the final 5 levels when you hit level 75.
    Cooldown: Lowers the cooldown of your skills by 1.2% per level up to 30%. So effectively all your skills will only have 70% of their displayed cooldown value
    Attack: Increases final damage dealt by 1% per level up to 25%
    Skill: Increases final damage dealt with skills by 1.5% per level up to 37.5%
    Critical: Increases your hard critical rate by 0.5% per level up to 12.5%
    Hit Points: Increases your base HP by 1% per level up to 25%.
    Defense: Reduces final damage taken by 2% per level up to 50%
    Ultimate: Increases final damage dealt with Ultimate hit by 3% per level up to 75%
    These bonuses aren't displayed on the stat screen so they may not seem impactful at first glance, however are MUCH more effective at improving your performance than your level or your stats. By maxing attack and skill damage you boost your damage by 72% and you HALVE the incoming damage. Not to mention you gain a hard real crit rate instead of a vague critical hit stat and the ability to simply use skills more.
    Please focus on maxing out these as soon as you can.
  3. Damage Type
    Skill and attacks can inflict two types of damage, blue swords for melee damage and red guns for ranged damage. Some attacks have both, which means they inflict both types of damage. Needless to say, certain characters favor one type over the other.
    In terms of actual gameplay, the type of damage doesn't affect anything really unless there's effects active, such as supporter effects or awakening skills, that affect a certain damage type.
  4. Training room
    a room where you can test your damage against a dummy. You can use it to test out your builds and check the types of damage you inflict directly. The training dummy has 50% damage reduction so your damage outside of this room will likely be higher than what you see here.

As for Costumes
Costume

  1. Theme
    The theme of a costume be it a holiday or a particular set. These don't really do anything (for now) but it does give you an idea of what they're meant to be.
  2. Costume Bonus
    Each costume offers a bonus to your stats. These bonuses are all pooled together to a total costume bonus which is then added to your character's base stat. You just need to own the costume to receive these bonuses you don't have to actively equip them.
    These bonuses however are super minimal and they hardly matter so don't worry much about these.

If you follow the green arrow to find the button that is present in every screen you'll find presets
Presets
In this screen you can save combinations of weapons, magatama, supporters and costumes to quickly load them later. Even if these are currently equipped in other characters it will unequip them on their sets and pull them to this character. This way you can use the same few supporters and pieces of magatama across multiple characters and equip them with ease.

And finally, Affinity
Presets
In this screen you simply give characters gifts that you gain via roulette using doki doki presents, an item that can be obtained in the gold gacha, in events or by crafting. Every character favor different type of gifts and as you raise their affinity you gain rewards and gems.
The most important thing you get is emblems kits at affinity level 6 and crystal kits at affinity level 9, which is enough to awaken the character the character past level 75, letting you farm awakening skills.

Initial Priorities

So, you're done with story mode 5, and you're done with your current day missions, What now?
The two primary things you should be looking out for is rounding up events and growing your character, then you move on to the other modes in the game..

  1. Events
    Focus on whatever events are close to ending, Events usually last 28 days and rotate every 15 days
    Event Menu|
    Event Screen
    Event Story

The way events works is as if they were story mode chapters with 5 stages with three difficulty and a brief plotline on story mode playing on easy mode. As you clear them you gain tickets that you can then spend in the gacha. Once you clear all 5 stages in hard you will gain access to a 3-stage bonus chapter which is a harder version of the story mode stages that yields greater tickets and gacha tokens. Much like in story and daily quest, each chapter has simple missions that when cleared let you spend multiple times the AP to clear the stage as many times in one run, so you can grind for tickets. Chapters 1-3 yield lower tickets per AP while 4 and 5 yield the most. You'd think hard gives more tickets, but actually Normal yields about as many relatively to the AP you're spending, so even if you can't beat hard yet as long as you can repeat Normal 4 or Normal 5 you can grind the events.

Event Gacha

The way the gacha itself works is that you are presented with a pool of 200 items on a list and the ability to pull for a "random" one for 10 tickets and you can spend up to 2000 tickets continuously pulling from the box. Once you obtain the "rare" reward at the top you'll be given the option to press the circular button to advance to the next box and reset the gacha.

Event Gacha

There’re 10 boxes, 5 of them contain the main reward, usually a supporter or a weapon, 4 of them contain a gacha token, and one contains a crystal kit to upgrade a character. Afterwards you can keep gaining tickets and dumping them in a dud gacha full of useless common items. Among the pool of items in each of the main boxes is gems 15 in each of the first 9 boxes or up to 135 gems in total. Add together the 150 from the main quests and the 50 from the new supporter you get a whopping 335 gems per event! (yes this is what f2p life looks like once you've dried up the wells). Do get them if you're not in a rush but you can safely skip them if you're in a hurry.

Your main goal on each event is to finish the 9th box and get the 5th copy of the main reward if it's a good reward. "Good reward" being a UR supporter that includes the words "increase" and "damage" in its main upper effect.
A god supporter

If you're starting out and you only have like two days left to round up an event and the reward supporter is good drop everything and get it, you want all the help you can get.

  1. Upgrading yourself

As a new player you're given a Welcome event set of missions. These missions give some ridiculous rewards for growing one character so try to finish them as they come.
Time Attack
The important one from day 1 you will get two Event Supporter Vouchers, which you should hold on to until you know exactly what you're using them for. You can see below in the "archive supporters" section to see which you should pick.
The highlights for Day 2 are the Supporter and Weapon upgrade boxes that give you enough materials to max a UR supporter and weapon respectively. The important one, however which gives you a selector for Shisui OR Emily, two fantastic characters, and most importantly an Advancing Pass that will instantly put a character to level 70 which is close to max level early game. You will also gain 10 skill point vouchers that total 50,000 for skill point training and take all her skill training to at least level 10~15. Use all of these to take your character close to their full potential right away.
Clearing days 4 and 5 you will get costume vouchers that let you select either a costume from the set or 350 gems. Most costumes in the voucher are available in the regular shop for cheaper and only the last 4 are limited. I only really like Emily's bohemian costume and even then it reruns every year. Do take the gems instead, however, as at this point you can do way more with the 700 gems than with the costume
On Day 5 you will get another set of skill points and another task force document to get another character and on day 6 you will get another set of upgrade boxes for supporter and weapons.
Finally, on day 7 you will get UR tickets for a chance to get something cool (don't get your hopes up), a 30 day preview of the effects of the Hebi-Shika pass thing that will enable the 4th skill slot for a month (more on that below), and most importantly another package with a Task Force Document and a 6* Advance pass which will give you a 3rd character and an item to push any to level 70.
One thing you should note about missions by day like these is that the earlier days don't go away instead new ones are simply added so newer and older missions that share the same requirement will be completed at the same time. As a result, don't feel too pressured.

On a similar note, when you hit rank 20 you will be offered some stuff for real money
Time Attack
This $4 bundle that includes a task force document is absolutely cracked. It's a total of 1550 gem value, or 388 per usd. it's one of the best offers in the entire game. If you're ever going to break f2p or if you intend to spend but as little as possible, this is it.

Alright so the game literally gifted your near max level character, you're not under pressure to farm event supporters and it's either Thursday, Friday or Saturday and all the Daily Quests are up. It's time to get grinding.
What you want is to max out everything on your defined build. Your Weapon, the weapons in the Armory (more on that later), Your supporters, and the materials you need to pay for those upgrades.
Among the things you should be grinding for, however, are Magatamas that can be obtained in Time Attack. These weapons come in their own rarities of N > R > SR and UR, however for now only Rs and SRs are relevant to you
Time Attack
Time Attack
As I mentioned before these are sub equipment you can equip on weapons to increase their stats. The kicker is that they come with effects. Each You upgrade the magatamas using other magatamas and you polish them to gain an effect, return them to level 1. You can polish them up to 5 times to gain 5 effects. UR weapons can equip 4 and SR weapons can only equip 3. The number of stats you get is very minor, however the effects in them can be very impactful.
Time Attack chapter 2 is among the necessary first 5 chapters and it yields Red magatama as its primary reward. As a less frequent reward it also yields blue magatama.
Magatama 1
1. The rarity of a Magatama, goes from N to UR. In time attack you can only grind up to SR in normal and hard, but you can upgrade SRs into URs later
2. The effects. Red and Yellow magatamas gain damage bonuses to certain enemy classes (or all), Blue and Green gain Damage Reduction in the same fashion. only Yellow magatamas gain buffs to critical rate and critical damage making them harder to reset due to the increased pool. Similarly, only green magatama can get bonuses to HP.
3. Reset. It allows you to spend a small amount of gold and beads to reroll one of the effects using materials of the same type. it piles up.
4. Attribute, something only for UR magatama. Don't worry much about it for now.

The interesting thing is that making this guide I found out that the raw stats you gain from magatama are so minor and the power of the cumulative effects is so strong, that it is in fact more efficient for you, the new player, to build R matagata with strong effects, as shown above. However, it comes with a caveat. While SR matagamas might be harder to get for you and growing them expensive, only SR magatamas can eventually be upgraded into UR and as such the effort invested in them has a long term. However, R and N magatama can be grown and reset quickly and relatively cheap. As in today quick.

So, my suggestion for the immediacy is to level up 4 R or N magatamas (depending which material you have more beads of) by grinding them in Time Attack then upgrade them until they look like the one above which keeps really good effects against all enemies or only slightly leaning towards one type or like the one below that is hyper focused on one enemy type. What you want at the end of the day is at least 12% (at least 2.4% per option) damage against each enemy type and the rest can be "all damage" or "boss damage". You don't need to be a perfectionist on N or R magatama.
Magatama2
You can later pivot into making more refined SR magatama. Ideally in the long term you want a set of 4 magatamas each tailored against a particular enemy type like the magatama above and that project can instead be done with SR magatamas later.

For defensive magatamas you can either go with blue magatamas focusing on damage reduction against a particular enemy type (if a certain stage in VR or Tower is giving you a headache) or green magatamas with set effects that boost HP. I prefer HP boosting since it's a broader form of defense and the HP granted by green magatama's raw stat is in turn boosted by the magatama's own effect.

  1. Special Activities

Special Activities are facilities in which you can place your playable characters to receive bonuses and farm for items. Placing a character doesn't restrict you from playing with them and how much you get from them depends on the level of the characters placed.
There’re three floors in special activities. To start them you just place the characters and select commence activity.

The Academy which contains buffs that are permanently active until you remove the characters from them.
Academy
- Headmistress’s Office: Increases the AP Multiplier, that is the number of times you spend AP per run. More valuable once you gain a larger AP pool
- Library: Increases experience gained by quests. Not as impressive as it sounds, since you still need to get SP to increase skill training, and that isn't affected by this.
- Classroom: Increases max BP. Deeper BP pockets means you can spend longer away from the game without worrying about capping this. Try and get 8~12 so you only have to connect two or three times per day.
- School Field: Increases your total max AP. I'd say this is the best one since AP is the resource you spend the most. 160~240 is a good goal to aim for.
- Swimming Pool: Increases CRI for all characters, applied to their base value. Seriously, what does CRI even do?
- Gym: Increases ATK for all characters. A big pitfall for newbies. You need A LOT of characters and it's hardly noticeable.

Basement 1 has facilities that farm resources over time. These will fill with the specified amount when the timer counts down and you will gain it by pressing "acquire". Each facility has a maximum that you can carry. You can't go over board and when it reaches maximum it stops counting, so avoid them reaching 100%
B1
- Mission Preparation Room: Collects Operation Plans, which are skip tickets. Shortens the grind, but nothing you can't replace with effort. They're extremely good in hurry however
- Hot Spring: Farms BP over time and items to replenish BP. Always good to have.
- Infirmary: Farms potions for VR Quests. Very unnecessary, especially with a good VR team, however it's always good to use it intermittently once you start going into that mode regularly
- Lounge: Farms AP and items to replenish AP over time. The single most important facility. More AP means you play more so try to always get the most out of this one.
- Gear Modification Room: Farms pearls over time. Farms way slower than simply grinding the stage, though. Safe to ignore
- Kiryu's Laboratory: Farms blank emblems, an item that can be traded for emblem kits, which in turn can be traded for friend emblems that ultimately are used to upgrade characters. Emblems are a big bottleneck for awakening characters past level 75 and these are the primary gatekeep for awakening points, the most important source of power for an account. Start farming these as soon as you can, because when you need them you will need a lot.

Basement 2 has crafting and training facilities
B2
- Crafting Facility: You craft items, which sometimes involve upgrading lower rarity resources like Modules and Pearls into higher grade or breaking them down into lower grades as well as affinity and items for upgrades. You can also craft enchantment materials. It's important you reach level 4 as soon as possible.
- Skill Training Facility: Gains skill points over time. More impactful on characters than level so always have someone here.
- EXP Training Facility: Gains level over time. Great for new characters or when you have more characters than you can train.
- Dispatch Facility: Gains items by sending supporters, needing UR on higher levels. The supporters you dispatch become unavailable. Mostly you get garbage items but a few times you can get good stuff like Tokens, Dye and Gems.
- Exchange Facility: You trade in supporters or weapons for another. You can trade 3 URs for 1 new UR (or 4 and have a chance to get a limited one), and using tokens you can narrow down to a particular character. It's a good way to get strong URs available in the gacha, if you dump things you know you won't use.
- Weapon Facility: Lets you level up weapons over time, but way slower than grinding for the resource directly. Honestly you hardly need it, but do unlock it for some quests require it.

Focus on the Lounge first and foremost, then on the Hot Spring, then on Kiryu's Laboratory, then on the School Field, then on the classroom.
You don't need to immediately fill all facilities with characters, it's best if you spread your characters early and fill each facility as you go on and gain characters.
As far as crafting reach level 4 as soon as possible, which will let you craft whatever items you may need and Skill Training Facility since you'll always be needing skill training. Some quests require the facilities in B2, so unlock all facilities in that tab.
Selecting "finish activity" unequips everyone from the activity you can only do it after letting an activity run for 12 hours.

  1. The Main Story

The main story is series of stages that you're probably already familiar with.
Story
The only things you need the story for is unlocking stages for time attack to grind on and clearing or unlocking missions.
My preferred stages are stage 8 and 9 to get red and green magatamas, and your initial newcomer quests you will need to clear up to chapter 15 so work towards that goal.

  1. The Archive

The archive is where you clear old events in order to acquire one copy of old supporters. As event 1/5 supporters (weaker than gacha URs) they're underwhelming. They're valuable resource for early game players to gain supporters to make builds. The quality of the builds you can make with these depends a lot on the type/trait of the character you picked and the color you need.

Archive1Archive2
Archive3Archive4

The events circled in colors yield supporters that are either Assist, Suppress or Protect type that have good effects and will be your main building blocks for gearing up your characters because they carry good effects. Use them in conjunction to whatever UR supporters you may have to make your builds.
Events circled in Yellow reward with supporters that are components for good formations so you should keep an eye on them. Look below and see which you can trigger and what's best for you
Orange circles and square have Snake and Beast weapons. You will use these to make a competent armory. You can compose an endgame-level armory using these tickets wisely so keep an eye on these and only use the reward tickets when the time is right.

Detailed below are more specifics as to which characters benefit from each supporter and formations.

  1. The Arena

Arena
The arena is where you spend BP to play harder content. Some is semi-PVP where you compete either in leaderboard or against other player's team, and some is just harder single player content.

Battle Arena
Battle Arena is semi-PVP mode where you put a team of 3 characters to fight another team and get rewards weekly. Early it will just be bots, but later you will fight against other player's accounts. As you win you will rank up however once you reach top rank you won't rank down. The requirements for the main rewards are pretty low and once you enter top rank you won't rank down unless you flat out don't play. The main reason why you want to play Arena, however, is the Arena Shop which contains UR weapons. These free UR weapons will be your go-to for most characters for a long time.
Arena Shop

Tower
The Tower is a gauntlet of set stages that hold very good rewards. Clearing these will be a benchmark you should be looking out for and in the stages you will get materials needed to further progress up to three characters past the stage at which the welcome events left you at. Use tower as a benchmark for your growth. You can begin tackling a few and measure out how strong you really are.

Tower
VR Quest is a set of boss battles rotating weekly. These are supposed to be very difficult fights meant for intermediate and endgame accounts, but they can be beaten with way more moderate accounts provided you have a solid foundation to your build. Succeeding as soon as possible requires strong teambuilding however this early on you should at least focus on seeing how far you can make it into one fight and use that as your measuring stick for progress.
Below is a video of the above boss being beaten with a very early account a character with no healing working off the luck of the draw..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxr8Do2Dh84
You're often closer to your benchmarks than you think you are, it's only a matter of having the right focus

Total war is a whalefest, ignore it for a while or do at most one attempt per week.

Archive Supporters

I know that you want me to just tell you which 3 supporters to equip to have a catch all good build on your particular character or anyone in particular. The cold reality is that you are going to have to put some brainwork in this because the optimal build for you in particular is not only character dependent but also changes drastically depending on the supporters you get in the gacha. Fortunately, however, the archive provides you with very good building blocks for you.

Know that event UR supporters already have lower overall stats than gacha UR supporters, and since you will have all these supporters at 1/5 with only the copy available from the archive, these will provide limited stats in terms of defense and only half their proper effect. With the aid of the support tickets from day 1 you can take one of these to 3/4ths of the total effect so use those wisely.

*Needs level 81 skill
Assist

Supporter Characters that benefit Explanation
Supporter Nagi Kotone Saika, Murasaki, Shizuru, Kurenai, Oboro, Hebiko, Inage, Rin, Nagi, Sakura, Su, Ingrid, Spinel, Francis, Wight Increases damage of Melee attacks by 15%. Use on character with primarily melee builds but loses a lot of steam on characters with mixed attack types across their moveset or in their stronger moves.
Supporter Sawawashi Ichika Saika, Shizuru, Murasaki, Kurenai, Oboro, Hebiko, Inage, Rin, Nagi, Sakura, Su, Ingrid, Spinel, Francis, Wight Increases damage of Melee attacks by 15%. Has the same effect as the above supporter which makes the benefited characters very easy to build green.
Supporter Raura Lefria Murasaki, Shizuru, Yukikaze, Shiranui, Sora, Hebiko, Asagi, Inage, Maika, Rin, Nagi, Aina, Sakura, Su, Rinko Increases the Crit Rate of humans by 15%. For early accounts crit rate should be more exclusive and coveted so this supporter is a go-to for humans with green builds. Since it doesn't lean melee or ranged it's good for mixed attackers.
Supporter Marguerite Lamarck Murasaki, Shizuru, Yukikaze, Shiranui, Sora, Hebiko, Asagi, Inage, Maika, Rin, Nagi, Aina, Sakura, Su, Rinko Increases damage of humans by 13%. Works on every human and is excellent on green builds for any human character. Kaworu, Raura and Marguerite make a solid green build for any human character, particularly those with ranged or mixed type damage. Sadly, not available in the day 1 ticket.
Supporter Sengen Misaki Everyone with a green build Increases damage of inside VR Quest by 25%. Increases damage by a massive amount, however only in VR Quest bosses. This may seem bad but VR quest is one of those modes you play regularly every day. VR mode rewards are very good and being able to clear them early can give you some strong advantages.

Protect

Supporter Characters that benefit Explanation
Supporter Onigumo Saburo Everyone with a Blue Builds against demon enemies Increases damage against Demons by 22%. Use on stages against demo type enemies. Makes a trio of really strong racial damage blue supporters with the SR supporter Haruka and the gacha UR Fuuma Amane damaging Humans and Machines respectively. Demon bosses are very common, especially in later games, although a lot bosses who should be demons are human type so check your enemy types in the monster collection.
Supporter Kamimura Maika Ragnarok, Murasaki, Phantasma, Tokiko, Sora, Hebiko, Asagi, Astaroth, Oboro, Kirara, Inage, Azuma, Rin, Sakura, Azusa, Su*, Ingrid, Mirabell, Lan, Francis Increases damage against enemies inflicted with debuffs by 16%. Sounds niche but it's actually relatively common. Know that rebellious weapons, the edgy blue and black ones, those inflict debuffs on critical hits so anyone with a Rebellious weapon can use this supporter effectively.
Supporter Mekamura Uraru Saika, Shisui, Mirabell, Emily, Asuka Increased damage of machines by 16%. Very useful for machine characters, however there are not many machine characters.
Supporter Lillim Sora, Lapis, Sakura, Kirara, Inage, Lina, Su, Ingrid, Mirabell Increases damage of Protect characters by 13%. The critter herself. Good on any Protect character.
Supporter Omine Nana Sora, Lapis, Sakura, Kirara, Inage, Lina, Su, Ingrid, Mirabell Increases defense of Protect characters by 13%. You know, a fantastic way of winning is not losing. So, if you're getting your ass kicked try getting some defense instead of trying to hit harder.
Supporter Himuro Reina Ragnarok, Tokiko, Sora, Astaroth, Kirara, Inage, Eleonor, Ingrid, Mirabell Increases critical damage of ranged attacks by 18%. Shines a lot more when you have higher crit rate but it's a rather big modifier. Characters with 50% crit damage skills or crit boosting passives like Ragnarok, Tokiko and Inage get more out of this sooner.
Supporter Arabella Glucksheim Everyone on a blue build Increases damage of against bosses by 20%. Very good supporter given that the strongest enemies in a stage are bosses, most stages end when you defeat the boss, and VR Quest is pretty much just bosses. Its only downside is when regular enemies are the ones causing you troubles.
Supporter Gwendolyn Demdike Saika, Shisui, Mirabell, Emily, Asuka Increased damage and reduces damage taken of machines by 7%. It is definitely something for machine type characters that you can equip and get a benefit out of it. Yes definitely something.

Suppress

Supporter Characters that benefit Explanation
Supporter Nino Weaver Tokiko, Sora, Hebiko, Astaroth, Nagi, Aina, Eleonor Increases damage of Ranged attacks by 15%. Use on character with primarily ranged focused red builds. There are fewer characters that can make a big impact on this color and type spread, however Hebiko in particular shines.
Supporter Grani Provence Tokiko, Sora, Hebiko, Astaroth, Nagi, Aina, Eleonor Increases damage of Ranged attacks by 15%. Use on character with primarily ranged focused red builds. Same as above.
Supporter Yamato Suzune Ragnarok, Annerose, Felicia, Shizuru, Phantasma, Sora, Hebiko, Lapis, Astaroth, Inage, Azuma, Rin, Nagi, Sakura, Noah, Eleonor, Asuka*, Lina, Lan Increases Damage against debuffed enemies by 20%. Seems niche but surprisingly effective for a lot of characters. Has a high bonus at 1/5 too.
Supporter Stella Everyone on a red build Increases Damage 15%. Works on every everyone and everything, no conditions or downsides besides her only being at 1/5. One of the better event supporters, obviously.
Supporter Melt Adel Argentum Felicia, Annerose, Saika, Phantasma, Tokiko, Azusa Increases damage by 5% for every buff you have active. A "buff" being each square box above your character. Very niche but also very effective on the ones who do benefit from it. How good she is varies a lot on your other gear, as weapons such as skills like Saika's, weapons and supporters that give stacks such as butterfly weapons also count. If you can have 3 or more green squares over your character on a red build, consider running this.

As you can tell, Assist supporters in the archive is very lopsided in favor of melee and human characters. Even if these aren't your character's preferred build (Shizuru for instance) it's wise to use a green build for a while as you obtain better supporters.

Protect supporters in the archive are in a very curious position. On one hand you have a lot good choices, but on the other they're very specific and are difficult to set. Your character will probably want to change a lot between these depending on the enemy types. That said, ranged characters and Machine characters have an easier time with these

Suppress supporters in the archive are interesting. There’re fewer good ones but the few that you can get are very good. Combined with several really strong SR Supporters like Sanada Homura, Harusaki Arika, and Tsushima Ibuki you will find red build to be the easiest to make.

Early in the game you got two vouchers to event supporters up to Melt (Of relevance only Marguerite and Yasuyama Yachiyo excluded). If you already know what you build you want to use the most and which supporter you're going to be getting, then use them to get two copies of that supporter and merge both with the copy you get from the archive to have a 3/5 of that supporter. Strengthening a supporter, you will be using a lot will be much more useful in the long run.

The Armory

The armory is a place where you can equip your unused weapons into and gain a big bonus to your attack, this bonus is applied to your whole account and it's a direct boost to the final damage of every one of your characters so do make sure to pay the gems and roll the gacha to unlock all 10 slots. Weapons set in the armory cannot be equipped by characters unless removed. The way the bonus works is that you will get around 3~6% for every UR weapon you stick in there, how much depending on the weapon's level, and you'll get an additional bonus depending on three factors: their rarity, the character that can equip them, and the theme of the weapon. You get a bonus for every 3 of a kind you match and you gain the bonus an additional time every two more until you reach 9 of a kind. So, in order to get the maximum effect, you need to place UR weapons that to match these criteria across the 10 slots you're given. Placing UR weapons Randomly will get you at least 42% at level 1 or 72% at max level, so dump the weapons you don't use here in the meantime as you'll get a significant bonus
Loadout

ArmorySets
The easiest way to optimize this is by doing a 3-3-3 spread, that is 3 weapons for 3 different characters of 3 themes each. Usually, you should get 94% from this spread, the actual maximum value is 101%, however your expected goal is 98% which can be achieved with the weapons available on the archive. Thanks to archive you currently have access to 5 different events that let you pick "Snake" weapons, which are red and white, and "Beast weapons that are purple and also count as Ultimate Weapons which are the UR weapons that can be acquired in the gacha (Naraku, Greek Fire and Shadow Knife from the rank 10 ticket belong to this type). Alongside this you can get one copy of a weapon intended for Annerose that belongs to the Ultimate Weapon type, which makes optimizing the armory even easier.

When it comes to the weapons you can get from the archive, you can get them in sets of three, the same sets that are the rows that you can filter the characters on and the same sets in the rotation gacha. As far the archive goes, as of the writing of this guide you can get snake and beast weapons through a ticket that lets you select one weapon from one of those sets. Those being: Set 1: Asagi, Sakura and Yukikaze, Set 2: Rinko, Murasaki, Su, Set 3: Shiranui, Emily, Kurenai, Set 4: Oboro, Asuka, Kirara, and set 5: Ingrid, Noah, Astaroth.

Since beast weapons count as Ultimate Weapons for the gacha, your goal is to get two weapons from the "ultimate weapon" set from the gacha, one of each of the different sets. When it comes to the armory, character who share weapon type count together so Ultimate weapons for Kirara, Eleonor and Phantasma count all as the same character, for instance. Since the archive already gives us the Ultimate Weapon for Annerose/Asagi/Lina on top of her snake and beast weapon you should only be looking out for ultimate weapons for Sets 2-5. Below are the weapons you should be looking out for of each set. The 10th weapon should be an ultimate weapon to get the 7 set bonus from ultimate weapons and that can either be a beast weapon or a dud gacha ultimate weapons.

Loadout
Remember you only need two from the above image, and they have to belong to different rows. The ones in green are safe to place in the armory and the ones in red are actually good weapons and you should not place them in the armory

This is how an optimized armory should look like.
Loadout

I recommend you hold on to the weapon tickets from the archive until you get two of the above weapons because once you redeem them, there's no turning back

Formations

Where
Where
Formations are sort of a title that you can equip in that gives you an additional bonus. They often give around 8~16% bonus to either your damage and/or resistances and often are rather specific. For now, you can only equip one and there’s several you can get with just the stuff from the N, R and Archive pool.
What
First in order to equip a formation you need to meet three criteria: own every supporter associated with it, max out their level and get their alternative artwork, and max affinity and unlock their bond scene. Once you've done this you can equip the formation and gain the effects for as long as it's equipped. They may seem small but once you pile up the effects with your other bonus you can get a lot of damage or defense.

The following are some recommended formations that you can make either with just R, SR and Archive supporters, or only need supporters available in the UR ticket pool.

Only needs Archive and/or R/SR Supporters

Formation Comment
Formation Good on mainly ranged characters like Ragnarok, Sora, Astaroth, Yukikaze, Maika etc.
Formation Good on any Suppress character
Formation Good on any Protect character
Formation Good on stages where most enemies are demon type.

Only needs One Gacha Supporter

Formation Comment
Formation Good on any Machine character
Formation Good on any Demon character
Formation Good on characters that inflict debuffs with ease like Ragnarok, Phantasma, Tokiko, or using rebellious weapons
Formation Good on stages where most enemies are machine type. Yes that's a defense debuff against you, so be careful
Formation Good on any Protect character
Formation Good on any Suppress character
Formation Good on any Assist character. Primarily melee characters get a massive boost, for a formation that is.
Formation Good on any Suppress character.

Needs Two Gacha Supporters

Formation Comment
Formation Good on mainly ranged characters
Formation Good on stages with difficult bosses that one-shot you
Formation Good on mainly melee characters like Saika, Felicia, Murasaki, Asagi, etc.
Formation Good on any Protect character

The gacha & paid passes

So, you want to get new stuff? You have to roll the gacha. First, understand the currencies, besides gems of course.

Formation Comment
Tickets Tickets Used to pull from items from the "premium gacha" pool of characters. You only get the pull and no additional bonuses. Come in R, SR and UR variety. SR tickets have the same pull rate for URs as R tickets.
Gacha Coins Tokens Used to pull int directly in a banner there's one for every type of banner. The key difference being that these counts as roll in the banner for reaching sparks. You cannot choose to consume them or not, as you're forced to use them on either single or 10 pulls. This means you cannot roll at a discount until you've consumed them all.
Desire Desire A type of payoff you get from each pull of the gacha. You can use in the desire shop to acquire prizes. The two most important things you can get is a special unique costumes or new supporters or weapons put on the banner.
Mileage Mileage Used to purchase special supporters and items directly. The weapons are pretty but trash, and the supporters are good. Shisui is a revive and gives invincibility, however her biggest trait is how she triggers a very good formation that is good for everything and everyone. Anniversary Trio is a very strong supporter than gives everything, attack, crit damage, defense and HP and can be turned into any color.

There’re three types of banners in the game. "Pickup", which are supporters and/or weapons that are added to the main pool. "Limited", which is stuff that isn't added and is, well, limited for the period it is up. And there's rotation gacha, which is the common pool, but restricts the pool options to the category displayed.
Banner
You can tell which banner is what by the type of token it uses and by the gem cost. Pickup gacha cost 40-400 for pulls and use regular tokens, while Limited gacha cost 50-500 and use Limited Tokens. Upon reaching 100 pulls via gems or tokens you will be given as a prize the very item that's highlighted in the banner (spark). It's ideal that you try spark the banner you commit to because en road to spark you can get 100 out of 140 desire and between the spark and the gacha pulls you can probably get a 3/5~5/5 weapon or supporter. Pulling 10 times with gems will net you mileage whereas single pulls do not.

Rotation gachas are always there and it simply changed the pool every day on a set pattern. Their primary use this early in the game is to obtain SR weapons and supporters to let you make a good build.
There's also one called "premium gacha". It is just common pool; there's no real point in pulling in that.

Banner
Gold Gacha is where you can dump hard gold to get low grade materials. The two things you want from this is Doki Doki Presents and Wooden weapons for fun skins. As far as affinity presents go, you will get around 10~15 Presents per every million-gold spent so you will need a lot of gold to max out all your characters.

Below are the SR supporters currently in that you should keep and get them to 5/5.

Supporter Comment
Supporter Sanada Homura Gives damage at the expense of losing defense. The defense loss isn't quite as bad, and it being an SR you can max out this supporter quickly
Supporter Harusaki Arika Increases damage against bosses. Bosses are the more common roadblocks you'll face and as this is an SR it's quite reliable
Supporter Tsushima Ibuki Increases crit damage of ranged attacks.
Supporter Mido Haruka While equipped as the main supporter gives a massive boost of damage against human enemies, which includes important bosses. It also gives a lot of defenses against human enemies, so the lower stats hardly matter.
Supporter Nanase Mai Increases defense for no real condition.

Below are the UR supporters currently in the gacha pool that are good.

Assist,

Supporter Comment
Supporter Tekkain Kaworu The Crit Mommy. Boosts crit damage and the active skill is a screen-wide attack. Early on Crit Damage might feel elusive, but the boost is massive. As you advance your account and crit rate is more consistent, this supporter becomes more and more valuable. Incredible given this is a day 1 supporter.
Supporter Sakuragi Suruga The Crit Cat. Boosts both Crit Rate and Crit Damage by a significant amount.
Supporter Misaki Akane The Crit Loli. All damage by a small amount and Crit Damage against bosses by a tremendous amount. Together with the above three you will make a very solid green build that can be used in any character.
Supporter Fujibayashi Yuno Depletes your particles, but boosts your normal attack's crit rate. Equipping her on Main gives you 14 seconds of complete invincibility AND boosts the crit damage of normal attacks by a massive amount for little investment. Great early on if you don't mind not using your ultimate attack.
Supporter Chuujou Nanao Boosts all damage of ranged attacks and crit damage of melee attacks. Wonderful on ranged attacks since the boost is pretty significant at low skill levels and later on in melee builds too. On main has a good screen-wide attack and gives defense.
Supporter Chikage Boost damage and penetration of normal attacks. Good on mainly melee characters
Supporter Yuri Hisui Gives defense against bosses. Has a nasty main effect that turns your combo into a double buff that goes up to an absurd double 100% buff to damage and crit damage. More important in late game content, but some characters can keep and sustain a long combo, like Emily.
Supporter Kuroda Tomoe Improves particle farming and gives you flat damage for every full particle circle you have. A bit inconsistent but it also lets you build the ultimate attack more consistently

Suppress

Supporter Comment
Supporter Kuronji R. Spica Gives crit rate to melee attacks and crit damage to ranged attacks. The biggest highlight, however is the Main effect, which delivers a solid attack with a 14 second invulnerability. Excellent clutch early on and solid damage on ranged attacks later.
Supporter Lydia Baretta Increases both damage and crit damage at the same time. Basically, doesn't has a main skill, however instead it gives two buffs. Since damage is multiplicative, the total increase is greater than it seems.
Supporter Fuuma Yukina Boosts skill damage by a significant amount. Additional effect is that the main skill has an attack that also carries a 60% of instantly wiping anything that is not a boss.
Supporter Fuyutsuki Kururi Increases damage up by a small amount and every enemy kill has a 50% chance of giving damage that stacks up to 7 times. On stages with lots of enemies such as tower or events it can pile up rather quickly.
Supporter [Kung Fu] Nanase Mai Gives damage and additional heal to Suppress characters. Good on characters that heal themselves too, like Phantasma
Supporter Momochi Nagi Gives damage and defense to Suppress. Pretty simple but it's good to gain both damage and defense at the same time.
Supporter Lina Gives damage to Demons characters and gives damage when fighting demon enemies. Shines a lot when you equip it on a Demons character while fighting a demon enemy.

Protect

Supporter Comment
Supporter Fuuma Amane Gives a LOT of damage against Machines.
Supporter Aishu Hebiko Gives defense and damage to Demons characters. Main removes buffs, which includes invulnerability in some late game battles stages.
Supporter Shimanami Kana Good on a few specific characters that can stack up a lot buffs, or anyone who can constantly keep 3 buffs active at a time.
Supporter Saya NEO Gives defense and skill damage to Demons characters. Main effect also boosts HP which makes you extra tanky
Supporter Wight Increases a Lot of damage against humans.
Supporter Kasumigaoka Rika Increases defense when using skills. Good for when your goal is to not die

UR Weapons

Weapon Comment
Weapon Naraku Asagi's ultimate weapon. In theory it has huge damage potential but it's rather difficult to keep up due to how hard it can be to avoid damage. Still, you always get some damage from it and Koujinka helps a lot with the stacks.
Weapon Muken Asagi's Renewal weapon. It instead gives a set amount of damage to her skills and adds additional projectiles to your skills. It's a solid alternative that should be considered so keep it around and use it if you have it instead of Naraku.
Weapon Gundari Annerose's renewal weapon. An absurd weapon that further increases her buffs and flat out increases her damage twice over. https://i.imgur.com/EI7N97J.jpeg
Weapon Cherry Storm Lina's ultimate weapon. Gives her a crazy amount of critical damage, 28~56% which is more than what many other characters can have. It may take a while before you can get the critical rate going, however.
Weapon Unbara Sakura's ultimate weapon. Skills deliver a weak additional attack that inflicts strong 30% debuffs to the enemy attack and defense. The shark only hits one enemy at a time and it's fairly weak, however de debuff is the same regardless of skill level so you can pretty much have the full effect with just one copy so it's really good early on.
Weapon Greek Fire Yukikaze's ultimate weapon. Surprisingly effective given how old it is, it helps breaking super armor and you do it does it increases skill damage by a massive 30~60%. It gets better in late game content that features battles with few enemies and a strong boss.
Weapon Twin Astrape Yukikaze's renewal weapon. Whenever she attacks she triggers an AoE that continuously damage surrounding enemies, so she can damage large groups of enemies simply by mingling around. The damage is actually pretty good and it stacks with Spark. Better suited for stages full of strong enemies, like Tower.
Weapon Starlight Chaser Rinko's renewal weapon. Increases skill damage flat by 20~40% and gives super armor with your combos. Additionally, it triggers projectiles automatically whenever you use skills.
Weapon Mystic Sword Nanashi Azusa's ultimate weapon. Whenever she dashes it gives 22~44% critical damage which is very consistent on her since her passive flat out gives her 20% crit rate just like that. It's an AoE buff in modes that allow for several characters, so it also makes her a very potent supporter.
Weapon Hawiya Murasaki's ultimate weapon. Critical hits empower her critical damage by 8~16% which stacks up to 5 times for a total of 40~80%. It's similar to a rebellious weapon except it's gained as a buff instead of inflicted as a debuff and, most importantly, it's double the goddamn effect. Brutally powerful, and impressive given how old this weapon is.
Weapon Double Dragon Kajiri Su's renewal weapon. Increases damage and speed by 10~20%. Additionally, it reduces the cooldown of your moves. She can stack a lot of buffs between these and her skills which let her use supporters that gain damage with buffs like Shimanami Kana.
Weapon Ithaqua Shiranui's renewal weapon. Increases the range of the last hit of her normals by 50% (always at 5/5) and increases the damage of her skills that produce vertical water spears by 25~50%, namely Yuugengoku, Shinenshinshoku and Geneijin. Mostly gives more damage to her green build which lacks healing but hits harder. In red builds with heal it still helps a lot by empowering the dodge skills which give Shiranui the much-needed breathing room she wants.
Weapon Scepter of Mastema Lapis's ultimate weapon. Increases skill damage by a flat 13~26%.
Weapon Twin Sword IR&UV Kurenai's Renewal weapon. Allows her normals to inflict Wind Scar, her personal mechanic, and doubles~triples it's damage with full penetration. In short, it's very powerful
Weapon Skull Face Oboro's renewal weapon. Heals when inflicting debuffs (which can be a lot with some limited supporters), but mainly increases damage by 20% and penetration by 13~20% on enemies paralyzed by her. The damage is flat regardless of skill level so you get a lot with just one copy
Weapon Impact Blade Asuka's renewal weapon. Increases damage of explosions by 20~40 and increases the damage of Mach Impact by 50~100% when the last enemy is isolated. It empowers the green build, mostly which is her highest damaging build for that matter.
Weapon Laufey's Drop Kirara's renewal weapon. Gives each individual hit of her attack have a 15~30% chance to inflict freeze. Freeze breaks on when attacking however multi hits make it quite consistent. Gives her a lot of leeway.
Weapon Fallen Heart Phantasma's ultimate weapon. Normal attacks give you a 20% damage buff and allow her normals to build Nightmare stacks (which inflict defense debuffs). Very strong at few copies.
Weapon Ignis Blade Ingrid's renewal weapon. Skill attacks give you a 50~100% chance to gain a stack; each stack gives 3% damage up to 27% and upon reaching 10 an explosion happens that resets the stacks. Very strong even at few copies since skill level only affects the rate at which it gains stacks.
Weapon Frigid Elivagar Ragnarok's ultimate weapon. Gains a 14~28% damage buff when inflicting freeze. She inflicts freezing whenever she breathes so it's always up.
Weapon Undying Apophis Astaroth's renewal weapon. Increases damage by a flat 20% whenever your HP is over 70%. Additionally, it doubles de attacks done by Supernova (blue build skill) and Satellite Flare (dodge skill) and gives them infinite tracking at the cost of lowering their damage. The penalty decreases with skill level, but the global damage increase is worth on every build.
Weapon Mr. Wonder Bear Noah's renewal weapon. Increases speed by a flat 8~16% and makes skills summon a familiar at a 32~64% chance; the familiar decreases enemy speed by 30% on hit which helps her deal with hard enemies and bosses. Each familiar on the field increases your damage further, which gives a lot of value to her skill that summons more familiars.
Weapon Fomorian Edge Tokiko's renewal weapon. Gives her ranged skills a 30~60% chance to gain stacks that give skill damage; each stack gaining 20% up to 60% and resetting to 0 when getting a 4th stack. Her melee skills instead gain 24~48% crit damage. Good but complicated, has higher damage potential than her SR but you need at least 3 merges to make the most out of it.
Weapon Goddess of Love Shizuru's renewal weapon. Doubles the number of buffs dropped by her skills and lowers enemy defenses. Very good for not dying while using the buffs granted by her skills to gain more damage and particles
Weapon Nightfall Felicia's renewal weapon. Increases damage and penetration by a flat 11~22%. Additionally, it makes an attack based the enemy's max HP, which is boosted by your damage buffs, when striking enemies with her blood mark gimmick. This weapon is pretty ridiculous.
Weapon X-71 Deep Impact Maika's renewal weapon. Gives you 5 stacks which are consumed when using skills and replenished when using normal attacks. Each stack gives 10~20% for up to 50~100%, keeping stacks is tricky but very rewarding.
Weapon Georgius Rin's ultimate weapon. Increases skill damage by a flat 13~26%.
Weapon Kumokiri Nagi's ultimate weapon. Increases damage to bosses by 20~40%. The hardest enemies in the game are bosses, just so you know.
Weapon Chironuppu Sora's renewal weapon. Increases damage by 15~30% and penetration by a flat 20%. Gives every skill the ability to shoot foxfire, which in turn inflict her stacks of debuffs making them a lot more consistent. Another pretty ridiculous weapon
Weapon Boost Greaves Saika's renewal weapon. The mother of all weapons. Increases crit rate and crit damage by 20~40% and increases damage by an extra 5~10% for every gear when overclocked triggers for a total of up to 25~50%. This weapon gives an enormous amount of crit rate on top of boosting damage twice by huge amounts both on top of the natural effects of Saika's skills. This weapon makes Saika the strongest character in the game in terms of damage.
Weapon Valiant Sigurd Mirabell's ultimate weapon. Increases ranged damage by a flat 15~30%. The weapon skill removes super armor instantly, which stuns bosses so it's rather viable
Weapon Absolver's Ferula Lan's ultimate weapon. Increases damage and defense to bosses by 12~24%. Her weapon skill is pretty cheap wipes buffs, which helps a lot against some difficult bosses that gain defense buffs
Weapon Sacred Cudgel Azuma's ultimate weapon. Increases damage against electrocuted enemies by 14~28%. Several of her skills can inflict electrocution even on burn focused builds.
Weapon Adamant Marcus Wight's ultimate weapon. Increases damage permanently by 2~4% whenever you kill enemies up to 10 times for a 20~40% total. Shines a lot in tower where you fight a lot of enemies, but it's very weak in VR and stages where the only enemy is the boss.
Weapon Rebellious A series of weapons that Everyone can equip. Whenever you crit you inflict a debuff that lowers defense by by 4~8% for 7 seconds and stacks up to 5 times for a total of 20~40%. Since it's a debuff it doesn't do much against weak enemies that die in a few hits, but it puts a lot of work on bosses. Since it's a debuff, these weapons are very strong on 3 character content and these help trigger conditions that require debuffs on the enemy.

SR Weapons
The following are important SR weapons you should consider, mostly because they're either the best option for their respective character or are at least superior to the available UR weapon pool. You can use the Rotation gacha to get them to 5/5 quickly and have a strong weapon quickly.

Weapon Comment
Weapon Mechanical Dart-Knife Inflicts a 20~40% defense debuff for 10 seconds simply for attacking with your normals. Extremely easy to apply and keep up and the damage increase is huge.
Weapon Yamaraja 40~80% critical damage is a HUGE bonus and Inage lacks a good weapon in general, so this is pretty much her best option. Equip it with things that give her critical rate and her green build is a menace. Gated by your ability to have consistent crit rate with her
Weapon Photon Sentry Offers 20~40% Familiar Damage, which is the source of most of her damage. Sorely lacks offensive weapons otherwise and it's fairly easy to get.
Weapon Rashomon Club Please don't start the game with Francis 40~80% critical damage and Francis have for the most part low damage output and this gives her the boost she needs. Ideally however she wants her limited weapon. Neither will make her good, though
Weapon Blue Light Sabre Offers 40~80% critical damage to Ingrid and Ragnarok. These are their true strongest weapons, drawing in damage the above weapons. However, these depend on keeping up a consistent crit rate, while the above do not.

The following are good SRs you should keep that serve as a good replacement for URs, should you not have then for characters you want. 20~40% Skill Damage is great for early accounts while 40~80% crit damage shine more in established accounts or in human characters with a crit build (such as Maika)

WeaponWeaponWeapon WeaponWeaponWeapon

Benchmarks and Goals

Your first benchmark is to clear whatever events are on at a given time. These events give you 5/5 copies of supporters that can sometimes be crucial in some builds until you stash a good amount of UR supporters. Events are timed gated and many times offer rewards that cannot be obtained again in the same quantity or quality so make your initial priority goal to be able to clear as much content as possible.

Afterwards your benchmark for progress should be the Arena Tower. In order to progress deep into the tower, you need to advance your account and acquire the more necessary of the basic resources. You will need a character with a high enough level, 70~75, a maxed-out Arena Weapon or at least a weapon with a good effect like the ones noted above. You will also need to have confidence in your ability to pilot the character you choose to bring to the tower. Don't worry about making attempts because attempting stages doesn't cost any AP or any currency so you're free to test your progress on these maps and see how far you can go.

Crests
A useful equipment for this mode is Crests. These are gear that can be rolled for using Arena Coins in the Arena Shop and can only be equipped in the Battle Arena and in the Tower. They give a few buffs and if you match the type you gain additional bonuses. The most important being "X Pick Ability" Where the first, second or last slot gains a huge bonus in stats. You can simply adjust which slot your character is in by not equipping a character ahead. You can enter with 2nd pick by not equipping a character in the first slot, but you must always enter with a character in the last slot.

In terms of benchmarks for the tower the first major roadblock you'll face will be floors 46~50, which are gauntlets of several playable characters featured as bosses at the same time, which will serve as relentless, aggressive and very potent enemies with that will quickly overwhelm you. It's a good stress test for builds setups, so take the opportunity to shuffle your equipment around. After floor 50 you won't find another challenge like that until floor 75 which should be your final benchmark and your primary goal.

Tower1
Once you clear floor 75 of the tower you've officially become not a new player anymore and hopefully a lot less clueless about what you're doing regarding this game. Continue to try and push the benchmarks. The biggest roadblocks you'll face are floors 100, floor 102, 113, 117 and 130.
Oh, by the way you can use Friend tickets to borrow a character from a friend, and beat the tower easy with an endgame account character, but there's no fun in that now, is there?

As far as VR goes, the goal is to push until you get to floor 100 since that's where the rewards stop. For VR it's a good idea to build a team designed around supporting one strong attacker by having one AI companion be dedicated to disrupting the enemy via debuffing defense or buffing your team offense and one AI companion dedicated to keeping everyone alive via either aggressive healing or by paralyzing the enemy. A good and cheap team you can make is something like this.

Team
Of course, some characters can do multiple roles at the same time while others who can't can use supporters instead

Things you should know & to avoid

  1. How to spend your gems
    The best thing to spend your gems is hands down getting more characters.
    Each character gives +5 AP which lets you play more, you can put them in facilities to gain several bonuses, affinity will give you additional bonuses you can equip. However much more importantly is that more characters are simply more game to play. Having fun is important too.

Costumes I'd say stick to what you will ACTUALLY use. There's a ton of costumes for characters, limited and permanent, however the cost will pile up if you start simply purchasing costumes that you will never use. Same goes for paid costumes. Know that you hardly get any advantages in gameplay from costume stats, so don't get them for that.

  1. Bonuses are Multiplicative
    Whenever you gain an effect like "damage increase by 10%" or "reduce damage taken 10%" these pile up multiplicative. So, if you gain 30% damage bonus across three supporters it's not a 90% total, its damage dealt * 1.3 * 1.3 * v = 119.7%. In other words, the key to doing a lot of damage is piling up a lot of different bonuses which includes magatamas, awakening skills, supporters, weapon effects, buffs, debuffs.
    Defense, or damage reduction, works in a similar way however this one is applied in reverse. 30% defense applied three times is instead Incoming damage * 0.7 * 0.7 * 0.7 = 65.7%. As a result, the increase you gain from damage reduction is Logarithmic and piling up different sources of damage reduction has diminishing effects
  2. Buffs and Debuffs
    Buffs and Debuffs are temporary effects that give you particular effects displayed as green and red squares about your character. These are composed of a type, an amount if applicable and a duration; i.e. Increase Damage by 20% for 10 seconds. Effects of the same type stack as long as either the amount or duration is different. If a buff or a debuff is applied that has the same type, amount and effect, instead the timer will restart.
  3. Awakening Skills
    Awakening
    Awakening Skills are account-wide so it affects all your characters. Spread them out wide, don't level one thing all the way. The thing about Awakening skills is that you get the same amount of a particular bonus per level, but it increases the cost as you go higher. So, spending 8 points to level up All Damage, Melee Damage, Ranged Damage and Skill Damage is more effective that spending all 8 on just All Damage or Melee Damage
  4. Weapon Skills
    Weapon skills are fancy moves attached to weapons. They al have the characteristic of having super armor and rather than cooldown they use particles instead. Sadly, you don't farm particles nearly enough to make them consistent, their damage is even to any of your average skills, they are not boosted by "skill damage" only "all damage" or specific weapon damage effects, and you probably would prefer to just wait out the ultimate skill.
  5. Penetration and Fortitude
    Penetration reduces the damage reduction on the enemy. It sounds convoluted but below there's a drive file where I explain everything in depth.
    Fortitude is a small percentage to flat out ignore an attack.
  6. Speed buffs
    Speed buffs accelerates both the animation and movement speed of your character by the specified amount. It has some curious side effects, for starter faster animations means your attacks are safer since they have shorter startup and recovery time, however it also means your attacks have shorter time active making it easier for you to whiff them. Another side effect is that skills that dash or move during the animation will move farther than originally intended. An important consideration, however is that your skill cooldown will not speed up, so with faster animations the time needed to wait until a skill activates becomes longer.
  7. Human and Demon bosses
    Contrary to what logic would tell you Demon characters, such as Ingrid, Lina, Astaroth, Yuffie & Sophie, Noah, etc. who have a humanoid body they are considered Human type enemies. This is especially weird when they're demons as playable characters, however you can double check in the monster collection to be sure.

Building your character

Alright let me keep it real with you guys. If you go around asking specific builds, as in which specific individual supporters you should use most people will refuse to give you a straight answer, or more often than not give you either one very good build you can't make or a very mediocre build that you probably can do better. The reason being because the ideal supporters depend a lot of your account and what fortune the god of rng has blessed you with. So, it's best if you instead know how to choose a build and tailor it to what you have instead of sticking to asking for "what's optimal" and "what's best".

The first things first. You want to choose the skill you want.
Every character has three skills that define the build, those being the skill that demand three of a color. One will always give 150% damage, one will give 250% crit damage, and one will give 50% crit rate.

Skills

Skills that grant 150% damage always hit really hard regardless of whether you crit or not.
Skills that grant 250% Damage are absolute nukes; however, you need to be able to crit with them.
Skills that grant 50% help you crit, which is good for effects that trigger off crits. Their damage doesn’t change much if you already crit, however they tend to be stronger than normal skills even without the full set of colors so these are ideal for mixed builds.

Which color skill does what changes between characters. Hebiko above has a green 150% damage skill and a red 250% crit damage skill. Shizuru on the other hand has a blue 250% crit damage skill and a red 150% damage skill.

So, what's the logic. Here let's use Hebiko. Let's say we want the power so we'll go for the 250% crit damage skill Octopus Ink Bullet. Since it's a ranged skill, let's equip ranged skills alongside it. So, we'll bring Octopus Choke and Octopus Field, one being a quick ranged move that snares enemies and the other being a dodge skill that attacks while triggering her decoy gimmick.

Skills

Next for the supporters we want damage and critical rate. The idea is that you scour to gather the best you have. Let's say fortune gave you Kuronji R. Spica, she's a strong supporter that gives crit damage to ranged moves, the type of your 250% crit damage skill, and enables on main a potent ability that makes you immune for a quarter of a minute.
Next among the SRs you can have, Sanada Homura gives 15~30% Damage for the price of 10% less defense. Let's say you've pulled a bit and you have 5/5 that should accumulate to 30% damage for only a 10% defense loss which is a fair trade.
Lastly since your eggs are in the crit basket, getting raw crit is a good idea. Another SR that helps a lot is Faust, which boosts crit rate for ranged skills by 14%.

Supporters

Finally let's say fortune gave you the components for Making a Splash (one of which is Spica and the other a very mediocre blue supporter), which gives you 16% more crit damage and crit rate to your ranged skills

Formation

The final tally being 21% crit rate, 30% damage, and 32% crit damage not counting Magatamas or Weapon and our final build looking a little like this

Formation

Advanced Formulas and Damage

Refer to this document for detailed information on each character

Contact

My discord username is Crushingon#3801, feel free to ask me for any clarification

Edit

Pub: 05 Dec 2025 04:09 UTC

Edit: 02 Jan 2026 00:07 UTC

Views: 1151