Contents
Getting Started
Foreword
First off, as you start, you choose your character. What you look like does not matter. It doesn’t change anything about your effectiveness in the game – just pick a skin you like and go forward into your adventure! Keep in mind, the game offers the illusion of choice in quest dialogues, where you think maybe if you choose one or the other response to an NPC it will change the course of the story… Wrong. It doesn’t matter. It could matter for the fate of those NPCs you are working with, but it will not change the quests you do or the story path in any significant way. You will, in the end, get the same rewards, so just pick whatever suits you. So don’t agonize over wrong choices along the way, they are just for roleplaying purposes for fun and will not change your path to the end of the story!
Do not hoard your purple dice. So many times I see new players not summoning with their free purple dice they accumulate, and I always suggest they just go forward and use them all. This will give you those epics and rares that you need to build balanced teams to progress content! Don’t hoard! And duplicates pulled give you currency that allows you to boost artifact levels and purchase new artifacts… NOT summoning is really foolish and slows you down! Sure, you can save your orange dice, but I’ll talk about that more later in this post.
Teambuilding
Like I said with the purple dice summoning point, you can’t really build a balanced team (tank, healer, debuffer, 2 dps) without actually summoning heroes… but basically you want to try and build a balanced team as you start out. Horrus is a free fire tank and you get Heksandra for free immediately; you have your main character (MC, traveler, whatever you want to call them), which is useful early to mid-game, as they can swap elements for various teams and purposes… So fire/poison to start.
This means you should really focus on those elements for your final 2 team members if possible – to stay within the same “affinity” of elements (there are 2 element affinities x3 that change each season; in s1 poison/fire, radiance/lightning, ice/necro). You want to take advantage first of the skill synergies of your heroes and not worry so much about the “quality” of the hero… there are Rares that are just as good and useful as Legendaries, so don’t sell them short!
One very strong unit that is usable in all content is a rare hero named Sigrid… She debuffs, she does damage, she is ranged… she does everything you need as a team member. Early on, you get a rare selector – do not waste it! * Wait for 1 week* as you use purple dice to summon more heroes… and then make your choice. The best rares in the game are Sigrid, Usha (frost dps) and the rare healers Enna, Quarion, Meggan, as well as the debuffers Grover and Irina. You will get all of these units eventually… but earlier is better! So use those dice! Build a balanced team! If you cannot stay within 5/5 affinity in your team, do not worry – early on, you only need 3/5. And even in dungeon tier 9, you don’t need 5/5. Balanced team first!
Other units to look out for early game for poison and fire that will last you a while are Eli (eyepatch poison crossbow guy), Letalis (green hoodie and mask poison mage) and Dench (gnarly spikey poison mage dude) are all excellent heroes that can be used for your XP farming goblin runs even at endgame! So any of them can go well in that first team you build right away, and don’t regret using scrolls to increase their skills…
Enhancing heroes past their level limit is hard if they all need poison/fire domain drops… Early on, you can manage to get through fire domain 1-2, maybe even 3 using fire and poison team… but the boss just does more damage to fire and poison heroes, which means… you just can’t do it with that team later on. That said, you can get your team to level 70 pretty easily doing fire domain 2 or 3 without much headache if you have a balanced team.
Gear Is Important
Make sure you understand the gear your heroes need to make them most effective! You can easily figure out gear and how to refine and put it on your heroes with these tips: 1) never just max your gear refinements right away on every piece… always go 4 levels at a time. Why? Well, as most things in this game, every 4 levels something will unlock on artifacts and gear! All gear starts with a main stat and unlocks new sub stats every 4 levels…
On your first pieces of common (white) gear, the max level is 8 and they start with no sub stats… this means at +4 you will unlock one sub stat and +8 will unlock the second one. The main stat is really the most important one, especially early on. You want FLAT stats not % stats during your early game, as your base stats are so low that % of them will not increase them by much…
Weapon and Head gear always start with the same flat attack (weapon) and flat HP (head); so on those pieces you are looking for sub stats that will fit the purpose of your hero you are putting them on… for attackers, you want flat attack and attack% for subs on head pieces; for tank you want flat defense and defense% as priorities on head piece followed by HP%; for Heksandra as a healer that scales on enlightenment as her primary stat (i will get into this later how to tell what stats matter for your heroes), you want enlightenment and resistance or flat HP/DEF stats. Debuffer heroes you want Accuracy followed by flat attack…
Now on Body and Hand gear slots this is where it gets tricky! Early game, you want flat attack on both body and hands for your dps; accuracy on body for your debuffers/attack on their hands; flat defense on both body and hands for your tank and enlightenment body for your Heksandra, followed by the other stats I described above that are important for those roles in general. Stay away from crit% and crit damage early on, it just won’t do much for you – your stats and gear are so gimpy early game that you won’t be able to achieve 80% or higher crit rate, so those become dead stats.
Progression Wise
Get to 70 first, grind epic gear in venom/curse 5-7 (don’t spend too much time and stamina here…. just get atk% main body for attackers, crit% main hands for attackers and debuffers… accuracy main body on an attack set… def% main body and hands on defensive set for tank… enlightenment main body for Heksandra. attack/def/accuracy main runes, if HR and AB dungeons are too hard for you just use rare runes with the right main stats to start… then level 70+ cap unlock doing domain 3-4… in epic gear at level 90 team you should be able to do domain 5 runs for efficiency to get to 90+… then go for lego gear sets. don’t push all the way to 100, stay at 95-99.
It will save you bread to stay at 95 and work on gear before you worry about grinding high level goblins to ensure 3-star success rate for more xp per run. all about being efficient with your stamina…
But make sure you are maxing out the pieces you put on your heroes – don’t be afraid of the gold cost, as it is insanely cheap early on to max out common and even rare (blue) gear pieces. But always level them up by +4 to see what your new stats will be little by little… if they end up useless, abandon the piece and move on.
Artifacts are Important
…and unlock at level 50 limit break (this means when you get to 50 and break the unit’s limit to go up to 70, the artifact slot opens up). You also get positive rune (70 limit break) and negative rune (90) slots unlocked for later limit breaks. Artifacts are significant increases to effective gameplay for all heroes, so make sure you don’t wait to slot them in!
The best artifacts in the Rare category that you can buy right away (you get currency for every rare duplicate hero you pull, as I mentioned earlier – you go to the exchange shop and use the currency there): disc (attacker), book (healer), banner (tank). Horns and Gyro are also excellent rare artifacts for early game attacker heroes. I recommend getting all of those as a priority over the others and taking them all to +4 or +8 each and putting them on the relevant heroes. This will dramatically change your success in progressing story content.
Fey Meander
It is unlocked early, and EVERYONE stalls out against the floor level 5 plant boss… Just ignore it and leave, go back later. This is going to be a common theme in the game, where you hit a wall in progression of things like Fey Meander, Pillars of Trial, NPC challenges, rotation battles and even some major bosses… They aren’t going anywhere! Just work on your levels, balanced teams, gear, artifacts… and then go back later! You’ll progress and then hit the next wall… rinse repeat. Don’t worry about it, just keep moving forward little by little. Get your rewards, hit the next wall and just keep improving.
Summoning with Orange Dice
It’s important, but it is equally important to be strategic if you aren’t spending a lot of money… If you are a free-to-play (f2p) player or even a low spender, you probably want to stay away from the Celestial/Blessed banners… they are kind of a trap. The main banner (which starts out as 0/80) offers you a bonus legendary hero if you pull 80 times – and I will say that as a nonspender, you might be able to get to 80 by mid-season if you are really efficient and completing all content, staying consistent daily, etc.
So with that in mind, there is also a “pity” counter that goes up to 35; pulling 35 times without getting a legendary hero means you will get a legendary with your 35th pull! So on the 0/80 banner, this means if you go to pity 35 twice and then to 80 you will pull 3 legendary heroes GUARANTEED. That is pretty good! At 3% rate of pulling legendary heroes, this is already a very high rate compared to a lot of other gacha-type games… and with the 80 bonus banner, getting 3 heroes in 80 is far better than 3 in 100 (which is what 3% represents). So as a nonspender, you really want to stick to that main banner and avoid the celestial banners.
The celestial banners limit you to a smaller pool of legendary heroes – which are always great and means you choose to pull only from those listed! – except selecting one or three of them as the banner allows does not guarantee you pull the ones you want… even if you go to 35 on that celestial banner, you can pull a guaranteed legendary that is NOT the one you selected; all that means is your bonus to pull the one you selected goes up for further pulls… so unless you plan on continuing to spend money to keep pulling all the legendaries on that banner or until you get the one you wanted, you are losing out on the bonus 80th pull legendary hero.
Epic Artifacts
To take it a step further, here are my suggestions for epic artifact purchases in order:
- Crown of the unclean (unless you have pulled a duplicate legendary early that allows you to buy the legendary artifact Witch Remains, a better version of this…)
- Antinaya’s tiara (perfect for people using ichiucatl, nathaniel, adolphus or other shield users; gamechanging)
- Arcane music box… perfect to use in teams with shielders to give you a huge damage bonus and easier time getting 100% crit rate for dps
- Silverstar horseshoe… if you are using a standard crit damage hero, horseshoe is pretty awesome.
- Wine of dragon blood… great for dauntless heroes, as it gives you a huge attack speed buff and extra crit rate in its effect
- Eyeball of the giant… purely an ult damage artifact; a lot of sigrid users will swear by this all the way to endgame – and yes, it is fantastic… i could move this ahead to 4th slot on this list, but there are a lot of great artifacts, and this one is really an ult damage focused one, and if you aren’t using sigrid because bad luck pulling her early, you can wait on this.
- Manticore statue / arcane cube / vile ink…. if you are using standard dps or a second dauntless, manticore is the way to go; if you are using multiple derivative damage users, go with ink on one and cube on another. cube can also be used on some healers for extra enlightenment if their heal skills require it, allowing you to put the rare book artifact on your other healer in same team.
- Incense, mask, scarab, shield, candle, spindle, harpy’s nail – basically all very solid, choose what you can use the most in your team. these replace some rare artifacts when they are maxed (scarab replaces banner, for example).
- Effigy, mirror, bracelet, phoenix feather and the elemental debuff artifacts… all pretty decent but I haven’t found a ton of use for them even late game, so I’d prioritize them low.
Rare Selector Chest
Within the first week or so you will get a rare selector chest from the walker’s trial reward progression… you need to use this on either sigrid or usha primarily. if you have either of them, meggan would be my next choice followed by quarion, irina, enna and grover in that order. sigrid is going to change the game especially in goblin farming and story progression… but wait a week or two of summons to make sure you pull either usha or sigrid first, then select the other.
Epic Selector Chest
If they become available through summon rewards or shop purchase, for new players the advice is always “take frurbath/adolphus/voresh/garius/zharloth”… and the answer is yes. One of those is the best choice you can make for your team’s needs… but don’t use the chest in the first two weeks of play… you will summon SO MANY TIMES over the course of those two weeks that you might just pull all 5… or you might pull 4 of them and having already selected one of them, you would be missing the fifth. There is also Rava, Deverick, Iola, Isolde, Tonalnan, Schaltar… all excellent epics that complement your teams. Just be patient… a couple weeks won’t kill your progression. You can clear through story 1 & 2 with f2p heroes easily by using the advice in this guide… If you have a tough choice like that definitely wait on it. You will need scrolls for all of them.
Goblin XP Team
An easy free-to-play team to build for goblins that will last you all the way to endgame… sigrid, letalis, eli, dench, horrus. you just set horrus ultimates to deactivated, give the ranged heroes as much accuracy as possible (attack primarily on sigrid), then attack, then attack %, then crit in terms of priority… just flat attack and accuracy in early game on those 4 ranged heroes, just a bunch of flat defense and hp on horrus and voila… instant goblin team that should clear 3 stars as long as you keep their levels maxed for your progression pace. gear will change over time, but that team really does not have to change, and you’ll clear all goblin farming on auto. if you have usha you can replace horrus with her even though it breaks 5/5 affinity… usha’s damage output will speed your runs up; just give her bracelet epic artifact for self heals and make her tanky (can leave this artifact at level 1). any aoe melee can do similar, but most rares don’t have that type of skill kit.
Progression is like… before mid-season you have 2 teams and maybe a couple extra units for gobs, maybe a couple to fill roles in venom and curse, do some epic runes in HR/AB but not go ham yet… by midseason chiefs 5th week in season you have 3rd team and should auto AB/HR9 after a couple of days of double drops in venom and curse 9 for core lego gear… by the 6th week, 4 teams… 7th week, 5 teams… 8th week, 6 teams. With gobs and some filler units that is 30-35 units.
Week 1
Abuse reset to level 1 team to 70 going back and forth from goblins to two domains until you can basically 70 both teams using fragments but only have the xp from goblins to max one of them… then reset. by the end of week 1 you should be positioned to have two full teams including goblin team as long as you have the xp… focus on the goblin team and vortex team going into week 2. by the end of week two, now you have to smartly and efficiently raise your 2 teams to limit break over 70, but without reset need to focus on multiple teams of xp. by the end of week 3, both teams should be over limit cap 90 but not by a lot of xp since it takes too much to go to 100… i recommend stopping them at 95. and you will need epic gear on your 70+ units or you won’t be able to do any of that.
If you are ahead of that in unit building you have crap gear… If you have too much gear by midseason you wasted stam you could be using on double drops…
Finally
Let me repeat this advice… Your issue will always be: team skill synergy > level > gear > affinity/positioning. If you struggle, address those concerns and you will find the solution.
Damage Types
You as a new player notice there are different elements. but also notice that within each element is a “damage type” or in later seasons, multiple types. example: Frost within the ice element. Frost damage dealers typically deal more damage or have an additional effect against enemies with the frost debuff. For that reason, you bring an “enabler” or someone who can apply that debuff – usually not the damage dealer themself, so as to avoid needing accuracy on that unit. it is also useful to have a multi-hit enabler so they also can hold a defense down artifact, applying frost and defense down before the damage dealer does the big damage hit with their ult.
So ice has Frost which are mostly area of effect (aoe) damage dealers and then in season 2 gains Ice Blast as a second type that are all single target damage; Lightning has Dauntless (single target, high attack speed) and in season 2 gets Thunderbolt (AOE damage); Radiance has Rally and then in season 3 gains Aura as a second type, both are a mix of single target/aoe; poison has Poison debuff and poison-based damage dealers and in season 3 gains Corrosion, both could be aoe or single target; fire has Wild which are mostly single target damage and in season 2 fire gains Burn as a second type (aoe); necro has summoners which are mostly aoe and in season 3 gain Shadow type, a mix of aoe and single target.
Each damage type within the elements works within their own niche gimmick, and those type units work together… you wouldn’t bring a frost enabler with an ice blast damage dealer… they wouldn’t work together at all. Knowing your types, building teams around those gimmicks and then using supports from each element within the affinity that season will be the basis for teambuilding.
You always ideally want a source of Attack Down II, a multi-hit debuff unit so you can bring defense down artifact on them, healer, shielder, tank and damage dealer. Units that do more than 1 role are awesome.
What usually separates unit quality rare > epic > lego is their utility… typically legos have a lot more in that they can do multiple roles in a group OR have very heavy damage capability. rares and epics typically do one or two things very well but can’t do it all. that does not make them bad or useless, it just means they fill holes in teams with strategy, and it is up to the player to figure it out.
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