MementoMori: AFKRPG – Progression Guide (F2P)

How to Reach Endgame: Step-by-Step Guide

This is a starting guide aimed at F2P and very low spenders, it will try to explain the game’s progression to endgame slightly in depth. There is no reason to read everything at once, do it as you progress through the game.

• You want to use 1 Carry + 4 Supports until very late in the game. Cordie and Florence are the best Carry options in the game by far; having your chosen carry 40 levels above everyone else will make you progress faster than having everyone at the same level.
• At the start, the only rune worth buying with Rune Tickets is PM Def Break, SPD becomes useful later but you shouldn’t buy any rune other than these 2.
• The most important augments are Dark Chest(Def Break), Holy Gloves(Crit Damage), and Holy Weapon(ATK%).
• In general, using base SR characters to upgrade others isn’t a good idea.
• Do not SSR(purple border) any base-SR character that you don’t have 4 copies of, the only exception to this is your carry. You also shouldn’t bother SSR’ing more than 5 characters at the start.
• Save as many gems as you can until you unlock Invocation of Chance(chapter 12), the only thing you really want to buy are the key gifts in the shop when you have golden boxes. You can buy Tree of Life’s Dews as well if you see them with a 50% discount, but they won’t be used until endgame.

Starting Out and The Perfect Reroll

With the way this game works, you will want a single character who will receive every gear/runes and 4 more who will act as support for her while having no investment; and there are only two characters that stand out from the rest as capable carries from early to endgame: Florence and Cordie. 

 The perfect reroll would be 2 copies of Florence/Cordie + 1~2 Notable supports:

• Notable Supports: Mimi, Primavera.
• Useful characters that will help progression and might make you consider a reroll good: Merlyn**, Dian, Soltina, Fenrir, Mertillier.

**Merlyn is one of the most important supports in the game, the only reason she isn’t a reroll goal is because she is buyable, getting her from rerolling helps but it doesn’t really interfere, especially if you’re going for Florence carry.

 This would be the “perfect” reroll, which is a great start if you’re willing to suffer enough to deserve it. Most people stop at 1 of either Cordie or Florence + 1 Notable/Useful character.

 Although it can make or break an account, there isn’t a reroll that guarantees your safety in this game because you want 4 copies of your carry (Cordie/Flo) by the time they get to level 140, and having the correct supports can also make a big difference on your progression. 

 All of that leaves us with a few main roads to start your account:

 The 4 rerolling ways explained below will be using chapter 12 as a goal for early game since that’s where you unlock the most important banner for progression. It’s possible to do it using other characters or just with level link, but these are the most reliable/desirable ways, Cordie/Florence will always be the fastest way to get there. The Selector Letters you receive should be the last resource you use, right when you need only that last dupe to progress. If you pick a Florence account, Cordie should be ranked up later as your level link.

The Easy Way (1 Cordie + Supports)

Being a buyable unit from the Cave shop, Cordie would be the less stressful option for rerolling. With the dash event that every account gets on start, you will be able to buy 1 copy of her on week 1 and you’re guaranteed to have another copy pretty quickly. The dash event also gives a Selector Letter, so that means that even if your reroll has only one Cordie at the start, she will still be easy enough to progress with.

Pros:

• 1 Cordie from reroll is enough to have an easy time progressing quickly.
• Not that far from Florence in terms of damage early on.
• You will only need to invest on one type of rune until endgame.
• Smug.
• Extremely high SPD, PvP is easy mode for Cordie up to top 25 in new servers. (which means more rewards)
• More flexible teams and more damage as a carry compared to Florence on endgame.

Cons:

• Low multihits, so she suffers against Soltina in Story and vs teams built specifically against her in PvP.
• Considerably lower damage than Florence until endgame.
• Requires a specific character (Sivi) to outperform Florence significantly on endgame.

The Hard Way (2 Florences + Supports)

Unlike Cordie, Florence has no f2p friendly way of being acquired until mid game. The only guarantee you have is the Selector Letter from the dash event.

So, even if you have a perfect reroll with 2 Florences and her supports, you might still get stuck at 140 for a while given bad enough rng. This is enough for her to get to Chapter 12 if you have good supports or enough patience so it’s not a big problem, just kind of annoying(see The Rough Way).

The chance of actually getting stuck at 140 is rather low since you will be getting a decent amount of soul summons, Soul Letters, and SR shards, but it is a possibility since you need 1 more random Flo.

Pros:

• Considerably higher damage cap than Cordie until endgame.
• With the right team, she is harder to counter in PvP than Cordie in early server teams.
• Cool.
• Easy to make use of a SPD-tuned Merlyn.
• You’ll get some fodder for Blue soul type early on, which can help her get to 140 a bit faster.
• Easier to build her team on endgame.

Cons:

• Low SPD, so she suffers against high SPD enemies(Sonya) and in PvP until built correctly, Primavera becomes almost a requirement pretty quickly.
• There is only one guaranteed dupe you get from the story but you will be level ~180 by then, so it doesn’t help much.
• You’ll have 1 team you can use on endgame and that’s pretty much it.
• You’ll have to build Cordie anyway, but as support instead. Raise her as part of your level link later.

The Rough Way (1 Flo + Supports / Only Good Supports)

Once you clear 11-28, you will unlock the Invocation of Chance, this banner will let you select a specific SR to roll for while getting other good mats as well, it’s generally considered the best banner for progression and it’s what you want to spend on with most of the gems you saved from early game.

While hard, it’s possible to get there with a 140 Florence/Cordie (2 copies) within reasonable time.

That means you can start with a single Florence, get 1 more from Selector Letter, and then do your best to get there with just that. You will need decent supports for this and even then you will suffer quite a bit with rng clears.

Cordie can also get to ch12 at level 140 (with a lot of investment), so going for Cordie on a Supports-only reroll is also viable as long as you’re not rushing.

Florence would be easier for this.

Pros:

• Easier to reroll for, makes 1 Florence rerolls viable.

Cons:

• Pure rng suffering to clear some stages as you get closer to chapter 12.
• Depending on how fast you progress, you will most likely get stuck at ch9~12 because of runes/augments. Not for too long though.

1USD Way – The Unbrickening (Amleth)

Amleth is the first useful “carry” unit to be given to you in chapter 9, and she has a “first purchase” pack that gives you 2 copies of her. That means you can have 4 guaranteed copies of her by buying one more from the cave shop, giving you a way to follow even if you start out without any useful character in your roster. Carry Amleth is enough to get you where you need to go to start focusing on someone else, she is a good pick for someone who really hates rerolling.

You can start using Amleth at any point if you can’t use Cordie/Flo and are not willing to reroll.

You will want a Merlyn asap, but other than that you should buy Cordies from Cave Shop as insurance.

There is a good chance that you will get enough Cordies/Flos with the early rewards to transition to them even before ch12, but don’t count on it.

Pros:

• No reroll required. You can have the worst starting account and this is still doable if you’re willing to pay 1 USD and be patient.
• Possible way to “unbrick” accounts if you didn’t waste gems/characters/letters.
• You will give your account some good time for the rng to even out, so you should have a more clear way to follow by the time you move away from her as your Carry.

Cons:

• Really not that great. Slower progression.
• Needs borderline perfect gem investments everywhere for this to be a remotely decent idea. Save as many gems as possible while using her as carry. The only thing you should spend on are the Key Packs for runes.

Make sure you read the “Amleth” part of the Invocation of Chance section when you get there. This is not recommended, but if you really want to do this instead of rerolling, this is the kind of stats you would need to get to Chapter 12, where you can safely transition without as much rng.

Level 010 to 120

(Considering carry level only).

Character Awakening:

When you get dupes of a character you can awaken them into a higher rarity. Sometimes you will need duplicates of that character (dupes) and sometimes you can use any other character of the same soul type; when you can use any character it will be symbolized by a generic witch in the Awakening screen.

Characters come as N (useless), R, or SR.

R characters are generally called “fod” since you also want to use them to raise someone else’s rarity, but they do have uses outside of that so don’t go feeding them away just yet.

The first awakening might happen right after finishing your reroll, if you have 2 Florences, for example.

• 3 R dupes = R+ of that character
• 3 R+ = SR fod.
• 2 SR dupes = SR+ of that character.

You can SR+ any character you’re able to, Rs included, but don’t go past that(Don’t make anyone SSR/purple border yet). Level up only 5 characters since they will be linked later, but don’t worry much about “who” you should level for now, just level who you think is good, Level Link will be expanded upon at the level 120+ section.

Team Formation:

Most of the time, your units’ positioning doesn’t matter much, but keep in mind that characters tend to hit in front of them and some specific characters want to be in certain positions as well (like Merlyn who wants to be on the team’s corners until level 220, or Primavera who hits the enemy directly in front of her).

You should change positions as needed. Notable characters and what they do. (No particular order):

• Florence/Cordie: Your main carry of choice. Your XP, Orbs, your best runes and augments should all be funneled into her. You should use only one of them as Carry.
• Merlyn: She gives a crit passive to the character by her side and both of her skills are great. S1 is a good damage buff and S2 is a dispel. She can be speed tuned to go before Florence quite easily, her SPD is the only support investment you might consider doing until endgame.
• Mimi: Reflects damage dealt from one enemy to another.
• Primavera: Prim is one of the best supports in the game thanks to her passive, but she doesn’t unlock the SPD bonus until level 121, which makes her not that great early on. Still better than most other options since she also stuns and gives an ATK buff, just not amazing. She is usually the one to switch out of your team if needed before 121.
• Dian: Passive that gives your Carry a bonus chance to evade attacks, good vs single hit threats.
• Soltina/Amleth: The only thing they are exceptionally good at is taking hits. Amleth really needs to be 141+ to be considered over Soltina for that purpose since Iris exists.
• Fenrir/Mertillier: Both of them will reduce your cooldowns. They are usable early but they quickly fall off compared to the others here until the endgame(when you get Luna’s weapon). 
• Hathor: Reduces enemy ATK on turn 1 and stuns on turn 2, useful by herself but can be a very good combo with Primavera if all stars align. In general not really better than the other mentioned characters early on thanks to bad rng.
• Freesia: Usually paired with Dian for even more evasion, she also heals I guess. She is nice if you have no other choice.
• Olivia: She has good buffs but she suffers from needing high stats, she will barely do anything at a 40 levels difference. She is nice if you have no other choice if you can get the 3 Amber soul bonus with her.
• Iris and Illya: Iris gives a 1-hit shield to your Carry and Illya has the longest Faint in the game so far (single target 2 turns stun), both of them have their uses in many stages and are good options if you need to fill the team.
• Lunalynn: Kind of an honorable mention. Luna has the potential to silence all enemies for 1 turn, she is very hard to use until endgame with her weapon, but she might be the reason you clear a stage early on even with no investment. You can try using her at level 1 due to how the game works with stats, giving her a higher chance to silence enemies.

Characters not mentioned here might not be bad, you work with what you get. Just try to understand your characters and read their skills to build your team. (Or ask for help.)

The most used generalist teams would be something like:

•  Merlyn Carry Mimi +2

The +2 can be anyone mentioned above and it will work well enough, but preference is given to 121Primavera, Hathor, and Dian; Soltina/141Amleth/Fenrir being the next best thing, or sometimes even better depending on your enemies. Early on you can use both Cordie and Florence if you got both, but you’ll quickly reach a point where your 2nd carry isn’t really doing anything at around level 100. There are also the soul bonuses that you get for using multiple characters from the same soul type, they won’t affect your team much but it might be helpful when you don’t have the best characters or when they aren’t needed.

Now with your rerolling done and your team ready to go, you will start doing story stages and unlocking the different trials in the game, they will all have a short tutorial on them. 

At the very beginning, you can usually just switch between Story stages and Tower of Infinity once you get stuck in one of them, that way you will keep progressing.

There isn’t much wrong you can do at this point in the game, just keep playing however you want until you reach level 100. There are only a few things you need to pay attention to:

• Don’t use limited resources until you need a boost to progress and what you have will be enough to get there. (This refers to the usable Kindling/EXP Orbs in your inventory since you get more from them the longer you wait.)
• Your carry being 40 levels above the rest of your team will make your life easier in general.
• If you can buy runes, the only ones you want are PM Def Break, buy SPD only if needed.
• You want to save as many gems as possible at the start, but feel free to buy the key packs for runes when you have golden boxes. You can buy Tree of Life’s Dews if you see them with a discount as well but it won’t be used until much later.

After this point it won’t take long for you to gradually start unlocking the things that usually make new players feel lost.

Level Link and Who to Level:

You will soon unlock something called Level Link at player rank 30, which will make it so all of your chosen characters are the same level as your 5th highest one; so just level up any 5 characters you want and awaken anyone, but only up to SR+ (level 120). 

The only thing to keep in mind is that you need 4 dupes of a character in total to get past SSR/Level 140, so you don’t want to SSR(purple border) anyone unless you meet that condition for SSR+ already, otherwise you can get yourself stuck thanks to wasted fod. Only your carry should be awakened past 120 without following this.

For now just get anyone you want to SR+ and get to level 100~120, you can check your character’s skills and decide on who you want to level based on that, or just level up the characters you like the most. Check the “level 121~180” intro for more on Link.

Upgrading and Reforging:

These two systems are unlocked quite a bit apart from each other but they are easy to understand so I’m lumping them together.

Upgrade will raise your equipment’s main stat, it adds up quickly so you want to keep it always maxed on your carry’s weapon; gloves and boots are the 2nd best thing to enchant. You don’t want to enchant everyone’s gear because you’ll be lacking mats later, but it’s fine to upgrade their gloves and boots a bit as well if you have mats to spare.

Reforging will rearrange your gear’s stat distribution, which is equal for STR, DEX, MAG, and STAM by default. The only thing you should know is your carry’s mainstat: Florence(Warriors) will want STR, and Cordie(Snipers) will want DEX. You can just click without looking since there will be a warning if you try to change a good reforge according to their mainstat.

There is no need to bother with anyone but your carry’s reforging until endgame, just spam the Reforge button until it gives you a prompt; even if you have it, do not use the lock feature for now since it will cost gems.

What to Do with Gems / What Banner to Pull on:

Your gems from early game should be saved for a banner called Invocation of Chance, the only things you should buy until then are keys from the store when you have golden chests and Dews if you see them discounted for 50%(can by 20% too if you feel safe with your gems); buy the Box Gift only if you are very stuck, but it shouldn’t happen if you’re doing everything correctly.

You will get tickets for the Elemental/Soul Banner from chapter clears and elemental towers. You should spend them on your chosen Carry’s soul so you get more dupes and fod, if you really need more fod you can also buy the 660 Fodder Packs on the store, but you probably won’t need them for now. If you get to 4 Florences/Cordies you can consider using your Soul Banner Tickets on Amber(gold) if you still don’t have Primavera or Mimi. 

Make sure you keep your Wish List unchanged for now unless you already know what you’re doing. So far, almost every limited/gacha character is either for whales only or useless.

Characters that are useful at low rarity that you can consider getting:

• Fia – Good for both PvP and PvE, but she needs ranks and gear for PvE.
• Rusalka – Useful in PvP both with and without gear.
• Sivi – Good for PvE as a support. Must have for Cordie teams.
• Leah – Good for PvP for her stun.
• Luke – Good vs solo targets. (Pretty much just guild raid if you care enough about it).
• Christmas Amour – Good for PvP and PvE, but she is situational.
• SR Iris – Can be good for PvP for her “shields”.
• Matilda – Walmart version of Sivi/Merlyn. (Pretty good, just not as good as those 2)

Runes:

There are offensive runes and defensive runes. Offensive runes will be equipped on the gear pieces that appear on the left (weapon, accessory, and gloves), and each piece can hold one rune of each type. The same applies to defensive runes but on the right side, which means you are able to equip 3 of each rune on each character; so when someone says “9/9/9 SPD” or something similar, it means “three level9 SPD runes”. You’ll always want 3 at the same level and start upgrading them one by one, it’s the most effective way to do it.

• The offensive runes you should keep an eye out for are, in order, PM Defense Break > SPD >>>>> ATK, ACC > CRIT, STR/DEX*. While nice, the runes other than PMDB and SPD will barely make a difference later.

*STR for Warriors and DEX for Snipers.

•  While nowhere near as important as the offensive ones, the best defensive runes are Evade, Crit Resist, and Debuff Resist.

You will get quite a few of these from the Mystery Runes that you get by just playing the game, but they won’t give PMDB or SPD(the ones you want the most), the most useful random runes you receive in this way will be the ATK ones since they help quite a bit early on.

To buy specific runes you’ll need Rune Tickets (often called Biscuits/Cookies by the community). This is one of the scarce currencies in the game so make sure you’re using it correctly.

You want to buy the Key Gift in the store whenever you have Golden Boxes in your inventory, that and Temple are your main source of cookies.

For the most part, the only thing you want to buy with the Rune Tickets at this point is PM Defense Break runes. This is where the carry options differ a little bit.

Cordie

• Go all out on PMDB, ignore everything else until you get to 8/8/8, or even 9/9/9 before thinking of buying SPD. The only reason you wouldn’t follow this is if you’re in a new server, able to rank high in PvP and being outsped by other Cordies, while also having 121 Primavera, since otherwise you’re not outspeeding the players who have her anyway.

Florence

• Get 6/6/6 PMDB first, you should get SPD for Merlyn until she goes first to buff Flo’s Skill1 (5/5/4 SPD or so should be enough). Going for SPD runes on Florence won’t be a waste since you’ll want them later, but your focus should be more PMDB runes anyway. Florence can go SPD’less up to the first Sonya stages in Story, especially if you have Primavera.

Amleth

• Get 6/6/6 PMDB and then get some SPD up to 5/5/5 or so, Amleth is one of the slowest characters so she really needs it before 160, then go back to focusing on PMDB runes. You can give the SPD runes to Merlyn or Amleth depending on the stage.

The usual “build” for your carry’s equipment will end up looking like this on all left pieces. 

The 4th slot can be ACC, CRIT, Debuff Acc, or STR/DEX. (or just keep it locked at the start.)

Augments:

When you clear 6-20, you will unlock the augment tab when you open your gear menu on a normal equipment.

Most of the augments are rather useless for progression, so you want to do this right from the start. They should all be funneled into your carry, same as everything else.

There are 2 types of augments that you can have at the same time on any piece of equipment: Holy and Dark. 

Holy is more scarce and can only be bought from the store as Holy gear, you will use the augment tab to feed it into your own gear. Dark gear pieces can be obtained from smelting gear and there are also Dark Perfumes that you will get often enough, so they are easier to obtain. 

 The TLDR:

•  Before level 160: Dark augments should go to both your weapon and chestpiece equally, stop the weapon at level 15 or so and start focusing only on chest. All Holy levels should go to your gloves (Don’t do holy on weapon for now)
•  After level 160: Feed all Dark levels from your weapon into your chest, and all Holy levels from your gloves to your weapon. You can use the Transfer function to send your weapon augments to a lower leveled gear, that way you keep your gear and upgrades, you’ll only lose your rune slots since they get transferred as well. From now on you will do all Dark augments on chest up to Dark level 40 before doing your weapon again; for holy augs you should try to do weapon and gloves at the same time from now on at a 2:1 rate.

If you don’t want to think about what you’re doing, just skip Dark Weapon augments all together and you will be alright too (do Dark Chest and Holy Gloves+Holy Weapon from the start), it’s not ideal if you want to progress as fast as possible but it’s also not that important if you think it’s too complicated or don’t really care. The result at the end is the same.

The Explanation:

The only augments worth anything for progression are these: Dark Chest (Def Break), Holy Weapon (ATK%), and Holy Gloves (Crit Damage %); however, Dark Weapon (Flat ATK) can be very useful early on since it inflates your ATK stat, which will be low enough for it to make a big difference. The Dark Weapon will be quite useful at the start but it falls off really hard as you level up. Regardless of what you choose, it will be easy to move augments around if you don’t mix many Holy and Dark levels on your weapon early on.

Elemental Towers and Tower of Infinity:

Tower of Infinity is just another thing to progress alongside story chapters, just with different rewards. In general you can use the same party as your Story one.

Floor181 and above will give Dark Perfumes for augments, so try not to use your reap tickets until then.

The elemental towers are a good source of Golden Boxes and Soul Banner tickets, it unlocks quite a bit after the normal tower.

You can transfer the gear around to another character to push the other towers but don’t worry too much about it, your main driving force for elemental towers will be your level link. Try transfering your runes/gear to these characters to push their respective towers:

• Blue: Florence
• Red: Sabrina/Rean
• Green: Cordie
• Gold: Mimi

Level 121 to 180

Wish List and Level link past 120/SR+:

When you get to this point you will need to actually decide on who to level; if you do this wrong you might get yourself stuck for a while.

You need 4 copies of a SR to get past SSR, so you don’t want to awaken any base-SR that doesn’t meet this requirement. 

What you want to do is awaken your carry to SSR(purple border), with hopefully 2 more copies of them at your disposal so they are ready to SSR+, then you awaken anyone else you have 4 total copies of from other soul types. Every other Level Link slot should be filled with base-Rs(Cherna, Illya, etc), ideally from different soul types as well but it’s ok if not while using Rs; you’ll be able to awaken these only up to SSR+(lvl 160) but that’s more than enough. As an example, a level link like this would work fine until you need to upgrade it to level 180, where you’d need to replace Arianrhod and Soteira for SRs:

While nice to have, your main team/characters don’t need to be part of your level link other than your carry. The only benefit supports can get from awakening is reaching higher levels a bit earlier than your level link (they get tankier too, but it doesn’t matter until very late into the endgame). You can have a main team like this and it will work fine:

When the time to transition from Rs to SRs comes(level 180 Link), you will want to use whoever you have 4 total dupes of, or whoever will be the easiest to get to that; sometimes it might be worth buying a Tropon from Cave Shop just so you can get past 160 link with her, the same applies later since you will want to have 5 LRs on link, which will take 8 dupes total, but it will most likely be the same SR-characters that you pick here, preference should be given to Cave Shop characters if you already have dupes for them.

You will soon start to use A LOT of fodder to awaken to UR and UR+(red borders), this is the main reason to spread your level link between the 4 souls. 

You can change your Wish List to only have the characters you want + ~2 R-ranks at this point if you feel like fodder is a problem for you, but make sure your Wish List still has all 4 souls with 5 characters, it won’t work as it should unless it’s full. Who you “want” in your Wish List exactly will depend on a lot of things, but you’ll probably be fine if you pick 3 SRs you think you want and fill the other 2 slots with Rs. Some people also choose to never change the Wish List so they get more dupes for later, but it might take longer to advance early on. 

You can consider buying the fodder packs in the shop if that’s all you need to get a good power bump from your carry or your link.

If your main carry is Florence, try to have Cordie as your green level link and raise her along with Florence, that way you have the option to change to her as your carry at endgame once you have Sivi. Using Cordie as LL will also let you use her UW earlier when she reaches 180, instead of waiting for your level link to get there.

Invocation of Chance (Unlock by Clearing Stage 11-28):

This is the best gacha for general progression in the game, it’s what you saved your gems for. You will get 16 hours of red balls on every pull, you get specific SRs that you select before rolling, you get level 180+ gear, you get SR letters; overall the best banner in the game. 

This is your chance to acquire that support you’ve been missing, that random level link dupe you lack for the next awakening, or just get to the 7th copy of your carry since you’ll need 8 in total by the time you reach level 200, you will most likely get your 8th by then.

Cordie

• If you unlocked Chance at level 140, you can get the 1~2 dupes you need now for level 160 if you don’t want to wait. Then you can think of getting the important supports you’re missing. Cordie being buyable means you probably won’t have too many problems with dupes.

Florence

• If you unlocked Chance at level 140, you’ll want to get the 1~2 dupes you need now for level 160. Then you can think of getting the important supports you’re missing, more Florences to prepare for LR, or level link dupes if you still don’t have enough by the time you need them. You’ll receive a Florence from Chapter15 so you can stop at 6 total dupes and get the 8th later if needed.

Amleth

• If you got here with Amleth (or someone else), congratulations. This is where you are guaranteed to have the chance to transition to another carry; it’s time you let her rest. Hopefully you will have 2~3 Florence/Cordie dupes by now so it won’t be hard to transition to them. Refer to their sections on the left once you do. You are free now.

You can roll on this banner until you have ~5k gems left. You can keep going if you want to or you can save when you don’t need dupes anymore, but you will want to have at least ~8k by the time you get to 13-22.

Chance will also give you books and scrolls for 180+ gear pieces. Check below for info, don’t craft any weapons with these books that you get here unless it’s a Naamah/silver piece, any gold/purple weapon you craft here will be replaced by Unique Weapons soon so it’s a waste(check below for UWs).

Gear Gacha Tab and the level 180+ Gear (Unlock by Clearing 13-22):

Instead of unlocking a banner, you now unlock a whole ass tab of banners. These new banners are all for level 180+ gear, there are 4 main types of gear and 3 of them change names and set bonuses every 20 levels so it would be complicated to go too in-depth, but this section will work as a general “value min-max” guide.

You will also be able to use Unique Weapons (UW) starting at level 180.

This is the TLDR for each of the banners:

• Sinful/Naamah Gacha: This is for silver gear, do not spend gems on this, just make sure to do the 5 free(gold) rolls every day since it’s a nice gear for supports and you can also get rune tickets from it. 2 books/scrolls=1 gear piece.
• Holy/Sandal Gacha: This is for gold gear, you can get by pretty safely with just 2 gold pieces that you’ll probably get from rolling on Chance banner. 3 books/scrolls=1 gear piece.
• Forbidden/Asta Gacha: This is for purple gear, you want at least 1 piece so you get the 2-set bonus with your Unique Weapon, since UWs are considered purple gear pieces until you upgrade to Michael. 5 books/scrolls=1 gear piece.
• Seraph/Chalice Gacha: This is for Michael gear for level 240+, you get 1 free roll every day. Check the relic store to see which relics you need for the Michael piece you want.
• Witches’ Secrets: This is for Unique Weapons, you get 1 free roll every day.

How to deal with all this: 

When you first unlock these banners, the first thing you want is your carry’s UW, feel free to spend some gems on Witches’ Secrets to get that, but you want to use your normal income of Weapon Crystals for enhancing it or acquiring UWs for other characters.

For Seraph/Chalice specifically, make sure you select the relic you want on Monday before you start that week’s rolls, changing the relic will reset the pity. You will end up doing 3 rolls on it weekly, that way you have a chance to get a relic every week. Your UW will become Michael with 15 Tree of Life’s Dews eventually, so you want to focus on 1 piece at first. Usually you’d go for Gloves or Boots since they have the most useful stat from armor pieces. Michael gear can eventually be upgraded into Metatron, which is the best gear currently available; the only problem with Mich/Meta is how hard they are to acquire and upgrade. Satan gear stats become better than Meta at around level 320, so you have to choose between upgrading your meta pieces or using a lot of enchanting mats on your Satan gloves/boots to keep them maxed. The difference between Satan and Meta is really big so it’s nice if you can keep up with at least one piece (gloves or boots)

The other gear banners are less important than those two. Hopefully you won’t even need to roll on them for now if you had good gear drops from Chance banner.

You can check the in-game index to see what each set does at each level, but in general what you want is 2 purple 4 gold, 2purple 2gold 2silver, or 4purple 2gold ; this is not a requirement though. 6 purple is good but it will use a lot of gems and you’ll ideally use only 4 purple pieces as soon as you hit 240, so I’d say it’s not worth it; you can also just use silver gears as needed, just check the index and try to go for the offensive set bonuses that you think you can achieve easily, sometimes a gear 20 levels lower than your character might be better thanks to its’ 2set bonus.

From this point onwards you’ll be enhancing your gear to level it up instead of getting a new one, this will use more gear pieces, decide on 2 or 4 purple according to what you think you can keep up with.(2 would be much cheaper since it’s just 1 piece + weapon)

Enhancing your gear will break your set bonus even if they have the same rarity, so try to always do at least 2 pieces at the same time if you’re going to lose/receive a good bonus.

Unique Weapons (UW)

With Witches Secrets unlocked you will be able to slowly buy UWs for your characters, some have far bigger impact than others so you want to invest your crystals correctly.

Get your carry’s weapon first, after that you will want to buy the most important support ones (while also upgrading your carry’s UW, so you’ll need to plan ahead a little bit since that will use more UW pieces.)

Read all weapon effects as you get close to having the UWs below to decide what to go after, but these are the most important support UWs considering their impact and the investment needed for them: 

• Cordie(base UW): -80% DEF debuff on s1, turns Cordie into one of the best supports for Florence.
• Merlyn(base UW): +20% Crit Damage on s1.

Merlyn Florence Cordie Mimi [+1] or Merlyn Cordie Mimi [+2] becomes the average PvE team at this point, at least until 241+. The [+1~2] are usually Primavera and Hathor.

• Lunalynn(UR UW): You’ll want her weapon at UR/Michael as soon as she is able to use it(level 240). This is by far the biggest upgrade to a character’s usefulness. It turns her s1 into a 3turn silence, enabling Fenrir/Mertilier teams. It’s a big investment but Luna’s UW is a priority for the PvE meta, and you should have enough crystals by the time your level link is 240. This is pretty much only for PvE.

Arcanas

You shouldn’t worry about it but it can be a good reason to shift your awakening investment to some specific characters in the future.

The Arcana with the best effect is the Amour-Sabrina-Nina-Ivy one, it gives 15% Crit Damage account-wide. The other arcanas really don’t matter much or have limited characters.

It will take a good while to get anything from Arcanas since you’ll want the characters at LR. Arcanas are also how you get past LR5, not a big deal as of writing this.

Level 181 to 240

Welcome to 17-12 and beyond.

From here on you can choose what to do with your gems. Each account will have a different need based on your luck up to this point. The only thing that won’t change is your thirst for runes, but you shouldn’t bother buying boxes so you’ll have excess gems. You should also try to buy Dews if you see them around, you’ll need 15 by the time your carry reaches 240 if everything goes well, but you can buy more as well since you’ll need them later.

Gems are there to be spent, but you’ll have to decide what is worth or not from here on since your income is going to be much lower now that you’re not constantly progressing.

More Chance banner for dupes is fine, maybe more purple gear for your Carry if your luck was bad on Chance, fodder packs are good if you really need them, going for 100% pity on Seraph if you’re getting to 240 soon is fine, saving for a limited character or for peace of mind is also fine.

You’ll be here for a good while, but you’ll need 5 LRs at 240 to get to 241+ so try to start working on that as well. 

At 240 you’ll want to have 2set Michael (UW + 1 piece), 4set Satan is nice as well(or 2Beel-2Luci since it’s slightly stronger damage-wise at 240, but it gives less HP so it might not be worth it because of PvP); put some thought into your gear and how much you’ll be spending for it.

Once you have 5 LRs for your level link, consider changing your Wishlist to include the SRs you’ve ignored until now, don’t remove your carry(and Cordie if you’re using Flo) until she is LR5; your fodder needs will become easier to handle and from now on you will want to get as many LRs as possible. Dupes past LR are only needed if you want to use Metatron gear on them, so you can remove characters that are at LR if you don’t care about their gear.

Level 241+

After 240Level Link, you will start using more green balls again and you’ll need as many LR characters as you can get to raise your level cap. (1 LR = +5 levels)

Because of how stats and gear leveling works, you’ll end up being weaker as you level up past 241. If you want your characters to always be as effective as possible, consider leveling in these steps: 241 -> 250 -> 260 -> 270; after that it will be fine to level normally. You can ignore this if you don’t care enough since the difference is smaller than 5%. 

This assumes you’re always keeping your upgrades maxed. If you want to do this, use leveling table below to check how much you’ll need for the next step.

It will take a long time as f2p since you’d need to be LR+5 for it, but Michael gear can also be awakened into Metatron (LR rarity) with 50 Tree of Life’s Dews for each piece. Keep this in mind since at some point you might end up breaking your Michael/Satan set bonuses for that.