Grand Summoners Newbie Guide

Technical Guide [WIP]

by Monokhrome

Updated as of 24/06/2025

Table of Content

Before Reading Further

1

Settings & Filters

2

Units

5

Before Reading Further

This guide is for players who are new to the game but have already understood the basics of the game. Please refer to the newbie guide instead if you’re a brand new player:

Grand Summoners Newbie Guide

Settings & Filters

Options

Under Battle, turn on “Time Mode”. This allows you to see the in-game timer of quests respectively.

Under Options, turn off “Show Tips”. This allows you to skip straight to the results page upon finishing a quest. You can also turn on “Push Notifications for Help Request” and “...when Energy restored” for notifs when people send SOS signals in Raids and if you are full on Energy. Participate in the rankings can also be turned on if you want to appear on the Leaderboards (top 10 fastest clears of each quest).

If you are having a tough time on a certain Quest, pause the game and click the “Logs” button to see the boss’ strengths and weaknesses.

Under Details, check “Show in Battle” to see your unit’s DMG, DMG Taken, Healing and Break values. Set it to whatever opacity you like, but personally halfway is best.

Unit Filters

 and selection of Units for a team: it’s best to filter out all the non 5★ units and sort by either Level or Limit Break in descending order, depending on your preference. (When sending your box for advice on discord, please send it sorting with Limit Break)

: same with the filters above and enable Duplicates and sort by Limit Break in descending order

: do the same filters above and filter out Lv MAX, since they don’t need to be enhanced anymore. Turn off 5★ Ascended filter on Rarity since SAWKs can’t be levelled through metal chickens. Sort by Level in descending order.

: do the same as the  filters but filter out Lv Not MAX instead. This is so you can only see units that require evolving/awakening/ascensions/dream awakening.

: Filter by Date in descending order. Filter out any 5★ Awoken and Ascended from Max Rarity so as to not accidentally sell them.

Equip Filters

: Simply sort by Rarity in descending order. Filter to any equip type you wish to see, otherwise keep it at All

: Sort by Date in descending order, since you most likely want to enhance the equips you’ve gotten immediately. Otherwise, Rarity is fine as well.

: Follow the filters from  and enable Duplicates similarly to limit breaking units filters.

: Follow the filters from  as you wanna sell useless equips ASAP so as to not clog up your equip box.

Units

Dealing DMG & Elements

Each unit has an element: Fire, Water, Earth, Light or Dark, and each element has a weak element that will deal 20% more DMG towards it.

Units will also take a reduced 20% DMG towards their weak element.
However this is mostly negligible for team building.

When dealing DMG, some yellow orbs may drop from enemies, these are called Battle Ether, or BE. These give 10 arts per orb on a random unit. This is usually NOT a reliable form of artsgen, especially in nukes. When forming a nuke team, calculate your arts gained on your nuker to be 100% consistent regardless of BE.

Units with CRI Rate can deal Critical DMG. Critical Hits deal 25% more DMG than non-critical hits, and completely ignore DEF.

SAWK units may have Arts or abilities that grant them Super CRI Rate, which deals 3x the DMG multiplier compared to standard CRI Rate. Do note that to hit Super Critical DMG, a unit must have both CRI Rate and Super CRI Rate Up.

Barriers and Taunts

  • Some units provide barriers to all allies, shielding them from damage. These units are referred to as mitigators and taunt tanks.
  • Units with a barrier and/or DMG RES will have a shield bubble on their sprite
  • Units with barriers will have a barrier HP bar on top of a unit’s HP bar
  • Damage Over Time (DoT) effects like Burn and Poison are not affected by barriers and will directly lower a unit’s HP
  • If an existing barrier is on a unit, any arts used that grants barriers will replace all allies’ barriers, regardless of if the existing barrier is higher or lower value. Taunt barriers are the exceptions to this, and stack with any teamwide barriers.

  • The colour of the barrier HP bar shows how strong the barrier is:
  • Light Blue: Standard (1x of unit’s HP bar)
  • Dark Blue: Strong (2x of unit’s HP bar)
  • Purple: Very strong (3x of unit’s HP bar)
  • Red: Strongest (4x or more of unit’s HP bar)
  • Some units’ Arts allow them to redirect all DMG from allies to themselves while granting themselves a barrier. These units are called taunt tanks and are an alternative to teamwide barrier units.
  • Similarly, DMG redirection does not affect DoTs. However, DoTs applied will only affect the taunt unit, unless stated.

  • Enemies that Ignore Barrier and Cancel DMG Negation completely remove units’ barriers.
  • Enemies with Shield Killer, Guard Killer or Taunt Killer deal significantly more DMG to taunt units, and shouldn’t be used for that quest.

Buff and Debuff stacking

  • Units with the same buff ANY of their Arts (example ATK UP, Accuracy UP, etc.) will not stack if used together, unless specified.
  • Example 1: Sublime Supernova Liza and War Hero Fen both have an Equip CT DOWN buff on their TA and NA respectively. If used together, Liza’s buff overrides Fen’s as it’s stronger (60% vs 40%)

  • Example 2: Lucy Heartfilia and Warpath Blazer Orvell both have a MAG DMG UP buff on their NA and TA respectively. Since Lucy’s buff is stackable with itself, it is a different buff type and will stack with Orvell’s

  • Units with passives of the SAME NAME will not stack if in the same team together. However, units with passive that increases the same stat with a different name do stack.
  • Example 1: Draken and Kimono Milim both have the passive “Arts gauge Master”. If placed on the same team, only Kimono Milim’s passive will activate as it is stronger (Lv5 vs Lv3)

  • Example 2: Spy of Darkness Fen and Forte both have a passive that functions the same, “Tactics” and “Arts gauge Master” respectively. Although the passives do the same thing, they have a different name and will stack.

  • Units with the same effects from passive and arts will stack.

Equip & Skill CT buffs

CT buffs are calculated with this formula right here:

Current CT ÷ (1 + CT Buff in %) = New CT

As an example, if an equip has a 35s CT on a unit with 40% Equip CT buff, we sub in the values of the formula:

35s ÷ (1 + 40%)

=        35s ÷ 1.4

=        25s

If you don’t want to calculate the CT buffs all the time, you can remember it in increments instead:

10% CT buff = 10/11 of its original CT

25% CT buff = 4/5 of its original CT

50% CT buff = 2/3 of its original CT

100% CT buff = 1/2 of its original CT

The CT buff formula is mostly used to calculate the up-time to down-time of DEF equips, as you need them to survive certain attacks from enemies. Up-time is a term used to describe how long an equip’s effect lasts for. Otherwise, it serves as a general buff to most equips to get more arts and/or buffs from them.

  • Most DEF equips have an up-time to CT ratio of 1:2, example: True ‘Adamas Gear’ has an up-time of 15s and a CT of 30s.
  • As such, these equips don’t have the ability to have its effect up permanently, since it's not possible to reach 100% CT buff outside of very specific units.
  • However, some DEF equips have an up-time to CT ratio of 2:3, example: Divine Robe Radoel has an up-time of 20s and a CT of 30s.
  • With a 40-50% Equip CT buff, these equips are able to have its effect up at all times.

A special property CT buffs have for crests is that they don’t stack even with different crests. So the Skill CT and Equip CT crests don’t stack with the crest “Magic Circuit γ2”, which buffs both Skill CT and Equip CT in one crest.

Special Effects

(Only Once) This effect triggers only once if another unit with the same effect triggers it at the same time.

(First Time Only) This effect can only trigger the first time the Arts/Equip is used, and won’t trigger after subsequent uses.

(Stacks) This effect applied will have an independent cooldown upon applying it, and thus can be applied and stacked infinitely.

(MAX XXX%) This effect stacks until it reaches XXX%. If the effect is permanent, they always stack with other buffs of the same effect. Otherwise, it will have the same stacking rules as regular buffs

Boss HP Bars

Every boss enemy you encounter comes with a big HP bar and a Break bar.

Enemies with diamonds on their HP bar means that at that threshold, they gain invulnerability and immediately use their Arts. Blue diamonds either do not have invulnerability, or can be interrupted via Break.

Break

When the Break bar depletes, enemies enter a BREAK state, taking more DMG called BREAK DMG and momentarily halt their attacks.

Dealing Break is separate from dealing DMG; a unit’s Skill, Arts and their equips all have a set break value that will be dealt to the boss regardless of if the unit dealt DMG. Break values, similarly, only get altered by a boss’ break RES, and the break buffs/debuffs applied to it.

Break is considered a niche among the other mechanics, as there is no need to break bosses unless specified. Consistent DMG and buffs are stronger than the value you get from the momentary DMG increase of Break DMG.

Status Effects

On a unit’s icon in battle, any buffs/debuffs will be placed respectively, starting from the bottom left going right and up as newer status effects get applied.

Buffs

Icon

Status

Effect

Max HP UP

Increases unit’s Max HP, as well as heals the target for the same amount

ATK UP

Increases unit’s ATK

DEF UP

Increases unit’s DEF

Break Power UP

Increases unit’s Break Power

Break Resistance UP

* Only applicable to Giant Bosses

Reduce Break taken by units

Skill CT DOWN

Reduces unit’s Skill CT (cooldown timer)

Equipment CT DOWN

Reduces unit’s Equipment CT
* Note: 100% Equipment CT DOWN cuts an equip’s cooldown by half

Evasion Rate UP

Increases unit’s chance of dodging attacks

Elemental Resistance UP

Unit takes reduced DMG from the specified Element

CRI Resistance UP

Reduces chance of being hit with a Critical hit

Auto-fill Arts gauge

Increases unit’s Arts gauge every second

BE Output UP

Increases unit’s BE Generation

HP Auto-recovery

Heals unit every second

Auto-revive ownself

Unit survives with a certain amount of HP instead of dying, and removes this buff

* Does not count as a unit death

Auto-revive fallen ally

Automatically revives a fallen ally with a certain amount of HP. Actions cannot be performed while the revival animation plays

* Counts as unit death, ally revives with no status effects

Heal Rate UP

Increases unit’s Outgoing Healing

* Healing received by this unit is increased

Heal Received UP

Increases unit’s Incoming Healing

* Healing received from other units is increased

* Does not affect Lifesteal

Negate Damage

Unit has a barrier that absorbs a certain amount of DMG

Magic Resistance UP

Reduces unit’s MAG DMG Taken

Physical Resistance UP

Reduces unit’s PHY DMG Taken

Damage Resistance

Reduces unit’s DMG Taken

Giant Boss Resistance UP

Reduces unit’s DMG Taken from Giant Bosses

Redirect Damage

Unit redirects all DMG Taken from other allies to self

Physical Damage UP

Increases unit’s PHY DMG dealt

Magic Damage UP

Increases unit’s MAG DMG dealt

Damage UP

Increases unit’s DMG dealt

Critical Damage UP

Increases unit’s Critical DMG dealt

Ignore DEF

Unit’s attacks ignore enemy DEF

CRI UP

Increases unit’s chance of landing a Critical Hit

Accuracy Rate UP

Increases unit’s chance to land attacks

Flinch Immunity

Unit is immune to Paralyze and Freeze

Heal for DMG Taken

Unit heals based on DMG Taken

Lifesteal

Unit heals based on DMG dealt

Arts Damage UP

Increases unit’s Arts DMG

Status Ailment Resistance UP

Reduces unit’s chance of being inflicted with all Status Ailments (except Faint)

Reflect Incoming Damage

Unit reflects all DMG Taken back to enemy

* Unit still takes DMG while reflecting

Blind, Burn, Poison, etc Resistance UP

Reduces unit’s chance of being inflicted with the specified Status Ailment

Debuffs

Icon

Status

Effect

Bleed

Increases unit’s DMG Taken by 3% per stack

Damage Resistance DOWN

Increases unit’s DMG Taken

Max HP DOWN

Reduces unit’s Max HP

ATK DOWN

Reduces unit’s ATK

DEF DOWN

Reduces unit’s DEF

Break Power DOWN

Reduces unit’s Break Power

Break Resistance DOWN

* Only applicable for Giant Bosses

Reduces Break taken from units

Skill CT UP

Increases unit’s Skill CT

Equipment CT UP

Increases unit’s Equipment CT

Evasion Rate DOWN

Reduces unit’s Evasion

Elemental Resistance DOWN

Unit takes increased DMG from the specified element

CRI Resistance DOWN

Reduces unit’s CRI Resistance

* 100% CRI Resistance DOWN is the same as having 100% CRI UP

CRI DOWN

Reduces unit’s chance to land a Critical Hit

Accuracy DOWN

Reduces unit’s chance to land attacks

Arts Gauge DOWN

Reduces unit’s Arts gauge every second

Arts Generation Inverted

Reduces unit’s Arts gauge every second, depending on unit’s auto-fill Arts gauge buff

Magic Resistance DOWN

Increases unit’s MAG DMG Taken

Physical Resistance DOWN

Increases unit’s PHY DMG Taken

Damage DOWN

Reduces unit’s DMG dealt

HP Reduction

Reduces unit’s HP by a set/percentage amount of their Max HP every second

* This debuff is applied by enemies, counts as status ailment

* Cannot kill, will leave unit at 1 HP

Reduces unit’s HP by a percentage of their Max HP every second

* This debuff is applied by the unit themself, usually as a caveat when a Skill or Arts is unleashed

* Cannot kill, will leave unit at 1 HP

Status Ailment Resistance DOWN

Increases unit’s chance of being inflicted with all Status Ailments (except Faint)

Blind, Burn, Poison, etc Resistance UP

Increases unit’s chance of being inflicted by the specified Status Ailment

Status Ailments

Icon

Name

Effect

Burn

Unit takes Fire DMG per tick, but cannot kill or lower the unit's HP below 1.

Burn inflicted units have a red tinted icon and a purple HP bar.

Cancelled by Freeze and cancels Freeze upon infliction.

Poison

Unit takes Earth DMG per tick, but cannot kill or lower the unit’s HP below 1.

Poison inflicted units have a purple tinted icon and a purple HP bar and purple bubbles on their icon upon infliction.

Envenom

Similar to regular Poison, but it cannot be cleansed and can kill your units.

Blind

Unit’s attacks have a 30% chance to miss.
(similar to 30% Accuracy DOWN)

Freeze

Unit is stunned and cannot attack or use equipment. Interrupts unit’s attack upon infliction.

Freeze inflicted units have a light blue tinted icon and will be seen frozen in ice.

Ultimate Freeze

Similar to regular Freeze, but also reduces CRI RES by 100%.

Ultimate Freeze inflicted units additionally have a misty aura on their sprite.

Paralyze

Unit is stunned and cannot attack or use equipment. Interrupts unit’s attacks upon infliction.

Paralyze inflicted units have a yellow tinted icon and an electric spark on their icon upon infliction.

Disease

Unit receives 80% less healing.

Disease inflicted units have a blue tinted icon and blue bubbles on their icon upon infliction.

Curse

Unit cannot use their equipment.

Curse inflicted units have a purple tinted icon.

Seal

Unit cannot use their Skills or Arts.

Seal inflicted units have a white tinted icon and white smoke on their icon upon infliction.

Faint

Unit is stunned and cannot attack or use equipment. Interrupts unit’s attacks upon infliction.

Cannot be resisted or cured.

Faint inflicted units have an orange tinted icon.

Crests

These are the criterias for when you can start farming for crests:

  • You can nuke PRO or EXT stages consistently on auto in 12s or less.
  • Your team uses 3 units only to slot in any 4th unit to farm a crest for.
  • It’s currently half-energy campaign for crest palaces.
  • You have a ton of L pots for energy to spare (at least 100).
  • You have nothing better to farm (events, giant boss & side story equips, etc.).

A crest has an estimated 1/20 chance to upgrade to a + crest, regardless of the crest palaces and its difficulty. This chance is calculated individually for each player in multiplayer, so one player can get a 4+, while the rest gets a lv4 crest.

You will gain a ton of Player EXP and rank up multiple times while farming crests. It’s recommended to put a Lv3 or 4 Player EXP Up crest on the unit you are farming crests for to gain even more Player EXP (this is purely optional).

Extreme Difficulty (or EXT) crest palaces are much harder to nuke consistently and quickly. They cost 50 Energy instead of 40 Energy on PRO, and have a higher chance to drop Lv4 crests. If you cannot nuke EXT crest palaces as efficiently, farming PRO stages will be better.

Crest Bursts are an extremely rare occurrence that happens after beating a Nova Crest Palace. When it happens, a random Lv4 or Lv4+ crest on your Leader will turn into a Lv5 or Lv5+ respectively.

  • If your leader unit doesn’t have a Lv4/4+ crest when a burst appears, nothing will happen and your burst will be wasted.
  • Only do novas with a unit with a Lv4+ crest as bursting for a Lv5 crest is never worth it. If your unit has a Lv4 crest on it, replace it with a Lv3 crest or so to prevent it from bursting instead of the Lv4+ crest.
  • Novas can still drop 4+ crests, so the most optimal way to farm is to have one crest slot hold a 4+ crest and one crest slot being empty or a Lv3 crest.
  • Novas also take extremely long to clear in comparison to regular crest palaces and cannot be nuked. Hence in a standard 24-hour quest cycle, you can only clear the quest roughly 200-400 times, and most likely get nothing from it either. Prioritise farming PRO or EXT crest palaces before farming for a crest burst.

Equipment

Calculating Equip APS

This is an easy way to calculate the strength of artsgen equips. Use this equation:

APS = Arts Generated ÷ MLB CT × 4 if Teamwide Artsgen

Example:

True “Shadow Cutter”, 20s CT, 10 arts

10 ÷ 20 = 0.5 APS

If there is any innate equip CT, you can factor that in as well:

True “Izanagi”, 10s CT, 2 arts for 3s, 15% Equip CT

      (2 × 3) ÷ (10 ÷ 1.15)

=    6 ÷ 8.7

=    0.69 APS

Support equips have teamwide artsgen, so multiply the APS calculated by 4:

Milim’s Clothes, 45s CT, 5 arts for 10s

(5 ÷ 10) ÷ 45 × 4 = 4.44 APS

What to look out for

  • Generally, collab equips are way more valuable than seasonable equips, as collabs have no ifs or whens about rerunning, whereas seasonable equips will rerun at least in 1 or 2 years.
  • If there are a few notable equips in a banner, feel free to drop a few pulls (up to 5, or depending on your crystal count and other unit priorities)

/ PHY/MAG Equips

  • Artsgen equips (with roughly 0.5-0.75 APS) are nice to get but the real prizes are the nuking equips, specifically high res down equips (around 40-60%) are the prizes, or any high burst arts equips (80-100)
  • Stacking res down equips are nice to have as well, but not a priority

  • Wave clear equips with high multipliers and fast-hitting equips are big prizes, as they are harder to come by, especially MAG nuking equips.
  • Bonus points for equips with high ATK for any DMG/Dual Boost units.

  • Equips with unique niches or passives will value way more as it helps to cover for something that is too expensive to counter with a full unit.

 DEF Equips

  • Equips with a high up-time to CT ratio of 2:3 (equips with 20s up-time and 30s CT) is the top priority of most equips
  • Equips with secondary effects like heals or burn/freeze/paralysis RES is also very valuable so as to not waste a whole unit for such niches.

  • Equips should have high elemental or PHY/MAG/general RES of roughly 30%+. If they have any higher RES with a low up-time, they are a bonus for surviving nukes and not for general RES

  • Equips that provide 50 arts on first use are called Trikes (since the first equip that has this is called Black Trike). These are extremely valuable for nuking.

 Support Equips

  • Any 3-4 APS with a secondary buffing/defensive effect are universally good

  • Pseudo healing equips are the best form of using support equips since it handles a niche of healing without needing to bringing healing equips

  • High burst arts equips can be used for nuking, or even help with slow start ups, keep a lookout for these too.
  • High DMG Up equips can be used to minmax nukes too

 Heal Equips

  • There aren’t many notable heal equips, just those that have high burst heal or pseudo healing with low CT.

  • Any status cleanse with lower CT of 30s is also welcome (as this is lower CT than Keratos which is the universal cleanse equip)

  • There are some unique heal equips with flinch res, burst arts, etc that can fill a niche, those are nice to have.

 True Equips (TWs)

  • Collab TWs take extremely high priority over permanent TWs, due to some units being pretty reliant on TWs. Usually for passive APS or starting arts

  • There are some TWs that are great on their own without the unit itself, due to all the points we’ve mentioned for the equip types

  • The two aforementioned points are valid for redeeming a TW of a high-value unit. It’s best to consult veterans before especially if your RBGs are low

  • Similarly, some TWs can be used outside their own unit

  • The best way to redeem and use TWs is for nuking since there are a bunch of good nuking equips in there

Compendium Farming

Compendium farming is clearing stages quickly with units you don’t use 2000 times to get crystals, alch and most importantly the luck gem. You should be doing this in your free time if you have nothing else to farm.

For new players:

  1. Head to Juno’s side story, scroll down to the first stage called “Night Stroll”.
  2. Put in 4 random units in a team and equip 1 equip with fast animations and high DMG (Best is to get the equip Sword of Glorious Will “Grand Destin” from Cross the Blaze Episode 3)
  3. Run the stage until all units hit 2000 runs and claim the rewards

A run should take roughly 30s, or 16 hours and 40 mins for 4 units.

For more experienced players:

  1. Head to Exploring > Training > Cross Battle.
  2. On the first team, place a fast nuker like Saitama, Sunraku, etc. Equip it with arts and buffs like Blade Regalia, Asura, Antimony, Axis, etc to fill up their arts for their nuke.
  3. Put in 3 other units with good equip slots. Equip them with big buff/debuff equips, such as True Shooting Star, Rishley’s Sunset Bikini, True Drago La’cryma, etc. to help the nuker.
  4. If needed, also provide a CRIT equip like Hellshaft or Terra Conjunction
  5. Put in 4 other units in the 2nd team.

A run takes minimally 35s, or longer depending on your setup, or 20 hours for 7 units.

As you can see, Cross Battle is way more efficient than Night Stroll, but requires way more setup and equips, while Night Stroll takes a single equip and no setup.