3.4.5: 06/06/17 : added some notes to the nat4 monster section for the 3.4.5 buffs. Added a link to nysra’s CR/CD guide in the mechanics question section.

3.4.2b: 05/07/17 : added sample GB10/NB10 team progression

3.4.2 : 04/28/17 : tweakes to necropolis section with addition of my team progression.

3.4.1 : 04/24/17 : lots of minor fixes from suggestions and comments in the reddit thread, including updating the tier list with missing monsters.

3.4.0 : 04/19/17 : started paring down my old, lengthy guide to something more digestible. Preserved here. Going to set my versions to those of the last patch that it was updated to for clarity.

Enjoy!

-void42/void43/void44/@uninspiredalias on reddit

0. Introduction

Background

I take too many notes, I do. Silly things...like tracking hundreds and hundreds of dungeon runs, or what teams I was able to beat X dungeon with at what level. Hell, I started two alt accounts just so I could run hundreds of low level dungeons without wasting energy on my main account so I could get a better picture of the drop rates.

ANYWAY.

This “guide” (and I use the term loosely) is a compilation of those notes into a form that I hope will be useful to at least one person.

I’ve recently attempted to trim it down from the much longer previous version.

ONWARD!

Goals

Just to give you an overview, I’ve seen this bit of advice thrown about, and it’s kind of mirrored my accidental progress, but seems solid anyway:

Toa 50
Giant B10
ToA 100
Dragon/Necro B10 (depending on units)
Arena
Raiding
Homunculus

I can break that down a little, at least based on my progress. Note that this is completely depending on your monsters and runes - you may have a setup that lets you get to ToA 70 but you still can’t auto Dragon B7, for example. Also this is based on ToA 1.0 (old ToA).

Note: Just because I think you should be able to auto GB6 does not mean that you SHOULD. It’s just a measure of your rune and monster quality. In general I wouldn’t recommend farming anything lower than B10 for Giant/Dragon/Necro since you can now get 5* runes from scenarios.

Note about PVP/Arena: Arena progress is generally considered a late game/optional goal, so you shouldn't necessarily prioritize that, these are just some observations based on my progress and rune quality at certain points in the game.

Elemental B6 dungeons, reliably awaken 3*s
Giant B6
Dragon B6
ToA 40
Elemental B8s, reliably awaken 4*s & 5s
Giant B7
ToA Hard 30
Giant B8
Dragon B7
ToA 50
Giant B9 OR SKIP with friend’s rep or crystals
Giant B10
ToA 70
Elemental B9-10s
Dragon B8
Arena F3
ToA Hard 30
ToA 80
Dragon B9 OR SKIP with crystals, etc.
ToA 100
ToA Hard 40
Dragon B10
ToA Hard 50+
Necro B10
ToA Hard 60+
R4
Homunculus grind begins
ToA Hard 80+
Arena C1+
ToA Hard 100
R5
Arena C2+

So, depending on where you are in that process, when you are making a new 5* or 6*, you want to ask yourself: “Which monster will best help me finish this goal and move on to the next?”

Elemental dungeon, xp farming, etc. all happen along the way with the same kind of guiding light.

You can start raiding whenever you want, but there’s not much point until a) you have runes worth upgrading and b) you can at least do R4, so I’d place it somewhere after DB10 & ToA 100.

Crystal use

I recommend saving all your crystals for the 750 packs at least until you get to level 40, or get a decent selection of nat4s. OR, if you are the hyper efficient type, save all your crystals for double xp refills and eventual GB10/DB10/NB10 farming. Me, I like monsters, so I spent > 50% of my crystals on 750 packs until I had enough nat4s.

Given the amount of free 2xxp now available, as well as the challenge award rainbowmons, etc. you shouldn’t need to purchase many of the 200 crystal 2xxp boosters, so all crystals can be saved for refills and 750 packs (if you like monsters like me).

You should be able to afford your first pack around level 20 - depending on Com2Us events - and another pack every 3-5 levels after up to 40. For comparison, my main account purchased 7 packs by the time it hit 40.

DEVILMON

Make sure you get these EVERY SINGLE WEEK EVER as your primary glory purchase. Seriously. They are that important. Just leave a single crappy monster in your defense to keep your rank down so you can farm other easy defenses. This is incredibly important.

Void’s general rules for devilmon usage

My general rules for devilmon has been (across my 3 accounts)

Amazing nat5 - if you get something game changing that can also farm (ex: Zaiross, Verad, any Chimera, Anavel, Praha) before you fuse Vero or Baretta.
Vero or Baretta - whichever you fuse first, max first
Vero or Baretta - note that Baretta doesn’t need #1 maxed. People will disagree with me about maxing Baretta and that’s fine. But *I* deviled him on all 3 accounts with 0 regrets.
Chasun - max S2 & S3, only needs S1 maxed when you start raiding or care about AD/GWD/Raid (and you might not even use her in raids).
Nat5s you will definitely use all over the place (ex: OGs, pandas), or a really, really good farmer if you still don’t have one (ex: Alicia)
Choice other nat4s - people will argue what constitutes this, but these are some that come to mind (in order of priority): Galleon (I would completely max him), Lisa (max S3),Emma (max S3).
I have done these and would NOT recommend them: Platy, Acasis.
Nat5s you will use sometimes, but regularly (ex: Sigmarus for DB10, ToA 100)
Vanity nat5s - basically any other nat5s you have and want to build but don't have a clear use/role for.
nat4s you are experimenting with

And of course, don’t devil anything with a 3* counterpart! This includes all 3 star monsters and some 4s like Chloe and water/wind/light taoists. Chloe in particular...you will pull SO MANY Michelles and Rinas that you’ll get her skilled up eventually.

Summoning stones

My general rules for summoning stones:

"Core four" aka "progress monsters" - they will help you far more than the others. These are the nat4s I would suggest any new player save their stones for. Don't have one of them or better nat5 (Briand is the only one "easily" replaceable by a nat5 or certain other nat4s (wind dice magician), and even that is arguable)? Keep saving stones.

Chasun
Verde
Galleon
Briand - Briand is much less "must have" than he used to given the new HoH format, however, I would argue he's still very good for a starting DB10 tower team and for auto ToA 1-99, and ToAH 1-60+ (depending on runes). I still use him for ToA.

Once you get those four, then move on to these:

Hwa - best R4/5 starting DPS, great on ToA/H 100, DB10, GB10 speed teams, NB10, etc. All around good.
Lushen - he defines the arena PVP meta. If you are patient, keep going until you get 2.
Orion - very good in GW, AD, RTA.
Lisa - one of the best R4/5 cleansers. Not much else use.
Chloe - Up to you if you want her or not. Out of meta, but still useful in AO/AD and GWO/GWD to a degree and in certain comps.

Depending on your tastes (I can't stand Chloe or Lushen, personally...BUT if you get two Lushens it’s hard not to run a double Lushen AO). Lisa & Hwa will help you speed up PVE (some ToA bosses, Raids) as well as helping you in PVP, Orion/Lushen/Chloe are 100% PVP monsters.

Until you have the "core four" OR you can successfully complete GB10/DB10/ToA100/C1, I would save my stones for their rotations.

II. Leveling

I’ve removed most of this section, as it’s no longer relevant and the game does a great job of walking you through the necessary steps by guiding and rewarding you with the challenges and giving you Lapis as a free starting farmer. If you are curious how progress looked prior to 3.4.0, please see my old guide linked on the first page.

General Starting Tips

While progressing through the map content, concentrate on working on a team (or a few teams) that can be successful in the dungeons, and limit the number of non fodder ("fodder" means a monster you are just going to feed to another monster to evolve or power it up) monsters you level up.

Speaking of what to level, aside from any useful nat4s and nat5s you pull, I would only level : fire magical night, light garuda, fire hellhound + all the challenge monsters.
water magic knight should be your first 5* (unless you pull a better nat4 - do some research!)
Bernard, Shannon, Konamiya and Colleen should be your next 5*, unless you are able to farm Bella from secret dungeons earlier.
5* Bella as soon as you can.

Concentrate your challenge reward awakening essences on critical PVE progress monsters. Things like Bella, Baretta and Veromos fusion monsters. Don’t just awaken random cool nat4s.
Grab 5 mentors with good level 40 reps as soon as you can.
Try and find as many friendly folks as you can with 6 star reps, as you’ll probably need them if you want to complete Faimon and get your Light/Dark scroll before you start making your own 5 stars.
Use your mentors and reps to progress through content and complete the challenges.
Farm the highest difficulty map zone you can - preferably one with runes you actually want.
TRY AND TIME YOUR LEVELING UP TO WHEN YOU HAVE 0 ENERGY. Otherwise that free refill is wasted. Dungeons give less XP than scenario levels and secret dungeons give ZERO xp if you don’t complete them. So if you are at 99% xp and have a full pile of energy - get any SD you can from chat spam and grind that for mana until you are almost out of energy, then go ding off a scenario level.

Monster specific tips

Lapis

You’ll get the water magic knight around level 5-7. She’ll be in most of your teams, even against wind scenarios, just because a nat4 is quite strong early on. She’s a great starting farmer, and can farm faimon normal easily at 5* and faimon hard at 5* as well with decent runes.

Runes:

She can farm faimon normal with the reward 4* fatal/blade runes. I was able to complete the solo auto challenge with them all at level 6, but it may take you a few tries depending on round 3 RNG.
After that, put the vamp/revenge reward set on her and level them to 6, and then 9 and 12 when you can. Level 6 runes can vrofagus 4 hard. Depending on your subs, level 9 or 12 may get you faimon 1 hard, but mine isn't reliable there yet.

Two star monsters to look out for:

With the 3.4.0 patch, Com2us now gives you most of the relevant 2*s for free! This can really speed up your progress.

Wind Pixie->Shannon: One of the best two stars in the game. People use her well into late game. CHALLENGE REWARD
Fire Harpu->Colleen: A solid support unit. She heals and provides an ATK buff, as well as having solid debuffs including a healing blocker, which is very useful on the Wind dungeon boss. She’s also one of the best “farmable” all around Necro AND raid units. CHALLENGE REWARD
Water Garuda->Koniyama: Another competitor for “best 2 star”. Great cleanser, supreme PVE utility in automode and exceptional utility if you are going to manual as his #2 basically lets you pass his turn to any other unit. CHALLENGE REWARD
Dark Salamander->Decamaron: You’ll have to farm this one from the dark secret dungeon, but it’s worth doing. His awakened passive makes him very useful in dungeons, especially water dungeon B5 and higher. CHALLENGE REWARD
Water Howl->Lulu: Possibly the best easily acquirable and skillable healer (also cleanses!). Generally you’ll get one from a US before 200 or so scrolls, but he can also be farmed in Hydeni. He's not super necessary now that you get Colleen+Kona for free, but still work taking to 4* and skilling up with extra howls just in case.
Wind Yeti->Rakajah: Solid dungeon healer as his heal is bigger the more LIVING party members you have. Yes, his heal gets worse as monsters drop - so if you’re running a team with a rezzer, he might not be the best fit. Also, since he has a slow, he can be used in Necro teams. CHALLENGE REWARD
Fire hellhound->Sieq: Solid damage and worth 5*ing (and 6ing for some) due to his use in so many AO combos. STARTING MONSTER.
Water Hellhound->Tarq: An amazing “fun” unit. Used in some really fast speed Dragon runs, but requires absolutely nuts runes. Early on, just keep one and skill him up with spare hellhounds, because you’ll use him eventually.
Fire imp->Cogma: Does decent damage and is fusion material, nothing wasted in leveling him up to 4/30.

Three star fire/wind/water monsters to look out for:

You are HIGHLY unlikely to get a specific 3 star unit this early in the game. Honestly, just about whatever you get is worth using and at least taking to level 25 so you can use them later as fodder. However, these are some units to watch out for. DO NOT fodder them until you are confident that you know what you are doing.

Wind E Priest->Michelle: You will probably get at least one of these. I think I saw 11 of them before I saw the water version. I would suggest saving at least one - the rest most use for fodder for the fire version (a very desirable nat 4), as she has some niche roles. See this comment for some.
Water Mystic Witch->Megan: One of the most sought after 3 star units. Much of the early PVP metagame revolves around having a fast Megan. She’s also useful in dungeons. Don’t stress if you don’t get her - I was well into level 40 with 150+ scrolls opened before I got her.
Wind Griffon->Bernard: Another staple 3 star that is useful all the way to Giants B10 and ToA. Farmable from Tamor, but the drop rates are low (but not as low as Raoq!). CHALLENGE REWARD
Water Battle Mammoths: A tanking BEAST who does almost no damage. When max skilled, Talc (water) is comparable to Ahman healing wise with the caveat that he can be silenced or have his CD reset (like in Dragon B10) BUT, on the flipside he’s easier to rune and he provides that DEF buff and he does nothing other than taunt. Ahman does his non-taunt sometimes when you really just wish he would have taunted.
Fire High Elemental->Kahli: Solid single target damage and she’s fusion material so you can leave her at 4/30 and fuse her later. However, she becomes very useful again later game AO when the meta turns tanky, so it’s not a bad idea to level up two - one for fodder and one for the long run.
Wind Serpent->Ermeda: Very tanky, also removes debuffs. Not a farmer, but useful in early PVE. Great for Vrofagus and Faimon 1-4, etc. Honestly the water serpent is usable if you get it in your first couple monsters too, but wind seems more generally useful. Some use it mid and later game AO/Guild wars as a specific counter to Rina.
Fire inugami->Raoq: Not worth farming for him, but if you find him, use him. He’s a very rare drop from Faimon, but can also spawn from scrolls. He provides pretty solid (if random) damage in the early and mid game, can be used in necropolis teams and can be a beast late game guild wars.
fire elven ranger->Adrian: Great necro unit. Don’t build if you happen to pull dark jack-o-lantern (Dusky).
fire harg: He’s like a fire Konamiya with better stats and a worse cleanse/heal. Very good in late game PVP, decent in early game PVE.

Three star L/D monsters to look out for

Here are some nat3s to look out for that can actually help you in early game PVE progress. See the monster section for info on more monsters.

light inugami->Bella: One of the most useful units in the game. He’s farmable, but you may pull him from a scroll before farming. I’d call that a win - much begging saved. He (and it is a he) is the suggested farming target for the secret dungeon challenge, and I suggest you follow that advice.
Dark battle mammoth->Basalt: An AMAZING unit. Great for ToA and many other places.
light garuda->Teon: Don’t fodder him, he can be your DB10 rezzer if you don’t get anything else. STARTING MONSTER.
dark yeti->Kumae: Veromos fusion mats, very in demand just for that, but also a decent Necropolis unit as both his attacks slow
Light vagabond->Darion : Can be in your starting GB10 team, can also be used in your starting raid teams.

Three star monster families to save for skillups

These are monsters you won’t necessarily build, but should not fodder any of them until you either have enough to max skill their better siblings OR have max skilled their better siblings or a superior monster (like a killer nat5).

There are other things to save, but these are the ones I would say you should definitely safe, no matter what.

Mammoths for water/dark
Hargs for wind/fire - wind is a nat4
elven archers for fire
taoists for water/dark/wind - water, light & wind are nat4s
living armor for wind/dark
griffons for fire/wind
inugamis for light/fire
mystic witches for water
penguin knights for wind
epikion priests for fire, maybe water - fire is a nat4

Fusions

Especially with respect to 3 star monsters, BE AWARE of the fusion hexagram and how it works, and which monsters you need to save to fuse later. See the wiki page and the image included below for a nice summary (CREDIT: DrZip, from this thread):

Short list of the rarer ones (in my experience):

Fire & water martial cat, water grim reaper, wind minotaur, wind lizardman, fire beast hunter, dark yeti (drops from SD, but it’s a rare drop and everyone will be clamoring for it, making it tough to get in sometimes). Some of these are now available via guild points, so that’s an option. I wouldn’t buy them in pieces - rather I would save up 800 guild points just in case they dropped mid-way along the purchase process.

As near as I can tell, all the fusable monsters have their uses. And hey - they are the only semi-guaranteed way to get nat 4 and nat 5s!

Baretta: If you have a choice, I would prioritize Baretta simply because he is so incredibly flexible - ToA, dungeons, PVP, AD...pretty much everywhere.
Mikene: If you build her for 100% crit, her #1 freezes on every hit (need acc, of course), and she’s a rezzer with a meh heal...she has her uses. Some ToA floors, occasional AO/GW. NOTE: Post-buff, she’s a bit more useful - I even use her in ToA/ToA hard. She’s now my #1 recommended option for F2P dragon teams.
Susano: Generally useful unit that I lucked into from a scroll and fused away without a thought. I later fused another to test out as a faimon farmer (vamp/blade), and wound up using him extensively in GW. He hits pretty hard if you need a single target water hitter.
Jojo: I’m not experienced with bomber teams, but he seemed solid while I had him. I’ll fuse another and test more eventually.
Arang: Very solid single target DPS, but a bit of a glass cannon. Can be used in NB10 as well.
Argen: I fused him away and never had much use for him along the way, but his kit looks interesting, especially if you need a general resist leader and haven’t pulled a better one. Plus, if you build your team for it, his #3 can hit like a truck full of other, smaller trucks. Has some use in NB10 teams as well (NickDaGreek built an F2P team around him).
Akia: She wound up betting more decent than I expected. Rage/blade and she puts out decent damage along with her heal block. It seems like she’s a unit that perhaps needs skillups more than others do to shine, but she’s not bad at all. I opened another from a scroll, and will work on her eventually unless I pull a better aoe heal blocker.
Queb : Combo unit with Katarina, also pretty solid GW buffer in general.
Wind Kung Fu Girl: least useful 4* fusion, or maybe tied with Akia.
Sigmarus: Damage beast. If you can make him, do it.
Katarina: I’ve seen mixed things about her. I’ve used her a couple of times via reps and wasn’t impressed for the amount of time it would take me to make her. She really needs a Chloe, Neal or Water Horus to shine (invincibility buff) - if you lack those, I wouldn’t put any urgency into building her. She was the last nat5 I fused and I STILL haven’t bothered to 6* her yet. Eventually I’ll do it when I have a good runeset for her.
Veromos: He is super flexible and useful and will progress your PVE game more than the others. I would recommend focusing on him as your first 5* fusion. GB10/DB10/TOA, AO, GWO/GWD, etc. Incredibly useful. Can also be an early farmer and do aiden/faimon 1 hard/hell.
Fire panda - Bella replacement and/or slight upgrade in NB10, also can be used in DB10 and a great monster for starting to build a raid team.

A note on four star monsters

Just in case you get any. DO NOT FODDER ANY OF THEM. Even if people tell you they suck. Especially people in game chat; many idiots and trolls there. Plus even a bad unit can get a buff later on to be made good (see the many gallons of tears over the Fedora buff).

Also, the more stars, the better the base stats, so any four star is worth using before level 15, just for the stats!

Runing

Rune Types

As soon as you can start farming Garen hell, get multiple 2/4/6 HP% energy runes. I spent days on this and the time was not wasted. At low levels, it’s great exp, and at this point in the game you can put energy x6 runes on just about any monster.
Once you start getting better monsters and becoming more familiar with stats and runes you can start using things like blade and fatal runes, as they will be the next ones you can start farming in hell. These go on your offensive (and rarely some supports, like undines, that need to crit to proc some effect) units.
You’ll probably want to acquire some swift runes from Mt. Ragon Hard as well (unless you can run Hell) as units like Shannon and Megan can really benefit from even shitty swift runes. Swift is, in my opinion, the best early game set. You can even rune your damage dealers swift (instead of fatal), speed is very strong in this game. Also, the strength of swift sets doesn’t really fall off - good swift runes can last you forever.
Focus is a GREAT offset for support units. Bella, Shannon, etc. should all be swift/focus to start so you can get some acc in there without having to waste a slot on slot 6 accuracy.
Rage runes are used more in late mid->late game as you often can’t get enough crit (except on certain units like Light Imp/Taru) to make it worthwhile. Statistically, they are pretty close to fatal in performance, but a bit better in the right circumstances. Don’t use rage (or Crit Damage in slot 4) unless you have at least 65% (more is better) Crit Rate.
Guard runes are used on a few early game units (golems), but often aren’t useful until you get specific mid and late game units (primarily wind and dark living armors, fire, light and water frankensteins).
Violent runes are awesome. Some units like Koniyama benefit from even shitty violent runes but, for the most part, you want good ones - and they are rare.
Revenge runes are pretty solid, and very useful in necropolis and raids. Early on, you may not reap much benefit from them.
Will & Nemesis runes are heavily PVP oriented, so hold onto the good ones but maybe don’t slot them until you understand their uses.
Destroy runes are, sadly, at this point still pretty much useless. Use them in broken sets if you get a good one.

See HERE for a great visual guide to rune stats.

How to rune, early game

Your offensive units should be atk/(cr or atk)/atk.

If you get a unit that scales with speed (ninjas, rakshasas, chimeras if you are super lucky), use spd on 2.
Fatal/blade is probably going to be your go to combination but if you really need to crit, you could run bladex3.
Swift, as I mentioned before, is also an all around good choice.

Your support units should almost always use swift (and eventually violent) if you can and have spd on 2, and then hp on 4 and 6. Things like Garudas, Bella, Shannon, that kind of thing.

Most don’t need defense, but if you get a good defense rune and don’t have a HP rune AND they don’t have any stats that scale with HP, it’s OK to use a DEF slot 4 or 6.
Focus is generally the best offset here, but you could also use guard, energy, revenge, will or nemesis.

DON’T use slot 6 resist runes. Slot 6 accuracy runes are also usually a waste, unless you get really good substats or you cannot get the acc you need from focus set and substats.
DON’T use flat stat runes on 246. Late game you can use flat stat runes on 4&6 that have really high speed subs on your ATB booster (Bernard), but that’s about it.

What to choose for you free rune sets

Go with the offensive sets. You can use them on an early farmer (unless you are using Veromos), or a strong nat4-5 attacking unit.

Early mid game runing notes

Here are some general notes on how to rune. Generally, once you’ve farmed GB/DB/NB10 for a couple months each, you should start developing an innate sense of what to keep and what to burn, here are some guidelines to get you started:

General

For offensive runes, at least 2 of: spd, CD, ATK/DEF (not both!), CR (attack subs)
For defensive runes, at least 2 of SPD, HP, DEF (tank subs)
For support runes, SPD+ at least one of ACC/HP (support subs)
Desired stats should be within 2 of max roll. So if a rune can have +6 of a stat per skillup, sell anything with 4 or less of the desired stat unless you want to gamble on double/triple rolls. I’ll keep low rolls if the rune has a good role on another desired stat - stuff like max crit/low speed or anything with high speed.
If it hits the non-desired stat (or even if it only hits once if you are picky), immediately sell
For legend runes, at least one of the above if you're trying for 4x. Almost any legend rune with good speed/CR is worth keeping to try and max speed or CR. Same kind of thinking if you want other stats, but speed & CR are the ones I go for. I have a few >20% HP/DEF subs sitting around and no place to use them since they have no speed.
For raid monsters, you want RES as well

Specific sets

Swift: Has to have either SPD OR 2 of atk/cd/cr (for swift nukers). If it's SPD+junk, and fails to hit spd 2 times, sell.
Rage/fatal/vampire: has to have 2 of SPD/ATK/CD/CR
Violent: I'll keep any rune that has the potential to hit SPD 2 or 3 times, sell if I don't get at least +10 or another good sub.
Despair: has to have SPD unless you are going for a despair nuker (Amir, Zaiross), in that case 2 of SPD/ATK/CD/CR (standard attacker subs).
Blade : has to have CR for the most part. Because that's why you are using blade in the first place, right? Might as well do it better.
Nemesis/will/shield: has to have SPD. Then standard support (+hp/def/acc/res) or attack (atk/cr/cd) - I avoid mixed runes for the most part to simplify.
Revenge : sometimes I'll do revenge runes without speed, since you don't need as much in necro.
Guard/energy/endure/destroy: Other than guard on Copper and endure on raid monsters, I pretty much just use these for broken sets and only keep the best looking ones. Energy, in particular, I don't find to be very good. Destroy is almost as bad BUT at least has an active effect and can be used on some troll monsters or where you have an open 2set and don't need revenge/etc.

Leveling Guideposts

Note: Depending on your monsters, you may be well ahead of these, or well behind. Don’t worry too much, but it’s something to shoot for. I did it with terrible monsters, you should be able to as well.

Also, see here for a nice guide to midgame progress.

Level 6: Magic B1

Level 8: Magic B3, Wind B2

Level 12: Dark B3, Fire B3

Level 14: Water B3

Level 15: ToA unlocks

Wind B3 Dragon B1

Cleared: Vrofragus 1 normal

Level 17: Dark B4 Light B4 Magic B4

Cleared: Garen Hell, Mt. Siz hard

Farming: Garen Hell

level 18: up to faimon 4 normal

Level 19: Dragon B2 (manual crystals at mini boss) Giants B3

Wind B4

farming: Mt Siz Hell

Level 20: Fire B4 DragonB3

Level 21: Wind B5

Level 22: Cleared: Mt white hard cleared

Level 23: Fire B5, first 5*

Cleared: Kabir Hell

Level 24: Giants B4 Water B6 Wind B6

Cleared: Faimon normal with reps.

Level 25: ToA 23, Farming: Mt. Siz Hell->Kabir Ruins Hell

Level 26: Magic B6 , Farming Telain Hell

Cleared: Mt. White, Telain, Hydeni, Telain - Hell

Level 28: First Fusion: Baretta

Level 30: Giant B5, Fire B6, ToA 19

Level 31: Fire B6

Level 32: Water B6, farmed Bella from secret dungeons

Level 33: Magic B7, Wind B6

Level 34: 2nd fusion (nat4 for Vero) , ToA 27

Level 35: Water B7

Level 36: Wind B7, ToA 29

Level 38: Fire B7, Wind B7, ToA 30, ToA Hard 10

Level 39: Giants b6, Dragon B5

Level 40: Magic B8, Light B7, Dark B8, Water B8, Wind B8,

ToA 30, ToAH 19

Monster Boxes

11/03/15 : I split out the monster box section to a separate file: Void’s SW Journal, because this one was getting huge (90+ pages!).

III. Cairos Dungeon

Elemental Dungeon Drop rates

If you’re curious about drop rates, see the Swarmfarm logs for far more logs than I could collect.

Secret Dungeons

By 25 you should be strong enough to farm a 3 star secret dungeon in, at most, 2 sessions (depending on the element and specific monster).

Clear level 6 then quit, as it takes way too long at this point (unless you have 5 star units or really good 4s) and can reliably clear B8. By doing this, I was able to get the piecesI needed in one SD per monster early on.

These are the ones you want (at minimum):

Light inugami->Bella: One of the most useful support units out there. He (or she!) is better at healing tanky teams due to his/her heal being % based.
Light vagabond->Darion: Another top support.
Light fairy->Neal: I never used her (although I did get one), but others swear by her. Mostly for taking advantage of the AI by baiting with a weak element then using her invincibility buff. She’s decent in Necropolis as well.
Dark Yeti->Kumae: Needed for the dark infrit fusion. It’s a rare and high demand SD, so grab it when you see it, but don’t stress as the fusion process is long. He’s also a solid slower for Necropolis.

For the others, just get what it feels like you need. Lacking fire aoe? Grab fire magic archer or fire inferno. Need skillups for something?

Awakening

A note on dungeons and awakening: You will be doing this for HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS AND OH GOD WHY? Especially for awakening 4 and 5 stars...it’s one of the most tedious aspects of a game that has many tedious aspects (and yet is still very good?? Whaaaat? Maybe it’s just addiction…). Suck it up and either start farming or uninstall the game. The latter may be better for your sanity. RNG is a harsh mistress.

With 3.4.0, Com2Us gives you lots of free essences in the challenge rewards. Make sure to use them smartly - don’t just awaken random nat4s, make sure to choose nat4s that will help you progress.

General notes on the elemental dungeons

B1&B2 can generally be done with any bullshit team. They are generally not worth farming for essences.
B3 seems to want a team of mostly maxed 3 stars, often with a certain HP cutoff (say 4500+ or 6000+).
B4 seems to want a solid team of 4 star units, on average.
B5 generally wants a very solid team of 4 star units with decent runes for their level (level 6-9 3-4 stars)
B6 generally wants a team of all 5 stars. Same for giant B6.
B8 seems to want a team with multiple 6 star units and very solid/durable 5 stars for the rest.
B9 is often a sweet spot if you still rarely fail B10 or B10 is just too slow.
B10 you’ll just stumble into once you have a team of 6*s with solid runes.

These are just general guidelines, and vary based on how strong your units are. If you have a team of all nat 4 and 5s (or just really strong supports like Acasis), you will probably be one “step” ahead. Say maybe you can do B7 or B8 with no 6 stars units, etc.

General speed leaders are very useful at least up to B7 - and Baretta is one of the best (the best that I have access to, certainly), and he’s fusable! So focus on him as your first fusion if you don’t open him from a scroll.

Key dungeon units for the early game

Listed in order of ease of acquisition - most of these are given to you as rewards now:

water garuda->Koniyama: best cleanse and turn passing
wind pixie->Shannon: defense, plus potential for glancing debuff and CC with despair
water howl->Lulu: heal and decent cleanse. You will most likely outgrow him, but good to start.
dark salamander->Decamaron: great damage and debuff against bosses, water dungeon MVP
light vagabond->Darion: defense and great debuffs
light inugami->Bella: buff removal, defense break, heal
wind griffon->Bernard: great debuffs and speed buff. Can take forever to farm him in Tamor.
fire sylph->Baretta: fusable natural 4 speed lead with good aoe DOT and ATB reset

Less Key, but useful units

Listed in no specific order.

fire harpu->Colleen: good debuffs + heal/ATK buff. Better when manual, but OK auto. KEY mid to late game unit, absolutely start building and leveling one when you pull it, just don’t 6* her until you start working on Necropolis or raiding.
wind yeti->Rakajah - his heal is stronger the bigger your team is, so best at team size 5

Specific notes on dungeons

Dark

Dark has a bunch of dots, so cleansing is important BUT you can get by with just solid healing.

key units: Koniyama, dark ifrit (fusion)
team template: {SPEED LEAD} {DPS} {CLEANSE} {SUSTAIN HEAL} {UTILITY}

Dragon

Dragon also has a bunch of dots, cleansing is critical because dragon damage is boosted by the dots.

key units: Koniyama, dark ifrit (fusion)

Void’s DB10 guide

Here’s my “easy” 5 step guide to DB10:

auto gb 10, including 6* Vero, Bella - both max skilled
If you want, your GB10 team should be able to do DB8 L-R-Boss, farm that for a month or two to get the violents you need for Vero, Bella, Rezzer & Support. If you have really good swifts, that may be good enough, but I had everyone on violent before DB10. Note: Most players will recommend just waiting until DB10, and this is fine, but if you get bored or want to do something else, DB8 is an option.
pick a rezzer: Teon, Mikene, Briand are the most common listed in order of usefulness imho.

They can all potentially do it at 5* with tanky enough runes.
Teon should be violent/xx hp/def/hp or something like that with +20 or more speed from subs. He needs max skills.
Mikene can be run a couple different ways, but the easiest is probably tanky swift/blade or violent/blade, spd/hp/(hp or def) if you want her to work at 5*. At 6*, it's generally safer to switch slot 4 to crit rate to boost her #1. She doesn't need skillups, but if you do have extra undines, boosting her #3 is enough.
Briand should be despair/focus hp/hp/hp or spd/hp/hp to start. He benefits from devils, especially for later ToA auto usage.

pick a DPS, two basic paths:

Sigmarus (becomes your leader)

fuse sig
6* sig
Spd/(cd/atk/cr)/hp to start, as your subs get better move #4 to CD and potentially 2 & 6 to atk. You want at least +25 SPD.

use any other 6* dps - favor Water, but fire/light/dark is fine too. Ex: Theomars, Stella. Hwa is NOT a good choice for tower teams as she can slow down your runs and get you killed. She's good for straight boss later

Pick a Support: Secondary healer or cleanser

If you have Verde, put him here as Verde+Bella is enough healing. bladex3 spd/CR/HP is often the starting build. Go for as much speed, crit and HP as you can get. From there, the goal is to eventually upgrade to violent/revenge or triple revenge, depending on what kind of Verde you want. Once you upgrade runes enough, switch to his lead to speed the run up even more. If you can't do it with that team, put Verde in the DPS slot and get a support as normal.
Talc is my favorite here as he can do the job fine at 5*, max skilled. Violent/xx spd/hp/hp
Konamiya should be solid here too, but may need to be 6* or have really good runes. violent/xx spd/hp/hp
Emma would be great, but need her heal maxed thus making her not a great option for early players. violent/focus spd/hp/hp
Chasun should be able to do it, but would need to be very tanky
Colleen can do it and, surprisingly, can even work well in a straight boss team, taking over for your rezzer once your runes are good enough.
Other relevant nat4s like Mihyang (heal+semi-cleanse) might also work. Basalt might work as well, etc.
Lulu could potentially do it if you are screwed for healers

Your team is: Vero (lead), Bella, Rezzer, support, DPS (if Sig, make him leader)

After you’ve done L-R-B boss for a while, your runes will eventually get good enough to move to R-B or straight boss.

For R-B, just keep testing your team there as you upgrade until you find you can keep up with all the dots - you may need to make sure your support unit is a backup cleanser if Vero can’t keep up.
For straight boss, ideally you’ll start by swapping your rezzer for Verde and your 2nd support for Megan. If you lack Verde, swap Megan (or Chilling if you have him) for your rezzer and start there and look for another unit to take the other spot.
Units like Spectra are also great here because he’ll increase the time it takes the tower to tick.
Units like Hwa and Stella can be great if you have the runes to support them because, providing the boss isn’t buffed, the increase the time between the boss’s attacks giving you more time to cleanse and your single healer (Bella) more chances to violent and heal you.

Fire

Fire also has a bunch of dots, but cleansing is CRITICAL as the bombs will one shot you. Up to B5 you should be able to burst the boss down before bombs go off, but for B6-B7 you will probably want TWO cleansers unless you have the DPS.

key units: Koniyama, dark ifrit (fusion). Fire mystic witch and Lulu can also work here, but Lulu’s cleansing AI seems terrible to me.
without Veromos, the jump from B7->B8 can be rough, but B8->B9 is fairly smooth. Without Veromos (he replaces both cleansers), I’ve found that a very strong sustain heal unit in place of CLEANSE#2 or a good immunity buffer (fire AA, Chloe...sorry fire brownie, haven’t been able to make you work here yet) can do it. A fast Ahman is the easiest/F2P route.
team template: {SPEED LEAD} {DPS} {CLEANSE} {SUSTAIN HEAL} {CLEANSE#2/UTILITY}

Giants

Giants has a mix of things, but generally deals a lot of damage so you want strong supports that can keep you alive (or rez you). Shannon, Bernard, Darion, Bella, Ahman - all the generic supports that everyone mentions over and over again tend to shine here. Buffs vary by level, but you want a) something to help you survive the giants huge hits and b) something to heal you back up. Defense buffs (Shannon, Darion), ATK debuffs (Darion, Bernard) and buff removal (Bella) all help with #1 and heal/rezzing with #2. Defense debuffs are always key for bosses just to speed things up.

Example mid game GB10 progression

Here’s how my faster teams have progressed, maybe it will help you plan:

#1:        Lagmaron(l) Bella Hraesvelg Vero Amir                 : 1:59?
        Lagmaron(l) Bella Hraesvelg Lushen Vero         : 1:31
        Lagmaron(l) Bella Hraesvelg Lushen Barque         : 1:28-1:36
        Lagmaron(l) Bella Hraesvelg Lushen Amir         : 1:13-1:22
        Lushen(L) Galleon Bella Veromos(l) Hraesvelg: ~1:24
        Lushen(l) Lushen Hraesvelg Lagmaron Bella        : 0:58-1:32

#2:          Sigmarus(l) Bella Chasun Vero Teshar                 : 2:00
         Sigmarus(l) Bella Megan Vero Teshar                 : 1:43-1:56
         Sigmarus(l) Bella Galleon Hwa Lushen                : 1:27-1:43
         Sigmarus(l) Bella Galleon Orochi Lushen        : 1:30
         Lushen(l) Bella Galleon Vero Mimirr                 : 1:32-1:43
        Lushen(l) Bella Galleon Orochi Mimirr                 : 1:08-1:26

Note on the teams above: Sigmarus could likely be subbed in for Lagmaron and Galleon for Hraesvelg. Any generic dps could have subbed for Teshar as I never had her well runed.

Light

Light dungeon has very high armor and low hp, so defense break is important (but you can get by without it if your team is tanky enough to last - it will just be a long run, enemy buff removal is also very helpful.

Light also seems to hit the hardest (?), so keep that in mind.

Magic

Magic dungeon is kind of middle of the road for everything. Generally you just need an “all around” solid team. Elemental composition doesn’t matter, so you can put your best team forward.

{SPEED LEAD} {DPS} {DPS} {SUSTAIN HEAL} {UTILITY}

Necropolis

Necro requires really specific teams and, in my opinion, is pretty fun to theory craft for. You’re going to want:

3-5 multihit units to break the shield
1-2 healers
Speed debuffer
speed buffer if possible
heal block if possible

Note that even though the boss battle speed caps your team (to 130 in B10), they will still attack in speed order. This is CRUCIAL to your team building - you want to set their speeds up so the shield breakers go first, then after the shield is reliably broken you debuffers go, then your dps and slowers hits last. This doesn’t mean you have to build your entire team slow - speed still helps on the trash waves.

A sample F2P team might look like, in speed order:

shield breaker->shield breaker->Colleen (finishes shield or debuffs atk/heal)->speed debuffer->dps

Obviously the more roles you can combine into one the better team you can get, so the above morphs into something like this (AS AN EXAMPLE! I haven’t tested this specific team) with actual units:

Lucasha[multihit on every attack, lead to boost Hwa’s damage]->Bella[heal, low chance of defense break]->Colleen[heal, atk buff, 2 multi-hits, heal block, atk debuff]->Adrian[heal block, speed buff, crit buff]->Hwa[dps, speed debuff]

Also, generally all your units here will be runed violent/revenge or revengex3, so when luck is with you the shield gets broken much earlier. Seriously, there seem to be so many more viable and interesting teams for this dungeon than say, starting DB10 teams or something. Have fun with it! Use a dark harpu or something! ;)

Example mid game NB10 progression

If you want some additional guidance, here is the upgrade path my main account took.

#1: Lisa->Colleen->Bella->Shihwa(l)->Fuco : >4min

Colleen->Lisa->Xiong Fei->Shihwa(l)->Fuco : ~3:50

Colleen->Shihwa(l)->Xiong Fei->Dusky->Fuco : 2:30-3:00

Colleen->Shihwa->Dusky(l)->Hellea->Fuco : 1:40-2:20

#2: Colleen->5* XiongFei(l)->Adrian->Zibrolta->Hwa : 04:30

Colleen->XF->Chilling->Zibrolta->Hwa(l) : 3:27-3:49

Colleen->XF->Zibrolta->Chilling(l)->Hwa : 2:30-3:08

Tarq->Colleen->XF(L)->Chilling->Hwa : 2:42-3:03

Colleen->XF->Yen(L)->Chilling->Rigel : 3:03-3:08

Colleen->XF(L)->Chilling->Rigel->fire Homu : 2:26-3:15

Since I don’t like building units for one purpose (if that purpose isn’t “screwing around in guild wars”), I refused to build Adrian (fire elven archer) on my main, who is commonly recommended for a starting team BUT is trash outside of necro (in my opinion). Instead, I subbed in my Lisa who I was working on for raids and it worked fine.

On my alt, I built Adrian so I’d have some experience with him. He wasn’t bad, but I just really don’t like him, so I subbed Chilling in for him as soon as I could. The fire homu there is the NB10 build - all multi-hits.

Water

Up through B5 the bosses extra HP is pretty reasonable, but at 6 and especially 7+ it starts scaling up really hard. If you lack a solid 4 star unit relevant to this dungeon (a dotter like Orochi, etc.), you might want one specialized unit to speed up B6+.

By a specialized unit I mean a heavy dotter like Taharus (wind elemental) or a dotter+enemy MAXHP scaler like Decamaron. Both of them can be left at 4/30 for this. For Taharus you want crit, acc and hp - whatever runes get you enough HP to survive to the boss and reliably stack dots. For Decamaron just acc and HP will do. Something like a bunch of SPD or violent runes will also help speed the boss up a bit.

B8 has a nasty aoe heal block at the boss, so a cleanser or HP leveler/etc. is needed if your units aren’t super tanky.

key unit: Decamaron (dark salamander) - it’s almost like he was made specifically for this dungeon. Taharus (wind elemental) also works if you get his stats right so he can dot reliably. Get one or the other and get him to 4/30, that will last at least up through B7.
team template: {SPEED LEAD} {DPS} {DOT} {SUSTAIN HEAL} {UTILITY}

Wind

Wind dungeon boss heals. B6+ it’s a full heal so you need a ludicrous amount of DPS or heal blocking or cool down reset for the left tower (you can’t reasonably kill it). Heal blocking may be the easiest.

Once you get to the higher dungeons (B9?) with the invulnerability tower, I just kill the towers. You should be using a Baretta, so by the time tower #2 is dead, tower #1 is almost gone and you can either burst that down or ignore it and let dot overkill finish it off.

key unit: For B6-B7 auto, something with a heal block! Ex: Colleen (fire harpu), jokers, death knights, werewolves. I wind up manualling the boss a lot and using Baretta’s #2 to reset the heal tower cooldown.
For the levels with the invincibility tower, Baretta or another heavy (and or AOE) dotter helps a ton. Hwa can slow things down because the towers never take a turn, so you have to manual a bit with her and change targeting so the dots can kill them.
{SPEED LEAD} {DPS} {HEAL BLOCK} {SUSTAIN HEAL} {UTILITY}

Template notes (F2P options):

{SPEED LEAD} = Baretta, Fran.
{DPS} = your main DPS, Sigmarus is best F2P option
{DOT} = wind elemental, dark salamander, water charger shark
{HEAL BLOCK} = fire harpu, dark death knights, fire succubus, werewolves if desperate
{SUSTAIN HEAL} = fire harpu, water mammoth
{UTILITY} = light inugami, wind griffon
{CLEANSE} = water garuda, fire mystic witch, wind mammoth (garuda is best bet)

TOA

TOA 100 f2p/farmable guide here.

A note on killer ToA units

Despair/cc units:

fire sylph->Baretta: An absolutely amazing ToA unit. 6* and skillmax him when you can. In addition to ToA, he’s useful in early & mid game arena, GW and essence dungeon farming.
light succubus->Aria: HoH unit from before my time. Amazing control unit.
wind ifrit->Amir: built in stun on his #2, good candidate for despair runes with a second aoe
dark ifrit->Veromos: He is (or can be) in every team you run, except Necropolis. Very reliable stun once skillmaxed, and he cleanses!

General use:

light inugami->Bella: Like Vero above, except people use Bella in Necropolis.
wind penguin knight->Mav: A new addition to the toolkit, he provides a speed buff, condition removal AND team cooldown reduction - which lets your aoe stunners/dotters/ATB manipulators/etc. go that much sooner.

ATB/speed manipulators:

fire vampire->Verde: He makes everything better, especially ToA.

wind griffon->Bernard: if you don’t have a Verde, he’s can provide similar team speeding, to a lesser degree
fire griffon->Spectra: The reverse Verde...sorta. Denies the opponents teams and provides decent damage via his #2.
Hwa: good single target damage, very good single target atb reduction and a slow+dots

Taunters

any unit with a taunt (Ahman, Talc, Mav) may be very helpful versus certain bosses. I’d say you want at least one, just in case.

My default ToA teams:

#1: Baretta(l) Veromos Bella Briand Verde - this team can auto 1-99, manual on bosses 60+. UPDATE: This team was eventually able to auto 1-100 (including all bosses), depending on rotation.

#2: Baretta(l) Veromos Bella Tyron Chasun - auto to 90ish, manual on bosses 50+
UPDATE: This account was eventually migrated to the same team as #1.

#3: Baretta(l) Veromos Bella Acasis Talc - auto to 80ish, manual on bosses 50+

(Basically Baretta-Vero-Bella-STUNNER-SUPPORT)

ToA 100 teams:

For the old toa boss:

1: Baretta Vero Bella Verde Hwa

2: Baretta Vero Bella Chasun Theo

3: Baretta Vero Bella Colleen Hwa

For the new (female) boss:

1: Veromos Tesarion Verde Bella Sigmarus

2: Veromos Tesarion Chasun Bella Sigmarus

3. Baretta Veromos Bella Chasun Hwa

Guild Wars

You should should a farming guild ASAP. This is a guild that just leaves out slime defenses and aims to LOSE guild wars defense so their rank stays low and they can fight other farm guilds. Your goal is to get as many GP (guild points) as you can and buy ifrit pieces and the weekly 4* rainbowmon. That’s it, don’t buy anything else until you have:

Theomars (water ifrit). Likely the best obtainable PVP unit. It can take up to FIVE summons to get him, as on the fifth you can use the challenge reward to pick whichever one you want. Don’t complain too much, before they added this challenge it took one of my alts 9 or 10 tries.
Tesarion (fire) and Amir(wind) are OPTIONAL, but I would strongly suggest getting Tesarion as well, as he makes certain ToA levels and GWDs much easier.
Amir is a really good Aiden 1 hell farmer and an AO wombo unit - if you are having trouble building an AO, you could build a starting combo team with Baretta Amir + Bernard/Megan Galleon/Mantura/dark penguin/Luer.

Once you get Theomars (or all 3 ifrits), you don’t need GP for anything beyond the weekly rainbowmons and scrolls. Feel free to farm forever for these things, or maybe build and skill up a water cowgirl for Necropolis.
If you opt to join a serious/tryhard guild, then you can start buying towers and setting real defenses.

Raiding

I don’t feel my knowledge here is yet as relevant as it could be (I’m currently still in R4), so see here for an amazing raid guide. Keep in mind what I say here only goes up to R4 - it will be a long, long time before I hit R5.

Rough stat requirements

FL = front line, BL = backline

level	FL count	FL def	FL hp	EHP	BL HP
3	2-3	900	20,000		13,000-15,000
4	2-3	1000	25,000		13,000-15,000
5	2-3	1500	25,000		18,000
5	4	1000	25,000		18,000

Team composition

For starting teams, you’ll want something like:

2+ healers, ideally 1 smart (smart healers = ones that only heal when needed like Bella, Mihyang & Praha).
1-2 cleansers, depending on speed of cleanser.

At 200+ spd, you can generally get by with 1

2-4 front liners
Critical debuffs: slow, atk down, heal block, glancing

So, a 100% attainable starting R4 team might translate to something like:

Front: Bella Xiong Fei Darion/Dias

Back: Kona Colleen Ran

That would give you: 3 random heals, 1 smart heal, damage reduction (from Darion or Dias, which reduces you def/hp rune requirements for the rest of the team) and cover all your debuff bases, although XF is not the best source of glancing. This team would be fine for R3, but take pretty solid runes for R4.

A potentially better (losing Bella’s “smart” heal can hurt some teams) team with some good nat4s might be:

Front: Chasun Xiong Fei Dias

Back: Lisa Colleen Hwa

Skeleton:

Front: HEAL XiongFei SUPPORT

Back: CLEANSE Colleen DPS

Unit by unit breakdown:

Chasun (luck), once you max her #1, gives you a semi-reliable source of glancing, as well just generally just being beefy and able to sit in the front and eat damage (for R4 at least). Yes, she’s rather rare, but everyone wants her and you should be saving summoning stones to try and get her and the other “chase” nat4s (Verde, Briand, Galleon, Lushen, Chasun) - odds are you’ll get one eventually. Probably within 1000 summons :P. Emma is also great in this spot and provides the crucial glancing.
Xiong Fei (fusion) is a great “filler” unit for R4 that fills a number of roles: valuable debuffs, beefy enough for front line, some sustain heal, a great leader skill, and can potentially deal decent damage with his #3. I’ve heard that he may fall off in R5, but he’s solid enough to be worth building for R4, GW, NB10. I’ve maxed him on 2 accounts and am working on the 3rd, no regrets.
Dias (HoH) is generally regarded as one of the better R4 supports due to his damage reduction passive, tankiness, and 3 relevant debuffs. He also provides that crucial 30% resist lead. Fedora provides the same debuffs and a cleanse, if that works better for your team and someone else has a resist lead.
Lisa (luck) is generally regarded as the best R4 cleanser. She needs 200+ speed to solo cleanse. Fedora and Delphoi (and others) can also work here but I like Fedora better due to his other skills being relevant.
Colleen (farmable) should be in every raid team (until you know enough to know why and how to replace her). Just build her and be done with it. She’s amazing for NB10 as well, so it’s not a wasted unit.
Hwa (luck) is generally regarded as one of the better DPS units for raids. She provides the much needed slow debuff but her passive ATB pushback is also amazing for raids. Other (non-nat5) contenders, based on the rest of your team include Stella, Ardella (SD), Fuco, Rigel (Hoh), Ran (HoH). All want full skillups, if possible (with some saying hold off on maxing Ran & Hwa’s #2, if you can).

Some notes on R5

Check out ShreddedPuzzle's recent video here for a fairly reasonable starting R5 team. What do I mean by "fairly reasonable"? No non-fusion nat5s, no HoH monsters you may have missed, and both nat4s are mostly replaceable. Let's break it down, here's the team:

* FL : XiongFei Darion

* BL : Konamiya Colleen Chasun Hwa

Obviously the Chasun and the Hwa are the non-obtainable ones, but let's look at some (there are many others, I'm just going to mentione a few) replacement options for all the monsters. Obviously, nat3s will need better runes than nat4s, ec.

XiongFei : Honestly, unless you are really lucky and pulled something like a wind panda, I'd just go with XF. He's fusable and worth deviling BUT can likely do his job in raids without devils. That being said, I deviled mine, so I couldn't guarantee it.
Darion :

Dias is a little better if you happen to have him from HoH or a lucky scroll BUT Darion does provide a more reliable defense break. Mostly a matter of taste, but if you lack other defense breaks, you might want to stick with Darion.

Konamiya :

Lisa: The one everyone talks about is Lisa but, honestly, unless you luck out with develing her S3 or have lots of spare skillups, Kona is likely going to give you a more reliable starting team. You can bring in Lisa later when you are more confident. If you happy to be lucky and have a maxed Lisa though, go for it.
Raviti : I REALLY like this guy. Not only is he a smart cleanser (he doesn't waste it like Lisa), but he can also front line very easily. I recently dropped Lisa from my R4/5 team on my alt and replaced her with Raviti. Plus, he's really easy to skill up (comparatively).
Delphoi : She's OK, but...she's a dumb cleanser, so *I* wouldn't rely on her as my only cleanser. Same thing goes for Fedora & Velajuel.
Amarna : If you have this guy, not only are you super lucky, but I'm jealous. Use him.

Colleen : Don't replace her, just use her. Once you get to the point where you can think about replacing her, you'll know enough to know your options (and be past me or this guide!).
Chasun replacements:

Bella : one of the easiest options, since you should have him already. Plus, he brings the defense break and a smart heal, not terrible.
Praha : she works, basically a better version of Bella with a very good leaderskill and no def break.
Ariel : I don't have one, but he should work fine.
Emma : I've heard good things about her, and she can front line decently too. However, she's a dumb healer...I think she'd be OK with Konamiya+Colleen, but if you are running say, a Lisa, I'm not sure if she can cut it.
Atenai : I haven't tested, but her S3 is a smart heal, so she should be an even less useful version of Bella/Praha. I would just use Bella....

XiaoLin : if you have one, she should work. Missing out on the attack speed slow debuff is significant though.
Stella : I used her on my alt, so I can configure she'll work fine instead of Hwa. Same comment about the missing attack speed slow though, if your runes aren't up to it, it may cost you.
Fire and wind attack homunculus : They each have a couple builds that will work fine here. I'd suggest getting one of the slows to help make up for the loss of Hwa.
Ran : I've heard she works. Maxed S3 would be nice. I would probably rune her violent (normal raid DPS is swift to start) to try and use S3 as often as possible.
Ardella : She works.

IV. Rift Dungeons

Now that we’ve had these for a while, and I’ve ground out second stage (chosen element) homunculi on all my accounts, I figured I should probably add something about these.

Keep in mind that the highest I can get is A+ in most dungeons, A in the rest, so I can’t tell you how to build an SSS team (short answer: get god mode runes!).

General info

Since debuffs don’t work in the active state, buffs are really strong in all the beast raids - primarily attack, speed and defense buffs, but crit rate, bubble shields and recovery are all solid buffs as well if you can fit them in without weakening your team. Units that fill multiple roles are, as always, in high demand. Think units like Randy who provide multi-hit in for dark beast and sustainability (defense buff) and average damage increase (CR buff).

The following information is NOT COMPREHENSIVE and drawn primarily from my experiences on my 3 accounts. So I’m mostly going to talk about monsters I actually have or have tested, not everything under the sun.

I’ll provide some simple templates that should at least get you to B- if your runes are decent (F2-F3 runes, violent where relevant, 160+ SPD violent on supports).

AOE = should be self explanatory, but something with good AOE of the relevant element (in this case, NO WIND) like Julie, fire/light/dark samurai.

DPS = single target dps like Theomars, Laika, Ardella

SUSTAIN = something that makes your units last longer while alse providing damage. Light/wind/water drunken master, Hwahee & Perna all do this by bringing damage and healing, while something like Randy does it by bringing defense buff and damage.

ATKBUFF = something that brings ATK buff (generally when you can’t run Colleen or don’t have Chasun). Shannon is a non-ideal option. Wind barbaric king and Hwahee are better ones.

MULTI = multi hit monsters like you would use in Necropolis. Shihwa, wind/water/dark liches, kung fu girls, etc.

NOTE ABOUT THEO: I’ve avoided putting Theo in every team in a DPS slot so as not to appear to claim he’s easy to get...but if you have him you probably should. The only A/A+ team I don’t use him in is Wind.

Fire

Fire is all about having enough aoe to take out the minion waves that spawn so they don’t destroy you. Being able to survive a couple missed minions doesn’t hurt either. In general, what seems to work best (for me) is 1-2 healers and 4 AOE dps. You also need at least 2 monsters that can survive in the front line, and as many of your monsters to be water as you can to take advantage of the glancing and 15% extra crit.

Template:

Front	Back
Bella Lapis(L)/Colleen	Lapis/Colleen Sigmarus AOE DPS/AOE/SUSTAIN

Relevant attainable units:

Lapis is actually pretty solid here, however she will require 6*ing and maxing her S3 will help a bunch. She can frontline with a good vampire set, or potentially a HP or DEF rune.
Colleen : She’s not water, but you should have built her already, so she’s sort of an auto-include into starting teams. ATK buff is huge here, and she can solo heal an A rank team at least with NB10/R4 runes. Can frontline with really good runes.
Sigmarus : You should have fused one by now for GB10/DB10/ToA 100, right? Her aoe should wipe the minions at each stage - the trouble is getting her to use it at the right time. This is why you bring 3-4 aoe units… before fire beast I didn’t really aim for violent runes on Sig, now I am, because every proc is a chance to make up for a missed or wasted AOE.
Theo : You probably have one by now, right? Apologies if not… anyway, he provides defense break for the groggy stage and good damage as well as a good leader skill option.
Bella : Not recommended long term, but he’s solid for starting teams, bringing the heal during awake stage and the critical defense break during groggy.
Kahli : provides two relevant buffs and hits really hard, doesn’t need def break so hits hard during both stages.

Nat4s

Verde : as much as I’ve seen people say that Verde is a waste here, I haven’t found a better unit to replace him and, especially on violent, he can help one of your aoe units make up for a wasted turn and maybe blast the minions before they blast you.
Fire lich : with good runes, his aoe can wipe the minions, and it’s on a low-ish cooldown (3 turns). Speed debuff is also helpful in groggy stage. He’s NOT great here, but if you have one, it’s somewhere you could use him.
water/dark lich : really good damage during groggy, occasionally takes out minions. Don’t built one for this, but if you already have one built, you can use it here.
Water nine tails : has a solid aoe and some self sustain, could be a frontline DPS.
Water/dark kung fu girl: she can do crazy damage in groggy state, and her S3 can occasionally take out a couple minions - but she’s mostly here to wreck the boss during groggy. Also brings a defense break. She fills a similar role to Theo here although does it slightly better.
fire/light/dark samurai: They all have a solid aoe as well as the potential to trigger their proc aoe at any time - and when the proc is up they are guaranteed to use that skill next. I haven’t built any of these for this role, but it seems like they could be decent here.
Light/water sylph: They have two aoes, so if you build them for damage (and potentially violent), they could do well here.

Water

Key skill here is ATB boosting to offset heal loss, then a couple healers to actually heal that up - all the while doing DAMAGE. So if you can compress all that support into two units and go hame with 3-4 damage well, you get the drift.

Template:

Front	Back
Bernard Bella	DPS DPS SUSTAIN/ATKBUFF DPS/Colleen

Colleen is less than ideal due to fire element, so replace her with Chasun if/when you can, this will also let you remove Bella, depending on rune quality.
Bernard will someday be replaced by a DPS unit (post A+ I think)

Relevant attainable units:

Bernard : You’ve got him, he’s wonderful here, use him.
Bella: Same as fire, good starting unit, remove when you can.
Theo: damage + leader skill
Mav : speed buff and CD reduction. Not amazing here, but could work well in the right team.
Megan: ATB boost, atk+def buffs. Sadly her S1/s2 are useless here.
Purian: ATB boost, crit buff and solid damage.
Amir: Not great here because his two aoes are wasted, but his S2 hits really hard, and he may be the best wind damage dealer you have.
Katarina: I use her on acct3 because I have no other options (currently building Shumar to replace her). You can use her to get to A at least.
Shumar (dark hellhound) : his passive is triggered by the HP freeze effect - might as well get a bonus out of something that will happen anyway.
Copper : solid frontline with great damage. One problem is that he’s usually built slower, but he’s still a pretty good option, especially if you’re lacking frontliners.

Nat4s

All the crazy healers are going to be helpful here: Chasun, Emma, Mihael, etc.
wind/water/dark lich - if you have one built for necro, also great here
water/wind assassins - solid damage with def break on S1 plus extra utility from S2

Wind

The trick on wind is to out heal the shock debuff - if you can do that it deals significant damage to the boss (and keeps you from dying). One thing to note is that the damage from the debuff will go through invincibility, and is affected by defense. So defense buffs and high defense units are decent here.

Template:

Front	Back
Xiong Fei(L) Colleen	DPS DPS DPS SUSTAIN

Relevant attainable units:

Xiong Fei - Solid front line, brings recovery buff for awake phase and def break for groggy phase.
Colleen - Heal+ATK buff
Bella - good for starting out, but try and replace when you can.
Randy - damage + def buff. He’s not the best here, but if you’ve got one already built he’s solid, especially given the interaction between defense buff and the shock damage.
Huan - he’s pretty solid here.

Nat4s:

All the crazy healers are going to be helpful here: Chasun, Emma, Mihael, etc. Emma less so because of elemental weakness, but if you’ve got nothing else she can help for a bit.
Fire undine - good frontliner and solid heal but needs maxed skills to shine. S1 brings nothing sadly. Not the best, but she’s in one of my A teams, so she’s not bad.
Verde - good until you get something better
Fire nine tails - if you’ve got one built for necro, she’s solid here with some self sustain as well as branding for the groggy state.
Fire anubis - good front liner, S2 hits hard in groggy state and his shield can help hold off the shock damage killing a weak unit.

Light

For light you want hard hitting attackers that do SINGLE hits (no multi hit), as the damage is apparently lowered for multi-hitters.

Starter Template:

Front	Back
Bella Colleen	DPS DPS DPS DPS/Sustain

Relevant attainable units:

Theo - really hard hitting single target damage on his S1 (S2 does less against the shield, but brings DEF break for groggy)
Copper (and other defense based nukes) will do well as long as they are fast enough.
Colleen - still here, doing her heal + attack buff thing. Not the best for this, since she multi-hits, but you’re using her for her S3 anyway.
Sigmarus - for some reason I never thought of bringing him here, but he helped push one of my teams to A. Helps if he’s on violent.
Katarina - if you have nothing else, she’s not terrible. Even without ignoring defense, her S3 hits OK since it’s all on the same target.
Huan (wind drunken master) - he is quite good here. His rune requirements are a bit high, but he’s a viable F2P option. Starter runes: Spd/CR/ATK, move to SPD/CD/ATK then ATK/CD/ATK when you can.

Nat4s:

Hraesvelg (wind barbaric king) - seems to be a key unit that took me to A+
Chasun - replace Colleen with her when you can, unless Colleen is working out fine for you.
Fei - people say multi hit is bad here but things like Fei with insane skills may be the exception ;).
Xiao Lin - I haven’t 6d mine yet, but she hits about the same as Fei without ignore defense and can hit much harder if you stack debuffs in groggy phase, so she should be fine.

Brief A+ guide

See my extensive A+ guide on reddit here. I’ll condense it for the purpose of this larger guide.

Notes:

We are going for the “easier” (imho) route to A+ in light: do 2,000,000 damage before the boss kills you.
You’re probably going to need R4/NB10 auto quality runes, especially Colleen.
You want 2+ DEF breakers and, if you can, at least 1 brander.
Shoot for 140+ speed on all monsters without SPD on 2, 160+ for SPD on 2 monsters.
Front line: 22,000 HP/750 DEF to tank the 2nd shield hit in 3rd wave.
Back line: 12,000HP/750 DEF to tank the 2nd aoe hit in the 3rd wave

F2P A+ Template:

Front	Back
Colleen TANKYDPS	LEADDPS FASTDPS BESTDPS SUPPORTDPS

Colleen : R4/NB10 Colleen : SPD/HP/DF, 200+ TOTAL (with leads, towers) speed. From my testing, Colleen needs about +60 speed to keep up with a Chasun here since she only has one heal. However, if you have a good SUPPORTDPS, she may be able to run slower.
TANKYDPS : This is the absolute hardest slot for an F2P player to fill. Hopefully by this point (NB10, R4+) you’ve pulled something that will work well here (I use XingZhe & Chow), if not see the discussion in the guide linked above. Basically you want something that not only can survive, but also either has a good damage output or drastically increase the damage of your team. Copper might be a good place to start. Mav works for SOME people, but not me.
LEADDPS : A unit that provides a relevant, damage increasing leadership skill and contributes good damage. Theomars is going to be the best F2P option here probably.
FASTDPS : A unit that hits hard and scales with speed works here. Really you can use any DPS, but most people will have a Tarq, Susano, etc. built by now.
BESTDPS: For many F2P players, Theo may be your best dps. If he’s not, put that unit here. If you have multiple options, go for one with brand+def break.
SUPPORTDPS: Ideally this DPS fills in whatever is missing - an extra defense break, a backup heal (especially if you are running Colleen), and extra ATK or SPEED buff, etc. Generally this should be a nat4 (Hraesvelg is amazing here), but Huan (wind drunken master) is an attainable option here.

Better/Nat4 A+ Template:

Front	Back
Chasun XiaoLin (vamp, R4+)	Theo(lead) Stella Hraesvelg +1

Dark

Multi-hitters are the key here, just like necro. In fact, you can probably start with your necro team +1 and do alright. If possible, try and make it so your frontliners are the monsters with the least multi-hits- Theo, for example, is a good front liner, because he’s mostly good in the groggy stage.

Template

Front	Back
Colleen XiongFei	MULTI MULTI MULTI MULTI

Relevant attainable units:

Randy (fire bounty hunter) : I like him here because he brings multi hit, damage, team damage (CR buff) AND team sustain (DEF buff). He’s also a unit you might already have for a Copper+Randy GW combo or something.
Ran - from HoH, especially if you’ve got one built for necro.
Xiong Fei - multi hits, tanky, and sustain. Good front liner.
Theo - Good old Theo, always willing to hit stuff hard. I put him in the front line so he gets frozen, since he’s best in the groggy phase anyway..
Colleen - Another great spot for her (build one already!).

V. Farming and farmers

The basics

What is farming? Well...if you haven’t played a Korean game before...it’s something you’d better get comfortable with real quick! OK but seriously generally when someone says “farming” it translates to “doing the same thing over and over again” where “the same thing” translates to “the most efficient thing I can do with my current monsters to acquire resource X” where X is experience, essences, mana, etc. Efficiency can be considered in terms of energy or or time - generally F2P players are more concerned with energy (since we don’t buy more) than time (time efficiency comes into play during free energy or double XP events where you want to get as much XP as you can before that event runs out, even if it’s not the most efficient use of your energy).

For the purpose of this section of the guide we’re talking about farming XP.

When someone talks about their “farmer” or their “bus driver” they mean a single monster that is powerful enough to clear a level entirely by themselves, as all their “fodder” (ie the monsters to be leveled, generally weak or unruned monsters being leveled up to 3/4/5/6 star other monsters) will die quickly. The common advice is to make your first 5 star monster one that is capable of bus driving in a good xp zone so they can help you make more 5 star monsters. Faimon 1 normal/hard/hell and higher are preferred because they tend to give higher energy returns.

Note that before you have a solid 5 star farmer, you’ll probably just be grinding with an entire runed team. You should be able to do Garen hell and Mt. Siz 1-3 hell by level 20ish. That will net you 1200 xp per 5 energy run and, while it isn’t great, it’s enough to start getting monsters up to 3/25 and 4/30 at least. ALSO: Focus on getting the % runes you need. Hp% from Garen 2/4/6 and ATK% from Mt. Siz 2 at least. Mt. Siz 3+ starts getting noticeably harder, but basically once you get the runes you need, just push your grinding up to as high a level as you can auto. The higher you get, the more XP you’ll get for your energy investment.

Some farming statistics

Note: There are much better stats for some of these zones available if you dig around. I just did 100 runs on each to grab some averages. Note that this does NOT count your natural energy regen, as that is variable based on the glory building.

Name	xp/energy with 3 fodder	mana/energy
Hydeni 5 Hell	1304	659
Tamor 3 Hard	1049	623
Tamor 3 Hell	1320	664
Vrof 4 normal	950	800
Vrof 4 hard	1074	643
Faimon 1 normal	1076	1013
Faimon 1 hard	1246	1005
Aiden 1 normal	1152	1034
Aiden 1 hard	1297	968
Faerun 1 normal	1226	1094
Chiruka 1 normal	1386	1198
Chiruka 4 normal	1323	1042

Yep, Faimon 1 is pretty good...this is why I say if you have a solid 5 star that can mow Faimon 1 normal, no need to stress about 6ing it UNLESS you are certain that doing so will take you to the next level.

I recently discovered that my Veromos and Antares could farm Faerun 1 normal. It’s not quite as fast, but it’s very efficient. The downside is mostly 1* fodder instead of hellhounds. Faimon is really hard to beat…. but if you are just leveling units and don’t need 2* fodder, the new zones look to be more efficient.

Lapis, your starting farmer

A note on old farmers (Raoq, Ramagos, Dagora) : You might find old guides suggesting using these. DON’T. Just use Lapis. She’s a gift from Com2Us to speed up your progress.

With despair/X at 5* awakened she can do faimon 1 hard. Don’t bother with any of the other starting farmers unless you pull a Soha or something, just go with Lapis. EASY. Here are some stats I (or someone else) tested her with (and this was 2 buffs ago, so her requirements are probably lower now):

Faimon 1 hard: 5* despair/xx spd/atk/atk

Faimon 1 hard : use the reward runes, don’t bother being fancy.

Faimon 1 hell: despair/revenge, atk/crit/hp: 19763HP, 1453atk, 905def, 143spd 76%cr, 89%cd, 22%res, 14%acc. See comments here.

Upgrading your farmer

So you’re tired of Lapis, or you really want to 6* a farmer - as I don’t recommend 6ing Lapis, because she can do faimon hard @ 5*, and that’s fine - what are your other/better options?

If yours can’t farm hell, Veromos can farm aiden 1 hard on similar quality runes, and that’s more efficient than faimon hard.
Nat4 farmers: There are a number of nat4s that can farm faimon and aiden hell better than Lapis, but I wouldn’t suggest 6ing one purely as a farmer unless you have nothing else to 6. Common options include:

Amir - Included in this list because he is “farmable”. A really solid Aiden farmer, ToA backup stunner, AO and GW aoe nuker, all around good monster. However, I think his rune requirements are higher than Hraesvelg, and definitely higher than Fuco. Likely lower than Lushen.
Soha (faimon) - great farmer, but limited usage outside of farming. Her other main use is as a stripper, but that would typically be runed differently than a farmer. If you really want her as a stripper, and can get her farming on a stripping build, that’s not a bad choice.
Hraesvelg - farms aiden 1 hell with low-ish requirements. Also a great GB10, early AO and rift beast monster. Mine was able to do it starting around level 35 with rage/broken spd/CR/atk. +600 atk, +36 SPD, 89%CR 136%CD. If you can do +25 speed with atk/cd/atk that should be good too.
Julie - decent faimon hell farmer, rune requirements might be a little higher but she’s also great for AO.
Fuco - really easy to rune for Aiden hell farming, really good in Necropolis, good in dark rift beast.
Lushen - can farm Hydeni Hell pretty easily, and this was a thing people used to do, but I would never advise it now as faimon & aiden HARD are better. He can also farm aiden 1 hell but the rune requirements are higher than say Hraesvelg. Still, he’s a great in AO & GW and useful in GB10 speed teams, so he’s worth building.
Susano - can farm faimon hell pretty easily, is fusable, and is a very good GW monster.
Trevor - One of the few monsters that can farm Chiruka without crazy rune requirements. Mine did it on vamp/rev spd/cr/atk with 77% CR 109CD +49SPD. The problem is that he’s fairly slow. Unless you are really going for efficiency, I would opt for farming faimon or aiden with another farmer at 2x the speed.
Tyron - He can do it, but I’d advise against it as he generally needs skill ups to farm really well and doesn’t have a whole lot of use outside of farming anymore.

Nat5 farmers are generally going to be better than nat4 counterparts, so if you are choosing something purely on a farming basis, that extra star counts. Almost any wind or water nuker or tanky dps can farm (OGs, Beast monks, etc.). It’s a little tougher for fire monsters as you’ll generally want to do Chiruka with them, so they need either really good runes (generally vampire), really good sustain (beast monk) or have to be really tanky and deal a lot of damage (chimera).

VI. Appendix I: General Monster info

I already covered the monsters I think you should look out for, so here I’m going to try for a very, very general monster overview of 2 & 3 star units and commonly referenced 4 stars, especially as pertains to newbies in case you want a quick lookup in the same document.

If I don’t mention the element version you are curious about, I consider it fodder in most circumstances. If you know otherwise, then you are probably past the point where you need this guide.

Two stars

Elemental : Wind can be used in water dungeons, water is an OK tank once awakened but eventual fodder, fire is easy fodder. Dark is good for the Akroma ToA Hard level - max out his 3rd skill if you pull him.
Garuda: Water is one the best 2 stars in the game and should be awakened, max skilled and 5 starred in your first 5-6 five stars. Water is also wind nine tails fusion mats, so you should level 2.Wind has an unresistable stun, fire has an attack bar and speed boost - both are food if not needed for those roles. Light has a rez and is given to you, Dark is a reliable dotter for water dungeon if you have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BETTER (you probably do).
Harpu: Wind is Fire Succubus fusion mats. Fire is amazing utility and perfect for Necropolis and raids. Dark (3*) can also be used in Necropolis.
Hellhound: Fire is very solid dps and given to you at the beginning of the game, water has some use in guild wars offense and other experimental team comps (supposedly 3 Tarq+good dps=Conq1 in arena if you are so inclined), but don’t bother until you specifically know what you are doing. Dark can be useful with very good runes. Water is fun.
Howl: Wind is Fire Joker fusion mats, water is useful up to 4/30 at least as early/mid game healer and cleanser.
Imp: Fire is water undine fusion mats. Light can help you climb early arena when paired with an ATK buffer.
Pixie: Wind is one of the best two stars in the game, water is wind vampire fusion mats.
Warbear: Wind and Water are excellent first farmers. Dark (3*) is a solid GW unit. Fire is a solid PVE unit up till 4/30, then eventual 6* fodder. Water and light are 3 star units.
Yeti: Fire is a water ninja fusion mats. Wind is a decent dungeon healer. Fire is an OK starting tank. Dark a 3 star unit and is dark ifrit fusion mats.

Three Stars

As I think I mentioned before, just about ANY 3 star is usable if you pull it before 20 and it fills a role you lack (X element tank/dps, certain buff type, whatever.), so I’m not going to mention that over and over here.

There’s absolutely no harm in taking them all the way to 4 star/level 30 and using them for 6 star fodder later. However, I would not probably not burn the time/energy farming essences to awaken a monster I was using like that.

Amazon : Wind amazon is wind 9 tails fusion mats.
Battle Mammoth: Water can farm faimon 1 normal. Wind has a nice full party cleanse if you don’t have Koniyama yet. Dark is one of the best nat3s in the game, if not the best.
Bearman: Light is in very high demand as a reliable healer. Water is fusion mats for water undine. Wind is fusion mats for water ninja.
Beast Hunter: Fire is fusion mats for fire succubus. All are decent single target DPS early on if you have nothing else.
Bounty Hunter: Water has a nice speed/atb buff, fire has a nice def/crit buff. Nothing special, but they are totally usable in early game PVE. Fire gets used in GW with wind living armor or fire frankenstein. Dark can be used in raid and some rift beasts if you don’t have better options.
Charger Shark: I like these. Fire seems the worst of the bunch. Water can be a farmer but takes more work than it’s worth IMHO, stay away. Wind is a solid leveling/newbie monster, but I’m not sure if he has a place in mid to late game. Dark can hit really hard and light doesn’t seem to be very useful.
Cow Girl: All are decent in Necropolis, with water being the most useful in that role.
Drunken Master: Post-buff, water, wind and light have potential in various rift teams - wind/light in wind, all 3 of them in water and, with their ignore def on S1 + decent multipliers on S3 they provide a good combo of damage and healing (like Hwahee) that can potentially be useful in generic PVE or PVP (still needs testing).
Elven ranger: wind & fire are solid necro units, especially fire. Water has some potential in ToA (hard?). Light looks to be the least useful - but don’t fodder it!
Fairy: You start with water, she’s OK and her sleep is unresistable (seriously). Light is a solid unit for exploiting the computer AI. Wind can be used in very, very specific teams as her damage on #3 scales with debuffs on target, like Kro (dark inugami) and Argen (wind vampire). UPDATE: Since their first attack is now multi-hit, they have some use in Necropolis - fire is best for this.
Frankenstein: Fire is good in pvp in the same way Copper is good. Water is good in late game pvp when you have amazing runes. Light is a great necropolis unit. Jury is still out on wind and dark.
Harg: Fire is a lot like Konamiya (potentially useful in DB10), wind is a great raid cleanser (4*), light is just weird, dark is a solid PVE healer, and water seems kinda meh to me.
Golem: Water is fire joker fodder and can farm faimon 1 normal with 5 stars and limited investment. Wind is water horus fodder. Light is good in PVP. Dark is not currently useful.
Grim Reaper: Water is water undine mats, and also used in ToA hard for dots if you don’t pull a dark grim along the way. Fire is better than average early game dps and has a heal blocker on #3 aoe. Occasionally used for faimon farming, but takes 6 stars and a decent investment I think. Dark is amazing unit for ToA hard. Light can be used in wombos.
Harpy: Wind is wind 9 tails fusion mats, water is fire succubus fusion mats. Fire is a solid Necropolis unit, dark is decent PVP dps. Light is the fastest ATB booster in the game.
High Elemental: Fire is wind 9 tails fusions mats and used in late game AO. Water and wind are really underwhelming. Light has some neat GW tricks, dark seems Meh.
Imp Champion: Water is used in late, late game DB10 speed teams. I’ve heard light has some use, but haven’t seen it.
Inferno: Wind is water undine fusion mats. Fire is very solid early->mid game aoe and handy for secret dungeons. Water has some use in specific arena combos, very high speed requirements but a great ATB buffer.
Inugami: Water is water ninja fusion mats. Fire is Raoq (:P). Wind can be a useful dungeon or wind speed leader until you get something better. Light is incredibly good and should be farmed. Dark has uses in specialized teams.
Living Armor: Fire is wind vampire fusion mats. Wind is great in PVP (moreso in GW, but some use in AO). Water and light are kinda meh - BUT light can frontline raids with good runes. Dark I’ve seen used in a number of ways (including HoH) and I would build if I could pull one.
Lizardman: Wind is wind vampire fusion mats. Water can be used as a late game (6 star) faimon hard/hell farmer. Light and dark have minimal uses.
Magic Archer: Water is fire succubus fusion mats. Fire is fire joker fusion mats. Wind is a solid late game raid dps unit (high rune requirements).
Martial Cat: Fire is fire succubus fusion mats. Water is water phoenix fusion mats.
Minotaurus: Wind is wind vampire fusion mats. Almost as bad as imp champions, even after the last round of buffs.
Mummies: Water is a decent ToA stunner and water horus fusion fodder, light can be used as a starting DB10 rezzer if you don’t have anything better. Fire is used in SUPER late game rush hour stall ADs.
Mystic Witch: Water is insanely in demand as an early->late game AO unit, also good in DB10 face teams - can stay at 5* pretty much forever. Fire has some use as an early game cleanser. Others don’t get used.
Penguin Knight: Water has some use in PVP due to his auto-crit #3. Wind is an amazing ToA support unit post-buff. Dark is one of the few aoe defense breakers, so he’s worth using for that. Light can be used as a raid cleanser if you don’t have anything else.
Salamander: Wind is fire sylph fusion mats. Fire is fire succubus fusion mats (and a 3 star unit) and occasionally used in ToA Hard. Dark is the perfect unit for water dungeon. I’ve seen light used in R4-R5 (with very good runes).
Serpent: Fire is fire sylph fusion mats. Water can be used in DB10. Wind is a great anti-fire tank and I’ve even seen it used in DB10. Dark is really solid for PVP (especially if you don’t have Galleon), ToA and even HoH.
Taoist: Fire and dark are 3 stars, fire seems the worst of the bunch. Light is a nat4 and absolutely amazing. Wind is a nat4 and decent for ToA. After the most recent buffs, water and dark are amazing for ToA Hard (pair with Spectra for perma stun).
Vagabond: Light is good, dark is also used in late game PVP. Fire is not bad as a PVP taunter either. Wind may have some use with the ATB reset and water seems the worst to me.
Viking: Fire is fire panda fusion fodder. Dark has some use in early game as a general speed leader - especially once Fran is no longer available. Dark and fire are 3 star units, the rest are 2.
Werewolf: Fire is fire joker fusion mats. Wind is wind valk fusion mats. Water is decently useful PVE and occasionally used in Necropolis. Light is decent in GW, and dark I find even better in GW.

Four stars

First, here’s a simple visual aid (since people love tier lists!) for the fire/water/wind nat4s. I’ve marked their most common PVE usage with letters on the right, and PVP usage with letters below the images. An underlined letter indicates that I use that monster in that role, and think they are one of the best options to use there. Blue square indicates I’ve 6*d that monster, yellow square indicates I still haven’t pulled that monster.

Keep in mind this is just my opinion, and is targeted at players up to rank C1, things can shift past that point.

Tier List

3.4.5 Tier list update:

Akia (fire succubus) now orange tier minimum, maybe green or yellow, for PVP - guessing probably RTA? Given her S1 sleep and S2 strip+stun+def break.
Izaria (water succubus) is potentially green tier for AO,RTA and maybe F3/C1 AD.
Selena (wind succubus) is still trash tier, sorry. Someone has to be the weakest link!
Astar (fire magic knight) appears to have had her S2 nerfed, but I don’t think she’s trash tier.
Yen (wind rakshasa) is missing from the list. She’s orange tier for necro and maybe GWO.

As far is details on individual monsters go, there are extensive posts on reddit about almost every monster, but I’ll give my quick 2 cents about the families here. I’ll include nat5 members of nat4 families just for simplicity’s sake.

Anubis

Fire: great GW unit, can also frontline wind beast raid. Needs maxed S2 to be a threat in GW.
water/wind: they feel almost usable now if you need a dps of that type for PVP, but make sure you don’t have better options first. Still needs another buff.
Dark: can farm faimon hell, has rare aoe brand, seems usable
Light: raids and necro. Would build one if I had him.

Assassin

Fire: least useful and hardest to use of the family. Her passive DOES AFFECT VAMPIRE SETS (including ones on her). Fire is also kinda secret tech for wind rift beast, because I don’t think her passive stacks with the healing reduction from the shock debuff - so basically, since you are shocked most of the time, you get the positive (damage reduction) from her passive, and none of the negative (heal reduction, since you already have it from the debuff).
Wind: great GW unit, can delete 2 units right off the bat when paired with aoe def break.
Water: raid and DB10. Needs skillups badly.
light/dark: good GW units

Barbaric King

fire/wind/water: Post 3.1.3 buff, these are all decent rift beast monsters, if nothing else. Wind is also a solid GB10 monster. I think fire is the least useful.
dark/light: great GW units, solid rift beast usage as well.

Brownie Magician

Fire : OK if you need an immunity buffer, generally for PVP
Wind: good for AO
Water: great PVP unit
dark/light: niche units, can be good in right context

Death Knight

Fire: I wouldn’t build (not quite true, I did build him to experiment with!). Not much use for anymore, but you could potentially build a fire bruiser GWO/D with him included, if you had really good runes for him (HP+SPD).
Wind: arguably the best PVE (others like Eladriel and Betta can be much better in PVP) rezzer in the game. Definitely build him if you have him. He’s much less useful now that HOH only has 10 levels, but I still like him for auto ToA. ToA/DB10/HoH.
Water: OK raid unit
Dark: top tier raid unit
Light: decent DPS with speed lead. Will be better if they ever change his #2 scaling.

Dice Magicians

Fire : generic fire aoe, with occasional extra damage or extra survivability...heavy RNG monster.
Wind : Briand alternate. Should be a decent HoH and ToA monster.
Water : good GWO/AO nuke. Use in a standard nuker comp (with atk buff and def break), don’t count on the ignore defense, hits hard enough without it.
Light : there was some initial hype about him in AO, we’ll see how it plays out.
Dark : Recently pulled one. He’s horrible hot garbage sadly. If he ever gets buffed to make his S3 aoe, then he should be usable.

Harp Magicians:

Fire : Looks like a solid utility PVP (GW primarily) healer, somewhere between Atenai and Chasun. Should be a decent PVE healer for early to mid game content as well.
Wind : She’s not great. Can be used in some high end ADs & GWDs, but until then I’d leave her in storage.
Water : Potential ToAH monster, maybe specialized GW or AO. Great in RTA.

Horus

Fire: the worst horus, hard to find a use for him now (and I’m trying!). Needs a buff imho.
wind/water: good PVP combo units. wind+Copper, water+Katarina.
Light : weird/niche unit, could build PVP teams around.
dark: very good late game AD unit.

Jack-o’-lantern

Water: the most usable of the family. Limited GW usage, DB10 as buff stealer, necro as buffer
Dark : quite good for necro and some elemental beasts (I use him in fire+dark).
The others can be used in necro and that’s generally it.

Joker

Fire: fusable. Good for ToA hard and bomb teams
Wind: chase nat4. Killer AO unit, can be used in speed dungeon teams and GW, farming.
Water: worst nat4 in game?
Dark: very good bomber
Light: niche usage as buff remover

Kobold Bomber

Fire: great necro unit, especially since last buff. Not generally useful elsewhere.
Wind: decent bomber
Water: great bomber with very good #3. PVP, ToA/ToAH
Dark: not generally useful yet, needs another buff
Light: good bomber with good #3

Kung Fu Girl

fire/wind : post buff these are the least useful, but still not bad. I don’t think I would build them, but it would probably work fine if you wanted one for necro or something.
Water : post (most recent buff), VERY good raid and elemental beast monster due to the scaling on her S3
Light: useful as raid dps
Dark: very good, useful wherever dps is useful. Unreliable due to RNG.

Lich

fire/light: the weakest liches and I cannot recommend building them for anything
water/wind/dark: great for necro/raids. Wind is also an easy to build aiden hell farmer.

Magic Knight

water : great early game farmer (can farm faimon hard at 5* with OK runes), likely your first farmer. After that, can be solid in fire rift beast.
Fire : decent necro unit, have seen used well in GW/RTA as well.
Wind : easily the worst of the family, not much point in using.
light: amazing, top tier unit. GW/RTA.
Dark : can be used in necro, not much else besides that.

Mermaid

Fire: OK rezzer, decent for Db10, ToA, HoH but for me works best in GW. Needs max skills and has high-ish rune requirements to shine.
Wind: worst mermaid, have only seen one person that said they used her. Very niche?
Water: not super useful, but you can build a ToAH or PVP team around her sleep.
Light: great AD unit due to RNG introduced by her passive.
Dark: great PVE support, AD, GW. Such a good kit. So good.

Neostone Agent

Fire: best raid cleanser. NB10, GW.
Wind: great in GW in the right team (Copper). Limited use elswhere.
Water: great all around support. GB10, DB10, ToA, GW, Raids
Light : very niche, limited usage.
Dark: amazing monster. Doesn’t do much on her own but, like Verde, makes teams go nuts.

Neostone Fighter

water/wind/dark: solid single target dps units if you really need one, but nothing special.
Fire : the most used fighter, decent in GW and can farm Chiruka hell with vamp runes (slowly).
Light: the most compelling one to me, since if you get his damage high enough and you build him as your opening one shotter, he can get a really strong shield from that first kill. GW monster.

Nine-tailed Fox

Fire : great NB10 unit.
Wind: solid wind dps, good in the right NB10 team
Water: faimon hell farmer, decent buff stripper
Light: quirky tanky...could be useful in the right team
Dark: very hard hitting, non-glancing nuke

Ninja

Fire : meh
Wind : OK in some GB10 teams, can be used effectively in GW with the right team - I use Orochi(l)-Ganymede-Bernard on my alt.
Water: decent faimon hell farmer and solid GW nuker and lead if you really need one.
Light: meh
Dark(nat5): Very good, extremely hard hitting non-glancing nuke

Phantom Thief

Fire: not a fan, but some like him. I wouldn’t (and didn’t) build
Wind: same, except that I made him my first 6* and wish I hadn’t. Many will disagree with me.
Water : OK AO unit until(or if you can’t) pull a Galleon. Can also be used in teams that don’t need attack buff (like HP/DEF scaling
Light : quirky niche unit. Generally not worth it.
Dark : good GW non-glancing nuke. Like a weaker Theo? Generally not worth it.

Pierret

Water : useful in AO wombo teams (especially as an anti-nemesis unit), can farm faimon hell with the right runes
fire/wind/light/dark: niche units with dark being the most usable.

Pirate captain

Fire: decent fire DPS. Better with a bomber
Wind: great GB10 unit, decent GW unit.
Water: chase nat4. Amazing PVP unit and PVE for dungeon speed teams.
Light: not worth building
Dark: great PVP ATB booster

Rakshasa

Fire: great raid dps, GW, NB10, ToA 100, speed DB10.
Wind: NB10 or raid if you have nothing else.
Water: great faimon farmer
Dark: NB10 or Raid
Light: quirky unit that I really want. GW, NB10, raid

Samurai

All are solid dps units worth building if you need that element for PVP. Fire is decent for fire rift beast too. I have seen fire used as a faimon farmer as well, but it’s uncommon.
Light/dark are generally regarded as some of the better aoe nukers in the game.

Sky dancer

Fire: weakest of the family, but still usable. Good in wind and dark rifts.
Wind: chase nat4. Amazing healer. Useful almost everywhere.
Water: great in raids, decent in GW.
light/dark: quite good since the last round of buffs, very good PVP units that can also be used in other limited roles (dark would work in wind or light beast for example).

Succubus

fire/dark : post buff, given their strip on S2, the have potential to be strong PVP units. Dark has some potential in Db10 as well.
Water : decent AO speed lead, especially if you have no other 24% options.
Wind : the worst of the bunch, not worth using yet.
Light: old (pre Gildong+Spectra) ToA/ToAH goddess. Still good there. Very strong in RTA.

Sylph

Fire : fusable king of ToA. Max his #2 & #3.
Water: pretty good CC unit. AO, GW, ToA, can farm faimon hard with decent runes. Hell has really high rune requirements.
Wind: decent AO unit with a good AO speed lead
Light: I’ve seen it used very well in HoH. Could also be a second ToA stunner.
Dark: ToA hard if you build a team around the sleeping.

Sylphid

Fire: used in VERY high end ADs (G1+) and speed DB10 (see ProcReady’s video here) and fire rift beast.
Water: I would recommend against building, but can be used in GW and as a generic support in PVE
Wind: build if you have nothing else and are working on GB10, otherwise don’t.
Light: amazing PVE (and GW) support unit.
Dark: Decent post-buff, very similar to Arnold but a little more flexible due to dark element and the team heal (if you’d prefer that to aoe atk break). Good RTA unit.

Undine

Fire: can be good in PVE & GW if you invest heavily into her. Probably not worth it for most.
Wind : can be used in raids (but not ideal), decent in GW in anti-Theo teams.
Water: DB10/ToA/HoH
Light: quirky GW unit with high stat requirement to excel. Can be used in ToA hard on a few levels, but Neal does that job better, easier.
Dark: very niche, only build her if you have a plan for her

Vampire

Fire: chase nat4. Absolutely amazing monster. Will make ToA, DB10 and many other things much easier
Water: can be used as faimon farmer, generally not worth it
Wind: can be used in necro or raid as DPS
Dark: absolutely amazing unit, can be used most places
Light: really solid GW unit after buffs

Five Star Factoids

This section won't cover all or even many of the nat5s, rather I'm just gathering up obscure/hard to find info I've come across about some of them that you might find useful.

Leo : His passive sets all other ATB to 95 and his to 100, so a nem/will megan can guarantee your team the first move. See here.
Rakan : Other things being equal, he will target the unit with the highest ATB (after you factor in elemental advantage, etc.). See comments here.

VII. Appendix II: Arena

I’m not going to say much here, as that’s a pretty detailed subject and one I’m not really that into. I can hold hold C1 easily, break C2 when I try and hold it occasionally, so I’m far from an expert.

As a newbie, you just want to farm as many glory points as you can for the energy recovery speed building (strange plant), energy + building, and eventually the various stat bonus buildings.

“But how can I do that,” you might ask “When my opponents all have fucking nat 4s and 5s at level 15!?” Welcome to the world of P2W vs F2P. You make sure to defeat all the rivals you can every day and you keep your rank DOWN. Put a single monster in your arena defense so anyone who wants to can defeat you and lower your rank. Then, once it gets below 1000, go defeat as many of the other farming lowbies as you can. Rinse, repeat.

You may not have the monsters to actually try and compete and climb past 1100 or 1200 until well into 40 - it really depends on what you pull and whether or not you prioritize PVP or PVE units for 5 and 6 starring. Hint: prioritizing your PVE monsters will help you more in the long term because they help you get runes.

Starting AO

Something like Baretta Vero Bella <NUKER>, where the nuker is ideally Theomars or a nat5, will do fine for F1-F2 farming. I used to just auto with that team, skipping the fights that looked like I’d have to manual or lose.
A really basic template for the team you should use after that one is something like <SPEED LEADER> <ATB BUFFER> Galleon <AOE> - without Galleon you’ll it’s much tougher, as he fills two necessary roles (atk buff, def break) in one unit.
If you lack a Galleon, hopefully you pulled a Lushen or two, in that case you can run something like Bernard Megan Lushen Lushen, or <SPEED LEADER> Megan Bernard Lushen.

Starting AD

Seriously, don’t bother. Farm glory until you can easily hold F3 and start pushing for C1. Just put whatever in there. A single whatever, so people freely attack your AD and keep your rank low so it’s easier/faster for you to farm glory.

C1 AD

OK fine, fine so you want a real AD. Are you sure? Up until you can confidently break C1, I would say just put your AO as your AD. Once you can break C1, that may not be enough to hold and you’ll want to try and be a bit scarier.

I have no way of predicting what the meta will be like as you read this, but currently a decent AD template is: SPEED LEAD STRIPPER THREAT ATBBOOSTER. Something like Psamathe(l) Triton Orion Perna - which is my AD and can currently hold C2 if I work at it. Post C2 I can’t help you ;). My alt used Seara Praha Orion Laika and can barely hold C1.

VIII. Appendix III: Mechanics Questions & Answers

Q: What does each buff & debuff do?

A: See the chart here, it’s pretty accurate. The trick to remember is that it affects your TOTAL stat. So say you’ve have 850 base defense and 250 from runes for 1100 total. With Megan’s DEF buff, you now have 1100 * 1.5 = 1650 DEF.

Q: How does the attack damage work?

A: Each damage (and some other types, like the water fairy’s heal) skill does an amount of damage relative to the attack stat. This amount of damage is generally referred to as the skills multiplier. So if someone says that a monster’s first attack has a “300% multiplier”, that means that it will do damage equal to that monster’s TOTAL (after buffs/debuffs/leader skills, etc.) attack stat BEFORE defense. How is that affected by defense and skilling up…keep reading.

Q: What about CR & CD? What balance of those do I want on my attack monsters?

A: See this great reddit post by nysra.

Q: How does defense work? What amount of damage does it negate?

A: Use this equation to calculate your damage reduction: 100%-(1000/(1000+3*(DEF))). So if you have 1000 defense, you take (100-1000(/4000)) = 25% damage. To rephrase, you will NEGATE 75% of incoming damage. With a defense debuff on you, you’d still negate 60% BUT the damage you take would increase by 66% (25% vs 40% taken). Two different ways of looking at it. See here for some discussion.

Q: How does accuracy work and how much do I need?
A: See this fucking amazing post. Here’s my tl;dnr summary:

Galleon/Luer/buff strippers/etc. (PVP units): 85%.
Bella/Megan/Lisa/Vero (DB10): 55%
Baretta/Spectra/Tyron/Mav/Thrain/Hemos/Woochi/Briand/Aria (TOA): 45%
Shannon/Bernard (GB10): 45%
Raks/Liches/NB10 debuffers: 45%
Raid units: Minimal acc subs to hit 15%.

To me, slot 6 acc runes are all but useless - if you have ones with amazing subs, use them on PVP monsters. Late game, people use them on strippers and stuff like Zaiross if they have really good subs.

Q: How do skillup skill damage %s work?

A: The are multiplicative to the base skill multiplier. For example, if your skill has a 300% multiplier and 30% extra damage from skillups, the new multiplier is 300 * 1.3 = 390%. See here for math/etc.

----CORRECTION---: Apparently, it adds into a “bonus damage” type section, basically sits where crit damage sits in the equation. So if you do not crit, it looks like it’s increasing the multiplier, as I observed. BUT, if you do crit, it just looks like you’re increasing the crit mult. See here.

Q: How does speed work and what speed stats should I shoot for?

A: Wow, that’s a good question. I don’t think there’s a simple answer (other than more = better)...you can start here for one of the more technical ones I’ve seen.

A2: Also, for a bunch more details, see the in-depth speed tuning guide here.

Q: What are the odds of powering up runes?

A: Shitty? But seriously, see the thread here for lots of info.

Q: How do I rune [X] monster?

A: See this nice guide. I don’t agree with every single suggestion, but it’s very comprehensive and a great place to start.

In general, I follow these basic guidelines:

Does it need to go first (Chloe, Bernard)? Use swift.

Offset is up to you, but it’s usually focus for things with debuffs (Bernard) and energy/nemesis/will/endure depending on what you need. For pvp, on a buffer like Chloe you’ll probably want will to prevent stunning, etc.

Do you have violent runes for it? Use violent. (Violent is OP, sorry).

This is true in *most* cases but there are oddballs like ramagos who benefits more from vampire in most cases.
Offset depends completely on what you need. Think about your goals before you ask someone else.

Do you want it to hit really hard AND you have good crit% subs? Rage and fatal are very close, but rage is slightly better.

As for using atk vs crit damage in slot 4, I’ve seen various suggestions here, but I’d say the bare minimum is 50% crit to use critD. Others suggest as high as 70%. I often use crit% in slot4 if I can get up to 75% or so crit, but I don’t think others do this.
Offset is generally blade to start, but once you get really good runes you can go revenge or nemesis/whatever.

Is it a (hopefully fast) support monster with at least one aoe (Acasis, Baretta, Draco, Shannon, Clara) or two aoes (Tyron, Eredas, Amir) that you want to stun? Use despair.

The basic criteria for despair is : “Do I want to use despair?” You’ll figure out for yourself a bit as to which monsters beyond the ones I listed you might want to use it on.
Offset is generally focus to help boost your acc. 85% would be nice, but I shoot for 50% if I can on supports (Bella, Baretta, Acasis, Shannon, etc.).
What are the best monsters to use despair runes on? A: See here.

IX: Appendix IV : Other stuff from me

My summoning stones rotation tracking document. Note: This is no longer completely updated, but I am still (as of 04/19/17) updating the hot4 portion.
My account progress journal (mentioned and linked earlier as well, not updated much anymore as I’m past the point where I can “progress” much).
My damage calculation spreadsheet. If you’re wondering how hard your monster can hit (relative to other monsters at least), here’s one place to start looking. I’ve got most of the nat4 and 5s in there with attacks that DON’T have weird scaling. So the Ifrit #1s aren’t in there (yet).

0. Updates/Version

0. Introduction

Background

Goals

Crystal use

DEVILMON

Void’s general rules for devilmon usage

Summoning stones

II. Leveling

General Starting Tips

Monster specific tips

Lapis

Two star monsters to look out for:

Three star fire/wind/water monsters to look out for:

Three star L/D monsters to look out for

Three star monster families to save for skillups

Fusions

A note on four star monsters

Runing

Rune Types

How to rune, early game

What to choose for you free rune sets

Early mid game runing notes

General

Specific sets

Leveling Guideposts

Monster Boxes

III. Cairos Dungeon

Elemental Dungeon Drop rates

Secret Dungeons

Awakening

General notes on the elemental dungeons

Key dungeon units for the early game

Less Key, but useful units

Specific notes on dungeons

Dark

Dragon

Void’s DB10 guide

Fire

Giants

Example mid game GB10 progression

Light

Magic

Necropolis

Example mid game NB10 progression

Water

Wind

TOA

A note on killer ToA units

Guild Wars

Raiding

Rough stat requirements

Team composition

Some notes on R5

IV. Rift Dungeons

General info

Fire

Water

Wind

Light

Brief A+ guide

Dark

V. Farming and farmers

The basics

Some farming statistics

Lapis, your starting farmer

Upgrading your farmer

VI. Appendix I: General Monster info

Two stars

Three Stars

Four stars

Tier List

Five Star Factoids

Further Reading

VII. Appendix II: Arena

Starting AO

Starting AD

C1 AD

VIII. Appendix III: Mechanics Questions & Answers

IX: Appendix IV : Other stuff from me