Newbie Guide

Newbie Guide

by Monokhrome

Table of Content

Summary

Before entering this guide, please play the tutorial to learn basic mechanics first, as nothing from the tutorial will be covered here.

Please also reroll your account before diving in.

GSOD Reroll Guide

Refer to the appendix at the bottom of the guide to see the Terminologies we use.

Early game progression:

Reroll > Do main story > Farm Giant Bosses > Upgrade notable units

> Farm notable equips > Farm ongoing events

Daily To-Do List (in order of importance):

• Do Daily Quest
• Clear Daily Missions (Cook food and clear 1 multiplayer battle)
• Farm ongoing events (SPEX Hyper, DMG Battle, etc)
• Clear Summoners’ Road attempts
• Clear Arena attempts
• Clear Grand Crusade AP
• Do Mines/Raid events (if available)

10 Golden Newbie Rules:

1. Only do guaranteed pulls. Never do unguaranteed.
2. Do not impulsively pity units, always consult veterans first.
3. Do not sell 500-alch units. Fuse them instead.
4. Upgrade units as you need; do not waste your resources.
5. Do not farm crests.
6. Make use of multiplayer for farming.
7. If possible, grab/pity strong crossover/seasonal equips.
8. Ensure your team has 2 artsgen units and 1 DPS.
9. Read boss mechanics or guides if stuck on a quest.
10. Consult veterans if truly stuck. Don’t expect to be spoonfed.

Quests

Main Story

For the first 7 days of your account being created, the main story quest takes 0 Energy to play, meaning you can use it to level up fast and get tons of crystals too.
Take advantage of this and try to go as far as possible.

If you’re not interested in the Grand Summoners story, you can skip most of the cutscenes and automatically go through the levels by checking the Auto button and using the Auto-Advance feature.

Don’t expect to auto through the main story quest fully. There will be some quests with high difficulty spikes that you need to conquer. Ensure you are well equipped with the right team with proper

Exploring

There will be multiple rotating quests in the Exploring tab, this includes crossover and event quests.

Daily Quests should be done every day, to clear the weekly missions and to slowly gather a variety of resources every day.

A bunch of easy levels to clear for some valuable materials. Clear this ASAP.

Crossover and Event quests can be accessed here. Be sure to only farm SPEX stage or higher, preferably on Multiplayer for more drops. Farm these ASAP before they end, as crossovers may not rerun in the future. Ensure to clear out as much of the Exchange shops as possible. If not, do it in this order:

Limited S Potions = Crossover Emotes >= Unit/Equip LB Stones >=

Crossover luck gems >= Crossover tickets > Farmable equips >

Everything else

Clear Dungeon of Trials as far as possible. Clear at least 5 stages of the Elemental Ruins for Crystals. Elemental Ruins open at the first half of the month, while Dungeon of Trials opens at the second half. Fire, Earth and Water Ruins rotate in on odd months, while Light and Dark Ruins rotate in on even months.

Assault Events rotate every week, with their first clear rewards resetting as well. Clear these ASAP once every week as the first clear rewards contain Crystals.

Giant Bosses are your main way to get materials for Awakening units. Clear new quests to get crystals on its first clear bonus. You can also use the Auto-Advance feature to quickly clear through the weaker stages. If there are any units that require any of the Giant Boss mats to evolve, farm enough for them. Some Giant Bosses rotate every hour, some every day and some every week. If a Giant Boss quest isn’t up, check the Schedule to see when it will appear next.

Side Stories

Clear Chapter 5 to unlock Side Stories which have an abundance of story quests to complete for more crystals. They drop useful equips, which will be covered in Farmable Equips.

Your priorities for Quests should be:

Main Story > Events > Giant Bosses > Side Stories

By doing all these, you should be able to get about 1500++ crystals easily by your first few weeks playing. With these crystals, only do guaranteed summons.

Grand Crusade - Buccaneer Tales

Grand Crusade Guide

Refer to the guide up top on the full Grand Crusade Guide.

Here are some tips for Grand Crusade:

• Battle as often as possible. By Area 40, you should be battling every tile. This ensures your regalia stats are as high as it can be. Battling also gives you a chance to refund back the AP spent traversing the tile.
• It’s up to you whether you want to collect treasure en route. You take longer to clear the area, however you battle more (and thus get more regalia stats), and have a chance of obtaining unique mystika from treasures.
• Craft and salvage all the Tier 1-3 common mystika to level up your Talent levels. Only convert to higher tiers of mystika once the area you’re in stops dropping that tier of mystika.
• A good team for clearing areas requires a bunch of burst arts equips, a unit with a fast, hard-hitting Arts, a mitigator/taunt tank as enemies will start to hit harder later, and an accuracy support/DPS for high evasion bosses.

Units

Units that aren’t 5★ (Hyper or Ultra Rares, they have rainbow stars on their rarity instead of yellow ones), which are 50 Alch, can be safely sold. Some 5★ units don’t start off with their full 5★ and requires evolving to reach their full 5★ potential

Duplicates of any 5★ unit, can be Limit Broken (fuse with the original) to gain 500 Alch. Any Limit Break past MLB will grant you an additional RBG. Limit Breaking, Alch and RBGs will be explained later.

There will also be free 5★ units you get by completing Trial and Ultra Trial Stages. Limit Breaking them won’t give you additional rewards, as their Limit Break [LB] Units (pseudo-dupes that are purely used to limit break a unit) can be farmed in said trials. These units are called Luck Units, because their Luck can be farmed for free.

Unit of Choice Ticket

New players can exchange a set of tickets under Town > Alchemist > Exchange > Exchange Alchemy Stones which can be used to redeem certain standard pool units. Don’t be hasty to use your ticket right away; since the units are from the standard pool, you will have a ton of opportunities to summon any of the units by chance first. Hold onto it until you are stuck on content with a niche that requires a unit from there.

Other than the UoC ticket, players can also exchange for a TW ticket, a 5★ and a 4★ Equipment Ticket. Equipment will be explained later in the Equipment section.

Tickets

Refer to this document here before making a decision on what to pick for your UoC, TW and equip tickets.

Upgrading

Levelling and Evolving

Due to having limited resources, only invest in a unit that you need right away. Even if a unit is good, if you don’t need them in the first place, it’s wiser to save your resources until you need them.

The best way to farm materials for Evolving and Awakening your units (such as Awoken Souls and Dragon Gods) is to regularly clear any Event Exchange shops, as they have a ton of these resources in most events.

Dragon God Paradisos can drop rarely in the hardest Invitation to Evolution stage, can be exchanged in Town > Alchemist > Exchange > Exchange Others, by fusing 5 of the elemental Dragon Gods into 1 Paradisos. Outside of some missions or stage clear rewards, this is the only way to obtain Paradisos.

• Dream Awakening and Ascension requires Soulgems, which can be obtained through Summoners’ Road under the Giant Boss category in Exploring.
• Summoners’ Road rotates their element every 3 days, and a Rainbow stage with all elements opens every Saturday.
• Summoners’ Road (or SR) has 5 stages, each ramping in difficulty.
• After a unit and its equips have been used on a stage, it cannot be used for subsequent stages.
• Each SR can be played 3 times daily for free. Do not use crystals to play more SR. New players that require soulgems can start by clearing the first 1-2 stages and exiting early to claim the rewards.

After ascension, a SAWK cannot level up through using metal chickens, and must clear quests to gain unit EXP, levelling up to a max Level 120. You shouldn’t rush to try to level them up fully right away unless they have a passive locked behind it (which is rarely the case), just bring the units into as many quests as possible and they will level up naturally. The stats gained from level 90 to 120 are not impactful enough to affect most battles.

If you Dream Awaken a unit that already has a previous Dream Awakening, the current one will override the old one and will not refund the materials. Although the subsequent dream awakenings will only cost half the materials, it’s best to stick to one good general Dream Awakening to save resources.

Limit Breaking

As stated before, do use your LB Stones sparingly, when you need to use the unit.

LB Stones will be your main way to MLB any unit outside the standard unit pool. You should be able to MLB any unit from the standard banner without spending LB stones unless that unit is powerful and worth the LB stones (refer to the link on the UoC section on what units from the standard pool are strong).

There are a few methods of obtaining LB stones:

DA and SAWKs can Limit Break past 5, with DA units able to be limit broken up to 6 and SAWK units up to 7. Any limit break past MLB requires a duplicate unit or an XLB Stone. XLB Stones are extremely hard to come by, DO NOT use them unless you’ve consulted a veteran on what to use it on.

• The vast majority of SAWKs are better off at LB5 rather than LB6/7!
• LB6 and 7 are considered luxuries and are rarely required. Currently, 6★ equips are barely worth using and are easily replaced by existing 5★ ones.
• The alternative 3rd equip slot at LB7 can even be considered a downgrade or sidegrade for most units. Only certain units benefit from their alternate slot, and even then, should be upgraded only these units are used often.

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Tasmon Upgrades

Along your journey, you will collect Tasmons that can be found in your Units > Enhance. These Tasmons can be used to enhance your unit’s stats. As mentioned before, limit breaking raises the cap for Tasmon Upgrades, and it’s always good to invest in these extra stats.

To obtain more Tasmons, you can obtain them easily by completing the daily quest, as well as the “Spirit of the Exploring” Boot Camp, which requires keys in order to play instead of Energy. More on that in the Quest section later.

Luck Buffs

• The crest slot takes top priority and should be upgraded first before all other stats as it yields the most value for its luck points needed.
• The rest of the stats upgrades are dependent on the unit’s needs, but will be rarely touched on.
• Do not worry about using luck buffs on any gacha units anytime soon.
• Save your luck gems in the future when you know how to use them.

Crests

To equip crests on your units, you must complete a Crest Palace quest. Crest Palaces rotate daily and will always drop one crest after the quest is complete. After the quest rewards screen, the game will prompt whether you want to equip this crest on the team leader by selecting the crests you want to keep.

Crests are more for veterans & experienced players; they are minor stat improvements that do not affect any early game progress, so it’s ok to ignore them for now.

Flux Drop is an item used to reroll the stats of a crest. They cannot reroll exclusive stats from specific crest palaces or crossover exclusive crests.

• Save your flux drops on Lv4+ crests ONLY!
• They are rare to come by and shouldn’t be wasted on lower level crests.

Max Elixir

If you have a Max Elixir, you can skip the levelling, evolving and tasmon upgrade step altogether, and immediately max level, max tasmon (based on your unit’s LB level) and fully awoken/ascended. They can be found in the Items button in the Home page.

If you obtained one of these Max Elixirs and plan to use it, remember to MLB your unit first before using it as this will max their Tasmon upgrade cap.

These should generally only be used on units that require their SA, a unit that works fine on a TA spam or TA > NA loop shouldn’t require one. Using it on crossover units are not recommended since they require less resources to ascend, however if a crossover unit requires their SA to function, you may use it on them. Max Elixirs are rare to come by so please save them for emergencies.

Summoning

The first 11x summon (multi-summon or multi for short) will be guaranteed a 5★ unit, shown by a purple summon button instead of yellow. Any multis after that will not have any bonus rate-ups. Summoning with Paid Crystals (spending real-life money for Crystals) will always guarantee a 5★ unit. Crossover events have a “reset” in the middle of the event where this guaranteed multi will refresh.

The Pity System

• Each multi-summon will give you a Hero Gem or 1 pity.
• You require 30 pity to spark a unit from the banner you pulled in
• Hero Gems are not shared between all banners, only banners that are relevant to each other such as crossovers.
• Hero Gems also do not carry over to the same banner if it reruns
• Hero Gems will expire 7 days after the banner ends. You will be able to access the pity shop at the Town > Alchemist > Exchange or directly at the banner in the Summon tab.

Crossover Resets

Crossover events have a “reset” that will usually happen 1-2 weeks before the crossover event ends. It will be announced in advance before it happens on Twitter and on Discord news.

GOLDEN RULE: GUARANTEED ONLY OR ALL-IN!

REMEMBER THIS GOLDEN RULE AND DON’T GIVE IN TO TEMPTATION!

1. NEVER summon outside of the guaranteed multis UNLESS you are planning to hit pity for a unit. The reason is that your odds of getting a featured unit in a banner with the guarantee is way higher compared to without.

Non guaranteed multi feature unit summon rate: 0.2 - 0.7%

Guaranteed multi feature unit summon rate: 4 - 4.5%

2. As a new player, you shouldn’t be pitying at all. If you are asking on who to pity, then you shouldn’t be pitying, as it shows you lack the game knowledge to spend your crystals wisely. A very few units are actually worth 1500 crystals. Always consults the veterans on Discord on who to pity.
3. For crossovers, half-offs banners will appear after roughly a week of a crossover banner starting. This allows you to pull a guaranteed multi for only 25 paid crystals, up to 3 times. These pulls also give pity so it’s optimal to pull for them if you’re planning to pity have some money to spend
4. For crossovers, due to the aforementioned reset, be patient till then to pull another guaranteed multi before deciding whether to hit pity for a unit.
5. If you plan to pity a crossover unit, it’s best to only pull to pity when the event is about to end since you may get lucky with tickets and guarantees.

What Banners To Summon On

Standard banner gives a free summon every day, but that’s it. DO NOT summon on this with your crystals.

Deluxe Alch Summon features 15 units on equal rates and will always pair with any Majestic Advent Banners (banner featuring new main story quest units). It takes 5000 Alch to summon the first time, 7000 Alch on the second, and 10,000 Alch from the third onwards. It’s recommended to minimally summon once or twice as the rate of receiving a specific unit is a 1 in 15 chance or 6.67%.

What NOT To Summon On

All-Star Alch Summon can feature units from a crossover and take 500 Alch to summon once or 5000 Alch to summon a 5★ unit. It may seem to be a good deal especially since you get a RBG for doing a 5000 Alch Stones summon but DO NOT SUMMON on this banner as there are no increased rates on featured units, and there are 155 other units that are in the pool.

To put into perspective on how low the odds are, it’s a 1 out of 156 chance or 0.64% chance of pulling a featured unit.

The Great Awakening equip summon consists of TWs for the featured units in the Majestic Advent banner. However, you can purchase TWs for RBGs instead so you don’t need to waste your crystals on this banner. The banner also does not have any pity system so it’s even more of a reason to not pull on it (it gives 1 RBG instead).

Team Building

Before we tackle how to build a team, we must first understand what roles a unit contributes to the team. A unit can have multiple roles.

Unit Roles

• Arts Generators (artsgen for short)

• All artsgen units should be of different types (more will be explained later)
• A rough estimate is to roughly have a total of 8-10 arts/s teamwide across 2-3 artsgen units
• Artsgen units should fulfil multiple roles instead of solely artsgen

• DPS: PHY/MAG DMG Dealers

• DPS units should be able to buff themselves on top of receiving buffs from other units
• DPS Units with their own self artsgen will have more value as they can self-sustain Arts

• Defensive Supports: Shielders / Taunt Tanks / Healers / Cleansers

• Only necessary when needed; can’t get killed if you kill everything first
• Should be paired with good defensive equips to survive lethal Boss Arts

• Offensive Supports: Buffers / Debuffers

• Provide buffs with permanent up-time through their Arts supported by artsgen units
• Some of these units have big multipliers on their Arts too, making them pseudo DMG Dealers

• Breakers:

• Niche that is only required if the boss is REQUIRED to Break.
• Not a factor in a team otherwise.

Here’s the secret formula, an ideal team comp should look like this:

Artsgen | Artsgen | DPS | Flex

Your Flex unit here should be dependent on the difficulty of the Quest. If it’s an easy quest, you can bring an extra artsgen or DPS unit.

Arts Generation

• As mentioned before, some units have Skills or Arts that can auto-fill arts gauge for the whole team or for themselves. Those that provide teamwide artsgen are called Artsgen units, or artsgeners.

• They allow other units to consistently use their Arts for consistent damage and buff/debuff up-time.
• This is why for an ideal team, it’s recommended to have at least 2 artsgeners, and to hit at least 8-10 arts per second of constant artsgen.

 + two flex units

Juno (7 arts/s on TA) + Mako (4 arts/s on TA) = 11 arts/s 👍

• Each artsgener’s artsgen has an artsgen type. Units with the same artsgen type do not stack with each other. If there are two units with the same artsgen type, only the stronger artsgen will take effect. Units with different artsgen types will stack.

 + two flex units

War Hero Fen (Type A: 4 arts/s) Spy of Darkness Fen (Type A: 3 arts/s)

Both have Type A artsgen, therefore only War Hero Fen’s artsgen will take place (4 arts/s > 3 arts/s)

• There are special artsgen types that stack with all other types of artsgen as well, some even stacks with itself.

 + two flex units

Since both are Type EX2 artsgen, they will both stack with each other.

• Refer to the Appendix for the full Arts Gen Type Chart.

Equipment

• Equips are completely account-based and the best equips will vary for each account.
• Check your equip box, refer to the guides mentioned below and play around with what you have.
• If there is a BiS or extremely strong equip available to summon, ensure you have enough Crystals for future strong units before summoning.
• If unsure, consult the veterans in the Discord.

Equip Types

/ PHY/MAG Equips

• Artsgen on PHY/MAG equips are useful in enabling faster arts cycling.
• Offensive buffs / debuffs also work to aid DPS units during boss fights and are essential for nuking.

 DEF Equips

• It’s best to bring general DMG RES UP and another PHY/MAG DMG RES UP depending on the boss if you have more DEF equip slots.

 Support Equips

• Always bring equips that increases arts gauge; bring a mixture of instant arts and artsgen equips.
• Artsgen from equips stack with all types of artsgen except with artsgen from the same equip (unless specified).

 Heal Equips

• Can be brought for status ailment cleanse or emergency healing if your units lose too much HP.
• A revive can be useful on taunt tanks to help them sustain through a tough nuke.

 True Equips (TWs)

• Usually a unit’s Best in Slot equip, but can vary for each unit.
• Has a unique passive that activates when used by a specific unit
• Some can be redeemed through the ticket shop while others can be obtained through gacha or spending 30 RBGs.
• Crossover units may have their TW available for 15 or 20 RBGs during their crossover event. Prioritise them over non-crossover TWs as they are only available during the crossover period.

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Farmable equips

There are some farmable equips from various stages of the game that you can get 1-2 copies of. They are extremely viable and are only replaced once you obtain something better from gacha pulls. Remember that Side Stories only unlock after completing Chapter 5 of the main story. Equips highlighted in Yellow are important starting equipment, and should be farmed ASAP. Always farm on the hardest difficulty of the quest.

Giant Boss Drops

Side Story Drops:

* This equip is craftable in the Equip tab, the drop location shows the materials drops to craft the equip

Luck Unit Drops:

Let’s return to the example team shown earlier in the team building section and place some equips on them:

• Equipment buffs/debuffs also stack similarly to how they stack on unit arts/passives. Check all equipment buffs and if they stack here (under Equip Stacking tab) (note that it may not be updated in a while).
• Here is a document on all artsgen equips, including non-support equips.
• GS Perma Pool Equips To Sell: Refer to this doc for perma-pool equips.

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Auto Battle & AI

Automate your quest clearing when farming for materials or event currencies. The standard auto feature allows you to set all units to use their Skill, Arts and Equips on On, Boss Only or Off (Always use off cooldown, use on during boss fights, and Never). You can also set each unit’s Arts usage (NA/TA/SA).

Upgrade your autobattle experience with the AI function, allowing each unit to follow a specific set of instructions. You can set 20 actions with conditions to activate each action. Actions higher on the list take priority over those at the bottom. Every condition set has been met to execute the Action.

Auto AI Guide

It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED to understand how to use the AI system so you can make AIs yourself. Please read the AI Guide above.

Multiplayer

• Any quests that are red instead of blue can be done in multiplayer.

• Click Join Multi to enter a lobby
• To host a lobby, select the quest and select Multiplayer

• Multiplayer lobbies can host up to 4 players

• With 2 players, each player uses 2 of their units.
• With 3 players, non-host players use 1 unit while the host uses 2.
• With 4 players, each player uses 1 of their units.

• Only the host uses Energy.
• All players in the lobby receive different rewards drops, but Luck drops will be the same for everyone.

• Each player’s Luck can contribute to the Luck drop, as mentioned in the Luck section

• After the quest is cleared, you will return back to the Home screen (or empty lobby if you’re the host) unless you were added to the Farm Party (or invited your teammates in a Farm Party as host).
• As host, click on their username to invite them to Farm Party or to kick them if they are uncooperative.

• Before making a multiplayer lobby, ensure you have Chat turned on to communicate with your teammates on tougher quests.

What is the benefit of doing multiplayer?

1. You can farm events without using Energy by joining open lobbies
2. You get multiple luck drops if everyone’s Luck is high
3. There are rewards available for helping new players (rank 80 and below)
4. You can make friends for Mines

Crystals - The Daily Grind

Your estimated crystal yield moving forward should be roughly 200-300 per month. Here is a rough breakdown for Crystals:

* These are rough estimates that can change depending on the event ongoing

Other FAQs

How do I use the bot in the GS Discord server?

In #gs-bot-commands, you can type in commands for guides on tougher content. The suffix for the bot is “... [command]” (remember the spacing before the command).

… commands to see the full commands list

… gbguide is for Giant Boss quests

… cbguide is for Crest Palace quests

… urguide is for Ultra Relic quests

… ruinsguide is for Elemental Ruins

… srguide is for Summoners’ Road quests

Trial Unit AWK quest guides:

… gananguide … sophieguide … nierguide … gradguide

Ultra Trial Unit AWK quest guides:

… chloeguide … viragoguide … aesisguide

Dungeon of Trials guide: … f[floor number] (example: … f31, … f25, etc.)

Main Story Challenge quest guides:

… deliaguide - Chapter 10

… ch14guide - ch19guide - Chapter 14-19

… ch21guide - Chapter 21

… ch24guide - Chapter 24

… ch25guide - Chapter 25

..etc, etc

* If a guide isn’t mentioned for a challenge quest, it is probably easy enough to not have a guide made for it.

What is the next crossover/event coming out? When will a crossover /event/banner rerun? How long till this future crossover/event comes out?

Global’s server does not follow the timeline of the JP server totally, so what is coming out can be anyone’s guess. In short, we don’t know, we are not the devs.

Should I pull on the current banner?

New/reran units’ kit, as well as if you should pull on a banner, are all in #banner-and-event advice. Refer to it for every new banner.

The game is currently on maintenance. How long does it last?

It usually lasts for 5-6 hours, however, extensions and extra emergency maintenance are possible. Don’t panic and just wait for the game to announce its end.

I can’t beat a certain quest even with a guide. Can you form a team for me?

Yes, however, post your unit inventory (or box) so that we know what units you own. Use the filters shown below:

Appendix

Terminologies

Arts Gen Type Chart

Here is the full list of all artsgen units in the game:

Format: [Artsgen Skill] - [Artsgen Rate] ([Artsgen Duration in seconds])

Artsgen highlighted in Green is for all allies, Red for ownself, Orange for all allies except ownself, Yellow for one ally except self

Legend: S - Skill | Arts - NA | True Arts - TA | Super Arts - SA | Cross Arts - CA

Passive Arts Generation

These units provide artsgen through their passive or dream awakening. The artsgen stacks with every other artsgen excluding itself (Type EX2). Passive artsgen is always conditional (except Arth’s DA).

Burst Arts Generation

[Incomplete]These units gives all units a burst of arts upon their own arts activation.