If you haven't already, please check the Beginner's guide and Basic Information first. It contains some information that this guide assumes the player already knows.
Priority[]
Like it was mentioned in the Beginner's Guide Priority section, the first thing you should aim for is the unlocking of the world. By doing that most of the content will become available.
After that the main focus should be your units and your daily resource management. That means getting your units to the max level and giving them the proper gear and Esper, make the most of the energy (NRG) and colosseum orbs available each day and lastly, getting to know what is available to do in order to progress. Check the "latest info" page in game to stay on top of current events and Vortex openings.
Daily[]
The quests you should be doing every day, sharing the same access as the optional quests, using the “Quest Report” button at the top left, by switching the tab to the “Daily Quests” you're presented with 7 quests, 6 of those to be completed with gameplay and one that completes itself after completing the rest, in order the quests are:
- 1. Daily Quests: Complete all daily quests
The most common and reliable source of Lapis, rewarding with 50 a day.
- 2. Adventurer: Clear 3 story quests
Complete any level in the world except explorations and esper's fight, for efficiency purposes, after completing the current story line, you should do Earth Shrine – Entrance with units that you need their trust mastery.
- 3. Vortex Explorer: Clear 3 vortex quests
Complete any level inside the dimensional vortex like the Chamber of the Fallen, any level of any chamber inside the Vortex of Desires, or any event currently occurring inside the vortex. Recommended Chamber of Experience ADV to level units and Chamber of Awakening to get awakening materials.
- 4. Dungeon Crawler: Clear 2 exploration quests
Complete any exploration level or Esper fight. The 2* esper currently give the best rank exp per energy, and the exploration levels not only give a bit of rank exp, it also provides with a decent amount of gil, unit exp and materials.
- 5. Crafter: Craft 1 items of any type
Craft anything in either the forge, abilities or synthesize menu, if doing exploration levels for dungeon crawler you may craft Shuriken for 1 Copper Ore.
- 6. Challenger: Win 3 times in the Colosseum
Win 3 battles in the Colosseum in any rank, boss fights included.
- 7. Gifter: Send gifts to 5 friends
At the friend menu, use the send gifts option and send the items to 5 friends, note that the item next to their name is what you're sending to them not what you're receiving. Sending gifts to friends are free and don't use up your own resources.
Friends[]
Accessible in the main menu. There you can see your friend list, search and add friends, see friend request, send and receive gifts, share or facebook invite.
Every player has a unique ID with 9 numbers (example ID:123,456,789) that identifies that player, by giving that ID to other players they can add you and you'll become friends. Another method is using a player's unit in the story mode that isn't your friend and at the end you'll be prompted with a chance to add said player to your friend list.
Important Note: The unit that is available for your friends to use is the one under leader of the party you are currently using. To select a static leader, you need to go to menu (top right), option, scroll down and select companion party. That party leader will always be the one your friends will use.
- Friend List: Shows all of your current friends, can be sorted by last played, rank and date added. You can also choose a friend to favorite, that friend will appear at the top of the list and can't be removed from you friend list until you remove the favorite.
- Search Friends: Presents you with your player ID and you can search for other specific players with theirs.
- Add Friend: Shows you a list of players to send a friend request.
- Friend Requests: Shows the list of received and sent friend requests.
- Send Gifts: Divided in 2 categories, send and receive. In Receive you get the item you've chosen as the desired gift whenever a friend sends you a gift, this can be changed by clicking on the box next to the unit that is currently your leader (default gil) and in Send you send whatever desired gift your friend as set to them. It's recommended to set the gift to friend points.
Also, when using a companion during a mission, after completing the mission both you and the player of the companion you brought will receive friend points. This amount doubles if the player is in your friend list. If the player isn't on your friends list, you won't be able to use its limit break or its summon.
Vortex[]
There are 2 main vortexes in the game: Chamber of the Fallen and Vortex of Desires.
The Chamber of the Fallen, not available initially, pits you against the bosses you've defeated in the Farplane. Currently only the White Dragon and the Demon Chimera can be fought, with the second boss being one of the highest current source of rank exp per energy.
The Vortex of Desires, is home to 4 chambers. You can you choose daily between one of them resetting daily at 00:00 UTC-8. After unlocking your first free one you can also unlock the others for 24h at a cost of 100 Lapis.
- Chamber of Creation: Drops crafting materials, used to craft equipment, abilities and items, as long as you have the recipe. Not recommended since the rate between the amount of materials and the randomness of the ones you get per energy spent is low. It's better to head to the materials list, find the one you need and look for the monsters that drop it.
- Chamber of Awakening: Drops awakening materials used to increase the ranking of the units. As with the Chamber of Creation it's better to use the materials list, for the one you're looking for with the exception of Sacred Crystal and Holy Crystal, being found in the INT and ADV version respectively, boasting the best ratio of amount dropped per energy spent.
- Chamber of Experience: Gives unit experience upon completion. The amount varies depending on the difficulty and has a slight deviation. It's the best place to solely farm unit experience with the ADV version having the best exp/energy spent ratio, by bringing a friend that can solo it the advantage is increased even further. It's recommended to spend some time here if you have difficulties advancing in the story or with the colosseum since the easiest way to make your units stronger is by leveling them up.
- Chamber of Riches: Gives you gil. This is a straight waste of energy. You should never use this chamber since there are better ways to get gil and the ~2500 gil per 15 NRG for the ADV chamber further sustains this statement.
Exploration[]
Exploration is a special level available in certain maps. Just like in towns, you wander in the map and may get prompted with a random encounter. These maps provide a balanced amount of rank exp, unit exp, gil and materials per energy spent. They can have multiple segments and different exits, leading to the end of the map, new areas or new maps.
Every exploration contains a few collection points in which you can get different types of magicites, crysts and some crafting materials that reset every time you enter the map. One of the highlights of explorations are chests and Silver Chests that can be opened once, and in some cases items/NPCs needed to complete/unlock certain quests, those quests must be active for the item/NPC to appear.
The exploration maps can be divided into zones, each zone has a max number of encounters that can spawn and once exhausted they will cease to appear.
When reaching the boss a warning will appear that a boss will spawn; a warning also appears when reaching an exit. After defeating the boss the player can continue to explore the map or choose to immediately exit.
Espers[]
Espers are powerful beings that can be summoned once the esper bar, located to the right of the enemy health bar during combat, is full. When summoning a small cutscene will play and, depending on the summon, an effect will be made to the battle, that can range from damaging enemies to giving buffs to allies.
Currently there are 8 espers in the game, by order of earliest unlock: Siren, Ifrit, Golem, Shiva, Ramuh, Diabolos, Carbuncle, and Odin.
Ramuh and Shiva are best used with mages, Siren and Carbuncle for healers, Golem for tanks, and the remainder with physical attackers. Siren can also be used with supports thanks to the skills she provides.
An esper provides 1% of their total stats to the unit it's equipped with, making the spells/abilities you can acquire in their skill grid more efficient than the stats, with the spells having the added bonus of not requiring the appropriate magic level.
Most of the notable espers spells/abilities can be obtained in their 2
form that can be achieved by leveling an esper to their max level (30) and fighting their stronger form in the map where they were obtained:
- Siren: Siren's Tower - Bewitcher's Trial
- Ifrit: Inferno Hollow - Trial of the Fire Beast
- Golem: Zadehl Southersands – Trial of the Guardian
- Shiva: Lanzelt Mountains - Trial of the Ice Demon
- Ramuh: Thunder Summit - Trial of the Sage
- Diabolos: Wicked Peaks - Trial of the Demon
The most notable skills for each esper are, in no special order:
- Siren: Blind, Silence, Deshell and Dispel
- Ifrit: Raging Fist, Plant Killer and Beast Killer.
- Golem: Provoke, Last Stand, Bug Killer, Stone Killer and (debatable) Cover.
- Shiva: Sleep, Imperil and Magic Break.
- Ramuh: Blind, Imperil and Osmose.
- Diabolos: Blind, Sleep, Silence, Imperil, Osmose, Man-Eater, Beast Killer and (debatable) Reduce Encounter
Colosseum Arena[]
The colosseum is a game mode that pitches you against different enemies. The battles fought here start easy but get considerably harder than the ones found in the story mode and in some encounters a proper strategy is needed.
The Arena is where you fight against other users parties for various rewards. Notable is the rewards for victories and losses. Win three times or lose three times to obtain star quarts. You also recieve arena medals and points, which you exchange for various prizes such as tough pots, rare summon tickets, metal cactuars etc.
In the colosseum, you fight 10 battles per round and a final boss battle. After defeating the boss for the first time, a special reward is given and you advance to the next rank. A different normal reward is given for every subsequent victory. To fight in the colosseum, you'll need a orb. You can have up to 5 simultaneously and they recharge at a rate of 1 per hour from the moment you use one. Note that entering the colosseum is enough to start the recharge since it's used at the entry.
The 10 fights up to the boss are usually easy and can be done with the standard teams and in some cases with 5dps, depending only on your units. The bosses are more difficult than the preceding encounters but after learning their weaknesses and strengths they can be handled with the proper strategy. The most notable ones worthy of mention are Europa and Frost Dragon, found at the end of the S rank of BGN and INT respectively.
Note: Like with the companion party you can also set a colosseum party, that party will be the one chosen by default every time you enter.
"Note": with the arena now added, the orbs can be used either for the arena or colosseum.
Equipment[]
There are 3 main ways to get new equipment: buying, finding/opening chests or receiving as a reward. This is the second easiest method to strengthen a unit. Depending on the role of a unit different equipment should be given to it.
- Tank: Equipment that raises HP, DEF, SPR and elemental resistances. Since giving all of this to a unit is extremely hard, the player should focus mainly on HP and DEF. The accessories a tank uses depends on the encounter and should be changed accordingly.
- Physical attacker: Equipment that raises ATK. The accessories should also raise ATK but giving an accessory that nullifies blind, and optionally confuse, is also a good alternative.
- Mages: Equipment that raises MAG and MP. The accessories should also raise MAG or MP but giving an accessory that nullifies silence, is also a good alternative.
- Healers: Equipment that raises SPR, MP and HP. The accessories should also raise SPR or MP but giving an accessory that nullifies silence, and optionally confuse, is also a good alternative.
- Supports: Equipment that raises MP. The accessories depend on the type of support since most fill two roles. An alternative for a physical supporter would be blind immunity and for a magic supporter silence immunity.
Looking Ahead[]
By now you should have an understanding on how to spend your resources, how to use the main parts of the game and how to enhance your units, the only thing missing is to prepare for harder encounters.
After completing the current storyline there are a number of challenges awaiting the player, mostly the Colosseum and the Farplane. In order to be ready for those you should have an understanding of the different status effects in battle, elemental weaknesses and strengths, and how to take advantage of or counter them, the different spells and abilities available to the player and, more importantly, the ones that the enemy uses and, last and most important, how to combine everything mentioned above to be successful. After clearing these pre-requisites and with the proper planning, any content should be doable.