Recruitment

It's more impactful to have +3 supports and +0 DPS than the other way around. You'll use the same supports for most encounters, but the DPS will change depending on the enemy element, quantity, placement, resistances, etc.

The worst strategy you can do is to draw purely for collection purposes, where you try to get 1 copy of every costume. This is going to put you in a weaker position than if you'd committed to going for multiple copies for a few strong costumes. Some costumes will perform well at +0, but there's a limit to it.

Most costumes have one upgrade level where the SP cost goes down by 1 with no other changes (either +1 or +3, depending on the age of the costume). You should try to reach this level if you can on any costume you plan to use long term, since it can make or break a strategy.

If you're lucky enough to get a banner for a costume that's worth taking to +5, the best strategy is to draw to +3 early on, then wait to +5 on the very last day. If you're lucky, you'll get a copy or two from free draws, and there's nothing more depressing than getting 300 golden threads instead of a costume. Instead of draws, you could use the draw point exchange if you haven't already or use the Selective Costume Enhancement to get +4, then pickup the +5 from the Powder of Hope shop (since +5 doesn't get you any tickets from the pickup event).

Leveling

Make sure you complete the hardest difficulty you can for the Slime Kingdom in Path of Adventure and spend your rice on hunt requests there when it's a bonus day for them.

Leveling increases your character's HP and ATK or Magic ATK, so your main damage dealing characters should be leveled first. Very early on, you won't have a lot of slimes for leveling up with so it's OK if your supports rely on combat EXP to level if they're not really doing any damage. When you've got a surplus later on, you'll max them out so they can take some hits for you.

If you're stuck and you think a character is going to help you right now, don't be afraid to level them. The amount of slimes it takes to get to level 40 is pretty small. If you're close, then you can add a few more levels. Otherwise you can try something else. Even if the character ends up not being useful later, those levels invested will still provide value to your account. You may want to keep a small stash of slimes just in case you need to level someone so you can clear a specific encounter.

The only thing that will seem scarce are the 2* and 4* rank-up items. For whatever reason, the story gives out a wealth of 1* and 3* rank-ups, but really skimps on the 2*. Every two weeks, there is a new event shop. This is the best place to buy rank-up stars if you need them. The only ones that have a limit are the 4* rank-ups: you can only buy 8, but you'll occasionally get them from the various passes. You can also buy them in the Evil Castle shop, but they're more expensive and lower priority than the ability rank-up books. By the time your account is 3 months old, you'll be pretty close to having all of your 5*s uncapped to level 100 and might even have a surplus of 4* rank-ups.

Gear

These recommendations are for PvE. If you're looking to be competitive in Mirror Wars (PvP), you'll need to focus on different gear and stats.

Prioritize DPS for gear, focusing on jewelry, weapons, and gloves. Most supports don't need gear to improve their ability, so just gear them defensively.

Each character has one piece of exclusive gear. The UR version is very nice to have, but by no means necessary. Newer players are going to get more value from their draw tickets if they spend them on costumes. If you get one from the daily free draws, congratulations! Otherwise, you'll be crafting your gear.

• Raise your crafting and alchemy until you can make R (blue) gear
• Craft a full set of R4 gear for the characters you use most often: staves & bracelets for characters with Magic ATK, swords and gloves for characters with ATK
• Upgrade the R4s to +9 and dismantle everything else
• Use the refining stones to reroll the mods if necessary: some combination of crit damage and either ATK or Magic ATK, depending on the character's damage attribute. If you haven't started unlocking potentials, taking crit damage in every possible location is ideal for R4.
• It's OK to refine a little bit to improve the letters, just don't go overboard

Continue crafting R4s if you need them for new characters, otherwise craft the cheapest N item until you reach legendary crafting and alchemy.

Because it's cheap to improve R4 gear, it's often considered to be better than SR or low quality UR gear, unless you get lucky on secondary mods after upgrading to +9. Generally speaking, gear is ranked as follows.

Note that not all exclusives are created equal. Weapons and gloves are universally good. Chest and helm are less good because you'll lose the exclusive bonus if you need the other type of armor. The worst are accessories because the ones that matter can't roll crit damage. They're basically only good if you need the crit chance for something like PvP or floors 41+ in Tower of Jealousy/Tower of Wrath.

• Eclipse
• Morpeah
• Celia

Potential Liberation (Potentials)

Make sure you complete the hardest difficulty you can for each element of the Crystal Caves in Path of Adventure and spend your torches on hunt requests every day.

This is a permanent choice, there's no undo and investing the crystals or tears into another character. Choose wisely!

Potentials are the most time-gated way to improve your characters. You get 250-290 crystals from your daily 60 torches on very hard. Tears of the Goddess are used to unlock the ability nodes and they're the most limited currency in the game. Only buy the one in the thread shop if you can afford the selective upgrade every month.

It's easy to be tempted to spend your crystals unlocking ability damage increases, but you'll get more value out of focusing on QoL improvements. Here's a general guideline:

• Range increases
• Buff or debuff enhancements for supports
• SP reduction
• Cooldown reduction (situational)
• Damage increases

Engraving & Awakening

The stat increases you get through this system are smaller than what you get from potentials. As a result, new players should skip this until they've got large stockpiles of money, since investing in improving gear and potentials is more cost effective. I do recommend stockpiling the resources from the event shop, guild shop, and Evil Castle shops until you're ready.

There are 3 attributes to level. The final stage of awakening costs 200 Awakening Elixirs and 500k gold.