Introduction Seriously? Another
poker guide? Surely we already have enough that describe optimal play. Well yes, but no . As those guides will get you 95+% of the way there, my goal was mainly just for fun, but it also allows me to share a few extra simple rules to get even more out of the game. For those who just want to know the strategy and no details you can skip until the TLDR. Before I lose your attention here are the new questions that I tackle (note: natural pair means a pair formed without the use of a joker)
- When dealt a starting hand with both a natural pair and 4 of a particular suit, should you keep the pair (go for 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, etc.) or keep the 4 of a particular suit (go for a flush)?
- When dealt a starting hand with both a natural pair and 4 cards of a straight, should you keep the pair (go for 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, etc.) or keep the 4 cards (go for a straight)?
- How much extra value does the card counting strategy bring in the higher-lower game?
Have These Questions Really Not Been Answered Yet? While there are excellent guides on the overall strategy (see
YANFLY) , one that calculate the odds of winning poker hands (
u/PinoyEvan5), and one that calculates the expected returns of playing higher-lower (
u/BillsHere1), there is still no full game solution. The probability of winning poker hands only matters when we know the expected returns of playing higher-lower for various multipliers. That is for a complete solution we need to combine and expand on the previous guides.
How Do I Answer These Questions? I wrote code to simulate the games and then played them millions of times. For anyone interested, I wrote a
ten page document that explains the entire process and shows the code. If anybody wishes to implement it themselves I can send you the R Markdown file if you DM me.
Results Preliminaries Before we an answer any of the questions, the first thing that needs to be done is to solve the expected value of playing the higher-lower game. Following past guides, we will be playing the 2 card higher-lower for 1000 chips. The optimal strategy is as follows:
- If face up card is higher than 8, choose low
- If face up card is lower than 8 choose high
- If face up card is 8, choose either
Using this strategy, and implementing it in my higher-lower game, I ran 10 million simulations and got the following results for various multipliers (+/- gives the 95% confidence interval).
- x1 (2 pairs, 3 of a kind): 42832 +/- 114 [6.2% probability of positive winnings]
- x3 (Straight): 101322 +/- 231 [7.2% probability of positive winnings]
- x4 (Flush): 135350 +/- 309 [7.2% probability of positive winnings]
- x10 (Full House): 236347 +/- 458 [9.3% probability of positive winnings]
- x20 (4 of a kind): 320897 +/- 525 [12.5% probability of positive winnings]
- x25 (Straight Flush): 271965 +/- 372 [17.0% probability of positive winnings]
- x60 (5 of a kind): 440917 +/- 501 [23.0% probability of positive winnings]
- x250 (Royal Flush): 839932 +/- 612 [42.0% probability of positive winnings]
Question 1 Now that we know the expected returns of various multipliers we can figure out whether keep the pair or the 4 of a suit when dealt a starting hand with both. As there are many cases, I decided to again estimate these through running millions of simulations (see
the document for details). In the end (got lazy with errors, but with this many simulations and a difference that wide should not be a problem), I got the following expected values to the various strategies:
- Keeping the natural pair (go for 2 pair, 3 of a kind, etc.): 18971
- Keeping the 4 of a suit (go for flush): 28198
In these situations you should GO FOR THE FLUSH
Question 2 The analysis for the straight is quite similar but here we need to consider that inside straight draws on open ended draws have different odds. Fortunately, keeping the pair is better in both cases so it simplifies our overall strategy. The following shows the expected value for going for a straight when you have 4 in a row (i.e. an open ended draw), which has a higher expected return than an inside draw
- Keeping the natural pair (go for 2 pair, 3 of a kind, etc.): 18971
- Keeping the open ended straight draw (go for straight): 18998
The difference here is not statistically significant and quite negligible. While one should be indifferent between the two from an expected return perspective, from a human perspective it is easier to remember that you go for the pair in all such situations.
In these situations you should KEEP THE PAIR.
Question 3 Question 3 is particularly interesting. A key part about playing the higher-lower game is that cards will not show up twice - this means card counting is a viable strategy. As has been pointed out in many guides, a simple card counting strategy is as follows:
- Start running tally at 0. If card is below 8, add -1. If card is above 8, add +1.
- If face up card is anything except 8, use the old strategy.
- If face up card is an 8, choose high if tally is negative, choose low if tally is positive.
The question is how much of a gain is this card counting? If the gain is small, then the player probably cannot justify using it if it adds extra time to playing. However, if the gains are large then it might be justifiable even if it slows down your ability to play. To test this I ran 10 million simulations using this card counting strategy for the x1 multiplier situation and go the following outcome:
- x1 (No Card Counting): 42832 +/- 114
- x1 (With Card Counting): 43385 +/- 115
The results are it adds about 1.3% to your expected return. Personally, I think using it adds well more than 1.3% to my playing time so for me personally counting cards is not a viable strategy. For extra analysis, I looked into a full solution card counting strategy (one that allows for cases when picking lower is better for a 7, picking higher is better for a 9, etc.), but these cases are so rare it adds essentially nothing (0.1% gain which is non significant).
Acknowledgements Thanks to
u/Aerdra for the crucial feedback and correcting an error in my code. This has now been corrected in both the post and document.
TLDR - Summary Provides a summary of the optimal strategy for playing poker. Contributions added in this post are in bold, while all the rest was previously known in previous guides.
Poker Phase: General Strategy
- Keep all cards that are part of a winning hand. You should replace any cards in that hand that do not contribute to winning
- If dealt a natural pair, keep the pair and replace the other 3 cards
- If dealt 4 of a suit (including if one is a joker), keep all 4 and go for a flush
- If dealt 4 cards of a straight (including if one is a joker), keep all 4 and go for a straight
- Otherwise replace all cards (except for a joker in which case you should keep it) [You may also want to consider keeping hands with 3 cards of a flush or a straight as pointed out by u/Aerdra but as u/Storm1k points out playing fast is best - the payoffs are so low it is probably more optimal to save time with fewer button presses]
Poker Phase: Tiebreaks
- If dealt a hand with a natural pair and 4 cards of a suit, go for a flush
- If dealt a hand with a natural pair and 4 cards of a straight, keep the pair and replace the other 3 cards
Higher-Lower Phase
In higher and lower you should play until the game ends either by losing, completing round 10, or passing the cap limit by using the following strategy:
- If face up card is above 8, play low
- If face up card is below 8, play high
- If face up card is 8, play either [might be easier to press "low" as pointed out by u/hkidnc]
Additionally, a +/- 1 card counting strategy can be used for additional gains
of 1.3%. [A benefit which for most players is too small to justify the effort of card counting]
Happy Halloween! And grinding!
submitted by Welcome to part 2 of my guide for very-new players! If you missed part 1, it's here:
PSA: Very-New Players Guide, Part 1: Stories, Events, and Weapons (pre-Omega/Magna) Now that we've had more than a week of roulette, you probably have a lot of characters, weapons, and summons, and you might not be sure what to do with them or which ones to use. In this part 2, I'll be talking about all of this -- but first, I need to explain something about elements, particularly Light and Dark.
(Edit: I added section 2g: Do you have any advice for party-building?)
Section 1: Elements Intuitively, you would think your characters will always deal more damage to one element and receive more damage from one element. However, this is not quite true:
- Fire is superior to Wind
- Water is superior to Fire
- Earth is superior to Water
- Wind is superior to Earth
- Light is superior to Dark when your character is Light
- Dark is superior to Light when your character is Dark
Counter-intuitively, your Light characters will take
reduced damage from Dark enemies and your Dark characters will take
reduced damage from Light enemies! This also means Light and Dark characters are not weak to
any element.
The superior element has +50% elemental ATK against the weak element and the weak element has -25% elemental ATK against the superior element. Elemental superiority and weakness also affects the success rate of debuffs like ATK Down or Blind. (Surprisingly, the worst debuff success rate is against the same element!)
Section 2: Characters 2a: Quick tip: changing party icons Before you start making parties, here's a quick tip: you can change the party icons that show up when you select Switch Parties. E.g. you can make each one a different element icon to help you organize your parties. The Change Party Icon button is just below your party's characters.
2b: What should be my first parties/teams? Simple answer: Make 6 parties, one for each element. If you don't have enough characters for an element, fill-in the gaps with your favourite or strongest characters from other elements.
Focusing on one element/party vs using all six: To be honest, I don't know how difficult the early game is with a single element party, especially an element that isn't Light or Dark and is weak to another element. If you want to play only one party with your favourite characters (hopefully of the same element...), you should be able to make it work at least for a while, since the early story content is very easy. But as you progress, I think the benefits of being the superior element will make fights a lot easier.
Many players will eventually choose to focus on one element. However, there is no need to do so before you reach the point where you are farming Omega (Magna) raids to build an Omega (Magna) weapons grid.
When you reach this point, you'll end up using weapons with skills to upgrade the skill levels of specific grid weapons. Since your supply of these "skill fodder" weapons will be limited at that point, focusing on only one element's weapons can help you progress faster. Similarly, you'll receive Renown Pendants for defeating raid bosses, and these can be traded for specific weapons in lieu of waiting for them to drop randomly from an Omega raid boss. Focusing on one element means you can spend all of your pendants on the weapon(s for that element's grid.
That said, having a party for every element can make fighting and farming (particularly MVP-ing) the Omega raid bosses much easier. They dish out a lot of damage for that point in the game, so you will definitely want to take advantage of superior element damage reduction.
2c: Which characters are the best? There is a
tier list you can check to get an idea of which of your characters are the strongest. Some notes about this tier list:
- Most SSRs are much stronger than most SRs, and most SRs are much stronger than most Rs, but there are some outliers. They're easier to see if you view only one rarity's tier list.
- Characters are ranked relative to their own element. Two characters of different elements in the same rank may have very different power levels.
- Some of the SSRs rated 9.5 or 10 only reach their full potential later in the game with specific weapons and/or party members. For example, Summer Zooey)'s Conjunction reducing all allies' HP to 1 will probably not be useful without enmity weapons or characters. (Enmity means ATK is greatly boosted at low HP.)
- Generally, a character's usefulness won't reflect their tier placement until they unlock their extra skill or reach a certain level, especially characters with a 5th star.
- In my opinion, early on, characters rated 7.0 and above will feel useful, while characters rated 6.5 and below will feel lackluster.
If you are short on (useful) characters for an element, remember that there are a lot of characters you can get for free from the side stories, including 4 SSRs (so far)! I listed the more useful ones at the end of my
previous guide.
2d: Are R or SR characters useful? Yes! ... Sometimes.
When you don't have 5 SSR characters in an element, you'll always want SR and R characters of the correct element to fill out your party. But there are some situations, especially when you have a small number of SSRs, where an SR character fills a role you need for a difficult fight, such as healing, debuffing,
Katalina's Veil (Dispel Mount skill), etc.
As for R characters, some notable ones include:
In addition, there are a number of reasons to use R and SR characters even when they don't serve any special purpose in battle:
- When you defeat raid bosses, you receive bonus Renown Pendants for having R and SR characters in your front line. (Back line and defeated characters don't count.) It's recommended to use a team of 2x SR and 1x R characters to farm Renown Pendants. These R and SR bonus pendants ignore the weekly limit on pendants you can receive, though they have their own separate weekly limits.
- Some quests have restrictions like "R only", "SR only", "Draph only", etc.
- Proving Grounds events require you to use more than one party of characters, and you cannot use the same character on two different parties.
- Some pairs of characters can unlock Cross-Fate Episodes once both characters have unlocked and received their extra skills (at level 25 / 35 / 45 for R / SR / SSR characters). Completing these episodes gives both characters new skills or ATK/HP buffs.
- Every character you get unlocks a new Fate Episode, which you can play or skip for 50 crystals each. You can always re-watch Fate Episodes later in your Journal.
Lastly, you may opt to use SR or R characters to add more variety to the game or to make repetitive fights more challenging.
2e: My favourite character isn't among my 5 strongest characters for their element. Can I still use them? Yes! Early game, it doesn't really matter. Eventually, it will make some fights more difficult, but nothing you can't overcome one way or another.
As for late game viability, you may be interested in the replies to this topic:
To anyone who has favorite characters that aren't viable in endgame, what do you do? 2f: Does the order of the characters in my party matter? Yes! Whenever a character does a Charge Attack (CA), all other characters that haven't done a CA yet on that turn will gain 10% to their charge bar. For example, if your main character (MC) has 100% charge bar, your 2nd character has 90%, your 3rd character 80%, and your 4th character 70%, then all 4 characters will use their CAs in that turn. MC's CA will raise everyone else's charge bars by 10%, and so on.
Therefore, you'll usually put characters that can gain more charge bar, such has having Double Attack / Triple Attack up (DA/TA up) or skills that boost their charge bar, into the 2nd and 3rd positions. Meanwhile, characters that consume charge bar for skills will usually be in the 4th position.
2g: Do you have any advice for party-building? Lots! But I'll just give some simple advice here. You can further optimize your party as you play and learn more about combat. You can also ask for more detailed help in the latest Q&A thread.
First, consider your characters' and your class's buff and debuff skills. If two skills apply the same buff/debuff, and neither one says "Stackable", then they might not stack. Look up
Status Effects and
Attack Rate Boosts on the Wiki to see if your skills will stack, or test them in a
Trial Battle.
ATK Down / DEF Down: Look at your ATK Down and DEF Down debuffs. These debuffs cap at 50% each on an enemy. One common goal of party building is to reach this cap.
Start with
Dark Fencer's Miserable Mist skill, which inflicts 25% ATK Down and 25% DEF Down and stacks with
most other debuff skills. You will almost always have this class skill -- in fact, you will almost always be using Dark Fencer for difficult fights.
Now try to build a party that can provide the remaining 25% for both ATK Down and DEF Down. If you can't achieve this with your characters alone, then you can use
Sidewinder's Rain of Arrows III (25% ATK Down) or
Warrior's Defense Breach (20% DEF Down) as your subskill.
Multiattack Rate Up: Another common goal is to pick characters with
Attack Rate Boosts, aka "DATA Up" (Double Attack / Triple Attack rate up). E.g. if you get the side story characters
Aqours Second-Years and
Sig (Event)), even though their DA Up skills won't stack, you can alternate between them to have a DA Up buff on your party at all times.
Build around a boss/fight: Lastly, when you encounter a very difficult fight, you should build a party around it. E.g.
Sorcerer's Blind skill reduces an enemy's accuracy by about 50%. Attacks that hit your whole party are not affected by Blind, which is one reason why Rain of Arrows III is used more often. But for some fights, Blind can cut the damage you take by half!
(By the way,
after Dark Fencer, I strongly recommend unlocking both Sorcerer and Sidewinder for these subskills. Moreover, Sorcerer is a
pre-requisite for
Bishop, which has the Dispel skill you'll eventually need to fight
Luminiera Omega#Omega%20Showdown).)
Section 3: Weapons 3a: What do I do with all my weapons? There is a fantastic comment by
u/kscw that summarizes what you'll end up doing with each weapon (and summon) as you progress in the game. Everyone should
check it out. In addition to all of the useful info, it mentions some very important things you should
not do.
To supplement that comment, I'll just note some things specifically for very new players and talk about which weapons you'll find useful when you start.
- Initially, I suggest you use N and unskilled R weapons to upgrade the weapons in your grids. When you upgrade a weapon using other weapons of the same type (Sabre, Dagger, etc.), you get a 50% EXP bonus. When you reserve these weapons' EXP, you can no longer take advantage of this bonus. Weapon element doesn't matter.
- Stop doing this once you find you're getting too many from weapon drops, or once you have an abundance of these weapons and no longer need to squeeze every last EXP out of them.
- When you reach that point, go into the Miscellaneous settings menu and set up Auto-Reserve, Auto-Sell, and/or Auto-Upgrade to save yourself a lot of time and hassle.
- Note that you need to set these up separately for event draw boxes.
- Reserved EXP can't be used at all until you fill a Chalice with 30,000 EXP. The Chalice becomes a treasure you can use to upgrade a weapon with 30,000 EXP.
- N weapons are particularly useful to upgrade your crew's airship: they provide 2 tp compared to 3 tp for R weapons. In contrast, the rupies and EXP you gain from an N weapon (5 and 11) are tiny compared to an R weapon (50 and 72).
- Do not reduce all of your Premium Draw SRs right away: you'll want to use some in your grid at first.
- It is safe to uncap useful Premium Draw SRs with duplicates so that you can level them up higher. Their ultimate destiny is to be reduced, and reducing an uncapped weapon gives you (almost) the same amount of materials as reducing the original weapons. On the other hand, skill fodder used to raise the weapon's skill level will be lost when you reduce the weapon.
- Do not uncap Premium Draw SSRs! Do not uncap them with duplicates. Do not uncap them with (very rare) Damascus Bars. And especially do not uncap them with Gold Bricks! In time, you will learn what to do with these weapons and which ones are actually worth uncapping with your precious few Damascus Bars.
- Sometimes you'll need a particular type of weapon for a class, so it's good to keep at least one SSSR of each type for each element -- even if the weapon skill doesn't boost ATK.
- Don't worry about Bonuses (the +1 marks). At any time, you can use Reset + Marks to remove them from any weapon and move them to a more useful one, such as a weapon used in most or all of your grids. As kscw's comment mentioned, just make sure you don't sell a weapon with a Bonus.
3b: How do I distinguish between Premium Draw weapons and farmable weapons? Farmable weapons have much lower stats than Premium Draw weapons. If you sort by PWR (Lowest), most or all of your farmable weapons will appear before the rest.
If you sort by Skill Level or click on the button in the top-left to show weapon skills, you will see some with an Omega (Ω) or an EX in the corner of the skill icon. These weapons are always farmable.
Some farmable weapons have Normal weapon skills, not Omega or EX. The only way to distinguish these from Premium Draw weapons is to click Reduce to see how much it will reduce for. Farmable SRs reduce for 1 weapon stone, while Premium Draw SRs reduce for 15.
Weapons purchased in the Casino, while technically farmable, are actually considered Premium Draw weapons: they have Premium Draw stats and they reduce for 15 weapon stones.
3c: I have a lot of skilled R weapons and no farmed SR weapons to upgrade. What should I do with them? I recommend spending 500 crystals in the
Shop to buy a Weapon Stash (you'll end up buying at least one eventually) and storing them in there.
Alternatively, you can use these R weapons to upgrade SSR weapons in your grid to weapon skill level 2 (SL2),
but only if the weapon skill boosts ATK. Make sure you use exactly 8 skilled R weapons to do this to guarantee a 100% skill-up success rate. Beyond SL2, you get diminishing returns: you'd need an additional 16 R weapons to reach SL3, and if you
check the weapon skills table, you'll see that upgrading a weapon from SL1 to SL2 provides the same benefit as going from SL2 to SL3, despite the latter costing twice as much.
If you're going to do this, I suggest you start by upgrading the skill levels of side story weapons that you get at lv100, particularly any with an EX weapon skill. These lv100 side story weapons will remain in your grid longer than your Premium Draw SSRs or SRs. Event SSRs are also usually(?) worth upgrading to SL2, sometimes higher. (Some weapons with EX skills will even be used in your first Omega (Magna) grid!)
You can always upgrade farmable (side story, event, etc.) SSR weapons to SL2 without wasting skill fodder. If these SSR weapons end up as fodder, they'll need to be upgraded to SL2 anyway, and sometimes even higher.
Obsolete Premium Draw SSRs, on the other hand, may ultimately be reduced, in which case the R weapons spent upgrading their skill levels will be "wasted" -- but not really, since the increase in damage output probably helped you farm the Omega weapons and fodder that you used to eventually replace them. Moreover, this isn't a lot of skill fodder compared to what you need to raise a single SSR weapon
all the way to SL10 and beyond, so don't worry too much about spending some right now.
3d: Which weapons are useful for my grid? To keep it simple:
- Use weapons that you receive at max level, either from max level weapon tickets or from the main story or side stories.
- Use weapons that have a "Medium/Big boost to ATK" weapon skill.
- Swords and Daggers are more useful than the other weapon types because Dark Fencer is proficient in them, so they provide 20% more HP and ATK for that class, even when they're not your mainhand.
Feel free to upgrade all of these weapons' levels to improve their stats: you'll soon find yourself with an abundance of Angel weapons ("EXP BOOST") used to upgrade weapon levels.
Auto-Select for ATK will build you a decent first grid, but it doesn't take weapon skills into account (see ATK vs Estimated DMG below). As you level up Premium Draw SSSR weapons with "Medium/Big boost to ATK", you may need to manually put them into your grid, especially if you already have a lot of max level SSR weapons from the main story and side stories. You can tell you did the right thing if you see the Estimated DMG increase, even if the ATK stat decreases.
Despite its flaws, Auto-Select is useful early on because it's fast, easy, and it may include lv100 weapons you obtained recently and forgot to add manually.
The game's
Damage Formula is complicated -- and the
Detailed Damage Formula even moreso! It is so complicated that I rely on an external website,
motocal, to tell me which weapons to put in my grid. Weapon grid building is a topic for an entire guide in itself. For now, using Auto-Select and then manually replacing off-element weapons will suffice, using the game's Estimated DMG to tell you whether or not your replacement improved your damage.
By the way, use an SSR weapon as your mainhand whenever possible: it provides a 3-turn cut to the cooldown of summons that match its element, whereas an SR weapon provides only a 2-turn cut. In addition, SSR weapons also deal more damage with their Charge Attacks.
3e: What are HP / ATK / PWR? How are they different from Estimated DMG? - HP: sum of HP of your equipped weapons and summons. Weapons matching your class's preferred types, e.g. Sword (Sabre) and Dagger for Dark Fencer, get a 20% boost to HP.
- ATK: sum of ATK of your equipped weapons and summons. Weapons matching your class's preferred types also get a 20% boost to ATK.
- PWR: sum of HP and ATK. This is what PWR means when you're browsing your weapons, and the PWR you see on your Home page.
- Estimated DMG: your ATK multiplied by weapon skill bonuses, main summon aura, support summon aura (if you set one in the Estimated DMG settings), and other effects. When you're trying to improve your grid, always look at this instead of ATK.
As mentioned earlier, when you Auto-Select for HP or ATK, it optimizes for the HP or ATK stats. It never optimizes for Estimated DMG, so it ignores weapons with "Medium/Big boost to ATK" when they have lower ATK stats, even if they'll give you higher damage.
Section 4: Summons 4a: What do I do with all my summons? Again, please read the
fantastic comment by
u/kscw that summarizes what you'll end up doing with each weapon and summon as you progress in the game. I'll supplement it with some very-new player notes and talk about useful summons.
- Initially, I suggest you use N and R summons to upgrade the summons in your grids. When you upgrade a summon using another summon of the same element, you get a 50% EXP bonus. When you reserve these summons' EXP, you can no longer take advantage of this bonus.
- Since summon drops are much rarer than weapon drops, it will be a while before you actually need to Auto-Reserve their EXP. (I'm rank 90 now and I still haven't turned this on!) Events are a bountiful source of Angel and Archangel summons that you can use to quickly upgrade your summons. Note that since Angel/Archangel summons are Light element, they'll provide 50% more EXP to Light summons.
- In addition to all Carbuncles, I suggest you save the following SR summons:
- 4 copies of Clay Golem from Premium Draw - At 3-stars, its summon call will heal all allies for 400 HP for 3 turns (1200 total). Allies with full HP receive a 10% charge boost instead, so its call is always useful.
- I recommend spending your Moonlight Stones from the Casino (Poker guide here) to fully uncap Carbuncles first, but if you get 3 copies of Clay Golem from roulette and need just 1 Moonlight Stone to fully uncap it, it might be worth it: the call isn't as good as a Carbuncle's DMG cut, but you can use it in every grid for every element.
- 4 copies of SR Celeste from the Hard Celeste raid - Its summon call is a 20% Light DMG cut for 3 turns. This is almost as good as a 0-star Light SR Carbuncle, but with the benefit that you can call Celeste 2 turns earlier (if your mainhand is an SSR Dark weapon).
- I do not recommend saving or upgrading SR Luminiera from the Hard Adversa raid because it is obsoleted by the Hekatonkheir side story summon: a 30% Dark DMG cut for 3 turns.
- The other 4 elements' SR summons do not provide DMG cuts.
- You probably won't come across White Rabbit, Black Rabbit, or Belle Sylphid anytime soon, but if you're lucky enough to get one, keep it and set it as one of your Misc support summons!
By the way,
don't forget to upgrade your summons as well as your weapons. Otherwise, you'll find yourself dying to single hits from the Omega raid bosses, among other things.
4b: Which main summon should I use? Whichever summon's (main) aura provides the biggest boost to ATK for your party's element. Check the side story summons, which usually provide a 50% boost to ATK or a 25% boost to both ATK and HP.
I also strongly recommend
Anat from the Casino (
Poker guide here): like Casino weapons, Anat has the stats of a Premium Draw summon, except you can easily farm 4 copies to uncap her to 3-stars and take full advantage of her high stats. Not to mention her 80% boost to Wind elemental ATK.
4c: Which other 4 (sub) summons should I use? Sub summons are the other 4 summons in your grid. Unlike your main summon:
- The sub summon's (main) aura has no effect.
- The only benefit to a sub summon being the same element as your mainhand weapon is that you can call the summon 1-3 turns earlier, depending on the weapon's rarity. (Your main summon also benefits from this.) Generally, it is better to pick useful sub summons than to pick ones that match your element.
- A small number of summons have both a main aura and a sub aura. The sub aura is active only when it's a sub summon.
When picking sub summons, I suggest:
- Summons with a useful call. E.g. the summon you get from WMTSB II (spoiler warning: don't look it up) has a great call that heals for 1000 HP and provides 15% ATK Up for 3 turns. Currently, I use this summon in ALL of my grids. (And thus it has all of my +1 Bonuses on it.) I strongly recommend it.
- In general, I suggest choosing calls that buff your party rather than debuffing the enemy, since the debuffs can miss -- especially if the summon isn't the superior element to the enemies you're fighting.
- An exception would be a powerful debuff like Satan, who can inflict Blind with the same rank as the Sorcerer's Blind skill (afflicted enemies have a ~50% chance to miss, in my experience).
- As I mentioned earlier, Clay Golem has a very useful call for new players. At 3-stars, it heals all allies for 400 HP for 3 turns (1200 total), while at 0- to 2-stars, it heals for 250 HP for 3 turns (750 total). If a character has full HP already, they receive a 10% Charge Boost instead.
- Premium Draw SSR summons. Like Premium Draw weapons, these summons tend to have much higher stats than farmable summons of the same level. Upgrade them to lv40 for high HP and ATK stats!
- 3-star side story summons. They have lower stats but since they come fully uncapped from side stories, they'll eventually surpass your lv40 Premium Draw summons' stats -- but upgrade the Premium Draw ones, first, since they provide a higher return for EXP invested.
- Event summons, if you can farm enough copies to uncap them to 3-stars, for the same reason as the 3-star side story summons.
- Anat, the queen of early game summons, who is all of the above. A farmable summon (easy to 3-star uncap) with high Premium Draw stats and a call that gives 20% ATK Up for 4 turns. She is used in most of my grids in all elements and I strongly recommend getting all 4 copies of her and leveling her up.
- Summons with a sub aura, if you have any for that element.
4d: Is it safe to use duplicates to uncap my SSSR summons? It depends.
For SSR summons, the safest choice is to ask in the latest Q&A thread. There are some SSR summons where having multiple copies that you can call is extremely valuable. E.g.
Shiva) and other summons that have a one-time-only call.
In general, like with SSR weapons, remember to ask in the latest Q&A thread first before consuming any SSR summons for anything. (And
definitely ask before you spend a
very rare Sunlight Stone to uncap an SSR summon!)
You can always uncap SR summons with duplicates, with one exception:
keep 2 or 3 copies of each SR Carbuncle: do not use them to uncap unless you have more copies. Having 2 (or 3) Carbuncles in your grid allows you to have a 25% or 50% DMG cut active for 6/8 turns (or for
all turns) of a fight after turn 8. This can be incredibly useful for some fights!
Instead of using duplicates to uncap Carbuncles, use
Moonlight Stones from the Casino (
Poker guide here, again!).
The Wind
Peridot Carbuncle is an exception. You cannot obtain them from Premium Draws. You can get 4 very early on, and you can buy additional copies from the
Shop for 10 Bronze Moons each. Since a Moonlight Stone costs 30 Bronze Moons, I recommend uncapping your Peridot Carbuncles with copies from the shop instead, or use a combination of the two if you run out of Bronze Moons.
4e: What is a support (friend) summon and which ones should I pick? A support summon, aka friend summon, is what you pick before any quest or raid. The support summon does 2 things:
- Its main aura affects your party, just like your main summon's main aura.
- You can call it. Support summons can always be called on turn 1.
The uncap level (number of stars) of the support summon is important when it is 3 or above. A support summon with orange text is a 3-star summon, and one with purple text is a 4-star summon. These have better auras and/or calls.
The support summon does
not contribute to your raw HP or ATK stats. Picking a level 100 Shiva vs a level 1 Shiva for support isn't going to affect your stats. The only thing affected by the summon's
actual level is the damage dealt by its call.
At this point in the game, you will be looking for one of the following support summons:
- If you're doing quests that aren't terribly difficult, or if you're farming, you'll probably want to boost EXP gained and/or item drop rate. Look for these in the Misc slot. Cait Sith is the best for boosting EXP gain, but you'll seldom see him. Kaguya is the best for boosting item drop rate and she also provides useful combat benefits. White Rabbit and Black Rabbit boost both significantly.
- Sometimes you'll want to fight a Rare Monster during the main story or a free quest on the world map. These can drop skilled R weapons, some of which you'll need later. Some of them drop useful summons, like Belle Sylphid who drops herself. In this case, look for Belle Sylphid in the Misc slot.
- If you're running a multi-element party and have 3 or 4 different elements in your front line, look for Grand Order in the Misc slot for a 100% or 200% boost to ATK for your party.
- In all other cases, pick the summon with the biggest boost to your element's ATK (or all elemental ATK). For example, pick either Shiva) or Sylph, Flutterspirit of Purity for Fire. (Do not confuse this Premium Draw summon with the useless side story summon, Sylph!)
- In this example, Shiva is superior because his call is also extremely powerful: the next damage each character deals -- be it a skill, normal attack, or Charge Attack -- will have its damage doubled! If you happened to draw Shiva the summon, put him in every element's grid!
Avoid picking the following right now, if possible, because your weapons' skill levels are probably not high enough to make use of them:
- Omega summons, such as Tiamat Omega. They say they boost some person's skills, like "Aeolus's Skills". If you look at an Omega weapon, such as Tiamat Bolt Omega, its weapon skill name will be something like "Aeolus's Might". This is the game's way of trying to tell you Omega summons boost Omega weapons' skills for the same element. I don't know who or what Aeolus is.
- "Primal summons", such as Zephyrus or Varuna. They say they boost a lot of things' skills, like "Wind's skills". Again, these names match the corresponding weapon skills' names on your weapons.
Even a mere 50% boost to your element's ATK is probably more beneficial than a 120% boost to weapon skills at this point in the game.
4f: I can't find a good support summon. How do I get different ones? Join any quest or raid that uses a support summon, e.g. enter a
Trial Battle. If you have friends with support summons you don't need, pick one of theirs when you enter the battle so that friend's summons stop appearing for a while (2 hours?).
On a side note,
Trial Battles are fantastic for testing things in this game. Test Machine Alpha doesn't attack and heals every turn, so you have infinite turns to test anything you want! You also have infinite "Trial Elixirs" to heal or use Charge Attacks. One notable use is to figure out
which buffs and debuffs stack with each other (
it's complicated: a lot of effects replace each other or do nothing) and to get an idea of just how strong your characters' buffs and debuffs are if the info isn't in the Wiki.
4g: I don't have any useful summons. Should I just avoid setting any support summons in my profile? No: please set your support summons anyway! If you don't, the game will take the main summon of whichever party you last used, and it will make that your support summon for every element and Misc. Your name and your main summon will still show up in your friends' lists and in other random players' lists.
submitted by I'm back! If you don't know me I'm a 120 Dark player that started English patch, with a completed Dark grid. I browse the daily question thread a lot and see a lot of repeated questions so I hope to answer some of them here! (Whale builds won't be included)
I have stopped playing Granblue since December of 2016 and this guide will not be updated in the future. For a more updated content consult: laforet's guide Characters - I have ... Who should I ticket?
Keep in mind in Granblue, characters aren't everything. Most (at least 70%) of your power comes from hard work and farming up your weapon pool. Event SRs can carry you all the way to HL! Keep on the grind and don't give up! For those wondering about SR's (Please don't actually ticket an SR)
Here's xiei's SR Tier List The answer to this question depends on the person, but there are general characters for each team. For dark, characters are categorized by role and race. Roles are mostly either attacker or utility. Race is for bahamut weapon synergy; for dark, it is usually doraf, erun/human, or both (See Bahamut Weapon Section). For a general team composition you will need at least 1 attacker and 1 utility (for def down). When ticketing, try to focus on race synergy.
Good Attackers to ticket include (sorted by race, they're all relatively good):
- Dark Jeanne (Human/Burst attacker, also provides a DEF down, great early/mid/late)
- Vira (Human/Has 5* and provides a veil, great late/endgame)
- Beatrix (Human/Weak earlygame, strong endgame)
- Narumaya (Doraf/OD Assassin, strong for early-midgame, worse late/endgame for racing)
- Forte (Doraf/Strong scaling attacker, great mid/lategame)
- Veight (Unknown/Newest dark character, strong ramper if not hit, a weaker six, needs Vampy)
Good Utility to ticket:
- Vampy (Unknown/Best Utility: Slow, Ougi gain, Dispell, Charm, great all game long)
- Vira (Human/Strong at Lv. 90+, see above)
- Yoda (Harvin/Water character that will boost your early progression by ALOT, useless except for farming)
- Korwa (Erun/ONLY FOR 101+ LATE GAME TEAMS, SHE IS WIND)
Other Characters (Ticket them if in start dash):
- Seox/Six (Erun/Guild Wars Character and the strongest dark attacker. Can't ticket)
- Black Knight (Human/Utility character with slow, dispell, and fear. Only available during legfest, great mid/lategame, lacks a bit of damage)
- Swimsuit Zoey (Unknown/Great character able to enable enmity (see fist build) with a skill that sets your team's hp to 1. Only in the summer gacha, great all game long)
- Halloween Cag & Xmas Rosetta (Healers for dark, each available during Halloween and Chirstmas respectively. Even though Dark has no heals, we don't really need any. These two aren't necessarily at all.)
Honorable Mentions (Not worth ticketing, short summary):
- Lady Gray (Human/Only good when level 100, Slow + DEF Down, heavily overshadowed by DJeanne)
- Vaserage (Doraf/Attacker that synergizes with axes, but is also heavily overshadowed by Naru and Forte)
- Swimsuit Danua (Doraf/Utility support that is not used becasue her sheild, along with all of her skills don't scale to late/endgame.)
- Dark Sarunan (Erun/The meme as his skills essentially allows him to burst once, then he suicides, he shines when paired with SS Zoey, but only in finished grids. He used to overkill monsters for huge honors, but now they took out overkill, making him used a lot less.)
For an in-depth look at each dark character's skills:
Click here. For an updated tier list/teambuilding help:
Click here Summons - I don't have Bahamut. Who should I use?
If you don't start an account with Bahamut, it is not recommended to start dark first as early game will be difficult for you. You
cannot surprise ticket or start dash Bahamut. If you are still doing it for the waifus don't worry it's not impossible! Any other dark ATK% summon will work in place of Bahamut until you have a grid strong enough to utilize MLB Celeste (i.e. Dark Gacha summons, Casino dark SR summon, Event Dark summons). When your grid is strong enough (Skill lv 5+ base grid), use Celeste as your main summon and use a friends Bahamut (Collect as many Baha friends as possible!)
Classes - What classes should I focus on as Dark?
For dark, we can use almost every class, but some classes are more important to take. Eventually you'll unlock all the t3 classes anyways, but I'll sort these by order of when you should get it:
- Beginner with no tier III: Dark Fencer > Superstar (Use a GW harp, if no GW use celeste) > Holy Saber > Bishop > Everythingish
- EX classes: Samurai > Sword Master > Classes with %ATK > everything else
- Tier IV Classes (Can't unlock until 101+): Sage = Spartan > Berserk = Warlock > Everything
For the most part you'll mostly be using DF until you get strong enough for SS. In raids you'll bring Holy Saber and Bishop unless on element then you can bring DF and SS.
Bahamut Weapons - I got a horn! What bahamut weapon do I build first?
Dark has three main options to go for when making a bahamut weapon: dagger, axe, and sword. You make these by combining a bahamut horn with an mlb rusted weapon of what you want. Each of these weapons give a % ATK (some have HP) to a certain race. The dagger gives 20% ATK to humans (Goes to 30% at max skill level), axe gives 20% ATK to dorafs (Up to 30%), and sword gives 10% ATK and 10% HP (up to 15/15). Sword stacks with axe or dagger, but axe and dagger don't stack.
For all elements it is recommend to build the bahamut weapon that most of your party members benefit from. Unknown races benifit from all bahamut weapons, your main character is also an unknown race. You can upgrade these weapons to SSR when you max skill level it, along with other materials. At Rank 101+, you unlock HL Bahamut, where you can upgrade your bahamut weapon once more, allowing it to effect two races giving them 30% ATK and 15% HP (up to 32/18)! It's recommended to get a bahamut weapon as soon as possible (most go either dagger or axe, then sword second). The first weapon will give you a huge ATK boost while the second will give you a boost, but less noticeable.
- Dagger now effects Erun and Humans, a must for six users
- Axe now effects Harvin and Dorafs, great cosmos axe synergy, mostly for doraf teams
- Sword still gives atk/hp up to Humans and Dorafs, but now at the boosted rate, for human/doraf hybrid teams.
- Multipliers cap at 50%
Weapon Pool - My pool is ... what weapon should I go?
I will try my best to explain weapon builds, but for simplistic sake, I'll only go into fist/axe/hybrid builds. If you want to look in-depth for builds, I recommend reading
Darchrow's Dark Build Guide.
Now into the cancer that is fist vs. axe. The reason that a huge majority of Dark players go axe is because of the lower drop rate of fists (axes are still hard to get) and the fact that late game it's hard to utilize enmity without dying (Wind players know the struggle). Enmity is a skill that comes on only Celeste fists/claws that will boost your damage the more HP you are missing. If you own SS Zoey, yes fists are good but it's not recommended to go full fisting, you'll basically have a full axe build before you complete the fists. You can however, incorporate 2-3 fists into your build as it'll still be efficient. Keep gacha items as stat sticks until you eventually replace them.
Generic Builds:
- Full Axe: 5-6 Axes, 1-2 Unknown, Main Hand (Usually GW), Bahamut Weapon, Cosmos Axe
- Hybrid: 4-5 Axes, 1-2 Unknown, Main Hand, Bahamut Weapon, 2-3 Fists
- Full Fist (Pls no): 6+ Fists, 1 Unknown, Main Hand, Baha Weapon, Cosmos Fist
Note you can only own one Cosmos weapon at a time. Baha weapons depend on the race you want to use (Usually sword/daggeaxe). If you don't own unknown weapons (as they only come from colab events) you can replace it with gw weapons, celeste weapons, or cerb dagger. Keep one MLB Celeste spear, as it enables Double Trouble III when playing Holy Saber. Otherwise, they are great placeholders until you get more fists/axes. It really hard to categorize which is the absolute best, weapon builds for dark are somewhat situational.
Farming - I am rank ... what should I do with my AP/EP?
Before I go into this, I recommend doing casino daily for a nice supply of daily pots and beans. For the early ranks (1-30) just progress through the story and level up everything. When you unlock Omegas (30+) use your EP to farm Celeste and Dark Angel Olivia(They both have terrible drop rates be prepared, Celeste if preferred as you need her summons late/endgame, also DAO does not drop any SR fodder.) and AP for events and doing Hard Raids of Omegas. After Rank 50, you unlock Baha/Grand Order, start farming these bosses as you'll need horns later on in the game. At 80-100 you should be able to MVP your raids and do ex events. Don't forget to plan for a GW character (whoever you pick is your choice, but I recommend six if you plan on maining dark) Focus on finishing your grid and farming materials. At 101+ you reach HL (High Level) Raids which I'll discuss below.
Because Celeste Drop rates are atrocious for SSR, it's highly recommended to farm Hard Omegas and join raids to try and cap on weekly pendants so you can buy weapons from the shop End Game - What does dark do endgame? Is it strong?
Short answer: we do the dps, yes. For dark, our strongest attacker is six, he is one of the strongest if not the strongest attacker in the game. As dark, you have the ability to join almost every single raid as you have no weakness, but since you can't really debuff great against non-light, we end up playing support/dps roles. Our job is to dish out as much damage as possible without dying, endgame you'll find yourself MVP'ing everything.
- I hit 101 as Dark, what do I do now?
When you hit 101 you unlock the endgame of Granblue. What you want to focus on is tier 4 classes as well as upgrading your weapon pool even more. When you hit 101, you unlock HL celeste, which is an "easier" celeste that drops dark centrums. You use these to upgrade your omega weapons to a 4th lb, unlock skill level 15 and level 150. You also need dark urns which has a chance to drop in brutal dark raids or 100% drop in HL Dark Angel Olivia. HL DAO isn't easy and only 6 people can join so either find a good group or yolo pub. HL Baha is also unlocked, this raid is super hard to pub and you'll need a decent group to complete it without wiping in 3 seconds. I'll post some links below to help your HL process. Don't forget about class weapons as you'll need to make one to unlock tier IV classes, a lot of them are super good!
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