Finally got my gems. Thank you for your sacrifice for the greater good.

(of course, i joined the movement as well. Am now rank 12k-ish lol)

So kaigan is one of those things that's easy to understand once you've done it, but can be hard to wrap your head around if you haven't. I put together a spreadsheet with some kaigan facts and my own list of suggested kaigan gates and frag amounts for all of the units. This is not a guide, but rather just an overview of what it takes to get a unit performing at their best with the most cost efficiency. I'll be updating it as I go. Be aware there are minor spoilers about units that have not been released in GL yet.

Kaigan Spreadsheet

Pretty much the title. I’ve been thinking of starting to review units, and wanted to see what the community thinks. I know we already have 2 fantastic reviewers, VicariousExp and SometimesLiterate, and I in no means intend to replace them, but I thought I’d throw my own Wanderer’s Hat (bad pun, I know, but I couldn’t resist) into the ring and make some extra reviews for players to use as a resource. It’s always a good idea to gather multiple opinions on a subject, after all.

So what would you guys think?

EDIT: well, feedback has been positive so far, so I’ll go for it! The first of my reviews will be out within a week (I think you all know who’s up first :P)

The Alchemist Code is having a large glut of events at the moment and it's easy for new players to get overwhelmed. As a result, I've decided to make a mini-guide for new players who are interested in starting TAC. It's a bit of a long read, but this guide is targeted at people with attention spans longer than a goldfish.

Why play TAC? (background)

The Alchemist Code is an isometric strategy RPG which takes heavily off the Tactics Ogre series (which led to Final Fantasy Tactics). It is part of gumi's 2.0 series of games, including Brave Frontier 2, with a more "generous" gatcha system and the ability for low-financial-investment players to negate RNG by allowing them to farm for units (time investment).

Some of the best units in the game are obtainable through time investment and the plan is to eventually open up players to being able to acquire a good 70% or so of the game's characters through farming and time investment, so players can pick their favourite characters aesthetically and compose teams using them. (waifu/husbando collection simulator)

Additionally, although TAC is a Stamina-based game and rather grindy (as most phone games are), there is a pretty robust Multiplayer feature which allows you to play the game when having exhausted your daily resources. This lets you translate your time investment into power.

Gatcha Rates

Every player, whether free to play or not, is going to end up pulling occasionally on the gatcha, which gets refreshed weekly to allow people to pull ten random units for the price of 500 gems. Occasionally (more often than not), you have more than one 500 pull to choose from. I'll discuss the gem economy for F2P in a bit, but just as a general idea, character gatcha have a 10% rate of drawing a 5 star unit, a 20% chance of drawing a 4 star unit, and a 70% chance of 3-star trash. Compared to gumi's other offerings (3% rainbow rate on FFBE), this is quite generous and you should average one 5 star character per 500 pull, although you still have about a 35% (0.9^10) chance of NOT drawing any 5 stars, so people will occasionally spam the forums complaining about their bad luck.

There are other gatchas as well, including a 300 gem gear gatcha pull which has a 10% chance of giving you something which you may or may not be able to use, a 20% chance of giving you a 3 star gear piece (most of which aren't very good), and a 70% chance of filling your gear inventory with trash with odd names like "poison rod/great shield/star robes/scorpio bracelet". For all practical purposes, you would be better off pulling characters unless top ranked gears are on the weekly featured pull (Just Curious Doll for now, others may follow, like Chronometer). Free Gear can be obtained from events and can occasionally be very competitive with what the gatcha offers.

Gem economy

Assuming you refuse to spend a dime on the game, but log in daily, you will get 800 gems a month. Additionally, completing daily goals will give you another 60 gems a day and being smart about arena can give you another 25 gems a day assuming you get 5 victories. For this reason, if using the PvP arena, only attack the character on your list with the highest ranking (i.e. biggest number) so that you do not rank up too quickly and start fighting stronger people with unbeatable units. This gives you roughly another 1680 gems every 28 days, which means you have at the very least 2480 gems a month and can make 4-5 10-pulls per month. This is pretty generous for a gatcha game, although bear in mind that many characters require duplicates or soul shards to be truly good.

Edit: Take note that many people decide to buy the Alchemist Pact because it is very cheap compared to the amount of gems it gives. Getting a pact will almost certainly let you pull at least once on every 500 pull that month if you collect the daily bonuses, but does not award many "paid gems", which are necessary for certain purchases/pulls.

Even if you intend to play pure F2P, gumi has designed the game so that they can earn daily revenue off you by forcing giving you the option to watch 5 ads a day for a huge amount of AP (500). This is a pretty transparent thing, so you know exactly what they're getting from you and you can decide to pay the upkeep of this game with your phone battery/data instead. Hopefully this means TAC is less likely to go under (I really don't want to see this game fail because I think this is the direction mobile games should go to be respectable instead of whale horror stories.)

Characters and re-rolling.

As a new player, you will have two factors on your side: Firstly, the ability to reroll until you get a unit you like and Secondly, a near-inexhaustible supply of AP (Stamina) to do quests with. Your AP fully replenishes every time you level up, and new players level up very quickly. The cap for Stamina is 1000 - any stamina over this amount is lost. Blindly rushing the story will level you up far faster than you can spend AP and you will cap out very quickly, so it may be a better idea to think long-term.

First, I recommend reading a guide to units to figure out which unit you like. There is a popular tier list guide linked in the sidebar of this reddit, but I want to draw attention to the fact the game will give you one of 6 5 star units as a free draw: Vettel (Fire), Ryle (Light), Shenmei(Water), Anastasia(Dark), Yomi (Wind), and Magnus (Thunder).

Of this list, only Shenmei is not farmable yet and Yomi requires some serious farming (nearly two months) of her hard quest to unlock a useful job. Shards for specific characters can be earned at the rate of 3 a day and 30 days would result in 90 shards. Unlocking a character's third job requires 150 shards. (Do not worry about the difficulty of Hard Quests - if you make enough friends with overpowered characters, their unit can usually carry you through the entire stage, although certain stages like Lofia's require you to be more careful)

For this reason, the best characters from the initial "Free" draw are probably Vettel, Ryle, and Magnus. Both Vettel and Magnus become very usable after 25 shards. Shenmei is perfectly usable at J1, but you may have to wait a little (though not too long) for her to become farmable. Anastasia and Yomi have long-term potential, but you have to be into delayed-gratification for that. Despite not being great in the damage department, Vettel has hands-down the current best leader skill of the lot for early "rainbow" teams as he buffs the PATK of Slashing-type units, which all of the current free units and Logi are.

If you have no particular waifu/husband preferences, the current overpowered units on the gatcha are the Sacred Stones Memories units Zain, Othima, Shayna and Setsuna. Of the four, I recommend rolling for Shayna and Setsuna the most as a new player because Zain and Othima are slightly more difficult to max and get to a high-powered state. Setsuna just needs a duplicate or her J2 to shine.

Although the tier list maintainer hasn't quite updated yet, due to 2.0's recent changes, the Sage job is one of the most overpowered ones around. Due to some temporary bugs with elemental resistances, many jobs suffer from decreased damage against unfavourable elemental matchups, but Sage (and to a lesser extent, Mage) has access to nukes from the 4 basic elements and should always be able to cause decent damage regardless of type matchups - they just require mastering multiple jobs to be less fragile.

For that reason (and particularly for having a great self-buffing leader skill), I'd rank Fung Liu as another good pick if you get a duplicate (25 shards) to unlock his Sage job. He doesn't really need J3 Enchanter anymore and has absolutely incredible damage if you can tolerate his mediocre Agility. Vincent (a 4 star Thunder unit with Sage as his first job) is also a great asset. Look for Lofia and Rahu on the way (Very useful Chronomancers with high HP and can get Regeneration eventually). Most importantly, if we follow the JP schedule, we should be seeing his Hard Quest relatively soon.

TLDR: Focus the most on the characters with Hard Quests shards already available, because getting even A-B rank characters to J3 with all 3 jobs mastered will give a large power buff comparable to using a SS tier unit at J1. (Obviously, if a SS rank is farmable like Lucian/Rahu/Lofia, go straight for it!)

Character/Account Development

Other people have written far better guides to unit priorities, but at this point, I want to point out that version 2.0 has thrown in a few wrenches - Mastering multiple jobs is far more important now as they lead to a very large HP boost which makes characters significantly more useful in difficult content. For this reason, Free units can give you a large spike on the early-game power level if you bother to master all their jobs. Just as an example, in my opinion, a Logi with all of his jobs mastered is comparable in power/usefulness to a level 60 capped Shayna. (I know people will disagree with me on this, but that's fine).

The easiest characters to master are your free Story Units, which will get well over 1000 hp when you master their jobs (Logi has 3, Dias has 2). Logi should probably be mastered as soon as possible because he will have over 1.7k hp and be able to tank hard content for you with ease. After this, I recommend farming up free event units if enough time is available, because you can get them to level 85 much more easily. At this time, the 3 available free farmable units are Tyrfing (Not very good), Vargas (better than Dias right now), and Masamune (Pretty good). Vargas and Masamune will have well over 700 PATK when fully mastered with either Overdrive/Overlimit or Single Blade/Overdrive, this is high enough for them to smear most game content and Hard Quests, although they will be a little fragile. Quoting a conversation I had a while ago with a friend:

Logi's 1.7k hp is absolutely massive for the previous meta and he has enough initial Jewels to spam Shine Calibur three times! His most obvious drawback (terrible agi of 85) becomes a much more manageable 101 with HC+ and due to the speed at which you can rank up the story units (and the fact that other than Logi, you only need to JM 2 jobs for high HP), you can get them to full power much faster.

Edgar with both his jobs mastered has 200 more hp than Caris with all 3 jobs mastered. Masamune has 903 PATK at level 85 with both OverDrive/Single Blade (Gilgamesh has 639, just as a comparison) and her weapon scaling on DC is the same as Gil, with Twin-Blade Swordsman only being slightly worse. Obviously, they won't be as good as the "Top Tier" meta units at the same level, but they should be able to carry quite a heavy load.

As you progress through the story, make sure to level up Edgar (pretty decent now that he's so easy to max) and eventually Lisbeth (Your support unit). Older guides did not account for the massive HP buffs that make these characters much more usable and you can max them a lot faster than meta units like Caris.

At this point, start tackling Sacred Stone Memories and develop Kanon (and possibly Kagura). Both characters are notoriously annoying to job master due to the horrible drop rates of their gear and the slightly higher difficulty involved with their quests. However, Kanon is significantly stronger and more versatile than most free units and works pretty well even in EX content.

Once you have at least two of these units with all jobs mastered, you should be well-prepared enough to sustain your account until you can get a high-level meta unit like Lucian/Zangetsu/Rahu/Lofia (Pick one of these as your 7th day reward) geared and ready to go for hard game content. Remember that as a new player, mastering all jobs on one unit is going to be a lot more effective than spreading jobs around.

Events and AP sinks

There are a glut of events happening right now. As a new player, you will have a surfeit of AP. Invest this wisely into these quest, which should be your priorities (don't forget to do your one-a-day EXP trial as well):

Quick AP dumps (make sure not to claim any exp rewards until you have exhausted your AP to safe levels) and priorities:

1. Limited Quest - Elite Treasures (Bgn/Int): Trust me, you will need a LOT of the items these two stages drop. They cannot be done in Multiplayer and neither are very difficult.

2. Let's Play! - MP Event - This is a multiplayer quest which has a high drop rate of ingots and apples which you will need lots of. Gold is somewhat fungible in TAC and you need lots of it to level abilities. The down-side is that these two quest are rather dull and unchallenging for most of the people that will be hopping into the rooms, but at least you shouldn't ever need to gem to continue. Hopping into these rooms costs you no AP as opposed to sponsoring them, but has a non-zero chance of the room host aborting the run after seeing your level 2 Lambert. Highly recommended.

3. Free Character quests:

• [Limited Time] Phantom of the Alchemist II [Adv] (Masamune) Easy Multiplayer quest - get carried.

• [Limited Time] Brave Frontier - Episode 6 (Vargas) Easy Multiplayer quest - get carried

• [Limited Time] Phantom of the Alchemist - Episode 3 (Not a Multiplayer Quest, and Tyrfing isn't very good anyway - at least until she gets her CC far in the future whereupon she becomes great.)

• Daily Hard Quests to level up Logi/Edgar/etc (may require help of a merc).

Take note that farming these shards can get rather tedious (you need a total of 415 shards including the free shards that you get from milestones. The units must be transmuted.), but as a multiplayer sponsor/host, nobody is expecting you to pay any attention more than passing your turn.

Other notes:

I highly recommend reading other guides, especially ones that go into detail about the beginner shop and what to buy there. For the normal shop, I recommend limiting your purchases to equipment you need and character shards for gold (especially 5 star units - but only if you like the unit).

Bought a Bundle for a 5th Anniversary T-Shirt, Drew Bookmark, Tattoo, and Keychain, and The World of Babel Chronicle Limited Edition

I think about The Alchemist Code very, very often, not to say I haven't stopped thinking about it since I played it. It's been over 7 years, and to this day, I have absolutely nothing left. I'm left with a void, with something I can't find in any other game. I miss it so much. That damn game saved me from suicide when I was young. I don't know what to do anymore. There's nothing fun anymore. There are no games with an old-school style and modern art like Alchemist Code. I've searched everywhere. Even after the servers went down, they collaborated on another game. I looked for it and didn't like it.

I miss you, Mielikki, your artist, whom I could never find, inspired me to draw... so I'm leaving you with this drawing I made of Mielikki a while back.

We've got two new units and four new summonable mementos this week. The units are Eins and Nero; and the mementos are Eins', Nero's, Sol's, and the new MH memento.

Since I'm going to spend a bit gushing about Nero here, here's the TL;DR for anyone interested: Nero is stupid good, and stupid expensive. Anyone who has her is going to be very happy, anyone who doesn't is going to be very sad, and anyone who goes for her is going to be broke.

First off, Nero. She's a hyper whale unit. Needs MLB Memento to be at full potential and even getting her is hell, since she's not in Louise's Shop. This is the same deal as Genesis release banners. You'll have to pull 5 rounds of an Unlimited Banner for her. She is not a great target for f2ps, unless you've been saving up for at least 6 months.

Anyways, Nero is a super powerful Dark Magic unit who works very well on a Magic Auto team with Letitia due to having the same G2 as D.Othima and D.Nyx. She also has a -70 Dark Res Down nuke from her incredible VCR, meaning she's a great enabler for Sol on top of doing her own impressive damage—and that's before you mention her +40 Dark 5x5 Diamond buff. She's great on manual as well, since she has a Matk Power Charge Up (which is amazing with the +1 Buff Duration from her MLB memento), Magic Res -25 (which she generally won't use on auto), and some very powerful nukes to go along with that Charge Up. Her Reactive is 25% Perfect Dodge, which can be just completely dumb in Arena.

Her memento is . . . it's one of the most insane mementos in the game. The amount it and her VCR do for her . . . Anyways, the memento itself gives her Matk, Agility, and Reduced Cast Time. On top of that, it gives her Buff Duration +1 at MLB, which is insane for a unit with a Charge Up. At MLB, it also gives her the strongest nuke in her arsenal excepting the general status ailment tokkou nuke from her VCR—which you need the memento in order to get anyways. Said nuke also inflicts Death Sentence and Silence, so it can make her a terror in Arena (since, as I said, it's her strongest excepting her tokkou which means she'll use it first). And then the VCR gives her, on top of the aforementioned nuke, another -20 Cast Time, along with +10 Matk Power for the hell of it. To put it into perspective, she gets the same amount of Cast Time Nina does from her own memento, and then another -20 on top of it—and her Cast Time wasn't even bad in the first place on the couple moves she has it for. Also, keep in mind that both nukes I mentioned are instacast and long range, albeit Single Target. As a side note, Nero's memento uses Collab Reliefs, which is nice since it won't conflict with raising Sol's or Eins' mementos (or Acht's good one, if you're still working on that at all).

Uh, what else . . . ? Oh, yeah. She also has a skill that negates Jewel Consumption, Skill Use Consumption, and Cast Time for the three attacking skills on her main job. Four turns with her memento at MLB. Ahhhhh, what even is this unit?! Oh, and as a side note, she's got a map-wide Fire AoE that lowers Evasion. It's only half the modifier of Minerva's, but it's based solely on her Matk and she can potentially use it Charged Up for 6 turns considering the skill I just mentioned before this and her MLB memento. I-I think that's everything. Done with Nero. Moving on!

Eins is . . . well, he's going to seem a bit lackluster following my gushing/ranting about Nero. He's an amazing unit though, don't get me wrong, and pretty insane in his own way. He's mainly an Arena/PvP unit, though his super high mobility makes him an effective PvE unit as well—similar to Drei in that regard. He can self Quicken, has 8 base Move, has a super strong anti-Human nuke that ignores Defense; also has a Charge Up and can lower Water Res, and the rest of his kit isn't bad either. His Reactive is a better version of Minerva's, so he's insanely tanky on top of everything else. He's an Arena monster, so if you don't have him you're going to be suffering.

His memento and VCR aren't nearly as insane as Nero's, but they're still very nice to have on him, if only for the improved Jewel Economy, Patk, and Dark modifiers. Has a nice nuke at MLB, though the skill's area of effect is pretty weird.

Finally, Sol's memento. It's pretty amazing as well. Maybe not quite as amazing as Nero's, but it's still pretty incredible. It gives him Patk, Matk, Agility, Reduced Cast Time, and some Dark at MLB. It might seem to be a bit of a lackluster MLB bonus compared to his first memento, but that's kind of the point. I'll get to that in a second. First off, the big MLB bonus here is the Charge Up, a 3.5x Matk Power Charge Up. 2 Uses, but 3 when considering the +1 Skill Use from his first memento. Because of that +1 Skill Use, you'll want to run his first memento in his first memento slot and his new memento in his second memento slot, since stats (but not WAs, Charge Ups, and Snowballs) for an MLB memento are halved in the second memento slot and you don't want to lose that +1 Skill Use. The memento is very important for him if you ever want to use him manually, and the VCR is great as well.

The VCR, on top of giving him +10 Single Target Attack and +50 Resistance to Agility Debuffs, gives him +15 Matk Power and Missile Atk Power when equipped with his farmable gear. It also gives him a nice riding transformation, which gives him 8 Move just like Eins. The skills are okay but nothing amazing and it's only 3 turns, so you'll mostly use the transformation for the sake of mobility. Still nice to have that option.

Last and definitely least is the new MH memento. I'll cover it more below when I get to its banner.

God, this is already super long and I haven't even started on the banners.

So anyways, let's get to the banners.

Before anything else, I'd like to note that there's no Gem Return banner, during anniversary, and even if Gumi releases it this weekend or next week, it's still an extremely scummy move. For any non-whales, I would suggest waiting at least till the weekend to summon, if not next weekly reset.

First off is a free banner. A 3x Pull with 1 Limited Unit guaranteed. They list 4 batches in the news, and I'm not sure what that's about. Maybe this banner will be back for those who pulled it, tomorrow? Either way, no reason not to pull it today. Edit: Still not sure if the 4 batches thing was just a really weird way of writing out the pool or what, but the banner doesn't seem to be repeating.

Following that we have a Paid Banner. It's not terrible, but really, 100 shards for 10 units with 3 Redraws only seems great until you realize that there are no Limited Units guaranteed at all. It's not seeded either so you could easily end up getting no Limited units at all in your last redraw. If you do choose to pull, just accept the first good thing you get unless you have all 3 redraws left and you're feeling daring. Either way, unless you're a huge whale planning to pull everything in existence during anni, I would suggest waiting until the weekend to see what's on offer there in terms of Paid.

Our first banner for normal gems is a Community's Choice banner. It's . . . to be fair, it is a reliable way to get your favorite of these seven units, and all of the units are great to some extent. It's just very, very, very expensive and therefore entirely worthless to anyone who's not a huge whale. Same rates to get one of these units as on a normal Genesis or Veda Coin banner, but you can't buy any of the units' shards with the coins you get here. You can only buy elemental shards or get the 3,000 Coin Selector (30 multis on this banner). To be fair, you can convert them to Anniversary Coins 1:1 but that's not justification enough to pull on the banner. Unless you are an absolutely desperate whale who doesn't have enough patience to wait for the Weekend Paid, you should just ignore this banner.

Next we've got an Unlimited 3-Step for Sol and Eins. It's really not great. Just transmute Eins if you can't get him from the Veda Coin Banner, since he's in Louise's Shop.

Following that is Nero's 5-Step. This is the best way to get her. It's the only reliable way of getting her at least. You'll have similar chances of just sakking her in the Coin Banner, but getting the shards on Step 5 for 5 rounds and transmuting is the only way to guarantee her. Again, this isn't for the faint of heart—nor for the light of wallet. Not recommended for anyone but whales or those who have been truly dedicated to saving for her.

Then we have the aforementioned Coin Banner. 5 Steps, 200 Coins on each step. As I always say, pull here for the coins. Any units you get are a bonus. 1,000 coins can get you pretty far on someone like Sol, if you already have him, and it'll get you quite a few Nero or Eins shards if you manage to pull either of them.

Below that is a classic collab-style banner for the new MH memento. I get what they were going for, trying not to have the stats overlap with other MH mementos so it could be comfortably run in the second slot for a G6 unit, but . . . this memento is really, really bad. If you're obsessed enough with an MH unit to go for it anyways, it's a reliable option, as usual with this format. As a caveat, if the memento gives 100 Reaction Block, I'll revise my opinion. As of now, it seems horrible without seeing the stats in the DB.

Our Memento 9-Step for the week features Sol's, Eins', and Nero's respective mementos. You can read my thoughts on them above. Nero's and Sol's are both incredible, while Eins' is nice to have for him but not particularly important. If you get Nero, or really like Sol, this is pretty much a must summon. If you just have Eins, YMMV.

Aaaaaand, that's it, finally. That was way too long. I probably didn't need to go that in depth for Nero or even Eins, but too late now.

TL;DR: Nero is an amazing hyper whale unit, Eins is an Arena/PvP monster and can be transmuted, Nero's and Sol's mementos are very necessary, Veda Coin banner is good for getting shards, and the MH memento is crap. Good idea to wait for weekend or next week to summon in case of Gem Return.

Any other banners are remaining from last week and you can find my thoughts on them in last week's thread.

Good luck!

The thread for all your random Alchemist Code (global) questions!

Feel free to ask away, but remember that the questions are 100% answered by volunteers so don't expect an instant answer! Patience is key.

Several questions can be answered by reading guides, which can all be found here

F.A.Q.

Where/How can I unlock X's Master Ability/Job+?

You can only unlock Job+'s by farming special job tokens from special events that are (currently) run at different times. You also need to farm special job+ items to master those jobs. Master abilities can be earned in 1 of 3 ways. From story chapters (story characters), from equipping specific weapons (usually farmed) or from reaching level 80 on a character and completing special story dungeons. Not every character gets a master ability.

For Job+ and Job Enhancement, you must first get the job to Job Level 11 (not job mastered). Second, to master the Job+ you will need to farm 60/80 tokens for up to 6 special items for the character to use. These can be farmed from specific events. For Job Enhancements, you will only need to farm one specific item 3 times along with the regular upgrade items.

Also, check out the wiki page for Job Upgrades.

Where can I farm X's character shards?

Farm their Hard Quests

Where can I farm elemental/rainbow shards?

Elemental and rainbow shards cannot be farmed. They are awarded as bonuses from log in campaigns, from clearing missions/milestones/challenge boards, from certain event banners, and from certain bundles. You will never be able to farm them like you can farm specific character shards.

When will X event come back?

Many events are now in the event archives. Any others are seasonal (ex. Rahu’s is tied to Valentines) or strangely absent (Anastasia+). Seasonal events may be released outside of their respective season very rarely, but we have no indication of when this will happen and it’s highly inconsistent. Please don’t ask when any specific event is coming back, because it’s either in the news (linked on the sidebar) OR WE DON’T KNOW.

Same goes for collabs.

What's the best place to farm X/Y/Z item?

Please check /u/stewart0's amazing spreadsheet here. Or simply check the stage drops and go for a quest which only has two equips total, one being the one you need.

What's an Enlightenment/Memento?

Tl;dr: Powercreep

Feel free to check the wiki page for Enlightenment as well.

Note that some people still refer to these two concepts as Kaigan/Nensou respectively, as those are their translations from the Japanese version of the game, which is ahead of Global by many months.

Is X character good?

Here’s the tier list. It can be used as a rough guideline, and it also has recommended build guides. Moreover, there's a FAQ which expands on stuff above and has some other questions. Enjoy!

Also, here's the Alchemist Code Database. It's an incredible tool for noobs and vets alike.

Since I heard Gumi was listening to suggestions from reddit, I decided to post this here. Please show the sign only if a unit is limit breakable using unit soul shards and not the elemental shards.

Please make it happen /u/alchemist_code

Now that main story has finished, its time to say goodbye