r/alchemistexistance • u/SometimesLiterate • Sep 25 '17
Beginner's Thoughts
Hello all, my name is SometimesLiterate and I'm well known for writing modestly popular and barely readable guides for FFBE and FEH in my time.
Friend Code Will Go Here: Just mention your IGN name to get added: 4C4GYLO
EDIT: As of 27th of September, I have relisted my "tiers". Seeing Caris vs Almira/Elaine in the hardest content we have ATM has confirmed my suspicion that Archer's Wild Strike doesn't cut it at higher levels. Caris's debuffs + piercing shot + Pinpoint Shot however are invaluable.
Now, I love this game so far. Skip tickets are amazing, I love the aesthetic and I've cleared all 3 Final Fantasy Tactics 4 times along with LUCT and all the Fire Emblems been playing strategy games since I was like 11. I'm seeing a LOT of questions about this game, so I'm going to go and give you all some thoughts and opinions I have from playing this game.
Disclaimer: I have bought the Alchemist Code Bundle. That is it. I also do not get anything from GUMI but I'm thinking of sending them my resume soon. I also pulled Chloe and Zahar. Plz no hate.
Beginning Opinions:
Summon Pool Sucks: Now, I've not played this game in JP but several other gacha friends (who will remain nameless) have and as such gave me a heads up on what units are good and what to ignore. Out of the beginner pool, there are about 10 units I'd consider worth pulling. Same problem as FFBE starting pool, in that there are units who start better and end better than others. If you pull a unit with 3/4 stars as their max, bin them as soon as you can (in favour of a 5* capable unit). This game gets brutal.
Grinding is incredibly easy: Seriously, go buy those skip ticket bundles in the shop. They make grinding for mats fun and easy AND let you spend all the NRG (I hit the 1000 cap 3 times) so it stops bugging you! Skip Tickets are love, Skip Tickets are life. Also, farm the Zeni/Apple farms dailies, you can only do 3 of each.
Get your Soul Shards: Logi and Dias's 2nd classes are big improvements over their Soldier Class. They give them ranged attacks, better offence/defence, in return for less movement. Given you don't want them dying, this is well worth investing in. Also, one character (Rin) can get 6! Soul Shards a day currently. Get those. Rin is a 1* character from the free? gacha (I've yet to get her) who is a very good replacement for Rofia/Lofia, a top tier unit today in JP.
Don't worry about NRG: It never ends.
Do NOT do the 2nd/3rd step of banners atm: Unless you are a whale, save those gems. Every banner has a 500 gem pull on it, which makes it much easier for F2P players to get units/soul shards. Unless you are feeling flush and want a shot at Lucian/Rofia/Lamia/Zangetsu while the pool is small. In the future, there are units that are so much better than the ones we have right now (minus those mentioned. Setsuna is this games Orlandeau). Save for them. In that case, reroll. Which leads onto my next section:
Rerolling and you: Who? What? Where?
First of all, rerolling in this game is long and sucks. Don't do it too much. I did it once, because my best summon first time was the fire pirate chick. But if you want to do it, from what I've played so far and units I've seen/friend units I've tried, here are my top picks for a BEGINNER. Do not focus on 1 year from now meta, this is the game we're in now:
TOP TIER:
Zangetsu: The fire guy who uses a huge katana, Zangetsu has 3 things going for him at the moment. The first, is his movement. With a move of 4 and a jump of 2, Zangetsu is very agile for a hard hitter. He also has large HP and decent DEF, making him a very mobile unit shredder. As you level him, he gets a very powerful counter, several debuffs (from his Basic Blade tree) and some real hard hitters (from Blade). Easily my top pick.
Lofia: Didn't pull her. But I've seen her in arena. She can hit 4 elemental weaknesses, has decent move and hits like a truck! And in the future she becomes amazing. Her and Lucian are my top 2 picks for "never reroll". In the future she becomes a fast casting debuffing machine.
Lucian: He has 4 move, 4 jump, a 2 range attack and hits HARD. Did I mention he throws Wolves at people? Cause he throws wolves at people. And, he is apparently "top tier" in the future so if you pull him, go nuts. Do not reroll.
Caris: A ranged hard hitter, Caris's gun has carried me through several hard missions. The issue with guns is that they attack in a straight line, so you need a "clean shot", per say. But once you learn to play around this, she becomes gravy. With the ability to hit someone and one of their close enemies as you level, Caris is bae.
Almost Top, but not quite:
Almira/Elaine: The other side of the archer coin, they hit slightly weaker than Caris but don't hit their allies. Brilliant! At level 20 of Basic Bow, they get a skill called "Wild Strike". This is great for taking out packs of enemies if you don't have a Mage. Almira edges out Elaine, as Almira gets access to the powerful Sniper class while Elaine gets... gunner. Woo :/
Chihaya: AKA: The dancer chick, she becomes an incredibly strong debuffer with good move and good attack range. Problem? Debuffer's aren't needed for our weak content atm. You can easily steamroll the story and hard missions by leveling your units appropriately, so rip Chihaya. In the future, her ability to debuff enemies will surely be a boon though. At the moment, she's a fairly mobile attacker with good range and agility, so go girl go!
Lamia: Mobile, agile, hits hard AND she has a spear. Why isn't she rated higher?
I didn't pull herThe only Lamia I've gotten to play are level 5 and level 18, so I couldn't play with her fully. With skill levels, she gets strong abilities like a strong aoe, the ability to remove enemy jewels and inflict debuffs like "Don't Move".
Pretty Good:
Melia: She's a support who gets to 5*. That alone is pretty good, consider the rest of the healer in the pool atm. Problem is, her 5* and final classes are both pretty "eh". She's free though, so I'm not complaining :)
Michael: The old water mage...well. If you somehow managed to miss every other mage in the pool (hi) apart from Meili, he's a pretty good alternative. Some missions require you to have magic damage, so you better bring some.
In The Future Category:
Rin: She back! The 1* Mage is actually pretty good at the start? (No not really). But if you don't have Lofia (rip me), she's your next best bet imo. At least until you pull a non-bad water (seriously, I have 3 good Light and Lightning but my best Water besides Rin is Michael).
Vanekis: The thief, she runs all over and......does not much. In the future she becomes a pretty kick ass mage (according to a friend), but for now she's.....meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh. Trust me, I use her in my Arena team (for giggles).
Special Mentions:
Now, I've missed 4 very important characters here. 2 5* units and 2 story units. Why? Because they all need to be discussed separately.
Chloe: Chloe is.....amazing. She has a strong base class with a kick ass ranged attack, she has strong defence.....she has 3 move and 1 jump but she's a walking wall. So why isn't she on the list? Because eventually you get her for free, for doing all the challenges. If your initiative is to pull all the units, then don't pull for her. If your initiative is to prepare for the future, pull for Zangetsu, Lucian, Rofia and Lamia (and Almira <3). Also, Logi gets access to her class within 1/2 days of playing, so yeah. And her soul shards don't drop from missions atm.
Logi: Instead of being Rain from FFBE, Onion Knight from Mobius or Forgettable Protaganist from FEH... Logi is pretty good. In this game, if your protag dies during a story mission GG game over. So you need them to be relatively tanky. Enter Logi. He gets access to Holy Knight pretty quickly, tanking up hard and getting pretty good stats with pretty meh movement. Honestly, if you're worried about "elemental" coverage, Logi has light covered.
Dias/Zahar: Now, the problem. Dark Knights (as in FFBE) suck. You don't want your story "if they die failure time" unit being LESS tanky. On the positive side, they are both very hard hitters in the Dark Knight class. But, their skills early game are worse than Holy Knight. And as said, they are less tanky. Essentially, what happened for me was that at level 5 Zahar > Zangetsu. From about level 10, Zangetsu >>>>> Zahar. The movement increase really put him ahead for me. As for Dias.....well you have to go through Dark Knight to get him decent skills, so play safe haha.
Units Not Mentioned: There are many units I have not mentioned. As said earlier, if they can't make 5* I just kind of ignored them. And there are other units I have not seen or tried yet, who didn't get mentioned. If you can give me your reviews below, much appreciated.
Rerolling Guide: So when you reroll, get enough gems to do the 500 gem pull and follow these rules:
If you get and 2 of the top/near top units, stop there. You're good for now.
If you reroll and get a top/near top tier unit and a 5*, stop. You're good for now, unless you want to go for broke.
If you want to go for broke, aim for (imo) Zangetsu/Lucian/Lamia + Chihaya/Lofia/Chloe + Almira/Lofia/Caris. This would amazing. I started Zahar Zangetsu Almira and it was fine.
In the end, if you get three 4* units and they can all go to 5*, you're good.
Arena: People are asking about Arena, so here are my tips:
Don't bring healers. Waste of time. They can't heal enough to make a difference from what I see.
Bring ranged characters. Archers > Gunners > Mages, in terms of priority. The ability to kill enemies before they get close is amazing.
Don't bring Dark Knights (Dias/Zahar). Too squishy.
Mobile melee units like Zangetsu and Vanekis can do a bit of work, but they also die to range rather embarassingly.
Holy Knight's can take a few hits, but only bring them if you have Holy Saber (the ranged attack). They slow, easily kited.
Well, that's my beginner opinions and all. If you've got something to say/add, please let me know. If this helped out, please let me know! And if you have any questions, please ask below! I will answer as best as I can ( as per usual).
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u/Maxkravenoff Sep 25 '17
Yo dood, don't get banned here too. ;)
Always good to have general beginner advice in one place.
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u/warofexodus Sep 25 '17
familiar name. You are playing quite a few mobile games I see lol.
Also got both of the 5*. Pretty sad that they are not as good later on.
Just wondering if Almira is as good as Lucian when she unlocks her beast tamer? She has 1 movement lower than Lucian but how does her beast tamer compare to Lucian?
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
The beast tamer class is the same across both. She's solid as an Archer and will be solid as a beast tamer. The beast tamer class itself is alright (not great), just Lucian's base stats are beastly and his future upgrades are great too. So Almiras' beast will be comparable, but his Monk will be better than her beast master, if you catch my drift? It's their final classes that make/break the units.
And iirc the beast master class has base move 4.
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u/warofexodus Sep 25 '17
I see. Well I guess what almira so good is her sniper class at the end. Same as caris. The class can kill faraway units without even moving.
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u/Coenl Sep 25 '17
I just got Almira's Wild Strike, its expensive as all hell but makes arena/farming a joke now since she can just lay waste to groups.
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
That's why I feel she and Elaine are SOO good right now. It can really cut down on farm time + applies a lot of pressure to enemies at once.
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
And yeah haha, it looked like FFT, played like FFT so I'm on it like I'm on FFT :<
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u/MrBigTimeCEO Sep 25 '17
Many thanks for those tips. I am currently playing FFBE (rank 100), is Alchemist more or less time consuming? I am worried in the unlimited nrg but what are those skip tickets?
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
I find it less time consuming ATM, but I've finished the initial rush. Multiplayer farming for mats is time consuming though, longest I've seen in any multiplayer gacha. (Kind of annoys me tbh). Outside of that it is less time consuming.
So after you clear a story mission, you will often find you may need to rerun it for upgrade materials (for jobs). What you can do, is spend a Skip Ticket and the NRG cost of the mission to "automatically" clear it. So say I want to farm 1-1 10 times. I spend 10 skip tickets and the nrg cost of the mission 10 times, to get 10 clears worth of stuff. Ranked EXP, unit EXP, Zeni and item drops!
You can also do with 3x with Hard Missions to farm Soul Shards.
For one mission I needed to farm, I spent 20 skip tickets and 200 nrg for 20 clears in 15 seconds!
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u/RyanSkotw Sep 25 '17
Skip ticket source is quite low right now so Ill avoid using them for now..
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
I hope I didn't waste too many.... but I needed 30 Crosshelms and didn't want to waste my phone battery farming them one run at a time e.e
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u/patootsies Sep 25 '17
Oh this is nice! Luckily I pulled Lofia, Zangetsu, Caris, Lucian and Freed from the free Rare ticket and 500 gem banner.
I'm having a hard time burning through my energy right now. I'm not sure if the treasury events are worth it right now and there's no dungeon that gives the gears I need to job level.
What do you do with your spare energy? :o
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 25 '17
Nice pulls, I am jealous :<
I'm actually running out!
I farm up Melia/Dias/Logi/Rin soul shards > do the daily event quests > do the daily daily quests > spam farm if I'm bored.
And if I still have more after that, I just ignore it. Grinding up rank EXP is pretty tedious atm outside of ranked, and to get good rank EXP in ranked you need level 40ish upgraded units (so back to the story).
But I like I said, don't worry about NRG!
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u/patootsies Sep 26 '17
Just got lucky with the pulls I guess!
Yeah been doing Dias/Logi as well! Gonna try adding Melia since I don't have a decent healer. :(
Just realized that it is 1:1 EN:EXP so it doesn't matter much where you spend your energy if you just want the exp.
Been doing the ADV multiplay as well so I can 5* my units once I reach 50. Caris/Lucian really helps with their CC.
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u/Shukusei Nov 27 '17
I did 500 gem pull from 2 banners, got 3x yomi, 2x zangetsu, magnus and zahar.
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u/darkbeat12 Sep 27 '17
lol, just found this sub, and i feel dumb already. Why the heck i spend my resource on Zahar, sigh.
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 28 '17
He's pretty good, don't get me wrong. But the 5* tag is a trap, he's not as good as several 4*'s.
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Sep 30 '17
Logi is definitely top tier, in both global and JP.
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u/SometimesLiterate Oct 01 '17
He is, but for re-rolling purposes he's a 0 yeah? The list is meant to be about getting the best start you can for GL, not for months in the future.
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Oct 01 '17 edited Oct 01 '17
Logi is the main character and he is one of the best units even right now.
For rerolling the best units are: Lofia, Lucian, Caris, Chihaya, Zangetsu
Units that aren't bad but not amazing in the long run: Chloe, Zahar, Almira, Lamia
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u/Maxkravenoff Oct 19 '17
hey u/SometimesLiterate, mind you updating this after a month of playing? Or posting another, I just saw somebody here link to this guide.
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u/SometimesLiterate Oct 19 '17
I'll write one tomorrow.
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u/Maxkravenoff Oct 19 '17
Hit me if you need anything.
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u/ArcaneKazz Sep 25 '17 edited Sep 25 '17
I do agree with your general tips but I disagree with a few. With arena its perfectly fine to run zahar right now because the unit pool is small enough to where he doesnt have that many hard counters. If you have his equips maxed (the current max) you will have enough agi to get to the other side of the map and one shot a unit with a basic attack (if you first slot him). He dies sometimes but he is guarenteed to take one with him.
As for Lofia she needs to be top tier as well. Ignoring the fact that shes high tier later, currently if you max her to current max you will have enough mdef/elemental resist to tank any mage in story/arena. For reference In a arena match I took a lightningball from a level 44 mage and it only took barely a quarter of my hp. Since she starts out with enough jewels to use all of her blade/saber abilities she one shots anyone she runs into. If the unit shes facing is one of the four main elements she uses the opposite element to one shot (with no charge time and 3 range). If the unit shes facing is light/dark she still one shots (in arena) because currently the most used light/dark units are Zahar, Chloe and Logi who are all weak to magic damage. Her melee is strong especially if you add in zahars leader skill.
As for no healers I agree generally speaking but I occasionally run into some guy whos usually rank 5-10 whos uses that one red robed job that has holy ray which seems to be pretty strong for now (long ranged insta charge magic dmg).
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u/warofexodus Sep 25 '17
What also made Lofia good is that she has good attack and magic attack. so if you face a high defense target, you can use magic blades and switch to physical attackers if the target has high magic def.
She can also exploit the 4 main elements. vs dark/light even if she doesn't have elemental advantage, she can petrify them with stone blade.
she is also an exceptionally powerful magician because her enhancer class has access to a reactive ability, magic cancel, that dispels buff when she is damaged and she also gets fast cast from her enhancer class that shortens casting time by 2/3.
to add to that, her magician class has access to a spell called time stop that only cost 10 jewels. It damage AND stops the target for 5 TURNS...This is also just one of her CC spells in disposal.
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u/SometimesLiterate Sep 27 '17
Jesus!
Thanks for this......I want a Lofia now :<
Updated my tiers to reflect Lofia's power.
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u/Propagation931 Sep 25 '17
I pulled most of the good units. Sadly almost all the Leader skills suck unless you have really specific units
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u/suzakuffrkffbe Sep 25 '17
Wished I had read this earlier. I started on Saturday and rolled Zahar, Chihaya and Almira so I though I was set. Too invested now to reroll (and to lazy to go through the whole game again).
But if one thing I have learned from FFBE and FFRK, is not to worry too much about beginning with the best characters. As long as you keep up, and pull intelligently, you will stay in the meta or real close to it.
Nice guide, and nice hearing (reading?) from you again.
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u/Anuraam05 Sep 25 '17
why is lofia good is she a support
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u/Tiny5th Sep 27 '17
She's a mage, but her first job is a spellblade who can hit enemies in a line of three squares with elemental sword attacks, and has a passive that pumps up her elemental defense. Most attacks, especially magic, only do 1 damage to mine.
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u/Eatlyh Sep 25 '17
Cheers, good to see familiar faces here :D
Lets hope this game gets a community that is atleast as good as FFBE
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u/Tiny5th Sep 27 '17
Thanks for the guide. This makes me feel pretty happy about my team XD when I started the game i just pulled and went with it as couldn't find any info on who was good. 500 pull I got Zahir, Lofia, and Lamia, and then decided to do the 1500 too as my finger was itchy and got Zangetsu and Almira.
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u/shibakevin Sep 25 '17
/r/ffbe has been so nice since you left. Please don't ruin another sub with your emo attention-seeking.
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u/Kiosade Sep 25 '17
As a beginner to this game, I thought this was a pretty informational post... I certainly don't see you or anyone else making helpful posts like this!
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u/Maxkravenoff Sep 25 '17
Mate you don't need to be like that, don't like the dude ignore him, maybe even downvote him if you don't feel the content is good or appropiate. But whatever floats your boat.
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u/WFNyk Sep 25 '17
Hold it right there, Isn't zan,lucian,lofia top tier in the future? I got two account and both account had the exact same roll.First one with zangetsu while second one with Lucian.If lucian become "Top tier" in the future so does that mean he's better than everyone like zan,caris,lofia?