I am making this guide to help new players. I recently created a new low level guild with the intention of adding very new players and guiding them along to learn the game. I decided to make this as a quick reference for them, and figured I might as well try my best to do a very good job on it and hopefully help all new players. Some of this is pretty generally accepted advice, some of it is disputed. I am open to ideas in the comments and will happily edit it if I feel it is appropriate, but this guide is intended for very new players. Please do not get in the comments and argue that reappraisal stones are a more rare and valuable asset then devilmons, or other similar petty disagreements. This is designed to give new players a running start and prevent them from making significant mistakes, not guide them to G3 arena or guild wars.
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My credibility
Feel free to skip if you’re willing to consider my advice regardless, but in my experience, some will want to read this before continuing. Today, my account is 1644 days old. For better or worse, I have never missed a daily login. I will openly admit that I am not a great coach for high end PVP (player vs. player) content. I am, however, good at PVE (player vs. environment,) and good at farming PVP. That being said, I have a meh PVP record but a good PVE record which I think legitimizes my writing this. My highest finishes/current ranks (Global server:) Arena C3, RTA C3, Guild war G1, Siege G1, World Boss SSS. Dungeon times: GB10 29s, DB10 37s, NB10 45s. Rift beast rankings: Fire 58th, Ice 438th, Wind 37th, Light 49th, Dark 37th. R5 27 seconds. Achievements (page 4 of profile) 262/287 91%, Elite. I have been guild leader of a G1 farming guild for around three or four years. We have been G1 for the last 80% of our existence.
Also, I have no interest in brevity here. I will try to organize it reasonably well but I’m not on a word count. This is going to be long, and I’m not sorry. That’s what she said. Wait, what? Wrong context. Anyway…
THE GUIDE
An overview: This is a grinding game. You gain incremental progress over a long period of time by repeating various tasks at various intervals. The purpose of this guide is to make that grind as easy as possible for you. The good news is that Com2us has been trying hard to give new players a hand in catching up to old accounts. This is also primarily a rune management game cleverly disguised as a Pokemon game with mythical creatures. It is also a Gacha game, designed to cultivate frustration to encourage you to spend money to gain progress. If you have a gambling/addictive personality, this may not be the game for you. You have to look at this game from a million miles away, and accept the gradual progress.
ARENA
Set your defense as one very weak monster. Arena enemies are sorted by your ranking. When you lose on defense, your ranking drops but you suffer no real consequence. Much later you may want to post a challenging defense, but not now. Right now you want all of your opponents to have very weak defenses so that you can farm glory points. If you find your arena list is too challenging, intentionally lose 3-5 matches and then refresh your list. It is also worth noting that your arena wings refill when you level up, which is quite often early on, so try to use your arena wings up right before leveling up, even if it is losing several matches on purpose to drop rank before getting 10 new wings.
GLORY POINTS
Be sure to spend these glory points on the weekly devilmon, every week. Devilmon are the rarest and most valuable resource in the game. Always use your arena wings when they are available. As you have extra glory, be sure to upgrade the sanctum of energy and the mysterious plant. Max these as soon as possible. The other major items to buy with glory are the arena totems. An often unknown detail is that these totems apply to every aspect of the game, including Caiross dungeon, Guild War, RTA, etc. IMO the best totems to buy early are, in order, Fallen Ancient Keeper, Ancient Sword, and Sky Tribe Totem. As you upgrade them the costs get incredibly high, so you won’t want to take one from 0-10, it’s better to get the few that are most important to you to level 5 or whatever you can afford. Do not buy summons with glory points.
MONSTERS
This game currently has 1144 monsters. I have 820. Obviously, you won’t have access to most of the monsters in the game early on. It takes quite an investment to make a monster 6 stars, which is the current highest evolution of a monster in SW. You don’t want to 6 the wrong monster, it can set your account back weeks or months. Monsters are born from Natural 1*, the most common, to Natural 5*, the rarest. Light/Dark monsters are rarer still. You might get very lucky early on and pull a great monster that will help you progress quickly, but probably not. The good news is that many useful monsters are readily available through common summons, achievements, events, daily secret dungeons, scenario drops, and monster fusions. Some long term useful and readily available monsters for early game players are the water magic knight (free beginner mon,) light inugami (secret dungeon,) water phoenix (fusion,) wind griffon (scenario drop,) dark vampire lord (event/achievement mon,) fire sylph (fusion,) fire vampire (fusion,) Dark Ifrit (fusion,) light cowgirl (secret dungeon,) water howl, and wind pixie. I am not saying to build each of those monsters in that order, but those monsters can all be good and useful parts of versatile teams for most of the important early content. Monsters can also be awakened to gain stats and skills.
Best early game monsters
MONSTER SKILLUPS
Monsters can be skilled up, good monsters should be. You can skill them up by feeding them any element of the same monster (i.e. feed wind magic knight to water magic knight to gain one skillup) or a devilmon. Don’t feed devilmon to common monsters. In my opinion, early game players should save their devilmon for the water phoenix, I believe he is the most impactful early game monster. Keep one of each monster Nat 4 and above for fire/wind/water and Nat 3 and above for L/D in case it gets buffed later. Com2us routinely balances monster skills.
MONSTER EVOLUTION
When a 1 star mon gains enough experience points via battling or consuming other mons to reach level fifteen, you can feed another 1 star mon to it to make it a 2 star level one mon. A level twenty 2 star mon requires two 2 star mons to become a level one 3 star mon. A level twenty five 3 star mon needs three 3 star mons to become level one 4 star. A level thirty 4 star mon needs four 4 stars to become level one 5 star. A level thirty five 5 star needs five 5 stars to become level one 6 star. A 6 star mon caps at level 40. As all mons level up their stats increase. As you can tell, it takes a tremendous amount of fodder and XP farming to make a six star, which is why it is important not to make foolish choices in this regard. Another good tip is to not make a bunch of 5 star monsters. 6 star one monster at a time. You should not make a monster a 5 star unless it is going to be your next 6 star. You should not make any other monster five star unless it is fodder for that six star. Again, look at the game from a million miles away.
RUNES
In the interest of saving characters and my sanity, I am going to link to what is in my opinion still the best beginners guide to runes YT video, made by a wonderful guy named Duke. Runes have evolved a bit since this video was made, but no video will get you up to speed on how runes work better than this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKobsF81FVM Learning how to manage your runes, what runes to roll, keep, and sell, will have a greater impact on your success in this game than anything else, including summoning the most powerful mons in the game. Use the above link as a baseline but continue to educate yourself on runes as you progress through the game. If you play this game without an understanding of runes, you are wasting your time.
SCENARIO/XP FARMING
You progress through the scenario as part of the story line. None of that story line has any real impact on your game play moving forward. Still, they programmed it, so have fun playing it. For your first 6 star mon, you should make an XP farmer. An XP farmer is a mon that can single-handedly carry a team of fodder (nat 2 or nat3 unruned monsters) Water magic knight, a free monster that you get very early on, is a great mon for this. She can farm Faimon Volcano, a long time favorite for XP and fodder monsters. For XP farming, you can also use the ‘rep’ mons of your in-game friends and mentors. You can add friends in chat, and can have up to 50 friends. The game also features a mentor system, you can have 5 mentors and use their mons as farming reps as well. Alicia, Beth, and Water Homunculus are the best Faimon farmers, but many mons can farm it capably.
CAIROSS DUNGEON
As a beginner, you should obsess over your team that will eventually farm Giants, stage 10, otherwise known as GB10. More good news, water magic knight is a great starting point for your first GB10 team. You should continue to farm GB10 for months before building specific mons for other content. This means battling the dungeon on auto, waiting for the victory, keep/sell the rune or keep whatever item drops, then replay. Do this over and over and over. As you get better runes, you will get better farming times. You will then get better runes more quickly, get even better farming times, etc. Buy energy refills with crystals that you receive as rewards for events and other content. By the time you are ready to leave giants, you won’t need this guide any more.
TRIAL OF ASCENSION
This area resets once per month, and offers the best rewards in the game in comparison to the investment you make into it. There are two modes, normal and hell. If you don’t want to spend money on crystals, you need to farm TOA as much as you can every month. Some of the best beginner monsters for TOA are fire sylph, water phoenix, fire vampire, water magic knight, light inugami, light cowgirl, water howl, and dark ifrit.
GODDESS AMERIA’S BLESSING
This is a spectacular feature that was not available for new players until recently. For the first 15 days of your account you gain the following bonuses: 50 energy daily, 2x EXP and mana, free rune removal, -50% rune powerup costs, and 1 extra daily wish. Take full advantage of this. Don’t try to achieve a lot of accomplishments early, level fodder. If you choose to fuse a monster early, level those fodder monsters. You can awaken them after your 15 days, and you will have some XP boosters to use to level the monsters you fuse.
RELEVANT YOUTUBE VIDEOS
SeanB interviewing a summoner who gained significant progress in 57 days
HOW TO GET ADDED FOR SECRET DUNGEONS
When another user gets a secret dungeon, it shows in chat. You can click that players name and request them to add you to their friends list, which will allow you to enter that secret dungeon. If their friend list is full, you cannot send a request. In either case, it is appropriate to post one time, politely, in chat requesting that person add you for the secret dungeon. A secret trick, you can often add people who get secret dungeons as a mentor and then be able to send them a private message making the friend request instead. Many experienced players enjoy having active mentees, they get free energy for doing nothing. Unfortunately being a mentee doesn’t let you farm their secret dungeon, you need to get on to the friend list. Be polite. Not everyone will add you, many don’t like having weak rep monsters on their friends list, and some people are just jerks. Whatever you do, don’t be the guy who mindlessly spams chat screaming about the SD you need. Everybody hates that guy.
GAME CHAT
Chat in this game is a bit crazy. There are plenty of trolls who like to tell new players to feed monsters that will be useful in the future and then joke about it. There are racists, sexists, bigots, homophobes, and just general jerks all yelling at each other, largely unchecked by com2us. My best advice is to block them and ignore them. Do NOT take random advice from random people in chat. If you hang in one channel long enough, you will see who has valid opinions about the game and who is blowing smoke. Also, don’t go into game chat and ask “Should I 6* monster A or monster B” and provide no context. There is no earthly way a person can answer that question without you expressing what goals you want to achieve next.
STUPID QUESTIONS IN CHAT
Do not ask chat (or a streamer) “Who should I six star next?” No context questions like that are impossible to answer, and frankly lazy. Firstly, most of the people who could give you a good answer to that question are likely going to ignore you for your lazy question, or else they will ridicule you for it. Ask questions with context as in: “I have a solid GB10 and need to improve my TOA team. Should I 6 star Baretta, Mav, or Verdehile?”
TRYHARD/CASUAL
There is nothing wrong with being a casual player, just understand and accept that this is a grinding game and you’re going to have stunted progress compared to someone who is grinding. That doesn’t mean you can’t still have fun doing the parts of the game you enjoy.
JOIN A GUILD
It costs nothing, makes rewarding content available to you, and often is your best source of in game wisdom. Your guildies have a vested interest in giving you good advice. There are valuable items available in the guild shop.
MY SIGMARUS ARGUMENT
I love Sig. He was, in my opinion, specifically designed by com2us to speed new players through GB10, DB10, TOA, and TOAH, the most important content to farm early on. Sig does damage based primarily on the enemies maximum HP, not his own attack stats. This means that he makes short work of bosses and TOA monsters, who end up having very high HP as you reach higher levels. HE AOE freezes on S3, single target freezes on S2 (both 100% chance when he crits,) and has a chance to stun on S1. He awakens into crit rate, which means he has a base 30% chance to crit where most other monsters have a base 15% chance to crit. He has a 44% HP leader bonus in the dungeons, which helps to protect your squishy, poorly runed, early game monsters. A LOT of people are going to tell you to stack attack on Sigmarus. He is an attack type monster and has 988 attack when fully leveled, a very high base attack. It’s very tempting to stack attack on him and have a 2300 attack monster. Sig does NOT need attack, he needs crit damage and crit rate. He needs speed and accuracy. After that, yes, he can use some attack. He needs skillups and is worthy of your early game devilmon.
QUICK REFERENCE GUIDE
Follow tutorial, get water magic knight (Lapis.) Get Vamp Lord from event. Join a beginner guild. Put Vamp Lord runes on Lapis. Level Lapis and Vamp Lord to 5* lvl 35 together while leveling fodder monsters. 6* Lapis. Continue leveling Lapis and fodder mons, as well as fusion mons for water phoenix (Sigmarus) fusion. Seek out valuable secret dungeons and get those monsters. Focus solely on GB10, don’t get sidetracked by other content. Exploit Ameria’s blessing as much as you are able.
CONCLUSION
This guide is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many mechanics and details of this game that I have not addressed, and I want to reiterate that this is in no way supposed to be a comprehensive guide for playing the entire game. What I’ve tried to do here is give you specific guidance through your first 20-30 days of game play and some philosophical outlines for what you want to do after that. There is a lot more to learn about this game depending on how competitive you want to get with it, especially the PVP side.
