XKCD humor never lets me down; also more Another Eden ramblings

[cashew]

This is so relevant.

LOL.

Yeah, I don't have anything else to add.

In other news, I've been plugging away at Another Eden some more and the game still has yet to disappoint me. Sure, there's a bit of grind, in that some of the character advancement items aren't dropping for me, but honestly? It's not actually stopping me from advancing through the game because the free units are already so very good. The Tales collaboration units are super powerful and can easily drag your team through most of the content. The only reason I feel like pulling is because there are certain characters that seem fun and I would like to have them on my team. But I have no need for them, which is the key, as the game already gave me the characters I needed to steamroll the chapters.

I'm still going to be grinding to level up certain characters in my roster, however, since I got them from the free pulls the game gave me and there's no reason to neglect them just because the free units have been doing most of the heavy lifting.

(I've lucked into Anabel and Miyu, and have gotten Deirdre for free. These three are part of the Miglance Palace set and have a special attack animation when any two are in the team during AF, so now I'm committing myself to grind everyone to 5-stars so that the three of them can be on the team together. I also lucked into the healer Mariel, considered widely the best healer unit in the game, so guess I'm sticking with her for all my healing needs.)

---

So, now that I've been playing for a little over a week, I feel comfortable giving some starting tips if you ever decide to try out the game.

1. The game starts off very slow. It pays to be patient and really test everything out. Follow the usual JRPG trope of click everything and talk to everyone. Once you get a chance to start battling, really test out the battle mechanics. Remember, swapping is important. Front line characters should take turns going into the reserve slot. You do NOT need to have 4 front line members at all times. Depending on the flow of the game, sometimes it's better to put only your most powerful unit in the front line and shove everyone else into the reserve slot for a turn or two to recover. (To do this, tap the front line character, tap swap, then tap the "SUB" slot to remove the character from the front line.)

2. You get food when you sleep at the inn. You can only carry one food item with you at any point. Once you've used it up, you'll get another food item at the inn. To use the food, tap menu, then the rice ball (labeled food). Food restores HP and MP in the middle of a dungeon. Abuse this mechanic if your party needs to heal up befor a boss fight after a long dungeon crawl or during long story sequences.

3. Heed the level recommendation! Earlier on, it's easy to go into a dungeon/story fight under-leveled. If you over-level by about 5 levels, the fight becomes significantly easier. Always over-level if you start having difficulties.

4. Keep your equipment up-to-date as much as possible. It's actually not possible to keep the equipment as high level as your characters if you stick to a core set of party members. Also, a lot of the items used for equipment crafting drops only once a day, so you'll need to wait 24 hours before you can get a second copy. If you don't know where to find the item that you need for a particular weapon/armor piece, click on the location button and the game will tell you where you need to go to farm the item. Waiting on that one missing craft material for the next level weapon/armor piece can sometimes be maddening. Just be patient, as there's no content that is time-limited.

5. Once you've cleared a dungeon in story mode, you can start accessing it in hard mode after chapter 10. You'll want to run the hard mode dungeon as many times as you find feasible. Each run consumes a Green Key Card, and you can have up to 9 at a time. You generate a new Green Key Card every 6 hours. You also get some from watching videos. I haven't run out of Green Key Cards yet, mostly because I don't run the hard mode dungeons nearly as much as I should, so I end up having less materials than I need to upgrade the equipment. I'm kicking myself now for not running them more frequently. (But there's just so much story to get through!)

6. Do the subquests. Do all of the subquests. It might not seem like experience scrolls are all that useful (low, middle, high class scrolls) at first, but once you start getting new characters, you'll want to be able to quickly bring them up to par without having to carry a dead weight in your party to power level them in dungeons. Also, some characters are required for running specific dungeons, so you can't always carry a lower leveled unit with your high level characters.

7. Definitely grind in Chapter 1. You want to be somewhere between levels 5-7 when you take on the boss. Since the game will give you a temporary healer at the get go (but the healer will be taken away for the boss fight), just smack those random encounters whenever you see them.

8. Chapter 1 will teach you the gacha mechanic before the boss fight ensues. During this time, you will get to choose a gacha unit (called an encounter) of 4-stars. Pick either Miyu or Ciel, as these are two units that can be upgraded to 5-stars later. At this time, the free Miyu give-away has ended, so either Miyu or Ciel is a good choice. Miyu is nice for her fire-compatibility with your main character and offers an extra final combo in AF. Ciel covers one of your main character's elemental weakness. Ciel also offers piercing damage, which is extra useful against early chapter mobs due to damage type advantage. As such, I recommend Ciel for the first support character.

   • Currently (as of April 2021), the game is giving away a free bundle ticket for new players. A bundle ticket is a one-time 10-pull ticket. Use this immediately so you can have a full team of six for the rest of the story.
   • The bundle ticket will also guarantee a 5-star unit. This guaranteed 5-star will be key to carrying your team until you get more 5-star units later. This is the time to re-roll if you do not like your 5-star unit. The most coveted 5-star is Mariel. So if you have her, congrats, you're done. (It's even worth sticking with it if you got a 4-star Mariel.) I pulled Anabel AS (AS are different forms of the same character with slight tweaks). Anabel AS has done everything for my team, from healing to curing conditions to tanking damage for weaker units to straight up DPS. I love Anabel AS. I recommend sticking with Anabel AS if you also lucked into her. You can always aim for a Mariel later.
   • If you must know what the best unit possible could be, you can consult the tier list. But know that any 5-star unit can carry you through the story campaign.

9. Like I said before, you do not actually need to play the gacha. But, if you really want to get a certain unit, the gacha is split into paid vs unpaid gacha. Paid gacha guarantees a 5-star unit for a 10-pull bundle (~$20). Unpaid gacha have limited time banners (pools) that have an increased chance of getting a specific unit. I spent the free 1000 chronos stones (gacha currency) on a Mariel banner and got a 4-star Mariel. (1000 stones buys you a 10-pull bundle, each pull is 100 stones.) I'm satisfied as 4-star Mariel can be ground up to 5-star Mariel. I will now save my stones for someone else if I really want them in the future. (Currently, I'm extremely satisfied with my Tales party.)

   • I highly recommend using your first 1000 stones (which the game gives you at installation) on one of the special banners. Firstly, because having more units means more options and 4-star units will still give you a leg up in the early game as you slowly upgrade your 3-star main characters. Secondly, after clearing chapter 10, you'll get a free, selectable 4-star healer and your choice will heavily depend on who you already have. I greatly recommend spending the 1000 stones as early as possible to get a good understanding of what your selection pool looks like so you can make a better decision on your freebie guaranteed healer.
   • And yes, if you've been doing the math, the game gives you 20 pulls off the bat. Yes, you should use it up and, hopefully, get 20 units so you can pick the 6 best suited for your core team.

10. After clearing chapter 10, you will get a free 4-star healer. Who you should pick depends on who you've already pulled (see above). If you didn't get any healers in the 20 pulls, I recommend Krervo, Erina, or Pom. (I personally don't like Pom as a character because she's a bit...problematic.) Prai is a bit redundant with Riica, and Riica is already accessible and can be upgraded to 5-stars. Erina is a mana drain, so she needs to be carefully managed. Krervo and Pom are easier to manage (better Valor Chant - the swap-in skill), but not as good for boss fights. If you managed to pull some healers before, get the units you don't have for variety. I recommend keeping one healer in reserve and one in the front line then rotate between the two during battle.

11. After you've pulled 20 times with the free pulls, take inventory and decide who will be your main team. You will not have enough resources to equip everyone, so focus on the 6 most cohesive units. Ignore 3-star characters unless they can be upgraded to 5-stars. Otherwise, stick to using 4- and 5-star characters and fill in the rest with main story characters. Having the same weapon type will give you bonus combo damage under AF, but having different weapon types means having good type coverage (slashing/piercing/blunt). Since type advantage doubles damage, it's worth it to give up on some AF combo power for type advantage. You want to aim for a core team that is capable of the following:

    • At least one unit that can AOE trash mobs to make dungeon crawling easier.
    • At least one unit that can multi-hit a single enemy for AF extension during boss fights. (Multi-hits increases the duration of AF.)
    • At least one unit that can heal HP and restore condition (called status in this game.)
    • At least one unit that can apply poison/pain/stun/sleep (prioritize in that order if you can only get one status condition) to soften up boss fights.
    • At least one unit that can apply offensive debuff (INT down, PWR down) or defensive buffs (SPR up, END up) to survive OHKOs from bosses. (INT/PWR down should be prioritized over SPR/END up)
    • Stats explained here.

12. The free Persona collab units (from the Symphony quests) are extremely powerful early game. You get a 5-star level 30 Morgana just by opening chapter 1 of the Persona quest. You'll also get a 4-star level 30 Joker that will upgrade to 5-star after you complete Part 1's (3 chapters) quest line.

    • Morgana heals 1000 HP (1500 HP with his character weapon), which is more than enough for everything up to around at least level 50. He can apply status debuffs to enemies and deals extra damage against poisoned enemies. Krervo (the free 4-star healer unit you get after clearing chapter 10) applies poison (hence why I recommend Krervo when you get a chance to pick him).
    • Joker's Valor Chant (swap-in skill) deals AOE piercing damage. His regular attacks deal slashing damage. So he covers two attack types and AOE mob clean up. He can also apply AOE sleep to make mob clearing much safer.

13. The free Tales of... collab units (from the Symphony quests) are also extremely powerful. You'll have to complete the full quest line to get their 5-star version, but even their 4-star versions are still extremely useful.

    • Cress (Tales of Symphonia) gives Slash Stance (aka Zone) with his Valor Chant (swap-in skill). Swap him in and you get a permanent buff to slashing damage, which affects sword, katana, and axe wielders. Slash damage units are the most popular units so you're likely to have a good selection of these. They're also the most common free units.
    • Yuri (Tales of Vesperia) can heal 1500HP and is a fearsome DPS unit plus AF extension. He also equips a katana and ring, unlike other slash units that tend to be sword + brace, so you can get a break on the weapon crafting materials.
    • Milla (Tales of Xillia) does a bit of everything. Early on, her biggest contribution is slowing the boss down so your units can get their hits in and her Shimmer Spin skill that debuffs/buffs and heals depending on the most used element (null-element heals 50% max HP, other elements give element-dependent debuff/buffs). Milla is a support unit that can fit any team.
    • Velvet (Tales of Berseria) is an AF extender and self-buffer. All of her skills is focused on buffing herself. She's a unit you build around as the center, as her spike damage is out of this world. She can account for 50% of the DPS on a team, but she doesn't bring much else.

14. You will get a free 3-star healing unit called Sophia once you get to chapter 14. She can be upgraded to 5-stars at the end of the quest chain. Sophia is very good, even at 3-stars. Her Valor Chant (swap-in skill) heals the team. She also applies poison, making her very good to use with Morgana. Swapping between her and Morgana makes for a very good rotation during boss battles and allows each unit to recover some mana between turns.

15. DON'T SCREW UP YOUR WHITE KEY CARD DUNGEONS. The White Key Card gives you access to Phantom Crystal Dimension. This is a special dungeon that has no mobs, no fights, just treasure chests. Open the chests and click on the cats before clicking anything else, as those other exclamation marks are portals that will take you away from your treasure. I made the mistake of checking out the portals before the treasure and missed my chance to pick up freebies. Oh, also, white key cards has a 10% drop rate when doing regular hard mode dungeons and you can only ever have one at a time. So use them immediately and collect as much loot as you can.

And that concludes my beginner tips. There's just so much stuff in this game and because it's not time-limited, you can work through the content at your own pace. Nothing ever gets blocked off permanently and you can always return to finish whatever you missed the first time around.

So I highly recommend giving Another Eden a whirl. If you like JRPGs, if you like turn-based battle systems, if you like videogames that actually tries to tell a story and engaging plot, then you should give Another Eden a try.