cashew | More Another Eden updates (Reply)

So, I slept terribly last night, which means I'm gonna be blathering at you today. Currently, I've restarted Another Eden. As I've mentioned previously, due to some glitches with Bluestacks, I can't get my progress back, so I've effectively restarted a run through, this time without festival bonuses. I think this gives me a better idea of what kind of challenges a new player might face when not given special units to carry me through the game and having to make do with in-game characters.

Before I begin, check out my previous posts on this game (now with dedicated tag because I genuinely like this game and find it consumer friendly). Specifically, check out the intro to game mechanics entry and new player experience entry to get an idea of what I felt about the game when starting it during the promotional event.

Currently, I'm playing 2.11.200 version, which has some updates to the UI, such as increased skill slot at 80+ light/dark, but those changes are far off into the late-game future and not really that important for the beginner experience. With that said, onto the New-new player experience!

Guaranteed Pulls

So, without special promotions and stuff, the game still gives you a 10-pull bundle ticket at the get go. This ticket will guarantee a 4-star unit with the ability to upgrade to 5-stars in the future. This unit will be carrying your team until you get better units. You will also get a Whisper of Time event that will give you a single daily pull that generates a special gacha currency (Tears). After ten days, you can convert the Tears into a one-time guaranteed 5-star gacha pull. You'll want to consider this 5-star as your main dungeoning team core in early-mid game.

In the first chapter, you will encounter a gacha tutorial. Here, you'll get to pick a 4-star unit. This unit is going to carry your team if your 10-pull bundle ticket doesn't pan out, so I recommend on picking the four characters with future 5-star potential. They are (in descending preference):

Bivette
Ciel
May
Miyu

Bivette:
I was lucky enough to pull a Bivette in the gacha from my 10-pull ticket, so I now know how ridiculously good Bivette is for the team. Bivette is considered the quickest of the lot to grind to 5-star and her 4-star version can make things much, much easier until you can get access to dedicated healers. Bivette starts off with regen and learns status removal later. Regen will take the pressure off your healing character and status removal is a rare skill that is usually the purview of pure healer units. However, Bivette is a fire-DPS unit, which means she can contribute to damage while keeping your team free of status effects. In earlier boss fights, keeping your team free of damaging status effects can be more important to survival than defensive buffs.

Ciel:
I was also lucky enough to pull a Ciel from the gacha at the get go, so now I have Ciel and Bivette. Ciel is a pretty common unit to pull from the gacha (I've gotten him in both runs in the first 20 pulls), so you'll likely get him soon. But if you prefer having more RNG free guarantee, Ciel is also a good unit to consider, although he's much harder to 5-star than Bivette. Ciel gains access to Elemental Song(+30% against all elements), which is very helpful dealing with a lot of bosses, as the most damaging attacks tend to be elemental magic in the early game. Ciel's earth element and piercing damage also helps greatly in the early game areas against water and flying enemies. Ciel can also pull off AOE to help clear trash mobs and his high speed means he's great for swapping in characters you want to use Valor Chants (see battle mechanics wiki for greater detail).

May:
I chose May when I started the game a second time, and so far she's proven to be less useful than Bivette or Ciel. Her synergy is mostly with Ciel in terms of earth-based damage and her base blunt damage helps punches through stuff that Aldo (the main character) can't. But her real potential isn't until much, much later, when she grows into a strong S-tier earth/blunt DPS unit. During early game, when you're mostly restricted to in-game units, May's synergy is lower. So if you're willing to roll the dice on support units during the early game-stage, then go with May, the only S-tier guarantee out of the four. However, unless you invest heavily into the gacha, May doesn't contribute much to a F2P team.

Miyu:
Everything Miyu does, Aldo can also do. There's much less reason to get Miyu unless you don't want to grind Aldo up. If you pick Miyu, she comes at 4-star level, which means more damage compared to Aldo, but getting Aldo to 4-stars isn't that much harder and he's required for some of the other side quests that give pretty good in-game units, so you might as well invest time into Aldo. If you get lucky and pull Miyu's Another Style (AS), then she's much more worthwhile. But I don't recommend picking Miyu over the previous three units.

Once you clear chapter 10, you'll have access to another guaranteed selection between four 4-star healer units: Prai, Krervo, Erina, and Pom.

If you still haven't pulled any of these units somehow in the free pulls bundle (and haven't spent any stones on the gacha banners), who you decide on will depend on what your team is currently missing. Ignore Pom, as she doesn't really bring anything the other three don't already.

With Bivette...

Prai:
If you chose Bivette in the tutorial encounter, then you'll want to pick Prai. This is because Prai is the only unit capable of upgrading to 5-stars later in the game. Having Bivette takes the pressure off of your healing unit, so Prai's slowness isn't as much of an issue. Later on, Prai becomes a very good blunt damage unit on top of his supporting skills, so he'll offer late game choice when you start outgrowing your early game units.

Without Bivette...

Warning: If you do not pick one of Bivette/Prai, you will be leaving your status management in the hands of RNG. On the other hand, by the time you're ready to build your 5-star team, you'll probably have managed to pull a healing unit from the gacha with the free currency.

Krervo:
Krervo is another worthwhile consideration, especially if you don't have Bivette, as Krervo's VC removes status afflictions. Again, being able to remove status when switching in means Krervo can dedicate more mana to healing and keeping the party alive, a thing much more important in early game during boss fights. This makes Krervo a better unit than Prai in early game if you don't have Bivette. However, with Bivette, Krervo's role mostly becomes spike healing, greatly reducing his usefulness.

Erina:
Erina is a discount Bivette. She has regen, status removal, and good spike healing that also steals HP for neutral damage. On a team without Bivette, Erina becomes a toss up compared to Krervo due to her damage output. Because HP steal and healing is rolled into one skill, that means Erina can carry regen, heal, dps, and status removal, without having to give up any of the skills. However, her VC is less useful than Krervo's and require much more active mana management. With Bivette, there's no real point to Erina, go with Prai instead.

Again, ignore Pom.

In-game characters - Main

The main story gives you 4 characters: Aldo (main character), Riica, Amy, Cyrus. These four will make up the main core of your team until you can get access to better units through gacha or collab/side-story units. If you got lucky on your free 10-pull bundle, you won't really need any of these units other than Aldo, as Aldo is mandatory for some of the side-story units and progressing the main story.

All four characters are capable of reaching 5-star with a buttload of grinding. They also become very good units with a buttload of grinding, so it's worth investing in them. Here's how I rank the importance of each character.

Aldo:
Aldo should be your priority. Not only is Aldo necessary for another good free unit later in the game, but he is often required for story progression. Also, Aldo is a good slash/fire unit that combines well with some later collab units. If RNG has not favored you when trying to get Aldo's 4-star tome, you can get it via a guaranteed in-game reward through farming Dierdre's dungeon (see "Side-story" section). Of the characters, Aldo is the character most likely to advance to 4-star during early game and stay relevant. In short, Aldo is a powerful unit that is worth your time, especially when you're F2P.

Cyrus:
Cyrus has the potential to become an S-tier slash unit. He's the second easiest to advance to 4-stars after Aldo, because he, too, has an easy to access side-story dungeon that allows him to grind his skills up through the rewards system. However, getting him to 5-star to realize his full potential is a much harder grind, and he's not required for story advancement the way Aldo is. He is also easily replaced by a much easier to level 5-star collab units. What's more, given his pure-DPS nature, he only becomes a superior unit after he reaches 5-stars. So, Cyrus is definitely a work-in-progress character.

Amy:
Amy's biggest advantage is that she is the easiest to farm up light/shadow points. Light/shadow is a system that improves the units after maxing levels. Gacha units gain light/shadow when a second copy is pulled. For in-game units, light/shadow is earned through running the corresponding dungeon. Amy's dungeon is the second lowest leveled dungeon, thus making her dungeon the easiest to run for light/shadow farming. Furthermore, both her and Riica's 4-star tome drops in her dungeon, thus making it very attractive to run the dungeon with her. However, her DPS potential is lower than Cyrus, especially if your gacha luck doesn't gift you with a blunt-zone setter. She also has less synergy with Aldo, making her mostly good for Light battery rather than as a dps/utility unit.

Riica:
Unfortunately, as much as I love Riica the character, game mechanics wise, Prai overtakes her in terms of usefulness and versatility. So level Riica if you want, but if you're F2P and the RNG wasn't too great, there's not a lot to recommend for investing limited resources into Riica. Early game, Riica might be your only spike-heal option, but she loses her benefits after chapter 10. Leave her for after you've got a really good main dungeoning team.

In-game characters - Collabs

There are two major collab dungeons that are available to you soon after chapter 13. The prologues open after Chapter 1, so it's worth doing it as soon as you can.

Persona Collab

Persona has two collabs, and in early game you get access to the first one. The second collab is in mid-to-late-game and thus less relevant to the early game experience.

Collab #1 gives you access to two 5-star units with minimal grind: Joker and Morgana. These two units aren't great, but they're the first full 5-stars units guaranteed in early game, when level matters more than build. Also, they have useful support skills that make them good for carrying a low level team and grinding dungeons.

Morgana:
Morgana's best attribute is 1500hp heal (1000hp without character weapon) at low mp cost. He's easily one of the most cost efficient spike healers during mid-game. He also guarantees some good physical damage reduction plus extra dps if the enemy is poisoned. So if you have a poison-setter, Morgana can do respectable DPS. He can also save your team by setting up AoE multi-debuffs, which is helpful for getting your team to clear the collab and side-story at a lower level. You'll find little use for Morgana once you get Yuri/Milla up to 5-stars, but until then, Morgana is worth leveling. Just don't waste scrolls on him.

Joker:
Joker's a bit of a joke. *badumtush* However, Joker offers great mob-clearance with his VC. Put him in reserves and switch him in to do AOE damage and watch the trash mobs melt away. He also brings a good sleep debuff that can put some units out of commission for a while and save your party some pain when going through difficult dungeons. So basically he's a good free 5-star character that can help you clear dungeons faster. Again, worth leveling up during early game, but avoid investing too many resources. However, he still has late-game niche uses, so he's worth slightly more resources than Morgana.

Edit to add:

Collab #2 is a mid-game collab (recommended level 50), and gives you two more 5-star characters: Violet and Skull. Violet is rewarded for clearing the story and Skull requires a complicated mission system.

I want to focus on Violet a bit, because she's an earth/slash unit that combos well/can replace Deirdre (see "Side-story" section). By the time you can get Deirdre to her 5-star form, you should be able to complete Persona 5 collab #2. She's worth putting the effort into getting, because she's an easy S-tier unit, unlike Dierdre who is slightly more situational. However, Dierdre's lower star version is faster to get, so you might have ended up grinding her levels up.)

Tales Collab

You get four units that start off at 4-stars and upgrades with increasing difficulty to 5-stars. The way the grinding works for Tales Collab is that you need to collect "dreamcolors" from the collab dungeon. When you reach 5k, 53k, 125k, and 205k, respectively, you'll be able to open a corresponding boss which will give the 5-star upgrade tome to the Tales character. As such, the first Tales character is fairly easy to upgrade to 5-stars, while the second requires some dedicated grinding, and the third and fourth become extra hard and time consuming.

Here's my recommended order for grinding 5-star on the collab units: Yuri→Cress→Milla→Velvet

Yuri:
Yuri is an S-tier wind/slash user, so he's the most versatile out of the group. He also carries a 1500hp heal (which also gives +25% element defense), can quickly build up Another Force (AF) gauge, extends AF, and builds combos. Yuri combines well with Aldo, Cyrus, and Cress to form a formidable slash team. He also can combine with other wind units if you get lucky and pull a wind-zone setter. Furthermore, he can pinch-hit as a pain-setter if you haven't finished grinding Deirdre. Basically, he's useful at the get go and continues to be useful well into the final stages of the game, so you might as well get him up to 5-stars as quickly as possible.

Cress:

Edit to add:
After experiencing the Chrono Cross collab, I've concluded that Cress is no longer as worthwhile to grind up and falls below Milla in terms of importance. See here for new order of collab character importance.

Cress is an S-tier fire/slash user, so he combines well with Aldo. He's also a free slash-zone setter. Of course, there are other better gacha units, but without good gacha luck, Cless is still good purely for switching in to set the slash-zone with his VC. Even at 4-stars, he's already very useful and will remain useful for a long, long time. The reason I prioritize Yuri over Cress is because 1) you might get lucky and pull a 5-star slash-zone setter causing Cress to become obsolete and 2) because a 4-star Cress is still powerful enough to use well into the later stages of mid-game. So you'll have plenty of time to slowly grind enough dreamcolor to unlock 5-star Cress.

Milla:
Milla would be my preferred third option to get up to 5-stars. Milla's a versatile slash unit with limited elemental damage (although she's ostensibly a water unit). That's because Milla's skill takes on the damage type of the most used element at the end of the turn and her VC gives 3 turns of elemental damage buff. This means Milla actually can fit into any elemental team as a powerful support unit, while being a substantial DPS unit in a slash team. Milla's Shimmer Spin also heals the team at the end of the turn if the team dealt non-elemental damage, thus making her a good sustained healer while doing chip damage. She can also debuff enemy's power stat to improve the team's sustain capacity, while her DPS skill gets a 280% multiplier if the enemy has 4 debuffs on them. In short, she's a good unit to have to plug holes on a team and offers late-game versatility on a F2P account. But in terms of early game, Yuri+Cress is a much more effective combo. (Note: In a slash team, a front line of Yuri+Cress+Milla+Deirdre is an insane DPS combo, leaving the two reserve slots open for condition management units.)

Velvet:
Velvet brings less to the table than the other three in terms of support for the team. However, she does have the highest DPS under AF, but only in the hardest of hard dungeons would the damage difference matter all that much. What Velvet does have over the other three units is a self-sustain when swapping in. Because she gives herself a 1500hp boost when swapping in, she is likely to survive the damage dealt that turn. So, at 4-stars, she is still usable, and thus have the lowest priority to get to 5-stars. Furthermore, at 5-stars, she has the least potential, as all her skills are focused on herself and doesn't benefit team synergy, making the other units preferable in a team build. Especially when playing with free units, she's mostly there to hold the place until other 5-stars become available.

In-game characters - Side-stories

There are multiple optional side-stories that open up after you get to chapter 13. However, the fastest to complete and the most useful is Deirde's dungeon. First, Deirdre is a pain-setting unit and a great slash damage user. Between her and Yuri (whom you'll get before Deirdre), you're almost guaranteed to be able to get the Pain status on the enemy. (Pain is the physical counter part to the Poison effect.) Furthermore, Deirdre has earth slash damage, making her a more useful slash-zone unit than Velvet. Third, she has less grind because she reaches 5-stars by completing the story mission, so there's no RNG blocking your advancement.

The second fastest side-story to open up is Sophia's. Sophia is a healing unit that uses Axe, so she benefits from slash-zone. She's a pure-healing unit, so you don't want her sitting in the front-lines for too long and definitely not during AF-chain. However, she can heal, buff allies, and debuff enemies. Best of all, she heals with her VC, effectively popping off a free heal and makes for a great swap-in character. The VC heal is % based, maxing out at 40%, which is a very substantial spike healing, comparable to Milla's end-turn heal from Shimmer Spin. If you don't need the DPS from Milla, Sophia is a completely viable replacement.

There's plenty of other units, but those are well into the mid-game and no longer part of the new game experience. However, even if you have the worst luck at gacha, you can still build a very decent 5-star dungeon team that can help grind stuff.

Slash-zone
Front-line: Yuri, Cress, Violet/Deirdre, Aldo/Cyrus/Milla
Reserves: Bivette/Prai (must have one for status management), Joker/Morgana/Sophia

The above team should easily get you to the end game without too many problems.

More Another Eden updates