Beginner's Guide

The following is a **beginner's guide** to getting started with **Grand Summoners**.

 **Credit:**
 **Written by Darmo** *with suggestions from members of the community*

## 1. Getting Started

### The Start

After you complete the tutorial to familiarise yourself with the basic game mechanics, you can choose one of the 3 Blade Masters.
These can be evolved into around B tier units. Corsair is the recommended choice as she is the best of the 3.

In addition, it may be worth your while to reroll for a high tier and/or Hyper Rare (aka HR) capable unit(s). Check the Recommended Units section to see which units are worth getting. If you don’t want to reroll for a HR unit.
Hyper Rare units are those who can be evolved up to 5 stars.

You may also wish to join one (or all!) of the online communities to further your gameplay experience. The majority of this game revolves around co-op with other players, so this is a great way to find said other people to play with!
The main online communities are on Facebook, Reddit and Discord.

### So, what do I do after I start?

The first thing to do once you are settled is to play through the storyline and enjoy yourself.

This will allow you to get a better feel for the units you are using, as well as the enemies and the weapon range. This is especially recommended if you want to excel in co-op!

Once you are comfortable with the gameplay, start levelling up your units (details on how to do this efficiently are in the Resource Management section), which will allow you to tackle most Advanced and Expert quests. If you have units that you want to evolve, farming for evolution materials is also recommended.

## 2. Basic Battle Mechanics

### Unit Types

Units are sorted into one of five types, which determine their use and how to gear them up.

Attacker-type units is straight offense. They tend to have moderate HP, low DEF and high ATK. Attackers are needed to burst through boss’s attack pattern and produce the most consistent damage output. Most of these units have 2 attacks slots.

Supporter-type units will often offers buff for your team and debuff for your enemy. These units tend to have moderate HP, DEF and ATK, and will do a bit less damage then an attacker but can still be considered as a sub-attacker.Their priorities are to gear up to help your team such as freezing enemy or boosting burst gauge. Most of these units have 1 attack slot and an assist slot.

Breaker-type units will break up to sky the break gauge of bosses(inflicting more damage and could make them flinch). These units tend to have moderate HP, DEF and high ATK. Breaker types can be difficult to control as most of them have a short skill range, but are often essential in some bosses fights. Most of these units have 2 attacks slot.

Healer-type units are literally there to heal and negate negative status. These units tend to have low ATK and high DEF,HP. They are crucial in the early phase of game where you can’t OTKO the bosses. Most of these units have 1 recovery slot and a defense slot.

Defender-type units are the wall of your team, their burst consist of negating enemy damage. These units tend to have low ATK and high DEF, HP. Most of these units have 1 defense slot.

### Basic Stats

Units have 3 primary stats, being ATK, HP and DEF.

* ATK: Generally, units will deal damage equivalent to their attack (before applying elemental advantages) to enemies.
* HP: How much HP that unit have and can take damage from enemy.
* DEF: A measure of how less the unit will take damage.

### Elements

Each unit is also aligned with one of 5 elements.

* Fire
* Water
* Earth
* Light
* Dark

As with many other games, the elements follow two basic strength+weakness cycles:

The first cycle consists of Fire, Water, and Earth.

* Fire > Earth
	+ **Fire** deals 20% more damage to **Earth**
	+ **Fire** takes 20% less damage from **Earth**
* Earth > Water
	+ **Earth** deals 20% more damage to **Water**
	+ **Earthtakes 20% less damage from** Water

* Water > Fire
	+ **Water** deals 20% more damage to **Fire**
	+ **Water** takes 20% less damage from **Fire**

The second cycle consists of Light and Dark.
Light | Dark

* Light > Dark
	+ **Light** deals 20% more damage to **Dark**
	+ **Light** takes 20% more damage from **Dark**
* Dark > Light
	+ **Dark** deals 20% more damage to **Light**
	+ **Dark** takes 20% more damage from **Light**

As you can see, the first cycle has each element with a strength and weakness.
On the other hand, the second cycle has each element with the same strength and weaknesses.
This means that for Light and Dark units, they will always deal and take extra damage from each other.

### Equipment Types

There are 5 types of equipment:

* Physical
* Magic
* Defense
* Healing
* Support

In addition to having a certain type, each equipment also has a certain rarity.
The lowest rarity for equipment is 1★ while the the highest rarity is 5★.

### Skills and Abilities

Each unit has an active skill, which can be activated by tapping the screen while the unit skill gauge is full. These deal much more damage than normal attacks, and generally have a larger attack range. Using an active skill will cause the unit to stop any action.

Units also have Arts or an True Arts if the unit is awakened, which do significantly more damage and have significantly larger ranges compared to active skills. They can be used when their AG(art gauge) is full by flicking once for Art and twice for True Art. The AG is recharged by doing damage to enemies, by certain skills/abilities and gears.

Units also have up to 3 passive abilities, which aid them in battle.

### Bosses and Break Gauge

When you fight against a boss, he has 5 orbs which fills through time and once he get full, he’ll launch a big move.Now you have two option, either break him or interrupting him (which does not work against some bosses).
Breaking a boss, will increase damage dealt by 1.25 and he will not charge orb nor launch a big attack.
When you break while he’s at 5 orbs you’ll cancel his attack.
Interrupting a boss, can be done by inflicting him paralyze or freeze. Through some unit skills and arts or through some equipments.

## 3. Obtaining & Improving Units

The two main ways of obtaining units are from the Gacha, and from Invasion quests. Single pulls from the gacha cost 5 crystals, whereas a 10+1 pull costs 50 crystals.
You should aim to have at least 2-3 Hyper Rares. You can obtain these units by either farming Invasion quests, or occasionally doing pulls from the gacha.

Check the tier list on the official Grand Summoners Discord server for units to pull for

### Enhancement

The easiest and most efficient method for enhancing units is to use Chickens. Using Chicken of the same element as the unit you are levelling is strongly recommended, as this will grant a 50% EXP bonus. The cost of enhancing increases with level, so it is also advisable to bulk enhance your units when they are at a low level to minimise costs.

ADDITIONAL STATS
In addition to level, there are three additional stats, being Stat Boosts, Luck and Limit breaking.

Stat boosts and allow you to raise the stats of your units even further. This can be done with Killmons, which can be obtained as drops from any quest, as well as certain event items or in a Spirit quest. The limit of stat boosts for units increase depending it’s limit break level.

Each additional point of Luck reflects a 1% increase in the chance of bonus rewards when that unit is brought into a quest. Luck is only influenced by your leader unit. Luck can be increased by fusing copies of itself. This includes copies of different rarities.
Rayas Luck can be increase as you finish quest, by fusing his copy and will be available up to 80 Luck.

A unit can also be Limit break up to 5 times, by limit breaking the same unit. However, units
can also be limit break with Unit Break Stone, from alchemy shop or through event.
As you limit breakthrough your unit, he gets more stats to boost and additional rarity for his equipment slots.
Most of HR units will have at 5 Limit Break, 5,5,4 Rarity equipment slots.

### Evolution

Most units can be evolved to a higher rarity, allowing them to get stronger. Evolution will keep your units level at their new rarity, and allows them to keep all boosts, luck and limit breakthrough they have already obtained.

Units are evolved using Evolution Materials. Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Evolution Materials can be obtained as completion rewards from EM quests of their respective difficulty.

Obtaining these can be a long and tedious process, and it is recommended that you farm for the lower rarity materials and exchange at the event/crossover shops.

## 4. Resource Management

### What do I spend my stamina on?

The main form of activity in the game is the completion of quests.Stamina are used to enter most quest stages. ST refills at a rate of 1 per 3 minutes. When you start the game, you will rank up extremely quickly. your ST can and will overflow.

Once you have some decently leveled units, you should be spending doing Boss quests and going through the story.
If you run out of ST, go and join rooms that others have hosted. This is highly recommended, as it does not cost any ST to join another’s room, while you receive all the rewards the host does except for rank EXP. This also allows you to achieve Relationship Rewards with your friends, which is an additional source of Alchemy gems and Crystals. It is also recommended to use foods as some can boost the Luck of each one by 20 if 4 co-op users use the same food.

### What do I spend my crystal on?

Later on, there will be twice per month of SUPERHERO FESTIVAL 1st & 2nd, where the most useful and top tier units will be released on a limited occasion.
The rate for those unit are abysmal so it is highly recommended to save for those draw.
Or Any 10+1 pulls that grants one HR units are recommended if your unit pools is small.

As for equipment, most of the high value equipment are from events or bosses drop so, while it is important to have draw pulls equipment to start on, do pull with precaution.

### Who should I use LB Stone on?

Check the tier list on the official Discord to see the Limit Breaking priorities

### Story Quests

The Story follows the plot of the Grand Summoner world. The story starts of reasonably easy in the first 3 Regions, then gets progressively more difficult. The fifth Region are extremely difficult, and may require the use of revives, or a well upgraded team.
Story quests can not be co-oped.

### Sub Story Quests

The Sub Story supplements the main storyline by exploring the backgrounds of Rayas and Iris and Ragshelm. But it will be available only after you clear 5th Region.

### Special Quests

Special quests include the daily dungeon, event and boss quest.

The elements for daily dungeon quests are:

Monday - Dark
Tuesday - Fire
Wednesday - Water
Thursday- Earth
Friday- Light
Saturday and Sunday- Mixed elements

In addition to these, a range of key-limited quests are available. Golds,Birds and Tasmons only quest can be unlocked by using its respective keys.

HOW DO I OBTAIN CRYSTALS?
Crystals can be obtained from a variety of places:
Completing story quests
Completing each difficulty levels for a daily quest series
Relationship rewards with friends
First 100 multi encounters
Various event and daily missions
Buying them as IAP
Though different achievements.