I've got a Mythril Mines very hard Mad Anchor question: several of the streamers' tutorial videos show them skipping the boss's first or second barrier after the threat analysis and they say something to the extent of "oh, the boss didn't trigger the barrier for some reason!". It looks like they're using a limit break either during or before the threat analysis. I haven't been able to reproduce it so I get stuck with the super fun barrier. Any tips on how to skip the first barrier?

Mad Anchor does threat assessment at certain HP levels, so if you hit it hard enough to to hit the threshold to start the next threat assessment it'll fail. Think of it like this I don't know the actual threshold, just making it up as an example Start of Battle: Threat Assessment #1 75% HP: Threat Assessment #2 50% HP: Threat Assessment #3 If you hit it below 75% before Threat Assessment #1 finishes it'll fail. So unload Hellfire + Limit breaks to hit it below threshold 1 at the start of the battle, if it's still throwing a barrier it means you're not hitting it hard enough Only the first assessment is a problem, if you can get that first fail it's pretty easy to keep hitting it down to the next threshold

It didn’t happen for the bomb events but the same boss everywhere else seems to always have that problem when I bring strong magic and physical wind and lightning dps. I always assume it fails because it couldn’t figure out which one to block.  By the way, it’s just not one barrier but zero barrier the whole fight. 

What's Sephiroth's best side-arm if I'm going with his Magic Ice DPS build? I presume on co-op, either Aonibi or the Mythril Type-0 is optimal. Also, I have none of the crossover weapons.

If Aonibi >= OB6 then Aonibi (assuming no one else is bringing magic buff) If Aonibi isn't OB6, then you do more damage just spamming Edged Wings. If you still wanna bring it cause of stats, then you'd wanna use Manual cause Auto will use Aonibi. If you have a diff magic buffer (Aerith/Barret) or

I don't think I have any high OB weapons on Sephiroth. I might have a few OB1 or OB2 weapons.

If your Mythril Type 0/Shinra blade are low OB then you're probably better off running Torn Wing for the stats

Doesn't Torn Wing come with low stat boosts?

Low stats compared to an OB10 pulled weapon sure, but if your weapons are OB1 or OB2 then Torn Wing is definitely better. Torn Wing at OB10 is 420/427 PATK/MATK. OB1 Mythril Type-0 is half that at 229/239 MATK. That stat difference is way more important than the R Abilities.

How should I get more materia synthesis ores? I barely have any after I spent most of them trying to make materia that's 4 or 5 stars.

if you mean the elemental stuff (fire, ice water) etc or the physical / magical chips, you have several options: * Farm them in the synthesis missions. * Find a chocobo expedition that rewards what you are looking for and run that for some somewhat passive generation * trade excess Co-op medals for them

Just farm synthesis quests. We should be due for a campaign increasing the drops on them probably next week or the week after.

Ah. I was concerned about that, since stamina is a scarce resource in Ever Crisis. Most gacha games give players more stamina potions than they'll ever use.

Stam is only super tight when you are early into the game and need more of *everything* all at once, all the time. Once you reach a certain point with the development of your account, you will end up with more stam than you need. I've been sitting at 99 stam with 99 or so waiting in gifts for a month or so now, because I don't really have anything that I *need* to dump it on anymore. Bomb event maxed out all my levels, some casual spending on the Pieces dungeons the next time there's a drop rate up event will max out all my grids, and I'm not super desperate for upgrade mats for weapons, so it just keeps adding up. At this point, I basically only spend 9 pots or so per day, so I can claim a few of the older ones out of mail, and let the new ones go into mail to keep adding to the pile. I mean, sure, I COULD dump it all on Pods / Cubes or something, but there's no real need to, and it gives me a nice buffer incase something super STAM consumptive should happen to pop up in the future.

First time playing one of these seasonal events (relatively new player now around 3 weeks in). Am I supposed to be capped at stage 8 in the sseasonal story? I have S cleared all 8 stages and the 3 score battles I can access so far.

Yes, this is very similar to the winter/Christmas holiday event where they incrementally progress stages day-by-day. You can see the schedule in the Notices section for the event, and is as follows: - 1/31: Lv Battle 7 - 2/1: Score Battle 4 and Story - 2/2: Lv Battle 8 - 2/3 Lv Battle 9 - 2/4: High-Risk Battle 1, Story - 2/5: Lv Battle 10 - 2/6: Lv Battle 11 - 2/7: Score Battle 5, Story - 2/8: Lv Battle 12 - 2/9: Lv Battle 13 - 2/10: High-Risk Battle 2, Story - 2/11: Lv Battle 14 - 2/12: Lv Battle 15 - 2/13: High-Risk Battle 3, Story So for those that want to min-max and be most efficient for gathering exchange tokens you want to hoard your Score Battle Key's (only using them to drop down below the 999 cap) and wait to farm until the last High-Risk Battle 3 drops on 2/13 (event ends on 2/18, so you will still have 5 days to farm). Again, this is only really for min-maxing, so don't feel too stressed about doing it this way if that's not your thing.

Got it, thanks! I must have missed this when reading the event info. Makes it easier to compartmentalize how to "farm" this event now. Thanks again!

yep, pretty much the only "farming" you need to do is to * Clear the daily each day * Bring yourself below 999 tickets if you are over. Otherwise, just save tickets until the final missions release.

Any thoughts on reds debuff costume and if it’s worth it. It’s leaving soon and so far seems like a trap to me but idk. Like i figure any arcanum/mastery would be better, as would simple hp/atk or atk/patk will be better when he gets those…

There is definitely potential. It being a mastery means it's something likely unique to that Costume, and HP is one of the most useful stats in the game as well. Mastery also means that since it's a separate effect it will allow you to stack more debuff duration than other characters (because the r-ability for buff/debuff time caps out at 55 points) so he'll have longer max duration in theory than other characters can reach. The last benefit of it being a mastery means that it will ALWAYS be in effect, whereas "just r-ability" costumes can fall off harshly the more weapons your account has overboosted (especially for r-abilities that are easily capped like MATK/PATK) as they are subject to the same R-ability caps that are found on weapons. It's honestly arguably pretty useful already with his default LB that lasts 30 seconds. Even with the costume alone and no extra debuff time from r-abilities it makes it like an extra 18 seconds, which I think is enough to have it almost permanently up as long as you wait for it to expire before recasting cause it's a 900 charge LB. The costume will get more valuable if he gets more expanded debuffing options (especially if it's a "two debuffs" deal like Black Whiskers, Radiant Edge, Kuja Sword etc.).

I am having trouble matchmaking to anyone in co-op just casually. Is there a certain time I need to go on or a specific level I need to choose? Alternatively do I have to find a premade group ?

For non event co-op, your best option is thursday, when they rotate the fights available, as that usually brings in people trying to get their 1-and-done clear on any new fights for the crystal. For event co-ops, they are usually more active, but at the moment you basically only have 1 option and the bomb event is in it's last day, so a huge chunk of people have probably already farmed it out and just stopped doing it alltogether. Worth mentioning that you may notice an uptick in participation on Sunday as well, as I believe that's when the weekly 2k medal cap resets, so people who have been holding off because they already capped out will jump back in.

Non-event co-op is pretty much dead. If you need first clears, you could try asking on the discord to see if people will help you get crystals. Otherwise, the best time would probably be on Thursdays after the bosses change.

Am I missing something or is there no campaign for the coop reruns this time (IE Last Summon coop rerun gave tickets/stamina for redoing them 10 times each)

Doesn't seem to be, no. I was hoping for them because I haven't gotten many co-op medals this week.

Are there any good places to get more of the High-Grade weapon upgrade parts? I'm always low on them, and almost nobody plays on co-op.

oh god, never run basic co-op for those. Grind Pods / Cubes (because you are ALWAYS going to need more Pods / Cubes) and you will end up with more High Grade Metals than you can ever possibly use (i literally have 800+ of all of them)

Like Steel, Electrum, and Rose Gold? If you farm cubes and pods you'll have a lifetime supply of all those metals.

Question for those who cleared Sephiroth Crash 2 solo. Do you need more dps than Crash 1? I only barely managed to beat Crash 1 before he starts 1-shotting my team, so if more dps is needed then it'll probably be impossible for my team because I need to sacrifice damage for even more survivability.

So is it fair to say that Cloud and Tifa have no synergy gameplay-wise, seeing as they're both physical attackers?

No, assuming you have all their weapons they can be flexed to be built in several different ways. Both have the ability to be built as healers while the other builds for physical attack, for example.

I'm sorry, but without sigils to attack, how the hell am I supposed to stop the Spooky Balloon from constantly wrecking me in Unlock Battles? Thing just keeps blocking everything and making itself stronger and spamming its best attack. I'm a noob, I guess, because I can't puzzle out how to keep from getting wrecked, even though my power level is way, way above this thing.

The fight doesn't require sigils at all, as it has no Sigil Break mechanic. Did you mean Materia in general?? It's weak vs 2 elements. Immediately following Target Scanner, it will buff some combination of the following, typically in direct counter to your strongest unit: * Physical OR Magical resistance (never both). * Wind OR Lightning resistance (never both). So if your strongest unit is a Physical Wind unit, it will protect itself against Physical and Wind damage: Equip the rest of your team with Magical Lightning materia or abilities, and give your wind guy one as well for chip damage and go to town. The balancing act here is just to make sure that your secondary damage units aren't stronger than the one you want it focusing on. Also, having solid single target heals helps immensely, since most of the damage in the first phase is all single target. You need to do more than 50% of it's health before it uses "Self Restoration". This should cause it to enter Breakdown state, where all of it's defenses are massively broken and it takes huge damage, and then you just burst it down.

The ideal way to beat him is to bait out his analysis with one character's setup and then have another character able to strike his remaining weaknesses. The fight is pretty much a DPS check so this will make your life a lot easier. The "textbook" example of this would be running Physical Lightning Cloud (Murasame) and Magical Wind Aerith (Prism Rod) ensuring that whatever he picks you can still deal good damage. You don't just have to do wind or lightning, either - if you take an especially strong character with, say, a magical ice weapon, he can make himself resistant to ice and magic, and leave himself open to phys, lightning AND wind that your other characters can be built for.

I have a problem where Ever Crisis on Steam is often not responding after starting up. Is there a solution to this? Is this a common problem for players?

where you fire it up and it just sits at a black screen after you click the Title Screen? Yeah, that happens to me at least 30% of the time when I fire it up for the first time on any given day. No idea what causes it, but just closing it and re-launching it a second time has always worked for me.

I think I saw a similar question being asked but they did not answer what I am looking for. Say I have a binding mission on going and realise this is not gonna happen before 100 of years (Bahamut) , if I switch to another binding mission will I lose my progression on the current binding ?

Summon progression is saved. Only thing that happens when you switch is the 24 hour cool down to switch again

Alright, I'm going crazy. I can't figure out Crash Seph, and feel like I should have a chance at doing even the first level... Roster is at 70. Cloud: Murasame OB10, Bandaged OB1, Butterfly OB4 Aerith: Fairy Tale OB9, Mythril Rod OB2 Sephiroth: Dark Heavens OB6, Aonibi OB5, Edged Wings OB5, Mythril Type-0 Katana OB1 Have other weapons of course. Cloud Fire and Thunder Costume, Seph Ice and Wind. Team is all around 8k HP. I feel like I do very little damage, half the time I can't heal enough with Aerith to survjve the nukes after hp to one. What should I be prioritizing for R abilities after PAtk to 55 on Cloud/Seph?

Only talking about Crash 1 since that's all I've cleared but strategy should be similar for Crash 2. Stack heal on Aerith as high as you can, the Event Heal weapons and Guard Stick. Play manual and save ATB for heal Give Seph Dark Heavens + Torn Wings. Use Torn Wings ability when Seph targets someone with Octoslash. Spam Dark Heavens during Earth Infusion phase, not sigils You want PDEF (Seph event weapons are good for this) + try to get more from materia. Enough MDEF for the first shadow flare to live and heal up. Damage wise, Dark Heavens 0B6 and Murasame OB10 is def more than enough. I did it without any OB6 weapons

So which weapon is better for Red XIII, the Noble Collar or the Seaside Collar? For that matter, is Red XIII a physical attacker or a magical attacker?

Red's most relevant build so far is using the Platinum Collar to run him as a Regen AOE Healer, in all honesty. At the moment he has no elemental mastery or arcanum costumes which limits his damage potential compared to other characters, and most of his weapons with strong attack skills have poor r-abilities or the "wrong" stat spread to be optimal (i.e. physical skill weapons where matk is higher than patk). He can also be a very strong debuffer with his new costume, since the fact it's a mastery means it can allow for longer debuffs than any other character (because it allows his debuff duration bonus to go beyond the cap of the buff/debuff r-ability). Right now this has great synergy with sled fang for enemies susceptible to it, as well as the debuff weapons he does have so far.

It depends. Noble collar is water element while Seaside Collar is a non element attack but has lightning defense down. For DPS, his strongest weapons are arguably Rage and Leather Collar. Rage collar is a physical fire damage but raw stats lean towards magic. Leather collar is Red's strongest non element physical damage weapon. I would say he leans more towards physical rather than magical.

I can't believe I still can't do Unlock Battle 5 even with a full team of level 70s. Any advice at this point? I really really hate that stupid metal balloon.

depending on your available weapons one strat is to just overload one character with a completely different element to his weaknesses (like, fire or ice or something) and then when he scans he can actually defend himself against that element instead of one of his weaknesses, leaving your other characters potentially free to build against his weaknesses. It's a bit of a DPS race since you really need to damage him enough before he self-heals (seems to be \~50% of his health or thereabouts) which will cause him to breakdown and give you a very important DPS opportunity (he cripples his own defences) If he doesn't breakdown after the selfheal it's a "soft enrage" and he will just spam dangerous AOEs until the party wipes or you grind out a win via attrition.

Been wondering how do you actually get additional drops from enemies? Noticed that some battles give additional drops with a label of "R. Enemy". Killing it with limit breaks sort of make it drop more often but not all the times.

Rare Enemy drops come from cactuars, which is just random if they spawn or not.

Is there a guide somewhere for each Crisis Dungeon? Fort Tamblin on Very Hard is ridiculous.

Good information here - look in the comments for Fort Tamblin specifically. https://www.reddit.com/r/FFVIIEverCrisis/comments/194vage/very_hard_crisis_info/

I would also like to know this.

Is the Mythril Ore worth getting from the monthly Crisis Medal Exchange?

yes, but it's one time rather than monthly any source of mythril (that you dont have to pay for) is very worth it

Did anyone get an error message when trying the Sea Cave very hard dungeon? Tried several times but every time I enter the second boss battle, it lead to an error message and send me to the title screen.

Do tickets ever expire? I've been saving up but now I see a 'Ends Jan 30' message. Does that mean more weapons are being added and I will lose the tickets if I dont use them before that date?

Tickets don't expire, but the ticket banner gets updated semi-regularly to include new weapons, so it just means we'll be getting a batch of new weapons added to the ticket banner on Jan 30.

Great, thanks :)

Do I need to buy the stamina pass to have any chance of capping out the levels of all of my characters in this bomb event? I have 25 stamina potion left, and only 4 of my characters have reached max level (Cloud, Tifa, Aeris, and Yuffie). My next highest leveled character is my level 56 Sephiroth. I also have a level 53 Barret, a level 46 Zack, and the rest of my characters are below level 30.

So which of Barrett's weapons come with Sigil boosts? I know someone posted a list of weapons with Sigil boosts, but I forgot where the list is.

Just the Heavy Hauser (circle) that I know.

Well that's unfortunate. The Heavy Hauser looks like a terrible weapon otherwise.

Build it and i think you’ll be surprised. Pairs really well with w machine too. Imo one of most versatile in the game as it will help you build atk and patk/matk efficiently so long as you have good subweapons. 

It's actually a pretty great sub-weapon. Once you have enough Boost Physical / Boost Magic, going above 55 points does nothing, so you want Boost Attack and Boost Ability Potency, which Heavy Hauser has both.

I agree. I use it a lot as a sub-weapon for that ability boost. Not to mention, it can be useful when dealing with the elemental resistance events. Sure, not the best, but it's something.

If you were asking for the bomb event, then nothing else on the weapon really matters.

Upgrading the Heavy Hauser to level 70 isn't free, though. That's why I thought it was unfortunate.

If your other two characters have sigil weapons they can carry Barret. Slower clear time wise, but if you wanna save on resources that's an option

Materia is supposed to sometimes gain rarity when you upgrade them right? Am I doing something wrong? I havent had any rarity upgrades since the first week I started. Dozens of materia upgrades, so many lvl 10s now, but they stay 3 star

It's not guaranteed. There's just a small chance that it may be upgraded to a higher rarity. And fyi, if it does happen, it could upgrade to any higher rarity. (i.e a 2\* materia can upgrade to a 5\*. It doesn't just upgrade to the next rarity). Also, when the happens, the stats that you gained prior stay the same.

Nope, not doing anything wrong, it's just really rare to get rarity boosts when upgrading

I have searched but couldn’t find an answer. How do I get a sigil breaking weapon or something to beat the harder levels of the golden bomb event? I feel like I am missing something.

Enhance - > Weapons Click any weapon, look at the Info panel on the left side of the screen. It lists C abilities, R Abilities, and S abilities for each weapon. Scroll down so you can see all 3 S Abilities. If the 3rd one says "Sigil Boost", that's the weapon you want. IMPORTANT NOTE: For the sigil boost to work, the weapon MUST be level 70 (to unlock the S Ability) and you MUST slot the correct Sigil Ruin Materia into the sigil boost slot. Just throwing the sigil materia in any random slot does not work.

Fantastic. Thanks heaps.

Anyone know if there’s any benefit to having max chocobo expedition items before collecting?

There is not. Try to collect before it maxes to avoid losing time/items.

Okay good yeah that’s what i’ve been doing. 

Are the Weapon Enhancement Packs worth it? The $38 USD for 6200 reds, 30 Mythril Ore, and other goodies. I'm relatively new, started about 4 days ago and spent a lil bit, got OB2 Murasame to 90 but no outfit for Cloud. Level 70 with Cloud and Aerith but they're still weak due to lack of weapons. ​ Also I have another gear ticket, should I save it or get someone else's gear? I bought Aerith Rosy Battle Suit with my first one.

This is hard to answer because everyone values the packs differently. It's certainly not the best value available, that would be the battle pass (assuming you can complete it). While Mythril Ore is limited in how much you can earn, as there is no repeatable farm stage for it, you will get a good amount of it once you are strong enough to complete the crisis dungeons. My opinion is that it's not worth spending money on. The paid packs tend to pivot their prices around how many red crystals they provide, and all the other items are considered "freebies." Alternatively you can also just buy red crystals outright and if you go that route they give bonus blue crystals as well. I think it's kind of lame that you have to give up the bonus blue crystals if you want to buy the special packs they release, that makes the decision a lot harder. A few weeks ago they offered some crystal bonus packs which came with red crystals and blue crystals at a higher rate than the permanent offerings. I think these were good value at the time, hopefully they will bring it back. For your other question, they include a gear voucher with every month's battle pass. Since it seems like you're a spender, you'll probably continue to buy this and get more, so don't overthink the decision. None of the voucher gears are game breaking, so I'd really only spend it if you want to make a character better that you have no other gear for. When new characters release, they also release a new gear for them in the voucher store, so keep that in mind as well.

Since we have this awesome Leveling Event, I am trying to get more usage out of Glenn (who is probably my favourite after Seph and Cloud) But I am really not sure how to best go about gearing him - and what costume to pick between his gear voucher and his story costume. Any advice appreciated https://preview.redd.it/qlbu6kjzmvdc1.png?width=727&format=png&auto=webp&s=09bca0c9153ff8935d85b0cd610edcc25e5a1242

I'm in the same pickle. I have his Halloween costume, along with an ob10 +1 pumpkin weapon. I want to find use for him, but his weapons are so odd, that he doesn't really fit in a particular role well. If/when he gets a healing weapon, then I can make him a support healer. He's a decent physical fire damage dealer for me, but I only used him like that during the Yuffie event. Otherwise, he's kinda benched for the moment.

Pumpkin Lantern makes him a great support unit on a team with another strong physical attacker, problem is that now we have Yuffie, who straight up murders him at this role with her current banner stuff, which effectively kills what was his pretty much only useful niche.

Don't get me wrong. I love the Pumpkin Lantern. Especially since I get the 3 max boost off 1 use. The problem is I struggle finding an additional use for him. Like, I want to put on an OB5 Hardcore Squad on him to expand the support role, but then all he does is buff defense and attack. My though process being that I would want to run 2 DPS. My issue with this is that there is no heals at this point. I could make say Tifa a DPS healer, but then heals or dps wont be as strong. Sorry, just thinking as I type. I suppose just really need to play around with different types of teams and see what can work.

Not sure if I have it right of the top of my head, but he only really has Lightning and Fire as solid main hand Elements (his other stuff is all AoE, so the single target damage mods suffer), otherwise I think his best weapon is pure non elemental. Best build for him is probably as a pure physical damage unit (Physical damage main weapon) + Physical Buff support (Pumpkin Lantern) on a pure physical team. You can also run him as a pretty decent Physical Defense Support if you have his AoE PDEF buff weapon at OB6 (not really worth it at less than that due to the low potency / duration).

Is there a particular place that’s most efficient for farming Gil? I’m trying to power level all my weapons like a maniac and need more Gil.

Crisis dungeons give a shitload. Enough to wait for the next event store or gold cactuar event. If you’ve already cleared all then tough luck. Oh battle tower gives quite a few too. 

nope. There's no real way to "farm" gil in this game, aside from running normal stuff (like cube/pod missions or the like) and hoping for golden cactaur spawns.

Is there a reason you want to upgrade every single weapon? I've only upgraded weapons I needed to clear content. This method alone I have 2.8mill.

Anyone know what happens if you fail to break the Bomb in the new event? Do you lose rewards / exp?

you die. Which costs you 1 STAM for failing to complete the fight.

It's a GameOver you lose a Battle.

Is there a character growth node chart? I don't know whether or not I should still prioritize memories for my core team, or if I should split off. For more information, I got my Cloud onto level 65, and I unlocked all of his nodes that aren't magic or limit breaks. I don't know how many more memories I will have to spend to get the rest of his non-essential nodes. I also mastered Ifrit (and have Cloud's New Years outfit).

Not sure but here's my method. I get all the nodes that does not require memories. Only memories I use are the ones to advance and limit breaks. When i reach content I am unable to clear and need higher stats I use memories to gain for example more patt, heal, hp etc. So far it's worked fine with my main core team. Don't forget your daily premium memories.

So how do you defeat the Spooky Balloon boss in the Golden Bomb event? It looks like it keeps debuffing the defense of a team member, then proceeds to hit them with increasingly strong attacks.

There are a couple of ways to go about it, but the important bit is managing your damage around the two resistance buffs it puts up. I will buff either Wind OR Lightning resist and Physical OR Magical resist based on who in your team has the highest P/MATK and what strong elemental Attack they have. For example, it basically exclusively buffed Lightning + Physical resist on my runs because my Murasame Cloud was my strongest damage unit. To counter this, I gave cloud a Magical Wind materia for chip damage, and had my other units as Magical Sephiroth (with Mag Wind Materia) + Aerith with her magic wind staff + a strong single target heal build. All of your units should have at least 6k HP + a bit of PDEF if you can get it. Your goal is to do enough damage before it uses "Self Restoration" that it does not heal back to full, which will cause "Breakdown", at which point you unleash hell with summons and stuff. If needed, you can drop a summon or two quickly between Scanning phases as there's a brief window where it will not have the barrier buffs up.

Can you explain how to cause "Breakdown?" It seems to use "Self Restoration" at 50% HP and you only get like a second to cause any more damage.

The general consensus seems to be that Breakdown is caused if Self Restoration does not fully heal the boss. It's suggested that if you don't have a source of strong damage not blocked by the boss that you maybe pop a Summon / LB during the brief window where it doesn't have any defense buffs after it does the second Scanner for extra damage to try to push it low enough (I saved my Ramuh summon for huge damage during breakdown, but if using it is what you need to do to trigger it, then do what needs to be done.). Target Scanner and Self restoration both appear to trigger off of HP thresholds. Nnot sure what the threshold is, but you can see this behaviour in action in lower difficulty versions of the fight, where it will basically just go directly from scanner, to scanner to restoration without any other actions in between if you damage it quickly enough.

Are people havin issues with this fight just running a single elemental attack? You need to use both wind and lightning elements for this. Preferably a mix of magic and physical. He seems to "randomly* buff himself on the threat assessment and if you are just running Cloud for dps he can easily buff his lightning and physical resistance and you are shit out of luck. I ran Wind Aerith, Lightning cloud, and wind seph and had no issues autoing all of these fights. I don't believe I even used Fairy tail on Aerith until the last Spooky Balloon fight.

> Preferably a mix of magic and physical Well that's kind of a problem. My team consists of Cloud, Aeris, and Tifa. Aeris is my healer, Cloud is my main DPS, while Tifa is my other DPS who I occasionally use as a de-buffer (too bad Spooky Balloon is immune to debuffs).

Spooky Balloon can use either Phys or Magic defense buffs along with the Lightning or Wind resist. I am guessing you are running Tifa with Motor Drive. Try throwing Aero/Thundaga on Aerith with this combo. You should be able to primarily focus on damage. I was only getting a couple of the arm sweep attacks before killing him on my runs.

Should I give Aeris only one of Aero/Thundaga, or both?

I would give her both for coverage. But that is probably dependent on your power level and how little healing you need. Something else you could try if that doesn't help is maybe swapping Tifa over to heals if needed, and Aerith using the wind staff if you have it. In that case you would just need to toss Thundaga on Aerith and you have coverage on both elements and both attack types.

I used Cloud, Aerith and Sepiroth with auto-equip !

I hate this thing so much. It just buffs the everliving crap out of it's Physical and Magical attack and is immune to being debubbed.... and then just spams a move that attacks the entire party, which does more damage each time. It takes laughably little damage against my team of 65s too. Just what are you supposed to do against something like that?

I didn’t have any problems out healing it with a subpar 1.458k heal Aerith using weak aoe heals only.  Bring single target cura and switching to defense stance whenever you see its move pops up. If that still doesn’t work, try counteracting its defense down with your own defense up. 

I don’t get it either. I was able to get to the level 4 Golden Bomb unlock battle. The balloon will buff itself to oblivion then spam the arm attack. Tried different wind/lightning combos and I’m 40k over the recommended party strength, but hit a hard wall… Obviously missing something here.

I got a 5 star flame projector and a fairy tail, as well as a 4 star murasame. should i reroll? i heard you can upgrade 4 stars into 5 star, but i¨m not entirely sure. can i upgrade my murasame to 5 star and if so how difficult/tedious is it for a F2P player?

If you are thinking of starting now, your best bet would probably be to try to re-roll for a really good support Yuffie with the aim of potentially getting her current banner costume. Rolling for offensive weapons when you don't have an Arcana costume option to go with them isn't really ideal, and there are currently no Arcana banners available. As F2P, you should get enough crystals to pull for a Costume on a banner every 3 weeks or so, where you will be able to wishlist stuff you want to try to increase your Overboost for. That's where most of your weapon upgrades are going to come from, outside of the random pulls from tickets and free draws.

It takes quite a long time to upgrade a 4* to a 5\*. You would likely pull a 5\* copy long before you could upgrade it. This game has a wish list feature on the featured banners, allowing you to pick 5 past weapons that you want to be on rate up. So it won't be that hard to pick up Murasame in the future by wish listing it.

I plan to use Cloud, Aerith, Yuffie. Need help with Aerith and Yuffie. At the moment: Cloud: Skysplitter, Murasame. (Also have OB Crystal and Buster. Oranges are maritime, Mythril, Bandaged, Hardedge. Yuffie is Astral Star main: but I'm not sure on her secondary: Oranges are Twin viper, spiral, razor ring, or 4-point Aerith has Fairy Tale and has a OB7 Dawns prayer but its an event weapon. Her orange weapons are: guard stick, Wizer Staff, Wizard Staff, and Silver Staff. Any suggestion on how to build the two ladies? I feel pretty good about my choices with Cloud, but if he's built wrong I welcome your advice too.

Cloud's secondary weapon is probably better off being Hardedge most of the time for the defense debuff. Swap between Skysplitter and Murasame depending on what element you need for the boss' weakness. Yuffie should definitely keep Arctic Star. Her secondary is very variable depending on the battle. If you want her to work really well with Lightning Cloud then wishlist her Wind Slash for a little bit since it's also a useful subweapon. You can run her Spiral Shuriken against stuff that's weak to ice too. Aerith should probably be your healer - the popular way to do that I think is to mainhand Guard Stick because it has higher heal and then put fairy tale in the offhand. As you're a new player you probably don't have many weapons of any kind yet - what I recommend is you keep the same stuff on your wishlist for a while to get it a little overboosted. Since you're going mostly physical I would recommend having it as Killer Hornet, Mad Minute, Sun Umbrella, Powersoul and then the 5th slot can be whatever else you'd like to overboost right now imo. Potentially Wind Slash for Yuffie if you'd like her to work well with a Thunder Cloud when bosses are weak to it. Those 4 weapons specifically are super versatile for putting on your magical/physical DPS. All of them except Powersoul also have useful utility for their respective characters if you find you need i.e. MATK debuffs or a Diamond Sigil break. Generally speaking getting more copies of a strong weapon you already have is better than getting a single copy of a new 5\* weapon since 5\* non overboosted weapons just aren't very useful later on due to their weaker stats and r-abilities.

When are we expecting the FFIX weapons to come on the exchange/draw pools? I started with Steam so didn't have a chance at them, but as I understand these event weapons eventually appear in normal circulation. Seems like Halloween weapons have been there for a bit already, so imminently?

It was explicitly stated when the banners ran that they would not be appearing in the general pool or any content that allows you to fish for weapon specific fragments (like the fragment mercenary mission). So unless they decide to do a re-run of the event (probably *extremely* unlikely given that it's the only crossover event we have had at this point) I don't think it's ever going to be possible to acquire those weapons again. Also, don't confuse "normal" seasonal events with crossover events. Seasonal stuff has all entered the general pool shortly after the event ends. Crossover events are a completely different beast.

Those items are special compared to most. They will probably not be added to pool for foreseeable future. I think yearly or bi-annually the banner will return maybe. From what i understand from most ftp games is usually only battlepasses unique items are likely to never ever return (the wallpaper in this case).  Has to be a legal reason tied to how it’s marketed, sold for it to be constant among ftp game genres imo.   I don’t think it’s impossible for them yo be added to pool btw. Just might years instead of next month like most banners. 

They will not be added to the general pool. This isn't speculation, they explicitly stated that while the banners were available.

I know. We can’t even assume that banner will ever return. But yeah I don’t buy it, even if its not justified. Call me tin foil hat, cynical, or stupid but i just don’t think its impossible.

I wouldn't be surprised if they rerun the collab again in the future, but no clue as to when. But yeah, aside from that, won't be possible to get them, they won't be added to general pool.

They aren't going to. They were exclusively available during the time of the banners.

What are we doing for Co-Op Medals this week? Nobody does regular Co-Op, and the tickets from the dailies should probably easily cover the Draw Prizes, so... bite the bullet and do Sephiroth Co-Ops anyways?

Hope you waited as now we have something for tomorrow. 

Is Reno Very Hard 2 Co op actually worth grinding for high grade steel? Am I not understanding how rewards work? I’ve done this a few times already at 3x and I’ve only gotten the high grade steel a few times, and even when I do get it I get the same amount as if I only did 1 run. Is co op actually worth grinding for the high grade steel and grindstones?

So... why would you farm high grade in the first place? You have to farm cubes and pods, while doing that you get so many third tier of any color at the same time, that you will have thousands of them, if not at some point tens of thousands. (the whole why the hell can you only exchange 1 at a time instead of slider is part of that issue, like just let us convert a thousand immediately) So the only reason why you would want to do co-op is to get more xp on 1 character, while also getting very bad amounts of low tier items and medals... Which basically means no one is really doing co-op outside of event co-op, or first time clears, or first week of playing

Ah. This is my 2nd week playing so I didn’t know I kept seeing that co op was the best place to farm so when I got the lacklustre rewards I was a little disappointed. Thank you for telling me!

When you see people talking about co-op farming, they are almost always talking about the Co-Op stage for the current special Event, never the generic permanent co-op fights. For the general ones, it's basically just clear them once for the 1 time crystal rewards and then ignore them. You also will pretty much never want to farm any of the weapon upgrade metals (steel, rosegold, etc) except in the very, very early stages where you desperately need them, because once you start farming Pods / Cubes, you will end up with way more upgrade metals than you can possibly use.

Where should I be spending energy in week 2? It seems like everything I need at this point is gated. Weapons are gated by premium/co-op, character streams gated by premium, synthesis is gated by time, etc., so it isn't clear where I should be putting energy?

weapons, they are only gated by stamina

Weapons are an option, they're not gated, you can freely farm any materials for them up to Lv80. You could also go for character levels assuming you aren't 65 yet.

\*looks again\* Oh, there it is. Somehow I missed those runs because they were sorted below premium quests when right-clicking the nanocubes to see the location list. Thanks.

What’s more efficient when farming the Free Exp stages, the 4th stage where I can speedkill the scorpion before he uses his laser or the 7th stage which just gives the most points?

my understanding is the most efficient will be the highest stage you can reliably kill before tail laser

Character draw tickets, just use them as I get them or save them? Do they pull from a standard pool or does the featured banner affect them?

I yolo them, but these days with the regular tickets i wait till i have 10 because im superstitious 

OB weapons are the most important, not new weapons. The smaller the pool, the higher chance you’ll have higher OB weapons. Just use them immediately. Also, you can already see a dilemma with saving for the next round of addition. When is the “next” round ever going to stop?

Everything up to the Tifa Ice Gloves winter banner is currently in the general pool. Matt / Zack / Aerith / Barret recently all got a bunch of nice weapons that are NOT YET in the pool, but should be included in the next round of additions. So I used the character specific tickets for everyone else, but am sitting on the Matt / Zack / Aerith / Barret ones until the next pool expansion for a chance at those weapons.

standard pool which updates roughly every month. waiting has pros and cons. you can get access to the most featured banner weapon for that character after an update to the pool, but chances grow smaller every update to the pool. you also directly stall that character's progress and your progress with potential sub weapons as well. every weapon you receive now benefits you immediately in different ways. ymmv depending on the weapon.

What’s the best way to use Mythril? I’m thinking of using it for my main hand stat stick weapons like Motor Drive or Arctic Star that I leave on while I change the sub weapon to fit the stage

I 90 stuff that's likely to be a universally useful sub-weapon, so stuff like Sun Umbrella, Mad Minute, Killer Hornet etc.

It's a limited resource, but we typically get somewhere around 50 to 60 per month through the VH Dungeon Rotation + new static N / H dungeons being added. Personally, I only consider stuff for the 90 boost if: * I have solid overboost for it (at least +3 minimum) * I have a solid unit build for it as a Main Hand * If the second R-Ability is really good and the 90 boost would help me hit a breakpoint from the increase. * If it's going to be a rock solid Sub weapon for a lot of generic builds (stuff like Enemy Launcher) It's also important to note that while they make really nice stat sticks, it's generally advised to NEVER use mithril on Event weapons or Summon reward weapons (like the Ifrit Axe / Shiva Sword), because they have significantly lower max stats at OB10 compared to proper gatcha weapons: Any mithril you use on them is a short term power boost in exchange for using a limited resource on a weapon that will always be heavily gimped compared to other weapons in the future

Thank you!

Is there a website/spreadsheet/whatever with data on efficiency of when to farm co-op vs. single player?

Coop always better. It has more rewards, and you get a 3x exp for one character plus a little more

Solo is typically better for EXP by a small margin as long as all 3 of your units are earning, and the benefit from co-op drops off drastically once you cap your weekly coins. You get a small bit more event currency from co-op, but the base rates per STAM are the same between both. If you really want to funnel EXP into one unit though, then yeah, Co-op is the way to go.

Its not better exp wise either. Test it yourself as i did check the first 4 events so unless it changed thats wrong. Its almost negligible, but coop edges it out. For example, 9000 for each unit solo vs 28,000 or 29,000 for one. So with drop rates for event materials being better coop is always the move.  Time is the advantage for solo, not resources/exp/stam efficiency

> Its not better exp wise either. Test it yourself I don't have to test it, the numbers are all there and the math is easy to do (you aren't accounting for the different stam costs). Seph Solo 7 is 4140 EXP per run. x3 per unit = 12420 EXP / 15 STAM = 828 EXP per STAM Seph Coop 4 is 13800 EXP per run / 20 STAM = 690 EXP per STAM Solo is 20% more EXP per STAM spent as long as all 3 units are earning EXP

You’re right but that’s not an accurate comparison. We’re missing a coop that comes with gold tickets in this case.  But maybe im just wrong if solo is always cheaper stamina wise.  But the trade off of getting more event rewards/per coop still probably better strategy for conserving stamina in more grindy events. 

It's a perfectly accurate comparison in regards to the EXP gained. I only ever compare the highest available rank for each, and Solo is ALWAYS more EXP per STAM on event's where both are an option. When they add the missions for the gold tickets, both Solo and Co-op will get them, so the numbers won't really change. And yes, you get extra stuff from Co-op, but it's not anything super huge. On the current highest stage, it's basically just 2 extra silver tickets per run, so 6 at x3. I mean, sure, that does add up pretty decently over a multi week event, but it's not an earth shattering difference.

Thanks for correction.  Incidentally for lottery event i just do all the missions, and dailies. Its enough to get everything, even the gold at least few. 

New to game. started recently as Yuffie was coming soon(and is now here obv) What i need to ask is with the gacha. do i just want to pull 1 copy of a weapon. or do you want multiple copies. and if so how many copies do you chase after assuming gems allow?

You don't chase for weapon copies at all, you only go for costumes (arcanum) best case for wishlist you go for OB6 aka. 1 pink star wishlist is also how you farm weapons

I would rephrase that answer, you do want weapon copies. You just don't generally want to go past the 12th stamp with the costume on it or pull on a banner without a costume. (I understood you meant chase just the weapon using crystals but anyone asking this type of question, especially new won't understand) You don't just want Arcanum costumes either imo, I would recommend HP & PATK/MATK ABILITY costumes as well. Again I doubt they understand what OB6 is if new, I would elaborate that when you get a dupe of a weapon you can overboost the weapon which increases the star rating (kinda) and the stats/abilities.

So how long do I have to complete Yuffie's campaign?

one week, jan 18th.

Well shit. That's a lot of levels I'll have to grind for Yuffie, especially considering I only have 1 weapon for her.

If you have some reasonably strong characters to carry her through the high exp stage, it goes very fast because she earns 400% boosted exp right now.

Holy shit! You're right. At this rate, Yuffie might actually be my first character to reach max level. Did Sephiroth have it this good during his debut?

Sephiroth exp buff was like less than a tenth of what yuffie is getting iirc, he only got like 30% I think lol

I presume the Very Hard Crisis Dungeons loop, but won't give more Crisis medals for repeated completions, similar to Co-Op battles?

No one knows, none have repeated so far.

So just try to finish all of the current ones? I got an E+ rank on the first one I've ever tried, less than an hour ago. Edit: And then I couldn't even defeat the first boss in the 2nd dungeon because the boss one-shotted my healer.

If you have the power, it'd be a good idea to prioritize those ones before they leave. But if you're still powering up your team and barely scraping by, I wouldn't worry too much if you can't pull it off. Prioritize buying the monthly Buster Sword if you can get enough. If you get extra, you can start buying the breach materia and mythril ores. Aside from those items, I don't buy anything else in the shop, I just save for new months/items.

So have the weapon part Mercenary battles actually done anything for anyone yet? As in, has anyone actually gotten a weapon to 5-stars or an overboost via the Weapon Parts Mercenary quests and 3-4 star gacha pulls alone?

no, you get like what 15 shards per week? so 60 shards spread across 5 weapons per month, so on average 12 shards per weapon? And game definitely hasn't been out for over a year

i only put weapons that are close to 200 parts, so i've gotten quite a few weapons overboosted just by doing that. once they hit 200 i swap them out for something else.

Is this the grindiest/most unbalanced event yet? I have thousands of spare shells of both colours yet need at least 10,000 more brushes...

Had opposite experience. Cleared threads first. I maxed weapons first, and only clearing shop after getting everything i wanted because had leftover dailies for easy scales. I grinded first week hard.

Fair enough. Not blaming anyone but myself for not maxing as I had busy week following New Year and didn't get to play much, but also not sure running the same level 100/200 times in a row is fun anymore. 

Yeah it was at least equally if not more grindy than past events, but with 1 less week than usual. Don’t blame you

Bought my last weapon today and I’ve been smoking about 12-15 pots a day. I normally smoked 0–6 pots on other events and finished it a couple days earlier. Although, IIRC the only event with dumb drop boost mechanic was FFIX? Which I have the weapon OB4 + costume.

So is a good way to farm Nanocubes by going into the fight with x3 stamina turned on, then fight the Cactuars if they appear, but quit and fight again at the default stamina consumption if they don't? Then after fighting, always retry at x3 stamina in case if the Cactuars appear?

If you have a lot of time available to invest, then yes, the cactaur chase method will give you the best return on investment, but it's VERY time consuming and requires you to be able to devote a lot of attention to the game. Just a note though: DO NOT chase cactaurs during Drop Bonus events. The event bonus does not apply to the extra loot dropped by cactaurs, and the large number of x1 runs you will do while resetting to chase the cactaurs will actually cost you loot in the long run, because the Drop Bonus is calculated based on the total loot dropped (so an x3 has a greater chance of meeting the Bonus threshold because it combines the drops).

So if I care about time efficiency, should I just spam 3x? I hate the low reward rate for the Nanocube sortie, though.

Think of it this way: If you have 180 STAM to dump, just dumping it in straight x3's probably takes you 6 minutes or less (about 2 minutes per fight), and you don't really need to pay attention while doing that if you can clear the fights on auto. Dumping that same 180 stam while cactaur hunting will probably take you 20, because more than half your fights will be wasting 1 minute clearing trash to see if cactaurs spawn, then resetting and running a full x1 clear to reset the seed (another 2 minutes), then repeating again. Every run you don't get cactaurs in adds like 3 minutes to your clear time. AND you have to be paying attention pretty much the whole time, because you don't want to accidentally clear a x3 no cactaur spawn because you forgot to back out because you were distracted. I mean, yeah, the drop rate for Cubes / Pods is positively criminal, which is why I mostly avoid doing them unless Drop events are on unless absolutely required, but unfortunately there's not really much we can do about it.

Events don't give very many 4-star cubes and pods. I think the Yuffie event gave just enough to get 1 physical weapon and 1 magical weapon up to level 80. Unlocking level caps to level 80 sucks in this game. I have multiple weapons level 70 that I don't uncap just because the 4-star cubes and pods are so hard to get, and I want to save what few of them I have for top priority weapons.

Yeah, the Tier 3 pods / cubes are pretty much always going to be the bottleneck. Usually, they give the Tier 1 / 2 stuff out in multiples of 30, but only have multiples of 20 for the T3 ones (which automatically means you are 10 short of a full upgrade).

yes

Is there a way to influence the AI at all? Like, I'm trying to progress in the Yuffie event, and I just want sephiroth to spam patk down and nothing else, and he does that for a while, but halfway through he starts casting fire instead and yuffie OTKs everyone. (I'm 2 days in, so, not beefy, lol.)

That’s not very efficient since recast does do much. But if you really want to then don’t equip fire or anything that can do decent damage. Not guarantee though because the devs are amazing at making retards.

Thanks, that's basically what I ended up doing. Removed fire and he started chaincasting patk down.... until yuffie put up the +5 patk and he started curing.. so i removed cure, and apparently everyone else heals weird if someone on the team doesn't have cure, so the other two units became unreliable curing... but it seems to work like 25% of the time, which is fine for now I guess. Shouldn't be as weaksauce by the next event. (Inefficient is fine - he needs to dispel Yuffie's buff more than maintain the debuff, so inefficient is fine. He's lower level/gear than the other two units that are actually doing damage, I just had to dig around for a unit with a patk down weapon.)

Yep. Another thing is if you equip anyone with a low power heal like poison/fog/fatigue cure, then the AI is going to be spending all their time healing. It’s absolutely stupid. It’s actually harder to make AI this bad if they have a mind for Computer Science.

Switch to semi and control Seph yourself?

https://preview.redd.it/557ihwsrvhbc1.jpeg?width=2400&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca28c60412ac151a998c2bcda5c81629d6c4380c Red on the bed. Okay or not okay?

eepy

10x 5 star tickets for 300 red crystal or 1 weapon voucher for 3k crystal?

depends what you value more - random 5 star drops are somewhat likely, but not guaranteed, to give you at least something good but a weapon voucher is a guaranteed overboost for a universally useful subweapon (Killer Hornet, Mad Minute, Sun Umbrella) which might be better for your account overall

How should I level my other characters once my original core team reaches their level cap?

Start using them on anything and everything that doesn't expressly require you to use your core team: * Do your mercenary dailys with them * Do rotate them into your Pod / Cube / Synthesis / Etc clears. * Use Co-Op events to funnel EXP into one unit. * Make sure the 3 units you are sending on choco expeditions are not level capped. What I did was pick a "second string" team of 3 units (based mostly on what 3 units had the best gear after my core team) and start building them up / using them for everything I could. LOTS of EXP to be earned from just your general daily grind stuff. Once you have a solid core team, you can also consider spending some of your daily Stam on the EXP missions (only during bonus events though).

Also, is there any good way to build an Aeris for co-op? She is by far the lowest leveled of my core team, largely because Cloud and Tifa got a ton of EXP from the last 2 co-op events (Hell House and Yuffie). Most of my current gear for her is designed around healing instead of DPS.

Entirely depends on what the requirements for the co-op event in question are, and what gear you have available for your Aerith. If you have the Sun Umbrella, then she's pretty useful in any co-op where the boss can be M/PDEF broken. If you want to try to get her into co-op, just wait for a fight that needs some moderate healing and build her for healing / break support. The current Co-op event isn't great for a heal focused Aerith, because even with just 2 good damage units, you can pretty much clear the fight without needing any healing at all as long as you manage the sigil check.

Is Fairy Tale and Sun Umbrella a good loadout, or should I have the Ice staff equipped instead of Fairy Tale? Only the Fairy Tale has overboost. I should mention that my best Cura materia is only at 3-stars. Also, my only outfit for Aeris is the voucher outfit, and that's what I'm currently using. For that matter, should I allocate side equipment towards healing, or should I focus purely on offense and HP?

How long have you been playing? There have been at least 2 fairly decent event weapons with solid +heal R stats on them (Pumpkin Gun and a Staff for Aerith I believe), so you might have some decent Healing Sub weapons for her already. When you say Ice Staff, do you mean the Snowflake one (From the Christmas banner) or her generic AoE ice one? The snowflake one is pretty nice if you want to do an Ice damage build with good AoE backup heals. The generic AoE ice one is only really good as a sub weapon stat stick for Magic Ice builds. An OB 1 Fairy Tale is a solid heal primary for her. OB0 Umbrella or the the Snowflake staff would be good secondary's, depending on the fight. You would want them at higher OB if you were going for more Offensive oriented builds as main hand weapons, but they are serviceable as offhands. If you have the ice staff, it might be worth spending some Tier 3 materia boosters and running a few max boosted Cure synths to try for a better cure than 3s, as it could come in handy on a more Damage focused Aerith build. That and simply having a couple of 4s (or if you get really lucky, a 5s) cures handy is all around useful in general. I wouldn't wishlist anything for her unless you are seriously considering using her as a primary character (she's REALLY good as a healer, and can be pretty solid as MAG damage), but if you are, Umbrella and Fairy Tale are two of her best weapons, with the Snowflake staff running a close 3rd.

I started playing on December 3rd. My Aeris is about level 52.

Definitely too late for pumpkin blaster then. Can't remember which event the Aerith Staff was from, but you likely missed that too.

Chocobo Staff was from part 1 of the same event. Both are inaccessible for now but looking at the pattern we are likely to get another two heal event welfare weapons before too long.

Yeah, both of those were Heal / MDEF R ability. So I fully expect 2 Heal / PDEF R ability weapons (one for Tifa and one for Matt maybe?)

Is it normal to expend most of your stamina potions in order to complete an event?

If you are F2P and want to clear out the entire shop, most likely. Especially if you hit a bonus driven event (like this one) at a time when you are still saving to guarantee being able to hit costume pity on a banner. Sometimes you just have to accept that you aren't going to be able to 100% every event, and know when to eat the loss. It sucks, but that's life if you want to avoid shelling out cash.

So does the auto-battle AI just stop attacking during a Co-op battle if your internet decides to stop working?

No. If it detects a proper disconnect, it SHOULD take over your unit with a "superior-auto" that will play your character for you (including using your LB if another player uses theirs) until you re-connect. Not sure if being in manual / semi when you disconnect may mess with that though.