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[FFBE]: Next maintenance: New PVP arena, and Brave Frontier collab 11/11-11/24
El Fantastico
Toronto, ONRegistered User regular
Toronto, ONRegistered User regular
What is Final Fantasy Brave Exvius?
A new-ish mobile game for Android and Apple devices, from the company that brings you all things Final Fantasy, in collaboration with A-lim, who handled the Japanese version of Brave Frontier, and Gumi who handled the global release of said game. The plot revolves around a young knight named Rain, and his personal aide/best friend/mentor named Lasswell, and a girl who lost all memories named Fina. The world's crystals are being shattered by a mysterious enemy, and to help restore their power, you require Espers, and the souls of legendary heroes past.
What is with the name of the game?
It's SquareEnix, responsible for making a trilogy of games called Fabula Nova Crystalis. They're kind of known now for making up fanciful words like Crystarium, and Dissidia Duodecim 012, and 358/2 Days.
I've played Brave Frontier and liked/hated it. How does this compare?
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is an expanded spin on Brave Frontier, with whom it shares some similarities. It's another gacha game, meaning you will earn in-game currency, coming in the form of Friend Points and Lapis, to summon new units on a seemingly unfair spreadsheet of hidden factors that emerge in the form of unique characters, and many familiar to the world of Final Fantasy.
Friend Points will let you summon from a specific pool of units, pretty much all of whom are trash. Their main purpose is in filling gaps for new players, and serving as a source of gil and easy awakening for an in-game achievement that goes towards rewarding the player with a powerful ring recipe. Primarily gil, however. 1* units are easily maxed out in their level and sell fairly well - well enough that you should avoid unlocking the gil daily dungeon because this method is easier and more economic. Some of these friend units do have their uses, mostly in acquiring enough of them to immediately gain their Trust Reward so you can pass it to someone of more value. These include HP 10%, Dragon Killer, Stone Killer, Aquan Killer (50% damage against those creature types) Camouflage (50% less likely to be the target of attacks) and Raging Fist (ignore 20% of target's DEF, with 120% attack damage)
Lapis and Premium Summon tickets will let you pull from a different pool of characters. Every pull guarantees at least a 3* unit. It has a chance to explode into a gold crystal, earning you a 4* unit, and very rarely a rainbow crystal, which is a 5* unit. Most current events will usually contain a few new 3*, 4* and 5* base units to summon, with event banners typically lasting 2 weeks, and an associated event to herald in their arrival. These events often times are great for obtaining more summon tickets (free banner pulls without spending your precious lapis) and unique equipment to improve your party.
The combat is relatively simple - you tap your unit's boxes to get them to attack. You can swipe right to use Limits, abilities and spells, swipe up to attack (default), swipe left for items, and swipe down to defend. The key to combat is in timing your attacks together to maximize the damage potential. When you chain hits together to form a combo, the chance for critical hits increases, and enemies drop additional shards which fill up your characters Limits. Each character has a different style of attacking - some delay their strike, some do multiple hits in quick succession. When you manage to do elemental combos (hitting an enemy with the same element in a successful chain), the damage is boosted. Objectively, units who do multiple hits tend to be more in demand to increase the damage potential and provide more Limit to the team, but units who hit once or twice have their place, too, as their critical hits will be much more effective since their damage isn't being spread out over many hits.
What's different for FFBE is the addition of abilities to change up your attack in combat, and equipment to wear to boost your party's stats. You don't have to just set the game on AutoBattle and let the computer do your work (though you totally will for trash stages). Bosses will have weaknesses to exploit, and will affect your party with various types of debuffs that having the right members on your own team to counter with will be part of a winning strategy. Brave Frontier had some similar mechanics, but you relied heavily on farming materials and crafted items to deal with it, and you were largely dependent on the gacha to provide you with the right units who had Brave Bursts that could mass-cure, heal, or afflict debuffs. You still need the gacha in FFBE to provide you with characters who can do this, but the pool is much more varied, and chances are you will end up with a viable healer unit along with a few good attackers and support members.
You mentioned Final Fantasy characters? I love Final Fantasy!
FFBE has a wide variety of characters from Final Fantasy, with it's own beefy roster of unique names original to FFBE. Characters from Final Fantasy 1 all the way to 13 and even outliers such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Type-0 are represented. Funny enough, there are no Final Fantasy 7 or 8 characters yet, but expect some to show up in Japan's version, which means at least a 5-6 month wait before we would get them in global. The animation sprites used in this game are gorgeous, by the way.
The roster of characters in game is a mishmash of various Final Fantasy games and Brave Frontier exclusive characters who all have a boring, pointless backstory that is meaningless because let's face it, you're here for your favourite FF character. As previously mentioned, characters are added to the gacha, usually alongside special events that ties in to the game they are from (unless it's just more FFBE exclusives). Unlike other games of this type, the rarity isn't just in the higher rank of the unit, but also the characters themselves. You should ignore the fact that the Exdeath you pulled is 3*, for example, because it's actually really easy to level up units. The fact that you pulled Exdeath is where the rarity comes from, as some of the strongest units in the game have a less than 1% chance of being pulled, and that number only gets smaller as the character pool expands.
Here's a link to a site that will update regularly as the global version gets more characters, and ranks the units by various categories to back up the reasoning for their position in the tier list. https://exviuswiki.com/Unit_Rankings
More! More! More!
There's a lot that I'm trying to get from the reddit, which has a great list of all of the characters, but it still contains a large amount of Japanese data, including ability names, and Trust Masteries, and what they do, how they work, etc. Expect this post to grow in detail as we figure out more.
PSN: TheArcadeBear
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Steam: TheArcadeBear
El Fantastico on
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OV-F9_Qs8M3TbCKi1XHX3BsTbTdr_xmpu9KI6nj11hs/edit?pref=2&pli=1
To find your friend ID in the game, tap Home in the upper right corner (on most screens), then the Menu icon in the upper right, then Player Info on the left. Your ID should look like this in your little character card: 123,456,789. This is also where you change your greeting, and rename your character if you like. Adding friends is the only way to use your "guest character" limit break in combat, and only your current party's Leader is shared to friends.
What is Trust Mastery?
If you've played FFRK, think of Trust Mastery as a Record Materia. As you clear stages, every character has a 10% chance to gain 0.1% of their Trust. The first stage in the game is the easiest way to level Trust, as it is 2 rounds for 1 energy, and there is no "difficulty" requirement to gain a percentage. Characters also transfer any Trust present to a new character if they are the same type, along with a base 5% bonus. So a Cecil with 50% Trust combined with a fresh Cecil at 0.1% will have 55.1% Trust. When you master a character's Trust level, they can learn a new ability, spell, gain a piece of equipment (presumably transferrable among characters, making these the most useful) or can equip something new such as short swords or heavy armors.
Farming for trust is not mandatory, nor does it come recommended. The masteries are luxuries, though some are certainly powerful enough to give long consideration to it.
Here's a full list of Trust Masteries exclusive to the Global version, with a helpful ranking list.
Re-roll: How to reset the game using a linked Facebook account to get a better gacha pull
Helpful Links:
ExviusWiki: Best source for Global version information, with maps for exploration dungeons, quest guides, and unit details.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Reddit: The reddit community for FFBE, containing info and updates for both the Japan and Global versions. Check here if you want to know what kind of stuff we'll get 5-6 months in advance since Japan gets it first. Also contains useful player-submitted guides and pull rate survey info when new Global events come up, so you can determine if it's safe to pull on a banner for a unit you want, and what your expected odds are of getting them. Most of the threads are generally not of much use, however, being whine posts, humblebrags, or speculative "I wish this would happen" commentary.
Helpful Tips:
Much like in other games of this nature, you can tap an enemy to prioritize your team to attack it. You can also tap it again to unselect it, but this means your units will still prioritize it first, and when it's defeated, any remaining characters in your flurry of taps/auto-battle will automatically switch to a new target. This way you can take out high damaging enemies first, but not feel like you're wasting a turn committing your whole team to an Overkill.
If there's anything more to add, let me know by PM or just post it here and I'll add it to the OP.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Unfortunately, your Shadow/Sabin/Penelo are some of the worst characters in the game. Yes, they are beloved Final Fantasy characters, but that doesn't exclude them from being King of the Trash Heap. Someone has to be, right? There is a subjective "tier" list of best units, based on role in your team, potential at their role, and overall performance here. Check it frequently as it will update every few weeks as new units are added, and almost always someone will replace the top spot in a given role at any time, with few exceptions.
If you're just starting out and want to know who to look for, below are some of the better units you can expect to see come out of your common blue crystal drop. If you see a prismatic crystal, there's a chance it could contain a 5* base unit, which is very powerful and easily secures a spot on your team at any given time!
3* units to look for: Cecil, Cloud of Darkness, Bartz, Garland, Firion, Exdeath, Kefka, Terra, Vaan, Zidane, Roselia, Chizuru
4* base units to look for (gold crystal or better): Warrior of Light, Lenna, Garnet, Agrias, Rosa, Amarant, Refia
5* base units to look for (prismatic crystals only): Lightning, Ramza, Delita, Dark Knight Cecil, Luneth
3* base units that if your entire 11-pull is full of, you might want to re-roll: Vivi, Lani, Galuf, Shadow, Penelo, Sabin, Maria, Fran, Clyne, Russell, Bedile, Anzelm, Gilbert, Rakshasa, Medius, Cyan
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Gonna just keep ballin out of control without them because I don't do the reroll thing. But man it's still kind of sad that I've done 5 pulls now and still not a single person on that list.
Edit:
Maybe also add a spreadsheet of friend codes w/unit?
As far as I can tell, Exdeath is an accomplished caster unit, and starts with unique spells, can learn many others, and learns Holy as a Trust Mastery.
Cloud of Darkness has innate human-slaying abilities that make her incredibly useful against any humanoid enemy, which seems to be common later on. On top of this, she gets 50% resist to all elements and status effects.
Cecil (Paladin) is a very strong tanky unit, and seems to get a great skill set as well that helps protect your party. My best guess is he has an ability at max level that may be a Wall equivalent from FFRK, though not exactly to such a mandatory degree. His Trust Mastery also gives him a 120 ATK sword, with Holy element. This seems like it'll be a very powerful weapon to have for those who can use it.
Vaan is one of the first characters who can learn and use Full Break. Any one who's playing FFRK knows how good that ability is. Other characters later on will get it too, so his time in the sun is only limited by how long it takes for other characters to show up. When we get the FFT event that adds Delita, Ramza and Agrias, Agrias can use Full Break too, and isn't shabby herself in other areas.
Bartz as far as I can tell is just a great all around character like he is in FFRK. Great stats, great ability pool.
Until more of the descriptions and skill names get translated from the Japanese reddit threads, it's hard to tell what some of those skills are that makes them so great, and who can use what Trust Masteries.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I assume the main cast will also be viable end game units, so far Rain is my main guy and has been mopping up. Lacking any kind of healing outside of a 1* bard will start being an issue soon though.
From the chart thingy on the reddit thingy, they can upgrade to 5*, so I assume so. It's neat that their appearance changes with each rank.
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Now I have a Shantotto too. So much black magic. So small... thingy.
I'm thinking I could probably really use a white mage, but I BARELY squeaked through the Intermediate Exp Vortex thing on the back of Bio Blaster poisoning and using all my potions, and like that, I can auto through it and the dungeons I'm at again.
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Repeat kind of defeats the point of Auto.
Auto will keep attacking each round, so it's good for grinding.
I missed this too, thanks.
Pfft. Like I read any of that junk. Jam buttons, make magic happen.
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Are the daily quests actually getting reset right now? Because my refresh timer says 75313 hours until 'refresh'.
That first one is always a 1* garbage gimme. You get those rolls like... constantly from Friend Points, although I think that initial one is from a tiny 1* subset of the other pools since I've gotten some really random 1* grunts and even one 2* from the Friendship pulls. The first true roll/summon is for 500 lapis (most likely after the ochu boss in the forest dungeon). When I was rerolling last night, it took about 10-15 minutes to run through the dungeon with skipping all cutscenes and just putting everything on auto to get to the pull there. I might not be optimal though.
That said, with the rewards for the pre-reg stuff, it seems like anybody who joins at the start then after the 'pre' period will get all those rewards, which include 11 3*+ summons (10 rare tickets +500 lapis) and 25 crap summons (5,000 friendship points). It might honestly be worth holding out until then for MASS rerolling. Or do both. *shrug* I'm pretty happy with the summons I got and they all seem pretty solid so far, and certainly significantly better than the 1* or 2* trashboats.
I should have stuck with that and been happy, but I was an idiot. I re-rolled and have been getting Edgars, Shadows, Sabins and Lunas ever since. I don't even care if I get a 4 or 5* unit, I will now settle for a Noteworthy or "Best" at any rating at this point. I'd be happiest with Cecil, but seriously, anyone but those guys again.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Is there somewhere I can look this stuff up?
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Reddit has a big list of characters available in the game right now, but the problem is it includes characters who are released from events in Japan, along with a few characters who've already gotten 6* evolutions.
Rydia learns Blizzaga as her Trust Mastery (180% AoE ice damage), and her stats at 5* are pretty good in the caster department. She's low on HP like most casters, typically. From what I can make out of all the Japanese, and in general, she'll be good because she can learn Meteor. She's also a prime candidate for Summoning Espers, as her unique abilities all boost their effect and damage.
You could do worse, for sure. :P
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I really like my 4* Edgar. Oodles of AoE status attacks, including Bioblaster at a low level. Poison ticks for 10% of max HP. It's ridiculous. There's already a (quasi?)superboss available that's guarding some great sword, and people are killing it because it's not immune to poison or paralyze. Also, it costs 0 to challenge, so that too.
Here's an index of characters and their stuff.
https://www.reddit.com/r/FFBraveExvius/wiki/units
Note that some of the names are wrong, like Clyne (in game) is Klein on the wiki.
Edit:
It also bears mentioning that Auto isn't actually Auto-Attack. It just 'taps' every character so they use the shit they've currently got selected. I basically never use the tap-and-try-to-time thing because with six going, it misinterprets as a slide to select an ability way too often. It's also great when two characters are casting the same spell because it's basically an automatic element chain... whatever that does/means. Auto also retargets pretty well.
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But I'm also neck deep in FFRK and I'm not sure I can handle 2 gacha games in my life.
Resetting has something to do with setting up a dummy FB account and logging out of one into your main account or something. I'm sure it's not actually complicated but I'm really not willing to use my FB for anything so I just said screw it.
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1.) Return to title screen.
2.) Log into dummy facebook account.
3.) Uninstall game.
4.) Reinstall game.
I have no idea how many steps were actually required, and I already have a dummy facebook account (technically three) specifically for all these things that demand to be given access to it or give rewards, or get bitchy about walling off stuff unless you invite other people. There's probably a better way to accomplish 3/4, I've got a faster internet connection, so redownloading everything only took a minute or two and I wasn't paying close attention anyway.
Note that after you do 2 once, the first account you do it with will apparently FOREVER be that facebook account's game. So if you log in a second time, it'll overwrite the new game data with the first game's data (but you're fine at this point to uninstall to get a fresh New Game). This is a way you can recover the account, or transfer it between devices, but I wouldn't suggest using your main account for this until you get a start you're happy with (and see caveat about tons of stuff being given out above), because you probably do want to link it to something in case your device explodes or whatever and you want to recover the game data.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
I posted a link to the youtube showing how to reset. It's not too complicated. The biggest effort is the 12-15 minutes it takes to go through the tutorial again and again.
Yes. Brave Frontier had that in spades and Exvius is not left wanting.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
When you feed a character to another one, does it matter what level they are? If I wanted to feed my white mage to Maria, should I level up the WM first?
I missed it, I apologize. What I'm about to say below is in the video, if I'm understanding correctly.
FWIW, @Delphinidaes @ArcTangent , it doesn't seem to require a dummy account. You do the tutorial once, login to facebook via options, logout, and it resets the data on your phone. Do the tutorial again, if you don't want to keep the new draw, sign into facebook, select "yes" then logout and repeat. If you DO want the new draw and are done rerolling, login to facebook and select "no" (the yes is about overwriting the new data for the previously stored data, so I assume the no means you keep your new data.)
I tried that. Don't count on it.
It does, since it pulls a new list of online friends each time you start up a dungeon. It requires a constant connection to do that.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
No worries. I posted the link after you asked about it, so you didn't miss anything really. Just a good idea to have a link to it since someone asked.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
And I was wrong about not needing a dummy Facebook account. It looks like Garland is attached to my main Facebook account and I'm not seeing a way to dislodge it. If I want to keep rerolling, I think I may just need to not connect to Facebook.
The problem is that seems to be the only way to back up your data in case something happens to your phone.
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It really kind of upsets me that Edgar has a sword in this game. He's a spear guy. He gets spears. Why the hell does he have a little rapier?
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Also I did a second pull and got 3* Cecil so I think I've got a good startup. Just nabbed the first esper as well so we'll see how Rydia does. Her Magic is on point and I've been able to combo her with the purple dude to good effect.
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