Final Fantasy Record Keeper
[Final Fantasy Record Keeper] Is actually a pretty fun mobile free-to-play game for iOS and Android. It's not perfect by any means, but it's a HUGE improvement over such duds as All The Bravest. It's a walk down memory lane with a simple ATB style combat system with a surprising amount of depth and strategy. There is a new event every week, featuring your favorite characters and stages from Final Fantasy history, so it never gets old, and it IS free to try, so give it a shot if you have some time to spare. Just don't give them any of your money.
How naive I was about this little game.
This is the thread for talking about Square Enix's F2P Mobile game Final Fantasy Record Keeper (FFRK) for iOS and Android. Initially met with skepticism after some of SE's lackluster F2P entries in the past, it has grown in scope and popularity to the point where it gets as much discussion as any other mainline Final Fantasy game.
The game features a pretty basic Active Time Battle system. You can take up to 5 characters, made up of all your favorites from past games (and one original starter character) as you journey through the cliff notes version of all the Final Fantasy games. Each Final Fantasy game is a world, made up of dungeons with several stages. Each stage requires you to spend stamina to attempt them. Stamina recharges at a rate of 1 every 3 minutes. There are also limited time events that occur every week featuring additional stages, characters, and rewards.
There is a surprising depth of strategy to this game, as each character can equip different combinations of equipment and abilities, allowing for many different approaches to tackling some of the at times quite intense challenges. Characters and equipment also get bonuses if you match them to the world you're in (for example, Cloud gets a bonus in FF7 stages, as does anyone equipping his Buster Sword).
The F2P comes in the form of the in-game currency, Mythril, which allows you to pull powerful relics from reward banners. Mythril also allows you to recharge stamina, and to try again if you happen to be defeated in a stage. You can spend real money on Gems which have the same function as Mythril, though refreshingly for a F2P game it's possible to clear all content without spending a dime. This is thanks to several quality of life features implemented by DeNa, chief among them the Friend Summon system. Additionally, rather generous amounts of free Mythril are available between a combination of login bonuses, stage completions, event participation and quest completion.
Tips and information for new players starting out;
1) Quests.
From the home screen, the Missions button in the upper-right features Wayfarer, Normal and Special missions. The Wayfarer missions are meant for new players and will guide you to some of the game's basic features, as well as giving you some nice ability and item rewards. Move on to the Normal missions from there. Special missions typically involve defeating some of the game's highest difficulty level fights with certain team limitations, which are usually "only use characters from this realm."
2) Stamina.
You can see the current / maximum stamina numerically in the upper right corner of your Home screen. Below that is an orange bar that shows the same thing, but below that bar is a set of 5 hexagons representing your current Stamina Shards. When you get 5 Stamina Shards, you refill your stamina to full and your maximum goes up by 1. The filled in hexagons show you how many stamina shards you have towards the next stamina refill and maximum +1. It is to your benefit to collect that fifth shard when you're running out or empty of Stamina. Efficiency is good!
3)Record Info.
When reading about the record in question, several tabs will be available with story, reward and boss info. Here you can read about the story background, rewards, and boss strategies as well as any medal requirements.
Upon completing any given stage in a record, your performance will be ranked. For any stage without a boss, you can earn up to 9 medals. You will lose medals if more than one party member dies, or if the party takes too much damage or uses too many actions to clear the stage. Earn enough medals and you will gain the Expert or Champion rating for the stage, which provides 150% and 200% experience, respectively.
Upon finishing the entire record, there are 3 reward levels; Completion, First Time Completion and Mastery. You can get the Completion bonus every time you complete that record. However, the other two can only be achieved once and typically include excellent rewards. To attain Mastery rewards, you must have earned 83.33% (5/6th) of all medals within the record. Remember those boss medal requirements? Each gives 3 medals if completed or 0 medals if not, so for records with few or only one stage, boss medal requirements can be crucial for obtaining Mastery rewards.
4) Realm Synergy.
Every character and every item comes from a specific realm. When you go into a record for a realm, characters from that realm are treated as if they are 10 levels higher. Items from that realm are significantly boosted in stats, provided the item itself is leveled up. If you're going into an FFVII record, it's a good idea to bring Cloud. It's a great idea to bring someone carrying the Buster Sword. It's a fantastic idea to bring Cloud carrying his own Buster Sword!
The boost from synergized items is stronger than the boost from synergized characters, so it's good to collect and maintain a spread of items from all realms. You will accumulate this over time, so don't worry too much.
5) Events.
Typically, there's 1 or 2 events running at any given time. These events start at a very low difficulty that even first day players can participate in, and end at very high difficulties that even longtime veterans can have trouble with. Rewards for completing event stages can include new or returning characters and their Memory Crystals (used to break level caps), weapons, armor or accessories from the event's realm, orbs, upgrade materials and of course Mythril. Events typically run for about two weeks and overlap, and you should definitely try to complete as much of each event as possible.
6) Hall of Rites.
The Hall of Rites is a place where you can exchange Hero Souls for characters and Blank Memory Crystals for their MCs. MC1s are used to break past level 50 and enable the Record Materia slot. MC2s are used to break past level 65, and MC3s are used to break past level 80.
7) Record Dive.
The Record Dive system allows you to power up certain characters who have reached level 65, adding small amounts of stat points, percentage boosts to certain types of abilities, adding or increasing ability ranks or adding additional equipment options. The available powerups are different for each eligible character. You unlock these power ups by expending Motes, which are a special type of currency obtained from a variety of sources including Event rewards.
8) Daily Dungeons.
Each day has a specific set of 1 or 2 dungeons. You can only get the First Time Completion and Mastery rewards once, same as the records, and those rewards don't refresh from week to week. So if you complete a stage of the Sunday dungeon, next Sunday it will still show them as all completed (though you could still farm the dungeon for normal drops or experience.)
Monday through Saturday, the daily dungeons have rewards for and can be used to farm orbs, upgrade materials or Gil. The Sunday dungeons feature battles with a tremendous amount of experience. To put it into some context, A + difficulty stage of a Monday-Saturday dungeon gives around 10,000 exp to be split to the party, while the experience dungeon gives up to 100,000!
The daily dungeons now reward Gysahl Greens upon completion, and enemies have a small chance to drop additional Greens. These Greens can be exchanged for orbs, eggs, gil or upgrade materials at any time, and once per week the Special Shop will restock a variety of Major Orbs (at half price, relative to buying 10x Greaters), MC lodes and Mythril. Additional purchases may become available from time to time (accessories, items, etc.)
9) Nightmare and Mote Dungeons
The Nightmare area will be open for two weeks every month, and each month adds a new dungeon. All previously added dungeons are accessible at any time that Nightmare is, so don't worry, you can catch up eventually. The Nightmare dungeons feature a series of challenging boss fights, culminating in a special fight where all characters of a certain 5* ability will get full synergy for themselves and all equipped items, regardless of what realm they or the items are from! These final fights are like puzzles that must be solved and typically require planning and tactics instead of super powerful gear.
Completing the final boss of a Nightmare dungeon gives you a Record for a powerful 6* ability, which require 6* crystals to make. These crystals are currently very slow to acquire, so spend them carefully.
Mote dungeons are similar, and show up on a regular, recurring basis. Defeating the bosses within will reward you with large amounts of 4* motes for record diving.
10) Relics.
The Relics page, accessible via shortcut on the bottom right of most screens, is where one can "pull" from a variety of "banners" for items. Banner pulls are always at least 3* rarity, with a lesser chance at 4* rarity and a ~13% chance at 5* rarity. Doing so costs Mythril (in game currency) or Gems (purchased with real $$$).
All banners from this point forward will have "Guaranteed 5*", which means every 11-pull comes with at least one 5* item. The likeliest result is two 5* items per 11 pull.
Banners are typically linked to current Events, and every banner has featured 5* relics. When you pull a 5* item, most of the time it will be one of the featured relics, but there's still a small chance it won't be.
One can do a single pull for 5 Mythril, a triple pull for 15 Mythril or an 11 pull for 50 Mythril. In this modern era of Guaranteed 5*, it is most efficient to do 11 pulls and only 11 pulls. Aside from that, on a per-draw basis your odds of drawing a 5* item are the same no matter how many items you pull at once and no matter which currency you use to pay for them.
Multiplayer!
We have a Discord channel set up to coordinate PA runs of Multiplayer bosses. You can join it with this link;
https://discord.gg/mNKVTKf
FFRK Acronyms 101
MC - Memory Crystal [Item to break a characters level 50 limit. MC2 is used to break their level 65 limit.]
RM - Record Materia [New equipment type once MC is used. RM slot unlocked by breaking characters levels. RMs are acquired from level broken characters in a variety of ways]
SG/SSII - Sentinel Grimoire/Stone Skin 2 [Also refereed to as Wall, either is a massive defensive SB]
SB - Soul Break [Think Limit Break from FF7, new ones can be learned by character specific 5* relics]
SSB - Super Soul Break [Like an SB, but stronger, with a variety of bonus effects.]
BSB -Burst Soul Break [Like an SSB, except they also change your Attack and Defense commands to something else for a limited time]
OSB - Overlimit Soul Break [Like a very powerful SB that hits once. Can break the 9999 damage limit.]
M_O/G_O - Major Orbs/Greater Orbs [the middle _ represents which type of orb between Fire, Ice, Lightning, Earth, Non-Elemental, Dark, Holy, White, Black, Power, Summon]
_*++ - Blank is a number 1-5 which represents an items base rank (not combined). Every plus after the * represents how much its been combined. [A 3*++ will show up as a 5* in game but will be only about as powerful as a 4*. Rule of thumb is every item combination adds about half a rarity level of power.]
RS - Realm Synergy [Character or Item matches dungeons realm ie Cloud in FF7 dungeon or Blitzballs in FFX dungeon. This adds about 10 levels of stats to a character or about a rarity level in power to an item]
Mister P's PDF is a compilation of super useful information about FFRK. Ability damage multipliers, character skillsets, super break details, upcoming event information, etc etc.
Enlir's spreadsheet has a ton of useful information. So does
Kaonohiokala's.
A while ago, FFRK added a friend summon system. We have
a spreadsheet here you can plug your friend code into, and find the friend code of other PAers. If you're looking to fill out your Friends list now that RW lists can be refreshed during selection, I recommend
this site, which features a searchable list of Friend Codes that constantly updates and can be sorted by realm stats.
Posts
Keeper's Choice Volume 1 - This banner can be activated up to 5 times, each for an 11-pull. It does NOT come with Guaranteed 5*. The featured relics are all SSB strength.
Additionally, after pulling on the banner you can choose one 5* relic from a predetermined list. There are several useful relics on the list, with Ramza's Armor (party 40% max HP heal and Protect) likely at the top, followed by Leila's party Shell + Haste and Red XIII's party Protect + Haste. There are also a pair of good Medicas; Arc's which also raises Resistance and Yuna's which also adds party high regen.
Keeper's Choice Volume 2 - This banner can be activated up to 5 times, each for an 11-pull. It DOES come with Guaranteed 5*, and the banner items include Sentinel Grimoire (Wall) and Platinum Sword (Shout), both extremely powerful soul breaks good for any account. The other items (3x BSB, 2x SSB) are decent.
Additionally, after pulling on the banner you can choose one 5* relic from a predetermined list. This list includes items with Shared soul breaks (good for running Cid Missions) and elemental resists/boosts. Of these, the Red Armlet and Oath Veil are probably the most useful, especially if you have Fire- or Wind-element SBs.
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New Player Hone Recommendations:
Mitigation is king in the game and never stops being useful, so Shellga, Protectga, Power Breakdown, and Magic Breakdown should be at the top of the priority list. The regular breaks are useful too, just because a different set of characters can use them. AoE Mitigation (without damage) is offered by the Dancer line; 3* dances match up with 3* breaks, 4* with 4* breakdowns, etc. Good Dancers include Faris, Lenna, Penelo, Cait Sith, Mog, Rikku and Yuffie. Bards have their own 4* abilities which are identical to Protectga and Shellga.
Abusing Retaliate's mechanics can cheese you through a LOT of content and it's a 2* ability, so is incredibly cheap to hone up. You can pair it with Draw Fire (also cheap) for extra cheese with cheese on top. Give the rest of your team copies of Double Cut or Tempo Flurry and use them against your Retaliator.
Self Boosts are useful to increase a character's damage before you pull relics with Party Boosts. Many jobs have access to them; Monks have Punishing Palm which deals damage and increases ATK, Samurai have Mirror of Equity which does the same. Thieves have Steal Power which doesn't do damage but does debuff the target's ATK at the same strength as Power Breakdown. Casters with at least 4* Darkness can use Memento Mori which increases MAG but also Dooms the caster.
If you want to get into Black Magic, start with the Water line in each tier as opposed to fire/lightning/ice; Water is infrequently resisted and easier to hone than the primary elements are. Plus it casts faster, so it does more damage over time not counting resistance/weakness.
If you want to get into Summoning, the 3* primary element ones are good. As for 4*, Carbuncle is occasionally useful at R1 but the others take a lot of resources to hone. Once you have a large pile of 4* Summon orbs, Maduin is always useful where AoE is needed and Orthros is good if you're heavily stacking MAG and have synergy. With regard to elemental 4* summons, the good ones are Alexander, Leviathan and Fat Chocobo.
With regard to White Magic, Curaga will suffice until it doesn't (party level ~55-60+). Renewing Cure is an alternative that heals for less than Curaga but applies Low Regen. Memento of Prayer applies Low Regen to the entire party. The Dia line is really only viable if the target is weak to Holy or if you pick up some MND gear/RMs and +Holy% gear.
With regard to Status Effects, the Machinist line is a series of 4* abilities that have a high chance to apply a status effect, and deal additional damage if the target already has that effect. White Magic has access to high proc chance Slow and Silence, while Black Magic has access to high proc chance Blind.
With regard to Spellblades, the 3* abilities are fine. It's not really necessary to push into the 4* ones.
After that, it all depends on your relic pulls. We're at a point in the game where pretty much every smaller population job is fleshed out with 3*, 4* and 5* abilities, so there's plenty to choose from.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Would anyone be interested in watching a silly youtube video when the OK Banner 1 drops of my relic pulls? Yes, I'll have facecam, and I'll have just gotten back from a vacation overseas, and it'll actually be a combined OK Banner 1 and Kain Banner 1 pull to see if I can chase the elusive BSBs present on both banners, and wind up with some Yang Claws and Ingus Shields as booby prizes for embarassment.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I might finally pull on a real VIII banner soon - I think the next couple of them are on the correct side of power creep increments. The last few VIII banners were right before big upgrades to banner formats, and I think the next couple are right after banner upgrades.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Personally, I find KongBakPao unusable, and would refer people to Enlir's spreadsheet or kaonohiokala's spreadsheet before it. Definitely keep Mister P's PDF, as that is absolutely resource #1 for me, with Enlir's spreadsheet #2 and the RW list you have linked a distant #3.
Enlir:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16K1Zryyxrh7vdKVF1f7eRrUAOC5wuzvC3q2gFLch6LQ
kaonohiokala:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e1xUGHH-OBdlM0QzWoME4GRJt9v3ocQmdmylI62hwFk/edit#gid=1211382974
I think I would also make an explicit recommendation for Keeper's Choice #2 over Keeper's Choice #1. No Guaranteed 5* is huge, but also the draw relics are significantly better across the board for vol 2. Really the only thing vol 1 has going for it is Grand Armor on the select, and that's showing its age.
A tiny ray of light in an otherwise miserable yesterday evening it turns out. Now I'm depressed about it and can't look at Bartz without remembering that brief elation/glee.
And I agree that KBP is nigh-unusable at this point and downright Dr. Mog-like in its wrongness at times. I don't have a good alternative though. Maybe I'll make my own. With hookers, and blackjack.
You're right in that KBP has turned to shit; I'm going to remove it from the link list. And add links to the other two spreadsheets.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
It's a plan.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
How's that one stack up? Seems like the defense ignore might be useful for things like the U+++ in the current event.
Thief's Revenge is great. Most of the lower thief abilities are overshadowed by other things. Steal Power is decent if for some reason you are not running a boostga, but usually I'd rather use Power Breakdown which deals solid damage rather than no damage.
Beyond that, focus more on whatever other abilities your thieves can use: most of them have Celerity (Dismissal is good sometimes), some have Support 4+ (Breakdowns), a few have Machinist (Shells are great when relevant).
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
The def ignore does make it nice for bosses with jacked up armor, yes. Just... don't expect amazing damage. You'd think it would with Seph's sky high attack, but nope.
Just did some maths; the defense piercing command is actually way better than I gave it credit for. For "serious" values of DEF (1000+), the piercing command is better than the four-hit fire/non command for pretty much any value of ATK/DEF unless there's a vulnerability. Even if there IS a vulnerability, sometimes the piercing command still comes out ahead, for things with 3000 DEF or more (though of course, hitting the vulnerability builds more meter).
As another point of comparison, at ~700 ATK (regular softcap +20% from burst), the piercing command starts pulling ahead of Sanguine Cross (3.8/2) around 2000 DEF, and doesn't have that icky life loss drawback.
One nice thing is that there isn't a softcap on ATK for piercing attacks, so if you have piles of stacking ATK buffs (Dark Bargain!), all of those buffs will provide noticeable bumps to your damage. Above the ATK softcap (590), an extra stacking 30% ATK buff only adds 14% damage to a regular attack, but it still adds 27% to the piercing attack. The drawback of course is that the piercing command takes a lot of ATK to "get going" and it's only two hits, so you're never going to get gonzo numbers out of it. It'll do very workmanlike damage, always.
(Reference point: pierce command deals 2x9999 around 1720 ATK)
Another consideration: the value of that piercing command will go down some when the ATK softcap is raised to 700, since regular attacks scale much harder than piercing attacks.
i haven't even looked at ffrk in 2 days so slowly trying to catch up as i attempt to regain normal life functions
it's full of ancient garbage, you probably want to dodge
Yeah. You could get very lucky, or you could end up with Braver. Best to save that mythril.
or the game will ultratroll and give me like another riona bsb or cardinal like it did for my 3rd platinum sword during fft lucky.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
ST is actually my best VIII sword but that's not saying much.
My son got Reno's goggles, squalls jacket, and Bartz SSB. I hate that kid.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I have some mages, but I'm still working on building the spells/hones for a full team.
The Monster Baru Cormorant - Seth Dickinson
Steam: Korvalain
Only if it's off banner
PS they're really stalling the plot with some of these dungeon updates, VIII is now in 'fuck around in disc 3 collecting the optional GFs' mode
Also, I'm pretty sure that FFI and FFIV will never get another update.
I, probably not, but IV might get The After Years.
Oh I know, and I'm very thankful for the guaranteed 5* for sure. 0/11 was just incredibly frustrating and I am glad that it is gone.
Ah, true.
I used to think that they could add non-FF games, like Mana, if they wanted to continue I after the next update (which is going to have to be the fight with Chaos), but the new Beyond synergy means that's not likely.
In other news, here's a video of that chain SB thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2D4BqOTgq9w
I'm not sure what the actual mechanics are, but it looks cool. It seems like Shantotto's SB creates a timer, and if you use attacks of the corresponding element (lightning, in this case) during the time, they're powered up in proportion to how many hits have been landed during the timer.
Also, voice acting.
Why not both? An imperil team which contains an elemental chain SB of that same element.
I'm not surprised. The I, IV, and VI realms are figuratively at the doors of their respective final bosses. And I'm pretty sure there are no dungeon updates for them as of the current JPN build. No doubt they quickly realized that the content they have to work with is finite. And you can't exactly keep fishing on the FTP model when you run out of bait.
IV has its sequel to mine, which could potentially give the IV realm something like twice or thrice as many rooms as it currently has.