This page consolidates most of the launch advice, Greensburg's beginner's guide, and my experience as a regular in #gl-help on Discord. If you are a new player, this page was written for you. This is a complimentary guide to the game. Most basic questions can be answered by playing the game. This guide will fill in the gaps. Where do I ask other questions?Ask in #gl-help on Discord or in the Questions megathread on Reddit. For any questions specific to the guide itself, ping @potato (me) on Discord. I don't have a Reddit account. You can DM me on Discord if you need to. Important notice on gachaIt has become a recent trend for the developers to change the featured unit rates. Always check the rates before pulling.
Medals are the pity currency in this game. Exchange them for units or arks in the Shop. Not every banner has a pity. Limited units cannot be pitied using their souls. When pity is available, a single unit or SSR ark needs 90,000 crystals (~$800 USD) to acquire enough medals for pity. Additional resources
Explaining gacha
Explaining staminaLast Cloudia is generally known as a "no stamina" game. The "no stamina" means that you can run stages an infinite amount of times without being gated by "stamina". This is only half true. There is a "soft stamina" system in Last Cloudia where, if you plan on equipping Arks while entering combat, you will require a number of souls as an entry cost. In the above screenshot, we have an Ark equipped. That Ark costs 2,640 blue souls to use, which is also shown as Required Souls below the Start Quest button. 90% of the time, you will want to equip Arks when entering battle. The only times when you don't want to equip Arks is when you are farming stages for souls (they drop in minuscule amounts per stage clear), or when you are out of souls. Explaining currencies
Changing your in-combat settingsThese are the in-combat settings that I use. You can copy these as recommended settings, or you can read the giant explanation below.
Changing your support unitTap on Party from the bottom bar, then tap the Unit and Ark above the party name to change your support Unit and Ark. Adding friendsPlaying a gacha is a lonely endeavour. No, really, I totally understand your plight – otherwise you'd be playing on a Switch or FFXIV. To lessen your ongoing grief, you can add "friends" in this game. In this game, all "friends" are friends with benefits. Ergo, you should add as many "friends" as you can. There is no downside to having more "friends". Obtaining friend pointsFirst, add some "friends". Then, follow the instructions below. When you tap on the pink box in the right image, you are shown this popup. To play smart, you will want to change to Friend Points and stay on it forever. Sometimes event currencies are obtainable in friend gifts. The Ceremonial Badge shown below is an event currency. Remember to switch back to friend points when the event ends. The game will not do it automatically for you. Explaining skill cost (SC)Skill cost, or SC for short, is the main measurement of how strong your unit is. The most unique aspect of Last Cloudia's progression system is allowing any unit to learn any Ark skill as long as they have the right Arks and the enough souls. To balance these Ark skills, each skill has a "cost" to equip. More skills = more SC required. You will need to increase SC to equip more Ark skills. First, enter the Unit screen. Then tap on the green button next to the SC counter.
Once you're done increasing SC, you need to equip skills. Because I have no skills on Kyle, let's move to Saintly Theria. From top to bottom:
To view all the skills you have mastered, tap the Skills button on Kyle's main page. And once again, because I have no skills on Kyle, I'll show you how this page looks like on Saintly Theria. This page monitors all the Ark skills you have learned or are in the progress of learning. It is very useful for forgetful people. Like me, who forgot I was making STheria learn Proud Force until I took this screenshot for this guide. By the time you're reading this, I probably forgot again. Explaining unit ability treesThe most important upgrade path for your units is to max out their ability tree. It doesn't matter which nodes you unlock, because you should unlock them all (other than the 15SC node on 4th enhance, unless you need 80SC). Important: The SC nodes on the ability tree unlock the SC cap – not the SC itself. You need unit souls or mother souls to increase usable SC. Navigate to your unit screen, then press the Ability button. You need crystallites, crystals and crystal clusters to unlock ability tree nodes. See the images below as an example. Unlocking units with soulsPermanent units can be unlocked by amassing souls from Friend point gacha or unit story stages (i.e. unlocking Robin by beating Robin in Gorm's unit story stage). Monster units are also unlocked via souls, albeit they need 50 instead of 30. To unlock a unit, navigate to the Unit screen and scroll to the bottom. Then tap on the greyed out unit. Explaining Arks and Ark skillsArks are self-explanatory to a point. When you equip an Ark, you gain the Ark's stats and Ark passives (shown here as Ark attributes) on your unit. Some Ark passives are party-wide, so they will affect every Unit in your party. I've highlighted the remaining parts in the screenshot below.
WalkthroughThis section is to guide players loosely for their first two weeks of play. This section will be strictly about progression. For understanding game mechanics, read the Basics section. New player goalsAt the launch of the Global version, there was a very concise checklist passed around for new players. For some reason, that checklist has faded into obscurity, and we've been greeting confused new players for the past few months. I've reconstructed the checklist below.
1. Focus on your main party (3 units) until level 60One of the biggest mistakes early on is to spread your resources thin on your entire unit roster. Focus on the three units in your main party. To gain EXP efficiently, swap a unit for another unit if you reach max level with them and can't enhance (uncap level) them ASAP. You can discard this advice when you reach level 60 because the level 60 enhance can take some time. 2. Upgrade your soul spots as much as possibleSouls is the scarcest resource because it is time-gated and acts as a soft stamina bar for most activities in the game. Use your blue souls to upgrade red spots – you will need those reds to upgrade red Arks. You will unlock soul spots as you progress through Story. These include:
Taken from Greensburg's beginner guide. As more Story content is added, more soul spots will open up, allowing players to increase their soul generation. When that happens, always prioritise new soul spots. 3. Upgrade your soul tanksThe higher your tank capacity, the more souls you can keep to upgrade SR and SSR arks with. DO NOT upgrade SSR arks early on. You need max level soul tanks to upgrade SSR arks to level 10. New players should level their tanks to level 5 before focusing on other things. 4. Be selective on which Arks to levelUntil the Ark level selector (a feature to adjust Ark levels before entering combat) is added to Global, you will be stuck with high Ark level costs for some crucial Arks. Beware upgrading arks you don't immediately need. These are easy and important skills for early players:
5. Max out your friends list for friend pointsThe friend point exchange is one of the best sources of materials early on. Don't waste those points on the friend point gacha – use them for materials. Tap on the Shop icon on the home screen, then increase your friend slots on the top left. You can exchange by entering the Marketplace from the Shop on the homescreen. All materials in the friend shop exchange refresh daily, so the low quantity is not an issue. 6. Max out your Conquer slots ASAPUnit souls are used for increasing your unit's SC, which is used for equipping learned Ark skills (that cost SC). The amount of SC a unit has usually determines how strong/flexible that unit is in endgame. Conquer is an idling feature that lets you generate 4 unit souls per unit per slot every 20 hours. New players should prioritise reaching Blaze Garden because it unlocks the second set of Conquer slots. Since SC is the largest bottleneck for endgame, the sooner you start, the sooner you finish endgame. 7. Use your unit souls for SCUnit souls are used for two purposes: awakening units, and increasing the unit's SC. Awakening is when you upgrade a unit's base stats and their Special, also known as Ultimate. The cost for Awakening normal units is fixed:
The cost for Awakening monster units is slightly higher, but monster souls are also much easier to farm from Story stages:
You can see an example of the Awaken screen below. Our recommended strategy is to:
The reasoning for this strategy is that you achieve a balanced progression between base stats, upgrading your Ultimate, and equipping important Ark skills. Walkthrough: From level 1 to level 20There are five Story units to unlock. You will start with Kyle, Lilebette and Rei – but you will obtain Zekus really soon, and Theria a while after.
3-starring stagesAs you play the game, you will run into stage goals that require certain spells to be cast. We recommend that you return to these stages later instead of trying to 3-star them. These requirements usually ask for spells that are available on Story units (i.e. Lilebette or Zekus), and most players don't focus on their Story units if they rerolled for Gacha units. Uncapping level 20 unitsUncapping your unit from level 20 to level 40 requires upgrade materials. You can obtain these materials from several sources. Story maps like the free quest in Yggdrasil Tree are unlocked early on, and are easy to farm, but have low drop rates. You can also obtain materials from the Friend point exchange and the Limit Breaker Field event dungeon (open weekdays). The Limit Breaker Field event dungeon costs event orbs, which regenerate at a rate of 1 orb every 60 minutes. To see which materials you need, enter the Unit screen and check your Unit's profile. It will show you something like this screen. Beware the Zell cost when enhancing units. You don't want to enhance more than 3 units (a party) before level 60, or you'll be stuck grinding Zell and materials instead of progressing. Walkthrough: From level 21 to level 40When you reach your high 20s, you'll find that the monsters become progressively stronger. To keep up, you need to purchase equipment from Shops.
Grinding crystals and EXPHere are several locations that are friendly for lower level parties.
Beating Zouglas, the boss in Blaze GardenIt is actually possible to reach Blaze Garden and beat Zouglas at level 40 without assists. However, you'll need to know what you are doing, such as equipping the right Arks and pairing the right Units against him. For most players, it is much safer to face Zouglas when they reach level 45-50. Nevertheless, here are a few strategies.
Walkthrough: From level 41 to level 60If you haven't beaten Zouglas yet, refer to the level 40 section on how to beat him. This section assumes players are able to reach Ladour Island. Grinding crystals and EXP
Uncapping level 60 unitsEnhancing past level 60 is the biggest obstacle yet. For players who rerolled for Phantom Thief Robin, now is your time to max out his Ability tree (the bottom branch has the Extort talent) and to learn Crit passives. For everyone else, your best chance is to loan a Phantom Thief Robin as a Support unit. You will be using him to maximise item drops from Transcendental Gate, which is a level 55 event dungeon open on Fri/Sat/Sun. You need at least one unit in your party (not a Support unit) at level 55 or above to enter this dungeon.
Walkthrough: After level 60From this point forward, you will want to explore Arena and Tower of Trials, as well as complete the rest of Story mode. Maybe you want to raise another Unit or two, or you're still deep in grinding for Zell. A few tips:
Whatever you do from this point forward is up to your priorities. We wish you the best of luck on your journey in Last Cloudia. Thanks for reading! Why reroll?A recent update added infinite reroll at the start of the game. This pool is sporadically updated with the latest permanent Units and Arks (i.e. all permanent Units and Arks that are older than 2-4 weeks). The reroll screen will look like this: (I stole this screenshot from #gl-reroll on Discord because the poster lucksacked. Your roll will probably not look this good on your first few tries.) How to rerollA good reroll should have a meta Unit + several meta SSR arks. The Unit can be used immediately, while the SSR arks can be used in midgame to endgame. The reasoning is simple: you are not guaranteed to obtain these SSRs in a sea of RNG. Unit of choice tickets do not exist in Global (yet). Units to reroll for
Best arks to reroll for
Second-best arks to reroll for
Really good Arks to have
What are crystals?Crystals are the premium currency in Last Cloudia. Crystals are divided between paid crystals and free crystals. You can view your number of paid and free crystals by navigating to How to obtain free crystalsThere are a number of methods to obtain Crystals in the game. There is no guaranteed daily income of crystals. However, you can obtain a sizeable number of crystals by pursuing non-renewable sources of crystals. Non-renewable sources of free crystals:
Fluctuating (semi-renewable) sources of free crystals:
Renewable sources of premium currency usually refers to daily and weekly missions in other mobile games. Last Cloudia has no dailies or weeklies, so Last Cloudia has no renewable sources of premium currency. Advice for light spendersEvery so often, the developers will come out with special crystal packages that include Mother Souls that cost roughly $80 USD each. If you are keen to support the game and are not so keen on the high prices, these special packages offer the most value for your dollar. Do NOT buy the level up packs or the guaranteed SSR ticket packs. There are very few worse things you can throw your paid crystals onto. The SSR pool is already too large to hope for specific Arks or Units, and the level up packs are redundant if you've played longer than a month. The developer has confirmed that a monthly subscription deal will come soon. No further details have been provided. Purchase the boostersEvery month or two, boosters will be made available for 2 weeks. These boosters will always expire at the specified time, so the sooner you purchase them, the longer you benefit. The soul gain booster is the best value for money in terms of anything you can purchase. It doubles soul regeneration rate, effectively allowing newer players to catch up to older players in half the time. The EXP gain booster and AP gain booster are only recommended for newer players so that they can reach endgame in less time. Further adviceNot all paid equipment are worthwhile. Always check the equipment passives and community consensus before deciding to spend for them. For example, very few equipment are as game-breaking as Davan's paid Axe. You don't need to pay to keep up with the latest meta. As long as you have a built team, you can still clear the hardest content in the game with launch Units and Arks. Most crystals in this game are obtained by playing the game. Last Cloudia is not a pull simulator. Play Dragalia Lost or Destiny Child if all you care about is pulling on the gacha. Always check the featured Unit and Ark banner rates before pulling. It's become a recent trend for AIDIS to screw around with the rates. Some banners will have 1% featured rate, others will have 1.5%, and a few select banners (with multiple units) will have 0.5% rate up. Checking before pulling will help you make informed decisions as to whether a banner is worth your time. For further enquiries, ask other players in Reddit or Discord.
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