Brave Frontier

  • Guest, it's time once again for the hotly contested and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!



    Go here and fill out your bracket!
    Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Once again, only you can decide!

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
Welcome to Brave Frontier!

First off, some links.

App Invasion Forum:Brave Frontier Forum | App Invasion
Brave Frontier Wiki:Brave Frontier Wiki
BF Subreddit:Brave Frontier
RR Friends List:Rerolled Brave Frontier Friend List - Google Sheets
Free Unit -Recruit a Unit for Free - Brave Frontier Wiki
Unit Leveling -Unit Leveling - Brave Frontier Wiki
What units should I focus on? -Long Term Unit Tier List
Unit Database -Brave Frontier - Units Guide
Item Guide -Part One,Part Two

I use all the above for pretty much all my information about the game. If you can't find it there then I hope you can read Japanese.

I will do my best to create a post that doesn't focus on things that can change and stick mostly to the basics. If you get past the mid-game (when you have mostly 4* and 5* units and are tackling some of the harder content) then this post won't be useful to you anyway. If I mention something that I haven't covered yet during the course of reading, chances are I do cover it elsewhere so keep reading. If I don't answer a burning question you have then PM or post and I'll try to add it in.

What is Brave Frontier?

BF is a game much like Puzzle & Dragon just without the Puzzle part. The collection, leveling, and evolution part is very similar if not the same. For those that aren't familiar with that scheme, think of it like an online Pokemon game. You capture or summon units, level them, and evolve them to more powerful forms in order to tackle increasingly difficult elements within the game. The style of play and overall aesthetic is set up similar to that of Final Fantasy, with your units on one side of the screen and the enemies on the other. Since this game is Japanese in origin, the art style is in that vein. Plenty of waifus to go around.

I just got the game, what should I know?

The game is simple to play but has a surprising amount of depth, especially as you get further into the game. When in a battle you tap which of your units you want to attack and it does. You can focus attacks on a single monster by tapping it, and a reticle will appear on it. Tap again to make it go away. Sometimes it makes sense to focus a specific enemy to get it out of the way, other times you can just tap away at your units and they'll focus on creature until it's dead, then move on. The game is smart enough to understand when one of your units will finish a monster off so the next unit will start in on the next monster.

This guide will basically follow the buttons at the bottom of the screen so if you don't see what you're looking for just keep scrolling.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Home

The home screen is what you'll see when you first load into the game. It'll have your currently selected team shown prominently in the middle of the screen. Above them will be various information about your account, including level, current exp, stamina, gems, zel, karma, and arena orbs. Protip: Touch and hold to view exp needed to level. Below them will be the menu (where things like the Setting exist), the gift box (where you pick up daily login reward and anything Gumi sends you), and all the gates accessible to you. There are five in total but only four are active at the moment. You can swipe left or right to see the other gates. Below that are the buttons used to navigate to other areas of the game. But first, the gates.

Quest

BF has a story so this is where you get to play it out. Bonus, each time you complete an area you get a free gem. In all there's close to 50+ gems you can get by going through the different areas. Fear not, only one is viewable at the start but there are three others you can unlock as you go. As you can probably expect things get harder as you get further along but the quest areas have the best stamina to exp ratios in the game so you'll want to come here as often as you can manage. It can be hard though because of?

Vortex

This is where you'll find the daily dungeons and parades, as well as any special dungeons currently taking place. From Tuesday through Thursday the daily dungeons are basically those that can help with evolution. I'll go into Evolution more in the Units section.

Parades

You access the parades by unlocking them via keys. You get keys from the Imperial Capital (see below). Unlocking one starts a one hour timer. There's just a single dungeon of 5 encounters that costs 15 stamina each. Going through rewards 5 guaranteed drops of a Metal Unit or Jewel Unit and 1000 xp. A quick note about metal units. Each "hit" done during an attack deals 1 damage. This never changes. So when going through Metal Parade you want your squad to have high hit counts. You can see what the hit counts for all units are over at the wiki.
Any time you do any of the above the sequence of events is always the same:

1. Pick dungeon to run.
2. Pick friend.
3. Pick Squad and Manage items. Swipe or tap appropriately.
4. Press Begin Quest button.

Arena

Go up against other players. You can get rewards as you get further along in ranking. Can be pretty brutal at the high end since that's filled with heavy IAP players but there's some rewards at the low end worth getting if you can manage. Oh, and you don't control your units. They attack randomly and sometimes even with a full BB bar they won't use them so be prepared to *headdesk* often.

Imperial Capital Randall

This is where you go to get keys for the parades (at the Administration Office), access Frontier Hunter when it's available (special event, beyond the scope of this document), and special challenges where you take three of your squads + 3 friends into battle to try and win against a special unit.

Raids

Inactive until a future update. Some details available since it's out in Japan but no idea when it's going to be implemented.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Units

The first thing I will note is that your starting unit will go very far in this game. Eventually you will want one of each element (of which there are six) but they go all the way up to 6* and are some of the easiest units to level up. They are: (more on elements below)

Fire - Vargas/Thunder - Eze
Water - Selena/Earth - Lance
Light - Atro/Dark - Magress

It's possible to capture them in certain situations but most likely you pull them out of an Honor summon. Each of these offers a base 25% increase to the attack power of same element units, which eventually upgrades to 50% and at 6* they give 50% and an additional 10% health. So, like I said, pretty much always useful. At the moment they are the leaders on each of my elemental teams.

The vast majority of the most useful units are the ones you get from spending Gems. It's 5 gems per pull from the Rare Summon Gate. Caution: I wouldn't do a pull from here unless there's some type of event going on. The great downfall from the Rare Summon Gate is that it can give you ANY 3* or above unit (since they're technically classified as rare), including ones that you can capture for free in the wild. An event lessens the chance of that happening (but no guarantees).

Many of the units you capture in the wild are, quite frankly, useless. However, there are quite a few that are still useful until you find something better. You can hit the wiki to get a good handle on how far a unit can go, but basically most units that only go up to 3* aren't worth much effort to keep. If they go to 4* they're fairly useful until you find something better and there's some that can go up to 5* but they're not that easy to capture. The exception to the 3* rule is healers. There's a subset of free healers for four of the elements and they are worth getting a hold of if the Rare Summon Gate isn't kind enough to bestow one of the beefier healers on you. Up until recently I was running primarily with a 3* water healer I got during my first few weeks in the game.

All units have a leader skill and a special ability called a Brave Burst. During combat you can get Burst Crystals while attacking a monster. They fill up your Brave Burst bar and once full you can activity it (touch unit and swipe up) for a variety of different abilities.

Elements

All units have an element. Fire, Water, Earth, Thunder, Light and Dark. The first four have a weakness to one of the others (take more damage) and are strong against another (do more damage), being neutral against the remaining. It goes like this:

Fire>Earth>Thunder>Water>Fire

LightandDarkare both strong and weak against each other, and are neutral against the other four elements. You generally want to group up like type units to take advantage of strengths.

Types

Units come in one of five types. They are:

Lord - Base type, stats are spread evenly*
Breaker - Sacrifices Defense for Attack
Guardian - Sacrifices Attack for Defense
Anima - Sacrifices Recovery for Health
Oracle - Sacrifices Health for Recovery

* It should be noted that some units have a predilection toward certain stats anyway which is why you'll see some people say a certain Type is better for certain units over others. For instance Magress has a low base Recovery, so Oracle is actually his best Type since it counters that deficiency.

Most every unit is useful in any type but sometimes it's just that much better with the right Typing. I wouldn't worry too much over it though. I know I don't.

Subclass

I don't know that there's an official term for this so I'll just call it subclass. Subclass is based upon the type of Brave Burst your unit has. They are:

Attack - Any unit with a BB that damages the monsters
Support - Any unit with a BB that buffs your units
Healer - Any unit with a BB that heals your units

Sometimes there's crossover, like you'll get a unit that heals and buffs but there's not too many of those.

Manage Squad

You can have up to ten squads in BF and you'll probably use every one of them eventually. At a minimum you'll have one for each element, a rainbow team and one full of high hit count units for the metal parade. Each unit has a cost associated with it and as you level the cap to that cost goes up. Personally I've never run into an issue with this but depending on how much IAP you do your mileage may vary.

Fuse (aka Leveling)

There's two types of leveling done in BF. Experience leveling and Brave Burst leveling. Experience leveling is accomplished by fusing up to five other units into a single unit. You access this through the Unit tab, and is easy to spot. You can essentially fuse any unit into another unit but it's best to try to match element type because there's a bonus attached. However, random unit fusing is really the most inefficient way to experience level.

Within the game there are what is known as Metal Units. They're rare+ units that have one of the six element types and their only purpose is for experience leveling. There's four types, Ghosts, Kings, Gods, and Crystals, each with increasing experience gains attached to them. Sometimes they can appear in the wild but for the most part your surefire way to getting them is through the Metal Parade (more on that later). A single Crystal fuse to a same-element unit will give over 200k experience.

BB leveling is pretty much the same, but with one caveat: You can only level your Brave Burst by fusing like-subclass units. So metal units won't do the trick. It's also extremely random and gets harder as the BB level gets closer to 10. Attack BBs are the easiest to find fodder for as you can run the very first dungeon over and over again for the Slimes and get 1-3 of them for each 3 energy run. Support and heal not as much but you can find the hot spots for those units at one of the links above.

6* units have the ability to get a Super Brave Burst, which is only activated once the normal BB hits level 10. SBBs are way more powerful than a normal BB, even at level 1, and generally confer a couple of benefits instead of just one. For instance, my 6* Vargas has his SBB unlocked and when activated he deals AOE damage and then buffs the party with an attack increase. SBB is activated by swiping to the right and you need to fill the BB bar twice to be able to access it.

Evolve

For many units once they achieve max level you have the option of evolving them. Evolving them makes them more powerful overall but they end up costing more to be a part of your team. Like other games of this nature there are specific creatures which are needed in order to evolve a unit. It becomes increasingly difficult to find and capture these units as you get further into the game. Currently they are as follows: (note: unless otherwise stated, assume an element version of each)

  • Nymphs- Easiest to get, first you run into. Generally for 2* and 3* evolutions but still used past that in some cases.
  • Spirits- Second you run into. Some 3* evolutions but again, still used past that.
  • Idols- Third you run into. Mostly for 4* evolutions but still used past that.
  • Pots- Fourth you run into. Some 5* and 6* evolutions. (Note: All of the above are available in the Tuesday Vortex Dungeon)
  • Mimics- Only three types, randomly appear in chests (if you look closely the chest will be moving), and in the Wednesday Vortex Dungeon.
  • Totems- Only available in the Thursday Vortex Dungeon as the four colored elements, with Light and Dark appearing randomly in stage 3 and 6. Needed for all 5* and 6* evolutions.
  • Miracle Totem- Thursday Vortex Dungeon, needed for all 6* evolutions. Light and Dark totems appear randomly in the 3rd stage.

Spheres

Spheres are items you create and sometimes get as rewards which increase the power of your units in different ways. Too many different types of list here but the Wiki page has a comprehensive list and what it takes to make each one. It's always worth equipping something to a unit. Spheres, however, each take up one space in your item inventory (see below).

Sell

Self explanatory. Always sell Jewel units. Any unit a part of a team will not show up here so no accidents on that front. Also useful to clear space. You start with 50 unit spots and in the midgame as you start leveling up and evolving, you'll run out of space quick. Costs one gem for each 5 unit increase.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Town

As you play you gain access to the town. The town has five buildings and four resource nodes.

Buildings

  • Music- IDGAF
  • Spheres- This is where you create spheres. What you can create is dependent on the level of the building. Creating spheres costs Karma and resources gathered while running dungeons. Some high level items require honor items gained from friends.
  • Synthesis- Where you create the items you can take into battle. What you can create it dependent on the level of the building. Creating items uses resources gathering while running dungeons.
  • Upgrades- Where you upgrade/level up the above two buildings and the four resource nodes. Upgrading costs Karma.
  • Items- Where you can View, Manage, and Sell the items you create and pick up in dungeons. You start off with 100 item slots and past the midgame this will not be enough. Costs one gem for each 5 item increase. All items stack to 99 (did they import SWTOR programmers? WTF?) except spheres which take up one slot each.

Resources

You have four resources, the forest, the river, the farm, and the mountain. You can upgrade each to level 10 (generally worth it) and a few times a day you can go to town and tap on them to give you resources and sometimes zel and karma in small amounts.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Shop

Where you spend money and gems. You can:

- Purchase gems
- Restore your energy to full for one gem.
- Increase Unit Capacity for one gem.
- Increase Item Capacity for one gem.
- Restore Arena Energy for one gem.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Summon

The summoning gates.

The Rare summon gate costs 5 gems to make a pull. Guaranteed 3* or above unit. Not always guaranteed to be awesome.

The honor summon gate costs 100 honor per pull. You get honor from friend gifts, using friends during a dungeon run, 1/9 chance from the daily login reward, and randomly from Gumi. Can make up to 10 pulls at a time. Generally good practice to wait until Metal and Jewel units are increased rate.

----------------------------------------------------------------


Social

Where you can look at your friends, review friend requests, add new friends, receive gifts from your friends, and enter any special codes you receive. There a Talk feature that's been listed as Coming Soon for months too.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
This is a relatively fun game, but a money sinker, like any 'lottery' based game. 5 Gems can get you something amazing or something that is bollocks. Everything is better than most of the F2P units you can get, however.
 

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
I spent maybe $30 and that was all from a gift card I got from work. You're not going to be jessu with limited IAP but it won't gimp you. My best units actually came from the gems I got outside that bunch but your mileage may vary.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
ID: 473999664

Felneus leader +Medulla Gem, 10/10 SBB.

Usually only take higher level players on my list that have Duelmex/Feln/Douglas, but if you let me know that you are from here, I will take you on regardless of level.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
Right, on it.

Added to second post.
Move it to the top of the first post
tongue.png
 

Derpa

Trakanon Raider
1,984
633
This is a relatively fun game, but a money sinker, like any 'lottery' based game. 5 Gems can get you something amazing or something that is bollocks. Everything is better than most of the F2P units you can get, however.
I've yet to spend a dime and doing very well. With the free gems they give out + ones you earn for clearing, capture events and being able to get the 6 "starter" guys from honor its a lot better then similar games (BB, FF, etc.)

Also first post should bring up "spark"

My ID: 72816365
 

Denamian

Night Janitor
<Nazi Janitors>
7,117
18,728
ID: 3763245247

I haven't spent any money on the game so my units aren't as good as some, but I have had some luck and can leave up a decent leader.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
Posted it earlier, but did not make it into the Google document.

Ingame name is Binx, ID is 473999664.

I run a max Felneus as my leader, though in September (I believe is the slated release) when we get Selha, I will be swapping to a Mono-White team, assuming I can pull 3-4 of her without breaking the bank.

Thisthread on Appinvasion shows all of the 'future' content for Global. It is already out in Japan, but Global lags behind 1-3 months on average of releases.



Mind you, having the 'best' units does not really matter a whole lot at this point, until you get to the 4th continent, higher arena tiers, or are trying some of the 'Trials'.

Speaking of which, the 3rd Trial (Maxwell) is out in Japan and holy-hell is it monstrous. Lame that Global is still waiting on the second Trial (Grah).

Rumor has it that we will be getting the 'Vargas' dungeon mid-august, which should be awesome. Final boss is a 6 Star Vargas that absolutely demolishes face. If you do not have a full water team, with a maxed Guardian Signas and Tesla, you will end up using 5+ Gems to get through it. Even with Signas and Tesla (One of which has to be a friend for the leader skill), you still end up using 2-4 gems to get through the fight. Reward is a Sphere that has +30% Attack/+30% HP/BB Gauge (I think it was 1-2 BC Crystal) fill each turn.

Later on, there will be a 6 Star dungeon for each of the 'starter' units, that will reward a similar sphere, with different attributes.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
So what should I be farming? For xp, or for future use?
 

moontayle

Golden Squire
4,302
165
I would focus on exp until you get to level ~40. At that point you'll have near to enough stamina for 3 MP runs at full stamina and your squad cost will be enough to slot anything you'd likely have. So that means questing. At that point, and depending on what you've managed to get from pulls and drops, you should be able to start tackling the lower level daily dungeons without much fear of losing and can alternate from questing and vortex dungeons as needed.

with a maxed Guardian Signas and Tesla
Heh, I pulled a Tesla just recently.
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
The 6 Star dungeons are a huge departure from what you regularly use in the game. The current 'meta' is to just blow everything up before it can hurt you. But with the trials and the 6 Stars, it is all about surviving until you can whittle down the health of the enemies.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
Hrm, I did the lowest level of the daily dungeon today, and managed to get a mimic later. Having the higher up friends seems nice.

Is there a PADHerder type tool (lists monsters/levels)?

So far I've got:
423 White Lebra (4*)
111 Firedrake (3*)
201 Mimic (3*)
196 Jewel King (3*)
083 Bandit Zaza (2*)
013 Warrior Eze (2*) - Starting unit
105 Sylph (2*)
079 Thief Leon (2*)
037 Luna (2*)

and a bunch of spirits and nymphs and some other 1*

Right now I just throw the appropriate unit type against the dungeon if I have it, or I just make sure I'm not using the weakest one. Are any of those decent? I made some spheres for all of the teams I'm using (one +hp on lebra, two +crit on firedrake and eze, two +atk on the other two).
 

Rime

<Donor>
2,638
1,613
White Lebra is a good unit, as it provides a nice buff with it's braveburst. In a 'future' update it will get a 6 Star form as well, which makes the buff stronger and does damage to enemies as well.

Sell the Jewel King, that is what Jewel units are for, they give you a healthy bump of Zel.

Mimic, Spirits, and Nymphs (Also Idols, Pots, and Totems - But those are later) are used for evolving units.

Warrior Eze can be taken to a 6 Star later, so hang onto him.

Other than that, the units listed are 'fuse' fuel, but it is not a bad idea to use them to round out your squad if you have enough cost to take Eze, Lebra, and then whoever you want. Keep an eye out for a Healing unit. The f2p healers to keep an eye out for are Fairy (Heals and removes status debuffs) and Light Lord Mimir (Light healer with decent stats). They both max out at 3 stars, but the F2P 4 Star Healer (Maria) has horrible stats.
 

Ao-

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
<WoW Guild Officer>
7,879
507
I've got a metal key as well. Should I just hold onto that until I suck less?

Also, is there some secret for sparks, or is it just timing based on attacks of your squad members?