I've managed to pick up Aisha - my leader (which I guess is great, but not long term) and Shera (which apparently IS a top end unit - yay). I also use Elulu, Eze, and Claris as my healer. I also have Liza, Leon, Merith, Zaza, May, Grafl, Mimir, Lily, and random Harpy, Unicorn, etc. I'm assuming all 1* and 2* are fairly shitty and not worth the effort? Although Eze is a 2*, but I guess he's an exception, as a starting unit?
I'd recommend bookmarking this link:
Brave Frontier - Drop Check Comparison (Ultima R3) - by Brave Frontier PROs
Use the search bar on the right hand side of that page for any character you ever have a question about and it will bring up a window with all sorts of relevant info, including all the future Evolutions of a unit (real quick way to identify a trash/fodder unit vs a real unit you'll want to hang on to long-term. There ARE a handful of characters you can pick up as 'captures' along the way that you'll want to keep, but they are rare.) I once fused a Mifune thinking it was common fodder, not knowing it was probably the premier glass-cannon nuker in the game at the time.
Also I'd ***Never*** sell/fuse a character that isn't just fodder (unless dupe, even then sometimes it is preferable to have more than one). They are currently in a trend of re-releasing old units that used to max at 6-stars with new 7-star evolutions that are as good or better than anything in the game. So many of those older units you might pull still can have massive upgrade potential now. (Your Elimo and Michele are both great examples. Both are older units that had been outclassed....Elimo's 7-star evolution was recently released making her God-Tier and Michele has a 7-star evolution on the way that will not only once again make her an uber-badass, but make her possibly the best Arena Leader in the game, even possibly dethroning Quaid.)
There are some useful rewards from the Arena (for instance the "Thief Bracer" which is useful for item farming.)
There are different strategies you can use to improve your odds in the Arena: at lower levels (anything below 100'ish or so), you'll notice certain cost breakpoints; Levels where you get +5 cost all at once and while you are still using 4, 5, 6-star units, 5 cost can still be the difference between how many units/stars you can have.....if you use the Arena's 'Refresh' button to re-roll for new opponents you can pick opponents lower level than you below those breakpoints so you can at least ensure you bring more cost to bear in any given fight.
Later on this tactic will fade in favor of others, but it is worth saying what I'm doing atm which is working out pretty nicely in my favor: Once you become more familiar with the different characters/leaders you'll know which ones are 'current' vs the ones that have gotten outdated. The Arena will keep cycling through competition even if they quit a long time ago, so if you don't mind fishing a little you can find old-outdated groups to fight....current groups can wipe the floor with them. (This will become far more true once you can field a full 6-star group...your game will pick up huge at that point.)
Also if you get the "kill 10 of type in arena" daily, try to fish for mono-leads in the arena for that type (all the starters are mono-leads as well as a handful of others.) Yesterday for the "defeat 10 dark types in arena" I was able to do it in only 2 Arena battles because I did 2 "Magress" opponents back to back who (lucky me) each had full groups of dark units.
Later on "Dropcheck" (the 'DC' on the character info sheets from that earlier link), becomes King in the arena. You'll want to be familiar with your characters Dropcheck # anyway even outside the arena (it is what determines the characters potential for Battle Crystal/Health Crystal drops and the like). In the Arena, with a high enough DC you can fill all your Brave Bursts even on the first round then blow away the competition with Brave Bursts to start the 2nd. I just had a 102-match winning streak (since broken via bad luck) doing that.
There are different Arena AI 'types', but can worry about that later on....but as a general rule, you'll want to avoid using healers/mitigators in the arena and only use units with AE brave bursts.
...One final bit of advice (Of course its up to you how you want to play it, but...) you have such a nice collection of (very high) quality units already (and no real urgent needs at all), that I'd actually recommend hoarding gems for a while, letting the next few new batches of characters roll out while you level up and evolve the characters you have (it takes more time/effort than it might seem), then once you are in a position to be able to work on more, hit one of the "popular rate ups" that seem to happen once a month or so, and absolutely clean house on some of the better units including newer ones that don't even exist in global yet. ...Then again it is always fun to get a new character, so I can't fault a guy for wanting to do a new summons every now and again lol.
oh, and one other thing.....at some point you'll pull your 5th copy of a character from the rare summon gate. When that happens, do your best to resist putting your device through the nearest wall....we've all been there
