Alchemy Stars is a revolutionary turn-based strategy RPG from Proxima Beta. With extremely successful hits like PUBG Mobile, Arena of Valor, and Chess Rush just to name a few, Alchemy Stars is bound to follow, or perhaps, even surpass the company’s most popular titles. With well more than 500 thousand downloads from the Google Play Store alone just a month following its release, Alchemy Stars’ noteworthy accomplishment on its own should suffice to have strategy RPG enthusiasts to check what the game has to offer.
Alchemy Stars might seem like the usual turn-based strategy games you will find plenty of in the mobile gaming scene. It is, however, far from it both in substance and form. Alchemy Stars deviates from the conventional design and gameplay mechanics of the subgenre and offers a fresh, yet familiar take that guarantees to provide new experiences to even the most experienced strategy RPG players. The immersive storyline and the memorable character designs certainly are a huge attraction but it is only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.
Journey to the world of Astra where both magic and technology are in abundance. As the dark creatures known as Eclipsites have vanquished all but one Caelestrite, it is up to you as your race’s last hope to eradicate Eclipsites and restore the light to the world of Astra. You will not be alone on the story you will forge, as your new allies, the Aurorians will be by your side in every step of your adventure.
Packed with its own set of unique concepts and gameplay mechanics, Alchemy Stars is designed to be an adventure that sets every player to a fairly equal playing field regardless of expertise and experience in the genre.
There is a lengthy and detail-filled tutorial that everyone needs to pay good attention to and there are numerous guiding tips that follow every new feature you unlock as well. The growth of difficulty from one challenge to the next is rather considerate for beginners and every player is bound to make good progress before facing the bigger challenges.
Understanding the concepts and game mechanics in Alchemy Stars is just the initial part of the learning aspect. The deep and broad mix of strategies involved in your adventure spans from the team-building and analysis part of the game down to each unique challenge ahead of you as well. If you have just started your journey in the world of Alchemy Stars and you are looking to jumpstart your adventure, we got you covered as our Alchemy Stars beginner’s guide has everything you need to form a powerful team and dominate your enemies!
1. Reroll For The Best Characters
Alchemy Stars boasts a ton of unique characters to unlock and collect, each with their own unique set of talents and skills. There certainly is a lot of fun to be gained from putting together your very own team from whichever heroes you obtain from the gacha, devoid of any guides or recommendation but despite the supposed balance that exists across all characters in a strategy RPG, some simply stand out over other.
The balance usually cuts across characters within the same grade and given that units in Alchemy Stars star off from 3 to 6 stars, it is a valid presumption to bank on the 6-star characters being the strongest of the bunch.
Considering the luck of draw factor present in every gacha system, the randomness of which heroes you will recruit at the start of your adventure is highly unpredictable. The unpredictability resulting from gacha pulls can tremendously impact your overall performance in your adventure, from the start all the way to the end game, which is why experienced and veteran players always employ means to pull luck in their favor as much as possible. Fortunately enough, most gacha-centric strategy RPGs provide means for players to do just that through the process of rerolling.
If you are a strategy RPG newbie and unfamiliar with the concept of rerolling, it simply refers to the process of starting your adventure over as many times as needed so you can replay your initial set or sets of 10x or multiple gacha pulls. As most gacha games will provide players with enough resources for one or a couple of 10x gacha pulls at the early part of their adventure, not getting the heroes you want at this stage is not the end of a good start as you can reset everything and go for another set of pulls.
We want to stress the point that rerolling is not absolutely necessary and you can always proceed to continue with your adventure regardless of which units you unlock from your first pulls. On the other hand, though, you can always expect that the same resources needed to perform a gacha pull can become difficult to obtain beyond the starting point and the luck of draw will not necessarily be in your favor any time within your journey.
If you are the type of player who would want to immediately proceed with your adventure regardless of which characters join your team from your first sets of gacha pulls, then you can skip this part. Otherwise, be ready to dedicate as much time and effort as needed to get the best possible roster of starting crew members through rerolling.
Alchemy Stars may have you sign in before you get to start your adventure, extinguishing the rerolling form a guest account and making it a little more challenging to start over. However, there is a workaround on it that only requires a little bit more effort. As you will only be able to start playing after linking your game to a Gmail, Facebook, or Twitter account, having additional accounts for any or all these options adds an extra attempt for your reroll.
As the tutorial takes you through a series of battles to discuss all the basic concepts and strategies, there will be instances that you will be taken to the main screen to check the other unlocked contents and features. As long as you are left with no other option but to follow directions, it means you still need to progress a bit further before you can venture freely on your own.
Once you can click on anything on the main screen, you should head to the mail first. Alchemy Stars provides players a ton of welcome gifts and pre-registration rewards that almost always includes the special currencies you will need to able to recruit units to join your roster. The Beginner Banner allows you to spend Lumocrystals, which is a premium currency. Lumocrystals can be used to purchase star flares. Each star flare costs 300 Lumocrystals.
Related: Alchemy Stars Tier List: A Complete Guide to the Best 6 Star and 5 Star Characters
With pulls ranging from 3 star units, which are the most common, up to 6 star units, you would naturally want to net a 6-star unit or 2. To be honest, you should count yourself lucky if you nab one save for the guaranteed 6-star pulls like the 21st beginner banner pull. If you want to go all the way and fully take advantage of the rerolls, though, at least try to grap Sharona, Charon, or Migard. You can obtain each with a 2% chance from the Mainstay Banner recruitment.
If you are satisfied with your pulls, you can continue on with your adventure without hesitation. If not, then it is time to leave that account behind permanently and start over with the new one. To do this, you need to click on the gear icon at the left side of the home screen, and under the system settings tab. Click on the “Sign Out” button and confirm. You will then need to sign in with a different account and go through the initial tutorial session until you reach the reroll point.
2. Strategize Carefully On Your Team’s Composition
There are certainly plenty of Aurorians to recruit in Alchemy Stars and with each one having unique sets of skills and talents and comes wrapped up in astonishing aesthetics, it can certainly become more challenging than the usual to choose from among your collection which ones to take with you on your main team.
A full formation consists of 5 units with the first one serving as its captain. Although preference as to a unit’s inherent star grade is given considering their advantage in ability and stats, rarity is not the only contributing factor to consider when building your team.
Naturally, though, you would want as many 5 and 6 star units in your full team and while it is highly possible for you to pull enough high ranking units following the initial sets of your gacha activities. Equally probable, however, is that the 5 and 6 star units you will pull may not as readily synergize or blend well with their counterparts, in which case, lumping them all together in one team may not yield the best results.
Beyond the character’s rarity grade, as well as the individual skills and talents of each unit, you also have to take into account the character’s role and elemental affinity or color. There are 4 distinct roles for each character and each unit also belongs to one of 4 different elements. A good mix of roles ought to be considered for your team.
Given the different colored tiles in every level and the delimiting aspect of tiles in that characters of specific elements can only move within their color, a more preferable approach is to consider focusing on a particular element for all members of your team.
Of the 4 unique roles for the characters, there are 2 types of damage-dealers namely the snipers and the detonators. While the distinction between both classes may not seem obvious, snipers typically have longer reach for their attacks, often targeting random enemies within the stage. Detonators, on the other hand, are usually limited in terms of their attack range to immediate surrounding cluster or a slightly wider AoE.
Of course, no strategy RPG is complete without support units providing a variety of skill effects to the mix of character abilities. Support units in Alchemy Stars are not limited to simply health restoration and regeneration. Support units may also reduce damage taken by team members or even provoke enemy units. A unique but nonetheless important class to have in your team is a converter. These units specialize in “converting” or changing the color of tiles in the stage to their color.
All the more reason a team needs to be focused on a single element is to ensure that more tiles can be connected in every turn and converters help your team have more ground to move in.
As far as elemental affinities are concerned, the 4 elements in Alchemy Stars are water (blue), fire (red), forest (green), and thunder (yellow). Alchemy Stars also subscribes to the proverbial “rock-paper-scissors” approach in granting elemental damage bonuses. Water beats fire, fire beats forest, forest beats thunder, and thunder beats water.
Given that having a full team of units belonging to one elemental affinity may lead to being disadvantaged against a full team of units from the advantageous element, it is recommended to have a fifth member of the team belong to an element strong against the element all the other 4 members are weak against, as an insurance of sorts.
Note as well that some enhancement materials needed for your units vary depending on their elemental affinity and, in this sense, it can become a bit more challenging to focus on a team belonging to the same element as the units will have similar resource requirements.
Given the above considerations, our recommended setup is to have 2 damage-dealers, 2 converters, and 1 support unit. As far as elemental affinity is concerned, we prefer having the 2nd damage-dealer to belong to a different element. For example, if you have 4 members of your team belong to the water element group, which is weak against thunder elemental units, your 5th member, who is the 2nd damage-dealer ought to belong to the forest elemental group.
You will most certainly be swapping characters in and out as you make further progress in your adventure and recruit more units. Make sure to keep maintaining the balance within your team as far as character classes and elemental affinity representations are concerned.
3. Focus On Moving Forward With The Campaign
Your initial dive into the world of Alchemy Stars takes you through the initial stages of the campaign’s first episode. As there will still be a lot to learn during these stages, it can be expected that the enemies will be relatively easy to deal with, most especially given that you have a plethora of characters to choose from following numerous recruits from the gacha.
Beyond being immersed further into the lore of Alchemy Stars, and being more acquainted with its host of characters, pursuing progression within the exploration offers the most basic necessities you will need to develop and strengthen your team.
For starters, completion of each stage earns you the most basic resources you will need to enhance and upgrade your Aurorians. Beyond normal rewards, there are also extra loot to earn for your first clear of each stage.
Although clear conditions determine your star rating for each stage, with a maximum of 3 stars, your focus ought to be clearing the stage first. As you can always replay any previously conquered level, you can simply mop up at a later time to pick up the extra rewards granted by the number of stars you have earned.
In addition to the numerous resources to be acquired, the exploration or main campaign in Alchemy Stars also serve as the sole key to unlocking the rest of the game’s features. You would naturally want to unlock all of it at the soonest to start reaping more rewards.
There is an energy or stamina system in Alchemy Stars, delimiting battles in the campaign you can engage in but you will start off with a plethora of it so your concern is to try and deplete it early on. Any amount of prism over the limit prevents it from replenishing. In essence, this leaves you with an opportunity cost of engaging in more battles and gathering more resources.
Alchemy Stars comes with an auto battle mode just like most strategy RPGs on mobile. However, you will need to clear a stage first before you can utilize this feature on that stage. In any case, manually playing across every unique level is the best way to learn how to strategize and improve on your team’s performance and roster. Note that there are limited turns per battle and every bit of action you make counts.
4. Be Selective When Upgrading Units
Once common strategy that relates to all RPGs that host a lot of characters relate to resource management. It is a given that strengthening a character always incurs costs and while you may start your adventure off with a plethora of each resource, you will certainly not have enough to sustain the needs of all characters within your growing collection of units. This goes back to our earlier tip relative to deciding early on your main team.
With limited resources, it will already be a challenge to sustain the resource needs of all 5 members of your main team, making it necessary to avoid switching characters with the exception of securing new and potentially better ones as you make progress in your adventure. It is best to try and get to know all the heroes in your roster and plan carefully which ones will be part of your team for a long time and which ones will be replaced as soon as better one comes along.
The most basic method of increasing a unit’s power in Alchemy Stars is through levelling them up. Although units you take into battle do not earn EXP outright, you can obtain plenty of Jaspers to consume and give your top units EXP. Note that some special type of these resources grant more EXP to units of a particular element.
Each unit starts off with a relatively low level cap. Once a unit has reached the level cap, you need to ascend the unit to the next phase through the ascension process to extend the unit’s maximum level cap. This costs Nightium, which is the most basic currency, as well as ascension materials that can easily be farmed from the main campaign.
The most challenging enhancement method is the breakthrough method, which also grants a tremendous increase in the unit’s stats every step of the way. Whenever you recruit from the gacha and receive duplicate copies of units, these duplicates are converted into Heartstones and character specific Solambers. These are the resources needed for breakthroughs.
Yet another mechanic tied up to enhancing units comes in the form of affinity, which is basically a character’s level of fondness towards you as their commander. There are gift items you can give to your favorite units to increase their affinity points and levels and each new level reached comes not just with new character files but stat increases as well. Affinity points can also be increased by interacting with units deployed within the Colossus.
5. Accomplish Quests For Extra Rewards
The immediate rewards and resources you can earn from each challenge you undertake in Alchemy Stars should suffice to maintain sustainable growth for your main 5 units, at the very least. Again, it will take some replays and grinding to have even just 1 unit reach maximum potential.
In addition to employing a prudent approach towards resource management, it is important to take advantage of the quest feature to obtain extra resources from your regular activities.
Alchemy Stars provides adventurers with quests to accomplish that grant additional rewards. Although these quests are always in line with the usual activities you engage in on a daily basis, it is best to visit the quest list and take note of each objective for a more targeted and systematic approach towards completing them. There are regular plot quests and time-limited growth quests available and the sooner you accomplish these sets of tasks and claim your rewards, the faster you can make progress in your journey.
Plot quests are very basic and relate to actual progress you make across the main campaign or the exploration. Every milestone you reach relative to plot quests grants you basic resources in addition to the outright loots and clear condition rewards you earn.
The time-limited growth quest objectives, on the other hand, motivate you to progress across various content and activities within the world of Alchemy Stars. You are given 20 days to accomplish 8 days-worth of tasks.
Starting from your first sign in, you have 9 objectives each day and accomplishing 3 in one row earns you rewards. There are additional rewards to grab following milestones relative to the number of tasks completed, which includes Star Flares and a 5 star unit. Note that you can always accomplish the objectives set on previous days any day within the limited event duration.
6. Tend To The Colossus Regularly
Earning resources in Alchemy Stars does not only originate from battles you engage in nor quests that you accomplish. A unique feature of the game that lines up with managing your Aurorians is the Colossus, which is your base of operations where your units can rest and work. The Colossus feature will be unlocked early on but its different rooms and upgrades are also dependent on your progression.
Beyond reaching certain milestones to make a room, within the Colossus available for unlocking, you will also need Lumina to unlock and upgrade each one. Some of the rooms to unlock have an innate ability to generate basic resources you constantly need, which means that the sooner you unlock them, the better it is for you. Note that there is a limit to the resources these rooms can generate depending on the room’s access level and you have to manually collect the resources for the rooms to generate more.
Some rooms, however, are simply built for the Aurorian’s rest and relaxation. You can interact with them within the Colossus and some instances will cause about an increase in their affinity. Note that Aurorians also have work skills that can enhance the effects of specific rooms within the Colossus. Be sure to deploy Aurorians to these rooms when you are able to. Aurorians deployed in rooms can still be taken to battle with you, so do not hesitate to have any of your units to be lodged in your base camp.
And that sums it all up as far as our Alchemy Star beginner’s guide is concerned. We certainly hope that you enjoyed reading this article and that you were able to pick up tips and strategies you can readily apply to your adventure moving forward. There are surely a lot more secrets to be discovered in the world of Alchemy Stars so if you happen to chance upon something we have yet to uncover ourselves, do not hesitate to tell us about it in the comment area below!