So you’ve been playing Date A Live: Spirit Pledge and a particular Spirit catches your fancy to the point where you want to raise her to the point where she is uncontestably your best girl.
Well, we can help you there. There are many things you can do to help your Spirit power up, many of which the game doesn’t exactly do a good job elaborating on in its current state. Then again, that’s what we are here for.
So, if you’d like to take your Spirit to the apex of her power, be sure to stay with us and read our Date A Live: Spirit Pledge spirit maximization guide below!
1. A Note About Battle Power (BP)
Before we begin, you’ll probably notice the big blue “BP” icon with a number to the right of your Spirit, right under her level. This is your Spirit’s battle power, which is a rough estimate of how strong your Spirit is. BP takes into account your Spirit’s Level, how strong the equipped Sephira on her are, what rank her Angel is, and how far she is on her Transcendence status tree. Don’t worry about these terms for now, as I’ll elaborate on them throughout the article, starting with level!
2. Level Your Spirit Up
Leveling up your Spirit is the fastest way to power your Spirit up, as simply giving her EXP allows all of her stats to rise, including load limit and skill points. The latter two are arguably some of the most important stats of your Spirit, as a higher Load Limit allows her to equip Sephira of higher rarity, and Skill Points allow you to increase the strength of your Spirit’s moveset, adding new effects to her attacks or powering up the various moves she has at her disposal.
The big drawback with leveling, however, is that it’s tied to your maximum player level. Your Spirit’s level will only go as high as your Player level and cannot exceed yours, so making sure you take the time to level yourself up by clearing Story Instances or Daily Orders is imperative to giving your Spirit enough leeway to keep leveling up.
EXP can be gained by clearing the various Story Instances and other battle stages in-game, though some only give you experience, while others only give piddling amounts. If you’re worried about your Spirit running low on EXP, the Event Stage mode has a battle specifically made to drop nothing but high rank EXP cards, and the more difficult Hard or Hell Story Instances drop tons of EXP, especially when you use Duel Cards, but more on story stages later as EXP isn’t the only important thing about them.
Another benefit of leveling yourself up is unlocking Event Stages with much better item drops. Since every stage under the Event Category is useful and only unlockable by leveling up, it’s imperative you clear the Story Instances as thoroughly as possible, on every available mode, as clearing each stage for the first time nets you additional player EXP through your Main Orders.
Don’t neglect your Daily Orders either, as they’re also one of the best sources of EXP, diamonds, and other useful items. The more Daily Orders you complete, the more Activity points you collect on the upper left, where Yoshinon the bunny puppet is waving at you next to the number with a yellow lightning bolt. Once you’ve reached certain point thresholds, you’re awarded items and Diamonds, the latter being extremely important for the later phases of maximizing your Spirit.
3. Ranking Up Your Spirit
Ranking up your Spirit is the second most straightforward way to power your Spirit up, as it increases all her stats by a significant amount, gives her more skill points to allocate for her Angel, and opens up her upgrade tree for Transcending. I’ll elaborate on Transcending and details about her Angel later on in the article.
For now, all you need to know is the only way to rank your Spirit up is by collecting Spirit-specific Fragments. You can collect these by either acquiring her from the summon gacha, netting you a sum of Fragments depending on her base rarity, or repeatedly beating Story Instances in Hard mode or Hell mode. And you’ll need a lot of them, as the amount of Fragments required to rank your Spirit up increases according to rank. S-rank Spirits need 60 fragments to go up to SS, and 120 to go from SS to SSS.
One way to straightforward way to acquire your Spirit’s Fragments is to plan ahead and save diamonds for when she’s on Rate-Up in the Summon Gacha, either on the Precise or Heat Summons. Saving 80 Fate Badges worth of Diamonds to guarantee pulling her for the additional Fragments can save you a lot of time when it comes to ranking her up. Spare Fate Badges can also be used for pulling for her Unique Sephira, which will be discussed later.
Again, it is also imperative to push as far into the story as possible so you can not only clear the normal mode of the chapter your Spirit appears in, but also the Hard and Hell mode versions to unlock the specific stages where her Fragments drop. Clearing Normal, Hard, and Hell modes will also grant you a significant amount of Player EXP, giving your Spirit a higher max level cap. For Spirit Fragment drop stages, these are usually the stages that are multiples of 5 in Hard Mode, and the stages that are multiples of 3 in Hell mode.
Unfortunately, you can only run Hard or Hell stages 3 times a day, which is why it is best to clear these stages using Duel Cards, items you get for clearing Daily Orders or if your stamina exceeds its natural limit for a certain amount of time. These Duel Cards significantly increase the amount of items and possibly Fragments you get for clearing a Story Instance; They are also best used on the stages where your Spirit’s Fragments drop.
As you clear the different story instances you’ll also acquire Spirit Origins, which can be used to buy your Spirit’s Fragments from the Fragment Store if they’re available, and Crystals, which are used to Transcend your Spirit. Speaking of which…
4. Transcending Your Spirit
Transcending your Spirit involves using crystal materials and gold to unlock stat boosts on her Crystal Tree, with each stat boost slowly requiring more or higher rarity materials and gold. As you rank your Spirit up, more boosts will be unlocked, with higher rank boosts giving significantly higher stats than lower rank ones. You’ll naturally gain these materials as you farm for your Spirit’s Fragments, though you may need to farm certain Story Instance stages or buy in bulk from the shop to collect specific materials.
Of note is the somewhat fortunate side-effect of having too much of a single material due to farming the same stages repeatedly for Fragments. What makes this good is you can sell these spare items for Universe Crystals, which can fortunately be used as a substitute for gold or even red rarity materials, which are often the most difficult to farm for.
5. Unique Sephira
Each Spirit has her own set of 3 Sephira you can acquire from the Summon Gacha. Each of the 3 Sephira are strong on their own, though they provide unique buffs if equipped to the matching Spirit. For example, one of Kurumi’s unique Sephira increase the effectiveness of her Time-Eating Castle, and another one allows her basic attacks to inflict random status effects at a certain percentage.
Again, only Kurumi gets these buffs from her Sephira, and the buffs a Unique Sephira gives are effectively tailor-made for the matching Spirit. Equipping all 3 of them at the same time also gives a massive buff to the Spirit in question, so it is imperative to save Fate Badges and Diamonds for when your Spirit’s banner comes to the Heat Summon section of the Summon Gacha. Thankfully, you can plan ahead by tapping the “Forecast” button in the Heat Summon section to see which Spirits will be on Rate-Up within the coming weeks.
6. The Details On Prayer Summoning And Prayer Clashes
Though all of the Event stages will help you and your Spirit significantly, one of the most important parts of strengthening your Spirit to her maximum potential is making sure you clear your Prayer Clash whenever it’s up. Prayer Clashes give you books, allowing you to pray for random Sephira, ranging from 2 to 5 stars in rarity.
You can sell the 2 to 4 star Sephira for Sephira Essences, You can keep lower rarity Sephira if they have purple, gold, or red substats you can stick onto your stronger Sephira via a process called “Refining”. Refining allows you to transfer these substats, such as higher elemental damage, critical hit chance, HP, etcetera, onto stronger Sephira and then boost them further with specific items.
The best thing you can get from this summon is 5 star rarity Sephira of the same types as her unique Sephira. This is because a Spirit’s unique Sephira can be ranked up by using the other 5 stars as fodder, increasing their max levels and powering them up even further as you rank them up.
However, you will need the exact duplicate of the Sephira to complete a Unique Sephira’s evolution to 6 stars. Do not use the duplicate when going to 5+ or 5++, as you can use any other 5 star Sephira for this. Keep your duplicate unique Sephira until you need one ranked to 6 stars, or if you want to trade the dupes for a missing Sephira in order to complete the 3-piece set.
7. The Spirit Trials
The Spirit Trials are a series of 3 battles you can take on everyday for diamonds and costume coupons. Each battle is against an AI-controlled Spirit, with random stage hazards and a rerollable buff for your Spirit to use.
The fights themselves are fairly straightforward, with you just smacking your opponents around until their HP bar depletes. As this event is one of your only sources for extra diamonds, exactly 20 diamonds per 3 battles, it is imperative you run them every day.
8. The Endless Corridor
The Endless Corridor is an event stage where you plow through over 100 different floors, each with random hazards or debuffs with each stage, minus the boss stages on every floor that’s a multiple of 10. This is reminiscent of how the Spirit Trials operate, though clearing these stages gets you gold, diamonds, and most importantly, essences to rank up your angels. Gathering these essences is vital to powering up your Spirit, as ranking up your Spirit’s Angel unlocks both passive slots and passive skills, each one unique to your Spirit of choice and significantly changing the way she plays.
You can also get these essences by buying them from the shop at a 6 Endless Gems for 20 essence bundle. You can buy this bundle a maximum of 3 times before waiting for the shop to refresh.
Refreshing the shop’s list of products with diamonds isn’t recommended though, since you’ll need all the diamonds you can get for summoning on your spirit’s banners of choice. Buying them out whenever they appear saves you massive amounts of time.
9. Dates And Gifts
Hopefully throughout this entire process you haven’t been neglecting to feed or take your Spirit out on dates. Increasing your Spirit’s favor towards you through setting her as your “Assist” Spirit, dates and gift-giving gives unique bonuses to your Spirit’s stats, as long as you keep her mood up. This means taking the time to at least have one date a day with her, regularly going to work, and finding out what her favorite items are.
For example, one of Kotori’s favorite items is a White Headband, Tohka practically inhales Kinako Bread, and Yoshino is extremely partial to Cocoa Milk and Starry Sky Decorations. Learning her favorite gifts and either buying them or crafting them saves you time and resources as they add much more to your Spirit’s mood and favor compared to other items.
As a side note, you can set your favorite Spirit as your assistant by tapping your player name on the upper left on the main menu, then tapping Assist to see the list of characters you have unlocked.
10. Team Compositions
I’m grateful you’re still with us after coming this far. This last bit is for when your Spirit is most likely at SS-Rank with a decently ranked up Angel and some powered-up Sephira. Though your Spirit may be strong enough on her own, you can increase her damage output or other stats even more by ranking up other Spirits with passives which give teamwide benefits.
Yoshino and Miku are specific examples, as their passives increase your team’s damage and one of Miku’s specific passives increases your Spirit’s attack on switch. I’m recommending this last as you’ll need to expend resources from the Endless Tower to level both Yoshino and Miku’s Angels up to unlock them, and your earlygame time is better spent powering your main Spirit up first.
And there you go! That’s the end of our Date A Live guide on the journey to EX-ranking and maximizing your favorite Spirit! Did we overlook anything, or do you have any other suggestions to make this guide better? Please let us know in the comment section below!