Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: high school boy gets transported to another world. But this time, you don’t even need truck-kun to isekai you.
Part gacha game, part JRPG, Eroica delivers a classic yet refreshing experience for the modern mobile gamer. In this world, you’ll recruit allies, resolve conflicts, traverse the world while helping the helpless – all while trying to discover the truth of this world and what your role is in it. FourThirtyThree’s new mobile game can be found on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.
Eroica is pretty simple on the surface, but it has a lot of systems in play. If you want a leg up on how to thrive in Eroica then be sure to stay with us and read our comprehensive beginner’s guide!
Mastering Combat
Much of your time in Eroica will be spent fighting against the dreaded Dargon (yes, that’s what monsters are called), so you’d best get accustomed to the game’s JRPG, turn-based battle system. And while some players may be old hands at this, some players might never have touched a JRPG before.
Battle in Eroica is executed via turns. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see the list of the current characters on the field – both enemies and allies. The character who’s currently taking their turn is at the lowest left of the screen (Marion, in the image above), and once the active character is done, the list ticks down.
Each character has three abilities at their disposal. The first skill is their default attack, and costs no meter to use. Their second and third skills, however, have a cooldown. This counts down at the start of a character’s turn, but you can elect to use these skills early by consuming some of your Soul Counter, the cubes at the bottom right of the screen. For each turn of cooldown that you skip, one cube will be consumed. Using an attack (whether you pay for it in cubes or wait it out) will reset the cooldown of the skill you just used.
These cubes also regenerate every turn, so don’t be afraid to go all-out on your attacks. Lastly, cooldown and consumed cubes persist throughout battles in the same chapter, so if you’re already on the cusp victory, you might want to save your resources instead.
The Burst Gauge
Each attack made by your heroes also fills up the burst gauge, which you can find as a shield-like icon on the lower right. This gauge can be used to unleash powerful special abilities by tapping on it, then selecting an ability.
By default, you can call in the Arkham for fire support, which does 30% of the combined ATK of your heroes to all enemies. You also use this gauge to use the active abilities of your Pre-Cores, which I’ll delve into in a bit.
If you really need to use your burst gauge abilities, you can forfeit a character’s turn to add a large amount of energy to the gauge at once. You can do this by tapping on the gauge, then tapping the star with a plus icon (refer to the image above).
Pre-Cores
Pre-Cores are powerful, important pieces of gear that you can also get in the character gacha.
Pre-Cores have both a passive and an active ability, depending on their rarity. These abilities can trigger on some effects, and their active skills can be triggered by spending the burst gauge in the same way as you would summon the Arkham. Note that some passive abilities also require burst gauge!
Elemental Weaknesses
Eroica utilizes a simple rock-paper-scissors elemental weakness system.
Fire beats grass, grass beats water, water beats fire. And light and dark are good against each other. Despite what you might expect, there’s no resistance system for hitting enemies with the element they’re strong against.
Each element also has its own color: fire is red, water is blue, grass is green, light is yellow, and dark is purple. You can tell what element a character is based on the color of their level indicator to the left of their HP bar.
For the purposes of attacks, any attack made by a hero of a certain element is considered to be that element.
Battlefield Information
Information is your friend on the battlefield. If you’re facing multiple enemies of the same type, they’ll helpfully be labeled with a number, so you can more easily tell who’s who. You can also always see the level and element of all characters – it’s to the left of the HP bar.
Bosses, too, will require that you play around their unique skills and gimmicks. If you’d like to see what a boss’ abilities can do, simply tap hold on their abilities below their health bar. The same works for your heroes – if you’ve neglected to read what their skills actually do, you can also tap hold on the three icons. Just like your heroes though, boss attacks also have a cooldown, which is denoted by a number on the icon.
Auto Combat and Speed Boosts
If you’re confident in your team’s strength, or just want to blitz through stages to access later content, you can always turn on Auto Combat by tapping the “A” icon in the upper right. In the same vein, you can double the speed of combat animations by tapping the “2X” button in the same area.
Summon More Allies
Your starting set of characters will suffice, but you can do a lot better. That’s where the game’s gacha mechanic comes in.
Maximize Your Selective Summons
When you’re first introduced to Eroica’s gacha system, you’ll be notified that you can perform Selective Summoning over normal pulls. This means that you can roll a group of 10 heroes 40 times, with each batch of 10 having a 3* hero, and you can choose to keep or refuse the group of 10 you pulled. However, you can’t keep rolling once you’ve accepted a batch of ten, or if you’re on the last group of heroes. This means that you more or less have a chance to pick which 3* hero to keep.
As you won’t get an opportunity like this EVER AGAIN, I highly suggest going for one of the game’s better heroes. Based on my own research (and the game’s subreddit), the best heroes you should go for here are Orslaha, Melavi, or Gaffs.
Note that it doesn’t seem possible to get more than 1 3* character per batch of 10!
Arkham Welcome Event
New players are also given a unique summoning opportunity via the Arkham Welcome Event.
Logging in for seven days nets you 500,000 gold, 10 summon rolls, 170 Luna, Marion, and Sei shards, a SSR Pre-Core chest, and last but not least, a 10 pull with a guaranteed 3*. Additionally, if you log in on consecutive days, you’ll also gain some bonus items, such as Wing Boots (stamina).
Switching Banners
Tapping on the summon button in the Arkham brings you to the Present Summon menu by default. But this isn’t the only place where you can roll for characters and Pre-Cores. Go to the left-hand panel and tap on the buttons there to see the other banners: Heroic brings up the limited character banners, Pre-Core shows the dedicated Pre-Core gacha, Gear gives you 6 random items, and Platinum gives you a guaranteed 3* but costs real-life money.
Note, too, that you can use your Pick-Up Tickets in limited banners. With that in mind, have a look at the current limited banners before spending your new player bonuses – you might decide that you like the featured characters over the regular gacha pool.
Free Summons
You also get the really generous prize of (bum bum bum) one free Present Summon per day.
Who knows, maybe you’ll get lucky. And no, this doesn’t stack if you don’t use it. Yes, I tried it.
Paid Pellets versus Free Pellets
While you were in the gacha screen, you might have noticed the distinction between Paid Pellets and Free Pellets. Paid Pellets are any Pellets you’ve bought with real-life money, while anything that comes from the game itself counts as a Free Pellet.
The main advantage of using Paid Pellets is that once per day, you can pull on a banner for just 10 Paid Pellets, instead of 30 Pellets. You don’t necessarily have to buy Pellets, but if you’re in for the long haul, I suggest making the most out of this system.
The Arkham Crew
You can also recruit members of the Arkham as playable characters.
To do this, speak with Airi in the main menu (she’s behind the counter). You’ll then be given a choice of three characters: Airi, Damian, or Raz. Simply go to this menu every day for 30 days and speak to them. Each time you talk, you’ll fill up a meter, and once that meter hits 30, hey presto – new 3* character!
There’s a very big catch though: if you miss a single day in those 30 days, your progress will be reset to 1. While you can salvage your progress by paying Pellets, it’s better to not miss at all.
Strengthening Your Companions
There’s a ton of ways to strengthen your heroes in Eroica; so much so, in fact, that it’s really easy to get lost in all the systems. Here they are, broken down for easier consumption.
Hero Stats
Before we talk about making your heroes beefier, we first need to review Eroica’s stat system. The stats that each hero has (and what they do) are:
- Power: A general approximation of the hero’s strength, based on their raw stats and equipment.
- HP: Hitpoints. These hit zero, you go down.
- ATK: Attack. Most offensive abilities and DOTs scale off a hero’s ATK.
- DEF: Defense. The more you have, the harder you are to beat up.
- ATK SPD: Attack speed AKA initiative. Determines turn order; the higher your ATK SPD, the sooner you’ll be able to act in a round.
- Crit: Critical rate. The chance to hit for extra damage.
- Crit DMG: Critical damage. The amount of bonus damage a Critical hit scores; a Crit DMG of 20% means your critical hits deal +20% damage, for a total of 120%.
- Penetration: How much of your damage ignores DEF.
There are also a lot of stats I couldn’t figure out, and so this is what my research has yielded. Take note that much of this is conjecture, and that you can easily forgo building these stats. Until the game reveals the exact math of these stats, take this section with a sack of salt.
- Accuracy/Dodge: Attacks have + Accuracy to hit, reduced by the target’s Dodge.
- Crit Dodge: Chance to avoid a critical hit entirely (probably).
- DMG Reduction: Percentage-based damage reduction, thought to work after DEF is factored in.
- Element ATK: Elemental damage bonus (probably).
- Debuff hit/dodge: Bonus chance to inflict status ailments, as well as the chance to avoid them.
- HP/MP recovery: Amount of regeneration after finishing combat.
Leveling Up
The easiest way to become stronger is simply by leveling up. Bring heroes with you, beat the crap out of dargons or other guys, gain experience points, increase your stats. Rinse and repeat. Note that experience points are only rewarded after clearing a stage.
A more efficient way of increasing a hero’s level is to give them EXP potions. You can do this by tapping Level Up in the hero screen (Arkham -> Heroic -> Heroic). EXP potions can be gathered via quest rewards.
Equipment
Each hero also has six (seven, if you count the Pre-Core) equipment slots. Characters can be given a weapon, body armor, a helmet, shoes, a ring, and a necklace. Each piece of equipment slightly boosts stats, and equipping a full set of six is a quick and easy way to bolster your troops.
Each piece of equipment also belongs to a set. By equipping 2, 4, or 6 pieces of the same set, you can trigger powerful passive bonuses that give characters an extra boost.
If you’re too lazy to bother with manually equipping items to every single hero, you can tap Auto Equip on the heroes screen to give them the best equipment loadout, depending on that hero’s role. You can also find the Auto Equip button in the victory screen to make equipping any gear dropped from a stage even faster.
Equipment can also be enhanced. To enhance your gear, tap on the inventory button (the chest icon in the upper right), then tap any piece of gear and select Enhance.
You can enhance gear by sacrificing other equipment or by using enhancement stones. Each sacrificed item yields EXP, and with each level up, the item’s base stats increase. All items also have substats, which can be viewed on the left side of the screen. Each level up gives a random increase to one of an item’s substats, though note that there’s a cap as to how much a substat can be raised.
Enhancement is also limited by the rarity of an item. Normal (gray) items can’t be enhanced at all, with each succeeding rarity increasing the enhancement level cap by 5. So that’s a level cap of 5 for green items, 10 for blue items, 15 for purples, 20 for reds, and so on.
You can also elect to ascend equipment if you like the substats you rolled or just want to keep it. Ascending gear means increasing its star rank, which leads to higher base stats across the board. To ascend gear, you’ll need to sacrifice identical equipment (ie, a T1 Hero Helm needs to eat other T1 Hero helms) for a chance at ascension. The higher the item’s star rank, the lower the chance of a successful ascension. And whether or not an ascension is successful, the items you’re choosing to sacrifice will be lost.
One last thing about equipment – you can salvage or sell equipment in the inventory screen. Salvaging wrecks gear and gives you crafting materials in return, while selling equipment gives you cold hard cash. Of note is the sell function as it’s arguably the best way to make gold in the game (as of writing).
Relationship Boosts
By befriending your characters (mostly by giving them gifts), you can get them to give you more detailed information about themselves. Mechanics-wise, this translates to a passive boost to a hero’s stats depending on how good your relationship is with them.
Tap on the heart in the upper left of a hero’s profile screen to access the gift menu. This will allow you to select which items to give them, and each item increases their relationship level by a bit. Fill it all the way up, and you’ll unlock a new level, along with a bunch of passive boosts and new information!
Note that items don’t fill up the relationship meter equally. Whenever you select a gift, you’ll also be able to see how much of the relationship meter that gift will fill up. Experimentation is key!
Ascension
Each hero has their limits, and you’ll need to ascend a hero if you want them to surpass those limits. Each ascension grants a respectable increase to a hero’s base stats, as well as increasing their star rating and bumping up their maximum level.
Ascending heroes is a fancy term for feeding copies to them. To ascend a hero, you’ll need to pay a considerable sum of gold as well as have enough hero shards.
You can only get a hero once; pulling duplicates of heroes you already own yields passport tickets nstead of that hero. These tickets can be exchanged in Amil’s Shop for shards of that hero. You can also get shards by playing through the story and events – shards for your default heroes such as Sei, Luna, and Marion can be found aplenty.
Passive Skills
A hero can also be equipped with several passive skills. These are accessible in the ascension menu. The number of passive skills a hero can equip depends on their star rating. One star gives one slot, and all other star ranks give 2 slots, for a grand total of 9 passive skills.
Each slot gives you a choice of two passive skills, of which you can only pick one. While early passive skills usually just push your numbers higher, later passive skills can have a direct effect on a hero’s skills, even morphing those skills into their alpha or beta versions which can greatly change how they work. Other passive skills provide unique bonuses, such as the one below.
If you decide you want to change a hero’s passive skills, you can change them by hitting the reset button at the bottom of the screen – but it’ll set you back 10,000 gold.
Runes
The Rune system is another way of getting those sweet, sweet numbers.
Each hero has a set of 10 major runes they can engrave. Surrounding each of these major runes are 7 minor runes, each of which minorly raise a stat. By putting in rune bits of that hero’s element (Light heroes need Light runes, for example), you can activate these runes and get their bonuses online, which directly means more stats for your heroes.
You can activate the seven minor runes in any order, but all of them need to be lit up before you can trigger the major rune, which gives a considerable boost to the bonuses that the minor runes give. Once you’ve triggered the major rune, you can start working on the next one.
Constellations
The Constellation system is hidden away under the Story tab of the game, but it’s effectively another way to boost your stats – if you have the involved heroes, that is.
Some heroes will fall under a specific constellation. Every time you increase the star rank of a hero (or get a new hero in a constellation), you’ll gain a Blessing of Light that you can spend on passive bonuses for heroes belonging to a constellation set. Take note that these bonuses will apply only for the heroes in a constellation set, regardless of where you got the blessings!
Upgrading Skills
Naturally, each of a hero’s skills can be leveled up to make them perform better. Tap the Skills tab on the right side of a hero’s screen to level up their skills.
In this menu, you’ll be able to preview the changes to the hero’s skills at each level, all the way up to level 5. This isn’t free, of course: you’ll need to pay gold, as well as skills books of that hero’s class and Miracle Skill Books at higher levels. You can also preview the changes that the alpha and beta versions of that skill has, if any.
Gathering Resources
With so many paths to power, you’re going to be burning through your resources very quickly. Luckily, Eroica also offers a lot of ways to source the stuff you need.
Stage Exploration
As you explore stages, you’ll occasionally find conspicuous landmarks, such as chests or obviously-interactable flowers and devices.
These aren’t just for show – tap on an item in a stage to interact with it. Chests give can resources and gold, while other things give more exotic fare, such as crafting items. Do note that if you’re running stages on Auto (yes, you can do that by tapping the A with arrows on the upper right), the AI will not interact with these items.
Expedition Tools
You’ll sometimes run across something that looks like it can be interacted with, but you can’t. In these cases, you’ll likely need an expedition tool.
These tools will become available as you progress through the story, with the first tool being the Detect Ball which flushes out invisible or blurry objects. Take note that these tools are consumable, but you can make more at a crafting table in any stage that has one.
The Dimensional Rift
Your tier 1 equipment will quickly find itself struggling to keep up with the demands of adventure. The best way to earn equipment early is to challenge the Dimensional Rift via the Challenge Menu at the lower right of the screen.
Battles in the Dimensional Rift challenge you to win a series of consecutive battles. If you can overcome this challenge, you’ll earn equipment, as well as crafting materials. This also coincidentally makes the rift great at farming gold as you can just sell the items you don’t need. If you’re looking for specific types of equipment, you can switch which rift to enter; you can also just tap the equipment icons on the left side to sort rifts by the items they drop.
The Dimensional Rift doesn’t have a daily limit, but it does consume Wing Boots.
Guild Requests
Guild Requests are very similar to Dimensional Rift battles. Just the like the Dimensional Rift, you’ll need to challenge consecutive battles. Just like the Dimensional Rift, you’ll get a lot of valuable resources: this time though, it’s EXP potions or gold to rapidly bolster your heroes’ levels. This mode also uses Wing Boots to run, so budget your stamina carefully. On the flipside, you can only run each mode (EXP or gold) of Guild Requests thrice per day.
Guild Requests can be challenged in the same menu as the Dimensional Rift.
Ancient Ruins
Ancient Ruins are (surprise, surprise) found in the same menu as the latter two modes. This mode gives you elemental runes for completing your heroes’ rune upgrades. Like the Dimensional Rift, you can sort ruins by the element of stones they give.
This mode also uses Wing Boots per run, and can only be completed ten times per day.
Battle Pass
Eroica also features a battle pass system that rewards players for completing battles.
Eroica’s battle pass doesn’t have specific quests tied to it. Instead, you gain battle pass points whenever you spend certain resources, such as Wing Boots, Azoth Relics, or by playing certain game modes. For more information, you can tap on the question mark beside your current battle pass rank.
Login Bonus
Eroica features a daily login bonus that goes on for 28 days.
While these login prizes are small, they do add up. Of special interest are the Pellets and Skill Books that you can get on days that are multiples of seven. Try and get these resources, as they’re always in high demand and relatively short supply.
Stage Stars
The stars you get for clearing a stage aren’t just for show. Collect enough stars, and you’ll be able to redeem them for some nice rewards by tapping the Objective Rewards at the lower left of the stage selection screen.
Stars are pretty easy to earn. You get one star just for clearing a stage, another one of you lost less than one unit, and all three stars if no one got downed at all. If you failed to get all stars in a stage, you can always go back and try again.
The Arkham
Your mobile base wouldn’t be good for much if you couldn’t actually do anything in it, yeah? Inside the Arkham, you can craft items, take on personal quests, and attend to the needs of your crew.
The cafeteria is perhaps the most prominent room aboard the Arkham. Every so often, hungry heroes will visit this facility, looking for a bite to eat. By giving them what they need, you can earn coins and relationship points with these heroes.
These food items can be produced on the first floor of the Arkham, and can be bolstered by assigning heroes to the greenhouse. Your cafeteria’s development is central to this system: the higher your cafeteria’s level, the more facilities are unlocked and the more options you have. Upgrading your cafeteria requires a lot of Tin Coins, which you get from fulfilling hero requests.
Hero quests allow you to deploy teams of heroes on passive quests to harvest resources. The more heroes you have, and the further you’ve gone in the campaign, the more quests you’ll have available to you. Try to have at least a few heroes always working here – passive income is the best income!
Finally, you can craft equipment aboard the Arkham. You’ll need crafting materials, gold, and time to craft items, but aside from that, it’s fair game. Be sure to assign heroes to the crafting room as each hero reduces the amount of time it takes to craft anything!
Pellets
Ah, Pellets. Where would you be without these precious gacha gems?
The most effective way for a new player to earn these precious Pellets is to complete challenges under the Trophy menu in the Arkham. By completing enough tasks, you’ll be able to not only get valuable basic resources, but also gain Pellets after hitting specific point thresholds. Make sure to redeem your pellets at the bottom left of the screen!
This World or The Next?
Now that you’re armed with all this knowledge, your time in Eroica will go a lot smoother – I hope. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll find a way home. The question is: is home where you once lived? Or is it with your crew, aboard the Arkham, adventuring and questing across the continent?
That concludes my beginner’s guide to Eroica, and I hope that I was able to help you find resources or pinpoint ways to improve your characters. If you have anything to add or would like to share something, make yourself heard in the comments!