The legends and deeds of Mercenary King Allus were known far and wide, and his legacy was matched only by his combat prowess and his leadership skills. But in a treacherous turn of events, Allus and his army were drawn into a trap at the battle of Devalt, and he was lost to the world.
Until now.
Published by GAMEVIL Inc., Eternal Saga: Region Tactics combines real-time combat with unit management and strategic thinking, leading to a game that looks simple, but plays very well. You play as the newly-awakened Allus, who is now both amnesiac and financially challenged. Armed with his trusty sword Shakin, Allus quickly gains a new following of mercenaries who want to accompany him on his second climb to power.
Many battles await you on your quest, which can be fought like auto chess games or via manual control of your armies. Eternal Saga: Region Tactics is available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store.
The road to glory is rocky and rugged, and there will be many obstacles in the way…such as learning the game. Our Eternal Saga: Region Tactics beginner’s guide will hone your strategic acumen by pointing out some important tips and for new commanders so that you’ll be ready for any fight!
Know Your Units
Despite being a large-scale battle game, Eternal Saga: Region Tactics naturally has a cast of protagonists or villains that can serve your cause, if you’re lucky enough to pull them from character rolls aka gacha. In simpler terms, it’s a hero collector game. These units have statistics, skills, and roles to fill in any group you put them in. Learning to sift through the game’s many numbers and skills is key to your success as a commander.
Boots on the Ground
Heroes have a 2.5% pull rate in the unit gacha. That means that most of your pulls will result in generic units. They shouldn’t be disregarded, however, as these units will make up the bulk of your army. These units also have different stats depending on what faction they’re from. Some units also have different niches, in spite of being the same unit class. Zhakan Valkyries, for example, are equipped with the standard sword and board, while Zhakan Chargers are armed with huge two-handed swords and are better suited for offense.
Different races also mean different specializations in combat. While both Roiam Knights and Elf Riders are both Spear Cavalry with a powerful charge skill, knights are equipped with shields, giving them a much higher chance to survive ranged attacks as well as more health. Riders are more offensive troops with superior range and damage, but their lower hp and lack of makes them more fragile.
Racial units also have different skills for units of the same class. Roiam Swordsmen have Boost Morale, which increases their own physical attack and physical defense by 50% for 10 seconds. Orc Warriors prefer to overwhelm their enemies with Bash, an attack that deals 2x damage and stuns for 3 seconds.
Heroes for Hire
Heroes are special units. Aside from having names and portraits, they also have higher stats compared to normal units of the same class. Heroes also have ultimate skills that can turn the tide of battle. With the aforementioned pull rate of 2.5%, your heroes will be few and far between. The good news here is that there’s a pity system in play, with a guaranteed hero every 50 pulls. The even better news is that you can get some heroes just by playing the game, like Sophia the mercenary knight, Lavia the elven healer, and Mikael the guy from some anime I’m sure I’ve seen before.
Your heroes aren’t one-man armies in Eternal Saga: Region Tactics. Strong as they are, they will quickly fall to hordes of ordinary swordsmen without backup. If you focus solely on getting and training heroes and not investigating in your grunts, you’ll end up with a very lopsided battalion that can’t stand on its own.
Vital Statistics
Each unit in Eternal Saga: Region Tactics has multiple statistics that govern how it does in a fight. Here’s a short breakdown on each of them.
P. Atk and M. Atk are physical and magical attack, respectively. This affects the damage a unit does with their attacks.
P. Def and M. Def represent physical and magical defenses. A higher defense score means less damage taken from attacks of the respective type.
HP is health, how much damage a unit can take before it dies and becomes unusable in the current mission.
ATK SPD is attack speed, the number of attacks a unit makes per tick.
MOV SPD is move speed; how fast the little chibi soldier walks.
RNG is range. The number represents how far a unit can attack. As a general rule, ranged units have a baseline of 6 RNG.
Ranged EVA is ranged evasion; this seems to be the chance out of a hundred that a ranged attack will miss this unit. Units with shields have an innate +30 to this stat, and those with even larger shields have +60.
Crit Rate and Crit Damage are the chance to land a critical hit and the extra multiplier that’s applied to a critical hit.
According to long-time players from the original Korean server, other stats not mentioned here such as Recovery don’t do anything yet, so don’t concern yourself with those for now.
It’s Super Effective!
The units in Eternal Saga: Region Tactics are classified as either infantry or cavalry. Infantry refers to all foot soldiers: Swordsmen, Spearmen, Archers, Mages, and Healers. Sword Cavalry and Spear Cavalry make up the game’s mounted forces. Each of these units have bonuses and penalties against certain unit types, so it’s vital to remember this information.
Swordsmen have solid all-around stats and can serve as both the vanguard and the bulk of your forces. Swordsmen are good against all other infantry types, dealing 30% more damage to them with the exception of other Swordsmen. It’s important to note that factions often have two types of Swordsmen – one focused on offense and the other on defense.
Archers have the advantage of being able to pelt enemies with projectiles from afar. This lets them dish out large amounts of damage while their sturdier comrades cover the front lines. They also deal 15% more damage to Spear Cavalry. On the other hand, shielded units can have a 30-60% chance to shunt ranged attacks entirely, depending on the size of the shield they carry.
Spearmen were historically utilized against cavalry, because to nobody’s surprise, horses don’t like running against a barbed wall of death. They remain the same in Eternal Saga: Region Tactics; Spearmen are a specialized unit that specifically counter Sword Cavalry. Aside from a hefty 30% attack bonus against Sword Cavalry, they have no other distinguishing features.
Magic users are divided into Mages and Healers. Like Archers, Mages sling storms of deadly projectiles at enemy units. Most mages have an area of effect skill, so they’re effective against tight formations of enemy units. Healers, like their namesake, heal. While they’re not as flashy as Mages, Healers keep your army topped up both in and out of combat. Some Healers can also bestow powerful buffs on your army.
Sword Cavalry are my personal favorite. These stalwart riders have a whopping 35% damage bonus against all infantry, sans Spearmen. Their thundering hooves will serve you well as either hit-and-run first wave units or powerful flankers that can eradicate an enemy’s backrow of ranged units. To compensate for their offensive ability, they take bonus damage from ranged attacks and especially spears.
Spear Cavalry have a 30% attack boost against all infantry except Spearmen. They also boast a 15% attack increase against Sword Cavalry, making them well-suited for either chasing Sword Cavalry down or rushing to reinforce your backline. They also make an excellent first wave due to most of them having a disruptive charge attack as their skill, breaking enemy ranks and exposing their squishier comrades.
Shielded units are a subclass of unit. Units can be equipped with either small or large shields, as depicted by a tower shield behind the unit’s icon. These units are effective against ranged units, as their shields give them a massive boost to their ranged evasion stat.
It’s also important to note that Heroes are not their own unit class. Thus, the same combat bonuses and penalties will apply to them.
This is a lot of info to process and remember, but the easiest way to remember it is this: Swords beat infantry, spears beat cavalry, cavalry beats everything but spears.
The Skills that Land the Kills
Each unit also has a skill. Generic units usually have one, while heroes have multiple, as well as one ultimate skill. You might be thinking, “Isn’t keeping track of every unit’s skill in a 20-unit army a recipe for a headache,” and you’d be right! To streamline skill usage, units will always use their skills as early and as often as possible – that is to say, anytime they’re off cooldown.
As mentioned earlier, unit classes of different races often have their own approaches to battle, so make sure you read what each skill does!
The only skills you really have to manage are the ultimate skills of your heroes. These are powerful game-changing abilities often on a long cooldown. Allus has a powerful AOE around himself that knocks enemies back, Lavia heals everyone, and Lena makes every archer attack faster.
To use these skills, you need to tap on the icon under the hero’s banner on the lower right. For optimal grinding, the ability to Auto Skill becomes available after chapter 11, where your heroes will use their skills whenever they’re ready.
Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail
Sun Tzu’s Art of War states that every battle is won before it is ever fought. Before combat in both PVE and PVP, you’ll have a preview of what your opponent’s army composition is. This is represented as percentages in the campaign map, and as two ranks of units in PVP. This knowledge gives you the upper hand as you can handpick units and heroes that counter what the enemy is bringing against you.
Command To Conquer
While Eternal Saga: Region Tactics can be played just fine via its auto combat system, learning to command your army is vital for success later in the game and can allow you to win battles that you would otherwise lose. During auto combat, your army is set to move to predetermined locations on the map, attacking enemies on the way. However, more savvy commanders will realize that there are better ways of tackling enemies. This is where the game’s manual controls come into play, and they are very much worth mastering.
Stance Dancing
As you progress through the early game, the combat interface will slowly open up to you. Two of the first buttons that become available are the stance buttons.
Armies can have two stances: Defense or Attack. While an army is in Defense, they will stop moving and hold their position. In this stance, they’ll only fight enemies that come into their range, which it makes it great for holding a defensive line, fortifying an area, or just stopping for a quick break while your healers patch everyone up.
Defense mode also prioritize following your movement orders above everything else, so use it if you absolutely must push towards a loaction. Attack mode does exactly what it says. Units in Attack stance will actively and indiscriminately engage the closest enemy that they see that get within their line of sight, just like attack-moving in RTS games.
Give Me The Controller
Armies can be made to move manually. This is done by selecting an army, then tapping a location on the screen where you want them to move. Take note that their behavior during movement is still influenced by their stance, so if they’re in Attack mode they’ll still stop to engage everything in the way!
Auto Move and Drag Select become available once you’ve cleared stage 11. Without Auto Move on, your army will await their next destination via your tap instead of fecklessly charging forward. Drag Select allows you to turn your finger into a mouse by drawing a box over units you want to select, which you can then order around. This is especially useful for units that need specific orders, like getting your ranged units back into cover or retreating and reforming ranks.
Formations
You may notice that your armies all have the same box formation, with their commander in the middle. While this formation will suffice, there are other better formations that you can buy with gems. These formations each offer a passive bonus that you can use as a basis for the army you want to train up.
Just like its real-life ancient Roman counterpart, the Testudo formation returns in all its turtling glory. Units arranged in this way receive 15% ranged evasion on top of what they already have, and a slight bonu to both physical and magical defense. This makes Testudo armies excel at drawing and withstanding ranged attacks as they continue their unstoppable march.
The Wedge formation is used to concentrate force at a single point while protecting its own flanks. In this formation, units form into a triangle pattern and charge forward with the tip – usually made of elite soldiers. Meanwhle, the wings of the triangle would deter flankers and assist in the push. The Wedge gives a sizable 10% physical attack and movement speed boost and a minor 5% ranged evasion bonus, perfect for smashing into enemy formations with cavalry.
The Circle formation favors ranged units by protecting up to 8 of them with units on all sides. Archers or Mages are surrounded on all sides by allied Swordsmen or Spearmen, who will fend off melee attacks and allow protected ranged units to fire on enemies with impunity. The Circle gives 7% physical attack, 5% magic attack, and 8% physical defense.
Soldiers formed up in a Blitz enjoy a huge 25% movement speed increase, as well as a minor 5% physical and magic attack bonus. Fast as lightning and just as deadly, Blitzes emphasizes mobility and speed in all combat situations. Blitz companies can be used by clever commanders to attack weak points in an enemy’s defense, to quickly rush to certain map areas, or to reinforce weak points in their own lines.
Hexagram platoons share most of their characteristics with the Circle, but are attuned to magic users. Units in this lineup gain 10% magic attack, 5% ranged evasion, and 8% magic defense. Just like the Circle, the Hexagram’s outer positions are perfect for defenders, while your Mages and Healers can continue their spellcraft inside in relative peace.
Use Presets and Banners
With the amount of men you’ll be commanding, it’s easy to get lost with regards to who belongs where. By tapping on Edit Preset in the lower left when assigning units, you can create loadable formations for easy army reassembly.
You can also assign banners to your units to help you keep track of who belongs where. This is located to the upper left in a unit’s info panel, with a button labeled Mark.
Strengthen Your Army
There’s lots of ways to strengthen your army in Eternal Saga: Region Tactics. From leveling to gear crafting and upgrading, to consuming copies of heroes for a big stat boost, your armies need to be kept in tip-top shape for the challenges that await them.
Level Up!
Of course, Eternal Saga: Region Tactics has a leveling system. What fun would it be if you had to keep replacing your heroes and battle-hardened fighting men every level?
Units have both levels and upgrade ranks. As per the usual RPG mechanics, leveling up grants a unit an increase in their stats, with higher level units hitting harder, having more health, and so on. Upgrade ranks serve as checkpoints for a unit’s growth and also prevent you from gaining high level units too quickly.
Every ten levels, both regular units and heroes will require materials to upgrade, which uncaps their level growth. You can toggle Auto Upgrade in the settings window, which will automate the process for regular units. Annoyingly, this doesn’t work for heroes, so keep an eye on them.
Unit awakening is another way to get stronger. Units gain awakening exp as they level up, or for heroes, you can take a shortcut by pulling a second copy of them in the gacha. Known as merging or fusing in other hero collector games, this process lets you sacrifice your copies to provide substantial stat boosts to the original unit. A unit’s awakening level is denoted by the number of stars it has.
Experience Farming
By far the best way to gain exp is through direct combat. The developers were nice enough to not only allow Eternal Saga: Region Tactics to autobattle with your forces, but also give players access to autobattle controls. You can tweak how many times you want your army to fight, if you want the game to purchase Shoes (stamina) if it runs out, and if you want to leave your phone on power saving mode. This will also earn you marks towards progression achievements and drop crafting materials for equipment.
You can also send soldiers to the Training Grounds where they’ll passively gain tiny amounts of exp every minute by beating up defenseless wooden dummies. This facility can be upgraded with gems, which will both increase the number of units that can train at once and the amount of exp they get. It’s not much, but something is better than nothing.
Gear Maketh Man
The fastest way to increase your army’s efficiency is by equipping gear on every single character. Equipment – weapons, armor, jewelry for heroes – give substantial stat boosts that vastly improve a unit’s performance.
Gear can be rolled for in the gear gacha – which of course uses gems. Make sure to use the free roll and advertisement-fueled rolls whenever possible. You can obtain common and uncommon gear just by proceeding through the campaign and as random drops. They’re not worth too much, but any boost is a good boost.
Generic units have 3 slots for gear – weapon, body armor, and shoes. The kind of armor they use is dependent on the unit. Frontline fighters use plate mail, Archers use leather and padded armors, and Mages prefer fabric armors. Heroes also have a helmet slot and 3 accessory slots – 1 for a necklace and 2 for rings.
To The Forge!
An alternative to rolling for gear is to craft equipment yourself. These require drops from either normal missions or bosses, depending on what gear you plan to make. Naturally, stronger gear requires more items and drop rates aren’t fantastic.
Refining with Scrolls
You can get even more mileage out of your equipment by upgrading them. Each level of refinement consumes materials such as upgrade scrolls. These refining materials come from various sources, usually daily activities such as dispatches or requests. Each grade of item can only be refined a certain number of times. The higher an item’s rarity, the higher its maximum level.
Cannon Fodder Skills Development Program
Units can be strengthened by skills in two ways. First is by directly increasing the level of a unit’s skill via their info page. Most skills gain higher multipliers as they level up. Take note that this only increases that specific unit’s skill – you’re going to have to level them all up. You’ll need materials for this too, which come from dailies, log-in bonuses, and the like.
The second way is via the Military Academy facility. By clearing courses that restrict you to a single unit type, you gain training tokens that are used to purchase passive skills that affect all units of that type. While their numbers are unimpressive at the start, remember that these bonuses apply to your entire army, making them a top priority. You can switch between the training courses and the upgrade tree by tapping the Academy button on the lower left of the popup.
Clear Your Extra Curricular Activities
Upgrading your army will quickly lead to a deficit in training and refining materials. Luckily, Eternal Saga: Region Tactics has a lot of daily, weekly, and monthly activities where you can harvest these essential items. Most of these have the option for multiplier modes, meaning that instead of running something like Goblin Mine nine times, you can just run it once for nine times the reward. And if you run against a challenge you can’t handle, the game won’t count it as one of your attempts. Here are some of the earlier, more accessible challenges:
Goblin Mine
Send an army to harass goblin miners. The Goblin Mine is the premiere gold harvesting area in the game. Sadly, you can’t buy anything with the gold, but it is used in various upgrade methods so it’s best to have a fat purse.
Dispatches
Teams can be dispatched in each town that you unlock on the campaign map. During this time, they’ll work to find you gold and upgrade resources. You can change how long dispatched units will work, from as short as two hours to as long as eight hours. Longer hours mean more resources.
Bosses
Fight a boss monster in an MMO-like raid. Bosses are single units with immense stats, easily reaching hundreds of thousands. They have skills that need to be learned and adjusted to, so you’ll need to memorize their patterns. Bosses drop boss materials for use in crafting recipes. You can fight bosses 3 times per day.
Underground Cavern
The Underground Cavern is a dungeon that resets either twice a month or monthly. Since the game only released its global version this November 9, there’s no way to know until next month. The cavern is a series of 50 chambers of increasing difficulty. Clearing chambers grants you tokens that can be spent in a special store that sells high-level crafting materials and guaranteed legendary gear tickets. Of course, expect these to be pricey.
Requests
These are Eternal Saga’s version of daily quests. You can only take 5 a day, and don’t expect too much from them. Still, upgrade materials are always going to be in very high demand. If you’re lucky you can get requests that let you trade in crafting materials for gear.
Academy Training Exercises
Allow me to reiterate the importance of doing these. The passive skill trees are a massive boon that affect your entire army. You can do up to five of these a day, regardless of unit class.
Legendary Ordeals
These are series of puzzle-like battles where you must defeat a set of enemies with a lot of restrictions placed on you. Said restrictions affect the number of units you can bring, what races you can use, and what unit classes are available to you. You can clear 4 ordeals a day, and these reset weekly.
Advertisements
Yes, I mean it – ads are one of the game’s dailies. You can watch 10 ads a day for 10-20 gems each. There are also ads for Shoes and a pull in both the unit and gear gacha. With the amount of gems you’ll need throughout the game, struggling through the ads is a way to get some gems for just a little bit of your time.
Engage In Social Activities
The world chat of Eternal Saga: Region Tactics is always buzzing with activity. Thousands of aspiring mercenary kings play alongside you, attempting to rebuild their own legacies. As you meet more people, you’ll realize that you really only have two options…
Option One: Befriend Them
Maybe you found a helpful random person in chat. Maybe you want to make friends.
Sadly, the game doesn’t have a friends system, yet. But what it does have is guilds. Get to joining a guild ASAP, because a guild’s level affects how much bonus experience and gold its members get at the end of a battle. At the same time, members are expected to do their part by donating gold and contributing manpower to guild raids, powerful bosses with health going into the millions. With each guild raid defeated, members build up their horde of guild coins that can be spent in a guild shop.
If you’re after bigger prey, you can band together with your guild to try to wrest control of a territory from a rival guild. But be warned – your enemies are often well-established and powerful guilds, so make sure you’re up to scratch before attempting this!
Option Two: Fight Them
Maybe you’re just feeling belligerent. Maybe you’re starving for gems or action. Whatever the case, PVP is very much alive in the world of Eternal Saga: Region Tactics.
While you don’t have to participate in the arena, you can get gems and gold just for making it to (and holding) certain ranks on the PVP leaderboard. These rankings reset weekly, and there are a variety of modes to choose from: 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, or Faction War. If you don’t like your odds against the opponents you’re put up against, you can refresh your opponents with the lower right button. The first reset per PVP bracket is free, but additional rerolls cost (you guessed it) gems.
For those who don’t want to interact with people, don’t worry. PVP is done by assigning a defense team and an attack team. Your attack team will do battle with your selected opponent’s defense team, and the results sent to the server. No social activity required!
Manage Your Gems Wisely
Want to buy units? Gems. New gear? Gems. Upgrade your facilities? Get new formations? No prize for guessing that it costs gems. So much of the game is dependent on gems that it’s important to find sources for this rare and valuable currency as early as possible.
Gem Sources
Some free sources we’ve already touched on in this guide are watching your daily advertisements and completing your PVP battles. There are other ways to get gems though.
You get gems from completing a stage for the first time, completing it again a certain number of times for progression, and once again for completing it again in Soldier Mode (no heroes allowed). This totals to around 70 gems per stage.
While you’re at it, keep pushing forward in the campaign, as certain milestones will also award you with gems. These Quests pop up in your camp screen, and you’ll have to manually claim them as they’re completed. Speaking of quests, the battle pass also gives gems at certain levels, whether you’re using the paid or free pass.
Finally, take advantage of events and coupons. As of this writing, there are multiple codes you can enter for a sizeable lump sum of gold and gems. These non case-sensitive codes are:
- global!
- google!
- apple!
- onestore!
- cafe4000
- cafe5000
- cafe6000
- cafe7000
- cafe8000
- cafe9000
- cafe10000
To access coupon redemption, go to Settings -> Account -> Coupon.
Use Rate-Ups to Your Advantage.
While the hero rates are at a pitiful 2.5%, Eternal Saga: Region Tactics does offer targeted rate-ups. By selecting one of these heroes, the chance of getting them as a hero drop soars to over 80%. You can’t change the rate-up heroes on the upper part of the banner, but you can reroll the bottom three ones (for 100 gems, of course) which is better if you’re dead-set on getting a particular hero.
For Honor And Glory
Eternal Saga: Region Tactics is a rich game rife with possibilities. If you’ve picked something up from this article that will help you rise from the ranks of common mercenaries and reclaim your title of Mercenary King, then we’ve done our job. But there are innumerable paths to victory, so if you can think of anything else – strategies, tips, or whatnot – that can help aspiring mercenaries, let us know in the comment section below! Now go forth and conquer!