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Punishing: Gray Raven Beginner’s Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies to Assemble a Powerful Team and Reclaim the Earth

Kuro Game has just released its long-awaited action RPG title, Punishing: Gray Raven on iOS and Android, a game that quickly made its way to respectable spots in top lists of games, even making it to top 10 spots in several countries.

As a fast-paced action RPG title, there are plenty of mobile games loosely comparable with Punishing: Gray Raven. While there are plenty of action RPG titles on mobile to match the quality of graphics, music, voice acting, and even the gameplay of the game. Punishing: Gray Raven has its very own unique and captivating charm that is guaranteed to provide even the most experienced action RPG enthusiasts something to enjoy and revel in.

Punishing: Gray Raven takes you to a post-apocalyptic world, where the last of mankind stands at the brink of extinction. As the commander of the Gray Raven, a special team of cyborg soldier, your task is to help the remaining humans reclaim what is left of their home world and, to do so, you must eliminate the Corrupted, machines infected by the biomechanical virus known as the Punishing.

punishing gray raven guide

As far as the basic controls and gameplay are concerned, Punishing: Gray Raven is a relatively easy game to pick up and play. The tutorial takes you through movement with virtual d-pad and the attack and dodge button on the right side are all you need to take out enemies and avoid taking damage. With the introductory chapter serving as a beginner’s immersion, even complete newbies are guaranteed to walk through it with ease, scoring a 3-star victory even.

You can expect the difficulty level of missions to grow more challenging each step of the way. The rate at which your characters can grow is partly dependent on you and, beyond that, strategizing about how to make progress, upgrades, and team management, in general, will impact the rate and flow of your progression.

Be sure to stay with us, as we are going to provide you some tips on how to assemble a powerful team of cyborgs and dominate your enemies. So let’s not waste any more time and instead let’s delve into our Punishing: Gray Raven beginner’s guide!

1. Pick Your First S Grade Hero Well

We have played more RPGs with a gacha mechanic than what we can count or even remember and for most of them, one of the first things we check is the rerolling process. For those unfamiliar with the concept of rerolling, it is basically going through your first or first couple of 10x pulls from the gacha over and over until you are satisfied with what you get.

As your performance in the challenges moving forward can be heavily impacted by the grade or rarity of the characters you recruit early on, most experienced and veteran players opt to spend as much time as needed just to get the perfect starting roster before they proceed with their adventure.

punishing gray raven s grade hero

The characters you recruit in Punishing: Gray Raven have different rarity grades and there is such a thing as luck of draw in terms of which ones you obtain from the gacha. However, Punishing: Gray Raven makes it a little more challenging to reroll by making the recruitment feature accessible only after clearing the first chapter of the campaign. The first chapter is comprised of 12 stages and there are also cut scenes and tutorial bits in-between, taking it longer than the usual introductory phase to actually get to the first 10x gacha pull and reroll point.

On the bright side, Punishing: Gray Raven provides a huge treat for all players in the form of an S-Rank ticket that lets you choose your first S grade hero from among 5 choices. So far, we have enjoyed playing through the early stages of Punishing: Gray Raven with even the B rank characters so we feel that any S rank hero is good to have at this point. Among the 5 choices, we recommend going for Kamui.

Before using your special ticket, however, it is best to try and secure one through the 10x pulls and you manage to get lucky, at least that is one less hero to choose from among the select ticket choices. You can certainly go for a 10x pull after claiming the beginner gifts and playing through some more stages and accomplishing missions will net you enough resources to go for a second one.

2. Progress Through The Story Campaign

Punishing: Gray Raven provides a simple yet engaging story that provides a progressive background of its world along with bits of information on its colorful cast of characters. Beyond sinking your teeth into the immersive experience, actually progressing through the main campaign has its more quantifiable benefits that sets it altogether at the top of your priority list.

Every stage you complete earns you valuable basic resources. Although you will have an abundance of these resources, you should know that you can never really have more than enough of it. Each unit you take into battle also earns experience points.

Beyond all that, your milestones as far as progression through the story campaign is concerned, serves as the exclusive key to unlocking the rest of Punishing: Gray Raven’s features. The initial chapter is certainly a cakewalk but you can expect the level of challenge to rise continuously as you proceed to the next chapter and so on.

punishing gray raven story campaign

One particular detail to keep tabs on in the campaign are the set objectives you need to fulfill to earn star points, which are basically determinants of your clear rating for that stage. The first one basically requires you to clear the stage within a set period of time. The other 2 points relate to never dying and having all members survive through to the end of the level.

In addition to the first clear rewards and random drops on each attempt, there are challenge goals that provide you with extra rewards based on the number of stars you have collected across the chapter.

It is fairly easy to clear the first chapter raking in the maximum number of stars you can get. Beyond that, it will slowly become more challenging to do so. In any case, your priority is to clear the level first so you can move forward as well as unlock additional features in the game based on milestones reached. Once your team has grown stronger, that would be the time to replay stages to earn the stars that you missed.

3. Maintain A Balanced And Synergistic Team

Compared to most RPGs that hold a variety of characters to collect, Punishing: Gray Raven does not have as many to begin with. Each of the available characters, however, comes packed with a ton of skills and unique traits, ensuring a varied enough play through as a result of team composition and character utilization. There are numerous ways to classify the characters and, for the most part, players will prioritize each unit’s rarity grade over everything else.

Characters you recruit will only be either S, A, or B grade and while S grade units are definitely stronger, the B rank units are not bad at all. Given the lower probability of securing units the higher their grade is, your only certain S rank unit is the one you can get from the special ticket. In this sense, be ready to choose from among the A and B rank units to form your trio of adventurers.

Heroes in Punishing: Gray Raven can also be classified according to their character class. There are 3 distinct classes and each one has an important role to fill in the team. Attackers, as the class name implies, are the top damage-dealers in the roster and focus on dealing damage to enemy units among other functions. Lucia, the first character you play as is an example of an attacker and makes it fairly quick to eliminate the enemies you encounter within each level.

punishing gray raven team

Tanks are like the polar opposites of attackers and focus more on defense and survival. Tanks are built to take in lots of damage compared to other classes but lag behind in terms of offensive strength. Kamui, our recommended S grade unit to pick up from the special ticket, is a perfect example of a tank.

Last, but definitely not the least, are support units, like Liv, who will join you within the first chapter. Support units do not excel in either offensive strength or defensive prowess. In essence, support units are typically around to provide support abilities to allies that go beyond mere HP recovery. Support units can also improve the performance of their teammates and may also have abilities that involve inflicting negative status effects on enemy units.

A perfectly balanced team in Punishing: Gray Raven almost always equates to having an attacker, a tank, and a support unit. You will most likely have each type of unit after your first 10x gacha pull and if you are having difficulty choosing from among the roster of units you have recruited, the best way to go is to pick your top priority character and then work on units that support him or her.

By tapping on the details button on the character page, there is a “Recommended Partner: button at the lower right side of the details that will show you recommended partners for that character.

4. Exercise Prudence In Upgrading Characters

As the challenges ahead of your adventure can only be expected to grow with every step forward you take, you naturally need to keep powering up your team to ensure that they will accomplish every mission they engage in. Punishing: Gray Raven plenty of ways for you to power up your characters and, save for gaining experience points to reach higher levels, each enhancement procedure will require resources.

At the early part of your adventure, you will have plenty of resources thanks to the welcome gifts. Additional resources are earned as well with every battle you engage in and every mission you accomplish.

As much as you will have an abundance of each basic resource you need, you can expect that the resources you have are never enough to even fill the needs of your 3 main characters. This means that if you invest heavily in all 3 characters and later on have to switch to new ones, you may leave yourself in an even bigger hole as far as resource needs are concerned.

With this in mind, it is only practical to exercise prudence in terms of utilizing resources and it is likewise best to start on doing so early on.

ranking up in punishing gray raven

In the case of the S grade hero you can obtain using your special S select ticket, it is okay to spend as much resources on the character knowing that you will continue to use him or her from the start till the end of your adventure. For the rest, especially the ones you will likely replace as you recruit better units, only upgrade them to keep them useful in every challenge you encounter.

You can click on the Members button at the main screen to take you to the character screen. From there, you need to click on the train button at the upper right side of the character’s page to see the different upgrade options for each character.

The most basic way of powering up your units is through leveling them up. Heroes you take to battle with you earn experience points but this will hardly be sufficient as enemy levels from one stage to the next will certainly bring bigger challenges.

You can use Construct EXP Pods to instantly give your characters EXP. These items come in different varieties that provide different amounts of EXP to units. Each new level reached increases the character’s stats outright but the maximum level characters can reach is primarily capped by the commander or account level.

The next step to strengthen the unit is through promotion. There are 2 basic conditions you need to meet to promote a character to the next rank with one relating to story chapter progression and the other being the unit’s level. You will also need to spend Cogs, the basic currency in Punishing: Gray Raven, to rank up each character. Promotions also grant a stat increase to the character and adds a star to their rank as well.

punishing gray raven weapon

Evolution is among the most challenging but the most rewarding enhancement methods to pull. Evolution can raise a character’s grade from B all the way to SS+. The requirements are inver-shards, which are basically character specific resources you obtain from duplicate copies of the characters. At some point, you may notice that you have recruited the same characters in different grades.

These are not duplicate characters in essence as each one has unique traits. Securing inver-shards can only come from the same exact characters, meaning that you will not see them on your roster as they will automatically be converted to inver-shards the moment you pull them from the gacha.

Each character has 3 special skills in combat, an ultimate attack, as well as a passive ability. All these can be upgraded independently using skill points and cogs. The ultimate skill and passive ability also have unique attributes to unlock and upgrade. Note that skill points are also resources you need to budget across characters so be sure to invest in each one wisely.

Beyond the character upgrades, each unit can also be equipped with a weapon and 6 memories. Weapons can be different from one character to the next and the higher the weapon’s grade certainly means better stats and performance.

Each weapon can also be enhanced in a variety of ways with enhancement being the most basic of them. Enhancement raises the weapon’s level and stats and this can be done by sacrificing other weapons to grant EXP to the weapon being enhanced.

Once a weapon has reached its max level, it can be overclocked following the completion of conditions as well. Overclocking will reset the weapon level while maintaining its stats and will instantly increase the cap for both level and stats. Lastly, weapons can unlock resonance skills.

punishing gray raven swap memory

This upgrade feature, however, requires sacrificing a weapon of the same rank, which can be difficult to pull in the early stages of your adventure. It is best to utilize this weapon upgrade feature a little later in the game when you fully understand the value of each weapon in your collection.

As for the memories, each one can be equipped on specific slots and while these are also covered with different rarity grades, the more critical impact these memories have lie in the set bonuses they provide. Memories unlock a set bonus when 2 of the same type are equipped as well as when 4 of the same type are equipped.

This means that to fully take advantage of this feature, you should either go for 3 sets of pairs or a quadruple and a pair of memories. Bonuses unlocked from 4-set pieces are usually better but then you also have to consider the memory’s compatibility with the character you equip them to. In this sense, it is best to align the stat and set bonuses that memories provide with the class of the character you are equipping them with.

5. Accomplish Missions And Achievements For Extra Rewards

The outright resources and EXP you can earn from completing chapter stages as well as the extra rewards you can obtain based on the stars you gather from completing chapter objectives provides you with a lot to go with. As we mentioned earlier, having plenty of resources early on should not lead you to spending any of them extravagantly on any character. Even for just a trio of main units, the resources you earn may not always be enough especially since resource costs grow along with each character.

Fortunately enough, Punishing: Gray Raven provides a variety of additional ways for you to earn extra resources and this comes from missions that you can accomplish in the course of your adventure. The missions button on the main screen is among the ones that you will likely see an indicator on from time to time.

punishing gray raven daily missions

This simply means that you have accomplished certain missions and there are rewards waiting for you to claim them. Most especially at the early part of your adventure, you are likely to accomplish a lot of feats, even a couple or more at a time. For efficiency’s sake, though, it is best to look into the lists of missions and have them serve as your basic guide towards progressing through your adventure.

There are 4 types of missions available to you and these are the daily missions, weekly missions, story missions, and event missions. Each set carries with it a list of objectives for you to accomplish and accompanying rewards. To start off, the daily missions are the easiest ones to clear. You can consider these missions as your guide to your daily routine and earns you squad EXP as well as activity points. Activity points earned unlock chests at the bottom of the page. Make it a habit to clear each objective and claim the top rewards daily.

Weekly missions are a little more challenging but only in the sense that you need to be consistently active to claim each and every reward on the list. In addition to sums of Cogs, you can earn black cards from every objective you achieve and black cards are special cards you can exchange for any kind of card to recruit more characters.

Story missions are almost instantly accomplished in line with your progression in the campaign. The early part is expectedly easier and the challenge these missions bring are very much aligned to how far you have progressed through the campaign. Note that there are numerous rewards here that are difficult to obtain anywhere else and, of course, it is always better to accomplish these feats and grab the rewards sooner than later.

punishing gray raven achievements

Event missions provide one-time objectives and rewards that are aimed towards boosting your progression the more active you are. These missions are available indefinitely much like achievements and, just the same, are best accomplished as soon as you can.

Beyond these missions, Punishing: Gray Raven also holds various achievement objectives in a completely separate set of list. The achievements can be accessed via the player details, which you can view by tapping on your commandant level at the upper left side of the main screen.

Achievements are basically milestones that you reach across various aspects of your adventure. Progression through battles in the campaign stages, construct and weapon grade collections, enhancement levels reached, and various other targets are rewarded at every milestone.

Like story missions and event missions, the objectives lodged under achievements neither reset nor expire. These targets will always be available for you to accomplish and you can take as much time as you need to complete each objective. Again, for efficiency’s sake, it is best to browse through the list of targets to have each list serve as your guide towards progression as well as claiming rewards at a sooner time.

6. Take Advantage Of Special Events

There are certainly a plethora of missions and achievement objectives for you to pursue and accomplish in Punishing: Gray Raven. What we discussed so far is not the end of it, though, as Punishing: Gray Raven provides a special event open to all beginners.

The Novice Missions are a special set of missions that you can accomplish within the first 7 days of playing. These missions work very much like the regular missions in the sense that all the objectives listed directly relate to the usual activities you should engage in as you go forward with your adventure.

What makes this set of missions special is that it provides you an extra opportunity to rack up on cogs and black cards. Beyond that, special activity points are also earned that unlock additional rewards at the bottom of the page.

punishing gray raven special events

5 star memories, a 5 star weapon, and a costume can be earned from completing all the objectives and all these special items are difficult, if not impossible, to obtain anywhere else. Note that while you can only view the next day’s objectives on the day itself, you can clear missions from the first day even on the seventh day.

There are certainly more to discover in the astonishing world of Punishing: Gray Raven but, for now, this is where we conclude our Punishing: Gray Raven beginner’s guide. We certainly hope that you learned a lot from the tips and tricks we shared and that you enjoyed reading this guide as well.

If you have spent a lot of hours exploring Punishing: Gray Raven and stumbled upon a nifty trick or strategy in addition to the ones we provided, we do appreciate hearing from you about it so do not hesitate to drop us a line!