Like all strategy-RPGs, Final Blade is a fearsomely complicated beast under its cartoony exterior, with an in-game economy of currencies, items, and upgrades that would confound a central bank chief.
This guide is aimed at helping you find your feet in the magical realm of Taemoon. It won’t get you to the end of the game, but it should at least point you in the right direction. We’ll start by looking at Adventure, the mode you’re going to be spending the most time on at first.
Pre-battle
Final Blade’s Adventure mode is split up into chapters, each containing ten stages, the fifth and tenth of which are boss stages.
Before each battle you’ll be taken to a setup page where you can get your party ready for the carnage that lies ahead.
Manage
First we’ll take a look at ‘Manage’, in the ‘TeamPower’ section on the bottom-left, just above where you can see your party. Tapping on ‘Manage’ takes you to the Hero management screen. We’ll go into this a bit more later, but for now it’s worth noting that you should ensure your heroes are levelled up and well-equipped before sending them into battle.
Formation
On the bottom-right of the setup page you’ll find a ‘Formation’ button. Tap this and you’ll be able to choose your formation and which heroes go into it. To pick (and, if necessary, unlock) a formation tap on the ‘Formations’ tab on the right of the screen.
Here you’ll find a selection of formations, which you can buy with gold or sapphires as long as you’ve reached the requisite level. These formations include Ambush, which increases stun resistance and reduces hit rate, Divine, which increases fear resistance and bonus regeneration, and many more. Each of these can be enhanced. To pick one, select ‘use’.
You can manually choose heroes for a given formation, but it’s easier to just tap ‘Auto Deploy’.
Ultimate
On the bottom-right of the screen you’ll see a glowing Ultimate icon. Your ultimate is a single-use party skill, and you can unlock, upgrade, and equip these by tapping on the little circle with four squares in it on the bottom-left of the main screen.
Battles
You can play battles manually or automatically. The only real difference is that in manual you have to deploy each hero’s skill yourself, whereas in automatic mode skills are unleashed as soon as they recharge.
Whenever an enemy dies it leaves its soul behind. You can collect these for sapphires, pearls, rice, and so on. You have to do this manually unless you recruit a Fairy. You’ll pick up Fairy cards allowing you to have a Fairy hoover up souls for a limited time, but if you run out of Fairy cards you need to pay cash in the shop.
You can replay battles using sweep cards or tapping ‘Repeat’, and you can have your heroes automatically advance from stage to stage by tapping ‘Continue Battle’. They’ll keep going until they die, the chapter ends, or you run out of rice.
Management
Once you’ve got a few battles under your belt you’ll want to start ploughing the loot you’ve earned into optimising your heroes.
The main way to do this is via Enhancement, in the Manage section. Higher grade heroes can be enhanced more, and to carry out enhancements you’ll need to spend gold. You’ll also need to sacrifice other heroes with levels lower than or equal to the one you’re trying to enhance.
Beyond Enhance there’s Advent. This requires heroes to be a grade 6, and the process uses Eternal Fox Essence.
Finally, you can Combine heroes (and their gear) who are at max enhancement. This yields a random hero at the next grade up.
And don’t forget to enhance your gear, too.
For a quick shot of XP you can send a character to Training, where a master will blast a wave of XP into them and then fall asleep for several hours.
General tips
- Don’t forget to keep claiming rewards. You can fill your coffers by tapping on mission, index, event, and the mailbox, as well as guide in the early stages. Just look out for the red stickers. Plus, you can visit the shop once a day for a free summon. It would be madness to let these freebies pass you by.
- Join a clan as soon as you can. Not only will it give you access to several new gameplay modes, including Clan War and friendly duels, but you’ll rake in more XP and loot.
- Concentrate on enhancing your original line-up of Inrang, Woohee, Yongju, Muchun, and Diane, as these will give you the greatest return on your investment.
Final Blade is out now on Google Play – use these tips and join the battle now!
