Arcarum was originally an event before I started playing which got shut down quite quickly due to really negative feedback from what I’ve heard but when late 2017 arrived, it has since been a permanent solo content which you unlock after clearing a certain quest after completing a certain chapter of the main quest of the game. Anyway, as a good friend has suggested, I’m gonna try giving it a shot to make some sort of opinionated guide for this game mode.
Unlocking and Preparing for Arcarum
Unlocking: You can unlock the Arcarum game mode as early as after clearing Chapter 44 of the Main Quest, you’ll need to go to Amalthea Island and play the quest named “Inchoate World”. (see below for in-game visuals)
Inchoate world will pit you against a primal beast named The World and will probably also act as an early grid check for you since fighting The World with a mediocre grid might prove a bit challenging as it is a neutral element boss with a lot of plain damage triggers; luckily the boss only has 6m hp and you will only need to do this once to unlock the game mode permanently.
Preparations: Arcarum is a turn/action based game system as every “expedition” gives you a fixed number of “TP” and for every turn you use(during battles)/node exploration you make/object breaking (on certain map objectives)/battles you enter, you lose a TP; once your TP reaches 0, you cannot complete your expedition and will have to start over again. Each expedition is composed of 3 areas and your main goal is to complete the objectives for each area which can vary from:
- Absolutely doing nothing
- Killing all monsters in the area
- Killing specific monsters
- Breaking spirethorns
- Defeating the area boss (every 3rd area once every 3 expeditions)
Given such conditions, you’ll want to form teams that focus on throwing powerful nukes (high skill damage) so that you can end most monster battles in just Turn 0, once you go to hard and extreme expedition difficulties, you will also want to form Full SR and Full R teams as these difficulties can sometimes have areas with debuffs that allow you to battle monsters with “R only” or “SR only” characters; while a bit iffy, your main character retains his/her strength and will likely be the one doing the killing when debuffed with these especially for the R only scenario. Once you’ve prepared teams properly, you are now ready for Arcarum!
Do note that arcarum does not allow you to pick support summons so you’ll definitely be dealing weaker damage than general content in here.
Special note: the best units to cheese through the expedition battles would be forming a team of FLB Sarasa (Threo) and SSR Lunalu as you can just easily erase most mobs with Ground Zero and Copy Ground Zero assuming you have high hp for both Sarasa and Lunalu.
Initial Priorities
Once you’ve completed preparations, personally speaking, your priority should be unlocking the Hard and Extreme difficulty expeditions and the content-locked items in the arcarum point shop.
First thing’s first is at least unlock until Hard mode, to do this, you’ll need to clear expeditions on all 3 points, meaning you’ll have to complete all 9 expeditions on points Aquila, Bellator and Celsus, totalling in the use of at least 27 tickets should you beat each expedition in one go; additionally, clearing all 3 normal points also rewards you with the shop item “Globe of the Starways” unlocked, this item will allow you to change the 9-3 Boss to your choice (note that your choices are limited to the Arcarum summons acquainted with the point you’re in).
After you’ve unlocked hard, take a try on one or two expeditions then you should have an idea already if you can take on Hard expeditions or not; should you be able to, prioritize clearing all points again to unlock the extreme expeditions and much like the normal clear, you’ll also unlock a bunch of other stuff in the shop and this includes the 3 point fragments, evolite, SSR Wind Monika and a +10000 weekly point limit.
Now that you’ve unlocked the Extreme difficulty, again, take an expedition or two to gauge if you’re ready for the extreme difficulty expeditions; once you are, just clear all points once more to unlock the final shop unlockable which is another +10000 weekly point limit.
Once you’ve unlocked all the shop items, prioritize buying out the “Arcarum Badge Limit Upgrade” there’s 4 of them and should total to 8000 arca points; you might be wondering why is there a need to prioritize this? You start of 10 and if you do your arcarum daily, you shouldn’t have a problem but there will definitely be days where you won’t be able to play due to circumstances and sometimes this can last for days and will cause your badges to fill up, this is especially true during Magnafes with Arcarum Bash which gives you 2 badges a day, having a 30-badge limit is never a bad option.
Next up is buying both weekly limit points; much like my statement above, you shouldn’t have a problem with weekly limit points IF you do your expeditions daily BUT should you end up piling your badges, you’ll definitely need this upgrade since the weekly points seriously rack up fast especially if you’re consuming like 21 or more tickets in a week. (assuming you manually do your expeditions anyway)
Hard & Extreme Expedition notes:
Do note that Hard and Extreme difficulties will only give you a starting of 70TP vs Normal’s 120TP and that, occasionally, some maps will apply a debuff to you which includes limiting your party to SR and R only as I’ve stated in the preparations section.
Extreme difficulty expeditions have one last gimmick which is the chance to encounter point-specific special mini bosses which drop a point fragment when defeated; while they will never be part of the objectives, you’ll immediately know if they’re around because you’ll encounter the things that are required to make them appear and they are as follows:
- Aquila: Red spirethorns will spawn on nodes, breaking each costs 2 TP each and once all red thorns are broken, Ruby Turtle will appear.
- Bellator: A pack of Bloodhunters will appear on nodes, beat all of them and Aldebaran will appear.
- Celsus: A field generator monster will appear on a node, beat it and it will cause Pollux and Castor to appear.
Which Arcarum Summon to Get?
Now that you’ve done the initials, it’s time for the main beef of Arcarum, choosing which summon(s) to get. This can come in many factors including, but not limited to:
- Waifu/Husbando Evoker
Easily one of the default reasons (myself included), if you’re gunning down a specific Evoker for wife/husband reasons, then it’s an easy pick, simply go after their associated Arcarum and follow that path until you unlock them.
- Your main element(s)
Of course, there’s always nothing wrong with supporting your main element as the summons have sub-auras which can either boost a certain element’s HP (only available for Main Wheel elements) or boost damage vs enemies whose element is weak against yours (stacks with Seraphic weapons). Should this be your primary focus, decide on which you need first, would you like more HP? or would you like more damage? Decide from there.
- Meta
Around half the Arcarum summons actually have good calls so some pick them for that or the fact that their matching evoker is meta. A perfect example for this The Sun and her evoker, Alanaan, definitely the most meta out of the all the summon+evoker combo. But as far summons go, aside from the sun, the ones with generally useful calls are Devil, Moon, Hanged Man, Star and Death. Evoker wise, Alanaan aside, Nier, Geisenborger and Maria Theresa seems to be strong contenders too; in addtion, there are also evokers who works really well as backrow units and this includes Haaselia for long battles (20% unique attack mod, 1% per turn) and Caim for highlander grids (20% unique attack mod + 10% damage cap up)
- What you actually need
You might be one who decides which to do depending what GW element advantage is upcoming and with this, you can pick a bit more easily given such situations as the attack arcarums are usually a top pick as you’ll want all the damage you can get and sometimes, the 3-5% attack you get from SR arcarums can make or break your OTK setups.
There are also times where you might need a certain sub aura to maximize your team (i.e. I needed Scathacha to have 20k HP so I craft Temperance) so that can be taken into consideration as well.
Trading in the Shop
- Sephira stones vs Astras
It depends on what you’re actually after, if you’re only after the summon you can trade in sephira stones since this will likely be the one gating you a lot especially when you are starting.
Speaking from a perspective of someone who already has 2 evokers as of this writing, the most important thing you should trade in should be the Astras as this is what will be gating you the most when you unlock an Evoker as you will be needing a total of 314 astras from crafting a 0* summon to fully uncapping an evoker.
Additionally, it’s a lot easier to get Sephira stones nowadays due to the recent changes on Arcarum which include higher appearance rates of the special mini-bosses (which guarantee a sephira stone drop) and the fact that solo-monster encounters also give sephira stones now and this is on top of the fact that you can get a good number of sephira stones during the monthly new scenario events.
- Globe of the Starways
Never stock up on this but instead, buy it only when encountering the wrong arcarum summons at 9-3, why it’s never good to stock up is because each globe costs as much as an Astra so only buy it when necessary, the good thing about globe of the starways is that if you buy a stock in the middle of the expedition, it immediately gets added to your usable items in your current expedition.
Is it worth using a globe everytime you encounter a different summon? Personally speaking, it’s mostly a yes, a globe costs 1500 points, the same cost as an astra, and when you beat the end point summon, it is guaranteed to drop at least 1 astra associated to its element, that said, should you only get 1 astra, it’s an even deal as it will look like you only bought an astra instead; should it drop 2 or more astras, then it’s already a profit resulting in the price of 1 astra for 2-3 pieces. Depending on which you’re after, if you already have enough ideans but encounter the same element boss, you probably shouldn’t change the boss already as you’ll still get the element astra you neeed.
- Sunlight Stone
It’s a good practice to keep the sunstone stocks (5 as of this writing) exclusive to Arcarum use as you will need a sunstone when you SSR your arcarum summons; meaning you’ll need 10 to SSR all 10 arcarum summons, 5 stocks easily take off half of that away.
- Sephira Evolite
You can immediately buy this (only 1 stock as of this writing) if you want, that saves you the trouble of being gated by the evolite later on when you’re nearly done with unlocking your first evoker. Of couse, if you’re not interested in unlocking Evokers yet, definitely save this for later.
- Monika
A must buy for me, for a free character and only costing 20000 arca points, Monika is a really solid unit who can easily help you out in most wind advantage content.
The Advantages of Manually doing your Expeditions
Lastly, there’s always a debate in the international community on why you should skip and why you shouldn’t, often people flexing their loots lmao; while manually doing your expeditions can be tedious more often than not, it’s generally the better option especially if you’re not bothered about giving some time for it, heck, you can just daily expedition and it will only take a few minutes anyway. Personally, I do my expeditions every 4 badges.
Generally, the advantage of manually doing things is the fact that you get more points and loot most often than not. There can be expeditions that are swarmed with a ridiculous monster count encounter and this can definitely help speed up your point acquisition, in addition to this, you also get the advantage of easily farming your point fragments as I don’t think fast expeds give you these, this definitely saves you a lot of points as one point fragment is 5000 points and you’ll need like 30 of them for each summon (10 for FLB, 20 for ULB), sometimes, if you’re lucky enough, you can get up to 3 point fragments in one expedition as it is possible to encounter the mini-bosses in each area of an expedition.
Of course, if you definitely don’t have time for Arcarum, you should probably skip especially when your badges are nearing max capacity already.
General Tips (edited 9-11-2019)
- Focus on one summon/evoker at a time, this will help you organize your mats better and focus your shop trades more efficiently.
- Should you finish unlocking an evoker/ULB-ing a summon, it’s best to try going for another element next instead of the same element as you probably have gained some decent mats for other elements when you were working for your recently completed Evoker/Summon.
- When you’re doing manual expedition, don’t just focus on the objective, always make it a point to kill everything in an area as this will give you more points.
- Have Siero’s Journey Drop drop rate buff enabled when you are running, this will help improve drops on certain items.
- (addendum) when facing the infamous Cantankerous Leopard, it’s best to be prepared with a high auto grid and a party (preferably dark) that has single-hit but high damaging nukes, that’s mainly because each hit contributes to the amount of reflect you’ll receive in return so echoes, multi-hit skills are a big no-no unless you have a high enough HP to tank them.
Anyway, that’s about it for this round of a guide! I don’t even know if it should be called a guide, lol but I hope it’s informative!
A Certain Skyfarer's Ramblings & Musings 