advice

[tiny smelt]

the big consideration for ships from the guild store is to get either unicorn or shouhou, and use them in one of your fleets

[wind badge]

Those definitely help. You'd probably gain value from the purple plates too.

[twilit wharf]

I understand that. I read up a bit and know how good they are, just didn't get far enough to farm for shouhou yet.

[tiny smelt]

From there, you can pick whoever will round your fleets out the best, Portland, Pheonix, Helena, and Cleveland are all notable picks

[wind badge]

Port you get for free from the beginner missions

so that's not actually a priority

[tiny smelt]

not a priority, but getting her earlier is valid

[wind badge]

Portland is very good, but since you get for free, not important.

[fickle timber]

i mean

could use the dupe for lbs

also earlier you get port the better

isn't it like beat 4-1 to get port or something?

[wind badge]

Honestly, I'd even argue that phoenix is worse than she was before because of oil cap being implemented. Not terrible, but her value is a lot lower than before.

[fickle timber]

nope its 2-1

[wind badge]

Exactly my point, it's early enough that it's pretty irrelevant. Dupes for lb maybe, but you get enough of those I think just by playing the game, no? At least for the amount of resources and ships you have early

[fickle timber]

thats true you right there

[twilit wharf]

Huh, I actually don't have Portland despite beating 2-1. And here's my current dock list if that helps.

[wind badge]

Did you click on the red flag at the top of your home screen?

[fickle timber]

click "easy" next to your username on home screen

[twilit wharf]

Ah, I need to complete all the easy missions first.

[fickle timber]

yes

[wind badge]

Yep

[fickle timber]

should be easy enough though

[wind badge]

They're talking about guild shop in the main chat right now anyways. I'd still argue that phoenix isn't as high a priority as she was before, but otherwise they seem to be giving sound advice.

Don't worry about tech points right now though, that's the grind system later.

[vapid canopy]

buy Penny and Uni for main ships

[fickle timber]

well if they didn't give sound advice i would yell at them

[tiny smelt]

not a high priority, but shes better than a lot of other early game non-gacha options for 300 guild tokens

[wind badge]

Eh, stats are middling, you'd probably be able to fill out two fleet vanguards with better ships before coming to it.

Portland, London, Helena, Laffey, just from what they have available.

[twilit wharf]

Hmm... So sounds like I should get Penny and Uni? And then try and farm for Shouhou in 2-3 when I get there?

[wind badge]

Nah

shouhou is in guild shop

one of the 300 token ships

just buy there

[tiny smelt]

shouhou can be hit and miss for drops, ive seen people farm her for hours and not get her

[wind badge]

Also, don't be fooled by the 2k "limited ships"

they're collection ships, pretty universally bad

[twilit wharf]

Figured that since no one mentioned them. ;3

[fickle timber]

yuugure for budget ara but thats hella low priority

[twilit wharf]

So Penny and Uni it is! What do I do with all these extra 1 stars?

[wind badge]

Feed them to other ships

[fickle timber]

yeah use them for enhancing

[wind badge]

You can keep one copy if you want to be a completionist later, but otherwise they're mostly trash

[tiny smelt]

Also you can refresh the guild shop once per cycle

at the cost of... 50? guild coins

I havent looked at the cost since it was released tbh, i just automatically do it

[wind badge]

Literally everyone does it, it's inconsequential and usually there's at least SOMETHING to buy

honestly, you might even get value from the purple gear boxes nowthat I think about it

[fickle timber]

yes

[wind badge]

buy some eagle boxes and fish for the 406

[fickle timber]

new player def wants boxes

[tiny smelt]

yeah, guild shop is a godsend to new players, if you join a guild you get like 300+ per day if youre participating, and you start the game with 4200 guild coins

[twilit wharf]

Not sure I understand what you guys mean by boxes. Do you mean the equipment boxes?

[wind badge]

Yea

purple boxes

not blue ones

or gold if they pop up, I think they do rarely

I would recommend the eagle union ones

The eagle union boxes have the "best" (technically not best anymore, but like second best) dive bomber and bb gun

[twilit wharf]

Should I even be bothering with trying to open T1/T2 gear? Or just save them and upcraft them to T3s?

[wind badge]

I wouldn't even do that, it's a pain

but def don't open them, most of the blue gear is trash

[tiny smelt]

gold are 180 if the pop up, maybe worth it to new players, guild coins are ultimately so easy to get that the guild shop is just an al la carte where you grab what you want

[wind badge]

There's like... one or two blue gears that matter, but only for being silly later on

Gold boxes definitely worth

Purple boxes I'd only say EU is worth

[split plinth]

It's fine if you craft them up to purple at your stage of the game imo since realistically you basically have very little. Later on any good gear is gonna come from research/gear lab

[twilit wharf]

Thanks for the advice! And guessing I'd want the T4 boxes here?

[wind badge]

t4 plates, but yes.

[vapid canopy]

skill books are nice too

[twilit wharf]

Oh, those are plates.

[wind badge]

Mhm

You'll be book starved for a while, so you'll probably get book value

I'd get the food also

the +xp in dorm is neat

[twilit wharf]

Is there a specific plate type I'd want the most?

[wind badge]

Main or general mostly

All ships have aux slots, which use general, and most ships have main guns (except for cv's of course)

You will want others, but you'll run out of general and main gun more than the others

[twilit wharf]

Gotcha. What type of skill book would I want?

[tiny smelt]

red

[wind badge]

Red probably

You get way too many blues

sometimes yellow?

[split plinth]

yellow is also good, but red has prioity

[tiny smelt]

maybe a couple of yellow or blue starting out, but after that red

or just red, red is the biggest bottleneck

[twilit wharf]

Tldr, bought out almost the entire shop.

[wind badge]

For now yes. You'll eventually not buy purple books

[tiny smelt]

now refresh the shop and probably do it again

[wind badge]

Don't bother with cat boxes unless gold. Totally not worth it.

[wind badge]

Second verse same as the first.

Gold boxes have a FEW good gears in other factions. The IB box has the best easy to get CA gun for example

[twilit wharf]

Grab plates, food, boxes, ignore the cat and T3?

[wind badge]

I'd still get the purple box, like I said the EU box is pretty useful. Good for your battleships and carriers

[vapid canopy]

choose eagle boxes

[tiny smelt]

just do join a guild sooner as opposed to later, as long as you are in a guild you can sustainably buy everything decent at every shop replenishment

[vapid canopy]

join a guild in #friend-and-guild-id

[wind badge]

You can search for a guild in client, or you can find one in the chat^

[twilit wharf]

I'll find a guild to join tonight. 👍 What ships should I grab now?

[tiny smelt]

Im not sure you can join one right now, commander level is needed

[wind badge]

Ummm you got who last?

[twilit wharf]

Penny & Uni

[wind badge]

Shouhou probably....

and.... london? cleveland

both are good

[tiny smelt]

did you already have helena?

[wind badge]

Helena is really good, but requires a BIT of game knowledge

[twilit wharf]

No Helena, but already have London.

[wind badge]

london and cleveland are just blanket plug and play early

oh right

cleveland is probably easiest to just plug and play

Helena is always good but also requires you to be a bit more into the game as well to take full advantage

[fickle timber]

well

helena as a gunboat

is straight up better than cleve

[tiny smelt]

honestly, early game shes still a middle hp gunboat, not as good as cleveland when tossed wherever, but you wont really notice, you can safely use her as a new player and just ignore her mechanics til later

[fickle timber]

so id still go helena

[wind badge]

After retro sure, but isn't cleve better otherwise? I haven't checked in so long

[fickle timber]

i think brooklyn class > cleve class as a gunboat

[tiny smelt]

cleve is better as a toss in, but not enough to matter imo

[fickle timber]

then atlanta class are the aa, and cleve is between brook and atlanta as the generalist option

[twilit wharf]

So it sounds like Helena & Shouhou? Do I need two healers?

[fickle timber]

no

[wind badge]

They make a lot of content easier, and Shouhou offers a more damage oriented option than Uni.

Ultimately, they will EVENTUALLY rerun the Perseus event, and she will replace any other healer you have. But until then, most of them are pretty even, and you move them around depending on need and fleet comp.

[tiny smelt]

you could pass and save the 300 coins if you have unicorn, or wait until past w2 in case she drops then get shouhou. The big thing was to get at least 1 healer, and to round out your fleet options

[wind badge]

Basically that, more usable options is generally better, and buying her here saves farming later.

[twilit wharf]

Hmm... Makes sense. I'll buy Helena now and hold off on Shouhou till I hit W3.

And for boxes, T3 & T4 Eagle?

[wind badge]

Yes.

If you read old information online, they'll talk about farming 3-4 for Kaga and Akagi. This isn't relevant anymore

[twilit wharf]

👀 Where did they get moved to?

[wind badge]

They didn't

but farming for them is really quite bad

At least, it can stall your progression a lot

You can do it eventually, but it's really a low priority endeavor

[twilit wharf]

Though wouldn't I want to grind 3-4 a bit when I reach it for the xp?

[tiny smelt]

thats fine, just dont overstay is the main takeaway

[wind badge]

Sure, if you need xp (though I think you'll probably be fine with the xp books you're getting for free)

But you don't sit there and grind for kaga and akagi unless you have time and oil to burn.

Basically, don't farm exclusively for them unless you don't have anything else to do.

[tiny smelt]

You generally dont want to farm using a fleet more than 1-2 worlds below what that fleet can handle, this is somewhat subjective. you have to balance the lost potential exp against the potential drops

[wind badge]

And it's especially relevant since they introduced an oil cap to later worlds

Once you clear W9 maps, the maps that are cleared have an oil cap; you can use any fleet and you won't spend over a certain amount of oil for each battle. Below w9, you pay the full oil cost of the fleet, which can drain you really quickly if you're not paying attention.

It's W9, right?

Or W8?

[fickle timber]

w9 is when oil cap starts

[wind badge]

Thought so

Anyways, point is, progressing to endgame (or at least getting to beat chapters in the main story) will be your goals right now.

Be very frugal with your gems from 3starring stages.

There's a guide somewhere around here on what is high priority for spending that on.

If you're going to slum it f2p like I do, you don't get any more after you 3star every stage. Unless it's a really really special occasion.

[tiny smelt]

its /gems in bot-spam to get the gem guide

[twilit wharf]

👍

[tiny smelt]

basically unlike other games that use the premium currency for pulls AL provides the pull resources directly (and in very good numbers), and as a result is very limited on sources of the said premium currency

[twilit wharf]

Gotcha. Yeah, I understood that part. Switched over from quite a few other similar gacha games and did research ahead of time.

Hmm... At my current stage in the game, would I want to try and have mobbing & boss fleets? Or just focus on a single fleet for now?

[wind badge]

You could probably make both. I would recommend it. You will become more familiar with the systems that way.

[tiny smelt]

have it in consideration, but right now you will mostly just use the one

[fickle timber]

the hard part is filling up good backliners for 2 fleets early game

like you are stuck with commons like ranger and okla/nevada who are decent sure but not something you really wanna focus on early game

[wind badge]

This is true, but it's an investment in tech points later. Or something.

[tiny smelt]

also gearing in general, hell, the optimal early game strat is to stack all your exp books and best gear onto 1 or 2 carries, it just feels wrong to do it

[wind badge]

Yea, like if you randomly pull hood or something, she pretty much solo carries you until the end of W8

[twilit wharf]

Hmm... What could be considered the best long term carries in my fleet currently? Laffey, Helena, London?

[tiny smelt]

I was talking on a bit of an earlier scale even, reaching world 4 from account creation can be done in a short sitting if you just stack all your resources into a helena or cleveland, they can be obtained from guild shop, boosted to level 29 with exp books from weekly pack, will reach 30 fast, and can be LB2'd using a guild shop dupe + bulin, and will proceed to shred the first few worlds

[wind badge]

Honestly, your carries are mostly main fleet ships. Vanguard does some damage, and london and laffey probably do the most out of those, but I'd say you want to focus on a strong main fleet carry

Though that might be a different style, I still rely on my vanguard mostly for tanking or utility and main fleet to do most of the damage

Which could be a bit antiquated as far as it goes

[tiny smelt]

Helena will if nothing else, always be relevant in late game, but the other options are both fine. early game (til about W6 or so) the vangaurd will do most of the damage, the backline will pass the frontline later all as battles get longer, and because they scale better with limit breaks

[twilit wharf]

Lol, only issue with that plan is my lack of carry worthy backline.

[wind badge]

Oh right... repulse and long island

[tiny smelt]

theres a lot of easy to get and good frontliners, backline options can be more annoying early game

[wind badge]

yea, just stack your helena and call it a day for now

There's going to be an event at the end of the month, and I'll bet there will be at least an OKAY back liner you can use in that

[fickle timber]

yeah

[tiny smelt]

Most common setup is DPS carrier, battleship flag, healer for mob fleet. boss fleet is the same but DPS instead of healer

[twilit wharf]

That's what I'm going for currently. Just don't have the numbers to fill the backline in my second fleet, much less have good ones. How do I stack Helena again?

[fickle timber]

stack helena?

[wind badge]

Give her your best gun and the xp books you got.

Referring to the actual ship xp, not skill books here.

[tiny smelt]

Also make sure you grab the free weekly pack from the gem store

which actually contains the exp packs were talking about

[twilit wharf]

Is that the one with 4k oil?

[tiny smelt]

yeah

[wind badge]

Yep

It's free

They're probably going to get rid of it soon I wager

[twilit wharf]

The oil that's overcapping my supply currently. XD

[wind badge]

They added it because they changed a system.

It's fine to overcap. I do that all the time

I actually hit the hard cap last week.

25k if you were interested.

[tiny smelt]

it was a permanent addition, 4k oil isnt THAT much to endgame players. it feels like a lot because you stopped doing long commissions after the oil cap and never noticed that you got 4k/day before

[twilit wharf]

Lol, my cap is a 10th of that.

[wind badge]

You'll eventually use it, and if you're really worried about "wasting oil efficiency" from your facilities, you can buy the food

That's a soft cap

The cap you have is a soft cap, you can go above it

[tiny smelt]

hard cap is a true limit, the soft cap is what you see and just blocks canteen collection

[fickle timber]

yeah you can always use dorm food

i invested a ton of excess oil early game into it cause i literally couldn't spend it all lol

[wind badge]

Oh I see. I thought it was just for a short time in exchange for removing oil on scrapping ships. Eh, whatever. It's really hard for me to go below cap on oil

[twilit wharf]

Oh right, what infrastructure type things should I be investing in? Dorm, canteen, etc.

[wind badge]

Well, dorm costs gems, so that's in the gem guide

But the oil and coin facilities are improved by coin, so always max them when you can

In summary on dorm, you probably want at least 4 slots, if you intend to play alot you'll want the second floor also. Just having 3 slots is usually pretty limiting since your ships will run out of morale if you farm for a while with no break.

[fickle timber]

for dorm 4-5 slots is the way to go yeah

also second floor if you grind a lot

[wind badge]

That said, if you just intend to log in for just an hour a day or something, you can probably get by with no slots.

[fickle timber]

in the tactical classroom id stick with 2 slots, 3 isn't worth the gems imo

but you can always do /gems in #bot-spam cause it lists a fair bit of options

[wind badge]

You can't sustain 3 classroom slots early game, and late game it's.... alright.

[tiny smelt]

for f2p, correct, I have 3 slots as a spender and its fine

[wind badge]

I just end up spending all my gems on dock slots

[fickle timber]

thats me too :)

[wind badge]

450 slots and never spent any money.

[fickle timber]

im at 420 and haven't spent any money

[wind badge]

Yooo

did you get 5th dorm slot? I'm only at 4 with both floors

[twilit wharf]

Should I be spending coins in the Munitions shop?

[fickle timber]

im a 4 dorm slots, no second floor, no classroom 3

[fickle timber]

not especially early game

[wind badge]

Didn't get classroom 3 either yea

[fickle timber]

munitions is the shop where if you have spare coins you spend it there

but like now with pr1 coin up

just invest there first

[wind badge]

There are a couple good options in the munition shop, I'd get T3 books for example. Or cubes.

[fickle timber]

and 100% don't spend gems there no matter what

[tiny smelt]

Context on earlier, throwing the +6 starter guns, the +6 loader, 20 exp books, and LB2 helena just sorta breaks early game balance

[wind badge]

Did you make a new account just to show this?

[twilit wharf]

Is buying T3 chests at 50% worth it?

[tiny smelt]

2nd server, I use other servers for testing new player stuff

[fickle timber]

probably

[wind badge]

Maybe

[fickle timber]

whats the total cost for it?

[twilit wharf]

5k

[fickle timber]

and what faction?

[twilit wharf]

Ironblood

[fickle timber]

ok nope

don't get it

[wind badge]

No, probably no

the only worth thing in there is the CA gun, and it's not even THAT good .

[fickle timber]

if it was eagle or hms i might have considered it but not kms lol

[twilit wharf]

Lol, good thing I asked. Bought a cube and dipped.

[wind badge]

yea, cube and t3 books are all I'd buy for now.

[tiny smelt]

Im actually going to test exactly how far into the game it takes for the hyperinvested Helena to stall out, ive theorized world 4, but never tested

[twilit wharf]

And because I have no idea what I'm doing, how do I stack Helena? Throw every single exp book I own at her? And then where do I get the equipment from?

[wind badge]

Pretty much that

[tiny smelt]

part of your starter missions givbe you +6 gear

[wind badge]

Check the easy missions and see where they give that to you. It should be like... in W1 or W32

W2

[tiny smelt]

a +6 CL gun, that you can give to her, a +6 DD gun, that she can also steal because she uses DD guns as a secondary, a +6 autoloader, because why not, they gave it to you

[wind badge]

Otterloader bad

[twilit wharf]

Gotcha, need to keep working on that quest line. When I use fodder for enhancement, does the equipment get automatically removed?

[tiny smelt]

As a warning this tactic will stall out, but it will stall out later and you can then grind the later stage while everything catches up instead of earlier stages

[tiny smelt]

it prompts you to dismantle

[wind badge]

The equipment on ships you're scrapping or feeding is universally shit. Just scrap it.

[tiny smelt]

I get so salty when i misclick and it goes to my depot

[wind badge]

There's 0 gear you want to save that come with the ships.

Oh that's so annoying, it fills up my gear tab and makes me go into it to dismantle

Important point of order, gold is not necessarily better

The best carrier dive bomber is the purple helldiver. (at least, best to be available until uber late game)

Same for battleship guns. The purple EU 406 is pretty much the best HE gun for general use.

So don't go around scrapping those. There's a safe to scrap guide in the bot spam that can help you with that.

[twilit wharf]

👍
Though on a side note, what's this big thing coming up that everyone seems to be saving cubes for?

[wind badge]

There's an event at the end of the year. Probably going to start on the 30th

[tiny smelt]

Next event was confirmed on old JP patch notes to have a UR rarity ship

[wind badge]

Events usually last 2-3 weeks, and this event has a confirmed UR ship

Every other UR ship has been best in class just about

So people are expecting something similar

Once an event ends, the ships in it aren't available anymore until it reruns, so people want to make sure they get at least a chance at the ship.

[twilit wharf]

Makes senses. Part of the reason I decided to start playing was because New Jersey was added in a recent event. Now to wait for the rerun to happen a year from now. 😅

[tiny smelt]

Oh, I didnt realize you could still do the 3 contribution dailies using the public guild

The +6 gear is from the "stage reward" event if you didnt find that yet

Well my helena cheese strat account should be at world 3 in a few minutes

[twilit wharf]

Ah, I see. Why is that even an event?

[tiny smelt]

the limited pool is just one half, the other half is the event story stages and such

[twilit wharf]

Huh, the more you know. Also, pardon my ignorance, but what is the gauge next the carriers while you're in combat? The BBs don't have them.

[tiny smelt]

Carriers have a stealth mechanic and cannot be targeted by long range attacks until revealed by planes, bomb boats, or other backline penetration. they also do more damage while stealthed

pfft, I forgot about commander level locks, the cheese account cant even enter chapter 3

[twilit wharf]

Lol.
Though for the next question, what is the hard difficulty on maps? It seems like I can do world 1 on hard?

[tiny smelt]

Its basically just higher level with some extra fleet restrictions, you can do 3 hard stages per day and will generally want to do the highest stage you can to obtain "core data"

hard stages also supply the parts needed for retrofits

[twilit wharf]

Ah, so three hard stages from any world.

[wind badge]

Keep in mind that you must fill at least one of each labeled slot

So one in main and one in vanguard

For the stats of the fleet to count

[tiny smelt]

also the parts you get for retrofits corelate to the stage number, on a given world the 1st stage gives DD retro parts, 2nd gives CL/CA, 3rd gives BB, and 4th gives CV

[twilit wharf]

Hmm... So would I want to be focusing on farming DD or CL parts for now?

[tiny smelt]

Either CA for portland eventually, or DD for your starter destroyer

[twilit wharf]

I don't want to try to boost Helena?

[tiny smelt]

Helena's retrofit is fairly minor in potency, she was already extremely powerful before they gave her her retrofit

[fickle timber]

well CL and CA use the same part

lol

but yeah helena retro low priority

[tiny smelt]

yeah, I should have said cruisers the first time, I used CL without thinking and edited it to CL/CA

[twilit wharf]

I see. So after I get Portland, would I run her in the boss fleet, or mobbing fleet?

[fickle timber]

https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/external/ZsgAelC6IESEecOU7-RKUV5tB3xBlsw5zC5fUoauBNo/https/media.discordapp.net/attachments/691551561658138644/895119062256988190/ReqHelp_Final.jpg adding on, this relates to this

[tiny smelt]

she can do either really, her main role is "tank" but you wont put her in that spot until she catches up in level, level advantage skews everything

You dont need to worry too much about boss vs mob fleet roles other than the healer until much further on, and at that point you will have rotated a lot of ships out and can shift things around as needed anyways

I really wish the game would have given me a single blue or better AA gun from the crates, I was today years old when i had to figure out what the best gray AA gun was

[twilit wharf]

Huh, is Nelson any good?

[tiny smelt]

Good option for the BB for your 2nd fleet, if only as a filler

[twilit wharf]

Penny is better than Nelson?

[tiny smelt]

marginally, id consider them fairly close overall. Nelson has a unreliable mob sweeping barrage, Penny has a slightly more reliable high focus barrage

The morale of all units on my cheese account that arent in the dorm is about to bottom out before i hit 3-4, reaching 3-4 is sorta sketch as is though because of lack of anti-air

A viable early game tactic would probably be to plan for this, keep the carry or carries in the dorm, and swap them to the other fleet if the first fleet gets the sad

[twilit wharf]

Think anyone planned it out that much has had some experience in the game. :3
Though dumb question, is there no way to regain oil over time?

[tiny smelt]

Your canteen generates oil over time (that you cant collect while at soft cap)

as a new player it will be hard to burn the 4000 oil weekly box as is though

[twilit wharf]

It is indeed. Though on a side note, am I doing something wrong here? 2-4 just chewed straight through Penny in the backline and caused my fleet to retreat.

[fickle timber]

are all slots equipped with something?

[tiny smelt]

2-4 starts to add some air pressure, remember when i was lamenting about getting shafted on AA, this was why

that said it wasnt until 3-1 that i had a real issue

Helena just chewed though the boss before it mattered on the cheese account

This account went though 2 weekly pack cycles if wondering about oil, i just didnt use the extra exp packs for testing sake

3-1 required me to go though all my ships and give them 76mm gray AA off of the gray ships I had

[twilit wharf]

Yeah, think I might have to do that as well.

[tiny smelt]

the 76mm gray AA has the largest range of the gray AA guns ive seen (the dotted line circle in battle is the AA circle, the size is based on the average of all AA guns, empty slots are treated as a low range gun)

[twilit wharf]

Good to know. And just got Ajax, is she worth using?

[fickle timber]

no not really