Summoner's War is a freemium mobile strategy RPG along the lines of Brave Frontier, Puzzle and Dragons, Seven Knights, Monster Strike, Crusader's Quest, etc. You collect monsters, equip them with runes, and battle other monsters in various PvE and PvP settings.
I've tried a lot of mobile games and I feel like this is one of the better ones out there in this genre. Yes it can be considered heavily P2W, but the game gives out a ton of free premium currency, and you don't have to spend a cent to be able to accomplish everything in the game outside of a top PvP ranking. Yes there is a ton of endless grinding involved, but the autobattle feature allows you to not have to actively play the game, while still playing the game.
On top of that, the servers are well-populated, we get frequent events and updates, there's quite a bit of teambuilding strategy involved (with lots of theorycrafting and min/max spreadsheeting for those interested), it's decently balanced with regular balance patches, and the graphics are pretty sweet for a mobile game.
I'm sure there are other TL'ers out there that currently play Summoner's War, so I figured I'd start a thread for discussion and to get new people to try it. If we get enough people maybe we can even start a TL guild.
For those who are new, the subreddit (www.reddit.com/r/summonerswar) is the best community/resource for the game, with plenty of guides. Feel free to ask any questions here though and I (or others) will be glad to answer them!
Join our guild (global server): search TeamLiquid in guilds and request to join. We've merged with Kindred Society but we're still very much active. Reply to this thread or pop in to our Discord and you can still join us!
started off a few days ago. I'm a little stumped on beating the 5th floors of Giants/dragons/necro.. At what point are you supposed to be beating these? When scenarios are concerned, I am stuck on the boss monster of faimon volcano.
Magic Knight ----- blade/fatal runes; Water Assassin ------ swift/blade runes; Inugami ----- fatal/blade runes (got inugami to 4 stars; currently working on evolving him to raoq, but evolving seems quite tough)
I'm a bit stumped because my damage seems to be kinda low compared to what I would want. What can I do to move on? the monsters are pretty much all max levelled.
Salamander *** Grim Reaper x2 *** Viking *** Sylphid **** ----- Water Warbear *** Water Griffon *** Water High Elemental *** Water Fairy *** ----- Earth Elven Ranger *** Earth Kobold bomber **** ---- Light Garuda
what leader skill is it better to focus on? Should I stick with my water Sylph, or use someone who increases my attack or hp instead? I'm quite sad that I don't have any aoe healer and I feel that it shuts me down a lot I don't want to invest much in fairy because she's just single target heals and they kinda seem meh and not worth giving up a slot over.
EDIT: rereading your post, I just want to make sure... you're aware that once a monster hits max level you can evolve it to the next star right? Any monster can be evolved to 6* and reach 6* lvl 40. To evolve a 3* monster to 4*, that 3* monster needs to be max level (lvl 25), and you need to feed it any 3 3* monsters (any level). To evolve a 4* monster to 5*, it needs to be lvl 30, and you feed it 4 4* monsters (any level). Etc, etc. When you talk about "evolving" your Fire Inugami to Raoq, that process is called awakening.
Here's my suggestion for optimal beginner progression:
1. Establish a farmer. A farmer is someone who can solo a scenario, so you bring 3 fodder monsters with it and that's how you generally level things up in this game.
Depending on your playstyle, you should opt for 1 of 2 types of farmers: a slow, energy efficient farmer, or a fast, time efficient farmer. If you are ok with checking your phone throughout the day, don't really want to sit down and actively play for hours, and are generally trying to make the most efficient use of your energy, then you should go with a slow farmer. If you can't really check on your phone throughout the day, just want to sit down and quickly use up all your energy from time to time, and are generally trying to get the most out of a limited amount of time to play (or you're willing to spend a lot of money/crystals for refills), then you should go with a fast farmer.
If you're going with the slow route, you should acquire a Ramagos (Wind Warbear). He's only 2 stars, so you can easily get him from the shop or from US (unknown scroll). Equip him with all energy runes. You should be immediately able to farm Hydeni Hell with him, and then you can progress to Aiden Normal, and then Aiden Hard or even Hell depending on how lucky you get with runes. Aiden Forest is one of the most energy efficient farming spots in the game.
If you're going with the fast route, you should keep working on your Tyron (Water Sylph). For others who don't have him or other viable farmers, Lapis (Water Magic Knight) or Raoq (Fire Inugami) are your 2 best options. You want to be able to farm Faimon Normal with him, and then progress up to Faimon Hard.
So basically your first goal right now should be to get a 5* max level (lvl 35) Ramagos or Tyron. If you go with Tyron and you're getting to the point where you can almost farm Faimon Hard but not 100% of the time, then you should even go ahead and 6* him first.
2. After you get a farmer, you should acquire the following monsters, level them all to 5* max level, and slowly start skilling them up. These monsters, along with your farmer, can carry you through most of the early game, while still remaining useful throughout the entire game.
- Shannon (Wind Pixie) - shop or US - Bernard (Wind Griffon) - drops from Tamor - Belladeon (Light Inugami) - secret dungeon on Sundays - Konamiya (Water Garuda) - shops or US
Light Inugami is the trickiest to get, since he's only available in secret dungeons on Sundays. You just have to stay in public chat channels and carefully watch, as soon as someone gets a Light Inugami secret dungeon, go ahead and add them as a friend. Then you'll have access to the SD for an hour, in which you need to farm 40 pieces in order to summon one.
3. Now comes the big grind. Your next goal should be fusing a Veromos (Dark Ifrit). It's a long process but definitely worth it, he's pretty much used for almost everything in the game. Check fusion charts here for what monsters you need: http://imgur.com/a/DVJSl. The only 2 fusion pieces for Veromos that are not farmable are the Fire Beast Hunter, and the Wind Lizardman. I suggest saving up all your crystals for premium packs (the 750 crystal for 11 mystical scrolls) until you get these 2 monsters. Afterwards, it's up to you whether you want to continue buying more premium packs, or using crystals for refills.
4. Once you get a Veromos, you're ready to go to Giants B10. Your basic team is Vero (leader), Bella, Shannon, Bernard, +1. The +1 can be Kona, or a number of other options because by then you could potentially have other things to work with. 6* Vero and Bella is a must, the others can remain 5*, although if you need to then 6*'ing Shannon is not a bad idea either. I was able to go straight to GB10 without ever farming any of the lower floors of Giants, although I did have to spend a week or so doing manual for the boss until I could auto it. It's not terrible if you have to farm GB8 for awhile before you go to GB10, but I would not waste any time doing anything lower than GB8.
Now to answer your specific questions:
1. Don't worry about Giants/Dragons/Necro for now. Farm the units I mentioned above, and you should be able to easily progress through all the scenarios and work your way up in Giants. Dragons comes after Giants, and your GB10 team should be able to do DB8 as well. Necro is late game.
2. Ignore pretty much everything you currently have other than Tyron. Just stick them in storage for now. Don't feed any natural 4*'s (i.e. Wind Kobold Bomber, Water Assassin, Fire Sylphid), don't feed any unfarmable L/D monsters (i.e. Light Garuda) and don't feed anything that's a fusion material. But things like Fire Viking, Fire Grim Reaper, Water Warbear (can be used to skill up Ramagos), Water High Elemental, and Water Fairy are safe to use as food. I would also save Fire Battle Mammoth and Wind Elven Ranger, themselves they are useless but they can be used to skill up other useful monsters you may get later (Water or Dark Battle Mammoth, Fire Elven Ranger).
3. Damage isn't really important early on. You can get through all of early-mid game with just 100% support monsters and no damage dealers at all.
4. Tyron has an excellent leader skill, attack speed is one of the most important stats for everyone in any situation.
5. Bella will be your aoe healer. Don't invest in water fairy, you can use her as food.
I do know that you can increase the star count on monsters. I just started playing some 2-3 days ago so I don't really have many monsters to feed to get past 4 stars, haha.. I'm working on it though with rainbowmons (I have 7 of them at 3* currently but nothing at 4* yet)
After reading a ton of guides and whatnot, I did understand that Bella is a superb monster to have and I actually tried getting into a SD with him today all day, but only 1 person accepted my friend invite(during the entire day...), but the dgn said that it had too many people in it so i never got a chance to even go in
I've also read up that a Water Warbear can be used to good effect to farm Faimon Hell. Do you think I should maybe work on that instead since I already have him? Also, I don't really see how can tyron solo anything. He does barely any damage for me, and his stun is great and all but it isn't 100% on everyone and it's once in like what.. 4 turns? I kinda feel like he needs to be evo'd and lvl40'd and have insanely good runes for that to work, and I think that's way out of my league currently. I can't even awaken tyron because I can't get access to his mats (the HIGH rarity ones are so tough to get, judging by my progress from hall of magic today)
just how strong is the increase from 4* to 5* anyway, in terms of raw stats? I'm only at Level 14 atm, tho I guess that if I really wanted to, then I could get my Sylph to 5* during the next day or two. Making him a Tyron will have to wait quite a bit longer tho I suppose many people say raoq is pretty much the god of farming, what do you think? not worth investing at all since I have tyron?
what do you think about the runes I am using?
Also -- what exactly does Resistance and Accuracy do ? Can monsters actually miss in this game? I haven't seen that happen yet.
as for this -->
"3. Damage isn't really important early on. You can get through all of early-mid game with just 100% support monsters and no damage dealers at all."
it doesn't feel like it :C my full team of damage dealers can't beat faimon normal, so how can my tyron hope to do it alone ?
As for skilling up - is there some easy way to do this that I'm missing or..? As far as I see it's only via devilmons or via feeding the same monster, which doesn't happen very often. Also - if a monster has 3 skills, can I pick which one gets skilled up?
and 1 thing about Ifrit -- I actually had the needed lizardman that's not farmable, but fed him away.. ^_^'
EDIT: Lol, I must be lucky. did 1 unknown summon and got a wind griffon ***
- When you open US, feed the 1* to the 2*. Then you can further level up 2*, and keep evolving/leveling them to use as fodder as well, you don't have to just use rainbowmon.
- Yea Bella is tough to get, it took me a few weeks of trying. But keep at it, just takes some patience.
- Don't bother with Dagora (Water Warbear). Ramagos (Wind Warbear) is pretty much the exact same thing (slow farmer, low rune requirements), except you farm Aiden instead of Faimon. Aiden is more efficient than Faimon, and farming Aiden with Ramagos is not considerably harder than farming Faimon with Dagora. Also, Ramagos is useful in other areas of the game, Dagora is not.
- Is your Tyron at 5*? I wouldn't expect to farm Faimon normal until you can get him to lvl 35 and equipped with a decent set of runes (completing certain scenarios awards with you nice rune sets). The difference between 4* and 5* is pretty significant, around 35%? You can check http://summonerswar.wikia.com/wiki/Sylph_(Water)_-_Tyron for detailed stats. Awakening him is tough I know, so I wouldn't prioritize it. That's why I really like using Ramagos early on - since he's only a natural 2*, he's extremely easy to awaken, skill up, and rune. Prior to Faimon normal, you can farm things like Garen Hell (for energy runes in addition to exp), Mt Siz Hell (for swift runes in addition to exp), and Tamor Normal (for Bernard in addition to exp).
- Raoq is only a god of farming if you have insane runes, which obviously new players will not have. He's one of the biggest newb traps in the game. If you get him to 5* max with the best scenario runes then he still won't be able to do anything more than Faimon Normal.
- Can't say much about your runes unless I can see specifics. You can create a swarfarm to manage and show your monsters/runes to others. There's also SWParser which lets you automatically upload your monster and rune info to swarfarm. In general though since like I said early game is about support monsters, you want to find good Swift and Energy runes with stats in HP, SPD, and ACC.
- Accuracy refers to effect accuracy. Many skills have effects other than damage (i.e. debuffs), and the chance of those effects landing on enemies is what accuracy affects. Resistance is the chance to resist those other effects. To determine whether or not the extra effects land, there are 2 steps: I'll use your Tyron's second skill (Cyclone) as an example.
Cyclone attacks twice and each attack has a 40% chance of landing a Glancing Hit debuff. The first step is simply the activation rate, which is 40% per attack. If you skill him up, you can increase this activation rate to 50% per attack (this is the "Harmful Effect rate +10%" for lvl 4 of this skill). Some skills have 100% activation rate, such as his 3rd skill (Hailstorm).
Now if a skill passes the activation check, then the 2nd step is where accuracy and enemy resistance comes into play. The chance of an enemy resisting an effect is their RES minus your ACC. So if the enemy has 100 resist and you have 0 accuracy, then you will never land any effects. However, it doesn't work the other way around, as everyone always has a default 15% chance to resist regardless of how much accuracy you have. So if you have 100 ACC and enemy has 0 RES, you'll still only have an 85% chance of landing the effect, not 100%. Essentially, this means that there is a soft cap of 85 ACC as anything over that is useless (RES is hard capped at 100).
Accuracy is definitely an important stat on any monster that has debuffs. To give you an idea of how much accuracy you need, the Giant in GB10 has around 60 RES, so when you're making your giants team, you want to shoot for 45 ACC on your support monsters.
- You're still really early on in the game, I understand that if your regular team can't be Faimon normal then Tyron shouldn't be able to solo it. That will come with higher level/evolution, and better runes. Optimally when Tyron is used as a farmer later on, you will equip other rune sets on him such as Despair (chance to stun enemies) or Vampire (life steal), which definitely helps him to solo. For now you can farm earlier stages that I mentioned above.
- You're right, skilling up is just feeding the same monster (can be any element in the family though - so to skill up water sylph, you can use any fire/water/wind/light/dark sylph). Obviously for nat 4's and nat 5's like the sylphs, this is going to be extremely rare so you'll end up using devilmons. But for nat 2's and nat 3's, those are much easier to come by so you'll be able to skill up via dupes. You cannot pick which skill gets skilled up, its random.
tyron is at 4* currently but I can get him to 5* if I really wanted to. Currently my runes on him are : + Show Spoiler +
1) 4star swift rune 2) +12 4 star blade rune with +atk% 3) 3star Blade rune 4) +6 3 star Swift rune with +critrate% 5) 4star Swift rune 6) crappy 3star swift rune
Note : I do have a despair + focus combo set available, but the runes are not too great, so I chose to go with swift+blade for now to get some speed and damage in there. Btw, does despair rune's 25% stun rate count towards every attack it does? I was under the impression that it would just improve the % of the freeze effect succeeding, but now after your explanation i see that Accuracy is what does it ^_^
I'm not sure how much I want to farm the hell difficulties for runes because they seem to be just 3-4 stars, while I can get better ones from golem dungeons D: plus I can get rainbowmons from there quite often as for exp though - sure, though I don't really have that much stuff that needs exp at this point, I guess i need to spam more unknown scrolls, which also drop quite often in golems.. About tyron and swift/energy runes with HP SPD and ACC; what about damage though? How well can he farm if he doesn't have any damage or crit? :/
Oh hey, a SW thread! I've been playing for a few months and am at the auto-all-b7's level currently. Biggest achievements were getting both Vero and Theo before level 40. :D
@abuse: Bernard (wind griff) has a fantastic speed buff and ATB booster on a low cooldown as his third skill, and speed is KING. In pve you'll be taking two or three TIMES as many turns between each boss attack cycle, and in pvp you will be able to get your entire team to move before theirs, often winning outright.
Heh I may be getting too far ahead of myself. If you've only been playing for a few days you should definitely not be expecting to farm Faimon with anyone yet. You gotta have decent % runes in the 2/4/6 slots, and they all should be at least +9 if not +12 for the 2/4/6 slots. After you complete some of the later scenarios you'll get nice 4* and 5* rune sets that you can use. For now you should definitely work on getting other monsters (Shannon, Bernard, Bella, Kona) and leveling those and Tyron up (5* lvl 35).
When I say farm hell scenarios for runes, I mean only if you can solo it, so you can farm for exp and runes at the same time. Even if it's white, a 4* HP% rune or a slot 2 SPD rune could be helpful for awhile. Farming scenarios for runes also allows you to choose for what specific rune set and slot you can get, which is great for filling in missing pieces. It's true giants can potentially get you better runes, but you could also get lots of useless runes, and you get practically no exp.
I don't understand what you mean by you don't have stuff that needs exp at this point... unless your entire team is 6* lvl 40 you always need more exp. From an efficiency standpoint, I strong advise against farming giants before at least GB8 (and optimally, not until GB10). It's just not worth it for the energy. US is generally just fodder/exp, and you get a lot more fodder/exp farming scenarios. Of course I understand endlessly grinding is boring, and giants actually drops a variety of things so if it's fun for you I'm not going to fault you for continuing to farm it :p
Faimon normal mobs have very little HP. You don't need much damage at all to farm it.
Despair stun works on every skill you have, even those with no effects. Like your Tyron's first skill with despair will still have a 25% chance to proc. Multiple hits on 1 skill however does not stack and increase your chance of landing despair stun. For example, even though your skill 2 hits twice, it still only counts as a 25% chance overall to land the stun. It does hit all enemies though, so you do have a chance to stun all enemies with despair. Stuns and Tyron's 3rd skill (Freeze) are actually 2 different effects that are very similar.
Bernard (Wind Griffon) is very good because his 3rd skill increases the attack bar of your entire team, as well as provides a significant speed buff. Speed is probably the most important stat in the game, it simply just gives you more turns. Also, his second skill is great too - it lowers enemies attack and defense, which means they do less damage and you do more damage to them.
why do some monsters have their star count shown in gold color while others have it in silver? also - does it matter which slot do I put what monster in? Like support monsters should go in the top right corner of the formation and tanks should go in the middle or whatever?
Do I need bella if I have the blue battle mammoth? What about if I have wind epikion priest?
- Gold star means the monster has an awakening. Silver means it does not (i.e. it's fodder/food). It can still be evolved though.
- In general, it does not matter what slot you put monsters in. There are a few exceptions though, but I wouldn't worry about them (for example, if you have more than 1 dead monster when you use a revive skill on auto, it will always revive the first monster in order).
- Talc (Water Battle Mammoth) is an excellent monster, but is not a replacement for Bella. Bella is easily a top 3 most useful monster in the game and you will use him everywhere no matter what else you have. I actually use both Bella and Talc simultaneously on many of my teams.
- The main use for Michelle (Wind Epikion Priest) is her revive. Her heal is rather weak. She can be useful in some areas but I would not invest into her for now.
I was surprised that you mentioned going straight to B10's after getting Vero. Maybe it's because I got him early, but for me he was the key to just getting B7's. I've been stuck there for a looooong time, but I think it's because I've been trying to work on too many things at once. Levels/awakens/runes for a bunch of cool utility 4*s I've picked up, finishing Kat fusion, etc. I think I really just need to work on my core 5-8 monsters. Heck, I still don't even have a single 6*, and I've been lv40 for a few weeks now.
(I mean, I can't even do Raid1 or ToaN50 yet. Raviti, delphoi, and Mav can wait!)
Getting a few key monsters to 6* is really important. I made 3 6*'s (Vero, Bella, Shannon) before I started doing any giants farming, and it was why I was able to go straight to GB10. You will be using monsters like Vero and Bella in almost all other areas of the game so it only makes sense to 6* them asap.
Working on a core group of 5-8 monsters is indeed the best way to progress, I literally did all of GB10, DB10, and ToAN 100 with only 7 monsters (Vero, Bella, Bernard, Shannon, Kona, Baretta, Ahman/Talc).
welp, did some things I'm not proud of and now have awakened sylph to tyron and upgraded him to 5 stars. His damage is quite nice now. Got Wind Griffon to 4 stars, though I'm still missing hp% runes. Also got my water mammoth to 4 stars. He is an absolutely INSANE tank indeed, very glad that I listened to you and not fed him away.. :D Griffon has been lovely too, enjoying his help quite a bit.
Today farming fire magic dgn, trying to awaken Raoq. The dungeon keeps dropping me cakes, summon scrolls and summoning stones though Hell, I even found a secret dungeon..
by the way, i got a premium pack. Nothing special dropped though, but I did get a fire joker and a few other monsters from the fusion pic you showed me.
Once I awaken Raoq, I'm probably going to farm a bunch of hell dgns, as I have a lot of stuff that needs exp now (griffon, mammoth, tyron, and whatnot), I did do a few runs of golems and it's so hard to make myself not go in there, the runes are just SO MUCH BETTER than whatever hell decides to drop, it's like no contest (I don't think i've ever seen a non-white rune drop from scenarios, but golems keep dropping me hero's and legendaries)
I'm in relatively midgame in this game, you can add me under "Mehified" on the global server. I have a 6* Akhamamir on Vamp/Blade who can solo Aiden Hell if you need someone to help you progress. I suggest trying to find friends with decent rep monsters to help you out early, and definitely try to join a guild to start collecting ifrit pieces.
Clearing the scenario levels is honestly not a big deal. You can stop at faimon/aiden and just start to grind those stages until you have your first 6*. The game is dreadfully slow before your first giants b10 team and probably just needs an overhaul to be honest. Scenario levels only have green/white runes at best, it's not somewhere to farm for runes aside from very early on.
Giants b10 is a "solved" dungeon for most people. Veromos (L), Belladeon, Shannon, Bernard, +1. I managed to avoid 6* Shannon but it's not a bad idea honestly.
Just want to clarify that the monsters I mentioned (bernard, shannon, kona, bella) are not early game monsters, but rather monsters that are easily acquirable by everyone during the early game, but will be useful through the entire game.
Don't worry too much about having a set team for scenarios. A big part of the game is having specific/different teams for different PvE areas. It's ok to invest in any of the monsters I mentioned, and then you can mix and match different monsters for different scenarios. I wouldn't use Raoq though, he simply doesn't contribute that much other than damage, and you really can't get his damage to be that great without good runes. You only need 1 farmer, and Tyron covers that role (and Tyron is useful for other things too).
Speaking of runes, the majority of my runes early on came from the shop. I strongly suggest unlocking all the shop slots as soon as possible.
Just started playing since the TL forums are usually pretty good on suggestions!
Got the starters pack, I'm enjoying it so far. Can you tell what the awoken name is somewhere in program? I want to make sure I don't accidentally feed one of the good ones.
There's not an easy way to find the awoken name in game, you can go to "Collection" (lower right corner of Monster screen), find the unawokened monster, and in the top right corner of that monster's profile you can see the awakened form and name. It's much easier just to google it though.
General rules of thumb for what to keep: - keep anything that is a natural 4* or 5* - keep at least 1 of any light or dark monster that is not farmable (you can check the monster's wiki, and if it's only obtainable from Scroll of Light & Darkness and Temple of Wishes, then it's not farmable) - keep at least 1 of anything that's used in a fusion, especially the Dark Ifrit fusion (http://imgur.com/a/DVJSl) - keep at least 1 of any 3* monster that is not farmable - keep ALL of the following 3* monster families (any element), because one or more elements of that family is really useful and you'd want to skill it up:
I managed to pull some (i think) good stuff. I want to get some clarifications if they are really as good as I think and if I should bother with them, and if yes then for what purpose.