/bag/ Newfag guide

A guide that goes through cycles.

Downloading/Setting up the game

JP - Play Store | App Store | QooApp

Global - Play Store | App Store | QooApp

Global may require a VPN to play, as it is region-locked. JP is region-locked as well, so if you wish to play it use a VPN. The only server to avoid would be Korea's server as raids are much, much, MUCH more competitive there than any other, leading to a potentially very detrimental experience. Otherwise, pick whichever you want and you will be fine.

As an aside, payment options can be dodgy on JP if you want to be a whale depending on your region/your payment account's region. These situations are more complicated. Ask about them in the thread.

You can play the game through emulation such as Nox, Bluestacks, Memu or LDPlayer. If you want the game in something like "tablet mode" (which lets you see more of the screen (some visuals are cut off at default resolution)), consider changing your emulator to the resolution 1440x1080

For comparison:

(Re)rolling

Your very first roll guarantees a single (3*) student. Every 10 roll guarantees at least one (2*) student.
If you have no interest in the banner student, use the Regular Recruitment banner, as all pick-up rates will be the same.

What are good units to roll for?

Perhaps these.

As the meta is constantly changing, the most optimal students to reroll for tend to change as well.
The Future Content Timeline and Unit Ratings and Raid Strategy Guide spreadsheets can help a lot in this regard.
Alternatively, you could ask /bag/ for advice.

What about good units who are only blue or gold (1 or 2 star)?

Definitely these.

Should I reroll?

Did you not get someone you wanted? Then reroll. Typical advice is stopping after you have at least 2 girls you wanted. Quite a few girls are farmable, so consider that when rolling. However, farming a student can take a considerable amount of time.

How do I reroll? (global only)

Menu bar (top right) > Account > Reset account

The idea is to only use guest accounts until you've decided on an account, then adding an email to it. For JP, the method is a bit more complicated and outlined here.

Is there pity? What's a spark?

There are 2 ways in gacha games to get a banner unit: spark and pity. With a spark you roll a certain amount of times (200 in Blue Archive) before you can redeem a copy of the banner unit. With pity for every roll past Y rolls without getting a highest star unit you get an increased chance to roll one, up to a 100%.
Blue Archive does not have a pity system, it only has spark.
1 spark = 200 rolls = 24,000 gems

You can only spark units currently on banner.
Sparks do not carry over between banners, so whatever Recruitment Points you have left will be turned into crafting mats when the banner ends.

As a side note, a duplicate of a banner unit will give you 100x of a special material (Eleph) which is used for upgrading their rarity. If you have enough pyros to spare and really want to upgrade a girl, keep this in mind.

How often do I get a spark?

You get 12,000 gems on average per month, which means it takes 2 months to get a spark. There's a lot of freebies lying around for new accounts though.
This assume you aren't rolling randomly, refreshing often, and that you're doing all your dailies.

What should I do after my initial rolls? Do I roll without a spark?

You want to save up for a spark before rolling. You do not roll without a spark, because you can get fucked over really hard.

If you're going to roll without a spark, don't complain when you don't get the banner unit you wanted.

I have X amount of rolls into the banner, but I already rolled the banner unit. Should I keep going?

Play it by ear, there is no concrete answer to this. This is heavily dependent on your personal preference and your current gem stash (and future rolling plans). However, remember that a duplicate of the banner student (whether from a roll or claimed with a spark), will give you 100 Elephs towards upgrading them.

I just got a ten roll ticket! Do they expire?

No.
The only ticket that expires are the 3* guarantee tickets you can buy (with real money) during anniversaries and other events.
However, most items in your mailbox also have a tendency to expire after a week if you don't pick them up in time.

I got the banner unit at my 200th roll. Do I claim her or do I get the other banner unit that I don't have?

It's more about what you want to do and less about "what's a good idea" at that point. If you don't know what to do, consider checking the other guides in the rentry, or ask /bag/ for advice.

Team Formation

In general a team consists of 1 tank, 1 healer, and multiple DPS. While this is not a concrete rule, it is a good rule of thumb to follow.
You want to match the Armor Color of your enemy with your Attack Color.

Weak does 200% damage.
Normal does 100% damage.
Resist does 50% damage.

No matter how strong your units may be, mismatching them against the wrong armor type will make them do considerably less damage.
If you lack units that do effective damage, consider using students that do neutral damage instead.

Your units also have different mood (affinity), depending on the terrain. While this isn't a major concern early on, if you find that your damage is sufficiently lacking it may be worth a shot to swap around some units. However, as a new player you might not exactly have a large roster of students to utilize in this fashion.

For healers and buffers in your Special slots, you can ignore the environment mood and attack type, you only have to concern yourself with that if they are a Special attacker.
You should always run full teams (6 Students). If you don't, your cost recovery goes down significantly (the time it takes to charge the EX Gauge)

For PvE (normal and hard missions, bounties, commissions) you want to bring AOE units. If you're having trouble with a boss, bring in a strong single target DPS instead.
Early game you will want to run an evasion tank such as Yuuka or Tsubaki, who are the best at tanking damage early on. The damage type of your tank is not important, as their job is to tank damage rather than deal it. You can still run other tanks if you lack these two, but you may find it is harder to keep them alive.
After you get access to the T4 Bag Equipment, you can run more orthodox tanks like Hoshino or Haruka (or Tsubaki, because she still is the best tank in the game).

You want to put your tank in position 2 or 3 in the formation screen, because if you put her on the edge there's a higher chance your unit on the other side ends up taking aggro.
There are strategies where you put certain units on the edges for better angles, or in the middle for better reach, but that's often times irrelevant. Try out what fits for you.

What does the Leader position do?

It shows you her funny leader animation at the start of every battle, her chibi in the overworld, and is the girl that appears on your victory/defeat screen.
The Leader does not receive any combat advantages.

Leveling your roster

This is the bonsai part.
Because resources are often scarce, you should only level up whoever you're using at the moment. It's best to conserve your resources until you actually need to use them.
You level up your EX and regular skills based on raids and (to a lesser degree) PvP. You can get by with just levels and equipment in most PvE missions.
You get the biggest return on investment by upgrading your DPS. Upgrading your healers or buffers is also good, since you can use them in every damage type (thus increasing their usability).
Tanks are generally fine with just levels and gear (specifically the 2nd equipment slot), so you can skimp out on their EX and regular skills.

If you want to know what order you should raise your skills in, consult the thread, people will be more than willing to help. Alternatively, consult the Future Content and Unit Rating spreadsheet.

If you want plan out your future material usage, you can look at how much you need with the planner:
https://justin163.com/planner/

Can I brick myself leveling up a student (e.g. Priconne)? (the short answer)

No.

Normal and Hard missions

Simple puzzles, with new mechanics added occasionally.
When a new type of tile appears, you will see a tutorial prompt. Read it.
Go as far as you can in the normal mode for the Cafe upgrades. They drop every 3 areas at Mission-5, which boost your daily AP recovery. (this means Area 3-5, Area 6-5, Area 9-5...)
Don't forget to actually upgrade your Cafe.

(Press that Button)

Once you have manually cleared a stage and gotten 3-stars on it, you are able to sweep it. Sweeping a stage will automatically and instantaneously consume as much AP as you spend on it and give you the drops you received from the stage.
For this reason, it's best to only sweep stages in which you actually gain some kind of reward, such as equipment (you will need a LOT of equipment).
A full list of stages and their respective droprates can be found here: Schale DB
Every stage which drops equipment has a chance to drop the equipment that is 2 and 3 tiers down of the respective equipment (e.g. a stage with t5 boots can drop t3 and t2 boots). The lower tier stuff has a lower drop rate however, around half.

If you're struggling with specific bosses or the like, consider using CC (Crowd Control).

Tsubaki has CC built into her EX, which can save you from a total party wipe by interrupting the ability of an enemy boss. You can also pull a tank behind the enemy lines using Serina to prevent AoE skills from hitting your squishier DPS.
If you happen to need more CC, other easy picks are Hare or Yoshimi if you really need it. Hoshino can also stun, but she requires EX3 in order to do so, her EX does not have CC by default.

What hard nodes should I farm?

Students Farmable from Missions
Majority of the hard nodes are worth farming in some capacity, but some are higher priority than the others.
Consult either the thread or the Future Content and Unit Rating spreadsheet to get a general idea of who might be worth farming.
If you like the girl though, farm her shards regardless.

Iori is the absolute best, with Haruna and Mutsuki right below her. Once upon a time this guide told you to ignore Kotori and Suzumi stages and that Yuuka is a pretty low priority too. Yuuka is eventually the best tank in the game, primarily if she's highly leveled. Furthermore you can make almost any unit work with investment. While Suzumi has next to no use, if you like Suzumi farm Suzumi. Kotori actually is useful, but indeed lower priority. If you like a girl, farm her shards. Again,

Should I farm a unit I don't own?

Yes, and you should also continue to farm students that you already own. De-prioritize students that aren't as good, however.
You can redeem a unit at certain thresholds instead of using gacha. You require 120 Elephs to redeem a 3* unit.

Should I sweep my stages?

Yes.
There is no benefit to manually doing them.

Bounties

Your daily mats farm (BDs, Notebooks, and Ooparts/Artifacts). Remember how you need to match the colors before? Well, now you need to match the attack type (red) AND the school AND the environment mood (except not really, it just helps).
With a well timed CC (interrupt) you can cancel the rangers' special ability, so if you're having difficulty, make sure to use your CC abilities to cancel their skills.

Always try to go for the highest tier you can clear. It drops lower tier mats as well, so there's no reason to farm a lower level.

Commissions

While you should clear these stages if you get the chance, there is no point in sweeping them until you can clear the Base Defense H/Item Retrieval H stages (recommended level 65, but doable way below that depending on your roster).
Even then, it is only recommended to sweep Base Defense H+/Item Retrieval H+ during 2x or 3x drop campaigns, as their droprate is fairly abysmal for the amount of AP you spend.

Commissions is comprised of two different stages, Base Defense, and Item Retrieval.
Base Defense is a wave defense against small yellow armored enemies, ideally you want to bring your best AOE Yellow students, and at least one tank. A useful trick is to use Serina to move your tank further ahead so they take 100% of the aggro from the waves of bots.
Item Retrieval is a single-target blue challenge with a strict time limit, ideally you want to bring your best ST (single-target) blues, but you can also bring ST Yellows if you're lacking in that department. There is no need to bring a tank or healer to this mode.

Total Assault (Raid)

Welcome to the endgame content of BA, your biweekly source of BDs, technotes, and elephs through the raid coins you can earn.
The first thing you want to do is join a club. The second thing is borrowing the strongest unit for the raid.

Read up on what the boss does, copy what the top teams do, check out a few youtube videos on the clear, maybe even use the auto formation button if you're out of ideas.
This Raid Strategy Guide spreadsheet has indepth information on every boss, as well as historical top scores on the JP version of the raid.

Up to HC you can borrow someone's hypercarry who can beat the raid by herself, just build a decent supporting team around her.
Don't try EX without a mock battle if you're below the recommended level.

If you're a pro gamer, it's good practice to either (mentally) make a note of what time you started the raid or what time you'll stop resetting for a high score and finish the raid. Getting a cool gamer score is not worth losing a ticket over.

Should I save my raid coins?

Yes and no. Think about what you actually want from the shop.
The absolute best thing is the Maki and Azusa shards, but other than that you usually want BDs and notebooks of the students you want to upgrade or plan to upgrade soon. There is a buy limit on everything in this shop that will reset every raid cycle (fortnightly).
The Secret Tech Notes are used to upgrade a skill from 9->10, which is not something you will raise for some time as a new player. Ideally you should only buy these out when you actually need them, as they are relatively expensive.

Joint Firing Drill/Joint Exercise

It's commissions but with a unique gimmick. The gimmick changes every time, so no 2 drills are the same.
You are required to clear the Firing Drill three times, and each student can only be used once in this set of clears.
A list of all Joint Firing Drills so far can be found here, but if you still don't know what to do against a gimmick, look at a few videos or ask /bag/.

You can borrow students for this challenge, so being in a club is very helpful if you want to get a good score.
There is no rankings (like raids), and higher scores simply give you more coins/credits per clear.

The tickets for Joint Firing Drill work differently than the ones for raids. Unlike with raids, you will not waste a ticket by giving up on a team. You'll only waste it if you give up entirely (in the top menu) or the sixty minute timer on the ticket runs out. You may forfeit a Firing Drill at no consequence, just make sure you finish your ticket.
Once you have used up an entire ticket (3 clears), you are able to sweep your remaining tickets.

Look at the shop section if you want details on what to buy. The shop refreshes before the next drill starts.

Tactical Challenge (PvP)

Probably the most frustrating part of the game if you overthink it, PvP sets you up in battle against other players.
These battles are done in auto mode, which means you have no control over the battle except choosing your team.

The goal of PvP is to match your attack type with the enemy's armor type, while mismatching their attack type with your armor type.
Initially, you will face bots, and their entire team formation will be visible, but as you climb up the ranks you will begin to face real players. If your rank is high enough, the composition of their team slowly becomes hidden, eventually getting to a point where you can only see their first striker slot and their Specials.
It is highly recommended to bring at least 1 tank. While there is some level of experimentation you can do in PvP, your best option is to copy what works.
If you're struggling to find an optimal PvP team, ask /bag/ (and show them your roster).

You can skip the battle after 1 minute. In JP you can skip the battle altogether.

Shop

The place where you buy stuff and rub Sora's forehead.

Normal shop

Buy out the last artifacts in the normal shop at the bottom every day (the "blue" artifacts). Consider buying the cheaper "gray" artifacts if you're low on them - which you will be initially - but keep in mind that that tier of artifact is obtainable from regular normal missions.
Ignore the tickets, because they're not worth your gems; and get the enhancement stones only if you need them.
Buying the reports is a waste of credits.

Eligma Shops

Every 20 purchases, these go up in cost by 1, so 20 for 1, 20 for 2, 20 for 3, 20 for 4, and then the rest for 5. The cost will not ever go down, if you get it to 5, it will stay there.
Don't use your Eligma for farmable characters if you can, they're quite literally farmable.
Ignore Eligma Shop 2. While the stuff in it may seem enticing, Eligma is often a very scarce resource. (If you didn't know or forgot, you get these from raids, from certain special shops, and from events, but mostly you will likely be getting them from the gacha)

Raid shop

You buy out Maki and Azusa shards, you get Kotama to 3*, and after that you're free to do whatever.
As a note, with regular coins buying out all of a character's eleph will cost you 500 coins. For elite (purple) coins, it costs 250, and you will also receive less Eleph by comparison.
Repeat: Don't get the secret tech note until you actually need it. You use it to bring your regular skills from 9 -> 10, which won't be a bottleneck for quite some time.

PvP shop

In general you want to save up your coins so you get to buy out the Energy Drinks during events. The Shop can be refreshed 3 times a day for 10 PvP coins each time, this allows you to spend 210 PvP coins a day buying out energy drinks.
Don't buy the reports or credits, they're not worth it in the slightest.
Only buy out the Elephs if you like the student.

Joint Firing Drill/Joint Exercise shop

A lot of the stuff in this shop is obtainable elsewhere. The fusion stones are not. If you're just starting out, buying artifacts or reports may be a good idea, but you can also get those in several other places. Eventually, for sure, you will want the blue, yellow, and purple fusion crystals. These will eventually save your ass, as a way of burning items of which you have an overabundance for more useful ones.

The shards are decent. Eimi is a solid tank, and Sumire and Tsurugi (JP only) are both yellow aoe dps frontliners. Unfortunately, there are better alternatives to Eimi, and the only place Sumire and Tsurugi shine in is in (indoors) Chesed as a 2nd or 3rd option.

Expert Permit Shop

This shop is mainly geared towards endgame players, although new players can obtain a small amount of currency for it through their dailies.
(After you hit MAX level, 1 AP = 1 Mastery Cert)
According to this, the priority is:
Credits > Limited Elephs (that you need) > Pins > Eligma > Reports
However it does not matter too much. Eventually, you'll have more tickets than you'll be able to use. At that point, you can really just buy what you'd like.

Can I redeem limited units if I buy their elephs?

You can't.

Crafting Chamber

Feel free to use the speedup tickets, you'll have a billion of them lying around.
There has never been a 2x event on the crafting chamber, so there's no point in saving your crafting materials up.

Material Synthesis (the normal one)

For your purposes, get enough furniture to max out your cafe's comfort. After that, just farm gifts basically. "Advanced" stuff frequently gives gifts if you don't have a gift node. Your primary way of getting furniture and gifts is here. Mostly, what you can get out of regular crafting is garbage.

Eventually this feature will be expanded a bit more in global, but it's mainly useful for late game where you have a lot of items to burn.

Material Fusion (the new one)

This allows you to recycle your garbage items into things you actually want.
Do not buy the raffle ticket, the choice ticket is the one you want. Raffle tickets are just another gacha within a gacha, if you prefer to buy them seek help.

You can dump the materials that you have excess of or ones you find useless into materials that you actually need.
You can trade your useless furniture away for a better one, which is pretty neat. If it's worth the purple fusion stone is for you to decide.

Events

(the story ones, not 2x ones)

Current event in global: N/A
Current event in JP: N/A

Important Stuff to Know

The highest even\t currency bonus will be saved, so if you 1* a quest stage with the max currency bonus then 3* it with a different team, you can sweep the stage and and benefit from that bonus. This also works vice versa (first 3*, then 1* with max bonus).

How do I get the welfare student?

You unlock the welfare/free unit by doing the first story mission.

I'm a newfag and there's an event going on, but I can only clear up to stage X. What do I do?

Do the story and farm the highest stage tier you can do, buy out the high priority stuff from the shop, buy from T4 -> T1. Or just buy whatever you need at that time.
What you're supposed to do is a case by case scenario though, since some events are pretty shit to farm or you might be close to getting a cafe upgrade. You can always ask in the thread.

Hoarding before an event

Generally only do this for 3x campaigns, if the week before it is dead, or if it's a really good farming event.

You can save up some extra AP right before an event to splurge on the event. This way every AP you spend is worth several times its normal value, vastly outweighing the small loss you take from missing out on daily regen AP (if you are saving for several days). Basically, when you reach 999 new AP just goes to your mailbox for a little while.

If you want a specific guide, use:

Bounties: if and only if (I.F.F) you buy the monthlies, you can save those extra tickets by not doing your bounties for a fat bonus during rate ups. Be aware that your free daily tickets will go to waste, but the bonus you get outweighs the 2 tickets you lose out on.

Misc. stuff

You can rub people's heads after you unlock their L2Ds. This also counts for NPCs (e.g. Arona, Sora, Rin)
Yes. You really can.

XP

1 AP = 1 XP. Your level is tied to how much AP you spend, so there's no real way to level up faster.
You can 3x refresh your AP for 90 gems a day, which is kind of good. Whether it's worth it is for you to decide. Every time you level up, you receive your new max amount of AP on top of however much you already had. If you even reach AP limit (999), again, extra AP will go to your mailbox.

Lessons

For the Schale areas: at rank 10 you unlock receiving choice tickets on top of the regular drops when you're doing your lessons. Pretty neat
The max rank for an area is 12. At 12 the drop rate altogether improves (and is still shit).
Increasing your Total Area Rank also unlocks extra daily lesson tickets, in case you didn't realise. There's a 7th ticket you can unlock at rank 80. As there are only 7 areas including red winter, and 80/7 = 11 + 3/7, consider leveling up everything evenly. After all, it costs less tickets to level up low-level locations.

Scrimmages

The place you get mats to upgrade your Exclusive Weapon (EW)/Unique Equipment (UE).
Not really worth farming until you can clear C. If you want to max out a few students before that it's fine to farm B.
Feel free to skip until Global gets the QoL that makes this no longer cost stamina.

Normal Missions

Just do it, don't worry about it. What do you need? Sweep for that. You can quickly jump to what you need from a student's stat page by clicking on what you need more of. There IS something to keep in mind where you get certain lower tier EQ on certain higher levels but... don't worry about it. With the Mastery Shop, this matters a whole hell of a lot less (you can freely pick T1-T4 EQ, and eventually T5. In Global, highest eq level is T6, in JP it's T7)

FAQ

I'm AP capped! What do I spend it on?

You spend it on whatever campaign is currently running (the pink banner). If it's a dead week (e.g. only 2x scrimmages) it's:
Hard missions > Normal missions > Commissions.
Reminder that Commissions are only worth it during campaign events, and only if you can farm the higher levels (level H+).

I don't have any credits/reports what do I do!

You pretend nothing's wrong and do the same what you're already doing.
You can get pink reports in the Joint Exercise Shop, and you can get reports AND credits from the Mastery Certificate Shop.
There's also technically the reports you can buy in the normal shop in JP for credits, but they're a big waste.

Is it too late to play?

No.

I just missed the X banner, will she get a rerun?

Students attached to a story event seem to get a yearly rerun, including limited units. Otherwise the chance is pretty slim.
See https://bluearchive.wiki/wiki/Banner_List for future banners.
Whether someone like Miku, who is a collab unit, gets a rerun is still unknown.

Should I redeem X?

It's up to you.
It's more efficient waiting for a spook (non banner girl appearing through the gacha), because a dupe (copy of an already owned unit) only gives you 30 shards if it's a 3*. This effectively means you lose out on 90 shards by redeeming.
However, if there's a raid/content you want to clear and you need that girl it's fine to redeem.
If you think she's cute then redeem.

Nonomi is the one exception to this, as she's only available through the New Teacher Guide Mission. You cannot get her through the gacha.
She is a threat to your virginity and pelvis though, so redeem at own risk.

Should I join a (/bag/) club?

Yes. It's 10 AP daily, an extra source of credits, and it lets you borrow hyper invested students for Total Assault and Joint Exercise.
See https://rentry.org/holdingthebag for /bag/ clubs.

No one cares if you don't use the chat.

I can't beat X what do I do?

Go on youtube and look at a video, or ask /bag/. You'll find that is the answer to a lot of problems in life.

What is UE?

Unique Equipment, or Exclusive weapon in Global.
It's the gun.

Can I brick myself leveling up a student (e.g. Priconne)? (the long answer)

No mate, we already told you.

Afternote

If you have any comments, contributions, and/or feedback go to the /bag/ thread and quote the OP with your reply.