/psg/'s Project Sekai FAQ (v1.6)

LAST UPDATED: January 19th, 2024
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This is a collection of some of the more common questions you might have about early-game, progression and the general gameplay loop.
You might want to consider reading the guide at https://kohanenoainnai.tumblr.com/ as well, especially for JP players in case you need any of the UI elements translated.

If the guide hasn't been updated in a while, don't mistake it for outdated -- it just means there's not really a lot of new mechanics that need to be covered.
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This FAQ is divided into sections.
[1] STARTING THE GAME
[2] PROGRESSION
[3] ABOUT EVENTS

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[1] STARTING THE GAME
For any questions you might have at the start.
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>What's the difference between EN and JP?
JP has the latest QoL. Features like friend lists, FAST / SLOW indicators, enhanced pity systems and so on are added to JP several months ahead of EN / TW / KR / etc.; obviously it also has newer songs and cards, which are a pretty big draw.
Since Vocaloid's still highly popular in JP, it's also the most active version of the game, and you won't have much luck trying to doompost it.
While JP's the main focus of this general, EN's also welcome here, but it would be polite not to talk about whatever drama they have cooking on any given day.
EN is, obviously, gaijin-readable.
It's a year behind in terms of songs and events, but this also means you'll be able to use foresight into JP's schedule, especially to get cards if you've missed them on JP.
There are also some exclusives it gets before JP, like the Anamanaguchi / Miku Expo songs.

>When's daily reset? When do gachas and events usually start?
Daily reset is 04:00 AM in all versions.
In JP, this is 4 AM JST, and in EN, this is PST / PDT (and changes with Daylight Savings as long as it still exists).
And so on for KR and TW's respective timezones.
New gachas go live at 12:00 PM (noon), and events go live at 03:00 PM.

>How casual/hardcore is this game?
This is a bit of a silly question to ask, but it's as casual as you want it to be.
You won't really be punished that much for not logging into the game every day (aside from Challenge Live's weekly stamp system) like some other mobages very much like to do.
On one hand, there's five difficulty levels for each song so that you can start off easy if you're new to rhythm games, and you can get a decent amount of rewards from events by just autoing your songs.
On the other hand, properly tiering, especially in JP, is pretty difficult competition, and some of the difficult songs Project Sekai can offer are easily as hard as the hardest levels of other serious rhythm games, making it a good way to sharpen your rhythm game skills if you're not afraid of a challenge.

>Which unit do I pick at the start?
It literally doesn't matter.
It's only so you can watch an intro and get given a starting team of 1* cards, but since you can watch the other units' intros later as well and get their cards, the one you pick as part of the tutorial doesn't matter at all.

>Is there a meta? Should I reroll for anyone specific?
Not really. Reroll for your favorites and their 4*s, I'm not kidding.
Card skills only mostly matter for points-per-hour autism when you're tiering for long stretches of time.
By the time you're comfortable enough with the game to do that, you'll probably have quite a few of the good skills (perfect scorers or normal scorers; i.e., 100% up for x seconds, or 110% up to PERFECT notes for x seconds).

>What should I save for?
Your favorite characters' 4* cards, obviously.
For EN players, you can check https://sekai.best/event to get a rough idea of what future 4* cards your oshi has.
Limiteds come with hairstyles; there is typically a limited banner occurring once per month. In all servers, this is the end-of-month event.
If you just want 4*s to buff up your team without particularly caring who, ColorFes gacha events which double up the 4* rate to 6% occur roughly every three months, and apart from the first ever ColorFes, they come with their own limiteds.
Limiteds aren't necessarily on 6% banners, so BE CAREFUL.
You can find a list of them here: https://www.sekaipedia.org/wiki/Category:Limited_cards

>How many rolls to spark (hit pity)? Does pity carry over?
300. That's 90k crystals.
Pity doesn't carry over by default, but you can exchange for gacha tickets at a rate of 10 rolls to 1 tickets; up to 10 per event. These tickets can be carried over to future banners, so you can use up to 10 of these seals to get up to a 100-roll discount on future sparks.
NOTE: There are two types of gacha tickets -- green (permanent), and pink (limited). You can only use green tickets on permanent banners, and pink tickets on limited banners.
You can also directly exchange 30 green tickets for a 4* non-limited card, one year after its initial release.

>How do I grind crystals to roll with? How much can I get per month F2P?
Increase character ranks, do challenge lives (shows if you're a gaijin), read stories and conversations, and ATTEND VIRTUAL LIVES.
Once the initial rush of farmable stuff slows down, you can expect around 6k crystals a month.

>I'm playing JP, why am I getting an error while joining Virtual Lives?
The Welcome Live shows require you to set your device's timezone to JST well in advance of joining.
It's a commonly encountered problem.
For Connect Lives (the long, paid ones), you need a VPN to get in and watch.
For any other errors, blame Kondo for using the money to buy another yacht instead of fixing his shit servers.

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[2] PROGRESSION
About things you do once you're a bit settled in.
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>How do I make my teams stronger?
Firstly, it's worth mentioning that score rank doesn't matter for anything other than first-time crystal rewards, Challenge Lives, or unlocking Veteran rooms.
That being said, level up your area items.
Unlock and read card stories, and increase your characters' Mastery Ranks.
There are attribute-boosting plants in the Kamiyama and Miyamasuzuka school areas which need seeds to level up.
The items in the SEKAIs will boost specific characters' stats.
Notice that teams will get a further bonus if the characters are all from the same group, or have the same attribute, or both.

>How do I get more music cards? What about stamps from past event lives?
Go to the Story Archive and read (or skip) all the past event stories.
In JP, reading all of them provides enough music cards to buy out every song in the shop.
Once you've read every part of an event's story, you can also enter the event's associated Virtual Live from the bottom left of the chapter select screen to get the associated event character stamp.
(You don't need to watch it in its entirety -- you can just quit the moment the initial countdown timer expires and the live show has "started".)

>How do I git gud?
Practice, practice, practice.
If you need to, record your play sessions, and pinpoint the exact notes you're missing on.
Apart from the Master 37 songs and APPEND difficulty, all songs are designed to be playable with two fingers, so whether you're a thumbs or index player is almost purely a matter of preference / dexterity.
(Some APPENDs, like Happy Halloween, are even almost entirely playable with two fingers.)
Yes, Project Sekai IS in fact unusually hard for a mobile rhythm game with anime .PNGs, and has a skill cap more comparable to pure rhythm games like Arcaea, Lanota, Dynamix, or Phigros.
Mess with the settings, as almost everything can be changed to your liking.
Most people generally find success at around 9 - 11 note speed, because that's the speed at which Expert or Master will look readable enough without looking too dense, but there's nothing saying you can't succeed on lower speeds.

It's also recommended that you study images from chart viewers, which allow you to analyze charts without having to play them.
Some examples:
(https://sekai.best/music) - From the Difficulty section of a song's data, load the SVG or PNG link.
(https://sdvx.in/prsk.html) - Note that the song names are in the original JP. An option to toggle mirror mode is also available.

Note timing / offset will vary between devices, and you'll have to find the one that works for you. It can't hurt to check if this is calibrated correctly every now and then — there are a lot of reasons why the ideal timing can change for your phone. (In particular, headphones or earbuds, especially wireless ones, have a major effect on audio delay.) If you want to manually adjust offset without relying on the in-game calibration test:

- If you're getting too many FASTs, increase your offset (+).
- If you're getting too many SLOWs, decrease your offset (-).

>What's the difference between the normal and the veteran room in multi?
Veteran room matches you with players with roughly the same team strength as you, ensuring more consistent event point gain. The higher, the better, although too high (whale-level, like 340k+) and the game may actually struggle to find people to match you with. Pubs still suck at songs just as much as they do in the normal room. Don't be embarrassed to pick lower difficulties if you have to.
The important drops (seeds, rainbow gems, cloth, threads) are largely the same, although you do get more of the normal attribute gems in vet. (This doesn't matter - you'll be drowning in this stuff within about a month.)

>How do I get SF (Super Fever)?
Everyone has to FC (no combo breaks, including GOODs) the entire Fever Chance segment.
Yes, pubs suck at this.
No, it doesn't increase your score any more than normal Fever does, but it gets you an extra drop at the end of the song -- and JP has already moved all the valuable rewards that used to be in the SF drop to the normal drop list, leaving only coins, so don't worry about it.
Due to multiplayer delay, there's also occasions where it'll say you only got FEVER (or no fever at all), but still get the SF drop at the end.

>What do I do with Wish Jewels / chords?
The note-shaped pieces should be used for increasing 4* Mastery Rank and Skill Levels.
4* cards with costumes will unlock alternate colors for these costumes, which also count towards character rank missions.
Increasing Mastery Rank to 2 for 4* limited cards will also unlock an alternate hairstyle.
They're fairly valuable and you should try to be conservative with them.

>Best ways to increase character rank?

- Unlock and read (or skip) the stories attached to cards.
- Play songs with them as your leader (first / leftmost card) on the team.
- Keep making costumes for characters.
- Keep increasing their Challenge Live / Show levels.
- Increase their Mastery Ranks (3rd tab of the Training menu).
- Increase their Skill Levels (4th tab of the Training menu).
- Upgrade their area items.
- Buy alternate vocals in which they're the singer.

Be advised that the cost to increase Mastery Rank and Skill Levels for 4* cards is prohibitively expensive compared to the other rarities. It's highly recommended that you only save those rare materials for your favorite characters' cards, but you can afford to spare Wish Pieces (kakera in JP) for the 1* and 2* cards very liberally for easy ranks. This is part of what makes 2* cards from events highly valuable, as they're an easy source of Character Rank mission clears.

At first, you should probably be a bit more conservative with how you use Wish Pieces on 3* cards, until you can get more of them as byproducts of rolling the gacha later on.

It can take a while to amass cloth and thread for costumes, so focus on making them for your favorite characters as much as you can, especially if you care about feather titles.

>What are the best songs for Challenge Live?
Challenge Live rewards are purely score-based, and the usual multiplier based on song length doesn't apply.
Therefore, to get the most rewards (from both the milestones and event points), play short songs!

As usual, Hitorinbo Envy is a solid pick, and most people will probably play it on Expert if they're not consistent enough for some of the more difficult (but better-scoring) options.
Harder possibilities that score better include Aku no Musume / Daughter of Evil, Bless Your Breath, Cendrillon, and Jackpot Sad Girl -- however, you'll probably want to have good accuracy (lower than 10 GREATs) on their Master charts to consider doing these.

>What's a "feather/flower title" and how do I get it?
Feather titles are the character fan titles decorated with wreaths, awarded starting from Character Rank 30 and earning more notches every 5 ranks. Flower titles are the same, decorated with flowers, but from Rank 80 (and are more or less reserved for the biggest whales).
They represent a fairly significant amount of investment into your favorite characters, and will take quite a bit of time to get.
It's entirely possible to be gated out of these titles simply because there's not enough cards or costumes for them yet.

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[3] ABOUT PLAYING EVENTS
How to play Sekai's weekly content loop.
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>What does an event team generally look like?
Cards that match the boosted characters and the boosted attribute.
There's a lot of value in raising your 2* and 3* cards, as they'll give you way more event points than a 4* with no event point bonus whatsoever.
This is another reason why it's important to snag the free cards from event point shops, as some of them will get really good event bonuses for future events and have no real equivalent card in the gacha you can simply roll for if you don't have them.
World Link event teambuilding is slightly different and will be covered in its own question.

>How many boosts should I use during events? Anything else I should remember to do?
3× is the most time-efficient option before gains start to diminish, especially if you're not refilling boosts with crystals.
If you're short on time and just want to dump your daily boosts on a tight schedule, 5× works.
If you're tiering high (about 5k or higher in JP, or 500 or higher on EN), you might want to consider 5× for extended periods of time.

If you're tiering EXTREMELY high (about 500 or higher in JP, or 50 or higher in EN), people will go as high as 7~10× depending on how much or how little time they have. It's extremely rare for someone to tier at those levels using boosts at 3~5×, but it's not implausible for slower, less popular events.

Don't forget to read all the stories on the event page AND attend the corresponding Virtual Live before the event ends!
If you read / watch them from the Event Story archive later on, you'll miss out on the crystals given out for these stories and lives (although you'll still be able to get the song cards and stamps).

>Then which events are "harder" to tier?
Niigo (a.k.a. 25ji / N25 / Nightcord at 25:00) generally has the most difficult events to tier, regardless of who's the focus character of the event.
Vivid BAD SQUAD and Wonderlands × Showtime events can go quite high, especially if the focus character is a dude.
Leo/need and MORE MORE JUMP! events tend to be the easiest.

>What are the "meta" songs for tiering?
Hitorinbo Envy.
Hitorinbo is the shortest song in the game, by at least ten seconds. Viva Happy is slightly longer but offers more event points per boost.
If you want the most efficient song for event points per boost:

- In EN, Melt is the longest song in the game.
- In JP, the longest songs in the game are メルト (Melt) and 初音天地開闢神話 (Hatsune Creation Myth). However, the songs considered most efficient in points-per-boost are:
- Sage, on Expert
- ロストエンファウンド (Lost and Found), on Hard/Expert
No one picks Melt and HCM for tiering purposes, unless you can't play and want to auto away your boosts.

>How do I build teams for World Link events?
You'll want cards of all five attributes (Cool / Pure / Cute / Happy / Mysterious) in your main team.
You will want to match the unit's four characters -- then, your fifth character can be a flexible spot / wildcard, as Virtual Singers with the matching sub-unit don't actually provide better event bonus. (They'll still be useful for the all-unit team power bonus you get from area items, but nothing else.)
Then, fill your support teams up with cards from the World Link's unit -- the higher the rarity and the more Mastery Ranks, the better.
Otherwise, it's the same as a normal marathon event.

>Is it possible to clear out the event shop?
If you're not refilling boosts, nope.
Even vets won't be able to clear out the entire shop without refills or whale-tier event bonuses, but once you play for long enough, the gems for specific attributes won't be an issue anyway, so prioritize the following:

- Crystals
- Event 2* and 3* cards (these are EXTREMELY useful for future events' event point bonuses)
- Boost cans
- Skill books
- EXP sheets
- Kakera (i.e., the pieces you get for burning cards)
- Seeds
- Wish drops (used to uncap area items from 10 -> 11)
- The character-specific jars from World Link (we don't know what they do yet, but don't get caught out if they end up being important)
- Alt vocal exchange cards
- Coins (you can and will run out of these)
- The 300 cloths, if you care about character rank, as they're used to make outfits
- Rainbow gems
- Music cards

>What the hell is wrong with Cheerful Carnival and why do I keep disconnecting?
On top of errors that are the game's fault, people will disconnect if they don't like the song, if their mom calls them for dinner, if their connection is hooked up to a potato in an Amazonian jungle, or for literally any other reason imaginable. Since everyone has to put up with this every month, you'll just have to keep queueing until it works.

>Does /psg/ play together? Any courtesies to keep in mind?
Yes, /psg/ organizes rooms all the time.
Just ask if anyone wants to play and specify what game region you're on. During Cheerful Carnival, specify which team you're on.
Any skill level is welcome, so don't be intimidated by anons picking Master (almost) every song!
Also be aware that it's pretty much tradition to play Tenshi no Clover at least once every room, usually near or at the end.

Some helpful stamps for multiplayer communication (even outside of /psg/ rooms):

[Minori] もう1回！
One more time!
[Kohane] 待って～！
Wait for meeee~!
- In private rooms, this usually means you'll leave the room (to change something, like your team setup) and are promising to come back very quickly.

[Saki] おつかれさま！
Good work!
[Various] ありがとう!
Thank you!
[Various] またね！
Until next time!
[Mizuki] じゃあね～♪
See ya~♪
- Stamps of these sorts are generally posted at the end of rooms. You might see equivalent stamps if the player prefers a specific character, like Akito's サンキュー (sankyuu) or Miku's 39 (san-kyuu) stamp. In particular, Saki's stamp is what JP players in Twitter rooms seem to use the most to close out a point grinding session.

[Airi] 信じて待ちましょ！
Let's hope for the best!
- Generally used by players who are still waiting for more people to come to a room, asking those already inside to wait a bit longer.

[Kohane] いいんですか？
Is it alright?
[Shizuku] よかったわ
Thank goodness...
[Miku] ミュージックスタート！
Start the music!
- There's no exact stamp for this behavior, but it's common for /psg/ rooms to start with fewer than five people and have someone try to join halfway through a room. In this case, the host will usually wait at the result screen (which prevents people from joining publicly) and use the Kohane stamp to ask the other players if the new player has joined. If they have, the other players will generally reply with a variety of stamps to signal that it's okay to start.

[Text stamp] ライブボーナスがない…
I'm out of live boosts...
[Text stamp] ライブボーナスあげるね！
I'll gift you live boosts!
- In Cheerful Carnival events, these text stamps are used by players in public lobbies to "exchange" the 3 free 3x boosts you can get everyday (although most people only have enough time to use the first stamp). It's also common to see players who write the number of boosts they can still trade with others. You'll see names like [name]@ライブボーナス 3 (@ = shorthand for あと (remaining); ライブボーナス = live bonus, often shortened to just ライブ, ライボ, or even just @1-3).

Besides those, feel free to react liberally to whatever happens in-game! /psg/ anons love to spam stamps.