SINoALICE Starter Guide

SINoALICE Starter Guide

Re-rolling:
After downloading the game and starting it up for the first time, you will make a roll. The weapon pool for this roll is very limited so do not fret about getting the “best” roll (I would consider a good roll two SS weapons or nightmares with one being a job).
If you got a roll you do not like, then delete the app cache and try again. If you get a roll you like, then continue on and input your screen name to sign the contract. You can change your screen name later but it costs gems.
[Edit: April 29th 2020] Pokelabo mentioned a skip feature, this will likely make re-rolling faster, but if I understand it correctly you'll just be skipping to the pull and avoiding the dolls talking.

Gems (premium currency):
Whatever these end up being called, besides paying for them you can get them from clearing story paragraphs, events, and raids. They are also achievement rewards for playing the game and hitting certain milestones. One x10 roll costs 300 gems.


Gameplay:
Once you’ve picked your starter character (anyone, it doesn't matter you get the rest in the story) done the little tutorial of game mechanics, (game will guide you on this) I recommend clearing Chapter One Paragraph One (first mission of each character) for every character (first mission of each character) to unlock them if you’re serious about continuing. You will have infinite “purification” (ghost killing mini-game to get AP) until you hit a certain rank (probably rank 20), and after that rank there is an 8 hour cooldown between free ones. The key to the mini-game is getting chains by hitting same colors while dragging (not tapping) across ghosts. There are tickets you can get for in between those cooldowns but they cost gems or patience from doing daily achievements.
Missions are straight forward, you have whatever grid you setup prior (just like the tutorial), using weapons costs SP, you have pool of 200 SP which replenishes 10 SP every couple seconds, and you have a time limit to complete the mission. Just kill all the enemies and remember your element triangle for now.
After getting all the free jobs, try rolling some more.

Rolling:
There is two rolling options x1 rolls and x10 rolls. With the x10 rolls you’re guaranteed at least one rare book which can mean an S weapon or SS weapon or nightmare.
“What banner should I roll?”
ALL OF THEM. You want every character and every job for every character because they all give common stats when you build a set for colosseum or story missions. Job stats are small but added up, which is why you want them all. To get jobs you have to roll the gacha and get the appropriate weapon. Not all weapons have jobs and not all jobs have weapons (jobs that don’t have weapons are outside of the gacha pools). If you don’t get your desired job in 15 x10 rolls then the 1500 “desire” medals you collected can then be used to exchange for that job or job weapon (one or the other, not both).
If you’re free to play or even if you don’t want to spend a lot of money, you will have to decide what you want to roll based on waifu, stats, or skills. You may want to skip some banners if it’s a character you don’t care for and has no weapons useful to your role on rate up.
[11/19 edit]:
There are some special banners referred to as "step-ups" and "guaranteed SS". These banners have different costs, with guaranteed SS banners costing 500 gems for one x10 roll (no x1 roll option). To offset the higher gem cost, guaranteed SS banners usually give potions and cleaning tickets. Step-ups are designed to play on the "sunk cost" fallacy, because the initial rolls are half rolls (150 gems for x5) with a guaranteed rare book (S+). Later rolls have different rates for SS (6% or 9% for SS instead of usual 3%) but are full rolls (300 gems for x10 rolls). Be sure to read about banners before you roll!
[Edit: April 29th 2020] The current state of the JP server has x11 rolls instead of x10 as a way of celebrating the 2nd anniversary. Pokelabo could be generous and release this at release but I would guess they would do this at the one year anniversary of global.

Colosseum:
Also known as PVP, guild vs guild (GVG), colo, this is the mainstay of the game. Timeslots may vary, but every day for 20 (or 30) minutes you join your guild-mates in a competition against another guild where you try to build us as many points ("inochi") as possible. To join a guild you need to reach rank 10 and complete chapter 2 of one character’s story (basically have played the game for more than one hour).
Guild compositions: there’s the front-liners (“vanguard”) that deal the damage, you’ll want five damage classes up front with high HP and stats. The remaining 10 of your guild are back-liners (“support”) they heal/buff/debuff. To have a good balance you’ll want 3 healers (staffs), 3 buffers (instruments), and 3 debuffers (books) with the last slot being what your guild wants more of (typically buff/debuff).

Colosseum Mechanics:
Colosseum works basically the same as story, but instead of just working to clear you fight until the time limit is reached and have 400 SP instead of 200 SP. To win you want the highest score and to build up points you damage your opponents. There are also special timed sections where you will want to use certain weapons. In the JP version they are referred to as “shinma,” but the name may change. Shinmas occur twice during the colo time period and are what make the meta in colo because they are displayed to players before the match and give huge bonuses to the selected weapon types in the match for winning shinma.
To win a shinma it is basically just a race to use more of the select weapons before your opposing guild. Shinmas are always one support weapon, one area-of-effect (AOE) damage weapon and one single-target (ST) damage weapon. The damage weapons are always of opposing types so if the AOE is hammer class then the ST weapon will be bow/guns. Although orbs (foci) are considered support, they have not been featured in Colo outside of a special week where it was announced prior that they would be included. In this special colo orbs were featured instead of one of the damage type weapons.  If you want to win colo, then you generally need to try to win both shinma.
Successfully downing all of the opposing guild vanguard gets you to their guild ship. You have about 40 seconds to completely empty the ship HP and steal a large portion of points away from your opponents. Again, to win the match you must have the most points at the end of the time limit.

Roles:
Once you find a guild you need to determine your role or perhaps find a guild after you determine your role. Vanguards typically specialize physical (hammers/swords) or magical (spears/bows) and require high stats and HP. Vanguards could also specialize in AOE weapons or ST, but this is a more advanced topic since most people will be learning during their first few Colosseum matches. Damage is generated by the appropriate ATK stats (magic attack (matk) for spears and bows, and vice versa), but vanguard’s need high DEF and HP to stand up against your opposing guild’s onslaught. Clerics healing is determined by DEF stats, so you need to maximize two stats: physical defense (pdef) and magical defense (mdef). Minstrels and sorcerers create their buffs and debuffs based on the stat they are affecting so they need all stats like vanguard but don't need HP.
How to determine your role:
You can either let gacha decide for you or you can pick a role. There are some welfare weapons in the “charm” (silver) and “friend” (light green) medal shops to help you out in the beginning. Once you have a role make sure you try to get the appropriate stats as well as good weapons (look at banners before you roll).

Weapon Tiers:
There are simply too many weapons and aspects to weapons to develop a tier list.
Weapon skills have five strength tiers, the higher the tier generally means the stronger the skill. There are some exceptions to this, so make sure to read weapon skills. Weapons also have equip cost and SP cost. The higher the equip cost is the most stats the weapon have. You have an equip load when you build a grid so keep that in mind when you select higher equip cost weapons. SP cost is related to skill tier and number of targets (higher tier, more targets cost the most SP).  I’ll have more information on weapon appraisal in an advanced topics guide, this guide is meant to get you through to Chapter Four of the story and your first Colosseum match up.

Account upkeep:
Weapons, armor, and nightmares can be strengthened for more stats with exp fodder or other items of the same type and then evolved at the level cap. Weapons and nightmares can be limit broken up to four times using the same weapon (even at a lower evolution step). Weapon skills can also be strengthened using skill exp fodder or other weapons. You want to get your best weapons to maximum evolution and level, but don't need to do it immediately. Try to keep all your good weapons about the same level until you evolve weapons. After evolving weapons they will keep their skill level but start back over at level one. Typically you'll want to mix your beginning grids with base S and SS weapons with the goal being a full L weapon grid. All base A weapons evolve to S, all base S evolve to SS, and all base SS evolve to L, however there are some base A weapons that can evolve to SS. These base A weapons can be useful for boosting stats early on. Note that some nightmares do not evolve.
Jobs also require exp to upgrade and get the stats. You should level up jobs evenly because it costs more exp the higher you go (just like other items). To get job exp you have to use weapons in story missions. The more weapons you use the more job exp you get. There are also books that will be in your inventory (butterfly) that you have to open to get job exp. Jobs can be limit broken as well with arcana. Arcana have to be bought from the “desire” (numbered gold medals) medal shop for gacha jobs. Other jobs will have other means to get their arcana. You should note that desire medals expire after a month is over, so you could roll really hard the first banner if there was a good weapon, and a later banner doesn't have anything good except the job stats you could just use medals and buy the job and skip hoping to get it in a roll.
EXP and Evolution (Evo) Material and Money Dungeons[7/26 edit]
There are EXP dungeons for Weapons and Armor daily at certain times for 30 minutes (Usually before Colosseum time slots).  Be sure to learn the times and manage your AP so you can run these and get EXP! The Evolution Material dungeons are on a weekly schedule, so they are available all day but only certain ones each day. There is also a dungeon for in game gold (the other currency) which is used for upgrading weapons, armor, and nightmares. There are three tiers of missions, and the third tier grants the most EXP/Materials/Gold per AP used. If you're struggling with these be sure to use the character that gets the bonus (like story). Unless things change the character bonuses are as follows:
Gretel-Armor EXP
Red Riding Hood-Weapon EXP
Alice-Wind Mats
Cindy-Fire Mats
Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)-Water Mats
Pino-Armor Mats
Snow-Gold
[11/19 edit]
Evo Material dungeons have changed to include calendar clears with the drops. However, this change also removed character bonus. Calendar clears are just shorthand for clears that are kept track of, and these dungeons have calendars of 10 clears for each stage with the exception of armor. Due to the introduction of L armor, Extra stages (EX) were added to the armor material dungeons which have calendars of 40 clears. Calendars reset monthly. I wouldn't expect this to be in global initially though.

Please don't forget to sell your gold bags. They take up inventory space.
[Edit: April 29th 2020]
JP reintroduced character bonus for all weekly dungeons short after the new year. Additionally, global may include the quality of life change of auto-selling gold bags that are sent to your present box. You will still have to sell gold bags that were sent to your inventory.


Basic Grid building:
Don't be afraid to auto fill the grid at first, but after a while you may want to build your own grid. Here are some steps to follow:
1. Put as many weapons on your grid that match your class as possible with as high as rarity. This is is how you get stats, and stats get you more damage/buffs/debuffs/heals.
2. Put as many weapons on your sub-grid as possible. Type does not matter, so auto-fill is best here.
3. For damage classes, build grids to be elemental balanced (especially for Armor material dungeon) to be able to deal with a variety of enemies until you know the mission you are working on doesn't need a certain element (Book 2 of the story and beyond is mono-elemental enemies for the most part).
4. Colosseum will require you to pick from your made sets. The goals of a Colo set are different than PVE sets, however step one and two still mostly apply. Elements are a different topic and require coordination with your guild.

Closing Notes:
Be sure to complete the Start-Dash Campaign achievements for important resources and the beginner checklist for Mage Alice (and other rewards). Mage Alice probably won't be at the launch of global, but her checklist is beginner oriented when it does release. Once colo is unlocked, be sure you try to participate every day to finish off daily achievements and get nightmare exp.