SINoALICE Advanced Topics

SINoALICE Advanced Topics Guide

Gamplay:
You can target enemies to hit with your weapons, for support classes you can target allies. Ally targets have a greenish reticle, enemies have a redish reticle. Once an enemy is targeted you can tap instead of using a weapon. Tapping is a good way to stall or build up combo, though combo in story isn’t as helpful as in colosseum.
Each enemy in the story mode also belongs to a family of enemies, there are sixteen enemy families. Events with collaborations will have their own new types of families. You can learn to exploit enemy types by using armor. The first armor available is in the charm medal shop and story. Each armor piece will up a certain weapon type and element, i.e. fire swords. The increase is linear with each skill level invested in that armor piece. Wearing four armor pieces of the same set with net you a set bonus (30-50% bonus) against certain enemy families. The story armor available is a Lolita style dress that ups fire skills for instruments (head piece), spears (gloves), hammer (body), swords (shoes). The set bonus is for beast type enemies. For wind beast type enemies you can maximize your damage by using this armor against them. The bonuses also stack, so a skill level one body piece with a set of four pieces will add 40% more damage when using a fire hammer against wind beasts.
Later armor events allow you to get more elemental sets with more set bonuses to tackle more difficult enemies. A primary source of difficult enemies are Chapter 5 bosses of each book and Raids. Be sure to added skill level by throwing excess armor into armor pieces you plan on keeping. There are skill exp fodder for armors but there’s no consistent way of getting them.
[Edit: April 29th 2020]
The story is divided into "Books," "Chapters," and "Paragraphs." Each Book has 5 chapters, and each chapter has 10 paragraphs. Each character gets a five chapter section in the book, with some exceptions. The exceptions being Chapter 5 and crossover chapters. These chapters have no character bonus and only needed to completed once to count for all characters involved. Once chapter 5 is cleared, then Hard Mode unlocks, which is essentially the same as normal mode, but costs more AP and has tougher enemies.
Events typically have 10 normal paragraphs and 10 hard paragraphs. Eventually, all events will have EX stages to facilitate grinding. One noteworthy event is the Prison event, because this event will sporadically span months and culminate in 407 paragraphs of challenges, with the last 7 being repeatable. The paragraphs will be added piece wise, but once you clear the 400 paragraphs (or "floors") you can get the Warden of the Prison, Fear. You want to keep Fear, he's a nice stat-stick nightmare and his skill is somewhat useful.

Raids:
Raids are open for 30 minutes five times a day for an announced period. There are three paragraphs (missions) for normal mode and hard mode. Hard modes get released later. Raids have a character bonus which you should use to get through them as they are designed for certain power tiers. The first raid will be very difficult because no one can be prepared. Raid clears reward gems and a core on the twentieth clear of the 3rd paragraph (N3). Cores are used to evolve the raid nightmare that drop at each stage of normal mode. Raid nightmare are very strong and good to get to add stats and strong nightmare skills to your grid. The Norse serpent Midgardsormr who is a water snake enemy is the first Raid with Snow White getting the character bonus. The clear for N3 gives you the nightmare to summon. The effect of Midgard for summoning is very good because it ups water type weapon effects for the duration of it’s summon. Raids get harder as more are released and eventually get hard modes which introduce a new weapon type (husk/shell).
Be aware that each raid has its quirks, so the approach for one raid doesn’t carry onto the next (except bursting the final wave). For damage classes it is also good to diversify some for PVE even if you only do magic weapons or physical weapons in colo. Some raid bosses are completely immune to magical or physical damage after you break one or two HP bar(s).

Colosseum:
As mentioned earlier combo is more useful in colosseum, and there are rewards tied to combo. Combo increases the damage dealt, so you can have back-liners hit the guild ship to help raise combo faster. Also if the match-up is a sure-loss then backliners can tap the enemy vanguard to also help raise combo instead of buff/debuff so that combo rewards can still be obtained. The damage increase from combo stops at 1000, but early on you shouldn't be worried if your guild can't hit this.
Eventually there will be a colosseum event called “Gran Colosseum” where there will be six days of special colosseum matches that determine a GC ranking before a finals match outside your normally scheduled colo (if you rank high enough). The higher the ranking the higher the rewards, which means more gems and more GC medals. You want GC medals to buy new jobs referred to as “half-nightmare” which are optimized for colosseum. Half-nightmare jobs give a larger bonus to specific weapons be giving a damage reduction for other weapons. The first half-nightmare (hnm) is Alice who specializes in spears, and has a neutral to swords (hey look it is the same weapons for a shinma). Do not use hammers or bows with hnm Alice. You can also buy other weapons but they’re generally a waste of medals considering how many jobs you can expect (one for every character) in the GC medal shop and future weapon releases (infinite weapons).

Grid Building:
Take it with a grain of salt, these are generalities.
PVE
After the one year anniversary in JP a new job type was introduced, Seven Deadly Sin jobs. The Sin jobs should not be confused with hnm jobs because they can also be combined (see hnm Proud Lion Alice) and offer even higher bonuses. The sin jobs are similar to hnm in they offer more damage in one area for a reduction in another. However, sin jobs have more bonus to a single element and weapon pair and reduction to a single element. The hnm go beyond this and have two element reductions, so hnm proud lion alice has a large total bonus for fire swords (all proud lions jobs use swords) bonus and reduction to water and wind weapons. This leads into grid building for PVE.
One weapon type, one element, 20 L weapons is the ideal for a grid.
Raids after the third raid introduced are all mono-elemental so you can start building grids with 20 SS/L weapons with one element. Combine this single element single weapon type grids with armor skills and you get to do large amounts of damage.
[Edit: April 29th 2020] Essentially, you want 20L of every element-weapon combination so that you can use armors for raids effectively and have easier clears. Except foci, because they don't get Sin jobs. Even after three years for JP, orbs are just a meme.

Colosseum
Colosseum is very different PVE in terms of grid build because you now have to consider two skills: active and passive skills. Vanguard will want probably a few weapons with the “Mana Supply” passive (the reduce SP cost skill) and the rest will be “Dauntless Courage” passive (the damage increasing skill). However, if you build a full grid with nothing but Dauntless Courage passive weapons, you will likely do more damage than a grid with mostly DC and a couple MS. For clerics , like damage classes want a few weapons with “Mana Supply”, the rest will be “Recovery Backup” passive (the increase healing skill). Unlike with damage dealers, clerics need more up-time, so a couple MS can be helpful even if you heal less.  Finally minstrels and sorcerers both want most of their weapons with “Support Backup” passive (increase the support weapons effects).
Why do you want so many of these passives? Well they stack, so one attack from a vanguard can get several DC procs and double their damage output. Same goes for heals and buffs/debuffs.
Note that since minstrels and sorcerers both want the same passive this allows them to share weapons. You can use a mixed composition if your off-job weapons all have SB skills to enhance your main job. You would think hnm would eliminate this, but both hnm sorcerers and minstrels only get a 10% bonus over normal jobs in colosseum compared to other hnm which get 20% so it is more of personal preference and guild need to determine how you should build sorcerers and minstrels.
However, you don’t want to forget about colo active skills. You want big damage/heals/buffs/debuffs so you want higher tier skills with multiple targets. Instruments offer tier 3 with 1-2 targets, heals have 1-2 and 2 target at tier 2 and tier 3. Damage classes have tier 4 and tier 3 for single target, and tier 3 for aoe. For buffs/debuffs also consider how many stats are affected.
Damage skills also seem to have be affected by secondary effects. Pure damage skills do the most damage, damage skill with life-steal seem to do slightly less, and skills with debuffs or buffs deal slightly less for the same tier skill.
Future weapons (if the game survives long enough)
At release the game only has RB/DC/SB at tier two, but eventually the third tier will be released. Additionally, the husk/shell weapons from raids have skills which are rare or unique. The husk skills will also be able to be “customized” and introduce more new, unique skills and add more stats using cores from raids. Husk weapons in general are recommended due to the relative ease of maximum limit breaking and their good skills and stats.
[Edit: April 29th 2020]
Skill Tier numbers can be deceiving. Be sure to read skill effects. There are going to be key adjectives to tell you how powerful a skill is. The unofficial translations uses "small," "moderate," "great," "massive," and "colossal" to rank effect power.

Closing notes:
That’s about all there is to know to be successful. The details of how you approach difficult content will be up to you. Try to find a good guild so that you can accomplish goals together. Good luck.