Banners

There are a variety of Summons in The Alchemist Code.

Summon Rarities

Summons have different rarities, and these rarities often impact their abilities or special features. Pulling duplicates of the same unit will result in getting additional fragments of that unit, based on the unit's rarity.

The Alchemist Code has the following rarity tiers:

• TIER 1 - 5★. These units come from red crystals. These are released on new banners with an increased rate of acquisition. Pulling a duplicate of one of these units gives you 25 fragments of that unit.
• TIER 2 - 4★. These units come from yellow crystals. These are released on new banners with an increased rate of acquisition. Pulling a duplicate of one of these units gives you 20 fragments of that unit.
• TIER 3 - 3★. These units come from blue crystals. These are the most common units and will make the bulk of most of your pulls. Most of them are not powerful, but they may have higher stats than higher tier units due to more limit breaks from duplicates. Pulling a duplicate of one of these units gives you 15 fragments of that unit.

Types of Banners

There are many varieties of banners, splitting into 5-types of categories which are, Unit, Gear, Shard, Memento, and Gem Banners.

Unit Banners

This is where you'll be summoning for units in the summoning pool. Unless stated there will not be any limited units in a normal unit pool (To know when a limited is featured check the banner unit, if its a limited unit on the banner then that means that unit is in the summoning pool). A normal 10x summon costs 2500 Gems with the discounted rate being 500 Gems. When you get a duplicate unit, depending on rarity it will become shards, for 5★ Rarity it is, 25 Shards, 4★ is 20 Shards and 3★ is 15 Shards.

The rates for a unit banner are:
5★ Unit - 10%
4★ Unit - 20%
3★ Unit - 70%

Unit Grand Summon

Aside from regular banner there is another type of unit banner called Grand Summon. These types of banner are usually available during the weekend. Only Paid Gems can be used to do this kind of banner. These banners have guaranteed units with higher summoned rate of 5* units along attractive freebies. Typically, these unit banners cost between 1500 to 2500 Paid Gems depending rate of 5* summon and freebies.

Memento Banners

This type of banner includes only Mementos and as such this is where you'll be pulling for and getting Mementos, costing around 500 Gems usually for the first step as it is a discounted rate, sometimes there won't be any discount rate which will be the usual, 2500 Gems.

The rates for a memento banner are:
5★ Memento - 6%
4★ Memento - 15%
3★ Memento - 79%

Memento Grand Summon

Like Unit Grand summon banner there is Grand Memento summon banner as well. These banners also use between 1500 to 2500 Paid Gems. Depending on the gems requirement, the banner could be 10x summon feature 5* mementos (usually, 1 guaranteed) with increase rate for 5* or all 5* mementos. All 5* mementos banner are mostly desired as this banner considered highly gems efficient.

Gear Banners

Unlike Unit and Memento banners, you are not actually aiming for reds, but instead yellows. This is a gear banner where you'll be summoning gear which will be used by your units. The gear banner purely only has gear in it and will generally feature Four 4★ Gears at a time in one banner, and unlike the usual, 5★ to 3★ Summons in Units and Mementos, Gear Banners features on 4★ to 3★, with 4★ with the highest rarity you can get from summons.

The rates for Gear Banners are:
4★ Gear - 10%
3★ Gear - 20%
2★ Gear - 70%

Gear Grand Summon

Gear banners also has Grand Summon which featured some very useful 4* gears. These banners start from 900 Paid Gems.  

Shard Banners

The main purpose of these banners are to easily limit break your limited/non-farmable units or to enlighten them. Most shard banners (with the exception of free ones) are 10x Summon costing from 1000 ~ 2500 Gems. These shard banners ranges from a variety of things, but generally when a unit is featured, you are guaranteed at least 10 ~ 50 Shards of that unit, with the rest of the 9x giving out equipment, gold bars, etc. These shard banners DOES NOT contain the actual featured unit unless specified, rather their shards so it is not recommended to pull unless you have that unit. Sometimes it varies depending on the banner, so it isn't always from what was stated above. So it is highly recommended to read the banner to see what you are getting you may regret it if you don't, in some cases there is also a chance of getting the actual unit, but its extremely unlikely/rare.

Gems Banners

Gems Banners give you an amount of gems higher than the gems that were used to pull. Starting from just 77 gems on step 1 it can go up to whooping 77,777 gems in step 7. Gems Banners do not summon gems instead summon items like Rainbow Soul Shards and other Soul Shards, Gold Gear Shards and other items then used Gems sent as Shared Free Gems to Gifts with no expiration. So, before using gems in Gems Banners it would be wise not to use any Paid Gems (Paid Gems are more valuable than Free Gems and can be use in Grand Summon which is Paid Gems only) as those also will be returned as Free Gems. Gems Banners are usually occasional and not too common.

Daily Free Summon Banner

These banners reset everyday and you can summon for free.

Rare Summon

You can summon Units or Character Shards in the rare daily summon banner (1/day).
The rates for a rare daily summon banner are:
5★ Unit - 10%
4★ Unit - 20%
3★ Unit - 40%
5★ Unit Shard - 10%
4★ Unit Shard - 20%

Common Summon

You can draw 5/day to obtain 1★ ~ 2★ Units, 1★ ~ 2★ Character Shards, Equipment, etc.

Mementos Summon

You can summon Memento in the mementos daily summon banner (1/day).

Celebration Summon

You can obtain various items such as Elemental Soul Shards, Miscellaneous Items, Equipment, Alchemy Droplets, Alchemy Drops, etc.

Cost Efficiency

Since banners come in a variety of types, and gems are limited, you need to pull on banners wisely.

Pact Player

If you're a pact player (meaning you spend $6/month on the game for the pact and nothing else), you'll be getting about 1,120 gems a week, not counting arena wins or event/story milestones/rewards. You can do the first step of the 5-step banner each week for 500 gems. You could also afford the first step of the gear banner for 300 gems. Still, you're only banking 320 gems a week if you buy both, meaning you'll be saving very slowly for collaborations. If your roster is weak, you should absolutely be pulling on the first step of the 5-step banner every week. If you're confident in your roster and can clear most content pretty easily, you can afford to scale back on doing the first step for non-limited/non-collaboration banner weeks. You can also skip the gear banner most weeks unless a featured item really appeals to you, such as if there's a limited gear or a Curious Doll.

For collaborations and limited banners, the third step of the 5-step banners will be your typical go-to, assuming it includes a guaranteed featured unit. Unfortunately, if you don't get the unit you want on the third step, then you're not going to have a lot of options.

Free-to-Play

If you're a completely free player, then you need to be very selective. You're going to be depending on the 60 gems a day you get from the daily milestones, for 420 gems a week, not counting the gems you get from arena. This isn't enough to do the 500 gem pull each week after your initial gem pool from all of the story milestones runs dry; but you should certainly do the 500 pull each week until it no longer becomes feasible, as you'll need to build your roster. As you build out your roster, you'll need to be very reliant on the units whose shards can be obtained through hard quests.

If you want to participate in collaboration gachas, then you pretty much shouldn't pull on the 500 gem pulls at all, as you'll need 2,700 gems to get to the third step of the 5-step banner (the third step usually, but not always, gives a guaranteed featured unit), and collaborations usually last about four weeks. If you're pulling on two of those weeks, that means you'll need to save for about 12 weeks. Essentially, by the time you have one collaboration banner, you're going to start needing to save for the next one. If the third step of the 5-step banner does not guarantee a featured unit, then do not pull towards it. You could still do the 500 gem pull, but your chances of getting a featured unit are only around 1%.

Featured Summon History

You can see a history of what units were introduced in both global and JP versions in the Update Schedule.

Some historical banners are displayed below:

From 12/05/2018 to 13/05/2018

From 10/05/2018 to 23/05/2018, 16/05/2018 (Daily, Elemental)

From 05/05/2018 to 06/05/2018

From 03/05/2018 to 16/05/2018, 09/05/2018 (Daily)

Previous Summon

From 19/09/2017 to 09/10/2017

From 10/10/2017 to 25/10/2017

From 26/10/2017 to 13/11/2017

From 14/11/2017 to 29/11/2017

From 23/11/2017 to 6/12/2017

From 30/11/2017 to 13/12/2017

From 07/12/2017 to 20/12/2017

From 14/12/2017 to 27/12/2017

From 21/12/2017 to 03/01/2018

From 28/12/2017 to 10/01/2018

From 4/01/2018 to 17/01/2018

From 11/01/2018 to 24/01/2018

From 18/01/2018 to 31/01/2018

From 25/01/2018 to 07/02/2018

From 01/02/2018 to 07/02/2018 (POTK), 14/02/2018 (SS)

From 14/02/2018 to 19/02/2018

From 08/02/2018 to 21/02/2018

From 15/02/2018 to 28/02/2018

From 22/02/2018 to 07/03/2018 (3-Steps & 9-Step), 28/02/2018 (Daily)

From 01/03/2018 to 14/03/2018 (5-Step), 07/03/2018 (Daily)

From 08/03/2018 to 14/03/2018

From 15/03/2018 to 21/03/2018 (A different one every day)

From 15/03/2018 to 21/03/2018 (3Step, Daily 3Step), 28/03/2018 (9Step, 3Step Gear)

From 22/03/2018 to 28/03/2018

From 29/03/2018 to 11/04/2018, 04/04/2018 (Daily)

From 05/04/2018 to 18/04/2018, 11/04/2018 (Gear Daily)

From 07/04/2018 to 08/04/2018

From 12/04/2018 to 18/04/2018, 25/04/2018 (9step)

From 14/04/2018 to 15/04/2018

From 19/04/2018 to 25/04/2018, 02/05/2018 (Gear)

From ?/04/2018 to ?/04/2018

From 21/04/2018 to 22/04/2018

From 23/04/2018 to 25/04/2018

From 26/04/2018 to 09/05/2018, 02/05/2018 (Fate)

From 30/04/2018 to 02/05/2018