Beginner's Guide

The following is a beginner's guide to getting started with The Alchemist Code.

Guide

Complete the initial tutorial. You will receive a free Setsuna. In your gifts you will also receive a unit selector (this includes all non-limited units up through the release of Creto) and 3 selectors for 50 shards of those same units, enough to apply 150 shards to the unit you pick and immediately unlock all 3 jobs on that unit. For a list of recommended units, see Tutorial Unit Overview.

You will also receive a ticket to summon a 5 star fire element and dark element unit from the first day event board missions (you will get one of each element over the course of the first 4 days of missions from the event board). There should also be a free 10x summon available (you get one every day for 7 days). For more details about the new account bonuses available, see New Player Starting Bonuses.

You can skip the subsequent tutorials if you want. All new account start with 700 gems, so you can immediately do step 1 of the 500 gem for 10x summon banner (the name varies) then go to the Events button and claim another 550 gems so you can do another step 1 for 500 gems for 10x summon. If you get a bad roll after those summons, you may want to reroll, although now that accounts get so many free units in the first week a reroll is not really needed unless there's a particularly strong unit available when you are creating your account.

Rerolling

Before investing too much time in your characters, you might want to make sure that you have a good set of starting characters. It isn’t necessary to reroll as over time you will get other characters and eventually it’ll even out, but starting out with at least one very strong character can make a big difference, so if you haven’t been playing long you may want to consider rerolling. You should not reroll until after you have done your initial discounted summons on the best banners currently available (the recommended banners change weekly).

For details about how to reroll and what units to aim for, see the Reroll Guide. You can also see the TAC Global Tier List for an idea of how strong units will be initially (look at the LB0 column on the Tier List 3.0 tab to see how strong units will be before they get any limit breaks).

Note: New players can now get a unit selector and 3 50 shard selectors, and they also get 1 5-star unit ticket of each element from the first 6 days of login bonus and a free 10x unit summon for the first 7 days. There is also a unit selector from the earlier pool of 5 star units from a challenge board. Players spending money can also purchase a selector for one of 6 units for 60 paid gems in the beginner shop. Because of this, getting the ideal reroll is less important than it used to be, although if there are good limited units available at the time of starting you should try to reroll for them.

Link Your Account

Once you are satisfied with your account and are sure you don't plan to reroll you should link your account so you don't lose it and so it can be accessed from multiple devices. You can either create a Gumi ID to use for logging in (under the settings menu "User Code Linking" option) or you can link the account to your Facebook account. It is not possible to unlink from Facebook, so don't use this method unless you are absolutely sure you want to keep the account.

Banner Guide

In general, for f2p players (those who don't spend money on the game), it is only worth it to do the 1st discounted step (when it is 10x summon for 500 gems) on a unit or memento banner due to the discount. Sometimes we also get discount tickets- those should be saved to reduce the price of the initial or later steps on a banner with good limited units. It's only a good idea to do additional full price steps when the banner is for good limited units and there are useful guarantees on the later steps. Don't do a 2nd step or higher step on any banner unless you plan to go far enough in for a good guarantee (since this is typically just a more expensive version of the 1st step). The 1st step of the gear banner (when it is 10x summon for 300 gems) is also considered cost effective.

Shop Guide

Rare equipments that could only be found in shop 3.

There is an in game shop in the game itself, where players can access to. The product content of all three shops change 5 times per day, and newcomers only get access to the first shop when they first join. The second shop is unlocked at Lv25, and the third shop is unlocked at Lv40. All three shops sell character shards, apples, equipment and equipment fragments, skip tickets etc, but they do not sell gear, although they sell gear enhancement items. It is a good idea to keep an eye on these shops to purchase equipment diagrams for your units so you can reduce the amount of farming required for their equipment.

The various shops of the game.

Upon reaching Lv40, the third shop will be unlocked and sometimes, rare equipment that either cost 100k+ zeni will appear in the shop. If the player has a lot of zeni, it is a good idea to purchase said equipment to reduce farming later. Do not buy equipment for gems (with the exception of the Beginner's Shop).

The shop content will be reset at 00:00, 04:00, 09:00, 14:00 and 19:00 server time (you can look at the in game clock to see how server time converts to your time zone).

For the first 7 days of your account, you will also have access to the Beginners' Shop under the Secret Shops, which contains items that are all at a steep discount from normal prices. You should take full advantage of these discounts.

Farmable Characters

As you progress through the story quests, you will unlock hard mode quests that will give you access to farm character upgrade shards. You'll want to start farming shards for the more useful 4 and 5 star characters as soon as you have access, even if you don't have the characters yet, because then when you get them you'll be that much closer to unlocking their better jobs (you unlock the 2nd job at 5 limit breaks and the 3rd at 15 and you can normally farm 3 shards a day for limit breaks).

You may find it difficult to do the hard quests at first, but if you can beat them once (use a strong mercenary to help) with all missions cleared, then you can use skip tickets to beat them in the future, at least until you're strong enough to do them on auto.

• Farmable Character Shards (list of which hard mode quests provide which character shards)

What To Do Next

Once you have settled on an account and started playing, you have many options. Generally your priorities for quests early game should be as follows:

1. Do all the daily milestone quests. This is your primary source of AP each day and also provides other rewards such as gems and ingots (which are converted to zeni).
2. Do the training hall quests to learn some basic game mechanics and obtain materials for switching Logi to his 2nd job and evolving him as well as get 3 copies of Moon Star Armor.
3. Do any temporary event quests which are a high priority (this is mainly during collaboration events, where there may be critical items you need for the collaboration units). It's best to ask on Discord whether any current events should be given special attention to. Limited time event quests will display how long they will be available for. Most return regularly, but some may not return at all (many collaborations do not). Gold Rush is available every day and it's recommended you run all 4 versions of it every day- it does not cost AP. There is usually a job trial quest as well if there is a new unit released- you should always do these as they give 150 gems and 25 shards for the unit (they give you the unit to play in the trial so it is not difficult for a new player).
4. If Mystic Tower Veda is available (under Trials > Babel Tower) you should complete as much as you can each day. It runs for 2 weeks roughly monthly.
5. Do any hard quests you have unlocked to farm character upgrade shards for high priority units you have.
6. Do story quests to complete milestones, unlock hard quests and access good stages to farm equipment.
7. Do Babel Chronicles (at least the first 3 chapters worth of normal mode quests) to unlock hard quests for Babel units such as Gerald and Ankh. These give you specific units to do the quests with, so they can be done at any level, but some may be a bit challenging- there are videos on the quest event pages which can help you complete them.

In addition to questing, you will want to focus on raising an initial team of units. These should be the units you have which are strongest at the job(s) you have unlocked. You can check the TAC Global Tier List get an idea of which units to focus on first (ideally ones with strong ratings at LB0) or ask on Discord for advice. Don't try to raise too many units at once- start with a core few. You will want to focus on raising their job levels as that is where they get most of their stats. Buying equipment from the beginner shop and monitoring the shops for diagrams sold for zeni for their equipment will help reduce how much equipment you need to farm.

Tips

Raising Units

• DO NOT USE ELEMENTAL SHARDS TO RAISE UNITS UNTIL YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING! Elemental shards are valuable items used primarily to limit break good limited units. Most units in the game can be farmed slowly, so you should never use the elemental shards for limit breaks until you consult with an experienced player on whether the unit is worth the shard investment and is not farmable.
• DO NOT ENHANCE YOUR EQUIPMENT BEFORE YOU REACH YOUR MAX JOB LEVEL (11) ON THE UNIT. IT IS POINTLESS (will be replaced at higher job levels).
• You can't level your units higher than your player level. Fastest way to raise player level is story quests for mission rewards and the experience they give.
• Max level for skills is 20 (it costs ~650k to max)
• Max job level is 11. Job level increases the stats of the unit and when you fill all equipment slots at job level 11 you get a job mastery bonus which applies to all jobs on the unit.
• If you are applying a job upgrade to a unit (very commonly done for your tutorial unit) you must first get the unit to job level 11 on the job being upgraded (and limit break 15) before you can apply the upgrade (you do not need to master it). Tokens and equipment for the upgrade can be purchased with enchanted coins in the coin exchange shops (the coins can be farmed under Events > Daily > Enchanted Quest). Upgrading the job will replace all skills and job levels on the unit and you will need to retrain and job level again.
• Evolve increases the unit max level and max job level.
• The level required to evolve is 10/20/30/50.
• To farm evolve materials, do the evolve dungeons (golem/alchemia/goddess) in Multiplay. It costs half the AP and is available anytime. Rainbow materials have lower drop rates. You can alternately buy evolve materials in the secret shops for zeni- the shop refreshes every week.
• Equipment and gear are different in this game. Equipment is used to raise job levels and is permanently applied to the unit. Gear can be moved between units and adds additional stat bonuses. Many gear items are limited to specific jobs. Gear stats do not stack with other gear- the highest value of each stat is used. Memento stats also don't stack with other memento- the highest value of each stat is used.
• For your hunter/ranger units, DO NOT MAX the basic hunter or basic ranger skill. The last skill that is unlocked is not very good (it misses a lot) and the AI really really likes using it if it is available.

Shopping/Acquiring Equipment

• DO NOT BUY CHARACTER SHARDS THAT COST GEMS IN THE SHOPS UNLESS YOU ARE A WHALE (someone who spends large sums of money on the game)
• The beginner shop only lasts for 7 days. All items for zeni in the shop are also sharply discounted and are worth purchasing. The equipment sets for gems may also be worth purchasing as they can save you a lot of farming and they are discounted heavily, but all the equipment is farmable. Don't buy the gold bars for gems. If you plan to spend any money on the game, it is very worth buying all the paid gem items in the shop (600 paid gems total can be acquired by buying Alchemist Pact and the Bag of Gems) except maybe the unit selector
• Zeni gacha can be rolled for a chance to get gold bordered equipment such as sacred blades which are needed for job levels 9-11. Unfortunately job-specific items are not available through zeni gacha.
• Finding job-specific items: You can roll equipment tickets for a chance of getting them. You can also find either recipe fragments for job-specific items, the complete recipe itself or the actual item itself in Louise's shop (requires player level 40). These are needed for job levels 9-11. 10 fragments cost around 16,000 zeni, the recipe costs around 128,000 zeni and the job-specific item itself costs around 110,000 zeni. The cost of turning that recipe into the item outweighs the cost of buying the complete item.

General

• When you fail or retreat a quest, you will only be charged 10% of the AP cost of that quest (i.e. if it costs 20 AP, you will only be charged 2 AP)
• Mercenaries are free until level 51, abuse them. Fill your friend list- friend mercenaries give you a buff when you use them. Quests also do not cost any AP until level 51.
• You get max 250 gems from meeting 10 new players in Multiplay (25 gems per new player).
• When you host a multiplayer quest, be sure to enable the Accelerate option. Most players will not join a multiplayer quest without that option enabled.
• Make sure to add friends (you can invite people from multiplayer or check chat or Discord to find people to friend) so you can use mercenaries with good friend bonuses to complete harder content. In addition, you should go to the gifts section under friends and change your desired gifts to friendship coins, and be sure to send friendship coins every day (this will not cost you anything). The coins can be used to buy items in the Friendship Coin Exchange.
• Do arena 5 times a day for the new ranking gem rewards and arena coins. Don't rush up the ranks- you get 5 gems every time you get a new high rank even if you go up a lot of levels, so it's best to challenge people very close in rank to you so you can milk the easy gems as long as possible. You can also buy Lotiyah shards in the Arena Coin Exchange with the coins you get from arena so that you can eventually transmute her.
• If you want to optimize your AP long term, avoid collecting too many quest milestones that give player experience early on so you can level slower to maximize the amount of time you get free mercenaries and AP. Whenever you level you will also gain some AP, so by saving these milestones you can collect them later to level up more quickly once you are actually starting to run low on AP. Keep in mind that you will probably want to be level 60 by day 7 to complete the beginner event missions but there is no reason to rush it in the first few days.
• Equip mementos on all your units if you have them. Preferably use ones that either have a base stat the unit wants (AGI is good on pretty much everyone and PATK is good for most physical damage units) or wear ones that have gear rewards (vision clear rewards) you would like to work towards- every quest you do with the memento equipped (not counting quests you use skip tickets on) has a 1% chance to give 1% alchemic boundary towards the gear reward. Do the Vision Clear Quest every day (with featured mementos if you have them) to stock up on items for leveling and boosting the alchemic boundary of your mementos.

For More Information

See the New Player Help Center for additional guidance. Also feel free to ask questions in the Discord channel in #ac_questions.