The Stylist's Arena and the Association are the two daily modes that keep paying long after the main story runs out: Star Coins for recipes, Association Coins for suit pieces, and co-op suits you can only get through other players. Skill numbers, rewards and suit lists below come from the game's own tables. The mistake to avoid is spending Diamonds on an Arena rank before you collect what both modes give for free.
1. What the Arena pays
The Arena has five grades, from Intern Stylist to Queen of the Stylists, with five stars in each. A win pays 40 Arena EXP, which is exactly one star, plus 100 Gold and 5 Star Coins. A loss pays no EXP, 50 Gold and 3 Star Coins. So you climb on wins alone, yet a lost match still earns more than half the coins of a won one.
That makes the daily attempts worth using every day, even on a theme your wardrobe is weak in. Star Coins buy recipes in the Starlight Store, and the Arena shop sells recipes, never finished clothes, so the coins only pay off once you craft with them. The 17 themes and their weights stay the same at every grade: an outfit you save for Golden Odeum as an Intern still works at Queen.
2. Skills: level the score skills first
Thirteen skills are live. They open with your player level, and the four that touch the score come first: Smile, Critical Eye, Picky Immune and Charming, all by level 5. Those four go to level 9, and each costs 292,000 Gold to take from level 1 to 9. The others stop at level 5. Maxing all thirteen comes to 2,689,000 Gold, so spread it out and put the early Gold into the four score skills.
The later skills mostly answer each other. Picky Immune and Picky Bounce answer Critical Eye, Gift Immune and Gift Bounce answer Gift, Clock Immune and Cinderella answer Clock, and True Love wakes you from Sleeping. Each level also needs a higher player level, so a skill's top level unlocks late: level 9 Smile needs player level 45, level 9 Charming needs 49. Upgrade every skill in the end. The defensive ones only matter against an opponent who uses the matching attack, which is why they can wait.
| Skill | Player level | What it does | Level 1 to max |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smile | 1 | Raises your score | +15% to +27% (Lv 9) |
| Critical Eye | 2 | Lowers your opponent's score | 13% to 21.3% (Lv 9) |
| Picky Immune | 3 | Chance to ignore Critical Eye | 2 to 6 sec window (Lv 9) |
| Charming | 5 | Raises the judges' next score for you | +24% to +40% (Lv 9) |
| Gift | 11 | Opponent loses their socks | 4.5 to 6.5 sec (Lv 5) |
| Gift Immune | 11 | Protects your socks | 2 to 4 sec window (Lv 5) |
| Clock | 12 | Opponent loses their shoes | 3.5 to 5.5 sec (Lv 5) |
| Clock Immune | 12 | Protects your shoes | 2 to 4 sec window (Lv 5) |
| Sleeping | 13 | Puts your opponent to sleep | 3 to 5 sec (Lv 9) |
| True Love | 14 | Chance to remove sleep | 50% to 90% (Lv 5) |
| Picky Bounce | 25 | Reflects Critical Eye | 0.5 to 1.7 sec window (Lv 5) |
| Gift Bounce | 30 | Reflects Gift | 0.5 to 1.7 sec window (Lv 5) |
| Cinderella | 30 | Reflects Clock | 0.5 to 1.7 sec window (Lv 5) |
3. Time Smile and Charming
Smile and Charming are percentage boosts on top of your clothes' base score, so the same skill is worth more when it lands on a category your outfit scores highly in. Save Smile and Charming for the categories your outfit scores highest in, rather than firing them as soon as they are ready.
This is also why Momo's estimate of an opponent can be badly off. The estimate is the outfit before skills, and a well-timed Charming on an opponent's best category moves the real score a long way from it. Read it as the opponent's score before any skill fires.
4. Pick opponents you can beat
Before a match the game shows Momo's predicted score for each opponent. Only challenge one whose prediction is at least 20,000 below your own score and skip the rest: anything closer is a coin flip once skills are counted, and a loss moves you no closer to the next star.
- Save an outfit for every one of the 17 themes. The site's Arena page gives the highest-scoring outfit for each and the best one with no Diamonds.
- Enter matches with the Last outfit option, not Highest, so the game uses the outfit you saved for that theme.
- Fill every category, accessories included. A slot left empty scores nothing.
- Cloud Lady and Intern Translator are the only two themes with a tag: a Modern China piece adds 10,000 there, so a saved outfit for those two needs one.
5. The leaderboard is usually a skip
Reaching the top 20 takes a high VIP level and thousands of Diamonds in extra attempts, and it is not worth that unless you want the achievement itself. For most players the grade rewards and daily Star Coins are the whole value of the Arena.
If you do want a top rank, go for it in the opening week of a major event, when competition for the top places is lighter. Competition for the board is also lighter than it was in the game's early years, since fewer people play.
6. Join an Association that is already finished
An Association gives you five daily requests and a library of four books that boost you permanently: Cloud Adventure raises your score by up to 6%, Little Red Riding Hood adds up to 15 to your maximum Stamina, Star Seer adds up to 5% Gold on Maiden and Princess stages, and The Wonderland adds up to 20% EXP from stages. The Stamina book pays back every day, so read it first.
Join an established Association that has already unlocked every co-op suit rather than starting your own, and leave one that has gone quiet. Do not hop around, though. Players who switched report that their activity points start again from zero, and earning back every suit took them about eight weeks.
7. Co-op suits and activity points
The Association Workshop holds 19 co-op suits, crafted from materials the members collect together. Players report that each suit opens once your total activity reaches 500 or 700 points, depending on the suit. The points are a threshold, not a currency: claiming a suit does not spend them, and the weekly count resets to zero while your total keeps growing.
By the same reports, doing the daily requests and donating the free and Gold books to the library brings in about 13 points a day, or about 91 a week. Wishing adds 10 to 20, and Sand Skirmish adds nothing, so do not play it for activity.
Star Prophet and Warfare Terminator are the co-op suits players name as favourites. True Shot is the practical pick: its pieces fit a wide range of stages, not one look.
8. The Association shop
Association Coins buy the pieces of 21 suits in the Association shop, from Sapphires the Phantom Thief to Moonpiercing Gleam, the newest. Several suit pieces are not sold as they are: you buy a base piece and evolve it with Gold, so the coin price on the shelf is not the whole cost.
Buy the shop's dyes when they appear, even in a colour you have no use for yet. Recolours are crafted from a base piece plus a dye, and a dye you skip today may be the one a recolour you want needs later. The Commission and Co-op pages on this site give the best outfit for every Association request and contest.