Sword of Convallaria basics

The battle in one paragraph

Every fight is a grid map. You deploy up to five units, the turn order runs on a timeline you can see and plan around, and each unit gets one move and one action per turn. Damage is roughly the attacker's ATK minus the target's DEF, then multiplied by any damage-up / damage-down effects in play (the damage-up multiplier caps at +300%) and finally by any vulnerability or mitigation on the target. Positioning, facing and height change those numbers more than a level or two ever will.

Retrying a map costs nothing. Scout the enemy positions, ranges and terrain on turn one, then commit.

The five classes and the counter triangle

Every unit is one of five classes. Three of them — Breaker, Defender, Seeker — form a rock-paper-scissors triangle: attacking the class you beat lands extra damage and hit-rate, attacking the class that beats you is punished. Watcher and Destroyer sit outside that triangle and mutually counter each other.

Because class advantage only really applies to three of the five, it's a tie-breaker, not the core of a team. Build one strong unit of each role rather than stacking the 'advantaged' class.

Height and terrain

Attacking from higher ground increases your damage and, for ranged units, your reach; being below an enemy is dangerous, especially for fragile back-line units. Getting an archer or mage one tile up is often worth a whole turn of repositioning.

Each unit has a Move value and a Jump value (a High Jump and a Low Jump number) that limit how far and how much vertical it can cross in one move — check them before you plan a climb or a flank.

Maps are full of usable objects: explosive barrels, crossbow walls, and boulders that roll when hit and shatter — instantly defeating anything in their path — if they roll off a ledge two or more tiles high. Knocking an enemy into a river removes it. Tarot cards on the map are free pickups that grant a bonus.

Facing — front, side, back

Every unit faces a direction, set by the last thing it did. Hits from the side or the back are stronger and harder to defend against.

A back attack adds a flat +30% damage modifier to single-target, non-piercing attacks (it stacks additively with your other damage-up effects). It also ignores front-facing defensive passives — some tanks block all frontal damage and can only be hurt from the side or behind.

Several Seekers have traits that trigger specifically on a side or back kill (an extra action, a reset). Keep your own units facing the threat so the enemy can't farm the same bonus off you.

The two battle resources

NRG (energy) is per-unit. It builds up over the fight and pays for a unit's skills — the skill cards show a cost and a cooldown. Basic attacks are free; the strong skills are not, so a unit that can generate or refund NRG is valuable.

TP (Tactical Points) is shared by the whole squad. You start a battle with a set amount and it slowly regenerates. TP pays for Tactical Skills — the team-wide battlefield techniques (extra move, revive, cleanse and so on). Deciding when to spend TP is one of the real skill checks in hard content.

Factions and Leader's Aura

Every unit belongs to a faction (The Union, Fortitude, Iria, Nightingale, the Order of the Sword Saint, Sword of Convallaria and others). Factions carry story weight and matter for certain event bonuses and for Spiral of Destinies recruitment.

Some units also carry a Leader's Aura — a distinct banner-icon skill, unlocked once that unit reaches RK7, that buffs every unit sharing its faction in battle (a flat ATK/DEF boost, with a few 'superior' versions adding a further bonus). It's a genuine team-building lever: pairing a Leader's Aura unit with several same-faction allies can lift a whole squad. It's a tie-breaker on top of raw unit strength, though, not a reason on its own to run a weak unit — a strong aura on a fragile or otherwise-poor unit usually isn't worth the squad slot.

SP-prefixed units (SP Inanna, SP Alexei, SP Samantha) are alternate versions of a character with a different kit. They are separate units — separate pulls, ranked separately on the Tier List — and you never need both the base and the SP version.

How a unit gets stronger — RK, stars, level

Level goes up to 60, but a unit can never out-level your account (Voyager Level), so account level is the real early cap.

RK (Rank) is the skill tree. Raising a unit's RK from 1 to 13 unlocks the passives, auras and skill upgrades listed on its page against each RK step. Most of a unit's power spike is in the mid-RK skill upgrades; RK13 is a large, expensive final step.

RK13 unlocks the unit's Ascension Skill, which has three levels and needs a special material (Badges). An Ascension Skill can move a unit up a tier — creators tag them '2.0' / '3.0'. Reaching RK13 costs on the order of 100 Platinum Rank Medals per unit, so it is a commitment to units you main.

Star level (1 to 5) comes from Memory Shards — earned from pulling a duplicate, or farmed for free through Memory Retrieval in Crossing Worlds. Stars raise stats and strengthen the unit's Trait, with a significant Trait upgrade at 5 stars. Most units are fully functional at 1–2 stars; only a few ('gives you a second body' units like Nydia) truly need 5.

Tarot Whispers are a fourth stat source, separate from gear: levelling one raises base stats, and it can also roll an extra flat or percent substat at random.

Bond is a slower, account-side stat source: raising a unit's Bond level to 5 gives it a flat +5% to every attribute. It builds from a capped daily currency (Spirit of Hearts), from clearing stages with that unit fielded, passively over time for units left 'at home', or from Bond Charms bought in shops or earned from events.

Gear — weapons, trinkets, Astral

Gear sits in three bands. Astral gear is a character's signature weapon or trinket — the strongest option, almost always locked to one unit. General Legendary gear is usable by anyone of the right weapon type and is where most builds actually live. Epic / Rare / Common gear is filler you replace fast.

Each unit holds one weapon and one trinket. Weapons are locked to the unit's weapon type (axe, bow, spear, staff or sword); trinkets fit anyone. Shield of Justice is the trinket almost any unit can use, and each weapon type has its own go-to Legendary (Newborn Blade for swords, Diffusing Prism for staves, Longbow of Martyrs for bows) — get those before chasing a signature weapon.

Raising an item's star level is expensive. A one-star copy of a great item beats a five-star copy of a mediocre one. Trinket slots are rarer than weapons and worth as much. See the Items page for the full list and the Gear tier list guide for what to chase first.

The modes

Story — the main campaign; unlocks systems and pays out the most pulls. Anecdotes are side-stories that add more.

Spiral of Destinies — a long branching roguelike PvE mode with its own town, facilities and permanent meta-progression. Its own guide covers it in full; it is the best rewards-per-hour on a newer account.

Tower of Adversity — the recurring endgame challenge: fixed enemy line-ups over rising difficulty tiers, cleared once per cycle. Its own guide.

Pioneering Odyssey — a staged exploration mode with its own progression track and rewards.

Duel of the Fittest — always-available asynchronous ranked PvP. Voice of Sabbath — a periodic real-time drafted PvP event with a ban phase. Both are covered in the PvP guide.