Please consult other guides for complete lists of crafting requirements, etc.

Why am I writing this guide?

There are plenty of other guides out there meant for new players, including the Ultimate GBF Guide, or Xie’s Progression Guide. However, I have yet to see a guide that is written with new players in mind, beyond simply info dumping.

With multiple kinds of resources and plenty of options, Granblue Fantasy can be extremely overwhelming for new players, and most guides aim to explain each option available to the player. This guide aims to is give new players clear goals, and what things to prioritize. You should be able to refer to this guide quickly whenever you feel lost about what you should be doing as a beginner. What this guide will NOT do, is cover every single option or explain every single detail of the game from the bottom up. I recommend reading other resources such as Ultimate GBF Guide for that.

The big thing about prioritization is that it is SUBJECTIVE. This is part of why many topics are either avoided or left in ambiguity for new players. This guide will try its best to point out where things get subjective, so that you can at the very least understand what factors to consider, and come to an educated decision yourself.

Once Per Day List (All Levels)

In GBF, there are some options which can only be done daily, for extremely good reward. You do not need to do these ASAP, but you do want to do them once per day. 

At some point every day you should:

1. Complete your co-op daily

1. Buy items from the Casino. Roughly in order of priority/budget: AP Pots, BP berries, Anima. Once per month: Steel Bars > Fury Stones > Fury Pebbles (depends on how much space you have), Moon stones. See: Poker Guide

1. Utilize your daily twitter AP/BP reset

1. Roll the rupie gacha 100 times (10000 rupie per day) – Skippable if you are low in Rupies. Important source of plusses to strengthen your grid.

1. Do Arcarum if strong enough – free daily way to eventually obtain decent summons, occasional random Magna drops,  and Sunstones (extremely coveted resource)

1. Solo Hard difficulty multi-battles – Key source of Renown and uncap mats. Should be achievable around Level 30+ or so. See Renown and you

1. Event dailies: some events have daily achievements to fulfill, often with good rewards. If the rewards seem worth the time investment to you, do these

1. Event daily limited quests: some of the high difficulty event quests can only be done a limited number of times per day, but yeild the most AP efficient drops. Do these if you are farming for event rewards.

1. Showdown Maniac Difficulty Quests – can be done twice per day. Suggested if you want to get an MLB of a certain Summon, or for farming for your Class Weapon (Unlocks T4)

1. Purchase Showdown event pots / berries (applicable if you are farming showdown bosses)

1. Limited Free Quests for Guild Wars Character materials, such as Chapter 34 80 AP Free Quest. 

I’m out of AP/BP! What should I do?

If you’re out of AP, here’s a list of things you can do.

1. Arcarum 

1. Pot – honestly its often worth spending pots to continue to do things in game. The game gives you a lot of pots, you are also rewarded for spending more AP in the form of journey drops. Spending pots can get you closer to platinum, which is very useful once you’re past the early game stage. This is even more applicable if you plan on spending money to roll, since rolling generally gives you a good source of moons, which can be traded for pots.

1. Poker – See: Poker Guide

1. Leech Co-Op 

1. AP positive Free Quest: Chapter 1 R Character Only Quest. Drops mats for Guild Wars characters. You actually gain more AP than you spend if you exchange the clover drops for AP pots, so go nuts with this.

Level 1-29

Goals

These are your goals. All your decisions you make should ultimately be geared towards achieving these short term goals as soon as possible. 

1. Get to level 30 as soon as you can, primarily via Main/Free Quest. At level 30, you have access to much more rewarding content, such as being able to join Omega (Magna) raids. Until 30, your BP is generally just going to waste, as its not worth your time to leech any difficulties under Magna. The less time spent under 30, the better. If you will get good mileage out of the 50 AP, its justifiable to use a 1/2 AP pot, as they give you lots of these throughout the game, and hoarding them early does not really pay off.

1. Participate in events with good rewards (consult experienced players)

1. Unlock Casino (Main Story ch.8), and get enough Chips to buy daily items from the Shop. With enough Chips, you can buy some extremely helpful items for getting stronger. If you have spare time, you should always be trying to get richer in Poker until you can at least buy all four copies of Anat (2.5m each). Consult Poker Guide

1. Become strong enough to Solo your Hard difficulty Primal Multi-Battles 

AP Spending Priority

1. Main / Free Quest: Main Quest unlocks more story content, addition free quests, and allows you to summon raid bosses. You want to at least complete the six islands, in order to summon raid bosses, as well as acquire the SR characters along the way. You also ideally want to get to at least Chapter 8 as soon as possible, in order to unlock Casino. Free quests are an important source of Crystals, which you want as many of as possible when you’re new (See Crystals, your first Legfest, and what your future holds)

1. Events: The first portion of quests are usually free and give crystals, so always do these at the very least. Beyond that, consult experienced players for whether the rewards are worth it or not to grind for.

1. Hosting Coop. Remember, if you’re too weak, you won’t be gaining much experience this way. It’s best to only do this to complete your Daily.
2. Angel Halo Extreme – You will eventually need to do tons of this (950 T1 Orbs, 1000 whorls….)  so it’s good to start on this early on, especially while you can benefit greatly from the weapon exp. Helps you get whorls and t1 orbs for guild wars weapons / chars, MLB’ing Magna weapons, and uncapping characters, as well as rusted weapons for your eventual baha weapon.

BP Spending Priority

At this level BP is often not worth spending, unless there is an event worth participating in raids for (obtaining tickets for loot boxes with good rewards). If you have not 

1. Events (varies)

1. Hard Raids (leech) – can be a source of uncap mats for your characters.

Level 30-49

Goals

1. Farm Magnas (leech). You can now join Magnas! To develop a strong grid of any given element, you will need to farm a tremendous amount of magna weapons. Consult experienced players on which weapons to look out for. The drop rate is very poor, so make sure to use Renown to buy two weapons every month

1. Get to your 3000 renown cap every week by Hosting Hards/Magnas and leeching Magnas. See Renown and you to understand why this is so important..

1. Get to Level 50

1. If you aren’t strong enough to solo your hards, work on that!

AP Spending Priority

1. Events – obtain potential good weapons / characters

1. Co-op – keep doing your dailies, but know that you want to have EX cleared well before Rank 101.

1. Hosting Magnas – necessary to go from 2500 renown weekly to hitting the 3k renown cap

1. Main Quest / Free Quest for Crystals / Exp. (Main quest can be put off until 1/2 AP on story happens). If you still haven’t rolled anything decent, increase your prioritization on free quest so you can roll more for the next legfes.

1. Showdowns Quests (Ifrit, Cocy, etc) – Purchasable SSR Summon for stat stick / good active. Also you need 200 silver anima of a single type for unlocking Tier 4 Classes (Rank 101+). Recommended if you are strong enough to clear the Extreme difficulty at least. 

1. Star Halo – you will need to to a ridiculous amount of Star Halo, so it’s good to start on this early on, especially while you can benefit greatly from the weapon exp. Helps you get whorls and t1 orbs for guild wars weapons / chars and uncapping characters, as well as rusted weapons for your eventual baha weapon.

1. Farm for White Rabbit

1. Farm Guild Wars character materials. There’s no harm in working on farming for your first Guild Wars character if you have nothing better to do with your AP. Remember that 

Level 50-100

Goals:

1. Get to your 3000 renown cap every week

1. Leech Magnas with BP

1. Get strong enough to Solo MVP the Magna you want to farm

1. Make a Guild War’s Weapon for your main grid by grinding out all 4 loot boxes during Guild Wars. This can be done even without a guild. The most common choice is the dagger.

1. Obtain White Rabbit – Since the Nov 24th 2016 patch, White Rabbit is now fairly easy to obtain, by repeatedly doing the Sharp Ears quest (Ch 42 free quest) until you have 8 carrots. Generally takes 20-30 AP pots. While this can easily be done later on, its best to do this as early as possible as the difficulty of the encounters is fairly low, and just requires patience / AP. The earlier you obtain this, the more helpful the +15% exp bonus will be, not to mention the drop rates, which at the very least, should directly help your hard drops. 

1. Make a Baha Weapon: Farm Proto Bahamut, at least enough to obtain 3 horns and ideally the rusted weapons for your desired baha weapon (Usually Dagger), which gives you a big power boost. Also a good way to obtain Silver Certs

1. Farm Grande Order. Silver certs will be the single item you will feel you’re always lacking, and due to how fast Grande’s fill up on Twitter, Silver Certs are one of the hardest items to farm. Each element-changed GW weapon requires 50 certs, and Tier 4 also requires 30 minimum. This means that, assuming you want a guild wars character, a GW weapon (dagger is the most common one), and want tier 4 (huge power boost), you’re looking at 130+ certs you need, MINIMUM. In addition, you will need at least 15 horns from Grande, which can be exchanged at 5 feathers per horn. So 75 Grandes approximately, to prepare for unlocking Tier 4 classes. You need an additional 30 horns, or 150 feathers, in order to obtain a Cosmo weapon.

1. Prepare mats for Guild Wars Character (Link to list of mats)

1. Prepare mats for Tier 4 Class Weapon (Link to list of mats)

AP Spending Priority

1. Events – obtain potential good weapons / characters

1. Co-op – At least to complete your daily. You need to clear up to EX difficulty in order to farm for mats needed to unlock TIer 4 at Rank 101. At this point the merit of Co-op starts to fall off. If you feel you have sufficient blue crystals and don’t feel pressured to get the Co-op reward mats, it’s okay to skip this.

1. Host your Hards for Renown and anima

1. Host Magnas for Renown, and solo’able Magnas of interest

1. Showdowns Quests (Ifrit, Cocy, etc) – Purchasable SSR Summon for stat stick / good active. Also you need 200 silver anima of a single type for unlocking Tier 4 Classes (Rank 101+). By this point you should be able to clear Extreme, and ideally Maniac as well.

1. Star Halo – you will need to to a ridiculous amount of Star Halo, so it’s good to start on this early on, especially while you can benefit greatly from the weapon exp. Helps you get whorls and t1 orbs for guild wars weapons / chars and uncapping characters, as well as rusted weapons for your eventual baha weapon.

1. Farming various free Quests for Guild Wars / T4 Weapon / 4* Unlock mats

Appendix

Job Prioritization

Remember that you will eventually get ALL classes, so the order is about seeing immediate improvements, not long term investments. 

1. Dark Fencer
2. Holy Saber / Sidewinder / Bishop / Weapon Master / Sorcerer. Choose based on what will help you early on for accelerating raids you participate in. 

Sorcerer for Blind or Sidewinder for Rain of Arrows 3 are common suggestions. Hawkeye for TH3 is also good, especially if you spend most of your time leeching.

Crystals, your first Legfest, and what your future holds

Crystals are extremely important to obtain, for one big reason: As a beginning player, you basically have absolutely no inkling as to what your eventual end-game goals will be. Even if you were lucky enough to get an SSR early on, that does NOT necessarily dictate the element you will eventually be going. Acquiring more SSR characters or getting lucky on SSR drops later on down the road can completely change the direction you are going. As a result, you absolutely want crystals to roll as soon as Legend Fest comes around. Legfest is generally at the end of the month, and gives you a 2x rate for SSRs. Prioritize free quests when you can, and save up so you can roll as many times during your first legfest as possible. 

Renown and you

Renown is an extremely important way to obtain guaranteed SSR Magna Weapons (5000 renown each), which is the initial core method for strengthening your team. While weapons can be obtained as drops from Magna bosses, the drop rates are abysmal. The drop rate is so poor that Renown should not be considered an afterthought, but rather an extremely high priority for progression (especially early on when you do not even have your base grid). 

You can gain up to 3000 renown each week. 1000 of that can come from SR / R survival bonuses. At 12 Renown each, Hard magnas are a key part of reaching this renown cap, and cost 0 AP. If you do all six bosses three times a day, every day, you will obtain 1512 renown a week. Adding in the 1000 bonus puts you at 2512/3000 renown, meaning that even if you do every hard every day, you will still need an additional 488 renown from additional sources. This renown generally comes from a combination of joining magnas, and hosting magnas. While participating in a magna can yield a max of 10 renown each, this relies on you dealing 10k honor in the fight, which can be difficult to achieve if you are too weak or the boss dies too fast. Hosting magnas, on the other hand, provide you with a stable way to reach that 10k honor, and caps at 40 renown, a very good source of renown.

While it is very tempting to save your Anima up for when you are strong enough to MVP, you generally MUST host some Magnas in order to achieve renown cap every week. Many players around Rank 50 or under often feel that gaining renown is not that important and that simply hitting the soft bonus cap (1000 renown) is satisfactory. I will stress that this is a very big waste. It is worth even spending ½ AP pots in order to obtain the AP needed achieve renown cap.

In addition, it is possible, depending on your luck / playtime optimization, that you may end up finishing your magna grid before you run out of Anima. It is not necessarily wrong to be liberal about hosting even when you cannot MVP.

Poker Guide

Your goal is to be able to play at 1000 poker tables. When climbing from lower brackets, I recommend starting at the next bracket when you have at least 40-50 attempts, i.e. Don’t try 1000 poker until you have 40000+ chips. During double up, it’s okay to stop when the odds are bad, since at lower brackets you want consistency to gain chips to climb brackets. General rule of thumb is always play until round 6+, and then stop if the cards are 6 to 10.

Keep:

1 pair

Open-ended wait on Straight, including Joker (356+Joker)

Single wait for Flush i.e. 4 cards of same suit

Single Joker (throw out the other 4)

In other words, do not keep:

Random single cards – value doesn’t matter. Don’t keep that random Ace.

Kickers (keeping an extra card alongside a pair) – this reduces your chance of improving from 40% to 33%. Do not do this.

Cards alongside Joker

only 3 cards for Straight/Flush draw

Inside/single waits for Straight (5689 or JQKA)

Because value has no meaning, there are a lot of things you would do in normal Poker that you should never do here. Remember that just throwing all 5 out yields you about a 1:11 chance to get two pair or better. So only keep cards if you think it will improve your odds from ~9%. 

During Double Up

ALWAYS play the next round (assuming you’re in the 1000 bracket, with a comfortable stack of chips). It’s always in your favor, and at the very worst, your odds are 50%, which is the same as stopping. The only time you should stop is if you’re extremely low on chips and need them. Even then, you should at least try to get to round 7.

What to buy in Casino

1. AP/BP pots (once per day, 20 days per month)
2. Anima (preferably of your desired Anima, but all should be the goal)
3. All Steel Bars (once per month)
4. All Demon Stones  (once per month, assuming you have space for them)
5. All Demon Pebbles  (once per month, assuming you have space for them)
6. Anat (as many as you can) 
7. All Moon Stones (once per month) – Extremely expensive but an important source of Element shards. 
8. All 4 Catherine Guns if you are playing Wind / Want Oliver
9. All 4 SSR swords if aiming for an easy Tier 4 weapon.

Guild Wars

For best time efficiency when focusing on Tickets, use VH Eyes (24 tickets per 25 AP spent)

For best AP efficiency, VH Dogs (30 tickets per 30 AP spent)

For best honors efficiency, EX+ Dogs

Use journey drops if you can.

Guild Wars Weapon / character

You need to grind a ton of Star Halo, primarily for the initial 250 t1/t3 orbs for element change, as well as helping obtain t2 light orbs. You can exchange t1 for t2 light orbs daily from the Shop to help get t2. Because GW weapons each require 50 silver certs (unless you are playing Light), assume that you will only get one GW weapon for the sake of part of your grid, for a long while. For mid-game / early game content, the GW weapon is a great power up, but choose wisely, as you may not make a second for a while. [Insert line about doing the R and SR character quests for rare shop upgrade items.]

Tips and Tricks:

Saving/Stocking AP

If you know you are going to be unable to play GBF for an extended period of time (sleep, work, life, etc), but are already close to full on AP, here’s an easy way to “bank” some AP so you can regenerate extra:

If you join a quest using AP, and haven’t cleared it yet, you can choose to retreat and all AP will be refunded to you. So an easy way to “stock” some AP is to find a 80AP or 40AP quest, and simply join it.

The next time you’re able to play Granblue all you have to do is retreat from the quest and you’ll have more AP than if you simply let yourself top off without doing anything.

Cross Fates

Certain pairs of characters get an additional Fate Episode called Cross Fate when you have cleared both characters final Fate episode (usually the one that gives you their final skill). Completing a Cross Fate raises the stats of both characters, so be sure to check in case you can unlock one of these. They are not restricted only to high rarity characters, so you may have an R character that has a Cross Fate with one of your main characters without realizing it.

List of Cross Fates:http://granblue.wikia.com/wiki/Cross-Fate_Episodes 

Choosing Friend Summons

Being on-element (fighting vs an element you are advantageous against) gives you a 1.5x damage bonus which is categorized as NORMAL. Because it is such a large multiplier, this generally results in Magna / Magna being as good as Magna / Element or Magna / Normal against the element you are strong vs, if they non-megna modifier is sub 100%. If you have access to a 120% or higher summon, you should pick that with magna instead of magna / magna.