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Caravan Stories - Basic Walkthrough

I've been stuck at home for past few weeks and got back into online gaming and started playing Caravan Stories first on the PS4 and then switched to the Japanese version for the PC.

I prefer the PC version as I can use the keyboard and mouse, but had to translate the menus and commands by comparing it with the PS4 version.  For all intents and purposes, the two versions are the same; with exception being the Japanese PC version gives you better bonuses and stuff (like Sophia with 5 star gear vs. PS4 only offering 4 star).

Basic Walkthrough/Guide

Whichever version you pick, the game play is roughly the same and you have five (5) basic goals:
  1. Finish the four (4) starter races.  Finish the stories and reincarnate for the four (4) starter races: Human, Elf, Dwarf and Orc.  After your first reincarnation, this opens up a lot more options and places to visit in the game.
  2. Human Story first.  Start with the Human story first as you get the powerful S-Class Sophia and she will be able to carry you through most of the game.
  3. Build a Good Team
  4. Upgrade your Caravan (Internal first, then external)
  5. Learn to Kite.  For most battles you can just auto and chill.  A few require you to doge and move.  Learn how to Kite and it'll help you on those tougher fights.  Examples are Emily's 2nd mission battle and a few other character stories that involve a stampeding warthog.
Building a Good Team
You will need several different teams and configurations as character types and classes matter.  There are five (5) things to consider when assembling a team:
  • Type (Wind, Earth, Water, Fire)
  • Class (Tank, Mage, Buffer, Jammer, Healer, etc)
  • Gear (Weapon + Sub)
  • Skills
  • Star Level
Generally, you want to match Types (ex. Sophia as a Tank and Slaveia as a Healer are both Light Type and Sophia gets a bonus when healed).

You also want at least one of the main class types mixed together and a good starting team (if you use Human story):
  • Tank - Sophia
  • Healer - Fholk (replace w/ Slaveia (Elf Story), Paylan (Dwarf)
  • Mage - Lena
  • Jammer - Alotie
  • Buffer -  Rolomeu (may take a while)
  • DPS - TBD
Gear
For Sophia on PC version you eventually get her 5 star gear for free on the daily login gifts.  For the 2 supporting characters on each story (ex. Fholk and Lena for Human Story) when you raise their Star Level to 3 and 4 you get their 4 star gear for free, respectively.

For everyone else you are either going to have to forge their gear, combine gear, or roll for them in gacha.  On occasion, some of the quests you complete in the game will give you gear, but nothing special until Gessy Story when you can get 4 star gear as a reward.

It should be easy to get 3 star gear for any character by purchasing 2 star gear at the various town shops and merge them with a 60% chance of getting a 3 star item of your choice.  It gets progressively harder to merge or forge 4 star and higher gear, but not impossible.

In general, a character with higher star gear and star level is better than those with lower star gear and/or star level.

Star Level
Each character is assigned a star level and most are 1 2 or 3 star.  You collect anima for that character and can upgrade them to the next star level, with the max currently being six stars.

  • 10 Anima = 2 Star
  • 20 Anima = 3 Star
  • 50 Anima = 4 Star
  • 100 Anima = 5 Star
  • 200 Anima = 6 Star

There are several quick ways to get more Anima:

  1. Daily 10 Anima - click on the characters walking within the Caravan and you can get 1 Anima for a max of 10 Anima total.
  2. Recall Mission - periodically you can do the Recall Mission (5th Tab) and get tokens to redeem Anima.  About 50 Tokens per Anima.  I prefer to get rare Anima like Gada with this one.
  3. Character Story - follow a character's story to get more Anima.  And also do their basic upgrade missions (ex. promote to 2,3,4 star, expand gear slots, upgrade gear, etc).

Your goal is to try and get your main team to 4 stars and generally focus on the starter characters as you also unlock their free 4 star gear as well.

With exception of Avatars, 5 star and higher requires additional items and usually are provided for the character's individual story mode.

Upgrading Caravan
Start with maxing out the Gold and Jewels.  And to do this you need to build every possible internal component available at your caravan's current level and upgrade them to raise the level of your caravan.

When you have reached a decent level you can then build on your external caravan components and you want to get at least one freeze gun then max out the poison guns.

Item Management
You will quickly run out of room if you try to keep every item you find or earn during battles.  In general, unless you need it for a quest, setup the auto-sell rules and ignore anything 1 or 2 star.

Also, sell the gear recipes you get for characters, especially for characters you don't have yet.  If you want to make items then keep just a few as you don't need that many. 

Daily Missions
This is a given, try to do all the daily missions to get the daily rewards.  Many are for useful tokens that can be used to purchase more Anima and Items.

Gold Mining
Do the daily gold mine run and unlock the 2nd level.  Go to Alotie's tent to get her free daily buff.  Also make Alotie or any character that allows increased chance for drops as the leader of your gold run team.  You can further use other buff items to increase chance of drops.

I prefer to redeem 3 tickets at a time for a 15 minute run and rush to the 2nd level and usually can get there in about 45 seconds.  I then spend most of my time in the main room in front of the 2nd floor elevator entrance and can get 5-7 of the 4-star gold bars drop per fight.  I am able to time my fights and do about 2-3 per minute and average about 35 fights for a haul of 210 bars.

Each of the 4 star bars are worth 3k so a 15 minute run yields me 630k gold.  More than enough to upgrade 2 characters to 4 stars.

Philosopher Tower (Experience Orbs)
For late game you will want as much experience orbs as you can find.  These are useful when you get a high star character and need to level them up quickly.  Just like Gold Mine, get to 2nd level and mine for the 4 star experience orbs.

NPC Quests (Gold/Jewels)
Outside of gold mine, you can go 'above' your gold and jewel limits by doing the various NPC quests.  If you are at max gold or jewels, the NPC quests will reward you and it'll just go over the limit.  This is a nice way to get alot of jewels or gold before you have enough storage capacity.

Some of the later quests (especially after the 1st reincarnation) can yield 20k gold a pop.  In Nero City in the bath houses (Onsen) area you can get a ton of gold from NPC quests and got at least 500k that way.

The Onsen is also a good place to get 1 and 2 star items to upgrade Caravan components.  You can get tons of them here.

Auto Fighting (Gold)
You can grind for gold in any map.  Make any character that has the 10% gold gain as leader (ex. Logion).  Focus on fighting the strongest monsters you can do without skills then set your team to auto fight.  You want to set auto sell rules to ignore 1 and 2 star items and weapon recipes.  You also want to set the befriend monster to avoid accepting monsters.  You can then let it run for several hours to get gold, but the earnings are quite low and at best I was averaging about 3k/hour on the gold gained and the auto sell rules when fighting monsters at about 7200-9000 BP level.

The exception to this is when you play on an event map and I've enjoyed much higher gold yields of 300 gold per monster for 20k/hour.  And prefer event maps to stock up.

Phantasm and Gacha Rolls
You only want to spend phantasm on gacha rolls..  And generally, wait for the special rolls or for a character you like.  Some good gacha deals are 500 or 1000 Phantasm vs. 3000 for a normal gacha.

The game is quite generous and with all the various quests and options you should be able to get at least 30k phantasm playing through the first four stories, which is worth about $300 USD.

Much to Learn
I still have much to learn and practicing assembling different teams to fight various monsters.  I'm working on building a 4 star team with (Sophia, Elf Avatar, Slaveia, Rolomeu, Alotie and Lili).

My goal is to figure out which DPS to pick and replace Lili who provides me ice magic while I wait to get enough items to upgrade Lena to 4 star.

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