Terra Battle Tips & Beginner’s Guide

While we’re nearing the two week anniversary of Terra Battle in the US, it’s about time we talk strategy for beginners. Sure having so and so character at level X is important, but there are tips that can help any new player fresh off the download screen despite which characters you own. Today, these tips are exactly what we’re going to be looking at.

Flanking and cross patterns:

Perhaps the most basic strategy to learn is how to attack and get other characters to join in. At the most basic level, you want to have two characters flank an enemy. This means on the grid, you should be able to draw a straight, non-diagonal, line through the enemy with either (or both) a horizontally or laterally. If two or more enemies are next to each other and your flank that group, you attack the entire group.

Now, where each of the flanking characters are, think of an invisible line emerging from them going in a straight horizontal and lateral line coming from them in each direction. Any of your units in these lines will help attack the foe that is being flanked. Even if these units are currently flanking other enemies, if they are in these lines they will add their damage to the fight.  Thus where your characters are, even when not directly flanking, matter.

Advanced: Try to use bow, sword, and spear characters in the actual flank and use staff characters as support attackers. The reasoning is due to that staff characters have range and the others depend on positioning. Also, like an RPG, staff characters are softer and less tanky than front line fighters.

Use Metal Zone and Hunting Zone Dungeons:

Metal Zones happen a few times a day and are used to level your units. Each tier of Metal Zone has a very specific level range that units will ONLY level if they are in that range; IE Zone 1 is 1-19 and Zone 2 is 20-29. You only want to bring characters with jobs of that level into these.

Hunting Zones are where you get materials to give units jobs. Unlike the sporadic Metal Zones, Hunting Zones appear on specific days: Pudding Time – Tuesday, Tin Parade – Wednesday, Puppet Show – Thursday, Friday has all three but they rotate per hour, Coin Creeps – Weekends. Check out the links on the Hunting Zones for more details and strategies.

Unlock other jobs for units:

Your characters will only really start to shine once you unlock their additional two jobs. While the third job has higher stats, you’re going to want to grab skills from the first two jobs to mix and match a powerful character. On the most basic level, a character with more skills is better than one with less skills. To do so, look at the ‘Add Job’ tab in the Tavern to see what you need, figure out which Hunting Zone they drop in, and farm the hell out of them. The S and SS units have harder ingredients to gather.

Skill Boosts and that 'Blue B':

Unlike other mobile stamina based games, your characters actually get better the more you use them. If you want a character to get more experience or better at using their abilities, you have to take them off the bench and throw them into the mix. In battles, if you notice sometimes the words ‘Skill Boost’ appear after an attack that means that character is 0.1% better at using abilities permanently (unless you lose the fight). This is shown as the Blue B in a character’s info. In the example of Daiana below, you see she is at 20.4% at this point. This means that she will use Blazing Counter at a 50.4% instead of 30%. This is character based and not job based. If you pull a character you already have, the Blue B will increase by 5%.

What do coins and energy do? Should I save them?

Coins: use them to recruit through the Pact of Fellowship. For 3000 coins in the tavern, you can get monsters and warriors to join your squad. Besides the very start of the game, this isn’t that useful since you’re only really going to want to use characters with three jobs. Coins are also needed to add jobs to classes – this is why you’re really going to want to save up. Monsters that are magic types are worth leveling a bit until you can field a full team for Pudding Time.

Energy:  use it to recruit through the Pact of Truth. For 5 energy you can summon a rare character between the B and SS grades. This is completely random and requires prayers to the RNG gods. Energy can also be used to refill your stamina and to resurrect all your units after losing. I like to keep three extra energy in my stash before I use it on the Pact of Truth, just in case.

Try to get past Chapter 10 ASAP:

This is easier said than done. The boss of chapter 10 is quite difficult if you’re party isn’t advanced. Take use of the Meal Zone 2 before attempting him. After you finish chapter 10, you have access to a free S class character, Metal Parade 2, and Hunting Zone 2. The second Hunting Zone is quite useful for farming materials needed for adding jobs to your existing characters. This will become necessary for further development in the game. Once you get access to this, spend sufficient time unlocking jobs before moving on too far with future chapters.