Starting Granblue Fantasy

Sierokarte

Welcome!
Welcome to Granblue Fantasy! We'll run you through the basics so you can get started!

Granblue Fantasy ("GBF") is a turn-based, browser JRPG gacha game made by Cygames. You can play it on any Chromium-based browser, such as Chrome, Edge, Vivaldi, etc. GBF can be played on a computer or any mobile device that can run a browser, and you can be logged into the same account on multiple devices to sync progress.

Why Play Granblue Fantasy

Granblue Fantasy is an online JRPG, with a focus on long-term progression. The combat system is turn based with hybrid real-time synchronization when other players are involved in a raid. It follows the tried-and-true "kill boss to get stronger to kill stronger boss" design philosophy. Even though it's a gacha game, its gameplay formula is closer to traditional MMORPGs.

Despite its over 10 years of age, GBF maintains a consistent playerbase thanks to its unique blend of classic grindy JRPG gameplay with its fantastic storytelling and presentation. Hardcore players love the game for how replayable it is and how rewarding it is to achieve your own goals, whereas more casual players love the constant new story drops and hundreds of hours of fully voice acted visual-novel style storytelling. Most players fit into both camps to some extent.

Why and Why Not Try Granblue
Positives		Negatives
	F2PFree to Play friendly You can enjoy everything the game has to offer without spending any money. Designed to be played for a long time The gameplay is mostly relaxed and low effort, and the grinds are long but rewarding. Play at your own pace. You're invited to do whatever content you want to next, at whichever speed you find comfortable. The game's "stamina system" is non-restrictive, with near-infinite free refills and virtually no punishment for having it full. Excellent community resources Whether that be here on gbf.wiki or another external sites, this game has a plethora of incredibly helpful resources created by the most dedicated fans.		Still a gacha game No matter how good it is, by definition, a gacha game is P2WPay to Win. You may be best avoiding it if you have difficulty with impulse control and/or prefer to play games in a competitive fashion. The game is grindy. While you can still get a lot of enjoyment from the story or just play the game casually, it is a grindy game, which may not be something you enjoy. The game can feel overwhelming. With so much content, it can be hard to know what to do next and it can be a challenge to plot your path. GBF is often called a "wiki game" - one you have to play with guides and the wiki on the side. If you're the type of player who prefers to play blind or prefers the game to guide them along, this may be a negative. Parts of the game can feel dated Being such an old game means a lot of growing pains from back in the day are still evident and vestigial or overlapping mechanics exist. Some patience is necessary to push through the outdated parts.

Creating an Account

Main article: Creating an Account

To play Granblue Fantasy, all you need is a Chromium-based browser. Check the link above for instructions on how to create an account and start playing today!

New Player Checklist

Here's a quick and easy checklist for new players to follow. This should get you up and going quickly and ready to enjoy the game.

Y Create an account as described in Creating an Account. If you're a "meta" gamer and want to optimize, or think you'll want to spend money in the future, it may be worth it to attempt Rerolling for a good starting account.
Y Claim free pulls that are given to you upon starting your account. You can get 100 free pulls from the New Skyfarer Step Up Special. Note that despite saying "1 week only!", this and the Beginner's Draw Set return regularly if unpurchased. You should not feel pressured to spend money on them.
Y Open your Crate (the gift box icon in your Home Screen), and collect all items in the Other tab, and only that tab. Leave all the Weapons and Summons from the Gacha in there. The Crate has infinite storage, and anything in the No Limit tab will stay there forever. This really helps with early-game inventory management! You should come back to the Other tab every now and then to pick up items, but don't pick up any Weapons or Summons from the Gacha until you need them later. If the Time Limit tab has a Notification symbol by it, make sure to pick all of those up, as they will expire otherwise.
Y Start clearing the Pinboard Missions available inside Extras > Other on your Home screen to familiarize yourself with the game's UI and menus. You may have to scroll down a bit to see it after the current events and promotions.
Y Read or skip the Main Story up to Chapter 8 to unlock Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy. (see below for more info)

Congratulations, you're ready to game! From here on out, keep following the Knickknack Academy's missions and follow Sierokarte's advice to get your foot in the door. Welcome to GBF!

Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy

Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy is an extended tutorial that helps onboard new players. During the Academy, new players are provided with tasks to complete while explaining the process behind them.

You can unlock Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy by completing Chapter 8 Story: The Iron Titan. As a new player, this should be your utmost priority. The Academy will guide you through understanding everything the game is about, and will leave you off at a fantastic spot to progress further. You should be graduating past Player Rank 150.

The Academy can be accessed from the Home Screen or via the GBF Handbook, as shown below:

Story Content

Main Story

Main article: Main Quest (Warning: May contain spoilers.)

The first thing you'll do as a new player is starting the Main Quest (MSQMain Story Questline).

It's recommended to give the story a try without skipping first, but if you find it too boring or poorly paced, give the Swiftly Sail feature a try. Granblue is old, and this is a sort of "band-aid" fix from the developers to help get you through the issues of the early writing.

If the main thing that bothers you is the overabundance of random story fights - you're not alone. This was the early game's way of simulating JRPG random encounters, but they realized it got boring fast around Chapter 54.

Io

Get Free Stuff!
As you clear the Main Quest, some free "Omega" weapons will land in your Crate. Pick these up, they're immediately useful!

If at any point you wish to read story you skipped or simply want to revisit a chapter without fights, you can do so from the Journal. (Menu > Journal > Story).

Side Stories

Main article: Side Stories

Side Stories provide additional facets of the GBF universe that aren't seen in the Main Story. There is significantly more Side Story content than Main Story, with several different storylines going on.

You can access Side Stories from your Menu on the top right of your screen. Reading Side Stories is an excellent way to immerse yourself in the various tales from the Sky Realm, while also earning lots of draw currency and new characters.

At the bottom of the Side Stories screen, you can find a link to the GBF Handbook's Character Map. This page shows all the available freely recruitable characters you can earn from reading stories and progressing in the game. If there's a character you like, this is a great way to find out where you can get a copy of them.

Zeta

Coming from Versus or Relink?
You may already be familiar with some of the crew then. We got you covered!

If you're interested in following specific characters' stories, you can click the button below to check out some notable events featuring the characters in those games.

Storyline	Notable Characters Featured
Main Quest	Katalina Rackam Io Eugen Rosetta Ferry Vira
Archangel Saga starting with What Makes the Sky Blue	Sandalphon Beelzebub Belial Lucilius among many others as supporting roles
Society Series starting with Footprints on Sacred Ground	Zeta Beatrix Vaseraga Eustace
Dragon Knights Series starting with Defender's Oath	Lancelot Percival Siegfried Vane
Aliza and Stan Series starting with The Cowardly Hero and the Captive Princess	Ladiva Soriz Ghandagoza
Lowain Bros Series starting with L.E.T.S. H.A.N.G.	Lowain Bros Katalina Vira
Primal Resonance Series starting with Primal Resonance	Zooey
Alchemist Series starting with Alchemist Astray	Cagliostro
Eternals' Stories starting with Seeds of Redemption	Anre Tweyen Seofon Seox Additional stories can be read by unlocking the Eternals through gameplay.
Auld Lanxiety	Zooey Anila
Little Skyfarer a la Sacre Blumiel!	Charlotta
Yesterday's Scars and Tomorrow's Hope	Metera
Forgiveness and Gratitude	Yuel
Arcarum: The World Beyond Storyline	Nier Stories can be read by uncapping the Death summon and recruiting Nier.
Note: Side Stories are just old story events made permanent. Not all events are available in Side Stories yet, and some characters only appear in more recent events. (e.g. Grimnir appears in Prayers, but that event is not available in Side Stories yet). If you want to learn which events a playable character appears in, you can use the Lore tab in their character page, and then watch the event story on YouTube.

Gacha Draw System

Main article: Draw

Granblue's gacha system is relatively simple. The following are the main things you should know:

	About Granblue Gacha The highest rarity is SSR and nearly everything below it is fodder. Standard SSR rate is 3% on most banners and 6% on monthly Gala Banners (more info below). Pulling a Character Weapon for the first time will unlock the respective character. 300 pulls on a banner gives you a Spark, which can be exchanged for one of the featured banner items of your choice. This is known as a "hard pity" system. There is no "soft pity" (such as rates going up from the lack of SSR draws). While 300 pulls sounds like a lot, Granblue is generous in its premium currency gain, averaging at about four sparks a year for F2P.

Different Draw Banners


Standard 3% Banner	Flash Gala 6% Banner Mid-Month	Premium Gala 6% Banner End-Month

Granblue primarily runs only one main rotating banner at a time—the Premium Draw banner. This is the main banner you'll be pulling from.

This banner rotates between different promotions several times a month. New characters are released usually twice a month on Gala banners.

Flash Gala (or "flashfest") usually around the middle of the month.
Premium Gala (or "legfest") at the end of the month.

Both types of Gala banners have a different set of Gala-exclusive Grand Characters that can only be pulled during their respective Gala—but this set is the same every month, so you don't have to worry about characters going away indefinitely. You can click the banners above to see who's available when.

An additional set of "Classic" banners are also available to be pulled from. These contain only old items from specific timeframes and are always 3% SSR rate. See Draw#Classic for more information, but it is generally best to avoid Classic banners for now.

Sandalphon

Don't pull on 3%!
Unless there are free-draw promotions, pulling on 3% banners is a terrible idea.

While Granblue does not have truly "Limited" characters outside of Collab events, it does have Seasonals—characters available only during certain times of the year (e.g. Summer, Holiday, etc). These also release in the Premium Draw banner, and are often the most sought after characters. Players often save their pulls to spark on seasonal releases.

Sparking

See Draw#Cerulean Sparks

Whenever you pull in Premium Draw, you receive a Cerulean Spark. This happens no matter how the pull was made, be it Crystals, Tickets, or real money.

"Sparking" is the term for trading in 300 Cerulean Sparks to obtain a featured item of your choice from the banner.

Katalina

Save for Sparks!
As we all know, rate up is a lie. The only way to guarantee the character you want is to spark it.

It is highly recommended to always have at least a full spark whenever you pull. Even if you luck out and get the item you want early, it's best to not run the risk of losing everything.

Be aware that Cerulean Sparks expire after a banner ends.

Because sparks do not carry over between banners, players are highly incentivized to plan their pulls. Sparking is the Gacha system's safety net, as any pulls done without a spark backing have the potential to be wasted entirely.

Acquiring Pulls

When you get started in the game, most content will award Crystals and Draw Tickets. Going through the main story rewards you as you progress, and a treasure trove of pulls can be found in Side Stories or by getting Trophies.

As is standard for gacha games, the longer you play, the further these wells dry up. Over time, you'll mainly be accumulating them by participating in recurring events each month. On average, excluding one-time rewards, between campaign freebies and clearing the main rewards on events (while doing their associated dailies), you should be getting a spark about every three months. The first few should be a lot easier to acquire as you'll still have one-time rewards to get.

Pulling Duplicates

The first time you pull a Character Weapon from the gacha, you'll also unlock the respective character:

Lyst Sin		Vira (SSR)
Lord of Flames		Percival (Grand)

When obtained, characters come with everything unlockable through standard in-game leveling. You do not need multiple copies of the same character to use them to their full potential, nor do you need to level up their weapon at all.

This raises the question—what happens to dupes?

	Dupes are valuable too! Pulling a Character Weapon you already own gives you an additional copy of the weapon, as well as a Moon Item corresponding to its rarity Bronze Moon for dupes. Silver Moon for dupes. Gold Moon for dupes.. The duplicate weapons are often useable, meaning you want to keep them around instead of merging or reducing. Moons are important currencies for buying powerful endgame weapons or useful supplies.

Free Draw Promotions

Granblue is known for regularly rewarding its players with free pulls. These are a great way to get lots of goodies for your collection, especially if you're newer.

The Roulette is the annual highlight, running twice a year in December and March—for the Holidays and the game's Anniversary respectively.

During Roulette, players can spin a wheel to receive a random number of free 10-pulls per day, up to 100 or even 200 in some cases. Roulette is a great time to spark, as even free pulls award Cerulean Sparks - meaning you can get heavily discounted sparks for the characters you want.

If Roulette is coming up soon, it's a good time to hoard your Crystals extra hard so you can cash in on the free pulls for cheaper sparks.

Tips and Tricks

Y You can get some free pulls by claiming Town Items as you go through the story. Doing this, you can get over 20 pulls by the time you're caught up. You can also claim some permanent serial codes from the top-left of your Home screen by going to News > (Scroll down) > Serial Codes. Put in the following codes: `j5pamkru2vcx4cr8` `yrwgyv8mcck2wcbf`
Y You should join an active crew! GBF is designed for crew play, and while the tutorial might have you make one for yourself, the game is much more fun if you have like-minded friends to play with. Not only that, but the most important events are crew focused, meaning you'll want to be in one no matter what. You can find crews recruiting or submit your "looking for crew" post on the GBF Wiki Discord Server (among other community Discords) or the /r/Granblue_en/ weekly Crew Recruitment thread. There's lots of "slack" crews or those accepting new players too, so don't feel too intimidated by the stronger crews recruiting only veterans!
Y Try out different kinds of teams for different fights. The game gives you a bunch of slots to put teams, so there's no reason to limit yourself to one per element. There's a lot of different niches in GBF, so try out your characters and figure out where each one shines. Remember that if you make teams that can stomp specific fights, you can get each fight's rewards even faster.
Y Take it one raid at a time, and join a lot of that raid. It can be overwhelming to have so many raids to choose from and so much to farm. It's often easier to pick one lane at a time, and use the Raid Finder to join mass fellow players' raids rather than hosting everything all the time.
Y Check out Basic Grids for more general tips and help for early gameplay, and Recurring Tasks for dailies, weeklies, and monthlies.

Limited Items

	Important Warning! The following items are extremely valuable and rare. You're given some to start off with, and they may seem easy to get in the beginning, but your supply quickly runs out. For the time being, do not use them, or you will regret it later on.

Sunlight Stone, Gold Brick, and Damascus Ingot can be used to "skip" steps in uncapping summons and weapons. While this may be tempting if something isn't dropping, it is highly recommended you don't do it until you fully understand their value.
- These items are required for progression later on, such as recruiting Eternals and Evokers, uncapping Dark Opus Weapons, or uncapping Arcarum Summons.
New World Quartz and Gold Moon are limited currencies that can be easily wasted on items you can get otherwise. You should not spend these on anything that can be acquired elsewhere.
- New World Quartz is required to purchase and uncap New World Foundation Weapons, Transcend Dark Opus Weapons, and purchase copies of The World Card to unlock each Evokers' fourth skill. New World Quartz should not be used for anything else.
- Gold Moons can be traded for things not ordinarily available from any other source, but are in extremely limited supply. This includes:
  - Powerful weapons such as the Illustrious Weapons.
  - Siero's Special Pick Ticket, which allows obtaining any desired character currently available in the Premium Draw, along with some only normally available from purchase promotions.
  - Other trades can be made, but should only be done with caution—or not at all. Be sure to read each item's page on the wiki to make sure that it cannot be obtained from another source before purchasing.

Next Steps

After graduating from Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy, you should be over Rank 150 and with baseline grids to take on future challenges.

At this point, the game really opens up and where you go is up to you. If you want to keep getting stronger, you should be trying out the new raids you just unlocked, such as the Six-Dragon Raids or Omega Rebirth Raids, or just finishing up loose ends from prior tiers like Ennead or Regalia. Either way, the world's your oyster, and how you get stronger (and how fast you do so!) is fully up to you.

Narmaya

Need some help?
No worries. Check out Advanced Grids
for where to go from here~

The Advanced Grids pages are the Wiki's main resource for players Rank 151 and higher. There, you can find grid templates, breakdowns of which weapons see use, and example teams for all the game's content. Please be aware that the grids shown are just that — examples — and never mean you need the characters or weapons shown. Use them as inspiration to build your own setups and have fun along the way!

You can also check out the Wiki's Guide Index, which contains a ton of user-made guides for GBF, covering many different parts of the game. If you are to read only one page, make it Advanced Grids, but if you want to consume all the knowledge available, peruse what's available in the Guide Index from time to time for sure.

Still have questions? Need advice from veteran players on what you should do? Try the questions channel on the GBF Wiki Discord Server! Remember we were all newbies at one point, so don't be shy to ask!

Starting Granblue Fantasy

Contents

Why Play Granblue Fantasy

Creating an Account

New Player Checklist

Sierokarte's Knickknack Academy