Echoes of Mana has just been released for mobile devices, and it’s already proving to be a pretty decent and fun gacha game, especially as the developers have proven that they’re listening to player feedback and looking to implement more changes. With that said, if you’re looking to get into the game while it’s still fresh, we’ve prepared an Echoes of Mana beginner’s guide to give you the best possible start to your account.
Echoes of Mana Beginner’s Guide and Roadmap
This guide will go over some of the basic things you should do first when you start your account, as well as an overview of the various different systems you need to get acquainted with to make your characters stronger. After that, we’ll also give you a general idea of which quests and content to push so that you can progress smoothly.
Rerolling Your Account
The first thing you should do if you really want to min-max your account is to reroll it until you have all the 4-star characters you want. We’ve got a rerolling guide here, as well as a character tier list to help you make your decision.
Essentially, the game starts you off with a free guaranteed 3-star pull, and the login bonuses you get after completing the tutorial will allow you to pull a guaranteed 4-star unit, and enough Spirit Crystals to do two more 10x pulls. The key here is to get the most out of your two 10x pulls, and keep rerolling and restarting your account until you manage to get a desired 4-star unit out of those.
Ideally, you’ll want to begin the game with at least two 4-star units of your choosing. At the time of writing, Sumo and Angela have quickly proven to be the best 4-star characters in the game, and we’d definitely recommend trying to grab Sumo at the very least as he can heal up your party and also tank as needed.
To reroll, you’ll want to go back to the title screen after your pulls, and click on User Support. From here, delete your user data, and the game will automatically restart. The great thing about Echoes of Mana is that the rerolling process is painless, and you can skip the tutorial with each restart, allowing you to get to your pulls faster.
This process may still take a few hours as the pulls are completely RNG-dependent, so be patient with it.
Equipping and Leveling Memory Gems
If you’ve played War of the Visions, you’ll be somewhat familiar with the Memory Gems system in Echoes of Mana. These are basically cards that you can equip to each character in your party, and they provide you with various perks and stat bonuses.
It’s likely that you’ll get a few Memory Gems while doing your initial pulls, and your next step should be to figure out which ones you want to equip and level up. It’s important to note that the star rating of the Memory Gems isn’t the most essential bit here; pay attention to the perks and decide which ones would best fit your party.
Once you’ve equipped your desired Memory Gems, you can also start leveling them up with whatever Echo items you have on you. You’ll want to level your Gems up to level 20, as that’s the first breakpoint for the Memory Gems, and hitting 20 will give them a huge stat increase and massively improve your party’s overall rating.
It doesn’t take too many leveling items to hit level 20 either, so do this as soon as you’re able to.
Unlocking the Mana Board
Before too long, you’ll find that the story quests will quickly ramp up in difficulty, preventing you from progressing any further. You’ll then need to level up your party, but simply increasing their levels isn’t enough. The most direct and easiest way of strengthening them is by unlocking their Mana board.
Head to the Allies screen and tap on a character, then tap on the third tab to take a look at the Mana board. Each character is tied to a different element, and you’ll need to farm elemental resources to unlock more nodes on the board to make them stronger. Thankfully, these resources are very easy to farm, and you can access them via the Training dungeons and choosing the element you want to farm for.
I recommend doing this in between your story chapters, or whenever you have enough SP in the bank, so that your characters are always getting stronger. You’ll eventually need to complete the entire Mana board in order to ascend them anyway, so it’s best to get started early.
Upgrading Equipment
There’s one other thing you can do to strengthen your party in Echoes of Mana, and that’s by equipping them with good gear. Gear drops can be farmed in Training dungeons and story quests, and as you level them up, they’ll gain extra stat bonuses. However, gear leveling items are precious and hard to come by, and are mainly farmed from your daily quests.
The good news is that once you’ve fully leveled up a piece of 2-star equipment, for instance, you can sell it to the blacksmith for Lucre, and you’ll also get a good chunk of your invested resources back. With this in mind, don’t be afraid to level up your lower rarity gear to keep your party on par with whatever content you’re pushing, as you can always sell them later to get some resources back.
You’ll start getting 3-star gear sets from Hard quests (unlocked as you complete your story missions) and gear dungeons, which can be farmed infinitely if you have enough SP. Level these up, and you’ll be able to tackle harder content that can drop 4-star sets.
One final thing to note is that pieces from the same gear sets will also give you stat bonuses. So if you’ve got three pieces from the Oak set, equip them on a character for better perks.
Character Ascension in Echoes of Mana
Awakening your units to hit level 100 is going to be your ultimate goal in Echoes of Mana, at least for now. And the key to doing that is by making use of your Knitwit Icons, Benevedon Icons, and all your 2-star fodder units for Ascension.
Here’s how Ascension works: you’ll need to make use of Knitwit Icons or other units of the same rarity to Ascend a character whenever they hit their max level for that tier. You’ll also need to Unleash them fully by making use of Benevedon Icons or dupes of that character. Once you’ve done all that, you can then Awaken them into a 6-star character, and allow them to hit level 100.
If that sounds like a lot of work, that’s because it is, and we recommend only Awakening your 4-star units at least for now.
Making Use of 2-Star Fodder
As you’re pulling units, you’ll inevitably end up with tons of 2-star fodder units that you’ll never use in combat. However, they can be used as valuable Ascension materials for your 4-stars. Here’s how to do it.
- Set a 2-star unit as a sub character to each of your main party members.
- By questing and farming normally, they’ll eventually hit the level 30 cap.
- Ascend your 2-star units into 3-star units by using Knitwit Icons or other 2-stars.
- Keep leveling those 3-stars until they hit the level 50 cap.
- Ascend them into 4-star units by using Knitwit Icons or other 3-star units.
- Level up your main 4-star characters until they reach the level cap, then Ascend them with the 2-star fodders that you’ve been leveling this entire time.
While this does sound like a huge grind, it actually doesn’t take that long to level up the 2-stars and bring them up to level 50. They’ll rack up experience very quickly just by sitting your party’s sub slots, and you can switch them out once they’ve been Ascened to 4-stars, and then swap in another fodder unit for leveling.
Knitwit Icons and Benevedon Icons
The Icon items in Echoes of Mana are extremely rare and valuable, so we don’t recommend using them unless you have no other option. The Knitwit Icons should be saved for occasions where you’re completely out of fodder units for Ascension, though this shouldn’t happen too often while you’re still pulling units.
On the other hand, Benevedon Icons are very hard to come by and are required to Unleash a character to unlock their skills. In order to Unleash a character, you’ll either need to use a Benevedon Icon or a dupe of that character, which makes Unleashing your 4-star units very challenging. Because of this, we recommend saving all your Benevedon Icons for your favorite 4-star unit, at least until the game includes a viable method of farming them.
Content Roadmap
Now that you’ve got a decent grasp of all the basic mechanics, it’s time to go over the general flow of the content you should be pushing in Echoes of Mana at launch, and how to spend your AP and SP.
AP is spent on main story quests, Tower quests, and event quests, while SP is spent on your daily training quests and farming quests for gear and resources. You should try to expend all of your AP and SP as much as possible, and make sure to keep farming resources with SP while your AP is regenerating.
Here’s a general idea of how your first week or so with Echoes of Mana should go:
- Reroll your account until you’re happy with your pulls.
- Push through the story as much as possible to rack up Spirit Crystals for more pulls to fill out your party.
- Expend your SP on the training quests as soon as they’re available, then start farming elemental resources to unlock the Mana board.
- Continue pushing through the story until Chapter 4 or 5, then go back to Chapter 1 and start clearing the Hard versions of those quests.
- After clearing Chapter 5, you can start attempting Twillwool Tower. Just push those quests as far as you can with your party level, and remember to keep expending SP to farm resources and gear for your party when you get stuck.
At the time of writing, the Trail to the Toughest event is currently live in Echoes of Mana as well. If you’ve hit a wall with the story quests and are waiting for your SP to refill so you can keep farming resources, the event quests are a great way to help you rack up Spirit Crystals and experience as well.
You’ll also earn EP for completing the quest missions, which can be used to buy valuable items like Knitwit Icons, Benevedon Icons, and Experience Tomes, so these are definitely worth doing when you’re not working on the story quests.
That does it for our Echoes of Mana beginner’s guide. Be sure to search for Twinfinite for more tips and information on the game.
