Good starter characters?

[kirokito]

As title says I just got into the game and am very noobie with auto battlers in general so I wanted to get some recommendations for good starter characters to learn and play

Thanks!

[Útost Alronbem]

Default sword character (and sword sect in general) is actually quite good as a starter.
Sword Cloud setup might fare mildly to decently consistently - and then more advanced strategies can be developed naturally.

Five Elements characters need too many fiddling with card database AND singleplayer practicing to start getting any satisfaction. Memorizing elements circle too!
If you're REALLY into trying it - Wu (a guy in a boat with a gourd) is an excellent choice to go mono Fire or mono Metal, thanks to his free Element activation on one Breakthrough and free Chase card (said gourd) on another. Others are more... exotic and demanding.

Didn't tried other two sects yet - astrologers seem to have even higher skill ceiling to boot and while bodybuilders are LOOKING simple, they're also LOOKING like lacking novice-friendly strats. Local experts in these sects might have different opinion.

Also, don't neglect Professions. After all, you get 1 card from your Profession each turn (and, with some chance, during card exchanges). And these DO affect gameplay on par with Sect cards.

Fuluist seems to be the strongest AND the most novice-friendly Profession at the moment.
Two universally good slot fillers (damage dealing consumables) in early game, dreaded Miasma Fulu which puts most decks on a countdown mid-game, free consumable Chase and some Qi in late game.

Default Elixir mastery is also nice thanks to most its cards not taking any space in hand/deck (i. e. being Absorbed directly).
An aspiring player might be interested in stacking multi-hit attacks then praying for early +ATK consumable. Unlike Sword intent, +ATK does NOT expire on use.

Growth (last in list) and Musician are for really advanced players.

The rest is... situational and maybe not for starters either.

[StrikerX22]

I find 5elem easiest and most fun, so eh. Metal decks are pretty straightforward, Wood into Fire (Blazing Prairie usually) is strong, Fire is pretty easy, Earth and Water are each a bit more esoteric but still fun and strong (just remember if you stick to 1 element late game, you really want multiple copies of some cards rather than upgrading sometimes). Just look at Deck Guide for good examples. there are also multi-element builds that work well and are interesting. I started playing them earlyish on because I got a good guide in english for Qinrui (primarily water) by a player Arbiter, using Formation Master job. Du Lingyuan gets a random "innate" element which makes for a fun time, and has more complex element interactions if you want to delve into that ("Overcome", don't have to use it). Xingzhi is pretty easy to use since he doesn't necessarily require the usual Seal card and has the "Destiny put to 1" thing that all 1st chars of each sect have in some way on p4, which helps beginners live longer to try things (and I've won plenty of times after being put to 1).

Elixirist is definitely easy to use, at least. What Drink said applies well for jobs. Deck Guide will show you usually at least 1 example of a job with each character (but that's late game only). Finding a real guide can help with the early-mid game. Yes, Fuluist is generally strong and pretty straightforward, has nice options with Qi stealing, weaken, flaw, internal injury (miasma). That Qi Chase p5 gold card (Divine Walk Fulu) is used in all sorts of decks for like every character. [Edit2:] Painter is fun and helps you get better/more sect cards through exchanging certain cards, though others can be fairly niche, but there'll always be things in any job you don't want.

As for other sects, Duan Xuan looked complicated but I did all the puzzles (Sect Inheritance) to get up to speed more, and honestly it feels pretty easy to make a pretty strong deck. Deck Guide, again helps with this. It has some ridiculous looking character builds, and the non-character general builds give you some helpful details on early-mid (use this for every sect to learn more, really). It's not as bad as it looks imo, and it gets better with time. Both chars seem fine.

Heptastar is harder, I would agree. Card position can be fairly strict. Interesting but not sure which char to recommend. Stats would suggest that Wu Ce is a very strong pick at low ratings and high since introduced, though it both makes things simpler and more complicated in a few ways. She can be fun though.

[Edit1:] forgot Sword Sect. Their builds can be fairly straight forward but it can get complicated transitioning between them when necessary, or knowing when to. Things may not seem terribly strong without seeing them in action. As always, refer to Deck Guide for ways to use things. Mu Yifeng is plenty strong and beginner friendly, so that's a fine choice already.

[Porre]

How do you unlock the other professions? I currently only have elixer and fuluist.

[StrikerX22]

They're in the shop, the "Immortal Market" I believe it's called, on the main menu after logging in.

[Eduard Laser]

def start with sword sect and elixirist. character is not important mb not lin xiaoyue. dont chase a build try to be flexible and try stuff. duan xuan is 2nd easiest i would say. heptastar and 4elements is more advanced. stay away from musician and plant master for beginning u wont get much use out of them

[azuremountian]

Mu Hu

[Miku]

There are several good starers.

You can use any of the swordies and just go mono cloud swords and it's okay, not great, but fairly straight forward to do.

The heptastar pavilion is more complicated, but it does have a couple good beginner strategies. You can use musician Yan Chan and just stack debuffs and use Within Reach.

5 elements also has some good beginner strategies. I'd recommend with Hua Qinrui and make a water or wood and water deck, or Mu Hu and just ignore all the cards other than earth and metal. You can also use Nangong and make a wood and fire increase attack deck just make sure to have a wood spirit in the first spot at the final break through in order to get the secret seal to activate wood spirit and get increased attack. Although if you never get the wood spirit fragrant and have no backup plans this can end in disaster.

[azuremountian]

five elms deck is smaller then every other deck therby making it more consistent so its easier to pick up and learn

[resquinox]

five elements is without doubt the easiest starter.

they are the most played sect in ranked for a reason.

they have the most chase cards in the game, and just one copy of their incarnation chase is enough to cycle through your entire hand compared to others who need multiple chase cards to accomplish the same effect.

they have multiple ways to counter every build in the game, compared to other sects that only have 1 or no ways at all to counter each build. you also don't need to completely pivot your build to counter either, just slotting in 1-2 extra cards is enough to counter most builds, compared to other sects who have to completely change their entire deck to counter a build.

they also have one of the best early games too, so you can easily save a bunch of hp and card rerolls early on.

[StrikerX22]

Originally posted by azuremountian:

five elms deck is smaller then every other deck therby making it more consistent so its easier to pick up and learn

The # of unique normal sect cards (non-secret etc), is 52 for each sect, except 5Elem, which is 51. Small difference for learning. The other 3 sects have 12, 11, 11, 10, 8 cards per phase (p1-5), 5Elem being 11, 11, 11, 11, 7. Sidejobs are 3 per phase.

From there, there are 8 copies of each card in deck except for p5 cards, which have 6 (exception for Elixirist, where p4's Talent Elixir, p5's Great Bodybuilding Elixir and Enlightenment Elixirs all only have 4 copies. [info from in-game FAQ.]

So, for Sects, the deck sizes will be as follows with a Non-Elixirist job:
5Elem: 11*8 + 11*8 + 11*8 +11*8 + 7*6 + job cards (3*8)*4 + 3*6 = 394 + 114 = 508
Others: 12*8 + 11*8 + 11*8 +10*8 + 8*6 + job cards (3*8)*4 + 3*6 = 400 + 114 = 514

With Elixirist, it has 8 less cards by phase 5, so 500 for 5Elem, 506 for others.

Per phase version:

        Sect+Job=total                     -4 if Elix  -8 if Elix
        p1         p2          p3          p4          p5
5Elem:  88+24=112, 176+48=224, 264+72=336, 352+96=448, 394+114=508
Others: 96+24=120, 184+48=232, 272+72=344, 352+96=448, 400+114=514

Now of course, you reduce those totals as you play, drawing cards from the deck, and striking them out with exchanges. Exchanging kills the card you exchanged as well as 2 more copies of it in the deck (or the rest of them if less than 2 are left).

All this is not counting certain events that actually create new copies ("obtain" 获得 instead of "draw" 抽, at least in Chinese), like Painter's Wonderful Strokes, or Dao Rhyme Omen specific cards (I've heard different things about selecting the "At Own Pace" 1st option, but Xom and Surreal_Memoir both tested that it's "draw", despite in-game FAQ). Note that I'm not sure all translations of obtain/draw are consistent with the original Chinese as brought up in Xom's very informative guide: Card pool mechanics, as it mostly just says "draw" in English for each instance, at least at the time he made that.

Originally posted by resquinox:

they have the most chase cards in the game, and just one copy of their incarnation chase is enough to cycle through your entire hand compared to others who need multiple chase cards to accomplish the same effect.

• If you're referring to Marrow, it gives 2 chases at the cost of a turn, giving nothing that turn (unless it's lv2 which gives +2Qi, or lv3 giving an extra chase as well), so it's not quite that simple, since normal chases also give an immediate benefit, if small. Adding echo obviously helpful, but is another card rather than just 1.
  
• If you're talking about UWF, you have to usually hold onto a low value seal, while really wanting circs or other chases to work with it. Hard to call it just 1 "chase" card.
  
• If you mean Willow... that's just a normal (but good) chase.

I still personally feel 5Elem is easiest though, with Mu Hu and Qinrui (particularly with a guide).

[June 3 edit: corrected Job card count for phase 5 to 3*6 instead of including with other phases as 3*8. Corrected total cards from that.]

[azuremountian]

Originally posted by StrikerX22:

Originally posted by azuremountian:

five elms deck is smaller then every other deck therby making it more consistent so its easier to pick up and learn

The # of unique normal sect cards (non-secret etc), is 52 for each sect, except 5Elem, which is 51. Small difference for learning. The other 3 sects have 12, 11, 11, 10, 8 cards per phase (p1-5), 5Elem being 11, 11, 11, 11, 7. Sidejobs are 3 per phase.

From there, there are 8 copies of each card in deck except for p5 cards, which have 6 (exception for Elixirist, where p4's Talent Elixir, p5's Great Bodybuilding Elixir and Enlightenment Elixirs all only have 4 copies. [info from in-game FAQ.]

So, for Sects, the deck sizes will be as follows with a Non-Elixirist job:
5Elem: 11*8 + 11*8 + 11*8 +11*8 + 7*6 + job cards (3*8)*5 = 394 + 120 = 514
Others: 12*8 + 11*8 + 11*8 +10*8 + 8*6 + job cards (3*8)*5 = 400 + 120 = 520

With Elixirist, it has 8 less cards by phase 5, so 506 for 5Elem, 512 for others.

Per phase version:

        Sect+Job=total                     -4 if Elix  -8 if Elix
        p1         p2          p3          p4          p5
5Elem:  88+24=112, 176+48=224, 264+72=336, 352+96=448, 394+120=514
Others: 96+24=120, 184+48=232, 272+72=344, 352+96=448, 400+120=520

Now of course, you reduce those totals as you play, drawing cards from the deck, and striking them out with exchanges. Exchanging kills the card you exchanged as well as 2 more copies of it in the deck (or the rest of them if less than 2 are left).

All this is not counting certain events that actually create new copies ("obtain" 获得 instead of "draw" 抽, at least in Chinese), like Painter's Wonderful Strokes, or Dao Rhyme Omen specific cards (I've heard different things about selecting the "At Own Pace" 1st option, but Xom and Surreal_Memoir both tested that it's "draw", despite in-game FAQ). Note that I'm not sure all translations of obtain/draw are consistent with the original Chinese as brought up in Xom's very informative guide: Card pool mechanics, as it mostly just says "draw" in English for each instance, at least at the time he made that.

Originally posted by resquinox:

they have the most chase cards in the game, and just one copy of their incarnation chase is enough to cycle through your entire hand compared to others who need multiple chase cards to accomplish the same effect.

• If you're referring to Marrow, it gives 2 chases at the cost of a turn, giving nothing that turn (unless it's lv2 which gives +2Qi, or lv3 giving an extra chase as well), so it's not quite that simple, since normal chases also give an immediate benefit, if small. Adding echo obviously helpful, but is another card rather than just 1.
  
• If you're talking about UWF, you have to usually hold onto a low value seal, while really wanting circs or other chases to work with it. Hard to call it just 1 "chase" card.
  
• If you mean Willow... that's just a normal (but good) chase.

I still personally feel 5Elem is easiest though, with Mu Hu and Qinrui (particularly with a guide).

through my own testing daoist rhyme nor the life shop make new cards. (unless you have already spun them all away in which case they will) but yeah i have a whole spread sheet to play elixrist mu hu his small card pool plus chances to upgrade and gain cult is insane along with the smaller card pool

[StrikerX22]

okay... so since your testing disagrees with 2 other person's tests, what was your methodology exactly? Here's Surreal's doc on it btw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/146JkQkwZxWEULj368EXISIL9c4O5x9EqGzqhGXcF0Rk/edit

Elixir 5Elem is going to have a p5 unaltered deck size of 506, compared to usual 520 for other sects+other jobs, about 2.7% smaller. Significant, but not sure I'd call the advantage insane. Keep in mind Painter also gives more chances to get what you want, although not the cult. The late March tier list for above 3k rating shows Painter Mu Hu as 19th out of the 50 listed (and 102 possible), while Elixirist Mu Hu was 30th, but he's been buffed now so I'm sure those are going to change some. I will note that the "cutoff" for having an average rank higher than "equal" wins and losses (4.5 avg rank) is after the 23rd listed (sorted them in my spreadsheet).

Just to keep things clean, you might want to snip the insides of a quoted post to just reference the most relevant part you're responding to, not that you have to quote if you're the next post. Unless you're trying to us honest, I guess lol.

[edit: On 2nd thought, maybe make a new thread if we want to continue this sub discussion, like if you'd like to post your findings, outside of "Good starter characters" thread]

[azuremountian]

Originally posted by StrikerX22:

okay... so since your testing disagrees with 2 other person's tests, what was your methodology exactly? Here's Surreal's doc on it btw: https://docs.google.com/document/d/146JkQkwZxWEULj368EXISIL9c4O5x9EqGzqhGXcF0Rk/edit

Elixir 5Elem is going to have a p5 unaltered deck size of 506, compared to usual 520 for other sects+other jobs, about 2.7% smaller. Significant, but not sure I'd call the advantage insane. Keep in mind Painter also gives more chances to get what you want, although not the cult. The late March tier list for above 3k rating shows Painter Mu Hu as 19th out of the 50 listed (and 102 possible), while Elixirist Mu Hu was 30th, but he's been buffed now so I'm sure those are going to change some. I will note that the "cutoff" for having an average rank higher than "equal" wins and losses (4.5 avg rank) is after the 23rd listed (sorted them in my spreadsheet).

Just to keep things clean, you might want to snip the insides of a quoted post to just reference the most relevant part you're responding to, not that you have to quote if you're the next post. Unless you're trying to us honest, I guess lol.

[edit: On 2nd thought, maybe make a new thread if we want to continue this sub discussion, like if you'd like to post your findings, outside of "Good starter characters" thread]

i used Tu Kui to guarantee a phys draw card burned all copies of marrow before daoist rhyme picked one up. then i spun away two copies of marrow only to pick up another one and spin it away, yet still drew into one

[StrikerX22]

Okay. So if I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like:

1. You did not(?) reserve Exercise Marrow on the 1st Dao Rhyme on round 4,
   
2. You got to phase 4, Tu Kui helps get all 8 deck copies of Marrow (Tu Kui verified by Xom to draw, not create),
   
3. You did not use Painter which would create you new copies potentially, you did not use Life Shop mechanics that might potentially create new copies (like Life Shop's Scroll of Exchange, verified in an interview [with Kreal, translated by Xom in the Card Mechanics guide] to transform hand to new cards, not draw).
   
4. You then got to round 15 Dao Rhyme and chose Marrow and got a copy (which would verify your claim that it at least creates one if you have none in deck).
   
5. Then you exchanged 2 Marrows and eventually got 2 more. That correct?

This would imply that something else is going on that no one has talked about, since you got 10 from your deck +1 from Dao Rhyme, or your test was done incorrectly.

This also doesn't address that you claim Dao Rhyme doesn't create new copies when you haven't used up the ones in the deck, but I'll assume you tested that in a similar fashion (presumably without the hiccups that this test seems to have had?).

[azuremountian]

Originally posted by StrikerX22:

Okay. So if I'm understanding correctly, it sounds like:

1. You did not(?) reserve Exercise Marrow on the 1st Dao Rhyme on round 4,
   
2. You got to phase 4, Tu Kui helps get all 8 deck copies of Marrow (Tu Kui verified by Xom to draw, not create),
   
3. You did not use Painter which would create you new copies potentially, you did not use Life Shop mechanics that might potentially create new copies (like Life Shop's Scroll of Exchange, verified in an interview [with Kreal, translated by Xom in the Card Mechanics guide] to transform hand to new cards, not draw).
   
4. You then got to round 15 Dao Rhyme and chose Marrow and got a copy (which would verify your claim that it at least creates one if you have none in deck).
   
5. Then you exchanged 2 Marrows and eventually got 2 more. That correct?

This would imply that something else is going on that no one has talked about, since you got 10 from your deck +1 from Dao Rhyme, or your test was done incorrectly.

This also doesn't address that you claim Dao Rhyme doesn't create new copies when you haven't used up the ones in the deck, but I'll assume you tested that in a similar fashion (presumably without the hiccups that this test seems to have had?).

two separate tests. one to see if daoist rhyme generates cards. and a second to see if i spin away two copies of a card and receive a third from the rhyme if that third one counts towards total deck size if spun. these tests were done with elixirst i didnt generate any new cards past the rhyme and life shop. the life shop tests were the same btw. me and my testing partner both used life dew to gain inf destiny as we always reached the 64 turn lim if thats your concern