Mobius Final Fantasy guide

Mobius Final Fantasy presents players with a sprawling fantasy world and asks them to create a "hero of light" from a soldier who starts out as a blank slate. You name him and train him, gathering cards that grant the abilities you need to conquer numerous challenges. The process initially feels quite complex, but keep this beginner guide at your side, and you should have no trouble with those critical first few hours.

The three phases

Once you clear the recommended tutorial mode, Mobius Final Fantasy falls into a simple pattern:

• You enter a map and win a series of battles.
• You watch whatever story sequence might follow.
• You customize your deck before doing it all over again.

With few exceptions, you will repeat that process for as long as you play.

Combat basics

Battles make up roughly half of Mobius Final Fantasy, so it pays to understand how to take down your enemies quickly. When you first meet a group of foes, generally you should hit them with standard attacks and automatically absorb the orbs that materialize. Once you absorb enough orbs of a particular color, you will gain access to special abilities, which you can use to inflict additional damage.

Stronger enemies often mingle with weak underlings. Eliminate the weakest enemies first, so you don't have to worry about them chipping away at your health for however long the battle lasts. Stronger foes take longer to defeat not only because they have more HP, but because they have a Break gauge that you must destroy.

The break gauge

When you wail on a foe wearing heavy armor, which is indicated by an orange bar placed beneath the green health bar, your attacks deal significantly less damage. You can hit the enemy with a special attack to turn the gauge from orange to red. Once it's red, then additional attacks will quickly break pieces away.

Once the gauge empties, then you have a limited number of turns to deal extra damage before the gauge returns. That's your chance in Mobius Final Fantasy to unleash your most powerful abilities, if you didn't already use them to do away with the gauge. Make sure that you hit with everything you have, while keeping elemental affinity in mind.

Elemental affinities

When you hit an enemy with your ability attacks, they inflict significantly more damage if you strike with the proper element. There are four primary elements: water, fire, earth, and air. At launch, light and shadow elements don't seem to factor into combat directly (though they matter elsewhere).

If you attack a fire monster, try to use a water attack, and vice versa. If you attack a monster of the earth element, use air attacks. Meanwhile, earth attacks work best against airborne adversaries.

In Mobius Final Fantasy, you can also use those affinities as a defensive move in combat. Use your earth-based Element Drive to temporarily improve your earth affinity (which you do by holding your finger on the circular ring near the screen's bottom right corner and then sliding to the element you wish to enable), for instance, if you are fighting a monster that relies heavily on earth attacks. You'll produce a barrier that lasts a few rounds and minimizes the damage attacks of that element inflict on you.

Auto-battle

When you are confident you can handily defeat enemies, tap the Auto button near the bottom of the screen. In a lot of games, this is a gamble. In Mobius Final Fantasy, your hero is actually quite capable without your direction. He heals himself when things look grim (if you have the appropriate ability equipped), targets pesky underlings first and uses abilities wisely to inflict maximum damage against tougher foes.

Auto-battle is a great way to learn how to fight, since your hero employs sound strategies that you can adopt for yourself. The feature also lets you speed up the game's flow.

Later, you can also visit a timed area that grants experience point bonuses while you defeat as many enemies as possible in a half-hour, which makes auto-battle a must. As long as you prepare your hero to face the enemies in a given area, you should persevere even without having to control anything directly.

Stack the deck

Typically in Mobius Final Fantasy, combat success is secured before you ever face your foes. The time you spend customizing your character determines whether you demolish everything that stands in your way, or struggle just to survive. You should access the Decks menu often. It's docked on the left or right side of your screen when you're not in battle.

Ability cards

The deck you build determines available combat abilities. You can and should create multiple decks. A single deck, constantly updated, might carry you through the bulk of the content available at launch, but multiple decks streamline the process. Happily, you can use your favorite cards in multiple decks.

Your Mobius Final Fantasy deck displays as a row of five cards. The first in the row is your Job card, which dictates the elements your character can use, and the rest of the cards are ability cards. Note that the second card gains an extra experience boost, compared to the rest of the deck. You should rotate card positions every so often, to level each favored card more quickly. The remaining three cards are nothing special, but make sure they suit your needs and keep them leveled. The four ability cards gain experience points after you clear each area.

As you enter an in-game area, you see a list of other players who have recently been online, along with their cards. You can select a card to rent from that list, and it is yours to use in the next series of battles. Enemy attributes are listed, so choose a card that either improves your defense against monsters of the sort you plan to encounter, or allows you to attack more efficiently. If you don't have the Yuna card in your own deck (which is the ideal, due to her powerful healing ability), consider renting her when she is available. Her skills make battles go considerably more smoothly.

Fusion

Cards gain power as you win battles, but you can speed up that process further by using fusion. This process is the only way to unlock exciting improvements, so fuse frequently.

When you acquire an intriguing new card in Mobius Final Fantasy, first lock it so you don't accidentally use it as fodder for another card. Then begin the fusion process.

Select your base card and mix it with other cards of the same element. Some cards display percentages. Adding those to the mix increases the likelihood (up to 100 percent) of improving the base card's ability to generate skillseeds, which you can spend to improve your job proficiency. Find a few favorite cards that you plan to use frequently, then unlock all of their seeds as early as you can. Doing so ensures that every battle you win offers greater rewards.

Cactuar cards

Mobius Final Fantasy's Cactuar cards, earned in special stages or purchased with ability cards or magicite, allow you to quickly level up weak cards. Save the precious Cactuar cards for times when you introduce a powerful new card to your deck, since new cards typically start at level one.

Character attributes such as HP and Break damage inflicted are tied to the combined total level of the cards in your deck, so it's important to quickly improve weaker cards once you are certain you want to use them frequently. Cactuar cards are less useful on higher cards, which may require thousands of points just to gain a single level.

Level caps

Note also that every card has a level cap in Mobius Final Fantasy. The number of stars on a card indicates rarity, with four-star cards being the rarest, and also lets you know the current maximum. Don't get rid of a card you once liked just because it has a low cap, though. When you clear the first chapter, the level cap rises for each card tier, and you can also augment cards as a new function of Fusion (provided you have sufficient resources).

Job cards and the skill panel

When you start your journey, you are an Onion Knight. Cards featuring an icon of a large sword will work best. Before long, you gain additional options: the Neophyte Ranger (who relies on cards featuring an icon that shows two smaller swords) and the Apprentice Mage (who uses cards depicting a magic staff). You can use cards with the wrong weapon type emblazoned on them, but they aren't as effective. Other job classes eventually unlock, and they fall into one of the three disciplines. Each job class also has multiple proficiency levels. As soon as possible, you should find one that suits your style of play and work to improve it.

Once you have chosen a job, access the Skill Panel. Here, you can spend the skillseeds that you gain for winning battles with your ability cards equipped. The Skill Panel consists of 16 individual cards. When you fill one panel, which also requires you to spend consumable crystals that you purchase with in-game currency or find after clearing some maps, you gain access to the next discipline within that job class. This is important, because your character attributes change substantially as a result. Characters can only use three of the four primary elements at once. A mage at one tier may be able to use fire, water and earth-based cards. A Mobius Final Fantasy mage at a different tier can't use earth skills, but has access to wind skills. Your attack strength also improves.

Filling a card is helpful every step along the way, because it also allows you to gain additional HP and combat strength, on top of what you gain through standard level progression. Pay close attention as you build decks. Make sure that you are using cards of the right elements in battle. In the first chapter, for instance, you should use a lot of water element cards.

Touring the map

Mobius Final Fantasy's world map consists of a series of nodes. Each node represents a battle with an enemy group. Early on, you can't skip around the map. That means that you should plot your course carefully. If you backtrack in the wrong direction, you might have to fight through several areas to get back on track, which consumes stamina. Typically, a distant icon appears on the map, and you should select any nodes that appear and seem to lead in that general direction, rather than going back the way you came.

Partway through the first chapter, you finally gain the ability to warp to key areas on the map. These potential destinations display as slightly larger nodes. They spare you a lot of backtracking.However, you might occasionally want to wander around a particular area on purpose. If you are trying to collect cards of a certain type, you need to fight as many of the corresponding monsters as possible. Just remember that boss monsters sometimes materialize near zones you have already cleared.

Also, note that it's quite possible to clear the first chapter and to make significant headway in the second chapter without ever stopping to grind. Since the bonus you gain when completing an area for the first time is higher, it's generally best to keep advancing to new areas, rather than hanging around old ones.

Spend currency wisely

Mobius Final Fantasy is a free-to-play title, but the developers are happy to let you spend money if you wish. As you play, a meter slowly fills near the top of the screen. This rewards you with Magicite, the in-game currency. You can collect around 150 Magicite in a 24-hour period, if you're paying attention and empty the gauge whenever it fills.

Magicite lets you buy a variety of tempting items in the in-game shop. A lot of the items are simply timesavers. Spend your precious currency on whatever will spare you the most grief. The Bronze, Silver, and Gold Opener items certainly qualify, since you can use them in lieu of seedstones to quickly improve your job skills.

If you're just starting your Mobius Final Fantasy adventure, the Silver and Gold levels may be tempting, but they have no immediate value. It makes more sense to purchase the Bronze Opener items, then use them once you are working through the third tier of a given job discipline. By that point, acquiring sufficient seedstones the old-fashioned way takes too much time.

Other potential investments, like Gil and Mystic Tablet items, come along often enough during the course of regular play (or as rewards for clearing daily objectives) that spending virtual currency on them is a waste.