The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to have the highest chance of getting Rank IV or V traits from the things you synthesize, and maximizing the potential power you can draw from traits in general. If you aren't aware of what specifically increases a character's Gift Bonus, it can seem like you never get high ranks at all. So we'll go over that.

I have to mention this real quick just in case you don't click buttons:


CLICK THIS ICON on the synthesis prep screen when selecting a character or material, because it will show the name of the trait(s) a character/material has, and if you click on the trait name next to the character icon, you can see the full description. No idea why this isn't the default option.

Before we get into detail, I want to go over all the mechanics that will play into getting high-ranked traits just in case you don't fully understand one of these. If you think you already know everything there is to know, feel free to skip this section.





This one's the most obvious. Traits are the properties that are applied to anything you synthesize. These traits come from a character's or material's "Gifts" which are the traits that they can potentially apply when you choose them during synthesis prep.

Just to avoid confusion, the game calls them "Gifts" when referring to what traits a character or material has, and then they're referred to as "Traits" when said gifts are actually applied to the final synthesized item. From here on out, I will simply refer to these as "Traits" since they're one and the same.


Weapons, armor, and accessories can have up to 2 traits at once, while Battle Items can have up to 3.







In the "Characters" menu, if you want to view what traits a character specifically has, press the Magnifying Glass icon near their name, then go to the "Gifts" tab. In most cases, a character will have 2 traits for battle items, and 1 trait for non-battle items (Weapons, Armor, and Accessories). A single material houses 2 traits, but what traits they are vary wildly depending on the item.












Traits applied to synthesized items will have a numbered rank associated with it, and as you might've guessed, higher ranks make the trait more powerful. Traits can be anywhere from Rank I (1) to Rank V (5). So, a Rank V trait is the best possible outcome for you to have. If you haven't been looking closely, the difference between rank I-III to Rank IV-V is pretty huge depending on the effect, so don't underestimate this.

While it is random what rank trait you'll get, your chances of getting Rank IV and V traits increase from your two character's "Gift Bonus" (You can see this in the above screenshot on the character details).








Speaking of that... Yes, as I described a second ago, Gift Bonuses come from characters, and increase the chance of Rank IV and V traits showing up if those characters are participating in the synthesis. Now, it's worth noting, the two characters YOU select during synthesis prep are the ONLY ones that matter; the first 3 characters that appear when you first get to the prep screen are purely cosmetic. We'll go over this mechanic in detail in it's own section.

Firstly, let's focus on this aspect before we even start synthesizing. Try to have as many characters with as high a gift bonus as possible. As previously stated, the gift bonus each character has increases the chance of a Rank IV or V trait being applied.





Now, here's a short PSA: When you gain a new character and leave them untouched, they have NO gift bonus.

This here is my Iksel. I got him from the gacha, but I did not level him up at all or touch his growboard. No gift bonus whatsoever, in comparison to Firis in the screenshot in the previous section.

This is just something I thought you should be aware of, since chances are very likely you won't be using EVERY character you own in battle and spread your resources too thin. For the ones you don't plan on using to fight, try to allocate whatever resources you can towards increasing their Gift Bonus, which we'll go over in just a second.






Anyway, now that you know that, you will want to especially focus on characters that have the traits you want the most. For example, Resna's 1* variant has "Magic Damage Boost" as one of her traits. This is obviously very versatile and helpful to any character that deals magic damage. However... that isn't a catch-all "best" trait; we'll go over that later. For now, just try to focus on characters that have helpful traits you'll want.



Alright, that's cool and all, but how do you increase it? Three ways:



If you wanna be optimistic, you can call this the Slow and Steady approach. If you forgot, awakening characters is increasing their star rank by consuming their "Pieces" as the game calls it. Starting from 3.5* onwards, characters will begin to have their gift bonus chance increased. On top of that, awakening will also increase the character's base stats, provide passive buffs, and increase the attack power of their "Burst' skill.







Star Ranks progress like this every time you awaken a character; the number of pieces are the amount needed to reach their respective rank

- 1* (None)
- 2* (50 Pieces)
- 3* (50 Pieces)
- 3.5* (80 Pieces, +5% to Gift Bonus)
- 4* (150 Pieces, +10% to Gift Bonus)
- 4.5* (300 Pieces, +15% to Gift Bonus)
- 5* (500 Pieces, +20% to Gift Bonus)


For the record, each of those Gift Bonus percentages stack, which means for example, a 5* character will have a total of +50%.

So to add all that up, for the worst case scenario of raising a character from 1* to 5*, that's a whopping 1,130 pieces. Ironically, you might have an easier time ranking up characters who start at 2* or 3* because of the headstart you got. If you plan on regularly using a 1* character, you might wanna spend some time trying to rank them up.




There are currently only 4 ways to get Pieces for characters, which are:

- Obtaining a duplicate of a character you already own from the gacha or Wish Medal Exchange; 1* dupes provide 1 Piece, 2* dupes provide 10 Pieces, and 3* dupes provide 50 Pieces.

- Doing the "Pieces" quest from Ryza's quest menu. This can be done up to 3 times per day. The party members you complete/skip the quest with are the ones that will obtain their own pieces. Easy difficulty gives 1 piece each per attempt, Normal difficulty gives 2 pieces each per attempt, and Hard difficulty gives 3 pieces each per attempt

- Purchase character pieces with Shiny Coins from Flocke's shop. You can earn Shiny Coins by "Converting" (i.e Dismantling) synthesized items at the Atelier. In the "Shiny Coins" tab in Flocke's shop, the selection resets every few hours. Each day in this section, you will be able to purchase 5 pieces of a character you own; whoever's available for purchase will be random. It can be anybody you own, so a 1*, 2* or 3*; although, the chances of 2* and 3* characters appearing are pretty low. Of course, higher rarity characters will cost more Shiny Coins. Also, you can reset the selection of this shop for free once per day. Any subsequent resets will cost Lodestar Gems.







- Purchase character pieces from the Piece Exchange in Flocke's shop; When you obtain a character dupe from the gacha, you are given both that character's pieces and also the same amount of "Generic" pieces which is currency to buy any pieces you want from Flocke; though it is worth noting, you can only purchase pieces of a character if you already own said character. On top of that, certain story-specific characters such as Resna and Valeria's 1* variants have their pieces be obtained via leveling them up and progressing the main story.

There's also a handful of characters that are obtainable via time-limited events such as Nady or Sterk, and you can only get their pieces from their respective event shop. Otherwise, you gotta use Ryza's pieces quest.

The exchange rate starts at a 1:1 ratio per character, but the cost of pieces increases by 1 for every 25 character pieces you buy, up to 5 generic piece per 1 character piece.








This one is much faster, and simpler. There's a specific node on every character's Growboard called "Synthesis Core" which increases a character's Gift Bonus. In order to maximize the effect of this though, there is a gap in when these appear. Synthesis Core stops appearing temporarily, starting from Rank VII (7), until it returns again in Rank XII (12). You need to have beaten Chapter 6 of the Main Story to unlock ranks 11 and 12 of the Growboard. Try your best to work on everyone's growboard as best you can so you can have the highest trait chance for the traits you deem most important.









By increasing your player rank, you'll gain an additional percentage chance of getting high-rank traits. You can increase your player rank by earning certain achievements. The general scenarios of achievements that increase rank EXP are these:


- Progressing the main story
- Clearing the Elemental Towers
- Obtaining new recipes
- Leveling up Research Level in the Atelier
- Leveling up characters
- Obtaining new characters
- Synthesizing things with a high total trait rank level (i.e The combined level of all traits on a single item)
- Fully clearing all risk levels of a dungeon
- Getting an SS rank in Score Battle

This might be extremely obvious to some of you, but I want to elaborate on it anyway. You should try your best to find a good synergy of characters that have matching traits that pair well together.



I actually know a prime example of this. Resna 1* and Meruru 2* both have "Magic Damage Boost" as their trait. On top of that, Resna's right color connects to Meruru's left color, so they can always be paired together if Resna goes first. This gives you a much higer chance of getting multiple "Magic Damage Boost' traits on your item, and with a high rank if their Gift Bonus is high enough.

So yeah, try to think of character synergies like that, that will pair very well together. Pure magic, pure physical, defense, offense, whatever it may be. It can go a long way.

Now this is where it gets a little complicated.


So to put it bluntly: Traits that are hyper-specific will generally be more powerful than more "general" traits; however, this isn't always true I think taking a look at the damage-oriented traits paint a good picture of this.


When you click on a trait's icon during synthesis prep, you'll see what the trait does alongside it's percentage variable depending on what rank it ends up being. If you look through them, you'll notice the numbers for the more "general" traits will usually be lesser than specific ones.




For this example, here's the "Damage Dealt Boost", "Magic Damage Boost", and "Bolt Damage Boost" traits and what each of their variables are.














Goes without saying, you can see the higher numbers. "Dealt Damage Boost" works for both physical and magic damage, "Magic Damage Boost" obviously only works for magic damage, and "Bolt Damage Boost" only helps if the character does Bolt damage. If you're very limited on mana, you might be tempted to go for a more general trait just to get a good piece of gear for your character, and that's totally fine, it works. You don't want all your mana to go to waste making trash you can't take advantage of.

But at a certain point, you'll be hitting a plataeu sticking with the safer options, so eventually it'd be in your best interest to try to get a highly-ranked specific trait. It can make a big difference depending on the outcome of the synthesis.




However, with all that being said, there ARE a handful of traits that do offer the same power level, while being in the more "general" category. Therefore, these ones should be your highest priority when synthesizing.

The traits "Skill Power Up", "Single-Target Attack Power Up", and "All-Target Attack Power Up" all have percentage variables of up to 25%. These offer the same amount of potential power increase as the elemental boost traits such as "Bolt Damage Boost", so these can be applied to many different characters if you use these ones while synthesizing your gear. All 3 of these traits also apply to both all Physical and Magic attributes.

I'm sure you can tell by the name, but the Single-Target and All-Target traits only affect character skills that target either one enemy, or all enemies. In most cases, a characters will have ONLY single-target skills or ONLY all-target skills. There are exceptions to this rule such as Marie and Logy, but this should be applicable to most characters. Focusing on these traits will lessen the time needed to synthesize for all your characters, and getting stronger gear faster. Always try to focus these when you can.






To make another example, here's two recovery-oriented pieces of gear I have for Meruru. The one on the left has "All Recovery Boost IV" which boosts healing skills targeting all allies by 15%, while the one on the right has "Recovery Boost IV" which increases ALL recovery skills by only 9%. Meruru's healing skill is all-target and she doesn't have a single-target heal skill, so the left one is simply a better choice for her.

There's a lot of traits in the game, and they can be difficult to keep track of, so I figured I'd give a sort of general overview of what the majority of traits are in the game. It won't go into a huge amount of detail or anything, but it should give you a better idea of your options.





There are some traits that will have a letter or word in brackets [Like this] that tell you the trait will only activate under certain conditions. While these have heavy restrictions, traits that have these will often be more powerful than it's regular counterpart. The vast majorirty of prerequisites are these:

• [D] - Effect will only be applied on Defenders
  
• [A] - Effect will only be applied on Attackers
  
• [B - Effect will only be applied on Breakers
  
• [Full] - Effect will only work if the character hosting this trait is at full HP
  
• [Resolve] - Effect will only work if the character hosting this trait is 50% or lower HP

These will be the general categories of traits you'll see along with their percentage variables. Please note that all percentage variables will be the numbers WITHOUT a prerequisite; as stated above, prerequisites will often have a higher percentage variable than usual.

This specific section will be traits that are applied to CHARACTERS. Battle Item traits will have their own section to keep the list concise and clean.


Damage-Oriented Traits; Percentage variables add to Physical/Magic ATK or Stun DMG:

• Dealt Damage Boost (2-15%) - Works for both Physical and Magic ATK
  
  
• Physical/Magic Damage Boost (2-20%) - Two separate traits
  
  
• Skill Power Up (3-25%) - Works for both Physical and Magic skills
  
  
• Single-Target Attack Power Up (3-25%) - Attacks that target only one enemy
  
  
• All-Target Attack Power Up (3-25%) - Attacks that target all enemies on-screen
  
  
• (Element) Damage Boost (3-25%) - All 7 attributes/affinities have their own damage boost trait; Fire, Ice, Bolt, Air, Slash, Strike, Stab etc
  
  
• (Enemy Type) Damage Boost (4-35%) - All enemy types have their version of this trait; increases damage dealt to that specific type. Beast, Puni, Aquatic, Bird, Spirit
  
  
• Stunned Damage Up (3-30%) - Increases damage dealt to enemies with a broken stun gauge
  
  
• Stun Damage Boost (2-15%) - Increases damage dealt to enemy's stun gauge
  
  
• Physical/Magic Stun Damage Boost (2-20%) - Increases damage dealt to enemy's stun gauges
  
  

Buff-Oriented Traits; Percentage variables stack on top of the default amount from the buff

• Enhanced Damage Buff B (5-50%) - Increases any ATK buff given to Breakers only; effect must be applied from the character housing this trait.