This is a guide for beginners that have some experience with bullet hell, musou, fighting games or roguelites.
Ideally you will have played at least 3 of these kinds of games before touching this or you will likely not be mentally prepared to beat this game and you will also probably rage a lot.

The guide would be too long if I started from the absolute bottom but the good news is the game is mechanically very fun so even if you are hardstuck, there is plenty of fun to be had provided you can handle taking an L.

This guide also doesn't cover ascensions/new game+ but the base game difficulty.
Again there's a lot to cover so I will start with tips and may expand more in future.

His passive ability doubles his defence when he is at half health or lower.
This makes him the tankiest character in the game and lucky you, you don't have to unlock him!

If you are a good gamer, this survival will give you stronger comebacks.
As a new player you will make a lot of mistakes.
Your health is how many mistakes you can make before game over.
Your heals at low health are twice as valuable as on other characters and you will also be able to make more mistakes without a game over.

He also has a decent charge attack which is decent for punishing bosses when they flash yellow.

Wisdom - 3 (gives health regen from landing hits. Comeback mechanic)
Skill - 4 (raises your combo, damage and gauge charge ceilings)
Vigor - 1 (interrupt mob attacks makes it possible with the right combo moves to stop their nonsense. Useful)
Speed - 1 (invulnerable evade. Important vs bosses)
Charm - 1 (Unlocks formation bonuses)


Aim to have a minimum of the above and try to get them in order if possible.
After that, this is the priority list of what emblems to aim for: Charm> Wisdom> Skill> Vigor> Speed> Elements> Strength.

Regarding elements, try to focus on 1 element and then have a backup element in order to save up on rerolls.
The main relevance of elements is unlocking of unique tactics (support character passives).
These greatly increase your strength and their importance is not reflected in battle power properly until late into your build.

Charm and wisdom help you build meter faster and use meter more effectively.
They also help each other (musou builds assemble and assemble builds musou).
The other relevance is musou and assemble are easy ways for clearing side missions (getting many kills in a burst) and musou specifically gives you invulnerability.

One trick that's great for beginners is to save both when fighting bosses then as soon as you break their barrier, immediately enter assemble and then do a musou. This does half their health meaning you can two-shot bosses with little skill.

Basically other than following the advice above, you try to get teammates that unlock each others passives.

Something important to remember is the contribution to your battlepower is not reflected accurately.
Also yellow glowing units are not always the best but if you are clueless then pick them.
The glow basically means they activate a passive or help activate a passive.
All passives are not equal either so reading helps but if it's too much for you, here is the simple way to do it:

Without thinking too much, get teammates that are from the same region (Wei units for Wei, Wu for Wu, etc) then get teammates that have similar descriptions (strategists with strategists, etc).

With even less thinking, you can simply pick the hero with the highest battlepower but you will miss out on the hidden battlepower of passives.

The game uses red gems (tears of blood) as currency for the shop.
In the shop you can buy health, musou, formations and multiple heroes.
You should not need health or musou because you generate both with good gameplay/farming mobs if you have at least 3 wisdom.

In general, do not go to the shop with less than 10K gems otherwise it would have been better to get EXP, gems, karma and a hero instead of visiting the shop. You do not need to buy everything in the shop but you also don't want a situation where you couldn't buy everything. I recommend avoiding the shop until after the 3rd boss if you don't know what you are doing.
Visiting no shops before the 4th boss is something you must avoid at all costs.

Formations play a massive part in the game but in the early game before unlocking all of them, just stick to the lightning shaped speed formation (it gives you infinite evade during assemble) unless you play a lot of Ice based teams then maybe go for the damage one.

Avoid peach trees, embers, gems.
If you follow my blind build and play decent, you will get your health back. with solid play.
Focus on hero paths (tree icon) and prioritise the ones that have chests followed by the ones that are golden.

You can learn your combos by testing after waves are cleared, before choosing your next path/area.

Keeping it simple, you want a general idea on which combos have the most distance, which combos move you the most and how long combos take. This will help you punish bosses and help you move without wasting a dodge and then being defenceless.

A tip is to gently mash X (basic attack) and watch how the white outline moves from hero to hero. This is an excellent way to keep track of your combo while trying to keep up with everything else on the screen.

Every hero has at least 5 combo branches with a 6th that is usually useless outside of getting an extra summoning skill out.

Starting with bosses, there are no moves that cover the entire screen meaning if you keep the right distance and are not literally cornered, you can avoid any attack. You might not be able to land a punish depending on how safe you want to do it, but this knowledge will save you from time to time. It will also give you an opportunity to learn boss patterns and prevent you from taking unnecessary damage.

Musou attacks not only give you invulnerability but they also interrupt any bosses they manage to hit. Another tool for the survival toolbox.

Now on to mobs. Prioritise your elite enemies in this order: Flagbeares > everything else.
Remember that musou is an emergency button but if you are on a mission with a chest, I recommend saving musou in order to beat the chest mission reliably. You actually do as much if not mroe damage than musou with the right combos but combos do not give you invulnerability or stop the mission clock like musou does.

Last tip is to remember that you can destroy most non-boss projectiles with attacks. Flagbearers seem harder to interrupt while also having a massive attack which is why you should deal with them but everyone else can usually get dealt with pretty easily if you do the right combos and are not just mashing X/basic attack.

And that's it!
With all these 8 points, you should be able to beat the game even if you make bad decisions when team building!