Various other guides may provide you with a lot of information or outdated information. I am here to provide you streamline information, so I will not talk about everything, but I will tell you what to focus on if you want to be efficient with your time with what we have left in Tribe Nine before end of service in November. Basically, this is a guide I wish I had when I jumped into the game at the start of August.

On top of my experience 100%ing the game, I have also referenced various other guides or sources including Kaiden[www.kaiden.gg]. If you want to explore your character or tension card options more, you can read Kaiden, but I will cherry-pick information from that website and other places to streamline what you need to know. This includes boss guides, how to start, what team to build, and etc. Sometimes I may wholly reference a video or guide if the presentation of information is streamlined, but I may add my own caveats or annotations to the sourced reference.

Keep in mind that because I am streamlining the information, I will mostly focus on one particular way of playing -- an efficient way of playing. But please feel free to build a team to your own liking, fight the boss your own way, etc.

This guide assumes you played through the 20 minute tutorial a.k.a. you reached this point of the game and read the tutorial up to this point:

This guide also assumes that you just started now and do not have player data before i.e. you do not have characters or cards from limited banners that existed before today and that you do not have any paid in-game currency.

I have ordered the sections of the guide for what you should consider first and what you can think about later as you get into the endgame and what you should or can do in the endgame. Naturally, this means I will talk about the gacha elements first and talk about the gameplay aspects later, but given how intertwined every element is, the explanation of things may be disordered or not explained as they come up, but if you are confused you can refer to some section or definition of a term or concept that I may explain later down the section. But as I said, the order of the sections are made in consideration of what you should prioritize and think about first at the top of the guide and what you should prioritize and think about later towards the bottom of the guide.

If you only care about completing the story, you can cherrypick what sections from the top that you would want to care about (i.e. Full Mark Stickers section) and then perhaps reference the boss guides towards the bottom. If you want to get all of the achievements and only care about the achievements, I recommend reading everything except the sections on Patimons (and How to Make PAR), PAR, How to Grind the Endgame, and The Endless Grind; afterwards, you can refer to my Achievement Guide to Tribe Nine

When I say "endgame", I refer to the part of the game that happens after you complete to story or near the end depending on how you progress your characters and tension cards. If you want 100%, you will have to engage with the endgame, even if for a little bit depending on your tension cards.

I will bold text to highlight important things or technical terms or names. I will name certain places you will go, character names, the name of bosses that you will fight, and how long the story is, but I will not discuss any details about the narrative.

This guide also assumes you understand gacha game terms and general gaming terms, but if you simply do not understand a term that I use, you can simply look it up online or even ask in the comment section.

Once you complete the 20 minute tutorial (which can end earlier if you wish to skip the cutscene), eventually you will reach a point where you fall through the floor.

Once you are here, you can reroll. I HIGHLY recommend rerolling for the character that you want. Rerolling takes 1 minute once you go through the aforementioned tutorial once, and the rates are decent. Nonetheless, the currency to do rolls is limited, so better to get the character you want now than never. Video guide for how to reroll: https://www.kaiden.gg/tribe-nine/guides/reroll-guide/

Just do a single 10 pull, and if you do not get the character(s) you want, reroll. Reroll until you are content with what you got.

In the current state of the game, we only have access to the permanent standard banner, so we have access to all characters except Hinagiku Akiba, Kazuki Aoyama, and Tsuruko Semba. Feel free to choose any character you like for whatever reason, but if you want to beat the game efficiently or get 100% easily, here is my recommendation: reroll for Miu Jujo

You just need to max her Passive 2 and let the AI pilot her. She can do a lot of damage. I do not recommend rerolling for a Tension Card since they do not do well in the early game compared to good 3 star character, but Things To Hold On To would be a good card to luck out on (even though you are likely unable to activate it in the early game).

Aside from the gacha, you are guaranteed four characters at the beginning: Yo Kuronaka, Tsuki Iroha, Roku Saigo, and Koishi Kohinata


Yo and Iroha on their own form their own team plus one more character. Both are them are meta, scale in the late game in terms of breaking and damage, and are extremely versatile for your third teammate.


Recommended Team
Therefore, I recommend the following team:

You will only pilot Yo and have the AI control your other characters. In this case, you should prioritize breaking your enemies which is done by using your secondary attack first and then his strategy skill afterwards. Of course, counterattack when possible or necessary. Your main role is to break your enemies so that you can use chain skills and build tension. When you perform a chain skill, I recommend starting with Iroha first in order to trigger her Critical Rate buff right away. (Also you will be building Iroha with Support stat, and if you do, start Iroha's chain skill first and then Miu immediately afterwards since Support buffs the damage of the next chain skill and your DPS is likely built for damage.) Miu gains resonance whenever an enemy is attacked within range of her crystal and when she performs a chain skill. Miu has three levels of resonance that you can observe next to her in-combat icon:


The first level is available right away. You build past the black line to get the second level, and the full bar means you have access to the third level. These levels means that Miu's ultimate performs 1/5/20 hits respectively. Her ultimate only costs 1 tension, so the game plan is to have enough tension and full resonance on Miu to wipe out a grouped up place of enemies and/or one tough enemy.

In this team, you will max Yo's Passive 1 for extra damage. You can decide on Iroha's Passive 1 for faster tension or Passive 2 as an extra source of damage.

Ideal Team(s)

In this team, you solely pilot Hyakuichitaro Senju and spam his secondary attacks (with dash cancels) and counterattack when possible or necessary. Senju has less damage than Yo, but Senju provides better break damage and allows activation of the Bombard Tension Card since Senju's ultimate only cost 1. In addition to his AI helping to build resonance through his multi-hit venom, Jio Takinogawa supplies a unique debuff that lowers the defense of your enemies. The gameplan is the same as before with building stacks on Miu's ultimate, but if you have Bombard, you would activate Senju's ultimate first and then immediately have Miu activate her ultimate afterwards for a big damage boost -- depending on your Ultimate Skill Efficiency substat, Bombard would require 2 Tension Bars at most.

For Senju, just max his Survival Instincts for more stamina since that would be required for breaking and counterattacking, and for Jio, just max his Passive 1 for the defense reduction. Keep in mind that getting both Miu and Jio is considered lucky, but the rates are good enough that you may be able to get both through reroll (or even Miu through reroll and then Jio later as you progress through the game), but it can also take a long time to get both. Senju himself is also not guaranteed even though he is a 2 star.


This team is more likely to get since you are guaranteed Iroha, and you would be rerolling for Miu. Nonetheless, in some ways, this team may be better than the team above. You may not have defense reduction, but Iroha's Passive 1 allows you to quickly build up tension on the first break which can be helpful in scenarios where you cannot do a preemptive strike to build up tension (i.e. overworld bosses and Central Shaft) and/or Iroha's Passive 2 allows you to quickly do a burst of damage through both Miu and Iroha at the same time.

The Other Free Units

You can choose Roku if you feel uncomfortable with dodging and counterattacking, but the combat is best when you dodge and/or counterattack. Roku is ultimately a crutch where he can help you get through the game while ignoring game mechanics, but it might take longer than mastering the game. Koishi offers some healing on top of damage. You can choose him if you find yourself needing more health in the middle of battle, but aside from forming a team built around damage that most fights end quickly, you should get used to dodging and counterattacking such that you would not need the healing. Also, Yo can provide more consistent healing than Koishi through Yo's Passive 2 if that is what you prefer.

Build Your Own Team
Again you don't have to follow my suggestions. You can beat the game with whatever team you want. Here is a guide for suggestions for how to build a team around characters that you like https://www.kaiden.gg/tribe-nine/guides/team-building-guide/ (albeit the conclusion at the end is outdated). Please keep in mind that the chances of getting a collection of characters that are not guaranteed through a single ten pull during reroll or over the course of what time we have left in the game.

The standard banner has a pool of characters and tension cards to pull from. When you do a 10 pull, you are guaranteed a random 2-star (of either a character or a tension card). Whether this is through Enigma Entities or Synchro Medals, always save enough to do a 10 pull. Throughout the course of the game especially since we no longer have events or a battlepass, you have a limited amount of pulls in the game, so your chances of getting 2-star characters (especially since tension cards are possible) is rather limited, so this means saving up to 1200 Enigma Entities or 10 Synchro Medals for your 10 pull.

There is a one-time Special Invitation to choose one 3 star character once you reach 300 pulls, but you are likely not to reach this threshold with what time we have left. I myself stopped at around 230 pulls once I reached my goals in the game. Most of your pulls will come from the Zero Sensei book, so your supply of Enigma Entities and Synchro Medals will dry up as you finish the story.

DO NOT DO SINGLE PULLS! Only do 10 pulls!

Unlike other gacha games, this game does not have a traditional stamina, so essentially, there is nothing really stopping you from starting the game right now and finishing the story today and to begin grinding the endgame (aside from your real life time). Instead, we have stickers. Full Mark Stickers should be your main priority throughout the game.

You collect stickers as you complete the story, engage in fights, explore the map, etc in the form of missions that may come with three separate tiers or one singular tier, listed out in the Zero Sensei book. Keep in mind that most Stickers are collected on the first tier of a given mission; the second and third tiers normally just confer extra Enigma Entities (which are still valuable). Nonetheless, later challenges may build on previous challenges that were fully cleared. Please keep in mind that you do not auto-redeem these stickers. You have to manually click on them on the top right of your screen when there is a red exclamation point and then click on "Claim All" for a given city in order to get your earned stickers and Enigma Entities.

Not collecting enough stickers may block parts of the map which then block your progression through the story and thus your progression in getting more stickers. If you play the game avidly, you are likely to get enough stickers to bypass the needed stickers to reach the next story block, but you are less likely to get the sticker amount to unlock the next level cap. The important breakpoints are

• 17: unlock Level Cap to 15
  
• 25: unlock Level Cap to 20
  
• 43: unlock Level Cap to 30
  
• 71: unlock Level Cap to 40
  
• 86: unlock Level Cap to 50
  
• 115: unlock Level Cap to 60

Leveling up a character is important towards improving your team and having them scale in the endgame. There are 124 stickers in total, but once you reach 115 stickers, you don't need to collect anymore.

My general advice to get stickers (at least from the early game):
1. Progress the story
2. Engage with random mobs as much as you get. Aside from leveling your characters, you will get more used to the combat of the game and learn how your team composition works further. You also get materials from defeating enemies.
3. Open treasure chests whenever you come across them
4. Do puzzles whenever you come across them.
5. Whenever you come across lootable items (i.e. Broken Robots, Broken PC, Shards, etc.), loot them.
6. Whenever you find graffiti, interact with it if you have not already.
7. Unlock Respite Units and Rifts whenever you come across them.
8. Rank up the characters whom you use
9. Level up the tension cards that you use
10. Complete at least 3 Daily Challenges in a given city
11. Collect Verity Orbs. They are marked on your map with a yellow exclamation point when they are made available.
12. Clear City Challenges as you come across them. These are grey exclamation points marked on your map. Keep in mind that, while the questgiver may be marked, the way to progress or finish the challenge may not always be marked on your map. Please feel free to follow a video guide on how to complete the challenges that are not marked on your map such as the Rose Garden City Challenges given by Madam Bonnet.
13. Sometimes, a sticker may require that you fight with a team with a combined stat of a certain Attack/Defense or higher. As you naturally progress, I recommend choosing the highest Tier of Patimon that is made available to you with the most desirable Sub Stats. If you are at the highest tier made available to you, you should naturally get enough Attack and Defense to clear this requirement. If you want to expedite your progress for this sticker, on top of prioritizing the tiers, you can specifically choose Sub Stats that raise your Attack/Defense.

The advice above are basically "free" things to do since you would naturally do them, as they have benefits aside from gaining stickers. The following pieces of advice are more specific depending on your progression, what materials you need, or simply just to get a sticker for something you would not do otherwise.

Specific Patimon Sticker Advice:
1. When you first reach the Patimate Shop in Minato City, I recommend purchasing one and only one Patimon. If you are going by the Recommended or Ideal Teams I suggested earlier, you should be going for Critical Rate or Critical DMG Multiplier substats because your DPS's stats are the most important. If none of the pieces are better in terms of tiers or substats than what your DPS has, feel free to purchase one for your breaker or support whose desirable substat can be Maximum Stamina, Ultimate Skill Efficiency, Attack, etc. You may even want to purchase a Patimon for (13) from the general advice to get stickers subsection of this guide.
2. When you first reach the Patimate Shop in Neo Chiyoda City, I recommend purchasing one and only one Patimon. Same rationale as (1).

Specific Boss Sticker Advice:
1. S.H.A.R.K needs to be cleared 5 times. Unless you need the materials to rank up a given character or tension card, you can hold off clearing this boss until you need the stickers. If you have a hard time with the fight and you only need the sticker, you can always challenge the boss at its lower levels. Please refer to the How to Fight S.H.A.R.K. section on how to handle the boss.
2. Chief -Brave Diver- needs to be cleared 5 times. Unless you need the materials to rank up a given character or tension card, you can hold off clearing this boss until you need the stickers. If you have a hard time with the fight and you only need the sticker, you can always challenge the boss at its lower levels. Please refer to the How to Fight Chief -Brave Diver- section on how to handle the boss.
3. The last boss Rakuzakai is the only optional boss in the game. You will need none of its materials since you only have access to Standard Banner characters who were released before this boss existed. You will need to clear it 5 times for the sticker. Since you don't need its materials, feel free to challenge it at the lowest level if you cannot handle its max level. Please refer to the How to Fight Rakuzakai section on how to handle the boss.

Specific Fractal Vice Sticker Advice:
1. You only need to defeat 15 enemies in Fractal Vice, the endgame. If your characters are at level 40/50, you should be able to do this easily. Nonetheless, if you just need the sticker but are underleveled to take on many level 50s, you can enter the first part of the map, and if you can clear the first enemy, you can just farm that enemy -- defeat them, leave Fractal Vice, reenter, and repeat.

Specific Rift Sticker Advice:
1. Unless you do not care about the endgame or you need the materials to rank up a given character or tension card, I recommend putting these off towards the end of the game when a given Rift is at level 60 to maximize the materials you get for a booster. If you are at or near 30 Boosters, I recommend clearing a Rift. Nonetheless, if you are at a breakpoint (particularly near the 115 breakpoint) and need a sticker that you cannot get from the previous sections, then feel free to use only 1 booster to get a sticker for clearing the Rift for the first time. I would recommend choosing a rift for materials that you would need if possible. If you are very near the 115 breakpoint, your options left might only be Rifts that you don't need materials for -- in that case, I recommend the ones in Neo Chiyoda City since they offer the most experience and best substats.

You won't need this right away, but it is important to know that you will get various materials throughout your journey. At some point, as you want to make your characters and tension cards stronger, you will need rarer and rarer materials. Some of these materials can be crafted from other materials that you get through progressing in the game or as you farm them. At that point, you should use the Crafting Bench. When you do not have the materials you need to rank up your characters or level up your tension cards, you may realize that you instead have other materials that can be used to craft the specific materials that you need.

For an exhaustive tier list, you can look at https://www.kaiden.gg/tribe-nine/tension-cards/tier-list/ (Keep in mind that that tier list shows the numbers at level 50 and ascension 5.)

I will assume you have read https://www.kaiden.gg/tribe-nine/guides/tension-card-guide/ and know how tension cards work. You level up a Tension Card up to 50 through Kane and Tension Points, with each breakpoint is at intervals of 10 levels where each different card requires a specific set of materials in order to unlock the next 10 levels.

If you have duplicates of a card, you can ascend it up to 5 times. Therefore, if you have any more than 6 copies of a given card, those cards can be safely converted into Enigmatic Fragments (for 3 star tension cards), Enigmatic Remnants (for 2 star tension cards), and Enigmatic Pieces (for 1 star tension cards). It goes without saying that ascension and leveling up increases certain effects of the card, and it will be shown in the preview of when you level up or ascend a given card.

I will not talk about every card nor explain how given cards fully works, but I will point out the cards to look for and how to get them.

Unity

These cards are Full Party and Strike Zone. You get Full Party for free, and that card is incredibly strong. You should keep this card equipped at all times and level it up as much as possible. Strike Zone can be gotten from the standard banner, and since it is a 1-star, you should be able to get it eventually. Nonetheless, at worst, you can purchase the card, though again, the odds are likely that you will just get this, and I generally recommend against using Enigmatic Pieces to buy cards unless you like farming. Strike Zone itself is not very important, and for the purposes of efficiency, you don't even need to level it up. The effect that we care about is that it grants [Unity] which doubles the effects of Full Party. Even without [Unity], Full Party is still powerful.

1 Star Monster Farming

Most of these cards are not particularly good. (You can look up their effects online to see if they fit the team build you want.) The benefit instead comes from the ability to Convert these cards. These cards only come from farming the pictured enemies, so you may pick some of them up as you progress through the game. If you engage with the endgame, you are likely to earn many multiple copies. Therefore, if you are in need of Enigmatic Pieces, you can use these cards as conversion material to purchase from the Exchange a limited amount (per month) of currencies to roll on the banner or purchase other 1 star tension cards from the Card Station. In other words, you can have an endless supply of these cards (given that you are willing to farm them). Keep in mind that the Exchange refreshes around the start of a calendar month. You can choose to convert other non-farmable 1 star cards that you plan on not using, but you can always get a random 3 star card or character that changes your mind on how viable a 1 star card is. For instance,

Interlocking Stratagems now makes all of your cards that grant [Star Actor] much more viable.

2 Star Monster Farming

Like before, you get these cards from the pictured monsters. Nonetheless, these cards are not as farmable, especially in the early-mid game. For one, the early instances of all of these creatures (except for the last one) are presented as Ferocious Enemies -- enemies that spawn at random points of a particular city. Aside from a fixed initial spawn, you won't know where they are for a given city until you unlock all of the Respite Units and Rifts in a given city. Also, as Ferocious Enemies, you cannot outlevel them and farm them easily for their cards, as a battle with Ferocious Enemies will not end instantly even if you significantly outlevel them. The last card Elated! is associated with a creature that randomly spawns at specific parts of the map that are not marked at all; unlike its compatriots, it is not ferocious and instead very easy to kill and give out 1000 Kane if killed.

Nevertheless, all of these cards drop rates are significantly low especially for how long it takes to have your team ready to farm them and get them.


Once you reach Neo Chiyoda City, these cards are farmable, as the enemies are no longer ferocious and spawn at fixed points of the map, but these enemies will be at a greater level than when they were ferocious. Your deployed characters' level and equipped tension cards' level have to be high enough to farm the endgame for you to be able to farm these enemies efficiently. Depending what characters or tension cards you level up, you may have to farm these enemies pre-endgame anyway for their material drops, ferocious or not.

These cards are All Out and Bombard. If you are using the Recommended or Ideal Teams, I recommend All Out and highly recommend Bombard. All Out greatly boosts your DPS, though if you are piloting a breaker, the stamina cost may reduce your intervals at breaking certain enemies. Bombard is particularly powerful because it is set up to boost followup ultimates. If you are piloting Yo instead of Senju, you will need Ultimate Efficiency substats in order to activate it consistently, or instead, Miu can activate her ultimate at full stack and then activate ultimate immediately afterwards at 0 stacks -- this way, the first few hits of her first ultimate may be unbuffed, but after the second ultimate activates, all hits from her first ultimate and second ultimate are buffed.

Nonetheless, given their drop rates, you may not be able to get them until much later into mid-late game or even later.

Boss Farming

These cards come from bosses. Again, these 2 star cards have low drop rates. The first two have questionable viability depending on your team, but the last card Full-Bloomed Cherry Blossom can be especially strong depending on if you can utilize its effects. Nonetheless, it is dropped from an optional boss that exists towards the end of the story whose boss materials are not relevant to Standard Banner characters and cards.

Control

These cards are Maximization and Excuse. They apply [Control] to an enemy if you manage to counterattack or break them, respectively. The relevant effect of [Control] is that attacking an enemy under [Control] grants you 15% extra Critical Rate. You likely only need one equipped, though you may decide to level one or the other, or maybe even both depending on your playstyle, team, enemy matchup, and mastery of the game mechanics.

Card Station Cards
The Card Station allows you purchase any card in the game. Enigmatic Fragments are used to purchase 3 stars, Enigmatic Remnants are used to purchase 2 stars, and Enigmatic Pieces are used to purchase 1 stars. Duplicate 2 star card characters automatically grant Enigmatic Remnants, and duplicate 3 star characters automatically grant Enigmatic Fragments. Therefore, given the rates and the current state of the game, you are only ever going to be able to purchase 1 star cards from it and perhaps one 2 star card from it if you get lucky enough and refrain from purchasing Enigma Entities with Enigmatic Remnants. (You can choose to farm the 2 star enemies or the bosses, but realistically speaking, that would take a long, long time to purchase one 2 star card just through farming on its own.) If you can purchase one 2 star card, I recommend cards that you can only get from the Card Station and are not in the Standard Banner:

These cards are Power Harassment and Rejection Impulse. Power Harassment is a [Control] card but much better than its 1 star compatriots. Rejection Impulse grants you tension if you execute a Deflect Counterattack successfully. If you are running the Recommended or Ideal Teams as I suggested, you have access to this counterattack.

Getting Lucky
You can get lucky and roll a specific 2 or 3 star tension card that changes how you play or what character you want.

For example, Things To Hold On To would be an incredible card to get, but to repeat myself, you are likely not to utilize it and other cards in the early game. And all tension cards scale better in the endgame. Since you are all but guaranteed to not be able to purchase this card, you are better off using your Enigmatic Fragments to purchase Enigma Entities.

When you get a character, you are granted one copy of a character. Extra copies of that specific character then gives you the ability to Transcend that character, up to 5 times. Transcending a character is generally beneficial to your character and cannot be reversed. Transcending your character the first, third, and fifth time confer buffs unique to each character, whereas transcending your character the second and fourth time have the same benefits applied to the given character.

A given character has 5 Potentials: Fighting Instincts, Survival Instincts, Coordination, Passive Skill Expansion 1, and Passive Skill Expansion 2.

• Fighting Instincts: increases your damage.
  
• Survival Instincts: increases your Maximum HP, Defense, and Maximum Stamina.
  
• Coordination: Increases your Support (which affect certain skills from certain characters in certain ways such as healing or damage and boosts the followup ally's chain skill.)

For each character, they have a unique Passive 1 and Passive 2, and their skill expansion increases the stated efficacy of that particular passive.

You increase these Potentials using Potential Gems granted to a specific character. These gems can be spent and refunded which is to say you can choose to respec your character freely as you rank them up. Transcending your character the second and fourth time grants you 2 and 3 Potential Gems respectively. Using certain materials and Kane, you can rank up a character. Each rank confers additional Potential Gem and an increase to singular specific stat based on the character, and all characters start with no Rank. The ranks are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Ex, Ex1, Ex2, Ex3, Ex4, and Ex5. Realistically speaking, you only really going to reach Ex (or maybe Ex1 or Ex2) with the time we have left. For reference, at Ex without any transcending, you have enough gems to max out one Potential. Ranks are also gated by your character's current level.

Characters increase their levels through winning fights, doing Rifts, and opening chests. You can also use Life Data to level up your characters, but given the level caps and the Kane cost of using Life Data which in itself is in short supply, you are better off leveling through not using Life Data except maybe in the late endgame in order to reach the next level so that you can farm certain enemies easily. For any characters that significantly outlevel a given enemy, that character will not gain any experience to level up from that won fight.

When your team's total and average levels of your characters and your tension cards significantly outlevel your enemies, your enemies may flee. (Keep in mind that tension card's max level is 50, while a character's level is capped at 60, so the tension card's level to "outlevel" an enemy is skewed differently.) In the instance of your enemies fleeing, preemptively striking them will start and then instantly end the battle as if you won the battle flawlessly. Otherwise, if the enemy is around your level or outlevels you, the preemptive strike only gives you 2 bars of tension at the start of battle, but if a non-cutscene enemy comes into contact with you without you hitting the enemy to start the battle, the enemy starts with 2 bars of tension.


All characters have access to a Primary Attack, Secondary Attack, Counterattack, Strategy Skill, Ultimate Skill, Chain Skill, and Dash. Each one of these moves work differently for each character in terms of damage, animation, animation delays, etc. Nonetheless, all characters have access to a Dash that can dodge every attack in the game (except for certain moves from certain bosses). All Ultimate Skills costs Tension, though the base amount differs between characters.

Some characters have access to a Deflect Counterattack which only deflects enemies' physical attacks, so these characters cannot deflect projectiles and range attacks. Other characters can Dodge Counterattack which can counterattack almost any attack. Each successful counterattack causes break damage, and depending on the enemy or what move they are using, the enemy might receive damage and get staggered.

When an enemy is broken, the battle slows down for a short period of time, and during that period of time, each one of your alive characters can perform a Chain Skill once. Each successful Chain Skill adds half a bar of tension to you. Once everyone applicable performs their Chain Skill or the short period of time expires, the battle resumes to normal speed. If the broken enemy dies or a character misses their Chain Skill (more likely to happen if your character has a physical Chain Skill), the battle resumes at normal speed, so any followup Chain Skill that could have happened can no longer happen for that break. A successful Chain Skill also applies damage in a small AOE around the broken enemy, so any nearby enemies also receives the damage and effects of the Chain Skill. If you intention is to build tension but your optimal DPS order would stop at the first or second hit, you can order your chain differently or make your DPS character hit last just so you can build more tension from two or all three characters chaining.

Guest characters are characters that you do not own but you can use in your party as they come up in the story. Unlike your regular characters, you cannot level them up, rank them up, change their Patimons, change their Potentials, see Potentials, nor see their skills. They are locked to the lowest rarity Patimons supporting an Attack or Defense set bonus. You can fight with them, whether manually or with an AI. Basically guest characters exist for you to use but not build or inspect. If you manage to get a guest character through the Standard Banner, you get to the own the character, and that character replaces the guest, starting at level 1.

Access to the guest characters are based on where you are in the story and where the guest characters are in the current state of story. Some guests stay with you until the end of a chapter or until the start of the next chapter. For a short story beat, some guests may disappear and reappear. While in the middle of the story or towards its climax, some guests may disappear entirely. With each new chapter, the old cast of guests disappear, and a new cast appears (though some members of the new cast may be from the previous casts).

Generally speaking, using guest characters is inefficient especially if you are not at the level cap of the characters you are using. By using guests, you are losing experience that you could be giving to your actual team. When you are in the endgame, you lose access to all guests.

Nevertheless, guests are your last chance to try out characters you cannot get because they were only available in limited banners: Hinagiku Akiba, Kazuki Aoyama, and Tsuruko Semba.


This may also be your chance to try out characters you did not get from the standard banner.

This is also your last chance to try the one unreleased yet playable character: Ichinosuke Akiba

You can take up to and finish 3 Daily Challenges a day. Some Daily Challenges only unlock in a given city as you progress through the story. All Daily Challenges always reward 40 Enigma Entities. Generally the benefits for a given city is

• 3 challenges that reward 50,000 Kane
  
• 3 challenges that reward 25,000 Tension Points
  
• 3 challenges that reward 5 Neo Stamps

At the start of the game, I recommend starting with accepting all 3 challenges that reward Tension Points. At the beginning, you generally need a lot of Tension Points to level up the tension cards you are using. After you find yourself maxed on the cards you are using without any access to the listed materials to unlock the next level cap for your tension cards and you have enough Tension Points to level additional but unused cards, I recommend switching to accepting all 3 challenges that reward Kane instead since many elements of the game require Kane.

I do not recommend ever going for Neo Stamps. Neo Stamps are used at the Antenna Shop "Parabola" to retrieve materials you can get from Rifts, Bosses, and Fractal Vice. If you need the materials, I recommend just doing the boss fights, Rifts, and Fractal Vice instead. You should be at the state (especially if you are using the Recommended or Ideal Teams) to handle the Rifts and Bosses. The challenges that reward Neo Stamps have the worst rate of return especially since you also get Neo Stamps as a reward for City Challenges. If you have specific goals in mind such as stopping when the story is over or when you have gotten all of the achievements, Neo Stamps may be worthwhile to save some time grinding, but without any calculation, you may or may not be at the point where you lack the Kane or Tension Point to progress.

Eventually, as you progress through the story, eventually both Minato City and Neo Chiyoda City will then each have 2 booster challenges.

Minato City

• 1 that rewards 1 Booster and 50,000 Kane
  
• 1 that rewards 1 Booster and 5 Neo Stamps

Neo Chiyoda City

• 1 that rewards 1 Booster and 25,000 Tension Points
  
• 1 that rewards 1 Booster and 5 Neo Stamps

Boosters allow you to enter Rifts, but you can also endlessly farm them from any fight that you win. Nonetheless, these challenges are essentially slightly better rewards than preexisting Daily Challenges. I recommend always going for the one that rewards 1 Booster and 50,000 Kane. You can additonally choose to go for Tension Points if you lack the Tension Points you need to level up your tension cards. Once again, I have the same caveats the challenges that reward Neo Stamps.

These challenges reset daily at 6 A.M. UTC time.

Respite Units and Rifts are shown on the map at all times. You have to interact with it once to unlock it. Interacting with Respite Units forces the use of it (in terms of healing and resetting enemy spawns) whereas Rifts do not. Once you unlock them, you can teleport to them at anytime while you are on the map and not in battle (i.e. whenever you can open the map and choose a Respite Unit or Rift to teleport to).

Chests and graffiti are at fixed points of the map. You can always refer to https://www.kaiden.gg/tribe-nine/interactive-map/ for what chests and graffiti. Kaiden's Interactive map also even distinguishes what types of chests and what the graffiti looks like (except in Neo Chiyoda).

Chests
All chests confer experience regardless of your level unless a given character is at their level cap. All chests reward Kane and Tension Points. These chest may reward a Patimon or a random material that can be used to rank up your character, level up your character, or unlock the level cap of a tension card.

• Regular Chests: 30 experience, 100 Kane, and 50 Tension Points
  
• Valuable Chests: 100 experience, 1000 Kane, and 500 Tension Points
  
• Luxurious Chests: 250 experience, 5000 Kane, and 2500 Tension Points

Chests in the Neo Chiyoda City reward the same amount of Kane and Tension Points for a given type of chest, but these chests reward more experience than previous cities.

• Regular Chests: 100 experience
  
• Valuable Chests: 300 experience
  
• Luxurious Chests: 750 experience

These chests respawn on a set timer after you have opened them up.

• Regular chests: Respawn every 12 hours.
  
• Valuable chests: Respawn every 24 hours.
  
• Luxurious Chests: Respawn every 48 hours

Graffiti
Finding graffiti can only happen one time, and you "find" them by interacting with them. Once you find a piece of graffiti, it rewards 5 Engima Entities. Depending how the graffiti looks like and where it is placed, it can blend with the background, but the variations of graffiti is rather limited. Here is some but not all of how they can look (though you can always look at Kaiden's interactive map to see how other variations look like and where they are):


If you zoom into the map, you can see how many pieces of graffiti are left in a given section of the map.

Exploring the Map
The world is in 2.5 pixel. Sometimes, you are blocked by an ankle-high obstacle, and you will have to solve obstacles, find a shortcut, or walk around the obstacle in order to actually explore the parts of the map that you want to explore.

Given that it is 2.5, the game also uses perspective as a trick to hint that there might be a path behind a tall building:

Nonetheless, to progress the story and even grind the endgame, you don't have to explore every corner of the map. The yellow exclamation points, grey exclamation points, and the icons for the Rifts and Respite Units should be enough to tell you where to focus. Exploring the map only really helps give you more readily available access to Luxurious Chests.

Grey exclamation points denote City Challenges. They do not show up all as once, as new ones may appear as the date changes, the story progresses, or previous challenges were cleared before.

Keep in mind that, like in various other fights, you always have the option to "Restart" the fight immediately if something suboptimal occurs. You have a choice of selecting the level from 15 up until your current level cap. Beating the boss at the highest level yields the best rewards. If the boss fight is mandated by the story, you have the option to set it to an easy difficulty where it should be near impossible to lose.

Out of all the video guides that I have consumed for this boss, this one provides the most details while being the most accurate.

Unlike various other guides on S.H.A.R.K., no detail in this video is incorrect, and the video explores both optimal options and suboptimal yet safe options. I will highlight a few of other details.


If the boss runs away from you and you chase it, it may choose to do a physical attack first before doing its ranged attack.

Its sharknado attack (as it charges at you from the water tornado) can be counterattacked (whether deflect or dodge). The optimal thing to do is to move backwards and forwards to avoid the rings and then counterattacking a few seconds after the warning prompt comes up to perform a successful counterattack.

If you are running the Recommended or Ideal Teams in the way I suggested, you just spam your break combo while having enough stamina to perform a Deflect Counterattack for any of the boss's physical attacks. And then once you have the boss broken and have enough tension, based on the combo with your tension cards that do the most damage, use Miu's ultimate at full resonance. If you are underleveled, undergeared, or not properly specced, this may take 3-5+ breaks in total.

Whether you are running the Recommended or Ideal Teams or not, if you are piloting someone who only has a Deflect Counterattack, you can choose to dash in order to dodge certain physical attacks that have tighter timings like its dive or sharknado attack, but for all other physical attacks, you should at least get the timings down.

Of course, if you are piloting a character with Dodge Counterattack, try to get the timing down for counterattacking almost all of its attacks.

Keep in mind that, like in various other fights, you always have the option to "Restart" the fight immediately if something suboptimal occurs. You have a choice of selecting the level from 25 up until your current level cap. Beating the boss at the highest level yields the best rewards. If the boss fight is mandated by the story, you have the option to set it to an easy difficulty where it should be near impossible to lose.

Out of all the video guides that I have consumed for this boss, this one provides the most details while being the most accurate.

If you are running the Recommended or Ideal Teams in the way I suggested, the game plan is the same as with S.H.A.R.K.

if you are piloting someone who only has a Deflect Counterattack, you can counterattack all of its physical attacks. Its missiles and its sword beams are considered ranged, and you will not be able to deflect them.

Of course, if you are piloting a character with Dodge Counterattack, you can counterattack all of its attacks.

Keep in mind that, like in various other fights, you always have the option to "Restart" the fight immediately if something suboptimal occurs. You have a choice of selecting the level from 40 up until your current level cap. Beating the boss at the highest level yields the best rewards.

Unfortunately, this is where Tribe Nine video content dries up. This is the one actual video guide that I found:

If you are running the Recommended or Ideal Teams in the way I suggested, the game plan is the same as with all previous bosses.

All of this boss's attack that can be counterattacked can be counterattacked by both deflect and dodge. In other words, all of its attacks can be counterattacked except its electric attacks (and another special phase attack).

During the electric sequence, you just have to weave back and forth between two separate columns. You can walk it, you can dash, or you can just follow how your AI companions do it.

During this phase, Rakuzakai will jump up and root itself in the center of the arena, and you can counterattack as it falls down. Then, it will shoot out two giant ink bubbles in different directions according to where its two eyes are looking -- these bubbles will expire after a short while. If you have a melee attack character, you have to start sprinting towards one of the balls right away, ideally before the bubble has a chance to touch the ground. If you are ranged, you have some leeway and can hit both bubbles at once if you are quick enough; if you are melee, you have no chance at hitting the second bubble, without a movement skill effect or dedicated Moving Speed substats, since it will likely be so far away. You should attack the bubble in direction of one eye, and then attack another bubble that is in the direction of the other eye.

If both eyes are hit by the ink bubbles, the boss is render staggered, and you are free to damage and break it. If the boss is not staggered by the two bubbles in a short while, the boss will shoot out another set of two bubbles in direction of its eyes. If you are melee, you have to sprint towards the new bubble that is in the direction of its other eye, as the older bubble will expire as you reach it. This second set of bubbles is your last chance to stagger the boss. If you fail to hit a bubble in both eyes during this phase, the boss will perform a highly damaging AOE move that cannot be dodged or counterattacked.

Once you get 115 stickers, you should freely farm the Rifts that you want farm for the materials that you need because Rifts should now have a level cap of 60, providing the most value.

Rifts require at least one Booster to be consumed in order to use the Rift. Before entering a Rift, it will list out the specific materials that it rewards. A Rift contains a slightly randomized map layout that is isolated from the cities. A Rift has randomized normal enemies along with one specific, required enemy that needs to be defeated in order to exit with the listed rewards. Also, various other randomized lootable materials and chests that exist within a Rift.

While requiring only one Booster, you can use up to 3 Boosters at once to claim 2-3 times the materials, Kane, and experience in one trip in a given Rift. In other words, using additional Boosters rewards you as if you cleared the Rift twice or three times when in reality you only had to clear the Rift once. For your convenience, when entering a Rift, it will autoselect the highest amount of Boosters that can be consumed.

Aside from tackling the ones containing materials that may be hard to come by, the main Rifts to use would be the ones containing the Code, Data, Program needed to rank up the characters you are using. (In this context, Data is different from the Life Data used to level up your characters.)

In the endgame, Rifts are your main source of experience.

Generally, you will not care too much about your Patimons until the endgame. Up until the endgame, you should not have had to be too picky about its substats, as opposed to using the highest tier available as you progress through the story.

Patimons
Patimons come in three types: head, body, and weapon. The head always has a base stat of Defense, the body always has a base stat of Maximum HP, and the weapon always has a base stat of Attack. A given character can equip one of each at a time.

Patimons come in four rarities, 0 star, 1 star, 2 star, and 3 star. Patimons' tiers range from 1 to 11. Its rarity and tier are not necessarily related to each other. There can be a 1 tier Patimon that is of the highest rarity. The number of stars on a given Patimon denote how many substats are on it, so a 0 star Patimon has no substat and 3 star Patimon has 3 substats. The higher the rarity, the better the substats exist on the Patimon. At the highest rarity, a given Patimon has at least 1 "gold" substat; this gold substat can be an enhanced character skill, "IV" quality or more, or one of the newest substats that come in no "+" or 1 "+" variety. Generally speaking, these gold substats are good but may not necessarily be what you want for a given character. The higher the tier a given Patimon is, the higher its base stat is. Therefore, it goes without saying, that we would like a Patimon of tier 11 with the highest rarity.

Patimons also belong to a specific set. Having two or more Patimons of the same set equipped on a given character confers onto the character the given set bonus.

How to Make PAR
PAR is needed to grind the endgame.
You get PAR as a recipe from Beroro. If you have not already done so, you will have to purchase his recipes, one recipe at a time, and they unlock based on your level cap. Purchasing one recipe allows you to purchase the next recipe. PAR should be the second to last recipe that is made available, and it costs 1 million Kane whereas all other recipes cost 10,000. (Unless you find yourself leveling other characters at level 40 or below at this point, please feel free to ignore the last recipe and most of the other recipes.) Once you purchase it, you can craft PAR.

PAR can be crafted from both Digital Energy Food (G) and Technical Tape.

Digital Energy Food come from compressing Patimons which essentially means to destroy the selected Patimons and reduce them to material. 0 star Patimons and 1 star Patimons compress to Digital Energy Food (K), 2 star Patimons compress to Digital Energy Food (M), and 3 star Patimons compress to Digital Energy Food (G). 3 Digital Energy Food (K) can be crafted into 1 Digital Energy Food (M), and 3 Digital Energy Food (M) can be crafted into 1 Digital Energy Food (G).

Technical Tape are crafted from a combination of two boss and/or Ferocious Enemy materials of specific quality -- boss materials of the lowest quality and Ferocious Enemy materials of the highest quality.
I recommend using the drops from Rakuzakai since you are not using those drops otherwise.

Welcome to the endgame!

Aside from getting 15 stickers (or getting your characters' presents early), I recommend holding off exploring Fractal Vice where you reached 115 stickers or are about to, and you want to have the best Patimons. Fractal Vice is the only place that rewards tier 11 Patimons, the highest tier in the game.

You can go to Fractal Vice through a Respite Unit and clicking on "Move to 24 City: Lobby" (or by clicking on "Fractal Vice Rewards Refresh" on the map but that goes away when you enter Fractal Vice once). From there, you will be transported to an isolated area from which you can choose to enter Fractal Vice. Once you enter Fractal Vice, you cannot change your team composition or tension cards.

Within the Fractal Vice, there is a fixed map route layout -- how the rooms connect through "A" and "B" never changes. Within each room, the layout of a given room are fixed until the next week, where the enemy placement and chests will be change. The lootable items and chests on the map do not respawn until the next week reset.

The map in Fractal Vice will show you the rooms that you have collected the chests and rooms where you have not (though it will not tell you about the lootable items). The map also does not tell you what quality of the chests that are left in a given room. Most enemies respawn with each run through the Fractal Vice.

The very first room is where level 40 enemies exist. The next room you transition to contains level 50 enemies, the next one contains 60, and the very last room contains 70. In the Fractal Vice, each enemy you defeat increases your score for that run. If you chain multiple enemies together, once you win the fight, score of each subsequent fight multiply. The number of enemies and types of enemies change week by week.

When you reach an exit, it will show on the left how many chests are unopened from that path out of how many chests exist from that path, and the right shows the rate of survival of everyone who used that exit in the given week. Once you use an exit, you cannot go back to the previous room.

Unlike in the cities, enemies who are underleveled will not flee, and no battles will ever instantly end without you actually engaging in combat gameplay. In addition to their original material drops, each enemy also drops Polyhedral Codex I when killed. Also, unlike in the cities, once you start a fight, you do not have the option to "Restart" it. If you make a mistake, you have to keep fighting with that mistake until the fight is over. Some parts of the map are blocked by enemies highlighted in red. Once you kill that enemy, that part of the map remains unlocked for the rest of the week, and that enemy in red will not respawn in subsequent runs.

You are allowed to use "First-Aid Items" when you are not in a fight. In order to unlock PAR, you should have access to the recipes to craft Stretchy Bandages and Super Medical Kits. Bandages heal you for 1000 HP, and the kits revive a fallen character. You will very likely need to craft (at least Bandages) at all times. Even if you can perfectly counterattack and dodge everything, your AI allies may not, especially when you chain multiple enemies together. Even if you have a healer, you may want to start the next fight with full health. If you have been looting everything (as I suggested above), you have way more than enough material from Overflowing Trash Cans.

Within each room, you have a choice to exit Fractal Vice either through just leaving via clicking on the top right icon or leaving via the boss exit where you will have the fight the a boss of the same level as the enemies in the room where you used the boss exit. What boss at what exit changes week by week as well.

If at any point your team is wiped or you choose to "Retreat" from a fight, you instantly exit Fractal Vice for that run. Your score is accumulated to a weekly limit of 9000 (which account for a fixed set of rewards that last until the end of game service). Any progress you made toward the weekly Fractal Vice missions are also accounted for. You get to keep anything you looted. Exiting via via clicking on the top right icon yields the same results.

If however, you get to the boss exit, you will encounter a boss (and other normal enemies depending on where you exited). If you manage to defeat this boss, you will have access to a special chest that rewards 1 present specific to each character on your team. This present is used to rank your characters past Rank Ex, and this special chest respawns only during the weekly reset.. Additionally, depending on your score, you get rewarded with a certain number of Luxurious Chests, at a limit of 30 chests per run. For a baseline example, if you beat the level 40 boss, you likely get no Luxurious Chests, but if you beat the level 70 boss, you are likely to get at least 15 Luxurious Chests.

Once you beat the boss, you must exit Fractal Vice.

The number of Luxurious Chests spawned after a successful boss fight in the Fractal Vice do not have a limit. So long as you keep entering Fractal Vice and keep getting a high enough score, you will keep getting Luxurious Chests to open.
Luxurious Chests have slightly different drops in Fractal Vice compared to the cities. All Luxurious Chests here drop:

• 1500 Kane
  
• 750 Tension Points
  
• 1 Polyhedral Codex I or 1 Polyhedral Codex II -- Polyhedral Codex I is the more likely
  
• A random material or a tier 9 or 11 Patimon of the highest rarity -- Patimons are the most likely drop

Fractal Vice has a weekly reset which resets the four missions, 9000 weekly score limit, special chest, boss and enemy layout, and chests and lootable materials on the map. This reset is at 6 A.M. Thursday UTC time.

Polyhedral Codex
This is the final material to unlock the final level cap of a given tension card. 30 Polyhedral Codex I craft into 1 Polyhedral Codex II, and 10 Polyhedral Codex II craft into 1 Polyhedral Codex III. Tension cards will need additional materials aside from the codex, but the codex will be the limiting factor since the other materials are more plentiful in comparison:

• A 1 star card requires 1 Polyhedral Codex II
  
• A 2 star card requires 1 Polyhedral Codex III
  
• A 3 star card requires 3 Polyhedral Codex III

How to Use Par
Up until now, you have mostly been given Patimon at random, random rarity, random tier. But with PAR, you now have agency to build your Patimon with some RNG.

When you have a Patimon with at least one -- hopefully 2 or 3 -- substats that you like (whether this is before you enter Fractal Vice for the first time or you got the Patimon in Fractal Vice), you can use PAR. You can use PAR by selecting for it via "First-Aid" Items. When you use PAR, it selects 1 Patimon worn by one of your currently deployed characters. The selected Patimon must be of the highest rarity, which is to say 3 substats. Once PAR used, all subsequent Patimons that are the same tier or higher with the highest rarity will copy one gold substat from the selected Patimon, and there is a small chance for each of these Patimons to acquire a secondary substat from the same Patimon (which may or may not be gold). This effects last for 25 Patimons. Patimon that come in lower tiers or lower rarities do not count towards this 25 use. PAR lasts even if the Patimon is compressed or unequipped. You do not lose the effect on death or when you exit the game. The only way to stop the current effects of PAR is to use PAR or use up all 25 uses. The effect is shown as a curved bar next to your character sprite, and that bar goes down as uses are used up.
Patimons of the highest rarity on their own come with their own gold substat. So, a Patimons having two gold substats come from PAR copying one substat and then the Patimon originally having its own gold substat. Therefore, Patimons with three gold substats come from the rare chance PAR copy two gold substats from the selected Patimon.

When you first start using PAR, I recommend building for your DPS first. Whether you are using the Recommended or Ideal Teams or not, your desirable substats are likely at least Critical Rate and Critical DMG Multiplier.

When you first enter into Fractal Vice, you are likely unable to exit through the level 70 boss your first time, at least cleanly. The best thing to do is to open as many chests as you can, whether be on the map or through challenging bosses you can actually defeat. This means, at the very least, being able to chain level 50 enemies together and then winning against the level 50 or 60 boss. Through this way, you should be able to get at least few Luxurious Chests. So the strategy is to use PAR on a Patimon that has the desired substat that you want; if you do not own a Patimon with the desired substat, refrain from using PAR until you can get it from farming. Slowly accumulate Patimons with the substats that you want with the highest tier you can get. By opening more and more chests in Fractal Vice, you will slowly improve your team and your exploration score -- eventually strengthen your Patimons to be strong enough to farm the level 70 boss.

PAR Example
Let's start with an example of how I started: I just manage to build the Ideal Team with a recent 10 pull, and I also had a Critical Rate IV+ piece. Normally, Miu would prioritize Critical DMG Multiplier, but since I did not have Critical DMG Multiplier IV+ and my Critical Rate was not at 100%, I thought it would be best for future Patimons to inherit the better quality first. Given how the Ideal Team operates, the stats of the other characters are not too important. At most, I want more stamina for Senju to break and counterattack, and AI Jio just does damage through Attack, so I just handed these two the leftover tier 11 Patimons that had the substats that they would generally want. At the very least, the higher basestats would be an improvement on their own.

With each run, I would slowly get more and more tier 11 Patimons with the substats that I want -- one Patimon had Critical Rate IV+ and Critical DMG Multiplier IV+. Therefore, I started using PAR on that piece. Fractal Vice runs got shorter; the boss fights to get materials for PAR ended faster. Eventually I got one that had Critical Rate IV++ and Critical DMG Multiplier IV+. Then I would use PAR on that Patimon. Eventually, I got a random tier 9 Patimon with Critical DMG Multiplier IV++. Since I had so many Critical Rate IV++ substats, I thought I should prioritize having more Patimons with Critical DMG Multiplier IV++. Eventually, this led to a Patimon with both Critical DMG Multiplier IV++ and Critical Rate IV++ .

How to Maximize Fractal Vice
The best way to increase your score is to group up as many enemies as possible and then preemptively strike them to form a big chain. In your "Options", I recommend setting "Chain Encounter Range" to "Wide" which will increase the radius of what enemies are included in your chain.

If you go into the boss rooms, to maximize your score, you should make sure the normal enemies notice you and then preemptively strike them in order to form a chain with them and the boss. At the level 70 boss room, normally only one enemy is setup to realize that you are there. If you preemptively strike them without that enemy noticing, you may not form a chain, so once you defeat the enemy that has a red cone radar, the other normal enemy and the boss will fail to notice you, so you cannot form a chain once this occurs.

Substats In Fractal Vice
"++" substats are exclusive to Fractal Vice (aside from using PAR):

• Maximum HP IV++
  
• Attack IV++
  
• Defense IV++
  
• Support IV++
  
• Critical Rate IV++
  
• Critical DMG Multiplier IV++
  
• Grant Recovery Effect IV++
  
• Damage Cut++

Substats that will not spawn in Fractal Vice (aside from using PAR):

• Life Absorption: When an attack hits, recover HP based on a percentage of damage dealt. The recovery amount will not exceed a percentage of Maximum HP
  
• Regenerate: Recover HP every 3 seconds
  
• Shield Expansion: At the start of battle, grant oneself a Shield with resistance based on a percentage of Maximum HP and can decrease damage by 30%
  
• Of Sword and Spear: When executing a Deflect Counterattack successfully, increase Primary and Secondary Attack DMG Multipliers for 30 seconds.
  
• Backstab: When an attack hits an enemy from behind, increase Critical Rate and Critical DMG Multiplier
  
• Ninja Footwork: Less likely to be detected by sound during exploration

The list above also includes their "+" variants. Character specific enhanced skill will also never appear in Fractal Vice (aside from using PAR).

Special Strategy
Generally, you want to build for your DPS first. Nonetheless, depending on your DPS or how you pilot your team, aside from Critical Rate IV++ and Critical DMG Multiplier IV++, you may want to build your team with Of Sword and Spear especially Of Sword and Spear+ or perhaps you want to use a character specific enhanced skill. The substats that will not spawn in Fractal Vice can be found in chests within Neo Chiyoda City at tier 6-9. First, you must find a piece with that given skill either through opening chests on the map of Neo Chiyoda City or running Rifts in Neo Chiyoda City. Then you use PAR on it while in Fractal Vice. Then, you will have tier 9 and tier 11 pieces with a substat that is not naturally found in Fractal Vice. Eventually, you will follow PAR Example where you start using PAR on subsequent better and better Patimons with your chosen substats.

Keep in mind that, while something like Of Sword and Spear may be generally valuable, specific character enhanced skills will not be usuable on anything but the specific character.

If you want to have a Paitmon carry two substats that are not available in Fractal Vice at the same time but at tier 11, you will have to use PAR while opening chests and running Rifts in Neo Chiyoda City. Let's say I want Of Sword and Spear+ and a specific character enhanced skill. I will use PAR on a Paitmon with one of those substats and then grind Rifts in Neo Chiyoda City. Eventually I should get 3 star Paitmon with both gold substats. Then I would use PAR on that piece and then make runs in Fractal Vice, hoping for the small chance that PAR copies both desired substats at the same time to a given Paitmon.

I generally do not recommend starting with this Special Strategy first unless you already own Of Sword and Spear+ and only need to use PAR on that one substat for Fractal Vice.

The Endless Grind
The endless grind comes from the RNG of choosing your best substats. Then having those substats on the Patimons that have the best set bonuses for your character. Then you do this two more times for your two other characters. Then you have this team clear the level 100 boss in Central Shaft. Then perhaps you want to build out more teams, so then you start this process over again with other characters or other team compositions.

At this point of the game, I recommend using the Neo Stamps you have received from City Challenges are used at the Antenna Shop "Parabola" for as much Polyhedral Codex I as you can buy. You can quickly grind the other materials available in the shop compared to Polyhedral Codex I.

Central Shaft
If you beat the level 70 boss, you get an additional choice of entering the Central Shaft. If you have not already done so, I recommend entering the Central Shaft the first time. Central Shaft contains the Red Limit series, a strong version of the current level 70 boss in Fractal Vice. It starts at level 50, and each time you beat this boss, you get to challenge it at a +10 level to the one you beat, up until level 100.

Defeating this boss yields no rewards aside from a medal once you beat the level 100 version, but once you access the Central Shaft for a given boss, you have permanent access to that Central Shaft even after the weekly reset, assuming that Central Shaft boss is present for the current week rotation.

This guide is already long enough, and if you are at this point, you should be comfortable taking on the Red Limit series on your own, experimenting, practicing, or at the very least, referencing other runs or guides online on how to tackle each boss.

The fruits of your endless grinding will include being able to finish the Red Limit Series quickly, though keep in mind that the progression of the grind is slow at this point and that we do not have much time left in the game.