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 WARRIORS Abyss Beginner 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.
1. Aim to beat the game with Dian Wei (bald guy) first
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.
2. Emblem build (any hero)
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.
3. Team Building
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.