Beginner’s Quick Start Guide

Welcome to Brown Dust 2! This is a quick, no-nonsense guide with the quick facts to get you up to speed as a new player.

The Infinite Reroll

Don't know which units are good to start with? For tips on re-rolling, see the Reroll Guide.

Reroll Guide

Story Mode Team Building

When you start the game, resources for levelling up and ranking up units are pretty scarce, so it's a good idea to start by focusing your resources on the units you need to progress story mode.

Here are the recommended team units for new players in story mode:

Unit	Name	Description
	Arines	Free 3-star supporter, and one of the best physical supporters despite being only 3-star. 30% crit rate boost, 70% attack boost for physical-type attackers (Note 70% damage boost does not work for magic-type attackers)
	Wiggle	Free 3-star attacker Base costume has a plus shape "+" AOE Very high damage on self destruct skill
	Kry	Free 4-star attacker Base costume (Marauder) has a cross shape "X" AOE that hits hard and reduces 50 DEF. School costume does high knockback damage and recharges SP.

All 3 of the above units are very useful and you will likely continue using them for a long time. If you don't find Kry early on, any other "X" shape AOE attacker would be a good substitute until you get him. For example, Layla is an easily accessible 4-star.

It's easier to build your first team with physical based attackers rather than magic based attackers. This is because 3-star Arines is easy to obtain for free and gives a huge damage boost to your physical-type attackers. Elpis is a 4-star magic attack buffer, but it will take longer for to find copies for her +5 since she's 4-star rarity. To check if a unit is physical-type or magic-type, you can go to the character stats in the unit menu and see if the unit has a [Sword] ATK stat or a [Staff] Magic ATK stat.

The remaining two slots are flex slots depending on what 5-stars you have available. Ideally, for story mode you should use characters that can do AOE damage (i.e. hits multiple units at once). Don't bother with levelling units with tanking or defensive skills (e.g. Lecliss, Seir etc) for now, as you won't need them until much later in the game. You can use whoever you pull in the gacha that meet the above criteria. Some freely available 5-star physical-type units that are good for story mode include:

• White Reaper Justia/Knight of Blood Justia: Justia's costumes have useful AOEs and all deal fixed damage, which means that she always deals full damage regardless of enemy defense or damage reduction skills. Note however that fixed damage also means that she cannot crit.
• Sharpshooter of the Mist Gray: Gray's skill deals heavy burn damage against physical type enemies, but is weak against magic type enemies.
• Herb Tracker Lathel/Promise of Vengeance Lathel: Lathel's speciality is doing high damage to a single unit. His diagonal knockback skill also comes in handy often.
• Rodev's Star Liatris: Lia's skill hits a wide 3x3 range for easy farming, but she is not very strong where single target damage is required.

Priorities for Early Game Progression

If you're lost on what you should do first and where to go next, some tips are below.

Enjoy the story

BD2's story mode is pretty good, and would hold up on its own as a game. Unlike most gacha games, the battles can't simply be auto'd and they do require some thinking. Progressing the story will also unlock more game features, including Evil Castle, Mirror Wars and Path of Adventure.

If you ever get stuck on a puzzle in story mode, try clicking the "+" on the quest description. The full quest description will often give you a hint about how to solve the puzzle.

Don't forget the free rewards from searching and exploring

There are plenty of useful goodies hidden in each level, which you can hunt for after you have cleared the main quest. You can use the map to find out how many one-off rewards are left to find in each area. Remember to activate Lathel's "Search" ability to find hidden rewards (the map will tell you how many hidden rewards are left to find).

Level up your characters with your story rewards and dailies

As you progress through story mode you will get slimes and rank-up stars as clear rewards, which are used to level up your characters. There are also a lot of rewards to be earned from daily missions and event passes, so remember to always check "the "Pass" section and the "Mission" section in the home screen. Note that 4-star rank up stars are relatively rare and not farmable, so use them only as needed.

Farm slimes and gold with cooked rice

After unlocking Path of Adventure, you will be able to farm slimes gold with cooked rice. At first, you will need to go to the Path of Adventure Pack and battle manually to farm. After winning 5 battles, a boss will appear (Red Slime/Goblin King). Once you defeat the boss in each difficulty level, you will unlock auto-battle for that difficulty level, which can be accessed the shortcut in the field menu. Clear each difficulty level as fast as you can, so that you can speed up your daily auto-farming.

The same goes for hunting grounds in each story pack: beating the hunting grounds boss in each difficulty level will unlock auto-battle for that difficulty level.

You get 40 cooked rice per day. As a new player, I would recommend spending 1 battle (or 1 auto-run for 6 rice) on Hunting Grounds for the daily quest rewards, and the rest of your daily cooked rice on slime or gold farming. In terms of whether to do gold or slime runs, do whichever has the current "day of the week bonus". When both are on bonus, prioritize slimes in the early game, until all of your main units are max level. After your main units reach max level, you can start prioritizing gold. You can never have enough gold, because the late game is very gold intensive.

Farm elemental crystals with torches

After unlocking Path of Adventure, you will also be able to farm elemental crystals with torches (similar to farming slimes and gold with cooked rice. Elemental crystals are used for upgrading potential. For beginners, it is recommended that you pick your favorite or most used unit (who has potential upgrades available) and focus on farming the elemental crystal of that character's element.

Craft gear

Fred and Layla have the crafting ability, which allow you to craft gear. Gears make a huge difference in your team's overall battle power. Note: some older guides on the internet will tell you not to craft with Fred because he cannot craft UR gears, that advice is out of date because the Dec 2023 patch made Fred's ability the same as Layla's.

You will also need Scheherazade's Alchemy skill to make crafting materials for gears that are R-grade and above. Levelling up both Alchemy and Gear Craft (on either Layla or Fred, but not both) should be a priority. For more details about gear crafting, check out the gear guide.

Gear Guide – Basic Mechanics

You get plenty of crafting materials from daily missions and pass events, so I wouldn't worry about farming for crafting materials in the early game.

Recruit Olstein from the pub

Olstein is in the Chapter 4 pub after you finish the main quest in that chapter. Even though Olstein is pretty weak in combat, he comes with the Dispatch field ability which allows you to earn great free rewards daily. Later, once you get to Chapter 10 (Homunculus) you can also recruit Diana from the pub for additional dispatch rewards.

As long as you save enough recruiting scrolls for Olstein and Diana, feel free to recruit any other 5-stars that catch your eye in the pub, though attackers should generally be a priority for new players.

Remember that you can use the main shop to convert 3* recruit scrolls into 4* scrolls, and 4* scrolls into 5* scrolls. Since scrolls are scarce, I generally would not recommend recruiting any 3-star or 4-star units from the pub.

Try Last Night at least once

Once you unlock Last Night, it's a good idea to try it at least once. This will unlock "Isaac", who delivers Ancient Crystals and gold to you daily based on your all time high score. You only need to try it once to start earning rewards.

For more on Last Night, check out this guide.

Get seasonal rewards

Once you unlock Mirror Wars and Evil Castle, participate as much as you can to get the seasonal rewards. Even as a beginner, just participating will help you earn rewards to progress faster.

For example, weekly rewards for PVP are 400 dia for the bare minimum participation (Bronze rank).

Evil Castle participation is also vital for earning ancient crystals, which are a time-gated currency for crafting UR gears.

Check out the free 5-star units in shops

The golden thread shop and Mirror Wars shop have 5-star units that can rotate each month. For more information about what to buy in shops, check out the resources and currency guide.

Resources and Currency Guide

Getting Stuck

As you progress in the story, you may get stuck against difficult content. If you are still stuck after levelling up and enhancing gears, here are some tips to break through when you reach a wall:

Not enough damage

1. Try stacking supporters: Damage from different offensive buffers will stack. E.g. An easily accessible supporter combo is Arines + Kind Student Samay, which together give a total of +120% ATK and 30% crit.
2. Build gears for high crit damage: Crit damage generally scales better than ATK/M.ATK, so prioritizing crit damage gears improves your damage potential. In story mode you can get away with having a relatively low crit rate, since you can just retry if you miss the crit.
3. Use on-element attackers: Attacking with a strong element deals +50% damage, attacking with a weak element deals -50% damage. Also take note of the current seasonal elemental bonus.
4. Check your opponent's DEF and M.RES stats: If your opponent has high DEF or M.RES, try reducing it (e.g. Marauder Kry, Lovely Lady Elise) or using fixed damage units (e.g. Justia, Alec).

Not enough survivability (easily dying to enemy attacks)

1. Always check your enemy skills to see what attacks are coming next, and adjust your formation accordingly. You can freely re-position your units before the start of each of your turns, so try to position your units in a way that avoids enemy AOE to extent possible. Be prepared to sacrifice an expendable unit if your opponent is about to use a big unavoidable attack.
2. Kill quicker: This is probably easier said than done, but it's worth saying anyway - the more enemies you can kill on your first turn, the less enemy attacks you have to deal with on the next turn.
3. Prioritize enemies that deal high damage: If you can't kill them all, then prioritize killing the units that will hurt you the most next turn. Again, this is why you should check enemy skills to see what is coming next
4. Try using a tank with taunt. 4-star Specialist Andrew is highly recommended for this role because he is easily accessible, he has taunt, and he can dodge enemy attacks, completely negating all damage.

Not enough AOE (enough damage, but unable reach all enemies in the first turn)

If you have used the units recommended in this guide, you should have a variety of AOE attacks at your disposal, including "+" shape and "x" shape AOE skills. Treat every battle like a puzzle to determine the optimal formation and skill order to maximize your AOE.

Using knockback skills is essential to making good use of your AOE. You can push your enemies into place before attacking to set up the attack AOE.

Although most characters simply knock the enemy forward, there are some units that can knock in different directions, opening up new strategic possibilities. Here's a quick guide to find the knock back direction you need:

• Forward: most units.
• Forward left: Lathel, Beatrice
• Forward right: Layla, Rubia
• Left: Emma, Ventana
• Right: Angelica
• Backwards (pulls toward you): Dalvi

Finally, Violent Student Kry's knockback deserves a special mention. Not only can Kry push two units back two spaces with his costume skill, his costume also does massive damage to any unit that the target collides into. Use this skill to clear mobs faster.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have more questions? Check out our FAQ section for beginners.

Beginner’s Guide – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)