Shard Farming Priority Guide

Hey all! I’ve seen so many questions in the community about who to prioritize in the daily shard farming level, so I figured it would be helpful to provide my own guide as an easy visual way to help people determine which characters they should be putting in the mines each day. Just make sure to read the Notes section before making any decisions!

Also, I intend to update this guide as new characters are added to the game, so people know where the new characters fit into the list of priority. I am going to do my best to limit how many characters are in the first two tiers, so as not to make it seem as though “everyone” is a priority, as that would be unhelpful.

If you have any questions or comments, please let me know 🙂 Enjoy!

Notes

In order to make the best recommendations possible, I had to use a few different criteria for ranking the relative priority of each character these criteria were as follows (in descending order of importance/weight):

• Impact of Star Level: Priority is based on how much star upgrades enhance a character’s traits or change their functionality. Breakpoints adding new effects are highly valued.
• Opportunity Cost: Characters in shard farming for 5-stars take much longer (2+ extra months) than 3-stars (1 month). This longer commitment reduces the priority of 5-star farming, since you can get two other characters to 3-star in the time it takes to get one from 3-star to 5-star.
• Combat Usefulness: While not the main focus, characters with multiple roles or exceptional power rank higher.

This list is a guideline. Prioritize characters you enjoy using—the game is about having fun, not stressing over meta.

Characters are arranged alphabetically within each tier.

Focus on 3 characters for shard farming daily to speed up key breakpoints and improve team efficiency. If you bring more than 3, it spreads the 9 available daily shards over more characters, and it takes that much longer for your characters to reach those critical breakpoints.

Changelog

Edit (3/27/25): Included Kvare. As per usual, 3-star is the minimum of where you’ll want him, as he gets an extra NRG per turn from using [Roster], but 5-Star is where he really shines, since he gets an extra use of [Roster] each turn. This translates to much more death and destruction around him!

Edit (3/13/25): Included Safiyyah. 3-star should be your goal ASAP so her trait includes an extra DMG boost to allies and so she can access her SP reaction skill. After that, I do thoroughly recommend getting her to 5-star so she provides 2 [Level 2 Attribute Buff]s with each activation of her trait and the DMG boost increases even further. You’ll be using her a lot, so investing heavily in her is a solid plan.

Edit (2/28/25): Included Pamina. 3-Star is a good stopping point for her trait, as it gets her to the point where she can counterattack 3 times per turn. Going to 5-Star can be nice, but you’re really only getting one more counterattack per turn and some extra NRG from it, so it might not be worth it unless you really love using Pamina

Edit (2/15/25): included Layla. If you’re going to use her, you want her at least at 3-star for the extra range on her preempt and alert attacks. At 4-star, she can proc her preempt up to 6 times, which can be very useful, and at 5-star she gets an extra NRG each turn, but 3-star should be sufficient for most content.

Edit (1/29/25): Included Tristan. Her 4-star is the biggest priority, since it gives her an extra turn of [Unlimited Resolve] in her [Berserk State]. Her 3-star, however, is also great, as it extends her [Berserk State] to 3 turns instead of just 2. Her 5-star is impactful, since it adds an extra turn of [Berserk State] and gives her non-[Instant] skills CD reduction and reduced NRG cost. As usual, the biggest issue is the amount of time it takes to get a character to 5-star, but it really seems like she gets quite a bit out of it, if you’re inclined to keep her in that long!

Additionally, I rearranged the guide and shrunk the sprites to allow for future characters to be added in easily.

Edit (1/10/25): Included Taair. His 2-star gives an extra stack of [Knowledge] at the start of the fight, meaning a guaranteed [Historical Skill] on turn 1. His 3-star provides another starting stack and one tile of movement, while his 5-star gives 5 starting stacks of [Knowledge] and an extra tile of range for his support skills. Getting him to 3-star is a priority, particularly for the extra movement, but also for the [Knowledge] stacks. 5-star is very nice, but like any other character, it takes a long time to farm him up to that point.

Edit: Watched Hawky’s video that covered this guide, and make a few changes that I agreed with in his review. Namely, Magnus has been moved up, Beryl’s recommended star level has been lowered from 5- to 3-star, and Alexei’s primary recommendation has been moved from 3- to 5- star, as I agree that if you’re going to build him, just go all the way.

Edit: Made a couple of minor changes (moved Hasna up a tier, separated out Col’s 3-star and 5-star, and added a little bit to the Notes section).