If you have been progressing through the story mode and reached Chapter 11, you will likely find it very difficult to obtain a 3-star completion given that every unit has six guardstones. While breaking all guardstones is not the sole requirement for a perfect 3-star completion, it is difficult to break guardstones in a specific number of turns. The obvious question you will likely be asking yourself is: what is the fastest way to break guardstones? The answer is very simple, through elemental enhancement!

The benefits and requirements to elemental enhance a hero

Prior to the release of Season 2, the elemental enhancement system was introduced in-game to prepare players for the new content. This new form of hero enhancement allows for a unit to break multiple guardstones depending on their transcendence level and their innate element attribute. The higher the transcendence level the higher a hero can be elemental enhanced, up to a max level of 5. The number of guardstones that can be broken increases as the enhancement level increases, up to a max of 6 stones at level 5. To clarify, if you have a +5 transcended Rera elemental enhanced to level 5, she will be able to break an enemy unit with 6 nature guardstones! 

As good as this upgrade sounds, it does have end game requirements given you need transcended heroes.  In addition, the chances of success decrease as you enhance a unit to higher levels. Regardless of the requirements, it is definitely an enhancement you should prioritize as even reaching level 1 is a huge benefit. A quick overview of the requirements and results:

As you can see from the table above, the resource requirements are gold, 5-colored fate stones, Mu, and heroic tokens. The gold requirement is steep, so you will want to save your gold as accumulating 300,000 will take a few days of farming the gold and shelter of avarice sanctums. The 5-colored fate stones are drops from the Holy Dragon Grounds, the higher your completion rating, the greater the number of fate stones you receive. Lastly, heroic tokens are obtained from disassembling heroes. Given the quantities of each, and considering the chances of success decrease for each consecutive level, you will need to save resources for several days to meet these requirements. The good news, for each failed attempt the chance for success increases by 5%. My recommendation is to prioritize a level 1 elemental enhancement for one hero from each different element first. 

Elemental enhancement in PVP and PVE content

It goes without saying, the ability to break multiple guard stones with a single attack gives you a huge advantage in all content. Specifically, for PVE content, this makes the story mode much more manageable and easier to reach a 3-star ratings for completion. New players just starting, prioritizing this after reaching chapter 3 will help greatly as the number of guardstones on enemy units increase. Veterans progressing through chapter 11 will notice all enemy units have 6 guardstones and boss fights have up to 8 or more. So elemental enhancing your strongest units is a requirement from chapter 10 and above if you are trying to achieve 3-star ratings. 

In PVP content, having elemental enhanced units is highly recommended from challenger level and above. As the global release was over 3 months ago, most competitive players in the PVP scene have their main team fully equipped with fated gear with matching guardstones. Thus, having the ability to break 2-3 stones each turn is a must if you are looking to climb the ladder.  

Given all the new content provided with Season 2, elemental enhancement should be priority for early and late game players. If you find yourself having difficulty with the new content and in PVP, save up your resources and start enhancing your top 5 heroes and you will start seeing more victories come your way! Hope this summary helps and good luck on the daily grind!