New Halloween themed content for the Exos community

If you have been playing Exos since release day, you have probably been searching for ways to spend the massive amounts of levistones you have accumulated between each Core Raid update. The amount of levistones the game provides should allow any player to farm content for days; however, there has been no real content to spend levistones on aside from explorations and farming golems or ancient towers which have a cooldown before respawns. Even still, normal or smart explorations do not require the player to actually engage in the content. Now with the recent Halloween update, Line Games has introduced the new Quantum Raid mode which is new PVE content designed to allow players to spend their levistones in a mini-game format.

New mini-game Format, same core raid rewards

Although this is new content for all Exos players to experience, those familiar with the previous Core Raid system will find the reward system to be mostly unchanged. There still exists a shop with step-up rewards and a Raid Pass system that provides rewards based on your continued progress through the new game. The Raid Shop will look familiar with fated armor available at each step-up reward as you purchase each item with the raid currency. The Raid Pass also provides the usual Premium Pass rewards which can be unlocked with 3000 crystals which will give you multiple fated gear, a ranked fated armor, and an exclusive weapon craft ticket as the upper tier rewards. While not necessary for most players, those looking to stay competitive in the game should not pass on the Premium Pass given the rarity of ranked fated armor.

Fundamental mechanics that allow all players to progress

The mechanics of quantum raid are fairly simple as it’s essentially a mini-side scrolling game with the objective of defeating all enemies to move on to the next difficulty. There are 4 levels of difficulty, easy, hard, very hard, and extreme. Each difficulty has 9 stages, with the 9th stage being the boss fight and obviously the most difficult. To progress, you must beat all 9 stages in consecutive order to move to the next level of difficulty. You start with a team of 3 heroes, Glenn, Zeon, and April and must eventually build a full team of 9 heroes to compete at the higher stages.

Build a team based on your hero box

Although by default you start with Glenn/Zeon/April, the team composition you decide to use will be your choice. The heroes available for you to use are based on the actual heroes you have recruited in game. Your team is composed of Front, Mid, and Back groups each with a maximum of 3 slots for a total team count of 9 heroes. Each group has a specific function, the Front being tank types, the Mid being damage types, and the Back being support types. Within each group there are 3 unique class types with different abilities. Below is a summary of each group and class type ability. 

Although your heroes are available from the start, you will initially have to utilize the 3 starting heroes as you can only use heroes at level 1 to participate. Every other hero in your box excluding Glenn/Zeon/April starts level 0 requiring you to level up your chosen hero to participate. To level up each hero, you will need to use elemental stones which are rewarded to you after completing a stage. Of course, the higher the stage the greater the quantity of stones are rewarded. Note that although the skills are the same for each class type, the grade of a hero impacts the stats and how many stones are required to level up. So while 5-star fated heroes will have higher stats for better performance, they will also require much more elemental stones to level up requiring you to spend more levistones to invest in them. 

5 basic tips for trogression

Given all the information provided, I wanted to provide some basic tips to help your progression in this new game mode in order to tackle it quicker in future updates:

1. Build the default 3-star heroes Glenn/Zeon/April first. If you are a spender or free to play, these 3 will get you to stage 4-5 (depending on RNG) of easy difficulty through auto battles. That said, I recommend initially farming stage 3 until you gain enough stones to unlock their skills at level 4. Once you meet that milestone, start leveling new heroes to add to your team.
   
   
2. Focus on building a diverse team of all classes in each group. Given the skill sets of each class, you should aim to build a Guardian/Knight/Paladin for the Front team and Assassin/Warrior/Wizard for the Mid team. The Back team can be a combination of the 3 types, but I personally find using an extra Cleric over an Enchanter has provided greater success at higher difficulties.
   
   
3. Try to utilize different elements in each group as much as possible. Given the quantity of stones required to level increases as you increase level, you will find it more difficult to level heroes of the same element as you will have to split resources. As there are 6 elements, it is inevitable that you will overlap elements in different classes, but try to minimize the amount of same elements in your team for faster progression.
   
   
4. Utilize and build 3-star units. Yes, using 5-star heroes seems ideal given their higher base stats. Remember that they ultimately use the same skills as their lower grade counterparts but have higher level requirements. If you want to utilize your levistones most efficiently, stick to building 3-star heroes to progress. 
   
   
5. Hit the boss at daily reset when entry is free. Given the boss stages (stage 9) is significantly harder than all of the previous 8 stages, I recommend not hitting it until daily reset when entry is free on the first run. This is due to the fact that losing a battle will not refund your levistones. So in terms of efficiency, if you are not sure if you can beat the boss, farm more stones at stages 7 or 8 and wait until reset to attempt stage 9.