As I said, I’m dropping almost all the gacha games I’m playing because they take up too much time. Epic Seven is the one I’m feeling the most pain over, because even though I’m not too good at it, I can feel myself getting better every day. Also I’m really liking the characters, the art and the flashy animations. But I’ve reached the point where I’ve taken my characters as far as they can go and now I need to grind for good gear. That will take months if not years, so I’m “taking a break” (i.e. dropping it without admitting it) for now.

Status when quitting:
AR Rank 65.
Abyss 80. I don’t like Abyss but I love the rewards
Labyrinth – Area 5 of Nixied’s Sanctum. I despise the Labyrinth.
Automaton Tower level 2 cleared. I LOVE Automaton Tower, I wish there was a new one every week.
88% in Hall of Trials
Wyvern 13, Golem 10, Azimanak 10, Banshee 11, Caides 10

Why I really like Epic Seven

I’ve been having a blast since I started playing it after Christmas. I’m only dropping it because I don’t want to grind.

Lively characters. The cast is large, but not so large that I can’t easily follow the story. Though very often it’s a case of “I pulled this character and I don’t know who she is but she’s really strong.” All heroes can be raised to max level. Yes, even 2-star fodder. And some of the 3-stars are good enough to give the higher tiers a run for their money. If you really like a character, you can keep them with you for a long time.

PVP is optional, so you can go at your own pace. The rewards aren’t that great so you’re not missing out. And that means there’s no pressure to get the very strongest and bestest characters and gear unless you’re into PVP. You’ll still need/want to get stronger as you play, but you can do that in your own time.

Colorful anime art. Their slogan is something like “Play the anime!” and I can definitely see the inspiration. I thought I would quickly tire of the repetitive attack animations, but I still enjoy watching them whenever I play manually. Of course I only played for three months, so it doesn’t really count.

Generous gacha and frequent giveaways. So generous and frequent, in fact, that it has delayed my quitting by several weeks because I kept thinking, ooh, I’ve gotta get that 5-star hero at the end of the Valentine giveaway. Oh, now I’m two days away from 5 galaxy bookmarks. Ooh, a 7-day 10-summon event! Ooh, 50% hunt boost! I’m not convinced I’ll be able to resist whatever Smilegate has planned for the anniversary in July either. But that’s still a while away, so at least I can uninstall Epic Seven for a while.

Of course, the reason they can be so generous with the pulls and tickets is because getting good characters is only 20% of strength in Epic Seven. Another 20% is catalysts and runes for skill enhancement and awakening. The other 60% is gear, gear, gear, gear, gear!

Conclusive stories. The main story is the same unoriginal secular humanist treatise JRPGs use in lieu of plots: “mankind needs no gods!” and “the power of humanity will save the day!” Epic Seven even contains three variations on the humanist theme: “God is dead” (Orbis, Rekos), “God is caring but incompetent” (Diche, Rekos) and “God is evil” (Archdemon, Fastus). If you’ve played a few JRPGs, you’ve seen it all before, but luckily no one plays JRPGs for original writing.

What I really like about Epic Seven‘s story as opposed to most mobile games is that each arc has a clear beginning and a clear end. There’s a clear good side and bad side. When I started and read about the Archdemon, I thought for sure the story would drone on for years and we would still be trying to beat this Archdemon and his henchmen who would keep escaping and complicating things, etc. Like how I played Granblue Fantasy for 5+ years and never reached Estalucia. Without spoiling too much, Epic Seven is not like that. Each arc does have a few loose ends that are wrapped up in side stories and events, but the main arcs end nicely and conclusively in a very manageable amount of time.

Easily-understandable gameplay. It doesn’t take too much time to figure out what equipment goes where, which drop does what and what it takes to get stronger. Apart from Effectiveness, it’s pretty clear what each stat does, so it’s not hard to sort good equipment from bad.

I especially appreciated the skill and artifact descriptions: “X jumps into the air and fires at the enemy, reducing their attack by Y% for Z turns.” Simple! Of course, “easy-to-understand” doesn’t mean “easy,” so the game contains plenty of RNG traps, grinding and time-wasters to keep you playing. Knowing what a stat does means nothing if you can’t get any equipment with that stat, right? Hmmmmm, speed boots?

Why I’m dropping it

I already said it: these gacha games are too time-consuming. Especially when it’s as fun and as attractive as Epic Seven. I just keep playing and playing and playing, and honestly I’m having a great time. I thought I could just keep it in the background because it’s auto-friendly, but somehow my eyes and hands keep returning to it. So due to my own lack of self-control, Epic Seven has to go.

Newbie tips

Does a rage-quitting newbie player of less than three months have anything to tell others about Epic Seven? Naturally. Eight weeks is more than enough time to make mistakes and kick yourself for it. I didn’t mess up too much in the long term, but there were things I could have done to make life easier for myself.

Reroll for Sigret. Or at least for a better 5-star character. I’ve never bothered with rerolling in gacha games, and I’ve always done fine that way. Plus I like to jump into games without checking who is meta because it’s more fun that way. Big mistake with Epic Seven, because I took a crappy 5-star character called Baal & Sevan. Useless waste of a free roll.

Sigret is the best wyvern hunter, and she’s also very good against bosses because of her bleed mechanic. Random level 60 Sigrets have saved me more times than I can count. Wyvern hunts are very important because they drop Speed, Crit and Hit boosting equipment, which 99% of the characters in Epic Seven run. I had heard of rerolling for Sigret, but I thought, meh, she can’t be that important. And if she is, I’ll get her some day (nope). And if I don’t, it’s a gacha game so I can just pay or save for her. Nope, you can’t just buy or pity a character unless their banner is on rate up. TL;DR don’t be like me. Check the meta and reroll for the best characters.

That said, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t have Sigret. I’m auto-ing Wyvern 13 reliably with Angelica, Furious, Muwi and Kise. Could probably do even better using Alexa instead of Kise as well. It just took me a while (and pulling the Song of Stars artifact) to get to this point. It would have been better and faster with Sigret because debuffs are so important. Plus as I said she’s useful in other content as well. The tips I’m giving assume that you want to make things easier and faster for yourself so you can enjoy whatever content drew you to Epic Seven.

Speaking of which, you need to pick your focus early on: PVE or PVP? PVE is the main story, hunts, expeditions, labyrinth. The bulk of the game, really. But PVP (Guild Wars, the real-time arena and the general arena) is extremely important to many players, and the characters, gear and builds you need to for successful PVP can be very different from PVE builds. Knowing which one you want to focus on will help you determine which banners to pull on and what weapons are good or junk.

For example I pulled a 5-star character called Ilynav early on, and I was like “Woohoo, 5-star!” Lots of wasted penguins and so-so performance later, I discovered that her main gimmick doesn’t work outside a PVP setting, so she’s pretty much useless for PVE. Luckily I didn’t use many molagoras on her. I also spent a lot of time getting an Injury set from a side story because it was higher level than what I had at the time. Only to find out that “only works on heroes” means it only works in Arenas, and not against bosses. Grr.

Many Moonlight (ML) heroes are great in PVP but only so-so in PVE, many sets like Immunity and Unity don’t see much use outside PVP.Sspeed is important in both but middling speed will take you much further in PVE, etc etc. That means the kinds of hunts you’ll be farming and equipment you’ll be enhancing will vary greatly. Long story short, it helps to know what you’re playing Epic Seven for.

Tip no. 3: You can achieve stage goals easily by using powerful supporters. In fact, this tip should be get and use as many powerful supports as you can. You know those goals that ask you to “Use 2 Dark Heroes and 1 Soul Weaver” and that kind of thing? Just field one random weakling with the right element/class and tag them out or let them get killed so a powerful supporter can come in. You still get the achievement in the end.

More importantly, powerful supporters will flat out carry you through some of the most annoying stages in the game. Like chapter 10-10 of Episode 2, which I cleared with the help of a support Vivian after about 20 failed attemps. Before that, I also went pretty far with a support Straze, Sigret and Seaside Bellona. You don’t need Vivian in particular, as long as the character is powerful. What did help was taking two soul weavers: Angelic Montmorancy and Angelica. Along with Vivian, they provided a lot of cleansing, healing and immunity to help keep the team alive long enough for Kise to rip through his barrier and take him down.

The point is, I consulted a lot of guides, threads, videos about that fight and they all said the same thing: get a powerful support to carry you. So I’m telling you the same thing. Good friends will take you places.

Don’t waste catalysts. Every new player is told not to waste molagoras, and it’s good advice. But don’t waste catalysts either. Early you you get several “choose your catalyst” boxes for rare and epic catalysts. Don’t use them just yet! Yes you can grind for catalysts, but it’s a massive time-sink and really annoying. If you need 10 epic catalysts to 6-star Violet, for example, it will cost 4000 AP in the World epilogue to grind them up from scratch, which will take 500 battles and several hours even on auto-play. Better save the free stuff for really good characters.

Don’t waste dupes either. Unless you’re going to use that character immediately, hold off on imprinting them with any duplicates you pull. As I mentioned earlier, Epic Seven is pretty free with the skystones and the free pull events. You will get many copies of 3- and 4-starts naturally just by pulling in the various summons. You can raise them to the next level that way and save yourself lots of fodder and dogs. And it doesn’t hurt to wait on 5-stars you don’t need to 6-star right away as well. Every little bit of fodder helps.

Wait for Free Unequip events to play around with your equipment. Epic Seven has a frustrating mechanic where unequipping weapons and armor costs money. It’s cheap at first with low rarity weapons, but when you get up to Heroic and Epic weapons, you’re talking 50,000 gold just to take off a helmet. And you need money for many other things like leveling characters, enhancing weapons (giant money sink) and above all crafting new stuff. I got up to 10,000,000 gold early on and thought I had it made. Went crazy with the unequipping and before I knew it I was flat broke and all my growth came to a standstill. Luckily (?) there’s a Free Unequip event at least once a month, so wait till then to make major changes. Unless you get something super-good or you’re gearing up a new character, you can wait a while for minor tweaks.

Start preparing for Wyvern Hunts early. The last and most important advice. The nickname “Wyvern Simulator” given to Epic Seven is not a joke. Past a certain point, the game is just one DPS (damage per second) check after the other. And the best DPS comes from equipment dropped by Wyvern Hunt 13. Getting Sigret is one way to prepare. Reaching Episode 2 early to unlock Furious is another way.

Preparing to farm wyverns also means you should build Ice/Water heroes first. Specialty-change Montmorancy to Angelic Montmorancy ASAP, get Angelica ASAP, build 3-star characters like Muwi and Alexa as soon as you pull them, and so on. I have zero regrets about using my Potion of Ascension on Angelica because she tanks Wyvern 11 and 13 like a boss. Muwi helps immensely, though, so if I had pulled him earlier I would have given it to him instead.

For reference I will post my wyvern team and their stats/equipment when I started auto-ing wyvern 13.

MVP Angelica. Her HP and defense make me wonder if Wyvern 13 even hits that hard… until it targets someone else and I’m like YIKES. I use her as a tank in other content as well since even Earth enemies have a hard time phasing her.

Daddy Furious, father of defense breaks. He has access to three different debuffs: def break, burn and target (with Song of Stars) but he can and will frequently fail to proc all three just to mess with you. I need to tweak his speed so he doesn’t arrive at the wyvern with def break on cooldown… wait, no I don’t need to do that because I’m dropping the game. You need to do that, though.

Muwi was very obviously created to help people farm wyvern, but I’m not complaining. He has attack down to soften the wyvern’s blow, backup defense break in case Furious misses and a bleed that doesn’t proc that often but does help shave off health occasionally. His speed is also pretty good even with so-so equipment. I raised him to 6-stars after taking this screenshot, and I use him quite a lot in mono-Ice PVE teams.

My little wyvern shredder. She has Exclusive Equipment that increases her combat readiness (speed, sorta) whenever she uses a basic attack. Because she lacks a debuff, she’s not ideal for wyvern farming, but no one told her that so she makes mincement out of them. I also use her in just about everything because I don’t have that many well-built characters. Also she’s kind of cool.

Final word (for now)

I feel a little relieved to be Epic Seven-free, TBH. I said I might return for the anniversary, but now I’m thinking I should get clear and stay clear. Now at last I can have time to play and finish shorter, more complete games.