Etheria: Restart Beginner Guide

Etheria: Restart is a turn-based strategy RPG set in a virtual metropolis. It combines Honkai: Star Rail 'open world' and visuals with Epic 7 style of PVE content (various bosses, modes, etc) and PVP content (PVP and Real-time Arena). If you're a fan of Epic 7 or Summoner's War, you will feel at home in Etheria: Restart as the game is basically a modern version of them. It takes the basic systems and premise and improves on them - making them more free to play friendly and also adding quality of life features right from the start!

Etheria: Restart will release on 5th of June 2025.

Here's a video that showcases some gameplay and goes over systems/modes:

Regions/Servers

The highest level is Region (NA, Europe, SEA) and each Region is further split into servers. Here are the restrictions:

• Etherena and PVE-related leaderboards: limited to your current server,
• Game features including Friends, Union and Chat: Cross server within your region,
• Summit Arena (RTA) and Phantom Theater (Coop PVE): Global matchmaking.

Team Size

As we mentioned earlier, Etheria: Restart features turn-based combat. You will build a team of 4 characters usually, though some content allows you to bring 5 instead - it's mainly the harder content.

Elements

A very important part of combat are the Elements. There are 5 Elements available in Etheria: Restart and you can see the relation between them on the image below. The advantage and disadvantage is pretty severe, and while in the early game you can bruteforce through content, the harder stuff will require you to counter the element of the enemy.

Speed/Turn Meter

Those are usually confusing to new players, but the system is pretty similar to most turn-based games:

• Speed decides the initial placement on the 'turn timeline' and the spot where you reappear after acting, but also how 'fast' you move on the timeline. The higher speed, the faster you will move and act again,
• Turn Meter pushes you forward (or backwards) on the 'turn timeline'. For example 100% turn meter boosts means you immediately take action, even if you were at the 'end' of the timeline.

This means that you usually want to build your characters fast, so they could move first and move often!

Auto-Battle

You don't need to play battles on manual, and instead leave everything in the hands of the auto-battle, but the game gives you options to customize some things. For example, you can select the priority of the targets within a stage - this is very useful if you need to take down the smaller monsters first to avoid some mechanics or just focus the big boss instead.

You can access the feature after entering the battle via the Continuous Battle option (not before!).

Still, usually the AI is pretty smart and knows how to use the characters to their full potential - so the feature is more targeted toward min-maxers.

Stars

Sweep doesn't exist in the game - you need to build a proper team that has both good clear rate (the closer to 100%, the better), but also can clear the stage as fast as possible. Still, continuous battle exists and you can start battling a stage and simply go back to menu to handle other things - or you can just close the app and return later to gather the juicy loot.

Stars decide how many continuous battles you can set:

• 1 star - 5 battles,
• 2 star - 8 battles,
• 3 star - 10 battles.

Animus is what the playable characters in Etheria: Restart are called. Each character has an Element and Rarity, but there's no Class/Role you often may find in other gacha games - that's because a lot of the characters can fulfill multiple roles in the battle. Still, we have assigned a role ourselves to every character based on the primary role they fulfill in the team - you can find that on our tier list or while hovering over a character in the characters page.

Rarity

There are 3 Rarities of characters in Etheria: Restart and each decides the starting Ascension of the character:

• R - start at 2 stars
• SR - start at 3 stars
• SSR - start at 4 stars

The Ascension decides the maximum level of the character, but even the 2 stars characters can be Ascended up to 6 stars - but more about it later.

Stats

Each characters has 8 stats:

• HP - if it hits 0, the character dies,
• DEF - reduces the amount of damage a character takes,
• ATK - decides how much damage a character deals with their skills (but it's not always the case as some characters scale their damage off HP or DEF instead),
• SPD - how fast the character is; decides the order they act in the battle,
• CRIT Rate - a chance to deal additional damage,
• CRIT DMG - how much additional damage will be dealt when a CRIT happens,
• Effect ACC - helps with landing debuffs that have a % chance,
• Effect RES - helps with resisting said debuffs.

Making your characters stronger

There are multiple ways of making your characters stronger in Etheria: Restart, allowing you to challenge and overcome the harder content that the game offers. The main ways are:

• Increasing the character level,
• Ascending the character stars,
• Upgrading the character Prowess which is split into:
• Upgrading skills,
• Unlocking dupe effects,
• Equipping Modules,
• Equipping Shells.

Check our dedicated guide for character progression to find out how they work:

Characters Progression

Modules are the equivalent of gear in Etheria: Restart. You can farm them in the Threshold mode where you will have three different bosses that each drops different gear sets.

Module types and main stats

Each character can equip 6 modules - 3 on the left side and 3 on the right side.

• The three slots on the left side have fixed main stats:
• Mask - Flat ATK
• Transistor - Flat HP
• Wristwheel - Flat DEF
• The three slots on the right side can be slotted with Cores and they have a bigger pool of main stats:
• HP, DEF, ATK, (both flat and percentage for the three), CRIT Rate, CRIT DMG, Effect ACC and Effect RES.

There's no Speed main stats - so you have to hunt for the most coveted stat on the sub-stats instead.

Module rarities

Modules come in different rarities - starting with Normal and ending with Mythic. Rarity decides the amount of sub-stats the module piece starts with (1-4) and the number of Matrix Levels it can roll (1-3) - the higher the rarity, the higher chance to roll higher values for both.

Upgrading a module

To upgrade a module, you only need Etheria Coins - so no need to feed modules into modules - but the cost increases with each level, so early on don't really upgrade stuff too much.

The upgrade breakpoints are: +3, +6, +9,+12 and +15

If a module starts with just 1 sub-stat, upgrading it to +3 will unlock the second slot and so on. But in the case of a 4 sub-stat module, upgrading it will instead improve one of the sub-stats randomly.

Module sets

Modules come with different sets, but the system in Etheria: Restart is a bit more complicated.

Each module can drop with 1-3 Matrix Levels and with 6 slots for modules, this gives you a total pool of 18 Matrix Levels you can use (well, there's a bit more, but it relates to Shells - we will go over them soon). This is important, because sets have different thresholds to activate their bonuses. Let's look at three examples:

Onslaught

Type: ATK

Source: Terrormaton

4/12:  ATK +10%

8/12:  ATK +25%

12/12:  ATK +45%

Strive

Type: SPD / Skill CD

Source: Aurora

4/8:  DEF +10%

8/8:  DEF +10%. After being attacked, advances Turn Meter by 10%.

Swiftraid [INFERNO ONLY]

Type: SPD / Skill CD

Source: DokiDoki

6/6:  SPD +15% & ATK +20%

The Onslaught set requires 12 Matrix Levels to activate the max benefit (but you can also only activate the 4 or 8 set bonus), the Strive set requires 8, while the Swiftraid set requires only 6. This means that there's a lot combinations you can use and picking the most optimal one will be very important!

There are 21 sets available in the game currently.

Learn more about Modules in our dedicated guides for them:

Module System

Matrix Effects

And here you can read about the three Threshold bosses:

Aurora Boss Guide

DokiDoki Boss Guide

Terrormaton Boss Guide

Shells are the last element that improves your characters performance. They basically act as 'weapons' from other games. Equipping a Shell improves the character stats/attributes, but also grants them a special skill that activates on their own (and then goes on cooldown).

There are currently 35 Shells available in the game.

Stats

Each Shells comes with 4 stats: HP, DEF, ATK and SPD. Equipping the Shell will improve the character's stats by the same amount. And don't worry! While HP, DEF and ATK vary depending on the Shell, SPD stat is the same for all Shells of the same rarity. So there's no Speed RNG here.

Passives

Each Shell can have up to 3 different passives that further increase the character stats. Still, you start with 0 passives on a new Shell and only by leveling it up (and Ascending) you're able to unlock the Passives.

• Slot 1 improves either HP, DEF or ATK,
• Slot 2 improves either Crit Rate, Crit DMG, SPD, Healing Effect, Effect ACC or Effect RES,
• Slot 3 has a lot options that range from straight DMG increase to a element-specific bonuses.

The passives can be 'rerolled' using Training Data and Reconfigure Chips, so you can hunt for your perfect combination!

Skills

Each Shell has a skill that is either active or a passive that boost the character's performance. The skill is tied to the Shell, so you can't change it.

Module Sets

Shells also come with up to 3 different Sets 'slots', each with 1-3 Matrix Levels. So when rolled well, you can get 9 additional Matrix Levels, bringing the total to 27 Matrix Levels to use on your character!

The Sets that roll on the Shell aren't fully random - each Shell has a pool of sets that can appear on them.

Learn more about Shells in our dedicated guides for them:

Shells List

Shell System

Etheria: Restart features a plethora of PVE and PVP game modes available already on the game's release. While most of them revolve around killing things as fast and as efficiently as possible, each of the modes has different rules and enemies that force you to adjust your approach to deal with them.

The game modes can be split into PVE and PVP:

• PVE Modes:
• Grim Pursuit - boss killing mode where you farm Shells,
• Threshold - boss killing mode where you farm Modules,
• Investigation - wave killing mode where you farm Character EXP,
• GP Outpost - wave killing mode where you farm materials to upgrade character's skills,
• Anisync Echoes - tower-like mode where you have to defeat various bosses for one-time rewards,
• Phantom Theater - coop mode where you join forces with another player to fight against bosses,
• Ember Trek - another tower-like mode, but this one resets once per month,
• EtherNet Rally - labyrinth-like mode where you have to build single-element teams to conquer a big map. Resets every 3 weeks,
• Events - there's a lot different events too - some require clearing stages, other finishing missions to obtain rewards.
• PVP Modes:
• Etherena - the basic PVP mode where you fight against AI teams. Features ranks from Iron to Mythic, weekly and seasonal rewards and more,
• Summit Arena - real time arena where you fight against players from all regions. Features ranks from Iron to Mythic, weekly and seasonal rewards and more,
• Fearless Arena - real time arena where you fight against players from all regions, but in a tournament format similar to E-Sports.

Learn more about game modes in our dedicated guides for them:

Game Modes

Etheria: Restart uses a gacha system as the primary way for a player to obtain new Characters, but compared to other games, Shells (the equivalent of weapons in E:R) are fully farmable and you can't pull them from a banner.

Rates

The chance to pull the highest rarity (SSR) characters is set to 1% for the majority of the banners - further split into 0.75% for Red/Green/Blue characters and 0.25% for Light/Dark characters - the elements have different names here, but they mean the same thing.

Banners

Here are the banner types available in the game:

• Targeted Banner - available for new players only. Within 40 pulls you will obtain any Red/Blue/Green SSR character of your choice,
• Permanent Summon - all characters in the game are available on this banner - both RGB and LD. Features 50 soft pity and 80 hard pity,
• Extra-affinity Summon - only LD characters are available on this banner. Features 50 soft pity and 80 hard pity,
• Rate-up Summon - features a single SSR character on the banner that you will obtain within 80 pulls. No 50/50 here. Rate up characters can feature either a RGB character or LD character and same rules applies to both,
• Ascension Summon - this banner only appears when you obtain a special SR/SSR ticket. Those are rare, but at the same time, the banner has the highest chance for pulling a SSR character - sitting at 10%.

Learn more about the gacha system in our dedicated guide:

Gacha System

Rerolling is a way to guarantee yourself a great start in any gacha game, but Etheria: Restart both makes it tricky to do and also tries to reward you for not rerolling .

Limitations

• There are no Guest Accounts available - neither on PC or Mobile,
• This means you will need a new email for every reroll attempt - or alternatively, use the salt method,
• If your email is abc@gmail.com, add +numbers (anything is fine, but numbers make tracking the accounts easier) which makes it abc+1@gmail.com. Any email (with the login code) send to abc+1@gmail.com will be sent to abc@gmail.com instead.
• Once you're done rerolling, you can just bind the account to a normal gmail account for ease of logging in without the code,
• Only gmail works for the salt method.
• Emulators are blocked in this game, so you can't do multi-rerolls and are forced to do them one by one.

Is rerolling worth it?

Rerolling is definitely worth in Etheria: Restart - the process isn't that long and it will allow you to start with additional SSR character - or even more if you want it.

Check our other guide for some tips who to aim for and how the process works:

Reroll Guide

Video

Unions are the guild system in Etheria: Restart. They allow you to play together with your friends, chat with them more easily, tackle dangerous bosses together and earn some great rewards! Joining a Union is very important, as you will miss out on a lot of resources if you won't - but don't be afraid, it's not time consuming. Also, creating a Union is fully free - which is something different compared to most gacha nowadays that require premium currency to be used to create one.

Sadly, Unions are limited to 30 players and even if the Unions is leveled up, the cap doesn't change.

Learn more about the union system in our dedicated guide:

Union (Guild) System

Hyperlink Charter is a set of missions that give you a lot of rewards / resources by playing the game and progressing through various modes. If you're stuck in the game, and not sure what to do next, the Hyperlink Charter will give you a goal you can walk towards to.

It's very important you focus on doing all the missions here - the rewards you get from both the missions and each milestone you reach are pretty massive.

The Hyperlink Charter is split into 5 set of missions, each with its own progression:

• Commission Chronicles - a generic set that is a mix of the other ones. Here you will be rewarded for leveling characters, clearing new modes and more,
• Animus Training - this set focuses on upgrading characters, especially
  
  Lian who you're given for free. So you will need to invest into her, because some missions will require that you use her to clear specific content. Thankfully, she's pretty strong, so it's not a waste,
• Module Modification - a set focusing on farming and upgrading Modules,
• Shell Tuning - a set focusing on farming and upgrading Shells,
• Arena Trials - a set focusing on playing PVP and progressing through the ranks there.

Hyperlink Charter unlocks after clearing main quest 2-3 stage, so you will get access to it quite early into the game.

Etheria: Restart has a lot of great packs that are tailored to both low and high spenders. You can find a list of all packs available in the game and suggestions what should you focuses on based on your spending budget in our dedicated guide here:

Packs & Spending Tips

Generic

• Don't waste your Selective banner choice! Some characters there are clearly better than others and they will allow you to progress smoother through the game. Pick a versatile character that will carry you through both PVE and PVP,
• Check the reroll guide for additional tips about who to pick there,
• Or check our tier list to see who shines in what content!
• If you're a spender, don't use you Selective Banner early! First grab the packs as there's a lot tickets that give random SR/SSR characters and getting a dupe is actually bad in this game. Mainly because the dupes don't give too much power here compared to other gacha games and it's better to have more characters here instead,
• Focus on progressing through the main story first till you get stuck there. Most game modes and features are locked behind main story progression (or your account level),
• Once you're stuck in the Main Story, check the new modes that unlocked in the meantime - or new stages that unlocked there. Next, clear every stage in every mode once for the first-time rewards (summon tickets, gems etc),
• Focus on doing Hyperlink Charter missions - the rewards you get from both the missions and each milestone you reach are pretty massive,
• Do daily and weekly quests - they aren't unlocked from the start and you need to progress the main story first,
• Do the events - there's a lot of them and they give amazing rewards. For example, the 7-day Commission will reward you with
  
  Lingluo who is the best healer in the game,
• Don't spend all your Hydra Coins (gems) on pulls! You should set aside some gems to do stamina refills, as you will be able to farm EXP/Prowess for your characters early on, drastically improving their power and progressing faster,
• Don't spread your resources too thin - as in invest only in a few characters that you can use across multiple modes,
• Don't sleep on
  
  Lian. Yes, she's a free character, but she's a really good free character - a great AOE DPS that will make early progression easier and furthermore, you will get a lot of missions that reward you for investing into her, so it's not wasted,
• Try to build a balanced team: grab a DPS or two, a Sustain and a Buffer/Debuffer. Trying to run 4 DPS will get you nowhere,
• Make sure your Supports are faster than other characters - so they can apply buffs to them before they use their strongest skills,
• Don't waste your SSR and SR Lattice! It's the rarest resource in the game that is used to upgrade the skill effects. Especially the SSR Lattice should be only used on the strongest characters that you use the most - even spenders can't easily get their hands on the SSR Lattice and other players are limited to getting them from events or shops (very limited supply),
• Lower rarity characters costs less resources to upgrade! So don't try to run a full SSR team early on as it will take you way longer to level and upgrade them. There's a lot of great and strong SR characters, so use them too!
• Early on, main stats and sub-stats on Modules are more important than Sets,
• Don't level your Modules too much! It costs enormous amounts of coins to do and you will throw the low rarity modules away anyway. At most, get up to +3 or +6 early on and stop there,
• You can Recycle both upgraded and non-upgrades Modules to get back roughly 40% of what you have spend on doing that,
• Use the Continuous Battle feature! Once you clear a stage (1-3 stars, doesn't matter), the Continuous Battle for that stage will unlock and you will be able to farm the stage automatically. The number of 'repeats' is tied to the stars you obtained on that page (5/8/10). And the best part - you can leave the battle after starting it, so you can go back to the menu and do other stuff in the meantime. You can even close the game fully and come back later to get all the loot!
• In Continuous Battle, you can also set the target priority for each waves of monsters there - sometimes this is really important as it will allow you to focus the boss and ignore the smaller monsters or vice versa, depending what's more optimal for that stage,
• Use the Formation feature to save the commonly used teams, so you can just load them up with a single click,
• Join a Union as early as possible! Union is another source of gems/materials that will make progression easier. Furthermore, you can obtain a Red/Blue/Green SSR character dupe of your choice from the Union Assistance System once every 1.5 month! So the sooner you join a Union, the sooner you can start gathering the pieces,
• Even if you hate PVP, at least try to do the few attacks daily there. Not only there's a PVP shop where you can buy resources and summon tickets for PVP currency, but also the rank/seasonal rewards are pretty decent,
• The AI PVP mode uses a ticket system that recharge over time - so also make sure to use them as they appear instead of letting them overcap.

Stamina usage and farming

• Don't let your stamina overcap! Always use it before you log off for the day. The cap for stamina is decided by your account level,
• 100 (base) + 1 (for each level), so the max is 200. You can also get +20 if you buy the $5 Monthly Card,
• It takes 5 minutes to recharge 1 stamina point,
• Don't waste stamina to farm low rarity Shells/Modules! You will replace them all, because not only the higher rarity Shells have better skills, but higher rarity Modules also have better stat ranges AND some sets can't even appear on lower rarity modules.
• Even F2P players should do stamina refills early on (but the number of the refills depends on what you want to do), because the materials you can obtain from the stamina will boost your account, allowing you to progress further than those who didn't do any refill,
• Mid/high level Spenders should use all 10 refills every day for quite some time,
• Keep the stamina pills for x2 drops events - everything you drop during them, will be doubled,
• Stamina usage priority (early on):
1. Character Experience in Investigation,
2. Prowess Materials (used to upgrade skills) in GP Outpost,
3. Shells in Grim Pursuit and Modules in Threshold - but don't farm the lower rarity stuff there! Only start farming it later.
• Don't try to focus on all three Threshold bosses (they drop Modules so the gear in this game). Each one requires a different approach and character archetype, but there's some overlap between some bosses, so investing into characters that can be used on two of them is the way to go,
• Pick a primary Threshold farm target and in 99% of the cases, it will be DokiDoki, because she drops SPD sets - and SPD stat is important in this game. Then you can pick between Terrormaton or Aurora depending on what you need,
• Don't stress too much about Grim Pursuit - so where you get Shells - the bosses there are easier and actually you can even use a full SR character team to clear all of them.

Progression Cycle

Here's how the cycle of progression should look like:

1. Do the Main Story till you are stuck,
2. Check everything that unlocked - new modes, new difficulties - and clear them ONCE to get the first clear rewards,
3. Check Hyperlink Charter missions and finish those you can,
4. If there's nothing else left, start using your stamina to farm things according to what you need the most at the moment,
• which early should be: Character EXP > Prowess materials >>> Shells (once you reach Yellow and Red Shells, the priority increases and they jump to spot 1) > Modules (only start trully farming them once you reach Red rarity).
5. You should level up from farming stuff and this could unlock new Main Story mission/other content or you will be now strong enough to push where you were stuck or get new first clears!
6. Rinse and repeat.

Early Progression Guide

Tips and Tricks