Characters Progression

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.

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.

Elements

There are 5 Elements available in Etheria: Restart and you can see the relation between them on the image above. 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.

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.

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.

Now, let's go over each of the methods and explain how they benefit the character!

The simplest way to improve the characters power is to level them up and by doing so, improve their stats (HP, DEF, ATK and SPD). Leveling can happen in two ways:

• Characters will gain EXP when you use them in battles,
• You can Investigation Records to quickly upgrade their levels.

Investigation Records come in three rarities that each provides different amounts of EXP:

• Primary - 200 EXP
• Intermediate - 1000 EXP
• Advanced - 5000 EXP

Investigation Records can be farmed in the Investigation Mode. Also, the higher the rarity of the character, the more EXP is needed to level them up - keep that in mind if you will try to run a full SSR team early in the game as you will need a TON of EXP books.

The max level in the game is 50, but you can achieve that only when your characters are Ascended to 6*, and the next section will go over this mechanic.

Ascending a character increases their current star level and thankfully, you don't need to use lower rarities characters (aka food) to do so that's very popular in other gacha games. Instead, in Etheria: restart, the system is simplified and you use Shadowprints to do it.

Shadowprints

Shadowprints come in four rarities - Blue Shadowprint, Purple Shadowprint, Orange Shadowprint and Red Shadowprint. To Ascend a character from 2 to 3 stars you need to use the Blue Shadowprint, to go from 3 to 4 the Purple Shadowprints and so on.

Shadowprints can be bought from Shops, obtained from progressing through the main story and from various events and modes.

Level cap

The maximum level a character can achieve is tied to their current star level (Ascension):

• 2 stars - Level 30
• 3 stars - Level 35
• 4 stars - Level 40
• 5 stars - Level 45
• 6 stars - Level 50

You need to reach the level cap for the star value to be able to Ascend the character further. And what's very important, the character will be 'leveled down' back to level 1 when you Ascend them, so have a stack of EXP books saved or you won't be able use the character to their full potential.

Prowess system consists of two elements: leveling the skills and activating dupes.

Skills

Each character has 3 skills:

• Skill 1 - Basic Attack
• Skill 2 - Active or Passive
• Skill 3 - Active or Passive

Basic Attack has no cooldown and can be used whenever you want, but the other two skills usually have a cooldown as they are way stronger.

A skill can be further upgraded - but not only the skill effect itself, but you can gain a lot of additional stats. Each skill is split into 12 nodes - 8 give stats and 4 upgrade the skill, making it stronger.

To upgrade the stat nodes you need Anima Imprints that can be farmed from the GP Outpost, but keep in mind that the type of Anima Imprints you need depends on the character element. As for the upgrade nodes, they require a very rare resource called Lattice (split into SR and SSR rarity) - you can only obtain them from some shops and events. So before you upgrade a skill for a character, make sure they are worth the investment - especially for SSR characters.

Dupes

If you pull another copy of a character you already have, it will be turned into Anima that you can feed into the character to gain some additional benefits.

• Dupe 1, 3 and 5 are always the same for every character,
• Dupe 1 and 3 increase HP, DEF and ATK by 5% each,
• Dupe 5 increases damage dealt by 10% and decreases damage taken by 10%,
• Dupes 2 and 4 are character specific, increasing two of their stats by a certain % - usually the ones they most rely on.

What's very important is that in RTA PVP, so the most competitive mode, dupes effects are disabled. So everyone can compete there on equal footing.

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

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

Since there's quite a lot of systems that can improve your characters performance, you will need a lot of stamina to actually farm everything you need. So what should you focus on?

1. EXP Materials - leveling your characters gives them the biggest boost of raw stats, so focus on it first. But before you ascend a character to next star level, make sure you have enough EXP materials saved to level them back up, since they will be reset to level 1!
2. Prowess - the raw stats you get from the Stat Nodes are pretty important, so farm the Anima Imprints next (remember that each element requires different Anima Imprints!),
3. Shells and Modules - those two systems are equally important, mainly because each Shell can only roll specific Matrix Effects (up to 3). So you have to pick a Shell that not only benefits your character skill-wise, but also set-wise. Once you settle on that, you will know what Modules to farm!

As for which characters you should upgrade first - go for the classic DPS > Healer > Support order. Killing things fast worse as both offensive and defensive layer!