Last Updated: Collab 2 | "Polymerized Dreams" | 6th of August, 2026
Introduction
Welcome to Reverse: 1999!
This guide is aimed at giving tips for those who just started playing the game and can be used as a reference for frequently asked questions. It also contains some basic information about strategies and spending opportunities.
The information in this handbook is entirely based around the team’s experiences as veteran players of the game, as well as discussions with other top players such as those operating the Community Tierlist.
It is important to note that no source of information is perfect, and it is imperative that you absorb the perspectives of many sources before forming an opinion of your own, as this will ensure that you are informed. Take everything people say with a grain of salt, as no one person can be objectively correct about everything in the game.
This guide assumes you have already completed the tutorial and understand:
How the basic game mechanics work and how to navigate the menus.
How Psychubes (Equipment) work.
What Afflatuses are and their strong/weak relationship to others.
Resources
Websites:
Prydwen (Reverse: 1999) - Database, tier lists, and guides.
Community Tierlist - Meta-oriented tier lists and team database.
UTTU (Merui) - Database, news updates, gallery.
Huijiwiki (CN) - Chinese server database.
Official Discord - Community hub.
Official Youtube - Global server channel.
Kornblume Planner - Character builder and material planner.
Content Creators:
Merui - Second coming of Jesus for anything news, CN server or story-related.
Vaevictis - High-quality and quick character/gameplay guides.
PhazedMD - In-depth team guides and character showcases.
Icehood - CN damage charts and calculations.
199.9 FM - Highly extensive story and lore deep-dives.
Yawmoo - A few detailed team/archetype rotations.
Gordan - Character meta analyses and game design research.
Jet Stingren - Tierlists and team showcases.
Devibul - CN character and skin showcases.
Jakazin - Character meta analyses, guides and news updates.
Idk6ro - Character guides and alternate team showcases.
Destroth - Content guides and team guides.
Neko Gamers - Bilibili (CN) reposts.
It is important to avoid landing in an echo chamber. Due to the game not being very difficult, opinions on ‘what is good’ can differ a lot and not everyone has the correct information. Please try to pull from a variety of different resources and content creators to inform your opinion!
Important Disclaimer: Enjoy The Journey
Reverse: 1999 is extremely casual-friendly. The story is clearable with any random combination of characters; dailies take up to 10min of your time and content density actively becomes less and less the further you get into the game. Vertical investment like Portraits (dupes) is also rarely recommended, and very few characters actually require them to complete content.
While the endgame can occasionally be quite strict with its team requirements, complex rotations and character optimization are essentially only necessary when going beyond rewards and into highscore or leaderboard categories.
Treat gameplay as an afterthought. If you are looking for a strategically deep experience coming from games like Arknights or Morimen, you will not find it here.
To Bluepoch, the entire game is secondary to its story and that is the primary drive for a majority of players as well.
Trying to care too much about the gameplay will only frustrate you. Bluepoch is extremely transparent about what they value most within Reverse: 1999, and gameplay nuance is quite far down the list. Optimization can be found in any game and there are ways to get complexity and depth out of Reverse: 1999, but that will require a conscious effort on your part as the player.
Rerolling
Short answer: don’t.
While the game has a PC client available and the Guest Account feature is there, the only way to reset it is by reinstalling the whole game. The introduction and tutorials are also notoriously long, and you don’t get access to a whole lot of pulls out of the gate, which makes rerolling both tedious and just… a general waste of time.
With the “starting pulls” being largely spread out throughout the early content, even if you’re fishing for meta characters, it just isn’t worth the struggle. If you absolutely want to do it, we have a Rerolling guide.
Pulling Strategy
In Reverse: 1999, there exists only one pull resource: Unilogs.
Unilogs are used for any banner regardless of whether they are Limited or not, meaning that it is imperative that you save your Unilogs until you are certain of the character(s) you’re going for. All known banners can be pulled on using Unilogs.
The game may hand out different types of Unilogs during Events; these are usually ones that you can only spend on specific banners. They will be called something along the lines of “Decatone: [Insert Banner Name]”. Reverse: 1999 also only has a character gacha; things such as psychubes are all farmed in-game.
It is important to note that most characters are part of the ‘standard pool’. Unless specifically mentioned to be Limited (such as Lucy, Paper Heron and Beryl), every new unit will join the standard pool three patches after their release. This means that characters released during 2.1 joined the standard pool in 2.4, at which point you can lose 50/50s to them.
Pity can be built on any banner, and hard pity is 70 by default. On the rate-up banners, your first 6-star will have a 50% chance of being the rate-up character or a random selection from the standard pull. After losing your 50/50, your next 6-star is guaranteed to be the rate-up character.
Limited banners do not carry their pity over to the next Limited banners. As a rule of thumb, don't try to 'build pity' on any banner that isn't the New Release banner.
Limited characters are just that: available for a limited time only. These do rerun consistently at least once a year, being obtainable during other Limited patches. These types of characters are typically only released once every three patches, but collaborations are also regarded as Limited.
When you first open the “Summon” menu, you are met with the First Drop of Rain.
This is a ‘beginner banner’ that guarantees one of three 6-star units. We strongly recommend against pulling on this banner despite the appeal of a quick fix to your first high-rarity unit.
The characters on rotation are rarely strong, and the ones that are good usually require a Euphoria to function in the current meta, which is an endgame system that you won’t interact with in your first few weeks of playing the game. In addition, a lot of the free units or new-release units are much better at progressing you through the early game.
This banner is actually more recommended for veteran players if a character happens to be on rotation that they need to fulfill certain team requirements.
Amongst the Lake serves as the game’s standard banner, and is pretty much ignored at every point during account progression, as there is no rate-up for any specific character and thus no guarantee of getting the one you want/need. It is much more common to get characters that you need from losing 50/50s, from events or through reruns.
Ripples on the Water is a type of returning banner geared towards players looking to get archetype-specific characters.
When a new Euphoria releases, its respective character is usually put on this banner alongside other characters that belong to the same archetype. It is rarely a good investment, but can be useful if you are missing key pieces of specific teams that haven’t shown up in reruns for a while.
With those options out of the way, we arrive at the two types of banners that players will usually pull on: the New Release and Rerun banners.
Usually you’ll want to spend your Unilogs on the New Release, or (if the current one isn’t helpful to you) save for a future character. This is a very team-oriented game, and the Global server is behind roughly 2 months on the CN server, meaning we have a modicum of foresight to plan out our pulls.
Reruns only get attention when two conditions are met:
It's a 'solo rerun' of a good character.
On occasion, a 'double rerun' banner appears that rates up two characters at the same time. The community lovingly calls these 'scam banners' as they follow the same 50/50 format as a normal banner. However, instead of having a 50/50 between the two rate-up characters it is actually a 50/50 between the standard pool or ONE of the two rate-up characters, meaning you ultimately only have a 25% chance of getting the character you want. If both characters on the rate-up are powerful, 'double reruns' are sometimes considered.
It is a high-value character.
What 'high value' means differs per account. If a rerun appears of a key character that you need to complete one of your teams, chances are that going for them is better than getting a new character that you can't use without their team. Full teams are more important than individual characters in this game; however, there are some characters that are just generally good regardless of the team they're in. We recommend checking with the community for opinions on these.
Where to spend stamina
Especially early on, there are a lot of ways to spend your stamina, and it can be quite overwhelming.
When starting out, you will never feel like you have enough stamina to properly level your characters while tackling content. This is a problem that subsides the moment you hit the mid-to-end game.
Try pumping your resources into your Damage Dealer first. The faster something dies, the less you need from other teammates.
Most Supports apply percentage-based buffs or debuffs that do not rely on their own stats.
A lot of Sustains will scale their healing or shielding with their stats, so putting levels into them will raise your survivability.
Focus your efforts on a small selection of characters. Preferably, keep to one team (so roughly four characters), as this will ensure that you can comfortably progress through the early game. For this, it is important that you identify important characters in your roster early and find an archetype that you might be interested in that you can focus on pulling/raising.
The best way to use stamina (once you have a team settled) is to farm the current Event. Getting as far as you can through the event story and farming combat stages nets you Event Currency that can be used in the Event Shop.
Event Shops (once you're able to start clearing them out) are overpowered.
They give you access to a Psychube tailored to the first new release of the patch, Unilogs for pulls, coveted upgrade items such as Gluttony/Cameras and an insane variety of character progression materials (also tailored toward the first new release of the patch). Everything that is required to fully upgrade this new release to Insight 3 can be bought here without requiring you to farm anything else.
Even if you didn't pull for the first new-release character, it is highly recommended that players clear out as much of the shop as possible, as these progression materials will make upgrading other or future characters smoother as well
Once the Event Shop is cleared out, and you are caught up to the story, a majority of your focus will rest on a quick ‘daily cycle’ of farm stages. This can be done in about ten minutes at most, making Reverse: 1999 a very easy game to load up, do dailies and then close to do other things.
Pneuma Analysis (Thought) can be run twice a day without expending stamina while getting additional rewards ("In-Depth Analysis Chances"). Thoughts are used to obtain Psychubes or upgrade materials for them in the shop (Bank → Fragment Shop).
Only during very specific events do you want to run Pneuma Analysis more than two times a day. Do not waste your stamina farming this stage; it is not worth it. Especially as a new player, you have way more important things to invest your stamina in to.
The Poussiere (Dust) and Mintage Aesthetics (Sharpodonty) are the beating heart of character progression. Almost every part of leveling a character requires either Dust, Sharpodonties or both and you can never go wrong with stocking up on them. Dust/Sharpondonties are also available from every Event Shop.
Usually, buying Dust and Sharpodonties from the Event Shop is a quicker and more stamina-efficient way of getting them, assuming that you have a team that can clear the last combat stage of an Event reliably. The Poussiere and Mintage Aesthetics are usually farmed either by new players who can't complete the last combat stage of an event or by players once they have the Event Shop cleared out.
Harvest Prime (Kern) gives you materials to upgrade your Wilderness (unlocked after completing Chapter 1: In Our Time). Your Wilderness is a powerful tool for passive Dust/Sharpodonty income and it is important for new players to start getting resources early. From the Story, completing specific Chapters will net you the "Child of Prosperity" item, which is required to upgrade your Wilderness. Whenever you get a "Child of Prosperity", take your time to farm Harvest Prime in order to upgrade your Paleohall, Dust Bell Tower and Sharpodonty Market.
Once your Wilderness (Paleohall, Dust Bell Tower, Sharpodonty Market, Wishing Well) is fully upgraded, you will never have to touch Harvest Prime again.
Character Progression
"Building" a character is divided into three (sometimes four) processes:
Level and Insight are intrinsically linked.
The maximum LVL of a character without any Insights is 30, after which you will need to unlock Insight 1 in order to level a character to 40. Then you need to unlock Insight 2 to raise the maximum LVL to 50 and Insight 3 for LVL 60.
Leveling raises a character's base stats, while Insights are a character's passive abilities. Insights are usually the most important part of a character as they dictate the flow of their gameplay. Once past Insight 3, there are no real benefits to leveling beyond base stats. A lot of people leave characters at Insight 3 Level 1- 30, as Dust/Sharpodonty consumption becomes too intensive beyond that point.
Not all characters have an Insight 3. Typically, only 5-star & 6-star rarity characters can be upgraded into Insight 3.
Resonance (sometimes called Reasoning) is this game's version of a 'gear/artefact system' and is unlocked when your character reaches Insight 1.
You are presented with a square grid and several puzzle pieces with predetermined stats; whichever puzzle pieces you can fit into the grid, those stats are applied to your character. At Resonance LVL 3/5/7/9/10, the available grid expands, allowing you to fit in more pieces and thus add more stats to your character. The stats gained from each puzzle piece also increase with your Resonance LVL.
The stats assigned to each puzzle piece are not random; there is no randomized gear system in Reverse: 1999.
Resonance is known to be really resource intensive, requiring rare upgrade materials like Crystal Caskets. Don't become too hung up on trying to grind for levels in your Resonance, as you can leave your characters at the 3/5/7/9/10 breakpoints depending on how easily you can farm the materials.
While it is technically possible to upgrade Resonance LVL all the way to 15, players rarely do this. This is because after the LVL 10 breakpoint, there are no more grid expansions that come from leveling your Resonance, and you require a Crystal Casket for each level past 10, which is a rare material and not easily farmed.
Unless you really like a character, LVL 10 is the maximum.
Psychubes are the weapon system of Reverse: 1999.
They can be bought from the Fragment Shop, from the Event Shop and sometimes for free. They give the equipped character a bunch of stats (Max HP, ATK, Reality DEF, Mental DEF) and a specific stat that differs per Psychube (such as DMG Bonus, Crit Rate, Healing Bonus). In addition, 5/6-star Psychubes also come with their unique passive ability.
Like characters, there are two ways to raise a Psychube: Levels and Amplifications. The leveling system is basically the same as for characters, but requires different materials. The Amplification system essentially requires you to either feed a Psychube dupes of itself or specific upgrade materials such as "Greed" / "Gluttony" and boosts the effects of its passive ability.
Most players focus on levels over amplifications, but once you start caring about amplifications, it is important that you focus on fully upgrading the Psychube carried by your Damage Dealer first. Their damage is what matters most in this game.
Euphoria (sometimes called Lucidity) is this game's version of the Novaflare (HSR), Module (AK) or Reforge (PtN) system. It is an endgame progression system, unlocked once characters that have one reach Insight 3 & LVL 30.
Not all characters have a Euphoria. It is primarily a way for older units to regain relevancy in the meta. Currently, characters can have up to two Euphoria options, so make sure you are unlocking the correct one when going for them.
A Euphoria is designed to bring the numbers up to pace with the current meta, or (for characters with outdated kits) completely revamp the way they play. It isn't uncommon for characters to completely change role (such as Tooth Fairy going from a Sustain to a Support) or archetype (such as Ezra Theodore being a Dynamo Sustain with one of his Euphorias, and a Bloodtithe Sustain with the other).
Euphoria levels are shared between all Euphorias that a character has, so if you want to unlock multiple of them on the same character, you won’t have to level them individually.
This system is strictly an endgame matter.
The LVL requirement is already rough on new players and the materials needed to unlock them are only found in Roaring Jukebox (Battlepass) or difficult endgame content. While some of them are absolutely meta-defining, most of the 6-star roster is powerful enough at base to make it through the early/mid game (especially newer characters).
Encase Nomination (6-Star Selector)
Early in your journey, you will receive a consumable item called “Encased Nomination”; this item is a 6-star selector with a pool of characters limited to your story progression. At several story breakpoints (CH1-16, CH2-15 and CH3-16), you will unlock additional characters to select from here.
You can only use this selector once, so it is recommended to weigh your options and hold on to “Encased Nomination” until all of your options are open. Below, we’ve detailed the characters available from this selector.
Hard-To-Kill DPS Tank & HP Loss Support
Team Role: DPS/Support
Ranking: B (Niche)
Euphoria Required: Yes (E1/E2)
Priority: Low
Unlocked: Base Selector
An early-game DPS who focuses on reducing her own HP on-cast and then healing it all back up with “Anecdotes in Exeter”. She is able to solo the entire early game essentially due to [Blood of Immortality] and has access to two Euphorias that can flex her into being a HP Loss-based Support or a Bloodtithe DPS.
Falls off a cliff in the mid-to-late game due to her one defining trait (ridiculous tankiness) becoming largely irrelevant, especially for her DPS build. She serves her purpose as a Bloodtithe DPS with her second Euphoria but gets outclassed hard, and would rather use her first one for Support.
Good Teammates:
Semmelweis 
Rubuska 
Nautika 
Sentinel 
Fatutu
Wish In A Bottle (5-Star Selector)
Obtained from the new player’s log-in event on Day 3, this selector will give you a choice between various 5-star characters.
Unfortunately, these lower-rarity characters typically struggle to stay relevant, with only those who have broken gimmicks or those who are able to box with 6-stars staying relevant. From this selector, there are only two good options:
The 5-Star Queen of Defense
Team Role: Sustain
Ranking: A (Decent)
Euphoria Required: No
A very strong early-game sustain who is actually one of the few characters that can heal and shield simultaneously. She also has access to some defensive debuffing by decreasing the DMG Dealt of dangerous enemies, can upgrade her own cards if played right and is one of the only sources of teamwide Debuff Immunity in the game.
The only thing holding her back is that her healing is entirely single-target, making it difficult for her to keep up once you get to the endgame.
That said, she is the ol’ reliable for a lot of people, especially because sustains don’t get released all that often.
Good Teammates: Any.
Suspiciously High DMG Reality Debuffer
Team Role: Support
Ranking: B (Niche)
Euphoria Required: Yes (E1)
The original high-tier debuffer still remains semi-relevant today for various reasons. Her mass Reality DEF shred and DMG Taken Bonus on enemies is very strong, especially early and she herself outputs a surprising amount of personal damage.
The [Seal] or Moxie Reduction on her Ultimate is also very strong, and she remains one of the few sources of the debuff, making her spook the meta occasionally when there’s Ultimate reliant enemies in a difficult stage.
After her Euphoria, this is amplified (though you should spend your materials elsewhere), giving her access to more debuffs (including a Crit DEF shred) and an even higher damage output.
Good Teammates: Reality Damage Dealers.
Spending Real Money
There are several ways to spend real money in Reverse: 1999. The premium currency is called Crystal Drops (not to be confused with ‘Clear Drops’) and can be obtained by buying it in the ‘Echoes of Rain’ section in the shop.
These are used to buy things like Garments or can be converted into Clear Drops for additional Unilogs.
Generally, the packs in the shop are strictly for those willing to invest a lot of money in the game. Some packs are worth it, but these are usually only available during celebrations such as Anniversary.
Roaring Month is this game’s version of the monthly pass. Immediately, you'll receive x300 Crystal Drops and 5x Jars of Picrasma Candy.
Over the course of 30 days, you receive a total of x2700 Clear Drops and x30 Picrasma Candy. This counts x90 Clear Drops + 1x Picrasma Candy a day.
The duration can be stacked if this is bought multiple times in one go; however, you will not receive payout from all your bought Roaring Month passes at the same time.
The Roaring Jukebox is this game’s version of the Battle Pass.
Over the course of its 70 levels, you get a massive amount of progression materials, even rare ones like a unique Garment, Unilogs, Crystal Casket, Gluttony, Key of Thought etc.
This comes alongside general materials and material selectors that you can use when required. Buying the Deluxe Edition over the standard one (Collector's Edition) will immediately give you 10 levels, a unique Portrait, some Clear Drops, and other materials.
All the rewards are concentrated in the first 50 levels of the Roaring Jukebox. All levels after that only give you Dust, Sharpodonties and Psychube leveling materials.
Personal Suggestion: If you want to invest in the game without pulling out the stops on your wallet, combining a Monthly Pass + Standard Jukebox is a good way to comfortably get a lot of resources while also getting a bunch of pull currency on the side. The one who wrote this guide only does these two, refreshing them once they run out, and has never once been in trouble pull-wise unless Portraits (dupes) were involved.