Beginner Guide

Arcanists are the playable characters, rated from 2★ to 6★. You do not need an all-6★ roster to clear early content; a well-built lower-rarity unit that fits your team often outperforms an underleveled high-rarity one.

• Build a small core of a few units rather than spreading resources thin across many.
• Aim for balance: a source of damage, some survivability or healing, and at least one support effect.
• Keep the Afflatus of your team in mind so you can adapt to different enemies (see the Afflatus guide).
• Free and early-access Arcanists given by the story are genuinely usable and worth leveling.

If you're new to Reverse: 1999 and unsure where to put your resources, the safest bet is to follow the current strength rankings and prioritize whoever sits at the top. Arcanists rated S+ are the lowest-risk investment early on, since you won't need to rebuild your roster around them later.

• Brume (S+)
• J (S+)
• Marsha (S+)
• Beryl (S+)
• Enigma (S+)
• Lorentz Butterfly (S+)
• Flutterpage (S+)
• Kiperina (S+)
• Liang Yue (S+)
• Charon (S+)
• Isolde (S+)
• Nautika (S+)

The good news is these names already come pre-packaged as teams instead of being scattered picks. The Beast Core Team is built exactly from Brume, J, and Marsha — all three S+, so slotting them together works out of the box. Likewise, the Star Core Team pairs Flutterpage, Kiperina, and Liang Yue, another all-S+ trio worth building toward as a second core once your roster allows it.

As a beginner, pour your upgrade materials into the S+ group first, then move down to the S-rated Arcanists once you have some to spare. Following the tier list takes the guesswork out of who's worth building.

Every Arcanist and enemy belongs to one of six Afflatus: Beast, Plant, Star, Mineral, Spirit, and Intellect. These are NOT two counter triangles — Beast, Plant, Star and Mineral form a single four-way cycle that decides when you deal extra damage; Spirit and Intellect stand outside it.

• Beast beats Plant, Plant beats Star, Star beats Mineral, and Mineral beats Beast.
• Spirit and Intellect counter nothing and are countered by nothing — instead, some Psychubes grant them bonus DMG specifically when there is no Afflatus advantage.
• Attacking an enemy whose Afflatus you counter increases your damage, so matching your team to the enemy matters.
• You do not have to memorise everything at once; the battle screen highlights advantage, and the dedicated Afflatus guide breaks the wheel down fully.

Your first week is about laying foundations rather than chasing everything. Progress the main story to unlock features, and pace your resources.

• Push the main story steadily; it unlocks systems, materials, and additional Arcanists.
• Spend Insight (ascension) and leveling materials on your core team only, not on units you will bench.
• Complete daily and beginner tasks for steady resource income.
• Save your premium currency early rather than pulling on impulse until you understand which Arcanists you want.
• Do not over-invest in Resonance or Psychubes on temporary units.

Reverse: 1999 has its own layer of jargon that the in-game tutorial does not fully explain — knowing it makes every other combat guide easier to follow.

• AP (Action Points): each turn, your AP equals the number of characters still alive on the field (3 alive = 3 AP). Losing a character means losing AP, so keeping allies alive matters as much as dealing damage. Using Vertin's Tuning Skill costs no AP.
• "AP generous" / "AP greedy": community shorthand for whether a character needs few or many cards (AP) to unlock their full combo. When building a team, balance "AP-hungry" units against "AP-efficient" ones.
• Tuning Skills: Vertin's own skills, found in the bottom-left of the battle screen, support the team without costing AP. There are two sets: First Melody (unlocked at stage 1-14) and Grand Orchestra (unlocked after clearing all training stages).
• Moxie: shown as yellow diamond pips under the HP bar, built up by playing, merging, or moving cards; you need enough Moxie to cast an Ultimate.
• i0 – i3 (Insight): an Arcanist's Insight tier, each level unlocking extra skill effects. Lower-rarity units cap out at i2; only 5★/6★ units can reach i3.
• Substitute: a 4th bench character who only enters the field when someone on the main team dies, appearing in the form of a representative creature called Udimo.
• Sacc / Sacrifice strat: deliberately letting a character die to trigger a follow-up effect. The 2★ units Door and Ms. Radio exist almost entirely for this purpose.
• Resonance: builds are commonly written as "i2 L50 R7" — meaning Insight 2, Level 50, Resonance 7. Resonance matters as much as level, sometimes more — don't chase level while neglecting it.

Reverse: 1999 unlocks its systems gradually as you progress through the story. These are the stage milestones worth remembering so you know what is coming:

Stage	Unlocks
1-1	End of the tutorial, unlocks 2x speed
1-6	Unlocks Traces, Leilani obtainable
1-11	Unlocks the Dust farming stage
1-12	Eagle obtainable
1-14	Unlocks Tuning Skill "First Melody"
2-6	Unlocks Hard Mode
2-8	Unlocks the Insight stage
2-10	Unlocks Psychube + Pneuma Analysis
3-2	Unlocks Resonance + Artificial Somnambulism
5TH-20	Unlocks Reveries in the Rain (endgame content)

Just push the main story steadily and you will hit these milestones in order automatically — no need to rush leveling ahead of what the system has unlocked.

New players get 6 free Arcanists early on plus 3 starting 6★ Arcanists (the "First Drop of Rain" banner). Not all of them are equally worth investing in — here is each one rated with reasoning, so your first week of resources doesn't go to waste.

The 6 free Arcanists:

• APPLe (Star, sub-DMG + healing) — Maybe. Passive healing, but only for 1 ally at a time, and AP generous (easy to use, doesn't demand many cards). Fine as a stopgap for week one, not a top priority.
• Sonetto (Mineral, DPS + support) — YES. The most flexible Arcanist in the game: strong buffs plus crowd control (Disarm). She's given free through the story, and as a 5★ pushing her to i3 is entirely realistic. Weak point: her control is useless against bosses (most bosses resist control).
• Leilani (Beast, DPS) — Maybe. Only 3★, but at i1 she generates Moxie for the whole team on entering battle — this makes her better suited as a Substitute or in a sacc strat than as a frontline DPS.
• Eagle (Plant, DPS) — YES. Just 4★, but her crit technique is surprisingly high: 445 at Insight 2, higher than 5★ Matilda's at Insight 3 (356). Her passive also inflicts [Sense Weakness] on the enemy with the highest ATK when she enters battle, cutting that target's Reality DEF & Crit DEF by 20% — solid damage plus team support in one.
• Dikke (Beast, sub-DMG + healing) — YES. Heals the whole team, her Ultimate self-cleanses debuffs, and a full-ATK build still works fine — one of the easiest support units for beginners.
• Matilda (Star, DPS) — Probably Not. She's a pre-registration reward Arcanist, and because she is not in the gacha pool, you cannot raise her Portray. Her crit technique is also lower than Eagle's, and she needs a whole team built around her to shine — not an efficient pick for a beginner's limited resources.

The 3 starting 6★ Arcanists ("First Drop of Rain" banner):

• Regulus — needs i1 to unlock the "Restless Heart" passive (+50% crit rate if he skips 1 turn; excess crit rate auto-converts to crit dmg). Matching Psychubes: Thunderous Applause, Tomorrow Also, Hopscotch, Brave New World.
• Eternity — needs i1 to become immune to [Bleed]/[Corrode]/[Poison], and gains 1 [Blood of Longevity] stack each turn (up to +15% DMG & +15% DMG Heal). In exchange, she loses 10% of Max HP every time she uses a skill, so her team needs a healer or shielder. Eternity truly shines at i3.
• Lilya — unlike Regulus, she does not auto-convert excess crit rate into crit dmg. She needs at least i2, and truly needs i3 to be strong, plus a team built around her. She's the most expensive investment of the 3 starting 6★s.

General rule: pour resources into the YES group first, keep the Maybe group as a fallback, and think twice before investing in the Probably Not group — not because they're weak, but because their return on resources spent is clearly lower than the alternatives.

You don't need to diversify your roster right away. Rules of thumb for week one:

• Level up only 4–6 characters at first, and of those, keep it to just 1 6★ — 6★ units are expensive to level and Insight, and splitting resources across several 6★ units at once leaves your whole team underpowered.
• Three core roles your team needs: Damage Dealer (main DPS) · Support (buff/debuff) · Survival (healer or shielder). There's also Mixed Role — flexible generalists that usually make good Substitutes since they can fill in wherever needed.
• Recommended build order: pick your main DPS first → pick a Support that matches that DPS's needs (buffing their damage type, or debuffing the matching enemy defense) → add a second Support or a Survival unit depending on the fight → finally, a backup Substitute.

This lines up with the 1 DPS + 1 Survival + 1 Support backbone from the Reality/Mental damage type guide — check it out to learn how to pick the right DPS for each fight.