We’ve been waiting for a gacha game of Astral Chronicles’ caliber for a long time. For once, players are able to fully control a character within their 5-man formation (also referred to as main character/MC), so they have the possibility to impact the outcome of each individual encounter to a greater extent. It’s not just picking your units and letting them grind anymore; you can lead your party to victory when they fall short on their own.

Given how “intelligent” the AI is, you might want to set aside auto-battling in most AC fights. Combine this level of control with the fact that all the characters and monsters can move in an isometric manner around the battlefield and you’ve got yourself a recipe for an amazing game. It actually reminds us of the main tank in raids. Ah, the old days of dying to Ragnaros’ Magma Blast.

Skills for your main character can be obtained by increasing your bond level with the other characters you currently own. In this guide, we’d like to go over the best way to farm these bonds, as well as some of the best skills (actives, passives, and basic attacks) you can get for your MC.

Choose Your Companions Wisely

If you want to fully make use of your MC, then you need to ensure that they develop a bond with the right characters of the same class. To see how you’re currently faring with somebody, head over to their character screen and then select Bond from the left menu. There, you can see how far along you’ve come. Of course, there is also a stat priority for each MC class, but you can read more about that in our guide to MC builds.

The fact of the matter is that better heroes will most often give you the chance to acquire superior skills from them, with several exceptions. For example, Stygian Bell’s basic attack is Fulmination, which taunts enemies, deals dark damage, and gives your MC a chance to get the Steel Body buff, which increases their physical defense for a while. Titan Soul’s Fortitude is outstanding due to the fact that it increases the base of your physique stat by 20%, while Ryuni’s Cure coupled with his Elemental resistance can transform your Guardian MC into a truly outstanding tank.

In case you’re going for a Warrior, which is just as popular as the Guardian, Ryudo’s Sky Flying basic attack is rated as exceptional. Aside from giving you an AoE attack, it has a chance to inflict a Bleed effect that can stack three times. Ryudo also happens to possess one of the best Passives for this class as well (what can we say, he is one of the most OP warriors), namely Alacrity. The latter increases your base agility by 50% every time you enter combat.

Farming Bonds Effectively

To increase your bond with a specific unit, all you have to do is head over to their Character screen and have them follow you around by pressing the “Follow” button, on the right of their name. This does not mean, however, that they will also be in your party. Since this increases your bond level, make sure to have them fight alongside you anytime this is possible. To accelerate the process a bit, you can just farm normal Cosmic Rifts.

Play Astral Chronicles on BlueStacks

Following gives you around 20 bond points per day, while doing the Cosmic Rift (even with 0 AP) will give you 2-3 points at a time up to a maximum of 50 per day. There’s also gifted as a mechanic, but, as we mentioned before, the system seems to be bugged. Until the devs figure things out, we’d recommend you don’t try it at all. With a total of 50 maximum bond points per day, it will take you 30 days to get to maximum bond level with an SSR character.

Once you reach the amount of points required to unlock any of the skills, you get a quest that will enable you to do so. SRs and Rs have significantly smaller bond caps, so you’ll get their abilities (if any of them seem to be of use) much faster. If you’re trying to increase your bond with several Guardians at a time, it’s much more effective if you switch over to warrior for the farming part.

The reason why you’ll want to be in Warrior class while all your party is made up of Guardians is that you actually need a damage dealer to have things running fast and smoothly. Remember, you don’t have to be in a particular class in order to increase your bond with a unit. They just need to be in your party and/or follow you. Then, once you’ve reached the cap with your Guardians, you can switch back to the tank role and acquire their skills accordingly.

Bonding with BlueStacks

If your favorite playstyle is that of a healer/support character, then you can easily apply the same bond farming technique to a party full of healers. Instead of being a Warrior, though, we’d recommend you switch over to Sorcerer to fill in the damage-dealing role. Although we did it this way (because the passives were synergizing better), there’s nothing stopping you from going with physical DPS, a Guardian, or another Chanter.

The problem with these latter choices is that you won’t be dealing a lot of damage when doing Cosmic Rifts, which will significantly slow down your progress. Alice’s Milky Way attack is OK to have, while Lars’ Michael’s Whisper is even better. As of right now, there seem to be no outstanding actives and ultimates for chanters, although Kamiko’s Sakura Snow and Lars’ Archangel’s Breath do stand out from the crowd.

Now that you know how to farm character bonds quickly, you ought to focus on giving your MC the best possible ultimates, passives, basic attacks, and active skills, since they’re often your MVP. The advantage when going with the Guardian role is that they’re likely to be better than any other character at what they do. If you’re also playing Astral Chronicles on BlueStacks, do let us know your favorite combinations of abilities for your MC.

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