時よ止まれ・お前は美しい | Fate/Grand Order

Fate/Grand Order - how to play

Hey all! Here’s a guide to the battle system and menus in Fate/Grand Order. Putting it under a cut so I can edit should the need arise, etc.

Also, I live in Japan and play this game straight on my phone, so I can’t help you with or troubleshoot how to emulate it or play it internationally. If you look around, there’s various information out there, though.

**** Game updates, maintenance/news, etc are all up at the /r/grandorder subreddit. I do not update this post for those things; check this stickied post.

If you see anything that isn’t correct or want to add some information, just send me a line, preferably on said stickied post here.

EDIT: Please do not send me asks (or messages, or leave disqus questions) with questions about FGO translations or gameplay any more. I will not answer them.

I am tired of getting anywhere from 2-10 messages per day about FGO across every site that I use (tumblr, reddit, ask.fm, even last.fm etc - though I used to get 30-50+ which took hours to get through) and sick of some of the grief/weird harassment that I have been getting. This is it for the basic gameplay guide. If you’re a tumblr friend, fire away. Otherwise - detailed game data, event info, etc, can all be found elsewhere like on the reddit. Please be understanding of my decision. Thank you for your cooperation.

Other guides:

The above guides are all outdated and I will never update them. Please go elsewhere for new info.

** FIXES and changes as of ~~14 February 2016~~ 8 August 2016

Updated the battle explanation section, all menus (strengthening, summon, shop, friend list), and added new functions (support menu, grail ascension). [still ongoing]
Forgot to update the My Room menu, so there’s that. And added a brief explanation of the card interface now that there’s four tabs.
Updated some screencaps to reflect the new interface (3 Jan 2016). Also finally uploaded the master outfit caps + descriptions (24 Jan 2016). Now I can rest in peace eternally. <:
Added an FAQ!
Added a note about how to swap party member slot spots (including for supporters); a note on the lock + heart icons, both under Party Config options; a note Mana Prisms from burning cards; more in-depth battling details on Noble Phantasms; and added various little bits all over the guide.
Added that each data transfer code can be used one time only.
In the Craft Essence compendium, fixed the translation for 弱体耐性 - it refers to resistance to debuffs, not resistance to weakness damage.
Added some more details on the Interlude quests.
Added some things/made clarifications to the battle and Craft Essence sections.

First of all, Fate/Grand Order is a turn-based card RPG. Servants are the cards that you fight with. Your default/first servant will always be Shielder.

You need a certain number of AP to be able to fight a battle. One AP recharges every 10 minutes. The max amount of AP you can have increases as you level up. Also, every time you level up, your AP also recharges to the max, so plan your battles accordingly.

You can refill your AP by using one Saint Quartz:

However, you also need Quartz to summon new servants (more later), and to increase the number of slots you have for cards. Plus, there’s a promotion going on that guarantees one 3+-star card per 40 Quartz. Finally, there’s a fixed and limited number of free Quartz in the game. So unless you’re going to buy Quartz or there’s a timed event going on, just wait for your AP to recharge.

FAQ - please read this before sending in your questions!

(Thanks to alkeia on reddit for gathering a bunch of these!)

Basic things:

Q: What does the first screen mean when you start the game?

A: It’s asking whether you agree to the terms of service or not. Right button is accept, left is decline.

Q: Do you have an ETA on when the next game updates will be released?

A: No. The newest information will always be on the /r/grandorder subreddit, by the way.

Q: When do the daily quests change?

A: At 00:00 (midnight), JST.

–

Battles:

Q: Help, I disconnected during my battle and I keep losing my AP!

A: If you ever try to resume the game mid-battle, you’ll see a screen come up with two button options at the bottom. The left one takes you out of the battle without giving you your AP back. The right one allows you to resume your battle.

Q: Can I change the order of my servants, including the supporter, in my party?

A: Yes. Ctrl+f “you can swap servant slot spots” to find the screenshots and explanation in this guide (in the Party Config section).

Q: How do I use the supporting servant’s Noble Phantasm?

A: The Servant has to be from someone on your friends list or available via the storyline. If there’s a greyed-out line in the description for the Noble Phantasm, then it means you can’t use them.

Anything outside of battles:

Q: How do I transfer accounts or use one on a different device?

A: Go here for a guide on getting the account transfer code and inputting a password. (It’s not “account binding,” but I guess that term’s floating around.) Be sure to get the code down absolutely correctly, as it’ll be a pain to get your account back if you screw up.

Q: How do I increase the max level of my Craft Essence?

A: Fuse the same one to it the way you would fuse others to it for EXP.

Q: What are the heart/lock icons and where are they?

A: Lock keeps you from using your cards as exp fodder, and heart allows you to change the Servant in your room. They appear to the left of the card image when you access them from the Saint Graf window. Ctrl+f “heart” for the relevant section.

Q: What do mana prisms do?

A: You exchange them at the shop for one of three reinforcement cards: a 3-star Almighty EXP card (20 Prisms), a 3-star HP up card (30), and a 3-star ATK up card (30). The last two cards, when fused with a matching Servant type, give small increases to ATK or HP. (Super small - dunno about ATK, but HP is a gain of 50.)

Q: Is burning cards for QP ever worth it?

A: Eventually your cards will need so much QP for exp cards at higher levels that you’ll be better off burning 1-stars if you don’t have baby cards to use them on. And if you have storage problems, you may be best off burning some 1- or 2-stars that you don’t want. Finally, burning 3+ star cards will get you Mana Prisms.

Q: What is [this strange item that I got]?

A: The game has a multitude of items you’ll need for leveling skills or ascension. Gems (blue spheres, red rectangular gems, and yellow 8-pointed star gems) are used for skill ascension, whereas everything else will be involved in ascension one way or another. For more, please look at this guide on ascension items.

Q: Some people on my friends list have colored usernames. How do you do that?

A: If your username is 4 characters or less, you’ll have the space to put in a hex code to color it. For example: “[ffffff]Kai”. Check out this guide for more info if you need it!

Q: How do I do a servant’s interlude?

A: Check out this guide. The basic requirements are that you’ve gotten the bond to somewhere around lv 3-5, you’ve ascended at least once, and you’ve beaten the entire map where the interlude shows up (aka, all of France, all of Rome, etc).

–

Errors and kerfuffles:

Q: Help! I think I’ve lost my account!

A: If you didn’t get your account transfer code set up, please look at this guide and see whether that helps. At this time, I am not writing people any queries in Japanese to send to the FGO support team for anyone.

Q: I misclicked my age in the store. Is there any way to change that?

A: Yes. If you transfer your account to a different device, the game will prompt you to select your age range for the store again.

Q: I’m having some kind of issue with the Friend Point summoning.

A: It’s probably because your phone’s not set to JST. Wait until it’s past midnight JST, or change your time settings.

0. Synopsis

Brief synopsis of the game’s plot: 48 individuals with the potential to become Masters, including you, were brought to Chaldea, an organization that works for the sake of advancing and protecting mankind. One of the organization’s measuring devices has turned murky, signifying great danger to the future world. Suddenly the earlier predictions that they had made of Earth’s future disappear - it seems that in one year, aka July 2016, mankind will cease to exist. But why?

An explosion rocks the facility. Since you had fallen asleep during the leader’s speech – and Olga-Marie is not the forgiving kind of ojou leader – you were not with the other Master candidates at the epicenter of the blast. As they were all inside special capsules at the time, they are forcibly put into cryogenic stasis. Marche, the female researcher you’d met upon arriving, has been severely injured. But suddenly the two of you are transported to another time – Fuyuki City, during that past Holy Grail War – when Marche becomes Shielder, your servant…?

Along with Olga-Marie, who also survived the blast, and with the help of Dr. Roman who is still back at Chaldea while relaying communications to you, you and Marche aim to discover what has begun to warp the future of humanity, while surviving countless battles and uncovering Shielder’s battle potential.

…is my really crappy and vague synopsis at the moment because I’m sort of rushing, but I promise I’ll improve this later, seriously.

A brief note on when you start the game:

The first screen merely asks whether you agree to the game’s Terms of Service or not. The left one is “decline” and the right one is “accept.” Note that the right button is generally the agree/confirm button in this game.

1. Battle system + world map

(For those of you who aren’t reading the visual novel portions of the game, the skip scene option is the button in the upper right corner. As you know, haha. Also, some of this stuff only comes after the first tutorial battles, if you’re wondering why it hasn’t shown up yet.)

So on the main maps – for example, the Camelot one here – you will see two types of available battles. First are the Main Quests, which will be indicated with a golden “NEXT” icon. These progress the main storyline and are in blue boxes.

You don’t necessarily get a Saint Quartz each battle. One of each of those little empty arrow markers gets filled in per completed battle. When all three are filled, you’ll then receive the quartz or whatever the reward pictured in the box is. Sometimes the reward is a different item instead, as well.

The second type are Free Quests, which are indicated on the map by an orange circled number. They’re in green boxes.

Once you fight the requisite number of battles, you will get a quartz. In this case, I’ve completed one of the required three battles. You can only get this item once – no repeating the easiest level to grind quartz.

Interlude quests are another quest type. They are the orange ones in the same screenshot above. These get unlocked as you obtain and level up servants. In the image above, I’ve ascended Hyde far enough that I can do his interlude, but I haven’t done the same with Mephistopheles, so his interlude is greyed out. Interludes also occur in fixed locations, so you’ll also have to progress far enough in the story quests to be able to do interludes.

Rewards include extra story, as well as either quartz or a skill/NP upgrade (which is indicated by that sword + golden disc image).

There are also strengthening quests, which can give servants new skills or vastly improve old skills. These get released periodically by DW. I think that in all cases, you have to have max ascended your servant before you can do them.

For information on specific interludes and strengthening quests, please go to the reddit etc.

Once you choose a quest and get past the dialogue, you will then choose a support member who will be the 6th servant on your team. Five of the slots are always your own servants, whereas the final one for the support member is always the servant of a random online player or someone from your friends list.

Also note - the level number in the top left is the recommended level for the battle, while the class icons to the right indicate what classes the enemies are, to help you formulate strategy. (Or to trick you, in some later quests starting in Camelot.)

You can browse among your friends’ (and some randoms’) servants for said support, which are all sorted by class with the eight buttons above. (The “all” class option can include servants that are Rulers, Avengers, Shielder, and any other type.) The rectangular blue button shows you the class/weapon triangle screen. You can also sort the order in which servants are listed by ascending and descending, according to last logged in, level, HP, and ATK. Hitting the blue button to the far right on each player slot will show you that player’s full support roster.

The little flag icon at the right means the servant is one available during a main storyline battle. These servants will appear at the top of the list regardless of which class you’re looking at, and usually have high NP and skill levels. The green handshake icon means the player is from your friends list.

You also get friend points after each successful battle. A random will give you 10, a friend will give you 25, and a storyline servant will give you 200. (FP are used to summon lower-level EXP, servant, and CE cards, at 200 FP per roll.)

A special CE available via a certain Type-Moon magazine copy gives you an additional 75 FP per battle if you use a servant equipped with it. (You can’t get double via your own copy and a friend’s.) If someone else uses your servant with the card equipped, you’ll get the additional 75 FP then as well.

If the supporter is not from someone on your friends list or the storyline, aka there’s no flag or handshake icon, then you cannot use their Noble Phantasm (it will be greyed out).

If someone uses your Servant in battle, then you will get 10 points if they’re not on your friends list, and 25 points if they are.

You’ll then see this confirmation screen. If you have more than two servants, you can include them as sub members. If one of your main party falls in battle, the subs will jump in. (More on party configuration later.) If you want to adjust your party right now, tap on any of the servant or CE slots to then choose what to put there.

The buttons at the bottom are as follows: master outfit, configure position, dissolve party (the red button), change party name, class affinity, and starting members’ command cards. The white button at the far right is “begin quest”.

Master outfit allows you to change, well, your master outfit. Configure position allows you to swap servant slot spots without having to manually remove and reinsert again. (You can’t swap the leader’s spot, though.) For example, you’ll be able to slide the slots around like this:

And end up with something like this (when you’re done, be sure to hit the white button to confirm, while the red button is cancel):

Another use to this is that you can move the supporter slot all the way back to slots 4, 5, or 6 if you want, which you can’t do otherwise.

Dissolve party is as it says on the tin (typical confirmation screens apply). Class affinity will show you the class/weapon triangle:

Change party name allows you to title each party. You can access each party by either swiping left and right, or by tapping one of the little circles at the center top of the screen (the current party is the one lit with yellow).

The starting members’ command cards option leads to this:

There are three types of attack cards in the game.

Quick (green) – more likely to score critical gems, which give you a chance of critting in the next turn. Increases the NP gauge by a small amount. Often multiple strikes (though how many depends on the class). Lowest amount of damage.
Arts (blue) – increases the NP gauge by several percentage points (depends on the damage you deal; note that you get more NP with crits and overkills). Getting a full, 100% gauge allows you to use your servants’ Noble Phantasms. Often multiple strikes (same as above), medium damage.
Buster (red) – highest attack power. No NP gained, but some crit stars. One or few strikes (though some servants’ cards do differ), highest damage.

Each servant has five cards. The card type distribution depends on the servant, though all servants will have at least one of each type. Casters are likely to have three arts cards, Berserkers 2-3 buster cards, Assassins 2-3 quick cards, etc. More later.

Here’s the battle screen:

Yay, lots of info. Most is pretty self-explanatory. (You can also choose which enemy to specifically target by tapping on it, if you need to.)

You can see the enemies’ class, name, HP, and NP charge gauge. You can see your own servants’ skills and HP/NP bars. The “battle 1/3” means that this is the first of three battles in this quest. The number to the right of “enemy” shows how many more enemies are left. (Some battles may have a number of 4+, meaning that as you kill enemies, more will appear.) Turn shows how many turns you’ve been in battle so far.

The treasure chest shows how many drops you’ve gotten so far. Tapping on the command seal will allow you to use them to gain NP/HP (more later). The two diamond buttons below the avatar image are “battle menu” (more in a sec) and “master skills” (which let you use your master outfit’s skills).

Five of the total fifteen command cards from your three Servants (aka your possible attacks) will be available per turn, and you can see them on the main fight screen freely. You’ll end up choosing three of them. (The supporter’s cards are marked with that blue hand icon, which is helpful for distinguishing between them if the supporter Servant is the same as another one in your party.)

You can use skills at the beginning of your turn and they won’t use up said turn. Each skill has an effect that lasts a number of turns, and also has a cooldown. Time accordingly. Note that once you tap “Attack,” you will not be able to exit the screen to use skills or seals, so be careful.

I’ll go into Shielder’s skills quickly. The left icon increases the defense of all allies for 3 turns, with a cooldown of 7. The right icon makes any one member of the party invulnerable for the following turn, while giving them an NP boost.

The battle menu button leads to this:

It shows the class/weapon triangle relations in this game, aka how some types are weak or strong to others in a rock-paper-scissors format. Basically it’s two triads, while Berserker is simultaneously strong against everyone atk-wise yet weak against everyone def-wise. Shielder is exempt, neither dealing nor taking special damage attacks from anyone.

The “trophy” section below lists the drops you’ve gotten thus far. The white button allows you to resign from the battle. The two options below that are two display options - choosing whether to show a confirmation window when using skills, and showing Noble Phantasm animations at their original, nonslowed speeds.

Your master skills depend on which outfit you’re wearing. This is what the first default outfit’s three skills do (more on the others later):

First Aid (the green icon) – heals one unit for 1000 HP. Has a cooldown of 9 turns.
Momentary Strength Boost (the red sword icon) – ups one unit’s attack for one turn. Has a cooldown of 15 turns.
Emergency Evade (the cloaked unit icon) – gives one unit evasion for one turn (which basically means they won’t get hit by an attack at all, like Shielder’s full def skill). Has a cooldown of 15 turns.

Your master skills will level as your master outfit levels. This means that they will become more potent (for example, the First Aid skill will heal 3000 HP at level 10), plus their cooldowns will get shorter (First Aid’s will reach 7 turns).

You also have access to Command Seals. In order, the three available options are Noble Phantasm unlock (1 seal), full restore (3 seals), and heal (1 seal).

NP unlock - Fills one Servant’s NP gauge by 100%.Full restore - If your party wipes out, using 3 heals it back to full while filling all NP gauges to max.Heal - heals one servant to full.

You have a max of 3 seals (obviously) and one seal replenishes every day at midnight. If you’ve used one, a timer will appear on this page showing when the next one replenishes (always at 00:00 JST - so if you use one up by 23:59, it’ll replenish at the 00:00).

That arrow in the upper right allows you to run battles at either normal speed or quickened speed. (For the love of god, go with the speedy version.)

On command cards:

When you choose “attack,” all of the critical gems you amassed in the last round get distributed among the five cards randomly. One gem equals 10% crit chance. Again, it’s totally random, and you can’t see the distribution beforehand. Cards that deal super effective damage are indicated by the red “weak” sign; attacks the enemy will be resistant to are designated by a blue sign.

Tap three of the cards in the order you want to use them. The first card gets a slight boost, the second gets a medium boost, and the third gets the largest boost (to damage and card type bonuses), so plan accordingly.

The first attack type card you pick will grant a small bonus according to its type to the next cards in the chain. For example, if you attacked with Quick, Arts, Buster, then the Arts and Buster cards can also generate crit gems. Leading with Arts means your Quick and Buster cards will generate NP (and your Arts cards will generate more). You can see this effect after you’ve chosen the first card, as the other cards will all glow with its type color around the edges. (A huge thanks to TheBluePylon on Reddit for pointing this out!)

Of course, a buster card in an arts-led attack won’t generate that much more NP, but a super multihit quick card will, so consider that when attacking.

On NP and Noble Phantasms:

When you fill up the NP gauge to 100%, you can use a Servant’s Noble Phantasm (those two cards above the normal five command cards in the previous screenshot). If the NP is at a level greater than 1 or you’re chaining multiple NPs, you can use it at 200%-500% overcharge for greater bonus effects depending on the NP.

The NP gauge can be filled via a variety of ways. Arts Chains get you the most. Arts and Quick attacks also get you some (though Quick, not as much). Getting attacked by an enemy can get you a tiny amount. Crits, overkills, and getting crit also vastly increase the amount your NP gauge fills.

Some Craft Essence cards either give you a significant percentage of NP at the start of the battle, or increase the amount you’ll get throughout a battle.

Tap on the NP cards to use them, and they’ll count as one of your three attacks. They each have a type - so Karna’s is buster and Scathach’s is quick. Neither chain bonuses nor first card bonuses affect an NP’s damage output.

Some more in-depth details:

If you chain NPs in one attack turn, they get overcharge bonuses. For example, if I chain three NPs at 100% gauge, they will actually in practice get charge bonuses of 100%, 200%, and 300%. Always consider overcharge bonuses and defense down/etc bonuses when considering what order to use your NPs in.
If your Servant wasn’t at a full 200% when you selected their NP as an attack, but it fills up to 200% within that turn before the NP gets unleashed (aka if you were chaining Arts, etc), then their attack will use the full 200%.

There are also chain boosts (most of these screenshots are from the F/GO site):

Brave Chain is when all three command cards are from the same servant. This will give the servant one extra multihit attack at the end. It will generally do somewhat less damage than a 3rd Buster attack. However, it will increase NP and get you a fair number of crit gems.

If your brave chain’s three cards are all of the same type, then you’ll get an attack bonus (to any card that isn’t an NP, anyway) in addition to the chain bonus. I think it’s about 25%? Don’t quote me on the figure, though.

Quick Chain uses three Quick cards. You get an initial bonus of 10 crit gems before you begin attacking.

Arts Chain uses three Arts cards. You get an initial bonus of 20% NP to each servant with a card used in the combo. (If you used 2 Shielder and 1 Caster cards, Shielder would not gain 40% NP, however. Also note that it takes a while storyline-wise in the prologue before Shielder gets a Noble Phantasm, so NP isn’t useful for her before then.)

Buster Chain uses three Buster cards, which vastly increases damage output.

Finally, Brave Chain and any of the other chains stack. For example, if all three of Caster’s Arts cards appear – you can choose all three to get an Arts and a Brave Chain bonus.

When you win the battle:

This screen shows the amount of Bond EXP you’ve earned. (Shielder does not get Bond EXP.) As your bonds with your Servants grow, you’ll unlock more info on their card bios, and in some cases can unlock bonus levels relating to that Servant. Clearing those levels can power up your servants. (Such battles are in orange boxes on the map:)

Sub members gain equal Bond EXP.

The avatar EXP you get. When you level up, your max AP, max cost (affects how powerful the cards you fit into your party can be), and max number of friends increase by a little bit.

The second EXP bar is for new equipment you can get, which will give you access to different Master skills.

Finally, if you used a supporter Servant that’s from a random player, you’ll be given the option to add them to your friends list. Pressing the button on the left refuses, and pressing the button on the right sends a friend request.

Note that if the player’s friend list slots are filled to the max, your friend request will not go through.

If you disconnect during a battle (!!!):

When you resume your game, you’ll see a screen come up with two button options at the bottom. The left one takes you out of the battle without giving you your AP back. The right one allows you to resume your battle.

A few final tips on battling:

Any sequential attacks from one Servant will always hit the same enemy. So say the enemy only has 1 HP left, but you used a Brave Chain – all the attacks will only hit that enemy. Whereas if your first attack was from Servant A but your second and third are from Servant B, A will finish off that enemy and B’s attacks will hit a different enemy.
Overkill attacks (aka when the enemy’s HP has already hit 0) will generate crit stars, more NP gained if applicable, etc.
The last of the three attacks will generally be the most powerful one.
If any of your Servants have skills that increase crit gem drop rate, it’s better to use them on a turn when you’re using more Quick or Arts cards, because they have more strikes per attack than a Buster does.

2. The terminal + menus

Aka, the top menu. (The white button in the upper left, “Back,” will always take you out towards the menus or terminal.)

On the terminal screen, however, the top left button takes you to game news.

The top box on the right is information on the daily quests. The brown one takes you to the Fuyuki City world map. (You’ll eventually unlock the ones for the other worlds, such as France, Rome, etc.) The Chaldea Gate box goes to the daily quests. The golden box is for any of the interlude quests from Bond EXP.

Interlude quests become unlocked as your Servants gain Bond EXP. You also need to have the map unlocked that they’re staged at. At the moment, many of the interludes haven’t been implemented as the corresponding maps have not been either.

If you hit the menu button:

From left to right:

Party config – allows you to organize your party and equipment
Reinforcement – strengthening your Servants and Craft Essences
Summon – summoning new cards, including Servants
Shop – where you pay real monies for Saint Quartz, but also is where you increase slots, cash in Mana Prisms, etc
Friends – your friends list, friend requests, your friend ID etc
My Room – an image log of all the Servants you’ve encountered, bio data, all the VN scenes that you’ve cleared up until now, serial code input, and various other setting items

3. Party config

This one’s pretty intuitive. Here you can adjust Party Config, which Supports your friends get to use, Master equips, and look at all of the cards you have (both Servants/EXP and Craft Essences) under Saint Graf.

In Party Config, you can save up to ten (note: was five before Dec 2015) party configurations, which you can see by sliding the screen. The buttons at the bottom left are the same as before - master outfit, configure position, dissolve party (the red button), change party name, class affinity, and starting members’ command cards.

Hitting confirm while on a particular party screen will make it the default party that appears when you go to start a battle (though you can change that easily right before starting, so no worries).

By the way, cost affects how much awesome stuff you can fit into your party. High star-rank cards and Craft Essences have higher cost. So even if you got a ton of 5-star things at the beginning, you wouldn’t be able to fit them into your party. You’ll have to decide how much one super-powered servant/Essence is worth it when you could fit two or three fairly decent ones into your party for the same price. Cost increases slowly as you level up, by 1 per level or two.

If you tap on the servant’s image, you can change the servant in that slot (or swap them position-wise with another servant already in the party). If you tap on the little rectangle under that image, aka the Craft Essence image, you can change the Craft Essence equipped. (As of the end of 2015, they made it so that even if you have the same servant deployed in more than one party config, you can have it equipped with different CEs for different parties. Thank god!)

Craft Essences, by the way, are non-servant cards that you equip to your servants. They give them boosts in both or either ATK and HP, plus an extra boost such as upping a type of command card damage, increasing crit/Noble Phantasm strength, starting a battle with a certain % of NP charged, etc. (A compendium of all Craft Essences is here.)

The Supports screen allows you to select up to eight servants for your friends (or online randoms) to use as supports in battle. There’s one slot for each of the main seven classes, plus an all slot for anyone you’d like. So you could put in another Saber, Archer, etc class servant, but it’s also the only slot you can include Rulers, Avengers, and Shielder in.

You can also choose which CE gets equipped to each servant, but you can only assign any CE in your possession to one servant only. Just tap on any servant or CE slot to select what card to use.

The bottom three buttons are: Clear all selected servants; clear all selected Craft Essences, and clear all selected.

The game now has multiple sets of Master Outfits. The Chaldea outfit is the default starter and the most all-around of the four. The other three have different effects and can be unlocked via the 40ap quests under the Chaldea dailies tab.

The default Chaldea set: already explained above. It’s the most all around set with the shortest cooldowns. The other three are more situational, and all of the skills have cooldowns of 12-15 turns at level 1.

The Chaldea battle suit. The first skill increases the attack of your entire party for 1 turn. The second stuns one enemy. The third allows you to swap one frontline party member with one submember.

The Mage Association set. The first skill heals your entire party for 800 HP (and increases by 200 HP as you level). The second fills one Servant’s NP gauge by 20% (note that this does not increase as you level). The third will reshuffle the attack cards available to you this turn.

The Atlas Institute uniform. The first skill grants invulnerability to one unit for one turn. The second dispels all debuffs on one unit. The third decreases the cooldown for one servant’s skills by 2 turns.

The Card inventory shows you all the cards in your possession. The top left button (currently red-orange) is for Servant/EXP cards. The one to its right will show your Craft Essences. The fractions are how many cards you have versus what the max limit is. You can sort the way the cards are ordered via that button to their right.

A brief explanation of the card menu:

The status tab shows your servant’s level, max level, cost, HP/ATK, bond level, skills (skill info, duration, and levels), and Noble Phantasm status (NP info and level).

You can also scroll through all versions of the card’s artwork here.

By the way, this menu is where you find the lock and heart icons. (Though as of recent updates, just press and hold on a Servant’s card image, and you’ll see them there in its profile as well.) Just tap on any card you want:

If the icons are unactivated, they’ll be in blue. If they’re activated, they’ll be in orange like above. Basically, the lock keeps you from being able to choose a card for reinforcement fodder, aka you’ll be able to avoid unfortunate accidents. The heart allows you to choose which Servant appears in the My Room. (Yay!) Only one Servant can have this designation at a time. You can also change this directly from the My Room, more later.

The profile tab includes info such as the card’s illustrator, the servant’s voice actor, parameter stats (they don’t do anything and are just for show), and info you unlock via bond level, interludes, events, etc.

The battle character tab allows you to look at all three versions of the character’s battle sprites. The one you use is defaulted to your highest unlocked one, but if you want to use a different one (say, you reallllly don’t like Jack the Stripper’s 2nd and 3rd forms…etc) - just choose the one you want via those three tabs and then exit the screen. If you see your came connecting to the server, it should have saved it. (You can only change the displayed sprite here, not in the compendium.)

The voice tab lets you listen to all of the servant’s voiced lines. Note that you’ll have to unlock them first (and if you unlocked My Room lines by listening to them before February 2016, you’ll have to do it again to get them to show up here).

4. Reinforcement

Aka, probably the menu where most people’s mishaps occur. (Say hi to the heroic spirit Da Vinci standing there, by the way, haha.) Here, you can engage in:

Servant reinforcement – using EXP cards on your servants
Ascension – increasing the max level of your servants (and gaining new skills in the process)
Grail ascension – using grails you’ve obtained throughout the main quest and story to increase servants’ level caps
Skill reinforcement – using items to up your servants’ skills
Noble Phantasm – using multiple copies of the same servant to level up their NPs
Craft Essence reinforcement – leveling up your Craft Essences

Servant reinforcement is straightforward. Pick the Servant you want to level by tapping the left box. You can choose up to five EXP cards to use on your Servant. Leveling up affects a Servant’s attack and HP.

New interface screenshots:

The four terms on the right are as follows. The yellow ones are QP needed to level up and current QP, while the green ones are the EXP you’ll gain and the amount of EXP needed to reach the next level. So in this case, one 4-star EXP card would get me 32,400 exp, whereas I’d need 127,500 exp to actually level.

A quick note - as you can see in the row below HP and ATK, you can also boost a Servant’s HP and ATK permanently up to 990 per. You do this with Fou cards (see the screenshot with the EXP card - to its left is an HP Fou card). The Fou card has to be of the same class as the card you’re trying to use it on or an almighty/all class card. The Fou cards from Da Vinci’s shop are always almighty, but you can get random kinds in the friend point summon.

A 3-star Fou will give 50 points to either HP or ATK, whereas a 2-star will give 20 and a 1-star will give 10. They’ll also give 12 exp. (I’ve only seen these two types when the game gave out a set of Fou cards for one campaign or another - ~~the friend point one only seems to give out 3-star ones, so no worries~~. As of January 2016, 1- and 2-star Fous can also appear in the friend gacha.)

There are various kinds of EXP cards. The more stars they have, the more EXP they grant. There are also eight types of EXP cards – one for each Servant class, plus one almighty type. If the card class matches the Servant’s class, then the Servant gets more EXP. Almighty gives that boosted EXP amount to whoever it’s used on. Try to use all of your almighty EXP cards on Shielder in the beginning.

Types of EXP cards:

1-star: 1,000 exp (1,200 exp with class affinity bonus)
2-star: 3,000 exp (3,600 exp with class affinity bonus)
3-star: 9,000 exp (10,800 exp with class affinity bonus)
4-star: 27,000 exp (32,400 exp with class affinity bonus)

The cost/benefit rewards for seeking out higher-star EXP cards are always more worth it.

It costs QP to use EXP cards on a Servant. The higher the Servant’s level, the more QP you need. So, for example, using five EXP cards one by one on a lv. 1 servant would use more QP than using all five of those in one go, since the servant’s technically still lv. 1 when you’re using all five EXP cards on it.

Also, note that the QP cost is the same for any type of card! So if it will take 400 QP to fuse a 1-star EXP card to Servant A, it’s going to take 400 QP for a 2- or 3-star EXP card as well. This is another reason why higher star EXP cards are more beneficial.

You can also use other Servant cards to strengthen your Servant. The card you’ll be using as EXP fodder must not have a Craft Essence attached to it, or else you won’t be allowed to select it. Finally, the QP cost is the same as with EXP cards…but 1- or 2-star cards give very little exp, so keep that in mind.

It’s all luck when it happens, but you can get a “Great Success” or a “Super Great” once in a while that drastically increases the amount of EXP you should have received (say, perhaps double the exp you were supposed to get, ish?).

If you see the following screen:

It simply is saying that one of the cards you’ll be fusing as EXP is 3 stars or above and is asking if you’re sure you want to use it. The left button is “cancel”, and the right button is “accept”. (Remember these buttons!)

Ascension increases max level by 10 per synthesis. This is one reason why higher star rank cards are better – their max levels are also higher. Take my 1-star Archer card here – right now his default max level is 20, whereas my 2-star card’s is 25, and my 3-star cards’ max are 30.

As you hit certain ascension ranks depending on the Servant, you will gain access to their two locked skills.

You need Class Pieces that correspond to the card’s Servant class for ascension synthesis, as seen above. The number of pieces needed depend on the card. A 1-star needs 2 per synthesis, a 2-star needs 3, and a 3-star needs 4. (Later on, you’ll need rarer items for ascension. Here’s some information on that.)

Finally, the card you want to synthesize needs to be maxed out already. Otherwise, there’s no need to increase their max level in the first place.

Note that Shielder cannot undergo ascension synthesis, since her potentials are locked by the main storyline progression.

Grail Ascension allows you to increase the level cap for any servant (that you’ve already raised to said cap), up to a max of 100.

How much the cap goes up by with each grail used depends on the servant’s max level at that time. At lv 60 (aka, the cap for a 1-star), the cap goes up by 10. At lvls 65-85, the cap goes up by 5. At lv 90, the cap only goes up by 2.

Thus, it would take 5 grails to ascend a 5-star to lv100. It would take 4 grails to get a 3-star up to lv90, and 9 to lv100. It would take 9 grails to get a 1-star to lv90, and 14 to lv100.

Note that if you get a 1-, 2-, or 3-star up to level 80, their card backgrounds will change to gold (though the star value on the card won’t):

In all honesty, the game isn’t so difficult yet that you need lv100s to clear endgame content (so far, anyway), and grails are so rare (you would only have 11 if you were playing since game launch and cleared ch6 Camelot as of August 2016), so just max out who you want to. It’s good for getting a 3-star up a little for a few more stats, as well. Think of it as extra Fou power.

Skill reinforcement levels up a Servant’s skills by using Weapon Gems. Again, each Servant class has a type of gem, and the classes must match. Shielder needs different ones that I suspect are main storyline items, but everyone else uses these blue orbs that you find periodically in battle or in some daily quests:

Noble Phantasm strengthening requires that you use the exact same Servant card. (Yes, ouch.) Just like it says, it ups the level and effect of their NP. Their NP gauge in battle will be able to reach higher levels, as well.

Craft Essence strengthening simply uses Craft Essence cards. Take one that you don’t want and apply it to the one you want to strengthen like you would an EXP card. This will increase the attack/HP boosts the card gives (not sure yet whether it increases its overall main effect like +5% to Noble Phantasm effect or +3% to Buster damage yet, will update).

If you use the same Craft Essence here, you can increase the max level of your Craft Essence. Maxing it all the way will slightly improve the bonus it gives.

The new interface changes are the same as with the reinforcement/EXP page.

5. Summon

Aka, that oh-so-crucial part of the game! There are two types of summoning: quartz summoning and friend point summoning.

Quartz summoning uses Saint Quartz. You definitely will not get a Servant cards each time you summon – here you have a chance to get Craft Essences as well, and are more likely to get them at that. You can summon either one card at a time for 3 Quartz, or ten for 30 (lowered from 4 and 40 as of August 2016). No bulk discounts, alas.

There is a benefit to doing one 10-roll versus 10 single rolls – if you summon 10 at once with 30 Quartz, at least one of the 10 cards you get will be 4+ stars. Note that this could be a Servant or an Essence, and summoning one card at a time x10 does not guarantee the 4+ star. You are also guaranteed at least one 3+ star Servant. So save up your quartz!

Friend point summoning uses friend points, if you couldn’t guess – 200 points per summon. You can get Servant cards, Craft Essences, and even EXP cards, meaning that your chances of getting a super amazing Servant card is fairly low.

The main way of getting friend points is via your 3rd supporter party member. If the Servant is a storyline one or from someone who isn’t on your friends list, you get 10 points. If the Master is on your friends list, you get 25 points. If there’s a campaign bonus, you may get 1000 points or the like from your gift box.

Also, you get one free friend point summon per day, so it’s worth it to log in daily!

If you did 2+ point summons, you’ll see three buttons at the bottom. They should lead to party config, reinforcement, and back to the summoning page.

Finally, if you see this kind of screen:

It means that you’ve hit your max number of Servant cards that you can hold, aka you cannot summon anything new. The button on the left closes the screen, while the button on the right will raise the limit of cards you can hold – or take you to the screen where you do so. Since doing so uses Quartz, I haven’t tried pressing it myself, but you get the idea.

6. Shop

You know how free to play games make their money and all.

There are a bunch of miscellaneous options here mostly to do with Quartz or Prisms:

Event Item exchange - exchange event items for prizes, up to a week after an event ends.
Burning – burn down EXP or Essence cards into QP.
Mana Prism exchange – exchange Mana Prisms (which you get from dailies) for things.
Saint Quartz fragment exchange – exchange seven quartz fragments from the weekly fragment quests for one quartz.
Saint Quartz purchase – spend real monies.
Special summon – exchange a number of those wheel things that you get from burning 5-star servants for a (non-limited) 5-star of your choice. Yeah, this functionality is kind of limited to either white whales or people with really bad (good?) luck.
Saint Quartz exchange – it seems like you’ll be able to exchange Quartz for things, but it doesn’t look like the feature has been fully implemented yet as nothing’s in stock.

Note that when you first enter the Saint Quartz purchase screen, the game will first prompt you with some warning dialogue. If you’re under 20 then it will limit how much money you’re allowed to spend on the game per month. If you’re 15 or under, it’s 5,000 yen; 16 to 19, 30,000 yen; and above 20 is limitless. Either way, choose whichever one applies to you. I honestly have no idea how they’d verify that you’re actually not 20 if you’re secretly younger than that. Also, the larger the Quartz package you buy, the more you save per Quartz, etc.

The mana prism shop gets refreshed once per month. The things available are: five packs of ten 4-star almighty EXP cards (40 prisms each), five summoning tickets (20 each), twenty 3-star HP Fou cards (15), and twenty 3-star ATK Fou cards (15). The last two cards, when fused with a matching Servant type, give small increases to ATK or HP. (Super small - dunno about ATK, but HP is a gain of 50.)

Every three months (so far, anyway), there’s also a special 5-star CE that goes for 1,000 prisms per copy (again, so far - was definitely more expensive before >_o). They give bonuses like +2% to QP, master exp, or master outfit exp - but if you limit break the card aka fuse 5 copies together, that goes up to 10%. Very worth it depending on the bonus.

Other things show up from time to time, like special cheap packages of things during special events - check somewhere like the subreddit for event news.

For Burning, simply choose the cards you’d like to convert into QP and then hit the white “confirm” button. You can cancel your selections by hitting the red button.

If you’re wondering whether this is ever worth using - eventually your cards will need so much QP for exp cards at higher levels that you’ll be better off burning 1-stars if you don’t have baby cards to use them on. And if you have storage problems, you may be best off burning some 1- or 2-stars that you don’t want. Finally, burning 3+ star cards will get you Mana Prisms. (1 per EXP card, 3 per 3-star servant, 1 per 3-star CE, and so on.)

7. Friends

The friends list option.

The three buttons at the top are for the Friends List, Friend Requests, and Friend Finder. The fraction at the top is how many friends you have and what your max friends possible is. The other buttons to that right allow you to view the servants on their support page by class. The “new!” indicator either means this is a new friend you’ve added, or they’ve changed their servant for that slot.

The Friends List is as you see above. You can also see their equipped CEs and skill levels. As for the two buttons on the far right of each friend slot, pressing the blue one will show all of that player’s support servants + CEs, while the red button will allow you to delete them from your friends list.

Friend Requests will list any requests that other players send you. Hit the blue button to the right of the red one to add them back. (Remember, you can send a request at the end of a battle to the player whose servant you used as your supporter. Just hit the button on the right-hand side.)

If you see this dialogue pop up when you try to add someone back:

It means that person has reached the limit of friends they can have, and so you cannot add them at this time. (You can try again later after they’ve leveled.)

Friend Finder allows you to look up someone specifically if they’ve given you their user ID number, in the top window. The bottom window displays your own user ID for friend finder purposes.

8. My room

This set of menus contains a lot of setting-related knickknacks. And unfortunately all of the English menu subtitles say “Myroom menu,” which…probably doesn’t help.

You can tap on the speech bubble to hear your Servant talk. Note that if you select your own cards from your own compendiums and click the little heart icon on the left side of the screen (screenshot to come later), that’ll change the Servant who’s in your room, aka you’ll be able to hear different dialogue and have your favorite Servant up there. (You can also do this via the 3rd option in this menu.)

Materials – includes things such as a visual log of all the Servants in the game, as well as game scripts for any of the main storyline quests or bonus Bond EXP quests.
Item Inventory – allows you to look at all the non-card items in your possession that you win during battles. (No, I’m not totally sure what all of them do yet, either.)
Change favorite Servant - can directly change the Servant displayed in the My Room here.
Master Profile – shows a profile card with things like your total Quartz, QP, etc. You can also input your birthday and change your avatar name and gender (aka the profile image).
Help – several info screens. In order, they’re game system explanation (little info blurbs on the game’s basics), game news, inquiry, terms of service, credits, and copyright.
Game Options – allows you to, well, change some options. Sound levels for BGM, Sound Effects, and voices; toggle whether you want the game to show you AP recharge time and game news; and allows you to download the game files so that load times are faster without depending on your internet connection so much. (You can suspend the download at any time and resume it later.)
Data pull code – if you want to transfer your data to a different device, register a password here (the same one in both bars) so that you can utilize the data on your other device. The transfer code that you’ll receive can be used one time only.
Title – go back to the opening title.

Most of it is easy enough to figure out with some random tapping, but here’s some details just in case.

Under the Materials tab includes the Compendium – a list of all the Servant and CE cards in the game. You can only see full info on cards that you yourself have owned, though you’ll see thumbnails of any cards who’ve supported or fought against you. You can look at basic skills info, bio info that gets unlocked with Bond EXP or related quests, and hear their voices.

There are also the Singularity Point Records, which contains all the visual novel scenes in the game, arranged by chapter/world.

After that are the Interlude Records, which are all of the visual novel scenes from the interlude quests, as well as any other servant-related conversations (when you first summon them). They’re listed under the true names of the Servants, as a heads up there, along with a little thumbnail.

Next is the Event Records, which contains all the visual novel parts from any past events that you’ve seen (or skipped - you can come back to read them here if needed).

Finally, once you’ve seen it by beating the Fuyuki City map, you can rewatch the Opening movie here whenever you want.

Using the Change favorite Servant just means that you don’t have to go all the way back to the Party menu to do it. Simply choose the Servant you’d like to change to, then hit “confirm” (the right button).

Your Master Profile shows your current avatar name and gender, current Command Seal status, current level + needed exp, and the number of the following that you have: Quartz, Prisms, QP, Friend points, Servant cards (includes EXP cards, etc), and Craft Essence/equipment cards.

The top blue button lets you input your birthday, which you can do only once. (No cheating!) The displayed Servant/s in your My Room will give you special birthday greetings.

The bottom-left blue button lets you change your avatar’s name. The bottom-right one allows you to change your gender aka your avatar image. The left option is female and the right is male.

9. The Chaldea gate + daily quests

If you need to grind for things like items, QP, or EXP, this is the place. (Really, almost the only place.) Get ready for your huge AP sinks here.

The day’s event quests start at midnight, JP time. Be sure to confirm your own time zone in relation to it.

If you click on the top blue banner on the Terminal page, you will see a list of what event quests are available each day. Daily event quests come in three levels:

beginner (10 AP, recommended party level 5-10)
intermediate (20 AP, recommended party level 15-25)
advanced (40 AP, recommended party level 25-40)

The recommended level is sometimes higher or lower depending on the exact quest. The higher the level, the tougher the enemies and the greater the rewards. For the people who’ve been having a tough time with later worlds despite being at the right average party level, maybe try to go in with a high level Supporter (since the AP cost is pretty high otherwise!).

If you beat the same event quest three times, you will get a Mana Prism, which can be traded in for things at the Shop (see above). Different quests give different rewards. Also note that the beginner stage gives you 1 Prism, the intermediate 2, and the advanced 3. The Mana Prism counters do not reset each week (so far), meaning you can only get each Mana Prism reward per daily once. You can still keep repeating the daily for drops or exp, though, so no worries about that.

Quests are available in this order weekly (here’s the Japanese so you can figure out what to click on):

The following list is outdated. Please go to the /r/grandorder subreddit.

Monday 月
種火集め　‹三騎士編› - Ember Gathering (Three Knights Edition) – Saber, Lancer, and Archer EXP cards
宝物庫の扉を開け – Open the Door of the Treasure Vault – QP

Tuesday 火
種火集め　‹四騎編› - Ember Gathering (Four Horsemen Edition) – Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker EXP cards
三騎士と対決 – Showdown with Three Knights – Saber, Lancer, and Archer Ascension items

Wednesday 水
宝物庫の扉を開け – Open the Door of the Treasure Vault – QP
四騎と対決 – Showdown with Four Horsemen – Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker Ascension items

Thursday 木
種火集め　‹三騎士編› - Ember Gathering (Three Knights Edition) – Saber, Lancer, and Archer EXP cards
モンスター狩り　‹三騎士編› - Monster Hunt (Three Knights Edition) – Saber, Lancer, and Archer Skill Reinforcement Items

Friday 金
種火集め　‹四騎編› - Ember Gathering (Four Horsemen Edition) – Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker EXP cards
モンスター狩り　‹四騎編› - Monster Hunt (Four Horsemen Edition) – Rider, Caster, Assassin, and Berserker Skill Reinforcement Items

Saturday 土
宝物庫の扉を開け – Open the Door of the Treasure Vault – QP
黎明の手狩り　‹オール編› - Gathering at Daybreak – all seven classes’ EXP cards

Sunday 日
絆の戦い – Bond Battle – easier to increase Bond EXP
マスター訓 – Master Training – can gain large amounts of Master EXP

Note that for the master EXP quests, the 10 AP one gives about 1100 EXP, the 20 AP one (which has all Assassin enemies + random shadow servants) 8300, and the 40 AP one (which has all Caster enemies + random shadow servants) 34,140.

10. Common error messages + ”What does this button mean?”

Time to learn some Japanese.

The button on the left means “cancel” (literally “cancel” in katakana). The button on the right is “confirm” (決定). Typically the button order in Fate/Grand Order is always left button cancel, right button confirm.

Various other server/etc error messages to come later. If you see the characters 通信エーラ, that means it’s a connection problem. メインテナンス means maintenance.

Thanks for reading. If you have any questions, spotted a mistake, etc, please let me know.

Again, if you have other questions, you can always go to the FGO subreddit, grandorder. Chances are someone can get back to you faster than I can. Thanks!