Crystal Maidens – Beginners Guide

Beginners Guide

This info is aimed at Free-To-Play (f2p) players, but if you spend on gachas the base info is the same.

Basics in the beginning:

• The Crystal Maiden’s Discord server is your best resource. Don’t like Discord? You’ll miss most of the info available to you
• Don’t blow gems on gachas without asking advice in Discord
• Don’t pass on anything free, especially maidens! A lot costs cash, earn everything that doesn’t!
• Keep switching to better gear
• Spend gems on Multibuild at the beginning, it is worth it
• The questions channel in the Crystal Maidens Discord is your home as a beginner.
• Do the “Daily Objectives” thing!
• Do the events! You get free stuff in them. Can’t do all of it? Get the maidens!
• Pay attention when Ardanis is giving advice. He does stuff without spending cash that others spend thousands to do.

You start with Nuka, Althea, Helen and Selena. Don’t fall in love, you outgrow them early. You get free pulls from regular gacha during a day. Do them ASAP because you cap at 3.

Maidens in the regular gacha pool:

Luna, Daphne, Edana, Asuka, Kade, Litza, Dawn, Micah, Liberty, Eli, Ichi, Heet, Vanille, Zera, Agni, Camilla, Aria. Lily, Beatrix, Lapis, Coral Taki, Ava, Billie, Isana, Dana, Ivy, Ophelia, Patricia, Kebi, Jess, Captain Amira, Annie, Alisha, Destiny, Kai, Vanessa, Gaia, Gabriela, Amber, Jackie, Eve, Florence, Felicity, Jane Doe, Alison, Brianna, Maeve, Helen, Roxelana, Althea, Nuka and Selena.

Don’t get hung up on rarity of maidens, there are rare maidens that are better than most epic or legendary maidens. From the regular gacha pool, watch for: Micah, Liberty, Jess, Amber, Eve, Florence, Brianna, Maeve and maybe Vanille. They will last you past the basic campaigns. During the basic campaigns you will find Isana, Beatrix, Luna and Felicity very useful.

As part of your bonus rewards for first 30 days, you will get the Star Platinum set, Sammy and Rose. Start using Rose as soon as you get her. The Star Platinum set is good, you’ll use parts of it for a long time.

Dusting Guide

So, you want to start Enhancing your gear, but you never seem to have enough dust. Dust is obtained by selecting items in your inventory and selecting Dismantle. Since Dismantle destroys the inventory item, that leaves the question what is the most efficient way to go about selecting what to Dismantle? There are several different schools of thought on this, but this is the method that works to build the most for me.

Your gear comes in differing Rarity. Many of each Rarity will need to be turned to Fodder to Upgrade items. Legendary and EpicRarity items should only be used for Fodder and not to Dismantle for Dust.

Your Common and Rare items are suggested for Dust collection, but you have to balance it so that you also have Fodder of those Rarity. You should choose an amount of Dust you want to have on hand and Farm that much and use the rest for Fodder

The maps in Campaign 3 all provide Rare items. The Boss maps will also have Epic or Legendary items. Rare items tend to get you the most Dust in the quickest manner. Here are the Maps to concentrate on when Farming for Dust:

• C3N9 – CDR Dust
• C3N23 – Attack Speed Dust
• C3N24 – Defense Dust
• C3N35 – Damage Dust & Crit Dust
• C3N52 – Dodge Dust
• C3N56 – Health Dust

Once you have an inventory full of Rare items, you now get to the tedious part of my system. Look at the stats on your items, there will be 2 of them on a Rare item. Add the two stat values together to get the total value for the item. This amount will range from 2 to 20. Now, use this value to decide how to dispose of these items:

• Value 2 – 11 Fodder it (won’t make enough Dust to bother)
• Value 12 – 16 Dismantle it as is
• Value 17 – 18 Upgrade to Level 3 and Dismantle
• Value 19 – 20 Upgrade to Level 4 and Dismantle

Using these values, you will typically Fodder enough low value Rare items to be able to Upgrade the ones you need to. You will soon find yourself producing thousands of Dust per inventory full of Farmed items.

TIP: Don’t do your items one at a time. Use the Select option in your inventory and check all the ones to Fodder and do them as a batch, then all the ones to Dismantle as is and do them as a batch, etc.

Reforged Set Items

Note: The following information is not mine. It is copied from information shared on Discord by Ardanis. It is shared here in its entirety.

• Voodoo Prince – for tank mages. One piece for resists. Second and third for DEF, if you have free slots in your build.
• Dragonscale – for skill user engineers. Two pieces for resists and 10 CDR. Optionally third piece for HP/def/respawn, if you don’t want to use another set (Designer, Mad Engineer, Flare, personals) for even more CDR.
• Grand Priest – for tank/caster supports. Two pieces (usually bood and boots) for resists and 10 CDR. Armor is usually skipped in favor of Curving Times set from arena shop.
• Bloody Gladiator – for DPS warriors. Full set used to be decent, but now with Old Blue Jacket available it is hardly worthwhile. Best use of it is probably boots for 10 lifesteal.
• Mildly Evil – for DPS mages (e.g. Maeve). One piece grants 50% bonus vs light/celestial enemies. Full set grants some dodge ignore and death immunity, but DPS mages aren’t meta in PvP, and dodge ignore is generally not important in PvE, so you may as well skip it if you have Vampire Queen set and/or some all class ultimates.
• Night Owl – 1-2 pieces could be useful to bring your marksman to 100% CST resistance, but otherwise it’s hardly worth the materials.
• Evil Priest – trash.

Reforged Ultimate Items

Note: The following information is not mine. It is copied from information shared on Discord by Ardanis. It is shared in its entirety.