Lost Swords is a 2D idle RPG side-scrolling game boasting high-quality Live2D animations and captivating visuals. If you’re diving into this adventure, you’re in for a treat!Â
This guide will walk you through everything you need to start your journey, from understanding the gameplay mechanics to optimizing your resources.
Table of Contents
Characters
Lost Swords offers a diverse roster of characters, with a majority being female. Notably, there are only three male characters in the game.Â
Rumors suggest that all male characters from the Closed Beta Test (CBT), except the main character and the 4-star Grandpa, may be removed, potentially leaving no male characters in the future.Â
This unique roster dynamic caters to the game’s fan base, with a heavy emphasis on visually appealing designs and playful fan-service elements.
What sets this game apart is its unique fan-service approach: when characters take damage, pieces of their clothing tear, creating a humorous and lighthearted atmosphere.Â
This mechanic adds an extra layer of charm to the game, paired with stunning skill animations featuring anime-like styles.Â
The game’s story is equally engaging, filled with memes and charming character interactions.Â
While many players might skip the story to reroll, we recommend giving it a read – it’s delightful and entertaining!
Content Overview
- Solo and Co-op Raid Bosses:Â Raid bosses provide valuable materials for upgrades and crafting gear and a wide variety of rewards, making them essential for progression.Â
- PvP Content:Â Compete against other players to test your team setups and earn weekly rewards. and exchange pvp currency for valuable items.
- Guild Raids:Â Engage in large-scale battles with your guild to earn rare resources and shop currency and build camaraderie.
- Tower Infinite Climbing Content:Â Challenge yourself by climbing as high as possible, earning increasingly better rewards as you progress.
- Roguelike Labyrinth Dungeon:Â A weekly mode that emphasizes strategy and resource management with high-stakes consequences.
- Regular Events:Â Participate in time-limited events to gain exclusive characters, pets, and other rewards. Staying active in these events is crucial for maximizing your progression.
Combat System
The game’s combat mechanics are reminiscent of classic gacha games but with some unique twists.Â
Lost Swords features seven elements: Fire, Nature, Radiance, Chaos, Shock, Frost, and Holy. Each element has its strengths and weaknesses:
- Elemental Advantages: Attacking with an advantageous element deals 30% more damage.
- Elemental Disadvantages: Attacking with a disadvantageous or weaker element deals 30% less damage.
- Holy Element: Holy characters have no elemental weaknesses, making them the strongest and rarest in the game. These characters are ideal for general use and excel in all content types.
To make the most of this system, diversify your team to include multiple elements. This ensures you can handle a variety of enemies in different stages. and in some end game content you have to start building some mono element teams just keep it in mind.
Team Setup
In Lost Swords, you can deploy a party of five characters arranged in three rows, with each row accommodating up to two units:
- Front Row: Best suited for melee characters with high HP and DEF stats. These units excel at tanking damage and dealing close-range attacks.
- Mid Row: Ideal for ranged and AoE damage dealers and CC units. This position keeps them protected while maximizing their offensive potential.
- Back Row: Reserved for healers and supports, ensuring they remain safe while keeping your team alive and boosting their performance.
The game features four classic classes—Knight, Archer, Wizard, and Healer—each fitting naturally into these rows based on their role.
Aggro Mechanics and Leveling
Enemies' Basic Attacks primarily target the front row, with aggro decreasing for units in the mid and back rows.ÂAggro is also influenced by character placement within a row; for example, if two units occupy the front row, the close range melee character will typically be targeted first.
To ensure your frontline can withstand enemy attacks, prioritize leveling up your tank characters.Â
Note that if your team’s average level is lower than the boss’s level, you’ll incur a debuff, further emphasizing the importance of maintaining strong frontline units.
Synergy and Team Optimization
Building a synergistic team is key to success.ÂSkills and Resources
Each character has four skills: one Ultimate, one Active, and two Passives. These skills are crucial to your character’s performance, so prioritizing the right ones is essential for success.Â
Keep in mind that each skill can be leveled up individually.
Skill Upgrades
Skill pages are a limited resource, and you’ll need them to level up your main party for late-game and hard content.Â
Make sure to Save them early on, as you’ll always be short of them later. Don’t waste skill pages on low-tier characters, as it will make progressing difficult. Focus on characters that are A-tier or above (or B-tier if you want to go for a lower-level team).Â
For detailed character rankings, check our Tier List here,To know what character is worth building.
When upgrading skills, prioritize Active and Ultimate skills first, as they have the most significant impact in combat.Â
Some passives, especially for damage dealers, are also worth leveling up to further boost their dammage, And particularly those support passives that provide team-wide buffs.Â
Farming Resources
- EXP Dungeons: Efficiently level up your characters by clearing these dungeons daily.
- Tower Stages: Progressing through the tower provides both EXP and valuable upgrade materials.
- Story Stages: Early-game freebies can give you a head start, so clear them whenever possible.
Equipments
Characters can equip four gear types, each with main and sub-stats. Gear rarity ranges from Common / Green to Rare / Gold, with higher rarities offering better stats.
Early-Game Gear Tips
- Blue Gear: Abundant in story stages and sufficient for initial progression.
- Stat Prioritization: Focus on percentage-based sub-stats over flat stats for better scaling.and make sure to save and level gear with three sub-stats for long-term upgrades.
Stonehenge Domain
Stonehenge Domain is a challenging area where you face waves of mobs and use a Stonehenge Boss Ticket to summon the boss.Â
Defeating the boss rewards you with gear drops. However, many players might not realize that this domain can also be farmed daily to gain an early advantage in obtaining good gear.
If you’re looking to maximize your progress early on, the game allows you to farm the Stonehenge Domain for 10 minutes daily without using the Boss Summon Ticket, up to 120 minutes if you buy the compass from the shop to extend the duration.
Simply go to the first floor or your highest floor you're able to enter, Summon the boss for your dailies missions, enter the domain back again and this time arround set the game to auto, and focus on farming the mobs. Avoid summoning the boss during this time. By doing this, you can earn a decent amount of purple - Gold gear drops by just defeating and farming the mobs, which are essential for tackling harder content and advancing through the story.
Keep in mind that purple gear is challenging to acquire consistently early on, and gold gear is nearly impossible to obtain at this stage.Â
Take your time and don’t feel pressured to grind if it’s not your playstyle—once you reach stage 14-10, you’ll start seeing regular purple gear drops to support your progress.
Chaos Cube
Grinding in Stonehenge allows you to obtain Chaos Cubes by dismantling rare equipment.Â
The amount you receive depends on the grade of the dismantled gear—the higher the grade, the greater the rewards. These materials can then be used to strengthen your Chaos Cube, improving your overall performance.
In short, the more equipment you farm in Stonehenge, the more resources you’ll have to upgrade your Chaos Cube, which ultimately leads to higher character specs.
While the Chaos Cube boost is smaller compared to the significant power spike provided by Holy Relics, it’s still a valuable way to enhance your stats and progress further.
Enhancing Gear
Start enhancing your gear to +5 for your main characters, especially before attempting challenging content like solo raids.Â
Enhancing gear early will give you the edge needed to take on tougher bosses, and you can use raid drops to craft even better gear.
Bosses in this game are difficult to defeat without strong gear, and it can take a while to acquire better equipment. if you’re low on gold, consider farming Gold Dungeons to make the most of your blue / purple equipments early on.
Start enhancing gear to +5 for your main characters and especially before attempting challenging content like solo raids because you can use the drops to carft better gear. and the boss is really hard to beat without proper investement.
Gear enhancement becomes expensive after reaching level 5, so it’s wise to stay at +5 until you reach a point where you can obtain a better piece of gear to replace it. If you don’t get a better piece, by that time you will get enough gold so feel free to max out your current gear.Â
Resources are limited in this game, so avoid overspending until you really need to, and prioritize upgrades for your main team to stay efficient.
Specialties
Each character can equip Specialties, which are additional random stats that enhance their abilities. You can roll for three specialties, each granting a random stat.Â
These stats include:
- HP Recovery
- ATK Increase
- Boss Attack
- Melee Attack
- Ranged Attack
- Magic ATK
- Defense Increase
- Critical Resistance
- HP Increase
- Crit Damage Increase
Optimization Tips
Each specialty has a random value, with a minimum and maximum range. The game allows you to lock a specific specialty to target its max value, while rerolling others. However, locking multiple specialties can become costly.
To optimize your character, focus on maximizing stats that align with their role and your needs. And be mindful of resource costs when locking multiple specialties.
Transcend and Resonance
In Lost Swords, the dupe system plays a crucial role in enhancing your characters’ power.Â
Unlike typical gacha systems, when you get duplicates of a character, you can either increase their power through Transcend or Resonance. Each character has up to five transcendence levels, with each level granting stat boosts and skill upgrades.
Transcend SystemÂ
Once you max out a character’s transcendence, you can Awaken them, further boosting their stats and skills, unlocking their highest form.
Resonance SystemÂ
The initial transcendence levels offer minor upgrades compared to later ones, making resonance an essential first step.
For instance, the free MC card can be used on your tank or front-row character to boost their damage, and the 4-star Holy Sword’s Blessing this one is a lif saver and a must-have for your tank to progress in harder content.
Pets System
Pets in Lost Swords are more than cosmetic; they provide buffs, and possess unique skills.Â
Like characters, pets are arranged in three rows (front, mid, and back), but only one pet per row is active.
Pet Stats
Main Stats:
- Defense
- Attack
- HP
Secondary Stats:
- Additional damage
- Damage reduction
- Critical damage increase
- Healing received increase
- Status effect resistance increase
- Flat stats like HP and HP recovery
5-star pets provide significantly higher stat bonuses compared to lower rarities.Â
You can also unlock additional substats by transcending your pets.
Transcendence
Pets have their own transcendence system. Each transcendence increases their main stats by 12%, with a a 36% to 96% increase from a non-transcendent and a 5-transcendent pet.Â
This makes transcending pets extremely important for maximizing their potential.
Strategy
Focus on obtaining one strong pet and invest in it when it appears on a rate-up banner.Â
While the pet banners are cheaper than character banners, maxing out a specific pet can still become costly.
When arranging pets, be mindful that only the pet placed in the red space at the very front will use its skill, so position your pets carefully for maximum impact.
Holy Relics
Relics have four lines of stats, and upgrading them follows a cyclical process. Each cycle upgrades one sub-stat at a time:
- Start with Sub-Stat 1, then progress to Sub-Stat 2, Sub-Stat 3, and Sub-Stat 4.
- Completing one upgrade cycle increases the overall Relic Level, which boosts all sub-stats further when completing the 4 cycle upgrade.
- With each level, the material cost for upgrades increases while also it gives you higher stat boost in return, making it crucial to use resources wisely.
It’s important not to invest excessively in upgrading all relics equally, as you’ll face diminishing returns. Overcommitting to upgrades on a specific relic becomes inefficient when compared to diversifying your resources.
Relic Effects
- Holy Grail: Provides attack increase, defense increase, HP increase, and critical damage.
- Holy Lance: Increases melee Attack, ranged Attack, and magic attack, along with a PvE attack increase.
- Holy Scabbard: Enhances melee defense, ranged defense and magic defense, plus PvE defense.
Don’t overlook leveling up your Holy Relics, as they significantly boost your character’s power.Â
There's no strictly "right" or "wrong" approach to upgrading your relics, tailoring them to your needs is essential. However, for maximum efficiency, consider this recommended approach:
Recommended Upgrade Path
- Holy Scabbard: Begin by completing four cycles of upgrades for the Holly Scabbard.
- Holy Lance: Move on to four cycles for the Lance.
- Holy Grail: Upgrade the Grail through three cycles, but skip the critical damage upgrade in the fourth cycle. The critical damage boost is relatively minor compared to the benefits of the other relics.
- Repeat: Go back to 4 Cycles upgrade the next Level for the Holly Scabbard, Next 4 cycle Holy Lance.
- Finally finish the 4th line upgrade for the Holly Grail and 3 Cycle the Next LevelÂ
This process might seem complicated initially, but once you start upgrading, it becomes intuitive.
To illustrate, here’s my personal approach:
- Holy Scabbard: Level 31
- Holy Lance: Level 28
- Holy Grail: Level 27 (avoiding critical damage upgrades until the other relics are maxed).
Next Steps:
- After maxing the Scabbard at Level 32, I'll upgrade the Lance to Level 32.
- Then, I'll return to the Grail and upgrade it to Level 31.
- From there, I’ll repeat the cycle—starting with the Scabbard, followed by the Lance, and finally the Grail.
This cyclical approach ensures the most efficient use of resources while maximizing your character’s power. Prioritize relics that address gaps in your stats, such as defense from the Scabbard or attack boosts from the Lance.
Why Start with the Scabbard?Â
The Holy Scabbard provides a crucial defense boost, and it's harder to obtain defense stats compared to attack and HP from other resources.Â
The boost from the Holy Scabbard and Holy Lance is much more impactful than the boost from the Holy Grail, so it’s best to prioritize them first.
Growth Points and Recommended Allocation
Growth Points are a vital part of progression, offering flat stat boosts across four categories:
Valor: Increases flat attack.Protection: Increases flat defense.
Chaos: Provides additional boss attack.
Indomitable: Boosts flat HP.
Much like the Holy Relics system, Growth Points quickly hit diminishing returns as you upgrade them, especially when combined with external buffs. Therefore, the optimal strategy is to focus on maxing one category at a time before moving to the next.
Suggested Allocation Path
Start with Protection: Defense buffs are limited in comparison to attack buffs from other systems like gear, passives, and pets. Maxing Protection first ensures you have a sturdy base to handle tougher content.Move to Indomitable: Once Protection is maxed, prioritize HP to further increase survivability. This extra durability can be critical in high-difficulty battles.
Choose Valor if Necessary: If you're struggling with progression or feel stuck in story content, consider boosting Valor for extra attack power. This can help you break through challenging stages.
Finish with Chaos: Boss attack bonuses are situational, so leave this for last once other categories are fully upgraded.
Gacha System
Lost Swords features a straightforward gacha system with both character and pet banners available:
Limited Banners:
Standard Banners:
And for all the Banners including Limited And Standard both Characters and PetsÂ
feature a 3% drop rate for 5★ units. With A hard pity system ensures a guaranteed 5★ unit drop after 120 pulls.ÂGuild System
Joining a guild in Lost Swords is highly beneficial and should be prioritized as soon as possibe, even if it’s a small guild. Here's why:
Raid Tickets:
- Guild shops allow you to purchase raid tickets using guild donation points. These tickets are essential for participating in boss raids.
Boss Raids:
- Always participate in boss raids. They offer valuable random drops and materials.
- With 100 materials, you can craft unique equipment, making raids a critical part of progression.
Gear and Resources:
- Guild shops provide access to additional gear and items that are otherwise hard to acquire.
Tip: Make it a habit to donate regularly to your guild to earn donation points and maximize your access to raid tickets and other benefits.
Town
Don’t overlook the Town in Lost Swords—it offers unique opportunities to enhance your gameplay:
Building Upgrades:
Character Testing:
The village lets you test your characters and even check out their death animations (ifykyk).Golden Egg Easter Egg:
Keep experimenting and exploring the village—it’s a hidden gem for resources and fun interactions can yield additional resources and hidden bonuses, so don’t neglect this area.
Labyrinth Dungeon
The Labyrinth Dungeon in Lost Swords is a roguelike competitive mode offering three difficulty rewards strategy and adaptability. Plan routes, manage resources, and aim for the highest rewards weekly.Â
Here’s how to make the most of it:
Key Features
- Difficulty Levels: Choose from three difficulties, with higher scores and better rewards at harder levels.
- Weekly Reset: The dungeon resets weekly, so plan your runs to complete it before the reset.
- Character Loss: If a characters dies in the Labyrinth, just take a break and comeback when you're prepared and try again.
Optimal Strategy
Route Planning:
Prioritize Treasures and Mystery Cards, followed by Mobs, Goddess Statues, and Healing Points.Avoid unnecessary mob fights as they do not grant buffs like in other games.Â
Preparation:
Ensure your team is strong and fully prepared before entering. Aim to complete the hardest difficulty once your characters are fully leveled and geared to maximize rewards.- Take a Break: Step away from the content and focus on other activities in the game.Â
- Claim Expedition Rewards: Use the downtime to collect expedition rewards, which help you level up and strengthen your characters.Â
- Use Food Buffs: Always eat food before challenging difficult content. These buffs are critical for overcoming tougher battles, as the game balances hard content with the assumption that you’re using them.Â
We hope this beginner’s guide helps you navigate Lost Swords. Enjoy your journey, and good luck with your summons!
