Crusade: the (in)complete guide
(NOT REALLY COMPLETE YET. RELEASED EARLY AND INCOMPLETE JUST TO HELP PEOPLE WITH THE BASICS AND SOME OF THE ADVANCE FACTS FOR THE 12/5/2018 CRUSADE)
(WILL COMPLETE SOON)
Crusade is a mode in which Guilds fight other Guilds. Victory or defeat will determine the rewards earned and the ranking of each Guild. Every Crusade Season lasts 3 days. Your Guild will fight one Guild each of the three days.
Crusades are seasonal. Meaning that they aren’t always on. Crusade Seasons are usually announced with some days ahead in the Notice/News of the game.
Average, there is a Crusade every 2-3 weeks or so.
What are the rewards for participating in Crusades?
The main reason to play and win in Crusades, is to obtain Crusade Coins. Crusade Coins can be used in the Crusade Shop where players can buy Cosmo of the Three Gods (Athena, Poseidon and Hades).
Playing enough Crusades will allow any player to unlock these three powerful characters without spending any money in the game (F2P/Free To Play).
What do I need to participate in Crusade?
First of all, you need to belong to a Guild. If you don’t have one, check the Domestic and Global Chats in the game and look for people posting request for Guild Members.
Secondly, the Guild Master needs to set up a time in which the Guild wants to play Crusade.
And note that the times given are in UTC, so Google what each of those times are for your geographical timezone.
(3:00 UTC is 7pm for me here in Pacific Time)
Two Guilds will fight for 60 minutes. The goal is to score more than the enemy Guild at the end of the 60 minutes countdown.
Every member of a Guild will have a Defense Formation and an Attack pool.
The DEF Formation is made of 3 teams, and up to 15 characters.
The ATK pool can (and should) have 15 characters.
The total number of DEF Formations of a Guild will determine the number of DEFENSES the Guild has. Max 50.
(If a Guild has ideally all of its 50 members set up for Crusade, the Guild will have a total of 50 Defenses)
You as a player will use characters from your Attack Pool to attack and defeat the enemy Guild Defenses. That means you will fight against the Defense Teams that the players in the enemy guild have set up.
You will need to defeat the 3 teams of that player DEF Formation in order to take down that Defense.
Failing to do so will not count as a Defense taken, although if you killed a character or a whole team during your try, they will remain dead the next time you or another team member tries it.
Their HP will also remain exactly the same as they had it the second your battle finished and you lost. (if one of their characters was almost dead, they will still be with low HP when you go to fight them again).
To attack an enemy Defense, you need to click in the Battle button
This will select a RANDOM enemy Defense from the ones that haven’t been taken down already.
If you feel you can’t beat it or prefer to see if you can fight someone else, you can click on the back button and click on Battle again.
However, the game can be sometimes very broken and only show you the same enemy over and over, so be aware of that.
Once you have defeated a Defense, you will score for your Guild and add to the total Guild Combo.
The total score of your Guild and the enemy Guild’s will be shown in the main screen of Crusade. Your Guild always in blue, the enemy always in red.
(Always try to keep the blue crossing the middle line!!)
When your Guild, or the enemy Guild takes down all of the Defenses, a big Bang Attack will happen.
A Big Bang Attack lasts for 3 minutes and allows the Guild who took all the enemy defenses down to score a MASSIVE amount of points during that time.
Ideally players use the Cost: 15 BBA to score 3 times as much in the same time that it takes to use the Cost: 5. The idea of the BBA is to score as much as you can.
When you attack on a Big Bang Attack, a random character from your ATK Pool will appear on screen (what character appears has no effect or makes any difference in the score)
And then your BBA score will appear
(We will go more in detail later about how to optimize BBA scores, Battle Scores and Combo Scores)
When the BBA ends, the Defenses of the defending Guild are restored, and the other Guild will have to take all of them down again to reach another BBA.
When the enemy Guild wipes out all of your Guild’s Defenses, they will get their BBA Chance.
For the duration of their BBA, all the participating members of the Guild can choose to BLOCK.
Blocking will decrease the score that the enemy Guild is earning during their BBA by a percentage. Each blocking member blocks for 1%, no matter the level of the player.
However, blocking will keep you unable to do anything until the enemy BBA is over and your Defenses are revived.
You cannot cancel the block once you started it.
All the guild members will see a BLUE countdown above the Guild Button in the Main Menu THE PREVIOUS DAY to the beginning of Crusade Season.
NOTE: It does not mark the beginning of the actual Crusade that you can play. It just marks the beginning of that Crusade Season and will reach zero exactly at Date Reset.
After the Date is reset, Crusade Season will be on and you will see a new RED countdown above the Guild Button in the Main menu.
Clicking on the Guild Button and the Crusade Mode once in the Guild Menu, you will see that same red countdown.
When this countdown reaches zero, the actual Crusade of your Guild will start
Every character has a Crusade Skill (some powerful characters have two). There are different ones and each one has a different effect during a Crusade. There are ATK and DEF skills.
Increases the Score gained when you are attacking during a BBA if this character is in your Attack Pool.
Increases the Score earned if the character with this skill is in the Attack team (NOTE: the character needs to be in the attacking team, it doesn’t count if the character is simply in the Attack Pool of 15 characters.)
Increases the Combo earned if the character with this skill is in the Attack team (NOTE: same as with BT, the character needs to be in the team of 5 that is attacking, it doesn’t count just by being in the pool)
When a Defense team wins against an attack attempt and they have a character with this skill in the team, the team will heal for a set amount. (usually their HP remains as low or high as it was at the end of the fight)
A Defense Team with a character with this skill in it will receive a set % less damage. However, the character with this skill will only be able to perform charge skills and nothing else (unless there is an exception that specifically states in the description of the Crusade Skill that allows the character to cast a skill other than the charge skill). The character will stand static and only able to perform charge skills (or any allowed skill if any)
If you are attacking a team and any of the defending characters has a Defensive Crusade Skill, it will show in a dialogue at the beginning of the fight
(in the case shown above, three characters have Defensive Crusade Skills: one Damage Cut, and two Recovery)
There are also 2 different types that all Crusade Skills can be:
Quality: the quality of the Crusade Skill will be determined by the roman number in front of the skill, and goes from 1 to 3 (I, II, III). The higher the number, the higher the effect of the Crusade Skill will be.
Type: Crusade Skills can be intensive, standard, or delayed. (Exception: all Damage Cut and Combo Plus skills are Standard and won’t have any indication in the name).
Intensive Crusade Skills are stronger than Delayed and Standard ones at lower levels, while Delayed is stronger than Intensive and Standard at higher to MAX levels.
Standard are never the worst, and never the strongest.
Additionally, there are special types like “LG Exclusive”, or “Specter Exclusive”. They are usually stronger than all the other ones, so nurture those first!
Combo is an essential part of Crusade and a vital factor to win. The main function of the Combo is to increase by a % the score earned by all the Guild members when attacking a Defense or attacking during a BBA.
Every time an enemy Defense is taken down, a player will not only score points for the Guild, but will also increase the Combo of the Guild.
The Combo stacks up and increases with every Guild member that is attacking. The higher the combo, the higher the % score bonus for the Guild will be.
However, the Combo needs to be maintained or it will DIE.
A countdown with the words “until combo ends” will mark when the Combo needs to be maintained.
Every time one of your guild members joins a fight, that timer will reset back to 1:59
Specifically, the moment they click on the “Start battle” button, that timer will reset.
This means that there can’t be 2 full minutes since someone clicked that button and until someone in your guild clicks it again to join another fight.
If the Guild fails at starting a battle in those 2 minutes, the Combo will die and it will go back to zero. All Score bonus will be gone and the combo will need to be build up again.
This will surely mean defeat in an even match because you lost a big advantage and your enemy will keep their combo going higher and higher, scoring more and more than you.
Crusade Stamina is a different kind of stamina that is determined by the player’s PREMIUM RANK. It refills one per minute.
During a Crusade, every player has 2 free Stamina refills. After that, any refill needs to be done using Energy Fruits that can be purchased in the Shop, Rare Shop and Premium Shop for 300 Holy Stones each.
They can also be earned as reward for Guild Missions and at the end of a Crusade Season.
There is also a limit of times that a player can refill Stamina, no matter how many Energy Fruits they own.
Optimizing your Attack Pool
So you know now that you need 15 characters in your ATK Formation and that they have Crusade Skills that will increase Battle Score, Combo or BBA Score. So what to put there now?
There are several things to consider:
BBA Score is determined by the Total Power of your ATK Formation. This means that the sum of the Power stat of all your 15 Saints in the ATK Formation will determine how good your BBA score will be. So consider including characters with high Power in the ATK Pool.
BBA Score Crusade Skills will further improve your BBA Score, so you might also want to consider adding characters with the best BBA Skills (III, Exclusive, etc)
You will need characters that can defeat enemies in actual fights, so don’t forget to include those characters you trust the most in battle.
If those 5 characters that you would include in your attacking team have powerful BT Score or Combo Crusade Skills, that would be optimal. Not always possible, but worth considering.
Consider having some characters with good Combo Crusade Skills. You will eventually encounter Defenses that have very low level units defending them. The score you will obtain against a low level defense is very small, HOWEVER the Combo score you earn is exactly the same, no matter the level of the enemy. Hence you will benefit your Guild a lot more if you attack a low level Defense with a team fully made of characters with Combo Crusade Skills.
Optimizing your Defense Formation
If you are thinking about putting your best units in Defense so your enemies have a hard time defeating it, consider the points mentioned in the previous “Optimizing your Attack Pool” section, because sometimes our best units have Skills that would benefit the Guild if they were in the Attack Pool. Also consider your player level. If you don’t have a high level, your team will probably be easily defeated even if you put your best units in Defense.
The better your defense and the higher their level, the more points it is going to give to the enemy team if defeated. Some people prefer to 1 level 1 character in every of the 3 teams to give no points to the enemy Guild. However, this strategy can easily backfire if they are defeated by a team with high Combo Plus Crusade Skills.
If you don’t have a high level, the best you can do with your defenses is trying to make the enemy Guild waste their time. This is vital in Crusade because if you force the enemy Guild to need even just one more second every fight, it will mean minutes later on that they will have wasted and that could mean a whole BBA that they didn’t have time to reach. And so, the difference between victory or defeat.
There are several units that waste time. New Andromeda Shun revives when defeated and needs to be taken down by a number of hits or he will revive again and again. Phoenix Ikki revives once as well. Surplice Camus revives and becomes invulnerable for some seconds once. Virgo Shun and Geki Bear survive beyond their HP when awakened to Seventh Sense... etc.
There are characters that are Crusade Defense Specialists. For example Final Pegasus Seiya whose Damage Cut Crusade Skill will make it harder for the team to die, and his Charge Skill will make the fight start from scratch for the enemy team, making it longer and wasting their time.
Other highly defensive characters like Hypnos, Abel or Shaka Spear will extend the fights and make the Defending team hard to kill, or at least waste the enemy time much longer.
However, you will have to consider losing some of their powerful Crusade Skills if you put them in your Defense Formation instead of your Attack Pool (like mentioned in Point 1)
There are also characters that are useful for Crusade Defenses when they die. Kanon God Cloth, or Libra Shiryu for example, will deplete the enemy team Cosmo Gauge when they die. You can consider putting them in your defenses barely leveled up (just enough to awaken the needed skill, usually Silver Rank/level 53) just so they die quick and mess the enemy Cosmo gauge, forcing the fight to last longer. Some people put them as the only character in the second team. This way, the enemy team will be forced to start the fight against your third team completely depleted of cosmo gauge, and will lose the advantage of starting the third fight with full Cosmo gauges.
Guild Organization, strategy and communication
