While talking about the new Halloween Accessories, all sorts of amazing ideas popped up, that I figured it deserved its own thread. Also, the topic of how players should effectively use their equips to their maximum potential hasn't been explored deeply until now, so it's about high time that got addressed too.

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Originally Posted by Corintis

I'd say to use those equips however you want, for the most part.

The only method to efficiently use good equips that I can think of would be to give them to your Helper Squad units. That way, your allies will have a stronger team to rely on. The topic of efficient use of equips actually hasn't been explored that deeply on the forums, so that's all I got.

Originally Posted by Drip

Get at least 1 dressbloom (equipment) before spending pumpkins or anything on manyus.
There are 4 pieces of jewelry to equip, which are:
Ring (lots of ATK)
Earrings (rare, but also some ATK)
Bracelet (Defense)
Necklace (some Defense)

And I'd *really* suggest equiping them on your girls in that order too, so by the time you have dozens of girls, you can quickly see what she has equiped.

ATK is really the more useful stat, you want to stack as much as you can on a girl.
Every girl comes with the first slot unlocked, so if you have a ring (high ATK bonus), you should equip it right away.
The second slot is the first one you have to unlock. Most logical is to put the Earrings (lower ATK bonus) in that slot.
You can always put a Bracelet into the second slot if you don't have earrings available, or need the Def for a particular mission (doubtful, but it's possible). But if there's something your girls could skip for now, it's Defense, so you can postpone the third (bracelet) and especially the fourth (necklace) equipment slot until you're confident that you took care of higher priorities.

Originally Posted by Corintis

The order of priority on the Halloween Accessories is a bit skewed actually, since 3/4 of them are providing a hybrid of both Attack and Defense.

The Ring has the highest raw stats as usual, but the Bracelet is pretty unique; the Bracelet is a 5* rarity, so it can be leveled up to Lv.50, whereas the other pieces of the set can be leveled up to Lv.40. Up until now, 5* accessories were only obtainable from character quests, which are locked to that specific character. The Halloween Necklace also provides the hybrid of Attack/Defense, while the Earrings provide pure defense; completely opposite of what normal Earrings do, but it does so in double the normal amount.

Also bear in mind the level of importance of Attack vs Defense becomes very relative when you have enough 5* Knights to start synergizing their abilities together. Attack is both a standard and safe way to go, since it's the highest stat we can boost and multiply with equips and abilities, especially when starting out.

However, when it comes to specialized teams, there's no discernible difference between Offensive/Nuking squads vs Defensive/Tanky squads in terms of the damage they output. There's only two basic differences between the two; the first and obvious one is that Offensive Squads deal damage in a shorter timeframe, vice-versa. The second difference is that the Defensive Squads have more opportunities to activate Battle Skills over more turns, which helps to make up for their difference in attack power.

Originally Posted by Drip

Very true. I do believe however, that the Halloween jewelry could be put to better use by equiping it on one of the counter-attack ladies (provided you have one), like Rose (5*, gacha), Hypericum (5*, event) or Anemone (6*, gacha). It's great jewelry on any flowerknight, but even better on those that have an additional use for the defense.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Love the idea of the deflection girls, have we got 5 that we could use for a full deflect team or just those 3 mentioned? Maybe worth just putting massive defense buffers alongside those 3 though.

Originally Posted by sharkboyxs

and with the new upcoming event girl marvel of peru who hasve a skill counter its good to go

Tldr; As a golden standard, attack is the most reliable stat to boost (especially for new players starting off), so Rings and Earrings should be the first accessories to give to a Flower Knight, followed by Bracelets and Necklaces. However, when squads become specialized and use abilities that synergize with each other, that rule gets a little bit blurry.

For the new Halloween Accessories, a few ideas were brought up;

1. Give it to your Helper Squad - The Halloween Accessories are the best equips available to us right now. By equipping them onto your Helper Squad, it also gives your allies a stronger team to rely on.

2. Give it to your Weaker Units - The stat boosts are more than large enough to help make up for a difference in strength........and survivability.

3. Give it to Counterattackers - The Halloween Accessories are great jewelry on any Flower Knight, but even better on those that have an additional use for the defense.

I myself use defensive gear for my specialized Defense Squad, but I thought that Drip's idea was a stroke of genius (and totally didn't xfer the Pumpkin Ring over to Anemone after reading about it).

And on a somewhat separate note, here's a few links to some past discussions that hold some pretty informative tips for players, some of which aren't, but should be, in the List of Useful Links thread.

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Team Tactics
Waifus to farm and grind with
Equipment: Advice please?
Tips & Tricks on FKG - Be enlightened or teach us your ways

Ya it really seems anyone with Anemone gets a huge power boost with the Halloween set.

All accessories have diminishing returns. When you have a fully evolved character in both skills and stats, accessories help, but each additional point beyond the +10 ranked fully leveled accessories become less meaningful. My advice is to tailor accessories usage to shore up weaker units/characters, and bolster up units who aren't evolved/level capped yet. Anything else is a waste until the update in which we can start crafting equipment/accessories (the JP version has this), which then we can have a decent discussion at that time.

Accessories play a minor role right now because this game does not have a PvP option in which min-maxing would make more sense. Even in the PvE arena, you're quite limited to literally the weakest link in your units, and therefore you should devote more of your resources into character gathering and building instead.

Originally Posted by Discoceris

Anything else is a waste until the update in which we can start crafting equipment/accessories (the JP version has this), which then we can have a decent discussion at that time.

Eh? No such thing exists. The main difference with the dmm version, besides quantity, is the existence of okitaeeru stuff. But that's just manyu for equipment. Nothing more, nothing less.

I feel like it's worth mentioning that the most effective way of upgrading equipment is by combining two pieces you don't want to one fodder of level 9-10 and use 10 of these fodders to upgrade a piece you want to keep.

Just to add something that I haven't seen mentioned:
When I was first starting out, not too long ago (Geranium's event), I found it to be very useful to create teams of girls with similar survivability, that is with a close balance of Health and Defense. The idea being that if half your team is easily picked off, you end up in a situation where your strong girls are taking a lot more hits and therefore become less effective overall. My first draw was DiYu and she has very high defensive stats, so she would often end up fighting alone for several rounds.

I still try to balance my teams this way, but I find that defense seems to have less of an effect now as enemies that are strong enough to down my girls do so in very few hits. Additionally, this effect can also be achieved by grouping girls with similar survivability together, but it is still a major consideration for me when picking equipment for a 1 or 2 slot girl.

And on a somewhat separate note, here's a few links to some past discussions that hold some pretty informative tips for players, some of which aren't, but should be, in the List of Useful Links thread.

->Open Spoiler<-

Team Tactics
Waifus to farm and grind with
Equipment: Advice please?
Tips & Tricks on FKG - Be enlightened or teach us your ways

Added it now - lemme know of any others.

Originally Posted by Rupturez

I feel like it's worth mentioning that the most effective way of upgrading equipment is by combining two pieces you don't want to one fodder of level 9-10 and use 10 of these fodders to upgrade a piece you want to keep.

Yah; it's amazing. You get double the normal exp for half the cost! And it doesn't even take 2000 coins to level up a +10 Accessory (any accessory actually) up to half its maximum level. And I don't know if anyone's noticed, but those +10s actually give a lot of stats..........seriously.

That Lv.1 +10 Warrior Ring that gives you 1000 extra attack? That's the equivalent of giving a 5* Knight an extra 30 Lv.ups in their attack stat! Then, spend a little less than 2000 coins to boost that ring up to Lv.20 and now it gives an extra 15 Lv.ups on top of that, a +45 Lv.ups worth of attack stats. +10 Lv.1 Earrings will give an extra +5 Lv.ups worth.

The +10 Lv.1 Bracelet gives +25 Lv.ups and the +10 Lv.1 Necklace a +10 Lv.ups worth in a 5* Knight's defense stats.........buuuuut, the value of this stat isn't anywhere as easy to judge its value, like the Attack stat. Provided that the information on the wiki isn't wrong and the stats of all the pests listed in there are correct, figuring out the value of Defense isn't nearly as easy as adding together 1 + 1.

In a very short summary of the tests I ran, all the way up to Stage 12-5, you can negate all damage taken if your Defense more than doubles the value of the pest's Attack stat. However, it only takes a fraction of your Defense to the Pests' Attack power to reduce their damage by 50% (about 25% Def < Atk). Fortunately for us, all pests appear to only have 75-Defense, so there's no chance of them pulling that BS on us.

Here's a few noteworthy statistics that relate to the value of Defense:

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1. Among our current 45 5*s, a Lv70 (Max Affection) Knight's average Defense is 2203
2. Among our current 45 5*s, a Lv70 (Max Affection) Knight's average HP is 12,376
3. Stage 12-5's Pests have an average Attack of 2500
4. Stage 13-5's Pests have an average Attack of 5000
5. Stage E14, ?-8's Pests have an average Attack of 8000

Yeah rings are AMAZING. From personal experience they have the lowest droprate of all equipment too. Rolling +10 rings is pretty hard.

Originally Posted by Corintis

Yah; it's amazing. You get double the normal exp for half the cost! And it doesn't even take 2000 coins to level up a +10 Accessory (any accessory actually) up to half its maximum level. And I don't know if anyone's noticed, but those +10s actually give a lot of stats..........seriously.

That Lv.1 +10 Warrior Ring that gives you 1000 extra attack? That's the equivalent of giving a 5* Knight an extra 30 Lv.ups in their attack stat! Then, spend a little less than 2000 coins to boost that ring up to Lv.20 and now it gives an extra 15 Lv.ups on top of that, a +45 Lv.ups worth of attack stats. +10 Lv.1 Earrings will give an extra +5 Lv.ups worth.

The +10 Lv.1 Bracelet gives +25 Lv.ups and the +10 Lv.1 Necklace a +10 Lv.ups worth in a 5* Knight's defense stats.........buuuuut, the value of this stat isn't anywhere as easy to judge its value, like the Attack stat. Provided that the information on the wiki isn't wrong and the stats of all the pests listed in there are correct, figuring out the value of Defense isn't nearly as easy as adding together 1 + 1.

In a very short summary of the tests I ran, all the way up to Stage 12-5, you can negate all damage taken if your Defense more than doubles the value of the pest's Attack stat. However, it only takes a fraction of your Defense to the Pests' Attack power to reduce their damage by 50% (about 25% Def < Atk). Fortunately for us, all pests appear to only have 75-Defense, so there's no chance of them pulling that BS on us.

Here's a few noteworthy statistics that relate to the value of Defense:

->Open Spoiler<-

1. Among our current 45 5*s, a Lv70 (Max Affection) Knight's average Defense is 2203
2. Among our current 45 5*s, a Lv70 (Max Affection) Knight's average HP is 12,376
3. Stage 12-5's Pests have an average Attack of 2500
4. Stage 13-5's Pests have an average Attack of 5000
5. Stage E14, ?-8's Pests have an average Attack of 8000

Wait, how to get +10 equipment? I thought if you upgrade an equipment you can only increase its level?