1. HMB
2. Guide - Strategy

While the brief in-game tutorial the game forces you to complete shows off some of the game mechanics, a lot of players end up feeling stuck because of a steep difficulty curve that separates the early game from the mid-game. A lot of times, they find that they've invested time building up the wrong teams, and are unable to clear content that sends them for a loop. Here are a few tips for how to take down two of the game's most infamous hurdles:

Most Xens have a total of three skills. In order to unlock their third skill, you’ll have to farm “The Threat” for Evolution Gems. All skills can be leveled up using another unit of the same type to power up, up to a certain limit.

Skills can roughly be broken up into four target types:

• Single-Target Attack / Debuff
  
• AOE Attack / Debuff
  
• Single-Target Heal / Buff
  
• AOE Heal / Buff

In (most?) cases, the Auto-battle AI will use skills from right to left, and prioritize single target attacks in order of (Weak Element) → (Neutral Weakness - Lowest HP) → (Strong Element).

Because of this, Auto-battles are a great way to farm, but because of how the AI uses skills, it's not usually the best choice for pushing new content, such as Difficult Story Stages, Xen Labs, Events, or in PvP. The AI has certain behaviors that will dictate when to use skills and which enemy to target, but sometimes, these decisions are better left to the player.

Here's a quick match to help illustrate:
https://ibb.co/PQbhKz4 Normally, Truffle's player AI will use her skills right to left as soon as they're off cooldown. Since both of them are AOE skills, this happens regardless of the enemy team. But in this situation, since there are no healers, there's not much reason for her to use her second skill to deny their healing, meaning using that is just a wasted turn, one she could use for her (much stronger) single-target attack!

Also, since she's weak to green, that means the Green Ibis + Aster will focus all of their single-target attacks on her! Meanwhile, since Aster has more HP all of your single-target attacks would normally focus fire on Ibis, even though Aster usually does more burst damage over a short period of time. And since Truffle's weak to Green, she'd start by firing on the Light Ibis, where she's not at a disadvantage, spreading out the damage over more of their team.

Instead of giving the Asters enough time to take down Truffle, I decide to focus all my fire on them. https://ibb.co/Tt6F27p As soon as I fire off everyone's AOE skills, I make sure that everyone - even Truffle - is using their strongest single-target attacks to take down the two Asters, only pausing to heal Truffle or fire off their AOE skills again when they come off cooldown. Once I’ve gotten rid of the two Asters, I can take my time with the Green Ibis before the next round, heal up, and even reset everyone’s skill charges.

Once you hit a certain level, you’ll unlock “The Threat” in Special Missions. The Threat is a recurring daily dungeon that gives players three opportunities to obtain evolution gems each day, with a different colored evolution crystal being offered depending on the day of the week (and multiple on weekends).

Since each mission is element-based, it’s important to think about who on your team is tanking.
Since Azalea is my only Light unit here, all of the enemies in this stage will focus their fire on her, instead of the units they’re disadvantaged against: https://ibb.co/N2LDYjQ

Keep in mind there’s no clear type advantage for Threat Light & Threat Dark, so you might need to Build a Dedicated Tank to handle them. [see further below]

The biggest challenge at the end of the early game comes in Chapter Nine.

Up until now, you may have been able to get away with not worrying so much about the overall makeup of your team. But in Chapter IX, you begin to see strong Mono-Color teams which start to underline some of the key areas where your team might be lacking, including the infamous 9-7, where all of your best-laid plans seemingly go out the window.

But a lot of the difficulty of these stages can be mitigated with some advanced planning early in the game - as well as a little bit of blessing from lady luck!

In particular, 9-7 is difficult for three reasons:

• Large Spike in Levels / Stats
  
• All Dark Units = No Clear Elemental Advantage
  
• Top Tier Xens with all 3 Skills

While dealing with the first point seems obvious, the true challenge comes from problems two and three. In order to level the playing field, you’ll first need to [1] EVO your best Xens, which means farming the “The Threat” (see above) & [2] Build a Dedicated “Tank”

Up until now, you've likely been able to always send out your top Xens based on their elemental affinities. But for 9-7, the only elemental affinities are Light & Dark, meaning that all Light units will take & receive 2X damage.

Combined with the big increase in stats, your Light units will most likely get destroyed in the very first round (including even Azalea & Aster). This means that some of the strongest early-game staples are rendered useless, requiring you to rely on the rest of your multicolored team.

While this may not seem like it'd be as much of a problem on its own, something that stage underlines is the importance of having a dedicated tank for your team.

Unfortunately, building a tank is often harder than you think. Contrary to other games, in HMB, your tank will need to have the LOWEST HP of everyone on your team. This is required for tanking because it tells the AI to focus all their attacks on them, as long as they don't have an elemental advantage over anyone else.

In order to do this, you'll usually have to boost the HP of your OTHER units while keeping your tank's HP as low as you can. The only way to do this is by giving chips with a “Main Bonus” of +DEF % to your tanks (usually Azalea, Truffle, and sometimes Daphney) and chips with a “Main Bonus” of +HP % to the other Xens on your team.

At the beginning of the game, it's easy to get caught up investing in the wrong Xens. Early on, you're unlikely to have a lot of choices in which Xens you're using, so it's a lot more likely you'll spend time leveling up the Xens you have and not thinking much about whether or not that Xen will be good in the long run. Unfortunately, that means you might end up spending a lot of time & resources on Xens that might not be as useful for you in the long run.

https://ibb.co/3cZt50r
Take a look at the above screenshot - at a glance, Catmint seems to have a clear advantage over Lily, since she comes at stage 3 out of the box. But keep in mind that the rarer the Xen, the harder it is to EVO & improve her skills. And unfortunately for Catmint, her skills don’t improve as much as some of the other Xens, so it’s still better to focus on building up Lily in the long run.

But you might want to keep that Catmint around... at least, until Azalea gets to Level 25! That’s because the cost for ascending Xens to the next Tier is the same # of Xens as the tier you're coming from, which means you need to “sacrifice” three Tier-3 Xens to get Azalea to Tier-4. Coming up with a solid long-term plan for tiering up Xens will help make the transition from the early-mid game go a lot smoother for you.

Here are some Top Xens for Beginners you should prioritize tiering up early on:

• Lily
• Azalea
• Vera

You may have also noticed that each Xen also has slightly different stats depending on their color. This makes more of a difference in the endgame, but here's a quick guide to the best early-game Xens for each color. Consider these more as "soft" recommendations, especially when considering the three above.

• Red: Lily, Azalea, Vera, Ibis, Daphne
• Blue: Lily, Silk, Thalia
  
• Green: Lily, Vera, Ibis, Catmint
  
• Light: Azalea, Lily, Vera
  
• Dark: Lily, Vera, Azalea

Once you reach level 14, you can also begin farming Xen Labs - where you should focus on obtaining Light Aster as soon as possible! Keep in mind that not all base tier-4 Xens will be as good as Aster and Thalia (Blue), but all of them are fine to keep around to upgrade your Tier 5/Tier 6 Xens.

Managing your chips is another big part of planning. Once you reach the mid-late game, most of your progression will come in the form of upgrading and optimizing the chips for your best Xens. The game doesn't do a great job of explaining the chip system, so you can quickly get into some problems if you place the wrong chips on your Xens, only to find that you need to pay a costly fee to remove them.

In order to prevent this, it's very important to take a look at the "Bonus Set" & "Main Bonus" on every chip you're using.

Early on, it's OK to only focus on finding the right "Bonus Set", as one - three-star chips are relatively cheap to remove, but in the long term, it's important to think of your six chips as a complete set and understand which stats you'd like to boost. Also, keep in mind that a Chip with a “Main Bonus” +STAT % will (almost) always be more effective than a “flat” +STAT chip over time.

Here are some quick suggestions to get you started:
Lily, Vera, Ibis: HP% + ATK% + SPD
Azalea, Daphne: Def% + SPD

Early on, it's usually best to prioritize pushing unlocking content over farming, because you are able to unlock a number of unique stages by getting to the end of story mode on easy. Easy difficulty will continue to be useful late into the endgame because it has a lower energy cost than Hard or Hell difficulty, which makes it cheaper to obtain Xen Fragments or whole Xens, however, Hell difficulty is usually the best place to farm, as it will give much greater EXP and is the only difficulty where you can obtain five-star chips.

Here are a few stages that are useful to farm:

Easy Difficulty:
* Chapter VIX, Missions 2 & 4 - Blue Thalia & Super Cubes
* Lost Colony I, Mission 7 - Green Aster, Super Cubes, & Special Fragments
* Lost Colony 2, Mission 6 - Light Truffle, Super Cubes, & Special Fragments
* Lost Colony 3, Mission 7 - Lobelia, Super Cubes, & Special Fragments

Hard Difficulty:
See below

Hard Difficulty:
* Chapter III- Mission 1 - Red Azalea
* Chapter III: Mission 6 - Dark Azalea
* Chapter III: Mission 7 - Light Azalea + Def Chips
* Chapter IV, Mission 1 - Red Ibis
* Chapter IV, Mission 7 - Spd Chips
* Chapter V, Mission 7 - Crit Rate Chips
* Chapter VII, Mission 7 - HP/Attack Chips + Super Cubes
* Chapter VIII, Mission 7 - Def/Spd Chips + Super Cubes

Essentials Shop:
Here's what your should prioritize buying with your gems, with few exceptions:
A) Safe of Coins
B) Briefcase of Coins
C) Super Cubes Pack

Coins are generally the most valuable resource in the game, so your gems should be spent on the Safe of Coins in most instances. If you can't stand to wait, the Briefcase of Coins can be a good intermediate step. If you're low on strong Xens, you may also benefit from buying the Super Cubes Pack early on.

*Note that because Xens can be bought from the marketplace for as low as 100k coins, the Safe of Coins is actually worth over 20 Super Cubes on its own.

Marketplace:
You should purchase extra slots for the marketplace as soon as possible with gems. The prices in the marketplace will fluctuate, so Super Cubes can often be as low as 100k or as high as 145k+. There are a lot of items in the marketplace, so it can sometimes be confusing what to buy early on. As money is a limited resource, here are some things to aim for:

A) Special Fragments (45k - 55k)
B) Super Cubes (100k - 150k)
C) Xen Fragments for four/five star Xens, especially Perle & Lobelia (35k+)
D) Xen Fragments for any three-star Xens you're farming, such as Azalea (3k+)
E) Rare Five Star Chips (300k+)

Xen Labs Shop:
Light Aster Fragments are THE top priority for the early game, as she will make a huge impact on your ability to clear content. Once you have obtained your first copy of Light Aster, the Xen Lab Shop can be used for a variety of things, in no particular order:

A) Additional Aster Fragments (2300 Xen Coins)
- These can be used to further upgrade Aster's skills, as well as tier her up to five, and later six stars.
B) Agave Fragments (2900 Xen Coins)
- Agave can only be obtained in the Xen Shop or during a special event.
C) Energy
- For farming purposes, the Xen Shop is a cheap way to add on to your available energy stockpile
D) Supreme EVO Crystals (4500 Xen Coins)
- While expensive, the Xen Shop can be used as a way to finish unlocking your Xen's third skills.

Arena Shop: Typically, it's recommended to use the Arena shop to finish up Xens Fragments for whoever you already have fragments for, with priority to Perle and Truffle. Otherwise, Lobelia is currently the game's strongest Xen and a great investment over time.