Beginner’s Guide

Punishing Gray Raven is a visually-stunning, action-packed ARPG set in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by the Corrupted. You play as Lucia, the leader of the post-human elite task force called Gray Raven set to combat these deadly machines as humanity’s hope to take back the world they have lost. In our Punishing Gray Raven beginner’s guide, we will list down the basics and important topics to help new players get accustomed to the game as quickly as possible.

Like most mobile games with the same format, Punishing Gray Raven can have lots of new terms, currency, and mechanics that can overwhelm a new player. Veteran gacha/mobile players will be familiar with most of the concepts like farming and grinding but for new players with no background or minimal exposure to such games, it can become daunting to enjoy what the game has to offer. In our Punishing Gray Raven beginner’s guide, we will attempt to make it easier for new players to get into PGR’s action.

The game has a gacha system

For those unfamiliar with the term, this is basically similar to lottery. You’ll have to spend certain currencies for a chance to “draw” or “pull” for a character or weapon. The actual item or character you’ll get is random. You can be very lucky and get a high-rank character/weapon, or exhaust your resources and still get nothing. Thankfully, the game has a pity system that guarantees you an A-rank or above for every X number of attempts. The currencies that will be used to draw will also differ from each banner.

The game is mostly F2P-friendly

If you’re just after clearing the PvE content and improving your constructs, you’ll be able to do so just by playing the game regularly and clearing the daily and weekly quests. Unfortunately, if you’re after the premium content, you still have to shell out money.

The game has a “Stamina” system

Stamina or energy system is a type of limiter that you’ll find usually in gacha mobile games. In Punishing Gray Raven, this limiter is in the form of Serum. Almost all combat-related missions (including auto-clear) will consume Serum.

Serum is replenished at a rate of 1 serum every 6 minutes. This rate is fixed and there’s no way to speed up your serum replenishment naturally. You can use consumables like Serum Bundles which will instantly replenish 60 serum. Alternatively, you can exchange 30 Black Cards for 60 serum as well, up to 10 times a day.

There’s no Auto-Combat

Most of the battles are quite short, lasting around 1-2 minutes so auto-combat seems to be unnecessary. The game however, has an Auto-Clear option which allows you to clear previously-cleared stages automatically but with 50%-80% worth of rewards. Auto-clearing will run in the background and after the timer has run out, you can collect the rewards. You can do multiple auto-clearing on the same stage, at the cost of higher stamina and longer completion time.

Increase your BP to tackle harder challenges

BP stands for Battle Power and represents your character’s overall combat power. This is affected by many aspects such as level, skill level, weapon, memories (accessories), and more. For example, before you start a mission, you’ll get a warning if your squad’s highest BR is below the recommended amount. Tap the “Up” button in the lower-right corner to see whether your character or equipment needs to be leveled up/improved.

All Constructs (Characters) can reach SSS-rank

Unlike several other gacha games where characters’ overall potential and usability are tied permanently to their rarity or grade, all constructs in Punishing Gray Raven can evolve to SSS-rank and can be viable for most of the game’s content. The main problem between a default S-rank construct to a B-rank is that you’ll need to invest more time, materials, and cogs to get to the same level as the former. However if you really like the character, watching that construct rise to the ranks on par with the top tier constructs can be quite rewarding.

Focus on the first few chapters and leveling up your Commandant

Most features of the game will be unlocked as you go through the first few story chapters and your Commandant (player) level. Focus on clearing these early stages, preferably until you complete the entirety of Chapter 2. There are more features that will be unlocked after this (like the equally helpful Dorm feature) but at least the important features like resource grinding missions will become available.

Get the Guaranteed S-Rank in the Beginner’s Banner

For new players, the Base Research (standard banner) will give you a guaranteed (and random) S-rank character after reaching 40 research (pulls). During this 40-pull attempt, you can get reliable A-rank characters and the guaranteed s-rank counter will not be reset. However, if you’re lucky enough to get an S-rank character for the first 40 pulls, the counter will reset and the beginner exclusive banner will disappear. After getting the guaranteed S-rank character from these 40 pulls, the beginner’s banner will be removed.

Don’t use the guaranteed S-rank ticket immediately!

All players will receive a S-Rank Construct Pick ticket. This will allow you to pick an S-rank character from the predetermined list. It’s highly recommended to get your guaranteed S-rank character from the Beginner’s Banner (Research) first. This is because if ever you get an S-rank character that’s part of the available characters in the S-rank construct ticket, at least you can choose a different character to have some variety in your squad. The characters available for this ticket are:

* Lee (Entropy)

* Liv (Luminance)

* Kamui (Tenebrion)

* Karenina (Ember)

* Nanami (Pulse)

If you don’t have any preferences, we suggest getting Karenina-Ember as she’s the only viable fire-DPS in the game for now.

Get the First Time Recharge Bundle

If you’ve decided to be a Lucia main and you want to give her a new coating and weapon early on, you can get Lucia’s Rain Walking coating and Kuji no Sada (5-star sword) by recharging for the first time. So, if you have a small amount of cash to spare, you can get the cheapest recharge (5 Rainbow Cards for $0.99) to get both items. The coating (outfit) looks cool and the Kuji no Sada can be very useful for a good portion of the game, until you get a better version or replacement for it.

Getting Decent 4* Weapons

Early in the game, if you’re still struggling to get decent weapons for your characters, you can consider buying the decent 4* weapons in the Shop > Recycle Shop. Each weapon will require 450 4-star weapon shard. These shards can be obtained by recycling 4-star weapons. Thankfully, the 4* Weapon Enhancers are also considered weapons so recycling them will yield 150 shard each. While these are unarguably valuable, you can afford recycling a few of them early on, especially if that means you’ll get a decent and useful 4-star weapon for your favorite character in return.

Complete the Novice Missions

This set of missions is aimed towards new players that will help point you to the right direction and help familiarize you with the game’s many features and systems. There’s no rush completing them since they’ll disappear once you’ve completed all tasks stretched out for 7 days. There seems to be no deadline for this so just take your time progressing through the game at your own pace. You’ll receive the Gray Feathers: Storm (for Nanami: Storm) as the final reward for reaching 160 points.

That concludes our Punishing Gray Raven Beginner’s Guide. Please check out our other pages related to the game for more PGR content.