Com2su Studio brings another pet-companion collector, Summoners War, to mobile and PC. Some may already be familiar with the name, as Summoners War made the rounds on mobile devices a decade ago and is still alive and kicking. Com2su Studio aims to revitalize the Summoners War series by introducing a new game to modern-day (compatible) devices. So, if you've never dipped your feet into the franchise before, Summoners War: Chronicles provides more than a solid enough entry point.

In Summoners War: Chronicles, you play as a guard defending the Kingdom of Rahil against all posing threats. But no hero comes to the battlefront alone; as a specialized summoner, you're tasked to recruit magical pets and companions to fight alongside you — similar to a Pokémon trainer with their selective cast of Pokémon.

But with most collection-based games on Android, there's a deep gacha system to unfold, and Summoner Wars: Chronicles is no exception. Fortunately, even if you have never played a Summoners War title, we've compiled a handy guide introducing the gameplay basics and essential upgrade systems to prep you for all the heavy action on your favorite Android gaming phone.

Getting started in Summoners War: Chronicles

You can select your class, customize your summoner's appearance, and learn the controls while playing through the tutorial; the starting section should take at most 15 minutes to complete.

Create your summoner

You're defaulted to three choices for your summoner, all serving as a baseline for your primary character model in the game. You can customize the appearance slightly, but it won't alter your selected class. We recommend choosing the right summoner based on your class preference, which is summarized below. Remember, your summoner fights alongside your monsters, so that may affect your default choice/playstyle.

• Summoner of Guard: Wields his shield and mace to defend his allies by taking control of the frontline. Recommended for tank players.

  

• Summoner of Magic: Commands magic with her staff; she excels at offensive magic to take down her foes. Recommended for attack-oriented mage class players.

  

• Summoner of Healing: Uses a hammer in battle while empowering her allies with buffs and healing magic. Recommended for healing-focused support players.

  

Battling with summoners and monsters

Select up to three monsters for your battle team; these monsters will fight alongside you. Navigating through skill and monster swapping cooldowns, equipping the right elemental weapons, selecting the best monsters, and practicing your dodges will go a long way while playing Summoner Wars: Chronicles.

Tap to cast skills and swap between your monsters to use their unique skills. While on the field, pay attention to the rectangle and lines; this is the trajectory of where the skills will land and plan your dodges around the enemy's projected attack.

Tapping on the twin swords icon by your skills turns on auto-battling, enabling your entire team to become AI-controlled. You can turn this off by tapping on the icon (again).

How to soul link with a monster

Soul linking is how you can access your monster's skills. To change out a soul-linked monster, tap on the monster's profile while on the field; the other monsters remain AI-controlled and will deploy skills independently. Once you've swapped a monster unit, you cannot change again until the cooldown timer is back up.

Casting a monster's skill

Once the magic and cooldown are available, you can manually tap on any monster's skill to begin casting. But, again, remember that managing your abilities and teams is a big part of combat success.

Exploring and auto-mode

After the tutorial, you can enable autoplay once you've gained control of your character. Essentially you can have your character run from objective to objective without any manual input; this is helpful when trying to complete a bunch of small quests before moving on to new chapters.

How to enable and disable autoplay

Tapping on the quest will turn on autoplay, and manually moving your character will disable it.

You can't autoplay through dungeons on your first visit, so we suggest making sure you know the gist of the combat basics and are comfortable moving your character around the map before tackling these dungeons.

Advantages of auto-play

Turning on auto-play saves the player from mindlessly grinding side missions involving fetch quests and monster exterminations. Every small break helps before moving on to the next part of the act and fulfilling these requests will grant you upgrade materials without considerable effort.

Be aware first-time clears for dungeons force manual play. These dungeons are designed to keep you on your toes; it requires interacting with switches, prioritizing targets, and learning the underlying game mechanics for encountered bosses and mobs.

Disadvantages of auto-play

Besides the convenience of the feature for mobile devices by letting the AI do all the work, late-game dungeons and raids will not benefit a player who relies on auto-play. In addition, teams with lower than the recommended PWR will need to play more carefully, or you will have to level up your summoner and monsters to re-tackle the challenge.

Turning off notifications in Summoners War: Chronicles

Unfortunately, as you progress further, your menus become congested with alerts. Thankfully there's an option in-game to help manage the alerts you receive.

• Tap on the double two square icon to access your main menu.
• Tap on the gear to open up your options.
• Scroll down to Alert and toggle on/off your in-game and app notifications.

Recruiting formidable monsters to your party

Learning the path of the summoner requires strict decision-making on which monsters you'll select to form your team and which deserve the maximum investment during the early stages of your account. So we outline how to recruit monsters, what classification/types are available, and how to set your team.

Adding more monsters to your team

You summon monsters by visiting the Summon Altar. The Summon Altar is the gacha system. Tap on a banner and use Mystical Scrolls, Legendary Scrolls, and Unknown Scrolls for single pulls or 10-pulls. Scrolls are the precious gacha currency, so be aware you won't come across many ways to replenish these resources, which is why we recommend saving up and committing to a single banner.

You can also summon monsters by using monster pieces. However, acquiring pieces requires pulling on the other gacha banners or by other in-game means (rewards), and remember that these pieces are also upgrade materials.

The differences in classes and monster types

Like most top-notch RPGs on Android, your monster companions are classified into types and have classes. Below we outline the types and how it plays into the rock-paper-scissors system.

• Fire counters wind
• Wind counters water
• Water counters fire
• Light and darkness oppose each other

The attribute that wins gains a 20 percent damage bonus and 10 percent extra crit rate; countered attributes receive a penalty of losing 10 percent damage, 10 percent crit rate, 15 percent precision, and 25 percent accuracy.

Monster classes

Monsters have classifications such as Mage, Archer, or Assassin. The monsters' skills help enforce their roles; you'll encounter monsters that possess supportive skills (like Fairy) and others that prefer controlling the frontline (like Yeti) with aggressive damage. Remember to pair monsters to enable your Summoner's primary class; a healer may benefit from having a frontliner to help soak up the aggro.

How to change your team

Only three monster slots are available; you can replace monsters by visiting the main menu.

• Tap on the double two square at the top-right corner.
• Tap on Monster.
• Tap on Composition. Select any filled slot to remove the monster, and then tap on any monster from your list to fill that slot.
• Exit the menu once you've completed the changes.

Is re-rolling possible in Summoners War: Chronicles?

It is possible to re-roll in Summoners War: Chronicles, but it requires a few steps to get there. We've outlined the steps below:

• Launch the game.
• Sign in as a guest account.
• Create a character.
• Complete tutorial missions and finish 1-6.
• Undergo the summoning tutorial and collect all your mail rewards.
• Start summoning.

The process takes around 20 minutes, so if you're ready to sink time into re-rolling, go for it.

Upgrading your summoner and monsters

To maintain a formidable team, you must spend resources to level up your skills and monsters. We strongly recommend focusing on your summoner's skills. Your summoner is the backbone of all team compositions, while your monsters are replaceable during the early game.

To upgrade your summoner's skills, open the main menu and tap on Skills > Enhance Skills. You can also enhance your weapons and acquire new skills to improve your PWR (power). PWR is like a skill rating or combat score: the higher the number, the stronger you are.

Monsters can also have their skills enhanced, similar to your summoner. But we recommend sticking to only leveling up your monsters until you've acquired higher-tier (4 and 5-star) monsters. You'll eventually evolve and awaken monsters to further grow their PWR rating. The PWR combines the score between your summoner and the monster's PWR.

Account level versus player and monster level

Your account level symbolizes your overall progression; the higher your account level, the higher your maximum level and the number of Rahil Orders you can fulfill (a points system used to grind repeatable quests for EXP and materials).

Raising your account level is the long-term goal, but the short term is raising your character level and monster levels to increase PWR. The PWR is a rough estimate that your team is strong enough to beat the current content. So focusing on leveling your team while progressing through the story will also grow your account level.

How to raise PWR

Unlock expeditions, and complete as many as you can per day. Then, try to salvage your free tickets and play through the first 50 runs. After that, take the collected runes and transcendence material to build up your summoner's skill points. You want to save tickets for better runes (gear) and focus on farming the primary material with the free runs. Eventually, you will work up to higher level runs, but doing the free level 1 run builds that stash of upgrade material.

Work through your Creature Book to collect book rewards (provided you've unlocked that area). Then, select Claim All to grab everything at once.

How to upgrade runes

Runes are analogous to equipment or gear for your monsters. You will aim to equip sets that boost your monster's stats. You can acquire more runes through the Path of Growth, but it requires you to complete Act I: Chapter 32 Meeting Place.

• Open your main menu.
• Tap on Rune and select a monster.
• Tap on a rune set name under All Runes.
• Tap on a rune and tap Equip.

Fast-tracking a beginner's account in Summoner Wars: Chronicles

Aside from strengthening your summoner and monsters, you'll want to collect all the premium awards and materials that'll get you through the game's early levels.

Questing

Follow the main storyline; you must complete many chapters in Act I to unlock features. Otherwise, you will be gated on ways to earn materials, experience points and upgrades to your monsters.

Tap Quest > Rahil Kingdom Story.

You can auto parts of the story or navigate to the selected quest. You gain rewards by completing quests; rewards unlock as you complete more chapters (claimable in the Rahil Kingdom Story menu).

Path of Growth

Midway into Act I, the Patch of Growth becomes available to use. You will only have so many entries to use for each completion attempt. Path of Training is the first you'll unlock to help earn EXP potions and monster pieces, essential upgrade materials for your team. The rest of the mode becomes unlocked towards the end of Act I and early into Act II. If bonus days are available for that dungeon, try to focus on bonus days to up the rewards.

Guard Journal

Your Guard Journal is where you'll unlock achievements, one-time dungeons, and monster stories. You receive rewards by completing any of your Guard Journal entries, but these rewards are one-time only. So it's best to finish these as you go, especially since monster stories become gated behind your account level.

Field Events

Scheduled-based events will have a mixture of challenges that may be cooperation-based, teaming up with other players, or competition-based, leaving you to face other players. Check "Scheduled" to determine and preview the events and rewards ahead of time; note that access to events becomes restricted based on story progression for that area. Completing these events is optional and unnecessary for your early account growth, but they might serve as fun-side challenges while you're questing.

How to join raids

Raids open as you progress through story acts. Raids are separated into regular raids and elite raids; regular raids will be the main focus for a beginner. You can earn Raid Coins and exchange them for new weapons and trinkets in the Coin Shop. Participating in raids will yield EXP and potentially weapons, trinkets, and Breath of Life (needed for monster evolutions and awakening.

To access raids, tap Party Dungeon > Raid > Quick Join.

If you don't have a pre-made party, you will be placed in a queue and matched with other players to complete the raid. Defeating raid monsters a specific number of times can earn you rewards for events (like Wanted: Boss Subjugation).

Area Exploration and milestone rewards

Your first stop for side quests; completing these stories will add exploration progress in an area. Milestones offer rewards like EXP Potions, Scrolls, and Crystals, so keep checking back after you've cleared a few stories. We recommend turning on auto-play to clear these out with minimal effort.

To access Area Exploration, tap Quest > Area Exploration.

Take your time to enjoy what Summoners War: Chronicles has to offer

Mobile games should offer laid-back activities to help you decompress after a long day of work and school. Sometimes, we prefer to divide our time with games and dabble into bite-sized sessions without too many complicated systems. That's why games like Summoners War: Chronicles exist. It includes auto-play and easy, repeatable missions to help you progress through the story while raising your account level. And for those games to succeed, minimalizing the repetition and burn out from the grind is key. Thankfully, Chronicles aims to strike that balance while offering a fun, colorful, fairy-tale-like universe in which anyone can get lost exploring.

And if you come looking for a competitive MMORPG experience, Summoners War: Chronicles might not be the ideal choice. Fortunately, there are some excellent MMORPGs on Android that you can load up on the side. Nonetheless, Summoners War still provides a relaxing experience, so we recommend diving deeper into this high-profile gacha by grabbing the download below.