Valiant Force Forum

This guide just contains some of the things that I highly recommend.

I'm less than 2 months into the game top 700 in arena, can clear gold 3 and capitol 2. Following this guide you should have a stable roster for PvE and PvP farming. This isn't an in-depth guide about game mechanic but more anecdotal about what you should have or be doing.

Contents:

1. Gold usage
2. Units and Fodders
3. Buildings
4. Items
5. Energies usage
6. Gem usage
7. Events
8. Other tips and tricks

Gold
For starting out, gold is a big limited factor and will remaining a limited factor until you're at least level 80+.
To put it into perspective, a building upgrade at higher level will usually cost 100k gold up to 300k gold.
Upgrading a 4* equipment from +1 to +15 takes an average amount of around 300k gold (and this is me using silver hammer to boost the chance). Upgrading a 6* equipment to +15 can cost up to 1 mil.
Training 4* units to max can takes around 300k+ gold and training a 5* units to max can take around 500k+ gold. 
Since I've been playing, there're 3 mains way to get gold:

Gold mine:

• This is the best method to gain gold. Buying extra run will cost you 25 gem and extra run after will cost 50, 75, etc...
• You want units that can do AoE damage or chain attack a lot.
• Bring a 4* Lancer so you can leap right onto the exit tile without wasting turns.
• Recommend team: Ninja, Mystic, Gunslinger, Lancer.

Buying gold: 

• If you haven't already, go to the shop and buy all the first time gold package.
• Each gem should give you at least 8000 gold. Any deal that gives you less than 8000 is bad.
• You SHOULD spend gem to do extra gold dungeon run if you need them. You don't want to delay any progression.

Events:

• VF always give out some gold prize in the bazaar. Always redeem it first.

Outside of these 3 things, other gold gain activities are pretty much mediocre. You can level your fodder up and sell them but that is very inefficient in energy usage.

Units and Fodders
First of all, I want to say that faith is a pretty important stat to consider before you decide to invest in a unit or not. The difference in stat gain between the worst and best faith can be more than 1000 difference in stat. However, faith can be rerolled so if you are unable to find a suitable units, don't be hesitate to build with what you have.
Next, know this, 4* units are useful. If you are unable to get a 5* heroes from pull and only max 4*, don't be worried. A max limit break 4* can be stronger than 5* and good equipment is more important.
This is a list of 4* units that I think are good and if you are unable to find a 5*, build these:

• Zealot Leon: incredibly useful for the lifesteal aura and the ability to pull an enemy unit to the tile in front of you. Best faith: Kratos, Zeus.
• Lancer Fiona: decent aura and is useful in gold dungeon for her ability to leap. Best faith: Ares, Zeus.
• Rogue Vann: has a spell that silence enemy for 3 turns with a low cooldown. Incredibly good for arena. Best faith: Hera, Ares.
• Marksman Luna: a good archer that can trigger chain attack when she crit. Best faith: Hera, Ares.
• Hunter Aaron: another good archer that can chain attack off others and has a sleep ability. Good for arena: Best faith: Ares.

For 5* heroes, all of them have their use and don't but I'll list what I considered to be S tier heroes:
Paladin:

• Holy Defender Faye: Has ability to remove enemy buff (including invincibility or defense up) that also taunts monster while providing a 30% shield for allies. Incredibly good as a tank.
• Paladin Faye: 30% shield with increase MAG makes your team unable to die so you can use this to replace an Inquisitor Lucille if you don't have her. 
• Chaos Knight Victoria and Darrion: These two have the ability to swap position which is incredibly useful for arena. 

Champion

• Berserker Vincent and Freya: Both are incredibly strong with the highest damage output in the game. If you have a champion, you must build these twos.
• Gladiator Freya: While does not have the raw damage as strong as Berserker, If all aura spot is filled, gladiator ATK will be the highest and can do a lot of damages. Her skill also stun and burn enemy.

Shadow

• Ninja Kai and Shizu: Must have for gold dungeon and for arena. Swap skill also decrease defense so also useful for PvE. This path is a must build.
• Magebane Shizu: Her stun aura and skill makes her useful for end game boss content since you'd need a lot of stun trigger to beat those tanky boss.(Edit out Magebane. While I think she's good (warlord and dragoon combine ish), a lot of people don't like her because of her lowish stat since a lot of her stat is allocated to MAG which is not useful for her.)
• Samurai Shizu: Her aura synergy really well with trigger archer team so you can kill unit before they approach you.

Mystic

• Ronan is actually rather strong since his spell (if lucky) allows him to kill one unit very easily and the debuff affects everyone.

Healer

• Archbishop Luthor and Lucille: Has a constant heal aura that will keep your unit alives and a low cool down single target heal spell. 
• All Witch Doctor: Poison can deal a lot of damage in arena and all their spell have some sort of status in it so they're can be very strong. You'd need to make sure you set them up in a good formation that allow them to constantly proc their poison. Lucille is the best Witch Doctor because her skill charms enemies. The downside of Witch Doctor is that you need to build the team around him/her.
• Inquisitor Lucille: Has a spell that gives you 2 turns of immunity to any damages. Incredibly useful for boss fight. You can use this spell to replace a tank if you don't have one.

Ranger

• Grand Ranger Kane: Has a stun trigger aura that is useful for boss fight. A popular choice among end game user to beat Capitol 3 boss and 24-3 Legendary.
• Gunslinger Kane/Cybella: A core hero in most chain attack trigger team.

Any heroes that I didn't mention isn't bad but I just don't considered to be S tier but all of them are strong nonetheless. You just need to figure out what kind of team you want to build and choose according to your need.

Fodder: 

• Best way to farm fodder is 24-3 normal and pull 45k gold from shop. 
• Events are also another good way to get fodders (at least according to my past events). 
• 1* fodders are used to train 3*, 2* fodders for 4*, 3* fodders for 5*. Some people might say that using 1* fodder to train is expensive but getting constant flow of 2* fodder isn't easy so you have to use 1*.

Buildings
Here's what you should builds:

• Gold mine
• Worker's hut: This building is a lot better than farm and quarry is because it decrease your building time by 20% and its expedition also gives you 8 silver hammer. The materials used for crafting can later be get through Salvage Yard.
• Armorsmith
• Salvage Yard: This is a must because it allows you to break down armor/weapon for materials that you can use to craft in the armor smith. Here's what it looks like. 

• Market/Academy: Either is fine in my opinion. Markets gives you the ability to buy potions/runes/gold for gem and gold and its expedition gives you large health potion which is useful for PvE. Academy gives you job keys which allows you to build your units faster. 
• Wishing Well
• Fusion Altar: This is a lot better than Weapon Forge because whle weapon forge gives you the ability to craft weapon, it is very expensive and costly. Fusion Altar expedition gives you gold bar to sell and also allow for fusing lower rank materials into higher ranks.
• Strike Tower
• Watermill: A must have because of extra energy.
• Gem Cavern

Items
There are 5 suffix (suffix affect the item bonus)::

• Trinity: ATK and DEF. Good for Paladin and Shadow.
• Might: ATK and CRIT. Good for Ranger and Shadow.
• Defense: DEF and HP. Good for Paladin.
• Wizardry: ATK and MAG. Good for Mystic and Healer.
• Zodiac: Can has any item bonus. Sometimes you can get really lucky with Zodiac but it's generally not use due to its RNG nature.
• To craft armor, you basically farm lower tier armor => salvage it => then used the salvage material to craft higher tier armor.

Enhancement: 

• You can enhance your items to a higher 5* for higher base stat but it resets the item bonus so if you had a +7% ATK item bonus. You probably shouldn't enhance.
• Here's a good example of why you should enhance. My 5* wing only has 4 item bonus (an extremely rare unlucky case). So I enhance to 6* in order to roll for the bonus again.
  

So items and runes are crucial to your heroes stat. You should try to actively find good armors and weapons for your heroes. This means using energies to re run story maps in order to find the equipment. Before you can clear 18-3 comfortably, do not upgrade your 3* or bad suffix 4* past +6. It can cost a lot of gold and you only want to +15 the equips that you going to use forever

For runes, try to get full set of 2* +15 runes for your heroes to maximize the stats. If you using red rune, try to only use one that increase ATK  Skill runes are incredibly useful too and I'll talk about this in the tips section below.
Note that 2 slot rune has stronger stat than 1 slot.


Energies usage
This is the priorities of what you should use energies for:

1. Clearing daily dungeon.
2. Completing all events quest.
3. Farming equipment.
4. Farming event quests for the bazaar
5. Farming fodders in 24-3 normal (best map for farming fodder since it also gives highest exp)

Generally try to see what you need and expense your energy there. Don't be hesitate to use it to farm 1* fodder if you feel like the event doesn't give enough for you.

Gem usage 
So this is pretty much open to whatever you need. If you're a f2p, you want to save your gem to pull for events heroes or buy costumes because those are pretty much the only things that you truly need. If you're a semi-paying, then feel free to use gem to buy things you need in the market or more energies to farm.

Don't pull for equipment though because there's no guarantee that you'll get a full set so that one 5* item you get from a pull is pretty much not good.

There're also a few players that recommend pulling single as opposed to 10x because that'll give them better chance but I don't think this is confirmed. 

Events
Try to do all of the quests since usually you'll get a full set of equipment as part of the reward. If you're unable to clear a stage, refresh the friend list to find people who has event heroes as their leader and use them.

If you pull an event hero, make sure you invest to at least make it +2 and not just leave them at +0. While they may not be used after the event, it will certainly help you to do it much faster and makes your life easier.

If you're having a tough time with a quest, try to look for tips and tricks on the forum. Someone will always figure out an easy way to do it even without event heroes. 

Other tips and tricks

• When you make a mistake in a round, you can force closed the app so you can redo the round and even reset the loot. However, by doing this, the enemies will be stronger. This is intentional to prevent abusing. [Edit: A person my guild corrects me, the loot will be the same and doesn't reset. Enemies won't be stronger but your heroes stat will be decrease and any friends hero will not use their equipment.]
• Resilience rune is bugged right now where it even allows you to resist the full damage of a spell. So a sharpshooter use his spell on you, you can fully resist the damage. Only once per wave though.
• When you doing story against a hard boss, don't rush the first or second wave, wait before the boss wave and allow your skills to be fully ready before you enter it.
• To view a friend hero's equip and detail, hold on top of the portrait to view the detail.
• Follow the official FB page. Sometimes, there are giveaways that require you to use facebook.
• Cleansing Serum is a good potion to used against the boss in 24-3 (cleanse silence). 
• It's wise to level up your unused 3* and 4* heroes so your expeditions will have 100% success rate.
• Use Inquisitor Lucille with any Berserker with high ATK to easily advance through story mode. Berserker has skill that increase their ATK by 2 (3?) times so if you can charge your skill before boss wave, the Berserker can easily 2-3 hit the boss.
• For 1*, 2* or 3* equipments, before you sell it upgrade them to +1, +2 and +3 respectively so it worth more. (i.e: A 3* +0 item will sell for 2100 but a 3* +3 will sell for 3744 after deducting the upgrade cost).

More will be added later. 

Author's Final Note
Essentially, if you can get a team with a tank, healer, some strong damage dealer and fully equip them with the best equipment and rune you can get your hand on, you should be able to progress smoothly. 

This guide doesn't have anything about arena because it's straight forward. Get a strong team with at least one hero that can swap position and you'll be good to go.

Last edit: 1/23: adding one trick and change the recommendation of S tier hero.

Nice! I'll add it here!

If you want a shadow for cc on boss isnt assasin shizu more effective than magebane? she can stun for two turns with a lower cooldown and her skill does more damage in total. The only advantage to magebane shizu is an aoe stun.

If you want a shadow for cc on boss isnt assasin shizu more effective than magebane? she can stun for two turns with a lower cooldown and her skill does more damage in total. The only advantage to magebane shizu is an aoe stun.

Yes, but magebane also have a passive aura that allow team to trigger stun. Assassin shizu skill is 5 turn cool down. You'd need at least another 2 hero with stun to keep the boss stunned. On top of that, the fact that the boss might randomly resist the stun can also be troubling. 
If you want to do stun trigger team, I think Grand Ranger > Mage Bane > Dragoon.

Thx, finally knew how to farm fodders!!

Second edited: clean out some text, fix font size, and add some pictures.