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[Rubenov]

So, Final Fantasy Record Keeper has been around for 2.5 years or so; it's a mobile "free-to-play" RPG game (iOS, Android) that has some of the deepest and entertaining gameplay mechanics found in any game, period. I myself been playing it every day since about 8 months ago, and the community has tons of people that have been playing the game since Day 1.

Currently, there is "Renewal Dungeons" campaign that lets players play almost all of the previous events for the game. This presents a huge opportunity since new players will be able to complete A LOT of content that would yield a treasure trove of game resources (orbs, motes, accessories) and game relic pull currency (mythril) that would otherwise be unavailable.

It would take entirely too long to explain all the mechanics found in this game, so I'll just post a few links down below to help.

WARNING: This game may consume your life.

Neogaf Official Thread

Newbie Guide

Enlir's FFRK Database

Mysterious MisterP FFRK Consolidated PDF

 

[Rmagnus]

Thanks for the heads up. Need something else besides steppy pants to waste my time with lol

 

[predalien27]

Creepy. I literally just redownloaded the game. I’m not sure if I can get back into though. I lost my phone a few months back and when I went to redownlownload it, all my data was gone. Apparently you could only back up data by connecting a Facebook account to your phone. Screw that.

 

[Falk]

Creepy. I literally just redownloaded the game. I’m not sure if I can get back into though. I lost my phone a few months back and when I went to redownlownload it, all my data was gone. Apparently you could only back up data by connecting a Facebook account to your phone. Screw that.

Several games seem to want to do this so if you're averse to using an actual facebook account you could dummy for that purpose.

 

[Rubenov]

Bump for the (US) morning crew

 

[mrjohill]

Just picked it back up actually

 

[Man Called Aerodynamics]

Fantastic game, both for the deep and challenging gameplay itself, and for the incredible nostalgia trip for a Final Fantasy series fan.

 

[Hours Left]

Easily the most player friendly F2P mobile game I’ve played. I’ve been with it since it launched and I still love it.

Highly recommended.

 

[Aquavelvaman]

Is this a limited time event? I'd like to give it a shot in a month or two

 

[Katori]

Do you all like this or Exvius better? I played both till about the mid-point and liked early Exvius better but thought this one had more potential.

 

[Hours Left]

Is this a limited time event? I'd like to give it a shot in a month or two

The Renewal Dungeons are open until Nov. 5th.

 

[panama chief]

Several games seem to want to do this so if you're averse to using an actual facebook account you could dummy for that purpose.

I'll never understand the reluctance to make a dummy account. This is how is saves your games people. Save yourselves the headache.

 

[SoulUnison]

Do you all like this or Exvius better? I played both till about the mid-point and liked early Exvius better but thought this one had more potential.

Exvius is your typical cynical F2P grind with a ton of dedication needed for little reward.

Record Keeper is much more laid back and generous.
I've played for a little over a year, never spent a cent, often won't play for days at a time, and have a ridiculously generous set of characters, gear, Limit Breaks (called Soul Breaks, here) and so on.
There's also tons of systems and loot types specifically designed pretty much just for catching up with current content.

 

[Lights and Waves]

Day One player here. Finally deleted the app this week. It's just so fucking repetitive. They keep adding power creep features instead of innovating and actually giving the players what we need to stay addicted.

Good luck to those getting into the game. It's a great love letter to FF fans.

 

[GDJustin]

Great game. Played it off and on since day 1. And the "OFF" periods were... long. We're talking 6+ months away. But eventually I just keep coming back... it's the pinnacle of ATB combat, and it's so satisfying to layer on buffs and debuffs to survive the endgame fights.

 

[WarAdept]

Do you all like this or Exvius better? I played both till about the mid-point and liked early Exvius better but thought this one had more potential.

I play all 3 Gatcha Fantasies (Record Keeper, Mobius, Brave Exvius) and RK has by far the best endgame content out of all 3, while simultaneously being the most fair in terms of the gatcha system.

It's true fanservice to the mainline games, with wonderful sprites of all the characters, all the songs of the games with remixes/medleys for special events and a deep and complex system that allows for a lot of freedom in terms of your party composition and play style.

I highly encourage it over Mobius/Brave Exvius.

 

[Falk]

Exvius and RK (and Mobius) really cater to different expectations.

RK's rewards are generally frontloaded on first-clears of each event so there's much less of an expectation to be grinding every waking moment.

Exvius taps a little more into traditional grind-heavy MMOs so you'd probably dig it more if the time investment is your thing. I personally find the overall combat mechanics a little weak, though.

Mobius is like the long lost stepbrother you never knew you had. Eccentric, full of surprises but pretty fun once you get to know him. It's actually probably got the most engaging combat mechanics of the three, especially with multiplayer simulating the typical role-based MMO party with mechanics that actually interlock extremely well. But whew it's also hell of a grind.

 

[GDJustin]

FFRK is considerably better than the other two mobile FF Gacha games which are grindy, poorly thought out messes in comparison.

 

[KuwabaraTheMan]

Damn, I'm kind of interested, but I've picked up too many gacha games recently. Not sure if I have time right now for another or not.

 

[WarAdept]

Damn, I'm kind of interested, but I've picked up too many gacha games recently. Not sure if I have time right now for another or not.

But that's the best thing about Record Keeper. As Falk said, everything (all the rewards and stuff) is all front loaded. Once you complete an event, that's it. No grinding each waking hour for materials for the entirety of the event just so you can buy only half the event allocated items (looking at you Brave Exvius).

The game really respects your time.

 

[Deadly]

The power creep is so huge now that I'd find it a huge turnoff to start playing at this point. They'd have to do some kind of beginner bonus IMO. You'd probably only be able to do up to 140 stages at most. Nightmare dungeons would be impossible for awhile too let alone magicite. Consequently, you're kinda barred from the actually fun stuff since 140 and below is kinda just auto-battle.

 

[Falk]

The power creep is so huge now that I'd find it a huge turnoff to start playing at this point. They'd have to do some kind of beginner bonus IMO. You'd probably only be able to do up to 140 stages at most. Nightmare dungeons would be impossible for awhile too let alone magicite. Consequently, you're kinda barred from the actually fun stuff since 140 and below is kinda just auto-battle.

Gacha games always have to strike a balance between retention and recruitment to combat churn. The well-designed ones let new players reasonably catch up to endgame content in a decent amount of time.

The most fundamental natural contribution to this factor is that in-game currency generally inflates on its own naturally due to what you can get out of the gacha with any specific amount. One Mythril now is worth a shit ton more than one Mythril at launch, for example.

Specifically for FFRK, maybe the best actual barometer would be players who jumped into the JP service out of curiosity maybe 6 months ago, who are clearing 4* magicites now. It's definitely a bit more of an effort but not impossible.

 

[Steeped in a Sea of Games]

The power creep is so huge now that I'd find it a huge turnoff to start playing at this point. They'd have to do some kind of beginner bonus IMO. You'd probably only be able to do up to 140 stages at most. Nightmare dungeons would be impossible for awhile too let alone magicite. Consequently, you're kinda barred from the actually fun stuff since 140 and below is kinda just auto-battle.

New players are almost at an advantage in Record Keeper. Since relics always powercreep, having those hundreds of free mythril means they have better chances on getting into the new meta faster.

The only drawback is that the game is starting to push back towards ability hones which take crystals that benefit long-time players (and legend dives, but even that motes are becoming easier to get all the time). You can usually have a lot of success as a new player in RK.

 

[CrimsonSquall]

Exvius is all about the characters.

Rates can be shitty af, but if u can nab 1 or 2 solid rainbow 5* base characters (Praise the Thunder God Cid), you're pretty much fucking set for almost the entirety of the game.

There's a pretty legit story in FFBE. Kinda slow in the beginning but it picks up.

But if I were new I would wait a couple months to start in bc Im fairly positive Cloud is coming in December finally

 

[WarAdept]

The power creep is so huge now that I'd find it a huge turnoff to start playing at this point. They'd have to do some kind of beginner bonus IMO. You'd probably only be able to do up to 140 stages at most. Nightmare dungeons would be impossible for awhile too let alone magicite. Consequently, you're kinda barred from the actually fun stuff since 140 and below is kinda just auto-battle.

Jumping in right now is the beginner bonus. Just look at this:

We currently have 2 new events running at the same time (XV and Dissidia), and they've been releasing "Renewal Dungeons" which gives new players a chance to get all the characters, a ginornous amount of mithril, all the rewards (orbs, accessories, gil, etc) from the events, as well as letting them experience the endgame of old events which, I think as a newcomer, would be exciting to try and figure out.

Not to mention actual Newbie dungeons to ease them in as well.

And we're only up to V renewal right now.

 

[Dreavus]

Cool game, I kind of fell away from Gachas though (Just playing FE heroes in maintenance mode atm). That, and I could never get a relic that gave me a proper defensive buff so I got kinda wrecked by the hard stuff.

The boss fights are damn cool in this game though, they actually require a lot of strategy to beat compared to what I played of Exvius.

I keep thinking about trying Mobius again but I don't remember if I linked my account anywhere or just trashed it. I played the first few months (with the weird alien event) and got owned by my job pulls. As a White Mage I never could seem to figure out the scoring/combo system either. However the story was pretty amusing for those first few chapters, because it seemed like everything Wol did resulted in everyone saying YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE and even he starts sniffing bullshit because it all seems to work out perfectly every time no matter what happens.

 

[Deadly]

Gacha games always have to strike a balance between retention and recruitment to combat churn. The well-designed ones let new players reasonably catch up to endgame content in a decent amount of time.

The most fundamental natural contribution to this factor is that in-game currency generally inflates on its own naturally due to what you can get out of the gacha with any specific amount. One Mythril now is worth a shit ton more than one Mythril at launch, for example.

Specifically for FFRK, maybe the best actual barometer would be players who jumped into the JP service out of curiosity maybe 6 months ago, who are clearing 4* magicites now. It's definitely a bit more of an effort but not impossible.

I agree it's a difficult balance to achieve. 6 months seems like an awful long time to reach the fun part of a game though. During that you have to balance efficient use of stamina, weapon slots (I can't imagine having only 100 slots, I'm at 475 now), and actually getting to spend your mythril for gear.

But hey if you have the patience to chug through, game can be rather fun. Since the rewards are front-loaded too it makes for a great gacha game to just pickup and then drop until the next event.

Jumping in right now is the beginner bonus. Just look at this:

We currently have 2 new events running at the same time (XV and Dissidia), and they've been releasing "Renewal Dungeons" which gives new players a chance to get all the characters, a ginornous amount of mithril, all the rewards (orbs, accessories, gil, etc) from the events, as well as letting them experience the endgame of old events which, I think as a newcomer, would be exciting to try and figure out.

Not to mention actual Newbie dungeons to ease them in as well.

And we're only up to V renewal right now.

You're forgetting a crucial limiting aspect of the game : STAMINA

 

[Bulzeeb]

As someone that is currently playing fate go and fire emblem heroes, I must skip this offer even if I think the game looks nice. I miss having all.the time of the world to play

 

[GDJustin]

You're forgetting a crucial limiting aspect of the game : STAMINA

Spend mythril on Stam refreshes during the event. You'll get like 5x or more mythril back for every one spent if literally all the events are new to you.

If someone started this game now, and rant through all these beginner dungeons, they'd experience 2+ years worth of content in couple weeks and have hundreds and hundreds of Stam at the end of it.

 

[Matt Attack]

How feasible is it for a new player to finish all of these renewal events?

 

[WarAdept]

How feasible is it for a new player to finish all of these renewal events?

You'll need to dedicate some time to it, as they all finish up on the 5th of November, but constantly refreshing using all the mithril (the ingame currency for the Gatcha) you get from completing these events, one can do it all with a whole stock of mithril to spare.

 

[Ventara]

If I didn't already have a f2p mobile RPG (Dragon Blaze) consuming my life, I would jump on this.

 

[Mozendo]

Why do people put quotes around F2P mobile titles these days?

 

[PataHikari]

How feasible is it for a new player to finish all of these renewal events?

You can probably get through the first 10 stages of the event which give the Mythril off the back of the 5 stars you draw.

 

[DyslexicAlucard]

Creepy. I literally just redownloaded the game. I’m not sure if I can get back into though. I lost my phone a few months back and when I went to redownlownload it, all my data was gone. Apparently you could only back up data by connecting a Facebook account to your phone. Screw that.

Several games seem to want to do this so if you're averse to using an actual facebook account you could dummy for that purpose.

Puzzles and Dragons does this too, except without the FB option, and I hate it. I honestly consider it a predatory business practice. There's no logistical reason they can't have an account system that stores your info server-side. The only reason to do it this way is to encourage users to keep a game on their phone in perpetuity, so that the temptation to play it (and therefore spend money on loot boxes and microtransactions) is always there. I honestly wish journalists like Jim Sterling would take up this cause too.

 

[Star Falcon]

Nice little game i played it for quite some time! I liked the vast amount of characters you could get and the amount of content from each game that was covered.
Ultimately though it was the same thing every week and the cost of the gacha is too much. Nothing worse than saving weeks and weeks lf resources and having it evaporate in a matter of minutes for nothing...

 

[PataHikari]

Nice little game i played it for quite some time! I liked the vast amount of characters you could get and the amount of content from each game that was covered.
Ultimately though it was the same thing every week and the cost of the gacha is too much. Nothing worse than saving weeks and weeks lf resources and having it evaporate in a matter of minutes for nothing...

Good news!

It's now literally impossible to get nothing.

Also, you get 2-3 Mythril a day now. So a 50 Mythril pull takes a bit less than a month.

And nowadays if you do a 50 pull you are guaranteed at least one 5 star.

 

[Kain]

I just found out I have an entire V event that I missed. FFII BANNER HERE I GO

Seriously, now it's a great time to jump in, there's a fuckton to do if you have the time.

 

[Falk]

Puzzles and Dragons does this too, except without the FB option, and I hate it. I honestly consider it a predatory business practice. There's no logistical reason they can't have an account system that stores your info server-side. The only reason to do it this way is to encourage users to keep a game on their phone in perpetuity, so that the temptation to play it (and therefore spend money on loot boxes and microtransactions) is always there. I honestly wish journalists like Jim Sterling would take up this cause too.

wat

 

[danthefan]

How necessary is it to spend money on it?

 

[PataHikari]

How necessary is it to spend money on it?

It's honestly one of the most F2P friendly Gacha games around.

Like, it's insanely generous with it's Free Currency (Mythril)

Like I said, you get 2-3 a Day from playing (1 every day, a 2nd three times over a ten day cycle, one one from doing 3 dungeons a day)

There are tons of always available story dungeon that give Mythril.

There's an event a week which gives another 12 Mythril (Two of them tied to multiplayer fights, but they're really easy).

So a month you get 61 Mythril minimum provided you do the events. Which means one free pull a month, which will get you something.

And then there's all the Mythril you get from the "story" dungeons now out. Hundreds of them. I still haven't done all of them and I've been playing a year.

 

[chronobeej]

How necessary is it to spend money on it?

There is no need to spend money in the game. Some people choose to spend money to chase after certain relics but there is no need. There are plenty of relics and abilities that are sufficient to complete the hard content. I've spent very little money in the game and have been able to complete all the new content.

 

[RecRoulette]

Is it worth it to hop in, play through dungeons of the FF games I like, and get out?

I remember starting it a couple of years back but couldn't stick with it.

 

[PataHikari]

Is it worth it to hop in, play through dungeons of the FF games I like, and get out?

I remember starting it a couple of years back but couldn't stick with it.

That's not possible.

You go through the "Realm Dungeons" which are direct adaptations of the FF game's stages in a linear order with the occasional branching but you have to do both branches to progress.

And event dungeons are weekly things based off a particular scene or character in a single Final Fantasy game.

 

[ZangBa]

This is the only mobile game I play consistently. It's fair, no reason to ever spend money unless you really want to support the devs. The gameplay is fun, well thought out and similar enough to classic ATB. This is definitely the best time for a beginner to start. Seriously now, a lot of gacha games will ask for your damn soul to keep up(Brave Exvius) but not this one. Also, it's better than XIII and XV.

 

[FinalAres]

Are any of the final bosses in the realms yet? Last time I played some were pretty close.

 

[PataHikari]

Are any of the final bosses in the realms yet? Last time I played some were pretty close.

They've been in some Event Dungeons but they haven't been added to any Realm dungeons.

 

[FinalAres]

They've been in some Event Dungeons but they haven't been added to any Realm dungeons.

Wow they're taking their sweet time.

 

[DyslexicAlucard]

wat

I don't know why you're confused. Some games do not save your account information at all server-side, despite the fact that you can (and usually do) purchase items through microtransactions. This means that if you ever delete the game from your device, all progress and purchases you made are gone forever.

So imagine you bought a game on your Xbox and the DLC for it, but if you deleted it you lost that DLC forever. But it's actually worse than that when it comes to loot boxes, because

1) there's no limit to how much you can purchase, making the need to keep it on your device more insidious, and

2) you can't even purchase your items back 1-to-1, so would need to buy a ton just to (maybe) get back what you had before.

To be clear, I'm fine with games that are single player and don't have MTs not having cloud/server-side storage. But when you start charging for things in-game that are lost when you delete the app (or your device is broken), that's when I start to have an issue.

Hopefully this clears things up.

Spoiler

Either way, not sure this is the right thread for it as I haven't played FFRK and don't know if it has this specific issue (although, like you said and I acknowledged, it does have a FB option.) I meant this more as a quick aside, as it reminded me of issues in similar mobile titles.

 

[Jux]

I've started playing again a few months ago and I feel like I've hit a huge wall. I can do 140 consistently and some 160 as well but anything above is just plain impossible. I've got a few level 99 characters and quite a few nice SBs (group heal, overstrike, etc.) but even with that and Wall/Full Break/Shout etc I just can't survive being hit for group 2K+ every other turn.
Watching Youtube I feel like I need to hone a lot more abitilites, but with the slow trickle of Major Orbs (or even converting the lower ones), I don't see myself ever catching up (some Nightmare dungeons seem to be insane in term of abillity requirement...). Some fights even seem to require very specific SBs to be able to pull them off...
Apparently they are adding a big update in december which will make Crystal orb more available... hopefully Major will increase as well. In the meantime I think I'm pretty much done with the game.