Eighth Era Guide: Everything you need to know about combat basics and tournaments

It’s hard to imagine that battling through an Orwellian world where AI is literally erasing the history of mankind could be such a pleasurable experience, but then there aren’t many games that offer as many compelling reasons to play as Eighth Era. 

Boasting an array of sophisticated strategic combat systems, a roster of over 50 unlockable heroes, plus opportunities to win real-world prizes, the action-packed, turn-based RPG offers plenty of incentives to dive in, climb the ranks, and win big! 

All you need is the know-how to rise to the top, and that’s exactly what we’re going to provide here in our guide to mastering Eighth Era's battle mechanics!

Getting down to the basics: elements and abilities

The first thing to know is that Eighth Era features a classic rock, paper, scissors, style system comprising of “Earth”, “Moon”, and “Sun” where one element trumps the other: Earth is more effective against Moon; Moon is more effective against Sun; and Sun is more effective against Earth. Each character will sport an icon displaying its element type during battle, but to make things easier, you’ll see a green, yellow, and red arrow above your enemies before each turn to show you how effective your hero’s attack will be.

Before jumping into battle, you’ll create a squad of five heroes; three of which will form the frontline, whilst the other two sit in reserve. So if you're confronted with a situation where you see mostly red arrows, you’ll want to swap your hero out for one that holds an elemental advantage. Just keep in mind that swapping a hero will cost two charges (read on a little further for more details about this).

When it comes to attacks and abilities, there are three choices at your disposal:

• Primary attacks: a basic attack which generates a single “charge” or two charges if it's an especially effective attack. Building up your charges will allow you to utilise the following two other abilities. 
• Charge attacks: these unleash a more powerful move on your enemy at the cost of charges
• Swapping: as mentioned above, swapping in a hero from the backline costs two charges. The backline hero swaps in for the frontline hero of your choice with an attack. 

Now it goes without saying that charge attacks are a lot more epic to watch, but you’ll want to use them wisely as your whole squad shares the same charge pool i.e. only use the charge attacks with the heroes that deal the most damage.

Classes are in session

Classes come in three flavours in Eighth Era: Support (which sport a heart icon), Defender (shield icon), and Attacker (sword icon).

With Support heroes, as you might have guessed, you can buff your team with useful healing to boost survivability. A different set of buffs will be available for the Defender class, who can help wear your foes down with debuffs and tanking as well. And finally, Attackers are all about DPS to help you eliminate your enemies with ease.

Time to level up

Now that you know how to win battles, your heroes will start gaining XP and leveling up. But to buff them up even more, you’ll want to customise their loadout and equip them with items collected from the campaign, dungeon, and PvP modes.

One of the resources comes in the form of XP cards belonging to the Sun, Earth, and Moon elements. Although these can be used to boost the XP of any hero you choose, you’ll receive a 50% boost if you match them to heroes with the same elemental affinity.

Each hero comes with six equipment slots so you’ll have plenty of potential equipment combinations to tinker with. The trouble is of course, you’ll likely end up with a lot of duplicate and unwanted items. Fortunately, when your player level increases to level 7, you’ll unlock equipment salvaging. This will allow you to salvage all of your unused equipment to create rank up and level mods to increase your equipment’s power, so nothing is wasted.

As for ranking up your squad using hero coins, you can improve their base stats and even unlock a Super Swap ultimate move for Epic and Legendary heroes. This means they can unleash more powerful attacks whenever they're on your back line.

Tournaments and PvP

Now onto the really fun stuff: the real-world prizes! Once you reach player level 6, you’ll unlock coin tournaments which offer you the chance to nab IRL collectible hero coins shipped right to your doorstep. They're minted in colourised, silvered, and gold-gilted rarities, so it's worth getting started on your collection with every new tournament cycle. 

As for PvP enthusiasts, you can unlock the Arena at level 9. PvP seasons last two weeks and come with featured factions - a system that awards bonuses to a specific character faction - which makes PvP the perfect choice for those who love to test new squads and change up their strategies.

All you have to do is beat campaign stages, clear skill dungeons, and unlock heroes - essentially everything you'd normally do as you go through the game. These will earn you some tournament points, and if you happen to bag a spot in the top ten, your coin will be shipped to you totally free of charge.

Ready to put all that into practice? If you haven’t started playing it already then you can find Eighth Era available to download for free from the App Store and Google Play.