I decided to whip up a short list of advice for everyone that’s just starting out. ^^~ Some of these are covered in the FAQ too. :3

Before asking questions, take a look at the FAQ and the comments section underneath it first since the answer is most likely in there somewhere. Thanks~!

Updated on November 16th:

Removed the tip about a targeted enemy taking the most damage from cone and AOE attacks. That only applies to main target focused ability cards from General Battle Tips.

Added a screenshot example of a deck for Fire Skillseed farming to the Getting More Skillseeds.

Changed the answer to What jobs are available right now?

Removed Where can I farm the Imperial Lich/Dyadic Lich/Miasmatic Lich in Chapter 2? since the 2nd Exploration map has been added. (The Liches appear there but it takes a few battles for them to show up again after the players defeat them.)

Older update info can be found here: https://koukoupuffs.net/mobius-final-fantasy-tips-for-beginners-updates-log/

Literally Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What jobs are available right now?

A. Please refer to the Release section of http://mobius.gamepedia.com/Category:Job_Cards Also check in-game information under HOME or your region’s official Mobius Final Fantasy Facebook page to stay up-to-date with future additions.

Q. Why would I want to draw jobs that I can get from the starter jobs?

A. Every summoned job card can evolve into higher forms. This is impossible to do with the starter jobs as they only gain the base forms of other jobs in their class. For example, the Onion Knight can become a Warrior, Knight, etc., but Knight job card has its own evolutions; it can move on to become a Royal Guard and then Imperial Knight (once panels 5 – 8 get added to the game). You can see all the summoned jobs here: http://altema.jp/ffmobius/joblist

IMPORTANT!! Please be aware that, when looking at details of a job at the Altema wiki, the evaluations for launch ones like the Warrior, Black Mage, etc. are high because Square Enix Japan introduced a new feature (as of August 2016) called Custom Skill Cards and a map featuring Job Quests which reward players with Custom Job Skill Cards. These make those early jobs extremely powerful in certain aspects. I wrote about it here: https://koukoupuffs.net/2016/08/14/mobius-final-fantasy-jp-global-about-job-ratings-found-on-the-altema-wiki/

To better illustrate the issue, here is an example of the Neophyte Ranger as a Dancer compared to the summoned Dancer and all of its evolutions. A Neophyte Ranger’s Dancer will not obtain these two other jobs.

Still, starter jobs shouldn’t be viewed as pushovers. They have certain stat advantages over their summoned job counterparts. For example, the Neophyte Ranger’s Dancer has much greater magic power than the Dancer.

Q. Should I use my Summon Tickets and Ability Tickets now or hold onto them?

A. Naturally everyone wants what other players generally consider “the best cards” or “the best jobs” but honestly, there are no terrible cards or jobs. Besides, even if you use Tickets now, you’ll get more over time. To answer the question though: the consensus so far (at the Facebook community I’m in, at least) is to hold onto the Summon Tickets for upcoming jobs or draw for a 4-star if you really really want to use them. And for Ability Tickets, go for Support cards like Artemis or Gigant.

Q. Should I reroll?

A. It’s really up to you. Many experienced players don’t see the need to and will most likely tell you no.

Q. Where can I get Dark and Light Skillseeds?

A. What Skillseeds you get is determined by the cards in your deck so you have to equip ability cards with Dark or Light seeds. See the Getting More Skillseeds section below to find out how to identify what type of Skillseeds a card has.

Q. Where is the best place to farm Skillseeds?

A. How many Skillseeds you get from an area is dependent on the cards in your deck, the difficulty of the area you’re fighting at, and your score. I would outfit the deck with cards that possess the element you’re trying to farm, look for a place with many battles (but watch out for its Stamina consumption), and, if you can handle it, switch the game to Hard difficulty. Changing the game’s difficulty setting is explained in the section entitled Play on Hard Difficulty When Things Get Too Easy.

Do keep in mind that equipping ability cards of other classes or even ones of elements the job can’t use may greatly affect the overall battle score. The reasons are 1) using cards that match the job class grants Attack and Break Power bonuses, and 2) if an ability card’s element isn’t drawn out in battle, the ability can’t be used.

Q. How do I unlock Extra Skills?

A. Please read all of What are Extra Skills (エキスパンドスキル)? AND Is there a faster way to get Extra Skills? The price listed for the Extranger is from the Japanese version. See in-game Item Shop for actual prices.

Q. How do I get more actions in a turn?

A. The number of actions are shown as stars under the Speed stat when you look at a job’s details. When you’re just starting off in the game, the only ways to increase Speed are by unlocking new jobs* from Skill Panel pages, upgrading weapons**, and hope that your Spirit casts the Hastening Gift.

*Unfortunately for the starter jobs — i.e. Onion Knight, Neophyte Ranger, and Apprentice Mage — even unlocking the evolved job forms for them may not always increase the number of actions. However, as far as I know, Job Cards that are drawn from the Summon Card shop always receive 1 extra star with each evolution.

**Not all weapons add to Speed.

Q. Why is there a flashing warning sign/exclamation mark over a card?

A. It’s an indication that the card does not match your deck’s elemental affinity. There’s nothing stopping you from equipping it but you won’t draw the element necessary to use its ability in battle.

If you only want to see the cards you can equip, tap on Sort: Job, and under Special Filters, tap No Elements. Afterwards, tap OK.

Q. When will Chapter {number}/new jobs/new cards come out? What are the next jobs?

A. No one knows. Check your region’s official Mobius Final Fantasy social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to stay informed about upcoming additions to the game.

Q. Where can I find a map for Blank Slate/Chapter 2/full maps of the game?

A. I’ve yet to locate a web site with completed maps of every single region but moogle-ff.com seems to have a fair amount of them. The site is in Japanese, however. The treasure lists may also be different.

Q. How do I get HD resolution graphics on an iPhone 6 Plus?

A. This is not a definite answer but I believe it has to do with a change made to the Japanese version back in July which seems to have been carried over to localized versions. The option to select High Definition graphics was removed due to the game abruptly terminating when the user selects it. There doesn’t seem to be any indication that Square Enix will try to reimplement it.

Q. [iOS issue] I’m getting Error 29 after Game Center is enabled but the game is stuck/frozen. Help?

A. This answer is from Square Enix and it applies to errors 29 through 32: Go to the System app and then select Game Center from the sidebar. Tap on your Apple ID. Choose Sign Out. Once that’s done, sign in again. The issue should be resolved. Source: http://www.finalfantasy.jp/mobius/information/2016/02/03/f133a0b40b6b338d69ff1d873dc9d722f9992092.html

Tips

Rerolling Ability and Job Cards

To me, rerolling is a term used by folks that aren’t satisfied with their first random draw. They’ll start a game and go through the tutorial all over again to try to redraw for perceived better items. In Mobius FF, you can do this with the Reset Save Data option under the ETC menu.

Don’t Worry About Whether or Not Your Job Card is “Good”

Unless you really care about weekly and event rankings and/or have the worst luck in the world with Job Summons, starter jobs can get you pretty far as long as you actively work on developing them. This is due to the fact that they’ll eventually evolve into other jobs of the same class. For example, that wimpy-ass Onion Knight can become a Warrior, Knight, Dark Knight, Dragoon, and so on. It’s recommended, however, that you should move away from them once you get new job cards since the stats of jobs evolved from beginner ones will never beat their summoned variants.

For the curious, players of the Japanese version have ranked all available jobs in that version: http://altema.jp/ffmobius/bestjob

IMPORTANT!! Please be aware that, when looking at details of a job at the Altema wiki, the evaluations for launch ones like the Warrior, Black Mage, etc. are high because Square Enix Japan introduced a new feature (as of August 2016) called Custom Skill Cards and a map featuring Job Quests which reward players with Custom Job Skill Cards. These make those early jobs extremely powerful in certain aspects. I wrote about it here: https://koukoupuffs.net/2016/08/14/mobius-final-fantasy-jp-global-about-job-ratings-found-on-the-altema-wiki/

Focus and Work With What You Have

Don’t fret if you don’t have the job you want. Assuming you have 3-star cards to go along with it, whatever is in your possession will probably be enough for a long while. You might want to consider developing one job of each class though since some event and story maps have locks that can only be undone by fulfilling conditions with specific jobs.

A common advice within the community is not to spend Skill Panel Openers on the Onion Knight, Neophyte Ranger, or Apprentice Mage and should be saved for use on Job Cards drawn from a card summon instead. The main reason is that the starter jobs are for short-term use and not worth fully developing.

Don’t Use 1-Star or 2-Star Cards as Your Main Ability Cards

Their sole purpose is to be evolved to 3-star. Yes, you’ll have to level them up but that’s the only reason they would be in the deck. Metal Cactuar cards can be used to cut down the amount of time they’re in there though.

Please refer to the Card section in the FAQ for information on other uses of 1-star and 2-star cards and other card-related details.

Card Summons Seem to Be an Iffy Investment in the International Version

In the Japanese version, you have 2 basic summon card options excluding the Cactuar Summon (which remains the same in all versions): 1 Summon Ticket/500 Magicite = 1 Ability or 1 Job Card; or 6 Summon Tickets/3,000 Magicite for 5 Ability Tickets and 1 Job Card.

In other versions, there are 3 different draws for Ability Cards and 1 draw for Job Cards.

The Ability 3-star & 4-star Summon options only offer 1 card. The only enticing thing about these is that the ability card you get will be maxed out in ability level and skillseeds level, and their Extra Skills are fully unlocked. The problem with this is, if you look at the little text under two of the Info buttons, it indicates that you must draw 4 times before you’re guaranteed a NEW card. This means, in the 3 attempts before it, you may get 3 duplicates.

For the Job Summon, you will obtain 1 Job that you currently do not possess. The pool does not include the 3 starter jobs (i.e. Onion Knight, Neophyte Ranger, and Apprentice Mage).

Finally, the Greater Summon Ability draw provides players with 6 Ability Cards. They can be a mix of 3-star and 4-star or all 3-star. The chances of them being ALL 4-star are abysmally low. The information window that pops up after tapping on Info states that:

The cards all come with level 1 ability and with no Skillseeds unlocked.

There could be duplicates of cards you already own. (I’m unsure if there could be duplicates within the draw itself though.)

Once you get a 4-star card, future draws of that card will also be 4-star.

If I remember correctly, many of the abilities of the 3-star offerings in the Ability Shop can be obtained from regular monsters so with patience, you can just farm for fodder cards to level up card abilities.

Note that fodder cards will have to be augmented to 3-star themselves before ability levelling could be done. Check the FAQ for a thorough explanation of the process. (The evolution material mentioned in it is not the Growstar but material cards dropped by bosses.)

Alternatively, since Ability Tickets are available for purchase from the Item Shop, you can simply use MAX Boost to buy a maxed out card without spending precious Summon Tickets.

For what it’s worth, it’s cheaper to buy 2000 Magicite and get 24 Ability Tickets to buy Ability Cards of your choosing from the Ability Shop over 3000 Magicite for a blind draw of 6 Cards. 18 Tickets are needed to buy 6 Ability Cards but the game doesn’t allow the purchase of that exact number.

90% – 99% Chance of Success for Event Card Fusions/Cards Without Farmable Abilities Aren’t Worth the Risk

This is especially true for Battle Tower events where you may not get enough cards to max out an ability since you can’t grind the bosses.

For example: The tower has 50 floors. You manage to only complete 20. Assuming the boss is kind enough to drop its card all 20 times, you’ll have 20 cards to work with. I think you need ~18 cards to develop the abiilty to level 6 so if, at some point, the fusion fails, it won’t possible to max out the level unless you use Ability Tickets.

There will also be situations where no monsters have the ability you need and Ability Tickets are the only way to level it. I strongly suggest ensuring the fusion success rate is 100% because getting enough Tickets to try again may take some time, or it may be an expensive option for those that opt to spend money.

The 4-Star Mog Amulet card is available in the Item Shop so you can always use those to boost the chance of success to 100%.

A Deck DOES NOT NEED to consist of 3 Offensive-Type Ability Cards and 1 Support Card

You can mix and match cards to suit your play style! On the Area Information window, it’ll usually state the elemental affinity of the monsters in the area you’re about to fight in. On most occasions, I bring a card that’s of the opposite element and another offensive-type that’s of another element and the last 2 as well as the rental card will be support cards.

As an example, I would have a deck with a fire card and either a wind or earth card for a spot where many water monsters show up. I do this in anticipation that one battle could consist of mostly or nothing but fire enemies. In such a situation, the wind or earth ability would be used since the monsters would be resistant to fire.

You can even have a deck consisting of one element or multiples of the same card.

Understanding the Element-Based Warnings in the Area Info

These are almost always in reference to the last battle in the area. All the battles before them may contain enemies of various elemental affinity. Keep that in mind when outfitting your deck.

Set a Support Card or a 4-Star Ability Card as Your Rental Card

Doing so will allow fellow players to have an easier time in battle. 4-Star ability cards are stronger than their 3-star variants and support cards give buffs such as upping magic power, strengthening attack power, changing all orbs to a certain element, etc. If you don’t have either then put in your 3-star that has the most unlocked Extra Skills.

Note that when considering which rental card to pick to use in battle, having identical non-support/ability cards of the same rarity is a waste because it’s just the same having one card.

Refreshing & Resetting the Rental Card List. Or If You Don’t Care About Rental Cards, Use Quickstart

You can refresh the Rental Card list up to 3 times. Tap the small button with the exclamation mark above the first Rental Card to receive another set of cards to browse through.

If you’re not finding a card you want to use, you can reset the list by teleporting to another area and back. If you’re on a small circle, go to another map completely (e.g. Chapter 1 to Chapter 2) and come back so you can keep your spot. If you teleport OFF a small spot, you’ll have to redo it again.

For anyone not wanting to constantly have to manually choose Rental Cards, there’s a tiny button with a wing icon next to the area name in the Area Info window. Press it to enable Quickstart. You’ll start battles with a randomly selected Rental Card. (This is useful in the Shrine of Trials when you don’t want to waste time scrolling through everything if you have a good enough deck to finish enemies fast anyway.)

Use Element Drives

They’re not only for upping elemental resistance. Use them so you can force other elements to appear more frequently.

Use Buffs and Debuffs

A key gameplay mechanic in Mobius Final Fantasy involves buffing Wol and debuffing enemies. If you’re unfamiliar with the terms, buffing means to enhance or fortify the player character. Conversely, debuffing is a means of weakening an opponent. Common debuffs are Stun, Slow, Debarrier, and No Guard. The first two forces the enemy to skip a turn and reduce the number of actions respectively while Debarrier reduces defense and No Guard allows players to deal full damage regardless of the enemy’s defense parameters.

Faith, Boost, Brave, and Haste are fairly common as well. Faith ups Magic power, Boost increases Break power, Brave makes physical attacks stronger, and Haste increases the number of actions per turn.

Note that all buffs and debuffs are subject to a turn limit. You can “refresh” them, however, if the support cards become available before the limits run out.

In the Ability Shop, there are some cards that have the abilities mentioned above! Tap the Info button at the top left to cycle to Info: Ability and then select the Name tab to see all the ability names of currently available cards.

Use Your Ultimate Skill in the Break Phase

There are certain Ultimates that work well even when enemies are not in Break, but generally, you get the largest score boost when they’re utilized during that phase.

Pay Attention to Attack and Break Power of a Job’s Ultimate Skill

There are some Ultimate Skills that can’t destroy enemies in one go because they lack power to do so. An example of this is the Strategist’s Ultimate Skill; its main purpose is to bring the enemies into Break and change all orbs into Prismatic/Rainbow elements. Unless the monsters are weak, even using the Ultimate under Break won’t kill them off.

(… I realize the Strategist is a late addition job but I can’t think of another one off the top of my head. ^^ Prismatic elements should be added in the near future — certainly sooner than the job. The unique feature about the element is that any card can use them.)

Auto-Battle Mode Can and Will Be Stupid

If you leave it up to the AI to fight battles for you, you may scream at the screen questioning why it’s not using an Element Drive to remove unneeded elements from the Element Stock bar when it’s completely full, or you’ll notice that AI Wol loves to waste his Ultimate on enemies with low HP when in a Break phase. You can’t really do anything about the former except manually intervening. The Ultimate button — the little button next to ATTACK MODE — is in its off position by default, thankfully. Still, be wary of leaving it on.

The difference between the AI modes is simply passive versus aggressive. Under DEFENSE MODE, Wol will focus more on conserving and restoring health. The Ultimate Skill won’t be used either. With ATTACK MODE, he’ll throw everything at enemies.

Don’t Forget to Press the Play Button

That button with the arrow pointing right above the ability cards on the side will enable or disable double speed. Use it once you feel comfortable with playing battles at a faster rate.

General Battle Tips

Eliminate the smaller enemies first since they’re much quicker to defeat.

I realize the options for the following tip are limited at the moment because of the tiny pool of cards but there are some ability cards that possess buffs and debuffs: Using a buff that’s the opposite of the ailment or debuff on Wol will remove it. For example: Debrave (Attack Power Down) can be undone with Brave (Attack Power Up). It works both ways, however; if Wol buffs himself, an enemy may remove it. Similarly, tossing a corresponding debuff on a monster that’s buffed itself eliminates it.

Learn to estimate how many more hits are needed before an enemy is put into the Break phase to avoid getting hit more than necessary. For example, if you have 2 actions left and you know you can reach Break with those 2 hits, don’t stop and use an Element Drive or anything else that would reduce the the turn count. Doing so will allow the enemy to hit you in its upcoming turn.

Attacking certain monsters with their elemental affinity will heal them and also reduce your battle score.

Dying and continuing a battle has consequences — there is a short period of score penalty. Its length is unknown but all attacks will generate a smaller score in that time.

Rich players may consider buying and using Warp Shards to instantly get rewards from battles rather than actually fighting them. These only work on areas that the player has been to except ones with bosses. While stamina will not be used, the Skillseed bonus on the results screen will always x1.

Getting More Skillseeds

Work on unlocking all the Skillseed levels of the ability cards you want seeds from. They all start off at +1 when the unlock level is at 0, but as it increases, the quantities will as well.

The greater the amount of Skillseeds your deck can create, the more you’ll get after each battle. Note that you can outfit a deck with only one or two Skillseed elements to quickly increase their quantities to accomplish that as well.

Here’s an example of a deck I use for Fire Skillseed farming. The first ability card has a taunt ability which is completely useless in single player maps but it’s in the deck because it gives 28 Fire seeds. (The card is useful for bringing enemy Break bars into the red; especially water enemies.)

Notice that the amount of Fire Skillseeds created by the deck is 64. I can even substitute Hermes and the Fire PuPu and use other cards that gave more Fire Skillseeds.

There are 3 ways to unlock all Skillseeds:

Fuse cards with the same element. Perform a fusion with (green) Cactuar cards. Use the Boost Fusion option.

Here are some visual examples:

I would recommend against using Boost Fusion on Skillseeds alone. As far as I know, there is no “discount” on the quantity of Ability Tickets required if either Ability or Skillseeds are already maxed out when performing a Boost Fusion.

Ability Cards drawn from a single card summon won’t have to undergo an unlocking process since all Skillseeds levels are already completed.

If you’re looking for specific elements from cards you own or how many Skillseeds have been unlocked, go to the Ability Cards screen and tap on the top left button until it changes to show Info: Seeds. You will see the element(s) and their unlocked levels.

You can even use this type of sort on the Decks screen by tapping on the button with the 2 squares on the top right above Abilities.

Note that simply maxing Skillseed levels isn’t enough. There are 2 main factors that determine the final Skillseed bonus you see on the Results screen: the bonus multiplier of the area and the multiplier from your battle score.

The total Skillseeds bonus comes from multiplying the Area Bonus by the Score Bonus. If you have the +50% from Mobius Gift Box, +0.5 will be added to the Area Bonus.

Here’s an example with numbers:

The bonus from the area is 1.5.

You obtained a score of 30,000 from battle. The bonus from that is 1.2.

Multiplying them together gives a total of 1.8.

With the +50% from the Gift Box, the calculation would be (1.5+0.5) x 1.2 which results in 2.4.

In terms of figuring out the bonus multiplier from a score, I have a chart here: https://koukoupuffs.net/2015/08/05/mobius-final-fantasy-general-faq/#misc1 However, it only applies to the Japanese version. All other regions have much lower multipliers. I believe the score ranges are the same though.

Additional maps with daily elemental bonuses should be forthcoming so be sure to use those to stock up on ‘seeds.

Oh, and keep your eyes peeled for the map with the giant cactuars. If no other major changes are made in international versions, it’ll be the ideal place to grind.

Pay Attention to the Rarity Level of Cactuar Cards

For unlocking Skillseed levels, it’s tempting to use cards that provide 100% or near 100% every single time. However, this can be costly as higher rarity cards cost more. In many cases, using multiple low level cards or mixing and matching 2-star and 3-star get you a successful fusion and end up cheaper overall.

The following are examples of unlocking Skillseed level 2 to 3 and 3 to 4. The screencaps are from the Japanese version since I didn’t have enough Mystic Tablets in the English one to do a run in the Shrine of Trials (^^;). These were also taken when the +20% success chance boost event was in place, but the fusion costs are fixed and remain the same even without the 20% boost:

From unlock level 2 to 3

In the left-most image, one 2-star Cactuar card is selected as fusion fodder. Since there is still a 4% chance of failure, there are 2 options that will ensure that the fusion will succeed: Use an extra 2-star card or use a single 3-star card. The middle image shows one 3-star card and its fusion cost of 1,200 Gil while the right-most one has two 2-star cards and a price of 800 Gil.

From unlock level 3 to 4

Left image: Two 2-star Cactuar cards. Cost is 800 Gil.

Middle image: One 3-star Cactuar and one 2-star Cactuar. Cost is 1,600 Gil.

Right image: One 4-star Cactuar. Cost is 2,400 Gil.

To sum it up — 2-star Cactuar cards offer the lowest success rate but are the cheapest and cost 400 Gil a piece to use. A 3-star Cactuar costs 1,200 Gil, and a 4-star Cactuar is 2,400 Gil.

Please note that while the examples above only show 3-star ability cards, the costs of fusing with Cactuars are the same for ALL rarities of ability cards.

The Mog Amulet DOES NOT work with Cactuar cards; they are used to upgrade abilities only.

Play on Hard Difficulty When Things Get Too Easy

For everyone speed unlocking job skill panels and nabbing 4-star cards from the card summons, you’ll want to switch over to Hard difficulty. Areas will most likely be at maximum difficulty meaning monsters won’t die in one hit anymore! And dealing more damage = higher score which = a greater overall Skillseed bonus multiplier! Hard difficulty also provides a higher drop rate for spoils and more experience.

To change the game’s difficulty, go to ETC and then the Config menu.

Unless Square Enix NA and EU changed something, Battle Difficulty does not apply to the Chaos Vortex or Battle Tower events as their difficulties are fixed.

Save Extranger Cards for Later Extra Skills

Level 2 and 4 skills tend unlock at a decent rate. It’s level 6 onward that can take a while. Sure, you can buy them but if you’re not willing to spend a fortune on the game, it’s best to hold onto the creepy light bulbs. Even with events and promotions that supposedly unlock them faster, you’re still going to have to use the abilities many times before the skills become available.

Oh, since we’re talking about just starting off in the game, I suppose using them on level 6 abilities would be reasonable. I’d still rather hold onto them for later unlocks.

Please read What are Extra Skills (エキスパンドスキル)? AND Is there a faster way to get Extra Skills? first if you don’t know how Extra Skills unlock.

Buy the Mobius Gift Box

If there’s anything ever worth shelling out money for in the game, it’s the Mobius Gift Box. Unfortunately, it’s more expensive than the Japanese version (3000 Magicite versus 1500 Magicite), but on the upside, you get more items in global versions. You can pay for it completely or reduce the amount you pay out of pocket a little by stocking up on Magicite through promotional bonuses and by banking them from the Magicite Distiller.

As indicated in the screenshot above, buying this will grant the player +50% bonus in Skillseeds obtained after battles, 6 Summon Tickets, 20 Ability Tickets, 1 Spirit Ticket, 5 Elixirs, 5 Phoenix Downs, 5 Crystals, 1 Growstar, 1 Extranger, and 1 Mog Amulet. 3 Mystic Tablets & two 4-star Metal Cactuar Card will also be sent to the player’s present box every 6 days, up to 5 times a month.

This special bundle of perks can only be purchased once every 30 days.

Stay Informed About Updates & Events

Announcements for events, new summon draws, and other game-related updates usually come out at least a few weeks before they’re implemented. Knowing about them beforehand can help you decide whether or not you want to go through with certain purchases or hold out on them. You can find these by tapping the i button in the HOME menu or checking on your region’s official Mobius Final Fantasy Facebook page.

Read the In-Game Help Section

Seriously, you can learn a lot about the game in there such as topics and details that were not covered in the tutorial.