Dragalia Lost - Who to upgrade if you don't have five-star Adventurers
As a gacha game, Dragalia Lost only allows you to build your teams of Adventurers out of the best units you have around you. So, although we may all want to have teams full of S tier five-star Adventurers, that’s simply not realistic.
Most players may have only one or no five-star Adventurers and will have to resort to putting together a rag-tag group of “lesser” heroes. Fortunately, Dragalia Lost is pretty well balanced so that you don’t need ultra rare units to do well in late game content, though they aren’t great about letting you know who these folks are. See below for my picks of some of Dragalia Lost’s best non-five-star heroes (and even some advice about five-star units to avoid):
DPS
Everyone wants to have a great damage dealer on their team, but not everyone has access to heavy hitters like Ezelith or Mikoto. As good backups, consider looking at Orsem or Musashi to add to your team.
Orsem is a highly mobile dagger Adventurer who is built around increasing his own critical rate. One of his special attacks can also freeze enemies, which can be super handy.
Musashi may be a four-star unit, but he still has one of the highest attack stats in all of Dragalia Lost. On top of this, he can gain the ability to buff his own strength and the strength of everyone on his team. Oh yea, he also has an ability that allows him to poison enemies without fail. All of these things combine to make for a really fearsome damage dealer.
Healer
Healers may not be the most glorious position on teams in Dragalia Lost, but they’re extremely necessary, especially for things like Phraeganoth Clash or The Imperial Onslaught. Although the five-star Hildegarde is easily the best healer in the game, you can still keep your team plenty healthy with Verica or Halloween Althemia.
Verica is a fire-based healer and does a great job of giving Hildegarde a run for her money. With a heal that regens the whole team and another that targets the ally with the lowest hp, she can help make sure that everyone is well taken care of. Her heals are also more effective when she stays at full health, which can be easy enough to maintain when you’re the one who heals for your team.
Halloween Althemia isn’t a healing unit specifically, but she can fill this spot quite nicely. She only comes equipped with one insta-heal by default, but if you pair her with the Vampire’s Lantern weapon from the current Trick or Treasure event, she gains the ability to heal the teammate most in need. The nice thing about Halloween Althemia is that she can use her heals relatively quickly thanks to her ability to start all quests with her abilities half-charged. This lets you whip out clutch heals quickly, which can be super important.
Tank
Tanks occupy a strange space in Dragalia Lost, but they are mainly units that can dive into the fray without having to worry too much about getting hit. Currently the best Adventurer for this is Julietta, though Karina and Ryozen can occupy this role quite well.
Karina is an axe-wielder with great survivability. She also has the benefit of being able to deal more damage to enemies based on how many buffs she currently has applied to her. This can make her a pretty good damage powerhouse as well. This damage can come somewhat early in some missions thanks to her Skill Prep ability that half-fills her abilities at the start of every mission.
Ryozen may be an old man, but he’s great at holding his own. He’s one of the few tanks in the game that has his own active defensive boost ability, which pairs really nicely with his Healing Doublebuff skill. This essentially allows Ryozen to heal himself as he buffs his whole team. This pairs with a damage increase for bosses in Overdrive, making Ryozen an important tool in taking down bosses.
Support
Support units are generally units that don’t have specific roles to fill on a team, but they have unique abilities that let them bring a certain x-factor to your lineup. For the only two events in Dragalia Lost thus far, support units like Ezelith and Halloween Elisanne have been the best units to have to complete the hardest event challenges, but fear not. If you have Luther or Kleimann in your roster, you can still do all right.
Luther has the ability to reduce the strength and defense of enemy units, so if he’s a great way to let more powerful teammates excel. He’s also a dagger-user, which is one of the more mobile and easy-to-use units in the game. His only real drawback is that his base stats aren’t as impressive as some other Adventurers.
Kleimann is a bit of a strange Adventurer, but he’s worth investing in if you like using force strikes. This wand user can buff his own force strike damage, making him a pretty dangerous weapon in the right hands. He also has the ability to put enemies to sleep, which can be quite handy.
Who to avoid
As good as Dragalia Lost is about balancing its Adventurers, there’s quite a few issues with an entire class of heroes that you may want to avoid until further notice. Even if you ended up their five-star counterparts like Hawk or Nefaria, you may want to hold off on training up your bow users for the time being.
There are a variety of reasons for this, including the fact that their arrows can only maximize damage against large targets and their force strikes are so slow that they’re unreliable. Unless some update comes and corrects some issues with bows, you’re likely better off not using the unit type entirely and just relying on the other Adventurers on your bench.