Sword Art Online: Integral Factor guide - Beginner's tips that are integral to success
Sword Art Online: Integral Factor is a new free-to-play multiplayer role-playing game that can be overwhelming. It combines a lot of systems from different kinds of games and lumps them in with the fourth-wall breaking world of Sword Art Online. Lukcy for you, we’ve banged our heads against Integral Factor’s systems and discovered a pretty good road map for getting you started. See below:
Re-rolling 101
The first thing you need to know about Sword Art Online: Integral Factor is that it’s a gatcha-style game. Also known as a game with “loot boxes,” Integral Factor relies on players spending a premium currency to get a chance at unlocking powerful, rare items. Luckily, Integral Factor provides players with a generous amount of premium currency to spend right away, so if you don’t like what you unlock from the start, you can re-roll, meaning you delete the game, re-download it, and try again. It may be a little time consuming, but it can let you get the items you want without having to spend money.
What you want from re-rolling
The premium currency in Integral Factor unlocks special attacks and abilities, but they come in the form of characters from the world of Sword Art Online. Each of these characters has multiple levels of rarity, which are designated by stars. All you really need to know about rarity is that items with high star ratings are more rare and stronger than lower star items.
When you spend your initial allotment of premium currency, you primarily want to look for at least one four star attack, but looking to get two four star attacks is ideal and not entirely unreasonable. The reason you’ll want two is because a second attack lets you kit out your AI companion that follows you everywhere. Two attacks means both you and your partner can dish out some serious damage.
Take care of your partner
In addition to equipping your AI friend with a good set of abilities, it’s always important to make sure they have the right gear as well. After all, you can do twice your own damage (or more) if you have someone beside you that has what they need to perform well.
All that said, you don’t quite need to treat your AI pal just like you do yourself. Your companions don’t seem to die easily (or at all), so armor isn’t something you really need to focus on giving them. Also, if you’re bad about using buffs on yourself, make sure to equip those to your companion, as they’ll make sure you stay in tip top shape during fights.
If you want to mindlessly grind, find a mushroom
In order to get the right gear for you and your companion, you’ll likely have to do a good bit of grinding in Integral Factor. Grinding is necessary in this game because you have to kill enemies to get materials for crafting and also because each piece of gear in the game has level perquisites that you need to hit in order to equip them.
If you want to be able to grind out levels and materials without having to think or focus too much on the game, the easiest way would be to find the areas of Integral Factor that have healing mushrooms, as they can make sure your character doesn’t lose too much while fighting. If you're near a mushroom you can mindlessly mash to your heart’s content to earn experience and materials without having to think much about it.
Dash everywhere
If you want to get from place to place quickly in Integral Factor, make sure to use your dash ability. It makes you move dramatically faster across the map and is easy to spam repeatedly. Although it does take some of your SP to dash, your meter refills so quickly that it’s worth doing to save the time.