Phantom Gate guide - Beginner's Tips

Phantomgate isn’t your typical Netmarble social rpg. For starters, it has all sorts of platforming and puzzle-solving elements in addition to the gacha-style shenanigans that all these releases seem to have.

Never fear though, as we can’t seem to pry ourselves away from any new Netmarble release. We’ve dug in plenty far into Phantomgate and have all the tips you need to know to give your self a great start (particularly if you plan to play without paying).

This is not a re-rolling game

Unlike a lot of other games with gacha mechanics, Phantomgate doesn’t really give you an early opportunity to try and draw powerful creatures (or “phantoms”) randomly. The best time for you to summon is once you’ve earned 600 crystals, which takes just about up until reaching level 20.

To get to level 20, you have to put in over an hour into Phantomgate. The prospect of playing for that long and then restarting if you don’t like your summons is just preposterous. Don’t do it. You’ll be fine.

Get the jump on enemies

As mentioned earlier, Phatomgate mixes in a layer of platforming and puzzle-solving in with its turn-based rpg mechanics. This consists of wandering levels, jumping on moving platforms, and running into enemies to initiate combat.

A key mechanic in Phantomgate’s combat is the ambush, which can give you a slight advantage on enemies at the start of a fight. To achieve this ambush, you need to approach enemies from behind, and this is most easily done by jumping. Enemies can move quickly and erratically, and the best shot you have at touching them quickly is to jump into them, as you move slightly quicker in your jump animation than you do just by running around.

Use 10 crystals early

Although the early game of Phantomgate is a race to try and get 600 crystals as possible, it’s not a bad idea to spend 10 of them to get some phantom souls. Phantom souls let you level up your phantoms without grinding out combat experience, so they can be really valuable to have on hand if you pick up a really rare phantom all of a sudden.

For a measly 10 crystals, you get 100 phantom souls, which is well worth the exchange, especially early on. At this point in the game, you’ll want to be experimenting with what kind of phantom compositions you want to make up your party, so being able quickly catch all your new phantoms up to your current level and mix and match them is super useful.

Build up every phantom you get

Going in line with the point about phantom souls, it’s in your best interest to build up all your phantoms as much as possible, particularly early on in Phantomgate. Although many gacha games like to have players focus in on specific, high tier characters to devote all of their attention to, there are practical reasons for building up just about any unit in Phantomgate.

As you evolve different phantom types in Phantomgate, you get rewards from Yggdrasil, the mythical Norse tree that functions as a sort of codex for this game. In the Yggdrasil menu, you can see a list of phantoms as constellations, and stars in the unit constellations fill as you evolve them. On each evolution, you get immediate crystal rewards, and filling an entire constellation grants your heroes permanent passive upgrades like increased attack, additional hit points, and more. These rewards are more than enough to justify leveling up even the most humble phantoms to give yourself a good early game boost.