Higan: Eruthyll is a real-time strategy card-based gacha game developed and published by Bilibili. The global version is currently in closed beta testing, which is how we’ve built a handy guide to reveal its inner mechanics. For a mobile gacha game, Higan: Eruthyll offers a great deal of visual polish with smooth 3D animations during cutscenes and in combat. At the same time, the story is delivered with full Japanese voicework (English subtitles), not afraid to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. On top of an engaging story, there’s intuitive gameplay that doesn’t feel too cumbersome, including a class system where you can develop new strategies while battling. Playing through Higan: Eruthyll is a breath of fresh air compared to the usual mobile gacha games out there, and you don’t even need the best Android phone for a fantastic visual experience.
Today’s beginner’s guide breaks down battle mechanics and upgrade systems to prep you before diving in. This way, you’ll know how to best spend your time and resources once you’re fully immersed in Higan: Eruthyll.
How the battle system works
Battling in Higan: Eruthyll is focused on manipulating combat flow by selecting cards while characters auto-attack enemies calculated by your battle formation. You’ll decide the formation of units before each battle while previewing the character’s target patterns and behaviors, ultimately strategizing how to tackle the upcoming fight sequence.
Every character offers a unique skill, and you activate these skills by selecting the appropriate card. It’s essential to time your skills since your energy is limited (actions you take). So you can’t just spam every card in your hand; otherwise, you won’t have enough energy left to use a skill when it matters. Your characters all carry a distinctive ultimate skill, and you can activate this once the ultimate energy gauge is full. You charge up the gauge as you activate your card skills.
Each unit is separated by class and skills that complement a role in battle. For example, a tank character can cast armor for damage absorption, which can save your team from taking too much damage; that way, it won’t be overwhelming for your primary support to keep up with healing.
You can select any character/role you’d like, but we found bringing in a tank, and a healer was an absolute must.
Mechanics
As the story progresses, you’ll face enemies with unique mechanics. When you’re introduced to new enemy mechanics, these often serve as hints at target prioritization and which actions will ensure your success.
You’ll also encounter hexagons (the tiles you stand on) that offer helpful buffs. Placing any unit on these hexagons will give that character the corresponding buffs. So keep this in mind when you’re editing your formation.
Roles and classes
Every unit has a preset class, and there are currently six available. You’ll need to mix and match your classes to balance your combat power.
- Adiutrix (healer and buffer)
- Assassin (damage dealer and debuffer)
- Caster (magic damage dealer and utility)
- Guardian (tank and buffer)
- Hoplite (melee damage dealer)
- Ranger (ranged damage dealer)
Outside of character classes, every unit has an individual element: Anemo, Lumino, Pyro, Ice, and Umbra. Not only are you expected to coordinate between a mixture of classes, but it’s also advised to incorporate a few elements to maximize the coverage during a fight. This way, you’re respecting which enemies are weak against a specific element type and which ones highly resist your element.
Building a roster
How to acquire more characters
Acquiring more units requires spending resources on the gacha system. Tap on Wish, and it’ll redirect you to the banners page. Selecting a banner, choosing either a single wish, or ten wishes is how you collect characters. But it costs Starlight Revelation to wish on your banner of choice. Starlight Revelation is earned from clearing stories, earning achievements, and completing your daily/weekly missions.
Some banners are focused on summoning playable units, while other banners contain a supporting cast of characters (your play inspiration) used to equip your roster. We recommend looking for new units before you dip into the play rate character banners.
Equipping your units
You can equip your units with your supporting cast of characters. To start, navigate to Roster and then tap on any unit. Under Play Inspiration, you’ll have three open slots to equip your unit: Prologue, Interlude, and Finale. You’re essentially equipping artifacts or gear for extra stat bonuses and passives. Every play inspiration has a 2-set bonus, and some have a 3-set bonus. If you equip the inspiration on two or three slots, you’ll unlock that extra bonus. Don’t forget you can power up your inspirations by tapping on Train.
Two other options on this menu are used for upgrading; extraction lets you refine your play inspiration copy to earn a level while exalting increases the star rating for that copy. Improving the star rating increases the base attributes and the maximum level cap.
Upgrading your stars
Every character begins with an initial star rating. The higher the base star rating, the more potent that unit is. Each unit can reach six stars, and you can upgrade your unit’s star power by selecting Awaken. You must have duplicate copies of that same unit to increase the star rating; first, you must consume shards to unlock attributes. Once you’ve learned the entire attribute line, tap Awaken to complete the star rating upgrade.
It may take a while to upgrade your favorite unit’s stars, but it’s certainly worth it in the long run since these gained attributes provide extra power.
Powering up your roster
If you neglect to upgrade your roster, your units fall during more challenging battles, depriving you of 3-staring missions to earn maximum rewards. We’ve outlined a summary of essential upgrades and what resources are required:
- Upgrading your characters: Simply leveling up your characters can go a long way, and it only requires using Inspiration materials.
- Refining your weapons: You unlock new active battle skills and passive talents. It requires your character level to reach a specified level while building modified parts on your weapon.
- Upgrading your active skills and ultimates: Raising the level increases damage dealt, health restored, and buff potency. You require two materials and some Credits; one material is based on the individual character, and the other is Basic Combat Technique.
- Leveling up your equipped play inspiration: Increases the base stats of your play inspiration. All you have to do is select the Train option and then choose a play inspiration (only use lower levels/rarity) to sacrifice for experience points during Extraction; this process also costs Credits. You unlock Play Resonance by extracting all assembled plays to levels 10, 15, 20, 25, and 30. Exalt the same inspiration to increase the star rating (raises base attribute and level cap).
Don’t sleep on Higan: Eruthyll
Higan: Eruthyll holds a lot of promise regarding the visual experience and simplified gameplay. Although the UI and English translation could be polished further, the overall game direction is positive. It’s early days to say if Higan: Eruthyll will become one of the best Android gacha games, but it certainly shouldn’t be one to skip out on, especially if you’re into gacha RPGs with beautiful animations. No news on pre-registration yet outside of the current beta, but for now, you can keep an eye out on the official site to see what’s coming next for the game.
