DOAXVV – The Long Gameplay Guide

Overview

This is an in-depth guide into the mechanics and gameplay of DOAXVV, designed for all.

Introduction

Let’s get the pleasantries out of the way – This is an unrepentant Gacha/Lootbox game, and you’d better know exactly what are you getting into. If you have no idea what that means, I think this picture pretty much sums it up.

I will not be going through the settings in detail, or how to install either version. This is a strictly a gameplay and interface guide, with tips and advice sprinkled about to explain the mechanics and features of the game.

DOAXVV comes in two flavours: DMM & Steam. DMM is the Japanese version without subtitles, and has approximately 1 year’s worth of content more than the Steam version.

The Steam version of DOAXVV is a localised, English version with some level of censorship. You may or may not have read complaints about the censorship part. First off, there’s no nudity over in the Japanese version, so don’t get your hopes up, and this guide isn’t going to teach you how you can make it happen either.

What is missing in the Steam version is the ability for you to use your mouse to touch the girls on screen, and have them react accordingly. Since they’re all 2D, they’ll never call the cops or hate you for life, so there’s that I guess.

You can do that now. Rejoice, one and all. Also, some features aren’t in the game yet because the Steam version is about 1.5 years behind the Japanese version. Should the need arise, I will update the relevant parts of the guide.

Otherwise, and I will emphasize this again, this serves as a guide to the interface, mechanics and gameplay loop of DOAXVV.

Most of the information in this guide is based on my own experiences with the Japanese version, as well as information compiled by the people over at https://www.reddit.com/r/DOAXVenusVacation/

Lastly – if by the time you’ve finished the guide and you feel that I may have missed out on crucial information and/or got something wrong, please let me know asap so I can rectify it.

Getting Started – Terminology and Girls

Terminology

For the sake of brevity, this is a non-exhaustible list of abbreviations and definition of terms I will be using in this guide. Each will be explained in greater detail as we progress along the guide.

DOAXVV – The name of the game.

N, R, SR & SSR – The rarity level of an item, with N being the most common and SSR being incredibly rare or difficult to acquire via conventional means. This system generally refers to the swimsuits in the game, although they may also refer to the various accessories and items.

Trend/Trendy – There is almost always an ongoing event centered around either a promotion, theme or girl. In fact, most of the game’s content is centered around these events which can last anywhere from 5 days to 2 weeks. During the course of these events, certain swimsuits and accessories are marked as ‘Trendy’, which means they get a boost to their stats when equipped for the event and are usually the best equipment available for the duration of the event.

‘Gacha‘ – The term ‘Gacha’ is not exactly a word, but rather a mechanic similar to loot boxes. When used in the context of DOAXVV, it refers to the main method in which you acquire the most powerful swimsuits in the game.

Stats – The stats of a girl is an indicator of her prowess at Beach Volleyball. The 4 stats are

• POW – Power
• TEC – Technique
• STM – Stamina
• APL – Appeal

Level – There are multiple levels in the game that can get confusing especially if you are new. They are the Owner Level, GIrl Level and Swimsuit Level. Each have their own individual counters that are independent of each other.

Tutorial

The in game tutorial serves to teach you about the Beach Volleyball aspect of the game, as well as skimming through the more technical elements which this guide will go through in detail. From this point forward, I’m assuming you’ve already finished the tutorial.

Girls

There are 10 ‘Default’ girls available in DOAXVV, with more added in periodically through updates. The game is nice enough to give you access to 2 of the default girls right off the bat, so pick the ones that you like the most.

You’re probably wondering how do you unlock the rest of the cast. The answer is to throw money at the screen. I mean it. There are only two ways to unlock a new girl in this game. The first is simply by obtaining a SSR swimsuit, which will immediately unlock the corresponding girl it belongs to. The other method is, to put it very simply, unfeasible. I will cover this method later on in the guide.

Got all that? Good. Onwards to the Interface.

The Home Screen

In case it wasn’t clear, or the more likely scenario that you’ve skipped it, Owner refers to you, the player. A more appropriate/accurate/less creepy translation would be ‘Manager’, but whatever.

Owner level only affects one thing: Your maximum FP. You gain 6 per level, then 3 per level once you reach level 30ish. I can’t remember the exact number, but at Owner level 70 I have 306 FP for reference.

FP regenerates at a rate of:

• 1FP per 5 minutes
• 12FP per hour
• 288FP per 24 hours

Whenever you level up your Owner level, you immediately add the max amount of FP you can have to your current FP. That said, there is no reason to do so as FP will not regenerate if it is beyond the limit. For this reason, it is best to avoid levelling up your owner level until you’ve emptied your FP meter.

Using a FP Refill Drink works in the same way, where it adds the maximum amount of FP you can have to your current amount. For this reason, it is important that you prioritise leveling your Owner level to make the most of your FP Refill Drinks.

Zack Dollars are used mainly to unlock the training rooms and to upgrade your swimsuits. You can’t buy swimsuits with them, sorry.

Guest Points are used for the Guest Point Gacha, and are accumulated simply by playing matches. This currency will be your main source of VIP points, which I will go into detail later.

V stones are the most important currency in the game, and serves as the premium currency. They’re so important I’m going to list all known methods of obtaining them right now.

• Winning most matches for the first time, and ‘S’ ranking them usually gets you 200-300 stones.
• Daily, Weekly and Owner missions.
• Achievements
• Occasionally as part of the daily log in bonus.
• Event Milestone Rewards
• Leveling up the Girls to specific levels
• Receiving from the dev team for unexpected maintenance
• $$$

Shoot doesn’t mean you kill them. This is a family-friendly game, after all. It starts a photoshoot, where you can dress up the girls in swimsuits, choose the setting and even the pose they adopt. Of course, you need to have unlocked each swimsuit, setting and pose first via gameplay.

Post is where all the stuff you’ve unlocked via gameplay goes. Apparently there’s an upper limit of 100 items, but unless you’re deliberately avoiding it you should never come across that issue.

Notice brings up a list of announcements that usually appear when you log in after an update. This is usually your best source of information for new Events and their corresponding rewards.

Friends are important. Screw your real life friends, they’ll never understand. These guys will help you win, and that’s all that matter. More on this later.

Mission is where you’ll find your Daily, Weekly and Owner missions. Highly recommend you always do the ones that reward you with V stones.

Options/Settings. Sound setting is under ‘environment settings’ for some obscure reason. Please explore the rest at your own discretion, I don’t want to be held accountable for anything.

Festivals

The festival screen is where you pit your girls and their swimsuits against the AI and occasionally other players during PvP events. Yeah, there’s some PvP. It’s called Dead or Alive 6 It’s still Beach Volleyball themed.

The matches are ranked in difficulty, with the lowest being E (F is tutorial level and not a conventional difficulty level) and the highest difficulty on the Japanese version being SS+, only available during events. The higher the difficulty, the better the rewards you get. Rank B is usually where you’ll begin to struggle, with rank A matches being nearly impossible to clear without either a SSR swimsuit and/or a lot of time spent farming and upgrading your swimsuits.

REC. is basically the next match in line for you, as well a rematch for the last game you played.

MAIN is the ‘story’ campaign. Yeah, there’s one. It’s pretty decent, rivals Mass Effect 2 imho. You’ll want to finish this as soon as possible as it is pretty much the only consistent source of Owner XP.

DAILY is a very misleading title. These matches serve to help you farm resources to improve your swimsuits by rewarding you with upgrade stones and Zack Dollars. You’ll be spending a lot of time here to improve your swimsuits once you reach License rank A.

The day of the week determines the kind of matches you get. For example, if you are trying to farm POW Stones, your best bet would be to wait until Monday for optimal results, or go for it on Thursday and Sunday at less optimal rates.

Note that while the girls will get xp for competing in these matches, they will not receive any Gravure Panel xp whatsoever from matches in this category. These matches exist solely to provide you with a metric ton of upgrade materials that you will need later on.

EVENT is a tab reserved for the current ongoing event themed around a girl, Gacha or in-game event, usually a combination of all 3. Don’t worry – the longest this game has gone without an event is about 12 hours. Most events follow a ladder format, where you have to clear E rank first before you can proceed to D, so on and so forth. The higher you go, the better the rewards.

Almost every event has an associated ‘Trend’ swimsuit and accessories attached to them. Using a Trend Swimsuit for the event matches confers a massive boost to the girl’s stats, usually more than enough to clear the entire event ladder. Due to the nature of the game, it is damn near impossible to keep this page updated as it changes every 2 week on average. Once you clear the main campaign, this is where you’ll be focusing your efforts.

License Rank

Your license rank initially depends on your progress in the campaign. Once you clear the campaign, it will reflect on your daily performance in the Event matches. What this means is that you will need to play about a few hundred event matches a day to get to SSS+ rank, and maintain that pace daily to stay there. Needless to say, that is rather difficult and pointless. I was once ranked #7 in the DMM server, and this is literally the only time I’ve ever said it to anyone else. It’s not something I’d put in my resume, but any potential employers reading this are welcome to see it as an indicator of my perseverance.

Jokes aside, your Licence Rank past SS- serves no real purpose except in PvP events, which I will cover in detail later.

That reminds me – if you’ve just started, focus on clearing the campaign and unlocking more girls. Both will require you to get some SSRs, so good luck with that.

Outfits

This is where the bulk of the game lies (heh). Before I go into detail about each tab, I need to go through how swimsuits work.

Not all swimsuits are created equal. Swimsuits come in 4 rarities.

N

R

SR

SSR

The swimsuit seen in this picture is Marie’s Venus SSR.

They are further sorted by type – Either Power, Technique, Stamina or Appeal, identified by the colour when you mouseover them.

Red for Power

Green for Technique

Yellow for Stamina

Purple for Appeal

I used my Japanese account to humblebrag simply because I don’t think there is an Appeal swimsuit in the Steam version yet, and for consistency.

By this point you should have realised that N, R & SR swimsuits are utterly terrible compared to a SSR swimsuit, and you’re right. If by now you are still unable to figure out the true nature of the game, give your credit card to your mom and make her swear she’ll never give it to you no matter how much you beg until you quit this game. This piece of advice is free, unlike 99% of the game.

Another tip: The default swimsuit all characters arrive in is the absolute worst swimsuit in the game. Swap it out asap, literally anything is better.

Festival Outfits is where you choose which swimsuits and accessories for each girl to wear into a match. There is absolutely no reason to use a N rarity swimsuit when a R rarity swimsuit is available, same for SR and SSR swimsuits respectively with very few exceptions.

‘Potential’(s) are basically passive skills you can equip on your girls. These skills are unlocked through levelling up and awakening swimsuits. The max you can equip at a time is determined by your accessories’ combined PP count. This is endgame content as some potentials can increase your stats by an upwards of 15% and more.

Lastly, the option to ‘Participate wearing private outfit’ acts as a cosmetic override for your girls. The reason for its existence is pretty simple – some outfit combinations are hilarious.

However, there are times when you just want to admire the aesthetics of the game. Or if you really like the look of a certain swimsuit. This options allows you to override whatever gear you have equipped on a character with whatever they have equipped in ‘Private Outfit’, which again is just a case of a horribly misleading translation which I’ll cover in the next section under ‘Girls”.

Upgrade Swimsuit is where you level up your swimsuit using either Upgrade Stones or other swimsuits and Zack Dollars. I recommend using Stones. The upper limit for SR and SSR swimsuits is level 70 and 90 respectively. You really shouldn’t be upgrading N and R rarity swimsuits with the exception for your starting girl since you’re unlikely to have any SR/SSRs at that point.

Limit Break lets you raise the level cap of your swimsuits, For reference, a SSR caps at level 50 by default, with the remaining 40 levels needing lots of materials and Zack Dollars to unlock. This is where the ‘Daily’ Festival tab comes in handy. You’ll only really need this once you reach License rank ‘S’ and beyond.

Skill Awakening can be confusing, so let me explain this component very carefully. When you get duplicate swimsuits of SR and SSR quality, you can awaken them up to 4 times in this screen. Awakening a swimsuit improves its skill, and functions independently of the swimsuit level. Doing so also destroys the duplicate swimsuit.

When you have awakened a swimsuit 4 times*, you unlock a passive skill which the girl can equip in the Potential menu. This is the only way to unlock passive skills for girls apart from levelling the girls up, and the best potentials in the game are unlocked through this function.

*You will need 5 swimsuits to awaken 4 times, 1 base + 4 sacrifices.

There are also ‘Awakening Crystals’ available in the game either through events or the event store that functions as a duplicate swimsuit, which often is the only way to awaken Trend SRs.

Once you’ve fully awakened a swimsuit, any further duplicates you receive can be safely traded for tokens as they serve no other purpose. You cannot get the same potential twice, so save your Zack Dollars for something else.

Lastly, the game auto locks SR and SSR rarity swimsuits and accessories when you receive them so you can’t destroy them by accident. To unlock them for awakening/trading, you need to manually unlock them via this icon found in the top right of the Outfits menu.

Let me just say there is a very good reason why this lock exists, and I urge you to fully read through this guide before making the decision to start trading SR+ level equipment for tokens.

Finally, there is a much more detailed guide to Improving swimsuits in the later part of this guide.

Girls

Private Outfit is what the girls wear when not in matches, namely on the home screen. You can also change their hairstyle and tan level when – say it with me – you unlock the ability to. You’ll have to gift them any generic swimsuits (i,e, not tagged to a girl) to be available as a private outfit. A full explanation can be found under ‘Gifts’.

Profile is mainly just some interesting facts about the girls. What you are likely to be interested in is the ‘Level Up Rewards’ tab which details exactly what you receive when a girl reaches a certain level.

Gifts is where you can give stuff to the girls.

The stuff you find in the Normal tab gives xp when gifted, so save them for every time you unlock a new girl for that sweet Owner xp boost. Some girls like certain gifts more, and you can get up to 3x xp for giving them their favourite food/drink. A full list is available over at /r/DOAXVenusVacation.

Special is mainly posecards. You can unlock posecards in the event store, and each card teaches the girls a certain pose they can then perform in Shoot mode and the Owner room. Posecards are one use items, so you need one for each girl. Happy grinding.

Swimsuit adds that swimsuit to the girl’s private collection, which allows them to wear it as a Private Outfit.

Here is an unexplained bit that will probably confuse the hell out of you. Whenever you get any swimsuit, you get two versions of it, a ‘match version’ and a ‘cosmetic version’. The match version is the one you see in the Outfit screen, the cosmetic the one you see in the Girl screen. Let’s say you want every girl to have the ‘Popcorn’ swimsuit equipped as their private outfit. To do so, you will need to obtain that many number of ‘Popcorn’ swimsuits and individually gift them to each of the girls. Assuming you have all 10 girls and 10 sets of the swimsuit, by the time you have gifted them all you will have 10 Popcorn swimsuits in the Outfit tab, and 0 in the Girls tab.

Note that most SR and SSR swimsuits are character specific, and are added to their private collection immediately. However, SR swimsuits that you obtained before unlocking the girl for will have to be gifted manually.

Skin Care modifies the jiggle physics. Namely, they make certain body parts softer/harder depending on your preferences.

THE ABILITY TO MAKE STUFF SOFTER/HARDER IS NOT SOMETHING YOU CAN DO ON A WHIM. THE ONLY WAY TO DO SO IS THROUGH AN IN-GAME EVENT THAT HAPPENS EVERY 2-3 MONTHS ON AVERAGE, AND I HAVE NO IDEA WHEN IT WILL HAPPEN. STOP ASKING.

Granted, nobody asked yet, but that’s an advance notice.

Applying the lotions also confer a bonus skils to the girls. However, the requirements for each event differs, so I can’t keep updating this guide to reflect on the latest event. Check in on the forums and the news updates for details.

Lessons are unlocked as you get more girls, with 3 being required for the first room, 4 for the second and 5 for the third. The rooms cost 5,000, 50,000 and 500,000 Zack Dollars to unlock respectively. Girls currently taking a lesson cannot be used in matches.

The main selling point of this is that you can send up to 3 girls to train for a certain duration of time, up to 20 hours. The time continues to count down even when you’re not logged in, and the xp gain is a flat 5xp/10 minutes. Leaving them to train for the max of 20 hours gives you 600xp. It’s not exactly the best way to train, so don’t be in a rush to unlock all the rooms. The type of training you do doesn’t matter, since all it affects is the type of Upgrade Stones you get when the timer hits 0.

Note that no matter the duration, the girls will always either return with 2 or 5 Upgrade Stones. If you’re looking to maximise gains, set them to train for 10 minutes, which will greatly increase the number of stones you can get. However, they will only ever bring back small/medium sized Upgrade Stones, so it is not as efficient nor as sane as it sounds.

While the girls are training, you can give them certain gifts that helps by reducing the time needed. The gifts reduce training either by 5, 10 or 60 minutes. This does not affect the xp gain – it simply reduces the timer. Don’t hoard them – use them liberally to powerlevel your girls. They serve no other purpose and leaving them in your inventory is a waste. This method is especially powerful if you’ve just unlocked a new girl as 600 xp is quite a lot.

Change Partner changes the girl on the home screen. That’s it. You can’t pick a Girl you haven’t unlocked, sorry.

Girl Level

The XP table for Girl Level follows an exponential curve. You only need 5 xp to get from level 1 to 2. You need 34,780 to get from level 59 to 60. Level 50-60 is generally where your girls will tend to be, for a long, long time. Some events occasional feature XP gifts that can give over 5,000 xp. It is recommended that these gifts be reserved for your stronger girls due to their steeper xp requirements.

The Owner Room

This basically allows you to pose 2 girls at the same time. That is the entire purpose of the room. There is no tangible gameplay benefit whatsoever.

The Room starts off completely empty, although you can just change the scenery in Shoot mode. You are able to purchase and place furniture in the room using Furniture Coins. However, the level of customisation is extremely limited, both in terms of furniture and placement.

The ‘Bonding Time’ for the girls does not affect their ability to participate in Festival matches. It is also possible for a girl to have both a training and bonding session at the same time. Each girl has an individual level counter with every other girl, so it’s going to take a while forever to max them all out. Actually, it’s probably impossible.

Baskets can be used to hasten the process. Using 3 baskets is the same as a 20 hour session. I’m guessing the 1 basket option gives you 6 hours worth. All you need to know is that using the 3 basket options 2 times will bring a pair to level 16, which will immediately unlock the 20 hour option.

Leveling up the bond between girls increases the max amount of time you can leave them, up to 20 hours at a time. Longer time = more exp. In addition, having the Trend SSR equipped for either girl in the DMM version guarantees that the 20 hour bond session will be a Great Success, giving you increased rewards and 3 FP bottles.

Leveling up the bond also rewards you with Furniture Coins which you can use to buy Furniture. I repeat, and will continue to repeat this: Everything in here is cosmetic, so you do you. I should also mention that you can get both girls to sit together and lie down together provided you have necessary furniture placed in the Room. This requires level 41 and 50 respectively. No, nothing interesting happens.

Getting level 41 and 50 require a special Key that is very hard to come by. Note that it is one key per relationship. For example, in order for Kasumi to get to level 50 with every other vanilla girl, you’ll need 18 keys in total.

This is key is occasionally sold in the Event Shop, as well as found in the higher tiers of Event Score Rewards. This is not the same Key found in Rock Climbing Events, despite sharing the same icon.

Some furniture can only be bought using VIP coins. They usually offer a special interaction (e.g. a fireplace will have the girls warming their hands using it) Again: No, nothing interesting happens.

Memories

This is the primary source of Owner xp in the game. You don’t actually receive Owner xp until you watch the scenes, so you can go ahead and stockpile exp here while you burn through your FP reserves. Skipping the scenes will still award you full xp.

Main Episodes unlock as you go through the campaign.

Gravure Panels unlock as you play the game with the girl in question. Main campaign matches give far more gravure xp than event matches.

Character Episodes unlock at certain Girl levels.

Event Episodes unlock usually by getting a certain score/completing objectives during an event.

Extra Episodes generally unlock during major holidays (Valentine’s, Christmas, etc). Usually tied to an event too.

Bromides is a japanese term. Basically, whenever you get a SSR swimsuit, a glamour shot of the girl wearing it is added to this page. It gives no xp whatsoever.

Leveling up

The quickest way to level up is to unlock more girls, which in turn unlocks their character episodes and gravure panels. Otherwise, you’re stuck with only the main episodes and event episodes as the only source of owner xp.

Each Gravure panel gives 30 xp, and every girl comes with 10 of them. Personally, I’d advise you to clear all their gravure panels the moment you unlock them. This serves 2 purposes, the first being the Owner XP, and the second to facilitate faster grinding. When a girl has unlocked all their gravure panels, they no longer gain any gravure xp. If both the girls in a match have unlocked all their gravures, you will automatically skip the gravure screen at the end of every match.

The fastest way to grind gravure XP is through the campaign matches. Daily matches give no gravure mission whatsoever, while Event matches give a miniscule amount in comparison.

This table, courtesy of T-K, covers the various xp rates for the difference campaign matches.

Originally posted by T-K:

FP Cost

Gravure XP

FP:GXP

30

63

2.1

20

46

2.3

18

42

2.33*

14

32

2.29

The most effective FP:Gravure ratio comes from the 18FP campaign matches. Do note that while the FP:XP ratio may be superior, the overall time investment is almost 2x higher as well. Personally, I’d just tell you to spam the highest level match, but it’s your time.

Gacha

OH HELL YEA – AWW HELL NO.

The Gacha menu will always have the following two gachas available: Venus Gacha and Guest Point Gacha. If there is an event ongoing (which is about 100% of the time), you’ll usually find the Trendy Outfit Gacha sitting at the top like you see in the example above.

Can’t avoid this. This is where all your hopes and dreams come to die. Here’s how bad it is – the best odds I ever saw for getting a SSR was 3.3% in the Japanese version. Keyword: BEST.

Alright – let me preface this by saying luck cannot be measured, I’ve seen people get 2 SSRs in a single 10x pull. I’ve personally spent 80k stones on an event Gacha without a single SSR to show for it, and there are people who have easily doubled that number. Take solace in the fact that you will never get a N rarity swimsuit from the Gacha, with the sole exception of the Guest Point Gacha.

Anyway, the individual odds for each and every item in the Gacha pull is given at the top right due to certain gambling laws, because that is exactly what this is. Don’t go in expecting a SSR, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

The way the 10x system work is that you are guaranteed at least 1 SR rarity or higher swimsuit. For the most part, you should be saving your V-stones for the 10x roll.

In addition, you may have noticed these tickets popping up as a reward while playing the event matches.

These act as a free 1x pull for the associated Gacha. Both tickets do not expire, so you can hold on to them for the next Trend Gacha if the current promotion does not interest you, or if you already have the girl featured in the current Trend Gacha unlocked and you’d rather try for another girl.

Note that while the game does let you to use up to 10 tickets at a time, it does not guarantee a SR the same way a 10x pull with V stones does. The game simply draws from the Gacha 10 times, with no guarantee of a SR.

Also, while you can stockpile Venus tickets, there is absolutely no reason to do so as the Venus Gacha has and will never be updated. You are better off using the tickets right as you get them, as they still have a chance of getting a free SR or better yet, a SSR.

One more thing before we get into details: The game differentiates between ‘Free’ and ‘Paid’ V-Stones. Paid V-Stones are ones you buy with real money, Free being everything else. Some Gachas in the future only allow you to use Paid V-Stones, usually for when a new girl is released. Don’t worry too much about that for now.

Venus Gacha

The term ‘Venus SSR’ refers exclusively to the SSRs from this Gacha. More specifically, these swimsuits.

These are the only SSRs the Venus Gacha will ever offer.

Now, whatever you do, never, ever spend V stones on the Venus Gacha.

The point about the Venus Gacha deserves an explanation. Being a Gacha game, the power creep in this game is insane. The problem is that Venus SSRs are bad in comparison to Trend SSRs, which in turn are often weaker than the next Trend SSR in line.

For reference, the screenshots below are of a level 1 Venus SSR and a lvl 1 Trend SSR released in the Japanese version from about a month ago.

Venus SSR

Trend SSR

The difference in stats between the two is absolutely insane, with the Trend SSR outperforming the Venus SSR in every possible way.

I would honestly recommend you save your V stones exclusively for Trend SSRs, or when a really powerful swimsuit becomes available. That, or if a certain swimsuit really catches your eye. It’s your call to make, although another reason I’d recommend skipping Venus Gacha is simply because the Gacha only has a 0.1% chance of getting a SSR for a specific girl as opposed to the 0.78% chance offered by a Trend SSR.

That, and the game showers you with Venus Gacha coupons. However, at the end of the day, it is your decision to make.

Guest Point Gacha

This is the one and only place you can spend your Guest Points. I suppose you could let it accumulate, but why would you ever do that is beyond me.

You’ll be spending a lot of time on this Gacha as Guest Points are far easier to come by than V stones. Unfortunately, you can’t get any SRs or SSR from this.

What you can get are Upgrade materials, food and N/R rarity swimsuits and accessories. These rewards are incredibly useful, especially if you are new and are a free player as this is the most consistent source of VIP points in the game. The food it gives also goes a long way towards leveling up your girls at the start, unlocking their character events and helping you level up your Owner level.

Trend Gacha

Trend Gacha is the Gacha tied to the current event/promotion. You can’t miss it. Trend Gacha usually offer better rates for SSRs, although ‘better’ is subjective as it is still less than 1%. Most, if not all, of your V-Stones should go here.

SR Gacha

This Gacha only appears when you buy a SR Ticket at the Venus Shop. You can only get 1 of the 20 default SRs from this Gacha, and nothing else. Buying this ticket is a straight up loss considering you need to trade in 2 SRs in exchange for a single SR. Don’t buy it.

Shop

This is where you go when you’re out of FP.

Owner Shop is the one area I have absolutely no experience in. Go ahead if you must, the currency used for the Steam version is the SGD.

Event Shop is where you trade in Event Currency for rewards. A more detailed guide is included in another section below. Keep in mind all Event Currency have an expiry date, so be sure to spend them all before it goes away forever.

SSR Tickets

You may have seen these beauties floating around in the Event shop and have gotten unreasonably excited over them.

Note the names: One is a Ticket, the other is a coupon for the ticket. You will need 8 coupons to form a single SSR Ticket, which can be done at the Event Shop.

For the most part, this is the only method you have to guarantee a SSR swimsuit from the Gacha. I should also point that that it is an insanely slow method of doing so, as opportunities to obtain either a Ticket or a Coupon are far and few between.

This is a list of all known methods of obtaining them:

• Daily Login Rewards
• Event Ranking Rewards
• Event Shop during certain Events

Despite the name, you can only ever get 1 of the 10 Venus SSR from the ticket, and there is absolutely no way of controlling which you get.

Venus Shop

This is where you buy character-exclusive stuff like hairstyles for girls you have unlocked in exchange for character tokens.

Most of the stuff sold here are entirely cosmetic, and should never be a priority to purchase. Keep an eye here for updates – some Events add a timed reward in this shop. Be sure to read the news updates to be safe.

Also – as an early bird bonus, you can get a free SR arm accessory for all characters you have unlocked here. Go get it, it’s going to be the best thing you have for a bit. This is available as of 28/03/2019 Mission Failed, We’ll Get ‘Em Next Time.

VIP Shop consists of two currencies – VIP Coins and VIP Points.

VIP coins are incredibly rare coins that only serve one purpose, to buy SSR SKill Awakening gems.

This Gem can be used to upgrade any SSR in the game, which is pretty much the only way you can ever hope to fully Awaken any Trend SSR.

Don’t worry, you really don’t need it for 99% of the game. You will be receiving VIP Coins and SSR Coupons at the about same frequency to give you an idea of how rare they are.

On the other hand, you’ll have plenty of VIP Points.

That said, there is only one thing you should ever buy here, which is the FP refill drink. The shop sells one every day, so make sure you get it. Spending VIP Points on anything else is a waste imo.

Trade Outfit is where you trade unwanted swimsuits, accessories and awakening stones for VIP points/Character tokens.

The rates are as follows:

N swimsuits and accessories go for 1 VIP point each.
R swimsuits and accessories go for 2 VIP point each.
Character-specific SRs go for 20 character tokens each. Note that each girl has their own token, so don’t get your hopes up.

Remember how I said N and R rarity swimsuits are pretty much useless once you get your hands on some SRs and SSRs? This is where they go, unless you plan on using them to upgrade your swimsuits. On that note, I strongly recommend against using swimsuits to level up your swimsuits.

Don’t worry – you’ll be drowning in unwanted stuff soon enough through the Guest Point Gacha. This is also why there is a lock function so you don’t scrap everything by mistake.

You can trade in a SSR in this screen, but I’ve never had a reason to and honestly neither should you unless you managed to get 6 of the same SSR in a row.

Events

This screen will display the current ongoing Event. The only thing you really need to care about is the ‘Rewards’ option. You can see a breakdown of all score rewards here. Getting 1.1 million points is a fairly reasonable target to hit even without Trend SSRs, although if you’ve just started just do what you can.

Occasionally, there are event missions for the girls that can only be accessed via this page, so keep en eye on the patch notes.

Due to the nature of the game, I will not be able to update this guide to explain each and every event. I will however be going through the various Events as they come, as well as giving my advice and reasoning for whatever I can think of.

You’re going to have to do some research on your own for the rest. You’ll be fine.

Types of Events

• Standard Event Ladder
• PvP
• Beauty Treatment
• Rock Cllimbing
• Pool Hopping (Rip f2p players)
• Stamina Tower

Standard Event Ladder
The most common type of Event, this is where you compete against waves of increasingly difficult AI, starting from E all the way to SS+ (SSS in DMM). Almost every other Event follows this format, with some exceptions.

For the record, it is possible to beat every SS+ match to date without the assoicated Trend SSR. The same (currently) holds true for the SSS matches in DMM.

Beauty Treatment
This event is the only time you can freely modify the jiggle physics. Follows the Standard Event Ladder format, but with additional Event-specific lotions in the Event Shop. In addition, some lotions can grant the girls a semi-permanent boost to their stats. Read the patch notes when they come, these boosts are huge.

Rock Cllimbing
Same as Standard Event Ladder, but with an additional Rock Climbing aspect where your girls can improve their Potentials.

Pool Hopping
Same as Standard Event Ladder, but the associated Pool hopping ‘minigame’ is nothing short of a tumor on your wallet.

Stamina Tower
Standard Event Ladder but with a twist – your girl’s stamina carries over the entire match tier. It will recover if they’re benched, and if you quit the tier match you have to restart from the beginning of the ladder. In addition, you must S rank the final match to unlock the next tier. If you’re planning the play the game with only 2 girls, you’re going to have a bad time.

PvP
PvP events do not feature a ladder. Instead, you are presented with a list of players and their lineups. Pick your battles wisely. As a small consolation, Trend boosts do not activate for the opponent team.

This is also the only time in the game when your License rank matters. Having a higher license rank means you’re more likely to face tougher opponents. This is important, because only SSS- level matches and higher are 8 points to win.

Also, when you’re done grinding for the day, swap out your swimsuits for a low leveled one so other players can farm as well.

General Guidelines and Tips

If you are lucky enough to land the Trend SSR for an event, that girl is your Ace for the duration of the Event, no questions asked. The boost to her stats is enough for her to solo the entire ladder even if you’ve just unlocked her (be sure to upgrade the swimsuit), and the boost to your Event Currency makes grinding much less of a chore.

While any SSR will offer better stats, Trend SRs (if available) offer a small boost to Appeal Points as well as increasing the amount of Event Currency you get per match. They are also far more easy to obtain than a Trend SSR, and when upgraded can carry you for the majority of the Event Ladder.

Higher ranking matches award more Event Currency, as well as Event Score.

For the most part, you do not need the current Trend SSR to complete the Event Ladder. Most SSRs are capable of clearing the entire ladder, although you may struggle at S rank. Trend SRs can easily clear the Rank A Ladder, but trying to clear the Rank S Ladder with only SRs is a nearly impossible task.

Most Event Score Rewards tend to offer an XL Unlock Stone at 1.1 million points. Try and go for it.

All Events have a start and end date. Plan ahead and accordingly, and do not try to rush it all in a single day. This is more for your health, both physically and mentally.

The Trend Gacha tends to offer a significantly better chance at getting a SSR than the Venus Gacha, which you should never use anyway. That said, you do not have to try for every single Trend SSR in the game. I strongly suggest that if you already have the Trend Girl featured unlocked, skip that Gacha for another one unless you really, really like that swimsuit. How you spend your V stones is entirely up to you, but this is my advice.

Of course, if you really like the swimsuit, by all means go for it.

Farming Event Currency
There are two trains of thoughts to this.

The fastest method to farm event currency is to find the highest tier match you can always win with the ‘Skip All’ function, and spam it.

On the other hand, the most efficient FP:rewards ratio comes from beating the highest tier match you cannot always win with the ‘Skip All’ function.

For example, I could easily spam skip all on a B tier match and always win, but I will lose 25% of the matches on A tier. But if I individually skip rounds, I can still use Tension burst to improve my win rates for the A rank to 100%. It all boils down how much time and FP bottles you have.

Event Shop & Rewards

A more in depth look into the many rewards available for you to buy.

All Event Currency have an expiry date. To be safe, make sure you spend all your currency 1 day before the deadline, seen here.

In addition, certain Event-exclusive rewards expire along with the currency. These gifts tend to be one use items (not swimsuits, accessories or posecards). Keep an eye on the patch notes for more details when the situation arises.

The Event Shop usually offers the following

• Trend SR Swimsuit
• Trend SR Accessories
• Trend SR Awakening Stones
• Generic Accessories/Swimsuits (R Rarity, can be gifted to anyone)
• XL Unlock Stones
• XL Upgrade Stones
• Event-Specific Gifts
• Posecards
• Other generic stuff you can farm in-game via Daily Matches

There is a very simple hierachy to follow when it comes to purchasing rewards, which is as follows.

Top Priority/Must Get
Trend SR & Accessories first, unless you’ve managed to get the Trend SSR in which case you can skip this. Getting this first allows you to
1) Enjoy the stat boost that can help you clear the Ladder
2) Farm more efficiently, as you gain a passive boost to Event Currency earned when wearing the swimsuit/accessory.

Trend SRs are usually one off deals. You’re unlikely to ever see them in the shop again, so do your best and make sure all the girls you have unlocked own a copy of the set, at least for the cosmetic version.

Event-Specific Gifts are second on the list. These gifts tend to be well worth their purchasing price, although be sure to check the patch notes and on the forums and subreddit to confirm.

XL Unlock Stones are third, at least for me. The Event Shop is the only reliable source of these Stones, so make it a point to have about 10 of each before prioritising the other rewards. Also, note that I only recommend buying the POW and TEC XL Unlock Stones as STM SSRs really are not worth the investment past level 70.

Generic Accessories/Swimsuits are fourth, but this is my own opinion as I am a bit of a completionist.

Trend SR Awakening Stones comes in last in terms of priority, reason being they can be farmed by playing the the Event matches. I would suggest you avoid buying these until you’ve managed to buy literally everything else of value from the shop.

Low-Mid Priority
Posecards are, to be completely honest with you, pointless. They are entirely cosmetic and do not actually affect gameplay. In addition, most Posecards are not Event specific, so you can always farm them at your own pace. Nonetheless, they are pretty much the only things left to buy once you’ve cleared the previous list. Also, Some posecards are event specific, so go ahead and prioritise those above XL Unlock Stones.

WTF are you doing buying these
Any other Upgrade or Unlock Stones can be obtained by farming the Daily Festivals at a far more reasonable FP:Stone ratio. While you cannot get XL Upgrade Stones from the Daily Festival matches, you can just use more L Upgrade Stones anyway. Just don’t.

Zack Dollars should be the very last thing you buy, and only when you have so little Event currency left that you’re just clearing your stock. Farming Event Currency for the sole purpose of trading them in for Zack Dollars is an insanely inefficient thing to do.

Event Score Rewards

There are two types of Event Score Reward – Cumulative Score, and Ranked Rewards.

Cumulative Score is pretty simple – It is the total amount of Appeal Points you’ve scored throughout the duration of the event. Even matches you lost will have the final score added to this number.

Several milestones to take note of are 500,000, 1,000,000 and 1,100,000 points.

Most Events lock an Event Episode at the 500,000 point mark.

There is usually an XL Unlock Stone at the 1,100,000 point mark. This is also a reasonable amount to grind to, although you are free to continue if you wish.

Ranked Rewards is the exact same thing, but with a ‘competitive’ element added.

Your cumulative score is matched against the rest of the playerbase, with the top 5,000 players getting a bonus reward usually in the form of a SSR accessory. You can’t unlock a girl with only their accessory, sorry.

It pretty much goes without saying that the top 3,000 players are those who are willing to spend money to get the Trend SSR and buy a ton of refill bottles.

Getting to the top 5,000 is not an easy task. If you intend to get the SSR accessory, you have to reach the top 4,000 the day before as players will inevitably do a final push on the last day, usually overloading the server. If you don’t spend money on the game, getting top 5,000 is already a massive accomplishment. Note the difference in cumulative points between the 1st player and the 5,000th.

Unlocking Girls via the Venus Shop

Some of you have seen this option, and got excited. I’m here to curb your enthusiasm.

Yes, this is a legitimate way to unlock new girls, I do not deny that. But please, bear with me as I do some math.

Each and every girl has their own Character Token, and Tokens are obtained at a rate of 20/SR at the Trade Outfit shop.

In order to unlock a girl using this method, you’ll need to obtain 50 individual copies of her SR swimsuit (50 x 20 = 1,000).

You can’t buy a girl’s SR from the Event Shop if you don’t have her unlocked, so that means the only method you have of getting any of her SRs will be from the Gacha.

Let’s use the Venus Gacha as an example. Assuming you’re always doing the 5,000 V-Stone pull for the guaranteed SR, that rounds out to about 250,000 V-Stones to get 50 SR swimsuits.

That’s being silly, so let us assume you get 2 SRs every time you pull a 10x Gacha.

That means you have spent 125,000 V-Stones in order to get 50 SR swimsuits. Now, the Venus Gacha offers equal rates for all SR-rarity swimsuits, so you should have 5 SRs for every girl.

You’re going to need to repeat the entire process 10 times for a total of 1,250,000 V-Stones in order to get the 50 SRs needed to unlock the girl with this method. You’re also going to unlock every single girl in the game with this method, so that’s a nice bonus I guess.

Know what’s the best part? The girl you just unlocked will have nothing but her default swimsuit, which means her stats are absolute garbage until you get another SR.

Long story short – don’t bother. Save the SRs and fully awaken them before trading further duplicates in for Tokens. Trust me, you’ll get her SSR long before you manage to amass 50 SRs for a single girl.

Gameplay – Starting out, Strategies and General Tips

At Owner level one with only 2 girls and no SSRs, your options are painfully limited. Your goal now is to reach rank C in the main campaign, which can be achieved in an hour. You should be able to get a SR for one of your girls through the tutorial gacha, so all you need to do is to level up a R rarity swimsuit for the other girl and you should be able to breeze past the campaign, at least until you reach rank C. From then on, your objective is to not lose.

Winning and Losing

Losing sucks. You gain nothing, no money, xp or even a consolation prize. You do keep the score in Event matches, but that’s a pittance. Anyway, if the enemy completely outclasses you, look around and play for a bit in either the Event matches, or the Daily matches to farm for materials. Whatever you do, avoid losing.

Scores, Match Results and Rewards

Whenever you play a match, you are ranked at the end of it on a scale of D to S based on your total appeal points.

Winning a match rewards you with Girl xp, Zack Dollars, Gravure panel xp, Guest Points and the occasional swimsuit/accessory. You’ll never get a SR/SSR swimsuit from winning matches, so don’t get your hopes up. However, you can get SR awakening stones from Event matches, which is usually the only way you will ever be able to awaken an Event SR apart from buying the stones from the event shop.

Winning a match for the first time (Minimum C rank) grants you a one time bonus as detailed in the pre-match screen. Similarly, Winning a match with a S rank for the first time also grants a one time bonus.

Getting a S rank in matches depends entirely on your cumulative Appeal points over the course of the match.

What this means is that you can still get an A rank even if you went 7 – 0. In the same vein, you may have barely scraped a victory at 7 – 6, but still get a S rank simply because you managed to score enough appeal points. This is why it appears easier to score a S rank for longer matches, as you have more opportunities to score appeal points.

The exact threshold to S Rank a match can be found at the right of the challenge menu. Losing a match automatically locks you a D rank even if you scored 10,000 for appeal.

Appeal points are calculated over the course of a match mainly by your Appeal stat. In addition, your POW/TEC stat also contributes to the score, as does your STM as the game calculates the score for each successful point based on your current POW/TEC for the attack.

The best way to get a S rank for a match is simply to come back later with a stronger swimsuit. Trend equipment can also boost your score for event matches by a percentage. This bonus also stacks, making it possible to have a 60% boost to your overall score at the end of match.

The Ace

The character set as the Ace gets a few bonuses. She gets the full xp every match (her partner only gets 1/2 xp) for both girl level as well as for the gravure panel. Your Ace is also the character that represents you when another player has you on as a guest. Remember to swap out your Ace regularly to ensure that your Owner level grows at a decent pace as well.

Guests

These guys are potential friends. Once you clear the tutorial, you should be able to see a list of potential guests before you start a match.

Some of the guests are lucky enough to have gotten a SSR, which would explain their stats. Some have no idea what they are doing, which would also explain their stats. In any case, do yourself a favour and make liberal use of guest characters. At higher levels, they are instrumental in burning the enemy AI’s stamina while preserving yours, which makes it easier for you to break through their defences when your girl returns to the match.

Also, if a guest had some really nice stats, add them. Adding them as a friend increases the likelihood that they will appear on the guest list, and they increase the amount of Guest Point you get if you field them.

Apply to be a friend here.

On that note, a word on Power, Technique, Stamina and Appeal.

Power affects your spikes. Choose spike when using a Power-oriented character.

Feint is governed by Technique, so use that for a TEC-oriented character. Don’t bother bringing in a mixture of POW and TEC for your games, stick to one style and focus on crushing the weaker enemy.

For example, take this matchup.

On the enemy team, Nyotengu is significantly weaker than Marie Rose in every aspect. Just go ahead and set her as the target.

Stamina swimsuits boast very high stamina, but average POW and TEC. While stamina SSRs are still pretty decent and viable for most of the game, they begin to struggle once you hit S and SS level enemies. Don’t play the stamina game, you’re going to lose to the AI. Focus on winning games as fast as possible.

Appeal swimsuits are
1) Very rare
2) Difficult to upgrade due to scarcity of upgrade materials
3) Rather bad

Appeal determines how many appeal points you get per round, making it easier for you to S rank a match. I also think it slightly influences the Tension Gauge build up, although I could be mistaken on that. However, they sacrifice POW, TEC and STM for a small boost to APL. The problem is that those stats are crucial to winning the game. There is some use for APL swimsuits for lower level ladders to maximise point gain, but you’re better off using a stronger swimsuit in all honesty.

Tension Burst activates whenever you build up 100% Tension Gauge. You gain a massive 50% boost to your POW and TEC stats for two turns. Guest characters are also affected by it, and the effect carries over even if they swap after one turn. Generally speaking there is no real reason not to activate it immediately upon 100% build up. You will also continue to accumulate Tension Gauge charge while in the midst of Tension Burst, so go ahead and spam it.

Later updates to the game in the Japanese version includes enemies who can affect your Tension Gauge build up, with especially devious foes being able to drain your charge. However, it still remains a powerful tool at your disposal to help against annoying foes.

Your Profile

You can access this screen by pressing the human shaped button beside your Owner level. Literally everything here is cosmetic, even your name so you can change it to your hearts content or to make a bad joke.

This is also the place where you can display your titles, which are these things.

Yes, that is what these random yellow things you keep getting are. Literally nobody cares about this but I might as well get it out of the way.

Finally, clicking ‘Confirm Team’ will bring you to a screen that details your most recent match setup.

The girl on the left will represent you when another player calls upon you as a guest. She is the Ace from the last game you’ve played, and when deployed as a guest retains all of her potentials and stats. The same goes for other player’s guest characters.

The reason for there being two girls on this menu is for PvP events. PvP events are the only time in the game where mirror matches can take place. You will face off against other players and their girls. They are usually a waste of time, but the score rewards are always a nice bonus.

Progression Guide for Newcomers

This is the part of the Guide that caters especially to Newcomers. I still strongly recommend you read the rest of the guide as it should answer most, if not all questions you have have regarding the the game.

I will now describe a situation many of you will be familiar with.

You started off with 2 girls. One of these girls is significantly stronger than the other because they have a SR swimsuit. The other girl is just deadweight at this point. That’s cool. Just keep doing the main missions until you are completely outclassed by the enemy.

At this point, your owner level is probably hanging around 4 or 5, give or take 2 levels.

Progress has come to a halt, and you have a ton of SRs from rolling the 10x gacha with your V stones, but none for the weaker girl. Hell, you probably got another SR for the girl who already has one. Still no SSR in sight for both the near and far future, and you’re very close to punching the monitor in rage.

Things are looking bleak. There’s literally nothing you can do to progress, and all you’re doing is wasting FP.

This is the story of my progress in DOAXVV for Steam.

First things first: Stop wasting FP.

Your goals for now are simple:

1) Get the weaker girl to pull her weight
2) Get some progress so you can get more V Stones
3) Get a SSR (and by extension, more girls)
4) Raise Owner level so I can have a normal sleep cycle

Step 1: Equip the weaker girl in the best R rarity swimsuit you currently have, and upgrade it so that she’s no longer a deadweight.

Step 2: Look for a means to acquire a SR for the weaker girl. There are many ways to do this, the simplest and most common way being the Event Shop, which often has a Trend SR in stock.

Step 3: Now that you have a clear goal, work towards it. In a scenario where the event shop does have a SR swimsuit for sale, keep farming the Event matches to get the currency. Do the highest leveled match you can always win, and don’t be afraid to down a few FP refill bottles while doing so.

Step 4: Purchase SR for weaker girl, go to town on the rest of the event/main matches.

Step 5: Continue to fail to get SSRs with newly acquired V stones.

Step 6: Reach another impossible match, this time with both girls in SRs.

Step 7: Farm Daily matches to upgrade the best SR swimsuits you currently have,

Step 8: Repeat step 6 & 7 as needed, until you either finally get a SSR, or reach a point where you simply cannot progress despite maxing your SR swimsuit.

Step 9: Farm either the daily or event matches to gather resources for next event, praying the V stone rewards can finally get you a SSR.

It is entirely possible to reach License Rank ‘S‘ without SSRs, tried and test on my own Steam account (Also because I had no luck with the gacha).

However, progression beyond this point is going to be nearly impossible without SSRs due to enemy stats approaching the 6k mark. This is the point where your focus is farming Event currency and V stones.

Upgrading Swimsuits – Level, Limit and Awakening

This section serves as a more thorough guide on upgrading your swimsuits.

As a reminder:

• Leveling a swimsuit increases its level and stats.
• Limit Breaking a swimsuit increases the level cap of a swimsuit.
• Awakening a swimsuit improves its innate skills, and can be done up to 4 times.

Levelling

Leveling up a swimsuit increases its stats. This is done by either using upgrade stones of the corresponding type, or by sacrificing swimsuits.

The stones used to level up swimsuits come in 4 varieties: S, M, L and XL.

These stones give 120xp each. Each stone also costs 100 Zack Dollars to use.

These stones give 420xp each. Each stone also costs 350 Zack Dollars to use.

These stones give 1,800xp each. Each stone also costs 1,500 Zack Dollars to use.

These stones give 42,400 xp each. Each stone also costs 25,000 Zack Dollars to use.

I strongly recommend against using swimsuits instead of stones as

• You can only use up to 10 swimsuits at a time, making them very time consuming
• Swimsuits are not as plentiful as stones
• Swimsuits are more useful when traded for VIP points, which can then be used to buy FP refill bottles that can let you keep farming stones via the daily mission

Limit Break

First off, there is absolutely no point in Limit Breaking R rarity swimsuits. Just don’t. While we’re on that topic, you can’t even Limit Break N rarity swimsuits.

Second, Limit Breaking a swimsuit increases its level cap by 10 each time you limit break them.

• SRs start off capped at 40, which can be increased to a max of 70.
• SSRs start off capped at 50, which can be increased to a max of 90.

Limit Breaking a Swimsuit requires a different set of upgrade materials.

There is no ‘S’ sized Unlock Stone for some reason. Also, unlike leveling a swimsuit, limit breaking always costs the same from lvl 50 > 60, etc.

SR

• Level 40 > 50 requires 5M, 2L & 15K Zack Dollars.
• Level 50 > 60 requires 10M, 5L & 50K Zack Dollars.
• Level 60 > 70(Max) requires 20M, 12L and 100K Zack Dollars.

SSR

• Level 50 > 60 requires 10M, 5L and 50K Zack Dollars.
• Level 60 > 70 requires 20M, 10L and 100K Zack Dollars.
• Level 70 > 80 requires 15L, 1XL and 200K Zack Dollars.
• Level 80 > 90(Max) requires 25L, 3XL and 500K Zack Dollars. (This is not a typo, it really costs half a million.)

Awakening

Skill Awakening requires you to sacrifice either a duplicate or a corresponding upgrade stone of a swimsuit in order to strengthen it. Each level of awakening improves the inbuilt skill of a swimsuit. This process can be done up to 4 times in order to fully awaken it.

By default, all SRs and SSRs are auto locked in your inventory in order to prevent new players from accidentally losing them to a misclick. As such, you have to manually unlock them in order to use them for awakening.

An awakened swimsuit will have a number added to the top right corner of its box in the Festival Outfits menu, with the number 4 meaning that it has been fully awakened.

Fully awakened swimsuits grant the girl some of the most powerful potentials in the game. However, only SRs and SSRs can grant a potential, meaning that there is literally no point in trying to awaken a N or R rarity swimsuit. Seriously, they’re useless.

Unlike Leveling and Limit Breaking, the only materials required for Awakening are Zack Dollars and the swimsuits/stones in question.

The cost of awakening a swimsuit is

• 4K Zack Dollars for the first
• 8K Zack Dollars for the second
• 40K Zack Dollars for the third
• 80K Zack Dollars for the final awakening.

You cannot get the same potential twice, so there is no point in fully awakening the same swimsuit twice. As such, any duplicate SRs for which you have already fully awakened once can be safely traded for Character coins.

Farming Materials for upgrading

Remember this?

Daily Festivals are the primary source of all Upgrade and Unlock stones with the exception of both XL Stones. In particular, the S rank missions for a specific archetype (POW/TEC/STM) will shower you in stones once you begin to farm them.

In addition, the training room is a slow but steady source of S and M Upgrade Stones that can help you greatly at lower levels. However, upgrading past level 30 will require the larger Upgrade stones due to the amount of XP required at that point.

The lack of XL Upgrade Stones is not too pressing of an issue since you can and probably will just spam L Upgrade Stones in its place.

On the other hand, XL Unlock stones are often in very short supply and very high demand as they are necessary to upgrade your SSRs past level 70. They are often found in the higher Event score tiers, as well as in the event shop on sale for 280 Event currency each. They can also very rarely be found when gifting the girls certain event gifts, but don’t get your hopes up.

While STM SSR Swimsuits are still far superior to any SR, oftentimes they tend to lag behind POW and TEC SSRs in high level matches. It is due to this that I personally recommend you don’t go out of your way to purchase XL STM Unlock Stones from the event shop. However, take this advice with a pinch of salt, especially if you’ve just started and a STM SSR is all you’ve got for now.

Strategies – The Middlegame

You may have have seen this piece of advice on your loading screens.

The game is lying to you.

On average, the girls get anywhere between 12-16 points in POW, TEC and STM added to their base stats when they level up depending on their personal character type. Some characters favor POW, same goes for TEC and STM.

It doesn’t matter because their base stats and growths are too insignificant for it to really have an effect on your stats.

Here is a comparison of the base stats of the same character wearing identical swimsuits, one at level 23, the other at level 42.

Level 23

Level 42

The difference in stats is barely noticeable, and often insufficient to make a real difference. For reference, the final main campaign match has your opponents with stats approaching 6,000 in every category.

It is worth noting that this is considered a very easy match to win as opposed to some of the more insane matchups in the event ladder. In addition, the exp needed to level up increases exponentially past level 40 as well. We’re talking about needing tens of thousands of xp in a game where the xp per match averages about 50.

That leaves upgrading swimsuits and changing strategies.

Upgrading swimsuits is technically true. However, they neglected to mention that you’ll need to upgrade SSR swimsuits in order to consistently win anything past the S tier matches,

Changing strategies is complete nonsense. If the enemy AI has every stat advantage over you, you are guaranteed to lose the match no matter what you do. Don’t bother wasting FP for those matches, they’re there by design to try and get you to buy V stones.

How To Actually Win Matches

Step 1: Get a trend SSR.

Trend SSR/SRs

You have seen this term pop up a few times now, but what exactly are they, and how do they work?

Simply put, it is the way the game tries to get you to spend your money to buy swimsuits.

Trend equipment, which can include accessories as well as swimsuits, are equipment that confer a bonus to your stats when equipped for that event’s matches.

As seen in Kokoro’s stats, she gains a boost to her stats simply by having a piece of Trend equipment equipped.

The bracket beside her stats indicate that there is a bonus active. However, this Trend effect only activates for the event it was tagged to. When bringing the exact same character and swimsuit to a non-event match, the bonus does not activate.

I should also take this time to point out that while Trend SRs confer a sizable boost to your stats, Trend SSRs give a even larger boost that can pretty much solo the entire event ladder by itself.

Trend outfits and accessories also have the added effect of increasing the rewards from winning an event match. Usually they increase the amount of event points you gain, as well as boost the amount of event currency earned per match. This is why I recommend getting the current Trend SR swimsuit asap to make grinding for the rest of the rewards easier.

Finally, Trend equipment rarely work past their event. They still retain their base stats, but their bonus is unlikely to return, making them mostly cosmetic once the event is over. Trend SSRs, however, have such powerful stats and skills that they can continue to be used long past their event. As a general rule, Trend SSRs are always superior to Venus SSRs if they are of the same archetype (POW, TEC, etc).

Strategies – How to Win Matches

What are the strongest tools at your disposal during a match?

The answer is

1) Guests & Friends
2) The ability to influence the tactics
3) Tension Burst

Guests are a free, 2 turn break for your girls. In addition, Trend boosts (if applicable) do proc when they are deployed, as do any skills and potentials they may have. Play your cards correctly, and you can turn an 8 point match into a 6 point match.

Note that I use the word ‘influence’. This is because, like Influencers, it can appear completely useless. However, unlike real life, it actually has some effect here. Swapping attackers and target on the fly is an amazing tool that can salvage the match if things go south. Note that you don’t have infinite time-outs. Use them sparingly and decisively.

Tension Burst is just your girls going super saiyan. Guests get the bonus as well. Note that you can still lose a point with Tension Burst active. It’s just much less common.

Skills & Potentials

Example of a lot of skills and potentials activating during a match.

Skills have a wide variety of effects that can range from a flat % increase in POW to reducing enemy stats when attacking.

Swimsuits starting from R rarity have skills built into them, which can be seen simply by mouseovering them in the Festival Outfits menu. In addition, most SR accessories come with a skills as well.

Generally speaking, you pick a SSR for its stats, and not its skills. In that case, think of the skill as a bonus.

The other source of skills come from ‘Potentials’. The maximum amount of potentials you can equip here depends entirely on your accessories’ PP limit. You get potentials either by leveling up the girls, or by fully awakening SR/SSR swimsuits.

The best potentials in the game come from fully awakening SR/SSR swimsuits. SSR potentials are extremely powerful, but aren’t all that necessary even for endgame content.

Stamina potentials are pretty decent, Appeal potentials are useless. TEC receiver is completely useless. Try to go for a 50/50 balance between your primary attacking stat and stamina potentials. Don’t bother mixing POW and TEC.

Stamina

Skills and Potentials cost stamina to use, resulting in the girls burning through their stamina far faster than just duking it out based on stats alone.

For reference, Luna started off the match with 4621 Power and 3924 Technique.

By the 7th round, she is considerably weaker, to the point where Kokoro could easily shut her down. Compared to her partner, who still has a decent amount of stamina left.

Also note that Kasumi isn’t doing so well either. Her stats have dropped enough that she will be unable to counter any shots directed at her. For this reason, it is recommended that you pick a target at the start and stick to it. You are able to switch targets in between rounds, which you should only do if your opponent constantly intercepts the shot and has a significant stamina disadvantage.

Preparing a Team

The best team is entirely dependent on the number of SSRs you have available. Starting to see a pattern here?

The sad fact is that no matter how much you like a certain character, if you don’t manage to get a decent SSR for her, she’s likely to be benched simply because her stats simply aren’t cutting it.

However, once you manage to get a decent collection, this becomes more manageable. It’s not as impossible as it sounds, trust me. I only started in December 2018, about 4 months ago as of writing this guide. In that time I managed to unlock all the girls with the exception of the current paid exclusive. Granted, there were several promotions that offered really good chances of getting a SSR, but it all comes down to luck.

Back to topic – I mentioned earlier to either pick POW or TEC and stick to it.

There is almost no point in trying to balance POW and TEC in a game because your main goal is to focus all your attacks on a single, weaker target and overwhelm them asap. This means your team composition is entirely dependent on the gacha until you have a few SSRs at your disposal.

POW focused characters should obviously focus their potentials towards POW and STM skills as a TEC increase is useless to them. However, your accessory should always be either the current Trend accessory, or the one that gives you the most PP, ideally both.

The Strategy Interface

Take a look at the opponent in this matchup. Who should you target?

The answer is Nyotengu, and only her.

You might argue that you should target Ayane so her stats would drop. Unfortunately, while that is true, so will your stats. Stamina cannot regenerate in the middle of a game, and once a character hits 0 stamina they’re sitting ducks.

Attack Methods depend entirely on your team. Part of the reason I strongly recommend against a team with both a POW and TEC character is because you are forced to pick auto for the attack, which is detrimental at higher levels.

Always set your guest to be the attacker as their stamina is free and doesn’t affect your girls. You don’t have enough time outs to micromanage every round, so be strategic about this, i.e. when one of your girl is completely exhausted.

Keep in mind the AI will not always follow your strategy. Occasionally it may do a feint instead of a spike, or if the enemy AI intercepts the attack meant for another. Also, make sure you are targeting the right girl. I had several matches where a misclick cost me the game.

Skip All

You should only ever use this option when you have a massive stat advantage over the enemy. If both of you are evenly match, don’t do it. The difference between skipping a single round and skipping an entire game is that Guests and Tension Burst are not factored into the equation for the latter, both of which which are the most powerful tools at your disposal.

Forcing a match up

You will never come across a situation where the girls compete against a clone of themselves, with the sole exception being guest characters for obvious reasons, and PvP events. What this means is that you can force the AI to pick another, possibly weaker, character simply by deploying the girl they had initially picked.

For example, in this match the AI has set Misaki and Kokoro as my opponents.

Since I have both characters, I experimented a little to find this.
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While Nyotengu does have a slightly higher POW stat then the previous girls, Honoka is significantly weaker in terms of POW and TEC.

Naturally, this strategy requires you to have access to as many girls as possible before you can really get anything out of it.

Endgame – Optimising and Futureproofing

Disclaimer, Credits and other stuff.

I don’t claim to know everything, only what I currently know.

Most of my knowledge comes from the people at /r/DOAXVenusVacation. They are a better source of information than I can ever hope to be.