Overview
General gameplay tips + how to level fast, basic game and endgame overview
Intro
pso2na speedrun guide EPISODE 6 version
PSO2 is a decade old game with a ton of content that has no real value and a lot of obtuse systems that make no sense, this guide will hopefully help you cut out a bit of the confusion and get to endgame quickly where you can then spend the rest of your time wondering why Quna looks like that blue haired lady that appears in the fields sometimes.
Level to 50+ ASAP!
Why 50?
-2m meseta a week per char in weeklies that take no time, 2.6m with yerkes (resets in 7 days from quest completion, not at weekly time)
-500k xp in dailies per day from arks missions that doesn’t scale down, able to use to level subclass or any alt class
-3 lambda grinders a day per char
-TOKYO SILVER KEY EVERY DAY PER CHAR, GOLD KEY PER WEEK (best xp mission, but a very limited resource)
-^ is so important that you should make all 3 of your characters to 50 as soon as possible, even before maxing out your main (don’t worry you won’t have to ACTUALLY play the alts just do 2 minute dailies)
Class selection & Mag
Melee: Bouncer, Hunter, Fighter, Katana Braver, Techer melee builds
- Hunter is used as sub for most other classes and it wants a different build as your main class which you’ll have to pay money for if multiclassing.
Ranged: Gunner, Ranger, Bow Braver
- Gunner is easily the best single target dps class but it’s very difficult to play well.
Tech: Force, Techer/Fighter, Summoner/Phantom
Dex: Bouncer, Braver, Phantom and anything using it as a subclass
Any ATK mag works with Hero, Etoile, and Luster
- [link] for all class builds, be careful with your skill points as they cost money to reset!
Check the link above for subclasses! Etoile and hunter give you both incredible survivability and damage and are almost always what you want to pick as a subclass.
Pick which type of classes you’ll play and build your mag for that stat only, you can switch classes at any time and if you pay $3 per you can get extra mags and it doesn’t matter. Feed your mag with either mag food that you get for free at 30 or 9* melee/range/technique weapons. For dex, feed them custom PA disks. To reduce dex, feed them 4/5/6 star furniture from the furniture shop in the shopping center. To get more mag food, you can buy minis from visiphone or trade in photon spheres for them at the photon sphere shop in the shopping center. Only use minis, large mag food is only worth 3 minis and is only expensive due to them being able to be traded for recycle badges.
A good mag loadout would look like:
Julius Nifta PB
Megid Auto Action
SP Striking or Ranged (barricade is useless), ranged gives 1pp per shot and shoots 80? times, melee restores pp per hit and gives a stacking damage buff up to 10%
HP Recovery A in all slots, this procs very often and is practically a second hunter automate but for free
New player 1-40
After tutorial
Arks missions (esc>shift), do everything related to Afin and then Jan and any others that give you a decent chunk of xp, unlock mag at Cofy, auxiliary stuff, do the practice quest intro that gives you a sub weapon barrier (best unit until endgame, get 1 per char and +10 them all you can use 3 at a time if you xfer them), if still not 20 either do a forest exploration with related client orders, or a few of the easy casino missions at Allin, once 20 grab your subclass advancing quest and do it (forest hard, volcanic caverns hard have the mobs)
- You should have some meseta from completing grind thing weekly, buy 7 star weapon with 1 stat requirement and 9 star weapon at this time.
- Enter Franka’s Cafe and do the gathering quests, note what the old dude (Yerkes) wants as his quests give 100k each and reset weekly.
- Just buy as many of your PAs and the crafted versions of them as you can for your main weapon from visiphone, they’re quite cheap. May have to wait until 30-40 until you have stat reqs for most of them though.
- After accepting any quest, esc>client orders>Orders That Can Be Accepted in the Fields of Ongoing Quests will let you pick up almost all quests for that zone
Grab the 3 boost-giving daily orders from daily npc, first recommended quest will always be the one to fulfill all of them. After that do expeditions to unlock every zone following your arks missions, always on the highest difficulty possible and using the client order menu trick to accept all client orders related. Kill everything as you make your way to the boss to make sure you finish all of them. Cressida orders (shopping center next to elevator) are especially important and the rock quest items can be bought from the marketplace if needed.
Leveling 40-85-100
Once you’ve played for a bit you’ll have 100k/500k/1m xp tickets that you can use to level alt characters or other classes to 40-50 instantly! Don’t forget to pick up your subclass at 20 and do your skill point quests from the quest npc when you hit 50.
Past level 50 regular client orders aren’t worth taking, you can abandon everything and only take event quests and Daily Orders from the Daily Order NPC.
Keys: Tokyo Gold>Kazuchi Assault>Rappy Fever>Magatsu Gold>Tokyo Silver>Magatsu Silver
Never run Tokyo Rainbow until 80+ but ideally 90+, it scales and drops nice endgame things.
Do all 4 recommended quests daily, they have a chance to give keys which give you way more experience than anything else, save these up and use them with your best boosters or on pso2 day (every 2nd and 22nd of the month, has 100% global triboost for the whole day!). Recommended quests are per account so you only have to do them on one character.
Making all 3 of your characters will greatly increase your xp income and make leveling vastly easier. For alts, turn in one daily quest for a gatherable, you only need to turn in a single item, talk to quest counter, select Sub Quests>Arks Quests>Subdue Za’udan on Super Hard, and then go in ship, have a drink, consume a random cheap food (Jerky) or xp booster, run through to the end of the zone and kill the monkeys, takes 30 seconds and you’re done with that char for the day and get a free Tokyo Silver, do it 3 times a week for a Tokyo Gold.
You can trade in 5 of any key, even expired ones for a Tokyo Gold through Swap Shop, but Tokyo Gold is worth approximately 3.5 Tokyo Silvers in exp and isn’t worth it unless you’re limited on good boosters.
XP Boosts:
- Increased EXP 75% (Photon Spheres), 100% (Event), 150% (Pay2Win)
- Triboost 100% (Mission Pass, Titles, Login Rewards), 150% (Events, Pay2win)
- Concert (25% Triboost)
- Ex EXP 40% (Fresh Finds), EX Triboost 100% (Pay2Win)
- Weapon Affixes (Alternate History+Increased EXP III, 20% total)
- Premium Shifta Drink (1.2x Multiplicative with all bonuses, regular shifta drink xp up is 1.1x)
- Alliance tree EXP up (1.1x Multiplicative with all bonuses)
- Timed Abilities on units (Earth Exp V, 9% each for 27% total)
The 4th recommended quest has a 200% XP boost and is your best way to grind xp outside of keys. It rotates daily between 5 different quests. A Broken World of Twisted Shadows, The Menacing Castle, and Disturbing Whistle of Chaos (Piper) are all excellent for grinding, the other two not so much. Just spam these on the highest difficulty you can with 75% xp boosts and 50/100% triboosts!
A bit outdated but AQs are still a decent option, and the best way to get photon boosters used for some nice weapon camos and weapon grinding fodder. Try to party up with a full group of other players who are doing max risk floating facility AQ on VH, you can rotate or host but it’s easier to just join a group that has it maxed already. DO NOT SOLO these as PSE bursts are the main source of XP and they spawn monsters depending on actual player count, npcs don’t work. Once you max out your risk it lasts all week. Use good boosts. You can PB chain mags (hold down mag skill button and other people can press theirs to chain the PBs, the icon to the left of their name in party will be glowing if they have it up), but it isn’t necessary in VH. For VHAQs, switching to a all class dex launcher for PSE bursts is recommended, you can just float in the air spamming just attacks or even just holding down lmb to kill everything instantly as their hps are pretty low. Do try to grind your weapon and get a launcher non-weak ring (L) if you’re a ranger or ranger sub.
- Pop Julius Nifta at the start of every pack you can to instantly group them as you’re going through the VHAQ, when you trigger a PSE burst immediately head to the nearest corner (don’t leave stragglers on the way as there’s a max spawn limit) then double jump up in the corner and hold lmb with your launcher, you can now tab out and your character will keep aimbotting everything on the screen until the burst is over.
Once you’re 85 you can start in on your endgame farm and do Persona (The Malevolent Void) UH for great experience while working on your BiS unit set at the same time!
Other triggers such as Luther can also be pretty good.
Urgent Quests can be decent XP but it highly depends on the quest, generally bonus keys and recommended 4th quest are more efficient.
Subclasses will gain XP until 75, if you have a 80+ summoner they gain a 100% xp boost to subclasses and it’s more efficient to run keys with the class you’re leveling as a subclass until 57.
All-class dex launchers such as Occuld Rugia and Sigma Bastad are very useful for leveling subclasses or any class without needing to acquire gear and PAs for it, just auto attacking will be plenty of damage for bonus keys.
Leveling other classes to 75 gives you a nice account-wide stat boost! You can see what you get at [link].
Important game knowledge
- Buy your weapon’s movement skill as soon as possible, if it doesn’t have one get “Kickdance Dash” for gunslash and swap to it to go fast (<40k) Tech classes can use Ilzonde or Safoie with the Custom for it that turns it into a movement skill. Safoie is way more PP-efficient than ilzonde.
- The auxiliary arks missions under main missions gives you 60 photon spheres and PA fragments per char, sell these for a few mill.
- All xp boosts of different types stack, daily order/premium/drink(premium)/xp 75%/triboost 100%/ex xp boosts, for leveling you mostly just want 75% xp and 50 or 100% triboost always on. Alliance tree attack boost is generally the best one and should be used for any content where more damage will help
- Photon spheres can be traded for 75% xp boosts at the photon sphere shop 1:1, they can also be used to buy mag leveling food.
- At 30 you get mag devices of each type, if you have 3 chars this is enough to level each mag to 120 or sell for free meseta
- Only ever raise one stat on a mag, lower the dex with mono/duo/trimates depending on which attack you’re raising or furniture from the furnisher if minmaxing, if dex just feed crafted disks
- Buy Julius Nifta mag photon blast from excube shop, it vacuums the entire screen for about 5 seconds, up to 20 with chaining) and extremely potent for pse bursts in super hard advanced quests, or just clearing packs in VHAQs. Cetos Proi is also good as a PP battery but doesnt help much for grinding.
- Urgent quests are great at any time over 20, do on hardest difficulty possible and use best boosters. But not lilipa mining base.
- Light is generally best element for weapon, and element power is a direct % multiplier to base damage so you want to max it out if possible, by grinding it with the same weapon, or same weapon+same element for easy maxing
- Use excubes on 250% rare drop boost and FUN tickets, use fun tickets on scratch to get Personal Shop permits if you aren’t premium
- For repeating missions fast, walk into the green teleportal that takes you back to town and select “repeat quest”
- You can shift+click on items in your inventory to select them fast and not have to select amounts
- Material inventory is the biggest QoL expansion in the game, you can batch move everything that fits into it, everything you gather automatically goes into it, and it’s automatically accessed while crafting/vendoring so you don’t need to take stuff out of the storage ever. Many things that aren’t materials go in there too so it saves so much storage space.
- Seafood Stew and Sashimi to a lesser extent make you mine rocks/jewels almost every time, always fish first until you activate Fever and then start mining, Extravagant Seafood Platter to target jewels
- Crafting isn’t worth it except for crafting your own PAs, request things that you need from crafters through the visiphone function.
- Chat Shortcuts can be used to swap weapon pallets, sub pallets, even rings simultaneously. Example: /mpal1 /spal1 /sr PartyToughness(L) This will switch your Main Pallete (Weapon) to Slot 1, Sub Pallete to Slot 1, and then Skill ring to whatever the name is set and slot.
What loot to keep
Gearing
Leveling (Buy and equip these as soon as you can): 7 star weapon with 1 stat requirement->9 star weapon (level ~20)->12 star Nox weapon(level ~40), you can consider upgrading this to at least +10 for the potential
Entry Endgame: Croesus weapon as soon as you finish the collection folder for it. Otherwise, any cheap 14* weapon from the visiphone will suffice until then.
Endgame: Rivalate redux is the 2nd best weapon series with Steel being marginally better at the cost of 100+m to make and a lot of grinding. Atlas EX redux and Trailblazer Redux are both also fine for endgame.
All-class dex launchers will help for leveling subclasses, these are Occuld Rugia, Blood Spat, and Sigma Bastad.
To obtain Croesus weapons, grab collection files from Prin next to Cofy in the gate area. The intermediate weapon rewards are just excube fodder. Hover over the “components” to see what you need to do to complete the collection folders. The finished weapon will be deposited into your inventory when it’s complete, if it says 100% it isn’t actually finished and you need to do another run. To find Luminmechs you can do Armada UQ, divide quests, Risk Explorations, or Ship Infiltration Ultimate quest.
Leveling: 3 Sub weapon barriers (one per char from practice quest quest, you get it almost instantly and can bank them to xfer), alternatively do the start of Episode 4 story and you’ll receive a few of them->Brissa set or Hiei set from Main Mission Time Attack quest->Stellar Wall set that you receive automatically at 75->Endgame 13* units
Currently the best 13* units are Trailblazer and upgraded Ofzeterious. These start at 12* and are upgraded into 13 through Zieg.
Zig has everything endgame gear related, check him out and scroll through the categories to see what you need to make everything!
To grind weapons, you want EXP Weapons that you purchase with Photon Boosters from the Photon Booster shop, 2nd floor shopping area. Do Advance Quests to obtain boosters, detailed in the leveling section.
I’m 85 and can do Ultra Hard, what now?
Congrats on hitting 85! Going past that in levels isn’t a huge priority unless you’re Luster as you don’t unlock anything new, just more skill points.
Ultra Hard content HURTS, your first priority should be getting a good set of units so you don’t get oneshot by everything.
You should have at least a Croseus weapon before attempting Ultra Hard. If you were around for the free Rivalate units and weapon, you’re way ahead of the curve and can just exchange it at Zig for the weapon your class uses. If not, the free Stellar Wall unit set will be sufficient to do Persona UH with.
13* Trailblazer is currently the BiS unit set, you can farm this by doing Persona (The Malevolent Void) on UH. Block 7 and 22 are the unofficial LFG blocks, you can go to these to look for active triggers, joining them with the “Join Quest in Progress” option, or host your own triggers there. You get roughly 10 void fragments a run with 250% RDR and 100% Triboost up, and you need 100 per 12* Trailblazer unit that you upgrade to 13*. It’ll save you currency if you buy 12* Trailblazer with 6 or 7 affixes depending on budget to upgrade, so you don’t have to upslot those later. If you’re lucky you’ll drop those or 13* Trailblazer while farming though! And Persona UH is still a great farm even if you already have the units.
You can check Zig in the shopping center to see basically all the currently relevant weapons and what you need to obtain them. Rivalate weapons with the Redux potential are what you should be going for, you mostly make these through buying Novel weapons with Rising Weapon Badge 5 (Shop Novel starts at a grind cap of +30, you’ll need 5 extra copies to +35 it), 50 Ultimate Boosters from Divide Quests, 200 Class Ex-Cubes through either leveling up past max level or farming Omega Masquerade, and 500 Plams from dismantling 14* and 15* weapons. Luminfragments let you swap to the Redux potential and this can be done at anytime through Dudu/Monica.
Atlas EX Redux weapons are the next best thing, and they’re relatively much easier to obtain.
- Buy a 7+ slot Val gunblade, +35 it with exp weapons
- Collect title from doing this for a Chronos Eternistone
- Buy a Lumiere gunblade, +35 it
- Buy 999 Sapphard and 999 Goldnia, or break down 13* weapons in your room for these
- Acquire 400 Ex-Cubes
- Upgrade Val gunblade to Atlas then Atlas Ex through Zig
- Switch potential to Redux with Luminfragments
- Divide Quests have weekly rewards for acquiring a certain number of points and should be capped every week. Farming them is extremely good as well, as they give modules needed for Cras units and weapon, the absolute best gear that we don’t have yet.
- Extreme Training: Risk Realm gives a lot of nice endgame materials and units that you can use for saving tens of millions on affixing your main set of units.
- Disturbing Whistle of Chaos (Piper) Rec4, drops Crack units, critical chance S6 units, Avion Dusk units (Doom Break 2 SAF), and other very nice things, while also being a good exp source. It scales and can be done on 4 or 8 man way easier than 12 with a good group.
- UH Persona/Luther triggers give very easy excubes, a few nice SSAs, and rare weapon camos that can be worth some meseta.
- Ship Infiltration: Enemy Battleship ultimate quest drops units with Crack and some Glares, this is very good for making meseta.
- Other Urgent Quest triggers like Valentines can drop some nice SSAs worth money
- Space Magatsu (Limited Quest) has a very low chance of dropping weapon camos worth 100-200m, feeling lucky?
There’s still a lot I didn’t cover but these are probably the most important things to be doing.
- Extreme quests with meseta boost+triboost (don’t use rare drop, it replaces meseta drops with gear) seabed & oceanids floor 36-40 can make up to 300k a run for an easy 5m an hour.
- Making rings to sell
- Advance Quests on VH can make 1.5-2m an hour in meseta+boosters
- Running trigger parties for SSA drops or nice affixes
Basic Affixing
Affixing can be summarized into 4 parts, SSAs/SGAs (Special Grade Abilities), SAFs (Special Ability Factors), recipes (Normal Affixes), and upslotting.
SSAs are their own system, they’re never lost and can be transferred independent of any other affixes. These are extremely impactful affixes that should always be used. Weapons and 13* Units have their own slots for these that you can see in the 2nd tab. Weapons can have S1, S2, S3, S4, and S5 slots, while 13* units have single S6/S7/S8 slots on each back/arm/leg.
SAFs can be viewed by clicking on the item and clicking on “Check Augment Factor”, this is an augment that can be affixed at a 100% success rate and is what you’ll do for most slots of your weapon affixing, units if you’re lucky enough to have ones with good SAFs. Keep in mind your SAF fodders have to have at least as many slots as what you’re trying to affix.
Regular affixes are created through recipes i.e. Arks Fever+Arks Fever on another unit+Arks Fever on another unit=can affix Arks Max. It’s very complicated and using the affix helper in resources is almost necessary for this.
Upslotting is suffering, ideally buy your components at the number of slots you want so you don’t have to interact with this. You can affix an extra slot on your item at the cost of making the percentage chances for each slot go way down. Using 100% affixes such as Precision I, Technique I, etc, helps a lot with this, and SSA slots can’t be lost so you should always have as many as possible on the item before attempting to upslot. 10% boosters for 1>4 slots, 30% from 4>6, and 40% for 7 slots, and 8 slots on affix day. Always use at least 2 fodder for this, only using 1 will greatly reduce your chances.
For the final affix, you can use up to 5 fodder on what you’re trying to affix, and after affixing SAFs onto something else they turn into the regular affix of that type and can’t be reaffixed without satisfying the conditions for their individual recipes.
Here’re a few budget affixes you can do!
7 slot Atlas EX Crit build (<10m)
- Buy weapons with the S3: Precision Will affix, one with S2:Precision Will, and one with S1:Precision Will. You may be able to find weapons with multiple of these for a better deal, or the capsules for these affixes may be cheaper, or weapons with these SSAs as SAFs such as Vadis could be cheaper.
- Transfer Special Ability the Precision Wills over to your Atlas Ex
- Affix Atlas Ex, adding the S4:Lifesteal Strike from its SAF.
- Regular affix your Atlas Ex, some good choices for the 3 regular affixes are a Add Ranged/Melee/Technique/pp capsule (Graceful) for your main stat, Ex Alles Di Soul or Astral Soul SAF from a Union weapon, and Phrase Decay from basilisk weapon SAF.
- Change gunblade to weapon of your choice
For a non-crit build you can find other Aggressive Will SSAs or use Petalsong SSAs
7 slot Rivalate build (<10m)
- S5 Skillful Adept Will from Gunblade SAF if your weapon type doesn’t have a better S5
- S4 Escalating Pursuit from capsule, buy this on visiphone
- Astral Soul from Union Weapons
- Phrase Decay or Phrase Weak from Basilisk or Fornis weapons
- Might/Precision/Technique VI from Dim weapons
- Graceful Might/Precision/Technique from Capsules
- Mitra or Varuna Glare (Same Glare * 2 + Divine Will)
7 slot unit single stat (<15m)
SSA
Persona Reverie from Trailblazer SAF
Ex Tir Soul
Might/Technique/Precision V from Novel SAF
Graceful Might/Precision/Technique/Stamina from Capsules
Mitra or Varuna Glare (Same Glare * 2 + 45% aug aid for 95% chance)
Doom Break II7 slot unit all stat (<20m)
SSA
Persona Reverie from Trailblazer SAF
Ex Alles Soul
Graceful Might/Precision/Technique/Stamina from Capsules
Exegul Glare (Same Glare * 2 + 45% aug aid for 95% chance)
Doom Break II
Mastery IIITo make the units even more budget, drop doom break II or glare and go for a 6 slot affix. Generally you can drop the S8 slot on legs if you don’t have S8:Skydance’s Boon.
Star Gems
Star gems are a fairly limited resource but you generally get enough free ones to keep a material storage and mission pass up, though you do get mission passes for free with premium.
- Story missions are the best way to get a large chunk of these as you get 10-20 for most of them, and clearing battle missions on hardcore with an S rank gives you 20SG each. Chapter 1-3 scales with your level and you can clear them easily on hardcore by using a high leveled subclass with a low leveled main class and an all-class dex launcher.
- Battle arena, pvp is awful but gives a RIDICULOUS amount of star gems, especially if you play enough to rank in the season.
- Casino has star gems that you can buy that reset every week.
- Magatsu silver/gold keys give 10/30 star gems each respectively.
- Buying outerwear/outfits with uncollected star gems and wearing them for around 24h you can then collect star gems from for a total of 30SG a day if you do it on all 3 characters. You don’t have to be online for this.
- Each class has titles for leveling it, you get 80 star gems at 80 and 85 at 85.
- +35ing a class’s 13* weapon for the first time gives you 40 star gems
Resources
Pso2 fleet discord, has everything you could possibly want
[link]
Basic guide to affixing (learn if you want to make BANK)
[link]
Way easier to use affixing simulator
[link]
PAs with guard/iframes
How to target gather any resource/yerkes quest material with foods
[link]
Make your game look like it’s from this decade!
[link]