The Ultimate Beginner Guide to Punishing: Gray Raven

If you're new to Punishing: Gray Raven (PGR) or considering diving in, any time is the perfect time to start your journey.

This guide is your key to becoming a PGR pro, offering essential tips on navigation, early game strategies, team building, and much more.

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Punishing Gray Raven Beginner's Guide: Start with the Right Foot

Navigating the Game

Understanding the Main Menu

When completing the tutorial, you're introduced to the main menu, which might seem a bit daunting.

• Battle: This is your command center for all things combat-related. Access the main storyline, side stories, tutorials, farming stages, and challenging modes here.
• Missions: Your go-to spot for daily and weekly missions, crucial for steady progression and rewards. Completing these missions not only advances your story-based missions but also boosts your resources significantly.

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Deep Dive into Game Features

• Dorms: PGR’s housing system lets you create a personal space for your characters, adding a personal touch to your gameplay.
• R&D (Research and Development): This is essentially the gacha system of PGR, where you can recruit new constructs to improve your roster.
• Cub: The game’s pet system offers companions that provide additional bonuses and are just downright adorable.
• Guilds: Joining a guild opens up new ways for cooperative play and additional rewards, essential for your PGR journey.

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Additional Navigation Tips

• Member Selection & Inventory: Here, you can manage your constructs and items. It's crucial to keep your inventory organized and your constructs ready for battle.
• Shop & Top-Up: The in-game shop is where you can purchase items using in-game currency, while the top-up section is for real-money transactions.
• Battle Pass, Calendar, and Inbox: Keep an eye on these for ongoing events, special rewards, and your daily login bonuses.

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Early Game Progression

Focus on Story Progression

Advancing through the story unlocks new modes, characters, and essential resources.

Each chapter completed is a step toward expanding your gameplay possibilities.

Serum, the energy system for progression, is what you'll need to play any mission.

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Serum Management Tips

Resist the urge to use serum packs right away.

Optimize your in-game serum first, benefiting from level-up refills to not waste any packs at the beginning.

Plan your serum usage around level-ups to maximize the automatic refills, enabling continuous play and progression during your first days.

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Team Building and Character Development

Your initial team plays a crucial role in your early success.

Liv (Eclipse), Nanami (Storm), and Lucia (Lotus) form a balanced starting team.

Don’t hesitate to invest in leveling them up as they are more than capable of carrying you through the early to mid-game.

Understanding the roles of attacker, tank, and support is crucial.

Early on, focus on creating a balanced team that covers all these roles to handle different challenges effectively.

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Gacha System and S-Rank Selectors

Understanding the Gacha System

PGR's gacha, known as R&D (Research and Development), is your primary way for acquiring new constructs (characters).

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Event-Based, Target, and Special Banners

• Event Banners: These feature the latest characters with increased drop rates. Prioritize these for a chance at the newest additions to the roster.
• Target Banners: Allow you to aim for specific characters, offering a mix of new and returning heroes.
• Special Banners: Occasionally, special banners might appear, offering unique opportunities for rare pulls.

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Spending Your Resources

Black Cards and R&D Tickets: The currency for the gacha system.

Black Cards can be converted into specific R&D tickets needed for each banner.

Save and use these when pulling on banners that offer characters beneficial to your team’s synergy.

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Making the Most of S-Rank Selectors

S-Rank selectors are a golden opportunity to choose a high-tier character, crucial for new players to jumpstart your progression.

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Evaluate Your Needs

Assess your current lineup's strengths and weaknesses.

Select a character that fills a gap or enhances your team's overall performance.

Consider the game's meta and future updates. Selecting a character that remains viable in the long term can be more beneficial.

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Strategic Gacha Pulls

Event Banners: The Priority

Focus on event banners for characters that fit well with your desired team composition or are known to be strong in the game's current meta.

Use event-specific R&D tickets and save your Black Cards for these occasions.

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Target and Special Banners: Secondary Options

These banners are best approached once you have a solid core team and are looking to fill specific roles or enhance your team with complementary abilities.

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Managing Expectations and Pity System

Understand the pity system of each banner, which guarantees an S-Rank pull after 60 pulls.

Plan your resources to reach the pity count if needed.

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Endgame Strategies

Mastering Resonance and Hyper-Tuning

Resonance‍

This feature allows you to enhance a character's memories (gear) by providing additional stats and perks.

Target memories that complement your character's strengths or mitigate their weaknesses.

Prioritizing attack or defense stats can depend on the character's role within your team.

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Hyper-Tuning‍

Takes resonance a step further by increasing a memory's stats.

This process requires hyper-tuning materials, which are rare and should be used only when needed.

Focus on hyper-tuning memories attached to your main DPS or critical support characters first.

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Building Specialized Teams for Diverse Content

Endgame content in PGR often demands specific team compositions to complete them.

This means building several specialized teams ready for anything the game throws at you.

• Elemental Teams: Assemble teams around specific elemental synergies (e.g., fire, ice, lightning) to exploit enemy weaknesses.
• Role Specialization: Beyond elemental considerations, ensure your teams have balanced roles—attackers, tanks, and supports/amplifiers—to handle different challenges.

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Engaging in High-Level Co-Op Content

Co-op modes like raids and boss battles are not only a test of individual skill and team strength but also require coordination and strategy with other players.

Align your team composition and strategy with your co-op partners to tackle challenges efficiently.

Use in-game chat or external communication tools to coordinate actions and adapt to dynamic battle conditions.

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Optimizing for War Zone and Pain Cage

These modes are where you'll test your roster, requiring deep knowledge of game mechanics and optimal team setups.

• War Zone: Focus on elemental and enemy-type advantages, adjusting your team to maximize damage output against the weekly challenges.
• Pain Cage: Requires a broader strategy, as you'll need multiple teams to progress through the ranks. Understand each boss's mechanics and prepare teams that can exploit their weaknesses.

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Prioritizing Character and Memory Evolution

Endgame progression lies on continuously enhancing your characters and their equipment.

• Character Evolution: Evolving characters increases their base stats and unlocks new skills. Prioritize your main DPS and key support units for evolution to ensure they can handle endgame content.
• Memory Evolution: Similarly, evolving memories boosts their effectiveness. Focus on evolving memories that align with your characters' roles and the demands of current endgame challenges.

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Resource Management for Endgame Progression

Managing your resources effectively becomes even more critical in the endgame.

With the increasing cost of character and memory upgrades, focus your resources on units and gear that will have the most impact on your performance in endgame modes.

While it's important to prepare for current challenges, also plan for future updates and content.

This might mean saving resources for upcoming characters or gear that could shift the meta.