Girls' Frontline 2: Beginner's Guide
XCOM with anime girls. If that's how Girls' Frontline 2 was introduced to you, then… it wasn't exactly wrong.
Whether you're just shopping around for a new game, or you've already downloaded it and are looking for some initial guidance, this guide will try to make your decisions easier.
Table of Contents
What is GFL2?
Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium (usually shortened as GFL2) is a gacha game available on PC (standalone & Steam) and mobile (Android & iOS).
The game itself is a sci-fi, turn-based tactics game. Or, in the common internet language, an XCOM-like.
You'll be commandeering tactical dolls—extremely advanced, AI-controlled androids designed to serve as potent military weapons.
A potent military weapon in question:
In the first game, most of the dolls were named after real-life guns (so you might hear people call them guns or gun girls). In the second game, that's no longer the case (apart from a few exceptions).
But do I need to play the first game?
No. The story starts with a long time skip anyway, and can be enjoyed by both old and new players. While you might not get some (or any) references to the ye olde times, you should have no trouble following the new story.
The Girls' Frontline franchise has a lot of passionate fans, so I'm sure you'll soon come across some "super short version" of the GFL lore (probably consisting of three books, fifteen hours of YouTube videos, and a bottle of antidepressants). But seriously, you don't need to know anything before jumping into the second game. And you can always revisit these later, in case you fall in love with the game's lore.
I'm f2p; how is the gacha?
If you plan on playing casually, the game is actually relatively generous. If you've ever played any Mihoyo game (e.g., Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail), the system is very similar, but the soft pity counter starts earlier (in simple language, it's easier to roll stuff you want).
What version of GFL2 should I download?
There are two versions of GFL2 Global - the Sunborn (Darkwinter) server, and the HaoPlay server. Which one to play at?
The short answer is that if you don't have any friends playing, and don't care about things like one server being a few days behind, just download whatever your PlayStore/Appstore/Steam allows you to. Or the standalone version from the official website.
Gacha
GFL2 is a gacha game, meaning that you'll spend your hard-earned in-game currency (or even more hard-earned real-life money) to pull for the good stuff.
"The good stuff" in this game are dolls (the characters) and weapons (equipment for your characters—yes, exactly, guns for your guns).
If you've played any Mihoyo games before (like Genshin Impact), the gacha system here is similar. And by similar, I mean practically identical. The main difference is that the GFL2 gacha is somewhat kinder, making it relatively easy for free-to-play players to obtain most characters.
If you do plan on spending money, consider starting with the Battle Pass (Patrol) upgrade, it's good value.
Gacha rates
What you'll usually want to get from a banner is the rare stuff—so either an Elite Doll or a Signature Weapon (those are the equivalent of SSR or 5* from other gacha games).
The rates for most banners are:
- The base rate of getting a rare pull is 0.6%.
- When you get a rare pull, there's a 50% chance it's going to be the rated-up character. On the Standard Banner with no rate-ups, it's a 50% chance for a rare character, and 50% for a rare weapon.
- If you don't get a rare pull in 58 attempts, the rare pull rate will start increasing (soft pity).
- If you still don't manage to roll anything rare even with the increased rates, you will get a rare pull after 80 draws (hard pity).
- This means that at worst, it would take 160 pulls to get the rated-up character.
On Limited Weapon banners, the numbers are slightly different:
- The base rate for a Signature Weapon is 0.7%.
- The chance of a rare pull being the rate-up weapon is 75%.
- Soft pity starts at 50 pulls.
- Hard pity is 70 pulls.
- This means that for limited weapons, you will spend at most 140 pulls for one copy.
Apart from the golden glow, you'll know that something rare is coming by watching Mayling's animation. She'll do a peace sign ("Commander, we're getting an extremely advanced war machine to help us mercilessly obliterate our enemies, peace.").
Banner types
If you didn't understand what things like "Standard Banner" or "Limited Banner" meant in the previous section, here's a brief overview of the banner types in GFL2.
Beginner's Banner
This banner becomes available when you first start the game, and will disappear after you pull 50 times from it.
Not only are you guaranteed at least one Elite Doll from this banner, but the pulls are also discounted (8 tickets for 10 draws). You should do all 50 pulls here, as it's great value.
The banner uses the Standard Banner tickets. You will get enough of these quickly, so don't trade your premium crystals to roll this banner.
Standard Banner
The permanent banner option. It doesn't have the new, shiny, limited dolls and weapons, but you can spend your Standard Banner tickets here. Also, after 260 rolls here, you'll be able to select one of the starting lineup Elite Dolls for free.
Limited Banners
That's where you get the newest, shiniest dolls and weapons. Limited banners can be either Character-focused or Weapon-focused. Each of them will have one Elite Doll or Signature Weapon on a rate-up.
Limited banners are (if it wasn't obvious from the name) time-limited. After they're over, the rated-up dolls or weapons won't join the Standard pool, and you'll have to wait for a rerun. Reruns happen relatively often, though.
Limited Banner tickets are necessary to pull on Limited Banners. One costs 150 crystals, so 1500 crystals for a 10-roll.
The Gameplay
GFL2 is a turn-based tactics game, similar to XCOM in gameplay. Even if you have no idea what any of those words mean, just jump in and try it. The game explains things really slowly.
The most significant difference from the XCOM games (apart from the anime waifus) is that there's no RNG-based hit chance. You will hit anything in range with a 100% probability. Cover, instead of lowering hit chance, lowers damage taken.
There's also the "B.R.I.E.F." tutorial system that you can access from the Campaign screen, which will explain things even more in detail. And also give you some goodies for completing it.
Campaign
The campaign menu has all the various combat stages you can use your dolls in.
Story Campaigns
This is the main story of Girls' Frontline 2. Completing the levels will unlock new mechanics and give you plenty of first-time clear bonuses, but… the main story is probably one of the reasons you're playing this game in the first place. So go in and have fun!
After you complete all levels of a stage, a hard mode will unlock. The hard mode versions don't really offer much new when it comes to the story, but they're challenging and fun and give you more resources when you clear them, so don't forget they exist!
Supply Missions
In other words, the farming stages.
- The In-Depth Search (combat reports), Equipment Analysis (analysis blueprints), and Cognitive Configuration (stock bars) will provide materials for leveling up your dolls and weapons.
- The Targeted Study drops attachments. In gacha terms, this is the artifact farming stage. More about attachments later.
- The Standardizing Sync gives Sardis gold, but you can only do this stage twice a day.
When starting out, you'll want to spend most of your stamina on farming upgrade materials. There's not much point in trying to get the best attachments when you can get much bigger gains by simply leveling up your characters and weapons.
After you level up the dolls you're using to the max level, you will find yourself farming for attachments. A lot.
Combat Simulations
Everything that's neither the main story nor a supply mission goes here.
- Neural Survey is half a farming stage, half a lore drop. You can challenge this stage at any time (using stamina) and it supplies you with Neural Helix materials (and lore).
- Boss Fights are challenging, well, boss fights. These reset every week and give various rewards.
- Combat Exercise is the casual PvP. Do it daily for some crystals. There don't seem to be any consequences for losing defense, so there's not much of a reason to try too hard here.
- Peak Value Assessment are one-time clear stages. Based on the highest stage you've cleared, you will get some rewards every week (thus the "Peak").
- Expansion Drills are challenge stages that reset periodically. Complete them to gain some premium currency.
- Military Simulation is the tryhard PvP. It has rankings and everything, and it's a place to show off your hard-trained teams, if you're into that.
Refitting Room
Accessed from the base menu, the Refitting Room is an important facility where you can strengthen your characters and weapons. While your dolls gain some experience naturally from battle, most of the power upgrades will be achieved here.
Refitting Characters
Level Up
Using dolls in battles will slowly level them up—the keyword here is "slowly." Luckily, in the Refitting Room, you can click the "Level Up" button and use the Combat Reports that drop in the In-Depth Search Supply Missions to level your character quickly.
Limit Break
Starting at level 20 and then every 10 levels, your character will stop being able to gain more experience. To fix that, you will need to spend resources from the Cognitive Configuration Supply Missions to Limit Break her.
Note that apart from Limit Breaking, your character's level is also capped at your Commander Level. Meaning that if your Commander Level is 15, your characters will also only be able to reach level 15.
Giving gifts in the dorms
By clicking the sofa button, you can visit the character in her dormitory room. You can do plenty of things here, like change the doll's outfit, or watch her do—you know what, I'll let you explore these yourself.
Apart from the eye candy, you can also give the character gifts. By gifting the wished items, her affinity will increase, granting a stat boost.
Fortification
The Fortification upgrades are a system that makes rolling duplicate characters in gacha a little less sad (at least the first six times). Every time you get a duplicate doll from gacha, you will be able to upgrade her Segments here in the Fortification tab.
You can upgrade every character six times this way. The bonuses from Fortification are unique to each doll.
Neural Helix
The Neural Helix is a system where you can buy upgrades for your girls with Conductors, which are farmable from the Neural Survey Combat Simulations, and Cores, which are much more rare and you can only obtain them from limited sources like first-time clears and battle passes.
The unlockable nodes in the Helix have three types.
Enhancement Nodes
These are purchased with the common Conductors. Unlocking these nodes will grant the listed bonus, which is usually some extra stats. As simple as that.
Fixed Keys
The Fixed Keys (also called Exclusive Keys) are purchased with Cores. These will grant buffs to the particular character's skills.
However, it's not enough to just purchase the Fixed Key—you must also equip it, in the menu that's located on the bottom left of the Neural Helix screen. Each character can only equip three Fixed Keys at the same time.
Common keys
After unlocking all Fixed Keys for a doll, her Common Key (also called Universal Key) will be automatically unlocked.
The difference between Fixed and Common keys is that the latter can be equipped by any character. So once you unlock it, any of your girls can use it. Every doll can equip three Common Keys.
Change the Weapon
By clicking on your doll's weapon and then on Change, you can change it. Every girl can equip one of the seven types of weapons:
- Assault Rifle
- Submachine Gun
- Machine Gun
- Shotgun
- Sniper Rifle
- Handgun
- Blade
Furthermore, when selecting a weapon, you can refit it as well! Which brings us to the second part of this section.
Refitting Weapons
After selecting a weapon, you can do several things to refit it. Specifically, you can...
Enhance it
Same as your dolls, their weapons also have levels. You'll have to feed them the Analysis Blueprint farmed in the Equipment Analysis Supply Missions.
Also same as with your dolls, the individual levels of your weapons are capped to your overall Commander Level.
Calibrate it
Calibrating is similar to character Fortification. If you roll multiple copies of the same weapon, you can use the extra copies to increase your weapon's special skill.
Just make sure to feed the new weapon to your already upgraded one, and not the other way around. This is a good time to learn about weapon locking. You can prevent a gun from being accidentally scrapped by using the little lock toggle on the weapon's icon.
Customize it
This is the weapon skin system. You can change the looks of the weapon to any of the other weapons of the same type that you own. You can also do the same with the weapon's attachments. Pretty cool.
Put attachments on it
Attachments are items with randomly rolled stats that you can get in the Targeted Study Supply Missions. And trust me, you'll spend a lot of time there eventually. When you think "artifact farm" from other gacha games, that's attachments in GFL2.
In the early game, you should be spending your time on more straightforward things, like clearing the story, raising your dolls' levels, upgrading their Neural Helix, watching their cute animations in the dorms—erm, what I mean is, don't sink too many resources into attachments too early, it's a black hole for stamina.
You will spend most of your stamina here after you're done with raising your characters, though.
There are four types of attachments:
- Muzzles (barrels) have four substats. They are also the only type of attachment that can roll the Critical Damage substat.
- Underbarrels, Sights, and Foregrips have three substats and an attachment skill.
The substats an attachment will have are rolled randomly from one of eight types:
- Flat HP and HP %
- Flat Defense and Defense %
- Flat Attack and Attack %
- Critical Damage (muzzle only) and Critical Rate
As it's usual with this kind of game, the best defense is a good offense, so you'll want the Attack and Critical Damage substats on your attachments.
The base values of substats are rolled randomly from a certain range, and will never change.
You can perform an attachment upgrade with gold and attachment fodder. The upgrade stats will also be rolled randomly, and added to the base values.
While you can only upgrade an attachment once, you can later reroll these upgrades (with more gold and fodder), and you can even decline the roll if the original one was better.
Dispatch Room
The Dispatch Room encompasses several systems related to the passive gain of materials. Familiarize yourself with this room early—it's easy to forget that it exists, but it provides a good deal of materials if you don't.
Main Dispatch menu
These are quite literally expeditions that you might know from other gacha games. Select girls from your roster, bake for about 20 hours, collect resources fresh from the oven.
The one unusual mechanic here is the Personality system. Each doll has a unique personality, and each mission has different recommended personalities. If the girls you send out match those, you get extra resources.
The Dispatch room also has a level. A higher level means higher efficiency of your girls on the expeditions. To increase the level, you need points gained by raising the Affinity with your dolls. You should be doing that in the first place anyway, but keep that in mind.
Dispatch Income
Through the Dispatch Income button, you'll get into a menu with three more mechanics related to the Dispatch Room.
Intelligence Storage
The Intelligence Storage stores some stamina if it overflows. You can then take it out at any time.
Production of Resources
You can select one of the three resources offered. After that, it becomes completely straightforward and starts generating the resource passively. Pick what you need the most, and collect it daily.
Conversion of Resources
Here, you can trade resources for Wishing Coins, which can be used to open Mystery Boxes. Mystery Boxes can contain various resources, weapons, and also characters with a tiny chance.
While it might be tempting to throw your extra resources on yet another gacha, the value is not very good, and you're better off using them to actually properly raise your characters. Don't starve your dolls.
