Defina

Gameplay Guide

How to Start?

In order to start playing this NFT strategy game, you need to connect your wallet, create a Defina account, own four heroes alongside some FINA tokens, and download the game. Open the official Defina website and connect your Metamask wallet; you can see this option at the top-right of the website. Then, you can create and verify your account by checking your email. 

Your account should look like this after connecting your wallet, purchasing NFTs, and transferring your characters.

Through the market, you need to purchase four NFTs to start playing the game. If you’re lucky, though, you can stumble upon a mystery box sale and get newly minted characters from them. After deciding which characters you want to have in your team and buying your NFTs, you need to transfer them to the game from your wallet. I recommend buying six characters initially, even though you need only four. Your initial team can have six heroes, and you can progress and level faster through the game.

First Steps

The first time you launch the client, you need to log in to your account and install the game. After that, you will be looking at the main menu with several different options. New players can claim various one-time rewards by checking their mailbox under their player portrait.

After launching the game, you should be here, the main menu.

Next, you should go to the Hero section and look at their abilities and stats. You can check out their skills, elements, and factions, as well as their attributes. These are essential for your team composition. Ideally, you would want SSS heroes, which is the highest rank and rarity for a hero, but they may be incompatible with each other in terms of factional and elemental synergies. It is better to select a few SSS heroes who have better attributes and skills, then form your team around them with tanks, healers, and supports.

Characters' detailed attributes and skills can be examined through the Hero section by clicking on a specific character.

The next thing you should be checking out is your team's Formation. It is how your team lines up on the battlefield. It dictates which order and enemies your characters attack. These need to be set up before participating in the adventure mode and the arena. You can see your team’s synergies and buffs they give to each other. 

You should always be aiming to create team compositions that have factional and elemental synergies which give bonuses to your team.

You can set up your primary team formation, which will be used in PvE modes, and your Arena attack and arena defense team comps which are for PvP modes.

Progression Explained

You should now be ready to take on the adventure mode. Three stars in every battle possible will give great experience points for your heroes and FINA earnings. Stars earned are determined by your team's performance in the battle. Each star is given depending on specific qualifications; if you win the battle or not, if you win within eight rounds, and if all your heroes survived at the end or not. You probably wouldn’t be able to complete them all with your initial starting team, but your main goal should be beating as many levels as possible with your current team. You will level your team up as you progress. 

Adventure mode has many battles you should complete with three stars to earn rewards.

Stamina is required to participate in battles, and each successful battle uses one stamina point. However, being defeated in PvE battles or PvP arenas won’t decrease your stamina. New players who own four to seven hero cards will have a stamina pool of twenty. In order to increase your rate of progress, you can own more cards, which increases your stamina pool. Owning 8 to 16 cards grants 40 stamina, while owning 17 and more cards will grant you a total of 60 stamina. 

Adventure mode will help create your desired and powerful team until you are ready for the PvP Arena. 

In addition to these two main modes, you can also try participating in Vrykos Tower, an idle game mode where you can spend a certain amount of FINA to start a timed quest and assign your team to complete it. After the quest timer runs down, if the quest is a success, you will get rewards in the form of experience, items, and currency, depending on the quest. Usable items such as potions will speed up your progress. Completing daily and weekly tasks will also grant more experience, items, and FINA tokens. Over three days of playing the adventure mode and mining during downtimes, I was able to earn ~6 FINA with a team of four A quality heroes.

Which Team Comps and Formations Should You Use?

Heroes can have skills ranging from single target damage, multiple target damage, healing, tanking, and ultimates. Elements and four different factions all provide strong bonuses if used in certain ways. These need to be taken into consideration when buying heroes and forming teams. Let’s say you have decided on a certain team composition, such as having four water element heroes in your team. If you have only three, you can use the Resonance tool in the Alchemy section, which can both add elements to and swap elements from particular heroes, but you will need two heroes and resources to perform this action.

Your team’s formation is customizable for both the PvE and the PvP modes.

Elemental Bonuses:

• A water, a fire, and a wind hero will have a 10% increased chance of activating hyper skill.

Faction Bonuses:

• One hero from each faction gives a 5% damage reduction to all heroes.

Battles are carried out automatically; your characters take turns to attack the enemy.

You should balance your teams to include tanks, healers, supports, and damage dealers, which maximizes your adaptability. Generally, building a team around one or two damage dealers is best for starting out. Capitalizing on a heroes’ strengths should be one of your main goals.

I have found success in forming teams that focus on two different element bonuses or one of the same element.

This means having 2+2 heroes from 2 different elements or four heroes of the same element. For example, having two fire damage dealers and two earth tanks will result in a balanced team. Faction bonuses can act the same. Having a tank along with Ouroboros bonuses (increasing attack damage and energy by each dead ally) will make the tank a carry. The same goes with if you have a carry with high damage with low health; you should be aiming for Athena’s Aegis bonuses (granting a shield that absorbs damage) within your team.

Formation should be taken into consideration before going into battle. You can set your main tank in front of the enemy’s damage dealer and set your own damage dealer to attack low-health heroes of the opponent’s. You should always aim to disrupt and gain an advantage over the enemy by strategically deciding on your team’s composition and formation.

How to Mine?

You can examine and choose which mines to conquer; Amethyst has the highest FINA yield per minute, while Low concentration Kyanite has the lowest.

In order to own a mine, you need to fight an unshielded player or an NPC-occupied mine. They are marked with green and yellow, respectively. Red-colored mines are shielded and can’t be attacked. After winning the fight, your team will automatically be staked to defend the pool. 

You can add shield items to your mine to protect it from harm. 

Shields are hourly items that can be obtained in several different ways. One, four, eight, and twenty-four-hour shield items can be gained through gameplay elements such as daily and weekly tasks. You can recall your heroes to harvest your yield. If your occupation time is less than three hours, you will get half of the unharvested FINA. Losing a mine to another player will result in losing the %10 of the FINA, conquering player gets the 5% while the remaining 5% will be transferred to the arena reward pool. I tried mining on two separate occasions on a low concentration Kyanite pool with a team of four A heroes, one where I assigned my team and left them on their own, and the other where I observed and assigned shield items when necessary. Your team will automatically be shielded for the first three hours, and be attacked at the end in an hour at most if you do not check on them. This three to four hour mining period usually granted me ~0.45 FINA. Carefully monitoring and assigning shields allowed the mining periods to extend more than eight hours, which earned me ~1 FINA on average.

There are four different mining pools that require various hero rarities to enter:

1. Amethyst pools require SSS heroes and give free shields for one hour.
2. High concentration Kyanite pools require SS heroes and give free shields for two hours.
3. Kyanite pools require S heroes and give free shields for three hours.
4. Low concentration Kyanite pools require A heroes and give free shields for four hours.

That is all there is to Defina at the moment. As long as you establish a great team composition and keep on battling while mining on the side you should be able to earn a decent amount of FINA in a short period of time. As the game evolves and adds new features this guide will be updated. Thank you for reading, enjoy!