GBF Granblue Fantasy Early Game Guide - Gachazone

Introduction
Seriously? Another poker guide? Surely we already have enough that describe optimal play. Well yes, but no . As those guides will get you 95+% of the way there, my goal was mainly just for fun, but it also allows me to share a few extra simple rules to get even more out of the game. For those who just want to know the strategy and no details you can skip until the TLDR. Before I lose your attention here are the new questions that I tackle (note: natural pair means a pair formed without the use of a joker)

1. When dealt a starting hand with both a natural pair and 4 of a particular suit, should you keep the pair (go for 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, etc.) or keep the 4 of a particular suit (go for a flush)?
2. When dealt a starting hand with both a natural pair and 4 cards of a straight, should you keep the pair (go for 2 pairs, 3 of a kind, etc.) or keep the 4 cards (go for a straight)?
3. How much extra value does the card counting strategy bring in the higher-lower game?

Have These Questions Really Not Been Answered Yet?
While there are excellent guides on the overall strategy (see YANFLY) , one that calculate the odds of winning poker hands (u/PinoyEvan5), and one that calculates the expected returns of playing higher-lower (u/BillsHere1), there is still no full game solution. The probability of winning poker hands only matters when we know the expected returns of playing higher-lower for various multipliers. That is for a complete solution we need to combine and expand on the previous guides.
How Do I Answer These Questions?
I wrote code to simulate the games and then played them millions of times. For anyone interested, I wrote a ten page document that explains the entire process and shows the code. If anybody wishes to implement it themselves I can send you the R Markdown file if you DM me.
Results
Preliminaries
Before we an answer any of the questions, the first thing that needs to be done is to solve the expected value of playing the higher-lower game. Following past guides, we will be playing the 2 card higher-lower for 1000 chips. The optimal strategy is as follows:

• If face up card is higher than 8, choose low
• If face up card is lower than 8 choose high
• If face up card is 8, choose either

Using this strategy, and implementing it in my higher-lower game, I ran 10 million simulations and got the following results for various multipliers (+/- gives the 95% confidence interval).

• x1 (2 pairs, 3 of a kind): 42832 +/- 114 [6.2% probability of positive winnings]
• x3 (Straight): 101322 +/- 231 [7.2% probability of positive winnings]
• x4 (Flush): 135350 +/- 309 [7.2% probability of positive winnings]
• x10 (Full House): 236347 +/- 458 [9.3% probability of positive winnings]
• x20 (4 of a kind): 320897 +/- 525 [12.5% probability of positive winnings]
• x25 (Straight Flush): 271965 +/- 372 [17.0% probability of positive winnings]
• x60 (5 of a kind): 440917 +/- 501 [23.0% probability of positive winnings]
• x250 (Royal Flush): 839932 +/- 612 [42.0% probability of positive winnings]

Question 1
Now that we know the expected returns of various multipliers we can figure out whether keep the pair or the 4 of a suit when dealt a starting hand with both. As there are many cases, I decided to again estimate these through running millions of simulations (see the document for details). In the end (got lazy with errors, but with this many simulations and a difference that wide should not be a problem), I got the following expected values to the various strategies:

• Keeping the natural pair (go for 2 pair, 3 of a kind, etc.): 18971
• Keeping the 4 of a suit (go for flush): 28198

In these situations you should GO FOR THE FLUSH
Question 2
The analysis for the straight is quite similar but here we need to consider that inside straight draws on open ended draws have different odds. Fortunately, keeping the pair is better in both cases so it simplifies our overall strategy. The following shows the expected value for going for a straight when you have 4 in a row (i.e. an open ended draw), which has a higher expected return than an inside draw

• Keeping the natural pair (go for 2 pair, 3 of a kind, etc.): 18971
• Keeping the open ended straight draw (go for straight): 18998

The difference here is not statistically significant and quite negligible. While one should be indifferent between the two from an expected return perspective, from a human perspective it is easier to remember that you go for the pair in all such situations.
In these situations you should KEEP THE PAIR.
Question 3
Question 3 is particularly interesting. A key part about playing the higher-lower game is that cards will not show up twice - this means card counting is a viable strategy. As has been pointed out in many guides, a simple card counting strategy is as follows:

• Start running tally at 0. If card is below 8, add -1. If card is above 8, add +1.
• If face up card is anything except 8, use the old strategy.
• If face up card is an 8, choose high if tally is negative, choose low if tally is positive.

The question is how much of a gain is this card counting? If the gain is small, then the player probably cannot justify using it if it adds extra time to playing. However, if the gains are large then it might be justifiable even if it slows down your ability to play. To test this I ran 10 million simulations using this card counting strategy for the x1 multiplier situation and go the following outcome:

• x1 (No Card Counting): 42832 +/- 114
• x1 (With Card Counting): 43385 +/- 115

The results are it adds about 1.3% to your expected return. Personally, I think using it adds well more than 1.3% to my playing time so for me personally counting cards is not a viable strategy. For extra analysis, I looked into a full solution card counting strategy (one that allows for cases when picking lower is better for a 7, picking higher is better for a 9, etc.), but these cases are so rare it adds essentially nothing (0.1% gain which is non significant).
Acknowledgements
Thanks to u/Aerdra for the crucial feedback and correcting an error in my code. This has now been corrected in both the post and document.
TLDR - Summary
Provides a summary of the optimal strategy for playing poker. Contributions added in this post are in bold, while all the rest was previously known in previous guides.
Poker Phase: General Strategy

• Keep all cards that are part of a winning hand. You should replace any cards in that hand that do not contribute to winning
• If dealt a natural pair, keep the pair and replace the other 3 cards
• If dealt 4 of a suit (including if one is a joker), keep all 4 and go for a flush
• If dealt 4 cards of a straight (including if one is a joker), keep all 4 and go for a straight
• Otherwise replace all cards (except for a joker in which case you should keep it) [You may also want to consider keeping hands with 3 cards of a flush or a straight as pointed out by u/Aerdra but as u/Storm1k points out playing fast is best - the payoffs are so low it is probably more optimal to save time with fewer button presses]

Poker Phase: Tiebreaks

• If dealt a hand with a natural pair and 4 cards of a suit, go for a flush
• If dealt a hand with a natural pair and 4 cards of a straight, keep the pair and replace the other 3 cards

Higher-Lower Phase
In higher and lower you should play until the game ends either by losing, completing round 10, or passing the cap limit by using the following strategy:

• If face up card is above 8, play low
• If face up card is below 8, play high
• If face up card is 8, play either [might be easier to press "low" as pointed out by u/hkidnc]

Additionally, a +/- 1 card counting strategy can be used for additional gains of 1.3%. [A benefit which for most players is too small to justify the effort of card counting]
Happy Halloween! And grinding!

Welcome to part 2 of my guide for very-new players! If you missed part 1, it's here:
PSA: Very-New Players Guide, Part 1: Stories, Events, and Weapons (pre-Omega/Magna)
Now that we've had more than a week of roulette, you probably have a lot of characters, weapons, and summons, and you might not be sure what to do with them or which ones to use. In this part 2, I'll be talking about all of this -- but first, I need to explain something about elements, particularly Light and Dark.
(Edit: I added section 2g: Do you have any advice for party-building?)
​
Section 1: Elements
Intuitively, you would think your characters will always deal more damage to one element and receive more damage from one element. However, this is not quite true:

• Fire is superior to Wind
• Water is superior to Fire
• Earth is superior to Water
• Wind is superior to Earth
• Light is superior to Dark when your character is Light
• Dark is superior to Light when your character is Dark

Counter-intuitively, your Light characters will take reduced damage from Dark enemies and your Dark characters will take reduced damage from Light enemies! This also means Light and Dark characters are not weak to any element.
The superior element has +50% elemental ATK against the weak element and the weak element has -25% elemental ATK against the superior element. Elemental superiority and weakness also affects the success rate of debuffs like ATK Down or Blind. (Surprisingly, the worst debuff success rate is against the same element!)
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Section 2: Characters
2a: Quick tip: changing party icons
Before you start making parties, here's a quick tip: you can change the party icons that show up when you select Switch Parties. E.g. you can make each one a different element icon to help you organize your parties. The Change Party Icon button is just below your party's characters.
2b: What should be my first parties/teams?
Simple answer: Make 6 parties, one for each element. If you don't have enough characters for an element, fill-in the gaps with your favourite or strongest characters from other elements.
Focusing on one element/party vs using all six: To be honest, I don't know how difficult the early game is with a single element party, especially an element that isn't Light or Dark and is weak to another element. If you want to play only one party with your favourite characters (hopefully of the same element...), you should be able to make it work at least for a while, since the early story content is very easy. But as you progress, I think the benefits of being the superior element will make fights a lot easier.
Many players will eventually choose to focus on one element. However, there is no need to do so before you reach the point where you are farming Omega (Magna) raids to build an Omega (Magna) weapons grid.
When you reach this point, you'll end up using weapons with skills to upgrade the skill levels of specific grid weapons. Since your supply of these "skill fodder" weapons will be limited at that point, focusing on only one element's weapons can help you progress faster. Similarly, you'll receive Renown Pendants for defeating raid bosses, and these can be traded for specific weapons in lieu of waiting for them to drop randomly from an Omega raid boss. Focusing on one element means you can spend all of your pendants on the weapon(s for that element's grid.
That said, having a party for every element can make fighting and farming (particularly MVP-ing) the Omega raid bosses much easier. They dish out a lot of damage for that point in the game, so you will definitely want to take advantage of superior element damage reduction.
2c: Which characters are the best?
There is a tier list you can check to get an idea of which of your characters are the strongest. Some notes about this tier list:

• Most SSRs are much stronger than most SRs, and most SRs are much stronger than most Rs, but there are some outliers. They're easier to see if you view only one rarity's tier list.
• Characters are ranked relative to their own element. Two characters of different elements in the same rank may have very different power levels.
• Some of the SSRs rated 9.5 or 10 only reach their full potential later in the game with specific weapons and/or party members. For example, Summer Zooey)'s Conjunction reducing all allies' HP to 1 will probably not be useful without enmity weapons or characters. (Enmity means ATK is greatly boosted at low HP.)
• Generally, a character's usefulness won't reflect their tier placement until they unlock their extra skill or reach a certain level, especially characters with a 5th star.
• In my opinion, early on, characters rated 7.0 and above will feel useful, while characters rated 6.5 and below will feel lackluster.

If you are short on (useful) characters for an element, remember that there are a lot of characters you can get for free from the side stories, including 4 SSRs (so far)! I listed the more useful ones at the end of my previous guide.
2d: Are R or SR characters useful?
Yes! ... Sometimes.
When you don't have 5 SSR characters in an element, you'll always want SR and R characters of the correct element to fill out your party. But there are some situations, especially when you have a small number of SSRs, where an SR character fills a role you need for a difficult fight, such as healing, debuffing, Katalina's Veil (Dispel Mount skill), etc.
As for R characters, some notable ones include:

• Karteira - "Money printer".
• La Coiffe - Earth character with 1-turn debuff immunity.
• Camieux / Camieux (Earth)) - Top-tier attack animation, in my opinion!
• Spinnah - Incredibly high damage potential for an R. To quote a reply to this topic: All he needs is a lucky ring roll to pad his stats and he's better than some low-tier SSRs. ("Lucky ring roll" referring to Over Mastery Rings such as Coronation Rings that give random boosts to stats and can roll Triple Attack up.)

In addition, there are a number of reasons to use R and SR characters even when they don't serve any special purpose in battle:

• When you defeat raid bosses, you receive bonus Renown Pendants for having R and SR characters in your front line. (Back line and defeated characters don't count.) It's recommended to use a team of 2x SR and 1x R characters to farm Renown Pendants. These R and SR bonus pendants ignore the weekly limit on pendants you can receive, though they have their own separate weekly limits.
• Some quests have restrictions like "R only", "SR only", "Draph only", etc.
• Proving Grounds events require you to use more than one party of characters, and you cannot use the same character on two different parties.
• Some pairs of characters can unlock Cross-Fate Episodes once both characters have unlocked and received their extra skills (at level 25 / 35 / 45 for R / SR / SSR characters). Completing these episodes gives both characters new skills or ATK/HP buffs.
• Every character you get unlocks a new Fate Episode, which you can play or skip for 50 crystals each. You can always re-watch Fate Episodes later in your Journal.

Lastly, you may opt to use SR or R characters to add more variety to the game or to make repetitive fights more challenging.
2e: My favourite character isn't among my 5 strongest characters for their element. Can I still use them?
Yes! Early game, it doesn't really matter. Eventually, it will make some fights more difficult, but nothing you can't overcome one way or another.
As for late game viability, you may be interested in the replies to this topic: To anyone who has favorite characters that aren't viable in endgame, what do you do?
2f: Does the order of the characters in my party matter?
Yes! Whenever a character does a Charge Attack (CA), all other characters that haven't done a CA yet on that turn will gain 10% to their charge bar. For example, if your main character (MC) has 100% charge bar, your 2nd character has 90%, your 3rd character 80%, and your 4th character 70%, then all 4 characters will use their CAs in that turn. MC's CA will raise everyone else's charge bars by 10%, and so on.
Therefore, you'll usually put characters that can gain more charge bar, such has having Double Attack / Triple Attack up (DA/TA up) or skills that boost their charge bar, into the 2nd and 3rd positions. Meanwhile, characters that consume charge bar for skills will usually be in the 4th position.
2g: Do you have any advice for party-building?
Lots! But I'll just give some simple advice here. You can further optimize your party as you play and learn more about combat. You can also ask for more detailed help in the latest Q&A thread.
First, consider your characters' and your class's buff and debuff skills. If two skills apply the same buff/debuff, and neither one says "Stackable", then they might not stack. Look up Status Effects and Attack Rate Boosts on the Wiki to see if your skills will stack, or test them in a Trial Battle.
ATK Down / DEF Down: Look at your ATK Down and DEF Down debuffs. These debuffs cap at 50% each on an enemy. One common goal of party building is to reach this cap.
Start with Dark Fencer's Miserable Mist skill, which inflicts 25% ATK Down and 25% DEF Down and stacks with most other debuff skills. You will almost always have this class skill -- in fact, you will almost always be using Dark Fencer for difficult fights.
Now try to build a party that can provide the remaining 25% for both ATK Down and DEF Down. If you can't achieve this with your characters alone, then you can use Sidewinder's Rain of Arrows III (25% ATK Down) or Warrior's Defense Breach (20% DEF Down) as your subskill.
Multiattack Rate Up: Another common goal is to pick characters with Attack Rate Boosts, aka "DATA Up" (Double Attack / Triple Attack rate up). E.g. if you get the side story characters Aqours Second-Years and Sig (Event)), even though their DA Up skills won't stack, you can alternate between them to have a DA Up buff on your party at all times.
Build around a boss/fight: Lastly, when you encounter a very difficult fight, you should build a party around it. E.g. Sorcerer's Blind skill reduces an enemy's accuracy by about 50%. Attacks that hit your whole party are not affected by Blind, which is one reason why Rain of Arrows III is used more often. But for some fights, Blind can cut the damage you take by half!
(By the way, after Dark Fencer, I strongly recommend unlocking both Sorcerer and Sidewinder for these subskills. Moreover, Sorcerer is a pre-requisite for Bishop, which has the Dispel skill you'll eventually need to fight Luminiera Omega#Omega%20Showdown).)
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Section 3: Weapons
3a: What do I do with all my weapons?
There is a fantastic comment by u/kscw that summarizes what you'll end up doing with each weapon (and summon) as you progress in the game. Everyone should check it out. In addition to all of the useful info, it mentions some very important things you should not do.
To supplement that comment, I'll just note some things specifically for very new players and talk about which weapons you'll find useful when you start.

• Initially, I suggest you use N and unskilled R weapons to upgrade the weapons in your grids. When you upgrade a weapon using other weapons of the same type (Sabre, Dagger, etc.), you get a 50% EXP bonus. When you reserve these weapons' EXP, you can no longer take advantage of this bonus. Weapon element doesn't matter.
  • Stop doing this once you find you're getting too many from weapon drops, or once you have an abundance of these weapons and no longer need to squeeze every last EXP out of them.
    • When you reach that point, go into the Miscellaneous settings menu and set up Auto-Reserve, Auto-Sell, and/or Auto-Upgrade to save yourself a lot of time and hassle.
    • Note that you need to set these up separately for event draw boxes.
  • Reserved EXP can't be used at all until you fill a Chalice with 30,000 EXP. The Chalice becomes a treasure you can use to upgrade a weapon with 30,000 EXP.
• N weapons are particularly useful to upgrade your crew's airship: they provide 2 tp compared to 3 tp for R weapons. In contrast, the rupies and EXP you gain from an N weapon (5 and 11) are tiny compared to an R weapon (50 and 72).
• Do not reduce all of your Premium Draw SRs right away: you'll want to use some in your grid at first.
  • It is safe to uncap useful Premium Draw SRs with duplicates so that you can level them up higher. Their ultimate destiny is to be reduced, and reducing an uncapped weapon gives you (almost) the same amount of materials as reducing the original weapons. On the other hand, skill fodder used to raise the weapon's skill level will be lost when you reduce the weapon.
    • Do not uncap Premium Draw SSRs! Do not uncap them with duplicates. Do not uncap them with (very rare) Damascus Bars. And especially do not uncap them with Gold Bricks! In time, you will learn what to do with these weapons and which ones are actually worth uncapping with your precious few Damascus Bars.
  • Sometimes you'll need a particular type of weapon for a class, so it's good to keep at least one SSSR of each type for each element -- even if the weapon skill doesn't boost ATK.
• Don't worry about Bonuses (the +1 marks). At any time, you can use Reset + Marks to remove them from any weapon and move them to a more useful one, such as a weapon used in most or all of your grids. As kscw's comment mentioned, just make sure you don't sell a weapon with a Bonus.

3b: How do I distinguish between Premium Draw weapons and farmable weapons?
Farmable weapons have much lower stats than Premium Draw weapons. If you sort by PWR (Lowest), most or all of your farmable weapons will appear before the rest.
If you sort by Skill Level or click on the button in the top-left to show weapon skills, you will see some with an Omega (Ω) or an EX in the corner of the skill icon. These weapons are always farmable.
Some farmable weapons have Normal weapon skills, not Omega or EX. The only way to distinguish these from Premium Draw weapons is to click Reduce to see how much it will reduce for. Farmable SRs reduce for 1 weapon stone, while Premium Draw SRs reduce for 15.
Weapons purchased in the Casino, while technically farmable, are actually considered Premium Draw weapons: they have Premium Draw stats and they reduce for 15 weapon stones.
3c: I have a lot of skilled R weapons and no farmed SR weapons to upgrade. What should I do with them?
I recommend spending 500 crystals in the Shop to buy a Weapon Stash (you'll end up buying at least one eventually) and storing them in there.
Alternatively, you can use these R weapons to upgrade SSR weapons in your grid to weapon skill level 2 (SL2), but only if the weapon skill boosts ATK. Make sure you use exactly 8 skilled R weapons to do this to guarantee a 100% skill-up success rate. Beyond SL2, you get diminishing returns: you'd need an additional 16 R weapons to reach SL3, and if you check the weapon skills table, you'll see that upgrading a weapon from SL1 to SL2 provides the same benefit as going from SL2 to SL3, despite the latter costing twice as much.
If you're going to do this, I suggest you start by upgrading the skill levels of side story weapons that you get at lv100, particularly any with an EX weapon skill. These lv100 side story weapons will remain in your grid longer than your Premium Draw SSRs or SRs. Event SSRs are also usually(?) worth upgrading to SL2, sometimes higher. (Some weapons with EX skills will even be used in your first Omega (Magna) grid!)
You can always upgrade farmable (side story, event, etc.) SSR weapons to SL2 without wasting skill fodder. If these SSR weapons end up as fodder, they'll need to be upgraded to SL2 anyway, and sometimes even higher.
Obsolete Premium Draw SSRs, on the other hand, may ultimately be reduced, in which case the R weapons spent upgrading their skill levels will be "wasted" -- but not really, since the increase in damage output probably helped you farm the Omega weapons and fodder that you used to eventually replace them. Moreover, this isn't a lot of skill fodder compared to what you need to raise a single SSR weapon all the way to SL10 and beyond, so don't worry too much about spending some right now.
3d: Which weapons are useful for my grid?
To keep it simple:

• Use weapons that you receive at max level, either from max level weapon tickets or from the main story or side stories.
• Use weapons that have a "Medium/Big boost to ATK" weapon skill.
• Swords and Daggers are more useful than the other weapon types because Dark Fencer is proficient in them, so they provide 20% more HP and ATK for that class, even when they're not your mainhand.

Feel free to upgrade all of these weapons' levels to improve their stats: you'll soon find yourself with an abundance of Angel weapons ("EXP BOOST") used to upgrade weapon levels.
Auto-Select for ATK will build you a decent first grid, but it doesn't take weapon skills into account (see ATK vs Estimated DMG below). As you level up Premium Draw SSSR weapons with "Medium/Big boost to ATK", you may need to manually put them into your grid, especially if you already have a lot of max level SSR weapons from the main story and side stories. You can tell you did the right thing if you see the Estimated DMG increase, even if the ATK stat decreases.
Despite its flaws, Auto-Select is useful early on because it's fast, easy, and it may include lv100 weapons you obtained recently and forgot to add manually.
The game's Damage Formula is complicated -- and the Detailed Damage Formula even moreso! It is so complicated that I rely on an external website, motocal, to tell me which weapons to put in my grid. Weapon grid building is a topic for an entire guide in itself. For now, using Auto-Select and then manually replacing off-element weapons will suffice, using the game's Estimated DMG to tell you whether or not your replacement improved your damage.
By the way, use an SSR weapon as your mainhand whenever possible: it provides a 3-turn cut to the cooldown of summons that match its element, whereas an SR weapon provides only a 2-turn cut. In addition, SSR weapons also deal more damage with their Charge Attacks.
3e: What are HP / ATK / PWR? How are they different from Estimated DMG?

• HP: sum of HP of your equipped weapons and summons. Weapons matching your class's preferred types, e.g. Sword (Sabre) and Dagger for Dark Fencer, get a 20% boost to HP.
• ATK: sum of ATK of your equipped weapons and summons. Weapons matching your class's preferred types also get a 20% boost to ATK.
• PWR: sum of HP and ATK. This is what PWR means when you're browsing your weapons, and the PWR you see on your Home page.
• Estimated DMG: your ATK multiplied by weapon skill bonuses, main summon aura, support summon aura (if you set one in the Estimated DMG settings), and other effects. When you're trying to improve your grid, always look at this instead of ATK.

As mentioned earlier, when you Auto-Select for HP or ATK, it optimizes for the HP or ATK stats. It never optimizes for Estimated DMG, so it ignores weapons with "Medium/Big boost to ATK" when they have lower ATK stats, even if they'll give you higher damage.
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Section 4: Summons
4a: What do I do with all my summons?
Again, please read the fantastic comment by u/kscw that summarizes what you'll end up doing with each weapon and summon as you progress in the game. I'll supplement it with some very-new player notes and talk about useful summons.

• Initially, I suggest you use N and R summons to upgrade the summons in your grids. When you upgrade a summon using another summon of the same element, you get a 50% EXP bonus. When you reserve these summons' EXP, you can no longer take advantage of this bonus.
  • Since summon drops are much rarer than weapon drops, it will be a while before you actually need to Auto-Reserve their EXP. (I'm rank 90 now and I still haven't turned this on!) Events are a bountiful source of Angel and Archangel summons that you can use to quickly upgrade your summons. Note that since Angel/Archangel summons are Light element, they'll provide 50% more EXP to Light summons.
• In addition to all Carbuncles, I suggest you save the following SR summons:
  • 4 copies of Clay Golem from Premium Draw - At 3-stars, its summon call will heal all allies for 400 HP for 3 turns (1200 total). Allies with full HP receive a 10% charge boost instead, so its call is always useful.
    • I recommend spending your Moonlight Stones from the Casino (Poker guide here) to fully uncap Carbuncles first, but if you get 3 copies of Clay Golem from roulette and need just 1 Moonlight Stone to fully uncap it, it might be worth it: the call isn't as good as a Carbuncle's DMG cut, but you can use it in every grid for every element.
  • 4 copies of SR Celeste from the Hard Celeste raid - Its summon call is a 20% Light DMG cut for 3 turns. This is almost as good as a 0-star Light SR Carbuncle, but with the benefit that you can call Celeste 2 turns earlier (if your mainhand is an SSR Dark weapon).
    • I do not recommend saving or upgrading SR Luminiera from the Hard Adversa raid because it is obsoleted by the Hekatonkheir side story summon: a 30% Dark DMG cut for 3 turns.
    • The other 4 elements' SR summons do not provide DMG cuts.
  • You probably won't come across White Rabbit, Black Rabbit, or Belle Sylphid anytime soon, but if you're lucky enough to get one, keep it and set it as one of your Misc support summons!

By the way, don't forget to upgrade your summons as well as your weapons. Otherwise, you'll find yourself dying to single hits from the Omega raid bosses, among other things.
4b: Which main summon should I use?
Whichever summon's (main) aura provides the biggest boost to ATK for your party's element. Check the side story summons, which usually provide a 50% boost to ATK or a 25% boost to both ATK and HP.
I also strongly recommend Anat from the Casino (Poker guide here): like Casino weapons, Anat has the stats of a Premium Draw summon, except you can easily farm 4 copies to uncap her to 3-stars and take full advantage of her high stats. Not to mention her 80% boost to Wind elemental ATK.
4c: Which other 4 (sub) summons should I use?
Sub summons are the other 4 summons in your grid. Unlike your main summon:

• The sub summon's (main) aura has no effect.
• The only benefit to a sub summon being the same element as your mainhand weapon is that you can call the summon 1-3 turns earlier, depending on the weapon's rarity. (Your main summon also benefits from this.) Generally, it is better to pick useful sub summons than to pick ones that match your element.
• A small number of summons have both a main aura and a sub aura. The sub aura is active only when it's a sub summon.

When picking sub summons, I suggest:

• Summons with a useful call. E.g. the summon you get from WMTSB II (spoiler warning: don't look it up) has a great call that heals for 1000 HP and provides 15% ATK Up for 3 turns. Currently, I use this summon in ALL of my grids. (And thus it has all of my +1 Bonuses on it.) I strongly recommend it.
  • In general, I suggest choosing calls that buff your party rather than debuffing the enemy, since the debuffs can miss -- especially if the summon isn't the superior element to the enemies you're fighting.
    • An exception would be a powerful debuff like Satan, who can inflict Blind with the same rank as the Sorcerer's Blind skill (afflicted enemies have a ~50% chance to miss, in my experience).
  • As I mentioned earlier, Clay Golem has a very useful call for new players. At 3-stars, it heals all allies for 400 HP for 3 turns (1200 total), while at 0- to 2-stars, it heals for 250 HP for 3 turns (750 total). If a character has full HP already, they receive a 10% Charge Boost instead.
• Premium Draw SSR summons. Like Premium Draw weapons, these summons tend to have much higher stats than farmable summons of the same level. Upgrade them to lv40 for high HP and ATK stats!
• 3-star side story summons. They have lower stats but since they come fully uncapped from side stories, they'll eventually surpass your lv40 Premium Draw summons' stats -- but upgrade the Premium Draw ones, first, since they provide a higher return for EXP invested.
• Event summons, if you can farm enough copies to uncap them to 3-stars, for the same reason as the 3-star side story summons.
• Anat, the queen of early game summons, who is all of the above. A farmable summon (easy to 3-star uncap) with high Premium Draw stats and a call that gives 20% ATK Up for 4 turns. She is used in most of my grids in all elements and I strongly recommend getting all 4 copies of her and leveling her up.
• Summons with a sub aura, if you have any for that element.

4d: Is it safe to use duplicates to uncap my SSSR summons?
It depends.
For SSR summons, the safest choice is to ask in the latest Q&A thread. There are some SSR summons where having multiple copies that you can call is extremely valuable. E.g. Shiva) and other summons that have a one-time-only call.
In general, like with SSR weapons, remember to ask in the latest Q&A thread first before consuming any SSR summons for anything. (And definitely ask before you spend a very rare Sunlight Stone to uncap an SSR summon!)
You can always uncap SR summons with duplicates, with one exception: keep 2 or 3 copies of each SR Carbuncle: do not use them to uncap unless you have more copies. Having 2 (or 3) Carbuncles in your grid allows you to have a 25% or 50% DMG cut active for 6/8 turns (or for all turns) of a fight after turn 8. This can be incredibly useful for some fights!
Instead of using duplicates to uncap Carbuncles, use Moonlight Stones from the Casino (Poker guide here, again!).
The Wind Peridot Carbuncle is an exception. You cannot obtain them from Premium Draws. You can get 4 very early on, and you can buy additional copies from the Shop for 10 Bronze Moons each. Since a Moonlight Stone costs 30 Bronze Moons, I recommend uncapping your Peridot Carbuncles with copies from the shop instead, or use a combination of the two if you run out of Bronze Moons.
4e: What is a support (friend) summon and which ones should I pick?
A support summon, aka friend summon, is what you pick before any quest or raid. The support summon does 2 things:

1. Its main aura affects your party, just like your main summon's main aura.
2. You can call it. Support summons can always be called on turn 1.

The uncap level (number of stars) of the support summon is important when it is 3 or above. A support summon with orange text is a 3-star summon, and one with purple text is a 4-star summon. These have better auras and/or calls.
The support summon does not contribute to your raw HP or ATK stats. Picking a level 100 Shiva vs a level 1 Shiva for support isn't going to affect your stats. The only thing affected by the summon's actual level is the damage dealt by its call.
At this point in the game, you will be looking for one of the following support summons:

• If you're doing quests that aren't terribly difficult, or if you're farming, you'll probably want to boost EXP gained and/or item drop rate. Look for these in the Misc slot. Cait Sith is the best for boosting EXP gain, but you'll seldom see him. Kaguya is the best for boosting item drop rate and she also provides useful combat benefits. White Rabbit and Black Rabbit boost both significantly.
• Sometimes you'll want to fight a Rare Monster during the main story or a free quest on the world map. These can drop skilled R weapons, some of which you'll need later. Some of them drop useful summons, like Belle Sylphid who drops herself. In this case, look for Belle Sylphid in the Misc slot.
• If you're running a multi-element party and have 3 or 4 different elements in your front line, look for Grand Order in the Misc slot for a 100% or 200% boost to ATK for your party.
• In all other cases, pick the summon with the biggest boost to your element's ATK (or all elemental ATK). For example, pick either Shiva) or Sylph, Flutterspirit of Purity for Fire. (Do not confuse this Premium Draw summon with the useless side story summon, Sylph!)
  • In this example, Shiva is superior because his call is also extremely powerful: the next damage each character deals -- be it a skill, normal attack, or Charge Attack -- will have its damage doubled! If you happened to draw Shiva the summon, put him in every element's grid!

Avoid picking the following right now, if possible, because your weapons' skill levels are probably not high enough to make use of them:

• Omega summons, such as Tiamat Omega. They say they boost some person's skills, like "Aeolus's Skills". If you look at an Omega weapon, such as Tiamat Bolt Omega, its weapon skill name will be something like "Aeolus's Might". This is the game's way of trying to tell you Omega summons boost Omega weapons' skills for the same element. I don't know who or what Aeolus is.
• "Primal summons", such as Zephyrus or Varuna. They say they boost a lot of things' skills, like "Wind's skills". Again, these names match the corresponding weapon skills' names on your weapons.

Even a mere 50% boost to your element's ATK is probably more beneficial than a 120% boost to weapon skills at this point in the game.
4f: I can't find a good support summon. How do I get different ones?
Join any quest or raid that uses a support summon, e.g. enter a Trial Battle. If you have friends with support summons you don't need, pick one of theirs when you enter the battle so that friend's summons stop appearing for a while (2 hours?).
On a side note, Trial Battles are fantastic for testing things in this game. Test Machine Alpha doesn't attack and heals every turn, so you have infinite turns to test anything you want! You also have infinite "Trial Elixirs" to heal or use Charge Attacks. One notable use is to figure out which buffs and debuffs stack with each other (it's complicated: a lot of effects replace each other or do nothing) and to get an idea of just how strong your characters' buffs and debuffs are if the info isn't in the Wiki.
4g: I don't have any useful summons. Should I just avoid setting any support summons in my profile?
No: please set your support summons anyway! If you don't, the game will take the main summon of whichever party you last used, and it will make that your support summon for every element and Misc. Your name and your main summon will still show up in your friends' lists and in other random players' lists.

Summary (for not-new players?)

• 5 Fury Stones is exactly enough to upgrade an SSR weapon from SL3 to SL4 with 100% success rate: no extra R weapon needed!
• By upgrading 2 Fury Stones to SL2 first, you can upgrade an SSR weapon from SL3 to SL4 using only 3 Fury Stones and 4 Fury Pebbles. In this way, you spend only 22.4 points of weapons to do to an upgrade that normally requires 24 points (or 24 plus an R weapon). Likewise, you can upgrade an SSR from SL6 to SL7 using only 5 stones and 10 pebbles. Again, using Fury Stones gives you 100% success rates, not 99%.

Guide (for new players)
As a new player, when it came to upgrading weapon skills, Fury Stones were always that thing that's worth more than an SR weapon but less than an SR plus an R. For a while, I would use strange combinations like 1 Fury Stone + 1 Fury Pebble + 1 R weapon + a prayer to RNGsus to attempt a skill upgrade with a 97% success rate. Today, I decided to figure out a better way to use them: a way to use Fury Stones without feeling like I was wasting an R weapon or relying on the power of prayer.
First of all, if you're a new player and you haven't already done so, please read the Raising Weapon Skills Wiki page. It explains the point system I'll be using in this post and exactly how many points are needed for each weapon skill upgrade. Make sure you understand how upgrading a weapon's skill level multiplies its point value. You'll notice some point values have a + sign beside them: their real values are "a bit" higher than what's shown on the Wiki.
Using Fury Stones efficiently is actually pretty simple. There are just 3 tricks you need to know:

1. If you use them in groups of 5 at a time, they add-up to a whole number (plus a bit). 5 Fury Stones is worth 24 points (plus a bit). This makes the math a lot easier.
2. The "plus a bit" value of 5 Fury Stones is just enough to cover the "plus a bit" needed to upgrade an SSR weapon from SL3 to SL4. This means you don't need to "waste" an extra R weapon to bring the success rate up from 99% to 100%.
3. Similar to the trick of upgrading an SSR to SL2 to turn 48 points of weapons into 80 points, it is more efficient to upgrade your Fury Stones to SL2. This costs you 4 points but doubles the Fury Stone's value to 9.6 points plus a bit. Note that two SL2 Fury Stones and one SL1 Fury Stone together are worth the same whole number value as five SL1 Fury Stones: 24 points plus a bit.

By combining all 3 tricks, you'll see that you need only 3 Fury Stones and 4 Fury Pebbles to upgrade an SSR weapon from SL3 to SL4, if you use the pebbles to upgrade 2 of the stones to SL2 first. And if you want to be even more efficient, 5 stones and 10 pebbles is enough upgrade an SSR weapon from SL6 to SL7 -- spending 44 points of weapons to do an upgrade worth 48+ points.
As for SR weapons, you can upgrade one from SL3 to SL4 with just 1 Fury Stone, 3 Fury Pebbles, and 1 R weapon, if you use 2 of the pebbles to upgrade the stone to SL2. In this way, you spend 11.8 points to do an upgrade that normally costs 12 or 13 points (for a 99% or 100% success rate, respectively). Upgrading an SR from SL6 to SL7 is the same as upgrading an SSR from SL2 to SL3. And so on.
That's it. Hopefully this guide helps other new players like me to make the most of their Fury Stones!
​
PS: Since this is a guide for new players, I should mention: do not consume SR or SSR weapons that you obtained from Premium Draw to upgrade your other weapons' skills! Premium Draw SRs and SSRs can be Reduced for 10 to 15 times as many weapon stones (the material, not Fury Stones) compared to Raid drops and Event & Side Story weapons. It is safe to consume Premium Draw R weapons to upgrade weapon skills. An easy way to distinguish Premium Draw weapons from most others is to look at the weapon skills (sort by Skill Level or click the brown button in the upper-left): any weapon with an Omega or EX weapon skill is definitely not a Premium Draw weapon. Also, in general, do not consume or destroy your SSR anythings unless you know what you're doing!
PPS: One last tip: you can play Poker in the Casino to quickly farm 20 Fury Stones and 50 Fury Pebbles each month. (I consciously left 10 of February's Fury Stones in the Casino earlier today and now I regret it...)
​
Late Edit: to upgrade an SSR weapon to SL8, SL9, SL10, or SL11, it is most efficient to first upgrade a fodder SSR to SL2 and then use that to upgrade your SSR weapon. But if you were thinking of using Fury Stones, then note that to upgrade an SSR from SL7 to SL8, using 5 SL2 Fury Stones + 2 SL1 SR fodder weapons will give you only a 99% success rate. You'd need an extra R fodder weapon in this case.
Mathematically, I find it intriguing that 5 SL2 Fury Stones provides enough extra skill points above 48 to cover "48 and a bit", but not enough to cover the "56 and a bit" needed to go from SL7 to SL8.

E: This guide is intended for those level 30-60 players who have sort of got the hang of the game but struggle with some of the early bosses. Arcarum isn't intended for players who just started the game and is squarely midgame content
I saw a few posts about people being unable to beat Inchoate World as their grid isn't developed enough, but it's actually really doable in a few days (assuming average luck).
Steps:

1. Farm Anat for main summon at the Casino | Casino guide
2. Farm 4 0* tiamat bolts, raise to SK10 | upgrading weapon skills guide
3. Get 5 wind weapons, raise to about SK5 with at least one sword or dagger. Your best bet are event wind weapons
4. Get Bahamut dagger from What Makes the Sky Blue
5. Use Grimnir friend summon
6. (Optional) Put EMP into Attack and Health for your Dark Fencer. Attack is self explanatory, health is if you keep dying before getting all 3 Grimnir procs off.

Strategy:
Bring Dark Fencer with rage III. You want to time Inchoate World getting to each of its triggers just as it fills all of its charge nodes, so time your damaging skills and Dark Fencer's delay wisely.
The best time to use Grimnir is right after the 50% health trigger, as your characters will all be low enough to make good use of the emnity from your Tiamat bolts.
Notes:
You can get wind event items quickly from Shadowverse and Lonesome Dragoness side stories.
You can replace 1 or 2 wind event items with weapons that have a large ATK stat even if they don't have a wind weapon skill.
If you have the Sandalphon event summon, throw him in your sub summons even if you end up with a little less attack or health stat. Use him when a character is about to die and you do not have Grimnir's shield active.

I'm back! If you don't know me I'm a 120 Dark player that started English patch, with a completed Dark grid. I browse the daily question thread a lot and see a lot of repeated questions so I hope to answer some of them here! (Whale builds won't be included)
I have stopped playing Granblue since December of 2016 and this guide will not be updated in the future. For a more updated content consult: laforet's guide
Characters

• I have ... Who should I ticket?

Keep in mind in Granblue, characters aren't everything. Most (at least 70%) of your power comes from hard work and farming up your weapon pool. Event SRs can carry you all the way to HL! Keep on the grind and don't give up!
For those wondering about SR's (Please don't actually ticket an SR) Here's xiei's SR Tier List
The answer to this question depends on the person, but there are general characters for each team. For dark, characters are categorized by role and race. Roles are mostly either attacker or utility. Race is for bahamut weapon synergy; for dark, it is usually doraf, erun/human, or both (See Bahamut Weapon Section). For a general team composition you will need at least 1 attacker and 1 utility (for def down). When ticketing, try to focus on race synergy.
Good Attackers to ticket include (sorted by race, they're all relatively good):

• Dark Jeanne (Human/Burst attacker, also provides a DEF down, great early/mid/late)
• Vira (Human/Has 5* and provides a veil, great late/endgame)
• Beatrix (Human/Weak earlygame, strong endgame)
• Narumaya (Doraf/OD Assassin, strong for early-midgame, worse late/endgame for racing)
• Forte (Doraf/Strong scaling attacker, great mid/lategame)
• Veight (Unknown/Newest dark character, strong ramper if not hit, a weaker six, needs Vampy)

Good Utility to ticket:

• Vampy (Unknown/Best Utility: Slow, Ougi gain, Dispell, Charm, great all game long)
• Vira (Human/Strong at Lv. 90+, see above)
• Yoda (Harvin/Water character that will boost your early progression by ALOT, useless except for farming)
• Korwa (Erun/ONLY FOR 101+ LATE GAME TEAMS, SHE IS WIND)

Other Characters (Ticket them if in start dash):

• Seox/Six (Erun/Guild Wars Character and the strongest dark attacker. Can't ticket)
• Black Knight (Human/Utility character with slow, dispell, and fear. Only available during legfest, great mid/lategame, lacks a bit of damage)
• Swimsuit Zoey (Unknown/Great character able to enable enmity (see fist build) with a skill that sets your team's hp to 1. Only in the summer gacha, great all game long)
• Halloween Cag & Xmas Rosetta (Healers for dark, each available during Halloween and Chirstmas respectively. Even though Dark has no heals, we don't really need any. These two aren't necessarily at all.)

Honorable Mentions (Not worth ticketing, short summary):

• Lady Gray (Human/Only good when level 100, Slow + DEF Down, heavily overshadowed by DJeanne)
• Vaserage (Doraf/Attacker that synergizes with axes, but is also heavily overshadowed by Naru and Forte)
• Swimsuit Danua (Doraf/Utility support that is not used becasue her sheild, along with all of her skills don't scale to late/endgame.)
• Dark Sarunan (Erun/The meme as his skills essentially allows him to burst once, then he suicides, he shines when paired with SS Zoey, but only in finished grids. He used to overkill monsters for huge honors, but now they took out overkill, making him used a lot less.)

For an in-depth look at each dark character's skills: Click here. For an updated tier list/teambuilding help: Click here
Summons

• I don't have Bahamut. Who should I use?

If you don't start an account with Bahamut, it is not recommended to start dark first as early game will be difficult for you. You cannot surprise ticket or start dash Bahamut. If you are still doing it for the waifus don't worry it's not impossible! Any other dark ATK% summon will work in place of Bahamut until you have a grid strong enough to utilize MLB Celeste (i.e. Dark Gacha summons, Casino dark SR summon, Event Dark summons). When your grid is strong enough (Skill lv 5+ base grid), use Celeste as your main summon and use a friends Bahamut (Collect as many Baha friends as possible!)
Classes

• What classes should I focus on as Dark?

For dark, we can use almost every class, but some classes are more important to take. Eventually you'll unlock all the t3 classes anyways, but I'll sort these by order of when you should get it:

• Beginner with no tier III: Dark Fencer > Superstar (Use a GW harp, if no GW use celeste) > Holy Saber > Bishop > Everythingish
• EX classes: Samurai > Sword Master > Classes with %ATK > everything else
• Tier IV Classes (Can't unlock until 101+): Sage = Spartan > Berserk = Warlock > Everything

For the most part you'll mostly be using DF until you get strong enough for SS. In raids you'll bring Holy Saber and Bishop unless on element then you can bring DF and SS.
Bahamut Weapons

• I got a horn! What bahamut weapon do I build first?

Dark has three main options to go for when making a bahamut weapon: dagger, axe, and sword. You make these by combining a bahamut horn with an mlb rusted weapon of what you want. Each of these weapons give a % ATK (some have HP) to a certain race. The dagger gives 20% ATK to humans (Goes to 30% at max skill level), axe gives 20% ATK to dorafs (Up to 30%), and sword gives 10% ATK and 10% HP (up to 15/15). Sword stacks with axe or dagger, but axe and dagger don't stack. For all elements it is recommend to build the bahamut weapon that most of your party members benefit from. Unknown races benifit from all bahamut weapons, your main character is also an unknown race. You can upgrade these weapons to SSR when you max skill level it, along with other materials. At Rank 101+, you unlock HL Bahamut, where you can upgrade your bahamut weapon once more, allowing it to effect two races giving them 30% ATK and 15% HP (up to 32/18)! It's recommended to get a bahamut weapon as soon as possible (most go either dagger or axe, then sword second). The first weapon will give you a huge ATK boost while the second will give you a boost, but less noticeable.

• Dagger now effects Erun and Humans, a must for six users
• Axe now effects Harvin and Dorafs, great cosmos axe synergy, mostly for doraf teams
• Sword still gives atk/hp up to Humans and Dorafs, but now at the boosted rate, for human/doraf hybrid teams.
• Multipliers cap at 50%

Weapon Pool

• My pool is ... what weapon should I go?

I will try my best to explain weapon builds, but for simplistic sake, I'll only go into fist/axe/hybrid builds. If you want to look in-depth for builds, I recommend reading Darchrow's Dark Build Guide.
Now into the cancer that is fist vs. axe. The reason that a huge majority of Dark players go axe is because of the lower drop rate of fists (axes are still hard to get) and the fact that late game it's hard to utilize enmity without dying (Wind players know the struggle). Enmity is a skill that comes on only Celeste fists/claws that will boost your damage the more HP you are missing. If you own SS Zoey, yes fists are good but it's not recommended to go full fisting, you'll basically have a full axe build before you complete the fists. You can however, incorporate 2-3 fists into your build as it'll still be efficient. Keep gacha items as stat sticks until you eventually replace them.
Generic Builds:

• Full Axe: 5-6 Axes, 1-2 Unknown, Main Hand (Usually GW), Bahamut Weapon, Cosmos Axe
• Hybrid: 4-5 Axes, 1-2 Unknown, Main Hand, Bahamut Weapon, 2-3 Fists
• Full Fist (Pls no): 6+ Fists, 1 Unknown, Main Hand, Baha Weapon, Cosmos Fist

Note you can only own one Cosmos weapon at a time. Baha weapons depend on the race you want to use (Usually sword/daggeaxe). If you don't own unknown weapons (as they only come from colab events) you can replace it with gw weapons, celeste weapons, or cerb dagger. Keep one MLB Celeste spear, as it enables Double Trouble III when playing Holy Saber. Otherwise, they are great placeholders until you get more fists/axes. It really hard to categorize which is the absolute best, weapon builds for dark are somewhat situational.
Farming

• I am rank ... what should I do with my AP/EP?

Before I go into this, I recommend doing casino daily for a nice supply of daily pots and beans. For the early ranks (1-30) just progress through the story and level up everything. When you unlock Omegas (30+) use your EP to farm Celeste and Dark Angel Olivia(They both have terrible drop rates be prepared, Celeste if preferred as you need her summons late/endgame, also DAO does not drop any SR fodder.) and AP for events and doing Hard Raids of Omegas. After Rank 50, you unlock Baha/Grand Order, start farming these bosses as you'll need horns later on in the game. At 80-100 you should be able to MVP your raids and do ex events. Don't forget to plan for a GW character (whoever you pick is your choice, but I recommend six if you plan on maining dark) Focus on finishing your grid and farming materials. At 101+ you reach HL (High Level) Raids which I'll discuss below. Because Celeste Drop rates are atrocious for SSR, it's highly recommended to farm Hard Omegas and join raids to try and cap on weekly pendants so you can buy weapons from the shop
End Game

• What does dark do endgame? Is it strong?

Short answer: we do the dps, yes. For dark, our strongest attacker is six, he is one of the strongest if not the strongest attacker in the game. As dark, you have the ability to join almost every single raid as you have no weakness, but since you can't really debuff great against non-light, we end up playing support/dps roles. Our job is to dish out as much damage as possible without dying, endgame you'll find yourself MVP'ing everything.

• I hit 101 as Dark, what do I do now?

When you hit 101 you unlock the endgame of Granblue. What you want to focus on is tier 4 classes as well as upgrading your weapon pool even more. When you hit 101, you unlock HL celeste, which is an "easier" celeste that drops dark centrums. You use these to upgrade your omega weapons to a 4th lb, unlock skill level 15 and level 150. You also need dark urns which has a chance to drop in brutal dark raids or 100% drop in HL Dark Angel Olivia. HL DAO isn't easy and only 6 people can join so either find a good group or yolo pub. HL Baha is also unlocked, this raid is super hard to pub and you'll need a decent group to complete it without wiping in 3 seconds. I'll post some links below to help your HL process. Don't forget about class weapons as you'll need to make one to unlock tier IV classes, a lot of them are super good!
Useful Links

• HL Summon Guide
• HL Baha Guide
• General Guide for materials/tierlists/etc
• Rizend's Ultimate Guide

tl;dr read it you asshoo

Hello to all fellow Skyfarers. First of all Granblue wiki already contains a large portion of what you need to acquire your first Eternal character. The purpose of this guide is to dive into specific details & tips for beginners or semi-veterans who are looking into The Eternals and have decided to take on the huge grind associated with them. To avoid unnecessary walls of text I'll link to the wiki for anything that doesn't require additional input.
Before we start

• DRUpdrop rate up. Will be used for specific missions to imply you should try to complete them while the effects of Journey Drop for Droprate, Crew Skill for Droprate, Kaguya, Bunnies etc are in effect.
  
• Matsmaterials.
  
• Two important early/mid game things:
  

a) Keep your Cerulian Stones unused. You've probably already rolled the premium gacha during or outside of LegFest, either with crystals or Cygames' free tickets/rolls (and you'll keep doing so until you have a decent starting team). Those Cerulian Stones will come in handy later on.
b) Do not trade your Low Orbs for High Orbs in the shop. The exchange ratio is 10 for 1. As we keep going you'll see why I strongly advise against it.
If you're interested in this you're probably aware of the Eternals. Or you spend too much in the subreddit like most people. In any case, I'll consider you're aware of most in-game terms and what Guild Wars are about. So, after your last Guild War you've managed to acquire 4 copies of the Revenant Weapon you were interested in and now you're looking into recruiting your favorite Eternal character. The grind is a long way and requires a various number of mats. I'll break down all categories of materials and provide some tips that can hopefully ease the grind pain. So if you're interested only for specific parts feel free to skip the rest.
First of all, preparations. Uncap your Revenant Weapon with the 4 copies you got and level it all the way to 100. Then you need to increase the skill level to 10. In order to increase any skill level easily check this amazingly helpful reddit post by Mac2492. Finally, you'll need a Rusted Weapon. These drop from the Angel Halo mission (which you can initiate at any time) and the Proto Bahamut raids (which are a rare sight and even if you use a Granblue Raidfinder site they'll fill up way too fast) and for both you'll need DRUp for efficiency. Generally you want 4 of them matching your Revenant Weapon. However if you can get one copy you can buy 3 Steel Bricks with Casino currency and fully uncap it. It's more of a time spend vs chips spend choice. My personal recommendation is to not buy bricks. Why you may ask? You'll find out in section 2. Once you fully uncap your rusted weapon you can use it to change the Revenant Weapon into the element of your choice. Important Note: Unless you are 100% that you'll use and you NEED the weapon in a team as a Main Hand, then always change it into the element you use the least or the element you happen to have the most mats for but isn't your main element. Chances are you'll have more mats for the element you don't use. Revenant Weapons aren't amazing and if you try and turn them into the same element like your main team it'll make your life miserable because you need most of the elemental mats to advance your team's power (if you want to main Gunslinger don't even think about using the Revenant Gun, this is the class that needs the most grinding next to Assassin).
Section 1: Island specific mats

• 300 Satin Feathers & 300 Zephyr Feathers Note: For most R rarity characters missions a team of lvl 30 characters will do just fine.
  
• 100 Untamed Flames Note: The SR rarity characters mission can be challenging for new players for how early on it's available, have all your SR characters at least maxed on lvl 30 and be careful of the last boss.
  
• 100 Fresh Water Jugs Note: Just like the R mission for the Feathers, a similar team will do fine here.
  
• 100 Rough Stones & 100 Swirling Ambers Note: Same level team of R characters also works here, raise them to 40 if you want to save time.
  
• 100 Falcon Feathers & 100 Vermilion Stones Note: Uncap and lvl your SR characters to 40, the SR missions is doable at level 30 but the speedrun process is highly increased with one uncap here.
  
• 100 Hollow Souls & 100 Lacrimosa(s?) Note: Despite the options between missions for the other island mats, for these two here avoid the "A Soldier's Pilgrimage" mission if you can help it, the droprates are way too low and if you have access to DRUp you're better of running the "For Whom the Bell Tolls" mission. However the 2nd mission has a really low droprate chance, so unless your DRUp isn't very good don't bother and go for the 1st one.
  
• 80 Foreboding Clovers & 80 Blood Ambers Note: "The Dungeon Diet" will provide you the most Blood Ambers per run with an average DRUp, usually 2-3 almost guaranteed.
  
• 100 Antique Clothes Note: This part of the grind completely depends on your team. If you are strong enough to beat the "Antiquarian Troubles" mission consistently then do the twice per day limit and don't bother with the rest unless you need just a few more. Otherwise the best alternative is the Chapter 36-3 Story Quest: Dead End, since besides the sidescroll drop chance every golem can drop 1 cloth with good enough DRUp (also the mission is affected during the half AP events).
  Section 2: Element specific mats
  
• There are two types of these that you'll need. The things that you cannot change are 50 Shinning Orbs, Skylight Scrolls, Radiant Whorls & White Dragon Scales for early on. These are always needed and are bound to Light element.
  
• Afterwards you need additional elemental mats depending on the element you chose for your Revenant Weapon, so never go for a Light elemental change unless you REALLY want it as a main hand in your light team, it will make the process of getting more Eternals in the long run harder. For the additional mats depending on your element of choice you need 80 Dragon Scales, 100 High Orbs, 250 Tomes, 150 Scrolls and the insane amount of 950 for both Low Orbs and Whorls in total.
  
• Remember what I mentioned at the start? Those two are your best friend to bypass the largest amount of this grind, which is also the biggest block in your quest for the Eternals. While Low Orbs are more common drops than High Orbs, I can guarantee you that by the time you take on this grind you'll have more than 100 High Orbs already, so for every 10 Low Orbs you didn't trade you save yourself a lot of time. Then, Cerulean Stones: you can trade 1 for 10 Tomes/2 Scrolls/2 Low Orbs, so use the ones you saved until now to fill in the gaps when you need to.
  
• Tomes & Scrolls come from many different sources, island missions, raids and even events. Remember to complete the Normal & Hard Primal Beast raids each day since they have good droprates for these and also give you another useful material mentioned in Section 5.
  
• Dragon Scales are available in multiple ways, most commonly found in the Six Dragon Trials & the respective elemental Rotating Extreme Trial. Another good source for them is also mentioned in Section 5.
  
• The Rotating Extreme Trials in the special quests tab is a good source for element specific mats. They are however hard and not recommended for newer players.
  
• Low Orbs & Whorls are the biggest pain due to the high amount that is required. Your best bet in my opinion is to grind the hell out of Angel Halo on hardest difficulty. Not only you'll have to do it to get the Rusty Weapon, it is also the fastest mission with the best droprate for Low Orbs and Whorls. The drops are of various elements, but it's still your fastest way of getting them. Also worth mentioning the 2 Normal/Hard raids on the 2-7 islands which also drop orbs, tomes & scrolls rather frequently but are gated by the 3-run-limit daily. And don't forget that by the time you finish grinding halo you'll have already tons of mats for the other elements to start working towards another Eternal character. You'll want DRUp for Halo to increase the number of chests, but don't pump it up to maximum since it will lower the chances of getting a wooden chest in the 1st & 2nd stages (only wooden chests contain Low Orbs while Gold ones have mostly Whorls, basically try to minimize the silver chest droprate). Also note that the final stage of Angel Halo not only has the chance to give you a Rusty Weapon but a White Dragon Scale as well. This is also why I don't think it's a good idea to buy Steel Bricks from the Casino to uncap your Rusty Weapon, because you'll run Halo so many times you're almost guaranteed to have 4+ copies of each weapon by the end.
  Section 3: One-time mats
  
• You need to get these only once during the first time you grind for an Eternal and you need them to upgrade Siero's Shop. These are 3 things: Rare weapons, 5 Mithra Animas & 200k rupies. The last one is very simple: start saving up. The other two are not as simple as they look.
  
• The rare weapons that you need will only drop from specific Rare Monsters (with the exception of Spiked Club that you can find in the lootboxes during Guild Wars). As you can see some monsters appear in more than one areas and some drop more than one of the weapons you need. Have DRUp ready, try to find a Belle Sylphid support summon (or get one yourself even though it is extra time spend-details to get it if you scroll down) to boost your chances of encountering one Rare Monster and just go for it. Clearing Chapter 62 in the main story will reward you with a Wonder that boosts the Rare Monster encounter rate as well, so if you can make it there use it. Also pay attention to the missions that they spawn, many SR character missions can end up spawning 2 Rare monsters on the same run, only farm the ones that have the chance of spawning more than one.
  
• Ever since we got the option to add two summons in the last support option I see very few or any at all Sylphids, so you may want to grab yours and use it instead. You don't need to farm 4 of it to max uncap it though. You also can uncap it with Moonlight Stones and you'll need 3 million chips to get 3 of them so...yeah don't do it.
  
• Mithra anima. Now this one is a horror as well, the reason being terrible droprates. Basically you DRUp and pray to RNGesus to help you otherwise you can go for many runs without even seeing a single anima drop. Besides that Mithra is a frustrating battle that can wipe your team if you're not strong enough. The boss has 1 charge diamond, it will do a simple attack and then it will cast Distortion Field that will cause a permanent random debuff on your team and a random buff on itself. The random debuff can be anything so if RNGesus rolls for you a Charm or even worse Paralyze early on you're pretty much done for. When the boss drops bellow the 80-60-40-20% hp marks it will instantly cast Defrag, inflicting wind damage (which will increase in power based on the amount of attack buffs on both allies and Mithra, the debuffs on the party, as well as removing/guarding debuffs from party) as aoe. Oh, and if you thought this was good enough, after you drop the boss bellow 50% it will unleash its true power and cast Return on the next turn that will restore it to full hp (which can happen only once), so basically the boss has a 150+% hp bar with an rng debuff fiesta mechanic unless you can drop it to 51+% then instantly kill it on the next 2 turns. And due to horrible droprates you need to beat it multiple times. So have fun with that one :p
  Section 4: Merits, Crystals, Prisms and...a brick?
  
• You need 2100 Crystals and 70 Blue Sky Crystals in total. Getting the Crystals is the easiest part since many things will reward you with them. Blue Sky Crystals are time gated if anything else: you get 1 per day by completing all 3 of your Co-Op missions and the other fastest way to obtain them is to join Grand Order raids (which are rare and fill up fast). There are other ways as well but these two are your best friends. If you farm Grand Order then do it during DRUp since there are many other good drops associated with this raid.
  
• You also need 250 Flawed Prisms and a crazy amount of 450 Rainbow Prisms which is close to be a meme. They both come from various sources and there isn't really any particular method better than the other, so choose on your own preference. They tend to drop regardless of high DRUp.
  
• You also need 50 Champion Merits & 30 Supreme Merits. Your best source for these is the Proto Bahamut raid (which is rare and fills up fast) and any event (Guild Wars or not) that has a lootbox, since they usually contain any amount between 2-8 of these and provide even more through honor and medal rewards. You don't need too many of them so they'll probably come with time. They also tend to drop regardless of high DRUp.
  
• Finally you need a brick, a gold one in fact. You upgrade your Revenant Weapon again and again and only when you use the gold brick the Eternals will trully notice you (they truly are a group of gold diggers). There are very few ways to obtain this one, but the only thing you need is to wait for a Rise of the Beasts event. The event runs for about 5-6 days and every day you can get a Gold Nugget by completing the daily mission. Keep fighting the Beasts during the event and trade your hard-earned Four Symbol Medals for the Gold Nuggets in the event shop until you have a total of 10. Then go to Siero's shop and trade them for 1 Gold Brick. There is a limited amount of how many you can buy so only keep Gold Bricks for the Eternals and nothing else.
  Section 5: Omega specific mats
  
• Finally you need 3 more things to complete the list of mats: Regular Animas, Omega Unique Items (OUI) & True Animas. And for these I'll give you my personal recommendation since there are also multiple ways of getting them.
  
• Let's get Regular Animas out of the way, you need 100 of them based on the element that you chose for your Revenant Weapon. These drop from the Normal/Hard/Omega raids of their respective Primal Beasts and sometimes from the Low Level Tier 2 Summon raids (these include Athena, Grani, Baal, Garuda, Odin & Lich). The best option is to go for the Normal/Hard raids and in a short amount of time you'll have all 100.
  
• Next you need 20 OUI for each element and an additional 60 based on the element you chose for your Revenant Weapon. You're probably thinking "well Omega raids are the best choice for the other 2 mats right?". While you're not wrong, you may have noticed that during some events we get the AP/BP reduction by Cygames. Outside of those your best choice is indeed to host/join Omega raids. HOWEVER during the half cost events, forget about omega and join every Low Level Tier 2 Summon raid you can find, abuse the Granblue Raidfinder sites and the 3 raids cap and join in as many as you can. Why? Because the droprate tables for them are godlike for what you need. First of all, you're 99% guaranteed to get one Regular Anima of Athena, Garuda etc. per raid, which can be traded without a limit to Siero's shop, 5 of them for 1 OUI. It sounds slow, but it's a guaranteed OUI so you don't have to DRUp to get what you want (basically every 10 BP you'll get one OUI). Consider how easy it is to get BPs and how fast they can recharge and you can get a lot of those during one event. Second, these raids drop regularly Dragon Scales & Whorls of the respective element. Oh, also both Orb types, Tomes, Scrolls, Regular Animas, Rainbow Prisms (all at a nearly 100% droprate) and with a chance of giving you an omega SSR weapon, a rarer SSR weapon or a Champion Merit. Basically you're doing one raid and farm 10 different mats that you need at once. Did I mention you get regularly Omega Fragments as well from these raids that you can use to acquire your True Anima mats?
  
• Finally, True Animas. You need 3 for each element and an additional 9 depending on the element you chose for your Revenant Weapon. Your best source for these are the Omega Raids with DRUp, if you decided to farm these for the OUI items you've probably have most of the True Anima already. If you're missing some, go to Siero's Shop and trade 30 of the Omega Fragments that drop in most difficult raids (including Omega & Low Level Tier 2 Summon ones) for any True Anima of your choice.
  After the grindfest is complete and you've left behind piles of dead unfortunate monsters you'll have all the mats needed to completely upgrade your Revenant Weapon from 0 to its Final Form. At this point you'll be able to fight against your Eternal character and once you prove your dominance & superiority just like a turn 7 Eachtar he/she will join your group. The fight is going to be tough, but you've come a long way to get here. So trust in your team and you'll eventually prevail (maybe).
  I hope you found something in here useful. Any other great suggestions will be credited & edited into the guide. Happy Skyfaring Tenno.
  

(No Primal Beasts were harmed in the making of this guide.) (Every time Mithra casts paralyze on turn 2 someone in Cygames' offices is laughing at your misfortune.)

A preface: if you're well into Granblue Fantasy, this probably is going to be redundant. I'm mostly posting this as a guide post to people who are just starting to get their third row classes and are wondering about the next step there. Possibly for those who are aware of Row IV stuff, but haven't really looked TOO deeply into it as well.
BASIC RUNDOWN
That said, let's quickly run down the basics on the little intricacies of classes. I'm going to assume you know about the difference between classes and their basic abilities. Stuff like Dark Fencer being best for solo battles, and the like. But maybe you're not really solid on things like Mastery and EMP.
Class Mastery is a bonus applied to your MC upon hitting level 20 of a class (it does not apply to your other party members), and when you gain experience with a mastered class you'll earn Extended Mastery Points (EMP), otherwise known as Zenith Points (ZP) with the Japanese side. EMP is used for upgrades on mastered classes, both in stats and in learning new abilities. Your EMP pool is shared between classes, but once spent in boosting stats, those bonuses will apply only to the class you spent it on. You have a limited amount of boosts you can give a class (represented by your Extended Mastery Level shown on your class menu), but this limit will grow as your rank goes up. In general, you can get two more stars per 10 rank levels.
As a digression on Extended Mastery Abilities, these abilities will only work on classes along their line. If you get Quick Down in the Dark Fencer line, that can be equipped if for some reason you wanted to use it on Enhancer, but you can't use it on Weapon Master. Not all of these abilities are useful, but they generally have at least a few applications. Of note, Bishop's Veil is very useful if you don't have a character with it, Hawkeye's Break Keep is great in Impossible (HL) difficulty battles, and Sidewinder's Change also has applications in farming renown.
But let's move on to Row IV classes, and all that they entail. Before anything, let's talk about how you get them. You've probably looked at them and blanched at the price of 2500 CP. Sadly, this is the least of your worries. Beyond those odd 'Distinction' things, which I'll get into later, the other requirement is an odd little trophy that's along the lines of 'Superior Something'. To get this trophy requires an incredible journey of grinding that's outright impossible to complete until you're rank 101 and above. While I'll get into the details, what this basically means is that you are extremely unlikely to even be close to touching these things until you've unlocked and mastered pretty much all the other available classes, no doubt including the Extra classes (more on these later).
That said, the fact that you need to be rank 101 or above does not mean you can't start prepping for it. If you've gotten to the point where you've unlocked and mastered all Row III classes, and are at least rank 60, you can try your hand at this preparation. This brings us to the major topic of this thing, Class Champion Weapons.
CLASS CHAMPION WEAPONS
Class Champion Weapons are largely the real obstacle in getting that annoying Superior Something trophy, and unlocking Row IV classes. To make them, they require some materials you literally cannot currently obtain until you're rank 101+, hence the impossibility of unlocking these classes until you're at that rank. To be honest, even when you're at that rank, there are a few battles for these materials that you're going to have a hard time with unless you've been perfecting your weapon grid like crazy. We'll talk about that later, though. First, let's talk about what these weapons are.
As the name implies, Class Champion Weapons cater specifically to certain classes. There are, in fact, one class weapon to every class (in this case, class lines such as Enhancer-Arcane Duelist-Dark Fencer-Chaos Ruler are counted as a single class). Extra classes are included in this total, so there are seventeen class weapons altogether. They all have different unique abilities attached to them that cater to their specific class. For example, the Priest class weapon Nirvana boosts the effect of Panacea and in its later upgraded ability gives the MC an Auto-Revive on using Panacea. These abilities only work with the weapon in the main hand, however.
Not all of these weapons are equally useful currently, and given the grind required to fully upgrade one, they are not something you choose lightly. I'm not going to get into this subject much since there is a layer of subjectivity but in general, the ones considered most useful are Nirvana (Priest), Oliver (Bandit), and Nebuchad (Gunslinger). Nirvana because it's simply very powerful ability-wise, Oliver is useful because it gives boosts to Treasure Hunter, and Nebuchad is one of the best guns for the Gunslinger class outside of the Revenant (Guild Wars) Weapon gun.
Moving on, let's talk about how Class Champion Weapons are obtained. They are specific 'Fabled Weapons' in similar lines to Bahamut and Revenant (Guild Wars) weaponry. Unlike the other two, however, you need to start grinding for it in co-op missions. While you can, and in fact will need to gather many materials from outside of co-op to get and upgrade them, the necessary materials for the first level of the weapon are in the later stages of co-op, in the Extra stages to be specific. What exactly you require will vary depending on which weapon you decide, but as a general point, the co-op drops you require are 35 Creeds, 30 Normal/Hard Gold Chest items, 70-90 Showdown-type boss items, and 30 Grimoires.
To go into a bit more detail on these drops, Mage and Warrior Creeds will drop in any Extra level difficulty battle at a fairly low frequency. They will also drop in Normal/Hard difficulty, but at an even further, almost legendary low frequency. The Normal/Hard Gold Chest items I speak of are the rare drops that sell for 5k rupies each, Vortical Pinwheel, Searing Stone, Resplendent Coral, and Opulent Amber. The Showdown-type boss items are drops from the Extra stages 2-2, 2-3, 2-4, 3-2, 3-3, and 3-4. They're alternates of the rotational Showdown bosses such as Ifrit and Corow, and drop co-op unique versions of the same items you get from their regular rotation battle. The Grimoires are items that drop from the Extra stages 4-2, 4-3, 4-4, and 4-5. Beating these bosses is a high task, but in general there are many high level players that would gladly carry simply because it meant more experience and treasure for them. So the only real requirement for farming these items is being rank 60 (because the later Extra stages are restricted to this rank), and a lot of AP to host these battles
But let's step back a moment. How are the Class Champion Weapons obtained at all? You first need a replica. These can drop in Extra co-op stages, but you can also simply purchase one from the shop. Under the Fabled Weapons option you can click on the Class Champion Weapons, and then Redeem Replica Items option. You need to exchange several Champion and Supreme Merits for a Legendary Merit for it, as well as one Creed and Class Distinction, but you can get up to three copies this way. You need to uncap the replica fully for it to be upgraded, however, so you need either 3 more copies after this, or to exchange for three Steel Bricks from the casino.
Once you've obtained the replica, uncapped and leveled it to 75, you can then upgrade it to its second level. This requires the element boss items, the Gold Chest items, 10 Creeds, 40 Antique Clothes, 200 Prism Chips, and 5 Blue Sky Crystals. Once this upgrade occurs the replica will become an SSR level weapon, and gain its second ability (which of course varies depending on what weapon it is).
After its upgrade, now you start to go into rank 101+ territory. At this point you need Class Distinctions, a lot of them. 20 Distinctions are required for unlocking any of the classes once you've gotten that Superior Something trophy, but you also need 40 of them to complete the Class Champion Weapon. There are about three ways of currently getting a Distinction. The first is getting the co-op trophy by playing a certain number of missions as a certain class (e.g., 100 wins as a Hawkeye gets you 1 Bandit Distinction). You can only get a total of 3 Distinctions this way, and you probably already used one of these for getting the replica. The second is as a drop in co-op. There is a very rare chance, even lower than creeds in normal/hard difficulty, of a distinction dropping in a co-op mission. There are 17 distinction types, however, and no way of you farming for that type in this manner. The third way is through prestige pendant exchange.
You've almost certainly been using the renown pendant exchange at this point, so you should be vaguely aware of the option for them in the same area. The system for them is pretty much exactly the same, only prestige drops from Impossible difficulty level battles, which will only be available to you at rank 101+, hence the obstacle. You have a weekly limit of 500 prestige, and it requires 20 prestige per Distinction, with a limit of 1 Distinction per type every day. So all you have to do for this item is just fight, and exchange for them. Once you're actually rank 101+, this is easy, you just need to be sure to remember to trade for the one(s) you want every day.
So, let's say you're at rank 101+ now, you've got all the Distinctions you need, you're ready to upgrade your Class Champion Weapon. What you need now is only 10 of those Distinctions, 256 Weapon Stones, 50 Elemental Quartz, 25 Creeds, 30 Champion merits, 120 Prism Chips, 2 Steel Bricks, and 5 Blue Sky Crystals. You should already be aware of most of these things, but for the more out of the ordinary things... You generally are going to get Weapon Stones and Elemental Quartz from reducing SSSR weapons and summons. Premium draw items of such items will give you higher amounts of the stuff per reduction. The exact stones and quartz you need will vary depending on your weapon. As an example, Oliver (the Bandit class gun) needs Gun Stones, and Wind Quartz.
With these items in hand, you need to have also leveled your Class Champion Weapon up to 100 from its former SR limitations, and then you can finally upgrade it to its second form. But there's one more step, you need to element change it to complete the process. Even if you like its current element, you still need to element change it to complete this journey and allow you to get those Superior Something trophies.
At this point, you have even more rank 101+ grinding to go. That said, if you've gotten to this point, you've likely already got all of the required materials anyway. Depending on the weapon and what element you're changing it to, the items you need vary, but in general... You need 30 class Distinctions, an additional 512 Weapon Stones, 30 Element Centrums, 30 Grimoires, 200 Showdown Silver Anima, 3 Silver Centrum, and 15 Blue Sky Crystals.
A lot of these things you should already be aware of, but I'll clarify on one point before expanding on the rank 101+ stuff. The Showdown Anima in this equation are the ones that drop from the actual Showdown in rotation, not anything co-op related. You need 200 of them, and which ones you need depend on what element you're changing things to.
Now, onto the items you might not be aware of. Centrums are more rank 101+ items. The Elemental Centrum are a guaranteed drop from the Impossible difficulty versions of the Omega family (i.e., Tiamat, Leviathan, and such). You will no doubt have already gotten more than enough of these while grinding for the prestige for your Distinctions, unless you decided to ignore the element you wanted, or spent all of them on upgrades for different things. Silver Centrum is another matter, however. These things are much harder to come by. Currently, there are only three ways to get one: they drop in Impossible difficulty Rose Queen battles, they are available in share chests from Grand Order raid battles, and you can exchange 5 Heavenly Horns for one of them per month from the shop. Heavenly Horns are a rare drop from Grand Order raid battles, but you can also exchange for one per 5 Azure Feathers (which you will get as a guaranteed drop from Grand Order raid battles).
Now, I'm going to digress a bit, because I want to actually put this in perspective to people. Impossible/HL difficulty battles are generally kind of a distant thought to anybody grinding out Omegas, so a lot of people probably haven't looked into what exactly they entail. The major difficulty with them is not a really an increase of difficulty (although there is that too), it's that raids get far, far more limited when you go into Impossible difficulty. Impossible level Omega battles are limited to 18 participants instead of 30, and then you go a level up into the Summon category (such as Nezha, Olivia and the like) and are limited to only 6 participants per raid. Battles are less about being able to actually deal damage (because that should sort of be a matter of fact at this rank) and more about actually coordinating with your allies, because you are going to need certain abilities in battles at certain times, and if someone screws up and dies, you might have very well lost something integral to beating the raid. You also cannot use elixirs, so there's no way to make up for mistakes. Obviously some of these battles are easier than other, allowing for more leeway, but the point is that the difficulty is not about power, but of strategy, and that's not necessarily an easy thing to coordinate for many people even if you speak the same language.
The major point here is that, likely, your best option for getting Silver Centrum is through Grand Order raids, which open up at the same time Bahamut raids do. If you've got your eye on a Class Champion Weapon, you also want try and do some of these battles. If you're unlucky, you're going to need to do 75 of these battles to get enough to exchange for 3 Silver Centrum.
But enough about that. Let's say we're here. You've got all the materials you need, you element change your Class Champion Weapon, the end of the journey has come. Well done. It's time to kill your master.
ROW IV CLASSES
Change to whatever class you're looking to open up (e.g., Dark Fencer for Chaos Ruler), and journey to your MC's home, Zinkenstill. You're going to find a new quest that'll open up, and you'll need to beat an opponent with only your MC in your party. Whatever element you are, the opponent will be your weakness. Give it your best, and you should be able to win without a problem if you've come this far. Upon winning, you will get the Superior Something trophy related to whatever class you were. You can repeat this quest with all the different classes to get all of the trophies. Currently, you do not need to make more than one Class Champion Weapon to unlock the Row IV classes.
And then you're done. You still need 2500 CP, and 20 Distinctions for every Row IV class you unlock, but at this point that's unlikely to be a worry either. The major advantage to these classes, besides the new abilities, better stats, and further mastery bonuses, is the ability to equip multiple subskills. You can still only equip up to 4 abilities, of course, but Row IV classes only have one set ability, so you just equip whatever you desire in the other slots. Versatility is an amazing thing. Each of these classes also have useful Extended Mastery Abilities, almost all of which are incredibly strong.
EXTRAS
But let me go back, back, back to something I mentioned previously and glossed over since it wasn't really overall relevant, and there are better explanations around for it. For completion's sake, I figured I should talk about Extra classes. These things are co-op centered. If you've actually gotten to the point where you're thinking about Row IV classes, but haven't looked into it all THAT much, Extra classes are actually the next step for you. Unfortunately, they're generally not very good.
Each Extra class has something of a niche to it, but the majority of them have largely useless niches. I'm not going into huge amounts of details, again because there are better guides on these things, but while there is no absolutely useless class, very few of these classes do things that something else will not serve for, and better at that. Largely the two Extra classes of any real note are Ninja and Gunslinger. Ninja has its niche in being able to inflict paralyze on enemies which is the best status in the game (albeit can be misused into tragedy). Gunslinger is a class that can be incredibly powerful, but requires almost as much grinding for it as the Class Champion Weapon. I largely can't speak on the subject of it because it never interested me, but if it does you, then check around, there is a wealth of knowledge on the class.
Largely, what you want out of Extra classes are the mastery bonuses. Many of them give incredibly useful things such as increased skill damage, attack, or even an increase to building up your charge attack bar. This is not to say that there is nothing good out these classes, even excluding Ninja and Gunslinger, there are points you might want to use these classes. Mystic's ability allows you to clear weak mobs faster in farming scenarios. Alchemist's Extended Mastery Ability allows you to boost attack up across to other raid parties. I personally found the Sword Master's abilities very interesting and powerful, although not necessarily more useful than the general things in Row III jobs' hands.
The only caveat to Extra classes is that they require you to clear Extra co-op stages, and creeds to unlock. This means they're a small competition for your Class Champion Weapon, because you overall need 28 creeds (11 mage and 17 warrior) to unlock all of them. Since Creeds drop rates are rather low, and you need 35 of one type of Creed for your Class Champion Weapon, this can increase the time spent farming for things in co-op. Just something to keep in mind.
OTHER FARMING
As mentioned by Sun-Tail in the comments, there are some shortcuts to getting a few of the other items mentioned in the above. In the casino, you can exchange chips for four copies of an SSR gun, and four copies of an SSR sword. The gun will initially cost 77,777,777 chips due to it being an exchange for the SSR character Christina, but subsequent purchases will reduce the cost to 7,777,777 chips instead. The SSR sword only costs 2,500,000 chips per copy. The reason to get these, as their abilities are very lackluster, is that they count as premium items in for reduction purposes, and thus will give a rather large bounty in weapon stones. If you're going for the sword or gun Class Champion Weapon, these will ease the grind of getting so many weapon stones.
The other more mundane items such as Prism Chips and Champion Merits will come in time when you're grinding for the other items. Grand Order will most certainly give a number of Champion Merits, for example. While it isn't related to the grind for other items, doing Proto-Bahamut battles is also another good way of gaining Champion Merits.
Prism Chips can be exchanged for in the shop via its larger cousin Flawed Prism (up to 30 every day). The most convenient way to get Tomes outside of grinding is exchanging Cerulean Stones for them, as you can get 10 Tomes for every Cerulean Stone.
Antique Clothes drop from the quests in Former Capital Mephorash. The likely the most surefire way to get them is from doing the 80 AP-cost quest "Antiquarian Troubles". You can only do the quest twice every day, but you are guaranteed 5-7 Antique Clothes each run.
RESOURCES
For more information on the class weapon materials, please refer to this google spreadsheet. Specifically check the the 'Class Weapon Guide' and 'Class Mat. Checklist' tabs. Alternatively, the Granblue Wiki has similar, useful information on the subject.
For more information on Row IV and Extra Classes stats, please refer to this guide.
For more information on Gunslingers, please refer to this guide.
TL;DR
Do co-op, do grand order, do showdowns, do impossible battles, get class weapon, upgrade class weapon, get new classes.