Girl’s Frontline is an awesome simulation game (SLG) with gacha mechanics and real-time combat where you get to collect hundreds of waifus to add to your squads and fight the encroaching Sangvis threat. In this game, you’ll take to the field and travel through tons of stages to drive the enemy out, capture their command posts, and establish dominance in the name of the Griffin Security Contractor!

However, there’s quite a lot to this game in terms of mechanics. In fact, if you’re a newbie and just starting out, there’s a good chance that you still don’t know how many things work, as well as what you should be working on from the very beginning. In the spirit of helping you out, we’ve created this beginner’s guide for Girls’ Frontline so you can learn about the basics and get your bearings.

Missions and Combat

After the introductory cutscenes, you’ll be presented with the missions list, which is where you’ll be spending most of your time in this game. After all, clearing the story missions is one of the most important things you can do from the very beginning, considering that you can unlock many different features and receive powerful characters by completing these assignments.

The missions in GFL are quite straightforward, if not a bit different than what you may have seen in other similar games. At the beginning of every assignment, you’ll see a list of conditions necessary for completing the level, as well as optional objectives to achieve the different ranks. It’s important to always complete stages with an S-rank, as well as collecting all medals, since this will allow you to perform auto-battles in that stage and farm resources automatically from that moment.

Though it might take you several attempts to get all those medals, especially in the beginning, it’s definitely worth the effort, especially when it comes to farming specific stages such as 1-2, 0-1, 7-1, or 4-1N, which are some of the best levels for obtaining materials and grinding for experience.

Basic Resources

There are 4 basic resources in Girls’ Frontline: Ammo, Rations, Manpower, and Parts. These resources are used for many different purposes in the game, most of which usually goes towards producing new T-Dolls in the factory. However, these materials are also quite important since they’re used even during missions. Every squad (echelon) that you deploy costs Manpower, as well as Ammo and Rations for resupplying. The larger the echelon, the more resources it’ll cost to deploy/resupply. Moreover, if your resources run dry, you’re basically out of luck since your units can’t fight nor survive without supplies.

Luckily, it’s pretty easy to get resources on a daily basis, simply by completing daily and weekly missions. However, some of these missions require actually spending considerable resources to complete, so you need to think about what tasks to complete and which to leave for later. For instance, some missions may require producing a certain number of T-Dolls, which not only requires all 4 of these resources, but also T-Doll Contracts, among others. Nevertheless, the weekly missions, in particular, give tons of resources so try to complete them ASAP.

Echelons, Rations, and Ammo

Your units in Girls’ Frontline enter the stages in echelons of up to 5 characters. These echelons can be deployed either from your HQ on the map or from captured Heliports. Whenever they’re deployed, they automatically resupply ammo and rations back to 100%, which are deducted from your grand total (shown on the top right of the battle screen).

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Your rations and ammo are exceedingly important for the combat in Girls’ Frontline since an echelon with no ammo can’t fight and will automatically lose if engaging with the enemy. An echelon burns through 20% of their ammo and 10% of their rations every time they engage an enemy in battle, as well as an additional 10% rations every turn. This means that a standard echelon can only engage against 5 enemies or stay idle for 10 turns, at most, unless they resupply at a Heliport or HQ.

Even though you could have the strongest echelon that can easily defeat any enemy in a few seconds, they can’t fight on empty stomachs nor without ammunition, so make sure to resupply when necessary. Or better yet, optimize your route so you can complete the mission without having to spend extra resources on resupplying.

T-Dolls and Their Properties

Your characters in Girls’ Frontline, called T-Dolls, come in different types and offer various skills. The 5 main types of characters are the following:

• SMG: Wields submachine guns. They have high evasion and HP. Ideal for tanking bosses.
• AR: Wields assault rifles. Balanced stats, with a high focus on DPS.
• RF: Wields sniper rifles. They offer awesome DPS and attack the enemy’s back row directly. They can easily defeat armored enemies.
• HG: Wields handguns. They are mostly support units that can buff nearby allies. They can also tank somewhat since they have high evasion and HP, though not as well as SMG dolls.
• MG: Wields machine guns. They usually feature high burst damage and rate of fire, but require lots of ammo and have long reload periods.
• SG: Wields shotguns. The best tanks in the game due to high HP and armor. They are vulnerable to armor-piercing enemies since they have low evasion and mobility.

Aside from their roles in combat, every unit has specific tile buffs, positive effects they can grant to allies on certain slots in the formation. HG characters are, by far, the ones who have the best buffs that can benefit numerous allies in the formation. However, some units have buffs that can benefit allies of specific types. For instance, AR and SMG characters usually make good partners since some of them can buff the other type, and vice versa.

The Factory: Recruiting New T-Dolls

Lastly, one of the features you’ll need to become intimate with is the Factory, which is where you’ll be producing new characters, upgrading existing ones, and even activating their Dummy Links. In short, this is where you’ll come when you want to work on your characters and strengthen them in many ways. We’ll go into more details of this feature in our Girl’s Frontline factory and upgrade guide but, for now, all you need to know is that you’ll be visiting this feature quite frequently during your time with this game.

For starters, we recommend simply jumping into a few missions and practice with getting used to the combat system in this game. Once you’ve done several runs, swing by our blog and look up other guides so you can learn about other aspects of Girls’ Frontline. And remember, if you want the very best experience with this SLG, make sure to play it on PC with BlueStacks!