Saint Seiya EX – Official recreates the iconic battles of the anime while adding familiar gacha RPG progression systems that let you strengthen your roster over time. Whether you’re following the main story, pushing PvP, or clearing challenge towers, your ability to develop your characters determines how far you’ll go. Thankfully, the game offers several upgrade paths, and most of them are straightforward once you understand how they work.

This guide breaks down everything you need to know about leveling, starring up, promotions, bonuses, and even how to safely reset your Saints using the rebirth system. If you’re just starting out or want to optimize your early resources, this will set you on the right path.

Leveling Up With EXP Potions

One of the simplest ways to strengthen a Saint in Saint Seiya EX is by leveling them up. You’ll gain a small amount of experience automatically during battles, though the bulk of your progress will come from using EXP potions. These items are rewarded through missions, daily activities, idle generation, and most types of content, making them your primary fuel for progression early on.

Though you can level up by battling, most of your progression here will be through the use of EXP Potions.

Leveling up increases core stats like HP, Attack, P-DEF, and M-DEF, which directly translates into more damage and survivability. While you can technically spread EXP across your entire roster, the game rewards you more for focusing on a small team of priority units. Since duplicate copies and promotions increase level caps, it’s better to concentrate your potions on the characters you know you’ll use long-term. The Rebirth feature ensures that nothing is wasted, but your early game will be smoother if you maintain a focused rotation.

Starring Up Saints (Using Duplicate Coins)

As with many gacha RPGs, starring up is one of the biggest long-term boosts you can give a character. When you obtain duplicate copies of a Saint, they’re automatically converted into special coins specific to that unit. These coins act as the main material for star up upgrades, and each rank requires a specific number of them.

Ascending (starring up) your characters gives them significant stat boosts along with unlocking new skills for your characters.

Starring up does three things: it boosts a unit’s base stats, it unlocks higher-level growth potential, and in many cases it opens new skills or improves existing ones. This is especially important because even R-rank characters in Saint Seiya EX can eventually reach SSR potential, meaning no unit is permanently doomed to mediocrity. If you happen to pull duplicates of your favorite Saints, starring them up should be one of your top priorities, since the returns are immediate and remain relevant at all stages of the game.

Promotions and Level Cap Increases

Promotions work alongside leveling to push your units further. While stars improve a character’s overall quality, promotions raise their maximum level cap and grant a direct boost to multiple stats. This is handled through the Promotion tab using materials obtained from gameplay, typically from missions, dungeons, and general progression.

While the stat boosts aren’t as significant as starring up, promoting your characters increases their level caps, allowing them to reach further heights.

Each promotion rank significantly improves your Saint’s performance, especially when the new level cap lets you spend more EXP potions immediately. You don’t need duplicates for promotions—only specific upgrade items—making it a fully reliable upgrade path even for units you rarely summon. Early on, promoting your main damage dealer, your tank, and your support will give you the biggest performance spike, so prioritize accordingly. The goal is to unlock new promotion tiers steadily as content difficulty rises.

Activation Bonuses Through Team Combinations

Not all character growth comes from strict upgrades. Saint Seiya EX also features special team bonuses triggered when you deploy certain combinations of Saints together in battle. Each character has a Bonus tab where you can preview these synergy effects, which usually offer percentage boosts to Attack, HP, or defenses for the units involved.

Deploy the right combination of characters in combat to activate powerful bonuses.

These bonuses are passive and activate automatically during battle as long as the correct characters are deployed, which makes them a great way to squeeze more efficiency out of your roster. Some of the easiest activation bonuses come from iconic pairs—such as Seiya and Shiryu—while others require more specific unit collections. Whenever possible, try to align your team-building with these combinations since they essentially give you free stats at no additional cost.

Rebirth – Resetting Units Without Losing Resources

Rebirth is one of the most useful quality-of-life features in Saint Seiya EX, especially if you accidentally over-invest into a character early on. By rebirthing a unit, you return them to level 1 and receive back all the EXP potions you used on them. This system ensures that experimentation is safe and that your resources are never permanently wasted.

Through the Rebirth feature, you can reduce your characters to level 1 and reclaim all the EXP Potions used on them—useful for trying out other characters.

Rebirthing doesn’t remove promotions, stars, or permanent unlocks—you’re simply reclaiming the consumable EXP you invested. This makes it ideal for adjusting your roster once you unlock stronger Saints or decide to build a more meta-relevant lineup. As long as you continue playing, EXP potions remain one of your most valuable resources, so the ability to reallocate them freely is extremely helpful.

The upgrade systems in Saint Seiya EX are straightforward but offer enough flexibility to support any playstyle. Leveling your Saints, promoting them, and starring them up are the core pillars of progression, while activation bonuses and rebirth give you extra utility and long-term efficiency. As you move deeper into the story and start tackling tougher content, staying on top of these systems will help your team keep up with the rising difficulty curve.

For an even smoother experience, especially during longer farming sessions, play Saint Seiya EX – Official on PC with BlueStacks. You’ll enjoy better performance, more precise controls, and built-in tools like keymapping and multitasking to streamline your progression across every mode in the game.