Tales of Grimm is a brand new idle RPG by the relatively new team at Tapplus, and though this is one of their first forays into creating proper mobile games, it’s quite safe to say that they have definitely started off strong with this one. 

Tales of Grimm is a game that revolves around the old fairy tales we were told when growing up. From Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, to Quasimodo and Captain Hook, among many, many others. Only, in this case, they’re not quite the same versions of the characters we know and love; they’re a bit different, but the spirit is still the same. Regardless, these are all recruitable characters that we can obtain and add to our teams, and that will help to make our way across the Lands of Oz and defeat all the enemies that stand in our way.

As an Idle RPG, Tales of Grimm is quite straightforward and designed in a way that even the most casual players can keep up, despite not being able to play for as long as the more committed users. In other words, the game is quite easy and casual, and makes for a great experience for all types of users. Nevertheless, it still retains its learning curve in the form of the different elements and systems you’ll need to learn about if you want to make it easier for yourself to progress and clear the tougher challenges.

With that being said, in the Tales of Grimm beginner’s guide, you’ll find all you need to know in order to start off on the right track in this new idle gacha RPG.

The Combat System

First and foremost, one of the most common things that you’ll be doing in Tales of Grimm is battling. In fact, you’ll be spending hours and hours on the battlefield, at least compared to any other task, except for maybe AFK grinding. Luckily, even though it’s quite commonplace, the combat system in Tales of Grimm is quite easy to understand, particularly since it’s completely automated. 

When the battles start, your team will run towards the enemy and engage them with basic attacks, while also using their active skills automatically. However, despite the chaotic appearance of the combat in this game, the battle system in Tales of Grimm is actually turn-based. In this sense, both your characters and the enemies will take turns attacking each other, and also use their skills automatically as soon as they’re off cooldown.

This emphasis on auto combat means that, instead of actively participating in battle, your role as the player is to assemble powerful teams that can stand up to any enemy and come out on top. In other words, your role is more of a manager than a fighter. In this sense, you’ll not only have to unlock top-tier characters, but also farm resources to upgrade your team and keep them performing in top shape.

The Hero Album

Aside from combat, the Hero Album is also one of the most frequently visited sections of the game, and is where you’ll find all the characters that you’ve unlocked in Tales of Grimm. Through this menu, you’ll get access to a catalog view of your heroes, and can also click on each of them to get more information on their skills and biographies, and also find options to upgrade them in many different ways.

One important aspect of the hero screen is the “Album” feature, which you can access by pressing the corresponding button on the lower right corner of the screen. In this panel, you’ll find a catalog of every single character in the game, and will be able to check up on their skills and other properties, which is great if you’re scouting for some great heroes to round out your team. However, this screen also lets you claim some free diamonds whenever you unlock a new hero, by visiting their catalog entry and clicking on “Story”. Remember to do this every time you get a new character so you don’t miss out on this valuable currency.

Obtaining New Heroes

Like in any other game in this genre, most of the gameplay in Tales of Grimm revolves around one crucial aspect: creating unstoppable teams with the best characters in the game. However, before achieving this, you need to actually obtain these characters, and then progressively upgrade them by gathering resources and materials.

Luckily, obtaining new characters in Tales of Grimm is quite easy—and also quite costly. This is because new characters are obtained mostly from the Wonder Castle building on the Town Screen. This place is where you’ll find the main gacha mechanic in the game, which will let you summon characters at a cost of 220 diamonds for one character, or 2,000 diamonds for a 10x. These summonings can yield heroes of 3, 4, and 5 stars, at the following rates:

• 3 Stars: 80% 
• 4 Stars: 15%
• 5 Stars: 5%

On top of these low odds, the probabilities of getting SPECIFIC 5-star heroes are so low, that they are basically non-existent. For instance, the odds of obtaining Dark Queen, a top tier Warrior character, from the gacha, is as low as 0.0126% on every pull. This means that you could essentially roll a thousand times and still not see this character pop up. Nevertheless, if you DO manage to get one of these top-tier characters, then you can easily breeze through the story with almost no issues at all.

It’s worth pointing out that you can get some good characters for free simply by progressing through the main story, or as login rewards for when you play for a consecutive number of days. Nevertheless, those who are interested in getting a head start and summoning the most powerful characters from the beginning will likely want to reroll, which is a common process in the gacha genre, the exact method of which varies from game to game. Luckily, those who are looking to get a boost in this game can learn how to do so by reading our Tales of Grimm reroll guide, and we suggest taking a look if you’re committed to getting a good start.

Upgrading Your Favorite Heroes

Now, even if you DO get a few good characters from the gacha, you’ll notice that they aren’t very strong at the beginning. In fact, all characters are quite weak when they’re at level 1 and without any good gear. For this reason, you’ll need to upgrade your characters if you want to get the most out of them, regardless of whether they’re top tier, or simply decent.

There are many ways to upgrade your favorite heroes in Tales of Grimm, the most common of which being simply leveling up, which permanently boosts a hero’s stats, and even lets them unlock more skills. With that being said, here’s a brief overview on the most important ways to upgrade your heroes in Tales of Grimm:

• Leveling Up

As we mentioned above, leveling up is the most simple way to increase a character’s power. To level up, you simply need to gather enough experience, either through combat, or by spending gold and accumulated Hero EXP, on the Hero screen. 

Every hero has a level cap, depending on their rank, and you must pay a sum of Promotion Stones and more gold, in order to increase a hero’s rank and level cap. You can perform these promotions whenever your hero reaches their current level cap. However, upgrading these ranks is important for more than just increasing the level cap, as reaching certain ranks will unlock new skills for your heroes.

• Star Up

Once a hero reaches level 100, they won’t be able to continue leveling up until they increase their star level. This can be achieved by sacrificing a duplicate card of the same hero and star level, or four different hero cards of the same element AND star level. These two options means that you have a bit of variety when it comes to the progression of your heroes in Tales of Grimm, as you don’t always need to get multiple duplicates of one character just to max them out.

Download Tales of Grimm on PC

Download Tales of Grimm on PC

Increasing a hero’s star level will increase their level cap, and also boost their HP and ATK growth per level by a certain percentage.

• Upgrading Skills

While your character’s stats will determine, in great part, their performance in combat, you can also boost their prowess by upgrading their skills, which will increase their potency and, in some cases, grant additional effects. However, just like with unlocking new skills by reaching specific ranks, upgrading your skills requires reaching certain star levels, which makes them a bit more prohibitive.

Regardless, aside from leveling, upgrading a hero’s skills is the next best thing you can do in terms of increasing their power.

• Equipping and Enhancing Gear

All heroes in Tales of Grimm can wear a variety of armor and weapons to further boost their stats. These pieces all increase specific stats, which at the beginning are ATK for the weapon and helm slots, and HP for the body and boots slots. These boosts can also be quite significant as well, increasing a character’s HP and ATK by about 10% even when using average gear that you get from AFK rewards.

It goes without saying that you should always keep your active characters outfitted with the best gear at your disposal. Additionally, it’s important to mention here that there are pieces that are exclusive to each character, and when you equip a full set on the corresponding hero, you’ll activate a wide variety of unique bonuses. These boosts are more than just stat increases, and are worth going out of the way to find, as they can significantly enhance a hero’s performance in combat.

• Sigils

Lastly, each hero can also unlock up to 2 sigil slots, where they can equip certain pieces that bestow unique bonuses and talents. These slots are unlocked when a hero reaches level 100 for the first one, and when they reach a star level of 7, respectively. By equipping sigils in these slots, you will also unlock up to 2 rune slots, which can fit different runes that also grant special skills when equipped.

These runes and sigils are more of an endgame mechanic and are intended to help your character reach maximum potential. You won’t really have to pay attention to this one until you reach account level 30, which is when you unlock Sigil Fusion. Regardless, you can always swing by the shop to check out their stock of runes, and get an idea of the bonuses they can confer.

Keep in mind that the skills obtained from Runes and Sigils can also be upgraded by consuming additional Runes, as well as Sigil Essences. Additionally, you can always choose to unlearn any Sigil and Rune skills by paying a small fee in diamonds. The good part about this process is that you get back all the Sigil Essences and runes you invested in the hero.

The AFK Grinding System

As an idle RPG, it’s important to know about the AFK grinding system in Tales of Grimm, as it’s a mechanic that will let you continue progressing at a steady pace, even if you can’t spend too much time playing. 

In a nutshell, your characters in Tales of Grimm are always grinding and farming in the Adventure screen, even while you’re offline. This means that they’re always producing resources at a steady rate, which is determined by your current chapter in the story missions. And as you progress further, you will farm more resources, as well as better pieces of gear, through the AFK grinding system.

These rewards have a limit, though, which is at 12 hours of auto-grinding. After 12 hours of grinding, your characters will stop producing resources until you manually swing by and claim your AFK rewards. However, you don’t have to wait until the 12 hours have finished, and can empty your coffers at any moment, so feel free to do it multiple times per day to avoid missing overcapping on resources and missing out on goodies.

If you’re playing Tales of Grimm on PC with BlueStacks, you can use the Macro Recorder to automate this process, so that you never miss out on AFK rewards, even if you can’t check up on your game for extended periods. Just create a macro for this purpose, set it to loop every few hours, and leave the game running while you can go do literally anything else, with the tranquility of knowing that you’ll never miss out on any resources.

Quests and Rewards

Last but not least, one last system that everyone should definitely know about, especially if they want to get a good start, is the Quests system, which is unlocked shortly after starting the game. You can access this menu by clicking on its icon at the very top of the rightmost panel on your screen, upon which you’ll see a list of tasks that can be completed on a daily and weekly basis, and also an additional mainline quests for tougher challenges that are meant to be finished slowly as you make your way through the game. 

While the mainline quests give nice rewards, the dailies and weeklies are considerably more important to complete, especially since they reset often, and your progress on the current tasks doesn’t carry over whenever they do. 

For each daily quest you complete, you’ll receive a few rewards, and also a bunch of activity points. Furthermore, whenever you reach certain activity point milestones, you’ll receive a variety of chests with even more rewards, which is where the true value of the daily missions is.

The weekly quests are very much the same, except they don’t give rewards for completing individual tasks. Instead, their activity point milestones are considerably more rewarding than their daily counterparts. However, since these tasks are meant to be completed across 7 days, as opposed to on a daily basis, they’re much tougher than the rest.

We strongly recommend focusing heavily on the daily and weekly tasks in Tales of Grimm, as they will give you a ton of different rewards, including diamonds and upgrade materials of all kinds. Furthermore, most of these quests consist of tasks that you’d do, regardless of your objectives, and will serve as a guide of sorts for when you lose focus on what to do at any given moment. In other words, if you have very little time to play each day, we suggest focusing on these missions first and foremost, and then dedicate what little extra time you may have left to progress through the main story.

That’s it for our beginner’s guide for Tales of Grimm. We hope that you can have a much better start in this new idle RPG with the information in the useful article!