Reverse: 1999 Beginner Guide: Tips for New Timekeepers

Reverse: 1999 hands you a suitcase, a time storm, and a pile of currencies with antique names, then mostly wishes you luck. You play the Timekeeper, Vertin, and the job is quieter than it sounds: recruit Arcanists, read what the enemy is about to do, and spend a pretty tight budget on the right three or four people. The game explains very little of this well. The good news is that the systems underneath are friendlier than they look, and the first two weeks mostly come down to a handful of decisions. Here's the short version of what actually matters early.

Understanding the Afflatus System and Elemental Reactions

Afflatus is the game's element system. Every Arcanist and every enemy has exactly one of six types: Beast, Plant, Star, Mineral, Spirit, and Intellect. It shows up as a little colored symbol on every portrait, and it quietly decides a huge chunk of every fight you'll take.

The counter wheel

Four of the six types sit in one loop. Beast beats Plant. Plant beats Star. Star beats Mineral. Mineral beats Beast. Attack a type you beat and you deal 30% more damage. That bonus sits in its own bucket in the damage math, so it stacks on top of your crits and buffs instead of getting eaten by them. A weaker Arcanist with the right Afflatus regularly out-hits a stronger one attacking into a bad matchup.

| Your attacker | Deals +30% damage against | | --- | --- | | Beast | Plant | | Plant | Star | | Star | Mineral | | Mineral | Beast | | Spirit | Intellect | | Intellect | Spirit |

Spirit and Intellect are the odd pair. They don't interact with the other four at all. They just hit each other for 30% extra, in both directions, and everything else treats them as neutral. So a Spirit unit never has to worry about bringing a knife to a rock-paper-scissors fight. Nice and simple.

It cuts the other way too. Attack into a type that counters you and your damage drops. The game doesn't shout the exact penalty at you, but you'll feel it on hard stages. The practical version: before a tough fight, tap an enemy and check its Afflatus, then build around beating it. Most stages even show you a recommended Afflatus before you deploy.

Damage types, the other half of the matchup

The word "reactions" in the header needs a small correction. Reverse: 1999 doesn't really do elemental reactions the way some games do. There's no combo effect when two types touch. What it has instead is a second axis: every attack deals either Reality damage or Mental damage, and a rare third kind called Genesis.

Reality and Mental each run into their own defense stat. Reality DMG is blunted by Reality DEF, Mental DMG by Mental DEF, and enemies are rarely equally tanky against both. So a boss that shrugs off your Reality carry might fold fast against a Mental one. Genesis ignores both defenses entirely, like true damage in other games, but very few units deal it.

There's one sneaky interaction worth knowing. Some damage types wake up enemies your team put to sleep. Hitting a Frozen enemy with Mental damage rouses them, and Reality damage will break Petrify. If your squad worked to lock a boss down, don't poke it awake with the wrong card. Nine times out of ten it's an accident, and it always hurts.

Building Your First Team Around a Support Timepiece

Quick naming detour, because the game won't give you this one for free. Nobody in Reverse: 1999 is called a Timepiece. You're the Timekeeper, the playable character. The units you field are Arcanists, and the game tags their role on their profile: DPS, Support, healer, and so on. What this section is really about is anchoring your first squad around a support Arcanist. It's also the single best early decision you can make.

Why support-first works

Your first weeks give you a rotating cast of attackers and a very thin bench. DPS units come and go. A good support makes whoever you happen to own hit harder, and keeps paying rent months later.

That's Sonetto. She's a free 5-star Mineral Arcanist who deals Reality damage, and the game hands her to you almost immediately. Her whole kit is built to prop up a team:

• Exhortation IX is her reason for existing. It buffs your whole team at once, raising damage dealt and cutting damage taken, for a couple of rounds. At its third rank it's a 25% boost to damage dealt and 25% less damage taken for three rounds. That's enormous for one card, and it works on any DPS you ever pair her with.
• Commandment V is her single-target attack. At rank three it deals 300% Reality damage and applies Disarm, which stops the target from using attack incantations. Disarming the scariest enemy on the field is sometimes worth more than the hit itself.
• Unrestricted Chant, her ultimate, deals 300% Reality damage to all enemies, and doubles up with a bonus 100% Reality damage if Sonetto is currently buffed. Since her own Exhortation counts as a buff, the combo is baked right in: buff, then ult.

Being Mineral, she hits Beast enemies for the full 30% bonus and takes extra from Star. Keep that in mind on Star-heavy stages and swap her out or hide her in the substitute slot there.

The shape of a first team

Squads are four characters: three on the field and one substitute who tags in when somebody drops. Early on, your fourth slot is honestly fine as a benchwarmer. The classic shape looks like this:

1. A main DPS. Whoever you pull from the beginner banner goes here.
2. Sonetto in support, buffing and disarming.
3. A healer to keep everyone standing.
4. A flex pick or a spare in the substitute slot.

For the healer, don't panic-buy one on day one. Dikke, a free 5-star Beast healer, arrives on your eighth login day, and she covers the job nicely until then. Her Justice skill is an area heal, and her ultimate cleanses the nasty statuses off herself, so she can usually still save you after eating a debuff. Until she shows up, story stages are gentle enough that Sonetto's damage-taken reduction does a lot of quiet work.

Leilani is another free early pick worth a mention. She's a low-rarity Beast unit who deals Reality damage and feeds Moxie (ultimate charge) to the team. Cheap to raise, useful in the flex slot, and she covers the Beast side of the Afflatus wheel that a Mineral Sonetto can't.

One last thing on team building. Don't chase a perfect four-person core on day three. Build the three you have, get them through Insight 1, and add pieces as the game gives them to you. A finished trio beats a half-leveled sextet every time.

Managing Furniture Points and Insight Resources Early On

Second naming correction, and this one matters more. There's no currency called Furniture Points in Reverse: 1999. What the game actually gives you is Wilderness Shells, and those are what you spend on furniture and props for your base. Insight materials are the other half of this section, and they're the real resource squeeze. Both run through the same place: the Wilderness.

The Wilderness, your free money machine

The Wilderness unlocks once you're through Chapter 1 and into Chapter 2. It's a home-base mode where your Arcanists wander around, and it quietly pays out resources forever. Open it as early as the story allows, because every day you delay is a day of free income gone.

Four buildings come with it. The Dust Bell Tower drips out Dust (character EXP) over time. The Sharpodonty Market drips out Sharpodonty (gold). The Wishing Spring is a crafting bench where you combine cheaper materials into rarer ones, which is a lifesaver when you're one item short of an Insight. The Paleohall is the hub, and upgrading it with special Child of Prosperity items (found in specific story stages and trace completions) raises the level cap on everything else. Push the Paleohall when you can.

Production scales with Vigor, and Vigor goes up as you place more tiles and islands. So when you get new tiles, put them down instead of hoarding them. More land, more passive Dust and gold. It's the closest thing this game has to free money.

Wilderness Shells come mostly from dailies and weeklies. You spend them at the Wilderness Shop tab in the Bank on decor, tiles, and limited theme sets. Decor is cosmetic, mostly, so treat Shells as a fun budget rather than a power one. Two honest warnings from players who've been around: don't spend Clear Drops (your pull currency) on Wilderness stuff, and limited theme sets rotate, so if you like one, budget for it rather than buying on impulse.

Insight, where your materials go

Insight is the game's version of ascending a character. Leveling to the cap of your current tier, then Insighting, raises the cap by ten, boosts base stats, and adds a passive. The ladder looks like this:

| Insight tier | Level cap | 5-star cost (roughly) | 6-star cost (roughly) | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Insight 0 | 30 | none | none | | Insight 1 | 40 | 12k Sharpodonty, 6 Pages | 18k Sharpodonty, 6 Pages | | Insight 2 | 50 | 30k Sharpodonty, 8 Scrolls | 40k Sharpodonty, 10 Scrolls | | Insight 3 | 60 | 120k Sharpodonty, 12 Tomes | 200k Sharpodonty, 16 Tomes |

The exact side materials wiggle a bit per character, but the shape holds: Insight 1 is cheap, Insight 2 is a real commitment, and Insight 3 costs more Sharpodonty than most new players have ever seen in one place. Your level resets to 1 each time you Insight, which feels alarming and is fine. An Insight 2 level 1 character has better stats than an Insight 1 level 30 one.

Pages, Scrolls, and Tomes come from the Insight resource stages, which cost Activity (stamina) to run. Everything else drops from story stages or gets crafted at the Wishing Spring. A sensible first goal is getting your main three to Insight 1, then leveling them toward the new cap. That alone carries you through most of the early story.

Activity itself regenerates over real time, and the cap grows with your account, up to 200. Don't let it sit full, because regen stops at the cap and that's just wasted income. Spend it down once or twice a day. As for where it goes: don't split it evenly across every farm stage. Feed whatever your main team is currently blocked on, usually Dust and Sharpodonty early, then Insight materials once levels are capped. Accounts that spread everything evenly end up with eight mediocre characters and no clears.

Which Starter Banners and Free Characters to Prioritize

The gacha side of Reverse: 1999 is honestly one of the more readable ones. Pity carries over between banners running at the same time, the hard cap is low by genre standards, and there's a beginner banner that's a genuinely good deal.

The First Drop of Rain, your first stop

This is the beginner banner, and you should almost certainly pull on it before anything else. It guarantees a 6-star within 30 summons, and the featured 6-stars are Regulus, Eternity, and Lilya. The banner closes once you've pulled a 6-star or burned all 30 pulls, whichever comes first.

You don't pick which one you get, so here's the quick rundown. Regulus is a straightforward Star DPS whose ultimate also hands the whole team a round of evasion. Eternity is a hybrid Beast attacker and debuffer, strong but with a self-drain on her skills that you need to play around. Lilya has the highest ceiling of the three but leans hard on landing critical hits, which is awkward early and fine later once your Psychubes (gear) catch up. All three are perfectly good first carries. None of them is a dud, so don't stress the result.

How pity works, so you can plan

The base rate for a 6-star is 1.5%, soft pity ramps up the odds starting around pull 60, and pull 70 is a guaranteed 6-star. A single pull costs one Unilog, or 180 Clear Drops if you're paying that way. On a rate-up banner, your first 6-star is a 50/50 between the featured character and the standard pool. Lose the coinflip and your next 6-star is guaranteed to be the featured one. So the worst case for a specific limited character is about 140 pulls, and the realistic case is somewhere well under that.

The practical rule for a new account: do the beginner banner, then stop and save. Pull for characters you actually like rather than every new face. Events, story first-clears, dailies, weeklies, and redeem codes all pay out Clear Drop and Unilogs, so the free income is decent if you keep claiming it.

The free roster, ranked by priority

You get more free characters than most gachas hand out, and a couple of them are legitimately good:

• Sonetto (5-star Mineral, support). Your first real unit and worth every material you put in. Priority one.
• Dikke (5-star Beast, healer). Day eight login reward. Once she lands, your team shape is basically solved. Priority two.
• Leilani (low-rarity Beast). Free during Chapter 1, feeds Moxie to the team. Cheap and useful. Priority three.
• Matilda (5-star Star). Arrives free as an early mail reward. A fine secondary attacker and your first real Star option. Priority four.
• APPLe and Eagle (starters). Low rarity, free from the tutorial. They're bridge units. Use them until your real team fills in, then let them rest.

Psychubes deserve one line here, since they pair with banners in your head space. They're the game's equipment, each character wears one, and they range from stat sticks to build-around effects. You buy the good ones with currency from farming stages, not pulls, so they're a slow-burn project rather than something to chase in week one.

Common Mistakes New Players Make in the First Two Weeks

Most early accounts don't stall because the game is hard. They stall because resources went to the wrong place. These are the traps that show up over and over.

Leveling the whole bench

Dust and Sharpodonty are the real bottleneck, not rare materials. Every level poured into a character you don't field is gone for good. Pick your three, plus maybe one backup, and let everyone else stay level one until the main squad is comfortable. New players hit a gold wall well before they hit a materials wall, and over-leveling is usually why.

Splitting Activity evenly

Covered above, but it earns its spot here because it's the most common one. Spreading stamina across Dust, gold, Insight, and Psychube stages in equal thirds feels productive and leaves you with nothing finished. Find the bottleneck, feed it, repeat.

Ignoring card merging

Combat runs on cards. Drag two identical cards together and they fuse into a stronger two-star version, sometimes with an added effect. That much the tutorial teaches. What it doesn't teach: manually dragging costs you one of your actions for the turn. If two matching cards have one odd card sitting between them, delete or move the odd one out and the matching pair fuses on its own, free. Fights get noticeably smoother once this becomes reflex.

Not reading enemy cards

Enemies telegraph. Icons above their heads show what they're about to do next round. The habit that separates a clean clear from a wipe is checking those before you commit, then aiming your Disarm, your debuffs, and your biggest hit at whatever is about to hurt the most. Buff your own side first so the damage boost lands before your carry swings.

Letting Activity cap out

Full stamina stops regenerating. That's it, that's the whole mistake. Log in, dump it into whatever your team needs, log off. Two minutes.

Putting off the Wilderness

Every day the Wilderness stays locked is passive Dust and Sharpodonty you never get. Clear Chapter 1, get into Chapter 2, unlock it, place every tile you own. The furniture can wait forever. The resource buildings can't.

Pulling without counting pity

Know where you stand before you spend. Check how deep you are toward 70 and whether you're sitting on a guarantee, because that decides whether this banner is affordable or a half-finished disaster. Blind pulling is how people end up 40 pulls into a limited character they can't finish.

Trying to build a healer on day one

Tempting, since stages get spiky around Chapter 3 and you don't have Dikke yet. But eight days is short. Sonetto's damage-taken reduction plus focused damage clears that content, and the materials you'd waste on a stopgap healer are exactly the ones your real team needs for Insight 1. Hold the line until day eight and Dikke walks in the door with an area heal already attached.