Makai Wars English Guide, Character Info, & Translations

Makai Wars (魔界ウォーズ ) released on Android and iOS (in Japan only)  in February and as a huge fan of Disgaea I started a guide to both get you started quickly despite the language barrier and also detail the more intricate details that are harder to understand without knowing Japanese. The guide will be expanded over time as new info comes in. As always, you can donate to my Patreon to support my guides!

Makai Wars is a simplified Strategy Roleplaying Game much like Disgaea (and half of NIS’ other games), and it’s Asagi’s very own game! For real this time! No really, stop laughing!

Feel free to ask questions or share info in the comments below or chat in the Discord server! 

Updates

Guide Updates

Current Events

Beauty Queen Contest

Vote for your favorite character by completing their quest. Pretty easy, can repeat quests with your “vote” points increasing each clear. If all you care about is the rewards, you need to get 13,000 points total, but it doesn’t matter who you vote for and you don’t need to do anyone’s quest but the one you “vote” for.

The characters’ quests are, in order, starting from the second quest:

Asagi
Verdanti
Etna
Sapphire
Seraphina
Pandora
Hilde

Banners: Laharl/Sutr/Unut, Kilia/Rozalin/Sapphire
Banners are boosted gachapon rates when selecting a certain ad banner on the gacha screen. The gacha without a timer is the “normal” one and never has boosted rates. Instead, the normal one shows the characters most recently added to the normal pool.

What The Heck Is Makai Wars?

Makai Wars is a long-running gag in the Disgaea/NIS community. Originally it was announced as a PSP game for E3 2004 and Asagi was to be the protagonist. It was a no-show. It was later re-announced as a PS3 game, which also never materialized.

Since then Asagi has shown up in a majority of NIS tactical games making cameo appearances, usually searching for her game, Makai Wars. She even got a full “Asagi Mode” side story in Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood (yes that’s a real title).

Finally, in the fateful year of our Overlord 2018, Makai Wars is a real thing and Asagi didn’t lie about it being her game; though it’s basically a Disgaea spinoff title featuring her. It’s a mini-SRPG playing like a simplified version of many of NIS’s other titles, specifically Disgaea.

Game Info

Title: 魔界ウォーズ (Makai Wars)
Platform: Android & iOS
Language: Japanese
Release date: 2018-02-15 (Android)
Developer: Nippon Ichi Software and Clover Lab
Price: Free with IAP/Gachapon
Genre: SRPG
Filesize: 520MB (installed and updated)
Always Online: Yes, persistent internet connection required
Gambling element: Yes (standard character Gachapon a la FateGO etc)
Battery Drain: High

If you’re just curious and not curious enough to download a Japanese app, you can see some standard gameplay of the game here:

Timed Events 

Banner Gachapon: Valvatorez, Artina, Fuka 

Ends: 2018-05-16

Banners have a roughly 50% chance for a 3* pulled in the gacha to be one of the listed characters. Odds of getting a 3* are still 8%, and the more characters in a banner the less likely getting any specific character is.  Remember 10 pulls have no benefits in Makai Wars, so there’s no need to “save up” 3,000 rubies before doing a banner/any gacha in the game.

Also note the “banner” without a time limit is the normal gachapon. New characters are listed on the normal gachapon’s banner image, but these characters do not have a raised occurrence chance.

Current Timed Events

Beryl Solo Raid 

Level Completion Rewards 50 Rubies, 50 Rubies, 50 Rubies, 100 Rubies

Total Score Rewards: 30,000 Hell, 30,000 Mana, 1 Evo Vial (M), 300 Rubies, 1 Red Orb

Earn score by beating levels, repeat the final level to get ever-increasing amounts of points.

To beat the raid just auto fight the last level on repeat and it should come pretty quickly (it’s pretty easy, low level teams welcome). You get the items immediately upon reaching the threshold unlike the April Fool’s event. 

Mao Event

Level completion rewards: 50 Rubies, 3 Evo Vial (S), 50 Rubies, 2 Evo Vial (M), 100 Rubies, 100 Rubies, 1 Blue Orb

Past Events

Makai Kingdom Event

Ends: May 1st

There’s a lot of stuff for the Makai Kingdom Event! A 15 day long “grind” event where you can get Zetta (Book), a free normal Gachapon pull a day (10 times), a new Background for the duration of the event, and a Banner Gachapon for Zetta (Overlord), Petta, and Pram.

Event SP Quest Rewards: 5x Dark Vial (M), 10 Zetta (Book) stones, 3 Evo Vials (M),  10 Zetta (Book) stones, 300 Rubies, 10 Zetta (Book) stones
Last two SP Quest missions drop Zetta (Book) stones randomly, 4 for second to last.

The final level of the event is even harder than Usalia’s, so work hard! It’s best to grind the second to last (15 AP) stage for Stones instead due to the extreme difficulty of the last one.

Valvatorez Event

There’s an event with Valvatorez and some Ragna Quest character, but don’t get too excited as it doesn’t give summon stones/tickets for either character. It just gives some “premium” items when certain levels are cleared the first time. So just play every level once to get all the rewards (repeats give nothing) and move on.

Rewards: 3 S Evo potions, 2 M Evo potions, 50 Rubies, 100 Rubies, 1 L Evo potion, 50 Rubies, 1 Passive Skill orb

Makai Wars Quickstart Guide

Big word of warning here; this is not a text-light game. With the use of Google Translate’s image translate feature (Android Version, iOS version), experience with past NIS titles, and a healthy dose of highly scientific trial-and-error, you’ll probably be able to play this game. But it will not be easy, and the faint of heart will likely want to wait to see if an English release materializes.

Even with Google Translate you’re unlikely to be able to enjoy the story, so you’ll be playing it for the gameplay alone.

Heads up – Yes, this is a free to play mobile game and yes, there is a gachapon. If that’s a problem for you I strongly recommend not bothering especially if you cannot read Japanese. But if you just want to take a quick peek, you can try out Makai Wars for free of course

But for those who want to dive in headfirst like me, here’s how to get started. First you’ll be greeted by some Japanese menus, the intro isn’t too hard to work your way through but here’s an English translation of the first menus just in case:

Once you’ve downloaded and installed Makai Wars it will ask you to agree to the Terms of Service (check the box). Generally, pressing the Red button is Back/Cancel and the Blue button is Accept/Continue. Keep Accepting from the start and name your account (8 characters only).

Eventually you’ll have to download about 40MB of extra data to start the tutorial. Be warned that later you’ll have to download another 400MB of data after the tutorial to actually start playing. I recommend starting Makai Wars on WiFi for that reason.

Tutorial

You’ll get a little story sequence (which you can skip if you don’t know Japanese) and the intro will play. Turn your device on it’s side to see the intro in full 16:9 and turn your volume on if you can/like.

Before we start playing Makai Wars will give you a free Gachapon roll of 4 characters; three 2★ rarity characters and a special 3★. To use Disgaea terms, 2★ characters are “Generics” like Female Warrior and Prinnies, while 3★s are Story Characters like Laharl and Flonne.

The 3★ characters you can get in the tutorial gachapon are listed below. A few characters can only be earned in regular gachapon pulls, not this free one.

Tutorial Gachapon possibilities

You can see a current list of characters here (in japanese). Anyone in that list in Red cannot be gotten in the tutorial gachapon. Additionally Etna is a 20 day login bonus, Asagi is given for free, and Freya is given as a preregistration bonus (to all players); none of those three characters will be in the first Gachapon pull, but you’ll get them all free (eventually, in Etna’s case).

Famous characters that are in the gachapon:

• Laharl
• Seraphina
• Almaz
• Rosalina
• Killia
• Artina

You can reroll the tutorial gachapon as many times as you like by pressing the red button on the left after the draw. Shoot for a 3★ character you like, but remember no amount of spins will get you more than one 3★, and there will be plenty of draws for generic 2★s later.

After you get your starter characters a battle starts. The tutorial is basic SRPG stuff that any Disgaea fan should be most familiar with. Don’t worry about your actions in the battle, it’s very easy, just move forward aggressively and you’ll finish it in a few minutes tops.

After the tutorial you’ll get your first login bonuses; a total of 600 Gems, enough for two extra character Gachapon pulls to start filling out your ranks. From here you’re on your own (for now), just try to experiment and have fun! Some basic menu translations have been posted here to get you started.

Reroll First Gachapons

If you hate yourself enjoy min-maxing Gachapon rolls, a method was discovered to re-roll the first two gachapon rolls with the extra 600 gems you get early in the game without re-downloading the main game.

If you enjoy Shiny Hunting in Pokemon give it a shot for the 3★s of your dreams, personally I wouldn’t bother.

Cloud Save

There’s a cloud save option in the Settings menu you should set up as soon as possible (the two phones and the arrow). Tap the top button to make a new CloverLab account or make one here, then log into it in the game to start using cloud saves. All that’s required is an email and a password no other info.

This will protect your data if your phone is stolen by a Prinny or mistaken for a Sardine by an overlord. If you forgot your CloverLab password (hint; save it in your browser’s password manager!), you can reset your cloverlab ID here.

Gameplay

Before you do anything in the game, set up your cloud save as per above! Alright? Good.

General Strategy

AI Manipulation

The AI works in certain generally predictable ways.

Weakest Target Priority

If all else fails, you can physically block a unit from pathing to your weakest character; units can’t walk through tiles where an enemy is, so you can form a wall preventing the quickest (or only) path from your enemy to the unit they want to target and they’ll instead focus on who’s in range.

Team Attacks

Much like Disgaea, Makai Wars has Team Attacks. Team Attacks are indicated by red exclaimation icons, and if your formation is right and the red mark is seen, a team attack will always execute.

Team attacks add ~10% of the damage from each additional party member. Elemental weakness/resistance is accounted for separately for each team mate. Amusingly, allies affected by Sleep will still join in Team Attacks.

Melee Team Attacks

Ranged units will join in Melee team attacks. Ranged units at melee range will not use this formation. Oddly, while Sword and Spear units both use the Melee team attack formation, Sword units will not join a Spear team attack and vice versa, but ranged units will join both.

A unit on the single tile on the opposite side of the enemy from the team attack initiator will join in to (so in this case, on top of the imp).

Ranged Team Attacks

Non-ranged units will not join in on Ranged team attacks.

Back Attacks

Hitting an enemy from behind will do 50% extra damage. Both regular attacks and skills can be boosted by this, unlike Team Attacks which are regular attacks only. Back Attacks are always preferable to Team Attacks if a choice must be made.

Back Attacks with ranged weapons can hit from any tile behind the sprite, even if it’s diagonal. Since characters can only face right or left, it’s easier than you might think to pin a character in a state where you can move behind them and get a back attack.

A melee unit directly above/below a unit has a pretty good change of getting a back attack next turn unless the unit moves two tiles away; the AI usually doesn’t bother to do this.

Stats

HP: Obviously, HP is how much damage you can take before a KO.

Attack: Damage dealt is determined by Attack only in Makai Wars, rather than different weapons using different stats in Disgaea. 

Defense: Reduces damage you take. Each Defense point is worth several HP points in terms of survivability. 

Speed: In addition to deciding turn order, units with enough speed (usually due to speed boosting skills or equipment) can “lap” slow enough enemies, acting more than once per enemy turn. Speed’s effect is hard to measure, and it does not appear possible to get more than two actions per enemy turn and it’s incredibly difficult to do so consistently. Speed is a very important stat that is unfortunately almost impossible to gauge the value of meaningfully.

Range: Range of normal attacks. Usually 1 for Melee units and 2 for ranged attackers. Some units increase in Range upon +2 Awakening levels (gachapon duplicates), usually ranged weapon units like bows/staves.

Move: How far the character can move per turn. Always starts at 2, but some units increase Move upon +2 Awakening levels, usually for melee range units. Feather accessories and Boots with specific Enchantments can have +1 Move as well.

Sex: Annoyingly, a character’s sex is a stat which occasionally impacts a few characters’ passive skills. Characters are either male, female, or very rarely neuter (neutral looking enemies are still usually) male. A unit’s sex is fixed and has no affect outside of specific skills such as Etna’s attack boost against female units, and you have no control over the sex of your enemies so it largely exists to randomly reduce the effectiveness of said skills. But said skills are rare and it shouldn’t often make a meaningful difference.

Elements

There’s elemental effects and five elements: Fire, Water, Tree, Holy, and Darkness. Every character is associated with an element, and all damage that unit deals is of that element. 

Tree beats Water beats Fire beats Tree, making a rock paper scissors effect, while Holy and Darkness are mutually weak to each other. There is no same-type resistance; Fire attacks deal weak damage to Water but normal damage to both Fire and Tree. For some reason, Dark Generic characters are excluded from the standard Gachapons.

Rewards/Achievements

Login Bonus

There’s a login bonus as usual, with the first week getting two sets of rewards. The daily rewards are still pretty good even after the first week.  You’ll also unlock Etna by claiming the login bonus for 20 days.

Daily Missions

There are 6 daily rewards you can claim by completing Daily Missions. They’re not a huge deal but you might as well claim the free stuff if you can, and most you’ll do simply by playing the game anyway. Daily Missions roll over on the same timer as the Daily Login Bonus, midnight Japan time.

• Upgrade weapons 3 times
  • Reward: 2000 Mana (Green spheres)
• Use 50 AP
  • Reward: 10 Rubies
• Clear 3 quests
  • 2,000 Hell
• Complete all other daily missions
  • 20 Rubies
  • Does not include the 50 AP “time bonuses”
• Play during 12:00 and 15:00 Japan time
  • Reward Sandwich (50 AP Refill)
  • Convert your timezone to Japanese time here
• Play during 18:00 and 21:00 Japan time
  • Reward: Sandwich (50 AP Refill)

Differences from Disgaea

If you’ve played Disgaea (or any SRPG) you’ll have a good basis for understanding how to play. Here’s some key differences that Veterans will notice:

• The battlefield is much simplified and characters always have a normal attack and two skills
  • Skills recharge over X turns, rather than having an SP cost
  • Characters have inherent skills based on who they are, no learning/transfering skills
• Stats are more straightforward; Attack appears to always affect damage, rather than Fists using 50% Strength 50% speed etc.
• Facing will affect damage  but not accuracy, and you cannot directly edit facing). Direct rear attacks only, not side attacks, deal extra.
• There is no “defend”, only “skip turn”
• Asagi actually has a game
• Elements are now an inherent property of a unit, so a Fire unit is always weak to ice and all units have elements
• There are still different equipment types, though weapon type appears to matter less than it normally would
• There is no throwing or height differences etc.

Leveling & Evolution (Level Cap)

Levels can be earned from Green Experience earned every stage, or purchased with Hell at a rate of 1 Experience per 1 Hell. Leveling with Hell is best saved for when there’s a wide gap between a new character you like and your regular team, so you can skip grinding.

Evolution means upgrading the Level Cap. Evolution is a process that will raise the ★ ranking of your character and their base stats as well. Once a unit’s Orange Experience meter is full and they’ve reached their current max level (60/60 for example), they can be upgraded to the next ★ by using Hell.

Evolution is basically always worth it, as only characters you actually use will ever hit it, it’s pretty cheap, and not evolving means your character is basically “stuck” stat-wise.

Costs:

2★->3★: 10,000 Hell
2★->4★: 25,000 Hell
4★->5★: 50,000 Hell
5★->6★: 100,000 Hell

After reaching 6★ you’ll no longer need to earn Evolution Points. Additionally you’ll be given 5 Sandwiches, 1 Red Orb, 100 Rubies, and 1 Evolution Experience Booster for each character that reaches 6★.

Awakening

Awakening is achieved either by getting a duplicate character in Gachapon (immediately raising that character’s Awakening level), or by spending Awakening Stones (the rainbow gems for Generics, or special per-character stones for Story Characters).

Awakening gives a small percentage boost every +1 awakening level, and either +1 Move or Range every +2 Awakening Levels.

Status Effects

Various characters can inflict status effects with passive (usually counters) or active skills. When used right many status effects can be devastating and deny their targets entire turns worth of action.

Sleep: Unable to act for duration of effect.  Attacking a sleeping character will wake them up. Amusingly, sleeping characters will join Team Attacks.

Stun: Unable to act duration of effect. Attacking a stunned character will not bring them out of it. 

Paralyze: Same effect as Stun.

Confuse: Will attack a random target with regular attacks only for duration of effect. They can target allies, but may will still target the enemy team if they’re in range. Attacking a confused character will bring them out of it. Confusion is best used when an enemy is in their attack range but not an ally; if only one target (or only enemies) are in their range, they’ll attack what’s in range rather than moving toward your characters. Confused targets may also simply not act if nothing is in their immediate range.

Blind: Adds a 50%(?) miss chance on all attacks for duration of effect. Two or more stacks of blind on the same target will completely prevent damage from attacks (certain other effects from skills may still occur).

Bind: Able to attack but not move. Most effective on short-range characters as it can make them completely waste turns if they cannot hit anything.

Burn: Character takes damage worth 5% of their total HP each turn while under the effect. Stacks with Burn/Poison, and if multiple stacks are present damage will be dealt multiple times per turn. Fire element characters can still be burned.

Poison: Same effect as Burn.

Regen: Same effect as Burn, but heals instead of hurts.

Skill Seal: Locks use of a character’s Skill 3 (their strongest skill) for the duration of the effect. Does not affect Cool Time count.

Shield: Shield adds an invisible health bar worth a certain percent of the unit’s total HP (dependant on skill), usually imparted by a passive skill. This invisible health bar will be depleted before your main health bar, showing 0 damage (and not removing the buff icon) if an attack is sustained that does not deal enough damage to “knock out” the shield.

The shield’s HP is not restored unless another effect that would impart Shield occurs; heals still go to your real HP. Unlike other de/buffs, Shield lasts until the invisible HP bar is depleted, amount of turns has no bearing on it’s effect.

Buff/Debuff: Many effects will raise/lower defense/attack/speed/critical percentage for a turn or two. All buffs/debuffs stack their effect (not duration) if multiple of the same type are inflicted on the same target. This can make a single unit extra powerful/extra worthless if properly stacked between their turns. A target with Speed debuffs stacked may miss several turns.

Gachapon

Gachapon pulls will only give 2 tiers: 2 star and 3 star. Only 3 star pulls will be “Story” characters (Laharl, Flonne etc.). The likelihood of 3 star pulls in general is 8%, though the exact percent per-character can be viewed (in Japanese) inside Makai War’s gachapon menu. Stats are subject to change at any time and thus won’t be listed here.

There is no benefit to rolling 10 characters instead of 1 at a time, other than spending less time.

Duplicates exist – Duplicates are “fused” with the one you already have for +1 Awakening level, giving a stat bonus.

Generics can be of different elements so you could get, for example, a Fire Female Warrior and an Tree Female Warrior. For some reason, Dark type generics are not currently in the regular gachapon pool.

The gachapon has a “mercy rule” where if you don’t get a 3★ character in 50 rolls (a very unlikely, but possible, event), your 51st roll is a guaranteed 3★ and you’ll get 100 Summon Stones to awaken that character as well. This counter is not shared between “banners”, so you’re unlikely to ever hit the limit on any gachapon other than the regular one (and only if very unlucky).

Items/Currencies

I’ll get icons for these in a bit. This list isn’t exhaustive of uses, so if I’m missing something please let me know!

 Hell 

Used to buy levels for units in place of Experience and upgrade Formations.

 Mana 

Mana is used to upgrade weapons.

 Rubies

The standard lesser-premium Currency, rubies are mostly used for the standard Gachapon at a rate of 300 per single-character pull.

 Sandwich

+50 AP, will exceed the AP cap temporarily so AP is never “wasted” from these. Eat by using the “items” (sandwich/clock) icon on the main screen.

 Skill Orbs

These level up a unit’s skill by one level. Red is for Active skills, blue is for Passive skills. They’re pretty rare, so use them sparingly and/or for people who you’re absolutely sure you’ll keep on your team; either grinding-focused characters or your favorites.

  Rainbow Potion

Rainbow Potions add Orange Experience which allows a character at level cap to exceed it’s level cap and add a star to it’s rarity.

 Experience Boosters

The Alarm Clock items boost Experience (green) or Evolution Points (orange) by 50% for a limited time. Best used with the weekly SP Quests that give huge amounts of EXP.

Diamonds (White Gems)

These are the premium currency, and are mostly used for a special 3★ Guaranteed gachapon (press the arrow key at the gachapon to see the diamond-only option). They can be used in place of Rubies wherever they are used.

Formations

Formations are unlocked through Story progress, and come with both a formation (duh) of your units, and respective stat buffs for each character in each formation slot. Formations can be upgraded with Hell (coins) to increase the stat buff.

Change formations at the “team select” screen before starting a mission, and upgrade them from the same screen with the blue button at the far right.

Equipment

Weapons

There are eight weapon types: Sword, Axe, Fist, Spear, Staff, Bow, Gun, Book.

They are all largely identical except each type of character can only equip one type of weapon; there is no changing weapon types like Disgaea. Also unlike disgaea, weapons do not use different attack stats or imbue different ranges; range is set by the character not weapon, and Attack is the only stat used to calculate damage.

Rather than having alternative types of weapons like other gear slots have, each individual weapon boosts a random stat: Attack, Defense, Critical Percent, Critical Damage, or Speed. This bonus stat increases with enhancements along with Attack. A weapon with no visible bonus has Attack as it’s bonus and will have higher Attack than other weapons with different bonuses.

Since you can only take 5 people with you in battle, you’ll need at the very most 5 of each weapon unless you have a lot of users of X weapon and like to hold different weapon “focuses” (crit chance, attack, defense etc).

Armor

There are four types of armor, all of which raise Defense plus bonus stats:

Breastplates: Boosts Defense by more than usual
Helmets: Boosts Def and HP
Gauntlets: Boosts Def and Attack
Boots: Boost Def and Speed

Boots are rarer, and are notable for having a (rarer still) chance of having +1 Move as an Enchantment effect. This Enchantment hasn’t been observed on other gear, and is very rare even on boots. To try and find it, farm many boots from the Armor SP quests, then upgrade the equipment to +6 to see if +1 Move is on them. If you’re feeling bold (or it’s already a good set of enhancements you want to keep) you can go to +9, but at/beyond that point the mana cost gets very high. It does not appear possible to get more than +1 Move on a single boot.

Accessories

There are six types of accessories:

Muscle: Boosts HP
Bracelet: Boosts Attack
Necklace: Boosts Defense
Earring: Boosts HP slightly and Speed
Feather: HP, +1 Move
Glasses: Attack and Critical Percent

Accessories provide a much smaller boost than Armor or Weapons. They’re often more useful for their enchantment pool than their base effects.

Earrings can only be found at the SP quests that cost 7 AP or more (4 Stars and up). The feather and glasses items are found at SP quests that cost 9AP or more (6 stars and up)

Magic Stones

Magic Stones (sometimes called Gems) act as an “accessory” slot and you can equip up to 3. Magic Stones can affect almost any stat and have three separate qualities.

Color: Color determines Set Bonus.
Effect: Exact stat that they buff, this determines per-level upgrades
Enchantments: Like other gear, every 3 levels on a Magic Stone will add a random bonus to almost any stat. Rare/Legendary magic stones have better enhancements.

Magic Stone Set Bonus

Set bonuses give 10% extra stats for 2 of the same color and 20% for 3 of the same color, with the exception of Status Resistance (unknown) and Criitcal Damage (20% and 40%). Here are the colors and what stats their set bonus affects:

Pink: HP
Orange: Attack
Green: Defense
Blue: Speed
Purple: Status Resistance
Red: Critical Rate
White:  Critical Damage

Note that a magic stones’ Effect is unrelated to its Color, so a magic stone with a color that buffs HP might give Attack as it’s Effect. Likewise, a Color set’s percentage bonus will still effect a unit even if all those stones don’t actually include that stat; the unit’s stat total will be buffed, not the stone’s.

Geo Symbols

Geo Symbols are hidden away in the “prinny camp” icon along with the In App Purchases, but Geo Symbols are bought with Mana. Geo Symbols act as a full-team permanent (but slight) buff rather than their usual Disgaea function.

Each upgrade level adds +1% of a stat (+1 point in case of speed) to certain effects. Note their color matches the Gem color for each stat as well, so they’re easy to remember. In the order presented in the menu, they are:

Pink: HP
Orange: Attack
Light green: Defense
Light blue: Speed
White: Critical Damage
Red: Fire Attack
Dark Blue: Water Attack
Dark Green: Tree attack
Yellow: Holy Attack
Purple: Dark Attack

Geo Symbols costs rise as they’re upgraded, making the earliest levels the best and safest investments. I personally upgrade them fairly evenly and prefer upgrading gear to +9 before upgrading geo symbols, but the effects are worth it long-term. Geo Symbol costs increase as such: 

5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 75,000, 100,00, 250,000, 500,000

Stages

Story

These are the main levels of the game and unlock various items as you progress. Go through as much of the story as you can first before messing with too much else. Story Levels cost AP to replay, but are free the first playthrough.

Once a story Chapter is complete, you can play a harder “purple” difficulty by pressing the lower right blue button at Stage Select. There will be a second set of missions with new completion rewards and Stars to earn.

SP Quests

SP Quests are special missions you can do a few times per day in exchange for AP and have specific rewards to help you focus your progress.

SP Quests have three types: Equipment Quests, Timed Events, and Character Episodes

Equipment Quests

These are the standard SP Quests that give a specific type of reward.

The first Equipment Quest is unlocked by reaching a point in the Story Missions (the end of the first chapter I think?). Each following quest is unlocked by beating other SP quests and unlocking more levels of each.

• No bonus (but helps unlock other SP quests)
  
  • Cat Mecha boss
• Weapons 1 (Swords, Spears, Bows, Fists)
  • Slumber Cat Boss
• Weapons 2 (Axes, Guns, Staffs, Books)
  • Shroom Boss
• Accessories (Glasses, Necklaces, Muscles, Feathers, Earrings, Bracelets)
  • Wood Golem Boss
• Gems 
  • Kitsune Boss
    • Rank 7: 8 AP,  Water type, 3654 XP, 25 Evo, 909 Rank points, 1300 Hell, 1900 Mana, one 4*-5* gem
• Gems 2
  • Dullahan Boss
    • Dullahans have the highest XP per AP spent in the SP quests

Equipment SP quests drop bonuses based on the following stage order:

5AP-7AP – ?
8AP 1: 3★  to 5★ (rarely) 
8AP 2  4★  to 5★  (more common)
9AP 1: 4★  to 6★  (rarely)
9AP 2: 5★  to 6★ 
10AP: 5* to 7* equipment

10 AP SP quests appear to be the only method to get 6 star/7 star equipment.

SP Quests can also drop random “premium” items at a low chance, including:

• 20-30 Rubies
• Large extra amount of Hell/Mana (10,000, 20,000, 75,000)
• Evo Potions (any size)
• XP vial (any size, element of the boss, 1-3 at a time)
• Tokens (the kind trading in characters give), 1 at a time
• Rainbow stones (very small numbers, very rare)

Weekly Timed Events

These events occur on specific weekdays only, and you may only complete Weeklies 3 per week. This means unlocking the highest level of each quest will take a couple weeks, so unlock while you can. Failing an event will waste your AP but does not reduce the amount of times you can complete that event for the day.

Times are all in Japanese Standard Time, not your local time. To see what time/day it is in Japan, use this clock.

Character Episodes

Makai Wars includes per-character “Episodes” in the SP quest section. They’re not time limited in most cases (time limited events always show a purple timer).

Completing a character episode gives 10 Awakening Stones for that character (1/10th of the way towards a single awakening), as well as 2 XP vials (M) for their type, 2 small Evo vials, 50 rubies, and 10 Large Rainbow Stones.

Regular Episode Quests cannot be repeated to repeat rewards, only specific time-limited events may have grindable rewards.

Note that as long as you have even one summon stone for a specific unit, you can summon them with enough Large Rainbow Stones. So even though 10 stones isn’t enough to summon a unit, it can help you call a single  character you really want. This is a good reason to save Rainbow Stones to summon instead of Awakening units.

The game currently has episodes for the following characters:

• Laharl
• Etna
• Valkyrie
• Freya
• Flonne
• Odin

Arena

Not sure when the Arena is unlocked yet, but it’s presumably a place to fight other people’s teams of characters. These are generally ways for whales to show off the fact that they wasted $5,000 a month on a mobile game.

Translations

Menu English Translations

Additionally, some basic menu translations for Makai Wars have been posted here! I’m in the process of making some graphics for the main menus myself.

4Koma Comics & Other Translations

/u/noroinohanako has also translated the Makai Wars 4Koma Comics, and has a Github project for corrections/translations of the rest where you can view or help with the translations!

4Koma Comics:

1-7
8-14
15-20
21

Raw Images to Translate

If anyone has the skills and or time and wants to translate some parts of Makai Wars, here’s some raw image dumps:

Loading screen tips (likely incomplete)

Story chapter 1-1  (from Reddit)

The Japanese originals of the 4koma comics (Official site)

IAP Translations

If you’re curious what an in app purchase means, look no further!

Starter Package

Lunch Box

Price: 
Items: 2 Sandwich (50 AP), 100 Gems, once a day for 15 days.
Total 30 Sandwich and 1,500 gems.

Dark Set

Price:
Items: 2 Dark Ticket, ?

Rank Rewards

Probably the most “worth it” item so far by a lot.

Price: ?
Items: This one adds “achievement” rewards every 10 ranks. If you’re already rank 50 you’ll just get all rewards instantly.

• Rank 10
  • Ruby x 1,400 
  • Sandwich x 5
• Rank 20
  • Ruby x 300
  • Hell x 50,000
• Rank 30
  • Blue Skill Orb x 2
  • Red Skill Orb x 2
• Rank 40
  • Ruby x 300
  • Mana x 500 (thousand?)
• Rank 50
  • Ruby x 300
  • Awakening Book

Normal IAP

Note that normal IAP for gems, while straightforward, will basically always be the worst way to spend your money; look for limited time/special offers, these are always more effective ways to spend your money (compare gems given in the straightforward IAP tiers to the rewards in almost any IAP pack).

Characters

Still working on getting these in the guide, we’re working on a Spreadsheet of Characters you can contribute to for english translations of skills!

Characters Outside Typical Gachapon

Certain “boss” characters and other characters are not included in the “main” gachapon. They include:

•  Dragon
  • Requires Dragon Ticket
    • 250 Tokens in the Token store
• Kitsune
  • Requires Kitsune Ticket
    • 250 Tokens in the Token store
• Dark Type generics
  • Requires Dark Tickets
    • Only one is in the main game, in Chapter 4. 
    • Two more can be bought as part of the Dark Package the game currently sells.
    • This means it’s nearly impossible to get dark units.

Grinding

The Dark Thief generic has a passive that raises Mana earned.

Artina has a passive that raises Hell earned.

Stage 4-5-3 (hard mode) is recommended for early (60-80s) level grinding due to it’s extreme shortness, ease, and guaranteed 4* gem drops.

Equipment

The easiest place to get equipment (up to 4 star) is actually Story Mode. Starting in 4-4-1, hard mode story levels will start to drop 4 star items and they’re beatable at a much lower level than the equivalent SP Quests would be.

Stage 4-5-3 (hard mode) is particularly good for 4 star Gems. The layout is a single Fire Dragon boss, very easily dispatched by any team who can make it to that level. It seems to drop a gem every time and a decent amount of experience (3,000).

Once you need 5* or above weapons, SP Quests start being required. Only SP quests will ever drop 6 or 7 star equipment.

Achievements

Here’s the rewards you can get per achievement.

Enhance a Gear Item to +15

Reward: 100 Rubies each
Max level: 10

Any type of gear (weapon, gem, etc) works, it’s best to use 1 star items because they’re the cheapest and you can sell them after getting them. Takes around 20,000 mana each item.

Level a character to 120

Reward: Gacha ticket (cycles between all 5 elements)
Max level: 20?

Worth it especially for the Dark Tickets, which are otherwise impossibly rare.

Reach Player Rank X

Reward: 100 Rubies
Max level: 20?

Just a minor bonus for playing a lot.

Clear Daily Mission X Times

Reward: 50 Rubies
Max level: ?

Pretty meh.

Acquire X different kinds of characters

Reward: Hell
Max level: 20, at 100 characters

Traded away gacha dupes still count. A meager bonus so don’t worry much about it.

Beat each level of SP quests

Each set of SP quest has 10 of these, the last two rewards are the most meaningful: at level 9 you get 10 2 star character Rainbow Stones, and at level 10 you get a Gacha Ticket (never a Dark one though).

Evolve characters X Times

Reward: Red Skill Orb
Max level: 20, 100 evolutions

Use Skill Orbs X Times

Reward: Hell
Max level: ?

Pull Gacha X Times

Reward: Blue Skill Orb

Makai Wars FAQ

Q: I’m not earning AP over time!/ The Gachapon loads forever!

A: Update the game, this was a bug in an old version.

Q: I can’t start a mission even though I have enough AP!

This is usually because you have too many equipped items, sell some in the Equipment menu, starting with your worst, least important items.

Q: I keep rerolling the tutorial Gachapon and I can’t get (X)!

A: The tutorial Gachapon in Makai Wars is special and will only return one 3★ character, and it cannot be certain characters like Etna, Asagi, etc.

Q: I get a strange error message that says 504 and a bunch of Japanese

A: 504 is a Gateway Timeout error; basically your device couldn’t connect to Makai Wars’ servers, and the game is Always Online so it can’t continue. This may happen due to server issues at the game’s side, or internet issues at your side. There’s not much to do but keep trying, and try again later if it doesn’t clear up in a few seconds.

Q: How do I get Makai Wars if I’m not from Japan?

A: Japanese VPNs, APKs, stuff like that. There’s a lot of guides out there for similar games. I can’t personally help you there due to grey areas, but Google will probably get you started.

Q: Where is (Character)?

A: If they’re not in Makai Wars but they’re in the title screen graphic, they’re sure to be added soonish. Otherwise, characters will likely be added to the game based on popularity. I’ve only listed characters currently in Makai Wars.

Q: When is Makai Wars coming out in English?

A: Between many months from now to never. There’s no official announcement of when or even if it’s coming at the moment. I asked NISA PR and (of course) it’s not officially planned, but these things are never known until they’re announced.

Addendum

Character reference (Japanese)

Credits

Tristen – Some miscellaneous info to help get me started

Gamy.jp – Tier list and character info

/r/Disgaea Various minor info about Makai Wars

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