[Ultimate] KoF All Stars Guide for Beginners (Progression, Rerolling, Team Building)

Overview

In this in depth tutorial, I will be giving you a complete guide for progressing well in this game by warning you about the mistakes new players can make while playing this game.

Game Mechanics

In this game, you get to utilize a team of 3 fighters alongside 3 strikers(one for each fighter) to take on your enemies. You do not always have to use 3 fighters and 3 strikers at all. Some people just use 1 fighter and make him/her really strong.

Fighters are separated into 3 types:

• Attack – These types have high damage and low defense. Hits hard but also dies easily like paper.
• Defense – These types have high defense and low attack. Lasts longer in battle but doesn’t hit hard.
• Balanced – A more well rounded fighter with balanced stats.

Strikers are supports that can help aid you in battle by doing damage or providing some sort of crowd control such as stun, freezes, healing and super armor etc.

A fighter will always 3 active skills, 1 finisher and at least 1 special card finisher which you can only use by equipping the special card.

Skills can also be classified into 4 types:

• Strike – It is the fist icon. Most fighters will have this type of skill. And most of the time, it is a melee attack.
• Blast – This is the hand with a red triangle icon. Some fighers will have this and usually it is a ranged attack such as fire balls, projectiles or a close range projectile.
• Grab – This is the hand that looks like its grabbing something icon. Grabs are a bit more rare to come by and are usually available to grappler type fighters. Grabs cannot be blocked unless the enemy has super armor. In that case, the enemy will only take damage and it won’t be grabbed.
• Finisher – Every fighter will have this. Finisher skills can be either strike, blast or grab skills. Keep in mind that Finisher skills cannot be blocked or negated by super armor. It will blow right through super armor. So use this to your advantage in fights against tough bosses.
• Launch – This is the up arrow icon. This is only found on support skills. This means that the skill will launch enemies into the air. This is great for extending combos.
• Normal Attack String – Every fighter’s normal attack string is different. Most will have anywhere from 5-8 hits to complete it. The best normal attacks are the ones that are fast and can launch enemies into the air. Examples are Mai Shurani and Orochi Leona.
• Core – A fighter’s core can make or break the him/her. Some will have really good cores that improves the fighters fighting capabilities in certain types of scenarios. For example, Mai Shurani 95 has cooldown reduction for active skills and burn damage, which are very good cores to have in PvE.

The available game modes in the game are:

• Story Mode – This is where you go through the KoF story mode from 95 to 98. You will get a lot of rubies by completing it from normal to expert mode. It comes out to about 20k rubies excluding player acheivement rewards. Always try to get as far as you can.
• Power Up Dungeons – This is where you farm to power up your fighters. This includes farming gold, experience, evolving and limit breaking your fighters. The Tower of Trials is also here for those that want a challenge. The enemies get stronger as your progress and defeating them grants extra items that will help you get to end game.
• Special Events – Any missions/collaborations that are not part of the main story or farming will be listed here. You can get some good battle cards and free fighters every month.
• Soul Quest – This allows you to limit break your fighters. All fighters can only get up to level 60 from evolving. Getting to 90 requires limit breaking.
• Epic Quest – Allows you to take on harder bosses and earn new fighters and some special cards which you should not miss out.
• Team Chain Quest (Coming soon) – This mode allows you to get Original Zero (Red, Defense) after a few weeks of farming. However, it is only on JP server at the time of writing.

Re-rolling

Now I am sure some of you will be tempted to re-roll for really good fighters. Do not worry if you missed a few OP fighters, they will always have banner re-runs unless it is limited.

For pulling limited festival fighters (purple border), it is 27000 rubies for the guaranteed pull. For some special/collab fighters, it will be 18000 rubies for guaranteed pull. It costs 9000 rubies for guaranteed Battle Card summons.

When it comes to re-rolling, you want to optimize for the best fighters. This process can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 1 hour, depending on your will and concentration. It can be very time consuming if you want to get the best head start.

Here are some good fighters to re-roll for:

• Orochi Leona 97 – Has guard cancel + super armor, shock damage and tonnes of damage
• Original Zero 01 – Has guard cancel, super armor + immunity, stun reflect and super good specials.
• Omega Rugal 98 – Has a unblockable attack, stun with super armor and immunity. Also regains health below 50% hp + super armor. Very powerful in PvP.
• Geese XIV – Super armor, big damage, stun and immunity.
• Orochi 97 (Coming to Global soon) – Has health regen, super armor and immunity + good 3 bar special that hits everyone.
• Lady Chang Koehan – Very hard to be juggled, has super armor that can counter as long as she is standing. Also can stun and is immune to stun.
• Orochi Iori 97 (Optional) – Quick PvE killer and a great leader skill for attack types.
• Goenitz 96 (Optional) – Can do infinite combo for PvE, which is super useful against tough bosses.
• Igniz 01 (Coming to Global soon)
• Ash Crimson 03 (Coming to Global soon)
• Terry Bogard 03 (Coming to Global soon)
• Kyo NESTS XIII (Coming to Global soon)

Keep in mind that a lot of them are not available unless their banner is up, so the most common ones to re-roll are Orochi Leona and Orochi Iori.

Now Orochi Iori might be a popular pick for re-rolling due to his insane damage in PvE and a rainbow leader skill for attack type fighters with -10% DEF in exchange for +60% ATK. However, his PvP is lacking and if you want to do well in both areas, I suggest the others.

Why? Because he doesn’t have super armor nor damage immunity. Neither does Goenitz. That means they are easily countered by super armor. PvP in league and arena matches give bonus rubies each week, so you don’t want to do too poorly and affect your long term ruby gains. They may get a buff in the future though.

For those that want a quick run down on the re-roll process, here it is thanks to xArceDuce:

Thanks to how the KR buffs basically decided to pass on Orochi Iori, I think it’s best to just update the reroll guide with a new one since Orochi Iori is no longer really even worth the rerolling in the current time.

[New Updated Rerolling guide]

• Download medium and don’t download all to shorten download

• Skip Tutorial (Top left button)

• Clear Chapter ’94 up to chapter 3 (Athena fight)

• (You can skip Kensou’s fight by pressing pause and leaving)

• Go to Home screen

• Go to Gacha/Summon menu

• Summon for Jin/Kazuya/XIV Geese

• If not, uninstall/reinstall or delete cache via root in emulator

• Repeat/rinse

[“What different?”]

You’re not rerolling by clearing the normal ’94 arc unlike Orochi Iori/Leona in the secret shop. You’re rerolling by only getting to Athena in normal ’94 arc, cutting like +15 fights away from the rerolling process for only one multi instead of two.

The time to reroll basically got reduced from like 30-40 minutes to like one reroll every 10-12 minutes.

Progression

In KOFAS, you get to use most of the KoF roster from 94-99 right from the get go. Early on, you will be receiving 5 free fighters from Growth Missions and Battle Card Mission:

• Kyo 96 (Purple, Balanced)
• Terry 96 (Yellow, Attack)
• Vice 98 (Red, Defense)
• Mature 96 (Green, Defense)

Athena 96 (Blue, Attack) is also free from growth mission quests.

Mature 96 will be a key member of your PvE team later on in Epic Quest against a boss called Hidden Wrath Chizuru with her bleed stacking, so you will want to keep that in mind.

In addition to that, you will get to select a special card, option card and set card upon completing the Battle Card mission:

• Special Card – Choose the special skill for your Favorite Fighter
• Option Card – Get Strategic Retreat or Unreal Peace (they give cooldown reduction for active skills)
• Set Card – Get Kula (Favorite Food) parts for bonus attack power upon completing this set.. This is the most versatile set that can be used on most attackers and gives the most combat power.

Resources

Now as an F2P player, your ruby gains will be limited and therefore it you want to be highly selective in who you try to pull. In this section we will break down the resources you need in this game.

Getting to level 100 and completing most achievements + story mode will net you 30,000+ rubies, which is good for a guaranteed festival fighter summon.

Rubies

These are the real money currency and are hard to come by for F2P players. Story mode gives the most initial chunk of rubies. Here are the rough guidelines:

Normal Mode (Level 1-70):

• 9 rubies for clearing objectives
• 10 rubies for 1st clear + full clear

Hard Mode  (Level 44-80):

• 12 rubies for clearing objectives
• 12 rubies for 1st clear + full clear

Expert Mode (Level 61-90):

• 15 rubies for clearing objectives
• 16 rubies for 1st clear + full clear

Each time you complete a chapter, you get 10 rubies. On top of that, you also get a full objective bonus clear reward per chapter of 100, 150 and 200 rubies respectively for normal, hard and expert respectively.

Then you got Ryo vs Statue and Car Destroying, and that gives a bonus 3000 rubies for all story modes.

All in all, you get a grand total of 20769 rubies from story mode.

Other sources include:

• Ranking up gives 1550 rubies when you hit level 100 with rank up achievement bonus.
• Once you have collected up to 100 fighters, you will get 780 rubies.
• Raising affinity of fighters to level 9 also gives 50 rubies each.
• Daily missions will give you 80 rubies.
• Watching the ad for recommended items in the shop gives 30 rubies.
• PvP League and Arena Match gives 40 and 45 rubies weekly minimum at Bronze ranking. If you are serious and climb daily, you can get as high as 300+ rubies for each tournament weekly.
• Time Attack can give you 25+ rubies daily if you are good at fast clears. The weekly version can net you 300 rubies if you have fast runs.

Gold

Another resource you will need for limit breaking fighters, upgrading battle cards and crafting items. You can get gold from most events and the gold dungeon.

The highest gold dungeon difficulty is only available 3 times daily. It gives 50,000 gold per run. Try to get to at least +50% gold bonuses. This would put you at 75,000 gold per run for a total of 225,000 gold daily.

You get % gold bonuses through the King set, which gives 12.6% more gold. You will need 3 sets of these cards on 3 fighters for the gold farming team.

There are also specific fighters that will give you gold gain % when pairing with certain strikers. They include:

+15% Gold Gain

• Robert 98 + Yuri 97
• King 98 + King 95

+12% Gold Gain

• Robert 97 + Yuri 97
• Robert 96 + Yuri 96

+6% Gold Gain

• Robert 95 + Takuma 95
• Robert 95 + Ryo 96
• Robert 94 +Takuma 94
• Robert 94 + Ryo 94
• King 94 + King 95
• King 94 + King 96

So most versions of Robert paired with a striker from Art of Fighting will have some sort of bonus gold gain. You will want them as your dedicated gold farming team. They don’t need to be max level to work. My gold farming team is only level 60.

Souls and Limit Breaking

Once you get your fighters to level 60 by evolving, you will start needing character, element/rainbow souls to get your fighter to level 90. It is a costly process.

• 61 to 70 -> 10k gold 10 character/element/rainbow souls per level
• 71 to 80 -> 20k gold 20 character/element/rainbow souls per level
• 81 to 90 -> 30k gold 30 character/element/rainbow souls per level

So you can see the gold sink there. Also, the character souls can be hard to get if they are either limited festival fighters or collaboration fighters. Those can only be limit broken usually by either gold AS souls, element souls or rainbow souls.

Keep as many gold AS souls, element and rainbow souls for limited fighters. When collaboration ends for limited fighters, you cannot get their souls via Soul Dungeon.

Always get souls for festival fighters(purple border) via Soul Dungeon.

You can also buy fighter souls from the exchange shop via soul dusts, which can be gotten via selling unwanted fighter souls.

Battle Cards

Once you have maxed out fighters, the battle cards is what will make your fighter from good to excellent. There are a few very OP cards that you want for pretty much most fighters.

The 2 most OP cards are the following:

Unreal Peace and Strategic Retreat

These 2 cards give the most OP stat in the game -> cooldown reduction of skills. Having both cards for any fighter will greatly improve their damage over time as they can spam skills more often. Having both at max level gives -3.8 seconds on all skills!

Some fighters can also do infinite combos in PvE. That makes them extremely OP since once an enemy gets hit its game over unless the person messes up the combo. Some examples are:

• King 94
• Mai 95
• Blue Mary 97
• Goenitz 96
• Orochi Leona 97

Here are some video examples:

For set cards, the most versatile set is the Favorite Things set. It provides 15% attack and bonus 17.8% attack when the fighter crits. Works well very almost all Attack and Balanced fighters.

Stick with this set. Other good sets are the FES sets, but they can only be gotten when the banner arrives and is quite limited.

Other sets like the Sibling Training set is good for Time Attack as it allows characters to spam their ultimates to stop the time counter for faster runs.

Another good set is the Hobbies set. Works wonders for PvE auto mode. Anytime your fighter gets hit, they gain power and it allows them to spam their ultimates quickly. If you don’t have any good 5 star sets, this is the budget set to use.

Enhancing Battle Cards

When enhancing battle cards, aside from using skill enhancement cards, it is best to use 4 star cards you don’t need, skill them up to level 5 skill level and evolve them to 5 stars for the best skill up chances. Below is a chart that will give you a good idea.

Check out his guide here: https://www.reddit.com/r/KOFALLSTAR/comments/e6fkc3/how_to_upgrade_battle_card_skills_the_right_way/

Team Building

Now at the start of the game, your team building is quite limited since you can’t be building full teams for each element and type. That is more for end game.

You always want to use a fighter with a good leader skill that will benefit the rest of the members. For a list of leader skills, check this page.

What I suggest for early game is to focus on 1 element or type that will get you to end game. For example, you can try and start with:

• 2 strong fighters of a different element
• 5 fighters, 1 for each element

This well narrow down your focus to only these fighters to prevent yourself from spreading your resources too thin at the the beginning.

Choosing 2 Strong Fighters

If you take this route, I suggest the following pairs:

Attack Type

• Mai 95 + Kyo 95
• Mai 95 + Yuri 95
• Orochi Iori 97 + Whatever Element Attack Type

Mai 95 is the popular pick since she gives 25% attack and hp for attack types. And you do not need to re-roll for days compared to Orochi Iori.

Kyo 95 is also a good pick. Does a lot of damage and does well with Mai 95 to tackle Blue stages.

Yuri 95 and Mai 95 is another good combo. Yuri 95 as Mai 95 striker will give her -2 second cooldown, which is vital to doing the infinite combo.

Balanced Type

• Orochi Leona 97 + Kyo 98

This pairing allows you to clear all content, including Epic Quest as Kyo 98’s leader skill allows other balanced attackers to have burn damage. Very useful for Epic Quest 0 Chapter 3 and 5, which you will need to clear to get the 3 bar special for Chizuru.

Defense Type

• Shermie 97
• Andy 98
• Chizuru 96

Shermie 97 has the most versatile leader skill, giving 60% attack bonus to everyone as long as you have 70% health or higher. If you are good at dodging, this is the best leader skill.

Andy 98 gives bleed damage and improves bleed damage for green element, which is perfect for Mature 96 and will take care of Epic Quest boss for Chapter 3 and 5-3. Also since you get Vice 98 for free, she can also be a good defense leader with bonus 35% attack.

Chizuru 96 is a super tank that takes very little damage. If you want a safe pick that doesn’t die easily, equip her with Hobbies set and a healing striker and you have a very tanky fighter. She is excellent for Live PvP to troll Attack type fighters.

Tip: I do not recommend going for Defense teams as they take a bit too long to finish most PvE content. Stick with Attack and Balanced types.

Choosing 5 fighters, 1 for each element

This requires a bit more resources, but will pay off in the long run when you cover all elements.

You are going to need either of these as the leaders:

• Orochi Iori 97 or Mai 95 for Attack Type
• Orochi Leona 97 for Balanced Type

I personally started with:

Both Mai 94 and Kyo 96 are free, so I covered all elements with these 5. Later on I was able to save enough rubies to pull the limited collaboration Tekken fighters.

Again, the more popular and easiest way is Mai 95 + 1 Attack Type. No need for re-rolls and she can help clear all PvE content. The only issue with Attack Types are Live PvP. But if you don’t play that mode, then this won’t matter.

Conclusion

Hopefully this gave you a good perspective on what to do in the game. Ultimately, you don’t have to play the game this way. Just pick whoever you like and enjoy it. You will be able to complete PvE content with pretty much any fighter.