Everything you need to know about farming for upgrade materials!
In this post:
Introduction
Hi folks! Welcome back to another post on my blog, GameFi Nexus.
If you’re a fan of mobile RPGs, then you’re no stranger to the grind.
You already know what to expect — log in to claim daily drops, replay through the same content to collect rewards, use them to power-up your account.
Guild of Guardians (GoG) has its own version of this. You can progress through the first two stages quickly, but eventually, you’ll settle into a daily game of inches.
Progressing “quickly” means being as consistent and thorough as you can to maximize your gains in the least amount of time.
It can be daunting to establish that routine when you’re still learning about the game, its systems and its collectibles.
I prepared this guide to help you figure out what you need to do every day to make sure you’re hitting all of the items you need to power-up as much as possible.
In this article, we’ll cover why it’s important to grind in GoG, how to set a daily routine, and we’ll go through where to get every upgrade material.
Let’s get started!
Why Farming Is Important in GoG
- Upgrading Guardians
- Crafting and upgrading Gear
- Unlocking and playing game modes
- Ranking higher on leaderboards
Let’s begin with the obvious question: “Why would you spend all this time repeating the same content over and over again?”.
The answer in a traditional mobile game would be something akin to beating the hardest content, conquering the strongest opponents, and flexing to your friends.
GoG, however, is a Web3 game, meaning that you can do all those things AND earn at the same time.
Let’s see how that breaks down.
Upgrading your Guardians
Your Guardians are at the heart of everything. The stronger they are, the better you perform in the game.
The basic way to upgrade them is to increase their level using XP Scrolls to give them a bonus to their three primary stats — hit points (HP), defense (DEF) and attack (ATK).
Every 10 levels, you can upgrade one of their skills by using Wisdom Dust. The higher the skill level, the stronger it is.
On top of that, you can increase your Guardian’s diamond rating through Enlightenment to receive an incrementally bigger bonus to their primary stats.
Enlightenment requires faction souls, duplicate copies of your for your Core One and Gen One Guardians, or cracked hearts for Founders and Early Adopters.
The last upgrade path for your Guardians is Radiance. You unlock Radiance by ascending it with Ascension Seals.
Radiance grants them a bonus to their base primary stats.
You can increase a Guardian’s Radiance level by using a duplicate that’s already ascended when you enlighten them. Success isn’t guaranteed, and you can use Radiant Souls to improve your odds.
There’s quite a bit to know about Enlightenment and Radiance. For more information, check out this guide from the GoG team!
Crafting and Upgrading Gear
Gear has a huge impact on your Guardians’ performance in the game!
It gives important bonuses to your primary stats and each piece can include up to three additional secondary stats, like crit chance, evade, armor penetration and so on…
Crafting gear is done at the Forge using crafting materials. You can then upgrade that gear using Power Crystals.
Each Guardian can equip an artifact that’s unique to them. These items give a big bonus to one of the primary attributes and transform one of their corresponding Guardian’s skills.
You need Star Stones and Cosmic Stones to upgrade artifacts.
Crafting and gear is another deep topic that I’ll cover in an upcoming guide.
Unlocking and Playing Game Modes
When you start playing GoG, you can only access Adventure Mode and Endless Mode.
Arena Mode unlocks when you beat the Lava Mines in Brimstone, and Boss Rush unlocks when you beat the Mire of Truth in Deadlands.
Playing Arena, Boss Rush and Endless rewards you with in-game currencies you can use to purchase even more upgrade materials in the shop.
Check out my guide on in-game currencies to learn more!
The quicker you upgrade your squad, the faster you’ll unlock these game modes, and the more rewards you’ll collect!
Ranking on Leaderboards
Ranking on leaderboards is the main way to earn $GOG tokens in Guild of Guardians.
You can then use it to purchase other Guardians on the secondary market, purchase Ascension Seals from Eri’s Store or trade it on an exchange.
Check out this post from the GoG team to get a sense of what weekly leaderboard payouts are like.
It stands to reason that the more powerful your squad is, the better your rankings will be, and the more rewards you’ll receive.
That’s why it’s important to consistently farm for upgrade materials to boost your Guardians and gear every day.
Doing so lets you maintain or improve your rank to generate a steady stream of weekly rewards.
Getting into a daily routine is the best and most effective way to make sure you maximize your time and your progress. Let’s have a look at that next.
How to Build a Daily Routine
- About Daily Resets
- Sweeping Adventure Mode Challenge Dungeons
- Crafting
- Summoning Heroes
- Shopping
- Upgrading Guardians
- My Routine
So, what would a daily routine look like in GoG?
In an ideal world, you would optimize your schedule to improve your squad as much as you can before you attempt any gameplay where you rank for leaderboard rewards.
In this section, we’ll go through each of the steps involved to make sure you hit everything.
Ultimately, your time zone and personal schedule will dictate what’s possible, so think of this more as a general guide.
About Daily Resets
Resets refer to the time of day when certain features become available again. The goal of your routine should be to clear all of the content before the next reset.
In that sense, they’re fundamental to your routine because you’ll have to set your schedule according to these deadlines.
There are two main daily resets to keep in mind.
The first one occurs at 12:00 a.m. UTC and includes:
- Daily rewards
- Daily quests
- Adventure mode challenge attempts
- Adventure and crafting energy refill limits
- Boss Rush rewards
The second reset occurs at 4:00 a.m. UTC and includes:
- Free and purchased Endless attempts
- Free and purchased Arena attempts
- Free and purchased Boss Rush attempts
- Most daily items in the in-game store
- Free daily/weekly chests and summoning stone in the store
Those times correspond to 8 p.m. and midnight in my time zone. As a result, I have to farm and upgrade everything the night before and leave the gameplay for the following morning to be as efficient as possible.
Here’s how it breaks down.
Sweeping Adventure Mode Challenge Dungeons
The first time you play a level in Adventure mode, you complete three increasingly harder and longer dungeons that unpack the game’s story.
Once you complete these three dungeons, you unlock three challenge levels that you can replay a certain number of times per day.
Defeating a challenge level unlocks the option to “sweep it”. Sweeping is GoG’s version of auto-complete. You spend 1 adventure energy to farm the dungeon’s resources once.
Sweeping rooms on a daily basis is incredibly important because it earns you all of the upgrade materials you need to improve your squad.
Challenge 2 dungeons reward you with Power Stones, crafting materials, gold, Commander XP, XP scrolls and rare Guardian shards. You can attempt these three times per day each.
Challenge 3 dungeon rewards are similar, but include epic Guardian shards and often drop better crafting material chests. You can attempt these twice per day each.
I personally don’t bother with Challenge 1 dungeons because the rewards aren’t really worth spending the energy.
Your Adventure energy meter holds a total of 10 points and refills at a rate of 1 point/hour (or 1/50 minutes if you own an Energy Booster).
To be as efficient as possible, you’ll want to avoid having your energy meter fill up for extended periods of time. That means you’ll want to set yourself regular reminders to spend it all every 10 hours.
You’ll also want to avoid over-spending on rubies to refill your energy meter for nothing. You can do this simply by figuring out how many refills you need on top of the 24 energy you’ll receive daily.
For example, if you’ve unlocked all of the Challenge dungeons in Brimstone, then you’ll need:
2 x 4 x 3 + 2 x 4 x 2 = 40 total energy — 24 energy/day = 16 energy deficit
At a rate of three energy per refill, you’ll need 6 refills per day to farm every challenge 2 and 3 dungeons.
Eventually, you’ll notice that you run out of energy and refills before you finish sweeping every dungeon. When you reach that point, you’ll want to prioritize the later stages for more and better drops.
Crafting
Crafting is one of the most important mechanics in the game because gear gives your Guardians substantial bonuses.
You craft gear using crafting materials you generate with your material factories. Each one costs 3 crafting energy and awards you with 30 Commander XP.
Commander levels increase the level cap of your heroes, so you’ll want to spend as much crafting energy as you can daily to increase it.
Basic crafting materials, like cloth, leather and steel, are used to craft common and rare gear. You need a second type of crafting material to produce epic and legendary gear.
Although your factories do occasionally drop these rarer materials, the best source are the material chests that drop from Challenge rooms.
That’s why I start my daily routine by sweeping as many of them as I can, then spending all of my crafting energy and all the refills.
I then use all of those crafting materials to craft the best gear I can manage and swap it into my Guardians’ loadouts.
Summoning Heroes
Upgrading your Guardians’ enlightenment and radiance levels is a great way to power them up to tackle harder content…and it requires a lot of duplicates, faction souls and radiant souls.
As you sweep Challenge rooms, you’ll start collecting more and more Guardian shards. When you get 60 of them, you can summon that particular Guardian into your inventory.
You can then choose to sacrifice those Guardians for faction souls, or save them as duplicates for later.
You can choose to ascend your duplicate Guardians first using Ascension Seals to sacrifice them for Radiant Souls.
Once you ascend them, you can use them at the Altar of Sacrifice to create the Cracked Hearts you need to upgrade Founder and Early Adopter Guardians.
You can also choose to use Summoning Stones and Calling Crystals to farm additional faction and radiant souls. I personally like to save them for a chance to get free Gen One Guardians later on.
Since increasing enlightenment and radiance takes a lot of resources, you won’t find yourself doing it every day.
I would recommend planning ahead and completing this step before you tackle any content to improve your performance.
Shopping
The in-game shop is a great source of free upgrade materials. Many of them require currencies that you obtain from daily rewards and gameplay.
For a more detailed explanation of GOG’s in-game currencies and how to get them, check out the GoG Currency Guide I posted on my blog.
For some reason, a few of these items reset on a different schedule than the rest of the game, so it may be hard to incorporate them into your routine.
The important thing is to collect them daily even if you can’t use them in before completing content.
Here’s a list of the shop’s upgrade materials, where to find them and when they reset.
- Free daily chest in the Premium section under Limited Chests resets at 4 am UTC
- Free Summoning Stone in the Premium section under Summoning resets at 4 am UTC
- Faction Souls (weekly only) and daily Wisdom Dust in the Rush Store General Offers resets at 9 pm UTC
- Gold, Power Stones and Calling Crystals in the Arena Store Wares reset at 11 am UTC
- XP Scrolls and Cosmic Stones in the Endless Store’s item section reset at 6 pm UTC
Upgrading Guardians
Now that you’ve collected all of the building blocks, you can finally upgrade your Guardians.
For clarity, that means:
- Using any XP scrolls to increase their levels
- Using Power Stones to upgrade their gear
- Swapping in any new, higher-tier gear
- Enlightening them if possible using duplicates, Faction Souls and Radiant Souls
It may not seem like a big deal to do this step before tackling any content, but it can mean graduating to a new difficulty tier in Endless or unlocking a skill upgrade.
When you’re competing for leaderboard spots, anything can help.
My Routine
Here’s what my routine looks like in practice using my local time, or UTC-4.
8 pm EST — First Reset
- Sweep all Challenge 2 and 3 rooms in Requiem 2, Deadlands and Brimstone using all of my energy refills and any banked adventure energy
- Use all of my crafting energy, refills and material chests to craft a piece of legendary T6 gear
- Convert any Guardian Shards into Guardians and sacrifice them for Faction Souls. Ascend Guardians as needed to enlighten or craft Cracked Hearts
- Use in-game currencies I acquired the day before to purchase upgrade materials from the in-game store
- Upgrade my heroes’ levels and gear, and enlighten them if possible
- Swap in new T6 gear
- Complete Boss Rush
- Complete Arena
12 am EST — Second Reset
- Go to 🛏️!
4 am EST — Third Reset
- Still sleeping…😴
7 am EST — Wake Up
- Collect daily login rewards, free daily chest and summoning stone
- Spend accumulated adventure energy to sweep remaining challenge rooms
- Spend accumulated crafting energy and remaining refills
- Purchase Arena store upgrade materials
- Upgrade Guardian levels and gear
- Complete Endless runs
Depending on when that four hour window between the first and second reset falls in your day, you may have to split your gameplay like I do to maximize the return on your time.
GoG isn’t a game where you can catapult yourself to the top unless you have serious disposable income to burn.
By building a routine that works for your schedule, you can make sure you’re hitting up every opportunity to power-up your account.
Do it for 40 days, and it will become like second-nature.
You should also notice yourself making headway up the leaderboards relative to other free-to-players and light-spenders who don’t build the same level of consistency.
Upgrade Materials
In this section, I’ll go over every consumable item used to upgrade your squad. I’ll explain briefly what each one is for, and how to get them.
It’s intended to be a reference, so please don’t feel like you need to read through the entire thing. I’ve included a lot of links to navigate back and forth as needed.
Guardian Upgrade Materials
Experience Scrolls
Experience scrolls are used to give the target Guardian a fixed amount of experience. They come in three varieties — small, medium and large. Each gives a progressively bigger XP bonus.
You can collect these scrolls by:
- Claiming daily rewards
- Completing daily challenges
- Completing referral quests
- Opening the treasure box in the crafting screen after you craft enough materials
- Collecting Endless rewards
- Completing Adventure Mode rooms
- Purchasing them from the Endless store
Wisdom Dust
Wisdom dust is used to upgrade a Guardian’s skill level. The number required depends on the Guardian’s rarity and current skill level.
You can get Wisdom Dust by:
- Sweeping Challenge 3 rooms
- Purchasing them from the Item Store and Rush Store in the in-game shop
- Completing Achievement Quests
- Completing Referral Quests
- Purchasing them from Merchant and Blacksmith shops you encounter in dungeons
Faction Souls
Faction souls are used as one of the inputs to raise a Guardian’s enlightenment level. There are three types of faction souls corresponding to the Imperial (blue), Redeemer (red) and Keeper (green) factions.
You can collect faction souls by:
- Sacrificing a Guardian from the corresponding faction
- Purchasing them from the Rush shop
- Using souls chests you receive from the daily login reward or from the Endless reward board
Radiant Souls
Radiant souls are used to increase the odds of raising a Guardian’s radiance level when you enlighten them.
If your Guardian reaches their maximum enlightenment level, you can try increasing their radiance again by using a fixed amount of radiance souls.
The only way to acquire radiant souls is to sacrifice an ascended Guardian
Cracked Hearts
Cracked hearts are used in place of a duplicate copy when you enlighten a Founder or Early Adopter Guardian.
There are three rarities of Cracked Hearts — rare, epic, and legendary. You have to use a Cracked Heart matching the Guardian’s rarity when you enlighten them.
The only way to get a cracked heart is by sacrificing a set number of ascended Guardians at the Altar of Sacrifice.
Ascension Seals
Ascension seals are used to convert a Guardian you collect in the game to an on-chain asset you can trade, sacrifice and sell.
Each Guardian has an ascension cost that varies based on the number of ascended copies in circulation.
The only way to get Ascension Seals is to purchase them from the in-game store or from Eri’s Shop.
Gear Upgrade Materials
Power Stones
Power Stones are used to give a piece of gear a set amount of XP. There are three tiers of Power Stones — small, medium, and large.
You can collect Power Stones by:
- Collecting daily rewards
- Completing daily quests
- Completing Referral quests
- Completing Adventure Mode dungeons
- Opening the treasure chest in the crafting screen after you create enough materials
- Collecting them from the Endless reward board
- Purchasing them from the Arena store
- Salvaging any piece of gear
Star Stones
Star Stones are used to upgrade a Guardian’s unique artifact. The number of star stones required depends on the artifact’s current level.
You can get Star Stones by:
- Salvaging another artifact
- Ranking in the top three of your Endless leaderboard on Gold tier or higher
- Purchasing them from the Endless shop
Cosmic Stones
Cosmic stones are also used to upgrade a Guardian’s unique artifact. Unlike Star Stones, Cosmic Stones are only required every 20 levels. Cosmic Stones come in two rarities — epic and legendary.
You can get Cosmic Stones by:
- Salvaging an epic or legendary artifact
- Purchasing epic Cosmic Stones from the Endless shop
Crafting Materials
Crafting materials are used to craft strength, agility and intelligence gear in the Forge. There are two types of crafting materials that I’ll dub primary and secondary.
Primary cramaterials are used to craft all rarities of gear. Secondary crafting materials are needed to craft epic and legendary pieces of gear.
Each type of gear corresponds to a primary and secondary crafting material:
- Strength gear: iron and stone
- Agility gear: leather and bone
- Intelligence gear: cloth and wood
You can only get primary materials from using item factories in your crafting screen.
Item factories will occasionally drop secondary materials, however your main source of them will come from the tiny materials chests you farm from sweeping Challenge Rooms 2 and 3.
Summoning Materials
Summoning Stones
Summoning Stones are used to summon Guardians from the regular in-game banner. Each stone summons a single Guardian chosen at random based on the current banner odds.
You can get Summoning Stones by:
- Collecting daily rewards
- Completing Adventure and Achievement quests
- Completing Referral quests
- Collecting them from the Endless reward board
- Purchasing them from the Guild store
- Purchasing them from the Item store once a week
- Opening free weekly chests
Calling Crystals
Calling crystals are used to summon Guardians from the premium in-game banner. Each stone summons a single Guardian based on the current banner odds.
The only way to get Calling Crystals for free is to buy them from the Arena store at a rate of five per week.
Prayers
Prayers are on-chain items you can sacrifice at the Altar of Sacrifice to receive a Guardian. So far, there are only two types of prayers.
The first generation of prayers were released during the grand opening of Eri’s Store. They summon a random Core One or Gen One Guardians when sacrificed.
They come in three rarities — rare, epic and legendary. Each rarity has better odds of summoning a legendary Guardian.
The latest prayers were released for the Call of the Wild Event and are used to summon Tamamo. You can read about the event here.
The only way to get additional prayers is to purchase them from Eri’s Store or on TokenTrove from other players.
Guardian Shards
Collecting 60 Guardian shards lets you summon a Core One Guardian. They are usually Guardian specific, however the generic ones summon a Guardian at random.
Legendary Guardian shards can only be purchased for fiat in the in-game shop. You can get epic and rare Guardian shards by:
- Completing Challenge 2 (rare) and Challenge 3 (epic) dungeons
- Purchasing them from the Item shop
- Collecting daily rewards
Conclusion
Winning at Guild of Guardians without paying an arm and a leg is about mastering the grind.
GoG incentivizes you to play daily by offering leaderboard prizes with real life value through its $GOG token.
That means the more consistent you are at improving a little each day, the more you can earn over time.
The key is to fall into a daily routine that hits all of the important upgrade resources before you play ranked content.
GoG has a lot of different resets, and they may not mesh well with your own personal schedule.
I, myself, have to split when I complete Boss Rush and Arena from Endless to make sure I can complete all the daily content.
But once you figure out that routine, you’ll notice that you start progressing through the game faster relative to other players.
I hope you found this content useful and entertaining!
Don’t forget to clap and follow me for more in-depth GoG strategy, guides and Guardian reviews. You can also follow my X account for news about the game and frequent tips.
Thanks again for all your support and appreciation! Until next time.
