Azur Lane Beginner’s Guide

Azur Lane Beginner’s Guide by Ruvicante

Hello everyone, Admiral Rubicante here, bringing you a totally ” quick ” beginner guide in playing this game, with information both for newbies and veterans. o/

You can find me most of the time in many Discord Servers or sometimes in Reddit. You can call me Rubicante / Ruvicante / Grimarch / Kaguya, whatever I just said, just choose your poison, since I get called by these names most of the times or rarely. >.<

Without further ado, feast your eyes down below.

Server Differences

> JP vs CN vs KR DIFFERENCES

• The Unit level is capped at 70, rising by 10 for every Limit Break (extra star on shipfu) in the Japanese and Korean version
• [Unconfirmed and Edited] Unit drop rate for Rares is 1/10 of what it is in CN and appears to be generally lower across the board in the Japanese version. ( After the weeks had gone by since the game opened, there has been no confirmed legitimate source of this known drop rate. Only the assumptions of early JP players and some CN players back then when the JP server just opened that this idea came into fruition inside the community…)
• [Unconfirmed] Unit stat upgrade costs have increased significantly in BBs, BCs, CVs and CVLs in the Japanese version compared to the Chinese version
• More plates needed for gold equipment upgrades in the Japanese version
• In the Japanese version, Chinese boats have Japanese voice actresses
• The Japanese version has uncensored character CG
• The Japanese version doesn’t have the latest events– they are behind compared to the Chinese version of the game
• The Japanese and Korean version has delayed ships, ship remodel and equipment release, and they are usually tied to those events, but not necessarily.

Notes

If you’re in the ” Azur Lane English Community ” Discord server which you can get in by this invite, or going through wiki for the invite , better read the picture guides or some of the other info inside the PINNED MESSAGES in the server so you know what to find later on for info. The wiki link is helpful too. Ask someone for help, especially the moderators if you’re a newbie in Discord. There’s also the Reddit link for more info too, plus the invite for the Discord server.

THE GUIDE

• This guide assumes that you have successfully downloaded and installed Azur Lane on your device or emulator and can play normally.
• Finish the tutorial and claim your cute starter ship girl. It doesn’t matter who you get thinking you’ll never get the others anymore. Wrong!, you’ll get them later anyway.
• Power level in 1-4 up till your ship girls are level 30 or a decent level you like for them so you can advance to Chapter 2
• Repeat above but in 2-4 or a decent map you can battle with and level your ship girls to a level they can handle so you can advance to Chapter 3
• Once you’re at it , don’t forget to upgrade some of your equipment since the game has a tendency of difficulty spikes.
• This is where the fun begins. If you want to power level your ship girls up to level 70 or 80, we all prefer to farm at the infamous Chapter 3-4, in order to have a chance to get these two 3-4 exclusive drop SSR aircraft carrier sexy foxy ladies, Akagi and Kaga, which are some of the best Aircraft Carrier ship girls in the game. Be blessed by floofy tails early on or witness and feel despair like all the others did before you.
• You can only limit break if these conditions are met:
  

  Your ship girl has reached level 10, 30 and 70

  Your ship girl has a duplicate ready, along with gold to limit break

  IF your ship girl doesn’t have a duplicate, you need to have at least a BULIN or PURIN to limit break them

• Limit breaking a ship girl increases her stats and offensive power, but adds more oil for your fleet to use.
• You can upgrade your ship girls skill even when she’s in combat at the Academy. Same color = More exp.
• When you get a new ship girl, a popup will appear saying, ” Will you lock this girl so you don’t accidentally feed her or scrap her or some shit like that? ” Just click the yellow button to do so.
• Remember to play Daily Raids. They give quite a good amount of gold even when having 3 limited runs ( used to be 6 runs ) a day:
  

  Pink haired girl = Torpedo Dodging

  USS Tennesee = Suicide Boat Endurance

  Akagi and Kaga = Instant Boss Fight

  USS Eldridge = Very Hard Tactical Research Sorties

• Why did I say to remember playing Daily Raids? Since I forgot to mention, they also give out useful stuff for your convenience:
  

  Pink Haired Girl = Equipment Upgrades

  USS Tennessee = Skill Books

  Akagi and Kaga = Equipment Boxes

  USS Eldridge = Mental Modules

• Speaking of limited runs, Hard mode is unlocked when you 3 Star a map. Rank S if you didn’t get it. Requirements to 3 Star a map are:
  

  Clear the map once

  Defeat X amount of enemies in map ( Repeatable. Ambushes and Bosses do not count)

  Defeat all the enemies within the map

• Hard mode introduces you to going in a sortie with specific lineups with different stats. ( For example, if you’re running a full battleship backline throughout the entire game, you need to change that here in Hard mode. You need an aircraft carrier or one battleship in here. or a destroyer with 500 anti air stat. Or a group of ship girls with 700 total torpedo stat. You get the picture. ) It will repeat in some events so try to learn to adjust here.
• Losing to higher PVP matchups give your ship girls a ton of exp, but not that much.
• You can battle in PVP with the default 10 PVP passes the first time you play it. When you consumed all PVP passes ( I’m just gonna call it that ) , you have to wait until it refreshes its cooldown. You get 5 PVP passes that you can acquire at the following times : 12:00am, 12:00pm and 6:00pm JST
• You can refresh a matchup 5 times a day only. Its used so that if you can’t win against an opponent bracket, you change that and matchup with another opponent bracket. But if you consumed it all and don’t want your precious girls get blown to smithereens by those in that bracket, then RIP you.
• You can receive some prizes when you tap Akashi, however those prizes are limited. ( That green haired cat girl at the diamond shop )
• At the beginning of the game, we urge you to spam construction to get the most of it and try to get at least one SSR ( Except San Diego, unless you want to waifu her ). After getting decent ships (or not), try to not spam craft until limited construction rate ups come or event constructions.
• From the day you played this, try to login for 8 straight days to get Prinz Eugen, a very tanky SSR heavy cruiser. You’ll get her no matter what you do, but only once since this is a beginner promotion. You can still get her on Construction though.
• The medal shop SSR exchange rotates every 15 days. If you have at least 80 medals, you can exchange for the featured SSR ship girl of the first or second half of the month guaranteed once. You can also exchange for other ships beside the featured SSR ship girl, or equipment boxes or blueprints, but they have varied timers and refresh some time of the day, so better grab what you can early.
• Backyard is your ship girl’s dormitory. It is primarily used to gain passive exp by feeding them food and regenerate their morale. The more furniture you have, the more exp they gain. This is an extremely useful feature to have.
• You can get furniture coins mostly from Commissions or some Quests. Suggestion for furnitures: Buy everything. ASAP. You can’t whale for these babies except for bundles associated with them
• Want to expand your dorms? You only need furniture coins. You can upgrade them with increments of 100, 500 and 1000. After you reach the final upgrade, a 2nd Floor upgrade will appear that you can put your stuff with. It costs 500 rubies by the way, and no, your shipfus can’t get exp in this floor, but they will recover their morale normally.
• You can buy food at the cost of oil, but the premium food costs diamonds. Be careful with that.
• You can upgrade your Tier 1 Boxes into Tier 2 and Tier 2 into Tier 3. But you can’t upgrade Tier 3 into Tier 4 Boxes. Neither does Tier 4 into Tier 5 will have any effect. FeelsBadMan
• You don’t need to limit yourself by not using drills to your crafting queues. You get more of these than cubes anyway. Unless you want to stockpile, its your own choice.
• The 3rd and 4th Fleet Slots unlock at clearing 4-4 and 5-4 respectively
• Vast majority of farming is to keep your fuel consumption very low while attaining the highest possible exp gain for your girls, or farming for drops for a long time. HIGHER LEVELED GIRLS CONSUME MORE FUEL. SO DOES LIMIT BREAKING THEM, IT KINDA DOUBLES IT SINCE YOU LEVEL THEM HIGH THEN LIMIT BREAKING THEM DOES THAT. MAKES SENSE.
• While you push your girls into more sorties, their morale gets lower and lower. Even lower if you sink them. If you see your girls having orange sad faces on them, DO NOT USE THEM ANYMORE AND SWAP THEM WITH ANOTHER SHIP GIRL. If you push further than that, they will hate you, legit , as per the red face they’re showing and the constant annoying notification popup whenever you want to sortie with tired and mind broken ship girls. You damn sadistic pervert.
• SSR Ship drop rates have an abyssmal rate of 1% or below, with 0.05% as i recall correctly in CN server, so expect days to weeks to months of farming an SSR ship girl in a specific map. This is what the FUN is about! Remember that server difference note above? Also that “feel our despair” part in the guide?
• As of now, you can only dispatch 2 fleets per map. Chapter 1 is excluded since it only needs 1 fleet per map
• Each girl has 5 ammo with them, with 1 ammo consumed per battle. If your fleet doesn’t have ammo anymore, you can find the dock within the map. They replenish your fleet with 3 ammo. But if there isn’t ammo left on the map and you don’t have anymore ammo left on your fleets, don’t fret! They can still fight, but with reduction on offensive damage on your fleet by -50%. Have fun killing your enemies with your ammoless fleet with peanut damage.
• Sometimes, there appears a question mark (hidden place) in the map. When you go through them, it may give you some of these things: Gold, Equip Boxes, Emergency Repair Kit or 1 Ammo. The rest is self explanatory, the Emergency Repair Kit tho, repairs your ship girls to a certain amount of health once per sortie. If you want more repair kits, you can use diamonds, which is kinda stupid unless you’re a whale.
• Commissions are your other passive exp accumulation, as well as one of the features that gives you Oil, Gold, Furniture Coins, Cubes, Drills, Diamonds, Ship Girl etc. You’ll pick certain amount of girls and dispatch them to their missions. However, you can’t use them or touch their equips while out on a commission. Some of them are Level Capped, meaning you only need one ship girl at this level before you can dispatch the whole group, or a certain nationality or ship class. You get time-limited commissions when you sortie every time randomly.
• Retrofitting a ship is both easy and hard. There are only a limited number of ships with their ” Kai ” ( If you played Kantai Collection then you’ll know this term ) versions in game for now. Just get specific blueprints ( Different for each ship class). And retrofit them in an research tree like menu. But you only get them from Hard mode, which you can only run for 3 times a day. You also need one dupe or a BULIN + plus having said ship girl to remodel to level 85+
• Sometimes, we get small or huge events in a set amount of time. It includes some prizes for you to attain such as skins, rare equipment, rare ship girls etc. Or limited ship girl construction, which you saved your precious cubes earlier on for. Even as a newbie, its best if you can attain as much of these precious things as soon as possible. But if your luck run out, better luck next time. If you find yourself having a hard time on such, it only comes to these things:
  

  Power level your ship girls and upgrade your equips to push through

  Following quest guides

  Looking for info to help you in this certain event

  Asking for help

I dunno why I typed this but yeah, you get the picture.

• Your early prioritization on diamond usage should be unlocking two more slots for your girls in Backyard, or all three of them if you’re very whale enough or getting enough diamonds for more passive exp distribution for your ship girls. However, this will shorten the exp distribution as they eat quicker as seen on the timer, meaning you have to feed them again and again. The next big thing would be expanding your slots if you’re a hoarder and collector, since your slots tend to get full rather damn easy every sortie. Meanwhile, its your very choice if you wanna marry more girls or buying all of the skins by whaling more. See marriage system below.
• Talking about diamonds, you can get these precious stones free by 3* a map, collecting the specific lineup of girls limit broken in the collection menu, and commissions. Yes, commissions. They popup randomly, and if you think you haven’t even seen this type of commission before in forever then your luck with RNG must be extremely terrible that it hides from you. You’re better off getting more of San Diego from crafting to create the Numbah Wan Navy in your docks. Or scrap her into medals. As usual. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
• As time goes by, even with a large number of ship slots, you’ll quickly notice that your ship slots get filled up quite easily every time you farm so much. Better feed those 2* rarity girls to your ships rather than scrapping them since they don’t give medals because feeding these girls ” enhances ” their stats so you can have the better edge in defeating those enemies. The 3* and above rarity girls are better off as medals, BUT!, only if you think she has no other purpose for you. The same class the ship is fed to, the more stat boost it gets. ( Example: 2* Aircraft Carriers give more stat boost when fed to Aircraft Carrier ships you want to enhance with.)
• As this is only a totally not ” quick ” wall of text beginner starter guide, there are other info out there that is not listed here like specific fleet lineups, stat formulas, equipment guides etc. You can find some of them on the Azur Lane Wiki, or in the Azur Lane Subreddit or in the Unofficial Azur Lane Discord server I linked above. Also, this guide is not that perfect, so feel free to say what needs tinkering.

Marriage System

• Marry the shipfu you ever wanted with the all new Marriage System!!!
• You can marry a ship girl when you reach a ship girl’s highest affection rate before marriage = ” Love “
• When you marry a ship girl, it will consume 1 Oath Ring
• After marriage, the affection meter of your married ship girl will increase up to 200
• You can also rename your ship girl’s name once after marriage. You can rename her again after 30 days have passed since you renamed her. But, is your waifu a pet for you do that though?
• Additional rings can be bought at the diamond shop for 600 Diamonds
• Your ship girl gets extra stats after you marry her, with a total of 12% stat increase by the time you reach 200 affection rate.

Auditorium

• Besides the usual Backyard exp gains, this building found in the Academy, is a new leveling mechanic added to the game. Unlocked at Commander Level 50, a player may level certain classes of ships acquired from the additional exp of max leveled limit breaked ships whether if the ship is awakened or not depending on what day you are gonna use the Auditorium:

Sunday: None. The Auditorium is closed on these days, but the bar gains twice the exp gained from sorties.

Monday: Destroyers ( DD ) and Repair Ships ( AR)

Tuesday: Heavy Cruisers ( CA ), Light Cruisers ( CL ) and Repair Ships ( AR)

Wednesday: Battleships ( BB ), Battlecruisers ( BC ), Monitors ( BM ) and Aviation Battleships ( BBV )

Thursday: Aircraft Carriers ( CV ), Light Aircraft Carriers ( CVL ) and Aviation Battleships ( BBV )

Friday: Destroyers ( DD ) and Repair Ships ( AR )

Saturday: Heavy Cruisers ( CA ), Light Cruisers ( CL ) and Repair Ships ( AR)

• This feature is very much valuable in order to level your other ships on standby at your docks when you’re not sortieing them for other matters. Sortie away!

Cognition Awakening

• Another new leveling mechanic, this system allows a ship to extend her levels up to Level 120 in order to battle against harder opponents in late game sorties.
• They need a specific item called ” Mental Modules “, which can be farmed in Daily Raids or on Commisions and quite an amount of gold to break the level limit first.
• For now, Cognition Awakening them increments in 5 levels, up to level 120. Example: 100 > 105, 105 to 110 and so on..
• As for ships that are already retrofitted, the amount of Mental Modules and Gold needed to Awaken them would correspond to their original rarity before they are retrofitted.
• Yes, you’ll sortie more and more just to level them up at that level. Watch your oil.

Research

• Born from the WoWs ( World of Warships ) collaboration between them and Azur Lane, this new added feature allows a player to acquire special types of ships called ” Priority ships / Prototype ships or PR ships”.
• These ships are not to be considered the same as normal ships as their Limit Break needs a special type of item called ” Strengthening Units “. So your saved Bulin or Purin army can stay untouched for a while.
• These ships are also not meant to be gotten early as soon as possible, as their objectives just to develop these ships are time-gated, which means you have to wait a corresponding amount of hours just to engage to the next tasks that are unlocked in order to obtain them. These ” Target “ tasks are shown below:

Target 1: Earn 1 million experience points with a specific nation. – Unlocked immediately when you get the required number of ships either Frontline or Backline

Target 2: Complete any 5 Research Projects – Unlocked after ” 24 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship

Target 3: Spend 10 Specific Ship Class Purple Blueprints – Unlocked after ” 48 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship

Target 4: Earn 2 million experience points with a specific nation – Unlocked after ” 72 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship, and, finishing Target 1 first. YES, I ASSUME YOU READ THAT RIGHT?

Target 5: Complete any 8 Reseach Projects – Unlocked after ” 96 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship.

Target 6: Spend 5 Specific Ship Class Gold Blueprints – Unlocked after ” 120 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship

Target 7: Spend 20,000 Gold – Unlocked after ” 144 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship

Target 8: Spend 5 Research Cubes – Unlocked after ” 144 hours “ after starting PR Development on chosen ship

• Note that the PR ship you’re developing needs ship lineups on your sorties that are the same class as hers for the ” Target 1 and 4 missions “. Also note those spending missions on the Targets need you to spend those in the Research Development Menu where you’re developing these girls, not outside of it.
• Development of these ships are not newbie-friendly, and will succumb to the grind if not prepared properly.
• Of course, if you were to rush acquiring all these ships and not care anything as the hardcore veteran you are then be prepared to lose a ton of your precious oil. Its either be patient on gaining oil from commissions and the canteen, or the easy part. Whale…whale….whale…..w…h..a..l..e.
• You can also halt your current development on your chosen PR ship for a while and choose another PR ship after 24 hours after you started development on the PR ship you chose first.
• Besides the new development feature, another feature was added called the ” Tech Academy “
• This ” very-friendly ” like feature will give you timed ” Research Projects “ that you can select from the choices and start by either of the 3 things it needs like Material Collecting ( Random Tasks ), Fund Investments ( Pay a certain amount of either Gold or Research Cubes ) or Combat Data Collection ( Sortie through a certain map or world ). After getting the needed procedure, it will start immediately.
• After the Research project is finished for a certain amount of time, it gives you plenty of blueprints and gold. As of now, this is also the only way to acquire Strengthening Units
• You can only do one Research Project at each given time, and after you finish one, the selection refreshes every time. You can also refresh the selection once a day only.