Update: We've added the Sword of Convallaria's first new character, Edda, to the tier list, along with some more commentary to help you choose between the varied roster of Epic rarity characters.
Sword of Convallaria tries to do Gacha differently.
It aims to take the best of classic Final Fantasy, with a charming pixel art-style, turn-based strategic gameplay and a score soundtracked by Tactics Ogre music producer Hitoshi Sakimoto, and combine it with a branching story brimming with meaningful narrative decisions that change the fate of the Voyager, their allies and the land of Iria around them.
It doesn’t feel as derivative as some other Gacha games, but that doesn’t mean it skimps on content - quite the opposite, in fact. Developer XD has said that the sprawling story clocks in at as much as 120 hours, and there are a whopping 67 characters to collect at global launch (not including the Voyager, when they appear as playable in the main story, either).
But that’s not all. Sword of Convallaria also tries to take a deep approach to the characters you recruit, giving them distinctly different abilities, power levels and skill trees to create builds with, as well as weapons, gear and trinkets to equip.
It’s a lot to take in, so to help you make sense of the characters you have in your party, and who to roll for, we’ve put together this Sword of Convallaria Tier List based on media and creator previews and launch impressions.
- Sword of Convallaria Tier List
- Why are these Sword of Convallaria characters the best?
- Best Epic Characters in Sword of Convallaria for F2P players
Sword of Convallaria Tier List
S-Tier
- Gloria
- Inanna
- Beryl
- Dantalion
- Magnus
- Col
- Edda
A-Tier
- LilyWill
- NonoWill
- Alexei
- Nungal
- Momo
- Rawiyah
- Faycal
- Maitha
- Garcia
- Samantha
- Abyss
- Divine Grace
B-Tier
- Angel
- Stormbreaker
- Guzman
- Nergal
- Lightning
- Teadon
- Leonide
- Iggy
- Miguel
- Xavier
- Flame Sorceress
- Butterfly
- Crimson Falcon
C-Tier
- Candlelight
- Nightingale
- Suppression
- Ballista
- Lash
- Tempest
- Stinger
- Might
- Flare
- Agile Eye
- Enforcer
- Night Raven
- Blade
D-Tier
- All Rare rarity characters
- All Common characters
Why are these Sword of Convallaria characters the best?
Edda
It's early days, but the new character, Edda, seems very, very good.
While her power isn't as immediately obvious as Inanna or Dantalion, Edda's ability to effect so many different fights across the battlefield makes her an incredibly strong addition to the roster.
Firstly, she has a suite of powerful buffs to support your melee attackers, an NRG replenishing skill that supports a variety of different characters and an Assisting Attack Trait which lets her chip in with damage in a huge 4-5 tile radius.
She then also has access to map control and AoE, making her the perfect partner for blitzing through stages of enemies.
The launch banner characters
Would you believe that most of the Legendary characters in the launch banners are also the best in the game? It’s almost as if XD did it on purpose to tempt players in with some of their most exciting designs?
Col is the arch assassin, capable of stealing in behind enemies and dispatching them without remorse before taking the opportunity to act again within the same turn. She also has a strong self heal which turns her invisible to avoid harm (which is important because she's quite squishy). Her leader’s aura gives her a straight damage, defence and critical buff for every “Alacrity” ally (a category which includes other popular characters like Rawiyah, Faycal, Nungal and LilyWill), but you probably won't pick it over the Omen of Death passive which massively buffs her Crit chance as your party overwhelms enemies.
Col however, is one of the most pay-to-win characters in Sword of Convallaria. With Legendaries, it's really tough to pull multiples of them to increase there star level, but with most of the characters you're only looking at a 10% or 20% difference in the effectiveness of their Trait. Col at higher star levels though, reduces the cooldown of her Act Again ability, which makes a huge difference in power.
I wouldn't say she's underwhelming at 1 star, but if you did manage to get her to 5 stars, she can really rampage.
Next is Gloria, who is an extremely powerful buffing character who gives damage, movement and defence boosts to her close allies without sacrificing her own damage output. Based on her Flag Waving aura, which automatically activates at the start of a battle, she gains access to a range of very strong AoE attacks, which transition to strong single-target attacks once the aura wears off. Roll for Gloria - just do it.
Beryl is another fun character in the Destroyer class who smashes out huge AoE, big damage and offers decent utility with self-buffs and a small heal in a decent range. There are other magic-wielding characters in Sword of Convallaria, but none of them can quite do the same job as Beryl - and definitely not as explosively as she does it.
Finally, Dantalion is a damage machine who combines both melee and magic attacks to rush enemies down and stop them from healing. He’s got great crowd control thanks to a couple of strong AoEs and his leader aura stacks with a ton of strong and easy to acquire characters like Faycal, Maitha, Inanna, Magnus and Rawiyah (although, again, it's on the same Rank as another great AoE). Dantalion is another I’d recommend rolling for, since he stacks so well with others and is a versatile attacker with great range whose Trait can keep him healthy without a babysitter.
Magnus and Inanna
What I will say for the banner characters above though, is that they’re all quite offensively orientated characters with the classic glass cannon mix of incredibly potent attack and relatively weak defence. They can offset this with the spacing and control Skills they have, but really, they need support from a Defender or Healer.
The best characters in this role are Magnus and Inanna.
Magnus’ terrifying presence debuffs the attack and defence of enemies in his immediate vicinity, making him the perfect tank to soak up aggro and retaliate (or soften up foes to be finished off by others). He also has some really strong spacing Skills to push enemies around while also inflicting movement debuffs to keep them bunched up.
Then Inanna is probably the best out-and-out support character in Sword of Convallaria, since she’s able to heal, buff her allies (including giving them an extra turn), and also summon a mini guard unit to take damage for your team in battle. She suits just about any composition and will be a mainstay of your party…if you can roll her of course.
It's almost funny how much better than every other healer in the game Inanna is. Her Trait constantly heals and buffs your team, while her easily accessible mass heal is head-and-shoulders above the rest. That she summons an extra defender unit for your team (for free) and can just hand out extra turns to your damage dealers if she's not got anyone to heal on top of that is just sugar on the icing on the cake!
Maitha and Faycal
But since we’re right at the start of the game’s western lifecycle, we need to discuss some more accessible characters too. Luckily, your two friends from the Sword of Convallaria mercenary group, Maitha and Faycal are decent characters who’re worth your time and investment. Which is nice, since they’re both key parts of the early story and firm friends of the Voyager.
What’s even better is that they are both free Legendary characters for all players in the launch period. Maitha unlocks naturally, whereas Faycal will unlock on your 3rd login!
Maitha is a solid Defender with a useful passive trait that heals your lowest health party member at the end of her turn. Her skills are good for spacing out and manipulating enemies, which makes her a versatile and impactful member of your team - even if she’s not as explosive as some other melee characters. That changes once you reach level 15 though, when you unlock access to a good charge attack for closing distance which makes her much more offensively viable.
This is where Faycal excels too. An archer’s regular attacks are good for manoeuvring around obstacles, but it’s his Skills - which can be used to lock down a huge amount of space on the board - where he really comes into his own.
Best Epic Characters for F2P players
While much of the focus in Sword of Convallaria is rightly on the unique, named Legendary characters, there are some more accessible characters in the Epic rarity tier who play almost as well (and in some cases better) than their legendary counterparts.
For example, since Inanna isn’t boosted in a banner at the moment, you could look at other healers. Based on the Chinese version of the game, YouTuber Clint Wulf suggests Angel because of her solid healing and easy debuff removal. But there's also Butterfly, who is a more support-focused healer, or Nightingale, who situationally protects against AoE and can boost her movement to reach allies in need.
I personally prefer Angel, because she has immediate access to a mass heal at Rank 1 and her Trait giving out buffs is more useful than Nightingale's movement.
If you don’t have Beryl, there are loads of other fun Destroyer class mages. One who’s easy to overlook is Abyss, who comes up a lot in discussions of easier to pull characters. As noted by Volkin Gacha, it’s not immediately clear how good debuffs are once you first start the game. Abyss can deal both solid damage and stack debuffs on enemies, which makes her a versatile threat in many different team compositions.
Abyss also has almost immediate access to either good AoE or a sleep spell that holds enemies in place for two turns. Both of these are very useful and close to unique within the roster of more accessible characters.
Then there’s Flame Sorceress, who has easy access to strong, fire-based AoE and damage-over-time. In that way she's similar to Abyss, just more focused on raw damage without the utility of debuffs. An outside pick for this slot is Divine Grace, who was highlighted by YouTuber Zeeebo Zwei as a popular character in the Chinese version of the game. He's a crossbow-wielding Watcher who, despite his unassuming appearance, is actually a really good character with a solid, controlling skill set and enough range to keep enemies at arm’s length.
Then for Col, the Seeker assassin you get right at the start of the game, Crimson Falcon, actually has quite a similar ability, just she gets to move again after defeating an enemy rather than a full action.
She's a lot more common in gacha, meaning you can fill up her star rating a lot more quickly. This means she can be quite an underrated damage dealer, since she'll be getting a +20% or more boost to back attack damage quite early in your adventure. While her Rank Skills aren't very exciting, Crimson Falcon still has more to offer than you might first expect.
Finally on the melee front, two characters who pop up quite a lot in gacha who are still very good are Lightning, who’s hiding an extremely good AoE set with great survivability and critical hit buffs in her upgrade track, and Stormbreaker, who it’s a very situational, but very fun, crowd control character with strong AoE.
I actually also quite like Tempest, since it seems quite difficult to get decent Breakers in the early game. At level 15, his Stormrage Strike turns him into a mini-Rawiyah - just without the follow-up attack after the charge. If you choose Inertial Chop though, you can Stormrage Strike into a group of enemies, then follow up with a passive AoE for a solid, early-game combo that's a lot of fun.
For more resources to try and pull for these characters, check out our Sword of Convallaria codes page!
