Grinding in Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road Is a Special Kind of Hell, So Here’s How to Break It
Forget "playing the game." It's time to exploit the system, farm some currency, and pray to the gacha gods for a character that doesn't suck.
Let's get one thing straight: Inazuma Eleven: Victory Road is a grind. It's a glorious, flashy, anime-as-hell grind, but it's a grind nonetheless.
The game wants you to spend hours, days, maybe weeks of your life chasing the dragon. That "dragon" comes in two forms: getting those stupidly rare 'Hero' characters and leveling your team to a point where they can actually compete.
I've been in the trenches, and I've figured out the path of least resistance. It's not pretty, it involves a lot of losing, and it feels like cheating. Which is exactly why I love it.
So, if you're tired of slogging through Chronicle Mode only to get your levels nerfed, listen up.
The Art of Losing on Purpose
This is going to sound insane, but the fastest way to level up your good players is to lose. Horribly. On purpose. In ranked matches.
The game has an XP bonus system based on team level difference. We're going to abuse the hell out of it.
Go to your Team Dock and fill your entire team with Level 1 scrubs. Just pack it with players you never, ever intend to use.
Now, stick one or two of the characters you actually want to level on that same team. Your overall team rating will plummet, which is exactly what we want.
Hop into Compete Online and start a ranked match. You're going to get matched against some Level 99 monster who hasn't seen sunlight in days. You will be annihilated.
It doesn't matter. You get a massive XP bonus just for finishing the match. I'm talking 20 or 30 levels in one go if the gap is big enough.
The best part? You get five Bond Stars for every match, win or lose. This pathetic farming method is also the best way to farm the game's gacha currency. Two birds, one deeply cynical stone.
Chasing the 0.001% Dream (Good Luck)
So what are you doing with all those Bond Stars you earned by being a professional loser? You're feeding them into the gacha machine, of course.
Heroes are the game's top-tier characters. They're absurdly strong, and you can only field two at a time. Oh, and you can't just upgrade a normal character into one. That would be too easy.
Your first stop is the Player Universe in Chronicle Mode. You dump five Bond Stars to get 12 "spirits" from a constellation. Each constellation has a tiny chance of dropping a Hero.
And when I say tiny, I mean it. We're talking gacha-game-level odds here, possibly as low as 0.001% for some drops.
I hope you like gambling, because you'll be pulling this lever a lot. You can at least search constellations to see which ones might drop the Hero you're desperate for.
The Other Grinds
If the gacha machine doesn't bless you (and it won't), there are other ways to suffer.
You can slam your head against Hero Battles in Chronicle Mode. These are endgame-level fights (think Level 50+) that also have a laughably low drop rate for Hero spirits. At least here, you know what you're grinding for.
Finally, there's the Spirit Market. You can just... buy them. The catch? They cost an astronomical amount of Legendary spirits.
So my advice is to not convert all your Legendary spirits into players right away. Hoard them, just in case the one Hero you actually want pops up in the shop.
Look, this whole loop is absurd. You lose on purpose to farm currency, to gamble for a microscopic chance at a character, so you can finally play the game properly.
It's a bizarre, broken, and beautiful little ecosystem. Now if you'll excuse me, I have about 50 ranked matches to go lose.