Guardian Codex Tips, Cheats, and Strategies

Guardian Codex is a free-to-play RPG from Square Enix (yep, another one) that borrows a bit from all over the place – Pokemon, Soul Hackers, The Matrix, etc. There are a lot of little details in addition to the over-arching need to gain levels and fight monsters, which can start to feel a little complicated. Gamezebo’s Guardian Codex tips, cheats, and strategies will help get you up to speed and keep you (and your Guardians) moving.

Managing Troops

Create multiple teams: You can only assign a maximum of three Guardians to a single Troop, however you can make up to five different teams of three (two to start, with more available as your player levels increase) in various combinations. This will be handy once things get more difficult as it allows you to quickly choose between pre-set teams before a tough battle.
Mind the elements: There are six different elements in the game – Fire, Water, Wood, Mecha, Light, and Dark. Each trio has its own rock-paper-scissors style strengths and weaknesses (i.e. Water > Fire > Wood, and Dark > Mecha > Light). Remember this when creating your teams and try to avoid doubling-up on elements in order to give yourself more options in combat.
You have to manually enable a lot of options: A handful of features will open up to you after the tutorial, but things like equipping gear on your Guardians or combining fragments to create new Guardians can only be unlocked by spending skill points in the player skill tree.
Think carefully about the skills you acquire: You won’t be able to undo any of your skill point allotments, and you only earn new points by leveling up – and you only earn the Renown needed to level up by completing a level for the first time. In other words you can’t grind to increase player levels, so your skill points are extremely precious. Make sure you read up on all of the available skills before you make your choice.

Keep grabbing Guardians: It’s usually a good idea to try and summon new Guardians whenever you can. There’s always the chance of snagging a very powerful and rare one, and if you get doubles you can use them for enhancement or sell them for items.
Use Guardian fragments: Guardian fragments are earned at random when you defeat enemies. Depending on what player skills you’ve unlocked, you can then use those fragments to summon new Guardians (ten of the same fragment make one Guardian), or use sets of them to evolve a Guardian to a more powerful form with better stats and increased rarity.
Give you Guardians items and gear: You can use items on your Guardians from the “Add Item” option in the Guardians menu. These items are important for things like boosting attack/defense, increasing maximum hitpoints, and giving Guardians out-of-combat experience to make them level-up faster. Gear, on the other hand, can be swapped in and out as needed (i.e. it’s not a one time use thing) and tends to give your Guardians even better stat improvements for as long as they keep the gear equipped.

Codex Conflicts

Pick a friend that compliments your team: Before beginning a level/fight, you’re able to select another player’s Guardian to join your team, for a total Troop count of four. If you can, try to avoid selecting a player Guardian with an element that matches one that’s already on your team. You can also tap and hold on a player Guardian to bring up more details about them, and check out important details like special abilities.
Guardian levels matter a lot: Unless you’re in the very first area of the game, your level 1 Guardians going to have a tough time of it. Attacks will be too weak to do much of anything (even against weak elements), they won’t have many special abilities, and they’ll get knocked out very easily. Even going from level 1 to level 2 can increase their survivability and usefulness quite a bit.
Enemies will attack once their counter reaches zero: Underneath every enemy’s name and health bar is a turn indicator, which will show you how many turns are left before they attack or use an ability. You can use this information to help you decide who to target first (i.e. go after the one who is about to attack).

Guardians getting knocked out doesn’t matter: If a Guardian gets knocked out in battle, they won’t be able to act until they’re revived. Otherwise they can’t do anything for the rest of the fight. Thankfully KO-ed Guardians will still earn experience if you win the combat.
Guardians getting knocked out sucks: While KO-ed Guardians will still earn experience, they also leave a gap in your defenses. You see, the enemy action timers aren’t affected by inactive Guardians, so anyone that’s been KO-ed will still count when their turn comes up. This means the more unconscious Guardians you have, the more turns enemies will be able to take before you can perform any actions.
Attacks that hit “all” are usually very important: The more enemies on screen, the more likely your Guardians are to end up taking damage. By hitting several of them at once, you should be able to reduce their numbers a bit faster. Not every Guardian has such an attack, of course. Still, it helps.
Tap and hold an ability to see its info: Not only is this useful because it will explain an ability’s function, but it can also show you at-a-glance how many enemies the ability targets as well as whether or not it will do reduced, normal, or increased damage (grey, blue, and orange/red targeting icons, respectively) due to elemental weaknesses.
Keep an eye on your Guardians’ MP: Each Guardian has a maximum of 10 MP, and different skills require different amounts. They do recover 2 MP at the start of each turn, so you don’t have to be too sparing with its use, but you will want to be mindful of how much they have left so as not to leave yourself with nothing right before a boss battle or something like that.