GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans is a strategy game from Netmarble, a renowned developer known for titles such as Tower of God: New World, The Seven Deadly Sins and MARVEL Future Fight. With a portfolio like theirs, it’s hard not to want to dive into GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans, Netmarble’s take on this tactical genre.
However, the game may be overwhelming for those not accustomed to the genre, so we’ve created this GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans – Ultimate Beginners Guide to help guide you through the initial steps of this grand adventure.
Don’t Skip the Story
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We know this might seem a bit unorthodox, especially in mobile games, but trust us. Grand Cross introduces unique twists to strategy simulation games that make a significant impact right from the start of the game, mainly in the story.
The character Eugene is remarkable, and how he influences the game’s tutorial in this isekai format—where a real-life character is plunged into a fantasy world—adds intrigue and fun to the experience.
However, if you wish to skip it, there’s an option in the settings that automatically cuts the webtoons. This way, you can focus solely on the gameplay.
Complete the Chapter Missions
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In the bottom left corner of the screen, there’s a scroll icon that, when clicked, opens your current missions. These missions guide new players through their next steps and offer numerous rewards, including new features in Grand Cross.
Do not overlook these missions regardless of your experience level with the genre and desire to forge your path. In fact, completing them is essential for advancing through chapters and progressing in the main story.
Use Your Resources Items
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Unlike other strategy simulations, Grand Cross doesn’t require additional storage to increase your resource limit. So, whenever you receive an item that provides a substantial amount of food, wood, or any other resource, you must use it. They can, however, be stolen from an enemy siege. But that won’t happen until later chapters.
Tap on the bag in the bottom right corner and navigate to the Resource tab. You’ll find all the items you can use to acquire extra resources there. Don’t hesitate to use them whenever possible.
Check the Artisan’s House Regularly
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Like any good building game, Grand Cross can intensify as your constructions grow and numerous upgrades become available.
To manage your foreman’s operations easily, make ample use of the Artisan’s House. Tap on the building and then the hammer icon to open up an interface displaying all ongoing constructions or new ones you can build or upgrade.
Photo: Netmarble
This way, you can easily oversee and monitor your realm without endlessly scrolling, hunting for upgrades, or constructing new facilities.
Explore Your Castle
As you construct new buildings, evolve them, complete tasks, and advance in chapters, your territory within the castle expands. You’ll need to face monsters, rescue soldiers, and reclaim destroyed buildings to free up more territorial space and grow even more.
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After unlocking the World Map, neglecting the castle is common, but don’t make that mistake. There are still many resources and buildings that can help you keep growing. So, frequently check the surroundings within your castle and eliminate the fog of war.
Check Your Unit Type
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You’ll build new facilities to train your warriors as your realm expands. These units feature two types divided into normal and special categories.
The normal units work on a rock-paper-scissors principle, where each type is strong against another. They are:
- Infantry: foot soldiers. Strong against cavalry but weak against archers.
- Archer: long-range staple army. Strong against infantry but weak against cavalry.
- Cavalry: soldiers mounted on horses. Strong against archers but weak against infantry.
- Combat Engineer: a different type of unit. Combat engineers help the hero move more resources and are unsuitable for battle.
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The special units are Catapults and Bombers, crucial for attacking other castles. However, they are only unlocked later in the game, so don’t worry about them just yet.
Check Your Hero Talent
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While there are strengths and weaknesses among normal units, what truly impacts their potential is your hero’s talent. Every hero has two categories: one that affects troops and another that enhances their overall capacity in specific areas on the world map, such as hunting or gathering. Here they are:
- Infantry: A hero highly adept at commanding infantry troops.
- Cavalry: A hero highly adept at commanding cavalry troops.
- Archer: A hero highly adept at commanding archer troops.
- Combat Engineer: A hero highly adept at commanding combat engineer troops.
- Combine: A hero with balanced commanding abilities for all troops.
Photo: Netmarble
As you can see, each hero specializes in a particular type of normal military unit. This means their talents will enhance those specific troops. For instance, a hero with an affinity for Cavalry troops will have talents that boost the damage, defense, movement speed and various attributes of cavalry.
Therefore, when assembling a squad to face enemies, it’s suggested to allocate heroes with a unit type that synergizes best with them. The good news is that the game, by default, already handles this for you. So, your role is to evolve your heroes, select the best talents, and endlessly recruit troops.
Photo: Netmarble
The second pool of a hero’s talent usually enhances the overall attributes on the world map. Here’s a list of all these talents:
- Hunt: A hero highly adept at eliminating monsters and neutral troops in the world.
- Station: A hero highly adept at defending objects.
- Defend: A hero that provides reliable defense when battling out in the world.
- Attack: A hero highly adept at dealing damage to enemies using basic attacks.
- Maneuver: A hero who moves flexibly in combat with a high marching speed.
- Gather: A hero highly adept at gathering resources.
- Siege: A hero highly adept at attacking other lieges’ castles.
- Support: A hero highly adept at enhancing the stats of the commanding troop and nearby allies.
Numerous distinctive heroes combine both talents in unexpected ways, greatly enhancing your strategic capacity. Sending a hero to collect resources with talents in Combat Engineer and Gather will accelerate the collecting, optimizing your time.
Photo: Netmarble
Of course, it all depends on whether you’ll roll them out in the gacha system. Still, the crucial thing is that this variety increases the dynamism of GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans and allows players greater customization of their troops.
Summon Your Heroes
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GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans employs the standard system of summoning heroes. However, it’s a bit more generous in offering free summons or Prayer Books—items used instead of gems for summoning—compared to other games.
There are two types of summons: Normal Summon and Advanced Summon. Both categories have a free summons period refreshed after a long cooldown.
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The quantity of free summons and the cooldown between them varies based on the level of the Star Fragment building. The higher the level, the more free summons you get and the shorter the cooldown.
- The Normal Summon can yield heroes up to the Unique category and also provide some fragments essential for increasing the Star Level of each hero.
- The Advanced Summon might reward you with coveted legendary heroes and fragments to evolve them. However, the chances are pretty slim.
Photo: Netmarble
Eventually, there’s the Grand Summon, banner events for newly released heroes. In terms of gems, Grand Summons are more expensive than Advanced Summons, but they provide additional bonuses as you repeatedly try your luck.
Age of Titans
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As the title suggests, GRAND CROSS features Titans, massive soldiers who frequently assist you in battle. While the first Titan awakens early in the game, the Titans are more advanced features available from midgame through the endgame.
The game provides the Titan Esther, but its power is locked. To unlock it, you need to rescue the Cores. At least the initial ones will naturally come to you. However, since it will take time to unlock everything, we suggest focusing on more immediate castle matters.
The World Map
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By completing your tasks and reaching chapter 8, the game truly begins. The world map opens up, along with new options and various features.
This is where GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans evolves into a grand strategy and simulation game. You might have played games with this model before, but we’ll guide you through the best practices for beginners.
Search for Monsters or Gathering Nodes
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When you enter the World Map, your best friend is the looking glass icon in the bottom left corner, just above the icon that takes you back to your territory.
By tapping on this looking glass, you can search for all activities on the World Map around your castle. Initially, there are five options:
- Monster: Select a monster level to search for and then send your army to face them. A victory increases your heroes’ levels and provides bonuses like resources and speed-up items.
- Cropland: A gathering node for collecting food.
- Logging Camp: A gathering node for collecting wood.
- Mine: A gathering node for collecting stone.
- Gold Mine: A gathering node for collecting gold.
All the gathering nodes work similarly. Choose a level, see if it’s available nearby, select a hero and their units, and send them toward the resources. The hero will collect resources over time and, once finished, return to the castle, filling your coffers.
The Hero for the Job
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At the beginning of the game, we have three slots where we can delegate objectives. Two slots are versatile and can be used for hunting monsters or gathering, while the third slot, with a greenish background, is reserved solely for gathering.
While sending only your strongest heroes on every hunt might be tempting, remember that each hero has a specialization that brings more benefits according to the activity. So, for monster hunts, it’s ideal to send heroes whose talents reinforce their corresponding unit. Don’t mind the troop type, as monsters don’t pose a significant challenge. However, when attacking castles, assessing the defending army and planning accordingly is essential.
Photo: Netmarble
When collecting resources, send heroes whose talents are enhanced for that resource type. Since you choose which talent to upgrade, you can promote a hero solely for wood gathering and another for gold. This makes micromanagement a bit more complicated, but it will be worth it in the long run.
Join an Alliance
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In chapter 8, we unlock the World Map, and in chapter 9, we open the Alliance feature, arguably one of the most critical aspects in games like GRANDE CROSS: Age of Titans. Joining an alliance will allow you to expand your global exploration and provide better protection against opposing lieges.
Joining an Alliance is straightforward. Click on the alliance tooltip in the lower right menu, search for one that suits your playstyle, and either join immediately or request to join. If accepted, congratulations—you’re the newest member of the alliance.
Photo: Netmarble
Afterward, the game will guide you, but the key is to join near your allies. In your inventory, under Miscellaneous, you’ll find the Beginner Castle Transfer item. Using it, you can transfer your castle to any location worldwide, even in a different kingdom.
The ideal move is to position your castle close to your allies’ castles, creating a tight net of fortifications against enemies and optimizing travel time if you need to send rally troops to attack targets or defend allies.
Photo: Netmarble
Furthermore, there are numerous benefits to joining an Alliance, such as speeding up building construction by requesting help from allies or investing in Alliance Research, which provides an overall bonus to various in-game features.
Coupon Codes
GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans would only be a complete mobile game if it offered seasonal codes to players. Currently, we have three codes, but only two can be active, as the Google and Apple pre-registration codes are exclusive to each platform.
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GATPREREGISTRATE: Redeem this coupon code for several rewards, including speed-up items, a resource chance chest, an advanced prayer book, 2,200 free gems, a Happy Bonion decoration building, and a Windmill Castle skin.
You can only redeem one of the two below codes corresponding to your device.
GATGOOGLEPREREGIST or GATAPPLEPREREGIST: Redeem this coupon code for 100 gems, 50,000 food and wood, and a portrait frame.
How to Redeem Coupon Codes
For Android players, the process is simple:
- Tap on your portrait in the upper left corner.
- Now tap into settings.
- Within the settings menu, tap on the Exchange Gift Code button.
- Enter your coupon code in the space provided and collect your rewards.
For iOS players or the PC version, the method is a bit more complicated:
- Tap on your portrait in the upper left corner.
- Now tap into settings.
- Inside the settings, notice that there’s a PID at the bottom—this is the code you should copy.
- Now access the official Netmarble website.
Photo: Netmarble
- For the general pre-registration code, use this link. Then, enter your member code and the coupon code.
- For the iOS pre-registration code, we have a different link. Click here to access it. The process is the same—add your member code and then the coupon code.
Conclusion
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GRAND CROSS: Age of Titans is the latest strategy and simulation game from Netmarble, adding twists to genre conventions while retaining the essence that makes it fun and intriguing.
Take advantage of the fact that the game is still fresh to build your empire around your allies and bring our beloved students back home.
Are you playing Grand Cross: Age of Titans? Share your favorite heroes and the name of your alliance with us in the comments.
