Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus – New Character Event Guide

Guide to New Character Event

Event Overview

The NCE (New Character Event) happens every time a new character is released, which is usually once a month.

During the event, performing certain actions grant you Event Points (EP), which in turn grant you Event Currency (EC), which in turn allow you to buy Event Chests that grant you Event Shards (ES, not the same as the regular Character Shards you can receive during regular play but work much in the same way). Once enough ES have been gathered (The amount varies according to the rarity at which the character is unlocked), the character is unlocked and any remaining ES go towards ascending the character further.

There are three (non-paying) ways to get EC, which is the most important currency of the event: Passing EP thresholds, completing event missions and the daily payout received for you placement in the leaderboards. All will be covered within this guide.

It is always good to get as far as you can in these events, as the cost for unlocking and ascending characters greatly increases outside of the event.

Without paying any BlackStone (BS), most events allow you to at least unlock the character and get them up to the ‘Rare’ rarity level, assuming you maximize play throughout the event.

This guide will try to outline the ways in which you can maximize play, get to the ‘Rare’ rarity if you don’t want to pay any BS, or get to the ‘Epic’ rarity level or even two star Epic with minimum BS wasted.

Getting to the ‘Legendary’ rarity is possible, but requires either insane amounts of BS, paying actual money or both, and thus won’t be outlined in this guide.

P.S- If you’re new to the game don’t worry. The NCEs are one the few events in the game that actually become harder the stronger you get, so you can actually get pretty far even if you’re still relatively new.

Quick Personal Note

Hey. This guide outlines the optimal way to advance as far as you can in an NCE… But it also kinda assumes you have the time for that, which a lot of us don’t. Even if you can’t rush the first day, or always use up all your tokens every day, you can adjust the guide to what you CAN do and you’ll probably still make it to Rare without spending BS or Epic if you are spending BS. Just use what’s written here as general guidelines on where you can optimize your playing style and try and find the places in the event where you can push harder and you’ll probably do just fine.

General Tips

This Section is for people already somewhat familiar with the event and/or those that read the guide and want a refresher. Most if not all of these tips will be covered later on, but this is the general formula for getting up to epic rarity in an NCE.

Prepare ahead of time

Save up on tokens, BS, Energy and everything else you’re going to need on the first day of the event, as it counts for a lot. See the “before the event” section for more detailed tips.

Hit mission goals first

Though it was somewhat changed in the last update to NCEs, all bottlenecks of the event relate to using up resources and then getting a mission that gets you stuck, and you want to get to the last two mission as quick as possible to count all the raids you’re about to do towards them. This means not spending your tokens if it isn’t relevant to your current mission unless you know for sure you’ll regain them before you’ll need them. And even while working towards a mission, figure out how to save- for example if the mission requires 2 Guild raids and 20,000 damage, do the raids first before you try and meet the damage output using other tokens.

Start strong, don’t save up

With the previous tip in mind, don’t save energy or any other resource for later on in the event. Use ALL saved up rewards now (unless you did every single battle that’s not an easy regular one… See the “Know your missions” tip below). If you’re spending BS, get the 250 energy refill. That leg up might be the difference between a different tier of daily payout, and in case of a tie for the same amount of points the one who gets there first ranks higher in the leader board. Don’t wait the event out to see if you need to spend the BS at the end, since that difference in tiers will mean you probably will need to spend even more than you would now. And yes, if you reach the end of the day and still have arena or Guild raid tokens and you think the EP they’ll get you will push you to next tier- do it.

Prioritize EP.

Might seem obvious, but the event needs to come before any other in-game priority. It doesn’t mean you need to neglect them, but at least at the first few days of the NCE make sure you hit high EP missions before you farm gear in others, take on stronger opponents in arena even if it means getting less victory points, etc…

When spending BS- Prioritize Energy

Buying energy is the most cost-efficient way to spend BS (for the NCE and in general). It’s one of two only ways to spend BS to get ahead in the event, and the other is refreshing arena and hoping for the best. Buying the 50 BS refill is a must, and you’ll find it hard to make it to epic without at least a few 110 BS refills. In my experience, trying to skimp on that will get you to the last few days needing to spend on the 250 refills as well to get to epic (See the “Start as strong as you can” tip). Only spend BS on other things if you’re positive you have enough energy to get you where you need to go.

Plan Ahead

And keeping in line with the previous tip- Know how much BS (if any) you have to spend on the event and see what it gets you energy-refills wise. Know which events happen at the same time as the NCE (usually there’s at least one tournament arena) and how you can use them. Also, figure out how and when you shove all that playing into your real-life schedule. Especially during the first week, just dealing with event stuff can take 2-3 hours a day.

Spend it all every day

Exactly what it sounds like. Do all available arena battles, guild raids and campaign missions every day throughout the event. If there are relevant coinciding events- max those too (The extra energy from getting all crates in a tournament arena is invaluable). Your tokens at any of these things should never be at full at any point of the event, and you want to get wherever they get you on the leaderboard before other people get there, so do it often.

Know your best missions to raid

Pretty simple but often neglected- the highest value mission can get to 270 EP per 60 energy, while the lowest sits at 190. While you probably won’t be able to hit either, the usual difference between picking your missions and just doing regular easy ones sums to around 1500 EP per event, which is usually a difference big enough to push you one threshold forward. Check the table in this document for actual stats, but your order of priority should usually be

1. Harder battles
2. Higher enemy power levels of the same difficulty
3. Less Energy Battles of similar difficulty and enemy power
4. Indomitus missons 19-29
5. Tutorial Missions
6. Regular Easy missions.
7. Easy Missions with no lightning victory

Before the Event

Here are some things you can and should do as preparation for the event:

Stop Playing!

Well, of course you don’t have to stop all together, but it’s wise to, at the very least, start the event with full tokens and energy. Some people even stop a few days earlier and save energy using refills, but I find that unnecessary. Just Calculate how long before the event you need to stop playing to reach full capacity, and then when you get to full again top up with what ever refills you get (at the very least the free-ad one).

Make Sure you’re at an appropriate league

As you’ll see in the Arena section of this guide, during the event you want to be able to win most of your arena battles, but not too easily. I find that for the best result I try to spend most of my event time in a league where I can win around 80% of battles, and then use the 1 BS refreshes to turn that into around 90%-95%. It’s worth to mention that some NCEs have 3 league seasons running through them with one ending a few days into the NCE, so if you’re starting at the league you want to stay in try and start it as far down the leaderboard as you can and make sure you don’t advance (Since, if done right, you WILL advance at least one league during the event, and you don’t want to find yourself at the last stretch and unable to win arena fights).

Save on BP and promo code energy rewards

Pretty self-explanatory. Since most battle passes start with a 50 energy reward and there are usually some energy rewards given through promo codes between NCEs, save those until the first day of the event… There are rarely if any other occasions during the game where you need extra energy NOW as much as you do on the first day of an NCE.

Save on BS

Calculate how much BS you want to spend (if any) on the), and then make sure not to spend yourself below that. The amount you need to buy the 50 BS refill every day plus the 110 BS refill every other day and the crucial 220 on the first day is 1690 BS. I find that a bit of wiggle room can really help with offers you’ll want to pick up during the event or 1 BS refreshes so you want around 2000 in reserve to follow that tactic with some breathing room. You probably won’t spend it all during the NCE, but you can always spend it later.

Hold on 10 pulls and rising in Power levels

For the newer players- when you get to a new power level, you get a full refill of your energy. As you can tell by now, that’s super valuable for the NCE, so if you see you’re on the verge of leveling up, wait a bit with upgrade, shard and badges you want to apply you your character and WAIT WITH YOUR 10 PULLS as unlocking a new character by surprise can push you over the edge by accident.

Progress as much as you can in campaigns and start new chapters

On one hand, you want to raid the hardest missions you can during the event. On the other, you have enough on your plate during the event without trying to complete those 24-hours new-chapter missions. The solution is obviously to get that progress done outside of the event, more than 24 hours before it starts.

If you are a veteran player- Save some badges and books for the new Xenos Characters

This is a new lesson that arrived with the updated NCE missions. Since the last two missions require your new character to survive and deal quite a bit of damage, you’ll need to get them to around Iron 2/3 to easily complete those missions without wasting tokens and gaining loses in arena. You can OC ignore this tip if the new character is either Imperial, Chaos or any other faction that already has a campaign in game.

Side Note

This one isn’t required for the event, but as you can tell you’re going to be hitting the same campaign missions over and over during the event, and ignoring most others. So, I’d recommend taking note beforehand which missions those are, which gear they hand out and ignore them while farming before the event. You’ll soon be swimming in too much of that gear, so focus on farming the gear that you aren’t going to be able so farm during the NCE.

Missions

NCE Missions are 20 missions that can be completed during the event for a 100 EC each (and some mission XP). There’s also one bonus mission at the end that gives out 1 requisition scroll (and some mission XP). Since EC it the most valuable resource of an NCE, you WANT to get at least the first 20 missions done (and if you’re at it, why not get a req scroll as well?).

They usually repeat in every NCE with some variation, with the 2024 October ‘Synaptic Imperative’ event having the most variation so far. These are the missions as we know them with some tips to get through all of them as fast as possible. This list is updated up to the 2024 September ‘Insanguination’ event

For those not looking to read a lot, here’s a tl;dr:

• You want to hit mission 4 ASAP to start recharging arena tokens for mission 15.
• You want to hit mission 8 before the current guild raid season ends or you’ll get set back a whole day.
• You’ll need 2 Salvage run and Guild raid tokens for missions 7 and 8 respectively and 1 Onslaught token for mission 12. Anything beyond that you can and should use to finish these missions (But try and save the Onslaught tokens for missions that require using abilities).
• Try to minimize energy use as much as you can while still earning max EP.

2 Lightning Wins and 5 melee kills

Pretty easy. Obviously play those 2 lightning wins battles (as raids don’t count) and put emphasis on melee kills.

Raid 5 battles and defeat 10 enemies with [New Character’s faction] units

Raid whatever 5 battles you want. Try and find a campaign battle with 10 enemies to defeat with the least amount of energy wasted.

Win 20 campaign battles and use abilities 30 times

If you don’t want to waste too much time, try and have 6 campaign battles with 5 deployed characters and using all their abilities. Don’t miss out on lighting victories for that though, as you have 20 campaign battles to spend energy on and you probably will use abilities at least twice a battle if you try.

Play 4 Arena battles and defeat 50 units with Ranged attacks

Start with the Arena battles (See the Arena section on which battles to choose). If you can, try and have all those kills done with ranged attacks, which should sum up to 20. Use the tutorial missions or ‘Multiplying Summons’ trick to finish up the second requirement as we approach the first bottle neck.

Deal 10,000 damage with Abilities and win 100 campaign battles

Again, start with the campaign battle, try to fight battles with 5 deployed characters and having them all use their abilities. For higher level players, the 100 campaign battles here might be the first bottleneck as you are probably hitting a lot more elite missions. For lower level players if you saved all the energy mentioned in the ‘before the event’ tips you should just make it. Heal/Repair 2500 Health and win 10 battles without Summoning any units.

You can probably get the healing done in those 10 battles. These battles can be any kind, but I’d recommend arena battles as they are the most cost effective right now. Just make sure you’ll have enough arena tokens for missions 9 and 14.

Use abilities 20 times with [New Character’s faction] units and play 2 Salvage Runs

Make sure you use ALL your abilities in each Salvage run, and then try for just two more battles with 5 relevant characters. Not much to say about this one. For Imperials and Chaos you can use the ability farming trick if you’d rather waste energy on one battle instead of two, but it’s probably not worth the hassle.

Play 2 Guild Raids and deal 20,000 damage

This is one of the main missions to look out for. So far, most NCE’s started under two days before the end of a guild raid season. If you don’t reach this mission before the season ends, you’re going to be waiting a whole day just for the next one to start while everyone else progresses on the leaderboard. On the bright side, your end-of-the-season guild boss is probably the place where you can deal the most damage with your strongest units, so the second part of that mission shouldn’t be hard.

Deal 7500 Psychic damage and defeat 75 enemies with ranged attacks

For this one I’d use the multiplying summons trick, especially one of the grot variants. Just surround a psyker and a healer with tank-y characters in a corner and let him do all the damage. If you don’t want to spend the time on that, use an Imperial or Chaos Onslaught battle (depending on what characters you have available) and do the same. That should cover most if not all of both missions. I wouldn’t spend more than 1 Onslaught token on this though- You can probably cover the rest using the multiplying summons trick to finish the job.

Win 15 battles using an all-[New Character’s faction] lineup and play 4 Arena battles

Start with the Arena battles. If possible, do them with the relevant factions and you can use Salvage runs as well since you’re done with those, or otherwise just regular campaign battles.

25 Lightning Victories and kill 100 Necrons

No trick for the 25 lightning victories. You can do them all in Indomitus if you want it to count for the second part but if you have time and don’t have good battles in Indomitus that will net you many points, you can use the ‘Multiplying Summons’ trick here as well (Just make sure you take on Scarabs, yeah?)

Heal/Repair 5000 Health and play 1 Onslaught

Should be able to get both missions done in one Onslaught. If you have Either Isabella surrounded by tanks or Aleph-null with another Mechanical will do nicely.

Defeat 75 enemies and use abilities 50 times with [New Character’s faction] units

This is where I would use remaining Onslaught tokens. Deploy your weakest characters first in a place where they won’t get one-shot on the first turn, use their abilities and let them die so you can deploy a new character and do the same. After that, Salvage runs and guild raids are also a good option at this point. Finally, you can spend arena tokens so long as you’ll have at least 4 by mission 15. Try and save you campaign battles as They’re the only thing you’ll NEED after mission 15, and you’ll need a lot of them. If you do end up needing campaign battles to complete this, use the ability farming trick

Win 25 battles with an all-[New Character’s faction] lineup and deal 30,000 damage

Same as missions 8+10. Start with the 25 battles obviously as they will probably get you the other goal if not close enough that you’ll have short work. Again, use arena battles only if you know you can get to 4 tokens by the end of this mission.

Use abilities 150 times with [New Character’s faction] units and play 4 Arena battles

Depending on how much energy you saved up this could be another bottleneck as you need at least 18.75 hours since mission 4 (or you might’ve already passed those hours waiting for energy), but you know the drill. Start with 4 arena battles. If possible, try and do an all ‘relevant faction’ battle and use the abilities so by the end of it you’ll end up with 20 more towards the ability mission, and then use whatever else you have in your arsenal. Save campaign battles for last but there probably won’t be any way around them, so this is a textbook use of the ability farm trick.

Defeat 100 enemies with [New Character’s faction] units and Raid 25 campaign battles

This one sucks cause you can’t really do these missions together, but it’s also pretty straight forwards from this point onwards. There’s no need to save up on any type of token besides energy so just use whatever works. If you got this far within the first 2 days chances are you’ll get to do the 500 campaign battles of the last two missions before the event ends so there’s no rush anymore. Try and use battles against multiplying summons (e.g mission mission 55) for the 100 enemies part if possible.

Deal 60,000 Damage to enemies and defeat 75 enemies

Onslaught and arena battles are you best options here, try and save as much energy as you can as campaign battles won’t get you as far in the damage department, but can serve well to finish the 75 enemies the onslaught won’t get you to.

Deal 50,000 damage with Abilities and defeat 250 enemies with Ranged attacks

Guild raids are top choice as they maximize ability damage options. Try and get characters like Eldryon that scale damage with each turn and have them last until the last round. Save Salvage runs at this point for mission 20. Ability farm trick works here as well, but probably won’t be needed after guild raid.

Defeat 100 enemies with Melee attacks and win 75 campaign battles

As usual, do the 75 battles first and it’ll   get you the 100 enemies part.

Use abilities 10 times with [New Character] and win 250 campaign battles

The second part is pretty straight forward. Just use all your energy and refills everyday and you should be fine. If you think you’re not going to make it, consider switching to raiding tutorial missions and Indomitus 15-29 (Especially missions 19-29 as they are actually more valuable than regular easy missions).

For the first part, if the new character isn’t imperial, chaos or another faction that already has a campaign- your best friends are Salvage runs and Onslaughts. Just make sure your new character survives long enough to actually use their abilities. Arena battles might also work if you feel confident that you can win within the first turn without losing the character and EPs with it. Same goes for guild raids if you feel certain you can get an “epic stand” rating (e.g if you know you can kill the boss in that same fight). Either way, with 2 salvage runs and onslaughts a day you can get that part done in 3 days. Don’t rush it unless you’re already done with the second one.

Blood of the Great Angel (21): Deal 15,000 damage with [New Character] and win 250 Campaign battles

Depending on your power level, this one might require you to level the new character a bit. Same as with the previous one, only this time you REALLY want them to survive throughout each onslaught and get one hit every turn, which for me for example meant getting them to iron 2. This also goes for getting max damage out of that one hit they’ll get out during arena and guild raids.

A nice shortcut is to pair them up with Eldryon or other characters that add a static damage number to their attacks (Not percentile), as that can give you a damage output you wouldn’t get for a long time with a new character.

The ’Multiplying Summons’ Trick

For a lot of the missions that require defeating a certain amount of enemies or dealing/healing a certain amount of damage, you can complete them using any mission with multiplying summons for the energy cost of just one mission. Just let them multiply, kill all but the ones needed to multiply and repeat until you’ve reached your goal.

For defeating amounts of enemies and healing, I’d recommend Scarabs as they multiply quickly and you usually can just sit back with Vindicta, Thaddeus or any other multiple hits/blast damage character and “harvest” them once they fill the screen. I’d recommend Indomitus mission 55 if you don’t have Isabella or mission 57 if you do, they both have a nice spot on the hill where you can hole up, heal forever and even make ranged attacks (For mission 55 to make ranged attacks you’ll need SOME melee character that can destroy a swarm with one hit, AKA Bellator). Just make sure you never kill the Scarabs with the unused Summon Active unless you want to finish the fight.

For damage output Scarabs likely won’t do as the damage you give them is capped by hits due to their swarm trait. I’d recommend instead going against Grots as you can mitigate their battle fatigue. They are available in both Octarius and Octarius mirror, and I’d recommend Octarius Mirror mission 71 for the most damage without going into elite. Just make make sure you don’t attack a Grot that is adjacent to all remaining Grots, as they might all escape.

Vox casters are also an option, but you will likely reach a point where there are no targets available that aren’t adjacent to the Vox Caster, at which point killing them will trigger the Vox Caster’s battle fatigue.

Bonus: Ability farming trick

This one isn’t as useful, but if you have Baraqiel unlocked you can use him alongside the multiplying summons trick to complete abilities related missions:

Baraqiel’s active can be used multiple times in battle, and unlike Tan Gi’da’s active it actually counts towards missions the require using abilities an X number of times. Just repeat the Multiplying summons trick with him in your lineup and use his ability whenever it’s available.

Do bear in mind that since it can only be used every other turn, this is even slower than farming using the summons trick. I would start by doing any other method before using this one to tie up loose ends.

Note: Ahriman can also be used for this trick. Just bear in mind that using him is even harder since it requires both getting a ranged kill with him and then making sure his ability doesn’t kill off crucial enemies to keep them multiplying. Titus can also be used probably, but that requires him to die and resurrect every time which is a much worse hassle.

EP, Milestones and the Leaderboard

Aside from the missions mentioned before, everything in an NCE revolves around EP.

First, there are Milestones, which are the main way to gain EC. Throughout the event, the EP you gain accumulates and grants you increasing amounts of EC every Milestone you reach, but the gap between each Milestone also increases after every couple of Milestones. This means that while you might find it easy to unlock a character and even get it to ‘Rare’ rarity, you probably will find yourself struggling to get it to epic even though it takes the same number of ES.

Generally, to get to epic you want to hit the 30,000 EP milestone, or even the 33,000 (Depending on your payouts throughout the event, as I’ll touch shortly).

Second, there is the leaderboard, which is set by the amount of EP you currently have compared to the rest of the world. Depending on your ranking, you’ll get a daily payout of EC each day, as well as big crate containing EC, ES, BS and other stuff at the end of each week (so two in total). The catch is- your daily payout counts for the highest you got on the leaderboard that day, so it’s worth a lot to start early before everyone else does their progress for the day.

Dropping even one tier in ranking means you get 80 or even 160 less EC during the event, which counter intuitively matters way more than the 3-6 ES difference between tiers (Since getting another chest using that EC will get you 30 more, and you are rarely missing just 3 ES to make it to the next ascension).

I find the keeping in the top 1000 through most of the event, together with the 30,000 milestone, is enough to get you to the tier 21 Chest and ascending to epic. You can also miss some days and still make it with the 33,000 milestone.

The Next bump into 2 stars epic usually requires getting both a better spot at the leaderboard and more milestones, and is rarely worth it.

So how do we get that amount of EP? Campaign missions, Arena Battles and Guild Raids.

Campaign Battles

Campaign Battles are the main income source for EP. Each one is worth a different amount though, so you want to hit the most cost-effective ones every day for the best use of your energy. Just hitting regular battles randomly can have a difference of around 1500 EP per event to hitting the most valuable ones you have, so it’s worth the effort to figure out which ones are which.

The EP value for each battle is set by this formula:

3 points per Energy + 1 point per difficulty Skull + 1 point per skull for Lightning Victory + X points for Enemy Power – 1 point per defeated character

While enemy power does not scale with your own power level, difficulty skulls do and they are the more significant of the two. This means two things: one- you need to recheck what missions are best to raid every once in a while (even if you made no new campaign progress), and two- getting higher in these events can actually be easier for weaker players to some degree.

That being said, it doesn’t matter if you do the actual battle or just raid it, as a battle that you won a lightning victory in will count as one for raids for the purpose of the NCE.

This means that hitting battles that cost more energy isn’t necessarily a bad Idea. You can see the differences in the table below, but generally if you can hit a harder battle it will probably be worth it yet a regular battle of the same difficulty is always better than an elite one, even with the highest enemy power level.

Lastly- as you’ll see below, early Indomitus missions cost less energy but are also worth less than most harder options. Still, they are worth the same or even more than regular missions and are great for Event missions that require a large number of missions to complete. Missions 6-14 cost only 3 energy and are worth the same as an easy 0 power regular mission, and Missions 19-29 cost only 5 energy and can have lightning victories so are actually worth as much as an easy 2 power elite mission. Missions 15-18 are the almost the lowest you can score and should be avoided.

Below you can see the EP rundown for every possible mission. LV means you got a lightning victory in that mission before. M stands for Mission (referencing those early game missions mentioned above). The columns stand for power levels (0-5) and the rows for difficulty skulls (1= Easy, 4= Very Hard).

Regular LV	0	1	2	3	4	5
1	200	210	220	NA	NA	NA
2	220	230	240	NA	NA	NA
3	240	250	260	NA	NA	NA
4	260	270	280	NA	NA	NA

Elite LV	0	1	2	3	4	5
1	NA	198	204	210	216	222
2	NA	210	216	222	228	234
3	NA	222	228	234	240	246
4	NA	234	240	246	252	258

Regular	0	1	2	3	4	5
1	190	200	210	NA	NA	NA
2	200	210	220	NA	NA	NA
3	210	220	230	NA	NA	NA
4	220	230	240	NA	NA	NA

Elite	0	1	2	3	4	5
1	NA	192	198	204	210	216
2	NA	198	204	210	216	222
3	NA	204	210	216	222	228
4	NA	210	216	222	228	234

Early Indomitus
M 19-29 LV	204
M 15-29	192
M 6-14	200

Arena

Similar to Campaign battles, Arena battles score varying EP depending on their difficulty and your success in them.

The EP value for each battle is set by this formula:

7 points per difficulty + X points for enemy power – 1 point per difficulty for each defeated character.

This one is pretty straight forward- you only have three options at a time, and you just go for the hardest battles you can handle without losing. You’ll notice that beyond easy difficulty going for a higher enemy power score might not be worth it if you lose even one character.

If your 3 choices include no battles you think you can beat you might want to spend the 1 BS to refresh. This is OC relevant only in cases where you usually can beat enemies at the league you’re at. If you accidently rose to a league that is too overpowered for your level you might as well save on the BS and take what luck gives you.

It’s worth mentioning that the battle that nets the most EP isn’t necessarily the one that would score you the most points in the arena, so you should take that into account as well.

Finally, as mentioned in the “Before the Event” section, you want to stay in a league where you can ideally win around 80% (Bumped to 90-95% with BS refreshes), as too low a league will net you very few EP and of course losing nets you no points at all. This also means that if during the event you find yourself at the end of the season and just on the verge of going up/down a league, you might want to consider losing some battles on purpose to make sure you can keep scoring well for the rest of the event.