NTE Mid-to-Late-Game Progression: Stamina Allocation, Second Team & Arc Graduation (Hunter Lv 30-60)

Key takeaway: Once the opening grind is over (from around Hunter Lv 30), your build focus needs to shift from “rushing levels and opening the map” to “a fixed daily routine of topping up ascension materials, EXP, and Beetle Coins”. Memorize the stamina priority: ascension materials → EXP → skills → Gear; Incantation materials are actually the least scarce, so don’t put the cart before the horse. Don’t get distracted building a second team before your first four-person team is maxed out. Maxing an Arc’s (weapon’s) ascension gets it close to graduated; the real long-term project is Gear substats (farm those hard only after unlocking the Rabbit Hole Rift at Hunter Lv 30). Fold weekly bosses and the Abyss into your fixed weekly routine as early as possible. Specific numbers shift with each version, so the in-game values are authoritative.

If you’ve already finished the opening grind by following the New Player 30-Day Roadmap, you should have 3-4 S characters + a stack of free S Arcs + roughly Hunter Lv 35. At this point a lot of people hit a wall: “resources suddenly feel really tight.” It’s not your imagination — the one-time jackpots of the opening period (main story, login, events) have all been claimed, and you’re now entering the mid-to-late game where you subsist on daily stamina, drop by drop. This article is the sequel to the 30-Day Roadmap, focused specifically on how to allocate resources after the opening grind, emphasizing decision logic over hard numbers.

Your goal after the opening grind

The goal of the opening period was breadth — collecting every free character, free Arc, and milestone you could. The mid-to-late-game goal is the opposite: depth.

• Actually take your first team’s Main DPS to fully built (maxed level ascensions, maxed skills, Arc + Gear in place), rather than stopping at “usable”.
• Invest your daily stamina into the materials that bottleneck you the most, instead of farming aimlessly.
• Fold fixed income like weekly bosses and the Abyss into your weekly routine — never miss a single one.
• Only once you have spare capacity should you start laying the groundwork for a second team / second DPS, to handle dual-team content and enemies of different elements.

In a sentence: the opening grind is “stamp collecting”; the mid-to-late game is “building one team well enough to beat all current content”. The overarching principle of investment order continues the “depth first, breadth second” of the Build Priority guide.

Stamina allocation priority (the most important section of the mid-to-late game)

After the opening grind, how you spend stamina (character pixels) directly determines whether you get stuck. The community-compiled mid-to-late-game priority is:

Ascension materials → character EXP → skills (Incantations) → Gear (drive blocks)

The key insight behind this order runs exactly counter to new-player intuition:

Incantation upgrade materials are actually “the least scarce”

A lot of people get spooked during the opening grind by “five Incantation-material domains to run every day” and assume they’re the most precious. But in reality the game hands out tons of Incantation materials — the community widely reports “leveled 8 characters to max without farming specifically, and still had enough to carry through to around Hunter Lv 40”. So in the mid-to-late game you don’t need to grind hard for Incantation materials every day; save that stamina for what you’re actually short on.

The real bottlenecks are these two categories

1. Ascension materials (character ascension / Arc ascension) — characters need to ascend at Lv 30, 40, and 50, and Arcs likewise must ascend to keep leveling. These domains can be repeated infinitely once cleared (costing stamina) and are the main destination for mid-game stamina.
2. Beetle Coins + character EXP — these are the two scarcest things in the mid-to-late game. EXP is used to raise Hunter level and character levels; Beetle Coins are used for leveling characters, ascensions, and Arc upgrades. The community has measured “building a single character from scratch costs nearly a million Beetle Coins alone”, and during Hunter Lv 30-45 the common advice is to consistently run the “EXP omnibus domain” and the “coin domain”.

Concentrate Beetle Coins on your main carry

The most common cause of going broke in the mid-to-late game is spreading Beetle Coins evenly across every character. The correct approach is to funnel 100% into your current main carry, finishing one before moving to the next — the same pitfall as “don’t spread your resources” in the opening grind (see the pitfalls in the New Player 30-Day Roadmap).

Why Gear (farming substats) ranks last

Gear (set substats) is the slowest-burning return: the Rabbit Hole “Rift” difficulty only unlocks at Hunter Lv 30, and before that both drop rates and quality are poor, so grinding Gear early is pure stamina waste. That’s why it ranks last in the priority order — once ascensions, EXP, and skills are mostly handled, then shift stamina heavily into Gear. For the details of daily stamina planning, see the Daily & Weekly Checklist.

How a second team / second DPS takes shape

First ask: do you actually need a second team yet?

The test is simple — can your first four-person team reliably clear “the content you currently want to beat”? If you’re still getting stuck, resources should keep flowing into the first team; don’t rush to open a second team. What usually forces you to need a second team is:

• Dual-team content (some Abyss/event modes require you to field two teams at once).
• Elemental counters — enemies resist your Main DPS’s element, so you need DPS of another element.

The most cost-effective second DPS in the mid game: low-cost A-rank

When opening a second team, don’t fixate on pulling another limited S Main DPS. The smartest mid-game move is to stopgap with a cheap, easy-to-build A-rank character — Mint, for example: high-frequency output, simple to play, and very capable in both the opening grind and the transition phase; many teams use her directly as a quick-swap Sub-DPS. Use an A-rank to round out a “Lakshana-reaction team of a second element” first, spreading the breadth of your overall power, then painlessly upgrade and swap once you actually pull the corresponding limited Main DPS.

Build your second team around “Lakshana reactions”

NTE’s damage core is the Lakshana reaction (adjacent elements triggering bonuses off each other). When building a second team, don’t just look at single-unit strength — look at “can this team trigger Lakshana smoothly”: the typical structure is on-field Main DPS + quick-swap Sub-DPS + two Buffers/Survival units. For team-building logic and ready-made team templates, see Recommended Teams.

Arc graduation: from “usable” to “graduated”

First let’s clear up a term that often gets conflated. In this site’s terminology, a character’s equipment splits into two parts, so “Arc graduation” is actually two things:

Part	What it is	Graduation standard	How to get it
Arc	The character’s weapon	The right S Arc + maxed level ascensions (refinement T1)	Mostly obtained free during the opening grind
Gear (Cartridge + drive block)	The character’s set substats	The right 4-piece set + correct main stats + good-enough substats	Long-term farming in the Rabbit Hole

The Arc (weapon): the opening grind already half-graduates it

If you finished the 30-Day Roadmap, most of your free S Arcs are already in hand, and a free Arc is itself close to BiS. In the mid-to-late game the only thing you need to do for an Arc is max its level ascensions. As for refinement, F2P should only chase T1 — every rank above T2 spikes sharply in cost, T5 is whale-exclusive, and the DPS-gain value drops off a cliff. For the full mechanics of the Arc system see the Arc System Guide; for the list of free S Arcs see the Signature Weapons Guide.

Gear (set substats): this is the real graduation project

Gear is the most time-consuming part of the mid-to-late game, but it has one very build-friendly trait: “what you see is what you get” — substats are all visible and permanently fixed the moment you obtain them, with none of the endless substat-rerolling pain of Genshin’s artifacts. The three conditions for graduation:

1. Complete the right 4-piece set (to trigger the 4-piece graduation effect — be sure to place the drive-block shapes manually rather than relying on auto-equip).
2. Correct main-stat direction — generally prioritize Crit Rate / Crit DMG, then top up matching element DMG / ATK depending on the character.
3. Good-enough substats — since they’re fixed and can’t be rerolled, keep the ones you farm with good quality and decompose the bad ones (decomposing refunds most of the materials, so don’t worry about feeding the wrong character).

The key to efficiency is still that one line: farm heavily only after unlocking the Rabbit Hole “Rift” difficulty at Hunter Lv 30, where orange drive blocks mostly come from. For the complete sets and build paths, see the Gear System Guide.

When to start tackling high difficulty (weekly bosses / Abyss)

The mid-to-late game has two blocks of “free income you’d be silly to skip” — the sooner you fold them into your weekly routine, the more worthwhile:

Weekly bosses: run full attempts as early as possible

Weekly bosses (Murphexus, the Never-Ending Curtain Call Arachne, etc.) unlock one by one as you clear the main story, and each has fixed weekly challenge attempts. They’re an important source of mid-game ascension materials and some Arcs, and most don’t cost much stamina, so not running their full attempts is pure loss. Write “run full weekly-boss attempts” straight into your weekly routine.

Abyss: start around Hunter Lv 30

• Permanent Abyss: the community recommends you can start trying around Hunter Lv 30, going for full stars first, the limit second. At Lv 30 there are already plenty of cheese teams that can full-star, so you don’t have to wait until you’re very high.
• Time-limited Abyss: resets each cycle and is a major Crystals source, so be sure to clear the final floor every cycle. When a team gets stuck, prioritize topping up Gear substats and skills rather than mindlessly rushing levels.

The mid-to-late-game rhythm in one line

Opening grind done → top up ascension materials/EXP/Beetle Coins on a fixed daily basis → build your first team’s Main DPS to fully graduated → clear weekly bosses + Abyss each week → only lay the groundwork for a second team once you have spare capacity.

Run this loop smoothly and you’ll transition cleanly from “opening-grind player” to “a mid-to-late-game player who can beat all current content”, ready for the new characters and new high-difficulty content of later versions. For the daily/weekly execution details, just follow the Daily & Weekly Checklist.

FAQ

The decision principles in this article are compiled from Bahamut forum mid-game build threads such as “Lv 30-40 resource planning” and “Lv 40 resource famine”, along with this site’s existing New Player 30-Day Roadmap, Build Priority, Daily & Weekly Checklist, Arc System Guide, and Gear System Guide. Specific material names, quantities, and unlock levels shift with each version, so the in-game values are authoritative.