Tales of The Rays - Summer Hearts Event + August Producer's Letter details!

Summer Hearts

Summer's not over, so naturally Rays is here to give us another summer event! Also, we cover August's Producer Letter for Rays in this article so read on if you'd like to know more, especially for the upcoming release of co-op mode!

It's time for yet another summer event. There's only one new character this time: Ines Lorenzan from Tales of Hearts and its remake, Tales of Hearts R! She'll be joined by other Hearts characters. The featured returning characters this time are KorBeryl and Lithia! Like usual they'll be getting new artes and costumes for the event. The costumes are swimsuits naturally, but what's special this time is that they won't be the only ones with costumes. Kohaku and Hisui will also be getting new costumes for the event, despite not being featured! This makes sense since they already had swimsuits ready from Hearts' DLC. The special swimsuit cut-ins from said DLC will also be implemented, making this summer event more robust than usual!

The event times are below! It follows the standard event format - complete all the quests, then farm the highest AP quest you can to buy out the event shop. There's also a daily challenge quest for this event to get dia, exp gems and tickets for swimsuits, so be sure to check in to that, especially if you want Kohaku and Hisui's! Be warned however, as they're quite tough- you're limited in what characters you can use!

Tales of The Rays Summer Hearts Event Start Time End Time
Event Period August 11th, 14:00 JST August 21st, 10:59 JST
Daily Challenge August 11th, 14:00 JST Resets Daily, last one on last day of event
Gacha Banner August 11th, 14:00 JST August 31st 10:59 JST
Ticket Banner August 11th, 14:00 JST September 7th 10:59 JST

By the way, if you're unsure where to pick up Kohaku and Hisui's costume, here's a quick guide on where to find all currently running trade shops!

First go to the shop tab between the bottom menu, and press the button with the two arrows on the right.

Then, press the top left button with the chest.

Now you have a list of all exchange shops. The one with Kohaku and Hisui's face has their costumes, but be sure to check out the other ones too! Keep this place in mind as every exchange shop lasts longer than their respective event, so this lets you visit them after the event's end.

Now for the real meat of this article. Shortly after the Preview was released, Rays producer Yanigasawa released the Producer's Letter going into more detail on upcoming content, like usual. This month's letter had a lot of information, so we'll cover the important parts here. Mirrage Arte and costume previews will be at the bottom of the article.

The producer hopes everyone enjoyed the Rays festival, and wants to hold another one. But it won't be held until all the issues people had with the last one were addressed. He's referring to the event before the villainess summer event of course, where we voted on crossover mirrages. It looks like this event format may be a regular thing, so look forward to it!

Tales of The Rays Version 4.0.0 will come in the fall with a major overhaul of the equipment system. Mr. Yanigasawa toyed with the idea of a stream to explain how it works down the line, but he does his best to explain anyway. All duplicate equipment received through the gacha will be automatically sold or limit boosted- this mechanic is mandatory, as opposed to the optional version that came with the last update. As a result, the limit on inventory space and the warehouse will be removed, and all dia/mrg will be refunded. Artes can now be set regardless of equipment!

There will be a new stat called Equipment Level. This stat is determined by how many different equipment pieces a character has, in total. Before, only the 4 weapons equipped would affect your stats, but now all the different pieces of equipment together are counted. This does not mean characters with more equipment will be significantly stronger. The difference in power between the character with the most equipment pieces, Mileena, and characters with the median amount of equipment is less than 5%. Difficulty will not be changed either, particularly since Rays has no PvP elements. Collab and Bonus characters have even less equipment than most characters, but they're made stronger than usual due balance it out, particularly collab characters since they're intended for players new to the game who may join specifically for a collab. The equipment level will also determine a character's orb count, for the tower.

There's a new system in development wherein some characters can take the role of Master and others the Disciple. Before, a common strategy to increase a character's stats was to give them the weapons of another character. The update will make only a character's specific weapons matter, and they will no longer be able to benefit from another character's weapons. To replace this, the Master/Disciple system will be instated. This will allow you to set one character as a Master, and the stats of their Disciple will increase by a percentage of the Master's stats. The number of Disciples a Master can have is based on their Character Points, which is another new stat. Character Points are given when weapons that are already Max Limit Boosted are sold. This means even if you've max limit boosted all of a character's available equipment, getting more of their equipment will still benefit you! The producer wants to implement this in Version 4.0.0 but this may have to wait for Version 4.1.0.

You'll be able to set artes to any enhancement level you want. There were arte enhancements that'd change an arte significantly enough that people liked to have multiple copies at different enhancement levels such as for Caius. Since you will no longer be able to have multiple copies of an arte, you will now be able to set enhancement levels however you want to turn on/or off specific effects. This is especially useful if you found an enhancement detrimental to your strategy!

Stats will be weighted depending on the type of artes you set. For example, someone with all spells set will have their stats weighted towards their arte stat, likewise a character with only physical artes will have a higher physical stat. Presumably, the total stats won't change, just which one is higher.

Master Arte Zoom-In can be turned off. Normally on Master Arte activation, the game will freeze and zoom in to the character using it. This can throw people's rhythms off, particularly if AI uses Master Artes. Turning this feature off should help players who found it annoying!

There'll be a new glossary explaining terms in the story. Tales of The Rays has a lot of original terms in the story's setting that you'd need to remember to follow along. Pop Quiz, what's a mirrite? Or an overray? This is the sort of thing the glossary will explain, and you'll be able to tap a highlighted term in a story's scene to see what it means.

Lastly, the Producer mentioned that separating artes from stats means a lot more can be done with them. The data load should be lighter with this new system. He throws around ideas like increasing the number of artes available or changing the number of party members, but nothing is set in stone. We'll just have to hope for the best on that.

Finally he goes into august's schedule. There's nothing we don't already know, besides that the Legendia event after this one will be a Yukata event that introduces Will and celebrates Legendia's 15th anniversary (on August 25th!) He muses how Legendia has become a summer tradition for Rays. The event after that is the Vesperia Spirit Gear event. The PV was released on Vesperia's anniversary, so the spirit gear event is celebrating that game's anniversary as well.

But more importantly, in the middle of August, we'll be getting The official release of Tales of The Rays' Co-op Mode: Unison Attack! That's right, no more beta testing! The co-op mode is permanently here to stay. This co-op period will have a larger available selection of characters to use as well, because it'll be the characters who's voice actors were intended to be a guest for this year's Tales of Festival. Here's the full list:

Zelos
Velvet
Mint
Lloyd
Kratos
Luke
Raven
Sorey
Edna
Zaveid
Eizen
Eleanor
Lailah
Sheena
Yuri
Rita
Hubert
Malik
Laphicet

That's a lot of characters! Hopefully everyone playing has at least a few of these characters. We'll be planning on making a full article for this mode's release, of course! Look forward to it.

The producer signs off by stating Arc 4 will take a while to come, but events will still come each month like usual.

And now that that's done, let's get to the arte and costume previews for the current event!


Here's a group shot of all the Hearts cast currently in Rays in their swimsuits. Except for Kunzite. Poor Kunzite.

Ines Lorenzan

Kor Meteor

Lithia Spodumene


Lithia's swimsuit is totally new for this game, due to her not being playable in Hearts. Notice that she's wearing an anklet, just like Kohaku's Soma!

Beryl Benito


Her new art has her taking a selfie with Kohaku, rather than being solo art like Shing's or Lithia's, interestingly enough! Make no mistake it's still for Beryl's Seasonal Mirrage Arte.

That's all for this event! Be sure to stick around for upcoming news-especially since co-op makes its official permanent debut this month!

Tales of the Rays
Tales of BerseriaTales of the Rays is a Tales mobile game for the iOS and Android featuring characters designed by Hidenori Matsuraba and a new ADF-LMBS (Advanced Flick Linear Motion Battle System). The game tells the story of hero Ix Nieves and heroine Mileena Weiss in the world of Tir Na Nog. Characters from the previous Tales titles appear in this game. The game initially had an English version, but was short-lived and now currently runs exclusively in Japan.

Info Page | News | Gallery | Official Website (JP)

Khayyaam
About Khayyaam 104 Articles
When he’s not playing Tales, Khayyaam tries his best to get as many people he knows as possible into the series. He’s also a fan of all sorts of games in general, especially Fighting Games, Action Games and RPGs, and he loves to write and talk about them too, especially from a gameplay and game design perspective. One day he’ll make his own game, or be a voice actor in a game, but for now he’s happy just playing games and talking about them.