That's right. The long awaited rerun of the Star Ocean Anamnesis collaboration event with Tales of The Rays is here now! This is the perfect chance for those who missed the first instance of the event last year to get their hands on Claude and Rena, and to fight Lucifer in Tales! Read on to see how to get the Star Ocean characters, their artes, and play the event.
The rerun was already shown in the first PV this month (which you can check out here.) While it was on short notice, the rerun is very welcome to both old and new players! Veteran Tales fans and those who have done their research should know something of the history between Tales and Star Ocean. Long story short, many developers who worked on Phantasia split off to form Tri-Ace and develop Star Ocean as a spiritual successor. This crossover served as a reunion for Wolf Team!
The featured characters coming into Tales of The Rays from Star Ocean are Claude C. Kenny and Rena Lanford from Star Ocean: The Second Story! Roll their Gacha Mirrages to get special costumes: Claude gets Cress (and looks almost indistinguishable) while Rena gets Mint! They of course have their iconic Star Ocean abilities as artes, such as Shockwave Swirl and Dragon Roar. The returning Featured characters to get artes and costumes based on Star Ocean Characters are Sophie who gets a costume and artes based on Meracle Chamlotte from Star Ocean: The Last Hope, Laphicet with a costume and artes based on Ashton Anchors from Star Ocean: The Second Story and Rondoline who'll be dressed as Nel Zelpher from Star Ocean: 'Til The End of Time for her artes and costume! As you can see, there's plenty of representation from across the Star Ocean series for this event.
Here's this event's timetable. Below this chart is an explanation of how the raid works, and the arte and costume previews will be at the bottom of the article, like usual.
| Star Ocean Anamnesis Crossover | Start Time | End Time |
| Event: Raid Quests, Gacha Banners, and Panel Missions | October 12th, 14:00 JST | October 22nd, 10:59 JST |
| Gacha Banner Grade Shop | October 12th, 14:00 JST | October 22nd, 23:59 JST |
In order to recruit Claude and Rena, playing the raid is required. You'll recruit Rena immediately through the first quest, a fight against Velvet on the easiest difficulty. Recruiting Claude is more involved: he is unlocked for everyone participating in the raid for free once it's complete. To explain further, Raids are a cooperative event where everyone playing contributes points by completing the quests and scoring high on the boss battles within. But you don't necessarily have to wait that long, since Rays has an alternate way of recruiting characters: both characters can be recruited by getting their 5* weapon or a Mirrage Arte in the gacha. You'll want to roll anyway since recruiting characters the normal way only gives you a single 3* weapon to work with, and the event expects you to use them to score high!
As is usual for collabs, there is a Free Multi on the banner featuring the collab characters (look for a button that says 0 dia/MRG for free pulls). There is also a Dia Step Up banner. Each step on the banner increases the rates of pulling a 5* or Mirrage Arte, with steps 4 and 6 guaranteeing at least one 5* or higher, and steps 5 and 7 guaranteeing at least one Mirrage Arte. It costs 665 Dia to go through all the steps, and taking advantage of that and the free multi makes it very likely you'll get 5*s and Mirrage Artes for both characters, as there's only two of them! There's also Mirrogem Discounts, but those require you to have paid real money to get mirrogems in the first place.
Now onto a more detailed explanation of the raid. This event uses the standard Raid format. Touch the event banner and you'll be taken to the Raid screen, which will show pictures of all currently unlocked bosses and Question Marks for the bosses currently locked. All players must contribute a certain amount of points to unlock the next boss, so the more people playing the event, the faster it will finish. There are progress indicators under each boss indicating how long until each raid is completed. It's in a player's best interest to play through all unlocked quests first, then repeat the quest that gives you the most points to contribute to the raid easily. There's a global score counter that tallies the total points of everyone doing the raid, but there's also individual score counters for each player to unlock rewards for themselves.
Even if you don't feel like you want to dedicate yourself super hard to the raid, you do want to get a certain amount of points. I suggest aiming for 350,00 points. Once you reach that number you'll have automatically received all event weapons for Rena and Claude, 6th enhancement orbs for them, their alternate costumes and a good amount of free gacha tickets. That said, I definitely suggest completing the raid if you can, with 2,100,000 or 2.1 million points. Not only does this give you every possible reward, you also get a Mirrage Select Ticket for Rena and Claude. This ticket lets you ignore gacha entirely and gives you an option to pick either character's Mirrage Arte. This is especially useful for people who were unlucky and only got one character's Mirrage Arte, but even if you have both this ticket goes a long way to making them more powerful.
Points received in raid is based on the base point value given by the quest, with multipliers based on the team you used, how fast you completed the quest and how much damage you were able to do in a single combo. The Featured Characters Claude, Rena, Sophie, Laphicet and Rondoline give inherently higher bonuses, so they're recommended for the quest. However, bonuses are based on how well equipped they are, so it's possible for some characters to be higher than the featured characters. Also, it's more important that you're able to win consistently, so if a featured character isn't doing well for you feel free to pick a character that makes the fight easier. That said, Claude is one of the best melee fighters in Rays while Rena is one of the best support and mage characters, so it shouldn't be too hard to make a team of only featured characters. Also, when picking a helper before the quest begins, be sure to pick one with a good point value!
There's also a new panel with 9 missions to clear available through the green button with a clipboard and feather near the bottom right of the home screen. Completing these will get you dia, gacha tickets and a ticket that guarantees a Mirrage Arte. Here's a translation of what you must do for each mission.
| Complete Vs. Velvet? Quest Once | Defeat Lucifer on Mania Difficulty Once | Use Mirrage Artes 5 Times |
| Defeat An Enemy 10 Times | Complete 3 Quests | Complete 5 Quests |
| Use 200 AP | Collect Log In Bonuses on 3 Days | Collect Log In Bonuses on 3 Days |
There's also a separate panel of missions for new players and players returning after a long time, but I'm unable to see what it is or provide a translation as I don't fit either criteria... but this article will be updated if I get my hands on it. In the mean time, you can tap one of the panels to be automatically taken to where you have to go to complete said mission, which may help. You may also look at the beginner panel mission on our previous collab raid (.hack) here for a good idea of what you must do for this one.
With all that done, here's the Mirrage Arte and Costume previews for each character.
【お知らせ】
こんにちは。運営です。
コラボ衣装ソフィ、ロディ、フィーの紹介です。
ソフィはSO4のメリクル衣装、ロディはSO3のネル衣装、フィーはSO2のアシュトン衣装で登場です。
アシュトンの衣装を着ていますが中身はフィーなので通常攻撃連打でハメ技はできません。ご注意ください。#ザレイズ pic.twitter.com/tyvJd0ZuOA— 【公式】テイルズ オブ ザ レイズ (@talesof_therays) May 29, 2019
This tweet gives us a good comparison of the original Star Ocean characters that our own Tales characters will be dressing up as, as well as the Mirrage Artes they get.
Claude
Claude's Mirrage Arte is Mirror Blade - Flame, and his alternate costume is based on Cress Albane! He wears it a little too well.
Rena
Rena's Mirrage Arte is her signature Star Flare from her original game. She also gets a costume based on Mint Adenade to match Claude's Cress costume!
Laphicet
Laphicet's Mirrage Arte is Ashton Anchors' Dragon Breath ability.
Sophie
Sophie gets Meracle Chamlotte's Max Shockwave!
Rondoline
Rondoline's Mirrage Arte is Nel Zelpher's Divine Wrath ability.
By the way, this collaboration is also rerunning on Star Ocean Anamnesis' side. Here's a good look at the new art our Tales characters get, as well as a commemorative picture for the event, which can also be unlocked for use in Tales of The Rays' My Room feature as a poster!
Cress
Mint
Arche
Chester
Commemorative artwork featuring characters from Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean: First Departure. The two casts have often been compared by people who've played both games. It's a nice way to celebrate the two original games made by Wolf Team!
That's it for this event. Stick around for more news though, because a lot is happening this month for Rays. The game isn't slowing down any time soon! If there's anything you're unsure of or want to know more about, leave a comment, a reply on our social media accounts or join our discord and we may even update this article. Also reminder that the Miracle Boss Challenge event is still going on, so there's plenty of rewards for players new and old even outside of this crossover for players to claim. You can read more info about that here. See you next time!
Tales 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.
