Kalina's Shop and Gems

While Girls’ Frontline is very friendly to Free to Play (F2P) players due to the character and equipment gacha being based on free resources, the game still has a premium currency whose use should be carefully budgeted.

The currency in question, Gems, is primarily used for improving base infrastructure or purchasing cosmetics. They can also be used to purchase consumable items and Tokens, the premium currency used for the costume/furniture cosmetic gacha.

1. Echelon slot 5 and 6 are the absolute highest priority due to logistics. Logistics is how you gain your resources in GFL, and if you do not keep them running you will swiftly run out of resources to do anything at all. You want to always have 4 echelons in logistics and to be able to run combat maps in addition you need more slots.
   [Link to logistics section]
2. Dorm slots 3-4 are next to allow a steady income of batteries. Note that this requires Comfort levels in your dorms to be decently raised, and you should generally not buy more dorm slots unless you can fill them with furniture. See [Dorm section] for more info.
3. Additional echelon slots as needed. As you progress, you will need to be able to deploy more echelons while keeping logistics going. It is recommended to aim for at least 10 echelons slots over time but not as an immediate priority. The maximum is currently 14.
4. Enough t-doll slots for comfort, scrapping bad dolls should always be done as a new player so only important dolls are kept (Index retrieval exists), up towards 150 should be sufficient for normal gameplay for a while
5. Equipment slots to store what you need. Note that equipment index also exists as of 2.09, and special equipment you have scrapped can be retrieved here, thus scrapping anything you won’t be using is recommended over having it clog up your precious equipment slots.
6. Equipment (Fairy) production slots to comfort. These share slots, and are the same item in the Shop.
7. If you are not playing casually and feel 30 Fairy slots are too few and you are trying to optimize raising expensive fairies you can add more as you feel the need up to 60.
8. Up to 14 echelon slots if you are intending to do ranking(s where this matters, or keep logistics running while ranking).

Continuous sources:

• Monthly login
  For every day you log in during a month, you get a stamp with a minor reward, as you fill this up over the course of the month you get progressively better rewards.
  7 days gives 30 gems, 14 days gives 60 gems, 21 days gives a special reward and 90 gems, and 28 days gives 120 gems. This totals up to 300 gems a month.

• Weekly fake sharing for 30 gems a week.

One-time sources:

• S-ranking day missions of which there are now 134, and related achievements,
  10 per normal S-rank (6 per Chapter), 30 per Emergency S-rank (4 per Chapter)
  • 13 Chapters plus 4 missions in Chapter 0, totalling 2380 gems
  • 130 S-rank achievements totals up to 1020 gems
• Collection and related achievements
  As you collect more dolls of each type you gain progressively more gems from these achievements.
• Full resource pack
  Downloading the Full Resource Pack grants 30 gems the first time.
• Defense drill (one time rewards)
  • 150 gems for waves up to and including 100, this can be done with basic level 90 echelons, see the Defense Drill page.
  • 130 gems for checkpoints 110 to 140, this requires a well established armory with tools to deal with all the enemies, again see the Defense Drill page.
• Other achievements, see spreadsheet
  • Achievements from gems, published

Other sources:

• Community competitions and sharing events
  Example: Long since over and done sharing raffle 
• Buying gems

Echelon slots:

First one is heavily discounted at 480 gems, further are 880 gems each, extremely important to get despite high cost, especially to be able to run logistics.

Dormitories

First one is heavily discounted at 380 gems, further are 680 gems each.

First few are great battery per gem efficient, further ones have massively diminishing returns

Getting 4 is recommended to keep battery gain up, 3 is if you are extremely pinchy with your gems, 5 if you are willing to spend some extra after getting any other stuff you need.

Special mention to 14 dorm friends being extremely valuable in keeping your daily battery income high due to being free (not your gems).

Armory slots

• T-doll slots (280 gems/10): As needed, remember to scrap things you’re not gonna use (you can retrieve once per week), this is more important than fairy slots as there are a ton of dolls in the game and you need a large selection to field good units as needed.
• Fairy slots (280 gems/10): As needed, especially if you are raising expensive fairies through calib feeding. Mind you that beyond 60 is fairy addict territory and not needed for most players.
• Equipment slots (120 gems/20): As needed, remember that SPEQs that won’t be used can be scrapped due to equipment index (you can retrieve once per week).
• Coalition slots (280 gems/10): You should be scrapping bad units and linking good ones, unlikely you’ll need any slot increases for these during your first year++. Possible to increase as wanted much later on

Production and other slots

• Equipment/Fairy production slots (380 gems/1): highly valuable as you should preferably produce plenty of fairies a day, and they are rather long timers (requires your logistics to be in proper order, as well as core income to supply it).

Other slots are generally not worth considering, as they are expensive and the gain from them is minimal if not useless.

Avoid at all Costs.

7-day login packages last for 14 days, and are slightly priced down packages containing several items. However, considering a new player has very limited gems and also has priorities that do not line up with what is offered in any of these packages, the recommendation is to ignore them entirely:

1. There is no echelon slot increase, and that should be Priority #1 as a new player to allow them to do logistics concurrently with combat missions.
2. They are too time limited and too high cost for a new player to buy without buying gems.
3. While the resources you get might seem worthwhile to a new player, make note that resources in general in GFL are extremely overpriced for gems, as they are very easy to get when you progress through the game and unlock better logistics.
4. If you ARE going to whale (you are buying gems), Day 5 and Day 7 are the two most valuable packages here, but again, are generally far too expensive for a new player to even consider, combined with other much higher priorities to spend their gems on.

Support packages are one-time packages that last until purchased, and some of them are also quite good deals, while most are not worth the time.

• If you are severely behind on FCCs, the “Neural Upgrade Package” isn’t terrible, but it’s also not cheap. A consideration for much later.
• The “HOC Package” is lowered in value due to the double sim yield weeks that we get monthly, and as such buying extra sim energy is more worth it. This makes the package not worth it overall.
• The “Fairy Buildup Package” is cheaper than usual, but with 3.0 dedicated Fairy Crafting, these drop quite drastically in value.
• The “Protocol Assimilation Package” is very good value, offering 20 Svarogs for what is essentially the price of 10. Of course this is still spending gems on Svarogs, and is not in any way necessary.
• Other packages not named here are lower value and are generally not worth it.

Regular timed packages are generally discounted batches of regular shop items, so if you were intending to burn your gems on those items anyway, the package is probably a better deal.

• Svarogs are “Aid Commission” tickets, allowing a random pull of any unit in the current Coalition banner. These are not needed if you only want the good stuff, though if you want to collect everything they are a consideration. Not necessary, and quite expensive.
• Sim energy can give a lot of extra data for a somewhat low gem cost if used during double yield events. Do note that each additional sim energy purchased in a single day increases the cost. As such it is best to buy 1 single Sim Energy per day if you want to spend gems on this.
• Oath Rings are special items that allow you to establish an ‘Oath’ with your favorite dolls. These have extremely minor gameplay benefits; there is a 5% stat multiplier for having your affection above 90, Oaths increase the maximum Affection and gives another little boost in stats when it’s close to the new max Affection cap, exp bonus past level 100 (for mods). Combine this with that you get 1 Ring from career quests now that you can give to your favorite doll, this should not be a consideration at all until you have everything else you need.

Tokens give you practically no gameplay benefit and are only used to pull for Skin Gacha, and as such should not be considered unless you already have everything you need gameplay wise and/or are a whale or you for whatever reason do not care about improving your armory.

• Resources: Logistics are too good for these to be worthwhile.
• Contracts/Tickets: Do logistics. Don’t ragecraft (more than 4 doll 4 equipment a day) and you should never run out of these.
• T-doll production slots: Completely unnecessary, you should only do 4 doll crafts a day, and we have Quick Production Tickets for Rate-Ups.
• Repair slots: Big fat no, Quick Repair Contracts exist and 4 slots is more than enough otherwise.
• Research slots: Should never be needed, you’ll run out of data faster than you run out of time to skill up dolls.
• Echelon preset slots: Unless you are the one person excessively using this feature, don’t.

If you are intending to buy gems for real money there are two very good deals and a whole pile of far less valuable options.

• Monthly gem card.
  This grants 900 gems over 30 days for only ~4$ or the regional equivalent.

• Battlepass
  The battlepass costs ~10$, or the regional equivalent, and while this requires some effort on the user’s side, offers far more value than anything else you can buy.
  See Battlepass page for more info.
• Buying gems directly
  There is a first-time bonus on each of these packages (note that some, for example the ~26$ one has less value than others, and this should be calculated beforehand) that resets each year at Anniversary.

Commander costumes are a way to waste your gems and show how fancy you can be.

In Kalina’s shop these are available through the Costumes tab, bringing you into a dressing room menu where you can try on parts and test dyes as you wish.

Special effects

The special effects showcased on introduction infographics from mica is missing one crucial disclaimer present on other languages:

A new cosmetic effect is obtained when rare dyes are unlocked for all parts.

The special effect visible on the preview is only unlocked after you get the Rare (shiny) dye for every single slot of the set.

Set bonuses

Collecting a full costume set will enable a set bonus, granting various effects. To view these you can go to the Commander’s Wardrobe with the toggle button in the bottom right on the main menu.

As you collect a full set (the Griffin Standard Uniform is given from career quests) you will gain a bonus associated with this set. If multiple sets exist linked to a specific bonus, it can be upgraded further.

Do note that these set bonuses are generally very minor and should only be considered if you really like the set they are tied to while you are whaling.

The only actively beneficial set bonus would be the Search Theory set allowing for an extra chance to get drops after combat while farming. This is still minor gains for very high cost however.