Gundam Battle Gunpla Warfare Arena Announcement & Balance Changes, Covert Gerbera Event, Astray Red Frame, Dragon Gundam, Seabook Arno Coming Tuesday

Pilots!

There's a lot of notable things going on in Gundam Battle Gunpla Warfare and we wanna talk about all of it. Not only do we have a new event, new pilots, and new gunpla suits coming, but we've got an interesting trend (only one 4 star set THANK GOODNESS in the Pick-Up this time) and a lot hidden away in the recent arena announcement. 

Let's get into the latest news!

Hidden in the text of an arena announcement were a few tidbits that may be easy to overlook. For starters, the purpose of the announcement issued on 8/16 was to explain that the Arena bugs that plagued the initial arena opening have now been potentially fixed and they are going to take Arena for a test drive on 8/24 to see how it goes. The test period will only be for THREE DAYS so be sure to get in and try it out (and earn 3 days' worth of arena coins that can be used to buy valuable blue awakening chips).

Bandai goes on to apologize for the inconvenience and does right by all of us players in doing so. We're hopeful this fix worked and that we can see arena events reopen shortly after this test run (including possibly 3v3). We would anticipate this test run will be 1v1 just based on the fact that 3v3 was supposed to open at the end of this month and 1v1 is what initially broke the system.

But beneath the arena update, we're getting some other seriously interesting tidbits. For one, they mention adding code phi Gunpla Parts as rare drops in Free Missions (hard). We're not entirely sure what code phi parts are. We know from in game that some of the awakening chips (white, green, blue, purple) have various greek letters associated with the rarity, but we haven't noticed a code phi yet. It could've been a typo but we're just not sure. Below are the various rarities for awakening chips:

• White - Alpha (a)
• Green - Beta (B)
• Blue - Gamma (y)
• Purple - Delta (d)

It's possible the tier of gear (white, green, blue, purple, gold) has a different greek letter associated with it, but who knows. Point is, they want to give out more rewards for Hard missions. We're all for that.

They also mentioned increasing the parameters of Gundam Artemis Gunpla parts which would be a welcome surprise. The only free 20 pull you get is from friend points, and the green gear (rarist possible pull) in those sets is not exactly world-beating. It'd be great to see those parts improved substantially. 

On a similar note, they also talked about upgrading Haro (pilot) which would also be great.

They mentioned updating Daily Missions to increase the number of upgrade nippers obtained from each one, which is smart. Right now, the Amass Capital rewards a whole pile of upgrade (all) nippers versus the individual parts (back, legs, chest, etc) reward nippers that can only be used on armor for that location -- making the Amass Capital mission (which also awards 100,000 capital per victory on Very Hard) the far superior daily to do. Increasing the number or rarity of the other dailies is a no-brainer.

They mentioned a few quality of life improvements as well -- making it clearly visible if you've got a bonus on your main for an event, fixing the poor response on long taps for some devices, changing where you go after tapping on beginners guide, fixing EN fully recovered notices, etc. 

But it certainly sounds like they have a lot of content planned, including balancing shifts (hopefully they see how OP defender and support is right now) and quality of life improvements, etc.

In keeping with the last event, once again you can use the gear obtained through Unseen Assault (Blitz Gundam) to earn a 2x multiplier on the next event Covert Gerbera. And once again, you can get a 7x and a 5x multiplier for the two main suits in the Pick-Up banner -- but this time the pick up is separated in a unique way.

In the first week of GBGW - the Pick-Up banner had only one 4 star suit -- the Gundam Nu Ver Ka. Since the overall drop rate on the banner is around 5% (with around 40% chance to pull one 4 star piece on a full 10 pull), the Nu banner was relatively undiluted and allowed for a decent chance to pull that gear. But the last two-week-long Pick-Up banners have contained TWO full 4-star sets -- meaning that 5% chance to draw was even further diluted by having two full sets of armor at 4-star.

But this week -- thank goodness -- we're seeing the Astray Red Frame as the only 4-star suit. So 10 pulls won't be as diluted as they were in the last few weeks. I hope this style of featuring one new 4-star and one new 3 star continues -- as it's far more beneficial to pull on the Pick-Up banner in that scenario than it is to pull on it with two full 4-star sets. Plus, it slows down the rate of new 4 star armors being added to the general pools and adds new 3-star armor (with a better chance for a pull) to the overall pool which is helpful for free to play players who only get one pull on the standard banners free every 24 hours. Having more strong 3 star sets is extremely helpful.

So it's great to see this -- and we hope it continues.

As for the pilots and armor sets and whether or not you should pull, it really depends on what you like -- and we really don't know for certain what the stats or moves will be on any of the armor sets or from any of the pilots until 8/20. 

There's a ton of cool stuff happening in Gundam Battle Gunpla Warfare and we're excited to see where it leads. We're hoping to get a database up here on GamePress and bring you some guides (with the incredible help of people like SmilyT1, AetherRose and the mods on the Gundam Battle Discord and r/GundamBattle subreddit) so be sure to check back here often as we get things rolling.

We can't wait to see what Bandai has up its sleeves next!