General Tips

These are general tips. Remember, I am writing them as a late-mid game player. At the time I draft this, I have only 6 ships to 125, 1 more to 120, but a bunch over 100.

• Make use of Tier Lists. I'll link a few below.
• I like to Favorite all EX and Tier 0 ships. (Pocket Gamer uses SS, S, A+, A, et cetera for the tier names.)
• When building fleets, equipping ships, enhancing, et cetera, the Favorites list can help prioritize
• Learn how to use the Gear Lab once available
• Begin in the Shipyard when it's available (level 30). See the Research Guide in the Tier lists guidance.
• All Ultra Rare ships are Tier EX or 0, so Favorite them.
• PR ships above PR1 are all viable (as are some PR1). Favorite them when you get them, but understand they are viable once you've done further development on them. They tend to be Tier EX and 0, but some of the PR1 ships are Tier 1.
• Do the PVP / Exercises even from the very beginning. See reasoning below.

Tier Lists

Azur Lane Community Tier List: https://slaimuda.github.io/ectl/#/home -- probably the best

Pocket Gamer Tier List: https://www.pocketgamer.com/azur-lane/tier-list/ -- the first one I used

Azur Lane EN PvP Guide: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BewmBsf4EWKAf_UwYax05c7ksL51y6sjs96pIwD73Jc/edit?pli=1&gid=1356744907#gid=1356744907 -- useful for building exercise fleets

Research Guide - ECGC: https://samheart564.github.io/ECGC/research -- A lot of information plus help prioritizing ships

Fleet Building

Take anything I say with a grain of salt. Early on, you built fleets based on what you had. Some of those ships may be your highest level and best equipped ships. However, it's worth referencing the tier lists and taking a short term productivity hit to level higher tier ships.

Ultimately, you're going to want several fleets of ships that are:

• Tier EX, 0, or 1
• Are max level
• Max retrofit when available
• Max development (for Research or Meta ships)
• Properly equipped (see the Community Tier List for suggestions)

You'll need all these fleets:

• A mob fleet for your current content
• A boss fleet for your current content
• A PVP / Exercise fleet
• For OpSi:
  • A mob fleet
  • 3 boss fleets for different types of bosses

There can be overlap in the ships you'll use. For your PVP / Exercise fleet, there are some unique choices. For instance, Juneau (Retrofit) is not a high-tier ship, but she has a place in many top PVP fleets. This is because she heals the other ships when she sinks. In regular content, you don't want any ships to sink, but in PVP, it's going to happen in most fights. Juneau is typically put into the off-tank position, which means she'll heal your main tank when she sinks.

Your OpSi fleets mean a total of 24 ships. These ships probably include all the ships in your main mob and boss fleets but may or may not include any of your PVP / Exercise ships. Furthermore, at very high maps (higher than I've gone), your main fleets may need swapping around based on the types of encounters. Some of the guides on the internet can help you.

In addition to the above, I also have leveling fleets for easier content. This is where I level new ships until they're big enough to move into the mob fleet.

Some Fleet Building Terms and basics

• Mob Fleet: The fleet that kills everything up to but not including the boss
• Boss Fleet: The fleet equipped to kill the boss
• Main Tank: leftmost vanguard ship, which takes the lead when your fleet is advancing. This ship takes the most damage, so you want your tackiest ship here
• Off Tank: rightmost vanguard ship, which takes the lead when your fleet retreats. This ship takes the second-most damage. This is where Juneau may go in a PVP fleet.
• Middle Vanguard: more protected than left and right, so put your squishy damage dealer here
• Flagship: Central position in the main fleet. The flagship position carries special abilities, so picking the right ship here matters. The general advice is to pick a good barrage battleship. Note that the flagship takes the most damage in your back line but receives 50 percent more experience to make up for it.
• The other two main line positions don't have a special name, and position here isn't critical. If you use a healer like Akashi or Vestal, this is where she goes.

Why PVP / Exercises?

The general advice is that you should run exercises (pvp) as early as you can, even though in the beginning you'll lose most of the fights. There are enough people who run very poor defense fleets, that you'll win some fights, though, so have heart.

There are advantages to exercises:

• There's a daily quest reward for running one
• You get free XP for your ships
• You gain merit points, which you're going to want. Even when you lose, you gain half points.