Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel New Player Guide

If you want little more help picking your Ace Monster, this guide will give you a quick rundown of all Ace Monsters you can pick at the start of the game, check it out!

Completing the tutorial will grant you with choosing a free Ultra Rare Monster to kick start your Cross Duel deck. This is the most impactful choice you will make, so choose wisely. Whilst you can always choose your favourite Monster, we would recommend checking out our Introduction Guides first to see if you will enjoy the overall playstyle of their deck, and what future upgrades are available to you as of launch.

Picking a generic Ace Monster that isn't overly reliant on other cards and skills, such as Loading... or Loading... , will provide the most value in the early stages of the game - even if that does mean you'll see them most often in Ranked Duels. With its Master Skill, Blue-Eyes can destroy any monster on summon, an ability which no other Ace Monster can match in terms of cost and power. Red Dragon Archfiend on the other hand destroys all defense position monsters at the end of the battle phase.

After finishing the rest of the main tutorial and completing your introductory PVP duel it's time to start working on your account and earning some easy Gems! These are the main Free to Play currency you will use to pull cards from the Gacha.

Starting out you will find a bunch Gems in your Gift Box and Missions tab, as well as the Pre-Registration Campaign rewards (even if you didn't pre-register!). After your first week of playing you'll receive a total of 2400 Gems just by logging into the game during that period.

We can also earn 700 extra gems by completing the Challenge Duel tutorials. These are short, introductory missions to different game mechanics and summoning types which you can find from the Menu in the top right of the screen. This again will take you 10-15 minutes at maximum.

You'll also be introduced to the Guaranteed UR Ticket campaign. These are one of the most important items to early game progress, and will be the focus of your first few hours playing Cross Duel. If you've come from Duel Links, these tickets will work a little different from what you're used to since you can't choose the UR card you get - it's randomly chosen from the Gacha.

3 Tickets are available at launch from completing the following activities:

• Complete the Raid Duel tutorial
• Rank up to Silver 2 in Ranked Duels
• Complete all Beginner Missions

The Raid Duel ticket is by far the easiest to complete. Simply click on "Raid Duels" on the menu and the tutorial will start. There's 3 or 4 parts to this, but it won't take more than 5-10 minutes for you to get your first UR ticket!

Now comes the fun part - acquiring new cards! You should have between 4000 and 5000 Gems if you've followed this guide so far, which is enough for 3-4 10x Pulls of the Gacha.

Depending on the Ace Monster you chose, you might want to see if there are any Special Gachas available with increased rates for that monster, since getting duplicate copies of your Ace will give you a big advantage. However these rates are usually miniscule so you're usually better off just pulling on the standard Release Celebration banner.

You'll be looking to pull as many UR and SR cards as possible (SR may be more important at this point) but since there is no pity system officially in place for Gem banners there's no guarantee you will pull anything... If you do happen to pull 0 SR/UR cards, or you aren't overly happy with your pulls then this is the optimal point to potentially re-roll you account. This can be done by deleting your game data and starting over again, it's not a super quick process but at least the option is available to you.

Since you've completed the tutorial you should understand the general idea of building a deck and equipping cards with Skills. Since we're using Loading... as our ace Monster for this guide we don't really need to follow a specific deck theme, but if you didn't you can refer to the Guide for your specific monster for Starter Deck recommendations.

You should be able to comfortably add a Skill to every monster in your deck with the currency provided at the start of the game, if not don't worry too much just yet. You also want to make sure you craft/equip your ace monsters Special Skill before anything else. We won't be able to give Blue Eyes its Master Skill just yet, so we'll only be able to destroy level 4 or lower monsters on summon, but that should be fine for Ranked Duels gameplay through Silver.

Of course feel free to also add any UR/SR cards you may have pulled that you want to play but be mindful of playing more than 1 additional level 7 or higher monster. Here's a few SR cards we'd recommend immediately putting into your Deck if you get lucky enough!

If you do find yourself missing certain cards, you can craft those you want from the Shop -> Trade Cards section, by using duplicates of cards of the same rarity. Over time you will eventually pull these missing cards, so you might want to hold fire and save these to unlock more skill slots for use in Tag or Raid Duels, or at minimum only use duplicate Rare Spell and Trap cards for now.

Here's a decklist we recommend following for new players starting out with Blue-Eyes White Dragon as their Ace Monster! Check out our Introduction to Blue-Eyes White Dragon to learn more about how the deck plays!

20 cards

Build in Deck Builder

Tag Duels

This is the main single player mode where you'll be playing with an AI partner. Face off against teams of duelists from each of the different Yu-Gi-Oh! series' to earn Gems, crafting materials and accessories. Each Series has it's own reward track, and there's also a general Tag Duel reward track that will over time reward you with 2x Speed and Auto Duel features!

There's a set limit of 3 Tag Duels available to you when you start the game, that respawn at a rate of 1 per hour - think similar to Duel Links' Standard Duelists. You can increase this number by progressing through the Cumulative Tag Duel reward track.

Raid Duels

You and 3 other players take on a giant boss monster in the centre of the duel field. Each Raid Boss has different abilities, takedown conditions and exclusive cards that will be used against you. Two Raid Bosses will appear each month, each with 25 levels of difficulty to climb through.

Reaching certain level milestones will grant you Gem and material rewards, as well as a cumulative reward track that resets monthly and random item drops after every duel. Be sure to check our Events section to see which Raid Bosses are live in game right now, and for tips and deck recommendations on how to defeat them!