Whether you've collected characters while playing the story or spent gems to revive the best in the game, you'll need to level up your team to get the most powerful loadout possible. In addition to enhancing characters with various items to increase their level, you can also use the Nier Reincarnation ascension system to increase the level cap and gain new abilities.
To build characters, you will need texts and manuals. The texts are specific to each character. They can be purchased from the Exchange Shop with Automaton Medals, found as rewards for completing certain normal and hard story quests for the first time, or received from Dupe Summons.
While every character can use texts for ascension, not all of them yet have texts that can be purchased or found through quests (or at least it seems so so far). This is where textbooks come in.
Manuals basically perform the same function as texts, and each character can also use them for ascension, but they come in three basic varieties: beginner, intermediate, and advanced. They're also used to leveling up characters that don't yet have texts available in-game.
Beginner and Intermediate textbooks can be purchased with Automata Medals through the Exchange store. It seems the advanced manuals are only available through events, though I couldn't find one in the roughly eight hours I played.
To mount a character:
- Open main menu
- Select "Improve"
- Select "Characters"
This will spawn any characters you have in the game, both through story and by summoning. Choose the character you want to upgrade. Click on the "Ascend" tab on the far right of the screen. If you can mount a character, the tab will have a red diamond in the upper right corner.
A new set of Ascension options will appear: Battle Text and Handbook. You see how many you have in your inventory by looking at the icon for each. You can also click on the icons to see where you can find/purchase them.
Some descriptions will simply say “??? which means that you have not yet discovered the text or the manual, while others will be more descriptive. Even if you have a number of battle texts in your inventory, for example, the descriptions can still list their locations as “??? because you acquired them by synthesizing dupe summons. You haven't picked them up in-game yet.
Each time you pull a duplicate character through a summon, you will receive a number of combat texts for that character. The number of texts is heavily governed by RNG, and the number you get is completely random but quickly discernible.
A duped character will turn into a square with a number in the center on the summon summary screen. This number corresponds to a number of battle texts.
- 1 = ?? (I haven't drawn a 1 yet)
- = 2 16
- = 3 14
- = 4 12
- = 5 10
Be sure to go to the gift box and collect the texts after receiving them from the dupes.
You can Ascend each character four times. This raises their level cap, grants new abilities, and boosts abilities they already have. Each Ascension costs a certain number of Texts or Manuals (usually 10) and a certain amount of Gold (usually 25).
That's basically all you need to know about how to level up characters in Nier Reincarnation. For more tips, consider heading over to our guides hub, where we've got all the Black Bird locations and more.
