Blue Archive Gacha Guide: Rates, Pity, and Smart Pulls

How Does Recruitment Work?

Your next recruitment session can end with a featured student—or a counter you needed to redeem before the banner disappeared. The Blue Archive gacha uses Pyroxene to recruit students, but its guarantee system differs between Global and the Japanese version. Check which system your server uses before committing your savings.

Recruitment happens through the Recruit menu. A single pull costs 120 Pyroxene, while a 10-pull costs 1,200 Pyroxene. The tenth result in a 10-pull is guaranteed to be a 2★ student or better, but pulling ten at once does not increase the 3★ rate.

Regular recruitment rates are:

Student rarity	Recruitment rate
1★	78.5%
2★	18.5%
3★	3%

A featured student on a regular pickup banner has an individual recruitment rate of 0.7%. The overall 3★ rate includes that featured student alongside the other eligible 3★ students.

Choose the banner featuring your target before pulling. A 3★ result can still be someone else.

Official page: Blue Archive (store.steampowered.com)

Global Recruitment Points: How the 200-Pull Spark Works

Global pickup banners use Recruitment Points, with one point earned per pull. Accumulate 200 points to directly recruit an eligible featured student. Players call this exchange a spark.

Image: Steam / NEXON Games

At the standard Pyroxene price, 200 pulls cost 24,000 Pyroxene before recruitment tickets or free pulls reduce the amount you spend.

Concurrent pickup banners share their Recruitment Point pool. You can pull across those banners and then choose which eligible featured student to recruit with your points.

The deadline matters: unspent Recruitment Points become Keystone Pieces when the pickup period ends. Those pieces are used for crafting; they do not preserve your recruitment progress.

Before spending:

• Check the pickup period’s ending time.
• Count your Pyroxene and applicable recruitment tickets together.
• Choose the student you intend to spark.
• Redeem your points before the period expires.

Reaching 200 points does not force an immediate exchange. You can keep pulling within the same pickup period before making your choice, but the expiration deadline still applies.

JP Recruitment Charge: Guarantees, Resets, and Carryover

The Japanese version introduced Recruitment Charge for pickup banners with the July 29, 2026 update. This system replaces the old pickup-banner point exchange with guarantees tied to a charge counter.

Image: Steam / NEXON Games

The milestones are:

• 100 Charge: a guaranteed 3★ result, with a 50% chance of being the featured student.
• 200 Charge: a guaranteed featured student.

Recruiting the featured student resets the corresponding Charge counter. That reset applies whenever you pull the target, including before a guarantee milestone. Pulling an off-rate student who happens to headline another concurrent banner does not reset your selected banner’s Charge.

Which banners share Charge?

JP tracks two separate counters:

Charge counter	Banner types
Recruitment Charge, shown in light blue	Regular pickup banners
Limited Recruitment Charge, shown in pink	Limited, Anniversary, Encore, and Recollection banners

Charge is shared within the corresponding banner category and survives a banner’s expiration. Regular pickup progress and Limited Recruitment Charge remain separate.

For example, Charge accumulated on a regular pickup does not move into an Anniversary banner’s counter. Limited and Anniversary banners belong to the same Limited Recruitment Charge category.

Check the counter before switching banners, and account for a reset whenever you recruit the featured student. Carryover preserves progress between compatible banners; it does not prevent a successful featured pull from resetting that progress.

JP Recruitment Count Rewards and Ticket Expiration

JP’s Recruitment Count Rewards track pulls made during the current pickup period. This reward track is separate from Recruitment Charge: Charge carries over, while the count reward track resets when the banners expire.

Image: Steam / NEXON Games

The first-time reward track includes limited-time 10-Recruitment Tickets at these milestones:

Recruitment count	Reward
70	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
130	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
150	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
170	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
270	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
330	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
350	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket
370	One limited-time 10-Recruitment Ticket

Reaching 200 pulls earns 40 pulls’ worth of tickets from those milestones. Reaching 400 earns 80 pulls’ worth.

These tickets expire 40 days after the pickup banner’s release, rather than 40 days after you claim them. Check that fixed deadline before saving tickets for a later banner.

The reward count is shared across concurrent banners. Archive Recruitment and recruitment using paid items do not contribute to it. Each first-time reward can be claimed once per pickup period, and a repeat reward cycle follows the first-time track.

Before chasing another ticket milestone, compare the extra pulls required with your remaining budget and target. A nearby reward still costs resources to reach.

Anniversary Banners: What the 6% Rate Actually Means

Anniversary banners, also called Fes banners, increase the overall 3★ recruitment rate from 3% to 6%. Their drop-rate breakdown is:

• 0.7% for the featured Anniversary student.
• 0.9% total, divided equally among eligible non-featured Anniversary students.
• 4.4% total, divided equally among regular-pool 3★ students.

The doubled overall rate does not double the featured student’s individual rate. It increases your chance of recruiting a 3★ student across the eligible pool.

Save discretionary pulls for an Anniversary banner when your goal is to expand your 3★ roster. If you want one specific student, plan around that banner’s applicable guarantee instead of relying on the 6% headline.

Earlier Anniversary students can appear as off-rate results on later Anniversary banners while they remain in that pool. On the Recruitment Points system, appearing in the drop table does not automatically make a student available through the spark exchange.

If you have a selector ticket, finish your planned recruitment before choosing its student, while staying within the ticket’s expiration date. That lets you make the selection with your new recruits already accounted for.

Archive and Other Special Recruitment Banners

Archive Recruitment has its own tickets and accepts Pyroxene. It uses a separate Archive Points counter, with 200 points exchangeable for an eligible student.

Students moved into Archive Recruitment leave the regular recruitment pool. Pull on Archive Recruitment when you want one of those students; regular pickup pulls will not recruit them.

Limited students have a different availability rule: they are available during their applicable recruitment periods and leave the standard pool when their Limited banner ends.

JP also has dedicated banners for older limited and Anniversary students:

• Encore Recruitment lets you select a pickup target from a lineup of legacy limited students.
• Recollection Recruitment offers legacy Anniversary students. Students moved there leave the Anniversary banner pool.
• Limited Dash Recruitment, introduced on JP in May 2026, is available to new players for 28 days after their first login. It tracks separate Limited Dash Points, with 200 points exchangeable for a student.

Check the eligible lineup before spending on a special banner. A student’s earlier appearance on a Limited or Anniversary banner does not mean they remain in every later pool.

What Duplicate Students Give You

Duplicate recruits provide Eligma for the shop and student-specific Eleph used to raise that student’s Mystic level.

Duplicate rarity	Eligma	Student Eleph
1★	1	1
2★	10	5
3★	50	30

Rate-up duplicates provide more student Eleph: 20 Eleph for a featured 2★ duplicate and 100 Eleph for a featured 3★ duplicate.

Using Recruitment Points to select a student you already own gives 100 of that student’s Eleph and 50 Eligma. Before redeeming a spark, compare that duplicate reward with the option to recruit another eligible featured student you do not own.