Glossary of battle collection RPG terms

Every entry below is written so that it makes sense on its own, without the entries around it. Where a term only becomes useful in combination with others, the definition says so and points to the page that works through it. Terms are grouped by the part of the game they belong to rather than strictly alphabetically, because the groupings themselves are part of the explanation.

Two conventions are used throughout. Where different games use different words for the same mechanism — shard and scroll, champion and hero, energy and stamina — the alternatives are listed together rather than given separate entries. And where a definition depends on a specific game's numbers, the entry describes the shape of the mechanism instead of quoting a figure, because those figures change between titles and between updates. For anything where an exact number matters, the publisher's own in-game information screen is the authority, not a third-party page.

Collecting and rarity

Champion, hero, unit: A single collectible character. Each carries a rarity, a faction or clan, an affinity or element, a role, three or four skills with individual cooldowns, and a base stat profile. The champion is the atom of the genre: almost every other system exists to acquire, improve or deploy one.
Rarity: A tier label — commonly Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary — that sets a champion's base stats, its maximum star rank and how hard it is to obtain. Rarity is a ceiling, not a measure of usefulness: a Rare champion with a needed utility skill will outperform a Legendary one whose role is already filled.
Faction or clan: A thematic grouping of champions. Factions usually matter for specific content that requires a team drawn entirely from one of them, which is the main reason to keep champions you do not currently use.
Affinity, element, attribute: A cyclical advantage system laid over combat. A champion attacking into a disadvantaged affinity connects more reliably and may land additional effects; attacking into an advantaged one risks a weak or glancing result. Because the cycle is fixed, no single team clears everything, and breadth of roster is a real constraint rather than a collector's preference.
Shard, scroll, summon token: The item consumed to perform one randomised draw. Tiers of shard draw from different pools: a lower tier may be unable to produce the highest rarity at all, while a higher tier changes the distribution rather than guaranteeing an outcome. See summoning and randomised rewards.
Drop rate, summon rate, published odds: The stated probability that one draw produces a given rarity or a given champion. The figure describes each draw independently. It does not accumulate across a session, and it does not improve because earlier draws were disappointing — the exception being an explicit pity counter, which is a separate mechanism the game has to state.
Pity counter, mercy system: A published rule that guarantees a minimum outcome after a stated number of draws without one. Where it exists it is a real, checkable commitment; where a game does not publish one, no such guarantee should be assumed from player anecdote.
Banner, rate-up, featured summon: A time-limited event in which the odds for a specific champion or group are raised for the duration. The base rate for everything else usually falls to compensate, so a rate-up is a redistribution rather than an increase overall.
Duplicate: A second copy of a champion already owned. Games differ entirely in what a duplicate is worth: fodder for ascension in some, a direct power increase in others, a conversion currency in a third group. Check which applies before disposing of anything.

Making a champion stronger

Levelling: Raising a champion's level by spending experience, usually earned from campaign battles or from consuming other champions as fodder. Cheap, quick and capped by star rank.
Ascension, rank-up, star-up: Raising a champion's star rank, which lifts its level cap and its stat ceiling. It consumes other champions, or dedicated materials, in quantities that rise steeply with each rank. For most accounts ascension — not levelling — is the real bottleneck, and the reason a roster of unused low-rarity champions has value.
Fodder: Champions kept specifically to be consumed by levelling or ascension. Farming fodder efficiently is a large part of what daily play consists of once the campaign is cleared.
Mastery, talent tree: A per-champion tree of passive bonuses, unlocked with a currency earned by using that champion in battle. Progress is slow and specific to the individual champion, so it is the last system a new account should invest in.
Awakening, transcendence, limit break: A further upgrade beyond maximum rank, gated behind rare materials and often behind a specific dungeon. Not present in every title.
Skill book, upgrade tome: An item that improves one of a champion's skills, most often by reducing a cooldown by a turn. A single turn of cooldown frequently matters more than a large stat increase, because it changes whether a rotation is sustainable.

Gear and stats

Gear set: Equipment pieces that grant a bonus when a required number of matching pieces is worn — extra speed, extra defence, healing on damage dealt, a chance to act again. The set bonus is usually the reason to wear the gear; the individual pieces' numbers are secondary.
Main stat and substats: Each piece carries one primary stat determined by its slot and several secondary ones determined at random. Because substats are random, two visually identical pieces can differ enormously in value, and sorting gear by its substats is the single most useful habit a new player can form.
Speed and speed tuning: The stat that decides turn order and how often a champion acts. Speed tuning is the practice of setting speeds so that a specific champion reliably acts before or after another — for example, so a buff lands before the attacker takes its turn. It is the difference between a team that works and one that merely looks strong.
Accuracy and resistance: Paired stats governing whether a debuff lands. Accuracy raises the chance of applying one; resistance raises the chance of shrugging it off. Content that requires debuffs to be reliable effectively sets a minimum accuracy, and teams fail at that threshold rather than at a damage threshold.
Critical rate and critical damage: The chance that a hit is critical, and the multiplier applied when it is. Raising damage multipliers while critical rate is low produces inconsistent results; the rate is usually brought to a reliable level first.

Combat and teams

Turn meter: A hidden bar that fills according to speed; when it is full, the champion acts. Skills that fill or drain turn meter are among the strongest in the genre because they manipulate the order of play directly.
Buff and debuff: Temporary positive or negative effects with a stated duration in turns. Duration interacts with cooldown: an effect lasting two turns on a three-turn cooldown cannot be maintained without speed to close the gap.
Cooldown: The number of turns before a skill can be used again. Reading cooldowns against durations is how a team's rotation is planned, and it matters more than any single stat.
AoE and single target: Area-of-effect skills hit every enemy; single-target skills hit one, usually for considerably more. Most content wants both, in different slots.
Role: attacker, defender, support, healer: A label describing what a champion is for. A functioning early team generally needs a source of damage, something that survives being focused, a way to apply a needed debuff, and sustain — see champions and teams for a worked build.
PvE: Player-versus-environment content: campaign stages, dungeons, bosses. Scripted, repeatable, and the place where team design can be planned in advance because the opposition does not change.
PvP and arena: Content fought against teams assembled by other players. In most collection RPGs the opposing team is controlled by the game rather than by the player who built it, so it is a contest of preparation rather than of live decisions.

Economy and time

Energy, stamina: The resource consumed to attempt a battle in most modes. It regenerates on a fixed clock up to a cap, and can generally be refilled with premium currency. Because it is rate-limited, energy is the mechanism by which time and money become interchangeable, and it is the clearest place to see how a title expects to be monetised.
Premium currency: The currency bought with money and also granted in small amounts through play. It typically converts into shards, energy refills and inventory space. Its dual source is deliberate: it lets the same interface serve paying and non-paying accounts.
Energy refresh: Spending premium currency to restore energy immediately. The conversion rate between currency and energy is the most direct statement a game makes about what an hour of play is worth to it.
Daily quests and login rewards: Tasks that reset every day and grant resources for completing them, plus escalating rewards for consecutive logins. They are designed to establish a habit; whether the reward justifies the session is a reasonable question to ask at the end of a week.
Battle pass, season pass: A tiered reward track completed over a season, usually with a free row and a paid row. The paid row's value depends entirely on whether you would have played the required amount anyway.
Event and tournament: A time-limited scoring competition, scored either against a target or against other players. Events are where spending pressure is concentrated, because they add a deadline to a system that otherwise has none.

Clan boss, guild raid: A cooperative encounter in which every member of a group attacks the same target on a repeating cycle, with rewards tied to the group's combined result. It is usually the most reliable recurring source of upgrade materials, and the reason clan membership is worth more than the chat feature suggests.
Clan, guild, alliance: A player group with shared objectives and a chat channel. Chat features bring the ordinary risks of any online space; the eSafety Commissioner publishes guidance and reporting routes for harassment in games.
Account binding: Linking progress to an email address or platform account so it survives a device change. Worth doing on the first day. Account security advice, including two-factor authentication, is published plainly by the Australian Cyber Security Centre.
Account trading: Buying or selling a game account. It is prohibited by the terms of service of essentially every title in the genre, it is a recurring subject of scam reports collected by Scamwatch, and the buyer has no recourse when the account is recovered or banned.
Classification and consumer advice: The rating and advisory text applied to a game distributed in Australia. Decisions are made and published by the Australian Classification Board, and its database is the place to check what applies to a specific title. Games containing purchasable randomised items are not suitable for children.

How these definitions were written

Each entry describes a mechanism that is common to the genre and observable in a game's own interface: a stat screen, a summon information panel, an energy counter. Nothing here is derived from leaked data, private testing or player surveys, and no probability figures are quoted, because published rates belong to individual titles and change with updates. Where an entry touches on rights, safety or classification rather than on game mechanics, it links to the Australian body responsible instead of paraphrasing it.

Where a term is missing, or where an entry reads as wrong for a game you play, write to info@veroworks.online. Corrections are made to the page rather than answered privately, so that the next reader gets the corrected version.