Sword x Staff: Starfall Covenant Relic Card Strategy for Sages

Free-to-play Sage players in Sword x Staff should hoard approximately 8,500 Relic Cards to spend exclusively during the Starfall Covenant event. Saving for this threshold allows you to cycle through rate-up pity guarantees, acquire up to 8 Mythic Relics, and push your account's total relic compendium completion past 82%. This large pull volume supplies the passive stat multipliers, damage reduction, and support passives required to sustain teams through high-deficit PvE stages.

Why Hoard 8,500 Relic Cards for Starfall Covenant

Spending Relic Cards gradually outside of major events slows account progression for non-spending players. The Starfall Covenant event provides targeted rate-up rotations, milestone caches, and bonus shards that reward deep investment in a single banner cycle.

Reaching the 8,000 to 8,500 card threshold provides several structural benefits:

• Pity Protection: Cycling through 8,500 cards provides enough volume to overcome standard pity variance and secure guaranteed high-tier drops.
• Compounded Fodder: Large pull sessions generate high volumes of duplicate Rare and Epic relics. These duplicates convert into the universal materials and currency needed to level key items.
• Broad Base Stat Growth: Sage effectiveness scales heavily through account-wide health, defense, and healing multipliers. Drawing a high volume of cards at once upgrades these shared stats across your entire profile simultaneously.

Compendium Milestones and the 82% Threshold

In Sword x Staff, relics grant permanent account-wide bonuses simply by being unlocked in your compendium, regardless of whether they are actively equipped. Reaching an 82% collection index significantly increases your team's baseline survivability through passive percentage damage reduction, maximum HP, flat Defense, and Healing Effect.

To maximize this system during a summon session:

1. Prioritize Unlocks Over Star Upgrades: Always activate newly acquired relics in your archive first before allocating shards into star promotions. Raising the total catalog percentage yields wider defensive gains than over-investing in a single item.
2. Sweep Low-Tier Entries: An 8,500-card session will naturally fill out the vast majority of the Rare and Epic compendium pools, driving the fastest initial percentage gains.
3. Layer Defensive Buffs: Compendium milestones grant stacking percentage damage reduction, which helps keep your Sage alive during unblockable boss phases.

Sage Mythic Relic Priority

When pulling Mythic Relics or opening guaranteed milestone selection chests, select items tailored to support mechanics rather than raw offensive stats. Damage-oriented classes prioritize critical hit rate and offensive penetration, but a Sage requires cooldown reduction, crowd control resistance, and burst protection.

Focus on these three Mythic utility types in order:

1. Party Damage Mitigation: Select relics that convert incoming burst damage into damage-over-time or distribute hits across the frontline. These effects prevent fragile teammates from being eliminated in a single attack.
2. Energy and Ultimate Acceleration: Relics that speed up energy generation let your Sage deploy team shields and burst heals before boss rage timers trigger.
3. Healing Amplification and Cleansing: Choose relics that add passive debuff removal or lingering health regeneration to your primary healing skills, which counter heavy boss debuffs in endgame stages.

If you pull Mythic relics focused purely on physical attack or critical damage, activate them in your archive to claim their collection percentage, but leave them at base rank.

Post-Summon Shard Allocation

After completing an 8,500-card session, avoid spreading duplicate shards evenly across your entire unlocked pool. Instead, budget your upgrade materials based on class role:

• Target Breakpoints on Core Mythics: Upgrade your best defensive and healing Mythic relics to 1-star or 2-star status first, which unlocks their primary mechanical bonuses.
• Invest in Team-Wide Epics: Once your priority Mythic passives are active, spend duplicate shards on high-tier Epic relics that grant team-wide defensive stats.
• Conserve Universal Dust: Keep residual conversion dust in reserve for future event milestones rather than spending it on low-impact offensive relics that do not benefit the Sage toolkit.