[Coldsaturn]

You are my new most favorite person, THANK YOU. this is exactly what I didn't know I was hoping for.

I do not have enough four star cards for this next fight, so I have leveled I think 3 of them as 3 stars to level 40 so oh well there. A question might be:  other than Radiant / Silver Galaxy to pull cards at the rate of 1 per 8 hours, where AM I supposed to get better cards? I know that Silver gives 4star items, and Radiant has a chance for 5star, but they are definitely stingy on the golden magnets needed.  Is there some "easy" way to keep the cards rolling in?

I am unclear if I should be constantly using up my Empyrean Wishes or not. I splurged what I got as a new kid just for the hell of it before I realized I might be in this game for the long(er) haul which is why I do have a handful of 4's and couple of 5's but now I'm hoarding, unsure.

The protocore system update means nothing to me, for good or ill. I have only really just gotten to a place where I can attach them at all, let alone figure out best-match. When I get home tonight, I will hunker over my screen and look for the band-match for rarity and which type pairs best with which card and find this "Talent" label and shuffle any mistakes around to be lesser mistakes, and then I guess just kill all the low-rarity cores into my highest ranked cards.  Right?

Sometimes you'll receive a protocore that has only one or two stats out...

Okay, so leveling a protocore will reveal any hidden stats, up to four I'm guessing?

amen on the stamina -- as an MMO player and having dabbled in gatcha games every now and again (Love Nikki Dress Up Queen had me for a few years there), spending a renewing resource nearly as fast as you get it it to avoid overcapping was second nature so I'm at least ahead of the curve there. I also realized a few days ago that I was collecting stamina drinks in my VERY HIDDEN inventory that had expiry dates, so I've been using those up as well, as needed.

If you have problems orienting yourself in the game, I can pull a couple of screenshots with arrows and circles. Old but effective style. A lot of this gets more intuitive as you experiment though, and I understand that a wall of text might get confusing the longer and more packed with info it is.

You'll start getting a constant influx of silver/radiant magnets once you reach the end of the main storyline. I'm constantly sitting on at least 10 silver magnets, and get a couple of radiant every few days.

If you want other cards, you need to buy empyrean wishes from the shop, or spend red diamonds. I would suggest against spending red diamonds because that's the main currency you can use during limited events (as you've seen with the current spring one), and your constant influx of them will soon dry up. Hoard them as much as you can and use them during important events where you want to get specific cards.

Emp wishes can be obtained as rewards from the battle menu, by ascending cards at certain levels, by spending the blue gem you get every time you pull (Shop > Exchange > Wishing Well) (you can also buy 4 and 5 star cards from there), by spending chocolates (currency you get from the mini games in the Date menu - do that weekly until you reach the 2400 chocolates cap, it will raise affinity big time), from the Heartsand Shop (last tab in the Exchange) although they're very expensive and it's unlikely you're sitting on heartsand SR or SSR as of now, by spending red diamonds in the shop (Shop > Selected > Items), in the Pack section of the shop with real world money.

Should you hoard them? Debatable. They work in the non-limited wishing pool, and sometimes you get banners that work there instead of xspace echo. At that point it's the same as red diamonds: the more emp tickets you have, the more you can pull for cards during the events. But as of now, especially because you're at the start of the game and you need to find good cards to win main battles to unlock all the other challenges in the Battle menu, I'd say to spend them to get decent cards rolling. 

And yes, leveling up protocores will reveal hidden stats, but sometimes you'll get unlucky and find out that the protocore you're leveling up isn't that great compared to the other one you just got, so it's better to work with protocores you know upfront. Leveling up your cards so you can clear bounty hunts and core hunts is extremely important: that will give you the resources to get the machine going.