However you can also obtain them from time-limited instances like maintenance compensations, events, surveys, and gift codes. Black Cards are by far the most important resource in the game, and unless you’re a HUGE whale, you may want to check out every method of acquiring these highly elusive babies! Let’s look into each farming method to see how you can get more of these.
Clear Main Story Battles
Main Story Battles are where you can get the most sizable bulk of your BC aside from your Dailies and Weeklies. You can get 50 Black Cards per stage cleared, and that goes for both Normal Mode and Hard Mode Main Story Battles. The Main Story is updated every once in a while, and it guarantees a huge influx of Black Cards for the playerbase whenever they come out.
Clear Stronghold Battles
Stronghold Battles also give out 50 Black Cards per stage as first clear rewards, along with a few other resources. Though unlike in the Main Story Battles, you’re gonna need some degree of strategizing in this game mode. Just make sure you manage your character rotations accordingly (put your higher BP heroes in your main party) and you’ll be good to go!
Clear Memory Rescue Battles
Along with giving you 50 Black Cards per stage cleared, Memory Rescue Battles also give you 5-star Memory Cards. Some of these cards are actually worth investing in, so I highly recommend clearing them as soon as you unlock them. It consists of Missions (Mission A, Mission B, etc.) that are further divided into 5 Battles, with each Mission netting you 250 Black Cards in total. The battles are fairly easy. But you may need to brush up on your dodging skills to clear some of the harder stages if your characters are underpowered.
Clear Interlude Battles
Interlude Battles are unlocked as soon as you obtain the necessary characters for them.
They give out 30 Black Cards per mission cleared. Each Character has 6 available Missions to be cleared, which comes out to a total of 180 Black Cards per Character unlocked.
Keep in mind, Interlude Battles are not just a way to get to know the characters better, or just for earning extra Black Cards.
You can also obtain character shards from this game mode, which are essential for promoting your characters.
Achieve Max Exploration Rate at Golden Vortex
Golden Vortex is yet another game mode where you’ll need to pay attention when it comes to managing your characters. You’ll need to deploy your characters wisely, as they all only have a limited amount of possible deployments before they become unusable. It’s recommended to invest in at least 4 characters in order to thrive in Golden Vortex – and you don’t necessarily have to put all of your highest CP characters together in one party. Clearing all of the stages will net you exactly 300 Black Cards, which is a great bonus alongside all the resources you’ll get for clearing each stage.
Clear All of Celica’s Basic Battles
Celica’s Basic Battles are this game’s version of combat tutorials. They’ll teach you the fundamentals of skill usage, construct types, dodging, and many other important tidbits of primary knowledge that you’ll need to excel at the game. Not to mention that you can also get 50 Black Cards per stage cleared. And since there are 6 Basic Battle stages in total, you’ll be able to get 250 Black Cards out of this method all in all.
Clear All of Celica’s Member Battles
Much like Celica’s Basic Battles, Member Battles are designed to show new players the ropes of the gameplay. Although these focus more on teaching you how to use certain characters individually rather than in a general sense. Each stage allows you to play a specific character and practice their skill sets. If you achieve the requirements to clear one stage, you’ll be able to unlock further stages — giving you 10 Black Cards per stage cleared.
Collect Achievements
You can clear these achievements just by getting new characters, upgrading them, and collecting all kinds of resources. Basically, you can just play the game however you want and you’ll be able to net some extra Black Cards for your account. Try not to expect too much out of this though, as the achievements that give away Black Cards are pretty much few and far between.
Special Achievements
Special Achievements are a bit more generous compared to Collect Achievements when it comes to handing out Black Cards. For example, you can get 50 Black Cards per 10 account levels you achieve, which is not at all bad considering how rare Black Cards are in this game.
Do Your Dailies
Like most gacha games, PGR has daily missions that have an in-game currency as a reward. With dailies you can get up to 30 Black Cards per day, and that’s just by doing menial tasks that you’d probably do while playing the game daily anyway. In total, that’s about 210 Black Cards per week. Granted that’s not enough for even a single pull, but it does add up over time.
Do Your Weeklies Too
Weeklies are by far the best and most consistent method to acquire Black Cards in the game. You can clear them by playing both Phantom Pain Stages and the War Zone Stages a set amount of times and achieving a set amount of points for each game mode within a week. You can get a total of 1000 Black Cards per week doing these tasks, and combined with the 210 Black Cards you get from Dailies, your “consistent” earnings would come out to about 1210 Black Cards per week. That’s about 4,840 Black Cards per month! Which would be just 160 Black Cards short of the amount you’ll need for 20 pulls!
Time-Limited Methods
These are the methods you’ll need to keep an eye out for, since you can only obtain Black Cards from them within a set timeframe. Rest assured, most of these time-limited events linger around quite longer in PGR compared to other games so you don’t have to worry about missing out much.
Maintenance Compensations
Like most gacha games, PGR compensates its players for each major maintenance that comes around. While the amount of Black Cards the developers give away can vary, you can expect at least 500 Black Cards every time major patches or hotfixes roll out.
Event Missions
Like I mentioned before, events in Punishing Gray Raven last for a long time. So you can take as much time as you need to go through them. There’s no set amount of Black Cards that you can obtain from these Event Missions, and you clear some of them just by playing through the entire event. You might have to grind the repeatable event stages to clear some of these missions, but again, you’ll have several weeks at the very least to do all of them.
Clear Event Story Battles
Event Story Battles come hand in hand with new Summon Banners whenever an event starts. They’re a way to earn more Black Cards just by playing through Story Battles, and they mostly give out 30 Black Cards per stage, as opposed to the usual 50 that the Main Story Battles give. The amount of Black Cards you can get depends on how long the event’s story is. But you should be able to expect a total of at least 300 Black Cards just by clearing all of it.
Surveys and Gift Codes
Surveys and Gift Codes are by far the most missable method. You can only get them by going through the events and news page, and by checking in on several of Punishing Gray Raven’s social media accounts. To not miss out on any of this, I’d highly recommend joining their Discord Server since they have various channels dedicated to alerting players whenever new stuff is available.
Recommended Pack: Monthly Pass A
For players who don’t mind forking over some of their hard-earned cash, there’s no better option for you to spend your money on than Monthly Pass A. It’ll give you 300 Black Cards right off the bat, along with 100 Black Cards for 30 days. That’ll be enough for ten pulls and then some! For reference, here’s how many Black Cards you’ll be able to get from Monthly Pass A compared to its slightly cheaper version (Monthly Pass C):
Monthly Pass A: 100 BC x 30 = 3000 Black Cards per month Monthly Pass C: 90 BC x 30 = 2700 Black Cards per month
And now to compare them in terms of cost-efficiency:
Monthly Pass A: 3000 BC ÷ 30 RC = 100 Black Cards per Rainbow Card Monthly Pass C: 2700 BC ÷ 28 RC = 97 Black Cards per Rainbow Card
This proves that in the long term, Monthly Pass A is by far the best choice if you’re looking to spend no more than $6 in the game per month.
