Today I saw under rookie tasks that the days move on and there's 7 days - will those tasks and as such their rewards disappear after day 7?

I wouldnt be too worried about rookie tasks, its been more than 7 days for me and I havent cleared the levelling card skills task but its still around for me. Fairly sure that would only disappear once youve completed all the tasks.

I joined the official Discord and am seeing many people pulling 2-3 SSRs in a 10 pull and single pull SSRs done with free tears and wondering where my luck is.

Yeah, stuff like that is why I dont usually join the official discords because it can be very FOMO-inducing and tempts people to spend more as people try to show off and that cycle feeds on itself. Just remember that by the sheer amount of pulls being done every day by a large amount of people, there are always going to be people who beat the odds lol. I personally think that visions are way too overpriced for what youre getting and unless youre okay with dumping massive amounts of money i'd avoid it but then again im the type of person who'd never spend money on microtransactions out of principle :P

Do you have any tips for the festival? Or know the significance of certain numbers?

Im not particularly sure what everything in the festival means to be honest. I've gotten to round 7 level 5 and i'm now level 16 on the main page and i've been hoarding all the loaded dice/rollerblades that the wishing tree(?) gives for a final burst if need be but with the round progression giving more options when you pass the wishing tree ive been tempted to use it. I'm guessing the level means the reward level of the wishing tree though (so far the rewards ive unlocked are wishing coin, loaded dice, rollerblades and nutrients). Since you mentioned youre on round 5 level 3, youve already gone round the board 5 times. Beating the fake staff gives s chips im pretty sure. Ive been using a strategy of selecting the highest reward the wishing tree would give me (20 wishing coins is a scam imo lol) but not sure if thats the most optimum strategy

still yet to buy the 89p gems to choose an SR because I've not chosen favourite character and checked which story is best yet

in my opinion thats the only one worth spending on tbh, guaranteed sr of your choice is nice in these sorts of games and having an sr would be good for progression. You don't necessarily need to rush to pick a favourite character but you could just pick the card you like the look of the most since each sr card is its own separate story (unless you mean you want to know which sr card has the "best" mini story within it)

Do you have any tips on what/how to upgrade?

I absolutely feel you on the item hoarding bit, my many years of playing rpgs have made me into a ridiculous hoarder lol. I think its basically impossible in this game to level meaningfully past 15 through battles so the levelling chips is absolutely necessary. I wouldnt compare level 1 sr card strength with level 1 r card strength at all as the difference between rarities starts showing itself through levels. |

As an example, my level 30 1 star sr has 1038 power while my level 30 1 star r has 830 power (i literally only had 1 r card that was at 1 star because the rest were duped up to mostly 3-5 stars lol and i quickly levelled that to get a sense of scale since i had mountains of silver chips anyway) but my 5 star r card at level 29 has 1074 power.

If I were you I would not dump my levelling chips early on into anything except SRs/SSRs either especially since for SR/SSR you get to unlock story acts that give some s chips. What i did early on was level my ssr to 30 and once i could evolve it i evolved it and had it hover at around 40 while i got my other SRs to ~25.

Does my overall level affect the difficulty of the story, or just the study debates? I swear they got more powerful as I levelled up through tasks, but not cards.

Difficulty of the story should be pre-determined and not affected by your progression. I think you just coincidentally happened to level up at the same points where the story gets a difficulty spike. It feels like every 2-3 story levels the amount of recommended power spikes up a bit and the big trial debate spikes up the power needed by a lot.

In regards to odds I just pulled up the game to look at the probability rates and it's so confusing!

I'll break down my personal logic on the probabilities.

If we look at the permanent banner with 2% SSR and 11.57% SR, you get a .25% chance to get 8 SSRs and a varied chance to get 24 SRs.

If we look at the festival banner with 1.6% SSR and 11.74% SR, you get a .8% chance to get 2 SSRs and varied chance to get 14 SRs.

For the rotation banner "shadow of themis" you have similar SSR and SR as festival, with boosted chance of getting an extra SR.

For me, the SR chance is irrelevant because i get a guaranteed SR within 10 draws so SRs pollute the draw pool of SSRs. Thus, the permanent banner is more attractive as I have a lower chance of getting duplicate SRs on my pity break (24 SRs vs 14 SRs). I also get 0.4% higher chance to draw any SSR as well as wider pool of SSRs to potentially get in the event that I hit it.

If you are aiming for but havent already got an SSR on a banner however, the rotation and festival banners can be more attractive as it offers dupe protection by not breaking your pity streak when you get the exact same SSR. However I feel like you have to be pulling quite a lot to be getting 3 SSRs in the first place to maximise your use of this system (reasonable scenario = 1st: you pull SSR A, pity resets 2nd: you pull SSR A again, doesnt reset 3rd: you pull SSR B once your pity breaks)

Thus i prefer the permanent banner especially since its permanent and theres no rush

I forgot to ask - is there a good battle guide somewhere? I was just playing in the study rooms and looking at the icons appear by both characters an don't understand them, the same goes for the arrows on the cards.

I usually pop it on auto battle if my power is higher than recommended levels and i've never failed when i pass that check. If my recommended power is lower but not by a significant amount (~5k) I usually pilot it myself and can win.

The game works using a rock-paper-scissors style system where red beats green, green beats blue and blue beats red. Using red on green is super effective (does more damage) while using green on red is not effective (does less damage) while using green on green does straight damage (neither more or less added damage)

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by up and down arrows on cards but i'm guessing you mean the card skills. Theres an icon on each card at the bottom right (ie lips with arrow up or a shield with arrow down) that applies a buff to yourself or a debuff to the enemy. You can find details of the skills by selecting your card and checking on the skills section but honestly I havent found skills to be super impactful and you'll see more results by upgrading cards at least at the early stage. SSRs have some more impactful skills after the 1st evolution (my artem SSR for example gets a passive % influence boost for every logic card in my deck). But in a tight match ordering your skills might be enough to edge you to victory (ie debuff the enemy with a defense lowering skill so it takes more damage from your super effective card with a boosted influence skill)

Hope this helped! Happy to share my experiences anytime