Starting Make Drama MAD can feel a little overwhelming. There are quite a few systems to learn, several characters to build, and a lot of beginner rewards being thrown at you from different menus.
The good news is that you don’t need to understand everything immediately. If you focus on the elemental system, build a balanced team, invest in the right early characters, and take advantage of the beginner rewards, you can make your early progression much smoother.
In this Make Drama: MAD beginner guide, I’ll go through the most important things you should know when starting out, including elemental advantages, beginner rewards, low-rarity characters, team building, team presets, and how EXP works.
Make Drama MAD Beginner Guide – Passive Skills
The elemental system is one of the most important mechanics in Make Drama: MAD, especially during the early game.
Characters have different elements, and certain elements have an advantage against others. When you attack an enemy with a character that has the correct elemental advantage, you deal 30% additional damage.
That is a huge damage increase, so you should get into the habit of checking the enemy’s element before starting a stage.
Unlike some other gacha games, MAD does not currently use a traditional Light-versus-Dark system. The elemental advantage is also one-way, meaning the stronger element gets the benefit rather than both sides simply countering each other.
This makes team building much easier than it might initially seem.
You don’t necessarily need a different tank for every element. You can keep a reliable tank such as Jennie in your team and change your DPS characters according to what you’re fighting.
For example, if the stage contains enemies that are weak to a particular element, swap one or both of your damage dealers to characters that can exploit that weakness.
Don’t Ignore Elemental Advantage for Early Content
A common beginner mistake is trying to use their highest-rarity characters everywhere.
A properly matched lower-rarity DPS can sometimes outperform a stronger-looking character simply because it has the elemental advantage.
So before spending a lot of resources trying to brute-force a difficult stage, check the enemy element first.
Beginner Event
When you first start playing, the game gives you a large number of rewards through beginner missions and events.
My biggest recommendation here is simple:
If you see a red notification dot, check it.
A lot of useful resources are hidden across different beginner menus, and ignoring these events can mean leaving free materials, summons, and other rewards behind.
Work through the beginner missions while progressing through the story. Don’t worry about completing everything instantly. Just make sure you regularly check the event and mission tabs so you aren’t sitting on unclaimed rewards.
Use the Beginner Character Selector Carefully
After completing the main beginner event, you’ll also receive a character selector.
You don’t necessarily need to use this on a character you already own.
For casual players, having one copy of a character is generally enough early on, so I’d rather use the selector to expand your roster and give yourself more options for different stages.
Ines is one of my favorite choices because she provides strong healing.
Another excellent option is Charlotte, who brings a useful combination of support and buffing abilities.
After those two, I’d consider Chise, Valentina, and Casey if you don’t already have them.
If you already own the characters you want from the selector, there’s no reason to spend it randomly just because you have it. You can consider using it for collection purposes instead.
Don’t Underestimate 1-Star and 2-Star Characters
This is probably one of the most important things for a new player to understand.
You don’t have to build a team consisting entirely of three-star characters.
The elemental system makes lower-rarity characters surprisingly useful.
A 1-star or 2-star DPS with the correct elemental advantage can deal considerably more damage than a higher-rarity character who doesn’t have the advantage.
This becomes especially useful when you’re progressing through the early story and don’t have a large roster yet.
Instead of constantly replacing your tank and support characters, you can keep your core team stable and rotate your DPS characters depending on the stage.
That gives you elemental coverage without requiring a huge investment into every character you own.
Unlock the Passive Skills on Your Low-Rarity Characters
There is another reason you shouldn’t completely ignore low-rarity units.
Characters unlock their passive skills when they reach 3 stars.
Because of this, a low-rarity character that looks weak at first can become much more useful after you invest enough to unlock its passive.
This is also something to keep in mind when looking at tier lists. Character rankings can assume that their important skills or passives have already been unlocked.
So don’t judge a character purely from its starting stats.
For example, a properly invested low-rarity DPS can perform extremely well when the stage is designed around its elemental advantage.
That’s why I recommend having several inexpensive DPS characters available rather than putting all your resources into one or two characters.
Build Your Team Around 1 Tank, 2 DPS and 1 Healer
The basic team structure I’d recommend for progressing through the early game is:
- 1 Tank
- 2 DPS
- 1 Healer
- 1 Flex slot
This isn’t a strict rule, but it’s a very comfortable setup for learning the game.
The flex position gives you room to adapt your team to the stage.
You could use another support when you need buffs, another DPS when you need more damage, or even a second healer if the enemies are hitting extremely hard.
The game can become surprisingly difficult once the level difference between your characters and the enemies starts increasing, so simply throwing your strongest five characters into every stage isn’t always going to work.
A Simple Early-Game Team
You can build a perfectly functional team using several characters that are available relatively early.
Lumina and Suji are both free characters and can help keep your team alive.
Elisia is another free option and brings strong area-of-effect damage, making her useful when you’re fighting groups of enemies.
For your tank, Jennie is a very strong choice. She’s useful enough that you can continue using her while pushing through content even when her element isn’t ideal for the particular stage.
For the remaining DPS slot, I like Mane quite a bit.
Despite being a 2-star character, Mane can put out impressive damage when the enemy is vulnerable to her element.
This isn’t meant to be a permanent endgame team. It’s simply an example of how far you can get by combining free characters with elemental advantages instead of trying to build an expensive team immediately.
Change Your DPS Based on the Enemy
Once you understand the elemental system, you’ll notice that your DPS characters will change much more often than your tank and support characters.
This is actually one of the easiest ways to build your roster.
You can have a dependable core made up of characters such as your tank, healer, and support, then keep several DPS characters available for different elements.
Before entering a stage, look at what the enemies are weak against.
If you have a properly leveled character with that element, bring them.
Even if that character has fewer stars than another DPS, the elemental damage bonus can make the lower-rarity option the better choice for that particular battle.
Use Team Presets
Because you’ll be changing characters frequently, team presets are extremely useful.
Make Drama: MAD allows you to save multiple teams, so take advantage of them instead of manually rebuilding your party every time you enter a new stage.
You can currently have 4 teams on each page and up to 5 pages, giving you plenty of space for different setups.
You could organize your presets around different elemental matchups or game modes.
For example, you might keep:
- A general-purpose team
- A team for one elemental matchup
- A team for another elemental matchup
- A boss-focused team
You don’t have to follow this exact system. The important thing is to create presets that match the way you actually play.
Once you’ve built several teams, switching between them becomes much faster.
Be Careful When Using EXP Tickets
There is a small EXP mechanic that can confuse new players.
Make Drama: MAD does not simply return unused portions of smaller EXP tickets when you use a larger ticket than necessary.
Instead, any excess EXP can remain as accumulated EXP.
For example, imagine you only need a small amount of experience to reach the next level, but you use a larger EXP ticket.
The extra experience isn’t simply wasted.
It gets stored as leftover EXP and can be used toward your future level-ups.
So if you notice an accumulated EXP number before leveling a character, don’t worry about it.
The game will use that stored EXP first when you level up again.
This means you don’t need to be afraid of occasionally using a larger EXP ticket than necessary. Just understand that the excess is carried forward rather than returned to you as another EXP item.
Don’t Spend All Your Resources on One Character
Early in the game, it can be tempting to put everything into your favorite character.
That can work for a while, but MAD’s elemental system makes roster diversity much more valuable as you progress.
I’d recommend having a small group of reliable characters rather than one extremely over-invested character and four weak ones.
Your tank and main support characters can stay in your teams for a long time, while your DPS roster should gradually expand to cover different elements.
This approach also saves resources because you don’t need to build every character you obtain.
Focus on characters that fill a useful role or give you an elemental option that your current roster doesn’t have.
Check the Enemy Before Starting Difficult Stages
If you suddenly hit a wall in the story, don’t immediately assume that you need to level everything.
First, check:
- The enemy’s element
- Your current team’s elemental matchup
- Whether your DPS characters have their passive skills unlocked
- Your character levels
- Whether you are using the right team composition
Sometimes simply replacing one DPS with a character that has the correct elemental advantage is enough to turn a difficult stage into an easy one.
This is especially important in the early game because you have access to several inexpensive characters who can fill these elemental roles.
Make Drama: MAD becomes much easier once you stop thinking of your roster as five characters that you use everywhere.
Your tank, healer, and support can form the foundation of your team, while your DPS characters should change depending on the enemy you’re fighting.
The 30% elemental advantage is too significant to ignore, and it is one of the biggest reasons why lower-rarity characters can remain useful.
Take advantage of the beginner rewards, invest in a few characters instead of everyone, unlock useful passives, and build several elemental options for your DPS slots. Once you get into that habit, the game’s early progression becomes much more manageable.