Free Units

Free Units are a category of units that require no pulls from the summoning banners and are obtainable from Special Login Periods, Events, Main Stories, Challenge Boards, Towers or Shops. The free units currently in the game are listed below. For tips about which permanently available free units may be worth prioritizing, see Recommended Free Units.

Story Units
These units are obtainable by going through the main story of the game with each of them being the "Protagonists" of their story. Their shards can be obtained by milestones or their respective hard quests.

Collab Units
These units are obtainable during specific collaboration events as a farmable unit, unlike other kinds of free units once they're gone, they'll take a while to return, and some collaborations may never run again.

Event Characters
These units are obtained from either standalone events or as an extra from a J+ event. Most of them can be farmed all the way to level 85 via shard farms with milestones (and in some cases can be enlightened), but some only get a certain amount of shards. Some of these events are permanently available in the Event Archives but others only return periodically.

Side Story Characters
These units are exceptions from the other categories as they are from events that act individually from the main story with little to no interaction from the main cast. All of them start with 1 job and obtain more as their story proceeds (for example Kanon only had Apprentice Paladin as a job but as more chapters to SSM was released she got 2 more jobs) There are two events which contain these kind of units; Sacred Stone Memories and Magni Historia

Special Sources
Some free units are obtained from special sources that don't fit in the above categories.