Blue Archive JP Replaced the Spark With Recruitment Charge: 160 Saved Rolls, and a Worse Ceiling

Recruitment Points are gone from Blue Archive's Japanese service since the maintenance of 29 July 2026, replaced by a counter called Recruitment Charge. The 200-point exchange that let a player claim any active rate-up student outright no longer exists, and Yostar has framed the replacement as permanent rather than as an anniversary trial.

Two days before it shipped, on 28 July, Kim Yong-ha, Executive Producer at Nexon Games, apologised in public for how the announcement was handled. The patch went live on schedule anyway. The 5.5th anniversary Fes banners themselves do not open until 5 August at 11:00 JST, a week after the system change, which most coverage of the past week has collapsed into a single date.

The 5.5th anniversary calendar, in JST

Every time below is Japan Standard Time, UTC+9, on the JP service only.

The free 100-roll campaign pays 10 rolls a day, 20 a day for the last three days, and it stacks if a player claims nothing until the final day. It applies to Swimsuit Makoto or Swimsuit Satsuki, one or the other, and those free rolls do not feed the new charge counter.

This is the Japanese service and only the Japanese service. Japan launched on 4 February 2021 under Yostar, which makes August 2026 the five and a half year mark. The Global build, which contains the Korean and Taiwan/Hong Kong regions, launched on 8 November 2021 and reaches its 5th anniversary in November. Nexon Games develops all of them, Nexon self-publishes Global, and the copyright line on the anniversary key visual reads "© NEXON Games & Yostar".

What Recruitment Charge actually does

The old system, 呼び出しポイント or Recruitment Points, paid 1 point per roll on every banner. At 200 points a player exchanged directly for any rate-up student on an active banner, picking between concurrent banners from one shared pool. Points expired at the end of each rate-up period and converted to Keystone Pieces for the Crafting Chamber, which is how it has always worked, not a migration rule invented for this patch.

呼び出しチャージ, Recruitment Charge, still counts 1 per roll and pays nothing on exchange. At 100 charge the next drop is a guaranteed 3-star, and there is a 50% chance that 3-star is the featured student. At 200 charge the rate-up is guaranteed outright. There is no third checkpoint and no repeating coinflip every hundred rolls.

Two exceptions decide most arguments about the counter. Pulling an off-rate 3-star who happens to be featured on a concurrent rate-up does not reset anything, because only that banner's own featured student clears its counter. And if the featured student appears mid 10-roll, the counter zeroes on the spot and the remaining rolls of that ten feed the next cycle.

The same maintenance discontinued Standard / Permanent Recruitment, the evergreen banner that had been in the game since launch. Archive Recruitment was left alone, along with its own 200-point exchange. Base rates did not move either: 3-star sits at 3%, a featured student at 0.7%, and Fes banners double the 3-star rate to 6%.

What 200 rolls costs, and why the real number is 160

A single roll costs 120 Pyroxene and a 10-roll 1,200, so the hard guarantee at 200 rolls costs 24,000 Pyroxene. game8.jp puts that at roughly 19,200 yen at first-purchase pack rates, which is the figure most JP threads are quoting.

Alongside Recruitment Charge, Yostar shipped 募集回数特典, Recruitment Count Rewards, and detailed it on 28 July. It pays one period-limited 10-roll ticket at eight roll counts.

Four of those tickets land at or before roll 170, which is 40 free rolls inside the 200 needed for the hard guarantee. A player who saves 160 rolls, 19,200 Pyroxene, therefore reaches 200 and takes the featured student. The non-ticket tiers pay Advanced Tactical Education BDs, Eleph for specific students, Secret Tech Notes, gift boxes and Keystone Pieces. Eleph, 神名文字, is the per-student uncap material; Eligma is the separate generic shard currency, and the two are not interchangeable.

The count has real limits. It is shared between banners running at the same time, it resets when the pick-up period ends rather than carrying like the charge does, and it does not accrue on Archive Recruitment or on rolls paid for with paid-only items. Inven Global counts 20 first-time tiers spanning 10 to 390 rolls and 10 repeat tiers spanning 410 to 590. Whether that repeat set cycles every 20 rolls or every 200 is reported both ways, by Inven Global and Dengeki respectively, so treat the figure past 390 as unsettled.

The maths nobody in the results page is running

bluearchive.wiki ran pull simulations of both systems and labels the output speculative. They contradict the prevailing read, and they are the most useful thing published on this change so far.

Read the two halves separately, because they point in opposite directions. On averages the new system wins at every target: a first copy costs 18 fewer rolls on average, two copies cost 13 fewer, and four copies come out level. On ceilings it loses the one case that mattered most, the second copy. Under the old rules, a player who hit the featured student early could keep rolling to 200 and exchange for a second guaranteed copy or for the other banner's student. Under the new rules the counter resets on that first copy and the second one has no ceiling short of another 200.

That is the whole fight. Players who plan a banner as a fixed budget with a known worst case lost their worst case. Players who look at expected cost got a better deal. Both groups are correct, and the top-ranking coverage has only reported the first.

The apology, and the Steam number

Kim Yong-ha, Executive Producer at Nexon Games, posted an apology in Japanese on 28 July, two days after the stream, on his personal account rather than through an official channel. He said the team had forced players to weigh gains and losses, that "we have damaged the trust we have built together", and promised more caution and sufficient advance notice before future changes of this kind. The update was neither delayed nor reverted.

Two complaints sit underneath the anger and neither is about odds. The change was announced with three days' notice before the maintenance that shipped it. And it was read out on stream by voice actors during an anniversary broadcast, rather than by the development or operations team in a written notice.

The measurable fallout landed on a build that is not even affected. Game*Spark reported the Global Steam version at Overwhelmingly Negative on 28 July at 19:26 JST, with 3,883 reviews over the previous 30 days sitting at 10% positive. The Steam build is region-locked out of Japan, mainland China and Germany, so those reviews came from Global players protesting a change that has not reached their service.

What the Fes banners actually ship

The anniversary banners open on 5 August at 11:00 JST and close on 12 August at 10:59. Swimsuit Ibuki is a SPECIAL, a Supporter in the BACK position, voiced by Natsumi Haruse. Swimsuit Iroha is a STRIKER, an Attacker in the MIDDLE position, voiced by Misato Fukuen. Both run at the doubled Fes rate of 6% for 3-stars, with 0.7% on the featured student.

Neru in her school uniform and Rio rerun in the same window at the same doubled rate. Five swimsuit students were revealed for this cycle in total, all from Gehenna's Pandemonium Society: Iroha, Ibuki, Makoto, Satsuki and Chiaki. Anniversary students are limited and historically rerun about 18 months later, at another anniversary.

Both Fes banners feed the pink Limited Recruitment Charge counter, not the light blue one. Charge accumulated on the Swimsuit Makoto and Swimsuit Satsuki banners in the previous week does not carry into them, because those are regular pick-ups.

The rest of the patch

The summer event and the 5.5th anniversary login bonus both run to 26 August at 10:59 JST, which is two weeks past the Fes banners. The login bonus pays roughly 1,200 Pyroxene across its run plus a furniture piece on day seven, which is 10 rolls of the 160 a player needs. A new mode called the Virtual Aptitude Test was announced on the same stream for further stat enhancement, with no date attached.

Three things that will say where this lands

Whether the 10-roll tickets survive the period they were earned in. They are labelled period-limited and no expiry date has been published anywhere, in Japanese or English. A ticket that dies with the pick-up period is worth much less than one that banks, and the 160-roll figure assumes a player rolls them inside the same banner.

Whether Recruitment Charge reaches Global, and when. No date has been announced as of 1 August 2026. It has not been ruled out either, and JP systems have historically reached Global in due course, with the JP service running roughly nine months ahead on content. The Global 5th anniversary in November 2026 is the obvious window to watch.

Whether the repeat reward set pays every 20 rolls or every 200. Inven Global's tier counts imply 20-roll spacing from 410 to 590. Dengeki describes a 200-roll repeat cycle. Nothing beyond roll 390 should be budgeted until one of those is confirmed against the in-game screen.

FAQ

Does Blue Archive still have a spark? Not on the Japanese service. The 200-point exchange was removed on 29 July 2026 and replaced by Recruitment Charge, which guarantees a 3-star at 100 with 50% odds it is the featured student, and the featured student outright at 200. Global still runs the old system.

How many pulls do I need to save to guarantee one rate-up? 160. Recruitment Count Rewards pay four 10-roll tickets at 70, 130, 150 and 170 rolls, so 160 paid rolls plus 40 free rolls reach the 200-roll guarantee.

Is the new system better or worse for free-to-play players? Better on average, worse in the worst case. Simulations put the mean cost of a first copy at 90 rolls against 108 before, but a second copy of the same student no longer has a 200-roll ceiling, because the counter resets the moment the first one drops.

Do the counters reset when a banner ends? No. Recruitment Charge carries into the next banner of the same type, and only rolling that banner's featured student clears it. Recruitment Count Rewards work the other way and reset when the pick-up period ends.

What happened to my leftover Recruitment Points? They converted to Keystone Pieces for the Crafting Chamber and were delivered by in-game mail. Points already did this at the end of every rate-up period before the change, so the conversion itself is not new.

Is Standard Recruitment gone too? Yes. Standard / Permanent Recruitment was discontinued in the same 29 July maintenance. Archive Recruitment was not affected and keeps its own 200-point exchange.

Does the Global server get this system? Not yet. Nexon has announced no date for Global, Korea and Taiwan/Hong Kong included, since all three are regions of the same build. Treat it as unannounced rather than ruled out.

When do the 5.5th anniversary banners open? 5 August 2026 at 11:00 JST, closing 12 August at 10:59 JST. The 29 July maintenance opened the Swimsuit Makoto and Swimsuit Satsuki banners, which are not the anniversary banners.