How to Play on the JP Servers

For those who haven’t seen the notice, Johren has announced that updates for the global servers will cease immediately and the server will be shut down on August 21st.

Currently, there have been no announcements of server transfers, and likely will not be happening due to licensing issues. The artwork and a large amount of the music were made by 3rd party artists, some of whose contracts do not involve international use. This guide is to help players who want to restart on JP servers.

I highly recommend making a DMM account even if you only plan to play on mobile, as linking to a DMM account is the only way to save your game data. Generating an ID and password will NOT save your data and only serves as a temporary password for device transfers. The wiki already has a nice guide on how to link accounts.

For PC Users:

The browser version currently cannot be accessed without a VPN. This is DMM’s decision, not the TKRB devs’. The VPN is only needed briefly when loading up the game, so even a free VPN will be enough to access the game, as long as the VPN has JP servers available.

You can create a DMM account here. The game’s page is here.

If you are using Chrome or MS Edge, the brower’s built-in webpage translator will come in handy when you are creating an account. If you are using Firefox, there is an official translation addon available here.

For a free VPN, I’ve found Tunnelbear’s browser extension reliable enough to load the game. The free plan offers 2GB of data per month, which is more than enough as long as you switch it off once the game is done loading.

For Android Users:

The JP app isn’t available on Google Play outside of Japan, but you can still install and run the game without needing a VPN. The most reliable method I’ve found is through Qooapp, which is a 3rd party app store where a large number of region-locked games can be found. Updates for the game are available almost immediately and can be set to install automatically so you won’t have to hunt down the new APK every time. I’ve been using this one for years without any issues.

You can download qooapp here.

Qooapp also has a built-in screen translator and offers unlimited translations for $4 a month, but can give questionable results sometimes as it is a machine translation.

If you are using a recent Samsung Note, you can hover the stylus over game text to automatically translate. It has issues detecting large text and calligraphic styles, but is otherwise pretty accurate.

For IOS Users:

Unless the phone has been jailbroken, IOS does not allow users to install apps from anywhere besides the Apple Store. However, users can easily create a second Apple account and set the account’s region to Japan to access the JP shop. It is not recommended to change the region of your main Apple account, as this can cause conflicts with other apps and subscriptions you have.

The game can be translated by taking a screenshot and using Markup’s translate feature.

Ingame Purchases

The game’s shop uses a different currency depending on if you are playing on PC or mobile. Any ingame purchases made in one version will transfer over to the other version.

The PC version uses DMM points, which can be purchased here. These points can be used anywhere across DMM’s site but cannot be used in the mobile version of the game. DMM no longer accepts foreign bank cards, but PayPal is still available. Your VPN must be active while buying from the ingame shop, or else you’ll get an error message.

The mobile version uses Koshuu gold. Due to region restrictions, all purchases must be done through a Japanese Google/Apple account. /u/sdarkpaladin/ wrote up a great guide on how to make a JP google account, and while this guide was written with FGO in mind, the steps will be the same. IOS is much simpler, you just need to manually set your Apple account’s region to Japan to access the store, no VPN needed.

Currently there is no way to convert DMM points to Koshuu gold and vice-versa. Keep this in mind if you will be playing on both versions.

This guide is a work in progress and will be updated as I find/remember any more important info.

I don’t know much about IOS, so if anyone is able to chime in with helpful information regarding setting up an alt apple account, better translation apps, etc I’ll add it into the IOS section.

:folded_hands::folded_hands: Many many thanks for putting this together. I need to take a few days before I can think about setting up anything new, but this is super helpful.

Thank you for posting this and sharing your knowledge! :heart:

Thank so you much for posting this! I’ve already have DMM account and a vpn to purchase a few games, books, and to watch SRS2022, so I’ve already taken a few steps in that direction. Since I do plan on playing both mobile and PC, thank you for providing a URL for linking them!

That said, my headcanon for my citadel is already helping as a balm (just temporarily separated… like trying to find rpg party members again…).

Thank you for posting this. I’ll save this for later when I decide to play again. :heart:

It will be sad for my dear citadel in the eng server to go down but I can imagine or headcannon at least that a great invasion 2.0 happened that made my swords disappear and gotten the master to transport to Japan and find a way to get them back or that my citadel moved from my home country to Japan because of the laws XD it will be a nervous but exciting journey for me! Thanks for the guide!

I’m having issues registering, it seems. I fill in the (3) items needed, and click the “register and start the game” button, but nothing happens. Is that just me?

Any tips for improving the connection on PC? I’m using firefox and nord and man, the pages take ages to load. Got the dmm acc set up, loaded the game for the first time, but then got the connection error and couldn’t even get past the server selection.

Update: seems like the VPN server was the issue, bounced around for a bit until I got a stable enough connection to load the game without issues. Also changed browser to speed things up a little. The wiki troubleshooting page was great help too, although it would probably be good to get it updated soon, to reflect changes in the interface.

Also, would like to add a tip for anyone struggling to translate text on buttons/images (anything that’s not picked up by in browser translator) - use Google Translate app on your phone with the camera feature. It’s a bit finicky to use but gets the job done. You can use it to translate via the camera by pointing at whatever is on your PC screen or by running screenshots/photos through the app.

Thank you for this post! I have a dmm account and for a few weeks I couldn’t play on it because my old vpn wasn’t working.

Is the Touken Ranbu Helper browser extension still useful in playing the game or is it rather obsolete to use?

My hatred towards Johnren won’t subside but I genuinely appreciate this. I will see If I create an acc eventually after I’m done being salty. My only issue is the whole “make a DMM acc to be safe”, since I plan to play on mobile but I don’t want to have data accidents.

Have you had any ever since you downloaded the game through Quoapp???

Just a question to confirm: Everything I purchase on PC will transfer over to mobile too, yes?

My PC and mobile account are linked.

So, if I buy more space for swords or unlock the other forging/repair spots, or buy any packs, or whatever on PC, will they also be on mobile?

Hey I just wanna say thanks for the tip about Tunnelbear and linking the JP site. I managed to regain my old JP account from way back when and I’ve managed to get some of my favorites from EN back via forging as well as Shichiseiken!

So, seeing other folks steadily getting some of their swords back (and even pulling Shichiseiken!) has me feeling more ready to start over, but is there an ideal order to all the setup steps? Should we be on a VPN when making a DMM account, or does that not matter? And have you all found it easier to set the game account up on a browser first, and *then* install qooapp and sync the data to a phone?

Hello, thank you so much for this guide! I have a question tho, I want to play on Android and Downloaded the Qooapp. When I go to download the Touken Ranbu Online game from Qooapp there are two versions : an English one and a Japanese one.

Can I choose the English one ? It’s said it’s from DMMGAMES, would that work ?

Just to confirm even if I do have my UID number saved from the eng servers, i would still have to start over completely in the japanese server? Accounts are not transferrable between servers correct?

I was able to get the VPN and am at the game page, but now my game’s screen is just black. I can click on the gear to access the settings, but it’s all black still.

Is the jp Google account a new requirement? I remember playing back on ~2017 and using my normal account to purchase stuff. Was thinking of coming back but this is a bummer if true…

I appreciate for this, looks like I have to start a new journey in JP version at Android.