How do the bonus work

I’m new to the game and wanted to understand how the bonus on the Characters/Weapons work. Can anyone tell me how to gain levels?

Awakening = Get multiple copies of the character/weapon then fuse them into one to awaken it up to 4 times. Each time it increases the max level by 5 (e.g. SSR weapon has max lvl 80 but increases up to 100 when fully awakened).

Boost = The main place you get boost is with mercenary points. Use those in the summon and you’ll get low quality characters/weapons which can instantly be used for sometimes a large number of boost each. The boost they give is shown as a number in a diamond on them. Some will not give any boost. Characters will boost characters, while weapons will boost weapons. By fusing them into another character/weapon for boost it will increase the boost by the number displayed. Boosting can go up to 99. Boost increases the stats of a character/weapon, with 99 boost being roughly +7.5% HP, +10% Atk.

With extra copies of characters (beyond the 5th) you may be able to sometimes use them for boost if you awaken them first, but I’m unsure about this.

I highly recommend you only boost the SSR characters/weapons you have and if you don’t have anything good to boost then hold onto your mercenary points until you do.

Does this answer the question you were asking?