Moonrise Combat Strategy Guide

Welcome to the world of Moonrise! In this guide, I’ll demonstrate the basics of the combat system in Moonrise, as well as some general strategies and tips for finding success against other Wardens or wild Lunari!

- Peter "Heartbeat" Lim, Moonrise Designer

Affinity relationships

What Is An Affinity?

There are six common Solari affinities: Water, Fire, Nature, Electric, Stone, and Basic. You will find and recruit Solari from every affinity as you venture through the wilds and dungeons in Moonrise. Each Solari has strengths and weaknesses depending on its affinity matchup, as shown in the graphic below!

Learning affinity matchups gives you a significant advantage in combat.

For example, find Nature (the green leaf) in the graphic. It has green arrows pointing at Water and at Stone, which means that Nature skills deal extra damage to Solari with the Water or Stone affinity. (Likewise, Nature Solari also take less damage from Water and Stone skills.)

You can also see that Fire and Electric have arrows pointing toward Nature. That means they deal extra damage to Nature Solari, and take less damage from Nature attacks.

Basic Solari don’t have any strengths or weaknesses against the other five common Solari affinities, so the Basic affinity isn’t shown in the graphic. Basic skills deal normal damage against all affinities, and Basic Solari take normal damage from all other affinities (with one exception, noted below).

Snapdragon’s Nature skill dealing extra damage to the enemy Water Solari.

Apart from the six common Solari affinities, there are two more affinities that are special: Poison and Void. There are no Poison-affinity Solari in Moonrise right now, but there are Poison skills and relics. So it’s useful to know that Poison is super-effective against Stone Solari.

Virulent Bolt is a Single-target skill that inflicts Infect on the target enemy.

Void Solari are introduced deep into the game. They are very aggressive and usually dish out insane amounts of damage at the cost of their own Health. Although there aren’t any recruitable Void Solari currently, you can earn Void skills which are superior against Basic Solari!

The Dark Beast is a scary Void Lunari.

It’s important to note that each affinity also has its own flavor in combat. For example, Fire is all about raw damage and using Burn effects to deal tons of damage to the enemy, whereas Water has more control, with the ability to disable the enemy team while healing its allies. You’ll become familiar with these aspects as you play.

TL;DR Tip: Try your best to use Solari that put you in an affinity advantage in combat!

Combat Conditions

What Are Combat Conditions?

There are many different conditions that can affect Moonrise combatants. These conditions are most often applied by skills and relics, and being familiar with each condition will help you both in AND out of combat!

There are a lot of really cool combat conditions.

These conditions come in two basic flavors: buffs and debuffs. A buff generally makes your allies stronger and/or tougher, while debuffs hinder or disable your enemies. Using the right mix of buffs and debuffs during combat can really help you take home a win.

To learn more about the many conditions in Moonrise, check out this handy Condition Glossary!

TL;DR Tip: Know how conditions can affect Solari so you can use them to your advantage!

Summoning and Withdrawing

Okay, now that we’re past the technical side, let’s dive into the more tactical side of Moonrise combat! As you may know, you fight alongside two of your own Solari in combat! But which Solari do you summon? When is the best time to summon them?

Your first two Solari can be pivotal in getting a head start on your enemies as a fight begins. There are two basic ways to choose your first two Solari:

1. See the affinities of the enemy Solari, then summon your Solari to give yourself an affinity advantage.
   
2. Pre-emptively determine which two Solari you want to open with, and summon them as soon as the fight begins.

Crowbear and Titanclaw taking a while to be summoned into the fight

With option #1, you may lose tempo because you’re waiting to analyze what the enemy team has before making your move. However, if the affinity advantage is big enough, you can use this to completely outclass your opponent.

With option #2, you start quickly with any strategies you had planned going into the fight, but you may have to pivot due to affinity disadvantages.

Now let’s talk about a key mid-combat tactic: withdrawing! Remember that you are allowed to withdraw a Solari from the field at anytime you want, as long as they are not ‘Rooted’ (a debuff). The most common reasons for withdrawing a Solari are when you are at an affinity disadvantage, or if you have too many debuffs to handle.

Phaelynx is rooted, so it can’t be withdrawn from battle.

Withdrawing Solari can also be useful for preventing damage from a multi-target attack - whether that be from an enemy or your own round of skills or relics! However, the most important thing to remember when withdrawing Solari is the duration of their ‘withdraw delay’. This delay is the time it takes for a withdrawn Solari to leave the battlefield, and it can be reduced by applying Speed essences to your Solari! If you want your Solari to be able to go in and out of combat at the speed of lightning, you’ll want to make sure their Speed stat is topped off!

The last thing to remember is that although withdrawing a Solari out of combat can save them from sticky situations, it loses you a lot of tempo. When you withdraw a Solari mid-combat, you’re outnumbered until your replacement Solari comes out on the battlefield!

TL;DR Tip: Summoning your first two Solari correctly can give you a huge advantage from the start of combat.

Target Type

All skills and relics have a certain ‘target type’. Target types can be divided generally into single-target and multi-target. It’s important to study which target types that your Solari skills use, so that you’ll have a better understand if you want to use single-target skills to focus fire and bring an enemy down, or to use multi-target skills to defeat multiple enemies at once!

Phaelynx’s Lightning Volley targets All Enemies!

Titanclaw’s Daring Lunge targets a Single Enemy.

By mastering what target types your skills and relics have, you might be able to clutch-save a badly hurt Solari by using a powerful single-target heal skill, or take out two enemy Solari at once with a devastating multi-target relic! The choice is yours to make.

TL;DR Tip: Knowing your target type helps you make better decisions when choosing which skills and relics to use in combat.

Solari vs Warden

here are two ways to win in Moonrise: By defeating all enemy Solari (or Lunari), or by defeating the enemy Warden. Not all skills and relics have the capability (target-type) of hitting the Warden, so the second option is not as easy as you might imagine.

Eggleg’s Igneous Beam deals huge damage to the enemy Warden.

Depending on your team, you should think about which of these two win conditions you want to shoot for. If your team is full of powerful Solari who can hit the enemy Warden, you should definitely try that approach. On the contrary, if you have a more balanced team, you should focus on defeating the enemy Solari instead.

Titanclaw’s Sovereign Smash deals damage to both enemy Solari and Warden!

While it’s good to know which of the two win conditions you’re aiming for at the start of combat, don’t limit yourself! For example, if you are playing to defeat all enemy Solari and suddenly see the enemy Warden at very low Health, you should definitely think about switching up your strategy to go for the other win condition!

Note: When you’re fighting wild Lunari, there’s only one win condition: defeat the enemy Lunari.

TL;DR Tip: It’s good to know whether you’re aiming to defeat the enemy Warden, or just fighting all their Solari!

Conclusion

So that covers all the basic knowledge you need to boost your success in Moonrise combat. Try mastering these five points one step at a time, rather than trying to learn everything at the same time. Remember - practice makes perfect!

In the next guide, we will cover Team Building! Team building is essential for you to be able to set up your perfect team of six Solari. If the combat expertise that you just learned is the instruction manual for building a house, team-building knowledge gives you the perfect tools for crafting a beautiful home.

- Peter "Heartbeat" Lim

[Undead Nicole]

Ask and ye shall receive! https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/1VFvNbyIdoT6QCedO8TCwHr_FfIhkqpPzE3wnWoBvU1A/pub

[DeepbloodEclipse]

Wish I knew what the combat conditions were, for example I have no Idea what resurgence does, wish the game had an ingame description.

[Shovel Fighter]

thx alot for this guide

[Rajima]

Great guide! I love the art.