Struggling

[Add1cted]

The tooltips at the start seem very light, and I have no idea what to do RE evolve etc. Additionally, it seems after a short time the enemies have evolved characters and I only have basic goblins so get smashed 9/10. What am I doing wrong? Is there a guide somewhere? Love the vibe of this game but gonna dump it soon as it seems impossible.

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Okay, so I've beaten the game a couple times. The game is all about stumbling around and figuring it out for yourself, but I understand that this game does absolutely no hand-holding so if you don't mind the mystique being spoiled, then read on, because, yeah, it's very easy to get stuck in an un-fun situation in this game.


So your main goal in the game is to get to the castle at the very heart of the big center island. It's on top of a hill. You can attempt the castle encounters at any time and do as much or as little preparation as you wish. You could even attempt to bum rush it from the second Tangerine let's you loose--that bit about tangerine is assuming you started with the intro tutorial on.

So what's the best way to go about this game?

Well... first let's discuss global threat. The game's world gets a little bit harsher if you win battles, increase your party size beyond 4, or your gobos level up. The game's world gets a little bit easier if you lose battles, decrease your party size to 4, turn your leveled up gobos into a lower leveled class--or just drop them entirely for a brand new gobo who don't have much levels in anything, though I would not recommend it.

IMO? The best and most practical way to play the game is to tackle it without needlessly jacking up your threat in the first place--and there's especially a very good reason why that I'll get to later due to how the best loot works. Let's just assume you agree with me on this point for the time being.

So Tangerine has "disappeared." Your gobos are all sitting near the tower on his island. You might've even seen the billboard with a map that you can collect on it nearby. And... that's about it. I mean if you're especially exploratory, you might even notice a strange structure on the side of Tangerine's island that you could--but probably shouldn't--click on (it's a currently unmarked fight that will unlock a higher tiered class if you win, but is hard as hell right out of the gate).

What do you do?

Well, like I said you probably don't want to go out and start winning a bunch of battles to needlessly jack up your threat. The random fog encounters don't really offer much in terms of reward beyond the opportunity to pick up a new gobo which is a tenuous proposition if you don't know what you're doing.
What I would do is instead hit the water and start sailing around with the goal to try and find as many free herbs, birds, additional maps, and towns and just soak up all that free EXP. I would then use those maps to look for landmark locations. The additional birds are especially nice because it'll allow you to see further and be better able to pinpoint the landmark locations.

Landmark locations?

Landmark locations.

You see, there's not a whole lot that really separates your gobos from the enemy gobos--to a fault. This especially becomes pronounced when you've got, say, 4 to 6 gobos on your side and the enemy has like 13 gobos at their disposal--if you're not overcoming against that steep action economy then you ain't winning. Your only real advantage you can eek out against your enemies is by slotting in a couple out-of-class skills on your gobos and by dressing them in the most uber of loots possible which give them stats over their enemies. Now there's no way to completely avoid combat in this game so don't worry so much about going out of your way to get a whole arsenal of skills you can slot on a gobo's various class considerations as that will all come in due course of the game.

What might not come in do course of the game if you don't play it smart is the uber loot.

Lemme tell you about my very first playthrough of the game for a second: I got into as many fog encounters as I possibly could. I tried to unlock all the classes--even the higher tiered ones (and by "higher-tiered" what I mean is specifically the classes that are impossible to evolve into until you complete the class battle associated with it. You can evolve into an archer at your leisure. You can't evolve into a salamander or a gorgon until you complete their class fights--those latter ones I'm calling "higher tiered".)-and succeeded. I did this all to be prepared for anything the game could throw at me, and to be fair I was doing well despite the hordes of enemies the game was tossing at me--well, until the frost giants came. Point is by the time I hit my first landmark location I had jacked up the threat by such a colossal amount that I basically couldn't complete the landmark encounter. Why not? Because these landmark encounters put restrictions like, say, limited party size. This one in particular was one of the 5 or 6 towers that run the periphery around the big center island and it only let me field 3 gobos. 3 gobos against 13 enemies. Maybe there was some grand chessmaster's strategy that could've won the day there, but I wasn't having it.

And it sucked too because to get the uber loot in this game you have to play and win these landmark locations.

Well in my second playthrough when I did as little fighting as possible? Kept my party size 4? I came to this same tower, fielded 3 of the 4, and just cake-walked it. Laughably easy. And now I have one of the best pieces of equipment in the game that then made all the other landmark locations that much easier.

Hit the landmark locations quick and early.
Get the loot.


Speaking of loot? You can find some decent loot for trade in a town that's on the big island. It's to the South-west if memory serves, not that this will do you much good considering the map system in the game. Point is if you trace a line around the main island eventually you'll come up to a town with traders. If you get there with a bunch of herbs from your travels you can get some decent purples.


So about gobo evolution...

If you navigate to the evolution tab it'll show all the possible starting evolutions for your gobos. If the evolution is dimmed it means your current gobo doesn't meet the requirements to evolve into that class. If you highlight a dimmed class it'll tell you what class and level requirements are necessary to give that gobo access to it. Now there are many--MANY--additional classes beyond what you first have access to. If you sail around the main island to the opposite end of the map from Tangerine's island? You'll find Rutabaga's island. On his island there is a map that pinpionts all the fights to unlock the higher evolutions, and yeah ironically one of those fights is way back on Tangerine's island. You technically do not need to navigate to Rutabaga's island nor the map to seek out, find, and unlock these classes, but oh my goodness does the map help.

Now... unlocking the higher tiered classes is a triple-edged sword. It's not that the game couldn't throw a higher tiered class at you from what you've unlocked--I've seen it happen. But I couldn't help but notice that once I could field a new class? Suddenly I'd see a lot more of them on the enemy teams--that's one edge. The second edge is that to unlock these classes you need to level up a lot which requires a lot of fighting which will necessarily jack up your threat. The third edge is that while a lot of these higher-tiered classes have interesting skills? Interesting =! tactical advantage, and you'll only see the skills these classes have once you've unlocked it and you'll only really know if those skills suit your playstyle after playing around with them.

In my second playthrough I roflstomped the game and I did it without unlocking a single one of these higher-tiered classes--just used the classes that the game allows you to evolve into from the start and I was fine. I'm not saying don't go for them, but I am saying prioritize getting the uber loot first if nothing else.


Now every time you level up in a class you're allowed to unlock an additional skill with that class. So long as you stay in that class you have access to every unlocked skill therein. When you unlock a new class the game will randomly unlock a skill for that class for the gobo and that's all you'll initially have access to when you switch over. You will, however, have access to a single colorless skill slot that you can put *ANY* prior class skill into. This skill slot is POWERFUL. You can put unnerve resistance in here to the extent that your character actually gets their turns quicker by sheer virtue of being attacked--one of the most powerful tactical decisions you could make. There are plenty of other worth candidates for your colorless skill slot--like maybe a ranged attack so your melee units aren't completely helpless if they can't walk up adjacent? Possibilities are endless.

However, there are some classes that not only grant you access to this colorless skill slot, but when you level up you'll have the option to instead of learning a skill to unlock a colored skill slot. Colored skill slots are less useful than your colorless skill slot, but are still good. A lot of your initial elemental evolutions will have a colored slot that will have access to 3 of the 4 colors (Green, blue, brown, red) so they're still pretty versatile. The higher-tiered classes that required unlock seem to only have colored slots with access to 2 of the 4 colors and you'll have less options.


Tactically? The main reason you only really want to have 4 gobos in your party is because the battle arena size is small and the game is all about action economy. It's far more likely one of your 6 gobos will be picked off before they even get their turn in harder encounters and the encounter is based on you having a party strength of 6 so there's that many more enemies because of it. If you go in with 4? Well then not only does your gobo not just immediately get picked off but the encounter has fewer enemies to start with.


When you complete an encounter that had enemy gobos? There's a chance for one of the enemy gobos to remain after the fog clears so long as you have open party slots. If you talk to them they'll ask to join up. There is absolutely 0 reason or benefit to recruit a basic gobo beyond reducing threat by cutting off your own nose to spite your face. At least if the gobo who's asking is already evolved? Well then they'll at least come with some or many of that class's skills learned.

If you get into a situation where you're able to recruit a higher tiered class that you haven't unlocked yet? Yeah, you'll still be allowed to evolve them to a lower class that you have access to, and you'll even be able to slot in the skills he already knows from his higher tiered class into the various slots I mentioned earlier. However, once you evolve them out of their higher-tiered class they wont be able to return to that class until you unlock the class, again, by going to Rutabaga's island, getting the class map, and then doing the class fight to unlock it.


The last things I'll mention:

Do not underestimate skills that alter terrain. Speaking of terrain, If you must engage on a slope, do not settle for terrain where you're on the low ground and the enemy is on the high ground. Shuffle the fight until you get a generation that's not complete ass.

Do not underestimate unnerving your enemies and being unnerved yourself--it's the fast track to winning or losing encounters.

Poison shot--and especially poison salvo--is probably the most powerful early to mid-game skill and still does some good work in late game to boot. The archer's ice variant isn't a slouch either... but oh my god... poison salvo. You need to see it to believe it.


Edit: I almost forgot. You can switch and swap your basic gobo's basic class skills freely. To respec any other class though you need a herb that grows in the fog... I forget what it's called. The nice thing though is by pulling the fog herb it dispels fog in the immediate locale--you'll know it when you see it.

[Add1cted]

what an absolute star, thank you so much man!

[Crusher Von Splattenheim]

Hey, no worries

Glad to help