Just Some Suggestion From A Not-So Experience Player

[sf734efb;l4]

Originally wanted to just suggest a potentially (?) bug report, but seeing many others have similar complain as mine, here are some of the general problem that I encountered with the game, which I hope may help to make the game feels better in the future, at least from a non-expert player like me.


Spoilers will be inevitable so be warned if you haven't beat the game yet. Also most of these problems I had only encounter in Expert Mode.





1) Medical Booklet keeps on regiving me Medical Booklet with weirdly high consistency, namely 5-6 times in a row, I am not sure if this is a hidden-priority to give class neutral healing skills or just extremely lucky, but this happen many time when I get the skill.

2) The Twins basically do not have a passive skills, which make them in my opinion way too weak in the early game that you need to get very lucky with equipment or skill picks to survive Stage 2, especially considering half of their arsenal are ultra-high cost skills that are unusable early game

3) Sir Doichi can immediately kill your game in Turn 1. The fight always start with entire party getting swiped for like 70% hp damage, but the main problem is that if you don't draw healing skills (or simply don't heal enough hp), he can immediately slash your healer and die in Death Door from bleed. In other case, you lose 1 character either way. Also from the tooltip I read that he switch Dancing Leave based on the cost of skills in hand, but it is not stated that it is based on what (Highest cost of a single skill? Highest cost combined skills from a character? Lowest cost? Lowest card count?...). To put it simply, in most case I don't see my party being strong enough to fight Sir Doichi unless I always pick starting character with strong early game.

4) Lucy skills being such an integral part of the game should not have rarity (or at least don't have option that are objectively worse than others). Skills such as "Draw" (draw 2 cards, and have NO swiftness) is just worse than any other Draw 2 effect from any character. Also "Acceleration" being offered in the Fountain of Oblivion is also a problem since it reduce option (considering some option like Dark Silhouette and Auto Focus are not exactly cards that are playable in the early game) when you deliberately spend 200 gold just to exchange it.

5) Johan's fix ability not having ignore taunt is also a massive problem, because he is supposed to be the main damage dealer with entire team centered around him. Even then his ignore taunt skills are just generally worse than other characters. Otherwise his damage numbers is just weirdly low to me, especially with Hellfire arrow that is 4 cost, stun himself and in my opinion, just a way worse Overcharged Shot in most case.

6) Lootbox and fight reward RNG varied way too high. Sometimes you get a single Tablet or a Bread, sometimes 500 gold + items or key and sometimes you just get a Equipment with other items on top of it. The top and bottom end of reward should not be this far apart, 1d1000 dice should not be a thing in a game with this much emphasis on skills and strategy.

7) Hit Rate cap. Just like above, no one likes it when enemy have 0% evade and you have 100% accuracy, but you miss and lose the entire game just because of RNG, especially in a game that emphasize skills.

8) Equipment effect. Most equipment in the game have upside and downside, which leads to an interesting dilemma on how you should balance the pros and cons with the characters and skills you pick, but the problem is also that their effect by tier varied way too much. White/Common items seems good and balanced, until you realise that an item just a tier above can be better than it in every single way and without the downside.

In many games this is fixed by progression: you get low tier item early and stronger item later, which balanced it out. In Chrono Ark though, you can get common item or legendary item starting from Stage 1, which makes it feel extra bad when you spend 600 gold on a key just to get a common item in the chest when it my as well can be an epic/legendary equipment.

9) Any discovery relics (such as Skeleton Key, the Dark Rabbit relic that gives 400 gold on boss defeat or showing the relic that show Hidden Chest better) are outright useless when being offered in the final zone's relic stand, especially considering that many enemy in the last zone can cause heavy damage to your party if you don't draw well.

10) Bomb Clown. The Joker can be a problem if your team cannot burst him down, but almost every single time I fight Bomb Clown I lose (or almost lose). His mechanics is inevitable (because you automatically discard cards), extremely hard to manage (2 costs are selected in Expert Mode and you don't have lots of mana yet) and most importantly he is also somewhat tanky, meaning that his last phase where he put 2-3 bombs in your hand last longer. There is no strategy to play around this boss, you just have to hope your party is strong enough or your deck is build for him (while you have the same chance to encounter the other two bosses).

11) Cursed Enemy Rewards. This is probably a problem that is repeated many times already, but fighting 3 actions horse in Stage 3 that can insta faint your party, remove mana or gain a barrier every turn and your reward is potentially Teleport Scroll (especially when more enemy can spawn in as cursed after you cleared one) just make every curse fight -1 Lifting Scroll because no one wants to be bothered to deal with it. Meanwhile Cursed Balloon is just complete free lot because it has 9 hp instead of 5.



Again, there are probably people who can achieve 90% winrate despite these RNGs, but the variety from a run being a garbage run and a god run just because of RNG should not vary this much.

These are just some of the general problem I encountered with the game in Expert Mode which I hope will get fix/adjusted since they can lead to frustration, because otherwise I really like the game on its depth and making most bosses fair.

[Serulin]

Bomb clown is definitely an issue, he is high above any other boss in both tankiness and damage at that stage, and has summons which summon along with the bomb mechanics to deal with.

Another one I would say is that Kein's dps is huge compared to any other dps class. He lacks crit, but any other dps feels like a Kein support rather than a true dps. Honestly I would buff others up to his level rather than nerf him. My builds without him tend to have trouble on survival fights like bomb clown or the cursing witch. My only bomb clown win was with him and extremely good item luck, on normal I might add. I don't even want to touch hard in this.

[Samseng Yik]

Never play expert mode so I can't comment much.
2) Despite having a downside, the twins defensive buff is quite weak
8) Not all games need to follow the early game get weaker item and later game get better item. Sometimes true random has its own fun.

[BlacKnight]

2) The Twins basically do not have a passive skills...

Their passive is "Don't get randomly one-shot by bug damage + pain debuff" which makes them more resilient than many other dps/healer characters.

as for the mana issue you can
a. focus on increasing mana
b. don't fix expensive abilities (I usually leave the regular attack until I feel I have enough mana)
c. pick some low mana abilities for the early stages
d. rely a bit more on your 3rd character early on


Agreed with mostly anything else

[Deadcat]

Tbh if your run is in a situation about hit or die without any room of maneuver then you are probably not doing too well, same like eating bread before final boss, the 98% hit cap doesn't really matter for most of the game, the only thing people should ♥♥♥♥♥ about accuracy is Hein's Assault slash which has negative hit rate on top of his already low accuracy.

Bomb Clown is one of the easiest fight in game, there's almost no direct attack from him and he tells you what to avoid, he's just a punch bag if you manage your hand but even if you don't, just consider him like a standard boss, unless he bombs you 4~5 times a turn, of course that way he seems op, but this fight should always turn into your favor, plus you can always stun him to make this fight a joke.

[Platapoop]

I also think Sir Doichi is a bit too strong. I can almost always beat normal difficulty all the time unless it's sir doichi and he kills the run. I think his initial damage should do less damage.

For the OP, I'm pretty sir for every skill cost card you play, Dancing Leaves rotates to the right x characters, where x is the cost of the skill. E.g. you play a 1 cost, the character to the right now has the Dancing Leaves buff. If you play a 3 cost (with a team of 3), the same character gets the Dancing Leaves buff.

[Voodoo Doll]

Keep in mind that everything is still EA but a lot of points here are still valid. The one that I only really suffer from is Sir. Doichi (specifically on expert). Does way too much damage to the party, like the tank (but at least the tank gives time to heal). Does absurd single target damage, has dancing leaves damage, and bleed. Unless I have a very stacked team, I always wipe on this boss on the second phase (unless I cheese it with items).

2.) While I do agree that twins suffer early; they're by no means weak early. Helia offers some of the best dps skills in the game and pair well to characters that give buffs party buffs or multiple self buffs like Miss.Chain. Just get Flame arrow or Combustion early for Helia and Starbreeze, Lunar Ring, or Starbreeze for Selena.

4.)I never personally had an issue with Lucy skills, I do definitely agree that some are better than others;Especially on expert. Looking at you Hasty Counter.

5.)Johan's fixed attacked not having ignore taunt is not really an issue, and also probably because of balance reasons imo. You can pick dangerous targets quickly without spending too much of your valuable hand. You can also just use hookshot as well to get ignore taunt. While I do not agree Johan should be the main damage dealer, he can dish out serious damage in the right conditions. With dps gear can get his fixed ability to do around 14 damage. On of this, you can combine it with burning arrow and chemical weapon which adds an additional 35 dot damage. You can even further increase the base damage to like 22 with illusion arrow and shining aura active.

10) Yeah bomb clown is up there, but its no where close to SIr.Doichi in terms of BS. You can definitely minimize the bomb damage with discard cards by purposefully taking bomb hits instead chaining 2 or 3 bombs. I find DOT very useful since it does its work before the eventual bombing happens.

11.Not really an issue, you get plenty of lifting scrolls on expert. Most of the rewards are worth fighting for. Just plan if the effects are too strong and use the scroll.