Gameplay Guide for New Players

This guide is intended to help new players to have some basic knowledge of the game so that they can enjoy it when they play it. The intention is to make the game more enjoyable and thus less angry gamers.

Character Stats Explained

Basic Stats:
- Max Health: This is the HP your character will have at the start of every battle. No healing required outside of battle. Character will always start battles with max HP.
- Max Energy: This is equivalent to MP of other games. You need energy to use martial arts. What is different from other games is that this max energy directly affects your damage output. In this game, the more energy you have, the more powerful your martial arts will be.

4 Core Stats:
These stats have a current value and a cap value. They are different for each character. These stats can be improved by 'perspective' points, medicine, or sometimes maxing out an internal style. Once a core stat reach its cap, however, it cannot be increased anymore unless a medicine or an internal style boost increase the cap beyond the current limits. The core stat limit determines the how effective each point invested in the stat will benefit the character. A higher core stat limit means each point invested will be more effective. A lower core stat limit means the opposite. It is better to invest in characters' core stats with higher limits.

- Arm Strength: Increases critical chance.
- Vitality: Increases max health.
- Comprehension: Increases max energy.
- Movements: Increases counter chance.

If a core stat's current value reaches above 80, for each stat a special passive may be randomly triggered during battle.

- Arm Strength: Trigger when attacking. Shock your opponent so they cannot attack for one round.
- Vitality: Trigger when taking hits. Absorb received damage, turn them into your own energy and take no damage instead.
- Comprehension: Trigger when attacking. Clear all active martial art cooldowns so all of the martial arts are usable in the next round.
- Movements: Trigger when taking hits. Dodge and perform a counter attack. Yes, this will even dodge attacks performed by enemies who have the destiny (accuracy 100%) bonus.

Attack Stats:
Each character has 3 attack stats relating to martial arts. They are different for each person. The higher the value, the greater the damage from related martial arts. The type of martial arts can be seen in the 'Training' menu. Whichever attack stat the martial art increases, that's the kind of attack stat that affect the damage output of the martial arts. Sometimes, attack stats are needed before a certain martial arts can be learned.

Defense Stats:
In the menu players may see a bunch or R.SWD, R.BSWD, and etc with a value beside them. That's the defense of the character against different kinds of martial arts. Higher value means the character is better at defending against that kind of martial arts. There are various equipment that can boost defense stats. Defense stats grow gradually in battles (I'm still unsure, but their growth may be affected by what kind of attack the character gets hit by or the type of enemies they fight).

Other stats:
- Evasion Rate: The chance of dodging an attack. This subtracts against the enemy's accuracy to decrease the enemy's chance of hitting the character.
- Counter Rate: The chance of performing a counter move when being attacked by an enemy. For counter to work, the character 'must' have a martial arts skill that can reach the enemy.
- Critical Rate: The chance of performing a critical attack when attacking. Critical attacks are 50% more powerful than regular attacks.
- Moving Speed: The number of steps the character can move per round. Some internal styles or items can boost this.

What is 'not' visible on the main character screen:
- Accuracy: By default, this is 100% but it can be affected by enemy evasion and debuffs.
- Counter Reduction: This value subtracts against the enemy's counter to make them harder to counter attack when the character hits them.
- Critical Reduction: This value subtracts against the enemy's critical chance to make them harder to perform a critical attack on the character.

Talent:
Talents are special passives of each character. For the two main characters, winning the intro battle results in a bonus talent for them. Depending on which side the player picks, different talents will be given.

Martial Knowledge:
These are the martial arts that can be used in battle. Players can select up to 6 martial arts to use in battle. Each character can learn at most 12 martial arts. As they gain level, the more powerful they are. The martial art's energy consumption is always based on a % of the max energy. The damage listed here is only the 'base' damage of the martial arts. The actual damage output is affected by many other things, such as equipment.

Internal Styles
The internal styles are breathing methods for character development. They provide special passive bonsues during battle. Each character can only equip 1 internal style for battle (only the equipped style's special bonus will take affect in battle). At most 6 internal styles can be learned. Internal styles boosts max health and/or max energy permanently as they gain level. At full level, they often grant permanent bonuses to character's other stats. Interal styles are critical for character development. The equipped internal style often determines the character's role in battle.

Early Game Tips

General Gaming Tips:
- Save often. Save before you make a choice. Save before you enter a battle. Making multiple saves can be helpful too to backtrack to a certain point and try again.

- In zone maps, use the mouse to move around the environment to look for things to interact. Secrets are in many places. Don't rush to go to the next area.

- It is important to talk to as many NPCs as possible. You never know which dialog might trigger a quest or open up areas in a zone.

- Press 'F' for conversation dialog in case player needs to review hints during conversations.

- Remember to feed your cat with 'Salted Fish'. You can feed him by clicking on the stove in a certain room. Wisdom fruit and the music score (needed for a quest) are good choices.

- Don't use up all of the wisdom fruit. Keep at least 2 or 3 handy. As player advance in the game, they will encounter a paradise where they can plant the wisdom fruit after pulling out all of the vegetables in a certain field. 1 wisdom fruit will be consumed for planting. When successful (when there's rumors about golden wings), the character can go back to the field and harvest 9 widsom fruits. It can fail, however, (rumors about ravens) so keep 2 or 3 handy.

- Some quests/events are only available if a rumor was heard.

- Sometimes, random events occur when travelling on the world map. Some are generic battle evetns, but there are also others that's quest related.

- Some world map locations will only be accessible after certain quests.

- The soy milk that can be bought in the first major city is a cheap yet effective healing item early game.

- Characters with portraits are often involved in a quest or storyline.

- Red dialogs often mention importeant key information regarding quests.

Character Development Tips:
- The smith will give you an item to perform parties at a certain inn when you introduce new allies to him. Keep these until you have 9 people in your party so you can have maximum effectiveness. You need 9 people in the party before the largest room can be rented (which gives 5000 exp to all party members at the cost of 2000 Qian).

- Progress through the story, the player will be able to visit Shaolin and Wudang. It is very helpful to train there to beef up characters' internal styles and martial arts before advancing too far into the story. This is how to effectively farm experience early game. Later, the training point in Shaolin will move to South Shaolin after a certain quest event.

- Perspective points are gained through completing quests. They can be farmed through beating bandits and returning lost goods to the local authorities. Player will also get some money for returning lost goods. This, however, is only randomly triggered on the world map.

- It would be best to learn martial arts that is related to the best attack stat for each character. This helps to yield higher damage in battle when the attack skill value is high.

- Experience gain in battle is affected by: damage output, damage taken, and healing performed. It is very helpful to gain more exp by finishing an enemy with an overkill attack.

- Experience gained in battle will only affect the equipped martial arts or internal style. Once reaching the max level, remember to equip another so the experience isn't wasted.

- Characters with core stats limit close to 80 are good candidates to boost their limit pass 80, since there's the special passive bonus once a stat reaches above 80.

- Player should not invest much in characters' core stats that has a low limit. Because the bonus provided by each stat is directly affected by the stat's limit cap, In contrast, high core stat limit means the stat provides more bonus per point invested, making it a wiser choice to invest.

- It is best to max out internal styles before martial arts, since they affect the character's survivability (max health) and attack power (max energy).

- After training internal styles or martial arts to higher levels, it is suggested to return to your master or your team member's master to see if they have better internal styles/martial arts available for learning.

- Different kinds of tea can permanently increase a character's max health or max energy (by a tiny amount). They can be purchased as long as you have cash. Use them to enahcne the survivability and fighting power of your characters when you have cash to spare.

- Internal styles that increases movement per round as full level permanent buffs are very important. It helps main characters stop being a snail when you need them. They are very helpful on tank characters, whom need to be in the front lines as quickly as possible.

Combat Tips:
- Gu Yuexuan is an effective tank with his 'Xiaoyao: Roc' internal style. It is very helpful to strategically place him right beside low health allies.

- There are two characters who can steal in battle by attacking. Stealing is very useful to obtain medicine (including items such as wisdom fruit), food, and sometimes even martial art books. Hiring them into your party can be very helpful.

- Using a martial art in battle does increase experience of that martial art slightly.

- Tanks that protect their teammates can be bypassed if they and their teammate are attacked by an AoE martial art together.

- Equipment damage bonus is multiplied by 2 when calculating a character's martial arts damage output. Good weapons influence damage outputs by quite a bit. This is the same for accessories that increase damage.

- Pay attention to enemies in battle with invincibility status. Attacking them will result in 0 damage. Most of the time, their invincibility only lasts for a turn. Also, invincibility doesn't mean they can mitigate status ailments. Stacking status ailments on them can be an effective way to cripple these kind of enemies whne their turn is up.

[Professor Von-Wulfen ]

Really helpful. Many thanks :)

[Mew]

Thank you for this great guide!