Late game mechanics and optimization

Brief explanation of basic mechanics scaling into the late game.

Basic Stats

Stat caps

• HP, ATK, DEF, and SATK all cap at 9999.
  
• Crit (crit chance) caps at 100%
  
• ARP (attack resistance penetration) caps at 100%
  
• CHD (crit hit damage multiplier) has no cap

Stat scaling mechanics

• HP: monsters deal set damage, but environmental hazards (spikes) deal percent hp damage.
  
• ATK/SATK: Linear scaling (e.g. 1:1). Nothing special.
  
• DEF: non-linear scaling percent reduction. More or less, if something deals 100 with X DEF, then with 2X DEF, it will deal 50 damage.
  
• Crit: Linear scaling. Nothing special. Over-capped crit chance has no benefit.
  
• CHD: Linear scaling. Nothing special. More is better, but you'll be hard pressed to get more than 4.0 due to chip limitations.
  
• ARP/Resistance: Linear scaling. Monster 'resistance' is 50%+ on S+ . Meaning if you have 100 ATK and 0 ARP would deal 50 damage, 100 ATK with 50 ARP would deal 75 damage, 100 ATK with 100 ARP would deal 100 damage (e.g. full damage). Over-capped penetration has no benefit.

Item stats

Primary Weapons

• Stats are generally hidden, scale with the level but not difficulty. Weapons found on level 5 are the best by far.
  
• Weapon types/rolls are level specific. This means only specific weapons combos are found on level 5, which provides the best weapons. So you actual end game options are very limited.
  
• Weapons can only roll with a total of 5 affixes: 4 white and one green. This means weapons like katana and sword/shield, which have 3 forced white affixes (attack, def, crit) can only have 1 'flex' white affix.
  
• Weapons on level 5 seems to be bugged. Katanas never have a green affix and only sword/shield can roll 'level VII'
  
• Weapons are basically just 'stat sticks', where the only relevant stats are crit, CHD and pen. The base damage is flat and will be dwarfed by cores quickly. Attack speed differences are negligible and do not affect magic casting.

With all the above considered, this means the level 5 'long spear - sacred' is just the best weapon in the game despite its low crit chance (10) because of its high CHD (50) and ARP (40). There are weapons ( like the 'level VII' sword/shield combo being a close second) which have higher crit chance, but lower other stats. But given the power cost ratio of those chips (crit 15:15, CHD 15:20, ARP 10:15), CDH and ARP are much more valuable on the weapon. It also gives the same affect as 'Ossified Virus' which, if that matters, frees up even more power points for other things.

Katana's have the best attack mechanic, but stat wise they are just worse due to the, assumed, bug above.

Secondary Weapons:
2x 'Solar Eclipse Defense Shield' is the only thing to use. Not much else to say here. Its just mechanically very useful to have for various reasons and secondary weapon's damage don't scale well into the late game at all because they require investing cores into SATK. This is waste from what I can tell since SATK doesn't scale you own attack power or magic attacks (which are based off your attack power).

Chips
I won't cover all chips because, basically, anything that doesn't have '%' in it, is pointless. Cores add so much flat stats that, with few exceptions, flat bonus chips aren't worth using. I'll only cover chips that have potential in the end-game.

The useless:

• Mirror Counter: Useless, as far as I can tell. Could be bugged but it doesn't deal any damage. Assuming the damage rebounded doesn't affect the player (which didn't seem to be the case), a Shield of Conviction chip is just numerically better.
  
• Enhanced Bones: Useless. You'll hit the hp cap very quickly farming cores needed to do end-game.
  
• Sensitive Physique: Heal increase is way too small to justify the cost. Just get more damage or defense.
  
• Ossified Virus: Not worth the cost. You'll get the same affect on (arguably) the best weapon in the game.
  
• Tread Lightly: Useless. Does nothing at higher difficulties or against bosses.
  
• Move Body with Soul: While this effectively makes magic possibly usable, casting magic itself is riddled with problems. So I can't recommend it late game. If magic is ever fixed, then it will be very good.

The useful:

• Steal Health: Based on monster hp. It won't do much until higher difficulties, at which point it you can full heal constantly off of monsters.
  
• Domain of Steel: Single best chip in the game. Period. Does not prevent 'stun' (level 5 gloves, hidden boss etc), but prevents you from getting stopped by every other little thing.
  
• Unyielding Will: Single best damage chip in the game. It scales your base damage by a % of missing health up to roughly 100% more damage (e.g. you deal double damage) just before procing Automatically Inject chip. Does not bypass the player 9999 damage cap.
  
• Soul Cage: Second best single damage chip in the game. Caps a 999 (around 100k kills). However, its sill flat damage. So depending on how many cores you farm, and if you use Unyielding Will, if could be less useful if you're hitting the damage cap.
  
• Shield of Conviction: Increases based on base defense. Unless you're capped (unlikely) its usually worth running a few of these.
  
• Shield Piercing Projectile: Additive with weapon stats. You'll want as many as it takes to reach 100%, but no more
  
• Strength of Knowing: Additive with weapon stats. You'll want as many as it takes to reach 100%, but no more
  
• Critical Damage: Aside from cores, this is your only source of damage scaling. You want as much as you can afford, balanced as needed with Shield of Conviction
  
• Ammunition Loading: Amazing. Dirt cheap and doubles the charge count for the only relevant secondary in the late game: the shield.
  
• Automatically Inject: Huge quality of life. Allows you to focus totally on movement and fighting.

Farming

Item drops, core types, and shops are *NOT* fixed seeded. This means simply quitting to main menu and reloading will produce different results (within the options available).

For example, if you see a blue core (generally useless) you can just keep reloading until it changes to a red or green, as desired. This will greatly improve your core farming.

Similarly, if you're hunting for a specific weapon in level 5 shop, you can simply keep reloading until it spawns.

Note: while you can do this for chest drops, eventually the auto-save will catch up to the point after which you've opened the chest. So its really only good for a few attempts.