Basic/Quick Start Guide

Quick start/ basic guide for new players to enter Aria Chronicle quickly

Quick introduction

Aria Chronicle's is a turn-based RPG without the usual STR/DEX/MAG etc stats. Players customize their set-up with character classes, items, active talents and traits.
The interface of Aria Chronicle has a bit similarity to typical "freemium" mobile games, without having a need to spend your money to level-up your characters, which is a big plus. Some grinding and repetitive quests are necessary, if you want to equip your characters with the best equipment.
The main storyline is about princess Aria's adventure, escorted by Tila, a Paladin.

Mouse vs Gamepad

Gamepad controller feels very natural and comfortable during adventure mode, especially when you need to press a button for ~2 seconds to move from one area to another area.
However gamepad controller has a time consuming issue in the party-setup window. It will take multiple directional+button presses to go from a menu to a sub-sub-menu selection. Using mouse, you can easily click the corresponding hero/item and select the sub--sub menu item shown on the screen.

From my personal experience, I feel a combo of gamepad controller+mouse is more desirable than exclusively using a sole input device. Your millage may vary.

Starting a new game

Unless you are new to RPG game or do not want to have any challenges, you should set the game to Normal difficulty. Proceed to the next area (by clicking the , this is where you can set the class for princess Aria, please refer to the next section on a quick summary of character classes. Please note that you can change princess Aria's class later in the game (by using Potion of Fate).

After following the storyline, you will encounter an easy battle and aided by a Ranger (Archer).
Tip: Do not directly go to the city (Right Up corner), go around to the other areas for items and golds.

Basic character guide

• Warrior

  (Recommended for a new beginner)
  A fairly balanced hero class, depends on physical attack mostly.
  Warriors have various multi-target skills to target minions and high damage skills to face enemy's big bosses.
  
  • Weakness: Purely physical, no natural skill to inflict elemental/magic damage.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Eliminate terrain obstacle without stamina penalty.

• Paladin

  (Note that Tila is already a Paladin)
  It is foolish to target Paladins directly, They have the highest armor rating and the versatile support and defensive spells/skills. Use Paladins as tankers and Negative effect cleansers. Their light attribute is excellent against darkness and undead monsters.
  
  • Weakness: Average attacking ability and no natural multi-target attacking skill.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Provide purification on tainted objects without stamina penalty

• Rogue

  Master of physical damage with dual weapons. Both weapons will deal damages in one turn.
  A master of damage dealer. Rogues can divert their received damage to their allies to compensate for their lack of defense and hit points. A combo of Paladin and Rogue works pretty well.
  
  • Weakness: Weak in defense and magic.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Operate mechanical devices without stamina penalty

• Mage

  A class specializes in elemental damage. Good support for multi-target spell. A mage can probe the opponent's weakness suffering from a debuff/negative status, and tear it apart, dealing a big damage, even against big bosses. Has the highest Magic attack value.
  
  • Weakness: Low in physical attributes and hit points. Average effectiveness against Light and Dark elements.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Able to read signs/documents at high success rate

• Warlock

  Currently an unbalanced character (Fixed in the later version releases, necrosis doesn't stack). Warlocks are still amongst the important heroes, they can inflict a vast amount of weaknesses on enemies and unlock the possibility for other heroes to utilize them.
  Why concentrate on raising critical stats on every hero, when you can make an enemy in a very weak state and every ally unit will inflict a critical damage on it.
  
  • Weakness: Low in physical attributes and hit points. Not a natural direct damage dealer.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Give locations of treasures and bonfires (Important !!)

• Ranger

  A physical damage dealer class but situated at the back, has a decent support to deal elemental damages and a Targeting skill to bully enemy bosses. They are blessed with high speed an high accuracy stats. They can be developed to a multi-actions hero build.
  
  • Weakness: below average HP for Physical hero and below average MP for Magical hero, only has decent ultimate skills. Having a complex mechanism for multi-attacks.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Reduce the damage from traps

• Invoker

  Summon familiars and dealing elemental magics, requires invoker DLC.
  
  • Weakness: require "Arcane Energy" to do an elemental damage. Difficult to use for beginners.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Higher chance to get "Good" events

• Druid

  Provides disables and annoyances to the enemy. Chain Lightning and Entanglement are very good spells in early stage of the game. They also provide regenerative spells for HP and MP. Druids are candidates for the best support hero award with their Charm+, Bark, etc spells.
  
  • Weakness: Limited direct offensive skills
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Provide simple "map squares" to indicate the overall map terrains (important)

• Priest

  Provides Healing benefits and Light Attributes. In late-game, they can evolve into a meele fighter with Light element attack and healing capability ("Healer Berserker ?!"). A surprise late-game hero class.
  
  • Weakness: Good for light magic attack, bad in other offensive skill until late-game stage.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Reveal all locations of the monsters.
  Special note: Having a priest in your team will disallow you to search on "corpses" and "tombs"
  

• Monk

  A martial character class, has exotic physical offensive skills (also has good multi-target skills)
  
  • Weakness: No weapon item allowed. Low damage dealer at early levels. Too many good talent potentials available, too few talent points to purchase them all.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Stamina is not lost, if you return to a "visited-before-area" square. Good for Labyrinth-type missions. The best hero to have if you are annoyed with Stamina issue.

• Cook

  Another exotic class with various physical attack and support skills (also very good in multi-target skills)
  A very interesting ultimate in Tuna-cutting, cut all enemies' HP by 50% or 25% (for bosses).
  
  • Weakness: Low in armor points, can't face enemy big bosses alone toe-to-toe.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Doesn't spend stamina points when collecting resources ( ore mining).
    Cook also prevents the party from a possible poisoning due to eating wild berries.

• Exile

  A crazy physical hero who can sacrifice his/her stats for offensive skills. Complemented with life-steal and healing bonuses for this purpose. They are dangerously wild.
  
  • Weakness: Suicidal gamble on attack/ultimate skills. Limited multi-targets skills.
    
  • Natural position: Front
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Damage from terrains (cold/gas/lavas, etc) will be halved for your team.

• Charmer

  A good physical support class. Charmers have various skills to probe enemy's weaknesses and punish them.
  
  • Weakness: No weapon item allowed. Complex offensive skill mechanism.
    
  • Natural position: Back
    
  • Special Adventure bonus: Doesn't spend stamina when searching

Recommendation starting formation for new players

While the availability of heroes depend on the tavern's offering, here is a rough idea for a balanced party:

Frontline	Backline
Warrior (Aria)	Druid/Priest
Paladin (Tila)	Warlock
[optional]	Archer/Charmer

Optional: remove Archer/Charmer and put a Monk/Cook/Exile/Rouge in the frontline for a physical play.

Town buildings

For the first few events, just do some adventures and come-back to this section for upgrading purposes.

• Village Hall

  Upgrade this building to receive a higher Stamina allocation/limit at the start of a quest.
  It also increases the number of heroes you can have.
  
  

• Tavern

  Recruit your heroes here
  Upgrade for higher level and number of hero selections.
  Tips: Talk to people in Tavern often, to unlock new expeditions/quests.
  
  

• Smithy

  A place to get weapons/armaments/accessories.
  Ignore buying basic items, do item crafting.
  Important: you need to upgrade Smithy to get a higher level of weapons/armaments/accessories.
  
  

• Alchemy Labs

  Consumable items like healing potions, etc are available for sale here.
  Upgrade if you need to get a higher potion grade.
  
  

• Church

  Spend some money for a random blessing before a quest.
  Upgrade it to increase the number of blessings and heroes' mental point recovery when off-duty.
  
  

• Black Market

  (Not available immediately)
  Random items on sale. Sometimes, a rare item can be found here.
  Upgrade for more selection and higher rarity level item selection.
  
  

• Embark on Expedition

  Select this to go for a quest.
  Please read the next section before you do that.
  Tips:
  • Every expedition/quest has a level rating. If a hero in your team has 3 level or higher level than the expedition/quest level, The hero will reject the quest.
    
  • Tila will not go for a quest without princess Aria, since it is her duty to guard her.

Party Guide

After recruiting at least 3 heroes, you can bring-up the party window by clicking the Party icon at up-right corner.

Every character can contributes his/her talents to the team. At first, only one talent slot is available for a character. The number of talent slots and available talents will be added when the character gains some levels.

Press Edit Party button to enter Formation set-up

This set-up is useful to correct the position for heroes, i.e: to put monk in the frontline and to select which heroes to be in your team in the quest.
Remember to press the "Edit Complete" button !!
Note that you can only have max 3 heroes at the front and max 3 heroes at the back.


Selecting "Hero Details" will show the inventory of a hero. You can equip the weapon, armor and accessories for each character.

Selecting "Traits" will list down Traits of heroes in your group

Traits always have positive and negative attributes (except for all Expertise and Survivor traits)
Pay attention to the traits, as your heroes will collect traits during their encounter in quests. It is no fun to have critical-negative traits for hero characters whose classes specialize in damage dealing capability.
Tips: During quest, you will encounter heroes in cages. Liberating them will get you heroes with Survivor trait which only has positive traits. They might be the better hero candidates for your development plan.

Expedition window

Start of a Quest

At the start of the quest, a random event is chosen for this particular quest, i.e: Abundance of Ores, Peaceful state with less monsters, etc.
The party will be placed in a starting square area, usually with only one way to go to the other area.
To move to the other area, use directional buttons / place mouse cursor to the corresponding direction and hold the confirmation/mouse button for approximately 2 seconds.

Map

]Pressing the map button will open a map window.

How details is the map, will depends on what hero classes you have in your team now.
Refer to the basic class guide section for more information.
Reading signs and documents during encounters may also reveal a full or partial revelation of the quest area (Mage is useful here).

Stamina mechanism

Every task (searching/moving/gathering) during an expedition/quest will consume stamina.
Having certain character classes as mentioned in the basic class guide section, will eliminate or reduce the stamina consumption for the corresponding activities.
If the stamina reaches 0, every character will suffer in %Mentality status for every turns. This is very bad for characters. Be careful, if the %Mentality is becoming very bad, your hero allies may leave you.


You can charge the stamina gauge at bonfires location.
Tips:

• Plan your route efficiently, charging stamina when your stamina gauge is full is a waste of stamina resource. Every map usually has a limited amount of bonfires, barely sufficient for a quest.
  
• You can recover a mental status of heroes by not including him at the next quest or by using certain potions.

Using Skills/Spells in Quest window

Outside the combat mode, certain skills (healing,etc) can be accessed by choosing the corresponding hero portrait and select the desired skills/spells to be used.

Ending Quest prematurely

If all party are annihilated during an expedition/quest, princess Aria and Tila will be resurrected at town. However a random hero will be killed from your team as penalty.
If you decide to withdraw from an expedition/quest, your heroes will suffer a huge mental status penalty.
Tips: It is recommended to withdraw from a quest when your stamina has reached zero for long time. Their mental status penalty can be recovered by not using them for the next quest. Create a secondary low level team to go for a quest at lower level areas.

Basic Combat guide

Order of Battle

Battle will take place in rounds.
Every round, all characters in the combat will take a turn, based on their Speed stat.
The number of actions in a round or a turn is usually one per hero, however several hero classes have skills to have multiple actions for one turn or multiple turns within one round. Some Potions and Spells also can allow a hero to have multiple actions ability temporarily.

Basic Combat Calculation

Damage can be caused by physical and magical. Both of them will reduce the hit points of the target.
The basic hit point inflicted damage is simply: Damage - Target's Armor.
Some negative status of a hero (bleeding, burnt, etc) will also reduce the hit points per action or per turns.

Physical damage
The chance of landing to hit is determined by: Attacker's accuracy and position (front/back) vs Target's evasion, position and physical resistance.
Critical hit is a multiplication from the basic damage (influenced by Critical Power) with the chance is determined by Critical Rate.

Magic damage
Magical damage is determined by Attacker's Magical Attack vs Target's Magical Resistance.
There are three elemental magics in the game: fire, ice and lightning,
There are also additional magic elements of dark and light.
Elemental heroes like Mage, Druid, Rangers etc, can use fire, ice and lightning magics.
Rightful heroes like Paladin, Priest, Monk etc can use light magic to heal the party and purify undeads
Dark heroes like Warlock, Exile, Rogue, etc can use dark magic to weaken and suck opponent's life force.
Tips:

• All monsters and bosses usually have at least one magical weakness.
  "Burning" monsters mostly are weak on ice.
  Tree/plant type monsters mostly are weak on fire.
  Flying monsters mostly are weak on lightning.
  Undeads mostly are weak on light.
  
• Casting magic spells and skills will cost mana points.
  You need to plan how to replenish the mana. Some heroes like Ranger will consume mana more than they can handle by themselves. There are Traits and spells that you can try, rather than to depend on consuming mana potions.

Ultimate

(unlocked after a few quests)
When the ultimate gauge is full, a hero can use his/her ultimate skill.
At the MAX hero's level, there are two ultimate skills per hero class that can be chosen.
The ultimate gauge will be reset to zero again, after an ultimate skill is used.
Tips: Paladin class has a special skill to fill-it up again in an instantaneous manner

Negative Effect Status

Negative status that can deplete hit points

• Bleeding
  
• Burn
  
• Poisoning
  
• Necrosis

Cure: Corresponding potions/spells or Remove all negative effect potions/spells

Negative status that doesn't do damage directly

• Electrocuted
  Victim can't cast skill/spell and has slower speed
  
• Frostbite
  Victim suffers a massive slow speed penalty and lower evasion rate.
  
• Fear
  Victim has a chance not be able to execute any actions during the turn
  
• Stun
  Victim is unable to execute any actions during the turn
  
• Confusion
  Victim can attack his/her own ally
  
• Debuff
  Victim's combat stats is weakened
  
• Blind
  Victim's accuracy is greatly affected
  
• Sleep
  Victim is sleeping, will be awakened if receiving an attack.
  
• Sullied
  Victim is unable to receive a healing
  
• Coma
  Fainted and greatly wounded. Will die if there is no life-aid action in a few turns.

Cure: Corresponding potions/spells or Remove all negative effect potions/spells (except for Coma)

Understanding Weaknesses

Enemy's weaknesses can be viewed when you place an attack target on them.
The icons circled in yellow box are representing physical and elemental resistance of the target.
In this example, Treant monster is weak against Fire element.
The icons circled in green box are representing status resistance of the target.
In this example, Treant monster is weak against Burnt status and immune against Bleeding status.

Note that while attacking with fire element may cause a burnt on the target (ice -> frostbite, lightning->electrocuted, light->blind, etc), the chance of an elemental attack to inflict a status is determined by these status resistance stats, not the elemental resistance stats.

Some items in the game (weapon/armor/accessories/consumables) will raise hero's elemental resistances and others will raise status resistance stats. Unfortunately, a few poor inconsistency in english translation of item descriptions make it harder to understand the game mechanism concept: Debuff, Magic Resistance, Weaknesses, Harmful Effects, etc.

Tips:

• Use status for your advantage.
  example: if a dangerous enemy depends on the spells, making it electrocuted will make it unable to cast any spells.
  
• Occasionally, there are irremovable "curse" put on your party members by enemy. Hovering the mouse cursor on the status effect symbol of your character will reveal the description about the curse.
  
  Read carefully the available skills of your heroes, there may be tricks to manipulate various type of curses put on your party members.

Post-Mission guide

After completing a mission's main objective, you may choose to "Stay in Dungeon".
Doing so will allow you to complete the secondary objective or doing some mining or exploring all the "?" adventures. Keep a close eye on the stamina gauge.

Returning the town, the following events/activities are available:

• Crafting items (weapons/armors/etc) at the Smithy
  Choose "Craft Equipment" to see the list of available and possible item creation at the moment. This depends on the progression of storyline and the available materials in "Inventory"->"Materials" window.
  
  
  
• Selling items from inventory.
  All items (Armors/Weapons/Consumables, etc) can be sold from the "Inventory" windows.
  Simply click on the item and a pop-up window will appear.
  
  Note: Items can be sold during a quest, where a merchant is present.
  
  
• Some buildings are available for upgrades.
  Choose "Upgrade" on the corresponding building's window dialog screen.
  
  
• List of heroes in Tavern is refreshed.
  New heroes are available for hire.
  Also, please check if there are any new conversations in the Tavern,
  
  
• Black Market
  Black Market will appear after completing the first major event of storyline.
  After finishing a storyline quest and defeating a big boss in process, you will get a quest medal for that boss. The medals can be exchanged in the Black Market for a unique item.
  Note: Every medal at least have two unique items to choose from, i.e: an enemy priest boss may have left a robe or a staff. Only one item can be chosen, since only one mdeal is given for a successful quest (additional medal can be earned at the Arena)
  
  Example: Wyvern quest medal can be traded to a Venom Fang (dagger weapon) or a Venom Scale Armor (leather armor).

Game Tips

• Don't forget to stock-up keys before going for a quest.
  You can't open treasure chests without it.
  
  
• Examine your formation carefully,
  Front line has an advantage when launching an attack but also is more vulnerable when receiving an attack. Heroes with ability to carry more armor points will be able to absorb more damage. Consider to fix damaged armor points after every battle with monsters.
  
  
• Stamina gauge is important.
  Don't forget to upgrade Village Hall, when it is possible to do so.
  
  
• Talk to anyone in the tavern, they may give you a new mission.
  Talk to them again after the mission has been completed.
  
  
• Pay attention to the mission's details, especially for repeatable missions (grinding gold,item,exp).
  Whenever possible, bring a relevant hero according to mission's objective,
  i.e: Priest if the mission is to kill all the monsters OR Cook if the mission is to mine all resources OR Druid/Monk if the mission is to search all areas and has a long trail.
  
  
• Check carefully the traits gained by your heroes.
  Make sure a hero gained a sensible array of traits, i.e: it doesn't make sense a Mage hero keeps traits which undermine the Magical capability but increases the physical attack.
  
  
• How's about creating two teams to do quests alternately ?
  Rested team will appear at 125% stamina at the next battle, this will bring many bonus advantages.
  Consider to rest Aria's team before facing the next big boss mission of the main storyline.
  
  
• Hero's succession is a useful feature in the mid- and late-game.
  It will transfer experience and a trait to a hero. The hero needs to be involved in a quest, at least once, making the previous tip of two team creation more an attractive idea.

Arena (optional quest)

After reaching a certain mid stage of the game's storyline, Nadya of the black market will inform the existence of Arena. This stage is purely optional. It can be accessed by "Select Quest-Map" screen, at the lower right corner.


After entering the arena, the party will be given two choices Conquest Mode or Challenge Mode


In Conquest Mode, the party will face a continuous fight against parties of monsters in an ascending order of the difficulty. At the end of every wave, a choice is given to leave the Challenge Mode. The rewards depend on how many waves the party have survived.

In Challenge Mode, a selection of enemy big bosses that has been encountered, is given to the party to enter a fight again. Rewards will be given on the number of unique big bosses that have been beaten. It is a free selection and the winning record will be kept at the next arena visit.
Note that quest trophies/ medals are also won after the defeating the corresponding big bosses in Challenge mode.

Arena gives some good quality equipment and the writer class (not so good). However, it is advisable to complete 20 rounds of monster waves, when the party is at level 8 or level 9 at least.

[Rudigon]

Dying in Arena has no repercussions even in Hard mode. I've had full party wipes in Conquest and Challenge modes and my party was fine afterward

[Lilac_bloom]

Occasionally some pictures are missing from the guide and marked as missing links.
This is an occasional issue in the steam community server.

[Rudigon]

Hero's Succession is only possible for heroes level 5 or higher who have completed at least 1 quest. Doing a repeatable quest that you've already cleared in the past count towards meeting the 1 quest requirement. The Exp given seems to be based on the level of the hero being succeeded, not the cumulative Exp gained by the hero