Beginner FAQ (v.8.7c)

Did you start playing The Void Rains Upon Her Heart recently and have questions about the game? This guide might be able to help!

Introduction

Recently, there was a large influx of new players playing The Void Rains Upon Her Heart. This guide is aimed at answering some of the more common questions that the beginners ask.

Basic Progression Questions

I don’t want to look up answers. How do I learn all of this information myself?

A lot of the things in this guide are available by reading the Collection tab, looking at the settings and checking various menus. Nevertheless, there are some weird ones which you won’t know unless you do something beforehand, or are unavailable at the start. I still suggest reading the stuff the game offers to you, though.

How can i make sense of stats and gift effects? Some of the descriptions on the cards are unclear? And how much is +1 damage?

On the Check Heart menu that is available before encounters and in pause menu in the middle of the combat, there are several relevant options. Attributes menu allows you to evaluate how stats influence your character, figure out your DPS and other active effects, including special ones. Going to the Active Gifts menu and pressing right allows you to read the detailed effects of Gifts you have active (as if you have radiated them and are looking at them in Collection). For reference, +1 heart damage is +25% DPS for Her Heart without any other gifts.

What’s the difference between Her Heart and Defect? They play the same to me.

There are two major differences and a bunch of minor ones. The big ones are:
1) Her Heart starts with 16 HP, while Defect only starts with 12. To put it into a context, an “average hit” in this game deals 4 damage to you. To compensate for that, the Defect starts with a three-star gift “Adamant Will” which heals her for 30 HP at the end of each fight, essentially resetting her health to full. This does, however, mean that the Defect finds less three-star gifts in the run.
2) The regular shots Defect fires are of a Void variety (the charge shots still deal Radiant love). This means that she has access to two elements at the start of the run, compared to Her Heart whose attacks are all Radiant. What this translates to, in practice, that Her Heart experiences difficulties defeating Radiant-resistant bosses, especially at the start of the run, while Defect with her two elements has more options for dealing with resistances.
As for the minor ones, the two hearts have slightly different damage and rate of fire, panic damages and starting amount, slightly different movespeed, as well as different resistances, different panic durations, quick gift capacity and unlock capability. Defect can also hold more panics without being score penalized in Quickplay at cost of having lesser power gift “star” limit.

For most difficulties, there are two different kinds medals for clearing story mode! What does the second one mean?

Defeating the final story encounter at the maximum level possible for the difficulty grants you the second story medal, radiant and shiny.

Okay so I wanted to get a shiny medal for defeating The Void at level 12 in Heavy Rain but it refused to show up and I had to settle for level 11! What’s the problem?

The main cause of this issue is usually not having Void radiated. You should also fulfill “Level 12 Monsoon” dream before that, but you probably already did that.

How do I earn tetrids/motes of specific colors?

Getting motes of one of the six basic colors can be done by defeating a monster from its associated family. You can determine which color of motes a monster will give by looking at the color of its family symbol. This symbol can be found near the score tally in a fight, on the bottom right of the monster card and near the name in the monster list. Shambles give green motes, Guardians - red, Eyeric Glyphs - yellow, Zaramechs - blue, Glass flora - orange and Veyerals - purple.
Radiant motes are available in fights with final and Special (cyan family symbol) bosses. Special bosses also drop motes of all six basic colors. On top of that, Bonus and Bounty gifts can provide you with extra motes.

I don’t have enough tetrids! How do I get rich fast?

Generally, breaking more parts and doing a full combo gives you a better score on monsters, which directly translates to more tetrids earned.
Progressing in Quick Play is the best way to get tetrids of the six basic colors.
Monsters with higher levels give more tetrids, while investing into more Quick Play progression helps you defeat those bosses relatively fast with proper builds.
As for Radiant motes – early on playing story and doing well might be your best bet. As you play the game, you will unlock better ways to farm radiants, but at first, you’ll have to do regular runs.

What is a thorned monster? What does it mean?

Thorned monsters are basically special event or final bosses. They are called “thorned” because the border around the “monster type” symbol has thorns around it. They also have a special category in the collection. Radiating a certain amount of those is a requirement for unlocking new gamemodes.

What do those “Upgrade Gifts” do? I’m confused.

After getting through main chapters of story mode, one of the final bosses will have an Upgrade Gift available that’s not already in your collection (there are several of those which have a similar effect and name, though) if you have unlocked one. Defeating that boss will permanently add that Upgrade Gift to your collection. If you radiate this gift, you will receive a permanent upgrade that will apply to all future runs.
Types of upgrade gifts include “boxes”, which allow you to carry more Quick Gifts on a certain character, and “cores”, which allow you to use more Quick Gifts simultaneously (and also use stronger Quick Gifts which take two or three slots instead of just one), and gifts that upgrade your events so that they are more potent.

What is the priority for spending tetrids in the beginning? I don't want to miss important things.

Generally, there is no category in collection that should be ignored at the start. However, Upgrade Gifts are probably the most important thing to radiate in the game. After spending tetrids on them, the order of priority is generally "useful power gifts and thorned monsters > everything else", though you shouldn't stunt your progress in other categories as well.

Basic Gameplay Questions

I keep losing combo without getting hurt, what do I do wrong?

First of all, to find out what happens to your combo, you can enable “combo meter” in settings. Aside from just missing your shots on a mobile target, one of the main reasons beginners tend to lose combo is holding the charge attack a little too long.
One of the major things that can help with that is changing the charge type in the settings. There are six charge types with the default being charge type A, and you can set up two charge types as your preferred ones with the ability to swap between those in the battle. Playing with a “non-A” charge type, in my experience, makes losing combo by mistiming charge much harder. I recommend testing all charge types out and settling on those which are comfortable for you. (My personal setup is F/D)

I keep hitting the boss but i still lose combo! Also, what does that strange combo bar color mean?

Aside from getting hit or not hitting a boss for a while, you can lose combo to part of the boss, like a small glyph in Photoxai's case, escaping the screen. In those battles, combo bar will be colored green and the combo timer is frozen so you can just focus on destroying parts of the boss. To note, green combo bar should not be mistaken with a yellow one, which indicates that the combo timer is frozen due to a boss performing a specific attack where it's hard to hit (or the boss just feels like it).

Okay but why do I need to keep a combo? Doesn’t this just affect score?

Getting a good combo on a fight gives you more karma, and getting a good score on a fight also gives you more karma. This translates to getting more and better gifts in future fights, thus making fights after that easier and starting a snowball effect culminating in a much better build at the end of the run.

Wait, what does karma actually do? I missed it.

Karma is basically “luck meter” in this game. Having higher karma affects the quality and amount of the gifts you get, the number of bosses you can choose from, the number of challenges you encounter and the chances for encountering specific events. Basically, high karma = good.

What are the differences between the radiant, void, zap, toxic and burn damage types?

Both damage you deal and damage you receive belong to one of five aforementioned types (or a mix of several). Your resistances or weaknesses influence the amount of damage you receive, and the monster resistances influence damage they take. What that means in practice that trying to love a monster with a type she’s resistant against can take up to twice the time compared to time spent loving her with a type she's weak against, assuming equal DPS.
Type of damage you deal is usually pretty clear from the visuals. Type of damage monster projectiles deal also depends of how they look: void projectiles are usually black- or blood-colored, toxic is green or purple, zap is yellow/blue, burn is a orange/red and radiant are white. However, for many of those there are exceptions (for example, Glacia attacks with three-colored glass projectiles, but those all deal Radiant damage, red mech lasers/(+) projectiles are radiant while blue mech lasers/(-) projectiles are Void, there exist paint bullets of three different types, etc).
You can look up your resist values any time in the Check Heart menu by looking at Attributes. Monster’s resist values are shown after you radiate them. They can also be looked at in the middle of the run by pressing Down on the monster card, whether before the fight or in the middle of the fight in a Check Monster menu. In Quickplay, resists can be checked by pressing Right in the fight menu.

Does charging with a full energy bar deal more damage than with only a single energy unit?

No. it doesn’t. Firing a charge shot at 4 energy deals the same damage as firing it at 1 energy. However, firing a charge shot at 0 energy results in it being significantly weaker.

What happens if you try to shoot a charge shot while having no energy?

You release a really weak version of a charge shot. Aside from keeping combo on feather-based characters, using them is generally not advised.

Basic Gameplay Questions cont.

How do multiple shot types on a single character work?

A character can only shoot a specific shot type if it’s “enabled”. Shot types are enabled by picking up specific gifts: Lovely Hearts for heart shot, Tiny Wings for feather shot and Starry Night for star shots. Each character has default values for damage and attack rate for each of three main shot types. Gifts like “heart rate up” or “star damage up” affect those values.
What all this means is that if you equip a gift that affects star shots while you don’t have them in Quickplay, you still won’t shoot star shots and the gift will essentially have no effect in the battles.
It should also be noted that even if you have every shot type active, your charge shot will still be of the type your character started with. This means shooting charge shots with multiple shot types activated isn’t as effective.

How do monster levels work in Story Mode? I keep encountering monsters with high/low levels.

When you choose, for example, a level 4 monster in Light Rain, the consequent monsters in next encounters will start from a level 4 and then other encounters would be either of the same level or harder. That means that to keep a run “easy”, you shouldn’t raise monster levels by choosing harder monsters. This, however, results in you getting less karma. If you want to defeat higher level monsters and get some radiant medals in Story (or generally get a better score), you should choose harder monsters in order to have your final encounter be of max level. It should be noted that some level progression still occurs even if you keep choosing lowest levels – choosing three level 1 monsters in the first chapter of Light Rain still results in you having to fight at least level 2 monster in the start of the second chapter, for example.

I can't see my shots/can't panic/can't move in focus/something else weird happens in a specific battle? Also there are weird pop-ups before the fight.

You're encountering Bounty Gifts, marked with a + sign. Those give bonus score for a specific encounter, but some of those (ones with a red background) come with a downside for that fight. When you do one of these fights, a pop-up shows before the fight that explains what does that bounty do (even if you didn't encounter or radiate it yet), so pay attention to that.

I got some reserve health! What does that mean?

Reserve health is basically “potential regeneration”. If you don’t have full HP, it is marked with a light-green on the life bar. When you have any reserve health and you’re not at full HP, you regenerate 0.2 HP/s while losing the amount of reserve health equal to the HP you regenerated. If you have full HP, you just hold that reserve health until you require it. It can also be viewed as “slow heal” that can go over your max HP.

How do critical hits work?

Some gifts give your attacks a crit rate. Critical hits aren’t random: if you have a 7% crit rate, exactly 7 of your 100 shots would be critical hits. Each critical hit has two different effects. First, the damage dealt by the crits is doubled (the extra damage is amplified by critical damage gifts). Second, the critical shot creates a bubble on impact which deals the same damage as the shot over a period of time.

What this all means is that a critical shot deals four times the damage of a regular shot if the monster stays in the bubble for the whole duration. Due to that, critical hits are very effective at increasing your DPS: a 5% crit gift gives you a 15% increase in DPS for regular shots. It should be noted that, charged shots don’t scale that well from crits (those don’t consider the bubble).

Are there any other settings aside from charge shot and combo meter that are useful in combat?

There are a few useful things you can enable in the settings that can help with the runs. Combat timer helps with speedrun achievements, score karma meters allow you to estimate how well you’re doing and if you need to break more parts, and buildup bar gives you a tool to handle full-arena attacks easier.

Why do monsters get defeated at drastically different speeds?

Monsters have different amounts of base fear and resistances to elements. In addition to that, different parts of monsters take different amounts of damage from attacks. Some, like Glass Flora eyes, are weakpoints and take increased damage, while others, like Knot Knott’s wire, are the opposite and take reduced damage.

I’m trying to defeat Hadesoh/Chemory but they seem to be taking very little damage in the second phase! Why?

When the second phase of Hadesoh/Chemory starts, they absorb all small existing glyphs into them. It makes the second phase of the monster harder in two ways: absorbed glyphs fire small aimed bullets at you and also greatly decrease damage the boss takes, especially the main body. This results in a rather prolonged fight. If this happens, the solution is to focus on the glyph feathers since they will take more damage than the main body. But usually, just not letting glyphs absorb their small orb familiars by destroying those first is best.

Basic Gameplay Questions cont. cont.

Monsters keep aiming their shots directly at me and it's unavoidable! What do I do?

To dodge these attacks, you need to move as little as possible. Wait a bit (you might not need to wait depending on the movespeed of bullets) until they are in close enough vicinity and move away with a small step. Keep moving in small steps until that attack ends. In this way, you bait all aimed bullets to the position you just were in and they keep just missing you. This also helps with not losing combo on these attacks due to not performing big movements.

The Void attacks me with arrows and I have no idea how to dodge them!

This phase requires a variation of dodging strategy described above. The proper tactic for that phase (if you have no items that might help with that, like screenwrap) is baiting the arrows to the top side of the screen, waiting for a little there, then quickly making a dash for the bottom, waiting there, then going back. For some added measures you can move a bit forward on the side in order to bait the blood projectiles, thus your movement will kinda resemble the symbol “(“. A steam guide here https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2906330531 has a video with the clear which illustrates this.

I can't get a radiant medal on Pearl despite a full combo and breaking all of the segments on her tail!

If you don't break the flower on her tail before the 50% fear mark, it will run away and give you no motes, which will then deny you the radiant medal even if you do everything else perfectly.

I can't deal with shy monsters! I just lack DPS to deal with parts before they leave the screen.

If you destroy a summon of a shy boss, you get energy. Because of that, using a lot of charge attacks is sustainable in shy fights, and that translates to a big increase in DPS, so if you run into continous issues with shy fights, try to spam charged shots.

I have little Power Gifts radiated and trying to do Quickplay! What do I equip?

Shot-specific gifts (like Thorns and Love Note for Her Heart) are most efficient to equip DPS-wise. Compared to them, all damage% gifts like Fang offer much less DPS. If you have issues with keeping combo using Her Heart, you can consider gifts like Cracked Heart or a helper gift. Be sure to not overequip, though, because getting a score penalty by equipping too many gifts makes earning Radiant Medals impossible.

I can't keep combo on Twin Heart! What is the trick?

Keeping combo with feathers usually involves using charge attack when you go out of feather range.Even if you run out of energy, the heart can still shoot unenergized charge shots which, while dealing little damage, are more than capable of keeping combo constantly.

Story Event Questions

Why do I keep meeting/can’t find Anomaly?

Anomaly offers you a Gift From Beyond (a three-star power gift with a chance for three-star bonus and quick gift as well). However, she only appears in the event after a full three-encounter chapter if your karma is really low. This way, she serves as the catch-up mechanic for newer players.

Help I met Polyps and I don’t like it! What causes this?

Polyps are attracted to panics. If you hold a lot of panics, your chances of encountering them go way up. If you defeat Polyps, you get rewarded with panic gifts, so even if you spend a few to deal with the fight you usually still come out of it profitably.

Sentinel asks me weird questions! How can I possibly know the answers?

Aside from asking a lot of stuff that transpired during your run, Sentinel asks about a lot of info which can be found in radiated cards. She never asks you questions you can’t have the answers to. Of course, looking at the backgrounds or card arts and listening to conversations also helps.

Okay, but I still can’t remember the stuff. Is there a cheat sheet?

You might find that guide by Sabima useful. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3002551728 Beware of spoilers though: the quiz answers contain a lot of info that’s not revealed until later stages of the game. You also still have to do basic maths yourself (or pull up a calculator).

Achievement Questions

Achievements keep mentioning overleveled monsters! What are those?

Either reach level 30 in Quickplay, love a level 12 monster in Story, or radiate enough monster cards to unlock the fourth game mode. Then, either read what these dreams unlock or just try the new game mode – you will find your answers there.

These monster achievements are too difficult to do in Story, is there a workaround?

Many of the weirder monster achievements which require you to play “suboptimally” don’t specify that you should perform them in Story. This usually means they are much easier to do in Quickplay. Most of those also still can be done with “score reduction” so you could equip a lot of gifts for a weaker monster.

How do I look up specific monster dreams while in-combat?

Press “Check Heart” button in the pause menu, go to Dream List. On top of the list should be the specific monster’s dreams. By the way, it’s possible to do it that way in any game mode. In any non-Quickplay mode, you can also check dreams by choosing "Check Monster" in that menu and pressing Up while having monster selected.

Specific Prisma and Lavalin achievements are, like, totally impossible?

A Cute Angle: Choose a level 1 Prisma in the Quickplay. Have a charge type which allows you not to shoot while charging (like A/C/D). When she opens up the shell (best attack is a diagonal bouncy pattern, you can technically get away with a laser and aimed bouncing diamonds) discharge and then damage the main “eye” with your regular shots. If you are afraid of breaking a shell, instead of discharging you can change the charge shot type (this will have the effect of canceling your charge shot).

Simple Geometry: The simplest way to do it is just doing it in an encounter with a level 1 Prisma. Just move like a sixth of screen down and a small bit forward (under the place where the diamond bouncy pattern intersects in the middle). This place isn’t hit by anything that’s not an aimed bouncy attack, so you just wait there until she doesn’t do aimed attack two times in a row and that’s already 15 seconds.
If you already unlocked a Fallen Angel or Umbrella and found it in a run, you can just chill in a bubble for 15 seconds in Prisma encounter of any level.

This Is The Art Of Ruin: In order to do what’s required you need to finish the fight before any orbs fly to the left of the screen. What that means that you’re on a timer in the second phase. Thus, do a quickplay fight with a level 5 Lavalin, overload on DPS (hearts/feathers work), and just burn the boss down before any of the orbs leave the screen. Bringing a panic also helps.

Obscure Questions

This Eyeric language is cute. Do we have a full dictionary?

Unfortunately, we only know some specific glyphs and phrases, and to my knowledge the full available information is not written anywhere in a single place. However, all aspiring xenolinguists are welcome in the discord ( https://discord.gg/UmA7Tuv ) to discuss Eyeric and ask any questions regarding it.

I lost all my progress due to a crash! Where’s the backup located?

Currently, the game has a feature which allows to load backups in these cases. If it doesn't work for whatever reason, you can try doing it manually.

To quote the dev:

If you go here:
C:\Users\[Username]\AppData\Local\The_Void_Rains_Upon_Her_Heart\

There should be a folder called "backups".
Copy the most recent one, usually "Quick Backup [highest number]".
Paste a copy into the "save files" folder and rename the file to "save_data".

I have managed to unbind the "Accept/Select" button on the keyboard! What do I do?

Go to C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Local\The_Void_Rains_Upon_Her_Heart\save files\settings. If you don't have "accept" in that file under "[keys]", add a row with

 accept="90.000000" 

If you do, just set the "accept" that value.

Special Thanks

Veyerals for creating the game.
Sabima, Awedish, Tsilla and Randy for creating the resources with all the info about the game.
Friends (Prtsscout & 17711) for proofreading this.
People who keep popularizing the game so that the necessity for that FAQ arose.
All the members of the Void community for being awesome ♥.

Changelog

08-07-2023: Created.
11-07-2023: Minor updates.
22-07-2023: Restructured the guide and added a few more questions.
29-09-2023: Minor updates. Now compatible with v.7.27.
04-10-2023: Added "managed to destroy my keybinds" section.
05-12-2023: Minor updates. Now compatible with v.8.1c.
29-02-2024: Minor updates.
05-05-2024: Added more requested information.