Some things good to know prior to playing.
General Gameplay
Half of the fun of the game is exploring; you can’t miss anything since you click to navigate. But there are a lot of things that I would have liked to have known prior to playing.
- The “unlimited corridor” white gates are paths to the rest of the castle. I would recommend exploring what you can of the castle first prior to going into any of the other worlds. You can do this in any order you see fit, but I think the upper portion is meant to be done at the end of the game since the puzzles use mechanics introduced in earlier stages.
- Accuracy is the most important stat. There is a Bronze Spyglass in World of Joy that might be useful, and at least one elsewhere.
- The Guardians have fixed levels, their minions do not.
- There are exactly eight Guardians and nine guiding hands, the *big* guardian you meet is just a regular guardian (who just happens to be really powerful).
- The “unlimited corridor” white gates do not necessarily connect to each other.
- There are items that weaken each of the Arbiters carried by human characters scattered throughout the castle, though I think the one for your own element will be missing.
Items
- Blue Hearts are the most important random drop as these are used to make the Revive equivalent. Next up are the key item materials; Coagulant is the most important as it is used in all types of key items, followed by Aquila/Lyra/Cygnus (used to make the glowing emblem key items), followed by Wooden Keys (used to open treasure chests).
- You will need the glowing emblem key items in order to progress through World of Anxiety.
- Most of the throwables are useless but sometimes you just need to force damage through in the face of bad accuracy.
- There are key items in the infinite corridor that make something extremely useful once you have all three.
Monsters
- Recruiting monsters is purely random chance if you have the corresponding colour.
- It can help to have a team that is lacking the one energy so restores of that colour get the most value.
- I would recommend looking at how much energy a monster generates on their turn, and how often they can attack as a result.
Bosses (spoilers)
- The three hardest bosses for me were Arbiter of Relief (extremely hard to hit), Arbiter of Disgust (drains all your energy and has an instant-kill effect), and the *big* tower guardian (has an instant-kill effect on an AOE, more or less requires Dodge SD to beat, as well as an attack that specifically targets your hero). By the time you get to the latter you should have unlocked the special monster in the tower, determined by which of the notes you find, G (for Guillotine) or L (for Luxury). You should also have the special items from the Blacksmith.
- Special mention goes to Arbiter of Joy, which counterattacks, and Arbiter of Calm which has a self-heal. By the time I fought them I was quite overpowered but something to watch out for in any case.
