Advanced Combat Mechanics

This guide goes over mechanics that are mentioned in our Reviews, but not elaborated on in detail to fully iterate what an ID or team of IDs can do with their utility and how they fit into teams and/or adopt a certain play style. It’ll also mention all IDs and teams tied to that specific mechanic. This guide also aims to explain certain gameplay mechanics that aren’t explained enough in-game.

Related IDs: Dieci Rodion, Dieci Hong Lu, Dieci Yi Sang, and Dieci Meursault

Discarding is relatively straightforward in what it does. The effect randomly deletes skills that are selectable during the Chaining phase from the Dashboard, allowing you to cycle through skills faster. However, for the Dieci Association of IDs, they gain or lose Insight depending on the rank of the last skill you’ve discarded, for example, Discarding an S3 sets your Insight to 3, in which other skills that are dependent on your value of Insight will be activated.

Insight Locking is a technique that can be used by discarding a certain skill, and then using a defense skill so that you won’t discard anything else, effectively locking your Insight to a certain value. Dieci Hong Lu is the most well known case of Insight Locking as both his damage and Clashes skyrocket if his Insight is at a value of 3. Other Dieci IDs can utilize Insight Locking as well, Dieci Yi Sang for example being able to inflict more sinking on his S2 if he is kept at a higher Insight value. However, more often than not it’s not really worth using this technique with IDs such as Dieci Yi Sang, Rodion, and Meursault as they don’t really benefit from Insight Locking as much as Hong Lu.

Related IDs: Blade Lineage Meursault, Blade Lineage Yi Sang, Blade Lineage Faust, Blade Lineage Sinclair, Blade Lineage Outis, Blade Lineage Don

Swordplay of the Homeland is relatively straightforward and is exclusive to the Blade Lineage faction of IDs. Blade Lineage Meursault provides this status with his Passive of the same name which makes him pretty much mandatory for a Blade Lineage team to actually be usable, because without this status, they all severely lack in multiple different areas, whether it be Poise generation or just damage.

Starting out with the Passive, whenever he gains Poise, whether it be Potency or Count, he will give +1 Poise Potency and Count to 2 other Blade Lineage allies with no or the least Poise, and if you have the full team, he’ll give 2 Poise Potency and Count instead. He will always also apply the Swordplay of the Homeland buff to all other Blade Lineage allies.

The buff, Swordplay of the Homeland, buffs the unit’s S1 and S2 if they have 5+ Poise by giving them Coin Power, the amount of which is 3 divided by the number of Coins, which can always be a minimum of 1, and deals +(30/# of Coins) damage on a Critical Hit. At 7+ Poise it also gives the unit’s S3 +(30/# of Coins)% more damage and +(50/# of Coins)% on Critical Hit .

This makes your game plan with the team simple: Activate Blade Lineage Meursault’s Passive as often as possible for the other Blade Lineage allies. This is easily done by getting 3 Pride Resonance for his Passive to activate.

Swordplay of the Homeland also has 2 more variations as a buff, Sword of the Homeland - Rending and Sword of the Homeland - Penetrating, both of which also provided by Blade Lineage Meursault.

Sword of the Homeland - Rending would give its user Final Power by the effect’s count for their Skill 1 and Sword of the Homeland Mending would do the same but for the user’s Skill 2.

Related IDs: Multicrack Faust, Multicrack Heathcliff, W Corp Outis

Charge Potency is an attribute that only certain IDs can obtain if they have a Passive for it. Charge Potency does something different depending on which ID has it, and is mainly used as a certain type of permanent Counter which allows IDs who can obtain it to scale further in longer fights, and isn’t 100% tied down to the burst nature of Charge Count IDs like W Ryoshu and W Don.

Related IDs and EGO: Solemn Lament Gregor (EGO), Lobotomy EGO: Solemn Lament Yi Sang

Butterfly is split into two different keywords, “The Living” and “The Departed.” Its Potency is called The Living, and its Count is called The Departed.

Whenever you attack an enemy with Butterfly, you heal “The Living” divided by 4 SP, so if the enemy would have 8 of “The Living”, you would heal 2 SP on hit. The enemy will also take Gloom damage if their SP is less than 0, the number of which is determined by the amount of Sinking Potency the enemy has, divided by 5, and then multiplied by the number of The Departed you have. For example, if you had 10 Sinking Potency on the enemy, and 10 “The Departed” on the enemy, you’ll be doing 20 Gloom Damage to the enemy. The damage dealt from this status is capped at 30 per hit, and would always deal half damage to targets without SP.

Finally, at the end of the turn, "The Departed" is set to 0, and "The Living" is converted to Sinking Potency, which is then converted to The Departed.

Butterfly is a great source of extra Gloom Damage as well as Sinking Potency, thanks to it’s conversion effect from "The Living". Combined with fact that it can also provide SP healing, it makes Butterfly a great alternative for damaging enemies with Sinking.

Related IDs: Devyat Association Rodion

Strategic R&R Mode is a special condition that’s activated upon certain circumstances. The unit who activates it recovers from Stagger and Retreats from the Encounter at the end of the turn, which does not count as a death.

This mode has a bunch of utility behind it, in Chain Battles, the unit will give their skill slots to a substituted unit and move to the very last place in the Backup units’ Deployment order, although if there’s no other Backup Units remaining to swap places with, they will escape from the Encounter entirely. In normal battles, they will just escape from the encounter entirely. Although, if the unit who activates Strategic R&R Mode escapes from the encounter entirely, they will give their skill slot to the #1 Selected Identity, resulting in them having 2 skill slots which enables that unit to fight with double the efficiency.

Related IDs: Zwei Ishmael, Zwei Sinclair, Wild Hunt Heathcliff

Clashable Defense Skills are Defense Skills that can be clashed with attacks. As of writing there are only two types of Clashable Defenses, those being Counter and Guard.

Clashable Guard Skills (also called Power Guard) raise a target’s Stagger Threshold by the user’s final Clash Power when it wins a clash. When it loses a clash, the attacker’s final skill power will be reduced by the user’s Final Power. It also would not gain Final Power from Resonance and the Level difference between the Attack Skill. To explain this further, because this Defense Skill is a guard, it’llgain 1 Clash Power and 1 Final Power for every 3 Defense Level above the opponent’s and it scales the more Defense Up Level you have on the unit.

Clashable Counters does not have any unique ability similar to Clashable Guards. They only act as an additional skill to the kit they’re on, and in some cases, a really good alternative to using an ID’s S1. Clashable Counters also scale only with Offense Level.

Related IDs: Zwei Ishmael, Zwei Sinclair

Unbreakable Coins do not break upon losing a clash. After you’ve lost a clash and the enemy attacks you, the coin will still activate with it’s Coin Power fixed to 1 and can be really useful in activating that coin’s effects even after you lose a clash.