Scarlet Blade (Part Three)

Mechs and Cyberskins
Mechs and Cyberskins, in my opinion, kind of serves like the iconic feature of playing Scarlet Blade.

With the Mech, it is sort of like a "burst" mode for your character. It gives you a temporary boost of immense strength and power to get you out of hairy situations fast.

The Cyberskin on the other hand, is more like a mellowed version of the Mech. It allows you to "spread" all of that power over a longer, more sustained period rather than expending it all in one shot. However, this longer period of usage also comes at the cost of a reduction in power of course.

How It Works
Upon reaching the levels of 17 and 21, you will get two separate quests which will then reward you with the Mech (of your job class) and Cyberskin (of your chosen faction) once you've completed them.

After obtaining the Mech or Cyberskin, the first thing you would have to do is open up your inventory and pull their itemized forms into the respective slots found on the bottom right corner's hotkey bar.

The reason for doing it this way is to "arm" (equip) them for future use without actually triggering the transformation processes (which would have happened if you had right clicked on them). But anyway, after equipping them, they can then be easily accessed via the "Z" (for Mech Mode) and "X" (for Cyberskin Mode) keys on your keyboard. Do note that the keys work like a toggle so you can actually activate, switch between or deactivate the modes at will (albeit with a 10 second cooldown in between the changes).

Apart from that, there are a couple of major differences between the Mech and Cyberskin Modes too...

• Skills
  Skills-wise, you will need to know that the skills in which your character has access to will change depending on which mode they assume. In Cyberskin Mode, your character would primarily rely upon the power bonus of the Cyberskin while still using your character's original set of skills learnt for attacking.
  
  However, in Mech Mode, this set of skills will be switched out with an alternative, more powerful set that is found built into the Mech that you pilot (you can find this set of skills under the "Special" tab of your Skills window). Additionally, since the Mech that your bestowed with is different for each of the six job classes, this built-in set of skills would naturally be different as well.
  
• Power Bonus
  The following shows the passive bonuses gained when in Mech Mode and Cyberskin Mode (at least for my job class and chosen faction). And since the differences in power bonus is quite clear-cut, I will just leave you with that.
  

  Mech	Cyberskin
  Move SPD: +15 PvP ATK: +5% PvP VOID: +200 Min ATK: +10% Max ATK: +10% Max HP: +500 Max SP: +100	Move SPD: +3 PvP ATK: +3% PvP VOID: +300 Max HP: +5%

• Location Restriction
  As far as I can tell, your character is free to switch into the Mech Mode at any location throughout the whole of the in-game world. However, for the Cyberskin Mode, you may only activate it at certain locations like the battlefield arenas (Turnpike, Janus, etc) or Neutral Zone map areas (Viledon).
  

CP Consumption
As mentioned in one of my earlier articles, the core basis of using the Mech and Cyberskin Modes lies squarely upon a unique type of energy resource called "CP".

The way it works is such that, so long as your in one of the two modes, you will be putting a constant drain upon your CP energy pool such that it will continuously decrease until it becomes zero.

As to how fast your CP gets drained? That would actually depend on which mode your in as well as what your doing whilst in that mode. But the rough idea is that each of the modes would have two CP consumption values (Standing and Combat) and you would be drained at the rate of the "Standing" value if your not engaged in a fight. If you are in a battle, then you would be drained at the rate of the "Combat" value instead (which is typically higher than the "Standing" rate).

Once your CP energy pool is depleted, you will automatically exit from the modes and can no longer activate them. That is until you recover some CP, by either waiting for it to regenerate (at a crawling speed of 3 CP per tick) or by drinking a special CP recovery potion.

Combat

Combat in Scarlet Blade is a pretty straightforward affair. All you would basically need to do is to pick a target and then spam all of your skills at it until it drops...or you for that matter if you've picked a wrong target.

Your choice of a target...how many of it you can take at a time...all of it is highly dependent upon how much HP you have versus your target's, how fast you can finish it off and how much damage you can take from it before you die. The sum of all these factors would constitute whether its a right or wrong target choice for your character.

Why not pot, you would ask? This is mostly not quite possible due to the way HP potions work in the game.

In Scarlet Blade, the HP potions do not instantly recover X amount of HP (at least not the common ones you buy off NPCs or loot from mobs) and neither do they recover your HP bit by bit over time. Instead, what they do is increase your own natural recovery rate while in and out of a battle (and the same thing applies for SP potions as well).

Therefore, by the time you've determined that you "need" to pot, it might already be too late. And the next thing you know is you've hit the ground, dead, and have just wasted the potion.

So, in my opinion, the best times to use these potions is actually to either use them at the start of the battle and let it heal you partially as you take on damage...or to take them immediately after you've finished a battle and is low on HP. But if that's the case, then you might as well skip the whole potting thingy and just sit down, making use of the increased recovery rate to regenerate instead.

Previous: Scarlet Blade (Part Two)

Next: Scarlet Blade (Part Four)

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