Friday, August 23, 2013

Scarlet Blade (Part Two)

Stats, Level Ups and Skills

Scarlet Blade - Character Stats
Upon opening up your character's stats window (by pressing "C"), you should ought to see something like that shown above, with an equipment panel on the left and your stats panel on the right.

And since we all know what stats are and what they do for a character, I'll just skip with the formalities and proceed to the explanations.
  • HP
    Basically, this is the health of your character. If it ever reaches zero, your character will immediately die and have to wait before you can respawn at the closest revival (or on the spot if you have some cash shop revival item). And also, do note that there is an EXP penalty whereby you will lose 0.5% experience if you die in the hands of a monster (starts at levels 27 and above).
  • CP
    CP is a special type of energy that is consumed whenever you go into your Mech Mode or use your cyberskin armor. If it becomes zero, you will immediately exit your Mech Mode or have your cyberskin armor deactivated.
  • SP
    Kind of like your Mana in fantasy style MMOs, this form of energy is specifically used by the skills that your character has. Upon depleting this energy, you will only be able to use your character's basic auto-attack and nothing else.
  • ATK
    Needless to say, this is your character's physical attack stat. This stat determines how much more physical damage your regular and skill-based attacks will deal (on top of what it already does).
  • ACC
    ACC represents your character's physical accuracy stat. This stat determines how likely it is for your physical damage attacks to land on your target.
  • DEF
    DEF is your character's physical defense stat. It reduces the amount of physical damage inflicted upon your character (by a successful attack) on a point by point basis. (Every 100 points of DEF negates 100 points of physical damage.)
  • VOID
    VOID or Avoidance, is a stat that reduces incoming physical damage by percentages. It only kicks in after the DEF calculation. (Every 100 points of VOID reduces 1% of physical damage.)
  • EVA
    Also known as Evasion, this stat increases the chance that your character will completely evade the physical damage part of an attack. (Every 100 points of EVA increases your chance by 1%.)
  • Crit. Rate
    This stat increases the chance that an attack performed by your character will deal extra damage (in other words, score a critical hit). (Every 100 points of Crit. Rate increases your chance by 1%.)
  • Crit-ATK
    This stat increases the amount of damage done by your character's critical hits. You can basically think of it as your Critical Damage Multiplier. (Every 100 points of Crit-ATK increases your critical damage by 1%.)
  • Crit-VOID
    This stat reduces the amount of damage your character takes from critical hits. (Every 100 points of Crit-VOID should possibly reduce the critical damage by 1%.)
  • Crit-EVA
    This stat reduces the chances of an enemy scoring a critical hit on your character. (Every 100 points of Crit-EVA should possibly reduce the chance by 1%.)
  • Move SPD
    This stat determines how fast your character moves.
  • Ch-ATK
    Know as Chakra Attack, this stat actually introduces a special type of damage (Chakra Damage) to all of your regular and skill-based attacks (increases...if they already have them). Do note that this form of damage bypasses most of the stats affecting physical damage calculations so you can think of it as something like "magic" damage in regular MMO terms.
  • Ch-ACC
    Just like its counterpart, this stat determines how likely it is for the chakra damage component of your attack to land on its target.
  • Ch-EVA
    Technically, Ch-EVA works exactly like the regular EVA, except that it increases the chance that your character will completely evade the chakra damage part of an attack as well as any potential debuffs that it may carry. (Every 100 points of Ch-EVA increases that chance by 1%.)
  • Chakra Resistances
    From what I've heard, these work to reduce the amount of chakra damage that your character takes. However, since chakra damage comes in five different forms (to be explained later), your ability to reduce them would depend upon your individual chakra resistances. (Every 100 points should reduce the corresponding form of chakra damage by 1%.)
  • PVP Attributes
    As far as I know, all of these stats (PvP ATK, PvP DEF, PvP VOID) would act like "bonuses" that gets added onto your regular stats' calculations (ATK, DEF, VOID). However, they would only be counted while your in the Battlegrounds and Neutral Zones and only when against another player. As for PvP SPEC-ATK, I'm guessing that it means PVP Special Attack, but I can't really tell what gets affected by this stat...it may be your chakra attacks or it may be your ultimate skill.



Scarlet Blade - Level UpScarlet Blade - Explorer Trinket
And as far as leveling up is concerned, there are no bonus stat points for you to gain and use in customizing your character's stat build. What you do get when you level up is a tiny automatic increase in some of the more regular stats like ATK, DEF, Max HP and Max SP, while the more exotic ones (like VOID, Crit. Rate and Chakra Resistances) would have to be increased via other methods (like through skills, buffs, weapons and equips).
Scarlet Blade - Bonus Skill Point
Finally for the skills part, apart from the obvious gaining of 1 skill point per level up, you may also at times receive "bonus" skill points as a reward for completing certain quests as well as clearing puzzles.
Scarlet Blade - Active SkillsScarlet Blade - Passive Skills
These skill points are then used to let you learn new skills in your character's skill tree or improve upon existing ones. However, do note that due to the scarcity in the number of skill points, you may have to be very selective in what sort of skills you would wish to pick up and possibly max. But even then, they are all limited to only skills found in your Active and Passive tabs.
Scarlet Blade - Special SkillsScarlet Blade - Social Skills
For skills found under the Special and Social tabs, they can be thought of as something separate and entirely different, since they are mostly improved via other means.
Scarlet Blade - Sit Hyperchip L2
Like for example, the "skill" to sit, which can only be improved by learning from hyperchips found.

Chakra Attacks
As mentioned earlier, chakra damage comes in five different forms (Gravity, Plasma, Voltage, Atomic and Particle), with each having their own unique effects.

FormEffect
GravityInduces knock-out (stuns).
PlasmaDeals continuous damage over time.
VoltageDisables the use of skills.
AtomicReduces movement speed and can possibly result in immobilization.
ParticleDeals very high chakra damage, much higher than any other forms.

And the way they work is such that the form in which a chakra attack comes out as actually depends upon the skill that is used to make that attack.
Scarlet Blade - Atomic BulletScarlet Blade - Plasma Bullet
For example, the screenshots above shows two skills which my character has, "Atomic Bullet" and "Plasma Bullet". When I used "Atomic Bullet" on a monster, my chakra attack actually comes out in the "Atomic" form and the damage dealt is reflected by a cyan digit. When I used "Plasma Bullet" on that same monster, my chakra attack changes and comes out in the "Plasma" form instead...with the corresponding damage dealt shown in orange.
Scarlet Blade - Demolition
Next, so long as your Ch-ATK in your character's stats window is not zero, then regardless of whether your using a skill which has no Ch-ATK or even one that has some but shows no indication of its chakra form, there will be some form of chakra damage associated with that attack.

However, you will have to note that even though the damage may show up as a purple digit on your screen, it does not seem to have the knock-out effect that comes with a "Gravity" chakra attack and should not be mistaken as one.
Scarlet Blade - Physical Attack MissScarlet Blade - Chakra Attack Resist
Finally, as a word of advice, I would rather recommend that you find a way to increase your character's Ch-ATK stat (if possible) or else just skill up on some of your skills which has both a decent ATK and Ch-ATK.

This is because, apparently, the game system seems to treat both the physical component and the chakra component of an attack as two separate entities altogether...so much so that even if the physical part of an attack misses, you can still count on the chakra part to deal some damage and vice versa.

Well...you can kind of think of it as a fail-safe, just in case you meet some tough nut with insane stats warding against either physical damage or chakra damage.

Previous: Scarlet Blade (Part One)Next: Scarlet Blade (Part Three)