Scarlet Blade (Part Five)

Side Features
Well...when I say side features, I'm more or less referring to stuff that are good to know/have, but aren't necessarily game changing in nature. And mainly in Scarlet Blade, there are (loosely) three such features, namely, Pets, Cards and Puzzles.

Pets

This cute robotic pet that you see above is the default one that comes as a reward from completing one of the main quest that you get at around level 10 or 11. And it will most likely be the only one that you would have...unless you are willing to part with some money to buy one of the more special ones from the cash item mall.

Looks aside, I can see no visible difference (from their item descriptions) between the item mall pets and this default one that we get, so at best I can only guess that the amount of "bonus" that they provide would be their only difference.

But anyway, if you were to ask me, I would rather advise that you not spend such money to get them just for this tiny "bonus" advantage...as that money would be more well-spent on getting the proper datachips instead. However, if your into vanity stuff, then that is a totally different story...

So...what are these datachips that I have just mentioned?

Well basically, you can think of them as something like "program chips" that you insert into your pet so that it will learn new "tricks" or provide new extra "bonuses". However, these datachips appear to be only available at the cash item mall and cannot be traded (so there's no other ways to obtain them).

And while we're on this topic of datachips...perhaps you might be interested to know that there exists this "Pet Datachip Synthesis Technician" which seems to be able to help "upgrade" or improve the level of the datachips, from say L1 to L2 (at the very least).

However, upon inspecting the "Synth Manual" for a list of possible "upgrades", there seems to be only just one. Furthermore, from the looks of it, the key ingredient in performing this particular upgrade cannot be found anywhere in the Item Mall (the "AP Items" tag in its description hints of it being a cash shop item)...so I suspect that this is still a work-in-progress feature, to be implemented at a later stage. So do take note of that.

Next, pressing "Y" would bring up the Pet Statistics Window. It is from this window that you may interact with your existing pets (summoning, renaming, feeding, upgrading, swapping of datachips, etc).

Essentially, the more important things to note here are as follows...

• Fullness & EXP
  The fullness and EXP bars work in such a way that whenever you keep your pet summoned, the fullness of your pet would start to drop (at a rate of -4% per 5 minutes, or so I've heard) while at the same time, it would also gain EXP (at roughly +10 EXP per 2 minutes in most places, but much higher in Delilah Nightclub, VIP Lounge or if you use some Item Mall EXP Boost).
  
• Replenishing Fullness
  The most common way of replenishing a pet's fullness bar is to feed it with something called a "Pet Energy Drink" (just slot it into the empty box above the "Feed" button and click "Feed" to consume one of it). These drinks can often be acquired as loot from a monster, reward for completion of particular quests, prize from opening certain replicubes or even bought off the silver medal vending machine (using rank points).
  
  However, these drinks will only replenish a small portion of the pet's fullness (like 5% to 10%), so if you ever run out of them, your best option may be to unsummon the pet to let it rest and recover its fullness naturally (albeit at a snail's pace). Or...spend some money to buy "Pet Hunger Hacks" (prevents your pet from getting hungry for 12 hours) from the Item Mall.
  
• Level Up
  Whenever your pet's EXP bar is filled, it will automatically level up and gain one skill point. These skill points can be spent on improving any one of the passive skills that the pet may have...for example, skills which increases your character's Max HP or Max SP.
  
  Apart from that, you might also wish to note that once every 5 levels, you will need to "manually" upgrade the pet via clicking on the "Upgrade" button (and spending some in-game currency) found in the Pet Statistics Window.
  
  If you do not perform this upgrade, your pet will no longer be able to gain EXP and level up any further. But once you do, the pet will gain one additional datachip slot, so I reckon there's no reason for you not to.
  
  Additionally, once every 10 levels (two upgrades), the appearance of your pet will change, as far as I've heard, so there's no way you would want to miss out on that, now would you?
  
• Bonuses from Pet
  As far as I know or can tell, these bonuses that you get from your summoned pet (the base stats, the datachips and/or the passive skills), all of them would only apply if and when you have that pet out. Once you no longer have it summoned, you will lose all of those bonuses...that is until it is summoned again.
  

Cards
Rather than calling it a "mini-game", as stated by the in-game description, I would rather you see it as something more of an item collection quest/task.

Essentially, all you are doing for this is to collect a set of 4 of the same type of cards (you get these cards as loot off random monsters you kill), press "B" to access the Cards Menu and then trade it into a corresponding replicube.

Once you've obtained the replicube, then that's when the actual "gambling" starts in my opinion. Why? This is because, each replicube functions like a box or container that is loaded with its own list of goodies to loot and your job is to open it (just right click on it to open) and see what you get. And that's all there is to it, nothing more, nothing less...

Puzzles
Effectively, puzzles in Scarlet Blade aren't really those types that you think will need you to burn away some of your brain cells to solve. They're actually nothing more than an "eye candy" feature to be honest.

All you are needed to do is just to level up progressively and then once in a while, press "L" to access the Puzzle Window to clear away some of these so-called "puzzle blocks" that are being put in place, in front of some "visually appealing" images.

Upon gaining sufficient levels to clear the whole puzzle image, you may then click on the "Reward" button (at the bottom right) to claim your reward for clearing it...which mostly consists of some experience points and perhaps an additional skill point for your character.

And yeah, that's about it I guess...so I don't really know why they are naming it as "Puzzles" when in fact they're more like "Leveling Up Motivators". What's more, from what I've heard apparently, each of the different job classes seem to have their own unique high level puzzle images so perhaps they can also call it as "Try another Job Class Suggestinator"? Just joking...

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Next: Scarlet Blade (Part Six)

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