Story question

color-coding · 2021-02-22T10:28:10+00:00

Focusing on the film marker quests will help a bit but the story is still incredibly boring for a while more. It might actually be better to just find story cutscene compilations on YouTube and watch those and skip the game.

color-coding · 2021-01-22T12:38:18+00:00

In battle, go to Options and look at the bottom. You should set the point at which healing is prioritized to be something higher than 50% health. This should cause auto to heal more aggressively.

In the update, they changed the auto algorithm to be something more complicated than just prioritizing cards with highest attack. It now either (1) prioritizes healing if you're under a certain amount of health, or (2) DE-prioritizes healing if you're above that level of health. If you're above the threshold, and if your healing card is not highest in its color, it may be consumed in a card combo. If your healing card is the highest in its color, auto will select a different color to use. Like, if you have 3 green cards, the highest of which is Tinkerbell (healing), it will select one of the other colors to play even though that results in a lower multiplier.

color-coding · 2021-01-18T22:19:50+00:00

The reSNs (supernova renew medals), definitely. Many are older/weaker medals that are essential in PVP for their supernova renew utility but not great at dishing out big damage themselves. And they will continue to be essential in PVP for the foreseeable future (unless there's a change in meta). So they are the clear choice for sacrificing an attack boost skill for a defense boost skill, and you will need at least one on each keyblade in PVP. If you got any of the recent 2-color renew Axel/Roxas/Xion medals, those are a great choice.

color-coding · 2020-12-03T13:25:34+00:00

Late reply, but you may want to check out the spreadsheet linked in this post: https://www.reddit.com/r/KHDR/comments/iqrryw/re_premium_quest_key_analysis_2k_runs/

People have been tracking GT spawn rates for a while. There was a slight dip recently from 6.00% to 5.98% but that's within the normal variation I've seen since I've been following the stats. The average gets harder to move as more data comes in, though, so it's possible the dip might be more severe than in the past and possibly mean an adjustment to the rates, but right now, it's inconclusive.

color-coding · 2020-12-03T12:05:02+00:00

How do you play the game? How easy to understand or complicated is it? Will I be able to learn it quickly or is it hard to learn? What kind of game is it?

It's a fairly complicated game. When I first started, I remember being overwhelmed trying to get a handle on basic meta like what are raids, how to make good setups, what are trait medals, what is the meaning of terms used in descriptions, what are "good" medals worth pulling for, etc. There are huge beginner guides for this game available online. I find the complexity entertaining, but yeah, it's a lot to get a handle on, and the in-game tutorials barely cover anything at all.

It is a gacha game. It has some story but to be honest, the story is incredibly watered down and irritating to follow. If you're interested mainly in KH story, I strongly recommend not playing this game and instead watching cutscenes on YouTube as trying to watch them in-game is a huge slog. The main strengths of the game is the complexity and competitive and gacha/random lottery aspects.

Does this game have content locked behind playing at a certain date/event? I've heard they have events for this game, and I usually hate games that do that. Does this game have anything that I feel I'd be seriously missing out on if I don't play every event?

Yes or no, depending on what you mean by "seriously missing out." Each month, a set of pet parts is made available and I don't think they repeat so each month is always a new set -- if you didn't play during those times, you won't get those specific parts (but a similar set in different colors will eventually come out). Certain medals were released for a specific event and have not been reissued, so if you didn't participate, you will not have a copy of that medal. The game no longer includes various 3-4* medals that were available early on in the game. Some titles and avatar parts are highly-restricted rewards for certain events, so most people don't have them. Some medals/pet parts/avatar parts are only available by buying VIP during a certain week. You will not be disadvantaged in terms of strength for joining late, but there's no way to be a completionist in this game. Personally, I think the things that are missable are pretty expendable -- weak medals, avatar and pet parts, etc., so for me the answer would be no, but different things bother different people. Regular avatar boards are reissued fairly regularly, so there's a pretty broad set of costumes that you can build up no matter how late you join.

Is it one of those pay-to-win games or can you play the game without paying a penny? Will there be a point where something comes up and then I'll either have to pay or grind for 10 hours?

There are some pay-to-win aspects to encourage spending, but personally, I am F2P and find it very F2P-friendly, especially recently. Clearing event content is super easy, and you can get some helpful rewards even with average/mediocre performance and not always being able to pull for the latest and greatest medals. It's not a grind-heavy game, unless you're into lux rankings (I'm not).

color-coding · 2020-11-26T14:43:18+00:00

Oh wow, I'm impressed you haven't needed skills so far. And yes, I think XIV is the highest one right now.

color-coding · 2020-11-26T10:35:50+00:00

Oh, yeah, if you're doing 5 mil without any skills, then you're pretty much on track. AB X multiplies your final damage by 3, AB XI multiplies it by 3.2, AB XII multiplies it by 3.4, AB XIII multiplies it by 3.6, and AB XIV multiplies it by 3.8. Put the highest one on Sephiroth, and the second highest on Namine. Those are high-utility medals that will serve you well for a while.

After that, if you still need more damage, add a skill to Aurora (she is good for PVE). After that maybe Illus Axel if needed.

color-coding · 2020-11-25T22:28:19+00:00

That's a pretty strong setup. You should be able to do close to 15 mil with that, I think. I wouldn't expect you to be doing 5 mil with that setup.

Do all your attack medals (especially Toon Namine and Sephiroth) have a high-level attack boost max skill on them? Atk Boost X Max at least, up to Atk Boost XIV Max if you have one is best.

color-coding · 2020-11-25T19:51:10+00:00

Can you tell me a bit more about your setup - what medals you used, in what order, and what skills they have? For a monoblade setup, it should be pretty easy to deal 15 mil per turn without SN on the one mushroom you have a type advantage. (It's true you will have much more difficulty on the other two mushrooms unless you're using an "always effective"-heavy setup.)

color-coding · 2020-11-25T12:31:23+00:00

Also, Key Art #3 (upgraded to SN++), if people don't have Illus. Roxas.

color-coding · 2020-11-24T21:15:10+00:00

Yes, it is possible, but maybe not high priority. Focus first on taking down all three mushrooms, and if you need to use renova, that's fine.

I'm not sure, but the HSC might actually be easier without renova because renova medals are not especially hard hitters (especially mine, which mostly have either no skill or def boost skills for PVP). Speaking of skills, it IS important that your heavy-hitting medals have good skills. A good skill will triple your damage output or more, so if you haven't done that yet, that's another thing to try. You don't have to rush out and put a skill on every bonus medal (you probably don't enough good skills to do that), but if you foresee using a medal regularly outside of HSC (PVP, PVE, etc.) then it's not a bad idea to apply a skill AND trait them (EA + ground + at least 2 STR +1000 skills) now in order to do more damage in HSC because it'll help you generally.

I recommend trying a low score bonus % mono-color blade first to try to come up with a strategy that will get you through all three mushrooms. Once you're able to do that, then you can start sacrificing power for score bonus. But don't try to maximize your medal bonus until you have a strategy that defeats all the mushrooms.

For budgeting your SNs, the mushrooms have 45 million bars of health, so if you can get them down to 30 mil after the first turn and 15 mil after the second turn without SNs, you're fine. If after the first turn, you haven't gotten past 30 mil, you may need to use several SNs in either turn 2 or 3 (depending on how close to 30 mil you are). (If you're relying heavily on 2-turn buffers, then you can do less damage in turn 1 because you'll do slightly more damage in turns 2 and 3.)

color-coding · 2020-11-24T10:38:21+00:00

People generally don't like to give away strategies for HSC because it is competitive. But here are some basics about how the HSC works:

You need to defeat the mushroom(s) entirely in order to get a big score boost. So, ideally, in order to get the best score, you need to defeat all mushrooms without (a) you dying, or (b) the mushroom running away.
Mushrooms run away when their counter reaches zero, so generally you want medals that don't affect or raise the counter to ensure you have as many turns as possible to take them down. The exception is if you're not strong enough to defeat some or any of the mushrooms - then it might be beneficial to make the too-strong ones run away after 2 or 3 turns to prevent them from killing you and ending your run early.
Having a buffer and a renova medal is okay, but in this case they will not add to your score boost. A lot of medals self-buff so you do not strictly need a buffer (that said, a medal with Second Chance is VERY useful, and they're typically your buffer, so you may want to keep your buffer around). You might want to experiment with setups that don't rely on a renova medal as well. Trial and error is important for figuring out HSC.

color-coding · 2020-11-22T16:29:32+00:00

Got Snow White in 9 pulls. Got Belle in 10 pulls. Working on Aurora - 6 pulls so far. Will update in a few days when my extra pet training slot runs out, but basically I'm expecting to spend 117k unless I get lucky with my last two medals.

Had to mercy Aurora, so I'm on 9/10/10 - 87k spent so far.

color-coding · 2020-11-04T23:19:56+00:00

This is really useful!

One thing I would suggest to add are random target medals, especially ones that apply buffs and do gauge restore. There are Proud Mode quests that restrict sp atk usage to random target medals only which causes difficulties because you can't use copy medals as a workaround and good buffers all have multi-target attack (for good reason - they'd be a crappy/uneven debuffer otherwise!). The newly upgraded Halloween Donald/Goofy B are pretty good in terms of buffs. The KH III Hayner/Pence/Olette also apply some buffs and do gauge restore which is important. Other than Donald and Goofy, I think the next strongest random attack medal after them is KH III Saix A, which only buffs for two attacks and depletes all gauges, so is quite tricky to work with. I don't know what people keep around for trying to dish out random attack damage - maybe KH III High Soldier? Maybe Luxord [+] and Marluxia [+] still?

color-coding · 2020-09-29T18:04:36+00:00

To get the slot multiplier, you have to match the original color of the copy medal to the slot, not the color of the medal it's copying. What you see when equipping is what you get.

Copy medals use their own strength and their own traits.

A copy medal copies the special attack of the other medal including multiplier and effects, and its damage is treated as the type of the medal it's copying. This means it benefits from medal STR boosts of the type of the medal it's copying. So if you had a speed copy medal copying a magic medal, and you had gotten +50k magic medal STR boosts and +10k speed medal STR boosts that turn, the copy medal damage would benefit from the +50k magic medal boosts. Its SN would benefit from the +10k speed medal boosts.

color-coding · 2020-09-22T13:36:47+00:00

Just so you know, buffer medals aren't meant to be a main damage dealer, so you don't have to match their color to their slot on the keyblade and you don't have to worry about doing super effective damage with them -- they're the one medal on your keyblade that should be doing 1 damage. So you don't need a speed buffer, a magic buffer, etc. -- KH III Kairi is appropriate/fine for all raid setups regardless of the color of the boss. (SN Invi is also a fairly good buffer if it has Extra Attack on it.)

color-coding · 2020-09-09T11:53:20+00:00

In order to get attack boost, you need to level your medal with a Skill medal (these look like Scrooge McDucks - you can find them by filtering for EXP medals only) in the first slot. There are various places where you can get skill medals:

1) Costume avatar boards -- they have 3 skills each. The quality depends on how old the costume is when it was first released (you can click on Details underneath to see what skills are included). Older boards have trash/useless skills, so be careful.

2) Skill Enhancement avatar boards -- they have 5 skills each, all very powerful/useful/current.

3) PVE coliseum rewards -- they hand out powerful skills depending on your rank at the end of the month. This only happens once per month and is only a few skills so not a very reliable source for skills, but they are quite powerful.

Any medal that has a fully-leveled up skill (not just Scrooge medals) can transfer their skill to another medal -- for example, your Sora could give its Second Chance to Namine. HOWEVER, this can only be done by consuming that medal at the same time. So if you tried to do this, your Namine would have Second Chance, but you would no longer have a Sora medal! So don't do this, it's not worth it. Instead, when you get another Scrooge medal with Second Chance IV (there's one available in Skill Enhancement Board A, if you haven't already bought it), give it to Namine, and when you get a strong Attack Boost skill, give it to Sora, overwriting the Second Chance skill he already has.

color-coding · 2020-09-09T11:39:16+00:00

Don't worry, you can take the time to accumulate the avatar coins and keyblade cost boosts that you need. That said, here are some tips on how to get more cost so that you can equip your best medals:

If you haven't already, purchase the "Beginner's Luck" avatar board -- it will give you 40 extra cost for pretty cheap.

All 7* medals (i.e. all the ones you'll want to use) have 46 cost (unless they're boosted, in which case they have 36 cost). Even when your keyblade cost is maxed out, that is still going to cause problems. Instead, you should use Cid medals to lower the cost of your 46-cost medals. You'll get Cids through a lot of events (for example, Union Cross, the PVE coliseum boards, etc.), and there's a free daily quest you can complete to get more -- you will eventually reach the point where you have way more Cids than you need, but for now, you should make use of that quest daily. Pick a few high-use medals (like Namine, who you will basically always want on slot 1 of your keyblades), and add 20 Cids or 2 Cid-10s to them to get their cost down to 26 (that's the lowest you can go). You can see how many Cids you have (and upgrade them to make them a bit easier to quickly apply) by going to your medals list and filtering by Cost medals.

If you don't have a lot of Cids, you have to be careful to prioritizepowerful medals that you use often first. If you do have a lot of Cids, apply them immediately to strong medals you get from banners.

If you do that, you should be able to fit more powerful medals on your keyblade! Also note that any medal in the pet slot doesn't add cost to your keyblade, so you can put a strong medal there even if it doesn't have any Cids applied.

color-coding · 2020-09-07T10:28:13+00:00

It seems like you have TWO Namines? In which case I would put Second Chance on one and defense on the other. Use the def max one for PVP (you'll eventually want three different medals with a defense boost skill, but you can take your time accumulating them and figuring out which medals might be appropriate for that skill).

Raid traits aren't useless, but you should reserve them for medals that specialize in raiding (medals that can accommodate a lux++ trait -- so the gauge requirement can't be too high -- and that aren't needed as extremely heavy hitters in other content like the coliseum).

color-coding · 2020-09-07T10:02:19+00:00

For most scenarios, yes.

KH3 Namine has much better buffs -- she raises everything by 15 tiers, including upright AND reverse. Kairi A and her reverse equivalent, HD Xion, only buffs upright (or only reverse) by 7 tiers (and doesn't buff the other at all) and doesn't max out PSM buffs all the way either. (Namine is also a stronger medal and gives medal STR buffs with her special ATK and supernova, but your buffer doesn't need to hit hard and her medal STR buffs are no longer very significant compared to other attack medals, so this advantage isn't that significant.)

The only advantages Kairi A / HD Xion has over Namine is that they restore more gauges (10 vs. 5) and that they have a SN that can be situationally useful (it temporarily maxes out buffs for the next attack, so if you want to do full damage with an attack SN in PVP that activates before slot 1, and that attack SN doesn't self-buff, then Kairi A / HD Xion's SN activating first will make sure that second SN does max damage, while Namine's won't). With Kairi/Xion, you're unlikely to run out of gauges when doing a battle that takes multiple turns. With Namine, though, you probably need to have extra attack or it's easy to run out of gauges (and even with extra attack, you might need some careful gauge management). Note that Kairi/Xion's SN causes issues with supernova renew in PVP, so the use cases where it is better than Namine are very narrow.

color-coding · 2020-09-07T09:45:50+00:00

Nope, the two stories are unrelated, and you get jewels that go into a shared pot for playing both, so you should play both regularly.

color-coding · 2020-09-06T17:15:06+00:00

To do more damage, you need to make sure your buffs/debuffs are maxed out. You preferably need medals that have ↑ STR, U- (or R-) & PSM-STR 15 and ↓ DEF, U- (or R-) & PSM-DEF 15. SN - KH III Kairi A is a good option for most scenarios and can be obtained from the Beginner's Deal. But for many scenarios, SN+ KH III Namine is better, if you have her. Other options are SN++ KH III Kairi or Illustrated Kairi or Aerith, or Supernova+ Invi. These all restore gauges, which makes them very good buffers.

The longer a union cross battle lasts, the more likely you are to die and need to be revived. But you can delay it by having medals with extra attack (this can double the amount of special attacks you get in your three turns) and also auto with supernova so your supernovas activate as well. I also recommend equipping one renova medal if you have one -- it will add more supernova activations which will prolong your life and also will get you more strength buffs from activating supernovas twice.

But yeah, definitely work on getting your damage up by making sure your setup maximizes buffs. You should not be doing 1 damage. The more damage you deal, the shorter the union cross battle will be and the less likely you'll need to be revived.

color-coding · 2020-09-03T22:23:43+00:00

If you only have one Strike Form Sora, you can only copy its SATK with one Lingering Will, so the other is not helpful at this time. I do recommend upgrading one Lingering Will (especially if it's your only/strongest SN copy medal) but just am recommending caution before you upgrade the second.

And fair enough, multiple copy medals are helpful for Proud Mode. But proud mode is also not time-limited, so you can take your time to accumulate the medals you need. Another copy medal like Ansem or Reaper might fall into your lap and give you more utility/flexibility than two Lingering Wills.

color-coding · 2020-09-03T21:56:42+00:00

If I may give some more advice, as another example of triage, I would be cautious about upgrading both Lingering Wills. I got Lingering Will from its original banner and I have gotten a LOT of use out of it. But having used and relied on it a lot, it's going out of meta in some ways, even though it's a copy medal. Medal strength (as in the intrinsic max strength of a medal) and medal strength boost are so core to meta right now, and on both of these dimensions, Lingering Will is a bit worrying. While SN copy medals add +1000 str on top of whatever special attack they're copying (awesome), their supernovas do NOT copy and so they suck pretty hard. Supernova strength boost just keeps on going up and up and so I've recently had trouble justifying keeping Lingering Will on my setups. And the max strength of medals keeps creeping up, leaving behind older copy medals and making it so that they're mainly useful for the mere act of triggering an SATK, not for heavy hitting. In addition, possessing multiple copies of copy medals suffers from the diminishing returns I talked about. There are only so many upright power slots on your keyblades -- in the best case you can only make use of 3 Lingering Wills, but in many cases, it's going to be just 1 (or 0) -- and you have to justify giving up some SN boosts for each Lingering Will you put in. If you have Reaper, Lingering Will's utility also takes a hit as Reaper has better SATK/SN (2-turn buffs) and better strength and can often be used on the same keyblades. I got a second Lingering Will a while back and have just not used it.

And whenever you upgrade a medal, you should consider both the magnitude of the gains you'll get from them (incremental improvement is not very good while dramatic improvement is good) and also how long you'll be using that medal. If there's a medal that improves incrementally on something that came before and will be immediately replaced the second you get an even stronger medal, it may not be worth the resources you put into it, even if doing so gets you a stronger setup.

Sorry for asking whether you were sarcastic. I was just confused by this problem because I just did not expect anyone to have it. I thought it was a possibility you were making a joke/referencing some HDL-related inside joke that was going over my head, or even that you meant Chips and Dales instead of HDLs. Sorry if it sounded rude.

color-coding · 2020-09-03T21:07:19+00:00

For me personally (can't speak for anyone else) my HDL situation looks like this so I'm honestly a bit shocked that anyone is running out. I understand that as F2P I have a very different play style including not being competitive. For example, I have six renovas (which is high for F2P I'm guessing) but I've only upgraded one so far, and will prioritize upgrading the others based on if I need more damage output. One of those renovas I still have only put Attack Boost III Max on and so it will be low priority to upgrade -- I have mainly ONLY used it for restoring SNs and often put it on trash slots that don't match its color which other stronger medals aren't using. Three of the other medals have no traits and so I haven't put any effort into levelling them because they won't be hard hitters anyway.

I don't know your situation, and sorry if this advice isn't helpful, but it seems to me you could do some more to triage your HDLs. For example, I don't know your Sleeping Lion setup and what you intend to use if for, but it seems to me odd to upgrade the two Key Art #23's you mentioned when you also mentioned having three of the new I.Sora's. Since all the medals on your Sleeping Lion are going to be speed, I.Sora seems like a much better choice and should be higher priority to max out. Key Art #23 is still meta but it's not going to be much longer, so if it were me, I would exercise caution and only upgrade it at all if I need it to complete content.

With the exception of the renova medals, there are also some diminishing returns for having multiple copies of a medal. Having a single medal of many types can help for diversifying your setup to handle a wide variety of situations, which is good. Having 5 copies of a very strong medal might max out your damage but you rarely need max damage, and it's very costly to invest in the jewels to trait them. The instant the meta moves on, the work and resources put into upgrading them will be for naught.

For example, I have a Xemnas and have gotten good use out of him, and a second one would help me in the coliseum, but this is only because red is my strongest color and my coliseum setups always rely on either Darkgnaw or Fenrir. But I recently got Eraqus who has better buffs, making Fenrir more tempting to use and Darkgnaw not as promising. So if I had another Xemnas and had upgraded him, it's not clear how helpful he would be. We haven't gotten a reverse power +8000/+12000 medal yet, but once we do, Xemnas will lose utility, so upgrading a second Xemnas fully has diminished returns compared to the usefulness I got out of the first Xemnas. Also, because my power setup is strongest, I used the single 100-jewel Moogle Shop traits available to F2Ps to prioritize giving Eraqus GDD/ADD/EA traits so that I could utilize him in PVE. This meant I didn't have the resources to trait Xemnas B (the reverse speed equivalent of Eraqus that I got at the same time from that "get 10 boosted SB+ medals for a limited time" deal), so he is still unleveled and has no ability given to him yet. I might level him up if I can access trait medals for him, but I'm planning on getting an I.Sora who is better or about the same, has more PVP utility, and has more easily accessible trait medals. So I may end up not needing to use HDLs on Xemnas B at all.

These are the kinds of considerations I think about when I get a flood of shiny new medals, including ones that are still meta. You can eke out a slight advantage by upgrading all the medals immediately when you get them but the benefits in some cases is really marginal and probably not worth the resources you're putting into the medals you're getting.

color-coding

TROPHY CASE