Helpful Tips

This page is a list of information about game mechanics that could be difficult to remember as Paradox is rife with them.

Regarding Attack Types

 * Physical Types - Can be dodged, can be countered, can be reflected. Most non holy/dark/magic attacks are these.
 * Magical Types - Can be dodged, but most spells have a base hit chance of 100%, can be evaded ("The attack had no effect!"), can be reflected.
 * Auto-Hit - Can be dodged, altough only extremely late in the game. Physical Type Auto-Hits (Makina, Empty Sky, Non Holy/Dark attacks) can be nullified. Elemental Type Auto-Hits (no Physical type, aka Breath skills, Nature Spells, Die for Me!) can only be nullified/absorbed if you are completely immune to all elemental types in the attack. In the same way, Auto-Hits can only be reflected if you completely reflect all elements in the attack.
 * Chaos Element - Mostly only in the LoC (Nuclear and Page of the End have a Chaos Element, Nuclear and Demise respectively). Bypasses any elemental absorbs/reflects/nulls. Still affected by the type of attack it is on.
 * Untyped - Recently added with 2.40, this type is affiliated with psychic attacks and ignore any type of defense.
 * Special - Unofficial and barely used, this is a type affiliated with self-destruction attacks. They do not work against bosses.
 * Rape - Not an official attack type, but attacks with these tags ignore any defense a character has. They're mainly used against bound male characters.

List of Chaos Elements

 * Physical: Carnage
 * Pleasure: Nightmare
 * Fire: Nuclear
 * Ice: Quantum
 * Lightning: Ion
 * Wind: Hadron
 * Earth: Terra
 * Water: Nano
 * Holy: Eternal
 * Dark: Demise
 * Bio : ?
 * Sonic: ?

Regarding Weapons and Skills

 * If the skill has a ^ or an or (e.g. Att or Dex for Ninjutsu) in the calculations, its taking the highest of the stats listed. This applies to traits that replace one stat with another as well.
 * Likewise, a skill with a + (e.g. Att+Agi, for spears) takes the sum of the two.
 * After choosing a target, if you have multiple elements on your attack, it will take the one that will deal the most damage. Unless the enemy possesses an absorbtion, in which case he will absorb the whole lot.
 * However, if you have multiple "[Element Type Here] Damage +15%", it will take the HIGHEST of them, even if that boost is NOT what is being used against the enemy.
 * Weapon Type Skills, (Swords, Bows, Guns, Etc.) deal roughly 50% more damage when used with their proper weapon, and somewhat only slightly lower damage if the weapon is close enough, (+40% for club skills with an axe, +40% for sword skills with a katana, the lowest is base skill damage)
 * Deflectors are affected by dispels!
 * If your person has a deflector on them and they die from Climax/Ascension/Death, they keep it upon being revived.
 * Self harm damage (Edging, Punishment (Godfather),? (Samurai Skill)) will be blocked by deflectors.
 * Non damaging Talk/Dance/Song Skills are Auto-Hit.

Regarding Buffs

 * Buffs start their countdown on the turn you use then, so 4 turns means the turn you cast it plus 3 more afterwards. Buffs generally last until end of turn.
 * Buffs that appear separately on the status bar stack with each other, if they don't, its not being stacked.(Transform + Inner Focused Mind will stack. Song of Offense + Enchant Magic will not.)
 * In Part 2, Will and Hero's Song/Mass Omni Enchant are the same buff, and therefore will not stack

List of Dispels
These are skills that remove buffs. Typically there is a 5 turn cooldown between dispels. Some notable dispels are:
 * Disruptive Wave - No cost for enemies.
 * Mass Dispel - Costs MP, Magical, but will still dispel if reflected
 * All Cancel - Costs MP, Certain Hit
 * Zero Shift - Also removes debuffs on enemy side, costs MP
 * Dispel Dance - Magical, no cost for enemies

Regarding Difficulty
For quick reference, this is what each of the difficulties do to the stats of enemies.
 * Very Easy = 50% HP, 50% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 50% Defense, 50% Agility (And also regen health for party/damage enemy for a percent of max hp at end of turn)
 * Easy = 75% HP, 75% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 75% Defense, 75% Agility
 * Normal = 100% HP, 100% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 100% Defense, 100% Agility
 * Hard = 125% HP, 125% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 125% Agility, 115% Defense, 75% Death Vulnerability
 * Very Hard = 150% HP, 150% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 110% Defense, 125% Agility, 50% Death Vulnerability
 * Hell = 200% HP, 200% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 125% Defense, 150% Agility, 25% Death Vulnerability
 * Paradox = 300% HP, 500% Attack/Magic/Dexterity, 150% Defense, 200% Agility, 10% Death Vulnerability

LoC

 * All exits will appear in the same place, but which exit is "Active" is randomized.


 * The cap on rare points is 20000, with all points earned afterwards becoming rabbit points. See Labyrinth of Chaos for more details.


 * Rarely, enemy monsters can revive themselves at higher rare points. Note that killing them on the first turn seems to prevent them from doing this


 * There is a checkpoint for the main labyrinth every 100 floors, ending at the 601st floor, with the exception of floor 501 which doesn't offer you a checkpoint. You get 3000 X Check Point Number for starting at them, so starting at floor 601 starts you at 16000.


 * Blue chests in the trials always give the equipment that the trial would give, aka Endless Chaos would always give gems, while Sea of Truth will give bows/guns/whips...


 * All legendary gear of the same type have base effects that they always have, once you know what it is (Or look it up on this wiki), the other effects are what is random (So you can decide if you want to try for another equipment of the same type with better effects)

Other

 * If all front line members are under a status effect that will not end naturally and prevents action (e.g. Petrified), you will lose the battle (even if they can still revive themselves)


 * Monsters have MP as well, and can not cast spells that use them if they run out. Especially angels, whose holy attacks all need MP.


 * In Part Two, certain characters gain Haste: [Skill] (Reina gains Haste: Dance, for example), Hasted skills ALWAYS go first, if there are two hasted skills, its random which one goes first.

Abusive strategies
Applying those strategies isn't just merely useful, they break the game and completely trivialize their difficulties following their successful use.


 * Halving encounters stack. You can easily reduce your encounter rate to 1/32 with 4 Gadabouts and the starting demon protection bracelet, allowing you to fully explore Ilias Continent if you periodically reset the encounter counter by taking breaks in the Pocket Castle. You can explore most of the Midas Abandoned Mines to loot equipment there, then sell the excess to Iliasport and finish equipping your team as it should. Pornof can also allow access to Bunny Suit, which makes for a good armor for any dex based character like a hunter. You can even clear most of the Ilias Continent questline that way.
 * When Alma Elma joins your party to infiltrate Gold Fort, she won't leave your team if you decide to dawdle. You can actually use her to beat Leviathan, Sphinx and Yamata No Orochi. The battles are harsh but doable with dedicated supports (encouraging dance increases her damage a great deal in particular). While beating Sphinx is not quite interesting, Yamata No Orochi instantly join you, while Leviathan will join you once you recruited Selene. You can then complete your tour by keeping Alma Elma's equipment for yourself before exiting Gold Fort.
 * Simply using "Lucky song" with a dedicated minstrel will quickly get you overleveled.
 * After having completed the Gold Fort arc, get in Gold Port's tavern to recruit Lazarus and Merlin. They'll set up the third casino in the game in the Pocket Castle, and said casino has extremely good skimpy armor and shield. Lazarus himself has Gambling Luck III from his godfather job. You can rob blind his casino in less than a few hours adding him in your team and using slots.
 * Affection is now shared across saves. Characters hand out powerful (or, barring that, expensive) accessories with high affection. You can stack food items that gives high affection value, save across multiple slots, and give those items across slots to reduce your need to farm for food.
 * You can skip sequences with the Pocket Castle warp as opening it overrides other events. To do so, when you move on a tile on the overworld that should move you to a new map (any cities), opening the Pocket Castle (via the S hotkey) at that precise moment will override the map change, and leaving will return you right on top of the spot you were moving to without changing map. You can skip the Gold Fort, then the Gold Central checkpoint like that. You can then get Salamander, and upon acquiring her, the game will automatically consider that you completed all main quests until then.
 * Above works with the the world map hotkey (Q) as well, being even faster than Pocket Castle as you don't get transported anywhere. By spamming it at the very beginning of the game, it's even possible to skip the Slime Mountain and be able to explore and loot the whole Ilias continent (with an added bonus/penalty of random encounters being disabled at this point in the game), trivializing the early game by a lot. Be wary of possible sequence breaks when trying to proceed with the game story in that state, however.

When you already have an existing completed save, you can do the following as well:


 * As soon as you get access to Hades, fight Cupid repeatedly with the combat replayer spamming talk to increase your affinity with her. Once high enough, she will have a chance to give a Prism Bow. You can either use someone as a hunter with an overpowered weapon, or have Luka reliably hit with Flail Wildly due to the accuracy bonus.
 * You can farm 500 affections x 11 characters per 8 minutes using the Town Trials of Chaos. As a result, any new game can be started with a solid treasury simply by removing Sonya/the heroine/lime from your team, getting their gifts, and selling most of those.