Incline Troubleshooter: Abandoned Children - isometric tactical Korean SRPG

[Rafidur]

That inrush + recharge set is very effective. I ended up copying that for the gold tongue frog, specifically to defeat the black humanoid robot in the level 50 violent challenge (nothing in my team could do relevant damage to it except a lightning draki which somehow one shot it after it triggered an ice trap and shat numbers everywhere, and the frog seems to have much better SP burst than the draki and double forestall is neat - so that's a more reliable and versatile option).

Not sure why only the dragon could damage the robot, probably a combination of atom decomposition to ignore the resistance and the flash battery stack thingy charging to full on every boss counter, along with ice trap stopping dodge/block? Or the 100% dmg vs shocked target stacking additively with his reductions?

 

[Zumbabul]

That inrush + recharge set is very effective. I ended up copying that for the gold tongue frog, specifically to defeat the black humanoid robot in the level 50 violent challenge (nothing in my team could do relevant damage to it except a lightning draki which somehow one shot it after it triggered an ice trap and shat numbers everywhere, and the frog seems to have much better SP burst than the draki and double forestall is neat - so that's a more reliable and versatile option).

Not sure why only the dragon could damage the robot, probably a combination of atom decomposition to ignore the resistance and the flash battery stack thingy charging to full on every boss counter, along with ice trap stopping dodge/block? Or the 100% dmg vs shocked target stacking additively with his reductions?

To damage destrons, you need to bypass special armor: you need to deal more than 10% of its health. In the case of the black destron, it is around 800-900 hp. Destrons have a lot of resistance, so the magic damage will be relatively low. Also, the black destron has anti-esp armor: esp cannot crit. So, it is extremely hard to damage the black destron with magic. With lightning esp you can stack 100% resistance ignore, which will be enough to bypass special armor.

 

[gurugeorge]

I've just been getting back into this. My God this game is so deliciously huge and complex I'm using LifeOfAshuram's very helpful and knowledgeable vids to re-familiarize myself.

The Mastery system is just unbelievably brilliant, maybe the best build system I've ever seen in any game. Other contemporary familiar systems (D&D, the Pillars games, XCOM) are just kiddie pool stuff in comparison (I think maybe only Path of Exile's humungous passsives tree compares in any way). And again, I'm marveling at the trick the devs managed to pull off, of having your characters be able to do ridiculously OP things, yet still be somewhat vulnerable to mobs who can also sometimes do ridiculously OP things. It makes the gameplay so much fun.

 

[Mortmal]

It's incredible the amount of content there is , they keep adding more for free when it already had such low price , and combat is still much more tactical than most things released in the west.

 

[Reinhardt]

Ok, i hope you are really sorry, dear developers. Looks like it's on sale today again. So i bought another copy. Because i wanted to do something nice today. Had to relocate some money from my phone for this.

Wanted to gift it to my niece at first - she cries there is nothing to play, but then remembered she's away from her pc now.

 

[mediocrepoet]

It's incredible the amount of content there is , they keep adding more for free when it already had such low price , and combat is still much more tactical than most things released in the west.

I keep waiting for it to be "complete" before giving it a real go, but I'm starting to think I might die first. These guys are much younger than I am.

 

[abnaxus]

₴

 

[Reinhardt]

 

[BrotherFrank]

I keep waiting for it to be "complete" before giving it a real go, but I'm starting to think I might die first. These guys are much younger than I am.

For what it’s worth you can expect the devs to show up to your funeral to apologise for failing to meet your expectations.

 

[Mortmal]

Ok, i hope you are really sorry, dear developers. Looks like it's on sale today again. So i bought another copy. Because i wanted to do something nice today. Had to relocate some money from my phone for this.

Wanted to gift it to my niece at first - she cries there is nothing to play, but then remembered she's away from her pc now.

One more in the crazy uncle codex club.

 

[Mortmal]

It's incredible the amount of content there is , they keep adding more for free when it already had such low price , and combat is still much more tactical than most things released in the west.

I keep waiting for it to be "complete" before giving it a real go, but I'm starting to think I might die first. These guys are much younger than I am.

You could consider season 1 as a complete game already , 75 hours in and just "finished" it, starting the banned children DLC. I am at like 426/731 discovered masteries.

 

[gurugeorge]

I've just been playing around with Ash's Alisa Barbarian build - now that's a Barbarian done right (I've only got it about 3/4 completed, and only at lvl 46, but the core elements are there enough to show proof of concept.)



Not really for players who don't enjoy stretches of a character doing stuff on their own, but if you're the type of player who loves cheering on your characters' AI antics now and then, it's golden.

 

[gurugeorge]

Questions for the more experienced players: what's up with the "Golden x" gear sets? Are they any good? Do you craft them or are they drops? If you craft them how do you get to them past the lvl 20-25 crafted gear (which seems to be the limit of crafted gear as far as I can tell)?

Also, what are the additional difficulty levels like (e.g. High-Risk, High-Reward, Paranoid, etc.)? Are they worth putting on, or are they only for really uber builds?

[Later note: figured out some of the golden thing by looking into the materials index - you can see with the more advanced materials there that there are golden items with ??? marks as unknown craftable options, so it looks like they become apparent when you get more and more of the advanced purple and red materials from drops in missions in the 45-50 range. I also noticed that there are some golden things I can craft already, like some of the "gear" items (e.g. Arms Alchemy bag for Alchemist Ray ). But if anyone is familiar with the system I'd still appreciate some inside info! ]

 

[Zumbabul]

Questions for the more experienced players: what's up with the "Golden x" gear sets? Are they any good? Do you craft them or are they drops? If you craft them how do you get to them past the lvl 20-25 crafted gear (which seems to be the limit of crafted gear as far as I can tell)?

Also, what are the additional difficulty levels like (e.g. High-Risk, High-Reward, Paranoid, etc.)? Are they worth putting on, or are they only for really uber builds?

Golden sets don't drop, you can only craft them. Any sets are craft only. To open them you need to 'level' your craft. Once you craft lvl 20 sneaker, you will open a recipe for a lvl 25 sneaker. Once you craft lvl 25, you will get a recipe for a lvl 30. And so on. Golden sets are opened at level 45. To craft them you need to level your craft level for sneakers, uniforms, etc, and also crafting levels for the needed materials.

The sets were designed to be worse in terms of the stat budget than a legendary or a crafted purple item with perfect rolls. So, usually, it is never wise to go for a full 5 part set. However, some intermediate set bonuses are good and useful. For example, 3 part draki set for albus or 2-part gem crafter set for a caster, which needs hit chance (gear gives 20, ring gives 20, 2 set bonus gives around 150-200 ESP).

Golden Leather set is really good for battle mage Irene. With a uniform, wrists, and sneakers, she will have a solid amount of hp and around 100 speed. She will also get stun immunity, which is really good for Irene, because she lacks support slots. Some people use golden leather set on albus to get even more block schred. Some people use golden set on Heixing for speed bonuses.

Also, the devs add new lvl 50 class specific sets, which are actually quite good. The new barbarian set makes barbarian Alisa even more OP. Trap set makes trap builds fun and viable. New Kylie set is useful for both hacker and engineer.

Regarding difficulty levels.

Limit growth: prevents outleveling. You cannot grow above recommended level mission. If you replay the game, this option is mandatory. I think this option is mandatory even for the first playthrough.
Paranoid: extra masteries that enemies obtained are more likely to form a mastery set. Almost no effect in the end-game, slightly more difficult in the early game.
High-risk high reward: enemies have a slightly better stat, you get twice the amount of loot. This option eliminates any need for grinding.

Basically, enable everything. You will be fine.

 

[gurugeorge]

Questions for the more experienced players: what's up with the "Golden x" gear sets? Are they any good? Do you craft them or are they drops? If you craft them how do you get to them past the lvl 20-25 crafted gear (which seems to be the limit of crafted gear as far as I can tell)?

Also, what are the additional difficulty levels like (e.g. High-Risk, High-Reward, Paranoid, etc.)? Are they worth putting on, or are they only for really uber builds?

Golden sets don't drop, you can only craft them. Any sets are craft only. To open them you need to 'level' your craft. Once you craft lvl 20 sneaker, you will open a recipe for a lvl 25 sneaker. Once you craft lvl 25, you will get a recipe for a lvl 30. And so on. Golden sets are opened at level 45. To craft them you need to level your craft level for sneakers, uniforms, etc, and also crafting levels for the needed materials.

The sets were designed to be worse in terms of the stat budget than a legendary or a crafted purple item with perfect rolls. So, usually, it is never wise to go for a full 5 part set. However, some intermediate set bonuses are good and useful. For example, 3 part draki set for albus or 2-part gem crafter set for a caster, which needs hit chance (gear gives 20, ring gives 20, 2 set bonus gives around 150-200 ESP).

Golden Leather set is really good for battle mage Irene. With a uniform, wrists, and sneakers, she will have a solid amount of hp and around 100 speed. She will also get stun immunity, which is really good for Irene, because she lacks support slots. Some people use golden leather set on albus to get even more block schred. Some people use golden set on Heixing for speed bonuses.

Also, the devs add new lvl 50 class specific sets, which are actually quite good. The new barbarian set makes barbarian Alisa even more OP. Trap set makes trap builds fun and viable. New Kylie set is useful for both hacker and engineer.

Regarding difficulty levels.

Limit growth: prevents outleveling. You cannot grow above recommended level mission. If you replay the game, this option is mandatory. I think this option is mandatory even for the first playthrough.
Paranoid: extra masteries that enemies obtained are more likely to form a mastery set. Almost no effect in the end-game, slightly more difficult in the early game.
High-risk high reward: enemies have a slightly better stat, you get twice the amount of loot. This option eliminates any need for grinding.

Basically, enable everything. You will be fine.

Thanks for your advices! I'd only dabbled a little bit in crafting the last time I played. I wasn't aware that you could craft clothing, etc., beyond lvl 25 because prior to that when higher level crafting options were available you could see icons of the next tier things in the right-hand pane, but that seemed to stop around lvl 25 so I just assumed there weren't any higher levels available (although I did make lvl 30 mon & vivi for Kylie). How do you get to the higher level things? Do you just keep making what you can make of lower level things (then presumably selling or breaking down again) until the higher level items appear as options?

I guess the crafting system is still a bit opaque to me, I don't understand the "workmanship" thing, which presumably is really important for crafting All I noticed was that if you went over 100% the next tier of item became an option, but as I say that seemed to stop around lvl 25 items.

I've finished the main game part and I'm on the Bianca/Alisa DLC now, so I think it's probably time for me to look towards perfecting builds, doing some mats grinding, etc.

 

[GhostCow]

Crafting is the only thing I hated about this game. I beat the main game, got to the DLC, saw the only way to get new weapons for the dlc characters was to craft, and uninstalled.

 

[gurugeorge]

Crafting is the only thing I hated about this game. I beat the main game, got to the DLC, saw the only way to get new weapons for the dlc characters was to craft, and uninstalled.

Crafting is usually a headache to get into in most games, there are so many names of things it takes a while to get your head around them and get familiar enough. But with most systems if they tickle your fancy in one way or another and if you put some time in, eventually it all becomes transparent. I do kind of quite like the system in this, but I still haven't played around with it enough to understand it. It's only very gradually starting to make sense but as I said in the previous post, some of it's still murky to me, and doesn't seem to be explained very well either by the devs or by extant crafting guides (which do go over the most basic things, but don't really clarify the nub of the matter, like you know, explaining it in a way that key concepts make sense).

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Can you obtain new (upgraded) weapons for Kylie without crafting? Somewhat makes sense if you can't, still crafting is too bothersome and annoying in this game, the interface is frustratingly inconvenient and crafting components cost a lot, many of them you have to farm (and you can never obtain enough of them), I had to spend almost all of my savings several times over trying to craft a decent weapon for Ray. Items upgrades are even more ruinous for the pathetic bonuses they provide. Overall, doing millions of mouse clicks to craft all the required components, opening and reopening several relevant submenus, repeatedly going to the vendors to buy components and getting back to the crafting bench, doing specific scenarios again and again and again to obtain the rarer components, everything related to crafting, was a rather OCD-inducing experience.

 

[GhostCow]

I hate everything about crafting in every game. It's nothing but a time sink to make you waste time trying to figure out where the stuff you need comes from and then praying to RNGesus that you get it.

 

[Zumbabul]

Can you obtain new (upgraded) weapons for Kylie without crafting? Somewhat makes sense if you can't, still crafting is too bothersome and annoying in this game, the interface is frustratingly inconvenient and crafting components cost a lot, many of them you have to farm (and you can never obtain enough of them), I had to spend almost all of my savings several times over trying to craft a decent weapon for Ray. Items upgrades are even more ruinous for the pathetic bonuses they provide. Overall, doing millions of mouse clicks to craft all the required components, opening and reopening several relevant submenus, repeatedly going to the vendors to buy components and getting back to the crafting bench, doing specific scenarios again and again and again to obtain the rarer components, everything related to crafting, was a rather OCD-inducing experience.

No, Kylie's weapons are crafting only. Kylie has gear that allows her to summon two drones. This is also crafting only. Her new set is quite good. It is also crafting only. Drone crafting is more obfuscated than crafting, but it is also deeply connected with a crafting system. So, for Kylie, her potential is hidden behind the crafting system.

Ray, Alisa, and Heixing obtain new weapons mainly from crafting. The last violent case gives a legendary 2h sword and machine pistol, but besides that, it is only crafting.

Once you put effort, the system will become easy and intuitive for you. But before this, you perfectly described how players feel about the crafting system.

 

[Zumbabul]

Thanks for your advices! I'd only dabbled a little bit in crafting the last time I played. I wasn't aware that you could craft clothing, etc., beyond lvl 25 because prior to that when higher level crafting options were available you could see icons of the next tier things in the right-hand pane, but that seemed to stop around lvl 25 so I just assumed there weren't any higher levels available (although I did make lvl 30 mon & vivi for Kylie). How do you get to the higher level things? Do you just keep making what you can make of lower level things (then presumably selling or breaking down again) until the higher level items appear as options?

The workmanship is something like an experience for crafting. Each item type has its own 'experience bar'. If you craft swords, you will level up swords craft level. You will get new recipes for swords, but you will not get new recipes for rings.

This experience bar is usually 'attached' to some blue item. Let's say for example level 20 ring. If you craft them, you will fill the bar and open a recipe for blue lvl 25 ring and purple lvl 20 ring. If you craft lvl 20 blue or purple ring you will get some workmanship towards lvl 25 ring, but not a full bar. If you craft lvl 25 blue ring, it will most likely fill the whole bar.

To use crafting, you need to open not only the recipe for an item but also recipes for all resources that it uses. Otherwise, it will be too expensive to buy needed equipment or too time-consuming to farm the needed materials.

You also need to understand that you can break complex materials into more simple ones. For example, if you salvage loot, you will get a lot of crystals (something, like primal power, primal flame or primal frost). These crystals are used as a material for upgrades and not used in crafting directly. However, you can break them and get psi-stones. Same thing for other materials.

Although the crafting interface is not super good, it has some convenient features. If you type something in a search menu, the interface will filter all items that use this word or could be broken into it. Also, on the left there is a list of all previously used recipes, so it could be a little bit easier to navigate.

Once you understand how the system and interface work, you actually don't need to farm at all.

 

[gurugeorge]

Thanks for your advices! I'd only dabbled a little bit in crafting the last time I played. I wasn't aware that you could craft clothing, etc., beyond lvl 25 because prior to that when higher level crafting options were available you could see icons of the next tier things in the right-hand pane, but that seemed to stop around lvl 25 so I just assumed there weren't any higher levels available (although I did make lvl 30 mon & vivi for Kylie). How do you get to the higher level things? Do you just keep making what you can make of lower level things (then presumably selling or breaking down again) until the higher level items appear as options?

The workmanship is something like an experience for crafting. Each item type has its own 'experience bar'. If you craft swords, you will level up swords craft level. You will get new recipes for swords, but you will not get new recipes for rings.

This experience bar is usually 'attached' to some blue item. Let's say for example level 20 ring. If you craft them, you will fill the bar and open a recipe for blue lvl 25 ring and purple lvl 20 ring. If you craft lvl 20 blue or purple ring you will get some workmanship towards lvl 25 ring, but not a full bar. If you craft lvl 25 blue ring, it will most likely fill the whole bar.

To use crafting, you need to open not only the recipe for an item but also recipes for all resources that it uses. Otherwise, it will be too expensive to buy needed equipment or too time-consuming to farm the needed materials.

You also need to understand that you can break complex materials into more simple ones. For example, if you salvage loot, you will get a lot of crystals (something, like primal power, primal flame or primal frost). These crystals are used as a material for upgrades and not used in crafting directly. However, you can break them and get psi-stones. Same thing for other materials.

Although the crafting interface is not super good, it has some convenient features. If you type something in a search menu, the interface will filter all items that use this word or could be broken into it. Also, on the left there is a list of all previously used recipes, so it could be a little bit easier to navigate.

Once you understand how the system and interface work, you actually don't need to farm at all.

Yep, thanks for the tips. I've figured out that sometimes these rectangular bars appear on the left, by item names, and that if you craft a thing that has a bar and fill up the bar you get some workmanship and advance a bit and get the next tier of the thing, so there's that. But I'm completely in the dark as to when and why those bars appear. What triggers the appearance of one of those bars?

I've gotten back into it a bit, and I'm remembering that sometimes you have to break found things down so that you can get really simple mats that you can build up again into other things. It seems to be a feature of this system that you sometimes pair mats you find with things you have to build up from breaking down (which is different from salvaging).

Also, the characters seem to have crafting specialities, and I'm not sure how that factors in. Is it just pooled? (i.e. the crafting of x is automatically assigned to the character who has that skill? In which case the only difference it would make would be that if you didn't have person x in the party you couldn't craft y) Or is there some way you can "pick" the specialist and get them to it better if they're singled out in some way?

I can actually see it being intuitive once you get your head around it, as I'm gradually doing. It's a bit RSI inducing though, there are some QOL things like holding ALT and left/right clicking for some functions like selecting the max number of items you can make, but there aren't enough of those types of QOL features given how much clicking and zipping in and out of menus you do (although again, you start to get muscle memory for that too eventually).

One thing that's starting to grate on me is that the search filters don't have an 'X' to delete what you've typed into the search box (you know the kind of feature I mean?) Again, given how much filtering by text you do, that would save a lot of filddling (having to select the text and delete it, instead of just one click). In fact I might suggest that on the Steam forums

 

[Zumbabul]

Yep, thanks for the tips. I've figured out that sometimes these rectangular bars appear on the left, by item names, and that if you craft a thing that has a bar and fill up the bar you get some workmanship and advance a bit and get the next tier of the thing, so there's that. But I'm completely in the dark as to when and why those bars appear. What triggers the appearance of one of those bars?

These bars appear near items that can give you new recipes. This is predefined.

Also, the characters seem to have crafting specialities, and I'm not sure how that factors in. Is it just pooled? (i.e. the crafting of x is automatically assigned to the character who has that skill? In which case the only difference it would make would be that if you didn't have person x in the party you couldn't craft y) Or is there some way you can "pick" the specialist and get them to it better if they're singled out in some way?

Crafting specialties are predefined. They are fixed for a given character. They serve two goals. First, they gate which type of equipment you can get. For example, Albus can craft basic potions (lvl1), Ray craft more advanced (lvl2), and Leton can craft super cool potions (lvl3). You open new characters as the game progress, and you gain new crafting options with new characters. This approach prevents you to get access to strong equipment via crafting in the early game.

The second role is to prevent leveling craftmanship by crafting low-level items. Items below lvl 30 need crafting level 1, and above lvl 30 crafting level 2. So, when you craft a level 20 item, you will level craft up to items level 30. After that point, you need to craft more advanced items.

 

[Rafidur]

I hate everything about crafting in every game. It's nothing but a time sink to make you waste time trying to figure out where the stuff you need comes from and then praying to RNGesus that you get it.

If you enable "high risk, high reward" difficulty, enemies will shit out items. Thanks to their newfound incontinence you should never lack materials or equipment to disassemble.

 

[gurugeorge]

Aaaand it's all started rolling in. The trick was I hadn't done a high level beasts mission. I'd fancied the Golden Molar gear thing for one of my characters and I discovered it can only be found off a mob in 47V, a mission I didn't have. It had some quick low level missions (beast missions you do for some of the people in Shooter Street) and the lvl 40-ish Draki violent that I'd already done the last time I'd played, as preliminaries. I got it (qutie a good sewer mission, as it were, pretty epic as my team is only just at or slightly above that level. Then when I got back home I thought "hmm, wonder if that will open up any crafting?" And lo and behold, a whole bunch of grey rectangles (and even more not immediately craftable, but doable with a bit of breaking down, etc.) - and the more I did, the more grey rectangles appeared, the more new items kind of unfolded from the system. It was quite good fun, if a bit of a clickfest

Basically, it's really quite an easy system, it only seems difficult because one thinks it's more complicated to use than it is. Just play the game with a good variety of mission types and follow the grey rectangles and it all seems to roll in quite naturally Just from that one mission alone, plus all the stuff I'd been doing with the merely human bits (primals and all that), and some draki stiuff I'd done earlier, suddenly the whole thing has opened up and I'm up to lvl 40 blue and purple items in all the categories, with a few goldens starting to appear. Easy-peasy.

I still don't quite understand the logic and criteria, but I think it opens up certain avenues conditional on you opening up other seemingly unrelated avenues, and harvesting all the drops. IOW, if you play the game with a variety of mission types, it all just happens. Same as with the Masteries too.