Combat Mechanics

HP
Every adventurer has a health stat, represented as Hit Points, or HP for short. It is shown in numerical form, and as a bar representing a percentage of their HP, at the bottom-left or right corner of the screen. This represents the adventurer's endurance - HP represents the maximum amount of damage an adventurer may take before they fall in battle. In addition, the adventurer's maximum HP also significantly affects the strength of recovery skills.

The HP bar displays differently depending on its percentage compared to the adventurer's max HP.
 * At full HP, the HP bar is in light green with a glow effect.
 * At above 30% but not full HP, the HP bar is in deep green.
 * Below 30% HP, the HP bar is red. The screen also turns red if the controlled adventurer has 30% HP or lower remaining.

Enemies also have HP, and they also display a HP bar, either on top of enemy units (for minor enemies), or at the very top of the screen (for menaces and bosses).

This HP bar only has two states:
 * At full HP, the HP bar is light red with a glow effect.
 * If not at full HP, the HP bar is red.

Life Shields
Some skills and abilities grant adventurers a Life Shield, which act as a second HP bar, that absorbs oncoming damage up to a limit depending on the source. Similar to regular HP, it can also be viewed in numerical and bar form. See the Life Shield's page for more details.


 * If Life Shield is completely undamaged, the bar is light orange with a glow effect.
 * If the Life Shield is partially damaged, the bar is orange.

Overdrive and Break
Most bosses also have a Mode Gauge which represents the amount of damage required to cause a boss to enter the overdrive state, and after they have entered this state, the amount of overdrive gauge damage required to send the boss to break state.

While a boss is in normal state (neither in overdrive or broken), the mode gauge increases as the boss takes damage. Gauge Inhibitor can slow down the increase in the mode gauge.

In overdrive state, bosses receive boosts to Strength and possibly defense, and they may unleash new, more powerful attacks. Force strikes and Gauge Accelerator bonuses increase effective damage that reduces the mode gauge, while Gauge Decelerator decreases effective damage.

In break state, bosses are usually rendered immobile, and their defenses are lowered massively, making them easy to damage. Break state usually ends after a few seconds have passed, though there are some unusual bosses whose break state is permanent.

Basic Attacks
Basic attacks occur when a player taps on the screen while controlling an Adventurer. Multiple taps on the screen will unleash combos of basic attacks with different animations and damage modifiers. With certain exceptions, basic attacks are dependent on weapon type, so adventurers with the same weapon type will use the same basic attacks and combos.

There are damage modifiers for the basic attack combos and dash attacks for every weapon. With certain exceptions, adventurers of the same weapon type will use the same attack modifiers. By default, the Lv1 modifiers are used. The Lv2 modifiers are used when the Standard Atk Level Increase node is unlocked in the Mana Spiral, for adventurers who have access to it. Basic Attacks will cause adventurers to gain Skill Points when a hit lands on an enemy. SP is only gained ONCE for each attack, regardless of the number of times you hit an enemy or the number of enemies you hit.

Unique Combo Chain
Some adventurers have unique combo chains that differ from what is described above. These can be temporarily or permanently granted by skills or abilities, or may be natural to the adventurer themselves. 

Force Strikes
Force Strikes are secondary attacks that occur when a player taps and holds their finger on the screen. A special charge icon will appear under or near the adventurer, and when it fully lights up, release the held finger will launch the attack in the direction or location of the icon. Force Strikes are dependent on weapon type, so adventurers with the same weapon type will often use the same type of Force Strike. Some Force Strikes are altered depending on adventurers by design, effects of a skill, or ability.

The Force Strike attack is initially locked for most Adventurers, and is gained by unlocking the first Force Strike node on an adventurer's Mana Circle. There are two control schemes for Force Strikes: Pivot and Movable
 * Pivot - Hold your finger down without moving it to charge a Force Strike. The point where you held your finger down becomes the pivot point for aiming the Force Strike after it is charged. Drag your finger away from that point in the OPPOSITE direction to where you wish to attack to aim your strike (like drawing a slingshot).
 * Movable - Hold your finger down to charge the Force strike. Moving your finger while keeping it held down will still allow the Adventurer to walk around, though at a slower pace than a full-speed run.
 * For a Personal Area of Effect Force Strike(on Axes, for example) the area will follow the adventurer as they walk.
 * For a Directional Force Strike, the direction will default to the direction in which the adventurer is walking. If an enemy becomes targeted, then the Force Strike direction will automatically point to that enemy, and will maintain this targeting as the character moves.

Bonus Effects of Force Strike Attacks

 * Force Strikes do bonus damage to the Overdrive Gauge Bars of bosses, causing them to enter the Break state faster than regular attacks.
 * Force Strikes will instantly break enemy guards (the blue barriers some enemies create to block damage).
 * Force Strikes can knock back some enemies and interrupt their attacks in the process.
 * Force Strikes provide a degree of knockback and stagger resistance when held down, enabling one to, for example, not get knocked down by the Phantom Assault in Wind Imperial Onslaught (ailment affliction still applies to those without ailment resistance).

Unique Force Strike
Some adventurers have unique Force Strikes that differ from what is described above. These can be temporarily or permanently granted by skills or abilities, or may be natural to the adventurer themselves. 

Skills
Every adventurer and dragon have skills that they can use while on quests. These skills appear as small, dimmed grayscale icons along the bottom of the screen during missions. To use one of the skills, the icon must be filled, which usually only occurs after a certain amount of SP has been acquired during the quest. Once a skill icon is filled it will begin flashing in color, the player must tap on the icon to use the skill if auto play is not enabled or allowed. Skills can be attacks, buffs, recovery, or a combination of the three. Once a skill has been used, the Adventurer must gain enough SP to fill the icon to use the same skill again. Skill gauges fill up from the bottom, and will be in grayscale while they are not completely filled.

An adventurer may have up to 4 skills available during quests. All adventurers carry two skills; the third and fourth skills are provided by either a compatible weapon, a shared skill from another adventurer(s), and/or a helper.

During most skills, be it the user or a helper's skill, the user is immune to all damage during the skill animation except against purple attacks that make contact, which is also known as iframes (invincibility frames). In addition, if controlled by the player, regardless of the skill's own duration, the skill's use generates a 1 second long iframe starting exactly from the point of usage for the user's A.I team as well. This can be used to an advantage.

Some skills such as 's and  do not provide iframes to the user. In this situation, the user is vulnerable to damage, even during the skill inset animation.

Counter skills such as 's, 's , and 's intentionally do not provide iframes to the user, as a portion of the skill's damage output is dependent on the damage received while the user is executing the skill.

Dodging
Every adventurer and dragon can perform a dodge roll by swiping at the screen quickly, and they will execute it as soon as they're allowed to. During a dodge roll, the user is immune to all damage during the dodge animation, similar to a skill iframe. It is possible to dodge roll consecutively without losing any iframes by rolling before the animation ends completely, as the iframes are still active when a new dodge action can be initiated. Note that dodge actions by the player does not grant AI adventurers automatic iframes, unlike skills.

AI adventurers may sometimes dodge a purple attack even when the dodge animation still have them within the attack's area of effect; this is due to an innate chance of the AI automatically taking an avoidance action against most attacks.

Bracing
When an attack sends an adventurer flying, the player may tap or swipe the screen to brace (perform an air recovery). Tapping will cause the adventurer to attempt landing on the current location, while swiping will cause the adventurer to steer towards the direction of the swipe before landing.

Note that bracing will cause iframes to end when you land, compared to letting the adventurer fall completely to the ground and letting them pick themselves up, which provides extended iframes that linger on for a few more seconds.

Automatic Bracing
Automatic Bracing is an option that can be configured in the Game Settings tab of the game's Option menu. If this setting is enabled, adventurers will automatically brace themselves when they are sent flying, provided that they will not be disabled by an affliction afterwards.

Shapeshifting
When equipped with a dragon, most adventurers gain the ability to shapeshift into that dragon while on a quest. During the quest, a shapeshifting icon will appear near the bottom of the screen, alongside a two-part vertical bar representing the Dragon Gauge. Once the Dragon Gauge has at least 1 full bar, the dragon's icon will become fully lit. The player may command the adventurer to shapeshift by tapping on the icon once it is fully lit. Shapeshifting allows the player to temporarily fight as the dragon, giving the adventurer new basic attacks, a new skill, procs any dragon-related abilities, and a dragon timer that shows how much longer the adventurer will remain in their shapeshifted form.

Some adventurers have a fixed shapeshift; in these case the adventurer will always transform into the dragon specified on the adventurer's ability details, combining the equipped dragon's abilities and the fixed dragon's form and skill.

During shapeshift, you cannot be knocked back and are immune to all afflictions.

All manner of shapeshift attacks will break enemy blue shields instantly, and can also destroy some field obstacles. They however cannot instantly break Kai Yan's Adamantine Shield unless a dispel effect is carried by the attack (e.g. any dragon's basic attacks with 's ).

Unlike adventurers, both moving and dodging during shapeshift will also cause hitstun towards targets and break objects.

Elemental Bonus
An adventurer with an effective element against an enemy will enjoy 50% increase in damage and a 50% reduction in damage received compared to an adventurer with a neutral element. Conversely, an adventurer with a disadvantaged element will suffer a 50% decrease in damage and a 50% increase in damage received compared to an adventurer with a neutral element.

In addition, healing is 20% more effective when applied to a target with the same element as the element of the healing skill.

Damage Formula
Most attacks will go through a damage formula that calculate their actual damage.

Some enemy attacks do not use the standard damage formula.
 * Some attacks, such as High Zodiark's Shadow Blast, deal fixed damage, and are completely unaffected by any other factor other than shields or life shields.
 * Some attacks, such as Void Nidhogg's Dark Detonation, as well as all damaging afflictions, deal percentage-based damage based on the adventurer's current or maximum HP.
 * Non-affliction damage are still guaranteed to deal at least 1 damage if it succeeds; hence, it is possible for Void Nidhogg's Dark Detonation to deal lethal damage on an adventurer with just 1 HP remaining.
 * Affliction damage will never be lethal; hence, an adventurer at 1 HP will take 0 damage from damaging afflictions.

Action Markers and Iframes
Most enemy skills feature telegraphed attacks, that is, action markers on the ground, that indicate where and when an attack will hit.

There are two known types, red (sometimes yellow for visibility, depending on the color of the ground, e.g. Brunhilda's Trial, High Brunhilda's Trial) marker attacks, which can be iframed, and purple marker attacks, whose damage cannot be avoided without shields or being in dragon form and will stagger those that are hit even while the adventurer is performing attacks or skills without some form of knockback immunity. Some purple attacks can possibly be avoided if their hitbox does not match their marker or escaping along the vertical axis by using skills that put an adventurer at the position, or tanked with a dragonshift.

Unlike actual players, AI controlled adventurers usually have a 70% chance to dodge purple attacks through avoidance actions (this does not apply to the "controlled" unit AI in Auto Mode).

Action markers also function as a timer for enemy skills. For example, circular action markers will fill in color starting from the center, and once it reaches the circumference the attack will hit very soon.

Note that even for attacks without action markers, they can still be divided into "red" and "purple" attacks. Certain unmarked attacks are considered "purple" and will cause damage to an adventurer that is hit while performing a skill.

In addition, certain "purple" attacks will ignore dragon form's general invulnerability and will instantly cause the adventurer to unshift and either cause an effect or deal damage if it hits, even if in the middle of a dragon's skill animation. Some others can only be fully protected from if a dragon is using a skill when the attack lands; if the dragon is not using a skill when the attack lands, the adventurer will unshift and then immediately take damage.

Hit Priority
Every action has a individual speed value tagged to it which determines whether the user or the target will be interrupted when two opposing attacks clash. As such, strategies such as repeated force strike usage, or certain combo strings, may prevent the enemy from being able to retaliate, depending on the enemy.

Enemy Attention
Attacks and skills of an enemy, surmised as enemy actions, may be assigned a specific target group for each of them.

Target groups include, but are not limited to, the following:
 * Whether the party member is controlled or AI
 * Specific party member classes
 * Specific party member positions relative to the enemy

For example: It is thus possible to strategize, bait and dodge attacks by taking note of enemy behavior in a quest.
 * Most enemies have a tendency to attack the closest adventurer to them, which makes it possible to kite or bait them by having an adventurer staying the closest to the enemy.
 * Raid bosses tend to target the host first, which makes it possible to kite or bait them into turning round in circles or to charge into corners by moving in a specific way.
 * Enemy mages and flyeyes tend to target their ranged force strike attack against the party member who is at the furthest distance to them, such as in Avenue to Power.
 * Dragons tend to leap backwards and cause knockback to adventurers in the process if there are adventurers behind them, and in the case of High Brunhilda's Trial: Master, cause damage to adventurers in front of High Brunhilda.
 * Many of the more difficult attacks in endgame content, such as Advanced Dragon Trials and The Agito Uprising, will ignore AI adventurers in target selection, or have them not inflict damage on them even if it connects, as in Ciella's Wrath.
 * Certain attacks from Volk in Volk's Wrath: Expert, Master, and Legend such as Snapping Squalls will prioritize attacking ranged classes (bows, wands, staves, and manacasters) before melee classes (all other classes).
 * This attack also completely ignores AI adventurers, and will never target them.
 * Any excess attacks that could not be deployed due to the lack of valid targets will simply disappear.
 * Note that AI adventurers may still get caught up in a player-controlled adventurer's Snapping Squall and receive damage from them.