What are Boosts?
Boosts are passive character traits that give bonuses to specific activities or rolls. They function similarly to an inborn talent or quality of the character. Think of them as your character's natural talents.
Boosts are always active and don't usually need to be triggered. Some boosts have percentages of being triggered, while others have requirements for their effects to be applied. Not all boosts will benefit the character, nor will all boosts affect every roll. All boosts have both positive effects and drawbacks, and are good for certain specific activities. This variety allows for you to have different characters good at different activities or various roles.
How do I Obtain Boosts?
There are several ways for a spirit to get boosts:
- Creation: Boosts can randomly appear during geno creation (When getting a random geno from an event/activity or when summoning) or inherited from the summoners themselves during summoning. While boosts are rare to show up, the more common a boost is, the more likely to get it. This adds an element of surprise and encourages players to experiment with different starting traits.
- Familiars & Equipment: Certain familiars and any enchanted equipment can grant Boosts to your character. However, many familiars may have to be drawn to recieve the boost, and thus receive the benefits. These boosts are not on the character's geno however and cannot pass in summoning.
- Rebirth: While rebirthing usually only increases the tiers of existing Boosts on a character, there are some boosts such as Effects, Resists, and Weaks that can add each other to the geno. Additionally, rebirthing has a chance to apply added boosts to the geno of your character. As with creation, the rarer a boost, the harder it is to increase the tier or get it on the geno.
- Skills or Certain Item Effects: Specific items or familiars, like the Slime Familiar, might possess the ability to grant or modify Boosts. Some skills as well may increase the effects of certain boosts or change processes related to them entirely.
What if I Don't Want a Boost on my Character?
If you don't like the effect a higher-tier Boost has, or simply want to remove one off the geno entirely, you can use Debuffers to remove them. Debuffers only remove one tier at a time, so the higher the tier a boost is, the more debuffers you have to use to remove it completely.
Why Would I Want to Remove a Boost From my Character?
Some boosts have pretty nasty drawbacks. Depending on what kind of activity you're using your character in, there are some boosts you may not want to have on your character. For example, you wouldn't want Sloth on a character you're going to be using in Cove, and Fisherman won't be very helpful in Dungeons. Secondarily, maybe you want the boost on the character, but you'd rather it be on equipment and not on the geno so you can remove it as you please, or prevent it from passing to summons. Whatever your reason, it is valid.
You can get Debuffers from Vault's Haven using Silver Coins.
Boost Strategies
Some boosts work well together, while others cancel each other out or work against each other. This intentional balance encourages specialization. Rather than aiming for a "jack-of-all-trades" character, players can strategically choose Boosts that excel in specific areas, allowing for a variety of builds and playstyles instead of one right way to make the best character. While a character can possess a variety of boosts, they won't be as effective at everything as a character built for a specific role.
You might want to consider what boosts you want on the geno or not. Some will work on your Kiji or Tally's geno, some are meant for flexible use on equipment you can swap in and out so you can grant it to multiple characters as needed, and others are best at being part of your active Familiar roster, letting you choose when to activate their power. Additionally, some boosts are better on lower stated characters but are practically useless on higher statted or maxed out characters.
The in-game Compendium serves as a valuable resource for understanding how Boosts interact. It can provide detailed information on:
- Synergy Bonuses: Learn which Boost combinations create powerful effects.
- Conflicting Effects: Identify Boosts that counteract each other, allowing you to avoid hindering your character's performance.
- Familiar, Skill, and Boost Interactions: Discover how specific familiars or skills modify Boosts, empowering you to create optimized team compositions.
Effect Boosts: Status Effects, Resists, and Weaks:
Boosts can also extend to the realm of status effects, resistances, and weaknesses. The circular chart to the right shows a visual representation of how these effects interact. Referred to as the "Circle of Effects", each section represents a different status effect. Arrows point from each effect to the effects it's strong against. That also means the effect pointing to it is what the effect is weak against.
While seemingly detrimental, a weakness to one effect can come with a hidden benefit. Having a weakness to a specific effect increases your resistance to the effect it's pointing to on the Circle. For example, having Weak Burn will increase the effect of Resist Freeze. However, this creates a double-edged sword situation, as you'll be more vulnerable to the element you're weak against.
It's important to note that complete resistance to all effects is impossible. If you were to have max tier of all resistances and weaknesses, without skills or familiars you would recieve a max chance of 95% chance to resist any effect. However, the complex interplay between resistances and weaknesses allows for strategic character development. By carefully considering the Circle of Effects, players can create characters with targeted resistances and utilize elemental weaknesses to their advantage.
Rebirthing can also grant new effect type boosts to your character or increase them (if possible). These added effects, resists, or weaks will always be adjacent (1-2 steps behind or after) to the existing effect, resist, or weak on the circle being effected by the rebirth, depending on which kind of effect they are.
For example, if you look at Burn at the top in red, It's strong against Freeze, but weak to Soak. If you have Burning, it could add Weak Soak or Resist Freeze to the geno when rebirthing. However if you had Resist Burn, it could add Soaked or Weak Winded. And if you had Weak Burn, it could add Freezing or Resist Blinding.
Additionally, if you have a max tier Resist, it has a chance of freely REMOVING the same type of weakness from your character. (Such as if you had both Weak Petrify and Resist Petrify at max tier, Resist Petrify could remove Weak Petrify.