What are Boosts?
Boosts are inherent character traits that provide passive benefits to specific abilities or actions. Unlike skills, which are learned and improve over time, boosts are constant and don't require training. They function similarly to an inborn talent, shaping your character's capabilities from the outset. Boosts don't represent physical characteristics but rather internal qualities. They might influence your character's mental acuity, social charisma, or natural aptitude for specific tasks.
Boosts provide benefits that are always active, influencing your character's performance without requiring any specific action. Each boost focuses on a particular area, enhancing your character in a specific way. This variety allows for strategic character creation and party composition, letting you tailor your team to excel in different situations.
Finding Your Boosts:
There are several ways to obtain Boosts for your Kiji or Tally:
- Creation: Boosts can be randomly assigned during character creation or inherited from the summoners themselves. The more common a boost is, the more likely to get it, while the rarer it is, the harder to. This adds an element of chance and encourages players to experiment with different starting traits.
- Familiars & Equipment: Certain familiars and enchanted equipment can grant Boosts to your character. However, including these visual elements (like art or descriptions in literature) could be necessary to receive the benefits. Imagine your character drawing upon the power or essence imbued in their companions or gear.
- Rebirth: Rebirthing allows you to potentially increase the effectiveness of existing Boosts or even acquire them on 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. Some boosts, such as effect boosts, resists, and weaks, can also add new boosts onto the geno. These new boosts will also be effects, resists, or weaks.
- Skills or Certain Item Effects: Specific items or familiars, like the Slime Familiar, might possess unique abilities that grant or modify Boosts. Some skills as well may increase the effects of certain boosts or change processes related to them entirely. Exploring these interactions can provide strategic depth and encourage creative team compositions.
- Debuffers: Don't favor the effect of a higher-tier Boost, or simply want to remove one entirely? Debuffs can be introduced as a way to counteract unwanted Boosts or adjust your character's development.
Matching Your Boosts:
Not all boosts play friendly with each other, and while some work in beautiful harmony, amplifying each other's effects, others might clash like oil and water. Some boosts like "Fisherman" will increase your items gained, but it also slows you down, making it perfect for relaxed Cove sessions but less than ideal for high-octane PvP or PvE. 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. 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.
Consider where to place your boosts strategically: some will work on your Kiji or Tally's geno, some are meant for flexible use on equipment you can swap in and out, and others excel as part of your active Familiar roster, letting you choose when to activate their power.
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.