Darkling (Kingdom)/Strategies

==Non-Soul Fire Route==
===Added by Supperman88===
====What you need====
*AT LEAST 1 Magic Medicine
*AT LEAST 1 Down or 1 Sleepy Time
*RECOMMENDED 1 5 Spinner or 1 Super Spinner
*RECOMMENDED 1 Reveal
*RECOMMENDED 1+ Deathblock
*RECOMMENDED 1+ Revival (Deathblock is more important)
*Battle Skill: Afterburn, Guard, COPY, Harden
*Defensive Magic: M Guard DX or Bounce/Super Bounce
*HIGHLY RECOMMENDED LV. 80+
*Class (In order of best to worse): Hero, Acrobat, Monk, Cleric, Magician, Ninja, Anything Else
*Retreat to a Dungeon: Spring Cave, Underground Passage, and Casino Cave work well.
====Setup====
*If you need time, use a Vanish to avoid getting targeted by Dark Arts
*Use the Magic Medicine 1-3 days before the encounter.
*Lure the Darkling to a Dungeon
*Use a Super Spinner (if you have it)
*When they land on an Empty Space, use Down or Sleepy Time. Use Down first, then use Sleepy Time next turn. Sleepy Time is not required, but recommended, but Down NEEDS to hit.
*After doing this to the best of your abilities, attack the Darkling.
Obviously, if you are a Hero, you can use 1 Field Magic and 1 Item, such as the Super/5 Spinner and the Down. If you are a Magician, you can use Down and Sleepy Time. If you are a Ninja, you can use Magic Medicine and Super Spinner.
====Battle====
NOTE: If you put the Darkling to Sleep, STRIKE AWAY if your SP and AT are close to his SP and DF
*Use the Reveal, and cast Afterburn, Harden, Copy or Guard
*If using Harden, cast Bounce/M Guard DX or Counter, and Hope
*If the Darkling uses Delete (which it probably will,), hope you lose all cash, all field magics, or an unimportant equipment such as Offensive Magic. If you don't have, for some reason, a Deathblock or a Revival, losing All Items isn't that big of a deal either.
*If you are fighting a CPU, don't Strike.
*If you are fighting a Human, look at your options before deciding.
*If you have High MG against a CPU, use Attack. Most likely they will choose Super Bounce.
===Added by 333-blue===
The easiest way, use reveal then escape, or else you should have a deathblock or a revival then escape.
==Using Soul Fire==
If you have Soul Fire, all you really need is 1 Reveal, and 3 Deathblocks. 1 Magic Medicine does work wonders. Still, you should still go to a Dungeon. A 5 Spinner/Super Spinner helps, and a Sleepy Time would be amazing, as it gives you turns to set up. Down, if it hits, is good as well, due primarily to reduced HP and DF.
===Battle===
Turn 1 don't use the Reveal. Use Soul Fire as soon as you get the chance. Let the Deathblocks help you, and hope the Darkling doesn't use Delete and delete your Items. When you have run out of Deathblocks, use the reveal if it your turn. Always Attack. You should win this way. The one flaw is that due to your SP stat, you have a low hit rate.
===Added by Supperman88===
== Playing As Darkling ==
=== Primary Objective ===
Your true objective is to deal some substantial damage to your opponents while also letting yourself catch up/get ahead in levels, its not until late game that taking towns to win them back after Darkling is over matters since first place can change at the drop of a hat at any time.
The three things you can do most effectively is destroy important and/or rare equipment your opponents possess, summon minions into towns to gain EXP, and place traps on the field.
=== Destroying Equipment ===
Engaging in combat against another player is the most obvious thing Darkling will do, most players will avoid conflict fervently to protect their most valuable gear from being destroyed, so actually engaging a player in combat is highly unlikely, the when and how you become Darkling is what largely dictates if you can even engage a player to begin with, otherwise most players will within moments run to the nearest shop selling vanish and buy 3-4 of them to remain unassailable for your two week rampage.
If you do manage to engage anyone in battle though, you have two options, kill them outright or use delete, killing them outright will ensure you can destroy all of their money, items, field magic or one piece of equipment at your leisure, but they are now dead and will remain so for awhile(unless they decide for some strange reason to pay for immediate resurrection if offered) which makes the other option delete so something to consider, delete will without fail randomly destroy a piece of gear, all money, all items, all field magic, or invade a town they own with a monster, however the true downside of this is that you will not be ending combat by doing this, and every turn you begin in combat is a turn you lose potential Dark Art points since the Dark Art Spinner does not spin while in combat.
=== Summoning Minions ===
Landing on any town that doesnt already have a monster in it will summon one to it, giving you EXP equal to the monsters EXP when defeated, the monsters summoned are the same types to previously occupy the towns, so going for continents opened up later rather then earlier will net larger EXP gains.
=== Traps ===
Trap placement is more important then one might realize, traps remain permanently even after Darkling has ended and do not trigger on the caster, potentially having traps trigger the effects of down or sleepy time at the right moment can let you swoop in for the kill far after Darkling has ended, and not being the Darkling anymore lets you steal for yourself rather then just merely destroy, even just causing poison or afraid status with traps can give you an edge if you get lucky on the timing.
=== Combat ===
Combat is all about caution as darkling, even more-so then at all other times you want to ensure you make the right call on each turn, a single miss-step against anyone semi-prepared to take you on can be the cause of your downfall, simply put don\t take risks and end combat as safely and assuredly as possible.
=== Strike ===
Unless a player can deal significant damage to you don't use it ever, a single countered strike will kill nearly every Darkling player on the spot, attack or Giga Blaze should be able to one shot nearly everyone you come across until very late game, and even then attacking when they aren't using defend or using Giga Blaze and they don't defend against magic should kill them outright.
=== Attack ===
This should be your default choice, if you have 100 or more SP over your opponent your attacks have 100% hit rate, your attack stat is almost always the highest as Darkling, and its very easy to kill most opponents with a single blow. As safe as attack usually is in normal play, while playing as a Darkling you will likely come up against the one reason to never use attack, Binder, Binder is a shield that when using the defend action lets you on occasion return all damage to the opponent if they used the attack action, as Darkling your damage total against anyone you attack is probably going to number at least four thousand, so having it reflected back at you will kill you unless its very late game, or you stacked a ton of health early on, in short, if they have Binder treat attack like strike, only use it if you have no other option.
=== Giga Blaze ===
Your second choice in combat, Giga Blaze being a magic attack means it can not miss and with your magic level it should be able to lethally kill anyone early game, though mid-game anyone with high magic and a good defensive magic or anyone using Magic Guard DX probably wont die from it without previous damage, if your opponent has Charm, Shock, Charge All, Bounce and especially Super Bounce its usually best not to use Giga Blaze, triggering Charm seals Attack and Counter, Shock prevents you from moving means the opponent's strike will do tons of damage since you can't defend, Charge All doubles all of their stats, Bounce sends the damage right back at you which against low or 1 magic builds will deal massive damage with and Super Bounce will likely kill you, not that they will likely have it since the only way to get Super Bounce is to win it at the casino or steal it from the darkling.
=== Delete ===
Your battle skill as a darkling, it will randomly delete a piece of gear, all money, all items, all field magic or take away a town, in most cases its better to end the fight then use delete, however if your opponent possess Binder and Bounce/Super Bounce then Delete becomes your last safe offensive option, since Attack, Giga Blaze and Strike could all be countered and return lethal damage to you, keep using delete until either Binder or Bounce/Super Bounce is deleted to ensure you don't get killed, if your opponent has stocked up on a large quantity of death blocks/revivals this can be a useful though luck based method of eliminating the whole stock without wasting lots of time in combat.
=== Super Bounce ===
Interesting in its design, super bounce reflects magic right back at the opponent, effects and all, the damage even gets quadrupled, though in most cases magic will deal zero damage to you, meaning you will reflect 0 damage back, the real value of it is to block the negative effects of magic, such as sleep, blindness or in particular having aurora trigger its rare effect that cuts all stats in half, word of caution though, banish has a very cruel relationship with Bounce and Super Bounce, if the opponent has banish you are required to use Super Bounce to defend against the lethality it brings, yet doing so treats it as you casting banish yourself which brings you to one health, all field magic spells that deal damage deal a minimum of one damage, anyone on the same board map as you is going to use damaging field magic if they have it, even at the minimum of 20% chance to land, that is a significant chance to suddenly be dead, wasting the potential of darkling, its probably best to avoid anyone who has banish, but chances are they will come after you knowing this.
=== Dark Arts ===
Essentially your big bag of nasty tricks, Dark Arts let you wildly affect the game with all sorts of crazy/power and useful effects, ranging from shutting down all the safe spaces to land on to forcing everyone to fight you, summon monsters onto every town and even letting you steal castles, however these all come at a cost of Dark Art Points, more powerful effects cost more points, and the Dark Arts Spinner awards points in random numbers, you will almost always get around roughly 170 total points during your Darkling reign, give or take 40 points, though on rare occasions you can indeed get the 100 or even potentially the ever desired 200 point gain from a single spin, and on these moments the tide of fear you can bring is quick and brutal, but for the most part points will trickle in over time, and you have to decide if you want to spend points on lower cost effects often, or save up for a big heavy hitter like castle panic or global assault, or if you are unlucky on that spinner even just a simple local assault.
Its probably best to judge this decision based on your first 2-4 days of Darkling, if you don't get a decent amount of points in those beginning days your probably wont get enough for castle panic, nevermind global assault so its best to start spamming traps, getting 80 or so traps scattered randomly around the world will give you a significant edge after Darkling is over, as a personal example of this, ive had the dark space itself be the recipient of a trap, and upon someone else trying to become Darkling, they where put to sleep delaying it by a whole 8 turns as they tried over and over to land on it again.
== Surviving The Darkling ==
=== Objective ===
Before the Darkling reign even begins, find out who is in last place at all times, and try to gauge how long they have been in last place for, at the ten day mark, if last place has a significant difference its probably best you go and buy 4 vanishes ahead of time, just the act of doing this can dissuade human players from going Darkling since they know someone is already able to escape them, though A.I. will immediately bolt for the dark space if they plan to go Darkling, other A.I. suddenly making a Beeline for the nearest shop selling vanish is a dead giveaway.
Once the Darkling is on the field, you have to decide what is the most important thing you want to keep, and ensure you keep that, castles are easier to protect then one might think, merely causing the darkling to engage in elongated battles prevents him from getting to spin the Dark Arts Spinner, if you have a psychokinesis just throw someone as a sacrifice to the Darkling if you can, though if you go right after the darkling this doesn't help, as the other players will engage combat on their turn and likely die anyway, though if they have any death blocks, revivals or are an acrobat they will still stall him, if hes on a town engaging the monster instead of him is also an option as it will also drag him into the fight, just make sure not to kill the monster and just power up instead.
Your gear on the flip side is very easy to safeguard, just have 4 vanishes and you can ride out the entire thing unharmed, but since you cant attack anything during this time take care of ancillary things, such as restocking your supply of field magic and items, go to towns not yet taken by the Darkling and collect taxes and local items, and assuming the worst withdraw all taxes and local items in any castles you own, its also a good time to waste a few turns at the casino if you don't have a show ticket yet, and if you have cash to burn you can try for some high end gear by paying for 200,000 and even 500,000K spins, who knows you might get lucky and pull a super bounce or sun shield, even just a super spinner could be a great find, robbing shops is probably a good idea too since the darkling is probably just going to close them all anyway, and you might be able to get some nice field magic like vacuum or some revivals/death blocks or a guided warp, so long as you keep doing these little things you probably wont notice the darkling too much.
== Slaying The Darkling (added by Liro Raériyo) ==
=== Obstacles ===
Your main obstacles when trying to kill the Darkling are its massive health pool and inflated stats, normal means of damage are usually impossible until very late game, but plenty of methods exist to help navigate around these issues.
=== Battle Skills ===
The primary equalizer to the Darkling, They are either incredibly helpful or totally useless against the Darkling, but lets forget those useless ones and focus on what can actually help, in no particular order.
=== Overload ===
Increasing attack to be 3X its usual level is a great equalizer towards the end game, and the only time you would use it is in a risky fight, its downside of being a random chance for triple damage or half damage is pretty risky in normal circumstances, but you will probably die anyway. Its only really useful late game though when you have 300ish attack to actually increase to a level that can kill the Darkling.
=== Restrict ===
Sealing a random command from use can be a significant game changer, sealing Super Bounce while you have Banish or just sealing Attack while you have good defensive magic makes an impressive impact on how threatening you are to the Darkling, sadly not only is the skill that is sealed random, it only hits about half the time, however if you are extremely lucky, against an A.I. opponent if you seal both giga blaze and attack, they will use strike instead of delete meaning you can counter for a kill, a human player wont be that stupid though.
=== Pierce ===
Will probably take several attacks like this, but it does work, not so useful early game but late game an attack of 300 getting a +30% damage boost going uncontested against what is probably calculated as 1 defence can deal some horrific damage to the Darkling, but you need two Deathblocks to ensure each attack lands, though if you are exceptionally lucky or have a reveal, then a revival can work, you just have to go second so that you die, get back up use pierce, then go first next combat round before you get killed again and attack.
=== Debug ===
1 Health is great and all, but if you cant even deal 1 point of damage normally then debug is totally useless, however since field magic has a minimum damage of 1, while you might not be able to kill the Darkling, someone else can snipe him after your debug attack if they get lucky and land the magic, of course no one is going to get a nice juicy overlords crown, but hey a dead Darkling is always a good thing.
=== Decoy ===
While it doesn't directly help you kill the Darkling, having a minimum of 50% chance to avoid not only physical but magical attacks can be useful to stall a Darkling if that's all you can do, not dying and using a death block or revival half the time goes a long way, combined with acrobat and only 2-3 revivals can stall a darkling for 10 combat engagements easily, if hes on a town you don't even have to pick a fight with him, just target the monster and don't attack it, you might not kill the Darkling like this, but you sure killed his reign of terror.
=== Soul Fire ===
The simplest and most effective way to kill the Darkling, soul fire yourself to reach 999 damage, then attack until one of you is dead, preferably him, an effective trick is to hop into a town with a monster(preferably one that cant cast debuffs) and start buffing up, so long as you don't kill the monster you will stay at a steady 999, doing this makes it so the Darkling cant use come here without pulling you into the fight, with two death blocks you become too risky to engage, now granted the Darkling has to be stupid enough to come after you to begin with, a human player might not risk it but an A.I. player isn't that smart, they will gun for you as soon as they can land on you, and provided you get lucky to actually LAND a hit, you will kill him in one blow, though if its late game the Darkling might survive a single hit.
=== Play Dumb ===
Denying magic attacks from harming you while having a Binder shield can put a human darkling on edge very quickly, since they will want to end that fight ASAP yet you put them into a situation where they can only use delete safely, as any other action could get them killed, though i guess Giga Blaze could still be used, but since it doesn't do anything why bother?
=== Copy ===
Probably the only enemy copy is truly useful against consistently other then Robo-Sassin, also doesn't have a fail rate either, but you don't heal your health up to the opponents level so the Darkling will still likely one shot you right after, 3 or 4 death blocks though and you will probably pummel the Darkling into submission, just make sure you have a job matched weapon so you can get a 30% damage bonus, since the Darkling has no such bonus, you can dish out some serious pain.
Also, the Darkling auto counters your strike, but they don't auto magic defend your offensive magic. Against the CPU Darklings, you can use one of the stronger offensive magic, and it can probably kill them on spot. It's probably not as useful against Sneaky CPUs or human players (who will put up magic defense if they use the prediction and find that unblocked magic will kill them; however, this also allows basic attack to deal more damage) though. Also, since your SP is now the same as the Darkling after copying the stats, you can also hope that the Darkling's basic attack will miss and save you a revival or deathblock ---Added by Kurante-chan
=== Harden ===
Nullifying physical attacks and having strong defensive magic can annoy any human Darkling a lot, if that magic is bounce or super bounce prepare to lose your entire inventory until he destroys it, but its usually lethal against A.I. Darkling's since they wont use delete if they fear reprisal.
=== Escape (sorta...) ===
Okay so least useful and hardest to make effective battle skill that doesn't let you kill the Darkling in an obvious fashion, but its the only way to leave combat against a Darkling that doesn't involve outside forces or death, but it can actually be useful in fighting the Darkling, by escaping during the Darkling's turn, you can wait till your turn, where you can then cast magic then attempt to re-engage the Darkling before it can move again, now ideally you are doing this as a hero so you can use a crystal or spinner and magic as well, alternatively being a ninja lets you use two items per turn, so one buff/restoration item such as magic medicine or an elixir or even just a basic buff potion like Jesta then use a crystal/spinner to land on him again before he even knows whats up, even a magician can work here sorta, cast a debuff magic on him then psychokinesis the darkling onto the same space to force an engagement, or bring someone else onto the space if available since that will more likely land, and it gives you a good decoy to buy more time to cast magic against the Darkling.
All that said, hero is the best choice for this tactic, since you can use an item and magic, if you have a psychokinesis or two in your inventory then you can choose to either buff up with items or debuff the Darkling before re-engaging combat, and hero does have the largest inventory pool.
=== Jobs ===
The various field skills of each job are basically the same as battle skills, either totally useless or incredibly powerful, ill just list what can actually help, again in no particular order
=== Monk ===
Fire-up isn't too grand of an effect, granting at most 25% bonus to each stat at 1 health, chances are though that you will be at half health at some point fighting the darkling you have revivals so a bonus 12.5% to each stat isn't too bad, but its only really useful with other boosts helping out further such as magic medicine, but when magic medicine is in play its a noticeable and useful boost to be sure, and the extra max health makes it easier to take advantage of.
=== Acrobat ===
Despite the fact that its called a field skill, Play Dead's focus is exclusively combat, having a chance to straight up revive after getting killed can frustrate any Darkling a lot, and since the field skill triggers before using an actual revival you can use Play Dead to extend the value of your revivals. Death blocks trigger before revivals though, and dying still resets any buffs and debuffs you had going for you, so you actually need to be able to kill the darkling naturally, albeit slowly for this to have any bearing on the fight.
=== Alchemist ===
Suddenly duplicating an extra death block or revival in the middle of fighting the Darkling can certainly sway things in your favor, but what item gets duplicated you have no control over, and it happens infrequently enough that you cant rely on it, still its better then nothing. Debug is the skill that has that has high success rate ~70%. If you have 1-2 Death block/Revival that should be enough to activate the skill that reduce the Darkling hp to 1. After that you better hope that you have any attack/magic that can deal damage more than zero to Darkling. 
=== Cleric ===
The passive healing can be useful if you can survive three hits against the Darkling after using a magic medicine, healing occurs often enough that death blocks aren't consumed every time you get hit but the real problem is being strong enough to take three hits in the first place, since if you cant take three then half health is 1 shot territory, and that's what cleric heals up to naturally.
=== Warrior ===
Basic and to the point, +25% attack stat for a few turns randomly can make a difference when combined with soul fire or even just charge, but you have no control over its activation and its infrequent enough that you might be waiting a whole week just to take advantage of it.
=== Hero/Ninja/Magician ===
They all do very similar things, enable two items to be used in a turn, which two is dependant on the job but the results are roughly equivalent in the long run, all good choices to help prep a fight against the Darkling, but after that any other job would be better, if you happen to be right beside Dokapon Castle you might want to switch to monk and take soul fire after all that buffing/debuffing, assuming the Darkling is still going to be in range and be unable to heal, but thats only possible if you managed to land a blistered feet.
=== Notable Gear ===
A few pieces of gear are floating about in particular that makes fighting the darkling easier.
=== Binder /Metal Guard ===
2 best shields in the game as far as i'm concerned, might not block the most damage but its the only shield that lets you kill the Darkling with his own attack action, not common though, activation chance is around 10% to 12.5% from personal usage. Likely to have higher activation rate when facing bosses like Comacho, Overlord Rico, Rico Jr., Clonus. 
=== Sun Shield ===
The Sun Shield has a chance to heal to full health from using the defend action. It blocks more damage then Binder too, but unless you can survive at least one hit from the Darkling it doesn't mean much, seems to have about a 20% to 25% activation rate, but i haven't used it as much so that could just be luck.
=== Aura Fist ===
If you plan to fight the Darkling as a monk, the Aura Fist can certainly change the tide of that battle, has a chance to boost all stats by 25% when using the attack command, stats are buffed before the attack commences as well so you get that extra damage immediately, long with the extra speed to help ensure it hits and extra defence cause the Darkling doesn't die in one hit from regular attacks, activation rate seems to be as low as Binder though, at roughly 10% to 12.5%
=== Banish ===
If you have the revivals/death blocks to die by your own magic, banish can be a cheeky way to force the Darkling down to one health, if you can deal at least 1 damage normally to the Darkling or have a battle skill such as pierce you can squeeze by on just two death blocks/revivals to kill the Darkling with, but three or four would ensure it with little doubt, and hey if for whatever reason he doesn't decide to block banish, you kill the Darkling outright!
Category:Strategies