Combat

This article explains the basics and particulars of combat. Combat occurs when you encounter a pest during a Subjugation, initiate a fight against a Raid Boss, run into the Ancient Pest in the Whaleship, and in other scenarios. The outcome of combat is largely determined by each character's Attribute, Stats, Skill, and Abilities.

## Flow of Battle

All battles are turn based. Either the player's team acts or the enemy's team acts. Most battles, excluding certain Missions, start with your party's team having the initiative. When all characters/enemies have acted, the opposing side begins their turn.

All characters (and some enemies) will use normal attacks with a chance to activate a Skill instead.

Your party's attacks will make the enemy drop Shine Crystals which will fill the Light Gauge. When the Light Gauge is filled, you can press the Unleash button to activate Solar Drive. The Solar Drive will fire off when the current acting side's turn ends.

## Attribute

Flower Knights and Pests have Attributes.

* Slash Attribute (斬属性)
* Blunt Attribute (打属性)
* Pierce Attribute (突属性)
* Magic Attribute (魔属性)
* General Purpose (汎用) (Seen in Whaleship Missions)
* No Attribute (Seen in Unique Missions)

Having the *same* Attribute as your enemy lets you hit their weakness, making your attacks deal 1.5x damage. Enemies cannot deal weakness damage to you. All flower knights and common pests/bosses have one of the first four Attributes.

   General Purpose-Attribute pests only appear in Whaleship Missions. They are weak to attacks from a General Purpose Whaleship. Flower knights will not encounter General Purpose-Attribute pests.

   No-Attribute pests only appear in Unique Missions and Whaleship Missions. Nothing can hit these enemies for weakness damage.

## Stats

There are three stats that affect the performance of a flower knight during battle: **HP**, **Attack Power** (攻撃力), and **Defense Power** (防御力). There is a fourth stat that is usually only important for Subjugations: **Speed** (移動力). The combat stats can be increased permanently and cheaply by boosting their affection with Gifts. The stats can also be permanently increased by undergoing Strengthening Synthesis with Ampules. Combat stats can also be increased with the majority of Equipment.

**HP** is Hit Points. When taking damage, HP is reduced. If HP goes to zero, the character will be knocked out of further battles. If either party's members lose all HP, the surviving team will win. A flower knight that loses all HP will only be gone for the duration of a Subjugation; there is no perma-death. HP is the largest stat in the game, so it strongly suggests the survivability of a flower knight.

**Attack Power** / 攻撃力, aka Attack, determines how much damage you do with attacks. It is the second largest stat in the game and Attack-affecting abilities are similarly large in numbers compared to other abilities, so Attack strongly determines the usefulness of a character.

**Defense Power** / 防御力, aka Defense, determines how much damage mitigation you can do. It is the smallest combat stat and has the least bearing on a flower knight's usefulness. Pests tend to have negligible Defense unlike flower knights and Aqua Shadows. High Defense increases your chance to Defend.

**Speed** / 移動力 determines how far a party moves in one turn during a Subjugation. Speed does not affect combat unless someone has an ability such as speed to attack conversion. A party's speed is simply the average speed of all characters in the party. Managing speed is important for making full clears.

**Overall Force** / 総合力, also called Total Power, is an estimation of a flower knight's strength. It is calculated as HP + Attack + Defense + Ampule boosts + affection boosts. Equipment does not factor into overall force unless you are looking at your *own* parties in Whaleship compositions.

## HP Restoration

Usually, HP restoration is not a big factor in the game because it is not something everyone can do. Moreover, HP is always maxed out when you start a subjugation or RB fight. You don't have to worry about HP outside of fights.

This is a list of methods of HP restoration.

* Characters using HP suction skills.
* Characters with the ability to heal randomly during each turn.
* Equipping the bracelet with the ability to heal randomly during each turn.
* Getting healed by a character with the ability to heal/revive party members after losing all HP.
* Running into a healing panel.
* Running into a pest nest panel with a party member whose ability causes healing when touching them.

## Defending

**Defending** (防御) is a random chance to further reduce damage you take. It is visible by a green shield that pops out when someone takes damage. To date, only flower knights and the Whaleship can Defend. Defending reduces damage by 20%. High Defense increases your chance to Defend, so boosting your Defense through means like Equipment, Ampules, and affection bonuses can subsequently make you Defend more often.

There are ways to increase your damage reduction when Defending above the normal cap of 20%. Giving a total of 100 Defense Ampules to a flower knight increases their damage reduction when defending by 10%. Abilities can increase the damage reduction during Defending by up to 20%. The abilities can include Promotion Abilities, ordinary Defense increasing abilities, and even Equipment abilities like those that come from Character Quests.

## Skill

A **Skill** / スキル is a special attack that your character will randomly use. It will have a damage multiplier which states how much more damage over a normal attack it does. This is the damage you can expect no matter how many damage numbers appear as the attack grinds the enemies.

Skill activation rates increase with the character's skill level which can be boosted through Strengthening Synthesis. Otherwise, abilities are the only other way to boost skill activation rates.

You can see what types of skills characters have from the Comprehensive Knight List or by using any of the following categories.

* Category:One target skill
* Category:Two target skill
* Category:All target skill
* Category:One target drain skill
* Category:Multi-hit skill
* Category:Remaining enemies-based damage skill

## Ability

An **Ability** (アビリティ) is a passive effect that bestows special effects to flower knights in or outside of battle. The rarity of the flower knight determines the number of abilities they can have and the effectiveness of those abilities. The number of and effectiveness of abilities can improve with Evolution and Blooming.

Also see Ability Lookup and Ability Particulars.

## Solar Drive

Attacking enemies makes them drop shine crystals which fills the **light gauge / 光ゲージ**. Anywhere between 100% and 300%, you can activate **Solar Drive**. If you click the button while abilities are being displayed, Solar Drive will fire before anyone takes the first turn.

The damage formula is something like the following (source: Japanese Wiki).

[ (Overall Force of your parties) / (10 \* Number of your own parties [1 ~ 4]) - (enemy's defense / 4) ] \* [1.01 + 0.01 \* (Number of your own parties [1 ~ 4]) ] \* (Ability Multiplier)

The helper's overall force is not used in this formula, but that team's abilities that affect Solar Drive multipliers will work if they are fighting.

## Critical

Critical strikes are random boosts to damage. You can get up to 80% crit rate with ability boosts. Crits deal 1.5x more damage and can stack with weakness damage multiplicatively. Ordinarily, weakness damage is 1.5x damage, so weak x crit deals 2.25x more damage. The Whaleship deals 2.0x weakness damage, so weak x crit deals 3.0x more damage.

Crits are calculated on a per-enemy basis, so skills that hit multiple enemies may crit some enemies, but not the rest (see example screenshot).

    In the past, skills that hit "all" enemies could not crit at all, but this is no longer a problem. The old circumstance put Lupin in an awkward position since she had a crit rate boosting ability and an "all" targeting skill. Also in the past, crit was unable to stack with weakness damage, so characters either did 1.5x weak damage or 1.5x crit damage but not both.

## Damage Calculation

This info comes directly from the Japanese Wiki.

[ (Attack Power x Attack Abilities + Equipment Portion) / 2 - Enemy's Defense / 4] \* RNG \* Weakness Multiplier \* Critical Damage Adjustment \* Skill Multiplier

RNG is between 0.95 ~ 1.05. Everything beyond decimal points are thrown away. The lowest amount of damage is 1.

The exception is that if the skill does *not* target *all* enemies, or the skill's damage is based on affection, then after the minimum damage of 1, the skill's multiplier is tacked onto the damage.