House of The Know-It-All Ducks

> *"Admission to learn is free!"*
>
>

Located on the southern side of Capital Sequoia, The House of The Know-It-All Ducks is likely one of the first buildings a player will enter upon arrival. Talking to the NPCs within will explain the different game systems. The building has two floors. The base level has the knowledge generally useful for all adventurers. The Upper level can be reach from outside by jumping across the rooftops to the right of the school and into the left side of the blue-roofed building, or down the chimney.

All information found on this page can be found in-game at that location.

## Fundamentals

The Base level provides the following information

### Attributes

In addition to increasing the power of associated abilities, most attributes have at least one other passive effect.

#### Strength

Increasing Strength will increase Defense Pierce. As such, abilities which scale off Strength will naturally be strong against enemies with high Defense.

#### Vitality

Increasing Vitality will grant a bonus to your Defense. The bonus is multiplicative, so high Vitality compliments high Defense. Vitality also helps reduce the amount of damage taken from damage per turn status effects like Poison and Burn.

#### Dexterity

Increasing Dexterity will increase Crit Chance and Crit Damage.

#### Agility

Increasing Agility will increase Accuracy and Evasion. Agility is one of the only attributes that gives both a defensive and offensive bonus.

#### Mind

Increasing Mind will increase Resistance Pierce. As such, abilities which scale off Mind will naturally be strong against enemies with high Resistance.

#### Spirit

Increasing Spirit will grant a bonus to your Resistance. The bonus is multiplicative, so high Spirit compliments high Resistance. Spirit also helps increase the amount of healing received from healing-per-turn status effects like Regen and Chakra.

#### Speed

Speed affects your base Turn Time. Higher Speed will give you a lower Turn Time, allowing you to act more frequently.

#### Luck

Increasing Luck will help reduce your streaks of misses, missed crits, and failed status applications. Luck will also help you get lucky dodges, get critted less often, and avoid hostile status applications. Furthermore, Luck will help you do more damage when your attacks have Variance.

### Turn Time

#### What is Turn time?

Turn Time (also known as TT) is the amount of time you must wait between each turn.

In battle, each fighter has a number that equals to their TT. Between turns, each fighter's number decrements until someone's number hits zero. When it hits zero, that fighter gets to take their turn. After their turn is done, the number is once again set to their TT.

During battle, you can check the amount until anyone's next turn by navigating to the right from the command menu.

#### Turn Time: Speed

A party member's Turn Time is based on the Speed attribute. The higher their Speed, the lower their Turn Time, and thus more turns they get.

#### Turn Time: Status Effects

Don't forget: if a status or equipment has the effect of lowering your Turn Time, that is a good thing! Similarly, a status which increases your Turn Time makes you act slower. That is not a good thing.

#### Battle's First Turn

For the very first turn of battle against monsters, all monsters have a small penalty of a bit more Turn Time and all party members have a bonus of a bit less Turn Time. This difference is to allow the party a bit of leeway to set up a strategy before getting attacked by the monsters. This bonus, however, does not apply during PvP battles.

#### Charge Time

Charge Time (also known as CT) is just like TT, except it applies to how long it takes to use an ability. An ability which costs CT is not used right away. Instead, when the ability is selected, a countdown is set equal to the ability's CT. When it hits zero, that fighter finally gets to use the ability. Afterwards, their turn ends and their TT Counter resets.

If an ability's CT is low enough, you may have noticed you usually get to use it right away anyway. But don't forget that even in this case, you still need to wait longer for your next turn.

*Note: The Order Window on bottom of the screen will display when your abilities will complete.*

### Damage-per-Turn

#### Damage/Healing-per-turn Status Effects

Damage-per-turn status effects, like Poison and Burn, deal damage to you at the start of each turn while they are applied. They cause damage based on a percentage of your maximum HP.

There are also healing-per-turn status effects, like Regen, that work the same way except they heal you for a percentage of your maximum HP.

#### Damage-per-turn Resistance

Damage per turn based on a percentage of maximum HP sounds extremely powerful against bosses, since their have large HP pools. Unfortunately, almost all bosses have a natural resistance to damage-per-turn status effects. You can verify this for yourself the next time you fight a boss by opening the enemy's info window.

#### Attribute Modifications

Vitality will increase your resistance to damage-per-turn status effects that have been applied to you. Spirit will increase the effect of healing-per-turn status effects that are applied to you.

### Percentages

When an ability or status description says it adds or subtracts a stat by a percent, the result is additive. When an ability of status description says that is provides "more" or "less" percent of a stat, the result is multiplicative.

For example, if you have 50% crit chance and you equip something that says "Crit Chance: +20% ", your crit chance becomes 70%. But if you have 50% crit chance and you equip something that says "Crits are given 20% more often", your crit chance becomes 60%.

Furthermore, when stacking bonuses, all flat bonuses are applied first, followed by all additive bonuses, and lastly all multiplicative bonuses.

### Miscellaneous Notes

#### The Favorites menu

Press the Favorites button (by default, XBOX: "X"/PS:"Square"/PC:"F") to bring up the favorites menu. You can customize which items appear in your favorites menu by highlighting them in the main Items Menu or Tools Menu and pressing the Favorites Menu button.

#### Flame Respawning

For a flame to respawn, you must both leave the current region AND go far enough away from its spawn point. So switching regions isn't enough to make a flame respawn if the flame's spawn point is still nearby.

Also, needless to say, boss flames don't respawn. Once you kill a boss, it's gone for good.

#### Accelerated LP

The first handful of LP you learn for a Class are earned faster than normal, allowing you to get your first few abilities for a Class somewhat quickly. You can take advantage of this and swap Classes often to earn a variety of abilities and passives.

#### Vicarious LP

When a party member earns any LP for a Class after battle, all the other party members get a bit of LP for the Class too. Essentially, 10% of any LP earned for a class is given to all other party members too for free, as a bonus. This works even if you are not the same class.

#### Elemental Defenses

Most monsters have at least one kind of elemental weakness or resistance. You can check them out for yourself in battle by pressing left from the command window.

#### Gold Loss on Defeat

Upon defeat or giving up a battle, you drop a bit of Gold. The amount your drop is equal to the amount of Gold that would be rewarded by the remaining monsters. However, the amount you drop is capped. The cap is based on you party's average level. So if you run into some super high level monsters, you don't need to worry about going bankrupt. There is also another cap: you'll never drop more than 10% of you current gold.

Lastly, you'll never drop anything if you lose to or give up versus a boss.

### Threat

#### What does Threat do?

Threat determines which of your party members a monster will try to attack. During battle, each party member has their own unique Threat value for each of the monsters. A monster will target whichever party member is the highest Threat value for them.

#### Threat: Damage

Damaging a monster will increase the attacking party member's Threat for that monster. The amount of Threat generated is exactly equal to the amount of damage dealt.

For example, if a party member deals 100 damage to a monster, then that party member generates 100 Threat for the attacked monster.

#### Threat: Healing

When a party member uses a healing ability they might generate Threat. You only generate Threat for a monster when healing the party member which is that monster's current top Threat target. The amount of Threat generated depends on how much Threat the party member you're healing already has. To put it precisely, take the percentage of maximum HP that was healed: this is the percentage of the target party member's Threat which will be generated for the user.

For example, let's say a party member has 100/200 HP, has generated 100 Threat for monster A, 200 Threat for monster B, and this party member was the top Threat for both. If they are healed for 50 HP, then the party member that healed them would generated 25 Threat for monster A and 50 Threat for monster B.

#### Threat: Missing HP

While a party member is at for below 50% maximum HP, they will generate threat for every monster automatically at the start of each of that party member's turns. The Threat generated automatically is equal to 50% of the party member's missing HP.

For example, while a party member has 50/200 HP, this will generate 75 Threat for each monster at the start of their turns. On the other hand, while a party member has 125/200 HP, they will not automatically generate any threat at the start of their turn.

#### Threat: Decay

At the start of each monster's turn, their Threat value for each party member will naturally decrease by 20%.

For example, if a party member has generated 200 Threat for a monster, it will reduce to 160 Threat at the start of that monster's next turn. And then, a start of that monster's following turn, it will reduce to 128 Threat, and so on. Notice that the more Threat a party member has generated, the faster it will decay.

### AP Accumulation

#### What is AP?

Certain abilities need AP to be used. It always resets at the start of battle and you must accumulate it as you need it.

#### On Battle Start

AP always resets to zero at the start of each battle. There are some passives and equipment which make you begin battle with a bit of AP, but they are rare.

#### On Turn Start

AP will increase by 6 at the start of each turn. Keep an eye out for passives or equipment which increase this amount.

#### On Damage Given

AP will increase by 6 when you deal damage with the Attack command. Even if using a regular attack isn't your most powerful option, it can be very useful to build AP.

#### On Damage Taken

AP will increase by 6 each time you take any physical damage. As long as your enemies are dealing physical damage, your tanks are going to get a lot of AP!

#### Other Ways.

Some Spells and abilities exist solely to help accumulate AP. This kind of magic can be very useful when given to physical damage dealers.

### Weapons

#### Swords

Swords are the most well-rounded type of weapon. They can be either one-handed or two-handed. One-handed swords are usually weak compared to other weapons, but they leave the other hand open to equip a shield.

#### Axes

Axes are usually stronger than swords, but tend to have variance in their damage. They are very strong if you have lots of luck!

#### Daggers

Daggers are a little bit weak, but they usually come with more crit damage and other effects that make them worth using.

#### Rapiers

Rapiers are duelist's weapons. They tend to provide increased crit chance

#### Katanas

Katanas are a rare and mysterious type of weapon. They are typically stronger than swords, but difficult to use.

#### Spears

Spears are two-handed but they usually have defensive bonuses attached to them, like a shield would. When compared to holding a sword and shield, they are a little stronger, but a little less defensive.

#### Scythes

Scythes usually provide either defense pierce or resistance pierce. Even magic users can benefit from equipping one!

#### Bows

Bows provide lots of power at the cost of low accuracy. Characters with high agility make best use of them.

#### Staves

Staves deal the most damage out of the magical weapons and tend to have effect which benefit healers.

#### Wands

Wands are weak when used to attack but they tend to have effect which benefit magic damage dealers.

#### Books

Books are very weak when used to attack, but they tend to provide MP. Both healers and Magic damage dealers can make good use of them.

## Additional Learning

The second level provides the following information.

### Advanced Concepts

#### Defense vs. Resistance

If an ability is a "basic attack", a "Weapon skill", or a weapon type skill (for example, "Dagger skill"), then the damage it deals will consider the target's Defense.

If an ability is "magic" (that is, the ability has "magic" in its description), then damage it deals will consider the target's Resistance.

If an ability is neither a weapon skill nor magic (for example, Chi Burst), then damage is deals will ignore the target's Defense/Resistance entirely.

If an ability is a healing ability, then it will ignore the target's Defense/Resistance regardless of whether the ability is physical or magical.

There are some exceptions to these rules, but such exceptions are always listed in the ability's description.

#### Damage Categories

There are several different categories of damage: "Physical Damage", "Magical Damage", "Damage", and "Healing". When a status effect, passive or piece of equipment increases or decreases a specific category of damage, it might pay off to understand explicitly which abilities are affected.

"Physical Damage" refers to damage (not healing) dealt by any ability that is a "basic attack", a "Weapon skill", or a weapon type skill (for example, "Dagger skill").

"Magical Damage" refers to damage (not healing) dealt by any ability that is "magic". That is, the ability has "magic" in its description.

"Healing" refers to healing given by any ability that heals, regardless of weather the ability is physical or magical.

"Damage" refers to damage dealt by any ability that is not a healing ability, regardless of whether it is physical or magical.

"Damage/Healing" refers to all damage or healing of any kind.

#### Physical Stats

Each party member has their own Crit. Chance and Crit. Damage stats. These stats only apply to physical abilities. That is, any ability that is a "basic attack", a "Weapon skill", or a weapon type skill (for example, "Dagger skill"). If a physical ability has its own Crit. Chance or Crit. Damage stats, they stack additively with the user's own Crit. Chance and Crit. Damage.

If a non-physical ability has its own Crit. Chance or Crit. Damage stats, then those are the final values, and they will not be changed by the user's own Crit. Chance and Crit. Damage.

#### Crit. Damage Bonus

When a piece of equipment provides Crit. Damage Bonus, this amount is flat damage added to any attack that lands as a crit. This bonus damage does not take into account your Crit. Damage Percent, but it is also not reduced by the target's Defense.

For example, let's say you have a Crit. Damage Percent of 50%, and Crit. Damage Bonus of 25, and you land a crit using an attack that deals 100 damage. First, without Crit. damage Bonus, your attack will deal 150 damage. This will be reduced by the target's Defense, perhaps down to something like 110. And then your Crit. Damage Bonus will be added to it, resulting in 135 damage. The final result, however, will take into account things like increased or reduced Physical Damage due to status effects.

#### Crit. Resist

Crit. Resist reduces the amount of damage taken from attacks that land as critical hits. The amount of damage reduced is equal to a percent of the different between a normal hit and a critical hit.

For example, if an attack would do 100 damage normally, and 200 damage as a critical hit, then having 50% Crit. Resist would reduce the amount of crit damage taken from this attack to 150. Having 100% Crit. Resist essentially makes critical hits hurt just the same as normal hits.

#### Variance Stacking

When you equip so much Variance that it exceeds 100%, you cannot deal negative damage. Your base is 0, but you have no limit to how high you can go. That means that once you start getting you Variance up past 100% it becomes more optimal.

### The Order Window

When an enemy is charging an attack or ability, you can see what they're charging and how much damage it will do via the Order window. You can access the Order window by pressing to the Right while selecting a command. If you have a specific ability highlighted while viewing the Order window, it will slot the ability into the list to show you exactly when the ability will be executed.

### Guaranteed Hits vs. Misses

There exist several statuses and passives which have the effect of granting either guaranteed hits or guaranteed misses. You should know that if an attack is somehow both guaranteed to hit and guaranteed to miss at the same time, the guaranteed miss will take priority and the attack will not hit.

Also, the same rule applies to calculating guaranteed crits and crit immunity. That is, if an attack is both guaranteed to crit and guaranteed to not crit at the same time, the attack will not crit.