Arcana

**Arcana** are cards that have been traced with preset spells and imbued with a refined form of raw chaos that allow for quick and easy casting of spells.

## Arcana versus free casting

Directly manipulating chaos to produce spells is difficult and time-consuming, and involves intense focus and precise gestures, but allows more flexibility as to what the effect is.

Arcana have preset spells imbued into them, and wizards can instantly create their stored effects by simply channeling their magic through the card. Arcana are generally created with a specific element and spell effect in mind, and don't allow much, if any, flexibility in their effect.

In the fast-paced and stressful environment of the chaos trials, free-casting is impossible, so competitors must rely on the Arcana that they have brought with them and found along the way.

## Elements

Each arcana is associated with an element; Fire, Water, Earth, Air, or Lightning, each of which has its own properties, strengths, and weaknesses. An element deals more damage to and takes less damage from its strength, and the reverse for its weakness. These can be seen in the table below:

Or for simplicity: Fire > Air > Earth  >  Lightning  > Water > Fire, each element being weak to the one on its left, and vice versa.

Elemental enemies are also strong against their own elements (e.g. Freiya takes less damage from water).

Elemental attacks deal -20% damage to targets of the same elemental type, +20% damage to targets that are weak to that element, and -10% damage to targets that are strong to that element.

### Chaos Arcana

Chaos arcana are an extremely rare and powerful type of arcana. Few wizards are capable of using them, and even fewer can create them. The **head** of the Magical Council is the only known person capable of crafting chaos arcana, and they are only given out as awards for completing the trials. Due to their rarity, details of their effects remain a mystery at the time of the museum exhibit. In gameplay, they are always treated as enhanced. More than half of them are signatures, a much larger proportion than with the other elements.

## Types of Arcana

There are four different of Arcana: Basic, Dash, Standard, and Signature. You can choose one of each for your starting hand.

**Basic Arcana** are fast, fairly low damage Arcana. If you're not sure what else to do or your other Arcana are on cooldown, it's probably a good idea to use your Basic Arcana. Some builds opt to use their other Arcana and gear mainly to supplement for the Basic Arcana, maximizing its effectiveness by boosting its DPS, using it to trigger additional effects, and drawing and keeping enemies within the area of the Basic Arcana.

**Dash Arcana** allow you to cross distances quickly, dodging attacks and crossing pits. The starting Dash Arcana,  Air Burst, has no additional effects unless enhanced, but other Dash Arcana can trigger additional effects when used. While these effects may have a cooldown, the dash move itself can be used with fairly little downtime.

**Standard Arcana** are the most common, and unique in that you can have add more to your hand after starting a run instead of just swapping them out, accumulating up to three in your hand. They are great for creating synergies with your other arcana and even each other, and are essential to a good strategy.

**Signature Arcana** are in many ways similar to Standard Arcana- In fact, all Signature Arcana have a Standard variant which automatically unlocked when the signature version is- but with the ability to be charged by attacking enemies, dealing significantly more damage and additional effects when fully charged. Don't be shy about using your Signature Arcana without a charge, however; fully charging your signature instantly ends its cooldown, allowing you to use it immediately. Signature charge will be lost over time when not attacking enemies, and there are a number of effects that can increase or reduce the power of your Signature Arcana. The Standard and Signature versions of any given Arcana cannot be equipped simultaneously. Signature Arcana are enhanced by default and cannot be acquired in the trials, but they *can* be unlocked by defeating council members.

## Projectile and Melee Arcana

Arcana can generally be split into two categories: Projectile and Melee arcana.

When two projectiles collide, the game will reduce both projectile's damage by the other's damage. If the damage of the projectile after collision is less than ten, it's destroyed. As an example, if you have 2 projectiles, one with 5 damage, and one with 10 damage, and they collide, the first one will be reduced to -5 damage, and be destroyed. The second projectile will be reduced to 5 damage, and also be destroyed. This damage reduction stays even after the two particles have finished the collision. If one isn't destroyed in the collision, it will continue on with the reduced damage.

The Flak Gauntlet makes all melee arcana automatically destroy projectiles, regardless of their damage.

There are a few arcana that are special and don't fit into either of these categories, such as Bolt Rail, which is neither projectile nor melee.

These categories are also responsible for item effects being applied, such as the Dark Katana, which only affects melee arcana.