How to Build a Kick-ass Squad in Under 10 Hours in Soul Reaper
--
When people first see Soul Reaper’s combat system, they think it’s lacking strategy. It couldn’t be further from the truth. As you get further into the game, you’ll notice very interesting combinations of monsters and loot that, if used together, can yield incredibly satisfying results.
Building a kick-ass team
When trying to build a kick-ass squad, you have to think about at least the following:
Agility
The agility stat defines how quickly you act in combat. To keep things simple, if a monsters has an agility of 200 and another has 100, the one with 200 agility will act twice more frequently.
Some monsters have low inherent agility but deal a lot of damage. The opposite is true too.
In general, there’s good value in trying to increase agility for all your monsters. More on that below.
Row bonuses and Ability synergy (the core of it)
Each monster has a statistic that affects the other monsters who are also on the same row. As such, a good part of the strategy comes from putting the right monsters on the same row. Let’s use my top row as an example.
These monsters all deal wind-based damage. Now, let’s look at the row bonuses each monster provides:
Let’s analyze all this for a second:
- Galewyrm increases the damage of all the monsters in the row by 17%. That’s the bonus at level 17. It increases by 1% every level. At max level, the bonus is 200%!
- Ratapow increases the agility of all the monsters in the row by 26 at level 26. Remember how I said that it’s a good idea to increase agility of your monsters? That’s a great way to do it.
- Gorebark adds 260 wind damage per hit (per target). This applies to all monsters in the row. So, Gorebark deals 195 damage at her current level, but that’s not counting the bonus 260 wind damage. She then deals 455 wind damage. Ratapow then deals 582 wind damage. And Galewyrm then deals 332 wind damage (up from 72!).
The numbers above aren’t event the full picture because Galewyrm increases that by 17% at its current level. But again, that’s not all! Look at Ratapow’s ability.
Anything it hits has its wind resistance reduced by 50%, meaning they take even more damage from wind-based attacks after they were hit by Ratapow. And if you look at the target grid:
That means it hits anything in the same column as the targeted monster. So it applies to up to 3 monsters!
While this is pretty phenomenal, let’s explore how good the ability would be at different level brackets:
Between levels 50 and 99, the bonus gets doubled. Between levels 100 and 199, the bonus gets quadrupled. At max level, it gets insane. It now affects 2 columns, plus the bonus is now 400%. Any monster hit by the Ratapow now take 400% more wind damage!
Before you think he’s overpowered, let’s look at the others:
Galewyrm starts pretty weak but hits all targets. He’s perfect paired with Gorebark because it boosts its raw damage. The big purple number is the average damage it does per hit. Notice how it becomes a lot stronger than Ratapow. It also hits all targets. Now, combine this with its row bonus of 200% at max level. That number becomes 18K.
But let’s dream a little here. We didn’t take into account Gorebark’s row bonus. At level 200, it adds 2,020 wind damage. So it’s 8K times 3 = 24K. Now, imagine hitting monsters after they were attacked by Ratapow…
You basically deal 4x more damage. 24K x 4 = 96K. Not bad for a monster that starts by doing 7 wind damage!
So, there’s some really kick-ass synergy going on between those monsters.
This is only one of thousands of interesting combinations. We can’t wait to see what players will come up with!
Loot
You can use loot to amplify a statistic you want to focus on. In the case above, there’s good value in trying to increase the following stats with loot:
- Agility: takes turns more frequently.
- Wind Damage: Additional wind damage, affected by all of the monster’s bonuses.
- Wind Damage Bonus: You only deal wind damage so that’s great.
- Earth Resistance: Wind-based monsters take more damage from earth attacks.
- Life on hit: Every hit you give heals you back.
- Intelligence: Each point of intelligence increases you your wind damage by 1%.
- Vitality: Increases Health by 10 for each point. Increases survivability.
Equipping souls on loot
In the example above, I haven’t used it to my advantage, but I have for my Soul Reaper, in two different places:
Add a Nuttercutter soul to a piece of loot and you get 1 point of agility per level. Add a Tempiscis soul to a piece of loot and you get 1 point of vitality per level.
Add both on a weapon piece and you’ve got “soul gear”! Think of it like a Diablo 2 runeword. It’s a “recipe” of souls you put on a specific type of loot and it gives additional bonuses. In the following case, it adds wind damage and agility (see text in orange). The bonuses increase with any level of the two souls in the piece of loot.
Soul Gear can turn any regular loot into something epic. The recipe above is giving my Soul Reaper an extra 80 agility. He had 120 before, so that’s a massive gain!
Here’s another interesting combo:
The Shield Carapace’s legendary attribute makes it so the equipped soul ability has a chance to affect all monsters in combat. In the above example, there’s 15% chance that if I use the Gastroblast ability on my turn, it will affect all monsters instead of only one monster.
The Gastroblast’s ability is nothing to scoff at. Any monster it hits now has 50% chance of missing when attacking. Meaning, it deals ZERO damage. Imagine applying that to ALL monsters in a single hit now!
The Shield Carapace can turn any single target ability into an all-target ability. It can be quite powerful when used right!
These were the fundamentals of building a kick-ass team. Get inspired by my Galewyrm-Ratapow-Gorebark combo, but come up with your own ideas. Trust me, it’s not nearly the most powerful team you can get!
Using your kick-ass team
There are (at least) two main factors to using your team to maximum efficiency:
Attack range & enemy squad positioning
Be aware of the range each of your monster’s ability has. My team above has the following range:
Row 1:
- Galewyrm: ALL targets
- Ratapow: COLUMN targets
- Gorebark: ROW targets
Row 2:
- Vomitor: X targets (up to 5 when centered. He’s my main damage dealer)
- Portobellows: ALL targets (plus, poisons!)
- Buzzkill: SINGLE target (mainly using it for the Intelligence bonus and decent fire damage)
Row 3:
- Commandapanda: SINGLE target (hardest hitter)
- Jackoclops: SINGLE target (second hardest hitter)
- Volcadillo: ALL targets (mainly using it to deal fire damage to all, plus its great toughness)
Timeline
In the top-left corner of the combat screen, you can see who’s going to attack next (the timeline).
It looks like the first monster who’s going to attack is my Vomitor. This is the absolute perfect condition for it to act. Here’s exactly where I want to target before the turn starts:
Here’s why:
- The Vomitor’s ability deals damage in a X range/shape. This means it will also hit the Typhoonists above and the Cardinorcs below (all corners plus the center basically).
- The Vomitor’s ability deals earth-based damage, which is strong against wind-based monsters. Chances are, it will kill all 5 monsters right away.
What next? If all targets are indeed dead, I’d target the weakest of the two remaining monsters. Eliminate as many as possible as quickly as possible! :)
In this game a good offense is a damn good defense. The fewer monsters are against you, the less frequently you get attacked!
If the monsters are dead, I’d check the timeline for Ratapow’s or Gorebark’s turns. For Gorebark, I’d target a monster from the top or bottom rows. For Ratapow, I’d target the second column.
But that’s only a general rule. Sometimes, you’ll want to kill a monster instead to prevent it from taking a turn, even if it affects less monsters at once. It all depends on the situation!
So, is there strategy in Soul Reaper?
You bet!
The further along you get, the more strategic it gets.
If that intrigues you, please check out https://powerlevelstudios.com to download the Beta for free!
