these are adapted only very slightly from my personal notes and so this is kind of messy and not very easy to follow, sorry.

Basic Strategy:

Always pick the safe route.

Usual Character Choices:

Support: Kyle, Lead: Boron Support: Chick, Lead: Hack Support: Sheena (mostly), Lead: (Whoever is Currently The Best Armour Piercing)

Explanation:

Immediately raise Kyle and Boron’s affinity to Level 10. At level 10, Kyle’s support increases accuracy by 50%, this guarantees Boron a 100% hitrate as long as he uses a skill. Use the strongest all-target available to you to quickly wipe groups of enemies, including aerial opponents.

When you get Chick and Hack in Chapter 3, immediately raise their affinity to Level 10. Chick’s support lowers the cost of skills by 3SP, this causes Hack’s “Burning Trigger” to only cost 2SP. You will be using Burning Trigger nearly exclusively, so this is very helpful. Burning Trigger gets stronger the more times it’s used in a row, after 3 uses, it deals 178% damage, this effect persists between rounds, battles, intermissions and Hack being put in reserve, as long as Hack doesn’t use anything other than Burning Trigger, he will always be doing 178% damage. This is very strong if you can successfully commit to it.

Final space you will be using whichever character is your best armour-piercer 90% of the time (except Kyle since he’s with Boron) with Sheena in support to help with the amount of SP that Boron/Hack are going to eat. This will be Mei until Sheena learns Piercing Shot 2, whereupon you’ll use her as your lead until you obtain Britz and then him until the end of the run (except Chapter 11 when Britz leaves, you will be forced to revert back to Sheena for this).

You will have rare but non-zero occasion to swap Jin and Chick into lead roles when presented with large groups of grounded enemies, it happens a few times towards the end of the game, Electro Mines + Black Ground will make quick work of these encounters.

When Boron and Kyle’s affinity is maxed, raise the affinity of Malt and Mei and use Mei to strip armour, since Kyle is assisting Boron. Mei will be used for this purpose for about half the run. Malt will also sometimes be tagged in for those times where you need a third cannon.

When Sheena is obtained, raise her affinity with Mei, Sheena’s support ability at level 10 restores 3SP per regular attack which helps with meter economy since Hack is burning off 2SP every single time he moves. Sheena will eventually learn Piercing Shot 2 and at that point it is more ideal to use her in the active position to strip armour, Mei never learns Piercing Shot 2.

When Britz is obtained, you should raise his affinity with Sheena to level 10 for the same reason and use Britz as your armour stripper. Britz will leave after Chapter 10 so you’ll have to fall back on Sheena, Mei is semi-redundant at this stage.

Your final two sacrifices are arbitrary and can be whoever you want.

Thus, your core six party members are: Kyle, Boron, Chick, Hack, Sheena, Britz Mei and Malt are generally useful but fall off towards the end. Everyone else is superfluous and they will be sacrificed to skip the longer boss fights except Jin who manages to be just mediocre enough to not be worth killing, I think. Thus, your general sacrifice order is going to be something like: Socks, Hanna, Wappa, Mei, Malt

On chapters where you do not plan to use a sacrifice, try and save your Link Attacks for the boss fight to end them rapidly.

Ch1-2: access upgrade menu before spending all AP or you break the game lol

Chapter 1: No Sacrifice Chapter 2: No Sacrifice

During chapter 1/2 , you should increase Kyle/Boron’s affinity to 10. Afterwards spend AP in this general order of priority: Upgrades Scrap fishing to get parts for upgrades When the above have hit level 5 in all categories, increase Malt/Mei’s affinity (possibly redundant)

Chapter 3: No Sacrifice

Don’t skip first forced ruins you need the Crystal Dust for Reactor Upgrades (may need to repeat a couple of times if you don’t get enough the first time, twice is usually ok, three times is unlucky)

At this point, AP is largely going to be spent making Hack and Boron sleep to continually feed XP into them. You want Boron to hit Level 30 as soon as is reasonably possible, because Megaton Blast is strong and fast and you want Hack to hit Level 10 (?) ASAP to learn Burning Trigger.

Chapter 4: Sacrifice Socks Chapter 5: Sacrifice Hanna

Note: Sacrificed characters XP can be reclaimed at a rate of about half if you go to the soul cannon compartment during an intermission. Feed these to Boron.

Chapter 6: no sacrifice

After acquiring Britz, rush Level 10 Affinity on Sheena and Jin (don’t know what the minimum here is for his survival, would rather like to figure it out but you’re gonna get Level 10 affinity either way. (two level 10s and one level 2 worked so that seems like a good baseline)

When no affinity needs to be raised, just have Boron/Hack sleep to rush higher levels.

Chapter 7: Sacrifice Wappa Chapter 8: Do the forced ruins, it contains Blueprints for Level 3 Workshop, no sacrifice Chapter 9: Sacrifice Mei Chapter 10: Sacrifice Malt Chapter 11: use Piercing, Risky and White Ammo on boss Chapter 12: Use Flame Ammo on red rotating top dudes as they are very weak to it