Spoiler-free gameplay tips for Chroma Quaternion

[Victar]

Here's some spoiler-free gameplay tips for Chroma Quaternion, learned during my playthrough on the highest difficulty of Expert. As usual, there will be no story details and no details about specific boss fights.

It's my (perhaps somewhat disappointing) opinion that, especially in the early game, Expert difficulty is balanced around Shop purchases. It's not quite as blatant as in games like Alphadia Neo (where Shop purchases unlock physical and magical damage boosts up to 100%), but it's still very noticeable when the party struggles to kill random encounters and a soft level cap reduces the effectiveness of level grinding. In the early game, the best value Shop purchases are Storehouse keys, just to get equipment that enables the party to progress.

Once daily missions to earn Shop currency become available, the One-Step Boots are a "must-have" purchase to quickly force encounters with each step. Since equipment can't be marked as "Favorites" in Chroma Quaternion, I recommend turning the One-Step Boots into a One-Step Ring, so that they can't be accidentally consumed when strengthening rings.

One inexpensive Shop purchase that has more value than might be obvious is additional weapon/armor storage slots. This is because upgrading rings can't be done piecemeal - the player must feed the ring enough weapons and armor to raise it to the next level all at once, or else the ring can't be upgraded. More storage space means that the player can more easily amass enough cheap, store-bought weapons and/or armor to upgrade rings.

In the midgame and late game, Shop purchases that increase role experience (not regular experience) or increase Arena currency are valuable. Arena currency is especially important because the Arena shop sells stat boosters.

Autobattling the highest Bronze cup of the Arena costs only a minimal amount of gold, and is a very fast way to grind Arena currency and replenish the party's summon meter. If you don't want to overdo the Arena stat booster grind (or just find it boring), then save the summon meter for major boss fights, autobattle in the Arena to get the summon meter back, use the Arena currency to buy stat boosters, then progress to the next boss fight and repeat. The Secret Arena (in the Arena's basement) trivializes stat grinding, but isn't available until the postgame.

One of the reasons why Expert is so hard in the early game is because the party has very few buffing or debuffing abilities, and the ones they do have are on long cooldowns. So, don't hold back on using items, especially when fighting bosses!

Items that buff the party, debuff the enemy, or destroy the enemy's Act Orbs (very important to keep the enemy from taking multiple turns in a row to obliterate the party) are absolutely vital to surviving the early to midgame, and if the player runs out, then they can easily farm more items from the Arena.

The party's damage and defense goes up when the party has their own Act Orbs. It's generally better to just sit on Act Orbs instead of using them for extra turns, unless the party needs extra turns to heal or to quickly finish off an enemy. The exception is when the party is fighting an enemy that can steal the party's Act Orbs, but enemies like that are uncommon.

There is no weapon fusion system in Chroma Quaternion, so the bonuses on weapons and armor can't be changed. The bonus on weapons purchased from stores or won from enemies is tied to the party's level. So, the only way to get weapons or armor with higher bonuses is raise the party's level (which is limited by a soft cap on experience).

Early game Storehouses have weapons strong enough to actually kill things, plus a few potent stat boosters that go a long way toward surviving the early game, especially before the party can farm the Arena. Late in the game, one storehouse has the Tyrant Lapis, an utterly overpowered weapon for the party's best physical damage dealer that will keep their Attack buffed 2 ranks at all times. (The Tyrant Lapis should eventually be turned into a ring, to gain the benefit of the Attack buff along with a stronger weapon.)

As usual, concentrating most or all stat boosters on one character is vital to surviving Expert, because only a stat-boosted character will be able to kill random encounter enemies in one turn. Ark is probably the best choice because he learns some of the strongest attacks, plus a few very good support skills (high Speed will enable him to cast those skills more often). The attack Levan Horsa (obtained from refining a role - sorry, I don't remember which) gives Ark an extra turn when it's used to kill an enemy, so if Ark is fast enough to go first and strong enough to one shot small enemies with Levan Horsa, that will make random encounters go much more smoothly.

Ark starts with only physical attacks and starts learning magical attacks about 1/4 of the way through the game. This isn't really a problem, just something to be aware of. Ark can use the first summon that the party learns as a magic attack, before he gets his own magic attacks.

Whether Ark is your main damage dealer or not, give him the N---- W-------- role (I'm obscuring the name on purpose) in the first slot as soon as possible. He will learn this role automatically, as part of the story. The first slot activates a special effect unique to each role, and the N---- W------- special effect is "cannot be surprised by enemies". This will save the party from sudden obliteration in any area where random encounters pose a threat. Bosses can't surprise the party (or be surprised), so this role can be switched out when Chroma Quaternion warns the player of an upcoming boss fight.

If you're playing the Steam, Playstation, or Xbox version of Chroma Quaternion, you will run into a few Achievements/Trophies that require an absurdly high number of steps taken. You can cheeze these by getting on the air vehicle (obtained fairly late in the game), using a rubber band to tilt your controller's analog stick, and doing something else for up to 60 minutes.