Aurory Tactics - Battle Guide ⚔️
Do you want to get some reps in on the battlefield? Here’s what you should know!
If you prefer a video tutorial, you can check out this quick guide on how to play Tactics from one of our ambassadors, Rafikey Aurory:
Aurory Tactics is now open to everyone! You can even play without a wallet thanks to our innovative inventory system known as SyncSpace! For more information on this, see our SyncSpace article. We invite you to have a look at our Code of Conduct as well; any player that is flagged for prohibited behavior won’t get any rewards.
Visit our game dashboard and simply click on ‘‘Play Tactics’’ to launch the game. You can use our social login options or sign in with a Solana (SPL) wallet like Phantom. You’ll get a popup with a signature request if you are using a wallet; sign it to proceed. Before you can battle it out against other players in the arena, you’ll have to complete the in-game tutorial.
Note: loading the game for the first time can take a bit longer.
The Basics
You and your opponent select a team of three Nefties. Currently, players can use on-chain Nefties hatched through the egg incubator or bought from our marketplace, and off-chain Nefties with basic stats that are available in the game (or a mix of both).
The objective of battles is simple: knock out your opponent’s three Nefties before they defeat yours.
The Battlefield
The battlefield usually consists of two camps of 7x7 squares for each player, connected by a “neutral” 7x3 area in the middle. The size and shape of the field can vary depending on the game mode.
The battlefield will contain scattered walls and missing cells, impacting mobility. Some Nefties will be able to jump or fly over these obstacles; others will have to go around them.
There will also be a Battle-Royale style Danger Zone to encourage confrontation between opponents. After a while, cells on the sides will become dangerous to Nefties, dealing serious damage. The effect will progressively spread to other cells, slowly reducing the available battlefield.
Private Matches
Tactics is a whole lot more competitive with private matches! Simply enter the same battle code as an opponent to be queued up against each other.
Special Cells
Special cells are grid cells that have an effect on any Neftie that moves or stands on them.
Hype Cells
They are indicated by the flame symbol and provide a set number of hype points (usually one) to any Neftie standing on them at the end of its turn.
Healing Cells
They are indicated by the heart symbol and give a set amount of HP to any Neftie standing on them at the end of its turn.
Bumper Cells
They are indicated by arrows and will instantly push a Neftie in a set direction for a set distance, interrupting any ongoing action.
Neftie Attributes
Health
The amount of damage a Neftie can take before being knocked out.Physical Force
The amount of damage a Neftie can deal when using physical attacks.Physical Defense
The amount of damage a Neftie can block from physical attacks.Ether Force
The amount of damage a Neftie can deal when using ethereal attacks.Ether Defense
The amount of damage a Neftie can block from ethereal attacks.Movement Range
The number of cells your Neftie can move during each turn.Initiative
Reduces ability time costs, and decides the starting order of Nefties.
Neftie Abilities
A Neftie has six abilities: the Passive ability, the Basic Attack, and four Special abilities. They allow Nefties to perform actions with various effects during combat.
The “Passive” ability is an automatic ability that can have a major impact on how a Neftie is played, being an advantage, a constraint, or a bit of both. Understanding your Neftie’s Passive ability is often a major factor being efficient with it.
The “Basic Attack” is mostly based on Physical Force, but also uses a bit of Ether Power. This ability will deal a low-damage physical blow (melee or long range), but it raises the hype.
“Special” abilities are some of the most important aspects that will round out your elite Neftie squad. They are a set of various tools that will allow your Neftie to do its job in an effective way. Each Neftie has a set of four Special abilities that allow them to do more specialized moves at the cost of Hype points.
While some of these abilities may be purely for dealing more damage, most of the time, they come with a more interesting utility aspect, such as healing or pushing other Nefties around to disrupt the enemy formation.
Special abilities are key to winning a battle. Using the right one at the right time can completely change a situation in your favor. However, a misused ability could turn out to be more detrimental to your team than your opponent’s.
While most Special abilities are instantly used, there are a couple of exceptions:
Reactions are abilities you secretly “switch on” during your turn, and that will trigger during the enemy turn if the conditions are met. A common example of a reaction is “dodge” to avoid an incoming attack.
Reactions are a bit of a gamble though, meaning, even if your enemy doesn’t trigger your reaction, you will still pay the Hype cost - but if he does, you’ll be refunded more Hype than you paid, allowing for counter-attack!Stances are similar to reactions. When enabled, they react to an enemy action, but with three differences:
Stances are not secret. Your opponent can see that you activated a Stance.
While reactions can be triggered only once, stances can be triggered multiple times until your Neftie’s next turn.
Finally, when a stance is triggered, it costs a small amount of Hype. If your stance is triggered multiple times, your Nefties could end up out of Hype by their next turn.
Ultimate Abilities
The “Ultimate” ability is generally an ability with a significant cost in Hype, or restrictive conditions needing to be met before it can be used (ex: level of HP remaining, time passed since the battle started, number of markers required on a target, etc). Simply put, Ultimate abilities are stronger, usually with a more impactful effect on the battlefield. Each Neftie species has their own unique Ultimate, and just like Passive abilities, they are usually the embodiment of the Neftie’s role (ex: heavy damage dealing from fighters and massive buffs to the team from supports).
Hype
Your Nefties need Hype to use the different abilities they have. Hype points are distributed to every creature whenever an impactful action happens on the battlefield. Special abilities and Ultimate skills award more Hype points, resulting in combat intensity snowballing as using Special abilities tends to allow your opponent to use their own.
For example:
Neftie A attacks Neftie B:
+2 Hype points for everyone
Neftie A attacks Neftie B, and Neftie B dodges the attack:
+3 Hype points for everyone, Neftie B also gets an extra Hype bonus.
Sometimes attacking your opponent might not be worth it! Giving them a couple of Hype points may allow them to use a dangerous special ability during their next turn! A good knowledge of Neftie abilities is important to keep control of the battle.
Additional Hype sources
Hype Cells:
Nefties ending their turns on Hype cells will gain one Hype point.
Hype Inheritance:
Nefties that are knocked out will transfer remaining Hype to the nearest ally (if two allies are at the same distance, the one playing first will get the Hype points).
Hype Overcharge
Overcharge is a gameplay mechanic that allows a player to use Hype to temporarily increase their stats. When a player tries to start an action, they can choose to request the action to be Overcharged by pressing the SHIFT key on PC. The goal is to give players an alternative when their creature is lacking offensive options or to give them an advantage when they’ve accumulated more hype than they need.
Example use cases:
You’re losing a game, and have only one Neftie left. Due to the Hype Inheritance mechanic, your last Neftie has accumulated a lot of hype, much more than any of its abilities cost. You’re sitting on a lot of potential but will not be able to use it because your Neftie will probably be KO’d before its next turn.
You can use Overcharge to use all of your hype and have your next ability deal more damage than usual. It will leave that Neftie with no hype, but you’ll have a chance to deal enough damage to flip the situation in your favor, especially if you have AoE attacks.
An enemy Neftie is low on health. You want to down it before it has the chance to cause problems, but the only Neftie on your team that can attack it before its next turn is a support with no real offensive options.
You can use Overcharge to use all of its hype and enhance a simple attack; you will have no hype left and probably be unable to do special abilities next turn, but it’s better than letting the enemy Neftie use dangerous skills.
Effect:
When Overcharge is used, the ability’s Hype Cost is deducted from the Neftie’s Hype points, and all of the remaining hype points are converted into “Overcharge points” (OC points).
Each OC point grants a +2 stat boost on the following attributes:
Initiative
Physical Attack
Physical Defense
Ether Attack
Ether Defense
Example: A Dinobit with 17 Hype points uses Overcharge with “Throwback” for the cost of 7 Hype. After the Hype cost of Throwback, Dinobit has 10 hype points left. Those are converted into 10 OC points -> (10 x 2) -> +20 stat boost for the five stats listed above.
Initiative and the Time Track
The Time Track at the top of the screen displays where each Neftie is in play order.
At the start of a battle, the Nefties with the highest Initiative play first.
Using abilities has a "time cost," which means that after a turn, the Neftie is pushed down the time track a certain distance based on which abilities were used during its turn.
A high Initiative value reduces the distance down the time track that a Neftie will get pushed after using abilities, effectively meaning that the higher a Neftie’s Initiative score, the more frequently it will get to play.
If you skip your turn, your Neftie will move down the time track less than if you played a full turn (movement + abilities).
Note that some abilities, such as stuns, can push the targeted Neftie further down the time track.
If you prefer watching a video on the turn order and time units, check out this tutorial video by Rafikey:
Cost of Actions
Overall, battling in Aurory is a game of risk/reward assessment. Every move will have a consequence or cost, whether good or bad. It is this idea that will make the game deeply fun for those who like the strategic aspect of turn-based games. The two main costs to be considered are Hype and Time:
The Hype cost incentivizes players to plan their accumulation, and serves to fuel the increasing crescendo of the intensity of actions.
The Time cost adds a notion of downtime to Nefties.
The mix of costs brings a certain complexity to the reading of the game.
However, this is not a difficulty to be overcome in order to be able to play; the ability to play the game without mastering it remains, since a beginner player can always choose to carry out the actions proposed to him, even if he doesn't know exactly why he can do them at that time.
If in most games reducing the learning curve is beneficial, in a competitive PvP game it is preferable to keep a very rich and complex game so that players have as much time as possible to learn and master new aspects, and some may even choose to specialize in certain aspects rather than seeking total mastery.
The complexity brought by the fact of mixing several different “costs” also offers the advantage of making the games more interesting by favoring small errors and bad calculations, which makes it possible to keep surprises and unforeseen circumstances in the games at low and medium levels.
Neftie Rarity System
With the deployment of our new Incubator system, we are also introducing a Neftie rarity system based on a one-to-five star scale. The table below shows the rarity terms/number of stars associated, stat ranges, and probability of hatching a Neftie of that rarity.
One of the first things you might think when looking at this table, is that the probability to hatch a “Common” Neftie with [0;20[ average stats is fairly high. However, these probabilities are modeled similarly to other popular games, and as we mentioned, we will balance Aurory Tactics by lowering the default Neftie statistics to 10% for now (we may change this again depending on the data we observe after implementing).
Stars
Your Neftie will have a visual representation of rarity on its NFT card in the form of stars that can range from one to five. The number of stars that a Neftie has displayed on its NFT card will represent the average stat range of that Neftie as well as the percentage of chances that players will have to hatch a Neftie within that range. For a deeper dive into Incubator 2.0 and the rarity system, check out our article here.
We hope that after reading this guide, you feel prepared for your battles in Tactics. Keep in mind that the game is still in early access, meaning A LOT of things will be added with time (new skills, new Nefties, etc). We plan to update this guide with any new relevant information when we push updates, so players can always refer back here as a guide for studying the game mechanics and formulating their own metas and strategies.
See you all on the battlefield!
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