Kritika: The White Knights/Walkthrough

Kritika is all about efficiency of play. This boils down to how much time you spend playing the game. For the most part, competitive play requires constant play (e.g. from a mobile device). However, later on you can lower the amount of time you spend by spending all of your resources as quickly as possible through various means. This strategy does not include tips on how to spend real money effectively. It is meant to help players play the game for free.

Daily checklist
These are things you should pay attention to throughout each day:
 * Consecutive log in bonus: every day, log out and back in (close your app just to make sure) to get the consecutive day log-in bonus. By the fourth day you'll start getting huge bonuses like 150,000 gold (which is a lot at the start of the game).
 * Daily bonuses: you should get a 30 stamina boost, 5 silver keys, and 300,000 gold as a boost each day around 6:10 PST. This bonus has to be claimed by 11PM PST.
 * Friend bonuses: hearts and Bronze Keys arrive by mail.
 * Striker cooldowns: these are extremely necessary for quickly pushing through hard to beat boss fights. Because of this, it will also help you level up faster.
 * Brawler Badges: if you have 10 badges, use them up! When you play the Monster Wave mode, you will get more badges.
 * Sapphires: if you are at 20 sapphires, make sure to use them up. When you play normal stages to get XP, you will often get sapphires.
 * Daily Dungeon: this is the only way to pick up an Astral Shard for Meteorite evolutions.
 * Guild attendance: join a guild. Every day, log in and click the attendance button next to your name to add 200AP to your guild's AP pool. Compete in any current tower event to try and help conquer it for permanent guild member stat upgrades.

Overall strategy
The goal of the game is to have the strongest character. To do that, you need to spend your stamina effectively to make sure you get the most XP per stamina point. In addition, you need items, gold, karats, and crafting materials in order to boost your CP, which will allow you to be strong enough to play harder levels.

There are a couple of things to focus on each day, in this order of priority:
 * 1) Arena: Spend all of your Brawler Badges and fight 10 games in versus. This will maximize the number of karats you get per day. It will also increase your arena ranking, which will reward you with karats each week (or high level accessories if you are in the overall top 15).
 * 2) Gold rewards: Spend all of your sapphires on the Monster Wave. This will reward you with ~10K gold per sapphire on the beginner run (~200-230 kills per run required, which is easy around level 30). You will also get more Brawler Badges - go back and use them, too. In addition, at the end of the day you will receive a ranking bonus. If you play the mode 20-40 times you will probably end up near the top 20% of your league, and 40% overall, which gives a bonus 280K gold. Only spend sapphires on the tower if you do not need more gold or need inherit materials.
 * 3) Level up: Spend all of your stamina points. The best way to do this is to focus on clearing all stages on Easy mode. Once you get to a level that is too hard to beat, even with a striker (do not use the level 60 trainer striker on normal stages), go back a couple of levels and run through the normal modes with auto-battle until you level up or are forced to make more gear. Playing through normal stages will also give you additional Sapphires, so go back and spend them when you can.
 * 4) Gear upgrades:
 * 5) *Crafting new gear: When your weapon and armor crafting materials are close to 60 (always pay attention to stage completion rewards and plan ahead), spend 10 points on an Epic item. Do not waste them on the Legendary segment. Legendary (orange) items cost way too much, and you will usually end up with a Purple item. It is harder to find a replacement for a Purple Item, and the Purple and Orange items' strength is not much more than a blue with a few, cheap enhancements. Your goal is to always have blue items of your level tier (e.g. if you are level 30, make the new level 30 tier items) with 1-3 enhancements on it. The first enhancement is dirt cheap so make sure all items have it. If the only reason you are crafting is so that your materials is under 60 (so that new materials are not wasted), keep them for high level enchantments. If all you have in your inventory are blue items, then feed them to your pets or sell a few of them (not all!).
 * 6) *Skills: when you level up, boost your skills with gold. If you are low on gold, only spend it on the skills you will use for the mode you are working on (e.g. if you need the boost to increase your kills in monster wave, then get that, then play monster wave to get your gold back).
 * 7) *Enhance your items by using gold and grey items (do not waste green or higher items on the first few enhancements!).
 * 8) *Upgrade your gems and meteorites by combining them and spending gold.
 * 9) *Get a pet that boosts your primary stats and feed them extra items when your inventory is full. You can also spend gold, but it is best to save your gold for skills and until after you've boosted treasure chests and crafting to the maximum.
 * 10) *Save up your gold keys and do not use them until you reach level 70. These keys are harder to obtain so it's in your best interest to keep them until needed.
 * 11) *Use 10 keys if you have more than 80. You don't want this to fill up, either.
 * 12) *Use gem keys immediately. Having additional gems may allow you to upgrade one that you equip.
 * 13) *Save your karats! The goal of karats is to have enough to upgrade your inherited items effectively down the road, and to purchase an avatar set (which is ~6000+ total). You can get ~50-100 karats per day, so it will take about 120 days of play to get a free avatar set.

Auto-battle tips

 * Always double check to make sure it is enabled. If you recently took control, it is likely you left it off for the next run. Don't waste a run by forgetting!
 * The auto-battle system is not as good as you, so if you think you need a bit more performance, take the reigns or assist by timing the skill uses.
 * It will target one unit at a time. Meaning, it may corner just a single enemy, or use abilities against a single weak enemy even though there is a group right behind your character. This leads to wasted MP and opportunities to take damage.
 * It will not prioritize ranged units, so it will take more damage than normal.
 * In the Tower of Tribulation, it will not target potions, so if you think it needs healing, take the reigns before it leaves the floor so that you can make sure not to miss the potion.

XP gain strategy
These numbers were collected with a Berserker, using just auto mode, no striker, and no player intervention (no EX, no potion, no skills pressed). This is to find the most effective use of time. By playing the hardest level the auto-battle mode can complete for you, you can gain the most amount of XP in the least amount of time.


 * At level 32, 12,659 CP, World 3:
 * 05 Hard: 4131 XP (Rec'd CP: 8030)
 * 06 (Blue/Gold stage) Hard: 5580 XP (Rec'd CP: 10,488)
 * 07 Hard: 5160 XP (Rec'd CP: 11,012)
 * 08 Nightmare: 4408 XP (Rec'd CP: 9545)
 * 08 Hard: 5523 XP (rec'd CP: 11,747)
 * 09 Nightmare: 5121 XP (Rec'd CP: 10,624)

World 5 slows your grind down a lot because beating Tigelio to unlock the 2x and 3x stamina modes is extremely difficult (once you get the level 65 200K CP trainer striker you will be able to handle Tigelio on Normal).
 * At level 53, 53K CP, World 5:
 * 05 Hard: 60645 XP (with x3) (Rec'd CP: 41,901) - recommended level 50+ striker
 * 06 Abandoned Crimson Theater 1 (Blue/Gold stage) Hard: 70128 (Rec'd CP: 49,481)
 * 07 Abandoned Crimson Theater 1 2, Hard: 75K XP (with x3) (Rec'd CP: 51,000) - recommended level 57+ striker (80K CP minimum) and intervention during the boss fight until ~level 55.

Class-specific Stage fighting strategies
Please see character-specific pages:
 * Berserker
 * Cat Acrobat
 * Crimson Assassin
 * Dark Valkyrie
 * Shadow Mage
 * Demon Blade
 * Blood Demon

Arena strategy
For the most part, you will have two or three combinations of skills:
 * 1) For auto-battle runs and monster waves.
 * 2) For boss battles.
 * 3) For arena.

As of version 2.10, arena is very difficult to control. When you press a skill to activate it, it usually does not respond. You can either wait for your AI to automatically trigger it, or you can tap the screen wildly and hope for it to trigger. As of many tries, it is difficult to say whether or not you can affect it. However, as a Berserker, it is possible to have the Emergency Escape skill activate, but it will not be used unless the player presses it. This button responds 100% of the time.

When selecting your skills, ignore bonuses like 'destroy Super Armor' and stun effects, as these will have no benefit during the fight. Focus on low cooldown, high damage skills, or special skills. For example, Berserker's Infinite Grave is awesome because it has a high attack percentage, but it also deflects enemy attacks - you will often notice that you will receive no damage from the enemy while using this skill.

For equipment, make sure you have your CP as high as possible, but that your stats are stacked in a way that actually helps you. Critical rate is not very helpful here. E.g. a 7+ Onyx gem (+4000 crit) is less helpful than a +3 defense gem (+585 DEF). MP use will be minimal (about 50% of your bar, tops). So stacking attack, defense, and HP are primary bonuses to focus on.

Shop upgrades
Basic crafting and Bronze Chests can be upgraded for 25K gold per level (10 increments, 2000 gold per increment, 5000 gold to level up). This increases the chance that the higher tier item will be crafted (e.g. for Basic, you may get a Blue, for Epic, you may get a Purple, for Legendary, you may get an Orange). For chests, it increases the likely hood that a Bronze key will become a Silver key.
 * Basic

Epic crafting and Silver Chests can be upgraded for 50k gold per level (10 increments, 4000 per increment, 10,000 gold to level up). When you reach what would be level 11, upgrades for that tier will not be available anymore. E.g. if you level up the Bronze chest to 10, then level once more, it will be replaced with a new system that only allows you to level up the Silver chest from level 1, and so forth. The same goes for the crafting upgrades.
 * Epic

Legendary Crafting and Gold Chests can be upgraded for 1.4 million gold (20 increments, 6000 gold per increment, 20,000 gold to level up; 140,000 gold per level).
 * Legendary

Starting with level 11, the legendary crafting costs change each level. Each level has 20 'ticks'. The cost of each tick increases with each level with the formula of: $$(8,000+(1,000*(level-10)))$$. The 21st 'tick', in other words the final upgrade to get to the next level, increases in cost with the following formula: $$21,000+((level-10)*3,000)$$.
 * At level 11 it costs 8000 per tick and 24,000 level up, which totals 184,000 gold. (44,000 difference)
 * At level 12 it costs 9000 per tick and 27,000 to level, which totals 207,000 gold. (23,000 difference)
 * At level 13, it costs 10,000 per tick and 30,000 to level, which totals 230,000 gold. (23,000 difference)
 * At 14, 12,000 gold per tick and 36,000 to level up, which totals 276,000 gold. (46,000 difference)
 * At 15, 14,000 gold per tick and 42,000 to level up, which totals 322,000 gold. (46,000 difference)
 * At 16, 16,000 gold per tick and 48,000 to level up, which totals 368,000 gold. (46,000 difference)
 * At 17, 18,000 gold per tick and 54,000 to level up, which totals 414,000 gold. (46,000 difference)
 * At 18, 20,000 gold per tick and 60,000 to level up, which totals 460,000 gold. (46,000 difference)
 * At 19, 24,000 gold per tick and 72,000 to level up, which totals 552,000 gold. (92,000 difference)
 * Level 20 is the maximum and cannot be upgraded.

It is highly advisable get crafting levels maxed out to make it more efficient in getting good equipment towards later levels.

Inventory
Inventory items should be replaced every five levels and enhanced to about level 7 (which is cheap and effective to get to). Please see Inventory for how to upgrade gear effectively.

Gems
For the most part, you will have a limited supply of gems. Make sure you always combine them to have the highest gem possible, as this will maximize your CP. Only equip your best gems, and use ones that are effective for you. For example, a gem with +crit is less effective than a +atk or +def, even though it inflates your CP.

Meteorites
For the most part, you will not be able to get meteorites very easily and your selection will be terrible. They are very difficult to level up because Astral Shards are hard to come by (remember to do your daily dungeon!). In addition, you can only use one, two, or three of them until level 62. They have very low stat boosting properties and barely contribute to CP. Do your best to choose the best stats, e.g. Add'l Damage, Damage Reduction, and ATK or DEF.

Pets
At level 30 you will unlock shared pets for all characters. Pets are essentially another item, but the way it can be boosted is different.