Mystic Ark/Controls

Battle controls

In a fashion similar but more advanced to Dragon Quest 4 (a game by Enix, too), you can let your characters fight automatically following some tactics. This can be useful in many ways: if you have an established strategy, or if you want to let your heroes do some boring grinding by themselves.

Open the menu and select the Status sub-menu. From there, choose the Auto config. menu, then select Auto.

You can choose which actions a character would do, and sort them by priority, then you can choose which enemies the character should attack first.

• Actions:
  • Attack one: the standard attack.
  • Magic attack one: cast an offensive spell that damages one opponent.
  • Magic attack all: cast an offensive spell that damages all opponents.
  • Heal: uses a healing item; if the character has no healing items, it uses a healing spell (if able).
  • Status effect: cast a support spell on an ally; occasionally it casts a disabling spell on an opponent.
  • Skill: uses a skill, that consumes no MP.

The Attack all icon is actually an error: no character can use this option. Physical attacks that target all opponents are accessed from the Skill action, instead.

• Enemies:
  • High level: targets the enemy with the highest level.
  • Low level: targets the enemy with the lowest level.
  • High health: targets the enemy with the highest HP.
  • Low health: targets the enemy with the lowest HP, i.e. the one who is closest to be defeated.
  • Healer: targets any enemy that can heal himself or other monsters.
  • High attack: targets the enemy with the strongest physical attack.
  • Low defense: targets the enemy with the lowest physical defense.
  • Instant-killer: targets any enemy who can instantly defeat any one of your characters.

Strategy examples

Target priority

It is a good strategy to take down the most dangerous enemy first. The following can be a good example of target priority:

1. Healer: as long as an enemy healer is fighting, it's hard to defeat any other opponent.
2. Instant-killer: the most dangerous enemies, even if the chance of instant-defeat is low.
3. High attack: these are the enemies who deal the highest (physical) damage; note that there is no "high magic" option.
4. Low health: if an enemy is weak, take it down once and for all.

Action priority

Note that if the level of the enemies is lower than the character's level, the character will use the regular physical attack, regardless of the programming.

There are many possible strategies regarding the actions priority. Each player can choose a different strategy, depending on what he/she likes most. The following is just an example:

1. Skill: these actions require no MP, and your characters can use them at leisure.
2. Status effect: regardless the high priority, this action is not used often anyway; choose this if you like to see many different effects.
3. Magic attack all: the characters will use this only if there are at least two enemies in battle; avoid it if the character needs MP for healing.
4. Attack one: even if you don't choose this, it is always used against enemies significantly weaker than the character.

These actions are less useful:

• Magic attack one: usually, the physical attack is stronger and requires no MP; the Priestess and the Witch have the meekest physical attack, and they are the only ones who can benefit from this.
• Heal: the characters will use healing items (or spells) quite too often; e.g. they are likely to waste a potion that restores 50 HP on a character that lost just 30 HP.
• Attack all: not available for any character.