Guide For The Guide
At its core, Limbus Company is a game that is built around a relatively simple combat system. This combat, however, is difficult to understand at a glance and can be incredibly frustrating if you’re not willing to put your foot down and figure out how to use your systems to their fullest. The purpose of this guide is to teach you how to understand those systems, because if you can’t understand the UI at a glance, you certainly won’t be beating the Refraction Railway.
This guide will be broken up into several parts- Understanding Your Sinners, Understanding Your Skills, Understanding Battles, Understanding Clashes, and Understanding E.G.O. I’ll begin with the basics of the basics- understanding your Sinners and how to manage them.
If you are new to the game, or just coming back after a break, I’d highly recommend you read from the start. However, if you already understand the basics of the UI and passive abilities, you can feel free to skip ahead to Understanding Your Skills.
Understanding Your Sinners
This part of the guide will be fairly simple and straightforward, but since it’s not perfectly clear in-game, I’ll be going over it briefly. This part will touch on the basics of how to upgrade your Sinners, their passive abilities, the UI, and understanding how to prepare for an enemy before you face them.
When you go to the Sinners tab in the main menu, this is typically the screen that you will see.
From here, clicking on any Sinner will allow you to swap out their Identities, which you can get through Extraction. The game should explain this to you in detail, but it doesn’t go through everything else.
On both this screen and within any specific Sinner’s Identity tab, you can click and hold on their Identity portrait to view them in detail and upgrade them. The same can be done for their E.G.O’s.
From here, there’s a few things which you should be aware of.
Firstly, the Status section right below the Sinner’s portrait. This displays the health, speed, and defense of the Sinner. Health should be obvious- your character dies and is permanently gone until the end of battle (and beyond, if you’re in a Mirror Dungeon) if it reaches 0. Speed is randomly determined at the start of the turn within the range that each Sinner has (2-4 in this example), which determines the order in which each character takes turns. The defense will let you take less damage from enemies the higher it is.
Next, the Resistance section is important to note. All skills, both ally and enemy, have a certain attack type- the icons are, in the order shown above, Slash, Pierce, and Blunt. The attack type of every skill will be listed in its portrait. This Identity of Faust will take double damage from Slash, half damage from Pierce, and normal damage from Blunt. Early on, you can likely ignore these, but as the difficulty ramps up and more and more planning becomes required, you will want to take these resistances into account. Your enemies will also have resistances, so it’s a good idea to take along allies who have skills that are more effective against those enemies.
Upgrading your Sinners is simple. You can raise an Identity’s level by getting Identity Training Tickets, either through EXP Luxcavation, the Battle Pass, or events. Raising their level raises the stats of that Identity and the power of their skills. You can also Uptie your Sinner, which requires Thread. You gain Thread from converting Egoshards gained from Extraction or from Thread Luxcavation. However, it’s recommended to hold on to Egoshards you get unless you’re certain you won’t need them, as you can exchange 400 of them to get a 000 Identity or an E.G.O for a Sinner.
When you Uptie your Identity, they get various benefits. You can Uptie them twice, but there’s something to note before we do anything- your basic Identities and basic E.G.O will all be automatically Uptied through playing the story, so there’s no need to worry about them.
This is the screen you will see when you first Uptie an Identity. The Thread cost of doing this will vary depending on what you’re trying to Uptie- a 00 Identity will cost 10 for the first Uptie and 40 for the second (50 overall), while a 000 Identity will cost 20 for the first and 80 for the second (100 overall). Threadspinning an E.G.O (which is functionally the same) costs slightly less than a 000 Identity.
The first Uptie will do the following:
Raise the range of Speed for your Identity,
Increase the power of your first two skills and provide extra effects, and,
Unlock the Identity’s Combat Passive.The second Uptie will do the following,
Further raise the range of Speed for the Identity,
Raise the first two skills to their maximum power with all available effects,
Grant the Identity a third skill, and,
Unlock the Identity’s Support Passive.
Next, I’ll be discussing the Combat and Support passives and how to effectively use them.
Combat Passives are passive abilities that only take effect when the Identity that has unlocked them is actively in battle and you fulfill the Sin requirements to activate them.
This is the Combat Passive of Faust’s basic Identity. It will activate when you reach 2 Pride Resonance- that is, you use two Pride skills in the same turn. Resonance passives are only active on the same turn that you activate Resonance. However, not all passives need Resonance to activate.
This is Sinclair’s Combat Passive. When his basic Identity is in battle and you generate three Pride resources, this effect will constantly be active unless you use up your resources to activate an E.G.O. Unless stated otherwise, a Combat Passive will only apply to the specific character that has the passive- when an ally is defeated, only Sinclair will gain the Attack Power Up, not the entire team.
Here’s an example in the opposite direction. This is Yi Sang’s Combat Passive, which applies to only his allies and not himself.
You gain one Sin resource of the associated type every time you use a skill, and you use them to activate your passives and your E.G.O.
Here is a basic glance, provided by the game, at the colors and name of each Sin affinity.
For the most part, you won’t need to memorize the names- simply knowing the color is sufficient.
That is likely all you will need to know about Combat Passives. Take advantage of them, as they are often critical to the strategy of the Identity. Do keep in mind that each Identity has their own unique Combat and Support Passives, and some will rely more heavily on their passive abilities than others. Next, I'd like to touch on Support Passives.
Support Passives are extremely important, and should be a large part of your strategy. These abilities only activate if the Sinner is not in battle but have their Identity selected.
This is Faust’s Support Passive. When you fulfill the conditions to activate a Support Passive, the effect will apply to whomever it mentions in the text of the passive. For some Identities, it’s the entire team. For others, it’s a character that meets specific conditions.
As of Season 1, we have a maximum of five Sinners that we can bring into battle at one time. While this may or may not change in the future, for now it means that you will have a minimum of seven and a maximum of eleven Support Passives activated at one time. At first, not all of them will be good, and not all of them will immediately apply to your team. There are numerous strategies specifically built around Support Strategies to bolster the strength of a specific Identity to deal high damage. For example, if you had a hard-hitting Identity that only dealt Pierce damage, you might want to try to activate Don Quixote’s Support Passive.
That covers the basics of the Identities. Knowing how to build your team is the first step to success and aiming for Identities that synergize well and provide the correct Sin resources for each other’s Passives is critical in teambuilding.
Understanding Your Skills- Part 1, Offense And Effects
Every Identity comes with three unique offensive skills and one defensive skill. This section will cover how to understand what those skills do, how those skills are used in battle, and how to use them effectively.
For now, let’s take a look at a basic Identity’s list of skills- starting with Faust once again.
Knowing how to comprehend a skill at a glance is easily one of the most important parts of Limbus Company. For now, we’ll analyze Faust’s Skill 3, as the information we can gain from it will apply to almost every skill in the game.
First, we’ll analyze the basics of the skill, ignoring the effects for now.
All skills will have this layout, and learning to understand it is essential. We’ll start with the Clash Power and how it works.
When you clash with an enemy, the Clash Power of the skill will start with the large number on the left- 6, in this case. Then, for every Heads that you land within that clash, that number will be modified by the number above the skill: +2, in this case. The skill has 2 coins, as shown above the name of the skill, so the range of possible Clash Power on this skill is 6-10. Landing tails in a Clash doesn’t punish you, but it doesn’t aid you, either. Landing tails while attacking, however, typically lowers your damage.
It’s important to note that there are characters that do not benefit from landing heads. As of Season 1, the best character this applies to is The One Who Shall Grip. Here is an example of one of his skills.
As you can see, this skill has three coins, a base Clash Power of 30, and is modified by -12 every time he lands heads on a coin in a clash. That means that this skill can have anywhere from 0 to 30 Clash Power, with the power going down whenever a coin lands on heads. This type of Identity is an outlier, however, and the vast majority prefer to land on heads in a clash. We’ll move on for now.
Now that we’ve covered how a skill will work in a clash, we’ll analyze the rest of the skill in one go.
The sword icon refers to the strength of the skill. This is separate from Clash Power, and this refers to the amount of damage that the skill will do. This number will rise based on the Growth Rate (to my understanding). The higher the Growth, the stronger the skill will get as the Sinner levels up. The level of the basic Identity of my Faust is 1, so the strength of the skill is low, but it will gain around 17 points of strength by the time she gets to level 30 (30*.57).
The color of the skill refers to the type of Sin resource this skill provides. For this skill, it’s Gluttony. As mentioned earlier, the icon below the portrait refers to the type of damage this skill will do- Pierce, in this case. Every Identity may be able to deal different types of damage with their three skills, so it’s good to check them before attacking so you deal the most damage.
The x1 next to the skill name refers to how many copies of the skill will be available to you from the start of battle. The first skill for every character will have three copies, the second skill will have two copies, and the third will only have a single copy. When the battle starts, the order in which all of these skills are given to you is randomized. You could start with any combination of these skills; however, you must see every copy of every skill before your ‘deck’ of skills is refreshed.
For example, if you start the battle with Drilling Stab (skill 3, x1) and Downward Slash (skill 1, x3) as your options, then you’ll see two more copies of Downward Slash and two copies of Upward Slash (skill 2, x2) before you can see another copy of Drilling Stab- and even then, the order is randomized every time the ‘deck’ is refreshed, so you may not see Drilling Stab immediately. This system applies for every turn a character might take.
You have to use 1 skill every turn, but you are not required to use any specific skill. There are situations where you won’t want to use either skill available to you, in which case you’ll want to use a Defense skill. I’ll discuss that in detail later. For now, let’s take a look at the effects of a skill.
Drilling Stab has two coins. The (I) and (II) next to each effect refers to which coin that effect activates on when the attack is used on an enemy. If the first coin lands on heads, the first effect will apply, and the second effect will apply so long as the skill actually hits the opponent. If they use a dodge skill and avoid the attack, or if you’ve lost a coin through losing one round of a clash, then you won’t get the effect.
There are certain other cases in which an effect can apply which are important.
On Use effects will trigger once so long as the skill is activated. If it Clashes, the effect will immediately activate before the Clash; if the skill activates on a defenseless opponent, it will trigger before any additional effects or damage is dealt.
Clash Win effects are just what they say on the tin. When you win a clash, the effect activates immediately before damage is dealt.
Clash Lose effects are much the same- however, to my knowledge, there are no Identities that have any effects that trigger this way. So far, it is exclusive to enemies, and is generally meant to either provide depth mechanically or provide a sense of difficulty in battles where you can handily win most clashes.
Tails Hit effects prioritize flipping tails on a coin. Effects like these are usually exclusive to E.G.O’s or Identities that are centered around negative SP.
Kill Effects will trigger when an enemy is either killed or not killed. This does not apply to Abnormality Parts- breaking a part does not mean killing the enemy. You have to lower the enemy’s HP to 0 in order for it to count.
Combat Start effects will trigger at the start of the Combat Phase before any Clashes or attacks occur.
Indiscriminate effects target foes- and allies- randomly. AoE (Area of Effect) means that it will target multiple units. You can only choose the primary target of non-Indiscriminate skills, and the other targets will be chosen randomly. If an Abnormality has multiple parts or if there are multiple enemies, those will be targeted at random.
These are some of the most prominent current methods of triggering an effect. There may be more added in the future, but for now, this is all that is available.
Understanding Your Skills- Part 2, Effects (Cont) And Defense
Outlying Effects: While I’ve discussed how skills work, I haven’t discussed what some of the effects do. Most of them are self-explanatory, such as Attack Power Up, or are explained through the game, but there are some effects that require further explanation.
Tremor: Tremor is a unique mechanic that certain characters are based around. You must first apply Tremor to an opponent and then use a skill that can Burst Tremor- it will explicitly say if it can. Doing so will lower the Count of Tremor by 1 and raise the enemy’s Stagger Threshold by the amount of Tremor that has been applied. It’s a niche strategy at the moment, but it might have utility later.
Charge: Certain Identities (primarily W-Corp and R-Corp) revolve around a Charge mechanic. It’s a buff that is applied to the character through their own skills or through certain Passives, and does nothing for the most part. They build up Charge and expend it through their skills. Charge is based around a Count system, so it’ll decrease by 1 at the end of your turn.
Bleed/N-Corp Nails: Bleed is less useful than you would probably think and absurdly difficult to keep on the enemy. Every time a character with Bleed either clashes or attacks, they will take damage equal to the number of Bleed and reduce the Count by 1. N-Corp Nails directly synergize with Bleed, as they inflict 1 Bleed, raise the Count equal to their number, and they halve at the end of the turn. For now, this is the most reliable way to raise Bleed Count.
Paralyze and Plus Coin Drop: Paralyze is significantly worse than Plus Coin Drop against opponents that attack multiple times. However, it’s far more common, far easier to apply, and far more useful against low-coin, high-power skills. Paralyze will drop the power of a coin to 0 whenever it flips, essentially turning a heads flip into a guaranteed tails flip, but the effect will be lowered by 1 every time a coin is flipped. There’s no skill in the game that applies Paralyze in the double digits, but if the enemy uses a single 4-coin skill, then it will go through 10 stacks of Paralyze minimum before the Clash ends in your favor. Plus Coin Drop lasts for an entire turn and it lowers the amount of Clash Power that a skill gains when it lands a coin on heads.
Ammo: Ammo is a unique mechanic that characters with guns rely on. At the start of each combat (not wave), you get a set amount of Ammo that you expend through skills. So far, there is no way to increase your Ammo count, and attempting to use a Coin that requires Ammo when you have none will simply cause it to deal no damage.Everything that isn’t covered here can be learned by hovering over the effect with your mouse. With the general effects covered, we’ll now move on to Defense Skills.
Defense Skills are skills that are always available to you and should always help out in a pinch. There are three types- Guard, Evade, and Counter. Every Identity only has one type, and you can’t change or modify them. When you use a Defense skill, you’ll replace the bottom skill available to you, same as E.G.O. Let’s take a look at all of them.
Guard skills will look like this:
(Note- I am not as knowledgeable about Guard skills as the rest, so take some of the specifics with a grain of salt.)
When you use a Guard skill, your Defense will raise by the value listed on the skill. It’s good to note that no defensive skills can clash unless the enemy targets you, no defensive skills can break coins, and every defensive skill has a unique Clash.
As far as I know, Guard skills will only raise your defense until your opponent’s Clash Power is higher than yours. Multi-Coin skills are slightly less effective in this regard. It’s best to use Guard skills against skills you know you cannot beat.
Every type of defensive skill will also Clash until it's broken, but they only take effect once they Clash for the first time. For example, if multiple people are targeting a character, if you want the defensive skill to be effective and activate against every opponent attacking you, then you need to Clash with the opponent with the highest speed.
Next, we’ll look at Evade skills.
Evade Skills are different from Guard skills. When they Clash with another skill, the defender will avoid damage completely so long as they win the Clash. I’d argue that these are the best type of defensive skills, although you likely won’t be using too many of them in general unless you’re outclassed or attempting a solo run.
Finally, there’s Counter skills.
Counter Skills will have you retaliate against the enemy after taking their attack. They’re slightly more ill-advised than other defense skills, as you would typically just want to Clash unless you know you can’t win it. Taking too much damage may Stagger your Sinner, and all attacks including the Counter will be canceled until the turn after the next. You can also only counter one opponent; it's different from the other defensive skills in that manner.
Counter skills are also unique in that they have a Sin Affinity, generating you a resource when used. As of Season 1, there’s only one non-Counter defensive skill that has a Sin Affinity, belonging to The One Who Shall Grip. There will likely be more in the future.
Now that we’ve covered Defense Skills, you’ve learned just about everything there is to know about the skills. If you ever feel lost, just refer back to this entire section of the guide, because a lot of the information to come will be based on what we’ve covered here. For now, let’s move on to the next phase- combat.
Understanding Battles- Part 1, Allies
Now that we’ve learned about our skills, it’s time to apply them.
For this section, we will primarily focus on Abnormality combat, as that will be where the majority of difficulty, as well as the majority of the game’s content, will be. However, I will briefly touch on human combat.
Human Combat differs from Abnormality combat in a few distinct ways. This type of combat is how you’re introduced to the game, and it honestly does the systems in the game a disservice. You can’t target any enemies with skills, so you can’t choose who Clashes with what or who you target with skills. It’s similar to Auto combat in other games. That being said, these battles are typically a lot easier than Abnormality combat, and you get double the amount of turns that you will in Abno combat.
Abnormality Combat: When you enter combat against an Abnormality, you may see a screen that looks similar to this one.
There’s a lot to take in on this screen. For now, I’ll focus on general-use advice.
Firstly, you will absolutely want to press this button:
I honestly don’t know why this isn’t on by default. This will show which enemies are targeting which Sinner. It should look something more like this when you do that:
Now that we have the most basic information available to us, we’ll take a closer look at our UI.
This is the amount of Sin resources available to us. You gain one of the associated Sin resource whenever you use a skill. At the start of battle, every number will be at zero; however, in Mirror Dungeons and long-form content, like the Refraction Railway or story dungeons, it’s different. A story dungeon or the Refraction Railway will fully maintain the amount of Sin resources from battle to battle, allowing you to rack up a truly unimaginable amount of them. However, in the Mirror Dungeon, your Sin resources will be halved after every battle, rounded down.
Next up is the auto-battle buttons. These serve their purpose very well, but if you’re in a difficult battle, you probably should at least pay attention. They do not automatically make the best decisions, and they will frequently miss Clashes to get a more certain victory over the enemy.
Next, I want to discuss the difference between the count of an effect vs the amount of an effect.
The number on the left is the amount of the effect. When Bleed triggers, it will deal 2 damage to the enemy. The number on the right is the count of the effect. That means that Bleed can trigger once before the effect fades and needs to be reapplied. At the end of the turn, the count will lower by one regardless of the type of effect, and every time the effect is triggered, the count will also be lowered by one.
We’ll move on to the basics of your characters now.
When you look at your characters, you’ll see something similar to this. The number over their head is their Speed for that turn, which is randomized every turn. When you hover over their portrait, their Defense skills will flash, allowing you to judge at a quick glance if it’ll be applicable for your current situation.
Below their portraits are their Health and Sanity. The higher your Sanity, or SP, the more likely it is to land heads on a coin flip. Winning Clashes and killing enemies will raise your SP.
To the left of the screen, you’ll see the Dashboard, which lists your passives.
Passives that are active will be lit up. You can see the effects of your passives at any time by hovering over them, and you can show or hide the full list by pressing on the icon.
Most of what I’ve covered, however, is described to you by the game. I’ll get into the things that aren’t covered by it now.
Turn Count: You might have noticed that I only brought three characters into a fight when I can bring five. The game will actually account for this- in Abnormality battles, you can have a maximum of five actions. This means two of my characters will gain an extra action, one every turn after the first, which has its own ‘deck’ of skills. The game will give extra actions to characters who have not received one yet- that is, a character cannot get an extra action twice unless all allies have received one. This is the core of a solo strategy: the longer you survive, the more actions a Sinner can take. In human battles, the action limit is ten, so a full team of five will all gain an extra action.
However, this does not mean that the game won’t punish you for bringing lower amounts of characters. While you absolutely can bring only a single character, the game won’t limit the amount of turns the enemy can take beyond their normal limit, balanced for five Sinners- so you may take four unblocked attacks to your solo character if you can’t Stagger or kill the enemy in a single hit. On that note, under most circumstances, the enemy will not take more than five actions in a single turn, even if they normally would be able to. This is to prevent them from dealing unblockable damage to your team of five. If they summon other units, however, all bets are off and you better get to killing.
Understanding Battles- Part 2, Enemies
Next, we’ll take a glance at our enemies.
The enemies function under the same rules as your characters, with one key difference- Abnormalities don’t have an SP value. Any effect that deals SP damage will instead deal equivalent HP damage to them. Their Speed value is listed above their skills, the details of which you can check by hovering over them.
If an enemy has a specific resistance or weakness, it’ll be listed on the top right, in this section.
When you first fight an enemy, you won’t know their resistances. You’ll need to defeat them multiple times to learn them, raising the Observation Level. There’s never any penalty for backing out in this game, so feel free to alter your team composition as much as you like.
Next, we’ll take a quick glance at the numbers for the skill.
This section is important- the Clash Power of the enemy’s skill is listed on the left, and the damage modifier is listed above. The reason for the modifier?
The enemy is targeting Meursault, who has a weakness to Lust skills. The higher the modifier above the skill, the more damage it can deal. You can artificially lower an enemy’s resistances with certain Fragility skills, which will also affect this number. The number can climb well above +/-200 depending on how well you prepare, and although certain Identities may be very good overall, they’re next to worthless if they’re only dealing half or less of their damage.
Aside from what I’ve told you here, the UI for the skill is the same as for every other skill. If you need to check up on any character’s resistances, just click on them in battle.
Next, we’ll discuss enemy Passives.
Enemy Passive Abilities: These are the primary abilities you need to watch out for. Learning to decipher a passive ability and how it works with the enemy’s active abilities will be essential to figuring out how to defeat it. I’ll be briefly discussing one of the more difficult bosses in the game to showcase its mechanics and the importance of reading passives; if you don’t want spoilers for the Refraction Railway (Line 1) then skip to Understanding Clashes.
These are all the Passive abilities of one of the bosses, as well as a description for the most vital effects, within the first line of the Refraction Railway. It may be hard to understand at first, but taking a closer look at the details, it becomes obvious what the game wants the player to do in order to beat this boss.
Firstly, it wants us to rely on the Karma debuff. With 10 stacks of protection, none of your Sinners will be dealing any damage to the enemy. But you can’t inflict Karma until all of its allies are gone, which means we need to deal with them first. Unfortunately…
Unless you can manage to deal several hundred damage to each enemy in a single turn while also avoiding taking too much damage (this enemy lineup can regularly attack 6+ times) then you’ll have to rely on killing the enemies through Karma.
As for applying the Karma…
You need to constantly win Clashes with My Form Empties.
This is a boss that forces you to play along with its rules, but if you don’t take the time to read and understand those rules, you’ll find yourself fighting an uphill battle. Several bosses will punish you in this manner. You need to be careful and read from the start in order to get a victory.
Understanding Clashes
This section will cover Clashes, how they work, and Clash Power, in detail.
Firstly, we’ll discuss how to initiate a Clash. It may sound simple, but it’s easy to misunderstand.
Clashes are started based on each combatant’s Speed. You can choose to start a Clash with any enemy that has a lower Speed than you- for example, in the above screenshot, any one of my characters can start a clash with the enemy that has 2 Speed, but that’s not the case for the enemy with 3 Speed.
If an opponent has equal or higher Speed than all of your Sinners, they can only be clashed with by the character they are targeting. Since the enemy with 3 Speed is targeting my Hong Lu, the only Sinner that can clash with them is Hong Lu.
When multiple characters can clash with an enemy, the last character you assign to attack will Clash so long as they can Clash, regardless of Speed or turn order.
In this case, all of my characters can clash with the 2 Speed enemy, and right now, Gregor is the one Clashing with it. However, if I assign Meursault to attack that enemy, he will be the one to Clash instead, since he is the last person I assigned to attack.
Gregor’s attack will now go through first without being opposed. You can take advantage of this in multiple ways- if you Stagger the opponent with Gregor’s skill, then Meursault won’t have to clash at all, or if you want a faster character to Clash to get a more likely win, you can assign them last. Doing that will look like this:
Now that you understand how to initiate a Clash, we’ll take a look at the stats of a Clash and how to understand them.
How to Win Clashes: This is the best way to avoid taking damage, as a won clash will prevent the enemy from using that skill. Conversely, losing a Clash will mean that you don’t deal any damage.
When you begin a Clash, you first need to take into account how the Clash might play out. This is where the Clash Power of a skill comes into play.
This is what will come up whenever you begin a Clash. In the beginning of the game, you probably only need to focus on whatever word pops up here:
For the most part, if you see Dominating, you’ll win the clash nine times out of ten. Unfortunately, the game’s understanding of your chances are more shallow than you would think, and you’ll need to use your own judgment to decide whether you want to Clash. Figuring out how to do that is the base of making good calls in a fight.
The Clash Power of a skill, as explained earlier, is how a Clash is determined. The number on top (6) is the result you will get if you get the worst outcome (all tails), and the bottom number (18) is what you will get if you roll the best outcome (all heads). That system works for the opponent as well. Theoretically, if I roll all tails two times in a row and he rolls all heads two times in a row, I’ll get 6 and he’ll get 7, and he will win the Clash. While this is unlikely, it’s a possibility you have to take into account, as a difficult enemy is not guaranteed to roll tails and you can be the one on the receiving end of a harsh attack if you underestimate them.
If the skill has a strong advantage over an opponent, the initial Clash Power will raise. I don’t know the exact cause or numbers for this, unfortunately, but it’s generally an advantage in every possible way.
Not all clashes will be decided as handily as this one. As the difficulty of the enemy rises, your numbers will typically always be their defaults, and winning Clashes will be more and more problematic.
Next, we’ll talk about the specific mechanics of the Clash and how they work.
Clashing- A Basic Primer
Every time you Clash, you’ll flip the coins of your skill against the coins of your opponent’s skill. If the resulting Clash Power is larger than the opponent’s, you will win that round of the Clash, break one of your opponent’s coins, and continue Clashing until one side has no more coins. Clashes will break the first coins first. For example, if you lose one round of a Clash while using a three-coin skill but win the Clash overall, you’ll use the second and third coin of the skill against the enemy, but not the first.
Coin flips are determined based on the SP of the character. You gain or lose 1% chance towards landing heads per 1 SP you have. The range is -45/+45. If you have +45 SP, you’ll have a 95% chance of landing heads, and if you have -45 SP, you’ll have a 5% chance of landing heads. At 0 SP, the chance of landing heads is a normal coin flip, at 50/50. The key to success is getting SP as high as possible as quickly as possible through winning Clashes and killing enemies.
However, there are many enemies that have skill with high Clash Power that you may not be able to beat even if your Sinner has the maximum SP. Simply landing all heads does not mean that you will win the Clash, which is why it’s important for you to understand how the Clash Power works.
Having a high coin count is useful against enemies with high coin power and low coin count for one particular reason- they’re likely to land on tails at least one time in a Clash. Even if you seem outclassed, you can win even a Struggling or Hopeless Clash depending on how the enemy rolls, so long as it's physically possible to win in the first place. Every Abnormality has a set SP value that cannot be altered, so they’re only so likely to land on heads consistently.
If you know you can’t win a Clash, then you may want to use an E.G.O, as they have very high Clash Power, but you should use them in moderation, as the best E.G.O cost a large amount of SP to activate.
There may be certain circumstances where you can’t avoid damage at all- in that case, the enemy will use the skill to the far left of their highest Speed first, so if you want to get some damage on their board and off yours, try to Clash with that skill first.
Keep in mind that the enemy team will normally only take five actions per turn at most- with careful application of your Sinners and some decent luck, you’ll be winning Clashes consistently and not taking damage.
Now that we’ve gone through Clashes, we’ll enter the final point of discussion- E.G.O.
Understanding E.G.O
E.G.O skills are what truly sets apart your Sinners, and learning to use them effectively will be the core of many strategies. As of Season 1, we only have E.G.O up to HE (the order is ZAYIN, TETH, HE, WAW, ALEPH), but as more and more powerful E.G.O is revealed, it’ll become necessary to learn how to master them- or die trying.
Firstly, we’ll discuss the basics of E.G.O.
When a Sinner has the Sin resources to activate an E.G.O, a line on their portrait will light up. Gregor can use his basic E.G.O, but not his TETH E.G.O, since the Sin resources for it haven’t been collected. Clicking and holding on the portrait will bring up the E.G.O you can use.
Clicking on an E.G.O you don’t have the resources for during battle will show you how many resources you need to use it. If you want to see how many resources an E.G.O will expend when you use it after you’ve already gathered those resources, you need to click on the Sinner and go to the E.G.O section.
From here, clicking on the E.G.O you want to use will show how many resources are required to use it, as well as a description of the skill.
Once you’ve gathered the resources, there’s next to no reason to avoid using the basic E.G.O, unless you want to save the resources to keep a passive ability active or for a difficult clash. That’s because there’s no Sanity cost associated with basic E.G.O’s. However, for all other E.G.O, there will be a cost.
Using the skill will lower your Sanity by the amount listed. They don’t all cost 20, however; some are cheaper and some are more expensive. Using high-level E.G.O liberally will stunt your SP, making winning clashes harder and lowering your overall damage. On top of that, there’s special mechanics for if you hit -45 SP.
Panic and Corrosion
Hitting -45 SP on any Sinner in a battle can spell doom for your team, depending on how you set up your E.G.O. Here’s something important to note: hitting -45 SP at any point during the turn, be it through using an E.G.O, losing a Clash, or having an ally die, will lock you into having that amount of SP. You can’t raise it at all from that point, regardless of what you do. The second you hit -45, your Sinner is officially in Panic mode.
When a Sinner panics, two things will happen- one, they will use Panic skills if they have multiple actions available. These are blank skills that do nothing, and generally serve to prevent you from abusing the Corrosion system. Two, they will undergo E.G.O corrosion, and forcefully use their skills without incurring any Sin cost. Typically, the E.G.O used will be the last one that the Sinner used. Otherwise, it will be chosen randomly.
In order to see what a skill will do when corroded, we must return to the E.G.O page.
Almost all skills will target indiscriminately when corroded. If you’re doing a battle with a single Sinner, you can very easily corrode without worry, as you cannot target yourself for an E.G.O skill. However, you can typically only use 2-3 E.G.O’s maximum every time your Sinner panics.
On that note, you can access E.G.O corrosion without worrying about going into panic through E.G.O Overclock.
Overclock: By clicking and holding an E.G.O skill that you meet the conditions to use in battle that can also corrode (all non-basic E.G.O), then you can Overclock the E.G.O. This will use the Corrosion ability of the skill.
There are two types of Overclock: Stable and Unstable. Stable Overclock will trigger when you have enough resources to pay for 1.5x the cost of activating the base E.G.O. Unstable Overclock will trigger when you cannot pay that price. The difference between the two, from what I can see, is that Unstable Overclock will remain on Indiscriminate targeting, whereas Stable Overclock will only harm enemies- and although you still cannot choose your target, you can still Clash with the target the game chooses for you.
E.G.O corrosion caused by panic will trigger at low SP, and because of that, E.G.O that have corrosion effects based on landing a heads coin are generally worse than ones that focus on landing tails. That isn’t to say that you want to go into panic, but it means that you’ll get more mileage out of Overclocking those E.G.O when your Sinner has high SP instead of banking on a low-SP strategy.
After your Sinner falls into panic and uses a corroded E.G.O skill, they will return to 0 SP on the next turn. This is good, because a Sinner going on a homicidal rampage through your own team usually means that you’ll need to spend a turn recovering from a potential Stagger on other team members.
One important thing to note is that, when you don’t have any non-basic E.G.O equipped and your Sinner falls into panic, they won’t enter E.G.O corrosion, as they have no E.G.O that can corrode. Instead, they will simply use Panic skills on all the actions they have available to them.
Next, let’s move on to the Passive abilities that E.G.O provides.
E.G.O Passives: These are passive abilities that unlock when you Threadspin an E.G.O to the second level. These function similarly to Combat passives, but they work somewhat differently.
In order to activate an E.G.O’s Passive ability, you have to first use the E.G.O. All of them have a passive ability, most of which will help you. They function similarly to Combat Passives in that they only apply to the character who used the E.G.O unless specified otherwise. However, they differ in that, once you activate the E.G.O, they are active for the rest of battle even if you no longer have the Sin resources to activate it. You can activate multiple E.G.O’s to gain multiple beneficial passives. The earlier you use an E.G.O in battle, the quicker you can gain more snowballing passives that help you in the long run.
Passive abilities aren’t the only way an E.G.O helps you- they also provide you with new resistances.
E.G.O Resistances: Every E.G.O provides a new set of resistances for your Identity, although their basic resistances (Slash, Pierce, Blunt) will always remain the same.
For this example, we will look at Meursault.
This Identity is weak to Lust and Gluttony skills. However, if you take a look at one of his E.G.O’s, Screwloose Wallop, you’ll see that it has its own set of resistances.
When you use an E.G.O, their resistances will override your Identity’s resistances. This, however, will never be done to your detriment. A character cannot gain a new weakness, but they can lose weaknesses. If Screwloose Wallop was used, Meursault would lose his weaknesses to Lust and Gluttony, and his Pride resistance would upgrade from .75 to .5.
Every Sinner starts with the resistances of their basic E.G.O, and it resets at the end of battle. This means that in long-form content, you would need to use the E.G.O every battle in order to get the updated resistances.
Learning to use E.G.O will be key to surviving difficult battles. They are difficult to obtain, but they’re all worth at least putting some effort into. If you’re smart about using them, you can turn the tides of battle
Finishing Thoughts
With this, I believe I've covered just about everything I could. If you have questions, feel free to ask them. Limbus Company may seem daunting at first, but in a game with a gacha as forgiving as this, it’s entirely possible to get multiple usable teams even when completely free-to-play. If you hit a wall, then try something new. There are bound to be plenty of strategies in the future, as well as in the present, to help you get past every obstacle. If you need help with one specific boss, then just keep trying new strategies and doing your best.
I'm hoping this guide helped you out, regardless of what you needed help with.
Best of luck, Manager. Face the Sin, and save the E.G.O.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975618166
More Limbus Company guilds
- All Guilds
- How to Discard (with simple Q and A's)
- CantoVII speed guide
- How to get VSync for Limbus Company
- How to cheese Canto 7 boss fight
- Tables For Buying Lunacy (Whale Edition)
- Beginner's Manual for Newly Hired Managers - Part 2
- Divine Company
- Beginner's Manual for Newly Hired Managers
- Canto VI : EXP needed for IDs + EXP gained from Luxcavations
- GOD DON QUIXOTE!!!!!!!!!!!