Welcome Hero, it seems you are having a hard time progressing through the evil of the Dark One. Well now I will help you out on your quest to defeat him. But before I give you some pointers, it's time to show the playing field.

Brand
A Fighter who made a promise to give up the sword, now it is the only thing that will let him keep that promise.
Skills

• Edge Vault: Brand pounces on the enemy, click the button just before impact to increase damage.
  
• Skewer: Brand quickly strikes at the enemy, click the button just before impact to increase speed.
  
• Frenzy: Brand assaults the enemy, click the button just before impact to increase speed.

Brand is your main power hitter. As you level Brand, you will see his strength and defense increase dramatically. All of his skills can interupt/wipe the fatestream and do some heavy damage agaisnt the enemy. Edge Vault is a good skill you obtain at level 5. Pressing the button before he lands on the enemy will double his attack damage. Skewer is a level 20 skill that can be hard to use. When the speed of the attack increases, the timing to get a double damage can be too quick. Brand's final skill is Frenzy, which is obtained at level 40, works similar to skewer but at a slower pace. By the time you get this skill, Brand will have massive strength. Using frenzy can kill the enemy immediately if all button presses are timed correctly. I suggest using Frenzy as a last resort against a difficult enemy or the Dark One.

Jin
A Mage obsessed with unlocking the great mystery, he wasn't prepared for what the gatekeeper would take as payment.
Skills

• Slow: The speed of the fatestream is reduced until time runs out.
  
• Focus: Click any rune to turn it into a mage charger.
  
• Destiny: Click any hero charger to turn it into a striker.

Jin is your savior of when you mess up on the fatestream. His damage and defense are average but he excels with the skills he obtains. Slow is a level 10 skill that reduces the speed of the fatestream drastically for a certain time for you to think of what to combine or attack next. Focus is a level 30 skill that can be a major lifesaver agaisnt the strongest enemies of the game. It makes any rune, including enemy hexes, turn into mage chargers and the fatestream is frozen for a certain time limit. This helps creating easy super strikers to use agaisnt the enemy. Jin's final skill is Destiny. Obtained at level 50, Jin makes any hero charger turn into a strike providing easy chains and strikers to help defeat enemies.

August
A Healer exiled from his order, August seeks redemption for the blight he summoned into the world.
Skills

• Heal: Quickly click buttons to replenish each hero's health. Also removes hexes.
  
• Revive: Quickly click button to call the reaper before time runs out, continue clicking to revive each hero.
  
• Shield: Quickly click button to summon a shield over each hero, continue clicking to increase shield strength.

August is a healer who suffers from low damage and defense but is redeemed by his skills. All of August's skills just like Brand can interupt/wipe the fatestream. Heal is a level 5 skill that heals the hero depending on the color of the button you click. Heal can also remove hexes from said hero that is suffering from it. Revive is a level 20 skill that summons a grim reaper to revive your heroes at 25%-ish health. And August's final skill is Shield. Obtained at level 40, August creates a shield of ice around a hero depending on the amount of clicks on the button corresponding to the hero.

Telina
An Archer and the last of a cursed tribe, it is Telina's duty to destroy the dark one and break the spell.
Skills

• Pressure Point: Click and swipe to fire arrows at the target. Each hit reduces enemy strength.
  
• Poison: Click and swip to fire arrows at the target. Each hit poisons the enemy.
  
• Armor Pierce: Click and swipe to fire arrows at the target. Each hit reduces enemy armor.

Telina seems to be the balanced character of the 4. She has great attack power and somewhat mediocre defense while having decent skills, not to mention that her skills also interupt/wipe the fatestream. Her skills can be very hard to land on first as you have to swipe the mouse while holding the mouse button to aim and shoot an arrow. In order to improve your accuracy, I suggest putting your mouse over Telina and aiming from there to get a better shot. Pressure Point is a level 10 skill that decreases the attack power of the enemy when he attacks. Can be helpful agaisnt strong enemies but is overshadowed by her other skills. Poison is a level 30 skill that poisons the enemy. Can be very helpful at times when you need to add pressure to attack the enemy faster. Note that when you cast Poison, the target that you need to hit tends to move to different locations trying to dodge your shots, time your shots carefully or wait for the target to teleport before shooting. Telina's final skill is Armor Pierce. Obtained at level 50, this skill can help immensely agaisnt the Dark One and other hard enemies. It may not be much but with Brand dealing massive damage already when you obtain this skill, it can help Brand deal out even more.

Hero Chargers

• In order to attack an enemy, you must first combine 3 chargers of the same color. They must be adjacent to each other to create the charger, it does not matter what shape they are as long as they are 3 together. They vary in 4 different colors representing the characters. As your health gets low, you will begin to see a crack on both chargers and strikers. When the character faints, their runes will shatter looking very worn out. Clicking shattered runes will make them disappear from the fatestream.

Hero Strikers

• Your main use of attacks. You attack by clicking the striker, which will result in attacking the enemy and removing other runes/hexes on the fatestream within the same row and column. If a booster of the same color is within the row or column of the striker used, it will multiply its attack power to the enemy.

Static Chargers

• They behave just like chargers however you cannot move them like other runes. You have to move non-static chargers adjacent to the static charger in order to create a striker. The combination does not matter, 2 statics and one non-static or 1 static and 2 non-statics. (Never seen a 3 static, but pretty sure that works as well).

Super Striker

• Super strikers are created when combining 3 strikers instead of chargers. When created, these become static and can only be clickable. When clicked, everything on the fatestream that is shown will be activated. Strikers and chargers will increase the multiplier and make everyone attack depending if the color of all the heroes are shown.

Boosters

• Once a battle is finished, you have a chance to heal and level up your character. This works similar to charger is which you have to match 3 adjacent colors. You have to be quick however, the fatestream will not stop as you're doing trying to match the boosters.

Your runes aren't the only one present in the field however, there are also the enemies' runes and spells which are called hexes. They are the following:

Enemy Strikers

• The main attack of the enemy. When the striker reaches the end of the fatestream, it will attack the hero in which the striker is moving towards to. Some enemies have special attacks that will allow them to attack more than one hero at a time. These strikers can be moved but there are also static enemy strikers.

Armored Strikers

• When you get closer to the Dark One, enemies become stronger and have armored strikers. These strikers take more than one attack from the hero to be removed from the fatestream. If the striker is purple, it will take 2 hits to destroy. If there is also a black skull included, it will take 3 hits. There are also static versions.

Enemy Chargers

• Similar to how hero chargers work however you cannot combine them. Their purpose is to multiply the damage of the enemy when their striker reaches the end of the fatestream. These chargers can also be moved by the player.

Cursed Chargers

• Later on there will also be cursed chargers, which can only be removed from the fatestream by combining with 2 other hero chargers or hero static chargers. Movable.

Cursed Strikers

• Other than cursed chargers, there will also be cursed strikers. These strikers can only be removed from the fatestream by the same color of the hero. Meaning Brand's hero striker can only remove the red enemy striker and so on with the rest. These are movable.

There are also spells in the fatestream that enemies can use agaisnt you. Not every spell will be in the fatestream but certain enemies can have up to 3 spells to use agaisnt you. They work similarly to enemy strikers in which the spell is activated when it reaches the hero on the fatestream and can be removed when a hero uses their striker in the same row and/or column. As you get closer to the Dark One, these spells will become armored and will need to take more than 1 hit to be removed. Spells are also movable. The spells are as followed:

Armor Pierce Hex

• Reduces the armor of the hero its passed through when it reaches the end of the fatestream. Can be very devastating agaisnt heroes like August as he has low armor.

Blind Hex

• Causes the hero to miss some of their attacks. Heavy hitters like Brand and Telina will suffer from this a lot as they are your main heroes for damage.

Bomb Hex

• Turns the entire row shown into enemy chargers and strikers. Do yourself a favor and DESTROY THESE FIRST. You want to avoid these hexes like the plague as there are possibilities that the enemy will do a 10x multiple attack on one (or all) of your heroes alone.

Critical Strike Hex

• Attacks the hero and the heroes adjacent to him. Mostly seen from big enemies as their main attack. These can be devastating if there are multiple enemy chargers along the same row or column.

Freeze Hex

• Turns the hero's runes into ice and non-movable. This also prohibits using skills of the hero that has been frozen. These can be very annoying when affected by 2 heroes or more.

Haste Hex

• Causes the fatestream to go faster temporarily. Can really interupt your planning when one is used, try to avoid these if you want everything to be smooth.

Life Steal Hex

• One hero takes damage from the hex and the damage taken from said hero is given as health back to the enemy. Can make the fight longer than it has to, so try to avoid these.

Poison Hex

• Poisons the hero slowly over time. Not much of a problem compared to other hexes but can be a little bit irritating. Beating the enemy or using August's heal should do the trick if it's bothering you that much.

Restore Hex

• Similar to Life Steal except it doesn't hurt your hero. And just like Life Steal it extends the length of the fight too much. Destroy these quickly as well unless you want to spend more than 10 minutes on a fight alone.

Silence Hex

• Makes the hero unable to use their skill until the fight is over or when August heals them. This is one hex you want to keep away from August as all cost. Because if this hits August, your healing and hex removal is gone for the rest of the fight.

Wall Hex

• Creates a wall between the hero and the enemy. While the wall is up, the heroes can only attack the wall. The wall has a certain amount of HP that needs to be removed before the player can attack the enemy again. Can also lengthen the time of a battle.

Weaken Hex

• Decreases the attack power of the hero that is affected. Try to avoid this hex away from Brand as he is your main power hitter. Aim them at August, I'm sure he doesn't mind at all since he has very weak strength.

Nether Breath

• Inflicts a random hex on each hero. Can be anyone of the above explained and can only be used by the Dark One. When fighting the Dark One, I suggest destroying these as fast as possible unless you want a combination of Bomb, Freeze, and Silence on every hero.

Now that you know how the runes and hexes work, it's time to look at the playing field and how to strategize on it. Take this screenshot for example:



There are many ways to confront this small battle:

• Your eyes will probably be focused on the red chargers that are at the end of the fatestream. You can take the 3rd charger next to the 3 adjacent blue chargers and create a striker. With this striker you can pause the fatestream for a moment when you drag the striker to the bottom row and hit the red charger far away. With the small pause, depending on your movement and reaction, you can quickly combine the yellow chargers by taking the one closer to the end of the fatestream toward the heroes and put it close to the others. Quickly create a blue striker and a green striker and create a 3x chain and attack anyway you want as long as one of the striker hits the enemy's.
  
• OR you can ignore the red chargers and go for the blue chargers only. With the blue chargers, you can create a super striker and hit everything in the fatestream. It's not a good amount of damage because August is weak but as the first battle of the game, it's decent.

Now let's take this battle for example:



We have 4 enemy strikers on the fatestream, 3 being armored and need to take 2 hits to destroy. We also have a green striker. These can be the possible decisions:

• You can use the Green striker on the 2 armored strikers and quickly create a red striker on the bottom row to the right to hit 3 strikers, 2 that will be destroyed and 1 who's armor will be destroyed. You can then create green striker from the middle and drag the enemy strikers to quickly kill those.
  
• OR if you think that you don't have the reaction time to quickly do the above decision, you can deplete the fatestream using Brand's skill and still apply damage to the enemy, perhaps much more damage than the above decision.

Now let's look at a final example:



This is our first miniboss of the game (on my playthrough). Static chargers and static enemy strikers are on the fatestream. From what's shown there's not much you can do. You can perhaps quickly create a yellow striker and attempt to attack both enemy strikers, but that won't stop you from getting hurt. If you want to avoid getting hit, your best bet is to use Brand's or Telina's skill to wipe the fatestream and do some damage to the enemy.

Now the decisions that I put up on each screenshot aren't things you should do all the time. Some readers may have thought of other safer moves to do. But that's the beauty of it, there are many ways to solve these puzzles and only you can make the decision of what's best.

Here are a few tips to consider while playing:

• Always keep August alive at all times. Despite his low damage output, he is your savior when things get messy.
  
• If you spend a long time fighting an enemy, the fatestream will go faster. Try to defeat your enemy quickly but also safely.
  
• Try not to chain 2 strikers of the same color together. It does not double your attack power as one may assume, it uses it like a charger would multiply the striker. (Not sure if this is intentional)
  
• When possible always use a hero striker with one charger in the same row or column. This will pause the fatestream giving you more time to think and move other runes/hexes around.
  
• Don't always go for chains. Despite that it will give a high damage output, you may want to reconsider destroying the hexes first because you try to deal out high damage.
  
• Don't be afraid to use your skills. Whenever you attack with the hero, a bar right under their health bar will increase and when it reaches full capacity, it will make the skill usable again.
  
• Don't be afraid to move enemy chargers and strikers, they are movable for a reason. If it takes you a long time to drag them around and destroy them so be it, but be careful of taking too long.
  
• DESTROY BOMB HEXES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE
  
• Save one skill for a "panic button." Meaning if you're overwhelmed by the enemy's multiple amount of hexes on the fatestream, clickly depend on that certain skill to interrupt the fatestream.

Also here is a quote from the developer of the game, Technobabel, and how the multiplier works (Major thanks for clearing this up):

Originally posted by Technobabel:

-Multiplier starts at 1, and is increased by 0.1% for each non-skull rune in the combo, not counting the one you tap.
-That 0.1% increases by 0.1 for each additional hero in the combo. So if you have all four heroes in the combo, that's 0.4% for each rune in the combo.

Since strikers count the same as chargers, its not always best to create as many strikers as possible, since you're losing 2 runes each time. Of course, strikers continue the chain along the same row/column, so they still have an important use.

Hopefully you've learned a few things from this guide. Hopefully later on I will update and add the enemies and how to successfully beat them once I have a full bestiary. Thanks for reading. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.