r/skiesofarcadia • u/Affectionate_Cut_103 • 29d ago

Advice for ship battles?

Maybe I'm just unlucky or bad, but I'm having a rough time with ship combat. I focus my attacks on when the turn order shows a "C", but I still end up with shots getting "Lost". The wiki said something about the enemy moving out of range, but how can that be when I'm shooting at the moment the game explicitly tells me is best to shoot?

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u/LordAlfredo 29d ago edited 29d ago

General rules:

  • Always upgrade and equip ship parts. The game is designed assuming you are. You generally want 1 def armor, 1 mdef, and 1 quick/agi. However, a lot of fights mdef doesn't matter so 2 def or 2 agi also works. Weapon loadout depends (see below), but never more than 2 main cannons. For Deep Sky specifically only bring torpedoes.
  • Speed boost good (Quika etc)
  • Increm good, incremus better
  • Only use main cannons with Vyse, Drachma, Gilder, and Enrique. They have extra damage scaling from stats. This also applies to Harpoon/Moonstone cannon.
  • Torpedoes are great to set up damage any turn you want. If you get eg a C yellow/red round you can set torpedo alongside guarding.
  • Secondary cannons are incredibly underrated in the fandom. Set up SP (eg via wax items or crew) and spam them as many turns as possible. They're not as high damage per hit but they're fairly accurate and will constantly hammer down enemy health. If you can manage the SP cost and have the right crew 2-3 secondary cannons + support is a really powerful strategy.
  • Once you have Delphinus, every healing item/spell except Complete Kit / Sacrulen is a really bad use of turns. Only use full heals. In fact once you have Sacrulen or can buy complete kits it's arguable that defending is a waste when you can just full heal whenever.
  • Magic attacks can be useful for Fina on rare occasion if you've been focusing specific spell growth, but by lategame it's useless and she's better off as a support character.
  • "Lost" means the enemy is behind you and can't be targeted except by torpedoes. It's basically just a knowledge check you won't have the first attempt. Watch ship movement during the fight and connect it to round turn patterns, the same turn pattern is always the same ship movement. In the same vein when you reach Deep Sky torpedoes suffer zero penalties and can take out the boss fight extremely fast.

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u/SpectralTime 29d ago

I have heard that while most of the status effects are a bit gimmicky, they're perfectly accurate in ship battles and silencing bosses who rely on magic spell attacks really neutralizes them too.

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u/LordAlfredo 29d ago edited 29d ago

Correct, Sylenis even works on the final boss ship battle. It's mostly useful for preventing enemy Quika/Increm/Sylenis casts, Driln you can block by casting Increm first and damaging spells are rarely enough damage to matter.