Beginners' Guide to Battling
Your weapons may be able to do a lot of damage, but if you're in a battle for the long haul, it's a good idea to check whether your equipment can also survive for a while! Reading an item's description lets you check on its type and reliability.
Item Types
- Multiple-use items can be used every turn. Multiple-use attack items (often known as constants) form the major part of most players' attacking strategy. A good example would be the Ice Club, which can be used to deal damage to the opponent every turn.
- Once-per-battle items are exactly that; after you've used them once, while they remain equipped to your pet, they disappear from the Battledome screen for the rest of the fight and can't be used again in the same battle. Many freezing and healing items fall into this category, but there are also plenty of once-per-battle attack items. These are often called bombs, since they do a lot of damage once and then disappear (as if they had exploded). A popular example is the Honey Potion, though there are many others. It's best to throw a bomb at your opponent when s/he is at his/her most vulnerable, since you only get one chance!
- One-use items also give you only one chance to take advantage of their power... but once used, they disappear forever. There's no way to get them back, whether you win or lose! While a lot of one-use items are cheaper than other types of weapon, in the long run you can end up spending just as much money, since you'll need to replace them for every battle. However, if you're going into a one-off battle and your regular weapons aren't quite good enough, a one-use item like a Shooting Star Muffin might just be enough to tip the balance.
Reliability Issues
- Fragile items have a chance of breaking permanently in battle, after which you can never use them again. There's no way to make an item less likely to break (other than by not using it), so having a lot of fragile items may be a risky investment.
- Semi-fragile items are also breakable, but when they break, they don't vanish forever; instead, like once-per-battle items, they disappear until the end of the current fight. If you enter a different battle later, you'll be able to use them again. Depending on the power of the item and how likely it is to break, taking semi-fragile items into battle may be a workable strategy -- or may just end up as a liability.
Reliability and item type can be combined to describe an item. For instance, a multiple-use item can be completely reliable (like the Sword of Domar), semi-fragile (like many types of Frost Cannon), or fragile (like the Ultranova). Similarly, once-per-battle items can be fragile and have a chance of getting permanently broken. Obviously, one-use items always break, no matter what.
This article was written by: In-Depth Battlepedia
