Infection:

Infection is a Fungal passive ability which gives a Fungal aligned spirit hunter a chance to Infect the spirit each time one of their Fungal attacks hits it. When Infected the spirit takes additional Fungal damage every few seconds. While this is cool in itself, when you also buy Outbreak and Pestilence it becomes really interesting:

Pestilence:

Pestilence in action!

This ability cannot be used until your opponent is Infected. Once they are, the Pestilence ability will light up in your ability bar and this powerful ability can be used. By tapping, holding and avoiding the spirit while the ability charges, you will turn the spirit’s Infection into a Fever! This Fever will slow the spirit down, reduce their stats by 25% and heal you over a short period of time! This is particularly handy for Fungal aligned Spirit Hunters as they are weak to a lot of different element types. By keeping Fever applied to the spirit they can ensure it is doing less damage to them than normal!

Outbreak:

Again, this ability cannot be used until your opponent is Infected. It will also light up in your ability bar once the spirit is Infected and this time you can tap and hold on the spirit to charge up a powerful fungal blast. The more infections on the spirit, the more damage this will do!

The interesting thing about Pestilence and Outbreak is that although both will become active when you Infect the spirit you can only use one. When you use one of them it will absorb the Infection making the other one become inactive. This means you will have to make a choice as to which one you want to use at a particular time!!

Each element has one or more passive abilities which interact with the other abilities within that element in an exciting way. Some of the other passive abilities are:

• Ice has:
  • ⁃  Reflection – your attacks have a 15% chance to reflect all elemental damage back at the spirit.
  • ⁃  Frosty Fingers – your Ice attacks will do 10% more Ice damage & have a 33% chance to trigger Frostbite.
  • ⁃  Frostbite – each stack of Frostbite generated increases your Ice damage by 5% and when Frostbite reaches 4 stacks it will trigger Freeze (if you have purchased it).
  • ⁃  Freeze – freezes the spirit in place for 6 seconds when triggered.
• Light has:
  • ⁃  Refraction – the spirit’s attacks have a chance to do up to 25% less damage to you.
  • ⁃  Blind – the spirit will take 25% longer to move, think and use their abilities.
  • ⁃  Fusion – each stack of Fusion triggered increases your Light damage by 5%.
  • ⁃  Lightspeed – increases ability cool down and cast times by up to 50%.
• Shadow has:
  • ⁃  Curse – does additional 60 to 85 HP damage per stack, healing you for 50% of that amount.
  • ⁃  Darkness – create 4 stacks of darkness to trigger Eclipse (if you have purchased it). The Eclipse will reduce the spirit’s health by 3,200 to 3,765 HP.
  • ⁃  Slow – spirit will be slowed by 25% per stack of Slow, up to 100%; will last for 6 seconds.
• Water has:
  • ⁃ Hiccups – each stack of hiccups reduces the spirit’s damage by 10%.

Elemental Choices

Buffs show up on the left side of the top screen, debuffs on the right

At the start of your spirit hunting career you choose an element to align yourself to. Once you reach level 25 you can purchase a new alignment and switch between the two outside of battle. At other points in your career you can purchase additional ones so by the end of your career you can own all six elemental alignments. It is important to have a selection of elemental abilities in your Ability Bar as you will not always be facing spirits you are strong against. As I mentioned before there are some abilities in each element which you can use regardless of the element you are aligned to! So make sure you keep a few abilities from other elements in your Ability Bar.

My preference is to carry in my Ability Bar abilities which are strong against those elements I am weak to. For example, if I am Fire I am weak to Water and Shadow so I keep some Light and Fungal abilities in my bar as both of those elements are strong to Water and Shadow!! Although I still carry quite a few battle scars, things would have been much worse if I hadn’t used this strategy.

Note: each element saves its own Ability Bar so you when you switch between them you get your Bar back exactly how it was last time you used it.

Resistances

Avalanche incoming!

As you know, each element is strong to some elements and weak to others. This means if you are Fungal and face off against a Fire spirit it is going to be a hard battle for you. So in addition to making sure you try to keep Fever applied to the spirit, another tactic is to buy some items which give you an increase in Fire resistance!

Some items like Apples and Sushi just heal you for an amount of HP when you eat them. Other items like Mint Frappe’s don’t heal you at all but instead give you 30% increased Fire resistance for five minutes! This means that any Fire damage a spirit does to you is reduced by 30%.

There are also items which heal and provide resistances and even some strange concoctions which give resistances to 2 or 3 elements!

Levelling Up

When you defeat a spirit you will be rewarded with XP and Ghoulders. If you capture a spirit you will get more Ghoulders than XP as Spirit Hunters Inc will be able to use it for research.

To get the most XP and Ghoulders you should pay attention to the following order:

1. Defeating or capturing a spirit of an element you are weak to gives the most XP and Ghoulders.

2. Defeating or capturing a spirit of your element gives a moderate XP and Ghoulders.

3. Defeating or capturing a spirit of an element you are strong against gives the lowest XP and Ghoulders.

Note that defeating spirits you are weak to is harder than those you are strong against so be careful!!

Finally there are also Gold and Silver versions of each spirit. These spirits are much faster, stronger and harder to beat than their normal equivalents and will give you much more XP and Ghoulders should you defeat them!

Excellent! Now you are briefed in the basics of spirit hunting, I will leave you to discover the rest for yourselves. Remember, work out the best combinations of abilities to use against those pesky spirits, keep plenty of Items in your Ability Bar to heal yourself during battle and use Traps to increase your Ghoulders and buy new abilities.

Be careful out there – it’s a spirit war zone. Oh, and have fun!