In Athermancer, you command up to 3 monsters at once through a series of roguelite battles and dungeons. But how would you maximize your odds against increasingly more difficult foes? The best way, is through solid team composition. In this guide I will explain all the tips you need to comprise a team that is solid and capable.

Here are a few roles that I made to describe what monsters can do to further describe how composition can work. Keep in mind these descriptions are unofficial and purely informative. Monsters can be at least 2 of these at once.


-Tank: Monsters that have high health and can take high damage, can soak up attacks that weaker members of the party can't handle. They typically, though not always have low damage output, making them great to slow the enemy down but not the best at finishing them off. Having high HP is especially helpful to not get swept on turn 2 when dealing with high corruption.

-Healer: Keeps the team alive with healing and/or regeneration skills and remove harmful debuffs. Typically they have low health and damage. They're excellent with special skills that allow you to stave off corruption, a creeping penalty that reduces your starting health at the start of battles.

-Attacker/dps: Your primary attacker and damage dealer. They work best when either paired with a protective tank, or a support that can either assist with sidekick, or give them extra actions. Skills with full party damage, extra attacks, damage boosts, sidekick make them your best unit to go in and raise hell. Especially vs a staggered foe.

-Support: They facilitate the battle by either boosting your team with buffs and sidekick, or sabotaging the enemy's with skills like poise and debuffs. While some can be viable attackers, they typically have lower health.

-Setup: Not to be confused with support, setup is an archetype that has monster-specific skills tied to monster-specific abilities that require a setup to fully maximize. They can be absolute gold in one scenario and lackluster the next. They're hit or miss depending on who you ask.

Right away, your two main priorities should be to have elemental and compositional completeness if you are to survive the harshest battles the void has to offer. Firstly, a monster that is a attacker/dps, tank, or support are all acceptable options for starters.No matter what your setup consists of, it's ABSOLUTELY IMPORTANT to have at least 1 healer. A solid starting squad can consist of a an attacker, tank and healer, each cover each other's weaknesses. So long as you have these three, you have a squad that's capable of winning most battles. With that in mind, elements DO matter and you need to consider them in the team-building process.

Next we have something that actually is part of the game, and that's elements. There is 4 in total and the monsters are a combination of 2 of the 4. These elements are more than just for show, these matter in the skills a monsters can learn and the damage they deal to make foes stagger.

-Water
-Earth
-Fire
-Wind


Teambuilding
When making a team of 3, keep in mind that monsters are dual-elemental, meaning you are fully capable of a team with all 4 elements with only 2/3 monsters. Elemental variety is extremely vital because it is how you are best able to take full advantage of the STAGGER mechanic. If you are someone who enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII(13), this should be quite familiar. To explain, enemy monsters have a specific elemental weakness, and the more of that same damage type is applied the closer they get to staggering. Once staggered, they take heavy damage from ALL sources. Early game, you can win most battles without ever needing to stagger an enemy but mid and late game, you absolutely MUST have a way to stagger foes to deal with them quickly as they will start having more health and do more damage than your squad. Enemies will eventually use a unique move to Reset their stagger bar while also causing passive effects which can range from wasting your time to making your time hard. While it will happen regardless of what you do, there's a longer delay to when they do it once you've made a foe stagger, making staggering enemies all the more important.

Ather
Ather, is also an important component to be mindful of. Basic attacks generate ather of a monster's associated elements and skills consume them. Think of Ather as a pool of mana points, if each point of mana belonged to a specific element. You always have the first move in battle, and you can command your monsters in any order you please. With this in mind, you have to keep a keen eye to what ather a skill demands, how much you produce and rather or not using a fire skill that costs 1 ather will stop your monster from using a move that can win the fight that costs 2 ather. At the the same time, there are special skills and status effects that allow you to knock off your foe's ather, and if they do not have enough to use a skill they will be forced to use a basic attack instead. This is helpful to keep in mind to shut down opponents without accidentally playing yourself.

Traits and Aura
Traits are passive abilities that apply to a specific individual monster while aura abilities are passive traits that apply to the entire team. Traits are immediately active and viewable from a monster and can give an outlook of what they can do and are about. New traits can be learned through leveling up, however only aura can be unlocked via leveling up. Aura can greatly alter the dynamic of the squad, let alone the battle. Have awareness on your team and their skills, traits and abilities and how it can work together with the Aura effect.

Example Team
A team I used that I completed the game with consisted of Minokawa [Support/Attacker, Fire/Wind] Othoros [Attacker/Healer, Water/Fire] and Mandragora [Healer/Support, Earth/Water] and while that team saw me great success, this team is not recommended. While the elemental composition is great, there's a healer and attacker as well, the problem lies with the fact there is no tank and they are all brittle. Meaning I can still win fights and do great, but being brittle can be a problem when foes do increasingly greater damage and corruption growing further in the run, I have to hope my foes make a dumb move to avoid losing a monster by turn 2. It's only by religiously applying weakness debuffs I was able to stop my squad from being swept. I equipped two of them with Tomes, they are items which I will explain further in the next bit.

Artifacts
Artifacts are equipable accessories that enhance how your monsters fight. It can add an extra effect on attacks, support actions and more. These aren't as essential as the previously listed, but the right item in the fight fight can make all the difference in the world. Artifacts' effects can also affect the direction your team's level up tree trends towards. It's something the game does to allow the player to build a squad with skills and stats more specifically and focused rather than having a hodgepodge of skills that are varied but do not have much synergy together. Another thing that can be a trick is assuming that a greater rarity item is automatically superior to the one you have. While the artifact of a superior rarity may have more stats going on, you need to be sure these stats you're trading away are something you can actively make use of. Having a common rarity artifact that improves your attacker's offense replace that with an epic rarity artifact that boost his support skills that you know you rarely use, you have fundamentally downgraded in spite of the better rarity.

Corruption
Corruption is an existential threat to your monsters. Every time your monsters take damage, there is a low chance incoming attacks may increase corruption. The higher the corruption, the less starting health you have going into future fights, which puts you in a great handicap. Once again, I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a capable healer on the team, as even if you don't immediately have an answer for reducing the corruption, they can save your team from being swept up by strong foes within 3 turns or less. Healers can also learn special skills and passive abilities that allow you to remove small or significant amounts of corruption which can extend your run's longevity. Hourglasses of Undoing are must-haves if you have a hard time managing corruption and at the end of each level is a pot of monster soup, reducing up to 15 corruption for the whole squad.

Conclusion
This is all for now. Hope this guide could give insight and If you have any suggestions, corrections if I missed something or anything else you like to add, feel free to comment. What kind of team composition will you build?