Colony City 27λ: Quick Guide to Start the Game

• Beat the game once to unlock the gallery. It is actually pretty comprehensive.
• NG+? You get a clear bonus (as well as additional skill unlocks) from beating the game once, which you can turn on and off when starting a new game. However, your skills will not carry over to keep things challenging.
• Read, make sure you read all the red tooltips under your enemy and your own HP bar. They give very, very important hints on what you should or should not do.
• All fights are 1v1, but every mob have their own unique and some time very nasty debuffs. As we do not have the luxury of adjusting the deck after the battle start, you will need to adjust your play style for certain mobs.
• Corruption Value (CV) only affects the ending, and is gated at 33/66. Once you hit the cap, you will need to lose to see some defeat scenes to get to the next tier. Keep losing until your CV rise. There is no real penalty for losing.
• It is okay for Youzi to have sex with everything she come across. Because CV is gated, there is no concern about CV getting too high unless you lose. In fact, there are a number of achievements from having sex with everyone. Just go around and collect every semen sample on your first run.

When reading skill description, 2 key words to keep in mind: Gain and Draw.

• Any time you see the word “gain” <card>, you are getting cards added to your deck.
  Gaining energy is good, gaining card… not so much, as it can clutter your deck.
• Draw card is the preferred approach, since it draws from your existing deck.
• The game is very consistent in its use of the word gain vs draw. So… READ carefully.

• The skills you get are random. You need to clear the game twice to unlock all the skills.
• Winning a battle will award you a choice of 3 skills, one from each category of Passive, Activatable and Consumable skill (see below for details)
• When picking a skill, you should consider both its effects and resource cost. By default, your deck does not come with any yellow or purple cards. If you picked up a skill that requires them, you will not be able to trigger it.
• You must have 1 of each skill type equipped, and can make use of up to 10 skills at a time.

1. These are the cards for your deck.
   There are 8 types in total. By default you start with Red (Attack), Blue (Shield) and Skin (Heal) color.
   Each skill you equip would award some cards to your deck (see #5).
   You draw only 5 cards at the start of each turn, so make sure you have a balanced resource base.
   Until you are use to the game mechanics, it might be a good idea to have a spare card of each color… in case your card got locked out by grapple.
   For example, if you need 2 yellow cards to trigger your skills, try to have a 3rd one as a spare.
2. Passive Skills
   These cards require no card to activate. They will give you the corresponding buff, card or various bonus when their trigger condition is met.
3. Activatable Skills
   Line up the cards in your queue to match the pattern to activate it.
   You can activate the same skill more than once. For example, have 2 blue and red pattern to trigger the Meditation skill twice and increase its effectiveness.
   You can choose skills with similar pattern and get them all activated at the same time.
   Avoid having too many (e.g, don’t let it take up more than half your queue) so you have room to build your consumable skills combo.
4. Consumable Skills
   For Consumable Skills, you need to match the pattern similar to Activatable Skills. However, it also takes the cards of matching pattern out of your queue when triggered (hence consume).
   You can either charge or activate the skill same turn.
   Charging and releasing it in the next turn or later gives an 1pt energy bonus when you trigger the skill. This is a key strategy to allow you to play more cards each turn.
   Additionally, leaving a skill in the charge state will lock out the corresponding cards from your pool, and can be an effective way to help you draw the cards you need.
   Keep an eye on Youzi’s excitement gauge. She would climax if it is max, and this will lock out all your Consumable Skills.
5. Cards added to your deck if you equip the skill
   Most skills are not self sufficient, so you need to be creative if choosing your skill combination.
   Resource availability is very important.
   You also want to avoid over bloating on a single card type, unless you have sufficient consumable skills to remove it from play.

How to Obtain Different Endings

1. Balance skills that give energy and Draw cards. You need both to let you play more cards per turn.
2. Watch out for kills that let you gain cards… these cards can disrupt the balance of your queue, especially in long fights. Gaining energy is good. Have to be careful against gain cards.
3. Against hard hitting enemies, the Evasion buff is a better counter than Shield and Heal tactics.
   Evasion negates damage from direct attack, grapple, and sex (shield would still be consume).
   However, it does not negate damage from debuffs/enemy passives.
   Feint and Ascension in Pleasure are two example of skills that gives this buff.
   
4. Pick skills that compliment each other.
   For example, Feint pairs well with Energy Retrieval.
   They turn the useless Faulty Card (grey) into source of Energy + Evasion stack.
5. Always have 1 break free skill equipped
6. Cardiotonic prevents your HP from dropping below 1 and is a life safer if you are trying for the perfect journey achievement. #OMGbutton
   
7. Against enemies that like to clog your hand, make use of break free to prevent them from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in you and build up the stacks. It is still manageable if you only got 2 faulty or explicit card a turn.
8. Against the last boss, if your goal is to ♥♥♥ together… You will need the purple explicit card to help control your excitement gauge. If done correctly, his status would change from Frenzy to Quell.
9. If you want to beat last boss quickly, stacking the electric field buff works wonder.

Thanks to Bladewind for their excellent guide; all credit belongs to their effort. If this guide helps you, please support and rate it here. Enjoy the game.