ComixPlay #1: The Endless Incident – 100% Guide

ComixPlay #1: The Endless Incident is a fairly straight forward turn-based combat game about a team of superheroes called the Solar Defenders. Their story is told in digital comic book format you read in between encounters. Every time combat begins in the book, you take over the characters to defeat whatever it attacking them. Thankfully the game also gives you the option to just read the comic book (if you don’t feel like playing the combat rounds), or just playing the encounters (if you don’t feel like reading).

Honestly there isn’t a tremendous amount of variety in the combat encounters. Each character has a few special abilities which are generally limited. The trick is to figure out which characters work best in each situation.

The six playable characters are:

• Tom, a.k.a. Ace Awesome — He’s the team leader and one of the most vital characters for two reasons: He’s the only one who can buff other characters’ Defense, and one of his special abilities is to resurrect fallen teammates. The downside is that he cannot boost his own Defense which also makes him one of the squishiest. Monsters like to attack the party member they can deal the most damage to so during the course of the game you’ll likely have to toss a lot of healing Tom’s way.
• Forcer — The team’s best damage dealer, generally speaking. He can increase his own size for two turns, giving him a damage bonus against large-sized monsters. He can also boost his teammates’ Attack, or perform a multi-attack. His big drawback is, similar to Tom, he cannot boost his own Attack score.
• Nightingale — The team’s healer. Another essential character for success, she can heal her wounded teammates and has a lot of powers to help her accomplish that goal.
• Nebula — The team’s main support character. Her attacks hit all monsters at once but are generally very low damage. Her real usefulness comes when she is paired with either Tom or Nightingale. Using her power on Tom removes Defense buffs from the monsters, which allows everyone to deal more damage. Using her power on Nightingale gives a small heal to all heroes, which can be handy if you need just a little bit more healing. Nebula can also put a damage reverse shield on someone for two turns, changing all damage they take into healing.
• Gizmo — The team techie. He has a permanent damage bonus against robots and mechanical enemies, and can also put drones on other characters that attack monsters for minor damage or heal heroes. He can also freeze or shrink monsters, at least, the ones that aren’t immune to those effects.
• Aengus — An old veteran the team picks up temporarily. He is only available in combats #7 and #8. All his attacks are single target damage dealers but he can also put damage shields on other characters.

Here’s the one trick you need to know in order to have successful fights: Tom buffs Defense, and Forcer buffs Attack, and Nightingale heals. Each character can have up to four Attack and Defense buffs, so all you do is during the first wave in an encounter, kill all monsters except for one. Hopefully the monster you leave alive only has a single target low damage attack. Then each round, have Tom buff Forcer, have Forcer buff Tom, and have Nightingale heal whomever the monster attacks (probably Tom). Have them buff Nightingale’s Attack and Defense too until everyone is maxed out.

You can also swap in other characters to get buffs the same way. It’s generally slower to buff Nebula or Gizmo because you need to keep Nightingale on the board for heals, but you get the idea. Having characters with high Attack scores goes a long way toward defeating monsters quicker, and having high Defense really helps keep the damage you sustain low.

This trick works on all levels except for #1 (because it’s a tutorial), #6 (because it’s timed), and the final battle #9 (because you need to keep your damage output up before getting overwhelmed).

One other drawback to watch out for are the monsters that can copy a hero’s Attack and Defense. They look like large blue demonic lizards with a huge tail. Use Nebula’s power on Tom to take away the Defense they copied from you and then kill them as quick as you can.

• Always keep an eye on Tom’s health. If he starts to get low, make sure Nightingale is there for healing, or just swap him out until you can arrange a more favorable battlefield to come back to.
• Any time you see a monster with Defense bonuses, use Nebula’s ability on Tom to take it away. Doing this really helps in the long run.
• Attack and Defense bonuses carry over from one wave to the next. Abilities that characters can use on themselves or others do not. Don’t use abilities that last for several turns right before killing the last monster of a wave, because the remaining time you have on it will be lost.
• Holding down the right mouse button on a monster will show you its stats and attacks. Take note if it can attack a row, column, or another pattern and then arrange your heroes accordingly.
• Use positioning to your advantage. Positions 5 and 9 grant Attack bonuses to whomever is standing in the right spot, this is the only way for Forcer to gain Attack so it comes in handy.
• On some levels you can fire lasers or rockets from the Paladin (the Solar Defenders ship) and hit all enemies. The damage this does is based on the current Attack bonus of the character calling for the strike, so be sure to save it for someone with a large Attack.
• Don’t forget about Nebula’s healing shield. It helps keep Tom in the fight when Nightingale’s run out of her big heals.
• Don’t bother with Tom’s “Make Someone Else Play Next” special ability. It’s a waste of a turn for Tom who could be dealing damage or buffing Defense.

Training Day
Finish level 2 (any difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

Crumbling Rock
Don’t let any hero die on level 4 (normal or hard difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

Halfway Through
Finish level 5 (any difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

Halfway Through (Hard)
Finish level 5 (hard difficulty)

Same as above except to need to be on the Hard difficulty.

Perfect Fatality
Finish Level 5 with full HP and revives (normal or hard difficulty)

Nightingale has a special ability that allows her to heal everyone on the team, but she can only use it once. Wait until the last wave and use it just before defeating the final monster. If for some reason your characters are not as full HP when the battle ends, you can reload your game and go straight to the final wave to try again.

Quick Escape
Finish Level 6 with more than 10 turns left (normal or hard difficulty)

The hardest achievement in the game, in my opinion. You start with 26 turns so you have to defeat everything within 16 turns to get this one. You need continuous damage output from all characters so don’t waste time messing with special abilities (other than heal when absolutely needed). I was able to do this by concentrating on buffing Gizmo’s Attack through positioning. On Gizmo’s first turn, move to position 5, then 9, then 5 again to give him full Attack bonuses and have him go to town.

Forcer can also grant Attack bonuses but it’s probably better to just have him attack anyway. Use his Grow ability to fight the large robot, then use his multi-attack when they break down into smaller versions. Don’t forget to use Nebula and Tom to strip away the robots’ Defense, and keep Nightingale close by as you will be dealing with a lot of incoming damage.

Perfect Escape
Don’t let any hero die in level 6 (hard difficulty)

Self-explanatory. Hopefully you already got the Quick Escape achievement on Normal difficulty so you don’t have to worry about the time crunch as much when you try for this.

Aengus Forever
Don’t swap out Aengus on level 8 (normal or hard difficulty)

Self-explanatory. Keep Aengus in the fight the whole time!

20 Abilities
Use 20 special abilities in level 8 (normal or hard difficulty)

Specifically, special abilities are the powers listed under the character’s profile image at the bottom of the screen during a combat encounter. All special abilities can only be used once or twice, so you’ll need to do a fair amount of character swapping to use them 20 times. This achievement does not appear as soon as you’ve used your 20th ability, but rather when the fight is over.

The Endless Incident (Easy)
Finish the game (any difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

The Endless Incident (Normal)
Finish the game (normal or hard difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

The Endless Incident (Hard)
Finish the game (hard difficulty)

Self-explanatory.

20 Deaths
Finish the game with less than 20 deaths in total (any difficulty)

See below.

20 Deaths (Hard)
Finish the game with less than 20 deaths in total (hard difficulty)

These are not difficult at all. 20 deaths is a very generous threshold. On my Normal playthrough I only had two deaths, and on my Hard playthrough I only had three.

Quick Execution
Defeat the Endless before he spawns the last wave of enemies (any difficulty)

The Endless is the final boss of the whole game. Every four turns he will summon four new monsters to fight with him, and he will do this a total of three times. This means you have 12 turns to defeat The Endless before he manages to summon his final wave.

The Endless has 1000 HP so obviously damage output is key. Fortunately you have all five characters on the board in the final battle, so your damage dealers should be focused on hitting him as much as possible while your support heroes mitigate incoming damage and effects. A combo that works well here is to have Nebula and Forcer put a shield and a taunt on the same character at the same time, which forces all enemies to attack for no damage for a couple of turns.

Once The Endless is defeated, he falls over but you’ll still need to defeat any remaining summoned monsters to end the battle. If you are having trouble defeating The Endless in time, try it on an easier difficulty.

Ace Awesome
Cause 1000 damage with Tom during one playthrough (any difficulty)

You should be able to get this just by playing through the game normally.

Ace Awesome Reloaded
Cause 3000 damage with Tom during one playthrough (any difficulty)

You should also be able to get this just by playing through the game normally, although it will come much later. Have Tom focus on just attacking for a while if you’re worried he’s not doing enough damage.

The Forcer
Cause 1000 damage with Forcer during one playthrough (any difficulty)

You should be able to get this just by playing through the game normally.

The Forcer Reloaded
Cause 3000 damage with Forcer during one playthrough (any difficulty)

You should also be able to get this just by playing through the game normally, although it will come much later. Forcer is your biggest damage dealer so you shouldn’t have any problem with this, honestly.

Nebula’s Fury
Kill 3 enemies with one shoot of Nebula (any difficulty)

When fighting a wave of monsters just beat three of them down until they have only a few HP left, then have Nebula attack so she can take them all out. There will be lots of opportunities to do this, although doing it on an early level in the game might be easier than a later level.

Nebula’s Madness
Kill 4 enemies with one shoot of Nebula (any difficulty)

Same as above except you must kill four monsters at once instead of three.