Techniques

Techniques are your custom attacks and spells. You create them in the Meditation Sanctum — a special room found in dungeons.

Finding a Meditation Sanctum

Meditation Sanctums appear as special rooms in the dungeon. When you're standing on one, the Meditation Sanctum panel opens automatically on the right side of the screen.

Creating a Technique

The technique crafting panel has:

Kind

Choose between:

• Physical — Uses Strength for damage, has a hit roll (can miss), costs no mana, builds reflex debt
• Magic — Uses Intelligence for damage, always hits, costs mana, no reflex debt

Properties

Four sliders control your technique's elemental properties:

• Cap = your Intelligence (for magic) or Strength (for physical)
• The cap applies twice: to each slider, and to all of them added together. The total is the one that decides your build. At Strength 2 each slider reaches 2, but the whole technique still may not weigh more than 2 — so you may take Kinetic 2, or Kinetic 1 and Density 1, and that is the whole of it.
• A magnitude tracker shows that running total against the cap. When it is full you cannot raise anything without lowering something else, however much room an individual slider looks like it has left.

Name

Give your technique a name. This is required and shown in the battle log.

Submit

Click "Meditate on Technique" to memorize it. A toast confirms: "Technique memorized."

How Properties Affect Combat

Weight

Weight = |Caloric| + Kinetic + |Density| + Cohesion

Caloric and density are counted by how far from zero they are, not by their sign. A deeply cold attack costs exactly what a deeply hot one costs, and a diffuse gas costs what dense matter costs. Kinetic and cohesion only run upward.

Higher weight = more damage and higher mana cost (for magic). But it also means more neural capacity used.

The damage arithmetic

share of each affinity = |caloric|/weight, kinetic/weight, |density|/weight, cohesion/weight
R = sum of (each share x the target's resistance to that affinity)

Physical   round( weight x (1 + strength/100) x R  -  target fortitude x 0.5 )
Magic      round( (weight x (1 + intelligence/100) - target intelligence x 0.5) x R )

A critical multiplies by 1.5 and an equipped weapon adds its own multiplier. Physical subtracts the target's fortitude after the resistance multiplier; magic subtracts their intelligence before it.

The stat term is small — 8% at most — so R is what decides a technique's worth. A pattern that splits its weight across three affinities averages the target's resistances together, good and bad alike. One that puts its whole weight into the affinity a target is weakest to can hit far harder at the same weight, which is the real reason to craft rather than to keep a lent primal.

Reflex Debt (Physical Only)

After each physical attack, reflex debt accumulates:

Debt change = (Density / 2) - (Kinetic / 4)

• High Density techniques get heavier over time, slowing your action order
• High Kinetic techniques stay light
• This creates a tactical choice: hit hard and slow down, or stay fast

The combat UI shows a Reflex Debt tooltip on each technique button displaying current debt, projected delta, and post-use debt.

Neural Capacity

You can only have so many techniques active at once, based on your Fortitude:

Neural Capacity = Fortitude * 10

The sum of your techniques' weights must not exceed your neural capacity. If you're at capacity, you cannot learn another until you purge one. There is no way to set a technique aside without forgetting it: everything you know is carried, and everything you carry counts.

A full head is a slower one

You do not have to hit the ceiling to feel it. The more of your capacity is spoken for, the worse you fight:

What you were lent does not count. The two techniques you start with weigh 3 each, but they are handed to you rather than chosen, nothing can set them aside, and crafting destroys them — so they are not counted against your capacity. Every character starts clear, whatever its Fortitude. This measures what you decided to carry.

Nothing warns you as you cross these lines, so watch the weight figure on your technique list. Every technique you know counts towards it, and purging is the only way to bring it down — which costs stamina equal to the technique's weight.

This is the real argument for restraint. One heavy technique you swing accurately will usually beat three you fumble: at Fortitude 2 a single weight-6 technique costs you nothing, a second puts you at −2, and a third at −5 and paying more for every swing.

Renaming a Technique

You can change a technique's name. That is all — its four affinities and its weight are set when you craft it and cannot be edited afterwards.

If you want a heavier version of a technique you already have, you must craft the new one and purge the old one. There is no upgrade path — which means you hold both for a moment, so check you have the neural capacity for the pair before you start.

Purging Techniques

To remove a technique, click Delete next to it in the technique list. Purging costs stamina equal to the technique's weight.

You cannot purge primal techniques — these are system-provided defaults for your archetype and are always available.

Primal Techniques

Each archetype starts with one free technique:

These are labeled "PRIMAL SYSTEM" in the technique list and cannot be deleted.

Resting in the Sanctum

The Meditation Sanctum is also where you can rest. Click "Rest here" to start regenerating:

Resting stops automatically if an encounter triggers or you leave the sanctum.