Bestiary — reading the Enemy Preview
There's no separate bestiary screen in the app. Everything you learn about an enemy comes from a node's Enemy Preview — the panel you open before attempting the fight. Since your team is locked for the whole run, scouting the preview before you commit is the difference between a clean clear and a wasted attempt.
What you see before your first attempt
Open a node and the Enemy Preview shows you, for each enemy:
- Type — Standard, Elite, Swarm, or Boss (see Node types).
- Role — Anchor, Striker, or Mender. This is the single most useful field: it tells you what kind of team beats them.
- Rarity — how invested the enemy is, which hints at how much punishment it takes.
- Kit — the names of the skills the enemy can use. You see what they do, not how hard — there are no power numbers yet.
That's enough to plan. If the preview shows a Mender keeping a heavy hitter alive, you know to bring single-target burst; if it shows a wide field of low-rarity attackers, you know to bring area damage.
Enemy Defense is flat and near-zero — the same in every world and difficulty — so your attacks land their honest damage everywhere, and there's no "high-Defense wall" that shrugs your hits off. What makes a higher-world enemy hard is a bigger health bar and a harder-hitting Attack. So read a sturdy-looking enemy as "lots of HP to grind through," not "my damage bounces off," and read a dangerous one as "gear up so its hits don't fold me." Your own gear's Defense and HP are what let you survive its Attack — see Combat → Your damage, the enemy's HP, and your gear.
What unlocks after your first attempt
Full enemy stats unlock once you've attempted the node. After a first try you can go back and read exact numbers — the fine detail that lets you optimize a build for a 3-star clear. The design nudge is clear: scout with the preview, learn the specifics by fighting, then come back tuned.
How to scout a node
- Read the roles. Is there a Mender to burst down? An Anchor soaking your damage? A wall of attackers?
- Match a team to the shape. Single-target for a protected boss, area damage for a swarm, sustain for a grind — see Node types for the matchups.
- Check the recommended-power read. Green means your team meets it; yellow is a real fight; red means scout again when you're stronger.
- Commit the one team that clears the whole run, not just this node — remember it's locked for all four sprints.
The families you'll preview in Cinderfall
Cinderfall groups its enemies into recognizable families, which makes previews easy to read at a glance: the Muted fill the Standard nodes, the Static make up the Swarm waves, the Detuned guard the Elite nodes, and each chapter's Boss fights flanked by helpers. The world's capstone is the Herald — clearing it is what unlocks the next world. You don't need to memorize them; the Enemy Preview names every skill before you fight.
Elites carry a touch of their class
An Elite isn't just a bigger Standard enemy — each one has an assigned class, and a Striker Elite plays to it with one signature beat on top of its role: it might apply a bleed, drain life off its hits, chain into your back line, steal Speed, or land a biting cold debuff. So read an Elite's class in the preview, not only its role — that's the tell for which threat it brings, and which counter to pack. (Anchor and Mender Elites stay true to their job; it's the Striker Elites that show the extra class flavor.)
The Heralds — each world's class-boss
Every world's capstone is its Herald, and clearing it is the gate to the next world. The Heralds aren't generic reskins of one boss template — each fights as its own class, played as a striker, mirroring a real player kit, and each has a signature move it unleashes when the fight drags (its enrage turn):
| World | Herald | Class | How it fights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cinderfall | Embric — "The Snowball" | Brawler | Ramps as the fight goes on: escalating team-wide hits, capped by an Overpulse finisher when it enrages |
| The Stillair | Zephyrian — "The Dive" | Sky Knight | Team dive-strikes that steal Speed, then a Skyfall signature on enrage |
| Meridian Deep | Maris — "Thousand Cuts" | Wave Dancer | Stacks team-wide bleed, then The Wave Breaks — detonating those bleeds for a burst — on enrage |
These are honest fights with counterplay. A Herald's whole threat lives in the skills you can read in its Enemy Preview — there is no unavoidable, can't-miss chip ticking away on every boss turn. So the normal answers all work: cleanse or out-heal the bleed before Maris detonates it, race Embric before the snowball ramps, spread or shield against Zephyrian's dive and watch your Speed. Scout the class, bring its counter, and the Herald tells you exactly what to pack.
Enemies won't turtle forever
Two behaviours are worth knowing before you scout a defensive node, because they change how a "wall" enemy actually plays out — see Combat → Long fights don't last forever for the full detail:
- Shield-heavy enemies break their own wall. An Anchor that builds a big shield will periodically spend part of it as a sweeping attack on your whole team, so it's a threat, not just an obstacle. Bring enough damage to burn the shield down rather than planning to wait it out.
- A fight that drags will end itself. If a battle grinds on far too long, the enemy team enrages — hitting harder, faster, and with team-wide sweeps until someone falls. If you're triggering the enrage, read it as you're under-built for this node and come back with more burst or better gear.
- A hard turn limit guarantees a result. Beyond the enrage sits a final backstop: a fight that somehow outlasts everything hits a hard turn cap and ends immediately as a loss. You'll essentially never reach it in normal play — it only exists so two unkillable walls can't loop forever.
See also
- Combat — turn order, buff ceilings, and how enemies behave when a fight drags
- Node types — which enemy shapes you meet where, and how to counter them
- Run Mode — why a locked team makes scouting matter
- Getting started — the World Picker and Cinderfall