Black Beacon

Combat System Explained

Black Beacon Combat Basics
Combat Happens in Real-Time Every Character Has a Basic Attack and a Set of Skills Certain Character Abilities Charge Each Others' Vigor Combo Burst Lets You Use Skills Without Having to Charge Vigor Switching Characters Near Enemies Triggers Entrance Attacks, Charges Vigor Faster Dodging Enemy Attacks at the Right Time Grants Temporary Invulnerability Learn What Enemy Attack Indicators Mean Attacks Fill an Enemy's Elemental Anomaly Meter Weapons and Ancient Marks Improve Your Character's Performance

Black Beacon Combat Basics

Combat Happens in Real-Time

Every Character Has a Basic Attack and a Set of Skills

Certain Character Abilities Charge Each Others' Vigor

Combo Burst Lets You Use Skills Without Having to Charge Vigor

Switching Characters Near Enemies Triggers Entrance Attacks, Charges Vigor Faster

Dodging Enemy Attacks at the Right Time Grants Temporary Invulnerability

Learn What Enemy Attack Indicators Mean

Attacks Fill an Enemy's Elemental Anomaly Meter

Weapons and Ancient Marks Improve Your Character's Performance

Combat Happens in Real-Time

Like in other action games, combat in Black Beacon happens in real-time, and you can move your characters within the limits of the stages they find themselves in. This means you can come up with creative ways to not only deal damage (get enemies bunched up and hit them all with one attack), but avoid damage as well (dodge enemy attacks properly, interrupt Killing Moves with Heavy Strikes).

The game encourages players to keep moving throughout the battlefield and actively avoid enemy attacks, while looking for the perfect opportunity to strike with their attacks and skills.

Every Character Has a Basic Attack and a Set of Skills

Every playable character in Black Beacon has a basic set of abilities: A Basic Attack, a First Skill, and Second Skill, an Ultimate Skill, a Passive Skill, and a Combo Skill.

These abilities interact with each other in special ways. They also affect what order you use them in, what characters you will team up with, when you will switch your character in or out during battle, and even whether or not you should prioritize upgrading them over other characters.

Using your character's abilities in the correct order maximizes their damage output and survivability (or maximizes the damage output and survivability of another character), which ultimately affects your success with clearing missions (especially with endgame content that earns you Rune Shards and Ancient Marks).

Certain Character Abilities Charge Each Others' Vigor

Vigor is the energy that a character needs to gather before they can use their skills. But there is a small hierarchy of what character action gathers Vigor for what skill.

Basic Attacks charge the Vigor of a character's First Skill, while the First Skill charges the Vigor of a character's Second Skill. The Second Skill, as well as basic attacks, charges the Vigor of a character's Ultimate Skill. Then, the process is repeated all over again. This is important in maintaining high, consistent damage.

However, certain character upgrades can shorten this process by hastening a character's Vigor charge or even outright eliminating the need to do basic attacks. This is why it's important to prioritize not only what character to upgrade first, but which of their skills should be upgraded first as well.

Combo Burst Lets You Use Skills Without Having to Charge Vigor

All of your character's combat actions (Basic Attack, First and Second Skills, Ultimate Skills) also charge their Combo Burst meter. When the Combo Burst meter is full, you can enter Combo Burst mode, which allows your character to use their First and Second Skills without having to charge their Vigor.

This is useful for characters with high DPS, as they can spam their skills without any delay aside from a short cooldown for their second skill. So, it is recommended to switch to your character with the highest DPS and then activate Burst Mode to maximize damage.

Switching Characters Near Enemies Triggers Entrance Attacks, Charges Vigor Faster

If you have one or two other characters in your team, you can switch to them at any point in the battle. However, switching characters near enemies triggers an Entrance Attack, which the character being switched to will do. That character will also have a slightly increased Vigor charge rate, which means they will be able to use their skills faster.

Depending on what kind of team you have, switching characters often (preferably after they've gone through their skills) helps with dealing damage more consistently, as they would be able to charge the Vigor for all their skills (especially their Ultimate Skill) faster.

If the character you want to switch to has their Ultimate Skill's Vigor charged up, you can also tap the Ultimate Skill icon next to their picture in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. This will make them do their Ultimate Skill as you switch them into battle.

Dodging Enemy Attacks at the Right Time Grants Temporary Invulnerability

Dodging is important in Black Beacon, since battles in-game happen in real-time and players can survive for as long as possible, depending on their skill. Whenever you tap the dodge button, you can dodge in whatever direction you like (so it's also useful in closing the distance between you and enemies if you need to).

Dodging at the right time, however, is called a Perfect Dodge, and this grants a quick burst of invulnerability. This can be useful as you can rush headlong into a mob of enemies and use your skills to damage all of them while they are all bunched up.

Learn What Enemy Attack Indicators Mean

Enemies Flashing Yellow Indicate Killing Moves

During battle, certain enemies will begin to emit a golden glow. This is their cue for doing a Killing Move, which can deal a lot of damage to your character if they get hit. But you can counter this by holding the Attack button.

This makes your character do a Heavy Attack, which interrupts the enemy's Killing Move. Alternatively, you can interrupt the enemy's Killing Move by making your character use any of their skills.

Certain enemies doing Normal Attacks can also be interrupted just by doing basic attacks on them.

Enemies Flashing Red Indicate an Uninterruptible Attack

Meanwhile, if the enemy (such as a boss) is flashing Red, it means they're about to do an attack that cannot be interrupted, either by a heavy attack or a skill. In this case, the best thing to do is to get your character out of the way by dodging or simply moving in the opposite direction.

Attacks Fill an Enemy's Elemental Anomaly Meter

All playable characters belong to certain Elements, and their attacks fill the Elemental Anomaly meters of their enemies. Filling this meter inflicts an Elemental Anomaly on the enemy, which inflicts a skill effect on them that either causes damage or hinders them in some way.

For example, when the Dark Element character Ereshan fills an enemy's Elemental Anomaly meter, the enemy becomes afflicted with Erosion. Once Erosion ends, the enemy takes additional damage equal to the total damage they received while the effect was active, effectively amplifying Ereshan's overall damage output.

List of All Elemental Anomalies

Weapons and Ancient Marks Improve Your Character's Performance

Eventually, players will get their hands on two types of equipable items for their characters: Weapons and Ancient Marks. Weapons give extra Attack and Defense stats to your character, as well as a Sync Skill that enhances one of that character's stats and even a character's main skill if it's a higher-rarity weapon.

Ancient Marks

Meanwhile, Ancient Marks work similarly to weapons in that they give specific stat boosts as well as grant special effects to the user wearing them. However, the difference is that Ancient Marks don't give just additional Attack or Defense.

Instead, they run the gamut of stats from HP to Critical Hit Rate, Critical Damage, and Pierce - which are stats that increase your character's chance to deal critical hits, do more damage with critical hits, and ignore an enemy's Defense stat, respectively. Also, you can equip your character with multiple Ancient Marks to give them multiple stat boosts and effects.

Getting the right Ancient Marks and Weapons will make a difference in how your character performs in battle and come out as the winner.

Ancient Marks Explained

Combat Tricks

Intermediate Combat Tricks

Intermediate Combat Tricks
Know Your Skill Rotations and Character Rotations Organize Your Strike Order You Can Queue Your Characters' Ultimate Skills Get Higher Rarity Weapons for Your Characters

Know Your Skill Rotations and Character Rotations

Learning your character's skills, what they do, and what order you should use them in is one of the most important things a player should learn about their character. If you want to look at a character's skill effects, you can go to the Character menu, tap Develop, and go to the Skill screen.

For many characters, rotating between their First and Second Skills and basic attacks is enough. The order in which you do your character's skills is called a Skill Rotation.

But characters with certain abilities (like Zero and her ability to buff the damage of other characters in the team) require learning the right time to switch to other characters as well. The order in which you switch between characters is called a Character Rotation.

For example, any team with Zero will want to have her use her first and second skills before immediately switching to her team's main damage dealer (in this case, Florence). This is so Florence benefits from Zero's damage buffs, maximizing the damage she can deal with her skills. Once her skills are used up, it's time again to switch back to Zero so she can use her skills and repeat the process. Sometimes, you can also switch to Logos

Organize Your Strike Order

When it comes to Character Rotations, your party's Strike Order before the start of the battle is important as well. Every time before a mission starts, you are asked which characters you want to send into battle. On the right-hand side of the Team Formation screen, you can decide which character will be on the field first i.e., the "First Strike".

Sticking with our previous example, any team with Zero in it would want her to be the team's First Strike. This is so she can get the character going by charging her skills and using them, which grants buffs to the character she will be switched out with.

Take some time to think about which characters have abilities that benefit other characters somehow, and put them in a team with characters with high DPS. Depending on what specific characters you put in your team, you can have that support character either be the First Strike (like Zero with her buff or Ninsar with her shields), or switch to them later when you specifically need them.

You Can Queue Your Characters' Ultimate Skills

While using your character's ultimate skill, you can "queue" another character's ultimate skill so it can fire off right after without giving the enemy any chance to make a move between ultimate skill activations. This is useful for when you are facing a very tough enemy, and giving them even a moment to do any move could lead to your character's defeat.

While your character is doing an ultimate skill, tap the ultimate skill icon next to your other character's icon on the top-right-hand side of the screen. If your third character has an ultimate skill ready, tap their ultimate skill icon as well, so all three ultimate skills are used in quick succession.

Get Higher Rarity Weapons for Your Characters

As you progress through the game and encounter tougher and tougher enemies, we recommend getting higher rarity Weapons for your characters - or at least your main carry.

For example, Qing's weapon - Bieyunshui - not only has a sync skill that gives her a water damage boost, but also enhances the damage of her skill Wave Slicer by giving it more damage and a higher chance to deal critical hits. Compare this to her default 3-star weapon, Phoenix Flare, which only gives her a water damage boost and lower Attack and Defense.

Standard 5-star characters are relatively easier to get 5-star or 4-star weapons for since they have a permanent banner that takes Lost Time Keys instead of Time-Seeking Keys. But if you're using a limited 5-star character as your main carry, you will have to pull as many copies of their weapon as you can while their banner is still available.

List of All Weapons

Advanced Combat Tricks

Intermediate Combat Tricks
Learn How to Use Swap Cancels Keep Topping Up Your Characters' Ultimate Skill Charges Teleport Switching Can Make Skill Rotations Quicker Get the Right Ancient Marks for Your Character

Learn How to Use Swap Cancels

Swap Canceling is when you use a certain character's abilities, before switching them out for another character while they're in the middle of making their current move. This will not cancel that move and allow you to quickly use the next character's skills without having to wait for the previous character's skill animation to finish.

For example, if you use Florence's second skill, you can tap Zero's icon quickly while she's in the middle of doing her animation. Florence still deals the damage, but Zero's already on the field using her skills and activating her buffs before you switch back to Florence and deal even more damage.

Keep Topping Up Your Characters' Ultimate Skill Charges

Black Beacon encourages players to switch between characters often, because not only does switching in characters trigger Entrance Attacks, but it also gives the next character a boost in charging the Vigor of their own skills.

If you want to maximize your team's damage, you can quickly switch between all members, doing their skill rotations, to ensure that all their Ultimate Skills are charged up. Once that's done, you can queue their Ultimate Skills to deal maximum damage.

Teleport Switching Can Make Skill Rotations Quicker

Certain characters, such as Ereshan, have skills that either teleport them or get them quickly from one part of the map to another. These skills can be used to hasten another character's skill rotation and ensure they have maximum damage.

For example, the Dark Element character Nanna has a mechanic where, after you use her First Skill, you have to pick up the other half of her weapon to deal more damage. Instead of making Nanna run up to her weapon and pick it up, you can instead use Ereshan's First Skill to teleport her to where the weapon is and immediately switch back to Nanna.

Try to think of your team as one character, with each character being a set of different abilities you can use at any time to turn the battle in your favor.

Get the Right Ancient Marks for Your Character

Don't just equip your characters with random Ancient Marks that enhance stats they don't need.

In the early game, this is easier said than done since Ancient Marks are hard to come by. But when you've already unlocked Tome of Fate Mode, you can farm Seals of Fate to buy Ancient Marks at the Fate Store. The thing is that the Ancient Marks sold here have random stat boosts, which means you will have to keep farming and spending Seals of Fate until you get the Ancient Mark with the right stat boost.

However, it will be worth it. For example, giving Li Chi a Nourishing Wings ancient mark that boosts his ATK, Critical Hit Rate, and Critical Damage further amplifies his abilities on top of its effect that gives him a higher chance of dealing critical hits to enemies as his HP goes down due to using his skills.

Find out exactly what kind of stats Li Chi and other characters should be boosting with Ancient Marks to know what to buy from the Fate Store right away and minimize your time grinding Tome of Fate mode.

List of All Characters

Black Beacon Related Guides

Tips and Tricks

All Tips and Tricks

All Tips and Tricks Guides

Beginners' Guide
Beginner's Guide: Tips and Tricks for New Players
Game Modes
How to Unlock All Game Modes and Features	EX Stages Guide
Tome of Fate Guide	Resource Stage Guide
Infinite Multiverse Guide	Babel Tower Guide
List of All Game Modes	-
Gameplay Mechanics
Combat System Explained	All Stats Explained
Reroll Guide	P.E. Bonus (Battle Pass) Guide
Ancient Marks Explained	How to Switch Characters
Merging Guide	How to Farm Energy (Clarity) and Best Uses
How to Change Party Members	Team Building Guide
Affection Guide: How Do I Raise My Character's Affection	Friends Guide: How Do I Add Friends?
Combo Burst Explained	Classes and Elements Explained
Store Guide: What to Buy at the Store?	Things to Do Every Day (Dailies Checklist)
How to Set Up Support Units	How to Parry
List of All Elemental Anomalies (Status Effects)	List of All Seer Level Rewards
What are Pendant Skills?	Glossary: List of Terms
Damage Types Explained	-
Items and Leveling Up
All Ways to Get Rune Shards and How to Use	All Ways to Get Orelium and How to Use
How to Level Up Characters	How to Level Up Weapons
How to Raise Your Seer Level	How to Get Upgrade Materials (Develop Items)
Other Tips and Tricks
Gifts Guide: How Do I Get Gifts?	Costume Guide: How Do I Change Costumes?
How to Log Out of Your Account	Profile Guide: How to Customize my Player Card?
How to Change Camera Mode	Account Linking Guide
How to Buy Rune Stones From the Webshop

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Combat System Explained