Forgotten Girl Quest

As this is a reference document, I recommend doing a Ctrl+F on whatever you want clarification about rather than reading front-to-back. This will be updated from time to time according to what needs to be added. If something you're looking for isn't here, feel free to drop a comment and I will add information to the appendix.

Explanation of Statistics:

Here is a brief look at what all of the numbers/information on the character sheets at the end of each chapter mean. As for the sheets themselves, they represent the current state of affairs at the moment that the chapter ends. We'll use Natsuko's character sheet at the end of Chapter 1 as an example:

NATSUKO

Level: 48

EXP To Level:

79,324

Class: Jack

Fire Elemental

HP: (10,521 | 10,521)

STATS

Force: 124

Vitality: 150

Finesse: 63

Cognition: 45

Insight: 102

ABILITIES

PASSIVE

Hothead —

Deal 50% more fire elemental damage while under half health

ACTIVE:

Jack of All Trades —

Every two levels, Jack learn an ability belonging to another class. These can be used once per day.

ELEMENTAL:

Fire Gale —

Produces a burst of fire from its user's limbs dealing moderate fire elemental damage and setting target ablaze

ACTIVE:

Fuel Injection —

Parry an elemental attack and regain 10% of the damage that would be dealt as HP and halve all current cooldowns.

DESPERATION ART:

Spontaneous Combustion — Coats the user in a wreath of flames and deals heavy fire damage centered on the user who loses half their health.

USAGE STATISTICS

USE-RANKING

#189/190

USE-NUMBER:

11,144 Emanations

ART NUMBER:

7,055

ERO-ART NUMBER:

4,720

FIC NUMBER:

16,992

From top to bottom, left to right:

Name - The Hero's name, obviously.

Level - What their level is. For the time being this stat runs from 1-90, however the cap has increased in the past.

EXP to Level - Also fairly obvious. The scaling is exponential, with the amount gained from monsters/quests/dungeons pegged to regions. As an example, leveling past 45 becomes significantly more difficult for Heroes after the region of Shikijima, which is where Natsuko and her original team capped out at.

Class - The class of Hero. The Hero doesn't pick this, they're summoned that way and that's their class permanently. These are also tied to three general roles in combat: Damage, Control, and Support, with Jack being the odd one out due to being able to do a little bit of everything.

Elemental Type - All Heroes are summoned from a primordial element which determines both what type of damage they deal and what they're resistant to. There are eight in total, those being Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Metal, Wood, Lightning, and Aether.

HP - You guessed it, hit points.

Attribute Stats: These are assigned by the Hero on each level up. The amount that the Hero starts with at level 1 and how much they get each level is assigned at their summoning. This is the greatest source of disparity between earlier and later-summoned Heroes. As an example, Natsuko started with 12/10/10/10/10 and gains 15 points each level, whereas Sofiane started with 45/45/54/45/45 and gains 30. Additionally, Heroes lose 10% of their total stats each time they die and are re-summoned. Stats can be reverted to their full values whenever the Hero completes a major quest, but this is an issue for Heroes who get stuck in a downward spiral and become too weak to do this. One last point of note is that these stats are only taken into consideration on direct competition with a mob, obstacle, or Hero, meaning that Sofiane may have more Cognition than Natsuko for certain purposes, but he's not necessarily more clever.

Force - Determines physical damage dealt (damage dealt directly by the Hero's weapon, both Elemental and not) as well as resistance to physical damage. It also affects general strength.

Vitality - Determines total HP and resistance to damage-over-time abilities. It also affects healthiness, including the ability to hold your drink.

Finesse - Determines crit damage and %, dodge chance, and moderately influences the power of non-Elemental abilities. It also affects overall speed.

Cognition - Determines magic damage (damage not dealt directly by the Hero's weapon, e.g. when Shuixing fires a water missile as an attack) as well as resistance to magic damage. It also determines the level of certain in-universe knowledge. This is NOT considered as a total number, but as a ratio compared to the Hero's other stats. E.g., if Sofiane has 190 Cognition and Shuixing has 178, but Shuixing's ratio of Cognition to other stats is 1.5, she will be able to recall knowledge easier.

Insight - Determines power of Elemental abilities, both physical and magical. It also gives cooldown reduction on activated abilities, once again as a ratio compared to other stats rather than a total. It also lowers the Hero's accumulation of mental stress.

Abilities:

Slot 1 - Always the Hero's unique passive, usually determines the way they approach combat in some way.

Slot 2 - Always the Class's core ability. Unlike other abilities, multiple Heroes may have the same one. Sometimes this is slightly modified, usually to conform to the Hero's element.

Slot 3 & 4 - These can be either active or passive, Elemental or Non-Elemental. Elemental abilities are generally better since they recruit more stats into their effectiveness and can be used to set up elemental reactions for higher damage. These are unique to the Heroes who have them. The one exception is that the Jack class can learn other Hero's abilities but not Desperation Arts.

Slot 5 - The Desperation Art. This is unique to the Hero and can only be activated under severe mental stress, NOT damage taken. Any time a Hero feels as though they're in serious danger, their Desperation Art becomes unlocked and it can be used whenever it's off cooldown. As a non-damage example, if Shuixing sees her teammates getting beaten to a pulp, her Desperation Art unlocks even if she has not taken damage herself. As mentioned above, Insight directly increases this threshold, making it harder for high-insight Heroes to unlock their Desperation Art.

Usage Statistics: These represent either direct numbers for the Celestials' usage of a Hero's emanation, or provide useful proxies for the Hero to check their overall popularity and guess at the effectiveness of certain measures they are taking to attract Celestials to summon them.

Use-Ranking - A ranking comparing where the Hero's Use-Number sits relative to all other Heroes.

Use-Number - The total number of Celestials summoning an emanation of that Hero to fight for them.

Art Number - How many unique images have been drawn or created of that Hero by a Celestial.

Ero-Art Number - As above but of a more lascivious nature.

Fic Number - How many works of fiction have been written which involve the Hero.

One last point of note: Heroes are only able to see and keep track of their own statistics. The exception to this is the Use-Ranking chart which is publicly visible.

Other Terminology:

Celestial - Divine figures existing in alternate-universe versions of Po-Lin who summon Heroes to fight for them. Their motives are opaque to the Heroes they summon, though the Heroes are aware there is some kind of personal attachment involved due to knowing what the Art, Ero-art, and Fic numbers entail.

Emanation - A version of the Hero summoned by the Celestials into another world. This version is a snapshot of that Hero updated every seven days which functions as an imperfect copy of that Hero's temperament, personality, visual aesthetic, statistics, and combat ability. Because this isn't a perfect 1:1 clone of that Hero but a general sketch of them during that period of time, Heroes are able to manipulate how their emanation turns out by playing to a general pattern of behavior and appearance (i.e., their archetype). The more they deviate from this, the more this changes the emanation created when they're summoned. Additionally, if a Hero makes a point of coming up with a fully new outfit/costume, the Celestials can elect to summon them in that costume.

Po-Lin - The world in which everything takes place.

Yishang-ren - An order of demi-gods with the ability to summon and re-summon Heroes and Non-Heroes alike. They are supposedly helping to guide the world of Po-Lin out of an epoch of formless Entropy along with the help of the Celestials in other universes. They accomplish this by pushing back something called the Mist one region at a time and having the Heroes fight off the Entropic Axis, an opposing force in favor of entropy. The extent of their powers isn't fully known, but they don't appear able to re-summon Heroes who die through extraordinary means, such as falling through the ground.