Auras and Zens
Introduction
In this section, we will discusses how each Aura and Zen evolves as their upgrades go, how upgrading them would help you, and detailed strategies to use them to maximum effect.
It also attempts to give a priority system as to what Aura or Zen you should upgrade first when you first get a ship with a certain Aura Zen combination. The higher the priority number, the higher the priority. Thus if the Aura has a higher priority number than the Zen, then upgrade the Aura first, and vice versa.
Since you can only have one Aura and one Zen on a ship, several Auras are grouped together as one priority level, and several Zens are also grouped together.
The priority number goes up to 8. The most significant levels of each Aura and Zen are also indicated so you know where you might want to hold off the upgrade for a while.
At the end of this section, we also provide a comparison of similar skills to help you better understand the differences between them.
Aura
Aura is the skill that can be used as long as you have enough energy. There are 2 types of Aura skills: radius-based Aura and counter-based Aura. For a radius-based Aura like Bullet EMP, you can use it once your energy are stored for a minimum radius to activate the skill. For a counter-based Aura like Vorpal Lance, you can use it once your energy are stored for a counter to activate the skill.
The credits needed to upgrade each levels are listed below:
| Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | / | 150 | 300 | 450 | 750 | 1500 |
Currently, there are 11+1 Aura skills in the game. They are listed below, with their APEX forms:
- Bullet EMP
- Destructive Wave
- Extended Range
- Increased Stun
- Bullet Detonator
- Stun EMP
- High Damage
- Extended Range
- Strong Stun
- Barrier
- Reflector
- Reinforced Lining
- Laser Storm
- High Power
- Tac Moons
- Shield Breaker
- Missile Swarm
- Armor Piercing
- Ion Warheads
- High Explosive
- Point Defense
- Bullet Detonator
- EMP Laser
- Sentinel
- Chrono Field
- Deep Field
- Vorpal Lance
- Twin Lance
- High Capacity
- Trident
- Phalanx
- Reflector
- Double Phalanx
- Crisis EMP
- Ion Cannon
- Blast Amplifier
- Overcharge
- Goliath Missile
- Disintergrator Warhead
- Tungsten Warhead
- High Capacity
- Proximity Detonator
- Blade Storm
Zen
Zen is a skill that doesn't need energy to activate. When you move your finger off the screen, the Zen skill will be charged. After the use of a Zen skill, it may need time to recover its charging time. So it's important to decide where to use and how to use them effectively.
The credits needed to upgrade each levels are listed below:
| Level | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Ultimate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | 100 | 200 | 300 | 450 | 750 | 1500 |
Currently, there are 8+3 Zen skills in the game. They are listed below, with their APEX forms:
- Kappa Drive
- Antigrav
- Mega Laser
- Twin Laser
- Double Shot
- Armor Piercing
- Focused Beam
- Nightfury
- Mega Bomb
- Extended Range
- EMP Core
- Shield Breaker
- Compressed Blast
- Teleport
- Explosive Arrival
- Double Teleport
- Extended Clearance
- Departure EMP
- Darkfire Blast
- Reflex EMP
- High Damage
- Extended Range
- Serenity
- Personal Shield
- Supersize
- Super Reflect
- Focus
- Shield Booster
- Focus Lance
- Expert Focus
- Lance Wake
- High Voltage
- FTL
- Clover ATS
- Shield Breaker
- Ion Warheads
- Double Clover
- Tracking Minigun
- Railgun
APEX
Apexes are late game content. Each ship has 2 apexes. You can only view and unlock the apexes for a particular ship when that ship is fully ult-ed. Apexes change the look of the ship, sometimes in a revolutionary way. However, each apex also comes with either a re-adjustment or an enhancement to the ship. You can buy both apexes, but only one of them is usable at any point in time. You may also switch back to the base form of the ship at any time.
Apexes can be seen as cosmetic changes, like skins in other free-to-play games. In fact, as confirmed by the devs, the price of apexes are hand set based on the appearance of the apex instead of the apex's re-adjustment / enhancement. You do not need to buy them to beat the highest league, Marshal S4. SO STOP COMPLAINING APEXES ARE TOO EXPENSIVE. If you are unable to clear a mission with the base form of the ship, it is unlikely that you can clear the same mission with its apex. There are a few exceptions. However, they are usually important to secure BoBs or sBoBs these days due to the fact some enhancements from some apexes improve the speedrunning capability of the ship.
The prices of the apexes are as follows:
| Alpha | Beta | Gamma | Delta | Epsilon | Lambda | Sigma | Tau | Phi | Omega |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5000 | 10000 | 15000 | 20000 | 25000 | 30000 | 35000 | 40000 | 45000 | 50000 |
The ships' detail page will provide a detailed introduction to the ships, including APEXs (we are currently working hard to rebuild related content). There is also a APEX search page produced by Elegator, link in the bottom bar of the web page.
The name of the APEX only determines the price of the APEX, it does not determine the skills and effects of the APEX.
This section is just to give you a preliminary introduction and tell you that APEXs will bring a lot of changes to ships. On each skill's detail page and ships' detail page, we will give some info about the APEX, including its effects and ratings. Note that the rating of each skill comes from the player's subjective rating, not the in-game rating. Therefore, don’t think that this skill is useless or that this APEX is useless just because the rating is low.