Tips

The following is a list of tips for playing The Metronomicon.

List of tips

 * Abilities are chosen by how long you stay in one of the Lanes.
 * Elemental Crystals - Every enemy has the chance to drop elemental crystals. After surviving a song, you will absorb concentrated dance energy from crystals to level up your abilities. Water crystals level your water abilities, and... etc
 * Buffs that you cast on your party have a duration which is identified by the buff icon at the feet of each party member. Buffs that are cast in Tier 3 have a longer base duration than buffs cast in Tier 1. Generally, it is a best to only replace a buff when it has worn off (when the buff icon disappears).
 * There are several overall party strategies that can be taken to the extreme to survive songs. A pure survival party may stack defense, protection, health, and healing, while an aggressive party may stack Focus, Haste, Inspiration, and Stuns with heavy attackers. Both types of parties are viable, experiment as much as you can with the different characters and abilities.
 * You can overcharge an ability in Tier 1 or Tier 2 by staying in the lane for a few extra steps. The selected ability will only be cast when you drop the streak or switch lanes. This means there are really no wasted notes.
 * If you are still having trouble chaining together long streaks, avoid putting your best abilities in Tier 3 since it will be more difficult to pull those off. Make sure your bread and butter attacks and cures are in Tier 1 until you can chain together plenty of steps.
 * Equip new loot on your active party members whenever you can since it will often provide a significant bonus to your survivability. Later on in the game, gear management becomes a very powerful tool for optimizing your party for a particular challenge.
 * USE TEAM ATTACKS! The Team Attacks are great in a pinch and can greatly turn the tide of battle in your favor. There is a Team Attack for every party style. If you are having trouble with a particular mini-boss or area boss, charge up a Team Attack and unleash it when the boss is making your life miserable.
 * If you are successfully streaking through a song on Easy difficulty, consider moving to Medium, and likewise from Medium to Hard. The bonuses that you get from the extra steps include more Secondary abilities cast and more Team Attack charged. Plus bragging rights! Right?
 * Get in the habit of regularly glancing at several areas of the screen for information throughout each song. The key areas to scan are your party's health, the active buffs, and the enemy's element. The best time to check these things is when switching lanes after casting an ability because you are not forced to pick up the steps until you are ready.
 * The Sidequests are optional challenges that may require a special party configuration in order to meet the requirement and collect the loot. For these songs, carefully consider your party and their abilities. Go into each challenge with a plan of attack for greater success.
 * The Arena is a great place to practice the mechanics of the game since each arena challenge is carefully tuned to require a specific strategy. Consider each of the abilities at your disposal and plan your attack before each challenge. Brute force is often going to fail where careful strategy often succeeds.
 * Use Cures when needed and try not to waste healing (unless you are in a Cure specific Sidequest). Cures and Regens will heal more HP if they are in Tier 3 than if they are in Tier 1. Waiting until you are low on health is a risk but a big cure at the right time can pull you from the brink of death very easily.
 * You aren't forced to finish charging a Tier 1 ability that you have started casting. If you've hit a few steps but need a Cure or a different ability, you can switch before finishing the Tier 1 ability without losing the streak.
 * Type matchups will gradually get more and more important. Memorise the type matchups - it's fairly easy to remember, since there are only 5 in total, and it's practically a stripped-down version of Pokemon. Basically: Water beats Fire beats Earth beats Lightning beats Water, and Physical beats Physical.
 * Abilities and monster health is colour-coded to whichever type it is, if you ever forget in the heat of the moment what type your ability or an enemy is. So if your ability/monster health bar is purple, it's Physical. If it's blue, it's Water. etc. Even abilities that don't damage the enemy are also specifically typed, but you don't really need to take note of that.
 * Unlike Pokemon, remember that only same-type attacks are less effective, which means you still can do normal damage with a supposedly inferior type. For example, if you are fighting a Water type monster, you can still do normal damage with Fire, but steer clear of Water.
 * Don't try to attempt for highscores as soon as you reach a level or world. Focus on beating the song and the mini-boss, where applicable - or surviving - first. A lot of the highscores were set with characters that were very overlevelled as compared to when the player might first play through a level.
 * For highscore chasing, actively seek out highly dense note patterns. Rearrange your characters if you find yourself focusing on characters and using inefficient abilities as a result of using those characters. Accuracy and streak are also important to take note (hur hur!) of as well.
 * Also, while highscore chasing, you have to find a party combination and ability combination that does its work while you focus on the notes. It can be really hard to concentrate on finding optimal note patterns and maintaining high accuracy as well as dishing out appropriate attacks. Thankfully this gets slightly easier the more you level up, as inefficient attack type matchups won't matter as much.
 * Potentially the worst things that can happen when highscore chasing are the special abilities from minibosses/bosses. Meteor Showers prevent you from rapidly switching to the tracks with the most notes, Falling Rocks obscures some of the notes (in addition to causing damage), and Mines prevent a sizable chunk of notes from being hit, cutting your score. The best way to prevent it would be to stun the boss before those attacks happen, but should they take place, some Team Attacks can cancel boss attacks.