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Fighting monsters is a large part of whatVisions of Manaplayers will end up doing during their playthrough. Mashing buttons works in easy and beginner mode,but at higher difficulties, when enemies start becoming more aggressive and deal a ton of damage, a strategic approach becomes necessary.
A poorly explained part of combat inVisions of Manais its elemental weakness and resistance system. Other than a brief pop-up guide at the beginning, the game doesn’t offer much information about how to identify enemy weaknesses and strengths.
Visions of Mana Elements Explained
Visions of Mana, like the previous Mana games, has a relatively simple element system that defines what is effective and what is not in combat. Every enemy has an innate elemental type, which could be any of the following.
Weakness
Of the eight elements inVisions of Mana, six come in pairs that are weak to each other.The remaining two, Wood and Moon, stand-alone and have no weaknesses. The pairs are as follows:
Wood and Moon are not weak to each other.
The way these pairs work is actually quite simple. Let’s take the Fire/Water elemental pair as an example. If an enemy is of the fire type and they are attacked by a water-type move, the move will be super effective. Similarly, if the enemy is a water-type creature and they are hit by a fire-type attack, the move will be super effective. This means that if you’re using Fireball against a fish, it’ll likely be super effective against them. Anything else, meaning Earth, Wind, Light, Darkness, Wood, or Moon against the same creature will deal a normal amount of damage.
Resistance
For resistances, the formula is even simpler.If a character is attacked by an element of the same type as them, they resist or are outright immune to that type of damage. This means a fire-type creature resists fire damage, a water-type monster resists water attacks, and so on.
Immunity
Immunity is often decided on acase-by-case basis. There is no set formula for which enemy type is immune to which element. However, common sense still prevails. A blob of water will likely be immune to water, and attacking a wind elemental with a tornado likely won’t yield any results.
How to Check Enemy Elemental Weaknesses
There are three main ways to check for elemental weaknesses of any enemy that players may come across during their journey.
Health Bar Indicator
Every monster you encounter inVisions of Manawill have a health bar above its sprite. Sometimes, a colored icon may appear at the left corner of this bar, next to the level number. This is an indicator that shows whether the enemy is weak, resistant, or immune to the type of damage wielded by the currently controlled character. There are three possible icons.
Green Tick
Enemy isweakto the type of damage your currently controlled character deals.
Orange Triange
Enemy isresistantto the type of damage your currently controlled character deals.
Red Cross
Enemy isimmuneto the type of damage your currently controlled character deals.
Note that in addition to elemental damage, there are two types of physical damage:slash and strike. Some enemies may be weak, resistant, or immune to thephysical aspect of your character weapon, which will be not indicated next to their health bar. What this means is that if an enemy is resistant to slash damage it will not show up in their health bar even if you’re wielding a slashing weapon. You’ll have to rely on other clues to tell if that is the case.
Damage Numbers
Every time players attack an enemy, a damage number pops up to show how much damage was dealt. The color of the damage number indicates if the enemy was weak, resistant, or immune to the type of damage they had just received.Golden means it was super effective, blue means resistant, grey means immune, and white means normal.
Bestiary
After players defeat an enemy in combat, an entry for that enemy gets added to the player Bestiary (found in Guides). Inside, players will be able to view anin-depth weakness and resistance profilefor that particular enemy type. This is the definitive way of planning outoptimal party setupsfor particularly difficult fights.
