Jaochi

Original source: Saitama's "Jaochi Class Quick Start Guide" posted on AA in-game board

Overview

Jaochi are a class of hand-to-hand fighters who focus on themselves.

Keep in Mind

• Holding anything while fighting can be dangerous, causing you to fail.
• Brawling is not what jaochi do; skip brawl training. When Jaochi was first released, the brawler trait did not work due to a bug, but this has since been fixed.
• Wearing and wielding things is not recommended.
• There is no 'defend dodge', you have to move yourself.
• Because of these things, your setup time and gold needed is pretty low.
• All of the stats seem important, but jaochi struggle when int or dex is low.

What Do I Do?

You go to Codai's hut a bit northwest of the ex-cleric on northeast Infidian.

After joining, you can learn the first set of moves to practice by doing:

train leaf on the wind

You can 'practice' patterns like this, or create your own after 10 jskills in all of the moves in the pattern. Practicing can raise your jskills up to about 10, so it is useful when you have learned a pattern from someone else.

You seem to gain jskills up to a cap of about 5x your level, so level 1 might train leaf on the wind, dotimes 100 practice leaf on the wind a few times, then go see how your level 1 combat is.

What Do I Do in Combat?

You might see yourself performing the various moves randomly. This is not very effective. You can 'perform' the patterns you know in combat to do a routine. You can also interrupt the routine with any move by just typing its name, like an alias. You can make these special aliases with 'addmove'.

You will be moving around, attacking, and preparing blocks. The attacks are 'strike' which is more effective when close and uses the elbow, 'punch' which is more effective at middle distance and uses the hand, and 'kick' which is more effective at far distance and uses the foot. Straight and round styles exist for each of these attacks, but it is unclear if there is a difference. for now consider them a way to do different things each round, so as not to be predicted.

Movements let you 'dodge', 'jump', 'roll', 'slide', 'step', or 'twist' in one of 4 directions. 'In' moves you closer, where you deal and take more damage. 'Back' moves you out, where you both deal and take less damage. 'Left' and 'right' move you around to the sides and eventually behind your enemy, so you can deal more damage. There are 5 levels of 'distance', so moving too far in or back wastes a move. Your enemy will turn to have you in front of them, move closer, or further, depending on their weapons. They can do it as often as every turn, but at lower levels you get a few turns before they react. Moving often also helps you avoid damage, there is no 'defend dodge'.

Blocks let you reduce or nullify damage to a specific bodypart. If you want to make sure that part gets hit by your main enemy you can 'entice' that part for about 6sps and pretty good success chance if they don't miss. The blocks are 'brace block' which has a chance to also push back the enemy, 'catch block' which has a chance to pull the enemy closer, and 'sweep block' which has a chance to move the enemy to one of the sides. Thus blocking is a way to get 2 movements in one round.

Before Combat

Meditate lets you relax so that you can 'focus' on your bodyparts. Focus on head, body, arm, and leg to have something like armor, or hand, foot and elbow to have something like weapons. Meditate until you see the message change twice and you will probably have relaxed enough to focus. 'Meditate body' or 'meditate mind' to regain hps and sps quickly while freeing up focus at the same time. You will gain about 1 hp or sp per tick of the first message, 2 during the second message, and 3 during the third, which will keep going as long as you do not stand up, wake, or 'awaken'. It ticks about every 2 rounds.

'Focus regen' or regeneration to gain hps for an sps drain about every round. Focus of all kinds has an sps drain, but you will barely notice it on armours, somewhat feel it on weapons, and notice it disappear on regen. The focus builds up the same as meditation, taking about 2 rounds to intensify. When you reach the level you want, 'break focus' to stop, as moving will cause you to lose one level of intensity. If your sps drop below 5 you will lose all types of focus, so be prepared to 'relax regen' or one of your other heavy focuses in order to maintain the others. The focuses wear off slowly over time, and quickly with use. If you are getting hit a lot you might start to notice sps disappear even when focus is armor, and if your hps get up to full your regen sps drain is a little easier.

Starting to Come Together

You may find if you are performing leaf on the wind every time it finishes that you have pretty good defenses and you hit more often than most level 1s. Keep at it and at level 5 AND 15 in all jskills you can train the next pattern Codai has, 'wave on the sand'. This is also the point where you could 'learn' a 2-combo pattern from another player. Wave on the sand is the point where everything starts to make sense. You can combine the individual skills into a 2-move combo! My first idea was to move close before striking, but a lot of enemies will move close to you anyway. You make your own 2-move combos with 'addcombo' when both of the jskills are at 17. You can also do these anytime in combat, even during performance of a pattern and it will resume afterwards. Your own combos may need to be done in this way or on a dotimes, because they can't be added to a pattern until they reach jskill 10 again from 0.

Keep in Mind, Part 2

• Combos are a type of move that does more than 1 skill per round, up to 5.
• You can only do 1 movement (in back left right) per combo
• Only your first block in a combo is done to your main target. Any extra block is for multiple enemies or extra attacks.
• Being predicted causes most or all of your move to fail. Try to do a routine that puts the same move at least 4 moves apart at low levels, and further at higher levels.
• Going against a higher level enemy can cause you to fail by wobbling, losing your footing, or being predicted more. If you see these messages, check your encumberance, raise up your jskills, or pick a different target.
• Combos that are aimed left, right, at head, body, etc. work toward the same jskill no matter if you change the aim or direction, so you can just add a new combo with a different direction and the same moves if you want to keep your skill but try something new.

Beyond

You can make 3-combos by adding on almost any new move to the end of your 2-combos that are at least 24 jskill. There is also a requirement of some amount in the basic skill that you are adding to the end, and some level, 10?.

You can learn 3-combo patterns earlier than this, from another joachi who has 50 in all of the jskills in their 3-combo pattern, but you only need 17 in the 2-combos that the moves are based on. Thus it would be helpful to already be using a pattern of 2-combos of the needed moves, so patterns are most effective in learning as a lineage that progresses from 2- to 3-combos with the same base. You can practice these patterns up to 10 jskill for twice the early learner bonus! What would normally take until 24 jskill to learn at first is only 17 now and also the new skill doesn't have to be dotimesed from 0 up to 10.

Strategy

There are a lot of paths to take, but I want to list some appealing-sounding combos and some that seem like dead ends. Doing a pattern that moves only to the right or left will keep getting you into a damage zone while making the enemy move. Start your combos with double-hit, move-hit, and hit-move early, also move-block and block-hit. Middle think of hit-hit-move, hit-hit-hit, and move-hit-hit, because you might want to work toward simply a 5-hit, a move plus 4-hit, or a 3-hit-move-block, 4-hit-move, or 4-hit then block, but having them trained up early sets you on a path. It is easy to switch paths, but also sometimes you just don't realize how much time you may have spent on something that is not going where you wanted it to. The way the enemies move may affect a lot of the things you will want to do, and without knowing how they move or the way you can change directions and aims easily, you might be going down a path that has repeats or wrong turns. You can solo, bash or tank to some degree, but it takes some planning, pruning, and commitment to get where you are going with all the tools you need.

I try not to mix kicks with strikes, as they seem intended for opposite ends or the field. I consider that I might often be in a position I want to move out of when soloing, so: too close? strike, move back, punch, punch, punch. Too far? kick, move in, punch punch punch. Enemy always close? move back, punch punch punch punch or move back, brace block, kick kick kick. Get behind them! end a combo with a move left, sweep block and next turn do a full 5- hit.

You could just be prepared for your enemy to have their preferred distance and stay there, striking close enemy and moving left, punch middle enemy and moving left, or kicking far enemy and moving left.

Quirks

• 'Meditate relax' gets you ready to focus, while 'relax' is a way to release a focus down to nothing, and 'break focus' is the way to stop at a particular intensity level. This is not the way I would have named them.
• Moves, attacks and combos are sometimes referred to the same and sometimes differently in the help files.
  • Movements are moves that change your distance.
  • Attacks are either a single attack-type move or a whole combo.
  • Combos can have a name like individual moves, but patterns can have up to 35 combos, while the help file says they can only have up to 30 moves.

Good Luck

I don't know where we go from here, but hopefully now you have an idea of what you want to do, and joachi is definitely a way to do your own thing. You even get to name your own special moves! If you teach someone else they only see the name of the whole pattern, but still it gets recorded as being created by you.