Party Selection
Your party in a soldier-phase fight is your avatar plus up to three soldiers. Which soldiers you can pick depends on the content, and who you pick shapes how the fight plays out.
Avatar + Up to Three Soldiers
Every soldier-phase battle pairs your avatar with up to three soldiers from your roster. The avatar always joins; the soldiers fill in around them.
If you have fewer than three eligible soldiers, the party goes in under-strength - you fight with what you have, with empty slots in the formation. The battle still proceeds; you're just at a disadvantage.
Which Soldiers Are Available
Eligibility rules vary by combat surface:
- Dungeons - restricted to soldiers from the dungeon's required habits. If a dungeon requires "Go for a run" and "Meditate daily", those are the soldiers you can bring. Other good-habit soldiers you have don't qualify.
- Multi-phase adventure quests - you pick freely from your full good-habit roster. Some quests may gently suggest certain classes.
- Boss-only adventure quests - no soldier phase, so no party picking. The avatar fights alone.
- Arena - avatar only. Soldiers stay home.
Under-Strength Parties
If you can't field three soldiers - either because a dungeon's required-habit list is short, or because some required habits have retired or are unavailable - you still enter the fight. The missing slots stay empty. The battle scales down slightly in the enemy's favor, but you can still win with a well-played duo or even a solo fighter.
Re-adopting a missing required habit
If a dungeon won't start because a required habit is missing, the fix is to re-adopt that premade habit. The soldier rejoins your roster automatically, and the dungeon unlocks for entry.
Mixing Classes
Class composition matters a lot. See Soldier Classes for each class's combat role - but a quick summary:
- A Knight on the front line is the team's durability.
- A Mage in the back is the primary damage source.
- A Healer in the back keeps the team alive.
- A Bard anywhere amplifies the rest of the team.
A party of three Knights can brute-force its way through many fights but struggles without magical damage or healing. A party of three Mages hits hard but folds to a single aggressive enemy. Most successful parties mix at least two classes.
Selecting Matters More in Hard Fights
For a short, routine adventure quest, any reasonable party tends to work. For a dungeon with a tough soldier phase, party choice starts to genuinely decide the fight:
- Facing multiple high-dodge enemies? A Bard's Discordant Note to strip dodge, or a Mage's Fireball to hit them all at once, matters a lot more than a Knight's Heavy Blow.
- Facing a single high-HP boss in the soldier phase? A Mage's Arcane Surge is the kind of finisher that's built for the scenario.
- Facing debuff-heavy enemies? A Healer with Purify becomes the MVP.
Pre-fight inspection lets you peek at enemy skills to plan around them.
Party Order = Formation
The order you arrange the party in determines where each soldier stands. First slot = front row, second = middle, third = back. See Formation & Rows for what each row means and how to think about the decision.