Overview
In this guide I describe what Chronicon’s endgame is like! (with a video)
Video (Recommended to watch if you don’t want to read)
Intro
Chronicon is an amazing new ARPG, created by a single person who goes by name name “Squarebit”. It’s been in early access for about 5 years, but recently its big 1.0 update came out, and with it, it has brought many new people to the game, and even more who are interested in trying it, so my goal with this guide will be to tell those who got the game, or are thinking of getting it, what the game is about. Chronicon has a campaign as well, but where the game truly shines is in its endgame with all of its skills, items and character building. So for the sake of this guide, I will be describing what you can expect to see later on in the game, once you’re done with the campaign.
Basic Endgame Features
Chronicon’s endgame can be boiled down to doing Anomalies, which are essentially randomly generated levels. There are several different Anomaly types – Random, which are just infinite random levels with fixed difficulty, Dungeon Anomalies, which are three levels with a boss at the end at fixed difficulty, Elite Dungeon Anomalies, which are simply slightly harder dungeon anomalies, and finally Endless – which is an infinitely scaling dungeon anomaly (in terms of difficulty). There are also several NPCs which I will list now but will describe in further detail later – Tarot which allows you to gamble, Gemma which allows you to socket gems onto your items, Theo who will allow you to transmute items, Chantelle who will allow you to enchant your items, and King Tinka who will allow you to respec your character. Keep in mind that Chronicon is extremely forgiving when it comes to spending skill points – you can change your skills whenever you want at no cost and even save your favorite builds – just speak with King Tinka.
Skills and Masteries
Let’s get more in-depth. Your character has access to 100 skill points and infinite mastery points. You get a skill point each time you level up, up to level 100 (which is the level cap), and you get a mastery point for every mastery level up, which has no level cap, similar to how the paragon system in diablo 3 works. Each class has 4 skill trees, and you will be spending your 100 skill points across all of them most of the time. Depending on what you want to focus on, you will probably dump most of your skill points into one tree, and just get a few skills and passives from the other 3. Mastery points work roughly the same – there are 4 spec-specific skill-lines and 3 basic skill lines, and eventually
you will max out all of them, with all the excess points you get being spent on either Health, Damage, Mana or Thorns, scaling infinitely. The skills are one of Chronicon’s strongest points, since they, combined with items, allow for dozens of different possible builds, and figuring how you want to spend those skill points and create your own build is what personally made me love this game.
Gear
Let’s talk about gear now. There are several different loot qualities as you would expect from such a game, but what you would mostly care about are items from the “Legendary” and “True Legendary” qualities. These items, combied with Set items, have unique bonuses which can define your build. True Legendaries are simply Legendary items with stronger stats, and usually very strong powers. For example, I have a staff that increases the damage of my “Combustion” ability, based on the remaining duration of the “Flaming Hells” ability, allowing me to focus around extending the duration of “Flaming Hells” in order to maximize my damage. This game has hundreds of items such as this, and finding the right combination of items for your particular build is very satisfying.
Enchanting
Chronicon also features enchanting – once you obtain and item, you can take it to the Enchantress, and change its properties to whatever you’d like. You can then further upgrade these rolls once you get into Dungeon Anomalies, since you need a currency that only drops from there. Enchanting allows you to perfectly craft your loadout for all your min-maxing needs!
Gems
There also are gems – you can insert those into sockets, which you can create on items by talking to Gemma, the gem npc. Each item has a few gem slots, which can be 3 different shapes, each changing the bonus that a gem provides. What also changes what bonus a gem can provide is the type of item you are trying to socket – for example, a square green gem will give you one bonus if put on a chest, but a different one if socketed onto a weapon.
Lesser & Greater Runes
Let’s talk about lesser and greater runes now. By doing a specific recipe at Theo, the Transmutation NPC, you can extract a legendary item’s power into a Rune. You can later apply that rune to an item you have equipped, and gain the benefits of 2 legendary items in one equipment slot. A legendary item will create a lesser rune, while a true legendary will create a greater rune. There are no limit to how many lesser runes you can have equipped (well technically its 8 since thats how many equipment slots you have), but greater runes are capped to 3.
Gambling
For a few crystals (the game’s basic currency) you can have a chance to get a random item. That
item CAN be legendary, but CANNOT be a true legendary. This way if you have extra crystals you can spend them to get a legendary item you want to finish your build, or to make it a lot easier for an alt character to blitz through the earlygame.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Chronicon’s endgame offers huge flexibility in terms of how you build your character and the game is at its best when you’re making these desicions about how to create your perfect build, and finding all the item combinations that make your character even stronger. I hope this guide gave you enough insight into what this game is about and I hope you do decide to pick it up if you haven’t. It’s an absolute gem of a game, and in my opinion one of the best ARPGs out there. Please let me know if I’ve missed anything or if you have any questions and I’ll see you later!