Chained Echoes: Egyl, The Fortress Guide

Chained Echoes Egyl, The Fortress Guide: Stats & Build Suggestions. Also check; Chained Echoes Character Guide.

Chained Echoes: Egyl, The Fortress

Egyl is the first dedicated tank you’ll get. He focus mostly on mitigating physical damage, but works fine as a main tank for any content, given his high defensive stats, especially HP. Unlike Glenn’s Decoy, his Attention! affects all enemies, making aggro control more reliable. On top of that, Egyl has plenty of self healing abilities, making him incredibly resilient and self sustainable.

Given Egyl’s low AGI, he can be put in the reserve and linked to a faster character and swapped at the start of the battle to taunt enemies.

Strengths

• Fits the typical tank archetype: very sturdy and hard to take down.
• Highest HP and DEF.
• Average ATK.
• Has plenty of abilities and passives to increase Hate generation.
• Ultra Move makes party immune to physical damage.
• Amazing self-sustain and survivability.

Weaknesses

• Has the lowest MND, making him a poor tank for fights versus magical users.
• Second lowest TP and AGI.
• Very poor personal damage.

Baseline

• Attention!: area-of-effect taunt. Combine it with certain passives (such as Warcry) to make enemies focus on him right off the bat, since he has low AGI.
• Load Gunspear: make his Hate generation more reliable. Very useful when combined with Whirlwind Spear.
• Cover / Shield All: makes Egyl take damage for his allies instead. Can be combined with the Shield Ally passive for increased effect.
• Whirlwind Spear: excellent area-of-effect ability to keep enemies focused on Egyl, especially if the passive Kiai (increases Hate generation) is equipped. Spam it after using Attention!.
• Iron Will: one of Egyl’s best abilities, and it actually makes his lower AGI play in his favor. It makes him survive ANY attack with 1 HP until his next turn. Essentially immortal.
• First Aid: FULLY heals Egyl. I can’t stress how good this is when combined with Iron Will.
• Comrades’ Help: increases all healing done to Egyl, no matter the source.

Class Abilities

• Ether Sucker: from Vampire. Useful on all characters, period. Since Egyl has the lowest TP, it’s especially useful on him.
• Drunken Master: from Monk. Works fine equipped on any character, and since Egyl is painfully slow, it’s a pretty decent filler ability.

Crystals

• SOS HP / DEF Up: this works pretty well with Iron Will as it’ll guarantee a proc while ensuring he survives.
• HP / DEF Up: not much to say. Just reinforce his strengths.
• HP Drain: very straightforward. Hit enemy, get HP. The amount seems to scale with damage done, so the harder you hit, the more you heal. Useful on pretty much all characters.

Mid Game

By the time you recruit Egyl you’ll have access to tier 2 already (maybe even tier 3, I honestly can’t remember). Focus on getting all the Hate increasing skills and focus the rest on his HP and DEF.

If you want to give him a Class Emblem, Chemist is pretty good as it’s an all-round with bonuses to defensive stats.

End Game

Egyl becomes truly unkillable in the endgame once you unlock Iron Will and Comrades’ Help. After getting Kiai, Heroic Tank and War Cry, focus on improving his stats, as usual.

For accessories, Knight’s Honor (gives Warcry) can be stacked Warcry itself, if you have equipped. Otherwise, anything that increases his HP or DEF works fine. Alternatively, Heavenly Ring (reduces TP cost by 20%) is great to help remedy his low TP.

General Tips

Setups are everything

Combat in this game, especially in the late-game, is all about setups. Your characters will unlock plenty of buffs and debuffs and it is key to lay those down to empower your team while simultaneously cripple the enemy.

For instance, Sienna alone has four really important buffs she should have active nearly all the time, while Glenn should always make sure the enemy has Break debuffs on, With certain setups you can see some really big numbers (I’ve been able to crit +18k with Lenne during the final boss) so it’s important to have your team cover everything.

Don’t bother with Crystals (until later)

The Crystal system at the blacksmith anvil is a potentially powerful, yet a bit obnoxious system (because of RNG and how the combining functions), way to make your characters REALLY powerful, allowing you stack passives to reinforce their strengths or to circumvent a weakness. For instance, stacking Crit Damage Up crystals on Sienna can make her dish out some really insane damage, while adding debuff crystals (i.e. Poison, Blind) on characters with multi-hit moves can make inflicting those easier.

However, I strongly recommend waiting to tamper with this system until the endgame. It’s not really worth hunting down crystals or farming, and the game is already relatively easy enough that you can clear the vast majority of the content without worrying about crystals.

If you want more details on the Crystal crafting, check Xenocite’s excellent Crystal Guide.

Agility is everything

Agility (AGI) is the single most important attribute in the game, hence why Sienna is so busted since she has the highest in the game. Improving your AGI in any way (passive skills, buffs, crystals) is key to get as many turns as possible before the enemy.

Drunken Master (a skill from the Monk Class Emblem) is an ability you should have learned with one or more characters and equipped at all times, and use it as soon the fight starts. It’s party-wide.

Additionally, crippling your enemy’s AGI with Robb’s Leg Shot (and also Kylian’s Leg Aim) is key in any boss fight to further enable more turns for you and less for the enemy.