Help & getting started

Cadence is the Konatsu rhythm meter, 0 to 100, up to 120 in Flowing Water. Landed hits on any target feed it, so sweeping between foes keeps it alive. Building: - +2 per landed autohit swing. - +12 per landed physical or ki skill. Weaving skills into your swordwork drives the rhythm fastest. Losing: - A round with no landed hits bleeds 20 Cadence. - Two idle rounds in a row silence it entirely. - It resets to zero when combat ends. - It survives a stance switch, but a bar built past 100 in Flowing Water settles back to 100 once you leave. Rewards: - Bonus autohit swings: +2 at 25, +4 at 50, +6 at 75, +8 at 100. - Downbeat: every 4th landed swing strikes amplified, x1.5 at low Cadence rising to x2.0 at 100. The beat quickens to every 3rd swing at 75 Cadence or more. - In crescendo every landed swing is a x2.0 downbeat. - In Flowing Water, +1% quick recovery per 20 held. Details: Key Notes: - All four techniques spend the whole bar, and what it buys scales with how full it was. Minimums: Iai Slash 25, Cascade 40, Immovable Guard 25, Moonfall Strike 25. - Spending it does not cost you the rhythm. For the 6 rounds that follow, your bonus swings and downbeat keep running off the bar you released even though the meter reads 0. Your prompt shows the held value. - The meter cannot build again until those 6 rounds are up, and the technique cooldown does not start until then either. - Only landed hits count. A whiffed swing neither builds nor penalizes. - Skills build the meter, but only autohit swings advance the downbeat count. - Your bonus swings from Cadence, Iai, a second blade, Tempo of the Tempest and Chaos Overture can still land rage hits, but they spend no rage. Your other swings and your skills still spend it. - The prestige shop sells a head start: pshop cadence opens every fight with part of the bar built. See help pcadence.

A Konatsu's Cadence bar starts every fight empty and takes a few rounds of landed hits to climb. Opening Cadence starts each fight with part of the bar already built, so your bonus swings are running from the first round. THE THREE RANKS: 8 points Open at 25 Cadence, +2 swings 16 points Open at 50 Cadence, +4 swings 24 points Open at 75 Cadence, +6 swings and the quicker downbeat 48 points for all three. The bar never opens full, so no fight begins on a full strength technique. WORTH KNOWING: Konatsu only. The same 25, 50 or 75 in every stance, Flowing Water included. Rank one is enough for Iai Slash, Immovable Guard or Moonfall Strike. Cascade needs 40, so it needs rank two. It charges once per fight. Turning to a new foe while the fight goes on does not charge it again, a fresh fight does. It never lowers a bar that is already higher. The round the fight starts in never bleeds the charge, even when you are pulled in before you can swing. From then on the usual rules apply: a round with no landed hits bleeds 20, two in a row silence the bar. A fight that opens with a technique carried in by Lingering Refrain gets no charge, see help prefrain.