My Karma Shards & Boons Plan

My first two thoughts about Karma Shards and Boons of Salvation arrived in this order: this looks important, and — where did that menu go.

It took an embarrassing amount of an evening to find it again. It is at the Pale Raven's Perch in Dagsion, and later through the Shrine of Causality in the Obelisk Chamber. I have now looked for it twice, which is precisely why the current Boon target lives on my dashboard instead of in my memory.

Once I could actually see the menu, the real problem showed up, and it was not a game problem. It was the hoarding instinct: the conviction that I could spend this currency wrongly and still be quietly regretting it forty hours later. I know that feeling well. It is the same one that leaves me finishing RPGs with a bag full of items I was saving for a worse emergency than ever arrived.

Here it is simply wrong. This is not an exclusive tree — the long-term destination is unlocking all of it. Which turns the question from which upgrades am I sacrificing forever into which upgrades make the next few hours less repetitive. I can answer the second one in about ten seconds. The first one I could have stared at all night.

Three kinds of progress, and only one is a difficulty dial

For the first hour I mentally lumped all of it together as "experience", which made every Boon look interchangeable. They are not, and this distinction turns out to be the whole guide.

Normal EXP raises a character's level, which means more raw stats sooner. Genuinely useful, and also the one that can quietly delete the game: outlevel everything and the tactical layer I came here for simply stops happening.

Class EXP develops the class a character is currently in. That opens build choices without inflating anybody's level, so a level-eighteen map stays a level-eighteen map and I still have to think.

Proficiency EXP develops Spear, Bow, White Magic, Rider, Heavy, Authority and the rest. That is access to systems rather than to numbers — it is the one that makes more of the game available to me.

Two of those three make the game wider. Only the first makes it easier. So that is the one I keep a hand on.

Normal EXP is a throttle.

If I am grinding to stay near the expected level, turn it up. If I am flattening maps because the army is twelve levels clear of everything, turn it down. It is a setting I expect to move several times, not a decision I make once and live with.

What I am buying first, and why

The working order is on the Karma & Boons page, in priority sequence with the current target marked. The reasoning is what belongs here.

EXP +10% goes first because ten percent takes a little edge off the opening route without feeling like I flipped a switch labelled CHEAT, and because it is trivially reversible if I end up sailing past the intended level.

Spear and Rider come immediately after, and that is not speculative — it is the lane Cai is actively developing right now. Every point of acceleration makes a plan I have already committed to cheaper to execute, which is the best return available to me this early.

Bow is next for the same reason one step across: Peter has a clear job as the ranged specialist, and I would rather make somebody excellent at a role the party needs than spend early Karma on a weapon nobody is seriously training. White and Black Magic round it out, because magic is not another flavour of damage — it is the army's answer to defensive matchups, and those proficiencies keep their value long after Cai's route ends.

Availability is not priority

Sword is the obvious trap and I walked straight up to the edge of it. Cai has a Wooden Sword, therefore Sword proficiency feels like it belongs near the top of the list. It does not. Owning a weapon is not the same as building around one.

The same logic covers everything else in the menu. Axe, Brawling, Heavy, Flier and Authority all become meaningful eventually, and I want to buy each of them at the point where a character and a route are actually asking. Dungeon Evasion is pleasant quality of life that loses cleanly to development tools while Karma is tight.

After Cai, what I want is cheaper experimentation

Class EXP +1 is the first thing I want once Cai's Part I is finished, and it may be the Boon that suits me best of all. I am interested in the class system. I want to try things. What I do not want is for each experiment to arrive with its own repetitive tax attached, and that tax is exactly what this removes.

After that come the economy discounts, for a reason that is more psychological than tactical. I know myself: I get reluctant to spend resources when I suspect I might be improving the wrong weapon, and that reluctance turns the blacksmith into a museum I walk past. A permanent discount makes it cheap enough to be wrong, which means I will actually repair and refine the things I use and learn something from the results.

Cheaper meals and gifts do the same job for recruitment. I want targeted recruits rather than all of them, which makes Supports a tool instead of a collection — I can pursue one relationship because that person fills a role, without the route quietly becoming a Support-farming simulator.

The anti-grind switch

By the time three Part I routes are done the fifty percent EXP tier is available, and I want to be honest with myself about what it is for. It is not a setting I turn on and forget about.

New recruit ten levels behind? On. Replaying a route whose opening I could describe from memory? On. Army comfortably above everything and the maps have stopped being interesting? Off, immediately.

I refuse to grind something boring unless I actually enjoy the grinding.

Class EXP +2 is a different animal and can probably stay on permanently. It accelerates build variety rather than trivialising combat, which is the distinction this entire guide is built on.

Blessings are where I am choosing not to optimise

I am deliberately not pre-planning the Blessing discounts, because I have no idea yet which gods' Blessings I will actually reach for, and that is not something I can work out from a menu before I have played with them.

Once one of them becomes part of how I naturally play, I will make it cheaper. Discovery is worth more to me here than holding the mathematically correct discount six hours early.

The rule I want to remember

Karma is not something I need to hoard because I am afraid of making a permanent mistake.

Spend it on progression that makes the game less repetitive. Keep normal EXP under conscious control. Let class and proficiency growth open up more of the game — and let the rest wait until something in play actually asks for it.