Hey, Tyler here! I'm covering the blog post this week and I wanna talk about, THE HARD PATH.
In (most) of the chapters on an adventure in Mew, you fight a miniboss at the half-way point, and afterwards are given the option of continuing along the normal path to the chapter boss, or taking THE HARD PATH instead.
What fun awaits you on the hard path, you ask? Well let me tell you!
The hard path has one more combat encounter in it than the easy path, and in all of the combat encounters along the hard path, enemies have a chance to spawn as a Champion instead.
(you vs the cat she told you not to worry about)
Champions are beefy upgraded versions of regular enemies. And they all have unique art too! In addition to increased stats, champions have double health, move farther, do more damage, and take an extra turn every round. If you are not prepared to deal with these champions, they will be your demise.
I mean, some enemies are still not very threatening when upgraded into champions
But some champions are absolutely terrifying to go up against.
So, obviously, if you're risking this much by taking the hard path, there should be a pretty good reward for doing so, right? Fortunately, that is absolutely the case. The treasure chest on the hard path has rarer items in it than the one on the normal path, plus you also get extra food to help with cat breeding or a furniture piece to decorate your house with. But also, very importantly, that extra combat is also a huge reward in itself, and here's why:
Lets quickly recap how cats level-up during an adventure in Mewgenics. Every time you win a combat encounter, your lowest-level cat levels up (randomly chosen if there's ties for lowest-level). When you level up, depending on which level it is, you are given a set of abilities, or passives, or upgrades to choose from. Some of the options you are given at higher levels are extremely powerful, but you will not reach those levels normally. Taking only the normal path, at the end of your adventure, you will have 2 level 5 cats and 2 level 6 cats.
Now, that one extra combat on the hard path? That's one extra level up. And there's a hard path on every chapter. You add those extra level ups into the mix, now your whole team can reach level 6 before the end of an adventure. If you're bold enough to do all 3 hard paths, now one of your cats will reach Level 7 as well. Without spoiling, Level 7 is a pretty big power spike for cats, so if you're trying to make the strongest cats you can, well, you'll need to take on the hard path.
The choice of whether or not to take the hard path is not a trivial one, however. If your team is not playing together well, or you ran out of consumables, or a cat got depressed, or one of your cats already died, or the miniboss left you particularly beat up, you're much safer just taking the normal path. So many of my losses are from being like, "I think my team is maybe strong enough to take hard path this time" followed by immediate regret. And there's nothing to blame except my own ego.
Till next time!
- Tyler