Hakoniwa Explorer Plus – A Complete Treatise on Enhancements

This is a full list of all 16 attack and 16 defense enhancement prefixes, what they boost, and by how much. Except for like, 4.

Enhancement List

What They Are

The enhancements can be added onto any WEP or GRD item, weapons or guards, using the respective enhancement kits. There are 8 lower level enhancements on the standard enhancement kit, and 8 badass enhancements on the G enhancement kits, as the G doesn’t mess around. They generally increase in steps of eights, with higher level kits having additional stat decreases that aren’t the main stat of that enhancement; for instance, Skillful, the lowest level SKL based enhancement increases SKL by 16, and then Technical, the second level SKL based enhancement, gives 8 more SKL, 24 in total, but decreases ATK by 8 as well. The way the enhancements work in these stages is as follows: stage 1, standard enhancement, target stat is boosted by 16, stage 2, medium enhancement, target stat is boosted by 24, another stat is decreased by 8, stage 3, huge enhancement, target stat is boosted by 32, the stat that stage 2 decreased is now decreased by 16, another stat is decreased by 8, but another stat is increased by 8:

• Skillful = SKL+16, Technical = SKL+24 ATK-8, Holy = SKL+32 ATK-16 DEF+8 SPD-8

There are also some special enhancements, I’ll go over them quickly. There are 4, 2 for weapons and 2 for guards, that are difficult to quantify, those 2 are Jumping and Heavy. Jumping is the same for both weapons and guards, it makes you better at jumping, duh. Heavy is a bit harder to tell, though I’m near certain I’ve pinned it down; Heavy for weapons increases the knockback you deal, and heavy for guards increases your knockback resistance. Then, there’s the multiplicative enhancements, Powerful and Ultimate. For weapons, Powerful multiplies all stats by 1.5, and Ultimate multiplies them by 2. For guards, Powerful instead multiplies stats by 1.2, and Ultimate multiplies them by 1.5. Keep in mind, all stats, negative or positive, are multiplied, so for weapons that carry a penalty to DEF, SKL, or SPD, those penalties are also deepened.

Lastly, before laying it all out, there are two special enhancements, Sadistic for weapons and Masochistic for guards. These two are essentially fourth stages for their respective target stats, Sadistic is a fourth stage for ATK, and Masochistic is a fourth stage for DEF.

The Enhancements

Attack Enhancements

ATK

• Offensive: ATK+16
• Assault(G): ATK+24, DEF-8
• Destructive(G): ATK+32, DEF-16, SKL-8, SPD+8
• Sadistic(G): ATK+48, DEF-32, SPD+32

SKL

• Skillful: SKL+16
• Technical(G): SKL+24, ATK-8
• Holy(G): SKL+32, ATK-16, SPD-8, DEF+8

SPD

• Agile: SPD+16
• Sonic(G): SPD+24, SKL-8
• Lightspeed(G): SPD+32, SKL-16, DEF-8, ATK+8

Multiplicative

• Powerful: All x1.5
• Ultimate(G): All x2

Status Increase

• Sacred: MaxHP+64
• Invigorating: MaxAP+64

Other

• Jumping: Improves jump height
• Heavy: Improves knockback

Defense Enhancements

DEF

• Defensive: DEF+16
• Impregnable(G): DEF+24, SPD-8
• Invincible(G): DEF+32, SPD-16, ATK-8, SKL+8
• Masochistic(G): MaxHP+64, DEF+48, ATK-32, SPD-32

SKL

• Skillful: SKL+16
• Technical(G): SKL+24, ATK-8
• Holy(G): SKL+32, ATK-16, SPD-8, DEF+8

SPD

• Agile: SPD+16
• Sonic(G): SPD+24, SKL-8
• Lightspeed(G): SPD+32, SKL-16, DEF-8, ATK+8

Multiplicative

• Powerful: All x1.2
• Ultimate(G): All x1.5

Status Increase

• Sacred: MaxHP+64
• Invigorating: MaxAP+64

Other

• Jumping: Improves jump height
• Heavy: Improves knockback resistance

Tips and Extra

Well, those are all the stat changes, so I’ll just give you some tips regarding what to put on what. Firstly, if there’s a weapon with more than 32 attack, and you just want it for damage, then of course, Ultimate is a better bet than Destructive. Almost all of the super strong, No EXP weapons are better off with Ultimate than any other enhancement, so try for that.

Also, if you somehow didn’t realize it, you can of course apply the enhancements to a weapon, use it till it breaks, then the specific enhancement that was on it will come off. You can then freely apply this enhancement to any other piece of equipment of the same class, weapon or guard.

What I often did was get a blunt sword, use the enhancement kit on it it till I got the enhancement I wanted. Then, I’d break the blunt sword, take the enhancement, and use it on the weapon I wanted the enhancement for. This meant that, if I got something good, like Ultimate, when I wanted a different enhancement, I could break the blunt sword, take the good enhancement that I didn’t want right away, and store it with Sukumizu till I got something I wanted it on.

Usually, there’s a big tradeoff to speed for the best armor, the Steel Armor. For huge defense, you want it with Invincible, ideally. Ultimate for guard items is only 1.5x, after all, unlike the weapon’s Ultimate, which is 2x, so you only get about 72 with Ultimate, compared to the 80 you get from Invincible Steel Armor.

Though the difference seems negligible, DEF in this game is really powerful, even just 8 more is much better. Of course, though, the speed penalty is immense either way. What is one to do? Well, it should be fairly obvious, no? Just get a weapon with high speed, such as the Paralyze or Poison Claws, Beast King Claws if you don’t care about EXP, and put Lightspeed or Ultimate on those! Then, you get to be fairly fast while still being impossible to hurt.

The best option overall, though, is to get your hands on the Reaper Sickle. It’s a super good weapon with no stat decreases, but it’s a bit hard to get. If you get it, though, you can put Ultimate on it for a full SPD+88, completely negating the SPD decrease of the armor.

By the way, the Ultimate Reaper’s Sickle boasts the highest SPD increase of a weapon in the game, and the Lightspeed/Ultimate Nikey Shoes have the highest SPD increase of armor. Combine these two, and roll around at the speed of sound!

For the highest ATK possible from equipment alone, disregarding the Glass Sword, get yourself the Big-Ass Ax, and slap Ultimate on it. Then, get yourself a Red Dragon Jewel, and slap Ultimate on that too. Enjoy your crazy damage that isn’t an exploit.

One of the best weapons in the game that doesn’t have the dreaded No EXP on it, hands down, is the Hardcore club, especially with Ultimate. Literally no stat decreases, good durability, and the fatigue ability, which is pretty damn busted, if what you’re fighting can even last long enough against the insane damage to get affected by it. For more weapon tips, such as the secret items that others have already made posts about, I’ll be making a guide on all the weapons in the game very soon, probably the day after today, I’ve already spent a good two hours gathering the data for this guide and writing it down.

Did you know? Your weapon raises your ATK stat overall, not just the attack of the weapon itself. This might seem like nothing important at all, but did you know that the damage that attack items do is based on your ATK stat? Here’s a good way to absolutely break this entire game.

1. Get the Mundus Arbos weapon shop up to Lvl. 4 or 5, I forget which. You can do this right after the Riza Ruins and Dryad fight, which is one of the first areas you’ll have access to.
2. Once the shop is leveled up, buy a Glass Sword, an incredibly powerful sword boasting ATK+255 and SKL+64, at the cost of having only 16 durability, similar to the incredibly powerful Lucktard that gives DEF+255 and resists every status effect, but only lasts 8 hits.
3. While you could skip this step, this will make it even better. Get your hands on weapon enhancement kits G, and hope for Ultimate. Like I said earlier, you can get it on a different weapon, break that weapon, and then take the Ultimate Kit and use it on your Glass Sword. This gives it a staggering ATK+510, and SKL+128. As I said, these stat changes don’t apply only to swinging the sword, but to your character overall.
4. Acquire water bottles, a simple attack item that sends out little waves of liquid, you may have seen Sukumizu using them if you pissed her off, and the Cho Anicky in the Encore Watt Ruins have a similar attack, their pear juice thing. Using up medicine, brown sludge, or pervy liquid gets you an empty bottle. Wade around or swim in some water, and that’ll get you water bottles. You can even get these bottles filled by getting hit by the water attacks from Sukumizu or Cho Anicky.
5. Equip the Glass Sword in your weapon slot, don’t swing it.
6. Equip the water bottles in your item slot.
7. Use the water bottles in the general direction of whatever you want dead.
8. Profit.

Some considerations for that strategy, really quickly. It works with any other attack item that does damage, grenades, grimoires, and caltrops work fine, but the water bottle is such a weak item normally that it doesn’t trigger the enemy’s i-frames, meaning it can deal hella damage real fast, yo. By the way, while that is technically super busted, using the Ultimate Glass Sword itself is kind of a scam, so it’s way better in all honesty. The sword itself hits the damage cap way before it has the chance to do the crazy damage it advertises. Also, don’t use this against the true final boss, it softlocked me, cause there’s a cutscene after her death, and that got messed up by how bad I whooped her ass. I mean, use the strategy to get her nearly dead, but switch to a different weapon, and kill her with that.

A Final Conclusion: My Thoughts and Reasoning

I bet you’re wondering why I’ve spent two hours of my time writing this guide for an old, lewd, indie game that most people have played once or twice and never looked back at. To an extent, I wonder too, but really, I just found this all fairly fun. I mean, I’m a neet if you hadn’t already guessed, so it’s not like my time would be spent on much else important. It’s either spend two hours on this little guide, two hours playing games, two hours watching Youtube or a movie, two hours doing ♥♥♥, really. Of course, I could also spend two hours looking for a job, two hours volunteering, two hours on a walk, two hours at the library, two hours studying something, two hours doing something meaningful, really.

So why make this largely pointless guide, why plan on making another largely pointless guide on this same game that is so small and temporal for most? I don’t know. I found writing this guide to be fun, that’s all. This game in general fills me with such a nice feeling. No, not the sexy monster girls, I mean everything else. There’s a certain joy that this game, the music, and the art bring me, I just love it all so much. I just love isometric action games, I love the look of isometric games, but almost all of them are strategy games. And though an isometric angle and action don’t mix well, it’s often hard to tell where you are and where you’ll be hitting, I still love them so much, and this is among the nicest. I wish there were more isometric action games, the only other one I know of is CrossCode, and I love that game as well.

I can’t wait for Suxa’s next work, I’m hoping he does a Doom 2 and just makes basically the same game with more stuff. Unfortunately I don’t know what’s happened to Mr. Yoshimatsu, nor does Suxa, he’s gone completely silent on Twitter, and well, I don’t think he’ll be making music anymore to say the least. So, the music for whatever Suxa makes next probably won’t be as intensely pleasing as I find Hakoniwa’s soundtrack to be now.

By the way, with my rudimentary Japanese and following Suxa’s Twitter, it seems that he’s starting up work on another game after all! Though, he hasn’t had much to show for it other than some questions he had for his followers regarding technical issues. So if you were also hoping for some more of this sort of game, there’s hope in the air, I’d say. With that, I’m finished for now, if you bothered to read through this, and care about more, I’ll be around with the treatise on the weapons and armor in this game, probably to be followed up with a treatise on the items. Maybe I’ll consider doing a treatise on the enemies of the game, but maybe not lol. That’s way too much, and I doubt it’ll even be half as fun as this one has been. Farewell, until next time.