ForumsGame WalkthroughsSonny Guide: Tips and Tricks for Strategy

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DoraDoraBoBora
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DoraDoraBoBora
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Nomad

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Just picked up Sonny on iTunes for your iPhone or iPad? Sonny 2017 has quite a few different mechanics compared to its predecessors, but we've got your back. Whether you're stuck with Sonny or just want to pick up some more information to better equip yourself, our guide is here to give you insight on how the game works. Rather than functioning as an explicit walkthrough, these tips for Sonny will show you how understanding the various mechanics will have you vanquishing the Vileclaw or crushing The Corrupter and beyond in no time.

Don't have the game yet? Get Sonny on iTunes!

FIVE QUICK TIPS FOR VICTORY
Use as much crowd control as possible - Control the battle by using Stuns, Slows, or other weakening effects against your enemies to gain the upper hand. Use abilities like Wound to direct your team's focus onto a specific target and take them down more quickly.
Strike often- It's easy to neglect it, but you must keep Speed balanced when managing your stats because the faster you are, the more you can do before your enemy's next attack.
Time your heals wisely - Learn your enemy's abilities and wait until after the enemy has used its dangerous move before healing your team. Regenerate will cure 1 debuff AT RANDOM, so it may not dispel the one you were hoping for if you use it while you're suffering from multiple status conditions!
The more skills, the better - Especially in the early game, it's much more helpful to have a wide variety of abilities than to marginally upgrade a single skill.
Spend money wisely - Respec your skills to experiment with new builds while you're in the first two zones -- it's only $1 in the beginning, but it gets pricier later on!  Also, items in the Shop are different in each zone; keep your inventory up to date by buying higher level items so your stats don't fall behind.
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FOCUS

What is Focus and how does it work?
"Focus" is the blue bar that hovers above each character and partner to the green Health Points (HP) bar. When that blue bar is filled, you get to make your move, but the same goes for your enemy! Your goal is make sure your bar fills faster and more often.

The rate at which your Focus bar replenishes is determined by the Speed stat (the yellow feather icon that appears when you select a character). The higher your Speed, the faster your Focus will build, and the sooner you will be able to attack before the other team.

Increase your rate of attack either indirectly by equipping +Speed items or directly by using an ability like Snap Kick while in battle, which instantly grants 50 Focus.

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SPEED
How can Speed give you an advantage in combat?

More chances to hit means more opportunities to apply Chance-on-Hit (a.k.a. Proc) bonuses such as Expose's defense reduction or a double attack with Quick Strike.

If you effectively balance your Speed (thus the rate at which you regain Focus), not only will you have more opportunities to strike as your turn comes faster, you will also be able to use your powerful abilities more often.

Consider the following: An ability like Guard, which grants a hefty +150% Defense bonus and +50% Stun and Focus Drain resist, has a 3-turn duration and a 5-turn cooldown. If your Speed is equal to the opponent's, they may hit you multiple times in the two turns before you have a chance to protect yourself with Guard again. But with a higher Speed, your Focus will consistently build faster, giving you one or even two extra turns to act before the enemy makes their next move.

Each time your Focus bar refills an extra turn before your enemy can retaliate means one less turn spent defenseless during a cooldown period on your strong abilities. Given a high enough Speed gap, you could potentially keep Guard up throughout an entire battle.

Speed is the "silent strength" stat in Sonny. Ignoring Speed to focus only on Power is a great way to see really big numbers when you attack, but without a balance of these two stats, you'll also be dead before you get a chance to take that big swing.

Other stats are, of course, incredibly useful in their own way -- we'll discuss them later on. However, you can only do so much to buff your own attributes, so it's often most effective to lower the enemy's,  too...

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DEBUFFS
This enemy has strong defenses! How do I get through them?
"Wound" is a crucial ability in the early stages of the game for whittling down sturdy targets.

The Wound ability applies the Bleed debuff, which deals extra damage every time the target is struck with an attack. It's especially useful at early stages of the game, when the damage is practically equal to a double-strike.

Your allies will also focus their attacks on Bleeding targets. Use this to your advantage to have your whole team target an enemy that needs to be quickly eliminated.

Amplify the effects of Wound by pairing with the right abilities:
Super Dazed enemies are extremely vulnerable to attacks. Combine this temporary weakness with a direct attack and the huge bonus damage from Wound, and the target won't survive another turn.
On a similar note, Blood Strike will steal a large amount of extra health from a Super Dazed enemy. This can be a life-saver in a fight if your Regenerate is on cooldown!

Armor is the enemy of damage. Use a combination of Passive abilities and skills to negate the target's defenses:
Expose is a Passive ability that has a 20% Proc chance to reduce the enemy's Defense by a whopping -75% for the next hit it takes. Strike with a high-damage attack after an enemy is Exposed to deal a strong blow to even the tankiest tank.
Drill Strike is a skill perfect for raw damage... it completely ignores 100% of the target's Defense. Time your Drill Strike for the moment your target falls under 35% hp to deal an additional +50% damage and quickly execute a low-health enemy.

This enemy has a lot of dangerous attacks! How do I prevent it from overwhelming my team?
&lt>The most direct way to keep an enemy from attacking you is to stun them with an ability such as Break. A stun completely stops the target from acting on its next turn. Time the use of your stuns wisely. A well-placed stun on the right target can:

Stop an enemy if you know they're about to use a debuff ability against you such as Poison or Bleed.  This is especially effective against weak targets that like to throw out a DoT at the start of a fight so you can kill them before they have a chance to strike and save your Regenerate for a more crucial moment in battle.
Stall for time if you need just one more turn before an ability on cooldown becomes available.
Prevent a dangerous, super-powerful attack from an enemy that has a berserk ability such as Rage. Many of these enemy buffs last only one turn and have long cooldowns. You can completely turn the tide of battle if you wait until they berserk to use your stun.

Just as it helps you to have as high Speed as possible, making the enemy as slow as possible is critical in battle. The Cripple skill reduces a target's Speed by -35% for 3 turns with a 4-turn cooldown. If your Speed is high enough, you can keep an enemy constantly Crippled.

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SYNERGY
As we now know, having a slower enemy means having a distinct advantage over them in turn rate, and it also means elongating the duration of your other effects. Combine debuffs and attacks to maximize your Crowd Control (CC) and damage in battle:
Cripple + Stun = Longer stun, because it will take +35% longer for the target's focus to regenerate enough to end the turn, and thus end the stun.
Cripple + Wound/Cripple + Expose = More chances for your team to strike the enemy before Wound/Expose wears off, leading to a lot of extra damage.
Cripple + Suppress = Best used against enemies with Heal over Time (HoT) abilities. Being slowed means longer downtime before they receive their next heal and more time for you to go for a killing blow.
The Claw skill deals an additional +30% damage against Physically debuffed enemies. If you learn to pair your Physical CC and stretch them out as long as possible with slows, you can consistently inflict massive damage on your target.

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SKILLS
Should I invest Skill Points in multiple skills or upgrade one skill multiple times?
Fill your entire skill wheel before you even consider upgrading an ability. Having more skills gives you two advantages:
A variety of skills gives you a variety of strengths. You'll have the advantage of multiple tactics in battle to choose from instead of being limited to only a handful of abilities.
A wide repertoire of abilities will also help prevent downtime between turns where you are stuck with only your basic attack available.
There's an obvious advantage to being able to use two different attacks for hundreds of damage consecutively than to have one attack with +25 damage that then goes on cooldown.

Should I respec my skill points? When?

Try new strategies by experimenting with different skills to find a playstyle that works for you.

Respeccing is very cheap in the early game, only $1! It will not stay this inexpensive forever, so it's a good idea play around with various builds while you can do so without hurting your pockets.

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SURVIVING
What can I do to increase my survivability?
If you expect to take a large amount of damage in the next few turns from a charging or berserking enemy, you can protect yourself with an ability such as Guard, which grants +150% Defense as well as +50% Stun and Focus Drain resistance.
Other stats can help you survive in battle, too. Pay attention to the kind of damage the enemy is dealing your team:

Fast enemy with several, rapid attacks?  Defense is your direct protection from damage.
Slower enemy with heavy hitting blows OR an enemy using Defense-penetrating attacks? Vitality increases your HP to allow you to take more damage and still survive.
Non-Physical damage cutting through your health? Resistances will protect you by diminishing specific types of damage by a certain percentage.

Why should I pay attention to HP, beyond the obvious?
Many elements of battle can changed based on current HP. Abilities such as Drill Strike deals +50% damage to targets under 35% HP. Also, some enemies berzerk when they fall under half health, and some deal increased damage when you are under 50%.
Focus down berzerking targets quickly or stun them when they drop into the danger zone, and keep yourself healed when facing targets that gain strength while you're low HP.

How do I get the most out of my healing skills?
Be patient when fighting an enemy with dangerous abilities. Let them use their high-damage attack or debuff ability first, and then you can completely negate it with a well-timed heal.
The Regenerate skill can dispel 1 debuff at random. If you've been affected by a Slow and then a Poison, it's a 50/50 chance that your heal will dispel the Slow instead of the Poison. Sometimes, it's best to wait out the weaker debuffs before you attempt to dispel the stronger one.

Keep yourself alive without spending the Regenerate cooldown by using Lifesteal. You can find items with a Lifesteal percentage which will take an amount of the damage you deal and give it back to you as health <em>or</em> you can use abilities such as Blood Bath and Blood Strike.

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STATS
Not all stats are created equal! A single point into your four main stats, Vitality, Power, Defense, and Speed, can yield significant returns.
For example, increasing your Vitality by just one point will increase your HP by 7 points. Thus, an item that gives a few more Vitality points can add a sizable amount to your overall Health.

Speed: You thought we were done talking about Speed! In addition to raising your Focus regeneration rate, the Speed stat also increases your chance to hit <em>and</em> to dodge enemy attacks. A "Miss" on an attack deals absolutely no damage and has no effect whatsoever on the target.

Defense: This stat offers protection from direct attacks, meaning you can't lessen the damage from indirect damage like DoT effects, but you can significantly protect yourself from the enemy's strikes.

Try to maintain a balance of Defense and Vitality with your offensive stats if you notice the enemy is knocking out large chunks of your HP even after being debuffed. The damage you prevent each turn with a higher defense adds up quickly and can mean the difference between life or death.

It's possible to have high Defense with lower Power and still deal impressive damage. Abilities like Iron Slam take a large percentage of your Defense and add it directly as damage to your attack. Combining Iron Slam with a skill like Guard (which adds 150% Defense) can yield crippling results.

This guide is in progress! Feel free to post your own tips or as for help.

  • 203 Replies
DLN511
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DLN511
6 posts
Nomad

Big key in this game is maximizing the amount of your attacks and limiting the amount of the opponents. Speed for yourself, stun, slow down for the enemy. Sometimes the difference in getting destroyed and beating a boss easily was just grinding or equipping myself until I had more speed and could go first

SGT_Shark
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SGT_Shark
4 posts
Shepherd

im struggleing on the last boss in zone five, and i can't even manege to get her close to bellow 50%
(3/5) quick strike, (3/5) cripple, (3/5) wound, (3/5) brake, (1/5) expose, (3/5) drill strike, (5/5) disrupt. and im useing lightning strain.

analytical
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analytical
15 posts
Nomad

What did you do to beat the Blitz Raptor, SGT SHARK? That's where I'm stuck.

SGT_Shark
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SGT_Shark
4 posts
Shepherd

@analytical :luck basicly, i think?... i had herrgods and veradux in my party and hoped for both of them not dying.
in other words i don't realy know, im not that hardcore of a gamer.

Doombreed
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Doombreed
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Templar

@SGT_Shark, use Volt Snare, Warp Strike and shovels. Fury evo on your basic attack makes it destroy Celestia's focus every time you use it

@analytical, you too xD that's pretty much how to beat that entire zone with a primary lightning strain.

analytical
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analytical
15 posts
Nomad

I've got shovels now, but what if you have fire strain like me? I am getting beat by even monsters

ChrisYng
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ChrisYng
1 posts
Nomad

Skills useful for me in lightning build:

shockwave followed by warp strike then break/volt snare/cripple

Quick strike become very useful with the evo that deduct 20 focus pts per strike or fury

Speed built weapon mainly shovel and upgrade all equips.

When evolution: Fury or reduce cooldown by 1

M82Crusader
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M82Crusader
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Peasant

Hey guys. Just beat the game. Overall I really enjoyed it and was well worth the $3! I started off with the Ice Strain then added Shadow when given the second opportunity (was going to go for lightning but saw that everyone else and their mother were doing that, and shadow had some nice abilities to help with stuns).

Anyways, I figured out a build at the end of zone 4 when I had to destroy Arcanis. I was stuck for the longest time until I got a bright idea of using all three stuns available with ice (mind freeze, ice wall, and physical break). I use frost charge every time after my ice wall (used ice wall first turn). Then used cripple right after frost charge. Let my allies do the damage (Herregod's basic attack [acid] ignores defense so goes perfectly with ice wall), and just repeated that sequence of stuns and frost charge/cripple until he died.

This strategy worked all the way up to Celestia (beat raptor no prob, once upgrading to get enough speed). With celestia, I had to respec and move things around and I believe I also ended up using snap kick and reconstruct to further help with cooldowns.

I picked shadow as my second strain as the basic attack ignores defense (what you want with this build), and the blend ability times perfectly with the sequence of actions (I can go into more detail if you guys want to, in another post).

With the added shadow strain, beating the baron was a piece of cake (but I had to add shadow waltz in to get my speed just above the plague doctors beforehand). Once I got shadow waltz in, everything past that was first time success. I even messed around with trading out shadows waltz and shadow bolt with the two defense-ignoring attacks from physical+ice. I ended up having to go back to the original waltz/bolt combo for the last zone but works like a charm... even when facing the warlocks mixed with two other enemies, managed to keep ALL of them perma-stunned thanks to ice wall.

Let me know what you guys think or if anything is confusing - more than happy to explain more and even possibly take a snap of my ability wheel

Edit: A must have is for herregods and veradux to have focus drain weapons (shovels, or the drop from arcanis). Not necessary for you however. Also just focus on maximizing speed - nothing else matters unfortunately. Did all this with no training too (legend run).

VagrantSword
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VagrantSword
6 posts
Nomad

@analytical the fire strain is hard to use early on. It won't be really powerful till after you beat chapter 6 so you can build a full crit strike build for healing.
Fire strike, magma beam, blast, flame jet, wound, Phoenix soul, cruelty or heat distortion and blaze aura. Heat distortion is very good when it is level 5, cruelty is useable but in my opinion less effective.

Put one point in each, then max heat distortion, blaze aura or Phoenix soul, then the other and blast. Basically magma beam, wound and blast will deal damage, blast will easily hit for 20k+ on a breached target when maxxed late game. Flame jet will heal you usually 2/3 hits as well as 3 wound procs and blaze aura heals and removes all buffs (good and bad) so be careful with it. This build slaughters late game but comes to a dead stop at the last battle of chapter 8, I have fire and ice strains but have not found an effective combo for the final boss.

The best build for early game is a physical build
Quick strike, cripple, wound, break, blood bath, expose, guard and regenerate.

Put one point in each then max blood bath, quick strike and expose. Then the build is complete.

Against normal monsters wound the quick strike till most dangerous is dead. Starting from chapter 4 you will have to incorporate cripple against monsters and occasionally break.

Against bosses, cripple, wound, quick strike, quick strike. Use break to stop single turn super buffs like divine charge. Use regenerate mostly for the nastiest dots like super burn, but for the most part veradux and doc will heal you if you get low. Just remember sometimes you will have to heal or guard them in return.

I have beaten the game with this build, however I attempted to use elemental builds first and I spent quite a bit of time training. So I had extra cash and skill points that made it a bit easier.

On my current play through I have gone full physical from the beginning instead of respeccing at the start of chapter 3 I am upto the second last battle in chapter 4 without training, but i think this may be the battle that I have to train to pass, as I simply don't have enough speed to compete with the witch.

Incase it hasn't been said speed is key.

When choosing evolution I find it often pays to evolve my healing skills first against bosses, getting haste, regeneration or better debuff removal is often the thing that makes the difference for me. In general getting the right evolution on any ability is often the difference between an impossible battle and an easy one. I find that I get better evolutions on my healing skills more often, it may just be there a less evolutions for healing skills so the better ones are more often there.

A final tip to help all builds is never upgrade a skill that increases damage before you upgrade passives and proc skills fully, most skills gain around 5-10% damage which is nothing compared to more procs or extra utility of passives. There are a couple of skills that get increases crit damage or crit chance, these can be a bit of an exception depending on your build.

If it's no trouble would someone post a full build for lightning that they think can work for most of the game. I am stuck at war lizard for the second time, my first play through I changed to physical and never went back even after I added ice. Somehow I am retarded and simply unable to make lightning work.

SGT_Shark
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SGT_Shark
4 posts
Shepherd

@doombreed even with switching my euqipmen and my skills i still can't defeat her. my partymembers allays get the beserk buff, they dont even heal themselvs, and they keep missing her so she getts free focus all the **** time. and i don't even do enugh damege to her, shes allways above 75% health.

Doombreed
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Doombreed
7,022 posts
Templar

@SGT_Shark you need a lot of speed to hit her with warp strike, volt snare and shockwave as much as possible. When you use volt snare, allies won't attack her but spend time healing. For this fight it might also be easier to use Zakk, as he has attacks (Like Blizzard) that hit multiple times. Therefore, he will reduce the focus of Celestia more. So, really, you should use Shockwave, Warp Strike and Volt Snare to survive her onslaught while prepping for the Fury evo for your basic attack. Once you get it, the whole fight becomes far easier.

I don't know in the end, that's what worked for me like a charm

VagrantSword
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VagrantSword
6 posts
Nomad

@SGT_Shark

Quick strike, cripple, wound, break, blood bath, expose, regenerate and guard
Max blood bath and quick strike and put all extra points into expose.

I can't remember her skill line up. If debuffs are your problem evolve cleanse on the guard skill first. If it's damage try for regenerate. Then try and get stagger (for safety) or fury (more damage) on quick strike. Getting weaken or breach on cripple or wound helps too.

Cripple, wound, quick strike, quick strike. When I defeated her I had max speed gear from zone 5 and no shovels. For me she was far easier than the raptor.

I'm my last huge post there is a fire build and then this physical build with some info on how to play it. Sorry I suck with lightning.

SGT_Shark
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SGT_Shark
4 posts
Shepherd

@doombreed i tryed what you said and i still get overpowerd by her and my atacks dosse not hit hard enugh.
why is this boss so god daum hard ?

analytical
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analytical
15 posts
Nomad

Thanks for the help. Im trying it now. Is there a trick to surviving the one-shots from the blitz raptor? I'm trying to figure out his pattern. He just eliminates one of us with one shot every now and then. I don't ever know when to guard or who to guard. Or if a stun would bypass that move.

Bloodaddictor
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Bloodaddictor
1 posts
Jester

So I've made it to the last fight of zone 7 now, and this game is so **** hard...

Some general tips:
1. Until Baron in zone 6, all your damage output can be done with fully upgraded quick strike with either breach or bleed.
2. To crank a nuke:
2.1 Evolve magma beam, blast and heat distortion (fire strain). Fully evolve the last two. A critical blast heat after magma beam should give you 18000-25000 damage.
Here's some tips for extremely hard bosses:
1. Blitz Raptor
1.1 Make sure your speed is higher than 1400. Use equipment and the passive in Electric class.
1.2 The only damage output you need is fully upgraded quick strike, evolved with either breach or bleed.
1.3 Use the force field in Electric class. Fully upgraded.
1.4 Evolve that physical shield with nourish.
1.5 Use cripple. Evolve with weak if possible.

2. Baron
2.1 Use the "nuke" move upwards to finish him off ASAP.
2.2 Use iron slam in the mean time to suppress healing from his wife.
2.3 Shield yourself before nuke his wife to avoid death by damage reflection.

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