Introduction

This guide will explain the Pastel system and the Board System in-depth including how it works.

If you want a short TL;DR of the Pastel system keep in mind the following key points:

  • There are 4 types of Pastels -
    Basic Pastel
    Basic Pastel
    ,
    Average Pastel
    Average Pastel
    ,
    Epic Pastel
    Epic Pastel
    and
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    (with the
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    ones being the most important ones).
  • Farming Pastels before you have
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    unlocked is not worth it whatsoever.
  • There are 3 Boards per character, which you can access by opening a “Gateway” when you finish the current one.
  • You don’t need to fully unlock every node to move to the next Board, and you can come back at any time to finish previous nodes.
  • There are some nodes that absolutely YOU SHOULD ALWAYS pick - these would be glowing nodes that apply benefits to all characters, making them really important and the focus for most players. Similarly there are some nodes that you can completely ignore.

Farming Pastels

Pastels are arguably the most important currency in the entire game due to their ability to fill in nodes in the Character Board which applies stat buffs not only for that character but also provide buffs for all of the characters on your account. Pastels can be grinded for using

Star Candy
Star Candy
from their own mode but they can also be obtained in events and shops.

There are 4 types of Pastels that you can get: Bro

Basic Pastel
Basic Pastel
wn,
Average Pastel
Average Pastel
,
Epic Pastel
Epic Pastel
, and the most important one which is
Ultra Pastel
Ultra Pastel
. The
Basic Pastel
Basic Pastel
are often used on nodes that increase the stats of the Board’s character and her only. The
Epic Pastel
Epic Pastel
are often used on nodes that add a certain number of stats to all of the characters on your account. The
Average Pastel
Average Pastel
are used together with the other Pastels when you color squares close to the gate and
Ultra Pastel
Ultra Pastel
are often used on nodes that add a certain percentage of stats to all the characters you have.

Pastels are NOT WORTH farming for until you can get

Ultra Pastel
Ultra Pastel
, which start appearing at Stage 9 of the gamemode. Even then you should still advance to higher stages for increased drops as you will need a significant amount of Pastels to max Boards.

Character Boards and Build Advice

Moving onto the Character Boards, each Character Board has a different layout and there are 3 Boards per character, which you can access by opening a “Gateway” when you finish the current one. Fully unlocking every node on a Board is not necessary to progress to the next Board, and when you progress to your next character Board you are not locked out of going to your previous Character Board to finish up the nodes there. It is important to note that the price of unlocking nodes will increase on each consecutive Board. This applies to all nodes but here’s an example with Rainbow nodes:

  • Rainbow nodes cost 2
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    on the first Board.
  • They cost 4
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    on the second Board.
  • And 6
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    on the third Board.

Your priority when navigating through your Character Boards is unlocking the Rainbow nodes on ALL YOUR CHARACTERS before you move and start unlocking Gateways for your main units.

Ultra Pastel
Ultra Pastel
are a resource that are pretty hard to come by even at endgame, so it’s not recommended that you heavily invest into units that you don’t plan on using beyond their first Character Board.

Board Nodes
Image
  • Normal Nodes: These nodes apply only to the current character and are pretty cheap, costing only
    Basic Pastel
    Basic Pastel
    and
    Average Pastel
    Average Pastel
    .
  • Medium Gray Nodes: These nodes apply TO ALL CHARACTERS ON YOUR ACCOUNT. They usually cost
    Epic Pastel
    Epic Pastel
    and are important to get.
  • Dark Gray Rainbow Nodes: Same as before, they apply to everyone and cost
    Ultra Pastel
    Ultra Pastel
    . They provide the best buffs in the Board and are the priority to unlock for most characters.
Stats to avoid and Stat priority

Important Note: Stats were reworked in Global so there might be a different priority. Regardless of that, Offensive Stats should take priority.

It is essential to know that there are two stats you should always avoid on your character Boards, and that is Physical Defense and Magic Defense. Unless there’s a node with those stats leading to a rainbow node, you should never pick these two stats, as Damage Reduction is “useless” in Trickcal because the Combat Power difference in story makes it have no effect at all.

This being said, your stat priority should be Attack > HP > Critical Hit Rate > Critical Damage > Critical Damage Resistances. It’s often recommended that you take a ratio of 2:1 when it comes to attack and HP nodes.

When you clear all of them, you can move into Critical Hit Rate and then Critical Damage. When it comes to Critical Resistances, please only take Critical Damage Resistance, not Critical Hit Rate. This is due to the game having some monsters that ignore Critical Hit Resistance, so it’s worse off compared to Critical Damage Resistance. However, these monsters only appear in the later chapters, so you should be fine at the beginning.