Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk

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Luck Stat: Guide and Theories
By Enik
A guide dedicated to pooling known information regarding "Luck", until a more concrete guide comes along
   
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Intro
What This Guide Is: This guide is a place to post theories and discoveries regarding the Luck stat in Labyrinth of Refrain. Hopefully this information will help other players work with this vague stat. If you discover new information, please comment and let me know so I can revise this guide accordingly.

Update: Muddled through the Japanese Wiki, to grab some more information and data. Hopefully this brings more light to the information at hand. https://wikiwiki.jp/refrain2ch/
Effects of Luck
Just like in any RPG, Luck can affect a myriad of different things. Thankfully, some of these are even explained in game! Here are some of the effects you can expect

Critical Hits - It is believed that Luck affects the frequency of critical hits given, and possibly critical hits taken (Karma affects taken hits as well).
Covens - Specific Covens will explicitly state how Luck affects them. For example: 10% of character's luck is added to the drop rate after combat.
Skills - There are various skills that only work when a character possesses a specific Luck value. The Theatrical Star facet has a skill that increases AVD by 35% if luck is at Despair. This is one of the exceptions to having a high Luck stat

Keep in mind, there could be more ways that Luck affects characters. These are just a few of the ways I have read/discovered.
Luck Scale
The Luck Scale is below, both visually and with numerical pairings
Despair - Unlucky - Mediocre - Lucky - Fortunate

Despair 0-19
Unlucky 20-39
Mediocre 40-59
Lucky 60-79
Fortunate 80-99
How Luck is Initially Determined
This was a big mystery to me when I first started the game. No tutorial tells you how luck is determined, but it is hinted at in the Witch's Petitions. Hopefully this information clears it up for everyone.

From my research thus far, luck is initially determined by: name of puppet AT creation. I know this sounds a bit far fetched, but try it yourself. Name different characters, the same name, and watch as they all come out with the same luck stat (barring other modifiers, such as stance).

Changing the puppet name via Witch's Petition Does Not affect luck. Only the birth name matters

Other things that affect Luck are:
Moon Stance - Reduces Luck by 30 (1-2 tiers)
Lucky Star - Increases Luck by 25 (Generally 1 tier)
Lucky Personality - Increases Luck (Found the specific amount earlier, didn't write it down, can't find it again. If/When I find it, I will update this)
Equipment - Some equipment has a Luck stat modifier, represented as a numeral.
Known Names With Specific Luck Values
Below are the names that I know will produce specific results. Try them out for yourself.

Despair
Aloise - Despair is a great tier for Theatrical Star, for their skill that increases AVD by 35%
Chester - Thanks to The Zebu

Unlucky
Valkyrie - Thanks to The Zebu
Weiss - Thanks to The Zebu

Mediocre
Rennalt
Renzo - Thanks to The Zebu

Lucky
Ileen - eye-leen. Since I and l look so similar
JailBait - Thanks to IceLancer

Fortunate
Aria - Thanks to The Zebu
Casca - Thanks to The Zebu
Chelsea - Thanks to IceLancer
Cynthia - Thanks to UnlimitedNC
Lucky - That's correct. As if to make things easy on us, naming a puppet "Lucky" produces the highest tier of luck. Neat, right?
Triela - Thanks to UnlimitedNC
Lucky Numbers
Although choosing the your character's lucky number might not seem like a big deal, it really is. Your lucky number can affect some very big things and some small things.

Covens - Certain covens cause affects based on a character's lucky number (such as additional damage when the last two digits of your damage is equal to your lucky number).
Late Game Grinding - There is a Coven near the end of the game, that gives your 3 Attacker slots, and 1 Support slot, 666% Exp growth. How is this related to Lucky Numbers? The slots can only be filled by characters with EVEN lucky numbers
Luck After Soul Transfer - Your lucky number will have an affect on the amount of luck your character loses upon soul transfer. This will be explained in the Soul Transfer section

The big take away from this section should be this: choose even lucky numbers!
Regarding Soul Transfer
So, you did a Soul Transfer, and despite naming ALL of your characters Lucky, your character's Luck fell from Fortunate to Lucky. Why is this? Well, the simple answer, is that your character's luck decreases with every Soul Transfer.

Whenever you complete a Soul Transfer, your character's luck will decrease based on the second digit of their lucky number. Below is a chart detailing this information

00 | Luck -36
01 | Luck -35
02 | Luck -34
03 | Luck -33
04 | Luck -32
05 | Luck -31
06 | Luck -30
07 | Luck -29
08 | Luck -28
09 | Luck -27
10 | Luck -36
...
...
99 | Luck -27

*This information is based around my current understanding, and might not be 100% accurate to the numbers, but should serve as reasonable guide. Additionally, this is a simplification of the idea. A more detailed explanation will be placed in a section of its own

Do not worry, your luck will not continually decrease forever. Once your Luck reaches a negative number via Soul Transfer, it will loop back around to a high luck value. For example: Performing a Soul Transfer at Despair will land you back in either Fortunate or Lucky
Manipulating Soul Transfer
As previous mentioned, when performing Soul Transfer, your Luck decreases based on your Lucky Number, until you drop below 0, which it will roll over back to a higher luck stat.

When this process occurs though, it is not based on your character's natural Luck, but rather their Current Luck. This means, that by manipulating your current luck via equipment, especially unlucky equipment, you can always end up with a high luck stat upon transfer.

Example: Instead of transferring at Lucky and accepting a result of Mediocre after your next Soul Transfer, you can equip unlucky gear to drop your luck to Unlucky or Despair, and when you take the equipment off after Soul Transfer, your character will have either Lucky or Fortunate.

*This process will be better explained in the following section where, the numbering system will be further explained.
Let's talk numbers!
This section will mostly be regarding Soul Transfer, and an in depth look at the numbers behind it.

Remember when I said that Lucky Numbers decrease luck by a certain value? That was a partial lie, and very much an oversimplification of the matter. In fact, they increase your luck. I'll explain:

Luck is scaled from 0-99 (in theory).

Your lucky number, determines the change when Soul Transfer occurs

00 | Luck -36 / +64
01 | Luck -35 / +65
02 | Luck -34 / +66
03 | Luck -33 / +67
04 | Luck -32 / +68
05 | Luck -31 / +69
06 | Luck -30 / +70
07 | Luck -29 / +71
08 | Luck -28 / +72
09 | Luck -27 / +73
10 | Luck -36 / +64
...
...
99 | Luck -27 / +73

So let's say your character is Fortunate, and an unseen Luck of 84, and Lucky Number of 22 (-34/+66). When a Soul Transfer occurs, your Luck + Your Lucky Number Modifier determines your Luck stat. So... 84 + 66 = 150.

Since Luck is scaled from 0-99, you can't have 150 Luck. So we drop the hundreds digit (far left 1). Now you are left with a new Luck score of 50, which is Mediocre

Now let's talk about manipulating this score with equipment. The game uses your modified luck when determining your natural luck post Soul Transfer. We'll use the same example as above, but we'll equip a piece of unlucky equipment with a -73 to Luck. So... (84-73) + 66 = 77.
When your puppet finishes their Soul Transfer, they will have a Luck score of 77 (-73 for the unlucky gear), which is Despair. Once you remove the piece of equipment them, they will have Luck of 77, which is Lucky.

These methods can be used to determine your hidden luck number, or to manipulate your puppet's Luck score after Soul Transfer. Enjoy!
Credits and Thanks
Thanks to everyone in the comments for additional information/names/etc.

Thanks to the JP Wiki and all of Its contributors for their extensive testing
29 Comments
blazegamma 23 Feb @ 7:23pm 
I've noticed that handful of japanese games like this, mainly dungeon crawlers, like to include some raelly gimmicky mechanic that is either really luck based, rng, or some convoluted mess like this luck system here that more detracts from the game rather than adds to it or enhances it.. I can accept gear in chests being rng because that's just the way it is sometimes, but your puppet getting potentially shit on repeatedly from a soul transfer because you're trying to build up their passives to make them better overall, having to waste time already as it is just to level them so they can learn their passives possibly repeatedly from multiple soul transfers and then u gota put up with this "abuse it or fuck you" system? nah man
This is why the Etrian Odyssey series remains on top. they removed a lot of the random ass bullshit and really streamlined the whole adventure process,
Goobs 8 May, 2024 @ 6:21am 
Honestly the luck stat is pretty much my only gripe about the puppet building. Names determining base luck is so weird. Kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy Tactic's zodiac sign bullshit. It just makes it unnecessarily complicated. I wish they fixed it in Galleria but somehow the puppet building in that is even more messy. Refrain is a shorter game, but it has superior puppet building and much better dungeons, despite the luck stat fiasco.
It blows my mind how they rushed Galleria given what the fuck the end-game turned out to be. At that point the puppet building becomes a slog rather than an interesting mechanic. Such a waste.
DxDark 2 Jul, 2023 @ 5:26am 
Such a stupid fucking system...
HeadPats 7 Jul, 2021 @ 11:31am 
So if your puppet name changes the luck value, wouldn't that mean that each letter of the alphabet has a luck value assigned to it, and the result is just the values added together?
Shuruni 16 Mar, 2020 @ 10:23am 
Since I have been hooked on figuring out how this system works for the past several days, I decided to compile all of my findings into a comprehensive guide detailing a revised look at how LUC and the systems involving it work according to all my research and testing. Since I'd figure it would be a bit rude to actually post the link here, I'll just drop the name here so you can check it out in the guides section if you are having trouble with some of the inconsistencies in this guide atm. My guide is called "Are you feeling LUCky?" in case anyone is interested.
Shuruni 13 Mar, 2020 @ 5:36am 
So I just thought I'd mention that the table on lucky numbers and their corresponding decrement/increment values seems to have been misinterpreted here. One of the posts on the JP wiki points out a good summary of the details surrounding luck as

※1:(Limited between Min 0 ~ Max 99. Not sure if it's actually represented internally as 1~100 or not but here I'll just write the range as 0~99.)

※2:(Selecting Moon Stance during Soul transfer is the only case where -30 happens.)

※3:Regarding LUC lost on soul transfer: ( (36 - [Lucky Number / 10]) discarding the decimal place (So this means Lucky Number 91~99 is 26, Lucky Number 0 is 36, Lucky Number 51~60 is 30)

This would mean that the Table is actually

00~00 | Luck -36 / +64
01~10 | Luck -35 / +65
11~20 | Luck -34 / +66
21~30 | Luck -33 / +67
31~40 | Luck -32 / +68
41~50 | Luck -31 / +69
51~60 | Luck -30 / +70
61~70 | Luck -29 / +71
71~80 | Luck -28 / +72
81~90 | Luck -27 / +73
91~99 | Luck -26 / +74
Griffin 17 Jun, 2019 @ 10:54pm 
One thing to note for the guide: Soul Transferring from a Moon Stance puppet to a non-Moon Stance puppet behaves in a unexpected way. You would assume that Moon Stance was treated just like equipment. (You would assume that if you Soul Transfer a Luck 06, Despair, Moon Stance character to a Standard Stance character, they're Luck would drop by -30 to below 0, be rounded to Fortunate or Lucky, and then have 0 Luck added to it from the Standard Stance.) Instead, if you Soul Transfer a Luck 06, Despair, Moon Stance character to a Standard Stance character, you end up with a Despair character. More testing is needed to determine whether Moon Stance is ignored completely or whether something more tricky is going on.
「GEAR † HEAD」 12 Apr, 2019 @ 8:28pm 
The name: "Lovecraft" seems to give Fortunate tier luck. Not sure if you're still writing this but it could be useful.
Stormo 15 Dec, 2018 @ 6:10am 
For some reason, naming your character Junko does not produce a Despair result, but rather a Lucky one. Nagito also produces Lucky (sadly not Ultimate Lucky). Also, some of the randomized names I got and their scores:

Kayano (Moon)= Unlucky
Ajari = Mediocre
Firefly = Despair
Arya = Despair
Valkynaz 6 Oct, 2018 @ 8:48am 
Ok yeah, personality does modify LCK, trying Sona again, this time both Hotblooded and Brave, and right from the get go I see a difference, with 2 normal Baffling Blades (-30 LCK each), the Hotblooded one has a Mediocre rating, and the Brave one has a Unlucky rating, seeing as the calculator and my own calculations say -60 against 99 would put the LCK rating down to unlucky (39, not 40+) this is awfully confusing