Characters

There are two playable characters in 30XX, Nina and Ace. Characters can be switched in the hub by going to their respective character capsule and interacting with it.

Nina
Nina is the game's protagonist, wielding her modular N-Buster to attack at range and utilising high-damage Powers to tear through beefier enemies with ease.

Nina's reworked N-Buster can now have weapon modifiers attached, which allows her to fuse multiple Primary Weapons into one. Any extra weapon acquired from Contemplation Shrines will alter how the N-Buster acts, either adding additional projectiles or altering how the existing projectiles function.

For Powers, Nina now has access to Power Fusion, allowing her to give one Power the traits of a different one. This can completely alter how each Power behaves, giving Nina a lot more options in battle.

Nina's Energy Bar does not regenerate by itself, but she can rely on health pickups to additionally recover energy. Nina recieves 2 Energy for small health drops, and 5 Energy for large health drops.

Ace
Ace is the game's deuteragonist, specializing in melee combat with a variety of weapons as well as having input-command Techniques which can be weaved together. Each technique has their own individual cooldown, so properly weaving attacks and different techniques together is the key to minimizing down time.

Ace can now carry every Primary Weapon he obtains at once, but only one can be equipped at a time. Ace's starting Technique, Unleash Blade, changes form depending on which Primary Weapon Ace currently has equipped - usually in the form of a ranged projectile.

For Techniques, Ace can equip and use all 9 Techniques at once, without worrying about swapping what Techniques are equipped. The inputs UP + POWER or DOWN + POWER, or LEFT/RIGHT + POWER, where "POWER" refers to one of the three power buttons, is how Ace accesses a specific technique. Pressing a Technique's input twice will allow Ace to Surge the Technique at the cost of Energy, increasing the Technique's damage and enhancing its utility.

Ace's Energy Bar regenerates whenever an enemy is killed nearby, at the rate of 1 Energy per enemy defeated. When fighting a boss, hitting the boss with the final swing of a weapon's combo will regenerate 1 Energy instead. This allows Ace to reliably use Surged Techniques without worrying too much about running out of Energy on future targets.

Stat Mechanics
Each character starts with 8 Maximum Health, 8 Maximum Energy (Nina) or 4 Maximum Energy (Ace), and +0 Attack Strength, Power Strength, Run Speed and Jump Height. In terms of stats, +0 of both Strength stats is equivalent to 10 base damage, before multipliers. Each point of Strength above 0 adds 1 base damage, while each point below 0 subtracts 0.5 base damage. Both Strength stats have a lower cap of -18 (equivalent to 1 base damage), but no upper limit.

All level pieces outside of Maker Mode are designed to be completable with all optional extras without any Run Speed or Jump Height upgrades. Each point of Run Speed or Jump Height increases their respective base stat, but has diminishing returns after +8 (half effect), +16 (quarter effect) and +32 (tenth effect). The gains do not diminish any further beyond +32. Run Speed has a lower cap of -5, and Jump Height has a lower cap of -1.

For cases in which stat modifiers would lower a stat below its lower limit, the stat is lowered to its lower limit, and the excess decrease, though it has no effect, continues to be tracked. Subsequent stat increases must neutralize the accumulated excess decrease before they can raise the stat above its lower limit again.