Magikrab's Gauntlet

Magikrab's Gauntlet is a series of randomised combat encounters aboard one of the Mer-Line's interdimensional trains. It was added to the game on 20 November 2024 as part of Version 1.7.

The Gauntlet is unlocked after the player has defeated Aleph Null and completed Part 4 of Take Me On. To enter the Gauntlet, speak to Magikrab in Platform B of Night's Bridge Station. The side quest The Midnight Train starts after Magikrab introduces the Gauntlet to the player.

Overview

Magikrab's Gauntlet is an infinite battle mode where the aim is to go through as many carriages—or rooms—as possible, facing a series of battles that get progressively harder. It is divided into trains that consist of 50 carriages each. The last carriage of each train contains a boss fight.

Throughout the Gauntlet, items are limited in use, though the player can encounter café carriages where they can heal, access the tape storage, claim rewards, or buy items. The deeper the run, the further cafés are spaced apart, and the more expensive the items get. These café carriages also serve as checkpoints that the player can resume from in the future if they lose in battle, or choose to leave the Gauntlet.

In the Gauntlet, battles will feature modifiers in the form of infinite-duration status effects that are present throughout a given battle. The upcoming enemy's level, type (regular encounter, miniboss, or boss), and modifiers are shown to the player.

Taking part in the Gauntlet rewards a substantial amount of  Fused Material and  Metal which the player can claim at a café. Upon winning a battle, you increase the potential reward by a number that depends on the current streak, the carriage number, and the Gauntlet's difficulty. Losing in battle, exiting the Gauntlet, or quitting the game, however, removes all unclaimed rewards.

If the speedrun timer is enabled, the player can input a seed, which affects the carriages as well as the encounters in the Gauntlet.

Streaks

Streaks keep track of the number of battles the player has won since entering the Gauntlet. Streaks end from claiming rewards, losing a battle, or exiting the Gauntlet. This means that getting a high streak requires going through the game in one sitting, as leaving the Gauntlet by any means will reset the streak back to zero. The game keeps track of the longest streak for a given difficulty.

It is unrelated to the farthest carriage reached by the player, and it is not necessary to begin at at the first carriage to start a streak.

Difficulties

The Gauntlet offers seven difficulty levels:

• Normal
• Hard
• Harder
• Even Harder
• BRUTAL
• Hardest
• Impossible

The selected difficulty only sets the starting difficulty of the Gauntlet, however. As you clear trains, the total difficulty increases. This makes several things, such as the number of status effect modifiers, enemy tape count, overspill, or café carriage interval, more disadvantageous for the player. The enemy AI and levels are not affected by this.

The total difficulty level for any carriage can be calculated using the formula below. It starts at the selected difficulty (Normal = 0; Impossible = 6), and increases by 1 for every cleared train, i.e. for every 50 carriages. Boss carriages and, starting at Hard difficulty or carriage #51 on Normal, miniboss carriages have their difficulty level increased by 1. This increase only applies to that carriage.

${\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{total}}=\{\begin{array}{ll}\lfloor \frac{\text{Carriage Number}-1}{50}\rfloor +{\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}+1& \text{if boss or applicable miniboss}\\ \lfloor \frac{\text{Carriage Number}-1}{50}\rfloor +{\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}& \text{otherwise}\end{array}$

For example, carriage #148 on BRUTAL difficulty (level 4) has a total difficulty level of 6:

$\lfloor \frac{148-1}{50}\rfloor +4=\lfloor 2.94\rfloor +4=2+4=6$

This section is incomplete. Feel free to add the missing information by editing it.

Status Effect Modifiers

Status effects with infinite duration can be inflicted at the start of battles. These status effects are displayed just before entering the next carriage. Any displayed debuff is applied to the player team, while any displayed buff is applied to the enemy team.

These status effects can still be removed via standard means, though infinite duration status effects are completely canceled out and replaced by the opposing status. For example, acquiring Multitarget gets rid of the user's infinite Unitarget and replaces it with a finite amount of Multitarget.

These infinite statuses can also be removed by using New Leaf, Royal Flush, Bear Hug, Neutralise, or consumables like Cure-All.

The following lists all possible infinite status effects that can occur in a carriage. The number of statuses is equal to the total difficulty of a carriage.

Player Debuffs		Enemy Buffs
	Accuracy Down		Accuracy Up
	AP Drain		AP Boost
	Burned		Contact Dmg Beast
	Conductive		Contact Dmg Glitter
	Confused		Deflated
	Evasion Down		Double Speed
	Evasion Nullified		Evasion Up
	Flammable		Gambit
	Fog		Ghostly
	Glass Bonds		Healing Leaf
	Leeched		Healing Steam
	Melee Attack Down		Inflated
	Melee Defence Down		Locked On
	Poisoned		Melee Attack Up
	Ranged Attack Down		Melee Defence Up
	Ranged Defence Down		Mind-Meld
	Shrapnel		Multistrike
	Snowed In		Multitarget
	Speed Down		Ranged Attack Up
	Tape Jam		Ranged Defence Up
	Unitarget		Speed Up
	Window

Rewards

For each battle carriage you clear, you obtain potential rewards as described by the below formula.

$\text{Rewards}=(\text{Streak}+\lfloor \frac{\text{Carriage Number}-1}{10}\rfloor )*({\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}+1)$

For example, winning a fight in carriage #148 on difficulty BRUTAL with a previous streak of 40 yields 275 potential rewards.

$(41+\lfloor \frac{148-1}{10}\rfloor )*(4+1)=(41+\lfloor 14.7\rfloor )*5=(41+14)*5=275$

Café Carriages

The interval between café carriages is dependent on the difficulty of the first carriage of the current train, and calculated using the below formula. The maximum interval is 25 carriages, leading to a café carriage in carriages #1 and #26 of the train. Carriage #49 of each train is always a café carriage.

$\text{Interval}=\min (5+2*(\text{Train Number}+{\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}-1),25)$

For example, in train #3 on difficulty BRUTAL, the interval of café carriages is 17 carriages (#1, #18, #35).

$\min (5+2*(3+4-1),25)=\min (17,25)=17$

In addition to the interval, café carriages also change item prices based on the carriage number and selected difficulty, which is determined by the below formula. See the "Item base prices" table on the side for the base price referred to in the formula.

$\begin{array}{rl}\text{Value}=& \lfloor \text{Base Price}\\ & +a*(\text{Carriage Number}-1)+b*{\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}\\ & +c*(\text{Carriage Number}-1)*{\text{Difficulty}}_{\text{selected}}\rfloor \end{array}$

The values $a$, $b$, and $c$ stand for the price increase per carriage, the price increase per difficulty level, and the price increase per carriage and difficulty level. In general, $a=\frac{\text{Base Price}}{10}$, $b=1.0$, and $c=0.1$.

For example, in carriage #148 on difficulty BRUTAL, a Rewind costs ×94.

$\lfloor 2+\frac{2}{10}*(148-1)+1*4+0.1*(148-1)*4\rfloor =\lfloor 2+29.4+4+58.8\rfloor =\lfloor 94.2\rfloor =94$

Other

• Starting with total difficulty 1, overspill is disabled, i.e. NPC characters do not take health damage.
• Starting with total difficulty 1, all enemy tapes receive the Machine Curse sticker.
• Starting with total difficulty 2, all NPC enemies can fuse.

Summary

Note: This summary only applies to the first 50 carriages in the respective difficulties.

Difficulty	Café	Rewards	Other effects
Normal	Every 5th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: ×Streak ×Carriage number, divided by 10, rounded down	Overspill enabled No modifiers +1 modifier against bosses (not minibosses)
Hard	Every 7th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 2	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse 1 modifier +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses
Harder	Every 9th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 3	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse NPC enemies can fuse 2 modifiers +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses
Even Harder	Every 11th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 4	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse NPC enemies can fuse 3 modifiers +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses
BRUTAL	Every 13th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 5	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse NPC enemies can fuse 4 modifiers +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses
Hardest	Every 15th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 6	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse NPC enemies can fuse 5 modifiers +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses
Impossible	Every 17th carriage (starting with #1)	Per combat carriage: Same as Normal, but times 7	Overspill disabled All tapes have Machine Curse NPC enemies can fuse 6 modifiers +1 modifier against minibosses and bosses

Encounters

This section is incomplete. Feel free to add the missing information by editing it.

There are a various number of encounters that can happen in the trains carriages, that vary from Base Battles (Monsters, Trainers, Characters and Partners), Minibosses (Ranger Captains, Rogue Fusions and Archangels) and Bosses. If the encounter consists of an enemy with game relevance (like Partners, Captains and Archangels), a special title will appear at the start of the battle close to the carriage number (if two important enemies are fighting together, the title of the carriage corresponds to the character in the first team position, the one on the top).

Base Battles

Monsters

Monsters can appear in almost every battle (except for trainer, archangel and boss battles) and are the base creatures found in-game.

Monster	Type	Special Carriage Title
Ripterra	Beast
Jormungold	Poison
Gumbaal	Metal
Decibelle	Air
Tokusect	Air
Manispear	Metal
Cat-5	Lightning
Southpaw	Metal
Artillerex	Fire
Gearyu	Metal
Scubalrus	Water
Apocrowlypse	Poison
Fortiwinx	Earth
Ratcousel	Plastic
Coaldron	Earth
Mascotorn	Plastic
Binterloper	Plastic
Jellyton	Poison
Regensea	Water
Beanstalker	Plant
Cryoshear	Ice
Fountess	Water
Sharktanker	Water
Kuneko	Air
Shining Kuneko	Astral
Khepri	Fire	Nuclear Scarab
Adeptile	Astral
Auriclaw	Metal
Minosteam	Metal	Brazen Bull of Industrialisation
Umbrahella	Poison	Bad Omen

Trainers

Trainers are the base character encounters that can be found in-game, consisting of mainly not-story-relevant characters. Trainers can battle alongside almost every other character as a team member (with some exceptions, like Ianthe), but they can't fight alongside monsters, fusions, archangels and bosses. The ones that have exclusive names and monsters are shown in the table below:

Name	Monster Options
Karl	Robindam
Decartes
Darwin	Salamagus Manispear
Socrates
Plato
Aristotle
Diogenes	Pyromeleon
Epicurus
Zhuangzi

Characters

The Characters group consists of mainly NPCs that can't be battled normally in-game, having teams never seen beforehand. Characters work very similar to Trainers, in a sense that they can be team members with almost every adversary character in the game.

Name	Monster Options	Special Carriage Title
Dorian	Aeroboros Wyrmaw Mourningstar	Cult Leader
Jacqueline	Fountess Miss Mimic	Commune Leader
Hoylake	Flapwoods Triphinx Folklord	Data Analyst
Kirby	Ice Bootleg Cat-5 Water Bootleg Ramtasm Glass Bootleg Spitzfyre	Hoylake's Assistant
Clémence	Beanstalker Djinn Entonic Coaldron	Barista Extraordinare
Vin	Jormungold Khufo Aeroboros	Mourningtown Avenger
Doctor Pensby	Blossomaw Adeptile Ramtasm	Town Doctor
Frankie	Shining Kuneko Spooki-onna Glitter Bootleg Lobstacle	Profilic Fanfic Writer
Traveling Merchant	Ratcousel Grampus Picksie	Shirtless Ronin
Delvin	Folklord	Antihero of Another Dimension

Partners

Partners are the main companions of the player in game, working similarly to Trainers and Characters. A Partner character can appear even if the same Partner is on your party, making two of the same character appear at the same time.

Name	Monster Options	Special Carriage Title
Kayleigh	Decibelle Metal Bootleg Rockertrice Gumbaal	Neighbourhood Ranger
Eugene	Robindam Kirikuri Palangolin	Defender of Harbourtown
Meredith	Cat-5 Apocrowlypse Capricorpse	Sardonic Electrician
Felix	Glitter Bootleg Fungogh Shining Kuneko Arkidd	Inspiration Seeker
Viola	Regensea Ice Bootleg Undyin Miasmodeus	Lady of Messaline
Barkley	Ice Bootleg Spitzfyre Lightning Bootleg Southpaw Metal Bootleg Averevoir	Man's Best Friend
Sunny	Pawprince Queenyx Mascotorn	Recovering Capitalist

Minibosses

Minibosses are the stronger enemies that can be fought in the story, consisting mainly of Ranger Captains, Rogue Fusions and Archangels. A miniboss more commonly appear every 5 carriages (starting from carriange #10).

Ranger Captains

Ranger Captains are the elite Trainers of the game. Ranger Captains appear alongside another Trainers (most commonly appearing with their signature Ranger seen in their in-game fights), Characters and Partners (except for Ianthe, who always appears alongside Wilma). Ranger Captains can also appear alongside other captains.

Name	Monster Options	Special Carriage Title
Wallace	Weevilite Lobstacle Fungogh	Construction Worker
Skip	Binterloper Water Bootleg Binterloper Plant Bootleg Binterloper	Questionable Treasure Seeker
Zedd	Galagor Djinn Entonic Fortiwinx	"Meditator"
Judas	Manispear Jellyton	Survivalist
Clee-0	Khufo Triphinx Arkidd	Casino Mechanoid
Lodestein	Mothmanic Plasmantler Metal Bootleg Smogmagog	Electrician
Penny Dreadful	Queenyx Ramtasm Metal Bootleg Spitzfyre	Death Cheater
Gladiola	Palangolin Cryoshear Glaistain	Mistress of Blades
Heather	Aeroboros Hedgeherne Zeustrike	Weather Reporter
Buffy	Liligator Faerious Galagor	Bodybuilder
Cybil	Zeustrike Glass Bootleg Decibelle Glass Bootleg Smogmagog	Radio Presenter
Codey	Glitter Bootleg Arkidd Air Bootleg Artillerex Glass Bootleg Aeroboros	Tape Hacker
Ianthe	Gearyu Robindam Folklord	Head Ranger
Wilma	Djinn Entonic Decibelle	-

Rogue Fusions

Rogue Fusions are big enemies that can fought in the overworld. In the gauntlet, they can appear as Wild Fusions or Unstable Fusions.

Name	Monster #1	Monster #2
Aeroshear	Aeroboros Air	Cryoshear Ice
Arkentonic	Arkidd Lightning	Djinn Entonic Astral
Auriwoods	Auriclaw Metal	Flapwoods Air
Coalentonic	Coaldron Earth	Djinn Entonic Astral
Fountsea	Fountess Water	Regensea Water
Gramp-5	Grampus Ice	Cat-5 Lightning
Anathediusa	Anathema Beast	Mardiusa Poison
Anathegator	Anathema Beast	Liligator Water
Anathepaw	Anathema Beast	Southpaw Metal

Archangels

Archangels are the main game antagonists. Some archangels have received some changes (like getting new moves).

Spoiler Warning!

Name	Special Carriage Title
Mourningstar	Serpent God
Heckahedron	Neoplatonic Solid
Nowhere Monarch	King of Nothing
Lamento Mori	Dreams of Death
Babelith	Tower of Ignorance
Alice	Wonderland's Exiled Queen
Robin Goodfellow	Midsummer Night's Dream
Aleph	Red King of Conquest
Lenna	Hero of Another Dimension
Shadow Lenna	Antihero of Another Dimension
Morgante	Spirit of Rebellion
Infernal Engine Pearl	Feral Machine
Infernal Engine Rose	Chaos Machine
Infernal Engine Raven	Void Machine
Gwenivar	Ringmistress of Illusion

Bosses

Bosses are extra powerful beings that only appear on Magikrab's Gauntlet, appearing on every 50th carriage.

Spoiler Warning!

Name	Carriage Number	Special Carriage Title
Magikrab	50	Train Conductor
Traffikrab	100	Vengeful Beast
Bytten Studio	150	Dev Team

References

Locations

New Wirral Harbourtown • Harbourtown Beach • Harbourtown Outskirts • Upper Path • New Wirral Park The Deadlands • New London • Dino Quarry • Southern Isles • Autumn Hill • Mourningtown Eastham Woods • Mire Sea • Lakeside • Ham • Thirstaton Lake • Cherry Meadow • The Marshes Marshland Caves • New Landkeeper Hideout • Piper Farm • Lost Hearts Graveyard • Cast Iron Shore The Titania Shipwreck • Mt. Wirral • Brokenhead Harbourtown Gramophone Café • Town Hall • Harbourtown Hospital • Sticker Merchants • Chemists' Store Heritage Centre Mer-Line Stations Harbourtown Station • Glowcester Road Station • Mournington Crescent Station • Falldown Mall Waterloop Station • Cherry Cross Station • Landkeeper HQ • Aldgrave Tomb Station Bard Street Station • Icelington Station • Night's Bridge Station • Power Station Others Dead World • Magikrab's Gauntlet Pier of the Unknown Brightside Pier • The Witch House • Cosmic Zone • Funworld