Tips

While my intent is to help people get started in Atlas Reactor, rather than provide an exhaustive reference, here are a few more tips and tricks. These might be more useful after you have a game or two under your belt. Make sure to check out the video menu available on the left side of the screen during bot matches, which has much more info on these and other topics.

Mods

Each ability in Atlas Reactor has a variety of modifiers that can be attached to it. These can alter all sorts of things, including damage dealt, cooldown time, area of effect, and even add status effects or change whether or not an ability is a free action.

Every freelancer has a "base" kit of mods that are unlocked from the start (and note that these mods aren't necessary bad). As you play, you will acquire tokens that can unlock more options for each freelancer ability. Base mods all have a cost of 2, but others can have a cost of 1 or 3. No more than one mod can be equipped for a particular ability at a time and the total cost can not exceed 10. You can leave an ability without a mod if you wish.

Energy

Energy is required to use ultimate abilities and every other ability a freelancer has builds up some amount of energy. You also passively gain a little each turn. Gaining energy efficiently will allow you to use your ultimate more often. Make sure to have a look at how much energy you gain with each ability. Generally speaking, hitting multiple targets with abilities is a good way to build energy faster.

Anticipation and Positioning

Atlas Reactor is a game of anticipation. You don't have to think ten moves ahead, but keeping the next turn in mind will pay huge dividends.

Get in the habit of keeping an eye on not only how much energy you have, but your allies and enemies as well. If you think you are going to have enough energy to use your ultimate at the start of your next turn, try to plan your movement to put you in a good position for it. Likewise, try to anticipate when the other team might be doing the same. If you notice ahead of time that someone is likely to use their ultimate on the following turn, getting to a safe spot could prevent you from needing to dash on the next turn.

As you start applying the same principle to all your abilities and get better at positioning yourself to do something useful on a given turn while minimizing your exposure to damage, your skill will grow my leaps and bounds.

Cover, Line of Sight, and Vision

Low walls are your friends. These can reduce damage taken by many (but not all) ranged attacks.

Terrain that is the height of your freelancer will block many attacks and also line of sight. If you see a striped area (it's a little too subtle, IMO) in the AoE of an ability you are using, enemies in that spot won't take damage. While staying behind walls seems like a good idea, if it leaves you in a position where you can't use any abilities effectively, it becomes a problem.

This is an advanced topic but I want to mention that Vision is shared between teammates. Your character has a limited vision range. If your team bunches up too much, you will be susceptible to AoE damage and limit your ability to see where the enemy is. If someone moves out of vision range, a marker for their last known location will be left behind. If you can't see what an opponent is doing, the message "hidden action" will be displayed on screen.

Camouflage Basics

The sparkly squares you see on the field make you invisible (unless you have the Revealed status effect). If those squares turn red, they are temporarily disabled. Note that enemies in the same group of squares can see each other.

Alt Key is your friend

Pressing Alt (configurable in settings) allows you to see the cooldowns on enemy abilities. You can also see which catalysts they have remaining. Get in the habit of checking this often. Try to anticipate when an opponent might dash. As you play and learn how the various characters work, you will get better at making use of this information, but this is a great habit to get into early.

Power-Ups

Power-Ups can heal (green), haste (blue), and give might (red), or energy (yellow). The pads on the floor indicate when the buff will be available and they increment at the start of each round. If you see a pad with three pips, that buff will spawn on the start of the next round, so you can move there now to grab it.

GG boosts

GG Boosts are earned by playing. You can activate these during or immediately after a match. Doing so gives an XP bonus to everyone in the match. You can use these in bot matches, but keep in mind that base XP for these is a bit less depending on difficulty.