YMMV / Bonfire

• Cheese Strategy:
  • Cursed Skulls provide a One-Hit Kill on any non-boss enemy. Minibosses and elite enemies are technically not bosses. Quests that consist only of a single battle against multiple minibosses are normally very difficult, but can be cheesed by exploiting this. Even a single Cursed Skull can instantly cut the battle's difficulty by half or one-third.
  • Prior to the 0.9.35 update, equipping Zhu with Nadia's Trickery was this. Trickery gives a huge damage boost to the first attack used by the character, and also guarantees them the first turn in every battle. Combined with Zhu's Area of Effect attack, players could obliterate entire enemy parties before they could act. This was compounded by the fact Trickery stacked with the Charged Attack bonus, pumping the damage so high that Zhu's attack refunded the motivation cost of the charge, turning it into a perpetual motion machine. This was nerfed in the update by cutting Trickery's damage bonus for Area of Effect attacks and an Obvious Rule Patch preventing boosted attacks from giving motivation points.
  • Because wolves have a non-damaging Status-Buff Dispel, a popular strategy is to leave them as the last enemy in an encounter and then bait them into using their howl by continually applying buffs to yourself. This is a great way of Level Grinding by generating extra motivation points.
  • In the alpha build, a common cheese strategy for dealing with Crystal Golems was to have Diverter use Time Warp, which generated a large number of Status Effects, then when the Crystal Golem converted them into charges, exploit Shatter's dispel bonus. While not strong enough to kill Crystal Golems in one hit, this strategy did completely neuter them.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Many players say that it's hard for them to break out of the starting party of Hildie, Ephrem, and Zivko, likely because it's a familiar Damager, Healer, Tank setup and they're a well-balanced party. When players do switch it up, it's usually only to swap out Zivko for another Squishy Wizard.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Crystal Golems. At any point, they can convert all Status Effects on the field into a charge that will grant them an extra attack on their next turn. This in a game that revolves around Status Effects, to the point that some characters are incapable of acting without generating one! They also have high health and Armor, so you can't even get them out of the way quickly. In the alpha build they could be trivialized with Diverter's Status-Buff Dispel (once you got him), but since he was removed from the Steam release, players are left with little recourse against them. They are widely considered the most dangerous enemy in the game, and in some cases even worse than bosses.
    • The Mastery update fortunately threw players a bone with Zivko's Disenchant skill. While it doesn't get a damage boost like Diverter's Shatter, it does completely remove all of a Crystal Golem's charges when maxed out. Crystal Golems are still tough and annoying, but they're no longer the worst enemy in the game.
  • Unassuming Undead. While less common than other minibosses, they possess the game's only Randomized Damage Attack, and its upper limit is extremely high, capable of taking out even Hildie in a few hits if you're unlucky. To make things worse, they look almost identical to a regular skeleton warrior, so you may not notice them until they've already crippled you.
  • Resonant enemies, which start with a 6-turn Resonance buff that inflicts damage on the whole party every time they're attacked. They'll throw a wrench into any strategy centered around Area of Effect attacks and are pretty nasty besides, as you will often have to leave them alone until you deal with the other enemies.
  • Failures, which can randomly appear at any point after a Total Party Kill. They're Mirror Bosses with the same abilities as your heroes, but more health. You'll find yourself faced with your own tactics and powerful abilities such as Ephrem's Armor-Piercing Attack and Nadia's Counter-Attack, forcing you to get very clever very fast (or spam items) to survive. Many a Failure encounter has resulted in another failure.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Rune abilities. Unlike regular items, they are fully restored after every quest, yet they're all about as powerful and still give you the 10 gold bonus per use. Once you upgrade them to get more uses, you'll have enough resources to trivialize everything but the toughest quests.
    • Special mention goes to the Skull Seed, which summons a skeleton warrior to fight for you — and potentially a very powerful one if Erzsie has Zhu's Tinkering inspiration. To make things even crazier, you could summon multiple warriors by using it multiple times; this had to be nerfed in the Blood Bonds follow-up patch, after which a second use of the Skull Seed will replace the minion instead of generating a new one.
  • Zhu with Nadia's Trickery used to be capable of blowing past 100 areas in Endless Quest without breaking a sweat. The power boost applied to her Area of Effect attack allowed her to One-Hit Polykill entire encounters — and since Nadia's Trickery lets you always move first in battle, the enemies didn't even have a chance to act. This necessitated severe nerfs in subsequent patches, both to Trickery (cutting its damage boost to a third for area attacks) and to motivation mechanics. It's still an effective combination.
  • Zivko's Blast is a pretty good attack — but his Boost will turn your characters into gods. It boosts all stats by a huge amount, making them do more damage and take less, all while getting more turns. On top of that, its Special boost further improves the effectiveness of items, allowing you to combo it with buff-granting items for some truly breathtaking stat totals. And to sweeten the deal, higher charges improves both the effect and the duration, so with a charged Boost your target is likely set for the rest of the encounter. Ephrem is a particularly popular target, as combining it with the attack boost from his Pure Force rune and Battle Focus skill will shoot his attack power through the roof — and since he has an Armor-Piercing Attack, no enemy can defend against it.
  • Damage Over Time effects in general tend to be overpowered. They use the same damage formula as regular attacks, meaning they're about equivalent to a free attack every turn, and can last for 3 turns or more. Even better, they don't trigger counter attacks or Resonance. Of the three available to the player, each has an additional effect to sweeten the deal: Poison is an Armor-Piercing Attack, Burning reduces the Armor stat, and Enthrall provides Life Drain. A party of Zhu, Nadia, and Erzsie can basically sit back and watch most monsters die after applying their effects. About the only enemy that can throw a wrench into this is a Bloatscorch, which was specifically designed to counter this strategy.
  • In the alpha build, Diverter. Though you had to complete a brutal No-Gear Level to recruit him, it was entirely worth it. As the game revolves around Status Effects, he can completely trivialize most enemy strategies with his Status-Buff Dispel (which even does more damage if it removes buffs), including the dreaded Crystal Golems. He can also completely clear all effects on an ally with his Convert ability, which is really handy for nasty Status Effects like the Djinn's Doom. As the cherry on top, if no effects are in play, he can create some with his Time Warp ability, which places a Speed buff on all heroes and a Speed debuff on all enemies, which would be great even without his other abilities. Diverter's Game-Breaker nature was a big reason why he was removed for the final release.
• Goddamned Bats: Enemies with Counter Attacks, especially Resonant enemies. They're generally not that threatening with their other attacks, but they require you to wait them out if you don't want to take the hits or use up limited Status-Buff Dispel items. Even Zivko's Disenchant won't get you out unscathed, as it still triggers Resonance even if it removes it.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Unassuming Undead's Multislash ability is widely disliked. It's a Randomized Damage Attack in a game with otherwise highly deterministic abilities, and the power range is so wide that it can devastate even Hildie. It doesn't help that Unassuming Undead are very fast, potentially allowing them to two-shot Hildie before she can do much to stop it.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Hildie is sometimes mistaken for a man, likely due to her masculine armor. Fortunately, her name clues most people in.
  • Some players initially think Zivko is a woman, due to his headscarf, eyeliner, and generally androgynous appearance.