Hunter decision guide
How to plan a Jester run around luck and timing
Jester links the one-hit protection of Novice's Luck to the short offensive window created by Justice Heart. The important question is not simply whether the protection is available, but whether you want to preserve it for safety or consume it to start another effect.
Vintage Musket is a useful baseline for learning that rhythm. As the run develops, compare equipment by how reliably it benefits from the protected, consumed, and empowered states rather than treating every printed bonus as permanently active.
Choose what a luck charge is meant to do
Early upgrade choices divide a charge into three jobs: keep it for avoidance and while-held bonuses, spend it for a counterattack, or shorten the wait for the next charge. A route that rewards holding the charge plays differently from one that deliberately consumes it, so count only the branch you can trigger consistently.
- Preservation favors safer positioning and bonuses that require the charge to remain available.
- Consumption favors counterattacks, reload recovery, and short final-damage windows.
- Cooldown support matters most when your route expects several charge cycles in one fight.
Treat the courage window as a schedule
Justice Heart changes fire rate and reload timing for a limited period. Later branches can extend that window, add movement or final damage, or connect its activation to the luck cycle. Weapons with very different magazine sizes may therefore use the same window differently; compare how many meaningful shots and reloads actually fit inside it.
Keep conditional power out of the permanent total
Track four states separately in the Build Planner: charge held, charge consumed, courage active, and low-health or fatal-hit protection. Current-weapon elemental counterattacks and chance-based free activations belong in the conditional ledger until their trigger occurs. This keeps a defensive route comparable with a more volatile counterattack route without inventing one universal best build.