How do I chain together kills and why should I care?

Question

In Recettear, I'm slightly confused about how building up a "chain" of monster kills works. At first I thought it was determined by the amount of time I take in between each kill, but this doesn't seem to actually matter. It doesn't seem to be based on whether or not I take damage, either. How do I increase my kill chain? Are there even any rewards for increasing it or is this mechanic just for aesthetics?

Answer

Chains occur by killing monsters of the same type. This causes you to get more experience with every such kill. The same type means the same color and kind - blue Slimes are different from green Slimes, but both kinds of red Mushrooms will chain, for example.

For example, suppose you run into a room and there are four blue Slimes and three blue Eyebats. You could kill them in any order, but if you kill all of the Slimes first then all of the Eyebats (or vice versa), you'll get more experience due to chaining. Chaining does not time out, but it will reset whenever you kill a new kind of creature.

In general, unless you've got adjacent rooms with the same creature type, you mostly want to ensure chaining within each room segment and not go out of your way to chain. You'll get more than enough experience in this fashion.

There are some exceptions to enemy chaining.

• The trap that generates a ring of 8 blue Slimes does not chain. It will ruin any active chain but they do not chain with each other, or any other blue Slimes. The trap that does spawn 4 normal blue Slimes does count as normal blue Slimes.
• Starting in later dungeons, you may run into rock-throwing Gnolls assembled in a line of four that stand still. Only one of them counts as a Gnoll, but they do not cancel a Gnoll chain.
• Starting in later dungeons, certain kinds of Ropers will summon a Roper to appear in the room behind you. These summoned Ropers do not count for Chaining but they will not mess up your Roper chain.

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