Temtem guide: Understanding Priority and Speed in combat

You’ll spend a lot of time in Temtem pitting your squad of fighting creatures against wild ones or other tamers’ squads.

During combat, your actions and the attacks of all the Temtem involved happen in a certain order. This guide will help you understand how that order is determined.

Speed and Priority

Every Temtem has a Speed (SPD) stat. Every technique — the attacks your Temtem use — has a Priority. In the game, a technique’s Priority is indicated by a number of yellow arrows: One is slow, two is normal or average, and three is fast. Think of SPD as a starting point, and Priority as a modifier.

Image: Crema via Polygon

When you choose a technique, your Temtem’s SPD is modified by the technique’s Priority. That value is calculated for every Temtem and technique for the turn, and the actions play out from highest value to lowest.

According to the Temtem forums and the Temtem wiki, the Priority modifiers have the following values:

• One arrow = 50%
• Two arrows = 100%
• Three arrows = 150%

This means that even your fastest Temtem might act late in a round if they’re using a slow technique.

If you’re looking to land the first hits in each round (if you’re trying to finish off the last bit of health from an enemy, for example), focus on moves with a higher Priority from your fastest Temtem.

Using items always happens first

Even during combat, you’ll use items before any attacks happen. You’ll sacrifice one of your Temtem’s turns to use an item, but the effect will get applied before anything else happens in the round. This means that healing items like Balm will get applied before your opponent has a chance to attack, even if their Temtem are faster. It also means that throwing a TemCard will happen before your Temtem attack, so you won’t have a chance to weaken the wild Temtem first.