Every additional stage of a chain adds to a damage multiplier, the damage multiplier is 1x/1.3x/1.4x/1.5x for a 1/2/3/4+ chain. Simultaneous clears all get the chain multiplier of the later stage of the chain, meaning 1 chain into a double will give you 1+1.4+1.4. If you are playing with VS garnish 4 on it will remove chain damage multipliers as well as stat bonuses, every line cleared will be 1 point of damage.
Chain examples
Example image
Explination
1 Chain
1 chain
1 chains are the most basic kind of clears, they are the fastest to both make and clear and because of this they are useful for basically everything: Dealing the last hit, changing the selected card, quickly building coins, etc. To make a 1 chain match 5 of a suit together.
2 Chains
There's 2 variations on a 2 chain. All 2 chains give 2 coins. Getting coins in increments of 2 is very easily manageable, since at 2 they aren't taking up too much space, and at 4 you can easily chain them off. If you wind up with more than 4 it can be a little awkward, but 2 extra isn't that hard to manage.
Double Clears
Double clears are when you make 2 1 chains at the same time. These animate faster. If you clear coins this way it can guarantee you get a particular suit/color's Item/Card, as the game will change to that suit, and then send the Item on the same frame.
2 Chain Proper
A proper 2 chain involves making a 1 Chain with 4 of another suit intersecting it. This is the basis of the "bump spike" technique, where you make the first clear the color/suit you want your item to be, and then the second clear is the coins to use that item immediately.
3 Chains
3 chains can be a little hard to setup, especially if you have a few coins floating around on your board, but at match start and when you have exactly 4 coins 3 chains are pretty practical to go for. All 3 chains give 3 coins. The 3 coins they give is awkward, as you'll either have to do another clear in order to quickly chain them off, or make a somewhat difficult 4 chain pattern to be able to clear the 3 coins as they are.
Triple Clear
Like the double clear this isn't especially efficient, it animates the fastest of all the 3 chains, but time it takes to setup is often not worth it.
2 Chain double
This is when you have 2 parallel 4 suit lines and 1 5 suit line that intersects both. It's useful for setting up a coin and animates faster than a proper 3 chain while also dealing more damage, making it technically the preferable pattern to go for. It does 3.8 base damage.
Double Into 2 Chain
Clears a 3 emblem line.
3 Chain proper
This is when you have a 4 suit line parallel to a 5 suit line which is intersecting a 4 suit line. It's basically the same as the 2 Chain Double but the clear order is different here and it animates slower, which is strictly speaking bad. However, in practice this can give you time to check on health/items/what emblems are on board without burning time on the bomb, so it has it's uses.
4 Chains
4 chains are a lot harder to setup, but here's some variations. All 4 chains give 4 coins. Giving 4 coins is extremely convenient since you can either clear that quickly with a 2 chain or use the 4 coins as a base for a larger chain easily. However, getting more than 4 coins puts you at risk of jamming your board, where you'll have no clears possible except for coins and will be forced into whatever card/item is already selected. It's also often very easy to accidentally get a 5 chain or more while making 4 chains which can screw with your plans, either suit/color-wise or coin count-wise, especially since making a chain this large is going to require most of the tiles currently on your board.
Quad Clear
4 line clears at once, this is pretty slow to make and it can't be extended by anything since you run out of board room. Not especially useful tho it is the fastest to animate of all the 4 chain variations.
A double into a 3 suit clear into a 4 suit clear. Not really worth building for specifically, but useful to into as a recovery if you misjudge how many of each tile is available early on in building your chain
2 Chain Triple
3 parallel 4 suit lines and one 5 suit intersecting. Probably the easiest of all the 4 chains to setup, but you won't always have the right distribution of tiles to make this work, so you need to be prepared to either bail on it or turn it into a different pattern.
2 Chain Double Into 3 Chain
A 2 chain double but then there's one more line of 3 parallel to the 5 suit line. This is a fairly common way to cash out coins when you have 3 of them.
3 Chain Double
a 3 chain proper but with 2 parallel lines at the end. Also easy to setup and has the same applications as the 2 chain tripple.
4 Chain Proper
a 3 chain with a 3 suit line perpendicular to the 5 suit line. You'll get these a lot on accident if you go for proper 3 chains.
5 Chains
From this point on there's very little utility to any given chain pattern outside of bonus damage.
6 Chains
7 Chains
8 Chains
This is the limit, the all-clear, the highest you can go on the standard 5x5 board. If you make it this far the game will comment on how nice your chain is and you'll get in-game currency for your troubles. This deals the most damage possible and will give you a ton of coins, but you'll be completely at the mercy of RNG in terms of what followup you can get, so be careful if you go for these.
