Chapter 6 Crests + Jobs

[XtReMz98]

Howdy,

I'm tackling chapter 6 and got all Tojo crests scattered in Ijincho (apart from a few locked zones). While they can be farmed late game, it seems their drop rate is pretty low. What items would you recommend I go for? I'll get the 2 summons as soon as they are available, but perhaps some items are exclusive to that vendor and/or are really useful?

As for jobs, I'm curious to when I should start grinding them to get their respective skills + passive stats and where is the best place to accomplish this?

Cheers!

TL;DR: Top 5 Tojo crests purchases and chapter/location to grind jobs.

[Latency]

Tojo Crests: all you really need are the two summons, and possibly Sakura Storm if you want completion (you can buy it for 10 million yen elsewhere if you prefer). The other stuff isn't really worth it...also note that you won't be able to buy the summons until chapter 13, so just save up your crests (they will respawn at certain points in the story).

Grinding jobs is not necessary until you're ready to go to the True Final Millenium Tower. As long as you level Ichiban in hero far enough to get Peerless Resolve you should be fine for the normal game. If you are on a first playthrough and still want to grind, the homeless guys in Kamurocho Underground are probably your best bet, but I recommend waiting until new game plus. The reason to wait for new game plus is twofold; first you can get second copies of every job exp accessory (except one that is a part-time hero reward) which significantly improves leveling speed. Second you can enable Legendary difficulty, which in addition to making enemies much harder also increases the exp and job exp given by each individual enemy by a huge amount.

Once you're far enough in the story to have everyone at bond level 5 (for full xp in the backup party), switch the difficulty to Legendary and head to the bridge in southwest Ijincho. Enemies here spawn in groups of 5-6 and are low level, which means you can kill them in a round or two for ridiculous amounts of xp...you should be getting a job level every 3-4 fights. It's pretty boring as grinding usually is, but it's much safer than Kamurocho Underground on legendary where you can easily die with a bit of bad luck. There's also a free full heal just across the street in the homeless park and no need to leave the area to respawn enemies.

[XtReMz98]

Originally posted by Latency:

first you can get second copies of every job exp accessory which significantly improves leveling speed. Second you can enable Legendary difficulty, which in addition to making enemies much harder also increases the exp and job exp given by each individual enemy by a huge amount.

First of all, thanks! I wasn't aware the crests would respawn (I thought there was 200 in the game + optional dungeon item drops), so that should help getting everything from the vendor!

I got 1 job boost xp accessory and it crossed my mind that I could stack 2, but your suggestion to abuse such a feature in NG+ sounds pretty awesome. I won't lie that so far the game has been a breeze, even fighting mobs 8-9 levels above me; with what you suggested, I'll probably hold on grinding for NG+ unless I hit some difficulty spike for optional dungeons (usually end-game optional bosses require a bit of grinding to beat).

Cheers!

[XtReMz98]

Originally posted by Latency:

Once you're far enough in the story to have everyone at bond level 5 (for full xp in the backup party), switch the difficulty to Legendary and head to the bridge in southwest Ijincho.

Sorry to bug you, but to clarify, you suggest playing NG+ on hard difficulty up to chapter 11? That is the first occurrence of getting a full party. Also, I could get a 2nd copy of male jobs boosting accessories in chapter 9/10 substories and Nanba finally unlocks his jobs through friendship bonding in chapter 10.

Do I need to grind a bit in chapter 5 to make it to chapter 11? I'm unsure how difficult hard/legendary difficulties are, so maybe I could grind a bit towards the end of my NG playthrough via the arena/sewers so I could skip grinding in chapter 5 of NG+...

Cheers!

[Latency]

Difficulty doesn't really matter...if you want to play Legendary for a challenge go ahead, but it just makes bosses into HP sponges that do tons of damage. You can switch the difficulty from the menu at any time (except in combat) so if things get too rough you can just change to normal. The main point of using Legendary to grind is in the location I mentioned because the enemies are still weak (relatively speaking) and there's a large number of them to take advantage of the xp bonus per enemy. I do recommend waiting until chapter 11 because you can't get Namba's bond to 5 until then.

[XtReMz98]

Originally posted by Latency:

I do recommend waiting until chapter 11 because you can't get Namba's bond to 5 until then.

I usually go for a challenge, but within reason. So with what you said perhaps hard is best to start, at least to get a feel of how difficult it is. Thanks for answering!