Bulk Crafting?

[DrBright]

Is there anyway to bulk craft? I see something called auto compounding but I can't use it?

[Xengre]

You need a recipe. If you have a recipe you can bulk craft. These are acquired via quests, might be buyable (I forget been a while), and by the writing skill.

That said... bulk compound is pointless because consumables that aren't Fresh Sage (iirc the revival one) are largely pointless. Alchemy, smithing, crafting, and synthesis will do almost everything you need. You will also craft Elena's late weapons for some factors and buy Marielle's best gun from a post game shop.

[DrBright]

Authoring creating recipes makes sense, I will probably wait for that to lvl then since selecting every ingredient one at a time is quite tedious. In regards to compounding being useless the whole reason I wanted to lvl it is I read some tips that said if you max it, you get ability that helps you get more sp for other things? Do you remember if any of the others do the same?

[Xengre]

IIRC when you level a skill there is random chance you will get an extremely tiny SP boost. Its insignificant just like the exp earned from crafting cannot realistically ever max a crafting skill without spending SP to manually max the skill.

Realistically, while you cannot max every skill on a character ever due to what is of value you can max most, especially the ones that matter. Almost all of your SP will come purely from leveling which Surprise Attack Factors (stack up to 400%, stacks across active party too) is critical for. Max level is 255 per usual SO fair if you are wondering.

Most characters have tons of skills that are useless. This is strictly because poor balance. For instance, Ray's two best offensive skills are his two starting attacks (literally, I'm not joking) followed by his Demon Gate or w/e its called that teleports (only useful for flying bird boss which is in game in 3 spots mainly because the DUMA limit break attack thing is trash and worse than just using this and DUMA dash doesn't get you positioned properly to hit the bird compared to Ray's teleport skill... the other purpose is to stun the bandits as an alternate way of fighting them in Deh'mohr if you want to cheese them until stronger but really not neccessary imo). Boulder Crush is notably the best one and so good in terms of dmg ratio and skill cost, speed, and avoiding wasteful overkill by comparison that it displaces his other attacks. His basic sword slash is better than Boulder Crush extremely late (or post) game when your dmg stat is so high using Boulder Crush becomes invalid (no point in using a bazooka for something that dies to a pea shooter, quick hit and go to next target u get the idea) or its against a fast moving super boss and it can proc electrical orb factor if you use that which cares about attacking fast.

This is just one example. Midas has his massive aoe fire nuke. Marielle has her hilariously broken Energy Beam attack that makes her by far the strongest character in the game along with her dmg passives. Albaid has his energy gravity attack thing which matches well with his Rainy Day Funds (fol passive) which you stack with Surprise Attack. He groups enemies via dragging them in with the gravity effect for easy mass wipe of all stunned Surprise attack enemies making fights fast. Meanwhile it does great dmg, has a fast cast time, and is his best offensive skill anyways. Etc. etc. you get the idea.

Due to the game NOT having a combo system or any sort of benefit like Star Ocean Till the End of Time there is no benefit in using combos, especially when a specific skill on each character is so much better than the others you want to spam it. Plus, the AI due to 5 AP limit... (ew) cannot even handle combos to begin with >.<

As for passives most characters want the passive that prevents them from flinching and that lets them heal on % chance when taking dmg. These make you far stronger and are considered the best passives in the game for everyone. They outright invalidate some enemies or specific attacks (example those robots when you meet midas at the gate? they would heal you if you had this passive and you could go afk and never die, bosses? less deadly by far and less stunning you, less spent on healing / items, etc.).

As for crafting... you could have everyone learn writing as they each have different authoring outcomes (some overlap and some not) but its kind of pointless but you got spare SP to do this if you want tbh, esp if you waste less on passives / skills you don't need (I mean leveling them, you can learn everything on the grid just fine and have plenty of spare SP thus you can put points into them to see and compare their level 10 stats and find out for yourself what is good or not and cancel the skill level if you decide its not good). Compounding just nina. Alchemy JUST Albhaid especially (note you can buy all resources in post game dungeon btw, second and also being the final dungeon otherwise he will do alchemy for your high end iC). Laeticia will craft almost everything you want while Ray and Midas will smith almost everything you want. In short, certain characters only need a few IC skills to be leveled up and you can look up a guide for what is recommended and save SP instead of maxing everything. Malkya has best synthesis odds btw, though you don't always want best results but synthesis is an art... so do what works for you.

Short Version? You have ample SP to waste quite a bit and still get everything that matters. However, the game is impossible to have a "perfect save" of everything maxed unless you use a mod/cheat engine and it isn't necessary anyways fortunately.

What you do want from Compounding is the emotion elixers. I don't remember their name but you most likely have one of each if not more already. They + or - the relationship of the character its used on with the main character (either Ray or Laeticia depending on which route you chose for MC). Save these until the final boss. Then save. You only need 20 and no more. Then you beat the final boss. Get your ending. Load your save. Use the items to manipulate people's emotions (especially REDUCING Albhaid's who tends to have unneccesarily high affection with Ray in his route due to his overly frequent PAs) and beat boss for other ending pair. Etc. Each party member has an ending with each MC and there is one for the two MC, too. Or if you don't care about achievements and are sane just YouTube it lol

If you plan to author it then, yes, waiting makes sense because there are a bunch of different papers which produce different results. IIRC, authoring MIGHT be one way to get access to some otherwise rare elemental resistances (the ones that go really high when standing on ground unlike tri-emblem... aka they're harder but superior to tri-emblem IF properly setup). This is due to both post game super bosses doing heavy elemental dmg, especially in chaos and even more so for their up to 6 wing version (they have 2, 4, 6 wing powered up which on top of chaos make them quite deadly). With the right setup thoguh you can become unkillable by healing or reducing their elemental dmg to nothing (ex. my nina heals from every element except like takes less than 1% earth or w/e but auto heals from dmg taken due to passive etc and can debuff attack further so boss does 0 in the end except for elements that heal her). Totally unnecessary unless bored though so don't do this unless you really just want to maximize because "you can".

Btw, best farm spot in the entire game even post game is the Den'mohr cave with +400% surprise attack. Same rewards on easy as chaos but its easier on lower difficulty and there is no penalty swapping difficulty whenever you want. Go there if you want the money and exp for your IC fun as late game IC can eat tens of millions of fol per item easily.

[DrBright]

Damn that's a lot to take in.

Yet I read it all anyway lol, some very good tips there. I can't believe first aid, a series meme due to all the healing spells in every game is one of the best passives, that's crazy. I am kinda disappointed with the skill tree's for sure. If the AI can only use 5 AP then that really limits what I can put on them. Though I am finding the only thing I really need is Midus with Spicule. Human ballistic missile anyone? I stumbled upon the cave after getting Elena, and immediately found a spot where I could glitch most of the enemies that don't cast magic, now I can just farm the hell out it using Nina's "come together" and rez at any time. Once you get him up to the ledge Midus just sits there an bombs the enemy with magic, while Elena and the princess just run in attack once and die over and over. Takes a bit but I got a nice drop for Nina, looks like an end game weapon.

I don't have Marielle yet, looking forward to having another nuke to fall back on. So far I really like the characters, voice acting and story. Just really wish they had put more into the combat. Especially the AI control, even earlier games in the series had at least: Keep your distance, and Allow item use.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to tell me about all the tips, I might start over and put points only into the few abilities I am actually going to use on each since I am not that far into it yet and I now know how to farm the cave for some fast SP. I kind of want to start on Universe anyway, now that I know the difficulty cap is so low.

[Xengre]

Marielle's skill is the one from Star Ocean 3 that Maria had. Energy Burst or w/e if you remember the Kamehameha beam that keeps hitting repeatedly in a massive linear nuke. Great stuff. She comes packed with some absurd passives that boost dmg a lot on top of the healing passive.

Midus' Spicule is definitely one of people's favorites lol

If you win enough of the Den'mohr (probably mispelling its name every time) cave's fights they eventually start spawning post game versions that are super strong. From then the chest will give you money each time plus the fight, itself, gives tons of money with surprise attack and fol factor setup (especially the golem, its like 600k per quick run but he is the strongest one so that juicy meat may take a bit of work gearing up to earn otherwise save and reload the game to change the enemy there). If you have issues with the super versions in the cave when you get to them I recommend save scumming until you get the three wind mages since they're the easiest to dodge and stagger lock until you get enough money to build really strong stuff. Then again, sounds like you may have found a spot to do deal with them anyways if it works on the stronger versions since they're just higher stat of the same enemy.

Tri-Emblems are the best non-custom accessory, or best custom accessory for anyone that isn't doing a Nina immortal build (even on Nina its great if you can't get the better elemental accessories and right factors anyways). They can be made from Dark Matter iirc when using alchemy to upgrade to the next ore tier they can randomly create Tri-Emblems if you haven't already figured this out.

Sadly, even on Universe the difficulty cap is pretty low. I definitely think its a good point to start with if you are comfortable with the game though.

If you haven't already seen my other posts about the 5 AP AI limitation this basically means you only use the first row for AI out of each button's 3 rows. X1 (skill), X2 empty, X3 empty, same for Circle, Square, Etc. The hold button is a great option for buffs or fresh sage. Fresh sage is mainly set on AI for if your Nina dies they can revive her to keep her support rolling.

Also upgrading Nina's AoE invulnerability AoE skill boosts its duration. It actually makes it long enough that you can use the nearly map wide recall > cast the protection aoe > revive and finish reviving everyone before the protection aoe vanishes. Next, I would upgrade her revive (cause it gets up to 100% recovery at max level) and her status effect recovery (drops the cost to 1 AP). Then go from there.

In case you didn't notice her smaller AoE healing chimes thingy that she sets multiple of is a better heal than her huge one when AI is using it. It heals faster, stacks (thus heals even faster), doesn't require the AI to stand still (plus the AI isn't good at standing still for the big one anyways even when not attacked), and she can set it very fast and run to the next character and it keeps her mobile. She has almost zero scaling benefit from Intelligence btw so you should put entirely defensive factors on her (especially 100% confusion block as confuse status disables all factors while confused in addition to team dmg... so it can make even a immortal nina squishy unless you make her immune to confuse).

If you want to speed up your restart or grind just don't forget Laeticia Determined Princess exp buff passive (the only one that is team wide and not just for that character) and Albhaid's Rainy Day Funds passive (stacks with your other fol factor from equipment, but only 1 single highest fol factor will be used in combination with this). Last, your Surprise Factor +400% (stacks from any combination across team for a team wide total, but only active members factors). Again, if you rush Albhaid's gravity magic thing (that energy demon orb or w/e) it will help surprise factor kills and speed up combat / farm cause it groups them together.

[DrBright]

Cool, thanks for all the advice here, especially about the AI. Now I know why some of them were running around doing nothing most of the time. Getting ready to start over on Universe mode here tonight.

[Xengre]

Glad to help. Also just in case you want to know how to setup Nina optimally as her AI is the one most prone to breaking if incorrectly setup and she tends to have among the highest AP costs here is how I setup mine.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2897544041

Note the note about Cheer I forgot to remove from 2nd level. Also note you can swap in a attack reduction debuff if using her for the two super bosses to drop their dmg down a lot but aside from them I don't think its worth using the debuff.