Tipps for leveling?

[kannakamui.de]

Heya,

new to the series and so far I like it. Love the exploring part a lot but what I am confused about is leveling. Is the game really giving that extreme minimum amounts of EXP per fight? I am only playing on normal and the fights are quite tough but little to, felt, no reward.
I already understood that fights don't yield the money for buying healing but is there something else (except for obvious quests) for exp or is it actually 20-50 fights per level?

Currently could do the Tokyo Tower boss but I am only level 12 and barely scratching it even with its weakness.

thx for exp tipps!

[RexEviL]

You mean hydra? in SMT games you are supposed to raku/taru/saku -da skills to debuff bosses and -kaja to buff yourself to deal damage. Fighting enemies barely give exp/money. They are mainly for recruiting demons. Early fights usually take around 8-20 turns depending on your comp.
Well, you can hunt mitama but its unnecssary, you get enough exp through quests.

Another tip, learning when to guard can save you.

[Istiden]

Being level 12 for this fight sounds about right. The game sorta soft caps your exp gains when your level starts to get too high. Grinding for more levels would be quite inefficient at this point, so I will post some tips you could use for the fight.

I would recommend trying to use buffs and debuffs if you are not doing so. On this boss I would recommend a demon with Sukunda as it will make the boss more likely to miss you, and if he misses he loses two press turn icons.
Mermaid (lvl 12 demon) can do some good damage on this fight, although she has a fire weakness so you need to either bring fire dampeners (buy from the Gustaves store in leyline fount) and/or guard before you end your turn so that the boss doesn't exploit you weakness and gains extra turns.
Try to also just fuse more powerful demons if you are not already doing so. Try to bring some ice skills to exploit the boss weakness to get more turns, and therefore more damage. If it's possible try to maybe have a member that nulls fire or darkness, I can't recall if that is possible this early on however. (Maybe Yoko does? She should be with you at this point I think, I forgot) Fully resisting an attack will decrease the enemies damage output significantly as they will lose turns from attacking the fully resisting party member.

Good luck, I hope this might help you somewhat. It can be a bit hard to get used to the press turn combat system but when it clicks it is very strategic and fun. Take your time on the boss and don't make too many risky moves and you should be able to beat it!

[kannakamui.de]

Originally posted by Istiden:

Being level 12 for this fight sounds about right. The game sorta soft caps your exp gains when your level starts to get too high. Grinding for more levels would be quite inefficient at this point, so I will post some tips you could use for the fight.

I would recommend trying to use buffs and debuffs if you are not doing so. On this boss I would recommend a demon with Sukunda as it will make the boss more likely to miss you, and if he misses he loses two press turn icons.
Mermaid (lvl 12 demon) can do some good damage on this fight, although she has a fire weakness so you need to either bring fire dampeners (buy from the Gustaves store in leyline fount) and/or guard before you end your turn so that the boss doesn't exploit you weakness and gains extra turns.
Try to also just fuse more powerful demons if you are not already doing so. Try to bring some ice skills to exploit the boss weakness to get more turns, and therefore more damage. If it's possible try to maybe have a member that nulls fire or darkness, I can't recall if that is possible this early on however. (Maybe Yoko does? She should be with you at this point I think, I forgot) Fully resisting an attack will decrease the enemies damage output significantly as they will lose turns from attacking the fully resisting party member.

Good luck, I hope this might help you somewhat. It can be a bit hard to get used to the press turn combat system but when it clicks it is very strategic and fun. Take your time on the boss and don't make too many risky moves and you should be able to beat it! :p4g_love:

Hmm I had a whole different strategy.
It's my first SMT game but from what I read I understood that all those "chance" worded skills have a much higher chance to procc with high luck. So I am trying to raise luck atm only because I get 2 or 3 skillpoints forced into the other stats on levelup and thus still getting higher life.

So my first try on the boss (to see what level he has, which was 15 so 3 level above me telling me I am 3 level short) was to use confusion and poison on it. It worked quite well, it went down by about 20% in just 2 rounds by slapping itself, the poison was sadly a bad idea got blocked off and killed my team because 2 turns lost :D
But from what I understood it has Fire and Dark damage, so I just gotta fit my team with some Fire/Dark block and can do a BBQ Session while waiting for it to kill itself in confusion while healing myself?

[thefollowingcharacters]

So to answer your actual question, the lower the level of the mobs, the less xp you get. Meaning that there is diminishing returns in a particular area. That being said, grinding is actually not the main way you usually level.

1. Do all side quests that you can. They reward great xp.

2. Always have a spyglass and a shard of every elemental type in case you find the weird droplet enemies called Mitamas. They usually give great rewards if you hit their weaknesses. You can find them as rare spawns, and if you're using your companion to hit every exclamation mark on the map for items, you'll find them as rare enemies much more often.

3. Level your main character only. You should usually be fusing every level, don't get attached to older characters at this point in the game. If you do want to bring a lower level character up, some of the mitamas drop items that level other party members up to your characters level. They're actually quite common, so use them once you get to the boss fight of the level.

[Blunette]

Your EXP gain scales against the level of demons you're fighting. Demons you kill at a higher level than yourself give more, demons that are wimps give less. You can try using Ribrema or Attract Pipes later on to stack continuous battles if you need to farm, but those are past Hydra and more around the level 30 mark (Eligor starts with it naturally).

As for Hydra itself, it's a single big body. Tarunda and Rakunda go hard and will help keep things more managable, buffs/debuffs in SMT are serious business (and have me convinced to chase buffs in other RPGs as a result back in the day). Try to minimize any weaknesses to Fire/Dark that you possibly can get so that Fire Breath/Poison Breath do not blast your entire party and give it extra turns. Carrying one demon that's weak to Fire is fine (Mermaid shreds Hydra so long as she survives one turn and Tarunda/Guard helps with that on free turns). Just make use of Dampeners or Guard whenever it preps a crit turn.

[Topzchi]

Originally posted by Istiden:

I can't recall if that is possible this early on however.

of course it is possible with strategy and good team comp

you dont need to grind in smt games, i beated hydra on level 12.... on hard.

[Pisaro]

Originally posted by kannakamui.de:

Originally posted by Istiden:

Being level 12 for this fight sounds about right. The game sorta soft caps your exp gains when your level starts to get too high. Grinding for more levels would be quite inefficient at this point, so I will post some tips you could use for the fight.

I would recommend trying to use buffs and debuffs if you are not doing so. On this boss I would recommend a demon with Sukunda as it will make the boss more likely to miss you, and if he misses he loses two press turn icons.
Mermaid (lvl 12 demon) can do some good damage on this fight, although she has a fire weakness so you need to either bring fire dampeners (buy from the Gustaves store in leyline fount) and/or guard before you end your turn so that the boss doesn't exploit you weakness and gains extra turns.
Try to also just fuse more powerful demons if you are not already doing so. Try to bring some ice skills to exploit the boss weakness to get more turns, and therefore more damage. If it's possible try to maybe have a member that nulls fire or darkness, I can't recall if that is possible this early on however. (Maybe Yoko does? She should be with you at this point I think, I forgot) Fully resisting an attack will decrease the enemies damage output significantly as they will lose turns from attacking the fully resisting party member.

Good luck, I hope this might help you somewhat. It can be a bit hard to get used to the press turn combat system but when it clicks it is very strategic and fun. Take your time on the boss and don't make too many risky moves and you should be able to beat it! :p4g_love:

Hmm I had a whole different strategy.
It's my first SMT game but from what I read I understood that all those "chance" worded skills have a much higher chance to procc with high luck. So I am trying to raise luck atm only because I get 2 or 3 skillpoints forced into the other stats on levelup and thus still getting higher life.

So my first try on the boss (to see what level he has, which was 15 so 3 level above me telling me I am 3 level short) was to use confusion and poison on it. It worked quite well, it went down by about 20% in just 2 rounds by slapping itself, the poison was sadly a bad idea got blocked off and killed my team because 2 turns lost :D
But from what I understood it has Fire and Dark damage, so I just gotta fit my team with some Fire/Dark block and can do a BBQ Session while waiting for it to kill itself in confusion while healing myself?

Dont put all stat points in luck. That is... Well... "stupid". For me as a melee, i put the first levels only in health and attack.

[「Lukja」]

Game gets a little bit easier after the first two major bosses.

[kannakamui.de]

Originally posted by トルステン:

Originally posted by kannakamui.de:

Hmm I had a whole different strategy.
It's my first SMT game but from what I read I understood that all those "chance" worded skills have a much higher chance to procc with high luck. So I am trying to raise luck atm only because I get 2 or 3 skillpoints forced into the other stats on levelup and thus still getting higher life.

So my first try on the boss (to see what level he has, which was 15 so 3 level above me telling me I am 3 level short) was to use confusion and poison on it. It worked quite well, it went down by about 20% in just 2 rounds by slapping itself, the poison was sadly a bad idea got blocked off and killed my team because 2 turns lost :D
But from what I understood it has Fire and Dark damage, so I just gotta fit my team with some Fire/Dark block and can do a BBQ Session while waiting for it to kill itself in confusion while healing myself?

Dont put all stat points in luck. That is... Well... "stupid". For me as a melee, i put the first levels only in health and attack.

Working fine for me so far. Can poison everything instantly, procc almsot always secondary effects. Maybe its because it's the beginning of the game but so far its a fun first impression