Things I Wish I had Known... (newbie guide)

[Zloth]

Things I wish I knew when I was playing through for the first time…

>>> This has been replaced by a proper Steam guide! <<<

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=113566410

There are many things about this game that are not really obvious. In fact, there are a lot of things hidden in this game that, IMHO, should be out in the open. So here’s a little list for the prospective new player. Well, sorta little.

Keyboard prompts If you are playing with keyboard/mouse, you're going to want to tell the game to pompt you with keys instead of XBox gamepad buttons. Go to the main menu, pick options, go over to the gamepad section of the options, and there will be an option right at the top saying "Key Signal Display". Select it, press space, and select the Keyboard option.

Gaining battle ranks (BR) is bad. It’s not nearly as bad on the PC as it seems to be on the X-Box but you still want to avoid gaining levels without a good reason. It’s not a big deal for Rush and the characters you get early on as they will gain power right along with the increased rank; the trouble comes with the new hires. If you go out and grind through a dungeon 50 times early in the game, the characters you do the grinding with will be pretty strong but everyone you hire is going to be a wuss.

Don’t take this tip to heart too much, though. The characters that you can hire do get stronger as the game progresses. You just have to make sure you are progressing at a pace that’s fairly close to what the developers expect. You can crank your levels up AFTER you get all the people you want hired on.

Take on as many as you can. Use your time warp power to group together as many enemies as you can defeat. Not only does this increase your rewards, it is also FAR more fun than attacking one puny critter at a time. It also helps keep your BR down and your skills/rewards up.

Do as much as you can. Many quests in the game require that you have done some other quest earlier in the game. Some quests will give you access to very good characters for your squad or will increase your ability to customize weapons and magic items. Guild quests eventually start giving you special items that allow you to get better loot from critters. You probably aren’t going to want to do *everything* in the game but I think it’s a good idea to go to the Wikia website and check quests out before you blow them off.

Avoid the Aqueducts! Eventually the story will get to a point where you are supposed to go into the aqueducts of a town. David and his generals will all be standing near the entrance. Feel free to pop in and play around a bit but do NOT go far! Once you get to the boss battle, you’ll be locked in to a game changing event that will close off almost all of the non-guild quests. So get back out of the aqueducts and go do all the quests you intend to do. David well yell at you but David does not understand the deep meaning of the phrase “insert Disk 2.”

Choose your targets! If you’re trying to train up somebody’s skill and don’t get the skill you want, try to target a different enemy union. The skill may come up. (You also might run into an “interference” but your characters will still perform the actions you gave them.)

Buy/make weapons for yourself, not your party. There are hundreds of weapons and variants in this game, several of which are race specific. It’s tempting to buy or make a sweet weapon in hopes that somebody in your party will use it but characters only seem to want a few very specific weapons. The chances are good that they will ignore whatever weapon you make for them. You can check the Wikia website to see who might use a weapon but, honestly, it’s a lot easier to just give them the items they want so they can make their own weapons.

Don’t sweat the ‘what should I focus on’ questions. Characters that focus on fighting or mystics will still use all their skills and will still advance just as before. The ‘focus’ just determines what sorts of weapons and magic items they favor. Also, you’ll likely get a second chance to direct their focus.

Really don’t sweat the ‘should I learn art’ on PC. Unlike the XBox version of the game, you can turn powers on and off for characters in the PC version. So go ahead and let all the characters learn all the skills they want. If you don’t like them, you can just turn them off! (That’s almost a ‘must’ for Rush!)

The Arts

Combat arts are simply your weapon skills. Rush will advance with whatever weapon you pick for him so pick out something you enjoy. As for advantages, though, they seem quite well balanced. About the only confusing thing is one handed vs. power grip. Power grip means you use two hands to wield a one-handed weapon. If you are going to advance in one-handed then be sure to pick up a shield.

Mystic arts are the spells. Invocations start with a couple of single target attacks, then get a speed buff, then move on to some very good area of effect attacks. Evocations are similar but have some status effects like silence or paralyze. It’s harder to find characters that can do hexes (and Rush can’t learn them until very late in the game) but the spells in that set are particularly strong, doing great damage and status effects. Cachexia is of particularly strategic importance. Remedies are exceptionally good healing spells though it takes the set a very long time to get the power to raise the dead. Psionics provide very strong spells for improving morale. Wards provide some very handy shield spells, an agro-gathering spell, a morale boost, and a stat boost.

Herbs don’t cost AP to use but they require ingredients, which translates to money. Herbs are a fairly weak set for healing but they get the ability to raise the dead quickly. Potions are buff powers – buffs that I never was very impressed with. Lotions is a fine healing set if you can get it started. Unfortunately, the first power in the set is rarely handy making it difficult to improve and earn the much handier eye cream power. Explosives are fairly good powers against unions, though they get rather pricey. Shards can be very devastating to large groups of enemies but are, unfortunately, even more devastating to your pocketbook. Traps have some nice powers once you get past the rather sad first powers in the set.

While item powers are terribly draining on your funds in your first playthrough, playing the game a second time will give you a truck load of starting cash, making the item powers fun and easy! (Except Shards – you can’t get ingredients for that set until the second half of the game.)

The Guilds

Yes, there’s more than one guild. A couple more will open up if you do the right quests – and you definitely want those things open.

The quests are pretty generic stuff. You’ll probably get most of the “Bloodthirsty Warrior” quests just by playing the game. Monsterslayer quests are done by defeating the ‘rare’ monsters – these can be quite annoying as you keep popping in to a dungeon over and over, trying to make the monster spawn. (It helps a lot if you kill any rare you see in normal play.) Collector missions require you to find various components. You’ll get a lot of these simply by playing the game, too. Weaponmasters are much more of a pain – keep checking the Wikia pages to see how to make the requested weapons or if some character actually starts with the weapon. Leader quests are mostly easy but some require you to have certain rare classes of characters, which is very difficult to make happen. Battle chains and treasure hunts are trivial; you’ll get them just playing the game.

The biggest problem with the guild system is the ranks. To gain rank, you need to do a certain guild task and there is *no* indication as to what that task is! Unless you plan to do every single one of these things, you’re going to need to consult the Wikia.

In the early game, guild rewards are typically money, some blueprints (used to make magic items), and a new leader will be available for hire. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a new formation. Later on they start rewarding “weekly” and “daily” items that will help you get special drops from monsters. These are downright critical as those special drops will allow your characters to keep upgrading their weapons.

SAVE! There's plenty more to learn in this game. Keep your eyes and mind open at all times! Make sure you save often so you can experiment without risking a lot of playtime.

The Wikia mentioned above is at http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Remnant_Wiki_-_The_Last_Remnant_Guide

[Zloth]

Are you sure auto-save is turned on? That should save after every battle. I've relied on it for years.

Of course, you still want to save often. For instance, a quest may end up being a lot longer than you thought and you end up running out of an important herb. You can always turn tail and walk out of whatever you are in but then your BR may advance more than you want when you come back in the second time. A save will let you back out easily.

(Honestly, you never want to rely on auto-saves in ANY game. In fact, you don't even want to rely on auto-saves in programs like Word and Excel, either! See, this is a real world skill you're learning by playing games. ;)

[EndlessChaoz]

Thank you kindly for your advice! I have learned much from this thread.

[Zloth]

Posted to the Steam Guide section! That should help people find this thing.

[Bazaa]

Sticky!

[Zloth]

I am not! Now you take that ba... oh, I see. ;) Thanks! (Actually, it basically is sticky over in the guides tab.)

[Niteshade]

Great guide, i loved the game when i first picked it up on 360, then later i chose to buy a wired 360 controller and the pc copy upon reading of the awesome features(a big favorite being to use unions of all unique characters instead of a few+random soldiers) Def great tips and advice here considering it can get pretty complex if you're not careful or just simply not paying attention

[Glitch Goblin]

Thank you for this, I really needed this for a first time playtrough as I'm just starting out!

[Zloth]

Oh my! This was the topic I made back when the new forums were, well, brand new. The topic has since been replaced by a Steam style guide which you can view in-game if you want. (As well as a few other guides!)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=113566410

[Tommy]

I would highly recommend getting Herb skills. They are _extremely_ useful in the first half of the game. "Fairly weak weak set for healing" might be an accurate description in some/most people's point of view, but does not in any way portray how useful herb skills actually are.

[Zloth]

Oh come now, I wrote that way back when I was young and foolish.

It is a rather weak art. The healing isn't impressive and it can't fix status effects at all. It's top level attack is OK. The saving grace is the rezzing power, though, and it's a pretty strong save at that. You can revive characters with Herbs *far* earlier (and more reliably) than with Remedies or even Lotions.

[Tommy]

At least for me, not needing AP is pretty big. For the first normal playthrough I wager people will have less than 4k hitpoints per union for the first half of the game. Fifteen minutes of money farming will be more than enough to max out the ingredients for the first three skills. So I would say money is the only drawback with herb skills for the first half of the game. Well, a second drawback would be if you focus Herbs too much your Remedies skills will not be up to par for the second half of the game.

Skill 1 - Restorative herb V heals for 1500hp.
Skill 2 - Vivification Herb revives and heals 30% per unit.
Skill 3 - Life Powder V heals each unit in the union for 800hp.

Herb skills are really fast too. Much faster than Remedies overall.

Rest of the skills are very costly in money, if I recall it correctly. Also note, a lot of my NPCs ended up as scouts which gave the herb arts a boost. I think Herb V went to 1850 heal.

The fourth skill Revitalize for Mystic Art Remedies is the only skill that has been good for my gameplay. A big union heal. I do not recall, but probably heals for two or three times more than Life Powder V. The last three skills have not been all that useful compared to herbs. 5th skill, union buff. 6th skill revive with massive heal(129 - 108 AP!). 7th skill revive with massive heal and clears status ailments (172 - 144 AP!!!). There is only one really inconvenient status ailment for me, Curse.

Reasoning would be, I have rarely been in a situation where I have status ailments and an acceptable amount of hitpoints (directly after being hit with status ailment) on all unions. Better to heal and use offensive move than to clear status ailments + any other choice.

edit: The reasoning is not really saying what I am trying to convey. I will think about it.

[Otiz2i4]

good advice thanks

[VileKiller]

Since you resurrected the thread, I'll chime in. I'm a HUGE Remedies fanboi. I'd like to rebut a few points IcoBengt brought up in regard to Herbs -vs- Remedies.

Both heal, rez, and cure, but Remedies is always better, if you're not strapped for Action Points.
1. You will be perpetually buying Items from the vendor, for the rest of the game, if you go herbs.
2. Wanna stay in a zone, and grind it for Chain Bonus? Better go to the store and buy herbs first, because leaving the zone breaks your chain.
3. The Remedy equivalent of the 3 skills IcoBengt listed above:
Skill 1 - Second Chance heal. Full heal. Clears all status effects.
Skill 2 - Remedy Rez. Resurrects like Herbs, but pretty much fully heals, too.
Skill 3 - Group heal. Pretty much fully heals.
4. Though Frost Tincture is supposedly very good, it's a damaging spell in a healing arts category. The Remedy equivalent is a stat buff. Neither are ideally suited for this art, because they will take up valuable Combat Options Slots. You only get a couple. Someone else can respond whether Frost Tincture allows other group members to also use Item Arts, or if they have to use damaging abilities to match.
5. Most importantly, I'm a forgetful idiot. I cannot be trusted to always keep enough herbs on me.

[Zloth]

1. Herbs are seriously cheap. By the second disk, you can buy 99 of each and ignore them for quite some time.

2. You've got to take down a LOT of enemies before chain bonus starts up. I never do it until I have pretty much everyone I want in my party already. I certainly don't just do it on a whim.

3. Remedies can rez but it costs a LOT of AP and you won't get it until pretty late. With herbs, it's the second skill so you can get it very quickly (especially in "hard mode" where the enemies kindly dish out plenty of damage in need of healing). Assuming you've kept stocked up, there's NO worries about AP.

4. Combat Option Slots?? Huh? Have to use damaging abilities to match? What are you talking about? Frost Tincture is a pretty deadly attack but, unless you're playing in "hard mode" or grinding an awful lot of cash, it's just too pricey.

5. Well that I can't do anything about. Though forgetting a couple of times will often cure that issue.

You skipped over the big plus, though: ZERO AP. None. That leaves all the AP for other party members to use or lets you build it up for even bigger attacks. What's more, all item skills shrug off silence and even AP sapping. Remedy can cure silence in other groups but the physicians can't heal themselves.

I'm not trashing Remedies, of course. That full-party-heal might be the best spell in the game. A union with one herb user and two remedy users commanded to rez another union will not only bring back the other union, it will also likely heal itself back to full strength! I try to make sure most, if not all, my unions can do this by mid-game.

P.S. Since I have my videos page up anyway - here's 3 healing arts back to back!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=249356232

[VileKiller]

Nice vid, Zloth. I assume you chose the "Step Out And Heal" option in combat? And it automatically casts Herbs and Remedies together... no problem? That's cool. I wasn't sure it would do that.

Zloth eredeti hozzászólása:

4. Combat Option Slots?? Huh? Have to use damaging abilities to match? What are you talking about? Frost Tincture is a pretty deadly attack but, unless you're playing in "hard mode" or grinding an awful lot of cash, it's just too pricey.

I mean the game, innately, wants to give you combat options that match. If you choose "Attack with Combat Arts" it would not add a Heal to the list of abilities your guys are performing. For that you'd need "Keep Your HPs Up" or something that mixes arts.
What I was saying was I don't know what Frost Tincture (as a combat option) mixes with.

I'm also being a bit disingenuous. I still use Herbs, the whole game long. I still have an Herb Rezzer in every group (just in case someone needs a No AP Rez). Here's the herbs and remedies of my final 18:

Rush - Herbs/Remedies
 Roberto
 Gaou

Emmy - Remedies
 Caedman - Herbs/Remedies
 Torgal

Jager
 Gabriel - Herbs
 Baulson - Herbs/Remedies

Duke of Ghor
 Glenys - Herbs/Remedies
 Allan
 Irina - Remedies

Wyngale - Remedies
 Leuciteous - Remedies
 Paris - Remedies
 Pagus - Herbs/Remedies
 Zolean

I just like redundancy. All groups are self-sustaining, and Group 5 can handle any damage overflow. In a normal difficulty game, nobody had AP Issues. By the time they got to the expensive Remedies, they could easily afford them every turn.