Combat tips?

[CeliriaRose]

I finally got around to playing this game and while it's been decently enjoyable so far for the first few hours I feel like I'm missing something with the combat. It's just so dull so far.

Just from what I've played it ends up being either me spamming normal attacks until they die or there being so many enemies that I don't stand a chance. Arts have just seemed useless because if I try to use them I end up taking a bunch of damage that I then have to heal up with items outside of combat.

What am I missing? Does anyone have any advice?

Also I ran into one annoying issue where an enemy self destructed upon death instantly killing both characters without any hint or sign of that being something I was supposed to watch out for. Is there some kind of hint about that kind of thing or is it really just a screw you guess you will know next time thing.

[Cold_Reverie]

Trails games are usually hardest at the start due to having much more limited resources at your disposale. Getting good armor and weapons when you can is a good idea. Some chests can have a nice piece of armor or weaponry in them, although they are usually guarded by monsters (Fun Fact: Check every chest twice for some extra funny/amusing dialogue).

Another thing that you might have trouble managing at the start, but is good to have as soon as possible, is opening more orbment slots so you can have more quartz equipped. The red bug enemies (some of the strongest early game enemies) are weak to Fire Arts; the Tear Art is also very useful for healing characters. On harder difficulties, it might not be a bad idea to even get two HP 1 quartz -- one for Estelle and one for Joshua. This way you can have more options for healing Arts.

One other important thing about healing: Buying ingredients and making Food Items can be more cost effective than buying Tear Balms at the local shop. You can save a bit of money by buying the cheap ingredients for Food Items than the more expensive healing items. If you are finding yourself hurt or out of EP early on, you can also rest for free at Estelle's house to fully heal yourself without having to pay an inn or hotel.

I'd say it's probably best to avoid any hard chest fights for a little while and just try beating any chest monsters before progressing the story too much. You may find Arts a little easier to use if you position your characters all the way in the back row. You can do this in the Tactics tab in the main/camp menu.

One final tip that I can think of: Maybe try only fighting the tougher encounters if you can instigate the battle from behind. This way you should be able to go for first and/or have more time to deal with the enemies.

For the self-destructing monster, I think it might say in the monster's description, but I'm not 100% sure.

I hope this was helpful.

[CeliriaRose]

Thanks.

One other question, I've seen several dialouge options so far. Do these actually change anything or is it just for bits alternate dialogue?

[Cold_Reverie]

Originally posted by CeliriaRose:

Thanks.

One other question, I've seen several dialouge options so far. Do these actually change anything or is it just for bits alternate dialogue?

A few of them are just alternate dialogues, and very few of them change anything majorly, but there are some of them that will net you extra BP for choosing the correct response. I don't know how far in you are, but two examples from before the start of the Prologue: When you rescue the kids, you have the option to run with Joshua or run ahead by yourself. Choosing to run with Joshua has you receive an extra BP as well as have one less enemy to fight in the boss fight. But for the conversation a short bit later when you are asked to take some jobs, you can choose "Sure!" or "I'd like to, but..." and these are just for alternate dialogue. There is no extra BP for either choice for that one.

[CeliriaRose]

Originally posted by Cold_Steel_III:

Originally posted by CeliriaRose:

Thanks.

One other question, I've seen several dialouge options so far. Do these actually change anything or is it just for bits alternate dialogue?

A few of them are just alternate dialogues, and very few of them change anything majorly, but there are some of them that will net you extra BP for choosing the correct response. I don't know how far in you are, but two examples from before the start of the Prologue: When you rescue the kids, you have the option to run with Joshua or run ahead by yourself. Choosing to run with Joshua has you receive an extra BP as well as have one less enemy to fight in the boss fight. But for the conversation a short bit later when you are asked to take some jobs, you can choose "Sure!" or "I'd like to, but..." and these are just for alternate dialogue. There is no extra BP for either choice for that one.

Will it hurt me if I don't get that extra BP or is it a case of there's more than enough overall to go around?

[Cold_Reverie]

Originally posted by CeliriaRose:

Will it hurt me if I don't get that extra BP or is it a case of there's more than enough overall to go around?

It's pretty hard to get max rank in this game without a guide as there are a lot of secret quests that can be easily missable. I believe it's possible to get max rank even with missing out on a few BP, so there is some room there. Getting the highest rank isn't particularly important either way as they just net you some items (quartz and acessories).

You can also carry-over your completed save file after beating the game into the sequel which will allow you to get some extra items at the beginning of the next game based on how high your rank was in this game. But ultimately it isn't that important even then, since it is still just some added items that, while nice to have, are not necessary.

[Walke_893]

The combat system in this game is deceptively simple. On the surface it looks like your standard turn base system with visible turn bar, very little strategic depth and what seems to be systems derived from other RPGs.

As such, the first instinct that most players have is to fall back onto tried and tested methods of; using only basic attacks, the occasional skill attacks, conserve MP and unleash limit breaks when needed. Though it is possible to play this game like that, the approach is fundamentally contrary to the game design itself.

First some things to take note of. Every time you level up both your HP and EP (this game's MP) are fully restored. EXP is scaled so that lower level characters get more and higher level characters get less relative to the monster level.

Why are these two points important? Because the first allows the player to use traditionally scarce resources more actively in normal combat whilst the other prevents grinding to overlevel bosses or boss-like fights. So how does this change things?

It forces the player to recognise eventually that standard defensive play will result in a loss more often then a win. Or in other words, it tries to make the player fight more aggressively in encounters.

Right now, I assume you are most likely still near the beginning of the game so these factors don't seem that important. This will change as you progress. Of course if you think things are too easy then try playing on hard.

There are a couple of more things I want to elaborate on but this post will get too long so I'll seperate them. I'll address the Arts (magic) system next.

[Walke_893]

Arts in this game function as a two step process. First is the chanting step, then the spell cast. This is important because if you don't plan out your arts usage properly you end up putting yourself in a more disadvantageous position.

Early in the game, spell casting isn't faster when compared to things like normal attacks or Crafts. However in exchange, arts are more powerful since they can exploit elemental weaknesses.

You may have noticed that in battle there are four coloured bars with numbers to the left. Those numbers and colours denote an elemental % efficacy to a particular element. The higher the number, the more damage and vice versa.

Besides that, all arts have different overall cast times. Generally the rule goes, low cost arts are faster, higher cost arts are slower. Healing is often faster than damage and stat buffs/debuffs.

Other factors, such as buffing and debuffing also play larger roles and you may have also noticed that all healing does fixed healing amounts. These all play into the more flexible nature of the Arts system.

This cast time tiering causes each art to have different advantages and disadvantages. But essentially what this does is force the player into taking into consideration what and when to use each art rather than go big straight out the gate. This is important because the time between the chant and cast can be interrupted by cetain enemies.

Finally in the next post I'll briefly address turn manipulation.

[Walke_893]

Turn manipulation is, at its core, a very simple concept that is hard to grasp without more experience with the combat system. You may have already seen the most obvious example of it if you've used a S-Break (the glowing orb button) during combat to "steal a turn".

However the other way to manipulate turns is to actually utilise different actions to place characters at different places on the turn order bar. Every action in this game has a "cost". This cost determines when your next turn comes in the turn bar. Like arts, the larger the cost of an action, the longer it takes to get back to your turn.

This becomes more apparant when you face faster enemies and use high cost actions.This is what gives rise to the case where enemies may get two or three turns in a row due to the actions of the player. As an extension of this, SPD plays a role in reducing the "cost" of an action. Thus higher SPD usually means more turns.

How to manipulate the turn order is something that you will learn if you take time to experiment with the battle system. In some cases, if playing on anything below Hard, you may never actually need to give much thought to it.

This "cost" mechanic is the core of the battle system and is known as "Delay". It is for this mechanic that the turn based combat in this game is more accurately described as a semi-fluid turn based system rather than a static SPD based one.

Hopefully, all of that helps you better understand the battle system. Apologies for the length of it all.

[Mizufluffy]

Originally posted by CeliriaRose:

Also I ran into one annoying issue where an enemy self destructed upon death instantly killing both characters without any hint or sign of that being something I was supposed to watch out for. Is there some kind of hint about that kind of thing or is it really just a screw you guess you will know next time thing.

Cold_Steel_III already answered this but I'd like to expand it a little bit.

The key here is the Information quartz:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1241762649

You need it to be able to see detailed description of enemies:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1241762685

and if you don't have it equipped then it can be really hard to know which enemies explode:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1241762705

I'm quite sure most of the exploding enemies, if not all, have a mention about it in their description. Description also often tells some other useful information about enemies which can be useful to avoid other dangerous situations so it wouldn't be such a bad idea to keep the quartz equipped on one party member until you already know the monster book by heart.

[Berahlen]

Magic is typically the way to go unless the monster has either extremely high resistance or some kind of reflect. Initiate combat from behind so you have one solid turn of clean casting, and try to clear as much of the field as possible before they can attack you at all. Trails combat is about going for the throat hard and fast, because you won't be able to last long in a defensive war. Healing just isn't all that strong or often worth the tight action economy for a while yet, and you will get yourself into a resource drain if you try to turtle up Final Fantasy style. Try to do most healing out of combat.

[Hagen2900]

Contrary what you have been experiencing arts are generally more efficient than normal attacks or normal crafts in Trails FC. As soon as they are available yo should equip Cast1/2 quartz (Cast2 is better). They cut down the time until an art activates a lot.

Early combat is somewhat repetitive but that gets better later in the game.

[Berahlen]

Joshua's Dual Strike will carry you for a bit longer, but even when there's no elemental weakness, physicals in general get outclassed pretty quickly by higher level spells (particularly AOE).

[CeliriaRose]

Thank you everyone for all the advice :)