I do kinda wish incoming party members synced to the chapter level

[Spartan448]

I'm on Chapter 2, where you pick up a certain party member and unlock party switching about halfway through. And as much as I love that party member... it kinda sucks lol because she comes in so drastically underleveled on top of already being squishy to begin with.

Like I'm not expecting her to be at the same level as the party, since I didn't get around to her until after I'd already gone to the elemental tower and discovered there's an encounter with like 6 Shining Poms and powerleveled straight to 55. But could she have not come in at like 45 instead of 40?

As it is, pretty much any remotely difficult fight goes like this: Monsters kill new party member before she even gets a turn, the rest of the party clears the fight no problem because Estelle is wearing a soda drinking hat filled with two healers. Rez the newbie before dealing the final blow.

Feels like I can't do anything with my fancy new character because she keeps dying before she actually has a chance to do anything. At least when she does manage to get basic attacks off, they do surprisingly decent damage. But for now it feels like my only real recourse is to fish for Shining Pom encounters and use that to brute-force her in line with the rest of the party. That's fortunately easy this chapter, but I'm a bit worried now about the other missing party members and whether this cycle is going to repeat every chapter.

[Dr. Rudolf von Richten]

Nah, this is the only time it happens. What also doesn't help is that she has low HP in general, even if she's on the same level as the rest. Stick her in the back and have Estelle (and Agate, if you have him) take the heat.

Also, the Armoured Rabbits on the Tratt Plains have a chance to come with a Shining Pom, and even one of those is enough to give 9999XP to a lvl 40 character, bumping her up to lvl 48 in one go. So this should be a very temporary problem. :-)

[Latency]

I second the shining pom suggestion. Throughout Trails 1 and so far as I've played in SC all you need to do to get appropriately leveled for any new party members/chapters is kill a dozen or so shining poms in your current chapter and then you can start avoiding any annoying fights completely (unless you need the drops or something). It's also probably the best way to get sepith quickly so you can upgrade all of the new member's orbment sockets.

It's kind of weird since some of the normal enemy encounters can be quite dangerous compared to shining poms which are just difficult to kill without spamming S-breaks/S-crafts.

[Dr. Rudolf von Richten]

Originally posted by Latency:

[...] shining poms which are just difficult to kill without spamming S-breaks/S-crafts.

S-Crafts/Breaks work (at 200 CP), but using them means you have to build your CP up to 200 again, which is a very slow process in the Sky games. If you need multiple characters' S-Crafts it's even worse. So you can do this, but it'll take a long time.

Therefore, the best way to kill Shining Poms is to use Arts which have the Deathblow effect, since they're not immune to it and Arts always hit. In FC, this means Shadow Spear (20% chance of inflicting Deathblow on one target).

You can get the EV for Shadow Spear (5 Time) as early as the Prologue if you invest in some Blind (EV 3 Time) Quartz (as well as Cast 1, Action 1 etc.). Blind costs 50 Time Sepith, which is a lot this early in the game, but you'll earn it back soon enough.

In SC and The 3rd, Shadow Spear still works fine early on (you can get the EV for it from Chapter 1 onwards in SC), but later (Chapter 3 or 4 in SC) you'll be able to get Death Scream, which has 20% chance of inflicting Deathblow on all targets.

What's more, Deathblow also does damage, because it's a Time Art and the elemental immunity of Shining Poms in SC and The 3rd is only for the lower elements (Earth, Water, Fire, Air), and not the higher ones (Time, Space, Mirage).

[Latency]

Correct, not saying S-crafts are the way to go (unless you have access to the hot spring in Elmo of course), just that they're the simplest way to 100% kill a pom. Estelle's are also excellent for getting max sepith on a sepith up turn.

My setup in Trails 1 did use deathblow stuff on almost everyone for the chance, but I didn't find it reliable enough so I'd typically just wait until someone got an S-craft from normal play and then went to find a pom since they were easy enough to spawn.

In Trails SC it's obviously more tricky to find poms since they only spawn randomly in groups, but I've had success with double Crimson Eyes on my casters using Dark Matter and double Tiger Hearts for melee has been enough to one-shot with just 100ish S-crafts so far. I'm not too far in SC though so that may become an issue later as enemy hp goes up.

Once Death Scream is available I'll definitely look into that, but for how long it can take (at times) to spawn poms I personally prefer to have 100% ways to kill them available. Thanks for the info!