How to progress on late game?

[ᴋᴏɴᴀᴍᴏɴ]

So, I've finally reached where I stopped on Wii version of the game. Finished the main story, got my most used characters to lvl 80 (Marona, Ash, Archer, 2 Bottle Mail, and a Werewolf) and bascially that's it. So, how do I progress now?

- Which characters I create or level up?
- How I do so? Like, failure dungeons, I know. But how I put more efficiency?
- Which equipments combinations are the best? My Marona has a Vase with some Tree fused on it, but that's the only thing "really strong" I have. Like, my Ash is equiped with Snakish...
- Do I start Another Marona to get some more stuff, or not?
- Anything else?

Welp, thanks!

[Fel]

"ultimate" weapons are just weapons that you fused over and over to have high equip% on every stat.

Let's say you use rocks to boost the defense of your item, once you reach the limits of this you can fuse 2 rocks together to boost its equip% by 5% and then fuse than into your item, then you can take 2 sets of 2 rocks, fuse them in pairs and fuse the results together.

If the weapon/item you want to make is easy enough to get in large quantities, you might even want to just get a lot of them and use that fusion method to raise all equip% at once.

Granted, what is needed for the next step is always doubled from the previous step, so it usually reaches a point where it's not worth doing anymore, but it's a way to get even stronger items to equip.


- Which characters I create or level up?
Not really relevant as any character can become a monster, but 2-3 bottlemails, 1-2 mages, 1+ healer, Ash and Marona are a good base to have, and you can add physical fighters on top if needed.
You also want to level up one of your dungeon monks (you want one that stays at level 1, one in low-ish levels, 1 in mid levels and 1 high level if possible).


- How I do so? Like, failure dungeons, I know. But how I put more efficiency?
It depends on who you want to level.
Marona benefits from low level dungeons with a lot of floors, small and few enemies that she can rush through (her extra exp is by map cleared, enemy levels and such have no impact on it).

For others, try to get a failure dungeon of a level higher than your characters by a large amount (still small and few enemies, amount of floors is not really relevant but too few floors might make it hard for you as you would end up facing the boss).
Confine your characters into items that have good titles (better titles will give them more exp), and if possible try to kill a few items before clearing the map (killing enemies doesn't give any exp because of the title, but items have different titles and are worth a lot of exp when killed).
Being empty handed and picking an item on the floor is a fairly good way to get good enough stats to try to break other items if your own items are too week for now.
Also try to bring back a few items (bottlemails are your best bet for that) for their stats and mana to reinforce your own equipments.

Obviously, you want to try doing all of this before the enemies can take a turn at all because even if they have bad stats right now, it will change a lot if they pick one of the items on the ground.


- Which equipments combinations are the best? My Marona has a Vase with some Tree fused on it, but that's the only thing "really strong" I have. Like, my Ash is equiped with Snakish...
You want to chose your "base" item for their 0 cost skill (and/or look if there is a whole family with the same 0 cost), because stats and skills can be fused and changed easily.
Even a rock can become an ultimate weapon if you fuse enough things into it after all.

Obviously the "weapons" have higher tier ones that have a better base stats and usually learn better skills without having to fuse anything, but top tier stuff comes from stealing bosses at the end of high level and high floor count dungeons, so it usually requires that you already have strong equipments anyway.


- Do I start Another Marona to get some more stuff, or not?
Up to you, there are a few new things there and the unique characters can be a fun base instead of generic phantoms.
I'd say to do it once for the story anyway if you are into that because it's a fun ride that doesn't last too long if you start it from a cleared save instead of going at it from the main menu.


- Anything else?
Don't dismiss classes that might not seem suited for combat too easily, because outside of the old man and old woman they each have their thing.
And while you might not think too much about it at first, you still want to look at the skills of the other mana types, because there are a lot of good skills in every mana type, so having a character capable of using them is usually not bad.

[ᴋᴏɴᴀᴍᴏɴ]

- About the "ultimate" weapons, there is an way to know when it reached its limits?
I kinda got it. Can I use, for example, powerful Sword A, fuse Stone B and C, and then fuse the Sword and the Stone, and it will get better stats? This is one of the parts where I get super confused. Specially about how to get mana with the items, leveling the fusionist and so.

- Mages and Healers are usually kinda bad on my team. Usually they're too slow to do something on the battle. Probably give them some better equips, right?

- Thanks for the info about the dungeons, this was another problematic thing to me.

- What do you mean by "0 cost skill", about the items? In other words, basically, what should I do?

- Okay, your tips helped to clarify some good stuff, specially about the dungeons and characters. Now the items and fusing stuff are the complicated stuff I'm trying to understand... Well, anyway, thanks a lot for the help!

[Fel]

- About the "ultimate" weapons
There are 4 things that fusion can do for you.
You can use it to give mana to an item, you can boost the raw stats of your first item if the second has higher raw stats, you can transfer skills to the first item by paying mana, and you dan reinforce the "equip %" of the first item by paying mana.
For ultimate items, raw stats are obviously important, but what you want is to have equip % as high as possible in all stats.

To give you an example, item 1 has all equip % except defense higher than item 2 (let's say a rock), if you pay during the fusion then item 1 will gain 5% (10% if item 2 is a "combo") in its equip % for defense.

With a high equip %, it means that a large amount of the raw stats of the items are added to your character's when equipped, and given that most items start with low equip % (some even negative for some stats) it is a very important point when making your "ultimate" items.


- Mages and Healers
Equips for speed are obviously good, but there is also a skill that you can give them to make them like Ash (act right after being confined).

Usually mages are confined to deal massive amount of elemental damage in a fairly large area, and healers are meant to heal and rez, so they need to be able to act as soon as possible.
Not to mention that they usually are fairly weak against physical attacks (just like your physical fighters tend to get downed really easily by spells).


- What do you mean by "0 cost skill", about the items?
Each item has a skill that cost 0 mana, and that skill can not be transfered to other items.
Those skills are usually great when going in long dungeon runs as well as during the early game.
They help to train the mana type they belong to, but they are not all equal in how useful they can be.
For example, the healing mana usually has a weak healing spell as the 0 cost skill, but the vase has an attack skill that uses RES as its base stat (usually the stat healers are already good at).
If your healer doesn't really need to attack, a cane is better as it lets you heal without consuming mana, keeping it for the rez spells (they cost 25 mana after all).

Because each of the 0 cost skills are just like others, they have a base stat they use as well as a mana type, so it might not be the best idea to give a DEF based skill to a character that only has a high INT like a mage for example.

[ᴋᴏɴᴀᴍᴏɴ]

Ok, now I'm getting a better idea how it works. I've managed to progress a little bit on those equips.
Now, last one. For example, I have those two weapons here: https://imgur.com/a/hUU76. Mostly important, I need to improve the "x 30%", "x 65%" stats, right? An then, the "big number" stats, like HP and so.

Basically, just going to random dungeons, farm some items, fuse everything and done. THat's it?

[Fel]

"raw stats" is what is in grey numbers before the multiplication sign (it's the stats of the item itself), equip % is what is right after the multiplication sign and the result of it after the equal sign is what it gives you in stats when you equip it on someone.

Less relevant, but you can also improve the number that's on the far right (confine) through fusion in the same way, but you don't really want to confine in your own items unless you don't have a choice because the exp is too low.


Yes, you want to dungeon dive, bring high level items and fuse them, but getting items with equip % above 100% takes a really long time and a lot of items.
You also want to get dungeons that spawn the type of items you want to fuse, because there is no point in getting axes when you need to raise the DEF for example.

But at the end of the day, ultimate items are more work than they are worth, so it's often better to focus on getting decent/good items on multiple phantoms and just raise the raw stats rather than farming hundreds of items for a single 5% boost.

[ᴋᴏɴᴀᴍᴏɴ]

Okay, I pretty much understand about items now. Marona is about level 300, with a really strong vase. Now, I have some issue with the phantoms.

What is the best way to level them up? Just going to high level dungeons, confining them on strong items, and that's it? Because I've reached on a level 99 dungeon with a boss having a strong item, and I wish I could steal and bring it home.

[Fel]

Yes, that's it, at least until you are confident in running those same higher level dungeons without the failure title applied on them, where enemy kills reward exp, but enemies on a equal or higher level on the first floor means that it will quickly ramp up so realy boosted items are needed if you want your team to stand a chance.

Remember, small floor size, few enemies and at least 50% higher level than you is a good basis for a failure dungeon, but you really want marona to be taught the escape skill from a dungeon monk, because even if it costs her more to use she is always the first to act on any map.

In failure dungeons, you usually want to confine as much as possible (so maybe unequip most of them so that you can confine more), try to bring an item or two with bottlemails if the are fast enough every few floors, finish off the remaining enemies before they can act and go on to the next floor.
if you can keep that up for a lot of floors in a row, the bonus multiplier will apply to confine exp and you will see levels rise at a crazy pace, if you can continue to crush the enemies.

You might not want to beat the boss unless it's ridiculously easy to do so because stealing from them is hard anyway, they give no exp or money and the title you get back is worth nothing (it's no longer as good for failure dungeons as it powered up but it's useless for your items and phantoms).


As for stealing, bottlemails are the best at it, and the "way" is basically sending 1-2 empty handed bottlemails towards the boss to grab the item, then thow it in range of marona, confine an other bottlemail into it (or more if one try is not enough) and bring it back to the island.
Because both the stealing and taking back formulas are based on levels, you may want 3-4 levelled bottlemails.
The higher grade items are harder to steal, meaning that you need your bottlemails to be at a level not too far below the boss if you want a real chance at it.

As a result, stealing from dungeon bosses is only when trying to get the rare things that can only appear that way (you use the same strategy to steal story boss weapons).

[ᴋᴏɴᴀᴍᴏɴ]

Ok, so far so good. https://imgur.com/a/bmYOh I have this weapon with Marona, and I'm trying to improve this title. I think I'll leave getting the weapons and so for later. The chance is pretty low :/

One more question. How do I improve the +Exp% from the title? Everything is going up, except it.

[Fel]

You don't, but it also doesn't matter, because exp and bonus only apply when the holder gets ko'd.

The only time where you want a title with those two high is when you apply that title to a dungeon where you will kill a lot of enemies (so that they give more).


The title itself seems fine already too, and greatly updrading it would probably require a very high level dungeon with the title applied, meaning that enemies would be strong from their high level plus the title, and you would get weaker because the title is no longer on the weapon.
Not to mention you would technically want a somewhat long dungeon, but it also means that the title is not coming back until you clear it, so it's not worth it until you have everyone else with similar power levels.