Starting tips for new players

[Play Metaphor]

Welcome to Stranger of Sword City. This game assumes that you are intermediate/advanced into dungeon crawlers or at least in turn-based RPG's, and that you know how knowledge is power. With that said, there's no single piece of information that will make you feel like you have an "I win" button, and that might frustrate you. It feels as if the devs themselves made the game hard enough that it's moderately challenging even if you know what you're doing, which is why I haven't uninstalled the game yet.

Your character levels don't have to match the monster levels. A common beginner mistake is to farm until you're higher level, which is the brute force approach to open a can of tomatoes with bare hands instead of using a can opener. The can opener in this metaphor is planning your squad and make sure you are moderately geared, and use your Divinity skills wisely.

Without further ado:

1) Using the premade characters

Once you reach your base and you're suggested to form your party before you go in the tutorial area, take your time and roll 6-7 characters who will serve as the default squad. Make sure to choose their race accordingly (don't try to do an elf Knight) and make sure they have AT LEAST 15 VIT (back row characters can do with a bit over 10 *for starters* but they also have to follow the 15 vit rule eventually). Knight is an exception of this rule in the long term, since he's supposed to eat damage in the face for breakfast. Then strip all characters naked (lewd) and redistribute the gear to your main squad.

My core squad consists of knight, samurai, ninja, wizard, cleric, ranger.

2) Plan ahead

This isn't something that you need to fully invest yourself into right off the bat, but you should at least plan your multiclass path for your main character ahead, first.

http://www.spoiler.jp/srv/tsurugi/index.php slap this into google translate and check the classes, and some suggested upgrade paths, along with his reasoning (it actually has no spoilers in the classes section, so ignore the domain name). There's also an English wiki http://sosc.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page but it's lacking multiclass suggestion. Still, the translation came from the japanese wiki, so it serves as a quick reference guide on spells, and some gameplay suggestions.

3) Full your roster

The people who stay back in the base earn you money. The more people you have in the base, the more money you make. Make sure you cover every roster slot with characters, since creating a character is free. They don't have to have the perfect stats, they don't even have to be the right class, hair color or anything else. They only have to be there. You can freely delete and roll a new character when you have an idea of what your long-term goals of your squad will be.

4) Use your Divinity

Divinity cap increases by handing crystals to best girl... ahem! Getting carried away here.
Pick your Divinity skills wisely (refer to rule #2), when you meet a new group of enemies, don't go suicidal on them. Don't be afraid to use buff divinities (damage reduction, hit/avoid) or have your front line spam defense until you have a reading on their abilities.

When things go bad, flash escape.
When you're not sure how things will go, flash escape.
When you cannot flash escape, put your highest agi character to use smoke bomb, and pray to your religion of choice.

5) Don't grind levels, grind gear instead

I see lots of reviews mentioning how they had to farm exp to unlock skills and all that, which makes me cringe. An extra point or 2 in any stat won't save you, unless you have some gear that you don't meet the stat requirements (which you shouldn't have, unless you didn't planned ahead, you did plan your build ahead, didn't you?). The only time I "farmed" was doing 4 ambushes at the beginning, to get a chance at wearing better armor. A good method to grind gear is to first unlock 2-3 places that you can ambush, go out of the area, save, go back in, and auto-walk straight in the ambushes. Don't be afraid to let the first 2 monsters pass if they carry chests you don't need. There is no "rinse repeat" unless you're greedy or straight up unlucky.


I'll close this with an example of my squad:

My main character is a ninja, planned to be a Knight in the end game. His stat investment, for that reason, is in strength and vitality. No agility. Yes, he's lacking evasion, but his high health bar makes up for it for now.
With him, I rolled a Dwarf Knight who already sits at 30 vitality and doesn't care about getting tickled, and a "ninja wannabe" samurai cat girl who's the aoe damage dealer, and when she's not, she either pokes single target damage or defends (she's a good dodge tank).

Back row I got the queen of PIEs for cleric, an elf wizard and a ranger who holds 2 boomerangs I looted recently. One procs poison (you could also buy it from the vendor) and the other has a confusion enchantment (which is golden). She also has a ranger skill that decreases the target's hit and avoid and stacks, which also translates into making things easier across the board.

Leave your beginner tips below.

Edit: An update with a good comment I discovered in a neogaf thread

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=200054976&postcount=270

It's not mine but I'd say the same.

[TinyHowie]

No grinding level? Are you telling me you can kill a 35 lineage type along with 2 rows of level 25s in Shadow palace with a party of level 11 characters? Gears are so far pretty pathetic for me after hours of grinding ambushes even with 15 luck. So far I can take creatures within 15 levels with no gurantee that it won't escape.

A 33 Diadra can 2 shot my back row and confuse my front row with 2 actions a round (yes they all have 12+ vit back row and 15+ vit front with front row at D to C grade gears and about 4 uniques). A 35 gold knight can pretty much destroy my front row with 215+ health, my knight is at 330 and taking 172 per hit each round, not to mention other level 29 trash in the back row nuking my back row. Yes my party is level 11-13 and outgeared Gallius's shop. With less than 50% hit rate on trash and only 30 morale, even if I nullify damage every round that does not aid when all my morale ran out.

No I don't mean you need to grind for the skills or points when level up, but the discrepancy for hit and avoid between 20+ level gap, how do you add up with divinity skills?

[Play Metaphor]

Originally posted by TinyHowie:

No grinding level? Are you telling me you can kill a 35 lineage type along with 2 rows of level 25s in Shadow palace with a party of level 11 characters? Gears are so far pretty pathetic for me after hours of grinding ambushes even with 15 luck. So far I can take creatures within 15 levels with no gurantee that it won't escape.

A 33 Diadra can 2 shot my back row and confuse my front row with 2 actions a round (yes they all have 12+ vit back row and 15+ vit front with front row at D to C grade gears and about 4 uniques). A 35 gold knight can pretty much destroy my front row with 215+ health, my knight is at 330 and taking 172 per hit each round, not to mention other level 29 trash in the back row nuking my back row. Yes my party is level 11-13 and outgeared Gallius's shop. With less than 50% hit rate on trash and only 30 morale, even if I nullify damage every round that does not aid when all my morale ran out.

No I don't mean you need to grind for the skills or points when level up, but the discrepancy for hit and avoid between 20+ level gap, how do you add up with divinity skills?

Can you give me more information? What's your team, your divinities etc. You mentioned something about "less than 50% hit rate on trash" who do you use to kill trash? You also said that you have 15 luck. Did you felt like you have to level luck up in a character, is it coming from gear?

[TinyHowie]

Originally posted by Saikyoh:

Can you give me more information? What's your team, your divinities etc. You mentioned something about "less than 50% hit rate on trash" who do you use to kill trash? You also said that you have 15 luck. Did you felt like you have to level luck up in a character, is it coming from gear?

My team combination is as below:
Front row:
13 knight 330 health
4 Fighter/11 Cleric 249 health
3 Fighter/11 Wizard 215 health
Back row:
6 Dancer/11 Samurai 296 health
12 Ranger 159 health
11 Dancer 161 health

With dual wield my samurai can do 250~ on a level 20 trash and 110~ on a level 30 trash. When using +10 long katana (2hander) she can do 180~ on level 20 trash and 80~ on level 30 trash.
With +9 long bow my ranger can do 180~ on level 20 trash (w/ penetration), couldn't try it on level 30 mobs cause she gets 1 shot first round very often. Their hit rate against level 30 bosses are often less than 50% even with 28 hit for the samurai and 25 hit for the ranger.

I pumped my luck up because I got 20 points on my main character and hope for easier silver chests encounters in ambush. My main knight is str 14 int 9 pre 9 agi 19 vit 19 luc 15, with a +2 luck ring

Do you think I need to reroll some of my party?

[Play Metaphor]

Originally posted by TinyHowie:

Originally posted by Saikyoh:

Can you give me more information? What's your team, your divinities etc. You mentioned something about "less than 50% hit rate on trash" who do you use to kill trash? You also said that you have 15 luck. Did you felt like you have to level luck up in a character, is it coming from gear?

My team combination is as below:
Front row:
13 knight 330 health
4 Fighter/11 Cleric 249 health
3 Fighter/11 Wizard 215 health
Back row:
6 Dancer/11 Samurai 296 health
12 Ranger 159 health
11 Dancer 161 health

With dual wield my samurai can do 250~ on a level 20 trash and 110~ on a level 30 trash. When using +10 long katana (2hander) she can do 180~ on level 20 trash and 80~ on level 30 trash.
With +9 long bow my ranger can do 180~ on level 20 trash (w/ penetration), couldn't try it on level 30 mobs cause she gets 1 shot first round very often. Their hit rate against level 30 bosses are often less than 50% even with 28 hit for the samurai and 25 hit for the ranger.

I pumped my luck up because I got 20 points on my main character and hope for easier silver chests encounters in ambush. My main knight is str 14 int 9 pre 9 agi 19 vit 19 luc 15, with a +2 luck ring

Do you think I need to reroll some of my party?

Okay. I'll give you my 2 cents but maybe someone else want to add.

Your front row looks like a mess. If you changed your cleric and wizard at level 11 you did it early. If you changed your fighters at level 4 and 3 into cleric and wizard you did it way too early. Best case scenario is to roll into your secondary class when you are level 13, when you get an extra skill slot, unless you don't care about the slot.

Your Samurai should at least have 20-21 agility, even in the back row. Rangers in general are doing mediocre damage compared to your main dps (wizard, ninja, samurai) so I'd focus him/her into a debuff role. Rangers get the only -hit/-avoid skill in the game (the other one is a Divinity), slot her some special weapons with debuffs (poison, confusion) and have her spam debuff either your main target or the most lethal physical damage dealer. Your cleric should keep the group healed and when they're full he should be buffing or defending (a dead cleric is a bad cleric) Buffs like avoid, hit, multi-avoid etc.

Your squad seriously lacks GOOD damage, because it lacks focus. You could stack avoid buffs to your Samurai and have him carnage front your main target (who should also be debuffed from ranger), but that's assuming that your target is capable of counter-attacking.

Your 19 LUC on the main character means that you placed 10 points in luck (since humans start with 9 on all stats), which I find downright wrong. You can still recalibrate your party to beat the boss, but I don't know if you can reroll the stats of the main character with an item, because those points would be better off to basically a stat that gives direct results during battle, unless your plan is to make him a ranger or something.

Also check your divinities in the English wiki, they might do something you didn't considered that they do or is vaguely worded in-game.

[phadin]

Getting good equipment does seem to make a huge difference as compared to extra stats. I am still early (lvls 8-10) hunting in the forest and got a C-ranked axe that turned my fighter from an 80 damage attacker into a 200-300 damage attacker. No amount of leveling for stats could match that.

[Play Metaphor]

Originally posted by phadin:

Getting good equipment does seem to make a huge difference as compared to extra stats. I am still early (lvls 8-10) hunting in the forest and got a C-ranked axe that turned my fighter from an 80 damage attacker into a 200-300 damage attacker. No amount of leveling for stats could match that.

It makes sense that gear matters more than levels, once you realize that the devs expect you to have moderately low level party for the most part of the game, due to deaths and the multiclass mechanic.

Still, people really don't have to get THAT lucky (grats on that axe!). Half of my group still lacks helmets and their accessories are just random.

[TinyHowie]

Originally posted by Saikyoh:

Your front row looks like a mess. If you changed your cleric and wizard at level 11 you did it early. If you changed your fighters at level 4 and 3 into cleric and wizard you did it way too early. Best case scenario is to roll into your secondary class when you are level 13, when you get an extra skill slot, unless you don't care about the slot.

Well, to tell you the truth my front row has far more survivability than my back row, and my 22 agi samurai had almost never got hit. It's almost always 1/2 shot on my ranger and dancer, or 1 shot my knight when I pulled up iron defense. I also found no skills on the fighter beyond level 3 that would facilitate my cleric and wizard, and I am equipping them with at most 2 skills. With m armor and h armor skills they could tank damage about 80% as close as my knight without knight skills. Meaning they are taking 1 dmg or 20 dmg top from 33- trash or boss, but when the enemies hit 35, things start to go to hell.

I admit the damage output are mostly from my samurai and wizard. My ranger is doing only mediocre damage even with penetration, perhaps I overestimated ranger for this game. In any case, I do plan to reroll some of my party members once my main hit 15 or so so that I won't have to level primary classes too long before changing to secondary. Right now I have a ninja and a wizard brewing in the Base at level 6 now, not sure what to do with them actually.

[TinyHowie]

Originally posted by Saikyoh:

It makes sense that gear matters more than levels, once you realize that the devs expect you to have moderately low level party for the most part of the game, due to deaths and the multiclass mechanic.

Still, people really don't have to get THAT lucky (grats on that axe!). Half of my group still lacks helmets and their accessories are just random.

I agree with that, I guess I'm still need to gear up more, but that lineage type has been tailing me where ever I go. I swear I said nothing about his mother.

[Bishop]

Actually the easiest way to kill stuff early in the game is to stack a lot of evade on samurai or better ninja then use use a lot of evade buffs/debuffs and just perform Carnage Front. Most early game stuff is just not accurate enough to hit back consistenlty.

[Play Metaphor]

Originally posted by Bishop:

Actually the easiest way to kill stuff early in the game is to stack a lot of evade on samurai or better ninja then use use a lot of evade buffs/debuffs and just perform Carnage Front. Most early game stuff is just not accurate enough to hit back consistenlty.

I went with both before knowing Carnage Front in action, but I was thinking something like "Ninja is single target, Samurai is AoE, Wizard is for anything weak to magic". The ranger doesn't feel like a dps class (yet), so I made him the avoid/hit debuffer for now.

Originally posted by TinyHowie:

Originally posted by Saikyoh:

It makes sense that gear matters more than levels, once you realize that the devs expect you to have moderately low level party for the most part of the game, due to deaths and the multiclass mechanic.

Still, people really don't have to get THAT lucky (grats on that axe!). Half of my group still lacks helmets and their accessories are just random.

I agree with that, I guess I'm still need to gear up more, but that lineage type has been tailing me where ever I go. I swear I said nothing about his mother.

What you lack isn't gear, it's a proper team setup. You multiclassed some of the pillars of any group (cleric, wizard) for no reason at all, you invested 10 points in LUC for your main character. Ditch dancer, put a ninja, bring a caster to the back. Or go 2 samurai carnage front everything idk. But ninja seems too good, especially once they get their seal, which presumably can even seal bosses (haven't got it yet).

[Godwin]

Going to give a tip that isn't in the OP and ask a question as well :p

Tip:
-> instead of smoke bomb, take a magic wand or two along (you get them for free from the starting characters) and use that (as an item) instead of the smoke bomb to escape. It cannot fail, but the wand can get cursed (if so head back to the city for automatic de-cursing).

Question:
-> What's the difference between X Charge 1 and Charge divinities? The words are.. a bit confusing.. I understand Charge (Alm's one) negates enemy defense.. but sometimes it's worded as 'all out attack at the expense of defense', causing me to think maybe your party loses defense after the attack.
X Charge 1 (Marilith's one) does damage and increases your avoid chance.. but.. in both cases, do all party members attack? Just your main? If someone can explain these in detail I'd be very grateful!

[Bishop]

Originally posted by Godwin:

-> What's the difference between X Charge 1 and Charge divinities? The words are.. a bit confusing..

Both are all out attacks, so they break stealth and won't allow your characters to do anything else this turn. Xcharge sets accuracy to 100%, raises damage, avoid and defense. Charge ignores target's defense, decreases accuracy and also raises avoid and defense (same way as xcharge). Xcharge is somewhat useful to finish off weak but agile targets. Charge pretty much useless and obsolete to Xcharge imo. And both are obsolete to Dragon Fist.

[DarkFenix]

Yeah some players swear by at least one of the charge moves, personally I can't stand them. It breaks any stealth I have and denies me the round for healing/buffing with my casters.

@TinyHowie: I'll be blunt, that party of yours is a confused fustercluck which will get slaughtered later on, you have no proper casters, very little dps and have screwed up your first class changes.

Take a proper healer, stick them on the back line and give them a few multiclasses that synergise with their role. Dancer and samurai make poor main classes, they get their most useful skills early and bring nothing special to the table later. Ninja is hands down the strongest melee dps, take at least one. Never change class before level 13, that's when you get the extra skill slot to actually take advantage of said class change.

I would advise starting over, this time think about each position in your party, give them a role and have them stick to and excel at it. Use the wiki (sosc.wikia.com) to take a look through the various skills and classes, that way you can plan your changes in advance.

Stat-wise agility is pretty much king. I believe it raises initiative, accuracy and evasion. High agility and at least decent vitality should be on all your front row, less important for the back.

[Godwin]

Ah useful info here, and here I was thinking Dragon Fist was useless because my Ranger has a similar ability (albeit single target and not row).

[cantseeshit]

Further in the game stats don't really matter, except for getting that equip requirement. Levels, however, are important.

You need HP to survive and I suggest a base vit of 12-15 for your main characters and atleast 25 agi for the dual wielders. The 25 agi makes it so that your secondary will do the same damage as when it would be in your main hand.

For absolute beginners at this game I suggest getting 2 samurai and a Ninja to start out with. Samurai learns Slash which hits all foes in the first row, but at lvl13 they learn Slash 2. Which is really useful for a long time. Ninja learns hide/assassination and assassins dagger. Thats nearly 100% crit. For the second job I'll always suggest Dancer. At lvl6 you'll learn a skill that makes your row unimportant. You'll have infinite range. Atleast level every class to 13 though.

I personally started with:
Samurai
Knight
Ninja
Cleric
Wizard
Ranger