Is there a cap on link levels in the early game? :: The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel General Discussions

Store Page

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel > General Discussions > Topic Details

rachaellikesblue has The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

Feb 9, 2019 @ 8:55pm

Is there a cap on link levels in the early game?

I'm on Chapter 2 right now, and I've noticed that no matter how many battles I'm in, nobody's link is progressing past level 2. I know that this method of leveling up links is extremely slow, but I remember leveling up 3 to 4 and even 4 to 5, and it feels like it didn't take THIS long.

Is level 3 unreachable until later in the game? And is there a way to tell how many more EXP is needed before your link between any given characters levels up?

< >

Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Stabbey

Feb 9, 2019 @ 9:03pm

It is possible that it's story-locked to an extent. It will take forever, though. as in several hundred battles just to go from level 2 to 3. It's better to just use bonding events to raise link levels. Or even books. A single round of Blade is worth 16 battles!

I'm not sure how much it's locked, though. On my run, I focused on raising Rean and Alisa's level, through a lot of battles, but I'm not sure that did all that much. They reached level 5 in the Chapter 5 Old Schoolhouse.

Koby

Feb 9, 2019 @ 9:08pm

You get like 3-4 exp per battle towards links on the party members participating and 1 exp for those that aren't linked. It takes 1,000 exp to level iirc. So you're looking at over 300 battles to level up solely by battling.

I think I only hit something like 700 battles through my first entire play-through and that was with some grinding involved just because I wanted to get some of the achievements for the required Burst and Overdrive usages and whatnot.

Obviously battling isn't the main way of progressing link levels so it's to be expected. The exp bar may look like it's "close" to leveling, but you may still be something like 50exp off just as an example. The best way to progress link levels is to attend bonding events.

My first playthrough of the game was about 80 hours, and I only hit max link level on like 3 characters. Max is 5 btw. The rest were all level 3 or 4. So carrying link levels over in NG+ is pretty much required for maxing them all unless you just grind grind grind grind grind like crazy for hours and hours.

Last edited by Koby; Feb 9, 2019 @ 9:11pm

Stabbey

Feb 9, 2019 @ 9:28pm

Originally posted by Koby:
My first playthrough of the game was about 80 hours, and I only hit max link level on like 3 characters. Max is 5 btw. The rest were all level 3 or 4. So carrying link levels over in NG+ is pretty much required for maxing them all unless you just grind grind grind grind grind like crazy for hours and hours.

If you use the Unlimited Bonding points perk when carrying over a clear save to a NG+ save, that ensures you'll be able to reach level 5 with 8 of the Class VII members. Maxing out anyone else, though will require repeated playthroughs carrying over link levels.

Oguzhan

Feb 10, 2019 @ 2:19am

Battles are meant for the other characters since they don't really have a lot of options for bonding growth. It will take a lot of repeated play throughs for them to have max bond with each other though. Another side effect of focusing too much on Rean. If you notice there aren't many time where the other characters interact with each other unlike in Sky or Crossbell games. Sometimes I honestly feel that none of these kids are friends with eachother but only stay near one another because they wanna be with the cool badass player character Rean. Sure we have machias-jusis, millium-jusis and laura-fie but thats about it. The rest of their interactions are generic as it gets.

Last edited by Oguzhan; Feb 10, 2019 @ 2:21am