What level should I grind to easily clear infinite calamity?

[Azerate]

I'm not looking to be challenged, just to complete all the achievements. I'm at the end of my first NG+ and I'm only missing the two achievements. I'm planning to clear both infinite mode and calamity difficulty in the next playthrough. Currently grinding some levels and nearing 80. What level should I get to be able to breeze through it?

[Melon Sc//ence]

It's not about the leveling up, it's all about your gears setup - user core, element types combined with accessories that further increase the effects. If done right, you characters can be extreme wall-crusher in range/melee, or cheesy with huge invincibility i-frame, quick X-drive, X-strike recovering, self-healing and so on, and bosses and enemies become easier to manage.

[Azerate]

Originally posted by Ruya Gehhilfe:

It's not about the leveling up, it's all about your gears setup - user core, element types combined with accessories that further increase the effects. If done right, you characters can be extreme wall-crusher in range/melee, or cheesy with huge invincibility i-frame, quick X-drive, X-strike recovering, self-healing and so on, and bosses and enemies become easier to manage.

I do have pretty optimal setups when it comes to cores and elements. I did however also notice through my time with the game so far that the level makes a lot of difference too. Both of my playthroughs so far have been on normal. The first time around I had to use like 30 items on the final boss, while the second time I maybe used 1 or 2, and that was mostly due to overleveling it (I think).

If an additional 10 hour grind can make infinite calamity super easy I'd rather do that than struggle with it. I thought maybe someone had a similar train of thought and could throw some numbers around.

[Flariz]

Yep, Gear matters so much more than Level.

Infinity Calamity is kind of underwhelming honestly, it's barely any harder than Calamity on a fresh NG file. You will be fine.

For gear as in clothes/accessories should be self-explanatory, just equip endgame stuff.

Elements are a bit more complex and depend on how you play. However you can't really go wrong with Rakuyou. It's a very OP Element regardless of how you play- as long as you can dodge at least *sometimes*, it more than pays off. I recommend equipping this on everyone because it's pretty ridiculous.


The only time Infinity Calamity might be a bit harder is at the very end of the game- basically the After Story. Since the game expects you to have endgame stuff by then, and the enemies seem to be a bit harder than vanilla calamity. Even then it's really not much difference.

[Melon Sc//ence]

Originally posted by Azerate:

Originally posted by Ruya Gehhilfe:

It's not about the leveling up, it's all about your gears setup - user core, element types combined with accessories that further increase the effects. If done right, you characters can be extreme wall-crusher in range/melee, or cheesy with huge invincibility i-frame, quick X-drive, X-strike recovering, self-healing and so on, and bosses and enemies become easier to manage.

I do have pretty optimal setups when it comes to cores and elements. I did however also notice through my time with the game so far that the level makes a lot of difference too. Both of my playthroughs so far have been on normal. The first time around I had to use like 30 items on the final boss, while the second time I maybe used 1 or 2, and that was mostly due to overleveling it (I think).

If an additional 10 hour grind can make infinite calamity super easy I'd rather do that than struggle with it. I thought maybe someone had a similar train of thought and could throw some numbers around.

Well I guess the simple answer is to grind till you feel confident enough to beat them (I estimate it to be around 95-100 is fairly enough). Cap level is at 150 by the way, you can go for it if you have humongous amount of time. Yet if you don't want to waste time, you gotta heat it up and get challenged, then learn the patterns and dodging and eventually you will overcome it, earn your victory.

[Flariz]

Originally posted by Ruya Gehhilfe:

Originally posted by Azerate:

I do have pretty optimal setups when it comes to cores and elements. I did however also notice through my time with the game so far that the level makes a lot of difference too. Both of my playthroughs so far have been on normal. The first time around I had to use like 30 items on the final boss, while the second time I maybe used 1 or 2, and that was mostly due to overleveling it (I think).

If an additional 10 hour grind can make infinite calamity super easy I'd rather do that than struggle with it. I thought maybe someone had a similar train of thought and could throw some numbers around.

Well I guess the simple answer is to grind till you feel confident enough to beat them (I estimate it to be around 95-100 is fairly enough). Cap level is at 150 by the way, you can go for it if you have humongous amount of time. Yet if you don't want to waste time, you gotta heat it up and get challenged, then learn the patterns and dodging and eventually you will overcome it, earn your victory.

The problem is that this game is very anti-grindy. It will really take FOREVER to get to these levels...unless you saved up the S-poms or whatever they were called (even then, that is limited)

I also suggest to just go for it instead of grinding.

[Melon Sc//ence]

Originally posted by Flariz:

The problem is that this game is very anti-grindy. It will really take FOREVER to get to these levels...unless you saved up the S-poms or whatever they were called (even then, that is limited)

I also suggest to just go for it instead of grinding.

Well he said it "If an additional 10 hour grind can make infinite calamity super easy I'd rather do", so he's pretty hardcore, but in different meaning, not in term of challenging. And it's not like there hasn't been anyone doing that before, just around 300 hours+ from what I discover.

[Flariz]

Well, if you ARE going to seriously grind for 10+ hours, at least make sure to do it as efficiently as possible.
You can check the EXP the enemies give on NiAR. Naturally you will want to go for the late game dungeons...
If you have any unlocked additional ones (The ones that are exclusive to the 2nd playthough, you said this was your first NG+) I think these might be worth checking out, too.

And if you have any S-Poms, might be best to leave them for the very end- these will give you an entire level regardless of EXP. As in if you use it at level 1 it will put you at level 2, if you use it at level 97 it will put you at level 98. So use them wisely.

[Azerate]

I guess I will go for about level 90-100 then, yeah. Already looked up the grinding method - there's a ng+ dungeon that always has the final boss in it so it's essentially about 3000 exp every 4 minutes, not too bad. I also read about the level cap (150) but I'm not really interesting in maxing out, just reaching something that will let me comfortably clear the highest difficulty.

PS. It's 3k exp on normal, apparently 6k on calamity.

[Azerate]

Okay, so in the end I guess you were right that level grinding before going into that mode didn't matter. In general I didn't really understand how it will work. I thought this was going to be a "you can only use 5 items in the whole dungeon" type of thing, instead of just a short cooldown after using one. And I'm glad it was like that, because in the former case I just wouldn't be able to do it.

I ended up just running past most of the mobs in dungeons and wiping out the obligatory ones with drug-induced X-strikes, X-Drives and ...those E moves. Same thing for all bosses until Epilogue where it started to be a bit heavy. The final boss was a nightmare but finally managed to get through it with the shishio+onimaru combination that the guy in the other thread posted. Happy to get my 100% mark in this brilliant game, though that final fight was pretty annoying tbh.

[Flariz]

Yeah, the "item cooldown" you get even on Calamity is absolutely pathetic, it barely matters.

Props to them for trying to limit item spam in some way, but it honestly is a joke. Should be a 20+ seconds cooldown or so for it to be actually relevant; you can still spam them as it is.
Or, your idea of limiting the number of items you can keep with you on a dungeon/boss sounds good, too.

And the stat scaling on Calamity in general is somewhat alright; at the very start it is legit quite challenging (Especially if you are a new player) up till about Chapter 5 the difficulty is mostly alright- not insanely difficult, but still challenging.
Chapter 5 Final Boss is the culmination of this difficulty.

Then the Intermission Chapter were you get 2 X-Strike Slots and 3 EX Skill orbs happens, and you just become overpowered. The enemy simply can’t keep up with that...
And it’s not until the very last bosses were the difficulty starts to show up again.

While by no means bad, the difficulty curve on this game could have been handled a bit better. I still thinking giving these Intermission bonuses to the player was a big mistake though. It’s just too unbalanced on the player’s favour.
If you ask me, it should be given at the After Story instead. Make it a point on how the characters progressed so much they get freaking 2-X Strike slots instead of 1 or something. It’s actually somewhat balanced vs the After Story final boss.