Noob Tips?

[Andrew R]

Just bought the game; any general advice? :)

[Xott]

Have fun. Play probably how you want as normal isn't particularly difficult. Mostly though, take advantage of the auto mapping feature! Make sure you go everywhere and you won't miss anything. Also that tends to take a little longer, which will make your party stronger, which makes boss fights easier. If you get stuck or are having difficulty with something, there is a lot of information about the game online.

[wulfster42]

Bunch of stuff though honestly I have questions I would like answered as well.

First, ALWAYS go noble. I may restart (again sigh) because I went commoner Ronin with my main to get the row attack faster. While this does make things a bit faster to start, eventually you end up being S rank and getting 10/5 split (so if noble 10 to all stats and 5 skill points).

By that point, the 5 skill points are not THAT important, but the 5 stat points (FOR EVERY STAT) are pretty huge, especially on classes that use all the stats (not so much Ronin but I think even they use magic stats a bit). So always Noble, Always (that being sad the stat point boosting choices when creating your char are probably not as good as getting something like +15% accuracy, +20% healing or +5% magic power...because eventually your stats will be over 40 (maybe 50) and at that point it's a very minor difference).

Second point, you don't have to keep all your characters in your party all the time, and less characters means more xp for everyone in the part (same if they die). Do realize that chars that are missing, mean enemies will hit the ones that remain more often though).

You can QUICKLY level up characters this way though (including new ones if you trade them for tokens). One thing to note, if your playing on normal there is a level difference cap between you and the enemies, on normal it's 3 levels higher than the enemy and you only get 50% exp and 7 levels higher for 20% exp (only). Even if you are fighting solo, if you only get 20% exp you still will only get about as much as you would in a full party that was lower level.

Now, that isn't true if you play on the easy setting, and that is one of my questions. I read the discription and easy setting says it does two things. Monsters have 80% of their normal stats (seems pretty big) and there is no evel cap for exp (Ie if your 10 levels higher than the enemy you still get full exp).

This seems meant for solo play (or dual play) which I am interested in doing. I will have other chars I break out sometimes (I'll level up an archeologist just to take out when I'm gonna go mine etc), but having primarily 1-3 characters seems pretty awesome.

Warlords for instance rock the house vs single enemies FoE's, bosses etc. The rage mechanic also works great if you pump up the encounter rate. They have very high defense and even heal themselves while attacking (drain up to 10% life of the damage they do). 1-3 warlords would probably reck stuff big time.

That being said a Ronin is also freaking great, and you can get a row attack very fast.
Speaking of fast, after getting the row attack, you can boost your initiative by 50% as well, quickly without investing many points in anything else. This lets you strike before the enemies, and I would imagine, if your a much higher level then they are, wipe them all out. Still will have to get attacked by the next row, but after that you can obliterate them again.

Both rock, or one of each would work as well (so 2 man party, 1 ronin, one warlord), which would deal with most content easily.

Meanwhile while it doesn't matter too much long term, the Pride summon initially both does great damage (and ronin charge it fast) and often puts desease on the enemy which increases damage done to it, and reduces damage it does. I think that is the best (I had the healing one first, but it wasn't nearly as useful to get free). You can get free ones if you hit an enemies weak element (gobbo's seem weak to fire alot).

For me, I won't add an archeologist to my main part, nor a technocrat. The archeologist has uses, but I would just swap out another main character, turn off encounters and do a quick mine run etc with him. I might even actually break my above rule and set the archeologist as common since the main reason to add him is skill points anyway.

Technocrat just is bleah to me, don't really find anything about the class that shines.

Mendicant is an awesome healer, and you can even cast damage spells (and then regen the mana by healing in combat) with them. Great way to have a constant stream of mana and never run out of heals. Just get 1 point in heal, then max the bell skill and you get 15 mana back when you cast heal 50% of the time (and heal on one target costs only 5). Heal on a row costs 10, and 15 for all characters. That being said, like the archeologist, the mendicant isn't always needed, especially since healing items are cheap (same with teleport out of the dungeon it's cheap to buy). You get a ton of salves naturally in the dungeon anyway.

Soul caller is your mage class, but......again....very situational. It is great at getting free kessens (that is the summons) if you know the elemental weaknesses, and they can hit whole groups easily. With my current party I can go to a lower level, blast the heck out of stuff with their higher cost spells and then teleport out, to regen mana and repeat. I have 2 of them in my current party, but am considering resetting again.

While great in some ways, they have low health no easy way to regen mana for longer battles etc, and honestly the damage isn't that great, even with +5% magic damage chosen at start etc. Other then the kessen thing which is nice sometimes, I find my ronin are doing most of the work in my current party, and if I cut out the 2 soul callers and mendicant I have, they would be getting double the exp (and therefore a much higher level). Great class though, but not sure if it's really needed, or at least enough to halve the exp I get (along with mendicant).

Stormcallers I have played around with, and even though about going with 3 in the front row, 2 soul callers and a mendi in the back (or possibly 2 mendi + soul caller for easier mana regeneration/use). Honestly though, they just don't seem to compare that well to ronin or warlock and have a much harder time powering up, even with 3 mana users. Greatswords also have a lower damage base range than either swords or axes....which doesn't make any sense at all tbh.

Quick break from the classes. Shields, they seem better the later in the game you get. Initially they only offer a small block chance (like 5-7%), but later on it's more like 45%.
This is another LARGE advantage of a warlord (especially in a full party with 2 soul callers and a mendicant who all max counterspell), because warlords get a skill that boots the block chance by 15% (bringing it up to 60% chance to block). This works in addition to parry and evade and all of them work to allow you to riposte (get a free attack when you block/evade/parry). As far as I know there is no limit to the number of attacks you can get, so if you have a high block chance, you can in theory riposte most attacks against you (think it maxes at 90%). If you can kill enemies in 1 shot due to being a higher level, well, that makes needing a row attack much less important lolz.

I played around with Sohei a bunch but, in the end I just don't think it's worth it compared to having another warlord or Ronin. Basically if you place it in the middle of the front row, you can cast an aura that heals the front row and whoever is in the middle of the back (prob makes sense for that to be your mendicant if you have one). Thing is, his damage is meh, and mostly relies on getting rid of the healing aura, he has really low max magic points which he has to use to create them, and no way to regen magic points at all. Just wasn't impressed That was my main character the first time I played and the reason I restarted that time).

Geo Templars are pretty awesome to be honest, but again, slithgly situational. I could see a 3 man party being say, 2 warlords with a GeoTemplar in the back. They have the best buffs including one that boosts damage, and another that boosts initiative. They can heal, revive, but also eventually have damaging spells that always hit enemies weaknesses (either 1 enemy or 3 randomly chosen). The 3 randomly chosen gives a REALLY good chance of getting a free Kessen (I think it's like a 25% chance per enemy you hit or something like that, so it's somewhere around a 75% total chance).

I could TOTALLY see having 2 of these guys in the back rock and would 100% in a second replace my current Soul Callers with them. The soul callers are nice and all, but having 2 chars that can buff, still do great damage, heal and revive if needed (great damage without using mana that is), would be pretty awesome. This is currently my favorite casting class, even though it doesn't actually cast that much lolz. Mana regen is by far their biggest weakness, but, if you mostly just cast buffs (and shoot stuff) it's not really that bad (there is a skill that reduces the cost (or gives you back it) for casting buffs).

Finally Ninja, I haven't played with them too much and early on they don't compare to a Ronin at all (ronin is way better). They might work out later, especially since they have a focus based heal, and a boost to evasion to make them very hard to hit. That being said I think ronin and Warlords both can end up with about as high total block/evasion/parry chances (since ninja doesn't have the 20% parry going all the time, and can't boost shield (if a ninja uses one (or even can, didn't try) by another 15%). So that doesn't really seem like and advantage. I'd pretty much always go Ronin over ninja, or Warlord.

On normal (all I have played so far), things are not that hard so far, a few battles has killed some of my players, but i have always been able to win eventually. You can turn off encounters on normal (or just teleport out) afterwards so it's no biggie. I'm a bit hesitant to play on the lower difficulty level, even if I go with a smaller party, because I don't want to make the difficulty any easier then it is already on normal.

Anyway that's my thoughts so far,, I still have alot to learn/do, but maybe some of it will help you. Just remember, only your FIRST character is permanent, you can always make others and level them up, and if you get em post 20, you can even get a token for trading em in (so the next one will be stronger).

To power level, I'd probably go with a ronin (that is high level) that has row attack + initiative to ensure you go first and wipe most stuff out, but a soul caller might work with a high damage spell that hits all the enemies (hopefully before they attack). Just have the high level char and the low level char in a party together, and you should be able to zoom them up quickly (basically getting 4x the normal exp..which means even with a 7+ level difference (which you would have) that would be 80% of normal exp for everything.

[Andrew R]

Wow. Just Wow.

[wulfster42]

A bit more long term info (for later in the game).

First as I mentioned above, Warlords are amazing. Seriously no reason to have any melee char in the front row other than a warlord. They rock at first, and they have one of the best potentials to use a ton of skill points long term and still be getting better from it.

Other classes are situationally better the further into the game you get.

The Soul Caller for instance. It's never horrible, but you cap quickly if you stay elemental (at least in 1 element....and multi-elements isn't really that important (especially since you can switch by resetting your skills if a new boss/youkai has an elemental weakness). That being said, other then a few of them, fire works pretty well as your element throughout the game, with only a few having ice/shock as their weaknesses. Your warlords can totally kill them anyway so no biggie.

It's great that they max out by the mid 20's early 30s (maxed counterspell and all elemental damage boosts for 1 element), but.....that does kinda leave you with a FREAKTON of levels where you don't really have anything to spend on the points. You can go dark but.....honestly specializing in either dark or an element makes more sense. Even the teleport home spell is pretty much worthless by the time you get it (only 250 a pop for vergence crystals)...which is eventually nothing).

So while Soul callers work well early on, and do make some fights easier, they really are not the cats meow long term, with even mendicants often being more useful since many enemies/bosses and yougai are weak to holy.

That being said, Geo (again mentioned it above) is much more useful for direct damage long term then soul callers, they have FAR better utility (other then missing the yummy 10% counter spell each), and they can do quite decent damage without using MP at all (saving it for big fights mainly).

Geos get Geostrike/storm...which is not a big deal early on (not horrid though even by the 20's), but there are a few things about this that are pretty awesome. First even before you get Divination.

First Geomancy itself can give enemies a weakness if they are not resistant to that element (and it reduces resistance if they are). Geostrike even can then give free kessens right out of the gate, but Geostorm gives 3 hits each with a chance for a free Kessen, even without divination it's pretty awesome, and it doesn't take long to get Geostorm. If you have 2 Geo's in your party and 3 warlords, and you boost up to 50+ rage before a boss battle (not hard at all once wrath is maxed, you only lose 2 rage per step and you have weapon throw for 20 rage generation each), you can hit an enemy 33 times between them (and the geostorms will often hit a weakness and set off a free kessen).

Once you get Divination, your basically guarranteed to get a free kesses at that point, which can give you alot of really good options long term for even more damage.

So Geo's are pretty awesome. The real question is do you wanna bother with an Archeologist, or just run a mendicant all the time, or switch off.

Mendicants are pretty much awesome healers early on, and speccing on healing and getting revive etc initially will make the game much easier till about level 30 or so. By that point you should have the important healing all set, maybe a point in the defense/magic defense buffs but also points in your exorcism skills (by mid 30's the first was maxed and the second had like 3 points in it).

At that point your mendicant can actually do pretty decent damage, and again, has a good chance of hitting enemies weakness (since many are weak to holy). What is more, the damage with staves from the back row isn't that horrid for them if you wanna conserve mana (after upgrading the skill that allows you to do full damage from the back), so long term you have even more uses for skill points.

That is my favorite power party, by far, 3 warlords, 2 geo's 1 mendicant. You have a FREAKTON of healing, 3 of your chars can revive (so if your mendicant goes down you don't have to use a life crystal (although they are cheap). 3 can heal really well in a pinch (Mendicant the best) access to all buffs (and can cast 3 buffs in the first round. The only way to get more damage would possibly be to add another Geo (which btw, you could do, but the higher max healing of a mendicant, at least SOME counterspell, and holy damage all make having 1 of them seem worth it to me.

Most of the other characters just don't hold up that well, and don't have nearly as many uses for skill points long term.

Because the damage isn't THAt big on them, I would replace the mendicant with the archeologist when you need one. It's really not THAT important long term to be honest to have one, but they can be nice for straight gathering runs, and the bonus to uncommon/rare loot drops can be nice as well (but not really needed, ever, and will NEVER make up for not having a higher damage char).

Btw on the Geo's, the pistols start off nice, but once you start using geostrike/storm for hard battles, go with the arbalest. It has both a higher base damage (which factors into strike/storm damage) but also has a higher crit and crit multiplier (which affects abilities as well, as long as your wielding one) so is WAY better when you use strike/storm and generally better all the time.

You can go with assassins enchant later (once you have a high rune level) but early on just toss on Rangers (5 attack and 5 accuracy). Make sure your geos start with +15% accuracy for sure as well, and toss on those early 1k gloves (mosswearers gloves or something I forget) that adds +10% accuracy). My geos never really missed with that setup at all.

High level the Geos also have just SO FREAKING MUCH to spend skill points on. If you are running with a Mendi as well, you don't need to focus on their healing at all ( other then maybe 2 points just to have a bit more healing early on out of combat (saving the medi's for incombat more)...at least till you get strike/storm going.

This lets you focus your Geo's TOTALLY on boosting their arbalest and geostrike/storm and spending the large # of skill points to eventually get divination. Once you do that, you have a way to easily kill most battles as long as you don't mind spending 50 mana per geo.

Anyway, hope this helps someone somtime. Game is very fun, but some of the classes (Warlord/Geo especially) are a bit stronger/better then others (Techno for instance).