I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.

[Vicious]

First thing first, I bought this on Switch, but since there's no Switch forums, I'm here.

That said, I'm... lost. Not like actually lost, I understand where to go and all that, but lost on what to DO. I'm playing Urpina's story first, still very early (just fought the soldiers in the Fort at the very beginning) and I've realized I have no clue what I'm doing, and seem to be stumbling through battles.

For example, Im using Jamto and Beatrice and my frontliners because they seem like the dedicated Tanks, but no one ever targets them, and Jamto seems borderline useless because he's so slow so that I can never actually Provoke anything before they go. I believe this is me not understanding the combat, but thats the issue... I don't understand the combat.

[DoroTTV]

While there are ways through formations, roles, and frenzy status application to get enemies to attack your tanks directly later in the game, what you really want to do early on is to glimmer techs that allow your tanks to cover your weaker party members. Rampart, deflect, shelter, and block are what to look out for. Deflect and block seem to glimmer relatively easily on hammer and greatsword users in my experience. Use those skills to cover party members who are near death (or would normally die in one hit), or could be the targets of status ailments and stuns to stop them from acting in the turn -- especially casters if you use them.

Mondo starts with a role that increase the chances that enemies target him so if you don't like that you may want to take the role off him early on -- he'll eat attacks you may have wanted going at Jamto or Beatrice. You can collect roles (by glimmering techs) that will indirectly effect how often characters are or aren't attacked and then manipulate it so that counterattacks become a very viable strategy in battles, but that's mostly a later game thing when you have the techs, roles, and formations to support it. Once you glimmer those defensive techs, their slow speed won't matter as much since covering weaker characters occurs no matter where the slow tanks are on the timeline -- this is why it doesn't hurt too much to take speed penalties on a character's armor if you use them to cover other characters.

Another very important thing to pay attention to is your formations. Again, early on you won't have many options. But some formations will direct aggro at specific positions in the formations or make interrupt.counterattack skills cheaper to use. If enemies are attacking 3 or more times and you have counterattack skills, you can save a lot of pain by using them. Even if the counter doesn't go off, the defensive tech will make you take less damage usually.

Other than that, it's a tough game and you'll get beat up quite a bit especially in the beginning. If you know a character could die and you can't cover them, try to get them between two of your other characters so you get a unite attack out of their death. I personally grinded tech glimmers and smithing materials in Urpina's second region and it made things a bit easier later on. Use a variety of weapons and don't forget about status ailments. Poison is insanely powerful against stronger enemies. Sleep, paralysis, and stun can completely shut down an enemy from using high powered attacks. Roundhouse on the hammer can sometimes distract enemy spellcasters, causing a 1 turn delay on their spells. Hammers and axes get some really nice debuffing attacks to help manage damage. And if you cover characters during enemy AOE attacks, the covered characters will take 0 damage. So don't be afraid to just have two of your characters cover the weaker guys when enemies go all out. It's much better for only 3 guys to take damage instead of 5. And definitely don't hesitate to upgrade equipment at the blacksmith. Elemental crystals are super common in the long run, can sometimes be farmed from easy encounters, and you'll need those upgrades to survive.

Oh yeah, and it's also a good idea to make sure you have replacements for your favorite characters because you will need to cycle characters out every once in awhile to get their LP replenished. Weaker characters tend to grow faster than stronger ones (sort of the game's way of "catching up" to the current difficulty level), so don't worry too much about falling behind on levels and stats. Just make sure the characters you cycle in aren't so weak they hold back your other characters from ending fights without losing too many LP.

[Dagriv]

eh

[Vicious]

Originally posted by DoroTTV:

While there are ways through formations, roles, and frenzy status application to get enemies to attack your tanks directly later in the game, what you really want to do early on is to glimmer techs that allow your tanks to cover your weaker party members. Rampart, deflect, shelter, and block are what to look out for. Deflect and block seem to glimmer relatively easily on hammer and greatsword users in my experience. Use those skills to cover party members who are near death (or would normally die in one hit), or could be the targets of status ailments and stuns to stop them from acting in the turn -- especially casters if you use them.

Mondo starts with a role that increase the chances that enemies target him so if you don't like that you may want to take the role off him early on -- he'll eat attacks you may have wanted going at Jamto or Beatrice. You can collect roles (by glimmering techs) that will indirectly effect how often characters are or aren't attacked and then manipulate it so that counterattacks become a very viable strategy in battles, but that's mostly a later game thing when you have the techs, roles, and formations to support it. Once you glimmer those defensive techs, their slow speed won't matter as much since covering weaker characters occurs no matter where the slow tanks are on the timeline -- this is why it doesn't hurt too much to take speed penalties on a character's armor if you use them to cover other characters.

Another very important thing to pay attention to is your formations. Again, early on you won't have many options. But some formations will direct aggro at specific positions in the formations or make interrupt.counterattack skills cheaper to use. If enemies are attacking 3 or more times and you have counterattack skills, you can save a lot of pain by using them. Even if the counter doesn't go off, the defensive tech will make you take less damage usually.

Other than that, it's a tough game and you'll get beat up quite a bit especially in the beginning. If you know a character could die and you can't cover them, try to get them between two of your other characters so you get a unite attack out of their death. I personally grinded tech glimmers and smithing materials in Urpina's second region and it made things a bit easier later on. Use a variety of weapons and don't forget about status ailments. Poison is insanely powerful against stronger enemies. Sleep, paralysis, and stun can completely shut down an enemy from using high powered attacks. Roundhouse on the hammer can sometimes distract enemy spellcasters, causing a 1 turn delay on their spells. Hammers and axes get some really nice debuffing attacks to help manage damage. And if you cover characters during enemy AOE attacks, the covered characters will take 0 damage. So don't be afraid to just have two of your characters cover the weaker guys when enemies go all out. It's much better for only 3 guys to take damage instead of 5. And definitely don't hesitate to upgrade equipment at the blacksmith. Elemental crystals are super common in the long run, can sometimes be farmed from easy encounters, and you'll need those upgrades to survive.

Oh yeah, and it's also a good idea to make sure you have replacements for your favorite characters because you will need to cycle characters out every once in awhile to get their LP replenished. Weaker characters tend to grow faster than stronger ones (sort of the game's way of "catching up" to the current difficulty level), so don't worry too much about falling behind on levels and stats. Just make sure the characters you cycle in aren't so weak they hold back your other characters from ending fights without losing too many LP.

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you so much! Question about Deflect and Block, Beatrice has most of her hammer skills glimmered, including the massive AoE one, but she doesn't have her cover skill yet. Am I doing something wrong, or am I just unlucky? Jamto also currently only has one other glimmered skill.

So, about Unite Attacks, I though I understood them, but I don't think I do. Do they happen if ANYONE dies between any 2 characters? Including my party members? So, for example,

XOOOXOX

So, in this formation, if the second O died, would the first and 3rd Os now get the United Attack? And then if the 2nd X dies, would ALL the Os now get it because they're linked? And if the last O were to die, then the Xs around it would? So then that would mean you should never attack an enemy that's in the middle of a formation, right? Like say if there's enemies positioned like XXX, killing the second X would give the enemy a Unite Attack?

Also, is it worth having 2 tanks in the party, or can I drop one? I was thinking of dropping Jamto and replacing him with either the mage guy or the rapier girl (apologies for not remembering names) because Beatrice just seems better at the moment.

[Ravenkid9266]

The Discord is super helpful: https://discord.gg/ZEgNnpv
And if you want to work the translation feature the Japanese wiki has a lot of good info: https://kamikouryaku.com/saga_sg/?ファイアブリンガー

[DoroTTV]

Originally posted by Vicious:

This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you so much! Question about Deflect and Block, Beatrice has most of her hammer skills glimmered, including the massive AoE one, but she doesn't have her cover skill yet. Am I doing something wrong, or am I just unlucky? Jamto also currently only has one other glimmered skill.

So, about Unite Attacks, I though I understood them, but I don't think I do. Do they happen if ANYONE dies between any 2 characters? Including my party members? So, for example,

XOOOXOX

So, in this formation, if the second O died, would the first and 3rd Os now get the United Attack? And then if the 2nd X dies, would ALL the Os now get it because they're linked? And if the last O were to die, then the Xs around it would? So then that would mean you should never attack an enemy that's in the middle of a formation, right? Like say if there's enemies positioned like XXX, killing the second X would give the enemy a Unite Attack?

Also, is it worth having 2 tanks in the party, or can I drop one? I was thinking of dropping Jamto and replacing him with either the mage guy or the rapier girl (apologies for not remembering names) because Beatrice just seems better at the moment.

Yes, all of that is exactly right about unite attacks. I remember learning the hard way not to kill the 2nd X so to speak, in the XXX example. Enemies will try to protect their weaker members by keeping them in that "2nd X" position too on defense, which is why techs that can change a character's position in the timeline can become very important to finish off those enemies without suffering an enemy unite attack.

As for Beatrice, it's probably just bad luck. But it could also be her equipped weapon's spark type as well. If the club or hammer you have equipped on her is not a "Standard" or "Special" type then she will not be able to spark Block -- I believe she starts with a "standard" type, but you may have upgraded her weapon into a "Power" or "Technical" type. If you select the weapon on the Armaments menu to select a weapon for your character you can press a button (probably 'Y') on the Switch controller that will show you the possible techs you can glimmer. Although you won't see it if you haven't discovered it yet, it is a good way to see if there are any techniques left on the equipped weapon to glimmer. If any other characters use the same weapons, you'll be able to see what they have left to glimmer on the weapon if you've already glimmered it on another character.

As for having two tanks in the party, it really depends on what you're fighting and how well your other party members can deal with the enemies. I personally tried to have two party members that could cover in my party at all times, but not necessarily two tanks. I'd switch out Beatrice for Jamto or vice-versa if either of them needed to recover life points. Your own strategy will largely depend on the formations, roles, and skills of your party. But if you want to make the most of conditional combat rewards, it would definitely help to be able to field a full party of males and a full party of females in the future when you have enough party members to do so. And definitely spread out your weapon/damage types too in your active parties to deal with the multitude of possible threats the enemies can present to you.

My late game strategy involved using a formation that encouraged the use of counters and interrupts to deal with enemies and since I was dealing with damage dealers before they could hurt me, I found I never really needed more than one protector/tank for most battles. But I spent most of my early game in the Phoenix Dance formation with a tank in the middle, and usually I had two other characters capable of covering. But realistically I'd never needed more than two people for covering. They only cover when someone was about to get one-shotted, an enemy was planning to hit my entire party with an attack, or I really needed to make sure a mage never got interrupted from casting.

[Vicious]

Thank you again!

So, apparently I'm just getting extremely unlucky with Glimmers. To the point where Beatrice has now glimmered all but 2 skills (one of which is the Cover), and Jamto only managed to Glimmer 3 so far, none of which are the cover mechanic.

[(deleted)]

Jamto has high Str and Endurance. He is adept in greatswords which comes with a protect technique.
One of the commonly used way is to use him as tank after this technique is learnt. He will fit the role of protecting mages during spell countdown
As and when u have BP to spare, you can use him to finish off whatever's leftover.
Towards end of Urpina story you will end up with close to 20 members, equipment and formation to boost speeds. The turn order calculation is different for each formation and since it is not visible, try them out and experiment.
Though I would wait for Khan and Leonard, they will be your main greatsword user- Khan for katana and Leonard for broadsword types.
Beatrice is the worst club user and the least useful techniques are from club- low str, low ailment rate (need acuity and dex to stick)

Chapter 1
Martial art Organa, Elysed, martial art Lewis, katana Khan, longsword Angle
Chapter 2
Greatsword Leonardo, spear Tissiq, shortsword Tsubaki, bow Elisebeth, ax Strumiknen, club Sabit, mage Kreisa, martial art Nasim, club Paul

I am training 3 martial art for infinite stunlocks. I have already recommended characters based on a hidden proficiency stat which boosts their weapon damage further.

Make an extra save file before attempting pilgrimage quest, Leonard is easily missed.

Make and keep at least 3 sets of cyclone shoes, these are actually end game gears.

In this game, base stat 10 and 7 is no different for attacking stat Str, Dex, Int. At 11 will be 2% damage boost. So at 13, Jamto is doing 6% more damage than someone with 7 Str. 11 will be determining stat of what weapon or role these character will be.
This will give u an idea why I mention, get better characters. Strumiknen was the first character to reach 1k damage using ax if you are looking for high damage.