Questions about mechanics

[Chezz]

Hi there. I recently got the game in the sale and enjoying it a lot so far. I am a veteran of FFT and Fire Emblem games so I jumped straight to Hard, but I felt it was still pretty easy. I changed to Very Hard after Anadine power spike and just recently finished the Second Temple. Things are indeed better with this settings but have some questions I'd appreciate if someone can help with;

1. If you change to 'permadeath' settings during the campaign, does previous injuries you got count to the total or does it start counting when you turn it on? What about if you toggle it off again afterwards?

2. About leveling. I have some low level recruits that I want to level, but I am afraid in doing so I will make the future encounters too much harder. How does enemies scale exactly? Per the game description they scale based on your roster strength. Atm I have the Story characters and the starters at lvl 15-16, but I have the bench guys at less than 6-7 and I would like to spend some time patrolling to catch up and make them not useless if I have to field them. Is it a wise strat to go to the starter areas and do some battles only with those low level guys? What would be best strat to level up the roster?

3. AP gain. I am not sure I understand this entirely. I get that units only get AP for their primary class, and then vicarious AP gain is also tailored to primary classes of units participating in battle. What about benched units? Do they also gain a small fraction only on their primary class? If that's the case, I assume it's worth to change the primary class of units on the bench to make them gain AP on that class, but then not gaining EXP. So for example, I want to spend most battles with Kyrie as Marked since the stat gain from lvl ups is so much better than the rest of the classes, but if I do so I neglect her gaining AP on other classes. By leaving her on the bench for some battles and changing her class to another, I am working around it, right? Altho I guess AP gain this way would be much slower. Expanding on that, is it worth it to play battles with classes you already mastered, to have vicarious AP for that class for the rest of the roster?

That would be it for the moment, most likely will have more questions as I keep advancing in the game :P. Thanks!!

[Conan The Librarian]

The Dude Abides-

I think I can help you with your questions.

1. In terms of changing the injury settings, yeah, those can be a little funny if you start switching them around. I can tell you this:

• If your unit has any current injuries, but you turn injuries to off, they will disappear, however, when you turn them back on, they will re-appear.
  
  
• If you are playing on "Permadeath" and have injuries, but then turn it to a different setting (such as normal or none), your "dead" hero is back with X injuries that they currently have (so you COULD "revive" someone from permadeath my monkey-ing with the settings). Assuming you just go to regular injuries, you can recover from a couple injuries, then turn it back to perma.

Basically, the game's rules are based on "what is currently going on" and adjusts to that.

2. Level scaling is based on the average of your top 6 heroes in your entire crew. Therefore, attempting to have your characters overall more even in their level is usually a good idea. Note that there is EXP scaling, to where lower level heroes do something to higher level hero, you get extra EXP, and higher level hero to lower level hero gets less EXP.

3. So I don't have to retype everything on this subject, I would recommend seeing my guide's section on AP:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=♥♥♥♥578363

But, to answer a specific thing: "generally" it's not optimal to continue on as a mastered class because you'll be "wasting" a lot of potential AP gains. Yes, they will still be contributing to the Vicarious AP pool, but their main gains will be "wasted". Granted yes, you CAN choose to "stagnate" a hero's AP growth when you have "everything you want already learned" on them, but in my opinion, I go for the philosophy of "always be learning". I would generally consider only stagnating a hero's AP growth "very late in the campaign" (if at all)--but that's a personal choice.

I'd recommend these threads:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/1639787494973785282/

https://steamcommunity.com/app/699170/discussions/0/3247562523076075056/

Anyway, take a look at the info I put, and always feel free to ask further stuff.

[Chezz]

Thanks a lot for the timely reply! This helps a lot.

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

2. Level scaling is based on the average of your top 6 heroes in your entire crew.

This is exactly the bit of info I needed, much appreciated. So, there is no 'penalty' for going back and level other units, as long those units are not yout 'top 6'. Nice to hear as I have a lvl3 Werewolf that is in dire need of some lvls to be awesome (I hope :P).

Will take a look at your guide and the threads you linked and then come back if I have more questions.

Cheers!!

ps: a take on this part I forgot to ask:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

But, to answer a specific thing: "generally" it's not optimal to continue on as a mastered class because you'll be "wasting" a lot of potential AP gains. Yes, they will still be contributing to the Vicarious AP pool, but their main gains will be "wasted". Granted yes, you CAN choose to "stagnate" a hero's AP growth when you have "everything you want already learned" on them, but in my opinion, I go for the philosophy of "always be learning". I would generally consider only stagnating a hero's AP growth "very late in the campaign" (if at all)--but that's a personal choice.

This is very informative and helpful. Would you say there is an exception in the case of especial classes? Since they seem to have much better stat growth on level up (talking about Marked specifically here since is the one I checked the most, don't know if it's true too for other unique classes), wouldn't you think the 'loss' of stats you get by switching classes doesn't compensate for the extra skills you get, when you consider at the end of the day you can only get an 'extra' skillset from another class? I would think it's still useful to get a passive or counter you want from specific class, or maybe mastery bonus too, but that's pretty much it. Oh well, guess it's preference at the end of the day.

[Mechalibur]

Taking a few levels in a class with suboptimal growths isn't a big deal. My own preference is to stop mastering classes when I have a "finalized" build for a character, although it is tempting to try and master all the classes that give crit and evasion mastery boosts. I often go for builds that have passives all over the different classes (for example, Anadine as a Demon Knight with Duelist as a subclass, and Elemental Mastery as a passive), so often times my builds haven't been finalized until near the end of the game.

One other thing you can do is change a unit's class if they aren't participating in a battle so they gain some benched AP in the new class, even if they're otherwise in a class you don't plan on swapping out. I find that kind of tedious, but it is an option if you're a min-maxer.

[Conan The Librarian]

Originally posted by chakkal2001:

ps: a take on this part I forgot to ask:

Originally posted by Conan The Librarian:

But, to answer a specific thing: "generally" it's not optimal to continue on as a mastered class because you'll be "wasting" a lot of potential AP gains. Yes, they will still be contributing to the Vicarious AP pool, but their main gains will be "wasted". Granted yes, you CAN choose to "stagnate" a hero's AP growth when you have "everything you want already learned" on them, but in my opinion, I go for the philosophy of "always be learning". I would generally consider only stagnating a hero's AP growth "very late in the campaign" (if at all)--but that's a personal choice.

This is very informative and helpful. Would you say there is an exception in the case of especial classes? Since they seem to have much better stat growth on level up (talking about Marked specifically here since is the one I checked the most, don't know if it's true too for other unique classes), wouldn't you think the 'loss' of stats you get by switching classes doesn't compensate for the extra skills you get, when you consider at the end of the day you can only get an 'extra' skillset from another class? I would think it's still useful to get a passive or counter you want from specific class, or maybe mastery bonus too, but that's pretty much it. Oh well, guess it's preference at the end of the day.

Oh, didn't notice that you had edited your post (I don't get notifications for edits, only new posts)

Originally posted by Mechalibur:

Taking a few levels in a class with suboptimal growths isn't a big deal. My own preference is to stop mastering classes when I have a "finalized" build for a character, although it is tempting to try and master all the classes that give crit and evasion mastery boosts. I often go for builds that have passives all over the different classes (for example, Anadine as a Demon Knight with Duelist as a subclass, and Elemental Mastery as a passive), so often times my builds haven't been finalized until near the end of the game.

One other thing you can do is change a unit's class if they aren't participating in a battle so they gain some benched AP in the new class, even if they're otherwise in a class you don't plan on swapping out. I find that kind of tedious, but it is an option if you're a min-maxer.

Yeah, I would essentially echo Mechalibur's estimation / advice on that subject. As he said, theoretically, if you had "all you wanted learned", you could sit in X class with "good growths" and be fine. Alternatively, since Mastery Bonuses exist, sometimes going around and getting those could be good, especially on stats which don't have "growths" on them (like crit and evasion, like Mechalibur said). And yes, it's all just a question of "how min-max-y" do you want to go with things--it's far from necessary, but, if you enjoy the nitty-gritty theorycrafting, you can find some "answers" for what you think is best.

[Chezz]

Thanks a lot for the comments! Very helpful.

My main rationale was that, since you can only have one extra skillset apart from main, once you have a mastery in one you like there is hardly a reason to keep level too much on other classes. Of course you can also go for extra passives and counters, but that doesn't require the full mastery and even then the number of those you can use is limited. Alas, I forgot about Mastery Bonus, and I see how that would be a sweet reason to keep mastering stuff.

I guess I'll try to level my bench guys now, and then continue with the story trying to diversify teams during battles. Want to try to minimize the grind to catch up later on if possible.