infernal castle

[iRubi0]

aight i loved the game til this point. im having to s craft nuke every boss because if i dont then they will do the same to me in one turn. or it starts with them having many turns and slapping me to death before i even get a turn in. ♥♥♥♥♥ getting annoying. am i still gonna keep going? hell yeah. but like at this point in the game is this really the best thing to do just get str up and s craft spam? feels cheap and boring.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I would not recommend popping your S-crafts right out of the gate, as you are unlikely to kill the boss before he can make a move (unless you have truly maxxed out your setup), and you will be left with no CP to use crafts with. Use S-crafts on crit turns, or pop them them to finish off a boss.


Surviving

Alisa's Heavenly Gift can provide Shining and CP regen, and her Blessed Arrow is a 40% heal and provides 40 CP. However, her crafts are small AoEs, so you need to keep the party grouped up in order for her heals to affect multiple people. You can aim her heals though, so people don't need to be near Alisa.

Elliot's Holy Song is a 50% heal with a large AoE radius around himself. This gives you more leeway to get more people, but the party has to be near Elliot and he doesn't provide any bonuses like Shining or CP. I can be a good switch in emergency healer, assuming he is already topped up with CP.

Jusis is really useful because of his Noble Command (50% STR and SPD up, large radius around himself) and his Platinum Shield (nullify physical damage once, large radius around himself). Platinum Shield is especially useful on fights with enemy attacks that can bring you to low health or kill you, as the shield can prevent characters from dying to a followup attack.

You can use the Seraphic Ring art, which resurrects and heals everybody. Combine it with a large EP pool and fast arts casting times (use quartz and master quartz that cut casting times), you can brute force keep the party alive. Toval also has the Quick Caliber accessory, which cuts arts casting by half, if you don't want to use quartz slots to cut casting time. As said before, putting the Angel master quartz on the healer is a great fallback in case the healer dies.

For fights with adds (multiple enemies), you can cast the Adamantine Shield and Crescent Mirror arts (or Jusis' Platinum Shield and Emma's Crescent Shell) to reflect their attacks back at them. Adamantine Shield and Platinum Shield reflect physical attacks, and Crescent Mirror and Crescent Shell reflect magical attacks.

You can try to disable the enemy's ability to do anything against you on their turn by inflicting status conditions on them, notably Confuse, Nightmare, or Petrify. You can equip the Juggler Master Quartz (crafts have a 50% chance to inflict a status condition and a 50% chance to inflict Nightmare) on either Elliot or Machias. For Elliot, spam his Nocturne Bell craft, and you will inflict Nightmare on any enemy who is vulnerable to it. For Machias, stack the Petrify quartz on him (he can equip one status inflicting quartz per line), and then spam Petrifying Shot, petrifying any enemy who is vulnerable to it. This will render their turns useless and allow you to attack them without waking them up. You mind as well equip damage dealing status conditions such as Burn, so you can deal even more damage.

How to get more turns

Machias' Burst Drive craft gives everyone an additional turn, which can be invaluable for getting more turns to do things.

Remember, if you have characters who aren't using their EP, you can have them use the Chrono Drive art and get an additional turn for every 400 EP spent.

Don't forget the Grail Burst lost art (which you get from the optional superbosses in Act 2), which gives your entire party two additional turns.

Stack delay on characters with delay crafts like Rean (Arc Slash), Fie (Bullet Cyclone), Gaius (Savage Fang), or Millium (Megaton Press), and use their delay crafts to delay the adds (additional enemies besides the boss). This means you will only have to worry about damage coming from the boss. Naturally, this goes hand in hand with stacking the SPD stat, so you get even more turns. Using this strategy, you will minimize the amount of incoming damage, giving yourself more breathing room to heal and buff.

Dealing damage

Gaius' Wild Rage allows him to sacrifice health for a massive 90 CP boost, which means you can spam crafts like Savage Fang and get those pesky adds out of the way. Gaius pairs well with the Chevalier master quartz, which deals more damage the less health the wearer has, up to 150% more damage.

Rean is capable of dealing out some monstrous S-craft damage. Equip the Murakumo Master Quartz (higher crit rate and higher crit damage) and stack as much STR as you can. Equip the Domination quartz. During battle, pop Ogre mode (already comes with the 50% STR up buff) and pop your 200 CP S-craft. If you get a crit, there goes half of the boss' health on your first turn, before the boss can even do anything.

Similarly, you can equip the Calamity Master Quartz (150% more magic damage) and the Hades quartz (100% more magic damage on your first attack) on either Elliot or Emma. Stack their ATS. At the start of battle, have Jusis cast Noble Command twice for that 50% ATS up buff. Then cast Sol Eruption/Lost Eden (the Lost Arts you get from the optional superbosses in Act 2). Use an EP charge and then spam Claiomh Solarion from there.

Millium, Sara, and Sharon have 4S s-crafts which hit all enemies on the field, great for taking out adds.

[iRubi0]

Originally posted by Val the Moofia Boss:

I would not recommend popping your S-crafts right out of the gate, as you are unlikely to kill the boss before he can make a move (unless you have truly maxxed out your setup), and you will be left with no CP to use crafts with. Use S-crafts on crit turns, or pop them them to finish off a boss.


Surviving

Alisa's Heavenly Gift can provide Shining and CP regen, and her Blessed Arrow is a 40% heal and provides 40 CP. However, her crafts are small AoEs, so you need to keep the party grouped up in order for her heals to affect multiple people. You can aim her heals though, so people don't need to be near Alisa.

Elliot's Holy Song is a 50% heal with a large AoE radius around himself. This gives you more leeway to get more people, but the party has to be near Elliot and he doesn't provide any bonuses like Shining or CP. I can be a good switch in emergency healer, assuming he is already topped up with CP.

Jusis is really useful because of his Noble Command (50% STR and SPD up, large radius around himself) and his Platinum Shield (nullify physical damage once, large radius around himself). Platinum Shield is especially useful on this fight because the boss' S-craft which sets everyone's health to 1, so the shield can prevent characters from dying to a followup attack.

You can use the Seraphic Ring art, which resurrects and heals everybody. Combine it with a large EP pool and fast arts casting times (use quartz and master quartz that cut casting times), you can brute force keep the party alive. Toval also has the Quick Caliber accessory, which cuts arts casting by half, if you don't want to use quartz slots to cut casting time. As said before, putting the Angel master quartz on the healer is a great fallback in case the healer dies.

For fights with adds (multiple enemies), you can cast the Adamantine Shield and Crescent Mirror arts (or Jusis' Platinum Shield and Emma's Crescent Shell) to reflect their attacks back at them. Adamantine Shield and Platinum Shield reflect physical attacks, and Crescent Mirror and Crescent Shell reflect magical attacks.

How to get more turns

Machias' Burst Drive craft gives everyone an additional turn, which can be invaluable for getting more turns to do things.

Remember, if you have characters who aren't using their EP, you can have them use the Chrono Drive art and get an additional turn for every 400 EP spent.

Don't forget the Grail Burst lost art (which you get from the optional superbosses in Act 2), which gives your entire party two additional turns.

Stack delay on characters with delay crafts like Rean (Arc Slash), Fie (Bullet Cyclone), Gaius (Savage Fang), or Millium (Megaton Press), and use their delay crafts to delay the adds (additional enemies besides the boss). This means you will only have to worry about damage coming from the boss. Naturally, this goes hand in hand with stacking the SPD stat, so you get even more turns. Using this strategy, you will minimize the amount of incoming damage, giving yourself more breathing room to heal and buff.

Dealing damage

Gaius' Wild Rage allows him to sacrifice health for a massive 90 CP boost, which means you can spam crafts like Savage Fang and get those pesky adds out of the way. Gaius pairs well with the Chevalier master quartz, which deals more damage the less health the wearer has, up to 150% more damage.

Millium, Sara, and Sharon have 4S s-crafts which hit all enemies on the field, great for taking out adds.

i mean im not struggling just popping powders and nuking bosses. i havent had to do this the whole game but this is just insane i know my characters do and can do they just dont get a turn in. bosses start first and down my hp then their minions also down my hp til its nothing. so im just having to nuke them over and over again. its really boring.

[OnlyOffensive]

spamming s-crafts is a rookie mistake that is a punish in other trails games, in cold steel not so much due to more turn manipulations and general speed advantage. I've beaten every boss on nightmare with bare minimum s-crafts usually as the finisher.

what you can do is buffs, delays ( though in cs2 they nerfed them a bit ) and lower action turns, figuring when opponent does s-craft helps too. Jusis platinum shield, proper master quartez ( the one that gives invis for 2 turns ) chevalier master quartz def food, idk ton of ways to deal with anything in cs. Two bosses have cancel, makes them a little more challenging without broken tactics, still possible and pretty fun.

Honestly since there is no damage limit Rean can almost oneshot most bosses with s-craft, its so broken i used it once just to see.

And don't forget to use ancient magic, HP/CP/turn ones are very powerfull.

[Koby]

Unless you can manage to take out the boss with all your s-crafts right away, you'll actually be making your job much tougher by spamming them as you'll have such a delay that you'll likely die before you can get off another turn.

Honestly though, if you're leveled enough so that the area is giving you basically no EXP anymore, chances are you could wipe the floor with the boss of the area just with S-Craft spam.

At some point Laura, Rean, and Emma end up capable of doing an ungodly amount of damage.

The game is mostly a cakewalk if you have Rean, Alisa, Laura, and Fie on your team with Emma as a backup for when Arts would do massive damage. Just have Laura geared towards boosting her speed since she's already a massive damage dealer. Then have Fie geared towards evasion. Have Rean geared towards status effects such as additional Delay. Have Alisa keep Insight on the party and act as a CP battery. Then just have Rean and Fie spam Crafts with delay. While Laura just chips away at the enemy. The enemy will get nearly no turns at all and you'll wipe them out with ease.

If you're getting one-shotted. Have Alisa with the Lost Art that doubles everyones HP. Between that and having her equipped with Angel which will revive her if she dies... it's very unlikely you'll have any trouble.

There is also a dish (Seasonal Hotpot) you can cook once you get the recipe that also gives you instant 77 CP. So between Alisa being a CP battery that can give out 40CP with Blessed Arrow + 20CP per turn with Heavenly Gift and spamming Seasonal Hotpot, you could actually pull off S-Crafts every turn.

[OnlyOffensive]

there are ton of op mechanics, but all fights are possible on nightmare without abusing them even without s-crafts. much more interesting.

You can gear everyone whatever you like, as long as you do damage you fine. I never stacked evasion, dumb op mechanic. I dont think there are situations where you can be K.O'ed without response as long as you have alright HP pool, well as long as you manipulate turns properly.

All characters are good, Jusis is very powerfull, machias time burst is op aswell, if you line up AT advantage into loop you can basically never give opponents turns lol.

I already dont remember why, but skies schera AT advance is way less powerfull then CS one, probably because CS has ton of other crap that makes you OP, grail burst and ♥♥♥♥. ITs good there, but it feels balanced, because its unique mechanic that cannot be spammed and needs to be used properly.

[Wilq]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgufTTKOkGY

[iRubi0]

im prob under lvld thats prob my only issue cause at times i dont even get a turn. and with buffs i still get wiped i usually try like5 times before resorting to my broken scraft nuking. laura and rean wipe everything out. hvnt fought mcburn yet dont think i can scraft nuke him from what i read online. il try experimenting with buffs. its a fun game just im getting bored of the bosses one shots and feel like if i dont do the same its game over lol

[spectre199]

all fights are possible without using S crafts, you just got to have the gear and level and it is doable and I for one rarely used S crafts

[Koby]

Originally posted by 尺ㄩ乃丨ㄖ:

im prob under lvld thats prob my only issue

Well the game prevents over-leveling by reducing EXP gain to almost zero once you hit a certain level over whatever area in the game you've gotten to. So you don't have to worry about that. If you feel you're under leveled then do some grinding. With all the bonuses you get from various things such as starting the battle with advantages, wiping them out quickly, etc... you should level every couple of battles and be as strong as you can get for the area in 20 minutes or less.

If you're curious, I finished Cold Steel 2 at level 172. Though that was because I gained nearly 30 levels at the end from using the Shining Poms I had.

[OnlyOffensive]

Originally posted by 尺ㄩ乃丨ㄖ:

im prob under lvld thats prob my only issue cause at times i dont even get a turn. and with buffs i still get wiped i usually try like5 times before resorting to my broken scraft nuking. laura and rean wipe everything out. hvnt fought mcburn yet dont think i can scraft nuke him from what i read online. il try experimenting with buffs. its a fun game just im getting bored of the bosses one shots and feel like if i dont do the same its game over lol

this game has one thing that counters anything, and thats a combo between overdrive and AT advance, you cant POSSIBLY lose having 3 turns with instant casts, do you? And then returning order by AT advance. Its very hard to be underleveled and definetely 10x harder overleveled, you'd be slighlty lower then bosses and still have to hold back like crazy to have some kind of interesting fight.

Overdrive is the most broken ♥♥♥♥ in trails games and doesnt need to exist. Instant casts completely ruin any strategy or gear/quartz planning, who needs cast speed when you can instant cast elder spell on a whim. Remember when you sat 30 min in sky trying to squeeze cast quartz and action and still have good or needed skill set? No longer need, instant cast any time for any character is all you need.