Give me a good "Prisoner" strategy

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

How's it going guys?

Well I've gotten to the point in the game where I can now capture prisoners. It's been a couple days since then and I've basically been using them to strengthen my squads. But there are so many options and things to do with your prisoners that I'm not sure I'm making the best use of them.

So my question is, when you guys first gained the ability to capture your prisoners, what exactly did you do with them early on? Did you:

A)Wait until later, until your party members were stronger and *THEN* started capturing them?

B)Capture a bunch of them early and spread them out across different squad teams, gaining more abilities little by little for each squad?

C)Release as many as you can to the Netherworld as citizens?

D)Extract items from them?

E)Focus on one squad to gain maximum abilities as quick as you can? If yes, which type of squad did you max out first? Which one is more beneficial to have maxed early on?

F)One more thing....who's the best interrogator? I'm using Christo(or whatever the guy with the glasses' name is).

Hope to hear your thoughts and advise/suggestions on what the best strategy is for prisoners.

[Pickleton]

Don't bother interrogating your first few, rush the interrogation squad until you get the "punish all at once". It didn't matter who is the leader, only thing that matters is stats. Technically speaking though, Salvatore is best for her learnable evility. If you want to squeeze early effectiveness out of the prisoner mechanic, wait until the highway level of the poison netherworld (3-4 iirc) and get the 3x1 capture squad skill. You can capture 3x floral monsters in 1 turn over and over.

[Z3n]

If you see enemies at low health and you happen to have a unit from the Capture squad nearby, you can go for it. At the beginning, I think it is best to boost your squads, spreading the prisonners across multiple ones that you want to use. Don't focus on it, you will have much faster options to capture in the postgame. Also, Metallia (DLC) has an overload that captures all monsters on the map, and is one of the best unit in the game to boot.

Extracting is also a solid option, it gives you stat boost items, but you might wanna do that later when you have a Maid with Licensed Caregiver, which allows you to use extracts on 5 characters at once instead of 1 (Cannon for an Arm is also handful to extend the range of use so that you are not forced to boost the maid). Salvatore (DLC) has an evility that boosts the effects of extracting by 20% if leader of the Interrogation squad.

Releasing as citizens is useless except for a few quests and an achievement.

Use a unit with high stats as an interrogator and put them back to Foot Soldier squad when done interrogating. The special option (last of the list) is almost always better, except when monsters specifically resist it. Leveling the Interrogation squad allows you to put more members in it, which makes it easier to interrogate. You should be able to interrogate prisonners in 4 interrogations if your stats are high enough (or less if you're using the evility from Metallia that decreases the SP of enemies when capturing, but that's mostly just QoL).

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

Wow good info! Thanks guys :) I'm gonna have to re-read your post again to that sink in Z3n because lots of things you mention I was unaware of, so thanks again. Will let you know if I have any other questions.

[DLOZanma]

In short: get a Maid to rank 6(no need to master it), level up Metallia as much as you can and don't bother with prisoners until you unlock the Mysterious Netherworld bill and the Sandcano Challenge stage. Once you do put up the cheat shop stars at the level you're most comfortable with(read: comfortable means enemies either miss or do negligible damage) and go wild on those two missions.

[Kanye's Bottle of Adderall]

Thanks d l o. When you say get a maid to rank 6, can you be more specific? In other words what should the maid specialize in, brawling fighting archery magic or what?

[ShinkuTear]

Originally posted by The best of Itchy and Scratchy:

Thanks d l o. When you say get a maid to rank 6, can you be more specific? In other words what should the maid specialize in, brawling fighting archery magic or what?

The Maid won't be fighting, she'll be using the stat boosting shards you get from all the prisoners you capture and extract.