How do I get access to more spells? And why are spells usually too weak?

[Dragon]

So far I beat the Nightmare in the Graveyard and my characters are around level 17.

I notice that most of their skills are pretty sucky and borderline useless.

The only good heal I have is on Red Riding Hood which is Ex Healia.

So I tried to add Ex Healia to my other characters too, but I couldn't find any way to do it. Even if I try switching their jobs around, I still can't do it. I.e. I switched Snow White from "Scientist" to "Sakura Maiden" and I still couldn't add Ex Healia to her. And there was no option to make her a "Libero" like Red Riding Hood is.

On Thumbelina I have a fire spell that hits all the enemies for high damage and is actually good, but it costs 40 SP per use.

And on Sleeping Beauty I have a spell that hits one enemy for a ton of damage, but it costs 41 SP per use.

So I can hardly ever use those spells because after I use them a few times, my SP is gone, and the SP recovery potions are not that plentiful and are very expensive to buy.

And my other spells like "does minor water damage," and things like that,completely useless and never worth using. I don't even know why they bothered to put useless crap like that into the game in the first place.

So to summarize, the ultimate result of all the stuff I just said is, I end up using standard melee attacks most of the time, rather than spells, because either:

a) I can't give characters the spells I want to put on them (i.e. Ex Healia)

b) most of the spells I have are too weak and sucky to bother using and therefore a waste of a turn and SP if I were to use them. Hence using the "Attack" command or "Defend" or "Lick" command is always the better choice.

c) the few spells I have which are actually good cost way too much SP to use, and therefore I can rarely ever use them anyway

But it seems like the game should be designed better, so that spells are more useful and used as a standard part of the gameplay? ...as opposed to what actually happens, where the factors I mentioned goad me into using the "Attack" skill 90%+ of the time when any of the Maiden's turns come up.

What is your feedback about these points?

[SleepingSeaweed]

The only way to get more skills is to unlock classes. You can see all the skills each class can learn as soon as you unlock them, and that's all they get. Characters will get more massacre skills to learn though (the skills that are only usable in massacre mode), those are tied to character rather than class, and I think you unlock more from affection events.

As for classes, there are 5 different sets. The Sakura Maiden was originally a DLC class, it's mainly for looks and mostly pointless aside from that, but at least their water attack can give characters an additional element to attack with. A character's starting class and Sakura Maiden are free to change into, the others cost blood crystals to unlock and you can only change into them once per 10 levels, but some of them have pretty useful skills/abilities. Save before changing classes, if it doesn't seem to have any good skills you can reset and pick something else.

Most characters can learn some healing from classes. The best ones are EX Healia from Red's Libero and Thumbelina's Blood Witch classes, Snow White can also get the Item command from the Item Meister class to use healing items in battle.

The main method I used for SP preservation is to overkill enemies with their weakness element, this generates a lot of blood and lets characters enter massacre mode frequently. Massacre skills are free or almost free, and it also lets characters recover SP proportional to how much the enemy bleeds (again, weakness overkills). Keep in mind that this is risky if you take too much damage as it will build corruption, so remember to purge the girls when needed. In boss battles (nightmares) it may be safer to lick than trying to keep corruption in check, I pretty much forgot lick existed though. Sometimes you can also get Jail bonuses that recover SP.

Sleepy's Force Wave is good for softening enemies to set them up for overkilling. Later in the game you can mostly just spam skills that hit all enemies and get the SP back in massacre mode.

[Lolly Hunter]

The Sakura Maiden class can use powerful weapons like scissors, scythes, and bows, and gets SP regen as a passive skill, which can be handy early on, but it's one of the worst classes in terms of stats and skills. (The best class stats-wise is Pierrot, by far, and it can use scissors.)

Another use for the Sakura Maiden class later on is allowing other characters besides Red and Rapunzel to equip scissors, which are probably the best weapons in the game once shrunk by Thumbelina. SM is also relatively fast, so it's good on the Scientists (Snow White and Gretel), all of whose default classes are very slow.

Don't worry about skills that say "minor damage," because I found that they all do about the same damage when fully upgraded. For example, the difference between fully-upgraded Force Wave and Gigantast is minimal.

[Dragon]

Thanks for the thorough answers.

Here are more things I don't understand:

1. When I fought the Graveyard Nightmare, zero blood was produced during that battle, neither from my characters giving damage, nor from them receiving damage. Is that no blood being produced supposed to happen? Or is that a glitch? This prevented my Maidens from being able to go into Skelter mode or Massacre mode during that fight vs. the Graveyard Nightmare.

2. How do I know which element is the monster's "weak point" other than by randomly firing them all until I find out which one it is?

3. How am I supposed to remember what a monster's "weak point" is even after I did find it?

4. Why is there no skill to "scan" an enemy so I that can see it's HP and abilities and weaknesses and character level, as is common in other JRPGs?

5. It seems like sometimes my Maiden will go into Blood Skelter mode, instead of Massacre mode, even if I just used the Mary Gun on her to purge her corruption almost immediately before she went into Skelter mode. Is that supposed to happen?

6. Why can't I use the Mary Gun while outside of combat in order to remove corruption? Yet incongruent to my inability to do that, Jack does fire his Mary Gun out of combat in order to remove Blood Skelter mode.

7. When I am doing the purge game, I cannot figure out how to scroll the camera with the mouse, so this leads me to having the camera be stuck & fixed on the screen that the purge game starts on (i.e. the camera is stuck on a Maiden's face only, with her body offscreen), and therefore I cannot complete any purge due to that problem of the camera refusing to move when I move the mouse.

I can workaround this problem by using the thumbstick on my controller to scroll the camera. But I prefer to purge with the mouse since it gives me more precision, and I want to be able to scroll the camera with the mouse too, whilst on the purge screen, yet I can't. Why not???

8. When, exactly, am I supposed to use the Mary Gun to solve puzzles in the Dungeon? (the game does a horrible job of explaining this).

9. When, exactly, am I supposed to use to Thumbelina's ability to shrink stuff, and why would I want to? (the game does a horrible job of explaining this too).

[SleepingSeaweed]

Originally posted by Pedobear:

Another use for the Sakura Maiden class later on is allowing other characters besides Red and Rapunzel to equip scissors, which are probably the best weapons in the game once shrunk by Thumbelina. SM is also relatively fast, so it's good on the Scientists (Snow White and Gretel), all of whose default classes are very slow.

Glad to know there's a way to get some mileage out of that class, some of the art looks pretty neat. The SP recovery doesn't seem meaningful at any point in the game though.

Originally posted by Dragon:

1. When I fought the Graveyard Nightmare, zero blood was produced during that battle, neither from my characters giving damage, nor from them receiving damage. Is that no blood being produced supposed to happen? Or is that a glitch? This prevented my Maidens from being able to go into Skelter mode or Massacre mode during that fight vs. the Graveyard Nightmare.

AFAIK the only things that cause blood splatters are: hitting weaknesses, overkilling, skills that do "bleed damage", and randomly from some passive skills (every character has a "blood" type class)

2. How do I know which element is the monster's "weak point" other than by randomly firing them all until I find out which one it is?

That's basically how you do it, and you can view weaknesses for defeated monsters in the jail creature manual (lowest resistance is their weakness)

3. How am I supposed to remember what a monster's "weak point" is even after I did find it?

Some type of reasoning like "why is this monster weak to that?" can help. All monsters with a similar appearance have the same weakness. If you really can't remember, the only way is to keep a list at hand.

4. Why is there no skill to "scan" an enemy so I that can see it's HP and abilities and weaknesses and character level, as is common in other JRPGs?

Either the devs didn't want it to be easily viewable, or it didn't occur to them that it would be a useful feature.

5. It seems like sometimes my Maiden will go into Blood Skelter mode, instead of Massacre mode, even if I just used the Mary Gun on her to purge her corruption almost immediately before she went into Skelter mode. Is that supposed to happen?

If they have any corruption at all there's still a low chance to go blood skelter. I've never seen it happen to a completely clean maiden though.

6. Why can't I use the Mary Gun while outside of combat in order to remove corruption? Yet incongruent to my inability to do that, Jack does fire his Mary Gun out of combat in order to remove Blood Skelter mode.

Game mechanics.

7. When I am doing the purge game, I cannot figure out how to scroll the camera with the mouse, so this leads me to having the camera be stuck & fixed on the screen that the purge game starts on (i.e. the camera is stuck on a Maiden's face only, with her body offscreen), and therefore I cannot complete any purge due to that problem of the camera refusing to move when I move the mouse.

You can move the camera with WASD keys.

8. When, exactly, am I supposed to use the Mary Gun to solve puzzles in the Dungeon? (the game does a horrible job of explaining this).

When you've found all three special upgrades and had them installed, you get a different action for the Mary Gun. The upgrades are all in lategame dungeons. I think it's also used in the postgame dungeon, can't remember. Yes, saying it can be used for puzzles is very misleading.

9. When, exactly, am I supposed to use to Thumbelina's ability to shrink stuff, and why would I want to? (the game does a horrible job of explaining this too).

It's mainly for using on equipment. Some accessories and stuff with "big" names tend to get better, or at least different stats. You can't see how exactly the equipment will be affected, but if you don't like what you get you can use the ability again to restore it. There's a guide here on steam with a complete list. Also used for like one specific puzzle, you basically just have to remember that you have the ability to shrink stuff.

[Lolly Hunter]

The passive skill on the Mimic class allows you to see enemies' HP bars.

As for the shrinking ability, most "Large" and "Heavy" weapons have a light version with better stats, especially agility, which is the most important stat later on as you'd definitely want to go before the mobs. All scissors (except the first few) get a significant stat boost when shrunk. The Vatic Earring is a great headgear that you can farm early from the Tower Nightmare (on Easy), and it gets better when shrunk, too.

[Dragon]

Originally posted by SleepingSeaweed:

If they have any corruption at all there's still a low chance to go blood skelter. I've never seen it happen to a completely clean maiden though.

In that case, I guess what happened in the example I cited was: I used the Mary Gun when the Maiden had corrupt blood and was only one bubble away from going into Skelter, but then after using the Mary Gun, a bubble of corrupt blood hit her so she went into Skelter anyway, even though she was mostly pure.

[Lolly Hunter]

Originally posted by Dragon:

In that case, I guess what happened in the example I cited was: I used the Mary Gun when the Maiden had corrupt blood and was only one bubble away from going into Skelter, but then after using the Mary Gun, a bubble of corrupt blood hit her so she went into Skelter anyway, even though she was mostly pure.

Corruption only builds up when a character takes more than a certain amount of damage (I think it's 33 or 50%) during one battle, or when someone else gets KO'd.

Did she take damage, or did anyone get KO'd, after you use the gun?

[Dragon]

Originally posted by Pedobear:

Corruption only builds up when a character takes more than a certain amount of damage (I think it's 33 or 50%) during one battle, or when someone else gets KO'd.

Did she take damage, or did anyone get KO'd, after you use the gun?

I don't know; I wasn't paying enough attention to those things at the time when the Skelter occurred, so I have no memory of whether those things did or didn't happen.

But if it happens again then I'll try to pay attention next time with the corruption mechanics in mind (which I didn't even know how they work at all until I saw your post there).

[SleepingSeaweed]

I had the impression corruption builds if you take any damage at all, just more corruption the more damage. Can't claim I've paid especially close attention to it though.

[Lolly Hunter]

Weak hits don't build up any corruption individually, but all damage seems to be counted cumulatively during the same battle (or maybe turn).

For example, one character can take 10% damage in each of 9 battles and remain clean at 10% HP, but if they get hit multiple times during the same battle/turn and the total damage exceeds a threshold, the bubbles will darken. You can easily test this with the Cover skill, by adding and removing gear.

PS: Elemental damage seems to build up corruption whenever you have a weakness to it (< 100 resistance), regardless of the amount.