Fast skill leveling

(This guide does contain spoilers) A guide on how to gain skill exp quickly for the achievement: Stroker of Weapons' Souls

Leveling Skills

All skills consume a certain amount of SP, and depending on this amount of SP, skills will require more or less skill EXP to max at level 10.

An early game skill that consumes 10 SP will need 2000 skill EXP to max at level 10,
where the highest level skills that require 80 SP will only need 500 skill EXP.
This is to balance the disparity between player use of skills as lower cost skills can be spammed, will be around from the beginning of the game, while higher cost skills will be only available during late game and will be used less frequently.

Luckily for us, this means the skills take roughly the same amount of time each to max at level 10 regardless of their SP cost.

The most imporant thing to remember are that skills still gain EXP regardless if it hits an enemy or not. Which means we can take advantage of this for a nice little leveling trick:

First you'll need to warp to Earth Sanctum: End




These green crystals in the Earth Sanctum when broken, drop large amounts of SP (the points needed to use skills) which will allow us to spam skills, and accumulate skill EXP at a fast rate.

To reset the crystals, exit south to the next screen and return to repeat the process over again.

However there is important information about weapons to learn and accessories I highly recommend to get before attempting this.

Weapons and Accessories

All the weapons in the game come with their own skills for which you can learn and keep by leveling the skill to level 1. However, there is a benefit to using different weapons. Each skill use with the weapon that originally had the skill you are leveling will increase the skill EXP gain by 1, making it 2 skill EXP gain per skill. This is extremely useful when combined with certain accessories.

There are 2 accessories I recommend using and 2 optional accessories that could be used instead depending on where you are in the story:

The Recommended

Training Ring III

The Training Ring III can be obtained from a chest in the Sea Sanctum


The Training Ring III will increase the EXP gain from each skill use from 1 to 4, essentially quadruple the EXP gain.
Having a Training Ring III equipped with the right weapon can increase the skill EXP gain to 5, Quintuple the EXP gain!

Equip this accessory on the character who's skills you are wanting to level up.

Energy Orb

The Energy Orb can be synthesised as soon as you reach the well of Souls (final dungeon)


Equipping this will let you gain SP from simply running around. This can help save time as its another way to get SP on top of the green crystals.
This item will not work if you don't have it equipped on one your main party members (the 3 visible characters you control)

The Optional

(These accessories are optional, but if you want to start leveling skills as soon as you reach the Earth Sanctum in the story, these accessories are good choices)

Training Ring II

The Training Ring II can be obtained from a chest in the Earth Sanctum


Equipping the Training Ring II will raise the skill EXP you gain from using skills from 1 to 3. This ring triples EXP gain and will cut down time spent leveling skills significantly. Add in the right weapon and it will increase the skill EXP gain to 4.

Crimson Jewel

The Crimson Jewel can be obtained from completing the Pikkard quest which can be done as early as reaching the Earth Sanctum

The Crimson Jewel can be subsituted for the Training Ring II, as it doubles the amount of skill use. Using this alongside the weapon that has the skill you are leveling will give you 2 skill EXP per use and since it doubles the amount of skills you use (especially the higher level skills with high SP costs) it'll increase the number to 4 skill EXP per 2 skills used, which is the same as using a Training Ring II.

Video Guide

If you want to see this method in action, I made a short video showing how its done:

[terravinn]

I think the area of Altago Plains immediately outside of Iska Village could be as good a - maybe even a better - place to grind because those elephant enemies are so good for grinding SP via flash guard

- with sapphire equipped one can consistently get 25-33 per flash guard, sometimes up to 40

- Those elephants only take meaningful damage from strike type damage so you don't have to worry about your party members killing it

- In the event that they do kill it there are several in the immediate vicinity, allowing the grind to continue without needing to exit the area

- Their attacks are very telegraphed and occur at a very consistent rate so you can more or less turn off the brain during the grind

- They launch you into the air when you repeatedly tap the shield button, sometimes really high and that is really fun

[BlakReaper]

ik its kinda stupid to comment now but u said something wrong there, u wrote that its roughly the same amount to max skill but for example a skill that costs 10SP needs 2000skill xp which would be 20k sp but on the other hand a skill that costs 80SP needs 500 skill xp which would be 40k sp which means its double the SP and double the time

[Bamethyst38]

If you want to hybridize, outside of the Crystals are two spiders. If you kill them with charge shots and light scrapes, you should be able to leave a corpse behind that you can gen 3 charge shots off of Elk or Aisha armed with a Battle Bandana. This allows you to use your respawn room to your advantage. Running without dashing will also generate SP if the 3rd character has the Energy Orb.

[Helevorn]

thanks :)

[NaHCO3]

Since party members will follow player when using skills, let the grinder be a party member will do faster.

Player - Crimson Jewel
The grinder - Training Ring III, and forbid skills other than the one you want to grind
another party member - Energy Orb

The SP cost of skills player use can't much lower than the one you wan to grind, or the grinder won't follow. From my experience, 10SP lower, and it won't work: Adol's 40SP skills will follow player Aisha's 35SP skills, but Dogi's 50SP skills won't follow player Adol's 40SP skills.

There are other situations party menber will fail to follow. When player using skills, if the target is far away from player, then party members won't use skills immediately, they will approach the target first. If the target is killed too fast, or the player's skill is done so fast, then there's a big chance party members will fail to follow. Better use melee character, and go higher level zone to avoid this.

[Baslam]

I made this method to avoid using monsters, but I can see how this would also be effective. Can't say which is faster, I'll test it out once I clear the Sea Sanctum on my nightmare playthrough.

[Alshadur]

What I'm doing right now to quickly level my skills in endgame:

Characters and Equip:
The character whos skills you want to level - Training Ring III
Character that attacks quickly - Battle Bandana
Dogi - Energy Orb

Unequip the weapon from everyone. Go into the highest level zone with the tankiest monster you can find that you have no trouble surviving to and charge attack with the Battle Bandana character. When SP is full (after 3-4 charge attacks), use up skills with Character 1. After that it is likely that the monster you fight is stunned, so you gain more SP when hitting it with charge attack. Dogi helps with stunning with his party buff and Bash skill.
Do this over and over. If the monster is dead, go to the next one or re-enter the area.

[devilvergildv]

Hm, interesting, but I think that using charge attack on enemies could be faster, especially after getting wind seal, which boosts speed charging and getting more sp, one hit gives roughly 21 SP, and you can even hit dead body and still get a lot of SP.

[羊羽]

Thanks for leting me know such position~ I neither realized the right weapon will help doint this :D

[Baslam]

Thank you for the information, I never realized that using the right weapon will increase the skill EXP gained. Also it seems I somehow missed the chest containing the Training Ring III, I'll update the guide with this information once I obtained the ring.