Party Suggestions 2.0

Since 2.0 makes most of pre-2.0 party plans invalid or at least incomplete/misleading, lets start over with a new one here.

So my suggestion as a start:

Lise
Vanadise with INT capstone (equip any weapon), take weapon from Evil Shaman (nerf all enemies)
skip Power Up and Thunder Saber = 3 buffs & heal light; need to get Mind Up asap or the slot might be blocked since the previous spell is only an upgrade
auto-buff armor

Charlie
Evil Shaman with LUK capstone (team uses less MP), also take the class weapon
skip protect up and transshape
most importantly learn demon breath asap then anti-magic

Kevin
Dervish with VIT capstone (draw aggro)
skip Anti-Magic (shaman has that) and Half Vanish, so has the 3 missing debuffs, energy ball, analyse and moon saber
go for auto-debuff set bonus

enjoy your crippled enemy team - all buffs on auto, all debuffs except mind down on auto, 2x all stat downs beyond that. for proper mind down you have shaman with demon breath.

Taking the party from what I planned to use but update slightly let's see if I do it right:

Swordmaster LUK capstone (party crit resistance)
Miss Power Up, Moon Saber
Sabers, Energy Ball, Analyse
Crit build with his final weapon switching in between with another crit weapon

Ninja Master of course with LUK capstone for crit resistance and damage
Miss Thunder Saber, Analyse
Possibly crit build as well

Vanadise VIT capstone
Ditch Holy Ball (or Speed Up but you will have only Duran self Speed Up), Thunder Saber
Buffs, Heal
Tank/Healer build, that auto-buff armor seems really nice to have for Lise so might plan ahead for that.

I assume Lise's INT capstone can allow her to equip cursed equipment beyond level 60 correct?

Well sharing my plan for my first 2.0 playthrough, still no set in stone (especially in regard to Bishop) :

Duran - Duelist (Main character) :

Spell learned :

1-Diamond Saber
2-Thunder Saber
3-Dark Saber
4-Ice Saber (20 STR)
5-Mind Down (22 STR)
6-Anti-Magic (25 STR)
7-Flame Saber (16 INT)
8-Transshape^ (19 INT)
9-Aura Wave (22 INT)
10-Life Booster (18 VIT)

Stats Plan :
1-STR up to 22
2-INT up to 22
3-VIT up to 18
4-AGL up to 24
5-STR up to 25

10/10 Spell at LV62 Invest VIT and PIE to 20 afterward expected LV at the end of objective : 71

AGL Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Weapon : CQC Tech/TP Gain Up
Armor : Undecided
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Ring 1 : Trials Skill (CURSE)
Ring 2 : Mistscreen Charm

Hawk - Nightblade :

Spell learned :

1-Shuriken
2-Earth Jutsu 
3-Thunder Jutsu 
4-Water Jutsu
5-Fire Jutsu
6-Poison Breath
7-Blow Needles
8-Black Rain
9-Fire Breath
10-Deadly Weapon

Stat Plan :
-INT up to 21
-AGL up to 23

10/10 spell at LV49 then VIT, PIE and LCK to 20 LV at the objective : 63

AGL Capstone : +40% Counter Damage

Weapon : Counter UP
Armor : Undecided
Helm : Attack UP
Ring 1 : Break Counter
Ring 2 : Meta Leaf Coat

Carlie - Bishop :

Spell learned : 

1-Diamond Saber
2-Heal Light *
3-Tinkle Rain *
4-Magic Shield (20 AGL)
5-Thunder Saber *
6-Power Up * (16 STR)
7-Saint Beam
8-Saint Saber (22 PIE)
9-Flame Saber * (17 LCK)
10-Resistance

Stat Plan :
-AGL up to 20
-STR up to 16
-PIE up to 22
-LCK up to 23 (LV58)
-VIT up to 20

LUCK Capstone

10/10 Spell at LV52, LV at the objective : 64 

Weapon : Heal Up
Armor : MP Regen
Helm : Quick Cast
Ring 1 : Heal Up
Ring 2 : Spell : Resist (CURSE)

3 hours ago, smileless said:

I assume Lise's INT capstone can allow her to equip cursed equipment beyond level 60 correct?

nope, that is one of the few restrictions that still apply.
other being that you shouldn't equip a helm in a ring slot.

After thinking for teams, I wanted a team with buffs, debuffs, sabers, some elemental coverage, and critical hits. I'll have Vanadis for buffs and healing, Ninja Master for debuffs, jutsus, critical hits and counters, and either Swordmaster or Bishop as the saber user. Which one would you recommend? I was thinking of this kind of ability builds:

Character 1: Vanadis:
Protect Up, Speed Up
Fire Saber (skip Power Up)
Freya, Tinkle Rain, Heal Light
Body Change, Thunderstorm, Mind Up
Holy Ball (skip Thunder Saber)
VIT Capstone for enemies spawning with a lower attack

Character 2: Ninja Master:
Sleep Flower, Thunder Jutsu
Shuriken, Earth Jutsu
Water Jutsu, Thunder Saber
Fire Jutsu, Poison Bubble*
Ice Saber** (skip Transshape)
Crescent, Analyze
AGL Capstone for global +40% counter damage.
*: skip if the 3rd party member is Bishop
**: skip if the 3rd party member is Swordmaster

Character 3: Bishop:
Heal Light, Tinkle Rain, Magic Shield
Saint Beam, Saint Saber (skip Exorcise)
Thunder Saber, Power Up, Diamond Saber
Fire Saber, Energy Ball (skip Ice Saber)
STR Capstone for level 2/3 techs inflicting Leaf Coat.

OR Character 3: Swordmaster:
Teach Regenerate early in the game
Ice Saber, Dark Saber, Energy Ball
Thunder Saber, Analyze, Saint Saber
Leaf Saber, Diamond Saber, Power Up
(Skip Speed Up, Fire Saber and Moon Saber)
VIT Capstone for HP Regen during MP Regen ticks. I'd have chosen AGL Capstone for increased physical boost for sabers, but it's not possible if you want to skip all AGL skills.

EDIT: Variations of the above party:
A) Lise as Star Lancer, Hawk as Ninja Master, Carlie as Bishop. Star Lancer learns everything except Saint Saber and Power Up. Bishop learns everything except Energy Ball and Ice Saber (which are learned by Star Lancer and Ninja Master, respectively), including Saint Saber and Power Up. Basically the same as the team of Vanadis, Ninja Master and Bishop, except with less healing, replaced by Aura Wave and Dark Saber.
B) Lise as Star Lancer, Hawk as Ninja Master, Carlie as Sage. Star Lancer learns everything except Fireball and Mind Up. Sage learns everything except Ice Saber and Fire saber (Ice Saber is learned by Ninja Master, though), including Mind Up. Quite similar to the above variation, except with less fire coverage, replaced by more Dark coverage (Dark Saber powers up Dark Force).

You could take Swordmaster with AGL capstone, skip Moon Saber and Fire Saber, meaning 20 AGL at Lv60 and every other stat 19 or below
Lv38 -> 60 gives 22 points
you start with 18/16/17/14/13/13
to 19/20/19/19/19/19 requires 24 points, workable.

Great discovery! That is so hilarious that it would actually be interesting to try it out. With the setup, Swordmaster will end up with a self-only Speed Up, which will be useless, especially when Lise will likely get the auto-buff armor. I could still get Regenerate by teaching it to Hawk, skipping Analyze (Swordmaster already has it, so not a big deal). Another likely scenario is that I'll give Duran the LUK Capstone for party-wide crit resistance.

I've now decided that I want to use Lise, Hawk and Duran on my next playthrough. I haven't decided on the main character yet, though. What kind of class and ability builds would you recommend for them on a) Duran's quest, b) Lise/Hawk's quest?

16 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

I've now decided that I want to use Lise, Hawk and Duran on my next playthrough. I haven't decided on the main character yet, though. What kind of class and ability builds would you recommend for them on a) Duran's quest, b) Lise/Hawk's quest?

You could scroll up for a suggestion I had in mind with this team. Another variant:

Hawk (Main):

Ninja Master you could go with STR capstone so enemies spawn with less evade - good for Duelist to miss less this way, now TP being a lot more important to have with items also good for item usage.

Miss Transshape and Analyse, or Crescent and Analyse. 

Duran:

Duelist with STR Capstone. Or go with INT capstone if you give him cursed equipments.

Miss Protect Down, Leaf Saber

Lise:

Vanadise with AGL capstone (weapon cooldown) or with PIE capstone (Heal Light gives +1 TP)

Miss Holy Ball and Thunder Saber

Auto Buff Armor.

Another one:

Duran (Main)

Lord with LUK capstone (crit resistance for party) or PIE (+10 max MP)

Miss Energy Ball, Speed Down

Heals, has two saber spells

His final weapon works well in combo with Fenrir Knight's final weapon for HP/MP restore

Could make use of Auto Buff Armor, he got protect up, power up, speed up.

Hawk:

Wanderer with AGI Capstone (Counter dmg up for the entire party good for Lise's final Weapon), or STR capstone

Miss Sleep Flower, Body Change

Magic Shield, Anti-Magic, Aura Wave, and his final weapon makes Half Vanish better

Lise:

Fenrir Knight with AGI capstone (weapon cooldown)

Miss Transshape/Poison Bubble (Wanderer got both anyway)

Got debuffs, Leaf/Moon Saber on top of her final weapon to restore MP/HP with Counters, Counters are also open through Lord's final weapon.

You could give her an auto debuff set she got all debuffs, and you will have one more ring slot for an other purpose.

Lol that was a lot to think through, hopefully no mistakes.

IIRC according to the docs Auto-Debuff doesn't work with Hawk Jutsus.

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

IIRC according to the docs Auto-Debuff doesn't work with Hawk Jutsus.

Forgot to double check that. Good to know. It also makes sense thinking about it. I edited that out on my previous post just in case.

10 hours ago, smileless said:

Hawk (Main):

Ninja Master you could go with STR capstone so enemies spawn with less evade - good for Duelist to miss less this way, now TP being a lot more important to have with items also good for item usage.

Miss Transshape and Analyse, or Crescent and Analyse. 

 

Duran:

Duelist with STR Capstone. Or go with INT capstone if you give him cursed equipments.

Miss Protect Down, Leaf Saber

 

Lise:

Vanadise with AGL capstone (weapon cooldown) or with PIE capstone (Heal Light gives +1 TP)

Miss Holy Ball and Thunder Saber

Auto Buff Armor.

Alternativly you can give Duelist the Trial Skill Ring which disable Crit entirely for him (he take no Crit and can't Crit himself) but also disable Misses from Accuracy (meaning if a Miss happen it will be for other reason than Accuracy) so with this ring unless you aim at these stat's Capstones you can ignore AGL and LCK for the most part. Hawk's PIE capstone could be good with Duelist since his Saber spell are ST Only, cast them on Hawk then use a LV2/3 Tech to spread it to everyone.

10 hours ago, smileless said:

 

Lise:

Fenrir Knight with AGI capstone (weapon cooldown)

Miss Transshape/Poison Bubble (Wanderer got both anyway)

Got debuffs, Leaf/Moon Saber on top of her final weapon to restore MP/HP with Counters, Counters are also open through Lord's final weapon.

You could give her an auto debuff set she got all debuffs, and you will have one more ring slot for an other purpose.

Actually no Auto-Debuff require both ring slot to be taken by eiter Meta Sudden or Magic Up so no more Ring Slot open if you go for Auto-Debuff set, the Bloody Hunter set could be a good idea tough since you aim at landing Counter with Fenrir Knight you'll take the damage which this set would allow to recover HP.

9 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Alternativly you can give Duelist the Trial Skill Ring which disable Crit entirely for him (he take no Crit and can't Crit himself) but also disable Misses from Accuracy (meaning if a Miss happen it will be for other reason than Accuracy) so with this ring unless you aim at these stat's Capstones you can ignore AGL and LCK for the most part. Hawk's PIE capstone could be good with Duelist since his Saber spell are ST Only, cast them on Hawk then use a LV2/3 Tech to spread it to everyone.

Yeah that seems like a good idea too. Duelist main forte is his techs with his final weapon might as well be better off with this set.

9 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Actually no Auto-Debuff require both ring slot to be taken by eiter Meta Sudden or Magic Up so no more Ring Slot open if you go for Auto-Debuff set, the Bloody Hunter set could be a good idea tough since you aim at landing Counter with Fenrir Knight you'll take the damage which this set would allow to recover HP.

Really is that mentioned anywhere in a document, just curious.

Maybe you might need both of those rings but not the same ring occupying two slots?

But you are right, Bloody Hunter set might be better for Fenrir Knight actually.

On 22/12/2020 at 7:20 PM, Nesouk said:

Well sharing my plan for my first 2.0 playthrough, still no set in stone (especially in regard to Bishop) :

Duran - Duelist (Main character) :

Spell learned :

1-Diamond Saber
2-Thunder Saber
3-Dark Saber
4-Ice Saber (20 STR)
5-Mind Down (22 STR)
6-Anti-Magic (25 STR)
7-Flame Saber (16 INT)
8-Transshape^ (19 INT)
9-Aura Wave (22 INT)
10-Life Booster (18 VIT)

Stats Plan :
1-STR up to 22
2-INT up to 22
3-VIT up to 18
4-AGL up to 24
5-STR up to 25

10/10 Spell at LV62 Invest VIT and PIE to 20 afterward expected LV at the end of objective : 71

AGL Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Weapon : CQC Tech/TP Gain Up
Armor : Undecided
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Ring 1 : Trials Skill (CURSE)
Ring 2 : Mistscreen Charm

Hawk - Nightblade :

Spell learned :

1-Shuriken
2-Earth Jutsu 
3-Thunder Jutsu 
4-Water Jutsu
5-Fire Jutsu
6-Poison Breath
7-Blow Needles
8-Black Rain
9-Fire Breath
10-Deadly Weapon

Stat Plan :
-INT up to 21
-AGL up to 23

10/10 spell at LV49 then VIT, PIE and LCK to 20 LV at the objective : 63

AGL Capstone : +40% Counter Damage

Weapon : Counter UP
Armor : Undecided
Helm : Attack UP
Ring 1 : Break Counter
Ring 2 : Meta Leaf Coat

Carlie - Bishop :

Spell learned : 

1-Diamond Saber
2-Heal Light *
3-Tinkle Rain *
4-Magic Shield (20 AGL)
5-Thunder Saber *
6-Power Up * (16 STR)
7-Saint Beam
8-Saint Saber (22 PIE)
9-Flame Saber * (17 LCK)
10-Resistance

Stat Plan :
-AGL up to 20
-STR up to 16
-PIE up to 22
-LCK up to 23 (LV58)
-VIT up to 20

LUCK Capstone

10/10 Spell at LV52, LV at the objective : 64 

Weapon : Heal Up
Armor : MP Regen
Helm : Quick Cast
Ring 1 : Heal Up
Ring 2 : Spell : Resist (CURSE)

Well decide to change things a bit :

-Duelist decide to skip the AGL capstone, getting Antimagic and Aura Wave and AGL capstone is to much work on Hard, especially since you need Defensive stats fast.

So I gave up on it and got the STR Capstone instead, don't know if that 15 p.def/m.def reduction will make a real difference. I'm skipping AGL and LCK with Trials Skill.

-Nightblade : Decide to put the Spell Dodge armor on him, since I'm gonna raise his AGL to increase counter and spell damage (Black Rain actually hit quite hard on weakness), he should have a good Evasion, so for bosses (where Magic Spell is generally the most current source of boss damage) I'll put an Evasion build, just keep the Break Counter to reduce defense.

-Bishop : I wanted at first give the Auto-Buff armore, but it kinda sucks for Carlie, cause her HP become so low that she honnestly become hard stay alive. Instead I opted for the Constant Reg. Helm, and so far I'm not disappointed :

This helm + MP Regen Up armor + Magic Shield's increase MP rate + Her LCK capstone reduce MP cost by 20% and she can basically cast a spell and recover all the MP she used for said while casting a new one.

Also her LCK capstone reduce MP cost for everyone is really helpful, like Duelist's Aura Wave cost is reduce to 13 with Magic Shield he has 26 MP so he can use it twice in a row for a full tech bar right away.

1 hour ago, smileless said:

Maybe you might need both of those rings but not the same ring occupying two slots?

I ask Prae on discord sometime ago to get a set you need both Ring slot to be occupy by one of the Rings, which, if I understand correctly, means you can get a set by either equipping the same ring on both slots or each of the 2 rings.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

I ask Prae on discord sometime ago to get a set you need both Ring slot to be occupy by one of the Rings, which, if I understand correctly, means you can get a set by either equipping the same ring on both slots or each of the 2 rings.

Or you could check the README:
 

Quote

 

===Set Bonuses===

Equipping certain combinations of body armors, helms and accessoires can grant special set bonuses.
All 4 non-weapon slots must be filled with a compatible item.
Using the same accessoire in both slots is allowed.

 

Ok that explains it. Knew I would miss something important out.

On 12/29/2020 at 1:20 PM, smileless said:

You could scroll up for a suggestion I had in mind with this team. Another variant:

Hawk (Main):

Ninja Master you could go with STR capstone so enemies spawn with less evade - good for Duelist to miss less this way, now TP being a lot more important to have with items also good for item usage.

Miss Transshape and Analyse, or Crescent and Analyse. 

 

Duran:

Duelist with STR Capstone. Or go with INT capstone if you give him cursed equipments.

Miss Protect Down, Leaf Saber

 

Lise:

Vanadise with AGL capstone (weapon cooldown) or with PIE capstone (Heal Light gives +1 TP)

Miss Holy Ball and Thunder Saber

Auto Buff Armor.

 

Another one:

Duran (Main)

Lord with LUK capstone (crit resistance for party) or PIE (+10 max MP)

Miss Energy Ball, Speed Down

Heals, has two saber spells

His final weapon works well in combo with Fenrir Knight's final weapon for HP/MP restore

Could make use of Auto Buff Armor, he got protect up, power up, speed up.

 

Hawk:

Wanderer with AGI Capstone (Counter dmg up for the entire party good for Lise's final Weapon), or STR capstone

Miss Sleep Flower, Body Change

Magic Shield, Anti-Magic, Aura Wave, and his final weapon makes Half Vanish better

 

Lise:

Fenrir Knight with AGI capstone (weapon cooldown)

Miss Transshape/Poison Bubble (Wanderer got both anyway)

Got debuffs, Leaf/Moon Saber on top of her final weapon to restore MP/HP with Counters, Counters are also open through Lord's final weapon.

You could give her an auto debuff set she got all debuffs, and you will have one more ring slot for an other purpose.

 

Lol that was a lot to think through, hopefully no mistakes.

Thanks for the quest-based variants. For Hawk/Lise's quest, I think I'll go with your original suggestion of Vanadis, Ninja Master and Swordmaster, since that way, you'll get almost all of the Sabers, and a combination of Saint Saber + Holy Ball. For Duran's quest, a group of Lord, Wanderer and Fenrir Knight sounds good for plenty of survivability, and counter builds sound useful against the story-based end bosses.

Hi everyone! I just wanted to stop by and say it's good to see you all playing 2.0 in 2021; I'm looking forward to getting back into this and sharing new team build ideas based on all the new class builds/mechanics! I'm hoping to dive back in this weekend!

Awesome to see a general aggro weapon; thank you, Praetarius!

Well my Duelist, Nightblade, Bishop is going well for now, so I'm starting to think of my next run, I want to get the 3 other character so Kevin, Angela and Lise scratching my head for a team this three so far I'm thinking of this party :

-Kevin as Dervish going for a Crit Build with the AGL capstone, would aim at getting Energy Ball, Analyse, Power Up, Protect Down, Speed Down and skipping Anti-Magic and Half Vanish (would get Fire Breath and Power Down). Maybe going with the Bloody Hunter set with Crit Up and Silence Res ring, Crit Up helm and Attack Up armor with either Silence or Poison weapon (think Silence would be better). Or getting the Petrify Weapon ring with Crit By TP weapon.

-Angela as Archmage going for either the AGL or INT capstone, skipping Rainbow Dust and Aura Wave getting Power Down, Mind Down and Anti-Magic. Outside of getting her Final Weapon not set on what to with her equipment.

-Lise as Vanadis going for LUCK Capstone, skipping Flame Saber and Power Up (maybe Thunder Saber and teach her the Regeneration Spell), she'll need the Multi Upgrade, maybe giving her the Auto-Buff armor but I fear her HP might end up being to low so maybe the MP Regen Plus armor will be better.

Hi everyone!

After a bit of a break, I finally got a chance to start up on 2.021 over the past couple of weeks. So far, I've mostly been messing around with a few different teams through the early part of the game to get used to the new mechanics. A few observations/questions:

1) The big change from pre-2.0 is most certainly the dependence of items on TP. I love this change, but it can be tough for boss fights when you'd like to reserve TP to keep down hate with counters. The obvious ways to compensate seem to be HP-rasping equipment and increased reliance on MP healing; it's nice to have a few of these options available early in the game. I'm curious about how players are finding the cursed ring that teaches Regeneration - these are awesome in the early game, but are they indispensable? Are players preferring instead to hold out for Heal Light to preserve accessory/spell slots?

2) It's great to see the Chibikko bug fixed! However, a new annoying bug seems to depleting the number of items in my item ring at unpredictable times when they are above a certain number - 10 or 15? They usually drop to 5 or so. I've tried to pinpoint the trigger, but haven't had much luck - sometimes when I notice it, I will restart from a prior save point, perform the same actions, save again, and the bug will not reoccur. I seem to notice it after I save or move items between my item ring and storage, but this could just be due to my gameplay style. Has anyone figured out a sure way to avoid this?

3) Jewel Eater is still a monster, and it seems like every time I fight him I come away with a different idea about the relative importance of MDef and PDef. For the record, does anyone know for certain which Def each of his attacks hit against?

4) I haven't made it even halfway to Dolan, but seeing as this is potentially the most difficult fight of the game, especially with decreased access to items - are there any special considerations players are taking into account to prepare themselves in terms of party planning or party-level timing? I'm thinking a dedicated MP healer might be absolutely necessary (whereas before it was possible to get away with items), but I'm wondering if he/she can get away with Regeneration vs. Heal Light. I'm also curious about whether people are fighting Dolan early or holding out for the final weapons and capstones.

5) After trying a few different teams in the early game, I'm interested in running a SPI-weapon Wanderer with Regeneration ring and liberal use of the pseudo-saber accessories for my first game. Am I correct to assume that these accessories work with his capstone to propagate sabers to teammates? I haven't decided on teammates, but I'm drawn towards characters who could take advantage of the Regeneration ring without sacrificing too much such as Necromancer for the enemy-cast Dark Saber-resist and magic damage flexibility and/or an high INT/SPI Lise build.

2) instead of asking how to avoid it, tell me how to reproduce it so I can fix it - I failed so far to get it but others do get it >.>

3) I think for him it is purely: attacks that darken the screen = m.def, rest p.def

5) the pseudo saber rings should work with the capstone, yes

53 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

2) instead of asking how to avoid it, tell me how to reproduce it so I can fix it - I failed so far to get it but others do get it >.>

Absolutely; I will keep a close eye on this. My best guesses so far are purchasing, moving items in or out of storage, an effect that manifests on a save, or some combination of the above, so I'll pay special attention to these. I've noticed no other bugs so far.

1) Well so far in my only run I opted for not taking the Regeneration ring, so to be fair I don't know how it performs early game, without it on boss fight you definitly want to save your TP and get the HP Drain ring ASAP to stand a chance, my issue is according to the Doc unlike Heal Light, Regeneration can't be made MT as such I fear you might still need someone with Heal Light in the team to keep up with the bosses damage especially on Hard. Granted I don't know how the Regen Buff from the spells works, and admitadly if it stack with Sage's Final Weapon and HP Regeneration it might get some good results.
The good news is later in the game when you get access to TP increase gear and Aura Wave, the TP Cost on items become much more manageable, the early game is tough cause you have no way around it.

2) That bug had been bothering me through all my playthrough, and everytime it occurs I was never able to reproduce it despite being extra carefull and trying various method, the bug actually transforms some of the items you have in your ring into Round Drop or Puipui Grasses (never notice with any other items just these 2), when it happen you might sometime notice you have 2 slots of your ring filled with Round Drops or Puipui Grasses, at one point I decided to remove them from my Ring Menu and the bug didn't reoccur ever so at least you can avoid it that way, but you'll fucked if you don't have someone with Tinkle Rain in your team without Puipui Grasses unless you immune yourself to Statut Effects (which due to the TP cost for items and Spell casting not blocking them now have become much more dangerous, and by the way piece of advise buy Dream Res ring for your 3 characters for Tzenker trust me on this one).

3) I find his regular to be more dangerous so I opted for Physical Defense (keeping the Heal Up armor however as you don't want your Magic Defense to be to low either), one good thing to note is since he takes his time to enter the screen and make your character draw out their weapons, before they draw out there weapons you can use items for free so you can take advantage of this to buff your defenses with consummables.

4) I'm not gonna spoil it but basically Dolan's pattern completly change and is overall harder than before at the expense he can be killed faster, and as an heads up you need high HP to survive this fight, when I reached I ended up having to backtrack and buy the HP Regeneration ring to increase Hawk and Carlie's Max HP cause otherwise they couldn't survive, as a sidenote on Discord Prae told me that the Debuff Gard ring was suppose to include immunity to Max HP Down, it sadly doesn't work as intended if it was working you could certainly get this Ring for your characters and cast Life Booster on your team and this fight would be more manageable.
Also I got a glitch on this fight where after some time (random of course) Duran was taking about Double Damage from Howl and Graviton Press for no reasons (needless to say on Hard it make the fight near impossible to beat as Duran had no way to survive) and when Duran is dead the bug was expending to Hawk (and I assume it would have expend to Carlie afterward), I wasn't able to Pinpoint what was provoking that, I have my suspicions on a certain Cursed Armor but have no way to test it at the moment.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

1) according to the Doc unlike Heal Light, Regeneration can't be made MT

it should be (one/all) targetting by default

apart from healing it has the exact same effect as equipping the HP regen accessoire

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

when it happen you might sometime notice you have 2 slots of your ring filled with Round Drops or Puipui Grasses, at one point I decided to remove them from my Ring Menu and the bug didn't reoccur ever so at least you can avoid it that way

that is actually new info for me... are you sure that you played long enough to say for certain that this random bug seems to require either item in the inventory?

To be more precise it seems to require Round Drops in the item ring, I now remember I didn't report this to you because I started testing, and wanted some time playing before concluding, and I forgot about it when I decided to take a break. 

I'm not sure if I played long enough so this might require more testing, but I did about 4 God Beasts dungeons and the dungeons before Zable Fahr with no Round Drops in the Ring Menu (I had Puipui Grasses tough) and the glitch didn't occur a single time, where I had it almost 1 time per dungeon prior to removing the Round Drops.

IIRC you start with some free round drops at the beginning of the game right? The duplicate round drop could be from when you bought it/dropped from enemies, I think I remember that happening to me, just put them into storage, then put them into your ring menu.

I haven't figured out this item ring bug, but I'm paying close attention to it, i.e. checking it before every save. Hopefully something will reveal itself. I have, however, decided to move forward with my fantasy team of Hawk / Angela / Carlie (either Wanderer / Grand Divina / Necromancer or Dark Hawk / Dark Angela / Light Carlie), and I'm thinking about some of the new changes from pre-2.0. A few quick questions:

1. Does Orihalcon-enhanced Half Vanish damage cut in half mean maxHP/4 instead of maxHP/2 and maxBossHP/64 instead of maxBossHP/32? Has the 320/400 cap been changed?

2. Annihilator does Level 4 PIE damage. What is the max spell level now for all spells? (I'm thinking of Almighty Magic armor.)

3. Do the equipment set bonuses require both accessories or just one?

4. Does auto-debuff effect all enemies for single-target spells?

5. Does Angela's LUC capstone affect just her or everyone in the party?

9 hours ago, rpschamp said:

I haven't figured out this item ring bug, but I'm paying close attention to it, i.e. checking it before every save. Hopefully something will reveal itself. I have, however, decided to move forward with my fantasy team of Hawk / Angela / Carlie (either Wanderer / Grand Divina / Necromancer or Dark Hawk / Dark Angela / Light Carlie), and I'm thinking about some of the new changes from pre-2.0. A few quick questions:

1. Does Orihalcon-enhanced Half Vanish damage cut in half mean maxHP/4 instead of maxHP/2 and maxBossHP/64 instead of maxBossHP/32? Has the 320/400 cap been changed?

2. Annihilator does Level 4 PIE damage. What is the max spell level now for all spells? (I'm thinking of Almighty Magic armor.)

3. Do the equipment set bonuses require both accessories or just one?

4. Does auto-debuff effect all enemies for single-target spells?

5. Does Angela's LUC capstone affect just her or everyone in the party?

1. yes; still capped at 320

2. "cap" would be 10, though not possible to reach

3. readme:
All 4 non-weapon slots must be filled with a compatible item.
Using the same accessoire in both slots is allowed.

4. it affects all enemies when they are "spawned"

5. only her

Also IIRC Half Vanish cap at 360 on Luna Day now instead of 400 due to the bonus from the day system being reduce from +25% to +12.5%. 

On 4/22/2021 at 5:36 PM, praetarius5018 said:

2. "cap" would be 10, though not possible to reach

That's great to hear. As a follow-up question, does Almighty Magic armor's +1 spell level apply to Regeneration and Heal Light? (I know it says "damage" spells, but these spells have a level associated with them.)

Just saw the new release today; just in time for a new game. Thank you!

That is strictly for the damage spells only; healing magic has their own items.
If you want to boost both you can use "magic up" items.

Well since I'm now starting the third route might as well review the teams I played so far.

But first some general notes :

1- Statut Effect matter : Now that we can no longer block them by being in a casting stance, gear that protect against Statut Effect have become much more valuable, in fact unless you plan to use the new Ailment Res ring (which is curse), I advise to not equipped Cursed Armor and Cursed Helm until you defeat Mispolm (and of course defeat him early if you plan to do so), this way you can have both MindStatut Res helm and BodyStatut Res to be immune to all the statut he can throw at you. In general the most dangerous statut is Moogle, but thanks to last update only Lightgazer has an AoE that can inflict this statut, snowman also can't be guard (except Ailment Res) but this statut is mainly use by Fiegmund and almost nobody else.

2- Capstone on Hard : So to sum it up, you need defensive stat on Hard at one point or another and so I found that in general it's better to go for capstones of stats you are going to invest for spells for the class you choose (and generally they happened to go well with said class) or capstones of said defensive stats, just so you are free to spend points in the defensive stats (namely VIT and PIE and if you don't use the Trials Skill ring LCK).

3- Since I did the mistake, might as well alert anyone else, if you go for the Archdemon route unless you plan on learning the Resistance spell or equip the cursed Trials Element ring (both of which you can't do once past the LV61) do not equipped a Curse Helm and Curse Armor (I mean by that locking both slots), if you do so you'll have no way left for covering your weaknesses which might put you in big trouble for Archdemon's first form as his Antimagic will make your characters weak to every element if you have a weakness left.

4- With the rework on the Rage system, spell casting and Evasion Build feel much more worth it than they were in previous ring.

Ok the first team I played was the one I planned first :

Main - Duran as Duelist, his spell list was (in order I learned them) :

1-Diamond Saber
2-Thunder Saber
3-Dark Saber
4-Ice Saber 
5-Mind Down 
6-Anti-Magic 
7-Flame Saber 
8-Transshape^ 
9-Aura Wave
10-Life Booster

STR Capstone : enemies spawn with -15 p.def&m.def

Gear : Equipment vary from fight to fight, but for Duelist I was geared toward a Tech build so I used mostly his CQC Tech (LV2/3 Tech Up or Tech Gain Up until then), LV2/3 tech up and Tech Gain Up ring. For some fights tough I used the Meta Multi ring. I also give him the Trials Skill ring so that I didn't have to bother with AGL and LCK 

Originally I wanted to go for the AGL capstone, but this is one of the case where it's just to much work I would have to delay Anti-Magic (which require 25 STR), raise AGL up to 23 (so 7 LV) wait for LV60 to get the capstone (and not invest in VIT to not lock the last slot by Leaf Saber) and only then learn Anti-Magic and only then raise VIT and PIE, yeah to much work and to long until I can get some defenses so I ended up picking the STR capstone, not sure if that -15 defenses made a true difference at the end of the day tough.

Anyway Duelist was a beast once set outside of VIT and PIE I obviously focus on his STR and INT, INT is such a great stat for him it increase his LV2/3 Tech damage, increase Max MP and MP Regen and reduce his casttime. A bigger MP Pool allowed me to give him the Life Saver armor end game, this is a great armor for him to increase his survivability. Also let''s talk about Aura Wave which has become an even better spell than before, since Duelist doesn't have a lot of casting to do, thanks to Carlie's Magic Shield and LCK Capstone he can just cast 2 Aura Wave in the row to get his LV3 Tech ready, and with Aura Wave short cast time this is viable especially against a boss that go out of reach (looking at you Fiegmund) or move around a lot (looking at you Lightgazer). So main Damage Dealer with tanking ability and Mind Down, Anti Magic and Aura Wave for more utility an all around great party member.  

Teammate 1 - Hawk as Nightblade, his spell list was :

1-Shuriken
2-Earth Jutsu 
3-Thunder Jutsu 
4-Water Jutsu
5-Fire Jutsu
6-Poison Breath
7-Blow Needles
8-Fire Breath
9-Deadly Weapon
10-Silver Dart

AGL Capstone : +40% counter damage (party)

I'm a sucker for Counter Build with Hawk, tough in retrospect his PIE capstone would have a better synergy with Duelist as Duelist only have ST Saber spell, also would probably swap Silver Dart by Black Rain, I wanted Silver Dart for the potential pressure upgrade but in the end it wasn't that usefull. In any case Nightblade was my main debuffer and Counter base character with Break Counter to reduce ennemies defense, I also ended up putting him the Spell Dodge armor with an Evasion Build which works quite well. Also Poison and Silence are usefull statut effect, I especially learn to appreciate Poison a lot more, especially when using the area to my advantage, nothing funnier but stucking a mob with an obstacle between him and you, poisonned him and just wait for him to die (particulary usefull as a safe to deal against Knight type ennemies). I focused main on AGL and the defensive stats.

Teammate 2 - Carlie as Bishop, her spell list was :

1-Diamond Saber
2-Heal Light *
3-Tinkle Rain *
4-Magic Shield 
5-Thunder Saber *
6-Power Up * 
7-Saint Beam
8-Saint Saber 
9-Flame Saber * 
10-Resistance

LCK Capstone : spells cost 20% MP less, min 1 (party); does not change displayed cost

Noticeable gear :
-Constant Regen helm (Curse)
-MP Regen Plus
-Resistance Ring (Curse)

Ladies and gentleman I present to you the ultimate heal bot ^^. Seriously Magic Shield + LCK Capstone + Constant Regen + MP Regen Plus Carlie will just never run out of MP and can pretty much spam Heal Light non stop once she is done buffing, her LCK capstone is just amazing that 20% MP reduction for the all party is crazy usefull (this is what allow the 2 Aura Wave back to back with Duelist for instance), and I never stress out enough how good Magic Shield is for MP management and buffing. Power Up comes up as a nice bonus and Saint Saber which Duelist lack, the new resistance spell is really usefull for covering weaknesses. This is just an amazing support character.

Overall this was a great team, the weakness of this team however is that it lacked Magic Damage, having only Saint Beam (Hawk's spell hit against P.Def so he isn't gonna do great against ennemies with high P.def), which was an issue particularly for Land Umber and Zable Fahr's right head.

My second team for Archdemon route was :

Main - Lise as Vanadis, spell list :

1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Regeneration
4-Body Change 
5-Thunder Storm 
6-Mind Up 
7-Freya 
8-Tinkle Rain 
9-Holy Ball 
10-Thunder Saber

LCK capstone : party takes 1/8 less damage from spells

Giving her the Regeneration Ring to have an healing spell as soon as Maia. I also give her the Constant Reg helm and Auto-Buff armor (both are curse, yeah this was a mistake for Archdemon), I then focus on her VIT, INT, PIE and LCK for a good support with good survability, mainly use the Heal Up weapon, the second ring was for either Meta Multi, another Heal Up or Statut Protection. 

Overall she was my buffer and healer, teaching the Regeneration spell was a good way to not wait for Heal Light a good short term option, tough Regeneration was lacking a bit toward the mid game but it eventually picked up again later. Auto Buff is pretty usefull with Vanadis as she has good base HP and only the ST version of buffs, as a side bonus having to invest in INT and PIE for her healing capability and reduce cast time makes her a good spell damage dealer with Thunderstorm and especially Holy Ball in the late game. Also Body Change has it's use against some obnoxious ennemies (like Cockabird or Crawler). Her LCK capstone is also very usefull for survive.

Teammate 1 - Kevin as Dervish, spell list :

1-Fire Breath 
2-Power Down 
3-Antimagic 
4-Poison Breath 
5-Energy Ball 
6-Power Up 
7-Speed Down 
8-Rockfall 
9-Analyse 
10-Moon Saber 

AGL Capstone : when a weapon attack can inflict a status effect (even if immune) subtract another 30 HP or 40 HP on critical

AGL capstone was glitch originally it was supposed to add the damage only at a rate of the chance to land statut effect, turns out it add the damage on every hit, which was pretty insane before the nerf as it was adding 100 Damage to all regular hit and 134 to Critical, so Prae keep it permanent but nerf the damage. The AGL capstone is a good way for Kevin to guaranteed damage, as the damage add by it is completly fix, perfect for ennemies with high physical defense.

Anyway run him with a Crit Build focusing on VIT, PIE and LCK (his AGL was to 25 just for the spell which was enough for the most part), raise his STR a little too, originally I was planning to use the Petrify Ring but while it was good for mobs it wasn't great for boss fight due to the damage being halved so I took the Poison Ring instead, the fix damage + Crit + Dervish's ehance wolf form makes him does good damage even without heavy STR investment. With Crit by TP, Crit Up helm, Crit Up ring, Energy Ball and Detect his crit rate is quite high.

So main physical damage dealer who can buff himself, also throw Antimagic if needed and debuff.

Teammate 2 - Angela as Archmage, spell list :

1-Saint Beam* 
2-Dark Force* 
3-Mind Down 
4-Earthquake* 
5-Thunderstorm* 
6-Mega Splash* 
7-Explode* 
8-Body Change
9-Aura Wave 
10-Power Down 

AGL Capstone : party casts 20% faster

Main magic damage dealer, and debuff at the beginning of battle, Aura Wave has some use if I need to use item fast. With her Final Weapon Angela deals really high damage whenever she has a weakness to exploit, she has the MP to back it up and her AGL capstone is really nice for casting fast. I mainly try to maximize her magic damage output, didn't pout any Curse gear on her, sometime use the Meta Multi ring for MT Power Down and Mind Down.

Overall this team was more on the casting side, and honnestly I have a much easier time with mob fight with this team than the previous one, boss were overall tougher however, with the noticeable exception of Land Umber which thanks to Lise having Thunder Saber and both Lise and Angela having Thunderstorm was noticeably easier as well as Zable Fahr thanks to both girl having Holy Spell.

9 hours ago, Nesouk said:

With the rework on the Rage system, spell casting and Evasion Build feel much more worth it than they were in previous ring.

care to elaborate on this?
I don't see the immediate connection

5 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

care to elaborate on this?
I don't see the immediate connection

Well since in previous version, since the way it works was ennemies use a spell/tech immediatly, there was more unavoidable attack throw at you, and spellcasting was triggering such attack.

Most extreme exemple would be Bil and Ben, they were countering with Shadow Dive pretty much every spells they receive, and due to how trigger happy they could be with Shadow Dive an Evasion Build wasn't working on them.

Other bosses like that had the same issue regarding Evasion Build, tough for Spellcasting Bil and Ben were the worst.

On 4/30/2021 at 2:49 AM, Nesouk said:

Well since I'm now starting the third route might as well review the teams I played so far.

Great review, Nesouk. I would like to add that in general that the game feels very different with limited item use; at least in the beginning of the game, you have to be much more careful with how you spend your tech points, especially during boss battles. Now there are two turn-based action components: spell actions and tech actions, the second of which is only accessible by not casting spells. This balance becomes important for groups that spend more time casting, especially since it becomes important to invest tech points in counters to keep the enemy's rage down. I don't know whether this dynamic lasts into the late game when spells cast faster and tech points come more easily, but at least in the beginning the game feels much more strategic.

On 4/30/2021 at 2:49 AM, Nesouk said:

4- With the rework on the Rage system, spell casting and Evasion Build feel much more worth it than they were in previous ring.

For this reason, and for the reason that I miss her from my Ninja Master/Dervish/Sage run (pre-2.0 when Hawk and Kevin were killing it with tech points and Yellow Damage Heal weapons), I am building my first run around Angela. I'm planning to run Ninja Master and Bishop with her 1) to try a spell damage-oriented team that can pick up physical damage by the end game and 2) to take advantage of a saber-resist strategy through Fire or Earth. Ninja Master/Bishop give access to all of the debuffs and most of the buffs, provide a dedicated healer and saber-resist caster, and make a nice crit team with Analyze and Energy Ball, especially since the LUK capstones look pretty awesome for everyone: Hawk would get crit damage on a crit-oriented team, Bishop would reduce spell cost for the team, and Angela could use any weapon with her LUK stat. Hawk would be the only teammate to go for STR here since Angela and Carlie can pick up physical damage with their LUK capstone and final weapon.

The choice of Angela seems more complicated, though, as there are a couple of interesting options:

- Magus brings Dark Force/Curse Ring that compliments Bishop's skill set and unpins me from Thorns Armor to equip Almighty Magic Armor, fun things with Poison Bubble/Leaf Coat Ring/Explode/Rainbow Dust, and both Power Up and Mind Up (MT with MT Ring). The other major benefit is that no one would require an elemental resistance ring for saber-resist. Angela's AGI, INT, and LUK capstones all look good here, and I may be able to work it to give myself more of a choice as I approach Level 60. If I want all the sabers, though, Ninja Master would have to go for his PIE capstone, which would leave little room on him for Regeneration or Resistance, and Bishop would have to compensate.

- Grand Divina with high INT, Constant Regeneration helm, MP Regeneration armor, Magic Shield, and Carlie's LUK capstone (does this round up or down for MP cost?), due to her low cast times, low spell costs, and the MP regeneration during spell animation offered by the helm, should be able to cast pretty close to constantly. And with the rework of the Rage system, this strategy feels a lot safer. This would negate any need for Poison Bubble, and Grand Divina would still get access to Curse through Evil Gate. Also, since Angela could cover the remaining Saber spells with her final weapon when necessary, Hawk would leave off his PIE capstone for certain and he and Carlie could share the accessory burden of Regeneration and/or Resistance. This would leave the team a bit physically stronger, and Angela could go for her LUK capstone to help out when elemental spell damage is not an option.

At opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of cast times and spell power, there may be quite a gulf between how these teams actually play out. But this Constant Regeneration helm seems so interesting, and on the face of it Grand Divina looks to benefit more. Plus, Light Angela is a killer between the first and second class changes and gets my favorite tech in the game.

I will update as I make progress through my playthrough.

Carlie's LUK capstone rounds up the MP cost for instance Aura Wave cost 16 with her capstone 16 x 0.8 = 12.8, but the cost is 13.

Another capstone that looks interesting with Gran Divina is the VIT capstone, the 50HP recovery may look small but considering how fast she can cast the Tier 1 elemental spell this could be a good way to recover HP while keeping the damage going on. Another thing I didn't use that much is the Pressure upgrade now that it affect the Revenge heal, it's potentially a very interesting upgrade especially on bosses and both Gran Divina and Bishop have it. 

For physical you could also pick Magus and equipped the Trials Buff armor to double the effect of her Power Up. You could also go for the INT capstone for Hawk and equipped him with weapon that deal statut effect, that would add 30 damage to all his hit and 40 to his Critical, would be nice with his Crit Build as Ninja Master.

3 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Great review, Nesouk. I would like to add that in general that the game feels very different with limited item use; at least in the beginning of the game, you have to be much more careful with how you spend your tech points, especially during boss battles. Now there are two turn-based action components: spell actions and tech actions, the second of which is only accessible by not casting spells. This balance becomes important for groups that spend more time casting, especially since it becomes important to invest tech points in counters to keep the enemy's rage down. I don't know whether this dynamic lasts into the late game when spells cast faster and tech points come more easily, but at least in the beginning the game feels much more strategic.

Actually there is way to get TP with spells, the TP by cast accessories grant you 2TP per cast, and you can combine the Constant Reg helm with the TP Regeneration ring to proggressivly get TP while you are casting, there is also the Magitec weapon which basically change you LV2/3 tech into spells.
Admitadly once you can generate TP faster, this become less true a character with Tech especially can get back up to 4TP per hit enough to use an item, and when you have Aura Wave you can use it to instantly throw an items (tough the spell is quite expensive). It still strategic in the sense of items aren't free anymore so you can't spam them back to back, so your dedicated Tech user may have to save his TP if an item is needed. Same for the Counter build (except may when your name is Lise and you are a Fenrir Knight ^^). In any case 2.0 definitly made me less trigger happy with my item.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Another capstone that looks interesting with Gran Divina is the VIT capstone, the 50HP recovery may look small but considering how fast she can cast the Tier 1 elemental spell this could be a good way to recover HP while keeping the damage going on. Another thing I didn't use that much is the Pressure upgrade now that it affect the Revenge heal, it's potentially a very interesting upgrade especially on bosses and both Gran Divina and Bishop have it. 

Thanks, Nesouk, somehow I overlooked this VIT capstone. You're right, it looks great with Grand Divina. She was my favorite class from pre-2.0, and now there are a bunch of new mechanics to try, so I think I will end up going with her.

Can there be such a thing as too much healing? Vanadis (saber-resist through Wind resistance) might be an interesting alternative for Bishop for another good final weapon synergy with Grand Divina, but her stat/spell/accessory build looks awkward; plus, no Magic Shield for Grand Divina's MP Regeneration.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

For physical you could also pick Magus and equipped the Trials Buff armor to double the effect of her Power Up

to avoid confusion - it only affects the one that has the armor, not the the one power up gets cast at.
e.g. you want it on your physical attackers, not on your buffer

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

In any case 2.0 definitly made me less trigger happy with my item.

I count that as a win, seeing how especially in vanilla certain items replaced entire characters >.>
who needed heal light when you can throw 20 poto oils, 20 seeds of various kinds, etc. with similar gear to buff the heal potency while completely ignoring mp and cast time mechanics or even learning the spell at all.

8 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

to avoid confusion - it only affects the one that has the armor, not the the one power up gets cast at.
e.g. you want it on your physical attackers, not on your buffer

AH Thanks for the clarification, I thought it was strengthening the spell itself. So I guess this would be better for Duran or Kevin, also while in still on this armor does the 2x Power Up buff apply to Critical Hit or just normal hit (I suppose this include Light and Heavy attack).

3 hours ago, Nesouk said:

AH Thanks for the clarification, I thought it was strengthening the spell itself. So I guess this would be better for Duran or Kevin, also while in still on this armor does the 2x Power Up buff apply to Critical Hit or just normal hit (I suppose this include Light and Heavy attack).

To all of them.
It is already a 60% damage increase (1.25x -> 2x) having that party wide would be way over the top.

Guess I now understand why Swordmaster has a self Power Up as an option ^^

Alright did the third run and all 3 routes, so gonna review the last team I played :

Main : Carlie as Evil Shaman

Spell learned :

1-Resistance (Accessory)
2-Tinkle Rain
3-Holy Ball*
4-Unicorn Head
5-Machine Golem
6-Ghoul
7-Ghost Road
8-Demon Breath
9-Lunatic
10-Antimagic

LUK Capstone : spells cost 20% MP less, min 1 (party); does not change displayed cost.

I mainly use the Quick Cast helm and MP Regen Up armor, for bosses I was also using the Meta Pressure accessory and of course her Final Weapon. Advantage of Evil Shaman she learn all of her spell pretty quickly by LV48 she had all her spells, she is a debuffer in all sense of term, Debuff offense, Magic Offense and Defense, HP, healing you named it, and she can deal good damage having access to all element but Dark.

The obvious weakness is that in order to debuff, on a lot of bosses she need to apply Antimagic first mainly because of Demon Breath being 3 element at once.

Teammate 1 : Duran as Paladin

Spell learn :
1-Magic Shield
2-Saint Saber
3-Protect Up*
4-Holy Ball
5-Heal Light*
6-Exorcise
7-Diamond Missile
8-Sleep Flower
9-Antimagic
10-Tinkle Rain

PIE Capstone : +10 Max MP

Typical tank/healer, with 10 Max MP, Magic Shield, Constant Regen Helm he is very MP efficient, this huge pool of MP also allow to cast Exorcise more often which cost 17MP. Obviously Exorcise makes him great for Mirage Palace route who has 2 bosses that are undead (Gorva rematch and Dark Lich), against which he is guaranteed to hit 999, due to the last update happening mid playthrough, he lose some performance because I didn't invest in AGL at first. I think now with current version once he learn his spell the best way would be to focus on AGL, VIT, PIE and LUK to raise his spell damage and his survivability.

I also equip him with the Ailment Res accessory so he was immune to all statut effect, at the cost of increasing ennemy's LV by 2, it makes the ennemy hit a little harder, but gives the team more EXP overall (I finish this run at LV96 as oppose to my usual LV93).

3-Lise as Starlancer

Spell learn :

1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Airblast*
4-Fireball*
5-Mind Up*
6-Energy Ball
7-Ice Smash
8-Marduke
9-Aura Wave
10-Dark Saber

INT Capstone : can equip any weapon and armor (even class locked ones)

The main of INT capstone was to get access to a second character with Evil Shaman's Final Weapon to amplify it's debuff, it also had the conveniance to allow Lise to equip all of Duran's exclusive shield, the one that raise defense in particular, so she could work as the Tank if I need another accessory to Duran.

Originally I wanted to go physical, but I decided to make her a spell damage dealer, the tier 1 spell she has cast very fast, I combine this with TP By Cast allowing her to get TP back faster in case I need items or throw a Tech, and good elemental coverage, Marduke is a good summon for crowd control and Aura Wave a good way to recover TP. Outside she is the usual buffer.

So Overall a very caster heavy team, as a result fight focus where casting isn't that great (Bil and Ben, Lugar, Dolan) were pretty bad, also had a lot of trouble with Gildervine for some reason, however fight like Fiegmund and Xian Bhe were made very easy.

Having a character with Exorcise definitly make Dark Lich a lot easier (tough spamming Heal Light on him can work to), so pretty good for that route, Mirage Palace is still the worst dungeon in the game IMO, screw that place.

There's a party/team selector that I found on gamefaqs, thought you guys might be interested @Nesouk @rpschamp here:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bx3QTT7Xk4y2MmpnbGdHdjhuLUE

I chose my party members for three routes using that, I got:

Lise (main), Kevin, Carlie - will probably try Prae's class/abilities suggestion for this one, looked like fun

Carlie (main), Duran, Hawkeye

Duran (main), Kevin, Angela - I played a similar party on earlier versions but I will see what I can do with this in latest update.

Other two I will take a look later and think carefully, unsure what to do with their jobs/classes yet.

On 5/10/2021 at 3:00 PM, Nesouk said:

LUK Capstone : spells cost 20% MP less, min 1 (party); does not change displayed cost.

"Min 1" means a minimum reduction of one, correct? For example, a spell that costs 4 MP will end up costing 3 MP, even though the 20% reduction would still round up to 4 MP?

2 hours ago, rpschamp said:

"Min 1" means a minimum reduction of one, correct? For example, a spell that costs 4 MP will end up costing 3 MP, even though the 20% reduction would still round up to 4 MP?

yes that

On 21/12/2020 at 7:23 PM, praetarius5018 said:

Lise
Vanadise with INT capstone (equip any weapon), take weapon from Evil Shaman (nerf all enemies)
skip Power Up and Thunder Saber = 3 buffs & heal light; need to get Mind Up asap or the slot might be blocked since the previous spell is only an upgrade
auto-buff armor

Reviewing this again don't you think for this team it's better to skip Speed Up* considering you are likely going to use the multi spell ring and learn either power up or thunder saber instead?

2 hours ago, smileless said:

Reviewing this again don't you think for this team it's better to skip Speed Up* considering you are likely going to use the multi spell ring and learn either power up or thunder saber instead?

In his comp Power Up is already cover by Dervish, and Dervish is probably the only that will need it, so I don't think it would be usefull to learn it with Vanadis, and the thing is since Speed Up* replace Speed Up it actually doesn't consume an additionnal a spell slot so it's basically a free learn in term of slot.

35 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

In his comp Power Up is already cover by Dervish, and Dervish is probably the only that will need it, so I don't think it would be usefull to learn it with Vanadis, and the thing is since Speed Up* replace Speed Up it actually doesn't consume an additionnal a spell slot so it's basically a free learn in term of slot.

I undetstood that for Power Up but I thought Thunder Saber would be more useful than a multi speed up that's gonna get covered by another ring anyway. But what you said makes sense, it doesn't consume another spell slot.

Rewatching the spell list regardless of if you take speed up * or not, to get Thunder Saber while keeping Mind Up and Heal Light you would have to not learn Flame Saber and if you want Power Up you would have to give up on Holy Ball.

For my next runs (planned party members by the randomizer), what I got so far:

Carlie, Duran, Hawkeye
Carlie (main) - Necromancer
Skip Great Demon and Half Vanish
LUK capstone - spells cost less MP (important for Wanderer/Paladin if anything)
One way to build Necromancer around her final weapon is via life saver armor and blood magic to cast from HP instead of MP, might be a good strat considering this team lacks offensive part of Mind up, has 6 elementals covers

Duran - Paladin
Skip Anti-Magic (Wanderer covers that) and Protect Up (you got two users with Magic Shield)
PIE capstone (10 max mp)

Hawk - Wanderer
Skip Life Booster and Energy Ball
Unsure which capstone to choose, thinking of VIT (20 evade)

Team lacks the offensive part of mind up, but with Half Vanish you might not need that, especially using Wanderer's final weapon. Got two users with Magic shield And with MP increase and spell cost decreased Duran's exorcise spell comes in handy for Carlie's final dungeon.
Pretty heavy caster team without Angela lol.

Unsure yet what to make of the Duran, Angela, Kevin choice.

Actually since Wanderer's Half Vanish is reliant on ennemies's Max HP why not get Life Booster with him and cast it on bosses ? Might seems counter intuitive but IIRC if you debuff their Max HP with Lunatic their current HP will go down so the boss will have only 80% HP left, but then casting Life Booster increase their Max HP but their current HP doesn't move, so cast Lunatic so they have 80% HP remain then cast Life Booster on them twice to put their Max HP at 120% of their.

If I'm not mistaking going so with Wanderer would end up with Half Vanish doing 2,34375% of the boss remaining HP per cast, as an exemple if a boss at 10k Max HP Wanderer's Half Vanish at base will do 156 damage, you then reduce it to 8k with Lunatic and increasing it back 12k with 2 Life Boosters, so the boss has 12k Max HP but 8k remain and due to it's 12k mak Half Vanish will do 187 as oppose of 125 if you let him at 8k, compare to the base 156 that would increase Half Vanish Damage by 20%. Of course pointless to do if the boss has already 20480 Max HP or more at which point Half Vanish cap at 320 already but I don't think many boss have that much HP, also probably not safe to do on Zable Fahr.

Also Hawk's PIE capstone could be an alternative for increasing Carlie's spell damage without Mind Up, all you need is to equip the accessory that give regular attack the Element you want to get as Sabers and throw his LV2 Tech to turn it into a proper Saber effects (so giving it the +10% attack and boosting spells of corresponding element) and extend it to the entire party.

Nothing much to say about Paladin and Necromancer, this looks solid I'm interest in how effective Necromancer will be with such build.

EDIT : When I'll come back to this mod definitly gonna try that randomizer and just build around what it'll give me, looks fun ^^

6 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Actually since Wanderer's Half Vanish is reliant on ennemies's Max HP why not get Life Booster with him and cast it on bosses ? Might seems counter intuitive but IIRC if you debuff their Max HP with Lunatic their current HP will go down so the boss will have only 80% HP left, but then casting Life Booster increase their Max HP but their current HP doesn't move, so cast Lunatic so they have 80% HP remain then cast Life Booster on them twice to put their Max HP at 120% of their.

If I'm not mistaking going so with Wanderer would end up with Half Vanish doing 2,34375% of the boss remaining HP per cast, as an exemple if a boss at 10k Max HP Wanderer's Half Vanish at base will do 156 damage, you then reduce it to 8k with Lunatic and increasing it back 12k with 2 Life Boosters, so the boss has 12k Max HP but 8k remain and due to it's 12k mak Half Vanish will do 187 as oppose of 125 if you let him at 8k, compare to the base 156 that would increase Half Vanish Damage by 20%. Of course pointless to do if the boss has already 20480 Max HP or more at which point Half Vanish cap at 320 already but I don't think many boss have that much HP, also probably not safe to do on Zable Fahr.

That looks like a viable strat, but then would have to give Paladin Anti-Magic and either skipping speed up or protect up. But that team might counter a variety of elementals througj Carlie and Duran to some extend so really Anti-Magic might be only needed for two bosses, gotta think about that.

9 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Also Hawk's PIE capstone could be an alternative for increasing Carlie's spell damage without Mind Up, all you need is to equip the accessory that give regular attack the Element you want to get as Sabers and throw his LV2 Tech to turn it into a proper Saber effects (so giving it the +10% attack and boosting spells of corresponding element) and extend it to the entire party.

This looks interesting to try out, I wasn't sure what capstone to chose with Hawk, since the party lacks saber spells also that's one alternative to go and boosts Carlie's spells.

Limited in options when it comes to Duran,  Kevin, Angela (as far as I can tell) without having to sacrifice either speed up or speed down, spells like that, it all comes mainly to the party similar to the previous job thread that I tried but updated with 2.0+ changes

Duran - Lord
Skip Power Up, Energy Ball or Analyze doesn't matter much
Honestly main build might just give him a PIE weapon, max his PIE stat and just have him heal as he buffs/debuffs in between
AGI or PIE capstone

Kevin - God Hand
Skip Triple Spell, Life Booster
AGI or LUK capstone so maybe a crit build for him

Angela - Archmage
Skip Rainbow Dust, Aura Wave
Capstone: AGI (party casts faster) or INT (pierce 35 m.def)

18 hours ago, smileless said:

That looks like a viable strat, but then would have to give Paladin Anti-Magic and either skipping speed up or protect up. But that team might counter a variety of elementals througj Carlie and Duran to some extend so really Anti-Magic might be only needed for two bosses, gotta think about that.

This looks interesting to try out, I wasn't sure what capstone to chose with Hawk, since the party lacks saber spells also that's one alternative to go and boosts Carlie's spells.

You could also skip Aura Wave, I don't see you using a lot of tech with this team.

Good discussions here! I'm running Lise, Angela, Carlie and I have a couple of ideas for final teams to bounce off the board:

1) Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Necromancer/Evil Shaman: Light Lise and Dark Carlie both get natural Light Resistance, so Star Lancer can cast Saint Saber on enemies to minimize physical damage if Angela wears an elemental resistance armor or accessory. Star Lancer and Grand Divina can cover all the buffs, and Necromancer or Evil Shaman can cover debuffs, depending if you want Black Curse or the group-targeted Ghost Road and Demon Breath. Evil Shaman may work better if Grand Divina goes for her VIT capstone as the Necromancer's final weapon might not be of much use. I like Lise with her INT capstone here: she could use Evil Shaman's final weapon for -1/4 boss HP as Nesouk pointed out (and I guess Lunatic subtracts another 20%?), or she could use Grand Divina's final weapon to cover 2-3 extra sabers (Evil Shaman can cover Protect Up) and free up Grand Divina's weapon slot, which would be especially nice if Grand Divina goes for her LUC capstone instead. Evil Shaman would also bring Anti-Magic, though I'm not sure how useful it would be on this team. Carlie could take Regeneration to help out with the healing and Lise could take Resistance.

2) Dragon Master/Fenrir Knight, Magus/Rune Master, Bishop/Sage: Dark Angela and Light Carlie both get natural Fire Resistance, so Angela or Carlie can cast Fire Saber on enemies to minimize physical damange if Lise wears an elemental resistance armor or accessory. The choice of final classes is tricky here. Fenrir Knight and Bishop/Sage would be a great team for HP/MP healing, but if I went with Bishop, Dragon Master's Enhanced Anti-Magic would help out with the elemental spell damage. Magus or Sage would be the preferable Curse casters to Fenrir Knight as Dark Force is much more efficient than Black Rain. I am tempted to choose Sage to free up Lise and Angela to go Fenrir Knight and Rune Master, but then the buffs would be quite limited, and the sabers spells wouldn't work out as well. There is some optimal configuration here that promises a ton of power, but it doesn't seem as straightforward as the first team. Rune Master would be a lot of fun: I've always wanted to try casting Petrify or Snowman on Lise with a status protection accessory and Thorn Armor (or Curse) off-screen and then let her go forward with a shield and reflect enemies into oblivion.

Let me know what you think....

40 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

You could also skip Aura Wave, I don't see you using a lot of tech with this team.

Not necessary for tech, mainly wanted it for items but maybe that's not necessary.

32 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

1) Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Necromancer/Evil Shaman: Light Lise and Dark Carlie both get natural Light Resistance, so Star Lancer can cast Saint Saber on enemies to minimize physical damage if Angela wears an elemental resistance armor or accessory. Star Lancer and Grand Divina can cover all the buffs, and Necromancer or Evil Shaman can cover debuffs, depending if you want Black Curse or the group-targeted Ghost Road and Demon Breath. Evil Shaman may work better if Grand Divina goes for her VIT capstone as the Necromancer's final weapon might not be of much use. I like Lise with her INT capstone here: she could use Evil Shaman's final weapon for -1/4 boss HP as Nesouk pointed out (and I guess Lunatic subtracts another 20%?), or she could use Grand Divina's final weapon to cover 2-3 extra sabers (Evil Shaman can cover Protect Up) and free up Grand Divina's weapon slot, which would be especially nice if Grand Divina goes for her LUC capstone instead. Evil Shaman would also bring Anti-Magic, though I'm not sure how useful it would be on this team. Carlie could take Regeneration to help out with the healing and Lise could take Resistance.

You could manage without Anti-Magic id you have enough coverage in terms of elementals and some physical spell to toss around, that spell is mainly needed for two fights anyway, but it you go Evil Shaman you pretty much need it in order for her debuffs to work on enemies that are resistant to Demon Breath/Ghost Road, in that case get Anti-Magic.

32 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

. I am tempted to choose Sage to free up Lise and Angela to go Fenrir Knight and Rune Master, but then the buffs would be quite limited, and the sabers spells wouldn't work out as well. There is some optimal configuration here that promises a ton of power, but it doesn't seem as straightforward as the first team. Rune Master would be a lot of fun: I've always wanted to try casting Petrify or Snowman on Lise with a status protection accessory and Thorn Armor (or Curse) off-screen and then let her go forward with a shield and reflect enemies into oblivion.

Better play save and cover as many of the important buffs/debuffs, you have a caster heavy team so things like mind up, def up (or magic shield) and speed up are needed for their damage and defense.

33 minutes ago, smileless said:

You could manage without Anti-Magic id you have enough coverage in terms of elementals and some physical spell to toss around, that spell is mainly needed for two fights anyway, but it you go Evil Shaman you pretty much need it in order for her debuffs to work on enemies that are resistant to Demon Breath/Ghost Road, in that case get Anti-Magic.

Good call in pointing this out; it slipped my mind that Demon Breath has three elements. I do like that Evil Shaman gets access to Black Curse through a class change item, so this still might be the way to go.

33 minutes ago, smileless said:

Better play save and cover as many of the important buffs/debuffs, you have a caster heavy team so things like mind up, def up (or magic shield) and speed up are needed for their damage.

Good advice here.... Speed Up is not available here in any configuration, and Sage only gets Mind Up; however, casting a saber on enemies to reduce physical damage through elemental resistance can be an alternative, so I wouldn't rule this team out. Magic Shield should be quite a good spell for this team, but Fenrir Knight's final weapon can cover at least the MP regeneration part and keep HP up as well. Cast speed and elemental access are real issues, though, and Team 1) beats this team on both in any configuration.

It's also interesting that Evil Shaman should not need to trade Ghost for Ghost Road in 2.0 if she fills her spell slots before reaching 20 INT, making her more boss-oriented (especially in Lise's final dungeon); with Saint Saber resistance, the group Power Down might not be as necessary....

1 hour ago, rpschamp said:

Good discussions here! I'm running Lise, Angela, Carlie and I have a couple of ideas for final teams to bounce off the board:

1) Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Necromancer/Evil Shaman: Light Lise and Dark Carlie both get natural Light Resistance, so Star Lancer can cast Saint Saber on enemies to minimize physical damage if Angela wears an elemental resistance armor or accessory. Star Lancer and Grand Divina can cover all the buffs, and Necromancer or Evil Shaman can cover debuffs, depending if you want Black Curse or the group-targeted Ghost Road and Demon Breath. Evil Shaman may work better if Grand Divina goes for her VIT capstone as the Necromancer's final weapon might not be of much use. I like Lise with her INT capstone here: she could use Evil Shaman's final weapon for -1/4 boss HP as Nesouk pointed out (and I guess Lunatic subtracts another 20%?), or she could use Grand Divina's final weapon to cover 2-3 extra sabers (Evil Shaman can cover Protect Up) and free up Grand Divina's weapon slot, which would be especially nice if Grand Divina goes for her LUC capstone instead. Evil Shaman would also bring Anti-Magic, though I'm not sure how useful it would be on this team. Carlie could take Regeneration to help out with the healing and Lise could take Resistance.

2) Dragon Master/Fenrir Knight, Magus/Rune Master, Bishop/Sage: Dark Angela and Light Carlie both get natural Fire Resistance, so Angela or Carlie can cast Fire Saber on enemies to minimize physical damange if Lise wears an elemental resistance armor or accessory. The choice of final classes is tricky here. Fenrir Knight and Bishop/Sage would be a great team for HP/MP healing, but if I went with Bishop, Dragon Master's Enhanced Anti-Magic would help out with the elemental spell damage. Magus or Sage would be the preferable Curse casters to Fenrir Knight as Dark Force is much more efficient than Black Rain. I am tempted to choose Sage to free up Lise and Angela to go Fenrir Knight and Rune Master, but then the buffs would be quite limited, and the sabers spells wouldn't work out as well. There is some optimal configuration here that promises a ton of power, but it doesn't seem as straightforward as the first team. Rune Master would be a lot of fun: I've always wanted to try casting Petrify or Snowman on Lise with a status protection accessory and Thorn Armor (or Curse) off-screen and then let her go forward with a shield and reflect enemies into oblivion.

Let me know what you think....

Team 1 : About Evil Shaman's Final Weapon and Lunatic they all stack multiplicaly, meaning if you have Evil Shaman's Final Weapon it goes like this :

100% x 0.875 x 0.875 = 76,5625%

Then you add Lunatic :

76,5625 x 0.8 = 61,25%

Essentially you removed 38,75% of the ennemies HP just like that so this is actually over a 1/3 of the ennemies HP ^^.

That being said 2 tempting idea with Necromancer :

-The Auto-Debuff set by equipping her with Auto-Buff, Quick Cast and 2 Magic Up, having her Black Curse means ennemies will get fully debuffs as soon as they spawn, so you won't need to cast Black Curse with Carlie unless the ennemies buff themselves.

-The Invert Buff armor with Black Curse would let her set all buff at once, you are then free to go for Dark Class on Lise.

Necromancer also cover more element than Evil Shaman and I think would work better as an offensive caster.

While Dark Lise is great for a caster party there is one inconvenience with Dragon Master however, no matter how you look at it you can't get both Power Down and Mind Down with Dragon Master this is certainly to balance with the fact of her Srengthen Anti-Magic, but if you are planning for Dragon Master you are going to need someone with the missing debuff, as such going Archmage on Angela and Bishop on Carlie, covering both defensive buff with Magic Shield and getting the missing debuff for Angela might be a better solution, tough going Magus with Invert Armor, get Mind Down with Lise and Power Up with Magus (as I don't think Magus's Self Mind Up can be cast on ennemies even with Meta Multi). However Fenrir Knight doesn't have that issue and can get all Debuff MT without to much issue so probably the easiest option.

Auto Buff Armor/Auto Debuff set are so convenient for mob fights, I think most set ups should probably aim for that especially if you play on harder difficulties.

21 hours ago, smileless said:

Limited in options when it comes to Duran,  Kevin, Angela (as far as I can tell) without having to sacrifice either speed up or speed down, spells like that, it all comes mainly to the party similar to the previous job thread that I tried but updated with 2.0+ changes

Duran - Lord
Skip Power Up, Energy Ball or Analyze doesn't matter much
Honestly main build might just give him a PIE weapon, max his PIE stat and just have him heal as he buffs/debuffs in between
AGI or PIE capstone

Kevin - God Hand
Skip Triple Spell, Life Booster
AGI or LUK capstone so maybe a crit build for him

Angela - Archmage
Skip Rainbow Dust, Aura Wave
Capstone: AGI (party casts faster) or INT (pierce 35 m.def)

Actually the Randomizer give me Duran, Kevin and Angela with Paladin, Death Hand and Archmage, I actually think this can work to as such :

Kevin as Death Hand

Spells :
1-Flame Saber (LV40)
2-Diamond Saber^ (LV44)
3-Speed Up* (LV46)
4-Dark Saber* (LV50)
5-Body Change* (LV51)
6-Thunder Jutsu (LV55)
7-Aura Wave (LV60)
8-Lunatic (LV65)
9-Rockfall (LV67)
10-Leaf Saber (LV70)

INT Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Gear :

Weapon : LV3 Armor Break
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : Tech Gain Up
Ring 2 : Trials Skills

Angela as Arch Mage 

Spells :
1-Saint Beam* (LV40)
2-Dark Force* (LV41)
3-Mind Down (LV43)
4-Power Down (LV44)
5-Earthquake* (LV45)
6-Thunderstorm* (LV46)
7-Mega Splash* (LV47)
8-Explode* (LV48)
9-Anti Magic (LV50)
10-Rainbow Dust (LV53)

Raise AGL to 22 (LV55)

AGL Capstone : party casts 20% faster

Gear :
Weapon : ExploitWeakness/Magic Up
Gear : Magic Up
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Curse
Ring 2 : Vary

Duran as Paladin :

Spells :
1-Magic Shield (LV39)
2-Saint Saber (LV42)
3-Protect Up* (LV45)
4-Holy Ball (LV47)
5-Heal Light* (LV51)
6-Exorcise (LV55) 
Raise PIE to 25 at LV56
7-Diamond Missile (LV57)
8-Tinkle Rain (LV58)
9-Ice Smash (LV62)
10-Speed Up* (LV65)

PIE Capstone : +10 MP Max

Weapon : Heal Up
Helm : Constant Regen (Curse)
Armor : MP Regen Plus/Life Saver
Ring 1 : Shield
Ring 2 : Heal Up

So this team has :

-Every buff except Power Up and offensive side of Mind Up
-Every Debuff except Speed Down (Protect Down achieve with Death Hand's Thunder Jutsu), and beyond that has Death Hand's Final Weapon for reducing the Physical and Magic Defense even further.
-4 out of 6 Elemental Sabers only Ice Saber and Thunder Saber with Kevin's INT capstone to stregthen these buffs
-Exorcise to deal with Undead ennemies very easily
-Spell for all element with Anti Magic and non elemental spell as well as physical damage

Going tech build with Death Hand for Defenses debuff, support with Paladin with occasionnal offensive spell and debuff with Angela before spell casting.

3 minutes ago, smileless said:

Auto Buff Armor/Auto Debuff set are so convenient for mob fights, I think most set ups should probably aim for that especially if you play on harder difficulties.

Well it has it's downside especially with Carlie, Auto-Buff has the lowest HP Multiplier out of all the armor in the game, with pretty low defenses overall, so for Carlie you'd have to make up for it, Lise a lot more tanky and easier to build around this armor. And Auto-Debuff is a full set so it require all slot to be taken.

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

-The Invert Buff armor with Black Curse would let her set all buff at once, you are then free to go for Dark Class on Lise.

I was thinking about this to free up Lise to go for Fenrir Knight, if only for her final weapon. Fenrir Knight could also invert instead if you prefer a better armor on Carlie. Comparing these two teams:

1) Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Evil Shaman/Necromancer
- Lise can function as an alternative Saber caster (up to five elements with Grand Divina's final weapon)
- Easy path to Saint Saber resistance
- MP recovery through accessories
- Silence
- No need to use Invert Armor

3) Fenrir Knight, Grand Divina, Necromancer
- MP recovery through counters (might not be as reliable)
- No easy path to saber resistance
- Need to use Invert Armor

Though in general I prefer Fenrir Knight to Star Lancer (fun final weapon, better colors, awesome subscreen pose), I think Team 1 still comes out ahead.

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Necromancer also cover more element than Evil Shaman and I think would work better as an offensive caster.

This one is debatable; Necromancer gets access to one more pure element of spell damage, as well as non-elemental spells (which is nice), but Evil Shaman still gets access to five of the six (plus Demon Breath), and with two of her final weapons in play and Lunatic for bosses, a smaller portion of the enemy's HP is in play, and the whole team benefits in terms of needing to reach an smaller goal. I think the major benefit of Necromancer here is Black Curse, or maybe some low HP strategy to keep the extra damage from her final weapon high. But I admit that the best choice is not very clear.

Well there is a lot to take into account.

Like that 2 Evil Shaman weapon is only possible with Lise's INT capstone and dedicating her Weapon slot to it (not happening with her Dark Classes both Dragon Master and Fenrir Knight's Final Weapon are just not worth sacrificing for that) so that already require 2 specific character, otherwise the Difference between Lunatic and ES's Final Weapon + Lunatic is only 10%, also Lise isn't necessarly the best suited for offensive so removing for a more offensive character.
Also Evil Shaman is pretty much lock into her Final Weapon, while outside of her Final Weapon Necromancer can also use Magic Up weapon, Magitech or whatever you want she has more flexibility in that aspect (heck can even give her the AGL Weapon and make her a decent melee fighter). Another disadvantage for Evil Shaman is that for a lot of boss in order to inflict her Debuff she first need to cast Anti Magic and then her 2 spells, while Black Curse doesn't require Anti Magic and inflict all in one spells, which allow Necromancer to go faster on the offensive, and Necromancer has Dark Spell for Curse upgrade.

But yes if you have Lise and is ready to give her INT capstone and ES final weapon, Evil Shaman is 100% worth it, the 10% Max HP bonus is also good if you have powerfull attacker besides her, having both Power Down, Mind Down, Protect Up, Antimagic and Max HP reduction on one character is also pretty convenient no denying that.

41 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

1) Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Evil Shaman/Necromancer
- Lise can function as an alternative Saber caster (up to five elements with Grand Divina's final weapon)
- Easy path to Saint Saber resistance
- MP recovery through accessories
- Silence
- No need to use Invert Armor

3) Fenrir Knight, Grand Divina, Necromancer
- MP recovery through counters (might not be as reliable)
- No easy path to saber resistance
- Need to use Invert Armor

Though in general I prefer Fenrir Knight to Star Lancer (fun final weapon, better colors, awesome subscreen pose), I think Team 1 still comes out ahead.

For MP recovery don't forget Fenrir Knight can also learn Leaf Saber, also don't exclude the fact Fenrir Knight recover ALL the MP of the entire team in one counter as well as healing 25% of HP for the entire team, landing Counter do take some practice but once you do this is definitly a great recovery option in Fenrir Knight's favor, also in both case Lise can act as the tank with Shield and Life Saver Armor.

You could also go for Bishop instead of Necromancer use Magic Shield to buff your defenses and get the Saber Resisting strat with Saint Saber or Thunder Saber as a bonus getting also Power Up for Fenrir Knight.

39 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

For MP recovery don't forget Fenrir Knight can also learn Leaf Saber, also don't exclude the fact Fenrir Knight recover ALL the MP of the entire team in one counter as well as healing 25% of HP for the entire team, landing Counter do take some practice but once you do this is definitly a great recovery option in Fenrir Knight's favor, also in both case Lise can act as the tank with Shield and Life Saver Armor.

You could also go for Bishop instead of Necromancer use Magic Shield to buff your defenses and get the Saber Resisting strat with Saint Saber or Thunder Saber as a bonus getting also Power Up for Fenrir Knight.

I think Dark Angela would do better than Grand Divina here. I've always been tempted to put Fenrir Knight on the same team as Dark Angela or Dark Carlie to take advantage of the MP recovery, which was the purpose of Team 2 described above: Fenrir Knight, Magus/Rune Master, Bishop/Sage.

Two options:

2a) Fenrir Knight, Magus, Bishop: No Speed Up, but pretty much everything else. Almighty Magic armor on Magus to cast Annihilator every time Lise lands a counter seems like a reasonably viable strategy against bosses, but kind of one-note. Bishop would provide easy Flame Saber resistance, and Angela has an easy path to her AGI capstone to make up for the lack of Speed Up.

2b) Fenrir Knight, Rune Master, Sage: Weak on buffs, but Mind Up is the most important buff, Life Booster can help for bosses, and I'm not sure that you need all three of Protect up, Power Down, and Saber resistance; most players just use the first two, while it seems that either of the first two combined with Saber resistance should have a greater benefit to physical defense. Plus, Sage has Dark Force which frees Angela to go Rune Master, which just seems like an all-around more useful class for regular enemies (MT Snowman, MT Silence, picking enemies off with Stone Cloud) and bosses (Level 3 elemental damage for less MP; Level 2 damage that bypasses resistance/immunity when necessary). You would be missing Speed Up.... And Magus definitely has an easier path to her AGI capstone if you want to collect all of the Rune Master's Level 3 spells. But I may be tempted to stick that Constant Regeneration helmet on Rune Master so her cast-time isn't wasted.

One thing I'm tempted with Rune Master is run her with the full Trials Set, she might not get benefit from the armor, but reducing casttime to minimum with her LV3 Spells and Final Weapon is pretty tempting, and the rest of the set will still make her immune to Crit, remove her weakness and death score and increase her defenses. When her Final Weapon isn't needed the Magitec weapon could also work, as for capstone her PIE capstone could work, since all her 4 slot would be curse that would be a +80HP and +28 in both defenses.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

One thing I'm tempted with Rune Master is run her with the full Trials Set, she might not get benefit from the armor, but reducing casttime to minimum with her LV3 Spells and Final Weapon is pretty tempting, and the rest of the set will still make her immune to Crit, remove her weakness and death score and increase her defenses. When her Final Weapon isn't needed the Magitec weapon could also work, as for capstone her PIE capstone could work, since all her 4 slot would be curse that would be a +80HP and +28 in both defenses.

This is a great idea, and perfect to pair with Fenrir Knight. I'm a little concerned about Trials Defense's "no defense vs. Level 2/3 techs".... but definitely worth a try if I choose this path.

12 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Actually the Randomizer give me Duran, Kevin and Angela with Paladin, Death Hand and Archmage, I actually think this can work to as such :

Kevin as Death Hand

Spells :
1-Flame Saber (LV40)
2-Diamond Saber^ (LV44)
3-Speed Up* (LV46)
4-Dark Saber* (LV50)
5-Body Change* (LV51)
6-Thunder Jutsu (LV55)
7-Aura Wave (LV60)
8-Lunatic (LV65)
9-Rockfall (LV67)
10-Leaf Saber (LV70)

INT Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Gear :

Weapon : LV3 Armor Break
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : Tech Gain Up
Ring 2 : Trials Skills

Angela as Arch Mage 

Spells :
1-Saint Beam* (LV40)
2-Dark Force* (LV41)
3-Mind Down (LV43)
4-Power Down (LV44)
5-Earthquake* (LV45)
6-Thunderstorm* (LV46)
7-Mega Splash* (LV47)
8-Explode* (LV48)
9-Anti Magic (LV50)
10-Rainbow Dust (LV53)

Raise AGL to 22 (LV55)

AGL Capstone : party casts 20% faster

Gear :
Weapon : ExploitWeakness/Magic Up
Gear : Magic Up
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Curse
Ring 2 : Vary

Duran as Paladin :

Spells :
1-Magic Shield (LV39)
2-Saint Saber (LV42)
3-Protect Up* (LV45)
4-Holy Ball (LV47)
5-Heal Light* (LV51)
6-Exorcise (LV55) 
Raise PIE to 25 at LV56
7-Diamond Missile (LV57)
8-Tinkle Rain (LV58)
9-Ice Smash (LV62)
10-Speed Up* (LV65)

PIE Capstone : +10 MP Max

Weapon : Heal Up
Helm : Constant Regen (Curse)
Armor : MP Regen Plus/Life Saver
Ring 1 : Shield
Ring 2 : Heal Up

So this team has :

-Every buff except Power Up and offensive side of Mind Up
-Every Debuff except Speed Down (Protect Down achieve with Death Hand's Thunder Jutsu), and beyond that has Death Hand's Final Weapon for reducing the Physical and Magic Defense even further.
-4 out of 6 Elemental Sabers only Ice Saber and Thunder Saber with Kevin's INT capstone to stregthen these buffs
-Exorcise to deal with Undead ennemies very easily
-Spell for all element with Anti Magic and non elemental spell as well as physical damage

Going tech build with Death Hand for Defenses debuff, support with Paladin with occasionnal offensive spell and debuff with Angela before spell casting.

This looks very good and well planned also. Both Death Hand and Paladin have Speed Up, maybe skip Paladin's Speed Up instead for another spell? Tho from what I can see it learns only single target Sleep Flower so maybe having another Speed Up user is better than just learning single target sleep flower.

29 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

This is a great idea, and perfect to pair with Fenrir Knight. I'm a little concerned about Trials Defense's "no defense vs. Level 2/3 techs".... but definitely worth a try if I choose this path.

According to Praetarius even with that helm on Hard, you'll still take less damage from tech than Vanilla, so probably not that bad, especially if one play on Normal or lower.

On 5/20/2021 at 3:19 AM, Nesouk said:

According to Praetarius even with that helm on Hard, you'll still take less damage from tech than Vanilla, so probably not that bad, especially if one play on Normal or lower.

So, to take this further.... Rune Master will learn everything but Thunder Saber and Flame Saber, giving her all four Level 3 elemental spells, Fenrir Knight will learn everything but Transshape and Poison Bubble, learning all the MT debuffs and Moon and Leaf Saber, which will be great for Rune Master, and Carlie.... here, I think Light Carlie would be best for MT Heal Light and Sabers to enhance Angela. Bishop offers Magic Shield, the two remaining basic elemental Sabers, Power Up which works well with Trials Buff, an easy spot for Resistance (still important for Lise and Carlie), and Saint Saber to power her own spells, while Sage offers the missing Dark element and Curse, Mind Up, Life Booster, Leaf Saber to let Fenrir Knight learn Resistance, one of the two remaining basic elemental Sabers, and a final weapon which I believe ticks HP regeneration even through spell animation, something this team will be seeing a lot of. Again, I think I'm leaning towards Sage.

Capstones? Lise's AGI would help with Fenrir Knight's counter, and Carlie's LUK would help with keeping MP up between counters. Angela should probably go for PIE due to her cursed equipment, but VIT and INT look strong as well.

One of the obvious benefits here is that the Trials set helps with this team's lack of Speed Up, so as long as I master Fenrir Knight's counter, this team should be a monster. Now, this looks like a team that can compete with Star Lancer, Grand Divina, Evil Shaman/Necromancer. Let me know if you have any more ideas!

On 18/05/2021 at 8:31 PM, Nesouk said:

Also Hawk's PIE capstone could be an alternative for increasing Carlie's spell damage without Mind Up, all you need is to equip the accessory that give regular attack the Element you want to get as Sabers and throw his LV2 Tech to turn it into a proper Saber effects (so giving it the +10% attack and boosting spells of corresponding element) and extend it to the entire party.

A question on this to be sure, in order for that to work do those accessories need to be equiped on Hawk or it doesn't matter who equips them?

Hawk need to have the ring or Saber himself.

Take 2 doing it more organized Nesouk's style after more carefully looking at equipment:

In terms of equipment Hawk, as the ultimate support for most part will probably aim to regain MP fast as well as quick cast (while gain some TP as he supports with his spells), Quick Cast helm is questionable as party has speed up and speed down, it will probably vary most of the time. I might also go for Meta Curse ring for Carlie.

Thinking maybe I should skip Paladin's Sleep Flower and teach Regeneration with the cursed ring instead, but I think I will probably just equip remove weakness helm or armor equipment when necessary. I think I am now set for the next run.

9 hours ago, Nesouk said:

According to Praetarius even with that helm on Hard, you'll still take less damage from tech than Vanilla, so probably not that bad, especially if one play on Normal or lower.

I think you mixed up 2 things there.
Usually I say that enemy Lv2/3 techs on hard here are weaker than in vanilla.
The helm basically "vanillizes" them for normal

On hard just 326 p.def takes 668 from Lv94 bloody wolves doing their sky dance or 537 with def up.
Helm with def up and power down on hard is 999 damage from that - or 548 on normal.

In vanilla I've never seen enemy Lv3 techs do below 550 even with capped def; lv47+ enemies like nightblade are more in the range of 1000 minus your def (hard capped at 300 after buffs), a.k.a. "you die" damage considering that only Kevin has enough HP+def to take that unless you grind a lot.

But then I had to try here to get them to use the techs in the first place while in vanilla they cast it most of the time when I enter their room... this game is just weird.

41 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

I think you mixed up 2 things there.
Usually I say that enemy Lv2/3 techs on hard here are weaker than in vanilla.
The helm basically "vanillizes" them for normal

On hard just 326 p.def takes 668 from Lv94 bloody wolves doing their sky dance or 537 with def up.
Helm with def up and power down on hard is 999 damage from that - or 548 on normal.

In vanilla I've never seen enemy Lv3 techs do below 550 even with capped def; lv47+ enemies like nightblade are more in the range of 1000 minus your def (hard capped at 300 after buffs), a.k.a. "you die" damage considering that only Kevin has enough HP+def to take that unless you grind a lot.

But then I had to try here to get them to use the techs in the first place while in vanilla they cast it most of the time when I enter their room... this game is just weird.

This is along the lines of what I was originally thinking and seems more fair since the benefit of the Trials set appears to be quite nice. MT Silence may help with this; also, with the death score locked, it shouldn't be as much of a problem....

Now Trials set on all three characters... oof.... Maybe there should be an extra bonus for that?

Well my bad then.

32 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

This is along the lines of what I was originally thinking and seems more fair since the benefit of the Trials set appears to be quite nice. MT Silence may help with this; also, with the death score locked, it shouldn't be as much of a problem....

Now Trials set on all three characters... oof.... Maybe there should be an extra bonus for that?

Well not only I don't see why you would go for Trials set on everyone, some characters just aren't noteworthy as spell caster and have better option, but I also thinks it's a terrible idea, not only the Tech issue but also remember that it offers no protection against statut effects whatsoever, which can be deadly on some fights.

That being said Rune Master can really alleviate the tech issue, among ennemies that use Tech Knight, Bee and Ninja line of ennemies can be silence, Ninja and Wolves can be outright petrify and all of these type safe for Ninja can be Snowmaned, I think this set really go nicely with Rune Master's Statut effect ^^.

14 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Well not only I don't see why you would go for Trials set on everyone, some characters just aren't noteworthy as spell caster and have better option, but I also thinks it's a terrible idea, not only the Tech issue but also remember that it offers no protection against statut effects whatsoever, which can be deadly on some fights.

Haha well I wasn't actually considering it, just commenting on how ridiculously difficult it would make the game. Which is why perhaps there should be some commensurate bonus for it... though I can't imagine what that would be....

14 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

That being said Rune Master can really alleviate the tech issue, among ennemies that use Tech Knight, Bee and Ninja line of ennemies can be silence, Ninja and Wolves can be outright petrify and all of these type safe for Ninja can be Snowmaned, I think this set really go nicely with Rune Master's Statut effect ^^.

Yes, I agree; I think I'm going to go for it. Rune Master seems ideally suited, and Fenrir Knight can keep her casting if played correctly :-)

On 20/05/2021 at 3:26 PM, smileless said:

Take 2 doing it more organized Nesouk's style after more carefully looking at equipment:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Carlie (main) - Necromancer
Spells - no order:
Holy Ball*, Tinkle Rain, Unicorn Head, Machine Golem, Ghost, Ghoul, Black Curse, Dark Saber, Gremlin, Black Rain
Skip Great Demon and Half Vanish

LUK capstone - spells cost less MP

Weapon: Magic Up/Spell Revenge
Helm: Quick Cast
Armor: MP Reg/Life Saver Armor/other needs
Ring 1: Magic Up
Ring 2: Blood Magic/varies

Duran - Paladin
Spells - no order:
Diamond Missile, Sleep Flower, Holy Ball, Heal Light*, Exorcise, Magic Shield, Saint Saber, Tinkle Rain, Ice Smash, Speed Up
Skip Anti-Magic (Wanderer cover that) and Protect Up (you have two Magic Shield users)

PIE capstone: + 10 maxMP

Weapon: Heal Up
Helm: Constant Regen (curse)
Armor: MP Reg.
Ring 1: Shield
Ring 2: Heal Up/varies

Hawk - Wanderer
Spells - no order:
Arrows, Sleep Flower*, Body Change*, Poison Bubble, Lunatic, Anti-Magic,Transshape, Life Booster, Half Vanish, Magic Shield
Skip Energy Ball, Aura Wave

PIE capstone - using a Lv2/3 tech spreads current saber element to the party and makes pseudo saber real unless resisted

Weapon: Half Vanish+/TP up (unsure)
Helm: Quick Cast/varies
Armor: MP Reg
Ring 1: TP Regeneration
Ring 2: saber element accesory/varies
 

In terms of equipment Hawk, as the ultimate support for most part will probably aim to regain MP fast as well as quick cast (while gain some TP as he supports with his spells), Quick Cast helm is questionable as party has speed up and speed down, it will probably vary most of the time. I might also go for Meta Curse ring for Carlie.

Thinking maybe I should skip Paladin's Sleep Flower and teach Regeneration with the cursed ring instead, but I think I will probably just equip remove weakness helm or armor equipment when necessary. I think I am now set for the next run.

Lol, small correction here as I nadr a mistake (almost cost me good I realized sooner),  you can't skip protect up from Paladin as he already learns that as Knight, so might well multi target it, will skip Sleep Flower instead too.

Might consider now teaching Wanderer the Resistance spell, since there's no need for two Magic Shield users anymore.

Carlie gets the Meta Curse ring (Cursed), Hawk the Spell Resist ring (Cursed), Duran the healer and buffer gets the Constant regen Helm (cursed), each character at least one cursed equipment. Maybe I will give Duran the Auto-Buff Armor too.

9 minutes ago, smileless said:

you can't skip protect up from Paladin as he already learns that as Knight, so might well multi target it, will skip Sleep Flower instead too.

if he never gets 10 int as a knight he won't know it

16 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

if he never gets 10 int as a knight he won't know it

Was too dumb for that, but at least it wasn't a big fuck up and able to work around my mistake. This might be better choice too lol.

Well in the end I just can't get enough of this mod, however I'm gonna play Normal mode from now on, Hard is fun but I think I want a more chill experience now.

Anyway I decided that I'm gonna test a combo have been dying to try out since pretty much the time I started to really looking into the mod's files and really get into planning, namely Lise as Fenrir Knight and Duran as Lord, I don't think I need to explain why I was interest in this 2 just they just have a great synergy on paper my plan is as follow for now.

Main Lise as Fenrir Knight

Spells :

-Unicorn Head
-Ghost Road
-Mind Down*
-Lamia Naga
-Protect Down*
-Power Down*
-Moon Saber
-Black Rain
-Speed Down*
-Leaf Saber

Capstone : I hesitate between AGL and LUK capstone, AGL capstone would allow to attack more often but on the other side LUK is a good one for defense, then again since I'm playing Normal, maybe won't need for to much defense.

Gear :

Weapon : Drain Counter
Helm : Attack Up
Armor : Unsure
Ring 1 : Meta Sudden
Ring 2 : Break Counter/MP Drain

My idea with Meta Sudden is since between Leaf Saber/MP Drain ring and Drain Counter she will recover her MP very fast, Meta Sudden will allow to cast her Debuff and Saber with close to no casttime as a result, outside of that typical Counter Build.

Second Party Member Duran :

Spells :
-Ice Saber
-Protect Up*
-Speed Up*
-Life Booster
-Heal Light*
-Tinkle Rain*
-Arrows
-Diamond Saber

I'm not sure for the last 2 spells and the capstones, I hesitate between a few :

-AGL Capstone : Well because he has 2 Sabers already, and I'm wondering about if this capstone's effect will work with the next party member.

-PIE Capstone : +10 Max MP on the healer is always nice.

-LUK Capstone : Crit Rate Reduction doesn't sound to bad

Regardless I definitly will learn Power Up, the last spell can be any tough I'm encline toward Speed Down*

Gear :

-Weapon : Subterfuge
-Helm : Magic Up/Quick Cast
-Armor : Auto Buff
-Ring 1 : TP By Cast
-Ring 2 : Heal Up

TP By Cast is so he can still get TP while casting Healing Spells or rebuffing if necessary and also can use Arrows short cast time to to get some TP back

For the third member, I originally thought of Carlie as a Sage, but in the end decide to choose Hawk as a Wanderer.

Spells, for his Spells I'm actually wondering if I can skip Body Change and Sleep Flower by not raising his INT as a Ranger, if possible then his spells list would be :
-Arrows
-Half Vanish
-Magic Shield
-Aura Wave
-Poison Bubble
-Lunatic
-Anti Magic
-Body Change*
-Sleep Flower*
-Transshape

Going for the PIE capstone, so that I can get any Sabers by just equipping him with the Accessory of the Element I want, and I'm wondering if getting Saber this way is affected by Duran's AGL capstone or Kevin's INT capstone.

Gear :
-Weapon : Half Vanish+
-Helm : Quick Cast
-Armor : Unsure yet 
-Ring 1 : Elemental Weapon of boss's weaknesses if any or Corresponding Day (if Element isn't resisted)
-Ring 2 : Unsure, maybe Meta Leaf Coat for making use of his Poison Bubble and increase Duran's Tech damage or TP by Cast

So cover the last missing buff with Magic Shield, Aura Wave for Tech Point, Lunatic fr Max HP Down, Anti-Magic if needed, and also bring some magic damage with Half Vanish. 

So to sum it up :

-All debuff are covered by Fenrir Knight
-All buff except offensive Mind Up which this team doesn't really need anyway
-All Sabers through Hawk's PIE capstone
-Good MP Recovery with Fenrir Knight
-Some kind of Magic Damage with Wanderer's Half Vanish
-Some statut effects with Wanderer

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Well in the end I just can't get enough of this mod, however I'm gonna play Normal mode from now on, Hard is fun but I think I want a more chill experience now.

Anyway I decided that I'm gonna test a combo have been dying to try out since pretty much the time I started to really looking into the mod's files and really get into planning, namely Lise as Fenrir Knight and Duran as Lord, I don't think I need to explain why I was interest in this 2 just they just have a great synergy on paper my plan is as follow for now.

Main Lise as Fenrir Knight

Spells :

-Unicorn Head
-Ghost Road
-Mind Down*
-Lamia Naga
-Protect Down*
-Power Down*
-Moon Saber
-Black Rain
-Speed Down*
-Leaf Saber

Capstone : I hesitate between AGL and LUK capstone, AGL capstone would allow to attack more often but on the other side LUK is a good one for defense, then again since I'm playing Normal, maybe won't need for to much defense.

Gear :

Weapon : Drain Counter
Helm : Attack Up
Armor : Unsure
Ring 1 : Meta Sudden
Ring 2 : Break Counter/MP Drain

My idea with Meta Sudden is since between Leaf Saber/MP Drain ring and Drain Counter she will recover her MP very fast, Meta Sudden will allow to cast her Debuff and Saber with close to no casttime as a result, outside of that typical Counter Build.

Second Party Member Duran :

Spells :
-Ice Saber
-Protect Up*
-Speed Up*
-Life Booster
-Heal Light*
-Tinkle Rain*
-Arrows
-Diamond Saber

I'm not sure for the last 2 spells and the capstones, I hesitate between a few :

-AGL Capstone : Well because he has 2 Sabers already, and I'm wondering about if this capstone's effect will work with the next party member.

-PIE Capstone : +10 Max MP on the healer is always nice.

-LUK Capstone : Crit Rate Reduction doesn't sound to bad

Regardless I definitly will learn Power Up, the last spell can be any tough I'm encline toward Speed Down*

Gear :

-Weapon : Subterfuge
-Helm : Magic Up/Quick Cast
-Armor : Auto Buff
-Ring 1 : TP By Cast
-Ring 2 : Heal Up

TP By Cast is so he can still get TP while casting Healing Spells or rebuffing if necessary and also can use Arrows short cast time to to get some TP back

For the third member, I originally thought of Carlie as a Sage, but in the end decide to choose Hawk as a Wanderer.

Spells, for his Spells I'm actually wondering if I can skip Body Change and Sleep Flower by not raising his INT as a Ranger, if possible then his spells list would be :
-Arrows
-Half Vanish
-Magic Shield
-Aura Wave
-Poison Bubble
-Lunatic
-Anti Magic
-Body Change*
-Sleep Flower*
-Transshape

Going for the PIE capstone, so that I can get any Sabers by just equipping him with the Accessory of the Element I want, and I'm wondering if getting Saber this way is affected by Duran's AGL capstone or Kevin's INT capstone.

Gear :
-Weapon : Half Vanish+
-Helm : Quick Cast
-Armor : Unsure yet 
-Ring 1 : Elemental Weapon of boss's weaknesses if any or Corresponding Day (if Element isn't resisted)
-Ring 2 : Unsure, maybe Meta Leaf Coat for making use of his Poison Bubble and increase Duran's Tech damage or TP by Cast

So cover the last missing buff with Magic Shield, Aura Wave for Tech Point, Lunatic fr Max HP Down, Anti-Magic if needed, and also bring some magic damage with Half Vanish. 

So to sum it up :

-All debuff are covered by Fenrir Knight
-All buff except offensive Mind Up which this team doesn't really need anyway
-All Sabers through Hawk's PIE capstone
-Good MP Recovery with Fenrir Knight
-Some kind of Magic Damage with Wanderer's Half Vanish
-Some statut effects with Wanderer

I love counter based teams that involves Lord final weapon. One fight this team is going to suffer the most is pronably Xan Bie, but I am not sure how effective counters will be effective on the furnace this time, but they will probably work more than usual physical attacks, and you have half vanish too.

And Crit resistance will probably still be valuable for Normal but with Fenrir Knights weapon might be better to attack more often instead, also helps healing. 

Almost done with Necromancer/Paladin/Wanderer, just beat Deathjester, onto the final area, and just bought the life saver armor for Carlie will see if it's worth to give her two Magic Up equipment or her final weapon (spell revenge) with the life saver armor and blood magic ring (cast from HP)  for damage, quick cast helm. I feel like two magic up slots would outpower that setting as you need lower HP for higher spell damage.

I will probably feel more comfortable with the more simple setting but will see.

3 hours ago, smileless said:

I love counter based teams that involves Lord final weapon. One fight this team is going to suffer the most is pronably Xan Bie, but I am not sure how effective counters will be effective on the furnace this time, but they will probably work more than usual physical attacks, and you have half vanish too.

And Crit resistance will probably still be valuable for Normal but with Fenrir Knights weapon might be better to attack more often instead, also helps healing

 

Lise's LUK capstone reduce ennemies spell damage by 12.5%, this is actually pretty valuable on Hard against bosses, not sure on Normal tough. That being said her STR capstone could also be interesting I assume that 20% Attack Bonus apply to Counter and Tech, tough I think getting STR high enough would be pretty tricky.

For Xian Bhe Lise also some spells for magic damage, but yeah chances are Wanderer's Half Vanish will be key or Poison Bubble (IIRC the furnace doesn't have a lot of HP so Poison Bubble might end up doing more damage), worst case scenario I could get the Magitec weapon, on one of my character which would turn the LV2/3 Tech into Neutral spells.

So outside of that how is Necromancer Final Weapon + Bloody Magic going ? Is it good ?

37 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Lise's LUK capstone reduce ennemies spell damage by 12.5%, this is actually pretty valuable on Hard against bosses, not sure on Normal tough. That being said her STR capstone could also be interesting I assume that 20% Attack Bonus apply to Counter and Tech, tough I think getting STR high enough would be pretty tricky.

For Xian Bhe Lise also some spells for magic damage, but yeah chances are Wanderer's Half Vanish will be key or Poison Bubble (IIRC the furnace doesn't have a lot of HP so Poison Bubble might end up doing more damage), worst case scenario I could get the Magitec weapon, on one of my character which would turn the LV2/3 Tech into Neutral spells.

So outside of that how is Necromancer Final Weapon + Bloody Magic going ? Is it good ?

You know what, nothing wrong with playing more defensively, Lise's LUK capstone might be a good pick.

Didn't know Poison Bubble works on Xan Bie, if it works then it's a good alternative then.

Necromancer def seem to be doing a lot of damage really fast with that set up, to some enemies with around 50%hp give or take when hitting weakness it deals near 999 and to some 999 damage, and having no source of offensive part of mind up that's a good alternative to some fights especially if you lack sabers (with Hawk's PIE capstone that set up wasn't needed but for mob fights perhaps). Carlie's biggest strength still remained the curse upgrade through Gremlin/Black Rain.

I tried actually Magitech on Hawkeye, works really well actually, I decided to keep that for the rest of the run, good source for TP regen also (should have equipped that on him that before the Mirage Palace). On Heath after Lunatic/Black Curse, I just used Arrow, one of Carlie's 4 main elemental summons, Duran heals, once Hawk's tech bar filled the weapon worked really well for this fight, or for item use.

All that's left is Dark Lich.

Magitec weapon seems really interesting for character that have Heal Light (aka must cast a lot) and have a FST, like Paladin and Vanadis, heck I even argue for Paladin this might actually be better than Exorcise + on regular mob as casting a Tech is obviously faster than casting Exorcise and Exorcise has quite a heavy MP cost.

Actually kinda off subject butspeaking of spells with heavy cost, I'm actually wondering if Annilhator's MP cost shouldn't be reduce, with 20 MP this is the most costly spell of the game and it has the second longest casttime out of all the spell, I don't know if it was still the guaranteed 999 damage I would be fine with it, but for a LV4 Offensive spell that can only be Single Target this seems quite a lot.

18 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

  Hide contents

Yeah Poison is the cheesy way to beat Heath ^^

Magitec weapon seems really interesting for character that have Heal Light (aka must cast a lot) and have a FST, like Paladin and Vanadis, heck I even argue for Paladin this might actually be better than Exorcise + on regular mob as casting a Tech is obviously faster than casting Exorcise and Exorcise has quite a heavy MP cost.

Actually kinda off subject butspeaking of spells with heavy cost, I'm actually wondering if Annilhator's MP cost shouldn't be reduce, with 20 MP this is the most costly spell of the game and it has the second longest casttime out of all the spell, I don't know if it was still the guaranteed 999 damage I would be fine with it, but for a LV4 Offensive spell that can only be Single Target this seems quite a lot.

Heavy spell casters in general seem to benefit from Magitech weapon, I personally like to conserve the TP on healers for healing items for the most part, well depending on team composition. I might change that approach and give that job mainly to other character whichever one has a way to build TP faster.

I don't think Angela would beneficiate that much from Magitec considering her already vast array of spells, I can however definitly see Hawk work with Magitec considering several of his spells have a really short castime, and all of his class has decent spells to learn in INT so you are likely going to invest in it. Lise can work with this weapon as Starlancer the LV1 spell are decetly fast to cast and she has Aura Wave, for Duran I think Paladin is the best class for this weapon.

Anyway I'm quite satisfied with Normal for now, I feared coming from Hard it would be to easy, but it still maintain a decent challenge just less brutal, Tzenker and Gorva are still pretty annoying tough, I like Ranger for Bucca Island him having Body Change make these freaking Cockabirds so much easier screw them, probably going to put the game back on Hard for ??? Seed farming, the 100% chest rate is so convenient for that.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

I don't think Angela would beneficiate that much from Magitec considering her already vast array of spells, I can however definitly see Hawk work with Magitec considering several of his spells have a really short castime, and all of his class has decent spells to learn in INT so you are likely going to invest in it. Lise can work with this weapon as Starlancer the LV1 spell are decetly fast to cast and she has Aura Wave, for Duran I think Paladin is the best class for this weapon.

Anyway I'm quite satisfied with Normal for now, I feared coming from Hard it would be to easy, but it still maintain a decent challenge just less brutal, Tzenker and Gorva are still pretty annoying tough, I like Ranger for Bucca Island him having Body Change make these freaking Cockabirds so much easier screw them, probably going to put the game back on Hard for ??? Seed farming, the 100% chest rate is so convenient for that.

I like Normal mode the most, not too easy or not too difficult.

For ??? Seed farming I try to get to Snowfields as low leveled as possible without being complete fodder and farm them till around pevel 36/37, go buy whichever intended class item I didn't get and change class after beating Machine Golems (or you could travel to Wind Stone if you feel you are going to overlevel to 39 after beating the Machine Golems before class change). Takes more time but hey you pretty sure we all have fast forward buttons for quick travelling.

Anyway I beat Dark Lich

3 minutes ago, smileless said:

or you could travel to Wind Stone if you feel you are going to overlevel to 39 after beating the Machine Golems before class change

level up to 39 is unavailable until you class change

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

 I'm actually wondering if Annilhator's MP cost shouldn't be reduce, with 20 MP this is the most costly spell of the game and it has the second longest casttime out of all the spell, I don't know if it was still the guaranteed 999 damage I would be fine with it, but for a LV4 Offensive spell that can only be Single Target this seems quite a lot.

I should've possible done that when I nerfed it from 999 to mere Lv4, yes...

Just now, praetarius5018 said:

level up to 39 is unavailable until you class change

Oh that's convenient, shouldn't travel all the way to fucking wind corridor anymore.

I thought the README was clear on that?

Quote

 

===Class Change===

Class can be upgraded at Level 18 and 38.
Level-ups are disabled until class is changed.

 

Just now, praetarius5018 said:

I thought the README was clear on that?

 

Some things you have to find the hard way out 

On 24/05/2021 at 9:42 PM, smileless said:

I like Normal mode the most, not too easy or not too difficult.

For ??? Seed farming I try to get to Snowfields as low leveled as possible without being complete fodder and farm them till around pevel 36/37, go buy whichever intended class item I didn't get and change class after beating Machine Golems (or you could travel to Wind Stone if you feel you are going to overlevel to 39 after beating the Machine Golems before class change). Takes more time but hey you pretty sure we all have fast forward buttons for quick travelling.

Well I don't think I'm gonna change my routing for that part just switch to Hard for the Seed farming I always do as follow :

-Farm ??? Seed with Papa Potos on the first zone, until I get the Class Items I want (sell the ones I don't want for a good chunk of money)
-Do the Machine Golems fight and get Undine
-Do Bill and Ben (generally this fight finish to LV me up to 38)
-Get Class 3 at Fire Stone

Reason for this routing is when you have Dark Lise or Dark Hawk Power Down/Water Jutsu makes Bil and Ben much easier, and a good deal of ennemies in Valley of Flame of weak to Water so that's also convenient.

Since it work on Hard, safe to say it will work on Normal.

EDIT : Scrap that I forgot Rune Maiden can't learn Power Down anymore.

On 5/24/2021 at 4:40 AM, Nesouk said:

Well in the end I just can't get enough of this mod, however I'm gonna play Normal mode from now on, Hard is fun but I think I want a more chill experience now.

On 5/24/2021 at 3:42 PM, smileless said:

I like Normal mode the most, not too easy or not too difficult.

Agreed. I go back and forth between Normal and Hard, but I've decided on Normal for my current run. It's a nice sweet spot, and the fights are still a lot of fun.

On 5/24/2021 at 3:42 PM, smileless said:

For ??? Seed farming

I always do this in Seaside Cave; I just skips screens until I find a Papa Poto. A good place to collect Poto Oils as well.

On 5/20/2021 at 1:37 AM, Nesouk said:

One thing I'm tempted with Rune Master is run her with the full Trials Set, she might not get benefit from the armor, but reducing casttime to minimum with her LV3 Spells and Final Weapon is pretty tempting, and the rest of the set will still make her immune to Crit, remove her weakness and death score and increase her defenses. When her Final Weapon isn't needed the Magitec weapon could also work, as for capstone her PIE capstone could work, since all her 4 slot would be curse that would be a +80HP and +28 in both defenses.

I'm taking it slow, but so far my Lise/Angela/Carlie run has been a lot of fun. Jewel Eater went down pretty easy for once; my trick here was to forget that this was a spell-casting team for the first 10-12 levels and build up everyone's physical stats enough to take advantage of the HP Steal ring. At this point in the game, the only way to get tech points is to attack, and you need tech points to recover via items, so spending a lot of time casting can really hurt you. The Mind Status Resist helms were also a MAJOR help, with Tzenker too; this helm is the best thing since sliced bread for a team like this. Plus, if you are using tech points to recover your status, you are not using them to heal. I think the weakness for Jewel Eater should be "efficiency" or "vigilance" instead of "preparation".

At my first class change I chose Rune Maiden, Delvar, Priest; Tzenker was a joke with this team. I took Diamond Saber at my first Priest level-up and cast it on Lise and Angela to turn them into damage machines; for equipment, I used Mind Status Resist helms, Remove Weakness armor on Angela, and Quick Item ring on Lise to keep her tech points up for more earth-elemental Level 2 techs. The whole battle lasted somewhere around 60-90 seconds; I was back at my save point within 3 minutes.

I will be playing more during this long weekend and will be hoping to make progress towards my second class change. I'm still thinking Fenrir Knight, Rune Master, and either Bishop or Sage; now, I'm leaning more towards Bishop for the Magic Shield and easier/more compatible MT sabers (Rune Master picks up MT Diamond Saber and MT Ice Saber easily, while Bishop picks up MT Thunder Saber and MT Flame Saber easily). I'll be missing Dark element on Angela and Carlie, but I suppose Fenrir Knight could help out there; plus, I may be able to mostly get by with dedicated casters for five of the six main elements. I am so far undecided on the Trials Set; I'm not sure how much of a bonus the minimal cast-time will be compared to the traditional method of Quick Cast helm/building AGI, nor whether it will offset the negative effects of the Trials Set and not having equipment slots open for things like Flame Saber resistance. It's definitely worth a "trial" though; I'm looking forward to seeing "Meth Angela" throwing Level 3 elemental spells all over the place :-)

10 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Agreed. I go back and forth between Normal and Hard, but I've decided on Normal for my current run. It's a nice sweet spot, and the fights are still a lot of fun.

Honnestly I'm in a position where I would like to mix both, the mobs fight are actually balance on Normal they still pack up a fight but are more manageable, while they tends to be on the ridiculous side on Hard, meanwhile however the bosses are for the most part much more fun on Hard, while on Normal they feel a bit to much on the easy side. Also Hard's 100% chest spawn rate makes the grinding for Seeds more bearable.

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Honnestly I'm in a position where I would like to mix both, the mobs fight are actually balance on Normal they still pack up a fight but are more manageable, while they tends to be on the ridiculous side on Hard, meanwhile however the bosses are for the most part much more fun on Hard, while on Normal they feel a bit to much on the easy side. Also Hard's 100% chest spawn rate makes the grinding for Seeds more bearable.

I don't know if that means mobs are too strong or bosses too weak. Eh, lets buff both.

Also, why grind seeds? Is money that scarce that you can't buy the class change items?

3 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Honnestly I'm in a position where I would like to mix both, the mobs fight are actually balance on Normal they still pack up a fight but are more manageable, while they tends to be on the ridiculous side on Hard, meanwhile however the bosses are for the most part much more fun on Hard, while on Normal they feel a bit to much on the easy side. Also Hard's 100% chest spawn rate makes the grinding for Seeds more bearable.

Well more of a subjective opinion, I personally don't see it that way in Normal. You can easily buy seeds if you don't get the desired class change item from the seeds you farmed even if you don't get seeds at all. Weapon/armor seeds are probably harder to come by but for the most part you really only need one/two at best, you rarely would need to get for all three characters class weapons, or prioritize which one you need the most. By the near the end of the game I still manage to get about 2-3 more weapon seeds unless you skip enemies.

As for bosses if you find them too easy on normal or don't find them fun well maybe go on the tough difficulty then.

4 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

I don't know if that means mobs are too strong or bosses too weak. Eh, lets buff both.

Also, why grind seeds? Is money that scarce that you can't buy the class change items?

To expensive, there is a lot of new piece of equipment that become available and I'm interest in, as well as supplying my healing items, that buying all 3 is just to expensive I usually try to grind at minimum 2 of them and if I get lucky get all 3, it also happen that selling the additionnal ones I get on the way is a good bonus for money.

3 hours ago, smileless said:

Well more of a subjective opinion, I personally don't see it that way in Normal. You can easily buy seeds if you don't get the desired class change item from the seeds you farmed even if you don't get seeds at all. Weapon/armor seeds are probably harder to come by but for the most part you really only need one/two at best, you rarely would need to get for all three characters class weapons, or prioritize which one you need the most. By the near the end of the game I still manage to get about 2-3 more weapon seeds unless you skip enemies.

As for bosses if you find them too easy on normal or don't find them fun well maybe go on the tough difficulty then.

I never said my opinion was anything but mine ^^, I want to correct myself a bit cause I maybe wasn't clear enough, bosses are easy on Normal that doesn't mean they aren't fun tough, they are still fun fights and I think they are on the easy side but not overly easy (except Lugar which I already mention to Prae on Discord, Lugar is way to easy if you go for a Counter strat (which is easy to do on him as he attack non-stop) he goes down in less than a minute with barely doing anything else, my fight with him on Normal outside of his regular attacks he just did 1 tech and that's it, this is the one boss currently that needs a buff in my opinion).

??? Seeds are the big one for Seed farming, as the W/A Seeds you only need 3 at worst which isn't to bad to get and after getting them you can do a bit of RNG manipulation to eventually get the weapon you want, which to my acknowledge there isn't a consistant way to change the RNG for ??? Seeds result.

I also add to that tough that I always admitted that since my first 3-4 runs where I did everything legit, since then in order to speed up the seed grinding (and avoid overleveling) I abuse Save States, I never hide that ^^.

More randomizer team choices for my next runs - long clusterfuck of a post:

Lise (main), Kevin, Angela

Vanadise
Spells:
Skip Fire Saber, Power Up.
INT capstone - can equip any weapon and armor
LUK capstone - party takes 1/8 less damage from spells

Weapon: L3 armor break/Heal Up
Helm: Depends
Armor: Auto-Buff
Ring 1: Meta: Multi
Ring 2: Depends or heal up

Death Hand
Skip Dark Force, Demon Breath
INT capstone - sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)
Or LUK - party takes less damage from critical hits - if I choose Lise's INT capstone this one for sure then.

Weapon: L3 Armor Break
Helm: Lv2/3 tech up
Armor: Depenss
Ring 1: TP gain up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Archmage
Skip Body Change, Aura Wave
AGL capstone - party casts 20% faster

Weapon: Exploit Weakness/Magic Up
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: MP regen
Ring 1: depends
Ring 2: Meta: Curse

Funky set up lol, unsure if I will comit to double L3 Armor Break users, a bit too risky, but if yes Lise's PIE should still be maxed out for Heal Light, her purpose will be mainly healing, but if she can sneak a level 3 tech to reduce targets defenses then good, but maybe I will play more defensively and let Kevin do his job there

 

Kevin (main), Duran, Carlie

Dervish
Skip Power Up^, Half Vanish
VIT capstone - draw agro and turn him into a tank so Duran is free from that job. Tho the AGL capstone sounds nice too - when a weapon attack can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical, while the party has energy ball and analyze honestly I might consider the AGL capstone.

Might go for Auto-Debuff equipment set for the most part, when not needed I will just up his defenses or offer status protection, have him wield crit weapon.

Duelist
Skip Anti-Magic, Protect Down
AGL capstone - sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)

Weapon: CQC Tech/Lv3 Tech up
Helm: Lv3 tech up
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: TP up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Bishop
Skip Flame Saber, Energy Ball, Ice Saber
AGL capstone - enemies spawn with -20 evade or the LUK capstone with spells costing less MP

Weapon: Heal Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: unsure
Ring 1: Heal Up/varies
Ring 2: Spell: Resist (cursed)

 

Angela(main), Hawk, Carlie

I want to try something different than Archmage for the 20th time, so what I got so far:

Grand Divina
Skip Evil Gate, Sleep Flower
As for capstones am thinking of either of the three:
AGL capstone - party cats 20% faster
VIT capstone - primary elemental (fire, ice, earth, wind) spells heal party by 50 HP
INT  - pierce 35 m.def

Weapon: Dual Tech
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: Heal Up?
Ring 1: Dark resistance (when mob fighting)
Ring 2: depends

Wanderer
Skip Body Change (do that from first class change) and Aura Wave
INT capstone - when a weapon can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical

Weapon: Crit by TP
Helm: Crit Up?
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: Status infliction ring
Ring 2: Depends

Necromancer
Skip Half Vanish, Black Rain or Great Demon, more thinking needed on that, probably will keep Black Rain for curse.
LUK capstone - spells cost less MP

Weapon: Magic Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: MP regen
Ring 1: Magic Up/Meta: Multi (for dsrk saber
Ring 2: Meta: Curse

None of them as access to protect up so you need at least a Magic Shield user, and maybe do some sharet resistance strat by equiping resist dark on Angela, having Carlie cast Dark saber on enemies.  I am not entirely sure on this party, mind up no capstone to increase the saber power, for a spell casting team this might be a weak one in terms of damage. Maybe I should try Magus/Nightblade/Bishop.

2 hours ago, smileless said:

Angela(main), Hawk, Carlie

I want to try something different than Archmage for the 20th time, so what I got so far:

Grand Divina
Skip Evil Gate, Sleep Flower
As for capstones am thinking of either of the three:
AGL capstone - party cats 20% faster
VIT capstone - primary elemental (fire, ice, earth, wind) spells heal party by 50 HP
INT  - pierce 35 m.def

Weapon: Dual Tech
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: Heal Up?
Ring 1: Dark resistance (when mob fighting)
Ring 2: depends

Wanderer
Skip Body Change (do that from first class change) and Aura Wave
INT capstone - when a weapon can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical

Weapon: Crit by TP
Helm: Crit Up?
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: Status infliction ring
Ring 2: Depends

Necromancer
Skip Half Vanish, Black Rain or Great Demon, more thinking needed on that, probably will keep Black Rain for curse.
LUK capstone - spells cost less MP

Weapon: Magic Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: MP regen
Ring 1: Magic Up/Meta: Multi (for dsrk saber
Ring 2: Meta: Curse

None of them as access to protect up so you need at least a Magic Shield user, and maybe do some sharet resistance strat by equiping resist dark on Angela, having Carlie cast Dark saber on enemies.  I am not entirely sure on this party, mind up no capstone to increase the saber power, for a spell casting team this might be a weak one in terms of damage. Maybe I should try Magus/Nightblade/Bishop.

Funny enough, I've actually been thinking about this team for a while and considering it for my next run.... I'll list some thoughts here; I think 2.0 gives some nice new options to try.

I've used a team similar to this in pre-2.0, and I don't think you will be lacking spell damage: Grand Divina and Necromancer make a strong casting team, and with Wanderer even more so. Just stock up on Sahagin's Scales for Mind Up during boss fights when you need a damage boost; later in the game when you need it, you will also be able to boost your damage with sabers from Angela's final weapon. Speaking of sabers, it might even be worth considering going for Hawk's PIE capstone to take the burden off of Angela and free up her final weapon. By the later part the game, Angela is going to be a fun lead character here since her elemental spells will be close to instant, giving you no reason to switch off her before casting them, and having a choice of weapon will be nice (Magic Up, Heal Up, Magitech, etc.).

Also, this doesn't apply to your setup as listed, but I wonder how Angela's VIT capstone would interact with Necromancer wearing Undead armor or ring and her final weapon: would it heal or hurt her by 50 HP? If it heals, this could be used to create a stable low-HP Necromancer build; basically increase Necromancer's defenses with Undead equipment so the damage she takes is decreased significantly, and heal her as necessary 50 HP at a time while keeping her HP down as much as possible. It seems to me that a balance could be achieved here to keep Necromancer dealing massive damage with her Level 2 elemental spells. If it hurts, then you would need some other way to achieve the balance while Angela chips away at Necromancer's HP to keep her in the high-damage zone; otherwise you could go all out with Death Bringer gear. In both cases, Wanderer's Life Booster and Half Vanish should help to get Necromancer into the zone of high spell damage from the start. If any team can play to Necromancer's final weapon, this should be the team to do it.

1 hour ago, rpschamp said:

Funny enough, I've actually been thinking about this team for a while and considering it for my next run.... I'll list some thoughts here; I think 2.0 gives some nice new options to try.

I've used a team similar to this in pre-2.0, and I don't think you will be lacking spell damage: Grand Divina and Necromancer make a strong casting team, and with Wanderer even more so. Just stock up on Sahagin's Scales for Mind Up during boss fights when you need a damage boost; later in the game when you need it, you will also be able to boost your damage with sabers from Angela's final weapon. Speaking of sabers, it might even be worth considering going for Hawk's PIE capstone to take the burden off of Angela and free up her final weapon. By the later part the game, Angela is going to be a fun lead character here since her elemental spells will be close to instant, giving you no reason to switch off her before casting them, and having a choice of weapon will be nice (Magic Up, Heal Up, Magitech, etc.).

Also, this doesn't apply to your setup as listed, but I wonder how Angela's VIT capstone would interact with Necromancer wearing Undead armor or ring and her final weapon: would it heal or hurt her by 50 HP? If it heals, this could be used to create a stable low-HP Necromancer build; basically increase Necromancer's defenses with Undead equipment so the damage she takes is decreased significantly, and heal her as necessary 50 HP at a time while keeping her HP down as much as possible. It seems to me that a balance could be achieved here to keep Necromancer dealing massive damage with her Level 2 elemental spells. If it hurts, then you would need some other way to achieve the balance while Angela chips away at Necromancer's HP to keep her in the high-damage zone; otherwise you could go all out with Death Bringer gear. In both cases, Wanderer's Life Booster and Half Vanish should help to get Necromancer into the zone of high spell damage from the start. If any team can play to Necromancer's final weapon, this should be the team to do it.

Don't thinkthink there are better teams for Grand Divina to her final weapon, I think Archmage with her final weapon is great without even a mind up when hitting with weakness the right enemy. I think another way to play this team would be Magus, Nightblade, Bishop (no Anti-Magic but unless really needed you got a variety of physical and magical damage) and you can  do a sharet element resistance strat here as well. Or a no heal light team but relying on Regeneration spell and maxed PIE stat (which you will do that to your PIE spell caster anyway), I saw in one of Nesoul's videos Vanadise with Regeneration spell and no heal light so it's possible with that too.

Magus, Wanderer, Necromancer but have one of them equip Regeneration spell ring. Self Mind up for Magus, Magic shield to cover for defenses, all stat down. Wanderer with the capstone to cover for sabers. You have Necromancers Dark Saber for shared resistance strat.

In the end you could go with Archmage, Nightblade, Bishop, very straightforward but I don't want to use Archmage too many times now, I want to try more of Angela's other classes, dang it randomizer.

1 hour ago, rpschamp said:

Also, this doesn't apply to your setup as listed, but I wonder how Angela's VIT capstone would interact with Necromancer wearing Undead armor or ring and her final weapon: would it heal or hurt her by 50 HP?

all "triggered" heal sources are not affected by anything

11 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

all "triggered" heal sources are not affected by anything

In this case, Angela's VIT capstone should be great for Undead armor.

4 hours ago, smileless said:

LUK capstone - spells cost less MP

Also great for Grand Divina; her damage spells will cost only 3 MP. I may give Grand Divina, Wanderer, Necromancer a shot on my next playthrough after all....

7 hours ago, smileless said:

Lise (main), Kevin, Angela

Vanadise
Spells:
Skip Fire Saber, Power Up.
INT capstone - can equip any weapon and armor
LUK capstone - party takes 1/8 less damage from spells

Weapon: L3 armor break/Heal Up
Helm: Depends
Armor: Auto-Buff
Ring 1: Meta: Multi
Ring 2: Depends or heal up

Death Hand
Skip Dark Force, Demon Breath
INT capstone - sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)
Or LUK - party takes less damage from critical hits - if I choose Lise's INT capstone this one for sure then.

Weapon: L3 Armor Break
Helm: Lv2/3 tech up
Armor: Depenss
Ring 1: TP gain up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Archmage
Skip Body Change, Aura Wave
AGL capstone - party casts 20% faster

Weapon: Exploit Weakness/Magic Up
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: MP regen
Ring 1: depends
Ring 2: Meta: Curse

Funky set up lol, unsure if I will comit to double L3 Armor Break users, a bit too risky, but if yes Lise's PIE should still be maxed out for Heal Light, her purpose will be mainly healing, but if she can sneak a level 3 tech to reduce targets defenses then good, but maybe I will play more defensively and let Kevin do his job there

Maybe could use TP By Cast for Vanadis to get TP Faster, since she has some fast spell to cast like Holy Ball, tough going LUK capstone would probably be easier, not sure Riesz when on Healing duty would be suited for a double LV3 Armor Break strat.

Out of subject of this team, but one thing that could be interesting with Death Hand is the Invert Buff armor, since he has an MT Lunatic with this armor this makes him the only character able to apply Life Booster on everyone in one spell, tough you lose Protect Down from Thunder Jutsu you gain Speed Down through Speed Up* which might be better debuff for defensive purpose. And I don't think Sabers and Aura Wave are affected by this armor (technically could apply Mind Up and Protect Up through Thunder Jutsu and Demon Breath but the fact they inflict damage isn't really ideal).

7 hours ago, smileless said:

Kevin (main), Duran, Carlie

Dervish
Skip Power Up^, Half Vanish
VIT capstone - draw agro and turn him into a tank so Duran is free from that job. Tho the AGL capstone sounds nice too - when a weapon attack can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical, while the party has energy ball and analyze honestly I might consider the AGL capstone.

Might go for Auto-Debuff equipment set for the most part, when not needed I will just up his defenses or offer status protection, have him wield crit weapon.

Duelist
Skip Anti-Magic, Protect Down
AGL capstone - sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)

Weapon: CQC Tech/Lv3 Tech up
Helm: Lv3 tech up
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: TP up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Bishop
Skip Flame Saber, Energy Ball, Ice Saber
AGL capstone - enemies spawn with -20 evade or the LUK capstone with spells costing less MP

Weapon: Heal Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: unsure
Ring 1: Heal Up/varies
Ring 2: Spell: Resist (cursed)

Having use Dervish with a Crit Build and AGL capstones myself I can confirm it works wonder, these +30 and +40 being fix really help especially against ennemy immune to physical or with an high defense. That being said for an Auto-Debuff set up which means you'll have to wear Auto-Buff armor I think I would prefer skipping Anti-Magic and get Power Up, Auto-Buff would also applied Power on the all team so Duelist would beneficiate from it to. And on the other side I would take Anti-Magic with Duelist instead of Leaf Saber, the team doesn't need to much casting, Bishop with Constant Reg and MP Regen Plus is pretty self substain.

7 hours ago, smileless said:

Grand Divina
Skip Evil Gate, Sleep Flower
As for capstones am thinking of either of the three:
AGL capstone - party cats 20% faster
VIT capstone - primary elemental (fire, ice, earth, wind) spells heal party by 50 HP
INT  - pierce 35 m.def

Weapon: Dual Tech
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: Heal Up?
Ring 1: Dark resistance (when mob fighting)
Ring 2: depends

Wanderer
Skip Body Change (do that from first class change) and Aura Wave
INT capstone - when a weapon can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical

Weapon: Crit by TP
Helm: Crit Up?
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: Status infliction ring
Ring 2: Depends

Necromancer
Skip Half Vanish, Black Rain or Great Demon, more thinking needed on that, probably will keep Black Rain for curse.
LUK capstone - spells cost less MP

Weapon: Magic Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: MP regen
Ring 1: Magic Up/Meta: Multi (for dsrk saber
Ring 2: Meta: Curse

None of them as access to protect up so you need at least a Magic Shield user, and maybe do some sharet resistance strat by equiping resist dark on Angela, having Carlie cast Dark saber on enemies.  I am not entirely sure on this party, mind up no capstone to increase the saber power, for a spell casting team this might be a weak one in terms of damage. Maybe I should try Magus/Nightblade/Bishop.

Actually when I was having fun with the Randomizer it gives this party with Ninja Master, Magus and Evil Shaman I thought that would be an odd team, and so did a little theory crafting with it and thought this could actually work like this :

Main Hawkeye Ninja Master

Spells :
1-Thunder Jutsu
2-Earth Jutsu
3-Water Jutsu* (LV41)
4-Fire Jutsu* (LV43)
5-Ice Saber
6-Transshape
7-Shuriken*
8-Cresent
9-Analyse
10-Thunder Saber

PIE Capstone : using a Lv2/3 tech spreads the current saber element to the party and makes pseudo saber real unless resisted

Gear :

Weapon : TP Gain Up
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : TP Gain Up
Ring 2 : Accessory of Elemental weakness of the boss/???

Teammate 1 : Carlie Evil Shaman

Spells :
1-Regeneration
2-Holy Ball*
3-Tinkle Rain
4-Unicorn Head
5-Machine Golem
6-Ghoul
7-Ghost
8-Protect Up (LV42)
9-Lunatic (LV44)
10-Anti Magic (LV47)

LUK Capstone : spells cost 20% MP less, min 1 (party); does not change displayed cost

Weapon : Enervate Spawn
Helm : Constant Regen
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Regeneration
Ring 2 : Vary

Teammate 2 : Angela Magus 

Spells :
1-Power Up (LV39)
2-Mind Up^ (LV41)
3-Earthquake*
4-Thunderstorm*
5-Mega Splash*
6-Explode* (LV45)
7-Dark Force* (LV46)
8-Poison Bubble (LV48)
9-Ancient (LV50)
10-Lunatic (LV52)

INT Capstone : pierce 35 m.def

Weapon : Magic Up/AoE Mastery
Helm : Magic Up (or maybe Constant Reg)
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : Meta Curse

So :

-Evil Shaman assume the healing role with Regeneration but can also deal elemental damage ST with her spells, she also take the Protect Up role thanks to Dark Hawk she can skip Ghost Road and Demon Breath

-Ninja Master : Main debuffer, running a Tech build since you are going to use his LV2/3 Tech to spread Sabers with his PIE capstones

-Magus : AoE elemental damage and set Curse, need Meta Multi for Mind Up, also skipping Meta Curse and equipped Meta Leaf Coat to increase Hawk's Tech damage could be an option

So to sum up :

-All Debuff
-All Buff except Speed Up
-Technically all Saber
-Anti Magic
-Decent physical damage with Ninja Master
-Good Magic Damage
 

Sound actually pretty solid, the healing might be a little weak tough.

7 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Having use Dervish with a Crit Build and AGL capstones myself I can confirm it works wonder, these +30 and +40 being fix really help especially against ennemy immune to physical or with an high defense. That being said for an Auto-Debuff set up which means you'll have to wear Auto-Buff armor I think I would prefer skipping Anti-Magic and get Power Up, Auto-Buff would also applied Power on the all team so Duelist would beneficiate from it to. And on the other side I would take Anti-Magic with Duelist instead of Leaf Saber, the team doesn't need to much casting, Bishop with Constant Reg and MP Regen Plus is pretty self substain.

Yeah good point I should skip Leaf Saber. Dervish learns Power up on self, will auto-buff apply it other party members too?

7 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Maybe could use TP By Cast for Vanadis to get TP Faster, since she has some fast spell to cast like Holy Ball, tough going LUK capstone would probably be easier, not sure Riesz when on Healing duty would be suited for a double LV3 Armor Break strat.

Yeah I think LUK capstone would be the safest option here while have Lise save TP for items instead. INT capstone for Vanadise would work mainly with passive weapons like evernate spawn, Sage's weapon and such. Could make use of Bishop's weapon too, since she's the healer maxing out PIE stat and go for counters acting as a secondary healer, but weapons like that would probably be more preferable like Starlancer.

7 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Out of subject of this team, but one thing that could be interesting with Death Hand is the Invert Buff armor, since he has an MT Lunatic with this armor this makes him the only character able to apply Life Booster on everyone in one spell, tough you lose Protect Down from Thunder Jutsu you gain Speed Down through Speed Up* which might be better debuff for defensive purpose. And I don't think Sabers and Aura Wave are affected by this armor (technically could apply Mind Up and Protect Up through Thunder Jutsu and Demon Breath but the fact they inflict damage isn't really ideal).

That could work too, a lot of times I prefer speed up/down combo more than having protect down. Kevin's final weapon reduces defense over time anyway, while Archmage gets still increased spell damage with mind up/down + kevin's weapon.

7 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Maybe could use TP By Cast for Vanadis to get TP Faster, since she has some fast spell to cast like Holy Ball, tough going LUK capstone would probably be easier, not sure Riesz when on Healing duty would be suited for a double LV3 Armor Break strat.

Out of subject of this team, but one thing that could be interesting with Death Hand is the Invert Buff armor, since he has an MT Lunatic with this armor this makes him the only character able to apply Life Booster on everyone in one spell, tough you lose Protect Down from Thunder Jutsu you gain Speed Down through Speed Up* which might be better debuff for defensive purpose. And I don't think Sabers and Aura Wave are affected by this armor (technically could apply Mind Up and Protect Up through Thunder Jutsu and Demon Breath but the fact they inflict damage isn't really ideal).

Having use Dervish with a Crit Build and AGL capstones myself I can confirm it works wonder, these +30 and +40 being fix really help especially against ennemy immune to physical or with an high defense. That being said for an Auto-Debuff set up which means you'll have to wear Auto-Buff armor I think I would prefer skipping Anti-Magic and get Power Up, Auto-Buff would also applied Power on the all team so Duelist would beneficiate from it to. And on the other side I would take Anti-Magic with Duelist instead of Leaf Saber, the team doesn't need to much casting, Bishop with Constant Reg and MP Regen Plus is pretty self substain.

Actually when I was having fun with the Randomizer it gives this party with Ninja Master, Magus and Evil Shaman I thought that would be an odd team, and so did a little theory crafting with it and thought this could actually work like this :

Main Hawkeye Ninja Master

Spells :
1-Thunder Jutsu
2-Earth Jutsu
3-Water Jutsu* (LV41)
4-Fire Jutsu* (LV43)
5-Ice Saber
6-Transshape
7-Shuriken*
8-Cresent
9-Analyse
10-Thunder Saber

PIE Capstone : using a Lv2/3 tech spreads the current saber element to the party and makes pseudo saber real unless resisted

Gear :

Weapon : TP Gain Up
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : TP Gain Up
Ring 2 : Accessory of Elemental weakness of the boss/???

Teammate 1 : Carlie Evil Shaman

Spells :
1-Regeneration
2-Holy Ball*
3-Tinkle Rain
4-Unicorn Head
5-Machine Golem
6-Ghoul
7-Ghost
8-Protect Up (LV42)
9-Lunatic (LV44)
10-Anti Magic (LV47)

LUK Capstone : spells cost 20% MP less, min 1 (party); does not change displayed cost

Weapon : Enervate Spawn
Helm : Constant Regen
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Regeneration
Ring 2 : Vary

Teammate 2 : Angela Magus 

Spells :
1-Power Up (LV39)
2-Mind Up^ (LV41)
3-Earthquake*
4-Thunderstorm*
5-Mega Splash*
6-Explode* (LV45)
7-Dark Force* (LV46)
8-Poison Bubble (LV48)
9-Ancient (LV50)
10-Lunatic (LV52)

INT Capstone : pierce 35 m.def

Weapon : Magic Up/AoE Mastery
Helm : Magic Up (or maybe Constant Reg)
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : Meta Curse

So :

-Evil Shaman assume the healing role with Regeneration but can also deal elemental damage ST with her spells, she also take the Protect Up role thanks to Dark Hawk she can skip Ghost Road and Demon Breath

-Ninja Master : Main debuffer, running a Tech build since you are going to use his LV2/3 Tech to spread Sabers with his PIE capstones

-Magus : AoE elemental damage and set Curse, need Meta Multi for Mind Up, also skipping Meta Curse and equipped Meta Leaf Coat to increase Hawk's Tech damage could be an option

So to sum up :

-All Debuff
-All Buff except Speed Up
-Technically all Saber
-Anti Magic
-Decent physical damage with Ninja Master
-Good Magic Damage
 

Sound actually pretty solid, the healing might be a little weak tough.

This seems very good overall but weak on the healing side, Magus will still be your main attacker. Evil Shaman might need a heal up slot to strengthen regeneration. Is that spell at least faster than heal light when raising AGL high enough?

5 minutes ago, smileless said:

Yeah good point I should skip Leaf Saber. Dervish learns Power up on self, will auto-buff apply it other party members too?

Yes Auto Buff will apply it on the other character as well.

7 minutes ago, smileless said:

This seems very good overall but weak on the healing side, Magus will still be your main attacker. Evil Shaman might need a heal up slot to strengthen regeneration. Is that spell at least faster than heal light when raising AGL high enough?

Regeneration is slighty faster, also cost less MP and give an HP Regen buff, it also gives the auto heal after battle just like Heal Light and is One/All target by default. Nut yeah giving Heal Up to Evil Shaman might be better cause it is indeed weaker than Heal Light. 

10 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Regeneration is slighty faster, also cost less MP and give an HP Regen buff, it also gives the auto heal after battle just like Heal Light and is One/All target by default. Nut yeah giving Heal Up to Evil Shaman might be better cause it is indeed weaker than Heal Light. 

I think it's a fair trade considering you will also have Evil Shaman's final weapon.

On 29/05/2021 at 2:44 PM, smileless said:

Kevin (main), Duran, Carlie

Dervish
Skip Power Up^, Half Vanish
VIT capstone - draw agro and turn him into a tank so Duran is free from that job. Tho the AGL capstone sounds nice too - when a weapon attack can inflict a status effect even if immune, subtract another 30 or 40 hp on critical, while the party has energy ball and analyze honestly I might consider the AGL capstone.

Might go for Auto-Debuff equipment set for the most part, when not needed I will just up his defenses or offer status protection, have him wield crit weapon.

Duelist
Skip Anti-Magic, Protect Down
AGL capstone - sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)

Weapon: CQC Tech/Lv3 Tech up
Helm: Lv3 tech up
Armor: Depends
Ring 1: TP up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Bishop
Skip Flame Saber, Energy Ball, Ice Saber
AGL capstone - enemies spawn with -20 evade or the LUK capstone with spells costing less MP

Weapon: Heal Up
Helm: unsure
Armor: unsure
Ring 1: Heal Up/varies
Ring 2: Spell: Resist (cursed)

On another note here on Carlie I might have to skip Power Up* instead in order to get the LUK capstone, and learn Flame Saber instead, very clutch. Either that or I will have to go with the AGL capatstone. I think it may have been better to skip the Diamond Saber on her first class change entirely and not learn it at all.

Oh well, if I decide on LUK capstone for Carlie, at least with Duelist capstone team gets more power out of sabers, and at the beginning of fights Kevin will auto-buff the party with his power up.

You can also get the LUK Capstone and Power Up by skipping Exorcise.

44 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

You can also get the LUK Capstone and Power Up by skipping Exorcise.

You are right, but is it really worth to skip Exorcise in Carlie's final dungeon vs those undead enemies where it's gonna be pretty painful dealing with them physically. Tho it's doable with Duran's Lv3 tech and Kevin using counters, Carlie spams her one and only spell but I think Exorcise makes things just more comfortable for a team like this. Still confilcted if I should skip that.

Ideally would have been best to skip Carlie's sabers from her previous class, my spell/capstone planning sucks lol.

HA Forget you were on Mirage Palace route in that case yeah Exorcise is really valuable in Mirage Palace and Dark Lich himself.

Doing a little review of my own team on Normal :

-Fenrir Knight is good, I think beofre 2.0 Dragon Master had a slight edge over Fenrir Knight due to Anti-Magic, but now that Fenrir Knight can effectivly get all Debuff while Dragon Master can't makes her more convenient on that aspect, her Final Weapon is really good, especially the MP part, which allows her teammate keep on doing. And in general I think as a physical attacker she is the best class for Lise she is just fun to play. Also Unicorn Head and Ghost Road gives her some magic if she ever need it. I use Meta Sudden for mob fight as being able to nearly instantly debuff ennemies is pretty good.

-Lord getting all buff except for Mind Up works well, he also can work well with Arrow which is really fast to cast, his Final Weapon doesn't see much use on mob fight where I prefer to cast Arrow with him, but it's good for Boss fight allowing Lise to land Counter more frequently and he is good healer as an all decent cast time for Heal Light with Speed Up and good enough PIE to heal more than needed when combine with Lise's Drain Counter.

-Hawk, I feel I'm gonna get him something else for Boss probably due to the nerf on Half Vanish + combine with the fact character's deal 30% more damage on Normal (which doesn't affect Half Vanish as it's fix damage) and as a result for most bosses Arrow is outdamaging Half Vanish, the only fight where that wasn't the case so far is Land Umber due to his ability to raise his defenses, and Xian Bhe's furnace (more on that later), I'm not sure if I can go Magitec as I think it won't trigger his PIE Capstone effect. Other than that Wanderer is great, Magic Shield, Aura Wave, Lunatic all with a pretty good cast time, Poison Bubble to inflict Poison, Arrow for fast casting damage and Half Vanish for ennemies resistant to it, all and all a great character, got his PIE capstone with every elemental ring works wonder and think it works with Duran's AGL capstone.

Overall this team is pretty effective...... except for Xian Bhe, who ended up being a major difficulty spike with this team, mainly beacause of the Furnace, Wanderer has no answer against the furnace Arrow won't do shit, Half Vanish only does 70 with Life Booster and for some reason after Anti-Magic Poison Bubble does only a measily 8 damage to the Furnace (seriously how does that work ? The furnace get heal by Poison Bubble for 330 HP base on Anti-Magic's description I would expect it to do about 165, how does it does 8 ?), the only effective spell this team has against the furnace is Fenrir Knight's Ghost Road who deals about 250 with Mind Down and Ice Saber, yeah I have to temporarly go for an out of the blue spellcasting build with Fenrir Knight just for that fight, and even when we finally break the Furnace shits not over, cause Xian Bhe's Lava Wave is really a cheap move even with Mind Down and Lise's LUK capstone it does 127 damage (on Hard it would deal about 254), so if all of your team max HP is below that when he cast it it's a wipe, honnestly maybe if I had done him first it would deal less than 100 damage, on Hard I don't think there is any way to reduce Lava Wave below 100, on Normal maybe if doing him first. So that fight really boils down to can you beat him before he wipes with Lava Wave or do you have the Life Saver armor ? 

@Nesouk exactly the problem my current team has - lack of elemental coverage = Xan Bie will be a painful fight no matter which difficulty. Hopefully Duelist final weapon does decent damage to the furnace, maybe will have Carlie or Kevin with Magitech whichever ends up with the highest int.

Dangaard, Mispolm, Dolan down, I think I might go for Land Umber next then Xan Bie and get over that fight.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

I'm not sure if I can go Magitec as I think it won't trigger his PIE Capstone effect.

magitech changes it to a spell in every sense (except the MP/TP cost part), so it wouldn't

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

The furnace get heal by Poison Bubble for 330 HP base on Anti-Magic's description I would expect it to do about 165, how does it does 8 ?

are you sure it is 8 damage?
I got 254 healing to 127 damage + 3mp as pop ups

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

cause Xian Bhe's Lava Wave is really a cheap move even with Mind Down and Lise's LUK capstone it does 127 damage (on Hard it would deal about 254)

what if I told you that Xan Bie has a flatter damage scaling across difficulties?
no I don't really have an idea how to handle the boss level based increase of his spell damage with his gimmick...
as it is he's most of the time just best fought very early before it becomes impossible to reduce his spell damage below 100

6 hours ago, praetarius5018 said:

are you sure it is 8 damage?
I got 254 healing to 127 damage + 3mp as pop up

Well I only got a purple 8 appearing after Anti Magic.

8 hours ago, smileless said:

Nesouk exactly the problem my current team has - lack of elemental coverage = Xan Bie will be a painful fight no matter which difficulty. Hopefully Duelist final weapon does decent damage to the furnace, maybe will have Carlie or Kevin with Magitech whichever ends up with the highest int.

Duelist is one of the few physical character that perform well against Xian Bhe, in fact on Hard I manage to destroy the Furnace with Duelist before Xian Bhe got a single heal out of it.

Ice Saber + Power Up + Final Weapon + LV2/3 Tech Up Helm = 432 damage to the furnace with LV3 Tech ^^

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Duelist is one of the few physical character that perform well against Xian Bhe, in fact on Hard I manage to destroy the Furnace with Duelist before Xian Bhe got a single heal out of it.

Ice Saber + Power Up + Final Weapon + LV2/3 Tech Up Helm = 432 damage to the furnace with LV3 Tech ^^

Didn't expect Duelist to work that well in this fight he carried hard. He dealt more damage also due to protect down + Duran's AGL capstone increasing saber spell power. Kevin had auto-buff equiped so Duran benefited from his power up, and auto-debuff set all I had to cast was mind down.

21 hours ago, smileless said:

Didn't expect Duelist to work that well in this fight he carried hard. He dealt more damage also due to protect down + Duran's AGL capstone increasing saber spell power. Kevin had auto-buff equiped so Duran benefited from his power up, and auto-debuff set all I had to cast was mind down.

Yeah Duelist carry this fight hard, for Physical Kevin with AGL Capstone or Hawk with INT capstone can also work as the 30/40 damage is fix it allows to deal good damage on the Furnace.

I love the duelist class, mod did justice to a class known for level 3 tech power, unlike the remake where I heard Duelist got shafted hard.

And on that note I beat Dark Lich, next is the Lise/Kevin/Angela run, with Vanadise/Death hand/Archmage. Star Lancer, Dervish, Grand Divina could also be interesting, I will think of that option once I reach level 18.

Edit: actually no scratch that, no mind down, going with Vanadise, Death Hand, Archmage definitely.

Yeah Duelist got the short end of the stick in the remake, he isn't a bad class but the issue is Edelfrei/Swordmaster is better in every single way.

5 hours ago, smileless said:

I love the duelist class, mod did justice to a class known for level 3 tech power, unlike the remake where I heard Duelist got shafted hard.

And on that note I beat Dark Lich, next is the Lise/Kevin/Angela run, with Vanadise/Death hand/Archmage. Star Lancer, Dervish, Grand Divina could also be interesting, I will think of that option once I reach level 18.

 

Edit: actually no scratch that, no mind down, going with Vanadise, Death Hand, Archmage definitely.

Why not Dervish instead of Death Hand? You would get Protect Down, Speed Down, Half Vanish, Poison Breath, Energy Ball and Analyze, while the Archmage provides Power Down, Mind Down, Aura Wave and Anti-Magic.

28 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Why not Dervish instead of Death Hand? You would get Protect Down, Speed Down, Half Vanish, Poison Breath, Energy Ball and Analyze, while the Archmage provides Power Down, Mind Down, Aura Wave and Anti-Magic.

You can't keep Archmage's power down, mind down, aura wave and anti-magic,  you have to skip Anti-Magic and Rainbow dust so you learn Body Change and then Aura Wave for example, unless you skip one of Angela's spells entirely from previous class then maybe but you want her to cover elemental spells don't see a point doing that.

Death Hand final weapon would also allow to maximize angela's spell damage, has some saber spells too.

Tbh can't go wrong with either Dervish or Death Hand, I just want to try more Death Hand cause I liked the final weapon I tried before.

Dervish - skip Power Up, Half Vanish

Spells learned: Fire Breath, Power Down, Anti-Magic, Moon Saber, Protect Down, Poison Breath, Energy Ball, Speed Down, Rockfall, Analyze

Archmage - skip Rainbow Dust, Anti-Magic

Spells Learned: Earthquake, Thunderstorm*, Explode*, Mega Splash*, Dark Force*, Saint Beam*, Mind Down, Change Form, Aura Wave, Power Down

Could be one way to go with that team. No Sabers but with Mind Up and Archmage exploit weakness you still deal a lot of damage as long as hitting for the right weakness.

Drath Hand/Archmage formation I got:

Death Hand - skips Dark Force, Demon Breath

Spells learned: Flame Saber, Diamond Saber^, Speed Up*, Dark Saber*, Body Change*, Thunder Jutsu, Aura Wave, Lunatic#, Rockfall, Leaf Saber

Archmage: Skips Body Change, Aura Wave, learns same as above but with Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust.

Death Hand has the final weapon to reduce more of targets defenses, multi target lunatic, with invert armor that Nesouk suggested you got the reverse of Lunatic for allies and Speed Up* for enemies. Thundet Juts there remains a redundant spell but you have to learn it for Lunatic, doesn't matter even without def down it's manageable and you have Kevin's final weapon to slowly decrease that.

Personally both options work but am willing to try Death Hand more

What kind of combos and builds would work in a team of Light Kevin, Light Angela and Light Lise? I was thinking of God Hand and Archmage, but I'm not sure of Lise's class. Would this team of Kevin, Angela and Lise (all Light) have any viable combos with Grand Divina?

Warrior Monk, Gran Divina, Starlancer would work I think.

Warrior Monk cover the Debuff and Power Up* while Starlancer cover the remaining Buffs and also Silence, and Gran Divina cover Sabers Buffs. Warrior Monk is probably the best healer between him and Gran Divina thanks to his Final Weapon, you are then free to skip Heal Light with her. Both Starlancer and Angela can cover Elemental Damage, can also get Aura Wave with Starlancer.

For Capstone, if it works with Gran Divina's Final Weapon Kevin's INT capstone could be interesting tough his VIT capstone could work to making him a Tank, for Angela VIT or AGL capstone could work and for Lise I can see LUK or VIT capstone working.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Warrior Monk, Gran Divina, Starlancer would work I think.

I was thinking before to try this too. No Anti-Magic but you have 6 main elementals covered, only one enemy will be a threat to this magic heavy party but no big deal, as for anti-Magic only two boss fights need it.

You could potentially skip Star Lancers Dark Saber, Saint Saber ans Power Up and teach her one of those cursed spells, like Resistance, or have her leaen Dark Saber if you want to do the shared resistance strat, having Angela ans Lise equip dark resistance ring when facing physically heavy enemies. Kevin could be the healer/tank and has the needed debuffs, Lise and Angela do spell damage and buff party once you get Angela's final weapon even further the spells boosted.

4 hours ago, smileless said:

I was thinking before to try this too. No Anti-Magic but you have 6 main elementals covered, only one enemy will be a threat to this magic heavy party but no big deal, as for anti-Magic only two boss fights need it.

Which two fights are you talking about, by the way?

Thanks for the interesting idea of Warrior Monk, Star Lancer and Grand Divina. I think I'd build them to be something like this:

Warrior Monk:
Transshape, Water Jutsu, Heal Light, Leaf Saber, Power Up, Mind Down, Body Change, Energy Ball, Power Down, Speed Down (skip Fireball and Analyse)

Star Lancer:
Dark Saber, Energy Ball, Ice Smash, Speed Up, Airblast, Fireball, Mind Up, Marduke, Aura Wave, Protect Up (skip Saint Saber and Power Up)

Grand Divina:
Fireball, Diamond Missile, Airblast, Ice Smash, Holy Ball, Tinkle Rain, Speed Up, Evil Gate, Transshape, Triple Spell (skip Heal Light and Sleep Flower)
Alternatively skip Sleep Flower and Triple Spell to have backup healing.

I really dislike skipping Lise's Saint Saber, but I can't imagine any other build for her, since I don't think you can skip Speed Up, and skipping Mind Up is simply a terrible idea. There's also redundancy with Energy Ball and Transshape.

----------

Another combination I was thinking:

God Hand:
Heal Light, Moon Saber, Triple Spell, Ice Saber, Thunder Saber, Tinkle Rain, Power Up, Protect Down, Saint Saber, Magic Shield (skip self-only Aura Wave and Life Booster)
Alternatively, skip Moon Saber and Triple Spell.

Vanadis:
Protect Up, Speed Up, Flame Saber, Freya, Tinkle Rain, Heal Light, Body Change, Thunderstorm, Mind Up, Holy Ball (skip Power Up and Thunder Saber)

Archmage:
Earthquake, Thunderstorm, Mega Splash, Explode, Saint Beam, Dark Force, Mind Down, Body Change, Aura Wave, Power Down (skip Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust)
Alternatively, skip Body Change and Aura Wave if GH learned Aura Wave.

Missing Anti-Magic and Energy Ball, but otherwise pretty solid. Has double healing, all buffs and Magic Shield, and has all debuffs except for Speed Down.

----------

Yet another variation:

God Hand:
Heal Light, Moon Saber, Triple Spell, Ice Saber, Thunder Saber, Tinkle Rain, Power Up, Protect Down, Saint Saber, Magic Shield (skip self-only Aura Wave and Life Booster)
Alternatively, skip Moon Saber and Triple Spell.

Star Lancer:
Dark Saber, Energy Ball, Ice Smash, Speed Up, Airblast, Fireball, Mind Up, Marduke, Aura Wave, Protect Up (skip Saint Saber and Power Up)

Archmage:
Earthquake, Thunderstorm, Mega Splash, Explode, Saint Beam, Dark Force, Mind Down, Body Change, Aura Wave, Power Down (skip Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust)
Alternatively, skip Body Change and Aura Wave if GH learned Aura Wave.

This one gets Energy Ball, and Dark Saber if you want to enhance curse-based strategies with Dark Force. Pretty similar to the above team, though I'm not sure if God Hand's healing is enough to carry the team.

6 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Which two fights are you talking about, by the way?

  Hide contents

6 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

This one gets Energy Ball, and Dark Saber if you want to enhance curse-based strategies with Dark Force. Pretty similar to the above team, though I'm not sure if God Hand's healing is enough to carry the team.

Yeah I think this last one is not optimal for healing unless you use the ring to multi-target Kevin's heal light then it could work.

6 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

I really dislike skipping Lise's Saint Saber, but I can't imagine any other build for her, since I don't think you can skip Speed Up, and skipping Mind Up is simply a terrible idea. There's also redundancy with Energy Ball and Transshape.

No big deal skipping Saint Saber, Grand Divinas final weapon allows you to use her spells as sabers anyway.

6 hours ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Missing Anti-Magic and Energy Ball, but otherwise pretty solid. Has double healing, all buffs and Magic Shield, and has all debuffs except for Speed Down.

I think I would rather keep Anti-Magic than skip it for Aura-Wave, but personal choice here, with the available equipment you can make up for Aura Wave but not Anti-Magic, unless you are gonna do one of your characters a heavy tech build.

Overall they all look good, nice alternatives.

Actually Star Lancer + Archmage has a good combo going for INT capstone with Lise and get her Archmage's Final Weapon, this way both will do double damage for bosses weak to Fire, Ice or Wind.

Might be a good idea to turn God Hand into the healer for that, and since Lise cover buffs and Archmage cover Power and Mind Down, you could use Invert Buff armor on him, this would mean with Magic Shield he would be able to reduce both Defenses, Protect Up through Protect Down, Power Down through Power Up and also get Max HP Down through Life Booster.

Personnaly I'm soon gonna finish my Fenrir Knight, Lord, Wanderer run. In the end I decided to go for Magic Up weapon for Wanderer, Arrow and Poison Bubble are just better than Half Vanish + most of the time, can't go Magitec as I need his LV2/3 Tech for getting Saber Buffs, they seems to works with Duran's AGL capstone so that's good.

Outside of Xian Bhe this team is a killer, Fenrir Knight's full MP heal on Counter combine with Hawk's Magic Shield allow both Hawk and Lord to keep going on casting, Auto Buff on Lord is also convenient.

Dangaard was make short work of with Leaf Saber, Zable Fahr's hit hard but was a short fight with Saint Saber, for the Red Head Fenrir Knight's Unicorn Head was suprisingly effective.

For Jagaan it looks like you can't counter his minions, which I think is good otherwise Fenrir Knight's Final Weapon would have turn this fight into a joke. So it's still a decently challenging fight.

Think for my next run I'll try a set up with Lise as Dragon Master, not sur which one yet tough.

8 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Actually Star Lancer + Archmage has a good combo going for INT capstone with Lise and get her Archmage's Final Weapon, this way both will do double damage for bosses weak to Fire, Ice or Wind

Good thinking there, this would work greatly.

Will post a rather unorthodox party and class picked by randomizer the other day, which might work somehow, turning three characters like Kevin, Lise, Duran into spell casters.

God Hand (main)

Skip Aura Wave^, Magic Shield

INT Capstone - Sword magic +atk gives 20% (party)

Weapon: Magic Up

Helm: unsure

Armor: Invert Buffs

Ring 1: TP regen?

Ring 2: unsure

DragonMaster

Skip Protect Down, Power Down

LUK Capstone - Party takes 1/8 less damage from spells

Weapon: Anti-Magic+

Helm: Magic Upv/varies

Armor: MP Regen

Ring 1: Magic Up/varies

Ring 2: Meta: Curse (cursed), has Gremlin summon which is Dark elemental

Paladin

Skip Anti-Magic, Sleep Flower

PIE Capstone - 10 max MP

Weapon: Heal Up/Magic Up/Exorcise+

Helm: Constant Regen (cursed)

Armor: MP Regen

Ring 1: Heal Up?

Ring 2: Varies

Due to Lise's final weapon might well just get a few INT points for Paladin, max PIE and power up Holy Ball through Saint Saber. Lise's Ghost summon can also be powered uo by Ice Saber. Might suffer from offensive mind up but the capstone to increase saber power might help + empowering elemental weaknesses to enemies that have a weakness. Thoughts?

I don't see much use for Magic Up weapon on God Hand considering his only Offensive Spell is Triple Spell, which doesn't even benefit from Dragon Master's Anti Magic as it's non-elemental and you already have Paladin for Healing. Think it would be better to simply him as a physical damage dealer wih either Counter or LV2/3 Tech.

Tough personnaly I think Warrior Mond and Death Hand would work better in this team.

19 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

I don't see much use for Magic Up weapon on God Hand considering his only Offensive Spell is Triple Spell, which doesn't even benefit from Dragon Master's Anti Magic as it's non-elemental and you already have Paladin for Healing. Think it would be better to simply him as a physical damage dealer wih either Counter or LV2/3 Tech.

Tough personnaly I think Warrior Mond and Death Hand would work better in this team.

Forgot Tripple Spell is non Elemental so that goes out of the window. So physical is the way to go then.

And yeah I agree Death Hand would fit a lot better here with the tech build.

11 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Actually Star Lancer + Archmage has a good combo going for INT capstone with Lise and get her Archmage's Final Weapon, this way both will do double damage for bosses weak to Fire, Ice or Wind.

Which one of Lise's classes would be better with Archmage's final weapon, Vanadis (has Holy Ball and Thunderstorm) or Star Lancer (has Ice Smash, Airblast and Fireball)? I'd imagine a secondary Light-elemental caster would be useful against bosses like the Archdemon, especially when you can combine it with God Hand providing Saint Saber.

11 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Might be a good idea to turn God Hand into the healer for that, and since Lise cover buffs and Archmage cover Power and Mind Down, you could use Invert Buff armor on him, this would mean with Magic Shield he would be able to reduce both Defenses, Protect Up through Protect Down, Power Down through Power Up and also get Max HP Down through Life Booster.

With Invert Buff armor, you'll be missing Power Up. Without the Invert Buff armor, you already have Protect Down (from God Hand), Mind Down and Power Down (both from Archmage), and Protect Up (from Star Lancer). So the only new ability the Invert Buff armor brings is Max HP Down, which can be replaced by farming a few Moon Coins against the toughest bosses. Is Max HP Down really worth sacrificing Power Up, Max HP Up and Kevin's armor slot?

14 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

God Hand providing Saint Saber

He only learns that for self, but Star Lancer has both Dark Saber and Saint Saber, tho with Archmage final weapon you still do a lot of damage with mind up/down, but for non elemental enemies or those eho change elementals then saint saber is viable to increase damage even more.

6 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

Which one of Lise's classes would be better with Archmage's final weapon, Vanadis (has Holy Ball and Thunderstorm) or Star Lancer (has Ice Smash, Airblast and Fireball)? I'd imagine a secondary Light-elemental caster would be useful against bosses like the Archdemon, especially when you can combine it with God Hand providing Saint Saber

There is pro and con to each of Lise Classes :

-Vanadis only cover Holy and Wind so she can only take advantage of the weapon for bosses weak to this 2, the other issue is if you take Vanadis chances are you initialy want her as the healer, in that case you need Kevin to replace her in that role. On the plus side as a spell caster for boss weak to other elements you can get her Final Weapon, casting the corresponding saber on her and cast Freya.

-Starlancer works cause she covers 3 elements on her own which is more than Vanadis, and her weapon slot doesn't compete with a very good final weapon (her Final Weapon but not crucial) unlike the Dark Classes, on mobs she also doesn't need meta multi. And also with these 2 you cover all the essential in term of Buffs and Debuffs.

-Dragon Master this might be the better of the 4 for bosses actually she covers 4 elements on her own (missing Earth and Holy), so for all bosses weak to one of these elements you can use Archmage's final weapon, and for bosses weak to earth or holy you can equip her Final Weapon and make them weak to her spells. She also goes well with Archmage as you can get either Mind Down or Power Down with her allowing Archmage to skip one of them to learn something else. Her only downside, is her spells are ST only.

-Fenrir Knight comparativly I think this is the worst class to give Archmage final weapon, first she only cover 3 elements with one of them being Wood which isn't generally great for offensive (more usefull to set Poison or Wood Coat) and has only one boss weak to it IIRC, but the other thing is her Final Weapon is just much better with Archmage as it will allow to manage Angela's MP much easier, I don't see the benefit of using Archmage final weapon over it.

26 minutes ago, Serafie1999AD said:

With Invert Buff armor, you'll be missing Power Up. Without the Invert Buff armor, you already have Protect Down (from God Hand), Mind Down and Power Down (both from Archmage), and Protect Up (from Star Lancer). So the only new ability the Invert Buff armor brings is Max HP Down, which can be replaced by farming a few Moon Coins against the toughest bosses. Is Max HP Down really worth sacrificing Power Up, Max HP Up and Kevin's armor slot?

I actually was thinking of getting Power Down to skip it with Archmage. but then I realise skipping Power Down with Archmage means skipping Anti-Magic so yeah that's a no.

23 minutes ago, smileless said:

He only learns that for self, but Star Lancer has both Dark Saber and Saint Saber, tho with Archmage final weapon you still do a lot of damage with mind up/down, but for non elemental enemies or those eho change elementals then saint saber is viable to increase damage even more.

In what I said before, I meant this: "I'd imagine a secondary Light-elemental caster [from Vanadis' Holy Ball] would be useful against bosses like the Archdemon, especially when you can combine it with God Hand providing Saint Saber." A Vanadis can't get Dark Saber and Saint Saber, so that's why God Hand is providing the Saint Saber. He will be able to cast it on everyone by equipping Meta: Multi, which he needs for MT healing anyway.

1 hour ago, Serafie1999AD said:

In what I said before, I meant this: "I'd imagine a secondary Light-elemental caster [from Vanadis' Holy Ball] would be useful against bosses like the Archdemon, especially when you can combine it with God Hand providing Saint Saber." A Vanadis can't get Dark Saber and Saint Saber, so that's why God Hand is providing the Saint Saber. He will be able to cast it on everyone by equipping Meta: Multi, which he needs for MT healing anyway.

You're right, forgot you could do that.

But still he multi-targets Ice Saber too, it's a matter of preference here more, whichever you feel more comfortable. You still need the multi target ring for Vanadises buffs even if you wont go for her heal light so Star Lancer might be a better pick, unless you don't mind having two characters with the Meta-multi ring

Nesouk said it the best in his breakdown on Lise's classes take his advice.

And playthrough done some point to say :

-Bigieu is still a really hard fight even on Normal she can just kill whenever she feels like it, honnestly if done without damage reflection I think this is the Hardest fight in the game period. That being said with huge investment in STR, Power Up, Protect Down, Ice Saber with Duran's AGL capstone Lise's damage where very high, reaching the 200 per hits XD.

-Black Rabite I found out a good way to increase damage is Leaf Saber he doesn't resist it, so caming here on a Dryad Day and using Leaf Saber on Lise with Duran's Capstone, Power Up and Power Down really up the damage (about 120 per Normal hits), casting Ice Saber on him cause Lise resist it and resurrecting Hawk to poison Great Demon whenever he summons one of them works great. For extra safety I could have use Life Saver armor but didn't need it on Normal.

-Archdemon : I actually never realise that but this is actually the only boss where casting Life Booster on him is actually very beneficial, thing is his first form is the Hardest but his change form is tied to his Max HP so if you first decrease his HP with Lunatic then cast either Life Booster twice or let him cast Anti-Magic and cast Life Booster on him, he ends up with 80% of his original HP but 120% more Max HP. 
To put with number, base on an old video of Sin of Mana I found where Hawk's Half Vanish wasn't nerf yet, Archdemon has 31760 HP so normally you need to do 15880 damage to trigger the second form, with Lunatic he goes down to 25408HP cast then Life Booster on him twice he ends up with 38112 max HP so his form change will trigger when he'll have 19056HP left, but since due to Lunatic he have 25408HP left already we only need to do 6352HP to trigger the second form about 2.5 times less damage needed. This also means we have a longer second form, but since the second form isn't as deadly as the first, this play in our favor.

3 God Beasts Down (Dangaard, Mispolm, Xan Bie), next I will aim Dolan but will farm Death Hand final weapon first.

I was unsure about building Vanadise but I think I decided to give her Auto-Buff Armor, Death Hand has Leaf Saber if anything on enemies that don't resist/absorb dryad/non elemental, Angela and Lise will have Leaf Saber on them, instead of having anothet cursed slot on Vanadise (constant regen), would be better to keep a slot for possible status resistance or remove weakness slot *cough Archdemon

For my next run I will go back to roots and choose Duran, Lise, Carlie, what I have in mind so far:

Duelist
Skip Protect Down, Anti-Magic
AGL capstone - sword magic + atk 20%

Weapon: CQC Tech/Tech Gain Up
Helm: Level 2/3 Tech Up
Armor: ?
Ring 1: varies/TP Gain Up
Ring 2: Trials Skill (cursed)

Dragonmaster
Skip Protect Down, Mind Down
INT capstone - equip any weapon/armor

In terms of builds there's different ways to go with Dragonmaster alternating between Anti-Magic+ and either CQC Tech or CoDzilla:

Tech Build:

Weapon: CQC Tech
Helm: Level 2/3 Tech Up
Armor?
Ring 1: varies
Ring 2: Trials Skill

Counter Build

Weapon: CoDzilla
Helm: ?
Armor: MP Regen Up
Ring 1:Break Counter
Ring 2: Meta: Curse?

Bishop
Skip Diamond Saber, Ice Saber
LUK capstone slells cost less MP

She will just sit back and heal.

Lise has different roles here, as a physical attacker and since Bishop weapon is PIE based she can also be a strong spell caster too with her Gremlin and Anti-Magic+ when you alternete between those weapons or INT spells with Anti-Magic+ when going the tech build like Duelist.

Swordmaster could work there too with final weapon and crit/counters with Dragonmaster alternating between CoDzilla and Anti-Magic+ but DM has to skip protect down and speed down then.

Another variation with Swordmaster

Swordmaster - skip Moon Saber, Saint Saber
AGL - sword magic + atk 20%
LUK - increase crit rate resistance of party by 15%

Unsure which of the two capstone to choose

Weapon: crit or miss/counter up?
Helm: Crit Up
Armor: ?
Ring 1: Critical Up/break counter?
Ring 2: varies

Vanadise - skip Flame Saber, Power Up
INT capstone - equip any weapon/armor

Weapon: Evernate Spawn
Helm: Cinstant Regen
Armor: MP Regen Up
Ring 1: Heal Up?
Ring 2: Meta Multi

Evil Shaman - skip Protect Up, Transshape
LUk capstone - spells cost less MP

Weapon: Evernate Spawn
Helm: Magic Up
Armor: MP Regen Up
Ring 1: Magic Up
Ring 2: varies

Downside of this party always to apply anti-magic for power down/mind down effect of Ghost Road/Demon Breath, no speed down or protect down also, might be a fair trade off with double evernate spawn?

Edit: Lord final weapon can also go well with Lise's counter build using Bishop's final weapon, would be another great choice.

For Swordmaster if you go with Power Up you could give him the Trials Buffs armor, so Power Up double his physical damage, no counter tough.

8 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

For Swordmaster if you go with Power Up you could give him the Trials Buffs armor, so Power Up double his physical damage, no counter tough.

Yeah I was thinking of that, but since Duran's endgame has bosses that requires counters I wonder if the damage will be worth it for Lise to solo them for those two instances, with Bishop Final weapon equiped on her, or double Evernate Spawn.

I think I will choose Swordmaster instead of playing Duelist again, but double CQC Tech users sounds very tempting to try.

Well I think I'm gonna run this party next :

Angela as Rune Master

Spells :
1-Thunderstorm* 
2-Stun Wind 
3-Explode* 
4-Blaze Wall 
5-Mega Splash* 
6-Ice Saber* 
7-Cold Blaze 
8-Earth Quake* 
9-Diamond Saber* 
10-Stone Cloud 

PIE Capstone : gain 7 p.def&m.def and +20 HP per cursed acc. equipped

Gear :
Weapon : RTFM
Helm : Trials Defense
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Trials Skill
Ring 2 : Trials Element

Set : Ancient Curse

Lise as Vanadis

Spells : 
1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Body Change 
4-Thunderstorm 
5-Mind Up 
6-Flame Saber 
7-Holy Ball 
8-Thunder Saber 
9-Freya 
10-Tinkle Rain 

VIT Capstone : enemies spawn with -15 attack

Gear :

Weapon : Saber-Elem. God for Boss weak to Fire, Ice or Earth/Magic Up or Magitec for other case
Helm : Constant Reg
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : TP Regeneration (if using Magitec)/Magic Up/Meta Pressure

Kevin as Warrior Monk :

Spells :
1-Leaf Saber^
2-Power Up*
3-Mind Down
4-Transshape
5-Water Jutsu
6-Heal Light*
7-Speed Down
8-Body Change
9-Energy Ball^
10-Power Down

INT Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Gear :
Weapon : Heal Up/TP Heal Boost
Helm : Quick Cast
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Heal Up
Ring 2 : Meta Multi until Heal Light* is learned/???
 

Kevin's INT capstone is really just because reaching Mind Down and Heal Light* requires a whooping 19 LV to reach and at that point there is not enough point left to get any other capstone, since he is primarly my Healer I don't see value in the other Capstone anyway except the Luck one.

This is heavily a magical team, I'm gonna test the full Trials set with Rune Master with her PIE capstone my main concern is obviously gonna be Tech but the Statut Effect might compensate for that on Mob Fights, getting all her LV3 spells means skipping Thunder and Flame Saber but conviniently these are the one Vanadis can learn complementing Rune Master, since Kevin takes care of the Healing I can skip Heal Light with her, I can also skip Power Up as Kevin get it. I don't know if the -15 Attack from her VIT capstone will truly help, but why not.

The con are obvious lack of physical damage, tough I could get the INT ATK base weapon for Lise if I want physical damage, no anti-magic so I'm gonna have to buy Specter Eye for Land Umber, and lack of Dark and Light elemental magic (except by getting the corresponding claw and use them with Vanadis final Weapon).

21 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Well I think I'm gonna run this party next :

Angela as Rune Master

Spells :
1-Thunderstorm* 
2-Stun Wind 
3-Explode* 
4-Blaze Wall 
5-Mega Splash* 
6-Ice Saber* 
7-Cold Blaze 
8-Earth Quake* 
9-Diamond Saber* 
10-Stone Cloud 

PIE Capstone : gain 7 p.def&m.def and +20 HP per cursed acc. equipped

Gear :
Weapon : RTFM
Helm : Trials Defense
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Trials Skill
Ring 2 : Trials Element

Set : Ancient Curse

Lise as Vanadis

Spells : 
1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Body Change 
4-Thunderstorm 
5-Mind Up 
6-Flame Saber 
7-Holy Ball 
8-Thunder Saber 
9-Freya 
10-Tinkle Rain 

VIT Capstone : enemies spawn with -15 attack

Gear :

Weapon : Saber-Elem. God for Boss weak to Fire, Ice or Earth/Magic Up or Magitec for other case
Helm : Constant Reg
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : TP Regeneration (if using Magitec)/Magic Up/Meta Pressure

Kevin as Warrior Monk :

Spells :
1-Leaf Saber^
2-Power Up*
3-Mind Down
4-Transshape
5-Water Jutsu
6-Heal Light*
7-Speed Down
8-Body Change
9-Energy Ball^
10-Power Down

INT Capstone : sword magic +atk gives 20% instead of 10% (party)

Gear :
Weapon : Heal Up/TP Heal Boost
Helm : Quick Cast
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Heal Up
Ring 2 : Meta Multi until Heal Light* is learned/???
 

Kevin's INT capstone is really just because reaching Mind Down and Heal Light* requires a whooping 19 LV to reach and at that point there is not enough point left to get any other capstone, since he is primarly my Healer I don't see value in the other Capstone anyway except the Luck one.

This is heavily a magical team, I'm gonna test the full Trials set with Rune Master with her PIE capstone my main concern is obviously gonna be Tech but the Statut Effect might compensate for that on Mob Fights, getting all her LV3 spells means skipping Thunder and Flame Saber but conviniently these are the one Vanadis can learn complementing Rune Master, since Kevin takes care of the Healing I can skip Heal Light with her, I can also skip Power Up as Kevin get it. I don't know if the -15 Attack from her VIT capstone will truly help, but why not.

The con are obvious lack of physical damage, tough I could get the INT ATK base weapon for Lise if I want physical damage, no anti-magic so I'm gonna have to buy Specter Eye for Land Umber, and lack of Dark and Light elemental magic (except by getting the corresponding claw and use them with Vanadis final Weapon).

An interesting one, might as well use some shared element/saber strat for more defensive play with these multi target sabers when facing mobs/physical heavy enemies. This might work with Swordmaster well too replacing Rune Master, Lise as the mage, Duran with Crit build, Kevin heals.

Vanadise also has Holy Ball so at least that's something for Zable Fahr. Your toughest fight will be Fiegmund, unless you use some other element and power it up with saber+mind up+day, IIRC air doesn't get resisted or absorbed by Fiegmund, correct me if I am wrong.

Will Angela be the main?

1 hour ago, smileless said:

An interesting one, might as well use some shared element/saber strat for more defensive play with these multi target sabers when facing mobs/physical heavy enemies. This might work with Swordmaster well too replacing Rune Master, Lise as the mage, Duran with Crit build, Kevin heals.

Vanadise also has Holy Ball so at least that's something for Zable Fahr. Your toughest fight will be Fiegmund, unless you use some other element and power it up with saber+mind up+day, IIRC air doesn't get resisted or absorbed by Fiegmund, correct me if I am wrong.

Will Angela be the main?

Actually for Fiegmund I could just get a Specter's Eye and use LV2 spell with Rune Master and her Final Weapon, and grind one Demon Claw for Lise to use Freya on him.
I think one that's gonna be tough is Dolan, he generally doesn't go well with to Magic Focus build.

Also this 3 happen to have no shared element at all so Saber resist strat will not be an option.

Swapping Rune Master for Swordmaster would probably work better for bosses, admitadly and since Kevin get his INT capstone Duran has no need to get AGL capstone, and I could get Power Up with Trials Buff for him and run a Crit Build.

That being said I could also forgot Magic Build entirely for Vanadis and run her with a Physical Build getting Power Up instead of Tinkle Rain, getting her STR or AGL capstone and get her the Trials Buff armor would look like this :

Lise as Vanadis

Spells : 
1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Body Change 
4-Thunderstorm 
5-Mind Up 
6-Flame Saber 
7-Power Up
8-Holy Ball 
9-Thunder Saber 
10-Freya 
 

STR Capstone : 20% more attack, non-critical regular attacks deal half damage
or 
AGL Capstone : weapon cooldown -7 (party)

Gear :

Weapon : TP Gain Up
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : TP Gain Up

Or instead of a Tech Build could be a little more unique and run a Power Attack set up like this :

Weapon : Super Armor
Helm : Swift/Attack Up
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : Power Attack Up

If going for Power Attack set definitly gonna aim for the AGL capstone to reduce Power Attack cooldown.

Regardless of which one of this 2 it might be better to do this actually, getting a physical damage dealer character and a Magic Damage Dealer instead of 2 of the same type, and it would put Kevin's INT capstone to use..... Yeah I might do that.

33 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Actually for Fiegmund I could just get a Specter's Eye and use LV2 spell with Rune Master and her Final Weapon, and grind one Demon Claw for Lise to use Freya on him.
I think one that's gonna be tough is Dolan, he generally doesn't go well with to Magic Focus build.

Also this 3 happen to have no shared element at all so Saber resist strat will not be an option.

Swapping Rune Master for Swordmaster would probably work better for bosses, admitadly and since Kevin get his INT capstone Duran has no need to get AGL capstone, and I could get Power Up with Trials Buff for him and run a Crit Build.

That being said I could also forgot Magic Build entirely for Vanadis and run her with a Physical Build getting Power Up instead of Tinkle Rain, getting her STR or AGL capstone and get her the Trials Buff armor would look like this :

Lise as Vanadis

Spells : 
1-Protect Up
2-Speed Up
3-Body Change 
4-Thunderstorm 
5-Mind Up 
6-Flame Saber 
7-Power Up
8-Holy Ball 
9-Thunder Saber 
10-Freya 
 

STR Capstone : 20% more attack, non-critical regular attacks deal half damage
or 
AGL Capstone : weapon cooldown -7 (party)

Gear :

Weapon : TP Gain Up
Helm : LV2/3 Tech Up
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : TP Gain Up

Or instead of a Tech Build could be a little more unique and run a Power Attack set up like this :

Weapon : Super Armor
Helm : Swift/Attack Up
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : Power Attack Up

If going for Power Attack set definitly gonna aim for the AGL capstone to reduce Power Attack cooldown.

Regardless of which one of this 2 it might be better to do this actually, getting a physical damage dealer character and a Magic Damage Dealer instead of 2 of the same type, and it would put Kevin's INT capstone to use..... Yeah I might do that.

Agreed this looks much better for Vanadise in this specific team, Vanadise as a mage would probably work a lot better with Swordmaster as a partner (which seems very much intended). With Hawk's capstone Vanadise as mage can probably can be paired with him too some way.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Also this 3 happen to have no shared element at all so Saber resist strat will not be an option.

Saber resist shouldn't work well for this team anyways due to Trials equipment neutralizing elements.

Thanks Nesouk and smileless for your recent suggestions! Being the Angela/Carlie freak that I am, I'm now running two teams in turn:

1) Wanderer, Grand Divina, Necromancer

2) Fenrir Knight, Rune Master, Bishop

This will give me a chance to use both Light and Dark Angela and Carlie for my first post-2.0 run. I'm as far as the first class change for both teams and will be posting more as I go.

Thinking more about Vanadise and her final weapon, Wanderer could also work well with her too with PIE capstone, tech build and being an awesome support, has anti-magic, might do some strat on mobs with Sleep Flower being multi target, Poison certain enemy and so on, and Warrior Monk with INT capstone, debuffs and heals. VIT or LUK capstone sounds goot in that setting for Vanadise.

If I equip Trials Buff armor on Swordmaster does he need to have his power up to take the desired effect or it doesn't matter if someone else casts power up on him?

He need to have his Power Up, the effect takes place only if the character cast Power Up on himself.

12 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

He need to have his Power Up, the effect takes place only if the character cast Power Up on himself.

I see, thanks

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

He need to have his Power Up, the effect takes place only if the character cast Power Up on himself.

to clarify it doesn't matter who casts power up,
it just matters that the receiver of the buff has the armor.

e.g. Duran with armor, Charlie without armor
Charlie casts power up on all:
Duran gets 200%
Charlie gets 125%

Got it, I am free to skip Swordmaster's power up then

I am doing Nesouk's variation with Swordmaster replacing Runemaster, I will play a defensive approach in terms of capstones as party lacks status infliction spells like Runemaster.

Swordmaster - skip power up/Moon Saber

LUK capstone - increasing party crit resistance

Crit build:

Weapon: Yellow or bust/Crit by TP/Pure Critical

Helm: Crit Up/Swift

Armor: Trials Buff

Ring 1: Accuracy Up/Crit Up?

Ring 2: varies

Will test what works best in terms of builds

Vanadise - Skip Heal Light/Power Up

LUK capstone - party takes 1/8 less damage from spells

Mage build

Warrior Monk - the obvious INT capstone

Can also use shared element resistance by having Lise equip ice resistance ring vs mob fights, in that case maybe I might opt for Duran's STR capstone - enemies spawn with -15 p.def/m.def

Lise also has 3 other spells to spam vs mob fights, for bosses they will be buffed by Sabers/Mind Up/down/day bonus/capstone, same with Lise's summon

Played up to almost the Class 3 for now :

Power Attack build works quite nice, Lise does a lot of damage with Power Attack, the Super Armor is also nice basically giving you a Protect Up effect against regular physical, tough I think for most bosses using another weapon will be better, the Balanced one combine with MP Steal Ring is actually pretty good, later on when Kevin get Leaf Saber this could be a good combo with Lise and Power Attack Up ring (tested they stack).
That being said considering I'm on Dragon Emperor route I think I'm gonna forget Trials Buff armor for her since Angela going to run the full set that would leave me with only Warrior Monk who could use Counter, and while Darkshine Knight without counter is definitly possible I have high doubt for Crimson Wizard.

About Delvar since she has a little rework in the sense she no longer keeps the LV1 spells, I like it this really cement her as Sorceress opposite while Sorceress get AoE spells which makes her good against multi-target Delvar is the Single Target High DPS since we don't need to bother with PIE as it doesn't boost any of her spells, maxing her INT and LUK is fast and she reach some crazy damage especially when she hit a weakness, most mob die in one LV2 spell if they are weak to it.

And Kevin is still Kevin tough I wanted to focus on his AGL since he is my Healer I wanted to cast as fast as possible.... doesn't work that well even with max AGL (14) is casttime for Heal Light isn't great, I'm considering maybe trying the TP Quick Cast accessory with him this may work, as he can build TP decently fast now that he has a good AGL.

On 6/12/2021 at 1:46 PM, Nesouk said:

About Delvar since she has a little rework in the sense she no longer keeps the LV1 spells, I like it this really cement her as Sorceress opposite while Sorceress get AoE spells which makes her good against multi-target Delvar is the Single Target High DPS since we don't need to bother with PIE as it doesn't boost any of her spells, maxing her INT and LUK is fast and she reach some crazy damage especially when she hit a weakness, most mob die in one LV2 spell if they are weak to it.

Second this. Loving Thunderstorm this round.

I am focusing on my first team at the moment (Light Angela, Dark Carlie), so Nesouk, you will get to Ancient Curse or Meth Angela before me. I'm looking forward to your review; I'm still undecided on this set. It looks awesome for mobs but limiting in terms of options for boss fights, which are ultimately the most important.

4 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Second this. Loving Thunderstorm this round.

I am focusing on my first team at the moment (Light Angela, Dark Carlie), so Nesouk, you will get to Ancient Curse or Meth Angela before me. I'm looking forward to your review; I'm still undecided on this set. It looks awesome for mobs but limiting in terms of options for boss fights, which are ultimately the most important.

I'm gonna drop it, I already mentionned it to Prae on Discord I'm gonna do a more flesh out review, to sum it up for Normal Difficulty at least Rune Master with the Full Trial set is to good and I'm honnestly think we enter to the OP territory :

-Basically Ancient Curse is as if you had the Meta Sudden for all the spells, and this is just ridiculous with Rune Master and her LV3 Spells, every mobs weak to Petrify might as well die on the spot, mob weak to Silence get shut down instantly, and same or Snowman, and this basically make the only weakness of this build basically non-existant. The Helm makes her weak to LV2/3 Tech, problem is no mobs that can do this will have the time to throw them before bing shut down by Silence or instant Kill by Petrify, the only exception being Nightblade as this is the only mob that can cast his LV3 Tech as soon as he appears. And as for bosses by the time this set is accessible the only boss left that can use Tech is Darkshine Knight, so outside of him no worries on that side either.

-And then let's talk about bosses cause really with this set she cast her spells instantly, as a result her DPS is massive especially if there is a weakness to exploit, for instance on Land Umber once set she was doing 952 damage per Thunderstorm, I don't think I need to precise Land Umber was a totally one sided massacre, but she has an high DPS on pretty much any boss with a weakness, and also have the luxury to be the only spell caster that actually perform well on Dolan with her Final Weapon allowing her LV2 to bypass his resistance, and she was reaching 375 damage per cast, doesn't look much but considere the cast time is instant here. There is some exception thankfully like she doesn't perform very well on Mispolm for obvious reason or Xian Bhe cause he has a massive m.def.

-Also because we are not over yet add to this set her PIE Capstone, and top of being crazy DPS and mobs shutter Angela is also a freaking tank, yeah I know I put Angela and Tank in the same sentence, Trials Skill makes her immune to crit, Trials Helm increase p.def by 1.25 and with the PIE Capstone adding 28 defenses she ends up being the most tanky character of my team, and it's not even close, not mentionning the PIE capstone is glitched at the moment and doesn't give the +80 Max HP it's suppose to give.

-Also there is currently a glitch for some reasons the Trials Helm has a part the effect of the Defense weapon and it makes p.atk = p.def with the Helm multiplying p.def by 1.25, and the Trials Armor making Power Up buff x2 instead of x1.25 she also deals great physical damage.

So I think to sum up yeah Rune Master with the Ancient Curse set is OP, but to be fair I think having spellcast being instant on top of the other benefit the individual Trials equipment gives is just to good and the set doesn't give enough drawback to make up for it.

Tough once again I'm speaking for Normal on Hard this might play differently.

2 hours ago, Nesouk said:

I'm gonna drop it, I already mentionned it to Prae on Discord I'm gonna do a more flesh out review, to sum it up for Normal Difficulty at least Rune Master with the Full Trial set is to good and I'm honnestly think we enter to the OP territory :

-Basically Ancient Curse is as if you had the Meta Sudden for all the spells, and this is just ridiculous with Rune Master and her LV3 Spells, every mobs weak to Petrify might as well die on the spot, mob weak to Silence get shut down instantly, and same or Snowman, and this basically make the only weakness of this build basically non-existant. The Helm makes her weak to LV2/3 Tech, problem is no mobs that can do this will have the time to throw them before bing shut down by Silence or instant Kill by Petrify, the only exception being Nightblade as this is the only mob that can cast his LV3 Tech as soon as he appears. And as for bosses by the time this set is accessible the only boss left that can use Tech is Darkshine Knight, so outside of him no worries on that side either.

-And then let's talk about bosses cause really with this set she cast her spells instantly, as a result her DPS is massive especially if there is a weakness to exploit, for instance on Land Umber once set she was doing 952 damage per Thunderstorm, I don't think I need to precise Land Umber was a totally one sided massacre, but she has an high DPS on pretty much any boss with a weakness, and also have the luxury to be the only spell caster that actually perform well on Dolan with her Final Weapon allowing her LV2 to bypass his resistance, and she was reaching 375 damage per cast, doesn't look much but considere the cast time is instant here. There is some exception thankfully like she doesn't perform very well on Mispolm for obvious reason or Xian Bhe cause he has a massive m.def.

-Also because we are not over yet add to this set her PIE Capstone, and top of being crazy DPS and mobs shutter Angela is also a freaking tank, yeah I know I put Angela and Tank in the same sentence, Trials Skill makes her immune to crit, Trials Helm increase p.def by 1.25 and with the PIE Capstone adding 28 defenses she ends up being the most tanky character of my team, and it's not even close, not mentionning the PIE capstone is glitched at the moment and doesn't give the +80 Max HP it's suppose to give.

-Also there is currently a glitch for some reasons the Trials Helm has a part the effect of the Defense weapon and it makes p.atk = p.def with the Helm multiplying p.def by 1.25, and the Trials Armor making Power Up buff x2 instead of x1.25 she also deals great physical damage.

So I think to sum up yeah Rune Master with the Ancient Curse set is OP, but to be fair I think having spellcast being instant on top of the other benefit the individual Trials equipment gives is just to good and the set doesn't give enough drawback to make up for it.

Tough once again I'm speaking for Normal on Hard this might play differently.

Would he interesting if someone tried this on hard mode, looks like a well made team for that difficulty

Well I could switch to Hard Mode from an older save, prior to when I got the set and try.

Currently struggling with Bigieu, I think I will just pump Vanadise and Warrior Monk with def weapon and equipment, turn them into tanks and have them heal, while Swordmaster the main attacker. Even through shared ice resistance (Lise via ring) she deals a shit ton of damage, so only other way for this since I have two heal light users turn them into tanks also with def weapon since I don't want to sacrifice too much of their other slots because their stat up/down stats are also needed. And I don't think the VIT of my characters is that bad either (Duran and Kevin 23, Lise 24)

I think the bloody hunter set would go nicely with Swordmaster crit build thinking about it now. Would have been very much needed for this fight.

Edit: no matter how much I pump the def it doesn't matter so screw that strat, this time she killed my characters in one attack with her double hits or whatever that was. I will try later again this time by pumping evasion equipment and see how it works.

Honnestly I think Bigieu is my least favorite fight, I tried Pure Defense, I try Evasion Build I just don't see anything really working she hits so hard and so fast that you are guaranteed to get hit and killed at one point or another, my way to beat this bitch has always been with either Damage Reflection, or by baiting her to focus on characters that are casting spell (and can't die while doing so) so that I can do an hit and run strat with my main character, or spell casting with my caster and stay the fuck away from her going melee only if I need TP for using items.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Honnestly I think Bigieu is my least favorite fight, I tried Pure Defense, I try Evasion Build I just don't see anything really working she hits so hard and so fast that you are guaranteed to get hit and killed at one point or another, my way to beat this bitch has always been with either Damage Reflection, or by baiting her to focus on characters that are casting spell (and can't die while doing so) so that I can do an hit and run strat with my main character, or spell casting with my caster and stay the fuck away from her going melee only if I need TP for using items.

Thanks for letting me know evasion builds wont work either, funny I switched on easy and even then she kills my characters at random, both her and Black Rabite are my least favorite bosses for sure to me.

Honnestly I think Black Rabite is more fair at least you can sorta delay and even avoid his attacks by running around, his moving speed is similar to yours, and at worst he hit 3 times in a row, Bigieu however is way faster than your characters you can't even run off to avoid direct confrontation, and she can do like 5-6 hits combos.

Continuing the run and I think I have a team of Girly power house here ^^.

Rune Master : Since the Trial Set makes her spells instant I have no need for AGL, and her PIE capstone raise defense strong enough I don't have to invest in VIT and PIE to heavily so I ended maximizing both her INT and LUK and as you can imagine she is deadly, if the target has a weakness to exploit that's usually around 800 damage with a LV2 spells + Mind Up + Mind Down + Corresponding Saber on bosses and around 500 on Neutral so yeah quite the madness, Magitec weapon works well on boss her LV3 tech does about 700 damage more than her elemental spell on neutral. Really Rune Master is a beast.

Vanadis : It took more time but the Power Attack build pay off, now that I maximize her STR and up her AGL quite a lot, she hit like a freaking truck and I don't even have Protect Down, but the Trials Armor + Power Attack Up + Kevin's INT capstone + Saber of corresponding weakness and she can reach 600-700 with a regular hit on average, Darkshine Knight who has a noticeably high p.def was taking 300 damage from her Power Attacks, she is a killer, and yet Vanadis has a downside for this build in the sense for bosses she needs to dedicate one of her ring slot to Meta Multi for bosses, otherwise the best to do this build would be to put the Balanced weapon and the MP Steal ring to exploit the Balanced's cooldown reduction (and it just so happen that the max MP you can drain in one hit is 5). I'm honnestly interested in how such a build would turn out on character that don't need to dedicate a ring slot like Vanadis.

14 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Vanadis : It took more time but the Power Attack build pay off, now that I maximize her STR and up her AGL quite a lot, she hit like a freaking truck and I don't even have Protect Down, but the Trials Armor + Power Attack Up + Kevin's INT capstone + Saber of corresponding weakness and she can reach 600-700 with a regular hit on average, Darkshine Knight who has a noticeably high p.def was taking 300 damage from her Power Attacks, she is a killer, and yet Vanadis has a downside for this build in the sense for bosses she needs to dedicate one of her ring slot to Meta Multi for bosses, otherwise the best to do this build would be to put the Balanced weapon and the MP Steal ring to exploit the Balanced's cooldown reduction (and it just so happen that the max MP you can drain in one hit is 5). I'm honnestly interested in how such a build would turn out on character that don't need to dedicate a ring slot like Vanadis.

Thinking of double hitters with this set up. Star Lancer and Dragonmaster are flexible in terms of builds so they could work too.

Bloody Hunter set would probably work nicely with those builds.

10 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Rune Master : Since the Trial Set makes her spells instant I have no need for AGL, and her PIE capstone raise defense strong enough I don't have to invest in VIT and PIE to heavily so I ended maximizing both her INT and LUK and as you can imagine she is deadly, if the target has a weakness to exploit that's usually around 800 damage with a LV2 spells + Mind Up + Mind Down + Corresponding Saber on bosses and around 500 on Neutral so yeah quite the madness, Magitec weapon works well on boss her LV3 tech does about 700 damage more than her elemental spell on neutral. Really Rune Master is a beast.

Duran also has a similar capstone like Angela, I wonder how trials set would fare with him. Duelist and his light classes mught benefit from that (unless you don't do crit build for swordmaster).

I finally beat Bigieu ffs man, so many tries I still went for defense builds, Lise eith Magitech tho and Duran with TP gain Up ring, even if it didn't matter much damage reduction is damage reduction, majority of the times I spent running around while sneaking in hits, Lise casted Holy Ball and Heal Light, Kevin Heal Light, as I slowly casted buffs and debuffs (power down and protect up at the beginning asap), Duran trying to sneak hits as she mauls the other two characters.

Not really that impressed of Swordmasters final weapon overall even with max LCK and analyze/energy ball, for mobs I used pure critical, bosses Crit by TP alternating between those two weapons.

6 hours ago, smileless said:

Duran also has a similar capstone like Angela, I wonder how trials set would fare with him. Duelist and his light classes mught benefit from that (unless you don't do crit build for swordmaster).

I think Duran work with any classes, personnaly I was thinking more of Lord, Hawk might work to on Rogue classes or Wanderer.

6 hours ago, smileless said:

Thinking of double hitters with this set up. Star Lancer and Dragonmaster are flexible in terms of builds so they could work too.

Bloody Hunter set would probably work nicely with those builds.

Bloody Hunter prevent Trials Buff armor tough, but would work for more defensive.

I kinda want to try a Death Bringer build, dunno with who tough.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Bloody Hunter prevent Trials Buff armor tough, but would work for more defensive.

Well yeah in exchange for that you play more defensively, preferences

2 minutes ago, smileless said:

Well yeah in exchange for that you play more defensively, preferences

I wouldn't say defensivly both Deathbringer and Attack Up are low defense armor and the helms and rings require doesn't improve your defense so it can be quite risky.

11 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

I wouldn't say defensivly both Deathbringer and Attack Up are low defense armor and the helms and rings require doesn't improve your defense so it can be quite risky.

True, it's kinda like Fenrir Knight final weapon but for HP only.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

I kinda want to try a Death Bringer build, dunno with who tough.

How about Kevin/Hawk and not invest in their spell points but purely damage? With that in mind then you need other two characters to cover all the important spells.

Actually I think next time I'm gonna let the randomizer decide which party I'll take and just build around who and what classes it give me ^^

10 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Actually I think next time I'm gonna let the randomizer decide which party I'll take and just build around who and what classes it give me ^^

Lol, Ninja Master, Fenrir Knight, Necromancer incoming

Actually the randomizer give me Rogue, Necromancer and Gran Divina ^^", that's gonna be interesting.

19 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Actually the randomizer give me Rogue, Necromancer and Gran Divina ^^", that's gonna be interesting.

Even giving Necromancer the invert armor Rogue lacks power/mind up debuff effects, not sure if this can be pulled off, maybe using evasive builds and spell dodge armor, but doesn't sound optimal

It's clearly not gonna be optimal regardless at best you could give Invert Armor to Rogue and get Protect Up through Missile Cutter and Max HP Up through Deadly Weapon but since the spells deals damage that's gonna be rough.

That being said a Saber resisted strat is possible, both Necromancer and Rogue are resistant to Dark and Dark Saber is the only true Saber this team can get, Grand Divina is weak to it however so will need the Dark Resistance accessory for her, this could make up for the lack of Protect Up. All 3 of them can use the Meta Curse upgrade, which is usefull on mob fight, Pressure upgrade can also be use. Can also use Body Change to cheese some annoying mobs like Cockabird or Crawler.

I'm in for a ride with this team regardless ^^"

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

It's clearly not gonna be optimal regardless at best you could give Invert Armor to Rogue and get Protect Up through Missile Cutter and Max HP Up through Deadly Weapon but since the spells deals damage that's gonna be rough.

That being said a Saber resisted strat is possible, both Necromancer and Rogue are resistant to Dark and Dark Saber is the only true Saber this team can get, Grand Divina is weak to it however so will need the Dark Resistance accessory for her, this could make up for the lack of Protect Up. All 3 of them can use the Meta Curse upgrade, which is usefull on mob fight, Pressure upgrade can also be use. Can also use Body Change to cheese some annoying mobs like Cockabird or Crawler.

I'm in for a ride with this team regardless ^^"

If you cheat on one final class and take Wanderer instead of Rogue, then lo and behold, you have my current team :-) This team kills it after the first class change as Light Hawk, Light Angela, Dark Carlie have a ton of elemental versatility (six main elements plus Physical). Ranger is such a fun class to build as you can basically start by dumping everything into Luck. Wanderer will give you Magic Shield, so you would only need Sahagin's Scales or maybe Drake's Scales to boost your spells for bosses. Wanderer also gets some nice HP spells that should play well with Necromancer's final weapon. This team does struggle before the first class change with no shield or MT spells; probably best to focus mainly on physical stats during this early stretch (I did make use of the Scapegoat weapon, but this is not very Hawk-friendly as it makes his Luck stat less useful).

I thought about the Regeneration ring for this team, but in the end I decided not to sacrifice the accessory slot. Carlie and Angela will need an accessory slot for saber/resist (MT and Dark Resist rings), and Hawk gets a ton of use out of the HP Steal ring plus other accessories like Quick Item or Heal Up that you want on your lead character during boss fights. Angela will also want the MT ring if you want to MT Heal Light and other spells. Carlie might be the best candidate after all, as her Spirit should always be high, but then with the MT Ring, you won't have space for anything else; in my case, I was thinking about trying some Undead builds later in the game. It might be worth it overall, though, as you won't get the after-battle heal until level 42 or something.

Thank you for your review of Trials Set Rune Master; I think I'm going to avoid that team after all. I do like the option of OP builds through these rule-bending sets.... Wasn't that the point of these sets to begin with, to go back to the original mechanics? OP builds can be fun, but I think I would miss out on the challenge of some of the tougher fights.

11 hours ago, smileless said:

I finally beat Bigieu ffs man, so many tries I still went for defense builds, Lise eith Magitech tho and Duran with TP gain Up ring, even if it didn't matter much damage reduction is damage reduction, majority of the times I spent running around while sneaking in hits, Lise casted Holy Ball and Heal Light, Kevin Heal Light, as I slowly casted buffs and debuffs (power down and protect up at the beginning asap), Duran trying to sneak hits as she mauls the other two characters.

Not really that impressed of Swordmasters final weapon overall even with max LCK and analyze/energy ball, for mobs I used pure critical, bosses Crit by TP alternating between those two weapons.

Could saber/resist help with Bigieu? From what I remember of the calculation, the harder the enemy hits, the greater the HP saved.

8 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Could saber/resist help with Bigieu? From what I remember of the calculation, the harder the enemy hits, the greater the HP saved.

Veery little, I am wondering if it's also due to the saber spell +20% capstone that when casted on enemies they also gain that increase.

Yeah I know using Wanderer instead of Rogue would be best with Necro and Grand Divina, but no cheating will do with what it gives me, an Undead strat might work actually, with Angela VIT capstone, HP Drain and other thing like YellowDMGHeal or Tinkle Heal (if it works of course).

Having try Saber Resist with Bigieu it didn't help that much for her.

Bigeu sometimes goes batshit crazy with her combo attacks, but reducing as much damage as possible still helps, but it took me many tries even on easy, you want to bait her at other characters while the character you control sneaks hits in to take TP, no other way other than that.

I'm thinking maybe do like I did with Vanadis in a previous run, and give Grand Divina the Regeneration Ring, would give the heal after battle right away and allow me to straight up skip Tinkle Rain (since Carlie has it) and Heal Light and since Regeneration spell is One/All by default this means no need for the Meta Multi ring.

Probably going Crit Build on Rogue might be better here, since he needs LUK anyway, has the highest max Luck and his LUK capstone will be usefull in that aspect, tough no Energy Ball or Analyse in this team.

Not sure what build to go with Necromancer.

10 hours ago, smileless said:

Veery little, I am wondering if it's also due to the saber spell +20% capstone that when casted on enemies they also gain that increase.

if you want to do some math she has 472 atk naturally or 457 with one shaman weapon or 442 with two.
no shaman weapon and casting saber on her gave her 519 atk.

@Nesouk Don't see much choice with Necromancer here but focus on spell damage, maybe invert armor depending on battle.

3 hours ago, smileless said:

@Nesouk Don't see much choice with Necromancer here but focus on spell damage, maybe invert armor depending on battle.

Invert Armor is curse, so that would be Invert or not invert no in between.

6 hours ago, Nesouk said:

Invert Armor is curse, so that would be Invert or not invert no in between.

In the document it isn't listed as cursed

So for my next run I decided the randomizer to pick the classes also and see what bs it will pick, and surprisingly it looks pretty good.

I got Carlie (Sage), Duran (Paladin), Lise (Fenrir Knight)

A bit conflicted on which spells should I skip for Duran. Was thinking Protect Up and Saint Saber, feel like Exorcise is too valuable to skip for Carlie's endgame, but then again Paladin also has heal light which can be used on undead, and you have mind up and down too, thinking if I should aim for that. I could turn Duran into a tank possibly with with INT capstone and pumping cursed equipment, or PIE capstone and increase his MP for Exorcise if I decide to not skip it. Or maybe Anti-Magic, but I might need it for Carlie's Rainbow dust.

Fenrir Knight should be obvious for her final weapon, counter build, and AGL capstone

Sage I will probably skip Thunder Saber and Flame Saber possibly, not much choice here. Could use a curse upgrade for possibly skipping protect up so there's that.

12 hours ago, smileless said:

In the document it isn't listed as cursed

OK I check and the armor is indeed not curse, I thought it was curse because in game it has the same symbol after the name than the other Curse equipment, I asked Praetarius about it if it is a typo or if he intended to make it curse, for the moment it isn't.

In any case I'm thinking of going for the Auto Debuff set actually, since among the set only the Armor is a Curse one and the set allow for Quick Cast helm and 2 Magic Up ring so she would still work as a Spell caster and having all debuff on auto is pretty convenient. I'm considering maybe pick the VIT capstone for extra HP and Defense as otherwise she might be to fragile.

32 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

OK I check and the armor is indeed not curse, I thought it was curse because in game it has the same symbol after the name than the other Curse equipment, I asked Praetarius about it if it is a typo or if he intended to make it curse, for the moment it isn't.

In any case I'm thinking of going for the Auto Debuff set actually, since among the set only the Armor is a Curse one and the set allow for Quick Cast helm and 2 Magic Up ring so she would still work as a Spell caster and having all debuff on auto is pretty convenient. I'm considering maybe pick the VIT capstone for extra HP and Defense as otherwise she might be to fragile.

This would work well for Necromancer, sadly you don't have no other source of buffs so was thinking to take advantage via Necromancer and boost Hawk's spells instead (having physical spells), def down and speed down via Hawk, buffs via Necromancer.

My next run what I got so far:

Carlie (main) - Sage

Skip Fire Saber, Ice Saber

For capstones it's between:

INT Capstone - Light/Dark elemental spells deal more damage

LUK Capstone - Spells cost 20% MP less

Weapon: Heal Up/Heal Aura

Helm: Constant Regen

Armor: MP Regen Up/varies

Ring 1: Heal Up/Magic Up

Ring 2: Meta: Curse

Duran - Paladin:

Skip Protect Up, Saint Saber or Exorcise

As for capstones I could go for:

INT capstone - gain 7 p.def/m.def and 20 HP per cursed acc. equipped

Weapon: Exorcise+ (if spell not skipped), or Scapegoat for this case

Helm: Constant Regen

Armor: Auto Buff

Ring 1: Trials Element

Ring 2: Aliment Resist

Or PIE capstone - +10 max MP

Weapon: Heal Up/Exorcise+

Helm: Constant Regen

Armor: MP Regen Up/Varies

Ring 1: unsure

Ring 2: unsure

Would be a good set up for Exorcise spell great for Carlies endgame. Anyway I think in both cases I will skip Saint Saber.

Lise - Fenrir Knight

Skip Poison Bubble, Transshape

AGL Capstone - weapon cooldown -7 (party)

Weapon: Drain Counter/Counter Up

Helm: Attack Up

Armor: unsure

Ring 1: Break Counter

Ring 2: varies

Well it's either buff or debuff so no real option here, I think for Buffs I simply gonna rely on consumable and mainly for Boss Fights.

For your team, I don't think MP would be an issue since you have Fenrir Knight and her Final Weapon could go for a full defensive build with Paladin here like :

-Helm : Trials Defense
-Armor : Auto Buff
-Ring 1 : Ailment Res
-Ring 2 : Trials Skills

With INT Capstones, all 4 items are Curse so that's +28 in both Defenses, high physical defense with the Trials Defense, immunity to Statut effect and immunity to Crit.
Skip Saint Saber and Protect Up (if possible otherwise skip Exorcise), so with Magic Shield and Speed Up you have Defense Up, Magic Defense Up and Speed Up on Auto.

5 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Well it's either buff or debuff so no real option here, I think for Buffs I simply gonna rely on consumable and mainly for Boss Fights.

For your team, I don't think MP would be an issue since you have Fenrir Knight and her Final Weapon could go for a full defensive build with Paladin here like :

-Helm : Trials Defense
-Armor : Auto Buff
-Ring 1 : Ailment Res
-Ring 2 : Trials Skills

With PIE Capstones, all 4 items are Curse so that's +28 in both Defenses, high physical defense with the Trials Defense, immunity to Statut effect and immunity to Crit.
Skip Saint Saber and Protect Up (if possible otherwise skip Exorcise), so with Magic Shield and Speed Up you have Defense Up, Magic Defense Up and Speed Up on Auto.

You are right, Fenrir Knight + she learns Leaf Saber also so I shouldn't worry about MP too much, will go full tank mode with Duran and INT capstone

AH Mix up Angela and Duran it is indeed INT capstone or Duran ^^. Not mentionning even without Fenrir Knight you have Magic Shield for +10 additionnal MP ^^.

Anyway here what I think to do for the Randomizer party

Carlie as Necromancer 

Spells :
1-Holy Ball*
2-Tinkle Rain
3-Unicorn Head
4-Machine Golem
5-Ghost
6-Ghoul
7-Black Curse 
8-Dark Saber 
9-Gremlin 
10-Great Demon

VIT Capstone : 50 maxHP, 10 p.def&m.def

Gear :
Weapon : ???
Helm : Quick Cast
Armor : Auto Buff (CURSE)
Ring 1 : Magic Up/Meta Sudden
Ring 2 : Magic Up

Hawkeye as Rogue 

Spells :
1-Cutter Missile
2-Land Mine 
3-Deadly Weapon 
4-Rocket Launcher 
5-Axe Bomber 
6-Grenade Bomb 
7-Sleep Flower*
8-Body Change*
9-Speed Up^
10-Rock Fall

LUK Capstone : ignore monster type specific crit resistance; critical damage +20%

Gear :
Weapon : Crit By TP
Helm : Crit Up
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : Crit Up
Ring 2 : Quick Item

Angela as Gran Divina 

Spells :
1-Fireball*
2-Diamond Missile*
3-Airblast*
4-Ice Smash*
5-Regeneration
6-Holy Ball* 
7-Speed Up 
8-Evil Gate* 
9-Transshape 
10-Triple Spell# 

VIT Capstone : primary elemental (fire, ice, wind, earth) spells heal party by 50 HP

Gear :
Weapon : Dual Tech/Heal Up
Helm : Constant Reg
Armor : MP Regen Up
Ring 1 : Regeneration
Ring 2 : Dark Resist (for Saber Strat)/Heal Up

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

OK I check and the armor is indeed not curse, I thought it was curse because in game it has the same symbol after the name than the other Curse equipment, I asked Praetarius about it if it is a typo or if he intended to make it curse, for the moment it isn't.

lets go with typo on this one

Do I have to equip the cursed equipment after Duran gets the INT capstone in order for that to take it's effect or it doesn't matter?

17 minutes ago, smileless said:

Do I have to equip the cursed equipment after Duran gets the INT capstone in order for that to take it's effect or it doesn't matter?

Well capstone are set once reaching LV60, and at the same time at LV60 you can no longer equip Curse equipment, so you don't really have the choice here.

4 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Well capstone are set once reaching LV60, and at the same time at LV60 you can no longer equip Curse equipment, so you don't really have the choice here.

Yeah asked that just in case as I didn't notice much changes in terms of defenses until now I started switching his weapons back and forth and his defense stats increased lol.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Well capstone are set once reaching LV60, and at the same time at LV60 you can no longer equip Curse equipment, so you don't really have the choice here.

you should still be able to equip cursed items at Lv60 when you get the capstone but not anymore at 61

Well decide to use the new link for randomzing party, I reroll a bit cause I wanted a party without Lise this time, and for some reason the Randomizer was set on giving her to me  and so I ended with this party :

http://www.robin64.co.uk/tomtjt/perma.php?one=63&two=14&three=21

Well looks like no matter the rando they really want a Necromancer + Gran Divina combination, but this seems actually more workeable than with Rogue, I notice Duelist can learn both Mind Down and Protect Down and so with Invert Buff armor that give me both Mind Up and Protect Up tough he still need Meta Multi and as a bonus Invert Buff would also turn Life Booster into a Max HP Down debuff, so I think I'm gonna play Duelist in a more support/tank role this time around. So overall the team will look like this :

Leader Necromancer :

Spells :
1-Holy Ball*
2-Tinkle Rain
3-Machine Golem
4-Unicorn Head
5-Ghost
6-Ghoul
7-Black Curse
8-Black Rain
9-Dark Saber
10-Gremlin

INT Capstone : light&dark elemental spells deal more damage

Gear :
Weapon : ???
Helm : Quick Cast
Armor : Auto-Buff
Ring 1 : Magic Up
Ring 2 : Magic Up
Set : Auto-Debuff

Teammate 1 Duelist :

Spells :
1-Diamond Saber
2-Thunder Saber
3-Dark Saber
4-Ice Saber
5-Mind Down
6-Life Booster
7-Leaf Saber
8-Protect Down
9-Anti Magic
10-Flame Saber

LUK Capstone : increases crit rate resistance of party by 15%

Gear :
Weapon : ???
Helm : Phys Defense/Magic Defense (depending of the ennemy/boss)
Armor : Invert Buff
Ring 1 : Meta Multi
Ring 2 : Shield

Teammate 2 Gran Divina : 

Spells : 
1-Fireball*
2-Diamond Missile*
3-Air Blast*
4-Ice Smash*
5-Regeneration
6-Holy Ball* 
7-Speed Up 
8-Evil Gate*
9-Transshape 
10-Triple Spell 

VIT Capstone : primary elemental (fire, ice, wind, earth) spells heal party by 50 HP

Gear :
Weapon : Dual Tech (if boss weak to Holy)/Heal Up
Helm : Constant Reg
Armor : MP Regen Plus
Ring 1 : Regeneration
Ring 2 : Heal Up

Have to sacrifice Aura Wave on Duelist otherwise he can't learn Protect Down and Mind Down, since the Auto Debuff require 2 Magic Up rings I'm gonna try capitalize on it with Carlie's INT Capstone to increase the Damage of her Holy Ball* and Gremlin/Black Rain, she's gonna be a Single Target damage dealer with her spells, for Gran Divina Saint Saber is the only Saber I miss with Duelist and Necro, so for the bosses weak to it I'll use Dual Tech otherwise I'll stick to Heal Up, using Regeneration to skip Tinkle Rain and Heal Light and to not have to wait until Class 3 to get the Auto-Heal after victory.

Well almost done with this team, God Beast are defeated only Zable Fahr and Final Dungeon to ho through. Should mentionned that I upped the difficulty from Normal to Tough.

So first off sad to say Auto-Debuff set doesn't work on Bosses, at least the huge sprite one, well this has both pro and cons on the bad side of course that mean I have to debuff normally, but at least since 3 out of 4 pieces are not curse I have 3 slot left to put whatever I want on my Necro for boss fight. The set still work for mob fight and is definitly a huge help for these, and otherwise Carlie as Necro is a good spell damage dealer, and her INT capstone make Holy Ball and Gremlin pretty strong against ennemies weak to them or neutral, weapon wise I opted for the MP steal weapon which works well.

Gran Divina is good the VIT Capstone isn't that usefull for boss fight (except Lightgazer), but it's pretty good on mob fight and help keeping Duran alive, on boss fight her casttime is short enough that she can alternate between healing and offense well enough, Regeneration is faster to cast which really help in that regard, the combo Constan Reg Helm and MP Regen Plus Armor with enough INT ensure she won't run out of MP.

As for Duelist I used him as a tank, focusing on his p.def, VIT and LCK he tanks really well against mob fight and with Shield he can get the aggro allowing for Carlie and Angela to rain spell on the ennemies, and since I had to reach 25 STR for Antimagic, with his CQC Tech he can deal good damage with it. As for buffs since Invert Buff as a pretty Low Defense, after Dangaard which gives a lot of money I decided to use all that unused money to stock Sahagin and Bulette's Scale, using Invert Buff only against Bosses that can debuff you very often like Xian Bhe allowing for other armors on the rest of the bosses, the High Defense armor is pretty good for mob fights, also the LCK capstone is really usefull even without Crit Guard the number of Crit ennemies does is much lower than before.

Overall this team perform really well more than I thought it would, the toughest fight so far were Xian Bhe and Gildervine, but for the other boss fight so far I didn't have to much trouble, while it doesn't that big of DPS this team is suprisingly pretty safe to run.

It's a shame that the emulator axed my previous run, I almost beat the game as I beat Deathjester. Fenrir Knight final weapon in combo with Sage final weapon made up for a party that was hard to kill, and I could make good use of Sage as a mage too with MP restoration, free slots to either use magic up, quick cast or other equipment.

But that was it for that run, wont do it again as I beat majority of the game so it wont be redundant. Will try a different randomizer party instead

I think I will scrap the randomizer for this run, I wanted to try something different this time around, wanted to make use of Angela's LUK Capstone - weapons use LUK instead of their regular stat

Haven't thought possible party members yet, thoughts?

I guess the good thing about Angela's LUK capstone is she will be able to deal damage even when the target has high Magic Defense. It's really depend of which class you pick for Angela.

I guess you could do Archmage and Bishop, this already give you Power Down, Mind Down, Power Up and Magic Shield as well as a bunch of Sabers and a solid healer.

Third pick could be Hawkeye as a Rogue he would provide Speed Up so the only buff missing is offensive Mind Up, and he would provide the 2 missing Debuff and Max HP down, could go for his PIE capstone to get the Sabers you would be missing from Bishop.

Or you could also pick Lise as Dragon Master, since Archmage get Power and Mind Down you can skip them both with Dragon Master, she would allow to skip Antimagic with Archmage and with her Final Weapon make up for the missing element, as well as providing Speed Down, Protect Down and Poison statut effect, and give you a Shield user.

On my side I think I'm gonna try a run with building Kevin as the Tank, I realise that with his VIT Capstone unlike Duran and Lise he can aggro the ennemy, while having both Ailment Res ring and Trials Skill ring to get immunity to both Statut Effect and Crit, also since VIT increase the Attack Bonus of his Wolf Form, it could make up for the lack of STR investment. I'm not sure what team should I do around him tough.

Thanks for input, I guess both Rogue and Dragonmaster could work, with Rogue access to all buffs, debuffs but not spell buff, or Dragonmaster but without Speed Up, but you would have Aura Wave to compensate the misses for your characters.

Archmage if choosing Rogue would skip Aura Wave, and Rainbow Dust cause can't skip Body Change for the intended LUK capstone

If choosing Dragonmaster would skip Rainbow Dust, Anti-Magic

Bishop would probably skip Diamond Saber/Ice Saber, or Exorcise and Diamond/Ice/Saint Saber, I think better to just skip saber spells be it Hawk or Lise, to make use of Hawk's PIE capstone, and Lise's final weapon feels like it's best used when you lack elemental variety which this party doesn't lack no matter.

Dragonmaster would be kinda a hybrid like Angela too but more on the tanky side. Having her get the INT capstone to equip any weapon/armor so she gets Carlie's final weapom which is PIE based, ans when Dragonmaster final weapon isn't needed just use her for counters while pumping her defenses. She also works as a mage too kinda. Draws agro.

Rogue would probably see similar play as Angela but with physical spells and his final weapon which could be first time using it, but party would lack proper tanks then two spell casters, so if choosing Rogue would be better maybe to switch out Bishop for Paladin and turn Duran into a tank instead with cursed equipment with INT capstone and have him use the weapon that draws some agro when fighting mobs at least.

8 hours ago, Nesouk said:

On my side I think I'm gonna try a run with building Kevin as the Tank, I realise that with his VIT Capstone unlike Duran and Lise he can aggro the ennemy, while having both Ailment Res ring and Trials Skill ring to get immunity to both Statut Effect and Crit, also since VIT increase the Attack Bonus of his Wolf Form, it could make up for the lack of STR investment. I'm not sure what team should I do around him tough.

Fenrir Knight, God Hand, Lord a counter happy team I played in early versions, Kevin being a tank, Duran opens counters, Fenrir Knight helps maintain MP for casting and keeping HP up.

Wonder how it works using Dervish as it has a stronger wolf form, focusing on defense stats and his final weapon too, but in that case not worth to use his VIT capstone to draw agro, but you could always opt for a different weapon instead.

The ailment resist ring feels like it's best save for tinkle rain users so God Hand then the only class access to it and it's multi target, freeing the other two characers equipment slots for status protection.

For an Angela you could also go for Magus skip Rainbow Dust and Annilhattor, get the Trials Buff armor which she can make work herself with Power Up and Alternate between Crit Build (since you're gonna invest in LUK anyway) and Spellcasting depending of the ennemy.

For teammate could go with Evil Shaman and Vanadis get the 2 important Debuff, Antimagic, the rest of the buffs and the healer, and could get the 2 Evil Shaman's final weapon combo.

11 minutes ago, smileless said:

Fenrir Knight, God Hand, Lord a counter happy team I played in early versions, Kevin being a tank, Duran opens counters, Fenrir Knight helps maintain MP for casting and keeping HP up.

Wonder how it works using Dervish as it has a stronger wolf form, focusing on defense stats and his final weapon too, but in that case not worth to use his VIT capstone to draw agro, but you could always opt for a different weapon instead.

The ailment resist ring feels like it's best save for tinkle rain users so God Hand then the only class access to it and it's multi target, freeing the other two characers equipment slots for status protection.

I was actually thinking of God Hand, Lord and Nightblade, get the Trials Set with INT capstone for Lord for Instant healing and buffing, skipping Speed Down and Power Up. 

For Nightblade build him with a Tech Build and get his PIE capstone to get sabers, also getting Meta Curse with Black Rain, skipping Silver Dart and Grenade Bomb.

Or Death Hand, Dragon Master, Bishop get Demon Breath with Death Hand to skip Lunatic and Mind Down with Dragon Master, get Power Up and Magic Shield with Bishop putting Trials Buff armor on Kevin, using Dragon Master as a Debuffer and spellcaster with her Final Weapon when needed or Magic Up weapon, as for capstone probably going LUK capstone for both girls, MP cost reduction.

That being said I could also slap the Auto-Debuff set on Dragon Master and Auto Buff on Carlie, not that usefull for bosses cause glitch for Auto Debuff, but having Power Down, Power Up and both Defensive buffs on Auto could be really usefull on mob fights.

14 hours ago, Nesouk said:

For an Angela you could also go for Magus skip Rainbow Dust and Annilhattor, get the Trials Buff armor which she can make work herself with Power Up and Alternate between Crit Build (since you're gonna invest in LUK anyway) and Spellcasting depending of the ennemy.

For teammate could go with Evil Shaman and Vanadis get the 2 important Debuff, Antimagic, the rest of the buffs and the healer, and could get the 2 Evil Shaman's final weapon combo.

Is it worth for this party to skip counters for Trials Buff armor?

Other variables I had in mind:

Grand Divina, Ninja Master, Bishop

Angela - LUK capstone, skips Heal Light, Tinkle Rain

Hawk - counter build and either AGL capstone (in that case building Angela on counters too when attacking physically) or maybe VIT capstone, skips Thunder Saber, Poison Bubble

Carlie - LUK capstone, skips Ice Saber, Energy Ball or Diamond Saber

Has all but spell buffs

Another one I thought of - Grand Divina, Wanderer, Warrior Monk

Alternate Angela with between her final weapon when facing bosses with weakness and some other weapon, Kevin healer/tank, Hawk possibly a physical build with great support.

Angela skipping Sleep Flower, Heal Light, Hawk skips Body Change, Energy Ball ot Aura Wave, Kevin skips Analyze, Fireball

A lot more variabled than I initially thought lol, unsure which to choose now.

14 hours ago, Nesouk said:

I was actually thinking of God Hand, Lord and Nightblade, get the Trials Set with INT capstone for Lord for Instant healing and buffing, skipping Speed Down and Power Up. 

For Nightblade build him with a Tech Build and get his PIE capstone to get sabers, also getting Meta Curse with Black Rain, skipping Silver Dart and Grenade Bomb.

Or Death Hand, Dragon Master, Bishop get Demon Breath with Death Hand to skip Lunatic and Mind Down with Dragon Master, get Power Up and Magic Shield with Bishop putting Trials Buff armor on Kevin, using Dragon Master as a Debuffer and spellcaster with her Final Weapon when needed or Magic Up weapon, as for capstone probably going LUK capstone for both girls, MP cost reduction.

That being said I could also slap the Auto-Debuff set on Dragon Master and Auto Buff on Carlie, not that usefull for bosses cause glitch for Auto Debuff, but having Power Down, Power Up and both Defensive buffs on Auto could be really usefull on mob fights.

An all male party - old school 

Second one looks good also, I really liked Death Hand final weapon, good for physical attackers and mages. In that case I suggest Death Hand to get the capstone to boost saber spells, to make up for the lack of spell power boost

Well I think skipping Counter on one of them won't be to bad, if you go the Dragon Emperor route, you could just use Vanadis as your main and Counter against Darkshine Knight and Koren, that being said Koren is really the most concerning, Darkshine Knight can be beat without counter just fine.

I feel there is a lot of flexibility with Angela her capstone selection is pretty interesting, there is some interesting combo I'd like to try like combining Duran and Kevin's STR capstone with her INT capstone, would basically be like skipping through 65 of the ennemies m.def, not sure how big of a difference it would make but on paper this sound like quite a lot. I'm also interest in how effective her STR capstone could be.

Hawk's VIT capstone actually looks good with the Spell Dodge armor, would make his Evasion better, giving him better chance to get that half damage from spells.

Think I'm gonna go for the first team with a all male team.

On 6/20/2021 at 4:36 PM, Nesouk said:

Continuing the run and I think I have a team of Girly power house here ^^.

Rune Master : Since the Trial Set makes her spells instant I have no need for AGL, and her PIE capstone raise defense strong enough I don't have to invest in VIT and PIE to heavily so I ended maximizing both her INT and LUK and as you can imagine she is deadly, if the target has a weakness to exploit that's usually around 800 damage with a LV2 spells + Mind Up + Mind Down + Corresponding Saber on bosses and around 500 on Neutral so yeah quite the madness, Magitec weapon works well on boss her LV3 tech does about 700 damage more than her elemental spell on neutral. Really Rune Master is a beast.

Vanadis : It took more time but the Power Attack build pay off, now that I maximize her STR and up her AGL quite a lot, she hit like a freaking truck and I don't even have Protect Down, but the Trials Armor + Power Attack Up + Kevin's INT capstone + Saber of corresponding weakness and she can reach 600-700 with a regular hit on average, Darkshine Knight who has a noticeably high p.def was taking 300 damage from her Power Attacks, she is a killer, and yet Vanadis has a downside for this build in the sense for bosses she needs to dedicate one of her ring slot to Meta Multi for bosses, otherwise the best to do this build would be to put the Balanced weapon and the MP Steal ring to exploit the Balanced's cooldown reduction (and it just so happen that the max MP you can drain in one hit is 5). I'm honnestly interested in how such a build would turn out on character that don't need to dedicate a ring slot like Vanadis.

I'm back at this game after a small break, and ever since this post, I've been thinking of a way to out-do Nesouk's team of Girly power house. It doesn't look likely in any meaningful way - Trials Set Rune Master may be too good - but since the all-girl team is my wheelhouse I am taking up the challenge.

So far I have Light Lise, Light Angela, Dark Carlie and am thinking of the following builds:

Angela - Grand Divina with STR capstone. Adding weapon damage and spell damage looks too interesting to not try. With Power up, Protect Down, and Saber weapon buffs to add to her typical Mind Up, Mind Down, Saber spell buffs, Angela might be able to achieve a significant spell damage boost that will help with her Level 1 spells. I'm also wondering if the Trials Buff Armor would double the Power Up effect for her damage spells. The main idea here is that with a significant damage boost, Angela should be able to cast quickly, powerfully, and repeatedly. I don't think this would actually beat a Trials Set Rune Master, except maybe against werewolves who can't be silenced and might get a tech in against Rune Master every now and then, but I think it could be interesting. Plus she can heal (maybe; I'm not sure about the spell build here). If I don't go for the Trials Buff armor, the Constant Regen helm might be interesting to achieve a state of constant casting.

Carlie - Necromancer or Evil Shaman with Regen ring and LUK capstone. The Regen Ring is too useful to bypass with this team, and the capstone will help keep Angela casting constantly. With Necromancer, Black Curse has both Protect Down and Mind Down for Angela's spell damage, and non-elemental spells will help against Dolan. With Evil Shaman, the MT Power Down and Mind Down spells will help during mob fights, Protect Up (plus Grand Divina's Speed Up) can help Vanadis with her spell build, and her final weapon effect can be doubled if Lise takes her INT capstone.

Lise - Vanadis or Star Lancer with STR, INT, or PIE, or LUK capstone. The main idea of this build is to provide buffs for the team and saber spells to cast on the enemy for elemental resistance, Thunder Saber for Vanadis or Saint Saber for Star Lancer. Since the saber spells will require a Multitarget Ring for most fights, Star Lancer's multitarget buffs would only provide an advantage against bosses. Vanadis provides some extra options here - healing (especially important if Angela skips her healing spells) and a final weapon that works well with Grand Divina's final weapon. For the capstone, there are a few options - The INT capstone would go well with Evil Shaman, and if Vanadis becomes a heal bot, the PIE capstone might be interesting with a set of Magitech weapons. Also, I'm wondering if the STR capstone would work well with a Power Attack UP ring; did you try this, Nesouk? It seems like the critical chance reduction on power attacks would limit the effectiveness a bit.

Any ideas on the options here? I'm not sure if anyone has tested Angela's STR capstone yet, so I'm curious to give it a try.

Well honnestly Trials Set Rune Master with PIE capstone is definitly in the "too good" category, really she has only 2 weaknesses which are :

1-Obviously Tech damage but as mentionned in a previous post she can shut down all mob that can use techs, Bee and Knight can be silence, Werewolves and Ninjas can be outright Petrify, and yeah really Stone Cloud with this set is an instant delete for any mobs brave enough to not be immune against Petrify or Earth damage. Only mob that can instantly open with his Tech and therefore kill her is Nightblade. And only mobs that represent a threat are the Shadowzero if they take the appearence of a party member and use the tech.

2-She has no way to get immune to Statut Effects, and so these are pretty deadly against her.

Her STR capstone is on my list of thing to test I actually was interested in testing with Magus combine with her final weapon to remove the damage reduction on Multi Target spell this could be a good combo for mob fight (also think Magus with STR Capstone + Trials Set could work well the idea of being able to instant cast Ancient to not give a damn about Elemental affinity with STR Capstone to boost it top with a self Mind Up sound pretty tempting ^^). That being said I think Prae mention to me that Power Up wasn't affecting the bonus damage of her STR capstone so Trials Buff armor will not do much here.

I guess since you have Lise and Carlie combining 2 Evil Shaman final weapon is viable, at least for the Max HP reduction don't know how significant the -4 in PIE could be on Angela's Damage tough, if you are set on going Dark with Carlie that means no Heal Light until Class 3 unless you equipped Regeneration ring, you could also snap Regeneration of Carlie if you go Evil Shaman since there's a lot of spell you can skip for Evil Shaman.

As for Lise's STR Capstone with Power Attack build well I thought about it but reading the description it say : 

STR - 20% more attack, non-critical regular attacks deal half damage

I think "Non-critical regular attacks" include both Light and Heavy Attack, so this capstone doesn't seems synergise well with Power Attack build and seems more fitting for a Critical or Counter Build. Could work a Crit Build with Starlancer with it tough try getting either Energy Ball or Aura Wave and Power Up with her (getting all 3 at the same time would require giving up on Mind Up not really worth it), slap the Trials Armor, Crit Helm, Crit Up ring and Crit By TP weapon with the STR capstone and this could work that could work.

Alternativly you could go for Necromancer Carlie with Auto Debuff set and for Vanadis get Heal Light and learn Mind and Power Up and put Auto-Buff armor and enjoy having all buff AND all debuffs on Auto ^^ (just switch equipment for boss fight with Carlie as Auto Debuff is glitch and doesn't works with most bosses).

For defensive purpose I think either Vanadis's LUK or VIT capstone would be best in this set, VIT would be better for mobs mostly, LUK capstone is better for boss fight.

EDIT : Actually an idea come to mind after writing this how about Gran Divina with STR Capstone + Deathbringer weapon + Life Saver Armor pair with Fenrir Knight... that's sound pretty cool .

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

STR - 20% more attack, non-critical regular attacks deal half damage

I think "Non-critical regular attacks" include both Light and Heavy Attack, so this capstone doesn't seems synergise well with Power Attack build and seems more fitting for a Critical or Counter Build.

it is the little brother of the swordmaster weapon - if it isn't yellow damage it gets reduced

Yeah si for Power Attack build definitly should avoid that capstone and probably pick her AGL capstone instead.

1 hour ago, Nesouk said:

Her STR capstone is on my list of thing to test I actually was interested in testing with Magus combine with her final weapon to remove the damage reduction on Multi Target spell this could be a good combo for mob fight (also think Magus with STR Capstone + Trials Set could work well the idea of being able to instant cast Ancient to not give a damn about Elemental affinity with STR Capstone to boost it top with a self Mind Up sound pretty tempting ^^). That being said I think Prae mention to me that Power Up wasn't affecting the bonus damage of her STR capstone so Trials Buff armor will not do much here.

Hi Praetarius, can we confirm what affects the weapon damage that is added to the spell damage by Angela's STR capstone? My wishful thinking was that it would be some fraction of whatever the output of the "weapon damage" calculation would be, including Power Up and Saber effects on Angela and Protect Down effects on the target.

this is explained in the mechanics folder:
10) if Angela with STR capstone
    m.atk = max(0, p.atk - p.def) * 0.31 + m.atk

13 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

this is explained in the mechanics folder:
10) if Angela with STR capstone
    m.atk = max(0, p.atk - p.def) * 0.31 + m.atk

Thank you Praetarius, I overlooked this.

So, for a more basic question, what does "(buffed)" refer to in the weapon damage calculation 1) p.atk = (buffed) attack power? I can see that it does not include Power Up or Saber effects; I'm just wondering if there are other ways to improve this stat.

the buffed value is with saber; power up is separate

OH So the saber +10% (20% with Duran's AGL or Kevin's INT capstone) attack increase would affect Angela's STR capstone bonus ?

50 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

the buffed value is with saber; power up is separate

I see; so this would be influenced by the initial saber +10% or Duran or Kevin's +20% capstones, but not much else.

m.atk = max(0, p.atk - p.def) * 0.31 + m.atk

From this equation and my understanding of what goes into the m.atk and p.atk/p.def values here, it looks to me that the damage increase resulting from any boost in STR would be roughly on par with that resulting from a boost in the secondary stat, LUK in this case, basically providing another stat to boost spell damage moderately. Another way to do this would be to use Angela's LUK+ weapon so you can focus on just one stat and get essentially a double-boost from LUK; STR would have to be at least high enough to win the capstone, I think 19, but then you could maximize INT and LUK for maximum damage boost.

Anyways, this Angela STR capstone looks fun to explore; I'm going to go for it. She should also get a boost for her Magitech weapon Lv2/3 techs from this. With her frequency of spells and stat build, Grand Divina looks like an ideal class to try this with.

I am also interested in Lise's PIE capstone with Vanadis on a Magitech wielding team; there should be +2 TP from spell casting plus +1 TP for everyone targeted by Heal Light. This could be a good alternative way to keep the Lv2/3 tech damage flowing.

The bonus of secondary stat is base on LV : 

Secondary stat * (62 + LV) / 53

So 1 point of secondary stat increase the m.atk from 1 at LV1 up to 3 at LV99 if I'm not mistaken, so at best with max Luck Gran Divina get a +90 m.atk from it.

STR Capstone is a bit trickier tough since it also take into account the ennemies p.def, if you factor thing that can reduce p.def like Break Counter and LV3 Armor Break, or Duran and Kevin STR capstone the damage will be bigger. And also add some weapon effect like Deathbringer, or weapon that change the p.atk like Defense weapon, it has some variable to it.

endgame enemies should have about 220~250 def, so if you got angela to 400 p.atk you'd get 60~50 extra m.atk out of it.
ofc you can also go all in and max out deathscore and go with the max p.atk gear which should be about ~700 p.atk - and then one shot everything as well as get one shot by everything.

Not gonna lie the ultimate glass canon build with Deathbringer weapon and STR capstone looks tempting, with Gran Divina tier 1 spells being fast to cast and all ^^

There seem to be a few levels of craziness here:

Level 1: Deathless weapon. If I went for a high STR build, this would be the one I would start with; this weapon is fast and powerful and comes with zero downsides apart from not being able to try any of the Death Bringer gear.

Level 2: Death Bringer weapon. This one is not cursed and looks straightforward to use, and gives a bonus to both attack and magic which is perfect for Grand Divina. It looks like it comes with the full downsides of death though. It might be worth starting deathless, then carefully saving and giving this a try to see if the difference is worth it.

Level 3: Death Bringer weapon, ring, and Silence Res. ring. Here, only attack is increasing, so it may give diminishing returns compared to just the weapon. Still no curse, so you can flirt with this setup and return to normal gear according to preference.

Level 4: Death Bringer weapon, armor, ring, and Silence Res. Ring. Once you put the armor on, you're committed. But the armor lessens the downsides of the death score so the draw is there. The tortured Grand Divina (Light/Light!), drawn ever deeper by her lust for power, eases her pain with a contract writ in blood.

The Constant Regen helm (also cursed) may also be able to afford you constant casting with longer-animation spells like Fireball.

Let me know if I missed anything....

One more: Level 0: LUK-based ATK+ weapon. Go for 19/19/19/19/19/19 at level 60 and then ignore STR thereafter. The LUK score should boost her p.atk instead, and you can stay committed to Angela's traditional stats.

Well :

Level 5 : Deathbringer weapon with Undead armor, and Undead ring, give up all means to heal and your own life to just focus on bringing as much pain as possible and for as long as possible, thanks to Undead boost in defenses and lessen death score effect (ps : can put Trials Helm for more defense).

I think I'm going to try the Spell: Resistance ring for my current playthrough. Once the spell is cast, can the effect be removed for the current battle? Will Antimagic cancel it, and do you have to recast it after a character dies?

Both should end it.

So finally taking back my man power run, just reach for the moment my plan is as follow for now on Dark Palace route :

Kevin as God Hand

Spells : 

1-Heal Light
2-Protect Down (LV39)
3-Saint Saber^ (LV43)
4-Magic Shield (LV47)
5-Tinkle Rain* (LV49)
6-Power Up* (LV53)
Raise VIT to 23 (LV58)
7-Ice Saber (LV61)
8-Thunder Saber^ (LV65)
9-Aura Wave^ (LV70)

VIT Capstone

Gear : 
Weapon : Defense
Helm : Phys Defense/Magic Defense
Armor : ???
Ring 1 : Ailment Res
Ring 2 : Trials Skill

Duran as Lord 

Spells :
1-Heal Light* (LV39)
2-Ice Saber (LV41)
3-Protect Up* (LV45)
4-Tinkle Rain* (LV48) 
5-Speed Up* (LV50)
6-Life Booster (LV53)
7-Energy Ball (LV56)
8-Arrow (LV58)
9-Diamond Saber (LV62)
10-Speed Down* (LV66)

INT Capstone

Gear :
Weapon : Heal Up
Helm : Trials Defense
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Trials Skill
Ring 2 : Trials Element

Trials Set

Hawk as Ninja Master

Spells :

1-Water Jutsu* (LV41)
2-Fire Jutsu* (LV43)
3-Shuriken* (LV44)
4-Thunder Jutsu
5-Earth Jutsu
6-Crescent (LV45)
7-Analyse (LV52)
8-Ice Saber
9-Transshape
10-Thunder Saber

LCK Capstone : ignore monster type specific crit resistance; critical damage +20%

Gear :
Weapon : Crit By TP
Helm : Crit Up
Armor : Trials Buff
Ring 1 : Crit UP
Ring 2 : ???

So I change my plan for Hawk and decide to go Ninja Master, this is at first for the convenience of havin the main debuff MT with Water and Fire Jutsu.

Decide to go for a Crit Build with him and putting to use his Analyse spell and LCK Capstone (of course to take fully advantage of it gonna do Xian Bhe and Land Umber after I got it). Not sure what to give him for his Second Ring slot was thinking of maybe giving him Meta Curse to use it with Crescent or since I don't have Saber keep this slot open to put Elemental Weapon of the boss weakness. In any case gonna be a Debuffer and then a Damage Dealer, I expect Trials Buff and his LCK Capstone to be good but we'll see.

As for the other Kevin is gonna be my Tank, VIT Capstone draw aggro, Ailment Res to get immune to Statut Effect, Trials Skills to be immune to Crit, I also decide I'm gonna ignore STR and focus on his Vitality as it will increase his p.def, HP and Bonus from Wolf Form and put the Defense weapon to make his Attack = p.def. Not sure what to give as an Armor, High Defense would give higher Defense and as a result more attack with the Defense weapon, Auto-Buff might work well with Magic Shield and Power Up* but low defense and low HP might be an issue. I also hesitate if I shouldn't just go ahead and put the Trial Defense helm but having 2 characters with it might not be a good idea.

As for Lord gonna be my support, Trial set for Instant-cast if I need to rebuff or a fast Healing and INT capstone to make him more tanky, gonna focus on his VIT, INT and PIE stats since I can pretty ignore AGL and LUK with him.

Alright got pretty far only Land Umber left then it's Final Dungeon time so to sum up so far, in the end for Hawk I decided to put the Meta Curse Ring on him, and also decide to invest a bit in STR to get Thunder Jutsu MT, and so with his LUK capstone and a Crit Build he performs..... well let just say a video is better than a long text :

YIKES so for reference here :
This is on Tough Difficulty
Ennemies in the area before Xian Bhe were LV72 so I expect Xian Bhe to be about LV74, so expected LUK is 25, Hawk's LUK is 25 so if we calc this with the gear I have on Hawk :

Critchance = 25 x 2 + 8 + 31 = 89
Add Energy Ball : Critchance = 89 + 12 = 101
Add Crit By TP with 9TP : Critchance = 101 + 18 = 119

Then taking ennemy's stat :
Critchance = 119 - 25 = 94
Critchance = 94 - 74/16 = 90

And add Analyse :
Critchance = 90 + 8 = 98

Correct me if I'm wrong Prae.

And now just for reference even without calculate the damage add by Crit just with the buff/Debuff/gear we have :

Power Up with Trials Buffs = x 2
Crit Helm = x1.25
Protect Down = x1.25
Ice Saber = x1.5
Undine Day = x1.125
Hawk LUK Capstone = x1.2

So if I'm not mistaking we have a 6,328125 Damage Multiplier here everytime Hawk Crit and this isn't counting the +10% Attack from Saber and the Damage added by the Crit.
That's pretty insane to put it lightly, altough it is quite satisfy to give ennemies a take of their own medicine (Mobs's crit is absurd sometime) this might need a nerf here.

As for Duran and Kevin, well Trials set on a support character like Lord is pretty good quality of life MP Steal is a good way to maintain his MP, Kevin's VIT capstone doesn't seem to work or at least not as good as a Shield, but his immunity to Statut Effect with Tinkle Rain come out pretty convenient.

23 minutes ago, Nesouk said:

Critchance = 25 x 2 + 8 + 31 = 89

where do you get 8+31 from?
I see 20 from weapon, 3 from ring, 8 from helm; that is the 31 but where's the 8 from?

Its too much either way.
Really, I leave you alone for a couple of days and you break the game again.

The 8 is the character bonus which is 8 for Hawk.

To be fair I think this is only broken due to Hawk's LUK capstone, if Xian Bhe had his base 100 resistance that would be no crit (or just the 8% from Detect since it apply after), I would suggest reduce it's effect to just halving monster specific resistance instead of straight remove it, also the Damage +20% on it is to much.

I think that wouldn't change much; you have like 100 crit rate before monster specific resistance which for most is 15 or less, so you'd still have 85% at the least even without the capstone.

Well definitly there's one thing that should be nerf the Crit By TP weapon, even without taking the bonus added by TP that weapon has already 20 Crit Rate which is the highest out of any weapon, adding the bonus it goes up for 38 from this weapon alone, making it pretty much the undisputed best weapon for Crit Build, Pure Critical and Yellow or Bust which are second has 18 Crit Rate which is 2% up 20% less Crit Rate, this isn't even factoring that Pure Critical and Yellow or Bust have drawbacks (the former prevent TP generation which is pretty big deal especially since 2.0 and items costing TP, the later make all non-crit/tech attack deal 1 damage and it also has a lower Crit Bonus than Crit By TP) while Crit By TP has pretty much no drawback, the only other weapon I would considere over it for a Crit Build is the Yellow Damage Heal which works pretty well when you have High Luck and good crit rate.

Other than that the other thing I can see is reducing the Luck factor like currently with 25 Luck, Luck x 2 alread makes it a 50% critchance and if I max out out Luck with Ninja Master that would be 32 x 2 so 64% Crit Rate from Luck alone, I think you can reduce the x2 factor or even go ahead and remove it, without the x2 with the rest being unmodify that would still give me a 64 base critchance instead of 89, which would end up as a 73% Crit Rate at the end of the calc instead of 98%.

I think the main problem is more the limited range I can work with (0-100 scale) while also needing +luck investment to be worth it without crits being non-existant at lv1.

Maybe we should try something like changing the
crit rate out of 100 to
crit rate out of (70+3x target luck)
so if you have 90% chance there now it'd drop to 90/(70+3x25) = 62%

That could work I guess is it doable tough ?

Pretty easy actually; game calculates you crit rate and then draws a random number between 0 and 100 (RNG function takes values as parameter for range) so I would only need to change the 100

Well then that could work watching the numbers on doc that would mean on LV99 ennemy with 28 LUK at best Hawk with LUK Capstone as a Rogue (highest Max LUK with 33) with same set up I have here would get a 70% Crit Rate, still high but considering this is fully committed to Crit that's fair, other characters having to take into account the Crit Resistance from monster should end up in the 50% range.

Lv99 would vary from 28 to 33 depending on if it is e.g. a Duran/Kevin based enemy (knights, werewolves) or a Hawk based one (nightblades)

I'm having a lot of fun now playing a Rogue, Vanadis, Archmage team. I just hit my final class change and am looking forward to finally learning Heal Light in a few levels. With Hawk's PIE capstone, this team gets a boost from previous versions of the game with access to sabers. Vanadis will also get Flame Saber as well that I can use for saber-resistance. Access to all buffs/debuffs will be really nice. The point of this team is to do a ton of elemental damage, physical or magical. I have not fleshed out my endgame equipment, but right now Hawk is loving the Crit by TP weapon with the TP Gain Up ring.

Spells to miss: Silver Dart and Speed Up for Rogue, Holy Ball and Thunder Saber for Vanadis, and either Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust or Body Change and Aura Wave for Arch Mage. I will probably take Aura Wave though due to it's usefulness in several difficult fights.

Capstones: PIE for Rogue, undecided for the other two. Archmage's LUK capstone is looking really nice to add some more physical damage to my team. For Vanadis, I really have no idea and would welcome suggestions.

I'm playing this time Deathless on Normal, which brings its own sort of challenge. So far, the hardest boss has been Machine Robos x3 - keeping everyone alive requires a bit of luck. My strategy was to charge in, group them immediately with Hawk, and keep them stunned as much as possible by constantly quick-attack double-swinging with a Wind Ring while having my other two team members cast as much as possible to keep them away. Apart from this boss, Bill and Ben are always pretty tough, and the others have been a breeze. The next boss is Lugar - expecting no problem after casting Flame Saber on him with Element Guard armor, Protect Up, Power Down.

Deathless on Tough or Hard (single-player) - I'm not sure how I would pass some of these multi-boss battles except by letting my team members die and reviving them right before the end of the battle.

On 11/20/2021 at 5:52 AM, Nesouk said:

So if I'm not mistaking we have a 6,328125 Damage Multiplier here everytime Hawk Crit and this isn't counting the +10% Attack from Saber and the Damage added by the Crit.

Loved your video, Nesouk, and it's good to see that you are still finding ways to break the game :-)

Also, I'm interested in the Death Resist ring for my Deathless run. I'm confused by the item description in the Excel file: "Death Spell immunity for wearer; party gets resistance to Death Spell". What is the difference between Death Spell immunity and resistance, and is this different from the normal "Resist Death" (e.g. that you get with Undead armor)?

45 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

it's good to see that you are still finding ways to break the game :-)

and make me cry

44 minutes ago, rpschamp said:

Also, I'm interested in the Death Resist ring for my Deathless run. I'm confused by the item description in the Excel file: "Death Spell immunity for wearer; party gets resistance to Death Spell". What is the difference between Death Spell immunity and resistance, and is this different from the normal "Resist Death" (e.g. that you get with Undead armor)?

immunity = 0 damage
resistance = it deals damage like a normal spell instead of 999

40 minutes ago, praetarius5018 said:

immunity = 0 damage
resistance = it deals damage like a normal spell instead of 999

Would the Death Resist ring protect against Death Roulette, or would you need a normal Resist Death item like the Undead armor for that?

Death roulette is exactly the same as death spell.

On 12/01/2022 at 8:52 PM, rpschamp said:

I'm having a lot of fun now playing a Rogue, Vanadis, Archmage team. I just hit my final class change and am looking forward to finally learning Heal Light in a few levels. With Hawk's PIE capstone, this team gets a boost from previous versions of the game with access to sabers. Vanadis will also get Flame Saber as well that I can use for saber-resistance. Access to all buffs/debuffs will be really nice. The point of this team is to do a ton of elemental damage, physical or magical. I have not fleshed out my endgame equipment, but right now Hawk is loving the Crit by TP weapon with the TP Gain Up ring.

Spells to miss: Silver Dart and Speed Up for Rogue, Holy Ball and Thunder Saber for Vanadis, and either Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust or Body Change and Aura Wave for Arch Mage. I will probably take Aura Wave though due to it's usefulness in several difficult fights.

Capstones: PIE for Rogue, undecided for the other two. Archmage's LUK capstone is looking really nice to add some more physical damage to my team. For Vanadis, I really have no idea and would welcome suggestions.

I really should try a team with Rogue, as for Lise capstone well ince you're skipping Holy Ball and Thunder Saber tha mean no investment in LUK so the LUK Capstone is out of the question, don't see much use for the INT capstone in this configuration, so I would go either VIT Capstone tough I'm not sure if a 15 Attack reduction would have a lot of impact or the AGL capstone which would be good to attack faster (especially for Hawk).

As for Archmage yeah could skip Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust to Aura Wave can be really usefull to get an item fast if you ever need it of fill Rogue's TP faster to maximize Crit By TP effect, that being said her AGL Capstone could be interesting as the team may have to cast quite a lot (especially Angela and Lise), would be interesting if her AGL Capstone could allow Vanadis to cast faster Freya with her Final Weapon to allow Vanadis to exploit elemental weakness with Hawk's Sabers.

On 12/01/2022 at 8:52 PM, rpschamp said:

I'm playing this time Deathless on Normal, which brings its own sort of challenge. So far, the hardest boss has been Machine Robos x3 - keeping everyone alive requires a bit of luck. My strategy was to charge in, group them immediately with Hawk, and keep them stunned as much as possible by constantly quick-attack double-swinging with a Wind Ring while having my other two team members cast as much as possible to keep them away. Apart from this boss, Bill and Ben are always pretty tough, and the others have been a breeze. The next boss is Lugar - expecting no problem after casting Flame Saber on him with Element Guard armor, Protect Up, Power Down.

Deathless on Tough or Hard (single-player) - I'm not sure how I would pass some of these multi-boss battles except by letting my team members die and reviving them right before the end of the battle.

Well for Bil and Ben in 2.0 Evasion works really well, if you can stack a lot of Evasion Speed Up and Speed Down you're going to evade like crazy, and with TP on Dodge armor you'd have access to items pretty frequently and can set party members on using LV1 Tech to land counter to reduce their Revenge Value and trigger less Shadow Dives, there is some RNG tough as it depend of what Jutsu they uses against you, also having a Slime's Eye or 2 to reduce their attack power is welcome to if you don't have Ninja Hawk (who's in 2.0 is the only class 2 to have access to Power Down though his Spell with Water Jutsu) as Lise's Rune Maiden lost it.

Machine Golems are a pain in the ass tough, on Hard I always found it safer to just solo them with one character by focusing on landing counter with the Break Counter accessory, some items to handle the buff/debuff and just revive my party member when only one of them remain.

Quote

Loved your video, Nesouk, and it's good to see that you are still finding ways to break the game :-)

I'd rather not to be honnest, just like I'd love to stop running into glitches and stuff that doesn't work properly just for Praetarius's sanity ^^", but this game is SD3 unfortunatly after spending probably hundreds of hours into playing this mod, it's clear to me that this game just do whatever the fuck he wants to do sometime

On 1/22/2022 at 12:45 PM, Nesouk said:

I really should try a team with Rogue, as for Lise capstone well ince you're skipping Holy Ball and Thunder Saber tha mean no investment in LUK so the LUK Capstone is out of the question, don't see much use for the INT capstone in this configuration, so I would go either VIT Capstone tough I'm not sure if a 15 Attack reduction would have a lot of impact or the AGL capstone which would be good to attack faster (especially for Hawk).

As for Archmage yeah could skip Anti-Magic and Rainbow Dust to Aura Wave can be really usefull to get an item fast if you ever need it of fill Rogue's TP faster to maximize Crit By TP effect, that being said her AGL Capstone could be interesting as the team may have to cast quite a lot (especially Angela and Lise), would be interesting if her AGL Capstone could allow Vanadis to cast faster Freya with her Final Weapon to allow Vanadis to exploit elemental weakness with Hawk's Sabers.

Rogue is my favorite Hawk class to lead with: his spells come out fast so no need to switch characters when casting, his high LUC stat is great for treasure hunting, his build is simple with no real need for INT, and his ability to hit against physical defense with his spells is a great asset when you need it (e.g., Seashore Cave mini-boss). You also get great mileage out of his LUC stat for spell damage, spell bonus damage, and crit chance/damage. Plus his Level 3 super gets a random color which is fun and helps to break up the visual monotony.

I think I've decided on the LUC capstone for Angela. AGI would be nice, but 20% reduction just doesn't seem that game-changing to me. The LUC capstone lets Angela ignore STR and improve her physical damage with all weapons, crit chance/damage, and magical damage with one stat. There are some battles where damage casting is just not helpful, so this should help give the Archmage class more of a role when she would otherwise just be swinging for tech points. This also helps her with two of my favorite weapons in the game: YellowDMG Heal and Crit by TP.

For Lise, I will probably go for her AGI capstone as it seems more useful than the VIT one in the longterm: -15 attack should become less useful at higher levels as hit points and attack values increase, while -7 weapon cooldown should be useful as long as cooldown values are 7 or above, which I'm guessing should always be true?

On 1/22/2022 at 12:45 PM, Nesouk said:

Well for Bil and Ben in 2.0 Evasion works really well, if you can stack a lot of Evasion Speed Up and Speed Down you're going to evade like crazy, and with TP on Dodge armor you'd have access to items pretty frequently and can set party members on using LV1 Tech to land counter to reduce their Revenge Value and trigger less Shadow Dives, there is some RNG tough as it depend of what Jutsu they uses against you, also having a Slime's Eye or 2 to reduce their attack power is welcome to if you don't have Ninja Hawk (who's in 2.0 is the only class 2 to have access to Power Down though his Spell with Water Jutsu) as Lise's Rune Maiden lost it.

I want to like the TP on Dodge armor more, but the defense is so low, especially when the alternative is High Defense armor, so when you do get hit with a string of attacks or a super you can be quickly screwed.

On 1/22/2022 at 12:45 PM, Nesouk said:

Machine Golems are a pain in the ass tough, on Hard I always found it safer to just solo them with one character by focusing on landing counter with the Break Counter accessory, some items to handle the buff/debuff and just revive my party member when only one of them remain.

This strategy is also great for Lugar - counters seem to slow him down and really help keep his damage in check. I have no idea what his listed weakness - "special magic" - means, non-elemental magic perhaps? For me, his weakness has always been counters.

3 hours ago, rpschamp said:

This strategy is also great for Lugar - counters seem to slow him down and really help keep his damage in check. I have no idea what his listed weakness - "special magic" - means, non-elemental magic perhaps? For me, his weakness has always been counters.

Lugar is one of the easiest boss for me since the update that made Counter "bypass" physical defense, since he is always attacking landing Counter is super easy, and an evasion build with TP on Dodge works wonder on him (whereas it doesn't work on Machine Golem as they have a lot of unavoidable attack) and setting the AI of all party members to use LV1 Tech, and he should never get the Revenge Heal, and barely use any techs due to all the counters. Is even easier if you use a Specter's Eye.

3 hours ago, rpschamp said:

I want to like the TP on Dodge armor more, but the defense is so low, especially when the alternative is High Defense armor, so when you do get hit with a string of attacks or a super you can be quickly screwed.

Depend of the fight for Bil and Ben and Lugar, I wasn't to bother with the low Defense, High Defense armor is really great early on tough, it lose potency later due to flat defense being less impactfull, but I remember having a super tank Duran that Bil and Ben's first fight couldn't deal more than 10 damage per hit XD.

3 hours ago, rpschamp said:

Rogue is my favorite Hawk class to lead with: his spells come out fast so no need to switch characters when casting, his high LUC stat is great for treasure hunting, his build is simple with no real need for INT, and his ability to hit against physical defense with his spells is a great asset when you need it (e.g., Seashore Cave mini-boss). You also get great mileage out of his LUC stat for spell damage, spell bonus damage, and crit chance/damage. Plus his Level 3 super gets a random color which is fun and helps to break up the visual monotony.

Honnestly Hawk is just my favorite character as an all, all his classes offer something unique and have different build options, I'm never tired to play him, I do have a preference for his Dark Classes tough personnaly, but Wanderer's support is really great and Rogue is definitly a force to be recognize.

4 hours ago, rpschamp said:

I think I've decided on the LUC capstone for Angela. AGI would be nice, but 20% reduction just doesn't seem that game-changing to me. The LUC capstone lets Angela ignore STR and improve her physical damage with all weapons, crit chance/damage, and magical damage with one stat. There are some battles where damage casting is just not helpful, so this should help give the Archmage class more of a role when she would otherwise just be swinging for tech points. This also helps her with two of my favorite weapons in the game: YellowDMG Heal and Crit by TP.

For Lise, I will probably go for her AGI capstone as it seems more useful than the VIT one in the longterm: -15 attack should become less useful at higher levels as hit points and attack values increase, while -7 weapon cooldown should be useful as long as cooldown values are 7 or above, which I'm guessing should always be true?

Yeah probably the better choice overall, I think Angela's AGL capstone is really a good one personnaly, even more if you have character with spells that have a long casttime, the LUC capstone looks promising tough.

As for Lise really don't know how impactfull tge -15 attack would be, but in any case I think given this team AGL capstone is probably the best choice here.

On 24.1.2022 at 4:06 AM, rpschamp said:

For Lise, I will probably go for her AGI capstone as it seems more useful than the VIT one in the longterm: -15 attack should become less useful at higher levels as hit points and attack values increase

at its core the damage formula is (atk-def) times all the multipliers.
endgame mobs should have about 400-450 atk, you around 300 def depending on vit and armor class.
so worst case the -15 is 10% less damage taken (450-300=150 => 435-300=135).
pair it with evil shaman's weapon and it becomes a bigger share.

but tbh VIT is kind of a main stat on everyone so it got a "lesser" bonus from me; I tried to give the off stats better capstones to make the trade offs more worth it.

On 24.1.2022 at 4:06 AM, rpschamp said:

This strategy is also great for Lugar - counters seem to slow him down and really help keep his damage in check. I have no idea what his listed weakness - "special magic" - means, non-elemental magic perhaps?

anti-magic, poison; the stuff you'd usually rarely use in vanilla SD3

I'm planning a group of God Hand, Vanadis and Necromancer, on Kevin/Carlie's quest. Necromancer will be a debuffer with a curse build, but what kind of builds (equipment) would you recommend for GH and Vanadis?

Well since you have Necromancer with Auto-Debuff, could go Auto-Buff armor with Vanadis getting all Buffs and Debuffs on auto (auto-debuff doesn't work on bosses at the moment tough), other than that I'm guessing Vanadis is gonna be the Healer so Heal Up weapon/ring can work, Multi Upgrade for bosses that can remove your buffs, as for God Hand going as a physical damage dealer works, probably a counter build.