SOTET WT

Star Ocean - Till the End of Time

Platform: PS2
Release dates (d.m.y):
 27.02.03 (Japan, original)
 22.01.04 (Japan, DC)
 31.08.04 (NA)
 01.10.04 (PAL)

Based on: PAL-version (SLES-82028, SLES-82029)



      General Notes

- If you're new to the series and appreciate the mechanical nuances
of Action-RPGs, I recommend you play the earlier installments first,
starting with Tales of Phantasia.
- A single save file takes 173 kb of space. Battle Trophy data takes
1167 kb, but is not required to play the game.
- Be very. VERY. *VERY* careful if you have save files on multiple
memory cards. When saving the game, the game automatically places the
cursor on the current save file if it's on that memory card. If it's not,
it will place the cursor on the most recent save on that memory card.
- Text scrolling speed in the game is very slow. You can speed it up by
button mashing, which can get fairly frustrating, but you'll just have
to get used to it.
- Items in your inventory are sorted automatically, and there's no way to
manually sort them. Items are always sorted alphabetically during battle.
In the field menu, they're sorted by type by default but can also be
temporarily sorted alphabetically.
- As before, you can carry at most 20 units of a particular item.
- The selling price for items is only 20%.
- Item Creation is covered when it first becomes available in Peterny.
- The Attack and Defense skills do *not* increase your ATP or DFP. They
merely affect the behavior of AI-controlled characters.
- Do *not* use only Fayt during battles. Try controlling other characters
as well.
- Private Actions (or PAs) and character affinity are still present, of
course, although PAs can be rather elusive this time.
- Within towns, there are many objects (books and such) that you can
examine for some additional flavor text. It often has little to nothing
to do with the main story, but it can still be interesting. You might
even find some references to previous games made by tri-Ace.
- Regarding the PAL conversion, the speed is optimized, while the aspect
ratio / resolution isn't.
- Sadly, the game does not feature dual audio.
- If you're playing the game a lot, I suggest you keep the discs in
regular CD/DVD jewel cases. Just make sure you keep them away from
sunlight (and not just direct sunlight).
- Once you've become familiar enough with the game, I strongly recommend
speedrunning it (at least a couple of times).
- Notes on the emulated versions on the PS4:
 - Higher resolution, lower framerate.
 × Skip-canceling is still present in the PAL-version.
 × The PAL-version now uses the correct aspect ratio.
 × If you're not from a PAL-region, you may want to create a European
 PSN account, so you can get the PAL-version and thus be able to do
 skip-cancels.
 × The game automatically creates Battle Trophy data on both virtual
 memory cards. As a result, whenever you load the game, you have to
 choose which memory card you'll load the data from.
 × These versions suffer from crashing to highly varying degrees. You
 could easily play the game for 20 hours without a single crash, and
 then get three of them over the course of a relatively short period
 of time. Changing the map size from small to large is the single most
 common cause of crashing. Aside from that, you just have to save often.
 × Some of the visual effects are not emulated properly. As a result,
 some enemies don't display a purple aura when using unblockables.


      Essential Optimizations

- Play the PAL-version
- Use Cancel Chains.
- Use the best waza (Air Raid, Mirror Slice, Infinity Kick, Kaboom,
Raging Helmet, Hand of Doom).
- Use quick, minimalistic cancel fodder.
- Learn how to delay a chain to avoid wasting hits when the enemy is
knocked down.
- Don't use elemental weapons or skills indiscriminately, if at all.
- Use No Guard.
- Use Auto targeting.
- Use the Homing counter aura.
- Don't let the AI cast any spells.
- Don't use attack magic (except Thunder Flare).
- Expect characters casting magic to be targeted by any nearby enemies
and make sure they don't get interrupted.
- Get Regeneration Symbols for all three characters.
- Use SP to increase the MP skill to Lv5 for Fayt, Cliff, Roger and Albel.
Put the rest of your SP into HP, and possibly Attack if the character is
in AI control (the Attack and Defense skills do *not* increase attack
power or defense power). Keep Defense at Lv1 to avoid enabling self-
preservation, which does more harm than good.
- Get familiar with enemy attacks, their timing, duration, area of effect,
whether you can block them or not. Use this knowledge to create opportunities
to punish the enemy (whiff punish, block punish, evade punish, distract
punish).
- Get accessories that block status ailments (Amulet of Freedom, Anti-
Freezing Amulet).
- On Disc 2, customize your weapons with Blue Talismans, Red Talismans
and Rings of Mental Power.
- Equip Bunny Shoes or Rings of Haste to increase movement speed (or
customize your weapons with RoH if you don't mind farming some money).
- Minimize Sophia's (or Adray's) casting time with Quick Symbol and a
Star Necklace.
- Create a bunch of Healing Devices, especially if you don't have Sophia
or Adray in your active party.



                       Battle System & Mechanics

- I suppose I should preface this by pointing out that the game features
a *very* substantial margin of error. You certainly don't need to become
particularly familiar with the game's systems in order to make progress,
but you might enjoy the game more if you do. If nothing else, you should
at the very least have a look at the AI sections to learn about things
like self-preservation, stealth, and magic attract.


      Contents

   Normal Attacks           Parrying
   Fury                     Frame Advantage
   Targeting                Damage Calculation
   Skill Setup              Death
   Canceling / Chaining     Healing
   Skip-Canceling           Misc.
   Blocking                 Status Ailments
   Sidestepping             Characters
   Magic                    Battle Bonus
   AI                       Battle Trophies
   Enemy AI                 Difficulty Levels
   Hitstun                  Bugs


      Normal Attacks

- There are two attack buttons - Do you follow? - assigned to Confirm
and Cancel (commonly referred to as 'Minor' and 'Major' or 'weak' and
'strong'). Aside from the two buttons, attacks will vary depending on
the distance to the enemy. Most characters also have attacks that are
triggered when the target is in the air.
- Attacks performed with Confirm are fast but can be blocked. Many of
them have a base damage multiplier of 1,0 (meaning, the base damage is
simply the difference between your ATP and the enemy's DFP). Attacks
performed with Cancel are stronger and unblockable but also slower.


      Fury

- All actions consume Fury. Your max Fury is 100 and cannot be increased.
You will quickly recover Fury at a rate of 100 per second while "resting,"
as in, while you're standing still and doing nothing. If your guard is
broken, it takes two seconds before you start to recharge. You will also
slowly recover Fury when flinching, at a rate of about 10 per second.
It's possible to reduce Fury consumption with certain skills and equipment.
Killing an enemy gives you 30 Fury. Enemies don't always recover their
Fury when standing still. When moving, max Fury is 99.
- There are many attacks that can deal Fury damage. Fury damage done by
enemies is always 50.
- During battle, you can see the enemy's Fury as indicated by a green bar.
Try to learn to acknowledge the enemy's Fury at least when it's full.
- Enemies have a minimum Fury value of maybe 10, meaning they can always
perform certain attacks without running out of Fury.


      Targeting

- When using Auto targeting, you will automatically target the closest
enemy during battle. Manual targeting requires you to switch targets
manually by pressing the Disintegration button. The action will not
pause while doing so. As a result, you should *absolutely* stick to
Auto *unless* you're using ranged attacks that don't easily hit multiple
enemies, or you're up against a boss fight with multiple enemies and
you need to focus on a specific one.
- If you have the battle menu open, you can press and hold the Disinte-
gration button to check the targets.


      Skill Setup

- You have four slots for battle skills (SR Confirm, LR Confirm, SR
Cancel, LR Cancel) and two slots for support skills. Once a skill has
been set (and it's something that actually requires activation), you
can initiate it by holding down the corresponding button (as the game
keeps reminding you) at corresponding range. The activation occurs once
the button has been held down for about 0,2 seconds.
- Just like with normal attacks, battle skills performed with Confirm can
be blocked, while those performed with Cancel cannot be. Unlike before,
using battle skills now (typically) consumes HP. Skills set to Cancel
gain an additional multiplier, but also consume more HP/MP and Fury, the
HP/MP consumption being proportional to your max HP/MP. With moves that
use HP, it's no big deal; if you're running low, all you need is a quick
healing spell (either during or after a battle). When it comes to moves
that use MP, though, you need to be more mindful.
- The power or activation rate of battle skills increases as they are
used and gain levels. Lv10 damage multipliers are 1,5 times that of the
base Lv0 values (which are never used, since moves start at Lv1 and
already have a 5% bonus). Most skills require 1674 uses to reach Lv10.
Reaching Lv10 organically takes a good while. Grinding is, of course,
an option, and you can get to Lv10 in 2-3 hours or so. This kind of
boosting is certainly not necessary, however.
 × Charge and Aerial do not increase in power as they level up.
- All battle skills use a certain amount of CP. CP maxes out at 15 and
there's no way to increase it beyond that.
- A small number of skills have range restrictions. Specifically, the
following skills are limited to SR only: Charge, Aerial, Lightning Blast,
Earth Glaive, Efreet, and Southern Cross.
- Just like in previous installments, in order to truly excel in battle,
you need to take full advantage of hissatsuwaza / battle skills (or at
least the good ones). You can find my assessment of all the waza in the
misc file. Everyone has their favorites, though, so, regardless of what
I may say about them, I encourage you to experiment with different moves
and different characters yourself. Just make sure your setup allows you
to chain properly (explained below).
- The single most useful support skill is No Guard, without which many
of your chains would be interrupted.

- SP is not allocated into IC-related skills this time around. Instead,
they are used for the four status skills: HP, MP, Attack and Defense.
It bears repeating: the Attack and Defense skills do *not* increase your
ATP or DFP. They merely affect the behavior of AI-controlled characters
(see the AI section a few pages below). This is probably the simplest
and most common misconception people have about the game.
- I consider HP to be the highest priority, although I do raise most
fighters' (all except Nel and Maria's) MP to Lv5 before focusing on HP.
After maxing out HP and MP, I go for Attack. I keep Defense at Lv1 so
as not to enable self-preservation, which simply isn't useful.
- SP gained per level is about the same as your level figure up until
Lv39. After Lv39, it's about 0,55 times the character's level.
- You can reach max HP and MP skill levels around Lv45 (HP at Lv31-32).
The total boost is 6850 HP and 1260 MP. You can have HP, MP, and Attack
maxed out by Lv70+ (all four by Lv87+).

- Tactical skills are the only ones you can customize mid-battle. These
include things like Anti-Attack Aura and Berserk.
- Berserk is eventually learned by every character and greatly increases
your offensive capabilites at the cost of a DFP penalty. The DFP penalty
makes little difference until you start customizing your weapons with BoP,
which shouldn't be until the post-game. Berserk is particularly vital for
AI-controlled characters, whose chaining ability is severely crippled
without it.
- Then there's Scan Enemy and Taunt, which are used through the Tactical
Skills menu during battle.


      Canceling / Chaining

- Activating battle skills in succession will allow you to greatly
increase damage thanks to the cancel chain multiplier. Doing so simply
requires you to input the command for the next move during the current
move. However, there's a pattern that needs to be followed.

                       175%            200%           250%          300% (max)
a. Confirm normal -> Confirm waza -> Cancel waza -> Confirm waza ->Cancel waza
b. Confirm waza   -> Cancel waza -> Confirm waza -> Cancel waza (etc.)

- As you can see above, a chain can only be started with a Confirm attack
whether it's a normal attack or a battle skill. If it's a normal attack,
it can be followed by a Confirm skill. Beyond that, you just alternate
between Confirm and Cancel.
- Battle skills and blockable normal attacks have a cancel window (or,
possibly, multiple cancel windows) and a cancel queue window. The cancel
queue window is the entire time window from the very start of the move
up to the start of the actual cancel window. During this window, you can
input the command for the next move in the chain, but the move is not
ended. The cancel window is the time during which inputting the command
will indeed initiate the next move in the chain. If the command was queued,
the move is initiated as soon as the cancel window begins. Eg. Nel's
Shisentou is 1,6 seconds long with a cancel window that starts at the
1,1s mark. Keep in mind, it takes about 0,2 seconds to input a waza
command, so you have to take that into account. If you start holding
down the button when there's less than ~0,2s left on the window, then
it's too late.
 × Attacks do *not* have a cancel queue window in the NTSC-versions.
 If you're not holding down the button for the next move during the
 actual cancel window, nothing happens.
- Many of the best moves cause knockdown, so delaying the canceling will
be needed to avoid losing hits due to knockdown invincibility.
- Once the target is dead, you can't chain any further.
- Besides just straight up multiplying damage, chaining is also useful,
since it cuts recovery time and is more cost efficient, as the resource
consumption (HP/MP, Fury) stays the same.
- Since blockable attacks are a significant liability, it's preferable
that your blockable battle skills are quick and minimalistic, with low
CP and Fury costs and no knockdown. The term 'cancel fodder' is often
used to refer to these moves.
- A typical chain involves using the 'heavy hitter' (the move set to
Cancel) twice, first at 200%, then 300%. Using it a third time in the
same chain (in a so-called 'triple chain') is possible in some cases,
but many of the top moves require the Fury use -2 or -3 factor to pull
that off.
- Fury use -x stacks up to -4. The most you can get out of a single
factor is -3, but -3 is fine. -4 would mainly be useful for multi-hit
moves that consume Fury continuously.


      Skip-Canceling

- Skip-Canceling involves exploiting the cancel window bug that is
*only* present in the PAL-version (or, at the very least, only reliably
exploitable in the PAL-version). Performing it is rather simple. There
are two requirements:
 1. Must input the commands for the next two moves in the chain during
 the cancel queue window of the current move. The Cancel button must
 be held at the end of the cancel queue window, whereas Confirm must
 not be.
 2. Must be in optimal range for the next move (the move you want to
 skip) at the end of the cancel queue window.

- When these two requirements are met, the next move in the chain is
essentially skipped, and you will instead initiate the one after that.
This is useful because it allows you to skip cancel fodder and, thus,
eliminate the possibility of getting blocked. The skipped move is not
ignored, however; it will still consume HP/MP and Fury, but it will
also increase the cancel multiplier (and gain proficiency). The only
difference is that the move ends *very* quickly after it's initiated.
- Skipping the initial cancel fodder can be tricky because of the small
cancel queue windows that normal attacks have. You'll need to work on
your timing and technique. Do *not* use the default button settings.
I use Square as Confirm and X as Cancel myself. You can simply hold
down both buttons and, when the normal attack begins, release Confirm.
I myself only hold Confirm and then do this kind of wavy motion with my
thumb.
- 'Heavy skipping' involves skipping the first heavy hitter instead of
the cancel fodder. In some cases, this could result in higher DPS than
normal skip-canceling, although the difference is small. It's also harder
to pull off, since you need to convince the enemy to not interrupt you
when you're going through the double cancel fodder (although No Guard
helps).
- If you queue up a skip cancel and then switch to another character,
the skip will not occur.
- Charge and Aerial cannot be skipped, although the same skip-canceling
method can be used to trigger, and possibly exploit, the Charge bug,
which you can read about in the last section.


      Blocking & Counter Auras

- Blocking occurs when anyone with 100% Fury is hit by a blockable
attack. For every hit blocked, the attacker loses 30 Fury. Unblockable
attacks are easy to recognize, as the enemy is surrounded by a purple
aura when using them, just like your characters.
- Aside from not taking any damage, blocking results in the subject emitting
a counter aura or Anti-Attack Aura / AAA (if they have one). There are 7
different ones, most of which are obtained from Textbooks that are found
throughout the game, while one of them requires an accessory.
 × Selling a Textbook doesn't make you lose any counter auras that have
 already been learned. However, this will prevent any future characters
 from learning that aura.
- The most common counter aura used by the enemy is the basic one that
stuns you (for 4 seconds or until you get hit with a physical). Enemies
with damaging counter auras (Homing and Wide Area Homing) become common
after Disc 1. Getting blocked by these enemies can result in some pretty
devastating self-ownage. If you gain control of your character before they
hit you, you can potentially avoid the damage by sidestepping.
- The first counter aura you get is indeed the basic stun one. However,
inflicting stun on a tougher enemy doesn't mean it's safe to attack them.
Force resistance still applies, meaning they could easily attack you the
moment your attack lands.
- I find the best counter aura to be Homing (obtained quite early), which
not only reflects half of the damage you would have received, but, more
importantly, also floats the enemy, rendering them pretty much completely
vulnerable, if only for a short while.
- Some attacks are not actually interrupted when blocked.
- Magic and counter auras cannot be blocked.
- If anyone at 100% Fury is hit by an unblockable attack, their guard
is broken and they lose 50% Fury.
- There are situations where you may want to use a PC as a "shield;" set
them on Manual and simply have them stand next to an enemy while you attack
them with another character.
- A blockable attack can break a subject's guard if the subject is
inflicted with any type of special stun (such as grapple or the spinning
effect of Whirling Heat).
- If an elemental attack is blocked and the blocker would have fully
absorbed the damage, the counter aura will deal no damage. While the
elemental variable is taken into account when an attack is blocked, the
resulting counter aura is always non-elemental.


      Sidestepping

- Sidestepping makes your character invulnerable to physical attacks
and counter auras for a very short period of time (about 0,25 seconds),
allowing you to avoid damage when used skillfully. The invincibility
occurs at the very beginning of the sidestep. As a whole, the sidestep
is about 0,65 seconds long.
- While hardly vital for your survival, sidestepping is a nice, little
tool, nonetheless. Anytime you get hit when not in the middle of an
action or not flinching, know that sidestepping could have allowed you
to avoid the hit. It's less useful against multi-hit moves, but even
avoiding one hit is still something.
- While sidestepping will not protect you from magical damage, it does
prevent you from flinching from it. This allows you to eg. avoid getting
your guard broken by Fire Bolt or (mostly) avoid Lightning Strike.
- By default, sidestepping requires you to hold L2 while moving the
analog stick, but you should switch it, so that it's set to the d-pad.


      Magic

- Aside from the usual method of casting magic through a menu, it's now
possible to set spells as battle skills, albeit only offensive magic
and only for Sophia (and Adray to a *very* limited degree). When set as
battle skills, spells can be used without any casting time, although
there's still a slight delay (1,5s). The Major multiplier for spells
is always 1,3. Even when set to Confirm, spells can't be blocked.
- Magic is not a good source of damage except possibly for Sophia and
Adray. Other characters will learn some offensive spells as well, but
they should not be used. Disable them in the Symbology menu, so the AI
won't cast them. They should be disabled for Sophia and Adray as well.
If you want them using offensive magic, it should be set as battle skills.
Disabling a spell in the Symbology menu won't prevent the AI from using
it when set as a battle skill.
- Adray can only set five spells as battle skills: the four most basic
elemental spells and Southern Cross (who Adray can learn by leveling up,
unlike Sophia, who doesn't get it until the post-game). By comparison,
the only spell Sophia can't set as a battle skill is Crush.
- Unlike physical skills, spells will remain active when cancelled.
- Casting time can be reduced at most by 75% (with both a Star Necklace
and Quick Symbol). However, because of the way the animations work (ie.
the actual casting time being only a part of process), spells with a
short casting time don't really get much, if any, faster.
- When casting spells through the menu during battle, it's possible to
try casting a spell even if you don't have enough Fury to do so. In this
case, the spell will fail. Enemies will never start casting a spell
without having enough Fury, but you can still force the spell to fail
by dealing Fury damage.


      AI

- Fighters have five AI settings (found in the Tactics menu):
 1. Attack enemy with all your might (AWAYM)
 2. Act in a well-balanced manner
 3. Conserve Fury
 4. Focus your attacks (FYA)
 5. Don't use coups de grace (ie. battle skills)
 6. Off (manual)

- As always, don't expect much from the AI. Aside from the Tactics setting,
you can alter the AI's behavior by spending SP on the Attack and Defense
skills, which does make them suck less (at least Attack does), but even
then, their performance leaves much to be desired. Then again, if the AI
was actually competent, then the game would be playing itself to a large
extent. A fundamental issue in party-based Action-RPGs.
- Increasing Attack gradually makes chaining more likely for the AI, but
it doesn't become consistent until very high levels. It takes a *lot* of
SP to get there, however (820 SP to Lv10), and if you're not putting that
SP into HP (and MP) instead, your characters will be rather fragile, with
tougher enemies easily taking out huge chunks of your health with even a
single, solitary attack. As such, I strongly recommend you max out HP and
MP before you move on to Attack.
- Increasing Defense above Lv1 enables self-preservation (on settings
other than AWAYM), and I *have* to recommend keeping it at Lv1. The AI's
efforts at self-preservation are far too often meaningless, with many
enemies easily being able to catch the sidestepping AI characters.
especially once they hit a wall. Besides that, it's just a pain in the
ass to try and keep the AI above the thresholds, mainly because of the
MP threshold that's simply too high, possibly even higher than the
character's max MP. And taking a couple of sidesteps away from the enemy
when low on Fury just isn't necessary when using chains that leave the
enemy knocked down.
- Below, you can see the effects that some specific levels have.

 Atk Lv2 | - May sidestep during self-preservation. (w/ Def Lv3)

 Atk Lv6 | - Refrain from attacking invincible enemies

 Atk Lv10| - Chain without fail when the attack deals damage

 Def Lv2 | - Self-preservation (HP/MP)
           - Avoid enemies targeting you (Sophia & Adray)

 Def Lv3 | - Avoid enemies when low on Fury
           - Avoid enemy when casting magic (for a while)
           - May try to avoid unblockable attacks with either a sidestep
             or normal movement. While Def Lv3 enables this, the odds of
             it happening are defined by the Attack level. At Lv1, it
             never occurs. After Lv3, override variable c starts to occur,
             and the character has a chance of attacking the enemy in
             retaliation. At Lv6, it pretty much always happens.

- At the beginning of battle, the AI chooses an enemy as its main target
and will not seek a new main target until the current one has been dis-
patched. However, the AI can also temporarily target and attack an enemy
as a result of one of the five 'override' variables seen below. The de-
tection range for these variables is a bit larger than the area of effect
of the Explosion spell.
 a. An enemy flinches
 b. An enemy attacks them with a blockable attack
 c. An enemy attacks them with an unblockable attack (req. DefLv3 & AtkLv3+)
 d. An enemy is stunned
 e. An enemy is casting a spell

- Due to variables a and b (and possibly c), the override target is indeed
often the same as the main target.
- Variables a, b, and c will not activate if the incoming attack can't
deal any damage.
- The AI trying to avoid an unblockable in variable c is admirable, but,
again, far too often meaningless, as they might not even succeed in avoiding
the attack (it's usually just one sidestep after all) or they'll just end
up interrupting the attack. Either way, variable c isn't triggered all
that much.
- Flags for healing and support spells will also override main targeting.
- When backing away to cast attack magic, a fighter may give up on the
spell and use a physical attack instead (and not because of override
targeting).
- A fighter's avoidant behavior when casting magic stops after a little
while into a battle, but can be briefly re-triggered by changing AI settings.
- A fighter won't back away from the enemy when casting spells with limited
effective range (ie. Ice Needles, Lightning Blast, Earth Glaive).

- When searching for a new main target, the AI ignores enemies that are
moving or immobilized by a status ailment. The exception is when using FYA.
- When using FYA, the AI will choose a new main target from the enemies
your controlled character has recently attacked. This allows a degree
of control over the AI's targeting, as you could potentially attack an
enemy once just to paint it as a target for the AI. However, the logic
here seems to have some issues, as sometimes the AI enters a state where
they fail to acknowledge any painted targets, but they may still respond
to override variables a and b. This issue will remain even if you switch
AI settings. This doesn't happen very often, though.
 × Switching characters also results in target painting.
 × Until you attack any enemy, FYA AI will target enemies normally.

- One of the AI's biggest flaws is Fury management, which severely
impacts both their offensive and defensive capabilities (ie. chaining
and blocking).
- On most settings, the AI is set to act when above 39 Fury (the nFUp
threshold, as seen below). As such, they don't really let their Fury
recharge much higher than 40. While the AI may well idle for longer than
needed (maybe the enemy is (temporarily) invincible or the AI is waiting
to acquire a new main target or there's some other delay caused by the
intricacies of the action logic), generally, they don't have more than
40-50 Fury to work with. That means they can only boost their heavy hitter
to 175 or 200% (with Berserk). That's not *terrible*, but it could clearly
be better (with the possible exception of moves that are difficult to chain
beyond 200 anyway). There's nothing you can do to completely fix this,
though. You can remedy it to a fair degree with Max Fury or you can just
try to manually compensate. Max Fury is unfortunately often mutually
exclusive with No Guard, which is far more important.
- There's a separate Fury threshold when it comes to using "follow up"
attacks, ie. chained attacks or continuation attacks. Furthermore, if
the character's Defense skill is at least Lv3, the character will get
away from enemies targeting them when below a certain threshold. They
generally don't move as far away as with health self-preservation.
- Once you've gotten your Attack level up, you should probably start
using Well-balanced or FYA. A common problem with AWAYM is that the AI
will use their leftover Fury after a chain for the cancel fodder move.
You won't see that all that much on Well-balanced or FYA. You do have
to be more mindful of the AI's MP, though, due to self-preservation (if
enabled, which you shouldn't).
- The AI may ignore Fury recharging if override targeting occurs.
- The AI has no explicit blocking logic.

          Fighter                        Mage
      FUp  SelfP  nFUp             FUp  SelfP  nFUp
  1 |  - .| <25 | <40 |      any |  - .| <40 | <40 |
  2 | <25 | <40 | <40 |
  3 | <60 | <50 | <50 |
  4 | <25 | <40 | <40 |
  5 | <25 | <40 | <40 |

- When not attacking through override targeting, the AI will always use
unblockable attacks on an enemy with 100% Fury. They'll primarily use
unblockable attacks when the enemy is between 80-99% Fury, but also have
a small chance of using a blockable (and this isn't because of an override
variable (although that does happen as well)). Below 80%, the AI will only
use blockable attacks (unless chaining occurs). For enemies casting magic,
the AI will use unblockable attacks regardless of the enemy's Fury.
- The insistence to try and break the enemy's guard is another one of
the AI's great flaws, resulting in the AI spamming unblockables, often
without even succeeding in breaking the enemy's guard. This is *horribly*
inefficient. It's particularly regrettable for characters who can easily
deal Fury damage at short range. If you're controlling a character who
can easily deal Fury damage, consider softening up the enemy with some
Fury damage to help the AI perform. The only other way to remedy the issue
is to take matters into your own hands. At Attack Lv10, all the AI needs
is that first blockable hit.

- The AI treats anti-air normal attacks as follow up attacks to floater
normal attacks and will use them regardless of the enemy's Fury. Indeed,
this often results in the character getting blocked, since those floaters
are unblockables. Fayt, Cliff, and Mirage have normal attacks that enable
this behavior. Fayt at least has a chance of using his unblockable anti-
air attack (which can also deal Fury damage).

- If available, fighters will frequently use attack magic regardless
of the enemy's Fury. As noted, this is very crippling to a character's
performance. Therefore, it is best to disable the spells in the Symbology
menu (out of battle only).

- The AI won't move from short range to long range in order to use long
range skills (although it happens incidentally if attack magic is available
and the character has Def Lv3+). As such, the only fighters who can be
(*somewhat*) effective at long range in AI control are Maria and Adray.

- As already mentioned, increasing Attack makes the AI more likely to
utilize cancel chains. At Lv1, they will only occasionally do so. At
Lv10, the AI will not fail to cancel a move so long as it deals damage
to anyone. This consistency is double-edged, as the AI will indeed never
cancel if there's no damage (either because of a miss, knockdown invin-
cibility, special attack invincibility, high DFP or elemental resistance).
Even at lower levels, canceling is only possible when damage is dealt.
 × Moves that knock the enemy down are indeed problematic for the AI,
 although usually they won't have enough Fury to continue the chain
 anyway. If they do have enough and you're not too preoccupied. you can
 try to manually compensate.
 × There are some moves that the AI never cancels.
 × Technically, canceling is triggered by dealing damage regardless of
 the method. Eg., hypothetically, if Fayt was using an elemental weapon
 that was absorbed and then cast a spell that wasn't absorbed, the damage
 from the spell would briefly enable chaining.
- Berserk is all but required for the AI to use their heavy hitter in
a chain (or even outside of a chain). Without it, they simply won't have
enough Fury to do so, at least not with anything resembling consistency.
- Because the game considers Charge and Aerial to be normal attacks,
AI-controlled characters have trouble using them in a cancel chain.
- The AI won't use elemental waza or magic on an enemy if the damage
is nullified or absorbed unless it's in a chain (Attack level doesn't
matter).
- If a character is equipped with an elemental weapon, the AI will
attack enemies normally even if the damage is nullified or absorbed,
but they'll prioritize attacking enemies who aren't resistant, if there
are any.

- Self-preservation: The AI will disengage and avoid the enemy if they're
using any AI setting besides AWAYM, their Defense skill is at least Lv2,
and their health falls below a certain threshold. They'll start attacking
again either after one minute has passed or if they're healed above the
threshold. If the timer expires, further damage will not re-trigger
self-preservation unless the character is healed above the threshold.
The timer will keep running even if you switch to control the character,
but will reset if you change AI settings in any way.
- These thresholds are:
 a. <17,5% HP
 b. <x+5% HP, where x is the amount of damage received that was between
  1/8 and 2/3 mHP.
 c. An MP threshold that equals 0,05*HP + 0,0625*MP. At Lv255, these are:
  3790 | Cliff, Roger
 ~3500 | Mirage, Fayt, Albel
 ~3350 | Nel, Peppita, Adray
  3015 | Sophia, Maria
 d. c + (dmg/MP - 0,05)*MP

- There's no upper limit to the MP threshold, so it's very possible for
it to be higher than the character's max MP (at least until you max out
the MP skill).
- Again, I highly recommend keeping Defense at Lv1, so you can use Well-
Balanced or FYA without having to worry about the MP threshold.
- When using an AI setting besides AWAYM, the AI will stop using waza
when below 20% HP (even if it consumes MP, not HP).
- You can press L1 and R1 to switch the character you control, in which
case the AI will immediately take over the PC you switched away from
(unless they're set to Manual / Do Nothing). Pressing R2 during battle
will toggle the character's tactics setting between Manual (Do Nothing)
and AI.
- I play large parts of the main game without using the AI at all, not
just because of how ineffective the AI is below Attack Lv10, but also
because it gives me more stuff to do, more action. I would *not* recommend
this all-manual approach to first-time players, however (except when
otherwise noted).

- Mage AI settings:
 1. Act in a well-balanced manner
 2. Concentrate on healing/recovery
 3. Concentrate on attacking
 4. Support your party
 5. Don't use symbology (or battle skills)

- No healing or status recovery spells on settings 3 and 4.
- No support spells (Power Up, etc.) on settings 2 and 3.
- On setting 3, the AI prefers to cast offensive magic normally rather
than use anything set as a battle skill.
- When it comes to attacking, mages have no override variables.
- If a mage's Defense skill is at least Lv2, they'll move away from
nearby enemies who are targeting them (the detection range is the size
of the AOE of Blood Scylla). If the mage's Attack skill is also at least
Lv2, they'll also use some sidesteps to get away from the enemy instead
of just normal movement. This isn't really an improvement, so you should
consider keeping the mage's Attack skill at Lv1. Either way, the mage
can easily end up trapped against the wall, as they don't really try to
circle around the enemy.
- As if that wasn't bad enough, there's also the issue of mages spacing
out. If a mage is trying to get away from an enemy while a flag for a
spell is active, there's a solid chance the AI will space out and fail
to cast the spell even if the enemy's no longer close or even pursuing
them. It's even more likely to happen if the character's health self-
preservation has been triggered. After a while, they'll snap out of it,
but you really don't want to wait. Fighters can space out the same way
as well, but it's not as likely (unless they're in self-preservation).
- The practical upshot of all of this is that you simply can't rely on
the AI to keep you healed. Then again, even without the above issues,
it would still hardly be ideal, as it's often quite dangerous to hang
around 33-50% HP. It would also negatively impact No Guard.

- When a flag for a healing or support spell is set, the AI tends to
respond very quickly. However, if the AI is interrupted when casting a
support spell, the flag will already be gone, and, as such, the AI won't
try again (unless the flag is recreated). If a healing spell is inter-
rupted, it might take a little while before the character tries again,
but the healing target doesn't need to take any more hits.
- If you're familiar with the conditions for casting spells, it's possible
to keep your support character away from the enemy (on Manual) and control
another character while still receiving support without manually choosing
the spells; Switch to the support character and turn the AI on, switch
back, then back again to turn the AI off, then back once more.
- If you're using Maria as a healer instead of Sophia or Adray, you can
generally expect her AI to do a pretty good job at healing (so long as
Power Up and Angel Feather are disabled).

- Healing spells
 × A character becomes a valid target for a healing spell if
  a. the character's HP falls below 1/3, or
  b. the character's HP falls below 50% and the character has received
   damage that is greater than 10% of their max HP at some point during
   a given battle.
 × If there's more than one valid target, Faerie Light will be used instead
 of Healing. Faerie Light will also be used if Healing is disabled.

- Support spells: Once a condition for a support spell or spells is
met, it sets a casting flag that will remain in effect for the rest
of the battle (meaning the character will always re-cast the spell(s)
once the effect wears off).
- The AI will cast ATP boosting spells if a character deals damage that's
below a certain threshold.
  a. Less than 1/32 mHP: Power Up.
  b. Less than 1/24 mHP: Angel Feather.
 × These overlap, so triggering a also triggers b, causing the AI to cast
 Angel Feather in addition to Power Up, even though it can't boost the
 target's ATP any further.
 × Echo damage and fireworks are ignored.
 × MP and MP damage are not taken into account. As such, attacks that
 deal MP damage only will trigger the flags, since they deal 0 HP damage.
- A flag for DFP boosting spells can only seem to be set in response
to attacks that deal MP damage. However, most enemies either don't have
attacks that deal MP damage or don't have attacks that deal *enough*
MP damage. The enemy's max MP also seems to be a factor. All in all,
there are only a handful of enemies that can trigger the flag. As such,
I highly doubt it works as intended.
- Support spells won't take effect if the character is knocked down when
hit by the spell.
- The AI will cast Acid Rain if the mage itself has Power Up in effect and
deals less than 1/30 mHP damage to an enemy. This doesn't occur with all
enemies.
- The AI will cast Silence on most enemies that are currently capable of
casting magic (ie. the spell isn't locked behind a health threshold),
but not if it's a fighter set to AWAYM. The AI doesn't care if the target
is immune and, as such, can easily end up casting it in vain.
- The AI will cast Gravitation on some of the fastest enemies (Centaur
Statues, Imps). Even when it's used, it's used very inconsistently.
- Furthermore, Acid Rain, Silence and Gravitation are only used by the
AI if the enemy party is at a higher level than your party.
- I've never seen the AI cast Reflection.
- The flags for Power Up, Angel Feather and Acid Rain can't trigger if
the attack deals no damage. On the other hand, the flags *can* trigger
from magical damage (which seems like an oversight).


      Enemy AI

- Enemies are generally more likely to use unblockable (Major) attacks
when they haven't received any hits from the character they're targeting
during or since their previous action, and blockable (Minor) attacks when
they have. Enemies also tend to switch to blockable attacks if they manage
to break your guard.
- When tring to predict which attack the enemy is going to use, you can
possibly eliminate certain moves based on how close the enemy is trying
to get to you.
- Enemies are likely to target a character casting a spell as a result of
an element I've dubbed 'magic attract,' which has an area of effect that
is slightly larger than the AOE of Explosion.
- Using magic attract to intentionally distract the enemy is certainly
an option.
- Some enemies are susceptible to stealth, ie. they're unable (or more
like unlikely) to lock on to moving characters or characters that are
in the middle of performing an action. On 4D, every enemy is susceptible.
Below 4D, a good number of enemies are susceptible, although effectiveness
varies.
- Enemy behavior changes when their HP or MP falls below certain thresholds
(usually 60%, as seen in the enemy move list). Typically, this means
gaining access to additional, generally more powerful, attacks.
- Most enemies have an 'anti-backstab' attack that they may use when
you're performing actions or simply situated behind them.
- Enemies are unlikely to cast a spell if the damage is either nullified
or completely absorbed.
- 4D: If an enemy is hit multiple times in a short amount of time, the
enemy will enter a state during which they'll usually only use blockable
attacks and will ignore stealth until they manage to hit someone. I
guess we should have a name for this state. Er, how about... miffed?


      Force of impact & Hitstun

- One of the key elements driving power dynamics in many melee action
games, including Star Ocean, is the hitstun caused by attacks and how
it interrupts any possible current action and makes the target unable
to act until they recover. Previous installments employed very simple
hitstun mechanics, wherein it was possible for a subject - player or
enemy - to be so overwhelmed by rapid, consecutive attacks that they
would simply not be able to recover, resulting in what is known as a
stunlock.
- In addition to the limitations imposed by Fury, blocking, and chaining
restrictions, SO3 rebalances stunlocking even further by employing
hitstun RNG, wherein your attacks have varying force values and enemies
have varying force/hitstun resistance values. The higher the resistance,
the less likely your attacks are to result in hitstun. Bosses always
have high resistance, whereas normal enemies with high resistance become
more common as you progress through the game. Your average, normal enemy
can still easily be stunlocked by a single character using a chain, up
until the character runs out of Fury, gets blocked, or gets hit by another
enemy. A single successful chain is often all it takes, however.
 × I wish could provide actual, hard numbers on the force values, but,
 sadly, no, no such data is available. The amount of damage certainly
 has no impact on the calculation (when it's above 0).
- While your characters have no native resistance to hitstun, by using
the absolutely vital No Guard support skill, a character will be able
to avoid hitstun so long as the damage is physical in nature and the
amount of damage incurred doesn't exceed a value that is 1/15 of the
character's current HP. Eg. if a character has 15 000 cHP, any physical
attack dealing less than 1001 pod will not cause them to flinch. In
practice, this generally allows you to shrug off blockable attacks,
most of which have a 0,8x damage multiplier and which, indeed, the
enemy is most likely to respond with when you attack them. While No
Guard comes with a heavy CP cost of 5, it is well worth it.
 × No Guard always works for attacks that deal MP damage only.
 × With a Blue Talisman, it's possible to resist flinching even when
 your HP isn't high enough. Particularly useful on higher difficulty
 levels.
 × No Guard ignores Convert Damage (which converts HP damage into MP
 damage or the other way around),
- Not all attacks are interrupted if the subject is interrupted.

- The effects of force of impact can basically be divided into seven
different kinds:

 × Flinch. The most common type. The (possible) result of most attacks
 in the game.

 × Knockdown. The target is knocked off their feet. When a subject is
 knocked down, they cannot be damaged until they're back up. This is
 often bad news if you're in the middle of a chain or a waza with
 multiple hits (depending on how fast the enemy gets back up). The
 invincibility seems to extend slightly beyond the recovery animation.
 × Your characters recover from knockdown in about 2 seconds with very
 minimal variation between different characters. Enemies have more
 variation, but it's still around 2 seconds most of the time.

 × Float. The target is launched into the air. When they hit the ground,
 they will bounce a little bit before entering knockdown state (similar
 to Virtua Fighter). While in the air, the target can be re-floated
 by hitting them with another floating attack. If a subject launched
 in the air touches the boundaries of the battlefield or another subject,
 they will enter knockdown state. If a subject launched in the air is
 hit by an attack that doesn't cause knockdown or float, the knockdown
 is canceled.
 × Floating can occur in varying degrees depending on the attack used.
 Indeed, in some cases, the effect is so minimal that it's practically
 just a knockdown (take Hammer of Might, for instance).

 × Blocking. A subject will always flinch when they block an attack.
 The only action it's likely to interrupt is casting a spell.

 × Getting blocked. Most blockable attacks are interrupted when blocked.
 The ones that are not are usually of the energy projectile / blast variety.

 × Body impact. Occurs if a subject falls on or is pushed against another
 subject.

 × Parrying (see below)

- The actual flinching animation is the same in some of the above cases.
- If an attack causes knockdown or float, the enemy may semi-resist it,
resulting in a regular flinch.
- If an attack stuns a subject, the knockdown/floating properties of
the attack are ignored.
- For some reason, items and spells that increase your stats or grant
special conditions also seem to be affected by knockdown invincibility.
- You won't flinch when taking physical hits from an enemy whose ATP
is lower than your DFP or if the attack is elementally nullified or
absorbed.


      Parrying

- Parrying is the possible result of a Hit vs Evade roll. When an attack
is parried, no damage occurs, although the subject that parries will
flinch (although enemies will only flinch if the attack had caused them
to flinch if the attack hadn't been parried). On Earth and Galaxy, parrying
only really occurs if there's a significant level gap.
- Parrying is not possible when attacked from behind or when using
certain waza. It also won't occur if the attack breaks the target's
guard.


      Frame Advantage/Disadvantage

- A faster attack may beat a slower attack on an equal footing, but
rather than try and beat the enemy in raw attack speed - which may not
even be enough due to force resistance - you should strive to create
situations where you have a more significant frame advantage (not that
anyone is actually counting frames when it comes to SO3), such as after
baiting the enemy into attacking (ie. feinting) and then avoiding the
attack. Indeed, the simple whiff punish will likely be the single most
common offensive tool you'll utilize to start your chains. Blocking and
sidestepping are other options, as is simply attacking an enemy currently
targeting another character. With magic attract, you can easily distract
enemies that were just targeting you a second ago. Again, due to hitstun
resistance (and blocking), having the advantage doesn't necessarily
guarantee a successful chain, but it does still increase your odds of
success.
- Observe the enemy to get familiar with their attacks. Learn when and
from which directions they're vulnerable. Practice some sidestepping
while you're at it. Check the enemy move list for data like damage
multipliers and health thresholds. There are over 400 enemies, with many
enemies belonging in a certain family. Enemies in the same family have
mostly, if not completely, identical movesets, but even then, the same
move may have different attributes between two members. Eg. a move may
be blockable for one and unblockable for another.
- A higher movement speed is, of course, a significant advantage. You
can increase your movement speed at most by 30% with the help of either
a Ring of Haste or Bunny Shoes.
- Being low on Fury doesn't necessarily serve as a disadvantage for the
enemy, since, as already mentioned, enemies have at least one attack they
can still use even at minimum Fury and they don't have to pull off chains
like you do. Also, enemies with high force resistance can recover Fury
at full speed even as you're attacking them.
- When needed, you can use feinting and sidestepping to get the time you
need to recover Fury. Another option is Max Fury, which will randomly
fill the character's Fury to 100 when on neutral, but, like I said, it's
usually mutually exclusive with No Guard, and No Guard is much more useful
for general purposes. Either way, it would be more useful for the AI, not
just because of their poor Fury management, but also because they can
react to Max Fury activating at speeds that humans can't.


      Damage Calculation

- The physical damage calculation formula looks something like this:

((ATP - DFP)(d + i)bmachsr)e
  d: Basic multiplier (typically increases with proficiency)
  i: Increase HP/MP Damage bonus
  b: Berserk multiplier (1,3)(HP only)
  m: Major multiplier
  a: Cancel bonus multiplier (1,75; 2,0; 2,5; 3,0)
  c: Critical hit roll a (Critical Hit HP/MP (HP: 1,5; MP: 1,2)
  h: Critical hit roll b (Critical Hit)
  s: Stun multiplier (2,0)(vs. enemies only)
  r: Random variable
  e: Elemental multiplier (1,0; 2,0; 0,5; 0; -1,0)

- Put simply, the random variable increases HP damage at most by approx.
12,5% and MP damage by about 6%.
- During battle, ATP can be affected by the following (maxes out at 9999).
 Power Up (1,5)
 Angel Feather (1,2)
 Might Tablets (1,2; 1,4)
 Power Dance
 Anger (2,0)

 × If Angel Feather is in effect, casting Power Up will replace the 1,2
 with 1,5.
 × Might Tablets remain in effect for the rest of the battle even if the
 character is killed. The others are temporary (unless you have Auto-Anger
 equipment).
 × As before, Anger may be triggered when an ally dies. It lasts 45 seconds.

- During battle, DFP can be affected by:
 Protection (1,5)
 Angel Feather (1,2)
 Acid Rain (0,5)
 Reducer (0,7)

- Enemies' critical hits have a small chance of inflicting Stun.
- Your characters cannot perform critical hits natively, while the enemy
can. Critical hits from the support skills Critical Hit HP/MP don't have
a chance of inflicting stun. Enemies have varying critical hit rates.
They're mostly 8%. A few of them are as high as 34%. The critical hit
multiplier for enemy attacks is 4/3.
- The basic multipliers for normal attacks used by enemies are usually
0,8 for blockable attacks and 2,0 for unblockable ones (as seen in the
enemy move list).
- Enemies generally don't have all that much DFP. Even late in the
post-game, you're usually looking at figures between 50 and 200.

- If an attack has multiple elements, higher level resistance takes priority
over lower level resistance (weak < halve < immune < absorb).
- However, due to a programming error, neutral resistance will take priority
over anything else if it occurs later in the damage calculation sequence.
The four elements are processed in this order: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind.
Consequently, Wind neutrality takes priority over any other elemental
resistance, Fire neutrality takes priority over Earth and Water resistance,
and Water neutrality takes priority over Earth resistance.
- Ultimately, the bug is neither particularly useful nor harmful, and a lot
of that has to do with how unreliable elemental attacks are to begin with.


      Death

- Death, or 'incapacitation,' occurs when either HP *or* MP is reduced
to 0. Petrified characters are also considered dead, but paralyzed
characters are not (Paralysis now wears off after a while).
- The game uses the following colors to indicate damage and healing figures:
 White | HP damage
 Green | HP healing
 Red   | MP damage
 Blue  | MP healing
- If a character is HP killed by an attack that deals both HP and MP
damage, no MP damage is sustained.
- When using attacks that deal both HP and MP damage, you can easily
tell whether you performed an HP or MP kill, as the MP damage will not
be visible in the event of an HP kill.
- There are plenty of normal enemies on Disc 1 and Disc 2 post-game that
are vulnerable to an MP kill (those being enemies with an HP:MP ratio
well above 10:1), potentially making an MP kill (much) faster than an
HP kill. However, you also need to take your whole team's damage output
into consideration. If you have two or three fighters engaging the same
target, and only one of them is doing (significant) MP damage, the result
could easily be an HP kill. Later in the game, the old MP killers are
easily outclassed by the characters' best moves, despite mostly being HP
damage only. It doesn't even matter that only about 10 enemies on Disc 2
main game (outside of the Arena) are particularly vulnerable to MP damage.
Whether the enemies have low MP or not, the MP killers just can't compete
with the sheer dps and stopping power of the best waza.
- Whenever a character takes a lethal blow, there's a chance they'll
resist death and remain alive with 1 HP/MP. It can even occur when
you're already at 1 HP/MP, and it's more likely to occur with certain
attacks.
- If a subject is killed while one of their attacks is still active,
the attack will become harmless.


      Healing

- The most common healing items:

 Blueberries       | 30% HP               Physical Enhancer | 50% HP
 Blackberries      | 30%  MP              Mental Enhancer   | 50%  MP
 Fresh Sage        | Revive w/30% HP/MP   Analeptic         | Rev. w/30% (all)
 Ripe Berries      | 30% HP (all)         Aquaberries       | Poison
 Perfect Berries   | 60% HP (all)         Basil             | Paralysis
 Magical Berries   | 90% HP (all)         Sage              | Petrification
                                          Lavender          | Freeze

- Enhancers and Analeptics become available on Disc 2.
- The multi-target berries are only available in limited numbers.
- There's no item that would heal MP for multiple characters at the same
time (unless they're dead, and you're reviving them).
- The best way to heal moderate amounts of MP is through MP regeneration.
On Disc 1, the only source of MP regeneration is the Regeneration Symbol
accessory, which is dropped by a handful of enemies and can easily be
farmed in the second dungeon.
- Other types of healing items can be created mainly through Compounding.
Many healing items can also be refined to boost their effects, and the
Compounding Elixirs required in the process are readily available at
stores.
- There are numerous Food healing items, most of which can be created
through Cooking, but they can only be used outside of battle (with a few
exceptions).
- The support skills First Aid and Standby Healing can also heal you
(both 1 CP).
- Standby Healing heals a small amount of HP (20 at Lv1, 400 at Lv10)
every 4 seconds when on neutral. The amount is far too little, so don't
bother. You can't even level it up easily, as the proficiency gain is
capped at 8 points per battle.
- First Aid gives you a small chance of recovering 20% HP when receiving
physical HP damage. At Lv10, the activation rate is about 10%. A fairly
useful skill if leveled up, but at low levels, it makes little difference.
Fortunately, you can auto-level it easily on Disc 2.

- Healing spells:
                    Lv10
 Healing          | 1224 | Heal 30-38% HP (Lv1) / 80-87% HP (Lv10)
 Faerie Light     | 1224 | Heal 33-36% HP (all) (Lv1) / 60-66% HP (all)(Lv10)
 Restoration      |  269 | Revive w/ 10% HP/MP (Lv1) / 50% HP/MP (Lv10)
 Antidote         |    - | Heal Poison
 Cure Condition   |    - | Heal Poison, Paralysis and Petrification

- Healing spells gain proficiency only when cast during battle.
- Boosting your healing spell levels is helpful, but hardly necessary
(at least on lower difficulty levels). You can do it if you feel like it.
- Don't forget that casting spells consumes Fury like any other action.
- The two mages, Sophia and Adray, are the only characters who can learn
advanced healing magic. Nel is the only fighter who natively has Healing.
- You can teach Healing and Antidote to any fighter by using one of the
four Decrepit Tomes found throughout the game (two very early). To use
the spells during battle, you need to set Common Support Symbols as a
support skill (2 CP).

- Hypothetically, if you needed to heal your whole party non-stop, items
and magic (ie. Faerie Light) would be roughly equally effective, both
allowing you to heal every 5 seconds (with minimized casting time). Both
methods have their advantages and disadvantages.

   Items
+ Can be used by anyone.
+ Locks you in place for a shorter period of time.
- Limited supply, especially for 60% and 90% heals.
- Need to be created/refined.

   Faerie Light
- Can only be used by Sophia and Adray.
- Needs to be leveled up to reach full potential.
- Locks you in place for a longer period of time.
+/- Magic attract
+ Unlimited use


      Misc

- There are only 4 elements: Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, and Heart (?).
Elemental resistance is common as you can see in the enemy list. As
such, elemental attacks should not be used indiscriminately. If you
don't want to worry about it, just don't use any.
 × Lightning is considered part of the Wind element. Ice is the same
 as Water.
- There are no spells or actions that freeze time
- Body armor is the only type of armor in the game. There are no more
shields, helmets, etc. Armor is largely split into three categories:
light, medium, and heavy. Each character can only equip armor of one
of these types.
- Exp is still divided among active party members.
- The command menu during battle is rather poorly designed, as not all
commands are visible at a given time. Well, technically they are, but
because of the translucency effect, they're difficult to read. In any
case, the six commands are:
    Escape
    Tactics
    Tactical Skills
    Equipment
    Items
    Symbology  (default)
- You still can't enable or disable spells during battle.
- You can't switch party members mid-battle.
- The following actions have a 5 second cooldown during battle: using
an item, changing equipment, and using a Tactical Skill action (Taunt
or Scan Enemy).
- As mentioned, items are sorted alphabetically during battle, which is
*far* from ideal. You also can't see the effect of an item until you
select one to bring up the sub-menu, and even then, it only shows the
effect of the currently highlighted one. If you've done some refining,
you could easily have copies of the same item with different effects.
To avoid cluttering up your inventory, you should get rid of items that
you have no use for (Fire Crystal, Eldritch Fire Stone, Battle Sphere,
Reducer, etc.).
- In a given battle, the game remembers the last selected item on an
individual character basis.
- Stamina is now a hidden stat. Post-battle recovery rate is remaining
Stamina divided by 12 when below 6500 HP and 400 MP, and Stamina / 18
when above (they change independently).
- The recovery maxes out at 2000 HP and 500 MP. Post-battle recovery is
really not that important this time around, since battle skills generally
consume HP instead of MP.
- There are no random encounters. Instead, enemies are visible on the
field, and you'll be drawn into a battle when you come into contact with
one. Enemies will usually pursue you when you get close, but some of
them are "blind" and will not react to your presence.
- Each 'field enemy' can usually give you one of two or three different
encounters (possibly including the same set of enemies in a different
formation). These encounters are rolled when you enter an area.
- If you run away from a battle, Fayt will be flashing for 3 seconds,
during which time you can touch enemies without triggering a battle.
- The time it takes to escape from battle is defined by the difference
between your active party's average level and the enemy's average level.
At equal levels, it takes 2 seconds to run away. For every level the
enemy is above yours, the time required increases by about 0,25 seconds,
up to a maximum of 7 seconds. Conversely, being just a few levels above
the enemy will drop the required time down to a minimum, which is about
a second.
- Characters temporarily immobilized by a status ailment won't be able
to escape until they recover.
- When you run away from battle, all spoils are forfeit.
- Careful not to select the Escape command accidentally.
- Some enemies (mainly bosses) have 'boss benefits' that make them
immune to Fury damage, status ailments and special stun effects, and
partially immune to scan.
- Spectacles have been replaced with the Scan Enemy tactical skill. It no
longer gives you the HP and MP values of bosses. Any level of elemental
resistance is simply referred to as 'resistant.'
- An enemy that can drop two different items can technically drop both
of them.
- Impact freeze: Time freezes during battle for a small fraction of a
second (~0,05-0,2s) when any of the following actions occur and it involves
either your controlled character or an enemy getting hit by your controlled
character: flinching, blocking, parrying, critical hits, guard break. Not
all attacks cause freezing when flinching occurs. Command input for battle
skills still registers during the freeze, which is why it can help you
with tricky skip-cancels.
- Because of all the random variables at play and your own (possibly
varying) actions, the same battle can play out in many different ways
even if you're using the exact same setup. Once you factor in all the
different characters and different skills, the posibilities are endess.


      Status Ailments

- Stun: Unable to act. Fury drops to 0 but immediately starts to recover
at normal speed. Lasts 5 seconds. Removed if hit, and that hit will do
double damage on enemies.
- Poison: 4,166% (1/24) every 3 seconds in battle, 0,5% on the field.
- Paralysis: Unable to act. Lasts 16 seconds (resets at the end of a
battle or if killed).
- Freeze: Unable to act. Lasts 6 seconds. Most physical attacks cause
Instant Death on a frozen subject. Enemies may be resistant to being
shattered. An attack can't shatter a subject if it's an attack that
causes freezing.
- Petrification: Unable to act.
- Confusion: The subject moves randomly without doing anything else
while losing some HP and MP (1/45 mHP, 1/90 mMP, 5 times). Lasts 9
seconds. May disappear if the character is hit. If a character is
confused mid-chain, they're still able to continue the chain.
- Silence: Unable to cast spells through the Symbology menu (can cast
spells set as battle skills). Lasts 16 seconds
- Instant Death: Instant HP death. That's it. Not exactly an ailment,
but it's sort of related.

- Similar to before, many enemies have a chance of inflicting status
ailments with their attacks, but this time it's mostly limited to specific
attacks.
- Even if you can't see the character, you can tell when a character
has an ailment, as an icon is displayed on top of their portrait.
- Poison, Paralysis and Petrification are not removed at the end of a
battle, the others are.
- Aside from Stun, each ailment will remain on a character if they are
killed (Freeze being a possible exception; Freeze will remain if the
PC is killed by an attack that can't shatter them). You can't heal the
ailments of a dead PC.
- Equipment can protect you from the following ailments: Stun inflicted
by critical hits, Poison, Silence, Paralysis, Freeze, and Petrification.
- Using a Medicine Bottle will protect you from up to five status ailments,
starting with Poison. The effect lasts until the end of battle.
- You don't have to worry about Petrification as much as you did in
previous installments.
- A physical attack will not cause a status ailment if it deals no damage.
- Water-elemental spells can still freeze a subject even if the damage
is nullified or absorbed.
- Most enemies can be frozen and, thus, can easily be freezekilled.
- The only way to petrify an enemy is by using an item.


      Characters

- There are 6 mandatory characters and 4 optional characters.
 × Mandatory: Fayt, Cliff, Maria, Sophia, Mirage, Adray.
 × Optional:  Nel, Albel, Roger, Peppita.
- You can get two optional characters at most. At least one of Nel,
Albel, or Roger will join you permanently (at the beginning of Disc 2)
in every playthrough. By default, this is Nel, but you can have Albel
or Roger join you instead if you trigger an optional event at the end
of Disc 1, Early in Disc 2, you'll be given one opportunity to add
Peppita to your party. If you choose not to, you can get one of the
other characters instead.
- Your active party consists at most of three characters. With 10 different
characters, this means you can have 120 different character combinations
for your active party.
- To find out what characters you should use, you really need to just
try them all out. Don't get fixated on using only Fayt as your controlled
character, though. All the characters are good if used skillfully (except
Maria, who doesn't require any skill).
 - Personally, the only three characters I'd never keep in my active
 party for the entire playthrough are Cliff, Adray, and Maria. Cliff
 and Adray, because they have better alternatives with largely the same
 abilities. Maria, because she's just too slow and I just don't want to
 use ranged attacks that much.

- Pros and cons:

   Fayt
+ Fastest movement speed
+ Fast item user
+ Air Raid is quite effective.
- Can't use Air Raid as effectively in the NTSC-versions due to the lack
of skip cancels.
- His ultimate weapon is obtained very late in the post-game and isn't
worth using unless you're feeling obsessive.

   Cliff
- Lowest MP
+ His mid-range Confirm attack always deals Fury damage.
- Said attack has the hardest skip cancel timing.
- Doesn't have any low CP cancel fodder.
+ Can deal great MP damage with Aerial Assault (mainly of use on Disc 1).
- His version of Infinity Kick is almost unusable due to the high CP cost.
+ His ultimate weapon is obtained early in the Sphere.

   Nel
- Has the longest flinch of all fighters.
- Doesn't learn No Guard until Lv40.
- Third slowest item user
+ Her mid-range Confirm attack has a fair chance of dealing Fury damage,
whereas the long range one always does.
+ Can do juggling with Kyoumensatsu and long range HP and MP damage with
Kokuyousen.
- The AI can't make proper use of her long range skills.
+ The only fighter who can cast Healing natively (unless you count Adray).
- Her strongest main game weapon is elemental.
+ Her ultimate weapon is obtained fairly early in the Sphere.

   Roger
- Lowest MP
- Slow movement speed
+ Has the second shortest flinch of all characters.
+ Fastest item user
+ His mid-/long range Confirm attack has a decent chance of dealing Fury dmg.
- Charge is his only attack worth using until he learns Raging Helmet (Lv50)
+ It's really good, though.
+ Has two cancel fodder moves with special stun (Whirling Heat and Flying
Torpedo).
+ His weapons have the highest ATP.

   Maria
- Lowest HP
- Slowest movement speed by far
+ Has the shortest flinch of all characters.
+ Fastest spellcaster
+ Has a few ranged dps options that even the AI might be able to take
advantage of.
- Using ranged attacks from a safe distance (or the ridiculously powerful
Scatter Beam) isn't very exciting.
+ Learns Protection, Power Up and Angel Feather (which you should supplement
with a Decrepit Tome).
- Her weapons have the lowest ATP.
- Her ultimate weapon is obtained fairly late in the Sphere.

   Albel
- Second slowest item user
- His SR skip cancel tends not to work if the enemy doesn't flinch.
- His mid-range Confirm attack and best cancel fodder are Wind-elemental,
which prevents the AI from chaining when the enemy takes no damage from Wind.
- Even in manual control, he only has one move that's consistently effective
(Goumashou / Hand of Doom (Lv45)).
+ Still a solid character overall.

   Sophia
- Lowest HP and DFP
- Slow movement speed
- Has the longest flinch of all characters.
- Slowest spellcaster
- Doesn't join until Disc 2.
+ Has healing spells...
- that the AI can't be trusted to use effectively.
- Offensive magic can only do moderate HP damage at best, and most spells
are elemental.
+ Offensive magic is still often good for long range interruption
(especially Thunder Flare).

   Peppita
- Low DFP, especially later in the post-game
- Slow movement speed
+ Fast item user
- Doesn't join until Disc 2.
+ Can drastically increase the ATP of the entire party with Power Dance...
- which kind of breaks the game.
- The AI can't chain any of the dances.
+ The only character with counters / reversals.
- Her two best moves, Kaboom and Faerie Friend, both have their issues.
- Her strongest main game weapon can't be obtained reliably (not without
Bunny Racing).
- Her second post-game weapon is obtained very late and only has 5 empty
slots.

   Adray
- Low DFP
- Slow movement speed and godawful acceleration
+ His wazas allow you to deal good MP damage from a distance.
- All of these wazas are elemental, however.
+ Has healing spells...
- that the AI can't be trusted to use effectively.
- Can only set 5 spells as battle skills.

   Mirage
+ Short flinching time
- Slowest item user
- Doesn't join until late in the game.
+ Her mid-range Confirm attack always deals Fury damage.
- Said attack has the hardest skip cancel timing.
- Doesn't have any low CP cancel fodder.
+ Can use Triple Kick in a defensive Homing setup, if needed.
+ In the post-game, she can do juggling with Infinity Kick, which does
both good HP and MP damage.
+ Her ultimate weapon is obtained early in the Sphere.
+ Hot


      Battle Bonus

- Landing hits on the enemy increases the battle bonus gauge at amounts
that is relative to the growth rate figure seen next to the gauge. The
growth rate is a value between 0-300%. It's always divisible by 10 and
drops by 10 points every 3 seconds. The figure it starts off at is
dependent on the difference between your active party's average level
and the enemy's average level. For every level you're above the enemy's
level, the default rate drops by 10%. If the enemy is at a higher level
than you, the default rate increases as seen below. Average levels are
included in the encounter list.
    4+ | 110%      45+ | 210%
    8+ | 120%      54+ | 220%
   12+ | 130%      62+ | 230%
   16+ | 140%      70+ | 240%
   20+ | 150%      79+ | 250%
   24+ | 160%      87+ | 260%
   27+ | 170%      95+ | 270%
   31+ | 180%     104+ | 280%
   35+ | 190%     112+ | 290%
   39+ | 200%     120+ | 300%

- At 100% rate, it takes 50 physical hits or 100 magical hits to fill
the gauge (with the bonus +5 factor, it's 26 / 35).
- Hits that deal no damage won't increase the gauge.
- When the gauge hits max, you'll obtain one of four beneficial variables
depending on what type of attack was used last.
   Confirm      | Triple Exp
   Cancel       | Double Fol
   Confirm waza | Increased chance of item drop
   Cancel waza  | Double post-battle recovery

- The support skill Lucky Star can also be used to fill the gauge.
- Fighting 5 battles while keeping the gauge intact will add one of the
other bonuses at random until you have all four of them.
- The Bonus Battle gauge breaks if...
 × the character you control dies.
 × the character you control is hit by a critical hit (even if no damage
 is taken).
 × you run away from battle.
 × you load the game.
- Pretty much the only way to reliably maintain the bonus is to keep
the controlled character away from the action. Earlier in the game,
you can often afford that, but later you really can't, as your input
will be vital for survival. Besides, I'm sure you'd rather take part
in the action than stand in a corner.
- If the increment rate starts at 0%, then you should probably just
move on. However, if you really want that bonus, then you can either
use Lucky Star (available late in the main game) or you can bring in
a low level character to get your average level down.
- Because the game considers Charge and Aerial to be normal attacks,
using those will give you either Triple xp or Double Fol.


      Battle Trophies

- Battle Trophies - or just BTs - are obtained by completing various tasks
and reaching certain milestones during battle. There are a total of 300 of
them and the (unimpressive) rewards for getting them are listed below.

  45 (15%) | Second set of costumes / skins (changed in the status screen)
  75 (25%) | Universe difficulty level
 120 (40%) | Third set of costumes
 165 (55%) | Music Mode (accessed through the BT menu)
 195 (65%) | 4th Dimension (4D) difficulty level
 240 (80%) | Fourth set of costumes
 285 (95%) | Full Active Mode (FAM)

- As already mentioned, the Battle Trophy data takes up 1167 kb of space.
I suspect the reason it takes up so much space is because of the useless,
little screenshot that the game takes when you obtain one.
- I won't be going into detail about many BTs, just a few here and there
(the BT guide on Gamefaqs already has a lot of good information). These
notes are collected in the BT Help section in the misc. file along with
some information on a few additional BTs I don't bring up during the
walkthrough.
- Regarding the two BTs you can get from most main game bosses ('Defeat
(boss) in under x minute(s)' (usually 1) and 'Defeat (boss) without
taking damage'), the time limit trophy regrettably counts any time you
spend in the battle menu, whereas the no damage trophy, on the other hand,
isn't as hard as it sounds. This trophy simply requires that you don't
take any damage with the character you control. Note that you will lose
the trophy if you switch to a dead character.
- In the few cases where the boss is accompanied by normal enemies,
killing the boss is the only thing required to trigger the BTs. When
going for the time limit BTs for these bosses, you might actually want
to switch to Manual targeting for once.
- The single most time-consuming BT is getting into 50 000 battles. A
typical playthrough (post-game included) is not likely to give you even
2000 battles. If you want to reach 50 000 (semi-)organically, you really
just have to fight loads and loads of battles, at least 100 battles per
dungeon. Something along those lines. Aim at 5000 battles per playthrough
(about 2000 on Disc 1), so it'll take 10 playthroughs. If it sounds like
too much, then, yeah, just forget it.
- You can't get BTs on Easy (Earth) and you can't transfer BT stats from
an Easy save file to a Normal playthrough.
- Trophy note: You only need to get 80% of BTs for all the trophies.
This is quite easy. If you're diligent enough, you won't even have to
do post-game on higher difficulty levels.


      Difficulty Levels

- By default, you only have access to the lower difficulty levels: Easy
(Earth) and Normal (Galaxy). Collecting BTs is the only way to gain
access to the higher difficulty levels, Universe and 4D.
- Universe is still manageable, but 4D is going off the deep end. If
you try to fight enemies on 4D, you're probably dead. I'd say the main
reason is the increased speed (it's not just their movement, their
attacks are faster as well). Even so, if you're experienced enough with
the game, you should be able to handle it without resorting to Ori, RD,
or stun bomb spam.

            HP    MP    ATP   DFP
 Earth    | 0,7 | 0,7 | 0,75| 0,8 |
 Galaxy   | 1,0 | 1,0 | 1,0 | 1,0 |
 Universe | 1,5 | 1,5 | 1,4 | 1,4 |
 4D       |~1,8 |~1,8 |~1,85| 1,7 |


      Bugs

- The game suffers from occasional loading issues. This can result in
a crash, but it's very rare. At this point, these issues are likely
exacerbated by the deteriorating condition of the console.
- Cancel window bug (already covered).
- Attribute change bug. Some of the attributes of an attack may transfer
to another attack if the preceding attack is still active when you
perform another action. Eg. if you use Fuujin and then use a normal
attack with IHPD or Critical Hit, the Fuujin will gain the effects of
IHPD or Critical Hit but only for the duration of the normal attack.
In case of skills with a limited activation rate (like Critical Hit or
Stun), the activation roll is only made once, and the result then applies
to all hits during the normal attack.
- Cancel multiplier reset: The cancel multiplier will reset if you land
a normal hit on an enemy after canceling. Any contact with an enemy is
enough (ie. doesn't matter if the attack is blocked or nullified by
knockdown invincibility). This can only occur with characters who have
ranged normal attacks, ie. Maria, Sophia, and Adray. While not very likely
with Maria, it's sadly easily triggered when starting LR chains with a
normal attack with Sophia or Adray. You can also easily avoid it by
delaying the cancel, but that means you can't start with a skip-cancel
(not an issue in NTSC).
- Charge/Aerial bug: When Charge and/or Aerial are set to both slots, the
HP and Fury costs of the move can be transferred to the other. This happens
if you have to move before executing the attack and try to activate the
other attack before the queued move is executed. Used properly, this allows
you to increase the length of a chain while also consuming much less HP
(resulting in similar input as when skip-canceling). Another possible
(and purely cosmetic) effect is that the game displays the other attack's
name (ie. Charge becomes Aerial, Aerial becomes Charge).
- If you're using Charge or Aerial in a chain, it's possible, although
unlikely, to end up switching targets mid-chain. Another situation that
can result in mid-chain target switching is if you end up hitting another
enemy instead of the intended target. Even then, the target indicator
remains on the original target.
- If the AI uses Aura Wall, they won't use any battle skills again
during that battle unless you take control of Albel and execute some
other battle skill. Even then, as soon as the AI uses Aura Wall again,
the issue re-emerges.
- When chaining magic, the cancel bonus multiplier may reset in some
situations.
- Neutral element priority bug (already covered).
- Not really a bug, but some skill descriptions are quite inaccurate.
- If you equip the Lightstone during a battle in the Bequerel Mine, it
won't actually register unless you visit the menu or move to another
area.
- There are a few weapons that can't be refined (eg. Crest Gauntlet,
Fragile Metal Pipe).
- Jemat's Chain Smash sometimes deals absolutely ridiculous damage, as
if his ATP was increased tenfold or something.
- Defeating a beholder-type enemy during Misery Circle has a very small
chance of triggering a bug where the battle ends, but the beholder is
still seemingly alive, and you won't gain any xp or fol. Possibly the
result of receiving lethal damage and being healed on the same frame.
- It's possible to end up out of bounds, but it's incredibly rare.
It's never happened to me.
- Once, I encountered a bug where Confusion didn't wear off and didn't
do any damage after the character had been killed by Confusion damage
and then revived.
- I once saw Sophia cast Explosion even though it was disabled.
- Ghost target bug: If you kill the AI's target while the AI was casting
a spell at the enemy and also switch the AI's tactics to FYA, the AI will
fail to acknowledge that the target is down and will continue casting
magic at where the enemy used to be.
- A mage's AI can become semi-idle if you petrify an enemy mid-attack,
and the enemy was targeting the mage. The mage will act normally until
they get too close, at which point they go idle. They're supposed to
move away from the enemy, but since the enemy is petrified, it messes
it up.
- Faerie Light is misspelled as Fairie Light in the Symbology menu.
- The Striker's Lightning Blade is misspelled as Lighting Blade.




      How to read the guide

                                                \\\ Location(*) ||
Items: Items obtained by examining treasure chests.
Items (nc): Items obtained through means other than examining chests.
Lost & Found: Items dropped by enemies. Using the tricky Loot Item
 skill, you can also steal these items (twice at most) without affecting
 the drop chance in any way.
NPC: An inventor you can recruit.

*: More often than not, this is the title (or at least a vital part of
it) that briefly pops up in the lower left corner when you enter the
area.

- I've given some items tags, such as 'Unique' and 'Artifact,'
 × Unique: A one-of-a-kind item that appears nowhere else in the game.
 × Artifact: An item that appears in limited numbers other than one.
 × Temp: An item you will lose eventually.
 × Pat: An item that can be patented.

 [SkipScene000]. One of the scenes you will have to trigger in order to
  finish the main game. Before a scene starts to play, you can choose to
  skip it. You can't skip a scene once it's started playing.

 [Fixed Encounter321]. One of the relatively few non-boss battles you
  will need to trigger and finish (with one exception) in order to beat
  the game.

 [AddSkipScene321]. A scene you do not need to trigger in order to
  finish the main game.

 [Add Fixed Encounter321]. Battles you'll need to trigger and likely
  finish when doing optional events / stuff.

 [SkipScene321]. (Scene trigger)
   | <- Denotes that the events are connected (ie. you won't have field
 [Boss]        control between the events)
- HP, MP, xp, Fol, Elemental resistance (Galaxy level)




  Disc 1
        Grantier / Helre
        Vanguard III
          Pesotto Forest / Whipple / Ruins of Coffir
        Elicoor II
          Airyglyph Aqueducts / Airyglyph
          Kirlsa / Kirlsa Caverns
          Bequerel Mountain Path / Arias
          Aire Hills / Kirlsa Hills / Granah Hills
          Kirlsa Training Facility
          Peterny (IC)
          Duggus Forest
          Aquios / Castle Aquaria
          Bequerel Mine / Abandoned Refinery
          Sealed Cavern / Shrine of Kaddan
          Aquatic Garden
          Ruins of Mosel / Mosel Dunes
          Mountains of Barr / Barr Caves
          Ruins of Barr / Urssa Lava Caves

  Disc 2
        Moonbase
        Styx
        The 4th Dimension
          Arkives / Gemity
        Elicoor II
        The 4th Dimension
          Sphere
        Elicoor II
          Shrine of Kaddan
          Ruins of Mosel (Subterranean Waterway / Deepest Reaches)
        Firewall / Spiral Tower





                             Disc 1                                A01
    ============================================================

- When you start a new game, you'll have a chance to tweak the initial
settings and choose the difficulty level. The difficulty level cannot
be changed once you've started playing.
- Next, you'll be asked whether or not you want to load Battle Trophy
related statistics from a pre-existing save file (if there are no
pre-existing save files, this does not occur). This includes stuff
like the number of battles and button presses. Aside from the number
of battles, you can't actually see any of these figures anywhere. The
number of battles won't be visible until after the battle simulator.
- If you've managed to unlock FAM, make sure you check your BTs before
starting a new playthrough.

 [SkipScene001]

Party: Fayt Lv1					\\\ 1F Guestroom Corridor ||
Inventory: Blueberries, Quad Scanner (Unique), Communicator (Unique)

- Please take some time to check the Config menu. These are the settings
I use:
 Skip Events            Yes
 Voice                  Subtitles only
 Battle Targeting       Auto
 Battle Camera          Fixed
 Battle Camera Mode     High
 Battle Voices          Off
 Sidestepping           D-pad only
 Vibration              Off
 Button Customization
   Confirm - Square
   Cancel  - X

- L1 and R1 can be used to rotate the camera on the field. Pressing
Start resets it so that it faces north. R2 changes the map setting
between small, large, off. I use the large map at nearly all times.
- In menus, L1 and R1 can be used for scrolling. L2 and R2 are used
to switch between characters.
- Whether or not to trigger any Private Actions (PA) is up to you. I
don't bother with them myself outside of the few cases where magic items
are at stake. If there's a specific ending you want, you'll want to pay
attention to the way they modify affinity values. You can always lower
affinity using some of the Compounding items, but doing PAs is the only
way to increase it.

Item (nc): Rossetti Performance Ticket (Unique)	\\\ Grantier Resort Hotel ||

 [SkipScene002]. This one plays when you enter the northeastern room.

Item (nc): Shake (Unique)				\\\ Lounge ||

 [AddSkipScene001]. Examine the machine near the fountain.

- Examine one of the panels on the walls to initiate some dialog with
Sophia. Once inside the simulator, choose Battle Trophies and either
start the collection (if it's your first time) or load the BTs you
already have.

 [Fixed Encounter001] (Moa, 2× Poisonous Beetle)
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter001] (2× Lunatic Bat, 2× Lonely Bat)
- Don't even bother trying to beat this one unless you're playing on
Easy. On Normal, you'll need a ton of luck, and it's just not worth
all the resetting.
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter002] (Mythril Brute, 2× Dragonfly)
- If you somehow made it this far, the hard part is over so long as you
know exactly what to do. The Mythril Brute is slow, but his Earth Glaive
has a fair amount of range. He likes to use it when you move between
long range and short range. Start by taking out the bats with Fayt.
Only attack them when you're a safe distance away from the Brute. Once
they're down, use Sophia's long range Confirm attack to take out the
big guy. You can safely attack him when he's either going after Fayt
or when his Fury is very low. When he's going after Sophia, just bait
him into using EG until his Fury is down again. Only move counter-
clockwise around him when he gets too close.
- The Mythril Brute drops a Regeneration Symbol if you can manage to
dispatch him. Not bad, but, again, nothing worth resetting for.
   |
 [SkipScene003]

Party: Fayt, Sophia				\\\ Game Room ||
- Sophia will soon go MIA and won't be joining your party again until
you're on Disc 2.

						\\\ Lounge ||

 [SkipScene004]. Exit the Lounge.

						\\\ Evacuation Corridor ||
Items (nc): Metal Pipe (Unique), Fragile Metal Pipe (Unique)

 [SkipScene005]. Proceed north past the save point.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter002] (3× Incapacitator VRSS)
- Pretty tough on 4D. You'll be fine if you feint all of them in a row
and hit the last in the back a couple of times. Repeat until you're done.
   |
 [SkipScene006]
   |
Party: Fayt, Sophia, Peppita
   |
 [Fixed Encounter003] (4× Incapacitator VRSS)
- Peppita (aka Souffle) will join the party for a total of 2 battles here.
Just like Soph, she won't be joining you again until Disc 2.
   |
 [SkipScene007]
   |
 [Fixed Encounter004] (4× Incapacitator VRSS)
   |
 [SkipScene008]

						\\\ Evacuation Facility ||

 [SkipScene009]. This one plays when you enter Room 509.

 [SkipScene010]. This one plays when you enter Room 506.

						\\\ Room 506 ||
- Examine one of the beds to get some rest.

 [SkipScene011]. This one plays when you opt to get some sleep.

						\\\ Transporter Room ||

 [SkipScene012]. Enter the transporter.

					\\\ Central Starboard Corridor ||

 [SkipScene013]. Enter the Lounge.

- Before you can trigger the next scene, you have to talk to at least
one person (or a combination of people in e) from each of the 5 groups
seen below. Now, I haven't tried every possible combination, but I'm
sure it's at least pretty close to accurate.

 a. Peppita
 b. Elderly Roakian / Elegant Tetrageniot (2nd time)
 c. Male Blue Dolphin / Fox-Tail Girl / Piccolotto / Gonnella (2nd time)
 d. Expelian Man / Elegant Tetrageniot / Quantestorie / Peppita (2nd time)
 e. Kiosk Clerk / Flirt / Dulcinea + Gonnella or Ursus or Female Earthling /
  Young Earthling + Female Earthling or Ursus or Gonnella

 [SkipScene014]. This one plays when you enter the Lounge after talking
                     to the required characters.

					\\\ Upper Starboard Corridor ||
- Talk to at least one person here and refresh the area to proceed.

Item (nc): Simple Sword (Unique, Temp)		\\\ Emergency Passage ||

 [SkipScene015]. This one plays when you enter an escape pod.
   |
 [SkipScene016]

Party: Fayt					\\\ Pesotto Forest ||

- Note that you can't discard your sword nor the Metal Pipe.
- One more time: Tweak the setting in the Config menu. The default settings
are *not* recommended.
- Check the escape pod to heal yourself. You won't be able to do that
anymore after the next scene, though.
- This is the first area in the game where you can obtain a bunny model
as a reward if you can cover 99% of the map. You'll need to hug the walls
quite carefully if you want to reach figures like that. Don't just brush
by them. That's not good enough. (You have to go through a few more
scenes before you can complete this one, though.)
- Don't forget that, while you don't have any Textbooks yet, you can
still block attacks. Blocking attacks is one of the most basic aspects
of the battle system
- Fayt's 2 hit SR Confirm combo has poor tracking, which becomes most
apparent when the enemy is too close or when the enemy doesn't flinch
from the first hit.
- Note that it's often possible to use Fayt's flipkick attack twice after
floating the enemy with his LR Cancel attack. This is only possible if
you move the analog stick in any direction after the float, as this
causes Fayt to regain control faster (for some reason). Also note that,
while the attack has two hits, his anti-air Confirm attack only needs
one input.
- When wounded, the Noblemen type enemies start tripping over, which
increases the amount of Fol you get. When wounded further, they'll start
using a move called Spare Me, at the end of which they'll give you an
Idol and then run away. The Idols serve no purpose other than to be
sold. If you hit the Nobleman after they drop the idol but before they
run away, they can use it again, but you can only get two Idols at most
from one Nobleman.
- You can easily get the item drop trophy by taking advantage of Spare
Me. Note, however, that they'll only use it when between 20-50% health.
- Use Aerial (set to Cancel) at Lv4 to get the single hit exact damage
kill trophy.

 [SkipScene017]. This one plays when you reach the village.

Items: Blackberries, 600 Fol, Aquaberries	\\\ Whipple ||
- Triangles of different color indicate load zones on the map. Green
ones are shops, blue ones are places where you can heal up, and yellow
ones are just regular ones.

Item: Blackberries				\\\ Village Chief's House ||
Item: Blueberries				\\\ Private Home ||

Shop:					\\\ General Store "Manybloom" ||
 Blueberries             45 Fol
 Blackberries            35 Fol
 Fresh Sage             310 Fol
 Ring Mail              180 Fol
 Pomello Juice           21 500 + 1 Fol per second

- Buy a Ring Mail and maybe some berries.

Item (nc): Simple Sword (Unique)		\\\ Whipple ||
- Before you can trigger the next scene, you'll need to either
 a. speak to the Village Chief or
 b. trigger the scene with the Adolescent Girl in the house opposite
 the store.

 [SkipScene018]. Enter Niklas & Meena's House
						\\\ Pesotto Forest ||
 [SkipScene019]. Approach the escape pod.
						\\\ Whipple ||
 [SkipScene020]. Enter Niklas & Meena's House.
						\\\ Niklas & Meena's House ||
 [SkipScene021]

Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny (Artifact)		\\\ Pesotto Forest ||
- Assuming you can reach a completion rate of 99%, you'll be rewarded
with a bunny model. Simply having one in your inventory increases your
movement speed in battle by 5%. The effect does not stack, and it doesn't
affect the speed of your attacks. You can sell one for 9000 fol.

						\\\ Ruins of Coffir ||
Items: Blueberries, Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, Blackberries,
 200 Fol, Ripe Berries (Artifact), Blackberries, Aquaberries, Aquaberries,
 Aquaberries, Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, Fresh Sage, Blackberries
Lost & Found: Beat-Up Textbook (Unique) (Makafy)
Boss(es): Buster, Makafy & Tepeki

- Map completion is typically not possible in dungeons until later in
the game.
- Try to activate Triple Exp before the boss fight; You'll need to fill
up the Bonus Gauge with a Confirm attack. It's no big deal if you lose
it, though.
- Young Shriekers are among the enemies who have a 34% critical hit rate,
so don't expect your Bonus Gauge to last very long when fighting them.
- Don't use Blade of Fury or Aerial. Remember that Battle Skills consume
HP (MP only in a few cases). You can't recover your HP that easily yet,
and Blade of Fury isn't even any good.
- 500 Battles Alone is a very tedious grind, one that you should obviously
combine with Chain of 500. This is pretty much the best place to do it.
You should do it on Disc 2, though, so you can kill the enemies with one
hit.

 [SkipScene022]. Plays when you approach the bandit trio.
   |
 [Boss]
- 250 HP, 11 MP (Buster), 300 HP, 13 MP (Makafy), 200 HP, 9 MP (Tepeki)
- 89 xp in total (at most)
- These guys are likely to run away when below 20% health. You'll still
get the textbook even if they all run away. You should probably reset,
if any of them get away, so you don't lose kills for the enemy type BTs.
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene023]

- The Beat-Up Textbook allows you to emit the Standard counter aura
when blocking attacks.

Items: Jewel of Refuge, Fresh Sage		\\\ Norton's Hideout ||
Item (nc): Music Box Parts (Unique, Temp)
PC: Cliff Lv2
Default (Cliff): Mighty Gauntlets (Unique), Ring Mail, 4 SP
Boss: Norton

- This is your only chance to fight a Skeleton Warrior. Don't miss it.
- There are three jewels you can use on the field to affect certain
things, as seen below. The effects of these jewels last for 36 seconds.
The jewels are mainly useful as a source of extra money (one sells for
602 fol), but you should hold on to at least one Jewel of Refuge. There
are also a couple of dark dungeons where Jewels of Avarice might come
in handy.
 × Refuge: Stop enemies.
 × Alertness: Display enemies on the map.
 × Avarice: Display chests on the map with blue, diamond-shaped icons.
 The icon will be flashing if the chest is unopened. It only displays
 the icons in the current, specific (sub-)area.
- Find Norton's "office," and examine the computer terminal to input
the password (256). If you get it wrong three times, you'll simply be
teleported outside.

 [SkipScene024]. This one plays when you enter the prison cells.
   |
Party: Fayt, Cliff
   |
 [Boss]
- 1600 HP, 35 800 MP, R:F, 32 xp, Decrepit Tome (Artifact)
- The time limit BT requires a kill in only 30 seconds.
   |
 [SkipScene025]

- Don't forget that the BT data is separate from actual game data.
It's not possible to lose Trophies when you load the game.
- There are only four Decrepit Tomes in the game. Using one teaches a
character three spells: Healing, Antidote, and Silence. Choose carefully.
When you do use one, note that you need to set Common Support Symbols
(2 CP) as the character's support skill in order to be able to cast them
during battle. Either way, spending a support skill slot for CSS is a
tough sell when you can easily just heal your characters with items or
with Nel (who's the only fighter who can cast Healing natively) and
considering you'll soon learn support skills that are much more useful.
However, if you feel it gives you a little extra comfort, go ahead.
Use one on Fayt. Even if you don't have CSS set as a skill, you can
always cast them outside of battle, so that's something. If nothing
else, it helps dealing with Poison early in the game.
- Visit the office one last time for the Music Box Parts.

 [SkipScene026]. This one plays when you exit the hideout.
- You won't have access to the hideout after this.

						\\\ Pesotto Forest ||

 [SkipScene027]. Plays when you approach the entrance to the village.

Item (nc): Medecentra Pyroxene (Unique)		\\\ Village Chief's House ||
- Talk to the chief to obtain the Medecentra Pyroxene, an accessory
with the factor Battle Skill HP use -30% (it also has the factor Battle
Skill HP use -20%, but these two don't stack, so it doesn't do anything).

						\\\ Whipple ||
 [SkipScene028]. This one plays when you exit the village.
						\\\ Pesotto Forest ||
 [SkipScene029]. Approach the cliffs west of the escape pod.
						\\\ The Cutter 'Eagle' ||
 [SkipScene030]. Talk to Mirage twice and Cliff once.

 [SkipScene031]. Exit the ship.

PC: Nel Lv3					\\\ Airyglyph Dungeon ||
Default (Nel): Baselards (Unique), Ring Mail, 6 SP
Boss(es): Inquisitor (+ 2× Airyglyph Soldiers)
- Disable Nel's Fire Bolt, Healing and any other spells she (or anyone
else) learns. You shouldn't trust the AI with healing spells, least of
all when facing enemies that are a serious threat. You should just do
it manually. And keep in mind, spells consume Fury as well. If you don't
have the necessary Fury, the spell will fail.

 [Boss]
- Inquisitor:       1300 HP, 40 MP
- Airyglyph Soldier: 400 HP, 18 MP
- 30 xp in total
- No BTs
- Consider doing MP kills with Aerial and/or Blazing Sword.
- 4D: You can safely hit Inquisitor in the back when he does his unblockable.
   |
 [SkipScene032] (delay)

                                                \\\ Airyglyph Aqueducts ||
Party: Fayt, Cliff, Nel
Items: Worm-Eaten Tome (Artifact), Blueberries, Ring Mail,
 Warrior's Bracelet, Fresh Sage, Blueberries
Lost & Found: Regeneration Symbol (Skeleton Soldier)
Boss: Giant Crab

- The ladder in the third area is a bit hard to see. Run against it to
use it.
- Put the Warrior's Bracelet into good use (ATP +20, ATP +5%).

- Again, don't bother using Blade of Fury, Sphere of Might, or Shockwave.
They're basically just cancel fodder. Normal attacks will get the job
done just fine at this point in the game.
- Many of the enemies are weak to Fire, but using Blazing Sword will
quickly drain your MP. I'm sure you can handle them without it.
- Don't miss the kill for Bogle Leader a. They appear alongside Bogle
Soldiers, but not every time, so it could take a few battles. They might
also run away, so there's that too.

- You should fight the Skeleton Soldiers until you score at least one
Regeneration Symbol. I get three myself (one for each character). It's
an accessory that regenerates 3% MP every 5 seconds in battle. It also
increases DFP by 6, which is enough to make a difference early in the
game. You should be able to get them pretty easily even without the bonus,
but if you get the Osprey Dagger from town, you can quickly take out the
enemies with Nel's long range dive bomb attack (boosted by IHPD) with
minimal risk of losing the bonus.

- If you're not controlling Nel, it's probably best to keep her on
Manual and away from the action, so she can just support the party with
Healing. Nel can't spam her blockables as fast as Fayt or Cliff and she
has a long flinching time (the longest among all fighters), so she
easily soaks up more damage than the guys when in AI control. Another
substantial contributing factor is magic attract. As already explained
in the battle system guide, casting spells makes the character a magnet
for the enemy's attention unless the character is really far away. Use
the Loose Line formation, so Nel starts off in the corner. If an enemy
starts heading for Nel (either just randomly or because of magic attract),
you'll get a good opportunity to attack them, that is, if you're not too
preoccupied. Or maybe there are just multiple enemies and you can't take
them all on at once. Indeed, you'll have to get used to moving your
support character around in order to keep them safe.
- I use the Guard formation myself and mostly control Nel. I don't bother
controlling Fayt until he learns Shotgun Blast (which won't even happen
if I don't keep him in my party. I might).

- Don't forget about sidestepping. Eg. you can use it to avoid damage
from Bio Bullet if you don't have enough Fury to block it. But really,
you can use it to avoid damage from any physical attack *and* counter
auras.

- Both Fayt and Cliff (and especially Cliff) could use an MP boost. Get
their MP skill to Lv5 or so before focusing on and maxing out HP.
- Again, I do *not* recommend putting any SP whatsoever into Defense.

- I suggest using a Slime to get the consecutive block BTs. If you're
close enough, you can block all 16 hits from Bio-Bullet. Turn off your
counter aura and remove the other two characters from the active party.

- Hold Cancel to walk, so you don't slip on the ice.

 [SkipScene033]. Plays when you proceed north past the second save point.
   |
 [Boss]
- 3500 HP, 80 MP, W:F, 55 xp
- Go for an MP kill with Blazing Sword (or Aerial if you don't have that).
It's best to set your other characters on manual (by hitting R2) and
either keep them away from the action or use one as a shield.
   |
 [SkipScene034]

 [SkipScene035]. This one plays when you exit the aqueducts.

					\\\ Royal City of Airyglyph ||
Items: Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, Ripe Berries, Ripe Berries,
 Compounding Elixirs, Perfect Berries (Artifact), Compounding Elixirs,
 Blackberries, Cooking Ingredients

Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Cooking Ingredients			\\\ Inn "Wyvern's Tail" ||

Shop: Basil; Sage; Lavender - 20 Fol	\\\ Outfitter "Dragon's Dungeon" ||
- Pick up some healing herbs. Check the details with the Menu button.

Item: Ripe Berries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Blackberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Blueberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: 2000 Fol					\\\ Tavern "Dragon's Breath"||
Item: Perfect Berries				\\\ Abandoned Temple ||

Items: Blueberries, Blackberries	\\\ High-Quality Armorer "Tiamat" ||
Shop: Osprey Dagger - 15 100 Fol
- If you sell the 1/144 Scale Bunny and some other stuff, you should
be able to afford the Osprey Dagger. The other weapons should be passed
up on in favor of IC weapons. By no means is this necessary, however.
On the contrary, you're not "supposed to" buy this weapon until late
Disc 1. Even if you stick to the intended weapons, you can still easily
take out enemies with a chain or two once you get some decent skills
(starting with Kagebarai and Hammer of Might at Lv10).
- 4D: The Osprey Dagger alone isn't enough. You need to get the Superior
Chain Mail as well. You can afford it if you complete a couple of more
maps and get the money from the Mountains of Barr. You should be able
to get past the Earth Smasher even if you haven't fought a single normal
battle on Elicoor II yet.

					\\\ Armorer "Left-Handed Lizard" ||
Shop: Superior Chain Mail - 26 800 Fol
- You can get one of these for Nel later when you can afford it. Again,
this is hardly necessary (until late Disc 1), but it's your call.

						\\\ Traum Mountains ||
Items: Jewel of Alertness, Ripe Berries, 400 Fol, Blueberries, Blackberries

 [SkipScene036]. This one plays when you cross the bridge.

- If you need to go back to Airyglyph, do your best to avoid the Dragon
Brigade Soldiers. They can kill you quite easily. Eventually, you'll want
to kill at least one of them for the enemy type BTs, but you'll get a
good chance later during a side quest.

 [SkipScene037]. Approach the entrance to Kirlsa.

 [SkipScene038]. This one plays when you enter Kirlsa.

						\\\ Mining Town of Kirlsa ||
Items: Aquaberries, Perfect Berries, 520 Fol, Blueberries, Blackberries,
 Ripe Berries, Perfect Berries
- There's some new gear, but I suggest you skip them.

Items: 1400 Fol					\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Blueberries				\\\ Tavern "The Iron Stomach"|

Item: Compounding Elixirs			\\\ Mining Town of Kirlsa ||
- Talk to the man in the southwest corner of town. Doing so will make
Nel appear at the small graveyard north.

 [SkipScene039]. This one plays when you approach Nel.

- Head north into the mines.

						\\\ Kirlsa Caverns ||
Items: Scale Armor, Blackberries, Blackberries, Charm of Insight,
 Ripe Berries, 5000 Fol, Fresh Sage, Falchion, Earth Pixie
Lost & Found: Decrepit Tome (Artifact) (Earth Smasher)
Boss: Earth Smasher

- Once Nel reaches Lv10, you can start owning enemies with Kagebarai.
(Shadow Wave). If you're playing the PAL-version, you'll want to use
skip-canceling. Set Shisentou (Shockwave) to SR Confirm and Kagebarai
to SR Cancel. You did change the button settings, right? Right, so,
the easiest way is to hit Confirm, then immediately hold down both
Confirm and Cancel. Once the normal attack begins, release Confirm.
That should do it.
- Battlefields in caves and the Mountains of Barr feature random,
rolling boulders. These boulders deal proportional damage based on max
HP that's modified by size and momentum.

 [SkipScene040]. This one plays when you proceed west past the save point.
   |
 [Boss]
- 3600 HP, 163 MP, 40 xp, 1495 Fol
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene041]

- Pull the lever after the battle. Now, make your way to the third area,
where you saw those ovens or whatever. You'll have to ride a hauler
beast in order to make it through.
- The Aggressive hauler can be used to break down the three rock walls
that block your path on the east side. It can turn even when above the
speed limit, but it can't stop or turn left at the first junction.
- The Whimsical hauler will turn randomly.
- When you make a stop, the camera will be set in a certain angle, so
try not to accidentally leave right away.
- Make sure you get a kill for each enemy. The Giant Bat only appears
alongside Huge Spiders (found in the area west of where you fought the
boss). Four of the enemies can only be fought in the areas accessed
with a hauler. Just fight all the enemies in the first two stops and
you're good.

 Blackberries    | Stop.
 Charm of Insight| Right, stop.
 Ripe Berries    | Right, left (wall), stop.
 5000 Fol        | Right, left (wall), left (wall), stop.
 Fresh Sage      | Right, right, left, left (wall), stop.
 Falchion        | Right, right, right, stop.
 Aquaberries     | Left, left, jump, jump, stop.
 Earth Pixie     | Left, right, left (or right), right, long jump, stop.
  × The Earth Pixie can only be reached by using the Whimsical hauler.
  I suggest you skip it and spare yourself from the frustration.

- In order to proceed: left, right, left, left, left. Once you've gotten
through once, you can choose Automatic to get through instantly.
- If you use the Ill-natured hauler, you only have to slow down at the
second and last junctions.

						\\\ Bequerel Mountain Path ||
Items: Blackberries, Ripe Berries, Crafting Materials,
 Writing Materials, Aquaberries, Compounding Elixirs
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny
- Don't forget to use SP to boost MP for Cliff and Fayt.
- You can't handle the enemies in the Mountains of Barr yet. There is
one chest there, though, that you might want to pick up if you're feeling
daring. The chest is in the northwest part of the first cave and contains
18 100 Fol. There's an enemy in the room that you can only avoid by using
a Jewel of Refuge. If you don't have one, you likely won't make it. If
you venture a little farther, you can easily grab the Steeled Earth while
you're at it (on the west side in the areas after the cave).

 [SkipScene042]. This one plays when you reach Arias.

					\\\ Riverfront Village of Arias ||
Items: Ripe Berries, Multi-Flask (Unique), Cooking Ingredients, Aquaberries

Shop:					\\\ General Store "Jack Potato" ||
 Broadsword             120 Fol
 Steel Gauntlet         120 Fol
 Long Dagger            110 Fol

- You'll find a Steel Chain Mail and a Long Dagger very soon, so don't
buy them. Nel's going MIA for a while anyway. You'll also find a Steel
Gauntlet, but it's not that close, so you should just buy it unless
you're planning on avoiding battles until you get Nel back (which is
what I do).

Item: Perfect Berries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Blackberries				\\\ Bedroom ||

						\\\ Lord's Mansion ||

 [SkipScene043]. This one plays when you enter the Conference Room.

- De-equip any useful accessories Nel might be wearing.

						\\\ Guest Room ||

 [SkipScene044]. This one plays when you examine the bed, and choose
     "I can barely keep my eyes open," or talk to Cliff twice and choose
     "I'm getting kinda sleepy."

						\\\ Lord's Mansion ||
 [SkipScene045]. Enter the Conference Room.
						\\\ Arias ||
 [SkipScene046]. Approach the entrance to Aire Hills.

					\\\ Aire Hills / Kirlsa Hills ||
Items: Blueberries, Blackberries, Blueberries, Jewel of Refuge,
 Compounding Elixirs, Blueberries
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny

- Once again, I'd like to remind you how useful sidestepping is. Learn
to use it, and it'll help you shave off some damage. Take the horsemen,
for instance. Their strong attack is fast and horizontal. If you're
close, you may not be able to get away from it by simply running away.
However, if you sidestep (with the right timing), you'll avoid getting
hit (while also creating an opportunity to start a chain).
- Once you reach Kirlsa, take the path south. And don't forget about
the Superior Chain Mail in Airyglyph (27k).

						\\\ Granah Hills ||
Items: Blackberries, Blueberries, Steel Chain Mail
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny
Lost & Found: Charm of Insight (Young Shrieker, Elder Shrieker)

 [SkipScene047]. Enter the Kirlsa Training Facility.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter005] (3× Black Brigade Soldier a)
   |
 [SkipScene048]

					\\\ Kirlsa Training Facility ||

						\\\ Living Quarters ||
Items: Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, Anti-Poison Amulet (pat),
 Blackberries, Long Dagger, Aquaberries

- If you're planning on doing a lot of IC when you reach Peterny, you
should complete the map here (the bunny sells for 36k). It's a little
tricky, but very much possible. Pay attention to the map to see the
bumpy spots that will likely cause you to break contact with the wall.
- Blazing Sword and Hammer of Might work well against most enemies here.
They don't have the best harmony, though, seeing as Blazing Sword will
mostly do MP kills while using Hammer of Might will result in HP kills.
Either way, you should set them to Confirm to conserve HP and MP. It
really helps if you have a Regeneration Symbol for Fayt.
- You should probably avoid the Animated Armors, as they're fairly tough
and immune to Fire. Nel could take them out easily with Kagebarai, but
she won't rejoin until you're almost done with the dungeon. That said,
if you don't want her to fall behind in levels, you should run through
and get her back as soon as possible.

						\\\ Training Area (2F) ||
Items: Blackberries, Cooking Ingredients, Cooking Ingredients,
 Cooking Ingredients, Blueberries, Aquaberries, Neglected Textbook (Unique)

- The Neglected Textbook allows you to use the Homing counter aura
that reflects half of the damage you would have received as well as
floats the enemy. This is the counter aura I use the most myself.
- Getting the AAA BT is tricky, as you need to do a whole bunch of hits
for it to count. Better save it for later when you have access to counter
auras that do multiple hits per block.
- Don't miss the kill for Bogle Leader c. They only appear alongside
the Horned Wolves on the west side on this floor.

						\\\ Prison (3F) ||
Items: Symbol of Courage, 8000 Fol, Cooking Ingredients,
 Compounding Elixirs, Steel Gauntlet, Blueberries, Blackberries
Item (nc): Cuprite Key (Unique)

- Talk to Mayu to obtain the key you can use to access the elevator
(in the northeast corner on the first floor).

PC: Nel						\\\ Living Quarters ||

 [SkipScene049]. Plays when you reach the elevator.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter006] (3× Black Brigade Soldier a)
   |
 [SkipScene050]

						\\\ Training Area ||
Items: Worm-Eaten Tome (Artifact), Compounding Elixirs

Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny) (Artifact)	\\\ Arena ||
Boss(es): Shelby (+ 4× Black Brigade Soldiers)

 [SkipScene051]. This one plays when you proceed south past the save point.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter007] (4× Black Brigade Soldier a)
   |
 [SkipScene052]
   |
 [Boss]
- 5100 HP, 13 816 MP, A:I
- 175 xp, 37 Fol in total
   |
 [SkipScene053]

				\\\ Aire Hills / Bequerel Mountain Path ||
 [SkipScene054]. Plays upon returning to Arias.
						\\\ Lord's Mansion ||
 [SkipScene055]. Enter the Conference Room.

						\\\ Palmira Plains ||
Items: Blueberries, Ripe Berries, Aquaberries, Cherubic Bust (Unique),
 Jewel of Refuge
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny
Lost & Found: Wind Charm (Plains Spider)
- Hopefully you've figured out cancel chains by now. If not, you really
should.

 [SkipScene056]. This one plays when you reach Peterny.

					\\\ Trading Town of Peterny ||

Items: Blackberries, Blackberries, Aquaberries, Blueberries, 3400 Fol,
 Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients
Item (nc): Maiden of Irisa (Unique)

- DO NOT TALK TO THE BUNNY ON THE WEST SIDE! This NPC is a merchant,
and checking his wares at certain times will make him return to Sanmite
while freezing his selection. His wares change over time (he's not
actually selling anything as of right now). Wait until Disc 2, and
you'll be able to get the good stuff.

 [SkipScene057]. Approach the temple and choose to rest.

- Note that the accessory you receive will be equipped automatically.

Item: Blackberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Ripe Berries				\\\ Ameena's Home ||

Shop:						\\\ Armorer "Summit Street" ||
 Bastard Sword           750 Fol
 Fine Gauntlet           700 Fol
 Silver Dagger           660 Fol
 Heavy Armor             950 Fol
 Anointed Chain Mail    3500 Fol

- Get these instead of the IC stuff if you'd like to keep the game more
balanced (or if you just can't be f*#ked with IC). That's what I do.

						\\\ Craftsman's Guild ||
Items (nc): 1000 Fol, Compact Communicator (Unique)

 [AddSkipScene002]. Approach Welch and reply "Yes, I am."

NPC Unlock: Damda Mooda, Milenya, Mayu

						\\\ Workshop ||
- Assuming you joined the guild, you can start doing some Item Creation
(aka IC). This particular workshop is in bad shape, though, so open up a
single line and Smithing. Set your characters on the line, choose SMTH,
then go save the game before doing anything else.

   Smithery     3000 F    Writing      5000 F    Line 1       1000 F
   Crafting     8000 F    Alchemy      2000 F    Line 2       2000 F
   Engineering  6000 F    Compounding  4000 F    Line 3       3000 F
   Synthesis    9500 F    Cooking      1000 F

- The creation process does not consume materials, only money (as well
as time and patience). Each character has a pool of items that they are
(technically) able to create, skill levels as well as time and/or cost
modifiers (only three characters have neutral modifiers, Fayt being one
of them). These are all fixed and can't be changed.

- Now, you can't see what item you're going to try and create; you can
only see its cost. You can try to figure out what the item is based on
that figure (use the IC file). How easy or hard this is depends on the
amount of overlap. Indeed, in some cases, you just can't tell for sure.
- To re-roll the item, simply press Confirm twice while the cursor is
on one of your characters. When an item is rolled, its cost is defined
using the following formula:

    (1+a+b)x
 × where x is the base cost (which itself is 10% of the total item value)
 × a is the cost modifiers combined
 × b is the random variable (-0,05; -0,04; -0,03; -0,02; -0,01; 0; 0,01;
  0,02; 0,03; 0,04 or 0,05)

- Non-integers are rounded properly (ie. 10,4 becomes 10; 10,5 becomes 11).

- Your initial chance of success is determined by this formula:

    c+d-e
 × c: Skill levels combined
 × d: IC item bonus (20) (eg. Multi-Flask)
 × e: Item rating

- Once you begin the process, you'll see the time bar increasing
gradually. Once it fills up (which takes 7,2s by default), you'll lose
the money, and the characters' icons will change depending on whether
or not they succeeded: happy faces for success, sad faces for failure.
The time bar will then reset and start filling up again, while the
quality bar decreases. You can continue trying to create the item and
even make multiple copies. However, as the quality bar decreases, so
do your chances of creating the item. Seeing as you're not likely to
be sitting on a huge stash of cash at this time, unless it's a cheap
item, you should quit after a few attempts, then load the game if you
failed.

- Let's have a couple of examples. The Gatling Gauntlets will appear as
3990, 4032, 4074, 4116, 4158, 4200, 4242, 4284, 4326, 4368, 4410 with a
neutral cost modifier. The Radiant Sword will show up as 2496, 2470, 2522,
2548, 2574, 2600, 2626, 2652, 2678, 2704, 2730. Both weapons have a
rating of 70. With Fayt, Cliff and Nel, you'll have a total Smithing
skill level of 85. That gives you an initial success rate of 15%.

- Here's what you're aiming for:
 Mythril Plate (55+5 DFP)       140 F (60)
 [Searing Sword] (150 ATP)     4000 F (40)
 Radiant Sword (200 ATP)       2600 F (70)
 [Damask Gauntlets] (190 ATP)  1450 F (50)
 Gatling Gauntlets (250 ATP)   4200 F (70)

- If you're having too much trouble with the Radiant Sword and Gatling
Gauntlets, go with the easier alternatives.

- If you need money, create and sell Rune Blades (5250 F \ 20). You'll
profit 5k for each.

- Use Compounding to get these: Fruity Potion (13), Syrupy Potion (20),
Berry Potion (21), Aqua Potion (22), Sweet Potion (40), Resurrection
Elixir (140), Resurrection Mist (210).
- Some of these are very cheap to refine, so definitely consider doing
that, if not now, then maybe later.

- Not much use for cooking. As always, food items can't be used during
battle (with a few exceptions), but they can still help you conserve
combat items (especially for MP and reviving). If you still have money
left after the above, you can create these: Tuna Salad (15), Gratin (50).
There's also Natto, Cold Soba and Fresh Spring Rolls (all 40), but they
overlap with five other items. It's cheap, though, so it's worth a shot.
If you don't create them now, Mayu could easily end up snatching their
patents. It's not that big a deal, though.
- Better hang on to some Spicy Cakes (86) or Discordant Desserts (6).
They let you MP kill a character outside of battle, so they might come
in handy for a few Battle Trophies.
- The healing effects of food don't refine the same way as the effects
of items you can use during battle, and they also have different costs.
For instance, Revive with 30% only refines to 60% and costs 400 Fol.

- Learn to re-roll the item as quickly as possible without missing the
figure(s) you're looking for. I use my index finger myself when doing
so. I also usually go for only one item at a time, as I find it difficult
to try and catch more than one figure.

- Occasionally, you may see a character's icon change as soon as you
start the creation process. What this means is that the character is
excluded from the process. Whenever this happens, you should probably
quit right away (unless it's a character with an abysmal skill level).

- Specify Plan is used to modify the factors an item has (often referred
to as refining). The process uses materials in addition to money. The
initial success rate is not affected by skill level, but it does affect
the rate at which the quality bar drops, which negatively affects the
success rate. For a lot of factors, the initial success rate is in the
10-20% region.
- The number in brackets at the end of a factor indicates the number of
possible results when modifying. During a session, each factor can be
modified once. Only the factors present at the beginning of the session
are eligible for modification. Whenever a factor is successfully modified,
the session has a chance of ending. The session will end if each factor
has been modified. The session may continue even if all 8 slots become
filled.
- Refining is often very costly, so, once again, when you have limited
funds, you'll want to load the game whenever you fail. You also can't
easily obtain more materials until you reach the end of Disc 1 (with
the exception of Compounding Elixirs and Cooking Ingredients). Once
your Fol is in 7 digit figures (probably not until post-game), you can
definitely afford to give it multiple runs.
- Each factor has a certain monetary value. These are listed in the IC
file. The cost of refining is determined by the following formula:

    (1+a+b)y/n
 - y is the total value of all the factors combined
 - n is the number of factors
 - a is the cost modifiers combined
 - b is the random variable (-0,05; -0,04; -0,03; -0,02; -0,01; 0; 0,01;
  0,02; 0,03; 0,04 or 0,05)

- Synthesis can be used to add factors to weapons. The process never
fails, and the factors are always added in order from first to last
(one factor per run). You can leave out the remaining factors if you
quit midway through. A weapon can have 8 factors at most. If 8 are
already present, the weapon can't be selected for Synthesis. There is
no way to just remove or replace factors (the ultimate weapons being
the only exceptions, as they start off with many debilitating factors
that you can remove by refining).
- The cost of Synthesis is determined by the following formula:

    (1+a+b)(v+t)/m
 - v is the total value of all the factors combined in the consumed item
 - t is the total value of the receiving item (ie. base item value + y)
 - m is the number of factors in the consumed item

- In other words, whenever you synth, you have to pay the cost of the
resulting item. As a result, there are a few things you can do to optimize
the process and thus potentially save a considerable amount of money:
 1. Synth the factors in order from the cheapest to the most expensive.
 2. Leave the factor partially unrefined and refine it after synthing.
 3. Synth all the factors into a cheap carrier weapon and then synth
 that into the actual weapon. It'll cost you an extra synth kit, but
 it's well worth it in the post-game.
- Again, you can find a list of all the factor values in the IC file.
There's also a list of all Synth Material kits in the misc. file. You
can get about 20 kits on Disc 1, 60 on Disc 2, and 40 in the post-game.
A couple of infinite sources become available in the post-game as well,
but it's rather unlikely you'll end up needing them. You might if you
end up customizing weapons for more than three characters.

- In order to get the best items, you'll need to recruit NPC inventors.
There are 28 of them in total, and they become available in groups of 3
as you progress in the game. However, don't just recruit anyone and
everyone. You shouldn't fill up all the workshops, as an empty one is
faster to load. The earliest NPC inventors are hardly of use anyway.
I'll be pointing out the ones I consider worth recruiting.

- NPC inventors, whether recruited or not, will try to create items
periodically as you spend time on the field and when you're inventing
(the rate is faster when you're inventing). At most, 15 inventors will
be active at a given time. Recruited inventors will use your money to
work. Seeing as there's no guarantee they'll create anything useful, I
suggest you set them on standby in order to save money. When working on
their own, NPC inventors are able to create any items in their pool even
if it's normally beyond their skill level. A recruited inventor is still
able to work even if the workshop they're assigned to doesn't have the
necessary facilities.

- Don't forget to patent the items you create (or find, in some cases)
through the Invention Info menu. If the item is equipped, it can't be
reviewed. If you're up for it, you could try to create and patent as
many different items as you can. There's nothing you'll get from it,
though, aside from the items themselves and a sense of accomplishment,
I suppose. If you're going to do it, you should make a copy of the IC
file and mark the items you've created.

- After an item is patented (either by you or an NPC), it will then
become available in limited quantities in specific stores once you've
spent 6 minutes on the field (ie. the timer won't run if you're in a
town, in the menu, or in battle).
 - If you patent 32 items without spending enough time on the field to
 have any of them cleared out, patenting another item will cause the
 first item on the queue to become immediately available, with the newly
 patented item taking its place.
- This stock is shared between all shops that carry them. The stock may
increase if an inventor creates more of it (doesn't matter who the patent
holder is). The restocking primarily occurs with low-rate items. Creating
items manually never increases the stock.
- Items patented by you or NPCs working for you will be available at a
lower price, while items patented by non-recruited NPCs will have a higher
price. Any items patented by NPCs before you recruited them will still
have the higher price.
   Own   | (0,4 - 0,002c)y
   Other | (2,0 - 0,01c)y

 × y: base retail value
 × c: number of said item in stock

- The creation process is in no way affected by who the patent holder
might be.

- You should use the workshop in Peterny for pretty much all of your IC,
since no other workshop has a save point that close to it.

- Every 30 minutes on the field, you receive an insubstantial amount of
money based on your accomplishments in IC (likely a 4-digit figure). I
have no idea what the details are, but it seems play time and Fayt's
ranking are significant factors.

- Going into the Invention Info screen will sometimes trigger scenes
involving Welch that you can't skip. There are 8 of them in total. The
first two come after 4 hours each while the remaining ones come every
8 hours.

					\\\ Luxury Inn "The Front Door" ||

 [SkipScene058]. Talk to the lady at the counter.
						\\\ Peterny ||
 [SkipScene059]. Approach Ameena's house.
					\\\ Luxury Inn "The Front Door" ||
 [SkipScene060]. Talk to Nel and reply "Yeah, I'm done."

 [SkipScene061]. Exit the inn.

- Your next destination is west.

						\\\ Sanmite Steppe ||
Items: Smithery Materials, Blackberries, Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients,
 Perfect Berries
Item (nc): (1/144 Scale Bunny)
Lost & Found: Winking Sage Cider (pat) (Moonshadow Clan Member)

- Avoid the enemies beyond the small bridge unless you got the IC /
Airyglyph gear *or* if you're just really confident in your skills.
If you can keep the bonus on, you could get quite a few levels there
(not that it's needed).
- If you got the hang of skip-cancels, you should try it with other
skills as well, such as Nel's Touga. Don't forget to turn on Berserk
to enable longer chains (Nel Lv16, Cliff Lv17, Fayt Lv21, Roger Lv18).
- Also, you should *definitely* be using No Guard (Cliff Lv8, Fayt Lv16,
Roger Lv16). The CP cost is pretty heavy, but it is *well* worth it.
Nel doesn't get it until Lv40, so she'll just have to make do.
- With No Guard on, you'll have to choose between First Aid and Critical
Hit HP as your second support skill. If both were at Lv10, I'd recommend
First Aid (critical hits are nice, but staying alive is more important).
For now, though, you should go with CHHP, as you really shouldn't have
much, if any, trouble surviving early in the game. Neither makes much of
a difference at low levels, but you can easily auto-level First Aid to
max later.

						\\\ Duggus Forest ||
						\\\ Area 1 ||
Items: Compounding Elixirs, Aquaberries, Blackberries,
 Compounding Elixirs, Blackberries, Blueberries, Compounding Elixirs
Lost & Found: Regeneration Symbol (Blue Slime)

- Before you can proceed further into the forest, you'll need to find
some glittering water for the fairy.
- There are five Grapebinds in the first area, but you only have to
take care of one in order to be able to proceed. The three Grapebind
encounters in the second area are all mandatory. This is where you can
also pick up Roger if you want to.
- The Grapebinds have an unblockable attack you can't avoid by simply
moving. Sidestepping is one way to avoid it.
- Note that Fayt is actually invincible while running towards the enemy
when he's using his LR Cancel attack.

 [Fixed Encounter008] (Grapebind 1)

 [Add Fixed Encounter003, 004, 005, 006] (Grapebind A-D)

						\\\ Area 2 ||
Items: Perfect Berries, Blackberries, Blueberries, Wind Pixie,
 Orb of Alertness (Unique), Limited-Edition Doll (Unique), Aquaberries,
 12 000 Fol, Alchemy Materials, Crafting Materials, Water Shielding (Unique)
Item (nc): Gold Figure (Unique)
PC: Roger Lv6 (18 SP)
Boss: Moonshadow Clan Chief

- The Orb of Alertness alters your map so that the enemy's size is
displayed more accurately.
- Don't miss the kill for Bogle Leader d. They appear alongside the
Bogle Soldiers (in the area with the first Grapebind).

 [Fixed Encounter009] (Grapebind 2)

 [Fixed Encounter010] (Grapebind 3)

 [AddSkipScene003]. This one plays if you enter the area with the house.
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter007] (MS Clan Member a, MS Clan Member b)
   |
 [AddSkipScene004]

- At this point, you are presented with two options:
 1. Ask Roger to help.      <---
 2. Turn down his offer to help.
- If you take him along, you can
 a. Fight the Moonshadow Clan Chief and give his two BTs a shot.
 b. Initiate the Ancient Book side quest.

- If you refuse, you'll never see him again.
- If you're planning on using Roger, you should level him up to Lv18
by fighting the Grapebinds in the misty area. Kagebarai takes them out
very quickly, but if you're not confident you can keep Triple Exp on
while engaging them, you can just control Roger and stay away. For his
weapon, you can either pick up a Broad Axe at Airyglyph (16k, 400 ATP)
while you're doing the Ruddle & Rumina side quest or you can create a
Shark Helm (575 F, 350 ATP). A more restrained option for now would be
a Ranger's Helm (125 F, 100 ATP).

 [AddSkipScene005]. This one plays upon leaving the hideout.
   |
 [Boss]
- 5500 HP, 250 MP, 35 xp, 16 Fol
   |
 [AddSkipScene006]

 [Fixed Encounter011] (Grapebind 4)

Item: Heavy Armor				\\\ Area 3 ||
Boss: Mudman

 [SkipScene062]. This one plays when you approach the misty spring.
   |
 [Boss]               FWIE
- 8000 HP, 500 MP       WA
- 1200 xp, Synthesis Materials
- He'll likely (try to) cast Healing to heal about 50% of his HP when
he's below 40% HP.
   |
 [SkipScene063]

- You can only fight the Carnivorous Plant after the boss.

 [SkipScene064]. This one plays when you reach the flower field.

						\\\ Ameena's Home ||

 [SkipScene065]. Exit the bedroom.

- You're now supposed to head north to Aquios, but there are a couple
of optional events you should take care of first.
- Head northwest from Sanmite. If you feel like doing the Ruddle & Rumina
side quest first (covered after the trip to Surferio), note that you
can't find them right away. You have to refresh the entire town first.

PC: Roger					\\\ Lost City of Surferio ||
Items (nc): Ancient Book 1; Ancient Book 2; Ancient Book 3;
 Ancient Book 4; Ancient Book 5; Ancient Book 6; Ancient Book 7 (Unique)

 [AddSkipScene007]. This one plays if you approach Roger (only appears
   |                   if you fought the Moonshadow Clan Chief).
 - Cooperate.   <---
 - Refuse to cooperate.

- Initiating the Ancient Book side quest allows you to obtain 7 hidden
items found in various locations (but only on Disc 1).
- Also, keep in mind, this doesn't mean that Roger is now flagged as a
future permanent party member. As I already mentioned, you won't be able
to set that flag until late Disc 1.
- Roger may have a high Crafting skill level, but he also has a high
chance of dropping out of the session.

Shop:                                \\\ General Store "The Faerie Tear" ||
 Basil                    20 Fol
 Sage                     20 Fol
 Lavender                 20 Fol
 Fresh Sage              310 Fol

Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Machinery Materials			\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Blueberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Smithery Materials			\\\ Private Home ||

- Going west from Surferio takes you to the Mosel Dunes. The enemies
are (likely) too much for you to handle, but if you think you can avoid
them, you could try getting the chest in the southeast part of the desert
(22 400 Fol) as well as the Alchemist's Stone in the northwest.

						\\\ Duggus Forest ||
Item (nc): Health Berries (Unique) (Ancient Book 1)
- Examine the rock near the spring where you fought Mudman to find the
first hidden item. Keep in mind, you can't get these items if you haven't
started the Ancient Book side quest.

					\\\ Luxury Inn "The Front Door" ||
- Back in Peterny, go to Room 102 at the inn to trigger a scene involving
Rumina the Tomboy & Ruddle the Traveler. You'll be presented with the
following dialog options:
 × You should take the north gate.
 × Go east, of course.
 × It's south. Didn't you know that? <---
 × West. No question about it.
- To complete the quest, you need to keep heading southwest and encounter
Ruddle & Rumina in each town. If you can afford the Superior Chain Mail,
you can pick one up while you're at it (or two if you're planning on
using both Nel and Maria).

						\\\ Inn "The Dozing" ||
- You'll find Ruddle & Rumina at the inn in Arias.
 × Go out through the northwest gate. <-
 × Easiest way is through the southwest gate. <---
 × Actually, you should go east.
- Now, you need to run all the way back to Airyglyph. Drop by at the
Kirlsa Caverns on your way.

Item (nc): Magi Berries (Unique) (Ancient Book 2)    \\\ Kirlsa Caverns ||
- Examine the torch opposite the hauler switches.

                                                \\\ Traum Mountains ||
- If you didn't kill one earlier, do make sure you kill one of the Dragon
Brigade Soldiers here.

					\\\ Airyglyph - Inn "Wyvern's Tail" ||
- One more time:
 × You already passed Kirlsa. <---
 × You're almost at Kirlsa.
- Head back to Kirlsa.

Item (nc): Blueprints (Unique) - 5000 Fol     \\\ Tavern "The Iron Stomach" ||
Shop: Regeneration Symbol - 4100 Fol
- Buy the Blueprints from Rumina, as they're needed to acquire the
Engineering NPC Izak. A few Regeneration Symbols would be nice, too,
if you don't already have them.
- Now that we're done with that, travel north from Peterny.

						\\\ Irisa Fields ||
Items: Jewel of Alertness, Magical Berries (Artifact), Blackberries
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny

- There are some flying enemies here and in the next dungeon. Charge is
useless against those unless you hit them with a counter aura. Better
if you use something that can hit them as is. Cliff could still stick
to Charge (although EF is a fine alternative), but if you're controlling
him, you'll want to switch to another character when there are only flyers.
- West, you'll find the entrance to the first optional dungeon, the
Aquatic Garden. You're probably not ready for that yet.

 [SkipScene066]. This one plays when you enter Aquios.

Items: Perfect Berries, Synthesis Materials	\\\ Irisa Fields 2 ||
Item (nc): 1/144 Scale Bunny

						\\\ Sacred City of Aquios ||
Items: Compounding Elixirs, Aquaberries, Cooking Ingredients,
 Ripe Berries, Synthesis Materials, Compounding Elixirs
NPC Unlock: Eliza, Grats, Stanice

Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Smithery Materials			\\\ Doctor's House ||
Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Private Home ||
Items: Synthesis Materials, Blackberries	\\\ Private Home ||
Items: 1800 Fol					\\\ Private Home ||

						\\\ Sacred City of Aquios ||

 [SkipScene067]. This one plays when you approach the castle.

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 1F ||
- You can talk to Nel twice to warp to the second floor.

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 2F ||

 [SkipScene068]. Talk to Nel (twice/once), or enter the audience chamber.

Item: Blackberries				\\\ Guest Room ||
Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Guest Room ||
Item: Fire Shielding (Unique)			\\\ Clair Lasbard's Room ||
Items: Compounding Elixirs, Jewel of Refuge, Ripe Berries  \\\ Storehouse ||
Item: Magical Berries				\\\ Queen's Bedroom ||
Items: 4700 Fol				\\\ Runological Weapon Research Lab ||
Items: Blackberries, Jewel of Alertness	\\\ Runological Weapon Storehouse ||

					\\\ Great Temple of Castle Aquaria ||
- Talk to Cliff.

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 1F ||
- Approach Nel by the entrance.

 [SkipScene069]. Enter the Guest Room.

				\\\ Runological Weapon Development Lab ||

 [SkipScene070]. Approach the Research Lab.

- Your next destination is the Bequerel Mine. If you missed the Ruddle &
Rumina side quest earlier, you should probably do it now.
- If you're using IC or Airyglyph weapons, consider synthing them with
Regeneration Symbols to free up an accessory slot.

NPC: Stanice (Limited Edition Doll)           \\\ Surferio - Mayor's House ||

						\\\ Arias ||
- Check that you have a decent supply of Basil before heading into the mine.
- You can use the southwest gate again after the fixed encounter.

 [SkipScene071]. This one plays when you approach Clair and friends.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter012]
- 2× Legion Dragon a: 6500 HP, 800 MP, I:I
- The wyvern's unblockable fire breath is pretty nasty, since it covers
a large area. If you don't think you'll make it away in time, try to
sidestep through it. You could also synth the Fire Shielding you just
picked up.
- These two enemies are technically the same, but one of them is given
boss benefits (immune to Fury damage and status ailments, limited scan,
and boss death animation).
   |
 [SkipScene072]

						\\\ Bequerel Mine ||

Items: Cooking Ingredients, 15 000 Fol, Blackberries, Aquaberries,
 Amulet of Freedom (pat)
Items (nc): Lightstone (Unique), Key to Barred Door (Unique),
 Copper Ore (Unique, Temp)
Boss: Cockatrice

- Paralysis lasts for 16 seconds. The counter resets at the end of a battle.
- Don't forget that Berserk doesn't increase MP damage (not directly).
- Light the torch, then approach the gate to trigger a fixed encounter.

 [Fixed Encounter013] (2× Brass Dragon a)

- Equip the Lightstone right away. This is the only dungeon where it
does anything.

 [Fixed Encounter014] (may vary)
 [Fixed Encounter015]
 [Fixed Encounter016]

- Once you reach the large room with two torches around the middle,
light them both and stand between them.
- Next, you'll need to chase a dragon with a key.

 [Fixed Encounter017] (2× Brass Dragon a)

- De-equip the Lightstone in the next area, and put out the torch near
the door as well.
- In the last shadow puzzle room, you're supposed to step on the switch
in the middle, and then examine two of the dragon ornaments, so that
the door you want to pass through will not come in contact with your
shadow. The west gate takes you to the abandoned refinery and the north
gate takes you to the boss, although you can also reach the boss from
the refinery.
- Don't miss the Amulet of Freedom. From the third shadow puzzle room,
go north, then take the eastern path north.

 [SkipScene073]. This one plays when proceed north past the save point
   |                (or east past the other one).
 [Boss]                 FWIE
- 15 500 HP, 431 MP       II
- 1200 xp, 2000 Fol, Synthesis Materials
   |
 [SkipScene074]

 [SkipScene075]. Approach the pile of stones.

- You can't leave the mine on foot the way you came from at this point.

						\\\ Abandoned Refinery ||
Items: Compounding Elixirs, 23 600 Fol, Blackberries, Ripe Berries,
 Worm-Eaten Tome (Artifact), Synthesis Materials, Magical Berries
Item (nc): Demonbane Cross (pat) (Ancient Book 6)
Lost & Found: Synthesis Materials (Demetrio)
Boss(es): Demetrio (+ 2× Legion Dragon b)

- Examine the tree north to find the Demonbane Cross.
- Talk to the soldier near the mine cart to return to the entrance (or
talk to the runologist so you can rest first).

 [SkipScene076]. This one plays after you choose to ride the hauler.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter018]  (2x Airyglyph Soldier b, 2x Ag Soldier c)
   |
 [SkipScene077]
   |
 [Boss]
- 14 800 HP, 17 776 MP, A:I
- 3000 HP, 192 MP, I:I (Legion Dragon b)
- 1960 xp, 4216 Fol in total
   |
 [SkipScene078]

- Feel free to return to the refinery / save point after the battle
(you can't use the save point near Kirlsa Caverns).

Lost & Found: War God's Symbol (Albel)		\\\ Bequerel Mountain Path ||
NPC Unlock: Gossam, Mackwell, Rigel
Boss: Albel (+ 2× Black Brigade Soldier b)

 [SkipScene079]. This one plays when you approach the entrance to Arias.
   |
 [Boss]
- 26 000 HP, 2600 MP
- 4220 HP, 192 MP (Black Brigade Soldier b)
- 2560 xp, 6508 Fol in total
- No traditional BTs. Don't forget to switch to non-damaging counter
auras when going for Albel's BTs.
   |
 [SkipScene080]

                                                \\\ Moonlit Bridge ||

 [SkipScene081]. This one plays when you enter Aquios.
                                                \\\ Runological Weapon Development Lab ||
 [SkipScene082]. Approach Dion & friends.
                                                \\\ Inn "Solon's Guidance" ||
 [SkipScene083]. Approach the second floor room.

PC: (Adray) Lv18                                \\\ Audience Chamber ||
Default (Adray): Shichishitou (Unique), 180 SP
- You can get the old man with the dragon tattoo to join you for the
rest of Disc 1 if you visit the audience chamber. If you're actually
using him, fix him up with a Demon Slayer. He's not going to get any
armor until Disc 2 (unless Grats or Lias happens to create something).
- Adray has terrible acceleration, but otherwise moves slightly faster
than Sophia. He also has a much faster sidestep and is a slightly faster
spellcaster.
- Personally, if I was planning on using Adray, I wouldn't get him
until Disc 2, as I wouldn't really have use for him on Disc 1. If you
get him on Disc 1, you can't have him in the first two dungeons on Disc
2. If you don't get him on Disc 1, you can get him after the first
dungeon on Disc 2.

 [AddSkipScene009]. This one plays if you approach the throne and then
                     try to leave the audience chamber.

- This is your LAST CHANCE to start the Ruddle & Rumina side quest. The
follow-up PAs will still be available, but the time window for the first
PA is closing right now.

						\\\ Palmira Plains ||
 [SkipScene084]. This one plays when you reach Arias.
						\\\ Arias ||
 [AddSkipScene010]. This one plays if you approach Dion.
						\\\ Lord's Mansion ||
 [SkipScene085]. Enter the Conference Room.
						\\\ Guest Room ||
- Talk to Cliff or examine the bed to go to sleep.
						\\\ Conference Room ||
 [SkipScene086a]. This one plays when you talk to Clair and reply "Yes."
						\\\ Arias ||
 [SkipScene086b]. This one plays when you go through the southwest gate.

Boss: Vox					\\\ Aire Hills ||
- There are some enemies here you can only fight during this event,
so try not to miss them. Since you can't leave, you can't respawn the
enemies. Airyglyph Soldiers b and d use swords, c uses a halberd. The
Dragon Brigade Soldiers appear after the boss.

Enemies:                 HP       MP      ATP    Exp     Fol   FWIE  AAA
 Airyglyph Soldier b|    4100 |    192 |  153 |     85 |   10 | W  | 2W  |
 Airyglyph Soldier c|    4225 |    192 |  150 |     85 |    7 | W  | Nrm |
 Airyglyph Soldier d|    3500 |    192 |  140 |     80 |    8 | W  |  -  |
 Lum Knight a       |    5600 |   5000 |  170 |     80 |    3 |  I |  -  |
 Dragon Brigade Soldier b4000 |    196 |  164 |     90 |    4 |    | 2W  |
 Dragon Brigade Soldier c4200 |    196 |  150 |     90 |   10 |    | 2W  |

 [SkipScene087]. Approach Vox.
   |
 [Boss]
- 30 000 HP, 20 000 MP, A:I, 2700 xp, 5200 Fol
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene088]

 [SkipScene089]. This one plays when you approach Arias.
						\\\ Dion's Room ||
 [SkipScene090]. Approach Dion.
						\\\ Inn "Solon's Guidance" ||
 [SkipScene091]. Approach Mirage.
						\\\ Dion's Room ||
 [SkipScene092]. Approach Dion.

PC: Maria Lv20					\\\ Conference Room ||
Default (Maria): Microblaster (Unique), Steel Chain Mail, 190 SP

- This is where I *used* to always swap out Fayt for Maria, but nowadays
I'm very likely to leave her on the bench. All I really do with her is
use Charge, and it's a good move, but it's not very suitable for bosses,
much less the AI.
- Definitely use a Decrepit Tome on Maria. Don't forget that you need
to set Common Support Symbols as a support skill in order to use the
spells during battle.
- When using Maria in battle, you should move her by sidestepping, as
it's faster.
- Maria is one of three characters who learns Critical Hit MP instead
of Critical Hit HP. It multiplies MP damage by 1,2, which really isn't
much, but if you end up using her Charge a lot, then you still might as
well use it.
- Maria doesn't learn No Guard until Lv58 (later than any other character),
but she doesn't really need it when using her long range skills.

						\\\ Audience Chamber ||

 [SkipScene093]. Approach the Queen.

Items (nc): 10× Disintegration Hammers		\\\ Great Temple ||

 [SkipScene094]. Approach the High Priestess.

- Talk to the Priestess to obtain some Disintegration Hammers.

- You should create a weapon for Maria through Engineering (if you're
actually using her). Your choices are:
 Power Blaster:     70 ATP,  580 F, 30   (81)
 Pulse Needle:     120 ATP, 1280 F, 50
 Photonic Blaster: 160 ATP, 5950 F, 70
- I'd recommend the Pulse Needle. Consider creating some stun bombs while
you're at it.
- You should also try your luck with the Bangle of Accuracy, Blue / Red
Talismans and Ring of Haste. Using Roger gives you decent odds, although
he does have a fair chance of dropping out. You should at least be able
to make the bangle. Refine it right away. If you manage to make a Blue
Talisman, you can go ahead and refine that as well. Once you do, it will
negate HP damage 30% of the time. *Quite* useful. The Red Talisman does
the same for MP damage, but MP damage isn't a big concern on Disc 1. If
you have the money, you can also refine the RoH up to 20%.

 Bangle of Accuracy |  222 | 20 | (600 F to 30%)
 Blue Talisman      |  260 | 20 |
 Red Talisman       |  260 | 20 |
 Ring of Haste      | 1100 | 60 | (10k to 10%, 30k to 20%)

- If you need Crafting Materials before getting the RoD, the best source
is the Bogle Soldier at Duggus Forest. Not a particularly good source,
but, yeah, you'll get them, slowly, but surely.
- You now also have a decent chance of creating a Tattered Tome, which
teaches a character the tactical skill Convert Damage. That one can give
you a bit of an advantage when fighting bosses who only do HP damage.
- I suggest using the workshop in Peterny since the save point is right
next to it.
- Buying from the Retail Rabbit at this time won't make him leave Peterny.
If you want a Blaze Gun for some reason, now's your chance. If nothing
else, you could use it to boost Maria's skill levels.

						\\\ Sealed Cavern ||
Items: Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, Earth Shielding (Unique),
 Blackberries, Anointed Chain Mail, Lunar Talisman (pat)
Items (nc): Intellect Berries (Unique) (Ancient Book 3), 1/60 Scale Bunny
Lost & Found: Regeneration Symbol (Bronze Brute)
Boss: Flying Knight

- The Bronze Brutes are worth good xp (900 with Triple xp). You can
fight two of them at a time in the shrine. You should be able to keep
Triple xp on if you use Nel's Touga. Cliff (or Roger) can easily take
care of the Mages with Charge or EF. Using Power Up is an option. I
usually get myself to (at least) Lv32 (if I already haven't), so I can
get my HP to Lv10.
- Now, I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but please try
and learn to play the game with some degree of skill. It's really not
that hard (otherwise, I would never have figured it out).
- Also, learn to use L1 and R1 in the menus.
- Examine the statue in the room with the Bronze Brute to find a switch.
- The walls you can break are fairly easy to spot. When you have the
Disintegration menu on, the walls will be highlighted when you're close
to them.
- Hit the lever at the end of the stairs after the first breakable wall
to open up a short cut that makes it easier to get through the place.
- Examine one of the tombs in the room south from where you found the
Lunar Talisman to find another Ancient Book item.

 [SkipScene095]. This one plays when you proceed west from the room
   |                   northwest of the save point.
 [Boss]
- 17 000 HP, 240 MP, 900 xp
- No BTs

						\\\ Shrine of Kaddan ||
						\\\ Area 1 ||
Items: Compounding Elixirs, Saint's Stone (Artifact, Temp),
 Shabby Textbook (Unique), Blackberries, Cooking Ingredients,
 Heavy Armor, Compounding Elixirs, Hammer Charm (pat),
 Book of Prophecies 1 (Unique), Synthesis Materials, Synthesis Materials
Items (nc): Saint's Stone (Artifact, Temp), Saint's Stone (Artifact, Temp),
 Saint's Amulet (Unique)
Boss: Crystal Cerberus

- The Flying Knights are also worth 900 xp, but you may find them more
difficult to handle than Bronze Brutes, at least if you're trying to
keep Triple xp on. MP damage takes them out quickly, but you could
still easily end up taking a hit in the process. If it looks like you're
about to get hit, switch to another character.
- The enemies will be gone after the last boss. The ones in the Sealed
Cavern will remain, though (for the time being).

- Cliff will likely have learned Aerial Assault (Lv25) by now. It's a
great move, but you shouldn't forget about Charge (or EF). AA can do both
HP and MP kills, but it's better suited for the latter. Charge does better
HP damage, but, as usual, only when used manually. You can boost his
Attack skill to Lv4 to make him a bit more effective in AI control
(if you got his MP to Lv6, that should be decent enough for now).

- If you're the patient type and are using Nel, you may want to consider
boosting Whirlwind / Fuujin (Lv25) to Lv9 by fighting a Nobleman. This
takes 50 minutes with skip-cancels and an hour without. Once you hit Lv9,
you should start boosting CHHP, IHPD and IMPD by fighting the triple
Chameleons in the Duggus Forest. Just use it at short range there. No
need to chain it. If you got the Superior Chain Mail, you'll be taking
0 damage, but even without it, you can still bring damage down to 0 if
you turn off Berserk. All in all, if you get those to Lv10 as well,
it'll take about 2 hours. If this sounds a little too tedious, you can
definitely pass up. If you go through with it, note that you don't need
to cancel Fuujin when doing MP kills, since IMPD ignores the cancel
multiplier. Either way, it gives you about 0,3x MP damage.

- When hit, the Centaur Statue type enemies have a good chance of using
a counterattack that makes them invulnerable for a moment. They can even
do it in mid-air. This really takes the edge off of your multi-hit moves,
and the attack itself could easily interrupt you, at least without No Guard.
Even if their attacks don't interrupt you, your chains will still likely
die, since they move around so much. They're annoying, but not really
that dangerous.

 [Fixed Encounter019] (Crystal Statue 1)

 [SkipScene096]. Plays when you approach the dead soldier.

 [Fixed Encounter020] (Crystal Statue 2)

- Head south from where you fought the second Crystal Statue. You'll
reach a small, empty room. Wait for a while and a quake will occur.
This will weaken the walls in four nearby locations.
- Once you've acquired all three Saint's Stones, you can create the
Saint's Amulet at the workshop.

 [SkipScene097R]. This one plays when you proceed north past the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                         FWIE
- 30 000 HP, 3500 MP, 3500 xp   IIII
- The boss will be invincible if you don't have the Saint's Amulet.
- Electric Fists works great here. Normally, you'd use that with SoM as
skip fodder, but in this particular case, you can drop No Guard and just
chain it with itself. Since Cliff moves forward while using it, he's able
to attack and simultaneously avoid the boss's attacks quite well. It also
helps him stay in range.

						\\\ Area 2 ||
Items: Blueberries, Aquaberries, Blackberries, Cooking Ingredients,
 Orb of Foe Finding (Unique), Blackberries, Alchemy Materials,
 Anti-Stone Amulet (pat)

- The next quake can be triggered by examining one of the empty chests
in the treasure room.
- You'll eventually find an area with a statue. If you examine it, you
can fight four solo battles for an Anti-Stone Amulet. The third one is
the hardest, and the fourth one is the easiest. If you die, you won't
get a game over.
 × On 4D, I'd recommend: 1: Roger (Charge), 2: Nel (Touga), 3: Cliff (AA),
 4: Maria (Charge).
                         HP       MP      ATP    Exp     Fol   FWIE  AAA
 Stalker b          |    9000 |   1000 |  200 |    120 |   50 | W  |  -  |
 Dark Rider         |    9000 |   1000 |  200 |    120 |   55 |  I |  -  |
 Unholy Terror      |    9000 |   1000 |  200 |    120 |   55 |I  I|  -  |
 Ghostly Hag a      |    9000 |   1000 |  200 |    120 |   60 |I IW|  -  |

 [Add Fixed Encounter008] (Stalker)
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter009] (Dark Rider)
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter010] (Unholy Terror)
- You can avoid the second hit of his unblockable pretty consistently
by moving in a straight line.
- Starts casting Thunder Flare (~385 pod) once below 40% health.
 × For some reason, you can avoid the first hit of Thunder Flare with a
 sidestep. Doesn't make much of a difference, but it's still something.
   |
 [Add Fixed Encounter011] (Ghostly Hag)
- This one mostly does MP damage.

						\\\ Area 3 ||
Items: Blackberries, 54 000 Fol, Celestial Pixie, Smithery Materials,
 Alchemy Materials, Compounding Elixirs, Compounding Elixirs, Blueberries,
 Cooking Ingredients
Item (nc): 1/1 Scale Bunny (Artifact)
Boss(es): 4× Vendeeni Soldier c

- The last quake will be triggered once you touch the red gem.

 [SkipScene098]. Approach the door leading to the Sacred Orb.

 [SkipScene099]. This one plays when you reach the Sacred Orb.
   |
 [Boss]
- 7400 HP, 336 MP. 2400 xp, 2000 Fol in total.
- No BTs
- Only one of them actually has boss benefits.
- Note that it's possible to use a petrified character as a shield;
they can still get hit, but they won't take any damage.
   |
 [SkipScene100]

- If you get the 1/1 Scale Bunny, you'll want to sell that as quickly
as possible (it's worth 82k). Having it in your inventory reduces the
movement speed of your characters by 50% during battle. (Synthing it
gives you a Movement speed -30% factor, in case you're wondering.)

 [SkipScene101]. This one plays when you reach the entrance of the shrine.

NPC Unlock: Misty Lear, Lias, Dejison

NPC: Mackwell (Book of Prophecies 1)		\\\ Library of Theology ||
- Feel free to recruit Mackwell if you're interested in grabbing some
Alchemy patents. Aside from that, he's not really needed. Don't forget
to set him on standby unless you want him to try and create stuff on his
own (using your money).

						\\\ Audience Chamber ||
 [SkipScene102]. Approach the Queen.
						\\\ Radish Lounge ||
 [SkipScene103]. Talk to everyone (Jessie twice).

 [SkipScene104]. Approach Jessie after talking to the Guy Who Looks Like a
                               Scientist and the Seraph Boy.

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 2F ||
 [SkipScene105]. Enter the Audience Chamber.

- Your next destination is the Ruins of Mosel. However, if you haven't
done the Aquatic Garden yet, you should be able to handle the enemies now.
As for the puzzles, well, only one way to find out.

						\\\ Aquatic Garden ||
Items: Crafting Materials, Eldritch Fire Stone, Symbol of Courage,
 8200 Fol, Blackberries, Blackberries, Synthesis Materials,
 Smithery Materials, Holy Sword, Fresh Sage, Earth Charm,
 Anointed Chain Mail, Blueberries, 15 000 Fol, Wind Absorption (Unique),
 Paracelsus's Table (Unique)
Item (nc): (1/1 Scale Bunny)
Boss(es): Sculpture Lord & 2× Sculpture Guards

- Notice how the connecting paths widen at the end. Don't miss those
little nooks if you're going for map completion.
- If you get hit by the Harpy's Wing Cutter, you can sidestep to avoid
further hits, except with Nel, thanks to her long flinch.
- The dungeon features three areas with block puzzles. It's nothing really
demanding, except for one item in the last one.
- In the second puzzle area, you have to start from the south if you want
to go north (where you find the Holy Sword). To proceed west, you have
to start from the east.
- The hardest puzzle is getting the Wind Absorption in the third puzzle
area. It's a synthesis item, but it's hardly necessary, since you can
easily get the same effect by synthing an Elven Cloak. If you don't feel
like cracking it yourself but still want to get it, here's the solution:

    -------    |
    |¤#    #   |
    |     O    |
    | ##N#####A|
   |  # M      |
     z#    FEI |
    #  BCDzK   |
          L J H|
      ## ### G |
      #     z  |

 [AddSkipScene008]. This one plays when you proceed west past the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                         FWIE
- Lord:  40 000 HP, 30 000 MP     RA
- Guard: 11 000 HP,   3200 MP      A
- 2080 xp, 26 360 Fol in total
- The balls don't have boss benefits.
- No BTs

- Don't forget to sell the 1/1 Scale Bunny (if you got it).

Shop:						\\\ Peterny - Armorer ||
 Scholar's Bracelet	2750 Fol
 Warrior's Bracelet	3250 Fol

Boss: Schweimer (+ 2× Legion Dragon b)		\\\ Sanmite Steppe ||

 [SkipScene106]. This one plays when you approach the small bridge.
   |
 [Boss]
- 16 800 HP, 1400 MP, A:I
- 1660 xp, 3266 Fol in total
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene107]

					\\\ Passage from Parch to Plenty ||
Items (nc): (Map of Mosel Dunes) - 10 000 Fol, 1/144 Scale Bunny

- You can buy a map of the desert from the old man for 10 000 fol, but
you should save your cash. Either way, don't try to explore the dunes
right away. Wait until you have the Aqua Veil. The entrance to the ruins
is around the northeast part of the desert.
- Keep an eye on cases where an MP kill is significantly easier than an
HP kill.

						\\\ Ancient Ruins of Mosel ||
Items: Blackberries, Blueberries, 40 000 Fol, Aquaberries,
 Aqua Veil (Unique), Blackberries

- Had you come here before, nothing would've happened in the first room,
where you need to step on the switch in the middle.
- The Imps are among the most annoying enemies in the game. At worst,
there are four of them. Usually two. Feel free to run away when there
are four.

 [SkipScene108]. Proceed south past the second save point.

						\\\ Mosel Dunes ||
Items: Fire Pixie, Alchemist's Stone (Unique), Aquaberries,
 Cooking Ingredients, Perfect Berries, Machinery Materials,
 Synthesis Materials, Smithery Materials, Blueberries, 22 400 Fol,
 Aquaberries, Blackberries

						\\\ Sanmite Steppe ||

 [SkipScene109]. This one plays when you reach Peterny.

- You can now access new areas in Kirlsa, so check them out on your way
to Airyglyph or when you go there to pick up the Blades of Ryuusen.
Also, if you still haven't bought the Blueprints from Rumina, get them
too. On Disc 2, it'll be too late.

NPC Unlock: Killer Chef, Cornelius, Balbados	\\\ Airyglyph ||

 [SkipScene110]. This one plays when you approach the castle.

						\\\ Airyglyph Castle, 1F ||
- You can talk to Woltar twice to warp.

PC: Albel Lv24					\\\ B1F Guard Room ||
Default (Albel): Iron Claw (Unique), Padded Armor (Unique), 205 SP

 [SkipScene111]. Enter the dungeon.

Item: Synthesis Materials			\\\ Food Storehouse ||
Item: Compounding Elixirs			\\\ Kitchen ||
Item: Blueberries				\\\ Fallen Soldier's Room ||
Item: Jewel of Avarice				\\\ Armory ||
Item: Smithery Materials			\\\ Watchtower ||
Item (nc): (Letter from King of Airyglyph) (Unique)  \\\ 2F Audience Chamber||
- The letter involves a sequence of Private Actions you don't need to
 bother yourself with. I avoid the scene myself.
Item: Magical Berries				\\\ King's Private Quarters ||
Items: 1100 Fol					\\\ Oddeye's Cave ||

					\\\ Kirlsa - Storm Brigade Garrison ||
Items: Aquaberries, Cooking Ingredients, Ripe Berries
Items: Blackberries, Synthesis Materials	\\\ Storeroom ||
Item: Fire Pixie				\\\ Guest Room ||
Item: Blackberries				\\\ Official Office ||
Item (nc): Blades of Ryuusen (Unique)	\\\ Mansion of Count Woltar (2F) ||
- This is a weapon for Nel. It has an elemental side effect (May shoot
powerful balls of ice when using normal attacks), but it shouldn't be
much of an issue.

- At this point, you can "flag" one of the following three characters, so
that he or she will permanently join your party at the beginning of Disc 2.

 × Nel: Do neither of the ones below. (default)

					\\\ Luxury Inn "The Front Door" ||
 × Albel: Stay at the inn in Peterny and choose 'Not really.'

 [AddSkipScene011]. This one plays if you spend the night here.

						\\\ Surferio ||
 × Roger: Trigger an event in Surferio. (only available if you started
 the Ancient Book side quest)

 [AddSkipScene012]. This one plays if you enter the house opposite the shop.

- It's possible to trigger both of these scenes. In that case, the more
recent flag will overwrite the previous one.

- If you're planning on keeping and using Albel, get him the Steeled
Earth from the mountains (might as well take out the boss while you're
at it, since he's just around the corner), then go build him up to Lv32
in the Sealed Cavern. Air Slash (Kuuhazan)(Wind) is good for HP kills,
and Aura Wall (Mashouheki)(Earth) is good for MP kills. If both elements
are resisted or an MP kill is too slow, you can use his normal blockable
attack that you can chain until you run out of Fury (try doing some
Fury damage first with his mid-/long range blockables). For more force-
resistant enemies, though, you'll need something else. It's not until
Lv45 that he learns a non-elemental move that works well on bosses
(Goumashou) and is also (relatively) AI-friendly. That'll have to wait
until Disc 2, though.

						\\\ Bequerel Mountain Path ||

 [SkipScene112]. Plays when you enter the Mountains of Barr.

					\\\ Mountains of Barr / Barr Caves ||

Items: Smithery Materials, Smithery Materials, Blackberries,
 Aquaberries, Writing Materials, Superior Chain Mail, 46 000 Fol,
 Wind Shielding (Artifact), 18 100 Fol, Blueberries, Writing Materials,
 Ripe Berries, Steeled Earth (Unique)
Items (nc): Elven Slippers (pat) (Ancient Book 5),
 Dragon's Windpipe (Unique, Temp), Dragon Bone Flute (Unique)
Lost & Found: Pulse Gun (Artifact) (Blue Dragon Zombie)
Boss: Blue Dragon Zombie

- At the end of the first outdoors area is a place with a dragon flying
around (too high for you to fight). Hang around and it'll grab you and
take you to its nest. Examine the pile of bones in the nest to find the
Elven Slippers.
- Trophy note: You have to fight the dragon that carries you away. Wait
around without being picked up, and it'll come down.

 [SkipScene113]. This one plays when you enter the cave behind the
   |                 waterfall (north from the save point).
 [Boss]                          FWIE   AAA
- 30 000 HP, 2500 MP, 270 ATP    IIII   RW
- 3500 xp, 10 500 Fol
- As you may have already noticed, the Undead Dragons emit gas whenever
they're hit. It's MP damage only, so No Guard would allow you to avoid
getting interrupted by it. If you can't handle all that MP damage, go
with moves that don't involve direct contact.
- Obviously, the boss wouldn't have been here had you come here earlier.
   |
 [SkipScene114]

- Return to the workshop (where Misty hangs around) so you can fix up
a Dragon Bone Flute. Now, head into the caves and locate the "gigantic
relief painting that looks like a happy dragon." Play the right tune,
and it'll vanish. The way you press X determines the melody. If you
screw up, you'll be forced to beat up a dragon. If a door has multiple
moods, you have to play the tunes in correct order (fail and you have
to start over), but you don't need to get all the tunes in during a
single cycle.
- PS4 note: Hold L2 to emulate a hard press.
   Happy   (yellow) | Light, fast
   Playful (green)  | Light, long
   Sad     (silver) | Hard, fast
   Angry   (red)    | Hard, long

						\\\ Ruins of Barr ||
Items: Masterwork Plate, Magical Berries, Damask Plate (Unique),
 Blackberries, Spirit Stone (Unique), Wind Charm, Wind Pixie,
 Synthesis Materials
Item (nc): Dragon's Cranium (Unique)
Boss: Robin Wind a

- After examining the big door in the central room, go examine the
tubes in the operation room to find the cranium.

 [SkipScene115]. Plays when you enter the operation room.

- Light all the panels then stand on the middle panel in the central area
to gain access to the lava caves.
- You can use the Spirit Stone to recruit Misty Lear. She would allow
you to create Orichalcum, which can then be synthed to give a weapon the
ATP +500 factor. I would advise against using it unless you feel that
you really need or want it. Even on 4D, you should be able to manage
without it.

 [SkipScene116]. This one plays when you approach the lava caves.
   |
 [Boss]
- 50 000 HP, 1800 MP, 490 ATP, A:I, 6500 xp, 25 350 Fol, Synthesis Materials
- Aerial Slash is your main concern. He only uses it between 50-70%
health.
- All his special attacks are Wind-elemental.

						\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||

Items: Crafting Materials, Damask Gauntlet, Cooking Ingredients,
 Blackberries, Book of Prophecies 2 (Unique)
Items (nc): Rabbit Ears Chalice (Unique) (Ancient Book 7),
 Rabbit Ears Key (Unique), Gutsy Bunny (Unique), 10× Disintegration Bombs

- Most of the enemies here have 320 DFP (256 on Easy) and can deal heavy
MP damage. IMPD works well.
- Magma Man can heal itself, and an MP kill is not really an option.
Nel's Touga takes them out quickly. Scatter Beam works, too. So does
Pulse Blast if you've leveled it up. If you *haven't*, now's a good
chance to do so. You can get it to Lv4 in about 10 minutes. That's when
it gets the first bullet count increase, thus doubling the damage.
- The key is hidden behind the bunny statue, whereas the chalice can be
found by examining one of the torches in front of it.
- Here's a recap of the Ancient Book items:
   Duggus Forest      | Health Berries
   Kirlsa Caverns     | Magi Berries
   Abandoned Refinery | Demonbane Cross
   Sealed Cavern      | Intellect Berries
   Mountains of Barr  | Elven Slippers
   Urssa Lava Caves   | Rabbit Ears Chalice
- There should be only one Ancient Book item left now, but I strongly
suggest you forget about it. To get it, you'd have to complete the
second optional dungeon before the end of Disc 1 (normally you'd do
it around the end of Disc 2). You can't get any of the AB items after
Disc 1 even if Roger joins you at the beginning of Disc 2. There's no
additional reward for finding all 7 items, and the item in question is
far from worth the effort (Strength Berries: increases Str by 2). Unless
you're madly obsessed (or looking for a good challenge), just let it go.
- You can use the Rabbit Ears Chalice to get the exact damage BTs. If
you equip it and input the Konami code, the character will explode and
deal damage that equals half of their current HP. You have a good chance
of getting them by just playing normally, but if you don't, you can use
the chalice. You can get your HP down to the right value by adjusting
your DFP so you'll only take minimal damage from an enemy. You can also
use the flying rocks in the Kirlsa Caverns.
- Once you find Vanilla, he / she will eventually ask how much you're
willing to pay for the RoD.
   1000 Fol -> No deal
 10 000 Fol -> Ring of Disintegration & Gutsy Bunny
 30 000 Fol -> Ring of Disintegration & Gutsy Bunny

NPC: Misty Lear (Spirit Stone)			\\\ Mountains of Barr ||

						\\\ Airyglyph Aqueducts ||
Item: Glowstone (Unique, Temp), Anti-Freezing Amulet (pat)
- Blast your way north in the first room to find this one.
- Go grab the Anti-Freezing Amulet with the bombs you have left. The
chest is in the room right after the area where Fayt first noticed the
ice on the floor (ie. east from the save point).

						\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||
Item (nc): Ring of Disintegration (Unique)
- The Ring of Disintegration - or just the RoD - allows you to obtain
new items in most previous dungeons. These items are mostly of little
importance, however, so I don't actually recommend getting them, at
least not now. I myself only get the Synth Materials and a few other
items on Disc 2 when I'm close to them. Either way, if you're having
trouble finding some of these items, try using a Jewel of Avarice.

 ---> RoD clean-up

						\\\ Bequerel Mine ||
Items: Synthesis Materials, Ripe Berries, Silver Dagger, Perfect Berries,
 Perfect Berries, Alchemy Materials, Trading Card EX3 (Unique),
 Crafting Materials
						\\\ Abandoned Refinery ||
Items: Ripe Berries, Battle Sphere (pat), Water Pixie
Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)

- Regarding the 'Hit with Battle Sphere 5 times' Battle Trophy, you should
create a save file in the Kirlsa Caverns specifically for the purpose of
trying to trigger this elusive, unintuitive BT (I doubt it works properly).
Load it up every now and then and give it a go. In any case, you have a
small chance of getting it when you hit one of the larger boulders with a
sphere.

						\\\ Airyglyph Aqueducts ||
Items: Anti-Freezing Amulet (pat), Magical Berries, Synthesis Materials,
 Ripe Berries
Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)

						\\\ Kirlsa Caverns ||
Items: Ripe Berries, Perfect Berries, Magical Berries, Trading Card EX4,
 Ripe Berries, Synthesis Materials, Water Pixie, Antique Jewelry (Unique),
 3000 Fol
Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)
- You can use the Antique Jewelry to recruit Balbados at Mosel Dunes,
but I don't bother with it, since we're so close to getting Sophia and
Peppita.
- Hauler routes:
 Synth Materials | Stop.
 Water Pixie     | Right, stop.
 Antique Jewelry | Left, right, stop.
 3000 Fol        | Left, left, jump, jump, stop.

			      \\\ Kirlsa Training Facility - Living Quarters||
Items: Cooking Ingredients, Decrepit Tome (Artifact), Magical Berries,
 Ripe Berries, Perfect Berries
Items: Synthesis Materials, Compounding Elixirs		\\\ Training Area ||

						\\\ Duggus Forest ||
Items: Crafting Materials, Alchemy Materials, Smithery Materials,
 Crafting Materials, Smithery Materials, Magical Berries, Compounding Elixirs,
 Trading Card EX5, Ripe Berries
Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)

						\\\ Shrine of Kaddan ||
Items: Blueberries, Ripe Berries, Enchanted Pen (Unique),
 Compounding Elixirs, 22 000 Fol, Magical Berries, Synthesis Materials,
 Jewel of Avarice, Blackberries, Alchemy Materials, Jewel of Refuge,
 Aquaberries, Jewel of Avarice
- The Pen is in the long corridor two screens from the place where you
found the Orb of Foe Finding.

					\\\ Mountains of Barr / Barr Caves ||
Items: Synthesis Materials, Writing Materials, Cooking Ingredients,
 Writing Materials, Compounding Elixirs, Smithery Materials,
 Smithery Materials
Items: Perfect Berries, Cooking Ingredients, Ripe Berries, Blackberries
Item (nc): (1/1 Scale Bunny)

 <--- RoD clean-up

- If you need more Crafting Materials or Smithery Materials, go blast
stuff with your RoD at the Kirlsa Training Facility. Once there, find
an object that will only cost you 1 "Disintegration Point" (such as the
wooden fence blocking your path to the Cooking Ingredients). Disintegrate
it, then hit Select to activate Retry. This will instantly bring the meter
down to zero, and you'll obtain either Cooking Materials, Smithery Materials
or Crafting Materials.
- In order to recharge the ring, go to one of Vanilla's colleagues
hanging out at every inn in each town. A full recharge will cost you
10 000 Fol.

- Trophy note: You're going to have to do Deepest Reaches now for the
last Ancient Book. There's no way in hell you'll get those BTs (without
Ori, that is), so after getting the trophy, load a save from before you
fought the Aurora Monster.
 × Amoeba Giant: MP kill with Kokuyousen. Avoid Mudman Punch by side-
 stepping. Remove the other two characters so you don't have to waste
 items reviving them. If you synth your weapons with Blue Talismans, an
 HP kill with your full party is certainly possible with a little luck
 (same for the Aurora Monster).
 × Aurora Monster: Kokuyousen, again. Once he starts using Energy Pulse,
 only chain Kokuyousen during his slow unblockables.
 × Spirit Trio: This one's not as hard as you might think. I just used
 Aerial Assault with Cliff and synthed him Wind absorption and Fire
 immunity. I used AD -> MF with Maria a little as well. All my characters
 were on Manual. Take out Aquaregia last.

Bosses: Crosell, Crosell 2			\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||

 [SkipScene117]. This one plays when you enter Crosell's lair.
   |
 [Boss]                          FWIE
- 29 000 HP, 4200 MP, 280 ATP    R RR
- 7000 xp, 10 000 Fol
- Doom Raid covers a massive area, but it's blockable. Any character
set on Manual is guaranteed to block it (barring a critical stun). If
your controlled character doesn't have enough Fury to block it, it's
time for some sidesteps.
- You can get the BTs from either battle.
   |
 [SkipScene118]
   |
 [Boss]
- 62 000 HP, 6000 MP, 380 ATP, 12 000 xp, 35 000 Fol, Ring of Vigor (Artifact)
   |
 [SkipScene119]

NPC Unlock: Mishell, Gusto, Vanilla		\\\ Aquios ||
NPC: Mishell (85 000 Fol)
- With both Mishell and the Enchanted Pen, you could technically create
a Moldy Tome (Max Fury) and a Brittle Tome (Quick Symbol), but the odds
are only about 10% and there's plenty of overlap. Feel free to give it
a shot, but I wouldn't spend too much time on it.
- Incidentally, you can't get the pen now, as Fayt will refuse to enter
the Sealed Cavern.
- I'm usually a little above Lv40 at this point.
- Return to the garden after talking to all of your party members.
De-equip any vital equipment from everyone except Fayt, Cliff and Maria.
The PC you flagged as your first permanent optional character (Nel,
Albel, or Roger) will be MIA for only a short period of time.

 Nel    | In her room
 Mirage | Guest room
 Maria  | Great Temple of Aquios
 Cliff  | Castle Aquaria 1F
 Albel  | Main street
 Roger  | Grocer "Aire's Blessing"
 Adray  | Clair Lasbard's room

						\\\ "White Dew" Garden ||
 [SkipScene120]. Approach Maria and Mirage.
						\\\ Upper Deck, Diplo ||
 [SkipScene121]. This one plays upon entering the bridge.



                             Disc 2                                A02
   ============================================================

 [SkipScene122]. Insert Disc 2.

- Before Maria will contact you on the lower deck (after which you can
trigger the next scene), you'll need to talk to Maria and at least one
person from each of the following four groups:
 1. Maria
 a. Lancar / Lieber
 b. Quark Fighter A / C (Storeroom)
 c. Cliff / Mirage (Transporter Room) / Steeg (Transp. Room)
 d. Quark Member (Engineering Team) (Lower Deck) /
     Quark Member (Support Team) (Lancar's Room)

 [SkipScene122]. This one plays when you approach Cliff and co,
   |                   and reply "I'm ready."
 [Fixed Encounter021] (2× Vendeeni Soldier d)
   |
 [SkipScene123]

- You'll be in the Kirlsa Training Facility, but you can't leave. Go pick
up the Synth Materials from the southwest corner on the 2nd floor and
the Decrepit Tome on the first floor. You should hoard up on Crafting
Materials while you're at it.
- From now one, you'll be consistently running into enemies who may be
a little too much trouble to be worth killing (Mechaflies, Proclaimers,
Robogunners, Polyhedrons). Remember: you don't *have* to fight them.
You have the option of avoiding them. Use it.
- Also, you'll be running into enemies using damaging counter auras
more often (Homing, Wide Area Homing). If you gain control of your
character before they hit you (much more likely with Homing than WAH),
you can sidestep to avoid the damage.
- The encounters will go back to normal afterwards, so don't miss the
kills for Vendeeni Soldier d and Mechafly XP.

Lost & Found: Ring of Vigor (Biwig)		\\\ Arena ||
PCs: Sophia Lv1, Nel / Albel / Roger
Default (Sophia): Crescent Rod (Unique), Robe (Artifact)
Boss(es): Biwig (+ 2× Vendeeni Soldier d)

 [SkipScene124]. Proceed south past the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                   FWIE
- 26 000 HP, 13 816 MP    RR W
- 1090 xp, 1262 Fol in total
   |
 [SkipScene125]

- This is where I swap out someone for Sophia. I find her Restoration
(Lv22) and Faerie Light (Lv32) spells to be quite essential. Thunder Flare
(Lv30) is also useful for getting the leg up when fighting enemies that
are too dangerous to approach otherwise (ie. Wisps and Valkyries).
- Using three fighters may work fine on Disc 1, but things are about
to get a lot tougher. If you go on with three fighters, there's a high
probability that you'll constantly find yourself stuck on healing duty
(at least without Ori). If you bring in Sophia, you'll still have to do
healing manually, since you can't rely on the AI, but it'll be faster,
since you'll be healing both fighters at the same time.
- To reiterate, you *have* to keep Sophia (or Adray) on manual. It's
the only way to keep her safe. The AI usually has her at the edge of the
short range field (on account of the AI using her normal attacks), which
is simply too close. Never mind how easily she'll get targeted, enemies
on Disc 2 have area attacks that can easily hit her even when she's not
the target. Start getting used to manually moving her out of harm's way
(if you haven't been doing that before). Try to keep her outside of the
magic attract range. The enemy can and will still target her, but not as
frequently. If an enemy does go after your mage, that gives you a good
opportunity to attack said enemy (although if the enemy doesn't flinch,
they might go out of range and, thus, kill your chain). If you don't feel
like switching targets or the enemy is just too fast to intercept, you
can try to shake off the enemy using stealth (ie. by moving non-stop).
- If you're still planning on continuing with a party of three fighters,
at the very least level up one of the mages a bit, so you'll have access
to Restoration.
- Consider leveling up your healing spells to some extent at some point.
Once you've minimized casting time, you can cast one 10 times a minute.
If you end up boosting battle skill levels (more on that later), you'll
be doing a fair amount of healing at the same time, so keep that in mind.
Both Healing and Faerie Light reach Lv10 at 1224 proficiency.
- Restoration heals 10% HP & MP at Lv1 and 50% at Lv10 (269 uses).
- Sophia has the worst sidestep of all characters. It's pretty slow, so
she can't really escape multi-hit attacks the way other characters can.
It doesn't really matter that much, though, since she should be staying
away from the action anyway.

- MP damage is nowhere near as useful in Disc 2 main game as it was on
Disc 1. Not only are there few enemies with high HP:MP ratios, but with
force resistant enemies becoming more common, you really need to just use
the stuff with the best stopping power (Air Raid, Kyoumenstatsu, etc.).

					\\\ Central Corridor, Aquaelie ||
 [SkipScene126]. Enter the room Maria's staying in.
						\\\ Private Room ||
 [SkipScene127]. Approach / examine the bed, and choose to 'hit the sack.'
					\\\ Central Corridor, Aquaelie ||
 [SkipScene128]. Enter the bridge.
				\\\ Aft Long-Distance Transporter Room ||
 [SkipScene129]. Enter the teleporter.

						\\\ Moonbase ||

						\\\ Transporter ||
 [SkipScene130]. Exit the transporter room.
						\\\ Recreational Zone ||
 [SkipScene131]. Approach the center of the zone.

Shop:						\\\ Shopping Center ||
 Physical Enhancer	 800 Fol  (Heal 50% HP)
 Mental Enhancer	1000 Fol  (Heal 50% MP)
 Analeptic		3000 Fol  (Revive multiple characters)

- The new healing items will certainly come in handy. And, no, you'll
never get anything that heals MP for multiple characters (unless they're
dead). With MP regeneration and Red Talismans, you'll scarcely need it.

Items: 32 000 Fol				\\\ Bar "The Red-Eye" ||

                                       \\\ Armorer "Rokumundo Antique Shop"||
Shop:
 Ceramic Sword          32 000 Fol      Titanium Claw           35 000 Fol
 Ceramic Gauntlet       35 000 Fol      Clown Shoes             32 200 Fol
 Ceramic Dagger         32 000 Fol      Magician's Rod          21 000 Fol
 Flaming Gun            37 000 Fol      Ablative Armor          33 200 Fol
                                        Carbonite Armor         30 000 Fol

- You'll find better gear very soon, so you could pass up on these.

- If you're having trouble with a single tough enemy (such as the upcoming
Proclaimer) or even multiple enemies, you may want to play defense and
set all your characters on manual. Your damage output may go down, but
at least you won't have all three characters a55pounded at the same time.
- When going one-on-one, you can either use long range attacks from a safe
distance or get a safe opening for short range attacks by using Homing
or possibly Thunder Flare. In case of multiple enemies, you'll have to
do some micro-managing and frequently switch between characters.
- You may also want to consider creating elemental weapons in order to
take advantage of elemental weaknesses. I never do it myself, but know
that you have that option. Mechanical enemies are all weak to Water.
You'll find nothing but those here and more of them in the next dungeon,
but after that, it's not going to be consistent. If you're using Nel,
you don't actually have to do any synthing, since Ice Blades is elemental
by default.

PC: Peppita Lv1			\\\ Habitation Zone / Recreational Zone 2 ||
Default (Peppita): Cape of Assault (Unique), Robe, Heavy Bracelet (Unique)
Boss: Proclaimer a

 [SkipScene132]. This one plays when you pass the center of the zone.
   |
 [Boss]                            FWIE   AAA
- 50 000 HP, 50 000 MP, 600 ATP    RRWR   Hom
- 6000 xp, 4900 Fol
- Proclaimers love to spam their devastating unblockable (at least when
above 40% health). This one will do about 600 pod per hit, so No Guard
should still help you here (you need 9000 HP for 600 pod, 7500 HP for 500
pod, etc.. Just multiply the damage by 15). Her regular blockable has
an unusually high HP damage multiplier of 2,5, so there's no way you'll
No Guard that (unless Blue Talisman kicks in).
- If a more direct approach fails, try sniping her with Aiming Device,
or exploit her elemental weakness with Nel's Fuujin or Raikou or Albel's
Kuuhazan.
- If she happens to cast Dark Sphere, that'll give you a good opportunity
to attack, although she'll only use it above 80% health.
- Dark Sphere covers a very large area and causes Instant Death. The
chance of success is affected by the difference between the caster's
level and the target's level. If you're more than 10 levels higher than
the enemy casting it, it's nothing to worry about.
- Divine Wave (used above 80% and below 40%) is very slow and blockable.
   |
 [SkipScene133]

- After the boss, Peppita will join the party, and very soon you'll
need to decide whether or not to keep her. If you don't take her, you
can get Albel, Nel or Roger instead.
- If you're not keeping Peppita, go create a Philosopher's Stone (12)
at the workshop before she leaves.
- The Incapacitators are worth good xp and should go down easily. This
is pretty much the best way to level up in Disc 2 main game. I don't
really level up much yet, though, as I don't want Mirage to be too far
behind.

						\\\ Recreational Zone (R1) ||

 [AddSkipScene013]. Enter the bar with Peppita in your party.

						\\\ Storehouse ||
Items: Runic Cloak (Unique), Ablative Shield, Battle Armor,
 Spike Shoes (Unique)

      H2-H1
     /  \  \
   S1----S2 R1
        /  /
      S3-R2

						\\\ Habitation Zone (H1) ||
Items: Cooking Ingredients, Ripe Berries, Ablative Armor, Trading Card 1

Items: Trading Card EX1, Blackberries		\\\ Habitation Zone 2 ||
Item: Life Saver				\\\ Inside Building ||

						\\\ Research Zone (S1) ||
Items: Sunrise Dictionary (Unique), Synthesis Materials (s)

						\\\ Research Zone 2 ||
Items: Carbonite Armor, NC Program Disk (Unique)

 [SkipScene134]. This one plays when you reach the
                    Symbological Genetics Research Center Scissors 61.

						\\\ Research Zone 3 ||
Items: Magical Berries, Jewel of Alertness, Ripe Berries, 19 000 Fol
Items: Magical Berries, Ripe Berries		\\\ Research Facility ||
Items: Laser Weapon, Synthesis Materials	\\\ Research Facility ||
Items: 24 000 Fol, Perfect Berries		\\\ Research Facility ||
Item: Aquaberries				\\\ Recreational Zone 2 ||
Item: Mind Saver				\\\ Inside Building ||

						\\\ Recreational Zone ||

 [SkipScene135]. This one plays upon reaching the center of the zone.

- Now you need to choose whether or not to take Peppita as your second
and final optional party member (Mirage and Adray will join later regardless).
I always keep her myself, even though I never actually use her in battle.

					\\\ Central Corridor, Aquaelie ||

 [SkipScene136]. Enter the bridge.

 [SkipScene137]. Return to the bridge after resting in your room.

				\\\ Aft Long-Distance Transporter Room ||

 [SkipScene138]. Enter the teleporter.
						\\\ Shuttle Calnus ||
 [SkipScene139]. Exit the shuttle.

Item (nc): Authentication Disk (Unique)		\\\ Planet Styx ||

- As if fighting one Proclaimer wasn't bad enough, you can now run into
them as normal enemies, and there will usually be two of them. Unless you
have a death wish (or are adequately skilled), I highly recommend you avoid
them.
- Once below 50% health, Enforcers start using an attack called Disaster (U).
It's a ranged, multi-hit attack that homes in on all characters, deals
both HP and MP damage, and has a chance of inflicting Petrification.
Without something that significantly increases your movement speed, you
may not be able to outrun it (except with Fayt, of course). You don't
necessarily have to move away from the Enforcer to avoid it, though. The
homing isn't perfect, so you might be able to throw it off by making a
sharp turn.

 [SkipScene140]. This one plays when you approach the strangely
   |                          familiar structure.
 [Fixed Encounter022] (6× Security Service Member)
- Careful with this one on higher difficulty levels. I used Loose Line
with Cliff in the middle (Aerial Assault, No Guard, Blue Talisman) and
Nel at the bottom (Kokuyousen). When you get a chance to attack, they
do go down very quickly because of their low HP and MP.
   |
 [SkipScene141]

						\\\ Arkives ||
Item: Jewel of Alertness			\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Physical Enhancer				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Cooking Ingredients			\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Ripe Berries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: Ripe Berries				\\\ Private Home ||
Item: 35 000 Fol				\\\ Private Home ||

						\\\ Spacetime Station ||
 [SkipScene142]. Enter the station.
						\\\ Inside Station ||
 [SkipScene143]. Exit the station at Gemity.

						\\\ Gemity Theme Park ||

Items: Ripe Berries, Book of Prophecies 5 (Unique), Rapid Invocation
Item: Synthesis Materials                     \\\ Tavern "Come Together Pub"||

Shop:                                         \\\ Outfitter "Muscle Garden" ||
 Life Saver		  4800 Fol
 Mind Saver		  4800 Fol
 Rapic Invocation	22 400 Fol
 Keen Kitchen Knife	55 000 Fol

- You'll want to buy two Keen Kitchen Knives eventually (one for Killer Chef,
the other to keep). For now, though, you should save your money for IC.

Shop:				\\\ Armorer "Remul's Workshop of Weaponry" ||
 Laser Weapon		42 500 Fol
 Ablative Shield	46 000 Fol

- No need to buy any new gear. You'll be able to buy and create better
stuff when you return to Elicoor II.

- You'll find the Arena on the north side of the park.
- Unlike before, item use is not restricted, and you can keep any items
dropped by enemies.
- In Single Battle, you can win the prizes in ranks D and C once with
each character. The others are one-time only. Don't bother with anything
above rank C yet.
- Trophy note: I wasn't able to get the Single Battle trophy with Mirage
for some reason.

   Single
  D Rank: Magical Berries
  C Rank: Mallet Charm (pat)
  B Rank: Bunny Shoes (Artifact)
  A Rank: Star Guard (Artifact)
  S Rank: Imposing Scroll (Unique)

- In Team Battle, you can win the prizes in ranks D and C six times. The
others are one-time only. You might be able to handle this one right away,
but the rewards are unimpressive.
 × The Scumbag Slayer has a fair chance of instantly killing Scumbags.

   Team
  D Rank: Synthesis Materials
  C Rank: Tri-Emblum
  B Rank: Scumbag Slayer
  A Rank: Star Splash (Unique)
  S Rank: Ring of Slaughter (Unique)

- Beating Ranking Battle gives you a nice accessory, but that'll have
to wait too.
- The enemies in Ranking Battle are fairly susceptible to stealth.

- Feel free to try out Runic Chess as well. The problem here is that
you simply can't win most of the time. If you can tell that right away
(and it can be hard to tell), you'll want to cancel in order to get
your money back and, more importantly, avoid wasting your time.
- You can win each prize four times. The flask has no real use. You can
sell them for 100k each. I'm sure you're tempted by the money, but Lv9
and S are too hard to be worth it if you're asking me (except on 4D).
Late in the post-game, you might need Synth materials, so you can come
and grab those then (Lv10 is fairly easy). Other than that...

 Lv1: Blueberries           Lv6: 5000 Fol
 Lv2: Blackberries          Lv7: Strength Berries
 Lv3: 1100 Fol              Lv8: Perfect Berries
 Lv4: Synthesis Materials   Lv9: 50 000 Fol
 Lv5: Ripe Berries          Lv10: Synthesis Materials
                            LvS: Lezard Flask (Artifact)

- And don't bother with the c*nting Bunny Races.
- Trophy note: (Groan)... Use a turbo controller. It's the only sane way.
I used a Hori Fighting Commander. You'll get about 130 points in 10 hours.
All in all, it'll take about 75 hours and half a mil.

				\\\ Eternal Sphere Terminal Reception ||
NPC Unlock: Ansala, Puffy, Aqua & Evia

 [SkipScene144]. This one plays when you choose to enter the Eternal Sphere.

 [SkipScene145]. Talk to all PCs then talk to Maria.

- You can now use the terminal to return to the following locations:
   Vanguard III
   Elicoor II
   Moonbase
   Styx

						\\\ Ruins of Coffir ||
Items: 35 000 Fol, Bunny Shoes, Trading Card EX16, Perfect Berries,
 65 000 Fol, Earth Pixie
Item (nc): 1/60 Scale Bunny

			\\\ Pesotto Forest / Kirlsa Hills / Moonbase / Styx ||

 [SkipScene146]. Plays when you warp out of the ES.

						\\\ Inside Station ||

 [SkipScene147]. Approach the teleport device in Gemity.

Item: Smithy Hammer (Unique)			\\\ Flad's House ||
- Return to Arkives to find this elusive one.

- You should now return to Elicoor II to get some new gear.

						\\\ Kirlsa ||
- Go talk to Woltar (no need if you already have Albel).

						\\\ Bequerel Mine ||
- If you need Synth Materials, there's one in the second area.

						\\\ Mountains of Barr ||
- You can find Synth Materials in the area immediately after the first
cave. You can also get there by using the shortcut in the area littered
with bones.

- If you didn't get Peppita, you can get one more of the Elicoorians
to join your party.
 × Albel   | Urssa Lava Caves.
 × Nel     | Castle Aquaria.
 × Roger   | Surferio.

PC: (Albel)					\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||
NPC: Vanilla (30 000 Fol)
Items: Writing Materials, Writing Materials, Ripe Berries,
 Trading Card EX12, 25 500 Fol (ne), Compounding Elixirs,
 Writing Materials, Compounding Elixirs
Item (nc): 1/60 Scale Bunny
Boss: n× Albel 2
- If you talked to Woltar in Kirlsa, you'll find Albel in the lava caves.
Beat him in a duel and he'll offer to join unless you took Peppita, in
which case you can just fight him. If you refuse to let him join, he'll
join without a choice if you fight him again and win.

 [AddSkipScene014R]. Approach / Talk to Albel.
- The first time around, you only need to approach him. After that, you
have to talk to him.
   |
 [Boss]
- 50 000 HP, 10 000 MP, 700 ATP, 3000 xp, 13 000 Fol, Demon's Symbol (Artif.)
- Solo with Fayt.
- No traditional BTs
- I very much doubt Albels 2, 3 and 4 all count towards 420 enemy types,
but there's no easy way to confirm that.
   |
 [AddSkipScene015Ra] (win)
 [AddSkipScene015Rb] (lose)


NPC: Gusto (60 000 Fol)				\\\ Peterny (south) ||
NPC: Aqua & Evia (20 000 Fol)			\\\ Temple ||
						\\\ Peterny (west) ||
Shop:
 Ice Falchion           61 500 Fol      Battle Armor            49 500 Fol
 Gravity Laser          35 500 Fol      Battle Chain Mail       38 000 Fol
 Adept's Staff          29 500 Fol      Wizard's Robe           19 000 Fol
 Lunatic Shoes          36 000 Fol

- The Retail Rabbit is now selling the best gear money can buy. If or
when he/she leaves, you can find him / her in Surferio.
- Ice Falchion, Gravity Laser, Adept's Staff, (Battle Armor),
3 Battle Chain Mails, Wizard's Robe = 309 000 F
- The Lunatic Shoes are the strongest main game weapon you can easily
obtain for Peppita.

- Best IC stuff.
 Mythril Gauntlets (1000 ATP): 450 Fol
 Veinslay (1000 ATP):          400 Fol
 Ice Blades (880 ATP, Water): 6800 Fol
 Claw of Judgment (900 ATP):  6200 Fol
 Paladin's Helm (1200 ATP):    400 Fol
 Elemental Leather (R:all):   6720 Fol
 Astral Armor (320 DFP):      4530 Fol (+ I: Petrify, Freeze)

- You should create the following accessories.

 Bangle of Accuracy |  222 | 20 |
 Blue Talisman      |  260 | 20 |
 Red Talisman       |  260 | 20 |
 Bangle of Intellect|  300 | 20 | Sophia, Aqua
 Faerie Ring        |  600 | 80 | Sophia
 Emerald Ring       |  600 | 90 | Fayt, Mirage
 Anti-Incap Amulet  |  601 | 60 |
 Ring of Erudition  |  640 | 70 | Sophia
 Ring of Haste      | 1100 | 60 | Sophia

Blue / Red Talisman          Bangle of Accuracy         Ring of Erudition
  10%                          +10%                       +10%
  20% |  600 Fol               +30% | 600 Fol             +20% | 5400 Fol
  30% | 1800 Fol

Ring of Haste                Faerie Ring / Emerald Ring
   +5%                         -20%
  +10% | 10 000 Fol            -30% |   5000 Fol
  +20% | 30 000 Fol            -40% | 15 000 Fol
  +30% | 90 000 Fol            -50% | 45 000 Fol

- If you're not using Sophia or Adray or have no interest in using their
magic for damage, you can skip the Bangle of Intellect and Emerald Ring.

- Here's what I synth the weapons with, in this particular order:

 Amulet of Freedom        4000  (only for Fayt)
 Blue Talisman            5900
 Red Talisman             5900
 Ring of Mental Power     2400
 Ring of Animosity      36 000  (not for PAL Peppita, Roger, or NTSC Albel)
 Faerie Ring            45 000
 Ring of Haste          90 000

- RoMP isn't available yet, and you definitely want to save RoH for last
because of the high value of the factor (don't forget: you have to pay
the value of all pre-existing factors, the item itself and the value of
the new factor whenever you add another factor). As such, there's no need
to refine the RoHs yet, which is pretty expensive.
- For now, you should settle for synthing Blue and Red Talismans for
your fighters. For Fayt, Cliff, and Roger, it'll only cost about 10k a
piece, but for others it's around 50k.
- Also, if you're planning on doing post-game, you should create a double
xp weapon, which will cost 100-260k depending on the weapon used. If you
run out of money before you can finish it, you can either move on and just
finish it later or you can go and spend more time on Moonbase. If you're
planning on using Mirage, you should just move on.
- Double xp: 100k (Crescent Rod) / ~210k (Adept's Staff) / ~260k(Laser Weapon)
- On the other hand, if you're intent on getting all 300 Battle Trophies,
not using a double xp weapon would help you on your way to 50 000 battles,
since it would give you a(nother) reason to fight more battles.
- Refining success rate is around 15% for a lot of the factors you'll be
working with. Skill levels don't affect the odds of success in refining,
in case you forgot. The odds do diminish with each successive cycle, so
even if it's something cheap, it's best to give up after 10 or so cycles.
- Use Stanice and Adray (and some third character, of course) when refining
accessories. Using Adray will increase the costs a bit, but it's worth it
for the speed boost. You'll want to use him when refining in other fields
as well.
- Just a reminder that Maria's weapons are refined through Engineering,
not Smithery.
- While far from necessary, if you're feeling obsessive enough about it,
you could create a weapon for Soph that allows her to take out the Robo
Gunners in the next dungeon solo, so she can catch up in levels with the
other characters. If you're using Mirage, that won't be necessary, since
she has more of a need to catch up and can easily carry Sophia in a two
character party. But, yeah, if you already have your full team together
and don't mind spending a couple of hours (and some synth kits) on it,
here's what to do. Get a cheap carrier weapon in Kirlsa or Arias: Long
Dagger, Longsword, whatever. Get a bunch of them. You'll need more later.
Synth the accessories listed below into it, then synth that into an
Adept's Staff. Also, refine a Bangle of Intellect. Bunny Shoes as the
other accessory. Again, though, this is hardly necessary. The level gap
will slowly but surely narrow down as Exp requirements go up.

 Regeneration Symbol    2100
 Regeneration Symbol    2100
 Aqua Ring (+50% dmg)   2500
 Mind Saver             2800
 Blue Talisman (30%)    5900

- If you're using Albel, don't forget that the AI can't use Aura Wall.
- If you're confident in your skills, you should be able to beat Rank B
at the Arena now (Convert Damage really helps with Chimera). First-time
players should probably forget about it for now.
- If you're already set on which characters to use and have them in your
party now, I highly recommend auto-leveling First Aid to max with the
help of the Porcupines in the Traum Mountains. I don't do it yet, since
I'm using Mirage. Either way, you can indeed just leave the game on while
you go do something else for a while. You can get to Lv10 in a few hours.
Keep in mind, this method will no longer work once your Evade is too high
(above 420). It also doesn't work on Easy, as the Porcupines are just
not aggressive enough. If you're not doing post-game, you don't need
to bother.
 × Leveling up First Aid is kind of pointless for characters who can't
 even use that with No Guard, those being Mirage and Nel, who are indeed
 the two fighters I use. I still like to do it anyway, just in case.
 × You could potentially boost Max Fury at the same time, but that one
 levels up much slower than First Aid. It would take about twice as long
 to max that. Maybe you haven't even managed to create any Moldy Tomes
 yet. It'll be easier to create after the Kaddan revisit. Either way,
 it's not a skill I'd recommend, since it's often mutually exclusive
 with No Guard. Even when it's not (mainly for Peppita, Roger, and Albel),
 I'd rather just use First Aid or CHHP.
- Incidentally, the Porcupines are also a great way to get the tricky
Remain with Fury 15 consecutive times BT. Just synth a weapon with Ori
and an Illegible Book. Load the game afterwards to get your synth kits
back.
- Don't forget about the '500 Battle Alone' and 'Chain of 500' BTs. If
you're determined to get them, get it over with now, on Vanguard III.

PC: (Nel)					\\\ Castle Aquaria ||
NPC: Ansala (Philosopher's Stone)

 [AddSkipScene016]. Plays if you enter Nel's room.

PC: Adray					\\\ Audience Chamber ||
- If you didn't have Adray in your party on Disc 1, you can pick him up now.

 [SkipScene148]. Approach the throne, then try to leave.

PC: (Roger)					\\\ Surferio ||
NPC: Killer Chef (Keen Kitchen Knife)

 [AddSkipScene017]. Plays if you approach Roger (Village Chief's House).

NPC: Rigel (Golden Curry)			\\\ Kirlsa - Grocer ||
- Note that some of the exotic food has a chance of not being consumed
when used.

						\\\ Inside Station (Gemity) ||
Boss: Azazer
- Once you teleport to the Sphere Company, you won't be able to leave
until you finish the events there.

 [SkipScene149]. This one plays when you travel to Sphere Company.
   |
 [Fixed Encounter023] (4× Security Force Member)
   |
 [SkipScene150]
   |
 [Boss]                          FWIE   AAA
- 99 000 HP, 9000 MP, 1200 ATP   WR R   Rgn
- 15 000 xp, 78 000 Fol, Charm of Tranquility (Artifact)
- A potentially brutal boss. His attacks are fast and he moves fast.
However, he deals MP damage only, so any character using No Guard will
be unfazed by his attacks. With this advantage, you should have little
to no trouble cutting through his HP with something like Hammer of Might
and/or Shotgun Blast.
- To avoid getting screwed over by stealth, use another character as
a decoy. Otherwise, he could run off and leave you hitting the air.
Conversely, if you actually *need* him to get off someone's back, just
move around. (You did read about stealth at the beginning of the guide,
right?)
- I would recommend against Convert Damage, as it's difficult to cast
healing spells due to his high speed (unless the caster has No Guard).
- If you see no other choice, synth a Rainbow Diamond weapon. It's not
that expensive. You could also feed him 5 ES Hybrid Bombs.
   |
 [SkipScene151]

						\\\ Sphere 211 (Entrance) ||

- I might end up avoiding the enemies here, since I'm close to getting
my standard party together.
- The next save point is on the fifth floor.
- Nel's Ice Blades work well here. Don't try to combine it with any of
her Wind-elemental skills, though. Because of the neutral element bug,
they won't do double damage. Hardly that big a deal. You can just use
her other skills instead.
- If you made the Water-boost weapon for Sophia, just have her chain
Ice Needles -> Deep Freeze on the Robo Gunners on 2F. You can encounter
two of them at a time on higher floors, but she might not be able to
handle that. She likely can't kill them in one chain, so she *will* be
eating some missiles in the process.

Items: Cooking Ingredients, Perfect Berries		\\\ 2nd Floor ||
Items: Mental Enhancer, Ripe Berries,			\\\ 3rd Floor ||
 Synthesis Materials, Analeptic
Items: Dremela's Tool Set (Unique, Temp),		\\\ 4th Floor ||
 Physical Enhancer, Wind Pixie

Items: Laser Weapon, Mental Enhancer, Trading Card 2,	\\\ 5th Floor ||
 Ripe Berries, Ceramic Gauntlet, Synthesis Materials
Items (nc): Uninstaller (Unique), 5× Blueberries, 5× Blackberries,
 2× Fruity Potions (pat), Verdurous Potion (pat),
 2× Resurrection Elixirs (pat), AI Program (Unique)
Boss(es): Berial & Belzeber

 [SkipScene152]. This one plays when you pass by the corridor
                     leading to the research facility.

 [SkipScene153]. Enter the research facility.

- Before you go any further, talk to Shar, and then Leiria to obtain
some items (one of them is required to get Izak, the best Engineering
NPC in the game). You can can buy items from her after that.

 [SkipScene154]. This one plays when you enter the room west.
   |
 [Boss]                                            FWIE   AAA
- Berial (rl):     70 000 HP,   5000 MP, 720 ATP    RWR   Hom
- Belzeber (whip): 62 000 HP, 30 000 MP, 710 ATP   R RW   Rgn
- 18 000 xp, 35 000 Fol in total
- Berial is the greater threat, but it won't take many Aerial Assaults
to take him down. Air Raid and Kyou work fine as well (as they always do).
- The battlefield is fairly small, so casting healing spells is tricky.
   |
 [SkipScene155]

- Next, you'll need to activate the teleport elevators.

Items: 15 000 Fol, Trading Card EX2			\\\ 3rd Floor ||
- Use the elevator to reach these two chests.

- The floors through 6 and 100 are optional and of little interest
aside from the items listed below. There are also a bunch of jewels
and synth materials, but I won't be listing those (although the synth
kits are listed in the misc. file).
- The teleports can only take you either up or down, but this isn't
really an issue. If you want to go up, but are near a downgoing teleport,
just go down a floor to get to an upgoing teleport.

  13 | Silver Chalice (Unique) (SW)
  16 | Trading Card EX7 (last room)
  18 | Intellect+ Berries (Artifact) (S)
  30 | Book of Prophecies 4 (Unique) (SE1)
  47 | Intellect+ Berries (S)
  50 | Trading Card EX8 (last room)
  85 | Book of Prophecies 3 (Unique) (SW)
  86 | Intellect+ Berries (SE)

Items: Celestial Pixie, Dilapidated Textbook (Unique)	\\\ Top Floor ||
Item (nc): (1/1 Scale Bunny)
Bosses: Proclaimer b, Enforcer b, Convictor a
- You can complete the map if you come back after the following events.
- Sophia can't participate in the first two bass bottles, but will
automatically join in the third one if you leave an empty slot. In the
mean time, you should probably set Healing for one of your fighters (if
you're not using Nel).
- Again, when the enemy is using nasty area attacks, you should consider
setting all or most of your characters on manual to avoid getting annihilated.

 [SkipScene156]. This one plays when you proceed north past the save point.
   |
 [Boss: Proclaimer b]              FWIE   AAA
-  65 000 HP,   4000 MP, 700 ATP   IRRW   Nrm
- 12 000 xp, 23 400 Fol
- No BTs
- Her normal attacks deal MP damage only.
- Hit her with Aerial Assault (or something) when she's casting Dark Sphere.
   |
 [SkipScene157]
   |
 [Boss: Enforcer b]                FWIE   AAA
-  82 000 HP, 35 000 MP, 800 ATP   RIWR   WAH
- 15 000 xp, 24 Fol
- No BTs
- This one doesn't have boss benefits.
- His tentacle stab area attack is nasty, as always, but even if it
interrupts your chain, it shouldn't kill you, so you can just disengage,
heal up and try again. If you'd rather not risk it, you can go with a
more conservative approach and use either a defensive Homing setup (ie.
only attack him after floating him with Homing) or ranged attacks (like
Kokuyousen).
   |
 [SkipScene158]
   |
 [Boss: Convictor a]               FWIE   AAA
- 120 000 HP, 10 000 MP, 850 ATP   IIRW   Rgn
- 24 000 xp, 46 300 Fol
   |
 [SkipScene159]

						\\\ Planet Styx ||

 [SkipScene160]. Proceed south.

 [SkipScene161]. Plays when you reach the southern cliffs.

PC: Mirage Lv30					\\\ Diplo - Bridge ||
Default (Mirage): Ceramic Gauntlet, Carbonite Armor, 250 SP
- Before Mirage will hook up with you, you need to talk to the people
in 1-4 as well as A, B, C, or D.

 1. Mirage (Bridge)
 2. Cliff (Cliff's Room)
 3. Quark Member (Support Team) (Conference Room)
 4. Quark Member (Medical Specialist) (Sick Bay)
 A. QM (Science Officer) (Bridge) + QM (Engineering Team) (Storeroom)
 B. QM (Science Officer) (Bridge) + Peppita (Private Room A)
 C. QM (Engineering Team) (Storeroom) + Nel (Private Room B)
 D. Nel + Peppita

 [SkipScene162]. Talk to Mirage.

- This is where I finally get to start using my standard party: Mirage,
Nel and Sophia.
- Mirage is very similar to Cliff. They use the same weapons and share
many waza. Mirage's main advantages over Cliff are being able to use No
Guard more easily with Infinity Kick and learning Triple Kick.

- You'll now find new enemies in many locations on Elicoor II.
- The Moths can be rather annoying if you're not using No Guard. Keep
your characters on Manual and hit them with Thunder Flare (Sophia / Nel)
to make them vulnerable. Fayt's Lightning Blast should work too.
- If you need to level up Mirage or anyone else, I'd still go with the
Incapacitators (or Destroyers) back on Moonbase. The Blood Monsters and
Enforcers on Palmira Plains are good too (just watch out for Disaster).
- Either way, I don't think you should spend all that much time leveling
up before the post-game. Lv100 tops. After that, you really want to get
to the post-game, where you can get much better xp.
- I level up Mirage to either Lv56 or Lv62. Acrobat Locus should be her
waza of choice (for now).
- This is also where I max out First Aid.
- Hypothetically, if you're using CHHP with Mirage (which, again, I don't
recommend, since it's mutually exclusive with No Guard), you should boost
it to Lv5 by using Hammer of Might with a Water-elemental weapon on the
Young Shriekers at Granah Hills. Beyond that, it'll level up just fine
organically.

- Visit the main street of Aquios to unlock three more NPC inventors.

NPC Unlock: Meryl, Count Noppen, Boyd

- Also, if you f*#ked up with the Retail Rabbit's wares, you can now
buy the same stuff from Ruddle & Rumina. You can find them in a house
on the west side of Aquios. They'll be there regardless of whether or
not you did the Ruddle & Rumina side quest on Disc 1.

NPC: Meryl (Dremela's Tool Set)			\\\ Peterny (east) ||
- Ultimate Bomb (Meryl, Cliff, Mirage)(*: overlap):
162, 164, 166, 167*, 169, 171, 173, 175, 176*, 178*, 180.

NPC: Dejison (Ultimate Bomb)			\\\ Airyglyph ||
- Dejison can be found in the southern parts of the town.

				\\\ Airyglyph Castle, 2F Audience Chamber ||
Item (nc): (Crimson Scourge) (Unique)
NPC: Count Noppen (150 000 Fol)
- If Albel was the first optional character to join you permanently,
you can now trigger a scene here to get the Crimson Scourge.

 [AddSkipScene016]. Approach the throne.

PC: (Adray)					\\\ Surferio ||
NPC: Izak (Blueprints, AI Program, Meryl, Vanilla, Dejison)
- Check the mechanoid near the Village Chief's House to recruit Izak
(if you meet the requirements).
- If you had Adray in your party on Disc 1, you can pick him up at
Surferio now.

 [AddSkipScene017]. This one plays when you approach the entrance to
                     Parch if you had Adray in your party on Disc 1.

- Here's some stuff you should make in Engineering. If you don't have
Sophia or Adray in your active party, you should get a full stock of
all Healing Devices. I make around 10 of them myself.
- Don't bother leaving Izak and Meryl active in the hopes that they'll
make some Healing Devices on their own. They might make a few, but even
then, it won't be worth all the money they'll be burning constantly.

 Healing Device Mk1   |  201 |  50 |
 EM Stun Explosive    |  211 |  60 | Maria, Meryl, Izak
 EM Stun Explosive MP |  211 |  60 | Maria, Meryl, Izak
 ES Hybrid Bomb       |  231 |  70 |
 Healing Device Mk2   |  401 |  70 | Peppita, Meryl
 ES Hybrid Explosive  |  431 |  80 |
 Healing Device Mk3   |  801 | 100 | Meryl, Izak
 Beguiling Device     | 1001 |  80 | Vanilla, Meryl

Boss: n× Albel 3				\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||
Lost & Found: Philosopher's Symbol (Artifact)(Albel 3)
- 120 000 HP, 60 000 MP, 800 ATP, 6000 xp, 26 000 Fol

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 2F ||

 [SkipScene163]. Enter the Audience Chamber.

PC: (Adray)					\\\ Audience Chamber ||
- If you didn't have Adray in your party on Disc 1 and didn't come here
earlier on Disc 2, he'll join your party now.
- If you still have Peppita or Adray at default level, you can use one
of them to easily get the 'Win by a margin of x HP' BTs by adjusting
their DFP so they'll only take 1 pod from an enemy on Vanguard III.
Specifically, you can give Peppita an Elven Cloak and a Charm of Insight
(or refine the Elven Cloak once) to get her to 19 DFP (Young Slimes
have 20 ATP) or you can give Adray two Yellow Talismans to get him to
39 DFP (Scumbags have 40 ATP).

Boss: Lesser Eye				\\\ Sealed Cavern ||
- A good place to finish leveling up Scatter Beam and/or Pulse Blast if
you didn't already max them out earlier. The Flaming Zombies don't pose
much of a threat once you've extinguished their flames with anything
Water-elemental. After that, you just blast one with a Fire-elemental
weapon.

 [SkipScene164]. Plays when you enter the room leading into the shrine.
   |
 [Boss]                             FWIE   AAA
- 230 000 HP, 56 000 MP, 1000 ATP   AAAA   RW
- 30 000 xp, 84 500 Fol, Synthesis Materials
- No BTs
- The Beholders are back but don't pose as much of a threat as they did
back in ToP and SO1. They do take a while to beat down (unless you hit them
with two triple chains at the same time), so once you start encountering
them as normal enemies, you may want to avoid them.
- The Beholder's eye beam has maybe a 25% chance of petrifying you. You
can easily avoid by moving around him. Personally, I like to sidestep it
just for the heck of it.
- While Misery Circle will quickly drain your MP, it can't actually MP
kill you, at least not directly. To get MP killed, you'd have to get hit
by their anti-backstab (which they rarely use) or their counter aura
(usually Ring Wave).

Item (nc): Sacred Orb (Unique)			\\\ Shrine of Kaddan ||
Bosses: 3× Dark Armors, Crystal Statue b, Dark Eye

 [SkipScene165]. Plays when you proceed north past the first save point.
   |
 [Boss: 3x Dark Armor]
- 67 000 HP, 6000 MP, 1250 ATP, I:F, 30 000 xp, 117 000 Fol
- Without Convert Damage and elemental resistance (Hammer Quake is
Earth-elemental), you won't last long in close quarters. Thunder Flare
really helps as well.
- If a more direct approach fails, you'll have to go solo with a ranged
fighter. You can revive the other two characters once only one remains.

- In the second map area, pick up the Enchanted Pen (in the corridor
with spiked walls), some money (in the room where you found the Orb of
Foe Finding) and Synth Materials (in the southeast area)(if you didn't
get these earlier).
- Gold Armor has the highest DFP of all the enemies in the game (950).
 × You can easily level up Maria's IHPD using these guys (if you're
 using attribute transfer with Gravity Bullet). Not that there aren't
 other enemies that work fine as well (such as the Biochimera).

 [SkipScene166]. This one plays when you approach the Crystal Statue.
   |
 [Boss: Crystal Statue b]           FWIE   AAA
- 168 000 HP, 10 000 MP, 1300 ATP   IIII   Nrm
- 15 000 xp, 33 Fol
- Go with Triple Kick, Aerial Assault and Dimension Door.

- You won't find another save point before the next boss, so head back
to the previous one if you want to save.

 [SkipScene167]. This one plays when you enter the room with the statue.
   |
 [Boss: Dark Eye]                   FWIE   AAA
- 330 000 HP, 56 000 MP, 1300 ATP   AAAA   RW
- 50 000 xp, 110 000 Fol

 [SkipScene168]. Examine the Sacred Orb.

- As you exit the dungeon, the last three IC NPCs will be unlocked.

NPC Unlock: Chilico, Osman, Louise

						\\\ Aquios ||

 [AddSkipScene018]. This one plays when you approach the guards if you
                       left the main street.

						\\\ Castle Aquaria 2F ||

 [SkipScene169]. Enter the Audience Chamber.

						\\\ Surferio ||
NPC: Chilico (82 000 Fol)		\\\ General Store "The Faerie Tear" ||
NPC: Louise (90 000 Fol)			\\\ Private Home ||

Lost & Found: Boots of Prowess (pat)(Albel 4)	\\\ Urssa Lava Caves ||
Boss: n× Albel 4
- 340 000 HP, 120 000 MP, 1500 ATP, 20 000 xp, 130 000 Fol
- Well, here's a tough one. If you haven't been using Fayt, you can forget
about it. Your main concern is his Charge, which is now unblockable. He
likes to use it 2 or 3 times in a row and can even use it at long range.

NPC: Osman (Strange Book)		\\\ Airyglyph - Abandoned Temple ||
- Osman has three exclusive books, two of which are of possible interest.
 × Damaged Tome (Lucky Star). Lucky Star allows you to fill up the bonus
 gauge without attacking the enemy. This is the only way to get the bonus
 if the enemy is more than 8 levels lower than you.
 × Increase MP (Fading Tome) is something you may want to consider giving
 to Sophia if you haven't leveled up her First Aid.
- Aside from that, using Osman is the best way to get Moldy Tomes (Max
Fury) and a Brittle Tome (Quick Symbol). The other two should be Noppen
and Maria to get rid of a few unwanted results.
- While you're still in Airyglyph, you should go get the Synth Materials
in the aqueducts if you didn't get them earlier.

- One more time: I highly recommend auto-leveling First Aid (and Max
Fury) with the help of the Porcupines. Without maxing it out, First Aid
is *very* ineffective (just like CHHP, but that one should level up ok
organically, at least once you get past the first few levels).

						\\\ Peterny ||
- With Chilico's help, you can create a bunch of new accessories, such
as the following:
 Earring of Accuracy  |  220 | 40 |
 Ring of Mental Power |  220 | 80 | (1200 F to 6%)
 Blazing Pendant      |  380 | 30 |
 Berserker's Pendant  |  490 | 70 |
 Ring of Animosity    |  700 | 70 |
   -1
   -2 |   6000 Fol
   -3 | 12 000 Fol
 Boots of Prowess     | 2480 | 99 |
   5%
  10% | 20 000 Fol
  30% | 42 000 Fol
 Star Necklace        | 4100 | 80 |

- Now I get to finish my weapon customization. Here's the list again:

 Amulet of Freedom        4000  (only for Fayt)
 Ring of Mental Power     2400     6% MP regen
 Blue Talisman            5900     30% chance to negate HP damage
 Red Talisman             5900     30% chance to negate MP damage
 Ring of Animosity      36 000     Fury use -3 (excl. PAL Pep, Rog,NTSC Albel)
 Faerie Ring (40%)      45 000     Battle skill HP use -40%
 Ring of Haste (20%)    90 000     Movement rate +20%

- If you haven't synthed anything yet, start with the cheapest factors first.
- Refining the RoH to 30% after synthing saves you a good amount of money
(it costs less to synth *and* refine). If you can refine the Faerie Ring
to 50% at the same time, that's a nice bonus, but it's a little tricky, and
I wouldn't consider it a high priority. At 40%, you're already getting the
most of it. You certainly don't want to refine the Faerie Ring separately
after already refining the RoH, since Movement rate +30 has a value of
270 000 (HP use -40% has a value 120 000).
- Ring of Animosity allows you to do triple chains with Infinity Kick,
Mirror Slice, Air Raid, and Goumashou.
 × Maria won't need a RoA or Faerie Ring if you mainly have her in a
 support role.
 × NTSC Peppita also needs a RoA to do triple chains with Kaboom, since
 she'll be using Instanto Blast as fodder.
 × On the other hand, NTSC Albel won't need one, since he should be using
 Kuuhazan as fodder.
 × The Berserk Fury multiplier is applied before the effects of Fury
 cost reducing gear. As such, having both Berserk and a RoA will indeed
 reduce the Fury cost of some attacks down to 1, which is the minimum.
- If I don't get the Victory Trophy now (and I do tend to), I synth a
RoMP and a Star Necklace into Sophia's double xp weapon. If I do get the
Victory Trophy early, I'll add a Blue Talisman into it instead (in which
case, the Blue Talisman really should go in before the RoEs). With the
Aqua boost weapon that I mentioned earlier, you should just slap a Star
Necklace on it (unless you got the VT).

- If your weapon customization is similar, if not identical, to the
above, you'll need about 2 million fol. If you're a little short
(which is likely), go fight the enemies in the Passage from Parch to
Plenty. If you're controlling your support character, you can probably
keep the Bonus on, but even if you can't, you're still often getting
18k per battle.
- If you don't feel like farming that much, you can pass up on synthing
Rings of Animosity and Faerie Rings. They're hardly vital. The other
four, though, are a must.
- If, for whatever reason, you need *millions* of fol at this point in
the game, you'll want to hit the waterway at the Ruins of Mosel (which,
incidentally, we were heading for next anyway).
- If you need Synth materials, you should get them at Gemity. You can
get six from Team Battle Rank D and four from Runic Chess Lv4 and Lv10
each. There's a full list of all Synth materials in the misc. file.

- Use Chilico, Peppita and Mirage when creating Rings of Mental Power.
- I refine two BoPs at this point. I give each stage 2-3 runs. In the
post-game, I give both stages five runs, so it doesn't try my patience
as much. I usually have a Charm of Insight in my second accessory slot
(when status immunity isn't needed). If you only have one of them, you
can easily score another one by fighting the Shriekers at Granah Hills.
It gives you a 5% critical hit chance, which doesn't do much, but I'd
rather not just equip another ATP +30% accessory.
- Boyd is all but guaranteed to create the Damask Cape sooner or later,
but if you've already customized the Lunatic Shoes extensively, you
should pay it no mind.
- Fully refining a Blazing Pendant is one of the most difficult things
to do in IC, possibly taking several hours. You may need one eventually
just for a couple of BTs. Instead of doing it in one go, you should
make it an ongoing project. Spend a little time grinding it every now
and then. Hopefully, you'll be done or almost done by the time you need
it (which will be in late post-game).
- Refine a bunch of Medicine Bottles, so you can get Paralysis immunity
without using an accessory slot. You should use them when fighting the
final boss and Gabe.
- Refine some healing items while you're at it (Berry Potions, Aqua
Potions, Fruity Potions and maybe some Syrupy Potions).

- You could try beating Rank B at the Arena now. Chimera's pretty nasty,
though, so even with a custom weapon, inexperienced players will likely
have a hard time. It's the next storyline boss, so you should go fight
it normally first, so you'll know what to expect.
- In any case, the safest way to handle it is to use a defensive setup
with either Mirage or Fayt. Block the tail to float it, then hit it in
the air with Crescent Locus -> Triple Kick or Blade of Fury -> Air Raid.
You can't use No Guard with BoF -> Air Raid, but that's okay.
- Both Triple Kick and Air Raid work quite well on Dragon Zombies, but
you can also opt to use ES Hybrid Bombs / Explosives. If you die after
using them, load the game, so you'll get them back.
- If you can do Rank B, you should be able to handle Rank A as well.
A straight up offensive setup might work, although it's quite risky with
the Demon Beast.
- When going fully solo (whether it's at the Arena or anywhere else),
taking a critical hit could potentially spell doom if it stuns you. The
odds are low, but it *will* happen occasionally. Equipping a Mallet /
Hammer Charm can prevent it. It can be a little hard to even notice the
enemy's critical hits. They do have a sound effect, but it's pretty
subtle.

- If you're up for a challenge, you could try beating the Ranking Battle
at the Arena at this point. Normally, you wouldn't do so until post-game,
and while it's certainly tricky, it's not *that* hard. The accessory you
get is pretty nice but nothing huge. You may have trouble with some of
the enemies on your way to the top (Undead Lords, Robin Winds), but you
can just choose the ones you find manageable. Once you're at rank 3, you
need to beat the Dragoon Knights twice to get to number 1. One of your AI
fighters should keep the Crystal Dragon busy while you try to freezekill
the Dragoon. Deep Freeze (Sophia, Adray, Fayt) is the ideal freezing
method. Forget about Ice Needles, though. That one just doesn't work
well. You could also use Bitter Potions, but you'd need to get fairly
lucky to not run out. Either way, once frozen, you have about 50% chance
of shattering him. Once he's down, you've practically won. The Crystal
Dragon will take a good while to beat into submission, but he's doesn't
really pose that much of a threat.
- Once you reach rank 1, you should be able to leave and save without
dropping in rank. The next time you choose Ranking Battle, you'll be
offered to fight Dirna & Solon. A regular, aggressive approach could
very well be sufficient here. An AI fighter should be able to keep Dirna
busy and keep her from casting Explosion much while you handle Solon,
who has much less health. While he does have high Agility, you don't
necessarily have to attack him from behind, since he could easily end
up turning his back on you on his own, especially after he starts using
Sword Wave. If you want to make things simpler, you can just feed Solon
20 ES Hybrid Explosives. Anyway, once he's done, you've pretty much
secured your victory. So long as you have Blazing Pendants, Dirna shouldn't
be much of an issue.
- I recommend giving the Victory Trophy to your mage. I wouldn't give
it to a fighter, since then they'd quickly freeze anything they touch,
which trivializes things a bit too much.
- Insect Lords is a good battle for getting 500 hits.

- And, lastly, if you're feeling motivated enough, you could grind your
battle skill levels up. If you don't do that, they might not reach their
fullest potential until pretty late in the post-game. By no means is
this necessary, though. If you're not up for it, that's fine. I don't
do it myself until I get Infinity Kick.
- If you're doing it, then you'll need to create two Earth-elemental
weapons (or three if you're using three fighters). You'll be using those
on the Bestials in the Aquatic Garden. You should also petrify one (with
Malodorous Potions or Super Potions), so you can skip-cancel without
getting interrupted, I recommend the setups below (for a manually
controlled character). Equip a Ring of Animosity and a Faerie Ring.
No need to start with a normal attack when you're skipping SR C (F:
Confirm. C: Cancel).

         Nel                         Mirage                    Fayt
  SR F Kyoumensatsu (skip)    SR F Infinity Kick (skip)    SR F Air Raid
  SR C Kagebarai              SR C Sphere of Might         SR C Air Raid

         Albel                       Roger                     Peppita
  SR F Goumashou (skip)       SR F Whirling Heat           SR F Kaboom
  SR C Kikoushou              SR C Raging Helmet (skip)    SR C Kaboom (skip)

         Maria                                                 Peppita
  SR F Gravity Bullet (skip)                               SR F FaerieFr(skip)
  SR C Scatter Beam                                        SR C Kaboom

- The other fighter(s) should be in AI control. The AI will, of course,
not boost anywhere near as effectively as you do, but it's still better
than having them sit idly by. The AI should probably be fighting another
Bestial, who isn't petrified. That way the AI can get interrupted. If
the AI is attacking a petrified Bestial, don't forget to take the enemy's
Fury into account. You'll want the AI using the skill as a blockable for
the lower HP cost, so the enemy can't have very high Fury. You can easily
just deal some Fury damage if you switch to a non-elemental weapon.
- With skip-cancels, you can get to Lv10 in 90 minutes. If you don't feel
like going all the way, I'd say Lv8 is good enough.
- Boosting in the NTSC-versions will, of course, be slower, especially
for moves with long animations. It could take up to three hours (with
Kyou and IK). You can speed it up by fighting enemies that can easily
interrupt you, like the Robo Gunners or Toadspawn.

- Stock well on supplies before heading for the final dungeon.

Boss: Chimera				\\\ Passage from Parch to Plenty ||

 [SkipScene170]. This one plays when you enter the desert.
   |
 [Boss]                             FWIE   AAA
- 200 000 HP, 28 000 MP, 1200 ATP   R R    Nrm
- 17 000 xp, 5000 Fol
- A very c*nty boss unless you go in with No Guard and Paralysis immunity.
That way, you don't have to worry about the tail, which does minimal
damage but hits you on contact and may inflict paralysis. No need to
go defensive unlike at the Arena.
- It's possible to lock him against the wall using Ring Wave or Star Guard
but he may manage to get free after a while.
- If all else fails, go with RD or ES Hybrid Explosives.

Boss: Stone Golem				\\\ Ancient Ruins of Mosel ||

 [SkipScene171]. Proceed south from the other save point.
   |
 [Boss]                             FWIE   AAA
- 300 000 HP, 20 000 MP, 1500 ATP   IIII   Hom
- 60 000 xp, 71 000 Fol, Synthesis Materials
- Both Flaming Blow (used above 50% but not often) and Flaming Kick (used
between 30-50% health) will quickly kill any characters within range.
Neither of them are actually Fire-elemental, of course. Resort to ranged
attacks if you can't quickly get past the Flaming Kick phase. If you
don't have a good ranged option, then you should go one-on-one, block
the blockables, sidestep the heavies and sneak a hit in when you have the
chance (I'm... sure you haven't forgotten about sidestep invincibility?).

- You should now complete the optional dungeon here (take the right
stairs from the round table).

						\\\ Subterranean Waterway ||
Items: Blueberries, Blueberries, Cooking Ingredients, 160 000 Fol,
 Smithery Materials, Ripe Berries, Trading Card EX6, Synthesis Materials,
 Star Talisman (pat), Ring of Vigor, Perfect Berries
Bosses: Amoeba Giant, Aurora Monster

- Equip Anti-Freezing Amulets or Astral Armors and Elemental Leathers.
- The first area only has two chests with Blueberries (at the moment).
The first boss is also in this area, but to get to the specific location,
you'll have to circle around from the north with the help of the aquatic
hauler.

 [Boss]                              FWIE   AAA
- 220 000 HP,  25 000 MP, 1150 ATP     WA   WAH
- 18 000 xp, 33 000 Fol, Synthesis Materials
- As usual, he can use Healing.
- No BTs
- This is the only boss fight in the game that can be a surprise attack.

- The Synth Materials are in the second chest you can find after the
water's drained (around the middle of the area).
- The chest with the Ring of Vigor can be reached by climbing up a tall
piece of rock in the southeast corner of the northern area.
- To trigger the next boss, you need to lead the Rainbow Core to the
thingie at the south edge of the southern area.

 [AddSkipScene019]. This one plays when the Rainbow Core reaches the thing.
   |
 [Boss]                              FWIE   AAA
- 285 000 HP, 212 025 MP, 1200 ATP     AW   WAH
- 35 000 xp, 52 000 Fol
   |
 [AddSkipScene020]

						\\\ Deepest Reaches ||
Items: Smithery Materials, Synthesis Materials, Magical Berries,
 Trading Card 4, Synthesis Materials, Star Guard (Artifact),
 Decrepit Tome (Artifact), Blemished Textbook (Unique), Synthesis Materials
Item (nc): (1/1 Scale Bunny)
Lost & Found: Demon's Symbol (Robin Wind b)
Boss(es): Robin Wind b, Aquaregia d & Nova Blaze c (Spirit Trio)

- Follow the inner path to find the first Synth Materials. The other
two are in the treasure room.

 [AddSkipScene021]. Plays when you proceed west from the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                                               AAA
- Robin Wind b: 120 000 HP, 30 000 MP, 1000 ATP, A:I  2W
- Nova Blaze c: 135 000 HP, 40 000 MP, 1150 ATP, A:F  Nrm
- Aquaregia d:  115 400 HP, 50 000 MP, 1200 ATP, A:W  2W
- 44 500 xp, 49 650 Fol in total
- If you just can't get the time limit BT, come back later.
   |
 [AddSkipScene022]

- Afterwards, beat count Mattalun in a simple game of Runic Chess to
gain access into the treasure room.

Items: Perfect Berries, Synthesis Materials	\\\ Ancient Ruins of Mosel ||

 [SkipScene172]. This one plays when you take the left stairs
   |                    from the round table.
 [SkipScene173]

- Take the exit from Firewall to reach the two items.

Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)			\\\ Firewall ||
Boss: Battlecopter
- Different doors will be open depending on which door you enter an
area from.
- The door to the boss is right next to the save point. To open the
door, follow the path north from the save point to find a switch, then
come back the same path after activating the switch.

 [SkipScene174]. This one plays when you proceed west past the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                             FWIE   AAA
- 200 000 HP, 30 000 MP, 1100 ATP   RW     Hom
- 20 000 xp, 53 000 Fol
- You're looking at HP damage only (unless you get blocked), so, once
again, consider using Convert Damage.
- The boss likes to fly up high, where few attacks can reach it. If you
went through the trouble of leveling up Nel's Raikouha, now's a good time
to use it.
- If you can finish the battle with the bonus on, try to keep it, so you
can have Triple Exp on Blair. Blair herself is only Lv65 (lower than the
other bosses around here), so you probably can't get the bonus there.

 [SkipScene175]. Use the teleporter near the second save point.

						\\\ Spiral Tower ||

Items: Trading Card 3, Blackberries		\\\ Level 1 ||

						\\\ Level 2 ||
Bosses: Pseudo Blair, Ruktogias, 3× Chimera Hawks, 2× Death Monsters

- The battlefield on this floor is fairly small (although it's not used
in the Blair fight), so it's very unlikely you can avoid magic attract.
Do try and take advantage of it, then.

 [SkipScene176]. This one plays when you proceed north from the save point.
   |
 [Boss]                            FWIE   AAA
- 100 000 HP, 13 992 MP, 800 ATP   AAAA   Hom
- 150 000 xp, 85 000 Fol
- Like I said, you really want to have Triple Exp here. Even if you
have bonus gauge growth in this battle, you'll likely have to switch
to weaker weapons to be able to fill the gauge without killing her.
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene177]

 [SkipScene178]. Proceed north from the sealed elevator.

- After the scene, you'll need to take care of three boss battles
triggered by examining the strange objects.

 [Boss: Ruktogias] (north)          FWIE
- 280 000 HP, 30 000 MP, 1200 ATP   ARRR
- 70 000 xp, 47 000 Fol
- Watch out for Explosion (only used above 60%). Anyone caught in the
center of the blast will take 15 000 pod. Anyone outside of the center
will take 10 000 or 7500 depending on how close they are. With Blazing
Pendants, you don't have to worry about it.
- Chain Smash has a bit of a delay between the first and second hits
(0,9s), allowing you to sidestep away from it and avoid most of the hits.
- His Dark Eruption is unblockable.
- No BTs

 [Boss: 3× Chimera Hawks] (west)
-  85 000 HP, 28 000 MP, 1100 ATP, A:I
- 60 000 xp, 126 000 Fol
- No BTs
- Blizzard Attack (0,8x, W) and Heat Impact (2,0x, U, F) can really
f*#k you up if all of them are using them at the same time. Blazing
Pendants would really help you out here too. At the very least, use
Anti-Freezing Amulets. Convert Damage is also an option.

 [Boss: 2× Death Monsters] (east)
- 120 000 HP, 30 000 MP, 1100 ATP, A:F
- 40 000 xp, 84 000 Fol
- No BTs

 [AddSkipScene023]. This one plays if you approach the elevator after
                      breaking the seals but before seeing Blair.

 [SkipScene179]. Return to Blair after breaking the seals.

 [SkipScene180]. Approach the elevator.

						\\\ Level 3 ||
Items: Efreet Crystal (Artifact), Efreet Crystal, Blackberries,
 Worn-out Textbook (Unique), Fenrir's Crystal (Artifact),
 Fenrir's Crystal, Perfect Berries, 62 700 Fol, Bunny Shoes

- Ram Guardians have WAH, so watch out for those blocks.
- Use the RoD to change the color of the crystals. If you fail to
change it to the right color within the number of uses indicated on
the crystal, you'll be drawn into a battle and have to try again. If
you reach the right color on the last hit, this will not only allow
you to proceed but also make a treasure chest appear. Make sure you
get the order right. For instance, in the last one, use the RoD on
the *Blue* pedestal first (14 times), *then* hit the red one.
    2 -> Red 1, Blue 1
   10 -> Red 9, Blue 1
    6 -> Red 3, Blue 3
    9 -> Blue 8, Red 1
   16 -> Blue 14, Red 2

						\\\ Level 6 ||
Items: Synthesis Materials, Ripe Berries, Compounding Elixirs,
 Synthesis Materials, Blackberries, Compounding Elixirs,
 Magical Berries, Fire Absorption (Unique)

Item (nc): (1/60 Scale Bunny)			\\\ Level 10 ||
Bosses: Luther, Luther 2
- The final save point. I'm usually around Lv80 at this point.
- I have Mirage fight the Biochimera here solo a bit and then with Sophia
to get their levels to match Nel's. This doesn't actually make much of
a difference. It's more of an OCD thing.
- Either way, the Biochimera is a great source of Fol, so you should
definitely grab a mil or two (or five) while you're still here. I get
the money for the two Tri-Emblems at this point (9 mil).

 [SkipScene181]. This one plays when you approach the gigantic door.
   |
 [SkipScene182]
   |
 [Boss]                              FWIE   AAA
- 200 000 HP,  60 000 MP, 1100 ATP   RRRR   Rgn
- No BTs
   |
 [SkipScene183]
   |
 [Boss]                                       FWIE   AAA
- 400 000 HP, 120 000 MP, 1300 ATP, 150 DFP   RRRR   Rgn
- F*#k my a55, this guy is hard!
- Normal attack: 0,8x, 1-2 hits, knockdown.
- Normal attack (fast, U): 2,0x. 1-4 hits, medium area, knockdown.
- Normal attack (slow, U): 2,0x, Fury dmg, 1-4 hits, long range, kd.
- Normal attack (anti-back)(U): 0,8x HP, 0,05x MP, kd. Effect: Paralysis.
- Laser Beams (spell): ~1350 pod, 5 hits, large area.

- Expansion Force: 1,5x HP, 0,2x MP, ~4 hits, large area, knockdown.
Effect: Confusion.

- Flaming Divide:  1,5x HP, 0,1x MP, ~4 hits, very large area, knockdown.
There's a brief pause after the first two hits, allowing you to potentially
avoid further hits by sidestepping (if caught off guard).

- Perfect Symmetry (U): 1,5x HP, 0,1x MP, ~10 hits max. large area, kd.
Chance of Paralysis. Grants Luther temporary invincibility. Run behind
him to avoid it (or far away). He'll readjust his aim just before
releasing the blast. Instead of moving your characters away from it,
you could also try and have him throw the blast in a direction where it
won't hit anyone. This can be pretty difficult to pull off, though, as
you might not know for certain who he's targeting, and even if you do,
your movement needs to be quick and precise. Audio cues really help.

- Insanity Prelude (U): 2,0x HP, 0,2x MP in both fixed areas (constant:
3 hits per second) and random areas. Grants Luther temporary invincibility.
Chance of Instant Death. Standing on the edge of the field might help
you avoid hits (in the NTSC-versions, the blasts won't hit you there,
but this was changed in the PAL-version). Just don't touch the spikes
(or that thing in the middle). They come out at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11
o'clock. You can move around your characters, and they'll stay where
you leave them even without setting them on Manual (so long as they
have Attack Lv6+). If you have stun bombs, consider using those. You
need to get it in pretty quickly, though. It won't work anymore once
the lighting goes down. A damaging item will interrupt him as well, but
without stun, nothing is stopping him from using it again right away
while you're still in item cooldown.

- Phase 1: everything except FD, PS and IP.
- Phase 2 (<80%): + Flaming Divide & Perfect Symmetry
- Phase 3 (<30%): + Insanity Prelude

- I recommend Triple Kick, Kyoumensatsu, Air Raid, Gravity Bullet, Kaboom,
Goumashou and Raging Helmet (with No Guard, of course).
- He has *very* high force resistance. Even Thunder Flare is largely
ineffective.
- You should have two or three characters on manual. When you attack him,
he's likely to try and interrupt you with a blockable (at least from the
front). Block that with another character to get an opening. Attacking
him from behind after PS is indeed a bit risky due to his unblockable
anti-backstab, but I'd say it's worth trying your luck.
- If you got those refined Medicine Bottles, now's the time to use them.
Otherwise, you'll have to spend both accessory slots on status protection,
since you've got Instant Death to worry about as well.
   |
 [SkipScene184]
   |
 [Ending - 39:25] (length may vary)(can't be skipped)

- After the general ending, the game runs the individual character
endings. If you got one of the pair endings, that character's solo
ending will not be played. In regards to optional characters, you'll
get the endings of the ones who joined you permanently (although Roger
does get a short scene if you never even rescued him).

- After the ending and credits, you can add cleared status to your save
file. This allows you to access the post-game dungeons: the Maze of
Tribulations and the Urssa Cave Temple. After completing MoT, you can
explore new areas in the Sphere.
 × This is *not* a proper save. Any changes in your stats (regarding
 Proficiency, number of battles, number of enemy types killed) or
 inventory will not be saved.




End of file.