The GWJ JRPG Club - Q3 2019 - Tactics Ogre! ["Gaiden" Game]

Fastmav347 wrote:

I must be doing something wrong with my ninja, I'm around level 12 or 13 with him, have double attack/1h katana skill but he doesn't seem to be doing that much more damage, and when someone fights back he's far to squishy. What equipment do you guys run on them?

It's not just weapons alone. I roll double 1-handed katanas, plus I make a point to upgrade both with the crafting system so they're both +1 weapons. Further, I give my attackers the Strength skill (highest level available) to boost their physical damage further. Also, when I first made my Denam a ninja he was many levels behind everyone else for a good number of missions. Until a class catches up, they aren't going to be doing any damage, so that is where you might want to do some grinding.

As a side note, the stat changing skills that (constitution, strength, resistance etc.) make a big difference stat-wise. Putting a Resistance II on a previously fragile frontline unit helped improve their magic survivability quite a bit.

I tend to play games slowly, but I spent like an hour going through, learning about and upgrading equipment for my party and then got into a random fight that took about an hour as well. Great fun, but it's going to take me a while.

One small gripe I have so far is that I don't think you can compare items in the shop to equipped stuff. I find this especially tricky with armor because there are quite a few options and you can equip only two types at a time even though there are four types overall.

There's also quite a bit of intricacy to equipment with particular effectiveness/resistance to slash/pierce/blunt, magic elements and enemy type but it seems hard to optimize that without restarting every battle after you see what enemies are present.

Edit: Just obtained ability to use AI for party members. Do you guys use this? Seems like it could speed things up, at least in fights where there's some margin for error, but I'm be nervous in other fights.

Here's my Ninja:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/5UzmOAU.png)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/JsGqr4P.png)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/o8MW6nz.png)

StrayTanooki wrote:

I tend to play games slowly, but I spent like an hour going through, learning about and upgrading equipment for my party and then got into a random fight that took about an hour as well. Great fun, but it's going to take me a while.

One small gripe I have so far is that I don't think you can compare items in the shop to equipped stuff. I find this especially tricky with armor because there are quite a few options and you can equip only two types at a time even though there are four types overall.

There's also quite a bit of intricacy to equipment with particular effectiveness/resistance to slash/pierce/blunt, magic elements and enemy type but it seems hard to optimize that without restarting every battle after you see what enemies are present.

Edit: Just obtained ability to use AI for party members. Do you guys use this? Seems like it could speed things up, at least in fights where there's some margin for error, but I'm be nervous in other fights.

I definitely wish there was a way to compare what you buy to current equipment. As far as the differences in stats and resistances, I’ve been following a simple rule: I just assume that higher level gear is better than lower level gear, and equip my team with the highest level stuff I have (or can afford). This is working just fine for me. And it seems to be accurate: higher level stuff does tend to have better attack or defense stats, that more than offset the slight differences to other stat bonuses and penalties.

Haven’t used the AI for party members, so I can’t speak to that.

I played a little more last night and this morning. Tried the battle at Qadriga fortress (Ch. 2, Chaos), but the guest wizard went down before I was able to get to him, and I think that’ll prevent me from recruiting him. So I backtracked a little.

I started going through the Warren report, and found an entry (under Tidings, maybe?) about a forested area being opened up for hunting. And wouldn’t you know it, that area’s now on my map! I went inside and it is a little dungeon: each map leads to another map, but if I leave, I have to start from the beginning again.

I’ve been leveling up Denam as a Ninja, and he is now getting closer (at Level 7) to being the contributor he was before. I also learned that you need ingredients to use the Ninjutsu spells. Good to know!

When I saw a Dragoon in one of my battles — a unit I’ve been trying to develop, but that is lagging behind by too much to be useful — I tried recruiting again. Was able to get that Dragoon to switch sides, and here’s where I noticed a quirk: when it joined me during the battle, it kept its level as an enemy, which was level 10. But when I recruited it after the battle, it had dropped to my level for Dragoons, which (that battle) had just jumped from 5 to 7. It came with weapons and armor that it could no longer equip, so those went into my inventory. I guess recruiting can also help with looting good stuff?

It also seemed that it lost skills when I recruited it. When I scoured the unit ahead of time, I think it had the Beast Slayer and Dragon Slayer skills. But after the battle, when it asked to join my army, it only had one of these.

I was reminded in an encounter towards the end of Ch 3 Chaos that it is important who you keep in your party if you want to get all the story tidbits and recruitment opportunities. In this case, two characters who were lovers but became estranged for (reasons) have an emotional reunion:

Ch 3 Chaos spoiler:

Spoiler:

Arycelle and Leonar

Basically, once you recruit a story character, you probably want to deploy them as much as possible for the foreseeable future. Also, there can be opportunities for in-battle conversations during the battle and they are usually triggered as the leader's health drops, say <50%, then <25% etc. So, as tempting as it may be to just waste the leader with a barrage in a single round, it may be preferable to wear them down over multiple rounds and spend time scooping up tarot cards, mopping up the rest etc.

I think I still stand by Chaos being canon for Denam but now I think Law is canon for Vyce. Anyway, it's interesting to compare the two. I'll post more spoiler text sometime.

Also, finally recruited my first dragons, now I have 4. This was probably obvious to most but I didn't realise that each type of dragon needs to be levelled separately, ugh. There's a certain optional recruitment that you need a bunch of dragons for but I'm not sure I'll be using them much other than for that.

LastSurprise wrote:

I played a little more last night and this morning. Tried the battle at Qadriga fortress (Ch. 2, Chaos), but the guest wizard went down before I was able to get to him, and I think that’ll prevent me from recruiting him. So I backtracked a little.

That battle was really tough, silly pin-cushion wizards. Good call though.

Does double attack attacks with weapon one twice or with weapon 1 followed by weapon 2?
Good call on upgrading the weapons a bit that should help, he's finally within a level or two of the main group so I've been making attempts to actually use in battle, but despite having the ingridients for Ninjutsu, most of the spells have been very ineffective, with rarely doing more than 1 damage.

It’s weapon 1 followed by weapon 2. I messed around with Ninjitsu for a while and realised that I was wasting a skill slot (with the Ninjitsu skill) and wasting a turn where I could just be unleashing a devastating 2-hit combo on something. It makes Ninja a bit one note but they are still the best melee character so...

Basically seconding GT Chris. I never found a point where using Ninjitsu was preferred to double stabbing something. That Skill slot is better used to increase attack or defense or dodge or something. Plus, if I really needed a debuff, I either had the mages for it, or I had someone to use one of the tarot cards or something. My ninjas always had one job: double strike, then use Steel Stance to take the edge off physical damage received, since my ninjas always wind up out front where being squishy isn't appreciated.

Mr GT Chris wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:

I played a little more last night and this morning. Tried the battle at Qadriga fortress (Ch. 2, Chaos), but the guest wizard went down before I was able to get to him, and I think that’ll prevent me from recruiting him. So I backtracked a little.

That battle was really tough, silly pin-cushion wizards. Good call though.

Finally got through that battle. It took me two more tries. I didn't really do anything differently between them -- both times, I moved my guys forward to try to force the enemy to focus on me; both times, I sent Canopus to get to the wizard and heal ASAP. The first time, too many focused on the wizard, but the second time, enough focused on my units to make my strategy feasible.

I also finished a run through the Phorampa Wildwood, and really enjoyed it! There was a great battle at the far northern map where everything was undead, including the octopi.

I also tried my hand at upgrading a few weapons, and wow, they are a lot better than the stuff you can buy in shops. The crafting system is a hot mess, and I can think of a lot of small tweaks that the game could have included to make it more tolerable. But still, given the strength of upgraded gear, I think it will be worth it to engage with this.

I have a question for the group. Somewhere (the Warren Report, maybe?), I saw that you might be able to gather items by cutting down trees and bushes, and then exploring the space they used to occupy. I tried this a few times, but never got any visible item drop and did not find anything on the spaces when I tried to move there. Does anyone know if this is worth doing at all?

Also, I know I can sell most of of the oberyth (coins) I gather. I gather the silver ones can be used to scavenge skills from units that die in battle. How many silver do I need to keep on hand for this purpose? One per character that dies? One per skill I want to scavenge? Some other amount? I haven't had characters die permanently yet, so I'm not sure how much I'll actually use this mechanic.

I have found stuff randomly during battles, but never tried cutting down trees. I was doing couple random battles in Chapter 3 to level up my ninja a bit, and during one it was two dragons, two cyclops and a few lizard men, all ranged/casters. The AI effectively kited my melee around, if it wasn't for the archer and the wizard I brought with me, I would have had to withdraw.

So I've cleared Chaos Ch.3, and have jotted down my thoughts on all the happenings.

Spoiler:

So the schemes were flying everywhere in this chapter, and I want to see a flowchart of it sometime.

Vyce is a very interesting character in this route (maybe a cartoon villain?), but I feel like I’m missing something of him here. He was a major player here and involved in a lot of plot happenings, and seemed to be trying to meet with, and betray, just about everyone. He killed the Duke on his own, and tried and failed to kill Lanselot. I can only assume he planned to then kill the Bakram leader after going back to him with the good news that the other major players were out of the way, but the cutscenes always seemed to cut away before anything was discussed on camera.

So I get that Denam fights for the little guy here, and Vyce fights for…..what? Himself? Did he have his own designs on the throne? (and Catiua, well before knowing she was the Princess) He said back in the 1v1 fight that he was jealous of Denam, and was using the Duke and Leanor for his own purposes. Maybe he said more during that fight, but it never lasted long enough for me to see the rest of the conversation.

His death was pitiful (but great).

Looks like I was wrong in my prediction about the Liberation Front. They were not players at all, other than to get Denam’s father out of Heim, and they were promptly blown out. Too bad, they were potentially an interesting side story in this.

LastSurprise wrote:

I have a question for the group. Somewhere (the Warren Report, maybe?), I saw that you might be able to gather items by cutting down trees and bushes, and then exploring the space they used to occupy. I tried this a few times, but never got any visible item drop and did not find anything on the spaces when I tried to move there. Does anyone know if this is worth doing at all?

It's possible that maybe you can get rare drops at some point, but that would be for postgame content anyway. If it's just picking up logs and ore for crafting, you can buy that stuff pretty cheap from any store. And you'll need to buy a lot if you want to upgrade even just the weapons. You had it right about that being a cumbersome process. And the more advanced the weapon, the higher chance that the crafting fails. Save a lot.

Not much progress to report, but some class questions.

My knights are good, just REALLY slow. So far, they've been dragon-killers when nobody else could hit above 1 damage. Both have hammers and access to divine magic and can just pin down big targets until they die. But now that I have 2 ninjas who's dex attacks seem to be able to slice through scales, and a dragoon, I'm starting to find them useless. Any idea what I should transition those knights into?

Which follows onto my next question, I just unlocked Warlock. From my understanding, it's a very small stat increase over wizard, with access to better end-game/post-game schools of magic. Some say it's not worth it to make the transition, but if I'm levelling my knights into a new class, then I may as well do it together.

Thoughts?

As for the Knights, I would keep at least one as a Knight since as the get access to wider ranging Ramparts at higher levels, they remain very good for clogging up an area and letting weaker units stand in and get in hits. That rampart gets WIDE. I never used Dread Knights, so no opinion on them. I can't think of a reason to use Berserkers over Ninjas. And Fighters are too generic to recommend. Honestly, you might just change one over to a Ninja or Archer, since those seem to be the best widely available classes in the game. Having a Valkyrie around isn't a bad idea either, if you're not using one. I mostly just used mine to spam the Swiftness spell, but giving Denam and Canopus more attacks was never a bad thing.

Personally, I just stuck with the wizard, but that had a lot to do with not wanting to grind up another class to usefulness. If you're planning to do postgame content then it's probably worth it to start now, otherwise you can just roll with what you have.

And honestly, by the end of the game my wizards fell behind damage wise compared to my archers and ninjas, and was actually mostly used for eating stray arrows and casting paralyze or petriburst on enemies to slow down a mob. And use his MP and TP reducing spells. Highly recommended for some boss fights.

Warlocks and Wizards have different special abilities and can recruit different enemy types. So I think those are the main things to consider when deciding which one to run with. As is my usual strategy, I’m leveling both.

I tried really hard to make Knight viable for Denam but even with an uber sword that you get later, his damage was unimpressive. So, the main reason to have a Knight is for their superior defense, rampart skill for protecting squishies, and Divine magic, Heal, Innervate and Awaken Stone are all useful.

Later you get access to two other Knight variations, White Knight and Knight Commander, which are a bit better than vanilla Knight.

LastSurprise wrote:
Mr GT Chris wrote:
LastSurprise wrote:

I played a little more last night and this morning. Tried the battle at Qadriga fortress (Ch. 2, Chaos), but the guest wizard went down before I was able to get to him, and I think that’ll prevent me from recruiting him. So I backtracked a little.

That battle was really tough, silly pin-cushion wizards. Good call though.

Finally got through that battle. It took me two more tries. I didn't really do anything differently between them -- both times, I moved my guys forward to try to force the enemy to focus on me; both times, I sent Canopus to get to the wizard and heal ASAP. The first time, too many focused on the wizard, but the second time, enough focused on my units to make my strategy feasible.

I also finished a run through the Phorampa Wildwood, and really enjoyed it! There was a great battle at the far northern map where everything was undead, including the octopi.

I also tried my hand at upgrading a few weapons, and wow, they are a lot better than the stuff you can buy in shops. The crafting system is a hot mess, and I can think of a lot of small tweaks that the game could have included to make it more tolerable. But still, given the strength of upgraded gear, I think it will be worth it to engage with this.

I have a question for the group. Somewhere (the Warren Report, maybe?), I saw that you might be able to gather items by cutting down trees and bushes, and then exploring the space they used to occupy. I tried this a few times, but never got any visible item drop and did not find anything on the spaces when I tried to move there. Does anyone know if this is worth doing at all?

Also, I know I can sell most of of the oberyth (coins) I gather. I gather the silver ones can be used to scavenge skills from units that die in battle. How many silver do I need to keep on hand for this purpose? One per character that dies? One per skill I want to scavenge? Some other amount? I haven't had characters die permanently yet, so I'm not sure how much I'll actually use this mechanic.

I think upgrading is worthwhile, just do it while watching a tv show or something since the base material crafting requires minimal attention and takes up 90% of the time. Not only is the upgraded equipment better in stats than the next tier of vanilla equipment, they often have extremely useful special abilities. An upgraded Siege Bow shackles enemies (makes them immobile) for example.

Never bothered trying to hunt for treasure on the map. I do know that as the enemy levels get higher, the chance of getting a rare material drop gets higher too. However, I can’t get Magical Feathers for the life of me and they’re supposed to be a Griffin drop. I need them to upgrade the Nomad Bracers for my archers.

I never let characters die so no idea about the skill transfer thing! Sounds interesting but I’d probably only do it with a non story character.

Mr GT Chris wrote:

I never let characters die so no idea about the skill transfer thing! Sounds interesting but I’d probably only do it with a non story character.

Yeah, I’d only do it with a non-story character too. But I’m definitely thinking about sacrificing a couple so that I can pass skills on to the story character I use in every fight. Especially after recruiting three more at the end of Ch. 2 (Chaos), I don’t really have space for the non-story characters any more.

In particular, I really want an effective dragoon. I tried to train up one of my random dudes, but he kind of sucked. I think that either Folcurt or Voltare would be better, and I definitely don’t need two knights. But it would help me to be able to pass on the skills I already trained up.

Sundown, I’ve been keeping one fighter, although that might change soon. You’re right, he is generic. But I’ve noticed one nice thing about fighters: they don’t have a whole lot of other skills competing for their skill points. So, I can better afford some of the high-end buff skills with them. My guy hits like a freight train. I definitely use dual archers (Sarah and Arycelle) plus Canopus as a default 3rd. They are just killer.

This morning I wrapped up Chapter 2, and saved the game right at “the choice.” I’m not sure which I’ll pick, but I’m leaning toward sticking with Chaos. Some thoughts below:

Spoiler:

I really liked the buildup near the end with Cistina. Hearing her question her sister really drew some parallels with Denam’s decision at the end of Chapter 1. Just as Ronwey would kill his own to turn Galgastan against its leader, Cistina’s sister Cerya would kill Ronwey for her own advantage, so that no one kingdom could gain too much power. It seems both better and worse. By this point, we aren’t sympathetic toward Ronwey, or inclined to save him. And Cerya doesn’t plan to slay innocents directly. But as Cistina points out, her plan definitely would lead to more suffering.

This made me really consider reuniting with Ronwey and Leonar at the end of Chapter 2, in a way that I never seriously considered carrying out the order to kill innocents at the end of Chapter 1. After all, going back to my old boss could save lives; killing him might leave a vacuum. But Denam’s dialogue doesn’t quite reflect my thought process. If you side with Ronwey and Leonar, Denam says that the Bakram are the true enemy. If you reject Leonar’s offer, Denam takes his sister and leaves, without attacking further — and he aspires for a result other than one founded on scheming, backstabbing, and bloodshed. He sounds a lot like Cistina, even though his actions—walking away from Ronwey—probably will end up benefitting Cistina’s sister.

On fighters, I've kept Denam as a regular fighter, his damage has been pretty average, but he's been very consistent about the damage he does, good and reliable. Him been tough as a knight also helps alot, so I've been able to throw him head first into the enemy and not really worry about him dying in two hits.

I did switch my Enchantress into a Warlock/witch, but slightly regretting that decision, after close to 10 battles she's still pretty much ineffective in terms of damage, and her golem ability has had about 0% chance of success. I've been mainly using her to paralyze big creatures and charm smaller ones.

I'm with LastSuprise on the archers, Sarah and Arycelle been my MVPs along with Canopus.

I’ve made my choice, and am sticking on the path of Chaos.

Spoiler:

As I said above, I really considered rejoining Ronwey at the end of Chapter 2. But Denam’s reaction on the two routes really sealed it for me. Hearing him describe the two sides as just the same — was for the leader’s glory, with no regard for the people — resonated, and I think that the way Denam reacts on this route is a better fit for how I view the character.

I started out the chapter as a fugitive with a bounty on my head, again. It felt a little too much like retreading old ground, considering the first couple chapter 3 maps are the same ones where you encountered Arycelle. But I’m interested to see what happens when I take the fight to Ronwey.

There are a few more mechanical things I want to explore. I definitely want to experiment with character death (for non-story characters) and skill transfer. I tried to expose a character to death during the first couple battles, but I was winning decisively by the time these characters got knocked out and didn’t want to drag out the fight. So I may save that for side dungeons or random encounters.

On the skill screen, I’ve noticed that when viewing which skills can be learned by which classes, some class portraits will have a red X but will not be grayed out. I suspect this means that the class cannot learn the skill, but can use it. For instance, for Tremendous Shot, only the Archer has both a colored portrait and a green O for Tremendous Shot, but almost every other class has a colored portrait and a red X. Similarly, if I’m right, Rampart Aura appears to be usable by a number of other classes. I’ll have to play around with this.

Also, something cool I found: I upgraded some mage robes and found that the upgraded version also boosted the meditation skill! That’s a nice surprise.

I've been playing but I hit a bit of a road block at the start of Ch 4 Chaos regarding the opportunity to recruit a character. As this is the second time playing this game, I've wanted to dig up all the extra content that I missed out the first time including trying to recruit all the available characters. Anyway, if you want your head to spin regarding some of the stuff being calculated behind the scenes, try googling "galgastani chaos frame". You'll probably get mild spoilers about the optional character I referred to above.

That's some interesting stuff about skills being used across classes. I knew that sometimes I had a skill available that I'd learnt with a different class but I always assumed that it was something I could have learnt in the new class.

Another little tibit: if you press select while on the character info screen and highlight their name you'll get a snippet of info about their attitude towards you that reflects their Loyalty rating. If it gets low enough they'll leave.

Ch. 1 here, but I made a couple tries at my next mission (The Arkhaiopolis of Rhime) this morning. A few things about this mission...

Spoiler:

I chose to try to save the woman. It became clear quickly I wasn't going to reach her in time with heals to keep her alive, so I accepted her fate. I was surprised to fail the mission when she was killed.

I tried again, putting all my healers as far forward as I could and rushing them into danger, one nearly getting one-shot by a dragon tail lash. I got one heal on her, but then she ran farther away up the hill and I couldn't do anything. I tried again, but her movement and actions seemed much the same if not exactly the same.

I haven't tried the other dialog option, but that's not really how I wanted to RP this. Canopus is my most mobile. I don't think he can have divine magic, but if there's a way to get him to heal that's about the only other option I can think of to keep her alive with one melee and three high damage ranged units attacking her.

Doesn't feel good that even if I managed it, it would just be luck or the AI taking pity. If everyone just focused her I don't think there's anything I could do.

Game is somehow living up to my expectations so far, which is awesome--but this is an awkward bit.

You're basically right:

Spoiler:

Canopus is your key here. You need to give him the Field Alchemy I skill (50 sp). This allows you to use Mend Leaf +2 which will heal an adjacent unit for 75HP, a good amount at this point in the game and more than a Heal spell. Basically, position him at the front of your group as close as possible to the target. Then rush him forward as you were doing. He's pretty buff on his own so he can take a few hits. And once you manage to get him next to the target, +75HP per round should be enough to keep her up while the rest of the group gets within range. It's not guaranteed, you're still relying on the enemy not getting criticals etc and her dodging one or two attacks early on. But your odds are closer to 50% instead of almost zero.

I definitely agree that this was an unfortunate encounter so early when you're still familiarising yourself with the tactics available to you.

StrayTanooki, I did that battle the way that Mr GT Chris suggests, but I have two others suggestions:

Spoiler:

I didn't realize this until recently, but hawkmen like Canopus can actually belong to a variety of classes. So even though Canopus cannot use the heal spell as a "Vartan" (his default class), you could change him to a cleric and teach him heal. You can change him back, after the battle, as long as you have a "Peregrine" classmark.

Also, there is a ranged weapon called the "Lobber" that lets you use items at a distance. I've had one on my cleric, and he can throw healing items about as far away as he can cast the heal spell. Give it to Canopus for some extra range! I know it can be purchased earlier in the game, but I'm not sure if it's available to you yet.

For what it's worth, I think that mission was one of the trickiest I've faced so far.

And, if you want to RP that mission to commit to saving her, it can benefit you later:

Spoiler:

Cistina can be recruited in Chapter 2, on the Chaos route, if you saved her in Chapter 1.

EDIT: some slight clarifications.

So rather than continuing on to Ch.4 after clearing Chaos chapters 2 and 3, I went back and replayed the end of ch. 2 to see what happens in the other route.

So here's my thoughts on the Neutral route, Ch.3. Spoilers, obviously.

Spoiler:

Neutral route

-First mission is killing Galgastani holdouts (including Hektor, who has the distinction of being in every route) (I’m glad I played Law first to get to know him) who are barely armed. Leonar called it a public execution, and he wasn’t far off. Oof.
-So one of the things I like about both the Neutral and the Law routes is that they have you do clearly ambiguous for the sake of the Duke's greater cause, and it's pretty clear that Denam struggles with this.
-The Neutral route also confirms (through the Duke, for whatever that’s worth) that Vyce fights for himself and to sate his own anger. So that answers my question from Chaos Ch. 3.
-The crazy thing is that the Duke still alive in scheming in this route. And the schemes are working. He baits people into traps with ease. That definitely wasn’t the case in other routes. Although Denam’s read of him as a man who cares little for anything but his own quest for power is definitely more clear here since we get to see him live it out. And he’s very quick to sacrifice his own people. At least the game doesn’t valorize him for it.
-And the inevitable deaths of the Duke and Vyce were done in spectacular fashion here. I get by now that this is going to happen in (almost) all the routes, but if I hadn’t known this was going to happen somehow, the sudden downward spiral would have been shocking. Just think, the Duke’s scheme to capture a Black Knight after luring them into a trap worked, then Denam took the Rhime, and everything was looking up. Then Ozma found out and broke out Blaxephon, then Vyce showed up looking rabid, killed the Duke in a rage, and was immediately cut down. All the best laid plans shattered in the matter of seconds. This is the sort of interpersonal drama and politics that this game does well. Still curious to see what will happen to Leonar the rest of the way.
-Turns out he makes a speech about continuing the fight for the little guy, which still feels wildly disingenuous coming from him. But then he got bumped off unceremoniously by Catiua of all people.
-I think I really liked this chapter up to when Vyce kills the Duke. After that, it just seemed like it went into autopilot to set up ch.4 in the same way the other chapters did.

Now, a couple of things. It may seem like I have been speeding through this game (and I have. I've put about 60 hours into this over the last month, which doesn't happen very often. It helps that it's very easy to pick up and play and just do a mission, or more), but after beating the game the first time, it got a lot less fiddly which saved a lot of time.

What I mean is I wasn't tweaking my characters as much. I never saw new weapons show up in the store, so I wasn't spending time on upgrades either; (I checked some guides and it looks like more weapons should have been available in stores, but I never saw them. Maybe I had to trigger some postgame content first, idk) and I was seldom going back and messing with skills, since they got a lot more expensive and spread out level wise. So for the last couple of weeks I've largely been rolling through story content with an endgame team, which makes things go pretty quickly. I can think of only 4 battles that gave me real trouble, and 3 of them involved keeping an NPC alive that was surrounded by enemies.

That said, I'm now thinking about what my favorite routes where and why. I'll probably post that later.

I can't remember if I mentioned before but the store definitely tops out around level 20. After that you need to get drops from enemies for higher level equipment and scrolls. Ice sword and wyrm armour are ones that I've gotten a bunch of times. What I am missing is the crafting manuals for a bunch of stuff. I have crafting manuals for high level katanas but nothing else which is a bit frustrating.

Lobber?! Damn, I'd been wondering for the longest time how to get that throw item ability.

You just have to equip the slingshot! I figured that I might as well put it on my cleric, when am I ever going to have him bash with a staff?

The various staffs and rods have good attribute bonuses for casters, at least that’s why I never bothered to equip a hammer which would theoretically do a lot more damage. But a slingshot would actually be useful...

True enough on getting drops for weapons. But in the 3 chapters I've played through, I think you can count the number of new weapons I got on two fingers.

I haven't seen drops for the scrolls either, and it would be nice.

Chapter 4! Things are getting interesting, it's a bummer classes take so long to catch up, I have a feeling that there will be a good number that I will have to ignore.