Best Time to Grind

[1oldtymer]

If you decide to grind in this game, you have a few choices.
1. There are only 2 dungeon restore points until late in the game when a 3rd is added. But don't bother here.
2. Once you have enough money to feel comfortable buying the teleport item, and you have a stock of restore items, you can easily grind and teleport to an inn when you feel like it. I recommend this approach.

Hold off grinding until you get to the last few dungeons, as they offer much bigger rewards so that the process goes faster than those early dungeon spots. Of course this is true in most Kemco RPGs.

[MSG Commander]

I'll add that up until the last dungeon, there's no real need to grind if you don't want to - but for the hard core gamers who enjoy grinding anyway, I'd follow 1oldtymer.

I haven't done the bonus material so I don't know how much grinding is needed for that.

[1oldtymer]

The best benefit from grinding is to get the passive bonus from tablets, or to master the tablet in hopes of getting merit points. The merit points I think are worth more than the small increase in level. In fact, although I didn't record it, I think the actual increase in attributes from increasing levels is less in this game than in most. You get the biggest bump if you can get to the next "merit" level, and most of the merit points come from weapons and the mastery bonus. However, I didn't really measure all this--just my impression.

[MSG Commander]

I didn't measure either, but it did seem like merit points were hugely important. (Also I did master a number of tomes, and the best place for that is the final area. Just switch players out a lot and you'll get some really cool skills.)

[1oldtymer]

Yes, the final area is the best for the grinding. With the burglar stuff and the assassin shoes I actually mastered every tablet of the 3 main characters. I didn't bother with the others, but in fact none of that is necessary, or even particularly useful, for the few remaining battles. That is my only real complaint about the game: the mastery, additional characters, etc., don't do much, if anything, for the battles (even in the post game). That's ok, but then why spend the time? In particular, as far as I know, there are no inapp purchases for this game, so why provide the opportunity for lots of grinding time if it doesn't result in either purchases or great help in the remainder of the game? [Note: even though I didn't use the extra characters in the post game, out of the 7 battles, 2 require items, 3 are just easy, 1 isn't hard but maybe could be fewer turns, and the big battle doesn't depend on skills. So I doubt I missed anything by not grinding the extras.]

If they had added the additional characters much earlier, then ahhh...yes, that would have been much more interesting. I think they missed a great opportunity. I liked the interplay, the friendly but competitive rivalry, and eventual joining of forces, from a story standpoint. I wish they had tied that in to the play more than they did. Oh well, still a fun game.

[MSG Commander]

Agreed. I really, REALLY like the one time you use all party members. But, having that scene, I expected the same thing to happen in the final boss battle and I was really disappointed when it didn't pan out the way I'd anticipated.

Still, it's an enjoyable game and one I would easily recommend.

[LemmyTheLenny]

I fully agree. The only character I would probably use aside from the main 3 would be the ninja girl for the postgame(Swap out Dau) as the ninja girl comes with her speed to keep up with the use of healing in the Avatar of the Heavens boss if i can splurge all of the merit points into speed.

[1oldtymer]

Yes, that should work. I checked, and she (Rednight, not the other) has enough merit points to max speed. She will still need to improve her armor using the zeradonal ore. Actually, kind of interesting, as you then have a choice:
Kreist, who is speedy and could have the darkness crystal, becomes your hitter, while the other two become healers (which means you still have the Heal All from Lish)
OR
Lish the attacker with her dark skill, and the other 2 healers who go first.

I prefer to have Lish as a healer to have her heal all, but replacing the slow Dau and transferring the attack to speedy Kreist is attractive.

[LemmyTheLenny]

What was the ninja girl's name? I forgot to be honest.. And i never found a need for Rozeim and Ruland and the Golem Mage since the humans i mentioned seem to lack in specialization while the mage is stuck learning from Golem tablets that favor physical attack over magical attack.