Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2016 11:26 pm
Having played the game for a couple of weeks now I thought I'd share a few tips with everybody. This won't be a complete walkthrough as I really don't have the time or inclination, but it should certainly help people new to the game and hopefully some others as well. I realise other posters have covered some of these topics already, but I thought I'd give my own verion and put them all together in the same thread.
Farming (Experience/Gold/Meteorites)
This can be a pretty unforgiving game at times, I'm used to strolling through this type of game on the Normal setting without the use of recovery items etc but here the regular enemies in the first cave wiped the floor with me when I first entered (I went back and did the first request for the bees and then the cave was much more manageable). The game also seems to ramp the difficulty right up for most bosses, so you can reach a boss without any problem but then get absolutely battered and have to go off and level up before trying again. It's also pretty rare to find a game where gold can be such a problem. However there is an easy solution for all of these problems.
By far the best place to farm gold and XP is the Fairy Garden; the enemies in the various Halls give way more in terms of reward than the regular enemies you encounter throughout the game, probably more than most bosses too. I waited till I reached the recommended level 15 before entering but I'm sure you could enter at a lower level. So long as you can defeat a few enemies there then you'll level up so fast it won't matter.
The Halls are also the best place to farm meteorites, as these are the only drops available from the enemies there (and the bosses too as far as I can tell). I recommend farming 4 Light Swords with the Light Slash skill, so that you can steal with all of your characters. They're available almost from the beginning of the game (if I remember right) so it shouldn't be hard to do. Clean weapons are the best (no stats), but more on that below.
*Note - it's not worth spending too much time stealing in the easier Halls; by the time you reach the Hall of Original Sin the lowest meteorite you can steal is Silver (Large), so I wouldn't bother farming normal and bronze meteorites.
Weapons
This can be divided in to two sections: skills and stats (or enhancing).
Skills
Unlike a lot of other games, the characters in GS don't actually have their own skills, these are determined instead by the choice of weapon. Each weapon has one random skill from a range of different possiblilites, so it's possible to get relatively strong attacks on relatively weak weapons. All characters can use any weapon, so it's easy to switch them from one person to another. Generally it's a good idea to give each character at least one physical and one magical, since some bosses can make themselves resistant to certain types of attacks, and you want a staff/wand to maximise fever continuation rates.
Really it's not up to me to tell you what skills to use, although these two are the ones I used most throughout the game:
Light Slash - As mentioned above, essential skill for stealing from enemies. Very low SP cost.
Shining - Powerful magical attack, particularly at lower levels, also one of the few skills that hits all enemies, not just rows or columns. Capable of wiping out all four enemies in one attack, at least up until the Hall of Original Sin, and can inflict paralysis on regular enemies.
God Breath - Basically a souped-up Shining, which also hits 3 times and can cause Sleep. Easily one-hits all enemies in the game, except bosses.
Don't worry if the skill on your weapon becomes obsolete due to get more powerful one, as you can simply disassemble the weapon and reuse the stats on a new weapon, so just use what you like and find effective. Obviously the best skills tend to be the ones that have "Incredibly" in the description.
When it comes to bosses they seem to be resistant to all status afflciting skills like sleep and paralysis, although poison works and can be extremely effective in the regular story mode. However they are all vulnerable to stat reducers, so I recommend skills that lower def, spd etc. The ones that delay enemy turns can also be extremely effective.
Stats and Enhancing
This is really important, especially if you want to beat the extra bosses in the Fairy Garden, but will make the main story pretty easy on lower difficulty settings. Basically, each weapon can have two different spirits, which e.g. provide bonuses to stats and crit rates etc, restore HP/SP when walking or increase encounter/drop rates. You can also use meteorites to increase a weapons attack by up to +999. As the bonuses you can apply will be much higher than the bonuses already on weapons, it's best to use clean weapons for enhancing (white or blue text if you're unsure).
When you apply a spirit to a weapon the amount of bonus it provides is completely random, equally when disassembling you don't always get the spirits back, so make sure you save before any enhancement or disassembly. The easiest way I've found to get +100% bonuses to strength, HP etc is by buying a load of cheap clean weapons from a shop and using your chosen Spirit on these. Make sure you get around a 30% bonus to be safe (I've done with 27% and think it 25%+ is enough), then disassemble the weapon and the extracted Spirit will be level 2. Then reapply this spirit to another weapon and make sure the bonus is around 60% (again, the lowest I've done is 57%), then when you disassemble you'll have a level 3 Spirit. Simply apply this to the weapon you want to use and you can now get up to 100% (remembering to save before each try until you get the desired values).
Strength and Intelligence are really important, as they add far more to your attack than upgrading weapons with meterorites in my experience. Same with Vitality, which probably makes a bigger difference to your defense than your choice of armour. HP, and particularly SP, is useful at low levels but later it's worth prioritising Speed, Strength, Intelligence and a bit of Vitality too. See below under Characters.
In terms of the other spirits, the Sun and Moon spirits don't seem to level up, they just given a random value when applied, but you shouldn't need more than +30 SP when walking anyway. Since you can heal whenever you need there is no point using the Sun spirit imo, but the Moon spirit is particularly useful for the main story quests. In the Halls I've been levelling up so quickly that you don't need either there in my experience.
As for the other spirits, to be honest I haven't experimented with them so far so unfortunately can't give you much information. If anyone wants to provide this I'll be happy to update this post (I am thinking about switching in a crit rate spirit at some point for metal enemies in the HoOS. EDIT - added a crit, got up to 58% but I'm sure you can get higher).
Characters
I could be wrong, but I reckon Rain and April are best for strength, so I've given them two 100% STR spirits each in their weapons (Soleil and Viola have two 100% INT instead). Other than that they've got 2 HP, 2 SPD, 1 VIT and 1 SP among all their weapons, all obviously at +100%. I'm sure more hardcore player use other combinations but I've been happy with those so far. I've also given them weapons corresponding to their stats, so Rain and April have more physical weapons/skills, while Viola and Soleil have more magical. Soleil is also my healer, but you should probably just play the way that you like. I don't think the differences between character are significant to really matter, at least on the first three difficulty levels.
EDIT - Having reached lvl600+ I'm restatting and taking off one HP spirit from each character and the SP ones. Stats max out at 9999 (or 99,999 for HP), so worth taking that into account when thinking of statting for Enna).
[center]******************[/center]
That's as much as I've got for now, this is a work in progress (although I've beaten everything in the game now so may not post much more). I'll happily add anything that people think I've missed or would be useful; but I hope some of you find it helpful.
Farming (Experience/Gold/Meteorites)
This can be a pretty unforgiving game at times, I'm used to strolling through this type of game on the Normal setting without the use of recovery items etc but here the regular enemies in the first cave wiped the floor with me when I first entered (I went back and did the first request for the bees and then the cave was much more manageable). The game also seems to ramp the difficulty right up for most bosses, so you can reach a boss without any problem but then get absolutely battered and have to go off and level up before trying again. It's also pretty rare to find a game where gold can be such a problem. However there is an easy solution for all of these problems.
By far the best place to farm gold and XP is the Fairy Garden; the enemies in the various Halls give way more in terms of reward than the regular enemies you encounter throughout the game, probably more than most bosses too. I waited till I reached the recommended level 15 before entering but I'm sure you could enter at a lower level. So long as you can defeat a few enemies there then you'll level up so fast it won't matter.
The Halls are also the best place to farm meteorites, as these are the only drops available from the enemies there (and the bosses too as far as I can tell). I recommend farming 4 Light Swords with the Light Slash skill, so that you can steal with all of your characters. They're available almost from the beginning of the game (if I remember right) so it shouldn't be hard to do. Clean weapons are the best (no stats), but more on that below.
*Note - it's not worth spending too much time stealing in the easier Halls; by the time you reach the Hall of Original Sin the lowest meteorite you can steal is Silver (Large), so I wouldn't bother farming normal and bronze meteorites.
Weapons
This can be divided in to two sections: skills and stats (or enhancing).
Skills
Unlike a lot of other games, the characters in GS don't actually have their own skills, these are determined instead by the choice of weapon. Each weapon has one random skill from a range of different possiblilites, so it's possible to get relatively strong attacks on relatively weak weapons. All characters can use any weapon, so it's easy to switch them from one person to another. Generally it's a good idea to give each character at least one physical and one magical, since some bosses can make themselves resistant to certain types of attacks, and you want a staff/wand to maximise fever continuation rates.
Really it's not up to me to tell you what skills to use, although these two are the ones I used most throughout the game:
Light Slash - As mentioned above, essential skill for stealing from enemies. Very low SP cost.
Shining - Powerful magical attack, particularly at lower levels, also one of the few skills that hits all enemies, not just rows or columns. Capable of wiping out all four enemies in one attack, at least up until the Hall of Original Sin, and can inflict paralysis on regular enemies.
God Breath - Basically a souped-up Shining, which also hits 3 times and can cause Sleep. Easily one-hits all enemies in the game, except bosses.
Don't worry if the skill on your weapon becomes obsolete due to get more powerful one, as you can simply disassemble the weapon and reuse the stats on a new weapon, so just use what you like and find effective. Obviously the best skills tend to be the ones that have "Incredibly" in the description.
When it comes to bosses they seem to be resistant to all status afflciting skills like sleep and paralysis, although poison works and can be extremely effective in the regular story mode. However they are all vulnerable to stat reducers, so I recommend skills that lower def, spd etc. The ones that delay enemy turns can also be extremely effective.
Stats and Enhancing
This is really important, especially if you want to beat the extra bosses in the Fairy Garden, but will make the main story pretty easy on lower difficulty settings. Basically, each weapon can have two different spirits, which e.g. provide bonuses to stats and crit rates etc, restore HP/SP when walking or increase encounter/drop rates. You can also use meteorites to increase a weapons attack by up to +999. As the bonuses you can apply will be much higher than the bonuses already on weapons, it's best to use clean weapons for enhancing (white or blue text if you're unsure).
When you apply a spirit to a weapon the amount of bonus it provides is completely random, equally when disassembling you don't always get the spirits back, so make sure you save before any enhancement or disassembly. The easiest way I've found to get +100% bonuses to strength, HP etc is by buying a load of cheap clean weapons from a shop and using your chosen Spirit on these. Make sure you get around a 30% bonus to be safe (I've done with 27% and think it 25%+ is enough), then disassemble the weapon and the extracted Spirit will be level 2. Then reapply this spirit to another weapon and make sure the bonus is around 60% (again, the lowest I've done is 57%), then when you disassemble you'll have a level 3 Spirit. Simply apply this to the weapon you want to use and you can now get up to 100% (remembering to save before each try until you get the desired values).
Strength and Intelligence are really important, as they add far more to your attack than upgrading weapons with meterorites in my experience. Same with Vitality, which probably makes a bigger difference to your defense than your choice of armour. HP, and particularly SP, is useful at low levels but later it's worth prioritising Speed, Strength, Intelligence and a bit of Vitality too. See below under Characters.
In terms of the other spirits, the Sun and Moon spirits don't seem to level up, they just given a random value when applied, but you shouldn't need more than +30 SP when walking anyway. Since you can heal whenever you need there is no point using the Sun spirit imo, but the Moon spirit is particularly useful for the main story quests. In the Halls I've been levelling up so quickly that you don't need either there in my experience.
As for the other spirits, to be honest I haven't experimented with them so far so unfortunately can't give you much information. If anyone wants to provide this I'll be happy to update this post (I am thinking about switching in a crit rate spirit at some point for metal enemies in the HoOS. EDIT - added a crit, got up to 58% but I'm sure you can get higher).
Characters
I could be wrong, but I reckon Rain and April are best for strength, so I've given them two 100% STR spirits each in their weapons (Soleil and Viola have two 100% INT instead). Other than that they've got 2 HP, 2 SPD, 1 VIT and 1 SP among all their weapons, all obviously at +100%. I'm sure more hardcore player use other combinations but I've been happy with those so far. I've also given them weapons corresponding to their stats, so Rain and April have more physical weapons/skills, while Viola and Soleil have more magical. Soleil is also my healer, but you should probably just play the way that you like. I don't think the differences between character are significant to really matter, at least on the first three difficulty levels.
EDIT - Having reached lvl600+ I'm restatting and taking off one HP spirit from each character and the SP ones. Stats max out at 9999 (or 99,999 for HP), so worth taking that into account when thinking of statting for Enna).
[center]******************[/center]
That's as much as I've got for now, this is a work in progress (although I've beaten everything in the game now so may not post much more). I'll happily add anything that people think I've missed or would be useful; but I hope some of you find it helpful.
Does God Breath effect all enemies then? I got a staff with that skill in HoOS but haven't used it yet - I've been using Air Tempest or Absolute with Viola/Soleil and Arc Cutter with Rain. One-hitting rows of enemies with those but if God Breath hits both rows I'll definitely use that instead!
but I know Azyleo used it and recommended it)