1. Weapon Farming
This should have started as early in the game as possible. By using the following trick (and with lots of patience), you can easily get decently strong weapons even before you complete your Normal End.
Felix has a trust gauge skill: Ultimate Pleading, that has a 100% chance to steal rare items from all monsters, which is a godsend for weapon farming. With this skill, almost 70% of the monsters in game guarantee a weapon drop.
The optimal team setup for weapon farming:
-Felix at the frontline, it is not important who her partner is. Make sure her speed is higher than Uriel and Nadia’s.
-Uriel and Nadia in the same team. They will be the magic nukers and will act after Felix steals. Zack’s team doesn’t matter as he is not important in this process (sorry Zack).
BEFORE your Uriel/Nadia reaches Void rank 90:
1.Felix to use her skill Ultimate Pleading as soon as the trust gauge gets refilled to 100%. *Because it takes a while for the trust gauge to be refilled, it is more efficient to use this skill if there are 4 monsters (all of which guarantee a weapon drop).
2.Uriel/Nadia to clear the mobs with AOE Magic/Unison. *Use magic skills with multiple hits to maximise the overkill hit counts, so to slightly speed up the trust gauge refill. You can also equip the Thief Jewel on either Uriel/Nadia to get double drop items.
3.Refill the rest of your trust gauge before stealing again
AS SOON AS your Uriel/Nadia reaches Void rank 90: switch to this method for much quicker farming:
1.Felix steals as usual
2.Uriel/Nadia team to use Unison: Destruction (Mini Big Bang x Dark Matter) *this Unison should at least do a 100 hits in a battle with at least 2 monsters. It will INSTANTLY fill up your trust gauge to 100%. Avoid using this in battles with single monster (unless you are fighting a boss with valuable drops)
3.Profit and rinse and repeat
2. Weapon Effects
The whole point of weapon farming is of course... for their special effects! Weapon effects, weapon upgrading and effects transfer are explained in game and therefore will not be explained here.
Useful weapon effects to look out for:
-Critical rate (must-have for all party members!)
-STR (for Zack and Stella)
-INT (for Stella, Felix, Nadia and Uriel)
-Paralysis (important if you are dealing with strong mobs. May not be effective on some bosses)
-SPD (you will ultimately need this in end game, especially if you are challenging Madaime Curie.)
-% element up (depending on the magic skill you use the most often. Not sure if this has an effect on Unisons though. great if anybody can verify this)
Despite Magic skills and Unisons (which also uses Magic skills) being stupidly OP in this game, Stella still needs some STR because there are some monsters in the Battle Arena that reflect magic (specifically Back-At-You Chicks: Silver cup 3rd round, and Peek-A-Boo: Gold cup 2nd round), and it will be fatal if she blindly magic AOE her way through. She therefore have to kill them with her physical baton skills (e.g The gloves are off!).
3. Best Weapons in Game?
The strongest weapons in game has a base attack of 200 can be easily earned through your Trophies achievements. However in my opinion, the best weapons for Uriel and Nadia are Oblivion Cutter/ Heels (base Attack 180) respectively. Both weapons have a special effect of 1 INT rank up at the start of the round, so equipping both of them with Oblivion weapons will result in 2 INT rank up on their team, which makes their Unisons extremely powerful.
You can either buy the Oblivion Weapons clean from Forgotten Village in Reveria (after you have completed the Normal End) or farm for them - they are pretty commonly dropped at most of the unmarked islands in Asdivine, Archelio and Reveria. Farming at these spots can get you rarer weapon effects at up to 50% which can significantly speed up your weapon crafting.
Oblivion Heels - Heels are IMO one of the harder weapons to farm in this game. You can farm for them specifically at the Oblivion Isles (marked in map) in Reveria. Blitz Demoness drops them.
Oblivion Baton - Batons are also one of the harder to farm weapon in game. They are found commonly dropped by Crossbred Pugworts at the Fluffy Pugworts Isles (marked in map) in Archelio.
Other Oblivion weapons farming spots that are also great for grinding EXP:
a. Metal Isles (marked in map below) Asdivine or Reveria. Easily 300k exp per battle. Make sure you have at least 50% Crit rate on each team before attempting to grind here. Equip Acceleration Jewels if you find the monsters outspeeding you.
b. Fairyland (marked in map below) Asdivine. My personal favourite spot to farm for weapons & ability seeds and grind at same time. Killing Metal fairies can net you bonus 9,999,999 exp and gold. If the fairies are too strong for your team, you may attempt the Steal-And-Run method here (elaborated in the next section). Notable loots: Swords & STR Seeds (Dancing Fairy), Cutters & INT Seed (Springly Fay), Batons & Ability Seeds (Nymph Princess)
UPDATE:
Have just discovered the strongest weapons in game are weapons with base Attack of 400, rewarded by Maidame Curie at the Secret Arena, Forgotten Village.
Get these and upgrade them only if you are a completionist and are intending to defeat Bloody Maidame Curie. Oblivion weapons and achievement weapons are good enough to carry you through 90% of the content, and can even easily deal 100mil damage in the Gazillion Challenge.
Here are what she will reward you once you have defeated her (Thanks Islandi for the info!)
4. The Steal-And-Run Method
If your party is not strong enough and yet still want to farm for rarer weapon effects in advance, I hereby present you the Steal-And-Run Method.
Two Acceleration Jewels are mandatory in this method. You can get them from locked Treasuries: one from Rhuge City and another from Rhuge Castle (Archelio). You get one free Treasury Key somewhat early in game and another one from your Trophies achievement (by completing 10 Sub-Quests).
Here’s how you Steal-And-Run:
-Equip one Accelerate Jewel on Felix/partner and another on Uriel/Nadia. Make sure Felix has higher speed than Uriel and Nadia.
-Enter battle. Felix steals from all monsters.
-When it comes to the next team’s turn, FLEE. You’d get the stolen loots even if you did not kill the monsters.
-Fly/Sail off to somewhere else to refill your trust gauge.
-Rinse and repeat
5. EXP Grinding / Unmarked Areas
Now finally we talk about level grinding. There should not be any need to grind extra levels during your Normal End playthrough as the boss battles are easy enough. However, you can start grinding early once you have gotten the flying Pugwort Asdivine so you can finally explore the unmarked areas inaccessible by foot.
Marked on the maps are some great farming/grinding spots with unique monsters. You may explore the other unmarked isles as some are also great farming spots for Oblivion weapons (only marked one Oblivion Isle because I feel it has better Oblivion Heels drop rate than the others). Unfortunately I have yet to discover a “Safe/Aquarium Area” in this game.
I highly recommend getting the two Accelerate Jewels from the Rhuge treasuries before attempting to grind on any high level areas (especially Fairyland and Metal Isles), as the monsters are likely to outspeed your team. Also, equip Metal+Titan Jewels when grinding to greatly increase your EXP and gold (thanks to @spoilerspree for this tip). Last important thing is to remember to save the game before you land on those unmarked areas! Do that just in case the monsters are too strong for you to handle and you are too far away from your flying pugswort.
That’s all! I hope these are of any help. Let me know if there are any inaccuracies or anything. Enjoy thieving and grinding!