Alright, some
SaGa Scarlet Grace questions (I look at the "Tips" section as it updates, but I may have missed if these questions were answered in there):
- What is that blue bar at the bottom of the turn order that slowly fills throughout battle? Is that related to Benisons?
- Does this game have that mechanic where the battles get harder/enemies get stronger if you fight too many battles/grind, like in Romancing SaGa 2/3?
- I haven't done it yet, but should I be training characters with multiple weapons (i.e. swapping weapons around after battles, to glimmer new techs or whatnot)?
- Stats (besides HP and weapon proficiency) seem to only go up via upgrading equipment. Is this correct, or can you grow stats by battling, similar to the Gameboy SaGa games somehow?
- Is there a way to get new formations other than recruiting new characters? I ask because the only new formation I've gotten so far was when I recruited this axe user thief girl (who rocks, btw).
- RE: magic - I have a mage who has leveled up two of his spells, and as I've beaten battles, I've filled the bars more, but the Restoration spell I have won't seem to level up (and the tooltip says I don't have a high enough... something or other to level it, anyway). How do I level up that spell? Keep using it during battle until it levels, or some other way?
Thanks in advance. Sorry about all the questions, but the game is pretty opaque lol
1. Higher blue bar-->Unison attacks do more damage
2. Battle Rank raises somewhat quickly for new encounters, and very slowly for repeating encounters. So, if you want to grind without enemies getting stronger, you can do a repeatable battle over and over. But Battle Rank also affects how high your skill levels go before they plateau and how likely you are to learn new techs/spells and how likely it is a skill will rank up, so trying to keep Battle Rank low won't necessarily make your life easier... If you're struggling, doing some new side quests to have new encounters will make your skills and HP able grow higher and make it easier to learn techs/spells. Grinding a repeatable battle will raise your HP and skills to whatever the current plateau is, and so is probably only the best choice if you want to get a new character up to their HP and skill level plateaus.
3. A character you use over the course of the game will probably either be extremely proficient with one weapon type or pretty good with two. Training Roles by learning techs across weapons is probably best left for New Game+, unless you're using a guide and meta-gaming to aim for some specific Role. Similarly, you probably want to focus on at most 2-3 elements for magic users, and 3 is honestly stretching it a bit. (The elements typically considered best are
tree and water.) You
will want to swap w/in the same weapon type to gain techs. (One-handed swords are one weapon type, but different types of one-handed swords teach different techs.)
4. Correct, stats only go up via equipment. So, pick a speciality based on those initial stats. If an initial skill stat is 0, that means a character has a
permanent deficiency in that skill/element.
5. Formations come from recruitment.
6. If a spell won't level up, you probably need to raise basic proficiency in that element higher. If base proficiency isn't raising, you'll probably need to fight more new battles first (i.e. progress the story, do new sidequests), because Battle Rank is tied to both enemy strength and the current plateau of how high your skills will grow. There's no point in absorbing fluxus into a spell the game says will absolutely not level up, use it for something else. You get more fluxus from more difficult battles, so it could also be that the battle is too easy relative to how much fluxus you need. Ranking up a spell is pretty rare. The highest Rank is 3, which you'll probably only reach for maybe 1 or 2 spells you use extremely often. Basically everything in your standard repertoire will reach Rank 1, eventually. Rank 2 is not as rare as 3, but much rarer than 1. Learning spells is also pretty rare. There aren't very many of them, and generally they all have a unique function that isn't duplicated by other spells.
