Let's Play Crystal Project: Obviously Crystals are more important than Adventure.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

Hey everyone!

Let's play Crystal Project!

Update Directory

Class Writeup Directory

Released in March of 2022 by the single person dev team of Andrew Willman (aka River Running Games), Crystal Project is effectively a love letter to the classic RPGs of the SNES era, but designed from the ground up to evoke a sense of first-time exploration of a vast and sprawling world full of secrets. Gameplay involves finding different crystals across the land of Sequoia, each of which imparts us with a new class, the abilities of which we'll use to build our four adventurers to handle any fights we come across. The most direct inspirations are FF5 for the combat, of course, and a few things for the overworld: Super Mario RPG style voxel-ish platforming, the huge amount of space and directionless wilderness one might expect of any given open-world title, and a few other things. Point being: this game is huge and it's a delight to explore and I want to show all of you that.

For the first update, I'm going to play through the intro section, Spawning Meadows, with this party to give you a good idea of how things work, but at the end of this post I will follow it up with a class list, since we start with six different classes, and I'd like YOU, the reader, to pick for our four characters a name, gender, and class each. Starting class isn't a huge huge deal, but, well, you'll see in a bit. Gender teeeechnically has some stat changes to it but only extremely barely (male characters get a slight bonus to HP, Spirit, and Luck, female characters get a slight bonus to MP, Speed and Agility, and even then it's hardly enough of one to care about).

Also: I'm considering running this mod and this mod only, for the LP. The long and short of it is that physical classes can, with a few exceptions, only use their attack skills with one or two compatible weapons (so for example, Rogues can only use daggers and rapiers, and even then they prefer daggers). This mod, done by a friend of mine, expands the list for each class to add one other compatible weapon for each class so limited (so Rogues would now be able to use rapiers with all of their skills, and swords with the ones that previously allowed rapiers). It doesn't give any extra proficiencies with those weapons, but it does open up the different classes a LITTLE more to freeform customization. Please tell me whether you want to use this mod or not.

Finally: difficulty selection! I've only ever played this game on Normal and I'm not about to change that up now, but you can tune it more one way or the other. Note that Hard says that "grinding will be necessary", but in my experience the game really gets difficult once you've hit level cap and are playing around with late/postgame, so grinding isn't an option there anyway. Still, it's there if you want it.

We'll start off with some quiet music and this quote, unattributed.

And then we descend from space into the first area of the game, Spawning Meadows.

Hello!

Oh, yeah, the music credits are always displayed bottom left when we encounter a new track. All the media assets for this game, be they spritework, effects, or music, are basically general use packages. Andrew Willman didn't really make anything save for some of the more unique sprites. If you want to listen along, the three main music artists in my experience are Vindsvept, Calbert Warner, and Aaron Krogh.

Nan said:
Well, naturally, you've come to the right place! But you look positively famished. As if you're about to dry up and blow away! I invite you to come pay a visit to our lodge for a big helping of stew. There's nothing like a hearty bowl of stew for an empty stomach!

Don't worry, this isn't a very text-heavy game. Transcriptions won't be much longer than this, and very infrequent. The meat and potatoes of the game is exploration.

Speaking of, Nan heads off after the invitation...

And some directions. The path is basically the fundamental route for getting through Spawning Meadows, which is as barebones and tutorialist as an area gets.

You can follow along with Nan, and we will. We're just gonna...

Take our time a bit first.

Tonics are basic healy items. They go for about 50 HP a pop.

More useful to us is the treasure chest itself, which serves as a handy-dandy stepping stool to get to the upper level. Our jump can clear two blocks of height, but three is out of reach.

Our reward for doing this, at first, is... an inexplicably acquirable woodland creature. Great?

However, we're also able to run alongside the southern wall here to climb yet higher.

Also: sorry for the poor quality. I'm taking screenshots from my own recording of the game with OBS, the quality of which appears to have dipped somewhat. I'll look into fixing that up for the next update, but for the Spawning Meadows we're all just gonna have to deal with a bit of fuzz.

Our reward for climbing up this high is a fun new shield!

Ain't much, but it sure does the job. Appreciate the little guide down there for which party members can equip stuff and by how much they improve over their existing stuff.

I'm not gonna go over super-specific detail and use cases of all the gear we find, but if I happen across any especially exciting gear I will highlight what it's good for. Suffice it for now to say that Spawning Meadows' hardest-to-get treasures are primarily weapon/shield upgrades for the starting crew.

Oh, yeah, you can slightly rotate your view with the left and right bumpers on controller. Ain't know what the inputs are for keyboard, this just feels like a better game to play with a controller, y'know? You can use this like here to get a better look at areas that might hold secrets...

Like this!

Last bit before we actually go down the beaten path, I swear. This squirrel's route is clearly visible in the shot.

Way ahead of ya, Nan.

The blocky platforming isn't the only thing like SMRPG. NPCs are completely valid to use as platforms to reach hidden areas or just to hitch a ride if the situation works.

Even this early, we can use it to get up here a hair earlier than intended!

Tinctures restore MP, 20 per use. For your earlygame casters, that's roughly 3 more shots of whatever spells they've got.

The trees here can be climbed, but some of them might require some tricky triangle jumps to get to. They're possible in this engine, just very difficult.

From here, we can climb all the way over the path that Nan would ordinarily lead us down. We're still gonna walk that path with her, later, after I've had my fun treating the first area like a jungle gym.

Big axe. Axes like this one pack a decent amount of Attack and come in one or two-handed variants (this one being a two-hander) and have some Variance on the damage they deal. More on that once we get in a fight.

Yeah just to really drive it home: in no way are you expected to stick to the "main" route in this game. Almost everything can be sequence broken if you know how, although some parts are trickier than others, and sequence breaking doesn't help if you hit an encounter capable of pasting you before you act.

Suppose we head left from the Tincture box, though.

What

#$&@ said:
You only have two. I'd need to see at least three for you to prove me wrong.

I... see? Okay. Sure. We can catch another black squirrel for you, you very normal person.

But first, more treasure!

Unfortunately, the terrain here is a skosh too high to REALLY start sequence breaking, but this is hardly the roadblock you'd expect. But that's a later thing.

Still may as well show off what our height lets us see a bit, which isn't much.

A new block type or two is barely visible here, but they're far out of reach. Ah well.

First treasure over here is the basic revive item, restoring the target to a meager 1 HP. Unfortunately, we can't use items in battle. Use them specifically for restoring condition after tough fights.

A dagger, hell yeah. Daggers afford the user extra damage when they score a critical hit (henceforth: crit). This makes them a favorite of any Dexterity-focused characters, naturally.

And our last necessary black squirrel.

Okay, back to Nan, I swear.

Grab some cash on the way.

I see? Well, moving on.

Nan said:
Flames are nothing to be afraid of. Gather your courage and approach it.

On-field encounters but not random, you say? Yes please and thank you.

LEZ TUSSUL

So, here is the combat section of the game. Our Rogue, Beb, is up first, which makes sense, against a Slime that will be doing a basic Attack. Our stats on the right, theirs on the left (insofar as we can see them), actions and turn order on the bottom.

We can also see the turn order in more detail at any time. Basically, after every aut, everyone's TT goes down by 1, and when someone's TT hits 0, they can act. We'll explain it more later, but for now, it's a turn system.

We can also see the Slime's stats, as well as our own, at any time. Not just numeric stats either: should they have any passive traits worth noting, like resistances, special behaviours, and the like, we can also see that here.

In any event, the Slime is a complete non-issue. Beb and our Warrior, Rer, can do about this much damage trivially.

Note two things that occurred here. The first is the Slime's healthbar turned from green to pink. Even if we can't see enemy health at first, we can get a basic idea of their damage. An enemy whose healthbar is pink is at 50% or lower health, and if the healthbar is red they're at 20% or lower. My math might be off here but that's about where I remember it being.

Second is that Beb's AP went up. Just like magical characters use MP for their attacks, physical characters will usually use AP, which builds whenever they do a basic Attack, get attacked themselves, or start their turn, each for 6 AP total. The cap for AP is 30. There are exceptions to almost all of the information here, but as a general rule it's what you can rely on.

Anyway Rer manages to score a crit (as seen by the exclamation point) that overkills the hell out of the Slime, winning the day.

THROW YA HANDS UP IN THE AAAIIIRRR

Before...

And after.

XP is the gold one, LXP is the gray one. Both are very important.

Thanks it was really hard.

Way, WAY ahead of you. Now hold still please.

Thanks. (There's stuff up here, but I got distracted and retraced earlier steps so I didn't find any. But still.)

Considering we have to jump at least once to get to this point I'm not especially sure we NEED this info but yes, jump height depends on button hold length.

I'm a good learner.

More juice. We don't need it yet, but hey, it's there.

Had I not been distracted earlier, we could've gotten that shiny thing already. Doh well!

Oh yeah, in case it isn't clear, there's multiple Nans. It's more obvious if you follow the one leading you on the walk instead of immediately pissing off into the trees like we did.

This is getting out of hand! Now there are two of them!

After defeating an enemy at least once, any future encounters with that enemy will display their HP at all times.

Oh, and don't ask what the formula is for successful stealing. I have no actual idea.

Stealing can get you special items from bosses but it's absolutely not required to win the game, and even if you miss a "unique" steal there's a place to get those items later. Stealing is still easier for those, of course, otherwise why even offer the option?

More stats! Bigger stats!

Each class not only applies modifiers to the stats the character has accrued over time, it also uses those same modifiers as stat growths when you gain a level. So Ses the Wizard is going to naturally build up a lot more Mind than Rer, even if she was to later change to Warrior herself. We can mess with this later, but it's the guideline for how stats on level work right now. Similarly, the three initial levels everyone started the game with are all in their initial class, forming their core stats.

I am very glad none of you have any issues about letting me climb on your heads and use them as springboards.

By the way, the lodge is just offscreen to the right. We're not going there yet, of course.

Pouch! These expand how many of the indicated items we can hold. They're nice. They stack, too.

Accessory!

Since nobody has an accessory yet and everyone can equip it, they are all of the opinion that it makes them universally stronger. We are, of course, ignoring their clamoring.

Weirdly true! Lots of secrets in Crystal Project can be found in areas you'd consider extremely familiar once you've gotten into the game proper!

Anyway I've ALMOST found all the secrets in Spawning Meadows. Which is funny because Nan here is only at the halfway point of her personal jog.

You might be wondering if we or the Flames can swim, incidentally.

The answer to both is "not right now". Some Flames can handle water better than others, and right now we can only handle water that's a single block deep.

Anyway, back to this waterfall for a bit.

DO YOU MIND

This fight poses absolutely no threat to us. It's a shame Rer can't drop the Slimes instantly with a crit, but oh well.

Our Cleric, Wew, elects to do a bit of self-care here, letting me show off the costs of his Cure spell. MP is self-explanatory, but the CT, or Cast Time, of their spell effectively adds the total listed to their TT for the spell actually going off. For simplification, any spell that wouldn't resolve instantly is given a Turn marker to indicate how many turns must first pass before it actually casts. See also that Wew's action here is bumped down the turn order at the bottom, indicating that whatever Ses does will go first.

While any such action is queued up, the character in question will have a speech bubble with the ability's icon above them. So Ses will do her basic wand smack, and then...

Wew self-heals for more than enough to deal with his wounds.

Technically I opened this before the fight, but with such a small window of visibility that I decided to wait until after to really review it. Staffs like these are important for healers, since many healing spells, including Cure, scale with Spirit, which staffs offer in abundance. They're always two-handed and have the best Attack score of the caster-focused weapons, although not so much as to invalidate actual physical weapons (usually).

Right, before I forget, let's prove the existence of black squirrels.

We did it!

And that's it.

#$&@ just steps out of the way and refuses to say another word to us, letting us climb into the tree to obtain the reward...

...Great?

Okay. Sure.

Luck, as a stat, is Weird. Very few abilities use it directly, but basically, the higher the user's Luck, the more often the RNG will throw them a bone any time something with random chance would be checked. So if you have a long string of, off the top of my head, missed hits, failed crits, failed steal attempts, failed status effect inflictions, or low Variance hits with things like Axes, a higher Luck score will drastically improve the odds of that not happening on subsequent attempts. In effect, higher Luck actualizes the Gambler's Fallacy more in your favor.

Oh right stew or something.

No point climbing on your head, I can't reach anywhere cool if I do.

New enemy. Wisps are super-basic healer enemies.

Their Cure spell is exactly the same as the Cleric's, right down to the CT.

They have Tinctures, that's nice.

For the sake of being thorough, here's a Fire spell courtesy of Ses. Because the CT isn't significant enough to cost any turns, it goes off instantly. However, that CT still applies to her turn, making her later actions come up slower.

Oh yeah it also does massive huge damage early on, more than enough to obliterate any enemies here or in the next area.

We get not only a level from this fight, but our first LP!

LP is spent to unlock new abilities and passives for your class, which I'll go over in the following posts covering each class. However, I want to draw attention to the LXP for the non-Rogue classes for Beb. See how she's got 10 LXP for the classes of her allies? That's vicarious LXP! Every time you gain LXP for any reason, all of your allies get a tiny bit of that LXP as well for free. It's not gonna make them a master in the class overnight, but it can let them shore up on passives or the like, and for mono-class runs it makes getting a more fleshed out repertoire a lot easier.

We made it to the cabin yaeey

Nan gives us a free Tonic and Tincture as a reward for ~~walking with her~~ checking in on her between amateur rock climbing attempts.

Delende is the next big area, and I'll be ending this update upon entering.

WE ARE LEVEL FIVE, YOU ARE LEVEL FOUR! THIS MEANS YOU ARE INFERIOR TO US!

Yep, plenty of Nans in here. The two on the left and the one in the middle give tutorial advice I've already imparted to you by now.

Nan said:
Aha! Here you go!

It can be good to have a map on hand while exploring. But if you don't have one, don't worry! Sometimes the best adventures are had while exploring blind. And any area you see in a region while you don't have a map will be filled in automatically later when you do get the map.

MAAAAPS

Maps are super super important in Crystal Project. As you can see even from the incomplete area we have mapped below, a map can put a lot of context on the area you're exploring, and as much as we've found extra silly junk here in the Spawning Meadows, A: there's STILL more to find here, and B: this area is small potatoes. This is the baby stage 1-1 "learn the buttons, fresh meat" area. I don't think I can properly impart how huge and sprawling this game is.

But, as Nan said before, sometimes you have to just go in blind. Some areas even hide their maps within behind special challenges, REQUIRING you to navigate them blind at first. It's the spirit of adventure!

Anyway, the remainder of the Nans we'll talk to in here offer goods and services.

There are, effectively, two kinds of shops. A few, like this one here, will require you to bring certain items to craft something, usually with a cash cost (but not in this case). Nan's Secret Recipe is the uncontested champ of MP restoring consumables, but you gotta find the ingredients for it, and they're non-trivial to find.

Nan said:
Help yourself to a warm bowl of stew. Your first bowl is complimentary.

And please feel free to stock up for the journey ahead. As they say: never go adventuring without a plan to fill your stomach.

This Nan sells consumables, albeit not Tonics and Tinctures.

No, her wares are Stew and Cocoa, both very cheap but also very weak in terms of restoration. You CAN fill up on them, but... nah. Cash early on is tight enough without shilling out for consumables I'm likely never gonna use.

Allow me to demonstrate.

The gear sold here is identical to the starting equipment the team has, with the exceptions of the headgear (which I buy for everyone with just enough cash to make it). Technically, I could sell off my starting weapons, but recall that I don't plan to make this team my actual one for the playthrough, and will instead assemble a party based on what you, the posters, think we should do. Besides, resale is like 50% of MSRP or something. It's an RPG, you know this.

Oh boy, a free inn stay!

Nice of them to display the HP and MP everyone has. Inn stays also revive fallen party members, no need to seek out clergymembers for that.

I sleep

Nan said:
Your "Set" Home Point is the place you'll return to after you save and quit. You'll also safely return to your Home Point after you and all your friends die. Death is nothing to be afraid of. Death comes knocking on my door each day. Death loves people my age.

Morbid, but accurate. These wisdom cubes will serve as both save points for playing the game, and restore points should your team bite it in this or that encounter.

Additionally, you can change the class and sub-command of everyone in your party at Home Points, warp to your Home Point if you have a different one set, set up configurations for your team so you can mess with alternate strats as needed, and, of course, save the game. The autosave is pretty generous but you should all know by now not to rely on that alone.

The path to Delende is just up ahead, but we're not quite done here.

First up, climbing on the roof of the lodge.

This particular Nan also gives us another Tonic Pouch and explains their properties, but I beat her to it! Ha ha ha ha!

And a weapon upgrade for Wizards. Wands are one-handed weapons with pitiful Attack scores but plenty of Mind, obviously perfect for anyone hoping to use big pain blaster magic like Wizards.

Anyway, let's climb over this natural archway.

Cool clearing ahead of us, but first...

Hell yeah.

Coming to a secret recipe near you soon!

The clearing houses a telegraph of one of the classes we can find later, as well as a level indication of how late in the game they'll be. Don't get your hopes up for that any time soon.

Still, we may as well make a note of this on our map. We have a nice selection of stamps to work with, and can even stamp areas we haven't mapped yet (although doing so is hard if we're in an unmapped region since our own position is hard to make out).

For the last part of the journey, there aren't any Nans, just signs with more of her aphorisms.

The path is also a lot steeper to climb, but by this point that should be no obstacle for you and it sure as hell isn't one for me.

That's not what any given antagonist of the vast majority of animes has taught me!

I'm kidding, of course. This is all good advice, if perhaps a strange way to start the game.

It's also a good way to encapsulate the flavor of the game. They aren't gonna tell you how to play. They're gonna dump you into a massive world, give you only enough info as you ask for, and then let you do whatever. It's great.

And to start that off, we enter the first real area of the game (with our map of Spawning Meadow fading away as we do), Delende.

Given how this game works, at this point, and the closing of every post, I'm going to put a little checklist of "cool stuff we can do", kinda like Yimothy's LP of Link's Awakening. I'll also allow you, the posters, to give suggestions for what loose ends we explore, and how to build our team. I'll happily state that most every class in the game is viable, if perhaps at different degrees, and more important that using the strongest classes is making sure you can have them function well together. For this post, I'll top it off with the checklist, and then the next six posts will cover the starting classes we can play as! Choose the coolest ones! Also: decide if you wanna see the expanded weapon compatibility mod.

TO DO:

Build the perfect starting team.
Explore Delende.
Find the Summoner class.
- Challenge the Deity of Fire.
Try to find another route out of Spawning Meadows.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

WARRIOR
Master Of Arms

STATS

HP: 8
MP: 2
Strength: 8
Vitality: 8
Dexterity: 3
Agility: 5
Mind: 1
Spirit: 3
Speed: 5
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Swords, Axes, Daggers, Spears
Armor: Shields, Heavy Helmet, Heavy Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Fighter: +2 AP per turn.

The fundamental combat class right out of the gate. Warriors are good at dealing and taking physical hits, controlling threat from enemies so they spare their teammates (and to a lesser degree, themselves) from unneeded pain, and even debuffing enemies on the physical side of things. They also boast unparalleled flexibility with weaponry, as all of their attacks are fully weapon-agnostic and they have a solid repertoire of weapon and armor proficiencies immediately. I really have to stress this point; a lot of classes are pretty much limited to one or two weapons at most in practice, but the Warrior is not. If you can wield it, it's viable. Furthermore, they're an AP dependent class that doesn't go any higher than 9 AP with their costs, making them extremely reliable for their turns. Truly, the Warrior is a solidly reliable brick of a character welcome on any team.

As flexible as Warriors are on the physical side of things, they obviously suffer in terms of magic. You really can't have them be hybrid attackers with their poor Mind and MP, and their Spirit makes even healing an iffy proposition for a secondary moveset (or for taking magic hits, of course). Furthermore, they have pretty low Dexterity for a physical class, so their ability to play with crits is lower than average. But honestly, if you're taking a Warrior, you've already accepted the first weakness and are fine with the other. The only other issue is the complete lack of self-sustain for the class, which is an actual problem given they're usually going to at least try to draw threat for their team. Warriors will demand a lot of attention from your healer whether they're being a tank or going full damage hound.

As is only fitting, Warriors are extremely flexible for changing to pretty much any other physical class they want. Even with the starting roster, they're perfectly happy playing as a Monk, and a Warlock, Cleric or Rogue looking to shore up their survivability and physical kick a bit will definitely consider switching briefly (if perhaps not permanently). As you play, you'll discover loads of other options for physical classes that can fall back on the Warrior's fundamentals while they get their bearings and fit into the roster.

Taunt
Costs: 6 AP
Single Enemy Ability
Threat Formula: 50 + 15 Str
Prereqs: None

While this move does no damage, it does generate threat as though you dealt a hit according to the above formula, making this a good way to tell a single enemy DON'T LOOK AT THEM LOOK AT ME. Obviously has strong synergy with a Rogue, or any damage dealer that trades survivability for more damage, and a base-class Warrior will be more than ready to handle any physical hits aimed their way. Use judiciously against enemies with magic, or armed with any status effects you have no way of handling.

Defender
Costs: 2 AP
Stance Change (does not use the turn)
While active, -25% physical damage dealt and taken.
Prereqs: Taunt, 1 LP

Obviously, this ability is a fundamental tanking stance, built to make physical hits even easier to weather at the cost of wrecking your own damage output. While you CAN circumvent the penalty by using magical abilities... don't do that with a main-class Warrior? A subclassed one, maybe, but not a main-class one. Note that stances stay active until you change out to another stance, end the fight, or are defeated, so always be ready for their drawbacks.

Berserker
Costs: 2 AP
Stance Change (does not use the turn)
While active, +25% physical damage dealt and taken.
Prereqs: Taunt, 1 LP

The offense counterpart to Defender, naturally. Against enemies with no physical attacks (like, say, magic-exclusive enemies) there's absolutely no reason not to rock this as soon as the fight begins. Otherwise, you should wait on this until after the enemies are locked down and you have an opening to cut loose without them hitting you where it hurts. And since it works with any physical damage no matter the formula, it's valuable to all sorts of classes, including Rogues, for starters.

Power Break
Costs: 8 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Str + 0.5 Str
Inflicts Power Down (-35% physical damage dealt) debuff on the target for 2 turns.
Prereqs: Defender, 2 LP

Let's be blunt about this: debuffs and buffs are very strong and have pretty limited accessibility in Crystal Project. A main-class Warrior can use Power Break every turn, and even a sub-classed one will usually have enough uptime on it if they're taking hits. Sure, the damage is no better than a basic attack, but this can turn an area attack that would wipe your party into one you can come back from, no problem. One of your best options in boss fights, and it's pretty good in some lower-stakes formations, too. Plus, if you're in Defender stance, the weaker damage isn't even what you're here for in the first place!

Armor Break
Costs: 8 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Str + 0.5 Str
Inflicts Armor Down (+35% physical damage taken) debuff on the target for 2 turns.
Prereqs: Berserker, 2 LP

Goes without saying that a defense debuff is really nice for setting up for your physical damage dealers to go ham, and the Warrior themselves is highly likely to be one of those damage dealers. With only two turns of uptime, though, the Warrior isn't likely to be able to capitalize on this themselves for more than a single turn, and that's assuming they've the Speed to keep up with the enemy. I wouldn't recommend bothering with this unless you have lots of other physical classes that could use the help on your team.

Bruiser Crush
Costs: 9 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: 1.5 Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + 0.5 Str
-50% damage dealt if you are not the target's top Threat.
Prereqs: Power Break, 2 LP

The four Crushes are the Warrior's closest thing they have to big payout hits. The damage formula is solid, if perhaps not astronomically high, and the different drawbacks they have are sufficient costs to pay in exchange for the lowered AP cost. Bruiser Crush is exactly what it sounds like: once you have the attention of your enemy, you just keep hitting them really hard, relying on your equally strong offense and defense to win the day. Only problem is, if you're pulling threat, you want Defender stance up, which reduces your damage. But if you want to deal damage, Berserker makes that threat even more dangerous. And once you're in a stance, you can only cancel it by changing to a new one. You see the problem, yes?

Paragon Crush
Costs: 9 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: 1.5 Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + 0.5 Str
+50% threat generated.
Self-inflicts Power Down (-35% physical damage dealt) debuff for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Power Break, 3 LP

Got Power Down on the enemy, Defender up, and enough AP to do something about it? Paragon Crush. Consider this the fundamental attack move for a tank-focused Warrior. The damage from the attack will usually be about as solid as a Taunt, and it's not like you'll be hurting for AP. Just alternate between this, then Power Down on the turn where you have the debuff, and then Paragon Crush again. This is the way of the defense-focused Warrior, and it is as reliable as the ground you stand on.

Blitz Crush
Costs: 9 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: 1.5 Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + 0.5 Str
20% recoil damage.
Prereqs: Armor Break, 2 LP

If you took Warrior for the extra options to your existing offenses, or just want to actually be the strong weapons-hitting guy, Blitz Crush is there with the only condition being a meager 20% recoil. Who cares, you have someone healing you anyway, right? The recoil damage from this can kill the user, so if you're hitting something with Blitz Crush where that's a possibility, maybe consider... not doing that? Put up Defender and Power Break and turn off the damage hose for a second you'll be fine.

Battle Crush
Costs: 9 AP
Single Target Weapon Skill
Damage Formula: 1.5 Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + 0.5 Str
-50% threat generated.
Self-inflicts Armor Down (+35% physical damage taken) debuff for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Armor Break, 3 LP

The last of the Crushes is intended for a Warrior that has someone else doing the threat management, someone who is much better suited to taking hits than they are. Which feels like an extremely rare situation, but if you go back and look at Blitz Crush, you'll realize that Battle Crush has a second niche, for an offense-focused Warrior that's at low health and doesn't feel like Blitz Crush is a safe play, but also doesn't want to go full turtle mode with Defender and Power Break. Still, I think I'd personally prefer using Armor Break in that situation anyway. But the option's there.

Equip Sword
Costs: 1 PP
Allows you to equip Swords regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Defender, 2 LP

Weapon proficiencies aren't quite as strong as they're made out to be considering that many classes that aren't Warrior require one or more specific weapons to use their techniques. Still, there are a few classes with skills that can use more than one type of weapon, but which don't have the proficiencies to use them. Or hell, maybe it's earlygame and you just want your Cleric to have a damage option that doesn't cost MP. Swords are the most straightforward damage sticks there are, coming in one or two handed forms, and there's rarely ever a bad time to have one as your weapon of choice, so this is fine. Pretty cheap for a passive, too.

Equip Axe
Costs: 2 PP
Allows you to equip Axes regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Berserker, 2 LP

Axes are about as universally useful as swords are, although they do have Variance to contend with. Basically, every axe can deal damage within a range of +/-50% of the original damage of the attack, with the wielder's Luck stat helping to trend it higher more often. Aside from that, the slightly higher rarity relative to swords, and the slightly higher PP cost, this passive can be used in about the same cases as Equip Sword. Different classes will want to have access to axes but they're good choices all around.

Grudge
Costs: 4 PP
Gain 6 AP when physically damaged.
Prereqs: Bruiser Crush, 4 LP

Warriors on their own don't need the extra AP considering their Fighter innate and the relatively low costs of their moves, but anyone else that uses AP and is expecting to take hits salivates at the prospect of Grudge. Obviously, if you're running a Monk in any serious capacity, Grudge is an excellent thing to build for. I cannot overstate how disgustingly high this income is, especially when physical attacks are in no short supply and you're likely to withstand them easy since you have levels in Warrior.

Adrenaline
Costs: 3 PP
Gain 6 AP at battle start.
Prereqs: Blitz Crush, 3 LP

This one is actually pretty considerable for Warriors, since it lets them immediately go to a stance and then use a Break or Crush on their first turn. Naturally, any other AP-focused class also likes this, especially if they're less okay with building AP the usual ways. Most of those classes would prefer Grudge, but no reason saying you can't run both! ...Well, unless you count using 7 of your 10 PP as a reason. Which is valid.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

MONK
Disciple of the Body

STATS

HP: 10
MP: 1
Strength: 7
Vitality: 5
Dexterity: 2
Agility: 5
Mind: 3
Spirit: 8
Speed: 3
Luck: 3

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: None
Armor: Medium Headgear, Medium Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Aversive: +25% Crit Resist.
Brawler: Attack increases with Strength while unarmed.

It's an FF inspired game with a job system, so here is the job that does the unarmed punches. Obviously, Monks are excellent physical fighters, with the highest HP growth in the game and respectable stats for Strength, Vitality, and Agility. Unusually, they also boast incredibly high Spirit to help with healing or surviving magic, and a few fun, if unusual, ways to provide healing support to allies or themselves. Finally, their attack techniques are notable for being elemental in nature, letting them pivot to hit weaknesses as the situation demands, and allowing them to average the enemy's Defense and Resistance when attacking. They're a very self-sufficient class that's good at staying in the fight and hitting hard no matter what happens.

Compared to Warriors, Monks have a pretty big amount of drawbacks. Aside from HP, they're weaker in most of the stats the classes care about (Strength, Vitality, Speed, Luck) and the stats they ARE stronger in (HP, Mind, Spirit) aren't especially worth writing home about. The inability to equip ANY weapons hurts a lot, but it hurts even more that the only other weapon they can possibly use with their moves are staffs (or spears, with the mod). Not that that's BAD, it's actually pretty good, but lacking the proficiency to even try that means that unless you either put Equip Staff on a main-class monk or go to a class that can equip staffs (or spears) innately AND has strength to work with, you're stuck using unarmed attacks, which obviously can't have any of the cool stats of a rare weapon. And as flashy as the Monk's moveset is, you're gonna need a LOT of AP to use it.

Monk is an attractive class choice to brush up on for physical brawlers and healing casters alike. Clerics, in particular, usually don't mind the Monk's low MP and will happily be able to use their preferred staff, making them extremely strong at both healing and fighting in short order. Meanwhile, Warriors have no issue fighting barehanded with the Brawler passive and their techniques don't need a specific weapon, and that increased Spirit stat gives them a very welcome ability to shrug off magic.

Beat Down
Costs: 12 AP
Single Target Unarmed/Staff(/Spear) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 1.25 Str + Str
50% Variance
Prereqs: None

A button you can push if you want some damage. The Variance and AP cost make this move pretty unattractive, even if the damage itself is pretty good. Still, if you're facing an opponent that resists all your elemental moves and has weaker Defense than Resistance, this is here? I'd rather just save up for Chi Burst honestly, but that's a capstone ability, so until then, you have Beat Down, I guess. And if you want this move for a Luck build speccing for Variance... there's better options. Just do one of those instead.

Meditate
Costs: 2 AP
Self Only Ability
Removes all debuffs.
Prereqs: 1 LP

This one is pretty nice! It's dirt cheap and clearing debuffs is pretty rare, and odds are your healer might not be able to cut through all of them in one go while still keeping you alive. Just take a second to clear your stats and bam, back in business and barely stopped your momentum. Seriously, 2 AP is NOTHING. Only problem is that it can't help you if one of those debuffs prevents you from using this particular move, but there's lots of rude debuffs that don't impede that in the slightest.

First Aid
Costs: 1 AP
Single Target Ability, No Self-Target
Removes one debuff.
Prereqs: Meditate, 1 LP

Much, MUCH weaker than Meditate. If there's only a single debuff preventing your healer from acting, then sure, First Aid is a fast and cheap way to clear it and get them back in business, but the thing about single-debuff clears is you always get the oldest one. If your healer gets a debuff that shuts them down, it's probably not gonna be the oldest one on them. And in the meantime, that's your Monk, your physical brawler, slowly chipping away at a status effect 1 AP and turn at a time... yeah probably just have a real backup plan.

Earth Split
Costs: 14 AP
Multi Target Unarmed/Staff(/Spear) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 1.25 Str + 0.5 Str
Earth Elemental
Targets the average of the enemy's Defense and Resistance stats.
Prereqs: Beat Down, 2 LP

Monk is the only starting class with an AOE physical attack, for certain definitions of "physical". And for what it is, Earth Split's damage is solid, especially for an area attack. At that level, 14 AP is even a totally fine cost for it since you'll be able to launch it as soon as turn 2, or even 1 if you take some hits first. The big problem is that Earth is by far the weakest element in the game, with loads of enemies being completely immune to it. It's nice when it works, excellent even, but simply too unreliable to clear everything you see with.

Chakra
Costs: 8 AP
Self Only Ability
Applies Chakra (30% healing per turn) buff for 3 turns.
Prereqs: First Aid, 2 LP

Tasty, tasty self-sustain. Remember that regen effects like this scale well with both HP and Spirit, two of Monk's strongest stats. So if you want to stay alive longer without demanding your healer's constant attention, this is a great idea... but wait, there's more! Applying a buff/debuff you already have simply takes the higher of the two durations, BUT you can totally have two buffs with near-identical effects but different names at the same time. So you can stack Chakra here with the usual Regen buff available to, among other sources, Warlock, for a ridiculous 45%+ healing per turn. Truly, you love to see it.

Thunder Chop
Costs: 14 AP
Single Target Unarmed/Staff(/Spear) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + 0.75 Str
Thunder Elemental
Never misses.
Targets the average of the enemy's Defense and Resistance stats.
Prereqs: Earth Split, 3 LP

Hell yes. Excellent damage and getting to freely ignore enemy Evasion makes Thunder Chop a favorite tool of any Monk worth their salt. For extra fun, more than a few enemies that stack Evasion to the heavens tend to be weak to Thunder! Consider this the general bread-and-butter payout hit for Monk. Not a lot else to say really, it's just good beefy damage that can't be dodged. Course, against enemies immune to Thunder, it's not gonna work, but by the time that becomes a threat, you'll have other options.

Focus Energy
Self Only Ability
AP Gain Formula: 3 + 0.03 Spi
Applies Focus Energy (Guarantees a crit on the next attack) buff for 1 physical attack.
Prereqs: Chakra, 2 LP

This is the sole reason I can recommend Monk's otherwise-high AP costs. Thunder Chop and Wind Punch both get a LOT stronger with a guaranteed crit backing them, especially when you get to do that every other turn. And that's not even counting the AP spiking you can do to land a Chi Burst. Or if you want, it can also be used with your other skillset to turn moves that really shouldn't get to be free crits into them. This move is grood.

Wind Punch
Costs: 22 AP
Single Target Unarmed/Staff(/Spear) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 1.5 Str + Str
+100% Crit Damage
Wind Elemental
Targets the average of the enemy's Defense and Resistance stats.
Prereqs: Thunder Chop, 3 LP

Remember how I said Focus Energy makes this already good move even better? Yeah, I wasn't kidding. A crit Wind Punch can lop off massive chunks of a boss' healthbar, sometimes even through Wind resistance! Only trouble is that as much damage as Wind Punch can pull, it costs 22 AP, which is way the hell up there for a lot of people and virtually requires both Focus Energy and a Monk that's comfortable with drawing more than their fair share of aggro. Still, as far as your average Monk is concerned, this is their capstone flashy killshot move. We're going to ignore Chi Burst for now because uhhhhhh it's Special.

Revive
Costs: 12 AP
Single Target Ability
Revive Dead Formula: 1
Prereqs: Focus Energy, 3 LP

Like First Aid, Revive exists solely as an option in case your primary healer bites the dust. Unlike First Aid, Revive might actually see practical use since it'll immediately solve the problem. Sure, you still have a 1 health healer who can as like as not be dropped in a single hit, and 12 AP for a not-attack is a tall ask for a Monk, but the option is there, and that's better than nothing.

Chi Burst
Costs: 30 AP
Single Target Ability
Damage Formula: 7 Spi
Prereqs: Focus Energy, Wind Punch, 4 LP

This move demands a full explanation for its ungodly power. The cost of 30 AP is definitely a lot, and most Monks, as mentioned, will be more than content with Wind Punch. HOWEVER, for a healer class that's got a Martial Arts skillset and no real reason to use their AP, Chi Burst is effectively a free shot of killpower when they feel like getting around to it. It's a pure Spirit scalar, so they don't need to use Brawler or a fancy Attack-heavy staff to use it. And best of all, Chi Burst is neither a spell nor a weapon skill, which means that absurd Spirit formula cares not for either Defense or Resistance AND doesn't provoke counters. But, again, 30 AP is a lot! a lot! a lot! and will therefore require either someone doing shenanigans to replenish their AP faster than average (including but not limited to Focus Energy) and no other reliance on AP for whatever their goofy plans are.

Brawler
Costs: 1 PP
Attack increases with Strength while unarmed.
Prereqs: First Aid, 1 LP

This is the only way to really make someone into an unarmed fighter. Someone else (v074, hi!) decided to make this the core of their damage class build, and calculated the scalar for the Atk value to be 1.6 Str. Which makes the basic attack scalar 1.6 Str + 1.6 Str * 0.5 Str + 0.5 Str. That not only keeps up with the weapons of the game pretty adeptly, if you stat your Strength high enough by speccing for it, it can even outclass at-region weapons. Of course, you have to factor in weapon compability for movesets and the cool extra features of extra gear, and that's not a tradeoff I'd personally make, but if you're only in it for big skrong damage, Brawler may be an avenue worth pursuing!

Counter
Costs: 3 PP
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Str + 0.5 Str
Counterattacks any physical damage taken with a single-target weapon skill.
Prereqs: Earth Split, 3 LP

Sure, the damage on it is the same as a regular attack. Who cares. It's still free real estate on any physical fighter pulling threat for their team, which absolutely includes Monk and Warrior at a minimum. I don't think counter chains are in this game, so it's also pretty risk free if you happen to get poked by a cactus. However, any per-attack buffs WILL be consumed by this, which does matter for a Monk using Focus Energy (so, any Monk).

HP Boost
Costs: 4 PP
+20% Max HP.
Prereqs: Focus Energy, 3 LP

Sure, this is good for giving you more HP to survive hits, and absent a specific choice for your build it's hard to say who WOULDN'T want that. But at 4 PP? That's a tall ask. 4 PP can do a lot of very strong things for me, and I'm willing to bet they're stronger than just having more HP. If you ARE interested in this, it's best off in the hands of characters who already have high HP, for obvious reasons.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

ROGUE
Shady Character

STATS

HP: 4
MP: 3
Strength: 2
Vitality: 3
Dexterity: 9
Agility: 6
Mind: 5
Spirit: 2
Speed: 9
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Daggers
Armor: Medium Headgear, Medium Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Pinpoint: +20% Crit Chance.

Probably my favorite of the six starting classes, Rogues are fearsome damage dealers with a hint of disruption that require a lot of support from their team to work, but when they do, the results are inarguable. Sky-high Speed and Dexterity, plus Pinpoint, give them loads of opportunities for big huge crit damage, which their weapon of choice, Daggers, only amplify further. Their moveset allows them to spring out of nowhere for heavy damage, or to skulk in the shadows, avoid notice of enemies, and keep them off-balance long enough for their team to finish the job. And, of course, they're capable of robbing enemies blind and getting the hell out of there in a scary situation. "But Kalir, that's what every game with Rogues offers with them, but the FF style of gameplay doesn't allow for that!" Oh don't you worry, because that's where we now look at their drawbacks.

Putting aside their fairly mediocre stats in most areas and their heavy reliance on daggers and to a lesser degree rapiers, Trickery as a moveset has one massive downside: they only work on enemies that are considering the Rogue to be the lowest Threat. Which stops being the case REAL quick once you nothing personnel them for half their health. Obviously, you can (and should) pair them with other characters capable of generating lots of Threat, whether through abilities like the Warrior's Taunt, raw damage potential, or healing a tank that's taking a beating, but the most important thing is that once a Rogue DOES get some Threat from a target, it's very hard to lose it except by dying. Rogues do have ways of contributing without generating Threat, and they always have the subcommand to fall back on, but without keeping their Threat low, they can't do anything, and their best moves are going to generate some threat one way or another. Honestly, I love this as a way of implementing stealth without going to the old broken fallback of "I'm invisible you cannot see and therefore affect me". But as cool as it is, they do have that as a flaw.

Fortunately, Rogues don't lack for other options, although there aren't many among the initial six classes. They have a respectable Mind score that lets them dabble in Wizard or Warlock pretty easily, both of which are nice choices for when they have too much Threat for Trickery. And, of course, the self-sustain and durability of Warrior or Monk is nothing to turn your nose up at. The big problem is there are few classes that let Rogues do stuff that doesn't involve turning up their Threat anyway. Not to say there's NONE, it's just a very committal class for the greater part of the game.

Steal
Single Enemy Ability
Attempts to steal an item.
Prereqs: None

I'll tell you right out that stealing items in this game is only doable with Rogue or certain daggers, but it's also absolutely not required. Not only are unique stealable items pretty rare, any steals you miss are available later on from a specific shop. So as a means to supplement the party with more frequent consumables, it's nice, and as a way to get certain funny options, it's nice, but hardly a requirement for any given playthrough.

Eye Gouge
Costs: 12 AP
Single Target Dagger(/Rapier) Skill
Damage Formula: 0.5 Atk + Atk * 0.25 Dex + 0.25 Dex
Always misses if you are not the target's bottom Threat.
Inflicts Blind (All physical attacks miss) debuff on the target for 1 turn.
Prereqs: 2 LP

An extremely strong hard counter to any physical attacks coming your way, limited by the high AP cost and, of course, being a Trickery move with the usual problems that implies. Best saved for emergency situations, when an attack that will wipe or otherwise irreversibly screw up your fight is headed your way, or an enemy has a really rude physical counter your team can't handle. Fortunately, the damage is lower than even a basic attack (disregarding that it runs with Dexterity instead of Strength) so it won't generate MUCH Threat, but it will generate some. Note that Eye Gouge, unlike most of the rest of the Trickery attacks, is not compatible with Rapiers by default, or with Swords if you're using the mod.

Backstab
Costs: 10 AP
Single Target Dagger/Rapier(/Sword) Skill
Damage Formula: 50 + 2 Atk + Atk * Dex + Dex
Always misses if you are not the target's bottom Threat.
Prereqs: Steal, 1 LP

The standard issue payout skill for any given Rogue. The damage formula is very, very good, and whether you're using a dagger or a rapier, it's likely to get even more damage from crits. The only problem is that there's no way in hell a spike hit like this leaves the Rogue at the bottom of the threat list. For standard encounters, this can trivially oneshot your average enemy or at least drop them low enough for your team to deal with, but against bosses, this will expose the Rogue far too much for them to help the team unless you take some VERY drastic measures.

Sleep Bomb
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Ability
Inflicts Sleep (skips turn, removed on taking damage, only works once per battle/death) debuff on the target for 2 turns.
Prereqs: Eye Gouge, 2 LP

Sleep is extremely strong, and not many classes can use it. Rogue has probably the most reliable and accessible form of it, 6 AP is basically free. Of course, you will only get one shot of this during a boss fight no matter how many times you use it (except for dealing with auxiliary targets). Notably, this is one of the few Trickery moves that does NOT have the bottom Threat requirement to it! Should go without saying that interrupting a scary turn and buying your entire team two turns of downtime is really really good, although you do have to be careful about damage during that time.

Shadow Cut
Single Target Dagger/Rapier(/Sword) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Dex + 0.5 Dex
Always misses if you are not the target's bottom Threat.
Target cannot counter.
Generates no Threat.
Prereqs: Steal, 1 LP

For all practical intents and purposes, this is the Rogue's basic attack. It's the same damage as a basic attack but uses Dex instead of Str, and instead of generating AP it ignores counterattacks and doesn't generate Threat. It's not very exciting, but it does keep the Rogue primed to go once they have the AP necessary without getting the attention of the targets they want to murder. And hey, ignoring counters is nice. Very nice. Not something that always comes up but it's nice when it does.

Run Away
Costs: 12 AP
Attempts to escape from battle.
Prereqs: Eye Gouge, 2 LP

Handy-dandy utility move for saving your neck against deadly foes or skipping encounters too tiresome to finish, held back by a rather rude AP cost. Note that by default there is no avenue for a player to actually escape fights, they can merely surrender (i.e. instantly lose). Run Away, while not always guaranteed, gives you a way to do that without wrecking your exploration process, and in Crystal Project, keeping your exploration progress is very, very important.

Sneak Attack
Costs: 15 AP
Single Target Dagger/Rapier(/Sword) Skill
Damage Formula: 80 + 1.5 Atk + Atk * Dex + 0.5 Dex
Always misses if you are not the target's bottom Threat.
Target cannot counter.
Generates no Threat.
Prereqs: Shadow Cut, 2 LP

Hey look, it's your answer to Backstab in boss fights if you have no backup plan once you gain Threat! That's it, that's the move. It's a bigger, more expensive Shadow Cut, with all the same use cases as Shadow Cut before it but a better damage formula. Said damage formula pales in comparison to Backstab, of course, and Backstab is cheaper, but for the most part, both attacks do plenty of damage and are worth the AP spent.

Reflex Stance
Costs: 6 AP
Stance Change (does not use the turn)
While active, -50% Defense, and automatically dodge all physical attacks if you are not the attacker's top Threat.
Prereqs: Run Away, 2 LP

Obviously, dancing around Threat levels doesn't help you at all if the enemy's just gonna use area attacks... but that's what Reflex Stance is for. At least, as long as the attacks are physical. Nuke spells still kill the Rogue same as ever. But with Reflex Stance, you can safely avoid area physical attacks provided you're doing your usual thing of laying low and waiting for the perfect chance to strike. In fact, the condition for Reflex Stance is more generous than for the rest of the Trickery techniques! This makes it useful even for characters that aren't strictly playing the Rogue game, like Clerics or Warlocks. Just remember, you can only cancel a stance with another stance or your own death.

Trick Stab
Costs: 12 AP
Single Target Dagger(/Rapier) Skill
Damage Formula: 0.5 Atk + Atk * 0.25 Dex + 0.25 Dex
Always misses if you are not the target's bottom Threat.
Interrupts the target's turn if they are charging an ability.
Prereqs: Sneak Attack, 3 LP

Most enemies that cast spells, and a few that don't, have some cast time to their moves, giving you a small but significant window of time before the spell goes off where they must commit to the bit. Trick Slash is an excellent way of disrupting that incoming spell, making it a kind of antimagic version of Eye Gouge, complete with the low-yet-threatening damage. The comparison isn't 1:1 since there's plenty of spells that go off immediately, and a handful of physical moves with CT, but hey! Who cares? Just stab them in the focus. Again, it's not available if you're using Rapiers by default, or with Swords if using the mod.

Rupture
Costs: 30 AP
Single Target Dagger/Rapier(/Sword) Skill
Damage Formula: 100 + 2 Atk + Atk * Dex + 1.5 Dex
Inflicts Bleed (15% damage per turn) debuff on the target for 9 turns.
Prereqs: Trick Slash, 4 LP

If you are simply unable to keep your Threat down on your Rogue and have already spent Sleep Bomb, all hope is not lost. You still have one ace in the hole, one move that doesn't care about Threat and simply hits with the pure menace of a crime lord dealing with a loose end. It's 30 AP for a reason, but if you're a Rogue that's gotten too much Threat, AP is the least of your concerns. The damage here will make you EARN that top position of that enemy's Threat, assuming they live to tell the tale. Needless to say, if you're still at low Threat, just use Backstab or Sneak Attack like normal, Rupture is far too overkill in that position.

Equip Dagger
Costs: 2 PP
Allows you to equip Daggers regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Backstab, 2 LP

Obviously, anyone hoping to use Trickery as a moveset wants daggers, as does anyone hoping to abuse sky-high crit chance. Unfortunately, more than a few classes that DO want this (including Monk) have movesets wholly incompatible with daggers, and the rest that do tend to have the proficiency anyway. But hey, if you really want to do... I don't know, dagger Cleric? You shouldn't, but you can.

Pocket Sand
Costs: 1 PP
When critically damaged, uses a single target ability that inflicts Blind (All physical attacks miss) debuff on the target for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Sleep Bomb, 1 LP

Cheap tactic with a cheap cost. Against some enemies, a free blind can save you some serious pain. But then, this is an ability that expects a Rogue to get hit AND survive with critical health. A main-class Rogue will use it purely because it costs 1 PP, but its real value comes for tanks that will often find themselves at low HP and will actually have answers to that, not a Rogue. Remember, you automatically generate Threat at the start of your turn if you're significantly damaged!

Backstabber
Costs: 4 PP
+20% physical damage dealt against any target that considers you bottom Threat.
Prereqs: Sneak Attack, 3 LP

For Rogues, this is free real estate. For other classes, it's a little harder of a sell, simply by virtue of most physical damage dealers just naturally building up Threat because they're, y'know, physical damage dealers. It's a little easier if you have the kind of team that could support a Rogue, and it's also not as committal as Trickery moves are since you can still use the move without the damage bonus.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

WIZARD
Student of Apocalypse

STATS

HP: 3
MP: 8
Strength: 3
Vitality: 2
Dexterity: 6
Agility: 4
Mind: 9
Spirit: 5
Speed: 3
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Daggers, Scythes, Wands, Books
Armor: Light Hat, Light Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Element Specialist: +15% Fire and Thunder damage.

Big blasty magic that incinerates entire crowds or massive single foes with aplomb. Yes, it is the Wizard, and they do their job very well. Preferring the elements of Fire and Thunder, they sport some of the most raw power with their attack magic, with a curious specialty for single target damage that other casters tend to lack. They're also surprisingly able to wield magical stances that can be very handy in the hands of a Wizard unafraid of taking hits. To top it all off, they display a pretty versatile weapon selection that nonetheless has its advantages for casting no matter your approach, and in a few instances even supports a hybrid damage playstyle.

Naturally, the biggest weakness of the Wizard is that they take hits very poorly, funny stances or no. The second biggest weakness is the heavy cost of their strongest spells in both MP and cast time, making every single invocation of white-hot energy a serious commitment. And, of course, all that heavy firepower will immediately mark the Wizard as the biggest Threat on the field, so unless you have an ally that can convince the enemies otherwise or somehow protect the Wizard from reprisal, expect to have a dead caster on your hands very, very quickly. And without either a Book as their weapon or someone else giving them MP through one method or another, eventually they will be dried up in boss fights and have to resort to pitiful stickslaps.

Conveniently, Wizards have pretty reasonable Dexterity and can already use Daggers, making Rogue an easy pick for a subclass for them that lets them save MP and avoid attention as the situation calls. They also have enough MP to make them very worthwhile as an option for any character depending on MP for their skills (like Clerics or Warlocks), and their Spirit is functional enough that even a healer can afford to flex to Wizard if they want to experiment with explosionism for a bit.

Fire
Costs: 6 MP, 20 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 50 + 1.7 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Prereqs: None

The basic Fire spell will definitely kill the hell out of basically whatever you aim it at earlygame, although lategame the uncharacteristically heavy CT for the low damage will render it virtually useless. At most, it affords a basic attack that can do actually noticeable damage for a Wizard, but doesn't cost as much as Bolt and checks for Fire rather than Thunder. Again, early on it'll be fine, great even, but later Wizards will opt for heavier spells.

Bolt
Costs: 8 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 50 + 1.8 Mnd
Thunder Elemental
Prereqs: 1 LP

Faster and better damage than Fire at a higher MP cost. Early on, that tradeoff may not be worth it, but as you get to midgame, Bolt provides the most economical output of damage for single targets without immediately blowing a hole in your MP reserves. As far as the elemental difference goes, I wouldn't worry. Fire and Thunder are both more or less equally viable as elements go, and if you want to confirm which is better, you can just look at enemy resists whenever you want.

Firen
Costs: 22 MP, 30 CT
Multi Target Magic
Damage Formula: 50 + 2.7 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Prereqs: Fire, 3 LP

The earliest area magic you can get, and for what it is, it's not bad. Basically just a harder-hitting Fire spell, and as far as Black Magic goes it's definitely the fastest and cheapest multitarget spell. It'll be a reliable encounter-clearer from the moment you get it, but in the earlygame that MP cost will need to be supplemented with consumables outside of fights, because getting caught on empty is never fun.

Bolten
Costs: 18 MP, 20 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 60 + 3.1 Mnd
Thunder Elemental
Prereqs: Bolt, 3 LP

For the same time as you could cast a vanilla Fire, you could spend three times the MP to hit... what, a little under twice as hard? If single target damage is what you're after and MP efficiency isn't a concern for whatever reason, Bolten is the fastest output you've got, if perhaps not the most powerful. If MP efficiency IS a concern, then you probably shouldn't be playing Wizard if I'm being honest? But also: that's what books or Warlocks are for.

Firena
Costs: 42 MP, 40 CT
Multi Target Magic
Damage Formula: 250 + 3.2 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Prereqs: Firen, Bolten, 5 LP

Enemies explode. Massive damage that handily competes with most other sources, spread out across the entire field. Yeah, it's slow and costs a ton of MP, but who cares? This is the spell you cast when you want to kill the hell out of everything you see and can't be bothered to focus on a single one.

Boltena
Costs: 44 MP, 36 CT
Multi Target Magic
Damage Formula: 250 + 3.3 Mnd
Thunder Elemental
Prereqs: Firen, Bolten, 5 LP

See above, really. The differences between Firena and Boltena are so small as to be negligible, and any Wizard hoping to get to the end of the skill tree has to get both. It costs a little more MP, casts slightly faster and does slightly more damage, and it's Thunder element instead of Fire. I can assure you the smoking crater that used to be the enemy encounter will not be able to tell the difference.

Mind Stance
Costs: 8 MP, 10 CT
Magic Stance Change (does not use the turn, but still has to resolve CT first)
While active, physical attacks taken check Resistance instead of Defense.
Prereqs: Firen, 2 LP

Yeah Wizard stances let's go! The CT on the stances is annoying, but if you have access to them, the investment is usually worth the trouble. For mainclass Wizards, Mind Stance is the better of the two, as their Resistance will be loads better than their Defense owing to both their armor of choice and their stat array. Sure, a mainclass Wizard still probably dies to a direct hit lategame, but that extra bit of insurance could mean the difference between life or death!

Storm Stance
Costs: 10 MP, 10 CT
Magic Stance Change (does not use the turn, but still has to resolve CT first)
Damage Formula: 30 + 2.9 Mnd
Thunder Elemental
While active, counterattacks any physical damage taken with a single-target magic, Lightning.
Prereqs: Bolten, 2 LP

In the unlikely event you're playing someone who can take physical hits and has Black Magic as their subcommand and the Mind to make it work, Storm Stance is really good! I should know, I used it in more than one instance to win some fights I had absolutely no business winning in the first place. The Lightning counter costs NO MP, so as long as you can keep the stance up, and as long as you can survive taking physical hits (i.e. you're not a mainclass Wizard), it's free damage that keeps up with Bolten, easy.

Flare
Costs: 52 MP, 62 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 350 + 4.5 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Ignores Resistance.
Prereqs: Firena, Boltena, Mind Stance, 4 LP

Some may argue that this, right here, is the spell that makes Wizard worth taking as a class. I can't say I find fault with that. Flare's damage modifier is exactly as monstrous as its huge costs to MP and CT demand, but on top of that, it also ignores the enemy's Resistance. Flare is the kind of spell that, once it goes off, changes the state of a boss fight then and there. You need to be absolutely sure to keep your Wizard well-protected both before and after casting it, though, because that high amount of CT is a huge investment, and you better believe that hitting with a Flare rockets the caster to the top of the Threat list.

Thunder
Costs: 54 MP, 26 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 350 + 4.3 Mnd
Thunder Elemental
Ignores 50% Resistance.
Prereqs: Firena, Boltena, Storm Stance, 4 LP

Do you really, REALLY want to cast a Flare on the enemy, but they either are immune to Fire for some reason or you just don't have the CT on Flare to do it before the enemy takes an action that could kill your Wizard? Okay, that's cool. Thunder is an option. Not as much Resistance piercing, slightly lower damage, and slightly higher MP costs, but for a single target killmurder spell, it goes pretty dang fast. Ideally you still cast Flare anyway, but we're not always in an ideal world, I completely understand.

Equip Wand
Costs: 2 PP
Allows you to equip Wands regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Fire, 1 LP

Another easily-accessible proficiency, and another valuable one. Wands are one-handed weapons with weak Attack but significant Mind boosts, making them the gold standard for offense casters. Curiously, a lot of offense casters do NOT innately have proficiency with wands, making this a pretty good investment if their base weaponset doesn't cover their needs. For extra fun, this is the only caster-focused weapon that's one-handed, so you can also use a shield with it, proficiencies willing. Obviously, if you're using Black Magic, having the option of a wand is always worthwhile.

Initial Focus
Costs: 3 PP
Self-applies Magic Up (+35% magical damage dealt) buff at the start of combat for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Bolt, 2 LP

Hello yes it is the Encounter Obliterator Passive. If you just want to Firen as soon as you get in a fight and not spend a lot of time actually thinking about it, this is for you. It's a little less useful in boss battles since you only get it for the first turn, and maybe that first turn has to be doing some setup rather than immediately going full throttle, but hey, it's up to you. Certainly not a BAD passive for those, just maybe a little inefficient.

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

CLERIC
Faithful Supporter

STATS

HP: 6
MP: 6
Strength: 4
Vitality: 4
Dexterity: 2
Agility: 3
Mind: 4
Spirit: 10
Speed: 4
Luck: 6

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Staffs, Books
Armor: Light Hat, Light Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Pinch Healer: +20% healing on targets at critical HP.

Yes indeed, here we are, it is the meter refueling class. When it comes to raw power, nobody beats the Cleric for healing. Sporting the highest Spirit in the game and the expansive repertoire of White Magic, plus either a staff for even more Spirit or a book to keep their MP as bottomless as your HP, Clerics know exactly what they are here for and do it well. In the likely event that nobody on your team needs healing, they even have a few offense spells that scale off of that sky-high Spirit score to cause problems for the enemy, as well as a handful of weird ways to mess with Fire damage I guess? Whatever, more tools is never bad. Anyone seriously hoping to make is as a healer is gonna spend a good amount of time as a Cleric.

Now, obviously, their stats aside from Spirit, HP and MP aren't very good, functional at best. That's fine, that's what you expect from a dedicated healer. What IS a drawback they have to contend with is their cast time. All of their spells cost not just MP but time, represented by CT (cast time) on each spell. That could mean your healing spell has some other people acting between when you select it and when it goes off. Which, in turn, is plenty of room for a low-health target to bite the dust, or even for your Cleric to suffer a malady that prevents them from healing, spelling your defeat before you're ready. And Clerics aren't exactly speedsters in the first place. A healthy amount of caution and prediction is necessary to excel as a Cleric.

As mentioned above, when changing classes, Clerics already have excellent Spirit, which is an attractive selling point for many characters (such as Monks and Warlocks). And with decent HP and MP alike, they can frequently change to a more pugnacious class to split the difference between their initial healing focus and the new class' brawling. Hell, early on, the game even has someone recommend throwing White Magic on everyone even if you have no Cleric levels, just so everyone gets a basic heal-the-guy button.

Cure
Costs: 6 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 50 + 1.5 Spi
Prereqs: None

Yep, that sure is a basic healing spell. While it's more than enough to keep teammates healed early on in the game, it slightly falls off in later levels as far as raw power goes. Not to say it's useless, the speed and low MP cost still make it ideal for patchjobs, but generally speaking, later on your Cleric will want to rely on bigger, stronger heal effects where possible. Don't disregard the lower cast time on this though, because that could be the time you need to pull a game-saver on your next turn!

Spark Shine
Costs: 8 MP, 18 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 60 + 1.8 Spi
Prereqs: 1 LP

Yeah Clerics just get a basic attack spell too, why not? Spark Shine scales off of Spirit rather than Mind, so it doesn't require you to also dabble in other caster classes to make it work, but the costs are a bit harsh for what it does. It's also non-elemental, which can matter for casters since most of them prefer this or that element and can get walled by certain enemies, but that doesn't happen to Cleric. Still... if you need your Cleric as an offense caster, why?

Mend
Costs: 6 MP, 8 CT
Single Target Magic
Remove all debuffs.
Prereqs: Cure, 1 LP

Full debuff wipe! That might not sound impressive, but there are precious few classes that have ways to clear debuffs at all, and Cleric is one of the very few of those that can completely clear all debuffs from any ally. And let me tell you, there are plenty of enemies that will stack debuffs to the heavens if given free reign to do so. Having the ability to just no-sell that for a tiny cost of MP and CT is immensely strong and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Curen
Costs: 14 MP, 16 CT
Single Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 150 + 2 Spi
Prereqs: Cure, 3 LP

Your single target spike heal. The costs aren't that much higher than for a basic Cure, but they are higher nonetheless, and as anyone who plays a CT-using class will tell you, every one of those points counts. If you're gonna heal someone with this, make sure your team is okay where they are for a while after that heal. Best used, of course, on a tank class that can take a few hits, to stretch that extra strength healing you graciously provided them with.

Spotlight
Costs: 15 MP, 2 CT
Single Target Magic
Inflicts Spotlight (+35% Fire damage taken) debuff on the target for 2 turns.
Prereqs: Spark Shine, 3 LP

This probably looks like a really situational buff on its own, and you'd be right. Out of the starting classes, only Wizards and Warlocks have any access to Fire damage, and even then this has the same modifier as Resist Down, a much more commonly applicable and usable debuff. But remember, debuffs of different kinds can stack where the same one just refreshes its duration. Combine this with Resist Down from another source, and suddenly your Wizard's damage with their big lethal fire magic becomes WAY scarier. That said... 15 MP is a lot for something so situational. You'll know if you need it, I guess.

Raise
Costs: 16 MP, 16 CT
Single Target Magic
Revive Dead Formula: 60 + Spi
Prereqs: Mend, 2 LP

It's a resurrect spell! Yes, this is a vital component of any healer's toolkit. Relative to other characters with the same, Raise takes a little more time than the usual method, but makes up for it by also having about the same strength of healing as your Cure spell, give or take. Lots of revive abilities will leave the target in critical condition anyway, and this one... well, they're not gonna be up to full health immediately, but they'll usually survive a glancing blow.

Return
Costs: 42 MP, 34 CT
Single Target Magic
Revive Dead Formula: 150 + 2.5 Spi
Prereqs: Raise, Curen, 5 LP

Want a resurrect spell that also makes damn sure the target stays alive afterwards? Look no further than Return. This spell, while extremely expensive and requiring a good chunk of time to cast, also heals the target for MORE than Curen, virtually ensuring they'll stay on their feet once it goes off. It's expensive as hell, and odds are that if you need to cast it, your Cleric is probably exposed directly to danger for the duration, so make sure the enemy is off-balance long enough for it to go off.

Blackout
Costs: 20 MP, 16 CT
Everything Target Magic
Applies Blackout (Immune to Fire damage) buff for 3 turns.
Prereqs: Spotlight, Inner Warmth, 3 LP

Don't have any Fire damage specialists to take advantage of Spotlight with? Cool, have a spell that turns off fire damage COMPLETELY. Flat immunity abilities are super, SUPER rare, and there is an especially troublesome set of Fire abilities you might encounter lategame that make this spell a very worthwhile tool to pick up. Do note that the cast time may make this a bit too slow to interrupt a Fire spell already in progress. Oh, and of course, don't use this if your damage dealers need Fire damage to function. Of course.

Curena
Costs: 28 MP, 24 CT
Multi Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 150 + 2 Spi
Prereqs: Curen, 4 LP

It's Curen but it's also multitarget! It's a multitargeting heal spell! You're playing an RPG! There are absolutely some players who will immediately shotgun towards this spell and damn the consequences, and I can't say I blame a single one of them. Hell, the costs aren't even that bad considering you're healing your whole team with it. Do you know how many classes actually have strong area healing like this? Not many, it turns out! This is probably the best straightforward "I want my team at max HP" move there is. (It has competition later, but none are so direct as this.)

Star Flare
Costs: 56 MP, 42 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 350 + 6 Spi
Prereqs: Spotlight, 5 LP

If you really do have to cast this, you need to bank that against all the healing that could accomplish. Seriously, casting Star Flare to obliterate something off the face of the earth (and it will do this to anything that's not a boss) is as expensive as TWO Curenas. Internalize this. Every time you cast Star Flare in a fight, say to yourself "I will be able to heal my party two fewer times this fight". I know, I'm the one who made the HEALIGN meme and I stand by it, but Star Flare's costs are very, VERY high, and 42 CT is a long, LONG time to not have a healer able to act.

Equip Staff
Costs: 1 PP
Allows you to equip Staffs regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Spark Shine, 1 LP

Cheapest proficiency passive in the game, and a pretty valuable one. Staffs are two-handed weapons that trend towards high Spirit bonuses, making them valuable to any healer, and Monks have a special interest in it for being compatible with their Martial Arts. Anyone using White Magic will want a staff as their weapon to back it up, and honestly, if you master Cleric, this one is easy enough to access that your team can probably universally grab it through vicarious LP alone.

Inner Warmth
Costs: 1 PP
Receive 10% of any healing applied.
Prereqs: Equip Staff, 2 LP

A very nice passive even on the face of it for letting your healers keep themselves alive even as they keep the team alive. The trick is that this works regardless of the TYPE of healing you're providing. If you're somehow healing a buddy's MP or AP, that still counts here! Obviously, HP healing is the most relevant stat we're looking at here, but hey! Who wouldn't like to refund their own MP as a Cleric, or anyone using White Magic really?

Kalir · Apr 12, 2024

WARLOCK
Inveterate Dabbler

STATS

HP: 4
MP: 4
Strength: 5
Vitality: 5
Dexterity: 4
Agility: 6
Mind: 6
Spirit: 6
Speed: 5
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Daggers, Rapiers, Staffs, Wands
Armor: Shields, Heavy Helmet, Heavy Armor, Light Hat, Light Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Chaincaster: -16 MP cost for Doublecast.

Why commit to any one playstyle right out of the gate? Fie on that! Warlocks don't bother with sticking to any one playstyle, that's for sure. With a highly varied set of proficiencies, no real bad stats, and Mixed Magic capable of fulfilling multiple roles at once in any given fight, the name of the game for the Warlock is flexibility. Further playing into that is their spells taking absolutely no cast time to pull off: if you cast a Warlock spell, it happens immediately! Hell, the abilities they can get have very few prereqs between them, allowing you to build your Warlock with a focus on what matters most for them, be it healing, magic damage, or support buffs!

The downside, of course, is that Warlocks sacrifice the power one gets from specialization in a single field. Sure, they have no bad stats, but they also have no good stats. Their spells can cast instantly, but the power of those spells can only keep up with the fundamental spells of dedicated casters. And all of those weapon and armor proficiencies are nice, but Warlocks have no techniques that can really put the physical weapons to use, and there are precious few staffs or wands that fit the playstyle they hope for. Not to say that Warlocks are bad, or that they're not viable outside of earlygame, but in practice, you'll probably either use them as a flex class for when a physical character absolutely NEEDS something to do with their MP, or as a less committal option for a caster that's low on MP and quick on resolution.

That's the nice thing about Warlock, though. It's hard to think of a character that wouldn't want to invest in the class for one reason or another. Casters, as mentioned, like having the cheap fast options that can branch to other specialties, to say nothing of MP efficiency for their other spells. Physical characters appreciate having a good use for their MP without sacrificing the combat skill they've built up. And with stats as broadly generic as those, it's not like committing to Warlock for an extended period of time can really ruin your build, y'know?

Heal
Costs: 5 MP
Single Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 40 + 1.4 Spi
Prereqs: None

Warlock has an actual niche as a lategame healer for the sheer speed of their healing spells. Is a single Heal going to keep someone alive? Not in a vacuum, no, but it's fast and cheap, and that's what matters. If supported by classes with enough self-sustain or backup methods of healing, Heal does what it needs to do just fine. But seriously, the low impact of the spell does bear mention, and this is, for... let's be real, for worse, Mixed Magic's strongest immediate heal.

Scan
Costs: 2 MP
Single Target Magic
Reveals the target's HP.
Prereqs: 1 LP

Ordinarily, you can't see an enemy's HP total until you've defeated them before. You only get vague color indicators: their healthbar is green until they get to 50% HP, then it goes pink until it hits 20% or so, then it goes red. Scan removes all the guesswork, and that's certainly a nice convenience... but it's just that, a convenience. If that's worth your Warlock's turn, then go for it, 2 MP doesn't matter to them.

Protect
Costs: 10 MP
Single Target Magic
Applies Armor Up (-35% physical damage taken) buff to the target for 4 turns.
Prereqs: 2 LP

While Warlock's damage and healing capabilities suffer from their stats, they ARE exceptionally strong buffing characters, albeit limited to single-target buffs. Protect, obviously, works great on a tank drawing Threat from the entire enemy team... provided they're sticking to physical moves. Early on, they probably are. Later on, though, when area attacks start becoming more common, maintaining Protect on everyone will be a fulltime job the Warlock will be hard-pressed to keep up with.

Blaze
Costs: 5 MP
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 60 + 1.4 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Inflicts Burn (15% damage per turn) debuff on the target for 3 turns.
Prereqs: 1 LP

Nine times out of ten, if your Warlock wants to cast an offensive spell, Blaze is it. The damage is mediocre, perfectly fitting for the cost and lack of CT. The actual draw is the Burn. Of the three damage-over-time effects, Burn is the rarest for most characters, and it doesn't take much effort for a Warlock to just throw this out every so often. Note that Burn damage does NOT count as Fire elemental, so you can get away with tagging the damage on someone even if the Blaze spell itself doesn't hurt that much.

Remedy
Costs: 5 MP
Single Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 20 + 1.2 Spi
Removes one debuff.
Prereqs: Heal, 1 LP

In exchange for healing for even less than Heal, Remedy also comes with some free debuff clearing, which is, again, rare enough to bear mention as pretty important. A single debuff clear won't usually do much if a target's got more than one though, since debuff-clear effects always pick the oldest. But hey, again, fast and cheap. If that's what it takes for a debuff clear with a little extra healing on top, that's worth it for sure.

Regen
Costs: 12 MP
Single Target Magic
Applies Regen (+15% healing per turn) buff to the target for 4 turns.
Prereqs: Scan, 2 LP

If you're serious about keeping a single target healed for a long amount of time as a Warlock, it's not Heal or even Remedy you need to focus on first, it's Regen. Combining that with a tank's own self-sustain methods and some supplementary Heal/Protect/Shell of your own ought to be enough to keep them safe. Mind your MP though if you're doing this as a mainclass Warlock, because your spells are low-cost for a few reasons, and your weak MP stat is one of them.

Shell
Costs: 10 MP
Single Target Magic
Applies Resist Up (-35% magical damage taken) buff to the target for 4 turns.
Prereqs: Protect, 2 LP

Wow! That sure is a magical variation on Protect that costs pretty much the same! Of course, it doesn't exist in a vacuum. With the starting six classes, this is the only method you have of reducing magic damage heading your way. With physical damage, Warriors can throw Power Down on a foe and use Defender to keep themselves alive, and even otherwise-squishy Rogues and Wizards have methods of handling physical hits. This is the earliest antimagic defense you have. Later on, of course, other methods exist, and later on is where magic starts to get scarier, but do keep that in mind.

Douse
Costs: 6 MP
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 60 + 1.45 Mnd
Water Elemental
Self-applies Magic Up (+35% magical damage dealt) buff for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Blaze, 1 LP

The damage difference between Warlock's attack spells is so negligible as to be useless, so the spells must be rated solely on their elements (which largely don't matter) and auxiliary effects. And while boosting further magic for the next turn is definitely nice... it hardly stands out as make-or-break for a mainclass Warlock. As a cheeky setup option for a more dedicated damage caster, Douse has a little more utility going for it.

Life
Costs: 14 MP
Single Target Magic
Revive Dead Formula: 50 + 0.8 Spi
Prereqs: Remedy, 2 LP

Again, pretty much every healer worth mentioning needs a revive spell of some kind, and Life again has the hallmark of usefulness that Mixed Magic affords in that it casts instantly, and is (slightly) cheaper than comparable options. That cost, unfortunately, gets passed on to the patient, who will struggle to stay alive for long left in the kind of condition the Life spell will leave them in.

Refresh
Costs: 12 MP
Single Target Magic
Applies Refresh (6 MP healing per turn) buff to the target for 4 turns.
Prereqs: Regen, 3 LP

Warlock is also the only class of the starting six that can restore MP to anyone midfight, albeit slowly and inefficiently. Used on themselves, they're effectively spending 12 MP now to gain 12 MP later down the line, which is a lot of thumb-twiddling I could do without, but does more or less make their direct spells free for four turns. On another caster... 24 MP over four turns, huh? Do you have any idea how much one of their spells actually costs? Early game, sure, Refresh can keep pace with Cure or Bolt or whatever, but once the higher-tier stuff starts coming out, Refresh is a bandage on a severed artery.

Dispel
Costs: 22 MP
Single Target Magic
Removes one buff and one debuff.
Prereqs: Shell, 4 LP

Canceling enemy buffs is such an extremely rare capability, most people think of the Warlock as the only class to do so. They're not, there's one other class, but by the time you get to them, you'll already be used to Dispel and its ability to turn otherwise-scary encounters much more reasonable. Enemies have some VERY rude buffs they can pull off, and Dispel is, for most of the game, the only way you're clearing them. The high cost for it is easily weighed out by the rest of the Mixed Magic spells being so cheap.

Frost
Costs: 7 MP
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 60 + 1.5 Mnd
Ice Elemental
Inflicts Resist Down (+35% magical damage taken) debuff on the target for 1 turn.
Prereqs: Douse, 1 LP

How, exactly, are your allies meant to capitalize on a single-turn resist debuff? At most, you can get this in before a spell that an ally has already queued up is set to go off, in which case yes, Frost is pretty handy. But the Warlock can't make use of the debuff themselves because whatever they hit will absolutely take their next turn before the Warlock does, and without timing it with your other casters, their CT will mean the debuff wears off long before the spell fires off. But hey, at least that damage bonus is being used by real casters instead of a Warlock, haha right?

Doublecast
Costs: 24 MP
Immediately cast two Mixed Magic spells back-to-back.
Prereqs: Dispel, Frost, 4 LP

This spell single-handedly makes a lot of the spells we've spent this entire post dunking on into legendarily good spells. And since a mainclass Warlock only has to spend 8 MP to Doublecast, they're even more able to flex around. Some examples: combining Life with Heal to actually do efficient revives on a single target and get them back in fighting shape immediately. Stacking Protect, Shell, or Regen on your tank to ensure survivability. Chaining Frost and Blaze together to set up magic damage for your team while putting in some chip damage yourself. Or hell, just cast one spell that's good in your situation twice! Who am I to stop you? You're a Warlock with Doublecast, you can do ANYTHING

Regenerator
Costs: 3 PP
Self-applies Regen (+15% healing per turn) buff at the start of combat for 6 turns.
Prereqs: Life, 3 LP

Yeah I wasn't kidding when I said Warlock was worth investing in for physical characters! Not only do plenty of tanks have enough Spirit to get some use out of the Warlock's healing spells, starting every fight with a healthy dose of regen is incredibly handy for keeping the pressure off of your healers between fights. And 6 turns is enough that it's even worth using in boss fights.

Refresher
Costs: 4 PP
Self-applies Refresh (6 MP healing per turn) buff at the start of combat for 6 turns.
Prereqs: Refresh, 3 LP

Again, if you just want some efficiency to carry you through basic encounters, Refresher is fine. But I see so many people treat this like the holy grail of passives when in actuality... at most you're getting 36 MP back in a single encounter. And if you're getting 36 back, you're in a boss fight, which means you're spending a hell of a lot more than 36 MP. It's fine, and its pretty strong early on. But if you want real MP efficiency, just go equip a book already.

Mogri · Apr 12, 2024

Male Warrior named GUTS

and, uh, Korra the Monk

Torzelbaum · Apr 12, 2024

3Ws and a C:
Male Warrior - Ragnar
Male Wizard - Brey
Female Warlock - Maya
Female Cleric - Meena

Kalir said:
Please tell me whether you want to use this mod or not.

Yes, use the mod.

Asema · Apr 14, 2024

I’m the one who made the mod. Please forgive the typo!

Seconding GUTS. Also, male Wizard named Werdna please.

JBear · Apr 15, 2024

Male Warrior named Stark
Male Cleric named Sein
Female Wizard named Frieren
Female Warlock named Fern

(Those last two should probably be switched but I enjoy the idea of Frieren casting Firen too much.)

Kalir said:
Note that Hard says that "grinding will be necessary", but in my experience the game really gets difficult once you've hit level cap and are playing around with late/postgame, so grinding isn't an option there anyway.

I 100%-ed this on Hard and I definitely never did a lick of grinding. There are so many place to go and things to do that you can always just fuck off elsewhere indefinitely if you hit a wall.

Mogri · Apr 15, 2024

I'm not even sure what grinding would look like in Crystal Project if you're not explicitly doing a speedrun or other self-imposed challenge. I guess you can grind mushrooms for AP, but I don't think there's an XP pinata in the game, and there's certainly no incentive to level up past what you get from standard encounters.

Kalir · Apr 17, 2024

Okay, going for a party of Warrior-m, Wizard-m, Warlock-f, and Cleric-f to start, borrowing names from everyone's posts. Naturally, all of that will change as we play, but for starters, that'll do.

I'll also be using the expanded weapon selection mod, which won't affect the starting party in the slightest but should free up some class combos down the road.

JBear · Apr 17, 2024

Broadly speaking, I don't recall finding the weapon selection overly limiting except in the specific case of my Dex character, where it really grated at times. I recall Fencer and whatever the Archer class is called were especially frustrating, I think, but my memory is, as always, a bit dim.

Mogri · Apr 17, 2024

Yes, but once you play with the mod and realize your Assassin actually has weapon options, it's hard to go back.

Kalir · Apr 19, 2024

Here's our party! GUTS the Warrior, Werdna the Wizard, Frieren the Warlock, and Meena the Cleric, all set to do an adventure! I'll cover how each of their roles is going to work out for now.

GUTS is in an awkward spot, as he is not only our most tank-like character, he's also our sole physical damage dealer for now. As such, while his skillset is going to lean more towards the defensive branch with Power Break, he's still going to grab both stances to flex, and he's using the Cleaver and Squirrel Dung since those afford the best damage potential right now. Such a build can trivially oneshot the small-fries of Spawning Meadows, and won't have any trouble even into Delende.
Werdna's first two goals are Firen, for the big area blasty damage, and Initial Focus, to make that viable as a first move for your average encounter. Having the option to immediately Mahalito everything on the field is a privilege only Wizards can get early on, and it's one I intend to make the most of. The costs can be paid out of combat with consumables. I'm also considering flexing him to Rogue later, since he's got the Dexterity to work it and having a backup physical attacker would be really nice.
Frieren's gunning for Doublecast first and foremost. She can't compete with Werdna on magic offense and can't compete with Meena on healing, so her next best bet is to simply lean into the flexibility and do both of their jobs at the same time. This also means focusing on Protect, Shell, and Dispel, which will be very useful abilities to have on deck for boss fights in particular. After that, I'll see how things shake out and play it by ear.
Meena's playing her class as straightforward as Werdna is. We've already picked up Mend, and Raise is next up. Unfortunately, Return and Curena are so far away and gated behind the frankly-overkill Curen that I'll probably have her dip into the damage and Fire control half of the tree after I have those two. She's also another contender for flexing into a physical damage class, albeit hers would be Monk, for obvious reasons.

I'm also using the Expanded Weapon Compatibility Mod for this file. This means that every class that has weapon techniques compatible with one or two weapons has an extra weapon afforded to each of them. I've already gone back and updated the Rogue and Monk posts to accommodate for this (Rogue can now use Rapiers for anything and Swords for the moves that already could use Rapiers, and Monks can now use Spears, two-handed weapons that sport about a half-shield's worth of Defense). Future class posts will account for the new weapon addition by having any modded compatibilities listed in parentheses.

Anyway, into Delende we go! There's a lot we can potentially explore here, but for starters, I'm just gonna move in directions, find interesting things, and note them for later.

We can't go too far east of the entrance, there's a river that flows through the better part of Delende that stops our progress.

We run into a Flame shortly after, displaying the two most common foes in Delende. Carreats, as you can see, are capable of using some Black Magic to attack, and Nut Munchers can restore their own health by eating the Nuts they carry around (which you can Steal off of them if you have a Rogue).

Our general playstyle early on isn't much different from before, save that we can't rely on Werdna or Meena to realistically do damage with basic attacks. Frieren can do some damage if she lands a crit, but even then only for about 45 or so.

GUTS obviously has much better damage, but note that since he's using Cleaver, he's got a bit of Variance on his attacks! Everyone else reports exactly how much damage their attacks will do, but for GUTS, he could do anywhere from 35 to 105 damage on a single hit, and that's without me having Berserker.

This is a low-ish roll for him and it still blows whatever Frieren can do with Stabbers out of the water.

Compared to the hilly valleys of Spawning Meadows, Delende is much more open plains, dotted with a few trees and ridges. If you can use the trees to your advantage, there's more than a few spots where you can get to some unexpected spots, but don't fret if you don't find them. This area is meant to be explored at your own pace, and given enough time, you ought to turn up everything worth seeing.

Remember, the rule for our jumps is that we can climb up to two blocks high, and can cross three tiles of distance if it's level. Anything further is out of reach unless we get a serious height advantage.

There we go, already getting treasure! Earrings are an accessory that grants +4 max MP, with that value doubled if you equip a second Earring to the same character for a total of +16. Werdna gets this for now, his MP is the most generally valuable.

Anyway, back to the beaten path for a bit.

Werdna's Fire spell can't yet oneshot enemies, but give him a few levels. This is still more than enough to make a follow-up from basically anyone finish the job.

Hooray, another consumable healing item that's not good actually! But it's ours now and no one can take that away from us.

We can climb up here using this tree pretty easily.

This wouldn't be half-bad for GUTS had we elected to have him not use Cleaver. Anyone else that wants to use this is gonna have to grab a few levels in Warrior for the Equip Sword passive.

Astley said:
You look like you just arrived. So, what made you decide to come? Everyone who comes here is looking for something. So, what is it you're after?

New friend! Astley is a Fencer, much like that person blocking us off from the Deity of Fire back in Spawning Meadows was a Summoner, telegraphing another class. (Which... I guess means #$&@ is telling us there's a Mimic class?) She's level 12, which is pretty high compared to us but shouldn't be too hard to reach before long.

Anyway, we're here for Crystals. I don't know what they are, but the game IS called Crystal Project, so clearly there's gotta be some growth formations with excellent cleavage and hardness going on here.

Astley said:
Just don't forget to take a break and head off the beaten path every now and then. Which reminds me... You should have this Home Point Stone! I think you'll find it'll come in handy.

You can use a Home Point Stone as many times as you want, whenever you want, to teleport back to your current Home Point. Don't forget you have it! And set it to your favorites menu while you're at it.

Hell the damn yes. First off: the Favorites menu is basically a quickly-accessible menu where you can use preferred consumables or tools like...

This bad boy right here.

Like Astley says, you can use this to go to your Home Point from anywhere you like at will. You can use this in a lot of ways, depending on the Home Point, but the thing we'll use it for most often is to set a Home Point right besides some convenient goods and services, and then use it to jump back there to restock as needed. Of course, trekking back afield will take a while depending on where your Home Point is set, so choose your spot wisely.

Anyway, after handing off the Home Point Stone, Astley heads further into Delende.

Later! PEACE.

Astley this was right on your path how did you miss this honestly.

Well, waste not! (I can't actually reach anything up here but it was fun.)

Ooooh a bridge! I wonder which way we'll cross it in the future.

Hell yes more LP. I'm not gonna religiously track this sort of thing, especially as XP and LP becomes more desynced (it will happen), but early on every point counts.

First, GUTS grabs the other stance. This will make them even better at flattening randos.

Werdna's saving up for this first, then Firen. After all, usually its his first action that will matter most in your average Flame encounter.

As mentioned before, Frieren starts working on Doublecast. All of the attack spells for Warlock are dirt cheap in terms of LP, and honestly with this team Frost could see some pretty convenient use as setup for Werdna. She'll work on Protect and the like after, to better support GUTS.

For Meena, I briefly consider Spark Shine, but nah. She's gotta get as much healsauce as she can right now. It'll be easier for her to access Raise than it will be for Frieren to get Life, at least for now.

Hey, it's the river again! And if you jump in sequence, it alternates the walk sprite so it looks like you're skipping! THIS IS WONDERFUL!

Oooh, free stepping stone.

Seriously, trees are great in Delende. Always keep a careful watch for where they grow and how climbable they are.

Hey, is that Astley up there? And how do we even get up there?

Okay that's too many Nut Munchers. It's time for extreme prejudice.

That's still asking for GUTS to get a high Variance roll to oneshot one, though.

I have more tools.

Burn deals 15% of the target's max HP every turn. And you might be thinking "wow, that sounds absolutely broken against bosses!" And you'd mostly be right. However, bosses and lots of later enemies also have resistance to this sort of damage scaling with their level, to the point where it's still useful as chip damage, but not much more than that. Still, that chip damage is entirely independent of your stats, making it especially useful to Warlocks like Frieren.

Speaking of Frieren, see those yellow arrows? Those all indicate that Frieren is the top Threat for each of those enemies, since she gained Threat by starting her turn below half health. The burned one would probably consider her top Threat anyway since she attacked it, of course. That means that unless someone else gets their attention, they're all gonna dogpile her with their attacks and ignore everyone else. If multiple characters are equally threatening, the monster will randomly choose one to attack, but Threat is so granular that this situation is pretty unlikely unless you've done nothing whatsoever to provoke the monster. Threat also naturally decays over time, with higher decay at higher levels, so your tanks must work constantly to keep enemy attention focused on them.

Werdna successfully draws the ire of the Nut Muncher in the back, and owing to his serviceable Agility, he manages to dodge the attack coming his way. Agility determines both accuracy and evasion, although both stats only apply to physical moves. Still, it's a handy stat for basically anyone, albeit in small doses for the most part.

A level well-earned, that.

Oh, this river flows all through Delende from multiple points! That's cool!

There's a crossing point back south further ahead, so we double back a bit, grabbing some snacks along the way.

Aha, it's the Salmon River. Okay. Anyway, this gives us a few landmarks. The place we saw a maybe-Astley Fencer was the Fish Hatchery, and there's a Proving Meadows further east. Let's check that out!

Oooh, hidden tunnel by the river!

Hat upgrade!

As far as the different types of armor go, heavy armor favors Defense over Resistance, while light armor is the opposite and medium is, obviously, a more even split. The different armor classes also favor different auxiliary stats: light armor like this usually comes with bonuses to Mind and/or Spirit, obviously very useful to casters. Frieren, being the only caster we have that uses both stats, gets it. Heavy armor tends to come with extra threat generation, while medium armor usually provides Attack, Agility, or Dexterity bonuses.

Note also that she gains a smidgen of Resistance Pierce off of this! Every primary stat (y'know, the ones I list in the class breakdowns) provides benefits outside of the scalars for abilities that use them. Mind and Strength give extra points of Resistance Pierce and Defense Pierce, respectively. This allows characters with enough stats there to punch past hardy foes!

She still doesn't, y'know, do loads of damage with spells. But it helps.

Sploooosh!

The Magic Up buff that Douse provides is pretty anemic for Frieren alone. After all, that would take the damage here from 43 (worse than her attack with Stabbers on this enemy) to... what, 55 or something? Again, for Warlocks, Douse isn't good, but as a more dedicated offense caster like a Wizard that happens to have the Mixed Magic subcommand, Douse has a lot more value as a setup tool to make their next big spell pack even more kick.

Oh, wait, it does a little more here. That Fire Plus marker there indicates that the Carreat has an elemental vulnerability to Fire! Fire weaknesses are pretty common early on, and in general you can expect enemies that are plants or bugs to handle it worse than others.

After the fight, Werdna grabs Initial Focus, our first passive.

Every party member gets 10 PP to equip any passives they have learned from any class. Generally speaking, passives grant either proficiencies with weapons, conditional stat boosts like this one, or bonuses to certain actions. Notably absent from the passives list are status immunities: there is no passive that makes you immune to Poison, Burn, Sleep, or anything else of the sort. (You can still get those immunities, just not from this particular source.)

For now, this is a good early pick for a Wizard that lets them just explode things even harder on the first turn.

In the meantime, Frieren gets Frost and Meena gets Raise. Now we can revive fallen allies in combat! That hasn't been even close to an issue yet but it will be and we will want at least one revive-capable character.

Oh hey, Astley. I see the bridge is out.

She doesn't wait up for us, immediately running north.

Well, that bridge is too broken to cross. No playing in the Proving Meadows for now then. Grotto Encampment sounds like a pretty nice option though.

Remember, these copper coins are pretty valuable early on! Buying our supply of upgraded helmets and hats early on nearly bankrupted us.

Chloe said:
I'm Chloe. I came to the land of Sequoia to make friends. Maybe you'll be one of 'em?

Maybe! Chloe is a Hunter, so that's another class to add to the list for later.

She doesn't say anything else before leaping down to the encampment Astley went towards.

This is a great place to set a Home Point for exploring Delende. You have vendors that sell weapons, armor, and consumables here.

For my first purchase, I get Frieren a Stinger rapier. Rapiers, as you can see, provide extra crit chance, which is always a welcome addition, and it'll be more reliable than her Stabbers dagger. Note also that we have one silver coin to go with our copper coin. It's a simple conversion system: one hundred copper to a silver, 100 silver to a gold, 100 gold to a platinum. This early on, anything costing even a single silver piece is EXPENSIVE LODS OF EMONE.

Plenty of nice armor upgrades here, complete with more Earrings if you're so inclined.

Oh, and don't expect selling your gear to make the big difference you'd want it to. You CAN, it might get you the little bit extra you need, but you can also just not.

There's also a Cleric providing full healing right here, too! That's nice of them.

At two copper apiece, Marieanne's services are dirt cheap, and well beyond Meena's capabilities.

Allen said:
I don't even want it! Take it!

What's so good about this that they're gonna call the feds on you?

Really? That's it? It's nice for Monks in particular and I'm not gonna turn it down, but really?

Report deez nuts.

Anyway, before I forget, I'm gonna set this as my new Home Point. The Pale Grotto beyond we'll save for a bit, but it is a nice convenient dungeon to explore. Those usually have cool stuff in them.

For now, let's head south of the broken bridge, see what's off the beaten path.

Clearly possible to get up there, we just can't right now.

FROM THE TOP ROPES

The Hive Guards in this area are a bit spicier than usual, able to take a high-Variance Berserker GUTS attack without folding.

They are, however, weak to Fire, and Werdna's also got a tasty Initial Focus backing that hit up. That's our current record for spike damage, I'd say.

THEY LIVED IT?!

Something I missed: most enemies at this stage are doing basic attacks only. However, those two Hive Guards at low health are doing a special technique, and if I bothered to read their stats I would've finished them off before they did it.

Here is my reward.

Suicide Sting, in exchange for killing the user, does a boatload of damage (especially with that crit backing it) and poisons the target for 6 turns. Poison is functionally identical to Burn, but remember kids, identical effects under different buff/debuff names stack! You can absolutely pile onto a target with Poison, Burn, and Bleed all at once, and it's a completely viable boss strategy!

Fortunately, they all wear off after the battle, and we got a shiny new Potion for our troubles. Potions heal for a hell of a lot more than Tonics do, enough so that we won't need to use this for a while.

We're still going to administer medical aid to Werdna right away.

Auto Top Up calculates the most efficient use of your consumables to get your party back to full health, right down to listing a cash price for about how much restocking will run you should you do that. While it WOULD be cheaper to hoof it back to Marieanne... nah.

Ooo cave

Well, surely we won't have to go on some kind of retrieval errand here.

That's a them problem! Into the spooky cave we go!

Super dark entrance, but there's lights inside.

Welcome to the Soiled Den! This area actually covers more than just this cave, and is part of a lot of the Delende underground. But for all intents and purposes, this particular cavern is isolated.

No music here, just ambiance. Still monsters though.

The Zoo Bat is hardly a significant threat. Its most noteworthy feature is its high Evasion, which means that casters or a Thunder Chop armed Monk are your best bet for handling them. Hell, Frieren's got enough Agility to consistently land hits with the Stinger.

The first Zoo Bat guards a fork at the road. Heading left leads to this treasure and an underground channel, one we obviously can't traverse.

But hey, it's a creepy cave! We're exploring all of it.

Soon, we drop to another branch.

But if we go south, we find our path caved in.

North past another Zoo Bat it is.

Yay a level! Kinda underwhelming fight to get it, but levels is levels.

Here's the cut-off route. That was fast.

Oh this area screams ambush. But that shiny screams shiny even louder. I need to get it!

Yeeep. Those darker Flames are boss fights, and we are in for one now! Note that you can technically avoid a lot of boss fights with clever deep magick schmovement, but A: I did my time with that already, and B: fighting bosses can give rewards and doesn't risk anything but getting punted back to your Home Point, so!

Spoilers, this first fight against the Bone Thief doesn't go so well, so I'll skip the details for now and put a video of the actual fight later.

For now, I'll cover my strategy for bosses in general with this team. GUTS uses Defender stance instead of Berserker if the opponent is physical, and Taunt to draw their attention right out of the gate. Frieren doesn't really have a lot to do early on, so she either attacks with a spell or a basic rapier poke.

Werdna casts spells until he cannot anymore and then does baby weakling wand slaps. Strictly speaking, the first spell he casts should be Bolt owing to the bonus from Initial Focus absent any elemental modifiers, but this early on, a Bolt spell costs the same as a Fire spell and a third, so economy might be worth considering.

Meena has nothing to do if no one is injured, and a basic attack is less of a commitment than a Spark Shine (not that she has that yet). If people are injured or debuffed, obviously she heals them, but she does have to watch out. As much as GUTS is strong at drawing Threat, any time she heals the top threat of an enemy, she gains a bit of threat for them as well. Eventually, enemies will figure out to focus her down if you take too long.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I died.

But lucky me, we return to play at our last Home Point none the worse for wear! You DO lose some money if a non-boss Flame defeats you, scaling with how much money you'd get for winning a fight with them, but that scaling has a cap with your own level. In short: there's a slight penalty for screwing around in areas you can't handle, but not so massive of one as to preclude exploring massively over-leveled places entirely. And if you find some strong gear in one of those areas, that's time and money well spent, that is. Losing to a boss Flame costs nothing, letting you facecheck them at will!

Anyway, suppose we head south further of the Soiled Den.

Another Dog Bone up here, and a treasure down there with a Fenix Juice inside and more Hive Guards above.

Those Hive Guards give enough LXP to let GUTS afford a real attack, Power Break. You'll get to see it in the rematch with Bone Thief later.

Oh, we must be on the other side of the branch of the Salmon River we saw at the start!

Hole!

This cave is full of Flames, but uncharacteristically, they flee from us rather than approaching! Let's track one down.

The Indecent Dweller, huh?

Note that colorful ball for their action. That's another kind of spell we haven't got a caster for yet, and it's important enough to highlight.

It's got a CT of 60, which is ridiculously high, but the Indecent Dweller's got a passive that casts it immediately.

As soon as Frieren stabs it, it uses this ability!

I see.

Yeah this enemy is just a dick joke all the way down. Complete with its stealable item only being Nuts, and its preferred action that isn't Reverse Polarity to be Speechless, an AOE Silence infliction.

Speaking of Reverse Polarity, it's a very silly spell. Healing becomes damage, damage becomes healing.

To get around this, remember that you can target actions towards either team. Frieren can use her Heal spell to damage them instead.

Anyway we drag the fight on long enough to get Speechless'd.

While Silenced, every ability that counts as magic in any way is disabled. Non-magical abilities like the Monk's restorative abilities or Chi Burst still work fine.

We eventually chip them down and get another level for our troubles.

Realizing that hording LP for Curen so I can unlock its later stuff is kind of overkill, I relent and let Meena have Spark Shine. She can now sequence break her Spirit stat in place of Mind for an attack spell.

The Indecent Dwellers leave us alone as before, letting us go through this short cave pretty easily.

That's all three bones, we'll return them to the Dog Trainer later.

Eventually the tunnel leads out to the side of a hill, rewarding us with a cool hat.

Damage resistance is nice, and Meena doesn't really need lots of Spirit to do heals good.

Old Man said:
The trick to being a good cartographer is getting a bird's eye view of your surroundings. Here, have a gander at my map and see for yourself.

True! The higher up you are, the more map gets recorded on your map.

Excelente!

As you can see, just climbing up here filled out a pretty big chunk of map well on immediately.

It also helps serve as a guide for what jumps you can and cannot make. You can make out the lines on the map at the borders, right? Those indicate height differences! The thicker the line, the bigger the difference. Of course, it might be possible to climb up even if the map doesn't offer a very clear pathway, since it's all topdown and there's no telling what's underneath the top layer.

Anyway, time to cash the bones in.

You're welcome!

Oooh.

The Bone Smasher is our first example of a weapon that doesn't do exactly what its expected weapon class says. It's a staff, but unlike Meena's usual Cedar Staff, the Bone Smasher boasts Attack that puts the Cleaver to shame, and comes with a little extra Defense Pierce instead of the expected Spirit bonus. It's a phenomenal reward for a Monk and it's not half bad for Meena since her healing at this stage is more than enough for our baby HP meters.

We leave the puppies to gambol and play with their bones once more. I think at this stage we're nearly done with our exploration of Delende for now.

But first, we're running it back against Bone Thief. With the Bone Smasher on Meena, Protect on Frieren, and Power Break on GUTS, we're more than ready.

Fundamentally, Bone Thief is not a difficult encounter. Their moveset is almost entirely a check to see if you have figured out how to direct the attention of an enemy to the party member best suited to handle it. Marrow Slurp CANNOT be allowed to hit anyone depending on MP, as not only will they lose all capability to act in the fight, but Bone Thief will heal up afterwards! Once that's out of the way, the only trick it has is the paralyzing Bone Crunch, preventing the target from acting for a turn and most likely stunlocking them until their Threat wears off.

For our party, we're playing this fight extremely by the book. GUTS gets the Bone Thief's attention with Taunt, then weathers their attacks with Defender and Power Break, so even without a shield he's sitting pretty. Werdna shoots the hell out of them with magic, favoring Bolt at first for the Initial Boost spike damage and then switching to Fire to stretch his MP. Meena keeps GUTS alive with Cure and Mend, making a wild swing with the Bone Smasher if that's not needed, and she has enough defense with her upgraded armor to take a hit when her Threat gets too high. Frieren is the pivot: using Blaze or her rapier as offense, and Heal or Protect to keep the two people in the spotlight, GUTS and Meena, alive and well. It's an extremely fundamental set of tactics for an extremely fundamental first boss. That early miss with GUTS' Power Break hurt a lot, but even so, this team handled it just fine. A Rogue or Monk wouldn't differ too much, save that a Monk could more comfortably take hits and Threat, and a Rogue could blind Bone Thief to prevent a Bone Crunch from paralyzing their teammates at the right moments.

Our reward money gets spent well on immediately on armor, so that we don't have to aggressively tank everything with GUTS. GUTS picks up Bruiser Crush and Werdna picks up Firen as well, giving both of them some real oomph for later fights. Which makes this a nice point to stop, take inventory, and figure out what else we want to do next time!

Oh, and I'm gonna fine-tune our checklist a bit more to accommodate for stuff I discovered but already did. Just to have everything thorough, y'know?

TO DO:

~~Build the perfect starting team.~~
Explore Spawning Meadows.
- ~~Prove the existence of black squirrels.~~
- Try to find another route out of Spawning Meadows.
Explore Delende.
- Cross the bridge to the Proving Meadows.
- Explore the Fish Hatchery.
- Explore the Pale Grotto.
- Explore the Soiled Den.
  - ~~Defeat Bone Thief.~~
- ~~Find the dogs' bones.~~
Find the Summoner class.
- Challenge the Deity of Fire.
Find the Mimic class.
Find the Fencer class.
Find the Hunter class.

Second Duke Revier · Apr 21, 2024

Ahhhh, this game. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Too bad I dislike its voxel aesthetics, else it seems like it would be the perfect game for me. Here's hoping this LP lets me enjoy it without being too turned off by its looks.

Also glad to see a male wizard in the party, I really enjoy the classic conical hat on old man look, though Werdna does fall a fair few years short of that. Eh, close enough.

Mogri · Apr 21, 2024

I strongly suggest you plug your nose and download the demo. That's pretty much the majority opinion here, and everyone who's tried it loves the game.

Crystal Project is good enough as an RPG that I'd recommend it on those grounds, but it's also good enough as a freeform exploration game that I'd recommend it to people who don't like RPGs. (The assist options are generous enough to ensure you don't have to engage with the RPG mechanics if you'd rather not.)

Kalir · Apr 21, 2024

Also, the demo covers so much of the game that I'd say we're not even a quarter of the way through it in the LP.

Kalir · Apr 26, 2024

If you're a bit curious about the spatiality of Delende, here's the map we've got thus far. The holes are trees, of course; we could map those if we climbed onto them, but most of the trees are hard to reach. The plan for today is to try to flesh this out a bit by seeing where we can realistically reach from here, add some points to it, and cap it off with some Pale Grotto. For context: that's where we are now, with the Soiled Den from the last update south past the broken bridge, and the Fish Hatchery on the northwest corner. In fact, looking at this map, there's still plenty of explore we can do in that direction, so let's! go! that way!!!

Oh that's SO climbable.

Just gotta go over here first, it's nothin'.

And there you can see what a proper mapped tree looks like.

The box contains some nice kit that'll save Frieren some Protect MP, and for now I put it onto GUTS because again, he's the one gonna be drawing Threat wherever possible.

And here's the Fish Hatchery! Let's see what all this has to offer us.

Everyone knows shady merchants offer the best deals for True Adventurers.

13 copper? Hell yeah fish me up.

...Oh.

The merchant bolts off like a bat out of hell, laughing all the way, and we're stuck here with...

This thing.

On the off chance you need to reduce someone to critical HP before a big boss fight for niche strategies, it's handy for that, at least. But I would simply not do that.

The remainder of the Fish Hatchery is much more on the up-and-up, if perhaps not very exciting.

Gohain and Entuardio here are going over the fundamentals of managing Threat, which I've already established very well by now. As they say, early on the best characters to pull Threat are Monks and Warriors, since both classes are more than capable of taking extended punishment.

There's the usual trifecta of weapons, armor, and consumables merchants here, with the latter having a few tools as well. We already found the cartographer, so the map isn't required, but it can be nice if you didn't come across him yet. We do have enough cash for the fishing rod, so that gets bought.

Weapon shop has two notable quirks: the Fishgutter dagger that gets free bleed with every hit, and our first book weapon! Books are two-handed weapons with the worst attack in the game, but more than make up for it with sizable boosts to max MP. This makes them excellent choices for any caster looking for endurance over raw kick, with Clerics and Wizards being the characters most likely to use one early on, but plenty of casters can make use of one. Cash being what it is for me here, I pass the offer up for now. For comparison's sake, Moby Dick here affords an extra 13 MP, enough for Werdna to sling two extra Fires in a fight.

The only really noteworthy thing in the armor shop is this convenient little number. Bonus Strength, especially early on where everyone needs to consider their basic attack, is pretty nice.

Wayfarer Joe said:
You know what? If you let me borrow a rod and a lure, I'll lend you my fishing skills for a small fee. Come talk to me when you've got both a rod and a lure.

Oh what we can't even do fishing yet? BOGUS!

Anyway, Wayfarer Joe is the fishing minigame NPC. He shows up here or there in the world, and bringing him a rod and a lure lets you pay money for a random reward. Even Crystal Project is not safe from the gacha. I don't know what all the rewards he offers are but you can get some nice-ish stuff, and even if you don't get gear, he's a decent source of consumable healing fish.

There's an inn in the basement, The Angler's Suite, but we don't need it right now. I tried staying there to see if I'd get a freebie lure, but nope.

That's about it for the Fish Hatchery. Back to exploring for treasure!

Nice. This improves drop rate! Obviously we're equipping this right now (on Frieren, not that it matters).

Next up is this little mesa.

Free Bracer, hell yeah! This also goes to Frieren, since she's the other person who would want to do physical attacks and is kinda lacking for good sauce for that.

If I was BETTER, I could try jumping across these trees to check out more areas, but I tried and fumbled it twice. Oh well, it's an extremely minor way to just reach another part of Delende a little faster.

It's doable, I've done it before, it's just very hard. Try it yourself if you want.

Another level from the small fries in the area, that's nice.

Let's at least start the Pale Grotto, eh?

Unlike Soiled Den, this area DOES have music, very tranquil stuff.

The path here is pretty linear, landlubber that we are.

Is that so? Have you met Wayfarer Joe?

Uh... huh. I see?

Well, my hobby is apparently fishing for secrets, so I get it.

The Pale Grotto is probably the first instance of actually required platforming for navigation. All that hill and tree climbing we've been doing up to now is basically optional.

It's not hard, especially not if you're already good at this sort of thing, and the only penalty if you fall in the water is a warp back to where you started the jump, so it's not nearly as punishing as trying to climb the trees across the northwest side of Delende like I was trying before.

Oh no, two Zoo Bats! Anyway.

The Pale Grotto quickly opens up into a kind of ruins area.

We'll pass underneath this here bridge first. Mind the Zoo Bats.

If I really, really wanted to, I could just have Werdna obliterate them all with a single attack at this stage.

So I do.

Absolutely not efficient in the slightest, but Firen, especially backed by Initial Boost, can and will clear any encounter you cast it in early on.

No path north, but we can climb a hill to the east.

The Pale Grotto proper extends to the west, across the bridge, with an alternate route to more of Delende further south.

I go south, cleaning out more Zoo Bats for some more LP. Frieren grabs Shell for some magic defense, and Meena grabs Spotlight to better enable pyrotechnical displays from her caster allies. Right now, our highest ceiling for damage is basically on turn 1, Frieren casts Frost, Meena casts Spotlight, and Werdna casts Firen. Assuming Werdna's spell goes off before the enemy acts, they ought to take well over 400 damage from it.

Anyway, like I said, south.

My schmovement is sicknasty enough to drop a Flame into the river on the way, so I don't have to fight it. There is plenty of tech to avoiding Flames on the overworld, which we'll get some chances to learn about later. For now, the important thing is that Flames don't "lead their shots", so to speak.

The river leads into a larger reservoir here, the south side of which is our goal.

After a brief treasure-related detour, of course.

One more for the pile.

We pop out at another part of Delende, complete with waterfalls! (The waterfalls still drown you like regular water tiles do.)

This area is on the other side of that broken bridge, so we should be right near the Proving Meadows.

TARGET ACQUIRED.

Yep, just a ledge behind the waterfall, nothing too fancy.

Maidood said:
If a flame is green, it means the battle will be easy for your level. The flame also won't chase you from as far away. If a flame is orange, it means it'll probably be a hard fight for your level.

True! There's two-and-a-half other colors to the scale as well: grey flames are trivially easy and won't chase you at all, and red flames will kill you to pieces you really shouldn't be here can I see your passport.

Anyway, that down there looks like the Proving Meadows, let's go check.

Sure is.

Rainy down here.

The Trial Caves are effectively the end goal of exploring Delende, so we'll be back here later.

Still things to buy here, that's nice. In fact, the Proving Meadows tends to sell pretty high-end stuff as far as Delende gameplay goes.

The supplier here has maps for not just the Proving Meadows, but the Trial Caves and someplace called Yamagawa M.A. as well. Generally speaking, if a map vendor has a bunch of maps for areas you haven't heard of yet, those areas will usually be close by, or at least relatively intended as your next destination(s), so we'll add Yamagawa to the list. The Proving Meadows map gets bought, obviously.

There's a few treasures worth getting here, but this ain't it. We already have one of these, even if they stack!

Healign

Bilsuen the Fencer over there just talks about how you only lose cash on death if it's not a boss fight.

Shaman, eh? That's another class for the list. I also can't afford anything here, so I merely browse the shop lists sullenly. There's nothing especially unique, it's just good gear all around.

Gokue said:
Don't stress too much about min/maxing your growth right now. There's an NPC later that can help you respec if you're into that.

Dang, look at the levels on this jabroni! Gokue, in addition to telegraphing another class we haven't seen yet (Dervish), basically serves the role of newbie helper, and will have some nice, but not required, advice wherever you find them.

Their head is as climbable as anyone else's.

Do you see it? Do you see the secret treasure I'm looking for?

Yes! VICTORY!

Scythes, as weapons go, are two-handed weapons that add some extra piercing for both Defense and Resistance to the wielder. They're unique in that they can be useful to both physical or magical attackers, making this an extremely good earlygame find for Werdna in the same way the Bone Smasher is an earlygame boon to Meena.

And yeah, Mind also improves Resistance Pierce, so a pure caster will still usually prefer a Wand, but it's earlygame. Nobody gets to be a pure caster in earlygame.

Oh yeah one of these too. Did I mention most every consumable in the game has pouches you can find? I'm mentioning it now.

The river to the south is too wide to cross, so we can only play on this side of the Proving Meadows for now.

Knight said:
You have not. You have not yet discovered any crystals. You are not yet worthy. Go out and continue adventuring. Return after you have found at least three crystals.

Called out! Dang! All right, be that way. The Trial Caves are off-limits until we actually find ourselves the requisite crystals.

Fine then. Back into Delende we go, now from the unexplored side. Seaside Cliffs is a new region, maybe that one will have a crystal.

This side of Delende has new enemies to fight, so fight them we will!

Okay, so they barely live a Firen from Werdna, good to know.

They also drop... Rabbit's Claws? What am I supposed to do with those?

Collector said:
So anyway... do you have any Rabbit's Claws? At this moment, I would like... four. Come back when you have four Rabbit's Claws.

Oh, okay. Sure thing, bud. I'll probably fight another group of them shortly, right?

As we head south, this other Warrior also starts heading that way.

What's there to be afraid of? Just climb on up it's great.

Whatever you say, buddy. Another class for the list though, this time Scholar.

This cliffside goes right into the tunnel over the Indecent Dwellers here, and above the dog trainer.

This is the power of verticality!!!

Hey, it's the bridge we crossed under when entering Delende! So it was an east-to-west situation all this time...

If we didn't fumble the treejumps earlier, we could have reached here at the start of the update instead of the latter half. Ah well.

Lots of room up here, probably some cool things to find.

Collector said:
Unlike my brother, I'll do it for free. To tell you the truth, I think Rabbit's Claws are kinda nasty...

That is... a very specific and generous offer that we will happily accept.

So yeah! We can now go trivially from the entrance of Delende to the very spot we're standing on thanks to the collector sister here!

Moving right along, in an upward fashion.

Right above the Spawning Meadows! Lookit that!

Nice. This sucker comes with more defenses than the Cotton Robe and is all-in on Mind bonuses rather than Spirit, so Werdna takes it. You can buy more of 'em at the Proving Meadows if you're interested.

Oh hey, another cabin.

So you can! But I'm more interested in the possible watering hole behind us.

That's no aphorism. But hey, if you're offering, Dollar Store Legally Distinct Nan, then free treasure it is!

Note the path continues past the cabin. We'll check that out after we get that delicious treasure.

Huh, guess some other newbies beat us to it.

Oh wait, that floor wasn't the BASEMENT basement. Now we'll get treasure.

I stand corrected! What's the big idea, Gran?!

Uh

What. Am I supposed to do with this?

The tunnel in the back of the Basement goes pretty deep.

This is looking a lot less like treasure.

That explains it. Hard to make out the Flame color, but if I had to guess, I'd say...

TOO LATE

Suddenly, everything makes sense.

Gran is actually a puzzle boss disguised as an out-of-depth encounter. If you want to fight Gran on level par, you'll likely lose, and besides the point we're not anywhere near high enough level to do so.

As seen here. Gran cycles between these three moves, very predictably. Attack does enough damage to oneshot even GUTS.

None of our physical attacks have the accuracy needed to consistently land hits.

And Devour is an instakill so that's fun.

And in the event we do somehow manage to land hits and keep the party alive?

Regenerate heals the user for exactly as much HP as they currently have.

There is no universe in which this team is able to win this fight, so.

Haha byee

Okay fine we'll do Pale Grotto.

AFTER opening up the shortcut.

Hold that thought. You see that down there, right?

Takes us a few tries...

But we eventually slip down and grab an extra-strength Tincture, perfect for pinch MP restoration.

Can't exactly go back the way we came, so...

Oh hey, Seaside Cliffs!

Again, I want to go back and take care of the bridge shortcut and Pale Grotto, but good to know I can reach it from here.

Don't know what the Clamshell does yet that's not relevant THESE FLAMES CAN SWIM

Oh, just one Cliffwolf? We got this, easy.

Here's Werdna's attack with the Battle Scythe, for the record. Pretty decent.

Can climb up these boxes to get to the way out, and hey, another friend!

Reid said:
Someone named Astley told me that if I came to the land of Sequoia, then I really should be looking for something. So I'll look around for a Crystal, I guess. Are you looking for anything?

Same as you dogg. Crystals are the "in" thing to look for.

We leave Reid to explore the Seaside Cliffs and head back to where we were working.

Seaside Cliffs are VERY accessible from Delende once you get past the broken bridge.

EFFORT

That's the Rabbit's Claws needed, plus some LP for the road.

Werdna grabs Mind Stance, on the assumption that if he's gonna be drawing Threat from everyone, he may as well be able to take a hit or two.

Meena picks up Equip Staff, so she can take the Bone Smasher to the Monk class later (and also it's a nice prereq for a few other things).

Yeah here's your nasty animal parts.

It is convenient, yeah.

With that, we can now easily access pretty much anywhere connected to the main area of Delende without needing to go through ridiculous hoops! NOW we'll go finish Pale Grotto, I swear.

Speaking of, it does have enemies beyond Zoo Bats. The Grub here isn't really appreciably different or more dangerous, but it sure is here!

Okay, on to the ruins within the Pale Grotto.

Hi again.

Oh we know some of them!

<Reid> Nice, you know Chloe too?
<Talon> ...
<Astley> Well I'm gonna head out. See ya guys at the trials.

Guess they're a party like we are. Astley the Fencer, Chloe the Hunter, Reid the Warrior, and Talon the Rogue, the latter of which seems to not want to talk to us.

Chloe said:
And now that I've made friends, I'm gonna go find some birds.

Astley and Chloe head off to do their respective things, leaving us, Reid, and Talon here.

Setting this as my Home Point for now.

Reid said:
Don't underestimate what having good armor can do!

We're actually a bit overgeared for this place if anything, but this is good advice. Gear is important to upgrade, even if it's usually a big expenditure.

Talon said:
Yeah, that's right. I bet you didn't. Sometimes you can hide from them behind walls or pillars to sneak by.

Talon's a jerk, but there's no one better at figuring out tech to avoiding Flames in the field. The Pale Grotto is a prime example of this kind of tactic, as most flames further in the ruins are usually in rooms with lots of visual cover to work with.

For example. This Flame only spotted us when we rounded the pillar here, and now that we're on the other side, after a few attempts to leap over (but not path around) it, it'll drift back to its usual pattern, making it pretty easy to avoid if you know what you're doing.

Past that is a nice dagger that's even better than the Fishgutter from earlier. Favors Poison rather than Bleed, if you care.

The enemy we skipped to reach Poisonkiss is this thing. It has Fire magic that can inflict Burn and it absorbs Fire element damage, but we're still overleveled and still going to paste it. It can be scary for an on-par team that hasn't yet got a way to mitigate magic or Burn, though.

Hell yeah rare drop. It's just an Earring but without the conditional on the extra MP.

Not rare, but still nice.

Chloe said:
Lookin' for birds. I'll catch them.

Far be it from me to tell you how to do your job, but aren't birds usually... in the open? Not inside caves?

See, I'm fishing for secrets, not birds, and ruins are FULL of secrets.

Yeah see this is what Talon was talking about. Play it smart here and the Flame will never be able to track you down.

If you just charge in, the Flame will pursue you into this room, where it's harder to avoid. It might fall in the water, of course, but it's going to be hard to dodge it AND do platforming.

Heavy helm version of the Storm Hood. Wonder if they're telegraphing some boss with strong area Thunder or Wind element spells later? Goes without saying that this goes right to GUTS.

Think this is the last regular kind of enemy you can find in the Pale Grotto. Its got a Poison Sting, so watch out for that. For whatever reason, everything in here is weak to Wind.

Stealth or combat are both viable approaches. We're overleveled for this area, which both means it could be trickier if you go straight for it at level par and fight everything, and you absolutely don't need to worry about grinding every fight here out to stay competitive.

Oh, well, if you're offering.

Just like in real life, licking an unidentified frog you found in a cave is just as refreshing as a full night's sleep. Just as well, Werdna was low on MP.

Double prize!

Paragon Crush for GUTS, that should make his tanking game much stronger.

Just about done here, once you get this it's a straight shot up to the ultimate secret of the Pale Grotto.

It's not this treasure chest, although it is nice.

Despite the unimpressive name, this is a solid rapier upgrade for Frieren that she will be equipping as soon as I lose the heat of that guy behind the pillar.

Here we go, here's what we came here for.

You and me, big guy.

Wasn't kidding when I said we were overleveled. Even if the Guardian has no actual strategies except for casting Shell at low health, we kind of flattened it before I was halfway into my groove. Bone Thief is a harder first boss than this thing, Guardian isn't really any kind of challenge at all. Assuming you're going in at level par, the only real threat you have to look out for is the whole "casts Shell at low health" thing, which shouldn't be an issue if your casters are going ham from the word go, as is right and proper for a boss fight.

The prize for beating the Guardian, at the end of the Pale Grotto...

We've found our first crystal, and it comes with a fun bonus!

It shimmers with brilliant power before awarding us...

A new class let's goooo!!!!

Every single crystal we discover in the far-off hidden corners of Sequoia will grant us an entirely new class to play with now and forever. I'll cover Fencer in the writeup after this update, but suffice it to say that Fencer is a strong earlygame class that feels like a physical version of Warlock: versatile in the supreme but kind of lacking in kick.

Astley said:
You know, I've got high hopes for you. You really seem like you know how to look for adventure! You planning on heading to the trials?

Bet. I've already basically cleaned out Delende, the Trials won't be any trouble once we get two more crystals to, y'know. Actually enter them.

Yes you will. Later.

And there's the map. Like I said, sometimes you only get the map after clearing the area, which I'd safely say we've done for the Pale Grotto.

Anyway, the Slate Crystal here, in addition to granting the Fencer class and granting a free full heal upon first discovering it, also has many of the features of a Home Point (save for, y'know, actually functioning as a Home Point). It's an ideal place to fiddle with your team comp to fit in the fun new class you just got. Speaking of, I should discuss how class composition will be handled from here on out.

Broadly speaking, I'm gonna customize this party as I see fit to build for this or that, without necessarily waiting for player input because I think my ideas are Pretty Good. However, if you really want to see a specific class, or think you've tapped into a galaxy-brain build idea, let me know, and I'll try to fold it into my next update. (Ideally, do so before Wednesday evening, that's when I play.) And, of course, if you have a preference for what we should explore next, well, you have the list below to work with!

TO DO:

~~Build the perfect starting team.~~
Explore Spawning Meadows.
- ~~Prove the existence of black squirrels.~~
- Try to find another route out of Spawning Meadows.
Explore Delende.
- ~~Cross the bridge to the Proving Meadows.~~
- ~~Explore the Fish Hatchery.~~
- ~~Explore the Pale Grotto.~~
  - ~~Defeat Guardian.~~
  - ~~Find the Slate Crystal.~~
  - ~~Find the Fencer class.~~
- Explore the Soiled Den.
  - ~~Defeat Bone Thief.~~
- Explore the Basement of the Cabin on the Cliff.
  - Defeat Gran.
- ~~Find the dogs' bones.~~
Explore Seaside Cliffs.
Explore Proving Meadows.
- Find three crystals.
- Explore the Trial Caves.
Explore Yamagawa M.A.
Find the Summoner class.
- Challenge the Deity of Fire.
Find the Mimic class.
Find the Hunter class.
Find the Shaman class.
Find the Dervish class.
Find the Scholar class.

Kalir · Apr 26, 2024

FENCER
Graceful Duelist

STATS

HP: 5
MP: 4
Strength: 4
Vitality: 3
Dexterity: 6
Agility: 9
Mind: 3
Spirit: 3
Speed: 6
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Rapiers
Armor: Medium Headgear, Medium Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Eagle Talon: +60% Crit Damage.

The first class the average player is likely to unlock. Fencers are straightforward physical damage specialists with an extra focus on critical hits, owing to their weapon selection of rapiers being well-suited to that with their extra crit chance, their Eagle Talon passive making the damage of those crits even better, and, of course, having excellent Agility and good Dexterity. The Agility bears special mention as this is the first class to use the stat for their damage scalar, meaning that even though their Strength isn't great, they can handily compete with Warriors on the damage side of things. Furthermore, their Swordplay techniques are a vast toolbox of useful properties, none of which go over the basic 6 AP. The upshot of that is that even compared to a Warrior, a Fencer will NEVER be unable to do their preferred move. Like, even right out of the box from the second you unlock it, Fencer can contribute pretty meaningfully.

The biggest issue with Fencer is that as fun as their toolbox of physical moves is... they're basically like the Warlock of physical damage classes. Their stats for everything else are pretty unimpressive so it's hard to imagine them doing much else, and the Swordplay moveset might cost only 6 AP for everything, but that also means every move there only is worth 6 AP. And in that case, you'll probably find the one button that works best for your situation and say "this is my basic attack", which might be effective, but it's BORING. Come on! No payout hits? No situational shutdown techniques to save the day? No obscene scalar effects we can build towards for lategame? You're just gonna poke the other guy and fish for crits every turn and that's your gameplan? I know, I know, you can just use it as a subcommand and use your other skillset to do more flashy things, but STILL! It vexes me!

That said, focusing on Agility makes Fencer a pretty viable option for a lot of classes. Warrior, Rogue, and Warlock are the main options one might go with from the starting roster, as all of them have respectable Agility scores, always want more Agility, and have no issue whatsoever with using rapiers as their main weapon (or swords in the case of Warrior). And while I hesitate to say Fencer has no bad stats... any class that really wants a stat Fencer sacrifices can usually stomach the lower stat without issue since Fencer doesn't completely neglect anything. Note that the mod we're using also opens up the option of katanas for Fencers, which are rare one-handed weapons that tend to have elemental properties, extra AP gain on basic attack, and can usually maneuver around counters.

Poison Tip
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Inflicts Poison (15% damage per turn) debuff on the target for 3 turns.
Prereqs: None

Fencer has an issue in that all of their attacks cost (and are worth) 6 AP and have the same damage as a basic attack (albeit one using Agility instead of Strength), but they almost always have some nice extra effect on top of that. One of Fencer's stronger niches is easy access to damage over time effects like Poison, and since it lasts for 3 turns, you can just throw Poison Tip into your gameplan more or less whenever the enemy doesn't have Poison on them. Cheap and effective damage with little investment, that's the Fencer way.

Barbed Cap
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Inflicts Bleed (15% damage per turn) debuff on the target for 3 turns.
Prereqs: 1 LP

See above, but now with Bleed instead of Poison. And remember, stacking different types of damage over time is both allowed and recommended. There's absolutely nothing wrong with your Fencer alternating between Poison Tip, Barbed Cap, and whatever other move you feel like doing on their third turn. Yeah, everything outside earlygame gets scaling resistance to damage over time effects, but it's still free real estate.

Swallowtail
Costs: 6 AP
Multi Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Prereqs: Poison Tip, 2 LP

Behold, the easiest to use area physical move in the game! It is functionally a basic attack that hits everyone, mind you, so it's unlikely to actually kill anything and will probably just draw threat from the entire field. Course, enough crit chance and damage can make it likely that at least one of those hits can kill, so it's still pretty solid, especially with Swordplay as a skillset on a devoted tank character. Trends stronger earlygame, where basic attacks are more viable as damage options.

Hawk Stance
Stance Change (does not use the turn)
While active, +20% crit chance and -30% accuracy.
Prereqs: 1 LP

Fencer has two stances to work with, and neither of them cost anything (haha imagine a Swordplay move that cost something). Hawk Stance is great for a mainclass Fencer that's got accuracy to spare from their Agility investment. Got guaranteed accuracy on the enemy? Cool, throw Hawk Stance and see if you can get some free damage out of it! This gets even more free if there is some effect you or they have that guarantees the hit no matter what your accuracy is.

Eagle Stance
Stance Change (does not use the turn)
While active, +25% crit damage dealt and -25% non-crit damage dealt.
Prereqs: 1 LP

Eagle Stance is instead meant for people going all-in on crit chance, to really reward that kind of playstyle. A free 25% damage boost isn't anything to scoff at, y'know. Of course, you first have to make sure you're landing crits often enough for that to be worth it, and while a Fencer can usually guarantee that with their rapier, other classes might struggle to pull that off. If you're doing the Monk playstyle of Focus Energy into Thunder Chop or Wind Punch and don't really NEED a subcommand, Eagle Stance is fun, but I dunno if I'd go into Fencer just for that.

Piercethrough
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Ignores 25% Defense.
Prereqs: Barbed Cap, 2 LP

If you have no better ideas, Piercethrough has slightly more damage than your average Swordplay move... and that's about it. I really can't describe the move with any more fervor than that. It's not as good as Wizard's ability to pierce Resistance because it's only 25% piercing on a basic attack formula. It really is just slightly more damage, and sometimes that's nice if your other moves can't quite hit a breakpoint for a kill, but... eeehhhhhhhh.

Feathercut
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Never misses.
Prereqs: Swallowtail, 3 LP

This has some uses against enemies whose Agility competes with your own, and if you're using Hawk Stance it's a nice insurance piece, but usually a mainclass Fencer isn't going to need or want to bother with this one save as a prereq to Nighthawk. But hey, sometimes it's nice to know your attack is absolutely, 100% guaranteed going to hit. There is a slight caveat, mind you: if the enemy has a guaranteed dodge effect, that takes priority, whether it's with Feathercut, Thunder Chop, or any other guaranteed hit. Unicorn Overlord this isn't.

Snowfang
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
Ice Elemental
50% Lifesteal
Prereqs: Piercethrough, 3 LP

Again, lifesteal is a really nice effect if it's on an attack with a real damage formula. Swordplay doesn't let you have real damage formulas. The self-sustain here is fine, but just isn't gonna be enough for anyone seriously looking for that sort of thing. The extra ice element on the attack is basically trying to tie two sort-of-viable effects together and hoping that one or the other will make this move an attractive package, and outside of one extremely niche super lategame combo that doesn't even work in boss fights and might not work at all... it's just not it.

Nighthawk
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
-30% crit chance.
+150% crit damage.
Prereqs: Feathercut, 4 LP

Okay now we're getting somewhere! Even on a basic attack, that kind of crit damage is gonna leave a mark if it hits. It'll be tough to land crits with this up, but if you have crit chance to spare (and as a Fencer, you probably do), you'll get plenty of super cheap damage out of this on a crit, and that's before factoring in stances. Hawk Stance can negate a lot of the penalty to the crit chance in exchange for an accuracy penalty you can probably handle better anyway, and Eagle Stance lets you go for even bigger, meaner crits.

Checkmate
Costs: 6 AP
Single Target Rapier/Sword(/Katana) Skill
Damage Formula: Atk + Atk * 0.5 Agi + 0.5 Agi
10% chance to do 500% damage.
+50% Luck while attacking.
Prereqs: Snowfang, 5 LP

But what if, and hear me out... what if we accepted that we're already critting, but wanted to enable a second, super-secret type of crit that only Fencer could use? That's Checkmate. There is absolutely no way to influence the 10% chance save for jacking up your Luck so that you get a pity success roll later, which makes me wonder: if you've been missing a bunch of crits in a row while using Swordplay, maybe there's sound logic in fishing for the big crit Checkmate? Because yeah, stapling your existing crit damage with a x5 multiplier is Pretty Good.

Eagle Eye
Costs: 2 PP
Self-applies Eagle Eye (Physical attacks always hit) buff for 1 physical attack at the start of combat.
Prereqs: Hawk Stance, 2 LP

Do you want to use Hawk Stance but are too much of a coward to commit to the bit for more than a single turn despite using the second-best Agility class in the game? Cool, here's a passive you can use. 2 whole PP and you can be sure that your first attack, no matter how inaccurate it may be, will absolutely 100% hit the target (unless they have a guaranteed dodge). I'm being a bit dismissive here, of course, there are valid synergies one can pull with this, but Fencer isn't really the one to do them.

Equip Rapier
Costs: 1 PP
Allows you to equip Rapiers regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: Eagle Stance, 1 LP

Rapiers, as we've established by now, have higher crit chance than usual, and are otherwise decently serviceable one-handed weapons. They're used in a lot of movesets favored by Dexterity-using classes, including Rogue, and that makes this extra flexibility certainly worth shooting for on any class that dabbles in crits. It's also nice for classes that aren't necessarily doing physical damage but have enough Dexterity to make fishing for crits on off-turns worth going for, like Wizard.

Banach · Apr 26, 2024

So, This LP has gotten me to dive into this, and I am extremely grateful to you for creating it, because I've been having a blast. My only regret is that it is completely impossible for it to be updated at the rate I am consuming the game, but I've noticed several commenters that have already put a lot of time in, so I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple of general later game questions behind the fold.

My path through the game definitely followed the LP so far, entering the castle next, then the Quintar fields, the sewers, Salmon River, and finally the cliffs east of the castle. I got thrown to the desert shortly after that, and I think the desert might be the last time I saw a non-orange or red flame in any progression area from that point forward. Is this typical? I feel like the random encounters in the game are extremely deadly, to the point that I can rarely do more than 2 or 3 (and sometimes but 1), without needing to heal back up. I mainly get through them by relying on my Wizards AoE spells, but that is definitely a limited resource. This reached it's peak when I got the Owl mount, which opened up so much that I feel terrified in every zone I enter.

Bosses are also tend to be orange or red, but I find these encounters to be much more of a puzzle and a lot of fun (I'm only playing on normal, I expect I would find the higher difficulty extremely frustrating). This actually started even early the the random encounters, beginning around the Fancy Quintar. It makes more sense to me that these would be higher level, but again, I'm curious if this is the typical experience, and if so, what I'm missing for sustain that would make the random's a bit less running around trying to dodge flames while I explore.

Finally, do people typically play around with the respec feature in the capital? Pretty open question there, but I've definitely picked some classes that I don't think are doing a lot for a given character, and am wondering how much I need to play around with stat growth. I might just need to level up some more, but honestly, I hate just sitting in a spot grinding for levels unless I feel like I'm getting away with something (love me some Liquid Metal Slimes, but I haven't found the equivalent in this game).

Regardless of the above, I again want to say thanks for this. I had downloaded the game years ago, but didn't really get into it. Your initial write convinced me I needed to play again, and it's been fantastic.

Kalir · Apr 27, 2024

Banach said:
So, This LP has gotten me to dive into this, and I am extremely grateful to you for creating it, because I've been having a blast. My only regret is that it is completely impossible for it to be updated at the rate I am consuming the game, but I've noticed several commenters that have already put a lot of time in, so I hope you don't mind if I ask a couple of general later game questions behind the fold.

Regardless of the above, I again want to say thanks for this. I had downloaded the game years ago, but didn't really get into it. Your initial write convinced me I needed to play again, and it's been fantastic.

I'm glad you're enjoying this so far!

I think the most likely thing for the flames all being orange or so is that you might have missed some earlier areas that would require a bit of devotion to work towards. I obviously don't know what all areas you've seen, but without any other ideas I'd recommend going over earlier areas to see if there's anything you might have missed, whether it has a new crystal or just has cool stuff to see. I don't think there's an XP grinding place, but there are enemies in Shoudu Province that serve as LXP piñatas.

Respeccing isn't usually required unless you want to finetune your stat spread to facilitate this or that strategy. Since you're gonna be changing classes constantly, your characters' stats will broadly average out over the course of the game, so respeccing can let you trim the fat, so to speak, and get more pronounced strengths for whatever they're trying to do at the cost of pronounced weaknesses, but remember that classes also use growths as modifiers. Anyone that's in Warrior is going to be built for physical beeftanking, they just might be less effective at it if the character spent all their levels in Wizard and Warlock.

JBear · Apr 27, 2024

Second Duke Revier said:
Ahhhh, this game. I've heard nothing but good things about it. Too bad I dislike its voxel aesthetics, else it seems like it would be the perfect game for me. Here's hoping this LP lets me enjoy it without being too turned off by its looks.

FWIW, to quote myself from the game's dedicated thread:

JBear said:
So, I can say this now that I've tried this game and am absolutely enthralled by it: I found the trailer videos on the Steam page absolutely repellant. I don't know what it is, but something about the voxels and the floaty physics just rubbed me extremely wrong, so when it was first recommended to me I took one look and then decided it wasn't for me. And then someone else recommended it to me. And then someone else again. And finally it hit critical mass, and the demo was apparently giant, so I said "fuck it" and tried it anyway and now I am extremely in love. So to anyone who, like me, think they might be interested but don't care for how it looks, I encourage you to try out the massive free demo anyway, and perhaps you'll be similarly smitten.

Oh, and to answer Banach's questions above:

I'll echo Kalir that there must be areas that you missed with more level-appropriate encounters, but I'm afraid I don't recall the game well enough to offer any more specific guidance. I didn't typically spend much time adventuring in areas with red or orange flames, and I definitely never did any grinding, as it is against my religion.

As far as respeccing goes, I never really touched it, and I experimented freely with the classes, although with an eye as to which classes would best support each character's build.

Mogri · Apr 27, 2024

If you're getting behind in levels because you're avoiding encounters, you might consider bumping up the XP multiplier a bit. Aside from that, I'd echo the above.

Banach · Apr 27, 2024

Thanks for the help all. I picked up my last crystal last night (or so the achievements tell me), so at this point I think I must almost by definition have leveled things out. I have a few ideas on where to go next, though those areas are definitely still at least orange (some of the earlier ones are now blue, so I had definitely just gotten then earlier, both likely by skipping a couple of areas

Shoudu was the big one

and by avoiding encounters (given how dangerous they were, if I wanted to explore I had to pick carefully).

Regardless, the whole world seems open now, and I've definitely got some areas to to try. I bumped into the

Labyrinth

earlier, and had to leave that area at that time. I definitely think I've got some very non-optimal jobs, but my newest crystal unlocks a lot of boss fights, so that's another pointer.

Looking forward to see what progression route you go with. For all I know there's some giant zone I didn't find, the game is just huge, and I felt like I was always missing something whenever I went to a new area (and, frequently, when I returned, I discovered I had).

The only convenience feature I've turned on at the moment was the triple home point, which I love. No question it's led to some of the described problems, but I really hate backtracking, so it had to come on. I'll look at the others, but I expect I'll keep catching up as I run through these late game areas.

Torzelbaum · Apr 27, 2024

Kalir said:
FENCER

Swallowtail sounds like it would at least be useful for softening up monsters that are barely able to survive AoE spells or for finishing them off. But I'm assuming that Fencers will often act before any spells go off so it's probably hard to get the timing right for the latter.

JBear · Apr 28, 2024

Banach said:
The only convenience feature I've turned on at the moment was the triple home point, which I love. No question it's led to some of the described problems, but I really hate backtracking, so it had to come on.

I know this is a popular one to turn on, but I'm really glad that I left it off. It made setting my home point a difficult, weighty decision, and made other warp items all the more powerful/satisfying.

Kalir · May 3, 2024

Before we get into the update proper, some procedural stuff. First, check out the Pale Grotto map! Subterranean locations being what they are, we're never going to get this 100% filled in like we might the overworld, and obviously our inability to swim blocks off some chunks of the map, but for now you can consider this the extent of the Pale Grotto.

For comparison, here's what we've seen of Delende. The big blot in the middle is something we've explored under but not over, so we can't exactly get the map of the upper area just yet. Depending on the location, you might be able to map under first and then over, but usually that requires two or more disparate "regions" to be vertically stacked, and there aren't that many areas like that without diving into the different caves/overworld layers to fix the issue.

Next up, we're gonna change Meena's class to Monk. As tempting as getting someone into Fencer is, Frieren's the one I'd really want to bother with that, and I'm not doing that until she has Doublecast.

So, we just scroll on up here...

SHINE!

She's a Monk now, woooo!

Immediately after changing someone's class, you're booted to the equip screen and shown exactly what you can no longer equip for that character. Since I hadn't yet put on the Equip Staff passive owing to Clerics just... being able to equip them anyway, the Bone Smasher is put in the bin for now, as is Meena's old light armor.

This reward is the only medium armor we presently have, but hey, nothing a quick trip to the nearby merchant can't fix.

Here's her gearset after everything's sorted, but before we go buy a fun hat. With the exception of the newly-available Bone Smasher owing to her Cleric levels, this is pretty standard earlygame Monk.

We're still able to set any command she has as a subcommand no matter her class, so all that progress with White Magic gets to stick around. Sure, her MP is a lot weaker now, but we don't need THAT much healing, and even if we did, Frieren can also heal if we really need it.

Speaking of Frieren, here's her current gear, and I'll show off the others too. Most of this is pretty by-the-book stuff, although I do want to highlight that Toothpick is actually pretty dang strong for where we are.

Battle Scytle Werdna's been doing some work on the damage side of things. Resistance Pierce isn't as solidly useful as more stat for the damage formulas, but it's still worth it for a hybrid attacker, and as mentioned, early game casters are gonna have to dip into physical attacks eventually.

GUTS is still using the Cleaver and Squirrel Dung combo, although now that we've changed Meena to Monk and she has Beat Down to care about Variance, we might see about switching him over to swords and letting her have the Squirrel Dung. We'll see.

Here we go. Meena's not exactly built for crits, but hey, better defense and resistance.

For today's update, we're gonna actually explore past Gran's Secret Murder Cabin. You might recall I wanted to check out the path there earlier, but that was contingent on leaving the cabin alive. Unrelated: that Flame is green, which means its easier to evade and is generally going to be a pushover to fight for this party, so that's nice.

This isn't exactly the clearest benchmark for how hard Meena hits, but with the Bone Smasher on hand and the base Strength modifier of Monk, she's able to do some damage now. Less damage than GUTS or Werdna in their elements, but still respectable.

Yeah, see? Rocky ridges up ahead, but entirely traversable.

Looks like Talon is also here, but he's not interested in talking. Suit yourself, bud.

Hey, lookit that! We found Yamagawa M.A. after all. I dunno exactly what the abbreviation stands for, but I like to think it stands for Mountain Ascent, for reasons you'll discover ere long.

The gimmick of Yamagawa is that it's almost entirely a sidescrolling platforming area that goes vertically. We aren't gonna travel along the usual Z axis very much at all today, it's all X and Y.

Not to say the exploration here is two-dimensional. Clever platforming can take you to certain areas ahead of time.

Right, let's see what the mountainside has to offer.

Oooo flying eyeball. Cool. The colorball spell the one is about to cast is Barrier, which applies both defensive buffs Frieren can cast in one shot!

Werdna killed it with Firen before the cast went off, but that drew the Threat from the other one, and Headbutt HURTS.

Let's see if Paragon Crush has enough Threat to change its mind.

It didn't, but it turns out it didn't matter too much.

Oh, now this is a nice find.

This is a nice enough weapon for GUTS that I can now safely move the Squirrel Dung over to Meena without sacrificing big hits from GUTS.

Hi again. Enjoying the platforming?

He's got a headstart but that's about it, we'll catch up in no time.

Another colorball spell, what you got?

Oh that's VERY bright.

It's an area heal move. Focus down any Itachitori you encounter on Yamagawa.

Heavy shield complete with a small Vitality boost. This'll go to Frieren since GUTS is busy two-handing right now, but if you're devoted to using a shield Warrior it's good for them too.

Nice thing about Yamagawa is that I don't even have to let you fill in the blanks on my travel route. Just look at the bottom of the image!

Again, as soon as we get close enough to reach Talon, he takes off.

Just past him is a new drug and another fight.

Unfortunately, a miss from GUTS left this formation alive long enough to turtle up proper.

Made it work in the end though.

Since Meena is still our primary healer, being able to shrug off status effects is extremely important for her, so we'll be splitting our attention between the offense and support branches of the Monk skillset for her. Obviously, Chi Burst would be hilarious, and I can't say HP Boost would be a bad passive on her.

Yamagawa's a pretty short area. Once you reach this little tunnel, I'd say that's past halfway.

Still has one new enemy, with two new annoying moves. Division Cut is the usual "not here to kill just here to injure" move that's annoying but hardly life threatening, and MP Sickle lets them damage MP directly.

Whenever possible, make sure MP Sickle is aimed at your character who cares about their MP the least. Remember, that's their ability to contribute!

Note that while Division Cut and abilities like it ignore Defense, they're still "physical" and can thus be affected by sources like Defender stance, Armor Up, and the like. GUTS has about 50 more HP than he ought to after taking one of these to the face.

It might not look it, but we can totally make that tree jump. Three blocks, remember!

Oh, and the tree's good for baiting that Flame to the lower areas.

Our reward is this curious earlygame accessory. The Torpid Cuffs are extremely powerful for low-level runs, and even outside of those they're handy earlygame for any physical attacker. They do fall off very quickly though, becoming actively detrimental by level 27.

That's a ways off yet though, so for now, new toy!

Think we're about at the top.

Just up this route here, yeah?

Hello again!

Social butterfly, right there.

And that'll do it! I'm saving that Flame as a snack for Later.

Oh, that's pretty! Makes no damn logistical sense, but it's pretty!

Talon said:
...Not like anybody couldn't.

It was easy, but the important thing is we did it. Of course, now the question is, what's hiding down there?

Anyway, we set this as a Home Point for now for a few reasons. It's not as inconvenient for restocking as it looks, and more importantly, this is very high up.

ALLOW ME TO DEMONSTRATE

And bam, we're higher up in the Spawning Meadows than ever before!

At this point I'm gonna have to spoil a little something. If you want to do big honking sequence breaks, you take this route (albeit using the Home Point to first climb up even higher on Yamagawa, THEN launching yourself down here). I kinda messed up for the above reason, but even if I did it right, I wouldn't complete the sequence break for several reasons, not least that doing so would take me to an area with encounters WAY the hell above our current level and EXTREMELY mobile on the field. If you can pull it off and live to tell the tale, though, you can get to some pretty distant areas very early. I'm putting this out now so I can say that if you want another route out of Spawning Meadows, this is it.

Again, jumping at the height we did was insufficient to complete the sequence break. We'd need to be on that topmost ledge seen here.

While I'm here, I'll head to the lodge for an inn stay. Appreciate the grey Flame here, which knows how profoundly outclassed it is and makes no attempt to engage us whatsoever.

Oh, that's nice!

But yeah, having a high up Home Point is very handy for a lot of reasons. Anyway, let's actually finish up Yamagawa.

Just fallin' down the ol' mystery hole.

We land in a cavern deep within the mountain, dimly lit.

I'm pretty sure if you used the pillars to the side you could evade this boss, but that's not my style. Let's do this.

Sepulchra is much more difficult than your average boss in Delende, primarily because it's able to use both physical and magical attacks well. Had I been paying attention, I could've saved myself a lot of trouble with proper applications of Shell on that front, but even the Storm Helm and Storm Hood can shave off some pain. And it's not like Blaze was a misplay, either; Sepulchra displays a weakness to Fire that lets Wizards and Warlocks alike get some free damage in. This is also a fight where tanking is a lot harder than usual because of the Fatigue debuff Sepulchra throws out with every single Thunderbolt it fires off. That spell, plus its Impale attack, are custom built to ruin your tank's life. It also has some pretty solid evasion, although that might just have been me being a little underleveled for the fight, but honestly who can tell what level par is for the greater Delende area anyway? The only gotcha it has in practice is Thunderstorm; Reverse Polarity is held back by its cast time and is more of a breather phase than anything.

Really, if I was fumbling with anyone here, it's Frieren. My unwillingless to spring for Remedy for so long is starting to be a real pain, and Shell applications on GUTS would've saved so much headache from the repeated damage of Thunderbolt. Werdna shooting Fire constantly is hard to mess up and he had the scythe for when he inevitably ran dry, GUTS is doing the best he can with the AP he's able to scrounge up given the Fatigue effect, and Meena's alternating between keeping GUTS alive and hitting really hard. This is one of those wins where I somehow pulled it off despite poor tactics. At least everyone still got full XP for some reason!

Also I don't know why Sticky Web does damage when that's not listed in its formula.

Before doing anything else, I get Dispel for Frieren as the next step in the Doublecast progression, and Bolten for Werdna to allow for single-target spike damage more efficiently than with Firen.

Progressing further in, we find a reward well-earned!

New class time new class time new class time

Yussss

Unlike most such updates, I'm going to show off the power of this particular class literally right now, because, well...

Scholar is the blue mage of the game. All those colorball spells we saw? We can get those, right now, by having a Scholar on our team look and go "hmm yes I see".

For reasons known only to me, I decide that GUTS will be our Scholar. He's got Equip Sword now it's fine.

I'll go take care of the whirlwind tour for that imminently because there is one thing we can do with Scholar now that I really want to do immediately.

Didn't initially notice that Scholars can use Shields, so for now this is GUTS' new loadout. We'll switch to the Iron Sword and Stout Shield shortly. Needless to say, he's keeping his Battle Skill subcommand.

Aside from the two passives, Scholar's starting Monster Magic moveset is completely empty.

Not done yet, though!

Werdna's also changing it up to go Rogue! This ought to give everyone a physical and a magical class to have some small degree of proficiency in for now, something that it turns out is a Good Idea. Frieren is, for now, exempt, but once she gets Doublecast she'll probably go Fencer unless a better idea comes up.

Oh right Meena's using all our Medium Armor right now. We'll fix this shortly.

Pupil said:
A Monster Magic spell is learned when you see an enemy use it, but only while you're a Scholar. Try learning some Monster Magic from the enemies on this mountain! They've got some pretty handy spells for you to start with.

A fine idea! We'll start with that encounter I decided to ignore earlier for a conspicuously apparent reason.

Master Scholar said:
Return to me once you have proven your worth by mastering the Scholar class.

So yeah, you might be wondering what's the gameplay benefit of getting every possible ability of a class. If you really wanna know, track down the class masters and see what they have to offer. It's hardly an essential reward, but it's worth doing since you're gonna be mastering plenty of classes anyway. Scholar's a bit of a special case with their conditional learning, but hey, may as well.

Oh yeah there's no actual escape route from down here that I'm aware of, you gotta use your Home Point Stone to escape. Good thing you can't reach here without one!

GIVE ME YOUR SECRETS

Most monsters that have Monster Magic for you to learn will usually drop it pretty early on, and this particular formation was generous enough to make each of their openers the new move.

Can't skimp on other classes' progression while doing this of course.

Still very convenient!

This though, this is the spell we really want. Because with this bad boy under our belt...

We can finally cheese out a win against Gran.

Again, Gran's moveset and raw stats make engaging them fair and square a death sentence for all but the most overleveled parties. Scholars, however, can use Reverse Polarity on their Regenerate spell to turn that overkill amount of healing into a precise amount of lethal damage, ending the fight with a single cast. You do have to last two turns without your Scholar randomly getting pulped, but do that and it's easy. Comically so, even. Plus, free Regenerate spell.

This is the reward for taking a completely unleveled character into a boss fight and still winning. For starters, I grab Backstab and Shadow Cut.

The passageway continues a little further back.

The Underpass, you say?

Oooh now that looks like a treasure trove.

So the Underpass isn't a new area, not exactly. What it actually is is kind of the interconnecting space between various subterranean zones, like the Soiled Den, Pale Grotto, and obviously the Basement. Traveling the Underpass without some kind of swimming ability is next to impossible, and mapping it is impossible without lots of these Underpass Scraps. On their own, they do nothing, but gather enough of them and you'll be able to speak with a cartographer later to assemble a real map.

There's also this exciting number that would be amazing for GUTS were he still classed as Warrior. Still, max HP is good for anyone, and Frieren sure wouldn't complain about that.

That about does it for today.

Chloe said:
...Wait, we've met before. Are we already friends?

We'll close it out by revisiting the Proving Meadows for a bit.

How did I not find this the first time? Silly.

Well, I have these things now, that's nice.

Chloe said:
He's pretty lame. I don't think even I'd want him to be my friend.

Aren't you like... adventuring together?

Well, it seems the feeling is mutual.

One Crystal away from that!

TO DO:

~~Build the perfect starting team.~~
~~Explore Spawning Meadows.~~
- ~~Prove the existence of black squirrels.~~
- ~~Try to find another route out of Spawning Meadows.~~
Explore Delende.
- ~~Cross the bridge to the Proving Meadows.~~
- ~~Explore the Fish Hatchery.~~
- ~~Explore the Pale Grotto.~~
  - ~~Defeat Guardian.~~
  - ~~Find the Slate Crystal.~~
  - ~~Find the Fencer class.~~
- Explore the Soiled Den.
  - ~~Defeat Bone Thief.~~
- ~~Explore the Basement of the Cabin on the Cliff.~~
  - ~~Defeat Gran.~~
- ~~Find the dogs' bones.~~
Explore Seaside Cliffs.
Explore Proving Meadows.
- Find three crystals.
- Explore the Trial Caves.
~~Explore Yamagawa M.A.~~
- ~~Defeat Sepulchra.~~
- ~~Find the Aquamarine Crystal.~~
- ~~Find the Scholar class.~~
  - Find every Monster Magic spell.
  - Prove our skill to the Master Scholar.
Explore the Underpass.
- Find enough Underpass Scraps for a map.
Find the Summoner class.
- Challenge the Deity of Fire.
Find the Mimic class.
Find the Hunter class.
Find the Shaman class.
Find the Dervish class.

Kalir · May 3, 2024

SCHOLAR
Monster Field Researcher

STATS

HP: 5
MP: 6
Strength: 5
Vitality: 4
Dexterity: 3
Agility: 6
Mind: 6
Spirit: 7
Speed: 3
Luck: 5

PROFICIENCIES

Weapons: Rapiers, Staffs, Books
Armor: Shields, Light Hat, Light Armor

INNATE PASSIVES

Studious: -20% MP cost for all abilities.
Learning: Learn Monster Magic abilities by seeing an enemy use it.

Oh no, blue magic! My archrival! If you know me at all, you should know that the trend of blue magic, i.e. abilities you can only add to your character by seeing someone else do them in the wild, is one of my least favorite mechanics in RPGs, period. So imagine my surprise when Crystal Project adds a blue mage I actually find kind of enjoyable to use! The main thing that sets Scholar apart from traditional blue magic is that Monster Magic is incredibly easy to use: just watch the other guy do it. That's it. Scholar gets that Monster Magic now and forever as soon as you do and all it costs is having the Learning passive equipped. No needing to bait the enemy into targeting you and then surviving it with caster gear. Furthermore, Scholar rewards diligent students with by far the widest roster of abilities in the game at 20, counting healing, attacks, and utility among its moveset all with some pretty decent use cases.

Scholars suffer a bit of the same problem that Warlocks do with their stats, of some overgeneralized abilities that kind of make it hard to excel in this or that, even if their moves might allow it. Speaking of their moves, even setting aside the issue of the orthogonal method of progression compared to everyone else... Scholar's moveset has lots of limitations. The more straightforwardly useful abilities are expensive for both MP and CT, and there are lots of abilities that just... don't really have a lot of widely applicable use cases? Like, they CAN be used, but having your Scholar spend their turns and MP committing to those is usually less effective than something a more straightforward character would do by just hitting the guy or unhitting one of yours. And remember, if Scholar has a weak stat, it's their Speed. It's another breadth-first class that rewards having lots of possible plans instead of one extremely well-polished button.

Still, the vast array of abilities and generalist stats mean that, just like Warlocks, really anyone can get away with playing a Scholar without it causing too much trouble for their abilities. Of the classes we have, the one that would be least concerned with the shift would probably be Cleric, but hell, you saw me in the update immediately throwing this on GUTS, a Warrior, and I daresay he's doing just fine. Plus, Studious and the easiest access to Books in the game make it a safe choice for anyone hoping for more mileage from their MP. The best part is that all you REALLY need to get involved with Scholar is Learning, so if you want to spec someone into it for a fight... just go do a whirlwind tour of every area that has Monster Magic and fill out their moveset! And to make that better, I'm gonna come back and update this post you are reading right now (!!!) with the locations of monsters that use the spells recorded here after every time we see one! Wowie and/or zowie!

Infusion
Costs: 9 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic, No Self-Target
Recovery Formula: 50 + 1.5 Spi
Also heals the user for the same amount.
Known Users: Jellyfish (Seaside Cliffs), Sting Jelly (Capital Jail), Cactim (Poko Poko Desert), Sea Snake (The Open Sea)

Cheap heal effect that doesn't go for much, but it comes with a nice self-heal stapled on to it. And as we've already seen, there's more than a few classes that want to tank for their team and have the Spirit to make a spell like this worth doing. Pretty excellent for the price, especially if your Scholar is comfortable taking hits. A more casterly-oriented Scholar will probably either use their other command or a different Monster Magic heal, but the combo of speed, low cost, and self-heal makes Infusion a consistently nice package.

Regenerate
Costs: 12 MP
Single Ally Magic
Recovery Formula: 100% Current HP
Known Users: Gran (Basement), Bandages (Ancient Reservoir), Cultist (Greenshire Reprise), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Landrunner (Lake Delende), Brutish Quintar (Poko Poko Desert)

This is Scholar's fastest heal, with no CT commitment, and for Scholar that's worth paying attention to given their generally high CT and low Speed. Unfortunately, the big problem is that it becomes less useful the more you need a quick heal. If your target is at or above half health, great, Regenerate 'em. If not, you're gonna need something with a little more oomph to it. If your target is at critical levels of HP, Regenerate isn't even going to take them above half health, which is the magic threshold you really want to hit so they don't automatically generate Threat on their turn.

Sun Bath
Costs: 14 MP, 50 CT
Multi Target Magic
Recovery Formula: 60 + 1.2 Spi
Known Users: Itachitori (Yamagawa M.A.), Fiendish Quintar (Rolling Quintar Fields), Moss (Quintar Sanctum), Yamma (Okimoto N.S.), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Sea Skimmer (The Open Sea), Buttermint (Rolling Quintar Fields)

Area heal, wooooo! This is likely the earliest area heal you will get in the game unless you rammed headfirst into Curena on your Cleric. It's not even too bad on your MP! Unfortunately, it IS bad on your CT, i.e. the one resource you REALLY don't want to pay if doing an area heal, and it goes without saying that the formula quickly falls off even if you're fiending your Spirit stat. Sun Bath is extremely strong earlygame, and I hesitate to say it's useless lategame, but you will notice the diminished efficacy compared to most other area healing options.

Roost
Costs: 18 MP, 8 CT
Self Only Magic
Recovery Formula: 20 + 1.5 Spi
Removes one debuff.
Applies Roost (150 healing per turn) buff to the target for 6 turns.
Known Users: Quintar Egg (Rolling Quintar Fields), Seafeeder (Sara Sara Beach), Woke Egg (Quintar Reserve), Cockachicken (Jidamba Tangle)

An extremely strong self-sustain option with a nice package of effects. No individual effect is very strong: the heal isn't going to be for a lot if you're at critical health, the regen is fixed so it scales extremely poorly outside of earlygame, and you're only removing a single debuff. But tying all of these rather-middling effects together into a single spell that resolves pretty quickly for a Monster Magic spell makes this more than the sum of its parts. This is an extremely nice option for basically anyone running Monster Magic.

Build Life
Costs: 20 MP, 25 CT
Single Ally Magic
Revive Dead Formula: 25% Max HP
Known Users: Moss (Quintar Sanctum), Cactim (Poko Poko Desert), Buttermint (Rolling Quintar Fields)

Pretty slow and expensive for a revive, but it does at least have a benefit of always putting the target up to 25% health, independent of your own stats. A mainclassed Scholar won't really like that, but someone using Monster Magic on a low-Spirit class will definitely appreciate having the option to revive the actual healer in a pinch. Plus, it's not like 25% of max HP is BAD for a revive ability, it's really not. As ever, it's the CT that's the killer for this one. Monster Magic is so slow!

Lifegiver
Costs: 30 MP, 25 CT
Single Ally Magic
Revive Dead Formula: 100% Max HP
Sets user to 1 HP.
Known Users: Risen (Land's End), Dead Mage (Land's End), Dead Warrior (Land's End)

It's not any higher in CT than Build Life, and it's faster than Cleric's Return spell! Pretty cool, pretty nice... except for the whole health cost of your entire HP meter. Now, if you have proper precautions in place for this, it's workable. Use it if the enemy isn't pulling an area attack (which is usually ideal for revives anyway because an area attack would probably paste the target anyway). Or, if they're doing single-target attacks, you can have an Aegis to cover the caster thanks to White Knight. I don't know if this can trip the assorted "critical HP" passives, but it might be worth investigating if you want to make a build for those.

Reverse Polarity
Costs: 18 MP, 60 CT
Single Target Magic
Applies Reverse Polarity (damage becomes healing, healing becomes damage) buff to the target for 1 turn, damage taken, or heal taken.
Known Users: Indecent Dweller (Delende), Sepulchra (Yamagawa M.A.), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea)

The gimmickiest gimmick button to ever gimmick. Reverse Polarity has such a massively unwieldy CT as to render it functionally useless... but if you CAN line it up just right, it can be a massive help for a pretty decent MP cost. The obvious use is to turn a tankbuster hit you're about to take into a complete non-issue, but if you have some obnoxiously high scaling on your healing, you can also use it to pull some spike damage. Again, though, that CT makes it really hard to use in practice, especially when Scholar is so starved for actions anyway.

Barrier
Costs: 16 MP, 20 CT
Single Target Magic
Applies Armor Up (-35% physical damage taken) buff and Resist Up (-35% magical damage taken) buff to the target for 3 turns.
Known Users: Itachi (Yamagawa M.A.), Jail Breaker (Capital Jail), Sand Bomb (Ancient Reservoir), Dark Mage (Shoudu Province), Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea)

More efficient buff potential than Warlock... kinda! If an enemy only uses one of physical or magical damage, Barrier loses out no matter what due to Protect/Shell casting instantly, costing fewer MP, and having a better duration. On a hybrid attacker, Mixed Magic can still use Doublecast Protect/Shell, in which case the MP cost goes from 10 to 28 if used on a mainclass Warlock, and a whopping 44 MP on anyone else. Which means if you ARE facing someone that can do both physical and magical attacks (an increasingly common situation as the game goes on), Barrier has some excellent use cases.

Reflection
Costs: 24 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic
Applies Reflect (single-target magic gets repelled back to the caster) buff to the target for 1 turn.
Known Users: Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea), Puppet (Ancient Labyrinth)

Got a mean single-target murder spell aimed at your tank and not much time to do anything about it? Reflection is an expensive but solid way of handling this, instantly bouncing it back to the attacker. It ONLY works against magic, and it works against ALL magic, so try not to do this if you have a healer acting between your Scholar and your tank who would REALLY like to mend their wounds. Unless that healer is a Chemist. Then you can do this whenever you want.

Adrenaline
Costs: 10 MP, 30 CT
Self Only Magic
AP Gain Formula: 9 + 0.02 Mnd
Known Users: Cliffwolf (Seaside Cliffs), Bass Hunter (Salmon River), Scentaur (Sara Sara Beach), Root Muncher (The Sequoia)

I like to think that every single ability in the game has some nice use case to it, some situation, no matter how rare or niche it is, where that ability excels beyond anything else. I can't extend that kindness to Adrenaline. Sure, it gives more AP than Focus Energy initially, but A: Focus Energy has a better scalar, miniscule though that is, B: Focus Energy is free and this has big costs of 10 MP and 30 CT, C: Adrenaline is a spell and thus vulnerable to being slapped by Silence, D: Focus Energy gives a free crit buff on top of its extra effects, and E: even if you weren't willing to grind out the levels in Monk to get Focus Energy... you can just do a basic attack instead for the 6 AP that always offers. Frankly, if you're in a situation where Adrenaline of all things is your best move, you're fishing for an excuse.

Aero
Costs: 8 MP, 8 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 120 + 2 Mnd
80% Accuracy
20% Crit Chance
50% Crit Damage
20% Variance
Wind Elemental
Known Users: Fiendish Quintar (Rolling Quintar Fields), Brutish Quintar (Quintar Nest), Dust Devil (Poko Poko Desert), Woke Egg (Quintar Reserve), Buttermint (Rolling Quintar Fields)

It's about damn time we got a nice direct attack spell in the Monster Magic set! Problem: Aero is an extremely swingy spell. Most spells do not have crit chance, miss chance, or Variance to contend with. If you cast the spell, you're getting the exact number it says, which is their major advantage over physical attacks. Aero has solid damage, about a little weaker than Bolten, and that's really nice for its cost. But unlike similar physical moves that have ways to mitigate that ugly Accuracy penalty, Aero has no such allowances. One out of five of your casts will do nothing but waste your Scholar's time and resources. Course, sometimes you strike it big and hit way above your weight class. That's random chance damage for you!

Whirlwind
Costs: 33 MP, 28 CT
Multi Target Magic
Damage Formula: 240 + 3.3 Mnd
80% Accuracy
20% Crit Chance
50% Crit Damage
20% Variance
Wind Elemental
Known Users: Brutish Quintar (Quintar Nest), Fancy Quintar (Quintar Sanctum), Dust Devil (Poko Poko Desert), Chimera (Poko Poko Desert), Niltsi (Capital Sequoia), Brutish Quintar (Poko Poko Desert), Woke Quintar (Northern Stretch), Woke Quintar (Quintar Reserve)

Take everything I said about Aero up above, and then apply that to an area attack. If you're up against lots of enemies, the Variance and crit chance works more in your favor and the miss chance is more tolerable. It can't be relied on as a full encounter clearer the way, say, Firena or Boltena can, because you will almost certainly need to do some cleanup, but for the cost, this is a really nice area spell. The cost does have to be paid attention to here, unfortunately: while it's still cheap compared to Firena or Boltena, so are most other things, and they're cheaper still than Whirlwind.

Fire Breath
Costs: 50 MP
Multi Target Magic
Damage Formula: 230 + 3 Mnd
Fire Elemental
Ignores 50% Resistance.
50% chance to inflict Burn (15% damage over time) debuff on the targets for 3 turns.
Known Users: Crag Demon (Cobblestone Crag), Salamander (Beaurior Rock), Rampart Demon (Castle Ramparts), Fire Bug (Jidamba Eaclaneya), Wing Worm (The Sequoia)

An instant area attack that ignores 50% Resistance? On Scholar?! Sign me right the hell up! Sure, it costs a terrifying amount of MP and the damage scalar is a little tepid, but who cares? It's fast, it's powerful, and you can have a little Burn as a treat sometimes. If you have a party built for MP sustainability or your Scholar is playing it to the hilt and wielding a Book, Fire Breath can and should be considered your signature weapon and an excellent crowd-clearer. The 50 MP cost is still a lot though, so if you're in an extended fight, maybe leave Fire Breath aside in favor of more economical attacks like Whirlwind.

Lucky Dice
Costs: 17 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 30 + 2.8 Lck
100% Variance
Ignores Resistance.
Known Users: Hobo (Jojo Sewers), Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea), Torpedo (The Depths)

The only Luck-scalar ability in the game. Lucky Dice is extremely hard to spec for given how uniform the stat is across virtually all classes, to say nothing of Scholar's own exactly average Luck. The Variance only feeds into the heavy Luck dependency, too. And it's not like you can stack Variance on a spell, y'know? I'm sure someone out there can use this to deal bonkers amounts of damage for a pittance of MP and CT, especially for a Monster Magic spell, and the fact that it ignores Resistance is nice. It's just a really hard swerve to make it work for me.

Explode
Costs: 40 MP
Single Target Magic
Damage Formula: 300 + 3.2 Mnd + 3.2 Spi
Fire Elemental
Kills the user.
Known Users: Sand Bomb (Ancient Reservoir), Devil Bomb (Beaurior Rock), Torpedo (The Depths), Veil (The Sequoia), Doom Spike (The New World)

Well, it does really, really good damage. Scaling with both Mind and Spirit and having no CT makes this a great emergency "this thing needs to DIE TO PIECES" maneuver. Yeah, it does kill the user as well and that sucks, but that doesn't make it useless. Far from it, if Explode can secure a kill on a boss or at the very least an enemy that's about to do the deed and then some anyway, Explode is great! Earn that fate! Especially squishy characters who are expecting to die anyway should totally go for this when the chips are down, and consider the possibility of having a revival queued up for the user immediately after their turn for minimal downtime!

MP Sickle
Costs: 10 MP, 20 CT
Single Target Magic
MP Damage Formula: 10 + 0.12 Mnd
Ignores Resistance.
Known Users: Kamaitachi (Yamagawa M.A.), Salmon Cook (Salmon River), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Jester (Shoudu Province), Anubis (Ancient Labyrinth), Periculum (The Old World)

MP damage is technically a strategy you can pursue in this game, and it's one I've done before and even succeeded with. The trick is that a lot of enemies don't actually have significant costs on their moves, MP or otherwise. And those that do usually have enough MP that you'd have to devote a significant amount of time to just... chipping away at it with one or more of your characters instead of depleting the other massive number of HP you need to deal with. Plus, suppose you DO deplete their MP enough that they're forced to resort to regular attacks. They're still making regular attacks with boss stats! That's not exactly ignorable!

Atmoshear
Costs: 6 MP, 12 CT
Multi Target Magic
Inflicts Confusion (Randomly choose targets) debuff on the targets for 2 turns.
Known Users: Musher (Skumparadise), Parasite (Trial Caves), Capper (Salmon River), Possessor (Ancient Reservoir), Dead Mage (Land's End), Coyote (The Deep Sea), Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea), Parasite X (Castle Sequoia)

This is one of those moves that's better for enemies to use than for your team. After all, enemy AI is something you can predict and control with Threat. Randomizing where they're attacking, without the usual assumption of randomly attacking a teammate or healing an enemy (Confusion isn't that strong) means disregarding that and hoping to randomly distribute their attacks to your team. Which can work out if, say, you have someone who's taken too much Threat for their condition, or if the enemies have single target healing/buffing skills you want them to flub up. Those are all pretty insignificant edge cases though, and odds are good you have some other Monster Magic that handles the situation more gracefully.

Sleep Aura
Costs: 28 MP, 30 CT
Multi Target Magic
Inflicts Sleep (skips turn, removed on taking damage, only works once per battle/death) debuff on the targets for 2 turns.
Known Users: Wispette (Quintar Sanctum), Capper (Salmon River), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Snow Nymph (Tall, Tall Heights)

Multitarget Sleep is a really good way to shut down lots of enemies at once for an extended period of time to restabilize and set up. It is also a really good way to waste a Sleep application on summons in a boss fight if they aren't immediately dangerous but could be later. And that CT makes it hard to gauge it for perfectly optimal timing. Still AOE Sleep, and that's good, but it's a bit more unwieldy compared to other methods of inflicting Sleep.

Overload
Costs: 18 MP, 10 CT
Single Target Magic
Applies Power Up (+35% physical damage dealt) buff and inflicts Armor Down (+35% physical damage taken) debuff to the target for 4 turns.
Known Users: Shelldin (Salmon River), Vermage (The Undercity), Shank Shark (The Deep Sea), Swamp Kid (The Deep Sea)

That's right! We finally, finally have a straightforward "this character does more damage" spell! And look at what it cost us to get here. It's pretty fast for a Scholar spell and lasts for 4 turns, plenty of time to throw out damage, but it also applies an equally-persistent Armor Down penalty. In theory, you could also use Overload as an economical way to lower enemy defenses should they be lacking in physical options. Or chase an application of this spell with a debuff clear. I do have to drive home that every form of applying Power Up or Magic Up we've seen is self-only and usually extremely brief. Overload's huge duration for the low cost makes this a VERY strong support tool.

Insult
Costs: 6 MP, 6 CT
Single Enemy Magic
Threat Formula: 200 + 16 Mnd
Known Users: Improper Imp (Capital Sequoia), Dry Kid (Shoudu Province), Mind's Delusion (The Deep Sea)

Actually a better way of drawing aggro than Taunt! Except... Warriors are actually built to take hits. Scholars, not so much. And this move does have ever so slightly higher costs, including CT, so using it to spot-taunt enemies away from vulnerable characters isn't as guaranteed here. Still, if you have a Monster Magic skillset on someone capable of taking a beating, this is a really good Threat generation option.

Learning
Learn Monster Magic abilities by seeing an enemy use it.
Prereqs: 25 LP

For all practical intents and purposes, this is the only thing you need to spend LP on as Scholar, and it's your way of saying "even if I haven't yet found all the Monster Magic in the game, I've mastered the class". After all, hard to say whether you get 25 LP first or find all the abilities first, right? If you're maining Scholar for study purposes, this is the part where you can stop.

Equip Book
Costs: 2 PP
Allows you to equip Books regardless of class proficiencies.
Prereqs: 3 LP

Another caster weapon proficiency, this time for the humble Book. While they have pitiful Attack and are two-handed, the huge bonuses to MP make them worth investigating as an answer to poor endurance for your casters in any given fight. And if you're serious about Scholar, you'll get this passive just by doing all the fights needed to fill out their spell list as soon as you get into it. Yeah, you lose out on the raw punch of Wands/Staffs, or the hybrid damage potential of Scythes, but honestly? MP is critical in tons of fights, and if it bothers you, the answer is right here.

Let's Play Crystal Project: Obviously Crystals are more important than Adventure.

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Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer

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Round and round I go

(he)

????? LV 13 HP 292/ 292

(he, him, his)

Internet's foremost Bertolli cosplayer

(He/Him)

Do you require aid.

(whatevs)

Do you require aid.

(whatevs)