Game Mechanics


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Game Mechanics

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Attacks:

Slashes/Punchs (X)
Stabs/Kicks (Down+X)
Rising Strikes (UP+X)
Running Strikes (a suitable run-up, and pressing X/Down+X/Up+X when you're close enough).

A set of these attacks chained together (ie Slash, Slash, Stab) is called a 'Normal String'.

Slash/Stab and Punch/Kick must be 'levelled' in Reid and Farah's cases to gain access to new skills (see the Status Screen to see how much you need to do so to earn the next level), but no indication of your current level is given. Levelling is done by attacking with any move.

Combos:

Combos act differently for different characters.

Reid: Normal String > Special Skill > Sacred Skill
Farah: Normal String > Forward Skill > Rising Skill > Air Skill > Power Skill
Meredy and Kelle cannot combo.
Max can only combo his skills if he has the Canceler equipped.
Chat also cannot combo.

See the Skills page for a full list of skills

Skills:

The primary player's (ie your) skills can be assigned to X, X+Up, X+Down, and X+Left/Right. Also you can assign another person's skill to one of the second shoulder buttons (ie if you're playing as Reid you can assign Meredy's Restore skill to the L2 button and press it for her to use it).
Secondary characters can have their skills switched on and off using the Square button when they're highlighted (ie highlighting Keele's Fireball spell and pressing square would make sure he never used that skill). This is useful for battles wher certain spells would have a positive effect on the enemy.
Some Skills are earned by levelling Slash/Stab or Punch/Kick to a certain level, whereas some are earned by using previously learned skills a certain number of times.
Max and Chat learn their skills by seeing certain events in certain places (see Sidequests), whereas Keele and Meredy have spells but no skills.

Guarding:

Guarding can lower damage you take from an enemy as much as a two thirds.
Guarding doesn't work against magic
If you're attacked by a combo, you have to wait until you recover before you can guard again.
Certain accessories can give the Guard move extra abilties (ie Meredy's Step Ring allows you to control Quickie while in the Guard position).
On Semi-Auto control mode your character blocks automatically when not attacking.

Magic:

Magic (Craymel Artes) work exactly as normal skills, but require some charging up first.
being attacked during the charging period stops the spell, and it has to be re-cast from scratch.
Often they have a limited area, so it's entirely possible to completely miss an enemy. Remember that if you run fast enough, enemy spells can also miss you.
With Keele, direction buttons that appear next to his HP/TP stats can be pressed to speed up the casting of the spell (Max can do this with his skills also).

Fringing:

When you have more than one Greater Craymel, they must be fringed to activate new powers. This is done by putting the two Craymels that generate the spells (look next to the name of the spell to see what other Craymel must be used for fringing) into different Craymel Cages, then pressing the 'Fringe' button to create the spell. (ie, to use Undine's Heal arte, you would put Undine and Sylph into different Cages, then pressing 'Fringe'.

Spells can only be used so long as those two Craymels are kept seperate
There is no perfect combination of Craymels. Not all spells will ever be usable at once. You must find your own setup that allows you to use the spells you want.

Summoning Greater Craymels:

Greater Craymels can only be summoned by maxing out their Vitality Gauge, displayed under their name in the Craymel Cage screen and next to their name in the Skills screen. Vitality ranges from 1 to 10.

Vitality increases as you use spells of the same element as that Craymel.
Vitality decreases as you use spells of the opposing element of that Craymel.
If a Craymel has Max Vitality, using another spell of that same element will instantly lower the Vitality to 5.
No two Craymels may have Max Vitality at once. If a second Craymel attains it, the first has it's Vitality lowered to Nine.

Also, since levelling can sometimes be a little silly in this game (especially on hardcore mode), here's a handy table with some of the more popular places to do so:

Levelling Locations
When to Level	Levelling Place	Anything to declare?
Before Nostos Cave	Mt. Mintche	Make sure you don't stopper up the caves and you'll have an infinite supply of predictable enemies to face before Nostos, and later Morle and Undine.
Before Sylph Cavern	Forests between Barole and Sylph Cavern	Some pretty good enemies here, for this level.
Before Efreet Gorge	Forests on Farlos Island	Make sure you take frequent rests at the Sanctuary, since some of the enemies here can be brutal at lower levels.
Before climbing Mt. Farlos	Islands near Chambard	The beaches are an especially nice place to level. Try to go at Night and find some Super Stars there for a lot of EXP. Again, be careful of running out of healing items.
Anything past Mine of Gnome	Mine of Gnome	Specifically, the Fakes. They're worth good EXP at this point of the game. Assuming, that is, you can stand to kill them. Come here and try Fakes again before you to to Mt. Celcius as well. The other enemies aren't worth the bother.
After getting the Aifish	Shadow Cave	Since by this point you should have the Excalibur, nothing here should pose a huge problem, and they give good EXP, and you can even see where the enemies are. If you like go to the bottom floor where the random encounters are for the best EXP.
When you get there	Balir Castle	Nothing much to say. Good EXP.
When you get there	Shizel Castle	You'll level here a lot. After you get the Mystic Sword everything will become so much easier, so equip the Demon Seal with Reid, a Sephira on someone use the most powerful Artes and hack away. You'll get a ton of EXP and Gald.
If the previous two are too hard	Sunken Ship	Good places for getting Reverse Doll, which are probably one of the most useful items in the game.
	Aifread's Tomb
	Seyfert Shrine (under Farlos Sanctuary)	Good EXP-gathering here, plus Maxwell, if you're brave enough. Some decent Armor to be collected also, so get that, even if you run away a lot.
	Inferia City Battle Arena	Even though this is only good for Reid, the other character's levels will advance at a roughly equal pace, so try it.