FINAL FANTASY Record Keeper

Kinda sounds like FFXI back in the day..

Edward is actually pretty decent in this incarnation compared to his actually FFIV usage =p Being a 5-star support that also has a Faithga + Hastega makes him a great addition for mage teams. Even if you're using him for just the support access the Harp is a pretty good ranged weapon overall as it beats a lot of bows I find >>; You may not want to use the Harp for Edward directly but it does make a good weapon for other supports that can use that as a ranged weapon - notably Ramza and Faris are the two big ones I use for my own teams that can equip the harp. Just because a weapon provides a SB for a specific hero doesn't mean it isn't a good weapon for other applications / heroes too :)

Having a hastga effect in the form of Sync this early in is good since Haste is an important component to any high end team so its good to future proofing. I would recommend using Rydia since the BSB effect will probably allow you get over some hurdles that may otherwise be hard to overcome and she has just as much Black Magic skill rating as Palom in addition to having Summons and some light White Magic if you need it in a pinch.

You'll accumulate quite a few of the Hero Souls as you do more and more events though you might want to save one or two in case you get a Relic that doesn't belong to the current event (ie you're pulling on a nightmare banner) so just keep that in mind for more future proofing / planning.

Happy smashing~

Thanks again for the replies.

I do have a Stardust Rod for Terra, so maybe she's worth getting? Not sure it's the best choice since I already have Rydia with a 20/20 Slepnir's Tail, and Palom with a Bomb Core.

Couple of questions:

With combining weapons, does it matter if you're combining a 20/20 weapon to a 1/20 vs a 5/20, 10/20, etc? I have a second Slepnir's Tail, and I'm wondering if I should upgrade the lower one before combining the two.

Also, is there an approximation on the difficulty of daily dungeons?
I've only done four or five of them, and so far my experience has been:

Easy: Good if you only have enough stamina for that, and are done playing for a while.

Normal: Just auto-attack while you do something else.

Hard: Actually need to pay attention and cast a few Cures/Curas. Maybe a bit challenging to get the full reward due to damage taken.

Heroic: Attacks can come close to one-shotting you, need to cast several cures, and maybe use a Mythril to heal between battles. Defensive "helper" NPC summons (Roaming Warriors? I forget...) seem really useful here. Really hard to get full reward/mastery due to damage taken and potentially getting KO'd.

I've got Tyro to level 50 via eggs, everyone else is around 40ish. I see some of these Elite and Nightmare fights with difficulties 40-100+, not really sure what the upper limit of what I should be attempting is. I haven't had a full wipe yet, and only very few KOs, but I hate the idea of wasting 50-70 stamina.

when combining, you are wasting materials leveling the 2nd item.

your levels are not suitable for Heroics. you'll want level 80 for most/all of your party members. there IS a way to cheese them to a certain extent: the almighty tauntaliate combo.

what you do is find a character who can use both Draw Fire and Retaliate (Auron, Gilgamesh, lolTyro, maybe a few others). you hone these up to max/close to max. you alternate using these (Draw Fire > Retaliate > repeat) and what happens is that Draw Fire makes all single target physical attacks go to the person using it, and Retaliate allows them to evade the attack and counter with their own. this allows you to escape from a lot of things with minimal damage, however group attacks will still screw up the rest of your party, as will magic attacks. it should help you breeze through a LOT of the lower leveled content, however, and it can even help with dailies to a limited extent (today's has lots of Ninja, which tend to use AoE magics).

With everyone at 50 you should be able to get through the first two (maybe even three) elite missions in the current weekly event, just plan carefully for it. Not sure how well you'd fare afterwards though. Make use of the Roaming Warrior to help smooth that out a little and of course retaliate meta spam can be helpful to *Point to above* I think when I did some of the dungeons with a full level 50 Realm team (all 5 heroes have synergy boost), I can generally get to the 4th Elite mission with little issue.

I have noticed that the daily dungeons the mobs seem to hit much harder than say their core / event counter parts so if you can't do it yet right now, revisit it later. The dungeons will continue to recur on the same day every week and you be able to collect the "clear reward" at another time. Make sure to make use of the Sunday dungeon though since the EXP gain is immense.

Terra w/ Stardust Rod is good. If you're going to build a mage team you'll definitely want more than one mage for the team.

In terms of combining the two whips, if you're using the second just for upgrade bait leave it at 1. If you happen to have another caster that can use whips (Krile from FFV comes to mind), saving the 2nd whip for another caster can be beneficial as well. Use your judgement in this regard.

also, if you are going to use Mythril for anything other than pulling on Relic Draws, I would recommend using them for Stamina refills on Sundays for Gain XP. being able to rapidly level is going to be important since you are starting out.

I find that if you need to heal between rounds, you either are approaching the level wrong or trying to fight something too high above you. the game is super dependent on having decent Soul Breaks, which means lots of pulls for gear. additonally, Realm Synergy is going to be extremely important for you right now for that extra oomph. you'll kinda figure out difficulty gauges on your own, mostly because it will vary depending on what and who you have available to you. additionally, if you are at 4/5 Stamina Shards, and have a level with one as a prize, drain as much of your stamina as possible doing other stuff to just barely have enough remaining to complete that level. it'll give you a bit more bang from the refill.

Debating on whether to give up or not on the event that ends soon. In the Ultimate fight, keep dying, doubt I'll clear it much less the +1 for the MC3 >.>

which, XIII or IV?

edit: nvm, XIII is the one ending soon >.>

I don't recall the ultimate being too difficult, you just smash it fast and hard, exploiting the Ice weakness when its barrier is down. if you have any soul breaks with DEF/MAG down, they will really help you wreck his face.

Don't use stamina refills at lower max stamina, and then not anywhere aside from Orbfest. Massive waste of mithril.

I must be missing something. Multiplayer raids.... 100 Gil reward? I mean what's the point of the rewards?

I am loving multiplayer lol

I think this is just a beta test, so the rewards are intentionally crappy. Just there to make sure it works, etc...

That's pretty much my thoughts too behind the rewards.

In a "this made me smile" post - I apparently have enough realm synergy in IV to actually beat the 180 difficulty trial with a full IV team. Woo~

^ Correcto

Its an open Beta, stress test, working out kinks, etc.

Multiplayer is however a lot of fun.

At least, I think so.

I think I'm starting to realize how important the daily dungeons are. I kind of slacked a bit early on with honing abilities because I realized I won't need like Fire/Thunder/Blizzard very long. Plus going for maximum stamina has been pretty fulfilling to grind out as many realm dungeons as possible.

Just picked up Thundaga/Firaga/Blizzaga though, and I'm in a huge orb/gil crunch now. Added Firaga Blade too, and need to pick up the other elemental blades. Really nice doing 9999 on some boss fights.

Way too many abilities to look into right now, it's pretty overwhelming. Basically been using Tyro/Kain/Yang/Rydia/Porom full time - Tyro using elemental blades, Kain and Yang using "break" abilities with Jump and 2x Cut, Rydia nuking and using that Titan Soul Break (which is amazing), and Porom curing and using Sync.

Had to use a gimpy mage party for Bottomswell, since the MFer put Rydia and Kain into Bubbles on my first attempt. Second try, I just spec'd Tyro to use a harp, Kain to jump, Rydia to nuke, along with a very underleveled Tellah and Porom to nuke it into oblivion. It worked, even though Climhazzard was zero help.

From my experience there are a few key abilities to get "up to speed" in regards to completing final content:

Full break (or the dance version)
Each breakdown (they stack with full break)
Lifesiphon
Ruinga (non-elemental AOE that can basically carry you through dungeons)

I was like you not too long ago and just focused on leveling/stamina farming but came to a point where I was quite lacking in orbs to make useful skills and that held me back for a bit. Now that I have more free time/stamina to toss into dailies the orbs are piling up and I'm doing pretty solid on abilities (finally honed full break to rank 2!) so now it's the eternal issue of having synergy equipment and the right soul breaks, which has been failing me as of late (missed the CM for XIII, decent chance I miss the IV one but we'll see).

What's "CM" by the way? I ascertained BSB being Burst Soul Break, but not sure on that one.

Cid Missions. Generally bringing a realm-specific party to Ultimate and/or Ultimate+ battles

Yeah, they can be really tough for newer players getting characters leveled for it. Unless you have good synergy gear I think you should basically be 65+ for CM's and that's tough for a lot of realms. I was able to do IX and XII but might be missing the next few until we get to like FFT or something, lol.

Meh, hoping I would be able to jump into Ultimates sooner than later.

Currently sitting at

Tyro 62
Blitz Sword 20/20
Red Jacket 10/15

Kain 45
Platinum Sword 1/20
Wizard Armlet 15/20

Yang 51
Hell Claws 13/20
Regal Gown 1/20 (Why can he wear this?!)

Rydia 46
Slepnir's Tail 20/20 (I have two others 1/20 - gil is an issue though)
Black Robe 15/15

Porom 48
Seraphim's Mace 1/20 (I have four at 1/20 total, so that's interesting)
Feathered Cap 1/20

Seems like I'm able to handle some Heroic dailies now and get Champion or Expert level award. Stuff hits like a truck, but doesn't one-shot. As long as the boss has an elemental weakness, I'm usually fine. Ultimate and higher will probably one-hit KO me though.

You want to reserve Sundays to be nothing but experience daily day. Once you get get an A-team at 65+ you should have a chance at Ultimates. That said, generally you need to focus either entirely physical or entirely magic because of how buff/debuffs operate in the game. I chose physical to start (since magic requires BSB's or Hones) so the fights that lean towards magic are still a tough thing for me depending on element.

Yeah, that's my current plan. Looks like the 65 limit break crystals for my current team come from the FFIV event, so hopefully I can get them up towards 65 on Sunday and then do some of the higher level event dungeons before they go away.

Since Tyro is almost 65, any idea where I can get his second LB crystal?

Edit to add: Blind, Dark Buster, and Sleep Buster never friggin' work. :(

I believe the only way to retrieve Tyro's 2nd limit break is to use a Memory Crystal II Lode which are generally in the 110 difficulty weekly event fight. Dunno if you have the capability to do that yet though with the fact you have Bomb Core for Tellah and Seraphim Mace for Porom, you actually have a decent start point to build a combined physical and magical team - you just don't have access to Dr. Mog's Teaching (Tyro's third Record Materia) and Mako's Might (Cloud's third Record Materia) which will give you a good starting block for any fight that revolves around a single encounter with the boss (anything 110 difficulty and up). If you get those two and a RW a wall (Tyro's Sentinal Grimoire or Y'Shtola's Stoneskin II) you can probably handle a lot of things up to 110 with some specific preparation on the other characters in the team.

Also sadly the status busters seem to have a lock proc chance compared to spells and Machinist abilities :/

damnit man Onion Knight's stats go up exponentially after lvl 93? Same crap from FF3 DS, and when I thought grinding in FF3 DS was long as hell lol. Anyways Onion knight have any potential?

That is exactly why they did it for....


Onion knight is pretty much your new support if you pull any of his relics. His OSB is lack luster because there is no way to enhance the damage.

is banner 1 or 2 going to be better to pull on for Onion Knight?

The hyped up relic of his is on banner 1: Vessel of fate
Which is the stacking att 30% + magic 30% + Haste to all allies.

The banner 1 itself has Luneth BSB which is very powerful with R2 of Sky high. 2 of arc's ssbs, one is an insta cast cure + physical blink and the other is regen + pro/shell + magical blink

The rest of the relics are pass: luneth dagger,KO sword, Ingus shield. So 4/7 of the relics can be very useful.

Banner 2: Ingus BSB : att + tanky stats on use, commands are sentinel and retaliate, making him an excellent physical tank.

Refia bsb : Attach fire, 50% crit. command 1: crits deal 100% of the damage instead of 50%(fire based) command 2: Basically a Dark bargain buff(stackable att 30% - def 30%. Fire based).

KO: medica 40% max hp

Desch: imperil thunder + 30% magic up for him

Refia SSB is decently for an ssb and in this era, Ingus SSB is ok with sentinel.

Only one useless relic and thats the 2nd relic for Desch.

Personally I think banner 1 is stronger but its up to your preference~

Refia's BSB is arguably the best elemental exploiting SB in the game.

No, no its not.

Kain and Luneth deal way more damage than refia. Refia would have to crit all 4 hits on her command to double her damage(command 1 = 100% crit dmg instead of 50%) to come close to Kain's out put. If you use Fire within then you're gated by 20k per use like Pecil is. However the 2k heal per use is pretty good from Refia.

Refia's BSB excluding abilities and only commands, sure its strong, but you would be hindering most elmental bsb's full potential but not using abilities due to abilities being higher in multipliers over commands which hover 2-2.4 multipliers. Obviously commands with buffs would be used.