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[Mobius FF] The Other, Other F2P Final Fantasy Mobile Game
Aegis
Fear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered User regular
Fear My DanceOvershot Toronto, Landed in OttawaRegistered User regular
Mobius Final Fantasy is an episodic, role-playing, gacha-style video game developed and published by Square Enix for iOS and Android devices. Japan's version was released in June 2015, and the rest of the world received its international launch in August 2016. For a mobile game, it has involved a surprisingly established final fantasy staff including producer Yoshinori Kitase (FFVII, FFVIII, & FFX) and writer Kazushige Nojima (FFVII, FFVIII, FFX & Kingdom Hearts), among others.
The story follows with you being a literal Blank slate: You play as <insertnamehere>, a Blank that was spirited away to the dying world of Palamecia. Alongside a number of other Blanks, you are urged forward to become the next Warrior of Light. Along the way, you meet friends and enemies alike (including many familiar faces throughout the Final Fantasy universe), as you attempt to discover the truth behind the dying world, and Vox, a spiritual entity that speaks through your mind.
The layout of the game is similar to other F2P gacha RPGs. The world itself is filled with stages that cost Stamina to enter, which recovers at a rate of 1 Stamina/5 minutes. Each of these stages has a number of Battles that typically end in some kind of Boss encounter as their last wave. In the case of Mobius, the Stages are broken into Chapters and arranged in a Map format to simulate you traveling through each Chapter and the world. You can Teleport back and forth between the larger Circle stages (hubs), but to access any of the smaller circle stages you need to physically be in contact with it from a nearby connecting path. This is important for dungeon-style levels which have anywhere from 3 to 5 sublevels: you can teleport to the dungeon's entrance area, but to move to the bottom floor of the dungeon you will need to fight through each of the preceding levels. In practice, though, there are plenty of larger circles scattered across each of the maps to make teleporting not that much of a pain. Aside from the main Chapters, there are also special Event and Challenge maps, either open permanently (the Shrine of Trials & Chaos Vortex), or open for a limited period of time in the case of special events.
Combat
Mobius operates on a relatively straightforward (at first) turn-based combat system. You have a limited number of actions each turn which can be used to: Attack, use an Ability, use the Element Drive, or use your Limit Break/Ultimate. Every time you Attack, you randomly generate Elemental Orbs that accumulate at the top of your window up to a maximum of 16 orbs (at which point you will stop generating orbs until you free up space). The Orbs come in a variety of colours and types: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, & Heart Orbs (Light, Dark, & Rainbow orbs are currently unavailable and will be added with the release of new Chapters & Jobs that utilize them). The purpose of these Orbs is to serve as the fuel that your Ability cards use to activate their abilities, as well as to fuel the Element Drive.
The objective of each battle is to, obviously, kill all of the fiends without dying yourself. Each fiend comes with 2 bars: an HP bar (the green one at the top), and a Break bar (the orange one below it). Just using the Attack action will generally not do that much aside from generating orbs and a little bit of HP and Break damage (except on smaller enemies who have so little hp that you will likely 1-2 shot them). Rather, your aim is to Break the enemy's Break bar. This is done by using Abilities on these enemies, with Abilities of the opposite element type of the enemy dealing much more HP and Break bar damage than neutral (or resisted) elements. In Mobius, Fire and Water are opposed to each other, while Earth and Wind are similarly opposed. Enemies will always resist the same element of an Ability that they themselves are, and often won't take any Break damage from them. In order to actually Break the enemy, once you've used an Ability to turn the Break bar from orange to red in colour, regular Attacks on that enemy will do much more damage to the Break bar and quickly reduce it (Abilities will never reduce the Break bar, they will only turn it from Orange to Red so that you can follow up with Attacks). Once the enemy's Break gauge is broken, they will take much more damage from attacks and abilities to their HP bar, as well as providing a significant increase in Score if killed with their opposing element while broken.
Instead of attacking or using abilities, you can also consume Orbs by using the Element Drive. This has three important effects: First, it consumes ALL of the orbs you currently have accumulated of the type that you chose to Element Drive. Secondly, you gain a resistance shield buff to the element that reduces damage received by that particular element. The duration of the shield is 1 turn per 2 orbs consumed, rounded up, up to a maximum of a 5 turn shield at 9+ orbs consumed. The exception to this resistance shield buff are Heart orbs, which if consumed, simply heal you for an amount based on the number of Hearts used.
Finally, consuming orbs via Element Drive temporarily reduces the spawning frequency of the orbs consumed proportionate to the number of orbs consumed. You notice on the element drive that there are 3 colours sitting there in a pie-shaped pattern? That actually represents the types of orbs and % chance that any given Attack will generate an orb of that colour (Hearts, as far as I'm aware, have a low base chance to be generated regardless of how you manipulate the element drive). At the start of a Stage, each orb type will have an equal % chance to spawn, and natural the tendency of the element drive is to equalize the % chance of orb generation if it happens to not already be equal. For example, let's say you'd really prefer Fire Orbs to spawn but currently have 5 of each Water and Earth orbs. You can activate the Element Drive twice, once for each of the Water and Earth orbs, and watch as the Element Drive suddenly becomes overwhelmingly Red (upwards of 75% percent or even completely 100% red if you keep doing it). But over time, as you keep attacking enemies, the Water and Earth % will creep back to their original levels, and the Fire generation probability will decrease, if you never use the Element Drive again.
As such, the flow of combat is typically an alteration between Attacking to generate Orbs alongside consuming unwanted Orbs to shuffle around the orb generation, consuming those Orbs to use your Ability cards, Attacking again to break the enemy, and then outright killing enemies with your Abilities or Limit Break.
Jobs & Abilities
Here's where a lot of the customization comes into play. Before going into battle, you'll need to assemble a Deck. Decks consist of three things: a Job, a Weapon, & 4 Ability Cards (alonside the friend Ability you bring in on an individual basis).
Jobs serve as the foundation that guides your base statistics (HP, Attack, Break Power, Magic, Crit Chance, Speed, & Defense), what types of Abilities and Weapons you can use, what your Limit Break/Ultimate does, and even what your character looks like. Do note that Jobs pulled from the Job Summon gacha are more powerful than the starter Jobs that you are given, even if the names are the same (Jobs from the Job Summon dedicate all of their Skill Panels towards that specific job, rather than alternating between a new Advanced Job each panel, and have further unique Advanced Jobs separate from the starter versions). Think of the Starter Jobs are teasers for the style of play that the pulled version will offer.
Each Job also will tend to eventually dovetail into Advanced Jobs after a certain number of Skill Panels are unlocked.
Stats
Here's a quick overview on stats:
Elements: The 3 types of Elements that your Job will generate when you Attack. You will never generate orbs of types not on this list in combat, unless you bring along an Ability Support card which converts orbs into a specific type on use.
HP: Your total Hit Points. If you lose all of these in battle, you die.
Attack: How much damage your Attacks do to the enemies' HP.
Break Power: How much damage to the Break meter your Attacks & Abilities do.
Magic: % increase to the damage and Break Power of Abilities that share your Job type.
Crit Chance: The chance that your Attacks and Abilities will score a Critical Hit. I have no clue on how much of a % increase each star represents.
Speed: The number of Actions you have available each turn. Each * represents 1 action.
Defense: Your overall level of defense and the amount of damage reduction your job has. I have no clue on how much of a % increase each star represents.
Weapons
Each Job will have a weapon type associated with it, split among Swords for Warrior-types, Daggers for Ranger-types, and Staves for Magic-types. Jobs can freely use weapons from other Jobs provided they are the same type; so a Mage and White Mage can each use the other Job's Staff, since they are both Staff users, but they could not use a Knight's sword. You will typically unlock one weapon (and upgrade it) per Job, and each Job will have its own unique Weapon complete with unique stats. Weapons are also rewards from Events and from Multiplayer. Beyond the base statistics of Attack Power, Speed, Crit Chance, etc. Weapons can and often do have a variety of passive effects that range from Increased Ultimate Build % to Increased Orb Type Generation, for example.
Skill Panel
The Job Upgrade screen and where your skillseeds will go. Each job has a # of Skill Panels (currently 4), and each Skill Panel has 16 unlockable panels, the last of which is locked until you unlock every other panel on that particular Skill Panel. Panels upgrade a variety of stats associated with your Job, from passive buffs to HP, Attack, Break Power, & Magic, to providing passive abilities such as Element Starter (start a Battle with a # of orbs randomly generated in your bar) or Extended Break (add X number of turns that an enemy stays broken), to unlocking upgraded versions of your weapon or even Advanced Jobs. Each panel costs a number of skillseeds, the types of which are generally associated with the types of orbs that the Job in question generates, except for the middle panels which like to use Light & Dark skillseeds.
Abilities
Here's where you put all of those cards you've collected and assemble them into a team that you'll be using. Each Ability card has four main components that it brings to your deck: the card's overall Level (which translates into your Job's level and affects your base statistics), the card's Ability when used in combat, the Skillseeds generated by the card at the end of combat, and any Auto-Abilities that the card will passively provide you in combat (usually only relevant for 3* and 4*, or higher, cards). Ability cards grow in level as you use them in combat, but you'll also want to levelup both their Ability Level and Skillseeds Level as you progress throughout the game.
The Abilities that each card has are relatively straightforward. Each has an Orbs requirement, that informs you as to the type and number of Orbs needed in order to activate the Ability. Alongside this is the Attack, Break Power, and Crit Chance of each individual Ability. In the case of Support Ability cards, these also come with a Cooldown number that lets you know the number of individual turns (not actions) that need to pass before you can use the ability again after you've used it once, even if you have enough Hearts to activate its ability again. Aside from the base statistics, currently there are four types of offensive Ability shapes: Single Target, Cones, Area Abilities, and Focused Area Abilities.
* Single Target: As it says, hits a single enemy. Typically has moderate Orb usage around 4 Orbs.
* Cones: Hits a really strange number of enemies. Sometimes it hits just one enemy, sometimes it hits 3, sometimes it hits 4. Tends to operate on hitting the enemy targeted plus whatever enemies are adjacent provided they are physically close enough to hit. Regardless, Cone abilities usually have the fewest Orb requirement down to 3 Orbs.
* Area Abilities: Hits every enemy on the screen, usually for lots and lots of damage. High orb requirement, down to a minimum of 5 Orbs.
* Focused Area Abilities: These are those Area abilities that also has a line that says "Main Target Focused". They function similarly to Area Abilities, except they do less damage to the rest of the enemies on screen in exchange for more damage to the target immediately focused by the attack. Has the largest Orb requirement, as high as 8 Orbs.
The Ability Level on a card impacts how much damage and break power the ability does when used. In the case of Support Abilities, raising the ability level of the card can also reduce the cooldown on that card. Moreover, in order to unlock the Expanded Skills (those icons underneath the Ability card's Crit Chance line) on a given Ability card, your card will need to have a minimum Ability level. Typically, you only need to have the card at Ability Level 2 in order to have a chance to unlock the first Expanded Skill, but the last one typically requires a maxed out Ability Level. To upgrade a card's Ability Level, you need to fuse together another card that share's the same Ability name. So to upgrade Firaga, I will need to find another card that has the Firaga skill and feed it to the card whose Ability level I want to upgrade. Cards that drop from the wild often come with Lesser versions of Abilities. What the game doesn't tell you, is that if you Augment these farmable cards up to 3*, that Lesser version of an ability will turn into the regular version. So Lesser Firaga eventually becomes Firaga at 3*, at which point you can use said farmed, augmented monster as fusion fodder for the monster whose skill you want to upgrade. The game will give you a % indicator when you go to fuse cards together that will indicate the % chance that your chosen Card will gain 1 Ability Level. Obviously you would like this to reach 100% so that you're guaranteed an upgrade.
Skillseeds Created by the Card, meanwhile, are your source of skillseeds that you receive at the end of battle that you then use to unlock panels on your Jobs. Each Ability card tells you how many and what types of skillseeds it creates, and at the end of each Stage, the types and # of skillseeds are added together from each of the 4 cards that you've put into your deck, multiplied by the skillseed modifier you gain from Difficulty & Score. In order to increase an Ability card's Skillseeds Level, you simply need to fuse together cards of the same element as the chosen card in question. It's typically wise to quickly focus on increasing the Skillseeds level of your cards so that you're generating more and more skillseeds each battle early and building up a pool to use later, considering panels quickly start taking tens of thousands of skillseeds per panel to unlock.
Gacha & the Shops
Yes, this is another gacha-style game, but don't run away just yet. The premium currency of this game is Magicite, which you can either purchase for real world cash, but which also accumulates in your Magicite Distiller at a rate of 1 Magicite/10 minutes (up to a cap of 100). This Distiller is unique to the international version of the game and provided you regularly empty the distiller (you should regularly empty the distiller) results in roughly 1000 free Magicite every week.
What can you do with Magicite? Well the first thing is the gacha itself. There are currently 5 types of summoning available in game:
* Job Summon (3,000 Magicite): Job Summoning allows you to pull new Jobs (classes) from the pool of currently released jobs. You are guaranteed to pull a job that you don't already own. This is the main difference between International and Japan, where we have a much increased cost of the Job Summon in exchange for a guaranteed new job each pull until you eventually collect all of the available jobs.
* Greater Ability Summon (3,000 Magicite): Unique to the international version, the Greater Ability Summon randomly summons 6 ability cards ranging between 3* and 4*. You may receive duplicates, but if you pull a 4* any future draws of the same card will come out at 4*.
* 3* Ability Summon (1,000 Magicite): Summon a 3* Ability card that comes out at max Ability Level and max Skillseed level. You still have to levelup the card itself, but you don't have to worry about grinding out Ability or Skillseed levels. Pulling duplicates is possible and there are occasionally rate bonuses for cards you don't own yet.
* 4* Ability Summon (2,500 Magicite): Summon a 4* Ability card that comes out at max Ability Level and max Skillseed level, plus you gain a bonus of 12 Ability tickets as a present. Follows the same rules as the 3* Ability Summon.
* Cactaur Summon (10/20/30/50 Friend Tickets; or, 500 Magicite): While the Cactuar Summon technically uses Magicite, in reality you'll be using your Friend Tickets on this. This summoning will randomly award you with 6 Cactaur pulls of randomly * levels (2-4*) and types (Regular, Metal, or Gold). Each time you pull, the cost of subsequent pulls increase up to a max cost of 50 Friend Tickets.
Alongside Magicite, though, are Summon Tickets. You will occasionally receive Summon Tickets from events, achievements, and through the Mobius Gift Box (more on this in a moment). These tickets are equivalent to 500 Magicite and are consumed alongside Magicite (Summon Tickets will always take priority and be consumed first) when using any of the available summoning options. For example, with 3 Summon Tickets you could pull on the Job Summon while only having 1,500 Magicite in reserve as the 3 Summon Tickets will be used alongside the 1,500 Magicite to makeup the 3,000 cost of the pull.
The second thing you can do with Magicite is purchase the Mobius Gift Box itself (you are limited to 1 purchase per month). At a cost of 3,000 Magicite, this is generally recommended as one of the most efficient things you can do with your Magicite, in both Japan and the International version (even though the cost in Japan is lower), considering what you get out of the Gift Box:
Mobius Gift Box Contents
6x Summon Tickets
20x Ability Tickets
1x Spirit Ticket
5x Elixirs
5x Phoenix Down
5x Crystal
1x Growstar
1x Extranger
1x Amulet
30 day boost of +50% skillseed bonus, active from the moment of purchase.
Every 6 days, you will receive a gift of 3x Mystic Tablets and 2x 4* Metal Cactuars.
The 6x Summon Tickets alone are worth 3,000 Magicite if used instead on Summons, but more important is generally the skillseed boost, as skillseeds are the primary method of upgrading your jobs and you will need a ton of them.
Finally, Magicite can also be used to purchase consumable items from the Item Shop. These range from Elixirs, to Phoenix Downs, to Ability Tickets. There is also a section on Augment materials where you find the rare Growstars, Extrangers, and Mog Amulets as well as more common augment materials that feature in Daily Deals for reduced prices. Aside from the Growstars, the rest of the augment materials are typically farmable and are not terribly enticing an option to purchase. On the other hand, the most enticing items available for purchase are the Bronze/Silver/Gold Openers. These Openers can be used to open panels on your Jobs without having to pay the skillseed cost of the panel. Bronze can open panels that cost up to 5,000 skillseeds; Silver can open panels that cost up to 50,000 skillseeds; and Gold can open panels that cost over 50,000 skillseeds. These Openers can be received through events, and typically you'll want to save them to open the most expensive panels that fall in their range (ie- don't use Bronzes on panels that cost 100 skillseeds).
The other two available shops are the Ability Shop & Spirit Grove. The Ability Shop contains a number of 3* (and 4* if you've augmented or summoned a 4* version of a Shop card) abilities you can purchase for Ability Tickets. You can either choose to purchase them for their listed cost (typically 3x Ability Tickets), or click the max boost button and purchase them with their Ability Level & Skillseed Level maxed so that you don't have to farm for said upgrades. These abilities are generally going to be what you're putting into your deck, as they aren't farmable (outside of pulling them from the 3* or 4* Ability Summon).
As for the Spirit Grove, this is where you throw Echo away and never look back purchase new outfits for that lovable fairy that follows you around, or change her appearance altogether (currently into a tiny Cactaur-in-a-Pot or Tonberry). The Spirits available for purchase are entirely cosmetic. There is no benefit in combat (ie- the random stat effects/buffs Echo sometimes provides) outside of changing how she looks/sounds. The Spirit Grove uses Spirit Tickets for purchase, at a cost of 1 Ticket per Spirit.
Useful Links
Mobius Main Website
Mobius Twitter
Mobius Facebook (they seem to use this more actively than twitter in first announcing news)
Unofficial Mobius Reddit
Here's also a random youtube video that initially got me interested in the gameplay, at least in terms of the level of craziness in the future:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBEooIk2ahAWe'll see how long this blog lasts
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Aegis on
+5
Posts
* October 5th - Chapter 3 - Chaos & the Crown, Part I, released!
-Job Cards, Batch IV: Dragoon, Dancer, & Scholar are released into the Job Summon pool.
* October 6th - Shiva appears in Multiplayer to battle.
* October 8th - Mobius Day is finally here! Every 8th, 18th, & 28th of the month gain double stamina from Elixirs, +20% fusion success, increased chance of skill unlock, & other bonuses. We're also receiving 5000 water & fire skillseeds on the 8th.
* October 10th - Pictologia Final Fantasy cards available. (until October 31st).
* October 13th - Second Exploration Region (El Dorado) unlocked!
-Odin appears in Multiplayer to battle.
* October 18th - Mobius Day #2. Same benefits as before, except 5000 wind & earth seeds.
* October 20th - Infinite Arena. I assume this is a continuously scaling single player battle arena judging by the description.
* October 27th - Battle Tower: Omega & the Azure Witch (until November 4th).
* October 28th - Mobius Day #3. Same benefits as before, except 5000 light & dark seeds.
Current Available Jobs
Starter Jobs
These are the starter jobs that everyone is given access to at the beginning of the game.
* Onion Knight - Sword attacker focusing on Attack Power and Defense. Advanced Job previews include: Warrior > Knight > Dark Knight
* Apprentice Mage - Staff-based Mage teaser, typically featuring high Magic in exchange for low Defense and Break Power. Advanced Job previews include: Mage > White Mage > Black Mage
* Neophyte Ranger - Dagger class featuring higher Crit Chance and Break Power. Advanced Job previews include: Ranger > Hunter > Thief
Job Batch I, II, III, & IV
Also released with the start of the game, but not immediately available to players without spending Summon Tickets/Magicite, these are some of the advanced version of jobs available from the Job Summon pool. Also included are the second batch of job releases:
Elements: Fire, Water, Earth
Weapon: Falchion [Crit Chance: * / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Fire Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing fire orbs.)
Ultimate: Arc Slash - Cone Attack. (Added Effect: Brave)
Advanced Job: Gladiator (Panel 4)
Elements: Fire, Wind, Earth
Weapon: Defender [Crit Chance: - / Speed: * / Defense: *] (Auto-Ability: Earth Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing earth orbs.)
Ultimate: Radiant Sword - Cone Attack. (Added Effect: Barrier)
Advanced Job: Royal Guard (Panel 4)
(Mage)
Elements: Fire, Water, Wind
Weapon: Runic Staff [Crit Chance: - / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Water Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing water orbs.)
Ultimate: Ruinga - Massive area damage spell. (Added Effect: Faith)
Advanced Job: Magus (Panel 4)
Elements: Fire, Water, Earth
Weapon: Divine Staff [Crit Chance: * / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Earth Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing earth orbs.)
Ultimate: Holy Prayer - Instantly restores HP to the player. Deals a minor single target attack to an enemy. (Added Effect: Regen)
Advanced Job: Combat Surgeon (Panel 4)
Elements: Water, Wind, Earth
Weapon: Gladius [Crit Chance: * / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Wind Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing wind orbs.)
Ultimate: ??
Advanced Job: ?? (Panel 4)
(Hunter)
Elements: Water, Wind, Fire
Weapon: Waylayer [Crit Chance: ** / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Water Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing water orbs.)
Ultimate: Rain of Arrows - Single-taget attack with high crit chance. (Added Effect: Snipe)
Advanced Job: Skirmisher (Panel 4)
Elements: Fire, Water, Wind
Weapon: Deathbringer [Crit Chance: ** / Speed: * / Defense: -] (Auto-Ability: Wind Draw - Moderately increases chance of drawing wind orbs.)
Ultimate: ??
Advanced Job: Shadow Emperor (Panel 4)
(Black Mage)
Elements: Water, Wind, Earth
Weapon: ??
Ultimate: ??
Advanced Job: ??
(Thief)
Elements: Fire, Wind, Earth
Weapon: ??
Ultimate: ??
Advanced Job: ?? (Panel 4)
(Assassin)
(Red Mage)
Tips & Tricks
Helpful collection of pointers from Rius:
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Hunter and White Mage
Really wanted Knight, but I think I'll wait on the next set of jobs before drawing again
How often do new spirits come out? I don't want to miss an awesome one in my haste to get Tonberry.
Ranger has actually been pretty great and kind of cemented my choice to stick to the rogue types except in one or two very dragoon based exceptions.
Currently working up the skill levels on some multi area stuff because the only thing that consistently gives me trouble is all the chip damage from those fights with 5 enemies or whatever. I just aint got no defense or hp for that mess.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Even Warrior and Mage have their uses
And then you have my problem, where you have a really awesome area ability in Ifrita that now does so much damage that I'm doing too much hp damage to enemies and they either are one shot outright or die before I can break them.
Score attempts have been...interesting, because of that. Lots of team swapping to try and lower my damage so I can break the damn things.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Steam: betsuni7
Steam: TheArcadeBear
There's three current grinding options right now for people who have completed both chapters: augment mats, raw xp to raise their player level, and skillseeds.
Augment Mat farming is chasing after the wandering bosses that appear throughout the mats to get their special materials to drop so you can augment lesser cards up to the point of 3* so their Lesser ability upgrades to the base ability that can then be fused into proper monsters. Mostly this is for folks building their own team up from scratch and not wanting to spend Ability Tickets at the Shop to buy the monsters maxed out to start. The exceptions to this are the Grudge General (support card with Drain), the various Liches, and all of the wandering bosses who drop their own cards (typically the Focused Area Abilities), all of which aren't available from the shop to begin with and need to be farmed up. The process is pretty simple: find the wandering monster that has the augment mat you need and follow him across the map.
Farming XP also follows this route: chase the wandering monster. For whatever reason, the fights have much more XP than normal, likely because they add a boss wave to whatever area they're currently inhabitating. Each wandering monster fight in Chapter 2 on Hard gives 1200-1800 player XP, with an average around 1400.
Then there's Skillseed farming, which nobody ever has enough of (for reference, Panel 4 tabs average 9000 skillseeds for the cheapest tabs, and 60,000 for the expensive one, the last weapon upgrade). There's a simple way and a more involved way to do this, but the simple way is typically: go to Teleport Stone Shrine (the very last area in Chapter 2) on Hard. Make sure the area's red so that you gain the highest difficulty modifier to skillseeds, but still bring a team that's capable of actually completing it on red difficulty. Make sure you can score at least 200,000 points consistently, and tada, you have a 6 stamina area you can farm for a x9 skillseeds multiplier. The more involved method is that x9 is not the highest multiplier you can achieve. I've seen 14x on some areas, but they typically involve longer stages with higher scores that cost more Stamina. There might be an area that's more efficient per stamina at a higher multiplier, but I don't think anyone's found it yet. You could try and consistently get 500,000+ points in Teleport Stone Shrine to gain a higher score multiplier, but it's far harder than hitting 200k.
Oh yea, Score (which is a section I was considering putting in the OP): it's not just for ladder farming. Score and Difficulty are the two ways to affect your skillseed modifier at the end of battle. The Difficulty of an area is determined by your deck's level; there are ranges for given areas where if your deck is a high enough level it lowers the difficulty of the stage and vice versa. These are outlined visually by the colour of the circle of the area: Blue > Green > Yellow > Orange > Red. Meanwhile, Score offers its own multiplier: the higher your score at the end of an area, the more of a multiplier. The two main ones to generally worry about is that 500k+ is 4x and 200-500k is 3x.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Steam: TheArcadeBear
1) When regular Attacking, all(?) classes have a 3 hit combo/animation. The first hit generates 1 orb, the second 2, and the third 3 for a total of 6. For this reason, if you're going to Attack, you want to attack a couple of times in a row to generate more orbs. The 1/2/3 model becomes 2/3/4 if the enemy has Break status. The combo persists between enemies if you switch quickly enough, or if you kill one enemy and move to another quickly enough.
2) Don't sell any cards! Except Golden Cactaurs. Common wisdom is to keep at least 1 of every *1/*2 card, because augmenting them to *3 both causes all future drops of that card to be *3 and because it removes the "lesser" from their ability, letting you use them as augment materials for Ability bumps. What took me a few days to realize is that extra copies of those *1/*2 cards can still be used as augment materials for Skillseed bumps.
3) Don't attempt 80% or 90% Ability/Skillseed augments. You will cry.
4) In the Ability shop, there are three cards with rarity *3+, where all the rest are just plain *3. They are the Salamander, Succubus and Fenrir cards, which are Fire/Warrior, Water/Mage and Air/Ranger respectively.
These *3+ are "Awakened" cards, or some shit, and here's the scoop on them;
Basically, they're Newbie's First Cards. You could do much worse than spending your initial Ability tickets on the 3 or 9 cost versions, and using some more to pick up an Earth single target ability to cover that fourth element. You'll still need some normal *3 abilities to have something with decent Break Power or it'll take you forever to Break bosses. Plus they're all Single Target, so you'll still need some Blast or Area abilities for when there's 5 enemies in a wave.
5) When you get around to doing the Shrine of Trials, put 3 different elements in your deck and turn on Auto Battle, in Offensive Mode, then hit the button to turn on High Speed. Battles will go three times as fast and the 30 minute clock won't, so you can finish more stages and get more cactaurs.
6) If an area is too easy, switch to Hard Mode from the ETC menu.
7) Ability cards have Extra Skills, little passives that modify or empower the Ability when used. They have one per *, and all of a class' cards have the same set. These can be spontaneously learned upon any use of the Ability in battle, so don't blow your Extranger augment materials right away. Supposedly the 3rd/4th ones are much slower to unlock via usage, so use your Extrangers on those if you want to.
Cards summoned via Summon Tickets will always(?) have the Extra Skills unlocked.
8) Area w/Main Target Focus cards actually do one huge hit to the main target, then a smaller AoE hit to all targets including the main. So you get to double dip on the main; I just upped a Treant to 3* yesterday and it's visually spectacular. Tornadoes erry'where.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Yea, I have an Adamantoise sitting around with Blizzaja which is just a giant Icicle explosion. Problem I have with those abilities is that since they're drops, they're going to max out at 3* which means they don't get Damage Limit Break as an expanded skill. So they don't do nearly enough damage
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
My knight gets 4 hits, but I have no idea if the combo stuff works like this with him.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
If Ifrita crits on a Broken Water enemy with a Magic buff active, my record's 20,450 21,358 damage. Noncrits are just 13-14.5k.
Score record attempts remind me of PAD in terms of "Goddamnit, stop fucking up!" consistency. I'll start off great for the first 3 waves, way ahead of my typical score, and then completely fall on my face on 2 of the waves and miss a record by 10-150k
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Edit: Also set you friend card in Social -> Profile. Not sure if they mentioned that in the tutorial or I just glossed over it.
FFBE: 898,311,440
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/dElementalor
Also, PuPu Attacks! tomorrow. The reddit thread's been compilating information of the Japanese version of the event, and supposedly it comes with a roster of En-element Support Ability cards that you can farm. These are augmentable up to 4* (at least in the upgraded version of the Japan event), and when activated cause your attacks to deal damage of the specific element of the support. They also grant +25% (50% for 4*) damage bonus to the same element.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
I finally managed to max Ability skillup my Adamantoise and hot damn:
Max Ability 4* Ifrita: 2084 Attack / 982 Break Power
Max Ability 3* Adamantoise: 3062 Attack / 1331 Break Power
...If these Focused Area abilities ever get to be upgraded to 4* and gain Break Damage Limit, they're going to do insane amounts of damage, holy shit.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
There will be an ability shop card with Blizzara at some point however
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
The japanese wiki has them with 4* upgrades as their max augment level. Dropped cards will just never drop past 3*, you have to manually augment then to 4*.
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Generally later on, for Mage Ice cards, you'd want either Leviathan (Overall range, costs 4 orbs, has low attack but almost twice as much Break power of Blizzaja), or Vanille+Fang (single target, costs 3 orbs, has almost no break power but almost the same attack as Blizzaja)
The strategy later on is that you would set up break-oriented multitarget attacks to supplement your strong single target killer attacks
All we have now are largely balanced cards that, while they aren't bad, they'll largely get phased out of real usefulness later on
Currently DMing: None
Characters
[5e] Dural Melairkyn - AC 18 | HP 40 | Melee +5/1d8+3 | Spell +4/DC 12
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Oh well, Ice Sword is pretty nice to have at least
My Hunter and White Mage are sad
Pupu is here for a while, but it's easy, the cards can be augmented to 4* so it's actually pretty nice to have a full deck of them, and there are a couple chests with like 1000 seed rewards, some magicite, ability tickets, a pupu echo skin and I dunno what's in the last spot because I haven't gotten enough souls yet.
My pull luck has been good so far.
Scratch that, I already bought the gift box, it'd be sort of dumb to reroll now. Weak.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
Short answer: Yes. They go up again at the end of Chapter 2 as well, even though there's no Ch. 3 yet.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
The first three 3+ cards, and Yuna.
4* Inugami (Flameshift) (got it from my one *4 summon, fully maxed out on all fronts; it's actually kind of badass.)
3* Geryon (warrior fire cone, 3/6 ability, 1/3 Extra Skill)
3* Belias (mage fire cone, 6/6 ability, 3/3 Extra Skill)
3* Famfrit (mage water cone, 1/6 ability)
3* Byakko (rogue water single, 3/6 ability)
3* Miasmatic Lich (mage water single, 1/6 ability)
3* Treant (rogue air focused, 2/6 ability)
3* Onion Knight (warrior earth single, 3/6 ability)
3* Raiden (warrior earth cone, 6/6 ability)
3* Jormugand (warrior earth area, 1/6 ability)
3* Fat Chocobo (Barrier) (one of my *3 pulls. fully maxed, for what it's worth)
3* Chariot, Centicore, Gnome (all 3 ability ticket purchases, use 'em for skillseed farming sometimes)
So my Ability Summons landed me the Inugami, Belias, Raiden and Fat Chocobo. My one Job Summon landed me Hunter, which I don't hate. I have gotten the Onion Knight to the third panel (Knight), the Neophyte Ranger to the third panel (Hunter), and the Apprentice Mage to the second panel (Mage).
I still have 41 ability tickets, so I've got some versatility there. 1 Extranger, 2 Growstars, 1 Mog Amulet. 26 days duration left on the Gift Box. 9 Mystic Tablets, so I could do 3 cactaur runs. 980 Magicite. I believe I used my prereg Extrangers on 3*+ Salamander. That might have been kind of dumb.
So obviously with the Inugami my strongest element is Fire. I was pleased to see Hunter uses Fire/Water/Air instead of Earth/Water/Air. Unfortunately Fire is the one element you can't augment 2* to 3* for because nothing drops the Molten Core material yet, so it's pretty much impossible to upgrade the Abilities on Fire cards without spending Ability tickets. And there's still no Fire Rogue cards in the game, even with the second wave of Ability cards in the shop. This is really irritating.
Where should I go from here? How can I best use the 4* maxed Inugami? Is the 3* maxed Fat Chocobo useful or useless? Which cards should I be focusing on, or buying? Should I keep developing the Neophyte Ranger job panels (different weapon that the Hunter job card can use), or just focus on the Hunter job panels (generally stronger investment of skillseeds)?
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.