Any other common pitfalls I should avoid? I did see some people talking about areas that were brutal and to save a lot.
Oh yes. Pitfalls.
Ok soldier! up and at em! We got some battles to win! Captain Murphy at your service!
1) Diversify your team's ability pools. The job system can be best taken advantage of by diversifying. Early game, in order to simplify roles, it's Always good to have a dedicated priest/healer separate from an offensive/spellmage so they don't dip into each others mp pool and run out of spell-casts when they need them most. Make sure to develop a chemist so that you can learn 'hi potion', 'fenix down' and potion right off the bat. Also learn the 'Throw item' skill b.c it allows you to cover more ground when things get rough.
a) When you are recruiting new characters in towns wait until you get one with high brave and high faith before you accept. You can keep re-rolling. (ideally +70 each) and this will help you out a lot with more able characters to adorn the battlefield. Do this at the beginning of the story if you can to save yourself headaches later on. Higher character faith allows better healing and magic damage, high brave allows for better physical damage and I believe resistance to physical attacks.
b) ideally you'll want some crossover abilities later on so that each character on the battle field can heal, do damage as needed etc.
2) The decisions you make in the story can improve the brave and faith of every person on your team, potentially. It's kind of like an honor system. The more honorable your choices, the better the rewards tho it can make the objectives of certain battles slightly more challenging. Later on you can buff these stats permanently with class abilities so don't worry too much.
3) Get Orlandu. lol. Game over! You'll understand when you make it to him. Unfortunately you have to defeat Riovanes castle first, which is no small feat. Speaking of which...
4) Make several save files periodically. The aggravating part people are talking about is the lead up to Riovanes castle. You want to make sure you have the chameleon robe and possibly maxed out squire abilities before you move on to Riovanes or you can really screw yourself and have to start over. The first battle is potentially very tough, but the second one is just awful. The third one is even worse lol. The squire skill, "Yell" will be your friend here. In fact, unlock 'Yell' asap. It will give you +1 speed for each turn for the entirety of the battle and you can cast it on everybody. It's incredibly powerful in story battles but can also be used for the purposes of grinding so that all your characters get turns immediately and can max out job abilities.
5) think about combining abilities of different classes. The monks 'barehanded' and 'martial arts ability' can be paired with the ninja class two-sword ability to basically break the game. Pairing THIS with the squire abilities that increase passive damage each turn you use it will make you into a wrecking ball of devastation. Class abilities such as 'speed save' on the archer can be learned so that each time you take damage you receive +1 speed for the rest of the battle. Opt for speed and power where you can but if you have to choose one or the other, optimize speed.
6) Use Agrias b.c she is my sweet girl waifu and she can potentially be incredible as an early sword specialist with sword arts.
7) Mustadio + make him into chemist, with the 'throw item' ability and master the class and one of your roster spots will be set for the entire game. Mustadio has an incredible speed stat and can use guns. Allowing him use of the chemist abilities just feels natural.
8) Experiment! Go nuts. Have fun. Save often.
9) PS. get a summoner as early as possible. Those guys hit hard and can do it from a distance!
Thanks for that! Im saving it to my notes
