So I'm kinda just stumbling through the game, I'm not really sure if I'm progressing or not but I guess I discovered a bunch of new zones so that must be good.
Right now I'm synthesizing a bunch of shit because I spent a whole bunch of time getting items and I might as well solve some of these delivery requests. I just got to the point where I can choose what order to put ingredients in, and I think I don't understand it at all. It seems clear that if you put things in in the optimal order, you get either higher quality or quantity of items, but I'm not sure what logic determines what the optimal order is. I tried doing it in the order that made logical sense, like, for example, obviously you'd put in the filter first and then put ingredients in after that because that's how filters work, but that ended up getting me less items than usual, so I think I just don't understand this system at all.
I'm also not sure if it even matters the letter grade of my ingredients, and especially it seems like I'm wasting them while determining the optimal order of ingredients.
This synthesis system seems like it could be interesting but it seems pretty obtuse and punitive to the point of being a little off-putting.
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Look at the item traits.
Those item traits go into the stock yard (that box with things like "fire spirit, or good w/dirt" in the middle of the alchemy screen. You can press select to read what they do. Putting, say, "fire spirit" in the stock yard first, and then following up with a fire based item will add (+10?) to your item's Fire attribute points.
Attributes are those element bars you see to the left of the stock yard. For certain items, like bombs, heal items, weapons/armor, and accessories, if you raise certain element attributes to a certain point, the item will gain additional effects.
I'll give an example.
Nomadic Shoes is an item that reduces the time it takes to travel from point A to point B on the world map. However, the amount of time reduced depends on the item's effect.
The only attributes that matters for the
Nomadic Shoes is the Wind attribute, or the green bar. There are three possible effects: Fast Walk, Run, and Like the Wind.
"Run" will lower the amount of days spent traveling more than the "Fast Walk" effect would. "Like the Wind" will lower the traveling days the same amount as "Fast Walk" but has the added bonus of making Ayesha run faster in towns and fields.
So you will want to use ingredients with traits like "Wind Power" or "Tornado" or anything that help raise wind attributes. For early game, you might not have the ingredients to gain your desired effect.
Item quality doesn't matter for Nomadic Shoes. I know for weapons and armor, each point above 50 quality will increase the base stats by 1%. I imagine, for bombs and heal items, quality would effect how powerful bomb attacks are, or how much HP/MP heal items heal.
Item traits/Stock Yard can effect your created item's elemental attributes, quality, gained properties, and CP consumption.
I think the system will click the more you mess with it. And like afreaknamedpete said, there won't be any need to worry about maxing out items early in the game, as a number of Alchemy skills will be locked unitl you level up, and the best ingredients will come later.
I'm enjoying the game so far. Started off on Hard. Great soundtrack. The performance is spotty though.
Yeah, that's one thing that bothered me about the MC herself. In English, the performance didn't feel convincing, and read the script too literally. In Japanese, the voice pitch for her is annoying during some events, particularly comedy scenes. I'm cool with the voices for the other cast members in both English and Japanese, though for this game, I prefer the Japanese cast overall.
