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[Chrono Helix]

Argh I was so close to beating 18-10, but in the end I lost everyone. I paid an energy to finish off the last remaining enemy, and after I beat him... my phone ran out of battery. Fortunately it still remembers I cleared the level, but after restarting the game I don't know what happened in the cutscene after that. It's not much, but still annoying.

 

[Deitus]

You'd possibly be better off getting mantledrake or some other AoE mage with high skill proc rate as it's somewhat doable to hit runners with AoE magic.

here's an example of someone clearing Metal Zone 2 with Mantledrake

It would have to be high enough level for the magic to clear the regular metal enemies and have a high enough skill proc % for it to always go off.

Mantledrake is something you could farm for the +5% skill rate btw.

Edit: Other than Bahamut we're also most likely going to get Odin and Leviathan sometimes in the future. All with 3 jobs.

You know the Mantledrake in that video is level 65+ right?

To unlock that fire column spell it has to be level 35. But even then, based on my experience using level 29 mages with much better magic stats than Mantledrake (albiet using different spells), I doubt he could one shot most enemies in Metal Zone 2 at level 35. Not to mention the base activation of that skill is 30%, so you need a ton of skill ups to get it to go off consistently.

I mean it looks really useful, but it seems like it would take an insane amount of grinding to get to a point where it could actually work, and doesn't seem in the realm of possibility for the average player. For most people, getting someone who can inflict sleep or paralysis is a much more realistic possibility (albeit, less effective).

Edit: Didn't see the end of the video where it shows both Grace and Mantledrake are level 70.

 

[Hige]

Mantledrake's final skill is level 50 instead of 65, but I agree with most of what you said. Still, it's farmable and pretty useful in general, whereas the status affliction types don't seem that great outside of metal zones.

 

[Visceir]

You know the Mantledrake in that video is level 65+ right?

To unlock that fire column spell it has to be level 35. But even then, based on my experience using level 29 mages with much better magic stats than Mantledrake (albiet using different spells), I doubt he could one shot most enemies in Metal Zone 2 at level 35. Not to mention the base activation of that skill is 30%, so you need a ton of skill ups to get it to go off consistently.

I mean it looks really useful, but it seems like it would take an insane amount of grinding to get to a point where it could actually work, and doesn't seem in the realm of possibility for the average player. For most people, getting someone who can inflict sleep or paralysis is a much more realistic possibility (albeit, less effective).

Edit: Didn't see the end of the video where it shows both Grace and Mantledrake are level 70.

My Piz'fer at lvl 35 gets the job done. Obviously SS class mages have way higher MATK, but even at lvl 40 - 50 Mantledrake should be quite competent. I imagine I could get a B rank monster to that level in 1 - 2 days.

Farming it is another issue, but even that shouldn't take more than 2 - 3 days to get it to drop a couple of times -- the stamina for each try is just 8.

Not saying it's the best way to go about things, but it's definitely an alternative.

+Mantledrake would actually be useful outside of Metal Zone

+You'd probably have to level up your paralyze character just the same to actually have the paralyze effect land.

 

[Deitus]

Farming it is another issue, but even that shouldn't take more than 2 - 3 days to get it to drop a couple of times -- the stamina for each try is just 8.

Getting it to drop a couple of times is one thing. Getting it to drop 15 times (1 to get it the first time, and 14 skill ups to get to 70% skill) is on a whole other level. What's the drop rate on it anyway, 1 in 5? 1 in 10? Anecdotal evidence is showing it's taking people 10-20 runs to get it to drop the first time (I got the drop on my first run though). Even at 1/10 drop rate, that's 150 runs of that single stage.

Sure, it would have other uses, but that's still a crazy amount of grinding.

+You'd probably have to level up your paralyze character just the same to actually have the paralyze effect land.

Not sure about paralyze, but in my experience Sleep works 100% of the time on the metal runners, even with an underleveled character. It works 0% of the time on anyone else in the metal zone though.

 

[Visceir]

I don't think you'd really need to get it to 100% as even 70 - 80% would make the skills go off the majority of the time.

Paralyze wouldn't work in Metal Zone 4, right? That one is all about confusing runners.

I guess the real answer would be to just ignore the runners and do metal zone only when the king is present. Would still net you a decent amount of exp.

 

[Deitus]

I don't think you'd really need to get it to 100% as even 70 - 80% would make the skills go off the majority of the time.

True, you don't need it to activate 100% of the time, but you'd want it to go off pretty consistently.

Actually, watching that video again, I originally thought that it was actually a column spell (can playable characters even use skills like that?), but the Fire Vertical only applies to the two squares directly above and and two directly below Mantledrake. The other two spells he uses are standard pincer area. So the Grace is actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, and there's some crazy positioning going on to get them all lined up correctly in that first screen. Having a high level Mantledrake would surely help a lot, but it still wouldn't guarantee you could clear screens.

Paralyze wouldn't work in Metal Zone 4, right? That one is all about confusing runners.

I guess the real answer would be to just ignore the runners and do metal zone only when the king is present. Would still net you a decent amount of exp.

I guess I didn't realize until now that different Metal Zones had different weaknesses. So yeah you would need confusion for Zone 4 (petrification for 5, paralyze for 3, and sleep for 1 and 2).

But you might be right that waiting for King Zones would be the easiest way to go, especially if you have high level characters to help you.

 

[Visceir]

True, you don't need it to activate 100% of the time, but you'd want it to go off pretty consistently.

Actually, watching that video again, I originally thought that it was actually a column spell (can playable characters even use skills like that?), but the Fire Vertical only applies to the two squares directly above and and two directly below Mantledrake. The other two spells he uses are standard pincer area. So the Grace is actually doing a lot of the heavy lifting there, and there's some crazy positioning going on to get them all lined up correctly in that first screen. Having a high level Mantledrake would surely help a lot, but it still wouldn't guarantee you could clear screens..

One of my Piz'fer's ice skills does a 3 tile vertical column damage across the screen, one glacier skill does the same, 3 tiles, only horizontally. I've yet to get another Glacier skill and the bsolute Zero(3x ice damage) skill for him. SS AoE mages are pretty kickass.

Really wish they would fix the mage skill descriptions to actually display the area they hit.

 

[silvermember]

Man, I would gladly drop $10 or $20 on this game if it meant taking away some of the f2p elements like stamina and energy.

Some guy on another forum spent 200 bucks for the perfect team and you are talking about 10 bucks?

If you want an energy free version, play for a console version.

 

[Datschge]

Finally got a Bahamut. You guys weren't kidding it being slow to level up. And it starting at level 1 adds insult to injury. =D

 

[Ryuukan]

Chapter 20 done

Wild ride

 

[Soulflarz]

Chapter 20 done

Wild ride

And here I am still on 13 acknowledging I need to level up.

 

[theMrCravens]

Some guy on another forum spent 200 bucks for the perfect team and you are talking about 10 bucks?

If you want an energy free version, play for a console version.

He probably means in terms of time actually playing instead of recruiting.

It does suck emptying stamina in 10-15 min, but then without it you'd have a bunch farming exp and mats non-stop, and rushing to the end way too fast for what Mistwalker intended.

 

[Pinko Marx]

10-10 boss is whipping my butt. Can't kill him fast enough before he turns back time. What do?

 

[Soulflarz]

10-10 boss is whipping my butt. Can't kill him fast enough before he turns back time. What do?

Use that lightning guy you got a couple chapters back, itll stun him for the turn every time.

 

[mjc]

Got Bahamut after three tries, not bad

 

[Jaruru]

10-10 boss is whipping my butt. Can't kill him fast enough before he turns back time. What do?

11-10 killed my team several times... the whole map storm attack :/
finally got through cause he stopped using storm :O

 

[Soulflarz]

H-how do i beat 13...-8?s boss when he can

Spoiler

warp my mage out of the battle until the others die

 

[Skyler]

H-how do i beat 13...-8?s boss when he can

Spoiler

warp my mage out of the battle until the others die

You can avoid its attack completely. Just move your team out of its cross range when you know it's coming.

 

[paradise_circus]

H-how do i beat 13...-8?s boss when he can

Spoiler

warp my mage out of the battle until the others die

Spoiler

they will return after some turns. i concentrated to elimate his minions as fast as possible while keeping my distance from him, because of his area attack.

 

[Soulflarz]

You can avoid its attack completely. Just move your team out of its cross range when you know it's coming.

Spoiler

they will return after some turns. i concentrated to elimate his minions as fast as possible while keeping my distance from him, because of his area attack.

So basically, get the hell out when he does his area attack (which is how often?) and kill minions, and level up past my pathetic level.

edit: so alternate getting the hell out and attacking the boss?

 

[Neol]

So basically, get the hell out when he does his area attack (which is how often?) and kill minions, and level up past my pathetic level.

If I remember correctly, every time he does the dimensional shift the next turn it does the AOE cross attack.

Basically the strategy is kill all the minions FAST without suffering too many casualties then moving units out of the way when he does the AOE attack and then attacking him afterwards. Then it's just rinse and repeat from there.

 

[Visceir]

If I remember correctly, every time he does the dimensional shift the next turn it does the AOE cross attack.

Basically the strategy is kill all the minions FAST without suffering too many casualties then moving units out of the way when he does the AOE attack and then attacking him afterwards. Then it's just rinse and repeat from there.

Alternatively

Spoiler

you can attack the boss with dark attacks and it should dimensional warp its own minions off the map

.

 

[Ulthwe]

Pretty sure you guys know this: is exp evenly divided by 6, even if the party consists of 3 chars?

Been working on leveling up the Bahamut on the 1st Metal Zone and it seems that A/ bringing chars over 20 and B/ bringing less than 6 chars doesn't seem to give him any more exp.

 

[Visceir]

Pretty sure you guys know this: is exp evenly divided by 6, even if the party consists of 3 chars?

Been working on leveling up the Bahamut on the 1st Metal Zone and it seems that A/ bringing chars over 20 and B/ bringing less than 6 chars doesn't seem to give him any more exp.

If the party consists of 3 then exp gets split between the tree. Never bring more characters than you need. Sometimes even 2 is enough.

 

[GloomyHitsuji]

You'd possibly be better off getting mantledrake or some other AoE mage with high skill proc rate as it's somewhat doable to hit runners with AoE magic.

here's an example of someone clearing Metal Zone 2 with Mantledrake

It would have to be high enough level for the magic to clear the regular metal enemies and have a high enough skill proc % for it to always go off.

Mantledrake is something you could farm for the +5% skill rate btw.

Edit: Other than Bahamut we're also most likely going to get Odin and Leviathan sometimes in the future. All with 3 jobs.

How did the exp divide work?
In the video, it had 3 characters, two at lvl 70, does that mean Palpa ate all 146k of experience? Or did 2/3 of that 146k went to waste?

 

[SixMachine]

Pretty sure you guys know this: is exp evenly divided by 6, even if the party consists of 3 chars?

Been working on leveling up the Bahamut on the 1st Metal Zone and it seems that A/ bringing chars over 20 and B/ bringing less than 6 chars doesn't seem to give him any more exp.

The metal zones are exp capped. In the first one, over 20 does not give exp, 2nd one over 30 gets no exp, on the 3rd one over 40 is no more exp. Exp is split by the number of characters in your party.

edit: I actually don't know if the over the level cap character eats the exp and wastes it. I probably should take a look at the numbers next time a metal zone pops up.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

How did the exp divide work?
In the video, it had 3 characters, two at lvl 70, does that mean Palpa ate all 146k of experience? Or did 2/3 of that 146k went to waste?

The latter

 

[Soulflarz]

Alternatively

Spoiler

you can attack the boss with dark attacks and it should dimensional warp its own minions off the map

.

Spoiler

I killed em all, yeah. I think im gonna win. Also if you stun him, his next move is a shift, so no fear of him crossing you all.

Edit: beat him

 

[Visceir]

Chapter 20 - 22 have been rather easy compared to the torture before that.

Gonna have to level up a spear user for one upcoming chapter, but other than that I think my team is good enough. Fortunately I have a dark/lightning spear user in the form of B rank Sh'berdan -- I've just never used him before. More metal zone grinding awaits, I guess.

 

[zulux21]

now that i have the dumb dragon I have been doing coin creep runs to do pacts... I have a number of my monsters up past 30% skill boost already... 2 more weekends or so and I will start eliminating monsters that I can get ^-^

 

[cpp_is_king]

I don't know how they thought it was a good idea that subsequent hunting zones don't reward more exp than the initial one. Combined with the fact that they flee after 1 turn all hunting zones after the first yield significantly less exp, yet you require exponentially more to level. And then some of the abilities unlock at 65, which is essentially unobtainable as a result.

 

[HawthorneKitty]

I don't know how they thought it was a good idea that subsequent hunting zones don't reward more exp than the initial one. Combined with the fact that they flee after 1 turn all hunting zones after the first yield significantly less exp, yet you require exponentially more to level. And then some of the abilities unlock at 65, which is essentially unobtainable as a result.

Higher levels -> more skills -> more chains?
Sure it's not a level playing field, but then the lower metal zones would be obsolete since you could take like 1 lv 1 with you and boost like crazy.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Higher levels -> more skills -> more chains?
Sure it's not a level playing field, but then the lower metal zones would be obsolete since you could take like 1 lv 1 with you and boost like crazy.

Right now they make it so you don't gain exp for characters above the cap. They could just make it so you don't gain exp for characters below the lower limit either.

And your levels dont matter when on the first damn round the monsters are so far away you can't even pincer them in 1 turn anyway no matter what you do, or spread out so you'd need 2 or even 3 pincers to surround everything before it flees.

 

[Visceir]

Don't have any hard proof but I do think the higher level metal zones give more exp.

Then again I'd never do a higher level metal zone without the king being present.

As for the metal runners, having gotten the +2 time ability and all the AoE's on my mages has made it quite a bit easier.

 

[Uthred]

Don't have any hard proof but I do think the higher level metal zones give more exp.

Then again I'd never do a higher level metal zone without the king being present.

As for the metal runners, having gotten the +2 time ability and all the AoE's on my mages has made it quite a bit easier.

I think perhaps more mobs spawn, while the mobs seem to give the same amount of xp my total at the end of, say, Metal Zone 3 is always significantly higher than my total at the end of Metal Zone 1

Right now they make it so you don't gain exp for characters above the cap. They could just make it so you don't gain exp for characters below the lower limit either.

And your levels dont matter when on the first damn round the monsters are so far away you can't even pincer them in 1 turn anyway no matter what you do, or spread out so you'd need 2 or even 3 pincers to surround everything before it flees.

A mob with control time really helps with this, Kuscah gets it on his third job if you dont have anyone else with it.

 

[cpp_is_king]

I think perhaps more mobs spawn, while the mobs seem to give the same amount of xp my total at the end of, say, Metal Zone 3 is always significantly higher than my total at the end of Metal Zone 1



A mob with control time really helps with this, Kuscah gets it on his third job if you dont have anyone else with it.

What's your total at the end of 3? On zone 1 i can get between 100k to 200k, on zone 3 I almost never get more than 120k because there's no way to kill everything. Anywhere from 3-10 enemies flee on me every time in 2 and 3. Maybe i need this control time ability. How much does it lengthen the limit?

 

[Negator]

What's your total at the end of 3? On zone 1 i can get between 100k to 200k, on zone 3 I almost never get more than 120k because there's no way to kill everything. Anywhere from 3-10 enemies flee on me every time in 2 and 3. Maybe i need this control time ability. How much does it lengthen the limit?

Kuscah adds two seconds to his timer for moving around. Other characters can give a control time buff to others.

 

[theMrCravens]

I don't know how they thought it was a good idea that subsequent hunting zones don't reward more exp than the initial one. Combined with the fact that they flee after 1 turn all hunting zones after the first yield significantly less exp, yet you require exponentially more to level. And then some of the abilities unlock at 65, which is essentially unobtainable as a result.

They want some semblance of "grind" progression for later chapters, instead of the fast paced 1-30 we get early on.

They obviously want whales to spend on stamina refill, but at the same time I'm guessing they don't want the majority to clear the current content too fast.

Also, you may want to run only Metal Kings at that point instead of regular Metal Zones. Bring sleep, bomb equip, paralysis, petrify for those kills. Bomb equip have made me clear those zones almost 100%.

 

[cpp_is_king]

They want some semblance of "grind" progression for later chapters, instead of the fast paced 1-30 we get early on.

They obviously want whales to spend on stamina refill, but at the same time I'm guessing they don't want the majority to clear the current content too fast.

Also, you may want to run only Metal Kings at that point instead of regular Metal Zones. Bring sleep, bomb equip, paralysis, petrify for those kills. Bomb equip have made me clear those zones almost 100%.

What does bomb equip do?

 

[theMrCravens]

What does bomb equip do?

Makes 3 bombs follow behind you, like those bomb monsters you see.

Run around runners and they die from bombs in 1 hit. Easy King kill too.

 

[cpp_is_king]

Makes 3 bombs follow behind you, like those bomb monsters you see.

Run around runners and they die from bombs in 1 hit. Easy King kill too.

Terrabattlex says only like 2 guys have it and they are SS rank. Did you get it from somewhere else?

 

[pancakesandsex]

Terrabattlex says only like 2 guys have it and they are SS rank. Did you get it from somewhere else?

The monsters that use it.

 

[cpp_is_king]

The monsters that use it.

I have one of those but he unlocks it at lv. 65, which seems kind of difficult to reach. Curious which one specifically, maybe there's one that unlocks it before 65?

 

[rocketskates]

Fujisaka needs to hurry up and release his characters. I will be paying real monies to get my Drakengard peoples.

 

[putermcgee]

10-10 boss is whipping my butt. Can't kill him fast enough before he turns back time. What do?

Use that lightning guy you got a couple chapters back, itll stun him for the turn every time.

Jeez, I had no idea his skill could paralyze. That made the battle way easy.

 

[Soulflarz]

Jeez, I had no idea his skill could paralyze. That made the battle way easy.

Youre welcome. When you get stuck on 13-8 use

Spoiler

darkness and he'll stop doing his special ability, making him an easy boss.

 

[pancakesandsex]

Jeez, I had no idea his skill could paralyze. That made the battle way easy.

It normally can't. It's a property of the boss not the lightning blade.

 

[Einbroch]

So thought I'd try this again as all my friends are playing it and my first four rolls were garbage.

Why oh why is the tutorial so long? Feels long, even if it's not.

 

[Soulflarz]

So thought I'd try this again as all my friends are playing it and my first four rolls were garbage.

Why oh why is the tutorial so long? Feels long, even if it's not.

Because they probablyy didnt make it with the intent of rerolling