A Feast for... Vitality?

There are many ways to improve your party's parameters in Tales of Graces f aside from leveling, and this is especially important to further build your party after reaching the level cap of 200. These include:

• Herb bonuses from herbs e.g. Verbena, Chamomile, Red Sage etc.
• Plus skills from titles e.g. Mind Plus, Aim Plus, Evade Plus etc.
• Dualizing equipment repeatedly (each shard dualized to an equipment increases its parameters) to a maximum of +99
• Food (specifically Tuna Bowl, Beef with Red Wine Sauce, Eel Porridge, Sweet and Sour Eel)

Today, I will be covering the use of food to boost your party's maximum HP and equipment parameters with four often overlooked dishes.

Beef with Red Wine Sauce

Post-battle: mixer's eleth < 50%

Improves armour ability

I just learnt this today. If this dish triggers after battle, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 boost to either PDEF, CDEF or EVA on their currently equipped armour. This is a very good way to build your party's armour and is way cheaper than dualizing. Best of all, it's easy to trigger! Just don't refill your eleth mixer unless it is completely drained. This is more suited to people who have acquired the Turtlez Flute and have a mixer with considerably large eleth capacity since the dish itself is very high on eleth consumption.

Eel Porridge

Post-battle: someone levels up

Max HP +1

HP is obviously not the most important parameter in Tales of Graces, but the difference of 1 HP can have life and death consequences.To trigger this dish, someone must level up at the victory screen after a battle from gaining EXP. If triggered, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 maximum HP. Monitor your party's EXP closely after battles and swap this dish in whenever you feel that someone is going to level upon the next battle.1 HP may sound irrelevant, but considering the level cap is 200, and you have 8 party members to choose from, you're looking at a +1600 max HP boost if you time every level up with this dish on New Game +.  Set this dish when you are attempting the upper floors of the Zhonecage (floors 6 - 10) as those floors give so much EXP that you can be guaranteed a level up almost every other battle. Warning: this dish will lose its usefulness once you reach level 200 so start using it as soon as you can afford its eleth cost even during your first playthrough.

Sweet and Sour Eel

In-battle: when landing 50 or more hits in a combo 

Max HP +1

This dish works just like Eel Porridge, except that it is triggered upon landing a 50th hit in a combo during battle. As soon as you are confident enough to land consistently long combos, this dish should always be in your eleth mixer, especially just before a boss fight. Setting the difficulty higher will give monsters more HP and allow them to tank your combos. A very efficient way to boost your max HP when you are at extremely high levels is to challenge the Rockgagong on Easy, land a 50-hit combo and escape. Rinse and repeat. This requires you to have Cheria in your party to heal your attackers in case you can't land a 50-hit combo before the Rockgagong attacks. Control and move Cheria to the bottom left corner of the battlefield where she can't be hit by any of the Rockgagong's attacks. There is a small blindspot where she should stand but it's hard to explain so try it out a few times. Once you reach level 200 and are strong enough to kill the Rockgagong, you can do this max HP farming but instead of escaping, defeat the Rockgagong to earn 88k gald. This is a good way to grind arte usage (with the Book of Striking and duplicate titles), gald and max HP at the same time. On average, to defeat the Rockgagong with a fresh level 200 party with minimally improved equipment takes approximately 4 minutes.

Tuna Bowl

Post-battle: party's HP < 30%

Improves weapon ability

This dish works just like Beef with Red Wine Sauce, except that it gives a +1 boost to either PATK, CATK or ACC on your party member's weapons. However, this dish is considerably harder to trigger.If you can consistently end battles with less than 30% of your party's average HP remaining, then set this dish. I regret to announce that I have not devised a scenario where this is possible, though I think it can be done Inside the Rockgagong (the toxic pools deduct HP) and the Eleth Research Facility on Fodra (the gas cloud deducts HP).