Monday, 23 July 2012

Great Obstacles Offer Great Rewards

I haven't been online much lately because I'm trying to get all the trophies I missed during my first playthrough of Tales of Graces f on the PS3 a few months ago. This time, I'm a little smarter as to what challenges await me, which sidequests are missable and the solution to dungeon puzzles. Also, I'm on New Game + with X10 EXP rate, X2 item drop rate, X2 gald (currency in Tales of Graces f) drop rate, X6 SP rate, mastery bonus (X2 SP rate for mastered titles in first playthrough) and lots of other cool bonuses purchased from the Grade Shop.

I tried to experiment with Evil difficulty (I unlocked it by chance when I started New Game +) and I was amazed at the EXP, SP and shard drop rates. Needless to say, once you reach a moderately high level for your area, you should increase the difficulty to as high as you can survive. Even on Evil difficulty, my party was destroying enemies in less than 20 seconds per battle. It's a good way to grind levels, arte usage and master titles.

You can set food items that give huge HP recovery post-battle in the Eleth Mixer to eliminate downtime after battles at high difficulty since you're bound to suffer damage. I find Miso Stew is an excellent choice because it greatly boosts your Eleth Mixer capacity growth after each cooking, easy to trigger (> 50% eleth post-battle), gives near full recovery to the party (94% HP heal) and greatly increases tempering rate (X4) to help tempering equipment.

Set Miso Stew in the Eleth Mixer and couple it with Book of Potential for double Eleth Mixer capacity growth, Book of Smithery for extremely fast tempering of equipment and Book of Maintenance to restore up to 5% of maximum eleth after battle if no cooking is done (this maintains the equilibrium so you will always have enough eleth).

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