Part 3: Lesson Plan: Battles and Menus

Video: First Battle



Welcome, students! Today we're going to learn about the fascinating world of battle!



Let's begin.

Music: Battle I



Time to teach you a lesson!





My years of research allow me to deduce an enemy's weakness at first encounter!



Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. You may not even know the importance of weaknesses! Well, students, it's time you learn with experience!



Everyone from the lowest pauper to the hardiest warrior can use the basics. You can simply attack with one of the six common weapon types within Orsterra, and for some that may be preferable. Many enemies have weaknesses to at least one of these weapon types, and if you've got the muscle, you can make them regret tangling with you!



Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, and it's wiser to live to fight another day. There's no shame in running away from powerful foes, though more often than not you'll be unlikely to outrun them. You can also choose to Defend yourself, absorbing less pain and allowing you to grab initiative for the next attack!



It is wise to always be prepared. Grapes are good for recovering health, while Olives can help restore fallen comrades. You'll want Plums to recover your stamina to unleash your special attacks!



Of course, the special attacks! We all have our jobs in the world, and this experience grants us the knowledge to utilize special attacks! I myself have learned a few spells here and there in case I get in a little trouble, as I'll readily admit I'm no good with a blade.



For now, let's observe this foe so we can plan accordingly.



A couple bruises, but no worse for wear! I deduced from earlier that this foe is weak to my staff, so a good whack should stop it in its tracks!





Marvelous! We've broken through its defenses, and now it's helpless before us. It'll take a bit of time to recover, but be aware that once it does, it will always take initiative. Best to hit them hardest when they're down!





As the battle progresses, you'll accumulate power that you can use to "boost" your attacks to the limit!



You shall fear my wisdom!





Enemies usually have multiple attacks, sometimes elemental. However, for some reason I have never been broken myself. How peculiar.





Techniques cost stamina, and they can really rough up the competition! But they only really shine if the enemy is broken and you boost them to their limits.



You don't have to be a scholar to discover a foe's weaknesses, mind. Similar enemies generally have similar weaknesses. Likewise, a foe aligned with an element will likely be weak to the opposite element, that is, Fire and Ice, Lightning and Wind, and Light and Dark. And if you're especially experienced, you may be able to deduce weaknesses from the "order" of things, but that is for advanced studies.



The beautiful thing about breaking an enemy's spirit is that weaknesses no longer matter. Fireball and Icewind will do the same damage to this foe now, even though it's only weak to one of the two. This is invaluable for simultaneously damaging broken foes and breaking others!





Lesson concluded.



Addendum: There are incentives for fighting well. Simply breaking a foe will enlighten you with more battle experience, while completing a fight quickly will help you learn skills faster. You shall also obtain more money for completing a fight unscathed, and while you may be curious why so many foes carry money, my research in this area has led to nothing but dead ends.



Gain experience to gain strength! You become more powerful and occasionally regain what strength you lost without having to resort to items. Sometimes it's worth fighting a few extra enemies to be better prepared for more powerful foes!

And that's it for today's lesson on battles! These are only the basics, but this knowledge should be more than enough to get you started on your respective journeys! With that, tomorrow's homework is to memorize this formula.



Dismissed!

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I'll take over for the easy stuff. We're missing a couple of options, but we've got enough for now.

We'll skip over Miscellaneous, which deals with Settings and Return to Title, and Healing, which involves using healing techs of characters like Ophilia and Alfyn to recover HP.





The World Map will eventually show us a large and diverse world to explore, with the very wonderful ability to instantly fast-travel from anywhere to any town in most circumstances.



Journal recaps each character's story so far, even allowing you to review cutscenes. There's a similar function to keep track of side quests once we start obtaining those.



Inventory is, well, your inventory. All your consumables, equipment, and key items are stored here. Grapes restore 500HP, Plums 40SP, and Olives revive a fallen character.



Weapons and armor have various stats they boost, and are quite diverse in doing so!



We also have a Knowledge tab for information we learn from NPCs with Scrutinize/Inquire. These are useful solely for quests.



Status is simple. The key things to note here is that for Physical Attack, the value used is from the weapon being used, while for Elemental Attack, it always uses the highest value from all your weapons. There is one specific exception to this, but it won't come up until much later.

The other thing is that Elemental Defense is directly tied to healing, so you want your healers to have a lot of Elemental Defense, which you'd want anyway.



All gear is available to all characters, absolutely no limitations on jobs or gender or whatever else. The only exception of course is a character can't equip weapons its job has no access to, which means Cyrus is stuck with staves. Otherwise, he can use the same shields, head gear, and body gear as someone like Olberic, though of course he'll prefer the ones that boost elemental attack and Max SP.

Next time, we'll unlock the Skills menu and do a quick rundown of all the skills Cyrus can learn, and following that we'll finish off Chapter 1 of Cyrus's story.