Part 10: Feinne's Notes: The End of Day 1 and Racial Skills

So, now is our first real credible threat to an Unkillable run, Dubhe. Dubhe is very capable of killing people with his Binary Fire, as we almost saw with Io. The strategy I would suggest is to fight all the demon parties before you even attempt to cross Dubhe's range. Even if Dubhe is theoretically able to move, he's pretty clearly scripted not to under almost all circumstances. Once all the demons are dead, then you can just take your time and get people through Dubhe's range while minimizing their exposure to him. Remember, unless there is an explicit time limit (and there will be on some of the later maps) you can feel free to take all the time in the world. Ideally you want to have someone hang around outside his range on the opposite side to cross heal if someone has to stop inside his range. Once Daichi hits him with the truck, just send whoever got Resist Fire over to smoke poor broken Dubhe, since he'll pretty much be unable to injure that character in any meaningful way. Also do make sure you crack that skill, it's worth resetting if you fuck up. Resistance skills are absolutely crucial.

Let's briefly talk about a couple of the Race Skills we've seen so far and why we might want to bring them along:

Fairy: Glamour- A small ranged heal on a team with a chance of some random side bonus as well (such as increased crit rate or a full heal). This is pretty nice early on when there's no other real way to heal an entire group, but it's definitely the weakest healing Race Skill and once we have access to better Fairies will definitely lag behind in support. That is until SPOILERS that I won't mention unless Dragonatrix says it's okay to talk about mechanics we won't see until somewhere in the middle of the game or so.

Jaki: Bind- Reduces a target team's movement to 1 for a turn. This skill is mainly one you'll see used against you, because enemy parties love using it even if there's no good reason. It's extremely good in the situation where you need to restrict enemy movements and otherwise it's obviously useless. We'll see some maps later where Bind can be useful.

Ghost: Ghost Wounds- Reduces a target team's range to 1 and movement by half. You'll also see this used against you a lot when there are enemy Ghosts, which can be annoying. It's slightly less useful for area restriction since it only halves enemy movement, but it's a great way of forcing a ranged team to run in and let you actually get to hit them. It can also give you a moment's reprieve against ranged bosses sometimes, since many bosses in this game are immobile.

Touki: Aggravate- Guarantees a critical hit for the team. Enemies that have this skill will definitely make heavy use of it. It can be useful if you've got a whole party that's good at physicals, but otherwise it's sort of blah. The free criticals could help get you Extra Turns, but you'd be better off just using magic most of the time unless you're a real physical character.

Genma: Phantasm- Lets you ignore obstacles while moving, and reduces the turn speed cost to move. This is a pretty nice mobility power, and it stacks with another power we've not quite seen yet that makes you move substantially faster. Being able to move through obstacles is great on a lot of maps, and at certain level ranges Genma are really strong (though they're also often unique, which can be annoying).

Beast: Animal Leg- After attacking, your movement allowance is fully restored. A nice but sort of niche mobility power, this lets you hit and run quite effectively. It's especially effective in combination with effects that increase your movement capabilities or your attack range, since either of those make it much more likely that you can get away from whatever you just hit.

Dragon: Evil Wave- Increases your range to 2, but you no longer get Extra Turns and attacks cost you more turn speed than normal. A range of 2 can be nice, but is sort of niche. There are better range skills that are more useful, but Evil Wave is sort of impractical. You might get some limited use out of it but definitely don't have more than one ranged party.

We'll talk more about race skills as we see more races on the second day, where things really start to open up demon wise.