Spheres are important, here are a few of my favorites:
For Power Leveling I use a combination of these
2x Experience/No OTH Sphere + Extra Bonus Sphere + Sword Blessing (120% Attack) Sphere
Now the 2x Experience Sphere is self explanitory. No OTH isnt a problem, money is never a problem in this game, I have had 700k sitting around at one point. The Extra Bonus Sphere WILL NOT WORK if you cannot get an enemy to overkill quickly. That is where you get the major bonuses. Any party that can get an enemy to overkill before using up the bulk of their AP to do so will reap MASSIVE benefits from this sphere. It is important to note that at some point the bonus CAN max out. Im pretty positive I did this in a fight with some enemies that can summon more of themselves. Sword Blessing CAN help lower level parties get to overkill faster, but is optional. Generally at the beginning of a level you will only be able to draw maybe 2 spheres anyway, so the first two ive listed are the best for leveling.
It is important to note, that with Extra Bonus Sphere, it is possible to make MORE experience from a lower level area than a higher level one, since you can overkill faster and pound on the damage. I HIGHLY recommend you use archers for your range, specifically their attacks that do multiple hits. Make sure they attack last in the order so when overkill hits they are getting in every hit they can.
Also, you dont want to grind in levels that are TOO low a level, or you will obliterate enemies beyond the point of milking them for bonuses. Areas I recommend for grinding include:
\Royal Underground Path/ -- grind here first, master the basic battle system here first
\Kythena Plains/ -- grind here second, no sense wasting resources in the castle before hand
\Audoula Temple On The Lake/ -- grind here, do not grind in the mines or the lost forest
\Sahma Desert/ -- grind here until you are capable of grinding the next area effectively
\Surts Volcano Caverns/ -- grind here a long time. Once you get the 2xEXP orb and BONUS orbs, grind here a lot -- MAIN GRINDING DUNGEON
\Forest Of Spirits/ -- Last fantastic dungeon to grind. Can get up to, with cleverness, 500k experience from one non-boss fight.
I would also recommend that once you get your spheres, you find an area of a dungeon where 1-2 enemies are close to the AREA enterance, that way you can kill those two, run out, run back in, and they have respawned. This is faster than running the length of areas and WILL save you time. You should have the 2xExp sphere shortly before or after the Volcano, I cannot remember which. When you get it make sure you spend at least one period of play grinding enemies there with the sphere equipped. ALSO VERY IMPORTANT, locate and obtain the INCREASED MASS sphere before you grind the Volcano. There is a decreased mass sphere there that makes enemies fly from you and ruins your chance at successful overkill. However if you simply beat the dungeon and restore the decreased mass sphere you wont need the increased mass sphere.... It is one of the tougher dungeons however.
Note: In the Forest of Spirits, when there are Elven Wolves around, LET THEM summon more of themselves, and keep killing all but the leader, and you will just keep stacking on that wonderful experience.
Spheres for FIGHTING BOSSES ----
200% Recovery -- Shield Blessing -- HP Drain OR Poison Pin or Sword Blessing
The combination for bosses varies a lot more and what I say here should be taken as advice more than instruction. However, I will say the 200% recovery sphere is ESSENTIAL for boss combat. Best example would be First Aid. First Aid, when it randomly activates, will heal half of the damage taken from an attack. Doing the math 200% recovery orb will heal AN ENTIRE attack. This sphere saved me in a boss fight where I was hit with 2000+ damage, only to have first aid heal me for the full damage taken. Nothing like being able to shrug that off. Additionally any heal items you use will also get the 200% boost, so an item that heals the whole party for 1500 normally will now heal for 3000. OMG OMG OMG.
The shield blessing/sword blessing stuff is no brainer. Increased def and attack. Stack that on top of the skills that do the same thing and ZZOMG. Poison Pin and HP drain both are useful to widdle the bosses down but as you progress through the game your poison attacks and HP drain spheres do very little against the massive HP numbers bosses have.
As for skills...
Always have everyone learn survival and first aid. its just a good idea. survival prevents a killing blow leaving the attacked party member at hp of 1, allowing you to heal a member of your party after they take the hit. First Aid is required for the reasons stated above.
All the other skills are pretty situational. Some skills let you kill mages fast, monsters fast, scaled monsters fast yadda yadda yadda. Force Field (100) is nice early on, I suspect there is a higher force field and I will check it out tonight, but (100) isnt bad. It basically sucks up to 100 damage from a hit, multiple times in a battle. There's also counter, evade, all that good stuff. I will say I have a harder time seeing the visual triggers for things like counters in VP2 than the original.
--Einjejrjrjajjrjarar..aww fuck it--
I am currently in the process of liquidating my non-essential party members. When you FREE a soul, you basically materialize them and let them go on with their lives. Youll start seeing them around various towns. Aside from leaving you items that permanently boost stats when they leave your party, if you talk to them in towns they will give you lots of money and sometimes items. It is worth it to hunt them down after you free them.
Liquidation is important. In general you will always use a central 4 people. Just so you know, if its a main character type they will leave your party at some point so focus on leveling your summoned characters. Anyway, liquidation. I had four archers. I only USED one, so I got the other three to a level I could free their souls, and did so. All the stat boosting items they left behind I then used on the remaining archer making them a SUPER ARCHER stat wise. Also what you get when you free them depends somewhat on the items they are wearing.
By the end of the game you want to have freed as many people as possible, because the bosses that await you are a doozy.
***MINOR SPOILERS - DUNGEON BITCHING *****
DRAGON in Palace Of The Venerated Dragon
Zombie Dragon: This boss has so much god damned HP, and his attack ranges change in split seconds. While the outer ring is generally safe, you're still victim to spells like Brain Rot. The idea is to destroy the three orbs hidden in the walls around him, and then attack, but he's still fairly tough. I had a worse time with the Zombie Dragon than the Hrist Arngrim combo.
Palace of Venerated Dragon: Very long dungeon...very long. An entire section of this dungeon is filled with poison air that poisons your whole party. There's also a part where you have to carry a crappy negative sphere around for a while and suffer its effects, but the crux is this, do you carry the 300% attack + WEAPON DESTROY sphere, or the NO MENU sphere that has a good bonus. I ended up having to carry the 300% attack sphere just cause the enemy with 300% attack was brutalizing me.
Crawsus Forest Ruins: Short Dungeon, but there are some important factors:
1.) Lightning strikes shrines in the area at random intervals, you have to knock these shrines out. when you do the lightning has to go somewhere.
2.) You need to place a sphere on each dias in the dungeon. When you place a sphere on 2 of the 3, the water in the area turns to POISON.
3.) Lightning, when it strikes you, has knockback. When you are traversing the level and making timed jumps on logs over poisoned water LIGHTNING CAN STRIKE YOU AND SEND YOU INTO THE WATER, poisoning your whole party. Whats best is when youre coming out of the water and lightning strikes you again knocking you into an ENEMY initiating a fight with you poisoned and without initiative. LOL.
The two dungeons mentioned above are not places to level up, you should only return to gather spheres for your growing collection. I did fight the Zombie Dragon twice but that was by mistake lol
Anyway that's it for now, this game has an amazingly deep combat system that if manipulated correctly, can make the game incredibly easy for someone patient enough.
