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General Power Leveling Guide


ehindra
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Hrm… man, I must be really bored. Procrastination FTW.

 

Anyway, let's get to it.

I asked this on another Board, so I'd like to give where credits due:

@jimwade and @omgidfk from GameFAQs.

 

Leveling in Star Ocean: The Last Hope isn't that bad. It's quite a tolerable process. You can get away with very minimal grinding; yet, you can be pulling off more than 1 level gain by battling ONCE (sometimes, 3 or 4).

 

The key in this is knowing how to Synthesize. Item Creation is a WONDERFUL thing. Yes, Welch can be annoying, but you have a device that's called the "remote". You can mute your TV while you're doing this.

 

The general rule of thumb of power-leveling via Synthesized Gears is to always add "Food" items that will give you + xx% of EXP per battle. The number range from 5-20%. Depending on what you use.

 

For the purpose of this guide, let's use Curry Rice as the KEY ingredient. Its recipe is quite simple.

 

Curry Rice

S. Lv 4, Cook 12, Art 4, Comp 9, Sense 7

Group: Meracle

Raw Animal Meat x1, Seasonings x1, Vegetables x1, White Rice x2

(courtesy of The Pants Party's guides)

 

 

You can get most of the ingredients from a shop in Tatroi. It's the shop with 2 stores in one building. You can get white rice from the "Vending Machine 2" on your ship. Or you can harvest it at Lemuris. But really, you should have these vending machines (if you don't, go read the item creation guide, it's a sticky on this forum).

 

Buy them, plenty of them.

 

-- Somewhat Advance--

If you'd like to further advance your power leveling, read this, too.

Get:

• Curry Rice

• Sacrificing Dolls

• Aquaberries

• JUNK weapons with no "Factors". Just anything. Buy lots. The cheapest garbage weapon is fine.

 

 

 

From here on, this guide will be on point forms, because I'm sure you are more capable than I am figuring out what's the best combination of items to be synthesized.

 

1) Go to your ship. Then give Welch a visit (meeting room, Item Creation unit).

2) Make the Food Items that will give you your +20% EXP from each Battle (there's a few, but as I mentioned, we'll be using Curry Rice)

3) Synthesize! Select a Base Item (the gears you'd like to attach these factors into). Please note that you must select gears that have AT LEAST 1 empty Factors-slot for this trick to work (a gear can have up to four).

 

Example: Laser Sword + Curry Rice == Curry Laser Sword (no, not really). It'll be a Laser Sword with 20% EXP from each battle, and some ATK bonus, I think.

 

That's the general rule of thumb of making "Power Leveling" gears.

 

If you'd like to take this further, read below.

So, you want to add stuff to your accessories as well? The process is a bit lengthy.

 

1) Take a Sacrificing Doll, and then synthesize it with Aquaberries. Do this TWICE.

2) Take the Aquaberried-Sacrificing Doll, and then synthesize it with the food item that will grant you +xx% EXP. It'll be called Sacrificing-Doll SR01 (or something similar to that). Remember its name. I call them Curried Sacrificing Doll

3) Take a crap weapon with no factors, and synthesize that with the Curried Sacrificing Doll. Now, you'll end up with a new item, to make it easy, let's call it "Weapon with Curried Sacrificing Doll".

4) Finally, choose the accessory you'd like to synthesize (you have to take it OFF your character's BTW), THEN you can synthesize that accessory to have +xx% EXP.

 

 

BTW, that "Weapon with Curried Sacrificing Doll" can be further synthesized onto another weapon of your choice.

 

 

Confusing? Yeah. I'm confused, too. But heh, it works for me.

 

Oh, and lastly, if you happen to have party members who can be equipped with Critical Hits skill, MAX IT. So your Bonus Board will be all blue. Imagine all that PERCENTAGE! Math had never been so hot until I discovered this.

 

 

EDIT:

I should mention, your Base Item, regardless of what it is, can always be synthesized with "Weapon with Curried Sacrificing Doll". So, your +EXP% Factors can stack! Yes yes, fantastic stuff, innit?

Edited by ehindra
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Very nice guide. Aside from a maxed Crit Hit, you can also do blindsides like crazy, and hope that your bonus board doesn't get broken. I always just switch characters if one of mine starts getting mobbed.

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  • 3 months later...
What is the max extra exp per weapon, 20% or 40%? Does it work to synth 2 Curry Rice into a weapon?

The "+exp" modifier is 20% on weapons and 15% on necklaces and wristsbands (it doesn't exist on armors). You can synth up to four 20% on a weapon, assuming it has no modifiers, and up to three on accessories since there is no accessory with 4 free slots.

 

That means you can have +80% on your weapon, +45% on your necklace and +45% on your wristband, making a total of +170% per character, and yes, they do stack. Do the same on your three other characters to get up to +680%. Add a full blue bonus board for another +140%, totaling a +820%. Add some ambushes if you want this number to grow even higher.

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Your missing valuable info my friend lol.Where do you level up? Edit and tell them to train in Nox Obscurus Area 6 after following your guide, there are 3 dragon thingies that will net you 60000 exp a battle if you have used the curried weapons and got the bonus board filled with blue tiles. Simply exit and re-enter the room and they will spawn again. Also fighting the apes in that rooms gets you some additional exp and theres a heal point. If you dont want them to break your board use Bacchus and all his long range attacks, especially his mechs like justice savior and stuff. Using this method i went from level 63 to 93 within an hour or 2. :) Please edit the guide with this info, it 100% works and will save people alot of time ^_^

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Your missing valuable info my friend lol.Where do you level up? Edit and tell them to train in Nox Obscurus Area 6 after following your guide, there are 3 dragon thingies that will net you 60000 exp a battle if you have used the curried weapons and got the bonus board filled with blue tiles. Simply exit and re-enter the room and they will spawn again. Also fighting the apes in that rooms gets you some additional exp and theres a heal point. If you dont want them to break your board use Bacchus and all his long range attacks, especially his mechs like justice savior and stuff. Using this method i went from level 63 to 93 within an hour or 2. :) Please edit the guide with this info, it 100% works and will save people alot of time ^_^

Cave of Seven Stars gives you many more EXP, also try the Colosseum for quick exp.

 

The "+exp" modifier is 20% on weapons and 15% on necklaces and wristsbands (it doesn't exist on armors). You can synth up to four 20% on a weapon, assuming it has no modifiers, and up to three on accessories since there is no accessory with 4 free slots.

 

That means you can have +80% on your weapon, +45% on your necklace and +45% on your wristband, making a total of +170% per character, and yes, they do stack. Do the same on your three other characters to get up to +680%. Add a full blue bonus board for another +140%, totaling a +820%. Add some ambushes if you want this number to grow even higher.

 

What is the best way to manage this amount of EXP? Since Curry Rice also gives +2 attack, so I only managed to get +40% on each weapon.

 

Also, can someone tell me what the best/most common weapons are for a lvl 150? Since I prefer to not put EXP bonusses on my best weapon (I prefer to have + attack on them or something, since when I reach the level cap, the EXP bonus is useless).

Edited by Ypuh
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You didn't read the whole post. Adding Curry Rice to the Sacrificial Doll first gets rid of the +ATK, allowing you to get 4x +EXP on the weapon.

 

Just duplicate whatever ever weapon you want to add to before you do it, then you still have the vanilla version of the weapon.

 

Does anyone know what the level cap is? I'm at ~177 and still going up.

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You didn't read the whole post. Adding Curry Rice to the Sacrificial Doll first gets rid of the +ATK, allowing you to get 4x +EXP on the weapon.

 

Just duplicate whatever ever weapon you want to add to before you do it, then you still have the vanilla version of the weapon.

 

Does anyone know what the level cap is? I'm at ~177 and still going up.

200, once you reached 50% BT for that character, it'll be raised to 255.

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If you got access to Cave of the seven stars, best place for XP is the 6th floor.

 

The mob we are looking for are the Metal Scumbags ^^

Equip your chars with all your XP+ equipment and add Bacchus equipped with the Scumbag Slayer and add Black Hole Sphere to his Battle Config Chain Combo. Just put all your members on manual.

 

Now just find yourself a Metal Scumbag, engage battle and as soon as the battle starts cast Black Hole Sphere. The Scumbags should die instantly and you'll net between 1.3 up to 1.9 million XP ^^ and thats without any XP+ Bonus Board. Make a step to the side and use Meracle's Ocarina skill to let the Scumbag respawn and do it again and again. On this way u even gain 2-3 lvls above lvl200 each round.

 

 

Metal Scumbags are perfect for Fol as well.Equip everyone with Fol+ equipment, let Bacchus equip his weakest weapon (not the Scumbag Slayer) and add to his skill list "no shield" to prevent knockbacks.

 

What you do this time is to spam Black Hole Sphere. Make sure to have one sphere always up.While the scumbags are in regular mode they wont be able to escape battle and building up their rush gauge like crazy.

When they get to 100 they gonna start to steal from you (max 99,999 each steal).

 

So that makes 99,999 FOL + 1340% = 1.4 Million Fol for just one steal attempt, but even way more if u just continue spamming and let them steal a bunchof times^^

 

Continue spamming until u get tired or running slowly out of MP. Go to the menu and change Bacchus weapon to the Scumbag Slayer to instant kill them with your next Black Hole Sphere. Make a step to the side and use Meracle's Ocarina skill to let the Scumbag respawn and do it again and again.

 

My regular "income" on this way is around 50 mil in 1 round^^

 

Happy hunting ppl,

 

Eiji Sama ^^

Edited by Eiji Sama
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Your missing valuable info my friend lol.Where do you level up? Edit and tell them to train in Nox Obscurus Area 6 after following your guide, there are 3 dragon thingies that will net you 60000 exp a battle if you have used the curried weapons and got the bonus board filled with blue tiles. Simply exit and re-enter the room and they will spawn again. Also fighting the apes in that rooms gets you some additional exp and theres a heal point. If you dont want them to break your board use Bacchus and all his long range attacks, especially his mechs like justice savior and stuff. Using this method i went from level 63 to 93 within an hour or 2. :) Please edit the guide with this info, it 100% works and will save people alot of time ^_^

 

No actually, he is not. Reread the name of the thread.

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Okay, I'm trying to figure out how this works, but there's one thing I don't get... why the Aquaberries? I understand that synthing the rice into the Sacrificial Doll first gets rid of that pesky +1 ATK, but why do you need to synth Aquaberries into the Doll first?

 

I've seen this guide before and thought the same thing. So I tried other random stuff that would be on the sac doll and see what would happen. Well from what I found out the only way to get the actual bonus with out any other types of add on is to have something that cannont be synthesized to weapons. Basil, Aquaberries, etc, etc. Otherwise when you try to synth it to the weapon it will take on the properties of what you have synthed.

 

Makes sense right? Even some of the stones have different properties when getting synthed to different things.

 

I.e.(Salamander stone on armor=absorb fire damage, on weapon=+15% damage for fire symbols)

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Yes, I see... so it doesn't actually have to be Aquaberries, just anything the results in a bonus that cannot be transferred to a weapon...

 

Still, handy though this guide is, the suggested method isn't the most efficient way to do it. For example, if you want to create an accessory with full XP-bonus, the smartest way to do it is to take the cheapest weapon you can find that doesn't have any build-in bonuses, then synth three Aqua-Curry-Dolls onto that - and then synth that tripple-bonus weapon onto the acessory. Using a weapon for each doll is just wasteful... especially since all the really cheap weapons have a bonus already attached, annoyingly enough.

 

I'm planning to do a bit of experimentation, though, to see if I can find a cheap weapon with a bonus that cannot be transferred to accessories. Would make the overall process significantly cheaper.

 

EDIT: Doesn't seem to be the case... so far, the cheapest non-factor weapon I've been able to find is the Silvance, at 5000 bucks each. Seems kinda' expensive, really... anyone know of any cheaper weapons with no factors? They're remarkably rare.

Edited by BlackDragon
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Does anyone have any good tips for getting it before you can get the Duplicate stuff?

With it you can easily duplicate the Laser Weapon and the Laser Suit, but without it, this method takes a while. And also, I didn't find suitable weapons, for instance, for Arumat, as I wouldn't get +80%, but max +60% .

So I wonder if anyone did it, and if positive, which weapon with which character, and also for armory and accessories, which ones would give the best income?

It's not that I'm lazy at trying, just that I've not got the Duplicate yet, and I'd like to get it before setting an huge exp-made party (with that, it's going to become much easier).

Thanks in advance if anyone is going to reply.

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You can generally do it with the early weapons for each character, as they usually have four empty slots.

 

Duplication makes life much easier though. The best place to grind for exp is floor B7 of the Cave, and Duplication is found on...floor B7 of the Cave, so it's worth holding off a little to make it easier for yourself.

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The best place to grind for exp is floor B7 of the Cave, and Duplication is found on...floor B7 of the Cave, so it's worth holding off a little to make it easier for yourself.

 

Personally I like B6 of the Cave of the Seven stars, crabs are the bomb when it comes to exp! Even before I figured out the synth for exp I was making 100k+ a fight. Which is retro spect is laughable since even with out have max 15 or 20% on all 3 or 4 slots still get about 1.2m a fight if I kill the one metal scumbag when surprised by those devilish crustaceans.

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You can't do it with armour. The rest comes from the accessories (3 x exp+15% on each), which are not unique.

 

So each character can have +80% on the weapon and +90% on the accessories, making a total of +680%. The rest comes from the Bonus Board, but I didn't bother with that.

Uuhn, ok, thank you.

-

If anyone minds that, I filled:

 

>Plasma cannon (bought in En II) with 3xExp+20%

>Laser scythe (easy to craete, as ingredients can be bought) with 2xExp+20%

>Silvana sword (bought in En II) with 4xExp+20%

>Watcher's Spear (bought in En II) with 4xExp+20%

 

So I can now go to the Seven Star cave at level 70, spamming Dragon's Roar with Arumat that allows me to win, even if it seems to be a little tough.

 

As for the accessories, I bought Anti-poison amulet and Sniper's Bangle (bought at Tatroi, but I guess it's quite easy to find them anyways).

So I got 90% per each character; an extra 60% with Bacchus, 40% with Arumat, and 80% with Edge and Sarah. It's 60% less effective than the best setup, but as I said before, I don't mean to waste unique items for this, and that's a fine setup for a good training to get Duplicate as soon as possible (I hope so ^^) and meeting the Metal Scumbags.

 

By the way, +140% is not that bad.

Edited by Starlight126
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  • 3 weeks later...
Sorry for the semi necro of the thread, but is there a way ta remove factors put on an item? Maybe not the original factors, but ones ya added already?
Nope, unfortunately; once you put them on, they are there and they'll be there forever. You can isolate some factors, though, but you'll never be able to remove factors from any item.
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