For Legend of Legacy players...
If you’re blundering around in the dark wondering how the hell everything works, here are a few really basic things I’ve learned by trial and error. Mostly error.
1) Those ships in the harbour? As soon as you can scrape the money together, send one of those ships out immediately. They are not just a Streetpass add-on; they’re one of the few ways to get decent equipment! They work in real time, and Streetpass will bolster their cargo, so try to make sure you have a ship out at all times.
2) If the shop ever stops being next to useless, I haven’t reached that part in the game yet. The equipment it sells is incredibly low-level - stick to your ships. The only thing it’s been good for so far is selling maps. Make sure you sell them at 100% completion though - once you sell it, you won’t get the chance to sell it again. Your character will let you know via speech bubble when the map of an entire area is complete.
3) LEARN RICOCHET! Equip one of your characters (i.e. Garnet) with a shield, stick them in Guard stance and have them use Block until they learn it. Ricochet gives the guard position character a good shot of nullifying all damage to the entire party. Only works for physical attacks, but it’s a lifesaver.
4) It’s useful to have an odd-man-out formation for the purposes of skill building and emergencies. If Garnet usually guards, Bianca usually attacks and Meura usually supports, create a formation with Bianca guarding, Meura attacking and Garnet supporting. If your healer character faints, for example, having someone else take up the Support position with a healing spell can get the fallen comrade up and running again. Don’t be tempted to ignore formations and stick the same characters in the same stance all the time.
5) On an incredibly basic note…Whispering shards are USELESS until you have the corresponding SINGING SHARD. The game is quite happy to hand you tons of Whispering Shards that you can’t use yet - you need the Singing Shard to make the elemental contract in the first place. (A really basic mechanic that the game almost completely glosses over!)
6) There is no point in have a Whispering Shard equipped once your character as “learned” (memorised) the skill. Pass the Shard on to another character to learn - the previous user will still have the skill. That especially goes for defensive magic like Water Wall, or healing magic, where having more than one character with the ability means that you can block and recover on the same turn, instead of having to wait for a single character’s next turn.
7) The Roaring Valley is hell. It’s narrow, difficult to navigate first time around, and those birdlike shadows on the ground are Archwings, and they will mash you into a paste unless you’re seriously overlevelled. Take this map slowly. Avoid those shadows, even if it means running into regular enemies - you at least have a shot at winning those battles. Don’t try to dodge enemies if your map isn’t filled in - you’ll probably run into an Archwing.
8) Don’t be fooled into thinking that you’re not the “right level” for an area just because you’ve run into one or two really strong monsters. The difficulty level in this game is all over the place, and there are rarer, tougher monsters hanging out with the critters you encountered in the first area (Spriggans in the Seaside Ruins, with two attacks each turn, are a good example). Don’t forget that enemies can be dodged; all three Singing Shards are reasonably attainable with some quick footwork and a little luck (not all monster hordes you run into will have those godawful strong ones among them). However, you may have to do a little levelling up before attacking the purple barrier and the relevant Golem.
9) Remember to return to fully explored areas; there may not be much there, but some of the NPCs might hand over useful stuff (you get the Recovery stance from someone wandering about in the Boiling Sea), and acquiring different Singing Shards helps you to restore those unresponsive monuments you passed the first time round. Also, these areas are obviously useful for stat grinding.
10) There’s a good chance you’ll come to a place called the Deserted Village before you’ve acquired all three Singing Shards and cleared their corresponding ruins. Don’t waste time here - there’s nothing you can do until you meet these two conditions.
11) Grinding is inevitable - the (seemingly?) random nature of the levelling system basically acts as padding to make the game longer. Equip shards and go monster-bashing until your squad has their skills memorised, so that you don’t have shards taking up an equipment slot. It’s also worth retreating to do some grinding if you decide to swap weapons
12) I honestly don’t know how accurate this is, but…When I was desperately trying to raise my party’s HP, I found that Garnet, my tank and blocker, gained far more than the other two. When I created a formation that put the other two in the Guard stance and had them use some blocking moves, I started to have more luck levelling up their HP. Might just be coincidence, but it seemed to do the trick.
If anyone finds this in any way useful, I’ll add more as I blunder into it. Someone on Tumblr mentioned a manual, but I don’t see anything - anyone got any ideas?
EDIT: Got it - I was looking for a physical booklet or an in-game menu. The manual appears alongside the “play game” option when you first tap on the game’s icon at the home screen. Zero out of ten for observation…
