Trails of Cold Steel (and the Kiseki series in general)

[Weltall]

We got some more scans for Hajimari and a release date (August 27). They showed off the Valiant Rage mechanic which sounds like it's a new thing layered on top of the ARCUS link attacks, becomes more powerful depending on how many characters are in your reserve and has multiple possible effects. The scans also show off some characters we were expecting; Matteus and Aurier Vander appear and the latter looks confirmed to show up in combat, so the rest of the family probably will be as well. There's also more Crossbell arc characters with Ilya, Rixia and Arios getting blurbs and (spoilers for Crossbell/CS4)

Spoiler

Novartis reappears and is having a chat with Vita, the former also mentions the Golden Butterfly so we might be meeting them or at least learning something about our mysterious Enforcer III. And Zeit also gets a writeup and is seen talking with Roselia, which should be interesting since we've never seen Holy Beasts interact before. Feel free to make your own joke about the two of them getting on like cats and dogs. xD

The article also details the bonuses you'll get based on system/clear data from earlier games and it looks like pretty typical stuff. Rewards for system data from the upcoming Crossbell ports and CS3/4 plus goodies based specifically on clear data from CS4.

15 hours ago, Briar King said:

Where is a Orbal rest point in Celdic!? I need to recharge but the inn is trying to charge me $100 and I sure can’t part with that right now. I haven’t seen one yet and that Highway did me in EP wise!

Oh and Laura is a beast.

I don't believe there is one until the end of the field exam. A hundred mira is a battle worth of sepith mass so it's not that hard to afford. One trick for the future that can help a lot is to equip the Master Quartz Sceptre, since it nicely increases the amount of sepith you get. It works on a 'per hit' basis so attacks with multiple hit animations (especially Fie's S-Craft) cause enemies to drop a lot of sepith. It should be available for purchase now, if you haven't grabbed it already.

And yes, Laura is a beast indeed. And all-around awesome.

Edited April 22, 2020 by Weltall

[Eluvianii he/him]

1 hour ago, Weltall said:

We got some more scans for Hajimari and a release date (August 27).

Huh. That's my sister's birthday.

[Briar King]

Awwwwwwwwwwww I just figured out what y’all meant with the Sepith Mass stuff...I just thought that bottom number was my sum total from battles and that I would get a direct Mass title drop onscreen. So now I was able to get $14K I dropped $2K on that master Quartz and gave to Alisa.

Im now on day 2 of field study in Celdic going to a disturbance at the market stalls.

Very engaging game.

[Briar King]

Initiating that advantage is make or break a battle. I’m in the park right now grinding a bit and the enemies are def much stronger then the ones on route here but even those can cause my lvl 14 party grief. Elliots lullaby craft is  a must cast on 1st move as is Reans autum cutter thing. I use Alisa’s flame arrow sometimes. Laura is so strong I just use attack.

oh and the mom at the farm gave me vampire ch 3! It’s 30 pgs long..

aww I kept waiting for that to happen...opening a chest only to be attacked..got pounced by a very large group of enemies but using my skill I’ve been slowly been learning I was able to defeat with minimum damage taken. I love how powerful you are in this game right off the bat. Or atleast how many options you have available..normally this type of stuff would be mid game atleast.

 I’m glad I have such a good 1st impression after spending $107 on just this threads hype.

Edited April 24, 2020 by Briar King

[Eluvianii he/him]

Glad you're liking it! And you're on the slow part. Wait for the mind blows. The two biggest mind blows in this series are when the plot expands during your first game, and when you move on to another arc and find that you've seen nothing yet.

(I'm like a broken record saying this stuff, aren't I?)

[Briar King]

Oh man I spoke WAY TO SOON!!

Im gonna try to get to lvl 16 or 17 as I just got mauled and was quickly running out of revive brews by something that is Gogol(Xenoblade)Behemoth(FF) hybrid in this park. Tore me up so bad I quit mid fight. Back to the grind I go. I wasn’t expecting that bad a beat down...

actually I think I ll backtrack off I can back to Celdic and buy some items with all this mass ive collected.

ok bought 12 for the exact Mira I made from Mass and dipped further to equip all armor and stronger weapons at Odvins so hopefully that itself will really help out. Shame it will probably be tomorrow before I find out now as I it’s ambien time now so I will just continue the grind towards lvl 15 tonight I guess. Come at it in the AM

ok I’m back. Got to 15 last night. Here’s hoping that lvl 16 will do the trick today.

and I just went ahead and trotted back to Celdic and bought 10 more revives. I love rpging!! 
 

back on. Almost to 16. My peeps are really starting to miss their hits. Very annoying.

ok at 16x4 so here I go. Hope I don’t have to shoot for 17 or even 18. Put an HP 1 quartz on Laura so she almost at 3K right now.

ok 16 was the magic number. I really sailed through it compared to that lvl 13 attempt. I just loved the corniness of the entire closing chapter skit. So they have Kylo Ren now...

gotta cut some grass but I can’t wait to get back on and continue.

grr so much READING.. hours of reading now. I just want to get back in old school house and fight but trying to do the options quest now and deliver 5 txt books. Have got 2. It is ambien time though so until tomorrow...

Edited April 25, 2020 by Briar King

[Briar King]

ARGH where are these rusting teachers at? Only one more to go...

THIS IS FRUSTRATING! I’m going all over the place looking for this last teacher. Don’t want to look up in case of spoilers getting blasted.

ahh got it. The teacher in art room was very sneaky but I’m finally done... now on to the fighting.

Edited April 25, 2020 by Briar King

[Pathfinder]

1 hour ago, Briar King said:

ARGH where are these rusting teachers at? Only one more to go...

THIS IS FRUSTRATING! I’m going all over the place looking for this last teacher. Don’t want to look up in case of spoilers getting blasted.

ahh got it. The teacher in art room was very sneaky but I’m finally done... now on to the fighting.

I know as you said you want to avoid spoilers, and it is totally up to you, but this is the guide I used to help in harder locations, and in my experience they are pretty good at avoiding spoilers. They usually say things like "go here and there will be a scene. After the scene then do this". So you won't be spoiled by what happened in the scene. The only exception is if you have to do something specific in the scene that can affect the outcome. They also sometimes white out text so if you have not reached that point yet, you won't see it till you highlight it. There are some pictures that depending on the instance you might feel are spoilers, so you could watch out also for that. The link is to the beginning of the guide. Considering you got through the beginning already, why not read the first few pages of the guide to see if it is too spoilerly for you. Since you already played those portions, you will then know if it spoils too much while reading, and not have anything in the future spoiled. If you decide it is too spoilerly, then you can stop reading, no harm no foul. If you find that the guide helps, then there is a table of contents you can use on the first page, to just jump to where ever you are having difficulty without having to go through the whole guide. Link shown below:

 

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/vita/694912-the-legend-of-heroes-trails-of-cold-steel/faqs/72747

[Briar King]

Nice

quite a bit I missed so far to it looks like and I thought I was doing good too...been talking to everyone multiple times so I thought I had everything covered. Nope!

Edited April 25, 2020 by Briar King

[Briar King]

Will I be able to unlock more then just these 8 slots of the Arctus?

[aneonfoxtribute]

1 hour ago, Briar King said:

Will I be able to unlock more then just these 8 slots of the Arctus?

No. The slots you see are the slots you have the whole game. Don't worry, its not as restrictive as it seems. You'll need to make choices about what you want to sacrifice for something else, but you're not gonna be hurting for more options. 

[Briar King]

I was afraid of that. Don’t like it.

moving onto my 2nd field study. Should be interesting.

[Pathfinder]

14 hours ago, Briar King said:

I was afraid of that. Don’t like it.

moving onto my 2nd field study. Should be interesting.

I don't feel this is a spoiler but just in case

 

Spoiler

Orbs start out with giving you single abilities or stat boosts but later orbs will cover multiples. So instead of having to choose between a fire or water spell, you would get an orb that give you a fire, water, and wind spell. Thereby freeing up that spot for another orb

 

So although you have the same number of slots, you'll be able to do more.

[Briar King]

Most excellent news that. 

[Weltall]

Another thing to keep in mind is that your Master Quartz level up and when they do you'll usually unlock new Arts for them, so you'll eventually get a decent pool of magic just from those. By way of example, Elliot's starting MQ 'Canon' will eventually grant pretty much all the single-target heals, a revive spell and a couple offensive ones.

Characters who don't have good ATS like Laura can generally get by with only what their Master Quartz provides, and maybe one or two other spells to fill whatever support niche you need. They won't do much damage with offensive Arts due to low ATS but support spells don't rely on that stat.

[Pathfinder]

5 hours ago, Briar King said:

Most excellent news that. 

One heads up regarding something that annoyed me (really minor but still). Countering depends on the weapon. So guns, and spears are good for counters. The problem is every other weapon sucks at it. When you get attacked, even if you dodge, the animation moves either the character or the monster out of range, so the counter does not happen. Only characters with ranged weapons only, or spear can reliably proc counters. I wanted to do a counter build for Fie, but since her "basic attack" is slashing with her dagger guns, the counter wouldn't proc. This annoyed me because it wasn't exactly explained, so it just wouldn't happen. Wasn't till I looked it up that I found out why. On the plus side, this was changed in CS 2. So you could do a Rean or Fie counter build and it work. 

1 hour ago, Weltall said:

Another thing to keep in mind is that your Master Quartz level up and when they do you'll usually unlock new Arts for them, so you'll eventually get a decent pool of magic just from those. By way of example, Elliot's starting MQ 'Canon' will eventually grant pretty much all the single-target heals, a revive spell and a couple offensive ones.

Characters who don't have good ATS like Laura can generally get by with only what their Master Quartz provides, and maybe one or two other spells to fill whatever support niche you need. They won't do much damage with offensive Arts due to low ATS but support spells don't rely on that stat.

My favorite builds which I finished the game with were Gaius evasion tank/counter build, Emma magic crit build, Fie debuff build, and if I remember correctly Elliot as the heal bot that he is. Haven't gotten too far through CS 2 (still at the beginning when Fire Emblem came out, so I hopped on that), but I intend to do a "chemist" build as an alternative to healer, in other words focusing on item usage. 

Edited April 28, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Weltall]

5 minutes ago, Pathfinder said:

Haven't gotten too far through CS 2 (still at the beginning when Fire Emblem came out, so I hopped on that), but I intend to do a "chemist" build as an alternative to healer, in other words focusing on item usage. 

One word for this: Moebius.

And yeah, Gaius is a pretty good dodge tank and becomes an even better one in later games while Fie is practically made for it from CS2 onwards when she gets long-range counterattacks. Probably my favorite 'fun' build though is Machias. With his Orbment setup you can stack a whole bunch of status-causing quartz on him and once he learns Petrification Shell (which is already a very nice move on its own) he has a huge AoE attack that can also inflict close to a dozen other effects depending on what you've given him. And if you hit enough enemies with it, it won't even cost you any CP.

[Pathfinder]

2 hours ago, Weltall said:

One word for this: Moebius.

And yeah, Gaius is a pretty good dodge tank and becomes an even better one in later games while Fie is practically made for it from CS2 onwards when she gets long-range counterattacks. Probably my favorite 'fun' build though is Machias. With his Orbment setup you can stack a whole bunch of status-causing quartz on him and once he learns Petrification Shell (which is already a very nice move on its own) he has a huge AoE attack that can also inflict close to a dozen other effects depending on what you've given him. And if you hit enough enemies with it, it won't even cost you any CP.

Lol yeah that is what I was referring to. Lets just say I realized the strength of that quartz near the end of CS 1 when my heals were taking too long to fire off, but since I had not built for moebius in advance, I hadn't cooked enough items to make real use of it. So now in CS 2, I want to build for it lol

Edited April 29, 2020 by Pathfinder

[Briar King]

That brings up a question I had: what exactly is ATS and ADF(?) stat? It’s really not been explained in game that I’ve noticed and I’d look it up myself but I learned the hard way while playing glorious Xenoblade NOT to do so because of random spoilers appear that have nothing to do with what you specifically typed up to be looked at...grr that pissed me off so bad. Saw a HUGE spoiler when I was in the midst of that gem of a game.

[Weltall]

ATS is short for Arts Strength and ADF for Arts Defense, they primarily dictate how powerful your offensive Arts are/how well you resist damage from Arts respectively, but there are a couple of instances where they'll apply outside that context. Some characters have Crafts that are designated as Magical in their description, that means they use ATS to determine damage instead of STR and they're checked against the target's ADF instead of DEF. Elliot's Blue Lullaby is an example of this sort.

Likewise a few characters have normal attacks that are designated Magical (Elliot and Emma for your purposes) and they're calculated based on STR just like normal but they're checked against ADF instead.

[aneonfoxtribute]

Also, if you want to know a really overpowered tactic. The Master Quartz (that you probably don't have yet) Tauros on Laura. In CS1 its strong, but in CS2 it makes her absolutely busted. Add that onto the Domination Quartz, which deals 100% extra damage for the first basic attack or Crafg, and a whole ton of regular attack Quartz, and Laura becomes just about the best party member in the series other than maybe Renne in 3rd. She literally made regular encounters trivial because all I had to do was use one Craft with her and she won.

[Zurvanight he/him]

In Sen 2, I put Minotauros on Machias because of his regular attack being an aoe. I had a setup where Laura was already oneshotting any enemies I fought against, so Machias was just there to take down small mobs that bosses spawned without wasting CP. Rean could take down groups instantly with Gale, and fully recover all of his CP with his starting Master Quartz so I never changed it. Fie had an evasion build (not perfect) with Juggler Master Quartz. So she evaded like 3/4s of the time and inflicted a ton of status effects which was fun (stun grenade became a favorite of mine). In 3 I made Fie purely evasion with lots of counter quartz. Juna was an absolute monster though. All break quartz and damage multipliers. I think it was Skuld Master Quartz with Scorpio Submaster Quartz. 

Edited April 29, 2020 by Zurvanite

[Briar King]

Finally was able to fight with Fie outside Bareahard. She is a little demon!

Not a huge fan yet of Emma. Got her in reserve. 
 

Like Jusis and Machias a lot.

Now I’m having to use

Emma after that beast hurt Rean and I don’t really like it. I’ve gotten quite comfortable with Rean in the lead..

 

i find myself really wishing the game allowed 5 party members. I would totally go with Rean, Elliot, Laura, Fie and Machias all day long. Jusis is quite handy.

Gaius, Alisa and Emma will be getting the back seats likely if the game ever opens up pasts these field study things.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Briar King

[Briar King]

Getting some great character build going after night 1 of field study 2. Grr and as I type this I’m 55 miles north of my house for who knows how long with my ex wife. I had to put on rest mode right in the middle of

Rean and Jusis talking to each other cause they are wide awake in bed. Machias is turned away and I suspect when I get back to pick it back up I ll see he was awake the entire time as well.

Also last night my ambien was kicking in when that flying thing took off out of Autochs Fort. It just looked like one of Sara’s training bots to me but Jusis said a person was on it...I didn’t see that good myself.

[Weltall]

[gets popcorn ready]

Oh, and Falcom released product info on Hajimari today. There's going to be an LE with a bunch of nice goodies called the Platinum Meister Box and preorders of both it and the regular addition will come with the usual mini-OST. The LE goodies this time are a 'Zemurian Heroes' desk calendar, a set of 24 semi-transparent mini-posters showing character art and a two disc '15th Anniversary Vocal Collection' album. Oh, and a box patterned after Lapis' case, which if it's anywhere near as nice as the Ys IX LE box should be a nice addition to the shelf indeed.

They also updated with the next chapter of Three and Nine.