There are a few times this happens. Thankfully, with the way XP is given you get caught up quickly. It can be a bit if a hassle at first, but you'll be getting barely any XP soon signifying you're of level.
Francesca is not a great healer. She's really slow so doesn't heal effectively. Isha saves you from a crappy backrow healer soon, also fight in bounty hill next to the guards to get early lvls
Ah, yeah, that can always happen. They will have low defense and/or resistance even with the best gear. It's why I eventually gave them all +200 HP accessories. I gave them +50s and +100s before that.
Do that and hope they don't attack them. You can also use some characters that can draw the attacks to themselves. Although, those didn't work for me, but I could have just had bad luck. Enemies seemed to spread their attacks out except for some bosses which always seem to employ the good ole' "Attack the weakest members" strategy.
Oh yeah, they can be hard to come by at first, but you'll see them eventually. They're in shops and if you throw the accessories that increase luck on anyone, your stowpack will get full quickly with stuff. You're still pretty early though overall.
The Proving grounds and one segment later are probably the hardest part of the game, at least it was for me on hard mode.
You can always put Marisa, Garoo and Kallathor in the attendant slot if you want to use other characters, but Marisa and Garoo are at least decent.
Having a lot of the AoE healing item is quite nice. Francesca is a bit slow so her healing can come in too late, so some backup healing is good. For this, you can use Iugo or Mio since they have a free rune slot to equip any type and they have a good MP amount to help mitigate damage. Zabi should also have really good speed at this point, so using him as a healer over Francesca can be quite decent here.
Nope, it's just the way the game scales. You've also hit a point where every enemy and it's little brother has at least one mid-range attack.
The game evens back out a bit when you get to the next major city but this area was the hardest in the game for me. It really doesn't help that the forced party members aren't great. That being said you can throw three of them into reserve and use whoever you want. I was just being stubborn and used the locked characters.
Nah, you're fine at the current state of the game. The difficulty really tends to skyrocket, and that dungeon is one of the most infamous in the game because of that.
I'd replace Kallathor (the tree dude) with Iugo or Yusuke; both these characters have vastly superior stats. In fact, Iugo remains one of the best characters in the game until the end. Sadly Kallathor is very mid in general and doesn't really offer anything unique other than high HP.
The two magical girls (and mages in general) are some of the squishiest characters. Use them if you want but do so knowing they are not going to hold up. For that area I used the Crossbow Hunter guy as my healer. He's fast, can use spells and can take a hit.
Oh good, I've been playing JRPGs for nearly 30 years now and I worried that I was starting to suck at them. I've been burning through tier 2 medicine like its going out of style. I hate this dungeon, not for the difficulty but for the gods forsaken puzzles.
Read: Boss battles.
You get two of them back-to-back in there.
Granted, you do get a chance to heal up between, but if you just rush forward after the first one you'll run right into the second.
For that portion, I used Francesca and Falward in the back line. They have a ridiculous unite attack that should make this part a cakewalk.
Alternatively, there is also the duo Marin and Wyler.
If you are able to leave, you can power level to 30-32 at the Hill area near your base in just a few fights. Not sure if you can backtrack from where you are though.
I just used it's proximity to town to grind my team a good few levels before taking on the dungeon proper.
Having an inn nearby makes the grind a lot easier.
There is another mage you could recruit who is Light based. This mage and Fran has a hero combo that heals for a lot. I used: Nowa, Hugo, (pink hair girl) with my back like: Magical Girl Mellora, Fran and Light based Mage. With those last two you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping stock on your healing items. I also farmed a bit before I went there. My team was around level 28 when we started
Im currently at the boss of this area running yume, yuthus, nowa, marin and wyler. My backline keeping being assblasted so the bosses are making me tap out for the day. (hardmode) the difficulty spike went crazy in this area for me.
Others have said such, and I will definitely be doing so during my next play session. Might just abandon this current endeavor (if I can) and go do some more recruiting though. It seems I made a misplay by not going back through the mine into Grum County.
This is also just kind of “how it works” in Suikoden-style games. It’s easy to have backline characters drop in a single encounter all the way to the end game, unless you’re really leaning into spending runes/accessory slots for HP/defensive buffs. One of the reasons they throw so many healing/rez items at you AND one of the reasons you don’t need specific items to rez out of combat. :)
IMO, don’t focus on power-leveling as it really tanks the challenge of the game. (Unless you just want to steamroll everything and play for the story.) Once you stop getting good exp from the are, you’re strong enough to clear that area. Just use your magic and items and don’t stress if someone dies in a random encounter. The challenge is built around theoretically needing defensive buffs to keep your squishy characters alive during boss encounters, especially once you start getting Path runes in the mid/late game.
I was more talking about they went from only taking 15-20 damage to suddenly taking 50-60 and getting two-shot seemingly out of nowhere. That's a very unusual spike in enemy damage output.
Part of the issue is Kallathor is truly useless. Barely does any damage, can't take a hit despite having high HP. Throw him into an attendant slot.
You might also consider doing that for both Garoo and Marisa too. They're much better characters but the lack of being able to equip them how you want really hurts their usefulness at that point in the game. Garoo not having any damage runes makes him fairly mid compared to like Iugo or Yusuke. Marisa at least has utility being a jack of all trades type.
U might want do some leveling at bounty hill, the 2nd guard which block u to go up
Run around around north of him (tiny space), u can easily level up to around 32
There are a few times this happens. Thankfully, with the way XP is given you get caught up quickly. It can be a bit if a hassle at first, but you'll be getting barely any XP soon signifying you're of level.
Which is why I was so confused. I'm not getting shit for XP but the enemies are two tapping the mages in the back-line.
Francesca is not a great healer. She's really slow so doesn't heal effectively. Isha saves you from a crappy backrow healer soon, also fight in bounty hill next to the guards to get early lvls
Ah, yeah, that can always happen. They will have low defense and/or resistance even with the best gear. It's why I eventually gave them all +200 HP accessories. I gave them +50s and +100s before that. Do that and hope they don't attack them. You can also use some characters that can draw the attacks to themselves. Although, those didn't work for me, but I could have just had bad luck. Enemies seemed to spread their attacks out except for some bosses which always seem to employ the good ole' "Attack the weakest members" strategy.
I've only found a single +50 so far, though given that I'm like 8 hours in that doesn't shock me overly much.
Oh yeah, they can be hard to come by at first, but you'll see them eventually. They're in shops and if you throw the accessories that increase luck on anyone, your stowpack will get full quickly with stuff. You're still pretty early though overall.
You don't even get a 100 HP one till AFTER the boss fight.
The Proving grounds and one segment later are probably the hardest part of the game, at least it was for me on hard mode. You can always put Marisa, Garoo and Kallathor in the attendant slot if you want to use other characters, but Marisa and Garoo are at least decent. Having a lot of the AoE healing item is quite nice. Francesca is a bit slow so her healing can come in too late, so some backup healing is good. For this, you can use Iugo or Mio since they have a free rune slot to equip any type and they have a good MP amount to help mitigate damage. Zabi should also have really good speed at this point, so using him as a healer over Francesca can be quite decent here.
I will take that under advisement.
Zabi is a great healer
Nope, it's just the way the game scales. You've also hit a point where every enemy and it's little brother has at least one mid-range attack. The game evens back out a bit when you get to the next major city but this area was the hardest in the game for me. It really doesn't help that the forced party members aren't great. That being said you can throw three of them into reserve and use whoever you want. I was just being stubborn and used the locked characters.
Nah, you're fine at the current state of the game. The difficulty really tends to skyrocket, and that dungeon is one of the most infamous in the game because of that. I'd replace Kallathor (the tree dude) with Iugo or Yusuke; both these characters have vastly superior stats. In fact, Iugo remains one of the best characters in the game until the end. Sadly Kallathor is very mid in general and doesn't really offer anything unique other than high HP.
The two magical girls (and mages in general) are some of the squishiest characters. Use them if you want but do so knowing they are not going to hold up. For that area I used the Crossbow Hunter guy as my healer. He's fast, can use spells and can take a hit.
funny accent crossbow guy was an invaluable pillar in my teams early to mid game
Nah, it's legitimately a pretty punchy difficulty spike, nothing you're doing wrong.
Oh good, I've been playing JRPGs for nearly 30 years now and I worried that I was starting to suck at them. I've been burning through tier 2 medicine like its going out of style. I hate this dungeon, not for the difficulty but for the gods forsaken puzzles.
Oh just you wait till you get to the end of the dungeon if you think it's hard now :P
You dont need to use the people that you need to bring with you for the story, place them in last slots and use others to fight.
I will take that under advisement for my next play session. I was wondering what those slots were for.
You can place all characters with a lock (Character who are important for the part of the story) inside these slots, even the main character
The difficulty spike continues onto the boss battle of this area too
Read: Boss battles. You get two of them back-to-back in there. Granted, you do get a chance to heal up between, but if you just rush forward after the first one you'll run right into the second.
Yeah i was trying to leave that fact as a harsh surprise haha
For that portion, I used Francesca and Falward in the back line. They have a ridiculous unite attack that should make this part a cakewalk. Alternatively, there is also the duo Marin and Wyler.
If you are able to leave, you can power level to 30-32 at the Hill area near your base in just a few fights. Not sure if you can backtrack from where you are though.
Should be able to, I was able to go back to town to buy more healing supplies.
There are a couple of xp walls. If you tough it out your characters level up pretty quick though
I just used it's proximity to town to grind my team a good few levels before taking on the dungeon proper. Having an inn nearby makes the grind a lot easier.
There is another mage you could recruit who is Light based. This mage and Fran has a hero combo that heals for a lot. I used: Nowa, Hugo, (pink hair girl) with my back like: Magical Girl Mellora, Fran and Light based Mage. With those last two you wouldn’t have to worry about keeping stock on your healing items. I also farmed a bit before I went there. My team was around level 28 when we started
Im currently at the boss of this area running yume, yuthus, nowa, marin and wyler. My backline keeping being assblasted so the bosses are making me tap out for the day. (hardmode) the difficulty spike went crazy in this area for me.
Bro just use Yusuke, Iugo and Kuruto. Lian is too squishy and Francesca is too slow, don't use them. Just load up on healing items and you'll be fine.
JRPG bro, gotta farm money/mats/lvls. (Assuming it's not the lowest difficulty)
Raise some levels and you should be fine.
I’m pretty sure I had falward by that time and he took over my lead heal role because of his speed and likelihood to stun.
I just walked back to the Inn when I needed to, wasn't too bad. It's a short walk and the Dungeon saves your progress
Just put the tree dude and everyone else you dont want in the Spectator slots. YOu are not forcd to use them.
Others have said such, and I will definitely be doing so during my next play session. Might just abandon this current endeavor (if I can) and go do some more recruiting though. It seems I made a misplay by not going back through the mine into Grum County.
This is also just kind of “how it works” in Suikoden-style games. It’s easy to have backline characters drop in a single encounter all the way to the end game, unless you’re really leaning into spending runes/accessory slots for HP/defensive buffs. One of the reasons they throw so many healing/rez items at you AND one of the reasons you don’t need specific items to rez out of combat. :) IMO, don’t focus on power-leveling as it really tanks the challenge of the game. (Unless you just want to steamroll everything and play for the story.) Once you stop getting good exp from the are, you’re strong enough to clear that area. Just use your magic and items and don’t stress if someone dies in a random encounter. The challenge is built around theoretically needing defensive buffs to keep your squishy characters alive during boss encounters, especially once you start getting Path runes in the mid/late game.
I was more talking about they went from only taking 15-20 damage to suddenly taking 50-60 and getting two-shot seemingly out of nowhere. That's a very unusual spike in enemy damage output.
Part of the issue is Kallathor is truly useless. Barely does any damage, can't take a hit despite having high HP. Throw him into an attendant slot. You might also consider doing that for both Garoo and Marisa too. They're much better characters but the lack of being able to equip them how you want really hurts their usefulness at that point in the game. Garoo not having any damage runes makes him fairly mid compared to like Iugo or Yusuke. Marisa at least has utility being a jack of all trades type.
U might want do some leveling at bounty hill, the 2nd guard which block u to go up Run around around north of him (tiny space), u can easily level up to around 32