Update Time!

I feel for the first time now, I've reached this personal point with Unlimited Saga:
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So yeah, I feel I've passed the learning curve, figured out the rules more of less, and I'm finally enjoying my overall experience with the game. I feel my biggest issue was just trying to rush things, and do everything as it unlocks as I usually do, when it is apparent I really should be advancing the plot to gather my team so I can use these hard missions to build up their levels.

It also helps I finally conquered the Abandoned Castle mission, so my OCD is finally feeling better. Having an extra party member has been nice, and Francis and Michelle have both obtained some Life Protection skills for their armor so I don't have to worry as much about them losing LP every time an enemy just looks in their general direction.

I only progressed the story a bit, we have reached Henri's (fun fact, it's pronounced Anri) homeland so we can investigate his mysterious family heirloom and trouble is already brewing with the party as Laura aught Francis sending a message to his lord sine he's technically on loan to Henri. So she thinks he's a spy whereas he believes she's only helping Henri for some material award considering she's a pirate, though oddly enough this has not come up yet in the plot so I'm not even sure if Henri actually knows Laura's background. Anyway, I'm simply tickled this game has a bit more of a plot structure than usual for this series.

The rest of my evening was spent playing around with the blacksmith system and traveling back to former towns to pick up any new good items I can use. Blacksmithing is weird because on the one hand, it's not nearly as complicated as say... Legend of Mana's system, but on the other hand, it does have some serious RNG shenanigans if you want the actual good stuff. Basically the only way to get certain materials for weapons is to either buy it in a shop, find it, or for some craft it in a blacksmith shop by combining certain materials that only have a 15% chance of actually becoming that material. So save scumming and soft resets are a big deal. Damascus is probably the most annoying to get likely due to being the best material. First, you have to get your hand on a cheap but rare material called Mullock which stops appearing in shops after a certain point I've been told. You merge it with a gem that grants a Magic Art to a weapon and make a dagger. This part is relatively easy as long as you have the materials. The tricky part is the second material. Turns out a lot of materials in this game have two versions of them. Mullock is one, which is why you have to merge it with a gem to gain it's 2nd tier form. It's not a pain since you have a 100% chance of gaining the second tier by doing this. Steel is the other one, and that's the tricky one. Steel is not common, you pretty much have to make it by combining Iron and Wood, but it's second tier is deceptive and only has a 15% chance of occurring when you merge them. The only tell you have done it right is the weapons attack power. Since you have to make a Steel Dagger (for some silly reason the steel base items for Damascus have to be Daggers) which normally has an attack power of 39, you need it to be 38 in order to know it's the secondary tier. Once that's done, just find a blacksmith who will make the item you want and merge the two to get their Damascus equivalent which generally has attack power in the 70 range and durability to match. Sadly, you can't make armor with a blacksmith, so I'll have to be lucky to acquire some. It looks like Damascus armor and armlets have a high tendency of having Life Protection so that's a boon.

So last night I manged to make a Damascus Spear for someone, and a Platinum Sword for Laura, while also amassing quite a few good items for future investments.

Laura - Is still doing good, her panel board is shaping up nicely and she managed to learn Sharpeye which is a great skill for treasure chests because it tells you what kind of traps are on one. This is mostly important because it will tell me if a chest is a mimic. Mimics are not as bad as they seem in this entry because they are one of the rare enemy types that have a high chance of dropping Magic Tablets in the game. So knowing a chest is a mimic beforehand means it's more beneficial to trigger the trap and fight the mimic than diffusing all of the traps. My one gripe for Laura at the moment is that I want to drop Lockpicking from her panel for something more useful, but its a Lv. 4 Panel (Panels only go up to Lv. 5) so losing it without an equivalent ranked panel will cost her some serious stats. She's been doign a great job sparking moves for her weapon types, and Sharpeye finally made her magic a bit more viable for battle since her Fire affinity was mostly trapped at it's starting level.

Henri - Is not doing bad, he's not sparking moves like I want him to and while he now has a Familiar for magic, he's not setup well for it. I'm mainly trying to get him to get him to acquire most of the skills Laura seems to keep getting. He's been well rounded for the most part, but he's not excelling anywhere either.

Judy - Is still going strong and getting better Familiars. It is so nice to have access to magic without worrying about item durability. I just need her to get a high tier Water Familiar so I can have access to Purify all the time. I have really three Panels I'm looking out for. I need a Bow panel because staffs are useless and she's much better with her bow. I need Fortunteller since it's a great elemental boosting panel and a useful skill in dungeons. Of course I also need to find the Holy Grail of magic panels in this game, Magic Blender which is super rare (I believe it is only a Lv. 5 Panel) and is the only means of accessing the other half of the magic system. Besides that, I'm trying to master her Forbidden Tablet, but it looks like I may have to try to master some of the other spells first because the particular spell (Degenerate - Lowers enemy's Attack Power and Endurance) I'm trying to master only levels up occasionally. Her other two spell choices are not part of the Forbidden spell line, so they tend to get more XP when I choose to level them, so I may try to master them first. I still haven't had time to hit up the other Magic Tablet on her panel.

Michelle - Has been doing really good, and I learned she's one of the better characters for melee options, so I'm thinking of trying to build her with more light armor so I can haves access to Light Martial Arts which are apparently a better version of most of the melee options. This means I may have to drop her gun, which is fine because guns are not terribly useful in this game. They can't be upgraded, only have their number of uses increased, they always seem to be heavy iron so they weigh a character down, and they can't learn arts because they are sort of built in already. So it's been kind of silly to keep her equipped with it. I am gambling with one area. I made her a Topaz Sword with Earth Arts, but this cost the weapon the use of the Deflect skill which she sort of needs, but now I have access to an item that can allow her access to cast Earth Magic she's mastered and it has a huge durability so I don't have to worry about having to use the fix-it skill in dungeons to keep her previous armlet that did this from breaking. We'll see how well this build goes. I did manage to get her a great Lv. 3 melee panel which boosted her stats considerably. if the sword doesn't work out, I may switch her to a dagger with parry skill and focus on making her a melee specialist.

Francis - Now that he has some gear with Life Protection and a better shield, he's starting to move into the position I want him to be in as a tank. He has four more LP than the next highest character so I want to utilize that. He did piss me off because he keeps getting panels I want for other characters. He managed to roll Fortuneteller for example but he's not really built for magic. This skill is useful because it will tell you what is in a treasure chest before you open it, except if you succeed in the roll, it actually upgrades the item into something better whereas a fail will just tell you what it is, and a critical failure will lower it's value. I opted to give him a higher tier Fix-it panel so I can eventually drop the one Laura has on her chart. He's doing okay with spears, but I'm really starting to toy with the idea of switching him to axes since they seem to be a the most recommended weapon type in this game besides daggers.