Duke Reivier's Grand Game Emporium

 Rena went ahead and got a level in Customization to craft the Emprezia. She kept a Kaiser Knuckles that rolled Poison on it, but sold everything else. Then, she leveled up Art until it was level 8 with Rainbow Diamonds, and started putting the rest of her SP into Effort. She also maxed out Body Control, and was close to maxing out Sidestep. I put one perfunctory point into Hasten Speech and Concentration, and would only invest further in them if she suddenly had to rely on her damage spells, which I seriously doubted. Energy Nede certainly was a huge step up from the Ell continent, especially since the particular strip of land connecting Centropolis and North City drew encounters from both the Cave of Crimson Crystals and the Field of Might. The latter dungeon in particular was quite a ways away and so drew rather overleveled enemies for her. While her damage was good, it took a while to grind them down, and their strikes were quite ferocious. Her stack of Blueberries got chewed u...

     UNIVERSE Rena's introduction to Universe was a bit milder than Claude's, as she didn't have to face any souped up gorilla. It was still clearly harder, but less jarringly so. What was jarring was how much slower she was in combat without Godspeed, I would definitely invest into it and Qiqong first! Allen Tucks was her first "hard" fight. Not because he was a particularly difficult foe tactically, but because of how bad her damage was! She needed a weapon upgrade, and quick! I upgraded her Customization to level 5 and Alchemy to level 4 before fighting the Gargoyles, she wouldn't stand a chance against them without a weapon upgrade. The upside of all this grinding, she got a Meteor Ring from Challenge Missions and that made Krosse Cave's encounters considerably more manageable.  The Gargoyles still hurt hard, but with a Metal Fang on, and some quick maneuvering, they were easily dispatched. She also got the Square Shift 1 formation, and switched to it,...

 Rena reached Energy Nede and forged a veritable spread of fighting gloves: The Kaiser Knuckles were just a really strong pair of gloves, but this particular set rolled a chance to paralyze, and so was worth keeping. The Magic Knuckles were considerably weaker, but raised spell damage by 50%. The Knuckles of the Moon were considerably less interesting, but did provide a hefty 30% MP boost. These knuckles had also rolled the Poison property, and you've seen how potent that can be. The Sorcerer's Knuckles reduced MP consumption by 33% and granted 2% MP regen every three seconds, thus being potentially useful for fights of attrition. Lastly, the Emprezia had the highest raw stats of them all, but no further properties besides. For now, she donned the Emprezia and paired it with some damage boosting equipment. Sadly, her crafting hadn't turned up much useful, so she still stuck to the Meteor Ring and the Chain of Might. Her regular attacks were considerably weaker than Claude...

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 Next up on the challenge is Rena. Rena is a cleric. In gameplay terms, this means she is less physically robust than Claude, but has access to largely healing and buffing spells. Spells are interesting in that they differ greatly from special arts. They don't have to be equipped to the two special arts slots, a character can cast any spell they know in battle. They also ignore defense and evasion entirely. However, spells all have a charge up time, and getting attacked before they finish being charged stops them entirely. Thus, they are kind of a high risk, high reward mechanic. As mentioned earlier, most of her spells perform healing or buffing duties. This leaves her ranged offense a bit underpowered, but to compensate, she is built more sturdily than most spellcasters, and can melee through most of the game in "regular" play. That said, I anticipate her journey to be much tougher when she isn't backed by any fighters, and doesn't have someone to hide behind to...