Bravely series

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

My style of playing variants is playing things other people have already done and copying their strategies verbatim .

Only exceptions being Oracle Solo, and me rocking the "farm a million Staves of Light" strat shows I tend to pick one strategy and grind it out until it works, an Kimahri Only in FFX, and even then I copied someone else for the most part(one later boss would have been incredibly difficult had I not since special preparations have to be taken for him which involve not raising your max HP above a certain point), and only the final boss was one where I had to figure things out for myself which took a few days.

Also, a bit of a vaguely related question. This wouldn't happen anytime in the near future, but if someone ran variants of Bravely Default and had a capture card to get screengrabs of it, would this be a thread to put them in, as it's basically a Final Fantasy game in all but name, and the Job system is almost identical to FF5's.

Hello!  I read this topic for a while, and I knew I had to post for the first time when someone mentioned Bravely Default.

I once tried a variant for that game.  Since the game has a customizable New Game Plus feature, I decided to try 4 Monks starting out with Level 14 Job levels, and with the Conjurer class's Obliterate skill to speed up mindless grinding later in the game.  No character levels or equipment were carried over.

Before trying any self-imposed restrictions in Bravely Default, make sure you can beat the penultimate boss on a trial run first with your rules!  It can give you a weakness to fire with Acedia that overrides any elemental resistances, then hit your entire team for 9999 damage on the next turn with Zeta Flare.  Even grinding to level 99 wasn't enough for the Monks.  I experimented with other maxed out jobs and failed with those too.  Bravely Default is like playing FF5 if the programmers expected you to use Spellblade + X-Fight + Dual Wield to survive.  You can't buy Elixirs or get them as random drops in BD if my memory isn't lying to me.

Do your single class challenges in Bravely Second instead.  If you need to grind levels, go to Grapp Keep and use Phoenix Down with Freelancer's Halfsies or Patissier's Items For All on the undead enemies.  You can turn off random encounters in the Bravely series, so I only count mandatory fights in my restrictions.  You can buy Elixirs in Chompshire.  Another exception ought to be the "Berserk Room" in one of the Chapter 2 dungeons.  There's no way for physically-weak classes to clear that part without being overleveled.

The equivalent of "rod-breaking" in the Bravely series is probably Special attacks, but the 9999 damage cap makes them much weaker than they could be.  Level 1 Specials are as good as Level 4 Specials later in the game because of this.

My successful 4 character challenge runs were Patissier and Hawkeye.  Patissiers rely a lot on Specials and "attack items" because their active skills are mostly debuffs.  Their passives let you do silly things like using one Enopu Mushroom on your whole party to give them auto-revive status.  (Later bosses can dispel that, so it's not invincibility.).  In the Berserk room, I had to switch to Thieves for the mandatory fights to beat it without extreme level grinding.

Hawkeye is similar to the Spellblade in FF5, but with much lower defenses.  For that run, I started with job level 11 to unlock Crossfire, a passive that can give your party members the chance to get free follow-up attacks when they hit the enemy.  Although Hawkeyes can apply elemental or defense-piercing properties to their weapons, their magical attack Sparrow is stronger in most cases.  It was much harder than the Patissier playthrough, even though the Patissiers started at job level 1.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Mages in general are much better in Bravely Second than Bravely Default.  Try casting Holy on the second-to-last boss of Bravely Default, and you'll see what I mean.

Red Mages don't get dualcast in Bravely Default, but it's their level 11 ability in the sequel.  I should have mentioned in my first post that you don't get level 11 skills in a normal playthrough until you get the Yokai job in the Vampire Castle sidequest right before the final dungeon.  Yokais have a passive ability called "Awakening" that lets you learn level 11 abilities, and I decided to allow those for my single class playthroughs.  Mostly because I want to have fun with it and use all the classes' abilities.  

Another note for Bravely Second single class challenges:  Be sure to have a source of magical damage for Amphisbaena, even if it means buying lots of attack items from the Fort-Lune shop.  Amphisbaena has one head that can only be hurt by physical attacks, and one head that can only be damaged by magic.  Special attacks can handle the physical part.

Red Mages have passives that can give them more Brave Points when they dodge attacks, lose most of their health, or are affected by status ailments.  For the FF5 players who aren't accustomed to this series, there is no ATB bar in the Bravely games.  Instead, you can gain extra actions per turn from Brave Points.  You usually get them by defending (called "Default").  So Red Mages can take more actions than other classes.

I never did a Red Mage only playthrough, but I used the class often during my first run through the game.  It would be interesting to find out how good they'd be with dualcast without the Wizard's overpowered Spellcraft ability.

Maybe when I finish my solo Wildling playthrough of Etrian Odyssey 3, I might get back to Bravely Second.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

In a regular game, how powerful is it that you can mix and match two abilities from any previous jobs, together with any equipment? E.g., have a mage with a huge amount of defense.

FF5 doesn't really have a huge amount of defense by any means.  The danger is kill spells and disabling status effects, not really the numeric values of enemy attacks or your defense.  Really the best defensive abilities are Equip Ribbons and Mix.  You could master Dancer or Chemist to put that on a mage.  But there's not much else that would matter to do that with; anything else like Equip Armor or the Monk's HP +30% will be fairly marginal.

Combining two jobs gives you either more offense or a utility ability in the second slot.  Take a physical fighting class plus Dual-Wield or X-Fight, or Time magic for haste or White for healing or Blue for that bag of tricks.

Where the job system gets overwhelming is combining multiple mastered jobs as a Bare, since all the highest stats and passive abilities carry over, plus all equipment.

Freelancers are different in the Bravely series.  Equipment isn't restricted by class in those games.  Instead, classes have "grades" for each weapon or armor set, from E to S.  E rank only gives you the base stats for the equipment, while S rank provides double the attack power or defenses.  If you want to use shields with your mage, go right ahead!  Yes, you can swap out weapons and shields in Bravely games without using up your turn like in FF5.

Freelancers come with B ranks in all equipment.  Their Late Bloomer skill increases all of their stats by a small percentage per class mastered.  In Bravely Second, their level 2 skill is Halfsies, which lets you use one item on multiple targets for a low MP cost.  The catch is that it's only half power and an active skill, unlike the Patissier's passive Items for All.  It's still good for the early game, level grinding, and challenge runs.  Stand Ground is their innate passive skill, which gives them a 75% chance to survive a fatal blow with 1 HP if they had more than that before the attack.  Freelancers inherited the Mimic skill from FF5 too.

EDIT:  In Bravely Default, you want either offense or skills that negate damage outright instead of more defense and HP.  The Spiritmaster skill Stillness makes all combatants immune to damage for two turns, and I needed it to survive the penultimate boss on my regular playthrough.  Be sure to use the Spiritmaster's Fairy Ward to block status ailments too.   The other way to avoid damage is using the Valkyrie's High Jump with the Time Mage's passive skill Hasten World to get the BP back every turn.

Bosses aren't as overpowered in Bravely Second, so HP and defensive stats will work better.  One boss right before the last dungeon can set a character's max HP to 1 for the duration of the fight, so watch out for that.

[Cheater Hater]

The biggest problem with the Bravely series is that a lot of the game is based on out-of-game stuff: building the town could easily be bypassed via NG+ and friend summons would obviously be banned, but the biggest problem is SP for Bravely Seconds, which give you extra turns but replenish in real time (or for a real money fee). It feels like you either need the broken job combinations or Bravely Seconds to beat the final bosses, mostly because a Bravely Second turn is the only thing that can break the 10k damage cap--I remember in the first game I was doing my playthrough with no (meaningful) Bravely Seconds (since I just don't like the mechanic) and had to drop the difficulty down to Easy to beat the penultimate boss, even at L99 (though in that case I had just picked it up after putting it down for a while and was trying to finish the game quickly before Bravely Second came out).

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

The biggest problem with the Bravely series is that a lot of the game is based on out-of-game stuff: building the town could easily be bypassed via NG+ and friend summons would obviously be banned, but the biggest problem is SP for Bravely Seconds, which give you extra turns but replenish in real time (or for a real money fee).  It feels like you either need the broken job combinations or Bravely Seconds to beat the final bosses, mostly because a Bravely Second turn is the only thing that can break the 10k damage cap--I remember in the first game I was doing my playthrough with no (meaningful) Bravely Seconds (since I just don't like the mechanic) and had to drop the difficulty down to Easy to beat the penultimate boss, even at L99 (though in that case I had just picked it up after putting it down for a while and was trying to finish the game quickly before Bravely Second came out).

You don't need Bravely Second in well, Bravely Second:  End Layer except to activate the cutscene that begins Chapter 5, and that doesn't really count.  The boss design is much more balanced in the 2nd game.  My Patissiers and Hawkeyes did fine on Hard without bothering with Bravely Second.  As for Bravely Default, yes, you're right about needing an overpowered team.  BD is NOT a variant friendly game.  I wish I knew that before trying to beat the game with 4 Monks.  


I always carry over Norende and Fort-Lune data for variant playthroughs.  If you're doing a Patissier challenge, be sure to unlock all the cakes in the Fort-Lune shop if you don't want to spend hours in random battles looking for them.  Attack items and Specials from Fort-Lune are important too.

Maybe I should post an Etrian Odyssey thread.  That's another RPG series with lots of potential for self-imposed restrictions.

[Cheater Hater]

The biggest problem with the Bravely series is that a lot of the game is based on out-of-game stuff: building the town could easily be bypassed via NG+ and friend summons would obviously be banned, but the biggest problem is SP for Bravely Seconds, which give you extra turns but replenish in real time (or for a real money fee).  It feels like you either need the broken job combinations or Bravely Seconds to beat the final bosses, mostly because a Bravely Second turn is the only thing that can break the 10k damage cap--I remember in the first game I was doing my playthrough with no (meaningful) Bravely Seconds (since I just don't like the mechanic) and had to drop the difficulty down to Easy to beat the penultimate boss, even at L99 (though in that case I had just picked it up after putting it down for a while and was trying to finish the game quickly before Bravely Second came out).

You don't need Bravely Second in well, Bravely Second:  End Layer except to activate the cutscene that begins Chapter 5, and that doesn't really count.  The boss design is much more balanced in the 2nd game.  My Patissiers and Hawkeyes did fine on Hard without bothering with Bravely Second.  As for Bravely Default, yes, you're right about needing an overpowered team.  BD is NOT a variant friendly game.  I wish I knew that before trying to beat the game with 4 Monks.  


I always carry over Norende and Fort-Lune data for variant playthroughs.  If you're doing a Patissier challenge, be sure to unlock all the cakes in the Fort-Lune shop if you don't want to spend hours in random battles looking for them.  Attack items and Specials from Fort-Lune are important too.

Maybe I should post an Etrian Odyssey thread.  That's another RPG series with lots of potential for self-imposed restrictions.

Yeah, Bravely Second is much easier overall, probably because they took out most of the completely broken stuff and balanced the classes a lot better. Then again, I wasn't really min-maxing at all in either playthrough; I just take two physical attackers and two magic users (one offensive, one defensive) and go through--I do try to max out each job on somebody just as part of the process of playing (to try to find what I like best), but I don't think about it much beyond that. I also didn't do much with the crafting or blue mage jobs, since I didn't want to keep a guide open while playing a portable game or grind for moves/materials (and it was so dumb that Vampire wasn't unlocked until near the end of the first cycle--I know why they did it, but that doesn't help when you can't figure out how to kill the dragons the first time through and can't get the job until Chapter 5 like I did).

[English Language]

The thing about BD is levels don't help all that much if your strategy isn't right. A level 50 team with a solid strategy and abilities can steamroll the game while a level 99 party just kinda winging it can get smeared into paste. Which is one thing I like about it. I can see why it's not too variant friendly sadly though.

[Cheater Hater]

The thing about BD is levels don't help all that much if your strategy isn't right. A level 50 team with a solid strategy and abilities can steamroll the game while a level 99 party just kinda winging it can get smeared into paste. Which is one thing I like about it. I can see why it's not too variant friendly sadly though.

That's a great trait for post-game content or hard mode, but not necessarily for normal mode trying to just get to the ending. It's not like I was completely just trying to get by--I knew the power of stuff like Conjurer, Spiritmaster (that was the super-White Mage with the elemental immunities, right?), and special attacks (more for their status/buffs than their damage without Bravely Second), but I couldn't figure out how to get past that penultimate boss without lowering the difficulty. What are the ways to get past it (as I remember he would do the weaken+Zeta Flare stuff either without giving me a chance to act or often enough that I couldn't get the elemental immunities back up)? Obviously Stillness is one (which is one thing I didn't use much, mostly since it seemed like the turn order was never consistent and that's the kind of thing you need to plan perfectly to get good use of), but what else?

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

The thing about BD is levels don't help all that much if your strategy isn't right. A level 50 team with a solid strategy and abilities can steamroll the game while a level 99 party just kinda winging it can get smeared into paste. Which is one thing I like about it. I can see why it's not too variant friendly sadly though.

That's a great trait for post-game content or hard mode, but not necessarily for normal mode trying to just get to the ending.  It's not like I was completely just trying to get by--I knew the power of stuff like Conjurer, Spiritmaster (that was the super-White Mage with the elemental immunities, right?), and special attacks (more for their status/buffs than their damage without Bravely Second), but I couldn't figure out how to get past that penultimate boss without lowering the difficulty.  What are the ways to get past it (as I remember he would do the weaken+Zeta Flare stuff either without giving me a chance to act or often enough that I couldn't get the elemental immunities back up)?  Obviously Stillness is one (which is one thing I didn't use much, mostly since it seemed like the turn order was never consistent and that's the kind of thing you need to plan perfectly to get good use of), but what else?

When I used Stillness, it took me a little while to find a way to make it work because of the RNG factor in the turn order.  Then I remembered the Ninja skill that always hits at the beginning of the turn.  (Shippurinjai?)  Give speed boosting accessories and passive abilities to your Spiritmaster, and you can get through the final fights without taking damage if you remember to keep Fairy Ward up to block status ailments.  Spiritmaster is not a healer so much as a class that prevents damage.

If you don't want to play fair at all, equip everyone with speed boosting abilities and equipment, put the Time Mage's Hasten World ability on one of your characters, and use High Jump.  Then set it on autobattle and win.  The game crashes if you try High Jump on Rusalka, so don't do it in that fight.

As for other strategies, I'm not sure.

Conjurers have good stats, but their active abilities are single target buffs with high MP costs.  What you want from that class is the passive Obliterate ability to speed up grinding.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Well, y'all inspired me to start another Bravely Second:  End Layer single class challenge.  This time, it's the Red Mage.

The rules:

-New Game Plus
-Start at character level 1 and job level 11
-Items carried over to keep Growth Egg and spells, but all equipment must be sold off
-Fort-Lune data and Specials carried over, because who wants to do that more than once?

Starting with job level 11 may annoy purists, but I want to show off the class's abilities.  Otherwise, it would devolve into using Specials and attack items like Pantheon's Wrath in every fight for most of the game.

Red Mages are allowed to use the Black and White Mage elemental attacks up to the -ara level, Aspir, Drain, Esuna & Esunaga, Cure through Curada, and Raise.  Chainspell is this game's version of Dualcast, and with the Brave system, they can cast up to 8 spells per turn.  If my characters ever get near the 9999 damage cap, this would be an effective way around it.  However, this will make you guzzle Turbo Ethers.

The selection of passive abilities for the Red Mage is so good that you won't have enough room for them all with only 5 slots.  Chainspell alone takes up 3 slots.  Revenge is an innate ability that gives you a 25% chance to gain one BP when you take damage.  Turn Tables grants 1 BP for dodging an attack, which is a nice bonus when Defaulting with a shield.  Revival has a 75% chance to give you 2 BP when your HP falls to critical level.  MP Free in a Pinch complements that by letting you cast free spells when low on health or afflicted with Ghost status.  In the Red powers up your spells when you go far into negative BP, making it a good choice for fighting random encounter streaks.

All those BP abilities mean Red Mages get more turns than other classes, which should make up for their weak spells.  I set the Special trigger to Magic, so a few Chainspells should let them use their limit breaks often if the party needs to.  (EDIT:  Just tested this in a random battle.  Chainspell does NOT increase the Special gauge by 2 per spell.  This is disappointing!   )

The bosses so far as of the end of the Prologue:

Bella 1:  Edea joins in this battle, and she is in whatever class she was during the final battle before New Game Plus.  (Hawkeye in this case)  In this run, she still has her equipment too because I couldn't sell it off yet.  I tried to win the fight only using Yew as a Red Mage, but a Crossfire from Edea got the kill.

Bella and Cu Chulainn 1:  I forgot Bella the Wizard resisted magic, but managed to take her out despite my bad tactics. She casts elemental attacks on your party and casts elemental Walls on her party to make you take damage when you use physical attacks.  Cu Chulainn the Charioteer smacks you with Triple Wield physical attacks.  Cu Chulainn is weak to Lightning magic, so a few casts of Thunder did the trick. 

(Cu Chulainn is pronounced KOO HOOLIN according to the voice acting.  Yes, that includes the capital letters.  Cu Chulainn is a ham.)

Janne and Nikolai:  Nikolai is very resistant to spells, and neither of them have an elemental weakness.  The spells are a bit underwhelming if they aren't super-effective.  I miss the Patissiers and their ability to give the enemy a weakness by feeding them cakes.  Piercing Bolt did the trick on Nikolai.  I accidentally healed Janne once because I forgot Nikolai cast a buff on him, but he went down eventually.  Magnolia died a lot in this fight despite having the same equipment as everyone else.  Maybe the Asterisk holders have a grudge against her?  Then again, I fought them below the recommended level range because I turned off random encounters like usual.