Difficulty Recomendation

[Kim_Kimm]

I'm new player and right now i'm in chapter 3. From beginning I choose Expert Difficulty until now. It is worth to keep playing in Expert Difficulty or recommended to play in normal mode only rather than Hard/Expert 

[Berendsapje]

If you have DLC, It's better to play on hard or expert, as there's a trophy tied to difficulty. Otherwise, just keep with the difficulty level you're familiar with. Chapter 6 and 8 have some hard boss fights IMO, but you're not forced to go to medium.

[daniezutton]

I'm on Chapter 8 and have been playing on Expert since I started the game. I started on Expert for the "better drops" but forgot to switch to a lower difficulty. 

 

Figured I was far enough into the game on Expert to keep the difficulty, and I like the challenge. The drops can be improved with the Kingdom anyway.

 

Keep it for the DLC trophy, otherwise whatever ya feel.

[soliunasm]

Expert is fair for the main story, you just have to make sure you're about in the 40s for anything past Goldpaw and past 55 when you're heading to Broadleaf. Once you get past Broadleaf 60 is basically all you need to be to do the rest of it. I had no problems with it for 48/50 of the tainted monsters on this playthrough which is my first and only one. The drops are plentiful (Even more if you get the Arts of War increases for equipment and treasure chest modifiers on equips), stocking up Roland or Evan is so easy because swords drop basically nonstop, and outside of a couple enemies things are pretty fair the fights just take a while.

 

Your issue with Expert will pop up with the one tainted poison mushroom that has Oliver's outfit and that absurd tainted dragon that's level 69. Even into the late 80s I was dying in a single hit and dealing essentially no damage with every hit. I use Roland primarily so I use the slash that drops defense and even with that I was dealing nothing to those bosses. The mushroom literally recovers 80% of its health when it burrows and you have to luck out into not only finding the right stalk but smashing it with enough damage to break it in the fifteen or so seconds you have. There's also the problem with its awful mushroom adds that do well over 1600 damage a hit, are damage sponges, and chase you down.

The dragon on the other hand will, without notice, spin around and slap you with its tail for an OHKO and depending on the character it may or may not miss. Tani can avoid it if you're hugging the body, Evan doesn't seem to be able to, and Roland randomly can if he's directly in the center of the front or back of the body. Once you get it down to about 70% health left it will suddenly buff itself for the next four or so minutes with electricity that spans basically the entire map and one-shots you with enormously long hitbox times even if you have level 3 evade. Pair this up with the fact it can instantly send out attacks and you're in for a world of hurt.

I had to drop it to Hard for those two fights but at that point I didn't feel like I was losing my mind and it was a lot fairer. You could probably do it if you were in the level 100 range but there's no real reasonable way to grind to that without Horraura.

 

Expert on the Tainted Monsters added after the first 50 is all over the place. I decided to give Horroura (Level 79) a go at level 130 on Expert. It took well over ten minutes straight of attacks with debuffs, buffs to myself, knights constantly knocking her down, her constantly being poisoned, and relatively decent equips. But even though I was such a high level and taking only about 300 damage a hit my melee hits were only dealing roughly 800 a hit which wasn't even ticks off her health until about 8ish hits in. On the other hand Lymina (Level 71) with the same conditions died in like ten seconds and Elkwhisker (Level 83) took about three minutes at most with most of the fight being chasing him down.

 

For Higgledies I'd recommend using the three Higgledies that have Higgledy Sirrah which are all neutral ones paired up with a "Me Too! Me Too!". They are invaluable on Expert for getting the aggro taken off of you, dealing respectable damage, and they can trigger a knockdown on every single hit they have which is unbelievably good for getting in damage on the sponges that are bosses. They're also invincible, as far as I can tell can't be knocked down, and they're on a timer so you can essentially have up to five of these things on the field in addition to your party members. The Higglidies' passives that use the knights will also debuff the enemy defense and attack which is even better.

 

I would recommend you spend time grinding out Horraura if you are going to be continuing on Expert for the DLC and Faraway Forest. 120 should be acceptable, anything more than that is up to you. The DLC content is absolutely going to require you to be higher level just to survive it, and your only decent way of getting EXP is those amazing fairy spawns Horraura gives you since even into the 100s you only need like six or seven to level and you kill them in two Evenstar casts on Normal. As far as I know the only other reasonable method for getting EXP is doing runs of the Labyrinth when you're past 120.

 

 

Faraway Forest Edit:

If you are playing on Expert with the DLC you have to clear floor 40 to get the floor 30 clear trophy and I believe this also applies to Hard. Floors 31 to 40 are in the 105ish range at danger level 1, 120 to 128 in danger level 5. Blackheart the Winnower at danger level 1 is level 110 and 130 at level 5. I went into the fight at danger level 1 with my party members at 133 and I was taking 900-1600 damage a hit. I was dealing around 800 damage a hit using the 570+ attack weapons I found on floors 31 to 40 and the fight even 23 levels higher than the boss took about eight minutes or so. I'd recommend you clear floor 30, go into 31, clear that, then find the door on 32 and warp out to research the Faraway Forest stuff at the Multi-Dimension Lab as it will allow you to warp straight to 21.

One more thing to note is that floors 35-40 do not seem to have a statue at all in the two runs I did to 40 so keep that in mind.

The Zeta fight to get the weapons for Blackheart is actually harder than Blackheart in my opinion and she's just as tanky as Horraura for no real reason.

 

Lair of the Lost Lord Edit:

If you own this DLC I would highly recommend you progress it as soon as you reach roughly level 60 or 70 at least up until floor 23. Had I known this my late-endgame phase would have been far less stressful and I think it would have made the two tainted monsters I had trouble with not that bad in hindsight. Clearing 23 means you learn of the barrier the monsters of the DLC gets and has you go on a quest to Ding Dong Dell. If you do this quest it will unlock the Martial Methods tab for your equipment and this changes up things drastically. Everyone has Classic Style initially and the quest also unlocks Ding Dong Discipline. This thing essentially acts as a Witch Time if you played Bayonetta which allows you to attack for up to 4 square strings plus a triangle while time is slowed down (Or more with upgrades), and even with only 5 points the damage and time spent in slowdown can be buffed already. If you have Arts of War and stick evade to level 3 it gets even more ridiculous because you can completely mistime everything and it will still count as a perfect dodge. When you're in the slowed down time you are also completely invincible to any hits that come your way even if they hit you, and projectiles dissipate on contact.

To top it off, since there's no danger gauge everything is relatively low level up until the 40s and they give you incredibly easy bonuses for orbs meaning you can roll the chests every 10 floors for 500 orbs for a chance at Nascaan weapons. It's highly worth it.

 

Be warned that the floor 100 boss is absurd on Expert. Despite him being level 110 or 120 I barely beat him with everyone in the 140s while wearing Nascaan equips on everyone (Roland has 1603 attack as an example and 1506 physical/1311 magic defense). The boss was dealing roughly 3100 to 3600 a slash, the orbs would do 600 per hit and there's about 15 of them, and the adds are constantly spawning so it's rough to kill them with the boss attacking you. The only reason I won was because of Ding Dong Discipline; I abused the iframes and high damage from the Power Strikes to win.

 

Tale of a Timeless Tome Edit:

You're fine when it comes to the main story with the Memory Lanes, just expect the final boss to wipe you instantly if you get hit and he has some pretty mean attacks though he's not that bad.

For the Solosseum drop it to Normal and forget you ever heard of the Expert difficulty. There is no reason to subject yourself to that nonsense. Even on Normal several fights take minutes at a time of nonstop Wizard's Companion casting with over 2000 magic attack to kill, and into the mid 20s you're fighting stuff 150-167 already. Don't bother with Expert or even Hard because the Normal fights are already on par with Expert at that point.

Edited June 22, 2020 by soliunasm
Adding more information.

[yellowwindow7]

stick to Expert difficulty, better loot and item, armor and weapons drop regardless especially if you unlock the Faraway Forest Maze, most of the ultra rare Higgiledies something items you required to coke them up can be found in there plus the items you required to upgrade your weapons and armor is mostly found there, in fact there are trophies related to difficulty is involve finishing the faraway forest on expert or something and the only way to unlock Evan and Tani's Wedding dresses including Roland's President suit is to beat Blackheart ( the boss of the faraway forest ) on Expert.

[schicic]

Its the EASIEST RPG I have ever played. It does have a little grinding but its not too bad. You don't actually have to do all 100 floors of the far away forest I don't think because I only done floor 40 fur the trophy.

 

Do the 9 chapters of the story, then do all 9 of the dreamer doors for the far away forest key. After that, I done the labyrinth to get levels and items (Play on expert through the game). Use the food that give you extra exp for 1 hour on a single character (I used Roland). Once I got to lv140, i dropped the difficulty down to hard and finished the labrynth. That gave me the dreamer door trophy, labyrinth trophy and plat. It may only work if its the last trophy you need for the main trophy list, but its how i got the plat.

 

I hope that helps someone.