2. Star Ocean: The Last Hope General hints and tipsUpdate notes

There are a lot of "general hints and tips" to give on this game, but I'll keep it simple and scatter most of them around the Story Walkthrough pages when it's time to speak about them. Let's just see a few important points and curiosities in this page.

Save Files

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It's important to make backup saves quite often in this game, due to the massive amount of missables which occur rather often. The three main points where I suggest making a backup save are:
- When the fifth member of the party joins (Disc One)
- When the eighth member of the party joins (Disc Two)
- Before making the massive Item Creation and Quests delivery in the post-game

I'll remind you of these spots in the Story Walkthrough pages too, but it's a good thing to underline them here as well.

Another important thing to mention is that in this game it's possible to point out three different "save files". One is the classic game data save file, where you save your progress, etc. (there's 20 save slots, by the way: use them wisely). The other two are the Collections Data and Game Clear Data.

The Collections Data is the file where the Battle Trophies, Spaceship Data, Weapon Data, and Monster Data are saved. It's not data that you can see, and it's updated automatically every time you save the game "normally". It is a common save shared among the classic save files, even on different playthroughs. This practically means that if you get Weapon Data and save the game, say, on save slot "A", if you load save slot "B" (where you didn't really get that Weapon Data) you will notice that the Weapon Data acquired and saved on the save slot "A" has been added for save slot "B" too (as well as every other save file). There are important consequences of this. One is that you can work on all of these datas on different saves and playthroughs, and since they are all shared you could, say, miss a Spaceship Data on your first playthrough, then get the missing Spaceship Data on your second playthrough, and unlock the achievement right away without having to recollect the other 21 (there are 22 Spaceship Data in total) Spaceship Data. Another consequence is that you don't need to make multiple playthroughs to obtain the 100% "monster info" (it has nothing to do with Monster Data; you will learn what the "monster info" is as you play the game) on bosses and one-time-only fights. These things will probably sound a bit confusing at first, so I'll cut it here. Just know these basic things, the rest of the pieces will all come together with some experience in the game.

The Game Clear Data is another "hidden" file which is saved as soon as you complete the game for the first time. It works as a sort of "key" that unlocks a few extra things for the post-game. More info will be given in due time (at the end of the second Story Walkthrough page, when the game is completed).

Difficulty Multipliers

There are four difficulties available in the game: Earth ("Easy"), Galaxy ("Normal"), Universe ("Hard"; unlocked after completing the game on Galaxy) and Chaos ("Very Hard"; unlocked affter completing the game on Universe). Enemies have different stats (HP, ATK, INT, GRD) and a different "Rush Gauge" speed (you'll learn what it is as you play). If we consider the standard values of Galaxy as reference, then the multipliers for the stats are:

- Earth: 0.7x (an enemy that has 100 HP on Galaxy has 70 HP on Earth)
- Universe: 1.3x (an enemy that has 100 HP on Galaxy has 130 HP on Universe)
- Chaos: 1.7x (an enemy that has 100 HP on Galaxy has 170 HP on Chaos)

Moreover, on Universe the Rush Gauge of the enemies goes up 1.5x times faster, and on Chaos the Rush Gauge of the enemies goes up 2x times faster.

Calnus Map

On the Calnus there are various items that can be put (and then used) on some "S/M/L-sized" tiles. Here is a map and below is a summary of the items that can be placed.

S-Sized Objects (put them on the desks upstairs, in the crew's rooms):
- Biorhythm Tester
- Echo Machine
- Aroma of Love
- Mood Stone
- Bunny Plush
- Ominous Metal

M-Sized Objects (put them on the two tiles in the Recreation Room, towards the West side):
- Healing Sheet
- Curing Sheet
- Boy's Gift Bow
- Girl's Gift Box
- Memory Plate

L-Sized Objects (put them on the two tiles in the Recreation Room, opposite the mini-bar):
- Jukebox
- Li'l Vending Machine No. 1
- Li'l Vending Machine No. 2
- Li'l Vending Machine No. 3

Most of these items are useless, or basically useless. The only interesting ones are the Li'l Vending Machine No. 1/2/3 (sort of "on-board shops"), the Memory Plate (which tracks a lot of interesting stats) and the Aroma of Love (not really important, but it can help boosting the affinity between your characters; you should never need it).

These are the stats tracked by the Memory Plate:
- Recipes Discovered (max is 321)
- Items Created (max is 321)
- Quests Cleared (max is 201)
- Distance Traveled (km) (no limit)
- Treasures Collected (%) (max is 100% of course)
- Enemies Defeated (max is 99,999)
- Maximum Hits (max is 99,999)
- Maximum Damage (max is 99,999)
- Times Fled (no limit)
- Times Incapacitated (no limit)
- Best Time vs. Gabriel Celeste (six-winged form only)
- Best Time vs. Ethereal Queen (six-winged form only)
- Wandering Dungeon Floors Cleared (no limit?)

Vocabulary

Let's see some commonly used words, just in case you happen to read them and don't know what they mean:

- Grigori = a special "race" of monsters. They are the main bosses (defeating them earns a story-related achievement), but they can also be found in unlimited quantities in the post-game dungeons
- EQ = Ethereal Queen, one of the post-game bosses of the optional dungeons
- IC = Item Creation
- WD = Wandering Dungeon, one of the post-game dungeons
- CP = Capacity Points. They are discussed in more detail on the Characters and Skills page
- SP = Skill Points. They are used to increase the level of your Skills. There are individual SP and Party SP, as discussed below
- PA = Private Actions. They are related to the affinity of your characters (and, therefore, with the secret ending achievements)
- AI = Artificial Intelligence. An "AI-controlled character" (or just "AI character") is typically one of the characters that you're not controlling manually
- Leader = referred to the context of the battle, it's the character that you control manually. You can only control one character manually (out of the four that can be on the battlefield at once), while the others (up to three) are AI-controlled (unless you set their settings on "Manual", in which case the AI won't move them)
- NPC = non-playable-character. Any of the many "random" characters found typically in the city areas of the game

Affinity and Secret Endings

There are nine secret endings in the game, and they trigger only if the characters have enough "affinity" with each other (the affinity towards Edge is usually the most important). The Private Actions (short optional scenes that you can trigger by speaking with your party members in a specific moment and location) available during the game, especially (but not only) during the travels towards the new planets, are meant to increase the affinity of your characters. Most of the Private Actions have a positive effect on the affinity, although a few of them have a negative effect (which is usually minimal or compensated by something else later). It's important to stick with a guide to trigger all the possible Private Actions.

The Private Actions are not the only way to modify the affinity of your characters. There are also three more ways of affecting the affinity negatively: Pickpocketing (Pickpocketing is a skill that lets you steal [shabby] items from the NPC), using the Super Aphrodisiac item, putting an Ominous Metal in the room of a character in the Calnus. Viceversa there are also two more things that help the affinity: using a Love Potion No. 256 and putting the Aroma of Love in the room of a character in the Calnus.

The affinity of the characters also affects whether they can share a room or not. For example, at the beginning of the game you won't be able to put a male and a female in the same room, but by the end of the game you will probably be able to mix things up as you wish. Sharing a room is another thing that gradually increases the affinity of the characters, although its effect is not very strong.

Discarding Items

Discarding items is important, if not really fundamental, to open all the chests of the game. There's an unfortunate limit of 20x items that can be carried at the same time, and this means that if you open a chest that contains 2x Blueberries but you already have 19x or 20x Blueberries you won't be able to pick it up. To go around this problem, open the main menu with Y and select the item you want to discard from your inventory. Then press Back on the item that you want to discard, and confirm the discarding operation. You will discard only one item at the time. Do so whenever you can't loot a chest due to too many items in your inventory. Do it smartly of course: if your characters need healing and you need to remove a few Blueberries (HP recovery items) from your inventory, the best thing to do is use the Blueberries instead of throwing them away.

Bonus Board

On the right side of the battle screen you can see the 14-tile "Bonus Board". By defeating the enemies in particular conditions you will gain the "Bonus Tiles", which will give you different bonuses according to the one you have collected. The Bonus Board is carried over to the next battle, so it's a good idea to fill up the Bonus Board with bonus tiles in order to benefit from bonuses all the time. You lose the entire Bonus Board if you either run away from a battle or your Leader takes a Critical Hit/dies. However, if you accumulate multiple Bonus Tiles of the same type (color) in a row, this will "strengthen" them, and therefore you will only lose half of them instead of the whole lot. Saving the game doesn't save the Bonus Tiles either: if you save and then immediately reload the same save your tiles will be reset. Let's see the four bonuses now:

- Turquoise Bonus Tiles: acquired when an enemy is defeated with a Critical Hit. This is easily done by killing an enemy with a Blindside attack (Blindside attacks have 100% Critical Hit rate). You gain +10% EXP at the end of the battle for each Blue Tile you have
- Yellow Bonus Tiles: acquired when two enemies are defeated with a single attack. You gain +10% Fol at the end of the battle for each Yellow Tile you have
- Pink Bonus Tiles: acquired when an enemy has been damaged and defeated only with Arts/Symbols (no regular attacks with A allowed; the hits of the AI count too). You'll recover +1% HP/MP at the end of the battle for every Pink Tile you have. This one is important to endure without consuming too many items
- Green Bonus Tiles: acquired when you Ambush two enemy groups on the field (an Ambush is when you engage more than one enemy group at once, and this is possible if they are close enough). You gain +1 Party SP at the end of the battle for each Green Tile you have

Skill Points (SP)

The Skill Points are the points you spend to increase the level (and strength) of the Skills. There are two types of Skill Points. The Individual SP are related to a specific character only, and each character acquires some SP by leveling up. Leveling up is the only way to accumulate Individual SP.

The Party SP are much more easily found. They are obtained by looting Harvesting/Mining Points (you'll learn what these are as you play), opening chests, removing some "elemental" barriers with the Disintegration Rings (another thing you'll know as you play), and also by completing Quests. The other way is by getting the Green Bonus Tiles in battle, but this method becomes less and less effective as you continue. The Party SP are shared among all the characters, so they are a common reserve of SP. They also have the function of being the "fuel" used to invent new recipes at the Item Creation terminal (more info in the Item Creation page).

The maximum amount of Individual SP/Party SP you can have is 9,999 (of each).

Chain Combos

The Chain Combo passive skill allows you to chain the special attacks of your controlled character. The higher the level of Chain Combo, the higher the damage dealt with the combos. Without spending too many words on how it works (it's intuitive when you see it), just beware that there is a thing called "Combo Exceed Limit". It happens when you set multiple combos of the same special attack (for instance, 6/6 Galvanic Shock) and instead of stopping at the sixth hit of the combo you continue to press LT/RT (the button associated with the special attacks). What happens is basically a sort of "overheat attack" which deals minimum damage. It's not a big deal, but it's better to avoid it of course (simply wait a second or two after your sixth chained attack, then start a new chain of attacks) since you are just wasting time and energy attacking with "exceeding" combos.

Other Random Tips/Info

Only the alive characters deployed at the end of the battle will receive the EXP at the end of the fight.

After being able to access the Item Synthesis feature (midway through Disc Two, when the eighth character joins) you can create equipment imbued with EXP and Fol-bonus attributes. If possible, try to avoid farming/leveling up at least until you get your hands on said "bonus equipment". This topic will be discussed again in the Story Walkthrough pages, when Item Synthesis becomes available.

The monsters on the field usually chase after you. However, if you have a relatively high level they will stop chasing after you. You will most certainly notice this when you backtrack in the first areas of the game in the post-game, without the nuisance of triggering useless fights. On the other hand this is also a bad thing when you actually want the enemies to come at you. The enemies of the last areas of the game and the post-game dungeons will chase after you even at level 255 (max level).

The maximum level is level 255, but only if that character has 50% or more of his Battle Trophies. If a character doesn't have 50% or more Battle Trophies, then his level cap will be 200 until he gets enough of them.

You can skip the cutscenes by pressing Start and then picking the "skip" option in the dialogue box that pops-up. The very first and very last cutscenes can't be skipped.

Targeting is one of the worst flaws of the gameplay. It's not possible to manually select the enemy you want to attack, although it helps a lot if you head with LS_Forward towards the enemy you want to attack. Other than this, except when targeting the enemies by casting spells, there's no way to manually change the enemy you want to target. Just try to deal with it, and remember that you can lock on a specific target by pressing LS while he is your current target. After locking on a target you shouldn't "lose" him until he's dead/until you lock-off.

To respawn (regenerate) the Harvesting/Mining Points you must step on the Calnus. There is no other way to respawn them.

Don't - ever - sell anything that you can't buy or obtain again easily. Selling items is a poor way of making Fol, and you should never do so. Never. With all the Item Creation to make, the more you keep, the better.

The "Seeds" items (such as Attack Seeds or Potent Health Seeds) can boost your stats by small amounts, but they are very rare and too precious to be wasted for a mere increment of parameters. Do not use them, since they will be very useful in the latest phases of the game for item creation, item synthesis and also some quests.

Considering the numerous amount of disc-swapping required (especially between Disc Two and Disc Three, at the end of the game, as you will see), installing the Discs on your HDD is recommended. Disc One is not necessary, but Disc Two and Disc Three should definitely be installed to speed up the loading time. Note that this won't make the game load the installed disc automatically, and you still have to disc-swap every time.

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