The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV - Tips for Beginners

Tips for Beginners

Using Sepith

You should prioritize reinforcing the quartz slot to be able to equip R and SR quartz that increases character stats. Use quartz that you find in treasure chests as much as possible as they will usually be enough to progress through the early stages of the main story.

Sepith Farming

Earning Mira (Money)

You can earn Mira during the early stages by selling Sepith Masses obtained from defeating enemies in battle. You can also sell difficult-to-use incense you come by for around 10,000 Mira.

Sepith Mass Farming

Money is best spent on weapons to increase damage dealt in battle. Afterwards, focus on buying accessories and armor that increase your maximum HP.

Mira Farming

Combat Difficulty

The difficulty mode you are playing on directly affects how easy or hard enemies will be during combat. By default, the the difficulty setting is set to Easy. If you simply want to enjoy the game’s story without having to endure stressful combat, you can switch to Very Easy. Note that this setting reduces enemy stats to 50% to 60% of what they would be on Normal mode.

You can freely change the difficulty at any time during your playthrough. Bear in mind, however, that you cannot do this when playing on Nightmare mode.

Game Difficulty

Leveling Up

Earning experience points in battle allows you to level up and enhances your overall stats. Raising the level of the Master Quartz, meanwhile, grants you a significantly higher increases, making encounters much easier as you progress through the game.

Leveling Guide

First Strike and Surprise Attacks

Approaching an enemy from behind grants you the first strike which give you a slight advantage when the fight begins.

Attack enemies with the R2 button while out in the field allows you to perform a surprise attack. This reduces the foe’s break gauge at the start of battle. Note that surprise attacks will not work on some large enemies.

Accumulate CP and BP before Boss Battles

Before taking on bosses and other tough enemies, it is recommended to accumulate 200 Craft Points (CP) and 7 Bravery Points (BP) by defeating weaker foes. Having access to Crafts and Brave Orders immediately will make boss battles much easier.

Assess your Equipment

Prioritize upgrading weapons as much as possible. Afterwards, assess whether the accessories you are using will help you against certain enemies, especially those that inflict status ailments. If you do not need any resistance against such attacks, equip accessories that increases HP, STR, ATS, SPD, and other stats. This also applies to deciding what quartz to use.

It is recommended to use equipment that increases your HP during the early stages of the main story. Some good options for this are Silver Chains (accessory) and HP2 (quartz).

All Character Weapons

Battle Tips

Brave Orders

Make use of Brave Orders in battle, especially against strong enemies, as they allow you to use abilities that grant special effects without using up your turn. They do, however, require BP to execute.

Certain bosses will use a powerful strike on the next turn after they have charged. Using a Brave Order that reduces incoming damage taken helps you survive such attacks.

Randy’s Brave Order during Part 1 (1) is particularly useful during the early stages as it consumes very little BP. Use it as often as you can in battle.

All Character Brave Orders

Interrupting Enemy Attacks

S-Crafts

You can use S-Crafts to interrupt enemy actions. This is very useful for preventing enemies from taking AT bonuses such as critical hits and HP recovery or even the more worrisome Death and Vanish effects.

All Character Crafts and S-Crafts

Items and Arts

You can also use items and arts to interrupt enemies which have less fixed time to use. An example of this is Rean’s Devilish Release which has 0 fixed time, allowing you to shift the order of actions immediately by one.

Arts like Chrono Burst shift the order of actions by two which can be used to either continuously use actions on your side or to prevent the enemy from taking AT bonuses.

All Character Arts

Breaking

All enemies have a Break gauge that gradually fills in the midst of battle. When the gauge reaches 0, the foe will enter a Break state, postponing its turn and removing all stat boosts and special effects it has gained. This also causes the enemy to lose its posture, suffer reduction in defense, and be incapacitated for one turn.

Enemies can also turn the order of action

Note that enemies can also turn the order of action using their own abilities. As mentioned before, you can use S-Crafts and items to interrupt them. Certain Brave Orders even grant an accelerate effect, allowing characters to act immediately regardless of the current of order of actions.

Sarah’s Brave Order, Instant Thunder Light, applies both an accelerate and fixed time reduction effect. This works very well after an enemy has reached a Break state, allowing you to continue attacking without using up your turn. BP becomes especially important in this situation, though you can work around the need for this by increasing the number of actions using Chrono Burst.

Other Strategy Guides

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel IV Recommended Article List

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