03A: Branded

03A: Branded

Leveling jobs

Now that you have all of the housekeeping out of the way, continue along the path and hit the jump point - there are enemy nearby but before you go kill them, see that save point ahead?  Right, head over to it and save the game!  If you check the shops you will notice that B&W Outfitters has some new items for sale.

If you leveled your party - you should have - you will now notice that they have more action points and can execute longer chains of attacks - pretty cool!  Lightning can now stack regular attacks with her special attacks which is also pretty spiffy!

The fight will not last long thanks to the extended attack power and HP of your party members, and if you check Lightnings stats you will notice that she picked up 15CP just from fighting that one mob! 

Along the path ahead you will notice a treasure sphere - go ahead and grab the Pearlwing Staff from it.   The Pearlwing Staff is a weapon that boosts the spiritual abilities of whoever is using it, though its stats are lower than the weapons you presently have equipped.

Head back to the save point and past it to continue on our route now and fight the next group of monsters.

-- Grinding Notice --

You have now reached the point in the game where you can build and use CP and therefore level your jobs.  You can keep right on going along the adventure here if you like, and let the CP come on its own, however if you want to have an edge in the battles ahead this is your first convenient grind spot (I will be noting grind spots throughout the adventure).

If you want to use this area for some CP grinding you need to take out the second group of mobs and then return to the save point and save.  Now pause and then exit to the main menu, and load your last save - the two groups of mobs have now re-spawned and can be killed again for roughly 50CP total. 

While 50 CP does not sound like a lot, bear in mind that you cannot progress to Level 2 in any of the jobs until you get further into the game, and having all of the Level 1 jobs maxed out will make your path much smoother as you will have significantly increased your HP, Magic, and moves! 

Some of the characters - Snow for instance - will quickly cap off their skills at Level 1, which means they will be building a reserve of CP that will give them a big jump when you unlock Level 2.  For now concentrate on getting the skills for all of the jobs on your weakest player capped off.  When you finish them you should have built a reserve on most of the others.

-- End Grind Spot --

If you chose to grind here you spent the last 35 minutes capping the Level 1 jobs for all five of the characters, which means that Snow should have a CP reserve of between 800 and 900, Sazh should have a little over 100, and the rest of the party a handful each.  Excellent!  You have something of a jump on Level 2 now, and any battles you have between here and the raise are gravy!

Before you continue down the upper path look on the right in the area where the second group was and you will spot a treasure sphere on top of a ledge - you can jump up there so go ahead and do that now and empty the sphere before we continue along!

At the end of the path is a shattered bridge with strategically placed jump points that allow you to cross it.  On the other side you get a CS in which Snow gives you the benefit of his wisdom - offering a rather circular approach to the matter.  Sazh on the other hand is the team pessimist, and declares that rather than being heroes we are in fact villains.