Bravely Default Series

So am I doing something horribly wrong in BD 1. I gave my earlier characters and stuff to make sure I was doing okay but I just went through the lava part and I ended up using so much MP and Ethers. Buying back all those Ethers once I got to the Fire Temple cost me all my money and I just don't think this is the right way to play.

But it's like, every enemy takes at least 3-4 of my best spells to kill: that's 15 MP a pop so I spend like 45-60 MP a fight, even with Ringabel's and Edea's physical support.

Been really trying to level up Salve Maker for Ringabel but at the moment he isn't doing much except helping me heal better with items. I don't have enough attack items to make him offensively that useful beyond his Ranger skills.

I think I need to make better use of Specials.

Chaugmar is obliterating me. Energy Burst seems to be a physical attack but Protect does nothing so far as I can tell. Angelic Wind is making it so Agnes can semi-reliably survive it but it's a physical attack which means it can crit and just wipe out everyone, even my tanky Edea.

But yeah, this fucker can do this again and again and again, meaning even if I survive the first EB, the second might wipe out at least 3/4 of my party. Or the one after that.

The crystal fights are all such dumb gimmicks.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jun 19th 2021 at 2:57:31 AM

Most of pre-chapter 4 bosses can be cheesed by just opening with 4 specials to nuke them down before they can play out their gimmick.

Chaugmar is a special case, it's shield just caps it's defensive stats, menaing that a Fixed Damage Attack like attack items or an Armor-Piercing Attack like the Monk's Pressure Point all work on it even when it's shield is up.

My strategy for it IIRC correctly always was just to default up until it's shield drops and then braving it down with all my specials.

Edited by Kiefen on Jun 19th 2021 at 2:20:35 PM

Specials don't seem that good. They do like a couple thousand damage and raise my M Attack for a bit which is helpful but I don't see how using multiples of them could kill a boss that quick.

I guess I'm missing something. They have always just been a nice little buff when I could, never a way to kill a boss instantly.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jun 19th 2021 at 5:27:35 AM

Have you unlocked Norende? You can customize your specials so they have matching elements or further (de-)buffs.

Yeah I have been spending most of my time getting equipment and items, though.

I do have the bonus elemental damage but no debuffs yet.

Chaugmar really is complete horseshit. EB can kill my best physical fighters at full HP and with a shield for good measure if it crits.

I went and got Performer adn Pirate but given he loves to just drain all your MP, fat lot of good that does.

Kinda regret I picked this game back up only to run into this total BS boss.

I recommend using its idle turns to buff up with White Mage's Protect and other defensive spells. I don't recall which jobs you have access to at that point, but I never had much trouble with Chaugmar. Just don't bother attacking him when he's defending unless you have a defense-ignoring or fixed-damage attack and be sure to Default on the turn he uses Energy Burst.

Huh, I haven't noticed that buffs/debuffs stack in BD 1. I didn't realize there was a second description of abilities, a more precise one, that specified this. I can raise my P Def to 150%, just use Performer's thing and maybe Protect on my squishy mages. and maybe then they can all survive Chaugmar's move.

So that is my huge mistake. My only defense is I didn't think there'd be a second menu for abilities.

Edited by Nikkolas on Jun 20th 2021 at 7:00:57 AM

By the way, rather than Protect et al being a unique status effect, it's a modifier to defense or the corresponding stat, which stacks up to two times (first one is +25%, second one is +50%). So two casts of the corresponding Performer buff will cap your Pdef modifier, combine that with Default and you should have no problem surviving Chaugmar.

BD is a very flawed game, but the combat is pretty excellent. There's never a fight that can't be solved with a clever strategy and proper knowledge of the game's mechanics. One of the best examples is with the elemental dragons and later with the team Asterisk fights.

I am having quite a bit of trouble with said elemental dragons. XD

Oh, those are fun. Templar's Rampart will protect your entire party from the damage of any one attack, so that's a good starting point. It won't protect you from the status effects, though, so that might be a problem with the Earth dragon which will just stun you and do it again. Enter the most low-key broken job, Spiritmaster. Fairy Ward will keep you safe from status effects, so that's practically a must. If you use the expensive ability that makes your party immune to all elements (I forget the name), the dragons will waste a turn using the Eye abilities, so it's good for a breather in an emergency. You'll need a BP battery for those two abilities, so a Performer is the best choice. If you're willing to grind, My Hero + Mimic ×3 (Freelancer capstone) on Hasten World is the ultimate battery, givibg your whole party 4BP every turn (also giving the enemy 1 extra, but it's not a huge deal). Otherwise just use the MP-for-BP one on your Rampart bot and you should be set. Or, if you wanna get funky, you can ignore all of the above and set your whole party to the Ninja/Red Mage setup which uses Utsusumi (sp?) to auto dodge one attack and gain BP from it, maybe toss in some counter abilities from Ninja and Swordmaster or the spicy BP-from-status ability with a Group Cast All poison -> Esuna so you can have the whole party constantly topped up with BP and safe from the dragons' physical attacks.

Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there's more strats. It's a fun game.

The best part of Bravely Default is finding new ways to break the game.

I'm very eager to see how Third will continue that tradition when it's finally made

A new BD gatcha game was announced

Gatcha Default.

Well, defaulting is what you'll be doing if you play too much gacha.

Instructions unclear, mortgaging my house for a .gif of Edea Lee.

Steam release of Bravely Default II on September 2nd

Excellent. Really need to get going with Second before, though.

Well, if it's coming to Steam, I guess I could give it a play. I hope it's more like Second than Default.

Good to hear it's coming to PC. I don't game a lot on my Switch and it's starting to have some Joy-Con drift issues, so I'd been content to sit on this one.

Coming out soon as well, about the time I finish up my uni work. Honestly, haven't heard much of BD2 since it first released. Any opinions on it? I still haven't beaten any of the previous games, which you can blame on me not being much of a 3DS gamer — but how's it compare?

It's very similar to the earlier games, meaning that it follows the formula set down by the class based Final Fantasy games very closely, but throws in a bunch of very meta story beats starting around the midgame.

From what I've heard the music is the best it's ever been. People like the characters but there are a few bits near the end that may or may not land with you depending on your ability to accept "this character felt this way all along despite no evidence". The villains of each act are perfectly loathesome, while the overarching villains are conceptually interesting but come in so late it's a hard bridge from the mortal threat to the cosmic one. The ending is very satisfying but there are certain implications that go entirely unexplored, either due to sequel baiting or covid messing with development.

If you like FFV, any of the Bravelys, or Octopath Traveler then you'll probably enjoy this.

The only concerns I have are the lack of Blue Mage, the sort of plastic aesthetic, the way random battles are triggered, and the turn-based combat no longer having a clear turn order (even though exclamation marks do show when the enemy turns are).

I also heard something about enemies having obnoxious counter abilities.

They do. You're pretty much railroaded by certain bosses into using certain setups if you don't want to get slaughtered. Which is nice in that it gets you used to different mechanics and makes you explore different options...but it can also force grinding if you've gone in a totally different direction.

Playing II right now on chapter 1. It's fun, though I'm not sure how much job grinding I should be expected to do for each section. I wasn't having too much trouble until I got to Anihal. Dealing with her monsters was rather easy, but then you basically can't attack her physically because her counter is so devastating. I did manage to whittle her down with magic, taking potshots with physical attacks when my party was healthy, the earth attack item, and a special to finish her off, but that was obnoxious. Feels like there should be a better strategy to deal with that.

Alright, I’m going to cast Raise on this thread to ask what is essentially a continuation of my questions in the FF thread.

Having played around with V’s Job system has made me interested in experimenting with the original Bravely Default’s as well (mind you, given how it’s narrative didn’t exactly impress me, and I ended up bouncing off it once I got to Chapter 5, I’m not sure WHEN I’ll actually try again, but hey). The first time I played, I didn’t really experiment with the Jobs as much as I wish I had, so I know there’s a lot of untapped potential buried there.

Basically, I just want some advice of how to build a party from a selection of 8 classes, taken from several that I didn’t give a shot earlier but look intriguing, as well as a couple that I either remember thinking were cool or seemed essential. I am aware that there are some pretty powerful party builds that would have multiple characters share a Job, but I’m the kind of guy who likes to achieve maximum diversity in party composition (certainly when it’s a four-person party). Besides, the point is to experiment, after all.

To begin with, I’ll also say that a White Mage/Spiritmaster combo would take up two of those slots (and I would probably stick Agnes in that role, if it matters) as I found in the past, and I think others agree, that it’s a pretty potent combo. So with all of this in mind, here are the remaining 6 I want to work with:

• Black Mage
• Time Mage
• Swordmaster
• Ninja
• Performer
• Templar

I am open to replacing one or two of these if anyone has better ideas. The general idea is to have a deviated healer, dedicated melee damage (who is also a tank, maybe?), while mixing offensive magic and more melee DPS with support skills. One crazy idea I had was to mix Performer and Samurai, with the aim of using Free Lunch to reduce the Performer’s MP expenditure while also using Catch Me to focus enemy attacks in order to counter them; not sure if it’s viable, but I’m curious.

Any thoughts?

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Nov 29th 2023 at 12:26:55 PM