Game Breaker / Atelier Series

A large part of the Atelier Series' appeal comes from mastering its complex Item Crafting mechanics in order to create ludicrously powerful items. From One-Hit Kill bombs to full-party-healing elixirs, here are various ways to exploit the power of alchemy for your own benefit.

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Salburg Saga

Atelier Marie

• The Time Slate is a quite frankly ludicrously powerful item that stops the opponent for 3 turns straight, which is exactly enough time to stack up buffs and damage to such a degree that once the opponent is unfrozen, the battle is all but over. The only annoying downside to the item is that it has a notoriously hard minigame attached to it.

Atelier Iris

Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana

• Using Alrin. His stats are all around great, particularly his strength. His skills are pretty strong, too, and he has the MP pool to spam them effectively; Double is one of the best single target attacks anyone has (and has a great chance at Skill Breaking enemies) and Bull's Eye is a contender for most powerful ability in the game, and even has defensive applications. All told, Arlin's presence just makes things easier.

Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny

• It's very easy through playing around with Item Synthesis to get all your items to heal more, deal more damage, and affect the entire party at the same time while costing only half the elements to synthesize. All this can be done with a simple loop between the Cure Jar and Yugdore Water.
• Fee's "Endless Blade". It doesn't do much damage for a skill that costs 3 Skill Gauges, but you get it very early and it deals ten hits to every enemy on the field. In a Chain Combo, where every hit gives 1 SP regardless of how effective it is, this results in large amounts of SP for a single usage.
• The Demon Ring. In exchange for losing all your dark resistance (which only a few specific enemies deal), you gain an insane bonus to all your other stats, such as 100 max LIFE, 50 in both Attack and Magic, and a crazy-fast 10 Speed.^note Most accessories, even the intentionally busted ones you don't get from Item Crafting, don't offer extra speed, and the only other accessory which has this high a speed bonus is the Dark Fairy Clothes, which only Poe can wear and has far too restrictive a recipe to be useful It also has review flexibility thanks to having components which benefit from crafting loops, allowing you to buff those high stats even further.
• Forget Endless Blades, why not have your regular attacks do the SP grinding for you? The ATTACK +4 property review grants four additional attacks, and with five equipment slots, you can deal an absurd 20 bonus hits to each enemy, plus some neat bonus damage after reaching the stat Cap of 500.

Mana Khemia

Mana Khemia: Alchemists of Al-Revis

• Amazingly, the Party Switch mechanic will save you a lot from the hard-hitting enemies in the Bonus Dungeon. It's also because a character's Guts Ability has a 100% chance of being activated if said character switches into the battle. So, no matter how powerful the enemy's attack is, Guts will keep the switched character from being killed by said attack. And with most enemies in the Bonus Dungeon (specifically the Delinquent-types) having attacks so powerful that they're practically One-Hit Kill, and said Delinquents take a really long time to beat.
• If used repeatedly, Vayne's Over Realm can give you infinite turns for as long as your SP restoring items can last.
• For Pamela, Cast From HP skills (plus a little knowledge on math) + "No Bullying" + her physical attack immunity = TONS of damage.
• Muppy's high Support Speed and his Defense Support Move can make the party all but invincible.

Arland Saga

Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland

• Iksel. He's accessible early in the game, doesn't cost much to hire, has effective special attacks, and is one of the few healers in the game. And unlike Lionela, he has a high HP cap.
• In Rorona Plus, Esty can count. Speed high enough to get two or even three strikes before the turn rotation finishes and a ranged normal attack (a rarity in this game compared to Meruru). Considering how good she is in Meruru, is it any surprise that her past self is just as powerful?

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland

• The "Infinite Gio" build takes the Makina Domain and META bosses from face-meltingly hard to pathetically easy. You essentially build a Gio that can always go first, repeatedly using his Slash attack to generate consecutive hits, and then heal his own LP so he never runs out of attacks. It's the only set you can't build before New Game Plus due to both Gio and Makina Domain being unplayable in the first playthrough.
• Pamela's unique Auto-Revive passive makes her absolutely critical in many strategies for tackling the Machina Domain end-game dungeon.

Atelier Lulua: The Scion of Arland

• With the right amount of trait stacking, it's possible to turn the N/A Omega Bomb into a devastating tool of destruction that can One-Hit Kill bosses, including a level 200 Machina of God, as demonstrated here.

Dusk Saga

Atelier Ayesha: The Alchemist of Dusk

• Being a game about crafting your own items with various properties, it's not that surprising (assuming you know the recipe). Examples include healing items that heal everything and will do it again every round of turns and weapon properties that do every element of damage and apply every debuff. Even worse (like in this video), unlike the other games, you can apply properties to all four of your equipment slots with no limitations.

Atelier Escha & Logy: Alchemists of the Dusk Sky

• Having the homunculi clone a Purple Crystal with multiple traits that increase its selling point at shops makes it very easy to rack up massive amounts of the game's currency, Cole. Not only that, but you can use this money to buy benefits that directly increase your stats and alchemy abilities, as well as other benefits. Additionally, any money you have at the end of the game will carry to a New Game Plus, meaning that you can start getting great benefits right away.
• If you synthesize an Elixir or Elixir Base with the properties "Perpetual Motion" ^note Gives the item unlimited uses and "50% Automatic" ^note Item activates automatically when its owner's health drops below 50%, it becomes nearly impossible for you to lose: whenever your health gets anywhere near low, the Elixir will automatically activate and heal everyone to nearly full health.
• Escha's ultimate attack item, the Knowledge Book, when used in a Double Draw with the proper build, can inflict over a million damage, more than enough to inflict a One-Hit KO to any enemy in the game including the Final Boss and Superbosses. Even if you don't take the effort to craft the exact equipment and properties needed to reach that amount of damage, it can deal insane amounts of damage if you give it just decent properties.

Mysterious Saga

Atelier Sophie: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Book

• The "One Hit Kill" trait (Critical Finish + Always Critical) makes an attack item 100% guaranteed to instantly kill pretty much any non-boss enemy in one hit. Alchemizing it onto items which hit multiple enemies means that you can easily kill Mooks that are far above your current level in a single turn. It doesn't work against bosses, but killing mobs will be so easy that you'll have no problem getting the items needed to make high-level equipment.

Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings

• The Firis Bomb technique. Firis in the support row can use several powerful elemental arrows when the appropriate battle item elements are used. There are two traits called "Twin Powers" and "Twin Powers: Pair", which add fire/ice and wind/lightning damage to your attack items, respectively. You can, for example, make a Flame of the End attack weapon with both these traits attached, in addition to maxing out the attribute levels in order to maximise damage. If a character uses it with Firis as their support, you will unleash not only a powerful attack item which hits with multiple elements at once, but also trigger all of Firis' support skills in rapid succession, resulting in a long bombardment of the enemy with powerful alchemically-enhanced arrows. The only downside is that Firis' support skills only work once per fight, but with the proper preparations, the Firis Bomb Combo can tear through even endgame bosses, so that one shot should be enough to get the job done.

Atelier Sophie 2: The Alchemist of the Mysterious Dream

• Plachta's unique item, the Twilight Prism, can be ridiculously broken if you max out its Light element for the Wild Rainbow effect. This effect does have a nasty drawback, burning all of Plachta's MP when activated, but the results are well worth it: for every point of MP consumed, the item's 200 power is increased by 1%, so with 400 MP (very easy to obtain or surpass) you get a 1000 power attack; you can get even more ridiculous by giving Plachta as many MP-boosting traits as possible. Slap on a few other good traits, and you can easily take off more than half of the Final Boss' health in one blow. Then, you just have to get Plachta's MP back to full (for example, with Sophie and Ramizel's Dual Trigger or a Lebestrahl) to do it again.
• Ramizel's unique item, the Primal Storm, is at the bottom of the recipe idea list, but it's worth getting there. While its potential damage isn't quite as ridiculous as the Twilight Prism, and it's a single-target attack, it makes up for this by creating up to 3 time cards when used (depending on its first effect), meaning that you can use it once, and get its effect four times over the next few turns. As a cherry on top, one of its other effects gives it a chance to not lower its remaining uses, letting you use it more liberally in the post-game Boss Rush.

Secret Saga

Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout

• Reinforcing your weaponry can result in some insane combos. Most items you can reinforce your weapons with only add stats, but if you reinforce a weapon with a usable item you also gain an ability for the weapon. These can range from the decent (buffs at the start of the battle) all the way to ridiculous. Elemental damage items, for example, give great stats and increase the damage the character does with this particular element. Lila can use any element. So if you reinforce her weapons with three elemental damage items, three of her four skills do significantly increased damage. Special shout-out to the Energianica, which, when used to reinforce a weapon, grants the weapon the "gain extra AP" perk you'd usually need a Support character for.
• The Philosopher's Stone is the best Synthesis item in the game. It is not a Game-Breaker though, because you can only make it after beating the Final Boss. Crystal Elements, on the other hand? They are almost as good of a Synthesis item (better in some regards as they have more keywords attached and add Synth Quality), unlock much earlier in the game, are significantly easier to create and only cost about a tenth as much as a Philosopher's Stone to duplicate. Once you make a good Crystal Element and dupe it a couple dozen times, you'll suddenly be making significantly better gear and usable items.
• Item duplication makes it very easy to deck out your entire party with the strongest possible gear. Unlike previous games where you'd have to make a bunch of cloth and ingots with the perfect traits, here you only need to make one batch and duplicate it. The downside is supposed to be that duplication costs gems, and more powerful items are more expensive, but there are ways to earn loads of gems easily. For example:
  • There's a big tree in the southeast corner of Limewick Hill. Hit it with a charged swing from the Scythe Axe (be sure to have the Gathering Up L effect on it) and it'll drop an absurd amount of items. Fast-travel back to the atelier, and reduce these items to get tens of thousands of gems in one quick trip. You can easily get a million gems in about 10 minutes.
  • In the post-game, you can earn gems even more easily by making a Red Stone with the Synth Quantity +2 effect, which causes you to make two extra copies of an item when the Red Stone is used in a synthesis. This effect stacks with itself. Make at least four copies of the Red Stone (which will be costly in gems at first, but you can use the above trick to get you started), then use them to make a Philosopher's Stone. Due to the Synth Quantity +2 effect, you won't make just one, but several Philosopher's Stones at the same time: if you use four Red Stones, that comes out to nine Philosopher's Stones, which earns you more gems when reduced than it cost to make the four Red Stones. Use these gems to duplicate more of your Red Stone, use them to make more Philosopher's Stones, rinse and repeat. You can easily make millions of gems in minutes using this trick, more than enough to turn the supposedly high cost of duplication into chump change.
• Due to a possible glitch, the game considers basic attacks to count as skills. Due to this, the best traits by a huge margin are stacking skill damage multipliers. Not only does this mean your abilities will be absurdly powerful, character's basic attacks will do more damage than any possible item you can make. In some cases, simple attacks can do MORE damage than abilities with this build. Even crazier? There are certain abilities that reduce Wait Time after skill use, which will trigger after basically any action that isn't using an item, so a character with such an ability can attack basically constantly.

Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy

• Everything related to alchemy that broke the first game wide open is back and made even easier with Dennis's capability of reinforcing equipment. Simply create and duplicate the items with the desired effects, have Dennis slap them onto a piece of gear, and stack all desired effects on everything for very little effort beyond the initial setup. In addition, unlike the first game, where the final quality of a synth is an average of all the ingredients used (making your creations take penalties if you just cram low-quality filler ingredients in to unlock loops), here every item added will only improve Quality, so hitting the quality cap is much, much easier. Furthermore, you can even reinforce armor and accessories, complete with the option of either replacing a weaker fourth Effect (or adding one if the base item lacks a 4th Effect) with some of the unique Reinforcement effects that can be acquired from using special ingredients.
• Upgrading a character's Core Crystal allows them to start a battle with more than 0 CC. Get a powerful-enough item with a low(ered) CC cost equipped on a powered-up character, and nearly every regular battle can be won just by opening the item menu and lobbing an Attack All item to instantly kill everything.
• The Garland effect on Rose Bombs is designed to do more damage to enemies the lower their HP is. Thanks to a Good Bad Bug, the effect is much more powerful than intended, to the point where the bonus damage is absolutely ridiculous even when used on an enemy with full health. Combined with the ability to upgrade your Core Crystal so that it's already partially charged, you can just have everyone throw a Rose Bomb as their first move, which should end most fights very quickly.
• The essence system makes exploiting the Elemental Loop synthesis the game uses even easier when it comes to making powerful equipment. Celestial Essence ensures that when you morph a recipe into the next tier, you gain 1 additional item to add to the mixture. Going from a tier 1 to tier 5 weapon can yield a canny player more than thirty ingredient slots to stuff ingots into their weapons, so you can easily cram more than twenty Goldterions into a weapon to inflate its stats with the 'Gear Synth All+5' boosts, and the amount of materials you can stuff into accessories can get very impressive if you start from their precursor recipes, for example, going from Polishing Powder up the gemstone recipe morphs to reach the lategame accessories after the Arc en Ciel. Tack on Elemental Essences to unlock the most powerful version of a weapon's Effect and stat boosts, and you can make some unbelievably strong equipment before even factoring Dennis's reinforcing services.

Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key

• There were ways to easily obtain gems in the previous Ryza games, but Ryza 3 takes the cake in how early and quickly its infinite gem trick can be performed. All you need is to find any material with the "Ultra Purity" Super Trait. This trait increases an item's gem reduction value, but not its duplication cost. This means that some items can be reduced into more gems than it costs to duplicate them. All you have to do is duplicate that item as many times as you can, reduce all but one of them, rinse and repeat until you can afford what you need. This allows you to duplicate and rebuild items to your heart's content, trivializing alchemy. While Super Traits in general are rare, they have a small chance to show up on any item you gather, meaning that all you have to do is keep playing normally and gathering items, and you're bound to find it soon enough. It's not hard to get such an item just a few hours in.