Table of Contents

Overview

Herein lies a general FAQ and hint guide. This is not intended to be a full walkthrough, or detailed trophy guide. There are a bunch of those out there. However, a few game mechanics seem to be left out of both the game tutorials as well as a number of these guides. So, rather than scraping the chat rooms for information, I hope to provide one-stop shopping for the major roadblocks in the game. There will be light spoilers regarding the presence of certain points of no return and the existence of some missable characters, though I’ve tried to leave out major plot and character spoilers. Also, all button controls mentioned are for the PS4, so YMMV if you play this on a different system.

Note that for the level grinding advice below, I’m using DLC bonus dungeons. It’s free, just download it. You don’t need to use it if you don’t want to. Same for the bonus fairies. But it’s immensely faster and not worth doing it “the pure way” IMHO.

Game Playthrough Routes

Minor spoiler #1 that will permeate the entire guide: there are 3 routes. Effectively, NG, NG+, and NG++. You have to play a minimum of 3 times to get the whole plot. The second half of each route/cycle is entirely different plot and includes new areas, though the first half of all of them repeat. They are named Goddess, Vile God, and Evil Goddess routes in all the guides and here. (Technically you can do just Vile God then Evil Goddess, or Goddess and Evil Goddess, but you’ll miss some items and fairies and trophies, so most guides place them in this order.)

Don’t pull more than 6 swords from the Vile God on a first cycle (or more than 16 on a second). You can count how many you’ve pulled by selecting the Vile God (which will point to the S-class sword), and cycling through and counting until it wraps around. There’s 20 total, so do the subtraction. Yes your characters yell at you for pulling a first sword from the big bad evil dude, but they don’t do it again and there’s no negatives to pulling a couple.

In general, there are a couple different overall strategies: one is to plan to grind out everything annoying on the Vile God cycle, so you can play around with the difficulty if you need to, and then be fully overpowered for a Hard-mode run of the final cycle for that trophy. Alternatively, do a grind to level 200 on the first cycle and then Hard-mode the Vile God second cycle, as it’s easier than the third cycle, and you can do a second grind on the third if necessary – one that allows you to swap difficulties. I do not recommend trying to do the hard mode trophy on the first playthrough – the grind is just too hard to get going. Note that changing the difficulty from Hard, even once, even UP, will ruin the hard mode trophy.

Avoiding Missables

After the cutscene at the beginning of every dungeon, exit and check every menu option in town to view all scenes, activate all optional questlines, accept all quests. Also after every endboss. Yes there are one or two that pop up after entering a dungeon but then disappear before the boss. It’s only a couple, but it can cause missables. Annoying, but just get in the habit.

Do every optional objective and quest as soon as they’re available. Including all of Lola’s quests. It’s more convenient this way anyways, as Lola almost always points you back to the area you just left, so all your swords are still planted there, and the bartender always gives you quests related to the items and monsters in the area you just entered. It’s not critical to do every pub quest absolutely ASAP, but try not to leave them til later; get them done while you’re in the appropriate dungeon anyways.

Before you finish the Desert Sanctuary in the first half of the first cycle, make sure you farm 5 Flying Stones and one Spring Feather. Also make sure to steal the blue gem from the boss of Desert Sanctuary. Flying stones drop or can be stolen from from Caladrius, Land Shark, or Red Oni in Bui Valley. Spring Feather must be stolen from a rare-appearance Spring Fairy near the end of the last area of Zawaza Plains with Enemy Change in effect. (The enemy sprites look the same in the dungeon – keep attacking fairies near the end of that area and eventually one will be a Spring Fairy.) After the plot point, synthesize the Flight Stone.

On the Goddess route, after the Subterranian Tower make sure to watch the cutscene in town where you get a charm. And before you beat the boss of the Blast Furnace later on, make absolutely sure that Fang is at least level 35.

On the Goddess route, when you fight the final optional quest boss from Lola’s questline, Imperial Gold Dragon, make sure you have only the three male characters in your team. Pippin doesn’t count, apparently, so don’t include him. This is for a trophy. Save before the battle and make sure the trophy popped, as this battle is not repeatable (without doing an entire other NG+ run on this cycle, as it’s also not available on the other two routes).

On the Goddess route, after you enter the Stairway to Heaven near the end of the first cycle, leave and save. The second plot point inside will permanently (for this cycle) remove a character, so if there’s stuff you want to do, or want to grind, do it then. After said plot point where that character is removed, immediately leave and go back to Town to synthesize your first S-rank fairy. Details in the Quest section.

If you do all of the above consistently, and take those couple precautions specific to the Goddess path, everything else that’s related to a trophy or optional cutscene will not be missable.

Controls

Skippable Battle Animations

You can press or hold L2 to skip battle animations, both attacks as well as transformation sequences. After watching them a couple dozen times, it gets old, so you’ll find yourself holding L2 for entire battles. Eventually, when you’re strong enough to combo everything, you’ll be tapping X 20 times with L2 held and ending most battles in about 2 seconds.

Targeting Other Units

Surprisingly, they never teach you how to change targets. If you have an area of effect attack or heal that targets only one unit, and there’s multiple targets, then press the left and right D-pad to switch targets. The unit with the glowing name present is the one that’s being targeted.

Running Away

They only explain this partially. You need to actually be running up against the edge of the battlefield and then press R2 to escape. You’ll see some floating, glowing runes if you’re against the edge. If you don’t see those, then you’re running up against the edge of your movement range, but not the battlefield, so it won’t work. Also, sometimes you can’t run away for one turn, no matter what, and need to survive until your second turn for a character, before you’re allowed to run – I don’t know what causes that to happen. In addition, some bosses cannot be run from, and they do not warn you that you’re unable to run, it just will silently not work.

Dashing and Jumping

You get a jump increase in the second half of the first game cycle (the Flight Stone synthesis item), but only if you farmed for some critical synthesis items, which I’ll mention later. So if a few jumps or platforms seem just out of reach, this is why. Also note that jumping will not protect you from getting caught by an enemy, and neither will dashing. Dashing also can’t be redirected by much during a dash, so make sure there’s a straight line between you and where you want to go, if you’re trying to avoid an enemy.

Challenges

If you go to the menu and Library – Challenges, all of them are character-specific. So when you get a new character, make them the leader and use them to run around to take their turn. The only one that actually matters is jumping, and probably only for the first half of the first cycle. TEC (which is agility, i.e. ability to not miss when attacking) is hard to come by, and this is the only buff for it. So try to get the 300 jumps for every character.

Another one you might consider spamming early is the “take damage” one. The HP you get from it is pretty minor, but it might matter for the first half of a first cycle. If you want to spam it, wait until you get a second character, then go into a high level DLC area and let one character jump in front of the enemies and get annihilated for high HP damage, then run with the other one. You’ll get many levels of this pretty quickly.

World Shaping

There are a few categories of effects on World Shaping:

1. EXP+
2. WP+
3. Drop+
4. Gold+
5. Enemy Change
6. Detrimental effects like Seal, Silence, no healing, etc
7. Damage x2 and Double-SP
8. All the other P-ATK and such plusses and minuses

The main idea is that you want to maximize having as many EXP, WP, Gold and Drop as possible without making the dungeons too hard by turning off spells or such. WP is critically important because it really barely trickles in, all game. The last group of stuff, the stat changes, are pretty meaningless and you can just write them off as not important. You’ll probably be running around with double-SP, Damage x2, and silence on most levels on cycle one, while attempting to max EXP/WP/Gold and sometimes Drop.

You can forego the Enemy Change unless you need a specific enemy to farm for a quest, either to kill, for a drop, or for stealing from. Generally it makes the enemies harder and thus higher EXP, so you can also do it if you want to kill everything as you go (which I recommend).

If you can spare the negatives, keep Drop+ up at all times. It helps with the rate of finding stuff from breaking pots, and there are some rare materials that you only get that way.

Don’t arm both Seal and Silence at the same time, that will make things really hard. And be careful with no healing or no SP healing. They’re frequently not worth it unless you’re specifically grinding in a way where you kill a few enemies and exit to world map and then go in again, where it won’t matter.

Double-SP is a bit annoying but not too bad, don’t avoid using it. And damage x2 is more often a boon than a curse. Be careful if it’s on during boss battles, but if you’re planning on beating things in 1 turn with extra damage, it really comes in handy. Note that, Damage x2 does not stack – you’ll never get Damage x4. Which is a bummer. Double-SP also does not stack.

Consider leveling your fairies that you use for world shaping, not just the ones you arm in battle. It increases their range of effect, which lets you pack more in on a single dungeon. If they’re all level 1, it’s hard to get more than 5 at once. If they’re all level 10, you can easily stack 15-20 of them on one dungeon. EXP+300% and WP+300% is a worthwhile goal!

Also note that the Seal and Silence effects also hit enemies. So if certain enemies have an annoying skill, use Seal and they can’t use it. This works on bosses, too! It’s hard to tell what’s a skill and what’s a spell, though. But if you’re having a hard time, it is a good option.

Fairy Builds

So what do you pull for what fairies? On a first cycle, honestly it doesn’t matter much, and you’re pretty much locked into a lot of choices because the fairies trickle in, whereas the furies you want have priorities. If you want to cheese it, you can just wear the DLC fairies, which you can’t use to pull furies anyways, though be aware this will overpower you very quickly and you’ll steamroll everything on a first playthrough.

Just keep one thing in mind:

Which fairies do I actually want to arm, and which ones do I not care about arming?

Put the world shaping effects that you plan to use on the latter, and dump anything you want onto the former that you plan to arm.

First Cycle Fairies

On a first cycle, consider at very least saving the fairies that have an EXP+ on them to arm. The two weakest DLC fairies have this, by the way, which are not so strong they’ll break the game, so you might consider using them heavily just for a boost.

Consider saving Sylph for your leader’s fairy, because at level 5, it gains Item Sonar, allowing you to find hidden treasure. This won’t be available otherwise until you upgrade to Resonance Rank B, which is quite a while in the first cycle.

Fairies that have EXP+ are:

• C: Nellie, Reed, Dia
• B: Light has Goddess Blessing which is similar
• A: Jaeger & Christinger (both DLC), and Dohn (who you won’t get until the very end of the second playthrough)
• S: (none)

There’s also one EXP+ ability from a pull that you can add onto any fairy (and one Goddess Blessing, but that will only go onto an S-class one and that’s later). So likely you’ll have 5 for most of the first cycle: the two DLC ones, Nellie, Reed, and the one you pick. Dia doesn’t come til later, and Dohn much much later. So you’ll probably have just five EXP+’s for most of the first cycle. After that, it doesn’t matter too much, as you’ll focus on other things.

Second and Later Cycle Fairies

While you will be doing grinding later, the EXP+ on the fairies isn’t as critical, as the percentage gained is overshadowed by world effects. Later on, you’ll probably focus on Post-Battle SP and/or HP. If you can stack that up, you can use spells in battle and then heal it up afterwards, which greatly helps with grinding.

Honestly, none of the abilities are that critical. There are a few that buff individual weapons, so consider putting sword proficiency (“prowess”) on a fairy that you plan to arm to a person that will be sword comboing a lot. Consider stacking identical Element X Support all on one fairy that you’ll give to a character with spells of that element. You can also put Good Leadership+ on whoever you will make a permanent leader – that improves hit chance for the whole team.

Other than that, it doesn’t honestly matter much, the abilities are a few percentage difference in damage one way or the other, so don’t sweat builds too much.

Battle

Enemy Names

The enemies have letters after their names, like Bandit A, Bandit B. Just be aware. Once you start L2-ing through all battle animations, it’s easy to lose track of enemies moving around and which one you were targeting before. This is particularly annoying when you’re trying to steal from a bunch of enemies and keep track of which one you did so already.

Stealing and Drops Suck

Use the highest level steal skill, and max out the steal buffs under Ability. It will still only hit about 25% of the time. Note that every enemy has 2 items to steal, and they’re not ordered. It will literally tell you “there is nothing left to steal” if you accidentally try it again after successfully getting it twice. Note that steals are not random (thank goodness!), so if you keep trying, you will always get the same 2.

Drops are random, with one being more rare than the other. Note that the special drop that an enemy might give you if it’s parts are broken first is not listed in the bestiary at all, nor on most online lists of enemy drops. Also, the bestiary does not list which drops only happen on Hard mode.

Quests

All quests other than the ones that unlock a new quest level are infinitely re-doable. This is a great source of money and a few critical rewards early on, using some common drop materials as fodder.

Always re-accept all kill requests after claiming them. You’re sure to fill them up again at some point for free rewards. And some drops are super common, so accept one to get the rewards, claim it, accept, claim, for both the items and the gold. And in some cases you can then sell those items for good money, too.

Note that the “next quest level” gate-keeping quest only appears if you do every single quest of the previous level. In addition, when you’re done with all the A-level requests and waiting for the S-level gate quest, you must do a few of the A-level quests a second time. Just a handful of the fetch ones that you probably already have fulfilled will do, but you must do a few extra for some reason.

General Advice

Not to RTFM you too badly, but 95% of the quests are pretty easily solvable by doing a search for the enemy name or the item you need to find/drop/steal in a list of enemies (see below or google around), and then aiming at that location. Half of the time, you will need to to set an Enemy Change world shaping effect to get the enemy you need.

• Enemy list, useful for looking up where to find an item drop or steal:
  • https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/835983-fairy-fencer-f-advent-dark-force/faqs/76352/enemy-list-part-1
  • Note that there is a separate list for the second half of each cycle
• Material list:
  • https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/835983-fairy-fencer-f-advent-dark-force/faqs/76352/materials
  • Note that the enemies in this list are not the only ones that drop the item, so the enemy list is probably more useful
  • If it mentions the name of an area, it means it’s a hidden treasure or in destructible bricks

However, there are a few warts. For one, just because an enemy is named properly doesn’t mean it “counts” for a quest. Yes, this is horribly annoying and unfair, but if you need to kill 5 of XXX and you do so, but not in the area they intended you to do so, they literally don’t count. Click the square button to look at the quest description and it generally tells you the area that it means for you to go to. This only affects enemy kill quests, not item fetch quests. However, a few of these seem to be literally broken on the Vile God path, as the kills only count when you find the Killer Insect several dungeons later.

Some items are only available from synthesis. Some drops only happen on Hard or higher difficulty. Some enemies appear only rarely and only at some spawn points. Some drops only occur if you have “parts destruction” broken the enemy first before killing it (and killing it on the same combo as the break doesn’t count!)

Specific Quests

Supplying Medicine [Important] – Gate keeper for D-level quests

The mid-potion and energy shard are both available in two ways. You can synthesize both. And both are rewards for other E-level quests that you can repeat until you have enough.

The Collector [Important] – Gate keeper for C-level quests

• 5 Fire Stones synth into one Blaze Stone
• 5 Wind Stones synth into one Gale Stone
• 5 Ice Stones synth into one Glacial Stone
• 1 Blaze and 1 Lightning synth into Wildfire Spirit Stone
• 1 Gale and 1 Glacial synth into Blizzard Spirit Stone

• Fire Stones drop from Staff Lavann in Yatagan Lava Flows + Enemy Change
• Lightning Stones are a rare find from a Hidden Treasure in the second zone of Zawaza Plains, or a common find in the third zone
• Wind Stones are a common find from a Hidden Treasure in the third zone of Zawaza Plains
• Ice Stones are a common drop from the Ice Sharks in the Katticus Ice Caves + Enemy Change

Robot Research [Important] – Gate keeper for B-level quests

Wait. A long time. You get this quest long, long before the drop is available. The Ultra Powered Circuit is a common drop from the Red SPA robots of Lusamundo Ice Cave.

The Collector 2 [Important] – Gate keeper for A-level quests

This quest is a friggin monster. If you’ve been getting every hidden chest up to this point, and routinely kicking every destructible brick, and killed every enemy you ran into so far with a high Drop+ world effect, and you didn’t waste the results on anything frivolous, you might be half-done this quest when you start.

Note that in the original version of the game, there was a different DLC area that had a hidden chest drop that just handed you these three items. That DLC area does not exist in the remake, and they did not carry that drop over to the present DLC areas.

Roll up your sleeves and be ready to farm rare RNG for hours.

• 1 Firestorm Spirit Stone requires
  • 3 Inferno Stones, which require 3 Blaze Stones each, thus
    • 9 Blaze Stones, which can either be farmed directly or made with 5 Fire Stones each, thus
      • 45 Fire Stones
  • 1 Hurricane Stone, which requires
    • 3 Gale Stones, which can either be farmed directly or made with 5 Wind Stones each, thus
      • 15 Wind Stones
• 1 Slush Spirit Stone requires
  • 3 Absolute Zero Stones, which require 3 Glacial Stones each, thus
    • 9 Glacial Stones, which can either be farmed directly or made with 5 Ice Stones each, thus
      • 45 Ice Stones
  • 1 Maelstrom Stone, which requires
    • 5 Water Stones
• 1 Voltremor Stone, which requires
  • 1 Cloudburst Stone, which requires
    • 5 Lightning Stones
  • 1 Quake Stone, which requires
    • 3 Rumble Stones, which cannot be directly farmed and require 5 Earth Stones each, thus:
      • 15 Earth Stones

Is your head spinning yet? You might have a bunch of the constituents already, but definitely not all of them. How do we get these little beauties?…

• Gale Stones can be farmed from hidden treasure in Bui Valley, and I recommend doing these first, as you sometimes get Blaze Stones at the same time and can tick two things off the checklist at once, however it’s still a rare drop and very annoying
  • If it’s not working for you, you can also steal Wind Stones from Slash Sharks in Zeppelia Valley. Slower but less RNG
• Blaze Stones can be found in hidden treasure in Rudohke Blast Furnace, but
  • I recommend farming Fire Stones by stealing from Phoenixes there. Slower but less RNG
• Glacial Stones can be found in hidden treasure in Lusamundo Ice Cave, but
  • You can also steal from the Ice Hawks in the same location. Slower but less RNG
• Lightning Stones can be stolen from the Thunder Bird in Bui Valley
• Earth Stones can be stolen from Earth Golems in Cavare Desert

Reminder that once you synth an ingredient for the next thing in line, you might need to leave the shop and re-enter in order for the next recipe to pop up.

Mountain Monsters [Important] – Gate-keeper for S-level quests

The quest itself isn’t hard to achieve, this is just a reminder that you need to fulfill every single A-level quest first… and then also do a few of them a second time… and then exit to the world map and go back in for this to appear. This is unlike every other gate keeping quest.

[Urgent] Big Oil

This is needed to cross he bridge in the giant plains area, for a mandatory plot event later. You don’t need to do anything to trigger it, but the one confusing thing about it is that it’s C-rank. You probably have a bunch of B, A, and S rank quests on the screen, and this is likely buried deep in the C-rank quests. So if you can’t get past the bridge to the center of the lake, go back and search your C-rank quests for this and fulfill it first.

Specific Finds

Demon Beast’s Claw

When you need this item, the Callistos in Bui Valley only drop them on Hard difficulty or higher. Increase the Drop rate world effect, bump the difficulty, grind. It will work.

Huge Beak

You get this from the Gukyo, the large bird with a mask at the very entrance to the Desert Sanctuary. However, it is not a standard drop, you must break the mask first for it to drop. Use sword combos until it breaks, and then kill it. You can’t kill it on the same attack turn as breaking it, the break has to happen and then kill it on a second person’s turn.

If you are overpowered and find yourself killing it by accident, then it can become a big problem, but not insurmountable. Arm Fang with a weak sword combo of length one (i.e. the initial and one other), like the first green arrow one under the Sword attacks. Attack with just one or two swings (and hit circle to end the combo early if necessary), so the bird is still alive but took some “parts destruction damage” in the beige numbers below the regular damage. Use Tiara to cast Cure-All on it (yes, it will heal an enemy) and repeat. This is horribly annoying, especially since it’s not even a guaranteed drop after all this, but it does work. I had grinded to level 200 and was accidentally killing it too easily, and this worked for me.

Diablo’s Remains LV 56

This enemy doesn’t exist. The quest is bugged. Sorry.

Mottled Fur

You need two for the Polka Dot Mask. You can get one from a DLC. There is no second. Also a bugged quest. Sorry.

Bone Fragments

The breakable items in the ranch (either one, Vile God or Evil Goddess route), however they’re pretty rare. Drop+ world effects will help a bit.

Cash Glasses

These exist in one regular, non-respawning blue treasure crystal per route. That’s it. Zeppelia Valley (Goddess), Dansklight Ruins (Vile God), Dorall Wine Factory (Evil Goddess). If you want to forge all the accessories, you’ll need 9. So 9 full playthroughs of the game where you didn’t miss any of them. Good luck.

Flowers

A bunch of flower type items are needed for the last few accessory recipes. And a handful of Evil Goddess route quests. Never waste these on potion synthesis, they’re super-rare.

You’re most likely in post-revisit if you’re doing farming, so you’re basically going to set every Drop+ world effect you can and scrape the Zawaza Plains 2, Solaru Village, Cavare Desert, Bui Valley 1, and Subterranean Tower 1/3/5 for hidden items, and smash pots in the Subterranean Tower and the Ranch over and over. Plus Sepidua Den hidden items if you’re in the Evil Goddess cycle. For Wild Strawberries, at least, smashing tons of pots in the Wine Factory with Drop+ active does generate quite a few – you might get 5-10 in a full run thru the dungeon, because there’s a ton of pots.

Yes this is RNGtastic nonsense, good luck.

Synthesis

After Synthesis unlocks in the plot a few dungeons in, this becomes a major place to create both quest items as well as better gear. At the bottom of the consumables that are sold are sometimes a bunch of recipe books, make sure to buy those whenever you see them. Also, when a new consumable is able to be synthesized, do so, and it will appear as a buyable resource afterwards.

Note, and this is very annoying, but synthesis recipes sometimes disappear if you are missing some of the ingredients. It’s particularly pernicious in the wearable accessory and craftable materials tabs. So if a recipe seems to have gone away, it’s not you, this is the game mechanic. If you find what the game considers to be the “primary” ingredient for the recipe, it will appear again. You may have to exit to the town menu and enter the store again to get it to refresh, however.

Be careful about using up rare resources, though. The ones with the plant icon are frustratingly uncommon, so synthesize them sparingly. If there’s a less rare version of the recipe, use that instead. Also be careful of ore type items like Iron and Silver. They’re needed for critical recipes later and are very annoying to farm.

Key Item Synthesis Recipes

Flight Stone

This key item let’s you jump a little higher, which is necessary to clear some jumps and get over some obstacles.

• 1 Beautiful Blue Jewel – steal and/or drop from the boss at the end of the Desert Sanctuary
• 1 Spring Feather – must be stolen from a rare-appearance Spring Fairy near the end of the last area of Zawaza Plains with Enemy Change in effect. (The enemy sprites look the same in the dungeon – keep attacking fairies near the end of that area and eventually one will be a Spring Fairy)
• 5 Pieces of Flying Stone – steal and/or drop from Caladrius, Land Shark, or Red Oni in Bui Valley

Music Box

This unlocks the sound test feature in the Inn.

• 1 Black Disc – found in Cavere Desert
• 2 Audio Output Circuit – steal/drop from Guardian Riser in Cavere Desert
• 2 High Powered Circuit – steal/drop from Majin Gunner in Zawaza Plains or Machinga in Subterranean Tower or Bit θ and Signa Riser in Inverted Tower

Visual Box

This unlocks the gallery in the Inn.

• 1 Art Book – found in Bui Valley
• 2 Video Output Circuit – steal/drop from Signa Riser in Inverted Tower
• 2 Ultra Powered Circuit – drop from Red APS in Lusamundo Ice Cave

Polished Fury – The first S-Rank Fairy, Rita

• Polished Fury
  • 1 Forged Mithril
    • 3 Mithril Stone
    • 1 Silver Ore
  • 1 Repaired Fury
    • 1 Forged Steel
      • 3 Iron Ore
      • 1 Silver Ore – Hidden treasures in Zeppellia Valley and Rudohke Blast Furnace, or destructible blocks in Subterranean Tower
    • 1 Cracked Fury
      • 1 Broken Fury-Blade – Goddess Route, Stairway to Heaven, drop from the mid-boss
      • 1 Broken Fury-Edge – from a Lola quest
      • 1 Broken Fury-Hilt – from a Lola quest

Silver and Mithril are both in hidden treasures in Zeppellia Valley, Rudohke Blast Furnace, either Tower, or Stairway to heaven; or destructible blocks in Subterranean Tower

Iron Ore is in hidden treasures in almost every area in the second half of the game

Once you craft this, you’ll get a quest marker in the Desert Sanctuary – follow it.

Hidden Treasure

Once you get the Item Sonar ability, either by paying for it on your Abilities tab, or by arming a fairy that has it innate (like Sylph), you start getting sonar pings. Note that this only works for the current leader. So if only one person has Item Sonar and they’re not the leader, this won’t work.

What this means is that when you get close to a hidden treasure, you’ll see a question mark above your head and hear a beeping sound. As you get closer, it becomes ?! and finally a red !!. Somewhere around that area, you need to walk until you find a prompt for the X button. Click it, and a treasure diamond will appear – click that to claim the reward.

These rewards are specific to each zone of each area, but there are several possibilities. So you might keep finding one and not get a rarer one until you do it multiple times.

You can only get one per zone per exit to the World Map. Some materials, like Iron Ore and Silver Ore, are only farmable this way, or by punching the destructible bricks in some areas.

There are 3-4 locations that might have a hidden treasure in each zone. It will always be in one of those fixed locations, but there’s no telling which one.

What Abilities to Select

The ability tree is deep and confusing, but it makes sense once you get into it. Here are some general guidelines and explanations to make things easier.

• Get combo level 1 and 2 ASAP
  • Only after you get at least combo 1 can you add combo attacks
• Get one next-level skill and one magic beyond your first
• If you can learn a healing spell, a cure-ailments spell, or a P-ATK up or M-ATK up skill, learn those, leave the rest for later
• Get ONE toss (blue arrow), catch (green arrows), and strike (orange half-arrow) for each weapon to begin with
  • Arm the blue to combo 1 for each weapon, green to second, and orange to third when that unlocks later
  • You can keep up with getting better versions of these as you go, they’re not that expensive, but it’s not super-critical either until late-game
• You might want Ability Vigilance for everyone, so you can stop getting ambushed if you get hit from behind
• Get up to range 4 or 5 for your weapons, it makes battles go so much smoother
• Now start to fill out your skill attacks and magic attacks
  • This will require getting P-ATK to level 5 and M-ATK to level 5, respectively
  • Some may also be locked off by Resonance level, oh well, have to wait
  • Don’t bother with any other spells unless you need a higher level or better-area-of-effect heal
• For Galdo, get all the Steal abilities and max out his special abilities that make Steal work better, as it has an annoyingly low hit percentage and you need to steal for some quests
• At this point, save up for Combo level 3, it will take a while since it costs 2000
• If you finally unlocked Resonance Rank B, give everyone Item Radar
• Somewhere around that point, you might have 7 characters, maybe – when you do, get Learning for all characters so they get EXP even if they’re not in the party. However, it’s a waste until then
• For Fang, Tiara and Galdo, max out their special Abilities, as they’re actually useful – no one else’s is worth it
• At this point you can choose between the Goddess Blessing for 1000 or upgrading all your weapon combos. It’s a crap shoot, pick either, then do the other. The later weapon combos require P-ATK level 7, 8, or 9
• Finally, you’re filling in the rest. Buy the cheapest stuff and work your way up. Nothing is critical, and you’re guaranteed to be locked behind Resonance levels way more frequently than running out of WP

Grinding

Level Grinding

My method skips several steps from others listed online. Note that difficulty doesn’t affect EXP so set it as low as possible while grinding (which you can’t do during a route when you’re trying to get the hard mode trophy, so do this on a different playthrough). Seriously, you need to be on AMATEUR to make this work. Even when you’re level 999, the enemies in the DLC areas will still eat your lunch on hard or hell difficulty and are not anywhere near physically possible below level 500 or so. I recommend grinding at least to 200 before the end of cycle 1, then hard-mode trophying cycle 2 with no grinding, then finishing the grind on cycle 3. Or just doing the full grind during cycle 1.

• Level 30-35: No special method, sorry
  • You’ll need to do this to get one missable character in the middle of the second half of the first route… it’s debatable whether just beating what’s in your current plot area is any faster or slower than the next step below
• Level 50-100: Sedipua Den Rear DLC (No Enemy Change)
  • Yes, I skipped levels 35-50 because it’s debatable whether just killing local enemies is any slower. Some guides recommend floor 28 of Shukesoo’s Tower, but I found that slow and also hard for the level. You can try this earlier than level 50 but it might be hard or RNGtastic
  • Set the difficulty to AMATEUR
  • Plant as many EXP% swords as possible, and at least one that gives Damage x2, but not Enemy Change. Go to the DLC area Sedipua Den Rear and attack the first enemy you’ll see, which will be an “Edge”. If you run into more than one, you’re toast. Run away or die and retry until you run into one. Use all your magic and skills and try to murder it before it murders you. You’ll probably go up 10 full levels. Exit to world map, re-enter, lather, rinse, repeat
  • As you repeat this, you’ll be able to take on more than one, and then do more than one battle before having to exit and refresh
  • Note that a single battle will level a fairy from 1 to 10 all at once, so consider cycling through all your fairies and getting them all to 10, it’s quite fast and worthwhile
• Level 100-200: Jet Black Cave DLC (No Enemy Change)
  • Yeah we skipped the other two DLCs, they’re not worth it
  • Kill one evil bunny monstrosity if you can, work your way up same as before with as many EXP% as possible and a Damage x2
  • Once you can kill a full group of them, you can kill the other stuff in the cave, too
• Level 200-500: Jet Black Cave DLC + Enemy Change
  • Kill as many things on the first floor as you can before leaving to refill HP/SP
• Level 500-999: Jet Black Cave DLC + Enemy Change
  • Bring 30 dimensional clocks. Run to the back of the second area to find the vile god palette swap baddie. Kill everything in one shot with Maelstrom except the boss who will be mostly dead, and then smack it with one person’s combo to bring it down. You get 180M EXP for this with all EXP world effects in place. Use dimensional clock. Repeat. After about 20 of these, everyone will be level 999.
  • You’ll probably be close to 5M gold as well, so you might want to continue until you get it and knock that trophy out

Gold Farming

Early on, you may actually end up using quests for this. Later on, the best you can do is pile up the Gold%+ world effects. The only time this really counts is the annoying 5M gold trophy. So it’s best to just keep on the gold effects consistently and try not to waste too much money. Yeah that’s not that helpful, but there’s no metal slimes or gold punis in this game. However, I find that with a high gold modifier on, while grinding to level 999, I got almost 5M, so this comes along with the grinding fairly easily.

WP Farming

Much like gold, there is no trick. Stack your world shaping effects and keep it up over time. If you grind to overpower and then walk around highly overleveled, you can beat most battles in literally a second or two by holding L2 and clicking X fast. Find an area with large groups and hack away. Kill every enemy in your path as you do all three cycles, with max WP on at all times. I had all my party maxed out by the beginning of the Evil Goddess cycle. You do get two more characters during that cycle, it’s up to you if you care enough to grind them as well; I didn’t, I left them in the backup slots and couldn’t be bothered, and just didn’t use any WP effects for most of the third cycle. It made it easier to not have silence permanently on any more.

Berserker Trophy Kill Farming

Don’t bother doing this until you’re about to stop playing, as you might as well get as many kills as you can over the normal course of a play session. You need 10,000 enemy kills (not 10,000 battles thank goodness). By the time you are nearing the end of the Evil Goddess cycle, you will be nowhere near this. I was at 6000, but I was also going out of my way to kill things along the way so that I could spread the grind out rather than having to do it all at once. But I’ve read of people that reached that point with only 3000 kills, particularly if they didn’t grind to 999.

Put Tiara alone in your party and enter Shukesoo’s Tower and select DLC floor 1. This has 6 easy enemies. Select Maelstrom, hold L2 and click X until you return to the tower menu. Go back into the battle and repeat. Over. And. Over. And. Over. I’ve read that with focus, you can get 600/10min, so 6000 in just short of 2 hours. However, I couldn’t focus, so I turned on a youtube channel and did it on the side and I got a steady 500 per 15 min while not going mad as a hatter. There’s nothing pretty about this grind, you just have to grind.

Endings

There are 2 endings on cycle one, 4 on cycle two, and 5 on cycle three, basically depending on which female character you “woo”. The only differences are cosmetic, with a different cutscene at the end, and a different visual stored to the viewing box. No trophies, skills, or items are tied to this.

Basically, there’s one event each near the end of cycles 1 and 3 where you can only talk to one woman, and then the other events disappear, and whoever you pick is your ending. And for cycle 2, you have to select one to talk to and deliberately not talk to the other, in order to get a specific ending, and if you talk to both you get the (I guess canon) Eryn ending that time. Honestly I picked Tiara for 1 and 3 because that felt canon to me.

If you play all three cycles, then do another full cycle (i.e. a 4th playthrough) on any route, and then start a cycle 5 of any route and get a single cutscene that generates a visual record, it will automatically fill out all the other visual records for you, so that you don’t have to do 11 playthroughs to see all the cutscene graphics. You won’t be able to witness every cutscene that way, but you can at least collect all the pictures. To watch them all, youtube is your friend.

External Links

• https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/835983-fairy-fencer-f-advent-dark-force/faqs/76352/introduction
• https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=605104911
• https://fairy-fencer-f.fandom.com/wiki/Fairy_Fencer_F_Wiki

Credits

All Rights Reserved by Sean Cusack (eruciform). Copyright 2021 by Sean Cusack. This guide is only to be used by GameFAQs and eruciform.com or by permission of Sean Cusack. Original link: https://eruciform.com/games/fairy-fencer-f-dark-advent-force/