When I recently started The Alliance Alive, I noticed how incredibly flexible the weapon system was and how it was held back quite a bit by the lack of information on what each character stat did. Did STR raise all damage? Only Slashing and Blunt? Piercing? Ranged? Melee? Blah, blah, blah. Etc. Etc.

Upon seeking out more information across the internet, I found out that...no one really knew. In general, it was believed that STR and FOC were the damage increasing stats depending on whether the weapon did Piercing damage or another type, with SEN increasing Spell damage. It was all speculation and anecdotes, and details were sparse. So, I took it upon myself to remedy the problem. I brought out ol' reliable Cheat Engine and edited stats to see what changed damage for what weapons.

It didn't take long for me to realize that weapons did not have a consistent scaling stat. Instead, each individual art, irrespective of the weapon it was attached to, scaled from its own selection of stats.

...Oh, boy. My work was cut out for me.

One playthrough of the game and half a week of testing later, I have compiled a spreadsheet describing the stats used for scaling by every damaging Unique Art, Awakened Art, Spell, and Sigil in the game. Have at!

Below is a link to the Google Sheets document that lists all the offensive Arts and the stats they scale from.

A few things to note about the spreadsheet itself:

• Final Strikes are not included due to the time it would take to test.
  
• Arts are organized by SP cost followed by the Attack value listed in their tooltip. This means they're listed roughly by the order in which you'll learn them.
  
• Arts do not scale with all stats equally. Even if an Art scales with more than one stat, it can scale with one specific stat more or less strongly than the other(s). This differs from Art to Art. I have not covered this in the spreadsheet.

The Stat Scaling Spreadsheet[docs.google.com]



Fellow Steam user, asmoranomar, managed to pull more specific art scaling data (and much, much more) straight from the game files! You can use their spreadsheet as a reference for how much any specific art scales with each stat. They were also kind enough to create an art calculator so we can find any art with relative ease.

This new spreadsheet includes the Final Strikes!

To be able to edit any of the fields, you'll need to make a copy of the Sheet to your own Google Drive. To do that, open the link below and then click "File" on the toolbar at the top of the page, then choose "Make a Copy" to add a copy of this sheet to your Google Sheets account. You'll be able to edit it there.

Art Calculator Page[docs.google.com]

Note: The spreadsheet also has multiple other pages to look at that include data from the game files. I've linked directly to the arts calculator page, but raw art data, items, enemies, and other such data pages are available as well.

Through my testing, some of the results surprised me. I want to touch on a few of them.

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• STR and FOC are not the only stats that increase weapon damage. Every stat affects the damage of some Weapon Art or another.

It's not super intuitive that AGI and END also increase damage for some Arts. Even SEN increases the damage of exactly one Weapon Art in the game. In fact, counterintuitively, some melee Weapon Arts don't scale with STR at all.

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• Devil Snatch, a Sword Art, is the only Weapon Art in the game that scales with SEN.

Devil Snatch is a Sword Art you can expect to learn toward the last third of the game, and it is strong enough to be used for the rest of the game going forward as a low to modest cost Art. This Art singlehandedly makes Sword a strong lategame weapon choice for Vivian and Ignace despite their low STR. Devil Snatch compliments their Spells well, doing good damage and costing less SP against single targets

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• Staff is an AGI weapon, having as many Arts that scale with AGI as scale with STR.
  
• Sword is a strong AGI weapon as well. Half of the Sword Arts scale with AGI.

Renzo is a party member known for his super high AGI but crappy stats everywhere else, and it was assumed that this made him the worst character in the game due to having low damage. Turns out, we just didn't get it. AGI is a damage stat.

His best weapons, without a shadow of a doubt, are Staff and Sword. And his high AGI actually makes him excel with them.

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• Bow is as much a STR weapon type as it is a FOC weapon type.

Every single Bow Art scales with both STR and FOC. The weakest Bow Art, Gambit, also scales with AGI, but it's so low damage that it's completely worthless anyway.

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• Unarmed is the only "weapon" type that has Arts that scale with END.
  
• Most of Robbins' exclusive Unarmed Arts scale with END and not STR.

However, only the lower tier Unarmed Arts scale with END, making the END scaling relatively useless later in the game. For most characters...

...except Robbins, who is the exception. Of Robbins' four exclusive damaging Unarmed Arts, three scale exclusively with END (not even STR!), and only one of them scales exclusively with STR.

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• Tiggy's exclusive weapon type, Cannons, has all its Arts scale with both FOC and AGI. STR does absolutely nothing for her.

No point in giving Tiggy any STR boosting equipment. It's all FOC and AGI for her.

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• Two lategame Spells uniquely don't scale with SEN at all.

Nearly every Spell scales with SEN. There are only two exceptions which do not: La Danse Macabre and Misokayo 12. Instead, they both scale with STR (with the former also scaling with FOC). These spells are ideal for Barbarosa, given his immense STR and capacity for Sorcery.

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• Every Sigil scales exclusively with FOC, but they also scale based on the tier of Etheract equipment you're casting them using.

The fact that the Topaz Ring, an Etheract Accessory that allows you to cast Sigils from it, increases the healing and damage of Sigils is common knowledge. What I learned, however, is that not all other Etheracts are equal either.

The stronger the Etheract Weapon/Accessory you're using, the more damage and healing your Sigils will do:


Another big thank you to fellow Steam user, asmoranomar, for pulling the precise power of the Etheract items straight from the game files, resulting in a correct list!

As you can see, Staffs (and the Spearflute) eventually outdo even the Topaz Ring near the final quarter of the game.

This may be coming out years after this obscure JRPG title's release, but I hope that some will still come around and find it useful. I'll certainly be using it for my NG+ run!

Have fun!