Not much to say since there aren't many options available to us. Forestallment is extremely powerful on melee characters since our characters are still incredibly slow so getting an extra attack in every turn is huge. Dodge is still useful as low level enemies have very low hit chances. Albus tanks while Sion is the DPS.

Boards are starting to look a lot more coherent now with more options. Our frontline in Albus and Irene shift their defenses over to block instead of dodge since it is more reliable and controllable. They will still have decent dodge thanks to the nature of their gear and base stats. Sion is still our main DPS. His Black Mage class is all about stacking class masteries and Magic Book. Anne is our healer support. Her options are somewhat limited early on so we put on some extra defense on her since enemies like to target healers.

E: Unfortunately Irene's build is already outdated as you can not get Lone Wolf from Ryo anymore. However Heixing will have it when he joins 3 levels later. I can't however go back in time and edit the level 15 build of course so my best advice is to just slot in whatever you feel like (great advice I know). The build should still be functional and will be fixed very soon.


Normally the gear I'm showing are mostly suggestions but I wanted to highlight the Poacher Sneakers here since they are so much better than other options. They only appear in the shop on Shooter Street so getting them can be a bit annoying. Try to get one with a dodge affix (Chaser). If you see them in the shop buy at least 3 of them. They will be the best in slot for our sneaker users for a long time.

Heixing joins the team as our second ranged DPS. However he deals physical damage as opposed to Sion's ESP damage. His role will be to offer Fire Support and area control from the back. Unfortunately many of his better masteries are locked behind a character that joins later. For now we use Blood-Red Bullet to synergize with Albus' bleed focus. The 2 of them make a great team. We will have to use a few inefficient and boring common masteries on him for a while though. Our frontline added Veteran to their boards to become stun immune. We did that because at this point in the game is when the Spoonist start to use wind users. And those guys can knock you around and into walls from a distance. And getting stunned can be a death sentence. You can get the mastery from the level 12 story mission where Don fights Marco. It can be a bit tedious but it is definitely worth it. In fact I suggest trying to add Veteran as early as you can. (the wind users start to show up at level 15)

Also another special mention to Albus' sword Eluote. It is dropped by Ralph. It will be the best in slot until the very lategame. It will cover for most of your block needs and block is the most important defensive stat so this sword is mandatory.

Not much to say since we got no new characters. This is the part where Heixing really struggles to find any new useful sets and masteries. You can honestly equip whatever you want on him. Only Blood-Red Bullet and Offensive Choice are a core part of the build. This mastery drought will be fixed within the next few levels though.

We get 2 new characters this time. Ray is another ranged damage dealer specializing in area damage and hit-and-run tactics. Giselle is a long range sniper with very high single target damage and the ability to support allies and demoralize enemies. Both of them can be very useful against medium block enemies as they can easily strip them of all their block. Giselle also brings with her a wide array of Gunman masteries which allows Heixing to finally get a proper build. He will now shoot anything and everything in sight and follow up allies attacks.

Note that Ray's weapon can only be crafted. So you now have to definitely get into the crafting. The next character that joins will make this even more important.

Kylie joins and she is one of the more complicated characters. Not only are the playstyles of her classes quite unique she can also bring drones with her. On top of that she has quite a few masteries that are locked behind achievements. So you will have to look up a guide for those. Her Hacker class is an all arounder that can do pretty much anything. Does good damage, is unreasonably tanky, can heal allies as well as support them in various other ways and is very mobile. One important part of her kit is Multi-Processing. You always want to use at least 2 protocols per turn if possible to really increase your turn speed.

I also added a Glacier Tima as Giselle even as a Sniper can summon beasts and while beasts can be rather complicated the Glacier Tima is as basic as it gets and is also very powerful. It can be a great extra frontliner for your team and is nearly indestructible which is very helpful since we haven't gotten a new true frontliner in quite a while.

At the same time I chose to not include any drones. Reason is that while a drone can be helpful they are not nearly as powerful as beasts while requiring even more investment. They're basically half a character but take at least twice as much time to get going. That's why I think they're not qualified for this particular guide as efficiency was one criteria and they do not meet that.

Little disclaimer; this is the point in the game where things get even more complicated. I was really unsure how to approach this part as I wanted to keep this as simple as possible but I chose to go with the more complicated route as the things that you have to do to get all the necessary masteries will be useful for a number of other future things and especially so if you are interested in any post-main story content. So while all the things I'm about to mention are by no means necessary to beat the game I believe they are a worthwhile time investment albeit it a bit tedious.

So one of the main reasons why this can get more complicated is that Leton joins. And no matter how you spin it to get the best out of Leton as a character you will have to go through some hoops. Either do a list of obscure achievements and then use a rather complicated class or use a simpler class and catch a legendary beast. I chose the latter. Leton as a Martial Artist is another tanky frontliner. One of his main strengths besides his tankiness is the ability to freeze things. With freeze being one of the strongest if not strongest CCs in the game this alone can make Leton very useful. The most efficient way of freezing things is to use a little gimmicky mechanic and that is ice grenades. They count as an ice attack and therefore benefit from the mastery Absolute Zero. This will turn them into a ranged AoE freeze bomb that cannot be avoided. Very powerful. Another tool unique to Leton is his mastery set Frosty Fortress which will give him 100% block immediately as well as some damage reduction.

Now here comes the downside to both of those things; they both require masteries that can only be accquired from a legendary beast at this stage of the game. Luckily that beast has both of them as well as another very useful mastery Charisma which I will use on other characters as well so catching it is very efficient. And that beast is Albino Negoori. I won't go into too much detail on how to catch legendary beasts as there are guides for that already but the gist is that you have to kill a Hunter enemy named Jeff which has the mastery Monster Taming. This will allow your Hunter Giselle to tame legendary beasts.

I also used a mastery on the Glacier Tima which comes from a legendary beast Guardian's Descendant which you can get from taming Snow.

No new characters anymore however a few other important changes. The most obvious is that Irene swapped from Martial Artist to Battlemage. Reason for that is for one Battlemage is just the stronger class overall both in damage as well as survivability as well as the fact that the enemies you face at this point in the game are very hard to deal with for Martial Artist since they are mostly ranged enemies.

Battlemage plays quite a bit different than Martial Artist so a short explanation; the focus is entirely on ESP attacks as opposed to her basic physical attack. In fact you never want to use her basic attack unless you have no other choice. Battlemages generate stacks of Concentrated Magic Power (CMP) and use those to both multiply their damage as well as heal for an ungodly amount whenever they attack. CMP stacks up to 25 and you want to make sure that you always attack with the full 25 stacks. That's the tl;dr of Battlemage.

Another important addition to the team is the introduction of the Lights of Martial Arts Golden Leather gear set. This set is a staple on many melee characters as it offer both great base stats (which set pieces normally lack) as well as having a lot of utility like adding stun immunity or ignoring some of the opponents block. Very strong set and best in slot for almost any melee character.

Little disclaimer to the Leton build. This one is obviously a little troll. If you haven't noticed yet Leton is a bit of an odd character and so can be his builds. This one is more about freezing while being self-sufficient and tanky. If you do not like that then the other earlier build works just as fine.

I also added Draki King as a little bonus mainly because it is my favourite beast and it is overall very powerful and can fill a similar role to Glacier Tima while being able to deal more consistent damage. It also passively debuffs enemies when getting hit which can be very fun to watch. Catching Drakis is a bit different than other beast so I suggest you look up a guide for that.

So I decided to end this here as this is where the main story finishes. The DLC will have a whole slew of other challenges and requires much different tools to succeed. Plus I also think that at this point in the game a player should have gotten a feeling of how things work and something as basic as this is not needed anymore.

Last thing is a little run of the level 46 violent case where I use the level 45 builds from this guide. Maybe seeing them in action explains a little better how they're supposed to work and what makes them strong.


Big thanks to RexEvil for beautyfying this whole thing. Much more pleasant to look at now. Thanks mate.

And that's it. This was honestly cobbled together in just a few hours so if anyone finds some major mistakes they can let me know. Hope it's at least somewhat helpful.

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