Here is the thread where we can begin to toss ideas around. I am starting this before the game comes out as I have a few curiosities.

However, as we play the game, we can add to the thread and help route this game out as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Outside of the obvious difference in combat, which isn't mind boggling in and of itself, there are a lot of small things that I believe will impact stuff heavily. Combat being action based / real-time is cool but I believe the intricacies of the real-time combat will be more important (Higgledies, Zing, etc)

The Tactic Tweaker

• This is going to be monumental. The ability to adjust vulnerabilities, resistances, exp, money, and drop rates, and more. There is no doubt in my mind that intelligent utilization of this tool will make the run what it is.
• A brief explanation : Using Battle Points (points earned by winning fights) you move various sliders in different directions. For instance, Solidity and Sliminess share a slider. In exchange for 1 BP you can move the slider one space in either direction. Moving the slider one space closer to Solidity increases your effectiveness against Solidity type enemies while weakening your effectiveness against Sliminess type enemies.
• Unfortunately, there is VERY little information (I think 2-3 videos that briefly touch on and display the tweaker) on everything the tweaker adjusts. Currently, I know these things are adjusted :

First Section Solidity <----> Sliminess (Damage boost for Solid vs Slimy enemies) Nature <----> Nobility (Damage boost for Natural vs Reptilian enemies) Wonder <----> Wildness (Damage boost for Beautiful vs Brutal enemies)

Second Section Blaze <----> Beffudlement (Fire vs Confuse resist) Puddle <----> Poisoning (Water vs Poison resist) Light <----> Dark (Light vs Dark resist) Storm <----> Sleep (Lightning vs Sleep resist)

Third Section. This section has no counterpart. It is a Slider that moves in one direction, increasing effectiveness without reducing anything elsewhere

Brutality (Increases damage inflicted by heavy melee attacks) Ranged (Increases ranged damage) Magic Shield (Decreases magic damage taken, I think? This one is not 100% confirmed) Speed (Increases movement speed in battle, also not confirmed.) Untouchability (Increases the length of time you're invulnerable while evading) Block (Decreases damage taken while blocking)

Fourth Section This section is a square. So, for whatever you make most effective, you are losing effectiveness in two other categories as a result.

EXP............↔.........Money ↕.....................................↕ Rare drops ↔ More drops

Higgledies

• This is a very interesting and new concept. After a ton of researching every video I could find, I have kind of figured out how these function. First, there are a TON of different ones you can acquire and use. They are obtained in various ways and some (if not most?) are received as a result of your town building. They function differently individually but also receive bonuses based on the combination compatibility of all Higgledies you have equipped. Finding Higgledies that are not only useful but work well together will make a large difference, I imagine.

Town Building

• This is a classic Level-5 move. If you're familiar with their library then you probably aren't surprised by the emphasis on town building. First thing to know is that you build parts of your town in a kind of instanced, side zone type of place. What you build has impact on what you have access to in towns and shops and such in the actual game. The things you build are dependent on NPCs you recruit. The NPCs you recruit are obtained by doing various side quests for the NPCs in question during actual gameplay. Various NPCs build specific things and at different rates of speed required to construct which take place in REAL TIME. This is a forced functionality. We cannot make it through the game without utilizing this as it is forced by the main storyline progression at a point. My hope is that we can pop into town builder, queue an NPC to start building, return to the main storyline, and then go back to the town builder when you need to. This way we won't be forced into real time waits of multiple minutes to progress. Not sure, exactly, as very little has been explained outside of what I've listed. One thing is for certain. We will be unable to ignore all sidequests as we will probably be required to recruit at least some members in order to effectively tackle Kingdom Battles. Which leads me to my next point....

Kingdom Battles

• These are the strange, tactics style battles where you have 4 varying types of soldiers around you and can rotate them to defeat enemies at various rates of efficiency. I don't imagine this will take a ton of time or be hard to do at all. However, if the effectiveness or strength of your soldiers is tied to the Military/Barracks level of your Town (which I believe it is, based on what I've seen) then it could, again, force you into utilizing more Town Building elements than anticipated to complete main storyline stages.

Zing System

• This is the 3 main-weapon system that the game features for all characters. This does not include side-weapons that all characters have equipped at all times (Roland's Gun, Nani's ranged weapons, etc). The 3 weapons you have charge from 0-100% and damage and ability effectiveness increases with those percentages. A 'fire sword' style weapon will have increased fire damage and fire abilities will be amplified based on the corresponding weapon Zing percentage. You can charge a weapon to full, swap to another to charge, and then the third without losing any charges of already maxed weapons. Once you use a 'special move' available at 100% Zing, that weapons charge will be reduced back to 0%. Charging certain weapons to 100% to prep for various boss fights will be important but I don't believe this system will be game changing as much as the other points. Just cool and creative ways to do more damage and speed things up a bit.

Alchemy

• I'm really unsure of how much this will matter in the game because almost nothing has been shown about this system in any of the content I've seen released. However, I've noticed that alchemy ingredients are EVERYWHERE. Sometimes there are 5 ingredients within a few feet of each other. Similar to Breath of the Wild, there seems to be multiple flowers in flower beds, multiple roots around the bases of trees, etc. Since we don't have the unlimited money we have in the first game, it may be beneficial to keep an eye on the value of crafted items.

Clipping/Skipping/Sequence Breaking/Glitches

• I've grouped these all together as there is, currently, no way to tell if any of these will be present or impact the game in any way. One thing to note is that jumping is available natively at the start of controlling Evan for the first time. Based on the fact that the battles are not instanced OR forced, we can possible sequence break sections that aren't necessary by utilizing the huge range and height that the jump in this game offers. Will keep an eye out for glitches and bugs and such but one thing is very important to note. This is a current generation game that is connected to wireless network influenced systems. Patching out of glitches and bugs, changes to versions, and DLC content (swords from collectors edition and such) will all have to be paid attention to. We may be playing a different game in a year than we are playing the day of release. Keep that in mind.

Hey Guys I have been doing a first play through of but something I found interesting is I decided to fight a dragon at lvl 22 it being 50, but the interesting thing was Poison does quite a bit of damage I was dealing 1-4 and poison did 144 a tick and this was with only Evan triggering it I'm sure if the whole party had poison I could prob beaten it and gained a huge amount of XP I wonder if anyone has tried this or if its viable in a speed run :)

As of right now, grinding in general has been deemed slow. The damage boost isn't so great and the boss fights go by very quickly (less than 3 minutes for pretty much all except the final boss). Also that trick would require a fast way to get a poison weapon. I can only think of two pretty late in the game and by then we have Bracken who just destroys everything.

Ahhh Interesting I thought I would throw it out there :) but seems quite easy to go through on Normal then.