Keyboard prompts If you are playing with keyboard/mouse, you're going to want to tell the game to pompt you with keys instead of XBox gamepad buttons. Go to the main menu (the one you see when you first start the game), pick options, go over to the gamepad section of the options, and there will be an option right at the top saying "Key Signal Display". Select it, press space, and select the Keyboard option. (While you're in there, you might want to poke around in the other options. There's an "autosave" option that some folks have missed.)

Gaining battle ranks (BR) is bad. It’s not nearly as bad on the PC as it seems to be on the X-Box but you still want to avoid gaining levels without a good reason. It’s not a big deal for Rush and the characters you get early on as they will gain power right along with the increased rank; the trouble comes with the new hires. If you go out and grind through a dungeon 50 times early in the game, the characters you do the grinding with will be pretty strong but everyone you hire is going to be a wuss.

Don’t take this tip to heart too much, though! The characters that you can hire do get stronger as the game progresses. You just have to make sure you are progressing at a pace that’s semi-close to what the developers expect. You can crank your levels up AFTER you get all the people you want hired on.

Take on as many enemies as you can. Use your time warp power to group together as many enemies as you can defeat. Not only does this increase your rewards, it is also FAR more fun than attacking one puny critter at a time. You'll take a litte BR hit but not enough to matter and certainly not enough to be worth the boredom of attacking just one at a time.

Do as many quests as you can. Many quests in the game require that you have done some other quest earlier in the game. Some quests will give you access to very good characters for your squad or will increase your ability to customize weapons and magic items. Guild quests eventually start giving you special items that allow you to get better loot from critters. You probably aren’t going to want to do *everything* in the game but I think it’s a good idea to go to the Wikia website and check quests out before you blow them off. Pubs are the best (but not the only) source of quests.

Talk to your People. When you hire a leader character (meaning not a soldier or a typical guild fighter but somebody with an actual story), you'll find that character standing around somewhere in the game world. Violet, for instance, can be found in the streets of Celapaleis and Zolean can be found in the Café Moondust. Chat with them when they have a red ... above them and they will tell you a bit of their back story. Once you hear their whole back story they will get a small stat bonus. Some of them, like Nora and Loki, open up special quests.

Avoid the Aqueducts! Eventually the story will get to a point where you are supposed to go into the aqueducts of a town. David and his generals will all be standing near the entrance. Feel free to pop in and play around a bit but do NOT go far! Once you get to the boss battle, you’ll be locked in to a game changing event that will close off almost all of the non-guild quests. So get back out of the aqueducts and go do all the quests you intend to do. David will yell at you but David does not understand the deep meaning of the phrase “insert Disk 2.”

Choose your targets. If you’re trying to train up somebody’s skill and don’t get the skill you want, try to target a different enemy union. The skill may come up. (You also might run into an “interference” but your characters will still perform the actions you gave them.)

Buy/make weapons for yourself, not your party. There are hundreds of weapons and variants in this game, several of which are race specific. It’s tempting to buy or make a sweet weapon in hopes that somebody in your party will use it but characters only seem to want a few very specific weapons. The chances are good that they will ignore whatever weapon you make for them. You can check the Wikia website to see who might use a weapon but, honestly, it’s a lot easier to just give them the items they want so they can make their own weapons.

Don’t sweat the ‘what should I focus on’ questions. Characters that focus on fighting or mystics will still use all their skills and will still advance just as before. The ‘focus’ just determines what sorts of weapons and magic items they favor. Also, you’ll likely get a second chance to direct their focus. The question matters but picking the "wrong" one for a character doesn't mean you're doomed.

Really don’t sweat the ‘should I learn art’ on PC. Unlike the XBox version of the game, you can turn powers on and off for characters in the PC version. So go ahead and let all the characters learn all the skills they want. If you don’t like them, you can just turn them off! (That’s almost a ‘must’ for Rush!)

"Recover your health" is misleading. Actually, what it tells the unit to do is to wait until some other union gets hurt then rush in and heal them. It's pretty handy when you know damage is coming. Having a leader for the unit that's a healer will make this option more common.

Combat arts are simply your weapon skills. Rush will advance with whatever weapon you pick for him so pick out something you enjoy. As for advantages, though, the various weapon types seem quite well balanced. About the only confusing thing is one handed vs. power grip. Power grip means you use two hands to wield a one-handed weapon. One-handed mean you use one hand for the weapon and one for your shield. (It does behoove you to actually OWN a shield if you're going to use that weapon art. ;)

Mystic arts are the spells. Invocations start with a couple of single target attacks, then get a speed buff, then move on to some very good area of effect attacks. Evocations are similar but have some status effects like silence or paralyze. It’s harder to find characters that can do hexes (and Rush can’t learn them until very late in the game) but the spells in that set are particularly strong, doing great damage and status effects. Cachexia is of particularly strategic importance. Remedies are exceptionally good healing spells though it takes the set a very long time to get the power to raise the dead. Psionics provide very strong spells for improving morale. Wards provide some very handy shield spells, an agro-gathering spell, a morale boost, and a stat boost.

Herbs don’t cost AP to use but they require ingredients, which translates to money. Herbs are a fairly weak set for healing but they get the ability to raise the dead quickly. Potions are buff powers – buffs that I never was very impressed with. Lotions is a fine healing set if you can get it started. Unfortunately, the first power in the set is rarely handy making it difficult to improve and earn the much handier eye cream power. Explosives are fairly good powers against unions, though they get rather pricey. Shards can be very devastating to large groups of enemies but are, unfortunately, even more devastating to your pocketbook. Traps have some nice powers once you get past the rather sad first powers in the set.

While item powers are terribly draining on your funds in your first playthrough, playing the game a second time will give you a truck load of starting cash, making the item powers fun and easy! (Except Shards – you can’t get ingredients for that set until the second half of the game.)

If you're interested in more details, I've got a complete Arts Review guide here on Steam.

Yes, there’s more than one guild! A couple more will open up if you do the right quests – and you definitely want those things open.

The quests are pretty generic stuff. You’ll probably get most of the “Bloodthirsty Warrior” quests just by playing the game. Monsterslayer quests are done by defeating the ‘rare’ monsters – these quests can be quite annoying as you sometimes have to keep popping in to a dungeon over and over, trying to make the monster spawn. (It helps a lot if you kill any rare you see in normal play.) Collector missions require you to find various components. You’ll get a lot of these simply by playing the game, too. Weaponmasters are much more of a pain – keep checking the Wikia pages to see how to make the requested weapons or if some character actually starts with the weapon. Leader quests are mostly easy but some require you to have certain rare classes of characters, which is very difficult to make happen. Battle chains and treasure hunts are trivial; you’ll get them just playing the game.

The biggest problem with the guild system is the ranks. To gain rank, you need to do a certain guild task and there is no indication as to what that task is! Unless you plan to do every single one of these things, you’re going to need to consult the Wikia.

In the early game, guild rewards are typically money, some blueprints (used to make magic items), and/or a new leader will be available for hire. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a new formation. Later on they start rewarding “weekly” and “daily” items that will help you get special drops from monsters. These are much more important as those special drops will allow your characters to keep upgrading their weapons.

Formations can have a fairly large affect on a union. The descriptions are exceedingly vague, though, making them pretty hit and miss for new players.

A formation typically provides some sort of overall bonus (extra damage against some monster type, a buff for a certain art, extra mobility...) and some stat bonuses. The formations are balanced by giving them penalties to stats and possibly even an overall handicap. The stat bonuses and penalties are according to the position in the formation. So team members 1, 3, and 5 might get extra attack strength and a minus to defense while positions 2 and 4 get just the opposite.

To raise the level of a formation ("you have unleashed Whatever Formation 3!"), you need to pick the right characters. Sometimes its based on gender, sometimes race, sometimes whether the character is versed in combat skills when you first get them. Raising the level of a formation makes the stat buffs stronger and the stat penalties smaller and will also increase the bonus the formation itself gives (so the "Leash 3" gives more of a bonus against flying insects than "Leash 2").

Each formation has 3 levels but some formations build on others. If you see a message saying you have unlocked more a powerful version of a formation, that means you just unlocked 3 more levels. For instance, if you fill a wedge formation full of fighter-types that are special characters you'll get Wedge 3. However, if you've unlocked the more powerful version and you use Qsiti for at least 3 positions, they will be put in the Chisel formation. Essentially, Chisel is the 4-6th level of Wedge.

For ALL the details, head out to the Wikia: http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Formations

Personally, I don't mess with them much unless I'm up against something really nasty. Then I wade into the stats and try to figure out just what will work best for the situation at hand. Most of the time I just keep an eye on the stats to the left. Actually, more like half an eye - my MAIN concern is that the party isn't too short on healing/rezzing powers.

A few interesting formations....

Orb lets you use powers for less AP cost. That can be great mid-game when you're trying to learn high level magic skills. It does nasty things to your attack stat, though.

Melee Stance and Cup of Celapaleis have no penalties for any position. I use them quite a bit when I'm not in a particularly challenging area and I just want to build my unions quick.

Casket is interesting, too. Instead of using it when things are rough, you can use it when things aren't so rough but one of your characters is blowing things away so fast that the rest of the characters in the union don't get to do much (and thus don't get to learn much). It does this by severly nerfing all the leader's attacks. Mystic Seal is along the same lines but even more so - it works on the entire union and it doesn't just nerf attacks, it 0's them out! GREAT for practicing your skills... just don't use it on too many unions when attacking anything dangerous.

Remember, you only have to fill out the leader position! Many formations will have nothing but buffs if you avoid certain positions in the formation. Vanguard, for instance, puts a penalty on position 2 and 3. If you don't put any characters in those two positions then there are no penalties! Of course, you can't get the formation's level very high doing that but sometimes its better to have lower rank than to take the penalties.

Weapons (and shields) are upgraded by getting various components together. When Rush wants to upgrade, he goes to one of those hammer icon stores and uses the party inventory. It's different for party members, though - they have their own ideas on what to build (determined by those questions you answer about how they should focus). If you look at their 'check items' menu, you'll see what components they currently want. Unfortunately, you can't tell how many they still need to get, just the total number they currently have.

You can get these components in a few ways.

• Monster drops. You'll see these in your victory conditions. If you you would rather keep the component for yourself (or if you just want to hear the character complain) you can take their share away from them. Note that only one character will get a particular kind of drop. If Nora and Loki both need godwood timber and three drop then one of the characters will get 3 and the other will get 0.
  
• Monster splits. When you cut up a critter, EVERYONE gets a share if they need the item. So, in the above example, if you split up a monster and get three godwood timbers the Loki, Nora, AND your own inventory get three godwood timbers!
  
• Mr. Diggs acts just like monster splits. If the little guy hauls out 3 divine metals then everybody who wants divine metal gets 3 plus 3 go into your inventory.
  
• Breaking up weapons also acts like monster splits. The only problem is you don't have any clue what you're going to get when you break up a weapon. The Wikia can help there if you don't like rolling the dice.
  
• Buying components.... sorta. If you buy components at a store then the party members will NOT get a share. However, party members can buy components themselves! I'm not real sure how that works (nor is the Wikia) but I do know that characters are somehow upgrading weapons without the help of Mr. Diggs or anything else I am doing. So you might be able to upgrade party weapons simply by popping around the towns and checking store inventories!

What does not work is having components on hand when the character decides s/he wants them. I think there are a couple of gameplay reasons for that. First, if you are saving up for a weapon for Rush, you aren't going to be happy if Dave suddenly takes a component you've been saving up. Second, in hard mode you get to keep all the components you had in your first play through so you can give Rush a super weapon. If anyone could dip into the party inventory then everyone would be getting super weapons and hard mode wouldn't be very hard any more.

SAVE YOUR GAME!

You've got LOTS of slots and, being a console oriented game, the saves take up very little hard drive space. So use them! The game will auto-save but often times that's not enough.

Save before you start a quest or go into a dungeon. Save before attacking a rare monster. Save after completing anything that was really hard. It only takes a couple of seconds and it can save you dozens of hours!

Most of you will probably want to also check out the Wikia pages. Everything you could ever want to know about the game is in there. It's one of the best Wikia guides I have ever seen!

http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Last_Remnant_Wiki_-_The_Last_Remnant_Guide