Let's start with the menu. This is what you see when you enter the Development Lab. The first four options actually let you manipulate items. The last option, Development Method, is just a list of recipes you have "unlocked" by using them. It's not important. Let's move on to the first command then.


Keep in mind that you cannot modify "Glitched" items. This occurs when a character wears a piece of equipment that isn't allowed by their type, sex, or alignment. They show up with purple names and cannot be unequipped normally. Instead, you must pay a fee using the Release Bug option. You may alter items before glitching them onto characters, however, as was the case with my Monk here.

Sub-disk is basically your inventory. This option lets you select an item not currently equipped by your characters. Member lets you select a member whose items you wish to alter.

(De-)Crafting Equipment

If you select an equipment item other than "JW" or "JA," or Junk Weapon/Armor, the effect of crafting is to take an "imprint" called Source Data of that item, consuming the item in the process.


Note that this imprint will carry over characteristics of the item including the enhancement bonus, element, variant, and status affixes... along with the other properties of the item. More on this in the Affix section.

Crafting Items

Next, you can use Craft to upgrade consumables (Tools) into better ones as shown below.


If you find yourself amassing a lot of certain common tools that don't help as much as you progress, consider upgrading them to something more useful since the GP cost of the recipe is generally significantly cheaper than buying items through Issue (shop).

Note that you can also upgrade Materials to the next tier this way, I wouldn't recommend it unless you really need that upgrade immediately and cannot buy anymore or have things to Strip for them.

Creating Equipment

If you select Junk when you craft, these are basically blueprints to create an item. It follows the basic concept many games have of needing the base blueprint plus some selection and quantity of other materials to produce a specific outcome.

The materials required is dictated by the level of the item. The material tier is as follows:
Tier 1: 1 - 10
Tier 2: 11 - 20
Tier 3: 21 - 30
And so on.

The number of materials required is dictated by the 1's digit of the level. For example, a level 14 Fist weapon will require 4 (Tier 2) materials. A level 7 Spear costs 7 (Tier 1) materials.

This cost is also applied when you Boost the items to raise their enhancement bonus. So raising that Lvl 14 Fist five times would cost 20 (Tier 2) materials. Keep this in mind when considering Boosting your equipment as it can get really expensive, especially the Level 8-10, 18-20, 28-30, etc items. If you have enough resources to not care, these higher level gears also have higher maximum enhancement bonus caps.

Stripping items provides the relevant materials for that item type along with a JW or JA base of the item. This means you can reconstruct it later if you change your mind, but at the cost of sunk materials lost in the process of Crafting.

Strip can also be used to downgrade materials and Tools, which can be helpful in the early game, but I find materials don't drop quite often enough that I recommend doing this if you need a lot of them.

Boost lets you enhance item to have more damage or defense. The type of item determines the type of materials needed. There are a couple important things to note about this.

• Even though the recipe shows it adding +1 to the previous value, it actually rolls a chance to do more than +1. I don't know what the exact range is, but I believe it can add as high as +4 or +5.
  
• The maximum enhancement bonus you can add to an item is equal to its level. In the example provided above, the Hatchet-G can be improved to +17.
  
• This limit can be exceeded if any roll that provided more than +1 also exceeds the natural limit. Thus, it's possible for this item to roll +22 at a low probability.

Affix has three options:

• Plug-In
  
• Source Data
  
• Key Tool

Note that Unique items may not accept Plug-Ins.

Plug-Ins let you add or change various Affixes on the item. These are Element, Variant, and Status. In the example shown, the P Sword+5 has no elements by default, but we can add +Fire, which makes it strong against Earth, but weak against Water. If you also add a +Variant affix, such as +Par (Paranormal), the weapon would be extra strong against earth-type ghosts.

When armor is affixed, it provides defense against the relevant types.


Plug-Ins can also lift the Type restrictions on equipment. For example, this helmet is unusable by "Muscular" type characters, but we can fix that.


Notice that the dark gray "M" is now white to signify that it is now a valid Type.



This option lets you apply Source Data (acquired from the Craft option of an item) to another item, granting it the properties of the Source item. This mostly seems to serve as a type of "transmog" (if you're familiar with World of Warcraft).


Pay attention to all the properties that change and ALWAYS check the preview of the completed item before proceeding to ensure you are satisfied with the result.

There aren't many of these in the game that involve crafting, but the Gamble Code is an interesting exception. Basically, it lets you take an unwanted item and randomly turns it into another item of within roughly +/- 3 levels of the chosen item. This means you can use an extra copy of a level 10 unique helmet and get back a non-unique level 13 accessory, just as an example. It doesn't seem to deliberately choose whether to pick from unique or non-unique items from my own testing. It just seems random, though perhaps some items may have better odds than others.

Materials

In general, I don't recommend Stripping items unless you have many copies of them. If you have a party with 2 Samurai (main), you need 4 Katanas, which means you would think your threshold for stripping extras would be 5+. However, if you decide that you want to try a different class combination from scratch through the recruitment option, you might find you wish you didn't tear apart those lower level equips. This is multiplied if you want to try a whole different party without having to start the story over. One reason you might prefer this method is that your high level party can farm tons of GP for your lower level party to skip the lower levels through Growth Treatment, but this scales up in cost exponentially, so you will eventually want to take that party out to go grind and test how it feels.

Gambling

You can actually get some pretty good stuff from gambling. What you want to do is grab the highest level items you don't need and sacrifice those to RNGesus. For example, if you don't run a (C) class in your party, feel free to use that gear. I also recommend sacrificing uniques over non-uniques since you can't do as much with them in crafting and finding duplicates of them is generally fairly easy.

Issue/Delivery

First off, Delivery (sell items) is mostly a trap. GP is very easy to farm and items are somewhat less so.

As for Issue (buy items), it can be useful in the early game to fill in the gaps of your party's equipment needs, but eventually you can/will farm everything you need. How long this takes you depends on if your party has too much homogeneity in its classes or if you have diversified enough to share very little equipment between characters.

However, the best things you can buy in Issue are raw materials (top priority), tools that provide effects you won't get from spells for quire awhile, and plug-ins. Some recommended tools are as follows:

• Enfloat (or bring a lvl 3+ Wizard)
  
• Error Care
  
• Multi Care (in case healer dies or runs out of spells)
  
• Anti-Poison, Paralysis
  
• Return Gate (leaves dungeon)
  
• Neo Default (increased encounter rate)
  
• Power Recorder (if you run out from bounties, in case you have to leave game suddenly)
  
• Open Mapper (for dungeons that disable map by default)
  
• Bomb S (only in very early game before your back row casters have wands)

Another good thing you can buy with Issue is an Arts accessory. Some of them are pretty expensive, but they offer specific class skills to classes that don't normally have access to it.

For example, if you made a Monk/Assassin (a strong choice), you can equip her with Musa Arts I for the "Quick Slash I" skill, which allows her to target an entire enemy row instead of just a single opponent. If the Assassin's "Deadly" procs (which has a higher chance with Luck and Monk's fists), you can potentially KO an entire row in one attack!

Identifying Items

There are actually several ways to go about this in the game. The Development Lab lets you spend GP to do it. Academic's 4th Level spell can do it, though this is really only useful if you're getting it through an accessory, because this class can do it naturally with enough Wisdom. Doing it this way is free, but has a small catch. If your Ac fails to identify an item, there is a chance she will be afflicted with Fear, which prevents the casting of spells. In dungeons, this goes away after you walk around for a little while, but if your Ac is also your Priest, this could compromise your healing. I recommending waiting to go to town to do it unless it's a potentially powerful upgrade. To do it in town, just go to "CPA Headquarters -> View Squad -> Identify," then select the character to do it. If she succumbs to fear in town, just take her to the Medical Clinic to remove statuses. You may then proceed to Identify everything again.

Growth Point (GP) Storage

This might seem like a useless feature, but the way it works is that each squad formation you have is saved as a separate squad, which means they each keep track of their own GP total and Unity rating. Use GP Storage to transfer GP between squads. This allows your high level squad to "power level' a weaker squad's members through the Med Clinic's "Growth Surgery."