This guide is really only reviewing some guides that the game already tutorializes - but it goes through each concept pretty quickly, at a time when Estelle and Joshua can breeze through fights by just attacking or using what few spells are available. It's very likely, by the time you've spent a few hours in story or in low-difficulty fights, you may have forgotten some important concepts, or not investigated them very much.

This is the basic rundown for your options before battle:

• Buy new / Upgrade your weapons and armor
  
• Upgrade/Organize Quartz to offer new spell options
  
• Complete Achievements, apply upgrade items
  
• Eat / cook recipe items
  
• For "Long-term" side quests, come back later

Then, once in-battle:

• Prioritize stat boosts and indirect actions over direct damage
  
• Finding boss weaknesses
  
• Learning to make good use of turn bonuses

One thing I can recommend ahead of time: Try to rotate saves so that you're not saving into the same slot each time. (Slot 1 -> Slot 2 -> Slot 3 -> Slot 1) It's rare, but you may end up saving during a story sequence that locks you towards a certain boss fight. If this happens, and you can't reach towns/shops, only changes to tactics or a few in-field Quartz changes, or in-dungeon grinding, are open to you.

Step 1: Buy this weeb game.

The general pattern, in classic JRPG fashion, is to buy all the new equipment available in a next town when you arrive. A step that's easy to miss, but these often provide significant stat boosts - and the way the game calculates attack/defense for a hit can make those differences pretty noticeable. (For instance, upgrading from "2000 -> 2100 STR" may cause your damage on enemies to go from 200 to 300)

That said, it's very possible when you first entered town, you couldn't afford everything available, especially when including armor and footwear. While there are other uses for Mira, weapons and armor are the main goal, so don't worry too much about saving.

You will find some weapons during exploration/story, which can supplant the need to buy them. If you want to follow a guide so you know when these are upcoming, you can do so, but mira isn't so rare you need to proactively save it to avoid this scenario.


Anytime you're short on mira, you can get yourself more through the Exchange menu in shops, turning in Sepith (the currency used for Quartz) for mira. "Sepith Mass" has no other use besides selling, so when you enter this menu, it will automatically have all of it selected.

If you're short for equipment upgrades, you can also consider selling Sepith of a particular element you've accumulated an abundance of, or if you think you're not likely to develop specialization in that element's attacks. It may be worth doing a review of your Quartz (see that section) before selling Sepith, as you can grind for it, but you can't buy it.

Lastly, it won't earn you much, but you can sell old equipment.

Quartz, the game's off-brand materia, are easy to forget and not always intuitive to make good use of. The game eases you into setting up your first quartz, and encourages you to get more powerful ones, but doesn't do a lot to guide you into a planned setup.

As soon as possible, you'll want to be unlocking as many Slots on your characters as possible. Next, to plan beyond just "Getting a bunch of good quartz and seeing what spells I can cast", you'll want to decide what spells you could theoretically afford, based on how many of each type you can put in one Line.

Each Quartz has an elemental value of one or more types (earth, wind, fire, water, space (bright yellow), time (black), mirage (silver). Each "Line" on your Orbment counts up their elemental total to decide what spells are available. Basic spells only need 1 of a given type, while others may require a large combination, needing high-element-value Quartz.


To see ALL potential arts (all of them in the game - there are no secret Arts that you have to "find"), open your orbment menu, and press X to open "Required Elements". From here, you can see the element totals one line will need in order to have a given spell. Like so:


If you also open up your Orbment with Y to reassign Quartz while this view is open, you can see if a spell is going to be added or removed by a particular replacement.


In this screenshot, Estelle's left-side line has a Defense 2, Impede 2, and HP 2 Quartz. This has 2 earth, 2 water, and 2 mirage element power. if I replace the selected Impede 2 Quartz with Evade 2, that takes 2 mirage elements, and it's going to lose me access to Earth Guard and Crest (because Earth Guard needs 2 Earth, 2 Mirage); as such, they're marked with red arrows.

If you're looking for higher-value Quartz but you're low on Sepith, you can also Customize (upgrade) orbments. Go to an orbal factory, enter the Customize menu, and below all your equipment options, you can trade in multiple of a lower-tier Quartz, together with some U-Material, for the next tier up. (For instance, give them two Blue "HP 1" Quartz and 2 U-Material for an "HP 2")

Some important spells (Arts) to focus on early in the game:

• Clock Up - Estelle's Morale craft is great for STR/DEF stats, but this will be your first way of increasing turn speed (SPD). It doesn't take long to cast, and can both alleviate frustration in cases where monsters are getting multiple turns, as well as give you a great boon of getting multiple turns ahead of opponents even when casting spells.
  
• Earth Guard - Adds an additional HP pool onto your characters, basically "Overhealing" them. Very useful for bosses.
  
• Anti-Sept - Besides muting enemies that prefer casting Arts, this can also remove all enemy buffs (STR+, SPD+)
  
• Chaos Brand - A powerful status spell, applying Confuse, that only costs 3 Mirage (silver).
  
• Any higher-level elemental spells - If you can happen to match this to upcoming elemental weaknesses, that's a nicety, but not necessarily needed. Sometimes variety to match weaknesses is important, but many bosses also won't have basic weaknesses. Given the way you earn Sepith, dedicating into one element isn't easy, but if you ever find yourself with one type spare, it's worth a try.

You'll likely come across many "Droplet" items in the game, and this is your reminder to use them - they're permanent upgrades to character stats.

Estelle and Joshua are your main party members - all others are generally going to come and go from your party through the course of the game, so it's up to you if you want to upgrade side characters while they're around. Even if they don't get much stronger during their chapter, their later reappearances will boost them accordingly.

Rather than balance out whoever has less STR/ATS, you may want to think about specializing people. For instance, Joshua starting out with a Protect ability means it can make sense to emphasize DEF on him.

More Droplets can be obtained from Rewards in the pause menu, as well as searching chests and even just shiny spots in the grass. As well as grabbing the ones you've achieved, look at the other achievements to get ideas of what mechanics you're not using often. If you're saving all CP for boss fights, for instance, you'll miss out on rewards for using Crafts. If you always skip real-time combat in the field to start turn-taking mode, you'll miss rewards for dodging attacks or activating field abilities.

One thing that's easy to overlook when playing with a "Preservationist" mindset (also known as Too Awesome to Use playstyles) is food and recipes. You'll find these items around the world and in shops, and they heal so much / have such good secondary effects, you may want to save them for later, REALLY tough boss battles.

But, the game will reward you for using them early. The first time you use a new food dish, you'll learn its recipe. Then, when you cook that recipe, all characters in your party get a permanent stat boost. And, now that you have the recipe, you can make more of them! So, don't save them too long!

You can especially run into this fallacy from certain secondary effects. For instance, maybe during a fight, you're at 130 HP / 600, and you have a food item that heals 900 HP and cures Blind. "Oh, but that wastes some of the healing, and I'm not blinded." Don't be picky! There's no urgency to preserving food for the exact right circumstance.

When looking for ingredients to satisfy recipes, some ingredients will come from monsters or distant locations. At times, Bracer quests will help you with hints on where to find them, other times it's just an encouragement to explore. Other more basic-sounding ingredients, like "Flour", "Maple Sugar", can only be located at stores in town. The cost for these ingredients is usually miniscule, eg 10 Mira, so their inclusion is really only built that way to encourage you into the fantasy of shopping for food at the market once you have the rarer ingredients found. They're cheap enough that if you find yourself doing a lot of cooking, you can just save time by buying a large excess of them.

When first arriving in a city, you'll of course accept all Bracer side quests; and sometimes, the "Wall" boss fight will be one such side quest, which you're of course trying to handle before advancing the main story. As the tutorial teaches, side quests disappear as the main story advances.

However, on a few occasions, it's still not a good idea to do these side quests early. Check the listing of the quest in the notebook - if it has a "Long" availability to it, it's definitely not going to disappear in one or two story cutscenes. What's more, advancing the story may introduce you to equipment, experience, or even a new friend that will make these fights less challenging. You'll want to take care of the side quest before you get too far, but you may not need to check off your entire notebook before moving to any red quest markers.

Many players might not visually parse stat changes often - either to enemies, or considering them for themselves. Trails very much emphasizes their importance and effect, and a lot of what gave me a hard time early in my play was failing to spend enough time boosting and even re-boosting my characters mid-combat.

You may have at least worked out, for instance, that you should often begin boss fights with Estelle's Morale ability. Did you notice you can apply this boost multiple times? The second-level boost will be shown with a second arrow. Additionally, on longer fights, remember to re-apply this boost later on, to reduce the worry of characters getting one-hit KO'd from low DEF. It'll especially pay off from its CP regeneration, especially if other characters can use Attack Delay effects to prevent enemies from hitting as often.

Clock Up, an early Time spell that increases SPD (delay to next turn), is another excellent booster. Its cast time is infinitesimal, so even though it only reaches one party member, you can cast it on several people quickly.

Besides dealing damage and staying alive, one of the main ways you increase survivability in tough fights is to delay and debuff the enemy. Any Craft that applies AT Delay will cut down on the number of hits that reach you. Estelle's Whirlwind reduces STR, Joshua's Flicker applies turn delay - these can sometimes be much more important than hitting an enemy's elemental weakness to deal damage.

One example of an early bit of challenge for unwary players: The Great Crop Muncher will eventually use an ability that grants him (and later, his minions) many stat boosts at once. This boss is trying to teach that Joshua's S-Craft, Sever, removes all stat bonuses from an opponent. (You can also do the same with the "Anti-Sept" spell, which costs 2 time and 2 mirage.


So, after it boosts itself, use Joshua's next turn to Sever him, right? Not exactly.

Unless you have a turn bonus like "Critical", you may want to initiate S-Crafts using the S-Break feature instead. Rather than selecting them from the craft menu, you may interrupt turn order during a different animation at any time in order to perform an S-Craft, as long as you have enough CP. The current character/enemy will finish their action, and then your S-Craft will come next. Timing these well may require turning off high-speed mode, or you may simply want to activate them right after choosing a different turn action, in which case you'll queue another move after your own move to ensure one character gets to act twice in a row.

S-Breaks are performed with RT/R2+Up/Left/Right/Down on the D-Pad on controller, Space+1234 on keyboard (depending on whose to activate). Once picked, they can't be canceled - just retargeted.

This idea of using particular moves when they're most applicable, like when a boss uses a particular move, also means you might be saving craft points to ensure your S-Craft is ready at a key moment. You'll generate CP pretty regularly in a fight, but you can keep this get-out-of-jail card available by sticking to regular Crafts, rather than using S-Craft as soon as it's charged, or avoiding crafts to stay at a perfect 200.

Sometimes, all you may need to start a boss fight off with the right momentum is making sure your team has full CP before going in. This will let you cancel enemy stat boosts or steal turn bonuses with S-Crafts, or simply make sure you can apply boosts/delays/debuffs with regular crafts before using your first S-Craft. If you don't feel like grinding enemies to do this before a boss, Hotels will also give you 100 CP for a 100 mira stay.

One key to combat adaptation and adjusting for randomness is watching the upcoming Turn Bonuses in a fight. All of these are listed below:


Although S-Breaks interrupt turn order, they do not let you steal turn bonuses (something old players used to do in the original game). A character can take enemy turn bonuses by targeting that bonus's current owner with a "Break!" attack, or Attack Delay. (Or by killing them)

Some ways you can achieve a turn steal:

• Use any "AT Delay" attack
  
• Activate Overdrive mode, and deliver any attack (thus triggering a Break)
  
• Activate an attack S-Craft (or S-Break). Each of these generally list "Steal Bonus" as an effect (and will often stun anyway).
  
• Deal enough damage to finish that enemy.
  
• If an enemy has a high STUN gauge already, you may only need one hard-hitting attack of any kind; stunning them, triggering a Break attack, and canceling their turn

By stealing their bonus, the character that delivered that attack will get the according bonus on their next turn. It is possible to have multiple bonuses on one turn, if you hit multiple enemies at once, you serial burglar!

Since arts get delayed in casting, it will often be harder to steal bonuses through spellcasting than crafts. That said, some arts like Soul Blur build the stun gauge a long way, potentially setting you up for one of these combos later. Hitting weaknesses will also trigger stuns much faster.

Even if you don't end up using a turn bonus like a Critical, just taking it away from the enemy can avoid putting you in a dangerous situation.

An example of turn-stealing in effect: Here, these two monsters have an upcoming HP and Sepith bonus.
Since Joshua's Flicker ability causes Delay, both of them will lose their turn bonus. When Joshua's turn comes back around, he will have both bonuses.

I won't bore you with water-beats-fire diatribes; often, the more confusing type of weakness to work out is the ones that will work on bosses. In this case, usually we're not just referring to elemental weaknesses.

If you came to this guide, it was probably after getting nearly one-shot by a boss. One of many ways you can reduce this chance is by finding status effects that can actually reach the boss. For big fights, this might only be stat debuffs (eg, STR Down, ATS Down), but even on big story bosses, it's rare for them to be immune to everything. Sometimes, a particularly troublesome boss (or, crowd of "Plus" enemies, as often is used as a boss) is actually vulnerable to a common status effect like Petrify, or Mute. (I would not blame you for not expecting this - JRPGs have a nasty habit of making bosses immune to everything)

You can check the stats and vulnerabilities of a monster with the Menu button in combat, and can also look them up in the bracer notebook ahead of time with RB + Y.

Failing those options, you can often still give yourself breathing room by reducing bosses' SPD with any crafts that hold this effect. Reducing SPD, stunning enemies, applying AT delay, and even applying status effects can all be key to recovery. It's a natural reflex to want to devote yourself to healing when the "Panic" music starts playing, but sometimes the right attack will give you a bit more time to put yourself back in the fight, especially if it also grants you some turn bonuses that restore HP, or let you cast a major healing spell instantly with Zero-cast.

Sometimes the biggest problem exhibited by one boss is their tendency for certain status effects (Confuse, Paralyze, etc). When these are particularly troublesome, you may try to find/equip accessories on the party that nullify the status. Additionally, the green/wind spell Sylphen Guard applies status effect immunity. For simpler statuses, especially when the boss applies them frequently, consider playing around them. Blind, for instance, makes physical attacks unreliable, but doesn't do anything to Arts. And, take note of how long a status is going to apply before you cure it. If it only lasts for one turn, you could just bear with it.

One last tip: Anytime an enemy is performing an attack that takes two turns - either by casting an Art, or by charging up and turning red - it's an opportunity to use any Craft that has the Impede effect, canceling them out. Joshua's Sever, and Schera's Bind Nail are examples of this.

Of course, in order to interrupt an enemy, you need to get a turn before them, and have enough CP available for the right attack. This is one of many reasons to keep your own SPD up, and keep the enemy's down.

Trails in the Sky has a lot of side quests to occupy you, as well as side accomplishments like building support, finding extra bonuses, completing recipes, finding treasure, etc. However, you may end up grinding monsters in the field if you really find none of the other tips for a hard fight are helping.

The game follows a bit of an EXP curve. If you're fighting relatively easy enemies, you'll barely get any EXP. If you fight enemies above your level, they may get additional bonuses for their level advantage, but if you beat them you'll likely level up in one go (and this can be true even just for one lagging party member).

You may also need to grind a bit for Sepith to build Quartz, as it can similarly only be obtained from fights. If you're in need of Sepith, pay attention to the turn bonuses that grant more of it.

At any time (story cutscenes, exploration, battle, whenever) you may turn on High-Speed Mode, clocking up the entire game process; especially useful for long battle animations or traversing large fields. On controller, this is R1+L1. On keyboard, E+Ctrl.

You can additionally make the game even faster by customizing High-Speed Mode in the options menu.

Trails has the rare feature of letting you "default" to opening your last save. If you missed it on first launch, right-click the game in Steam, navigate to Properties > General, then for Selected Launch Option, pick "Resume from the latest save data".

From then on, if you double-click the game, you will get a loading screen, and then you will be in-world, standing where you last saved.

You can turn them off! The original game was built to emphasize directions as part of the character dialog, so it ends up working well. Navigate to the Options menu, and you can change Objective Marker Display to "(Always) Display", "Hide when Idle", "Hide when Moving", or "Disabled".
Hide When Moving may be preferable if you just want to minimize distractions when exploring.

You can also change the minimap display from Rotation to Fixed, so that when characters mention "North/East" during cutscenes, it's easier to interpret this into a direction. (Note that part of the reason it defaults to rotation is because it displays terrain height in 3 dimensions)

The game only briefly mentions it, but out of combat, you can press Right on the D-pad (H on keyboard) to access a quick healing menu via Arts, or Left on the D-pad (I on keyboard) to open your items.