Valkyrie Profile (Playstation) - RetroAchievements/guides GitHub Wiki
Written by Sines, don't hesitate to ping me if you see mistakes in this guide.
This guide is an extended and more explicit version of what was initially my routing notes. Everything has been personally tested by me and should be replicable by following the notes. This is not a play-by-play walkthrough, the goal is to cover all the achievements, provide a roadmap to obtain them and give tips & tricks to save on time.
| Set Difficulty | 4/10, Not a very hard game but can be time-consuming |
| Approximate time to master | 40~60h depending on efficiency and use of emulator speed-up |
| Minimum numbers of playthroughs needed | 2, technically 1.5 with some key backup saves |
| Number of missable achievements | 15 as per set tag, I'd argue for more but I'll detail more when I cover them |
| Does difficulty affect achievements? | Yes, Normal & Hard mode have mutually exclusive dungeons |
| Hardest achievement of the set | Voices for the grind, Pest Control is technically the hardest fight in the game |
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Valkyrie Profile is an RPG loosely inspired by Nordic mythology where you play as a Valkyrie tasked to retrieve the souls of dead warriors in preparation for the Ragnarok. Due to the premise, this mean that every single one of your companion in the game will die before joining you, often in terrible ways, and you will be here to watch it happen. Fun times !
The gameplay loop is a mix of exploration, with a bit of platforming, and classic RPG turn based battle. While fighting each of your 4 team member is assigned to a right-side button (X O □ ∆) and will attack when you press their symbol. It's up to you to mix & match your lineup and pay attention to their moves and timings to be able to juggle and combos enemy, filling a special gauge that will then let you unleash devastating Supers unique to each characters. There are of course a few more systems but I'll cover them in due time.
While technically you don't need to do two full playthrough if you are already familiar enough with the game, I'd recommend to do the set in 2 playthroughs. The first one in Normal mode for the Ending B and the second one in Hard mode for the Ending A. You totally can switch which ending for which difficulty you want to tackle, and a lot of the regular Normal mode dungeons are also available in Hard mode, but I'll present the achievements with that order in mind.
As the majority of characters recruitments are trivial but can slightly change in unlock order, I'll cover them in the Misc section.
Step 1: Ending B Normal Mode
First playthrough, you don't have to go through the harder puzzles of Hard mode dungeons but you also don't get the most powerful equipment. I'd recommend a Normal mode run for anyone not familiar with the game rather than Easy as the difficulty works a bit backward in the game. You don't have to level all your characters from level 1 as in hard mode so don't hesitate to test different lineups and see what clicks for you. This run should cover most of the progression and misc achievements. There are a couple of missables but nothing that isn't obvious if you take time to read the achievements description.
Step 2: Ending A Hard Mode
Now that you are familiar with the game this should be a breeze to go through. While everyone start at level 1, you have access to enough options to make it a blessing in disguise for customization. Hard mode dungeons are not necessarily harder from the enemies and boss encounters but more due to their puzzles and gimmicks. I wont provide a full solution of those outside of advices here and there based on my experience. If not already the case this run should also cover any story mode Misc achievements that you did not get through the Ending B playthrough. It's also here that you should prepare the most for postgame as this is the save you will use to unlock everything.
Step 3: Postgame
This last step will cover the postgame, unlocked by having a save in the last dungeon of the respective endings. Called the Seraphic Gate, you will have to run through it once for the usual map/treasure/boss completion achievements, find a couple of bonus fights and this is also where you will have to engage the biggest grind of the game to unlock 100% Voice sample completion.
Step 4: Misc
For all the other non-story specific achievements that can (and in majority will) get unlocked long before you finish the game. Most are fairly obvious, some require a bit of game knowledge and I'll share my tips to ease the grind for the Voices achievement.
Bonus Step: PSP
With the release of the PSP set, I've added this section to cover a few of the new achievements that I thought could use a guide.
Learn on how to use crystals. They are mandatory for map completion achievements and some of the chests acquisition. There are mainly five ways to use them.
- The first way is to create platforms on walls or on the ground. This is used for straightforward platforming and scaling walls. You can only have three at the same time, if you create a fourth the oldest will de-spawn
- Second way is to slash them to create pieces. Those pieces are independent from the crystal spawn count and can be used to reach the maximum height in a lot of rooms: create a large crystal where you want to climb, create and slash 3 small crystal to create pieces and move those pieces onto the big crystal. You can then jump once on the crystal, pick up the pieces again and this time stack them up (also work with chests if there are any lying around).
- Breaking a crystal while being near it will boost you to the side. This is needed in a handful of dungeons where low ceiling keep you from doing a straight jump.
- Breaking a crystal will also spawn a semi-invisible platform that you can jump on. This platform will slowly descend towards the ground before de-spawning. There are a few places where you cant simply scale up a wall due to terrain and will need to create a crystal on a ceiling to make a platform and continue.
- Finally you can throw crystal at enemies to freeze them for a bit. This can be used to bypass encounters but is at no point required for the set mastery.
As a misc, crystal are also used in a couple of puzzle. I'll touch upon it when covering the related section, but generally speaking crystals can reflect ice beam and broken pieces can be used as a weight.
Other than that, a good 3rd party map helps tremendously for chest and map completion. I couldn't find any online be it wiki or gamefaq, but if you manage to find a copy the Prima Official Strategy Guide is great !
Valkyrie Profile difficulty is a bit wonky once you know how the game work. As far as I'm aware there are no change in enemies stats, it only change which dungeons you have access to, how many xp you get and what level your fresh recruit start at (also lock you out of ending A if you chose Easy). In Hard mode, everyone start at level 1 and this can greatly get abused !
- Equipment allow you to boost characters on each level up. The main two are the Bracelet of Zoe that boost DME (HP basically) by 300 per level up and the Emerald Necklace that boost CP (used for skills unlock) by 100 on the same condition.
- You can quickly level up new recruits through the "Party" menu. There you have the ability to attribute the "Event Exp" that you got while playing. I'd recommend not giving too much exp at once in order to not hit the CP cap (999). For mage or archer if you put them in the back row you could even skip this step entirely as they are mostly safe and should catch up quickly to the level of the dungeon you are running.
- An alternative use for the exp distribution would be to keep it for the units you don't like and plan to transfer.
- There should be not point at all in the story where you need to grind levels but if you really want to there are very few places where you can farm for free. Any enemy killed will be gone for good until you quit the dungeon, which cost 2 time period. The few exceptions I found were the Arkdain Ruins that should re-spawn enemies when you goes through the entry gate (last zone before going back to the world map) and any chest that is trapped by an enemy spawn. You can kill the enemy, change room without picking the chest content and it will spawn a new one from it's trap. Again, this is not needed.
- You can run away from most non-boss fight, even Zombie Dragon. Running away from a battle make the enemy de-spawn entirely as if you had killed it.
- Having one or two mages in your lineup can trivialize most fights: by hitting Select and choosing the Magic tab, you can cast "All Units" spell. Those spells will hit every enemies with the same potency as if you had cast it regularly on a single enemy. The only downside is that you cant combo from it.
- The combo gauge increase your damages by a percentage based on Hit count. A useful strategy is to have characters with low damage but lots of hits go first and have your hard hitter attack last.
- Related to the previous tip, AOE spells when cast as Great Magic also benefit from this and can be used to cheese a lot of early bosses. You wont get unbreakable rods for a while but you do get a lot of breakable one that you can keep in reserve for a difficult bosses.
- Once you have the Guts and Auto-Item skills you become borderline invulnerable. Guts make it so you have a high chance of surviving a killing blow at 1HP and Auto-Item can be configured to automatically use the revive items when Guts fail. Outside of self-imposed challenge there is no reason to use any other combo of main skills on any characters.
- The Heal spell is a percentage-based AOE, meaning it will heal your team the same amount if cast by a lv 1 or by a lv 50.
- In the Ability tab you can switch around the attack order of your characters. This can be useful to get better synergy. An example is switching around the attacks of Aelia so that she throws her spear in her first attack, making her timings easier to use.
- Slayer weapons are great for quickly getting rid of powerful enemies. The one you should use the most is the Dragon Slayer, with maybe the Beast Slayer and Daemon Slayer being useful. They have a low chance of breaking but you shouldn't play around RNG, I'd recommend only using them on the relevant stationary enemy before going back to your regular loadout.
Step 1: Ending B Normal Mode
For this route no seemingly random requirement to worry about: enjoy the dungeons, familiarize yourself with the game, send one or two Einherjars per chapter to please Freya and it should be a straight line to Jotunheim.
Before we even start the game:
Watch the Prologue
- Wait on the Start screen or manually select the Prologue option, watch all of it and you will get this achievement
Baby's first dungeon and the tutorial, you should have no trouble here. One item you can find here is the Treasure Search accessories which will make a small blue light appears around Valkyrie when she is in a room with unopened treasures. Quite useful if you're playing blind.
Defeat Elder Vampire and its Dragon Servants in Artolian Mountain Ruins
Completely map Artolian Mountain Ruins
Collect all treasure in Artolian Mountain Ruins
When you are out of the first dungeon it's a good opportunity to get the "Bad" ending, Ending C. Make a save, skip around to the end of multiple chapters (Press Start in the pause menu to skip periods) until let's say chapter 6. Go into any town and exit, Freya will be here to scold you for not doing your job properly. Skip around some more and she will get angry and attack you, triggering the Ending C.
Reach Ending C
Reload your save and continue where we left off
Still the early game, if you use the Treasure Search accessories it can be a bit hard to see it trigger due to the snow effect. It's also where the game start the trend of hiding chests behind the foreground so don't forget to check those areas. I wont repeat it later because it will always work the same but this is also likely the first instance where you need to stack broken pieces/empty chests on top of a big crystal to be able to reach high enough for map completion.
Defeat Insane Yetis in Forest of Woe
Completely map Forest of Woe
Collect all treasure in Forest of Woe
Some light puzzle elements start to creep up. Your goal is to put all of the statues onto a seal. You can push/pull by pressing X near a statue and you can slash the stone demons with your sword. Equip Valkyrie with a bow and burst the boss in the first round for an easy win. There is a hidden room at the start of the dungeon accessible by jumping down the well.
Defeat Drow Shamans and Ramapithicus in Solde Catacombs
Completely map Solde Catacombs
Collect all treasure in Solde Catacombs
Pretty straightforward dungeon. The boss can be one-shot with a Dragon Slayer and you can get one for free by visiting Angrim's House.
Defeat Lesser Dragon in Dragoncastle Caverns
Completely map Dragoncastle Caverns
Collect all treasure in Dragoncastle Caverns
Same as the previous dungeon, the Dragon Slayer can be used to destroy the boss.
Defeat Dragon Zombie in Nethov Swamp
Completely map Nethov Swamp
Collect all treasure in Nethov Swamp
Another straightforward dungeon with the exception of the boss room. There you will need to stack chests / broken crystals on top of a big crystal and also create a hidden platform to reach the top part of the map and the additional treasures.
In Gorhla Cult Headquarters defeat Thaumaturgist and two Lesser Vampires with only Valkyrie in party
- You cant miss it, you need to beat this layout in order to "activate" the dungeon. There is a save point in a room just next to it if you want to be extra careful. Just dismiss everyone in your party for the fight, it shouldn't be hard to beat. If the Thaumaturgist gives you trouble you can equip Valkyrie with a bow to kill him first.
Defeat Noble Vampire and Will-O'-Wisps in Gorhla Cult Headquarters
- Will-O'-Wisps are annoying because they will explode on your party if their HP fall below half. Pay attention to your damage and don't hesitate to end your turn early if you cant kill them before they reach the threshold. The fight can be made very easy if you equip Valkyrie with the Lightning Edge sword: it absorb Electricity attacks which is the majority of the damages you face here. You can get one through RNG drop in the first Sacred Phase reward or by buying it in the Divine Item shop.
Completely map Gorhla Cult Headquarters
Collect all treasure in Gorhla Cult Headquarters
The dungeons gimmick is to reflect the ice beam toward pillars to make them breakable. You can do so by creating a crystal where the beam should hit on the ground / ceiling. The exact location can be finnicky sometimes so be prepared for a bit of trial and errors. If you get frozen by the ice beam or by touching a moving statue don't worry it will worn off on it's own, it's only there to annoy you and waste your time. Their are multiple dragon zombies but they are still vulnerable to the Dragon Slayer. Alternatively if you don't care about their exp, you could just flee the fights to move past them. The boss is weak to the Daemon Slayer sword which you should have gotten from a chest in Nethov Swamps. Don't forget to bring Kashell to the boss fight for the [m] achievement.
Defeat Greater Demon in Oddrock Caves
Defeat Greater Demon in Oddrock Caves with Kashell in party
Completely map Oddrock Caves
Collect all treasure in Oddrock Caves
The whole dungeon is timed which is annoying for the map completion. Most of the big room will require you to stack broken crystals to be able to reach enough height for the top part. You will need at least two trips to map everything in any case as you will be thrown out of the dungeons after killing the boss, leaving some of his room unfinished. As we are doing a B ending run with this step, it doesn't matter when you meet Brahms at all.
Meet Brahms in his castle
Defeat Brahms in his Castle
- Brahms fight is actually not that bad. While he has very high damages, he can only kill one person per turn. With that in mind, having a mage on resurrections duty or manually using items should be enough while your other two members deal damage. If it's too tough for you in this chapter you can always do this fight later on once you have Guts and Auto-Items.
Completely map Brahms Castle
Collect all treasure in Brahms Castle
Your first big boy dungeon ! You will start the dungeon right after Lorenta recruitment so be sure to be ready. The layout is very annoying but there is no confusing gimmick to it. Locate and activate two machines to be able to use the teleportation circles on the floor. One will lead you to additional treasures, the other to the boss room. If you teleport and see a save point that mean you are about to face the boss ! The boss is [m] if you don't do it in a single go: going out of the tower will make him escape instead of fighting you. For map completion you will need to do the dungeon twice (including re-activating the machines) because of the boss room not being fully mapped before the fight. If you use Lorenta for the whole dungeon she will be largely on par with the rest of your team, don't forget that you need her in your team for the other [m] achievement.
Defeat Lezard Valeth and Dragon-Tooth Warriors in Tower of Lezard Valeth
- Dragon-Tooth Warriors are vulnerable to the Dragon Slayer but you shouldn't need it. One annoying skill they have is that when you kill them they will boost the stats of the other enemies. If you don't want to deal with this trouble, equip Valkyrie with a bow and have an archer and/or a mage in your party to focus Lezard first.
Defeat Lezard Valeth and Dragon-Tooth Warriors in Tower of Lezard Valeth with Lorenta in party
Almost completely map Tower of Lezard Valeth
Collect all treasure in Tower of Lezard Valeth
- One item of note in this dungeon is the Creation Gem: this accessory equipable by Valkyrie give you more item transmutation choices and is critical to get access the most broken crafting options later.
This dungeon works like a Tower of Lezard Valeth:Easy mode. There are tons of passageways but less than in the previous dungeon and even the boss has a similar layout to Lezard. There's a bit of crystal platforming needed but nothing difficult. You should get all of them for the achievement anyway but pay extra attention to the Fairy Bottle artifact you get: with the Creation Gem equipped you can transmute it to Orihalcon and then transmute this to the Creation Jewel accessory which give you access to a lot of broken crafting options.
Defeat Wise Sorcerer and Dragon-Tooth Warrior in Black Dream Tower
Completely map Black Dream Tower
Collect all treasure in Black Dream Tower
This dungeon is thankfully straightforward but is likely your first encounter with water physics. If Valkyrie barely touch a pixel of water your jump height will get significantly nerfed. To progress you will have to cut underwater flowers stem and jump on them while they rise to the surface. Make sure to talk to the sorcerer's ghost twice when you start the dungeon to get the seal and once more on your way to the exit to get the achievement and some bonus party exp.
Defeat Kraken and Crab Giants in Cave of Thackus
Completely map Cave of Thackus
Collect all treasure in Cave of Thackus
Talk to Sorcerer again when Sluice Gate is resealed
The layout here is again easy to follow. Annoyingly most of the chest are trapped with an enemy spawn. You will need to create a hidden platform by breaking a crystal on a ceiling to progress to the boss room. Once defeated, create your own crystals on the woman encased in crystal to go around and find additional chests. You don't have to worry about her for now, you will get add her to your party later in Hard mode.
Defeat Raver Lords in Arkdain Ruins
Completely map Arkdain Ruins
Collect all treasure in Arkdain Ruins
Big story dungeon ! The start is rough, you will need to kill Barbarossa twice back-to-back. Once this is done he will respawn again, go whack him once more for the "Still not Dead [m]" achievement. If you are strong enough you might want to let him hit you for a while to get some of the boss related voice samples but it's not that important. Once you get sent to the past, you will need to talk to an NPC in order to learn about the Queen secret passage (even if you already know where it is). The passage is behind the bookshelves on the top floor of the castle. Once you are sent back to the present, to reach the boss you will need to break the stained glass mural in the room with a save point. You will need to use crystal platforming to reach it. The boss fight is a bit annoying, make sure to kill Gyne first as he can resurrect his fellow mages.
In Lost City of Dipan defeat Barbarossa twice and see him spring back to unlife again
- I'm not sure why this is tagged [m] as the boss fight seems mandatory, but maybe you are allowed to fail one of the encounter ? I haven't tested this possibility, killing the boss twice in a row will award you this achievement.
Defeat Barbarossa again
Witness past events in Lost City of Dipan and return Barbarossa his crown
Defeat Dallas, Gyne and Walther in Lost City of Dipan
Completely map Lost City of Dipan
Collect all treasure in Lost City of Dipan
This forest is quite large but easy to navigate. You will need to defeat multiple bosses to complete the fetch quest and making the elves repair the Flame Gem for Odin. This is another dungeon that you will need to run twice for completion: after you repair the Flame Gem and exit > re-enter you will gain access to a mist covered area that will lead you to a second Cockatrice and additional treasures. Some of the chests are fairly well hidden behind tree branches so make sure to check every pixel if you see the Treasure Search blue glow on you.
Defeat Sivapithecus in Forest of Spirits
Defeat Venomous Spider in Forest of Spirits
Defeat Cockatrice in Forest of Spirits
Get Accursed Flame Gem repaired
Defeat second Cockatrice in Forest of Spirits
Almost completely map Forest of Spirits
Collect all treasure in Forest of Spirits
This is the only dungeon in Normal mode that play like a Hard mode dungeons, so if you never played those before I hope you enjoy puzzles ! The short version is that to progress you need to discover Stones (check behind paintings) and then use those on statue to move forward to the next segment. While this is not a full walkthrough, here are some things to know:
- When you find a first room with multiple statues, take note on which direction they are facing. You will soon encounter a similar room with a close door, interact with the statue to rotate them in the same position as before to move forward
- In the long corridor with multiple doors you need to enter them in a specific order to unlock the way forward. The order, with the leftmost door being 1, is 3 7 5 4 2 1 6 8
- Near the end you will have to move through two rooms with a patrolling statues. You will need to get "caught" at least once on purpose for map completion. After that to move through the first one you will need to walk behind the statue until it open a hidden door for you. For the second room you will need to dodge the statue a couple of times until it "tires" out and go in the corner. Interact with it to get a new Stone for progression
- The boss is a joke due to his low defense. Don't forget to bring Aelia for the [m] achievement. What is not a joke however is the crystal platforming that you will need to perform to get every chests and finish the map completion. It will require you to spawn a big crystal on the ground and create a hidden platform from the ceiling. With the right timing and placement, you can jump on in and have enough height to reach the top part of the boss room.
Defeat and recruit Gandar in Palace of the Dragon
Defeat Gandar in Palace of the Dragon with Aelia in party
Completely map Palace of the Dragon
Collect all treasure in Palace of the Dragon
Last stop before the end of the world ! The dungeon is quite vast and has tons of enemies, I'd recommend equipping the Dimension Slip accessory (transmuted from the Dryad's Bark artifact) to skip them and concentrate on exploring. You get access back to everyone you previously had sent so you now can assemble your dream team ! You have multiple rooms where you will be required to walk on disappearing platform, the timing can be a tad strict but if you fail they reappear on their own after a while. For map completion make sure that you fully map the "bridges" section (narrow rooms with a Up and Down movement option and a bridge in a background). It can be tricky to notice on the map screen but you need to scale up the room with crystal to fully complete them. As can be expected the bosses Bloodbane and Surt can be tough, I once again recommend equipping Guts and Auto-Item on everyone. They know the Heal spell so you will need to deal enough damage or they will get back to full HP. If you haven't played with it yet, having a mage or two with the spells Sap Guard and Might Reinforce could be the push you need if you're a bit short. Bloodbane has some unique lines samples that cant be gotten in the postgame so you might want to try and trigger them for the voice completion. After defeating him you will get the most powerful sword of the story mode for Valkyrie! Surt also have unique voice lines but because you cant save after you beat him they wont get added to the voice completion so don't worry about it. Once beaten you get a half-assed ending with cryptic dialogues. Congratulation, you've beaten the tutorial ! Time to move on to the "true" ending on Hard mode.
Defeat Bloodbane in Jotunheim Palace
Completely map Jotunheim Palace
Collect all treasure in Jotunheim Palace
Defeat Surt and his Vanir guards in Jotunheim Palace
Reach Ending B, watch credits and scene after
Step 2: Ending A Hard Mode
Now that you are familiar with how the games work let's finish the Hard mode and Ending A achievements. Having everyone start at lv1 is not that bad as you can either grind them up quickly to the rest of your team level through regular battle or with party exp. First point of discussion is on how to reach the Ending A instead of the default one. Often described as "obscure" and "impossible to get without a guide", it's actually not that complicated.
As far as I know, there are actually 3 requirements:
- Get Valkyrie's Seal Rating to 37 or less by Chapter 7 (can check the value in Valkyrie's Status (you could say on her Profile, eh))
- Send Lucian to Valhalla by Chapter 6 maximum
- Having a spare homunculus available: requires to have cleared the Tower of Lezard Valeth and recruited Mystina.
If everything's done properly you will get a unique cinematic where Lucian get tricked and killed by Loki. After that in chapter 8 the last Spiritual Concentration will point to Weeping Lily Meadow. In that case you are now 100% sure that you can get the A ending !
The only tricky part is to manipulate your seal rating. Here's what you should do:
- Play normally up to chapter 3 without visiting Weeping Lilly Meadow or Gerabellum
- In chapter 3 you can loot Brahms Castle but do not meet the boss for now
- Chapter 4 at the very start (before any spiritual concentration) send to Valhalla the relevant warrior you wanted. This mean it should be prepared by the end of Chapter 3. You should have the maximum Seal rating of 100
- Do all the Spiritual concentrations and character recruitments of Chapter 4. Number of recruitable unit is rng based but don't matter, you likely want to keep Lorenta for last as you need to clear the dungeon just after.
- Clear the Tower of Lezard Valeth
- Visit Gerabellum where you will have a cinematic of getting stoned. Not the fun kind.
Witness scene in Gerabellum
- Visit Weeping Lilly Meadow and kill the lingering spirits in the cinematic.
Witness scene in Weeping Lily Meadow
- Go the Brahms Castle, talk to him and refuse to fight.
- Before ending the chapter you should remove the Nibelungen Ring on Valkyrie. At the start of chapter 5 you should be around 40 seal value depending on how many characters you recruited.
- In Chapter 5 recruit Mystina and Lucian, you should have single digit Seal value now.
- Make sure to send Lucian to Valhalla before the end of Chapter 6. Sending someone will raise your seal value by +12 per character sent, but recruiting someone is a -2 so it should balance out with the remaining warriors especially if you don't re-equip the Nibelungen Ring.
Witness Lucian transfer scene
- It's true for all of the game but mostly relevant for us past chapter 4, you can get away with only sending one warrior per chapter to Valhalla (or even none at all in some chapters). Keep the Seal value in mind but the hard part should be over now.
- As said above, you know you are good to go when you see Loki killing Lucian and the Chapter 8 guiding you toward Weeping Lilly Meadow.
Witness Lucian's plan to restore Valkyrie's memories and Loki's deception
Normal mode have a lot of dungeons overlap with Hard mode so if you are fuzzy on the details checks Step 1. I'll only cover new one here. Hard mode dungeons also have Flames Jewels in chests, which you will need to be able to unlock everything in the postgame dungeon. I wont cover them in details as you will naturally get them through their respective Treasure Hunter achievements.
Collect all 8 Flame Jewels
Not too bad for the first Hard mode dungeon, you will need to take note on where the scent change trigger and vines are. You can interact with the green container to get Acid, which when used where a vine used to be will keep it from spawning back for a while. The delay before a vine regrows is 15 screen transitions. Make sure to climb the vine and take the roof route when you reach the top part of the map, if you go through the water your scent will be washed off and you will need to retry the dungeon for the Scent achievement.
Defeat Harpy in Salerno Academy
Completely map Salerno Academy
Collect all treasure in Salerno Academy
From Salerno Academy entrance reach Harpie's room changing Valkyrie's scent no more than 5 times
- Without giving out the whole solution because it work really badly through text format, you should get those scents in that order: Red, Yellow, Blue, Yellow, Red. The last Red scent trigger is from a room in the top-right part of the map.
Welcome to hell. Getting to the end of the dungeon is quite straightforward, you can find tons of walkthrough for that and you can be in and out in less than 5 min. The issue we have here is that we need to visit every rooms for map completion (except the most top-right which is impossible). I honestly don't have any advices for this, it's trial and error. If you get stuck in a room, wait for a bit and touch the ghostly apparition to be taken back at the entrance. Good luck.
Defeat Chimera in Clockwork Mansion
Almost completely map Clockwork Mansion
Collect all treasure in Clockwork Mansion
This dungeon is a breezed compared to the previous one ! You have a couple of gimmicks here. First of all you need to activate the hearts by slashing them with your sword. Once this is done the teeth trap will be activated. You have three main zones where you can fall off in one and they will each activate a different "valve", making some flesh wall traversable. You will likely be missing some of the big rooms for map completion, even though you hit the ceiling at the bottom part. After some trial & errors I found that you need to hit the corners high enough for it to register. In order to do so you should construct a crystal pillar (big crytal + 3 broken crystals stacked up) in some of the stairs between teeth to get enough height for the jump.
Defeat Hel Servants in Dark Tower of Xervah
- The boss fight can be a bit of a pain as they can resurrect each other. The trick is to whittle down their health until you can kill them in a single round. Most Great Magics deals AOE damage if you need a boost.
Completely map Dark Tower of Xervah
Collect all treasure in Dark Tower of Xervah
Don't worry too much about the first zone, you will take damage. RNG can be a pain and you sometimes have to wait a while before being able to progress, being able to cut flames with your sword doesn't help much. For the platforming some of the ceilings are too low and you will be forced to boost yourself to the side by breaking a crystal (breaking by throwing a third blue thingy at it, not with your sword). The [m] achievement is not too bad if you are careful and stay on the left side to catch flames, you can always leave the room to reset it if you got hit.
In Citadel of Flame catch required amount of fire without dropping pot (reenter room to reset)
Defeat Fire Elemental in Citadel of Flame
Completely map Citadel of Flame
Collect all treasure in Citadel of Flame
Another easy dungeon, you have a bit of puzzling to do by changing a platform elevation through a scale system and then exploring underwater. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realize you can infinitely "jump" while underwater. When you reach a zone with a closed door on the left after an underwater section, you'll need to break a crystal and take the piece under the switch. Let it go and it will float to it, unlocking the door. The same need to be repeated x3 in a following room. The last room before the boss where you need to activate the orbs through the Ice beam can be tricky: Once you have a crystal on the ceiling hitting the top Orb, you can break it and create a hidden platform. While this crystal platform lower itself to the ground, the beam will also get lowered which should activate the other orbs. You might need a couple of tries before managing it if your timing is bad.
Defeat Wraith in Sunken Shrine
Almost completely map Sunken Shrine
Collect all treasure in Sunken Shrine
Welcome to hell: Egypt edition. The dungeon is huge, the layout is a pain, you have tons of crystal platforming to perform to reach high chests or map big rooms. You have some rooms that requires you to jump blindly onto the tip of a couple of pixel large platform to progress. You have a boss with unique voice lines and a unique entry in the voice collection so you probably should make the fight last as long as you can to attempt to collect as many sample as possible. Enjoy ! The pieces of advice I have for progression are the following:
- When you enter a room with a giant Pharaoh head pushing you back, you can break their lower part to slide under
- There is a room with two spike platform coming toward you slowly from the left, blocking your passage. You can hit with your sword the lower one to make it stop and progress
- Once you get the dungeon's jewel, you get trapped in the room. To exit, throw a broken crystal piece on the pedestal Indiana Jones style.
Defeat Akhetamen and Undead Slaves in Tombs of Amenti
Completely map Tombs of Amenti
Collect all treasure in Tombs of Amenti
It's not called a Labyrinth for nothing ! The way it work is that each rooms have 1 or 2 machines with a number on it. Add those numbers and the result indicate which room the teleporter will sent you to. When instead of a number the second machine is an operation, apply it to the first number. You can interact with every machines to switch between two possible positions.
Here are my notes on which rooms are needed to get to which numbers. The way to read it is Room Number you want to reach > Room Number that can send you there. For example A > B C F G Indicate that you can reach Room A through the teleporter of rooms B, C, F and G.
- 2 > 22
- 3 > 1 7 9
- 4 > 6
- 5 > 3 13
- 6 > 7
- 7 > 5 14
- 8 > 10 15
- 9 > 2 8 20
- 10 > 1 11 19
- 11 > 6
- 12 > 13 17 21
- 13 > 4 10 12 21
- 14 > 6 12 19
- 15 > 11 17 24
- 16 > 3 18
- 17 > 11
- 18 > 8 11 18 22
- 19 > 15
- 20 > 2 17 18
- 21 > 6 14
- 22 > 18
- 23 > 4
- 24 > 3 20
- 25 > 17
Treasure chests are present in the rooms 1, 8, 11, 13, 14, 21 and 25 (the boss room). Be careful to not get knocked into the teleporter from an explosive trap !
Defeat Dark Lord and ''Vallan'' Demons in Arianrod Labyrinth
Completely map Arianrod Labyrinth
Collect all treasure in Arianrod Labyrinth
For the last of the hard mode dungeon this is a very annoying one. While most of the exploration is standard, you have two big rooms which are hanging gardens. If you fall from there you get back immediately to the world map. And of course those two rooms are full of chests that are rigged to explode, on platform where you have almost no room to move. While you have a lot of free time in Chapter 8 and could do a couple of retry without a sweat my recommendation is just to reload your save before entering the dungeon if you get booted out, except if you managed to open some of the more annoying chests. Other that those rooms it's not very difficult to navigate, some crystal towers will be needed for the end of map completion. Don't forget to bring Jayle in your party against the boss for the [m] achievement.
Defeat Genevieve and Daemonic Barons in Celestial Castle
- Genevieve is another boss with unique Voice samples, so again you might want to make the fight last longer than necessary to get some extra samples.
Defeat Genevieve and Daemonic Barons in Celestial Castle with Jayle in party
Completely map Celestial Castle
Collect all treasure in Celestial Castle
The final sprint to the finish line ! Once you're done with your preparations visit the Weeping Lilly Meadow and follow the story. Compared to the B ending final dungeon this is just a straight line to the end. Kill the bosses, including our old pal Bloodbane, kick Loki's ass and witness Valkyrie get bonkers powers. It end with a bit of a tease for Valkyrie Profile 2 but don't get too excited as the gameplay is quite different.
Defeat Bloodbane in Asgard Hill
Defeat Fenrir in Asgard Hill
- If you are scared of this boss, don't be. He is weak to fire and turns out that one of the dungeon drop you should have gotten is a greatsword that one-shot enemies with that weakness. Equip Angrim with it, slap the puppy and move on.
Defeat Loki in Asgard Hill
Reach Ending A, watch credits and scene after
Step 3: Postgame
Welcome to the Seraphic Gate, prepare yourself to spend hours in this single dungeons ! Although it wont necessarily be due to the following achievements but you'll see when we get to the Misc section. The dungeon is massive, the biggest in all of the game, but not necessarily difficult to navigate. What is a pain is that there is only a single save point at the very beginning meaning that if you want to save your boss / chest / map completion progress you will need to backtrack to the entrance. On top of that any enemy that you kill / flee from will respawn if you re-enter the room. For that reason alone I'd recommend you equip the Dimensional Slip with Valkyrie to bypass them if you don't need the exp (again, you can get it by transmuting the Dryad's Bark Artifact). Only puzzle that can be a pain is when you need to fall on a floor from high enough: to do so you need to break 2 glass panels, which stay broken even if you change room so it's not difficult. Actually they even stay broken if you reset the dungeon after having beaten the boss so you will need to do this only once !
Some of the doors are locked and can only be open by using a Flame Jewels which you should have gotten during the Hard mode run. If you didn't get all of them before saving in the last dungeon of the story mode some of the achievements will be locked, hence why in the intro I said I'd argue for more [m] than what is currently tagged.
Once you beat the last boss and hopefully finish your dungeon achievements, don't turn off the game ! If you run back to the entrance and save, the next time you load you will be able to redo the fights against the two Angels, get more party exp and get a new useless item. While you only need to beat the dungeon once to get the Treasure Hunter achievements, technically to get the ultimate reward you need to kill the last boss 10 more times. After that you will get the ultimate sword, the Angel Slayer ! Of course by now it's utterly useless as you've already proven you had no need of it to beat the postgame...
Defeat and recruit Lezard Valeth in Seraphic Gate
- As a mage his defense is pathetic and he should get destroyed without problems.
Defeat and recruit Brahms in Seraphic Gate
- Brahms is powerful and can be tanky but just like in story mode he can only kill one ally per turn. With Guts and Auto-item you wont have any problem dealing with him.
Defeat and recruit Freya in Seraphic Gate
- Similar to Brahms, Freya is even more powerful but still can only kill one person per turn.
Recruit all Einherjar and three extra characters in Seraphic Gate
- If done properly you should get this after having recruited your last Seraphic Gate ally, Freya if done in the "correct" order. If after getting the 3 bonus warriors you don't get it that mean you've forgotten someone in the story mode. You have more than enough time to recruit everyone during their respective chapters so that shouldn't really happen, you might want to double check in the Misc section before heading to the last dungeon if you're paranoid about this.
Defeat Gabriel Celeste in Seraphic Gate
- With the postgame equipment you have access to he shouldn't be a problem. His special attack Empress Massacre will kill a character but as long as it's a single target attack once again you are safe. When pushed into critical health he will start using Great Magics, which are team-wide. Make sure you can burst him down before that happen. If you are lacking a bit in damage, having two mages to cast Turn 1 Sap Guard and Might reinforce is still a good tactic.
Defeat Giant Lord and Vanirs in Seraphic Gate
- Giant Lord is the Seraphic Gate version of Surt, as you cant save after beating him in story mode. He is a hidden fights, having a low percentage of spawning instead of the 3 Disaster Eyes in the last zone of the dungeon. The trick to try and fight him quickly is simply to flee if he doesn't appear and reset the room.
Defeat Hamsters in Seraphic Gate
- Similar to Giant Lord, the Hamsters are a hidden fight that you can randomly trigger instead of the Loki Shade in the last room before the boss. Same as above, you can quickly flee if they don't appear. Make no mistakes those critters are lethal and are the hardest fight in the game if you are not prepared. As expected from Hamsters, their hitbox is very small and most of your team will have trouble even hitting them in the first place. On top of that they have a devastating team wide attacks that will likely wrecks you even with Guts and Auto-Item.
- The setup I used to kill them in one turn before they can even attack is the following:
- Valkyrie equipped with a Bow
- Janus
- Two mages equipped with Mystic Cross and able to cast Great Magics
- Attack the first hamster with everyone, start a PWS chain going Valkyrie > Janus > Mage 1 > Mage 2. If you're using the equipment gotten in the dungeon and are not a bunch of lv1, you will deal enough damage with the combo-boosted Mystic Cross that all the hamsters will die in the first round.
Defeat Iseria Queen in Seraphic Gate
- Iseria Queen is very similar to her brethren Gabriel Celeste. She has a lot of HP so boost your team / debuff her through Sap Guard and Might Reinforce while making sure you can burst her quickly once she get to critical life levels.
Completely map Seraphic Gate
Collect all treasure in Seraphic Gate
Step 4: Misc
This section is for all the other achievements. I'll organize them in subcategories so everything should be neatly filed.
All the recruitment achievement bar one are obvious and require no guides.
Recruit Lyseria
- Only recruitment that is not obvious, you need to go back to the boss room in Arkdain Ruins and interact with her crystal. After a short battle with her she will join your party. Make sure no matter what to never send her to Valhalla: due to a bug you wont get her back for use in the postgame if you did so.
Again, getting the bonus items is as complicated as reading the achievement description, no guide required.
Turns out it's not very difficult to please Freya as long as we follow her Amazon whishlist of warriors. I personally never had to take into account the technical gain/loss of points from sending Artifacts or not to Odin. You can even get her to be impressed by sending a single warrior, but if you want to make sure you could send two at the same time. If you are not sure, don't hesitate to save beforehand and try something else in case of failure. Make sure whoever you send is fully equipped so they don't die during transfer. You also can buy in the Divine Item menu some misc equipable that boost skills or even grant skills not otherwise accessible like Swimmer or Negociator.
Have Freya satisfied with your progress during Sacred Phase 1-2
- Send a warrior with at least 40 Hero Value. Not a lot of choices, I tend to send Belenus.
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 2-3
- Send a warrior with at least 50 Hero Value. Must know the skills Identify, Leadership and Tactics.
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 3-4
- Send an Archer with at least 65 Hero Value. Must know the skills Survival and Find Trap. I usually save Llewelyn for this as Janus is the best Archer in the game, he should have enough Hero Value by level 15 if you max his traits.
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 4-5
- Send a warrior with at least 80 Hero Value. Must know the skills Hear Noise, Trick and Demon Int, must have the Angel Lips item equipped.
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 5-6
- Send a warrior with at least 90 Hero Value. Must know the skills Attack Power, March, Resist Damage and Defend. Must know Swimmer (Yumei) or have the Pearl of Karula item equipped. Requirement obviously point towards Yumei but because Freya want Attack Power that mean you also need to send a Warrior or Archer.
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 6-7
- Send a warrior with at least 100 Hero Value. Must know the skills Hit and Monster Hit, must have the item Flame Bandana equipped
Have Freya greatly impressed with your progress during Sacred Phase 7-8
- Send a Mage with at least 110 Hero Value. Must know the skills Avoid, Resist Magic and Undead Intelligence. While tempting it's a bad idea to send Lyseria because she is bugged: if sent off you will not get her back in the postgame.
There are a few combination of warriors you can send to Valhalla that will have unique dialogues during the Sacred Phase. While on paper it shouldn't matter if you sent them both at the same time or not, I had some difficulty in having those discussions trigger. My recommendation to be safe is to wait until you have both the characters needed, make a save before spending points on their traits and then send them. That way if something doesn't work you can try and change your timing slightly to see if it's better. The Lawfer / Kashell dialogue was no issue but that's the only way I managed to make Badrach / Jelanda and Suo/Shiho work. I got all of those achievement while the characters had maxed their traits.
Witness conversation between Lawfer and Kashell in Sacred Phase 3-4
Witness conversation between Badrach and Jelanda in Sacred Phase 6-7 or 7-8
Witness conversation between Suo and Shiho in Sacred Phase 7-8
The achievements related to fighting.
Learn all 31 possible extra skills
- I don't know if it's possible to get this achievement in Normal mode, I planned it around the Hard mode run. The following is the full list of the 31 skills needed for this achievement, obtainable through dungeon drop and transmutation. You will likely get some earlier due to the Sacred Phase rewards which I had not taken into consideration when initially routing it.
Chapter 1 |
- Solde Catacombs: Attack Pow, Avoid, Magic Pow 3/31
Chapter 2 |
- Nethov Swamps: Cure Condition, Charge, Wait Reaction 6/31
- Salerno Academy: Slanting Rain 7/31
Chapter 3 |
- Brahms Castle: Throw, Combo Counter 9/31
- Clockwork Mansion: Guts, Adept Illusion, Trick Step, Defend 13/31
Chapter 4 |
- Cave of Thackus: Strike Edge 14/31
- Dark Tower of Xervah: Auto-item, Noise Arrow, Hit 17/31
- Tower of Lezard Valeth: Dancing Sword, Splash 19/31
Chapter 5 |
- Arkdain Ruins: Stun Magic, Dark, Darkness Arrow, Resist Dmg, Resist Magic 24/31
Chapter 6 |
-
Lost City of Dipan: Triple Distress, Concentration 26/31
-
Sunken Shrine: Charge 2, Dark 2 26/31
Chapter 7 |
- Tombs of Amenti: Darkness Arrow 2, Resist Magic 2 26/31
Chapter 8 |
- Celestial Castle: Concentration 2 26/31
Transmutation |
- Last Trial: Transmute Lapis Lazuli (L3) > Found in Artolian Montain Ruin, Brahms Castle
- Reverie: Transmute Dark (L3) > Transmute second Dark from Sunken Shrine
- Scarlet Edge: Transmute Quartz Gem (L3) > Transmute Quartz Gem from Nethov Swamp
- False Arrow: Transmute Darkness Arrow (L3) > Darkness Arrow 2 from Tombs of Amenti
- Mental Reaction: Transmute Concentration (L3) > Concentration 2 from Celestial Castle
Knock out 40 Magic Gems in a single battle
Knock out 4 War Throphies in a single battle
- The trick for those achievements is to launch the enemy in the air and continue hitting him before he touch the ground. A good team for that is Valkyrie / Badrach / Lucian / Any mage (or Janus). If you are killing your enemies before having enough, you can wait for Chapter 8 / Postgame dungeon and equip really weak weapons to make the fight last longer.
Perform 4 PWS in row
- You will likely get this very early on, just need to understand how your team PWS works. Each subsequent PWS start at a lower gauge than the previous so you need to start with the special generating the lowest hits and move up.
Reach 99 hits
- Easiest way to reach 99 hits is to wait for Chapter 8 / Postgame. Create a team of Valkyrie and 3 Mages, equip them with a rod able to cast Great Magics and assign Mystic Cross to them. Find a group with 4 enemies, attack the first one with everyone and then combo PWS Valkyrie > Mage 1 > Mage 2 > Mage 3. You will easily reach 99 hits that way.
Have an enemy die on its turn (due to skill, spell, artifact or bad status effect)
- Another achievement you likely got early on. Easiest way to trigger is either through Poison (Poison Blow magic or using Janus attacks) or Counterattack (Counter skills for 20CP).
Technically some of them could be missable if you used your magic tome like crazy and are now missing some, as you cant farm all of them in the Seraphic Gate. Simply trigger a PWS chain and let your mage cast the respective spell while having equipped a rod capable of Great Magic.
As a quick recap and far from being an exhaustive list of drop:
-
Fire Storm > Ifrit's Caress | Palace of the Dragon (Chp8)
-
Fire Lance > Calamity Blast | Solde Catacombs (Chp1)
-
Mystic Cross > Celestial Star | Lost City of Dipan (Chp6), Forest of Spirits (Chp7), Tombs of Amenti (Chp7)
-
Sacred Javelin > Seraphic Law | Sunken Shrine (Chp6), Forest of Spirits (Chp7), Palace of the Dragon (Chp8)
-
Poison Blow > Petro Disruption | Dark Tower of Xervah x2 (Chp4)
-
Stone Torch > Carnage Anthem | Brahms Castle (Chp3), Citadel of Flame (Chp5)
-
Icicle Edge > Crystal Strike | Salerno Academy (Chp2), Tower of Lezard Valeth (Chp4)
-
Frigid Damsel > Absolute Zero | Solde Catacombs (Chp1), Tower of Lezard Valeth (Chp4), Palace of the Dragon (Chp8)
-
Shadow Servant > Meteor Swarm | Nethov Swamp x2 (Chp2), Citadel of Flame (Chp5)
-
Dark Savior > Cosmic Spear | Citadel of Flame (Chp5), Lost City of Dipan (Chp6)
-
Lightning Bolt > Dragon Bolt | Dark tower of Xervah (Chp4), Palace of the Dragon (Chp8)
-
Prismatic Missile > Gravity Blessing | Sunken Shrine (Chp6), Palace of the Dragon (Chp8)
Ok, nobody panic, this is it. The big Grind, capital G. This right here is where you will spend the most time outside of the story mode.
Complete 100% voice collection (enter Voice Collection in Sound Mode)
There's a few things to know right from the start. The first is that you don't really need to get 100% voice completion. Oh sure the achievement triggers when 100% is displayed, but you ? You ""only"" need to achieve 95%, the game will give you the remaining 5% for free. And trust me, it's a mercy. I don't have the exact number of voice lines needed for the trigger but for info I was missing around 50 lines in total when I got the 95%, which should cover most of the Boss Story-mode only samples.
The second important thing to know is that how the game knows you got a voice sample is based on your save data. Let's say you have an original Save 0. You load it, teach Jelanda Mystic Cross and cast it during battle, unlocking the voice sample. After that you make a new save, Save 1. You go back to Save 0 and repeat the same thing but with Yumei instead and create yet another save, Save 2. Now in the voice completion you will have both Jelanda and Yumei voice samples for Mystic Cross unlocked but if you erase one of the save the voice sample will also get removed.
While there should be little risk of deleting voice completion progress, as you likely have a "main" Save 1 for Normal Mode Ending B and a Save 2 for Hard Mode Ending A, that mean that we will be able to abuse that when it come to Mages voice samples. The thing is, it is hard to grind in Valkyrie Profile. Your time is limited, enemies aren't spawning infinitely, you don't always have access to team synergy that allows you to farm for chest etc. But, if you mostly used your default abilities on mages, only taught Magics of which you had at least 1 remaining sample and looted every chest in the game that mean that you should have at the very least 1 exemplar of every magic tome in the game. As long as this is the case, worst scenario we will be able to create one specific save for every mage to grind for their voice samples.
So let's get started ! For easily identify what you are missing, check on the Voice Collection gamefaq guide that transcript every lines:
My recommendation is to be methodical about the grind, to reduce backtracking. Because we might need to make additional saves later for mages, I recommend making a solid "main" save with all of the non-mages at 100% and most of the Bosses samples. Rather than go through every characters individually, let's look at what type of samples we need and what's the best way to grind for it:
Battle Intro: Usually 4, 1 against strong enemies, 2 for same level and 1 for weak enemies.
- In the Seraphic Gate, most of the time you will be considered "Weak" and so will trigger Sample 1. If it's not the right character that said the line simply flee and try another battle.
- There is a battle in the first Section of Seraphic Gate against an Anemone and two Bream Giants. They are represented by a teleporting skull and are in a hallway next to a Disaster Eye. When you fight this group if your total party level is between 200 and 210, you will be "same level" and can trigger samples 2 and 3. This usually meant for me that I had to level up the character I was grinding for around lv 30. You might need to grind your core party first, but you will only need to do it the first time and after can re-use this formation for future characters.
- The last one against weak enemies can be triggered by using the Practice option (Menu > Party > Practice). There you will always be considered Strong so it's just a matter of starting the battle until the right characters talk.
PWS Moves: 3 parts, when you use your PWS, when you kill an enemy with it and when the enemy survives
- You likely already got the PWS line for everyone by endgame but if not it should take less than a minute to trigger it
- Lines for killing an enemy with your PWS are RNG, find a weak enemy and kill it by doing a combo with everyone, launch your PWS and hope RNG's on your side
- For the last part you can again use Practice mode. The enemy here is invincible and will never do any damage to you so you can launch your special attack again and again until you have every samples.
Battle ends: No specific tips here, just grind battles until RNG decide to give you the samples you need.
Attack: Equip a 3-hit weapon and blast the Practice mode zombie for a couple of rounds
Hit: See counter, as you will need to get hit a lot
Counter: The worst of the lines. What I've observed through my grind is that the Counter line you get is fixed per battle. If on the first counter attack your character say the counter line 1, it will ALWAYS be counter line 1. Due to that it's the most painful as you not only need the counter attack to trigger but you also need the right RNG to get the sample you are looking for. You will have to get hit so much that it's guaranteed that you will get all your Hit and Death quotes.
- Setup: I was putting the character I was grinding sample for in the front line (Square button) and Valkyrie in the backline (Circle button), no one assigned to the other two.
- Make sure the Counter skill is unlocked, equip the Aleph armor, buy a Stun Check if you don't have any and equip it as well (prevent Faint status).
- Set up with Guts and Auto-Item on max level.
- In the very first room of Seraphic Gate after the save point you have two enemy groups: one with 2 murlocs and one with 3. The tactic was to let them hit until you can counter, check which sample you got and flee to another battle.
- If the sample is one you already got, flee. After removing those two groups simply re-enter the corridor and do it again.
- After that it's just you bashing your head against the RNG wall, good luck.
Death: Even if you revive through auto-item, the sample still count. For your warriors you will likely get them while grinding for Counter samples, for Mages put them naked on the front line and let them die.
Boss Battles: You have a few bosses that have unique profiles in the Voice completion file. Most if not all of them have lines that can only be heard during their story mode fight, which I tried to indicate in every instance, but it's not that big of a deal if you are missing some due to the 95% requirement. On the other hand you have some bosses where you can absolutely farm every samples in the Seraphic Gate:
- Iseria Queen, the last boss of the dungeon
- Gabriel Celeste, the boss fight in the Third (green) zone
- Giant Lord, the Seraphic Gate version of Surt. This is the only place where you can add his samples to your file as you cant save after his story mode fight.
- Loki Shade, the Seraphic Gate version of Loki. Same deal as Surt. He seems to be very against the idea of using his regular magic attacks against you so don't worry if you cant seem to trigger those.
- Dark Valkyrie, the Seraphic Gate version of Hrist. It seems to me that it's the only place where you can hear her version of Nibelung Valesti but I could be wrong.
Magic: Mages profile seems huge but every offensive spells actually cover 3 samples at once so it's not that bad. The idea is to go through the full list of spells and cast every Great Magic at least once. It's not very difficult but a bit tedious. If you don't have enough books to teach every spells to all of your mages (which is likely if you haven't specifically grinded for it during the story mode) you can "branch" off your main file by creating new saves for specific mages. For most spells you can (and I'd recommend) use the Practice mode. For Invoke Feather you need to have a dead ally to resurrect so turn off your team's Guts and Auto-Item. Normalize cure status ailments including Faint, which the murlocs in the first room of Seraphic Gate seems to have a very high chance of inflicting. If you want to be extra-efficient, if you have a party with 1 dead and 1 ailment-inflicted ally, you can also use the Practice mode. Their status will be reflected there and because it's Practice they won't actually get resurrected / healed status.
To be exhaustive here's the full list of spells you need to cast (and the Great Magic version for offensive spells)
- Fire Lance | Calamity Blast
- Fire Storm | Ifrit Caress
- Icicle Edge | Crystal Strike
- Frigid Damsel | Absolute Zero
- Lightning Bolt | Dragon Bolt
- Prismatic Missile | Gravity Blessing
- Shadow Servant | Meteor Swarm
- Dark Savior | Cosmic Spear
- Poison Blow | Petro Disruption (best animation btw)
- Stone Torch | Carnage Anthem
- Mystic Cross | Celestial Star
- Sacred Javelin | Seraphic Law
- Invoke Feather
- Heal
- Normalize
- Might Reinforce
- Guard Reinforce
- Spell Reinforce
- Sap Power
- Sap Guard
- Dampen Magic
- Reflect Sorcery
- Shield Critical
L1: Base
L2: Creation Gem > Tower of Lezard Valeth
L3: Creation Jewel > L2 Transmute "Fairy Bottle"/"Manual of Resurrection" to "Orihalcon". L2 Transmute "Orihalcon" to "Creation Jewel"
Wondering what you should send to Odin and what you should keep ? I'm not claiming to be the absolute truth but here are my recommendation for every Artifacts.
Chapter 0 |
Artolian Mountain Ruins :
- Sacred Box --> send it
- Jewelled Blade "Grimrist" --> keep it
Chapter 1 |
Solde Catacombs :
- Secret of Damascus --> send it
- Crown of Felmar --> send it
- Emerald Necklace --> keep it
Forest of Woe :
- Extreme Guard --> keep it
- Phoenix Feather --> send it
Chapter 2 |
Dragoncastle Caverns :
- Spear "Dark Angel" --> send it
- Scarlet Lotus Sword --> send it
Nethov Swamp :
- Bark of the Dryad --> keep it (can later be transmuted the Dimension Slip accessory that allow you to phase through enemies)
- Inscribed Fragment --> send it
Salerno Academy :
- Faim Fenn --> keep it
- Holy Grail --> keep it
- Tiara of the Holy Empress --> send it
Chapter 3 |
Oddrock Caves:
- Grand Sting --> keep it
- Golden Fowl --> keep it
Gorhia Cult HQ :
- Incense Burner of Darlis --> send it
- Gaygoyle Statue --> send it
Clockwork Mansion:
- Mirage Robe --> keep it
- Mirror of Pleiades --> send it
Chapter 4 |
Black Dream Tower :
- Bewitching Statue --> send it
- Fairy Bottle --> keep it (to change into Creation Jewel)
Cave of Thackus :
- Bracelet of Zoe --> keep it (important, HP + 300 per level up)
- Coin of Fortune --> keep it (important, EXP + 60%)
Dark Tower of Xervah:
- Holy Sword "Seraphy" --> send it
- Manual of Ressurection --> keep it (to change into Creation Jewel)
- Spear "Basilisk" --> keep it
Chapter 5 |
Arkdain Ruins :
- Holy Wand "Adventia" --> keep it
- Robe of Bryttain --> keep it
- Star Guard --> keep it
Citadel of Flame :
- Holy Water of Mithra --> send it
- Inferna --> keep it (Can oneshot the 2nd to last boss)
- Eternal Lamp --> keep it
Chapter 6 |
Lost City of Dipan :
- Dragoon Tyrant --> keep it
- Rust-Red Circlet --> send it
Sunken Shrine :
- Reflect Armor --> keep it
- Slashing Sword "Farewell" --> keep it
- Tear of the Cosmos --> send it
Chapter 7 |
Forest of Spirits :
- Accursed Flame Gem --> send it
- Arectaris --> keep it
- Elven Bow --> keep it (Very good 3-Hit bows and unbreakable)
Tombs of Amenti :
- Richebourg --> send it
- Mask of the Dead King --> keep it
- Ambrosia --> keep it
- Ruby Music Box --> send it
- Bracelet of Basilisk --> send it
Chapter 8 |
Palace of the Dragon :
- Dragoon Faith --> keep it
- Scroll of Golem --> send it
- Hourglass of the Gods --> send it
Celestial Castle :
- Armor of Aleph --> keep it
- Harp of Atrasia --> send it
- Berserker Bow --> keep it
Labyrinth of Arianrod :
- Secrets of Zolon --> send it
- Shadzard --> keep it
- Unicorn's Horn --> keep it
Bonus Step: PSP
Most of the progression and challenges are similar enough to the PS1 set that I wont revisit them all. A few notes before getting to specifics:
- Single session "Defeat all enemies" works as long as you don't quit the game. If you made a backup save on the overworld and realize after beating a dungeon that you missed some you can reload the backup and only kill those missing encounters. Most useful for Gorhla Cult HQ where the boss room is set before additional encounters in the back, so if you trigger the event you wont get access to those.
- As far as I'm aware only three of those achievements are missable due to enemy chest-ambush traps: any chest opened will remain open on future dungeon revisits. The dungeons in question are, in chapter order, Arkdain Ruins, Tombs of Amenti and the Third part of the Seraphic Gate (green glow). The Seraphic Gate also requires you to have Flame Jewels to open the doors so it's Hard mode only.
- Voice sample completion work the exact same way as the PS1 version, including the save scanning feature. With PSP hardware you have access to more saves slots overall so as long as you've got at least 1 of every spellbooks you can get it.
Defeat Dragon Zombie in Nethov Swamp without using the Dragon Slayer sword. (Normal+, Chapter 2)
- Nethov Swamp Dragon Zombie can be one shot with Tome of Alchemy as the enemy is not tagged "Boss" by the game. You can get a Tome of Alchemy by transmuting the elemental scepter you get in the very first dungeon.
Defeat Lesser Dragon in Dragoncastle Caverns without using the Dragon Slayer sword. (Normal, Chapter 2)
- This time it is tagged as boss and cant be killed with Tome of Alchemy but you can use a Holy Crystal to one shot. Coincidentally you can find one in Nethov Swamp.
Defeat Greater Demon in Oddrock Caves without using the Daemon Slayer sword and without any sorceress on the party. (Normal+, Chapter 3)
- If you can't manage to kill this boss without magic you can use other "Elemental" Crystals to have anyone do a magic attack. You should have some left if you got every other chests before and can get more by using transmutation.
Defeat all 20 unique enemies in Arianrod Labyrinth. (Hard, One Session)
- Just like in the PS1 set Arianrod Labyrinth can be a pain to navigate. To help you make sense of the rooms you can refer to my section on it above in Step 2. Here's the list of rooms with enemies to kill (without the dungeon's Boss): 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24
Perform at least 70 hits in a battle without any sorceress / sorcerer on the party.
- There a few team that are possible but you always should equip Valkyrie with a bow to maximize her hits. Likely will need to wait for the postgame as you will need everyone to have a 3-Hit weapon equipped. You can see my setup by clicking on the picture below.
Starting on the first floor, climb the first area that contains a vertebral column in the Dark Tower of Xervah without pressing Up.
- If you keep messing it by pressing UP on accident I'd recommend unmapping the button in the emulator settings while doing the challenge. The challenge can be reset by simply touching the ground. There's three part to the climb
- At the start, go on the left side, create a big ground crystal and scale the left wall. Once high enough jump to the first ledge on the right.
- Once on the ledge, create another big crystal on the ground at the very tip. From there stack broken pieces and try to have them ladder slightly to the left.
- From your new vantage point you should be able to create a crystal on the tip of the left ledge. You won't have the height to reach it but you can break it to make an invisible platform. From there, jump on the left ledge then the top right ledge and you're done !
Returning from the boss area, climb the first area that contains a vertebral column in the Dark Tower of Xervah without pressing Up.
- Again, you might want to unmap the UP button to prevent stupid mistakes. Start similarly by scaling the right side wall and jumping on the left ledge.
- From there it get a bit more complicated. The dev told me that if you used the chest if still closed you have enough height, but otherwise you will have to not only stack multiple pieces and the empty chest but also throw a tiny crystal bit to get the few pixels you need. The throw setup is not that bad and goes like this:
- Once there, make your stack and climb it.
- And to finish up the achievement create an invisible platform on the right ledge. Once there you can do a normal jump to the left ledge.
Go through the first rear passage in Jotunheim Palace and climb the first area containing platforms without destroying any of them.
- This one is simpler, specially with the alternative method provided at the end ! To start up make your way on the first left ledge via an invisible platform.
- From there, create a crystal stack and make sure you scale them to the right like so:
- You can now create another invisible platform and jump on the final ledge. The jump can be a bit finnicky and you will need to slightly move to the right (but not too much or you'll fall) to be able to make it.
- Alternatively it turns out that if you throw a crystal piece on the level's platform and stand on it you won't make it disappear ! I talked about it with the set dev, Raniejogos and while this was not the intended way and there's no way of blocking players from doing it, he agrees that it is a clever way of solving the puzzle. The first part is the same but as you can see the final jump is made easier:
