This short guide applies to both the original LUCT PSP, as well as One Vision. They both use the same mechanics, OV is just mercifully faster. With that out of the way, let’s grind!

Class Level experience

This is the first and most obvious type of experience, as well as being the simplest. Every fight in the game has a set pool of experience that it will give out. Usually, the more important ones will have the most, while the ones in the POTD will have almost none. This amount is split between all units in the fight, but will also expand if you gain any extra friends during your visit. Experience will skew noticeably towards lower classes, but will also be raised for each unit of a class type that you brought in. In the example above, 4 classes are at level 7, 3 of which receive the same experience. The one at Level 6 gains almost twice as much, while the one with extra units sees about a 50% addition for their extra unit.

TLDR: If you want to raise a class, make it the lowest level in the team, and make as many units that class as possible. Tynemouth is the easiest and most consistent grind spot, being a simple 7 v 7 battle with very unskilled enemies. Putting 7 units of the same class in there will boost the class all the way to 10 from their first fight.

As a final note, in the vanilla game, this is an incredibly easy way to make overpowered units in no time. For some reason, they gave units an 0.1-0.4 increase to all stats based on class type per level, meaning with just the 5 basic classes you start with, you could potentially max out their stats in chapter 1. It wouldn’t be very fun, but you could do it. This was removed in OV, with all classes just having the best of their stats naturally instead.

Generally, the game has 3 modes for how it spawns levels, as well as 2 “modes” for each fight. These are a “Low Level” and “High Level” version, which spawn based on where you are in the game, as well as your highest level. Gear the AI can equip is generally limited to what you can find in stores for the low levels. High levels can use elemental gear, and spawn either after Hanging Gardens, or level 23-50, depending on the Chapter and Battle in question.

Random: Random battles will spawn based on trying to match their highest or lowest allowable level to your highest deployed level. Sometimes this will be under or above by 1-2. In Tynemouth’s case, it’s a minimum of 3, and 1 under your max deployed level. Random units will spawn with the highest level gear they can equip, based on their AI Setting, Skills, and RNG (This is why you often see units with 2 weapon skills, which they semi- randomly choose for flavor).

Story: These will spawn at their set level, with semi-randomized gear, but will switch over to a scaled High Level version if at a high enough level. Usually this is the Chapter # + 11, +/- 3 or so. This can very a lot, but you have to be really over levelled or only using one class to hit the “level 30 wall” in most cases. Even using one class, you usually won’t hit it until the end of Chapter 3 just due to guests.

DLC: Many of the DLC areas only seem to have one “mode”, which is a lower level version of a High Level setup. They have better stats, gear, and skills, but don’t scale up. This seems to apply to many of the Chapter 4 sidequests, including most post-game story encounters.

Proficiency Levels

This is where stuff starts to get complicated. There are many skills that will rank up with use. These can rank up to a natural maximum of 8, going up to 8+4 with equipment. The game will crash if the value ever goes to or above 13, which isn’t possible without messing with the files. Not helpful, just interesting.

(For reference, generally speaking each skill will give a 4 Atk and 3 Def bonus using or defending against the relevant skill per rank.)

The basic rule is this: Every time a unit interacts with another unit (Not an obstacle, it has to compare stats with another unit to gain experience), experience is rolled. This experience number is then split between all relevant skills for each individual damage-dealing or healing (if applicable) action taken. This split will seemingly not occur if a skill is maxed, however.

This means that if you are training several skills at once, they will be noticeably slower. If you’ve ever been playing vanilla, with a unit running Swords, Anatomy, Parry, and Augment Wind with the Lombardia…only to find them at Rank 1 for most of those in the post game, this is likely why. It should be noted that OV boosted these gains by roughly 6-18x, depending on the commonality skill, making these situations a bit less likely.

Each skill will go up at a different rate, though it should be noted that the vanilla game has most of them at roughly the same level, with the notable exception of Fusils, which seem to go up around 2x faster than most other weapon skills.

Note that what I mean by “individual action” is that experience is generated for every time a unit stops their damage-dealing or healing move, with a few exceptions. So for example Spiritsurge will train Augment Light, while Innervate will not, because the skill is not used in it’s calculation. Heal will get a ridiculously small boost, while Harvest Dance does not, and will not train the element. A Counter Attack uses the bonus damage calculation, being hit by the same weapon will resist it, and train the skill as well. Blocking with the relevant weapon does no damage, but does seem to reward around 50% of damage XP. Additionally, being hit by or avoiding any damage-dealing elemental skills will still train those elements, because the game had to think about them. Parry and Deflect can train during blocks and hits, as long as it thought about rolling, it counts, which makes it pretty random.

Hopefully that all makes sense.

Go to Tynemouth Hill.

In general, if you want to grind your proficiencies, Tynemouth has everything you could ever need to safely do the same action for several hours.

They have tons of units that only use basic attacks, and a few casters with common elements.

They can have up to 3 clerics, which can take punishment and heal as much you need.

They have weak archers for training Deflect, bad accuracy melee units for training Parry, and plenty of rain to ruin their odds of hurting an even modestly competent party.

They have 3 lizards that can spawn for training Herpetology, as well as pretty much every weapon type for faster sparring.

It’s almost always available, save for some short parts of Chapter 2-3.

The units here have the lowest spawn level, and lowest skills in the game, starting at 1, only ever going up to 3 by level 30. They are here as punching bags.

Tips, Tricks, and Cheese:

If you want to train a unit fast, give them a ton of armor, a bad weapon, and a recovery option. Slap them in a corner, and let them counter attack lizards for a while. This speeds them through their levels in no time.

In either version, if you want to train a unit passively, make a barricade around a cleric or 2 in Tynemouth, give them the worst weapon they’ve got, and leave them on AI control. In vanilla, Rune Fencers with Barricades can work for this. In OV, Knights with Phalanxes will do better. The idea is just to make the two of them stuck together, endlessly attacking each other in a training stalemate until you’re satisfied. This was about the only way to make Cudgels a somewhat useable weapon early on in vanilla.

Using a buff on a weapon will train that weapon as if they had the element with every hit. Very handy, and faster than training augments with actual magical nonsense.

Two units training with the same weapon can train twice as fast. Give your casters some Stickers or Shanks, and let them take swings at each other from the back for a while. You can get some proficiency training while they avoid actual harm. Same goes for Clerics.

If you need to train Racial skills, especially things like Anatomy, throwing rocks will give you pure experience toward the skill. They never counted on people trying this, so it goes up pretty fast.

That’s all for now, if you have any questions, let me know, and I’ll answer them here!