Can you complete all the quest in one playthrough? or Should you strive to only do quest that belong to specific characters?
I can’t say for sure, since I’m only about a quarter of the way through. But so far I have plenty of time. I’ve already unlocked both girls’ second tiers of spells and I’m months away from the first test. (Tempero Ignis is OP.)
The shortest quest I’ve seen so far has an 8 or 9 week window, and I have never had a problem completing one.
You have ~150 days and there’s 79 quests and 100+ spells to learn. Even if you learn a new spell or do a quest every turn, you probably still wouldn’t be able to do all the quests; on top of that, you have to spend turns training to gather spirit for learning spells. After the first test you started getting peppered with quests, and the required spirit to learn new spells from the third tier is pretty steep.
How are endings determined?
I’m not sure, but this review (linked off the Jast USA twitter) says that there are ‘epilogue quests’, and it implies that when you do one, your game immediately ends.
From this, I would hazard a guess that when you meet all the requirements for an ending, it will appear as a quest. If you pick that quest, you will get that ending. Or lock yourself into the endgame route for that path, or something similar.
EDIT: This is indeed how the character endings work. When you meet the requirements for a character ending, a quest will drop with a star. It is marked with a plus-affection symbol, but that is just there to tell you which character the quest is for. Picking that quest immediately terminates the game proper (you won’t ever take a next turn to, say, learn magic) and you will instead get the character ending for that girl.
The narrative gets a bit wonky; the 3 year thing is dropped altogether (the two character endings I’ve gotten to date both change Domino’s circumstances enough it becomes a moot point). And it’s also wonky the other way - if you do unlock one of the quests, but then don’t do it, there is a considerable amount of narrative buildup that also just abruptly goes nowhere. (Kaya’s for example makes no sense; if you get her ending, then backtrack to scenes that happen between the quest you have to do to unlock it - and her actual epilogue quest - it makes no sense that not getting her ending is just … dropped by the game - basically the game has to retcon some of the stuff that only happens in her ending if you don’t take her route).
Might as well make this a sort of mini-FAQ thread in case people have questions.
About the tests:
I’ve only seen one test so far, but I expect the other two will be similar. For the first test, the game will randomly select spells that must be cast during the test. There are two, one for each character. For the second test, the game will randomly select a type of spirit and require that the girls generate a minimum amount of it. The third test just combines the first two. I’ve seen reviewers claim the tests are trivial - yes, they really are.
Fail any of the requirements, and fail the test. (If one girl passes, but the other does not, then you fail anyway. For the first and third tests (and probably also the second, but it isn’t tested), the game will even erroneously claim both girls failed.) This is an immediate game over for the first, second, and third tests. (I have seen it claimed that failing a test is required to get certain routes, but I don’t see how that’s possible. If that is so, there must be some other conditions that would change this that I haven’t seen.)
Nothing else seems to matter during the test. Casting the spell more than once doesn’t seem to have an effect, I don’t think you gain Spirit for doing the test, and there doesn’t seem to be any penalty for using the quick-cast on the right of the screen.
Since I’ve seen people claim that failing a test is necessary to get on a certain route, I suspect this is false.
Optimizing generating spirit:
Tempero Ignis
Basically the key to generating lots of spirit is to take advantage of the spell Tempero Ignis. This can be literally the first spell both the girls learn, and it makes every die present when it’s cast worth +5 spirit for the rest of the week. (Bonus dice from other spells generated after Tempero Ignis was cast are unaffected by the bonus.) And it stacks with itself.
So, some simple math. This assumes you use the Quick Cast to cast Tempero Ignis right at the start. (Note that doing so on the first turn costs no spirit, since quick casting costs all the spirit the girl already had, which is 0, and doesn’t affect what you get from the current roll.)
Assuming no spells cast at all
Then for the week, each girl will earn 3 dice * 6 days * 1 point per die = 18 points
Assuming 1 cast of Tempero Ignis: Then for the week, each girl will earn 3 dice * 6 days * 6 points per die = 108 points
2 casts of Tempero Ignis: Then the first day is wasted, so each girl will earn 3 dice * 5 days * 11 points per die = 165 points
3 casts of Tempero Ignis: Then the first 2 days are wasted, so each girl will earn 3 dice * 4 days * 16 points per die = 192 points
4 casts of Tempero Ignis: Then the first 3 days are wasted, so each girl will earn 3 dice * 3 days * 21 points per die = 189 points
5 casts of Tempero ignis: The first 4 days are wasted, so each girl earns 3 dice * 2 days * 26 points per die = 156 points
6 Tempero Ignii (for completion’s sake): Wastes everything but the last day, earning 3 dice * 31 points per die = 91 points
3 casts of Tempero Ignis gets you the most points, and past that point you start overspecializing in the 2 types of spirit it takes to cast anyway. Note that 3 Tempero Ignii is worth more than 10 times as much Spirit as not casting it at all.
This must have something to do with the third test, then. Failing the second test gives me (at least on my first playthrough) an immediate game over, same as the first test.
Character Endings (work in progress);
In general, you do not need to do ALL a character’s quests to get their ending. Some quests seem to be important, and failing to do them means you can’t get that characters’ ending. Others just count towards the minimum number of affection points that you need.
Olivia: To unlock Olivia’s epilogue quest, I did the following quests marked with her affection points: Olivia’s Flowers, Hound Food, and Bounty Hunt. There is also an event at one of Fianna’s tea parties discussing a war that causes her to get upset; this is probably key (and it’s hard to tell whether it is one of the fixed always-happens events or one of the randomly-generated ones.)
Kaya: Ruins Exploration triggers a series of scenes in the pre- and post- activity scene slots. The end of these causes her epilogue quest to unlock (requiring several game turns), but it seems to have a fixed deadline around turn 135 (as the quest spawned for me with 2 days remaining to finish it). You must finish Ruins Exploration, and also have enough points. I completed the following additional quests: Missing Children, Restless Dead, and Kaya’s Cake.
Mariella: Build all the rooms, and complete The Tower’s History, Glasses Repair, and Daily Life of a Genius.
2x Temperio Ignis is a solid starter til you get better spells. Once Aria unlocks Celero and Tardatio you can rely on those instead–they’re much more powerful. I made a beeline for them as soon as I got her second spellbook (sometime in year 2), and once unlocked I was able to regularly score 1000+ spirit per week on both girls evenly spread across all elements. Before that I was lucky to get 300-500.
No, it’s the second test, but it’s not about getting on her route exactly.
One character’s plotline is unusually tricky to trigger, and unlike all the other characters, doing her Star Quest doesn’t end the game.
If you intentionally botch the second exam after doing her Star Quest, then you get a (very short) ending with her.
Haven’t unlocked Tardatio myself. I can see that being powerful. I misread the effect of Celerio before (I thought it was a one-time buff of +3 to all, the description says it’s +3 every turn). I’ll definitely have to try it out.
I figured out a combo that reliably gets me 6-800 or so spirit per week per element using Tempero Ignis, Celerio will probably make it even more ridiculous. Caelestis Flos seems to work by having each face of the die generate spirit as if it had been rolled, when a die is hit by a firecracker. This makes the spell really nice if you’ve buffed your dice, as it starts generating hundreds of spirit per type per turn.
So what I was doing goes:
Turn 1: Aria - Tempero Ignis Kaya: Invitare Spiritus
Turn 2: Aria, Kaya: Tempero Ignis
Turn 3: Aria - Immutare, Kaya: Tempero Ignis
Then for turns 4-6, Aria casts Caelestis Flos and Kaya does whatever she wants.
Turning one face on every die to the triple-crescent symbol appears to mean that every time any die is hit by a firecracker, it generates spirit of every type. And screwing around with the Invitare Spiritus die makes this effect even more ridiculous.
Edit: Based on some quick testing, it is not possible to get Aria able to cast all of Caelestis Flos, Immutare, Celerio, and Tardatio. There’s no way to make the dice work. You also can’t make Caelestis Flos + Immutare + Celerio work. You can make Caelestis Flos + Celerio + Tardatio work, and if you throw in Revivificare then you get over 2500 Spirit on every element from Kaya, but only around 500 or so for Aria. That is good to know, but it just confirms that Caelestis Flos needs highly buffed dice, and Immutare is a big buff.
I never even unlocked Immutare. From the description the effect only applied to the day it was used on, so it didn’t sound interesting.
I found a really awesome combo that makes use of Revivificare (+5 dice for Kaya) and Imitor Ars (Aria casts same spell as Kaya).
Turn 1: Revivificare + Imitor Ars
Turn 2: Celero (Aria)
Throw in whatever else you want to generate spirit (I used a black hole, a Valkyrie summon, and the magic circle teleport). This combo yielded 5000-12000 per element for each girl, (though I also got a random spell cast that did something unknown [it was literally the random spell that Kaya casts], which I then duplicated using Aria’s Remao Horaef spell :P).
Cons: Imitor Ars requires the Chapel to cast (probably not possible to use til mid-game), and both spells come from Aria and Kaya’s forbidden tome, which makes them endgame spells. Imitor Ars is necessary for this combo, as it’s not very useful for just Kaya to get really high results.
The ultimate spell from Kaya’s tome looks really ridiculous, but the learning requirements are really harsh, making it appear unobtainable on a first playthrough unless you plan specifically around it.
I also noticed that Caelestis Flos is a nice generator spell. It works best when the dice are high in the screen.
Yeah, Immutare changes one face to the triple-crescent symbol permanently. It’s a double-edged sword, honestly. The extra bonus face is nice, but because of the fact that you lose faces on the die, it can be very hard to combo into other things. And yeah, that combo does sound pretty ridiculous.
You’re right, Kaya’s ultimate spell looks pretty ridiculous. You’re also right that I couldn’t get it my first playthrough 
It requires 8 of 2 different types of spirit. I’m pretty sure 8 is the max you can get your capacity up to at all, meaning if you skip ANY of the capacity-boosting quests of that type, you can’t get it.
Also is it just me or is Undine better than the other two summons? Making a die better for each remaining round seems to me to be better than generating a lowish amount of spirit right now.
The Valkyrie summon seems pretty good. It’s like a free low-level spirit generator auto-cast every turn–very useful for maximizing spirit generation in the last couple days when the dice are fully buffed. Undine is also good, but it’s outclassed by Celero, which applies to all dice. I often use Undine, followed by the Valkyrie. Sylph seems most useful when there’s objects in the field to hit, but I don’t bother with objects anymore since I can generate a ton of buffed die. Persistent field effects seem more useful since they auto-cast every day, while objects disappear after being hit a few times.
Hi, JAST USA has moved to a new forum system, which much much more modern and easy to use. We’ll eventually close these old forums after some months. I’ve started a new thread at the new forums, at
https://connect.jastusa.com/discussions … 5000025196
Thanks, and hope to continue the discussion over there!