Character discussion: Alanis (and Melville)

[KFCrispy]

Alanis is a very flexible character who's often treated as a pure mage since she's pretty frail and doesn't have a great attack. However, 3 rune slot characters end up having a lot of physical damage potential, and she is no exception.
One major problem with using Alanis as a pure mage is that her MAG is relatively low. She'll probably end up with just 1 level 4 spell at level 50-60.. but she can use plenty of low-level spells effectively. Her Pale Gate affinity is A, making her one of the most effective Pale Gate users in the game, and the level 1 spell is great for random battles. B+ in Shield and A in Water give her access to great low-level support spells. She even has Precision to help her safely use Breath of Ice or any Fire spells. Having B+ in Fire and Lightning means that if desired, she can bring Fire or Lightning to S with a Wizard Hat and 3 elemental magic rings.

So Alanis is flexible in the magic department (with a primary weakness being that she doesn't get a lot of level 3 and 4 spells), what about physical attacks? Late game (end of Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5), you will be able to setup Alanis and Melville up to have the 3rd or 4th most damaging 2-person unite while still retaining Alanis' magic abilities.
Alanis has one of the lowest base attacks in the game, even with 2 swings (her C in Swing skill and SPD will naturally get her a second swing by Chapter 4 (take your characters to Flame Champion Hideaway...). But she has 3 rune slots, and Melville gets 2. The Child unite deals double damage, activates quickly, and makes Alanis unbalanced. So as you can expect, stack some Double-Strike, Fury, and Warrior Runes to increase damage. Double-Strike and Fury don't need mention, but Alanis also gains a pretty good boost with a Warrior Rune since her base ATK is so low (~35% gain in ATK at level 60). Melville will gain about 24% in ATK from Warrior Rune, so if you don't have a lot of Fury Runes, it's a good alternative. Double-Strike Runes become a normal shop item if you visit Le Buque's rune shop after obtaining the True Water Rune, and Warrior Runes are rare finds in Zexay's supply shop in Chapter 5.
Melville will naturally achieve 3 swings, making his damage potential pretty good (better than Roland, Hugo, Futch, Hallec, and a bunch of others when not factoring in the random critical hits).
When you give each character just 2 runes, the unite can deal over 6000 damage if Melville has Fury and Double-Strike (this calculation is doe without enemy defense, though.. it will probably drop to 4500-5500). If you give Alanis all 3 damage boosting runes, Melville can use Warrior instead of Fury to still do over 6k dmg. The optimized unite (maxing Damage skill for both characters, all 3 runes for Alanis, Fury and Dbl-Strike for Melville) will output over 7000 dmg.

Having a rune sage as a support can bring out Alanis' (and Melville's) true potential, because they can hot-swap their runes to become an attacker+mage pair or an ultimate unite attack. While Alanis is setup as a mage, Melville might want to switch in a Killer Rune to score even more critical hits that ignore defense. But for random battles and many boss fights, it probably benefits the team to make Alanis and Melville a unite monster to sure-handedly take out a target.

SKILLS: Alanis doesn't need Accuracy or the Damage skill to make the Child unite effective (the accuracy of the unite to prevent it from doing 1 or only half dmg depends on Melville's accuracy), even without her Damage skill, the optimized setup mentioned about still outputs over 7k dmg. So Alanis just needs to dedicate Swing for this setup, and she has 4 free skill slots remaining. You can even use 2 for Armor Protect and Magic Resistance, maybe even one more for Repel (no real reason but it's an option)... that would still leave one for a magic element. I would ditch Armor Protect and Repel if you want more magic versatility; she'll rarely get hit by physical attacks if you keep her in the back as a mage or spam the unite.

EQUIPMENT: If you want her to specialize in Fire or Lightning Magic, she can use Wizard Hat and elemental magic rings to reach S. Blue Ribbon is recommended for women with Double-Strike Runes, but I think it's unnecessary. If you like swapping around armor, you can carry some Belts of Strength to add a bigger punch to the unite, and earlier in the game you can try to boost her speed with Feather Earrings to get that 2nd swing going.

Final boss: Alanis and Melville both have low HP and won't survive a long fight against the final boss, but they can quickly knock off half of its HP on their first unite attack (even more if you have a Jongleur user, which will cast faster with a Rune Sage support). A Balance Rune on Alanis would let them repeat the attack the next round to end it.. assuming they survived the first. If you try to be more "practical" and use support magic, you're still at risk for a hard hitting series of attacks that can knock them both out in 1 round. You need to focus a lot on (fire, lightning) elemental resistance and PDF to ensure that they can consistently take the punishment, or just go all out and use em until they're gone!

[eldrasidar]

I think the two problems facing alanis is her lack of defense, and the fact that she isn't as good with magic as others. Yes, she get's an A in Pale Gate, but with the exception of the first level spell, pale gate lags behind thunder and rage in terms of damage and speed, and the first level spell can pretty much be cast as effectively by anyone with the Pale Gate Skill. Water Magic is okay, but since you're limited to only 4 Flowing runes, you more likely to assign them to the two viki's, Salome, Rody, who also have A's, but have far more spell slots. shield is nice, but common enough, that you would rather have it on someone tougher. as far as Combat goes, while you can make a ton of damage with fury, double strike and warrior combined, along with the Child combo, but it is a glass hammer. They are both very likely to die if there are still enemies(particularly bosses) around after they do their combo. So while you could put the effort into making them good, why bother when the same or better effect can be acquired with other characters more easily?

[KFCrispy]

i started using the power-Child setup with a Pale Gate and i haven't come across a boss that that lasts more than 2 rounds. basically, you're doing so much damage with their unite and the rest of the characters, there is very little risk. but if the boss does survive the first round and KOs both Melville and Alanis, the rest of the party can easily finish the fight the very next round. another benefit to using the unite is that the characters don't move towards the enemies, further reducing the chance to be attacked.

i found that even at level A, the Pale Gate level 1 spell takes a while to cast. i rather go with Shield because Battle Oath and Great Blessing come out pretty quickly and are extremely useful.

[ninjaluc79]

How about bringing Sasarai in for the final boss then have him cast Canopy Defense within Alanis/Melville's area with his True Earth Rune? I think they will survive the WindRincar's first turn with it.

[eldrasidar]

Canopy defense is a really too slow to cast. I mean, Sasarai is only the tiniest little bit faster than someone with an S in earth magic and a mother earth rune, and it still takes him 45% of one turn to cast it. meanwhile, all of the attack runes(wind, fire, and lightning) can all cast something in half of that. It's also unnecessary. Vengeful Child can protect Alanis and Melville just as well, so long as they are a pair. However, True Earth cannot cast it, so you'd be better off with someone other than Sasarai, unless you want to double him up on earth runes.

Alternatively, one could load up Alanis and Melville with resistance rings and gold emblems and cast Clay Guardian which should be cast regardless, since everyone else benefits from clay guardian in the final boss fight, and it only has to be cast once every three turns, giving you some freedom to cast other spells.

If you have two casters with earth runes, you could alternate clay guardian and vengeful child castings, which would be the best solution to keep alanis and melville alive, although I can't say it would be helpful for beating the final boss. In general I always bring a single Earth Rune to the final boss fight, clay guardian and vengeful child are much more valuable than canopy defense and land of eternity.

[KFCrispy]

Considering 2 Child Attacks can be used to kill the boss, you can consider a Balance Rune on Alanis, and Sacrificial Jizos can help them survive for that 2nd go. when you're going with glass cannon, it's really a waste of effort to try to buff defenses--the other 4 characters can help contribute to damaging the boss (even though they can probably just sit back and let the kids handle it).

[highwind44029]

Take note that you can also make Clay Guardian/Vengeful Child scrolls to protect the pair as well, but I'm not sure how fast they go off in a given turn.