Overview
Tips and advice for the new guy about getting money and beefing up your “Power” without increasing your Battle Rank too much .
Introduction
Contains Leader, Location, Monster and Sidequest spoilers. Nothing that ruins the story.
If you just play the game normally you do not really have to worry about getting too high Battle Rank (in relation to your stats and skills). By normally I mean NOT going out of your way to kill the same enemies over and over again.
I am going to go through the basic mechanics of Battle Rank, stat and skill gains. This is how I think it works. I could very well have read something wrong or perceived something in the game incorrectly, so try not get too upset in case you notice an error here or there. Overall this should be helpful for new players. If you are going for a beefcake team, then this information will be really helpful in getting you started.
The Last Remnant Wiki[lastremnant.wikia.com] is a good source for information about just about anything concerning The Last Remnant. It can be hard to navigate and it is riddled with spoilers though.
Battle Rank
Your Battle Rank is not your level. It is better if you view BR(Battle Rank) as your Bounty or Reputation. The higher your Bounty/Reputation(Battle Rank) is the harder the enemies who come after you will be.
The higher Battle Rank you get the harder it will be to get stat gains (and skill gains?).
Killing an enemy gives you BR xp. 500 BR xp and you gain a Battle Rank. Killing many enemies, linked or one and one, will obviously give you lots of Battle Rank xp resulting in high BR.
The more units that die on your own side the less BR xp you get. Not sure if you can get 0 xp, but I hear you can get as little as 8 xp(30 units dead on your side. I do not remember against what mob. (Probably Bai Ze).
Gaining Stats and Skills
You get skill xp and (chance at)stats every turn, what kind depends on the commands you use and what happens in battle. Most of it is pretty straight forward. Use your weapon and you become better at your weapon. Use a spell and you become better at your spell. Take damage and heal yourself to increase Hitpoints. Move around on the battlefield a lot to gain speed (Item Arts increase speed as well?) and so on.
You get half(approximately?) the xp by picking a command (and surviving a turn?). The other half you get by executing the given action. Which means if you have 18 members and the first/fastest member kills the last enemy before the other 17 get to do something, the first member will get full xp while the 17 others get half xp for that turn.
You only get xp/stats from the 30 first turns. And most importantly only the characters who survive the battle will be rewarded xp and stat gains. I suggest Bai Ze to grind on, because you get good money as well. At least it works when you have BR46 or less. If you are not getting any stat gains then you need to find a mob with higher BR. Find details about location of Bai Ze in the Money section. Otherwise any high HP mob with similar or higher BR than you will do just as fine. Later you can grind at Ancient Ruins, which will also be the best place to get several rare materials. (I should probably mention Mystic Seal formation will set all your offensive stats to 0, but you cannot get it in time for The Fallen.)
Each art can gain xp, with the exception of Arcana, Weapon Arts and Unique Arts. Most arts have a subset of skills. For instance the Mystical Art Invocation has the skills Spark, Wind Shear, Double Time, Caustic Blast, Permafrost, Wildfire and Grenade Impact . The sub skills also gain xp individually. The Combat Art(CA) skills only get xp individually. Instead of being dependent on an Art to unlock new skills, CAs depend on Wield Style and Weapon Type.
Wield Styles(WS) and Weapon Types(WT) also gain xp and levels. Wield Style is One handed, Two handed, Powergrip etc. Weapon Type can be Spear, Katana, Mace and so on. To unlock some of the greater Combat Arts and Weapon Arts you will have to have reached certain levels in your WS and WT. WS and WT are also used as requirements for some classes (see wikia[lastremnant.wikia.com]).
I am not going to go into specifics about the requirements, you can find those in the wikia. But it is good to be aware of them if you want to get the most powerful Combat Art skills. In short, pick a Weapon Type and a Weapon Style and do not switch about. Especially do not change the WT, because progressing in that has been really slow for me. I think it will be faster if you focus on Combat Art(CA) commands. I have been focusing on normal attack commands which have yielded a lot of WS xp.
I should also mention a couple of things about weapons. Weapons gain xp from hitting enemies(with normal attacks only?) and will level up, also known as weapon strengthening, becoming a +1, +2, +3 weapon and all the way up to +9 I believe. This level will stick with your weapon if you upgrade it. But not if you swap your weapon to a new weapon.
Each weapon has a Style modifier. Either a Mighty/Peerless (strength) modifier or a Nimble/Swift (speed) modifier. This modifier affects your Combat Art skills. Each skill starts with a base of 0 modifier xp. This is not to be confused with the regular level xp each skill gets to earn levels 1-5. The modifier xp is different and works differently.
If you are equipped with a strength weapon you will get positive xp. If you are equipped with a speed weapon you will get negative xp. +85 xp will give your CA skill the Mighty modifier. +577 xp will give your CA skill the Peerless modifier. -85 will give your CA skill the Nimble modifier and -577 xp will give your CA skill the Swift modifier.
In most cases switching between weapons with different modifiers will counteract your accumulated xp. If you have +100 xp in CA skill B then switching to a speed weapon your modifier xp for skill B will decrease every time you use CA skill B. So when the modifier xp becomes less than 85 you will lose the Mighty modifier for CA skill B.
An example:
My character Albert switches between Two handed weapons. He has used Combat Arts a lot and the skill Double Strike is now level 5. Double Strike V. My other character Berny also uses Two handed weapons but he always uses the same weapon. But he has not been using CAs as much. His CA skill Double Strike is level 2 but has also the modifier Nimble. Nimble Double Strike II.
See Developing Arts[lastremnant.wikia.com] for more details.
I did not have a save from when I started grinding at BR 46 so I used a save from BR 45 to use as a reference. You can see the stat increase from BR 45 to BR 47. The “b” pictures are just there as proof to show which BR the stats are for. You can see that HP and AP for Rush are the same.
Money
If you want money with zero BR gain, then harvesting is the way to go. You need Mr. Diggs[lastremnant.wikia.com].
Major location spoilers:
The first useful harvest point will be in the Vale of Gods where you will mainly be digging for Rough Elven Stones, sells for 300g a piece. You will also get Rough Sylph Stone, worth 450g per rock. Enter, then go directly to your right. Exit and re-enter until you do not wish to farm any more. If you have 10-15 digs it might take you about 20 minutes or less to get 100 Rough Elven Stones if Mr. Diggs is max level. It is a rough estimate. I considered it somewhat painstaking to get money this way. But it more than covers your herb expenses at least.
As soon as you enter Elysion for the first time you can find your way to the Vale of the Gods. I think you need to talk to the bartenders in the Pub in Elysion to unlock The Southwestern Road. Go through The Southwestern Road to unlock Balterossa (ignore warnings about not leaving Elysion). Talk to the bartender in the Pub to unlock the The Great Sand Sea. Lastly head for the west exit of The Great Sand Sea to get to the Vale of the Gods.
Major Location and Sidequest spoilers:
The second spot is on the second disc, going by Xbox length, in Nagapur. It is after you unlock the Acqueducts the 2nd time. You can do that earliest after Wyrmskeep I believe. The Slave Traders sidequest need to be cleared to unlock the Acqueducts again. This part of the Acqueducts is called Central Sluiceway.
Then the harvest point should be visible directly to your right. You will need to head a bit further in, take a ladder down and head back towards the entrance to get to it. Not as quick a walk as in the Vale of Gods but still fast. This spot is nice if you ask me. I would say the money gains are at least double of that in the Vale of Gods. Rough Leprechaun Stone is what you will be after, 900g a pop.
Another way to get money is to kill certain mobs who either drop lots of money or drop loot that sells for lots of money.
Major Location and Sidequest spoilers:
I recommend Bai Ze. Bai Ze spawns in the Crookfens and always drop a corpse that sells for ~66,000g more or less. To unlook Crookfens you first need to do the sidequest A Date with Emma. Then talk to the bartender in Elysion. Head to Berechevaltelle and use the south exit. Bai Ze should be visible directly from the entrance of Crookfens, in the upper right. When he actually spawns. It usually takes me less than 10 tries on average to spawn him. Just make sure to have Character Clip Distance in settings maxed so the game renders enemies far away.
There is an exploit by using The Cosmos Maiden sidequest. In that sidequest Bai Ze always spawn upon entry. If you never finish the quest you can enter and exit an infinit amount of times with 100% spawnrate as long as the quest is active. I have never tried it, but no one has said that it does not work. By not finishing the quest you will be unable to do following subquest and you will not be able to acquire a Unique Leader who is connected to the quests.
End words
To gain as much stats/skill xp as possible with minimal BR gain you want the battles to last as close to 30 turns as you can and your units need to die a lot to decrease the BR gain. Easiest done by fighting 1 high Hitpoint mob.
Do not use Unique Arts(UA) and Weapon Arts(WA) because they will kill the enemy more quickly and UA/WA do not gain xp.
With this in mind you should not be facing the problem of a too high Battle Rank.
I use Bai Ze for stat grinding. I was BR 46 when I started and after 29 kills I reached BR 47. I am guessing you can double the kills under optimal conditions.
An alternative stat grind is the 370+ chain grind. Grind info on wikia [lastremnant.wikia.com]
I do not remember who wrote what posts. Most of the information is from the The Last Remnant wikia[lastremnant.wikia.com] the rest is probably from [link]
Sunzi has posted a lot of useful information on gamefaqs. For the most part I have no idea who wrote what in the wikia, but I can say that Zephyr has at least written some of it.
You should know this is not an in depth guide. There are more details for each of the subjects I brought up. But I do believe I covered the important parts.
Have fun.