Beginners Guide Atelier Ryza 2

Whether Atelier Ryza 2: Lost Legends & the Secret Fairy is your first ever Atelier game you picked up, or one of the many you have played, it’s always good to have a refresher. Developer Gust tries to make every game a bit different. Whether it’s a big overhaul from the one trilogy of games to the next, or different synthesizing systems, different battle modes and more. But although there’s an in-game guide, it’s easy to miss the finer details that make the gameplay much more enjoyable.

So, I felt it was time for a beginners guide with some tips to get you started!

May Be Obvious, But Still…

There’s a couple of basic tips that you may think are obvious, but they make gameplay so much easier that I’m going to mention them anyway:

• You know you can press ‘-‘ to get the map and quickly travel anywhere? Click on the city and see the list of locations and areas to visit. It will show you were you have unfinished business, allowing you to progress.
• You’ll see the head of the character who has a quest for you next to the location on the map. Sometimes you see two are three besides your Atelier in Ashra-am Baird. But going there only one sequence triggers. Just go to another location and come back again to the Atelier, and the next event will occur.

• Stuck and not sure what to do next? Click ‘+’ and see what story quests there are left to do. The game is made in a way that you will never be at a loss. Even if one of the quests can’t go any further because you are missing materials or such, focus on the other ones.
• Meanwhile, don’t forget to work on your requests from the people in town to up your reputation. Otherwise Patty’s dad may just kick you out of the rooms you rented for free!

In the Dungeons

• When you first enter a dungeon, you have to do “research” to get things going. This means there are five entries on the list that you must have done. You can check the list when you press “-” and see the exploration diary. Some research things are about foraging certain items, opening chests or beating a particularly strong enemy. As soon as you’ve done the research, you’ll get the compass and go hunt for the fragments.
• I must be pretty dense because in the first dungeon I constantly used the compass to see where I could find fragments. But in the middle of the screen on top you’ll see your goals light up with markers. Follow them and you’ll find them more easily, as the compass map only lights up the fragments when you are close.

• When in the dungeons and you’ve got your compass out, you can easily switch to the normal view of the map of the dungeon by pressing Y.

• Several parts will be unlocked as the % of discord of the dungeon goes up. Unraveling them will give you skill points or special recipes and such.
• The mysteries to unravel always show the fragment that you need to find by highlighting a couple of words. Check to see if they are in the clues on the left too to match them. Solving them can give you a hefty amount of SP to unlock more on your skill tree!

• Needless to say, you have to get the dungeon to 100% to progress the story, but you might not be able to do that in one visit. The storyline under “+” will show you what is expected next.

Synthesizing Can Be Easy

Synthesizing, or performing Alchemy, is the thing that Atelier games are famous for. It’s such a joy to choose a recipe and make the article you want. Aside from progressing the story and making battle items you get lots of quests too, and I guess we all reach the point that making a bomb yet again gets a bit boring.

Not to worry, choose a recipe, and click the right shoulder button to Auto-Add Materials. The game will automatically add the necessary ingredients and you can choose that it do that aiming for high quality or low quality. I guess it depends if you want to keep your prized ingredients safe, or whether you need a certain level for the request you are fulfilling.

And by the way, just when I started doing most of my recipes on automatic, a feature unlocked that made it possible to unlock new recipes with your current recipes like in the first game.

There’s a term called Overflow in your synthesis screen, below on the left. Overflow (in %) is made when you continue adding materials to the same loop where the element value is at its max. So all rows for an elemental value have already been filled in (you’ve already reached the max effect of L) and still, you add more. You will see the Overflow bar go up, and the more overflow you get the better. You’ll have more chance to get a greatly successful synthesis and a higher quality. However, this is not something to worry about early in the game.

The item rank of an item is its overall grade, influenced by both quality and traits. It can go from E up to A and then to S with S being the best one.

If you want to dive into the finer points of the basis of the synthesis system, here’s my guide Atelier Ryza 2 Guide: Let’s synthesize!

Gathering Materials and Exploring

Another base part of the game is gathering items to use in synthesis and of course, explore while doing this.

You’ll see things you can take with you because they shimmer. Sometimes pressing A will suffice, at others you harvest items using your staff or other tools. That’s fun too, as for instance an Axe used on a tree will get you different items than using your staff.

There’s also a sickle and a bomb rod to gather things with or start a battle with to get additional benefits at the start of the battle.

The Bug Net and Fishing Pole can be used in certain places. The Bug Net on bushes to get the little creepy crawlies. For the Fishing Pole the spots are quite specific, and you can fish there a set couple of times. No need to press extra buttons, just press Y with the net equipped and catch some fishies.

Keep in mind that getting a tool with more stars (and a bigger chance at finding higher quality materials and special items) is not a matter of using it more. You can only reach that by synthesizing it. And not because of quality primarily, but by going for a higher level effect. Getting two stars isn’t too hard, you should synthesize the tools to reach a Capable effect, like Capable Cutting for the Sickle, Capable Chopping for the Axe and so on. Reaching three stars is much more difficult, involving recipe morphing and rarer materials.

Your bag is quite large, but eventually you will have to return to the atelier to unload! And don’t forget to check the merchants regularly too, as they might have materials of a much better quality than what you find.

Let’s Look at the Battles

The action based fighting in the Ryza games isn’t my favorite I must say. It’s turn based in a way that the meter below on the battle screen shows you when your turn is up. Ryza and her friends come from the left on the bar to the center, and the enemies from the right. When it’s your turn the game doesn’t wait for you to make a decision, that’s what sometimes makes me nervous. But after quite some battling I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Here’s some tips to let you enjoy the battles:

• Normal attacks and using items in battle will up the AP meter, magical attacks ( holding the R shoulder button) ups the CC. You need this CC to use items in battle. All items in your pocket have a Core Charge, the number of points needed to use the item. Have enough gathered? You could string several items together in one turn.

• But, you can use the gathered CC too outside of battle. Press X, go to basket and the second tab, choose one of the medicinal items equipped and give everyone a top off. You can only do this for as long as you’ve got CC. Works for me, not much need to use them in battle for the normal kind of monsters. This CC Bottle as it’s called, empties itself when you go back to the Atelier.

• At first I tended to stay with Ryza during battles. But I’ve since noticed that for different monsters, different members of my party have magical attacks to which certain animals are weak. For instance, Patricia has a move to which a Flower Puni is weak. And Clifford has a move to which the Evil Orchis is weak. At the start of the battle scroll through the party members (using ZL or ZR) and find the right move to use!

• Using magical attacks ups the Tactical Level, making normal attacks more powerful
• Doing magical moves uses up AP. And if you have enough  AP you can even string more magical attacks in one move. So it’s a kind of balance: normal attacks to make AP, or use magical moves? I guess it depends on the kind of battle.
• If you have time left during this hectic fighting, look on the left side for requests your fellow team members give you. They will for instance ask for Magical Attacks and if you do, they string some nice attacks onto that out of their own accord.
• Need more time to contemplate your moves? Don’t forget that with pressing the ‘-‘ button you can pause the battle. Must be made especially for me!

• If I have one complaint, then it is that I’m watching the enemy before me to see if I need to defend myself, and then I’m attacked from the side by another monster. I hadn’t remembered that with ‘+’ you can change your targeted enemy. Might come in handy!
• By the way, Defend at the right time and you won’t suffer as much damage. But, it also freezes your waiting time. Which will make it longer until you can act again. So, it’s all in the balance!
• Pressing the Dpad to down makes the other party members only use normal attacks generating AP. Pressing the Dpad up let’s other characters use magical skills freely, so they also use up the AP.
• One last thing: we have talked about Gathering Tools. But it’s important to mention the effects they have in battle too. When you hit a monster when you’re close to start the battle different tools have different effects:
  – Grass Sickle: reduce the enemies Attack
  – Axe will reduce their Defense
  – Bugnet will reduce their Speed
  Keep in mind that the Staff has no extra effect.

That’s it. Most of all: Have fun!!