Summary
In theBaten Kaitos remaster, no matter which of the two games included that you load up, you’ll be facing down enemies and monsters by taking a deck of cards into battle. The fights can be a hassle or a breeze depending on which cards you have in your pockets.
But with so many options, covering damage, protection, spells, healing, and even miscellaneous items that seem to have no use, how do you decide what to include in the decks of your party members? This list will give you some tips about constructing your decks so you can be a bad, monster-slaying machine.
8Maintain A Balanced Deck
This is pretty straightforward. When you first start the game, you have a full deck of cards. But as you come across new weapons, shields, and the like, be mindful of what you are replacing. You may feel inclinedto have more weapons, especially those that can also be used as protection.
However, the further you get away from this balance, you may find yourself with a hand that can’t be used, whether it’s to launch an offensive or to keep yourself safe. This will happen less often if you are mindful of how many of each item you are adding to your deck as you Class Up.
7Be Mindful Of Card Numbers
This isn’t referring to how many weapons and so on you have in your deck. Each card has at least one number on it, and if you use them to create combos, you will be dealing extra damage. This takes the form of playing cards that have the same numeric value, or playing them in a straight; a card with number one, then two, and three, etc.
As you play and explore, you will find duplicates of many different cards. When you come across one, you can look to see if it fits with the numbers in your deck more effectively and swap those cards out. This will make combos so much easier to achieve, helping you deal maximum damage to your foes.
6Always Keep A Camera Card
Unlike other JRPGs, enemies don’t drop gold or another form of currency for you to pick up. Instead, the way you make money isby taking picturesof enemies (or allies) and selling them to various shops. So, no matter how you change and rearrange your decks, have at least one camera in play at all times.
It can also be used to help with combos. Although a camera itself doesn’t do any damage or healing, if its number matches or continues a straight, you can use it and still help build onto the percentage added to the damage, shielding, or healing you were going for.
Don’t sell pictures right away. They act like Polaroids, and you have to hold them in your inventory until they are fully developed. You’ll make more money selling them once they’re developed.
5Have At Least One Healing Item In Each Deck
You may feel like having one character devoted to healing. After all, that is commonin most JRPGs; having one character that knows healing spellsor abilities. But that isn’t the case with Baten Kaitos. Anyone can hold the healing items in the game, and you’ll want them to all have the ability to help each other.
Having healing cards in each party member’s deck helps you from getting wiped out, especially in boss fights. If a character falls, the other members can get them up. Or, if luck isn’t on your side and healing items aren’t appearing in your hand, having them in multiple decks should keep that from happening.
Healing cards benefit from combos just like damage and shield cards do, letting you increase how much health you gain back if you’re able to match cards or have a straight.
4Steal From Inactive Party Members
In Baten Kaitos, you can only have three characters in battle at a time. That means, depending on your progress in the game, you’re going to have some folks sitting in the background with all of those helpful cards, gathering dust on them. There’s no reason why you can’t rob from their decks to fill up your active party decks with the best options possible.
If you likerotating your party membersout often, this tip may sound like a nightmare. But keep it in mind when you sense yourself approaching a boss battle. You’ll want your strongest cards for them, so temporarily robbing Lyude topayhelp Kalas can make all the difference in the biggest battles.
3Have Xelha And Mizuti Split Spells By Type
In Baten Kaitos Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, your two spellcasters are Xelha and Mizuti. Once Mizuti joins the party, decide who you want to have holding each type of spell. Xelha, for instance, has several finishing moves that are based on light damage.
So all the light cards Mizuti has in their deck can be taken from them and given to Xelha. In exchange, Mizuti can hold all the Dark Flare and Yell cards instead. Doing this ensures they both have powerful spells that aren’t going to cancel each other out.
This can be done for any party members you like to use often. Gibari has a lot of Water and Wind cards, so if you use him and Kalas a lot, you can have Kalas hold all of his Fire and Chronos cards.
2Struggling With A Boss? Scout And Adjust
One of the good things about losing a battle is that you still gain information about them and the damage types they use. If a boss is a user of dark damage and is strong against it, then you know to bring all the light-based weapons and shields that you can.
At times, you can be informed by the monsters and enemies leading up to these boss fights as well. So always pay attention to the Final Results screen after a battle, as well as the special effects on screen during fights, to inform you about what damage was used and what the enemy resisted.
1Keep Your Damage Type Consistent
Through the natural progression of the game, you are going to find weapons of every damage type for every character. Instead of having all of your strongest cards in your deck, figure out what the majority of enemies are weak to and then alter your deck.
You don’t want to keep a bunch of dueling damage types on hand. Water and fire cards will cancel out their elemental damage dealt, meaning you’ll be using these powerful cards but dealing less damage overall. So, if you see that enemies around you are weak to Fire, take all the water cards out of your deck and swap in fire or neutral items instead.
Fire and Water, Light and Dark, and Wind and Chronos damage types will cancel each other out.
