Ore no Shikabane wo Koete yuke is a unique game in a number of ways, but it has one thing in common with other dungeon crawlers: it gets tedious! Even as a big fan of the game there were moments near the end when I seriously considered giving up. I was playing and playing and fighting and fighting and yet I wasn’t getting any stronger or any nearer to finishing the game. I’m glad I kept at it, but I’d love to spare others the same frustrations if I can.

Hence this post, where I share my personal tips for finishing this game in a fast(er) and (more) efficient way. It won’t solve all of OreShika‘s problems, but it will remove some of the common frustrations that might keep you from enjoying yourself. Depending on your style of play you might want to ignore everything and try stuff for yourself (I personally try to avoid FAQs in my first playthrough) but my advice is here if you want it.

Tip 1: If you’re not enjoying yourself after the first 3 or 4 generations, quit. There are some games that get dramatically better as you go along, but this isn’t one them. This tip alone should save you 50 hours or so.

Tip 2: You can change the difficulty level at any time. If things are taking too long or the dungeons are too hard and you just don’t want to spend all that time on one game, don’t punish yourself. You don’t get anything special for finishing on the hardest setting.

Tip 3: All classes are fine for dungeon battles, but for boss fights it’s hard to beat martial artists and archers. Both of them have super-powerful special moves (ougis) that will absolutely devastate any and every enemy up to and including the bonus boss. Archers are useful early on because they learn their first ougi really early. Martial artists are ideal for the middle-to-endgame because they have a skill you can use first to raise both ATK and DEF to ridiculous levels. My rundown of the other classes:

Swordsmen: Excellent attack, can pass down a sword that gets more powerful with every passing generation. Nothing wrong with them. For the final and bonus boss battles, I used 3 martial artists and 1 swordswoman (although her job was to just heal). If you plan to use swordsmen till the end, get the blacksmith to make you a family sword as soon as possible.
Naginatas: Super highly-recommended for dungeon battles, but lack offensive power for bosses towards the end of the game. You won’t go wrong having one in your party.
Demolishers: Devastating ATK but tend to miss like crazy. This is really bad in a game where everyone else hits 90% of the time.
Spearmen: Good early on. Not bad in general, but outclassed by every other class in every respect.
Dancers: Can’t get till late-game. Very good evasion but weak ATK, weak DEF. Supposed to be really good for magic attacks and defense, but other classes aren’t bad either. On the other hand, enemies in the final dungeon drop a LOT of dancer equips, so maybe they’re supposed to be good?
Gunners: Can’t get till late-game. Gunners can hit everyone on the field when armed with the right weapons, so they’re good for fast grinding in dungeons. Meh for everything else, though.

Tip 4: Use parent-child combos with the ougis. Use combo-magic where you can. Heal repeatedly, never go “Oh they should be okay till the next turn.” All this should go without saying, but it’s really important if you want to finish bosses quickly with a minimum of pain.

Tip 5: Debuffs and status effects do work on bosses. They work on all enemies without exception. It’s all a matter of percentages, so you might have only 1% chance of poisoning a boss, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. For that matter the right buffs will save your life, especially against magic users. Buffs and debuffs do stack.

Tip 6: a) Breed with the best gods you can afford, and b) Breed with the best characters you have. I started out doing it wrong, trying to give every character and every god a fair shake. It can be done, and it’s fun in it’s own way, but breeding takes time and precious worship points. If you want to finish the game in a sensible amount of time, throw equality out of the window.

Tip 7: The best stats for early survival are water and earth. Heart-water helps in learning healing skills, heart-earth helps with defense skills, body-water gives you more HP and body-earth gives you better defense. That said, save stat-boosting items for late in the game and try to get your stats through breeding as much as you can.

Tip 8: A character’s gained EXP has no effect on his/her offspring’s genes. Lamarck who? When I started out I thought I had to have a kid, level the kid up as high as possible and then breed them in order to have better kids, but it makes no difference at all. As a result it makes way more sense to have kids as early as possible so you can take full advantage of parent-child combos.

Tip 9: Keep your family small. In video games as in real life, a large family is nothing but trouble. Extra kids take time and WP to breed, time to train, time to level up and money to equip. On top of that, characters that don’t get enough playing time will get mad and may very well run away. I think a family of 6-8 characters maximum is best. On normal mode you’ll need 30,000 ryou and 5 family members to get the first house extension, so get that ASAP then stop expanding till much later.

Tip 10: Exploring the dungeons will be slow and tiring to start with. This is a “tip” because you’ll be wondering if it’s supposed to be this annoying and the answer is, sadly, YES. But it will get better, I promise (but see Tip 1). You’ll get items/skills that let you run much faster and others that let you see the map layout so you can get more done in a single trip. You’ll also get items/skills that make enemies either stand still or run from you so you can hit them in the back for a free turn.

Tip 11: When reconstructing the town, focus on the stores and the community. Restoring stores will give you better weapons/equips/items to buy, so it’s a no-brainer. Restoring the community is not half as important, but it will give you access to the medicine store, the blacksmith and, more importantly, the goods trading point which will help you make more money.

Tip 12: You cannot make the roulette land where you want. The spinning is all for show, and doubly frustrating for that. When the game wants you to have a certain class manual/god, i.e. when you have fulfilled all the obscure requirements needed to get it, the roulette will stop there automatically. On the other hand red flames do help with weapons, items and scrolls, but there is no way to make red flames appear.

Tip 13: Feel free to sell the rainbow jewels (七光の御玉) and vermillion necklaces you get (朱の首輪). Maybe keep a few of the latter to help you learn skills (sub-tip: equipped accessories help you learn/use skills by boosting base stats). Don’t hold on to any unnecessary weapons, items and accessories either. Sell them and use the money for better equips. Speaking of which, wait for store sales to do your bulk shopping and equipping.

Tip 14: The best grinding spot (IMHO) early game is the Emperor’s tournament. It’s a great place to get EXP all the way to the end. Mid-game I recommend the ice dungeon after you beat the mermaid. Look for the frogs in the screenshot on the left. They’re rare and tend to run so kill them ASAP.

Once the final dungeon opens up, look for the frogs in the shot on the right. You’ll find 2-5 of them in every battle in the fourth (I think) screen before the final boss. It’s easier to reach the final boss warning screen and backtrack a bit. Go down the stairs to a square space, go down again to a passage, go down to another square place, go down to yet another passage which should be the right spot.

As an aside you can finish the game without grinding for WP/EXP. I’m just assuming you want to do so quickly.

Tip 15: A very personal one, but this is how strong I was when I beat most of the mid-game “hair” bosses (left) and when I beat the last boss (right). The first character on the left was sick that day, which is why her stats are so low. I was a little overpowered TBH, but if you’re in the general vicinity you should be okay.

There you have it. 15 things I wish I’d known before starting the game. I’m almost tempted to start afresh and see if this saves me any time but… Nah, too many other things on my list. I’ll put OreShika away after one last post tomorrow.