History GameBreaker / EtrianOdyssey

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives. Throw in a max-level Natural Edge, a cheap non-Drive attack skill (only 8 TP at max level) they have access to from the get-go that can be imbued with elemental attack buffs, and an Imperial-Zodiac can still do lots of damage when they're not firing off Drives.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills (''24'' total if you wanna max out all three of them, not counting prerequisite skills), lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives.

* In a game where most classes had roughly 300 HP at max level, the Medic's Immunize was the difference between most enemies hitting for 250 and for 25. Sadly, ''Heroes of Lagaard'' [[{{Nerf}} cut it out altogether]] (along with the Troubadour's Healing and Relaxing skills).
** Immunize in the original game was broken due to a bug with how it handles elements. Normally, it should only affect Elemental Resistances, but for some reason, the physical damage types were treated as Elemental as well, and thus you have a powerful damage reduction buff, that when combined with the Protector's Defensive Formation and Elemental immunity shielding techs, allowed you to only take minimum damage during the final boss.
* A CombatMedic build was most effective in this game, mainly due to common passives not scaling the same way across most classes. For nearly any class with the ATK Up passive, at level 10 it offers a 30% damage boost. For the Medic? The 30% mark is at level 3, and full investment is a '''300%''' boost. This makes the Medic hit about as hard as your actual frontliners, especially with a maxed-out Caduceus skill. Later games standardized the way passives scale between all classes, and the Medic's physical damage output took a big {{nerf}} and never fully recovered.

* Speaking of Survivalist, they can be considered a GameBreaker in this game, while Survivalist already have the JackOfAllTrades aspect it had in later installments, EO1 Survivalist is also notable for being the most powerful damage dealer in the game, thanks to how powerful Apollon and Multihit are, the later having a noticable traits exclusive to this game where in later levels it got a third hit with no strings attached. As with most of the powerful class in 1, Survivalist would suffer a heavy nerf coming into ''Heroes of Lagaard'', neutering its damage output while also removing the third hit of Multihit. Survivalist would then suffer from an identity crisis in terms of its roles until its return to form in ''The Fafnir Knight''.

* Venom Throw returns as the Nightseeker's final Throw skill and the best source of poison damage. Although it no longer deals a static 700-or-so damage like it did in its source game, at max skill level and around level 40 the poison ticks for a whopping 350 each turn, which can almost immediately kill most random encounters at that stage. Poison damage also scales with the level of its caster, meaning its damage will remain relevant through most of the game. On top of that, Spread Throw now also raises the Nightseeker's infliction rate, and an Auto-Spread triggering lets the Nightseeker spread this powerful poison across the enemy ranks with a very good success rate. This means you can end most random encounters in just 1 to 2 turns for a very low TP cost.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills, lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight. Etheric Boon also offers fantastic synergy with their expensive Charge Edge, mixing multipliers together to deliver extremely powerful Drives.

** Negotiation may seem counter-intuitive, until you realize that the healing scales with level. Remove a debuff and buff from level 99? Say hello to a full heal and 50TP! This is particularly helpful against bosses and [=FOEs=] who punish too many buffs.

** Negation may seem counter-intuitive, until you realize that the healing scales with level. Remove a debuff and buff from level 99? Say hello to a full heal and 50TP! This is particularly helpful against bosses and FOEs who punish too many buffs.

* The offensive passives given by the Bushi make them a staple subclass for anyone focused on dealing damage, seeing that these skills give a massive bonus with minimal skill point investment. With a single point, their Blood Surge gives a long-lasting buff that doesn't consume a buff slot, drains miniscule amounts of HP and TP per turn, and gives a ''45%'' damage bonus. And that's before we factor in Charge, Defiance or their own Power Boost. Never mind the Bushi's own attack skills - imagine all these damage multipliers stacked on an [[spoiler:Imperial]]!
* The Sniper's Squall Volley, at max level, can hit anywhere from 6-16 times but has low accuracy to offset it. However, if an enemy is inflicted with the Paralyze, Blind, Panic, or Leg Bind, their evasion rate basically turns off. Snipers have easy access to leg bind with their natural skill set, along with the ability to inflict critical hits and raised critical chance against enemies with binds. What this amounts to is a ridiculous number of hits on the enemy, at least half of them being criticals. Oh, and all this can proc more follow-ups with a Landsknecht's Link skills.

** Absorb is a skill that allows the Fafnir to cancel any binds and ailments on him, raising his Force gauge in the process. Not only is it a powerful skill for his self-sufficiency, it can be passed by Grimoire to everyone else too, to ensure they can quickly shrug off most debilitating Boss- or FOE- inflicted status attacks. Also, it doesn't require any body parts to use, so your party can easily break out of the dreaded triple-bind.

* Crusade. The Troubadour's Force Break multiplies any damage done that turn by 1.5. This wouldn't seem so bad... if the use of other skills from the Troubadour can cause your damage to reach insane levels.
** Troubadours in general in this game are pretty overwhelming. The game imposes a much more punishing form of DiminishingReturnsForBalance to prevent the player from exploiting buff-stacking for ludicrous amounts of damage. However, it classes the Troubadours' Fantasia skills as an elemental resistance modifier, different from attack or defense buffs. This means they don't get gimped when combined with other buffs, allowing elemental damage to reach new heights. This also compounds with Crusade above, which, due to its status as a Force Break, is ''also'' exempt from diminishing returns.
** On the topic of Fantasias, the Sovereign's elemental Circles work akin to Fantasias (raising the party's resistance to an element while weakening the enemy's to the same element), do not occupy a buff slot, but only last a turn. In the Japanese version of the game, if multiple party members use it, the effects ''stack'', and this tactic, in addition to the above, is what allows the Fafnir Knight to take down the BonusBoss in one turn. The stacking does not apply in non-Japanese releases, though.

** Grimoire Stones from visiting legendary adventurers have additional effects that are unavailable anywhere else. TP Cost Recovery gives a 25% chance of fully regaining TP expended for a skill, giving some very good battle stamina if you roll well with it. Auto-Heal gives the user a chance to heal half their max HP when taking a hit, allowing great sustainability for a Beast who's TakingTheBullet. Pair that up with Heal Amp that boosts the amount of healing one receives, and a Beast can turn NighInvulnerable by effortlessly healing off whatever damage they're taking.

* Pugilists are one of the strongest classes in the game. Their access to binding skills can save the party's life from time to time, but their other skills can do incredible damage:

** Their most consistent and strongest skills are Charge Shot and its elemental derivatives, though they come with a drawback of very low turn speed and a heavy defense penalty when charging. For the risk-averse, though, the Gunner also comes with Act Quick, a charge skill that temporarily raises their action speed and deducts TP costs, greatly mitigating the Charge skills' downsides. Act Quick does not have any skill prerequisites, the only requirement being that the character reaches level 20 first, meaning that once you unlock subclassing (by which point your main characters will be well over level 20), you can subclass someone else to Gunner and teach them Act Quick. Imperials in particular can make use of it for the same reason as Gunners using Charge Shot: Imperial Drive skills also have a slow act speed, a high TP cost, and a defense debuff until the skill activates, all of which can be negated by using Act Quick in advance.

** Imperial + Zodiac, if you are willing to pour the skill points in to their elemental Drive skills, lets you do even more damage when hitting an enemy's weakness through Singularity and learn TP Up, as Imperials naturally demand a lot of TP but don't have nearly enough of it for a sustained fight.

* Some attack skills, such as the Masurao's and (in ''Nexus'' only) Ronin's Helm Splitter, are [[PowerfulButInaccurate extra-powerful attacks with low accuracy]]. However, if your party has a skill that can reliably inflict Panic/Confusion, Blind, or Leg Bind, all of which prevent the victim from dodging -- there's plenty of skills that can inflict at least one of these -- you can spam those attacks without worry of missing the target for a few turns.[[note]]Paralysis can also work but only if the victim is prevented from moving for the turn. Sleep also works too, but hitting a sleeping target will wake them up. Stun also works but wears off at the end of the current turn.[[/note]]

** The Dark Hunter's Climax was similarly buffed up. Once mastered, it kills any enemy vulnerable to instant death with less than 55% of its HP (previously, it only had a 20% chance of working, even when mastered). Most bosses are immune to Climax, but F.O.E.s aren't; having Climax mastered essentially halves the duration of any F.O.E. encounter.

** Imperial + Gunner. Act Quick at max subclass level gives them a 40% discount and a faster turn speed, removing the key problem of Drive skills in that they are slow and the user's defense drops severely until activation and that they use obnoxious amounts of TP.

** Multi-Shot is one of their most potent passives, giving their attack skills a small chance trigger an additional time. This stacks with Double Action, so it's not unusual to see a Gunner use their Charge shot up to three times in a row to deal a boatload of damage, or roll for a bind three times with their Snipes. And like with the Hero's Afterimage, you can subclass a non-Gunner into one to get Multi-shot, albeit with less proc change; imagine an Imperial dropping a second max-level Accel Drive at no additional cost!

** In particular, the Protector's Shield Flare becomes hilariously overpowered with Pain Shield, being a counter move that can trigger multiple times. When you pair it up with a DrawAggro skill like the Protector's own Taunt, Survivalist's Scapegoat or a Shogun's Great Warrior, the Protector and any Protector subbed class can easily do absurd amounts of damage across the enemy ranks.

** Their primary gimmick is to create an afterimage. It spawns with a fraction of their HP and TP at the time (until their Afterimage passive is maxed, which spawns them as an exact copy of the Hero) and are programmed to repeatedly use the same skill that spawned them. This also provides additional triggers of Encourage, which passively heals the party after the Hero or their afterimage(s) attack, reducing the need for a dedicated healer. Heroes also have an extremely potent Force Boost that gives a x2.3 multiplier to their afterimage damage, and they have some astoundingly powerful offensive skills.

** Multi-Shot is one of their most potent passives, giving their attack skills a small chance trigger an additional time. This stacks with Double Action, so it's not unusual to see a Gunner use their Charge shot up to three times in a row to deal a boatload of damage, or roll for a bind three times with their Snipes.

** Their primary gimmick is to create an afterimage which would copy their current TP and HP to repeat their last used skill next turn, which triggers their ability to heal while attacking to keep the party constantly fresh and reduce the demand for a dedicated healer. Heroes also have an extremely potent Force Boost that gives a x2.3 multiplier to their afterimage damage, and they have some astoundingly powerful offensive skills.

** Their most consistent and strongest skills are Charge Shot and its elemental derivatives, though they come with a drawback of very low turn speed and a heavy defense penalty when charging. For the risk-averse, though, the Gunner also comes with Act Quick, a charge skill that temporarily raises their action speed and deducts TP costs, dodging the tremendous risk that would be associated with the Charge Shot skills. Act Quick does not have any skill prerequisites, the only requirement being that the character reaches level 20 first, meaning that once you unlock subclassing (by which point your main characters will be well over level 20), you can subclass someone else to Gunner and teach them Act Quick; Imperials in particular can make use of it for the same reason as Gunners using Charge Shot: Imperial Drive skills also have a slow act speed, a high TP cost, and a defense debuff until the skill activates, all of which can be negated by using Act Quick in advance.

* Sovereigns join the above two classes in being some of the strongest in the game, and it's mainly due to the strength of the buffs they bestow.

* Shogun have an infamous build that revolves around 3 skill that is [[DiscOneNuke available on their basic skill tree]]: Great Warrior, Taunt Assassins, and Front Command.

** Front Command allows the Shogun to choose an ally, so long as said ally took a hit from the enemy during the turn, including when the damage is nullified or absorbed, the frontline would perform a counter attack with their equipped weapon for 200% damage modifier each. Front Command is the most basic of the command skills, and arguably the best. The requirement to use a specific ally to trigger the counter can be circumvented when used against AOE moves, aggro skills such as the aforementioned Great Warrior, and redirection skills such as Scapegoat and Line Shield. Compared to every other command, it has the most damage potential besides Shot Command. With 3 frontline damage dealers, 600% damage modifier that's compatible with Elemental Arms are impressive when compared to the standard high-end offensive skills. When compared to Basic skills, its absolutely ridiculous especially when backed with Elemental Arms skills from the Sovereign.
* Venom Throw returns as the Nightseeker's final Throw skill and the best source of poison damage. Although it no longer deals a static 700-or-so damage like it did in its source game, at max skill level and around level 40 the poison ticks for a whopping 350 each turn, which can almost immediately kill most random encounters at that stage. And in this game, the strength of poison also scales with the level of its caster, meaning its damage will remain relevant through most of the game. On top of that, Spread Throw now also raises the Nightseeker's infliction rate, and an Auto-Spread triggering lets the Nightseeker spread this powerful poison across the enemy ranks with a very good success rate. This means you can end most random encounters in just 1 to 2 turns for a very low TP cost.
* Not every Force Boost is made equal. Of particular note is the Arcanist's force boost- it locks the existing circle in place for three turns, meaning that for those three turns you can spam the very powerful dismissal spells for a lot of damage. Later, if you get points Dismissal Boost, even low level dismissal spells will do significant amounts of damage.

* Once a Farmer hits Level 40 to learn their Master rank skills, getting money becomes all but trivial thanks to the combination of Nature's Blessing and Double Crop. The former gives you extra chances to gather rare materials from gather points. The latter gives a chance of you getting two gather triggers in succession, which also means Nature's Blessing can trigger again. Its entirely possible to completely fill an empty inventory from 2 gathering spots. Simply make 4 level 40 Farmers, and support with a single Survivalist for the ability to negate enemy ambushes (including gathering ambushes) and the ability to expand inventory capacity. This in turns made getting the strongest weapons rather easy, considering that at later labyrinths, its entirely possible to make 100k off a single gathering trips. Don't have the time to level a bunch of characters? No problem! [[SocializationBonus Just grab some Guild Cards with level 40 gathering-optimized Farmers and borrow them]] (easy enough since many online ''Etrian'' communities have a QR code sharing thread or two).

** Brouni's Guard Order needs 2 party members but halves all incoming damage for the turn. It's a simple low-cost Union skill that can turn into a lifesaver, and when combined with the latter it does wonders for a party's longevity.

** Brouni's Guard Order needs 2 party members but halves all incoming damage for the turn, and this modifier is exempt from the usual DiminishingReturnsForBalance that other buffs experience. It's a simple low-cost Union skill that can turn into a lifesaver, and when combined with the latter it does wonders for a party's longevity.

* Party builds that specializes in burst damage is a wide scale GameBreaker for the entirety of the main series games. By carefully managing buffs, maxing the right skills, and timing your charge and damage boosting skills properly, its possible to blow up bosses in few turns after setting up, bypassing a good chunk of the fight. These kind of team would often uses StatusAilment based classes to disable its victim, or the right amount of DamageReduction from classes such as the Protector to keep the party safe while setting up and executing the strategy. Since specifics of these kinds of teams would cover a wide range of skills in the series, a lot of entries in this page are some of the best skills that can be used in these kind of parties.

* Union skills are some extremely powerful skill that can be initiated by a party member in cooperation with other party member in the team. Generally speaking the more party member required, the stronger the skills are and multiples they can be individually used every turn in an ascending order. The effect itself ranges from BoringButPractical such as extra attacks, mana restoration, analysis scope, and escape to the last used stairs, all the way to powerful [[LimitBreak Force Break]] esque skills and they [[ActionInitiative activate at the start of a turn]]. That being said some of these skills are a tad too strong:
** Double Attack require 2 party members to perform a stronger weapon based attack each. Double Attack have a fairly good damage modifier, and can be modified to carry elemental traits when buffed with Shaman's Elemental Prayer skills. This Union skill is alvailable to every race at the very start of the game. One very BoringButPractical way to take full advantage of this Union Skill is by using 1 extrensively buffed Therian act as a secondary initiator, to initiate a double attack for 5 consecutive turns, allowing your strongest damage dealer to a sizable amount of extra damage.
** Brouni's Guard Order require 2 party members to halve every incoming damage for the turn. A very simple and extremely powerful Union skills that can signficantly boost party tankiness.
** Earthlain's Tri-Shield require 3 party members, nullifying the first 3 attacks. Used against attacks that only hit three times, its basically a free turn. Used against skills that targets the entire team, it ensures the frontline to not get hit, giving you a much easier time to defend against dangerous teamwide attacks. On top of that, the requirement makes it much more spammable than higher tier skills.
** Earthlain's Black Mist, require 4 party members and give you double the final success rate of ailment and bind skills used on the turn when it is initiated. Notably Earthlain's are the designated ailment and bind specialist of the game in their own right. This effectively allows any party member with high enough luck to use the status jars to reliably inflict status ailments and binds, on top of offering unmatched consistency when used with an already reliable infliction skills, even against resistant target.
** Celestrian's Chain Blast, require 5 party members, for a teamwide '''150%''' bind to all body parts. On top of this, Chain Blast uses an exclusive infliction formula of 2x INT + 1x LCK which works well with Celestrian's high INT stats and naturally acceptable LCK stats. This is without a doubt, the single most overpowered Union Skill in the game, being able to triple bind almost every enemy in the game just for including a Celestrian Race into the team.

** Brouni's Guard Order require 2 party members to half every incoming damage for the turn. A very simple and extremely powerful Union skills that can signficantly boost party tankiness.

** Heavenly Aid is a charge skill with a rather complex mechanic - at the turn where it is casted, Heavenly Aid would keep track of the percentage of HP the user had, and after healing is applied to the user, apply a damage multiplier based on the percentage difference between the two, applied every time the user is healed for the turn. When used at 1 HP, Heavenly Aid with full HP healing multiplies damage by around **4 times**. This can be taken further when used with Overheal, since the increased HP cap of overheal is treated as an extra percentage towards the calculation, treating it as if the target can reach 133% HP allowing as much as **5 times** damage modifier with Heavenly Aid. In theory, Heavenly Aid have near infinite potential to apply several instances of damage multipliers, only capped by the amount of healing applied to the user of the skill, and the damage taken prior to the healing being done. The user can then unleash a heavily boosted Titan Killer, Thunder Fist, or better yet, a well prepared Death Edge to deal extreme damage to the target, sometimes able to even OneHitKill outright. The power behind Heavenly Aid is such that a well optimized Pugilist is able to one shot everything in the game, even the BonusBoss.

** Front Command allows the Shogun to choose an ally, so long as said ally took a hit from the enemy during the turn, including when the damage is nullified or absorbed, the frontline would perform a counter attack with their equipped weapon for 200% damage modifier each. Front Command is the most basic of the command skills, and arguably the best. The requirement to use a specific ally to trigger the counter can be circumvented when used against AOE moves, aggro skills such as the aforementioned Great Warrior, and redirection skills such as Scapegoat and Line Shield. Compared to every other command, it have the most damage potential besides Shot Command. With 3 frontline damage dealers, 600% damage modifier that's compatible with Elemental Arms are impressive when compared to the standard high-end offensive skills. When compared to Basic skills, its absolutely ridiculous especially when backed with Elemental Arms skills from the Sovereign.

** Thunder Fist from the base Pugilist tree is a DiscOneNuke to the extreme, its a composite Bash and Volt making it harder to resist than most of the Pugilist's pure bash skills, not to mention easier to hit weakness with, notably hitting the weakness of the first and second stratum boss and a couple of FOE at that timespan. It have 130% speed modifier making it fairly likely to hit before the enemy move, and to top it off it have 450% damage modifier, which is completely absurd for basic class skills. The only downside associated with Thunder Fist is the backlash damage dealt to the user if the move failed to kill, which is barely relevant against random ecounters due to the sheer power behind the move, and workable against FOE and Boss fights with the right skills, and proper Union skills usage. Thunder Fist stays relevant all the way until the end of the game, since its damage modifier actually stacks up fairly well compared to skills alvailable at Master class level, and when primed with Dance Oracle, it surpass Titan Killer as the Impact Pugilist second strongest move after Death Edge in the right condition. As a skill alvailable that early, Thunder Fist is such a ridiculous skill that when the class re-appeared in ''Nexus'', not only does Thunder Fist got shuffled into the Master rank, the damage modifier is also reduced to 400%.
** Heavenly Aid is a charge skill with a rather complex mechanic - at the turn where it is casted, Heavenly Aid would keep track of the percentage of HP the user had, and after healing is applied to the user, apply a damage multiplier based on the percentage difference between the two, applied everytime the user is healed for the turn. When used at 1 HP, Heavenly Aid with full HP healing multiplies damage by around **4 times**. This can be taken further when used with Overheal, since the increased HP cap of overheal is treated as an extra percentage towards the calculation, treating it as if the target can reach 133% HP allowing as much as **5 times** damage modifier with Heavenly Aid. In theory, Heavenly Aid have near infinite potential to apply several instances of damage multipliers, only capped by the amount of healing applied to the user of the skill, and the damage taken prior to the healing being done. The user can then unleash a heavilly boosted Titan Killer, Thunder Fist, or better yet, a well prepared Death Edge to deal extreme damage to the target, sometimes able to even OneHitKill outright. The power behind Heavenly Aid is such that a well optimized Pugilist is able to one shot everything in the game, even the BonusBoss.

* Party builds that specializes in burst damage is a wide scale GameBreaker for the entirety of the main series games. By carefully managing buffs, maxing the right skills, and timing your charge and damage boosting skills properly, its possible to blow up bosses in few turns after setting up, bypassing a good chunk of the fight. These kind of team would often uses StatusAilment based class to disable its victim, or the right amount of DamageReduction from class such as Protector to keep the party safe while setting up and executing the strategy. Since specifics of these kind of team would cover a wide range of skills in the series, a lot of entry in this page are some of the best skills that can be used in these kind of party.

* TEC formula for skill damage calculation of TEC based skills are calculated entirely based of the comparison between user TEC to the target TEC. More importantly, head bind halves the TEC stats of the victim, effectively doubling the damage output of TEC skills against a target that get afflicted by head bind. This allows you to simply stack as many TEC increasing equipment as possible on class that uses TEC for their skills since weapon does not matter on them, and thanks to the low impact of Armor piece in the series since ''The Drowned City'', this kind of equipment set up can be done with little to no repercussion. While quirks based on TEC formula is not necessarily a GameBreaker in every installment, it is arguably the primary contributor towards the clunkiness of Alchemist and their derivatives over the course of the series until ''Legends of the Titan'' Runemaster heavily tones down their extreme DiscOneNuke factor while giving them a more stable performance towards the later stages of the game. By the time of ''Beyond the Myth'', the game swapped into a new stats formula with a more standarized stats mechanic where every equipment had their own Physical and Magical value, while making armor piece more impactful, subsequently removing all the quirks tied to the TEC formula for good.

* A CombatMedic build was most effective in this game, mainly due to common passives not scaling the same way across most classes. For nearly any class with the ATK Up passive, at level 10 it offers a 30% damage boost. For the Medic? The 30% mark is at level 3, and full investment is a '''300%''' boost. This makes the Medic hit about as hard as your actual frontliners, especially with a maxed-out Caduceus skill. Later games standardized the way passives scale between all classes, and the Medic's physical damage output took a big {{nerf}} and never really recovered.

* Dampen, which is another Hexer skill, applies a debuff that neutralizes the target's resistances and immunities the moment a single point is invested in it. Depending on the target or the party build, applying this can pretty much ''double'' your party's damage output. Further investment will begin to force the target to take increased damage from everything they're not already weak to. The drawbacks are that it doesn't stack with Frailty, a stronger defense debuff for amplifying neutral hits, has a terrible speed modifier, and certain bosses react adversely to its effects, but other than that it becomes very handy in attaining conditional drops.

* Once you get the Master Key (which becomes available halfway through the 4th stratum), you can access a secret area in the 1st stratum which contains an item called the Training Orb. Said item, once equipped, grants you free experience points each time you take a step in the labyrinth. Oh, and by the way, this game has a feature that lets you draw a path and have your party automatically follow it. And the areas that contain bosses don't have any random encounters, so you can just go there, draw a looping path, turn on auto-walk, set your 3DS down, and come back 20 minutes later to a party that's just 1 experience point away from levelling up. The fact that you cannot gain that last experience point just from walking puts a small limit to the item's overpoweredness, but it still essentially eliminates all level grinding for the sufficiently patient.
* The combination of New Challenger of Masurao and Soul Gather of Harbinger. New Challenge allows you to immediately get into a consecutive random ecounters with improved chance of meeting Rare Breed which offers amplified exp gain when defeated and can be maxed with 5 skill points. While the premise of fighting rare breeds consecutively can be rather scary, and escaping didn't stop the chain, the Union Skill Full Retreat can be used to stop the chain of ecounters. Soul Gather significantly increases ecounter rate and increases battle exp gain, up to double the exp at the final level. This can be further boosted with Larva Scythe, a scythe that improves the chance of ecountering rare breed, alvailable as a normal drop from the Toxipede. These skills are very useful to reduce the time required to gather materials, but with the right set up, it can be abused to go far past the experience scaling of the game. As a result, New Challenger ended up getting a small nerf when it returned in Nexus, turning it into a Veteran level skill.
** One way to optimize the reliability of such method is to compose a team with priority attacks, to bypass the increased action speed of Rare Breeds. One good example is the Rover Wing Thrash, alvailable pre Mastery with 3 points of Hawk Whistle as pre-requisites. A single target skill where the Rover shoots an arrow to the target followed by the hawk attacking the same row as primary target. Due to the way that Rover's pet stats is calculated, Wing Thrash can do a lot of aoe damage with a well leveled Hawk Whistle, independent of the caster's stats, allowing further optimization from using race with higher TP to get even more cast of Whing Thrash with minimal repercussion to the skill's damage output.

* Heroes are the game's unique class and they're some of the best in the game thanks to well rounded offensive skills that can fulfill several roles in one, and great choice of passive skills.

** Reinforce and Royal Veil are healing passives. The former lets their Orders restore HP and the latter heals the party if the Sovereign is at full health. While not as strong as a Medic's healing skills, these passives are usually enough to keep a party topped up in-battle, especially if aided by a Hero.

* Shogun have an infamous build that revolves around 3 skill that is [[DiscOneNuke alvailable on their basic skill tree]]: Great Warrior, Taunt Assassin, and Front Command.
** Great Warrior is a single target buff that offers 60% Physical Attack buff when maxed along with increased target focus. This is the single most powerful attack buff in the entire game, for a small cost of 6 SP, with the caveat of being incompatible with Sovereign's Force Break due to being classified as a target focus buff. While the downside might seems risky, it serves as a way to fuel Shogun's Command skills.
** Taunt Assassin is essentially Soul Gather of EOV, it increases ecounter rate, with doubled EXP gain when the skill is levelled to max. In comparison to Soul Gather, its even better, the skill requires only 6 SP to be maxed with Level 2 Great Warrior as a pre-requisites for the skill making it extremely easy to fit into a build. On top of this, due to the way Nexus is structured, there are simply way more opportunity to use Taunt Assassin to rake up a lot of EXP. Simply using Taunt Assassin before engaging a bossfight would put the party ahead in the experience curve.
** Front Command allows the Shogun to choose an ally, so long as said ally took a hit from the enemy during the turn, including when the damage is nulified or absorbed, the frontline would perform a counter attack with their equipped weapon for 200% damage modifier each. Front Command is the most basic of the command skills, and arguably the best. The requirement to use a specific ally to trigger the counter can be circumvented when used against AOE moves, aggro skills such as Great Warrior, and redirection skills such as Scapegoat and Line Shield. Compared to every other command, it have the most damage potential besides Shot Command. With 3 frontline damage dealer, 600% damage modifier thats compatible with Elemental Arms are impressive when compared to the standard high end offensive skills. When compared to Basic skills, its absolutely ridiculous especially when backed with Elemental Arms skills from the Sovereign.

** Thunder Fist from the base Pugilist tree is a DiscOneNuke to the extreme, its a composite Bash and Volt making it harder to resist than most of the Pugilist's pure bash skills, not to mention easier to hit weakness with, notably hitting the weakness of the first and second stratum boss and a couple of FOE at that timespan. It have 130% speed modifier making it fairly likely to hit before the enemy move, and to top it off it have 450% damage modifier, which is completely absurd for basic class skills. The only downside associated with Thunder Fist is the backlash damage dealt to the user if the move failed to kill, which is barely relevant against random ecounters due to the sheer power behind the move, and workable against FOE and Boss fights with the right skills, and proper Union skills usage. Thunder Fist stays relevant all the way until the end of the game, since its damage modifier actually stacks up fairly well compared to skills alvailable at Master class level, and when primed with Dance Oracle, it surpass Titan Killer as the Impact Pugilist second strongest move after Death Edge in the right condition.

* TEC formula for skill damage calculation of TEC based skills are calculated entirely based of the comparison between user TEC to the target TEC. More importantly, head bind halves the TEC stats of the victim, effectively doubling the damage output of TEC skills against a target that get afflicted by head bind. This allows you to simply stack as many TEC increasing equipment as possible on class that uses TEC for their skills since weapon does not matter on them, and thanks to the low impact of Armor piece in the series since ''The Drowned City'', this kind of equipment set up can be done with little to no repercussion. While quirks based on TEC formula is not necessarily a GameBreaker in every installment, it is arguably the primary contributor towards the clunkiness of Alchemist and their derivatives over the course of the series until ''Legends of the Titan'' Runemaster heavily tones down their extreme DiscOneNuke factor while giving them a more stable performance towards the later stages of the game. By the time of ''Beyond the Myth'', the game swapped into a new stats formula with a more standarized stats mechanic where every weapon had their own Physical and Magical attack value, subsequently removing all the quirks tied to the TEC formula for good.