by squidrick on Tue Jan 15, 2013 6:05 am

You can get in expedition as soon as you start the game if you know what you are doing but I suggest you to wait till you have 8 units. How to get this number? Follow the beginner quests. At some point an elf (mage) and a sister (healer) will be added to you initial crew bringing the total to 5. Then later you'll be asked to build a square. Square allows you to recruit more units, up to three random ones every day. The recruit list changes everyday at 00.00 and it is highly suggested to check it every day and to recruit all blooded units (http://www.ein-herjar.com/website/guide ... lationship) that you can find there. Blooded units has better chances to get stats at every level up. Your lord start with the Brunhilde blood which help to increase str, def and hp.
So once the square in built you can recruit 3 more units bringing the total to 8.
Why 8 units? Up to 3 units can be working at the same time (harvesting, building or upgrading). It is highly suggested to have 3 constantly working.
About harvesting:
Mining brings you silver ore, tin ore, copper ore, lime, iron ore and corundum.
Loging brings you log, ash wood, oak wood, abies wood and line.
Quarrying brings you plant ash, obsidian, alunite, stone ore, quartz and beryl.
Hunting brings you bear, wolf, rabbit and food.
You can get your units up to level 30 in base with harvesting, building or upgrading. Once a unit hit the level 30 it won't get any xp from those with the exception of training.
Training is usable only by units lvl 20+. It lasts 8 hours and rewards the unit with around 300xp. You also have a chance to get an item by training (among ygg leaf, silk cloth, ogre skin, juton skin, imp skin, muspel stone, dwarf coin, blue diamond, secret of cyclops rock, ancient trees yutoun). Units are trainable till the max level aka lvl 50.
Lvl 1-10 units can harvest up to 60 minutes.
Lvl 11-20 units can harvest up to 120 minutes.
Lvl 21+ units can harvest up to 180 minutes.

So was saying before I interrupt myself that you can have up to 3 units working and a maximum of 5 units can participate in a battle in expedition despite you can bring with you up to 10 units. So that makes a total of 8. Bringing more then 5 units in expedition can have an advantage, you can have 5 "slaves" carrying brand new weapons for your main team so that they can change their equipment once the ones originaly carried run out of durability. Note: if a weapon reaches 0 durability it will be gone forever so better unequip it once it reaches low durability in order to repair it once you'll be back in your base. But bringing many units in expedition has also a disavantage. Indeed, the more units you take with you, the more food you'll consume.

About food:
If you reaches 0 food while your in expedition, all your units will start the battle with 1HP. So pretty tense to win with that huge disadvantage.
You can get food with a field, a farm, buy them 30 gold each in the market or raid those as seen earlier.

Refresh the page (F5)
If during a battle one of your unit die or if you break a weapon and you really didn't want that to happen, you can refresh the page to start the battle over. You can refresh as many times as you need in expedition. Refreshes are limited to 2 during colony attacks and upsala fights. Refreshing in a raid = auto loose and all your units will loose a LP.

Bonuses during a fight

Those who played FFT will try side and back attacks. Side attack doesn't give any bonus but attacking an ennemy in the back will provide you a +15% hit rate.
Also if a sword type unit attack an axe type unit, it will get a +15% hit rate too. Same goes if an axe type unit attack a spear guy or if a spear guy attack a sword guy.
Attacking from behind with a spell will not provide any bonus.

About xp:

Only the unit who kill the mob will get the xp. That's why leveling a sister can be boring caus she's generaly healing instead of hiting. If one of your unit get some xp in a fight, all your units will get a +5xp bonus at the end of the fight. I say if one of your unit get some xp caus it's not automatic. Indeed, the more th (sum of all stats, can be seen in the unit button of your unit tab or by adding str + tech + agi + def + int + luck of a unit) your unit have compared to the th of the mobs, the less xp you'll get. This can be decreased till 0. So for better leveling, the higher the map the better it is. Plus mobs of different maps give more and more xp.

Xp bonuses:
-Recommended battle times. Symbolised by the axes on the top of your screen, you get 3 of those every 8 hours. As long as you have recommended battle times, your xp will be multiplied by 5. You can stock up to 18 recommended battle times.
-Elite skill:
elite I: +20%xp
elite II: +50%xp
elite III:+100%xp
elite IV: +150%xp

Note: healing an undead will not damages it but will actually heal it. Healing mobs can sometimes be useful if you want to kill a specific mob with a specific unit without it getting ksed by the counter attack of another of your units.

Finish Battle Button

Using this will end your current battle. Can save you time if you know that there are no way that you can win the actual fight. But be careful if you use it, all your unit will lose one LP (which they all would have do anyway if you are no match against the ennemies). Saves also durability with the time and it will not be counted in Times of loss of battle ranking.

About the team
3 melees, 1 mage, 1 healer can clear any map with proper level and equips. If you're having a hard time you can use a corner of the map with the 3 melees blocking the path to your magic classes and abuse the standy option with melees.
My favorite PvE team is 2 melees, 1 high elf (high elves can use holy rosario spell so can help the healer sometimes), 1 cardinal and one hawkeye.