Seiken Densetsu 3

This page is for the 1995 original. For the 2020 remake, go to Trials of Mana (2020)

• The hard part I've always found is the healing. Without spending an a lot of money on items, especially at the beginning of the game, healing is hard to come by until you get your class change. And assuming you have Carlie, Kevin or Duran. If you don't, you're stuck with healing via items. But if you have someone who can heal, things a lot easier.

• Abuse the hell out of the Black Market. It's in Byzel (city on the left side of the Golden Road), only open at nights, and you can buy items which can cast spells that you don't have access to. You can buy items which cast buffing spells and you should buy a few bucketloads of these and use them in every boss fight. Use the Attack Up ones on Hawk and Duran, Mind Up on Angela. The others aren't half as important. I think you can also get Saber items and a Heal-All item. The Heal-All item uses the user's spirit stat for calculating how much it heals so Angela should be throwing most of these.

• Some bosses love to counter spells and level 2-3 techs. The Ninja Bros are an example of these guys. Stick with buffing yourself and bashing their skulls in or else you'll get a nasty counter attack. Another notable example is a certain three-headed boss that shows up near the end game. Don't completely forgo these, but if enemies are using a lot of painful attacks try not using your strongest moves and see if that makes them stop.

Class change advice

• If you took Hawk, just remember that the light side classes suck and his dark side classes are game breakers.

• Kevin is probably the best character. Look up on GameFAQs for good class changes, some are awesome and some are terrible.

• You can change classes at level 18 and at level 38, but you have to visit a Mana Stone to do so.

• Change class when you hit the level requirement (18 for the first, 38 for the second). When you class change your stats will change to the starting values of that class and all the points you put into stats will be lost. On that note, Dexterity and Luck are useless (although Hawk needs some dex to learn some skills).

• Angela either gets level 2 spells or gets a whole one darkness spell that is useful against about four enemies and a boss. I forget which class gets which but it's her 'light' class (the top branch). 'Dark' (the bottom branch) Angela really isn't that great and since it's the Angela you'll have for most of the game you should go with the light path. The second class dark classes aren't anything special either so you won't be losing anything special.

• Duran can learn either a healing spell and shields (light) or Sabers (dark). Duran's healing isn't that great compared to the Poto Oils you can buy in the black market, take time to cast, and only targets one character. And shields are bugged and are mostly useless. On the other hand the 'dark' Duran gets more attack power, half the elemental sabers (fire/air/water/earth, also replacable by the Black Market), and a hit-all-enemies level 2 technique great for wiping regular enemies. From the dark Duran you can get access to Moon/Wood Saber (absorb HP/MP on hit, respectively) or the strongest attack and most powerful tech of the game. Light Duran leads to Heal-All or Saint Saber which aren't half as good as Moon Saber.

• Hawk gets bad trap spells (light) and debuff+attack spells (dark) and you can't buy debuff spells from the Black Market. To learn these skils you'll need some Dex. I don't remember Hawk's second classes very well except the Wanderer (light-light) which can learn some nice skills except it comes way too late in the game.