The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel

• You're not going to max out your AP or fill out your entire notebook's character bios unless you follow a guide. Nor should you really try, to be honest. You'll probably get high enough AP anyway provided you don't skip out on any requests/sidequests to get most of the best rewards anyway.

• The name of the game in Cold Steel is that the Delay effect is king, so stock up on Impede quartz and equipment with Delay and get them to stack as much as possible on Rean because he has crafts that also inflict Delay. The more you stack, the more likely it is to activate as well. The end goal is wind up with a setup that will allow you to stunlock enemies and bosses close to indefinitely and prevent them from ever getting a turn.

• If you're wondering what the point of having multiple lines in your Arcus (on attackers like Rean, Fie, and Laura), each line means you can place a Status-inflicting quartz. So something like Poison, Freeze, Burn, Stone, etc. It's a very valuable strategy to get as many of these as possible on such characters, because it will transfer down to any attack/craft they use (even on bosses).

• Elliot should probably be your mage of choice because Resounding Beat is amazing. This got nerfed a lot in the sequel though. Related, Elliot also has a trick where you can have him cook an egg dish (I forget the name) that can sell for more than the cost of its parts. You can abuse this to grind money, which is a premium in that game.

• Rean, Laura, and Fie are more than likely going to be on your characters of choice, but also experiment with everyone to find out what crafts you like the most, because in these games you often get the most utility out of a character based on their crafts. Jusis for example has Noble Command which is an amazing buff.

• As with other Trails games, talk to as many NPCs as you're willing to do so.