Lost Sphear Beginner’s Guide: Tips For Spiritnite, Combat, Sublimation & More

Square Enix and Tokyo RPG Factory’s latest, Lost Sphear, puts players in the role of Kanata, tasked with protecting a disappearing world from an ominous power. Like I Am Setsuna before it, the game doesn’t hold your hand with a lot of tutorials about some of its core gameplay systems, which can easily lead to confusion.

Wondering why you can’t beat that super annoying frog boss? Can’t figure out what Spiritnite do? We’ve put together some general pointers and strategies to help you feel a little less bewildered in Lost Sphear. (We’ll be using the PS4 control scheme, for reference.)

General Tips

• Money is scarce, particularly in the middle of the game. Items are expensive, and selling equipment yields precious little cash. This means you can’t plan on having loads of spare Phoenix Tears (revival items) kicking around your inventory at 1200G a pop. You'll have to be strategic with your use of restorative items.
• You can restore all your HP and MP by levelling up, which should happen every several battles, if you're not grinding excessively. You can also use healing skills outside of battle to keep health up while not cutting into your item supply.
• Bosses are tough in this game. Just because you’re wiping out groups of regular enemies in a turn or two doesn’t mean you’ll have an easy time once you get to the end of a dungeon. Expect a significant difficulty spike and a probably a few knockouts.
• The stat boosts of food items (purchased at inns) are only good for one battle. It may make sense to eat a meal at a save point before a boss battle, but food isn’t as much of a game-changer in Lost Sphear as it is in Final Fantasy XV or the Tales series.
• There are a lot of different kinds of Memories in this game, most of which have multiple uses. You can use them to construct Artifacts, structures on the World Map that can’t be entered, but lend passive abilities to your team. (For instance, Tach Lab increases your movement speed on the World Map; Quantum boosts the ATB gauges of your party when you manage to evade an attack). You can also use Memories to make Spiritnite, allowing your characters to equip new skills and passive abilities. If you’re looking for one type in particular, check the Memories section of the Moon Memory in the main to find out which enemies drop it, then look in the Monsters section to find out what that particular enemy looks like and the areas where you can find them.
• Most often, Memories needed to progress the story will be available in the immediate vicinity (eg., you’ll have to defeat some enemies or talk to some people). So if you're missing something, you shouldn't have to look very hard.
• Forgot what you were doing or not sure where to head next? Press R1 to initiate Party Chat. In the main menu, there’s also an easy-to-miss option to press R1 for broader gameplay tips and useful information about Artifact Creation, Glow Spots, Vulcosuits and Spiritnite that are never directly mentioned in the game.
• During your travels, keep an eye out for metallic sphere enemies known as “Platinum Bobb” or “Gold Bobb.” Try to get a preemptive attack and strike quickly, before they run away. If you manage to take it down, you’ll score major EXP and valuable ore to sell. Once you hit mid-game, you’ll be able to build a Platinum Bobb Artifact to increase your encounter rate for these kinds of enemies.

Weapons and Items

• Sell most of the goods in the items section of your inventory whenever you get to a shop or merchant. Most of these serve no function other than supplemental cash. Be sure to hold onto colored Spiritnites to upgrade your equipment, though. You can only sell these for 10G but they cost thousands to purchase!
• Speaking of colored Spiritnite, there are ten varieties to modify your weapons and armor, for ten potential upgrades. You can only use each color once on a piece of equipment, which means each successive upgrade comes with a price bump.
• Beware: if you sell enhanced equipment, you won’t get those pieces of Spiritnite back. Plan to use these items for a while, and resist the urge to immediately upgrade equipment every time you hit a new town.
• As your party expands to include reserve party members, don’t be shy about swapping your best armor to your active-duty teammates. It’s hard enough to keep four characters with upgraded equipment, let alone six or seven!

Combat

• Learn to love the Momentum system. Momentum charges for each character appear as blue dots above the HP stat. You can burn one of these dots for an extra melee attack by taping Square when a blue ring appears around the active character.
• More importantly, you can also use Momentum charges along with Spiritnite skills, making them far more useful and powerful. (More on that below.)
• If you’re having trouble with a boss, consider adjusting the difficulty settings, expanding your Spiritnite selection, or upgrading your equipment. You probably don’t need to spend hours grinding for levels.
• You can evade some battles by using the Boost feature on the Vulcosuits. It’s also worth paying attention to the enemies’ positions on the field as you navigate a dungeon, so you can time your approach for when their back is turned. If you manage to snag a preemptive attack, you’ll start the fight with one Momentum charge.
• AOE and line-based attacks are your friend. Learn quickly which characters / skills can be used to hit multiple enemies at once, and use them for crowd control against larger groups.

Spiritnite / Skills

• The Spiritnite system is kinda-sorta like Final Fantasy VII’s Materia system. There are three kinds of Spiritnite: Skill Spiritnite, Counter Spiritnite and Momentum Spiritnite. The first two are locked to specific characters, and equipped in the blue left-hand column found in the equipment menu.
• Skill Spiritnite is what it sounds like. These allow your characters to equip attacks specific to them, primarily attacks and healing spells.
• Counter Spiritnite activate when a party member is attacked, typically triggering some kind of buff.
• Momentum Spiritnite, listed in the purple right-hand column of each character’s equipment menu, modifies and enhances the other varieties of Spiritnite. In order to trigger the secondary effect of Momentum Spiritnite in battle, you must have at least one Momentum gauge full, then press Square when a blue light appears around your character as they perform a skill.
• By repeatedly triggering the Momentum system while using skills, your characters’ Spiritnite will undergo Sublimation, allowing you to equip secondary effects as permanent effects of the skill. Sublimation allows you to customize your characters more deeply, and taking advantage of the system is critical to success against some of the game’s tougher challenges. Want a flame-based AOE attack that puts your enemies to sleep while also raising your defense? You can make it happen with Sublimation.
• Once you’ve Sublimated an effect, you can leave it on that Skill (its effect will grow with use), or swap it out for a different one. You can check which passive effects are linked to a particular skill by highlighting the skill in the equipment menu.
• Life Axiom, which heals a party member after they use a skill, is fairly easy to sublimate and a good skill to prioritize early on. Rotate it around party members and various skills to ensure your teammates can heal themselves while still dealing damage.
• Be careful not to make duplicates of skills. You may end up wasting Memories you could otherwise use for something else, and there’s no way to get them back once you’ve used them. You’ll just have to find more, either at Glow Spots around the world or by defeating enemies.

Lost Sphear is available now for PS4, Switch and PC. Got any other hot tips we should add to our list? Share your wisdom in the comments below!