Artes Basics

Welcome to your handy guide to Artes and various attacks in battle! For those of you not familiar with the Tales of series of games, "Arte" is the encompassing term for spells and special techniques that go beyond basic attacks with a weapon. Characters in the Tales of series also have extremely powerful attacks known as "Mystic Artes," which are similar to Limit Breaks, Ultimates, etc...

Let's learn how to use these techniques in battle!

Look at the lower right hand corner of the screen. You can see 4 buttons arranged in a + shape.

Normal Attacks[]

The icon to the right is the Normal Attack button. On the player's turn, pressing this button will cause the selected character (Kanata, in this case) will do a basic attack with their weapon. The look of this button changes depending on what weapon the character is using, nifty huh?

If we look at the character details screen for a second, we can see exactly how much damage we'll do with that Normal Attack. For Kanata, it hits 1 enemy 1 time and will do 100% of his attack stat (ATK) as damage. If you want to reference this in battle, just long press on the Normal Attack button.

Because Normal Attacks grow with a character's attack, you don't have to worry about leveling it specifically.

Artes[]

Back to the battle screen, let's look at our Artes.

The Arte buttons are the bottom and left buttons. Some characters only have one Arte, it will appear in the lower left of this area. Tapping an Arte button will use that Arte for that character's turn.

Just like Normal Attacks, we can see more information about Artes on the character screen, or by long-pressing on the Arte button. Kanata's two Artes, Feint-form Strike and Rending Bite, are detailed here. Feint-form strike is similar to his Normal Attack but has a few more hits and does more attack. Rending Bite, however, hits all enemies and has even more attacks!

Rending Bite sounds like a great move that we should use all the time, as it hits everyone and helps increase our combo count to improve damage. However...

Unlike Normal Attacks, that can be used every turn without restriction, Artes have a cooldown period between uses. If Kanata uses Feint-form Strike on the first turn, and then Rending Bite on the second, these messages would appear over the Arte buttons. Once the countdown finishes, the Artes can be used again. Be sure to keep the turn count in mind when deciding when to use an Arte!

Artes can also be leveled up. There are items available for trade or that drop from battles to increase the amount of damage, hit count, healing, and buffing that an Arte can do.

There are a few different types of Artes.

Attack Artes[]

The most common type of Artes are attack Artes. Both of Kanata's Artes are attack Artes, they simply do damage to the enemy. Kanatas Arte, Rending Bite, is sometimes referred to as an area-of-effect (AoE) or multi target (MT) because it hits multiple enemies in one turn. His other Arte, Feint-form Strike, can be referred to as a single target (ST) Arte. Normal Attacks only come in ST form, but this may change over Crestoria's lifetime.

Effect Artes[]

Next up are attack Artes with special effects.

Velvet's Arte, Hell's Claw, has a chance to put a status effect on the targeted enemy. These effects can help cripple a super strong opponent and turn the tide of battle, be sure to use them when you can! There's a handy Status Effects page that lists how they work and you can check the Status Effect Artes list on the wiki to find characters who can apply those effects.

Heal Artes[]

Next up are healing Artes. Heat Aid is one of Misella's Artes and it partially heals an ally of your choice. There are also healing Artes that heal everyone in the party. To look for characters who can do healing Artes, check the Healing Artes list page.

Buff Artes[]

Last are buffing Artes. They're the reverse of status effects, as they give a beneficial boost to either a specific or all party members. In this example, Norma is able to raise all allies attack by 40% for 3 turns. If you're looking for someone to buff your team, check the Buff Artes list page!

Some characters even have Artes that attack and can buff at once!

Mystic Artes[]

Finally, we'll look at the top button, the Mystic Arte. Unlike Artes and Normal Attacks, Mystic Artes need to be charged before use. Let's look at the party on the battle screen.

Below each character's teal HP bar is a purple bar. This bar is called the Overlimit Gauge (OL Gauge) Once it fills, the character will be able to perform their Mystic Arte (MA). Keep in mind that only SSR characters have a Mystic Arte, SR characters do not have an OL Gauge or a Mystic Arte.

OL Gauges are easy to raise. Using Normal Attacks, Artes, and defeating enemies will raise the OL Gauge bit by bit for that character. Once the OL Gauge is full, the icon for that character's Mystic Arte will appear.

Here's Kanatas MA as an example. While it won't contribute a lot to the hit bonus, it hits very hard! In the upper left, the amount of Overlimit (OL) is listed. Kanata's 180 is on the lower end, so his MA will charge quickly and can be used a lot in battle.

As a counterexample, Velvet's MA has an OL cost of 270, but deals a whopping 450% ATK.

Mystic Artes can be used any time during your turn, but can be used outside of the specific character's turn. In the example screenshot above, you could use a Normal Attack or Arte for Kanata, Cress, Misella, and Vicious in turn to fill up their OL Gauges and then take advantage of the pause before your turn ends to unleash their Mystic Artes! You also have the option to select the order they use their MAs, for example, to have Yuri use his 38 hit MA before the others to guarantee a higher damage multiplier.

Like Artes, Mystic Artes can be upgraded. However, they require either the character's SSR stone or a specific rare item. They will require 5 items total to reach their max strength, so be sure to farm if you want to cause massive damage on the battlefield!