[Rendar]

Summoners have to deal with the day-in-day-out bullshit of having to level summons.

Which, while powerful, are usually not really worth the effort to actually summon in a fight since they die in about 1.5 hits (or a well placed AoE).

Now, I don't bother to actually write about that, but instead I write to lower the amount of bullshit grinding that is needed to get these little shits to be actually worthwhile.

They take forever, can only gain 1 level at a time, scale at the same XP rate that normal players do, and do not get XP for being in your back party. Only if they are actively summoned.


Can we get something about this to change?

A) Lower the XP needed to go from 1 > 60 on them
B) Allow the little mongrels to get multiple levels at once. There is zero reason they shouldn't do this right now anyways, since you aren't rolling for stats each level now.
C) Give us an XP share function so that you can toggle it on and say.. the first 3 youkai in your list gain XP. Or just a toggle for 1-3, incase you don't want XP for some of them, but want it for 1.

Any combination of these 3 changes would be very welcome, but having at least B would save us so much god damn time, infact I would love just B if literally nothing else changes.

[Snake]

B is enough imo, especially if this is on LV45+. But it being the most tiresome grind in the whole game is why people scratch aside Summoner from the omniclassing zone, because it requires effort.

I think it's fine, but if people wanna make every single person alive have fully leveled Youkai in less than a day, *shrug*.

[Raigen.Convict]

I'm honestly rooting for this change BUT if it stays the same that's fine too. Most youkai as Rendar said die easy if they aren't earth attack scaling, water attack scaling, Plant or Dragon race youkai so having the grind be so unbearable is a bit overkill.

[Fern]

Youkai grinding is incredibly frustrating at the moment, yes. In the Shin Megami Tensei games, there's a skill called 'Growth' which allows you to get the creature EXP while it is not in your main repertoire.

This could probably be implemented as a talent in the Summoning tree.

Allowing them to get multiple levels at once also works.

[Nanovelich]

I think multiple levels would eliminate a huge enough chunk of the grind for it to be worth it, really, but I like Fern's suggestion.

At the moment, the Summoning Talent only requires 5 of the 10 possible ranks to max it out completely, so I think adding something like Growth as a subtalent would be swell.

Here's an idea or two.


Additional Subtalents for Summoning.

Mentor - 5 Ranks
The first SR Youkai in your contracts gain EXP even if they are not summoned at the end of a battle.
Unsummoned Youkai receive a 50% penalty to EXP gained. (Unconscious Youkai do not gain EXP.)

Guidance - 5 Ranks
Reduces the penalty of Mentor EXP by (10*SR)%.

Numbers are arguable, of course, but that's my idea. As for 'why the first X Youkai' and 'doesn't that interfere with Auto-Summon,' I imagine it's easier for Dev to program, and the first X Youkai are generally supposed to be your more important ones anyway. I think it colliding with Auto-Summon balances out how much easier it would make grinding them.

[Raigen.Convict]

Why not your first X unsummoned youkai? Makes more sense to me

[Nanovelich]

Two reasons, really.

First one: Honestly, I think it'll be buggy as hell if it is. Simple as that. Youkai slots at the moment seem to be buggy for some reason, but am I the only one getting that problem?


Second reason: Drop R5 Summon Storm at the end of every battle with the maxed Summoning talent as I've described it but with 'first X unsummoned Youkai' instead. 5+6 = 11. Add Auto-Summon, and a Grand Summoner never needs to manually summon to get full EXP for all of his/her Youkai. (Bonder is unaffected by the difference, obviously.)

And that's only necessary if they're using 12 contracts. If they're using anything below that, they can keep all their Youkai safe in their back pocket until the Summon Storm, never even having to risk them while grinding them.

If we're adding multiple levels, which I estimate can cut the grind of a single Youkai by about a third if the Summoner in question is LV60, I think that's making it too easy.


I think some compromise is a bit necessary with how much easier a majority of this suggestion would already make the Youkai grind, and I'd rather see it like this than anything else. It's bad enough I wrote those subtalents to allow you to get 100% EXP without summoning them, I think; originally, I was going to suggest they be 0-50%, but that was difficult to write in a way that wouldn't let you just buy a useless Mentor subtalent if you didn't invest in Guidance as well.


So that's my reasoning. Free to justify an argument against it, of course.

[MegaBlues]

Youkai aren't nearly strong enough to warrant how troublesome it is to use them.

IMO, the grind should just be removed completely. Make them scale off of the summoner's level and call it a day.

[Neus]

First one: Honestly, I think it'll be buggy as hell if it is. Simple as that. Youkai slots at the moment seem to be buggy for some reason, but am I the only one getting that problem?

I've noticed that sometimes the pages don't seem to be ordered properly but I'm not sure if it's just in my offline version (because I've messed with my test character's list of youkai for testing purposes).

[Lonestar]

Youkai aren't nearly strong enough to warrant how troublesome it is to use them.

IMO, the grind should just be removed completely. Make them scale off of the summoner's level and call it a day.

Two reasons for that.

One: Youkai are really strong after leveled, and I do agree the early levels are decently hard to manage.

Two: That would completly kill the whole 'creating and increasing the bonds of your Youkai by getting strong together' theme.

The grinding can stay, but it would be really great to make it at least easier.