The Legend of Heroes: Trails through Daybreak II – A Guide for Grendel, Grimcat and More

Go! Go! Grimcat! is the most buffed Craft between games and is quite ridiculous this time around.

– Go! Go! Grimcat! like in Daybreak 1 will last for an entire battle when used unless KO’d.
– Both Go! Go! Grimcat! and Revert have a Delay of only 5.
– Being in Grimcat also increases the power of Grimnight Waltz from S to S+
– While Grimcat is active Judith’s regular attacks and Crafts will deal a second packet of damage that scales off her magic attack and hits the opponent’s magic defense.

– – Unlike in Daybreak 1 (where the magic packet attacked at 90% magic attack) in this game it scales directly based on the attack used and even works on her S Craft. This is an enormous buff
– – This extra magic packet also deals the same amount of stun as the initial attack. This extra stun will NOT appear in the preview when selecting an attack but will still apply. Effectively this means Grimcat will be doubling the stun that Judith applies making her amazing at stunning enemies.
– – If the initial hit Judith does lands a critical hit then the magic damage packet will also critical. This magic packet critical can also benefit from the Heidrun quartz.
– – Side/Back Bonuses will NOT apply to the magic packet

Magic damage packet oddities:
(These also work this way in Daybreak 1, but they matter less there)
– Despite the magic damage packet being well, magic, it actually counts as a physical attack for the purpose of things that buff Physical Attacks vs Magic Attacks.
– – So for example: Forte WILL increase the damage dealt by the magic portion of Grimcat attacks and Ideal Force will NOT. The same goes for S Boosts that boost physical damage: they will increase the damage dealt by the magic portion of Grimcat and S Boosts that increase magical damage will not.
– In spite of wanting things that increase physical damage, things that increase ATS and NOT STR will make the magic damage packet better. In short: Physical damage up good, ATS up good.

This one is a bit more straightforward than Grimcat but there’s still a few interesting bits about it.

– Take the Grendel gives 100 Craft Points back and this can critical from a critical turn or from random criticals to give 150 back.
– Slightly different from Daybreak 1 the stat bonuses provided by Grendel are STR/DEF/ATS/ADF +80%. In Daybreak 1 it was Attack/Defense/Magic Attack/Magic Defense +40%. This overall makes Grendel statistically stronger in Daybreak II in practice. Equipment bonuses are still applied after all of this, it’s just that Grendel no longer makes Van’s equipment stronger so to speak.
– When multiple actions are chosen during a single turn the Delay Van has will be from the highest Delay action picked only.

Temper from Van’s Heated Roar craft is kind of funny especially when considering it can “benefit” from turn count increases.

In Daybreak 1 Temper increased Van’s damage the fewer turns of Temper remained:
4 turns left: +25% damage
3 turns left: +50% damage
2 turns left: +75% damage
1 turn left: +100% damage

These numbers still work this way in Daybreak II while Temper’s duration is 4 turns. Which kind of begs the question how this works when Temper’s duration is increased through Craft upgrades.

At a 5 turn duration it works as the following:
5 turns left: +20% damage
4 turns left: +39% damage (yes you are reading that right)
3 turns left: +60% damage
2 turns left: +80% damage
1 turn left: +100% damage

At a 6 turn duration it’s like this:
6 turns left: +17% damage
5 turns left: +34% damage
4 turns left: +50% damage
3 turns left: +67% damage
2 turns left: +84% damage
1 turn left: +100% damage

The 39% up above does look weird and you might be wondering if I made a mistake there, but these numbers are actually easy for anyone to test because damage multipliers (like from Temper) do NOT make Impact Shard Skills stronger so Impact Skills can easily be used to test how damage multipliers work.

This section goes over some elements that are new so I’ll be spoiler texting a few things here for those who don’t want mechanics spoilers. No story stuff will be included here so don’t worry about that.

Trails through Daybreak II introduces new dual element arts.
– These arts benefit from verse quartz from both elements they are associated with and they all stack up to a maximum of 4 verse quartz.

Side/Back bonus:
These grant a default of +30% to your attack/magic attack when the requirements are met. They are attack multipliers, NOT damage multipliers.

Risette’s Mystic Vision has 90 Delay.

Ark Feather has 125% power (between C and C+)
Judgment Feather has 150% power (like B rank Arts)

Delay for common actions:
Attack: 100
Defend: 50
Using Items: 80

Stun inflicted by SCLM support attacks has been reduced from 8 to 4 in Daybreak II (Except Grendel who still does a whopping 20) and have had their hit counts all reduced to 0.

Normal attacks have had their stun adjusted for many characters. Here are the following stun values for normal attacks:

Van: 10 (was 8)
Elaine: 8 (was 6)

Agnes: 4
Kincaid: 6 (was 8)
Swin: 6
Nadia: 4
Judith: 6 (doubled to a whopping 12 during Grimcat).
Quatre: 4 (was 2)
Celis: 4 per target
Leon: 4
Aaron: 8
Feri: 6
Risette: 8
Shizuna 8
Renne: 10 (why?)

– Hilariously the damage dealt from Impact shard skills ingore all forms of damage multipliers including difficulty setting so they are in essence more impactful (I’m not sorry) on higher difficulties and less so on lower ones.

At its core the Trails series uses a basic Attack – Defense damage formula with some simple multipliers thrown in.

The basic formula in Daybreak II (and also all Trails games after Skies) is:
Attacking stat x 2.5 – enemy defending stat x 1.25

Crafts and Arts apply a multiplier to the user’s attack based on how strong that Craft or Art is.

– For example if an 80 Attack Van Stun Slashes an enemy with 100 Defense then he will do roughly 115 damage.
– – 80 x 1.2 = 96 = Effective Attack for this Craft
– – 96 x 2.5 = 240 = Attacking damage
– – 100 x 1.25 = 125 = Damage reduction from Defense
– – – 240 – 125 = 115

After this damage multipliers (like from hit count) are applied if applicable.

Damage variance is then applied (+ or – up to 10% iirc) which is slightly more variance in Daybreak and Daybreak II than previous Trails games.