The depth of Star Ocean is defined by its incredibly satisfying skill system, which provides benefits both in and out of battle.
Ranging from gaining positional advantage in battle, to smithing, to even playing music, these skills are almost universally useful.
Success of skills is determined not only by RNG, but also by a character’s specific “Talents.”
Talents are a character’s natural inclination to be successful at a particular set of skills. Talents can be innate, the character joins with them, or can be learned, in an often tedious process.
Appropriately pairing skills with the appropriate party member is key in saving the ever valuable SP. Specialization is key in getting everything you need in a prompt manner.
This guide will provide a basic primer on Talents and Skills and when to learn them.
When to Learn Skills
It is largely agreed upon by the Star Ocean community, that the best time to learn skills is upon reaching Ionis.
Before that point, hording SP is preferred as the only skill required for game progression is Gale being leveled up one to learn to Dash.
I would also suggest that aside from waiting for Ionis, to first level up the Effort skill, which reduces the SP required to learn other skills.
Pre-screening for Talents
The best way to get the Talents you want is to SAVE right before a character joins the party. When they join, check their Talents on the Status menu.
If the Talents are what you want for that specific character, or more importantly if they have Talents that fill in holes for your party, keep them, if not reset the game and have them join again.
Since most people are probably playing this on an emulator, I will warn you save states will not work for this, you will get the same Talents everytime, that is the nature of how save states work.
Another consideration is it would be ideal for most characters to have the Originality Talent, as it allows them to Customize their best weapons. This Talent is hard to learn as well, so your best bet is some pre-screening.
Talent List
Blessing of Mana
Helps with Alchemy. A skill only available to magic users, and cannot be learned. Either you start with it, or you don’t have it.
Design Sense
This increases someone’s success with the Art skill. Painting portraits and duplicating items will be easier with this Talent.
Love of Animals
Helps with the Familiar skill, which allows purchase of items from almost anywhere. This one is tough to learn, having it as innate skill is easiest.
Manual Dexterity
Helps with Compounding and Crafting.
Originality
Helos with Smithing and Customizing. Another one that’s pretty hard to learn, better off starting with it. You will want this on most characters. Certain characters won’t need it though. Can be learned by Customizing repeatedly, preferably with Violin 2 playing.
Pitch Sense
Helps with Music-related abilities
Rhythmic Sense
Another one that helps with musical abilities.
Sense of Taste
Helps with Cooking
Sixth Sense
Helps with Scout ability. Best to have innately. If you need to learn it you have to keep changing the encounter rate, leave to the previous menu, come back and change it again… repeat.
Writing Ability
Helps withl Authoring
Skills
Skills must be purchased in sets at skill shops scattered in towns throughout Star Ocean. I will first list the contents of each skill set, then provide a detailed description of each.
Sets
Battle Set 1
- Location: Astral, Otanim, Portmis
- Contents: Below the Belt, Strong Blow, Flip
- Price: 1000 Fol
Battle Set 2
- Location: Astral, Tataroy, Tropp, Van I II
- Contents: Counterattack, Feint, Mental Training
- Price: 2000 Fol
Battle Set 3
- Location: Astral
- Contents: Link Combo, Motormouth
- Price: 20,000 Fol
Knowledge Set 1
- Location: Hot, Otanim, Tropp
- Contents: Herbal Medicine, Mineralogy, Recipe
- Price: 300 Fol
Knowledge Set 2
- Location: Otanim, Portmis, Tataroy, Tropp
- Contents: Biology, Item Lore, Musical Notation
- Price: 600 Fol
Knowledge Set 3
- Location: Sylvalant, Tropp
- Contents: Psychology, Piety, Fairy Lore
- Price: 1200 Fol
Sense Set 1
- Location: Ecdart, Hot, Ionis, Portmis
- Contents: Esthetic Sense, Good Eye, Patience
- Price: 100 Fol
Sense Set 2
- Location: Ecdart, Ionis, Portmis, Tataroy
- Contents: Playfulness, Danger Sense, Perseverance
- Price: 200 Fol
Sense Set 3
- Location: Ecdart, Ionis, Sylvalant
- Contents: Functionality, Radar, Effort
- Price: 300 Fol
Technique Set 1
- Location: Hot, Van I II
- Contents: Kitchen Knife, Whistling, Sketching, Gale
- Price: 600 Fol
Technique Set 2
- Location: Ecdart, Ionis, Otanim, Tataroy, Van I II
- Contents: Workmanship, Writing, Animals
- Price: 1200 Fol
Technique Set 3
- Location: Astral, Sylvalant, Van I II
- Contents: Performance, Forging, Technology
- Price: 5000 Fol
Skill Descriptions
Below the Belt
Ignores a portion of enemies defensive stat.
Strong Blow
Knocks enemies “high in the air;” basically knocks enemies away
Flip
Quickly flip to rear of enemy to attacked from behind
Counterattack
Chance of counterattacking enemy
Feint
Makes attacks not miss
Mental Training
Raises attack power
Link Combo
Allows up to 4 Killer Moves to be set on L and R buttons, for short- AND long-range attacks.
Motormouth
Reduces delay for casting a spell
Herbal Medicine
Certain healing items have increased effectiveness outside of battle. Bonus HP = (Herbal Medicine level x 2 )%
Biology
(Biology level² x 10) HP increase
Psychology
(Psychology level)² MP increase
Piety
(Piety level + 2) INT increase
Patience
(Patience level x 2) CON increase
Danger Sense
Ambush rate down (Danger Sense level x 4)%
Perseverance
(Perseverance x 3) GUTS increase
Effort
Decrease SP needed to learn all skills. Includes Effort itself. Best to max this ASAP, before the rest of the skills.
Kitchen Knife
(Kitchen Knife level x 2) STR increase
Gale
(Gale level x 4) STAM increase
Workmanship
Not listed in game, but verified by two sources: (Workmanship level x 2) AGL increase
Writing
(Writing level x 4) AGL increase
Fairy Lore, Animals, Esthetic Sense, Mineralogy, Recipe, Item Lore, Playfulness, Musical Notation, Good Eye, Whistling, Sketching, Technology, Forging, Performance,
No effects
Speciality/Item Creation Details
Specialities are accessed from either the Special menu, located in the menu screen, or the Item Creation menu, accessed by pressing X while on the Item screen.
Specialities are leveled up, resulting in a higher success rate and increased access to better items, by leveling up the related skills described in the previous section.
Below is a list of each Specialty, the required skills to learn/level it, and where to access it. Keep in mind all skills can fail, yielding a useless failure item unique to each skill.
Alchemy
- Skills Needed: Fairy Lore, Mineralogy, Technology
- Related Talent: Blessing of Mana
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Used to create the rarer minerals from Iron. Increasing the level will, allow access to rarer and rarer minerals (ex: Sage Stone and Rainbow Diamond)
Art
- Skills Needed: Sketching
- Related Talent: Design Sense
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: can duplicate items or draw portraits depending on consumable item chosen.
- Magic Card: creates a portrait of a character in your party. Used for selling. Can also create cards that can be used in battle that have special effects, pretty useful.
- Magic Color: duplicates an item of your choice. Probably the 2nd most useful skill in the game.
Authoring
- Skills Needed: Writing
- Related Talent: Writing Ability
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: creates a skill book by consuming a Research Pen. Each skill book allows a certain skill to be learned and leveled up to level 7 without using SP. To create a book, the Author must have the related skill at level 1 or above, and only 16 of the Skills have books. This is easily the most useful skill in the game.
- Below are the Skill book titles and related skill.
- All About Weapons: levels Forging
- Biological Theory: levels Biology Skill
- Book of Grammar: levels Writing Skil
- Cooking Reference: levels Recipe
- Dwarven Techniques: levels Workmanship
- Heart of the Artisan: levels Kitchen Knife
- Herbal Tome: levels Herbal Medicine
- Hermes’ Theory: levels technology
- The Master Chef: levels Good Eye
- Minerals Lexicon: levels Mineralogy
- Music Encyclopedia: levels Musical Notation
- Music for Beginners: levels performance
- The Mysterial Fairy: levels Fairy Lore
- Psychology Omnibus: levels Psychology
- Soul of the Artist: levels Sketching
- Tool Compendium: levels Item Lore
Compounding
- Skills Needed: Biology, Herbal Medicine, Psychology
- Related Talent: This one is not clear, perhaps Manual Dexterity.
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Allows combining two herbs
Cooking
- Skills Needed: Good Eye, Kitchen Knife, Recipe
- Related Talent: Sense of Taste
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Use ingredients to create food items, act as healing items. Each character has a favorite food that fully heals their HP and MP.
Crafting
- Skills Needed: Esthetic Sense, Mineralogy, Workmanship
- Related Talent: Manual Dexterity
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: can consume minerals to create accessory items.
Customize
- Skills Needed: Esthetic Sense, Functionality, Workmanship
- Related Talent: Originality
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Allows creation of ultimate weapons or items from existing weapons. All characters have single item to Customize, except Joshua and Iria, who have none. Almost impossible to be successful without Originality.
Dash
- Skills Needed: Gale
- Related Talent: None
- Menu Location: Press B to Dash once Gale is at least level 1
- Description: See Above
Familiar
- Skills Needed: Animal Training, Whistling
- Related Talent: Love of Animals
- Menu Location: Special Menu
- Description: Use the Bird Feed item to call a bird. The bird is basically a shop. You give him Fol and he will bring back the items you ordered… hopefully. Like other skills this one can fail, and you can be left blowing money on nothing. Higher Skill level and the appropriate Talent decreases the chance of getting burnt. Increasing Skill level also increases what items are available.
Identify
- Skills Needed: Herbal Medicine, Item Lore, Mineralogy
- Related Talent: None/Unknown
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Identify unknown items, marked with a “?,” by using this skill in tandem with the Spectacles item.
Music
- HERESkills Needed: Musical Notation, Performance
- Related Talent: Pitch Sense, Rhythmic Sense
- Menu Location: Special Menu
- Description: compose and perform Music that cause a variety of special effects, including healing HP/MP, summoning secret bosses, increasing the likelihood of learning Talents, and more. Incredibly useful skill. Composition requires a Composer’s pen, and the purchase of an instrument. Song list HERE
Oracle
- Skills Needed: Piety, Playfulness, Radar
- Related Talent: None/Unknown
- Menu Location: Special Menu
- Description: After beating the game and getting a Star next to your Save File, this ability can be used to transport you to a special area that allows you to speak with the game’s dev team. More rooms open up as you level up the Skill.
Scout
- Skills Needed: Danger Sense
- Related Talent: Sixth Sense
- Menu Location: Special Menu
- Description: allows adjustment of the game’s encounter rate; a nice modern touch. It is a little unreliable though, it doesn’t seem to work consistently.
Smithing
- Skills Needed: Forging, Mineralogy
- Related Talent: Unsure, maybe Manual Dexterity
- Menu Location: Item Creation
- Description: Allows creation of weapons from the consumption if a Smith Hammer, 1 Weapon, and 1 Mineral.
Training
- Skills Needed: Effort, Patience, Perseverance
- Related Talent: Unclear if Talent matters.
- Menu Location: Special Menu
- Description: Select the “Train During Battle” option to gain extra EXP during battle. It seems to decrease stats when it is on.