I’m going to explain the equipment skills system and help you understand exactly how to use it to your advantage. Please check out the Beginner’s Guide if you need help getting started, and for other guides.
This guide will go over everything about equipment skills in Tales of Zestiria including:
What are Equipment Skills? - What these skills do and how they work. Example Skills - A list of some of the individual skills. Example Bonus Skills - A list of some of the bonus skills.
What are Equipment Skills?
All skills in Tales of Zestiria come from your equipment. Each piece of equipment lists the skills they give, and you can check the skill list of each character by going to the equipment menu.
These skills do a variety of things from increasing stats, to giving bonuses in battle. When you buy, find, or fuse equipment, pay close attention to the skills and what would be best for your situation.
There are 10 groups that skills are placed in:
Status - These skills increase a certain stat, depending on the element of the skill. Battle Abilities - These skills affect action in battle, such as increased damage against stunned enemies. HP - These skills affect your Health recovery. SC - These skills affect your Spirit Chain recovery, allowing you to attack more often. BG - These skills affect your Blast Gauge recovery. Status Change - These skills add the potential to inflict status effects, or increase the chances to increase them on skills that already do that. Category 1 - These skills increase damage done and reduce damage taken from most common enemies. Category 2 - These skills do the same things as Category 1, but against stronger/rarer enemies. Elemental - These skills increase the power of element- based artes. Incantation - These skills can alter the course of a battle.
Each skill can be for one of the elements. Below is an example of what they do in the status category:
Non-elemental - Attack increase. Fire - Arte Attack increase. Earth - Defense increase. Water - Arte Defense increase. Air - Focus increase.
Again, this is just an example of the status category. Each of the 10 categories do something different for each element.
Example Bonus Skills
When you have multiple skills together, you can get bonus skills. There are too many bonus skills, and skills in general, to go over here.
You also don’t usually have a choice what you skills you get, so you must collect and fuse equipment until you get the skills you want.
There are 3 ways to get bonus skills:
Stack - This is when you have more than one of the same skill. E-Union - This is when you have 2 more skills next to each other on the same elemental line. G-Union - This is when you have 1 of each element, including non-elemental, in the same column.
Let’s use the above picture as an example. Notice that you can skill the bonus skills, and what type they are, on the right side of the skill sheet when you hover over a skill.
Stack
When you stack the same skill, it increases the effect. One Spirri skill increases Focus by 4%, but 2 increases it by 8. You also get a bonus skill for stacking 2. This lowers stagger time by 6%. All stacks of 2, regardless of element, give this same skill.
Each stack gives a different effect and you can only have one stack effect for each skill.
E-Union
When you get skills of the same element in a horizontal line, they also give a bonus. A stack of 2 reduces elemental damage of that type, and 3 reduces the status effect of that element.
For example, an E-Union of 2 fire skills reduces fire damage taken by 10%. An E-Union of 3 reduces burn effect by 50%. If you want to to keep the damage reduction bonus skill, make sure no more than 2 skills of the same element are next to each other on the horizontal line.
G-Union
When you have a vertical line of each element skill, you get a bonus G-Union effect. A G-Union in the status skill group, increases all stats by 10%. Think of the G-Union as combining the effects of each skill into a huge bonus skill.
That wraps up my guide on Equipment Skills in Tales of Zestiria. Let me know if you have any questions!
