The Last Remnant/Walkthrough

Prologue
The prologue starts showing Rush Sykes looking for his sister, and entering a battlefield. It's a quick and coarse introduction to the battle system - for this cinematic battle, you can simply have the targets do whatever they want - within a turn, your army will use a superweapon to eliminate the enemy, and the following scene will have Rush and Emma fall into a cave.

The cave provides a basic tutorial of how to play. First, the tutorial cave introduces you to the treasure chest system, where you approach one of the small remnant markers and retrieve an item (in this case, a Broadsword you need to equip.)

Next is a combat with a creature. Approach it until the bubble above it gets a red outline, and press the button to initiate combat. This combat gives a quick introduction to deadlocks and flank attacks, but is otherwise hard to fail. Deadlock refers to engaging enemies in melee, and a flank attack (which the enemy does to your party) is an attack on a deadlocked union. If you're concerned about losing the battle, simply attack with combat arts.

Boss: Raptor
As you approach the end of the cave, you will enter a boss fight against a Raptor. This is practically a scripted battle, neither side will be able to inflict damage until Rush uses his amulet to perform Omnistrike.

After the battle, Rush meets with David Nassau, the lord of the nearby city of Athlum. He is accompanies by his generals, Pagus, Torgal, Emma and Blocter. He brings you to the city of Athlum in order to help you with your search.

Athlum
In Athlum, you will get access to the shops. Not all of the shops are yet open, but there are some things you can purchase.

In town, three locations are available. The first, Xiphos Way, contains three usable shops. The second, Town Square, has one usable shop.

As instructed by Torgal, you can head to the Warrior's Honor in Virtus Parish. Speak with the bartender to unlock the fourth location, Athlum Castle. The other location, Union of the Golden Chalice is only usable once you completed the first three missions in the main quest when you can form your own party.

Enter the castle, and David will mention that there are two places of interest - Pagus will describe the two possible locations, where suspicious individuals were bring a young girl to the Gaslin Caves, and night-time activite near the Robelia Castle ruins. These two actions can be done in either order.

Gaslin Caves
When you search the caves, Blocter will accompany you. He operates as a single-unit union, and you will have two supporting units. Blocter will recommend to try fighting as many groups as possible, which is a hint that increases the reward for multiple battles at once.


 * There are two non-adjacent rosefly groups in the starting area. You can try provoking one and moving closer to the second.
 * A manticore group is in the left tunnel. It leads to a chest containing 300G, but is a dead end.
 * The right tunnel leads to a chest with 5x cureleaf and 5x Relaxing Herb. It has three nearby encounters, totalling 1 manticore group, two rosefly groups of 2 units, and one rosefly group of 3 units.

The end of the caves reveals that these women are captive and being sold as slaves. This starts a boss battle against a Slaver (1,552-3,863 HP, depending on battle rank). Blocter is rather weak in this battle, but you want Rush's Troop to destroy at least one of the enemy troops to help make things easier. If Blocter does fall, focus your attacks on the boss using a combination of attacks and healing arts.

After the slavers fall, the captives are free but Irina isn't with them. Return to the castle when you are ready.

Ruins of Robelia Castle
When you search these ruins, Pagus will accompany you. Upon entry, Pagus will mention that the monsters inside the ruins are more vulnerable to the mystic arts. He will mention that monsters in the caves are vulnerable to physical attacks.


 * Central Tier
 * There is a Landworm group in the north-east corner, and a Vile Lizard group in the north-west corner.
 * The treasure in the second room is found in the north-east corner, contains 5 cureleaf and 5 Relaxing Herb.
 * The second room contains two monsters close to each other, both Vile Lizards. You can fight both at once if done properly.
 * The third room has three encounters: One group with two unions of vile lizards, and two groups totaling three landworms (both close to each other).
 * The north exit from the third room contains a chest with a Slayer Stone. This is required to open the east door within the third room.
 * East of the third room is crossing corridors. You can find two-union group of vile lizards, and a single vile lizard.  The south chest in the corridor crossing has 500G, and the exit to the second floor is to the north.


 * Sweeping Safehold
 * The west room has two groups, both Two Chimeras. These creatures will survive more than one round, but are vulnerable to mystic arts as normal.
 * The east room contains Graves, which can increase your speed by 3%.
 * The doors to the north lead to the boss fight.

The night-time activity was actually anti-remnant activists trying to destabilize Athlum by dressing up as guards, then causing problems.
 * Anti-remnant activist

The Anti-remnant Activist is a single unit with hit points between 1,552-3,863 depending on your battle rank. He is accompanied by an Anti-Remnant Bodyguards union and an Anti-Remnant Terrorists union (~500 HP).

Because of the threat of a flank attack, try to defeat the unions first by attacking with mystic arts. In general, you should have a high chance to KO one of these unions on the first attack. If one of your unions falls, try to use attacks with recovery arts, as the activist can inflict about half of a union's health in damage.

The activist drops 300g. Additional gold may be dropped by his escort.

The people at the anti-remnant rally don't know anything about Irina, thus you'll have to return to the castle.

Dillmoor
After investigating these two locations, there was sighting of a mysterious light in the sky. For this excursion, Torgal and Pagus will occupy the first union with three other assistants, and Emma, Bloctor and Rush till occupy the second union with assistance from two others.

Upon reaching Dillmoor, Torgal wants to see if Rush's talisman can be activated out of combat. It can, and you will then learn the Time shift ability. This allows you to move through an area to either evade monsters, or to link multiple non-adjacent monsters into a single encounter. While timeshifting, possible encounters will be marked on-screen.


 * To the northeast of the starting area, there is a triple encounter of Divains, totalling five enemy unions. Nearby ia treasure of 2 Cureleafs, 2 Relaxing Herbs, and 800G.
 * On the path to the northwest, there is a raptor to the side, and three divain encounter groups.
 * When approaching the bridge, a raptor encounter (with two unions) and a divian encounter (with two unions.)
 * On the bridge, three Jhana Archfighter groups spanning three unions.
 * Past the bridge and to the right are minor encounters, such as three divain encounters (spanning 4 unions), and two Jhana Archfighters with 3 units each.  This ends in a locked door which you can't open yet.

To the left of the bridge, you will see Irana and the person kidnapping her. As with most cases, they leave, and force you to fight a Vicious Plant.

The vicious plant has 5,168 HP, but increases if you have a high battle rank (up to 23,500 HP). It is supported by four Vile Plants, which should have around 1000HP at a low battle rank. In this battle, the Vicious Plant will not attack until the third turn or when it is engaged in combat. When it does, it has a powerful monster art, Natural Gas, that can inflict significant damage should it be used as a flanking attack - it is therefore in the best interests to eliminate the vile plants first.

When the Vicious Plant is destroyed, you will return to the castle. David believes that he should postpone actions until he learns more about the flying remnant - Rush decides to continue the search on his own, and will now be able to access the Union Board to create his own units.