This guide is targeted at:

• A player who finished the first playthrough struggling and now is ready for a more powerful playthrough.
  
• A first time player who doesn't want to do the guesswork of how to best navigate the main/side quests, how to develop the units properly and to know some easier ways to upgrade the equipment.

This guide is basically:

• Giving a brief but complete walkthrough through the main and side quests in an optimal order, regarding difficulty and development of the units
  
• Explaining those basics of the game which are important for a quick development of the units
  
• Giving suggestions which units to use in order to minimize the need for upgrading weapons by hunting for materials, which is often very tedious in this game

This guide is not:

• A walkthrough in a completionists sense. While we will do every quest and side quest, this guide does not cover getting every guild task completed or finding every chest or secret
  
• Going into details about the side quests themselves. Mostly all that is provided is the title, which is also a link to the Wikia page, as a reminder that a particular quest is due now.

But this guide will show how to achieve the following in a very effective manner:

• Completing all side quests and thus unlocking the highest ranked final boss
  
• Unlocking all ranks of the Chalice and Sword guild (Labyrinth guild needs too much work for too little rewards)
  
• Unlocking all DLC bosses
  
• Unlocking all weapons in stores, including the Imperator's
  
• Getting better weapons for the units during mostly by using weapons which are either dropped or can be bought in store, but do not have to be upgraded by hunting for components

By doing this and using the guidelines explained in this guide, you will develop an superb team, which can take on all the bosses with ease!
And all this with minimal effort needed; hunting for components is absolutely optional.
Nothing comes for free though and if you really want to outperform you should be willing to do one stat-building session of 1-2 hours (you may call it 'grinding'!?), which will make the difference between a good and an outstanding team.

You can also use this guide only for the walkthrough part, just skip the Basics part and jump right to the WALKTHROUGH sections.

My motivation for writing this guide
I clocked more than 2000 hours in this game, having done more than 25 playthroughs in all kinds of settings: Normal mode multiple times, Hard Mode multiple times, a run with Rush & Dave only, Maximum Damage run, Speed runs, runs with a lot of grinding, without any grinding, etc.
During my playthroughs I gained a good deal of knowledge about this game, think that I can tell the important from the not so important, and also want to share some lesser known infos and tricks with the public (like the Lavafender grind).

I always found the most annoying part of the game to be the upgrading of weapons by collecting gazillions of different materials. Even worse that in order for certain materials to be dropped, you had first to complete guild tasks to unlock those weekly and daily magazines.
The game originally, in the XBOX version, was intended to have only a few leaders, making upgrading them much less work. But PC version allowed for all 18 members to be leaders, so it's now much more work to upgrade them all.
For me, this seemed way too tedious and I was searching for ways to minimize that.

This is not a guide for hard mode. In hard mode the enemies hit harder, but you also start with plenty of gold, materials and formations from the last run and you can afford to craft some really good accessories (Ragna-rock!) and weapons for your party, improving their defense. Those things are much harder to get in a normal run; here you have to be careful with spending your gold and the materials. Therefore you have to optimize your ways and that's what this guide is about:
Giving a compact walkthrough about to do the right things at the right time and about which units to hire to minimize upgrading weapons, thus making the game less time consuming in the end.

The team is not primarily built around the 'usual' leaders, but rather with units which take advantage of the 'free' weapons that come along our way or those which are affordable to buy. Unfortunately I found no such weapons for any of the early Sovani leaders. They are great units, but for them conventional upgrading is the only option, so we only use them in the beginning; afterwards as reserve units only.
Of course it's possible to follow this guide without using the suggested units, it's just that you have to take care of the weapon upgrades by yourself.

The titles in this guide are prefixed with MQ for Main Quest and SQ for Side Quest.
This guide will not go into much details about the storyline or the sidequests themselves. Refer to those Wikia pages for that:
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Story_Begins...
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Quick_Walkthrough_of_Side_Quests_in_Chronological_Order

The order of the sidequests in this guide does not indicate when a sidequest is actually available, but rather when it makes most sense to do them regarding difficulty and unit development.

I won't go crazy over possible spoilers. While I tried to avoid those concerning the story itself, I will not put 30% of the text behind spoiler tags, just to avoid displaying leader names, areas or weapons. You have chosen to read a walkthrough, then of course there might be some minor spoilers ahead!

This game can be enjoyed just by playing it, without ever having resort to external tools.
However for a deeper view into the internal numbers, I recommend the following tools:

• http://enceler.github.io/tlrplanner/
  
• Shows you a lot of useful stuff, like which enemies have spawned in the current area, your game progress, which side quests are available or about to expire, etc.
  It even shows you how to proceed next in the main story.

• https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/950908-the-last-remnant/76686862
  
• Useful for watching class relevant stats and skill levels
  
• Weapon upgrade paths of your units

The game puts the save games here:
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\My Games\The last remnant\RushGame\Save\

All the save games from my latest test run for this guide can be downloaded here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/13WLKgYoxJ3sXcIcE5e3h3XinWPT_AtpW/view?usp=sharing

If the Steam linkfilter breaks the link, copy the whole string into your clipboard, paste it in your browser and reload.

After downloading unzip it, backup your actual 'Save' folder by renaming it, rename the unzipped folder to 'Save' and put it where your original Save folder used to be.

The save games can be used for comparison purposes or simply to restart the game at a certain point, in case you messed up your save history. They also might get you some hints as which arts to enable/disable for the units (with a grain of salt as far as Rush is concerned, since I had to disable many of his arts for quite a long time in order to get him to Scholar class).

There is a mod available, made by RebornSamurai190, which makes enemies' BRs static (fixed) according to different rulesets (curves).
https://steamproxy.net/app/23310/discussions/0/2906376154333740815/

This mod basically prevents enemies' BR from scaling according to the player's BR.
In the unmodded game, when facing a higher than expected player BR, many enemies increase their art damage significantly and thus higher stats are needed to survive. This often led to frustration for players using the kill 'em all playstyle. This playstyle leads to a high BR without developing the increased stats/skills the higher BR assumes, because the mobs are pushovers, which can be defeated within 1-2 turns, not resulting in significant stat/skill gains.

In my opinion this mod can be great, IF you know what you're doing.
Simply locking enemies at a too low BR will lead to lack in stat growth, which will lead to a underdeveloped party later in the game.
Locking them at a too high BR will lead to a nightmare difficulty experience and I'm not talking about difficulty which can be overcome by skill, but only by luck or heavy grinding.
Good thing is that you can choose between many different flavors of the BR curve, which makes it possible to control the difficulty of the game, adjust it to your needs, which had not been possible before!

From my tests, for a new player the following version seems quite adequate to me:
- 30 Steps 128&96 Linear Static (Final-Superbosses Excluded) + 106,4% Movement Speed
The mobs have a higher than normal BR, which makes it possible to grind them even at high BR. Still the rares & quest monsters stay at their lowest BR.

Important to notice: Whenever battle difficulty seems weird, compare that battle with and without the mod.

There is also a Discord server to discuss this mod and all things TLR in general:
https://discord.gg/4DtPtYn

So let's start this guide with some basics, that need to be explained first:

Battle Rank (BR) basically indicates how many enemy unions you have defeated. Under most circumstances it does not matter whether you fight extremely short or long battles, you gain 1 BR approximately per 25 enemy unions terminated.

But there are some notable exceptions to this basic rule:

1. As the BR difference between the enemy and your party becomes positive (enemy BR higher than you), BR gain will rise by 3% per BR difference.
   Example: If you fight an enemy which is 50 BR higher than you, the BR gain will be 2.5 times (150% greater than normal).
   
2. As the BR difference between the enemy and your party becomes negative (enemy BR lower than you), BR gain will tank and may be as low as 10% of the normal growth at a BR difference of 11 or more.
   Example: If you fight an enemy 11 BR lower than you, the BR gain will only be 10% of the normal gain (but so will the stat gains, as explained later).
   
3. The number of party & guest unit KOs reduces BR gain up to 20% of the normal growth.
   Example: Reviving 25 or more units reduces BR gain to 20% of the normal growth.
   
4. If the number of enemy unions minus the number of turns used to defeat these unions is 2 or more, BR gain will be reduced up to 20%.
   Example: Defeating 12 enemy unions in 3 turns reduces BR gain to 20% of normal.

More details about it here: http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_Rank

So fighting generally increases your BR. That in turn most of the time acts as a burden to the difficulty of the game. Fighting on the other hand can gain you very positive things, growing your stats that is:

Stats (HP, AP, STR, INT, etc.) on one hand increase basically per number of actions (which corresponds to number of turns), meaning that longer battles with more arts used give more stats.
On the other hand a Base Stat EXP, which is a number multiplied by the link count, is added. This is very important to know.

Here as well the BR difference may modify the stat gains significantly:

1. As the BR difference between the enemy and your party becomes positive (enemy BR higher than you), stat gain will rise up to factor 3 at 45+ BR difference.
   Example: Defeating a huge boss yields 3x the stat gains; considering that the battle likely lasted longer than normal, even more!
   
2. As the BR difference between the enemy and your party becomes negative (enemy BR lower than you), stat gain will tank soon, even at a BR difference of 11 it's only 10% and at a difference greater that 65 it's zero!
   Example: Going to clean out Gaslin Caves at BR 90 will yield zero Base Stat EXP (but also only 10% of BR EXP).

The above points result in the following:

• Fighting enemies with higher BR than you increases both stat and BR gains, but stat gains a little more.
  
• Fighting enemies with lower BR than you reduces both stat and BR gains a great deal; it could be considered a standstill unless you fight a huge number of them. This can happen if you fight everything that comes along. Eventually your BR is high enough that you will gain neither stats or BR, only skills. The latter will help you to further progress through the game, although stat and BR gain have come to a standstill.

Battle situations which are beneficial for stat vs. BR gains:

• Rares & Bosses: Few enemy unions give only little BR gain, high number of turns needed yield a lot of stats. A high BR difference will multiply this favourable result.
  
• The same as above but with additional reviving further reducing BR gain.
  
• Linking at least 12 enemy unions whose BR is not lower than yours but still can be defeated in a minimum turn count:
  Exploits #4 of the Battle Rank Table above: BR gain is only 20% of normal while link count is normally 7-9, multiplying stat gains.
  Example: Linking as many landworms as you can and defeating them as fast as possible.

Battle situations which are bad for stat vs. BR gains:

• Enemies with multiple unions per link:
  A lot of enemy unions give a lot of BR gain, low number of links only yields poor stats. A high BR difference would only multiply this unfavourable result.
  Example: Ancbolders & Rockgraters in the Ancient Ruins.
  
• This example above basically applies to most of the mobs creeping around in the maps, except that the BR difference is not very high, mitigating the negative effect a little.

Thus try to avoid the mobs but try to defeat any rare you encounter!
But don't sweat it: When getting ambushed by a weak enemy it's OK to fight the battle and don't soft-reset the game. This way you probably avoid 95% of the mobs, which is good enough.
However if you encounter a group of at least 7 linkable creatures and you are confident to defeat them within 3-4 turns, take them on as well.

One of the most asked questions about this game: Is grinding needed to beat this game (or is it beneficial at all)?
Let me put it this way: It depends. There are basically the following ways to play the game:

1. As the devs intended: You fight what's in your way, also fight in order to unlock quite a few guild tasks and do most of the side quests.
   This is actually what most players do on a first playthrough. BR and stats grow normally, as the devs intended, finishing the game at ~100 BR. In this kind of playthrough most story and side quests seem reasonably hard, the most difficult DLC bosses in mid-/end game are very challenging if not almost impossible to beat.
   
2. Low BR approach (more or less): You avoid fighting mobs as much as possible, do only those guild tasks not involving fighting mobs but do all side quests. To make up for the missing fights, you're willing to do a lot of battles just for 'trainings' sake, like fighting any rare enemy you find or even do some specific grinding, without raising BR a lot.
   Many players decide to try this approach either because they had troubles with their first playthrough (as described above) and/or because they were reading how bad a high BR is (mostly because this used to be the case on the XBOX).
   This approach results in about half of the BR growth (finishing the game with a BR at around 50) while some stats like STR/INT rise above normal (greater BR difference makes them rise faster), others like HP below normal (without any additional training).

Also it can be observed that in approach 1, the early units are 'overdeveloped' in relation to the late ones, because of the many battles, while in approach 2 the early ones are 'underdeveloped' relative to the later recruits.

Thus, if you follow approach 2 (what I recommend), I suggest doing some very specific 'stat building'. (I don't like to call it 'grinding', because that word implies doing stuff over and over and over. What I'm proposing here takes ~1-2 hours, not very much for a 50+ hours game)
In this walkthrough we will combine this with unlocking the highest tier of weapons which can be bought in stores, the Imperator's weapons.

"Why t* f* won't the game give me these darned healing commands, when I need them!??"

Yep, this is one of the most hidden chapters of battle technique in this game: The obvious lack of healing commands.
But actually it's way less bad than it seems; the game offers several 'hidden' ways of triggering healing arts, if needed.
So let me wrap up the healing system:

• "Recover your Health!"
  This is the all-purpose command for a union to stay out of deadlock and pick up the pieces before the end of turn. Whenever enemies are so strong, that they are able to one-shot your unions, set one or two unions to this command. They will revive fallen unions before end of turn.
  
• "Get your HP up!/Heal yourself with item arts!/Recover with mystic arts!"
  Quick emergency recovery. Leaves deadlock so only to be used in an emergency.
  
• "Keep your HP up!/Hang in there!"
  Stays in deadlock and tries to heal while attacking. Not a good option, since it often fails. Much better is 'cross-healing':
  
• "Save them, no matter what!/Hurry and heal them!/Heal the others!"
  This is the prefered way to heal, since it not only heals the other union but also revives, if that unit has fallen.
  
• "Clear their status ailments!"
  Important to know: this command not only debuffs the targeted union but any additional healer will reassess his command to healing.

The above commands are the obvious ones, so you're probably already familiar with these.
Classes with [Medic] skill (Sorcerer, Healer, Bishop, Scholar, Scout or Hunter) will have a preference for these commands, which means if you put a such unit in leader spot, this unit will almost always give you these commands.

Now let's take a look at the less obvious methods of healing.

• "Strike from the sides!/Hit'em from behind!" (yellow commands)
  When executing this command, every healer to which an art hasn't already been assigned, will reassess to healing if needed. So to take advantage of this, use mystic healers within flanking unions with all their offensive arts disabled!
  
• "Strengthen your defenses!"
  Classes with [Defender] skill (Monk, Cavalier, Guardian, Cleric or Paladin) will offer an additional "Defend!" command. Damage received by units in slot 1-3 is reduced to 50% and units in slot 4&5 may reassess to healing if needed. This is much more likely if the unit hasn't an art already assigned. So this is another good spot to put in mystic healers without offensive arts enabled.
  This build will give you the perfect 'self-healing' tanking union!
  
• Support commands: "Give offensive support!/Lay down cover!/Give defensive support!/Set up the field!/Help 'em out!/Support your friends!"
  Once a unit executes a support command, its other union members may reassess to healing as well. The easiest way to get support commands is by using Potions. So they are not useless after all :-)

Sometimes it's quite tricky to command your party to immediately heal during the next turn, if they are not already damaged. So it's important to know about the last two methods that you can set them in advance. For example if I know that an enemy is going to launch a battlefield wide attack in the beginning of the first turn, I can set my unions to Defend and Support commands, so they will immediately heal themselves.

Next tip: Don't fall into the trap of simply choosing the option which spends the most AP.
Against strong enemies, slower is better: In this game there is no reward for finishing hard battles fast. And your units also need experience in healing, so play it safe and always let half of your unions do some healing commands. If these don't show up on a consistent basis, you might want to change your union leaders to one of these classes: Sorcerer, Healer, Bishop, Scholar, Scout or Hunter.
Cross healing is the preferred way to heal ('Heal the Others!'), because it does not break deadlock, but this only works if there's enough HP left to survive one or two enemy attacks. Otherwise it's better to get out of deadlock and let one union fully heal itself, even at the risk of being raidlocked.
Again: Don't fall into the trap of simply choosing the option which spends the most AP.
In the above case, you might let another union heal the first one, even if this means spending no AP. That union usually will have even more AP at its disposal the following turn and will be able to attack with a vengeance!
However if you are fully healed and have the choice between different equally attractive attack options, choose the one with the greatest NUMBER of arts.
This will develop the arts/skills of more units and reduce the loss if one of the attacks is being dodged.
For this to happen more often, you need to disable higher ranked arts until the lower one become more or less fully developed. See next chapter:

Using a normal attack or any combat art advances the unit's combat skill EXP for a certain wield style. At first a Rank C art is unlocked (costs ~7 AP) which itself can be developed (up to Tier V). Upon gaining more wield style EXP, a Rank B art is unlocked (costs ~17 AP), then a Rank A (~24 AP) and finally a Rank S (~33 AP).
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_Arts

As you may have noticed, I haven't covered the weapon specific Combat Arts (Rank A & SS).
They are not as straightforward to develop because they depend on weapon skill, which requires the use of a Combat Art. Damage wise both Rank A arts are the same and I found that developing Rank SS arts is not worth the much higher effort, except for units which already start with it.

I found the basic rule for developing Combat arts should be to first develop the unit's Rank C art only, until their Rank S art (for pure combat units, without healing) is unlocked or their Rank A art (for units, which have an alternative purpose, like healing). As soon as that higher art shows up, disable the Rank C art and focus on developing that higher one. This also means immediately skipping Rank B arts (and Rank A arts, depending on the kind of unit) as soon as they show up.

This also prevents Rank B/A arts, early in the game when not much AP per turn is available, from unnecessarily stealing AP from the other units, otherwise only the union leader would have his arts developed at the cost of all the others.
In addition this limits damage output somewhat, making the battles longer, helping developing stats too.
There may be very few units that deviate from this basic rule, mainly because they enter the game late and come with already pre-developed combat skills.

Tier V arts are MUCH more efficient (damage per AP) than the base arts.
These are approximate numbers from some damage test I did:
The numbers for speed modified arts (Nimble/Swift) are 7-8% lower, but they are executed much quicker and are less likely to be dodged.

So the goal is basically to develop your one chosen Rank A/S art for every combat unit up to Swift/Peerless V for the final boss battles of the game.

This table shows a list of easily achievable weapons for the units in this guide:

Weapons in {curly brackets} mean that obtaining them may be quite time consuming and is not recommended. On the other hand, lacking that weapon means also removing the unit from the active party at that point, because the current weapon may be too weak in comparison to the other units.

For Rush I listed multiple weapon paths, called Combat 1, Combat 2 and Mystic. All three are very powerful in their own sense. Since Rush in a normal game (as opposed to a New Game +) is best served in a non-mystic role, I'd recommend following Combat 1 or 2.
Weapon path Combat 1 uses the Speed modifier while Combat 2 uses the Strength modifier: http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Developing_Arts#Power_.2F_Technique_Styles
In this guide I follow weapon path Combat 1.

HP and AP are the hardest stats to gain, therefore we should set as many units as possible to 'balanced' equipment focus, so the accessories will be HP/AP enhancing.
The units will ask you at certain BRs which route to follow. So your answer should be 'Balanced', except for the following exceptions (otherwise they wouldn't pick up their designated weapon):
Violet (Mystic), Darien (Combat) & Paris (has all 3 options, easiest is Combat but best is Mystic)
When they ask later in the game for the second time, we may set them to 'balanced' again, once they picked up their weapon.

To excel at this game your party basically needs three things:

• Maintaining high morale
  
• AP control by Cachexia -> Developing Hexes up to the highest rank
  
• Some highly developed combat arts

The only arts worth developing are Psionics for morale shifting and Hexes for both of the above.
The other mystic arts IMHO are not worth it. Damage wise they can't match combat arts and you might as well only develop hexes since the others are not more damaging than those, so their only point would be utility. Unfortunately only Psionics and the top Hexes arts offer reasonable utility (morale shifting and AP control).
Paralyze Gas/Confuse/Palsy Skein/Silent Gas/Silencer only actually paralyze/silence about 30% of the time (unless it's done by an enemy of course, how cheap!), so you can't rely on their effect; makes them more or less only usable for their mystic damage. And for that, Hexes and Psionics cost much less. Addle costs 12 AP and shifts morale almost always. Palsy Skein costs 48 AP !!! For an art that works as advertised only 30% of the time.
Maledict curses only weak units, those who die from its damage anyways. Useless...
Invocations generally have no meaningful effect besides damage and for the same AP, combat arts are superior.

Mystic arts also need to be developed from the bottom: Leave the lowest useful art always on and switch off all the higher 'weak arts' once they have reached Level II (Level II is needed in order to advance to the next ranked art).

An example:
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Mystic_Arts
In order to learn Permafrost (the only useful invocation IMHO), you can use Spark (Rank C art) until you reach Wind Shear (Rank B), then use Wind Shear until it hits Level II (necessary to reach Rank A), then switch off Wind Shear and keep spamming Spark (because it's cheap and relatively efficient). Eventually Caustic Blast pops up, you can switch that one off immediately (because Rank A has already been reached) and keep spamming Spark until Permafrost appears.

And finally switch off all combat arts on mystic units as soon as they pop up. These units have very low STR and enabling these arts only steals AP from the stronger units for little damage in return.

The offensive ones are not needed at all IMHO, so I consider them to be just for fooling around. Also they don't contribute to stat/skill growth, that alone should be a reason to avoid them.
If you really need weapons of mass destruction, there's plenty of other options in this game:

• David's Gae Bolg

And after the Bases:

• Pagus' Megalore
  
• Gaou's Zeal's Virtue
  
• Roberto's Snowblind

Just to mention a few...

But there's one exceptionally useful Arcana: Rejuvenating Water
This Arcana actually helps art/skill development, because it not only restores health of all unions currently alive, but also fills up AP to the max.
This will lead to much more arts being offered in battle, which naturally is a very good thing for development of the units.
So I very much recommend teaching RW to some of your leaders, like Rush, Emmy, Paris or Pagus. I will remind you of this opportunity later in this walkthrough when the time in the storyline is optimal for doing this.

Make union 1 consisting only of one of your quickest units (highest SPD stat) in Melee formation. He's basically cannon fodder and his purpose is to die quickly. Union 2 consists of your trainee in leader spot (with Restore V enabled and/or at least Revitalize II) and three other units with only Restore enabled. One of these units must be able to revive. This trainee union has to be slowed down considerably, so put them in Pentacle formation or use slots 1/3/4/5 of Arrow of Athlum. Even better, if you have it, is slots 1/2/3/4 of Mystic Shield.
Union 3 should consist of 4-5 units, so it won't die quickly, and must be able to revive as well, but preferably in a way which does not fully heal the revived unit (Herbs/Lotions instead of Kiss of Life).
Put the rest of your units in reserve.
For once disable all offensive arts on all unions, for a longer battle giving you more opportunities.
Now go fight a decently strong but not too strong enemy, one that lasts 5-10 turns but does not one-shot entire unions. Right after having 18 units in the party, Bloodthirsty Beast in Ivory Peaks fit the bill nicely. Jarama in Heroic Ramparts - also a Raptor - is another good option and can be seen right from the entrance. Plus it can be respawned, so you can teach multiple leaders.
Union 1 should go in deadlock first, followed by union 3 and our trainee union 2.
Next we have to set up things correctly, which means we want union 1 dead, union 3 well alive and the trainee union 2 somehow damaged (< 70% health). For this we must not issue any cross-healing nor support commands, no Potions, no yellow flanking commands etc., until we have achieved this. As soon as union 1 is dead, the trainee union is sufficiently damaged and has at least 153 AP, send both the trainee union and union 3 to revive. The quicker union 3 will arrive first and revive. Our trainee union will arrive later and will reassess to healing (either themselves or the freshly revived but only partially healed unit) and thereby trigger the Synergy needed to learn RW.

Once RW has been taught to a leader, only two more mystic units (of any type!) are needed in the same union to make use of it.

Rush does not excel in any particular skill. While he will learn a lot of different skills, there are better units than him in any particular discipline. What makes him special however are his special arts which make him a natural leader.
His most important special art is Omnistrike. This art scales with his STR stat as well as the ATK stat of his weapon. Therefore it's wise to develop his skills and weapons more towards combat rather than mystics.
In a normal game (opposed to a new game+) the better kind of mystic arts come quite late in the game; another reason to focus him on combat development.

Also it's important to choose his class wisely in order to get the desired type of commands when using him as leader.
For an overview about classes see this: http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Classes
The following class list for Rush assumes him to be in Power Grip stance.

Rush starts out as a fighter and, depending on which arts you disable, can progress into the following classes:

• If you disable his Combat Arts, he will most likely become Marauder, Healer or Bishop
  
• If you disable everything but his Combat Arts, he will become a tier 3 combat class, e.g. Swashbuckler (if equipped with swords)
  
• If you disable his Remedies, he will most likely become Scout (more herb use) or Mysticknight (more invocations use)
  
• If you disable his Herbs, he will most likely become Cavalier (more remedies use) or Mysticknight (more invocations use)
  
• If you leave everything enabled, then it will depend on the uses of these arts. Actually this is not what you want.

I prefer the following classes for Rush:

1. Scholar[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Preference for healing commands, No Instakill
   Quite difficult to get: First disable all his mystic arts and go light on combat arts. So use him more as a healer. Develop Herbs until Life Powder, then disable them (except maybe for occasional Vivification) and start using Restore. As you reach Rejuvenate check for Mystic/Item balance AND 'Mystic only' significance. This condition can be fulfilled for example by having Mystic at 7, Items at 6 and Weapons at 5 (check using RemnantAssistant). Do as neccessary to achieve it, otherwise he'll end up as Scout or Cavalier. If it's been achieved, disable everything and wait for the class change (INT = 41). After that you may reenable Remedies and to a lesser extent items, e.g. Vivification, and use Rush's combat arts without limits. After he learns Wards, go easy on them or he might 'advance' into Commander (not!).
   
2. Scout[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Preference for healing commands
   Easy: Leave his Herbs enabled, go light on mystics use or disable them altogether.
   
3. Cavalier[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Additional 'Defend!' command (thereby reducing damage suffered by half)
   Easy: Switch off his Invocations and after having gained Vivification Herb his Herbs as well, enable Remedies and you're set.
   This is the class I'd recommend the most, since it's easy to get and since good mystic healers are not as common as item healers.
   
4. Guardian[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Additional 'Defend!' command, Power Play Immunity (= immunity from critical hits)
   Rather difficult to get: Rush's wield style must not be Dual-Wield. Next you need to disable mystic arts completely. As he gets the herb art 'Life Powder' switch off the herbs too. He will become a tier 3 combat class at some point, e.g. Swashbuckler, Axman.
   As he becomes 'Legendary' in that class AND has gotten one of the following level S combat arts: Double Slash, Dragon's Flight or Dragon Crush, reenable his herbs. Eventually he will become Guardian and you may enable whatever arts you want.
   BTW, this class can also make sense for Blocter and is achieved the same way, with the only exception that the herbs have to be disabled from the very beginning!

In a normal playthrough (compared to a New Game, where all mystics are available from the start), Rush's more useful mystic arts (Psionics, Hexes) come very late in the game. So there's no point in developing his INT stat and a mystic oriented class.
And his freely available weapons also do not support a mystic oriented focus for him.

Generally: Don't make unions with less than 3 units, unless you are sure about keeping them out of deadlock. Smaller unions are much less likely to survive, when they get drawn into deadlock. Only in certain situations, like fighting a single boss, can they be kept out of deadlock, and only so if the leaders class is chosen appropriately.

For the defensive aspect, each union should contain:

• Exactly one item healer who is also able to revive. More is a waste, because in the end game item healing is too weak.
  
• At least one mystic healer with high INT. I'm talking about really good mystic healers here, like Pagus, Irina, Rhagoh, Paris, Megeleus, Kimberly, McGrady or a mystic Rush. These will fully heal a 9999 HP union in the endgame with one single Revitalize. Best to use them with all offensive arts disabled, so they can reassess to healing when needed.
  But do not rely on Remedies of low INT units like Glenys/Violet/Darien/Caedmon or even worse Baulson. Their Remedies are more or less wasted and will top at about the levels of item healing arts.
  This 'at least one remedies per union' rule can be bent: They may be unevenly distributed, e.g. gravitate towards dedicated healer unions or towards dedicated flanking unions.
  If you haven't enough proper units to fulfill this, you have too many unions.
  Every healer must be trained to heal an entire union at once! In the end game only mystic healers can do this.

Item healing arts tend to be quicker than mystic ones, so most of the times they get applied BEFORE the enemy hits you, while Remedies tend to get applied AFTER the enemy has hit, also because these are often reassessed from a 'Standby' command, as needed. By combining both within one union, a damaged union most of the times can finish a turn fully healed using a 'Keep your HP up!' command.

For the offensive aspect, this is up to your creativity!

The early game formations are almost useless: they boost one or two stats by 5%-10% but in return impose a penalty of -40% on another stat. Not worth it, except for nerfing a union on purpose. I recommend using Cup of Celapaleis for all unions until we unlock Orb formation later, which by reducing both damage and AP cost brings a real benefit for the development of our units.
 
Then there's the old discussion about having a dedicated mystic team versus mixing the mystics into the unions:
The game is completely capable of providing useful battle commands, if there are no more than two types of arts in an union: Combat & Mystic, Combat & Item, Mystic & Item.
This means that it's OK to combine two types of arts in one union, and there are more reasons to do so:
Mystic units tend to have more AP and less HP. So if you create a pure mystic union, it will have a huge AP pool but little HP and gets killed easily. Also a single 'Silencer' can make the whole union useless for several turns!
I found that it's best to either put two mystic units in each union of 4/5 or none. Their high AP help fueling the combat units, in case the mystic arts are not needed. Vice versa the high HP and physical defense of the combat units help the weak mystic units survive.
You, the player, can control by issuing the commands, which type of art shall be applied in a particular situation.
As an example: At the beginning of the battle use mystic arts for raising morale: Bluff, Addle, Mixed Message, Bewitch, etc.
A single mystic union would not have the AP in the first turn, to fuel three or four of these arts.
But if put into different unions, there is enough AP to fire off all these commands in the first turn.
After morale has been raised, there's probably no need anymore for mystic arts, and the combat units can take over, with a lot of help from the mystic unit's AP.

As soon as you have access to the menu, make sure Rush's wield style is set to Power Grip. This wield style is suited to accommodate the best free weapons of the game for a Mitra like Rush.
As you enter Athlum buy 10 Cureleaf and Relaxing Herb. Do not buy any weapons, since some good ones are being dropped for free soon.
Talk to the barkeeper and enter Athlum Castle afterwards.
Choose to go to Robelia Ruins first in order to receive the Invocations arts and build some experience before going to Gaslin Caves.

Enemy: Anti-Remnant Activist (BR>2, HP>1552)
Go to Robelia Ruins with Pagus[lastremnant.wikia.com].
No need to fight anything on the way to the boss battle. In the boss battle use mystic arts against the support troops and combat arts against the boss.

Enemy: Slaver (BR>2, HP>1552)
Go to Gaslin Caves with Blocter[lastremnant.wikia.com]. In the boss battle again use mystic arts against the support troops and combat arts against the boss.

Enemy: Vicious Plant (BR>6, HP>5168)
Defeat one of the Jhanas on the bridge for guild task 63.
Easy boss battle on top of the hill.
After the cutscenes the guild opens but do not hire any units yet!
Go to the pub instead and accept the following side quest:

Deliver the letter to the Yama in Robelia Castle
Afterwards talk to the bartender in Athlum Pub. Do not accept the side quest from Baulson yet.

Leave Athlum: Celapaleis opens

Go there, talk to the merchant with the red bubble, then move over to Lamberro District and turn in the guild task.
Hire Semry[lastremnant.wikia.com], a generic leader. He is the strongest of all the early game leaders and has a good chance to receive some great end-game weapons during the game.
Do not hire any more units since gold is scarce at the moment!
Open the union board and build a union with Rush and Semry.

Go to the pub to do the quest Mr. Diggs[lastremnant.wikia.com] (Use the Digging Spot)
Talk to a soldier with a red bubble, but don't go to Athlum Castle yet, first we need to do another side quest in Athlum:

This quest can easily be done using Rush & Semry only. Put them in a single union using Rush as leader. Make sure Rush's wield style is Power Grip.
After the battle hire Baulson [lastremnant.wikia.com]und put him into your existing union. Baulson also will receive some strong weapons during the game.
Switch off his herbs immediately, because we want to accelerate Rush's herb development towards early vivification. Also without herbs, Baulson will end up in Lancer class, boosting his damage output by +15%, and later can be developed into the very useful Bard class, after Potions become available.
Now our first union is complete.
Stock up on herbs and progress in the main story at Athlum Castle -> Blackdale.

This is now the most important task we have to achieve: Getting Vivification for Rush asap.
It takes ~18 successful uses of herbs for that. To accelerate this, make sure that it's only him that has healing enabled in his union.

Mystic arts against the minions and combat arts against Jager will finish this quickly.
Battle tips:First attack default union. After reinforcements have arrived, target enemy union H (or if you lack HP, then any other which will give you the necessary 'Keep your HP up!' command.

Pick up the Combat Francisca -1[lastremnant.wikia.com] from a chest at D-11[lastremnant.wikia.com] and equip Rush with it (afterwards make sure he's still in Power Grip!):
 
Enemy: Fiery Idol (BR>10, HP>8467)
Not much to say here: Kill the support troops first, try to keep your unions fully healed and you need a lot of luck too...
'Keep your HP up!' is your friend here.
Only so much: If you die, it's probably not your fault but of the unbalancedness of this battle. The game has barely begun and there's nothing you could have done better up to this point! Just retry until you prevail...
Battle tips:First attack default union. After turn 1, only 4 enemy unions should be left. If so, attack union B next.
After the scene in Athlum Castle talk to a soldier with the red bubble in the city.

You're allowed 9 active members in your party.
...but don't put much thought into building your unions yet.

Now it's best to progress in the main story, in order to further increase the number of active members of the party, and save the sidequests for later.

Walk across Ivory Peaks without engaging any monsters.
There is a chest with a Leraje Princeps[lastremnant.wikia.com] at J-24[lastremnant.wikia.com], which Torgal will request after a few battles
As you leave on the other side, Elysion will show up on the map.

Progress in the main story:

• Talk to receptionist of the Academy (Entrance Hall)
  
• Enter Tula Street
  
• Talk to Court Lady (Assembly Plaza)
  
• Enter Ark Gate
  
• Run through Sacred Lands
  
• Go to the Temple of Elysion's (Genaade District) and enter the Catacombs.

Proceed until the next area loads, after the first two landworms there is a digging spot at the wall to the left. Make a savepoint and keep digging until you harvest two Shadow Metal. Leave the Catacombs back where you came from, suspending the story quest.
Go to Athlum guild, turn in the guild task and hire Perneth[lastremnant.wikia.com]. Also in Town Square hire Neales[lastremnant.wikia.com] (an Athlum Soldier).
Go to Celapaleis guild and hire Faye[lastremnant.wikia.com]. She and Neales have Vivification, which is very important in this game.
Also buy herbs for that in Athlum. It's the only city which always has all the herbs stocked.
If you lack the gold, go to Blackdale, turn right and there's some gold in a chest behind the spiders and the vultures. If you still need more, start hunting rares and sell the captured ones.
If you follow weapon path 'Combat 2' buy a Bludgeon[lastremnant.wikia.com] for Rush.
Now build two unions each with one of the revivers.

They might look like this:

Switch off Perneth's Poison Gas in favour of Paralyze Gas. As long as Rush has not gotten Vivification, keep Restorative Herb switched off on all other units in his union, only Vivification on.

Head back to Elysion, go to the Temple and enter the Catacombs again. Play through the Catacombs part.

http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=521281721
This video shows the suggested playing style: Avoid the mobs, but fight the fatties. Don't sweat it when you're getting ambushed once in a while.
As long as the battles you fight remain challenging, the development of the units will be fine.

After the cutscenes you're back in Elysion. Instead of directly going with Emma, go to the Pub first and talk to the Gloomy Man, accepting the side quest 'The Secret Letter'.

Elysion Pub: Speak to the Gloomy Man, accepting his quest.
Exit the city and the Southwestern Road appears on the map. Walk across it to Balterossa and deliver the letter to the receiver in the pub. Rush will now have Remedies.

Go back to Elysion, talk to Emma and go with her to Numor Mine. Grab the Commander's Rapier[lastremnant.wikia.com] to the right after the crank lift and equip Rush with it. Make sure he's still in Power Grip!
Second to last branch to the right has the key to the final door.
Before entering the boss fight, disable Rush's combat arts & invocations and remove Emma from the party. She will join the battle as a guest union with 2.5 times her normal HP!
So let HER do the dirty work and use Rush only for healing her. This battle may take around 20 turns and might be a good opportunity for Rush to get the 18 herb uses needed to achieve Vivification.
This battle seems a little weird to me because sometimes Rush consistently has a standby/healing option every turn, sometimes not and every second turn there is no other option than attacking, which almost always results in his instant death.
I haven't found out why, it definitely helps enabling every possible healing art on both units.
Otherwise just restart and retry and all of a sudden the standby commands are there consistently.
If everything runs well, it might look like this (Warning: Extremely boring, but it works!):
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=573168842
After Numor Mine you'll be in Athlum. Your allowed active party size has increased to 12.
Don't forget to reset Rush's arts according to your class choice.
Don't leave the city but go to the pub and do the following side quest:

Athlum Pub: Speak to the Yama
Enter Gaslin Caves and turn right immediately.
You'll end up in The Great Sand Sea, immediately exit it by the closest exit in front of you.

A series of locations now open up on the world map:

• Numor Mine
  
• Heroic Ramparts
  
• The Great Sand Sea

If you are on a mystic path with Rush, it's very important to go back to Numor Mine, go straight ahead instead of taking the lift to the right, and get the Blood Chalice[lastremnant.wikia.com]. This accessory will double the EXP towards all mystic skills!

Cross the Heroic Ramparts: The northeast exit leads to Nagapur, the southwestern one to Ghor.

• Enter Nagapur and talk to the dock worker in Flussbahn.
  
• Visit Nordenalm & Sudenalm and tell Emma & Pagus that you're finished
  
• Cutscene in Flussbahn
  
• Talk to Oswald in Sudenalm
  
• Enter Flussbahn

Leave Nagapur and go back to Athlum but DO NOT ENTER Athlum Castle or the quest 'Bravery and Loyalty' will expire for good!

If Rush hasn't gotten Vivification yet, you can go to Town Square and hire another Athlum soldier: Sutherby[lastremnant.wikia.com], a pretty good healer/reviver
Now build your unions.

1 easy battle at Ivory Peaks

1 battle at Robelia Castle: Remove Emma from the active party and she'll join the battle as guest union with much higher HP.
Send all units on the Third Committee Soldiers; let Emma handle one of the birds...

Enemy: Hitman (BR>18, HP>6713)
1 Battle with Paris at Mojcado Castle

Go to Elysion and talk to the bartender in the pub about the cities. This will open up Berechevaltelle (-> Melphina) and Vale of the Gods (-> Baaluk), if not already done so. Also run into Darien[lastremnant.wikia.com] on the upper floor and accept his side quest. Go to Berechevaltelle and use the south exit to reach Crookfen. There use the opposite exit to reach Melphina. Enter Cobalt Plaza take the first stairs down to the right and pick up the Book of Remembrance. While you are in Melphina finish the Darien[lastremnant.wikia.com] side quest. Talk to the Geography-Savvy Knight in the guild to unlock Fourth Path.

Get his chalice from his hometown.
Go to Melphina and talk to:

• Festival Head 2x
  
• Salesgirl
  
• Goster 2x
  
• Goster's Wife 2x
  
• Goster 2x
  
• Bino
  
• Festival Head

Return to Darien in Elysion Pub.

• First hire Caedmon[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Balterossa
  
• Hire Darien[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Elysion as soon as you have the gold.

If you exit The Great Sand Sea you'll unlock two neighbouring cities:

• West exit -> Vale of the Gods[lastremnant.wikia.com] -> Baaluk[lastremnant.wikia.com]
  
• South exit -> Lavafender[lastremnant.wikia.com] -> Royotia[lastremnant.wikia.com]

You can shorten your ways to unlock them by suspending this quest after two poles:
C-4, then exit west, resume the quest, B-E, exit south, resume and finish A-1
You can make a small detour between pole C and 4 and pick up the morsel and the map:
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/The_Great_Sand_Sea

At this point the unions may look as follows:

Cross Lavafender until you reach Royotia.
While you cross Lavafender kill 5 Vultures for a later guild task which will unlock Rank 1[lastremnant.wikia.com] of the Sword of Three Realms[lastremnant.wikia.com] guild.

If you haven't already done so, cross the Heroic Ramparts and take the southwestern exit to Ghor.
Objective: Find six treasures in Blackdale Second Entrance
There's an Elite's Rod[lastremnant.wikia.com] for Pagus in an chest which you need to pick up.
Also pick up the Boots of Remembrance[lastremnant.wikia.com].

Talk to the Guardian
In Lavafender immediately turn right. If you haven't defeated your 5 Vultures yet, this might be one more opportunity.

Find Milton and fight some rather easy battles.

Kill the grand beetle between posts 4 & 5

Link the first group of 4 albic qsiti in the Catacombs and defeat them.

Go to Ivory Peaks until you meet the Ruler of the Dawn[lastremnant.wikia.com] and defeat him. He looks like a Rosefly and is at about half distance of the road across Ivory Peaks, slightly to the right, sitting on the top of the hill.
Defeating him unlocks Rank 2 of the Sword of Three Realms[lastremnant.wikia.com] guild, which is needed for hiring our second hex unit.

Find the flowers for Rhagoh: 1 battle.
Do not attack the treant until the other enemy unions are down. Paralyze him as much as you can because his Natural Gas can instakill any of your unions.
Hire Rhagoh[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Celapaleis. He will be needed later in the game for triggering a side quest.
Put him into your unions if you have a lack of healers, but it's also no big deal not to use him at all.

Location: Gaslin Caves, in an extension of the area where you went with Blocter earlier.
Now you must really put a good team together, because this battle can be quite difficult.
Your unions need to have at least 1700-2000 HP. It's better to have only 2 unions with 2000 HP than 3 unions with 1500.
If you go with 2 unions, send both to the Vile Lizard union C.
If you have 3 unions, send union 1 to C, union 2 to A and union 3 to D.
After the first turn keep all of the deadlocked unions on their respective enemies using commands like 'Keep your HP up!' or 'Hang in there!'.
It's important that your unions will not be raidlocked.

1. Take Emma out of the active party. Big spoiler: she won't be available from a certain point in the story anyways
   
2. Hire Wyatt[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Celapaleis. Immediately disable his Poison Gas and Smoke Canister.
   In order to reach Cachexia[lastremnant.wikia.com] at the earliest possible time (an art we need against the strongest bosses), it's important to use his hexes arts as often as possible. Switch off his combat arts and put him as union leader in Union 1, so he gets the most usage. This way you don't have to 'grind' for Cachexia, just heavy usage during the normal game quests will do.
   When the art Dispirit shows up, develop it until Disprit II, disable it afterwards because it's a weak art (has the same morale shift as Addle but costs twice as much and cannot even be used long range). Keep using Paralyze-/Silent Gas until Bewitch shows up. That is a much better art and we keep that one enabled. Eventually you'll reach Cachexia.
   
3. Hire Gabriel[lastremnant.wikia.com] (he has Vivification) if you can afford him, replacing Sutherby / Neales. Since Gabriel will not be used any more in the later game, a cheaper alternative would be Jorgen (Adventurer)[lastremnant.wikia.com] who is going to be introduced in the following side quest.
   
4. Hire Violet[lastremnant.wikia.com] as soon as you have the gold. Her INT is low, thus it's better to turn off her remedies, so she becomes Runemaiden[lastremnant.wikia.com] instead of Cavalier[lastremnant.wikia.com].

Find three rememberance items:
Get the Book (Melphina - Cobalt Plaza), the Boots (Blackdale Second Entrance) and the Bandanna (The Southwestern Road - E4[lastremnant.wikia.com]):
Give these three things to Jorgen. He will remember himself as an Adventurer. Hire him if you are not going to hire Gabriel.

Disable the steles
Enemy: Mantroskylo (BR>24, HP>15772)

Defeat the boss
Enemy: Absolute Queen (BR>24, HP>21935)

Find the seer
Enemy: Seer (BR>32, HP>19054)
During this quest, before going in the area where the seer is located, you should go back to the place you fought the two bosses before.
In the chest there is a Shamshir and 10000g
Equip Rush with the Shamshir and set his wield style to Power Grip. Later David or Gabriel will request his Commander's Rapier; only give it to Gabriel.
Other that that, it's important not to upgrade your weapons at this point, because it would diminish the lengths of the battles and therefore reduce the stat increases.

Find Hinnah and bring her the Tarnished Earring.

Defeat the enemies.
You may have to re-enter Balterossa from the world map several times until Caedmon has a red bubble over his head. Keep doing this until he no longer appears outside but inside the pub.

Enemy: Souleater (BR>32, HP>34040)
Find the book and defeat the Souleater (Enter the Catacombs, then turn left)

Continuing the main story: Go to Athlum Castle
Battle Tactics:
Let David lead a union (with at least one reviver). Wait until the guest union gets killed, then have David's union revive it and let the other unions move in.
The very next turn David's unions should be out of deadlock and thus be able to fire Gae Bolg.
After the support unions are finished, let one union, preferably the guest union, target Roeas and the others Castanea. As soon as one of them dies, the surviving one will use Overdrive. David's team should be on healing/standby as often as possible, because his special arts are not usable when in deadlock.
It's Castanea who should be terminated first because otherwise his AoE attacks under Overdrive could be deadly for the entire party.

Union setup might be as follows:

Example of this battle (not done with our team, but an even weaker one):
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=523215854

Emmy has joined the party. Replace David with her. His best days are over, because Gae Bolg will no longer be needed and there are better units than him.
If you follow weapon path 'Combat 2' go to the upper floor of the Celapaleis Pub and talk to the Sweet-Scented Maiden to get an Olibanum for Rush.

Proceed to East Waterway Control. At the end of it you'll see a city map transporter. Proceed to the next section (Central Sluiceway) and open the first chest. It contains the Defender, a good, defensive sword for Semry.

DO NOT GO FURTHER, as the next door is the beginning of Disc 2 and all the unfinished Disc 1 sidequests expire at this point.
Go back to the transporter and leave the Aqueducts.

Hire Gaou[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Baaluk as soon as you have the gold.

Union setup might be as follows:

Enemy: Mantroskylo (BR>36, HP>39909)
Go with Glenys and enter Aveclyff. Immediately leave, suspending the quest. Aveclyff appears on the world map. Enter Aveclyff using the world map and defeat 13 Arachnids. They can be found in the first room, then through the door and to the left in the first and second room. While you are there go to the digging spot at A-12, make a savepoint and dig until you have 3 Royotian Alloy for another guild task.
Go back to the Sword guild in Celapaleis and then to the guild in Athlum to turn in the guild tasks and unlock Orb formation. While you're in Athlum hire Liza[lastremnant.wikia.com]. Make sure she has only 'Smash' enabled.
Orb formation reduces AP necessary for arts but reduces ATK as well. This makes the battles longer and more arts can be used, accelerating skill and stat growth.
From now on only use Orb formation for all fights, except when you struggle with beating the harder bosses!
Go back to Nagapur Pub and resume the quest with Glenys.

In this walkthrough we will not grind the landworms: http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/PC_Ultimate_Grind
We will soon use a different spot for achieving both stat gains and a lot of commerce points, killing two birds with one stone.

Once you are at the bottom with the landworms, you have to either aggro-pull them or timeshift-link them (running away, avoiding fighting) and run into the Mantroskylo to start the boss battle.
Afterwards hire Glenys[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Nagapur.

3 Roberto quests: Agree with Roberto at least once; better every time (greater reward).

Find the 3 broken seals

Find the soldier.

Defeat the enemies

Go to the Melphina guild and hire Roberto[lastremnant.wikia.com].

Help Blocter win the tournament
Enemy: Wild Dragon (BR>28, HP>17600)
Enemy: Ferocious Lion (BR>28, HP>27991)
Enemy: Hero Slayer (BR>28, HP>40254)
Take Blocter out of the active unions and he will join the battle as a guest union with 2.5 times his normal HP.

Blocter must leave us now, since there is no easy way to get a powerful weapon for him!

To unlock the first two ranks of the Union of the Golden Chalice (which we must fully unlock to fight the Cyclops Standard Model later) we need to defeat:

• Dominator[lastremnant.wikia.com] (Blackdale)
  
• Prometheus[lastremnant.wikia.com] (Lavafender):
  Enter Lavafender, first right into the next area, then second right.

You can use TLRPlanner to see which rares have spawned. For Prometheus reenter Lavafender until no rare has spawned in the first area and if that's the case proceed to the second area to check for him.

To unlock Rank 3 of the Sword of Three Realms[lastremnant.wikia.com] guild, we need to defeat 12 Spiritwoods.
Make a savepoint in the World Map and go to Numor Mine. Proceed to the last crank lift behind the door at the end of the left side of the tunnel, into Operations Area Nr. 5. If there are Spiritwoods kill them, otherwise soft-reset, reload your savepoint and re-enter Numor mines. Do so until you have defeated 12 Spiritwoods and turn in your guild task in Celapaleis.
The captured Spiritwoods sell for a handsome amount, so they also help raising gold for new units and weapons.

Also in Numor Mine:

• Ore Cruncher[lastremnant.wikia.com]

On the way down to the Spiritwoods, check for Ore Cruncher, a rare Vile Lizard, which you need to defeat to unlock Rank 3 of the Chalice guild.
He's down the crank lift in the first dead end to the right.

Defeating Spiritwoods and keeping all unions alive at the end of the battle is not easy, because they gather AP and then use Natural Gas multiple times, which almost always results in an instakill.
You remember the rule that after having a lot of units revived, BR growth is reduced (down to only 20% if 25 units revived)??
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Battle_Rank#KOs
Here's the opportunity (and need) to apply that.
In this area the stat gains are insane, but so are the BR gains! That's why you need to revive a lot here, in order to minimize BR gain.

The tactic therefore is as follows:

• Bring plenty of reviving herbs to these battles !!!
  
• Do not heal, let the damaged unions attack and die, but always be ready to revive!!
  
• Have only healers lead your unions (Gaou, Pagus, Blocter), so they will always have standby commands.
  
• As long as multiple enemy unions are alive, attack one enemy union with all but one of your unions, use a healing command for the latter.
  
• When only one enemy union is alive, let only one of your unions attack, all the others must stand by ('Recover Your Health!')

Do not use Paralyze Gas, because it will suppress their Natural Gas which is needed to instakill your unions.


What we are going to do now is increase Commerce Points and stats at the same time.

The following families of regular monsters contribute to an increase of Commerce Points towards equipment: Anthrovore, Butterfly, Colossus, Crab, Demon, Fenris, Fly, Homunculus, Hydra, Landworm, Leap Frog, Oculus, Phantom, Vile Lizard and Wyvern.

The bold ones, Crab and Landworm, are best suited for aggro-pulling and mass-linking.

Usually it's the Wisdom's Echo side quest which is used for stat grinding. But it has some distinct disadvantages:

• The Landworms in Aveclyff cannot be captured and sold for Commerce Points
  
• There is no control over the quantity of the stat raising, you can easily 'overdo' it!
  
• Glenys only takes part as a guest union and stats/skills are not increased for those.

None of these disadvantages apply for the proposed procedure in Lavafender. This is how it works:

Notice the huge stat gains at the end of the video AND the number of captured Landworms!
(I cut out most of the battle footage, so the video stays shorter)

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PS4 USERS: Due to a gameplay change (bug?) in the PS4 version (Landworms not following in Lavafender after being aggroed) the above method will not work. Therefore a different method is suggested, using Crabs in the Vale of the Gods (thanks to akaonimark for providing the tip):

It's better to build more but smaller unions (as an exception, only for this procedure):

A few tips:

• In order for this procedure to be efficient (stat-wise) you need to link at least 8 creatures. More is safer.
  
• The aggro-pull has to be done at the right distance from the creatures, just outside of the white ring that appears after the pull.
  
• Make a savepoint each, the first one before passing the vultures, because that can be tricky and the other one just before the final linking, as shown in the video. The aggro-pulled creatures remain in that state even after reloading a savegame.
  
• If you're constantly struggling passing the Vultures, you can also split it in two halves:
  Pull the first four Landworms, wait until they are in reach of the Vulture/Landworm group, timeshift and link these 8 creatures. Fight the battle, then proceed, pull and link the rest of the Landworms in the map.
  
• Immediately leave and reenter if you see or hear Wyvern being present. It's almost impossible doing this when they are flying above your head. With Evil Eyes present it's harder but still somehow possible. The smaller rares like Vodianoi or Scarlet Beetle are easy and can be linked together with the landworms. Deatheater should be left alone and defeated seperately, because otherwise he will make the battle quite longer and increase the BR gain a lot.
  
• On average the shown procedure should be done ~10 times (~150 Landworms linked -> 600 chains in total), until the Waraxe appears in Baaluk. This will take around 90 minutes in Turbo Mode (and you want that enabled! It makes no sense optimizing your critical triggers here).

Sell your captured landworms at Malliem's Shop[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Baaluk.
You can see the progress of your equipment trade rank by checking for the following weapons:

• Slasher: Rank D (45 equipment relevant creatures sold)
  
• Commander's Broadsword -1: Rank C (62 equipment relevant creatures sold)
  
• Waraxe: Rank A (105 equipment relevant creatures sold)

Buy the Waraxe right away as soon as it pops up (for Faye).

This is what we need for now to achieve rank SS in Imperator later on. By following this procedure, we have efficiently raised the stats of our party by a very defined amount and at the same time paved the way for unlocking the best equipment in the game that gold can buy!

If you still like to do a little more, switch the shop to observe the achievement of the last trade rank: Schneid's Armory in Elysion

• Blackjack: Rank S (129 equipment relevant creatures sold)

This is the only 'grind' we ever need and it takes only 1-2 hours; not much for a 50+ hours game!
Actually the game expects you to do some fighting for your stats; we were avoiding that so far, but now is the time to catch up in a very compact and dense way!

Now that we have finished 'stat raising' (but strictly by tasks which were very useful anyways!), it's the time to beef up the weapons:

• If Faye hasn't yet requested the Waraxe, buy her a Splitter in Ghor from Balfey's Armory of Junk for 8,800g
  
• Buy a Bardiche for Baulson in Balterossa from Beru's Fine Armory for 17,400g

Whenever a weapon specific combat art for Rush pops up (specific for sword use), disable it. We will later switch him over to a Katana, so keep only generic Power Grip arts enabled!

Help Raphus (this one will cost you 10000g)

• After accepting the quest from Raphus in Royotia, talk to Rainn in Balterossa Pub
  
• Alyssa in Baaluk: Pay her 10000g
  
• Rainn in Balterossa Pub: Decline the first offer to get a Tuck for free
  
• Beauson in Genaade District of Elysion: Decline the first offer
  
• Alyssa in Baaluk: Map is near the guild entrance
  
• Confront Beauson
  
• Back to Alyssa: She'll hand over the Ring of Morning Calm
  
• Back to Raphus in Royotia

Important: If you talk to Rainn in Balterossa for the second time, decline the trade once to get a Tuck for free. Liza will request that Tuck after a few battles. Disable her 'Smash' and enable 'Crossbreak' and 'Dragon's Tail'.

The union setup may look as follows:

Defeat the enemies
Here as well you may have to re-enter Balterossa from the world map several times until Caedmon has a red bubble over his head. Keep doing this until he no longer appears outside but inside the pub.
Can be a pretty hard fight if your units are underdeveloped; just a taste of what's ahead...

Now we're ready for sidequests with the hardest fights (Some rare dragons). But I think you should know by now how to handle enemies that instakill your unions:

Kill the Ancient Dragon
Enemy: Ancient Dragon (BR>38, HP>96671)

Defeat Vespalia
Enemy: Vespalia (BR>37, HP>61696)
She gives you a Vespe, a quite nice sword. If he's on equipment route 'Combat_1' equip Rush with it, after the fight! During the dialogue you can't set wield style to Power Grip, which is of course necessary.

Defeat the Mantroskylo
Enemy: Mantroskylo (BR>40, HP>98291)

Kill Validus. Defeating him is a requirement for fighting The Fallen later; defeating that one is a requirement for accessing the Ancient Ruins.
Enemy: Validus (BR>45, HP>84436)

• Athlum's Witch[lastremnant.wikia.com]
  
• Celapaleis's Witch[lastremnant.wikia.com]
  
• Elysion's Witch[lastremnant.wikia.com]
  
• Nagapur's Witch[lastremnant.wikia.com]

At this point one of the hex units should have at least achieved Dispirit II.
After the weapons have been brought to mid-game levels, we are ready to go to the Aqueducts for real!
 
Fill your herbs up to 90, except Relaxing Herb to 60. There will be a chest with a lot of herbs, so don't overpay to fully fill up.
Enter the Aqueducts again in Nagapur/Sudenalm. Proceed until the location where you turned back earlier on. Make a savegame, since there will no turning back if you get stuck during the coming fights.

Nothing special, their only really annoying art is Blaster, so try to use Silent Gas as much as possible.

This battle actually is a showcase how to use summons in this game, that's why they give you the Cyclops for!
After finishing the Hypnos don't go all in on the Gates of Hell! Always let only one union, the one with the most damaging arts, attack and let the other two unions heal the others. This way the Cyclops will tank and your best team will deal the damage. That team will always be revived, before the Gates can enthrall them with Pandemonium.
And for once don't worry about the low morale, there's no point in trying to raise it!
Optional: Rush can be removed from the active party and will join the battle as guest union with much higher HP.

Kill the support unions first until only Jager and the Lob Omen remain.
The Lob Omen ALWAYS will flank the union deadlocked with Jager. Thus that union would need the strength to survive both attacks which is improbable. So avoid targeting Jager like the plague and gang up on Lob Omen instead, using 'Heal the others!' type of commands. Then Jager will flank and maybe kill one of your unions, but one of your other unions instantly will heal or revive them. The damage of the Lob Omen flanking is much worse than that of Jager flanking.

As always attempt these battle in Orb formation; only when you struggle too much, use Cup of Celapaleis

• Talk to David
  
• Fornstrand
  
• Athlum Castle
  
• Enter any Elysion district:
  After the cutscene enter Tula Street. Buy reviving lotions for Gaou at Avielle's Items.
  
• Athlum Castle
  
• Talk to soldier with red bubble in Athlum city
  
• Athlum Castle:
  18 active party members; Irina[lastremnant.wikia.com] joins
  
• Enter any Elysion district
  
• Enter Celapaleis Castle
  
• Enter Ghor Castle, talk to the Duke afterwards
  
• Important: Do not go to Athlum Castle yet or you'll miss some cool rewards from another quest!!

Hire Zolean[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Balterossa and switch off his Invocations. If you lack the gold, do the 'Cosmos Maiden' side quest below, keep defeating and selling Bai Ze's.
Buy the consumables for Irina's Retreat Flare in Melphina.
Now is the optimal time for teaching Rejuvenating Water to these leaders, which have Remedies (at least Restore V or Revitalize II). See previous chapter 'Development of Mystic Units'

Rebuild your unions.

Escort Sheryl
This side quest should be used to raise gold for buying accessories. Defeat the big dragon in the middle of the map, Bai Ze[lastremnant.wikia.com], he sells for 66760g. Leave the map where you came from, suspending the quest. Sell the captured Bai Ze, buy the accessories/weapons or whatever and resume the quest in Nagapur Pub.
Usually ~10 of them should be sufficient.
After you finish this quest, Bai Ze has to be spawned by repeatedly entering Crookfen from the world map. On average you have to enter 10 - 20 times to spawn him, but if you set the character clipping distance to high in your graphic settings, you can see him from the entrance. So spawning him takes usually between 1-3 minutes.

Enemy: Yerva (BR>56, HP>81727)
Start the quest in Athlum Pub and move over to Town Square.
You know the trick: Remove Emmy from the active party and she will join the battle as a separate union with much higher HP.
Hire Jager[lastremnant.wikia.com] in the new guild in Athlum

Balterossa Pub -> Royotia Castle -> Lavafender
Hire Paris[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Royotia
 
It's important to do this sidequest right now, after the upgrade to 18 party members, but before returning from Ghor to Athlum Castle. You get 30000g and a Wishing Coin, compared with only 15000g if done after the bases show up! Some unit will request the Wishing Coin. Let him have it and his union will be immune against Curse.

At this point the unions are as follows:

• Athlum Castle
  
• Six Bases appear on the world map

 
Enemy: Syndicate Leader (BR>54, HP>66030)
There is a 'cheaty' solution to this quest: After the dialogues, when the race begins, soft-reset the game and reload the autosave. All the characters will stand still now and you can pick out the syndicate leader (the guy running in front), who is the only one that needs to be defeated to finish this quest.

Enemies: Yvalock/Yvalmock (BR>48, HP>32074)
Try to link as many Yvalmocks as possible, so the battles last longer. Also use Orb formation.
Remember to make use of Paralyze/Silent Gas a lot, to advance hexes EXP.
This is the list of the items needed:

• Part 1: 8 Parasitic Oil, 10 Blackrose Nectar and 5 Shadowood Seed
  
• Part 2: 25 Blackrose Nectar, 15 Shadowood Seed and 6 Cosmosand
  
• Part 3: 30 Parasitic Oil, 18 Cosmosand and 1 Nightblossom Seed

Enemy: Namul Niram (BR>50, HP>130954)
Your mother wants you to follow her to Numor Mine.
Go right, not through the door, but down the crank lift, where the two Quien are standing.
Follow that path to the area where the Namul Niram fight took place early in the game.

Afterwards collect the Rubber Soul[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Dillmoor as well as the Liafort[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Ivory Peaks, where you found Violet in 'The Dreaming Rose'.
Violet will request the Liafort, Glenys the Rubber Soul. If you're not using them in your active party, keep these accessories for Rush. They are among the best 'free' accessories in the game.
Also get the Schiavona[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Blackdale: Cuspate Post; Jager will request it.

You have to re-enter Lamberro District from the world map several times until Rhagoh has a red bubble over his head. Keep doing this until he switches location into the pub and start the quest.
Collect the Flâchonelle[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Robelia Castle afterwards.

Enemy: Mantroskylo (BR>60, HP>76124)
Go straight through the middle door and teleport to the next section. Proceed to the next area until you hit a T. Go left and pick up the Ninja Katana +3[lastremnant.wikia.com] (which Glenys, Wyatt or Perneth will request. Make sure it's Perneth who gets it, since he'll be able to upgrade it further to a Tataraichi[lastremnant.wikia.com]).
Go back and proceed at the other side of the T into the next area.

If you want to pick up the Phalanx Mace[lastremnant.wikia.com] (only necessary for weapon path Combat 2):

• At the next T, go to the right and take the teleporter. From there you can't miss the chest containing Phalanx Mace. Go back to that last T you came from.
  
• Equip Rush now with the Phalanx Mace and as always set his WS to Power Grip.

Go through two doors (on the left side of the T, looking from the direction where you arrived) and then turn left. From there it's straight ahead, two teleporters and finally the boss battle.

Enemy: Slaver (BR>56, HP>70051)
Unlocks Gifts of Remembrance in Nagapur, a Yama standing on the main square next to the guild.

Buy more weaponry (if you feel underpowered and/or have plenty of gold):
Buy one more Waraxe for Faye at this store.

Accessories:

1. In Athlum at Martha's Items you can buy some Metallic Token[lastremnant.wikia.com] for your balanced units.
   
2. One or two Metallic Stud[lastremnant.wikia.com] for your combat oriented units.
   
3. In Ghor you can buy a Power Belt[lastremnant.wikia.com] for them.

Keep defeating Bai Ze for the gold.

One of the hex units, most probably Wyatt, should have Bewitch by now.
If not, you have to really push the use of hexes now! The coming fights will provide ample opportunities to do so.
Wyatt should be the leader of a union, the best would be union 1 so he gets the most usage.
Reaching Bewitch means that 87% of the experience points (XP) for Cachexia have been achieved.
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Developing_Arts

Talk to the Rift's Owner in Baaluk Pub

The tactics are the same for all the bases:

• Outside battles: In order to keep BR gain low, try to finish these battles fast. Don't stay on your toes in the beginning to build up AP.
  
• Inside battles: Defeat the support unions as fast as possible, but then go slow on the boss. Only let two unions attack and the others on standby/heal.
  
• Everything can be done in Orb formation.

The best sequence (in regard to weapon drops) is as follows:

• IMPORTANT: Talk to Duke Ghor
  
• Base 2[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Zuido
  Drops an Obsidian[lastremnant.wikia.com] for Gaou
  
• IMPORTANT: Talk to Duke Ghor
  
• Base 5[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Young
  Drops a Frostblade[lastremnant.wikia.com] for Roberto.
  If you want to fight the big Dragon, you have keep one or two unions behind until he appears. Once a union has moved, it's impossible for them to reach the Dragon.
  
• Base 4[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Hannah & Hinnah
  Drops a Nightbloom[lastremnant.wikia.com]; seize it from Irina and give it to Emmy! If Irina keeps requesting it, remove her from the active party temporarily.
  
• IMPORTANT: Talk to Duke Ghor
  
• Base 6[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Milton
  Use Deadlock Rotation on him: Two unions attack, the others stay back on healing. Milton kills the first attacking union and the second one gets one 'free' attack without Milton retaliating.
  Drops a Wonder Bangle[lastremnant.wikia.com] for Blocter and a Serpent Star[lastremnant.wikia.com] which we will equip to Rush
  
• Base 3[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Ludope
  
• IMPORTANT: Talk to Duke Ghor
  
• Base 1[lastremnant.wikia.com]: Snievan
  The reason for this enemy being treated last is that after this battle another enemy has to be defeated without the ability to save in between and Snievan is the most 'predictable' one in case you have to repeat this battle .
  
• Cyclops

My BR at the end of the bases: BR 35. (Only to be used as a guideline. There is no problem if it's 10-20 higher)

Rush should now be equipped with the Serpent Star[lastremnant.wikia.com]. Changing the weapon type to Katana is no problem at all, since the wield style stays the same: Power Grip
He'll only miss the highest ranked weapon specific combat art (the one that costs 45 AP), but still gets the highest ranked generic one (the one that costs 33 AP).

Irina leaves after the battle.
Hire Sibal[lastremnant.wikia.com] in Royotia and replace her.
Sixth Path available if the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Paths have been unlocked

After this story quest, Irina will come back to the party. I put her back to her usual spot and switched in Sibal for Gabriel, who does not have an easy way of getting an endgame weapon.

Enemy: Third Committee Combat Squad (BR>??, HP~105000)
Talk to Duke Ghor first (although he has no red bubble), then to his messenger in the Ghor Pub, then back to Duke Ghor again.
In Numor Mine take the first door to the right. Afterwards always follow the Demons. Finally take the crank lift up and the battle begins.

We now need to choose a leader to go in reserve in order to hire Duke Ghor[lastremnant.wikia.com]. I'd suggest to pick the least developed combat unit (without healing).

We just hired Sibal and his purpose is basically to be the wildcard in our party: If any unit fails in acquiring his designated weapon (according to the table in the 5th chapter) he jumps in, for example if you forgot to set Darien to Combat or Violet to Mystic.
His final weapon lies in the Ancient Ruins and it'll be a great one. But apart from that, his stats are way behind the others and if there's no unit we must drop because of a failed weapon upgrade, we leave Sibal in reserve.
I made it a temporary decision and put Semry in reserve, because his AP were the least and his weapon was the weakest, but he'll soon get a better one and I'll reconsider him again as soon as he has got it.
So do not judge it on the weapons alone; they all will get great weapons once we are in Undelwalt/Ancient Ruins.

Remember that these enemies are quite bad for your BR (3 unions but only 1 link, together with a high BR diff) so try to get as many units KOed and revived as possible.
If you happen to meet Jurupari[lastremnant.wikia.com], from the Demon family, save and fight him until he drops an Auld Bardiche for Baulson (30% chance per fight, or 75% if you fight 4 times). He's quite strong (~350000 HP in my case) and it takes 6-8 turns in Orb formation to defeat him, so you might want to leave Orb formation if you want to fight him repeatedly.

Enemy: Tamas (BR>75, HP>144757)
Enemy: Rajas (BR>70, HP>75655)
Enemy: Sertva (BR>75, HP>217000)
Talk to Haruko in the Pubs of Elysion, Melphina, Celapaleis, Athlum, Nagapur and finally Celapaleis again.

Enemies: Lob Omen (BR>79, HP>293911)
Defeat 4 Lob Omen; each one is hidden in one member of the manticore groups. So save and try each one until the Lob Omen is among the unions.

Hopefully Perneth requested the Ninja Katana +3 from Flaumello Tower. To upgrade his weapon to a much better Tataraichi all he needs is some Pest Toxin (from Pest in Robelia Castle: Underground Tier), one Divine Metal (harvest in Darken Forest) and one Primordial Alloy. The latter can be harvested in Ivory Peaks, where the Liafort was collected. But you have only one chance, that's why you have to save and retry until you are successful.
(This kind of upgrading - going to a specific location, harvest and you're done - is acceptable IMHO and does not fall under the 'tedious' label)

Talk to the Knowledgeable Yama in Athlum (Virtus Parish) to open up Second Path.
Go there to slay 20 Weredragons to unlock the Enlightened Seven[lastremnant.wikia.com].
Remember that these enemies are quite bad for your BR (2 unions but only 1 link, together with a high BR diff) so try to get as many units KOed and revived as possible.

Enemy: Charged Idol (BR>83, HP>286930)
This quest might be quite hard at this point, but still if you followed this guide so far, should be quite doable.

Our time in Orb formation is more or less over, now let's have some fun and unleash our true powers! Let's switch the formation for all unions to Cup of Celapaleis.

Requirement: Nora[lastremnant.wikia.com] must be hired in Athlum
Make everybody with a battlefield affecting special art a leader: Pagus -> Megalore, Gaou -> Zeal's Virtue, David -> Gae Bolg, Roberto -> Snowblind, if he already has it, and see if one of these shows up (on non-deadlocked unions).
Focus your first-turn attacks on the two leftmost unions; leave the Hypnos alone, since they will respawn multiple times.

Requirement: Ring of the Labyrinth - Task 59 - Bind 50 treasure chests
If you're adventurous and/or very confident about your party, you can try to beat the Jhana Royals, BEFORE facing The Fallen. The reason is that there might be some great weapons dropped as reward, which might be useful for that battle.
Depending on the development of your team this battle might be well possible or just a tad too hard. Definitely use the best formations for your unions.
The battle went well for me and I managed to knock off an Auld Highbrand for Semry, an Ancient Tataraichi for Wyatt and an Auld Demonblade. Now Semry is back in business and it's Liza who is going in reserve for a while.
Details about this battle further below, because usually it's done after having been to the Ancient Ruins.

Enemy: The Fallen (BR>90, HP>389804)
You cannot access the Ancient Ruins (which is the area in the game with the highest BR enemies and where a lot of powerful things can be gotten) if you enter Undelwalt without having beaten this boss. And you have to finish him within 10 turns.

Hint: By now you MUST have gotten Cachexia!!

You often hear people say that The Fallen[lastremnant.wikia.com] can be beaten without Cachexia. Of course it can, you need some luck and a team with a lot of HP. Half of your units are constantly healing, morale is low and you won't get proper attack commands because of that. All you can do is sit there and pray for a special art coming up.
This is not the proper solution. And it's not fun at all.
The problem to be solved is The Fallen's EOT attacks, the game offers a solution to prevent those and that is Cachexia. Just one unit flanking with this art will halve the number of turns needed to beat The Fallen.
Fortunately we planned ahead and are well prepared...!

Team building:
There will be three deadlock unions (1...3) and one flanking team (4) with Cachexia.
The deadlock unions should be in a normal formation: Cup of Celapaleis
The flanking union must be in last position AND slow so it consistently arrives last. Either it's slow by nature or must be slowed down by formation: Batwings
First I built the flanking team led by the Cachexia unit: Wyatt, complemented by some units with very high AP: Perneth, Sibal and Pagus
Bottom line here: You must get at least 67 AP for Cachexia and try to achieve that with as few union members as possible. Also you don't want to waste strong combat units or strong morale shifting units here, since nobody else except Wyatt will be able to spend AP. Item healers are great here; they heal the damaged unions without AP cost.
Build the three deadlock units as you like, using the usual team building guidelines.

Switch off all useless arts for this fight:

• All mystic arts except morale shifting and Restore (Revitalize/Kiss of Life are too expensive in this short battle!)
  
• Combat arts which have not been sufficiently developed

Union setup for The Fallen:

Only for this one battle I hired Yuniver and replaced Zolean because of his Bluff III art, which is a lot cheaper than Dispirit II, Zolean's best morale shifting art at that point. But that was only for speed's sake. Keep using Zolean if you don't care about finishing the Fallen as fast as possible.

Rush was equipped with the Rubber Soul and the Cloistral Belt.
Union 4 was actually quite slow by nature, so I put them from Batwings into Catapult formation, boosting mystic output.
Union 1, geared towards damage dealing, was optimally suited for Pincer's Grip, in fact all conditions were met for variant formation Claw's Grasp II (4x Yama).
Irina was in that union because of her high AP, which sometimes made Duke Ghor's weapon art available on the second turn.

The tactics with this team against The Fallen are as follows:

• First turn: Use all available morale shifting arts.
  
• Second turn: Go all in; only issue healing commands if this does not diminish damage output
  
• Third turn: Finish him off, most of the times using special arts

The Fallen went down in the second turn...!
Even if things didn't go perfect, he could be defeated in the third turn consistently.
Not bad for the almost nonexistent weapon upgrading and the very limited grinding...!
After the battle hire Wyngale in Baaluk and replace your weakest unit (in my case it was Pagus) with him. If you like, you can upgrade his offhand Shax Dominus to a Gaap using:
Divine Metal x1, Holy Water x1, Pest Toxin x2

We can go back to Orb formation now.

Union setup after The Fallen:

Go to Undelwalt and talk to the Curious Qsiti in the guild, opening Third Path.
After already having talked to her in Athlum → Celapaleis → Elysion → Nagapur → Ghor, finish the Khrynia quest chain in Undelwalt → Balterossa → Royotia → Melphina → Baaluk
Verge of Victory for Paris (Combat:BR45) or if you missed setting him on Combat route, try to get the Auld Quarterstaff, a 15% drop from the first one of the two Monopole in Sacred Lands.
Now that you have plenty of gold from the Fallen battle, it's time to boost your party's HP. Buy some Manifer (HP +35%) in Undelwalt/Gefyri. Your active party members will request them one after another.

Go to Undelwalt Castellum and take the teleporter to run through Beneath Undelwalt.

You need to close the Cosmos Maiden quest to open this one. So fight Bai Ze until you have enough gold and exit Crookfen at the opposite exit.
Accepting the quest brings you to Fornstrand.
Try to link as many Rockshells as possible to minimize BR gain!
I managed to finish this by twice linking 8 Armorshells each; it almost felt like grinding Landworms!

Sell these captured creatures. Your Trade Rank[lastremnant.wikia.com] now should be SS for both Imperator and Equipment.
Buy an Imperator's Sword for Liza, an Imperator's Katana for Zolean, an Imperator's Lance for Darien, an Imperator's Staff for Violet and an Imperator's Shield for Semry, if you keep him in your party.
If you were following the Combat 2 path for Rush, buy him a Imperator's Hammer along with an Imperator's Bangle.

Mystic Seal Formation is not going to help much for this playthrough anymore, but if you plan to do a New Game Plus (NG+), it makes a whole lot of a difference!
To get it you have to defeat Spiritbeast Rin[lastremnant.wikia.com] on Mt. Vackel, a rare monster which is not very hard to fight, but the hard part will be getting it spawned.
It's a creature that looks like a Vánargand and sits in the last area of Mt. Vackel on top of the hill, meaning you have to run through Mt. Vackel countless times (if you happen to be unlucky).
Fortunately there are some other useful things you can do while crossing Mt. Vackel:

• Defeat two Brynhildr to unlock Rank 5 of the Chalice guild, which you need to fight the DLC boss Cyclops Standard Model[lastremnant.wikia.com]
  
• Left of the bridge before you leave the first area, there's a dig spot to obtain 3 Holy Water, needed for Task 45 of the Chalice Guild (unlocks a DLC boss: Eldritch Dragon).
  
• If you happen to meet two Venomspewer[lastremnant.wikia.com] (they look like spiders), link both and they may drop an Auld Rod for Pagus (28% probability, if you link both)
  
• Austri[lastremnant.wikia.com] (a Colossus guy), drops an Auld Longsword (15% probability). But he's too strong to keep trying for the drop.
  
• Deadly Swooper[lastremnant.wikia.com] (a Wyvern) drops an Auld Bast@rdsword (15% probability)
  
• Sugriva[lastremnant.wikia.com] (an Imp) drops an Auld Kiteshield (15% probability) for Semry or Gabriel

So keep fighting those rares and they might drop something useful!
Once you got Mystic Seal, start putting the one or two most powerful combat unions in that formation. As you progress, eventually all unions can be toned down using it.

Enemy: Dharma (BR>80, HP>129672)
Defeat Dharma
The perfect opportunity to practise Mystic Seal! A battle which would normally be finished within 4 turns now took me 18 turns!

Enemy: Welkin Dragon (BR>75, HP>290583)
Loki[lastremnant.wikia.com] must be hired in Athlum to start this quest.
Reenter Virtus Parish 5 times from the World Map until Loki has a red bubble. Talk to him and repeat this procedure. After having talked three times, go to Town Square and talk to Reya. Then go to Athlum Pub and start the quest with Loki.
Also talk to the Seasoned Adventurer in Athlum Pub next to Loki to open the last remaining section in Numor Mine.
Defeat the Welkin Dragon: It took me 34 painful turns to beat him in Mystic Seal, so I'd recommend Orb formation for this one...

Quite a long battle, have fun and enjoy your strong team!

Glenys must be hired in Nagapur and you need 450,000g.
Spending spree in Undelwalt!
Emmy will request the Finsternis for her off-hand.

Talk to Oswald in Nagapur Pub.
Enter Sixth Path and proceed to Seventh Path.
Fight Gojun and the Icy Idol. In this fight you will defeat 11 Glagonos; you should defeat 3 more of them later in the Sacred Lands to open the guild task for The Lost (Sword guild).
Bind the Ark and run through Sacred Lands: If you forgot to set Paris to Combat or Mystic route and he has not yet gotten a decent staff, you can save and keep defeating the first one (important!) of the two Monopoles for an Auld Quarterstaff (15% chance).
If not, there's one last chance for a decent weapon by buying him an Auld Greatstaff in Genaade/Elysion after the next and final quest, but it's very expensive!

Pick up the Demonblade (Katana). Would have been nice for Rush on mystic route but it comes too late, unless you're willing to upgrade it.

Soon you'll stand in front of a big, mystic door. Behind it awaits the final battle of the game.
If you've had it with this game go ahead and finish it. If you're keen on continuing with the most challenging parts this game has to offer, turn around, use the next teleporter behind you and take on the DLC bosses.

Listen to a story and collect your well deserved reward!

As we start to fight the so called DLC bosses of the game, you might also want to read this very good guide about the DLC, written by Zloth:
http://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=129125443

Enter the Ancient Ruins[lastremnant.wikia.com] via Second Path and collect the remnant weapons.
The good part: Finally we're allowed to clean the room! The bad part: But only of single union monsters, otherwise BR gain is way too big!
This leaves us the rares, the Brynhildr, the Oblivion Wings and the Observers, all of them great punchbags to train your party's skills.
The basic strategy against the Observers is either using one or two Cachexia per turn or if they manage to use Overdrive, doing the same thing we did earlier against the Spiritwoods: You need a healer as leader in all but one union. In the beginning let two unions attack and the rest 'Recover your Health!'. As soon as you run the danger of terminating the enemy while another union lies dead on the floor, only let one union attack and all others stand by.
Also this is the opportunity to improve your team's Cachexia skill levels, since at least one successful Cachexia per turn prevents the Observer from overdriving.

Apex Tier: You don't have to fight anything in this area except Ymir, just go to the rooms and get your stuff together:

• Northeast room: Daedalus for Sibal
  
• Western room: Grammy key
  
• Southern room: Foxtail Formation
  
• Central room: Ymir

Grammi Tier: Nothing to see in Anatoray, proceed to Disith

• Just as you enter: Malystrix, a large spear, requested by Haruko. (Would be nice for Paris too, but you need to equip it manually)
  
• Defeat one Observer in Anatoray, three in Disith
  
• Southwest room: Metopon key
  
• Central-east room: Holy Servant

Metopon Tier: Boreas

• Defeat three Oblivion Wings
  
• Eastern room: Ama-Gi for Pagus or Madd0x

Metopon Tier: Notus

• Defeat four Oblivion Wings and Terror Wing
  
• Northeastern room: Chest containing 2x Jewel Steel, the Valiant Eardrop and the Goddess Wristlet.

These Jewel Steel will be copied to every member of the party, as are those you get by disassembling a weapon, which contains them, in a workshop.
Next we should exit the ruins at that point, so the party members can request their weapon.

Requirement: Union of the Golden Chalice - Rank 5 & Task 23 - Defeat Heaven's Lord
Location: Aveclyff
In order to unlock Rank 5 of the Chalice Guild, you need to have unlocked Rank 4 (defeat Death Tank in The Aqueducts) and defeat 2 Brynhildr (Ancient Ruins).
Enemy: Cyclops Standard Model (BR>100, HP>575331)
Uses Gae Bolg at the beginning of every turn, so always let at least one union heal the others.

Requirement: Union of the Golden Chalice - Task 45 - Obtain 3 Phials of Holy Water
http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Holy_Water
Enemy: Eldritch Dragon (BR>90, HP>584707)
This is a nasty one, he knows every trick in the book and has a lot of HP...

Requirement: Sword of Three Realms - Task 57 - Have a party member with 45+ INT
Location: Aqueducts
Enemy: The Fiery Gates (BR>94, HP>548518)
A beefed up version of the Gates of Hell with a lot of HP. Plus two lines of Remnant Guards which are quite powerful.
Very difficult to keep morale high in this fight, so your damage output will be much lower and the battle may take quite long...
After the guards are down take your time and always let two fully healed unions attack and let the two others heal them.
Summons are quite helpful here.

Union setup:

Requirement: Ring of the Labyrinth - Task 59 - Bind 50 treasure chests
Enemy: Ala Melvilana Fusion (BR>92, HP>673900)
Enemy: Jhana King (BR>92, HP>97605)
Enemy: Jhana Queen (BR>92, HP>97605)

For the battle itself, the final part is quite hard and it's recommended to make everybody with a battlefield affecting special art a leader:
Pagus -> Megalore, Gaou -> Zeal's Virtue, Roberto -> Snowblind.

But it pays off big time because usually multiple 'Auld' weapons are dropped, which some in your team will pick up. I managed to knock off an Auld Highbrand for Semry, an Ancient Tataraichi for Wyatt and an Auld Demonblade.
The probabilities for Auld weapons from this fight are as follows:

• 73% Auld Highbrand for Semry
  
• 62% Auld Soulshield for Semry
  
• 48% Auld Smiter for Synope
  
• 45% Auld Glaive for Baulson
  
• 45% Auld Demonblade for Ynfry
  
• 30% Ancient Naginata for Yuniver
  
• 22% for either an Auld Wand or an Ancient Tambo for Pagus or Madd0x (mystic focus)
  
• 11.5% Ancient Tataraichi for Wyatt, Lukorra or Glenys
  
• 11.5% Auld Blackjack for Nora

So Semry has a 90% chance to get something good at least in one of his hands.
This was the main reason to use Semry in this playthrough (along with him picking up the Defender sword, which is a great mid-game weapon).
If after this battle he hasn't gotten a new sword, you can craft him a Superlative Zweihänder[lastremnant.wikia.com].

Only give those weapons to your team if there's a sufficient benefit from it. Normally, Auld/Ancient weapons are actually not meant for fighting, but for disassembling for precious components. An Auld Demonblade for example yields 3x Jewel Steel and the cool thing is, disassembling copies it to every member of your party! So think twice before letting a non-essential unit claim an Auld weapon.

Requirement: Ring of the Labyrinth - Task 56 - Have 1 Commander in the party (hire Aquarius at the Union of the Golden Chalice in Athlum)
Enemies: 3 Idols (BR>130, HP>171668)
Enemy: Divine Idol (BR>130, HP>624769)
Tempest Insignia hits hard and you can't prevent it by Cachexia. So try to keep morale up.

Requirement: Union of the Golden Chalice - Task 12 - Weredragon x20
Enemies: The Enlightened Seven (BR>180, HP: 330000…370000, Zuido: 545000)
Also no major problems here; as always the critical point is the entrance of Ludope and Zuido. Once you finish Ludope, you can sit back and handle it with care. Don't go all in; always issue enough healing commands. As far as the twins are concerned, fear the Twin Snowpetal (because our barebones weapons offer only suboptimal MDEF), so kill one of them quickly. If you bring Hinnah into the red first, Hannah might heal her fully up to three times, if you kill Hannah, Hinnah usually enthralls one of your unions. So be prepared to deal with that. I usually try to bring Hannah into the red first, then focus everything on Hinnah until she's defeated and at last finish Hannah.

From now on we only have to face single unit bosses with End-of-Turn attacks, like The Fallen we defeated earlier. So it's time to adapt our union setup. The following setup worked great for me:
Union 1 are the heavy hitters in Claw's Grasp formation, union 2 & 3 are mixed unions for morale shifting, Cachexia and some additional combat. Union 4 is the flanking Cachexia union with some additional morale shifting. And last but not least I brought back Pagus as a healer (In the meantime he has gotten herbs as well and even can revive!). In union 2 Paris can be switched for Perneth if an additional Cachexia unit is preferred over morale shifting.

Go straight through Apex and Grammi Tier, as before only fight the Observers/Oblivions. Then proceed to Metopon Tier: Boreas and enter Notus.
Go to the northeastern room and grab the Jewel Steel and the accessories.

Enemy: Demigod (BR>180, HP>1198520)
A copy of the Fallen but with triple the HP and no turn limit. In addition he spams Curse and Bewitch (the enthralling kind). Because of that this boss is nothing but annoying, completely unfun to play against. Control him with endlessly spamming Cachexia and you will win.
He clearly shows off the worst part of TLR: The kind of bosses you can beat either with luck or with having a Cachexia unit in every union. Its a disgrace that in this game everything comes down to this one single art...!
I tried it 4 times, I gave up twice because he instakilled my healing/revive unions but took him down twice within 7 turns, thanks to Duke Ghor's Bel'kwinith's Fury.

Requirement: Sword of Three Realms - Task 15 - Glagonos x14
Enemy: The Lost (BR>200, HP>722076)
He went down in three turns at first try. With our barebones weapons without major upgrading; must have been embarassing for him :-)
See this video. Also you can see how well the union setup with one dedicated healer works.

Requirement: The Ancient Ruins - Defeat Demigod
Enemy: The White Conqueror (BR>200, HP>869270)

Unfortunately this enemy is the pinnacle of unfairness!
Some of his arts are just so uber-cheap...!
Seal with 10,800 damage, seriously??? 10,500 War God on all unions all over the battlefield??
Crimson Flare, even if your last union successfully cast Cachexia at the very end of turn??
This guy knows no rules! Another example of The Computer is a Cheating Bast@rd[www.google.com]
10500 damage at fullest morale against very well trained and equipped unions - just at random - for me is the official admission that Square Enix decided to show you the finger at random. No matter how good your team is, at times we will officially screw you...

HE is the sole reason, why we had to foster 3 Cachexia units. You can do everything else in this game with just one Cachexia unit or even none at all.
If you happen to have only one or two Cachexia units in your whole party, you will suffer pain, just because this boss is so unbalanced, it's so tilted towards Cachexia. He can only be defeated by constantly preventing his attacks or by having loads of luck!
Without Cachexia he will instakill one union with Seal or Obliterate and damage another one to half HP and finish it off with his EOT attack.
Photon field will make him dodge every attack, unless you are lucky and/or have a special art which cannot be dodged. So this is a very important point in building your unions!

In this battle the only difference between total domination and total defeat is just: Luck !
Which arts he randomly uses, how many times he dodges your arts. He will win whenever he gets to do what he wants to do.
So make it quick and just restart the battle as soon as a union dies.

Anyways, after trying almost ten times (but instantly restarting as soon as he killed a union), he went down in four turns and I was happy not having to bother any longer with this SoB.

[rant]

• I hate to say this, but how can one make a game this unbalanced, that there is only ONE way to properly beat it?
  The devs were in constant fear that something might be overpowered so they rather made sure everything sucks (except Cachexia, that one probably escaped them).
  Have you ever seen a rare who wasn't immune against Stun Trap??
  Item arts only get serious when the game is almost over.
  The damage randomizing in this game is about a factor of 10 and all they give you is buffs that are max. 15%?? Pathetic. It makes the whole potions thing not even worth bothering...
  
  In this game, you basically need just one type of mystic art, that is Hexes -> Cachexia.
  Because it's the only art that reliably works in preventing an enemy doing his stuff.
  Palsy Skein costs almost as much and all it does is preventing physical attacks 30% of the time (except if an enemy does it, then it's 95%! TCiaCB!). How do you compare that to Cachexia, which actually works ~97% of the times and both with physical & mystic arts including Arcana?
  It's the only art (besides morale shift and combat) worth developing!
  
  Did I mention in the beginning of this guide that in this game you only need three things?
  - High morale
  - Cachexia
  - Highly developed combat arts

[/rant]

So finally let's enjoy this:
Come my Heart and Soul: Bilqis !!!
There is no Limit to my Strength!

(I did two test playthroughs for this guide. The second video is from the previous one. Only difference is Lukorra instead of Zolean, two members of the Seven and no Imperator's weapons)

Enemy: Rank 8 Conqueror (BR>255, HP>1979784)
This is the end..! For you or most likely him...

He's basically the same as the White Conqueror only with much more HP. Fortunately he lets you a little more room to breathe than the WQ, thus all in all he's not quite as hard.
Only a small hint: As long as he hasn't used Savage (meaning you have brought him down below 50% his HP), don't go all in, building up AP. Because later when he uses Photon Field you want to be able to fuel all these special arts he cannot dodge.

Union setup:

Union 1:

Ghor

Gaou

Baulson

Semry

Darien

Union 2:

Rush

Roberto

Liza

Perneth

Faye

Union 3:

Jager

Wyngale

Zolean

Sibal

Union 4:

Emmy

Wyatt

Paris

Irina

The battle took 10 turns, 2 for his minions, 8 for finishing him (and the game)...

Have fun in your final battle and enjoy the credits afterwards!

I hope you enjoyed the game and also the assistance offered in this guide.
I had a lot of fun writing and playtesting it, too!

Thanks to SenMithrarin85 for proof-reading and providing some valuable additional input to this guide. Also many thanks to all who help to keep this great game alive!