Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore combat, skills, and leveling up guide

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore has a few quirks that set it apart from other role-playing games. We’ll help you understand how leveling up, combat, and new skills all work together with this guide.

Leveling up has a few different pieces

Leveling up in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore is not exactly complicated, but it does have a couple different mechanics to manage. Let’s talk about each of them.

As you win fights in the Idolasphere and earn XP, your artists (your human fighters when they’re just normal people) will level up. Each level they gain earns some bumps to their stats (and unlocks new Radiant Unities — more on this in a second). This type of leveling up is hands-off, and you don’t have to make any choices.

Atlus/Nintendo via Polygon

Think of Carnage Unities as leveling up your Mirages and your weapons at the same time (because your Mirages kind of are your weapons). Each new Carnage Unity (weapon) comes with new stats, resistances, weaknesses, and new skills to learn (more on this in the next section). You’ll have to visit Tiki in the Bloom Palace to perform Carnage Unities.

Radiant Unities are more passive buffs like being harder to surprise or harder to kill. Radiant Unities are permanent, passive abilities or skills. Tiki handles these Unities as well.

Progress the story to unlock new Carnage and Radiant Unities

It’s possible to grind on low-level enemies to earn mastery over your weapons and learn new skills (more on this in the next session), but to unlock the next level, you’ll need to progress the story.

Each new Carnage Unity (weapon) requires drops from enemies a little further into the game.

New skills come from new Carnage Unity weapons

Each Carnage Unity (weapon) comes with a new set of skills to learn. (Skills in Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore tend to be more like attack actions than a traditional video game skill.) These skills fall into four categories: Command, Session, Passive, and Extra.

• Command skills are actions — usually attacks — you choose during combat.
• Session skills are reactions each Mirage Master has that another party member’s attack trigers.
• Passive skills are background boosts to stats (like extra health or resistances).
• Extra skills are special attacks that require the Special Performance gauge in the upper right of the screen to be full.

You also have Radiant skills from Radiant Unities (above), but these don’t come from Carnage Unities.

Atlus/Nintendo via Polygon

You’ll earn Command, Session, Passive, and Extra skills as you gain mastery over each weapon by using the weapon in fights. Each time the weapon’s mastery gauge fills, you’ll get a new skill to slot into your Mirage Master’s list.

Mix your skills to make use of Sessions

Sessions work like combos. When you hit an enemy with a Command Skill that they are weak to, you’ll trigger Session skills from your teammates. The damage from these attacks stacks up fast, making them invaluable during combat.

This means you’ll want to keep a variety of skills at your disposal, both under Command and Session skills. Each Mirage Master can have only six Command, six Session, and six Passive skills at a time. And you can’t save skills for later.

Once all six slots are full (which will take you several hours of play), you’ll have to start replacing old skills or discarding the new one. (If you earn the same skill from two weapons, you can combine them into an improved version of that skill.)

Don’t double up on types of damage in each section. Have a wide variety of Commands and Sessions so you’re always able to deal that extra damage.