Magic and Magic Chain Guide

As wizards and spellcasters, you’ll heavily rely on your magic spells to deal damage and support your allies with healing spells and buffs. They have a wide variety of effects and careful consideration of their properties can help you deal with different enemies and situations. In our dedicated guide, we will cover topics regarding Magic, Magic Chains, Elements, Status Ailments, and more.

Using Magic

As your character levels up and increases their character rank, they’ll gain access to more magic. These magic can be further strengthened as the character gets stronger as well. All magic has an MP Cost, (Target) Range or area-of-effect, Power, and Element. Some have Additional Effects like inflicting status ailments or enable the user to use a Counter stance. Magic that can hit a larger number of targets, has greater power, or more additional effects will cost more MP. As your character gets stronger, some of the magic abilities they know will improve, increasing its power and MP cost.

Attack magic with area of effect will deal damage according to the color of the glowing squares that appear under the affected targets. The color of the tiles from weakest to strongest damage dealt will be yellow, orange, and red.

Special Magic Types

The common type of magic you’ll encounter is Attack Magic which deals damage to a single or multiple targets. However, here are some special magic types that your other party members can utilize:

Element

There are seven elemental types in the game and they’ll represent a character’s compatibility to an element. (strength or weakness against another element) The elements are as follows: Fire, Ice, Holy, Demon, Light, and Dark. There are some magic that have double elemental properties such as Gray’s Ice Make: Cold Excalibur (Ice/Light) or Juvia’s Water Cyclone (Ice/Holy). For these types of magic, compatibilities will be calculated separately. Enemies also have compatibility to certain elements. You can easily view the compatibility of your team and the enemies by pressing the “+” button in the combat screen. You can also conveniently see if your magic will be effective or not through the magic selection screen of a character during his/her turn or before selecting a target.

The damage inflicted to a combatant will be affected by the said compatibility as listed below. Obviously, you should always use strong magic against an enemy’s weakness, and avoid attacking enemies that are immune or worse, can drain your attack.

Buffs and Status Ailments

Certain magic has the chance to cast buffs or inflict debilitating status ailments. These temporary status-altering effects are automatically removed after 3 turns and won’t stay on your team post-battle. You can also use recovery magic such as Wendy’s Raise magic (Heals all status ailments) or recovery consumables to deal with specific status ailments inflicted on your team.

Certain Lacrima can also help minimize the chances of getting specific status ailments while also increasing the chance of inflicting them against enemies. It will help equipping these certain Lacrima to characters with access to magic that can deal the specified status ailment. For example, Natsu has magic that can inflict BURN so giving him the Flame Lacrima/Charm/Amulet will help.

Here is the list of all the buffs and status ailments in the game. Some buffs can be situational but a good number of them like ATK Up can be extremely useful, especially when attempting to reach the damage threshold of Over Damage obstacles.

Magic Chain

As you attack, your Fairy Gauge will slowly fill up. Once completely filled, you can press the R button to trigger a Magic Chain. This special, powerful attack allows successive attacks by your team members, capable of dealing massive damage to all enemies. Due to the massive potential damage you can incur by using this move, it is the only way to land Over Damage to specific obstacles in certain areas. You will also be rewarded with bonus EXP if you unleash a Magic Chain at least once during the battle.

While performing a Magic Chain, you can either select Chain or Finisher. Selecting Chain will allow your next ally to continue the combo. The succeeding ally will then get these two options again and so on. The number of attacks you can perform in a chain will depend on the participating characters’ Character Ranks and other factors such as Guild Ranks. You can view your available Chain Combos for your team by selecting View Magic Chain under the Magic tab of the main menu.

The initial trigger of a Magic Chain doesn’t cost any MP or Chain I attacks. Only Chain II (more powerful than Chain I obviously) will cost MP and that MP cost can be further driven down by improving the Character Bonds of the participants.

Finishers can be used to stop a Magic Chain prematurely or as a final, powerful burst attack at the end of a chain. If you reach the maximum chain length of your Magic Chain, you’ll only be able to select Finisher. It is also possible for a Magic Chain to fail, in which the chain will end and you won’t get a chance to execute a Finisher. After finishing a Magic Chain, the Fairy Gauge will be emptied and you’ll have to fill it up again to be able to perform another Magic Chain.

The total damage calculated in a Magic Chain includes all enemies in the field and your characters’ individual damage output. To get the most amount of damage, engage an enemy with a large group and use an ATK buff to all your allies (like Wendy’s Ile Arms skill) before performing a Magic Chain. This is particularly useful to trigger Over Damage on certain obstacles that require a very steep damage total.

Extreme Magic

As you continue with the story, you’ll be able to unlock Extreme Magic which calls in special characters like Makarov, Kanna, or Exceed units to aid you in battle. There are two types of Extreme Magic: Finishers and Rescues. The Extreme Magic button will appear in place of the Magic Chain Finisher after achieving a long Chain combo. Rescues on the other hand are automatic, last-bail extreme magic that activates the lower your party’s total HP is. Take note however, that there are certain parts of the story where you can’t use Extreme Magic (such as during Grand Magic battles).

You’ll unlock more Extreme Magic as you continue with the story and as your Guild Rank goes up. You can review all Extreme Magic available to you by accessing the Magic tab on your main menu then selecting Extreme Magic.

Unison Raid

This special attack occurs when you activate a Magic Chain while several characters are Awakened or have changed modes. During Unison Raid, magic will automatically Chain - allowing you to deal immense damage to your enemies. When certain characters who are connected in the story (for example Gray and Juvia) are paired together, a special Unison Raid may trigger.