Last Updated on April 21, 2022
Managing your loadout in NieR Reincarnation is what you will be focusing on primarily throughout the entire game, as your ability to get through battles will depend on it. So how can you improve yours?
The Force is Strong With This One
Power is known as Force. This is applied to characters, weapons, companions, and memoirs. Adding these all up on a team will calculate the team’s overall Force. As you can see below, the screenshot shows the Total Force of the team to be 44785.
In the majority of battles you face, you will see a recommended force level before entering. On a very brief note, the way to improve your force is to enhance your characters, enhance your weapons, and enhance the companions and memoirs (both of which we’ll discuss later in this article).
Keep in mind that you cannot just breeze through every battle simply by having the highest force possible. In some cases in difficult content, elemental affinity will take priority, even if that comes at the expense of overall lower force.
Go to Mama Menu > Loadout and you’ll see the Total Force above your team, and then each unit’s loadout’s individual force under them. Tap on a unit, and you’ll see their loadout. The loadout will show the Character, their Primary Weapon, their Secondary Weapons, their Companion, and their 3 Memoirs.
Tapping and holding on anything in the loadout (character, weapons, etc) will show you their unique details, including their individual force. So currently, A2’s Force is 9964, and the Type-3 Blade is at 2904. These, and the other weapons, companion, and memoirs total to A2’s loadout being 18113 Force. Adding this to 2B’s 12299 and 9S’s 14373 total to the entire team’s Force currently being 44785.
Elemental Affinity
If you take a look at your team’s loadout, you’ll see an element icon next to your characters. Characters do not have their own elements. Weapons have elemental affinities. The elemental affinity of a character is dependent on the primary weapon equipped.
A2’s elemental affinity is Fire due to the Primary Weapon equipped having a Fire affinity.
There are 5 elements: Fire (red), Water (blue), Wind (green), Light (yellow), and Dark (purple).
- Fire is strong against Wind
- Wind is strong against Water
- Water is strong against Fire
Light and Dark are strong against each other, with the advantage given to the player. So a player using a Dark weapon against a Light opponent will deal more damage against them, and receive less damage from them.
Companions
Companions are familiars who join you in battle. You will see them floating behind your character. They have their own active skills that run on a cool down. They also have a passive ability.
Companions have an Elemental affinity. It is usually optimal that the Companion you equip has the same affinity as the Primary Weapon, due to some Companion’s passives buffing elemental damage. This depends on the Companion though and what battles you’re preparing for, so make sure to read each Companion’s skills and abilities carefully.
In this case, A2’s companion is also Fire. Tap and hold on the Companion, and then tap on their Companion ability. Enhancing a companion will increase both their active skill and passive ability. Each Companion requires unique materials to enhance. Tapping on the material will tell you where to farm or purchase them. So let’s take a look at the Tome equipped on A2, the material required to enhance it, and its passive ability:
Preferred Weapon
Each character has a preferred weapon. Equipping the character’s preferred weapon as their Primary Weapon will give them an advantage in battle, as they will perform a chain of 1 to 5 hits. If you equip a weapon that is not preferred as their Primary Weapon, they will only do a single hit. The Primary Weapon equipped will also give you two active skills in battle. Equipping a character’s preferred weapon as both of their secondary weapons will give stat bonuses.
You can see an icon depicting each character’s preferred weapon next to their name, and if you have their preferred weapon equipped, you’ll see a red flashing glow on the equipped weapons. Let’s take a look at A2’s loadout more closely. Her Preferred Weapon is a two-handed sword, so I have equipped two-handed swords as both her Primary and Secondary Weapons.
Memoirs
After completing Chapter 6 of the main story, you will be able to equip Memoirs. You will also unlock Dungeons in Subquests, where Memoirs can be farmed. The higher the dungeon floor, the more Memoirs you’ll receive, and the higher the rarity of the Memoirs as well. Memoirs come in 4 rarities – 1*, 2*, 3*, and 4*.
Memoirs provide good stat boosts. Each Memoir has 1 primary stat and 4 secondary stats. These stats will unlock or increase as you enhance the Memoir, depending on the initial rank of the Memoir. Memoirs can drop from dungeons with 0-4 secondary stats, but will always end with 4. Enhancing a Memoir only requires gold, but this can get very expensive very quickly and should be the last priority when increasing your team’s Force.
When looking at a Memoir, on the left above the image, you will see its rarity, name, and set name. In this case, this Memoir is 1*, called “Solemnity”, and is part of the “The Young Lord’s Studies” set.
Equipping 2 Memoirs of the same set will provide a small set bonus, and equipping 3 of the same set will give a large set bonus. The game will tell you which Memoirs belong to the same set by indicating this with two red arrows, and in your loadout it will show glowing lines between the Memoirs.
Small set bonus
Large set bonus
A list of all the Memoir sets, how to get them, and how they work can be seen here.
It is optimal to equip Memoir sets as you will see a noticeable difference in Force. At the start of this guide, my loadout was at 44K. Equipping the sets gave a 2K boost:
You Can Choose to Auto Your Loadout and Then Optimize From There
To make things quick and easy, open up an empty deck, and then hit “Auto”. You can choose to prioritize all elements or a specific one.
When I do this, my team looks like this:
It’s pretty good, and not too far off from my optimal build – a 2K difference to be sure, but nothing really drastic. From here, you want to make sure you have preferred weapons and Memoir sets equipped, and a Companion that aligns with the Primary Weapon’s elemental affinity. As you gain strength and more weapons, characters, memoirs, etc, it is optimal you do not use auto loadout, as it can very unreliable.
Tapping “Display” once under the loadout just shows the details. Tap it again, and it shows the skills.
The placement affects which character you can move around in battle. So the character you put in the middle is the one you can control (whether auto battle is on or not). This doesn’t seem to make any difference for battle or strategy though, so it’s up to you.
You can check all your Decks, delete them, or copy and paste them, by tapping “Deck List”.
I hope this helped and that you’re enjoying NieR Reincarnation.
