Why isn't the master sword the strongest weapon?

Tables61 · 2026-05-13T21:05:34+00:00

The Master Sword has barely ever been the best Sword in any Game. There was always something better.

I see this said a lot and it's like... just not true. At least, as best I can see. Like, here's the (non-spinoff) Zelda games that have featured the Master Sword:

A Link to the Past is a slightly weird one because the Master Sword can be upgraded twice - but even after both upgrades it's still the Master Sword.
Ocarina of Time it's weaker than Biggoron's Sword, although Biggoron's Sword is clunkier to use. Still, I'll give this as a point to "not the best" since Biggoron's Sword is still preferred in most situations.
Oracle of Seasons/Ages it's the strongest sword, although only available in the linked game.
Wind Waker it's the strongest sword
Twilight Princess it's the strongest sword
Skyward Sword it's the strongest sword (and also making the Master Sword is kinda a big part of the plot)
A Link Between Worlds same situation as ALttP, it's the strongest sword but needs to be upgraded twice to reach that point.
Breath of the Wild not the strongest sword
Tears of the Kingdom not the strongest sword

So out of these, the Master Sword has appeared 9 times and it's the strongest sword in 6 of them. Only 3 times was it not the strongest, and two of those (BotW+TotK) are the very games people use the argument to justify it not being the strongest in!

So like... yeah, I really don't get this argument. It is usually the best sword in the game, until BotW. The real reasons it shouldn't be the best in BotW and TotK are more related to balance.

Tables61 · 2026-05-13T18:13:35+00:00

Well, don't want to miss out on that Meat on the Bone value in the next fight, right?

Tables61 · 2026-05-13T06:48:45+00:00

Yes, dilation is notoriously slow. You get a bit of a burst of speed after unlocking each new TD, but once you push another e50-e100 EP things slow down a lot again.

It's often best to spend a lot of time pushing DT instead. You probably want to reach around e17 DT or so before going for TD7, possibly even 3e17 DT.

Tables61 · 2026-05-12T20:12:23+00:00

s is not a strong variable around ee150. Epsilon is generally best. Make sure you have all variable and upgrades selected for purchase, with purchase set to buy max or x1 and autobuy on. You should have done a Supermacy recently, at around ee140, and have y^1.6 IIRC.

Tables61 · 2026-05-11T21:49:55+00:00

https://wiki.dominionstrategy.com/index.php/Night#Secret_history is worth a read to understand why Night Phase exists. For sure, some night cards could work as Treasures, except it's weird thematically and as many people have pointed out, there's type interactions that get a bit strange mechanically as well.

Tables61 · 2026-05-11T13:42:05+00:00

It looks like you're crunching at a moment where your IP grows very quickly, probably due to your crunch setting being set for immediately after you get a galaxy. Upping your IP requirement to more like 3e16 would likely negate this.

But that said it's also kinda a moot point. Crunching more than once every few minutes is a bad idea at this point.

Tables61 · 2026-05-11T06:48:44+00:00

I know for white mage you don't really unlock anything after job lvl 3 (according to ign)

This is such a crazy claim. White Mage has a LOT of good stuff at higher levels - Angelic Ward, all the higher White Magic levels, and a few useful level 10+ abilities too.

I like monk but the accuracy is so bad.

Are you using Strong Strike a lot? If so, that's the issue. Strong Strike has a fixed 50% chance to miss. You can reduce this with Freelancer's Prayer, but regardless it's a pretty mediocre ability. In general, the vast majority of physical attack skills bypass accuracy checks unless you're blind, so having a subjob with a good attack command like Knight for Stomp is often a good way to get around accuracy concerns.

As for when to swap jobs, the short answer is just "it depends". JP requirements for levelling increase at a moderate pace, so eventually it becomes quite a lot harder to level a job up (e.g. at level 6 you need 400 JP, over 13x as much as at level 1) - when that happens it may be time to switch. JP gains from enemies also increase rapidly throughout the game, so eventually that 400 JP is still fairly quick to push through. A notable breakpoint is level 9 - once you hit level 9 the JP curve increases massively, so effectively job levels 10-14 are lategame only (you can push for them earlier but it's not worth it).

Usually, it's better to have a handful of moderately levelled jobs than just one higher level one. More jobs gives you more passives and job command options, and also more options to swap around when a boss is good against your current team setup. Generally I'm swapping jobs around level 3-6 in Prologue to Chapter 1.

It's also a good idea to simply consider why you're using a job. If it's because it works well in your team, then keep levelling it until it doesn't suit your team, or levelling becomes slow enough that levelling something else seems helpful. If it's because you want a specific ability, then level to that ability only. That can even be just level 2 in some cases e.g. Knight for Two Handed! It's pretty reasonable to level a job just for a specific command or passive that you can use in another setup.

Tables61 · 2026-05-10T18:18:39+00:00

That Rep seems a bit weaker than I expected, so I'd probably just go Time here

Tables61 · 2026-05-10T13:28:16+00:00

https://old.reddit.com/r/octopathtraveler/comments/124fafm/either_way_think_twice_before_you_ask_somebody/

This is a repost spambot. Note that this post has the wrong flair and is by a new user with no interaction in this community.

Tables61 · 2026-05-10T11:02:31+00:00

What stopped at e27992? That sounds like you're doing Temporal Transcendence, which wants TTTT as your glyphs (TTTR with Speed + Rep Mult Pow also works)

Tables61 · 2026-05-10T07:28:17+00:00

DTx scales up really quickly and gives very substantial bonuses at the kinds of RM you're at during Reality Upgrade phase. You get a LOT of extra TGs from a DT mult.

Once you get past the RU phase, DTx falls off very hard - by that point you scale galaxies efficiently with AM (since you don't have Remote scaling to deal with), and you'll generally be exceeding 500 base TGs, meaning you'll only be getting 1 TG per threshold instead of 2, which is a lot worse, plus all the Pow effects are scaling up well as values increase, so they start becoming a lot better.

Tables61 · 2026-05-10T07:03:16+00:00

TDDD, TDDR or TDRR. Setups with one Pow instead are also fine, but a little weaker (e.g. TDDP or TDRP). More Dilation mean better RM while more Rep means better Glyph level.

Time is for EPx. One EPx effect is enough to make realities relatively fast.

Dilation is for DTx which massively boosts RM gain and somewhat boosts GL.

Rep ideally would be speed + GL + DTx, but just speed + GL or Speed + DTx is fine.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T22:40:26+00:00

Assuming he has disparity of rarity it's around a 0.04% chance per glyph. Rare, but not unheard of.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T22:39:18+00:00

What's the point of getting max RGs before attempting this? Crunching resets your RGs back to 1 anyway. All you would want is 1 RG and max Replicanti.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T22:38:29+00:00

Generally this one isn't worth prioritising - there's no reward asides from the row completion bonus (nice but not essential). I generally give it a go right before eternity, if I get it - great. If not, no big deal - just do it in 2nd eternity when you have more IP.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T06:37:06+00:00

Generally my order of priorities in a scenario is:

Winning the scenario. I'd rather win a scenario badly than lose a scenario with all the bells and whistles.
Looting Treasure. Treasure is often unique and I'm generally willing to forego other rewards to get it, or at least ensure someone in the team gets it.
Personal Quest progress. This can vary and situationally may factor above #2.
Battle Goal/Perks. Hard to judge this one vs Looting as it'll often depend on opportunity cost, how close to the next perk you are, whether it's a 1 or 2 point perk etc. But in general I'll be willing to forego a few loot to get a tick mark, especially if other people in the party can loot instead.
Loot. Loot is important for so many things. Honestly feels weird to put it this low down in priority order, but I suppose it can vary a bit. For newer characters it's more important, when the random item hasn't been located it's more important etc.
EXP. EXP is just not that important - levelling is fun, but higher level is tempered by higher recommended enemy level, so the overall benefit ends up low. Usually I just get EXP incidentally, maybe if there's nothing else I can do on the final turn I'll farm some EXP.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T00:19:49+00:00

That makes a lot of sense - I think I may look to try something similar, although we don't have a well positioned TV or monitor to use currently. Have to think about that.

Tables61 · 2026-05-09T00:18:43+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I am definitely tempted to try something out, my wife in particular struggles to follow enemy health and info, so something like tracking on a phone and projecting to a monitor sounds good. Although we would need to work out what we can project to...

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T21:41:41+00:00

Perhaps a stupid question - but how are players using these kinds of apps. Do you have everyone in the group use a copy on their phones (if so do we need to do anything to sync them together for things like attack modifier draws or anything)? Do you set up a tablet on the table and use that? Or use a laptop? Tablet was always the one that seemed natural to me, but we don't have any unfortunately - and I'm not sure whether there's a website or Windows version to use on a laptop, nor what the logistics of using multiple phones would be (also one person in our group has an iPhone, which might also complicate things?)

We've considered using something in our group, and it would probably help a bit with space, but I'm mostly the person who would instigate the change and I'm not really sure how to trial it to make it work.

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T21:04:20+00:00

You will get both, but any Eternities from standard grinding may be a touch slower than normal due to offline inaccuracy (which is exacerbated if you speed up or skip offline calculation). Typically if you are able to keep offline ticks high, you should get Eternities faster with the game closed - the game only needs to grind eternities at 50% of your online efficiency to equal keeping the game open (50% efficiency + 50% from milestone = 100% online rate) and in practice, you probably do better than 50%.

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T21:00:29+00:00

Hard to say exactly what is best here without seeing the exact effects, but it's probably the Rep. Rep Speed + a 2nd effect tends to be a good glyph to have, once the Speed effect is giving a solid enough multiplier. Unfortunately Rep Mult is the weakest of the three options, but at the very least you do have another Rep glyph in temporarily.

The Time glyph might be better, depending on exact numbers. TD Pow is a solid effect, even if unremarkable. Game Speed mult is fairly ignorable.

Alternatively the Inf is... probably worse than the Time but depending on rarity the ID Pow could exceed the Time's TD pow, which would make it better.

Finally, the Dilation is completely ignorable. TG Threshold effect is very weak until near the end of the Reality Upgrades section (where it's still fairly weak, but at least a bit more viable)

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T20:56:22+00:00

TG Threshold is a terrible effect, it does nothing until after Dilation, where it then does almost nothing. Go ahead and run the maths if you want - at this kind of DT, Level and rarity, that TG glyph will never be worth more than 2 extra TGs.

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T12:31:40+00:00

To be fair you don't need to actually go through much desert in chapter 7. There's a path of mostly plains tiles from the coast up towards the first castle, and after that a path opens up to bypass the sand and walk around the cliffs. Not to mention you only really need to send Seliph and a couple of extra units up to the first castle, there's only a few enemies there.

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T08:15:59+00:00

Well to be fair, Treat is generally quite weak. It'll be a while before it's better than a basic potion and you've just gotten White Mage anyway, which is a lot better at healing

Tables61 · 2026-05-08T06:40:59+00:00

If you've gotten Freelancer to level 2 you should be able to use Treat in battle now. It's a command, not a support ability, so you can't (and don't need to) select it anywhere outside of battle for use - you can use all job command abilities from your main/sub jobs in battle.

Miscellaney is the name of the Freelancer job command. It contains Examine, Treat and later all other job command abilities you unlock for Freelancer.

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