What are the best skills in Digimon Story Time Stranger? Like any great RPG, this monster-taming adventure from Bandai Namco features a robust skill system. Agent skills are your key to both passive stat boosts for your digital companions and powerful active abilities you can use in battle to heal or even join the fray yourself.
Unlocking agent skills in Digimon Story Time Stranger requires Anomaly Points. Beyond their immediate advantages, these skills are crucial for your long-term progress. By investing Anomaly Points and acquiring agent skills, you’ll boost your Agent Rank, which is essential for accessing more advanced stages of Digimon digivolution. Let’s dive into the top agent skills that will help you maximize your Anomaly Points.
Top Agent Skills to Prioritize
Digimon Story Time Stranger features five distinct skill trees, but we can simplify them into two main categories. The ‘Bonds of Loyalty’ tree primarily enhances your character’s personal combat abilities, especially their powerful Cross Arts, and improves your overall capacity to raise Digimon. The other four trees – ‘Bonds of Valor,’ ‘Bonds of Philanthropy,’ ‘Bonds of Amicability,’ and ‘Bonds of Wisdom’ – all provide similar stat-boosting skills for Digimon that align with their respective personality types.
Bonds of Loyalty: Empowering You and Your Digimon
Making the left side of the Bonds of Loyalty skill tree your initial focus is a smart move. These skills provide valuable experience and stat enhancements for your Digimon across all digivolution stages, from In-Training all the way to Ultimate. While you won’t immediately access the higher digivolution forms, these foundational skills are invaluable for nurturing your digital partners and accelerating their growth.
Here are our top picks for essential agent skills from the Bonds of Loyalty tree:
- Lesson in Rearing
- Rookie Education
- Body Boost: Rookie
- Cross Art: Strike
- Cross Art: High Field
- Cross Art: Revive
- Strategic CP Application
Lesson in Rearing: Boost Your EXP!
In any team-based RPG, every single experience point matters, making ‘Lesson in Rearing’ an absolute must-have early on. This skill grants a 1% boost to all EXP earned in battle for Digimon both in your active party and your storage box, per Agent Rank. While a 1% increase might seem minor initially, its effects quickly accumulate. You’ll especially appreciate this later in the game as new Digimon rapidly catch up to your main squad.
Rookie Education: Accelerate Early Digivolution
The jump from Rookie to Champion requires significantly higher stat thresholds compared to evolving from In-Training to Rookie. Your decisions during this phase are critical, as they set the foundation for your Digimon’s ultimate form. ‘Rookie Education’ provides a scaling EXP boost for Rookie Digimon based on your Agent Rank. This allows for rapid leveling, giving you the freedom to experiment with various evolutions before committing to your preferred Digimon’s final path.
Body Boost: Rookie: Enhance Core Stats Early
‘Body Boost: Rookie’ mirrors ‘Rookie Education’ but for stats, granting all Rookie Digimon a significant increase to their HP, SP, and all other base stats. While Body Boost skills benefit all digivolution stages, the Rookie version is particularly potent. It provides that crucial early game advantage, letting you access powerful Champion-level Digimon sooner and giving you a strong edge against challenging early bosses.
Cross Art: Strike: Devastating Single-Target Damage
‘Cross Art: Strike’ stands out as the most impactful Cross Art to unlock, particularly in the early stages of your adventure. When activated, this skill unleashes “extreme damage” on a single enemy. While it can easily one-shot weaker Digimon, its true power shines against early-game bosses, allowing you to slice off substantial portions of a formidable foe’s health bar in a single hit. In prolonged battles, you might even get to use it multiple times. As your Digimon grow stronger and their regular attacks become more potent, consider transitioning to a more support-focused Cross Art.
Cross Art: High Field: Unmatched Team Support
Consider ‘Cross Art: High Field’ the ultimate support ability. It takes the powerful benefits of a Multi-Boost item and transforms them into a reusable skill, completely free of additional cost. This means your Digimon can spend less time casting buffs on themselves and their allies, and more time dishing out damage, all while benefiting from your constant stat enhancements.
Cross Art: Revive: A Lifesaving Comeback Mechanic
While standard healing is best left to items or Digimon techniques, a team-wide revive is perfectly suited for the infrequent yet impactful nature of Cross Arts. Unlike regular loot, revives are rare drops and costly to buy from vendors. This particular Cross Art won’t fully restore your Digimon’s health, but it crucially grants them ‘Guts,’ preventing them from being instantly knocked out again on the next turn. This provides a vital window to stabilize your team and bring them back from the brink.
Strategic CP Application: Start Battles with Power
Although Cross Arts aren’t strictly necessary for every victory in Digimon Story Time Stranger, they are undoubtedly a worthwhile investment. ‘Strategic CP Application’ ensures you kick off every battle with an additional ten CP per Agent Rank, allowing you to unleash these powerful abilities right when you need them. What’s more, this skill has multiple unlockable nodes on the tree, meaning you can stack its benefits rapidly and gain a significant advantage.
Bonds of Valor, Philanthropy, Amicability, and Wisdom: Personality-Based Boosts
When tackling these personality-specific skill trees, a general rule of thumb is to prioritize the tree that corresponds to the personality type of most of your Digimon. However, the ‘Bonds of Valor’ tree offers a slight strategic advantage due to its early accessibility to multiple Attack, HP, and Experience Point boosts.
Here are the top agent skills to consider from the Bonds of Valor skill tree:
- Body Boost: Attack
- Body Boost: HP
- Study of Valor
- Digivolution of Valor
Body Boost: Attack: Maximize Offensive Power
For many, a strong offense is the best defense, and Valor Digimon naturally excel in this area. You can amplify their inherent combat prowess by unlocking all the ‘Body Boost: Attack’ nodes on their skill tree. ‘Body Boost Lv. 1: ATK’ alone grants a substantial 20% Attack increase for Valor Digimon. But that’s just the beginning; immediately following it is ‘Body Boost Lv. 2: ATK,’ which pushes the total boost to an impressive 45%!
Body Boost: HP: Fortify Your Digimon’s Durability
No matter your battle strategy or how frequently you swap Digimon, they’re bound to take a hit eventually. ‘Body Boost: HP’ significantly increases their chances of surviving such impacts, providing a solid 20% boost to their health. Much like ‘Body Boost: ATK,’ the Level 2 upgrade for HP is conveniently located right next to the base node on the Bonds of Valor skill tree. Furthermore, it’s a short path to ‘Brave Perfection’ and ‘Zealous Protection,’ which each offer an additional 25% HP boost!
Study of Valor: Consistent EXP Growth
‘Study of Valor’ grants a consistent 2% EXP gain for each Agent Rank you achieve. While this might not seem game-changing early on, there are three ‘Study of Valor’ nodes available on the skill tree. This means you can accumulate up to a fantastic 30% EXP boost by the time you reach Agent Rank 10! The first node is also strategically placed right after ‘Body Boost: ATK Lv. 2,’ giving you an excellent head start before you delve deeper into the right side of the tree.
Digivolution of Valor: Streamline Your Evolutions
‘Digivolution of Valor’ lowers the stat prerequisites for Valor-aligned Digimon to digivolve into other Digimon of the same personality by a significant 20%. To maximize your evolutionary options, we highly recommend unlocking this agent skill not just for Valor, but also for Philanthropy, Amicability, and Wisdom. For the Bonds of Valor tree specifically, this is an excellent skill to acquire early. With four available nodes, you can potentially reduce these stat requirements by an incredible 80% if you make them a priority!
Unlocking Your Agent Skills: The First Steps
To begin unlocking these valuable agent skills, you’ll first need to advance through the main story. Your opportunity arises once you return to the Misono household’s attic and complete the primary mission, ‘The Time Stranger.’ Afterward, simply rest on the sofa to trigger the ‘Resonating Thought’ mission automatically, which will be followed by an important message from the Operator.
From this moment forward, the agent skills menu becomes readily accessible. Just open your Digivice and select the ‘Agent’ option. You’ll start with 50 Anomaly Points, but that won’t go far if you’re aiming for optimal progression. Fortunately, we’re here to guide you on how to quickly earn more Anomaly Points in Digimon Story Time Stranger and unlock those game-changing skills efficiently.
After mastering the best skills in Digimon Story Time Stranger, elevate your monster-raising strategy even further by exploring the personality skills available. If you’re looking for new adventures once you’ve saved the Digital World, be sure to check out our recommendations for the top turn-based RPGs.