Mystic Artes return in Tales of Arise, offering up the most powerful attacks in the game to deal devastating damage whilst displaying awesome cut-scenes. There are multiple mystic artes to unlock, and each character actually has two of them. Unfortunately, Tales of Arise isn’t particularly clear about the details.
Here’s everything you need to know about how to unlock and use the second mystic artes in Tales of Arise.
How to use second mystic artes in Tales of Arise
This is explained somewhat poorly by Tales of Arise, which tells you in the Artes menu to string together a 5-hit combo with different artes whilst in overlimit state. This might sound easy since some artes land more than five hits alone, but it’s not that simple.
To trigger the second mystic arte, you need to perform a combo that uses five different artes during overlimit. Then hold down any two arte buttons before the fifth arte ends to activate the second mystic arte rather than the first. This is always worth doing if possible, since the second mystic artes are considerably more powerful.
The only way a five-arte combo is possible is by assigning secondary artes in the Artes section of the menu. You can do this mid-battle, and these artes will be accessible during combat by holding L2 on Playstation and LT on Xbox. This feature isn’t unlocked until the end of the third realm, but it’s impossible to have any second mystic artes before this point anyway.
Note that you don’t actually need to connect with all of these artes, as long as the first and final artes deal some damage. You can attack thin air for the majority of the combo and still activate the second mystic arte. Also, it doesn’t matter if the overlimit gauge depletes as long as you started the final arte whilst overlimit was still active.
How to unlock all second mystic artes
Alphen’s second mystic arte, Blazing Pillar is unlocked automatically in the story, but you probably already knew that. As for the rest of the playable characters, they all have second mystic artes but these will not be learnt in the same manner.
All other second mystic artes are unlocked by maximising the bond with the character in question. Bonds are increased when Alphen chooses to chat with party members at campfires whose name has a small speech bubble next to them.
Each character needs five campfire conversations with Alphen in order to maximise the bond level and unlock their second mystic artes. This is simple enough, but there are two catches:
- You can only complete one bond event per hour of play time
- Bonds can only advance further after certain story points are reached
Basically, you should always talk to a party member at a campfire whenever possible, though the fifth and final skits cannot actually be unlocked until near the end of the game when the story has sufficiently progressed.
For some more information about this, there is a full guide below.
Tips for using second mystic artes in Tales of Arise
To get the most out of these all-powerful attacks, here are some of our top tips for using the Tales of Arise second mystic artes.
Control characters manually
The AI is pretty good at activating the default mystic artes, but when it comes to the second, more powerful ones it isn’t reliable at all.
As such, if you want to unleash the second mystic artes you should switch characters whenever you see a different party member enter overlimit state. String together the five necessary artes yourself, as the AI is hardly ever able to achieve this. It is possible, but incredibly rare.
Switching characters in battle is quickly done by holding the targeting button (L1 on Playstation) and pressing the D-Pad button that corresponds with the relevant character in the Boost Attack section in the bottom-left of the screen. There’s a little red flag that will switch over to a new character, and when you release L1 you will be controlling them instead.
When you are trying to string together so many artes, it can be easy to lose track of which ones you’ve used – and if you use the same one again, it won’t count towards the five necessary and is a waste of AG.
My most reliable method to avoid this issue was to simply use the artes in order of their buttons. I started with the top ground arte (triangle), followed by the middle one (square), followed by the bottom one (cross), which was always set as an arte with upwards trajectory. Then I used my top aerial arte (L2 and triangle) followed by middle aerial arte (L2 and square), which is enough to get the job done.
Using a methodical approach like this is pretty foolproof, and ensures you can trigger the second mystic artes even with characters you are not completely familiar with.
Prioritise bonding events of the characters you use most
Since the final bonding events won’t be available until towards the end of the game, it’s very plausible that you may reach the final boss without having maximised all of these bonds and therefore unlocked all second mystic artes.
You’ve got two options – either wait around for the necessary hours, or crack on and beat the final dungeon without them (you can always maximise these bonds in the post-game).
To give yourself the best shot for the latter option, always pick bond events for the characters you use in battle the most, so you’ll tackle the final segment of the game with their full firepower.
That’s all there is to the second mystic artes in Tales of Arise, so you’ll hopefully be able to use Blazing Pillar along with the rest of them every time.
For more Tales of Arise tips and guides, check out the articles below.
