Veronica is one of two characters that joins your group, along with her sister, Serena. She can use both Heavy Wands and Whips, although considering she is a spellcaster primarily, Veronica should just stick to Heavy Wands. Whips can hit an entire group of enemies, but Veronica is not going to really have the strength to do good with it, plus she has plenty of crowd control with her spells. Also, with Heavy Wands, Veronica will be able to physically strike foes with it, allowing her to regenerate some MP, even if she won’t do a lot of damage.

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Veronica

Spells¶

As Veronica is primarily a spellcaster, she will learn a lot of different spells as she levels up during the course of the game. You will want to be using Veronica a lot, since her spells can be quite powerful. She joins the party with six spells, including the wonderful Sap, Magic Barrier, and offensive spells. One of the first spells she’ll learn upon leveling up is Bang, which will hit all enemies in a battle. Most of the other spells she learns are evolutions of the above, although there are some others thrown into the mix. Veronica will learn Oomphle, which she does before Sylvando does, as well as Magic Burst as her final spell. The latter is one of the more powerful moves in the game, so it will be used a lot in the end portions of the game.

Magic Burst requires a minimum of 64MP to use, with it using all of your MP no matter what.

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Veronica’s Skill Tree upon getting her in your party.

Vim¶

This is Veronica’s non-weapon tree and there are a few things you will probably want to grab from here. The biggest takeaway from the Vim tree is Channel Anger, which when used, will increase the damage done by Veronica’s spells for a few turns. Needless to say, her spells doing more damage is always a good thing, so it might be a good idea to beeline towards this at the beginning of the game. Sage’s Breath is a nice skill to potentially keep up Veronica’s MP in battle, especially in the later portions, when spells use up a lot more MP. Kaboomle and Kafrizzle are probably her most powerful spells, despite the big MP cost of them. The passives are also good for this tree, with the resistances stacking with any equipment bonuses. Enchanting Echo gives a chance that a spell she casts will go off again, with no extra MP cost on your end.

Heavy Wands¶

This category isn’t that great for skills, since none of them are really game-changing and don’t really add much to Veronica’s playstyle. However, the passives in this skill tree are good and most of them should be gotten, especially once you open the skill tree to its maximum. There is MP Absorption when attacking, Magical Might, MP Recovery after battle, Maximum MP, and even a Pep Chance increase. For the abilities from this skill tree, Antimagic might prove useful if you’re going up against an enemy that uses a lot of magic. Ring of Ruin might seem good, until you realize that Veronica is probably the only one casting offensive magic, so Channel Anger from the Vim tree is a better use. If you really dig for something, Zing Stick might be good in emergencies, since it gives you another option for reviving a downed ally.

Whips¶

Whether you want to go this route for the weapon choice with Veronica is entirely up to you, but it’s not a wise choice for her. One of the bigger reasons for this is because Veronica is going to have some low Strength, so you’ll likely need to use Strength Seeds on her, when they are better used elsewhere. Also, while it’s nice they hit an entire group of enemies, Veronica can already do that with her spells. In fact, Boom and Bang will hit all enemies, instead of just a group. If you did want to use whips as a weapon, Sylvando has that option and he is better suited to it.

That being said, the whip tree does have a few nice skills. Hypnowhip can confuse enemies, although the chance isn’t too high, especially when you take their resistances into account. Hit the Hay and Trammel Lash are similar to the above, except they do sleep and paralysis, respectively. Twin Dragon Lash is probably the key skill you want at the beginning, since it hits a single enemy twice (Sylvando doesn’t learn this). Once the tree opens up completely, Whipcrackle can deal a good deal of damage to an enemy group, with a high chance for critical hits. Wyrm Whip is the best skill, at it does three hits against a single enemy, plus it can remove buffs. This includes the likes of Oomphle, Buff, and even a pepped up state.

Character Build¶

Veronica is primarily a spell caster and should be built like one. That means that something like using whips is probably not a bright idea, so you should avoid them. With that being said, one of the first things you should do with Veronica is go down the Vim tree. Channel Anger is your first stop, which requires four of the surrounding panels, so it’s probably better to go on the right side, as Spooky Aura isn’t really a viable skill. After getting Channel Anger, you can get the other resistance passive down there, then move on to the Heavy Wand tree.

Antimagic is okay here, but not really something you should be shooting for, as it’s probably better to just concentrate on the passives in this tree. This should tide you over until you finally unlock the full skill trees, which should make you return to the Vim one. There, you can start shooting for the Max MP +30 node, which gives you a free 10 SP. Refund the tree after that, then do it like above and start going to the right this time. Your target is Enchanting Echo, which does require you to get the two panels just under Antimagic. You can then go around and collecting the other spells in the Vim tree, then go after the rest of the passives in the Heavy Wand one.