Espers

What are Espers?
Espers are magical entities that agree to lend their powers to Rain and his friends during the course of the game. They are discovered by playing through the story and exploring towns. Talking to nearby townspeople after major story events (especially after a boss has been defeated) will sometimes reveal a new, hidden location on the map. Explore it, and you're likely to find a new esper at the end of the quest.

How do Espers work?
In practice, an Esper is kind of like a special piece of powerful equipment. Espers can be attached to your units, granting them a number of bonuses:
 * Any ability the Esper knows (except its ultimate attack) is shared with the unit.
 * 1% of the Esper's stats are conferred upon the unit. For example, if an Esper has 5000 ATK, the character equipping that Esper gets +50 ATK.
 * The Esper's elemental strengths and weaknesses are conferred upon the unit. Some Espers have no elemental strengths or weaknesses, but most have an opposing pair (fire and ice, light and dark, etc.). For example, an Esper might grant +50% fire resistance when equipped to Rain, but also saddle him with -50% ice resistance, making him more vulnerable to ice attacks.
 * A unit equipped with an Esper can summon it during battle once certain conditions are met. Summoned Espers perform one powerful action and then disappear from the battlefield.

How do I get Espers?
Espers are found during the course of progressing through the story on the World Map. Most of them are hidden, meaning that you, as a player, will have to do some extra exploring to find the secret areas on the map where Espers live. In most cases, this will happen in one of two ways: In either case, once the area is revealed on the map, you can visit it and progress through the red-plate (combat) missions inside. The last mission in the series will have a unique plate with a flame icon on it - this means it's an Esper boss battle. Enter, watch the cutscene, and battle the Esper to show it your strength and resolve. Win the battle, and the Esper will agree to join your party!
 * 1) Revisiting towns and cities after defeating the major boss of a nearby area, and talking to all the townspeople. One of the villagers will say something about an interesting or mysterious area that's rumored to be nearby, and when you leave town, a new path to the area will open up on your map.
 * 2) Carefully combing Exploration maps for alternate exits and secret passages. Once in a while, you must discover such a secret exit in order to unlock new, optional areas of the game, which can occasionally include areas with new Espers.

What do I do with my Espers?
As noted above, the primary purpose of Espers is to equip them to your party members in order to increase their stats and combat abilities. Fortunately, equipping an Esper is very easy! Espers are actually equipped to character slots in your party, rather than specific characters. Thus, if you equip Siren to a character slot, you can change the character unit in that slot as many times as you want, and whatever unit you choose will automatically have Siren equipped. To equip an Esper: Eventually, you will have more than enough Espers to fill all five Esper slots in your party, and you will have to decide which Espers you want to use, depending on what will be most useful for your current party. This will make a big difference in the mid- to late-game, where augmenting your specialized units with Esper stats and abilities will become important to maximizing their effectiveness in tougher battles.
 * 1) go to the Units screen (by tapping the button at the bottom of the Home screen) and take a look at your adventuring party. You will see that each unit has a little square box below it.
 * 2) Tap that box, and a list of your current Espers will appear.
 * 3) Tap the Esper you want to attach, and you will be returned to the Units screen, with the Esper you chose now filling the box beneath the character slot you picked.

How do I improve my Espers?
Espers can be leveled up, unlocking stat increases and new abilities for your units along the way. Because these stats and abilities don't have to be directly equipped by a unit, they help save your unit's equipment or ability slots for even more powerful effects. Each character has a maximum of 10 equipment and ability slots they can use - 6 slots for equipment and up to 4 for abilities - so that real estate is at a premium. Therefore, it's very important to level up your Espers as you play, so that they can grant as much power and as many useful abilities as possible to your party.

Espers have their own menu button on the Home screen for this exact purpose. It is one of the five oversize buttons near the bottom of the screen; you can reach it by rotating the list with your finger until you see the "Espers" button, and then tapping on it.

Here you will see a pictorial grid display of all the Espers you currently own. As of this writing, there are a total of 12 Espers available to find and acquire, but near the beginning of the game, you will only have 2 or 3.

You can tap on an Esper's icon to go to the details page for that Esper. On the details page, you will see the Esper's current stats and level, plus a description of what will happen if you evoke (summon) the Esper during a battle. There are also two buttons worth noting, Enhance and Train, located at the bottom of the screen. To improve your Esper, you will need to level it up using the Enhance menu. Espers level up by consuming a special resource, Magicite, which comes in different sizes and is mostly found during Exploration missions on the World map. Larger pieces of Magicite grant more experience. Tap the Enhance menu, and you will see a screen that looks something like this: The boxes at the bottom of the screen show all the types of Magicite available in the game, and the number next to each box shows how many pieces of that type you currently own. (In the image above, I don't currently own any Magicite.) To level up your Esper, simply tap the Magicite you want to feed to it, and it will automatically consume the Magicite. When this happens, the level bar just above the Magicite display will climb. As previously noted, small pieces of Magicite, like shards, will make the level gauge rise a little bit; larger pieces will have a more pronounced effect. Just as with your units, subsequent levels cost more and more Magicite to attain, so one shard might grant a level of two to a level 1 Esper, but will barely make a dent in the progression from level 25 to 26 (for example). For your reference, these are the sizes of Magicite: Obviously, for efficiency's sake, Megacite is the most desirable type, but every piece of Magicite is useful.
 * Shards, the smallest type
 * Magicite, the regular type
 * Megacite, the largest type.

There is one other thing to consider when feeding Magicite to your Espers, and that is the color of the Magicite you use. Any Esper can eat Magicite of any color; however, many Espers have a preferred color. If you feed Espers Magicite of their preferred color, it will grant 150% of its usual amount of experience. For example, Siren prefers blue Magicite: As a general rule, it's smart to save your colored Magicite for Espers that have an affinity for that color, because it helps you to level them up faster and with fewer resources. However, think of this as a loose guideline rather than a hard requirement. What's more important is that you level up the Espers you've got, regardless of the color of Magicite you collect.

There are eight colors of Magicite, plus colorless Magicite. (Colorless Magicite always provides less experience than its colored counterparts, even without taking affinity into account.) Here is a breakdown of what you can expect to find: And here are the eight colors of Magicite: Green Magicite in particular is easy to acquire, and the only Esper that prefers green Magicite isn't available until the late game, so many players end up relying on it to help level all of their Espers. I will explain more about how to acquire Magicite and where to do it farther down on this page.
 * 1) Magicite Shards are always colorless. They are very common in earlier areas of the game, but almost unheard of in later areas.
 * 2) Magicite can be colored or colorless.
 * 3) Megacite is always colored.
 * White
 * Red
 * Orange
 * Yellow
 * Green
 * Blue
 * Violet
 * Black

So, to recap: Go to the Espers screen, choose an Esper, tap "Enhance," and feed it your Magicite. This will level it up.

I leveled up my Esper. Now what?
As you leveled up your Esper, you probably noticed that its stats increased with every level. In addition, you might have seen a number in the upper right corner of the screen, labeled SP, that was also going up. SP are points you can spend to further improve your Esper and unlock more of its special abilities. This is where the other button on the Esper details screen, "Train," comes in.

Go back one screen by tapping the "Back" button on the upper left, so that you see the details screen with the two buttons, Enhance and Train, again. This time, tap the Train button.

You will be taken to a grid of hexagonal icons connected by lines. This is an improvement grid, very similar to Final Fantasy X's grid system. You start at the middle and branch out, purchasing stat improvements and special abilities with the SP you've earned from leveling up your Esper. Each hexagon has a short description such as "ATK +35," plus an associated SP cost. For one-star Espers (more on this later), the SP cost will always be 5 or 10 SP per hexagon. You can only purchase an ability if it's lit up; as you build connections outward from the center of the grid, more hexagons will light up. The order in which you unlock hexagons is otherwise up to you. For your first couple of Espers, you don't need to worry too much about which tiles to activate first; just plan on eventually unlocking them all. Later, you'll want to consider what the Esper's natural forte is, what kind of unit would go best with it, and whether or not you'd prefer to focus on some lines of expansion before others in order to get the upgrades you want as quickly as possible.

What happens when my Esper is maxed out?
When you acquire an Esper, it will have a star under its portrait and a maximum level of 30. In most cases, leveling an Esper up to level 30 will give you enough SP to completely fill out its enhancement board. However, that's only the first step: 11 of the 12 currently-available Espers (including every Esper you will acquire while this guide is still useful to you) can actually be ranked up to two stars. Ranking an Esper up to two stars has many effects: In most cases, the most desirable abilities of any given Esper are only available at star rank 2. These include passive abilities that increase your units' damage output against certain enemy types, such as Beasts or Demons (these are colloquially called "killer passives" in the FFBE community), useful support abilities like Dispel and Imperil, and other interesting effects.
 * It drastically expands the Training grid hexagons available to the Esper.
 * It resets the Esper's level to 1.
 * It allows the Esper to reach level 40 instead of level 30.
 * Hexagons you unlocked at rank 1 remain unlocked.

To rank your Esper up to two stars, you must first level it up to level 30. Once you do, take your party back to the area of the World map where you originally fought the Esper, and you will see that a new, second Esper battle mission is now available. This mission will be significantly harder than the original mission, so make sure you're prepared. Play the mission for a new cutscene, a tough battle, and another cutscene afterwards. If you win, the Esper's level will reset to 1, its hex grid will roughly double in size, and its level cap will be increased to 40.

It takes a long time to level an Esper all the way up to 40, because it's a total of 70 levels' worth of Magicite. I only have 2 Espers at level 40 myself (though I have many at the two-star rank). Nevertheless, it's a good long-term goal to help gear your party up for the toughest quests and special missions.

So where do I find Magicite?
Of course, you can't level your Espers at all without Magicite. Magicite is most commonly found at Resource Points inside Exploration missions. Depending on the setting and scenery, different Exploration missions will supply you with different colors of Magicite. Magicite can also be won as a quest reward, or acquired in special dungeons that are available once every month or two inside the Vortex.

To date, the most efficient place to farm for Magicite remains the Exploration map inside the Phantom Forest area. For whatever reason, the resource points inside Phantom Forest - Exploration drop green Magicite and Megacite like candy - you can typically expect 2 or more Megacite and 3-5 pieces of Magicite (or an equivalent number of Magicite shards) per run, all for a measly 8 NRG. The Phantom Forest is on the second island you travel to in the course of the game's story, so you can unlock it fairly early on, if you haven't already.

If you need specific colors of Magicite, there are other Explorations that are good, relatively accessible choices (For example, Zadehl Westersands for red Magicite, or Wolfsang Peak for blue), but for sheer richness of resources available, nothing beats the Phantom Forest, even though the Magicite it provides is green.