Weapon Evolutions & Ultimate Weapons - Dark Cloud Guides
In Dark Cloud the weapon system is quite unique, your character's strength in this game completely revolves around the weapon they're using and how powerful it is. Each time you defeat an enemy you'll earn Abs which are essentially EXP for your weapon. You're also able to put Attachments on your weapons which will make them stronger in certain ways, depending on what the Attachment does. When you get enough Abs you'll be able to upgrade your weapon and absorb the Attachments on it to make the stats from the Attachments permanent.
Some weapons allow you to evolve them which will transform your weapon into a better one that keeps all of the previous weapon's stats. Evolving your weapon also starts it over at level 1 which means it'll cost less Abs to level up and thus allow you to absorb even more Attachments on it. There are also different paths you can take with each type of weapon that will allow you to evolve it into various different weapons, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Each character in Dark Cloud has what's considered to be an "Ultimate Weapon", this is typically the best weapon available through evolution to that character. Most characters in this game have at least 2 different "final tier" weapons that you can evolve into but there is typically only one of them that stands above the rest in terms of how good it is.
To give you an example, Toan has 7th Heaven, Chronicle Sword and Sword of Zeus as final tier weapons. One of these weapons, the Chronicle Sword, is better than the rest since it has the highest maximum Attack stat of all 3 weapons. Chronicle Sword also has the best attack combos of all his weapons allowing for fast hard hitting attacks.
In addition to Attachments in this game there are also things called SynthSpheres. A SynthSphere is created when you have a weapon that is +5 or higher and you choose to "Status Break" it; this allows you to transfer 60% of the weapons stats (and any abilities on the weapon) to a different weapon. Much like with Attachments you can "Upgrade" a weapon with a SynthSphere attached to it and make it permanent or you can use the SynthSphere temporarily to make the weapon more powerful and remove it before upgrading.
All of this may seem overwhelming at first but you will get various tutorials ingame that explain this to you and once you experiment and start using the system yourself it's pretty intuitive. Now that I have given you a rundown of how this system works it's time to dive more indepth and look at each individual character.
To learn more about which weapons are the best and why for each character you should follow the links below. Click on the link for the character you are interested in learning more about and you'll be taken to a page that provides indepth information about their weapons.
Before I close out this guide there is one more topic I would like to cover and that's Gems. In Dark Cloud there are two types of Attachments that you can put on your weapons; you have the basic Attachments that give +3 to a certain Element such as Holy, Fire, Ice, Thunder etc. There are also other Attachments that give you +3 to Anti-Monster stats such as Dragon Slayer, Undead Buster, Sea Killer etc etc.
Then you have Gems which are superior to both of these Attachments. Gems typically give you 5 to 10 of at least 3 different stats for only a single Customization slot on a weapon. For an example, Opal gives you +10 Endurance, +10 Metal and +10 Mage; Ruby gives you +10 Speed, +10 Fire and +10 Mimic.
When it comes to leveling up your weapons Gems are by far superior to every other type of Attachment. Especially Diamonds which give you +5 to every Anti-Monster Stat except Metal of which it gives you +10. The only downside of Gems is that they're difficult to get, there's only 2 ways to reliably get Gems and that's through Fishing or by purchasing them from the Fairy King in the final dungeon of the game.
I have put together a list of all the Gems in the game below and what they give because I personally used this list a lot while playing and upgrading my weapons and I couldn't find anything similar online. For more information about obtaining Gems through Fishing check out my Dark Cloud Fishing Guide.
