Best Digimon Story Time Stranger skills

What are the best skills in Digimon Story Time Stranger? It wouldn't be an RPG without a skill tree or two, and Bandai Namco's monster-taming sequel is no different. Agent skills offer passive upgrades for your digital monsters, but they also include moves that you can perform in battle to heal your 'mons or join the fight alongside them.

In Digimon Story Time Stranger, agent skills cost anomaly points to unlock. Aside from the immediate benefits they provide, they also contribute to long-term progression. Essentially, you need to spend anomaly points and unlock agent skills to improve your agent rank, which in turn unlocks higher tiers of DS Time Stranger digivolution. Here are the best agent skills to help you make the most of your points.

Best agent skills

While there are five Digimon Story Time Stranger skill trees in total, we've divided them into two groups based on what they offer. Bonds of Loyalty focuses on your character's Cross Arts and overall ability to raise Digimon. Bonds of Valor, Philanthropy, Amicability, and Wisdom all offer the same skills to improve your Digimon's stats, provided the Digimon matches that personality.

Bonds of Loyalty

Unlocking the left-hand side of the Bonds of Loyalty skill tree should be your first priority. These skills all bestow experience and stat boosts to your Digimon at various stages of digivolution, from In-Training right up to Ultimate. While you don't have to worry about later digivolution stages until you have the agent rank to access them, these skills make all the difference for monster raising.

Here are the best agent skills on the Bonds of Loyalty skill tree:

• Lesson in Rearing
• Rookie Education
• Body Boost: Rookie
• Cross Art: Strike
• Cross Art: High FieldCross Art: Revive
• Strategic CP Application

Lesson in Rearing

Every experience point counts in a team-based RPG, so unlocking Lesson in Rearing early should be a no-brainer. It boosts all EXP gained in battle for Digimon in your party and box by 1% for each agent rank. That doesn't seem like much to begin with, but it snowballs fast. You'll also feel the benefit later in your playthrough, as freshly converted Digimon catch up to your main 'mons in no time.

Rookie Education

The leap from Rookie to Champion demands far higher stat thresholds than In-Training to Rookie, and your choice at this stage lays the groundwork for your Digimon's final form. Rookie Education delivers a Rookie Digimon EXP boost that scales to your agent rank, letting you level up fast and experiment with different forms before you settle on your favorite.

Body Boost: Rookie

Body Boost: Rookie does for stats what Rookie Education does for EXP, giving all Rookie Digimon a boost to HP, SP, and all stats across the board. Like the Education skills, the Body Boost skills are applicable for all stages of digivolution. However, there's no doubt the Rookie variant gives you just enough of a leg-up to tap into Champion-level Digimon as early as possible, which provide an edge when facing early-game bosses.

Cross Art: Strike

Strike is by far the best Cross Arts agent skill to unlock, especially in the early game. When equipped, you can deal "extreme damage" to a single target. You can easily inflict a one-hit KO on regular Digimon, but its real value appears when going up against early-game bosses. You can knock off a huge chunk of a Titan's health in a single strike, with the possibility of using it multiple times during lengthy encounters. Eventually, your Digimon will become powerful enough that their attacks will hit harder, at which point we recommend switching to a support-based Cross Art instead.

Cross Art: High Field

The ultimate support Cross Art, High Field takes the benefits of a Multi-Boost and transplants them into a skill you can use again and again with no additional cost. This also frees up your team to spend less time buffing themselves and allies, and more time doling out punishment with the stat boost you provide.

Cross Art: Revive

A teamwide revive is more suited to the infrequency of Cross Arts than standard heals, which are much better handled via items or Digimon techniques. Equally, revives are hard to come by as regular loot drops, and expensive to purchase from merchants to boot. This Cross Art variant doesn't restore your Digimon to full health, but it does apply Guts, which prevents them from being immediately killed off again next turn. This should give you enough time to pull them back from the brink.

Strategic CP Application

Cross Arts aren't essential for victory in Digimon Story Time Stranger, but they're worth the investment. Strategic CP Application ensures you start every battle with ten CP per agent rank, so you trigger them as early as required. Even better, there are multiple nodes on the skill tree, which means you can stack Strategic CP Application in no time at all.

Bonds of Valor, Philanthropy, Amicability, and Wisdom

In general, you should prioritize unlocking nodes on the skill tree that have the most Digimon aligned to that personality type. However, Valor's skill tree layout has a very slight edge over the others thanks to the ability to unlock multiple ATK, HP, and EXP boosts early on.

Here are the best agent skills on the Bonds of Valor skill tree:

Body Boost: Attack
Body Boost: HP
Study of Valor
Digivolution of Valor

Body Boost: Attack

The best defense is a good offense, and Valor Digimon bring that in spades. You can bolster their natural prowess further by unlocking all the Body Boost: Attack nodes on the skill tree. Body Boost Lv. 1: ATK bestows a 20% ATK increase, which is a huge boost for Valor Digimon on its own. That's before you follow it up with Body Boost Lv. 2: ATK that sits right beside it, which brings it up to 45%.

Body Boost: HP

No matter how often you switch out your Digimon in battle, they'll inevitably have to tank a direct hit to the face. Body Boost: HP improves the chances that they'll survive such an assault, delivering a 20% HP boost. Like Body Boost: ATK, the Lv. 2 upgrade is right beside the base node on the Bonds of Valor skill tree. It's also just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Brave Perfection and Zealous Protection, which both offer subsequent 25% HP boosts.

Study of Valor

Study of Valor provides a 2% EXP gain for each agent rank. While that doesn't seem all that impressive in the early game, there are actually three Study of Valor nodes to unlock on the skill tree, for a maximum of a 30% EXP boost once you reach Agent Rank 10. Even better? The first immediately follows Body Boost: ATK Lv. 2, which gives you a good head start before you advance to the right-hand side of the tree.

Digivolution of Valor

Digivolution of Valor reduces the stat requirements for Valor-aligned Digimon to digivolve into Digimon of the same personality type by 20%. We recommend unlocking this agent skill for Valor, Philanthropy, Amicability, and Wisdom to give you the most scope for digivolution. However, this is a great skill to pick up early on the Bonds of Valor tree in particular, and with four nodes to choose from, you can reduce those stat requirements by a whopping 80% if you make them a priority.

How to unlock agent skills

To unlock agent skills, progress through the main story until you return to the attic in the Misono household to complete the main story mission "The Time Stranger." Rest on the sofa to automatically begin the "Resonating Thought" mission and receive a message from the Operator.

From this point onwards, you can access the agent skills menu at any time by opening the Digivice and navigating to the "Agent" menu. You have 50 anomaly points to spend right from the off, but this won't get you very far. Thankfully, we can help you get DS Time Stranger anomaly points and unlock the best agent skills in no time at all.

Once you've got the best skills in Digimon Story Time Stranger unlocked, take your digital monster-raising to the next level with DS Time Stranger personality skills. If you're on the hunt for new worlds, check out the best turn-based RPGs to discover once you're done saving the Digital World.