Abilities

Abilities are special powers that characters possess. There are a ton of different abilities, but genarally they fall into two categories.

Action Abilities-signified with a red jewel icon, these are magic spells and special moves you use in battle.

Support Abilities-Signified with a blue-green jewwl icon, these are special abilities that support and protect characters during battle.

To be functional, you must equip support abilities with magic stones. Similar to MP, the maximum number of stones character can use to equip abilities increases as the character levels up. The main menu shows two numbers for magic stones: the remaining is the maximum number. The first number shows the remaining stones, and will decrease as you equip support abilities. The scond number indicates the maximum number usable by the character, and increases as a character levels up.

To set magic stones on support abilities, select Ability in the main menu and then select Equip. There are circles next to each support ability. THe ability is equipped if a magic stone appears to fill the slot. The menu shows which support abilities have been equipped. A darker icon indicates that the ability is not equipped.

Learning Abilities

In general, you must equp items to learn abilities. Most items hold special powers that help draw out a character's inborn abilities. Select Equip in the Main Menu to check which abilities a character can learn from items. The abilities that a character is incapable of learning from the itemare grayed out.

You can use action and support abilities as soon as you equip the item. However, you can't use them if the item is removed or replaced with another. To use abilities without equpping items, the character must learn them aby gainging enough AP for each ability. You earn AP by winning battles.

Each ability has an AP guage. This shows how many AP have been earned toward marmanently learning the ability. When the ability is bing learned, a green bar fills the gauge to a certain point and a ratio indicates exacly how many points have been gained toward learning that ability. If th gauge appers in red with three stars, then the character has gained enough AP to use the ability without equipping an item.

You can press the x button while in the status menu to view all of the abilities that a charracter has learned or is learningh. Continue to press the x button to page through the abilities.