Hello, the purpose of this guide is to hopefully provide an answer to any question somebody might have about the Rift that was introduced in this game's second DLC. If you find it sufficiently informative, please sticky or put this in a place that can easily be reached by players that come here. Please correct or add any necessary info in the comments.

The Basics & Story (not spoilery)

The rift currently has 100 floors, but the story only goes up to floor 21. Every 3 floors up to 18 you fight Gilgamesh and you unlock a new feature when you beat him. The new features include the new job Blue Mage, the new Dimension Bringer, new 400% affinity passives for the Basic Jobs (these include a damage buff to the respective weapon's combo abilities. Testing estimates about a 25% damage increase), new 600% affinity passives for every single job, and the fusion mechanic which allows you to transfer chaos effects, affinity passives, and increase the blessing potency of a summon (they must be the same type). At Floor 21 the Rift story officially ends.

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Every 3 floors (and then every 5 after 21) you must complete a Null Void rift to proceed. This is basically bosses only (after 21 they are randomized). If you die in a Null Void you can try again with no penalty, but if you quit the rift you will still lose your 500 points. If you are struggling, consider doing an easy rift first to stock up points whenever entering a new floor.

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If your points ever reach 0, or you select a previous floor, your monster quests will reset and you will lose all gil and temporary items. You can still start on the highest floor you've reached. You only retain the memory levels of the monsters so it's slightly easier to level their quests again, but this is still annoying as they start at level 1. You also have to sit through their dialogues again. Try not to ever reach 0. Consider backing up your save if you're 1 mission away from failure. Disconnects also unfortunately count as a loss.

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How do you unlock new level caps?

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You are able to unlock 2 new level limits for every job (3 for Blue Mage, as it starts at 135) by randomly opening Arcanium Chests. It does not matter what material you use, and I'd strongly advise not wasting your Crystals as these are valuable for identifying relics. This is completely RNG, and you may be unlucky and not obtain the limit you want for your class well until Floor 50 or so like me.

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What are Summon Blessings?

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Throughout the rift, from drops or from Arcanium Chests, you will find Unidentified Relics. They come with random chaos effects & affinities, but also 1 out of 12 currently available blessings. It is unknown if we will receive more. Very Important Information: You gain stats from all equipped blessings (for that job, your 2 jobs stats still remain separate), and you gain more the higher your blessing % is. Every single job gains different stats from every single blessing. It took a lot of community testing, with /u/BenTheSodaman contributing the majority of the work, but you can find the results in this spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ixa7GC6CMrgN6P2jfgXGaZtFtOOp88SZ0CqFOMB2Ncw/edit#gid=403129218

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You are able to choose any of your equipped blessings to be your primary blessing, and this will give you a certain buff (I.E. Leviathan gives you more MP & Max MP from Soul Shields & Soul Bursts). You're able to read what they do when you want to select one, or if you reference the spreadsheet.

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How should I equip these blessings?

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The best general strategy is to first figure out which primary blessing effect you want. If this blessing does not necessarily give you the stats you want, use a Shield that has this blessing. If your job does not use Shields, use either Gloves or Shoes for this blessing. The reason for this is because you want your 2 handed weapon, top, hat, and pants to have the blessing that will give you the most stats that you need. 2 handed weapons give more potency than any single armor. Shields barely give you anything so you're not losing out on much. 2-slot armors have more than double the blessing potency of the 1-slot armors, but more importantly, you are able to fuse the 2-slot potencies into the 1-slots. EX: You have a 90% Bahamut Hat and a 230% Bahamut 2-slot Hat/Top armor, you can fuse the 2-slotter into the Hat and the Hat will now have 230% Bahamut affinity. 2-slot armors come in Hat/Top or Pants/Top, so this is why you want these slots to always have the blessings that best fit your stats.

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This means once you find a blessing (for primary or for stats) on a piece you actually want, start fusing your chaos effects onto it if you can. As even if you find a 5% Odin piece on Floor 15, you can keep finding higher % Odin pieces and simply increase the potency for basically free.

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You can fuse a lower% potency into your equipped, higher% potency, and if they are the same type (i.e. both Odin), your % will go up by 1. Currently we don't know if there's a cap, as I'm at 240% for some gear. This is nice to even out some stuff (i.e. getting to 100, or 230, etc), but would only serve the most severe of min-maxxers once they've been on Floor 100 for a long time.

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In terms of stats, while the blessings give different stats for every single job, we've figured out that in almost all situations:

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- Odin gives the most Strength (and a decent amount of Agility)

- Ramuh gives the most Intelligence (and a decent amount of Spirit)

- Phoenix gives the most Spirit

- Fenrir gives the most Agility (and a decent amount of strength)

- Titan gives the most HP (and a decent amount of Stamina)

- Alexander give the most Stamina (and a decent amount of HP / Str).

- Generally all blessings give a small amount of Luck (0-2 per 100%).

- "Balanced" jobs (Swordfighter, Blue Mage, Summoner, Red Mage, Cyclic Warrior, etc.) tend to suffer by gaining less Int or Str than other jobs through blessings. When you reach the point where have you 600-900% blessing potency, this adds up to losing 20-50 Str or Int compared to a similar job.

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What is the best blessing to use / Should I use Summoner 600?

The Summoner 600 affinity doubles the strength of the primary blessing's passive. It does not boost the stats you gain from simply having a blessing (except Bahamut, as that's actually his passive). As for what is best, I believe the top 4 blessings are:

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- Bahamut: A successful soul shield will give you 1 str/agi/sta/int/spr/luck per stack, up to 20 each at max stacks. With Summoner 600 this is 40 at max stacks. This may not look like a lot when you have 350 stats, but trust me it is. Most Rift Floor 100 enemies (especially with the enemy stats 40 trial) float around 300-400 stamina/spirit, and simply being able to cross that threshold exponentially increases your damage to them. Note that this is so good because Cyclic Warrior 600 affinity activates Soul Shield effects every time you use Light/Chaos/Dimension Bringer. There are ways to minimize your Max MP Reduction (and Cyclic 600 heals some MP) whenever you use a Bringer, and you can quickly bump your stacks up to max. I personally believe this is a universal best, especially for people struggling to reach high enough stats, or people that utilize multiple stats.

Please note that you can build stacks on your subjob and switch to your main job and maintain them. You do not need Bahamut on the subjob, but you do either need Bahamut OR one of the following affinities, Breaker/Paladin/Black Mage/White Mage/Assassin//Knight/Thief 600. Each of these affinities have a similar effect to Bahamut, being a successful soul shield grants 1.5 of a single stat, 30 at 20 stacks max. You simply need to be able to build the stacks, and they do not have to match between the 2 jobs. Example: Your main job has Breaker600 and Bahamut blessing, but your subjob has Thief600 and Leviathan. You will build the stacks using a Bringer on your subjob thanks to Thief600, and you'll only be gaining Luck on that job. The moment you switch to your main job, the stacks will give you the stats according to Bahamut blessing and Breaker 600. At max stacks this would be 50 str and 20 all other stats.

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- Alexander: A successful parry inflicts a debuff that decreases the enemy's str/agi/int/sta/spr/luck. Like Bahamut, this pairs well with a specific affinity, the Samurai 600 affinity. Whenever you use a combo link, a parry will occur and this should have basically 100% uptime to any enemy in front of you. Currently I do not know if this is a flat amount, or percentage based, but from what I've noticed I think Bahamut is stronger.

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- Leviathan: Increases MP Recovery & Max MP Gained from a soul shield or soul burst. This makes Cyclic 600 Bringer cost almost nothing, and is probably the best blessing for anybody who plays having 1 dedicated buff/subjob (with Void Knight 400 for cheaper Command Abilities) and 1 dedicated main job. Keep this blessing on your buff job.

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- Ifrit: When activating a combo ability from a normal attack, press the Job Action button at the right time (when you flash red) and it'll do 30% damage ( 60% with Summoner 600). I personally find this hard to consistently time with Lunatic Haste, but it is very good for continuous attacks like Swordsman's Spinning Slash, or anybody really who spams a lot of combo abilities.

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Odin, Shiva, & Ramuh require a massive Spirit investment to start building up their debuff onto enemies, and this makes them usually useless (Odin is an exception with Paladin, as Holy Fang will proc these abilities, but only Odin is really worth taking on Paladin)

Phoenix just does not revive you sometimes, especially in multiplayer.

The other summons are situational but can generally find some use.

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Gilgamesh Accessories after Floor 21

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Once you've reached Floor 22, Gilgamesh will occasionally show up on the left side of the lobby and offer you a challenge Chaos Rift. Complete this and talk to him when you return and he'll award you with a random accessory that can have 1 of any 400% affinity passive. If his particular challenge is too hard, simply complete a rift and he'll make a new one. Currently, none of these 400% affinities stack with themselves except Monk's Mantra ( 50% Max HP). Stacking Monk400 a Mantra accessory will let you double your Max HP. This is excellent for Paladin & Dark Knight as Holy Fang & Souleater scale off of HP. You can also fuse away the affinity buff and give yourself a 5th stat/passive on those accessories, though I wouldn't usually recommend that.

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NPCs and should you take them?

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NPCs add about 12.5-15% HP & Break gauge EACH to enemies. They help a lot to distract trash mobs, but may not be useful for bosses. That is, until you build them properly. Here's an example of my NPCs killing a boss while I do 0 damage: https://youtu.be/_UIDL7pViEQ I advise giving your NPCs 400% Dark Knight Affinity, 250% Berserker, and 600% Liberator, while smithing at least 2-4 Near Death Damage Taken-%'s on their gear. This way they will each share some stats with you while having permanent protect & shield and taking massively reduced damage. I also recommend Paladin400/Knight400 as well, as Paladin400 lets them survive Trial IX status nonsense, and Knight400 lets them be invincible during resonance. They can have resonance up a lot, a good 50% or more of the time, or you can time it during a big attack.

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I absolutely do advise taking the NPCs as they contribute to Monster Quests as well. So all those quests that say "Kill an enemy as a Knight", Neon can help with as long as she's a Knight, etc. Coop allies also contribute to this too.

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Who are the best NPCs to take?

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Neon as a Paladin is the objective best choice for an NPC by far. With a few Holy Fang damage dealts on her gear and the Monk400 Mantra accessory, she'll actually contribute a reaonable amount of HP & Break Damage. She's able to inflict Holy Weakness on everyone, allowing you to take advantage of that with Tyrant 400 getting guaranteed Crits, or just doing more Holy Damage overall. She can also inflict any debuff blessing too because of this, and Odin is the obvious best choice massively increasing your damage.

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I personally believe Sophia as a Breaker is the second best choice, though Sage is a good option too. With about 70% Charge Time Reduction: Zantetsuken she will inflict the Level 3 debuff instead of the level 2. Lower the MP cost a bit and she can use this frequently, greatly increasing everyone's damage. Vs. Low defense enemies she can even sometimes do 30-99k damage (depending how built she is). Sage Sophia frequently buffs everyone, but it's easy to get Haste or Protect & Shell on yourself without a sage, so this loses some value. She also casts Ultima every now and then which is pretty fun.

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Monster Quests, How to make them stronger, etc.

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You unlock monsters through giving Astos summonstones in the lobby. There are currently 16 available monsters, and 5 can be out in the lobby at all times. Only the passives of the 5 monsters in your lobby are active when in the rift.

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Giving a monster it's favorite food, or a summonstone will give you 10 in the stat it best represents ( 10 int/spirit for Aether for example), and in the case of Str monsters 160 Break, or 200 hp for Stamina monsters. This bonus will last for one rift (in the event of a linked gateway, these disappear when entering the second rift). These will remain active even if you swap these monsters out of the lobby afterwards. A good strategy for those struggling with Null Voids is to feed all 16 monsters, assuming you have the resources. It's time consuming, but it'll help.

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Giving a monster a requested item when it has a ! above its head will give you some form of buff for 1-2 quests. These will remain active even if you swap these monsters out of the lobby afterwards.

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Each monster has 5 possible quests they can level, and these all level even if the monster is not in the lobby (as long as you unlocked them).

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The memories a monster has further increases the speed at which their quests progress. This combined with Coeurl make quests much more bearable.

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Every monster has their own questline which must be completed to progress their memories past 6. Most (but not all) monsters will evolve / change forms. While some will be completed just through killing stuff, others require something more specific and unclear:

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- Marlboro: Go to presets and Set something as your appearance.

- Tonberry: Do Cactuar's quest and obtain the knife.

- Harpy: Do Skeleton's quest and give her the bone.

- Coeurl: Kill the locked up Coeurl in the pirate level.

- Wolf: Kill the chaos wolf in the snow level.

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The best monsters are Deep & Aether. These monsters grant Str & Int, and one (or both) should ALWAYS be out depending on your source of damage.

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Some other good monsters to keep out are: Cactuar grants Luck and an increased Arcanium drop rate (crystals are needed for all relics). Ahriman grants an increased unidentified item drop rate. Mid will increase the amount of chaos monsters you find in Gateway rifts, thus getting you some better drops. Catastro (Behemoth) lowers the enemies stats while also making your combo abilities stat bonuses scale better.

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Coeurl should always be in the lobby. He increases the speed at which every other monster completes their quests. At level 30 this goes up by 360%, aka more than quadroupling the rate at which these quests gain exp. He's essential towards giving yourself a stronger rift.

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Harpy should always be in the lobby when feeding other monsters. Her Affinity% passive increases the rate at which monsters gain memories. She does not need to remain out while you're in a rift, but while in the lobby, place her before feeding everybody else. At level 30 her Affinity% quest maxes at 240%. This means her being there more than triples the rate that others increase their memory level. Doing this while always keeping Coeurl out will quickly make your rift a lot stronger.

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There is no forseeable cap on monster memory levels. Currently we have people with some monsters having 1300 Memories.

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Monster Quests currently cap at 30. For the base stat effects, this means 60 of a stat. For the job affinity boosts, this means 450% affinity (you only need level 27 to reach 405%).

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How do I maintain MP or Max MP?

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- Any job generating Max MP should have 20-30 points in Increased Max MP Limit Rate in your mastery points, and ideally Void Knight 160 at least (further increases the rate).

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- Also in mastery points, you should take Critical MP Recovery. If using Samurai 600, take Parry MP Recovery as well (you can take less Critical, but I would still keep 5 or so points in it).

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- Leviathan blessing is king for dedicated buff / drop rate / soul bursting bosses jobs.

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- If you have a buff setup, fuse MP: Lowered Cost effects onto your equipment. Ideally get any command ability you use to be about -100% or more (especially 2 mp skills). These things get exponentially worse, but the first bit is alway so valuable. 100% would translate to around 50% reduction, 150 & 200% would be about 60 & 67% reduction.

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- For your main job, fuse at least 1 MP: Lower cost effect for your combo ability/skill. More for 2 MP skills like Zantetsuken. A single MP Reduction giving about -45% would be about a 32% cost reduction already. Also consider the affinities for the Basic Job 600's that reduce that weapon's combo abilities by half.

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- Whichever job you use command abilities with, take Void Knight 400. It's about a 1/3 reduction in the MP cost for these.

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- Black Mage 400 magic damage is so useful for generating max MP. For physical jobs, consider smithing any Imbue effect onto their weapon & taking Black Mage 400 (or taking Tyrant Subjob), and you can infinitely generate Max MP. If you utilize the Imbue Method, try to max out your Intellect through mastery points to make your elemental damage stronger.

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- Chain Cancelling with Summoner 120 is still a great method for generating Max MP, especially with Ninja as your subjob. Even having this on your main job and chain cancelling often can help you out.

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What do I mean by "subjob" or "buff job"?

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A subjob or buffjob exists only to use command abilities, and possibly their job ability, to make you stronger or save your life. They are not contributing damage. In general, these jobs ALWAYS want:

- Void Knight 400 for 33% cheaper command abilities (Void Knight 600 is excellent too for free autohaste)

- White Mage 120 for 20% buff duration

- Buff Duration, Lightbringer duration, Luck, & Drop Rate on their gear and mastery points

- MP Cost Reduction for the command abilities you use on their gear

- In the case of Monk & Tyrant, a couple of Charge Time Reductions as well.

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Some other very good things for these jobs are**:**

- Evoker 400 for a constant MP regen when full.

- In the case of Monk or Tyrant, Red Mage 250 for faster charge times.

- Thief 400 for better drops (use this job to soul burst bosses)

- Breaker 120/400 for higher Soul burst MP Recovery, and the 5x stackable damage boost when soul bursting enemies.

- Knight 400/Paladin 400 if you switch to this job often during hectic combat, so you can maintain lightbringer invincibility or remain immune to status effects.

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DO NOT PUT Improve Effect passives on these jobs. Keep Improve Effect on your main jobs only. Improve Effect only works for the job that is currently active. The only exception to this is Sentinel, as this uses the HP of the casting job to apply its strength.

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What are the best "subjobs" or "buff jobs"?

- Ninja: The Utsusemi safety net is still the defensive king for many setups. 30 free hits is no joke. Just don't get them all drained from multi hits, or status effect pools on the ground.

- Monk: The absolute best DPS increase for a subjob, regardless of whether you're doing HP Physical or Magical damage, or break damage. . Fusion has removed all of the downsides of Focus. You can now stack 100% Charge Time Reduction: Focus, a single MP Reduction: Focus, Autohaste from Void 600, Red Mage 250, and potentially Lunatic, and get 3-4 stacks almost instantly.

- Tyrant: Basically a worse version of Monk, but with the same benefits. It's a bit weaker, and especially demands you to have very high Int, or else you don't get a lot of damage from this. But more importantly, Rift boss spawns are random which means you can't easily prepare the right element in advance. Imbue Element effects for your weapon are also very powerful, and simply having one on your weapon is enough. Allows you to use the Black Mage 400 affinity to increase your Max MP with any hit you do, but again, Imbue Element effects exists for weapons (and don't stack with Tyrant's Enchant).

- Knight: Blessing of Light with high Int does a lot of counter attack damage. This will lose a lot of value as you get strong enough to make fights very short, not giving the enemy much time to fight back. However, the "Black Knight" class specifically, with Cyclic Warrior 600 & Alexander, allows you to proc Alexander on the enemy every time you use a Bringer. So you can put a different blessing on your main job and benefit from both. If using Black Knight, you can also max out the Parry: MP Recovery / Damage Dealt masteries for that job and benefit for a bit for awhile when you immediately switch. Having Monk 250 on the Black Knight would double length of these parry buffs.

- Thief: Can dispel enemies who buff with one of its classes version of Steal, and acts as fuel for Azure Lore, since this ability needs Instant Abilities to be used.

- White Mage / Red Mage: Can haste, protect, & shell yourself or your party depending on which job you use. White Mage can do it for free as well, or use Reincarnate for a re-raise (for you and the party). They've lost a lot of value since we can obtain these buffs through affinity passives now, but they're still an option.

- Lancer: Can inflict a debuff to increase physical damage taken, self haste with one of its classes. Would need some Charge Time Reduction to be useful, and is a lesser option than the others IMO.

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What are the best 600 affinities to use?

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Again, subjective, but my personal favorites are:

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- Samurai 600: Simply set up Parry MP Recovery (and maybe Parry Damage Dealt) in your masteries and you should never run out of MP, while also gaining a nice damage boost. This enables so many builds to go absolutely wild. Thanks to the interaction with Samurai 400, this also makes every combo link ability crit. This means you can get Critical MP/HP Recovery easily, don't need Tyrant 400 for some break builds, etc. This is absolutely my #1 choice for most busted affinity for DLC2.

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- Cyclic 600: Refunds a ton of MP when using a bringer, and could potentially upgrade Soul Shield: Damage Dealt for a nice damage buff for a while too. Also enables easy stack building for Bahamut / The other stack based 600 affinities, while also gaining Max MP back from Bringers. My #2 choice right up there with Samurai 600.

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- Summoner 600: Doubling the effect of your primary blessing is very powerful, no questions asked.

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- Void Knight 600: Haste as long as your Max MP is above 400. Still lasts for about 5 seconds when your MP falls below 400 or when you switch jobs. If you chain cancel enough you don't even need this on your main job because of that. Something I love is that this affinity is on Ahriman in the rift, and he also boosts the drop rate of Unidentified Items, which means he's always in my lobby. Almost any build I make will have Void Knight 600 because of this (since I leveled him to give 405% Void Knight affinity).

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- Liberator 600: Shares a portion of your stats with the rest of the party. Currently we don't know the exact percent of this, but considering my NPCs can reach 300 str or int, even getting 5% of this would be a hefty boost, and this is for every stat. I love this for my NPCs.

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- Breaker/Black Mage/Assassin 600: Extra 30 Str/Int/Agi is very useful from the stack building. Not too mention each of these also gives an extra 10 str/int/agi just from doubling the regular affinity bonuses from 20-160 for each of these. White Mage/Knight/Paladin/Thief are here too to at least enable the stack building on a subjob, but their stats are generally not worth the commitment for 600 affinity for a main job.

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- Monk 600: Not all that strong, but does ignore defense (1 shots those metal cactuars) and at least does something with high HP builds like Paladin & Dark Knight.

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- Berserker 600: Activates Lightbringer everytime you Soul burst an enemy. This combined with Knight 400 & Paladin 400 makes those "Defeat All Enemies" maps a joke.

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- All Basic Job 600's: Cut the cost of their respective weapon's combo abilities in half. Very powerful stuff, and considering the 400's already add a hefty damage boost, it's usually worth taking for combo ability-dependent jobs.

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Is it worth it to try and debuff enemies, and Spirit vs. Status Ailment Accumulation?

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- At floor 100, you will generally need 300-350 Spirit (while in the rift/after feeding monsters) to debuff anything comfortably. With Enemy Stats 40 trial, bump this up to 350-400. Certain Chaos monsters might still give you trouble. If you decide to invest in Spirit, either go all the way or don't. Don't do it halfway.

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- You NEED to hit a certain baseline of Spirit to debuff an enemy. So when I say you need 300 Spirit, you really do. Even if you have let's say 300 Status Ailment Accumulation, this will do nothing if you're even 1 Spirit too low to start debuffing an enemy. As such, if you choose to try to inflict ailments, utilize Odin/Ramuh/Shiva, etc. focus on Spirit first, and Status Ailment Accumulation only as a distant second. A single slot on your accessory and maybe some mastery points is more than enough Status Ailment Accumulation.

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- Debuffs that don't require Spirit, like Zantetsuken, Marauder, Inky Envy, etc. see a lot more value because of this.

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- Inky Envy (the enemy ability from Kraken) allows you to use Lancet to hit Weakness and heal HP/MP.

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- Not debuffing an enemy as a Mage means you can't crit using Tyrant 400, and may have trouble with MP management.

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Doing damage isn't my concern, how do I simply survive the enemies of the rift?

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The most common methods for survival are:

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- Utilizing Ninja as a subjob and surviving with your 30 free hits.

- Utilizing Dimension Bringer and simply dancing around the slowed enemies

- Utilizing Knight 400 Paladin 400 (for ailments / Trials only) & Lightbringer to stay invincible. Requires a way to quickly regenerate your Max MP back. Stack some damage mitigation & possibly DRK400 Berserker 250 to lower the amount the bar decreases when hit.

- Utilizing Sentinel High HP (preferably Monk 400 & Mantra) to simply take 2 or 3 hits before re-applying it. Stack some damage mitigation & possibly DRK400 Berserker 250 or you'll still feel squishy

- Putting Sage 250 affinity to be able to block all magic damage. Putting Liberator 120 as well to increase parry timing.

- Abusing combo links with the "Decreases Damage Taken while active" effect. With enough mitigation you're effectively invincible during or while charging these moves.

- Git Gud & dodge / parry everything

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How do I get the very best gear?

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- The higher your floor, the better the chaos effects & the higher the potential blessing potencies are. At floor 100, the max potencies are Shield: 30%, 1-handed weapon/armor: 100%, 2-handed weapon: 140%, 2-slot armor: 230%

- Trial rifts, especially Trial IX, massively boost the level of the chaos effects you find. You'll get a ton of VI-VIII stuff doing these. Unfortunately, it seems these drop randomly and sometimes you're just forced to wait.

- Ideally, your best situation is a Trial IX Linked Gateway on Floor 100, that you fully explore and run all of the rifts. Remember that you won't have any fed stat buffs after your first rift. Obviously, being able to beat these comfortably first is a whole other situation.

- Bosses & Chaos monsters naturally give more high level chaos effects than regular monsters. I still wouldn't recommend skipping regular monsters in a Trial IX rift as sometimes they surprise you.

- Manually review every item you get. Painful I know. But the name of the game is now chaos effects, and they can drop from any type of gear. It's no longer worth it to only keep Artifact gear, as it's very likely your VII-VIII chaos effect will be on a lesser piece of gear.

- Base Stat effects (HP, Str, etc.) are pretty rare, and you should save most of them, even if they're low. VIII base stat effects is exceptionally rare. I have probably 300 hours in this DLC alone and have not seen a single one yet. That should say a lot.

- Keep Cactuar out, as at Level 30 her Luck bonus is 60. She'll also let you get more Arcanium Crystals which you'll need to identify your relics.

- Keep Ahriman out, as he boosts the drop rate of Unidentified relics.

- Consider keeping Mid out, as he boosts the spawn rate of Chaos monsters, who have better drops. Unfortunately this is only for "Find Gateway" maps, as the number of Chaos monsters in "Defeat Chaos Monsters" & "Defeat All Enemies" are preset. His food buff also increases the spawn rate of Tonberries. Whether or not you want that is another story, but it's a couple of better drops.

- You can save scum unidentified relics to peek at the effects they give. I.E.: Identify any relics that have high chaos effects, mark down any you think are worth keeping, return to title screen. The chaos effects are determined the moment you received the item, so they don't change. You now know which ones are worth keeping, and aren't potentially wasting 3-7 crystals on garbage.