Lesson 4: Faerie Abilities
There is no evidence yet to support any difference between the level at which an ability is used. Drain Life will not drain more life on the “strong” setting than it will on the “weak” setting, it will just drain your energy faster to use it on “strong”. The “strength” of an ability does not seem to matter except in the cases of Burrow and Sink, and this has not been confirmed. That said, my advice on the strength to use for your abilities is to use Medium for Burrow and Sink, or Strong if you want to burn 60 percent of your energy on those two moves. Always Drain Life, Heal and Fiery Gaze on weak. Diamond Dust will do the same thing as Fiery Gaze and there is no reason to use it at a strength other than weak. Understand this: USING ABILITIES ON WEAK WILL CONSERVE YOUR ENERGY. You will be able to use more abilities for more turns by conserving your energy. This is important.
There is no evidence that the level of a faerie ability has any discernable effect on the ability. That may change in the future, and with that in mind, it is NEEDLESS to get faerie abilities that you don’t need, since most of the methods to raise the level of faerie abilities raise random abilities. Following are my recommendations for faerie openings:
Level 1: 1 water faerie: this will grant the ability Heal
Level 6: 3 fire faeries: this will grant the useless Level 1 and Level 3 abilities Smoke Screen and Fiery Roar as well as the extremely useful Level 6 ability Fiery Gaze.
Level 10: 4 earth faeries: this will grant the Level 1 ability Magic Pebbles (useless), the Level 3 ability Tough Skin (blocks one water, not totally useless but seldom used), the Level 6 ability Magic Berries (which some think is good enough to warrant opening these faeries at Level 6), and Level 10 ability Burrow, a critical blocking ability.
Level 21: 7 dark faeries: forget about the slew of lower level abilities this gives you, it gives you most importantly the ability Drain Life. It also grants the Level 17 ability Shadow Health, which may be a useful spell.
Level 30: 1 more dark faerie, for the ability Sink.
For best character development I believe in opening the faeries in this order at these levels. I believe this because, as noted before, the fewer abilities you have the greater the chance a good one gets increased when you get an ability level increase (Wheel of Excitement, for example, grants these increases, to name but one source; neggs are another). If the only ability that can get increased from Level 1 to Level 6 is Heal, guess what, it’s going to be the one that gets increased. – Jadeasahi