Rebirth Stones in depth, and more

This great info comes from J.D. Guy

* The prevailing takeaway is that Power Rebirth Stones cannot be obtained from battles that contain nothing but metal monsters. I have seen witness about 4 or so times so far that Power Rebirth Stones can and do drop from metal-only enemy formations. Perhaps this was different in non-Switch versions of the game, but it is possible in the Switch version at the very least. That said, it does appear to be rarer than typical, though that in itself may just be happenstance. I’ve also gone through unlucky streaks in non-metal battles where it took awhile before more Power Rebirth Stones started dropping again.

* There are actually 3 metal islands. The one you mentioned is the third one: it is the northeast-most island, as you said, but it requires the airship since the metal monsters only appear in the forest on an otherwise inaccessible raised portion of the island. (Battles outside the forest on the raised portion are the regular nearby enemies.) The first island in available via regular ship. It’s the west-most small island in the little archipelago south of Clarity Village in the southeast part of the map. (Once it’s unlocked, it’ll be the small, west-most island west of Cielo Ruins.) The second island is in the northwest part of the world, surrounded by shoals, near where the Lamell Ruins entrance lies underwater. It requires the diving upgrade at minimum to reach, as there is an opening in the shoals underwater to the island’s southwest that allow passage through the shoal barrier upon surfacing.

* Things I learned about Rebirth Stones:

** The base Element Rebirth Stones (Fire, Water, Wind) work to change a Skill on a characters’ second Soul Map (which took me longer than I’d like to admit before I realized they were there) into an ”equivalent” Skill of the given Element. This allows, for example, someone like Laura, the Water character, to use Wind and Fire Magic Skills, too. They don’t seem to work on Weapon Skills, though. And are useless on Stat Attribute nodes, alas.

** The remaining Element Rebirth Stones (Strom, Light, White, Red, etc.) that unlock bonus Skills and can only be obtained via the Lottery or Coin Merchant? I learned that they work like Power Rebirth Stones on Skill nodes! They also ignore the cooldown period. And as the help guide briefly mentions, when upgrading a Skill with an element, using the correct matching stone (doesn’t matter if it’s the Weapon or Magic-granting one) will increase the Skill by 2 Levels. If the Skill’s element doesn’t match the stone’s or the Skill has no Element, it will still always increase the Level by 1. Unfortunately, they also don’t work for Stat Attribute Nodes. But since you can by some of them via Coins and farming the 3rd Arena, it is a nice supplement for increasing the Levels of Skills that I wasn’t aware of previously.