EDIT: Also, are there any major differences between male and female units, other than the whole zodiac thing?
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
EDIT: Also, are there any major differences between male and female units, other than the whole zodiac thing?
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
The only other major difference is that female characters can use perfumes. Many of them tend to be very powerful items.
They can also use the ribbon and the other two 20 hp headbands with a lot of immunities.
EDIT: Also, are there any major differences between male and female units, other than the whole zodiac thing?
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
The only other major difference is that female characters can use perfumes. Many of them tend to be brokenly powerful items.
Speaking of which, does that auto-raise perfume still make you invincible?
EDIT: Also, are there any major differences between male and female units, other than the whole zodiac thing?
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
The only other major difference is that female characters can use perfumes. Many of them tend to be brokenly powerful items.
Speaking of which, does that auto-raise perfume still make you invincible?
I swear even in the old version the reraise icon went away when used. I must've been doing things wrong.
I usually just use the haste/invisible perfumes because I like permanent haste more than re-raise. I can just calculator that onto my characters.
Off the top of my head you have the following effects with perfumes:
Always Protect and Shell
Always Regen and Re-Raise (I thought re-raise faded once used, but many say it stays on them, making the character all but immune to death by hp loss)
Always Invisible and Haste (Invisible fades after your first action)
Always Float and Reflect (I think?)
Through a character development side-quest involving Mustadio and Agrias, one can get a perfume that's +3 PA/MA, Always Haste and Regen I think. It's very powerful.
But this game is impossibly difficult. It has taken me ludicrous amounts of hours and I'm only at the fight with...er...that guy....you know the one guy.
the guy you pick up early and is all about the class struggle etc.
Gosh I wish I could enjoy Square games but it seems I'm allergic or something.
But this game is impossibly difficult. It has taken me ludicrous amounts of hours and I'm only at the fight with...er...that guy....you know the one guy.
the guy you pick up early and is all about the class struggle etc.
Gosh I wish I could enjoy Square games but it seems I'm allergic or something.
Unless you're lucky, die-hard or very patient, you'll typically have to spend some time looking for random fights to level up a little bit. It's not so much the levels you'll want, but the abilities.
The main thing leveling up will do is help you gain more PA, MA and Spd. Job abilities tend to help out a lot more.
One thing that might help is to try and get your characters the chemist reaction skill, Auto-Potion. That should help you out a great deal through the game and it shouldn't take too much grinding to get.
Some skills I would recommend getting that shouldn't require too much grinding would be:
JP Boost (Squire ability) - You get more JP per action
Move +1 (Squire Ability) - You gain +1 to your movement
Focus (Squire Ability) - +1 PA to self
Auto-Potion (Chemist Ability) - PA/100% chance of activating when you take any hp damage. Use weakest potion available on yourself automatically
Potion (Chemist Ability) - Potions heal 30 hps to target
Phoenix Down (Chemist Ability) - Revive targe with 1-10 hps or some such.
Concentrate (Archer ability) - Your normal attacks will never miss.
There's a great many skills as you know, but these should help you through chapter 1 for starters.
The game has a few spots of exponentially increased difficulty, but more often than not, you'll want to spend some time earlier on to get some better abilities, then you won't have to do that as much for the rest of the game.
For example, Monks tend to hold their own very easily through the whole game due to their abilities and I think a level 2 knight will open them up. Once you get a monk, get them Chakra (the 350 jp heal everyone around you hp/mp ability) and maybe one of their ranged attack abilities and you're pretty much set for a while.
I swear even in the old version the reraise icon went away when used. I must've been doing things wrong.
No, I just played it about a month and a half ago, and I put that one on Rafa to keep her from losing so quickly, since she was a bit underleveled. She ended up singlehandedly saving the day by rising from the dead 3 times after the rest of my back-up team got wiped.
I usually just use the haste/invisible perfumes because I like permanent haste more than re-raise. I can just calculator that onto my characters.
I keep the Haste perfume on Agrias to compensate for her terrible speed.
I haven't gotten the PSP remake, but I heard the sword dupe glitch was fixed, so I was wondering if the perfume got fixed as well. The sword dupe was one I didn't mind, if only because I needed it to make Samurai worthwhile. I wouldn't have used it if there were a way to get more than one Masamune.
EDIT: Also, are there any major differences between male and female units, other than the whole zodiac thing?
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
The only other major difference is that female characters can use perfumes. Many of them tend to be very powerful items.
They can also use the ribbon and the other two 20 hp headbands with a lot of immunities.
That kinda sucks. I hate arbitrary restrictions like that. I figured there'd at least be some male only items to even it out.
Unless you're lucky, die-hard or very patient, you'll typically have to spend some time looking for random fights to level up a little bit. It's not so much the levels you'll want, but the abilities.
The main thing leveling up will do is help you gain more PA, MA and Spd. Job abilities tend to help out a lot more.
One thing that might help is to try and get your characters the chemist reaction skill, Auto-Potion. That should help you out a great deal through the game and it shouldn't take too much grinding to get.
Some skills I would recommend getting that shouldn't require too much grinding would be:
JP Boost (Squire ability) - You get more JP per action
Move +1 (Squire Ability) - You gain +1 to your movement
Focus (Squire Ability) - +1 PA to self
Auto-Potion (Chemist Ability) - PA/100% chance of activating when you take any hp damage. Use weakest potion available on yourself automatically
Potion (Chemist Ability) - Potions heal 30 hps to target
Phoenix Down (Chemist Ability) - Revive targe with 1-10 hps or some such.
Concentrate (Archer ability) - Your normal attacks will never miss.
There's a great many skills as you know, but these should help you through chapter 1 for starters.
The game has a few spots of exponentially increased difficulty, but more often than not, you'll want to spend some time earlier on to get some better abilities, then you won't have to do that as much for the rest of the game.
For example, Monks tend to hold their own very easily through the whole game due to their abilities and I think a level 2 knight will open them up. Once you get a monk, get them Chakra (the 350 jp heal everyone around you hp/mp ability) and maybe one of their ranged attack abilities and you're pretty much set for a while.
Thank you for your patience. I realize I only come in here to whine.
I had trouble at the start of the game, but that was severely mitigated by giving everyone Phoenix Down and Potion. I notice - and would like confirmed - that an actual chemist can throw potions but a person using chemist abilities can only potion adjacent tiles?
It seems my difficulty has increased since I've promoted my two chemists to white and black mage. I have some good area damage now, but I seem to get raped quickly.
Auto-potion looks like a swell idea. I'll look into that.
Unless you're lucky, die-hard or very patient, you'll typically have to spend some time looking for random fights to level up a little bit. It's not so much the levels you'll want, but the abilities.
The main thing leveling up will do is help you gain more PA, MA and Spd. Job abilities tend to help out a lot more.
One thing that might help is to try and get your characters the chemist reaction skill, Auto-Potion. That should help you out a great deal through the game and it shouldn't take too much grinding to get.
Some skills I would recommend getting that shouldn't require too much grinding would be:
JP Boost (Squire ability) - You get more JP per action
Move +1 (Squire Ability) - You gain +1 to your movement
Focus (Squire Ability) - +1 PA to self
Auto-Potion (Chemist Ability) - PA/100% chance of activating when you take any hp damage. Use weakest potion available on yourself automatically
Potion (Chemist Ability) - Potions heal 30 hps to target
Phoenix Down (Chemist Ability) - Revive targe with 1-10 hps or some such.
Concentrate (Archer ability) - Your normal attacks will never miss.
There's a great many skills as you know, but these should help you through chapter 1 for starters.
The game has a few spots of exponentially increased difficulty, but more often than not, you'll want to spend some time earlier on to get some better abilities, then you won't have to do that as much for the rest of the game.
For example, Monks tend to hold their own very easily through the whole game due to their abilities and I think a level 2 knight will open them up. Once you get a monk, get them Chakra (the 350 jp heal everyone around you hp/mp ability) and maybe one of their ranged attack abilities and you're pretty much set for a while.
Thank you for your patience. I realize I only come in here to whine.
I had trouble at the start of the game, but that was severely mitigated by giving everyone Phoenix Down and Potion. I notice - and would like confirmed - that an actual chemist can throw potions but a person using chemist abilities can only potion adjacent tiles?
It seems my difficulty has increased since I've promoted my two chemists to white and black mage. I have some good area damage now, but I seem to get raped quickly.
Auto-potion looks like a swell idea. I'll look into that.
Chemists have the natural skill "Throw Item". You can learn that ability with their class and use it so any character can throw items the 4 spaces.
Magic earlier in the game, IMO, isn't very useful because the MP you have is very limited. Being able to heal someone 30 hps a turn with a potion appears to be much more useful than being able to cast cure X turns later, 5 times a battle or however much your mp allows for.
Ether items are expensive and probably not available yet for purchase (item that restores MP) and the only other way to restore MP besides picking up crystals would be the monk ability Chakra or whatever they called it in the PSP remake.
Personally, I don't really use magic much. If I do, I tend to stick to time mages or oracles because many of their abilities are status enhancements or status ailments that can go quickly. Sure, a black mage can hurt someone, but a time mage can haste or slow people, greatly influencing actions and the oracle can hit someone with don't move which means the character most dodge bonuses and that ability can generally hit almost anybody in the game, boss or not.
If you're fighting at the lighthouse right now against a familiar character, I've found that trying to keep Delita standing tends to help as many enemies focus on him. The boss of that fight is difficult becuse he has Auto-Potion as a reaction ability. While he may only have 30-35 brave (30-35% chance the ability triggers, healing him for 30 hps), it still means he heals himself 1/3 of the time.
One thing to try, I don't know if it worked well or not, is to consider trying the dash command (Squire ability that deals some damage to a target in front of you). I know that command bypasses a lot of defensive abilities like weapon guard (knight ability) or shields and natural dodge, but it also cannot be countered (monk ability, most to all monsters have this as an innate ability). It may eliminate the chances he has of his ability triggering.
Otherwise, if your characters have decent brave, having the auto-potion ability will probably make most fights much easier. Raising brave takes the skills of a special skill Ramza gets as a squire or the skills of a mediator, a class which takes a while to unlock, so I wouldn't worry about this yet.
When you get to Chapter 2, I believe Ramza has a new 200 jp skill he can purchase nuder the squire class, the name of which escapes me. It gives +5 brave to a target with a 100% chance, range of 3. The way permanent changes in brave and faith work is a bit different, but we can talk about it when you get to a point where it's possible.
JP Boost (Squire ability) - You get more JP per action
Focus (Squire Ability) - +1 PA to self
Auto-Potion (Chemist Ability) - PA/100% chance of activating when you take any hp damage. Use weakest potion available on yourself automatically
I had trouble at the start of the game, but that was severely mitigated by giving everyone Phoenix Down and Potion. I notice - and would like confirmed - that an actual chemist can throw potions but a person using chemist abilities can only potion adjacent tiles?
It seems my difficulty has increased since I've promoted my two chemists to white and black mage. I have some good area damage now, but I seem to get raped quickly.
Auto-potion looks like a swell idea. I'll look into that.
You are correct, Chemists can throw the items and a secondary Chemist can only deliver them to adjacent tiles.
I can't agree with Ardor's recommendations enough. JP Boost, Focus & Auto-Potion are critical in the early going. One thing that some folks on these boards pointed out to me was not go too far with powerlevelling early in the game. The enemies in random battles will scale with you, so if you start getting powerful enough to unlock some of the 2nd and 3rd tier jobs you won't be able to buy the gear and will get wiped out.
It's probably worth getting into a random battle, leaving 1 enemy alive, surrounding them and just continuing to focus over and over again. You get both experience and JP for using focus, so it's a good way to level up your jobs in the early going.
A correction on the chance auto-potion goes off, it's your brave/100 = % chance. So if your character has 60 brave, there's a 60% chance the ability will trigger. I realize above I said PA/100, which would be an abysmal chance at any point of the game.
PA is your physical attack stat. It helps determine your melee damage with non-gun weapons.
Focus is a squire ability that simply raises your PA stat by 1 every time it is used. It remains for the duration of that battle.
Calculation is basically PA*WA.
PA is your character's Physical attack stat. WA is your weapon's strength. The dagger for example, has a 3 attack rating. If your character has 4 PA, you should be dealing 12 damage to your target.
The only other considerations are zodiac signs, but if you aren't sure how those work, it's not necessary to know. All you need to know is based upon zodiac signs, you may find you have a better chance to hit and do damage to some people while others you have a lesser chance to hit and will do less damage to them.
A tip. If you plan on using focus a lot, you should consider not equipping a weapon because bare handed characters deal approximately PA*PA damage. So if your PA is 7 and you don't have any weapons that are around that same damage rating, you should be doing more damage with your fists. The continued use of Focus would exponentially increase your damage over a weapon. I believe non-monks have a handicap in there, but the exponential growth part is true.
An example you don't need because you know this but shows the basics.
Ramza has PA of 5 and uses a sword of attack rating 5.
He should be doing 25 damage.
If he uses focus 5 times in a row, he'll have 10 PA with a 5 damage sword, do he'll be doing 50 damage a hit. Everytime he uses focus, he does 5 more damage.
If Ramza was barehanded with 5 PA, he should already be doing around 25 damage. (I thought for non monks it was something ilke (PA-2)*(PA-2) or something for damage). If he raises his PA to 10, he'd be doing 100 damage instead of 50 with the weapon.
5 turns of constantly using focus can be a lot to ask in many maps, which is the reason you'd probably want to use weapons unless you need the damage or have the time.
White magic can definitely be replaced with items, if that's your preference, but black magic in the early game is ridiculous if you have someone with even decent faith. I don't think you've got much for Magic Attack raising items in the first chapter, but a thunder rod and Thundaga (Thunder because of the precipitation damage bonus) should be massacring one or two units at a time. The MP limitation only comes into play after you've caused plenty of damage.
And a black mage leads down the path of time magic and summoning, which are both very good. If you can get to summoning early, and pick up one of the stronger attacks, it can be incredible because of the comparitively shorter charge time compared to low speed characters.
Chakra was a skill I almost always had available. It's not that difficult to find a spot to heal one character, and there's always the possibility of healing more than one. The MP recovery is fun times.
Bards are good for Move+3 and quick JP gain. Life Song can get you JP waaay faster than Focusing a billion times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
Bards are good for Move+3 and quick JP gain. Life Song can get you JP waaay faster than Focusing a billion times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
Forbidden dance and slow dance are both incredibly useful, forbidden dance inflicts random status effects (it really helps when about 3 people get frogged at once) on all enemies and slow dance lowers their speed by one.
Bards are good for Move+3 and quick JP gain. Life Song can get you JP waaay faster than Focusing a billion times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
Forbidden dance and slow dance are both incredibly useful, forbidden dance inflicts random status effects (it really helps when about 3 people get frogged at once) on all enemies and slow dance lowers their speed by one.
I just started working on my first Dancer. 5000 for "Fly"???? That's a lot of Focusing. I don't have a Bard so it's my only option.
Any opinions on how to best tackle Midlight's Deep? I moved my characters around half the first map and still couldn't find the exit. Are there a selection of tiles that the exit shifts between?
Bards are good for Move+3 and quick JP gain. Life Song can get you JP waaay faster than Focusing a billion times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
Forbidden dance and slow dance are both incredibly useful, forbidden dance inflicts random status effects (it really helps when about 3 people get frogged at once) on all enemies and slow dance lowers their speed by one.
I just started working on my first Dancer. 5000 for "Fly"???? That's a lot of Focusing. I don't have a Bard so it's my only option.
Any opinions on how to best tackle Midlight's Deep? I moved my characters around half the first map and still couldn't find the exit. Are there a selection of tiles that the exit shifts between?
Just skip fly and go for teleport. I don't think there's any situation where fly is better.
The exits and items should always be the exact same squares. Just check in FAQs... I don't think there's any actual indication, so it's guess and check. There might've been something with lag and lighting from crystals and moving...or something, or maybe I'm thinking Harvest Moon. Just go with an FAQ or trial-and-error.
According to gamefaqs, there are like 3-6 locations in every map where an exit can be. So use one of the guides to figure out what places you should be checking.
Bards are good for Move+3 and quick JP gain. Life Song can get you JP waaay faster than Focusing a billion times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
Forbidden dance and slow dance are both incredibly useful, forbidden dance inflicts random status effects (it really helps when about 3 people get frogged at once) on all enemies and slow dance lowers their speed by one.
I'll admit to not being a real authority on Dancers, since by the time I got one I was so high level that their dances were too slow to be useful, so maybe I misspoke. Though you must be damn lucky to get three enemies frogged all at once.
But I think one could get more use out of that girl as a Geomancer with the Samurai secondary or a ninja.
I just started working on my first Dancer. 5000 for "Fly"???? That's a lot of Focusing. I don't have a Bard so it's my only option.
If you REALLY want Fly, then here's another idea.
Grab the dance that hurts the enemy and keep your PA low. Pick the dance and never stop, while the rest of the party keeps one chosen enemy alive. Hopefully the dance'll be fast enough to go off once or twice a turn and weak enough that keeping the enemy alive is easy.
PA is your physical attack stat. It helps determine your melee damage with non-gun weapons.
I know I'm a bit late on this, but I thought I would clarify PA. Most weapons are PA*WP. Some weapons (mainly barehands and knight swords) use PA*WP*(Brave/100), or PA*PA*(Brave/100) in the case of barehands. Knives and Ninjato take speed into account, while Oracle Sticks use MA*WP.
As for the Chemist's Throw Item skill, a number of jobs have "innate" skills. The Chemist innately can Throw Items, but non-chemists must use the support skill. Mediators have the "talk to monsters" skill innately, monks have barehand martial arts, ninja have innate duel wield, etc.
These bonuses are important to take into account when choosing secondary skills (i.e. the Mediator's Talk Skill won't work on monsters unless you have "talk to monsters" innately or as a support skill).
So I'm trying to learn the final summon but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Does anybody have any equipment recommendations? I've got a shelled level 99 summoner and I still die when it hits.
The White Mage ability Arcane Defense to decrease damage from magic. Maybe lower faith of the summoner or the guy casting it a bit. Only a bit, though, or he'll use different attacks.
So I think I might be stuck. I didn't think to save an alternate save just before the 1v1 fight of pain.
I can beat wiegraf usually, but I lose to Belias because I can't kill him before his attack goes off (as well as 1 attack from each of his buddies kills my dudes in one hit).
Is there a way to drop items from the party screen so I can only carry x potions in for ramza (hi potions don't cut it as they only heal half the damage that wiegraf does and I can't run around enough to avoid all his attacks)
So I'm trying to learn the final summon but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Does anybody have any equipment recommendations? I've got a shelled level 99 summoner and I still die when it hits.
So I'm trying to learn the final summon but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Does anybody have any equipment recommendations? I've got a shelled level 99 summoner and I still die when it hits.
MP Switch.
Well sure, but then you lose the chance to turn the spell around on him. I can't imagine that being anything other than immensely satisfying.
So I'm trying to learn the final summon but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Does anybody have any equipment recommendations? I've got a shelled level 99 summoner and I still die when it hits.
Lower faith by like 60 and break his magic by 10 or so.
If you lower his magic damage too much, he'll almost never cast it again.
Ardor on
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WearingglassesOf the friendly neighborhood varietyRegistered Userregular
So I'm trying to learn the final summon but I'm having a heck of a time doing it. Does anybody have any equipment recommendations? I've got a shelled level 99 summoner and I still die when it hits.
MP Switch.
Well sure, but then you lose the chance to turn the spell around on him. I can't imagine that being anything other than immensely satisfying.
One or two Monks with Chakra, and/or someone with Item and Elixir or Hi-ether.
I wish I could figure out what my ideal setup is going to be for jobs. I just keep unlocking stuff and grabbing skills like mad
Right now i'm working on ramza as a dark knight (because why not)
then.. working up a samuri (agrias) who might just become a ninja, just finished a monk so he's gonna do ninja next for dual wield, my black mage has jumped into arithmetics for now, and my white mage has gone back to chemist for some dual healing action
I was hoping to be able to teach it back to my other summoners but it looks like I'll have to teach it to an enemy and hope they teach it back. Ah well, instead of going through that I plowed through the rest of the game. Great ending!
Definitely unexpected.
And after closing the book on 85 hours with FF:T, it's time to unwrap Advance Wars: Days of Ruin...
Beat it this morning (finally ) Definately a great (but hard) game
The end boss was almost a let down because I was so overpowered by that point
Form 1: boss got no turns before dying
Form 2: boss first turn was to raise it's faith 3 (don't ask me why), its second turn was its status effect blast. Thats all it got before I beat so the final boss in the game did a grand total of... 0 damage to me
So, how do I raise Teleport's chance to succeed? It seems it fails 5 times for every one time it succeeds
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OtakuD00DCan I hit the exploding rocks?San DiegoRegistered Userregular
edited February 2008
What in the hell. I fulfilled the requirements for getting the damn Rouge. I didn't get it. Do I actually have to land on a town specifically labeled as a "City", not just a castle, in order to get it? Damn it. I have to grind away a whole year again. Is there a way to just... skip days?
For teleport: Don't abuse it. It specifically says that its chances of failing are higher the longer you decide to travel.
So, how do I raise Teleport's chance to succeed? It seems it fails 5 times for every one time it succeeds
If you try to teleport within the unit's natural movement range, it has a 100% chance of success. For every space you try to move beyond that range, the chance decreases by 10%.
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Rouge? I'm guessing that's the Agrias item? Don't know anything about it. Might have to go into a bar. As for skipping days, either go back and forth between two cities for a really long time, or just save like a week ahead of time and experiment...
Posts
Males start out with a higher PA and slightly higher HP base. Females start out with a higher MA and slightly higher MP base. But with extensive training and tweaking, you can balance things out. (Except probably the MA part, since only a few classes raise a unit's MA).
The only other major difference is that female characters can use perfumes. Many of them tend to be very powerful items.
They can also use the ribbon and the other two 20 hp headbands with a lot of immunities.
I swear even in the old version the reraise icon went away when used. I must've been doing things wrong.
I usually just use the haste/invisible perfumes because I like permanent haste more than re-raise. I can just calculator that onto my characters.
Off the top of my head you have the following effects with perfumes:
Always Protect and Shell
Always Regen and Re-Raise (I thought re-raise faded once used, but many say it stays on them, making the character all but immune to death by hp loss)
Always Invisible and Haste (Invisible fades after your first action)
Always Float and Reflect (I think?)
Through a character development side-quest involving Mustadio and Agrias, one can get a perfume that's +3 PA/MA, Always Haste and Regen I think. It's very powerful.
Fine.
I get it I suck.
But this game is impossibly difficult. It has taken me ludicrous amounts of hours and I'm only at the fight with...er...that guy....you know the one guy.
Gosh I wish I could enjoy Square games but it seems I'm allergic or something.
猿も木から落ちる
Unless you're lucky, die-hard or very patient, you'll typically have to spend some time looking for random fights to level up a little bit. It's not so much the levels you'll want, but the abilities.
The main thing leveling up will do is help you gain more PA, MA and Spd. Job abilities tend to help out a lot more.
One thing that might help is to try and get your characters the chemist reaction skill, Auto-Potion. That should help you out a great deal through the game and it shouldn't take too much grinding to get.
Some skills I would recommend getting that shouldn't require too much grinding would be:
JP Boost (Squire ability) - You get more JP per action
Move +1 (Squire Ability) - You gain +1 to your movement
Focus (Squire Ability) - +1 PA to self
Auto-Potion (Chemist Ability) - PA/100% chance of activating when you take any hp damage. Use weakest potion available on yourself automatically
Potion (Chemist Ability) - Potions heal 30 hps to target
Phoenix Down (Chemist Ability) - Revive targe with 1-10 hps or some such.
Concentrate (Archer ability) - Your normal attacks will never miss.
There's a great many skills as you know, but these should help you through chapter 1 for starters.
The game has a few spots of exponentially increased difficulty, but more often than not, you'll want to spend some time earlier on to get some better abilities, then you won't have to do that as much for the rest of the game.
For example, Monks tend to hold their own very easily through the whole game due to their abilities and I think a level 2 knight will open them up. Once you get a monk, get them Chakra (the 350 jp heal everyone around you hp/mp ability) and maybe one of their ranged attack abilities and you're pretty much set for a while.
I keep the Haste perfume on Agrias to compensate for her terrible speed.
I haven't gotten the PSP remake, but I heard the sword dupe glitch was fixed, so I was wondering if the perfume got fixed as well. The sword dupe was one I didn't mind, if only because I needed it to make Samurai worthwhile. I wouldn't have used it if there were a way to get more than one Masamune.
That kinda sucks. I hate arbitrary restrictions like that. I figured there'd at least be some male only items to even it out.
Thank you for your patience. I realize I only come in here to whine.
I had trouble at the start of the game, but that was severely mitigated by giving everyone Phoenix Down and Potion. I notice - and would like confirmed - that an actual chemist can throw potions but a person using chemist abilities can only potion adjacent tiles?
It seems my difficulty has increased since I've promoted my two chemists to white and black mage. I have some good area damage now, but I seem to get raped quickly.
Auto-potion looks like a swell idea. I'll look into that.
猿も木から落ちる
Chemists have the natural skill "Throw Item". You can learn that ability with their class and use it so any character can throw items the 4 spaces.
Magic earlier in the game, IMO, isn't very useful because the MP you have is very limited. Being able to heal someone 30 hps a turn with a potion appears to be much more useful than being able to cast cure X turns later, 5 times a battle or however much your mp allows for.
Ether items are expensive and probably not available yet for purchase (item that restores MP) and the only other way to restore MP besides picking up crystals would be the monk ability Chakra or whatever they called it in the PSP remake.
Personally, I don't really use magic much. If I do, I tend to stick to time mages or oracles because many of their abilities are status enhancements or status ailments that can go quickly. Sure, a black mage can hurt someone, but a time mage can haste or slow people, greatly influencing actions and the oracle can hit someone with don't move which means the character most dodge bonuses and that ability can generally hit almost anybody in the game, boss or not.
If you're fighting at the lighthouse right now against a familiar character, I've found that trying to keep Delita standing tends to help as many enemies focus on him. The boss of that fight is difficult becuse he has Auto-Potion as a reaction ability. While he may only have 30-35 brave (30-35% chance the ability triggers, healing him for 30 hps), it still means he heals himself 1/3 of the time.
One thing to try, I don't know if it worked well or not, is to consider trying the dash command (Squire ability that deals some damage to a target in front of you). I know that command bypasses a lot of defensive abilities like weapon guard (knight ability) or shields and natural dodge, but it also cannot be countered (monk ability, most to all monsters have this as an innate ability). It may eliminate the chances he has of his ability triggering.
Otherwise, if your characters have decent brave, having the auto-potion ability will probably make most fights much easier. Raising brave takes the skills of a special skill Ramza gets as a squire or the skills of a mediator, a class which takes a while to unlock, so I wouldn't worry about this yet.
When you get to Chapter 2, I believe Ramza has a new 200 jp skill he can purchase nuder the squire class, the name of which escapes me. It gives +5 brave to a target with a 100% chance, range of 3. The way permanent changes in brave and faith work is a bit different, but we can talk about it when you get to a point where it's possible.
You are correct, Chemists can throw the items and a secondary Chemist can only deliver them to adjacent tiles.
I can't agree with Ardor's recommendations enough. JP Boost, Focus & Auto-Potion are critical in the early going. One thing that some folks on these boards pointed out to me was not go too far with powerlevelling early in the game. The enemies in random battles will scale with you, so if you start getting powerful enough to unlock some of the 2nd and 3rd tier jobs you won't be able to buy the gear and will get wiped out.
It's probably worth getting into a random battle, leaving 1 enemy alive, surrounding them and just continuing to focus over and over again. You get both experience and JP for using focus, so it's a good way to level up your jobs in the early going.
PSN: PalaceBrother
What is PA?
What does Focus do?
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PA is your physical attack stat. It helps determine your melee damage with non-gun weapons.
Focus is a squire ability that simply raises your PA stat by 1 every time it is used. It remains for the duration of that battle.
Calculation is basically PA*WA.
PA is your character's Physical attack stat. WA is your weapon's strength. The dagger for example, has a 3 attack rating. If your character has 4 PA, you should be dealing 12 damage to your target.
The only other considerations are zodiac signs, but if you aren't sure how those work, it's not necessary to know. All you need to know is based upon zodiac signs, you may find you have a better chance to hit and do damage to some people while others you have a lesser chance to hit and will do less damage to them.
A tip. If you plan on using focus a lot, you should consider not equipping a weapon because bare handed characters deal approximately PA*PA damage. So if your PA is 7 and you don't have any weapons that are around that same damage rating, you should be doing more damage with your fists. The continued use of Focus would exponentially increase your damage over a weapon. I believe non-monks have a handicap in there, but the exponential growth part is true.
An example you don't need because you know this but shows the basics.
Ramza has PA of 5 and uses a sword of attack rating 5.
He should be doing 25 damage.
If he uses focus 5 times in a row, he'll have 10 PA with a 5 damage sword, do he'll be doing 50 damage a hit. Everytime he uses focus, he does 5 more damage.
If Ramza was barehanded with 5 PA, he should already be doing around 25 damage. (I thought for non monks it was something ilke (PA-2)*(PA-2) or something for damage). If he raises his PA to 10, he'd be doing 100 damage instead of 50 with the weapon.
5 turns of constantly using focus can be a lot to ask in many maps, which is the reason you'd probably want to use weapons unless you need the damage or have the time.
And a black mage leads down the path of time magic and summoning, which are both very good. If you can get to summoning early, and pick up one of the stronger attacks, it can be incredible because of the comparitively shorter charge time compared to low speed characters.
Chakra was a skill I almost always had available. It's not that difficult to find a spot to heal one character, and there's always the possibility of healing more than one. The MP recovery is fun times.
I don't recall anything good about Dancers at all, though. It can be a fun class, but not too useful unless you've got more than one going at once. Maybe with a Mime?
I just started working on my first Dancer. 5000 for "Fly"???? That's a lot of Focusing. I don't have a Bard so it's my only option.
Any opinions on how to best tackle Midlight's Deep? I moved my characters around half the first map and still couldn't find the exit. Are there a selection of tiles that the exit shifts between?
PSN: PalaceBrother
Just skip fly and go for teleport. I don't think there's any situation where fly is better.
The exits and items should always be the exact same squares. Just check in FAQs... I don't think there's any actual indication, so it's guess and check. There might've been something with lag and lighting from crystals and moving...or something, or maybe I'm thinking Harvest Moon. Just go with an FAQ or trial-and-error.
I'll admit to not being a real authority on Dancers, since by the time I got one I was so high level that their dances were too slow to be useful, so maybe I misspoke. Though you must be damn lucky to get three enemies frogged all at once.
But I think one could get more use out of that girl as a Geomancer with the Samurai secondary or a ninja.
If you REALLY want Fly, then here's another idea.
Grab the dance that hurts the enemy and keep your PA low. Pick the dance and never stop, while the rest of the party keeps one chosen enemy alive. Hopefully the dance'll be fast enough to go off once or twice a turn and weak enough that keeping the enemy alive is easy.
As for the Chemist's Throw Item skill, a number of jobs have "innate" skills. The Chemist innately can Throw Items, but non-chemists must use the support skill. Mediators have the "talk to monsters" skill innately, monks have barehand martial arts, ninja have innate duel wield, etc.
These bonuses are important to take into account when choosing secondary skills (i.e. the Mediator's Talk Skill won't work on monsters unless you have "talk to monsters" innately or as a support skill).
Luso's base job class, for instance, has Poach as an innate ability.
PSN: PalaceBrother
I can beat wiegraf usually, but I lose to Belias because I can't kill him before his attack goes off (as well as 1 attack from each of his buddies kills my dudes in one hit).
Is there a way to drop items from the party screen so I can only carry x potions in for ramza (hi potions don't cut it as they only heal half the damage that wiegraf does and I can't run around enough to avoid all his attacks)
figured out how to discard in the party menu, got my speed up to 28, then killed him
think i got a bit lucky on the group battle.. but its done, now i won't have to quit the gam e:)
MP Switch.
Well sure, but then you lose the chance to turn the spell around on him. I can't imagine that being anything other than immensely satisfying.
Lower faith by like 60 and break his magic by 10 or so.
If you lower his magic damage too much, he'll almost never cast it again.
One or two Monks with Chakra, and/or someone with Item and Elixir or Hi-ether.
Right now i'm working on ramza as a dark knight (because why not)
then.. working up a samuri (agrias) who might just become a ninja, just finished a monk so he's gonna do ninja next for dual wield, my black mage has jumped into arithmetics for now, and my white mage has gone back to chemist for some dual healing action
I was hoping to be able to teach it back to my other summoners but it looks like I'll have to teach it to an enemy and hope they teach it back. Ah well, instead of going through that I plowed through the rest of the game. Great ending!
And after closing the book on 85 hours with FF:T, it's time to unwrap Advance Wars: Days of Ruin...
PSN: PalaceBrother
I think i'm ready to just beat the game now at around 50 hours in
The end boss was almost a let down because I was so overpowered by that point
Form 2: boss first turn was to raise it's faith 3 (don't ask me why), its second turn was its status effect blast. Thats all it got before I beat so the final boss in the game did a grand total of... 0 damage to me
For teleport: Don't abuse it. It specifically says that its chances of failing are higher the longer you decide to travel.
If you try to teleport within the unit's natural movement range, it has a 100% chance of success. For every space you try to move beyond that range, the chance decreases by 10%.
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Rouge? I'm guessing that's the Agrias item? Don't know anything about it. Might have to go into a bar. As for skipping days, either go back and forth between two cities for a really long time, or just save like a week ahead of time and experiment...