Battle tips & tricks thread

[Anima_]

You need to click on a character in the backrow (on a warriors turn of course), it should be on the left side.

[Gee Bee]

You need to click on a character in the backrow (on a warriors turn of course), it should be on the left side.

Duh - Pretty obvious once you find it... Thanks heaps

[Graph_]

Well, I got through the game for the first time today. Version 1.0a, Standard mode. Chose Elenor as a Thief. After an uneventful Chapter 1, I switched to Hard Mode and felt that it lives up to its name. I beat it with a party between level 12 and 16. (Loren and Elenor at 16, Karen at 15)

The game feels pretty balanced early on, but later on you notice the speed difference between someone with 140 speed and someone with 120, or even 130 speed is pretty ridiculous. I think the mages generally have problems keeping up, since if you poured that much into their Skill stats they probably won't have much SP and can only cast 2-4 spells before running dry. Warriors have it better since they can spam low-delay, low-cost skills and attacks, and of course you need a few people who can soak up a few hits without getting staggered.

You guys have heard this already, but the Speed stat feels kinda broken late in the game since it feels like... the number of turns you get as your speed increases goes up exponentially, it feels like. The most crippling thing that can happen to you or the enemy late in the game is probably Stagger or Slow on a fair amount of your party, because of this (and Paralysis of course). Balancing can be tough though; it's because of little tricks like this that I was able to get through Hard Mode without too much grinding.

I won't say which characters are good or not since there's a few I didn't try, and I messed up the skill trees of some characters since I didn't realize I'd only be able to fill about 1/4th of it by the end. I will say however that Loren was the major damage-dealer throughout the whole game with her Rally and damage boosts to her secondary sword.

Karen was also very useful, attacking 2-3 times as much as anyone else by the end, having Focus Target, and able to Slow a staggered enemy with 100% success rate. Elenor provided good support with her Hero skills, but nothing special in the way of fighting. I also thought Amukiki was good for a while because of Battlecry and his ability to guard the front row, though speed-wise he fell behind in Chapter 4. I got some use out of Apoli's Paralyze spells too, even though the mages got generally screwed over late in the game.

Other stuff that helped:

- Equipment that gives you resistance to normal-type attacks, for the frontliners. Big help against Breza, and for those one-on-one duels.
- Equipment that gives you more SP regen. My Warriors were recovering about 10 SP a turn by Chapter 4, so it didn't matter that much how much max SP they had. Oddly enough, I couldn't find much similar stuff for Thieves. Maybe that was an attempt at balancing them?
- Haste items, so that I didn't have to blow 3 skill slots for a Mage to learn a Haste-like skill.
- I didn't use bombs, but I see great potential in that since it's rare for people to be doing 100 damage a pop, and often even 50 damage a pop thanks to high enemy defense.

Fost was surprisingly not hard, considering that the demon army ran my party through the wringer. Not sure if I should be thankful for that, or feel anticlimactic because I had a harder time with the drakes outside... (although I'll own up that I really should've brought more anti-fire equips before going to a place called Hellburn ) Is the Head supposed to have Restore in this version? It just kept using attack spells after the other parts died...

[jack1974]

Yes the head should use restore but I used "RedMageAI", so it should both heal and attack. We're aware that the AI is not the best, indeed I asked Anima if he can make a new healer that basically consider the revive as it should (I mean should be the most important spell since can revive a lost ally, instead now it doesn't seem to use it rationally). Once the expansion is out will revamp the final battle, hopefully with a better AI, or maybe just have Fost head heal only (I think it would be harder.
I am also thinking to reduce the Speed impact on the movement, since it seems to have too much importance later on, as you said, though I'm not sure how I could do that without unbalancing everything... it's not easy.
The problem is that for many people the Normal level was perfect, while I had others who had trouble at Easy, and others that found Hard too easy. Balancing a RPG for all the various skills level is a real nightmare So maybe I'll change the speed impact only in the Hard mode.

[Jim1958]

So maybe I'll change the speed impact only in the Hard mode.

I think that if you reduce the speed impact in hard mode you will make it really difficult, unless you increase the mage power or do something else to balance. You will probably really regret changing the balancing as it works now but in earlier versions during testing it was really impossible. If you do change things please test, playing right from the beginning, as using a save game doesn't give the true picture.

Best Regards
Jim

[Anima_]

We can change the impact speed has on delay on a skill by skill basis. It would be pretty easy to make the effect greater on mage skills and reduce it on the speedy short delay skills.
Finding the correct amount would be a balancing nightmare of course.

The problem with the red mage AI is that is has two modes, one for black magic and one for white magic. While using revive has a very high priority in the white magic branch, it does not exist in the black magic branch at all. The easiest fix would be to include the same check we perform in the revive node in the mode choosing node. It's not perfect, but should help.

[jack1974]

We can change the impact speed has on delay on a skill by skill basis. It would be pretty easy to make the effect greater on mage skills and reduce it on the speedy short delay skills.
Finding the correct amount would be a balancing nightmare of course.

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I'm replying to Jim as well), if we reduce the impact of speed, if won't affect only players but also enemies, right? what I mean is: now each skill has a WAIT value, and to that amount the speed value is added to consider the real delay. With the new change, the speed would lose importance so let's say the skill wait value will have 80% importance vs 20% of the relative speed. Is that how it would work? in this case would be easier to balance since I would only need to focus on each skill WAIT value.
I believe that after the change, I would need to reduce the wait value of mages spells and then it should be fine (even if of course will need to test it again from beginning mouhahah).

The problem with the red mage AI is that is has two modes, one for black magic and one for white magic. While using revive has a very high priority in the white magic branch, it does not exist in the black magic branch at all. The easiest fix would be to include the same check we perform in the revive node in the mode choosing node. It's not perfect, but should help.

Ah yes, that would be cool! I think that would solve the issue completely

[Anima_]

Yes, the wait mechanic works the same for both player characters and enemies.
At the moment the wait change for all skills is:

Code: Select all

wait - (character_wait - 100)/10 

It's implemented as this though:

Code: Select all

wait - (character_wait - wait_threshold)/speed_modifier 

All three variables can be specific to a skill branch or individual skill.
So we can have something like this:

Code: Select all

6 - (character_wait - 120)/20 

Or as an example for a spell:

Code: Select all

12 - (character_wait - 90)/7 

[jack1974]

I've changed the Speed impact on movement order so that in the expansion will be different (but will also influence the rest of the game). I think will require some more testing, but in the end probably will be more balanced and you won't be able to use the "speed trick" anymore.
An user by email suggested also to put a "Delay" action. It wouldn't be a problem to add it, was wondering what other people think, if a delay would be useful in the battle ?

[Jim1958]

I've changed the Speed impact on movement order so that in the expansion will be different (but will also influence the rest of the game). I think will require some more testing, but in the end probably will be more balanced and you won't be able to use the "speed trick" anymore.
An user by email suggested also to put a "Delay" action. It wouldn't be a problem to add it, was wondering what other people think, if a delay would be useful in the battle ?

It will be interesting to see how the speed impact change will alter the game. I never thought of putting a lot of energy into speed as a "trick" but as a valid strategy given the parameters of the game. The game is/was slightly different because the effect of weapons was based on two criteria 1. the power of the hit and 2. the number of times the character could hit in a turn. Multiply those two together and it came out to the total damage the character could cause per turn. Therefore you could increase either one to get a more powerful attack. For instance if Dora could cause 10 points damage per strike and because of her speed, could strike 6 times to each opponents one time, then her total attack factor is 60. Another character might hit for 75 points at a time but only hit once per Dora's 6 times. People who are faster have a natural advantage over those who are slower, that's why really heavy armour, such as what the mounted Knights wore, became obsolete and body armor basically went away except for the head (helmets) until the development of Kevlar which could stop bullets and was light enough that the wearer could remain somewhat mobile.

I think that the most under developed characters are the magic users and maybe the changes you are making will allow them to be more useful, I certainly hope so because many gamers like to have the priest/priestess sorceress/wizard type of character their most powerful ranged and large area of attack character and so far Loren has made that type of tactic impossible. Maybe impossible is the wrong choice of word, useless might be more appropriate.

I have no idea what you mean by delay mode, do you mean that a character can hold a turn and have another character attack? I think where that would be useful is if you are in a fight where there is only one enemy left in the front row and it has a very low point total and your character, whose turn it is to attack has a very high attack, like Loren. if you could delay then you could take out the front row character with a weaker unit and then hit the back row, after it move into the front row, with your stronger unit. I think that most people work that out now as part of their tactics, but occasionally you just can't arrange it properly.

I'd like to give the new changes a try if you will be looking for testing.

Best Regards
Jim