On my physical fighters, yes, but I guess I don't really have a full 12 person team that is consistent yet. I just got sick of my characters doing poor damage against all of those damn dragons that those skills felt more productive than many of the alternative skills. Maybe once I get the III and IV skills, things will change, but for now I really like them. My team is 22~20. My Octopi, Canopus, and Lord class are higher than that so I'm not using them at the moment except on boss fights (Poison Rain everything for the loots).
Phatcorns said:
One of the things I REALLY like about this game over FF Tactics is that the leveling system is not dependent on the actions you take in battle. This means I can always have my healers sit in the back and be ready instead of constantly having to make sure they're doing something so that they get JP and exp like it was in FFT.
I also like that the effect equipment and skills have are very tangible and I know that if I equip for defense my characters will actually have very good defense.
Best RPG I think I've ever played. It's just so much more engaging than most press A to win rpg's, which honestly is what I think most non-strategy rpg's are.
As much as people rag on the FFTA games, things like the improved leveling mechanics and the overall balance have clearly been taken and developed from the developers' work on that sub-series.
duckroll said:
Also, I'm not sure if I'm the only one who noticed this, but in the remake it feels even more obvious: The format of the "dungeons" in TO seem very much to be a prototype of how Matsuno would eventually go on to design Vagrant Story. It's much more apparent in the larger dungeons like Palace of the Dead and the Hanging Gardens, where there are multiple routes you can open within the maps which lead to different places.
It's not just in the basic design of such dungeons, but also how the interior of each map actually looks, the layout of a "room" area, the names of each map with a description, etc. It's very, very much what Vagrant Story's entire map layout and design was patterned after imo.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. FFXII is kind of the same with regard to nifty room names and multiple routes.
I've also really enjoyed how the dungeons play around with group and battle size. Some of the Palace of the Dead maps only allow 3 characters, some 12, and others with everything in-between.
Also, I'm not sure if I'm the only one who noticed this, but in the remake it feels even more obvious: The format of the "dungeons" in TO seem very much to be a prototype of how Matsuno would eventually go on to design Vagrant Story. It's much more apparent in the larger dungeons like Palace of the Dead and the Hanging Gardens, where there are multiple routes you can open within the maps which lead to different places.
It's not just in the basic design of such dungeons, but also how the interior of each map actually looks, the layout of a "room" area, the names of each map with a description, etc. It's very, very much what Vagrant Story's entire map layout and design was patterned after imo.
I'm at a point right now where I feel like I've just got to use my "A" team and nuts to my other dudes. My A team is all around 11-12. Then I've got a lvl 9 Terror Knight, 8 Beastmaster, 6 Rogue, 6 Dragoon, 5 Ninja, and 1 Warlock, and bringing even one of them into battle rather than a top tier guy screws me bad. Even the Terror Knight, who is close on levels.
I had temporarily made a Ninja/Rogue/Dragoon set up to level them on side battles (how they got to 6), but they stopped gaining enough XP/loot to make it worthwhile. I think I need to get to a point where I can go to the woods again (inaccessible at my part of the story) and maybe level there.
Yeah, I noticed that as well. FFXII is kind of the same with regard to nifty room names and multiple routes.
I've also really enjoyed how the dungeons play around with group and battle size. Some of the Palace of the Dead maps only allow 3 characters, some 12, and others with everything in-between.
Yeah but FFXII's dungeons aren't designed like an isometric SRPG. Vagrant Story's maps really do seem that way once you think about it a little. Clearly a lot of world flavor is something Matsuno has a knack for, but I feel the dungeons in TO and VS share a very similar design philosophy.
Another thing that Matsuno seems to have a thing for is recreating really tall old world structures in his fantasy works. The Hanging Gardens, the Great Cathedral, the Pharos.
It doesn't really matter for healing spells. The amount of HP healed is capped on a per spell basis, so no skill (other than mother's blessing) or even equipment really has a noticeable impact on healing.
Spellpower doesn't really matter for clerics either, so you could get rid of that cudgel and equip a lobber + shield with no real downside.
Sweet, I can finally post on the wonderfully insane world of GAF!
I've been following this thread since page 1 so it's nice to finally be able to talk about the game instead of just reading about it. So far I'm absolutely loving TO on the PSP, in fact I would say it's my favorite SRPG on the system. Right now I'm at the beginning of Chapter 2 chaos. As soon as I got the opportunity I changed Denam's class to Ninja as well as one of my two knights. It was quite satisfying to see them go up 4 levels after one random battle!
Did I mention I love this game? I don't think I've played a game that can kill 5 hours as easily as this one in a long time. It's incredibly addictive and more immersive than anything I've touched in years. By the way, thanks to all of the daily contributors to this thread, you've provided me with a lot of useful tips and plenty of interesting commentary.
Currently REALLY far into Vagrant Story and am looking forward to jumping into this after that is finished.
Having never played a TO game(and never beaten FFT, though I did put a lot of time into it years ago), are there any tips for a newbie? I just fear getting overwhelmed by class composition, equipment management, etc... Just some basic guidelines to follow in the early goings so as not to feel frustrated?
Even though I have a really tight grasp on Vagrant Story and have had little issue managing that game's systems; SRPG's have always been a real problem for me. I quit Disgaea a few hours due to feeling overwhelmed, and in FFT I reached a brickwall moment against a certain midgame boss(forget name).
Basic stuff like, point of no return moments to be mindful of. Some equipment/class choices to recommend to get the rhythm down. Can you grind in random encounters in case I need to power-up diff classes/characters for a rough story encounter? Etc...
Currently REALLY far into Vagrant Story and am looking forward to jumping into this after that is finished.
Having never played a TO game(and never beaten FFT, though I did put a lot of time into it years ago), are there any tips for a newbie? I just fear getting overwhelmed by class composition, equipment management, etc... Just some basic guidelines to follow in the early goings so as not to feel frustrated?
Even though I have a really tight grasp on Vagrant Story and have had little issue managing that game's systems; SRPG's have always been a real problem for me. I quit Disgaea a few hours due to feeling overwhelmed, and in FFT I reached a brickwall moment against a certain midgame boss(forget name).
Basic stuff like, point of no return moments to be mindful of. Some equipment/class choices to recommend to get the rhythm down. Can you grind in random encounters in case I need to power-up diff classes/characters for a rough story encounter? Etc...
The game is really noob-friendly. Other than the optional battle, the first chapter is easy to finish with the party setup you are given at the beginning, and by that point you should be able have a good enough grasp of the mechanics to continue by yourself. There are several small points of no return throughout the game, but as long as you keep two saves, one before you enter the following location and one during what happens in said place, you'll be fine. Classes are generally versatile enough to be useful in some way or another, but it's better to ditch the Rune Fencer early on and make him an Archer, who are really powerful. The protagonist makes for a pretty good Ninja once you get the job later. Story encounters give you quite a bit of breathing room thanks to the CHARIOT system, but you can grind if you want as well.
So I just used the WORLD system for the first time to jump back to the end of chapter 1, and I branched off to chaos so chapter 2 chaos shows up on my Warren Report. And..... errr.... all the battles I fought in chapter 1 had enemies scaled to lvl29. Wut? These are story battles too. Are all battles scaled when you use WORLD? What's going on?
Also, chaos route spoiler:
Holy shit, Vyce's portrait is... woooow. Lol. I'm glad I played Law the first time through. I don't think I could have taken him seriously as a character with that portrait. Loooooool.
So I just used the WORLD system for the first time to jump back to the end of chapter 1, and I branched off to chaos so chapter 2 chaos shows up on my Warren Report. And..... errr.... all the battles I fought in chapter 1 had enemies scaled to lvl29. Wut? These are story battles too. Are all battles scaled when you use WORLD? What's going on?
Enemies scale directly to your level anytime you are 10 levels over what they would normally be.
Also, chaos route spoiler:
Holy shit, Vyce's portrait is... woooow. Lol. I'm glad I played Law the first time through. I don't think I could have taken him seriously as a character with that portrait. Loooooool.
So I just used the WORLD system for the first time to jump back to the end of chapter 1, and I branched off to chaos so chapter 2 chaos shows up on my Warren Report. And..... errr.... all the battles I fought in chapter 1 had enemies scaled to lvl29. Wut? These are story battles too. Are all battles scaled when you use WORLD? What's going on?
Also, chaos route spoiler:
Holy shit, Vyce's portrait is... woooow. Lol. I'm glad I played Law the first time through. I don't think I could have taken him seriously as a character with that portrait. Loooooool.
Once you complete the game and use WORLD, everything scales using Random Battle mechanics:
- Maps have a minimum level
- If you bring a character higher than the minimum in to battle, enemies will scale to some value relative that highest character. In most cases it is -1, but I think Temples are +0, and parts of Palace of the Dead can be +2~3 at parts.
- In most cases of story battles, the minimum is whatever it would be set to during an initial playthrough.
- For random battles and dungeons, it depends on the area. Near Almorika, the minimum is 1. The first areas of Phorampha are L7, the C3 section is L11, and the C4 section is L15
- Most of the Sidequests in C4 are L20/21
- Even pre-WORLD, if you are some number of levels above the "minimum", it will break the set levels and use the above system instead.
Gear and skills are scaled up to match the level. A WORLD Chapter 4 can be pretty hard if you haven't done the extra dungeons yet or really tuned your party.
If you only have 1 or 2 characters higher than everybody else, bench them until you catch up.
Brandon F said:
Currently REALLY far into Vagrant Story and am looking forward to jumping into this after that is finished.
Having never played a TO game(and never beaten FFT, though I did put a lot of time into it years ago), are there any tips for a newbie? I just fear getting overwhelmed by class composition, equipment management, etc... Just some basic guidelines to follow in the early goings so as not to feel frustrated?
Even though I have a really tight grasp on Vagrant Story and have had little issue managing that game's systems; SRPG's have always been a real problem for me. I quit Disgaea a few hours due to feeling overwhelmed, and in FFT I reached a brickwall moment against a certain midgame boss(forget name).
Basic stuff like, point of no return moments to be mindful of. Some equipment/class choices to recommend to get the rhythm down. Can you grind in random encounters in case I need to power-up diff classes/characters for a rough story encounter? Etc...
There aren't any real point of no returns or missables. Once you beat the game, you can jump back to various points in the huge story tree of the game to replay from there with your current party and get things you missed. The system is kind of complicated, but, no, nothing to worry about, and the level curve for main story battles is extremely generous and reasonable.
I don't think it has anything to do with WORLD. That's how the game normally operates once you are 10+ levels beyond what the normal scale range for a battle is. Get a high enough level before beating the game and things work like that too.
I don't think it has anything to do with WORLD. That's how the game normally operates once you are 10+ levels beyond what the normal scale range for a battle is. Get a high enough level before beating the game and things work like that too.
No, I jumped back only a few levels in to Chapter 4, and still fought scaling enemies. C4 starts at around 16 normally, but I was facing 18, 19, 20, enemies in the first few battles of it once I did WORLD. I was nowhere near 10+ levels higher than the content.
And I've tested it, bringing lower level characters. Things will scale up if you bring higher characters, but not below their specific minimum if you bring lower characters.
I was mostly just going through the postgame dungeon and sidequests, including two trips through the Palace of the Dead and fighting a bunch of the divine generals. When I "grind," I actually prefer to do it at Tynemouth Hill,
Ozma
can clear a random battle there by herself, so I can pair her with a low level unit that I want to raise and have it level up super-quickly.
Ozma's
attack is so high because daggers factor in DEX more than other weapons, with 56 base DEX, strengthen IV, augment ice + a bunch of equipment that boosts augment ice, well...she can one shot dragons with mighty impact now.
Daggers on high dex characters and using augment element on elemental weapons is pretty game breaking.
Yaweee said:
No, I jumped back only a few levels in to Chapter 4, and still fought scaling enemies. C4 starts at around 16 normally, but I was facing 18, 19, 20, enemies in the first few battles of it once I did WORLD. I was nowhere near 10+ levels higher than the content.
And I've tested it, bringing lower level characters. Things will scale up if you bring higher characters, but not below their specific minimum if you bring lower characters.
Ok, I guess WORLD does trigger it too. I didn't really go far back with it until I got too high of a level where it was impossible to tell what was causing it.
I was mostly just going through the postgame dungeon and sidequests, including two trips through the Palace of the Dead and fighting a bunch of the divine generals. When I "grind," I actually prefer to do it at Tynemouth Hill,
Ozma
can clear a random battle there by herself, so I can pair her with a low level unit that I want to raise and have it level up super-quickly.
Ozma's
attack is so high because daggers factor in DEX more than other weapons, with 56 base DEX, strengthen IV, augment ice + a bunch of equipment that boosts augment ice, well...she can one shot dragons with mighty impact now.
Daggers on high dex characters and using augment element on elemental weapons is pretty game breaking.
Yeah, that character is one of only a few of mine that can solo pretty reasonably, most due to her obscene DEX stat.
Basileus777 said:
Lord Denam can do it pretty easily too, especially through exploiting how ridiculous Phalanx is on offensive units. He basically can't die since he does enough damage to constantly keep it on.
Lord Denam can do it pretty easily too, especially through exploiting how ridiculous Phalanx is on offensive units. He basically can't die since he does enough damage to constantly keep it on.
I was mostly just going through the postgame dungeon and sidequests, including two trips through the Palace of the Dead and fighting a bunch of the divine generals. When I "grind," I actually prefer to do it at Tynemouth Hill,
Ozma
can clear a random battle there by herself, so I can pair her with a low level unit that I want to raise and have it level up super-quickly.
Ozma's
attack is so high because daggers factor in DEX more than other weapons, with 56 base DEX, strengthen IV, augment ice + a bunch of equipment that boosts augment ice, well...she can one shot dragons with mighty impact now.
Daggers on high dex characters and using augment element on elemental weapons is pretty game breaking.
Lord Denam can do it pretty easily too, especially through exploiting how ridiculous Phalanx is on offensive units. He basically can't die since he does enough damage to constantly keep it on.
Sounds like Lord duckroll could be a very helpful part of my army. I can use WORLD to go back and get the Lord classmark without actually messing up my future progress right? As long as I never hit any anchor point to overwrite it, I should be good to go with the rewards but not have any of the story elements left on record right?
Phalanx reduces damage by 90% while it's on, but other than the Lord, it's used by tank classes. But the Lord can be an offensive juggernaut who can easily generate the 50 TP needed to keep phalanx on all the time, making him nearly invincible.
duckroll said:
Sounds like Lord duckroll could be a very helpful part of my army. I can use WORLD to go back and get the Lord classmark without actually messing up my future progress right? As long as I never hit any anchor point to overwrite it, I should be good to go with the rewards but not have any of the story elements left on record right?
Yes, you should be fine. WORLD doesn't save anything story related unless you progress to the next anchor point, and even then, it's only that specific anchor point that gets overwritten. You might have to progress to an anchor point to unlock LORD, but anchor points ahead of that on the time-line will be unaffected.
Because at the time the best daggers I had were ice elemental, and her augment ice skill rank was fairly high.
Phalanx reduces damage by 90% while it's on, but other than the Lord, it's used by tank classes. But the Lord can be an offensive juggernaut who can easily generate the 50 TP needed to keep phalanx on all the time, making him nearly invincible.
When I had him as a Knight, I could take damage, but had a had time returning it. Felt like the Knight class was low in mobility and low on the attack damage. I switched him to Ninja pronto.
Lord Denam can do it pretty easily too, especially through exploiting how ridiculous Phalanx is on offensive units. He basically can't die since he does enough damage to constantly keep it on.
Princess is kind of mediocre. She has better physical stats than most mages, but the class INT isn't great. She specializes in AOE attack magic, particularly the apocrypha and draconic magic.
But I've found the Priest to be a much better class for her. A high INT mage who can use almost all divine magic, can attack, buff, and heal...highly versatile.
Really depends on what you want her to do in a battle. If you already have characters you like who have filled the healing roles, you can try the Princess class to bring her closer to the front lines as a war mage. This also means it is more likely to see her get impaled by a dozen enemy arrows and die terribly awesomely in front of your uncaring eyes.
If you actually think she's a decent person who you like to stay by your side in battle (literally!), keep her as a priest. She's a great healer, and can really help support the front lines from the back. She's stocked with a ton of divine magic by default, so even when poor duckroll Pavel was petrified while holding the line with his Rampart Aura III, she was able to cure him from like a ton of squares away!
Apparently he has another even more crazy portraits than this:
Sounds like Lord duckroll could be a very helpful part of my army. I can use WORLD to go back and get the Lord classmark without actually messing up my future progress right? As long as I never hit any anchor point to overwrite it, I should be good to go with the rewards but not have any of the story elements left on record right?
It's time for me to mass level all the classes except for Necro and lich. I got my dream team set up. I went for looks from uniques mainly. I'll buff the people left out with food even if it takes forever.
My dream team:
Denam, Vyce, Raveness,
Lancelot, Cressidia (took forever to get her might as well), Denab (magic user needs buff as well), Warren (took forever to get him might as well and it completes the Xenobia group I got going), Azelstan (too badass to pass up), Ozma, Gildas (looks badass and completes my group), Mirdyn (Love his armor look and completes the group)
Wait, how's that possible? This is an optional event which does not occur normally, so how can there be an anchor point for it to overwrite? Unless it branches off and there's an anchor point at the branch? Otherwise I'm not sure how it's possible...
The anchor is right after the event before you go back to the castle. You can basically farm lord marks. You don't really need over 5 unless you switch a lot anyways.
There is an anchor point before it, but it's a few battles back.
Wait, how's that possible? This is an optional event which does not occur normally, so how can there be an anchor point for it to overwrite? Unless it branches off and there's an anchor point at the branch? Otherwise I'm not sure how it's possible...
Are you talking about letting Catiua kill herself at Barnicia or recruiting her and then letting her die? If you're doing the latter method there is no anchor point, but you will lose your Catiua unit because you need to kill her three times in battle.
The anchor is right after the event before you go back to the castle. You can basically farm lord marks. You don't really need over 5 unless you switch a lot anyways.
So basically it's a new anchor? Because that would actually be way better than anything else. It wouldn't overwrite any existing anchor, and it creates its own anchor for exploiting the wonders of time travel!
Basileus777 said:
Are you talking about letting Catiua kill herself at Barnicia or recruiting her and then letting her die? If you're doing the latter method, you will lose your Catiua unit because you need to kill her three times in battle.
Are you talking about letting Catiua kill herself at Barnicia or recruiting her and then letting her die? If you're doing the latter method there is no anchor point, but you will lose your Catiua unit because you need to kill her three times in battle.
I did it to fill out the tree too, but then I realized after I did it that
my actual Catiua unit was dead and that I if used WORLD to get her back, her stats and skills would reset. It's something I should have done way earlier, and it's not worth it anymore.
Yaweee said:
I think there's actually a 4th event if you do it before the decision.
The only anchor you got to worry about is chapter 4 since all path merges there.
Catiua's death or save
is going to determine the ending. If you beaten the game on Law and haven't past certain checkpoints of Chapter 4 with the neutral or chaos route it will be law in that checkpoint you haven't overwritten.
I did it to fill out the tree too, but then I realized after I did it that
my actual Catiua unit was dead and that I if used WORLD to get her back, her stats and skills would reset. It's something I should have done way earlier, and it's not worth it anymore.
I'm trying to figure out if there's a particular reason to equip one type of armour over another, for example are there difference to equipping head armour vs leg armour beyond just defensive stats?
I'm trying to figure out if there's a particular reason to equip one type of armour over another, for example are there difference to equipping head armour vs leg armour beyond just defensive stats?
Is it consistant? So far it just seems the secondary stats are randomly distributed. Does higher level equipment start to focus in on particular areas that would be useful to different jobs?
