Improving Weapon Skill in FF2

[Taibak]

Hey,

Was wondering if anyone could reccomend any places to improve your characters' weapon skills. Right now, I have all three main characters at level 4 in their respective weapons. Are there any good places to improve on that, or am I stuck beating on myself while a bunch of hornets stand around and watch?

Thanx

[NOFX1117]

basically u do have to sit there and beat yourself, but u dont need to be too strong just yet, for a long time the enemies are very weak

[DJZen]

Or just start walking north from Fynn :D

[NOFX1117]

im playing the DOS version, and if u beat the Captain's in fynn, they are rank 5, which brings up your stats by a lot, but they have 750 hp and high defense, but you can take them down with magic, they give u the flame bow which is very strong and can be sold for 2000 gil, the golden armour which can be sold for 1000 gil, the curse tome which i havent gotten yet, or the toad tome which can be sold for 5000 gil, they also give 300 - 450 gil for beating them...

[lord shishio]

On the battlefield

[DJZen]

If you get Curse, don't sell it. It's probably the best spell you'll run into for a while.

[NOFX1117]

what does curse actually do? and how come they made FF2 sooo boring and FF1 soo sweet?

[DJZen]

Curse would have been better titled "Cripple", it makes the target absurdly weak. Plus, you can stack that on top of Blind and Mute/Fog. Or, if you're like me, you can stack it on top TWO AXES TO THE FACE!!!! Gyahahahahahaaaaaa!!!!111

[NOFX1117]

lmao, sweet, but i'd stack it on 2 swords, 2 javelin's and 2 axes to the go-nads

[Sepho]

The mention of dual-axes has made me think of a sub-topic -

This mostly applies to swordsmen, spearmen, axe-wielders (basically any physical fighter that doesn't wield a bow) - Does anyone choose to NOT wield a weapon in each hand? In my experience the extra damage supplied by dual weapons for outweighs the lack of defense that is the result of this equipment arrangement. I've never had a problem with being too weak in the physical Def department, so all of my fighters are always wielding a weapon in each hand.

[rubah]

I never really thought about doing that.

Doing good enough still by only having one weapon per person.

[DJZen]

The mention of dual-axes has made me think of a sub-topic -

This mostly applies to swordsmen, spearmen, axe-wielders (basically any physical fighter that doesn't wield a bow) - Does anyone choose to NOT wield a weapon in each hand? In my experience the extra damage supplied by dual weapons for outweighs the lack of defense that is the result of this equipment arrangement. I've never had a problem with being too weak in the physical Def department, so all of my fighters are always wielding a weapon in each hand.

Shields don't add to your defense. Having a shield means you have the chance of being able to block an attack. They also add to evasion, and subtract from Intelligence and Spirit. At least, they did in the FC version.

[Captain Maxx Power]

I never go without a Shield, otherwise my front-row fighters have to live with 0% evasion, which means they really do feel the pain in some dungeons. I'd rather take two rounds to kill a monster and take no damage than take only one round and have a large chunk of my life taken from me.

[Sepho]

Shields don't add to your defense. Having a shield means you have the chance of being able to block an attack. They also add to evasion, and subtract from Intelligence and Spirit. At least, they did in the FC version.

I remembered the purpose of shields some time after my post, but depending on how valuable one considers the Evasion stat, that info could actually strengthen my argument.

Personally, I don't disregard Evasion entirely, but I only bother with it if the stat can be raised to a high level relatively easily. Otherwise, I'd rather take consistent damage with a high defense to support me, than hope for an attack to miss altogether (but that's an entirely different topic).

[DJZen]

Well.... It's kinda weird how it works...

The amount that they raise evasion by is usually only about 7 or 10 points. However, evasion tends to be more important than defense. A character with high defense and low evasion will consitently take more damage than a character with low defense and high evasion. I managed to get through the entire Deist Cavern with barely a scratch on Layla, who only had her starting HP (300 some-odd.... right?), but Guy routinely took thousands of HP of damage all the time. This happened because Guy had virtually no evasion because he was using dual axes. Layla had a sword and a knife, which barely made a dent in her high evasion.

The way damage works is monsters don't just hit you once. They hit you as many times as their accuracy stat allows. With higher evasion, you can dodge more hits per attack. So let's say a monster has 30 strength. not a big deal, right? Well, let's say this monster can also hit 5 times. All of a sudden the damage jumps from 30 to 150! Now, here's where evasion comes into play. If a character's evasion only lets them dodge one blow, they'll still be taking 120 damage. That's better, but it's still not great. A character who can dodge 3 blows will only take 60 damage. See where I'm going?

Now, defense DOES reduce damage, but it only reduces damage per hit. So let's use the above example of 30 damage X 5 hits. A character whose defense blocks 10 damage is still going to get hit 5 times and wind up taking 10 damage. While that's one hell of a lot better, let's say that monster now does 80 damage per hit. At 5 hits that going to be 400 damage. With that -10 from the defense, you're going to wind up taking 350 damage. However, with an evasion of 3 (which is a pathetic evasion, mind you) you'll take only 160 damage! This discrepancy only gets wider and wider as the game progresses.

Now, to make things even MORE interesting, while shields DO raise evasion by a somewhat marginal amount, their true value is determined by your shield skill. The shield skill is essentially your likelihood of using your shield when struck. Your magic ability WILL go down, but you'll also wind up getting hit even LESS. In my game, Firion almost never gets hit 'cause he's had a shield for the whole game. Not only is his evasion high, but his shield skill is approaching 12. Meanwhile, Guy and his higher defense still take thousands of HP worth of damage during tough fights, while the other 3 usually only lose a couple hudred worth (maybe two thousand if it's an especially volatile boss).

In summation, evasion makes more of a difference in reducing damage than defense does, especially later in the game.

[RedCydranth]

Okay.. Maybe I'm the smart one... But theres a HUGE glitch in the FF2 system. I'll spoiler it. Also i know it works for the NES and Origins versions of the game, DoS version I don't know yet. Y'all can tell me.

The way FF2 is set up you are supposed to go up 1 weapon point everytime you use a specific type of weapon. The glitch: It counts the point when you select the enemy you want to strike NOT when you strike him. Thus if you use Frionel to select an enemy, cancel it and reselect you get 2 points, not one. if you cancel and recommand him 100 times in a single battle he gets 100 points towards the next sword skill raise. do this 16 times and you have mastered sword skill. The same applies for magic, its when you select the character NOT when its casted. So when you get Ultima, you can beef it up to Ultima 16 quite fast.

Also, if you want to power up quickly early, when you get Minh/Ming-Wu/Mindu (same guy) do what I said and get all 3 major characters weapon (AND SHIELD!!!! I can't emphasize enough how important level 16 sheild is! Level 16 sheild raises your evasion magnificently) Then when you feel lucky/strong enough you can travel to Mysidia by curling around the ocean and using the canoe. When there save up the money to buy everyone the Swap spell (not Mindu). Level that up to about 8 when you return to Altair, then use it on the nearby enemies reducing your HP and MP to incredibly low. after the battle watch your HP and MP soar! heal at the Inn in Altair and redo until you are gods. Once money becomes a huge issue, go to Mysidia and fight there, avoid the Cockatrices, they stone you. Hopefully you can get Esuna high enough to not make that an issue.

Once your HP and MP are at about 1000 and 500 respectively, equip a weapon you do NOT have any skill with (most likely fist, rod or bow) and unequip your shield, against low leveled enemies you won't have to worry about them hurting you much, so instead attack your own characters to about half of their HP, doing this raises their strength and HP even higher. After a long boring time your characters will be ready to take on the final boss, all before you leave for Paloom. From now on, use the fourth players slot to attack your own characters (with shields) while the other 3 do the task of story progression, never even bother with Lionheart when he joins, because the glitch only works with the first 3 players.


With that FF2 will be a mere twinkle in your eye because by the end of the game you can equip 2 blood swords on your main sword user (mine was Frioniel) and whoop the crap out of the final boss in a round an a half. (2 blood swords lv. 16 with Frioniel, Ultima 16 with Maria and Excalibur and Masamune Lv. 16 with Guy. Lionheart sits with a thumb up his butt.

Now that you know, FF2 will no longer be at ALL difficult.

To be completely honest, I barely used my magic. The only spells I used was Cure (it got to about lv 10-12 per character), Ultima (16), Esuna (8) ans Basuna (8) before Ultima you can just run from the jellys and flans that require magic to kill them. I did have Fire up to level 12 but that was early on, and I barely used it. Don't waste a lot of time on magic, focus on your attack stats, weapon skill and HP. If you follow my instructions in the spoiler using 16 MP for ultima isn't much MP, its a bargain.

[DJZen]

Yeah, just so you know, the select/cancel trick is very well documented. You don't have to worry about putting that in spoiler tags. In fact it's practically considered an essential play mechanic by some.

[Sefie1999AD]

RedCydranth: That's the action-cancel trick, and it doesn't work in DoS version. It's quite well known among FF2's players. According to your description, you used virtually all the cheap tricks you can do in FF2, exploiting all the bugs and glitches, beating up your own guys, action-cancelling spells and weapons, using the Swap trick, Blood swords etc. Pretty much none of those tricks works in FF2 DoS anymore, except for (I think) Swap and Blood Swords.

[DJZen]

Beating up your own characters, Swap and blood swords still work. Actually, I haven't tried the blood swords yet, but I just know they haven't taken that one out.

Soon, however, I'm going to be able to give MUCH dirtier strategies....

[Taibak]

Well, I'm at least trying to do this honestly. Thankfully, beating down the Captains in Phynn seems to work well. The only thing I'm dreading now is going to be beefing up Esuna. *sigh*

[RedCydranth]

In my eyes if it can be done withing game's limits its not cheating. If there was an armor you could give Cloud to always take 0 damage, you'd use it. If there was a spell that cost 0 MP and killed any enemy, even bosses, you'd use it. Why? Because it was programmed into the game. Glitch or not, its there and will be used. Its not like I whipped out a gameshark and coded my guys. THAT is cheating. They give you Blood Swords, they allow you to hurt yourselves, and they programmed it the way they did.

Have you beaten the Weapons in FF7? did you mass use Mime and KOTR? thats cheap and dirty but I'll bet you did that. The reason you did was because it could be done.

Final Fantasy 2 sucked, but it bugged me that I hadn't beaten it, so I busted through the game faster than any other game I've played.

Its NOT cheating, its just cheap. But I'm an economical person and will do things as cheap as possible if it gets the same results in the end. Why buy a loaf of bread for $1.50 at a supermarket when you can buy it for .75 at Wal-Mart? Cheap works.

[DJZen]

Because $0.75 bread tastes like napkins and Wal Mart treats their employees like [explitive deleted], but that's another issue for another time. It's true though that it's enitrely Square's doing that those things were in the game. It's sorta like the Penninsula northeast of Pravoka. Was it unintentional? Probably. Is it there anyway? Yup!

[Sefie1999AD]

RedCydranth: I never said you were cheating there, and I haven't decided yet whether that's cheating or not, or whether it's okay to use the trick or not, but it doesn't matter since your opinion counts when it's about your game. I just said you used very cheap methods, and even you admitted yourself that you did things as the cheap way in FF2. And I also pointed out that many of those features don't work in FF2 DoS anymore.

DJzen: The Peninsula NE of Pravoka might actually be intentional. Who knows, Square kept it in FF1 WSC and Origins, and FF2 also has a peninsula full of strong enemies if you go slightly south of Althena.

[Fireblade13]

I think the fix in DoS was agreat idea because now when you fite guys that through some seriously hard times allows you to amass lvls quickly. Cheating is hard and the bllod swords were made for the final fite and nothin else.