new game!

It's very nice, I am Maria, stu is Frioniel, Jason is Guy, and Azar is Lionhe!

So far I've fought maybe about ten battles, stu is weilding double shields (I had him in the back row until I remembered he wouldn't ever gain any hp back there), maria a bow, and guy a sword and an axe (since he's the last character, I figured double wielding would make up for the lack in stats he's going to suffer for a while)

Guy's hp is about up to 100, maria and frioniel's to 50 something, frioniel's shields are almost level7, maria's bows to 3:45 poor guy is struggling along with 1:40 on axes and swords

haven't had any increases in agility yet; I was hoping to do some research into it sometime.

I just wanted to post about this game. I have it emulated at 150% speed for convenience xD

Also i've decided not to give them any armor right now, 'cause I mean, what's the point?

Do you plan to give them Magic?

Yeah, I wish I got the hang of that whole Agility increasing thing. Tell us how it goes.

Not enough about me. :(

You don't show up for like half the game, and then you don't join the party until the last tenth :p

They all have cure now; I'm debating whether to do like my last game and let Guy (Jason) handle the black magic so i have some elemental stuff to through out or to just pawn it off on the fourth characters. I don't want to spend a lot of effort with in on frioniel since it'll weaken his strength etc, I guess I could give maria some instead of guy. (it was just a random decision last time xD)

no one hasn't increased agility still (I weaned frioniel off the double shields since he got them to level 9 in the hour of playtime I've spent (clock time, not game time) and maria has given up her cane for bows. So equipped shields don't seem to do much. Maybe it has to do with how much you can dodge the multiple attacks or give out multiple attacks yourself? Other venues of investigation are actually running from battles (although how can you get stats up if you don't win is beyond me) and whatever else I can think of (ideas plz))

maria finally gained one agility;

things that happened in the battle: she was cured once by frioniel, she attacked herself, was poisoned, I don't remember if I accidentally hit the run command or not, she gained a level in canes.

[edit-9:43-- maria gained another agility. it was on a self-healing cycle, so she was cured by herself, hit with poison a few times, didn't hit run at all.]

Does it have something to do with how often you take damage?

as I recall you have a chance of gaining agility every time you dodge, so using double shields will greatly increase your chances of gaining agility, and you also gain agility faster as you have a higher agility stat, so if your gaining agility slowly now its probably nothing to worry about, you'll start gaining it a ton later on in the game.

That would make sense, since the beginning easy monsters don't exactly hit many times.

Here's a basic run-down of how stats increase in FF2;

HP - Lose HP in battle (dur), chance increases with % loss from start of battle. In other words, starting a battle at 100/1000 and going down to 50/1000 is the same as going from 1000/1000 to 950/1000
MP - Lose MP in battle, either through casting spells or losing it through enemy attacks. Same deal as HP.
Strength - Chance to increase if you use a physical attack. Once per battle is enough, the chance doesn't increase with more attacks. Chance to decrease if you use any White Magic.
Agility - Chance to increase if you are the target of a physical attack and manage to dodge it sucessfully. Once is enough per battle, chance does not increase.
Vitality - Chance to increase if you lose any HP in the battle, regardless of the amount. You need to have lower HP at the end of the battle than you had at the start. Chance to decrease if you use any Black Magic.
Int - Chance to increase if you use any Black Magic during a battle, again only once is necessary. Chance to decrease if you use a physical attack
Soul - Chance to increase if you use any White Magic during a battle, only counts once.
Magic- Chance to increase if you lose any MP in the battle, regardless of the amount. Like HP your final MP needs to be lower than your starting MP.
Evade/Magic Evade - These actually increase randomly during the game. They have a chance to increase if you get hit by any physical attack or by any magical attack. You don't need to evade the attack in question for it to have a chance of increasing these stats.
Weapon/Magic skill - These obviously increase with each use. Each monster has a difficulty rating (X). If we take weapon/magic skill to be Y and number of uses in battle n, the amount of exp you gain per battle is; n + X - Y. So at higher levels you need to use a weapon/spell at least as many times as it is levelled to see an increase against lower enemies.

Good luck with your travels. I never had the patience for the FF2 NES original being as it was bugged to death and stupendously difficult.

Thanks for what I already had a grasp on :}

I thought it would be cute to start hiking down to that one town that has change spell, just for fun, except I got into a battle with three Ghosts so now I have to start back a long ways back xD (I was seriously going to save before I got a battle but my finger lingered on the arrow key too long xD)
k so apparently ghosts are undead ;) Saved myself some relevelling time there :D

Alright, here's something for ya'll to gnaw on:

wondering around the palm bofsk area (I think) fighting vampire thorns, soldiers, bees etc, frioniel has gained levels in shields about four times in ten battles or less, despite only striking a max of three times in a battle.

What? His shields are level 16 now and they were only 11 before :O

Why are staff allowed to double post? D: I'm calling Vincent on you!

Sounds like a glitch to me. Shields level in exactly the same way as weapons in that they go up a certain amount every time you "attack" with them, or double that if you have a shield in each hand. I can't think of any reason why they would level up so quickly beyond a glitch of some variety. At a long shot you may have messed up the experience stat somehow so now it's either really large or in the negatives and the game is giving you a level each battle due to a logical error.

I wish I had another emulator I could check the file on, but none of the others seem to honor the format >:[

Anyways, holy crap this game has way more plot than I remembered! Time to find the EGIL TORCH

While playing this, I forgot I had the idea that Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night would go well with an FMV to this.

Certain scenes I envisioned were the characters moving up to attack and getting cancelled again after to the beat of the chorus, and the such. Also i can't remember where the EGIL TORCH is, so I've been putting off playing, putting off looking all over everywhere xD

[edit- a funny anecdote, if someone dies and the lastm onster dies that turn, the dead person's sprite will still jump up and run off screen. man that was funny. sadly they don't gain stats for losing all their hp]

Ah, you play smart. I think the reason why I die so much is because I kill kill kill.

the thing i always thought was lame in terms of stat progression was the way spells worked. Fair enough with cure, or fire that you use a lot, but for limited use spells i found myself just casting them for the sake of it so they'd work better later.