Honestly, without self-mutilation tactics, your characters will never really grow on their own.
(NES version anyway. The PSP and GBA versions are broken in their own right.)
Honestly, without self-mutilation tactics, your characters will never really grow on their own.
(NES version anyway. The PSP and GBA versions are broken in their own right.)
select cancel will also help. Remember though, increasing one stat will decrease another.
Scott you cheater, that is cheating.
I'm talking about playing the game legitimately.
I remember the one time I played through an original rom this game was really really hard but I managed to beat it, no self-mutilation involved.
...
I play this game all the time without using the exploit, and I usually clock in around 20 hours from start to finish. The trick is to get into a good, strict regimen of attacking/casting during the random battles. This way almost every random encounter will be rewarding in some fashion, and you more than likely will never have to "grind" to boost abilities or proficiencies. I've noticed that the game has a habit of "telling" you that you've hit a plateau and what you have should be sufficient to defeat anything you come across when it starts taking a LOT of random battles to increase a weapon or spell level.
A good strategy is to spread out your offensive and defensive magics throughout your party, so they aren't all lumped onto one character. Keep a wise eye on your equipment too, because the magic penalties are crippling. I generally play like this: Each of the starting three characters gets one of the three basic elemental spells and one of them gets Cure. The same goes for the defensive spells, like Blink, Shield and Shell. Then when you get access to them, I do the same with the negative status effect spells. I generally only take Blind, Silence, Fog and Curse, as they are the most useful.
This way, you can juggle what the party members are doing during random battles, so they never get stale. A generally good rule of thumb is, when there are more enemies on screen than you have party members, use elemental damage spells and target ALL of them. If there are the same number of enemies on screen as party members, use normal attacks, each character targetting different enemies. If there are fewer, alternate between the two, casting and attacking.
Also, for the positive and negative status effect spells, cast them at the start of battle, EVERY battle, but only against enemies where they would be appropriate. For example, if there are spell casting enemies, immediately open with Shell, Barrier, Wall, Silence or Fog. If there are physical enemies, open with Blind, Curse, Blink and Shield.
Lastly, don't try and do a dungeon in one run. If you run out of curatives and MP, immediately warp out and rest. Then start the process over again from square one. As tedious as it sounds, it's actually quite rewarding and often therapudic.
Edit: Also, from experience I've found that very rarely is it ever necessary to get any of your weapons/spells above proficiency Level 8. In fact, Prof Level 4 will get you through a good chunk of the game without any problems whatsoever. Only later, from the Mysidian Tower onwards do you really want everything at a minimum of 6. If you haven't been ignoring or running from random battles all game, ALL your spells/weapons should be at LEAST level 8 by endgame with little to no effort other than just... marching forward.
Last edited by MarbleMinotaur; 06-01-2010 at 04:34 AM.
It's not self-mutilation. It's sparring with your comrades and training your abilities.
Lamia's Tiara- Headgear in FFIX
Lamia's Flute- Weapon for Eiko in FFIX
Lamia in FFV- a enemy
appearance: a lady with long brown hair, wearing a tiara...half woman and half snake.
Lamia in FF3j- A Harp
Lamia in FFL2- An enemy
FF2j Queen Lamia, at one point she even gets Frionel in a bedroom with her and jumps on the bed and says "take me!".. before she turns into her snakey self. She serves as a mini boss in this game (as Queen Lamia).. and after you fight her as a mini boss, regular lamia's become random foes and later on in the game, Queen Lamia's become random foes as well.
LamiaScl. an item that paralyzes foes.
According to legend, she was once a Libyan queen (or princess) who fell in love with Zeus. Zeus' jealous wife Hera deformed her into a monster and murdered their offspring. She also made Lamia unable to close her eyes, so that she couldn't find any rest from the obsessing image of her dead children. When Zeus saw what had be done to Lamia, he felt pity for her and gave his former lover a gift: she could remove her eyes, and then put them on again. This way, though sleepless, she could rest from her misfortune. Lamia envied other the other mothers and took her vengeance by stealing their children and devouring them.
The easiest way to do it is just to choose a weapon for each character and a role for each of them (monk, archer, warrior, mage) and just stick with it. Its an exhausting task trying to master everything but really all you need is a dedicated party of specialist. I prefer making Firion a Paladin (swords, shields, white magic but mostly cure, raise, shell, protect) Maria as a black mage specializing in the three elemental spells and one instant death magic (Toad is fun) and have Gus use Axes. When Leon finally comes around I build him as the all around fighter.
After that, its just a matter of getting into ALOT of battles to compensate for not trying to max out abilites the cheap way, but one trick to making things easier is that you get slightly higher "experience" for battling higher level monsters and seeing as how its pretty easy to find such creatures...
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...
My favourite way to level "legitimately" is to enter/exit the dungeons a few times; this gives a much stronger feeling of accomplishment than just using the Select/Cancel trick, which I've always found rather dull and boring, TBQH - it feels like the characters are using steroids to become stronger or something, and that they aren't strong "for real".
You can also sort of "level up" rather normally against certain enemies - the Captains in Phin are relatively high-rank, so you can easily boost stats by just fighting them normally.
They are much easier in the Origins version though, since Life always works there; in the NES original it's wise to raise it to about LIFE 4 or LIFE 5 first.
That's EXACTLY what I do!
I guess it's easy to decide on these jobs though, since the main characters' stats and equipment kinda encourage you to do so (Maria's high Intelligence etc).
Last edited by *Laurelindo*; 07-03-2010 at 07:31 PM.
It is obvious based on their starting equips and stats, but I do level them up in other areas. I usually ditch weapons in the beginning over using the fist cause it will be ages before the game gives out any worthwhile weapons besides farming Flame Bows from the guards in Fynn. Not to mention the fist are just horribly overpowered and cap a few levels lower than all the other equipment.
I also forgot to mention that Gus tends to be my trash mule for magic spells. I give him cure and few other important spells but mostly I love giving him the weird spells and experimenting with them.
True beauty exists in things that last only for a moment.
Current Mood: And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe. Maybe this year will be better than the last. I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself. To hold on to these moments as they pass...