How does one raise Guy's Agility?

[maestro]

So I've noticed that Guy is sitting pretty at a piddly 5 Agility.

I looked it stat growth guides, and I found one for PR that says that Agility is randomly gained after a battle, but the heavier your equipment is, the lower chance you have of getting an agility increase.

But that can't possibly be right, because my Firion has the highest agility by far (35) and he's still getting one every 5-10 battles and he's wearing the heaviest possible armor (mythril armor, gloves, helm, and shield).

But, just to humor the guide anyhow, I tried unequipping Guy entirely (I have him set up as a monk right now, his fists are his main weapon) and fought 20+ battles, not one single Agility point.

So, I was thinking "well, maybe 0 weight is bugged" and I put Clothes and leather gloves on him. Still zero agility increases.

Then I was thinking "Well, Firion is using sword and shield, maybe shields give you lots of agility?" so I gave Guy a sword and a shield, zero agility increases.

I even tried knives, thinking those are a thief-like weapon and Maria had been using a mace/knife and she gets semi-regular Agility, she's like 26.

Nope. Not a single one.

And no, I'm not fighting Goblins. I'm at the part of the game where you're supposed to go to Deist and had just recruited Laila, so I got on the ship and fought enemies at sea (great for leveling Laila's cure and MP lol).

Is getting Guy agility impossible, then? Do the characters have some sort likelyhood towards getting certain stats and not others? That doesn't make sense, because Maria's strength and agility is keeping up pretty good, and Firion has had no trouble getting Spirit and Intelligence increases anytime I use magic in combat.

[SolusEmsu]

The chance for Agility increase after battle is based on combat speed. Combat speed is not your Agility, it is actually your Evasion%. So, have Guy equip a shield to increase his evasion and he should start gaining Agility more often. His base Agi is low so it will go up a little slower than the others, but using shields is the best way to raise Agility because they heavily increase your Evasion stat. The 'speed' of your characters in combat is Evasion, not Agility. It is a bit odd, yes. Shields make you go fast. xD

Agility (and all stat) gains are not dependent on the combat encounter rank, like weapon/magic skill ups would be.
If your Guy has not used Shields before, and thus is still somewhat low on Evasion% while wearing one at a low skill rank, it will not see much benefit until he ranks up a bit. At 99% Evasion, Agility increases are much more common. However, it is still an RNG thing, so do not expect it to be guaranteed. Note that weapon ranks also give Evasion% so equipping a weapon type Guy is already ranked up will help as well.

Above all remember that even at 99% Evasion, it still takes some time and fights because even then it is only about a 15-20% chance to actually gain Agility after a fight, in my experience. I usually start the game with shields equipped on all main characters specifically to increase it early on, even on my caster(s). In my experience in the PR version because weapon/shield base Evasion% was doubled compared to the older version, this results in my characters reaching maxed 99Agi before any other stats are close. Because of how Agi and Evasion interact, it tends to be slower growing at low Agi scores, and then ramps up as your Agi increases to grow it faster due to having more Evasion.

Pretty sure on my first run here on the Steam version, Guy had 99agi and his Str was still in the 60s even though he was strictly a physical attacker the entire game. Though to be fair on that, he spent a fair amount of mid-game time spamming Defend while I leveled up spells instead. You have to actually attack to gain strength or weapon/shieldskills in the combat, haha. However, Agility can increase even if you just use Defend. So my Guy (and the rest) had a kind of artificially inflated stat on it since I leveled up a bunch of spells.

Edit to add: The 'monk' build actually does not help you gain Agility, because without a shield or a weapon to give you additional Evasion%, you have only the base amount. Guy's 5 Agi means a base Evasion of 5%, which will have a miniscule chance of growing Agi. Lighter armor can help, but the Shield is the biggest help as they can give huge amounts of Evasion%. And remember, Agility is very snowbally because of how it grows, so it will grow very slowly when you only have a little of it, but will grow after as you get more of it. Leila grows Agi faster because she starts at a higher Evasion% due to having more base Agi.

[maestro]

That's.... a very weird and counter-intuitive way to do it... wonder why they decided to make it like That? Somehow, putting a giant slab on your arm makes you learn how to be more agile... okay, lol. Weird.

But at least I know what to shoot for, thanks.

EDIT: Apparently the game allows you to double equip shields, lol.

Maria and Guy already have 99% evasion with two mythril shields and only Lv3 shield.

[SolusEmsu]

yep, you can double-equip the shields, and if you attack with that setup it will do unarmed strikes. These strikes will be less powerful than if you were actually unarmed as having a shield equipped will reduce unarmed attack power by half, but they are still enough for killing most enemies. And having two shields equipped in the PR does not reduce your attack power a second time. In older versions it made you 'attack' with the shields, or do nothing at all. Here, your attack is the same whether you have two shields equipped, or one shield and one open hand.

But yes it has always been an oddity as to how the game works for this specific thing. Shields make you go fast. haha~

The only real disadvantage to having a shield equipped is that it has a high Magic Interference stat, so it will weaken your spellcasting. But you can always just remove the shield mid-battle on turns you want to cast magic, and put them back on when you do not. IIRC so long as the shield is equipped when the battle ends, that is when the game checks for the Evasion%. If you are not relying on that Evasion in combat, then you can leave the shield off until you know the last turn is happening.

[maestro]

Ahh, good to know.

Well, I got Guy ... one.

One.

Point of agility despite him having 99% evasion. In the same time, Maria went from 26 to 37 and Firion went from 38 to 45. Both Maria and Guy were wearing double shields the whole time, Firion only has 1 shield, but he has 99% with just the one shield.

Ugh. This is gonna take forever lol.

Oh well. Got Thunder 5 on everybody now.

Another question... I noticed Leila has 2x99% evasion... does the multiplier matter for leveling agility too? And what about casted spells, like Blink? If you cast Blink does that factor into whether or not you get Agility?

[SolusEmsu]

Evasion Multiplier is a separate stat, in terms of growth. The Evasion Multiplier gains growth exp when your character is actually attacked. I do not remember off the top of my head whether the character needs to actually dodge a hit for it to count. I *think* it just requires the character to be attacked. That said, Evasion Multiplier is one of the slowest stats to grow.

Having a higher Evasion Multiplier does not help Agility to grow, only the Evasion% matters for that. But having a high Agility and Evasion% will help your Evasion Multiplier grow (because you dodge more things).

Blink specifically increases the Evasion Multiplier, but does not increase the Evasion%. So, Blink will not help you grow Agility, but it will cause you to take less hits, and if dodges are required to raise the Evasion Multiplier, then casting Blink and having your characters get attacked will help raise the multiplier.

So if you single-target cast a level 4 Blink on your Leila for instance, by a character with at least 50 Spirit (because buffs have an accuracy stat too in this game, lol), her Evasion will become 6x99%, so any enemy with 6 or less attacks (which is most of them) will almost never hit her. But if she had 2x50% and got that same buff, it would become 6x50%. So Blink does almost nothing if your character has a low Evasion%, but does a helluvalot if you have an already high Evasion% but still a low Evasion Multiplier.

This also means Blink can funnily enough become obsolete if you grind up your evade multiplier. The highest monster accuracy is 12x100% (the Iron Giant) so any Evasion Multiplier above 12 is effectively wasted except in the Emperor (living) fight as he can cast Haste. So while it can be grinded up to 16x%, you only need 12. This includes Blink stacks, so if you have a natural 2x evade multi, and cast Blink10, you are now effectively capped. Blink over rank 11 becomes pointless. xD