Attack self for Defence increase?

[Gigerfan]

Hey I hear this FF game is the famous/infamous levelling system, the one I'm not sure about is the title implies, attack yourself and teammates for a defence increase. Is that still in this game or no?

[Electric Cupcake]

Yes, but the returns diminish and plateau pretty quickly.

It's wise to give everyone a shield (or two each) for the first several battles, since it gives a big boost to evasion, as well as defense and HP.

Though shields and most kinds of armor and weapons have a big magic penalty for certain spells. Once you get your stats to a certain level, you can be unstoppable with just cuirass armor or robes or armlets and unarmed attacks, or maces or daggers.

[asapa]

Originally posted by Gigerfan:

Hey I hear this FF game is the famous/infamous levelling system, the one I'm not sure about is the title implies, attack yourself and teammates for a defence increase. Is that still in this game or no?

Yes, but ignore the "diminishing returns" and "plateau" statement from previous user, if done correctly you can easily level max cap on all weapons / stats by attacking yourself.

it's boring, but it's definitely the fastest way to min/max your whole crew.

Do you need to do this to enjoy / play the game? No.

[DecalMan]

Originally posted by asapa:

Originally posted by Gigerfan:

Hey I hear this FF game is the famous/infamous levelling system, the one I'm not sure about is the title implies, attack yourself and teammates for a defence increase. Is that still in this game or no?

Yes, but ignore the "diminishing returns" and "plateau" statement from previous user, if done correctly you can easily level max cap on all weapons / stats by attacking yourself.

it's boring, but it's definitely the fastest way to min/max your whole crew.

Do you need to do this to enjoy / play the game? No.

How long do it take to get everything to 10 attacking yourself? And can you do this at the start of the game or only later?

[Dimlhugion]

Originally posted by DecalMan:

Originally posted by asapa:

Yes, but ignore the "diminishing returns" and "plateau" statement from previous user, if done correctly you can easily level max cap on all weapons / stats by attacking yourself.

it's boring, but it's definitely the fastest way to min/max your whole crew.

Do you need to do this to enjoy / play the game? No.

How long do it take to get everything to 10 attacking yourself? And can you do this at the start of the game or only later?

It takes longer than is reasonable for the average player doing an average run.

The thing about FF's in general, is that they've always been time sinks. That's just an innate mechanic to the franchise. When you add in all the secrets and permanently missable stuff and the challenge runs on top of that (either born from bugs, or born from people just wanting to do stuff the hard way), it's not uncommon to devote weeks' worth of real life time and effort into a single run. The clock might show "you beat this in 10 hours" but think about all the "shadow labor" you did researching, practicing, asking questions on here, save-scumming when RNG didn't favor you, etc.

It's "easier" now with the built in cheat sliders, but the bottom line is FF's are a time grind.

Now, why am I being so long winded? Simple, really: you gotta ask yourself how valuable your time really is.

20 years ago I'd spend that raw time doing it "legit" and not even blink in hesitation. Now that I'm twice as old, working a full time job... maybe I don't mind cheating with trainers as much as I used to.

But that's a judgment call you need to make on your own. You can power level in this, and in fact in all 6 of these PR's actually. Do it legit, if you wish. I judge not either way, just know what you're getting into, either way. Time or Trainer, your call.

[asapa]

Originally posted by DecalMan:

Originally posted by asapa:

Yes, but ignore the "diminishing returns" and "plateau" statement from previous user, if done correctly you can easily level max cap on all weapons / stats by attacking yourself.

it's boring, but it's definitely the fastest way to min/max your whole crew.

Do you need to do this to enjoy / play the game? No.

How long do it take to get everything to 10 attacking yourself? And can you do this at the start of the game or only later?

To max every single skill on all of your character, probably about ~20 hours of time. That's every single weapon and stat max.

[admiral1018]

If you find attacking you own characters to be cheap, an alternative way to grind weapon stats is in the Cave of Mysidia. In particular, on the Black Flan enemies since they take no physical damage except from crits. Once you get over level 10 or so for a weapon, you won't gain any weapon points from most fights unless the battles go on for several rounds (in my experience, it takes 5 rounds to move the bar), So long as the battle goes on long enough, enemy rank doesn't matter.

The strategy is the following:
- Equip all characters with the weakest possible weapons for the category you want to raise
- Put them all in the back row
- Use the Ancient Sword to inflict Curse on all characters, which halves their damage

Now, enter a battle with the Black Flan enemies, select attack, and let Auto Battle do its thing. You can now leave and go do something else. The battle will eventually end due to a combination of the crits and the enemies fleeing, but I found that I can level up a weapon class in 1-2 battles without really needing to be there. I didn't max all weapons for everyone, but I did get all characters to have at least one level 16 slot, and that's more than enough for the end game to be a cakewalk.

Those battles are also really good ways to raise any non-attack spells. Just have the characters use their support spells instead of attack and the Auto Battle will again take over. I find it's great to first level up Osmose for everyone to level 4-5 so you always have a way to refill MP without needing to leave a dungeon. After that, raise the more useful spells like Haste, Berserk, or whatever else you use in battle. You can even raise spells like Esuna even if the casting doesn't do anything.

To very quickly get Cure to level 16, enter a dungeon and have a character cast Teleport. This takes them outside with HP reduced by 90% or so. Heal that character, enter a step into a dungeon, and repeat. Use Cottages to replenish MP. I was able to get Cure for all character to level 16 in about 20 minutes.

[NewMoonShadow]

And just imagine, as psychotically clumsy as this game's leveling system is, this Remaster actually IMPROVES the leveling system over the original, and is by far the best version of the game in a gameplay sense.

[PureRok]

This game is extremely easy. You can go through it solo, no magic. Arguably, going solo makes the game even easier. Grinding by hitting yourself is absolutely not necessary.

[Dead Parrot]

this game's level up mechanics are so weird and easy to abuse. you can beat everything to death with wizard staves.

[nesoukefka]

Honnestly attacking yourself to increase Defense and HP is not necessary, in fact it's not even optimal, here's the thing the God stat in this game is actually Evasion, if you want to make this game easy that's the stat you have to focus on. And to put in perspective how good Evasion is the armors in this game with the most defense are also the heaviest armor that reduce your Evasion, Evasion is so important that if you wear these armors and didn't increase Evasion enough you might actually end up take MORE damage than if you were wearing an armor that has lower defense but doesn't reduce your evasion, on top of that later in the game some ennemies will have physical attack that ignore your defense making it useless and scale with how much Max HP you have meaning having higher Max HP will make you take more damage. Also Evasion also determine who act first in battle and having higer Evasion increase your odd of your Agility increasing at the end of battle, making your base Evasion higher.

To raise Evasion best way is at the beginning focus on raising your Shield Level (you can run 2 Shields for the early LV), don't equip armor if they reduce your Evasion, once your shield LV is high enough so that one shield is enough to have 99% Evasion use 1 Shield and whatever weapon you want, to grind the Number of Evasions (which cap at 16) you only need to be targeted by ennemies, so for that you can just take any encounter with weak ennemies and simply... defend just let them attack can take this time to raise your spells in the meanwhile (Blink, Berserk and Haste being the best one and Teleport if you want to play with that) but you can skip grind that with the Blink spell. In any case when you have 99% Evasion with a high left number or a couple of Blink cast, well enjoy nearly every ennemies's physical attack missing you and dealing no damage.