Class Change

[advkow]

So when should you change characters classes? What are the advantages/disadvantages?

[Icedfate]

Originally posted by advkow:

Originally posted by Icedfate:

so, if i have a priest and the priest knows all 4 spells of every level and then change to a valkyrie which has a max of 2 spells per level, does the valkyrie randomly lose 2 spells from each level? and using the "forget" command is a way to control which spells i get to keep?

Before you class change you need to go and choose which two spells each level you wish to keep.

If you do not, the game will randomly choose for you when you class change.

okay. understood.

[Icedfate]

on the subject of backline vs frontline, i do feel like there's not enough "evil" frontliners.
i know the ninja is often the most sought after class in the wizardry series. Fairy Ninja is practically a meme in wizardry 8, but both types of ninjas (male/female) have to evil and then ranger and thief have to be neutral or evil. you gotta have someone with the thievery skills. .

but then the frontliners are
fighter which can be any alignment
monk can't be evil
samurai can't be evil
lord must be good
valkyrie must be neutral

so in an "evil" party, the only viable frontliners are fighter, monk, valkyrie. maybe priest too, because priest can be evil.

the only thing missing is they should have had an evil frontliner, like a dark knight or something and i know that wasn't in Wizardry, but neither was summoner.
psionic and alchemist were in wizardry 8.
dark knight could be like the lord, but evil and have access to psionic spells instead of divine, which would complete the trinity of samurai with wizards spells and lord with priest spells, the dark knight could have had psionic spells.

but yeah, i'm harping on an old psp game i didn't even know existed until 5 days ago, lol

there is kind of a disparity here, in that there are 15 classes, but only 5 are dedicated frontliners, although at least 3 others could maybe do frontline as well, but then the spellcasters, i suspect i'll end up with at oeast 2-3 backline spellcasters who know every spell, if that's possible
and then probably a samurai and valkyrie or lord up front and of course, a ninja


edit : oh, nevermind i see that the monk is the "psionic" frontliner, so they did complete the trifecta

[atmasabr]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

on the subject of backline vs frontline, i do feel like there's not enough "evil" frontliners.

I consider Ninja to be flexible front or backliners, and better in the front. I might think differently if race has less impact on HP than class did.

So that means good parties miss out on both shinobi. Evil parties miss out only on Lord (which is admittedly major).

And it's only temporary. You can have alignment-incompatible parties and change alignment.

[Icedfate]

yeah, i guess the ninjja is the "Evil" frontliner. it's why i said 5 dedicated and at least 3 "maybes", the "maybes are ninja, ranger and cleric.
although, i'm a bit confused what alchemist is "supposed" to be, because they use a lot of melee weapons, are they a caster or a bruiser?

all my wizardry parties always ended up being sam, Lor, nin, on the front line and 3 casters with every spell on the backline.
this time, i went Valk and Kunoichi instead.

[atmasabr]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

yeah, i guess the ninjja is the "Evil" frontliner. it's why i said 5 dedicated and at least 3 "maybes", the "maybes are ninja, ranger and cleric.
although, i'm a bit confused what alchemist is "supposed" to be, because they use a lot of melee weapons, are they a caster or a bruiser?

all my wizardry parties always ended up being sam, Lor, nin, on the front line and 3 casters with every spell on the backline.
this time, i went Valk and Kunoichi instead.

Yeah I think they can go either row. I classify them as pure casters simply because of how useless they are at fighting. But they are also lousy at magic.

[advkow]

I mean isn't it easy to change alignment? You just have to wait for the encounters that say 'wait/fight' and choose the option for evil or good based on that?

[Icedfate]

i guess it's easier in this since wizardry wouldn't even let you add them to the party if they conflicted. this just gives an affinity penalty. i'm just talking about it because it's relevant for class changing, you have to take time to change their alignment.

(edit : changing alignment in this has a couple extra steps. once you perform the necessary actiosn, by leaving or attacking the non hostile mobs, you have to go back and perform hypnosis at the principals office and if you have enough "good/evil" points accrued, the your alignment changes)

[Icedfate]

so, after playing this for a while now, it is mostly like the old school Wizardry games, with a few new caveats.

as someone explained earlier, you have to pick which spells to forget before switching classes.

i also found that while you learn all your spells around 13-14, you don't max out your spell points until 22.

some opinions i found said to change at 14, but others said to wait until 22.

some folks like to try and get 9 casts of raganarock on every character, i dunno, that seems a bit overkill.

i'm sitting here, still early game(?), only just got the labyrinth key, but i discovered the arena and that seems a bit broken, since i can just grind xp to my hearts content with zero risk, even if my party gets wiped, it just bumps me out and fully heals everyone.

some sources said you should be level mid 20's when beating the main story and reaching post game, but i'm sitting here grinding levels and my valk and samurai are 25. kunoichi is 18.

and i have 3 back rows chars at work, learning all the spells.
i think i might uave messed up though, because i had a priest and a mage and i swapped them at level 14 and then swapped them to,psionics at level 14 and now they are psionics. they have learned every spell, but only have 4 spell points for level 6 and 7.
maybe i can fix them with a few more class changes.

right now, i'm working on the third one, used to be a dwarf fighter, but now is a psionic and then is gonna be a mage, and then a priest and will stay as a priest for the MP regen

i have a gnome psionic, that started as a mage then went priest and is now psionic, but i might switch back to mage to max out spell points and then back to priest to do the same and then end up as a psionic for that magic barrier skill.

the other one is a celestial, started as a priest , then swapped to mage, then psion, but i may have to fix her spell points as well, so doing that all over sgain. and then i'll make her end as a summoner, just because i want all the magic spells showcased.


i'm not sure about the front row, if i even want to change them.
but, my samurai is diabolos, and my valk is a bahamut, but then i found a mithril sword and armor set and only an elf or diabolos valkyrie or fighter can equip it, so i might class change the samurai to a valk, which means i'm also gonna want to swap my valk into a samurai, because i want both of those in there.

the kunoichi, is a felpurr and i realized, felpurr has the lowest luck stat of all the races and thievery is based on luck. . .but then with all these psionics, i can just use the unlock spell.
i might not even want to class change her. .since i've been feeding her life fruits, which are gonna get diluted if i do a class change.


so TLDR,
the best times to class change are probably either level 14 or level 22 when you learned all the spells for your current class and/or maxed out the spell points.

front lineers probably don't even "need" a class change, unless you are a minmaxer optimization fiend and want them to have all the spells too

[M.V.Petra]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

some sources said you should be level mid 20's when beating the main story and reaching post game, but i'm sitting here grinding levels and my valk and samurai are 25. kunoichi is 18.

With optimum gear, maybe. But I dunno how/where/what to farm to even get optimal gear. So I was like 25-30 when I beat the game, and even then, I feel like it was 50% luck hoping to get the right Ragnarok buffs

[atmasabr]

some folks like to try and get 9 casts of raganarock on every character, i dunno, that seems a bit overkill.

Complete overkill especially for normal play. Ragnarok consumes all your Level 7 Magic Points, and one of its options gives everyone except the caster 9 casts (the caster still loses their Level 7 casts). Mages are really good, though, and they'd be even better if they had warrior-type accuracy and weapons. And my experience and viewing of with epically high-level parties in Japanese Wizardry spinoffs is that multiple "Wish" casters becomes almost a bread-and-butter requirement for bosses. I doubt this game is an exception but by the time it matters, you'll KNOW it's time to class-change for epic combat, and I think you'll have enough money to immediately level people up.

In my mostly stagnated PSP game, my main team is all 13s in their second class after changing from about 14, except my Ninja>Wizard, who is 21 Wizard. The secondary party is mostly 17s-18 in various classes (one of them is a Dwarf Devout 13>Paladin 17, I wasn't too impressed with the Devout class once he got all his spells). My plan for my main front-liners is honestly to get them magic, then switch them back to either their original class (Fighter/NInja/Samurai). There's no penalty for it--this game doesn't "age" you for class-changing like Wizardry, only halves your HP. Well who cares if your base is high enough?

If you have someone with all mage and cleric spells and you want to end their class as a dedicated back row caster, don't forget Bishop, they'll gain both Mage and Priest spells. Mages exclusively get Focus, Psion has its own unique, you covered Priest.

[Icedfate]

it is pretty easy to do in this game actually. i was farming the arena , killing level 9 thief over and over and selling the mythic materials he drops for 50k each. farmed about 4 million gold in a couple of hours.
class changing to a magic class, donating gold to infirmary costs 500k to get to level 23, which is enough to learn all spells and max out the spell points straight 9's, then class change to the next spell class and donate another 500k.
psionic costs 530k to reach level 22.
i now have 3 back row casters with every divine,wizar,psionic spell all straight 9's.
i did have to "forget" some spells, but i kept the ones that matter.

did not realize ragnarok consumes all the spell points, but it's better than the game just making you "forget" the spell after you cast it, like wizardry did.

edit : bonus the arena thief drops the "final map", which allows you to open the map everwhere. get 10 of those and use alchemy to turn them into "final map DX" and i can even see the labyrinth maps without having to cast MAPOR.


i find bishop seems completely unnecessary in this game, because their class abilities are identify and an undead kill move. but alchemist and psionics can also identify (psionics get a spell that does it without failure)
the priest gets spell point regen and can share spell points with the party.
psionic gets the magic barrier. . which incidentally was the bishop's ability in Wizardry : labyrinth of lost souls. I remember that being an essential ability, so i think i need a psionic.

edit : but then, now i dunno. if raganarok spell can consistently recover everyone's spell points, then that means i don't need a priest and can turn the priest into something else. . (?)

[atmasabr]

Originally posted by Icedfate:

did not realize ragnarok consumes all the spell points, but it's better than the game just making you "forget" the spell after you cast it, like wizardry did.

I never actually used Mahaman in Wizardry I-III, but the main trick Mahaman does in almost all Wizardry games is it level drains the caster.

Alchemist doesn't get identify until level 10, the same experience requirements as Level 12 or even 13 for your other casters. Meanwhile you're stuck with worse accuracy than Mages and a much slower leveling rate. As an endgame class, I guess so. But mine is hogging so much money I wonder if they even save money in the long run.

I personally don't see the bother with Priest spell point regen yet, but I'm sure it will be useful if there's a dungeon you can't teleport at all in.

[M.V.Petra]

I started with a Priest and went to Bishop and I dont really miss the regen mana that much. For one, after class changing, they level up so fast to catch up, which automatically regens all their spell points, and 2, I've always found the limiting factor in exploration to be inventory management, not lack of spell points. Bag full, guess I'll have to go back to particus to dump everything off... again.

[Icedfate]

alchemist does level up as the slowest class in the game i found out.
i was trying to grind one up and then i realized i could just pay the laboratory to craft items.

i kept running into the problem my alch kept failing because item level was too high.
it looks like they can craft anything up to 5 levels higher, and fail at anything above that.

i figured i can donate gold to level up and i did do that, donated 1,000,000 gold to get my alch to level 26.
dunno if that will save money in the long run or not, because that could have just gone to pay the lab for crafting.
aside from that, i'm not sure what the alchemist is supposed to be. they seem to use all the same gear that the samurai uses. so i guess it's a backline samurai that can craft and identify.

the psionicist gets "appraisal" spell, which identifies witout fail, so once i got that and have access to arena and farming top tier items, the bishop and alchemist are obsolete.

i dunno, i'm a bit confused by game progression actually, because the arena is risk free grinding and farming and it becomes available fairly early.
if you're willing to invest hours into the arena, you can trivialize other stuff. like as i said, i farmed the mythic materials then sold them and then used the money the level up my spellcasters to get 9 of every spell.

[atmasabr]

The arena wasn't available in the PSP version but there's an infinite money trick if you buy 1000gold dolls from Ranslate and sell to Mashlena, and vice-versa :|

Alchemists are an early version of the "item master" archetype that saw more polish in future Experience, Inc. games, where their version of Item Dance lets you use 2-3 uses of an magic item or item staff at one time (in this game it's 10), fairly useful if you have caster stats to back it up. In this game magic ability can be doled out much more easily and the availability of consumable items is very different, so it's harder to get use of out Item Dance. Basically if you have a ton of Molotovs you can delete some enemies, and by carrying hundreds of Riceballs you can heal hundreds of HP in single-target healing. Kinda meh.

There aren't any other weapons besides bombs that are stackable, are there?