Should I be avoiding fights?

[T0AD]

I've been avoiding as many fights as I can, but not sure if I'm putting myself at a disadvantage later in the game. Got some issues already like I can't afford to build the University.

[Pisaro]

No, why?

Play it like a normal RPG. Since first time in game, i was leveling like in almost any other rpg.

[Cernunnos]

Originally posted by T0AD:

I've been avoiding as many fights as I can, but not sure if I'm putting myself at a disadvantage later in the game. Got some issues already like I can't afford to build the University.

No, fights are how you glimmer techs/spells and make money.
You likely read some rant about how unfair it is that the enemies get harder the more you fight but they can only scale up so far (determined by difficulty) and you'd have to be intentionally grinding weak enemies for you to be even minutely impacted, in a negative way, by the scaling.
Just play the game normally and you'll be fine; kill the enemies in your way but don't senselessly grind for no good reason.

[AliceShiki]

Avoiding too much can be troublesome as you may lack Weapon/Magic Levels, HP, BP, and money if you avoid too many enemies.

Avoiding some enemies that are in your way because you don't wanna bother with killing them all is fine though.

[NikDanger]

There's a long running misunderstanding about SaGa games in general that the encounter scaling is meant to punish you for getting into too many fights. But it's really not, it's meant to solve the issue of "how do you balance encounters in a game where two players might clear areas in different orders."

It doesn't help that these games are tough, and people tend to think "Oh my god, enemies hit so hard, I must be underleveled!" when really that's the expected difficulty, and you're rarely ever going to be strong enough to just "mash A" like so many other games.

This game actually has scaling boss strength, so avoiding fights is actually not quite as terrible. But in most other games boss encounters are static, so if you don't fight in order to keep regular mobs weak, you'll get massacred by the bosses. But even still, you need to fight a lot in this game, because you need money, and you need weapon and spell levels, and you want to unlock class abilities.

In this game, and most others, a better rule of thumb than the "avoid all fights" mantra of the poorly informed, is "just fight what's in front of you and play the game. Only grind if you have a specific, ideally short-term goal or need."

In general these games are balanced around the idea that you're fighting pretty much everything in front of you. What they aren't balanced around is the idea that you would stay in a single dungeon for three hours grinding a weak enemy. The enemy scaling is meant to empower you to play more and grind less, and as long as you do so you should be rewarded with a relatively consistent -- and yeah, stiff -- challenge. But beatable with a bit of strategy, and a solid party comp.

[Pisaro]

For example. The "boss" of the seven (dont know his Name lol) destroyed my like hell.

So i was grinding some levels. After that, i was destroying him/her/it.

[Chester]

There's several different ways you can approach the different bosses ("Wagnas" is who I think you're referring to as the "boss" of the seven). Grinding is an option, though you can counter many of their individual skills with spells/techs/abilities that become available to you without any kind of grind (like Fire Wall, which counters most of Wagnas' most dangerous spells)

[Pisaro]

Originally posted by Chester:

There's several different ways you can approach the different bosses ("Wagnas" is who I think you're referring to as the "boss" of the seven). Grinding is an option, though you can counter many of their individual skills with spells/techs/abilities that become available to you without any kind of grind (like Fire Wall, which counters most of Wagnas' most dangerous spells)

Yes, it was Wagnas.

Well, im to oldshool in this kind of games. Im like: "You beat me? Okay, i will get some level ups and i beat you!" :)

[vandal_vanir]

There is one reason to avoid fights.

When you hit a timeskip milestone, the game checks a bunch of factors to determine whether to initiate a skip, including your battle count. If it's too high you might trigger a timeskip early, and this could fail other quests.

E.g. in the third emperor's reign, you are tasked with fighting the corsairs and doing a quest in Cumberland. You should be able to do both quests before triggering a timeskip, however if you grind excessively during one of these quests the skip may be triggered. You could trigger the skip from the corsair quest, and fail the cumberland quest as a result (but this leads to an alternate quest instead).

In general you need a LOT of battles for this to happen (200+)

https://saga.fandom.com/wiki/Generation_Mechanics

[AliceShiki]

Originally posted by vandal_vanir:

There is one reason to avoid fights.

When you hit a timeskip milestone, the game checks a bunch of factors to determine whether to initiate a skip, including your battle count. If it's too high you might trigger a timeskip early, and this could fail other quests.

E.g. in the third emperor's reign, you are tasked with fighting the corsairs and doing a quest in Cumberland. You should be able to do both quests before triggering a timeskip, however if you grind excessively during one of these quests the skip may be triggered. You could trigger the skip from the corsair quest, and fail the cumberland quest as a result (but this leads to an alternate quest instead).

In general you need a LOT of battles for this to happen (200+)

https://saga.fandom.com/wiki/Generation_Mechanics

Other than Mermaid Quest, no event can be failed by getting timeskips without you initiating the event.

Cumberland is a specific case where you get the alternate version of the scenario if you don't do it as soon as it becomes available, which is different from failing the event.

The 200+ number of battles is outdated. This was true for the original/remaster. For the Remake you only need 80 battles.

Also, the fandom wiki is pretty useless as far as RS2 goes. If you wanna check mechanics of the original/remaster, just use the blogspot instead, since everything in that one is accurate and it has way more info than the wiki has.

For stuff related to the remake, there are some guides here on Steam, and Japanese wikis to refer to as well... But well, most things of the remaster still apply to the remake, tbh.