done

[FrosT]

closed

[Detestable Geohound]

I don't think it really matters all that much how you use them; the game was never really that hard to begin with.

If you really wanted to boil it down to numbers though, consider the MP available in comparison to the average cost of a spell for certain mana eggs. That might influence a decision or two regarding who gets what egg. Upgrading eggs can follow a different format; I always try to get all of the spells in the egg to the same star level as that tends to unlock more spells faster.

As for skill books, I always just attached whatever skill to the character with the lowest number in the party; or to whatever character had the most of said elements (like explosive/lightning damage boosts).

Again, you should be fine doing literally anything; my first time playing the game I got almost halfway through the game without knowing how the Special and Magic Coins even worked.

[5chneemensch]

Doesn't really matter as the game is pretty easy even if you don't use either. Aside form that, depends if you want to min-max or try to eliminate weaknesses.

I.e. Millenia has the highest INT stat, while Elena has the lowest INT stat. So you can either decide to make Millenia your spellcaster carry or if you want to make Elena similar to other characters stats.

I haven't looked deeply into the character stats, so I can't tell you how to min-max every little detail, but you should be able to figure it out yourself quickly if you go to the status screen and compare their stats.

Originally posted by Detestable Geohound:

I always try to get all of the spells in the egg to the same star level as that tends to unlock more spells faster.

It's faster to go as low-cost as possible if you want your big spells asap, as new spells are dependant on the Mana Egg level, which increases by 1 regardless of what spell you level up.

[tiornys]

Millenia is the best offensive caster thanks to her high MAG stat. That makes her a great carrier of the Chaos Egg, which tends to be your best offensive Mana Egg at this point. When she's not around, the 2nd best offensive caster is Roan, and he makes the best backup carrier of the Chaos Egg.

Elena is the best healer thanks to her high MEN stat. This makes her a great carrier of (surprise surprise) the Holy Egg. When she's not around, Roan is (also) the 2nd best healer, so he makes a good backup carrier of the Holy Egg.

Since Roan has nicely balanced mental stats, he also does well with the Mist Egg.

Between Ryudo and Mareg, Mareg's low mental stats should push you towards giving the remaining Mana Egg, whichever it happens to be.

As far as leveling up spells, keep in mind that a higher star rating decreases the time it takes to cast a spell after selecting it. This has several ramifications. Notably, higher star ratings: a) make it easier to target AoE spells effectively, b) make it less likely that you will have your actions canceled, and c) decrease the total amount of time between your turns. If you've decided that a spell is something you intend to cast regularly, it is very beneficial to try to reach 5 stars with that spell.

Skills do a variety of things. Some increase your stats, some reduce the time it costs to use items, some both reduce the casting time of spells AND power up those spells, and some do various other things. I have some fairly strong opinions--based on low level play and speedrun play--about which skills are the most useful to invest in, but I think that might be verging on spoiler territory so I won't go into that level of detail unless you ask. I will, however, note that you assign individual skills to characters, not whole skill books: a character can equip skills from multiple skill books, and multiple characters can equip (different) skills from a single skill book.

[5chneemensch]

Originally posted by tiornys:

Elena is the best healer thanks to her high MEN stat.

MEN is magic defence and has no influence over healing power, or any kind of spellcasting for that matter.

Originally posted by FrosT:

So for stats what does vitality do and does each character have a primary stat or do you just build the characters like you want to? Like does agi increase ryudos damage or is it just for armor? Also I did end up switching chaos egg to millenia to make her a primary spell caster. Another thing what causes millenia to go berserk like when she just starts auto casting spells after turning red ect?

STR - Physical damage.
VIT - Physical defence.
MAG - Magic damage.
MEN - Magic defence.
AGI - Time until your next ACT. May influence IP recovery after ACTing and IP damage received, needs confirmation.
SPD - Movement speed, movement distance, evasion chance.

I don't know the deep mechanics behind Millenia's rage mode, but just letting her get hit will trigger it, which gives her full SP and MP, and possibly a dmg boost too.

[5chneemensch]

the Defence and Evade commands are instant. Defence lasts until the next COM, and Evade until they reach their destination. Defence heavily enhances both physical and magical defence, while Evade gives you a strong boost to your Evasion, not to mention that you may also outrun enemies or they simply miss because you're out of range if they started their attack animation.
If there's an imminent threat to your characters tho, simply using Defence is usually better, since you cannot evade spells and skills.

Monsters attack rather randomly. But there's a skillbook that has the Decoy ability which makes the character that has it equipped draw much more aggro.
Trying to get out of aoe attacks is not really an option, since most bosses either have only single target, or an arena-wide aoe. And trashmobs are not worth the trouble, really.


Enhancing the defenses of your low defence characters is a good idea considering Allhealer is ridiculously overpowered, so that dmg is spread evenly and you can heal evenly in return.



E: In Grandia 3 the Defence and Evade command are a single command, making it MUCH more useful. And there are a few spells that can be evaded (Burnstrike for example).

[tiornys]

Originally posted by TenshiNanael:

MEN is magic defence and has no influence over healing power, or any kind of spellcasting for that matter.

False. I'm not actually sure if MEN = magic defense or not, but I've tested its effect on healing and it most definitely drives the power of healing magic. Test it for yourself; it's pretty easy to verify that increasing MEN increases your healing and increasing MAG does not increase your healing.

Originally posted by FrosT:

SPD - Movement speed, movement distance, evasion chance.

I don't know the deep mechanics behind Millenia's rage mode, but just letting her get hit will trigger it, which gives her full SP and MP, and possibly a dmg boost too.

I need to get around to testing Movement and Evasion chances; I've seen conflicting reports on whether there's any impact there. Millenia does not recharge her MP when she rages (see spoiler vid for proof), but she does recharge SP, gets a major speed boost, and might get a damage boost.

https://youtu.be/40aWzWagfOg?t=9m36s

Originally posted by TenshiNanael:

Trying to get out of aoe attacks is not really an option, since most bosses either have only single target, or an arena-wide aoe. And trashmobs are not worth the trouble, really.

From extensive experience, it absolutely can be worthwhile to try to stay out of boss AoEs, although it does depend on the boss and what skills you have available.

[人妻キラー]

Originally posted by FrosT:

I was wondering would it be better to give the weaker characters like roan/elena that are more susceptible to damage better defensive stats or does using the evade command and positioning them away from the enemies work as a viable strat because they'd technically just be casting spells in the back lines with ryudo and mareg on the front lines? Do the bosses just attack randomly and the placement of characters doesn't really matter except for staying out of aoe of big spells?

You don't really have to think about it all that much. It's very rare that you want all of your characters bunched up because some enemies/bosses have pretty nasty AOE attacks. I tend not to use evade for positioning that often because I can typically use an attack which will cause the character to change positions anyway.

I haven't been able to discern any patterns to which characters the bosses will attack, outside of some bosses that only attack one character. I have a suspicion that the AI is a little gimped to avoid focusing all the damage on one character. Position seems to have no effect except that bosses won't start an attack on somebody who is currently out of range.

Eventually, you can get some skills that will allow you to draw aggro to a certain party member. It synergies really well if you stack evasion + use the aim for counter skill.

For stats, I tend towards trying to maximize a character's strengths rather than patching their weaknesses. I haven't run the numbers on it, but I suspect you'll be able to soak up and heal more damage per round than you'd reduce by trying to buff defense on someone who isn't a strong tank.

Or you could just ignore all that stuff. The first time I played the game I didn't even know that you needed to equip skills from the skill books and I beat it just fine. You'd have to try to mess up your build so badly to make your party ineffective. That's less true on hard mode.

:edit: Some mechanics notes from the manual
http://i.imgur.com/EzkWmlR.jpg

[5chneemensch]

Originally posted by FrosT:

False. I'm not actually sure if MEN = magic defense or not, but I've tested its effect on healing and it most definitely drives the power of healing magic. Test it for yourself; it's pretty easy to verify that increasing MEN increases your healing and increasing MAG does not increase your healing.

Will do test later.

Originally posted by FrosT:

I need to get around to testing Movement and Evasion chances; I've seen conflicting reports on whether there's any impact there.

Easily tested, and seen by casting Runner. Especially those black and white bone panthers.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by TenshiNanael:

Easily tested, and seen by casting Runner. Especially those black and white bone panthers.

There's a potential difference between base out-of-battle Move affecting Evasion and in-battle +MOV affecting Evasion. Preliminary testing says that base Move might have an effect, but I don't have enough data points yet to be sure. I'll do more testing later.

[terry309]

Magic skills are useful as is life up and speed, the rest aren't as important. I'd say it's better to focus on leveling up moves early to make them ridiculously powerful, getting lifeup maxed half way through is advised though.

[5chneemensch]

Life Up is pretty bad. Reduction (VIT/MEN) is most of the time the better choice. The only time Life Up is good is if the enemy has Explosive element attacks, as that ignores your resistances.

Especially considering how OP Allhealer is.

[tiornys]

I now have enough depth of data to say with fair confidence that your out of battle Move score has no effect on your Evasion rate. Increasing your MOV with in-battle buffing does increase your Evasion rate.

Minor skill/eq spoilers in the detailed testing report: I set up Roan with Ninja Clothes and no +Move, giving him a Move of 80. I also gave him maxed Decoy. I entered a battle with an enemy that did nothing but Attack, killed off all but one enemy, and started using Evade with Roan and counting Sways vs. Hits. Full disclosure: I also raised my Defense to +5 and lowered the enemy's Attack to -5 for the sake of reducing my healing burden. After 100 trials, Roan had Swayed 52 times and been Hit 48 times. I then increased Move to +5, and had 50 Sways in 50 trials.

I exited battle and equipped 2 maxed Dashes and Ogre Shoes to Roan, adding +150 Move for a total Move of 230. Using the same setup, I again recorded 100 trials. This time, Roan got 47 Sways and 53 Hits. For giggles, I increased Move to +5 again, and had perfect Sways again (didn't bother counting).

It seems apparent that Roan with Ninja Clothes, using Evade, has about a 50% evasion rate regardless of his Move score. I'm not yet sure how much in-battle +Move is needed to raise that to 100% while using Evade, nor how much impact raising +Move has on evasion rates when not using Evade. That testing will wait for another time.

edit to add:
Oh hey, I just noticed this:

Originally posted by TenshiNanael:

Evade [lasts] until they reach their destination.

This is incorrect. The boost to Evasion from the Evade command lasts until your next turn.

Originally posted by terry309:

Magic skills are useful as is life up and speed, the rest aren't as important. I'd say it's better to focus on leveling up moves early to make them ridiculously powerful, getting lifeup maxed half way through is advised though.

Hmmm. I disagree on several counts. I agree that Magic skills are useful, although they're expensive enough that you should only develop as many as you actually plan to equip. I've already extolled the virtues of faster actions; the ability to double-stack a Magic skill for instant casting and double damage is awesome.

I agree that Speed is useful. Strength is also quite useful as it impacts normal attack damage and special move damage. I rarely bother with Life Up; stacking strong offense is enough to decimate most non-boss battles, and there are better ways to handle boss offense than increasing your HP.

Of the rest of the skills you've so casually dismissed, I find at least two other sets to be extremely powerful. First are the item related skills: Skilled Item Use, Item Recovery, and (for casual play) Pirate's Ring. Items are flexible and offer a variety of powerful effects, and a super Item user is arguably the most potent character on the field. Meanwhile, Pirate's Ring gets you all sorts of nice benefits.

Second are the tanking skills: Decoy and Abandon, and to a lesser degree Toughness/Mentality and Aim for Counter. Decoy is the real winner here; controlling enemy targeting opens up all sorts of tactical options. Decoy + Abandon + a little Evasion gear or 2nd Abandon + Evade spam = immunity to most Attacks; stacking Evasion gear on top of Abandon lets you take actions and still have immunity as long as you're careful not to be in the middle of an action during an enemy attack. Either setup completely neutralizes a surprisingly large amount of of enemies.

The Skilled Item Use + Item Recover and Decoy + evasion or toughness setups were crucial to my Mandatory Fights Only run. Honestly, the main downside to these setups in casual play is that they arguably make things too easy.

Move Recover and Magic Recover are also good skills, although I don't think they're as good as Item Recover. Full Body Blow turns Critical into an extremely powerful action control option even by late-game standards, although it's still debatable how often you'd want to use Critical instead of a special.

The rest of the skills? They haven't impressed me much.

[5chneemensch]

This just in, attacking with Millenia also increases her Rage meter, thus I assume any action you take will increase her Rage meter. Degrees may vary.

E: @tiornys
If you'd like, I've coincidentally farmed Speed seeds, which you can use to further adjust your data. https://www.dropbox.com/s/9qgi3e4h9q5yz85/GRANDIA2_000.VMS?dl=0

[terry309]

Originally posted by tiornys:

I now have enough depth of data to say with fair confidence that your out of battle Move score has no effect on your Evasion rate. Increasing your MOV with in-battle buffing does increase your Evasion rate.

Minor skill/eq spoilers in the detailed testing report: I set up Roan with Ninja Clothes and no +Move, giving him a Move of 80. I also gave him maxed Decoy. I entered a battle with an enemy that did nothing but Attack, killed off all but one enemy, and started using Evade with Roan and counting Sways vs. Hits. Full disclosure: I also raised my Defense to +5 and lowered the enemy's Attack to -5 for the sake of reducing my healing burden. After 100 trials, Roan had Swayed 52 times and been Hit 48 times. I then increased Move to +5, and had 50 Sways in 50 trials.

I exited battle and equipped 2 maxed Dashes and Ogre Shoes to Roan, adding +150 Move for a total Move of 230. Using the same setup, I again recorded 100 trials. This time, Roan got 47 Sways and 53 Hits. For giggles, I increased Move to +5 again, and had perfect Sways again (didn't bother counting).

It seems apparent that Roan with Ninja Clothes, using Evade, has about a 50% evasion rate regardless of his Move score. I'm not yet sure how much in-battle +Move is needed to raise that to 100% while using Evade, nor how much impact raising +Move has on evasion rates when not using Evade. That testing will wait for another time.

edit to add:
Oh hey, I just noticed this:

Originally posted by TenshiNanael:

Evade [lasts] until they reach their destination.

This is incorrect. The boost to Evasion from the Evade command lasts until your next turn.

Originally posted by terry309:

Magic skills are useful as is life up and speed, the rest aren't as important. I'd say it's better to focus on leveling up moves early to make them ridiculously powerful, getting lifeup maxed half way through is advised though.

Hmmm. I disagree on several counts. I agree that Magic skills are useful, although they're expensive enough that you should only develop as many as you actually plan to equip. I've already extolled the virtues of faster actions; the ability to double-stack a Magic skill for instant casting and double damage is awesome.

I agree that Speed is useful. Strength is also quite useful as it impacts normal attack damage and special move damage. I rarely bother with Life Up; stacking strong offense is enough to decimate most non-boss battles, and there are better ways to handle boss offense than increasing your HP.

Of the rest of the skills you've so casually dismissed, I find at least two other sets to be extremely powerful. First are the item related skills: Skilled Item Use, Item Recovery, and (for casual play) Pirate's Ring. Items are flexible and offer a variety of powerful effects, and a super Item user is arguably the most potent character on the field. Meanwhile, Pirate's Ring gets you all sorts of nice benefits.

Second are the tanking skills: Decoy and Abandon, and to a lesser degree Toughness/Mentality and Aim for Counter. Decoy is the real winner here; controlling enemy targeting opens up all sorts of tactical options. Decoy + Abandon + a little Evasion gear or 2nd Abandon + Evade spam = immunity to most Attacks; stacking Evasion gear on top of Abandon lets you take actions and still have immunity as long as you're careful not to be in the middle of an action during an enemy attack. Either setup completely neutralizes a surprisingly large amount of of enemies.

The Skilled Item Use + Item Recover and Decoy + evasion or toughness setups were crucial to my Mandatory Fights Only run. Honestly, the main downside to these setups in casual play is that they arguably make things too easy.

Move Recover and Magic Recover are also good skills, although I don't think they're as good as Item Recover. Full Body Blow turns Critical into an extremely powerful action control option even by late-game standards, although it's still debatable how often you'd want to use Critical instead of a special.

The rest of the skills? They haven't impressed me much.

I don't want to touch any further because of spoilers. You'll want to level those skills up later... after certain moves.

[tiornys]

Originally posted by terry309:

I don't want to touch any further because of spoilers. You'll want to level those skills up later... after certain moves.

Leveling those moves up ASAP is overrated. They are good, and they are a high priority, but they're also expensive by early-mid game standards. You can get excellent value for your SC from plenty of other places along the way.