So let me get this straight....

[pozertron]

This is a jRPG in which you are punished for grinding because the enemies grow in power depending on how many fights you've won? In a game where some enemies are impossible to avoid because they run too fast, or the controls are too janky? In a game where your characters get 2 shot and run out of LP almost right away?

[Melk]

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This is confusing, one thing people tell me to not fight too much, the other thing people tell me to fight whoever i stumble on normally. Normally i stumble upon every single enemy since avoiding them never works for me. So you're saying even if i run from battles i still get money but the enemies don't get stronger?

You're thinking about it too much.
You don't have to avoid fights. Just don't stick around in an area and intentionally grind enemies.
It's not that big a deal.

[Null]

Escrito originalmente por pozertron:

So what's the "right way" to grind?

Learn what monsters have the best odds of sparking certain attacks (ideal circumstances give 20% spark chance) and avoid unneeded battles until you have a decent income, then start going nuts.

Or just play normally. You can NG+ if you really screw up or go to the maze of memory.

[pozertron]

Seems to have found a bug, or an exploit depending on how you look at it. When i was fighting Dantarg, whenever i set my emperor to do a martial attack/move, the boss would just defend that turn. I literally just killed him with normal attacks, he did nothing but defend "and a poison blow once in 20 turns". Whenever i tried to use any other weapon/move he would start attacking.

[Toph]

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Seems to have found a bug, or an exploit depending on how you look at it. When i was fighting Dantarg, whenever i set my emperor to do a martial attack/move, the boss would just defend that turn. I literally just killed him with normal attacks, he did nothing but defend "and a poison blow once in 20 turns". Whenever i tried to use any other weapon/move he would start attacking.

Was there a specific Martial Arts attack you were using? What formation are you using? Also, what class is your emperor?

I actually took on Dantarg last night and it just so happens my emperor is a Brawler. Dantarg was definitely not behaving in the way you described, however.

[pozertron]

My emperor was a pirate/merchant or whatever it's called and i just used Punch

[Toph]

I wonder if you caught the first form or something. That still sounds odd, obviously. When I play again tonight, I'll try and mess around with him.

[pozertron]

My formation was Free for All "i had bad experiences with horizontal skills so that's all i ever use now" and i had 4 party members instead of 5. Pirate/Nomad/Hunter/Imperial Guard F

[pozertron]

Screwed myself over and recruited a doll in the final chapter, overwrote every save....

[gaspump]

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Man this is the Last Remnant all over again, should have picked my jRPG more carefully...

Kawazu, the driving force of SaGa games also made TLR. In fact amongst many in the SaGa community TLR *is* a SaGa game in all but name. It even has the Seven Heroes Sword available, amongst many other SaGa nods if you're looking.

TLR is an amazing game too.

In terms of Battle Rank adjustments RS2 is probably the hardest game in the series. Which makes it all the more entertaining when people see FF-looking sprites and wander in thinking they can grind, or just hit Fight Fight Fight in battle. At least it doesn't have Event Rank...

I can only reiterate that this game, no SaGa game since RS1 really, is intended to be finished in one sweeping playthrough. It's about building, discovering, failing and then trying again. Don't get married to your MC, or to any of your goons... and in letting them go the game opens itself to you.

When you git gud then you do challenge ♥♥♥♥ like... apparently you can beat the game without being Final Emp which I did not think was at all possible but there it is in the cheevos list.

[Null]

Escrito originalmente por gaspump:

It even has the Seven Heroes Sword available, amongst many other SaGa nods if you're looking.

Isn't that just a shichishito? That's pretty much Japan's excalibur.

[pozertron]

The Final Boss was complete bs. My emperor was charmed the entire fight just because he was a guy "the rest of my team was female" and he actually managed to kill my doll with 99lp. i've no idea how. Game's done and i'm never coming back to it, say whetever you will but it was not a pleasant experience.

[Null]

If I recall, Seven Heroes can use the instakill attack of the first boss.

[Lasci]

I want to address some of the concerns in the thread for those of you who are willing to think critically and aren't woefully distracted by your tragic misunderstanding about quotation marks.

It is incredibly difficult to over grind in this game. I'm speaking from experience as someone who went into this game blind, read that monsters scale with battle count, and immediately decided to forcibly Flee from every fight I could. While I did fight encounters, there were numerous instances where I rushed through an area and refused to fight until I got stuck in a corner or against a wall by several mobs. The result was having a stupendously high battle count before I really got going in the game because, as I figured out later, fleeing from a battle still adds it to the counter.

I think I'm now maxed out on difficulty level or close to it, meaning the bosses and monsters are at their strongest state. I'm not having many troubles with the game despite originally thinking I wasted ~15 hours and needed to make use of NG+ to even hope to finish the game.

If you aren't willing to do research, check guides, and consult charts because you're against the idea of using help, there are three huge things I'd recommend thinking about as you play:

1. There is not a universal "Defense" stat that protects from all damage. The statistic you're seeing on the equipment screen when swapping out gear is exclusively tied to your Slash defense. Enemies use just as many damage types as you do (Arrow, Piercing, Blunt, Slashing, each element of magic, etc.) and despite not showing these defenses in the menu screen, each item has a specific defense related to each of these attack types. You've probably seen your tanks capitulate against a really strong, one-shot attack that was a Blunt damage type because you didn't have a helmet -- which protects against Blunt damage -- equipped.

This doesn't have a huge influence against physical damage dealers, but when you get to someone like Rocboquet, who uses magic, it's huge. Equipping the accessory item types like the Silver Ring will help against magic attacks because these items typically boost your magic defense across the board. Items like the Rubber Shoes and Oven Mitts are great for negating lightning and fire damage respectively.

2. There are two different skill levels. Your characters' personal skill levels are what you see on the menu screen; these only affect the characters themselves and their capability with certain weapon types. However, there are hidden global skill levels that affect what your non-ruler characters start with after a generation shift. The best way to 'grind' long-term in this game is to make sure you're getting the most experience into your global levels each battle as you can.

Personal skill level gain = ([Number of turns skill type was used on] / [Total number of turns]) x [Skill points received]

In other words, any time you use a skill, it takes a portion of the battle's experience. If you have a battle worth 1,000 tech points and use a one-handed sword for three actions and Light magic for one, you gain 750 one-handed sword experienced and 250 Light magic experience.

Global skill level gain = [Skill points received] + [MP/SP expended on skills of a specific type]

In other words, any time you use a specific skill, you gain the FULL portion of the battle experience for that skill, plus a small bonus equal to the amount of points spent. If you fight a battle worth 1,000 tech points and you use a one-handed sword for one action, Light magic for one action, Earth magic for one, Fire magic for one... each of those global skill levels gained 1,000 points.

Global levels increase faster than personal levels, but they're by far the most important thing to pay attention to throughout the game. If you exclusively use the skills your characters are the best at, they'll be very powerful for that generation -- but the moment you get a generation shift, your party's overall power will decrease because your other skills have fallen behind due to your global levels.

3. As an extension of the global levels point, the most important thing to focus on grinding out is Magic. Unlike weapon skills, magic skills aren't dependent on your random ability to spark certain abilities. Once you obtain a certain global level in a magic school, you can teach your characters new magic from that school if you own the Magic Research Facility. Once your global levels reach a certain point, you can start researching low-level Fusion spells which greatly increase your ability to deal with certain enemies and encounters. Once your global levels get even HIGHER, you can research even more fusion spells. The first Earth + Water fusion spell negates a lot of the health and healing issues you've probably had throughout the game and it can be used by any of your characters to great effect, even if they're not magically inclined. Focusing on leveling your magic really diminishes a lot of the struggles with sparking abilities. Your magic damage also isn't dependent on having updated weapons to deal additional damage.



There are a lot of other aspects that go into the game, obviously. There's a ton of nuance to this game to discover. Being a SaGa game, RS2 has its fair share of unnecessarily complicated and opaque mechanics, but there are tons of resources that you can use to clear up a lot of the confusion. I would strongly recommend anyone struggling with this game take a look at the GameFAQs form for the SNES version, as that community is much more active and is extremely helpful in answering questions.

[pozertron]

The problem with reading guides on "Mechanics" is that most of the time they go so indepth, it gets impossible to understand or simply becomes too much hassle just to play 1 game. Especially for people with limited time.

I just started playing RS3 and decided to look at the combat mechanics on GFQs and well....

how the heck am i supposed to understand something like this :
D = Base + LF*(STR + WpnPw)/4 +
LF*TF*WpnWeight* (STR - TgtWeight*2)/8 + Ran#(0~3*SkillLV)
man, i just wanna play the game, not sit here with a calculator.

I understand that these guide makers go through alot of trouble getting that info, and it's totally worth it. They are doing a terrific job. But to a casual gamer, this just won't work.

[Enlino]

Escrito originalmente por pozertron:

The problem with reading guides on "Mechanics" is that most of the time they go so indepth, it gets impossible to understand or simply becomes too much hassle just to play 1 game. Especially for people with limited time.

I just started playing RS3 and decided to look at the combat mechanics on GFQs and well....

how the heck am i supposed to understand something like this :
D = Base + LF*(STR + WpnPw)/4 +
LF*TF*WpnWeight* (STR - TgtWeight*2)/8 + Ran#(0~3*SkillLV)
man, i just wanna play the game, not sit here with a calculator.

I understand that these guide makers go through alot of trouble getting that info, and it's totally worth it. They are doing a terrific job. But to a casual gamer, this just won't work.

What are you even complaining about here? Any game is going to be complicated if you start getting into the math that runs it behind the scenes, but nothing in the game is ever going to demand you know the damage formula like that. Why go out of your way to find obscure fan-made research if you want games to be simpler?

How do you think people played these games when they were first released in Japan and nobody knew the damage formula, anyway? Do you think everybody reverse engineered it just to be able to play the game? I don't know what gave you the impression this kind of stuff was somehow mandatory, but there's really no reason to mess with it unless you love the game and are curious about the specifc math involved.