Various notes and tips and things I have learned

[unclesporky]

In no particular order. Hopefully helpful to some people.

- Every time a character dies and is revived they lose 1 VIT. This is kind of a big deal. Save and load often and don't let people die. I have heard that the Wish spell can bring people back without losing VIT.

- If your party's inventory is completely full, any chests you find will be empty. Don't be like me and open three chests on a floor before wondering what's up and then figuring this out.

- If you are a save scummer type person, you can save before examining a chest, and if you don't like what it has you can reload and try again. This even applies to the quality of a chest, you might get an iron chest, then reload and get bronze, then reload and get silver.

- While it seems you can find low quality items from any quality of chest, only higher quality chests offer rarer items. So for example, if a wooden chest can hold Shoes or Staff or Antidote, then an iron chest can hold Shoes or Staff or Antidote or Plate Mail, and a silver chest can hold Shoes or Staff or Antidote or Plate Mail or Flame Sword, etc. This is just an example, it seems like all chests can hold a huge variety of items.

- The Levitation spell ONLY prevents damage from electrified floors. Very strange that it does nothing about spinners, teleporters, trapdoors...but it's still useful to have up at all times.

- Magic Torches and the Torch Light spell get canceled when you walk into darkness and have limited duration, but Ball of Light lasts forever and is only canceled by anti-magic zones.

- Don't expect to find maps for anything. If you do, you're very lucky. Get used to casting Arcane Map regularly. I didn't realize this for a while and thought the game was sort of indicating where I should go based on the maps I found...not true. Just cast Arcane Map.

- The buffs that stay up for as long as you're in a dungeon: Levitation, Ball of Light, Battle Aura, Advanced Reflex. Cast these every time you enter and recast if you happened to walk through an anti-magic zone. I don't know how much Battle Aura and Reflex do for your party, but there is no reason not to cast them since they stays up forever.

- The Ice Burst spell incorrectly claims it only hits a group, it actually hits all enemies. However in my experience the two or three all-hit spells do completely awful damage and aren't worth it, other than the final one NAL Burst which is incredible.

- Wish uses up all casts of that final spell level. While one of the Wishes is to refill others' casts, the developers thought of this and Wish does not refill another party member's Wish-level casts. (You can't Wish back and forth to stay topped off.)

- Bishop's special ability Magic Wall is awesome. Free shield on any incoming damage and usable in anti-magic zones. Two Bishops using this every turn will be a massive boon to your party for a large chunk of the game. You learn this ability around level 15-17.

- Samurai's special ability is awesome. Free hit on an entire group, usable in anti-magic zones and more powerful than most spells. Multiple Samurais are crazy.

- Questing in this game is...wonky. I won't spoil anything directly but some people might see this as a spoiler, so I will hide it just in case: the order that quests unlock means that you will be most of the way through a dungeon, and then be expected to discover things on an earlier floor you've already cleared, and then discover yet more things on an even earlier floor. Essentially, you are expected to re-explore the entire dungeon without any indication as to which random locations will progress things. I recommend looking up a guide to save on massive headaches.

[unclesporky]

A few more things that I've seen some people discussing:

- Class change is useful for a few reasons:

You keep half your HP, so if you start with 20 HP, then level up until you have 200 HP and class change, you will start again with 100 HP, which can really stack up over the course of multiple class changes. Just make sure you get higher HP than your last class change before doing it again.

You also keep the knowledge of any spells you learned. Samurais and Lords only learn 2 of the 4 spells at every level, but if you start out as a Priest and switch to Lord, you will keep knowledge of all 4 spells.

Your number of casts of magic will be cut in half. If you had 9 casts of level 1 and 6 casts of level 2, after class change you will then have 4 casts of level 1 and 3 casts of level 2. Classes that learn that type of spell will gradually increase again, so for example a Mage with all 9s switching to a Samurai will be cut to all 4s, but as they level will gain back to all 9s again.

If you switch to a class that can't cast those spells, you will be stuck at whatever casts you possess after class change. So for example, a Bishop with 9 casts of all mage and priest spells switching to a Thief will be stuck with 4 casts of all mage and priest spells. That Thief switching to a Samurai will have 2 casts of all mage and priest spells, but will gradually gain back up to 9 casts of all mage spells (priest stays stuck at 2).

Ideally you should class change when you have 8 or 9 casts of all spell levels to maximize your number of casts. This happens around level 25 on the high end.

- On changing alignment: when enemies show up but are wary and don't attack you immediately, choosing to attack them has a chance of lowering someone's alignment (good -> neutral, neutral -> evil), and choosing to leave has a chance of raising someone's alignment. Choosing to simply watch and wait for the enemies to attack or leave will not change anyone's alignment. I made the mistake of thinking that watching was a "good" action but it's not.

- If you don't want to lose stats on level up, you'll just need to save and load until it doesn't happen. All characters' stats max out at their race's starting point for each stat plus 10 (i.e. if you started with 6 PIE then your max is 16 PIE). Eventually all characters will likely reach their stat caps and have nowhere to go but down, so there will be lots of lost stats on level up. You may decide to just let it happen and those same stats will likely go back up in later levels.

[Lokiator]

Originally posted by unclesporky:

- On changing alignment: when enemies show up but are wary and don't attack you immediately, choosing to attack them has a chance of lowering someone's alignment (good -> neutral, neutral -> evil), and choosing to leave has a chance of raising someone's alignment. Choosing to simply watch and wait for the enemies to attack or leave will not change anyone's alignment. I made the mistake of thinking that watching was a "good" action but it's not.

Shin's Level 4 seems to be a really good place to find alignment changing encounters. The Crusaders that show up there seem to always provide the "fight / watch / leave" option if they're the front group of an encounter.

A note on changing alignment - this is also the only way to have good and evil characters in the same party. The "good and evil won't group together" restriction only applies when adding someone to the group. If they change alignment after grouping, that's fine. As a result, try not to let the main character die if you have good and evil characters in your group. If you go back to town after that happens, you'll go straight to the Temple where the main character is revived and the group is disbanded. You won't be able to add both the good and evil characters back again. You'll need someone capable of resurrecting your main character while in the dungeon if this situation arises.

[Damon]

About alignment class change you can also find all books for all classes without worrying about alignment. These are rare but dropped by certain enemy types, for example Samurai enemy can drop Samurai book.

If I'm not mistaken you can make evil Lord with a book.

[Damon]

Actually it's human enemies who drop books. Obvious with their name like Fighter. The only which isn't obvious is Crusader at Shin B4F who drops Lord book and Rogue/Assassin who drop Thief book.

[chazdragoon]

Good Stuff in this thread...did not know about the Vitality Drop on death.

Now if we can get a guide on quests...the ones on gamefaqs of the PS3 version is not accurate at all and incomplete.

[unclesporky]

Originally posted by chazdragoon:

Good Stuff in this thread...did not know about the Vitality Drop on death.

Now if we can get a guide on quests...the ones on gamefaqs of the PS3 version is not accurate at all and incomplete.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MKX5F7TLS3SaEnZZVufLy5zkvNAYpvi5N7kUJOZrnBQ/edit#gid=0

The quests tab on this spreadsheet helped me get through many of the quests in the game.

[Damon]

Running away from many fights then fight many will reset many Trade items at Guild. But idk if it's worth wasting time with it.

[unclesporky]

Just to continue adding tips to this thread, a question I answered in a different thread:

This is a screenshot of an item with a curse on it.[i.imgur.com]

White = that class, alignment, sex, or race can equip it
Grey = that class, alignment, sex, or race cannot equip it
Red = that class, alignment, sex, or race CAN equip it, but if they do it will be cursed on them and not removable without paying a fee in town

Uncursing does not destroy the item. It simply unequips it.

I do not know whether equipping a cursed item still gives you all the same positive effects of the item and the only drawback is needing to pay to unequip it. At one point I was using a cursed item for a long time and never realized it until I noticed I was able to uncurse my character.

[Damon]

Originally posted by Incuxus:

Running away from many fights then fight many will reset many Trade items at Guild. But idk if it's worth wasting time with it.

I found a few useful stuff from Trade. Idk how it exactly works, maybe related to your lowest floor level or something. It's also worth trading useless stuff whenever you can.

[ultimatecalibur]

Originally posted by unclesporky:

White = that class, alignment, sex, or race can equip it
Grey = that class, alignment, sex, or race cannot equip it
Red = that class, alignment, sex, or race CAN equip it, but if they do it will be cursed on them and not removable without paying a fee in town

If you look at an item in the store or album you might see a word in purple. This means that when the item is generated it will have one of various states for the purple text. For example if the word Good is purple when the item is generated Good may end up White or Red.

[Bishop]

Here are the modifiers for each class on level up (basically how much different statistics grow based on class choice)

Warrior 1 ACC, DEF 0.200, ATK # 0.200, MAX DMG 0.200

Mage 0.5 ACC, DEF 0.100, ATK # 0.100, MAX DMG 0.100

Priest 1 ACC, DEF 0.150, ATK # 0.150, MAX DMG 0.150

Thief 1 ACC, DEF 0.250, ATK # 0.250, MAX DMG 0.250

Bishop 0.5 ACC, DEF 0.125, ATK # 0.125, MAX DMG 0.125

Samurai 1 ACC, DEF 0.200, ATK # 0.200, MAX DMG 0.200

Lord 1 ACC, DEF 0.200, ATK # 0.200, MAX DMG 0.200

Ninja 1 ACC, DEF 0.250, ATK # 0.250, MAX DMG 0.250

All monsters apparently have their own hidden growths too.

[unclesporky]

That's really interesting that thief is tied with ninja for being the best. Makes me feel better about my choice to keep a thief around in endgame for chests and lockpicking.

[Damon]

What about HP growth? It has to be different for each classes as well.

[ASTER]

You can warp (spell or scroll) between floors.

[ASTER]

Wearing the "seal of sacrifice" on incompletely opened cards is a bad idea. Looks like the fights are keeping the thief from finding the hidden doors.