Post by North2 on Apr 1, 2004 2:29:51 GMT -5
I've played this game on and off many times (it's my favorite game, even now) and I have come up with many, many ways to be more effective in terms of speed, safety, and leveling. I just felt like sharing some of them. Some are fairly basic while others are very advanced. Feel free to add on with your own little tricks if you want. Most of this I haven't seen on any websites, which is why I'm posting it.
Tactics
All of this is kinda pointless if you don't mind about taking things slowly or if you bosslevel your characters like mad. I just like finding the most effective tactics with taking the least turns while making my army the strongest it can be.
First off, if anyone hasn't tried, I suggest at least trying the leg ring/knight ring combo on the dancer. It opens tons of possibilities. It allows her to go in combat, dance and back up into safety. But the best thing is this: it allows her to have 8 of the foot soldiers catch up with the cavalry by dancing and then moving forward with whatever movement space is left. 4 of them that got danced will be caught up, and the other 4 will be 1 turn behind. Alternate the dances so the 4 that's caught up becomes 1 turn behind on the next turn and the other 4 will be caught up. With this 8-man dancing system, all 8 of them and the dancer can benefit from 1 leg ring as long as she has the knight ring also. That's a steal of a deal.
For me, I also give Lynn a defender, shield ring, and Holin as her father. Lynn ends up having 70+hp, 20+ armor, and a hefty amount of magic defense. Her other stats will be really good too. She also gets prayer, moonlight hit, continue, and pursuit. She'll still only be a counterattacker because she'll be dancing. Even then, to me it's worth giving up the shield ring and defender to have a really good fighter that I can put wherever I want and dance pretty much wherever that's needed without fear of death.
That's not all. The benefit from Lynn being a really good tank is gigantic. She'll clear all of the arenas for a good boost in exp. She can be the best 'rescuer' in the game by dancing whoever that needs saving and then standing in the way of the enemy. On top of that, it adds some of the best tactics although it takes a somewhat good player to use it beneficially. I can recall 3 incredibly good tactics which can be slightly modified to fit the situation.
One is when you would rather have 2 groups. A group of 4 fighters and a dancer becomes a group of 5 fighters.
Another is when you want something done solo. You can dance Fee past the entire army and save the village while Lynn stays behind and takes a beating, while luring the enemy at the same time.
Another tactic is one that I use a lot. Any time your army stops for 1 turn to kill the enemy army, you can plow over most of them, dance the healers and other foot soldiers you don't want engaging in the fight PAST the enemy army, and then just have the dancer cover the back. If the enemy is cavalry, form a wall behind the enemy with all of your strong cavalry and the dancer. This allows your army to continue on the same pace as if they never stopped at all by following up with the alternating 8-man dancing that I explained before. Using this main idea, you can also move your entire army past a unit that you don't want to kill such as Hannibal and Yuria. In this case, just form a wall with all the units that have weak/no offense. If the enemy is a bunch of foot soldiers, I guess technically you can lure them off a bit and then slip by without even killing them. I wouldn't see a point in that though.
By the way, have Sylvia save most of the villages while Deu also gives some cash. For all the equipment that I give, it costs 80,000 gold total.
Leveling
If you're a fan of bossleveling or reinforcement killing, this is probably pointless. It does, however, teach how to get your units to really high level without spending so much time by using a little bit of the brain so maybe it can be useful after all. My main idea revolves around arena leveling. I like the arena simply because it only spends 1 turn for your entire army, so it's not deterring my ideals of taking the least turns. So if you don't like arena leveling then this is no use.
First, it's a simple idea, but giving every kill to the lowest level units is important. They get more exp and they can go further in the arena, which ends up in even more exp and lots more cash. It's exponentially beneficial. It's only hard for the beginning few kills, and then it gets really easy once your entire army is generally high level due to being able to clear the entire arena.
Trading off weapons and rings is important for arena leveling. This is where hero spear/sword comes to really good use. Being able to beat the last 3 enemies in the arena gives you 10,500 gold. This means that if you can't beat the enemy with the current gear, you can buy a power ring and a hero sword to get you through. The power ring costs 20,000 and the hero sword can be real cheap if it's used up already. Sell it back, and you get 10,000 plus whatever that's left on the hero sword. This means you only spent around 11000 gold, and the arena paid back 10,500 gold so you only spent 500 gold total.
Use this for 1 map, and on the next map your units will be generally high enough in level that they don't need to buy a power ring. You really don't want to use this too much though, because cash will matter with another trick that I'll explain a couple paragraphs down. The best time to use this is at the second to the last castle that you conquer. This is where your units are strongest while being next to an arena at the same time, which means they may not even need the power ring to beat the last 3 in the arena if they have a hero sword.
Using this and a lot of money grabbing by Deu, almost all of your fighters will have over 40,000 gold by chapter 4 (Silesia) on the parents generation. If some of them had around 40,000 gold at the beginning of chapter 3, you can use the trick I'm about to explain on chapter 3 by not having them go in the arena with them until the elite ring is available. The elite ring is dropped by Voltz, the leader of the freeknight army.
Now, for all of your units that have over 40,000 gold. All that gold is not gonna go anywhere unless you spend it. Think about how much money the arena gives. By clearing the whole thing, you get 17,500 gold. This means you can buy an elite ring and hero sword for around 42,000 gold, kill off the entire arena, and then sell it back for 21,000 gold. Add to that the arena cash, and this means you only spent around 3,500 gold total to recieve double the experience for the entire arena. You can usually get from lvl 16 to lvl21 with this. For any time that I play seriously (meaning I don't go with only a few units which is sometimes enjoyable), every last one of my units except for Sylvia and Tiltyu (who will be holding the elite ring for this map) will be class changed by the end of the first turn on chapter 4. All of my units will be able to do the same thing at chapter 5. By the end of the first turn on chapter 5, all of my fighters including Tiltyu will be at least lvl 25.
Heal whenever you can. Turn off the healing animation because it gets boring and time consuming after a while. You can do this by going into options and selecting 'Unit' for the animation mode. This allows you to choose whether you want 'Real' or 'Map' graphics for specific units. Heal anything and everything because it's not gonna waste a turn or anything, and you never know when that 1 hp means life or death.
Tidbits
Give the return ring to whoever that has the return staff and the warp staff. This gives everyone the access to the home base whenever they need it, in case you want to go to the arena right before conquering the map or something. It'll save you the running time.
Solo Pati: Pati as Deu's Daughter is an incredible fighter on class change with maxed up speed and high stats for everything important except for strength. With sun hit she's really tough to kill. Give her a magical sword, hero sword, speed ring, skill ring, armor or barrier ring depending on who she's fighting, power or magic ring, and the live bracelet. Stick her into a tree and she can literally take any army. This is the only unit I found that can seriously take any army whatsoever alone. Yuria's Rizziah can do the same thing except against swordfighters.
Rescue staff is really great for a promoted pegasus knight. You can take all sorts of shortcuts by flying over cliffs and porting units over. Or you can send characters that you don't like on a remote island.
Tactics
All of this is kinda pointless if you don't mind about taking things slowly or if you bosslevel your characters like mad. I just like finding the most effective tactics with taking the least turns while making my army the strongest it can be.
First off, if anyone hasn't tried, I suggest at least trying the leg ring/knight ring combo on the dancer. It opens tons of possibilities. It allows her to go in combat, dance and back up into safety. But the best thing is this: it allows her to have 8 of the foot soldiers catch up with the cavalry by dancing and then moving forward with whatever movement space is left. 4 of them that got danced will be caught up, and the other 4 will be 1 turn behind. Alternate the dances so the 4 that's caught up becomes 1 turn behind on the next turn and the other 4 will be caught up. With this 8-man dancing system, all 8 of them and the dancer can benefit from 1 leg ring as long as she has the knight ring also. That's a steal of a deal.
For me, I also give Lynn a defender, shield ring, and Holin as her father. Lynn ends up having 70+hp, 20+ armor, and a hefty amount of magic defense. Her other stats will be really good too. She also gets prayer, moonlight hit, continue, and pursuit. She'll still only be a counterattacker because she'll be dancing. Even then, to me it's worth giving up the shield ring and defender to have a really good fighter that I can put wherever I want and dance pretty much wherever that's needed without fear of death.
That's not all. The benefit from Lynn being a really good tank is gigantic. She'll clear all of the arenas for a good boost in exp. She can be the best 'rescuer' in the game by dancing whoever that needs saving and then standing in the way of the enemy. On top of that, it adds some of the best tactics although it takes a somewhat good player to use it beneficially. I can recall 3 incredibly good tactics which can be slightly modified to fit the situation.
One is when you would rather have 2 groups. A group of 4 fighters and a dancer becomes a group of 5 fighters.
Another is when you want something done solo. You can dance Fee past the entire army and save the village while Lynn stays behind and takes a beating, while luring the enemy at the same time.
Another tactic is one that I use a lot. Any time your army stops for 1 turn to kill the enemy army, you can plow over most of them, dance the healers and other foot soldiers you don't want engaging in the fight PAST the enemy army, and then just have the dancer cover the back. If the enemy is cavalry, form a wall behind the enemy with all of your strong cavalry and the dancer. This allows your army to continue on the same pace as if they never stopped at all by following up with the alternating 8-man dancing that I explained before. Using this main idea, you can also move your entire army past a unit that you don't want to kill such as Hannibal and Yuria. In this case, just form a wall with all the units that have weak/no offense. If the enemy is a bunch of foot soldiers, I guess technically you can lure them off a bit and then slip by without even killing them. I wouldn't see a point in that though.
By the way, have Sylvia save most of the villages while Deu also gives some cash. For all the equipment that I give, it costs 80,000 gold total.
Leveling
If you're a fan of bossleveling or reinforcement killing, this is probably pointless. It does, however, teach how to get your units to really high level without spending so much time by using a little bit of the brain so maybe it can be useful after all. My main idea revolves around arena leveling. I like the arena simply because it only spends 1 turn for your entire army, so it's not deterring my ideals of taking the least turns. So if you don't like arena leveling then this is no use.
First, it's a simple idea, but giving every kill to the lowest level units is important. They get more exp and they can go further in the arena, which ends up in even more exp and lots more cash. It's exponentially beneficial. It's only hard for the beginning few kills, and then it gets really easy once your entire army is generally high level due to being able to clear the entire arena.
Trading off weapons and rings is important for arena leveling. This is where hero spear/sword comes to really good use. Being able to beat the last 3 enemies in the arena gives you 10,500 gold. This means that if you can't beat the enemy with the current gear, you can buy a power ring and a hero sword to get you through. The power ring costs 20,000 and the hero sword can be real cheap if it's used up already. Sell it back, and you get 10,000 plus whatever that's left on the hero sword. This means you only spent around 11000 gold, and the arena paid back 10,500 gold so you only spent 500 gold total.
Use this for 1 map, and on the next map your units will be generally high enough in level that they don't need to buy a power ring. You really don't want to use this too much though, because cash will matter with another trick that I'll explain a couple paragraphs down. The best time to use this is at the second to the last castle that you conquer. This is where your units are strongest while being next to an arena at the same time, which means they may not even need the power ring to beat the last 3 in the arena if they have a hero sword.
Using this and a lot of money grabbing by Deu, almost all of your fighters will have over 40,000 gold by chapter 4 (Silesia) on the parents generation. If some of them had around 40,000 gold at the beginning of chapter 3, you can use the trick I'm about to explain on chapter 3 by not having them go in the arena with them until the elite ring is available. The elite ring is dropped by Voltz, the leader of the freeknight army.
Now, for all of your units that have over 40,000 gold. All that gold is not gonna go anywhere unless you spend it. Think about how much money the arena gives. By clearing the whole thing, you get 17,500 gold. This means you can buy an elite ring and hero sword for around 42,000 gold, kill off the entire arena, and then sell it back for 21,000 gold. Add to that the arena cash, and this means you only spent around 3,500 gold total to recieve double the experience for the entire arena. You can usually get from lvl 16 to lvl21 with this. For any time that I play seriously (meaning I don't go with only a few units which is sometimes enjoyable), every last one of my units except for Sylvia and Tiltyu (who will be holding the elite ring for this map) will be class changed by the end of the first turn on chapter 4. All of my units will be able to do the same thing at chapter 5. By the end of the first turn on chapter 5, all of my fighters including Tiltyu will be at least lvl 25.
Heal whenever you can. Turn off the healing animation because it gets boring and time consuming after a while. You can do this by going into options and selecting 'Unit' for the animation mode. This allows you to choose whether you want 'Real' or 'Map' graphics for specific units. Heal anything and everything because it's not gonna waste a turn or anything, and you never know when that 1 hp means life or death.
Tidbits
Give the return ring to whoever that has the return staff and the warp staff. This gives everyone the access to the home base whenever they need it, in case you want to go to the arena right before conquering the map or something. It'll save you the running time.
Solo Pati: Pati as Deu's Daughter is an incredible fighter on class change with maxed up speed and high stats for everything important except for strength. With sun hit she's really tough to kill. Give her a magical sword, hero sword, speed ring, skill ring, armor or barrier ring depending on who she's fighting, power or magic ring, and the live bracelet. Stick her into a tree and she can literally take any army. This is the only unit I found that can seriously take any army whatsoever alone. Yuria's Rizziah can do the same thing except against swordfighters.
Rescue staff is really great for a promoted pegasus knight. You can take all sorts of shortcuts by flying over cliffs and porting units over. Or you can send characters that you don't like on a remote island.
.
Tinny is still useful, but my opinion stands that she isn't high up there in fighting power.