SAGA FRONTIER SKILL FAQ Version 4.4 Written by: Aya Brea i_love_aya@hotmail.com Don't bother send any mail to Hotbot, I've moved to Hotmail completely. Note: This is a guide made for the US version of SaGa Frontier. There are many SaGa Frontier FAQs there out on the net but I thought some skills need explaining. This FAQ will explain the use of various techs, skills and magic, how to learn them easily and where to obtain them as well as some tactics and tricks I've discovered. This FAQ does not, however, include an item list, enemy list, mystic weapon list and a few other lists. (It doesn't say "List FAQ" up the top does it?) This is my first attempt at writing an FAQ so any help will be appreciated. English is not my first language so it's very likely that some parts may not make sense or is grammatically incorrect. Some data maybe wrong, left blank or I just forgot to put them in. Please e-mail me with any mistakes or if you want to contribute to this FAQ or you have a problem with the game. CONTENTS - Revision - Credits - Wanted - About me - Introduction - History of SaGa - Starting the game - Menu - The world - Battle - Races Humans Mystics Mecs Monsters - Combos - Human sword skills Sword skill list Alkaiser sword skills Special sword skills Tips on sword skills - Human fighting skills Fighting skill list Alkaiser fighting skills Tips on fighting skills - Human gun skills Gun skill list - Magic - Magic list Ying-Yang Light Magic Shadow Magic My thoughts on Ying-Yang Magic Symbol Arcane Magic Rune Magic My thoughts on Symbol Magic Dimentional Time Magic Space Magic My thoughs on Dimentional Magic Magery Realm Magic Mystic Magic My thoughts on Magery Magic Spiritual Mind Magic Evil Magic My thoughts on Spiritual Magic Unaligned Mirage Magic My thoughts on Mirage Magic Life Magic My thoughts on Life Magic Tips on magic - Human dodge skills Dodge skill list - The ideal Human character Sword users Hybrid sword users Martial art experts Hybrid fighting experts Gun users Hybrid gun users Magic users Hybrid mages The master magician - How to build your Mystic Spells to give to your Mystic Monster absorption The ultimate Mystic - How to build your Mec Mec skills Mec equipment - How to build your Monster Monster forms The ultimate Monster Where to absorb the skills - General tips on how to suceed in this game - Last boss guide - Character evaluations Main characters Humans Mystics Mecs Monsters - Well known tricks - Other tricks - The Dex Drive - Miscellaneous REVISION ======== V1.0 – 12/Apr/99 - First version. Everything is in but still missing a few things such as quotes and skills description. V1.2 – 14/Apr/99 - Updated the section about SaGa Frontier 2 now the game has been confirmed for a US release. V2.0 – 16/Apr/99 - Added the "General tips" section and fixed up more errors. Should be ready for public viewing. V3.0 - 13/May/99 - Tidied up my FAQ with line breaks so it's much easier to read. - Fixed up few skill descriptions with the help of the readers. - Fixed up the information on elemental barriers. - Added the "Last boss guide" section. - Added the "Wanted" section. - Various other stuff that I can't remember. V4.0 – 23/Jul/99 - Fixed mistake under "Infinite Credit Trick", a minimum of 10,000 Credits is required! (Nothing's ever cheap in this game) - Added "The Dex Drive" section with some fascinating facts about the characters you never got to play with! - Added the "About me" scetions. - Added more detailed explainations on Asellus' story, in her section under "Character evaluation". - The same goes with Emelia's story, also in her section. - Added stuff about the porno book under "Well known tricks". - Added an extra original trick! - Added an extra tip and guideline under "Combos". - Added data about a fourth barrier to the "elemental barriers". - Added the reason why not to bother with free Monster skills in the "How to build your Monster" section. - Just a couple more quotes. - Fixed more of those embarrassing errors. - Various little stuff. V4.1 – 7/Aug/99 - Not much, just changed my e-mail address. - Add a note to LifeSprinkler V4.2 – 8/Sept/99 - Added the exact requirement for evolving EnergyChain - Added some information on Woman and CommonMec, the glitch characters under "The Dex Drive" section. Care to check it out? - Added my alternate e-mail address. V4.3 – 27/Oct/99 - Added stuff on the SatelliteBeam skill and BitSystem under the Mec's section. As well as some stuff under Rabbit's evaluation. - Ah hah! So Type 5 Mec's special skill is the Graviton - Someone finally gave me the definition on what the bullets are for under "Gun techs"!! Wanna see what it all means? - Corrected some errors on CommonMec - Put some line breaks in V4.4 – 22/Dec/99 - Added more information on the Gameboy SaGa games - Added more stuff about Asellus' original hair color - Added the alternate way of reciting TimeLord as Asellus - Added an explaination on how the Defend command works in battle - Added the "Speed Skill Learning" trick CREDITS ======= * Square, for making this amazing game. * Nefdar, for his most excellent FAQ which inspired me for writing this FAQ. * Asura for his detailed FAQ on Monsters. And also Masterman for the info on the Mariche. * Thanks to everyone who wrote an FAQ on this game as well as everyone who submitted a trick or helped them on it. * Thanks to everyone who wrote an FAQ on Romancing SaGa 3, which helped me complete the game. * (aka Mega Man Legends) fot telling me about VermillionSand and LifeSprinkler. And thanks for chatting with me. * A MAJOR thanks to Dimetric Simone Houston for info on BoundShot, combos, Asellu's ending and Asellus' original hair color. (Ha ha ha!) * for the data on EnergyChain. * Drew Coon for the information on AsuraRevenge and elemental barriers. * Kaminari11@aol.com for various notes, comments and the awesome LightSword trick! * Eric Hohertz "Czar Dragon" for his information on Dex Drive data. * MichaelJH1@aol.com * Gary Hinger for his information on CommonMec and Woman. * MindWanderer for the information on the BitSystem, SatelliteBeam and Rabbit. * PrinceJoel for the explaination of bullet consumptions of gun techs. * Mec Cande for more notes on Asellus' hair and the alternate way of getting TimeLord in Asellus' quest. * BastionZM@aol.com for explaination on the "Defend" command in battle. * CaptainNemo7189@aol.com for the "Speed Skill Learning" trick WANTED ====== * Quotes quotes quotes! * Any helpful insights on Emelia's story (see below). * Any tips, tricks, gliches or just plain weird stuff. Don't be afraid to send them in! ABOUT ME ======== The reason that I am putting this section into my FAQ is that a number of people thought I was a female!!! Yes that's right, I'm a guy! (I'm kinda getting sick of people calling me "Miss" or "Girlfriend".) The reason why I'm using the name "Aya Brea" is that first, it goes well with my e-mail address. Second, I'm a huge fan of Aya Brea and Parasite Eve and finally, I'm known as "Aya Brea" by my friends on the net, so there's not much point in changing it. And besides, "Aya" is a unisex name! Now about me. I'm living in New Zealand, some might call it the "stinkin' hell hole" (a quote taken from this game.) I have just turned 17 and am currently doing a Commerce degree in Marketing in the university. (I was doing Computer Science but that was as boring as hell!) I like playing the PlayStation and some of my favourite games are SaGa Fronteir, Star Ocean: The Second Story, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and of course, Parasite Eve. I've enjoyed writing this FAQ very much so hopefully you've enjoyed reading it as well. Look for future FAQs from me. BTW, my ICQ # is 15185682 and you're welcome to come and have a chat with me sometime. INTRODUCTION ============ Hello and thanks for reading my SaGa Frontier Skill FAQ. This FAQ is designed to explain the use of most of the skills, how to learn them and which ones are the best for a certain situation. However, it's intentionally designed for a human but I will include special sections on various other races and list some of the more useful skills for them. Near the end of this FAQ, I will also include a character evaluation, which none of the existing FAQs had. This will include where to find a certain character, the skills they're best at and a bit about their backgrounds. There are also various miscellaneous stuff that I found quite interesting. So I hope you'll have a fun time reading this FAQ and I hope that you guys will find this useful. HISTORY OF SAGA =============== Another masterpiece RPG series made by Square. The SaGa series were largely accepted as a popular RPG in Japan for many years. For those of you who are not familiar with the past SaGas or the SaGa series itself, here's a short summary of it. Non-linearity is the strength (or weakness, depends on your taste) of the SaGa series. You are basically free to go anywhere you want and do what ever you want. Reduced linearity usually means reduced story and character development, and this is what really turns some people off, so if story development like those of Final Fantasy is your main priority in an RPG, then I suggest you to not even touch one of these games! SaGa series uses a rather unique levelling up system, it's similar to that of Final Fantasy 2 (Japan) in that you'll gain what you use during combat. Instead of a certain amount of experience points you gain after the battle which when a certain amount has been cumulated, will cause your character to go up a level. In SaGa, the experience are in the form of stat boosts (which depends on which game you're playing) can either gain you a direct stat boost (ie. raise in strength) or a proficiency level. You might gain stats after every fight but you might gain hardly anything at all. Also in SaGa, instead of running into a random fight every random numbers of steps you take, you'll be able to see he enemy as it comes at you and you can try to avoid it. GameBoy SaGa Believe it or not, SaGa Frontier is actually the seventh game in a series known as SaGa. (Or Romancing SaGa) The first 3 SaGa games were made for the GameBoy and appeared in the US as Final Fantasy Legend 1, 2 and 3. (I am not sure of what their original names were, so if you know, mail me and tell me.) Now I don't know what exactly possessed them (the publishers) to change the title of the game, but my best guess would be that they felt it would achieve better sales number by adopting the name of SaGa's cousin series Final Fantasy. Anyone who has played any of these GameBoy SaGas would probably call them "weird". These games consist of various races that have different powers and powers up differently, this feature had been retained in SaGa Frontier. (Yay!!) I have played FFL2 and 3, FFL2 is more of a FF/SaGa hybrid at 50% each and FFL3 is almost completely FF style. Anyway, FFL2 consisted of difference races, random skill/stats gain but had random encounters. FFL3 however, had a crap race system and has both random encounters AND experience! I guess it could be considered as an outcast. :) Romancing SaGa Romancing SaGa is the first "real" SaGa game IMO. It made its debut on the Super Famicom in Japan in 1991. Now I can not say for certain but I think this is the first game in the series to introduce the free scenario system, which when translated into the game, means multiple quests with different heros. There were 8 different characters to choose from, 4 male and 4 female. The characters range from a prince to a pirate to a thief and many more. Your initial stats are determined by various questions asked by the game before you start. You are allowed 6 characters in your team simultaneously and they can learn different skills depending on what type of weapon they use in battle. However, the equipment system still follows the traditional "body-part" system, meaning you can only equip a certain item on a certain body part, like a helmet on the head. This is also the first game to use the excellent spontaneous learning system. (Or light bulbs.) After the battle, your characters will gain stats directly. Also, conflicting schools of magic like that of SaGa Frontier is also in this game, some of the spell types made it into Frontier, such as Mirage and Evil. I have not given this game much of a go because I can't understand it... Romancing SaGa 2 Romancing SaGa 2 came out in Japan in 1993. The graphics had been greatly improved. I think there are 7 playable characters but it's kinda hard to tell since you can't select your hero from the beginning. The game uses a generation system sorta like Phantasy Star 3. When the king/queen dies, the main character switches to one of the king-queen's children. This game introduced the weapon/spell proficiency system. Weapons and their techs falls into a few types, they're given a value from 0 to above 40. The higher the value of the proficiency level, the more damage you'll do when you attack with that type of weapon or weapon tech. The same goes with magic, the more proficient you are with the magic type, the more powerful are your spells. After the battle, instead of gaining basic stats, your proficiency level might rise if you have used that type of weapon/spell during battle. This is, IMHO, less flexible than gaining straight stats because your when you switch your character to another weapon type, they're very likely to be proficiency level zero, which means they'll do VERY little damage even with a powerful weapon! The "free style item equip system" made its debut in this game. Also, you can seal your skills after you learn them but they'll be gone forever! Note that techs and magic are held by separate slots, 7 for techs and 7 for magic. I haven't played this game much either. Romancing SaGa 3 This is probably my second favourite SaGa game after Frontier. It came out in Japan in 1995. There are 8 characters again for this game, and can also customize their stats by the question the game asks you after you select the character. The weapon/spell proficiency is still here but they've made it better. You can seal your techs to equip it later, but only on one condition... You have to master it first. How do you do that? Well, when you first learn a tech, it will be in red in the menu. If you use it enough times, you'll master it so you can seal it to equip it later. Even better is that when you master a tech, ALL your party members will be able to equip it as well! There are also tons of party formations to play with. Each character's intros were also well done, using the RE2 style intermingling except it has 8 main characters! But the bad news is that, instead of having completely different quests like SaGa Frontier, RS3's quests are just slightly different. Each character has mostly the same storyline and same bosses, this hinders greatly on replay value of the game, no surprise that I've only clocked it once. SaGa Frontier Released in Japan in 1997 and came to the US shores a little later. This is the game this faq is all about so read on for all (well, most of anyway) your SaGa Frontier needs. One note worth mentioning is that the classic parchment world map was eliminated in this game, making it impossible to tell what the world of SaGa Frontier looks like. (No, Blue's RegionMap does not count because it's just a series of shapes and polygons stringed together, not parchment.) SaGa Frontier 2 It has been released in Japan recently. Although Square has EA behind them over in the US, no one can say for sure whether that this game will get published in the US, since the response for SaGa Frontier was not very good. I think I'll have to go jump off the building if they don't translate it. (Did you hear that Square? Now you're obligated to bring it over!) UPDATE! A US release of SaGa Frontier 2 had been confirmed. Keep your eyes peeled during the first few months of 2000. From what I've heard, the "free scenario system" has been stripped bare but will bring back the "generation system" that's been used in Romancing SaGa 2. Also, I was not pleased to see from the screenshots that the weapon/spell proficiency system is back again. Weapon types includes Swords, Axes, Spears, Staffs, Bows (YES!) and Fighting. The combos are back too but I am not sure if they're customizable. You can only have a maximum of 4 characters in your party. The game looks cute though, kinda reminds me of FFT. STARTING THE GAME ================= Let's start with the basics! Upon starting the game and choosing your character, you'll be able to make a new System's Data File. You don't have to do it if you don't want to and it won't hinder or affect your game in any way. But I recommend in doing that because after completing all 7 quests, you'll get a few cool bonuses and you get to meet the programmers. (But most of them are boring anyway so.....) The game will ask for your stats such as name and star sign, I don't know what effect this has (or anything at all) so just put in anything you want. Also, it's important that you wait 'til the System's Data screen to come up after viewing the character's ending to update your System Data. I assume that you're familiar with the button configuration of this game because I will not waste my time explaining it, it's not too complicated so take your time to learn them. One important note, the Quick Save option (pressing the Triangle and R2) is EXTREAMLY handy in this game and it only takes a second, you should get into the habit of using this often! But remember, NEVER push the restart button or turn the power off when you're using QS, it'll erase it! So before you turn off the power, use the normal save option in the menu. MENU ==== Pressing the Square button on the field screen will get you to the main menu. The 3 vertical columns represent your 3 teams, each having 5 slots to fill your team members with. The window on the right is your command window and the little one below it is the miscellaneous window, containing information such as the current place (or Region) you're currently in and your credits (money). These are the commands: Status Item Position Equip Weapon Equip Ability Config Save ---Status--- Contains all the important information about a certain character in your current party. On the top left corner is your character's picture, as well as a few basic stats: * Name: The... name of the party member. You can usually regconize them by their picture. * Sex: The gender of your character, I don't think it affects the game in anyway. Note a Monster or Mec has "Neutral" gender. * Race: Very important as how to develop the character. Note for a Mec, this will tell you which type they are and for a Monster, it's the form that they're currently possessing. The following 4 stats are what I call "power points". * HP: Hit Points. Measure the physical endurance a character has. When this drops to zero, the character will fall unconscious and will be unable to act and is vulnerable to attack. Each attack that hits an unconscious character will cause them to loose an LP. (See below) An unconscious character can be healed by any healing methods. Your HP will be fully refilled once a fight is over. * LP: Life Points. The number of "lives" your character has before they "die". You can loose these when you get hit while your character is unconscious. (See above) Once you loose them all (which is not very easy to do) then your character is considered "dead". They'll still occupy a slot in your team but all their power points (HP, WP etc.) will be zero! And they'll be removed from your team during combat. (Meaning that they'll not be there.) However, you can "revive" a "dead" character by staying at an inn or using a SancturyStone, anything that refills all of your character's power points. If your main character runs out of these then it's Game Over! Be careful because some enemy attack can drain LP directly, also some skills will also drain LP. The first number is your current LP and the second number is your maximum LP. * WP: Waza (Japanese for technique) Points, also known as Weapon Points. These are the potential your character has in releasing a powerful technique. Each time you use a skill/technique that has a WP cost, the cost of that skill will be subtracted from your current WP. When your WP gets too low, you will no longer be able to use that skill so use these sparingly! These will NOT refill after a battle. You can refill your WP by staying at an inn. The first number indicates your current WP and the second number is your maximum WP. * JP: Jutsu (Japanese for magic) Points, there are no English equivalent so this is also known in the States as the Ja-something Points. The potential a character has in casting magic spell. Like WP, each time you cast a spell, the cost is deducted from your current JP value, when it gets too low, you'll be unable to cast some/all spells. These also will NOT refill after battle. You can refill these by lodging at an inn etc. Again, the first number is your current JP and the second is your maximum JP. On the left hand side of the window is your character's "hidden" statistics. These stats wont be shown in battle but they all affect your character's actions in a certain way, so they're just as important as your basic stats, although some are more important than others: * Strength (STR): The power of your character. Affects the ability your character has at inflicting damage with physical attack and skills. Perhaps the most important skill for your Human swords and fighting characters. * Quickness (QUI): The agility of your character. Affects your ability to dodge an attack (indicated by the pop-up "miss") and how fast your character will act during battle. (If they have high QUI, they'll act early.) It is sometimes advantageous to act later in the round. * Intelligence (INT): Affects the speed at which the character learns magic with the help of "gifts" and the effectiveness of mechanical weapons (cannons/lasers). I think this may also affect how fast your character will learn gun techs. Kaminari11@aol.com tolf me that INT also affects the speed where you learn physical attacks... not I'm not too completely sure about that. * Will (WIL): The accuracy of weapon attacks. Also the higher the WIL, more damage can be done when using a gun tech or a spell, as well as the effectiveness of a spell (such as the death effect of the Arcane Magic "Death"). Finally, the higher the WIL scores, the more likely you'll achieve additional status effect of some skills (ie. The petrify effect of Cockatrice, the Stun effect of AirThrow and the Palsy effect of Blizzard.) The most important statistic of a magic/gun user! (#see below) * Psychic (PSY): The resistance your character has of avoiding negative status alignments. Less useful than most stats, but very helpful occasionally. Also affects the speed you recover from status (except for Stone as it cannot be recovered from naturally). A character having high PSY is virtually immune to negative status! I am not sure if PSY resists Feint effects. (#see below) * Vitality (VIT): It's supposed to be the resistance towards attack and the Sleep status. I haven't quite figured it out yet but I think that this will act with your character's Defence values against enemy skills. (Not physical attacks) A character having high VIT will take significantly less damage than someone with low VIT against an enemy skill such as Stampede, but remember, your character's Defence will play a roll in this too! * Charm (CHA): Perhaps the most useless stat of all. This affects your character's ability of evading a charm attack, as well as how successful your character is at attempting to charm an enemy. Helpful in rare occasions so just don't bother too much with this. * Defence (DEF): The resistance your character has against physical attacks, the higher your Defence, the less damage you take from physical attacks. You'll increase your DEF values by wearing any type of armor. A monster has inherited natural DEF value but all DEF values of a Human/Mystic/Mec is artificial, meaning a character other than a Monster will have zero DEF if all armor had been removed. # Something is leading me to believe that PSY affects your character's ability to cause status (sorta like how CHA affects your evade and hit % of Charm attacks.) I have to check on that..... On the right side of the character status window will either be the current equipment or skills equipped on the character. You can press up/down to alternate between the two and pressing O will take you to the Equip Weapon/Ability option. (Explained below) NOTE: A human has a bar-like thing on the upper-right of the window. This deals with mastering techs explained later. ---Item--- This option will show all of the items you have collected during your journey. Pressing the select button will sort the items by type. Pressing Up/Down will move the cursor up or down. Pressing Left/Right will act like the PageUp/PageDown keys on the keyboard. The bottom window displays the characteristics of a certain item, if any, when you put the cursor over the item's name. You can carry as many different items as you want but you can only carry a maximum number of 99 of one item. Select the item twice will use the item. Each item has a symbol next to its name, these indicates the nature (or type) of the object. A sword symbol indicates the item is either a sword or Katana, a gun symbol means the item is either a gun or cannon, a bottle is an item and a ring is an accessory. All other items are self-explanatory. If the symbol looks like Claire's "Vaccine Case" from RE2 then that's a Mec circuit board. ---Position--- Selecting this option will take you to the 3 vertical columns containing your party members. You can select a member and put them into another column/slot by pressing the O button again on with the cursor on the desired spot. If the desired spot is already being occupied then those two characters will "swap places". Note: A character on the top of the column is more vulnerable to attack (meaning the enemy is more likely to select that member as their target) and this vulnerability decreases as you move down a column. So it's a good idea to put your weak characters on the bottom slot so they won't get killed in one hit like Nina from BOF3! ---Equip Weapon--- Two windows will show up when you select this. The left-hand window indicates what equipment a character is currently possessing. You'll immediately notice that this window has been divided into 2 sections if your character is a Human or Mystic, indicated by the red highlighting above the bottom section. You may click on a slot (whether it's empty or not) and another window containing the equippable items. The window on the right shows your character's statistic. Some items when equipped, may boost a certain stat, when you equip one of these items one or more of these stats may increase, indicated by a color change. If it's green then that statistic has risen, if it's red then that stat had fallen. The first 4 slots are the items your characters will be holding on their hands. You can place a weapon (sword, gun, cannon), an item (Cure, MagicStone) or a shield. This is what I call the "free style item equip system" because you can equip any combination of the above mentioned items. (ie. I could have my character equipped with 4 swords or 4 shield or any combinations in between.) Note: If you don't equip an item, you'll be unable to use any items, even if they're in your inventory! (Unless you have a BackPack that is.) Note: I do not know what good does equipping multiple shields do. If the multiple shields can each block a different attack then you can block against any of them without any problem, but I do not know if your evading rate will increase if you equip multiple numbers of the same shield. Um... I've been told that equipping multiple shields WILL increase evade %s. Do it if you to (or if you cannot think of anything else you'd rather equip). The next 4 slots will be the equipment worn on the body of the character, in other words, armor. You can wear only one item per type. (ie, you cannot wear 2 shirts etc...) Types of armor include armor, shirt, suit, gloves, boots and helmet. If you choose to wear a suit (which is a good idea) then you won't be able to fit in any armor, helmet, gloves or boots, meaning you can only wear a shirt to go with it. On top of that, there're accessories. They tend to have low DEF ratings but has some other effects. (Such as a stat boosts, built-it skills or protection vs. certain type of attacks) For a Monster, you're given only 4 slots. These are for equipping accessories only, as a Monster cannot use any other items. For a Mec, you'll get 8 slots. However, unlike Humans and Mystics, a Mec can equip anything including multiple numbers of the same item!!! (ie, my Mec can equip 3 CyberSuits.) As for an added bonus, any items equipped on a Mec will give a stat boost!! Some items will increase stats more than others so try your hand on as many equipment as you can to find the ones which gives the highest boost! Mecs are also the only race who and use the special Mec circuit boards. (Humans can equip them too, but they won't have any effect!) There are many types of boards, each gives different stat boosts and have different effects on a Mec. (Some of them give the Mec extra skill slots while others allow them to use a certain skills when equipped with the right skill.) Note: Some items can not be removed. The names of these items are highlighted in red for Humans and Mystics or Purple for a Mec. ---Equip Ability--- This will allow you to equip, de-equip or exchange your character's skills. The left-hand window contains all the skills your character is currently being equipped with. The right hand window is the menu containing the type of skills your character has learnt. They line up like this: Sword Gun Fighting Magic Special Dodge Seal If you select Magic, another menu containing the magic type will appear and you'll have to select one of these to access your magic list. If you have not learnt a certain type of skill or your race permits you from using them, then that option will be in grey and you will not be able to access it. To equip a technique, first select the slot you want the skill to go in. (Doesn't matter which one.) Then select the type of skill you wish to equip and another window containing all the skills you have access to and select the desired one. Easy! After you've learnt a number of attacks, it's important that you "Seal" some of them because you may not learn any more if you have no empty slots. Select the skill you wish to seal and select "seal" on the menu, that skill will then be put into the correct skill type list, which you can equip later. A Human has 8 slots and they have access to all but Special (except under certain circumstances.) A Mystic has only 4 slots for them to equip magic (which is no where near enough!) and underneath it are their 3 Mystic Weapon (Sword, Glove, Boots) skills, these skill CANNOT be sealed! (Note a Mystic can have 3 additional techs absorbed from enemies but they can be used in combat only so they can't be accessed from here..) A Monster will also have 8 slots. The skill in the last slot has a different color and is used to exchange skills with enemies. A Mec has a number of skills depends on their model. Circuit boards may add additional slots, to a maximum of 8. Mecs can use only Special skills. Skills, skill types, racial abilities and how to learn certain skills will be explain later in this FAQ. ---Config--- This option allows you to customize various stuff such as sound and color. The first thing I do when I start a new game is to change the text color, I can't stand those ugly orange fonts!!!! ---Save--- You can save you game here. As well as the Quick Save option. Note: From what I've heard, the Japanese version of the game contains an extra option "Combo". I think you can put in your favourite combo and if you're using all the right skills in combat, the game will prioritize that combo, with a 100% rate of success or somethin' like that. Note2: According to Eric Hohertz, the implementation of the "Combo" option was planned in the US version, as the file was found in the CD, but they somehow didn't get around to it. What a shame. :( THE WORLD ========= The world of SaGa Frontier is divided into "Regions". Each "Region" may be a town, a country, a planet or even another plane of existence! Because there're no World Maps in SaGa Frontier, it's almost impossible to tell what exactly a Region is, how big it is or which Region is closest to it. You can travel between the Regions on a Region Ship. These are airplanes, spaceships, ferries or any other unusual transportation mediums. Region Ships are usually free of charge and there is a port in every town approachable by Region Ships. Each region has a unique theme or belongs to a specific time era or culture. For example, Kyo is very Japanese, Chateau Aiguille is very Gothic and Manhattan is very modern! There are 2 different maps in a Region, the area map and the field map. You can do very little in a field map and not all Regions have field maps. This is very much like the World Map in BOF3 or Wild Arms. When you walk on to an area you may enter, the name of that area will appear on the screen. Pressing the O button will bring you to the area map. That means some Regions have multiple accessible areas. Take Manhattan for example, you may access "Port", "Shopping Mall", "C.T.C Building" and "Central Gate" from the field map. Most Regions (like Koorong) however, have no field maps so you can navigate them easier. The RegionMap Blue has an item called a RegionMap. This will work with Blue's "Gate" spell to teleport him to a Region he has already visited. You can use this by choosing "Item" in the menu and select the "RegionMap" twice. This will then take you to a new screen with various cool looking floating icons, each one of these represents a Region. They're arranged in groups. Pressing left or right will bring up a new group of icons and pressing up or down will cycle through the icons, pressing O will teleport you there. The best thing about the RegionMap is that you can use this almost anywhere! So the next time you worked your way through the dungeon only to discover that you have to climb your way out again, you know what to do! (Well, when you're playing as Blue anyway.) BATTLE ====== Unlike most other RPGs where a random battle happens without much warning, you can actually see them coming and therefore avoid enemies in SaGa Frontier. You will see enemies running around in some places. If you get close, they'll chase after you. If you happen to touch one of them, you'll engage in combat. On a new screen, you can see the enemies you have to fight. On the top of the screen is a pink colored window that shows the names of the characters in your first team. Pressing left or right will let you switch teams. You can move the cursor over a character's name by pressing up/down and pressing the Triangle button will move them to the back row. Although I never use it, I think the back row is immune to some attacks. When ready, press O and this will start the fight! SaGa Frontier is the first Square title in years to not use the famed ATB, so combat is more traditional, similar to that of Suikoden or BOF3. You can give each character an action at the beginning of the round and during the round that character will carry out that action. Pressing up or down in the command window will scroll through the list of actions, pressing left or right will cycle through all types of available actions such as changing the weapon (and the skills associated with it), using items or magic. Pressing R1 will make your character defend. A defending character will take reduced damage from attacks. Pressing the O button will select the desired action. Now enter the command for your next character. The order in which your characters act is based on their QUI scores as well as certain amount of randomness. If a character is some how disabled (stunned, unconscious etc.) then their actions will be eliminated. The order in which your character will act is very important when it comes to building combos. (See below.) NOTE! BastionZM@aol.com sent in the explaination for the Defend command and the switching row option prior to combat. Here's what he has to say: "I saw that one part when you describe the pink screen before battle, and the different positions. I didn't get that for a while either, but it has to do with when you hit R1 and use Defend. If you're in the front position when you use Defend, it won't work. You'll just jump back into the real position. Then when you're in the real position and use defend you're character will stop moving and actually defend. So the pink position thing is so you can start out the battle with someone defending, instead of wasting a turn jumping into the real position." :) When the round ends, a new screen comes up with each character's HP, LP, WP and JP. Pressing any button will take you back to battle. Occasionally, numbers will pop up above a character after an action done by an enemy or party member. A white number indicates damage taken, a green number means the target gained HP and red numbers means a lost in LP. If your character rolls away from the attack, then that character has equipped a Dodge skill specific for dodging that attack. A "click" sound means that a shield has blocked the attack. (If you think that's bad, you should hear the brain crushing "beep" from Romancing SaGa 3!) If "miss" comes up, then the target had been missed by the attacker, which is determined by the WIL of the attacker and the QUI of the target. If your entire team falls unconscious (or is petrified) or your hero looses all his/her LP, then you're wiped out and it's Game Over! If all enemies are defeated (or ran away... or in some unusual circumstances), then the battle is over and you won! Then you'll be rewarded for you hard work. Your Monsters and Mecs will be able to absorb enemy Monsters and Mec, if you fought any, by selecting the name of the enemy you wished to absorb. Then your Human characters will get their statistic boost depends on the skills they used, as well as any new gun techs or magic they have learnt. Then your Mystics will get their share and finally you'll get any items or money the enemies dropped. After battle, every character in your party that was not involved in the fight will gain some of their lost LP, WP and JP back from resting. Everyone in your other teams will gain back about 5WP, 5JP and 1LP per fight. Because of this, you can gain back to your ful stats without even staying at an inn, very handy in long dungoens. Note Mecs will not gain any LP back this way. Negative Status Ailments Some attack specializes in crippling your characters by inflicting a bad status, these will hinder your characters but you may also use status attacks to your advantage. If used correctly, you may effectively debilitate them or eliminates them completely. Negative status includes: * FEINT Also known as Death. Not a real status of course but many attacks have this effect, this also takes place when a character's HP drops to 0. A feinted ally can be revived but a feinted enemy is dead. * VENOM Also known as Poison. This will cause the target to loose about 10% of their maximum HP each round. * PALSY Also known as Paralyze. A paralyzed character cannot act. * STUN Looses the ability to perform an action in that round. * BLIND Hit rate of physical attack decreases. * STONE Also known as Petrify. Cannot act or take damage. A petrifies enemy will be eliminated. If all your characters are petrified, then it's Game Over. * SLEEP Cannot act. * ANGRY Cannot use any techs or magic. They can use only most basic action and these may or may not take place, having the effect of Blue Mess as well. * MESS is divided into 3 degrees: 1) BLUE MESS You may enter a command for a character affected by Blue Mess but it may or may not take effect. 2) YELLOW MESS You may enter a command for a character affected by Yellow Mess but it may affect either the party or the enemy. 3) RED MESS The character affected will perform a random action of either your party member or the enemies. * CHARM Perform an action in favour of the opposite party. (For some reason, my character keeps on using Cures on the enemy... weird!) Note Angry, Mess and Charm is like a triangle. A character affected by ether one of them is immune to the other two. Curing Bad Status Fortunately, most bad status can be cured. I do not recommend curing every status you come across because if you keep on doing that you'll never get any hits in! Especially against bosses, just take care of the most serious ones like Charm or Red Mess. Also, when you get to the last boss, your PSY scores should be high enough to avoid most status and even if you did catch a cold, you'll most likely to get rid of if the immediately the next round. Also, equipping accessories like PurpleEyes will avoid many status as well. In normal fights, you may feel free to ignore the status but you should win the fight fast. The cures are listed below, note that it's possible that I have not seen all the skills in the game so I might be missing out a few. FEINT: Any healing skills, items or magic VENOM: Cure items, SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal, Heal, StarlightHeal PALSY: SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal STUN: None! BLIND: SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal, Heal STONE: Anti-Stone, Grail, Vortex SLEEP: Getting hit, SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal ANGRY: SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal MESS: SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal, Heal CHARM: SnakeOil, Grail, Vortex, MagicHeal Note: This is VERY important, SnakeOil will NOT cure STONE, and neither will MagicHeal!!!!!!!! Positive Status Not all status are bad, there are many helpful ones when used, may cause your character to gain HP each round, or make your characters do much more damage or double your character's actions! It's a very good idea to spend the first round using these when facing a big boss, where you'll gain the benefit of these the most. Note all positive status will be removed by Vortex!!! Elemental barriers Since this is in the manual, I feel obligated to put it in. There are three way in which a character can activate this. The first is when a character is attacked by an elemental attack (Fire, Ice or Lightning), an energy barrier of the corresponding element will surround that character. That character himself is immune to the effect but whenever an enemy attacks him with a short-ranged attack, the enemy will take damage from the barrier. The barrier will wear off with time. Also, a character affected by that barrier will take significantly less damage from elemental attacks of hat type. I don't know if your can activate more than one barrier at one time this way. Note elemental magic will not cause a barrier but most Monster skills and elemental cannons will! The second way is to absorb a "Barrier" ability as a Monster from another Monster. This skill cannot be used in battle and the command for it simply won't appear but your Monster automatically has the barrier and it will last all through the fight. It's also a free skill. You *CAN* have more than one barrier at a time (thanks to Drew Coon for that) by absorbing more than one skills but your Monster will counter with only one attack (probably the one occupying the higher slot in your skill menu). However, the resistance towards the elements still applies. The third way is to use an accessory during battle. You will have to use it in battle to achieve the effect, just wearing it won't do anything and the accessory is then consumed. Those accessories can be bought in Manhattan or picked up from enemies. There is also a fourth type of barrier that I'm sure that you've all came across, and that's the "Fear" barrier used by various undead enemies. Upon making contact with this dangerous barrier, the character will immediately be affected by a Red Mess status, very deadly! Your Monsters can also gain the power of this barrier by absorbing a skill called CounterFear from enemy Monsters that uses it (Liches are common enemies that uses it, while some other rare enemies have it too, but it tend to turn you into an undead). Unfortunately, characters of other races cannot gain the power of this type of barrier. IMO, this skill is better for the enemy than it is for you... RACES ===== All characters in the world of SaGa Frontier belongs to one of the races, the races includes Humans, Mystics, Monsters and Mecs. Each of these races has strengths and weaknesses, but are all powerful (or useful) in their own way. A different race has its own racial abilities and has to be built up in a different way. You will meet up with these races during your journey and they may be willing to join you. You should try out different races when you first start the game to find the one you feel most comfortable with. (And it's a Human most of the time.) ---Humans--- Humans are arguably the best race in SaGa Frontier because they have the most damage potential as well as versatile skills. A Human starts out very weak but is very likely to be the most powerful race in the long run. A Human can choose from four types of skills to learn from, each having their advantages. They can be swords, fighting, guns or magic. Occasionally, when a Human is exposed to a dangerous attack, they may discover the nature of the attack so to prevent the attack (or a similar one) at a later date. That Human has then learnt a dodge tech. Humans are the only race that has the ability of instantly learning a new sword, fighting or dodge skill in the midst of battle. Guns and magic techs can be learned after the battle if you have used an attack or magic of that category. All Human techs will be explained in detail below. When a Human equips at least 6 physical skills (any sword, fighting or gun skills will qualify) without any magic then they're considered a "master" in physical attacks and a crown will appear on the bar to the upper right corner of their status screen. Any physical skills when then cost 1WP less which is really useful since some skills will be free of cost! Like wise, if you equip at least 6 spells without any physical techs then they'll become a "master" in magic and their JP cost will also be lowered by 1! To build up a Human character, they must participate in a fight and survive. Then character will then improve on the skills he/she used during the fight. Each type of skill will increase statistics that's appropriate at using the skill more effectively. For example, you won't gain INT if you used a sword throughout the fight, because you don't need to be intelligent to use a sword effectively, but on the other hand, you're very likely to gain STR because the damage you do is dependant on your STR ratings. There also seems to be a "learning curve" of some kind if you change your character's attack type, they'll pick up the stats of the new skill slowly but this should last only for a few fights so feel free to change your character's attack types. The stats gained will be listed below: HP: All. But physical attacks seem to increase them the most. LP: You can not increase this at all! WP: Swords, Fighting, and Guns. JP: Magic only! * STR: Swords and Fighting. QUI: All will increase Quickness so don't worry if your character specializes in Magic or some slow skills. INT: Guns, but Magic increases this the most. WIL: All, because it affects all types of attacks. Guns seem to increase this the most. PSY: Guns and Magic. VIT: Swords and Fighting. CHA: Gaining this is more random than anything so you may get a CHA boost for anything you do, but don't expect to get this boost very often. It's not very useful anyway! DEF: You gain DEF by equipping better armor! * This is really weird! Doll got Charmed once and she used a Cure on the enemy and the battle ended in the same round. At the end, she gained JP!!! So is it possible to gain JP through using items?? Note that you do not need to use an action of that category to gain experience, all you need to do is to _attempt_ the action! A situation where this applies is if one of your characters got rid of all the enemies before another character can act. Similarly, you can learn a new gun tech or magic by attempting to use it. It's a cheap trick but hey, it works so I'm not complaining! Also because of this, it's a good idea to get your slower characters into guns and magic since they're so slow, they almost never gets to hit so it's unlikely that they'll do very well with swords or fighting. If your Human character does nothing in a fight, (ie, Defend) then they'll still gain stats. They'll most often get HP but occasionally WIL or VIT or something like that will pop up. I believe this is random though. I do not recommend this but if you want to mix multiple mediums during the fight, you can end up gaining the stats from both categories, but it seems that the chance for you to gain stats will be halved. Similarly, you can learn a new spell and a new gun tech after the battle (I did) but it's very likely you'll get nothing! Still, you're more likely to gain anything by fighting more powerful enemies. Another point I need to make is the experience you get after a boss fight. So you'd expect your characters to level up like crazy after a though boss?? Well, I'm sorry to say it but it will not happen that way, it's actually quite the opposite! Most of the time your characters will get hardly anything!!! I don't know what causes this but it's perhaps because your character will most likely to mix techs (see above) in a boss fight so your chance of gaining stat will be reduced. So just don't expect to get too much from a boss. ---Mystics--- Mystics have a lot in common with Humans only not as good. A Mystic resembles an exceptionally beautiful Human, they have a very long lifespan and they actually get prettier with age!!! Actually, a Mystic has more in common with a Vampire since they sleep in coffins and their skin tend to be pale. Also, Mystics has blue blood! Like Humans, a Mystic can improve his skill after a battle is over, thus gaining a stat boost. Unfortunately, they can only gain CHA, HP, WP , JP and they do tend to get them slowly. They can gain other stats by absorbing monsters with their racial abilities MysticSword, MysticGlove and MysticBoots. These skills when used in battle have one of three effects: 1) Also the most common effect. The skill will do damage to the enemy (usually low), this is CANNOT be used in a combo. If the enemy is killed by this attack then they'll be absorbed. 2) A critical hit! This will do no damage but will absorb the enemy instantly but it does not happen very often. 3) Instant death effect. The skill eliminates the enemy but they are NOT absorbed! Also, an enemy killed by this can not be used for an Absorption by a Monster or Mec after the battle. You can distinguish the absorbed and instant death effect by just looking at the enemy. If they disappear then it's the instant death effect but if their image gets dragged into the Mystic, then they're absorbed. An absorbed enemy will give your Mystic a stat boost as well as a new skill that will appear under the skill. This skill appears in battle only so you might not know what skills you got until you get into a fight again. The same enemy will give you different skills (but not different stat boost) when absorbed with a different Mystic Weapon (ie, a Suzaku will give FireBreath when absorbed with Sword, HellWing with Glove and TitasWave with Boots.) If you use a Mystic Weapon to absorb a new enemy, then the initial absorption will be lost (both the skill and the stat boost) while being replaced by the new monster. You can see what enemies are absorbed by the weapons at the Equip Ability screen. Just move the cursor over to the desired skill and the name of the enemy absorbed will be in the bottom window. Some enemies like Mecs and Humans can not be absorbed, therefore only the effect 1 and 3 can be achieved when using the Mystic Weapon. When you first recruit a Mystic, you may find that they're missing some of their Mystic weapon (or in the case of Mesarthim, missing all the weapons!) but you don't need to fear because they can gain the rest of their weapons through fighting, like Humans. Just use whatever in the fight and you might get a new weapon after the fight. To wrap it up, Mystics can also use magic. All Mystics has the natural gift for Mystic magic and they can learn new magic the same way as does Humans. Unfortunately, they get only 4 slots to equip any magic, which is never enough! Few Mystics (TimeLord, Zozma, Rei) are well known for the fact that they can use unique (not to mention powerful) magic types, which can be a whole lot of fun! Mystics can equip anything a Human can but they can not learn weapon techs like Humans so equip them carefully. I usually equip weapons that give a stat boost or built-in ability, such as the RuneSword. Most Mystics have their own stinkin' armor called MysticMail that can not be removed so concentrate on a high DEF instead of giving them accessories. Note Dr. Nusakan and Mesarthim can equip heavy armor or suits so you can equip them like Humans, they're about as good as a Mystic can get. Give Mystics a try, but when you play the game a few times, you'll probably find them boring! (I do!) ---Mecs--- Mecs are robots, Cyborgs or androids made by man for combat or research purposes. Mecs are divided into 8 types. Type 1 and 8 are unique body-types and the others are more common types. Each type has their advantages and can use some abilities unknown to other Mecs. A Mec is given 8 slots to equip WHATEVER they want!! This can includes multiple suits of armors, which will give them very high DEF scores. However, a Mec has 1 to 4 non-removable items, depend on their serial type, these can be Mec bodies (which will give them a low DEF), unique weapons and items allowing them to use special abilities. Every item when equipped will give your Mec a statistic boost, which is also the only way your Mecs can gain stats. But the stats a Mec gain is often quite unbalanced. I found it very hard to gain a reasonable PSY, VIT and INT score. When equipping a Mec, try using the weapon that gives the best stat boosts. A Mec can also equip the various types of "Boards" which will give them a stat boost and it will work with some of the Mec skills to give your Mec the use of some new skills. The most important stats for a Mec are HP, STR, QUI, INT and WIL. Mec skills are hard to come by. First you must fight a robotic enemy of some type and after the battle, the game will ask you if you want to absorb the enemy Mec with your Mec, very much like a Monster. If you absorb a skill you already have, you'll get the message "Recharged" which means that all your WP is refilled. Also, when you absorb a new skill, it goes straight to your "Special Ability" list in your Equip Ability menu, so you have to equip it before you can use it. Mecs gets a limited number of skill slots, which depends on their type. Circuit boards can increase the number of slots your Mecs has available, to a maximum of 8 slots. Mecs cannot use magic and have no JP. They probably don't need them. Mecs can be extremely powerful if equipped with the right items and good skills but since most likely to gain nothing from a fight, I'd not recommend using Mecs too much because your other units can use some of the experience for winning the battle. ---Monsters--- Monsters are what's at the heart of every RPG but they're a little different in SaGa Frontier. Just because a character is a Monster doesn't mean that he's bad, they're just another race like Humans and Mystic. A Monster will be given eight slots to fill with abilities. The skills they already own will be listed up the top and you'll probably notice that the last slot is highlighted in purple. Each time you win a fight, you'll be given a choice to whether or not you want to absorb the enemy Monster, if you fought one that is. If you do, your Monster will gain a new skill from the enemy Monster and it will end up on the last slot. (The game will choose a skill from the enemy Monster randomly. If it ends up giving you a skill you already have, you'll get the message "Couldn't absorb anything"). You can also absorb Mystic enemies (from their Mystic weapon perhaps) and you'll sometimes get one of their nifty Mystic spells. Now you can move that skill around and preferably to an empty slot up the top because if you absorb a Monster with your last slot filled, you'll lose that skill! If you have all eight of your slots fill, swap the skills around and put your most useless skill or the one you don't want in the last slot so the next time you absorb something you might get something better. It's very important to move your skills around often so you can accumulate all the important skills to build your perfect Monster. Don't get lazy because you may let many excellent skills slip away! Also note that whenever your Monster absorbs another skill, their WP and JP are refilled, very handy! I hope you got that. I tried doing an example but it sounded senile so I didn't, sorry. After absorbing a new skill from an enemy Monster, your Monster have a chance of morphing into another Monster race, depends on the skills you got and the skills you already have. Absorbing a new skill can mean your Monster might morph into another Monster who uses that skill. The weaker Monsters are very easy to become, they often have only one key skill so if you get that one, you're almost guaranteed to morph into that Monster. The more powerful Monsters will have more key skills and they're very hard to absorb, so to if you wish to become a certain powerful Monster, you can have an easier time if you get all the skills from another Monster. If your Monster does morph, and there's a good chance that they will, your Monster will take on the statistics of the new form. Usually the Monsters you meet later in the game will have fairly high stats but are very hard to become because their key skill/s are so hard to get. So if you became a Kraken for absorbing say, Maelstrom, you'll take up their STR, VIT, WIL etc, doesn't matter what your Monster used to be. Their WP, JP, LP and HP will also follow suit. If your Monster tries to become a very powerful race of Monsters then they'll assume a weaker from of it, indicated by a "Jr." after its race name. However, their HP can be improved. Each Monster has a base maximum HP, this is a constant like their STR and other scores. Each time you absorb a skill that you've never had before, your maximum HP is raised by 4. If your Monster morphs, these "add-on" maximum HP will be transferred to your new form. So if your Monster absorbed every enemy you come across, they can become very powerful with high HP, but Humans are better IMO and they take less effort to build up. Also, it's possible to gain skills you've had before, in that case, you get that skill back with no HP bonus. Monsters are the only race with natural Defence scores (these are also depend on the current form of your character), however, since Monsters can not equip anything except accessories, they'll often turn out to have less DEF scores than your other units. Since they can only equip accessories, try equip a variety of them that protects vs some attack because the immunity of certain attacks are more valuable than the 2 or so DEF increase of a slightly stronger accessory. I usually don't bother with Monsters but I do recommend you give them a try because if you have the patience to build up a Monster with a solid form and absorb so good skills, your Monster will be very powerful! I will add in a guide to how to build the (almost) perfect Monster. Note Monsters generally can not use magic but there are a few exceptions because a Monster does have JP, a LOT of JP!!! Some magic can be absorbed by your Monster, such as RavaShot (that's right, Evil magic!) or VaporBlast, but they're very rare! Also, if you get Kylin on your team, you'll get all of the Space magic! Another way of having your Monsters use magic is to use the built-in tech from some accessories, (such as the PurpleEye, which casts PhantasmShot.) COMBOS ====== The best new feature in SaGa Frontier is the ability to chain together 2 or more attacks (to a maximum of 5) of your choice to form your own custom combos. You may mix and match skills and abilities in combos but to some extent, a normal attack (such as a sword slash) cannot be comboed. Actions that qualify as combo linkers (with few exceptions) includes any sword, fighting, gun or magic tech, any Monster or Mec skills, Mystic weapon attacks (not the weapons themselves but the attack you get when absorbing an enemy), offensive item uses, built-in attacks and cannon blasts. Basically, any action that causes a window to appear showing its name. A combo will occur when one character who acts after another when they're both using attacks that are complementary, a level 2 combo will occur. Instead of combining their attacks together like that of Chrono Trigger or Phantasy Star 4, each element in the combo is done right before the last element finishes and the damage occur after the last action. Attacks chained in combos will do more damage than those same attacks done normally. I can not give the exact mechanics for combos but a level 2 combo seemed to work so that the damage of the most powerful attack is doubled and the damage of the other attack is added to it. I haven't got a clue what higher level combos work. You can add attack before the first action or after the second action to link in another character's attack, a level 3 combo will form. You can build a level 5 combo that way involving all your characters which will certainly make you wow! Most attacks are complementary, meaning that most attacks can combo with almost every other attack. Some are not though, no matter how many time they occur adjacent to the other, a link will not form! A good example is Tres Flores which will ONLY go after MoonlightCut. The order which you do the attacks also matters. Some attacks goes only before or after another one, I cannot think of an example right now. This is important as how you want to combine your attacks so the most linkable attacks are manipulated to the ends so they can link more attacks together. For example, I have a four character party each of them is doing: Haze-to-Wheel, RisingNova, SkyTwister and LifeSprinkler. The following orders of action may occur, considering that the enemy does not act between the characters. (A – is a link, a space meaning the attacks cannot link.) Haze-to-Wheel-LifeSprinkler-RisingNova-SkyTwister 1 x LV4 SkyTwister Haze-to-Wheel-LifeSprinkler-RisingNova 1 x LV3 Haze-to-Wheel-SkyTwister LifeSprinkler-RisingNova 2 x LV2 SkyTwister RisingNova-LifeSprinkler Haze-to-Wheel 1 x LV2 See, you'd want to make your characters act in the order of the first example, which does the most damage. It's a good idea to plan out your actions so that the fastest character will do the first action and try having the following actions done by characters with decreasing QUI scores. This is not fool proof though, sometimes the game will not link even if you have 2 attacks right next to another. Here are some guidelines on combos, these must be met most of the time: 1) If an enemy acts between 2 complementary attack made by your characters then the link will be broken, obviously. 2) If your Humans sees light bulbs (ie, they learn something) the link will be broken. 3) All your attacks must target the same enemy to link. 4) The combo will be single targeted unless an element in the combo is a multiple target attack, in that case, the remaining enemies will be affected by that specific attack only! (ie, no damage bonus) 5) Healing (or support) techs that affects your own characters will not combo. 6) An attack in the combo that has a status effect will be inflicted on the enemy, the only exception is Feint or Stone. If the main purpose of that attack is instant kill then the enemy is dead (unless the enemy is immune to it) but if the attack has a "bonus status" effect (ie, Feint effect of GiantSwing, Stone of Cockatrice) then it is not guaranteed to take effect. 7) If one attack from the combo does no damage or the enemy is immune to it (such as Sliding-BackFist, or ShadowHold-StunSlash) then the enemy will take no damage from that attack but the attack linked to it will still gain a damage multiplier, doing more damage than it should. 8) It's actually possible to chain together attacks where none of the attacks do damage! (I have! HideBehind-HideBehind is an obvious one but try CharmGaze-TripGas for a challange!) 9) Don't hope to combine multiple numbers of multi-targeted attacks because it's almost impossible!!! I have no idea why but I think the game won't allow it because it's too powerful. # 10) All attacks that's in the combo cannot be blocked. In other words, anything that gets blocked will not link. For example, all five of you use Fist, an attack that combos with itself on a Dullahan. You may see the first character do his Fist and a level 4 combo follows immediately after that. That's because the initial Fist had been blocked! Any "broke-link" moves will take place before the actual combo so the acual combo won't be ruined. 11) A combo will most likely take place on enemies who have high HP. A link will not form if a single attack is enough to kill off an enemy. Because of this, you may feel free to target your enemies since you will not waster your combos. 12) Most skills of similar strength combos well together so don't even try to link say, LifeSprinkler with DoubleSlash (ie, Master attacks combo well with other Master attacks.) Look for similar WP/JP consumptions if you're desprate, but I wouldn't worry too much. # MichaelJH1@aol.com told me he has linked 3 multi-target attacks together, thanks Michael. The example he gave me was: FlashFire- WheelSlash-SuperSonic. Given the guidelines, here are some methods or tips on linking skills. Note that these are quite general and many links don't obey these "rules". 1) Standing attacks and charging attacks works well, I guess everyone knows this way by now but this method is extremely general because it's sometimes hard to tell whether an attack is standing or charging. (ie, Thrust) NoMoment-BoundShot is a good example. 2) Multiple cannon/laser blasts will work so well that I couldn't be bothered to list them any more. 3) The same skills. This also the easiest way to combo, since you're dealing with the same attack, it doesn't matter which order you do them in. Only a handful of skills fall into this category. CrossShot, BoundShot, DarkSphere, Fist, SwallowSwing are great examples. 4) Opposite schools of magic, Light and Shadow, Time and Space, Realm and Mystics etc. Implosion-PhantasmShot is an example. Some skills can be thought of as belonging to a certain school such as ShadowCounter can be thought of as a Shadow spell. 5) Upwards and downwards attacks. One attack propels the enemy into the air while another nails them back on to the ground. RosarioImpale-RisingNova-SkyTwister is a great example. Some attacks are quite confusing to determine whether it's an air attack or ground attack, such as TripleThrust. This is also my favourite type of combo method, you'll get the hang of it after a few tries. 6) Add the combos together! Every link exists as a level 2 combo, you link 2 level 2 combos to form a level 3 etc. So if you seen CrossShot-Implosion and Implosion-LifeWave, combine them into a CrossShot-Implosion-LifeWave combo. 7) Throw random skills together and hope to get lucky. I use this a lot and I got a few level 5s out of it but sometimes I get nothing! Pretty risky. 8) Most 1WP/JP skills combo fantastically well with other 1WP/JP attack, works well for the beginning... HUMAN SWORD SKILLS ================== Out of all the skills a Human can learn, Sword skills are the best IMO, because it does have a good balance of offence, defence, multi- attack and unblockable techs. They're nothing like Cyan's SwordTech from FF6 because you don't need to charge up for 2 millenniums to use them. All sword skills fall into 3 virtual categories: sword techs (which can be learned from using any swords), Katana techs (which can be learned from only sword with the label "Katana" in the item description) and 2-sword techs that can be learned only if you have 2 swords equipped. All sword techs are physical in nature, which means the damage caused is dependent on your character's STR ratings and the attack power of the sword you're using the sword tech with. The latter is especially true with Katana techs. Too many people complain that the Katana techs do too little damage, which is probably because they're using a crappy Katana. (Consider this. The best swords you can buy are ZeroSwords with attack of 60 and the best Katana you can buy are Katanas with 34 attack power!) If you ever get your hands on a "SilverMoon", use a Katana tech with it and you'll be pleasantly surprised! Sword skills are the all-round skills because they're strong against all types of enemis. To learn one of these, you have to use a sword-based attack, either a basic sword attack or another sword tech. Occasionally, a light bulb will flash above a character's head and they will do something different. This attack will cost the WP acquired for the original attack, which means it's free if you learnt it from a normal attack but you will have to pay if you learnt it from something else. These attacks will go into your free slots and you can immediately use it again the next round if you have enough WP. If you don't have any skill slots free, you can't learn sword skills! Here are some guidelines for more effective learning (these also apply to learning fighting techs): 1) Use normal attacks! You'll learn skills a LOT faster that way, however, you'll probably want to use more advanced skills as your base attack to learn some higher level attacks. See below. 2) To learn higher level attacks, use a skill that's very similar in nature to the attack you wish to learn, look for similar animations! For example, split-body effects of TurbidCurrent can eventually turn into LifeSprinkler, where your character will also turn into multiple forms. Also, you can learn ThunderThurst from Thrust because they both use the "thrust" action. I will list the easiest way I know of learning these cool attacks below. 3) Fight more powerful enemies, you'll have a better chance of learning. The more you're likely to get killed the better! It's very important that you take sometime out to learn attack at the Bio-lab in Shrike. 4) Always de-equip techs you don't need to create room so you can learn. Try to leave 2 slots open and fill the rest with physical techs, this will allow you to learn a maximum of 2 attack for fight while still gets to keep the crown for physical attacks. 5) Being a master in physical attacks may make learning a bit easier. 6) Use the right type of weapon. Use a Katana if you want the Katana skills and equip 2 swords to learn the 2-sword skills. Also, some skills are easier to learn when using the right type of weapon, this is listed below. 7) Try not to mix in other races because Humans tend to learn better when isolated from other races. 8) Having more than one sword user attack in the same round will make learning sword skills a lot easier. I usually have all my Human swordsman train together. 9) You can learn a counter tech randomly when the enemy attacks you. You must use a sword-type attack (normal attacks will do) to learn a sword counter/deflect tech. It's no good just having a sword equipped but not using it. 10) Magic swords like Asura and Kusanagi have no normal sword slash attack so you can not learn with a normal attack. You can however, use another sword skill as a base attack (ie, DoubleSlash) but it's not as good unless you're trying to learn very advanced attacks. It's generally not a good idea to learn techs from a magical sword. From experience, the characters I give the magical swords to learns skills slower than all my other characters. ---Sword Skill List--- The sword skills are divided into 4 levels: Novice, Veteran, Master and Ultimate. You'll most likely to learn them in order of ascending power. Strangely, all Katana techs fall into the Ultimate category. I use the following terms to describe a skill, I'll use these throughout this faq. Cost: The amount of WP or JP needed to use that skill. Target: What targets are affected. * Single enemy: one enemy. * Single ally: one ally. * All: All enemies and allies. * All enemies: All enemies. * All allies: All allies. * User: The character who uses that skill * Line of sight: Hit all enemies in a straight line. * Cone: Select the main target to be the end of the cone and all enemies within the cone-shaped range is affected. * Circle: Select the main target to be the centre of the circle all enemies within the circle-shaped range are affected. The diameter of the circle is fixed. * Radius: Not the same as Circle. The user will be the centre of circle. Target an enemy to be the outer edge. The distance between the use and the target is the radius and enemies in that circle area are affected. Note: The main target of Circle or Cone type ranges usually take a lot more damage than all other affected targets. None of the skills below are of the Circle and Radius type range but they exsist in the game so I thought I'd mention them. Spore is a Circle and Quicksand is a Radius type attack. Type: The type of attack it is and or if any special effects. * Normal: Short-ranged and is blockable. * Long-range: A long-range move that doesn't involve in touching the target, can't be countered. * Throw: A throw (fighting tech) which counts as long range and can't be blocked, however, certain enemies (EarthDragon) are immune or resistant to Throws. * Unblockable: This attack can't be blocked and has 100% hit rate. * Ground: Misses flying enemies. * Auto-Defence: This may automatically take effect if you're attacked. * Defence: Like Auto-Defence but you must choose it at the beginning of the round to use it. * Auto-Counter: Like Auto-Defence but your character will evade the enemy's attack and counter it. * Counter: Like Defence, you must choose this at the beginning of the round. * Healing: Heals the ally * Miscellaneous: Has various effects explained in the evaluation. Status: Any status (positive or negative) effect the tech may cause. The texts in the <> brackets are the description of the technique, some attacks are very hard to describe so excuse me if the description is vague. The text after the <> is the evaluation of that tech. Learnt from: The easiest way I know to learn that skill. All techs can be learnt from a normal basic attack unless I note otherwise. ---Novice Sword Skills--- StunSlash Cost: 0WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: Stun This does very little damage and may stun the enemy. Maybe used to disable an enemy when used every round by a quick character but note that this will not work everytime. Learnt from: Normal attacks, very easy to get. DoubleSlash Cost: 1WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Does double damage with the sword and is free if you have a crown. Can be used as a normal attack to reduce the cost of Asura or Kusanagi. Learnt from: Normal attack, you should have no trouble learning this. HardSlash Cost: 2WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Does about the same damage as Doubleslash but is highly comboable, combines with itself as well as many other attacks. Works fairly well against bosses early in the game. Learnt from: Normal attack Thrust Cost: 2WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Not useful at all because this attack tend to miss a LOT!!! (You'll miss about half of the time and even more if you're using Annie.) The damage is not too great either but you can learn better attacks with this. De-equip this can soon as you get ThunderThrust. Learnt from: Normal attack, you'll also get this fast. CrossSlash (2-Sword) Cost: 2WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Must have 2 swords to learn this. Does very good damage for 2WP. Learnt from: Like all 2-sword techs, they pop up unpredictably every now and then. Luck is your best bet but DoubleSlash will make learning this easier. Smash Cost: 3WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None So-so attack power and combo ability, I usually ignore this if I have better skills. Learnt from: Normal attack but you shouldn't have much trouble learning this either. ---Veteran Sword Skills--- SwallowSwing Cost: 2WP Target: Single enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Does very good damage and it has at least the combo ability of HardSlash. You can chain 5 of these together to take down an enemy with a barrier easily. Note that this move is anti-air, meaning that flying enemies will take a lot more damage than usual. Learnt from: Normal attacks, not too hard to learn. ThunderThrust Cost: 2WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal (?) Status: None Does good damage and combos well, especially method number one. (See combos section for details.) I'm not sure about this but I think it does lightning elemental damage. Learnt from: Thrust, but you'll often go straight to TripleThrust. If you try using a normal attack then good luck because it's almost impossible! Heaven/Hell Cost: 3WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal (?) Status: Stun Does about 1000 damage if you're powerful which is very good for 3WP. Probably the best low-level sword tech and the stun effect is actually quite common. Learnt from: DoubleSlash can occasionally lead to this. I have learnt Heaven/Hell a few times with Smash as well. Otherwise this is harder to learn than most other lower level sword skills. WheelSlash Cost: 4WP Target: Cone Type: Long-range Status: None Probably the first multi-target sword tech you'll learn. Does serious damage to the main target but less on all the other targets. Useful until the point where you get GaleSlash because it's hard to target effectively and not as powerful as other mid-level techs. Learnt from: Normal attacks. WillowBranch Cost: 4WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Does so-so damage for 4WP but you might have better attacks already when you get this. Learnt from: Normal attacks. Using a Katana make this _slightly_ easier to learn. Deflect Cost: 1WP Target: User (any ally) Type: Auto-Defence Status: N/A An EXTREAMLY useful defence maneuver that your characters will learn early. It's probably the best defence move in the game because you can block an attack directed at any of your team members. This works especially well when you have a crown in physical attacks because this tech will cost nothing! Have all 5 characters with this will block 50% of all physical attacks. Never de-equip this for your sword users. Note this cannot block multiple target attacks. Learnt from: Randomly when the enemy attacks. Easier to learn than it sounds since it can block any character in your team. BearCrush Cost: 5WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None Well, it's definitely better than Smash at both damage potential and combo ability but it could be better. I think this (and Smash) has slightly better damage capacity when used against fragile enemies like skeletons. Learn from: Smash, obviously. DeadEnd Cost: 6WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: Feint Good and the feint effects are quite helpful. It's like a slightly improved version of Heaven/Hell and it's not bad in the middle of the game. It's fair against bosses but I find this move hard to link. Learnt from: Thrust (or ThunderThrust) is the easiest way to learn this but Heaven/Hell might do the trick as well. ---Master Sword Skills--- HeadWind Cost: 5WP Target: Single enemy Type: Normal Status: None The best sword tech in terms of damage per WP. Does exceptional damage for 5 WP and it's usually more powerful than skills with higher costs like DeadEnd, TurbidCurrent and NoMoment!!! A must have when you're trying to dish out heavy damage and saving WP at the same time! As an added bonus, this can lead to both TurbidCurrent and NoMoment. Learnt from: I haven't found an easier way to get this yet but the charging animation of HardSlash may very well be related to this but I need to conform this. Most characters (except Annie) will have no trouble learning this from powerful enemies. Also, if you're not too strong, you can learn this from ShadowCounter. TripleThrust Cost: 7WP Target: Single enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Does very good damage and combos well with method 5. Very likely the first 7WP attack you get so don't use it too much or your WP will be drained away very quickly unless against bosses, in that case, this attack will be your best asset! Believe it or not, this attack is long-ranged! Learnt from: Thrust and ThunderThust make learning this a piece of cake but you can learn this very easily even without them! Every character who will ever use a sword is likely to learn this, it's really that easy! Just make sure you're fighting a powerful enemy. Kasumi Cost: 4WP Target: User Type: Auto-Counter Status: None Kasumi is the best defence move in the game along with Deflect. Again your sword users should never de-equip this especially against bosses. This may not work as often as Deflect and can't block attacks for the rest of the party but the extra damage (1000+ minimum) is extremely helpful against those powerful monster and bosses. You cannot counter multiple target attacks with Kasumi. Learnt from: Being attacked by a powerful enemy. Not too easy to learn so just hang in there and you'll get this some how. NoMoment Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Unblockable Status: Distracted One of the more useful moves in the game because it's unblockable. The damage done is pretty average (actually it's very hard to do heavy damage with this) but combos well with method 1. Definitely use this (if you don't have any better unblockable attacks) against those annoying bosses with big shields or barriers. An attack against a target with its back turned as a higher hit rate (which is useful against enemies with shields.) Learnt from: Not hard to learn at all! You can learn this from HeadWind easily. Also using a Katana will make this easier to learn. GaleSlash Cost: 5WP Target: All enemies Type: Long-range Status: None Good multi-target move as well as being long-range at the same time. This move is also anti-air. I do not recommend using this (or the 2- handed version) on bosses because links are hard to find (and you most likely get level 2 combos). Even on multiple bosses, you should really be concentrating on taking out one at a time, not all of them together. Learnt from: SwallowSwing will definitely lead to this. 2GaleSlash (2-Sword) Cost: 5WP Target: All enemies Type: Long-range Status: None An improved version of GaleSlash as it uses both hands and 2 swords. Does double the damage of GaleSlash while csting the same WP!!! Use this against those encounters with multiple enemies and this usually wipes the screen clean. See note on 2 sword techs below to find out how to use this even more effectively. Learnt from: Randomly like all 2-sword techs but you can also get this from SwallowSwing (rare) or GaleSlash. StillStream Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal (?) Status: None Perhaps the most damaging 7WP attack out of the 5. I haven't used it much as by the time I get this, all my characters already has LifeSprinkler. Learnt from: This is EXTREMELY hard to learn when using a normal sword, NoMoment can speed this up a bit. The trick is to use a Katana, it's much easier that way. A normal Katana strike can learn this easily at times but you can still speed up this by using NoMoment with the Katana. TurbidCurrent Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None (Hope you got that, the animation's very complicated y' know) This cool looking attack proves to be an excellent starter in combos. The damage done is average though, like NoMoment. Still, there are better sword techs. Learnt from: The rings of HeadWind can net you this quite easily. You can also try ShadowCounter if early on in the game. Otherwise not easy to learn. CrossDeflect (2-Sword) Cost: 1WP Target: User Type: Defence Status: N/A I have no idea why this is in the Master section. Basically, this is Deflect with 2 swords that's not as good because it's not automatic and you can defend yourself only. Also, if this had not been triggered then your character will have done nothing that round but standing around looking stupid. If you have to be extremely defensive then you might want to give this a try, but you might as well use Godless (below.) Learnt from: Randomly when being attacked but this is more random than others because this is also a 2-sword tech. Having Deflect might make this faster though. RisingNova Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None One of my favourite sword techs, it's very good looking (especially the color of the flames.) It does exceptional damage and is the most excellent when it comes to upward/downward type combos! (See above) Also, this connects extremely well with LifeSprinkler. I usually give at least one character this when fighting the last boss. Learnt from: WillowBranch. Using a Katana will make it slightly easier to learn. RosarioImpale Cost: 8WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None This looks very cool and the cross will do extra damage against undead enemies. The damage done is good enough to use this on the last boss and this combines freely with other "upward" attacks or LifeSprinkler. Learnt from: TripleThrust and DeadEnd are the only way to learn this. That's right, the "only" way because I have never learnt this from anything else! If this is not true, mail me and tell me. ---Ultimate Sword Skills--- Haze-to-Wheel Cost: 9WP Target: All enemies Type: Long-range Status: None This will do SERIOUS damage (2000 or so) to all targets on screen. But since the cost is too high, use 2GaleSlash instead, you'll kill most of the normal enemies that way. If you're up against multiple powerful opponents, then give this a try, you won't be disappointed. Learnt from: WheelSlash only! Again I have never learnt this from anything else. Have all 5 characters use WheelSlash on a Dullahan and at least one of them will learn it! It's actually pretty easy when you know how. LifeSprinkler Cost: 10WP Target: One enemy Type: Unblockable (Limited)* Status: None The ultimate of the ultimate sword skills. This does the most damage out of all the sword skills and in extremely reliable because it's unblockable. It also combines extremely well with other upper-level attacks (RisingNova in particular), doing horrendous damage! Try to get this on your sword users before the final boss. Learnt from: There is no easy way of learning this. ShadowCounter is the simplest and best way I've found and TurbidCurrent can lead to this as well. Basically, learning this is all about luck. I *have* learnt this with a normal sword attack but I guess I was extremely lucky. Make SURE you are fighting a very powerful enemy (Dullahans works fine) when you're trying to learn this. * A weird thing happened to me once, I think it's a glitch though. I was playing as Blue against either Hell's Lord or the Dragon Guardian. I cast Overdrive then ShadowServant and LifeSprinkler 6 times. On the fifth LifeSprinkler Blue actually MISSED!!!!!!!!! (No sign of the "miss" message but he did no damage.) His character still did the animation but the sword slashes and red backgrounds were gone! Then his shadow came along and didn't miss! I have no idea what happened. How can an unblockable attack miss?? NOTE: Mage Man Legends told me that LifeSprinkler missed a lot in his game, so maybe this technique is only "Limited Unblockable".. Godless Cost: 5WP Target: User Type: Counter Status: None The ultimate counter and a very good defensive move when you want to go on offence as well, it does HUGE damage (3000+) to the attacker and you're free of damage. But this is not as good as it sounds because you can counter only direct physical attacks and this tend to not take effect occasionally. Also, the fact that you cannot counter multiple target attacks makes this less useful than say Kasumi. Like CrossDeflect, if your character is not attacked they will do nothing that round, wasting your time! Learnt from: Randomly when attacked, but having Kasumi equipped will certainly make learning this easier. MoonlightCut (Katana) Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Just because it's an ultimate attack doesn't mean that it's good. Please tell me if you have found any use for this pretty but low damage attack. The only use I've found is that it links before Tres Flores and you can make a level 3 combo Blizzard-MoonlightCut-Tres Flores which does heavy damage and mimics the classic SaGa sword skill Midare Setgetsuka or something like that. Learnt from: Using a Katana. Katana techs are also quite random, you can sometimes learn Katana skills from weak enemies. ShadowCounter can rarely lead to this. ShadowCounter (Katana) Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None A very useful Katana tech because it can do quite a bit of damage if you have a good Katana and it's long range. But the real reason to bother with this is the learning capacity this tech has. It can lead to HeadWind, TurbidCurrent, LifeSprinkler and all the Katana techs, all are good ones. This also has great combo ability and combines with itself for big attacks. Learnt from: Easy. Simply attack with a Katana and you'll get this fast, even early in the game. Blizzard Cost: 6WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range (?) Status: Palsy A very classy looking attack but not too useful except to make the Katana combo I mentioned above. Also the Palsy effect happens very rarely. Learnt from: Katana attack can lead to this, as will ShadowCounter and MoonlightCut. Tres Flores Cost: 9WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None My favourite sword skill as well as the most beautiful one. It's also the second most damaging sword attack (next to LifeSprinkler.) But the odds are that you'll be stuck with a crappy Katana until very late into the game, you're very likely to pass this excellent skill up. This is not as good as LifeSprinkler though because it's blockable, it's short-ranged and it's the WORST skill for combos in the whole game but it's certainly a lot easier to learn. It will only go after MoonlightCut for some reason but if you find any other links for Tres Flores, please send them to me. Learnt from: Any Katana skill or Katana attack. ---Alkaiser Sword Skills--- These sword skills can be learnt only by Alkaiser with his RaySword. KaiserWing Cost: 1WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None An okay long-range tech I guess but you're most likely to have something better. Also the fact that you have to change into Alkaiser to use this really hinders its usefulness. I usually seal it immediately. Also, note this skill is anti-air as well, use it if you don't already have SwallowSwing. Learnt from: RaySword KaiserSmash Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Alkaiser's version of Smash, not much better than the real one. Alkaiser's sword skills are useless. Learnt from: Raysword ---Special Sword Skills--- These are not really sword skills, just built in skills of certain sword. You cannot learn these, they comes and goes with the sword. I will include only the useful ones. Asura (Asura) Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: Feint Very powerful early on in the game and it's a good weapon to equip on your Mystics and Mecs so they can use this skill. The Feint effect doesn't happen very often though. Later in the game this will do very little damage to be helpful. (Less than 1000.) AsuraRevenge (Asura) Cost: 4WP Target: User Type: Auto-Counter (Special) Status: Feint This is a very pretty attack and you should see it at least once. It's an automatic counter built-in tech but it's a bit different than other automatic counters. 1) You must use the command "Asura" 2) You must be attacked before you can use "Asura" 3) You will take the damage of the attack. 4) According to Drew Coon, if your character falls unconscious after they take the hit, a shadow of that character will rise and take on the part of AsuraRevenge. Thanks a lot! This tech is very useful to dish out extra damage against a boss but it has the above conditions you must meet, so it's better to give this to a slow character and put him on the top slot of the team so he'll get hit more often. Note AsuraRevenge will do more damage than Asura. Kusanagi (Kusanagi) Cost: 3WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Does good damage especially used by a powered up Mec. Also, good for combos as well. Note King Sei has the Monster skill version of this skill but it's exactly the same. MillionDollers (CometBlade) Cost: 7WP Target: All enemies Type: Long-range Status: None Very pretty. This can do about as much damage as Haze-to-Wheel for a lesser cost. A very good built-in tech, pretty and very powerful. Give it to a Mec or Mystic so they can take advantage of this attack. Other built-in sword attacks includes ElementalSplash (instant kill), BraveHeart, FinalStrike and ShadowHold (Palsy). Don't ever use FinalStrike (unless you want to see the nifty animation) because it does next to no damage, breaks the sword and costs 10WP! ---Tips on Sword Skills--- 1) The automatic techs (Deflect and Kasumi) can only take effect if you choose a sword type attack so don't bother equipping these if you're planning to use other type of actions during the fight, even if you have a sword equipped. 2) When using a 2-Sword attack, always use it with the stronger sword equipped. The game takes the attack value from the sword you use and doesn't care about your second sword. Say if you use 2GaleSlash with ZeroSword, you'll do the same damage if your second weapon is a Knife or Asura. 3) If you have 2 swords and Kasumi equipped, always use the stronger sword (if possible) when using a single sword tech because Kasumi is used with the current sword you're using that round. 4) The aim for a sword user is definitely LifeSprinkler, try to get ShadowCounter as early as possible and try to learn his. I also recommend Tres Flores if you have the access to a SilverMoon (Asellus and Red can get one later in their game, other characters may win them randomly.) 5) Good multi-target attacks are 2GaleSlash (make sure at least one of your guys has this) and Haze-to-Wheel. 6) If you like combos, then definitely get RisingNova (or RosarioImpale) on a character so they can combo with LifeSprinkler. 7) Since Tres Flores is such a terrible combo linker, you may want to have the person using it activate ShadowServant to double their damage. 8) Sword skills are the best so don't be afraid if you have a team of all sword users, you don't actually need DSC to finish the game. (From experience, I actually don't want to use DSC after I killed a few of the final bosses because it takes away the fun of comboing.) 9) The number one sword user in the game is Gen but Emelia, Lute, Mei-Ling and Annie are good too. 10) I can not stress this enough but make sure that your sword users are using strong swords when preparing for the last boss (or any boss.) The Kusanagi is very good and the Asura is well worth investing 3 of your LP on. Also, you might want to cast the Light magic LightSword on the characters who hasn't got these as it gives you a very strong sword to use. If not, you should have at least a ZeroSword. Don't bother if you ain't goin' to use sword skills. 11) The first time your sword user learns a new skill cannot be blocked. For example, Mei-Ling learns GaleSlash when fighting a Dullahan (who can block), that GaleSlash is unblockable. If Mei-Ling wants to use GaleSlash again then it might get blocked. HUMAN FIGHTING SKILLS ===================== If you want to be an all out brawler then fighting skills are the way to go. There are basically 3 types of fighting moves: Punches, kicks and WWF style wrestling throwing techs. Fighting skills are usually weaker than sword skills at equal levels but it contains a hidden skill that's more powerful than any attack in the game (well, maybe not Tower), one of the two and half SaGa Frontier's equivalent of Knights of the Round. Like sword skills, fighting skills are also physical in nature. The STR of the characters determines the damage caused, this is more important to fighting skills than sword because sword skills take values from both the STR and the sword power, while fighting skills takes the STR value only. Fighting skills are usually weak against slime-type (soft) enemies but are strong against fragile enemies like robots and undead (skeletons in particular.) These are learnt almost exactly like the sword attacks so look there for the ways and tips for learning. One note worth adding is that you should use the corresponding type of fighting attack to learn the one you want, for example, use a throw tech is you want to learn throwing techs, use kicks to learn kick techs. You can learn higher kicks from punches though but throwing skills can only be learnt from another throwing skill. ---Fighting skills list--- Like sword skills, fighting techs are also comes in 4 levels. There are less fighting skills in the game so don't complain if your character is not learning very often. Punch Cost: 0WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Well, not a real fighting tech because you don't need to equip this to use it and everyone has this, even other races but they are not able to learn from it. ---Novice Fighting Skills--- Kick Cost: 0WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Does a tiny bit more damage than Punch and is comboable. You can use this to learn better kicks. Learnt from: Punch AirThrow Cost: 1WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun This is a must for learning better throwing techs. All throwing tech except this one and RollingCraddle cannot be learned from anything else. It has high combo ability but this is often a hindrance when you're trying to learn techs. Learnt from: Punch Chop Cost: 1WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: Blind Not good at all. It does slightly more damage than Punch and may cause Blindness but there're much better skills to spend your valuable 1WP on! Learnt from: Punch Sliding Cost: 1WP Target: One enemy Type: Ground Status: Stun A very important skill because it's the first part of the secret skill DSC. Other than that, it's a moderately damaging skill that's not too useful. It can combine with itself though. Learnt from: Punch or Kick. RollingCradle Cost: 2WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun Not very good. Most lower level fighting skills are not too useful so excuse me if I'm not commenting too much on these. Learnt from: AirThrow can do the trick but you can get this from Punch. SwayBack Cost: 1WP Target: User Type: Defence Status: N/A The only defence fighting skill but it's not very good. You can dodge direct physical attacks only, no long-range attack. Also you can only defend yourself so Deflect is better. If this is triggered before your action then your attack will follow immediately, I think the damage of your attack is increased this way. Learnt from: Randomly when attacked by enemies. ---Veteran Fighting Skills--- Fist Cost: 3WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal (?) Status: ? Does ok damage (around 600 average) but the only real reason to bother with this is that it combos with almost every skill in the game! It's no doubt the best combo linker! So the next time you wonder how to link your combo, give this a try. Learnt from: Punch Backfist Cost: 2WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Another one of those useless fighting attacks. Will do more damage than Fist though and can lead to other useless skills. Learnt from: Punch CrushBeat Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None This is actually not bad early on in the game. Try comboing it for better results. This still do less than 1000 damage though, you can see how weak fighting techs are. Learnt from: Punch or Backfist Rotation Kick Cost: 3WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Another solid low-level attack. Links are hard to find though. Learnt from: Kick KO Throw Cost: 2WP Target: User Type: Auto-counter Status: Stun? Another lousy counter move. Does good damage (though not as good as Kasumi) but it's less reliable than Kasumi as it will only counter short-range attacks. What makes it even worse is that it counters only punches while very few enemies use punches. I have never seen this take effect more than say 3 times per game. Learnt from: Randomly when attacked Suplex Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun A very good throwing move that does much better damage than all other 4WP attacks. Also combos pretty well. This is DSC move number 3 so make sure you get it! Learnt from: AirThrow and rather easy to get GiantSwing Cost: 6WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Feint Another solid throwing move and the Feint effect is extremely useful. This is DSC move number 4. Also note that this attack combos with itself for "giant" damage. Learnt from: AirThrow but Suplex may sometimes lead to this as well. ---Master Fighting Skills--- GoldHand Cost: 6WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: VIT down Very good attack move but somewhat hard to learn. This will cause VIT down on the enemy which is helpful. If you do get this early then by all means USE IT! It's about as good as a non-throwing medium level fighting tech gets. Can combo with itself but other than that, average combo ability. Learnt from: Fist but it's risky since Fist is such a good linker so have all your other units use normal attacks and try to learn this one at a time. (If your other characters are using skills, you'll combo about 80% of the time) BabelCrumble Cost: 5WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun DSC move number 2 and also the hardest to learn IMO. This is probably the best (and my favourite) throwing tech in the game. The damage done is pretty good, about 1000 minimum. Learnt from: AirThrow. As I have said, this is sometime very hard to learn if you don't get it early. Some characters of mine never got to use DSC because they simply won't learn this move, strange! (Even Fuse won't learn this sometimes!) Also, I have learnt this a few times by using Kick. TriangleKick Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Very good damage for a fighting tech, 1000 minimum. Good combo abilities and links with itself. Better than GoldHand as well as easier to learn, make sure your fighting characters has this because all the ultimate fighting skills are hard to learn. Learnt from: Kick or RotationKick but Punch often leads to this for some weird reason. OgreRun Cost: 6WP Target: Line of sight Type: Ground, Long-range Status: Stun (?) Damage is average but the fact that this has a range of Line of sight makes this skill hard to use effectively. You can usually target one enemy and two if you're really lucky. Use this if you haven't got anything better. Note this is a ground attack that will miss flying enemies. A flying enemy doesn't always have to be in the air. As a rule of the thumb, if it has wings, it's probably flying. If the enemy is highlighted in green when you flip 'em over, then it's affected. Learnt from: Sliding can lead to this I think but it's also very easy to learn without it, just make sure you're fighting a powerful opponent. Scuffle Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None Wow, I had absolutely no idea that this was in the master section. Come to think of it, this does do very good damage for 4WP, though it's hard to find a link for it. This looks like a throw but it's not, it's blockable too! Learnt from: CrushBeat can get you this quickly, so will Backfist. LocomotionG Cost: 5WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun This looks really painful but it's not. It does barely more damage than a normal Suplex! I usually don't bother with this. If I want a throwing tech I use BabelCrumble or GiantSwing, not some attack that do fake damage! Learnt from: AirThrow or Suplex can net you this eventually. DragonTurn Cost: 3WP Target: User Type: Auto-counter Status: None This is perhaps the most useless tech in the whole game! Why? Because this attack reverses kicks and the enemy hardly ever use kicks. I have learnt this once and seen it only once but I don't think it's of any use. Learnt from: When getting kicked by the enemy I guess. If you're desperate about learning this useless tech then find a Shieker (those green plant-like things that uses SuperSonic) and let them kick you a few time. Fei-On sometimes comes with this skill learnt. ---Ultimate Fighting Skills--- LastShot Cost: 9WP Target: One enemy Type: Unblockable Status: Feint Now you're really getting to the good stuff. His is IMO the best normal fighting attack because it does very good damage (2000-3000) and it's unblockable like LifeSprinkler. I haven't found any very good links for this attack yet though. The 4 Kanji characters meant something along the lines of "The fatal blow". The feint effect is very rare but I don't think you need it. Learnt from: GoldHand is your best bet but it's still quite hard to learn. CorkScrew Cost: 9WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range? Status: None Another excellent fighting tech. This does perhaps slightly more damage than LastShot but is blockable. This can do about 3000 damage. Combine this with LifeSprinkler for a big attack. Learn DSC and either LastShot or CorkScrew and you're all set for the last boss. I don't see how but this is actually the ultimate kick attack! Learnt from: TriangleKick I guess but Fuse and Liza often get this from their normal attack. SkyTwister Cost: 10WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None I don't like this very much as the damage is not too great and it's too expensive. It does combo a lot better than the last 2 ultimate attack, especially with method 5. This is not even a long-range attack! Learnt from: This is not a throwing tech but AirThrow can definitely lead to it. You'll often get this very early, but it won't do very much damage at all, so it's a rather waste of WP. DSC (Dream Super Combo) Cost: 18WP Target: One enemy Type: Throw Status: Stun? The ultimate physical attack and KOTR equivalent of SaGa Frontier. Although it costs a crazy amount of WP, it has HUGE damage potential. The damage done is affected by your STR, how many moves your DSC had done and the DEF of the enemy. Because each boss has different DEF ratings, it's hard to give a damage approximation since it can do anywhere between 3 and 5 moves. A 5 part DSC will do over 22000 damage on GenocideHeart but barely over a thousand on MasterRing!!! It's always worth the effort of getting this on one or two characters before you meet the last boss. Note DSC cannot be comboed since it's a combo all one its own already. Also it's a good idea to use stat boost items and magic to raise your strength. Don't use this if your character has low STR because the damage done is not worth the heavy price tag. Learnt from: It's not learnt like any fighting techs. You have to first learn 4 separate fighting moves: Sliding, BabelCrumble, Suplex and GiantSwing. Equip them all and DSC will appear in your command window. ---Alkaiser Fighting Skills--- Like Alkaiser sword skils, these can only be used by Alkaiser but thankfully, Alkaiser's fighting skills are much better than his sword skills. BrightFist Cost: 0WP Target: One enemy Type: Normal Status: None A free tech that does about 200 more damage than his regular punch so this is not bad. This is also the base skill to learn more advanced Alkaiser fighting skills, the regular punch won't do. Also you'll get this very early. Learnt from: RaySword SparklingRoll Cost: 2WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Slightly better than a regular BackFist. Still, I always get better Alkaiser techs before I get this. Learnt from: BrightFist FlashTurn Cost: 4WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Another one of those useless techs that's doomed to forever collect dust in the unused list. Al-Blaster Cost: 2WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Another one of those take-off skills, Alkaiser skills are so un- original! This is another useless skill since the damage done is too little to be helpful. Learnt from: BrightFist Al-Phoenix Cost: 7WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None Another one of Alkaiser's rip-off skills. Still not much better than other fighting skills though does just over 1000 damage, I think even TriangleKick is stronger than this. But keep this equipped because it can get you Alkaiser's ultimate attack later! I think this will do fire-elemental damage. Learnt from: BrightFist Re-Al-Phoenix Cost: 10WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None The ultimate Alkaiser fighting skill and the only one that's original! This is also the most damaging fighting skills in the game not including DSC. It does even more damage then LifeSprinkler (about 4000-6000) and combos well with it! A LifeSprinkler-Re-Al- Phoenix-LifeSprinkler combo can do over 23000 points of damage and believe me I have done it! Like Al-Phoenix, this will also do fire- based damage. The only disadvantage is that you have to be Alkaiser to use this skill, which is not a problem since you only get this at the end of Red's chapter where he's Alkaiser already but you won't be able to use this conveniently in 2nd Div. Learnt from: You can not get this normally. When you fight MBlack III, use Al-Phoenix after he uses his Dark Phoenix attack and you'll get this. Alkaiser will "upgrade" his Al-Phoenix for this because after the battle if you check the skill option you'll find that your Al-Phoenix tech is gone, being replaced by this. Al-Phoenix had been put back into your unequipped list. You do not need an empty slot for this either. ShiningKick Cost: 1WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None The kick version of BrightFist. This will do more damage than BrightFist and it is free if you have a crown. Use this if you want but there are still better techs out there. Learnt from: BrightFist DeflectLance Cost: 5WP Target: One enemy Type: Long-range Status: None A TriangleKick-rip-off. This is probably the best low level Alkaiser tech, it can do quite a bit of damage and it's not even hard to learn! Early in the game, all you have to equip is this and BrightFist (these are the only 2 attack that I find useful) and you're all set! Learnt from: BrightFist or ShiningKick. FinalCrusade Cost: 2WP, 1LP Target: All allies (Special) Type: Healing Status: N/A A very useful skill especially it's one of the only 4 mass-healing skill in the whole game (and only specific characters has.) This will heal all your allies except Alkaiser himself for Alkaiser's maximum HP plus one so keep his HP maximum high! Alkaiser will loose 1LP after using this so be careful when using this too many times. An important note is that if Alkaiser has a ShadowServant activated when he uses this, he will loose 2LP! So don't use this when you have a shadow. This spell did 1999 points of healing when I used it but it's not possible (because yo can't have over 999 HP). I guess Alkaiser's HP can go beyond 999 but the game will only allow a miximum of 999 HP. The calculation will take Alkaiser's actual HP (>999) but in reality he has only 999 HP. Learnt from: Cannot get normally. Alkaiser will automatically learn this after he beat any of the 4 BlackX Emperors. ---Tips on Fighting Skills--- 1) Like sword techs, it's no good equipping an automatic fighting tech if you're goin' to use something else because they simply won't be triggered if you don't select a fighting skill. 2) The characters you train in fighting should have 2 aims: to get DSC and either CorkScrew or (preferably) LastShot (SkyTwister works fine too, but not as good.) The reason for the first is obvious, DSC is the most powerful attack in the whole game. If you get this your character will be god-like powerful. The reason for the second is because some bosses (EarthDragon, Kylin) are immune or highly resistant (MasterRing) to throwing techs, having one of the ultimate normal skills can let you combo for good damage. 3) Most low-level fighting skills are useless so don't bother with them. 4) The number one fighting character in the game is Liza but Fuse and Fei-on are excellent choices too. 5) If you don't know what attack to give to a fighter in a boss fight, have them use Fist. It usually ties the attacks from your other characters together to form good combos. 6) To some extend, the first time a new skills is learned is unblockable, like sword skills. The only exception is when you learn a new throwing skills on an enemy immune to that, your character will simply do thing but that new skill will be added to your list. HUMAN GUN SKILLS ================ Gun skills are generally the worst skills a Human can learn because, hey, there are only 10 of them! It's also not easy to fully master gun skills, even (or should I say especially) for gun experts! For some reason, character who're good with guns (Roufas, Emelia, Mei- Ling) have a tendency of refusing to learn the last gun skill! (It's usually TwoGun.) Guns attacks are physical but they're completely independent on your character's STR, it's not how hard you can pull the trigger! Like Chrono Trigger, guns are more powerful when your accuracy increases, which is measured by your WIL. Guns are usually weak against undead enemies but can be remedied with its own special skills. I don't know what type of enemies it's strong against though (probably soft-type.) Gun skills however have 2 major advantage. The first is that all gun techs are long range attack, which means you don't have to worry about those enemies who uses counter skills and barriers no more. The other advantage is that most gun skills have high combo abilities and most of them can combo with themselves and is interchangeable with other gun skills. NEW!! Yay, thanks to PrinceJoel, I finally know what all those bullets and bullet consumptions are for. As you've already know, every gun has a bullet capacity and every regular attack costs one bullet. All gun techs have bullet consumptions too and different techs costs different amounts of bullets. Here's what PrinceJoel told me: "Its kind of like this: The amounts of bullets in your gun depect (approxamatly) how effective techs are (like Stunshot, Total shot, etc.) for example: "Stunshot is a tech that uses all your ammo. The more bullets you have left, the more effective it is. "Totalshot is where you shoot all enemys. Strangly enough, sometimes it blasts more bullets than you may have, but again, the more bullets, the more effective it is. "Focus shot and Cross shot have a capacaty of bullet uses at one time: 5. Any less and it won't be as effective. "All other gun techs (that I know