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 Hello and welcome to my SSLP of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift! In which a young man is torn from his summer vacation to go on a magical adventure, make friends and slaughter his away across the country. What's this? Released in 2007 (JP) / 2008 (NA and PAL) for the Nintendo DS, FFTA2 (as I will be writing it) is a turn-based Strategy-RPG developed and published by Square Enix. It's a sequel (sort of) to the 2003 game Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which is itself based (loosely) on 1997's Final Fantasy Tactics. FFTA was a major departure from FFT when it comes to plot, and FFTA2 goes even further. There's none of the moral ambiguity or "are we the baddies?" undertones found in FFTA. What we do get is more of the isometric strategy experience with new jobs, new races and new abilities. In my opinion, it's a big improvement over FFTA, though it definitely has some problems. I'm going for an informative/completionist LP. We'll be completing every mission, recruiting every secret character, and trying out as many classes as we can. Yes, that means I will be doing that section of the game. It's a long game, with over 300+ missions total! Expect 70+ hours of gameplay. +There are exactly 301 missions in the game. My goal is one update per week, though some updates will be lighter information dumps talking about the jobs, races, gameplay and so on. This is going to take a while. Who are you? I'm Solumin, and this is my first LP! Yes, I realize choosing this as my first LP means I have severe problems with things like "making good choices" and "maintaining my health and sanity." But I like FFTA and FFTA2, and despite several attempts over the past decade, there's still no LP of FFTA2 on the archive. It's a worthy endeavor! Do I need to know anything about FFT or FFTA? Nope! There's really no connection between FFT and FFTA/2, and the connection between FFTA and FFTA2 is loose at best. I'll explain the basic mechanics as they come up, along with the differences between FFTA and FFTA2. If you're interested, Orange Fluffy Sheep did a couple great LPs of FFT and FFTA, which are on the archive. I highly recommend them. DO NOT POST SPOILERS. If you have a question about something that you aren't sure is a spoiler, go ahead and ask with tags. But please don't talk about future plot points, characters, dungeons, etc. I like this game a lot and I'd like to give it at least some respect. I'd like to see more Isometric Strategy JRPGs! Well, there are the aforementioned LPs of Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy Tactice Advance by Orange Fluffy Sheep. You could also look for LPs of the Ogre Battle and Tactics Ogre games, which are all the brain-children of Yasumi Matsuno. Or for something a little different, there's Pokemon Conquest by Crosspiece. A note for the archive: Yeah, there are a lot of updates here! Updates 1 to 37 cover the main story arc of the game with a good selection of side quests, while 38 - 75 are all the other quests and end-game dungeons. There are a couple informative posts that give some useful information about the game, plus a series of updates where I discuss the various jobs in the game. You might find those useful, but you should be able to follow along without them. Updates: 1: Take a Look, It's in a Book 2: Am I My Trapper's Keeper? 3: Cat Ears: the Anime Avatars of Ivalice 4: Found a Job 5: Trials and Tribulations 6: Why Not Just Use Cure? 7: There's no Mist without Dragons 8: Auction Season 9: Good Company 10: Shellfish, Ninjas and Airships 11: Swamp of the Living Dead 12: Found Another Job 13: Nightmares and Flashbacks 14: Found Yet Another Job 15: Pirate Rescue! 16: Jagd Little Pill 17: Mrs Blue Sky 18: Entomology for Fun and Profit 19: Thieves, Healers and Backstabbers 20: Digging Too Deep 21: The Immortal's Choice 22: I Can't Believe I Already Used "Am I My Trapper's Keeper" 23: Duelhorn, Part 1 24: Duelhorn, Part 2 25: Duelhorn, Part 3: The Fall of Duelhorn 26: The Tale of Frimelda Lotice 27: Have at Thee, Ham-planks! 28: The Bonga Bugle, Part 1: Ethical Journalism, Shmethical Shmournalism 29: The Bonga Bugle, Part 2: Journalism Edition 30: The Bonga Bugle, Part 3: How is this paper still around? 31: This Update Is Mostly About Sentient Rocks 32: Primo Ladro, or A Thieving Obsession 33: Adelaide and the Five Kings 34: Bazaar Rewards 35: Don't Get Lost In Heaven, Part 1 36: Don't Get Lost In Heaven, Part 2 37: Demon Days 38: The Adventure Continues 39: Revenge of the Cake 40: Obligatory Tournament Arc, Part 1 41: Obligatory Tournament Arc, Part 2 42: Obligatory Tournament Arc, Part 3 43: Obligatory Tournament Arc, Part 4 44: The Witch of the Fens 45: Prima Donna and the Case of the Chocobo's Talon 46: The Clan Sawyer Pet Agency 47: Fashionable Weapons 48: Fighting for Privileges 49: Tinker, Trickster, Soldier, Agent 50: In Which Adventures are Had 51: Mini Update: Clan Overview 52: Magick Airship Ride 53: Bounty Hunting 54: Bounty Hunting, Part 2: Ultimate Bounty 55: Brightmoon Tor: First Watch 56: A Poisonous Bounty 57: Monstrous Fish 58: Feathers and Foozles 59: Five Kings and Digging Deep 60: I Need Your Strongest Potions 61: craigslist > ivalice > loar > camoa 62: Brightmoon Tor: Second Watch 63: Playful Raid 64: The Adventurer's Field Guide to Loar 65: The Adventurer's Field Guide to Ordallia 66: The Art of the Blade 67: The Game is Afoot 68: The Volcanoes of Ivalice 69: Love, Friendship and Speed Battles 70: In Pursuit of Poachers 71: A Mobile Feast 72: The Feud of the Foothills 73: Brightmoon Tor: Third Watch 74: A Martyr to Memories 75: The Final Quest Informative Posts: The Races of Ivalice Jobs 101 Job Roundups: 1: Starter Jobs 1: Soldier, Warrior, White Monk 2: Starter Jobs 2: White Mage, Black Mage, Thief 3: Starter Jobs 3: Animist, Archer, Fencer 4: Early-Game Unlocks: Green Mage, Beastmaster, Dragoon 5: The Color of Magick: Blue Mage, Red Mage 6: Ultima Power: Hunter, Sage, Assassin 7: Unusual Magicks: Bishop, Time Mage, Alchemist 8: Hidden Arts: Ninja, Sniper, Elementalist 9: Guns & Gears: Fusilier, Cannoneer, Tinker 10: Knights of Ivalice: Moogle Knights, Defenders and Paladins 11: Bad Job Teardown: Scholar, Flintlock, Arcanist, Chocobo Knight 12: Physical Might: Fighter, Parivir, Master Monk 13: Job Seeq-er: Ranger, Viking, Berserker, Lanista 14: Might and Magick: Gladiator, Templar, Spellblade 15: Soul Music and Memories: Bard, Heritor 16: Swords, Magick and Dragons: Geomancer, Ravager, Raptor 17: Magick Power: Summoner, Illusionist, Seer 18: Fool's Paradise: Juggler, Trickster 19: The FFXII Camoes: Dancer, Sky Pirate, Agent Solumin fucked around with this message at 05:20 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2017 23:28
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This post reserved for any extra stuff! Edit 2019-06-06: lol guess I never needed this then Solumin fucked around with this message at 04:44 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Sep 23, 2017 23:28
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Update 1: Take a Look, It's In a Book In This Update: - We meet our intrepid protagonist. - A name for a hero is written. - The adventure begins! --- We've a long, glorious summer vacation ahead of us. Let's get started, shall we? In-game dialogue will be in normal text. Comments from me will be in italics.  It's a Final Fantasy game, so of course Square Enix is responsible.  Basiscape is the company founded by Hitoshi Sakimoto, composer for this game and other titles, including Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII.  The Ivalice Alliance is a group of related games, all set in the world of Ivalice. It's not really important, but I might talk about it in a later post.  Welcome to Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift! The "A2" doesn't actually stand for anything. They couldn't call it "Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2" because it's not really a sequel to FFTA and it's not on the Game Boy Advance.  We're playing on Normal difficulty. Hard mode is very lazy, it adds nothing to the game besides buffing the enemies. Let the adventure begin! ---   : I'm out the door as soon as the teacher stops talking. Summer homework: keep a journal. That's not too bad. Better write my name on my notebook before I forget. Meet Luso Clemens, the hero of our story. We can change his first name, if we want. I'd prefer to stick with the default name, but I'm open to suggestions! : Don't get me wrong, I'm not crazy about homework. Just, it could be worse. And I can already guess what my first entry's going to be:"Summer Vacation, Day 1: Aunt chewed me out. Grounded for a week." : Maybe this journal thing's not such a great idea after all. Oh, we got another assignment, due today: "My Summer Vacation." We're supposed to write our goals for the summer. Well, here goes...We take a little multiple-choice quiz. It unlocks something little later later down the road, but is otherwise pointless. These 3 answers give us the best result.    : (I promise not to let the dog eat my homework... Maybe I can find a cat.)Heh, that all sounds pretty convincing. Summer vacation, here I come! ...Not that I have any idea what I'm doing this summer. But, I guess not having any expectations isn't all bad. I mean, whatever ends up happening, it'll be a surprise!   : Have a good summer. Class dismissed! There's an excited murmur in the air as the students leave class for the last time this year. As an aside, I love how detailed the scenery is. This game's art is detailed and lively -- it's one of my favorite things about it.  Luso, well, he isn't the best student, and it sounds like his home life isn't too great either. He at least seems to have some friends, which is not common for school-aged JRPG protagonists. : Sorry, but your vacation doesn't start quite yet. Your friends are going home, but you're going straight to the library, young man.: Aw, c'mon, Mr. Blair! Why?: Let's take a trip down memory lane... to this morning! When you were late to my class for the - how many times is it now?: That would be... I don't know.: Enough times that you've forgotten, apparently! Luso... You're not a bad student by any means. But, occasionally, you require a little... correction, shall we say.Which is why, I have decided to put you in charge of cleaning up the library. Maybe a little straightening up there will straighten you out, too. : Look, I see what you're trying to do here. But the last day of school? You gotta be kidding! I mean, it's summer vacation!: Vacations are to be earned. And you've got a lot of earning to do, my boy. Mr. Randell's down in the library. Don't keep him waiting.: ...: And don't even think about loafing off or sneaking out. Not unless you want me to pay a visit to your house.: ...Yes, Mr. Blair. Well, see ya!Oh, and I hope you have a really, really great summer vacation. Luso is 90% sarcasm. Seriously. Despite his initial whining, Luso heads to the library.  Seriously, look at all the little details! : Huh? I thought Mr. Randell was supposed to be here. Luso, nosy parker that he is, pokes around the library before stopping at the table. He opens the music box, which plays a cheerful but slightly wistful tune. : Check out that book! It looks older than Mr. Blair! : Huh? That's funny. The book just stops halfway through. The pages are all blank! Let's see what the last page with writing on it says..."One is fated to fill these barren pages. Know you his name?" : "Know you his name"...? What's with all the backwards words? Well, I never pass up a chance to write in a library book! I'll tell you his name! "His name is... Luso Clemens!"View this in motion!  Suddenly, everything freezes for a second, and the book starts to glow.  He is suddenly yanked out of the library by the glowing book, and falls a long, long way. Luso will learn many useful lessons during his summer vacation. The first: Never write in a library book. ---  Elsewhere, a forest. Three figures walk into a clearing. For those of you unfamiliar with this series, going from left to right, we see a Viera White Mage, a Nu Mou Black Mage and a Plot-Relevant Character With a Unique Sprite.  : Oi, oi. What have we here? The giant bird caws at the strangers. : Why is it always the vicious ones that pay the worst? 250 gil is barely enough to pay for our time sweeping up the feathers when we're done.Rendered immobile by its overwhelming girth, the feathered monstrosity caws at the strangers again. : What, you hungry? Sorry, but I've got higher aspirations than becoming chicken feed. Hop to it then!The three fighters ready themselves for battle-- View this in motion!   Luso's appearance stuns the beast and the three strangers. : M-Mr. Randell!?Bird: CAW!  : You there!: Ack! Who are you!? You're n-not even human!: Calm yourself, stranger. We'll protect you, if you'll let us. Join our clan now if you care to live. I hardly need to spell out the alternative.: Join your what!?: Our clan. You may be injured, but if you are in our clan, you will not die.: Why should I trust you?The bird is starting to recover and screeches loudly. : Yikes!: Because I can guarantee you'll get no such offer from him!Got to hand it to Luso: he manages to mostly keep his head despite the situation. First the magical book, then the giant chicken, and now a guy with a mullet and horns is inviting him to join a clan. That's a lot to handle at once. Though now that I think about it, "Come with me if you want to live" is usually pretty effective, isn't it.  : Swear your oath to the Judge. Say you'll join the clan!The other two strangers step back, and Blondie McMullet pulls out a card. View this in motion!   FFTA2 kept the sprite art of FFTA, but it adds a lot of neat visuals and particle effects. I'll show them off where I can.  : That's... a judge?: Quickly, before the beast has time to act!: Hey, um, Judge! I swear the oath! Let me in the clan!Eloquent as always, kiddo.  The Judge raises their sword, and both it and Luso are engulfed in blinding columns of light. After a moment, the light fades. The Judge is gone, but Luso remains.  Now that is a JRPG makeover! The ambulatory chicken dinner is no longer stunned, and two side dishes enter the battlefield.   : You're going to fight them?: Once you stand back as I've told you, yes.: Hey, let me take a swing at them! I swore my oath. That means I can't die, right?: Harrumph! Spoken like a true greenhorn! No, you will not die, but get a beak in your eye and you might wish you had. : Well, I didn't mean I'd go in first or anything. And I'm no fan of getting beaked... But I won't just stand here while you do all the hard work. C'mon, let me fight!: Hrm... I did not intend to make you fight when I invited you to join us, however... You promise to do exactly as I say?: Promise!: Then you may fight. I am Cid. And you are?: Luso.: Very well, Luso. We begin! The tutorial fight finally begins. Klesta, the giant round chicken thing, is our target.  Laws make a return from FFTA, but they're somewhat different. For one, they're based on the quest, not on the day of the month. This one is impossible to break, thankfully. There's some lore about the laws and Judges, but we'll get into that later. Practically speaking, following the law gets us three benefits: 1. At the end of the battle, we are given 1 - 3 rewards, like equipment or loot. 2. We're allowed to revive any teammates who are KO'd. 3. We are empowered by a Clan Privilege, minor passive buffs that last the whole battle. There isn't one active for this fight, but we'll see them soon. Break the law, and these benefits are gone. You will get no extra loot, and you lose your clan privilege and can't revive allies for the rest of the battle. The law is well worth following.  And we're off!  Except this is the tutorial battle, so we get a ton of info dumped on us. Our clanmates explain the basic mechanics: 1. Characters' speed determines the move order. 2. Take into consideration the terrain of the battlefield. 3. You can move and perform an action on your turn. 4. Not moving and/or not taking an action makes your next turn come sooner. 5. The race and job of a character both influence speed. (More on that later!) 6. You can choose which direction your character faces at the end of their turn. This is called their "facing", and influences the damage and accuracy of attacks made against them. Our white mage moves up the hill, near the black mage. White Mages are primarily healers, and there's nothing for her to do since the battle just started.  Actions are things characters can do besides move, such as attacking with a weapon or using an ability. Black mages can use black magick, like the "Fire" spell. Some abilities, like all spells, require Magick Points (MP). You have 0 at the start of the fight, and you gain 10 per turn. This is a huge nerf from FFTA and makes magick users a bit harder to use. Some fun and easy ways to get around this will open up to us later in the game. Our black mage moves closer to Klesta and casts Fire on it.  : Think of me as a "guest" in your midst. I might not take orders, but we're on the same side. Try not to forget that in the heat of battle!Cid is a Guest, an ally that we can't control. We'll be seeing a lot of them throughout the game, and a few of them will actually be useful! Cid also hints that friendly fire is a thing. You can target and attack your allies, though you probably shouldn't. We also get introduced to large enemies, like Klesta. They take up a 3x3 square and don't move. It's a neat feature that works great for some monster bosses, but it has some serious limitations.  Cid body slams Klesta, because he's badass like that.  Body Slam is a strong attack, but it deals damage back to the user.  We can also go into "selection mode" before moving, allowing us to inspect the battlefield and look at every unit. Here's the information page for Luso. On the top screen is the unit's name, number and job. Below that are stats -- Luso is level 1, of course. I'll go into detail about stats later. On the right side we can see Luso's equipment and abilities. "Arts of War" is the Soldier's ability set, and Luso's second A-Ability (Action ability) lets him use items. His R-Ability (Reaction) and P-ability (Passive) slots are empty. On the bottom screen, we see the summary card on the bottom left, a description of his job in the middle, and a menu for checking more detailed information on the right. "Status" lists all the buffs and debuffs on the character. We can also use this screen to look at enemies' abilities and equipment. I usually don't bother, because why strategize when I can just attack? Luso moves up next to Cid and attacks Klesta. We're ignoring the two little butterballs, since they really aren't dangerous.  Klesta, despite being immobile, is dangerous. Its attacks have a huge range and a 2x2 AoE with heavy damage. All of the large enemies have attacks like this, which makes them feel very similar to each other; big piles of HP with large area attacks get boring quickly.  It literally stomps on your head. Painful.  And it hurts. That's over half our health!  But no worries, it's Soo's turn again! Cure is the basic heal spell in the game, as is Final Fantasy tradition. It won't undo all of the damage from Klesta, but it helps. Also, we probably can't die during this section. FFTA2 is nice like that sometimes.  The battle continues. Klesta stomps on a few more heads, the little chickens peck at us, and we keep focusing Klesta. 33 damage is pretty good at this point in the game -- this is the black magick "Blizzard" spell.  It doesn't take too long to force Klesta to flee. Smell ya later! : Yeah! That wasn't so bad! We don't have to kill the little ones, the battle ends after Klesta leaves.  The XP reward screen. Most fights give 60 XP, plus a bonus depending on how well the individual character did. XP scales with your level -- easy fights will give only meager experience.  And the law bonus! We get a Longbow, useful for Archers. The reward is not related to the law, as far as I know, but this first battle is pre-determined.  : Um, Cid? Do you think you could, erm...: Do not worry. I didn't invite you to join our clan just to abandon you in the wild.: You mean you'll take me with you? Thanks! I got so caught up in the fight, I kind of forgot... But now that I think of it, I don't have any idea where I am.Luso really hit the ground running. Doesn't even know where he is, but it only took him five minutes to pick up a weapon and start attacking the natives. : And I have questions to ask of you. Beginning with how you managed to appear from the empty skies.Forbidden: Vandalism. Recommended: Cleaning Libraries. Those red cards are powerful.  Luso's stomach growls. : Ah... I kind of skipped lunch today...: Ha ha ha! Very well. First order of business is to go home and eat. Then, we talk.Thus ends Luso's first battle in Ivalice.  The quest reward screen. We get a quest reward (separate from the law bonus), in this case some money and basic loot (essentially crafting materials). Ability Points (AP) are used to learn Abilities. Clan Points (CP) are a currency with a few special uses. Negotiation, Aptitude, Teamwork and Adaptability are our clan's stats; some quests have clan stat requirements that you must meet before you can take them.  Here's the map. The top screen is a summary of our current clan, quests and stats. At the bottom is the date, the 20th of Goldsun. On the bottom screen, we see the weather (raining) and our location (Targ Wood) in the top left. The blue "!" bubble indicates there's a story event at the town, which is where we're headed next. --- Inside the pub, Luso and Cid are sitting down to a post-battle meal.  : Hey, I was more surprised than you were. Finding myself in the middle of the woods with that chicken thing and you, Cid... I mean, you're not human! Or a "hume", was it?Luso is a little rough around the edges but he learns quickly. Cid certainly isn't a hume -- the game treats him as a bangaa, though he obviously isn't a lizard. He's supposedly a Rev (or Revgaji), a race from FFXII. : Here I thought I was off to clean a library.: Ah, but you adapted quick... or perhaps it's just that you lack a healthy sense of danger. I've never seen someone eat so well after battle!: Hey, what can I say? When you gotta eat, you gotta eat!: Apparently so. But I've changed the subject. You... came here, to our world of Ivalice from somewhere not of Ivalice. Through that book of yours.: Um, yeah, that's about the size of it... So... how do I get back? My aunt worries if I'm half an hour late home from school. I have to find a way back.: I took you in, I'll help you find a way back. Back to your world.: You will?: I will, lad. I expected as much when we took you into the clan.: Well, thanks, Cid! I guess I'll do what I can to help the clan out until we find a way back. You got to admit, I pulled my weight back there in the woods, huh?If I'm stuck here for a while, I might as well enjoy it. I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of this Ivalice place. : As I said, utterly heedless of danger.: Heh. I try. So, all the people here are in the clan?Luso gets up to introduce himself to the other clan members. : Hey, I'm Luso. Thanks for letting me join you... Um, Cid... does this clan have a name? It must. C'mon, tell me! Voting for a clan name is now open! Put your suggestions in bold. Nothing like "bonerfarts" or "dickbutt", please, and mind the 9 character limit. : We're Clan Gully. Not that it's a name many know.: Right, well... I'm Luso Clemens. A, uh, proud member of Clan Gully! Thanks for taking me. I hope I don't slow you down too much.The clan gives Luso a warm welcome. The people of Ivalice are friendly! Also, he helped them attach a giant chicken, and I'm sure that endeared him to them. : So, do clans do much else other than fight monsters?: You'll find that most work falls along those lines... but there are other things. Available jobs, which we call "quests", are posted at the local pub. There'll be time enough to show you this later.Translation: Almost every quest will, one way or another, come back to murder. : You mean we're done for the day?: That's right. There's your welcoming party to attend to, after all.: Huh?: Barman! Refreshments for all!--- That's it for the first update! Thank you all for reading. The next update will be up next week. Remember to vote for the clan name! And I'll also consider any good suggestions for Luso's name. Both can be 9 characters long. Voting will be open for a few days.
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Sep 23, 2017 23:29
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Epicmissingno posted:Is that Montblanc from the other Ivalice games up in the top left? Sharp eyes! That certainly does look like him, doesn't it. That's one of the flaws with this game: it seems extremely replayable, but then you realize the really fun part of the game many hours away. Min-maxing is difficult, but in my experience isn't super necessary. I'll be doing a little bit of it (e.g. recruiting Assassins to get the high base speed) but it's not really worthwhile.
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Sep 24, 2017 01:38
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I'm glad to see all these positive responses!FoolyCharged posted:Vacationing should go look into local culture and dance. Vacationing is too long -- we only have 9 characters for the names. Do you mean "Clan Clan" as the name I enter, so "Clan Clan Clan"? Or just "Clan Clan"? TooMuchAbstraction posted:I say we be the Clan Clam (or is it the Clam Clan?). No real opinion on the protag's name, default is fine I guess, making Ramza references in FFT LPs is getting kinda old though. I do agree with this. FFT is a great game, but the names are old hat. Dude might be a fun name.  kvx687 posted:You totally can die during the tutorial fight, and if you dick around trying to kill the small fries you're pretty likely to. My last run through I ended up with both mages dying and Luso at 9 HP before Klesta ran off. Ah, ok. I'm mostly thinking of later fights, where some characters can't die.
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Sep 24, 2017 05:52
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jaclynhyde posted:I have no opinion because Clan Cockatrice doesn't fit. 1 letter off! Shame. Voting is still open! Current result are: Naming Luso: Samuel 6 Luso 3 Ramza 3 Dude 1 Harry 1 Naming the Clan: Sawyer 4 Beoulve 3 Clam 2 Clan 2 Rabble 1 Sotheby 1 Badstar 1 Kcikass 1 Woah! 1 Nutsy 1 It'll be open for another day or so. I'll probably put up the first informative update (about the races of Ivalice) tomorrow.
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Sep 25, 2017 05:24
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Voting for names ends tonight at 11:59 pm, Pacific time! That's GMT-7. Samual is by far the most popular name for Luso, while Sawyer is barely in the lead for the clan name. Current rankings: Naming Luso: Samuel 12 Ramza 5 Dude 3 Luso 3 Harry 1 Naming the Clan: Sawyer 7 Clan 5 Beoulve 4 Woah! 3 Clam 2 Badstar 1 Finn 1 Goons 1 Kcikass 1 Nutsy 1 Rabble 1 Sotheby 1
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Sep 26, 2017 01:14
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The Races of Ivalice Races in FFTA2 only influence one part of a character: which jobs that character can use. Base stats, stat growths and equipment are all determined by the character's job. However, every race has a large number of unique jobs, and only some basic and intermediate jobs are shared between races. Oh, and of course there's aesthetic differences. Hume  The most common of the races, humes can be found throughout Ivalice. In skill and ability they are perhaps the most balanced race. While they excel in no single area, they perform capably in almost any role. Humes are, well, humans. They're the most populous race in Ivalice, and also the most well-rounded. They have a little bit of everything available to them when it comes to jobs, with a general overall trend towards speed and power. They have the most jobs with 13 total available, only 5 of which are shared with other races. Humes have some of the best physical options in the game: Paladins, Parivirs, Ninjas and Fighters top the face-punching charts. Magickally, they're eclipsed by Viera and Nu Mou, but the classic Blue Mage and new Seer are interesting and powerful in their own right. But they truly shine when you start mixing jobs together. With little overlap between each job, almost any combination of skill sets is viable, and passive abilities like Dual Wield and Geomancy are welcome additions for any character. Viera  Oft called the People of the Wood, the viera are a lithe and swift race. Like humes, they can fill a great variety of roles on the battlefield. Ah, the Viera. To summarize: Rabbit women. One of the female-only races in the game, Viera focus on mysticism and precision. They share only two jobs with other races -- White Mage and Archer -- and have some very powerful abilities. Like Nu Mou, they're heavily connected with magick, but with a very organic approach. Appropriately, they have a lot of unique magick jobs. The majority of Viera jobs are magickal in one way or another. Barring a few notable exceptions, their jobs also tend to focus on applying conditions. Two of those notable exceptions are Red Mage and Summoner, which combined are the most powerful magick caster in the game. Viera are also famous for the Sniper and Assassin jobs, which ruled FFTA and are still quite powerful in FFTA2. Moogles  This short-statured race is distinguished by the pom poms on their heads and bat-like wings on their backs. They have no love of water, and will not venture into even the shallowest pools. Moogles are accomplished machinists, and they boast a great many unique and odd jobs all their own. Moogles are one of the signatures of Final Fantasy, right after Chocobos and belts. This is one of the few games where they play a significant role in combat. The most notable feature of Moogles is their intelligence: they make for powerful mages, but also have a great affinity for machinery and engineering. Almost every Moogle job is based on a gimmick, which makes them niche at best. But some jobs -- Moogle Knight, Fusilier and Juggler -- are valuable additions to any clan. Of course, they can also learn the extremely good Black Mage and Time Mage jobs. Their two jobs added in FFTA2 are, unfortunately, trash. Nu Mou  Canine features and long, droopy ears set this race apart. Even-tempered and thoughtful, they possess capacity for great intellect. Like moogles, they shun water and avoid it at all costs. Though ill-suited for the front lines of battle, they make incomparable mages and weavers of magick. Out of all the races, Nu Mou are the undisputed masters of magick. Every single job focuses on the arcane, reflecting a single-minded pursuit of mystic arts. Nu Mou are the leading scholars and researchers of Ivalice -- it's no wonder that Ezel Berbier, inventor of the anti-law in FFTA, is a Nu Mou. Nu Mou's job roster is a master class in magick. You know you're doing it right when the description of your spells is just, "Heavy damage." They also bring a fair amount of conditions and team support to the table. Unfortunately, Nu Mou are held back by low speed, though that's less of a drawback these days. Like Moogles, their two new jobs aren't that great. But if you need raw magickal power, call a Nu Mou. Bangaa  Tough scales cover this reptilian race head to toe. Their violent tempers, powerful physique, and love of battle make them at home on the front lines. BANBANGAAAA! The strong, proud race of warriors. If Nu Mou are kings of Magick, Bangaas are the Dukes of Facepunching. But they aren't just testosterone-fueled beatdowns: Bishops, Cannoneers and Tricksters round out their job roster with some interesting, if niche, abilities. Bangaa jobs are basically about finding new and interesting ways to inflict damage. There's little in the way of conditions or buffs, but frankly they don't need all that. Like humes, their jobs tend to complement each other, though there's only so many ways to deal damage. The new jobs, especially Cannoneer and Trickster, offer great alternative play styles that focus on support, ranged damage and conditions. Seeq  Though one would not think it to look on them, seeq are remarkably quick and agile, making for formidable foes and valued allies. They are not, however, terribly bright, and their moral compass has lost all direction. They lust for gold, jewels, and the like, often adorning their bodies with such, whether ill-gotten or otherwise. Seeq are one of the two new races in FFTA2. Of their 4 jobs, only one is worth mentioning, and that's only because it brings to the table essential utility and early-game-breaking power. Seeqs' main role in FFTA2 is comedic relief. Gria  Draconic wings and tail adorn this peculiar race. Able to fly for short distances, they move without hindrance across the battlefield. Gria much prefer a weapon's cold steel to the more subtle arts of magick, eagerly taking to the front ranks. Gria are the other new race in FFTA2. Like Viera, they're all-female. Like the description says, Gria favor all-out physical jobs, similar to Bangaa. Being able to fly is a great passive ability, too. There are a lot of vertical maps in FFTA2, which Gria can navigate with ease. Like Seeq, there are only 4 Gria jobs. Raptors and Ravagers are heavy physical damage dealers, while Hunters are ranged physical damage, a job they share with Humes. They can also be Geomancers, a unique magick job whose spells are influenced by the current weather and what tile the unit is standing on. But pretty much everyone just uses Gria for Raptor and Ravager.
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Sep 26, 2017 01:18
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Voting is now closed! The next installment of the adventures of Samuel Clemens of Clan Sawyer will be coming in a few days. Thank you all for the responses -- I'm really happy to see so much interest!
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Sep 26, 2017 08:03
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Update 2: Am I My Trapper's Keeper? In This Update: - Tutorials Galore - There's No Business like Bazaar Business - Our First Quest! --- Welcome back!   Thank you all for voting! Samuel Clemens won by a landslide, and Clan Sawyer proved to be just slightly more popular than the others. When we left off, Samuel had been accepted into the clan that saved him from Klesta, a giant, vicious bird, after he suddenly landed in the middle of their battle. The clan celebrated their victory and their new member, and now it's time for Samuel to learn what clans do.  : I always pictured a pub as someplace to kick back and grab a snack.: What better place? People gather to share a meal, and where there are people, there's talk. Clans pay good money for the sort of talk that leads to work - the quests I mentioned before.: So if we need to make money or find something to do, the pub is the place to go.: Exactly. : Ah, Cid. Looking for work?: That's right. We have a new member in need of training. Talk to the barman, Samuel. Find us a good quest. The best way to learn is to do, lad.: Okay, leave it to me. : Well, if you're looking for a quest, the first thing you'll want to do is ask to see the quest roster.The roster lists all the quests on record at the pub. Once you've found a quest that catches your eye, simply pay the finder's fee and you're done. It's not enough to read the quest and go running off. If you haven't paid the fee, you'll be on a fool's errand. Now some quests you can take as long as you please to finish. Others you'll have a set number of days to do it in. It's all there on the quest roster, so just pay close attention and you'll avoid any unpleasant surprises. That's all there is to it. Ready to have a go? That brings us to the Pub menu.  Notices are useful, short notes about the goings-on in the world. Quest Roster lists the available quests. Current Quests lets us view which quests we've accepted. We can cancel quests here, if we so choose. Story quests can't be cancelled once we've taken them. Rumors are basically the same as Notices, but are usually hints and tips about the game itself.  Unsurprisingly, we only have 1 quest available to us right now. You can tell it's a story quest because the "Days" column is empty. There's no time limit for story quests. Each quest has 4 pages of information.  Here's the basic description. Rank is roughly how difficult the quest is, which kind-of-but-not-really corresponds to character levels. Quests with a rank lower than our characters' levels will be easier, while those above will feature tougher enemies we may not be able to beat. Fee is how much we have to pay to take the quest. Days is the time limit for the quest. This particular quest, "A Paw Full of Feathers," is only rank 2, so it'll be easy. It seems a nearby chocobo ranch needs some wolves taken care of.  The quest requirements page. Some quests require some items, or for your clan talents to be high enough. Most missions (though obviously not story missions) can be dispatched, which means sending off one or more clan members to handle it themselves. That is, we don't have to do every mission ourselves! It's useful for particularly easy quests, and there are a few that are dispatch only. "Recommended for Dispatch" will list a job that's more likely to succeed on that particular mission.  The quest reward page lists the quest type, the monetary and loot rewards, and whether or not the mission can be dispatched and/or cancelled.  Finally, the destination page shows where we need to go and how many clan members can be taken on the mission. We can only take 5 people, because Cid is filling in as our 6th.  Since it's the only mission available, we must take it.  Pay the fee and the quest is ours. I don't know what happens if we don't have enough money to pay for a story quest. Effective game over? They let you take it anyway? : I got us a quest. "A Paw Full of Feathers". They want us to chase off some wolves.: Let's see... That ranch isn't far from the village. No hurry, though. There's no deadline written on the bill.: Sounds like they're in a tight spot. I don't wanna keep 'em waiting. I'll go get the others!: See that you're ready before you go running off!That boy needs to get his priorities straight. At this rate he's like to stay here forever. Samuel runs back into the pub to rouse the clan. --- Let's take a look at the equipment screen.  Here's Samuel. He's a Soldier still, equipped with a Shortsword, a Bronze Shield, a Plumed Hat and a Linen Cuirass.  Here's a problem: Samuel's sword has no abilities! Every job in FFTA2 has a number of Action Abilities (A-Abilities), Reaction Abilities (R-Abilities), and Passive Abilities (P-Abilities). A character learns abilities by equipping gear that teaches them. Generally, weapons teach A-Abilities, while armor and accessories teach R-Abilities and P-Abilities. Every battle and quest gives you Action Points. Most side quests give 30, and story missions give 80. Every member of the clan gets the same number of action points, which get applied to every skill they're learning. So if a Soldier is learning First Aid (from an equipped Broadsword) and also Shieldbearer (from a Bronze Shield), both abilities get the full amount of AP applied to them. Since Samuel's sword has no abilities, any AP he gets is not used. This is pretty wasteful, though AP is effectively unlimited.  Unfortunately, our only Broadsword is currently being used by Henri, our bangaa Warrior.  How do we get more weapons? By going to the shops!  Shops in FFTA2 have a couple useful features besides buying and selling gear. Fitting Room lets us try on items, which is useful for outfitting new characters.  The shop is a bit limited right now. They don't even have any broadswords!  "Item Info" shows which jobs can equip an item and the abilities the item teaches. Pretty handy, especially when trying to figure out which armor a character can wear.  This Hand Cannon teaches a couple abilities that sound interesting...  But we haven't unlocked those jobs yet. OK, but still: we're looking for a Broadsword so Samuel can learn some useful abilities. We need to do expand the shop's inventory, and we do that using the Bazaar. I'll let the shopkeeper explain it:  "Loot" is the random items we get as quest rewards and drops from slain enemies. Rat pelts, precious gems, various metals, elemental crystals -- all of these and more count as loot.  Here's the main Bazaar menu. The bottom screen shows the various categories of items we can unlock, and the top screen shows the types of loot each category uses. Apprentice Weapons has a glowing dot, indicating we have the loot needed to unlock an item in that category.  We only have Gikhet Lead, a rank E Metal, available.  It can be combined with Faren Pollen, a Rank E Flora. Together, they unlock the Broadsword.  Simple as that! I immediately buy one and equip it on Samuel. The shop has nothing else of interest. Let's go to our first real quest! ---  : Whoa, so this is a chocobo, huh? It's way bigger than I imagined! Cool! Hey, they're kinda cute.: Step too close and he'll peck your eye out.: Oh, I already knew all about that. The chocobos all turn to face the woods. : What is it?In the distance, a wolf howls. : Company.: Um... Here, chocobos! Stay in the hutch while we deal with these wolves. Here are our enemies for the mission: Two Wolves and a Baknamy. : Don't even think about touching those chocobos! : Hey, Cid. What was that Judge saying about some law just now? What do laws have to do with fighting?: Ah, I was remiss in my explanations. Laws are like the rules of engagement: guidelines you must follow in combat. When an adjudged clan - that is, a clan watched over by a Judge - fights, it abides by laws. It is not enough to do battle. We must do battle with care to not break any law.: You serious? That sounds like a pain.: Yes, but not without gain. Only by keeping the letter of the law may a clan enjoy its full privileges. Not to mention the reward offered those who heed the Judge's word.Why don't you try picking the clan privilege this time round, Samuel? Don't fret over your choice. Consider it to be a gift. First choose which clan members will participate in battle, then choose the privilege you will use. Listen, Samuel. Always obey the law when you can. But know that all is not lost when you can't. The penalties for breaking the law are not so severe. You will merely lose your clan privilege, and fallen comrades will remain so until the battle ends. This is pretty good advice. It's rare, but you might find sometimes that breaking the law will help you win a battle. The trade-offs aren't really all that terrible, and breaking the law once or twice won't hurt you. It's not like FFTA where breaking the law multiple times has mounting consequences, and the laws in this game are way less onerous.  Here's the crew for this fight. I haven't really focused much on the clan members -- the game doesn't do much to emphasise them, really, and there's no way to customize their names or appearance. From left to right, Clan Sawyer is: Cid, the bangaa Warrior. He's a guest. Nyno, the hume Archer. Talf, the nu mou Black Mage. Lenolia, the viera White Mage. In front of her is Henri, the bangaa Warrior. And of course, in front is Samuel Clemens, hume Soldier. Not present is Imino, the moogle Thief. We'll see him later. Since Cid is with us, we can only bring five clan members, and Samuel counts as one of the five. Our enemies aren't particularly frightening, since we out-number them 2:1. But don't be fooled: they can be pretty strong, and Baknamy pack a hell of a punch thanks to their abilities.  First off is the passive, Geomancy, which lowers resistance to elemental attacks. In FFTA2, elemental resistances come in tiers: Weak < Normal < Resist < Immune < Absorb The names are pretty self explanatory. "Weak" means they take double damage, and "Resist" means they take half damage. Geomancy lowers the resistance by one stage, so an enemy that Resists fire will take normal damage. This applies to all 8 elements, too, so enemies with no resistances will become Weak to all elements! I don't think I've said it earlier, but the eight elements are: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Water, Wind, Earth, Dark and Holy. The middle three -- Water, Wind and Earth -- are the rarest damage types, I think, but are also the most common weakness. For example, the wolves here are weak to Water.  The Baknamy can't take advantage of Geomancy, thankfully, but it has something scarier. Goblin Attack, the only A-Ability the Baknamy knows, ignores the defense granted by wearing armor. That's more than a little frightening!  Undeterred, we start the battle. We can finally choose our own clan privilege. We will almost always take Bonus AP. This is the skill we got from answer the quiz in the first update. Bonus AP 1 gives +20 AP at the end of the battle. Skills like First Aid and Cure cost 100 AP to learn. With Bonus AP 1, we can learn those skills in a single story quest! The other abilities slightly boost their named stat. We're talking a couple percent, maybe 5% max. Not worth it, though some privileges we'll unlock later are extremely powerful. And so the battle begins. One of the wolves is faster than us, so it advances. Lenolia spends her first turns doing nothing. She's a White Mage with no one to heal, so we might as well save her turn for later.  If you recall, last update we got a Longbow. It teaches the Archer ability, "Focus." It's not that great, since you're usually better off attacking twice.  13 damage isn't terrible. Archers fall off pretty quickly, unfortunately. Part of the problem is their weapons are a little rare, so it's hard to unlock the best skills for them.     Henri, Cid, Samuel and Talf gang up on the one wolf, quickly killing it. We get a Power Fruit for our troubles. Not bad! Every enemy has four tiers of loot they can drop, and each tier has four items. They're always guaranteed to drop one piece of loot when slain. Power Fruit is one of the tier 1 drops. Oh well. The first round ends with both sides heading towards the middle of the map. Lenolia drops a heal on Cid, who hurt himself using Body Slam. It's an AoE heal, so Henri and Samuel get some HP too.  I want to move Nyno forward, but I don't want him to be in range of the enemy. Before moving him, I can check out each enemy's movement range, shown in the red squares.  Looks like the Baknamy can move pretty far forward...  ...but there's enough space for Nyno to move forward and still attack.  Here's why Goblin Attack is scary. That's one third of Henri's health in one hit! And I'm pretty sure it can be used every turn, too.  But we can do comparable damage by taking advantage of facings. Attacking from the side helps Henri deal a solid 30 damage.  Talf has plenty of fun too. AoE attacks are very powerful in this game, and the AI doesn't really try to avoid grouping up. Black Mages rule the early parts of this game... and the later parts, too.  I mentioned last update that friendly fire does exist. It goes both ways: We can also heal the enemy! I'm not sure this is ever useful, but it's something to keep in mind.   The second wolf falls, granting us a Crooked Fang.  The Baknamy follows quickly after.   And with that, Samuel Clemens finishes his first quest with Clan Sawyer!  Note that Samuel started at level 1. He'll catch up quickly.  Metal Knuckles are the first knuckle weapon we'll get, and are used by White Monks, the other bangaa starting job. The Silken Robe is an upgrade for mages, but teaches no abilities. ---  : And a good day to quest. All we need to do now is collect our pay. So I think you understand well enough what it is we do. You might keep an eye out for quests that promise to lead you toward home.: Home... Right. It's all tied up in that book with the blank pages... Figure that book out, and I'll find my way back.: The magick book, yes.: I just wish I'd been paying more attention to the thing. I remember it was old, real old. The cover was all faded. I didn't even see what it was called.: The question is, who wrote it, where, and for what reason? ... Three questions, actually.Hrm? Don't tell me you carry a journal around, Samuel. : Huh? A journal?He checks his pocket. Hey, it's a journal.  Samuel, really? : You mean... that's not yours?: Do I look like the type to keep a journal to you?: That you do not.Samuel rifles through the book.  : What is it? Has it been written in?: Look at this, Cid! This journal talks about me in the library and coming to Ivalice, and getting rescued... Everything I've done is in here!: Ah, so you do keep a journal!The journal glows in Samuel's hands, and a new line appears.  : Ah, it's recording the fight with the wolves just now.: A magick journal?: Yet another surprise. You're full of them, aren't you?: You think this magick journal's got something to do with that book?: Possibly... No, it's certain. You've found your first clue.: That wasn't so hard. So, who would know something about a magick journal? Maybe a wizard? What if I can find a quest that'd take me to one?That's it! Cid! Let's get back to town and check out the lists at the pub! ---   We've learned some new abilities!  Since Samuel mastered First Aid, he unlocked Thief and Archer. These jobs require the character to learn 1 Soldier A-Ability before they can start training in that job. Let's head back the pub and get the plot moving a little. ---   : Bandits on the highroad. Several merchant caravans reported attacks between here and Camoa. : Purely profit seekers, I hear. They let those who offer up goods and gil they want go free. Little good it does us without two coins to rub together.: And that's the only highroad out of this place.: Bandits, hrrah? Their timing couldn't be worse.: Why's that?: I had a mind to take that highroad to Camoa. I'm tired of scratching around in the dirt here for scraps of information.: If there are bandits on the road, why not bring 'em in? We can teach them a lesson and open the road... Two birds with one stone.: It'll take more than a stone to put that lot in their place, but I don't see as we have a choice.: Hey, maybe someone's posted a reward for getting rid of them in the pub, too! Better get there quick before someone else has the same idea!The Blue Mage, Hunter and Illusionist trio are a callback to Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, where they served basically the same role: dispensers of plot-relevant gossip.  : While I'm away, you'll have to quest without me... but I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle. Don't worry, I'll come back if you need me for anything particularly important. Be safe.Cid will no longer be joining us as a guest. That means we can bring our full contingent of 6 clan members, finally.  He's still here in the pub with us though.   We have 3 quests right now. "The Yellow Wings" is the next story mission, but let's see the other two.   This quest requires we have a particular piece of loot.  Since we don't have any Cactus Fruit (it's a possible drop from the wolves in the previous mission), we can't take it at all.  This one's a little more promising. Weird people in the woods? Sounds like fun!    We'll grab the story mission, too.  Before heading towards the missions, let's check out the shop. The Grade E item in the Survival Set is open, so let's check it out.  Here's what happens what you try to use an item that doesn't match with the other selected items. Since a category can multiple items of the same grade, it can get confusing. Also, every recipe is only for items in the same grade, so we'll never mix Grade E and Grade D items, for example.  This recipe unlocks the Jackknife, which teaches Steal: Gil for Thieves and Gil Toss for Jugglers.  I also changed the team. Samuel's going to train as a Thief for a bit, since it unlocks a great job later. Talf is going to be a White Mage, since that's important for unlocking a bunch of nu mou jobs. Finally, Henri is training as a White Monk. We don't have anything else a Warrior can use, so we might as well put those Metal Knuckles we earned to good use. ---  Onto the next battle! Let's go fight creepy people in the woods.  Laws aren't going to be very restrictive for a while. We just don't have enough abilities to really run afoul of them.  Here's the starting lineup. We won't earn enough AP to master the abilities that Samuel, Talf and Henri are starting to learn, but that's alright.  The enemies here are hardly threatening. Only one of them is armed and knows more than just basic attacks. This will be a walk in the, uh, woods. Most missions start with a bit of dialogue. If it isn't a story mission, I believe which character speaks is based on who you place first. That's almost always Samuel, obviously, but there really is dialogue for every character! I think it's based on the race of the character you place though.  : Nrjg, nrjg... Elom nrjg... Green Dominion...: Those have to be the ones we're after. Sounds like they're chanting a spell.Um, hey! What exactly are you doing over there? : Green Dominion, heed us. Nrjg, nrjg. Grant us your power.... Nrjg? Who can concentrate with this noise!? The incantation is ruined! How close we'd come to divining a new magick... You will pay the price for disrupting these rites! : What did you expect, chanting some creepy magick in the middle of the woods?And we're off. Viera tend to be pretty fast, so a couple of them move toward us. They're too far away to do anything, since they can only attack with their bare fists.  Imino is our fastest character. He's still a Thief, so of course we should try stealing with him! Note the probability here -- 50% isn't great. Also, stealing does no damage at all. That's actually a good thing. The best way to boost your Steal chance is to Sleep the enemy. Since Steal does no damage, we can take our time and make multiple attempts. Another condition, Stop, also improves Steal chance.  Oh well. It would have been only a handful of gil anyway.  Also these viera really can't do much to us.  Some maps have treasure chests on them. A character can walk up to them and open the chest as an action. This is why I placed Lenolia on the right side -- as a White Mage, she has nothing to do for the first couple rounds.  Red treasure chests like this one contain common items, like this Knot of Rust. This is a throwable item that does a fair bit of damage.  I'll just be showing the highlights of this battle, since it's so easy. Here's Roundhouse, the A-Ability taught by the Metal Knuckles. It attacks every target around you, but only does half the damage of a normal attack.  Damage is calculated individually for each target, of course. Here's how facing can make a difference: attack the target's back does twice as much damage as an attack to their front!  Please stay grouped up forever. Well done, Talf.  They aren't defenseless, of course.  Both land. Ouch! Sleep will fade after a few turns, thankfully.  Or we can just attack them. Friendly fire does have its uses.  That viera also knows Blind, which greatly reduces accuracy. Fortunately, it misses.  It's not long before we have the upper hand in this battle. After all, they can barely hurt us.  Imino ran to the back of the battlefield to open the other chest. These fancier blue ones have valuable treasure, like rare consumables and even weapons! They're almost always worth getting.  Ether restores 80 MP and cannot be purchased. It's a fantastic consumable for mages.  A White Mage, making a melee attack? This early in the game, why not? Every attack has a bit of variance in how much damage it deals, so it's possible this attack won't KO the enemy.  Lenolia doesn't mess around though. In this game, critical hits knock back the enemy, which can actually be kind of frustrating.  Pretty soon the last one falls. Mission successful! : I am beaten. Not yet has our power grown to maturity. Forgive us our anger. Fully a day we'd spent preparing, only to have all come to naught. I go contrite. Let me share the wisdom of the green mage with you. Each month we come to this place to study the art of these magicks. Join us, should you like.: That's, uh... nice of you to offer, but I think I'll probably pass. We've unlocked our first job. Green Mage is a buff/de-buff-based Viera job with some really neat abilities. A lot of really, really cool jobs are locked behind quests like this. It's generally in our best interest to unlock them as soon as possible, since more jobs means more power.  Henri was the MVP of this mach. This doesn't really mean much right now, and I have no idea how it's calculated. I think it's based on bonus XP: if a character gets +10 or more, they're an MVP. Henri punches enough faces to get XP, I guess.  The Barong a Greatsword, which Soldiers can equip. Soldier abilities are more useful than Thief abilities right now, so I'm going to switch Samuel back. The Iron Helm is an improved helmet, and Eye Drops cure the Blind status.  Not a bad haul at all. Still no cactus fruit though.  I've switched Samuel back to Soldier. Since the Barong is a 2-handed Greatsword, we have to unequip his shield before he can use it. ---  Let's take care of the next story battle. Some bandits are blocking the highroad, but we want to use that road. So we'll bring them to justice!  : Pay? But we're just walking. When people pay, they usually get something in return.Samuel slips into his "innocent and naïve" act, which is actually pretty passive aggressive.  : How about your lives? Don't tell me you've not heard of our band, the Yellow Wings!: Ring any bells, Cid?: Not a one.: Fools! Hand over the coin, or we'll exact a higher price... in blood!Not that you look like you've more than a pint in you, runt. : I like my gil and my blood right where they are, thanks. What do you say we show those guys just who rules the roads, huh, Cid? Easy enough. Only Black Mages can deal ice damage right now, and they have Fire and Thunder to use instead. Note the wording of the law: "weapons and abilities". Some weapons deal elemental damage, and that will trigger laws like this one!  I made a few changes. Samuel is a Soldier so he can learn the Baron's A-Ability, Rend Power. Talf is back to Black Mage, though he has no abilities to learn. It's worth it for the stat growth when he levels up though. Lenolia is a Green Mage. I picked up the Battle Mace, which lets her cast Sleep. Henri and Nyno haven't changed since last battle. Finally, Imino is a Black Mage now. Two Black Mages can do a lot of damage together.  We're up against a sizable enemy force, and they're all armed this time. The Thief, Kidd, is joined by a bangaa White Monk, viera Archer, nu mou Black Mage and a moogle Animist. The two biggest threats are the Black Mage and the White Monk, so we'll try to take them down first.   Here's what Focus, the Archer A-Ability looks like. Yes, she will keep standing like that until she attacks.  Imino is still our fastest character, thanks to his Thief training. Thunder can do quite a bit of damage to the enemy White Monk.  ...or not.  Animists are more of an annoyance than anything. Their weapons do very little damage, and at this point in the game, they only have the "100% Wool" A-Ability. This gives them Shell and Protect, significantly boosting their defenses. But since they don't have any real way to deal damage, this just delays their inevitable death.  One drawback of Green Magick: It's expensive. We only gain 10 MP per turn, so we can't cast Sleep right away. I'll forget to cast it for a while, actually.  Let's check out Rend Power, the A-Ability Samuel is learning from the Barong.  Nifty!  This is after Rend Power. See why I said the White Monk is so dangerous?  Kidd goes for a Steal: Gil on Lenolia. It actually connects, and he takes 80 gil. That's chump change, even at this point in the game.  At the start of her turn, Lenolia spouts this line. She's activated an "Opportunity" turn, during which she can use a unique command depending on how many allies or enemies she has around her. These turns activate randomly, and can actually be pretty helpful.  With one adjacent enemy, she can use Flurry!, which does 2 normal weapon attacks.  Standing next to one ally unlocks Battle Shout!, which raises Resilience. Higher Resilience reduces the chance you'll be hit by status effects.  With 3 adjacent allies, Lenolia can use Shield of Steel!, which grants Astra. As it says in the description, Astra prevents the next status effect from hitting at all.  Standing alone allows Tough As Nails! to be used. This is identical to 100% Wool. Four adjacent allies lets you use Second Wind!, which casts Curaga, a high-powered heal spell. With two or more adjacent enemies, the Opportunity command just attacks those enemies once each.  But one Opportunity command stands head and shoulders above the others. With two adjacent allies, you can cast Hastega, granting all three of you Haste. Haste is easily the best buff in the game. More turns = more attacks = more damage. Frankly, Fleet of Foot! is the only command worth using most of the time.  Opportunity commands are used instead of your regular action. I rarely find them to be more useful than other abilities, honestly, but they're a nice bonus when they occur.  Samuel starts targeting the enemy Black Mage. He'll only cast one or two spells if we focus him, which will make this a lot easier.    It's hard not to place characters next to near each other, especially on a narrow battlefield like this one. The enemy Black Mage punishes me for it, but we'll be fine if we don't get hit by too many attacks like that.  Why attack instead of using Sleep? Maces do decent damage, and sleep isn't really worth it. If we could catch two or more enemies with it, I would definitely go for it. We could put the Black Mage to sleep, but since we're just going to attack him before his next turn anyway, it would be a waste.  Samuel gets the kill on the Black Mage. That's one major threat down.  The White Monk is still giving us trouble, but not for too much longer.  I take that back.  Remember when I said only the Black Mage and White Monk are threats? Here's another example why.  Imino pays him back for that.  Here's an example of why Guests can be annoying as hell. It's Talf's turn, there's two enemies at critical health, and they're spaced perfectly for a Fire or Thunder to take them both out. But Cid moves in to attack the Thief, ruining the formation.  Or we'll just attack Cid.  Worth it!  Nothing lasts forever. But we've made quite the lead thanks to that haste. With both major threats down, this is just cleanup now.  Lenolia finally uses Sleep, just so the archer can't be annoying and run away. Notice the Focus stance. It doesn't help.  It hits!  And now just the Archer is left.  The Archer is kind of annoying to get to, so I spend a few turns just moving everyone closer. Lenolia is able to jump up to her, since Green Mages get an innate +1 jump.  Oops, I guess that friendly fire is biting me a little. Don't worry, Cid will be fine.  Height is weird in this game. It's sometimes hard to tell if you'll be able to attack a target who is on a different level than you are. Here, Lenolia is attacking from way above her enemy.  Another advantage: AoEs have limited vertical reach. If this was flat ground, Lenolia would also be hit by the spell.  Cripes.  Cid gets the final hit in. That's a little overkill, especially since Cid is at Critical HP himself.  It's over! Our first big engagement went very smoothly. Identifying and eliminating (or disabling) the biggest threats is the most important part of most battles. Ganging up on one enemy, like we did with the Black Mage, is also a really useful tactic.  Samuel did really well and earned MVP status. It's possible to have multiple MVPs in a single battle, but it's not very common.  Glass Bell is an Animist weapon, which are fairly rare for no good reason. Battle Boots are the basic shoe armor, and boots are also rare in general.  : This will be my first big town in Ivalice... I can't wait!: Stay close once we arrive. I don't want to spend all day looking for a lost lamb.: No problem! I'm good at remembering streets. I'll just take a quick tour...: A tour? Have you forgotten why we go to Camoa in the first place?: To find out more about the journal! You didn't think I'd forget that!He runs off down the road.   After every story mission, our journal updates itself. A fresh line appears, and this little "save" symbol swirls around.  A pretty good haul! We're fast running out of skills to learn. Hopefully we can do something about that soon. At the very least, we can keep rotating jobs.  The red "X" at the end of the road turns into a blue arrow, indicating we've unlocked the next area.  This is our first look at the entire continent of Loar. We'll be exploring the whole thing pretty soon. But first, we're going to Camoa.  --- Thanks for reading! This was a pretty big update, I think, but I wanted to get out of Targ Woods and into the rest of the game. We're basically out of the tutorial but still being railroaded through the early plot. Things should start to pick up a little soon. Solumin fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 03:04
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FoolyCharged posted:Wait is that really the continent's name? Yup, it's called Loar. If you look to the northeast, you'll see another continent across the channel. That's Ordallia. dancingbears posted:Green Mages are great and the best. Even if their skillset wasn't incredible, they get good magic and great speed. Bet we see a lot of 'em. I've honestly rarely used them! I'm going to try to balance the clan between raw damage and conditions for this run through, so as long as we have maces, you'll see green magick. Green Mage stats are alright. Elementalist and Summoner have way better magick growths, but only Assassin has better speed gains. As is Final Fantasy Tactics LP Tradition, I'll put up some short posts about the available jobs. Probably do the first one pretty soon, to at least explain what jobs are and what they give each character. Solumin fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 21:07
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MightyPretenders posted:There's a place in the last update where the commentary doesn't match the picture. Thanks for catching that! I've fixed it in the update. Here's the correct image: dancingbears posted:Tranq alone makes Green Mages impossibly good. Sleep and whatever else is nice, but basically every Vierra in A2 I've run has Green Magic for Tranq. Tranq is really great! Anything that raises accuracy really helps characters who use conditions, and there's a bunch of actions that couple great damage with low accuracy. Most other attacks are usually accurate enough though. That said, there are other skill combinations that viera can use that blow green macgick out of the water. We'll be seeing those later. (Much later.)
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Sep 30, 2017 21:45
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:I'd do it but I haven't played ffta2 in years and I'm also ludicrously jaded. I really appreciate the offer, but I've actually already written all of them. I've been preparing this LP for a couple months. Just need to get pictures and do some final proofreading, I think.Rigged Death Trap posted:I've never found a real use for green mages. Gonna agree with OFS on this: Since you can have 2 ability sets on each character, there's no reason your healers can't be killers too. And I'm pretty sure healing scales with Magick Power, too, so they really can do both. I do believe Tranq and Leap are unique spells, and Leap might be the only ability in the game that can give +1 Move and +1 Jump to other characters.
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Oct 1, 2017 01:53
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I did, back in the first update, during the tutorial battle. The MP clan benefits are pretty useful. We'll be looking at clan trials pretty soon.
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Oct 1, 2017 03:43
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Jobs 101 A character's job defines their progression: stat growths, abilities and what equipment they can use. The jobs a character can train in are limited by their race; for example, only humes can be Ninjas, but humes, viera and nu mou can all be White Mages. Additionally, most jobs require the character to have learned a number of A-Abilities from other jobs. For example, mastering one Soldier A-Ability allows that character to become a Thief or Archer. Each job has a set of abilities for characters to learn. These abilities are learned from equipment, using Ability Points earned in battle. Soldiers, for example, can equip Swords, Greatswords, Light armor, Heavy armor and Shields. Some jobs must be unlocked by completing certain quests. We saw this with the viera's Green Mage job, which was unlocked after successfully completing the "Green Dominion" quest. There's 22 of these quests in the game, and a lot of really cool and powerful jobs are locked behind them. Finally, a character can equip any abilities that they've mastered, no matter which job they currently are. There are 4 ability slots: Two for A-Ability sets, one R-Ability slot and one P-Ability slot. Let's say Samuel learns a couple Soldier abilities, then switches to Black Mage. The first A-Ability slot is always filled by the current job, in this case Black Magick. In the second slot, Samuel can equip the Soldier abilities, called "Arts of War." He can then use the Soldier abilities he mastered, even though he's a Black Mage. If he switches back to Soldier without mastering any Black Mage abilities, Samuel won't be able to equip the Black Magick ability set. The R-Ability and P-Ability slots work the same way. The character can equip any ability that they've mastered. Samuel learned Shieldbearer, and as a Black Mage he could equip that skill in his passive slot and be able to use shields. Stats There are 7 stats that change as a character levels up:
Each job has a base value and a growth value for each stat. When a character is created, they start as a particular job, and character's stats will be equal to the job's base value. For example, Soldier has a base of 88 W.ATK with a +9 growth. At level 1, Samuel had 88 W.ATK, and when he reached level 2, it increased to 97. Growth also has a variance, so it's possible for Samuel to gain between 8 and 10 points in W.ATK when he levels up. Speed is a little different. Instead of a set growth value, it's a percentage. When the character levels up, they have that percent chance to gain a Speed point. This greatly flattens out that speed difference between characters, but starting as a job with a high base speed is even more important. Soldiers have 50% Speed growth, so Samuel has a 1-in-2 chance to gain a Speed point. Stat growths vary between 5 - 9 for HP, 1 - 8 for MP, 34% - 99% for Speed (average is around 50-60%), and 5 - 11 for W.ATK, W.DEF, M.POW and M.RES. One job may have different stat values for characters of different races. Compare Black Mage across hume, nu mou and moogle: code:There are also 4 stats that don't change as a character levels up:
These are determined only by jobs. Level doesn't matter, race doesn't matter. A level 1 hume Black Mage and a level 99 Soldier will both have 3 Move. Most jobs have 4 Move, though some have 3. Similarly, most jobs have 3 Jump, though some have 2, a couple have 4, and the Gria jobs have infinite jump because they can fly. Evade varies between 0 (most jobs) and 15, while Resilience is usually between maybe 30 to 50. (I haven't found any guides that actually list Resilience.) Some jobs also have a "hidden" Unarmed Attack Bonus, granting them an increase to W.ATK when they don't have any weapons equipped. This tends to be low -- 15 for Thieves and 18 for Soldiers, for example -- but Master Monk gets +40, which is better than several of their weapons. Solumin fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 01:15
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ultrafilter posted:Is there FFV-style mixing of abilities between jobs, or are you restricted to what you currently have equipped? Yes, you can mix them together. Characters have 4 ability slots: two for A-Ability sets, one R-Ability slot and one P-Ability slot. The first A-Ability slot is filled by your current job's abilities. Samuel is a Soldier right now, so he has the Arts of War skills in his first slot. The second slot can be filled with the abilities of any job that you have learned at least one A-Ability for. For example, Nyno knows First Aid, one of the Arts of War skills, so he can equip Arts of War despite not being a Soldier. Another example is Lenolia. She learned Cure as a White Mage, but it also unlocked that spell for Red Mages. She can have both the White Mage and Red Mage ability sets equipped, even though she's never actually been a Red Mage. For the R- and P-ability slots, you can equip any ability that you've mastered, no matter what class it's from. So if we switch Samuel to Black Mage, we can give him the Shieldbearer P-ability and he'll be able to equip shields. Edit: Update the Jobs 101 post with this information. Solumin fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Oct 2, 2017 |
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Oct 2, 2017 02:01
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Andyzero posted:I always have to laugh at what lazy cowards Square were about this. It's all a whole big mess and I have Opinions about it, but it'll have to wait until later in the LP. But compare the plots of Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics to FFTA and FFTA2. They went from deep, interesting (and maybe sometimes confusing) stories of political intrigue and war to... well, not that at all. Still, the plot has barely started, and I don't think FFTA2 is boring, at least. Andyzero posted:Luso is a bonus character in the PSP remake of Final Fantasy Tactics. I'll be interested in hearing about this! I've never actually played FFT.
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Oct 3, 2017 01:25
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:IMO you should rectify this. Yeah, probably. Maybe if I still want to play tactics RPGs after this LP, I'll pick it up.
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Oct 3, 2017 02:40
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BlazeEmblem posted:I'm not sure of that. Given how everything works in Advance verses the rest of the series, it looks more like the Ivalice they went to was fake, but based on the real Ivalice, which is in their distant past. This is also what I've heard, that the book that transported Marche to Ivalice built a new world using bits of Ivalice and bits of Marche's world. It's really not clear how FFTA2 fits into this, or if the Ivalice that he goes to is at all related to Marche's Ivalice, or if the places they're from are the real Ivalice but in the future. Again: It's a mess.
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Oct 3, 2017 03:49
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Job Roundup #1: Soldier, Warrior and White Monk The job system is the core of FFTA2, and it's a little hard to understand the game without knowing at least a little about them. I'll be giving a quick overview of each job with a short discussion of what I think of it. From Agent to White Monk, there's 59 jobs total! I'll be doing ~3 jobs per post, so this will still take a while. To start with, let's look at three of the "starter" jobs. These are jobs that have no prior requirements, so any character (of the right race) can pick up that job. --- Soldier  Races: Hume Locked by: Nothing Unlocks: - 1 Ability: Thief, Archer - 3 Abilities: Fighter, Paladin Equipment: - Weapons: Swords, Greatswords - Armor: Light armor, Heavy armor, Shields Growths: Solid physical stats, magick is terrible, speed is a bit low. Soldier is the Hume physical base job. They've got a nice selection of equipment, with bulky heavy armor and powerful greatswords at their disposal. They aren't really tanks, but they will be able to take hits and dish them out. Their main skill gimmick is the "Rend" skill set, which inflict minor debuffs on the enemy. They also get Provoke, which inflicts Berserk, a condition that just isn't good at all. There's also First Aid, a minor self heal that's been nerfed -- it used to heal conditions in FFTA. Another skill, Gauge, reveals the enemy's level 1 loot, but why waste a turn looking when a different job can just steal it? Soldier really suffers from being an early-game job. By the time you get the swords and greatswords with the good Soldier abilities, you'll have moved on to more powerful jobs already. Stay in Soldier long enough to learn the skills you need. Move to Thief ASAP so you can maybe get some speed. --- Warrior  Races: Bangaa Locked by: Nothing Unlocks: - 2 Abilities: Dragoon (+ a quest), Gladiator, Master Monk (+2 White Monk and a quest) Equipment: - Weapons: Swords, Broadswords - Armor: Light Armor, Heavy Armor, Shields Growths: Great physical, speed is a little low. Warrior is the Bangaa version of Soldier, which means it's strictly better but still not great. Like Soldier, they get access to Greatswords and Heavy Armor, letting them punch faces all day and take face punches all night. They also share the First Aid skill and the Rend skills. Fortunately for Warriors, they get some really nice extras: Body Slam does heavy damage but deals a 1/4 of it back to you, and Lifetap reduces the target's HP by 50%. Another ability, Greased Lightning, lets you bypass targets' R-abilities entirely. Problem is, by the time you've obtained the weapons that teach those abilities, you've moved on to better jobs. The stat growths aren't bad, but other jobs have better growths in both W.ATK and Speed. With offerings like Dragoon, Gladiator and Master Monk, why waste time with Warrior? --- White Monk  Races: Bangaa Locked By: Nothing Unlocks: - 2 Abilities: Bishop, Master Monk (+ a quest) Equipment: - Weapons: Claws - Armor: Light Armor (no helms!) Growths: Good speed, great W.ATK I usually forget Warrior exists, because why use it when White Monk is so much cooler? It's basically the hume Fighter job with a few tweaks. The two most important skills for any White Monk are Air Render and Aurablast, which are identical to the Fighter skills. They also get Exorcise, which permanently kills undead -- an essential skill in this game. Later, they'll pick up Earth Render (earth damage in a straight line), Revive (the White Mage spell) and Holy Sign (remove buffs from the target). White Monks are an exemplary starting class. In fact, I often find myself stuck with one for most of the game, despite never getting more claws. Like Fighter, you'll end up using White Monk's skill set as a secondary for more advanced classes. It's even more essential thanks to the prevalence of undead. Solumin fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 7, 2017 |
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Oct 3, 2017 03:57
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Kemix posted:FFTA was a great game. Too bad that 100% completion of quests can be a bit aggravating if you're stupid like me and throw out quest items that you only get one of in the entire game. I totally didn't do that until about a dozen hours after the fact and hosed my save to hell and back as a dumb kid back then, not at all I swear, everyone throws out the Black Thread. I'm not sure why! Maybe because it seems like an insignificant item. I mean, I have gemstones, treasures and riches, why should I keep this spool of thread?
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Oct 4, 2017 05:19
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Confession: I've never used a Blue Mage before. So this is the perfect time to use one! It'll take a little bit of set up, but in a couple updates we'll have the resources we need to make it not incredibly painful to do. Blue Mage is a bit gimmicky, but it's still better than some other jobs in this game. If anyone has other requests, comments or questions, feel free to post! I'm open to feedback. Next update will be up in a day or two. There's a little delay because I hurt my hand and can't type as much. It's 80% written, and that's the longest part.
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Oct 4, 2017 19:30
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Leraika posted:Basically anything other than a full team of blood price assassins and summoners because that's how I went for my playthrough. Absolutely. I'm actually thinking of trying to maximise conditions. I've never played a clan like that, and it'll be easy to fall back to straight damage dealers. Geomancer is actually pretty good even without its most powerful spells. And it's another class I've never used. Glaive17 posted:I am playing along with the LP, and I made my main character a Blue Mage. I just put Learn in passive and equip Blue Magic as my secondary A-Ability, and then switched him to other classes. He already has Night, Screech and Bad Breath, which I find very useful. (Well, Night is gimmicky, but fun.) you really picked up some fun abilities already. Alright, Samuel will be a blue mage soon.
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Oct 4, 2017 22:48
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Update 3: Cat Ears: the Anime Avatars of Ivalice In This Update: - Tomato Soup: It'll put some meat on Ribs, probably. - Extreme, lunch-related sass. - Smug greedy thief is smug, greedy. ---  Samuel and Cid are exploring Camoa, looking for Cid's contact in the city. They're searching for information about a wizard, who will hopefully be able to tell them about Samuel's journal and help the boy return home.   : The shops... the people... I expected it to be different, but this is something else!: Camoa is an old town. Her shops are full of relics and her streets full of adventurers. It's an easy place for us clanners to make a decent living.: I bet.: This way, Samuel. A streetear acquaintance of mine works up the hill. They walk across a rooftop to reach a Seeq squatting under some shady. I really like the design of Camoa. The city appeared in FFTA, and it (and many other locations) drew inspiration from Arabian and Middle-Eastern architecture. The rough brick houses that meld into the streets are one of my favorite features. : Lo, Ribs. : Aye, you'd be surprised. I'm almost respectable these days. Haven't had reason of late to visit my shady past. : Hra hra! *snort* You're too kind. So, Cid, what morsel have you come fishing for today?: Know any wizards, Ribs? I don't mean the street conjurors or their kind. I'm talking about upper-crust. Someone at the akademy, or even a Kiltias... a sorceror.: An odd request coming from you, that... Aught t'do with the boy, perhaps? *snort*: ...: I'll take that as a "no" then. So long, Ribs. : A very, very special someone, as it turns out. Hra hra hra! *snorts*: How special? Name your price.: Oh no, no, no. I wouldn't dream of asking for your gil. Though, there is one thing you could help me obtain.: One thing...?: A tomato stalk. Been a shortage lately, you know. Hard to come by.: So you want us to hunt tomatoes and fetch you a stalk?: Hunt tomatoes? ... Now that you mention it, I seem to recall seeing a bill at the pub...: Well why didn't you say so in the first place? Fine, we'll get you your stalk. Let's go, Cid. We'll pick those tomatoes and be back in no time.: You do realize we're not talking about garden-variety tomatoes, here?: I don't care what garden they're from. Let's go get 'em.Samuel immediately runs off, of course. : *sigh* I don't know what you're up to, but I'll play along for now.: Hra hra! *snort* Always a pleasure, Master Cid.--- We're free to go pick up our next story quest. But first, let's visit the shop.    First up is the Buster Sword. Yes, it's a Final Fantasy VII reference. Surprisingly, it counts as a regular sword.  Two offerings in Ornamented Blades. This category contains mostly foils, used by viera jobs like Fencer and Red Mage.      Fencing Foils will only contain foils, of course.   I the Buster Sword, the Stinger and some Leather Clothes. Might as well make sure we have enough armor! A couple characters have run out of learnable skills, so we're going to change some jobs.  First, Talf goes back to White Mage. He can only learn Cure right now, but White Mage locks a couple really good nu mou jobs that I want to get to.  I just noticed Henri's not wearing any armor. White Monk wears light armor, and we don't have any spare Leather Clothes for him. Maybe there's some other stuff he can wear -- let's see if the "Optimize" option will help him. That will equip him with the best weapons and armor we have, though it doesn't touch accessories.  Wait, it unequipped everything! I guess I need to pick up some armor for him, but why were the Metal Knuckles unequipped?  Turns out the Metal Knuckles actually lower Henri's attack. White Monks have a +30 Unarmed Attack Bonus, and Metal Knuckles have +29 Attack. (Check 2 screenshots above this one.) Most jobs have a much lower bonus, so any weapon is better than going unarmed, so we won't see this too often.  But since we don't have any more knuckles for Henri, he's going back to Warrior to learn Rend Magic. The Buster Sword has one other skill: Blood Price, learned by the as-yet-unseen viera job Spellblade.  I've mentioned that there are ways to get around the 10 MP per turn restriction. This is one of them, and perhaps the most popular, at least for viera. Spellblade's spells are pretty cheap, so doubling the cost puts them at around the same as advanced Black Mage spells. You'll just have to make sure you have a healer around, though maybe the Regen buff will be more than enough. Oh, Blood Price also give a +35 Magick boost, which is a pretty strong increase!  Finally, Imino becomes an Animist. We picked up a Glass Bell last update, and learning 100% Wool will unlock another couple good jobs. --- We have 3 notices at the Pub. These are important to read because, as far as I know, they unlock quests. I've highlighted the important bits, if you just want to skim over them. Crying Wolf posted:Wolf-like creatures of a kind never seen before are running rampant in the hills around Camoa! A mark has been posted in hopes that there is someone who can deal with this menace before more lives are lost. Those who have faith in their sword arm, come to our aid! Klesta Comes posted:The crushatrice is known for its especially violent temperament, but one in particular makes all the rest look like docile hens. House Bowen posted:What other elite group of headhunters would do anything - provided there's gil on the table - but House Bowen? With those out of the way, let's look at the available quests.  We're still a little low level, so I'd like to take care of some lower-rank quests first. "Wanted: The Cyanwolf" is only rank 3, so let's take a look.   This is a "Headhunt" quest, which means we only have to take down the desired target. Usually there are other monsters getting in your way, of course.   "Prepared with Love" is the other rank 3. It's a Delivery quest.  That means we have to pick up an item at the first location and deliver it to the second. There usually isn't any combat involved. ---  We begin this quest in the pub at Targ Woods, where the petitioner is waiting for us.  : That's right! *sniff* Uh... what's that smell... if you don't mind me asking? : That must be his lunch. The sauce is a recipe all my own!My husband never eats breakfast before leaving the house, so I'm worried he's not eating enough. You should find him just outside Camoa. Do hurry!  Quest items are represented as pieces of loot. I think we could sell this off, but I'm not sure what would happen. Probably fail the quest and have to restart it, I'd guess.  Completing that part of the quest pops up the Task Reward window. There's no rewards for completing tasks, it just tells us part of the quest is done. This is useful for dispatched quests, where we can easily see if any dispatch failed.  Back to Camoa for the second task: rescuing a redhead from a lake! Wait, wrong series. Sorry.   : You've come all this way to bring me my lunch? You shouldn't have... Really.: I thought you'd be happy to have your lunch. Best line in the game, hands down. : The only thing worse than the smell is the taste.*sigh* If I don't eat it, I'll upset my wife. If I -do- eat it, I'll upset my stomach. She's the most wonderful wife a man could ask for, but she can't cook to save her life. Well, it's here now. I'll think of something. I know you meant well, but don't do me any more favors. We hand the Chocobo skin over.    And that's that! Delivery quests are usually pretty easy. They're great to do on the way to another quest. Some of them may have shorter time limits, however. ---   Since this is a Headhunt mission, our objective is to kill the Cyanwolf. We technically don't have to hit the other 4 wolves, but we really don't have a choice.  No ice, but that's no problem. This is another one that affects only Black Mages.  Our initial setup. We're in this corner, and the Cyanwolf is on the opposite corner. Blocking the two routes are 4 wolves.  The Cyanwolf is our first monster with actual magickal attacks.  All wolves have Fangs. It hits pretty hard!   That could be a lot of elemental damage. The side effects are the actually worrying part, though, especially Immobilize. Not being able to move really limits our characters' options, besides the mages and the archer.  : I'm guessing that's our mark: the Cyanwolf. - Gwooorgh! Gwaaaawrgh! Arroooooooooo!: ... He doesn't look happy, does he? Let's take this one nice and slow.  The Cyanwolf wolf is too far away to do anything, obviously, so it just moves to the right.  Imino just edges the other wolves out on Speed, so he moves forward a bit and drops a 100% Wool on himself. Generally, buffs like this are a good way to spend a turn.  The wolf on the far left moves forward. They have more than just melee attacks, of course. Most monsters do!.  Screech has a chance to cause Confusion. Thankfully, the condition doesn't stick.   The other two wolves move in and attack. 20 damage is nothing to scoff at, but 100% Wool is really helping Imino.  The last wolf retreats towards the Cyanwolf. That's kind of annoying, but it saves us having to fend off 4 wolves at once.  Time for us to strike back. Henri more than matches the damage of the wolves's Fangs. I actually skipped Lenolia's first attack. She could have moved forward and hit one of the wolves, but I thought it prudent to let Henri get the attack instead. This way, we'll be able to cast Sleep before any of the wolves move.  Nyno gets in a good attack, then moves down to stand behind Samuel.  The wolf on the right is close enough for Samuel to loop around and get a back attack in. This is why facing matters so much! Over half the wolf's HP in one attack is great.  Talf drops a heal on Imino, but doesn't move.  Lenolia's turn rolls around again. We aren't really threatened by the wolves, but this buys us a little breathing room.  One wolf is slept. I'll take it.   The Cyanwolf moves back the way it came, and the other wolf continues to retreat.  Talf heals off the Screech damage Lenolia took.  Animist instruments do alright damage.  But black magic is much better!  Of course, Imino pays for it. But the wolf is in critical health -- hence the weird posture -- and Talf can easily heal that in a turn or two.  Nyno gets hit too. Unsurprisingly, the AI goes for weaker characters like Animists and Archers.   Of course, it's more than happy to keep its back exposed, so Henri finishes off the wolf.  Nyno follows that up by killing the other weakened wolf.  Samuel starts moving in on the Cyanwolf. I expect the wolf to keep retreating.     Lenolia, Imino, the wolf and the Cyanwolf spend their turns moving around. Imino will join Samuel on the right flank, while the other four will take care of the last wolf and flank left.  Talf heals Imino some before the moogle is too far away. In retrospect, it may have been better for Talf to accompany the right flank.  The last wolf near us finally wakes up. That sleep really bought us a good few turns. Sleep is a pretty good condition, I just wish it was more accurate!  He did NOT enjoy his nap.  Samuel moves forward. A lot of battlefields in this game have missing areas like this. It's pretty neat and really makes you realize it's a fantasy world. Just... try not to think too hard about the pit in the middle, I guess.    In 3 turns, the wolf is already almost done for. Meanwhile, the Cyanwolf and Imino move clockwise, and Imino refreshes 100% Wool.  Talf throws out another heal on Nyno and Lenolia. He's been really useful this battle! In the early game, it's easier to heal damage than prevent it, but eventually we'll be murdering things too quickly for healing to be useful. But, it's smart to have it as a secondary skill set just in case.  The Cyanwolf and the last wolf are huddling near the tree.   A few turns later, Henri finally finishes off the last wolf.  I, uh, don't quite think that's how pelts work?  The next few turns are spent moving everyone towards the tree, healing up the last of the damage, and so on.  Samuel and the wolf finally meet. Since Samuel and Imino are alone, landing some debuffs will make things a little easier.  A completely useless Opportunity attack. We're better off moving without using an action, since we can't get Fleet of Foot. That requires 2 adjacent allies, and that's impossible here.  Imino drops Fire on the two wolves. We're reaching the home stretch here.  Hooray for Attack Down!  But this damage is going to add up quickly if we don't finish this soon. Imino is facing east for a reason: Samuel is protecting his side, so the enemy can only attack him from the front. That'll prevent a lot of damage.  The rest of the clan is still all the way over here. Lenolia's facing is a misclick.  Another near misclick almost makes Samuel use First Aid. Look how useless this skill is. At least in FFTA it cured some conditions!  Instead he uses Rend Power on the Cyanwolf. That'll buy us enough time for the rest of the clan to reach the tree.  Imino could target either enemy, but I'd rather take out the lesser wolf.  That's a miscalculation! Fiery Blow hits a whole line, not just one target.  Fortunately, only Samuel is Silenced. Losing Imino's black magick could have made this end in disaster.   Nyno is finally close enough to attack, but the Cyanwolf still has most of its health left.    Imino refreshes 100% Wool again. The last attack brought him pretty low, though he's still above critical HP. Samuel finishes off the last normal wolf, netting us an inexplicable tiger hide.  Henri move forward and tries to bait the Cyanwolf by showing his back. The AI prioritizes back attacks, so this might pay off.  This is not good. The Cyanwolf ignores Henri's armored back for the juicier and weaker target in front of it. Imino can still survive this -- and it's not like death has any particularly bad side effects -- but it's getting close.  Talf is too far away to Cure him, too.  Fortunately, the Chilling Blow didn't immobilize Imino, and he land a Thunder before scuttling towards the rest of the team.     And just like that, the tide turns and the battle is won.   OK, never mind, MVP is not based on bonus XP like I thought. It's influenced by the character's performance in battle, but that is incredibly vague. FFTA2 is not nearly as popular as its predecessor, so there's a lot of game information that's never fully discovered.  The Samson Sword teaches Warriors Rend Power, but it deals Earth Elemental damage, so we have to make sure we don't bring it if we're facing wolves. The Round Shield teaches Shieldbearer to a handful of jobs.  This mission was the same rank and was ostensibly harder than the delivery mission we just did, but it gives so few Clan Points. Shame, that.  Talf mastered Cure, so he's back to Black Mage with White Magick as a backup. Why? He's going to be our magickal powerhouse, and Black Mage has disgustingly good M.POW growth.  Also, here's an interesting tidbit: Lenolia can equip Red Magick, despite never having been a Red Mage. Learning Cure as a White Mage unlocked the Red Magick version, too! --- Time to visit the Bazaar again.    This staff is a little useless, we won't be seeing Summoner for a while. But it does boost Defense and Resistance, so it's pretty useful on its own.  Predator isn't going to help us much right now, so I don't buy one. Wicked looking thing though, isn't it? ---     Time to pick up the next story quest. We shouldn't have any trouble with it now.  : Wow, you weren't kidding about these tomatoes...It's a shame, really. I kind of like tomatoes. That is, I used to. I don't think I'll ever be able to eat a tomato again. : One of the many hazards of our occupation.: Wait... Hey, Cid. Look at that one over there, with the funny head. That a tomato, too? : Why, that's an alraune! Hrrah! Our luck is strong!The drill off the alraune's head fetches a pretty price. Finally, some good news!  Introducing one of the most annoying characters...  Adelle. : Who are you? Don't even think about poaching our kill. These tomatoes are ours! : Poach? Me? Never! I'll just lend you a hand, for which I expect a reasonable cut, of course.Money's tight these days! Why, I was just wondering where tonight's supper was going to come from. Is there anything more piteous than a growing girl driven to the brink of starvation? Think of it as, I don't know, a good deed? : Please? Pretty please? Pretty please with suga-Samuel and Cid turn away from her to discuss this intrusion. : Um, okay... What do we do about her, Cid?: We don't trust her, for starters. Still if we can get that alraune, we could afford to make a small donation to her cause.They turn back to Adelle. : We'll split the reward four parts to one. No more.: Four to one? Why, how generous! Let's teach these vegetables some table manners, shall we?  Straightforward enough. There's 4 Tomatoes on the right, plus the one alraune to the left.  Everyone but Nyno. I don't really have a plan for him, the ranged damage is nice but we won't see new bows for a while. I could switch him over to a different physical job or even a magick job, but our clan is really doing well enough without him.  We'll worry about him later. For now, let's chop some vegetables!  All the enemies are faster than us. Here's the state of the battlefield after they all move.  Imino starts dropping those icicles. I think this is the first playthrough where I've switched the starting moogle to Black Mage. It's so obvious in retrospect!  Wait, tomatoes aren't vegetables. They're fruits. Whatever. : Wait a second! That's not what we said!: Oh right, four to one was it? And I'll take the four, of course. Why, that's even more for me!: Eh!? Four!? You're the one!I'm not a fan of the smug, greedy rogue character type. Fortunately, Adelle does get better.  But first she gets worse. She's a Thief, and the AI loves to use abilities, even if they're kind of pointless. They also love to get in the enemy's face, though that actually works in our favor.  Yeah.  My plan for this quest is to let Cid and Adelle facetank the tomatoes on the right while Henri and Samuel handle the alraune. This is, I think, our first exposure to R-Abilities. Counter is a mainstay, one of the best R-Abilities in the game, and we'll be picking it up soon enough.  Compared to the damage we were taking in the Cyanwolf quest, we might be a little over leveled here!   Cid moves up and debuffs one tomato, Samuel moves left and keeps pounding the alraune.  If only there was a better way. Sorry Adelle.   OK yeah this quest is a little too easy. Samuel is also wearing the battle boots we got last update, which give a +7 defense boost. That's pretty good for this part of the game.  Tomato Tackle is the Tomato's signature ability. It's a normal attack that has a chance to inflict the Speed Down debuff.  It looks so gross.  Cid has Counter, so he gets a free attack in. His attack flashes green because he's wielding the Samson Sword, which inflicts earth-type damage. Tomatoes are weak to Water and thankfully don't resist Earth.    So gross.  The first two tomatoes retreated after their attacks, and the two who were waiting in the wings have moved up.  Oh, and they also know Silence, apparently. It hits Henri, but Henri knows no spells, so it's all moot.  State of the battlefield after these couple rounds. We're actually almost done.    One down.  The alraune falls shortly after.   Cid continues to commit horrendous overkill.   Already down to the last one.  The last tomato decides to take his life into his own hands. This is a good example of the AI prioritising back attacks. No other target is particularly weak, and attacking Cid's exposed back will probably deal more damage than attacking anyone else's face.  Cid's counter kills the tomato in return. It's both depressing and hilarious when the AI goes for attacks like that.     This is some good loot! Rising Sun is another set of knuckles, with an ability that will be useful throughout the game. : Heh heh heh. Alraune... sweet alraune. I can practically taste the behemoth steak I'm going to buy with my cut.: Cid, I got that stalk.: And the alraune drill? You have it?: Oh... Huh, funny. I didn't see one out there.: Didn't see - !? Well look again! I'm not leaving without that drill!: Ah, there you are. I wanted to thank you for the help. Many hands make light work!: Look, we're busy here. Give us a moment?: Take your time. I was just coming to say good-bye, anyway.: Huh? What about your cut?: Oh, don't worry about that. : Hey!: Whaaat!?: You'd be surprised how much these little things sell for! I'll have more than enough for dinner.Not to mention those Brint Mea shoes I saw the other day... and maybe a Galmia Pepe bag - they're to die for! Oh, I don't know how to thank you enough! So I'll just say "thanks"! Well, time for me to be off! So long!  Why don't we get to teleport away?? : Hey wai- Where'd she go!? : Man, I bet she was after that drill from the start... What a fraud! We were had, Cid!: ...: Cid?: ...: Um, w-well, at least we got the stalk we needed, right? Let's go trade it for some information! That's worth more than some silly old drill, right?: I... I'll kill her! You hear me!? Kill!!! ---  : ...: Not very talkative today, are you? Ah, do I detect a foul - or perhaps I should I say "fouler" mood?: I'm fine, Ribs. Fine. Just tell us what you know.I think the writing does a good job of communicating Cid's barely concealed rage. : Master Cid... your clan is adjudged, yes?: What of it?: *snort* Judges and laws. Manifestations of a powerful, unique sort of magick that appeared in our lands centuries ago. At the time, it was suggested that the lord of this territory, the Archduke Beaudonis, was responsible... That he had made his *snort* court magicker weave the first spells.: Devised as a way to avoid profitless battles and preserve the peace, I know. I didn't fetch you that stalk to learn something any schoolchild could tell me!: Ah, but would a schoolchild know that the very same court magicker is still alive?: Faerie tales!: Oh, I assure you that high mage Lezaford is no faerie tale. Though to hear the chroniclers tell it, he's dead - and they've the grave and bones to prove it. *snort* So why now, hundreds of years later, would there be whispers 'neath every eave of Lezaford's return?: Hrrm? Tell me more.: Yeah. Where do we go to meet this mage guy?: Two whispers speak of a northern wood, others of a swamp, and ruins, and-: Whoa, whoa, whoa! I was hoping for a lead... not a list!: You know how much trouble we went through to get this stalk!? : The thief! What's she doing here?: Hey, you haven't heard anything about a freelance headhunter around - a girl? Wears this ribbon in her hair with little cat ears? Oh, and she's a total poacher. No sense of fair play at all.: Ah, hra hra. *snort* You must mean Adelle. She gets around, that one. Got a finger in every pie. They call her the Cat...: You know anything else? Like where she's going?: Hrmm... I did hear of a rather large sum being offered for a particular beastie down at the pub... Perhaps she's gone off to take care of that?: Change of plans, Cid. Let's hit the pub! I'm sure those rumors about the mage guy are just that: rumors. They can wait, can't they? But if we let her go now, we might never catch up to her!Samuel runs off. : Master Cid... Sorry about the mage, but you must admit, I came through with knowledge of Adelle!: If any of what you said turns out to be true, maybe.--- Our merry cast of cheeky characters expands! By exactly 1, anyway. We'll never see Ribs again. Thanks for reading! If you have any jobs or other interesting features you particularly want to see, let me know! I'll try to show off everything at least once. Solumin fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jun 7, 2019 |
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Oct 5, 2017 06:23
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Avalerion posted:Gria hunter with raptor abilities is great. Not to mention seeq ranger, of course. Which we will be seeing! That said, seeq and gria are two half-races, and I think I'd rather have one fully fleshed out race.
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Oct 5, 2017 22:08
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I'll keep that in mind! This last update actually went way longer than I expected. The next one will be much shorter, since I'm planning to just do some side quests.
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Oct 5, 2017 22:26
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Quantum Toast posted:Think you got the wrong image there. Thanks for catching that, it's been fixed. I do like her once the story gets underway. But that takes a while. Strange Matter posted:I'm honestly really curious about the specifics of the Gria and Seeq specific jobs since I mostly ignored them when I played through (I think I had a Seeq Buckaneer or whatever), and I'd love to learn more about how to optimize them. I'll be showing them off at some point! Unfortunately, we don't get gria or seeq of our own for a while.
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Oct 6, 2017 00:50
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Job Roundup #2: White Mage, Black Mage, Thief Let's look at another 3 starter jobs. Most of the interesting magick jobs are locked behind White Mage and Black Mage, though those two are no slouches on their own. Thief, on the other hand, is unremarkable (unlike its FFTA counterpart), though two fan-favorite jobs are locked by it. --- White Mage  Races: Hume, Viera, Nu Mou Locked By: Nothing Unlocks: - Humes: - 1 Ability: Black Mage - 2 Abilities: Illusionist [+4 Black Mage] - 4 Abilities: Seer - Viera: - 1 Ability: Green Mage, Red Mage [+1 Fencer] - 2 Abilities: Elementalist - Nu Mou: - 2 Abilities: Illusionist [+4 Black Mage], Sage [+2 Beast Master] Equipment: - Weapons: Staves - Armor: Light armor, Robes Growths: Pretty good magick, low physical, low speed. White Mages are an OK starter job. Healing is pretty useful, as few jobs have reliable or even useful self-sustain. Their true value, as with every other starter job, is that they're a springboard for all the really good jobs. Just look at that Unlocks list! Illusionist, Seer, Sage... the most powerful offensive magic in the game, locked behind the healing job. You would think healing would be more useful as enemies get stronger, but by midgame I think you're better off equipping White Magick as a secondary ability set. Avoiding damage, such as by knocking out enemies quickly, is better than healing. For some reason, the job actually got nerfed -- it lost the Shell and Protect spells. Why? No idea. And, for some reason, the staves they use are incredibly hard to find. I usually start getting the good ones 20 to 30 hours into the game. And by "good ones" I mean "the ones that teach anything besides Cure." --- Black Mage  Races: Hume, Nu Mou, Moogle Locked By: - Nothing [Nu Mou, Moogle] - 1 White Mage [Hume only] Unlocks: - Humes: - 1 Ability: Blue Mage - 4 Abilities: Illusionist [+2 White Mage] - Nu Mou: - 4 Abilities: Illusionist [+2 White Mage] - 5 Abilities: Time Mage - Moogle: - 5 Abilities: Time Mage Equipment: - Weapons: Rods - Armor: Robes, Light Armor Growths: Top-tier magick growths, everything else sucks. Those stat growths! +10 M.POW and M.RES per level (+11 M.POW for nu mou)! You don't see growths like that in any other starter job. Besides that, well, "lackluster" isn't quite the right word. Black Mage is one of those jobs that appears in every Final Fantasy game. They're usually packing all the damage and "nasty" spells: Fire/Thunder/Blizzard, Flare, Sleep, Toad, etc. Unfortunately, FFTA/2 gave most of those spells to other jobs, leaving Black Mage with only the Fire, Thunder and Blizzard spell families. Seriously, that's it, just those 9 spells. Thankfully, those spells are incredible workhorses. The tier-1 spells can be cast every turn, and with the right support abilities, the tier-2 and tier-3 abilities can be used just as frequently. Black Mage also has Geomancy, one of the best passive abilities in the game. It lowers every target's elemental resistance by one level, e.g. Absorb -> Immune -> Resist -> Neutral -> Weak. Black Mage is definitely one of the better starter jobs. You'll lose out on some speed if you keep a character in it for too long, but the magick growths are more than worth it. It makes a great secondary skill set for all the jobs it unlocks, especially Time Mage. --- Thief  Races: Hume, Moogle Locked by: - Hume: 1 Soldier - Moogle: Nothing Unlocks: - 2 Abilities: Tinker [Moogle only] - 4 Abilities: Ninja [Hume only] Equipment: - Weapons: Daggers - Armor: Light armor Growths: Excellent speed for a base job, middling for everything else. In FFTA, Thieves were powerful. They could steal armor, weapons, money and abilities. Yes, those abilities, the ones you need several hundred AP to master. This could utterly destroy the game's difficulty. But, like the other utterly broken things, FFTA2 nerfed them hard. Every enemy now drops loot, and Thieves' sole purpose is to steal that loot. Sure, the loot is useful, as it's the only way to get many weapons, but loot is hardly hard to get and thieves don't make it any easier to get specific loot. Still, Thief isn't a bad starter job. They learn Counter, one of better Reaction abilities, and their speed is great compared to other hume starters jobs. They also unlock the powerful Ninja job for humes and are a prerequisite for the moogle Juggler job. Good luck finding good knives for them though. Oh, and try not to let them get hit, it doesn't go well. Solumin fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Oct 7, 2017 |
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Oct 7, 2017 00:47
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Like, "unable to unlock jobs" few. Losing Protect and Shell put a really weird curve to their abilities. There's as the basic #1 ability Cure, midgame Cura, Raise, and Esuna, and endgame Curaga, Arise, Reraise, and Refresh. It does take a while, like way too long, to get the midgame ones. This causes problems for unlocking jobs that even require two abilities. Once I had a run where Arise was the second white magick spell I had for unlocking Sage or Illusionist or Elementalist. The Seer at least is late enough in the game you usually have four spells by then, but then again maybe I had Cure, Arise, Refresh, and Reraise. You hit the nail on the head. I actually unlocked the Staff of Protection already, but it's only useful for Summoners now. But Summoner is locked by Elementalist, and Elementalist requires 2 White Mage abilities! In all probability, we're going to end up getting Arise before any other ability, unless we get lucky with loot.
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Oct 7, 2017 01:21
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Sage is still really good, if not better than before because their low speed is not quite as punishing. However, it's locked behind White Mage, which means you're stuck with Black Mage for a while. Their spell list changed a little. They lost Drain and Raise and gained Scathe and Esunaga. But they still have the important spells, namely Bio and Giga Flare and Ultima Blow. Oh, and Ultima skills are now based on M.POW. Sage is one of my favorite jobs, but I'm a sucker for magick. To be honest, if I could do an all-nu mou run of FFTA2, I would. And also an all-bangaa run, for that matter.
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Oct 7, 2017 21:29
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Alkydere posted:Oh god, what is this? Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced Two... Final... Fantasy... Advanced...2? I'm not sure if I'm feeling nostalgia or PTSD... Oh well, definitely gonna have to keep an eye on this. I came across your last LP thread when I was doing the research for this one. I'm happy to see you (and OFS) are following this! Alkydere posted:The only real limitations for Sage skills are the MP system really. And as Solumin said, the Ultima stuff hits harder now because it's based on your magical attack. Casters hit like nukes with their various Ultima skills...it just take 4 turns to cast it since you only gain 10 MP. Of course there are skills that restore MP and ethers are commonly available, so there's no reason not to just feed your Ultima chuckers a Mountain Dew and watch them delete units at their pleasure. I don't want to talk about too many late-game mechanics and skill combos, mostly because we're a dozen updates or more away from those. And also you'll make me really wish I had those abilities now. So I guess if you really want to talk about them, put them in spoilers? Another way around the slow MP gain is Half MP + MP Channeling clan privilege. I'm also planning on adding a Cannoneer to the clan. Red Mage/Summoner will be making an appearance because it's my favorite combo in the game. What's the other hume setup you're thinking of? Paravir + Geomancy? Or something involving Seer? Rigged Death Trap posted:Geomancy was in 1 too I absolutely do not remember Geomancy in FFTA. Weird! Alkydere posted:Speaking of swearing at laws...Solumin, will you be showing off the clan trials/swearing at rabbits? Because there is one very early clan trial that has law BS nearly as bad as A1's. I also may hate that clan trial because I have an unhealthy amount of hatred for A2's dreamhares. I'm not entirely sure which clan trial you're talking about, though I do remember a lot of them being annoying. I'll be doing one of them soon -- not the next update, but probably the one after. (We need General Training 1 to get Aptitude up higher!) I'll be doing a few more to get Bonus AP 2 and 3, the MP Channeling and Efficiency privileges, and probably Libra.
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Oct 7, 2017 23:49
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I've definitely started cutting down. The next update (which is just about ready to post, but I didn't want to interrupt the discussion) is 5 side quests but 2/3 the size of the previous update. So I think I'm getting a handle on it. I beat the Tors when I played this game on the DS and remember them being interesting, but not too horrifically challenging. But that was nearly a decade ago, so I could be really misremembering! For reference, my main 6 in that clan were all around level 90. I distinctly remember my Red Mage/Summoner doing 90% of the work. I've done all the job write-ups, too, when I was between jobs earlier this year. Well, someone's going to end up having to do Illusionist/Seer then! Perhaps Adele, though she's going to end up Heritor/Hunter for a lot of it. Or Heritor/something. I'm not planning on using too many of the special characters -- they'll be in the clan but not really in the battle. I don't like having characters forced on me. Oh god, that one. I remember that challenge but not which trial it is. Funnily enough, that exact law will appear in the next update!
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Oct 8, 2017 00:44
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Quantum Toast posted:Given the mention of Paladin stats being good for it, I think they're recommending Frimelda. Doesn't hurt that she already knows Dual Wield, too. Yeah, I figured that's what he meant. That's one of my favorite quest lines, too. Alkydere posted:Glad to hear you're already to cut things down and just give the cliffnotes version of the action. I think I summed it up best in the first LP when I basically told the readers "I have run out of ways to say 'and then I killed a guy with Ultima'." One thing I'm going to avoid is Ultima spam. It's kind of boring, when there are so many other fun, interesting spells to use!
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Oct 8, 2017 01:04
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Update 4: Found a Job In This Update: - The Road to Blue Mage - Friendly beasts and Scottish bangaa - A bunch of sidequests --- Last time, we met (and were swindled by) Adelle, a gregarious, greedy thief. Instead of doing anything related to this plot, we're going to do some sidequests!  At the thread's request, Samuel is going to be a Blue Mage. For those of you who have never heard of a Blue Mage before, it's a unique job that learns abilities used by monsters by getting hit by those abilities. In FFTA2, this requires having the "Learning" P-Ability equipped. It's extremely gimmicky but really good fun, and some of the abilities are quite strong. One good thing about FFTA2: It's impossible to miss any Blue Mage abilities. Every monster that teaches a Blue Mage abilities can be found in repeatable battles. This is a massive improvement over FFTA, where some abilities could be missed.  However, Blue Mage is locked until you learn 1 Black Mage ability.  And Black Mage is locked until you learn 1 White Mage ability!  So Samuel's a White Mage now. --- Our first quest for today:    "Satisfy Petitioner" means we have to do some specific task. It's the catch-all category.   In this case, we have to defend these bridges. On the one side are our enemies: two wolves and two baknamies.  We don't have any R-Abilities yet, so this is fine. Note that this means we can't use any R-Abilities. Having one equipped won't break the law.  Our starting layout.  We're defending Ceva the Beastmaster, who is trying to rescue his pet dreamhare, Cappy.  Cappy doesn't have any lines, just speech bubbles.  : Be not afraid, little one. We will protect you. : *growl*: I don't like the way those monsters are eyeing that dreamhare.: They mean her no good, to be sure. Hold them back while I tend to her wounds. : *slaver*: Right. We'll keep you safe while you take care of Cappy. Those monsters won't make it across if I have anything to say about it! Right, this mission is really straightforward: Stand on the bridges and don't let them get through you.  It basically looks like this for a couple dozen turns.  These clocks are listed in the turn order, and they indicate the end of each round. I guess internally they're basically characters with really low speed. Once the last one has its "turn", the battle is over.   Also, there's an infinite number of enemies. Every time you kill one, another will spawn after a couple turns. There will only ever be at most four enemies, fortunately.  Here's Swarmstrike, it's pretty cool. Poison is useful when used early in the battle. It does 10% of the victim's total HP per turn.  Samuel is a pretty bad healer right now.  Healing scales off of M.POW, which Samuel obviously doesn't have much of. Anyway, we hold the bridges. We end up killing four or five enemies total.   : ?!?: See? That wasn't so bad, was it?That should do it! I think Cappy can walk again! : Great! Now let's get out of here!One thing's been bugging me, though. How come you can understand what she says? I mean, you can't really talk to her... can you? : All beastmasters speak the language of the beasts. It's not a language as you might know it, but it is there to be heard if you've ears to listen.: !?!: She wants me to tell you "thank you".Oh? I think she has something else to say. : !!!: What a splendid idea! She thinks I should teach you the secrets of the beastmaster.: !!!: After all you've done for us, it's the least I can do. But know this... The bond between beast and master lasts only till battle's end. You must always be mindful of growing too attached. Of course, I've been fortunate enough to win this wee one's heart. So I'm going to find a nice quiet place for the two of us to call home. Come, Cappy!  Multiple MVPs, nice!  Energy Mace is a good weapon. It teaches Silence to Green Mages, and Aero, a rare Air-element spell, to Sages.   --- I usually visit the shop between each quest. At this point in the game, I want as many weapons as possible as soon as possible.     Demon Bell and Lamia Harp are great weapons for the Beastmaster, because they teach the abilities for controlling a lot of enemies we're seeing right now. They'll also be useful once Samuel is a Blue Mage, since these monsters all teach Blue Magick abilities.   We also pick up a Pearl Blade. Moogle Shield gives the target the Astra buff, protecting them from the next debuff they're hit by.  And since Imino mastered 100% Wool, he can become a Moogle Knight!  Talf also becomes a Beastmaster. Not only is Beastmaster great for Blue Mages, it also locks one of my favorite nu mou jobs, Sage. Beastmaster is all about controlling monsters. With the right spell, they can make a monster move and use any attack or ability the monster knows. Since some monsters know really great abilities, this can be really useful! But, it's really more of a gimmick, in my opinion. --- Our next quest is in Targ Woods:    "Escort" means we need to protect the target while accomplishing another goal, usually defeating all enemies. Escort missions in FFTA2 really aren't too bad, usually.  Three White Monks and two Warriors against one Dragoon. Good thing we're here!   Oh, now that's a painful, awkward law. Any attack or ability that can hit more than one square will break the law. That means no white, black or green magick!   : Quite a spear you have there. You think to spit your enemies on it? Hra hra hra!Small wonder you hide beneath a helm. I'd be ashamed to wield that pig-sticker meself! : That must be the bangaa who's in trouble. : Spear and helm are part and parcel of the dragoon - a prouder group of warriors ye'll nae find! Yammer on about me as ye like, but I'll not have ye drag the name of dragoon through yer filth!: Hear that, lads? A dragoon, he says. Hra! Let's show him what we think of him and his dragoons!: We have to help him!  This map is nice enough to put the good treasure chest nearby.  Unsurprisingly, the AI will target the person you're escorting above all else. Fortunately, dragoons have pretty good armor, so he'll be ok for a couple turns.  Dragoons are spear-wielding warriors who are famous for their Jump attack, launching themselves into the air and inflicting heavy damage on their target. It's pretty inaccurate but also really awesome.    And it hits like a truck. Spears can hit 2 squares in a row, instead of one square like every other weapon type. This gives dragoons a lot of flexibility, but it also counts are targeting multiple squares. I believe Kyrra uses Jump every turn to avoid breaking the law.  Mark this day: I'm actually using a healing item in battle. I pretty much never do that.  We also see Air Render for the first time. It's a staple White Monk ability that lets them hit at range. It's one of the reasons they're significantly better than Warrior.  This is a big old furball of a battle. Really wish I could use Thunder here!   Nice.  AI, what are you doing?  At this point, I noticed the White Monk has Critical: Berserk. That's an R-Ability that activates when the character reaches critical HP. It gives the character the Berserk debuff, significantly boosting their damage output. That's a little scary, though if you're at Critical HP, you aren't going to be around for long. However, I have a plan to negate that ability.  First, Imino moves closer.  On his next turn, he can use Moogle Shield. As I said earlier, this gives the Astra buff.   Nothing stops you from buffing enemies.   Then, a few turns later, Samuel brings the bangaa into Critical HP range.   But Astra protects against the Berserk! He dies next turn anyway. Still an interesting exercise in how to apply your skills in new and interesting ways.  We're down to the last enemy. Will Samuel do enough damage to knock him out?  Nope.  Hey, remember that Knot of Rust we got a while ago?       Finally, a new bow for Nyno!   ---   Samuel is finally ready to learn Black Magick.  Henri mastered Rend Magick. I want him back on White Monk so he can learn Exorcise, the ability taught by the Rising Sun knuckles. It banishes undead, which will be very useful later in the game.  And Nyno gets the Char Bow, finally making him a little more useful. --- Back at the shop:   We don't order these. We already have a pair, and this would use up our only Zinconium.    And now we have the starting weapon for Dragoons. What use would a Dragoon without Jump be, anyway? --- On to the next quest.    Another "Satisfy Petitioner." What will it be this time?    Or, "Investigate the glowy spots on the ground until you find the right one."  This update is like an introduction to annoying laws. Sure, we have no abilities that can cause knockback right now. However: Critical hits knock back the target. And yes, that counts towards the law. So yes, you can be screwed over by random chance.  Fortunately, this mission is entirely doable without any combat at all. Seriously, just walk past the monsters.     Most of the glowing spots are red herrings.  This is the one you want. As a general rule of thumb, the one you're looking for is the farthest, most inconvenient one.   Other characters get lines for completing the quest, not just Samuel. It's a nice touch!   No one did anything, so no bonus XP for us.  Oh, now that is a reward. Kaiser Knuckles have the Air Render ability that we saw earlier. Great!   ---  Lenolia mastered Swarmstrike, so she's going to learn some Red Mage skills now. Red Magick is a good blend of White and Black Magick, with some twists of its own.  Back at the pub, Reagent Run now shows up in the "Other" tab. This means it's a repeatable quest, though we'll have to wait 223 days (about one in-game year) before we can take it again.    Hammers are a new weapon type for Green Mages and the as-yet-unseen Viking job.    No one can actually use this yet, but we might as well grab it.   We also pick up a nice knife. ---    We can finally take this quest now that we have Cactus Fruit.   : You have brought the cactus fruit? I will exchange it for this book of medical knowledge.: That looks like a really nice book... Are you sure you want to trade it for this? I'd think you'd be able to find another cactus fruit in the market or somewhere...?: No. I have committed to memory everything contained within this book, you see. But the cactus fruit I require to treat a boy who lies seriously ill as we speak. Please, the fruit.  : Thank you. I could not stray far from my clinic for long. With this, I will be able to concoct a salve for the boy.And that's that.   It wasn't a battle, so there was no need for a Judge. No Judge means no clan privilege. No privilege means no bonus AP! Mack does leave a nice note for us in the pub. Medicinal Marvel posted:Thanks so much for the cactus fruit the other day. --- Alright, we need a little more AP so Samuel can master the level 1 Black Magick spells and move on to Blue Mage. How about we try dispatching a quest?    No "recommended for dispatch" means any job can succeed at this one.   Selecting "Dispatch" opens this new window, where we can select who will go on the mission. The selected units will be unavailable until the mission ends, usually 4 to 6 days. Some units are more likely to succeed than others. This is based on the quest itself, the quest's rank, the level and job of the units, and one more factor:  MVP status. As a unit earns MVP in various battles, its "MVP Statue" fills in. The higher it is, the better a leader they will be for dispatch missions. Imino will be our leader since he has the largest MVP statue. Lenolia and Henri seem pumped up to join him, while Talf and Nyno look unhappy.  I send just these three. Perhaps sending the other two will raise their chances, but it's possible their negative reaction means they would have made it worse.  The mission is 4 days long, so we have to walk around the map for a while. Completing quests also makes time pass, but since half our clan is gone, we're better off exploring.  Baptiste Hill unlocked after we completed the last story mission. It's empty now, but leads further into Loar.  Heading back to Targ Woods, the mission returns!   Oh.  And that's one of my problems with dispatch: It's hard to tell if you'll really succeed. It's great for handling low-level missions and cleaning out your backlog, and there are a few missions that are almost physically impossible to complete without it. But I mostly avoid it. --- Well, we still need another quest so Samuel can finish learning Black Magick.    A lot of players complain about this mission, because they are incapable of reading and following directions.  It's quite simple: The cooking guild is looking for ingredients. And by ingredients they mean monsters.  The monsters needed for the recipe are fluffy and white. They need enough for 2 servings. Each monster is enough for 1 serving. So kill two of the white dreamhares and you're done.  This is an annoying law! Dreamhares are weak to fire. This mission could go twice as fast if it wasn't for this. Also, Henri still has the Rising Sun equipped, which deals fire damage. I switch him over the Kaiser Knuckles instead.   : Those things all look kind of the same! Hmm... What was the request again? "Must have fluffy white fur," "enough to feed two," and "one makes one serving." So... are you from the Iron Stomach? : ...Yes, I suppose. No, really I'm only an apprentice. I've not been formally inducted. This here's simple though: you tell me when you think you've bagged what you need. As an apprentice, I have to supervise procurement, and then take the fresh ingredients straight to the kitchen.So, once we kill two of the white dreamhares, talk to the Bishop.  Dreamhares are annoying to fight. They deal alright damage and love to buff each other. They have incredibly high speed, and Haste just makes it worse.  I switched everyone who has it back to Black Magick after the Dragoon fight. Talf's Thunder nets us the first ingredient.  You stop that!   Oh come on. I have no idea what happens if you try to talk to the quest giver when they're asleep.  Imino nabs the second ingredient.  One of the enemies is kind enough to wake up the Bishop.  Ugh.        Another bow! Excellent. And the Magus Robe is pretty nice armor for mages.   And that's that. ---   Samuel is finally a Blue Mage. He immediately gets the Light Saber from the beginning of the update, and he equips the Learning skill. That's the Blue Mage P-Ability that allows him to learn from enemy attacks. You must equip the ability to actually gain the abilities! But you don't have to currently be a Blue Mage. Having "Learning" equipped is all you need. One last shop visit to round out the update:   Some items have categories all their own. These are usually the rarest, most valuable weapons in the game. They're also sometimes available through other sources. In this case, we got the Samson Sword as a law reward a couple updates ago. It's not worth spending our only Chocobo Hide and Nepenthis on it. --- Thank you for reading! Our man Samuel is ready to begin his journey of getting hit by monsters on purpose. Solumin fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Jan 27, 2018 |
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Oct 8, 2017 01:05
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Yup, laws are fixed. I think law rewards are also fixed though, which is definitely worth it.
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Oct 8, 2017 02:29
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:The pacing on that update was a lot better. Thanks for applying more rigorous editing. Thanks! This is a learning experience for me. I really appreciate the feedback. Of course, it helps that one of the quests can be summed up as, "Go here and press A a couple times."
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Oct 8, 2017 02:49
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I think another improvement I can make is to move all the shop updates to the end. I want to show what loot we're using and what the bazaar offers, but it also disrupts the flow of the update. I'll still show the changes I make to the clan, because those have a significant impact in battle, but if someone has a new weapon it's as simple as saying "so-and-so has the Crowbar, which we just picked up from the Bazaar." I think I'm going to open up clan recruitment to voting. We'll be able to do that relatively soon, in a couple story quests -- so 1 - 2 updates. Recruitment becomes available at the same time auctions do.  Alkydere posted:"What use would a Dragoon without Jump be, anyway?" Jump is just so iconic that you can't not have it! Though I definitely use the breath attacks more often. The Astra strategy only works on debuffs, unfortunately, so it won't stop Critical: Quicken. The only good thing about Dreamhares is they're really squishy and easy to kill. RegalStar posted:I can't find the source (it was a GFaqs thread that seemed to have long since been purged), but I remember reading that the game actually has multiple lists of law bonus items which you cycle through until you get long enough of a streak (and are far enough along the story) to move to a better list, and so on. So it's sort of fixed, but not dependent on mission, and you need to be following the law pretty vigorously for them to eventually become worth it. I never knew that! It makes sense though, and is a pretty good way of handling the issue of making sure players have enough weapons. A fixed sequence of law rewards means they can be sure players are getting weapons they need, since random loot drops are random. Strange Matter posted:Yeah the pacing here was very nice. A+ improvement! I don't know how much Beastmaster we'll be seeing, because it really isn't that great of a job. I'll try to actually use the abilities in a battle soon. I absolutely agree about building the map. From a story/setting perspective, it's one of the reasons I think Luso goes to the "real" Ivalice while Marche went to a "dream" Ivalice.
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Oct 8, 2017 19:24
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As mentioned in this update, Jump was nerfed pretty hard in A2. It still hits like a truck, but it has 50% accuracy which means it's a literal coin-flip to toss. Personally I'd much rather poke people with my spear, or use the fire/ice/thunder breaths as a Dragoon. A lot of abilities got accuracy nerfs between FFTA and FFA2: mainly all status effects had their accuracy nerfed to a flat 70%. This meant that strategies such as Archers using Aim: Arm to inflict Disable on an entire enemy team was nerfed.
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Job Roundup #3: Animist, Archer, Fencer The last set of starter jobs are, more or less, the worst of the lot. Between ability nerfs, lack of weapons and just plain being overshadowed, these jobs are a little lackluster. --- Animist  Races: Moogle Locked by: Nothing Unlocks: - 1 Ability: Moogle Knight, Fusilier (+a quest) - 2 Abilities: Chocobo Knight (+a quest) Equipment: - Weapons: Instruments - Armor: Light Armor Growths: Slightly above average across the board, speed is OK. Animist just kinda sucks. There, I said it. Their abilities make them pretty flexible, with good damage in Chocobo Rush (infinite range in a straight line!), buffs with 100% Wool, and some great debuffs with Tail Wag (Charm), Sheep Count (Sleep) and Toad Song (Toad). Their really unique abilities are Cuisine (restores all HP to the target) and Friend (casts a random Summoner spell). But they suffer from a major external problem: Instruments are oddly rare. You'll get the one that teaches 100% Wool pretty quickly, but after that, they dry up. I don't think I see another until mid-game at the earliest. Two of them are locked behind late-game plot quests! And to add insult to injury, the instruments you do find in the meantime only teach abilities to Beastmasters. Learn a skill and move on, friend, there's nothing but frustration here. --- Archer  Races: Hume, Viera Locked by: - Hume: 1 Soldier - Viera: Nothing Unlocks: - 2 Abilities: Sniper [Viera only] - 3 Abilities: Hunter [Hume only] Equipment: - Weapons: Bows - Armor: Light armor Growths: Balanced but low, viera get better speed and attack but worse defenses than humes. There are 2 kinds of Archer: Those who have Concentration, and those who don't. Well, that's how it worked in FFTA, when the Archer's condition-inflicting abilities make them absolute monsters on the field. But one of the big changes in FFTA2 is the solid application of the nerf bat to conditions, and even Concentration isn't enough to save them. Still, FFTA2's Archers are great in the early game, and if you can find the bows to give them the advanced skills, they can provide a surprising amount of utility. The job's most important skills focus on disabling the enemy. They can inflict Disable (prevents use of actions) and Immobilize (prevents movement), Blind and Charm. They also get Burial, which can 1-hit kill undead enemies. Their damage tends to be low, but I find they shine in the early game. By mid-game, they're completely eclipsed by Hunters and Snipers. As a starter job, they're more interesting than Soldiers, but their stat growths besides Speed are worse. --- Fencer  Races: Viera Locked by: Nothing Unlocks: - 1 Ability: Red Mage (+ 1 White Mage) Equipment: - Weapons: Rapiers - Armor: Light Armor, Shields Growths: Excellent W.ATK, poor defenses and magick, great speed. Fencers exemplify Viera jobs: Fast, powerful, a handful of good (or at least useful) abilities, but not going to take hits too well. And for a race that generally uses magick, W.ATK isn't helpful. I suppose the new Spellblade job can use it, fortunately. (There's no way in-game to tell if an ability uses W.ATK or M.POW.) Fencers get some neat abilities, like a mini sampling of other Viera abilities: Swarmstrike inflicts Poison, Nighthawk is basically Air Render, Piercing Blow has a 2-panel range, and they can even inflict Doom with Checkmate. They also get the Reflex R-ability, dodging all basic attacks. It's funny that when I say "poor defenses," I actually mean "tied for best W.DEF among Viera jobs." Viera really don't take hits well. Of course, that's not problem if there are no hits to take, and Fencers are gateways to the immense power of other Viera jobs. Despite unlocking only 1 job directly, their skill set makes a great secondary for Snipers and Assassins. They'll be outclassed sooner or later, but Fencers are a respectable start.
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Oct 9, 2017 04:18
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Strange Matter posted:Animists were garbage in FFTA and I'm glad to see that FFTA2 keeps up that tradition. It's not even really clear what they are. Like Beastmasters control animals, so I guess Animists are more along the lines of Hot-Rod style "Totem Animal Sheep!" abilities? Beastmasters channel the physical monster, while Animists are more in touch with the spiritual side. Their "signature" ability is Friend, which casts a random Summon (as in, the spells Summoners use) for 4 MP. I've never been a huge fan of Moogles, to be honest. It feels like every other race does they do but better. The one exception is Fusilier, but as Alkydere said, they got nerfed. I'm not saying Mog Knight and Juggler are bad, mind you, just that they don't fit with how I play. Mog Knight especially is just the moogle version of Fighter/Paladin, but without Dual Wield. Also this: Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:Sheep Count now costs more than 10 MP when Moogles have no access to Half MP, is available way too late, and runs into Resilience now. --- One of my big frustrations with this game -- and FFTA, too -- is you can't really tell if an ability uses W.ATK or M.POW. It's pretty clear for most things, but jobs like Spellblade really blur the lines. My rule of them is that if it uses MP, it's M.POW based.
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Oct 10, 2017 02:03
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Orange Fluffy Sheep posted:I got some bad news for you, buddy. Spellblade is phyiscal, according to these four GameFAQS threads, along with the FF Wikia. That's why it's only a rule of thumb.
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Oct 10, 2017 03:07
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