So I'm playing LFT again. I like FFT/LFT a lot but I'm not super proficient at it. I usually employ a brute force method of blasting enemies with the strongest physicals or spells at my disposal. I tend to just max out those damage skills as much as I can - for example, magic attack up, equips that increase damage and high MP at the cost of everything else. I usually get auto-potion for everyone. My normal physical progression is Squire/Knight -> Monk -> Lancer -> Ninja. I'll wave fist the christ out of everyone, then I'll get max jump and hop all over the place, and then just two swords everyone with ninja. Thief, Archer, Knight, Geomancer -- these classes never really get touched besides to unlock things that I like. With magic, I usually go Wizard -> Summoner and then go back and forth between them. Who needs anything else? I've never even bothered with Math because it just seems like you have to invest too much to do it.You can already blow things up by the time you get there. I rarely touch Priest because auto-potion seems to do the job, and I never touch Time Mage because it's generally easier to blow a hole in the earth than do anything involving status.
So my goal this time is to try and step out of the usual tropes that I walk into. I want to try unique classes -- not because they're different but because I want to see if there's anything fun that you can do with them. I want to see if you can efficiently kill enemies in ways other than slamming them with swords and spears, or with fire and Shiva. LFT is well-regarded thanks to its diversity of classes so this should be a pretty easy thing to do.
I like Archers in LFT and will probably play with them a lot thanks to their ridiculous Ignore Height. On the magic side I'd like to give Priests more of a whirl instead of relying on Item so heavily. Geomancer is another option I'd like to play with, along with Bard/Dancer, and Ness has convinced me to screw around with Mime, something I never do because I like progression in FFT more than anything and you can't learn anything in that class. It's the same reason I never touch monsters.
I'm more interested in finding combinations that work well together than individual classes, though. I want to know if Geomancer + Thief is a good fit, or if Dancer + Priest turns me into a healing god. These are things I don't really know much about. Maybe Monk + Time Mage will do good things. I don't know.
I'm currently in Dorter. I've lost a couple of times because of Archers and their ignore height being hell on this map. I feel like a noob who gets owned by Dorter and gives up because the game expects you to not suck. I really feel like you should be able to buy bows by the time Dorter rolls around in order to combat this - the only way to really deal with the ranged spam in this fight is magic, and wizards go down so easily. Plus you can already buy rods in Gariland, so why not bows? It's probably to be faithful to the original but Archers that can leap to the top of Dorter aren't faithful. :) (Well, and I guess it's called Gariland Magic City. whatever.) It's a large map so you can get killed and then run out of time pretty quickly.
I'll beat it my next try for sure -- currently level 3 with a Knight/Monk/Squire/Wizard combo. I shouldn't have much trouble so long as I have some revive options, and I'm struggling in that regard because of 250 JP phoenix down. Usually I have 90 JP Phoenix Down by the time I switch to Wizard but the higher JP messes me up a little. Yay LFT! LFT can be kinda rough in the early going just because of how things work out with the tweaks, but eventually it's a cakewalk just like regular FFT. I love LFT.
You can't get Longbows before Dorter? I thought they changed that... guess not.
Dunno how much advice you want in this topic -- you have some combinations in that post and I'm not sure if you want commentary on them or not.
As for Mimes, if you haven't played around with things besides brute force you might find Mimes hard to get used to. It requires planning ahead, and if you start slacking off you can (and will) kill your own party members. I find them a lot of fun and they can be powerful if used right, but it requires a lot of work for the results compared to other options. If you haven't played around with status options a lot then you probably don't need Mimes to make this playthrough interesting. Mimes actually tend to work better in a brute force party anyway, in my opinion, since the advantage of Mimes is that you get to use all of your abilities through a unit with really high PA and MA. That doesn't really help out in terms of abilities Yin-Yang or Time, which are mainly Faith-based.
If you're planning on Priest be careful that your party doesn't have really bad Faith/Zodiac issues -- missing Raises is really frustrating.
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
I've got one 70/40ish brave/faith guy and the rest so far have 70/65 or so. I never really know what to do with brave/faith so I always get one tank with low faith that can be on the front line effectively. no idea if that's even smart or not.
noted on the Mimes - maybe I'll skip them for this playthrough.
High Brave is always good (just use someone else for Move-Find Item at the end of the game). As for Faith... I usually use all mid-to-high Faith units just since I like support magic. Faith is a personal preference type thing, though if you have a low Faith unit you might want to have a non-Faith based revival (Ramza's Wish, Punch Art's Revive, Item, etc) unless your Priest has good compatibility with them. Mainly since LFT has a bit higher damage output than vanilla so your units can die before you can do things about it.
Or you can just do whatever you want and if it becomes a problem, adapt accordingly. =P
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
I've never touched zodiac stuff. it seemed too involved to really nail feel worth learning. at least with brave/faith it's a single number.
maybe I'll learn autopotion on that character as a failsafe and then equip it if necessary. I guess I could always screw with their faith if I really wanted to fix it.
Ness26 posted... You can't get Longbows before Dorter? I thought they changed that... guess not.
*checks documentation*
No, you should be able to. Bows are only sold at castles, though (i.e. Igros) not Gariland Magic City. Did you try Igros Castle?
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
transience posted... and Ness has convinced me to screw around with Mime, something I never do because I like progression in FFT more than anything and you can't learn anything in that class. It's the same reason I never touch monsters.
Being in Mime gets you monster stat growth, especially if you unlock the class early. So...that partially makes up for missing out on earned JP.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
huh, you're right. I know I checked it too. maybe it was before sweegy woods.
my tentative plans for characters are:
Thief Geomancer Time Mage Chemist (with guns, I never seriously use guns) one of those quirky classes like mediator or oracle or something
some of these classes may end up being combined. I'll probably throw some archer use in too but it's kind of one-dimensional. find high ground, rain arrows, repeat.
oh, and Priest too. I'd like to do a priest/time mage combo but I worry that I'd have nothing for doing damage. I guess flails are notable. hmm, we'll see. I may want to spread my magic around to more than one character. then again, I'm also considering bard and dancer.
He humbly requests mime useage even if you're not running a nuke party, "because Mimes are hilarious and you will get so much more out of the experience." Also: "Mustadio starts with Mime unlocked, so you can just wait until then."
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
From: transcience | #010 oh, and Priest too. I'd like to do a priest/time mage combo but I worry that I'd have nothing for doing damage. I guess flails are notable. hmm, we'll see. I may want to spread my magic around to more than one character. then again, I'm also considering bard and dancer.
holy is an MP hog and you can't use it reliably for a good while. I guess priest has move mp-up but... well, we'll see. I rarely use big mp spells because there's rarely a need.
I'll try and grant Laggy's request. I was actually looking for him yesterday in the DL chat. someone else told me to use Mimes there, actually.
I might try and go Time Mage/Monk for some basic wave fist damage, Chakra and Revive. not sure how that works but I'll give it a shot.
KingBartz posted... I haven't been impressed with flails. They never seem to deal that much damage.
Last I checked, on paper the highest average physical damage in LFT at normal levels without grinding out superweapons involves flails. It's maybe not an obvious setup, however.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
Staffs are surprisingly good for damage too, since they're MA based. And I think it is Oracle that has Move MP Up.
Also Time Mage has THE lowest PA in the game I think, so combining them with the most PA dependent skillset in the game will probably be disappointing.
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
From: Lopen | #017 Bard + Mime + Dancer would actually be fairly effective as 3/5 of your team in LFT. You wanted to use them as your classes so this could work out!
Sing/Dance doesn't work with Mimes anymore. It's a bit unfortunate, but Laggy felt that it was too good, and any team using Mimes would be better with Sing/Dance so he opted to cut it so Mimes would be used for more interesting purposes.
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
Lopen posted... Bard + Mime + Dancer would actually be fairly effective as 3/5 of your team in LFT.
Barring an old version, that's actually been nerfed recently (Mimes no longer mimic Sing/Dance). Mime/Bard still isn't a bad combo, though: harps are still hilarious with mimes.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
I actually wanted to do Priest/Monk but doubling down on my revive options seemed like a Bad Idea, especially in LFT. I just want some built-in way to recover MP and revive, and then if I can do some damage from distance that'd be a bonus too.
since Laggy and MC are here, a question - I know you probably wouldn't do this because it would be deemed too drastic for a balance patch, but have you ever considered upping the HP and healing values across the board? everything is so OHKO heavy in FFT (and especially LFT) and if you could have like 2x the HP, that would be a lot of fun. plus there would be some other hidden benefits, like making White Magic legitimately better than Item. with more breathing room in the HP department, you could also differentiate the classes some more. just a thought.
Ness26 posted... Sing/Dance doesn't work with Mimes anymore. It's a bit unfortunate, but Laggy felt that it was too good, and any team using Mimes would be better with Sing/Dance so he opted to cut it so Mimes would be used for more interesting purposes.
It was a bit more complex than that. One of the big goals with LFT was to remove auto-pilot. Like...what spell do you spam with Math Skill? In classic FFT the answer is "Holy, end of discussion." In LFT it's...not really clear at all; Haste? Slow? Zombie? Don't Move? Pray Faith? Fire? Ice? Demi? Poison? Next question: what class uses Punch Art the best? In classic FFT, the answer is Monk or Ninja. In LFT there's good arguments for Monk, Dancer, Geomancer, Squire, Ninja, Knight, Lancer, and Toad Rod makes several of the mage classes...decent at punch art...I mean, not exactly good, but tolerable.
As for Mime/Dance/Sing, they kinda had become autopilot in LFT. People who got Mime basically always combined it with...usually both skillsets, and it was a very autopilot combo in-battle (compared to every other Mime combo in-battle). I still wish there was a better solution than just "the miming doesn't happen at all"--it's kind of brute force and inelegant, but I haven't found a cleaner solution.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
So the point of LFT is to provoke the player into finding out combinations instead of going with the most obviously powerful one because the difference is less noticable? Sounds pretty cool.
-- SomeC - sheer explosives since meeting that crazy hobo. BlAcK TuRtLe grabbed the Guru victory, slow but steady.
transience posted... since Laggy and MC are here, a question - I know you probably wouldn't do this because it would be deemed too drastic for a balance patch, but have you ever considered upping the HP and healing values across the board? everything is so OHKO heavy in FFT (and especially LFT) and if you could have like 2x the HP, that would be a lot of fun. plus there would be some other hidden benefits, like making White Magic legitimately better than Item. with more breathing room in the HP department, you could also differentiate the classes some more. just a thought.
There was definitely a point when we dropped damage a bunch (which accomplishes both those goals more simply). Ninjas, Thieves, and Geos have all dropped in the PA department compared to where they were. Bracer only gives +2 PA and not +3 PA. Summons got their damage reduced almost across the board. Fire/Ice/Bolt all deal less damage. Magic Attack Up is +25% instead of +33%.
And...I dunno; I've certainly heard reports where people claimed they win more consistently with higher durability setups. Whereas Laggy and I have tried running the classic FFT approach of "min-max for speed and damage, ignore durability", and it tends to be inconsistent--not that it can't win, but such parties will pick up two or three resets in unlikely fights. So...I think durability is managing to be reasonably important.
(Also: the classes that can heal really don't need a buff. Chemist? Priest? Monk? Samurai? Bard? None of them strike me as being below the curve in LFT. The bigger effect of a change like this is that it would probably make Mediator, Dancer, and Oracle extremely dominant due to status. Also: Wizard, as it has pretty good status now too).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
they don't need a buff, but they also don't have a built-in autoheal like auto-potion does. you have to actually employ a skillset. I was just trying to find a use for pure healers when most late-game classes don't really focus on that (or at least not in my experience). plus, people like big numbers and feeling powerful; dropping everything to do 70-80 damage at the endgame wouldn't feel very rewarding.
What about weapons that have a magic on them, like flame rods? Is there a specific percentage for each weapon triggering the effect or does it vary? what is that percentage?
From: KingBartz | #031 What about weapons that have a magic on them, like flame rods? Is there a specific percentage for each weapon triggering the effect or does it vary? what is that percentage?
I think almost all on-hit effects have a 25% chance of triggering. This includes spells on weapons, statuses on weapons, statuses on abilities (e.g. Holy Sword, Elemental), etc etc. One exception might be Space Storage (Rafalak's Truth abilities).
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No amount of planning will ever replace dumb luck.
I know nothing about LFT, but in response to the OP, I like using chemists once guns are available, as well as geomancers. Magic is, of course, very powerful and yet also requires some planning sometimes. I think when I finally finished the game the one time I actually played to the end, I had a Lancer (Ramza), Knight, Geomancer, WM/Chemist, and I forget who my bench player was. A monk, I think.
I started a playthrough of LFT a few months ago but got distracted. I'm guessing there's a new version since then and I should probably go redownload it.
man, I am getting hideously unlucky in this Dorter fight. anything that can go wrong is going wrong. I really need some kind of revive that isn't Wish because only Ramza and Delita can use it, and Delita's an idiot.
Wow. I have not gotten screwed by a fight this hard since the first time I did the rooftop in 1998.
My last two fights came down to my Wizard crystalizing with one enemy left at single digit HP. Twice in a row. One time it was because I missed a high percentage attack. I just got destroyed by the RNG in these fights.
Basically, it comes down to this: my Wizard would get rained on by arrows from turn 1. She was basically two-shotted and it was a matter of keeping her alive long enough to finish the fight. I have very limited revive options - Ramza and Delita with Wish, and my archer with Raise - so it was basically a matter of surviving and getting a little lucky. At least mc and Laggy were nice enough to unarm one of the archers.
Unfortunately I had no luck at all. Enemies would crit me constantly. Ramza would be hit in the middle of a Wish all the damn time, something I never expected to have to consider. 95% attacks missed. My Archer had bad compatibility with seemingly everyone. Delita and Algus did not attack the enemy for my first five tries, instead choosing to run around and accumulate all day. If I ever play LFT again I will not get these jerks accumulate. I almost switched to Knight just to avoid that.
And finally on my last turn I didn't just get normal luck - I got super lucky. My wizard, with 1 HP, dodged two 95% attacks. My archer finally started hitting. Delita and Algus finally attacked somebody. The AI was nice enough to charge fire with my Ramza up next and close by. I felt kind of cheap winning this fight because it was so one-sided. Oh well. Now I feel slightly less noobish for getting destroyed by Dorter of all things. Damn you archers and damn you revive. At least I didn't run around getting to level 8 or something. I'm really not bad at this game!
- Gained Exp Up on a beginner class is *dangerous*. One of my guys is now way above all the others and randoms are now scaling to him. I know that I could just not use him in a random encounter, but that's no fun. I just took on a group of level 7 monsters with my level 6-4-3-2-1 team. I didn't have much trouble -- I think monsters have been toned down since I last played two years ago -- but seeing them was pretty scary.
- Ignore Height seems really broken where it is. It should either be a lot more JP or on a more advanced class. I'm fine with Archers having innate ignore height but 300 JP in an early game class? I'm looking at the Monk's Jump +3 and wondering why anyone would bother getting that. Ignore Height can really break a couple of fights in the game so I'm surprised it's so accessible.
Current Party and their paths so far:
Ramza - Squire -> Knight -> Monk -> Archer -> Geomancer -- I've just been unlocking stuff with him so far. I just turned him into a Geomancer so I haven't done anything there yet. Monk seemed a little underpowered compared to what I'm used to, but I didn't have any skills either. I'm gonna try running Geomancer with various secondaries and see how I feel about it. I don't really know how to play a Geomancer so I'm just trying to unlock his elemental skills for now.
Ziggle - Squire -> Knight -> Archer -> Thief -- This is my level 6 guy with gained exp up. He wasn't doing a whole lot of good in Archer so I moved him over to Thief. He's now got a nice setup of equip sword + the Thief's innate two swords that is doing really well.
Yeshua - Squire -> Knight -> Monk -- I kept this guy in Knight until he could learn Move +1. I didn't really know what direction to take him in -- to get equip xxxx, to learn some breaks for the early game or to get move +1. I went with Move +1 and moved him over to Monk for the time being. He's my low faith physical guy. I found Monk + Basic Skill worked well because of accumulate. I don't want to keep him in Monk so I might push him on to Geomancer or Samurai. I'm testing the waters with Ramza first.
Klee - Chemist -> Wizard -> Priest -- Same generic path every guy goes through. Wizard is still blasting things into oblivion so I went over to the Priest. I'm thinking I'll try and get her into a time mage soon. Nothing interesting here.
Amy - Chemist - I just grabbed my fifth. I've always hated how you basically go shorthanded throughout chapter 1 and then play catchup for the rest of the game. I kinda want to get her gained exp up just to try and even stuff out. She's still level 1 and is throwing stones like crazy.
transience posted... - Ignore Height seems really broken where it is. It should either be a lot more JP or on a more advanced class. I'm fine with Archers having innate ignore height but 300 JP in an early game class? I'm looking at the Monk's Jump +3 and wondering why anyone would bother getting that. Ignore Height can really break a couple of fights in the game so I'm surprised it's so accessible.
1. Ignore Height was failing to compete with Move+1 when they were equal cost. This is why Move+1 now costs more than Ignore Height 2. Jump+3 is arguably better than ignore height. Jump+3 gives you horizontal jump, letting you frequently jump over swamps, over enemies' heads, etc. I mean yeah, Ignore Height lets you scale walls of 8+ height, but not many maps actually have walls that extreme. 3. Jump+3 is less expensive (even when considering that you have to unlock the class). 4. The skills are on different classes; you might be planning to use Archer JP for other purposes (Charge, Concentrate, etc) but not have as much use for Monk spillover. 5. It gets outclassed--Fly is basically all the good things about Jump+3 combined with all the good things about Ignore Height, and some extra good things on top of that, and Fly isn't terribly expensive.
I mean, I notice for such a "broken" ability, you don't actually seem to be learning it with any of your characters (whereas you did go out of your way to pick up Move+1). Call me if you find yourself Ignore Height equipped on three party members simultaneously (and note that two party members won't impress me--there's only really three earlygame movement skills, so with five party members and ideal balance, I'd expect a 2-2-1 split).
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
I had some crazy stuff on my playthrough. Ramza was a knight with a crossbow and a shield. Breaking stuff from a distance was hilarious. Also had a priest that dual-wielded Mace of Zeuses and had Charge. My team overall wasn't effective, but I was pretty stubborn about it and I eventually beat the game. Eventually.
Hopefully my team won't be so bad this playthough. My strategy was way too defensive. Every story battle took multiple tries, but somehow it was still pretty fun.
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Yes, I laugh at my own jokes. http://lparchive.org/Metroid-Prime-3-Corruption/Images/1-sitandspinumos.gif
1.) I needed to get a charge ability to help deal with the enemies in Dorter. 2.) Ignore Height is already innate on archers. There's no hurry when you already have it.
Archers already have great support abilities in arrow guard and concentrate, so Ignore Height just seems like a bit much. Plus it's just so early.
I hadn't considered the Jump +3 being horizontal - you're right there. But Ignore Height is still such a better ability.
transience posted... Archers already have great support abilities in arrow guard and concentrate, so Ignore Height just seems like a bit much.
Kights also have great support abilities in Equip Shield and Weapon Guard. Originally we actually had Equip Shield/Equip Sword/Weapon Guard/Equip Armor/Move+1 all costing...250 JP I think? And then different characters just made different decisions on what do do with their Knight JP, so setups would diverge. Worked great when Laggy and I were playing. But our playtesters valued Move+1 much, much higher than we did.
We built Archer on the same kind of principles--try to make several tempting abilities, so that if you have an archer providing a team with spillover JP, you don't just end up with every team member learning Arrow Guard.
Plus it's just so early.
Let's play a quick thought experiment for a moment--let's say someone told you to play through vanilla FFT, but told you you had to pick one skill type not to learn: reaction, support, movement, or skillset. The correct answer is almost certainly "I will not learn any movement abilities". Movement abilities just aren't that good. Add to this, the best movement abilities from FFT have been nerfed into the ground (roughly doubling in JP cost for Move+1, Move+2, and Teleport) and yet they remain the most used movement abilities (along with Move+3, because Bard/Dancer are good now).
Ignore Height, as least according to playtesters, isn't worth as much as Move+1. Nerf Ignore Height, and you'd need to nerf Move+1 as well. Nerf Move+1 too and you need to nerf Move+2 and Move+3 so that people don't go "screw it, I'll just get the bigger ability first; it's only slightly more expensive". And now we're talking about nerfing movement abilities as a whole--a slot which I really don't think needs nerfing (see the above thought experiment).
Ignore Height is still such a better ability.
I disagree; I think they're about equal. There aren't that many jumps higher than 6-7, and there are more situations than you might think where horizontal jump matters, especially when it's horizontal jump of 3. (And fall damage comes up every once in a while too).
Feel free to do what we did: run one character with Jump+3 and another character with Ignore Height and just compare them side by side. We felt they were very close in power level, but if you disagree after playing with both, let us know.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
So...if you have 6 jump, and fall 7 tiles, you lose 10% of your HP. If you have 3 jump, and fall 7 tiles, you lose 40% of your HP.
(With exceptions for Float and Fly which make you never take fall damage).
...At least, I think it's 10% per jump height. Might be 12.5% per jump height; I'm not sure, and can't seem to find an answer in any of the FAQs.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision
KingBartz posted... Sucks that Ninja jump got nerfed though.
Yeah, well, it's in exchange for making them move 5; definitely a buff overall. (It's also an attempt to differentiate them from Thieves--now Ninjas have more move, and Thieves have more jump).
KingButz posted... But ignore height still gives you damage from falls? lame.
Yep. So does teleport, to be fair (but that at least makes thematic sense).
Gameplaywise, I do like the tension between "I can get on this high ledge, but if that Squire has Throw Stone I'm dead" to be kind-of interesting, so I like that some of the height-ignoring abilities don't make you immune to fall damage.
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Cats land on their feet. Toast lands peanut butter side down. A cat with toast strapped to its back will hover above the ground in a state of quantum indecision