Current Events > Final Fantasy Tactics WOTL: JAKAS PLAYS! *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Greetings to my playthru of War of the Lions!

NOTE 1 - I have beaten the original before.

NOTE 2 - Beyond knowing that Cid and Calculators "break the game", I don't know how to best optimize the game to make it super easy.

NOTE 3 - This is a casual playthru that is not going to be some weird way of playing, more like a general journey through my game.

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I am currently just past the part where my brother hints at the idea of me going to deal with the Death Brigade, in random battles throwing Stones at one another and items. I have a Goblin pinned between my guys so now I'm just throwing stones at one another, and healing when necessary.

My current party consists of:

Ramza - Currently Level 6, Brave 70, Faith 70. Leveling up Squire (After this fight will have JP Boost, Move +1, have Focus). I'm always unsure what to do with Ramza. I know I can basically make him whatever I want, but I never know what I want. Looks like I lack some magic on the team thus far, but doesn't Ramza naturally spec into a better attacking class?

Scarlet - Currently Level 5. Brave 62, Faith 61. Leveling up Squire (Basically wanna get Move+1 and Focus, have JP Boost)

Peter - Currently Level 5, Brave 71, Faith 58. Leveling up Squire (Basically wanna get Move+1 and Focus, have JP Boost)

Baldric - Currently Level 5, Brave 71, Faith 45. Leveling up Chemist/Squire (Have JP Boost, looking at getting Throw Items I guess? Not sure what to do with a Chemist)

Josian - Currently Level 5, Brave 60, Faith 74. Leveling up Black Mage/Squire (Have JP Boost, not sure if Black Mage abilities are worth it beyond unlocking other stuff? I can go into Time Mage already)

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It's been a long time, but FFT was my favorite game and the reason why I initially came to this site.

Lancers, Geomancers, Monk-Ninjas, Samurai, Summoners, and Time Mages were always my favorite. Playing with 5 party members is so easy it's almost like cheating, but if you're just exploring the game no reason to limit yourself and see less of the classes, which is the reason why the game is good. Well, the remaining reason. WOTL got rid of the very special localization of the original, which is a negative except for the times where the translators just didn't tell Americans the story bits because they couldn't figure out how to translate it and just had Ramza speak like he was having a seizure instead.

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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

I'm always unsure what to do with Ramza. I know I can basically make him whatever I want, but I never know what I want. Looks like I lack some magic on the team thus far, but doesn't Ramza naturally spec into a better attacking class?

Ramza is a badass at everything, but objectively he's best at a class like Samurai that uses magic and physical because he's good at both and randos won't be. Just be sure to min/max Brave because some weapons use it in damage calculations, including Katanas. Brave/Faithing is tedious, but unfortunately kind of required to get the most out of a majority of the game's job classes.

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It's Gamefaqs law to tag @Alucard188 and me in in FFT topics

• Yes, Ramza can make a pretty good Samurai since he gets Male PA and Female MA growths, but Samurai is a pretty shit class with terrible speed and bad MA growth. Geomancer with Draw Out is the better way since Clothes >> Armor. But my favorite is Time Mage with Draw out because you get Haste, Quick and Teleport
• All Ramza needs to do is keep Guts in order to be broken. People like Monk and Two Swords [You can get stronger and faster very quickly and then just two punch everything to death], but I like Two Handed with him since I give him a certain sword
• You should try it with just 3 party members. They'll get powerful more quicker to balance it out. I've only played the game with Solo Ramza for the past 7 years or so
• If you're iffy on that then just have fun and fill the last 2 slots with Monsters

Gakk86 posted... Brave/Faithing is tedious

Not with Ramza once he gets Cheer Up in Chapter 2. At least not on himself. He can also talk to himself pretty well to lower/raise his Faith

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I keep wanting to beat this game. I've not beat the original, because I had no idea about enemy scaling.

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Alucard188 posted...

I keep wanting to beat this game. I've not beat the original, because I had no idea about enemy scaling.

Where did you get stuck? I can bail you out

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The only random fights that ever gave me trouble in the original that I remember was a bunch of Red Chocobo's on a waterfall. They basically nuked me before I could get to them to hit them.

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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

The only random fights that ever gave me trouble in the original that I remember was a bunch of Red Chocobo's on a waterfall. They basically nuked me before I could get to them to hit them.

Monsters become way more difficult than humans in FFT, yeah. You can use them yourself, too. Otherwise, just try different things over and over and you can usually find a way to get past anything. The AI is completely predictable and sometimes moving 1 space different will completely change what the AI does.

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I decided to move Ramza and Peter to Knight since that will open Monk which I recall can be OP as shit.

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Bad_Mojo posted...

Where did you get stuck? I can bail you out

Dunno. Chapter 2 somewhere, probably fighting Wiegraf or some shit. I ground my levels too much, and normal ass encounters were too much for me at that point.

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Alucard188 posted...

Dunno. Chapter 2 somewhere, probably fighting Wiegraf or some shit. I ground my levels too much, and normal ass encounters were too much for me at that point.

Then don't do the random encounters anymore. When I play, and solo the game, I almost do zero random encounters. And if you need to grind, back back and grind one the easy maps where it's just Goblins and maybe a Chocobo

And if you're stuck on that one Wiegraf fight, you just put your Robes on, and run away Screaming at Ramza. That stat boosts carry over to the Zodiac Monster fight when you can get 5 turns in a row doing 999 damage per turn

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For the Black Mage, is it even worth it to learn literally all the magic? Or should I just save up for Flare after getting the maybe level 2 of the elemental spells?

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Suppose I want to level Archer in the early game to get to Thief.

Can I level Archer using Squire abilities as long as I have Archer as my main job? Or does the JP go to whatever job class the ability I use come from?

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WOTL is the best FF game

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If you change someone into Job X, you can use Job Y as a secondary to gain experience towards X. It's a pretty common situation to encounter, especially if you want to unlock expensive skills first.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

i thought every normal class has the same exact MA growth, it's just MP growth that differs

This is true, however they do have different MA multipliers. Black Mage will always give you the highest MA while IIRC Dragoon is the lowest? Samurai is pretty low as well. So leveling up in a class like Samurai doesn't hurt your MA in the long run but it does have much less firepower with its own abilities than the magic oriented classes do, or something like Geomancer which is probably the best "when in doubt put Ramza in it" class because its stats are good all around and it gets the best equipment options, so you can make it work for any mix of physical and magical stuff you want (not to mention its class abilities being pretty fun when you get lucky with the status effects).

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Mmmkay. I moved one of my Squires into the Archer class just to get to Thief and then Ninja. Always nice to have a Ninja.

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Ninja's are overrated. Too weak. :-)

My general tips:

-I skipped White and Black mages. I hate that White Mages must charge up healing spells and the whole "Faith" thing sucks since a character with low faith won't be healed much anyway. I stick with a Chemist and then have every character learn the Item command to heal instead. Much easier since there's no charging and the healing amount is set.

-I also don't like Black Mages since they have friendly fire on attack spells while summoners do not. I used a Summoner with Bahamut most times with Quick Charge. It casts faster than you think and there's no friendly fire so you can fire it into a pile of your own men.

-The Mantles can be expensive but get these things as new ones become available. By the time you get the best ones you get an evade of like 40-50% and your guys will dodge tons of stuff. Very nice.

-The Robot 8 battle has a the best Lance in the game and best Shield on the two pedestals in the middle. You need to jump off the back of another character to get up there and use Move-Find to get them (which is why you can't use Ignore Height). Highly recommend if you have a Lancer (I made Ramza one) since he can one-shot most enemies with a regular attack, let alone a jump attack.

-Try to steal the elemental guns when you see them. They're only available in plot battles and, if you win the fights, your chance is gone. If you see a boss with one, quit and equip a weapon steal move and then restart. Given your Chemist can use guns, it's always nice to get one or two since they'll wreck regular enemies.

-Get Beowulf Quick Charge and he's one of the best mages in the game. A Time Mage with none of the issues of a Time Mage!

-Get a character with either Weapon Break or Weapon Steal. You'll see a number of bossfights with a boss using a Sword-based skill. Break or steal the weapon and he's hopeless. HIGHLY useful for the early fights against Gafgarion...have Ramza break that weapon quick and the fight becomes a breeze.

-For me, I say get these skills for EVERY character:

-Gained JP Up - Squire - Obvious. Makes leveling skills easier
-Ignore Height - Lancer - Anyone can jump onto or down from any surface. So easy to get to teammates or enemies and such.
-Potion
-Hi-Potion
-X-Potion
-Antidote
-Phoenix Down - Get everyone to learn all these so anyone can heal and revive anyone. I had almost everyone with "Item" as a command.

-Short Charge - Time Mage - For anyone who uses spells. Better than MP-Halved to me.
-Move-Find Ability - I put it on when I know there's good hidden items in a map. Situational but helpful

Ninjas have stupid good damage and are the fastest class in a system where speed is awesome to have. Black Mages are the best magical attacker, other magic jobs can't use their own abilities quite as well as Black Mage can. Element boosting equipment + basic summons also tends to be stronger than the stronger summon magic, though unlike in vanilla you do actually eventually probably want Short Charge here since summons are a lot slower than they were in the original game. Element guns are also available from more than just plot battles, you can find them in the bonus dungeon and there's a random battle that can spawn enemies with any of the rare guns (actually I think a few places can produce random enemies with rare guns at high level, but there's one specific place that has a rare battle consisting of nothing but gun-using enemies who tend to have the good stuff)

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Teleport is strictly better than Ignore Height and all but strictly better than Fly. And it's cheaper and easier to access than either of those abilities. It's probably the best movement skill in the game, toss up between it and Move +3.

Ninjas can be great, but they need help from Monk abilities. A male ninja with max brave and min faith and martial arts will wreck. Give him a Feather Cloak and Abandon (Long time ago, might be wrong stuff. Want the max evade stuff). Buy some of the shitty axes with high attack but are worthless for their random damage except when you throw them. That unit will be able to hit most enemies on the map on any given turn very, very hard, and pretty much any enemy pretty hard by throwing axes if he can't get right up to them. He'll take very little damage from magic and will be extremely difficult for melee enemies to hit. The Monk moves work really well as a secondary, too, because it gives the ninja a healing move that isn't dependent at all on faith and also restores MP of adjacent friendly units, so he can restore your summoner's MP because if you're using Short Charge, and you should, you'll be burning through it.

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Gakk86 posted...

Ninjas can be great, but they need help from Monk abilities. A male ninja with max brave and min faith and martial arts will wreck. Give him a Feather Cloak and Abandon (Long time ago, might be wrong stuff. Want the max evade stuff). Buy some of the shitty axes with high attack but are worthless for their random damage except when you throw them. That unit will be able to hit most enemies on the map on any given turn very, very hard, and pretty much any enemy pretty hard by throwing axes if he can't get right up to them. He'll take very little damage from magic and will be extremely difficult for melee enemies to hit. The Monk moves work really well as a secondary, too, because it gives the ninja a healing move that isn't dependent at all on faith and also restores MP of adjacent friendly units, so he can restore your summoner's MP because if you're using Short Charge, and you should, you'll be burning through it.

If you want max evade, then pick up Sword Grasp and give that unit 97 Brave

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More later tonight!

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Nice!

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Bad_Mojo posted...

If you want max evade, then pick up Sword Grasp and give that unit 97 Brave

Doesn't that only work on enemies using the "attack' command, while abandon works on all attacks able to be evaded?

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Gakk86 posted...

Doesn't that only work on enemies using the "attack' command, while abandon works on all attacks able to be evaded?

Abandon is better for high faith casters so they can more easily dodge magic attacks. You can catch bullets with Blade Grasp, the only way to dodge guns

But Auto Potion is the best ^_^d

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Ramza is Level 10, now into Monk level 3. He also has 5 Squire, 3 Chemist/Knight, 2 Black Mage.

Peter is Level 8, level 3 Knight. 3 Chemist, 4 Squire, 2 Archer and Black Mage.

Baldric is Level 9, a level 4 Squire. 6 Chemist, 2 for Knight/Archer/Black Mage.

Scarlet is Level 8, level 3 Archer. 4 Squire, 2 Chemist and Black Mage.

Josian is Level 9, 5 Black Mage. 4 Squire, 3 Chemist, 2 Knight.

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Gakk86 posted...

Doesn't that only work on enemies using the "attack' command, while abandon works on all attacks able to be evaded?

You're probably confusing Blade Grasp/Shirahadori with Hamedo. Blade Grasp works to evade most physical attacks at Bravery percentage, whereas Hamedo preemptively attacks but only against a few commands (Attack, Battle Skill, Throw, Charge). Hamedo is great against humans. Blade Grasp is great if you aren't worried about evading magic. Abandon is great if you want to evade everything that's evadable.

In story I am just at the part where Agrath told me how to get Tietra back, and got the cutscene with Ramza and Delita chatting about how broken the system is.

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Which version are you playing? PSP or mobile? If on PSP, did you by any chance get the performance patch or the resolution fixer?

Edit: If it's on PSP and you have the means to play a fan patched version of the game, PM me and I can send you the patches.

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I'm on the Vita, so the PSP version on the Vita.

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Make a mime called makememod

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Ah, I'll assume you do not have the special requirements then.

On a normal PSP that game runs like ass, with visual effects chugging way after the sound effects are finished. There's a fan patch which 100% fixes the issue. There's also one which destretches the resolution (since this version is a 4:3 image simply stretch to the PSP resolution). Idk how it runs on the VIta but i can't play without the patch anymore.

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Is Archer any good at all? I was just leveling it to get Thief and Ninja but bows seem like they could be strong?

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I've read that Archer is pretty much terrible. LOL

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Magic, guns, Jump, Throw, Shockwave from Martial Arts, Kiku-ichimonji from Iaido--there are lots of ways to do ranged damage that are better than being an Archer.

It's a shame that archers suck as much as they do. The best Charge skills take forever to land, their CT isn't even reduced by Short Charge, and they only target panels. Charging units also have lowered evasion and take higher damage. IIRC, archers also get accuracy penalties on nighttime maps.

If you want range, just use guns. Some skills, like Knights' break abilities, can be used with 'em for extra hilarity.

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Shotgunnova posted...

IIRC, archers also get accuracy penalties on nighttime maps.

Yep. Also in rainy weather.

Bows are actually decent weapons, especially early on. Later they're a bit hamstrung by good bows not being available in shops, although guns share that issue. It's too bad that their use is restricted to the Archer job.

Does the Concentration ability work with regular weapons? Seems like not a bad thing, never missing.

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Archers are actually pretty good, but not in this game because you never start with the high ground, so there is no point in using them. If you had the high ground in more fights they would be worth using, at least more than they are now

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Jeff AKA Snoopy posted...

Does the Concentration ability work with regular weapons? Seems like not a bad thing, never missing.

You can still miss with Concentration, it just ignores evasion. Basically, you have no disadvantage from attacking from the front. It also helps a bit with Stealing. It won't help with breaking items

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To clarify, Concentration means you will never miss because of a unit's evasion from job (front attacks only), shield (front and side), or mantle (any direction). Inherent success rates for abilities like Steal and Break will not be changed, and reaction abilities like Shirahadori will still function normally.

Even with those limitations it's a very good ability, arguably the best thing to pick up with your Archer JP.

Edit: and yes, it works with any weapon.

But you can make Steal better with Concentration, just not by much. It bypasses the Evasion still, so Stealing from the front will be just as good as stealing from the back. But something like Attack UP and/Or Martial Arts is better.

[MOD 4] ~ steal
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Attacks of this type are all STEAL directives. The 'caster' is the unit
executing the STEAL directive, and the 'target' is the unit being stolen
from. Let Sp0 be the caster's original Speed as given on the status
screen. K is equal to the constant component of the STEAL formula --
for instance, K = 30 for Steal Weapon.

1. If caster has Attack UP, then (Sp1 = [Sp0 * 4/3]), else Sp1 = Sp0
2. If caster has Martial Arts, then (Sp2 = [Sp1 * 3/2]), else Sp2 = Sp1
3. If target has Defense UP, then (Sp3 = [Sp2 * 2/3]), else Sp3 = Sp2
4. If target has Protect, then (Sp4 = [Sp3 * 2/3]), else Sp4 = Sp3
5. If target is Charging, then (Sp5 = [Sp4 * 3/2]), else Sp5 = Sp4
6. If target is Sleeping, then (Sp6 = [Sp5 * 3/2]), else Sp6 = Sp5
7. If target is a Frog and/or Chicken, then (Sp7 = [Sp6 * 3/2]), else
Sp7 = Sp6
8. Calculate Z (zodiac addend):
If compatibility is 'Good', then Z = [Sp7 / 4] + [K / 4]
ElseIf compatibility is 'Bad', then Z = -[Sp7 / 4] - [K / 4]
ElseIf compatibility is 'Best', then Z = [Sp7 / 2] + [K / 2]
ElseIf compatibility is 'Worst', then Z = -[Sp7 / 2] - [K / 2]
Else, Z = 0
9. Success% = (Sp7 + K + Z)
10. Consider physical evasion multipliers, if applicable.


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Bad_Mojo posted...

But you can make Steal better with Concentration, just not by much. It bypasses the Evasion still, so Stealing from the front will be just as good as stealing from the back.

Yes? I mean I basically said that.

But something like Attack UP and/Or Martial Arts is better.

To improve Steal, yes. Bit of a tangent from the discussion about Concentrate.

I'm likely gonna try and make it so I have someone always trying to Rend and someone else always trying to steal.

Should be fun to annihilate people that way. Monsters I shall simply punch to death.

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Stupid Argrath.

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