The leveling system in Final Fantasy II is such that you tend to get better at things by doing them. Want to level up sword skill? Attack with a sword equipped. Want to get more mp? Spend a lot of mp. Some of the stats are less straightforward and one in particular is flat out weird. That stat is agility.
How do you get more agility? Win a fight with a high evade percentage. You don't need to be attacked. You don't need to have a long fight. You just need to end a fight (without a negative status condition). The higher your evade%, the better a chance you'll get an agility stat up.
How do you have a high evade%? Have a high agility...
Ok, that's not the only way. Like in the original Final Fantasy wearing armor decreases your evade%. The heavier the armor the more it reduces your evade%. So, one way to increase your odds of getting an agility up is to run around naked. None of my characters are currently wearing a helmet, body armor, or bracer.
Another way is to equip weapons and shields. It turns out almost every weapon in the game increases your evade%, and it does so in an awesome way. Almost all of them have a 1% evade stat but it turns out that stat actually gets multiplied by your skill level with them plus 1. So if I'm using a sword with 1 evade% and have 3 sword skill I actually get 4 evade% from it. (I imagine this is because you're parrying with the sword and the better you are with a sword the better you can parry with it.) Shields work the same way but have real evade% numbers. The starter shield has 4 evade% on it. Get a shield skill of 2 and that's an extra 12 evade% right there. Now, you have two hands in FFII and you can stick a shield in each hand so with 2 shield skill I'd actually get 24 evade%. And now if I attack I do no damage but get twice as much shield skill experience!
How do you get more agility? By running around the woods naked, holding 2 shields, and showing them to the imps until they run away. (Can you blame them?)
I think your previous analogy of practicing to get better isn't going to hold up for raising your agility. Not that *anything* is likely to hold up as a good explanation for why running around naked except for a shield in each hand looking for imps makes you more agile...
ReplyDeleteI can actually buy that running around naked with nothing but two shields seeking out monsters (and surviving) is going to make you more agile.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that this is the optimized way to become more agile is intensely bizarre.
Would you be better off naked with a sword and shield? That way you can end a fight quicker than waiting for the imp to run away from your scary shields?
ReplyDeleteI think you want to have two shields and then cast an attack spell like fire or ultima to get into more fights. Probably you want to fire yourself a bit first so you can scoop up some max health along with the agility!
ReplyDeleteIt does seem pretty weird, but is there a better way within the confines of the system to get more agility? I'd think running away would be a good way, except you only get stat ups after winning a fight. Getting attacked and having the enemy miss?
I think just getting attacked would be better. The more you get attacked, the better you get at dodging attacks, whether you are learning from your successes or your failures.
ReplyDeleteI don't think I ever worked on getting agility when I played through the game (I certainly didn't know how it worked). I focused on HP and weapon skills.
I like that wearing heavy armour decreases your chance of dodging and decreases your chances of getting an agility skill up. Someone wandering around in a big suit of armour isn't trying to be agile. They're just trying to reduce the hits.
ReplyDeleteThis is somewhat compensated in the leveling system by having a chance of strength skill ups when you're wearing heavy armor. Wear heavy armour, get stronger. Wear light armour, get more agile.
I have been trying to figure out how that crap worked! It seems like everyone else on the internet was somewhere between way off and completely wrong.
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