Vagrant Story help

[Pshooter]

how do you increase your PP (phantom points) on your shield? you cant use it like you can weapons, can you?

[Tomtom]

It's been a long time since I played VS (too long, in fact...) but it seems to me that you don't get to use Phantom Points with your shield until you gain all the special defense moves, or whatever they're called. You get Phantom Pain for weapons, and something else for armor stuff.

[Turrican]

I can't recommend enough Zy Nicholson's VS FAQ on GameFAQs, truly one of the best I've ever read.

Anyway yes, you need to recover some abilities and time your buttons right to get plenty of PP.

I also remember how I was when I red that 64 playthroughs were necessary in order to forge a damascus dread shield

Sigh... what an awesome game. I soo want Matsuno out of FF and back to his personal projects.

[Pshooter]

yeah i'm just a little ways through it, but so far it is in a league of it's own. so i need to use my defense abilities it sounds like to build up my PP on my shields. The intro, when the dragon shatters through the huge skylight thing, and the music gets totally epic - that's some incredible stuff!

[U K Narayan]

I can't recommend enough Zy Nicholson's VS FAQ on GameFAQs, truly one of the best I've ever read.

Anyway yes, you need to recover some abilities and time your buttons right to get plenty of PP.

I also remember how I was when I red that 64 playthroughs were necessary in order to forge a damascus dread shield

Sigh... what an awesome game. I soo want Matsuno out of FF and back to his personal projects.

Your wish was granted several months ago, he's left Square-Enix.

[Turrican]

Your wish was granted several months ago, he's left Square-Enix.

You sure? I did read that I resigned from FFXII direction because of illness. That he left the company is news to me.

[Specineff]

Phantom Points is "energy" that your weapon absorbs while you have it on you. Not drawn, just equipped. Lack of Phantom Points does not render your weapon inneficient, like Damage Points do. IIRC, you only need them for using Phantom Pain.

[U K Narayan]

Your wish was granted several months ago, he's left Square-Enix.

You sure? I did read that I resigned from FFXII direction because of illness. That he left the company is news to me.

I've heard from various sources that he's jumped to Mistwalker.

[WarpZone]

Can you say what the sources are?

[sjewkestheloon]

i loved vagrant story. might play it through again soon and work on forging some more weapons. i also want that big ass minotour weapon...

[Turrican]

Your wish was granted several months ago, he's left Square-Enix.

You sure? I did read that I resigned from FFXII direction because of illness. That he left the company is news to me.

I've heard from various sources that he's jumped to Mistwalker.

U K Narayan, we're talking of Matsuno Yasumi here, ex Quest, mastermind behind Ogre series and such. Not Sakagushi Hironobu FF's father. Just pointing out to avoid any possible mistake.

[Pshooter]

I have another question for you VS experts. as you use a weapon on a certain type of enemy (human, beast, undead, etc.) your weapon gets more efficient on that type of enemy, but it gets less efficient towards other types of enemies. so how many types of enemies should you use each weapon for? one faq says this:


it is a good idea to say for example have a kit of four weapons that you use all
the time. Each weapon being able to cause high amounts of damage to only two
classes of enemies. A good example of these four weapons are shown here:-

Weapon 1 :- Dragon & Human
Weapon 2 :- Beast & Phantom
Weapon 3 :- Undead & Evil

With this system when the EXP of one class increases it won't interfere with the
next class down the list. In other words with the list in the menus looking
like this:-

Human,
Beast,
Undead,
Phantom,
Dragon,
Evil.

Every plus point on the human class would be a minus point on beast, and so on
down the list. This principle also works for element affinities although only
for the opposite of affinities. For an example you couldn't have a weapon
with high Light and Dark affinity because they are opposite affinities.


is this correct? i thought you were supposed to only use one weapon per enemy type.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

Your best bet is to have SIX different weapons. That still leaves two spaces for any extra ones you pick up(Not to mention you can break them up into blades/hilts of additional space.)

For my first playthrough I managed to do just fine with:
Spears for Dragons
A Edge bladed sword for Beasts
A stabbing type sword(like a Rapier) for humans
A club for Phantoms
A club for Evil
An Ax for the Undead

Two handed weapons are fun for awhile but unless you're pretty spiffy at switching off to a shield when the enemy makes their attack you'll end up taking big damage.

Phantom Pain is all right but I tend to use the attack that takes a 1/3 of your health in order to do a decent amount of damage. Of course none of this really mattered until the final boss.

All you have to do is work on your affinities and keep tinkering with the armor, defense is most important. If you want you can simply get eight weapons with a full stock of points and do eight straight Phantom Pains to kill off the final boss..but eh.

EDIT: You also have to take into account the elemental affinities of the enemies you fight, as it adds a slight variable to your ability to hit and do damage. The uh.."statues" that you find as you progress have no elemental affinity for example. In the end none of it really matters to be honest. All you have to do is beat the game the first time and becames much easier with each subsequent playthrough(For example in the first half of the game you'll be killing off most bosses in one or two hits).

[Pshooter]

much thanks for the info PepsimanVsJoe . on your armor, is it better to have high def str or def int ? (i think thats what they two are). And what exactly are the drawbacks of using one weapon for multiple enemy types?

[jiji]

I went with 3 weapons, just as the FAQ described. My inventory would tend to overflow pretty often even with only 3 main weapons, so I needed all the space I could get. Fewer main weapons also meant less swapping.

Matsuno hasn't left Squenix. He's no longer director on FF12, though, due to illness, but he's still serving as a consultant.

[Tomtom]

The intro, when the dragon shatters through the huge skylight thing, and the music gets totally epic - that's some incredible stuff!

In my opinion, "Climax of the Graylands Scenario", the opening piece from VS, is possibly the greatest piece of video game music ever written.

When I was playing, I think I had 3 main weapons, laid out as that FAQ described. The advantage of using different weapons for different types of enemies is that the more you use one on a certain type, the more suited it becomes to fighting that type. The types of enemies are grouped together as shown in the FAQ (Dragon and Human, Beast and Phantom, Undead and Evil), so if you use it against one of the pair, both of those stats will increase.

[Turrican]

A sort of drawback about keeping just three weapons could be that you must take in consideration not only the class affinity (vs beast, human etc) but also the weapon type: blade, blunt, piercing...

It was a game so awesome because, unlike 99% of rpgs, you immediately felt that a numerical stats change did have a true visible effect in game. you got a +5 boost on beasts, you switched to a piercing weapon, you decided to aim for a wyvern's tail instead of its neck... and you could sense the weight of any of these decisions in your following actions.

Unlike "OMG! Here's teh supah summon!! Go ifriit, 99999 damage, cool!".

[Icarus]

The most difficult thing I found about Vagrant Story was deciding what to keep and what to discard. I always tried to keep at least six weapon types depending on the kind of enemy I would be likely to run into - polearms for Dragon types, rapiers or edgeswords for Humans etc - and always used one weapon on one kind of enemy, to beef it up. I'd only ever carry the weapons I would likely need for each section as well (a section being the part of the game between each major savepoint/smithshop). Occasionally, if I had enough materials and spare itemcarry slots, I'd have an all purpose weapon as well.

I also tried to keep only the spares I knew I could combine into stronger weapons and stronger alloys at the smithshops. Breaking down new finds into their component parts and then seeing if you can make a stronger weapon in a smithshop was one of the more fun things in VS, that and testing out a new weapon on an unsuspecting enemy ^_-

I found it somewhat easy to time combo attacks in VS though (with edged sword weapons at least), and when you combine it with the ability to syphon HP and MP from an enemy on each hit, it made some battles just an exercise in comboing.

I love the styling of the game though. The comicbook-style speech bubbles, the art direction and the tense music made the game so atmospheric. And the amount of times I had to fight the final boss on the roof before I managed to kill him >_<

Unlike "OMG! Here's teh supah summon!! Go ifriit, 99999 damage, cool!".

Another reason why I preferred the likes of Vagrant Story, Parasite Eve and Final Fantasy Tactics over the major FF installments after 7.

[Pshooter]

The intro, when the dragon shatters through the huge skylight thing, and the music gets totally epic - that's some incredible stuff!

In my opinion, "Climax of the Graylands Scenario", the opening piece from VS, is possibly the greatest piece of video game music ever written.

When I was playing, I think I had 3 main weapons, laid out as that FAQ described. The advantage of using different weapons for different types of enemies is that the more you use one on a certain type, the more suited it becomes to fighting that type. The types of enemies are grouped together as shown in the FAQ (Dragon and Human, Beast and Phantom, Undead and Evil), so if you use it against one of the pair, both of those stats will increase.

so if i have 1 weapon for dragon/human, 1 for beast/phantom, and 1 for undead/evil, i will be fine? and say i'm fighting an undead creature with my undead/evil weapon - the evil stat won't ever go down?

and TomTom: I agree, "Climax of the Graylands Scenario" is definitely one of the greatest and most epic videogame musical pieces ever written, up there with a handful of songs from Radiant Silvergun (same composer as i'm sure we all know)

[Specineff]

PShooter, pretty much Pepsiman and SCC have nailed it with their posts. There's pretty much no set weapon for a specific type of enemy, though blunt weapons seldom get used against most enemies.

If your weapon type (blunt, pierce, edge) is not *that* effective against an enemy, you can offset this by using elements or materials or affinities that can damage that class. For example, I have a silver staff that I use only against undead. They don't fall because they're weak vs blunt, but because the silver and the undead class on that are high.

If I might suggest something, try a piercing type crossbow against beasts. That way you can pick them off far away, without the need for a shield. A one-handed piercing or edged sword is good against humans. Undead are slow and not too powerful or good with spells, so don't be afraid to be caught without a shield against them.

Evil enemies like to cast a lot of spells, so don't fight them without a shield.

[Pshooter]

it's strange that the VS manual doesnt go into more detail about developing your weapons, in particular there should be a chart showing "when you are developing a weapon for enemy X, the stats on that weapon for enemy Y will go down". I mean, how are you supposed to know that Dragon & Human, Beast & Phantom, and Undead & Evil are okay to have on the same weapon?

[WarpZone]

it's strange that the VS manual doesnt go into more detail about developing your weapons, in particular there should be a chart showing "when you are developing a weapon for enemy X, the stats on that weapon for enemy Y will go down". I mean, how are you supposed to know that Dragon & Human, Beast & Phantom, and Undead & Evil are okay to have on the same weapon?

That chart actually is in the game, if you pause and go to the quick manual (I know the instruction manual for the North American version is garbage, anyway). And the FAQ that you posted an excerpt from earlier was actually wrong on the pairings. It's human & phantom, beast & dragon, and undead & evil. It's actually really simple, look at the chart:

Human
Beast
Undead
Phantom
Dragon
Evil

When you strengthen your weapon against one type of enemy, it negatively effects the one directly BELOW it the MOST. The one that's two slots below will also be effected, but not nearly as much. And one that is three slots below is too far away to be effected at all. This is why the pairs are the way they are. The list "wraps around" so each pair is at the opposite end from the other, and can't effect it.

So let's say you decide to use a weapon for humans and beasts. For a while you might just be focusing on beasts, and your weapon's really getting built up, say to 40 or so. That's great. But then if you decide to fight some humans with it, you'll notice that as your human stat increases, your beast stat will slowly drop, maybe you'll notice it drops back into the 30's. There's nothing exactly wrong with this. It just can be a bit self-defeating in the long term. If you wanted to be MOST efficient, you'd avoid attacking humans with it, and go for just beasts and the rarer dragons when they come along.

You may have noticed by now, but the most common enemy types are humans, beasts, and undead. So basically, a weapon for each of them is good. And then when you run across a rarer enemy -phantom, dragon, or evil- just match up with the weapon that has one of those as a pair.

One more thing! I'm not sure how far in the game you are yet, but at least early on, the blade type (piercing, edged, blunt) is actually much more important than anything else. Affinity and elemental bonuses are just that- BONUSES, and they only start to make a big difference as they accumulate later in the game. Early in the game if you're not doing much damage to an enemy and you're wondering why, it's more likely that your blade is wrong, not that your affinities aren't built up right.

The game's purposely designed so it's difficult to always have the perfect advantage over an enemy. Your blade might be right...but then your affinity might be wrong. Your affinity might be right...but then your blade or elemental might be wrong. And all this other stuff- chains, break arts, gems, etc. are designed so that you can improvise and "make up the difference" as you see fit.

I hope that clears some things up

[Pshooter]

okay, what freaking weapon do i need to kill the golem?! I'm doing like 4-5 damage every hit, and my percentage drops every time i attack!
also, i'm a little ways through the game, and all my weapon pairings are wrong (i followed the guide i posted which was incorrect as noted above). Shold i wander around for a while and get all my weapons straightened out? Or can i fix things once i find a black smith?

[Tomtom]

You need to chain, set two of the chain arts to X and circle and juggle between the two. I usually used the one that does 70% of the regular attack's damage and one other. As you get more hits, the amount of damage you do increases (as does your risk, but as you are chaining that doesn't matter as much).

[Specineff]

If you got a blunt weapon against the golem, use it. I think that's what they're weak against. I'll read the guide tonight and post a strategy for it, P-shooter. Or you can check lamefaqs, too.