HCBailly plays Final Fantasy II AGAIN - Part 2 of 65

Now it's time to (re)learn a whole bunch of things.

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Duel wielding does not work here as it does in the later games, as the main hand is what contributes to attack power and the off-hand weapon contributes to the evade and weapon experience. Not surprisingly, having two of the same weapon type equipped will double the experience for that weapon type at the cost of a few points of attack power. Of course, the difficulty of the Famicom version balances this out, as you can equip both a weapon and a shield.

Equipping a shield will raise your Evasion. Evasion influences how high your agility can get, whether or not you'll strike first, and it also does wonders if you're not equipped with either your fists or a bow and arrow weapon.

The number to the left for evade is the evade count, which determines how many chances per turn you'll have to avoid an attack, and the percentage is the probability of you missing it on each chance. The hit percentage works kinda like evade except for attacks.

When your Strength rating goes up, you'll have to unequip and then re-equip your weapon and shield in order to get the game to recalculate your strength with that weapon. This is a glitch in the game that is only unique to the Famicom version. Ditto with your armor to recalculate the Evasion. Agility (Agi.) makes you faster, but you should pay more attention to Evasion. 

Vitality - known as Stamina in this game and will therefore be called "Stamina" for the rest of the guide - dictates how many HP you'll gain when you level up. If your Stamina is 10, you'll gain 10 HP. 

Intellect (Int.) adds not only to the damage of your Black Magic spells but also Black Magic hit percentage. Spirit is the same as Int., but for White Magic. Take the base damage level, then take your intellect, divide by four, round down and add your current Intellect level to see how much you will gain.

The Weapon Skill is basically experience with eight different types of weapons. You start out with Level 1 on each one, but as you use each weapon, you'll gain experience for it until it levels up after 100 Experience Points. The more you attack, the more you gain. It's better to strike at stronger monsters, as you can gain more experience from them than weaker monsters. The maximum level is 16.

For shields, the higher the level, the more your Evade will become when you equip a shield. Shields make you faster. Go figure.

Strangely, stuff gets a little complicated here, but not too much.

Anybody can equip anything, and there are no traditional experience levels in the game. Because of that, you level up based on your actions. Resorting to physical attacks raises your Strength, and resorting to magic will raise your Intelligence and Spirit. Evasion is levelled much like weapons are, but you don't get to see the experience for it. To level it up, you have to be attacked by enemies. 

Here is how HCBailly is going to prepare (which means that my strategies/note-taking/whatever will be based off of his prep - go figure): Maria will be the Black Mage, Guy will be the White Mage, and Firion will be pure melee, and will have a Broad Sword and Buckler while focusing levelling up agility, as the rate of ambush and pre-emptive rates in the game is based on his agility alone (and makes the game easier when you know this). Thankfully, you can check a character's stats to see if they are left- or right-handed. Put the stronger weapon in the dominant hand to ensure you get the most attack power.

Interestingly, you won't know if you've been ambushed or given a pre-emptive strike until after you've selected all commands for the first time. This is a bug in the Famicom version of the game.

You'll want to remove all the armor that all the characters have, so Firion can level up Evade as quickly as possible and so Maria and Guy do not have to deal with any magic penalties. Feel free to sell everything you don't need. 

For Maria, buy her the Thunder tome at the Magic shop. You'll find Fire in a dungeon soon enough. The magic tomes can be used as a one-use-only item to cast a Level 8 spell (which you can do for any spell), but you're better off using it on her to teach her the spell to level it up. For Guy, teach him the Cure spell, and equip him with Knives, as they have a low magic penalty and make it easier to finish enemies off and get some splash damage. While there are more enemies weak to fire than to anything else in the game, it's still better to get Fire for free. As for Ice, all the enemies that are weak to it have high physical defense, and are usually weak to other elements anyway. All the elements have the same base damage level of 10, and there is no difference in power between the elements.

If you're starting out, give everyone a shield, and stick to one weapon type (unless you [b]really[/b] love levelling up). Spears and canes are the best weapons at the beginning, since they're pretty easy to get your hands on. While they're powerful, axes have low hit percentages, just like in the first game...which can cause problems.

Items not only weigh you down and cause your Evade to drop, they also cause Intelligence and Soul to drop as well during battle. The heavier your equipment and weapons, the higher the "Int./Soul Penalty" or "Magic Penalty" will be. This will effect the hit rate and amount of damage spells can do.

This site is really going to help. I'll probably throw it in in later entries.

You have two item slots per character. This not only lets you circumvent magic penalties at times (you can put your Shield here to raise your Intelligence and Soul where necessary and still have it on that character), you can also make it easier to switch between items and weapons and whatnot if it's only useful in specific situations.

Pick a means of attack for each character and stick with it, as the game will not let you do both; gaining a point of Strength with a character you've deemed a magic user puts you in line to lose a point of Intelligence. Gaining a point of Intelligence, interestingly, will cause you to lose a point of Stamina. Gaining a point of Spirit will cause you to lose a point of Strength. (Weird counterbalance, I know.) Interestingly, equipping anything that a "job class" shouldn't equip will cause your stats to drop, and the game does not tell you this. For example, if you equip any swords, shields or heavy armor that a Black-Mage like character shouldn't equip, Intelligence and Spirit will drastically go down, and even do so by as much as 70% in some cases. Some pieces of light armor and weapons will have a negligible "magic penalty." You can find out the magic penalties here and here.

Press Select while not in battle to configurate your front and back rows. The back rows take less damage, but they deal less damage against enemies. If you lose your entire front row, the back row becomes the front row.

Magic and bows can hit anyone, but all the other kinds of weapons can only hit the front two rows.

Monsters drop random amounts of Gil, making money farming harder. You're more likely to get 12 Gil (or a common item) than you would 50 Gil (or a less common item) from an enemy at the beginning.

That's enough of that.

Altair Map (by Paco)

In your inventory, just select the book and select who you want to learn the spell. They'll learn the spell just like that.

World Map (by Rick Bruns)

Just north of Fynn is Gatrea. Let's head there.

Goblins give the most Gil. Get rid of them as soon as you can.

The Hornets can Poison you, but that's about it. There is a second version of Poison called Envenom. Even though Envenomed shows up as being "Poisoned," it's permanent and not temporary. If you're Envenomed, don't expect it to just go away. You won't see this until later on, though. (You'll be able to tell which one is which during battle, which kinda helps.)

By having Maria attack everyone with Thunder, everyone will lose HP and have a chance to increase their maximum HP. By losing at least 10% of your maximum HP in a battle, you stand a 10% chance of doing just that with a character, and you can lose at least half for up to a 50% chance (and no more) of increasing a character's maximum HP.

The inn has its own mechanics to it, as well. The price is dependent on the amount of MP you have to restore across your party plus the total HP you need to restore divided by four. In the example in this video, Maria has to restore 6 MP, and that's all you have to restore. That six. Between Firion, Mario and Guy, you have 20 HP to restore. 20 divided by 4 is 5. 6 MP plus that 5 equals 11, so that makes 11 Gil. Thankfully, Gus has a cure spell. Go to the menu, go to Magic, select Guy, select Cure, press Left to target all party members and press A. Now you have 7 gil, as Gus has 1 MP to restore on top of Maria's 6, but nobody has to recover any HP anymore.