Summer Games Challenge 2015

[Ack]

Yeah, I have noticed that my monks' attacks aren't increasing at the same rate as the jumps the knights are getting from new swords. Renna and Galuf are pretty high up there in monk, but I'm starting to hit the 100+ points required to level, and good places to grind for job points are few, far between, and often include a timer or vanish after I beat the boss. I would very much appreciate having a better place to build up these things. But I do like the stat bonuses, and I do want my freelancers to be able to counter...

And the lack of magic isn't as big a disparity as you think. Both Bartz and Farris have taken up the Mystic Knight class to offset this a bit, Renna can cast White spells up through level four and Black spells up through level 2, and Galuf has the first two levels of White in case I need to build a back up healer. But I'm still at a point where my physical stuff reams enemies. No boss has lasted more than three full rounds yet.

[fastbilly1]

you will get 1-5 job points for non boss monsters up until you meet magic pots. So what I always did was grind my job points at the first area of the world, before moving to the next one. I killed many squirrels to get my Galuf at level 5 knight before I moved to world 2.

[Ack]

That may well be what I end up doing. I've found the Chimera to be worth 3 points, so I may beef up a bit to ensure I can drop him easily and then farm him for a while.

Also...blue magic. Worth it?

[alienjesus]

Yeah, I have noticed that my monks' attacks aren't increasing at the same rate as the jumps the knights are getting from new swords. Renna and Galuf are pretty high up there in monk, but I'm starting to hit the 100+ points required to level, and good places to grind for job points are few, far between, and often include a timer or vanish after I beat the boss. I would very much appreciate having a better place to build up these things. But I do like the stat bonuses, and I do want my freelancers to be able to counter...

And the lack of magic isn't as big a disparity as you think. Both Bartz and Farris have taken up the Mystic Knight class to offset this a bit, Renna can cast White spells up through level four and Black spells up through level 2, and Galuf has the first two levels of White in case I need to build a back up healer. But I'm still at a point where my physical stuff reams enemies. No boss has lasted more than three full rounds yet.

Slight spoilers about great grinding locations (no real story spoilers):

The best place to grind for AP in the game is in the basement of Castle Bal in world 2 imo. If you do want to abuse it, a blue mage with lv.5 death will be your best friend. It's a pretty easy to pass area otherwise.

If you want to grind on the Chimaera, a blue mage is still your best friend. Chimeara uses Aqua Breath as an attack and blue mage can learn it. As a water spell it does 8x damage on desert enemies...like the chimaera XD

Also, Blue magic is ridiculously good. As is chemistry, bard song and sword magic. Those 4 classes are probably the most broken in the game without combining jobs imo.

Status magic is actually really useful in FFV too, and Chemists and Blue mages can inflict status effects even on many enemies who are immune to them using their level adjusting abilities and the blue mages lv ? spells

[MrPopo]

World one, another good grinding place is the Jachol cave. Three nut eaters give you 2 AP and die to one hit each and don't deal any damage, one skull eater gives you 5 AP. They're scary because they have high evasion and defense but they love to run and you can get past some of that with Aim + Axe or throwing weapons or confusing/controlling them.

World two there's an area that gives 4 or 8 AP depending on the group and the enemies can be wiped out with Level 5 Death or two Lightning Scrolls (ninja throw).

As for the monk, here's how the general attack formula works:

(WeaponDmg - Defence) * M, where M is based on your level and your prime stat.

For unarmed characters with the Barehanded skill, WeaponDmg is 3 + level * 2. Something you'll start to notice is that character leveling starts to fall off; I usually end in the low 30's in my FJF runs. That's what hurts the monks long term. There's an accessory in the third world that boosts Barehanded WeaponDmg by 50, which helps. The other thing is that the M grows at half the rate for Barehanded as it does for other physical weapons to balance the fact that you get a natural dual wield.

[Ack]

Hmm...argh, guess I'll need to retool my party a bit to do all of this. I'll make sure Bartz masters elementalist first though. I want those abilities on the freelancer, it's a cheap class to master, and all of the stat changes are small but positive and will offset any negatives I might somehow acquire.

[MrPopo]

You will never have negative stats in Freelancer. Basically, consider the Freelancer to have a stat bonus of 0/0/0/0, while a Berserker has a stat bonus of 21/-9/25/-23, and a Summoner has a stat bonus of -10/-1/-1/33. If you have those two jobs mastered and switch to freelancer it does a max of all bonuses for each stat. So your final Freelancer's stat buffs would look like 21/0/25/33.

[Exhuminator]

So the reason you like FFV so much MrPopo, is because of the intricate jobs and stats stuff?

[MrPopo]

I like it because the job system is so flexible and there's a lot of surprisingly combinations. I've gotten even more into it with the Four Job Fiesta since you learn about all kinds of crazy strategies against bosses when you're stuck with a weird team. But I'll be the first to admit that compared to the other two SNES entries the story is very ho hum.

[Ack]

Haha, I feel like I should move my FFV questions to the RPG subforum so we stop dominating this thread and so we can really hash out how all the job stuff plays out. My choices have worked so far, but from the sound of it there is a lot more I should be looking into.