Final Fantasy : The Hunting Grounds Guide, Circa Version 7.84 -= Basic Guideline for New Players =- - You start out in Dainan Castle. Treasure chests cannot be opened. For the most part, NPCs do not talk. Aside from shopkeepers, random NPCs in the towns and castles, and monks in the Nexus monasteries, don't expect anyone to reply when you try to start a conversation. - To actually talk to NPCs, press 5 on your numberpad, or press the center key on your DS display. It will be the little square that is surrounded by arrows. To talk to players in the same 'area' as you (that is, you can see them onscreen), use 'say'. To talk to anyone else, use 'worldsay'. - The first weapon shop is outside of the castle, in the town just west of it. Enter the town, and the weapon shop is to the east. The door will have a pair of swords above it. - The first armor shop is right next to the weapon shop. In fact, it's one door over, in the same building, with a shield above it. - The first item shop is southwest of the other two shops. The bank is also in here. - The inn is south of the armor and weapon shops. - The first battle grounds is south of town. Follow the path south until you reach a bridge with several guards on it. Cross the bridge and you'll be in the first hunting grounds. - There are five primary stats, one of which is not shown for some guilds due to them having no use for it (willpower). All five stats will perform certain functions, which are the same for every guild. The stats are as follows: - Strength: This combined with the damage on your weapon determines your total attack power for your FIRST HIT ONLY. - Vitality: This combined with the total defense of your armor is what determines your overall defense. It does not factor in to how much HP you get per level; that is strictly guild-based. - Dexterity: This is what determines your attack speed. The weight of your weapon is subtracted from this in order to determine attack speed. Attack speed is half of what is used to determine whether or not you miss a monster with physical attacks. It has no bearing on your evasion. It is also used for determining whether or not you can wield a certain weapon; if your dexterity is lower than the weight of the weapon, you can't wield it. - Agility: This is what determines your evasion. The weight of your armor is subtracted from this to calculate your actual evasion. Your evasion is used to determine how likely you are to dodge the attack of a monster. This also is used to determine whether or not you can wear usable equipment based on your guild. If the TOTAL weight of your armor would exceed your agility, you will be unable to wear one or more of those pieces. - Willpower: This is used to calculate how much damage you do with spells/skills and how much HP you recover with spells/skills. Fighters, Knights, Dragoons and Thieves do not have a Willpower stat, for lack of any abilities that would require it. - There are other stats that have less relevance overall. Such stats are Weapon Variance (the difference between the minimum damage and maximum damage of your weapon), Weapon Power (equal to the minimum damage on a weapon), and Attack Rating (Weapon Power plus Strength). -= Random Observations =- - Attack order appears to be influenced by evasion. Running around with minimal evasion is a serious risk due to monsters having better odds of attacking before you, especially if you have some form of healing that will at times NEED to occur before monsters get their attacks in. - Damage is handled in this fashion: initial damage - your/monster defense = actual damage initial damage / 2 - your/monster defense = weak damage initial damage * 2 - your/monster defense = critical damage initial damage * 3 - your/monster defense = mortal damage Accuracy and evasion are no longer the penultimate stats when it comes to determining your odds of landing/avoiding critical hits and the like. Now, they are only used to determine whether or not you hit a monster. After that, it's a matter of hoping you get lucky... or hope that the monster DOESN'T get lucky. As such, vitality will be of greater use to mages now, since pushing your evasion to the sky will no longer suffice for avoiding serious damage. Spells and skills such as Forcefield, Shield and Barrier will also work if, for some reason, boosting vitality is simply not something you're willing to do. - The minimum number of hits that a character will do (misses are not considered to be zero hits) is equal to half of their maximum number of hits, rounded down. A character with seven hits will never do one or two hits (7 / 2 = 3.5; rounded down to 3), and so on. This also will hold true for monsters. Black Belts eventually become an exception, but this is detailed in the list of skills (look for Fast Fists). - Hits seem to do a uniform amount of damage. The first hit will always be the biggest, and each hit after that will be smaller, but this only happens once. That is, the damage for the second hit is less than the damage for the first, but the damage for the third is the same as the second, and so on. A person with six hits and a damage rating of 80-90 would do 80 to 90 damage with the first hit before defense is taken into account. The other five hits will each do roughly 20% of the first hit's damage. - Defense works to reduce damage on more than just the first hit; this is so guilds and monsters with a high number of hits don't become more dangerous than monsters intended to be more powerful (but with fewer hits). - Monsters and Investigators alike have a minimum amount of damage they can deal, assuming normal circumstances (a target with no spells or inherent damage reduction present). This minimum amount of damage is tied into the level of the attacker; stronger monsters/Investigators will have a better value for their 'worst' damage compared to weaker ones. - Weaponry have a maximum number of hits. Light weaponry such as spears and daggers have a high maximum hit count compared to heavy weaponry like axes and polearms. Specifically, the order from fewest hits to most is Staff (1), Axe (2), Polearm (3), Blunt (4), Spear (6), Sword (6), and Dagger (10). In addition, low-end weaponry will have fewer hits than high-end weaponry. That is, a Short Sword can only do two hits at the most, while a Scimitar can do four, and a Knight Sword can do the maximum (six). In terms of character-based maximum hits, if the character's max is higher than the max of their current weapon, they will only do as many hits as the weapon allows. In order to compensate for the various hit caps, those types with a lower maximum hit count do more damage compared to those with a higher maximum hit count. Black Belts do not use weapons, so this change to weaponry is meaningless to them. - On the overworld, you may occasionally notice what appear to be a coat of arms. These represent a group of Investigators (or just one) who are (is) in the midst of a battle. The faction that the leader of the group belongs to, as well as the nature of the battle (normal or ambush) is reflected in this coat of arms; the coat of arms for a citizen of Dainan will look different than that for a Brother of Nexus. If the group has allowed it, it is possible for other Investigators to assist them in battle by way of combining forces. There is also the option for Investigators to inspect a group they're in the vicinity of, allowing them to see how many people currently are in the party, along with level, profession and faction for each member. - Some monsters have the ability to eat their target. If not rescued within a certain period of time, the victim will be digested, rendering them unable to gain experience or gold unless they were fighting Grygasz. This used to be based on a matter of turns; within four turns or you were digested. Now the victim sustains damage while the creature gains life, both of which rely on the creature's level. More specifically, the victim has a few options upon being eaten. They can attack the creature, which will do weak damage. They can attempt to irritate the creature such that it vomits, resulting in (admittedly gooey) freedom; this chance is influenced by the creature's level compared to the victim's level. Finally, the victim can choose to resist the effects of digestion, which will reduce the life loss/gain for them/the creature. If the victim is reduced to zero health while being digested, there is still a chance of recovery which requires the rest of the group (provided there is a 'rest of the group') to kill the creature before four turns have passed since the victim died. If they fail to kill the creature before these four turns have passed, the victim is completely digested and is considered to be beyond recovery until the fight ends. - In addition to Eat, monsters have skills available to them such as poisonous touch (attempt to poison the target upon landing a successful attack), paralyzing touch (paralyzes the target on a successful attack), slumbering touch (renders the target unconscious on a successful attack), gore (undefendable damage dependant on the level of the monster), disease (similar to gore, except Red/Blue Mages with Resist Ailments can reduce the damage done), Resistant Skin/Hide/Shell (reduces melee damage by a percentage and stacks with defense), and inherent resistance to various elements. -= Level TNLs =- The listing details how much XP you need overall to reach a certain level, not how much you need to go from one level to the next. That is, your character needs 44 XP to reach level 2. For level 3, they only need to gain another 88 XP to reach level 3 (132 total XP). Level XP --------------- 1 0 2 44 3 132 4 294 5 640 6 1160 7 1930 8 3040 9 4600 10 6770 11 9680 12 13800 13 19400 14 26800 15 35300 16 47500 17 62800 18 82000 19 106000 20 135600 21 172200 22 218000 23 275000 24 346000 25 435000 26 545000 27 680000 28 844600 29 1046000 30 1293000 31 1595000 32 1968000 33 2433000 34 3004000 35 3684000 36 4464000 37 5364000 38 6360000 39 7520000 40 8880000 41 10480000 42 12471200 43 14840728 44 17660466 45 21015955 46 25008986 47 29760693 48 35415225 49 42144118 50 50151500 51 59680286 52 71019540 53 85413253 54 100570771 55 119679217 56 142418269 57 185143749 58 240686874 59 312892937 60 406760818 61 528789064 62 687425783 63 893653518 64 1161749574 65 1510274446 66 1963356780 67 2552363814 68 3318072958 69 4313494846 70 5607543300