Part 21: Battle Primer: 71+

Battle Primer: 71+

Every character, no matter who they are, has static stats from levels 1 to 70.



My Rydia at level 70 will be the same as everyone else's. The exception is HP and MP; not only can that be manipulated easier through Apples and Somas, they go up by variable amount at every level. That's complicated and ignorable, though.

What isn't ignorable is that there are 8 potential outcomes for every level thereafter. Some of these are good... some of these are actively a detriment to you.

Whichever one you get, is pure chance. These are Rydia's potential stats at level 71; these only apply to her, and will be drawn from the same 8 potential changes every level thereafter.

This is in no particular order, and the stat differences I list will be in the order on the stat page (so, Strength, Agility, Stamina, Intellect, Spirit).



-1, 0, -1, 0, -1

I'm sure this gives you an idea of what I meant by actively detrimental. And, remember you could get this 20 more times if you were awfully unlucky.



+3, +3, 0, +3, +3

Arguably the best stat gain, save for that no change to Stamina. It makes Rydia effective at what she needs to do at least. It also gives a not insignificant boost towards magic defence.



+2, 0, +2, +2, +2

Second only to the one above, it trades the gain in agility for a gain in stamina. In doing so, it also reduces the gain of every stat by 1. Worth alternating between the two where possible to give a good, consistent increase.



0, 0, 0, +3, +3

Exclusively magical focused, but to its detriment. It's almost actively identical to one just above, save for being flatout worse.



+1 to everything

The "average" gain, I guess you'd call it. Square certainly seemed to think so, since it's in the pool twice. It's a slow, steady increase that works I guess.



-1, 0, 0, -1, -1

Hey look it's probably the worst possible outcome! On the one hand, at least this way Rydia keeps her Stamina with this one. On the other hand, she loses a point of Intellect in return.

Not a fair trade at all. Yay for actively making your characters worse!



-1, -1, 0, 0, -1

And, of course, there's this too because you need a chance to lose Agility as well.

I'm going to try and get the obvious good gains (i.e. the +2 and +3s to basically everything) when I can because I like stacking the deck in my favour. Also because I hate fun apparently. As you might have guessed, this isn't that easy because of having to reset constantly. On the plus side, Rydia takes the most EXP to gain any given level at this point so it shouldn't be a nuisance that often.

Really, in some ways, you'd be better off never getting to this point; you could end up a lot worse than you started! Even Edward who's touted as an endgame murder beast... isn't. At least not a lot of the time. On the one hand, he can gain +4 in everything but Agility. On the other hand, half of his stat gains are all losses. 2 of which are -1 to everything, the other 2 are -1 to everything... but Agility, again.


Or, to put it simply: this game is cruel to high level characters, and crueller to people who obsessively level this high.