------------------------------------------------------

Again, if you want to steal, this is the way to go. Balthier’s Plunder

abilities and high Speed make him the best item-stealer in the game, if you’re

so inclined.

BALTHIER

Job : Sky Pirate

Action Ability : Arts of War

Reaction Ability : Shirahadori

Support Ability : Attack Boost or Vehemence

Movement Ability : Teleport or Ignore Elevation

Equipment : Bow or Gun

------------------------------------------------------

This is a modified version of the generic Archer strategy. Balthier’s heavy

armor gives him more survival power than a generic Archer, and his Barrage

attack lets him do twice the damage with no risk of missing! Since Barrage

never misses, you don’t need Concentration and can replace it with some other

support ability, like maybe Attack Boost or Vehemence to increase the damage

he does.

Either a bow or gun works with this set-up. A good bow can do more damage,

but may have a shorter range unless you can find a good high point to shoot

from. A gun will typically have a somewhat longer range and allows Balthier

to equip a shield at the same time, but it does less damage. Since Balthier

is pretty mobile anyway and Shirahadori can protect you from a lot of attacks,

the bow may be more advantageous in most situations,

CLOUD

Support Ability : Swiftness

Equipment : Materia Blade, Lambent Hat or Brass Coronet,

Magepower Glove

------------------------------------------------------

Swiftness makes Cloud’s Limits charge faster. And giving him a Lambent Hat for

headgear and Magepower Glove as accessoriy raises his magick attack strength,

which makes his Limits stronger. The Brass Coronet, found in Rendezvous Mode,

is an even better booster of magick attack.

MELIADOUL

Job : Divine Knight

Action Ability : Darkness

Support Ability : Attack Boost or Vehemence

Equipment : Chantage

------------------------------------------------------

Attack Boost is a good early ability to learn for Meliadoul since it will make

her sword techniques stronger. Later, you could also use Vehemence to boost

her attack even more, as long as you give her a good defense.

Her main weakness, though, is that her sword techniques all only damage one

target at a time. And since the Divine Knight’s magick attack is fairly low,

magick isn’t a good choice for her either. Instead, you may want to consider

building her towards a Dark Knight. Several Darkness abilities can strike more

than target and she’ll already have the sword she needs to use them.

Since Meliadoul is female, she can use Chantage; the automatic Reraise means

you won’t have to worry about the HP loss from Darkness too much.

BYBLOS

Bravery : High (97)

Faith : Low (03)

------------------------------------------------------

As with Construct 8, tweaking the Byblos is pretty much limited to increasing

its Bravery. None of the Byblos’s abilities depend on Faith, so you can also

safely lower its Faith to 3 to defend it against enemy magick.

%%%PARTY STRATEGIES%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%00par

HOLY JUSTICE

4 Knights with Chameleon Robes

Black Mage with Arithmeticks, Holy (White Mage) learned, Chameleon Robes

------------------------------------------------------

Have the Black Mage calculate Holy on as many targets as possible; it will do

lots of damage to the enemies but heal all your characters since Chameleon

Robes absorb holy damage!

PHANTOMS OF THE OPERA

4 Dancers with Mincing Minuet (Dancer) and Vanish (Ninja)

Ramza as a Mime

------------------------------------------------------

At the start of the battle, have all the Dancers dance Mincing Minuet, which

will damage all the enemies. Have them Wait out all their turns and they will

keep on Mincing. When the Dancers get hit, Vanish will turn them Invisible.

Now, if you act while Invisible, you’ll become visible again... but if you just

wait, you keep using Mincing Minuet, and it doesn’t count as an action! In

other words, you can stay Invisible (and consequently inVINCible) and keep

damaging the enemies. You can’t lose! Well, except for Ramza... just have run

and hide; he’ll Mimic all the Minuets. (In non-story battles, you can dump

Ramza in favor of another Dancer.)

KEEP YOURSELF ALIVE

1 female character with Chantage

Another character with Ninja Gear, the Invisiblity Cloak, or Septie`me perfume

------------------------------------------------------

Chantage makes a character virtually invulnerable by giving her a permanent

Reraise ... but, of course, the one catch is that at least one other character

has to be still alive for the Reraise to work. What to do? Make another

teammate Invisible (using the Ninja Gear, Invisibility Cloak, or Septie`me)

and have him/her hide in the corner where s/he won’t get hit. As long as the

Invisible character doesn’t act and stays invisible, s/he won’t get targeted by

enemies and can’t die. This means the character with Chantage can Reraise

indefinitely! You can’t lose! The only possible snag is if the Invisible

character gets caught in the effect radius of a wide-range spell, which will

cause you to lose Invisibility, but hiding in the corner is usually a good way

to keep this from happening.

SERAPH SHIELD

One character with Seraph Song (Bard) and Mana Shield (Time Mage)

or Vanish (Ninja)

Other characters with Mana Shield (Time Mage) and good Bravery

------------------------------------------------------

This isn’t quite as invulnerable a party, but another tactic is to put Mana

Shield on most of your characters. Assuming they have reasonably good Bravery,

most attacks will just damage their MP as long as they have at least 1 MP.

Then, have one character just use the Bard’s Seraph Song to keep restoring MP

to your party. Every Seraph Song means your allies can survive another hit

without taking damage.

For added defense, the character with Seraph Song can use Vanish to turn

Invisible, which--as noted above--makes him basically invulnerable as long as

he only keeps performing Seraph Song ... and stays out of the effect radius of

enemy magicks.

This strategy isn’t quite as foolproof as some of the aboves since Mana Shield

might not activate, or you might be attacked again before you can restore MP.

But, it also requires fewer abilities than the above strategies.

*******************************************************************************

IX. STATISTICS AND LEVELING

*******************************************************************************

%%%BRAVERY AND FAITH%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%00brave

Bravery and Faith are two "special" statistics that are not affected by gaining

levels. Bravery affects a couple different combat skills, while Faith governs

the effectiveness of magic.

Bravery and Faith each range on a scale from 0 to 100 for each character, both

human and monster. They are not affected by equipment, experience level, or

job. Instead, only a few abilities and story events (listed below) will change

Bravery or Faith temporarily for a battle. At the end of the battle, a quarter

of this change (rounded down) also becomes permanent. For instance, raising

your Bravery by 4 during a battle results in a 1-point permanent increase at

the end of the battle. Or, a 9-point decrease in Bravery during a battle will

result in a 2-point permanent decrease.

This calculation means it’s not possible for Bravery or Faith to be permanently

raised above 97 or below 3 -- you can only get a 3-point change, which is not

enough for a permanent change!

---Bravery---------------------------------------------------------------------

Bravery relates to a couple different elements in combat. Generally speaking,

a high Bravery is better (and, in fact, will help you out quite a lot!)

---WHAT DOES BRAVERY AFFECT?---

- The chance of using most Reaction Abilities in response to an enemy attack is

equal to your Bravery. So, a high Bravery means you’ll use Reaction

Abilities more. This is quite helpful, and the best reason for raising your

Bravery.

- A higher Bravery increases the damage you deal when attacking with fists,

knight’s swords, and/or katanas.

- The gil/JP received from some Errands is affected by your Bravery -- some

Errands give you more gil & JP if your Bravery is high, others more gil & JP

if your Bravery is low. (And many other Errands aren’t affected by Bravery

at all.)

- If a unit’s Bravery drops below 10 during battle, she/he/it will turn into a

Chicken. As a Chicken, the character cannot be controlled and will simply

flee into a corner and do nothing. A Chicken regains 1 Bravery each turn and

will turn back into its regular self once his/her Bravery gets back to 10.

- If a unit’s permanent Bravery gets too low, he or she will abandon the team

out of cowardice and permanently disappear from the roster.

- When discovering items using the Treasure Hunter movement ability, you

receive one of two different possible items based on Bravery ... in this

case, having a LOW Bravery makes receiving the "good" item more likely. For

this reason, Rapha makes a great Treasure Hunter as she starts with a very

low Bravery.

---WHAT CHANGES BRAVERY?---

Bravery can be increased during battle by:

- Your choices in two story battles. Choosing to rush the enemy and not help

Argath on the Mandalia Plain in Chapter I will raise the current team’s

Bravery by 10 for the battle (at least 2 of which is thus permanent). In

Chapter II, choosing to help Mustadio at Zaland will raise Bravery by 20;

choosing not to help him will raise Bravery by 10.

- The Orator’s Praise skill raises Bravery by 4.

- The Dancer’s Bravery Boost reaction ability raises Bravery by 3 in response

to a physical attack. Note that one use of this by itself is not enough for

a permanent change.

- Ramza and Luso’s ability Steel (only available in Chapter II or later) raises

Bravery by 5 and has a 100% hit rate.

- Ramza and Luso have an ability called Shout (not available for Ramza until

Chapter IV) that raises their own Bravery by 10, but can only target

themselves, not other allies.

- Reis’s Dragon’s Might ability raises a dragon or hydra’s Bravery. It does

not work on other characters/monsters.

Bravery can be decreased by:

- Choosing not to help Boco in the story battle at Araguay Woods in Chapter II.

This gives a 10 point penalty to the party’s Bravery

- The Mystic’s Trepidation magick lowers Bravery by 30.

- The Orator’s Intimidate ability lowers Bravery by 20.

- Beowulf’s Chicken ability lowers Bravery by 50!

- The Dread Gaze ability possessed by the Floating Eye and Ahriman monsters

lowers a character’s Bravery by 10.

Remember that only 1/4 (25%) of these changes remain after a battle.

---WHAT LEVEL OF BRAVERY IS GOOD?---

There’s little reason not to shoot for as high a Bravery as you can get. It

makes your Reaction Abilities more effective, and increases the power of

certain weapon types. The ONLY downside to having a higher Bravery is that it

keeps you from finding rare items with Treasure Hunter. But, you can just keep

one specialized character with a low Bravery for that, and raise your main

fighting team to have as high a Bravery as possible. Plus, once you’ve

collected all the rare Treasure Hunter items, you don’t need a low-Bravery

character any more and can raise his/her Bravery back up.

---HOW CAN I RAISE BRAVERY?---

The best way to gain Bravery is to use Ramza and Luso’s Steel ability. Steel

gives you the largest Bravery boost (5) and has a 100% hit rate. (To increase

Ramza and Luso’s own Bravery, Shout is even better.) If you want to grind

Bravery, deploy both Ramza and Luso, increase their speed, and use Steel/Shout

until everyone’s Bravery is maxed out at 100. Then finish off the enemies.

Since only 1/4 of your Bravery gains are permanent, you’ll have to repeat this

process quite a few times to actually reach the highest permanent Bravery

possible (97).

Also, when you encounter the three battles in the story where you’re given a

choice of mission objectives, be sure to pick the options that net you a higher

Bravery (don’t help Argath; help Boco and Mustadio). This is a nice early

Bravery boost before you have other abilities to tweak it.

---HOW CAN I LOWER BRAVERY?---

The only reason you’ll want to lower Bravery is for Treasure Hunter, but the

quickest way to do this is with Beowulf’s Chicken. (The good Treasure Hunter

items don’t show up until after Beowulf is available.) Each use of Chicken can

net up to a 12-point drop in permanent Bravery. Use it over the course of

several battles to drop your Bravery quite a bit. For final tuning of your

Bravery, use Intimidate to make smaller 4-point changes. (Remember that if you

go TOO low, you run the risk of the character deserting!)

---Faith-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Faith is mostly related to magick, and can be both good and bad.

---WHAT DOES FAITH AFFECT?---

- Magick is most effective when cast by characters with high Faith. Attack

magicks do more damage, healing magicks restore more HP, and status-changing

magick is more likely to succeed.

- But, enemy magick is also more effective against you when you have high

Faith.

- Marach’s Nether Mantra abilities reverses the above: it does more damage when

Marach has LOW Faith, and when his targets have LOW Faith.

- "Magick" guns (Glacial Gun, Blaze Gun, Blaster) are more likely to do high

damage when the user has high Faith.

- A LOW Faith increases the attack strength of fell swords wielded by the

character.

- The gil/JP received from some Errands is affected by your Faith -- some

Errands give you more gil & JP if your Faith is high, others more gil & JP if

your Faith is low. (And many other Errands aren’t affected by Faith at all.)

- If your character’s permanent Faith level gets too high, the character will

experience a religious conversion and permanently quit the team.

---WHAT CHANGES FAITH?---

Faith can be increased by:

- The Orator’s Preach skill raises Faith by 4.

- The Bard’s Faith Boost reaction ability raises Faith by 3 in response to a

magick attack. Note that one use of this by itself is not enough for a

permanent change.

- The Mystic’s Belief spell and the Templar’s Belief swordskill cause Faith

status, which acts as a temporary increase in a character’s Faith to 100.

Because this status has no effect on a character’s actual Faith number, it

does not result in any permanent change to Faith.

- The Rod of Faith weapon gives the character equipped with it a permanent

Faith status as long as it is equipped. (But, again, this never affects your

actual Faith number.)

- Striking characters with the Rod of Faith can bestow the Faith status on

them.

Faith can be decreased by:

- The Orator’s Enlighten skill lowers Faith by 20.

- The Mystic’s Disbelief spell and Templar’s Doubt swordksill cause Atheist

status, which is the reverse of Faith status: it acts as a temporary

reduction to 0 in Faith, but also has no permanent impact on Faith.

---WHAT LEVEL OF FAITH IS GOOD?---

Unlike with Bravery, there’s no "best" Faith value since Faith is a double-

edged sword -- it makes your own magicks stronger, but it also increases the

damage you take from enemy magicks.

For magick-users, you’ll probably want a high Faith in order to increase your

magick strength. If you have a support character using a magick gun, you might

want to boost his Faith as well to make the gun more effective. Remember,

though, that you can’t get your Faith TOO high (95+) or the character will quit

your team.

If a character isn’t going to be using magick, you may want to lower his Faith

as low as possible. Of course, this destroys his/her ability to use magicks,

but it also renders them virtually invulnerable to enemy magicks. For

characters who use primarily physical attacks (e.g. Ninjas, Dark Knights,

special characters with swordskills) and not magicks, low Faith is actually a

great defensive asset!

---HOW CAN I RAISE/LOWER FAITH?---

You’re pretty much dependent on the Orator’s skills to change Faith. Just make

as many characters into Orators as possible, defeat most of the enemies and

cripple the remaining ones (see tips below), then have them use Enlighten or

Preach on each other.

%%%EXP, JP, AND GIL%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%00exp

---EXP and Experience Levels---------------------------------------------------

Characters gain experience after every successful action except Defend and

Re-equip, unless they’re KOed by an enemy counterattack. You do not earn EXP

for using a Reaction Ability, even if it does daamge or KOs the attacking

enemy.

Gaining 100 experience points advances a character’s experience level by 1 and

resets the experience count to 0. You cannot "carry over" any excess

experience; gaining 23 EXP when you have 99 EXP still leaves you with 0 EXP at

your new level.

Stats that increase with level gains include maximum HP, maximum MP, attack

power, magick power, and speed. Attack and magick power and speed increase

fairly slowly, though; you won’t see these increase with every level gain.

Bravery and Faith do NOT increase with level up; they have their own mechanic

(see Bravery and Faith, above). Other stats that do NOT increase with level

ups are Move and Jump ranges and evade rates.

Of the five stats that do change, the amount each stat increases at level-up is

determined by the character’s current job. For example, being a Knight will

cause you to gain more HP at level up than a Black Mage, but vice versa for MP.

(You can exploit this by leveling down and then back up; see Level-Downs & Stat

Grinding, below)

A character’s experience level and current EXP count can also be used as the

basis of targeting Arithmeticks (see the Arithmetician job description above).

---HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE?---

The number of experience points you earn is largely determined by the gap

beween YOUR level and the TARGET’s level. You’ll earn 10 EXP for performing

an action on a target as the same level as you. Performing actions (either

healing or attacking) on characters of higher level than you will get you MORE

experience, and the gain is bigger the bigger the difference in level. Of

course, healing or attacking characters of lower level will you earn you LESS

experience, and the penalty is bigger the bigger the gap (though you’ll always

earn at least 1 EXP).

You’ll also gain more EXP from an attack that KOs any enemy, though this bonus

wears off if you repeatedly revive and KO the same enemy.

---LOW-LEVEL CHARACTERS---

A good way to build up low-level characters is to have them heal teammates who

are at a higher level. This is safe and won’t get them counterattacked, and

if there’s a big gap in level, they’ll gain experience quickly. This technique

is particularly useful for building up Cloud, who starts at experience level 1

at a time when most of your characters are probably at least level 40.

Guns are also useful for low-level characters since their damage is not based

on any stats that are dependent on level. (Regular gun damage is based only on

the attack strength of the gun, and magickal guns reflect only attack strength

and Faith, which doesn’t change with levels.)

If you only care about gaining JP, you can turn the low-level characters to

Stone. This will protect them from being KOed, and they can still earn

spillover JP. Of course, they won’t earn EXP or levels, and they’ll gain JP

pretty slowly. But, this can still be useful if you have a low-level character

you just can’t keep alive long enough to gain JP any other way.

---OTHER WAYS TO GAIN EXP---

- The Arithmetician support ability EXP Boost doubles the experience you earn

from regular actions.

- The Thief action ability Steal EXP steals all of an enemy’s current

experience counter (i.e., anywhere from 0 to 99) and adds it to the stealer’s

own experience counter. This can be useful for small-scale experience

boosts, but it’s limited by the amount of EXP that your enemy has.

- The Arithmetician movement ability Accrue EXP gives you additional experience

every time you move around the battlefield.

- The Wild Boar monster -- available only by breeding from a Swine or other

Wild Boar -- has an ability called Bequeath Bacon that becomes available

when it is standing next to an ally with the Squire’s Beastmaster support

ability. This ability causes its target to gain 1 experience level, but

turns the Wild Boar into a crystal, killing it permanently.

---ONION KNIGHTS---

The Onion Knight job cannot gain EXP! So, the easy way to level up to Onion

Knights is switch them to another job to level up. The hard way is to use

Bequeath Bacon, which is time-consuming but rewards you with the best stat

gains -- see the Level-Downs and Stat Grinding section below.

---Gaining JP------------------------------------------------------------------

JP is gained after every action, just like experience. Characters earn JP for

each job separately -- whatever your current job is, that’s the job you’ll earn

JP for. JP is used to "purchase" new abilities. It is also used to advance

your job level -- see Unlocking Jobs up in the Jobs section.

---SPILLOVER JP---

Whenever a character gains JP, all other allies ALSO gain some JP for the same

job, equal to 25% of the JP earned by the original character. For example, if

a character on your team who’s a Ninja performs an action and gains 40 JP, your

other units will also gain 10 JP for the Ninja job, regardless of what their

current job is.

This bonus applies ONLY to characters participating in the current battle. It

does not apply to the other characters in your roster whom you did not deploy.

You also can’t earn spillover JP if you’re currently KOed. Other status

ailments still allow you to earn spillover JP.

JP Boost has NO effect on spillover JP. (It doesn’t increase the amount of

JP that spills over onto others, nor does it increase the JP a character earns

via spillover bonuses.)

Note that "spillover" JP accumulates even for a jobs a given character hasn’t

unlocked yet. You’ll see it once the job DOES becomes available. For

instance, if Ramza earns JP as a Dragoon, Agrias will get spillover JP for the

Dragoon job, even if she hasn’t unlocked it.

JP continues to be earned and distributed this way even if the character

already has 9999 JP for the job and his/her own JP count has stopped.

---OTHER WAYS TO GAIN JP---

- Characters at higher experience levels gain more JP! So, you’ll find it

much quicker to unlock jobs and abilities at the end of the game than at the

start.

- Characters also gain more JP as their job level for the current job

increases. This means your JP growth for each job isn’t linear; you start

out gaining JP slowly, but gain it more quickly after you’ve advanced job

levels.

- The Squire support ability JP Boost increases the JP you earn for each

action by 50%. It has no effect on spillover JP.

- The Arithmetician movement ability Accrue JP gives you additional experience

every time you move around the battlefield.

- JP is received from completing any Errand available in the Taverns in every

town. For the best reward, match up your jobs with the demands of the Errand

-- see the Errands list for more information.

---Gil-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gil is Ivalice’s currency and is used to purchase items and services in towns.

Unlike EXP and JP, gil is not earned after every action. Instead, it’s

primarily earned at the end of a battle as Bonus Coin. The amount of Bonus

Coin you receive at the end of the battle is equal to the combined level of all

the enemies times 100.

The other major way to earn gil is to sell items and equipment in your

inventory to the Outfitter or Poachers’ Den. You’ll receive half the list

price for each item (e.g., an item that costs 400 gil to buy at the Outfitter

will net you 200 gil when sold). A lot of equipment simply becomes obsolete

after newer equipment becomes available, so sell away! For example, there’s no

reason to keep Leather Helms (+10 HP) when Bronze Helms (+20 HP) are available.

However, you may want to hang on to equipment with particular special effects

(e.g. immunity to certain status conditions), as these often come in handy for

particular battles.

---OTHER WAYS TO EARN GIL---

- Gil is received from completing any Errand available in the Taverns in every

town. It costs some gil to sign up for each Errand to begin with, though, so

your profit is often somewhat limited--in some cases, you can even LOSE money

on an Errand! For the best reward, match up your jobs with the demands of

the Errand -- see the Errands list for more information.

- The Thief action ability Steal Gil gives you a small amount of gil if it

succesfully hits an enemy unit. (Note that when enemy Thieves hit YOU with

Steal Gil, you’ll actually lose money out of your War Funds!)

- The Thief reaction ability Gil Snapper, when triggered, gives you an amount

of gil equal to the amount of damage the character just received. This

actually isn’t all that useful an ability, since the amount of gil you get

from it is small compared to Bonus Coin. (Even an attack that does 998 HP

damage would only get you 998 gil, compared to the tens of thousands you can

earn in Bonus Gil.)

- Many story battles also give you a fixed amount of gil as a Battle Trophy

after the battle in addition to the regular Bonus Coin. These include story

battles #1, #4, #5, #6, #7, #10, #13, #14, #16, #19, #22, #26, #29, #35, #39,

and #42. This gil tends to be helpful early in the game, but in the

later battles is quite small relative to the Bonus Coin.

- During battle, if you pick up an item from a chest or find an item using the

Treasure Hunter movement ability, and already have the maximum 99 copies of

that item, you’ll instead be given gil equal to 1/4 of the list price of the

item.

%%%QUICKLY EARNING EXP AND JP%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%00quick

The follow sections describes how EXP, JP, and gil are earned, and strategies

for earning them quickly and maxing out your stats.

It’s RARELY (if ever!) necessary to spend time grinding experience to complete

the game. In most cases, a change of strategy is all you need to get you

through the next battle. But, if you’re absolutely stuck or if you just want

to max out your characters, read on :)

---BASIC STRATEGY---

The basic strategy for quickly raising JP is to take out all but 1 or 2