Breath Of Fire 2 - Strategy Guide (Page 01)
Below are the cheat codes, hints and help for Breath Of Fire 2 - Strategy Guide (Page 01).
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Breath of Fire 2 Handbook
written by Ben Siron
Maintained by James Greene
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Breath of Fire 2 (henceforth BoF2) is a classic-style RPG for the SNES,
produced by Capcom. I am in no way associated with Capcom. This handbook is
free and not intended for sale. All that I ask is that you do not remove
these opening paragraphs if you are providing it to others.
Unfortunately, it is my duty to inform you that Ben Siron has ceased
writing FAQs, as well as abandoned video games. Please do not contact him,
as he is no longer involved with this FAQ in anyway. He has given me control
of his FAQs. If you wish to use this FAQ, feel free to contact me. If you
explain what you want it for, chances are that I will let you use it. You
can contact me, James Greene, at sabin_2002@yahoo.com
This handbook is a text file approximately 7000 lines long, designed to
be read in a fixed-width font capable of displaying at least 78 characters per
line. This is the third edition, last updated May 12, 2001. Now I have a
thank-you list, better character information (includes level-up gains), more
discoveries, and less errors all around.
Thanks go to:
(irwin.51@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu)
Jim Irwin - for the detailed township tenant listing. This
speeded up my search a lot - and enabled me to make a
slightly more comprehensive listing.
(kerris@nucleus.com)
Rory Mahood - for finding the elusive StarrSD and Octopus items, and
for greatly expanding my list of battle award items.
(arcadia@crl.com)
Arcadia, Esq. (Rocky Kassos)
(duchess-29@hotmail.com)
(mattlambo@juno.com)
Matt Lambo - for listings of items which are battle awards.
(ragnarok@sci.fi)
Ragnarok (Heikki Ruuska) - for the secrets file which helped me a lot
the first time I played BoF2, and gave me lots of things to
check while compiling this handbook.
(asanchez@Texas.net)
Andrew Sanchez - for finding Pechiri.
(mokona@logicworld.com.au)
for the info about Akky's kittens and about the
fact that nothing happens if you clear both tolen boards with
only 8 tolens.
(nathanm@znet.net.au)
Nathan McDonald - for finding the NinjaML item.
(dm3@tca.net)
Stephen O'Neal - for finding the use of the SkullBR item.
(Epametheus@aol.com)
Ed, also 'Phoenix' - for finding the Zodiac enemy and with it, the
9-TailWP.
No thanks go to:
Ray Greer - and the team responsible for the carelessly inaccurate,
incomplete, and generally clueless 'Breath of Fire II:
Authorized Game Secrets' guide. I can't believe that Capcom
endorsed this. I can only guess that it is because Capcom in
America doesn't know a whole lot about the work that Capcom's
programmers in Japan do, or they don't care. Nothing in this
handbook has been stolen from Mr.Greer's book, I am proud to
say.
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Table Of Contents
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section begins at this percent of the way
through this vast document
Notation 0%
Bugs! . . . . . . . 0.5%
Welcome to the Party 2%
Action! 22%
Conditions . . . . . . . 35.5%
Damage Algorithms 37.5%
Skills 43.5%
Shamans . . . . . . . 45%
TownShip 49.5%
Items 55%
Home Cookin' . . . . . . 66.5%
Othello 68%
Gossip 68.5%
Huntin' & Fishin' . . . . . 69.5%
Spoils of War 74%
Know Your Enemy 76%
Tips n' Tricks . . . . . . 96%
Appendix 1: Percent to Binary conversions 99%
Appendix 2: Bof2's Random Number Generator 99.5%
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-=-=-=========================- Notation -==========================-=-
throughout this handbook, I use the following mathematical notation:
[x] the greatest integer less than or equal to x. This arises because
all division operations done by the game console's uP unit round down
automatically
(a..b) a number between a and b, including the possibility of being a or b
x = (a..b) choose a number for x randomly from the given range
(a,b,c,d) a number chosen as one from amongst this set of numbers
x = {a,b,c,d} choose a number from the given set randomly and assign to x
other abbreviations:
IMHO in my humble opinion...
FWAK Furry Wittle Animal Kitten.
all other notation is explained in the section in which it is introduced.
Just be patient and read the full 'Welcome to the Party' section...
-=-=-==========================- Bugs! -==========================-=-
BoF2 has it's own small set of bugs. Nothing major, just minor annoyances.
I call these bugs because I can't see why the programmers would have intended
these things to be these ways:
FireBrth, ColdBrth, FireDrgn, IceDrgn, and T.Drgn do NOT deal elemental
damage as their names would suggest.
The DmndBR does NOT prevent the Death spell from working. The authorized
game secrets guide for BoF2 says that it does, but I have tested this out
thoroughly on my copy of BoF2 and found it to be false. Only the LifeBR
prevents Death.
The GutsBT does NOT result in any increase in the Guts rating of a character.
The Angel Shaman, Seny, gives no standard bonus.
There are plenty of equipment items giving resistance to holy damage, but
none to give resistance to wind damage. This is to be contrasted with the
fact that the opposition never makes any holy attacks, but makes plenty of
wind attacks.
When you try to 'Swch' a priceless item at an equipment shop, the game
crashes.
The FastShoe gives no bonus to the probability of getting a lead-off attack,
despite the description of the item (maybe this was just a translation
error...).
The Mckrl item 'looks tasty', but has no effect when used.
Weapons are not capable of dealing wind elemental damage, despite their names.
The Agi.Up combat condition has no effect.
The Cond.Up item only raises bCond to 225, not 255. This could be a typo by
the developers, or it could be intentional, I'm not sure. My guess is that
nobody caught it because Cond. shows 'Super' either way, and the role of
the bCond stat is an enigma.
One more thing - for those of you who want to test that my algorithms really
are accurate to the point (which I assert they are), be sure to consult
Appendix A for conversion between % factors and binary fractions. BoF2
speeds up all of its calculations by using division by powers of 2 (shift
operations) instead of normal division whenever possible. This is done via a
precalculated conversion table between % factors and fractions using 256 in
the denominator. Needless to say, this conversion sacrifices precision, and
for a while it caused me a lot of frustation when I was trying to figure out
what was really going on in the calculations. Appendix A lists the
appropriate fraction to use for a given percent factor. All of my algorithms
use percent factors whenever possible in place of these unwieldy fractions to
make the math look as simple as it should be.
-=-=-=================- Welcome to the Party -====================-=-
This section introduces the basic system that BoF2 uses for characters,
combat, items, spells, and so forth...
- - - - - - - - - - Basic Party Mechanics - - - - - - - - - -
Your party is composed of the band of adventurers which from which you can
choose to take along with you on your quest. Those currently being taken
along are your party members, and they form your group. You may have between
1 and 4 party members. At some points in the story, you are compelled to use
certain characters as party members, and in many places, characters leave
your party altogether. But fear not - in the end they will all (except for
the child) return to help you fulfill your destiny.
by default (that is to say, except in a few special cases), you will be
compelled to use the hero as a party member. The hero's name is whatever you
choose to call him, so I just refer to him as 'the hero'. All other
characters' names are unalterable, so far as I know, so I call them by name.
All names are four characters or less, and in most cases the game assumes a
name to be exactly four characters. So, if you're going to name your hero
'Ed', be prepared to see some dorky formatting of text. To avoid this,
choose something with exactly 4 characters instead, like 'Eddy'.
There are two versions of the hero, and for all intents and purposes they
are separate characters. One is the child who you play during the prologue,
and the other hero is the one you play throughout the rest of the quest.
They have the same name and stats that match perfectly, but otherwise they
are completely different.
I have chosen the following 1-letter abbreviation scheme for party members:
C - Child
H - Hero B - Bow K - Katt
R - Rand N - Nina T - Sten
J - Jean S - Spar U - Bleu
At this point, you might be saying to yourself, "Jus' wait a cotton pickin'
minute... I thought there were only 8 characters!" (besides the child).
Refer to my HTML map - there's a location in the east you probably haven't
noticed before, and one potential TownShip citizen you haven't invited who
can help you.
Whenever a party member leaves your party, you are compelled to form a new
adventuring group. You may also change party members by choice by using the
'Change' command at any dragon god totem. This option is available only when
you have more than 4 characters in your party, and is also disallowed during
certain scenarios. To help you make the choice of who to take, whenever you
change party members, you are presented with a table of mHP/mAP/level/
Off/Def/Vigor values to compare all the characters. To toggle between
mHP/mAP and Off/Def/Vigor, just press 'L' or 'R'. Whenever you choose to
change party members, you must take the maximum number possible. This is
either 4 or the total number of characters in your party, whichever is less.
As you shall see from the algorithm for awarding EXP from combat, there is
really no reason you would ever want to travel with less than the maximum
number of party members possible - more is better.
After changing party members, you may also change formation and combat order.
There are two separate ordering schemes for party members: the walking order
and the combat order. The walking order determines who is in the lead while
walking around on the map. The combat order determines position in combat -
who is closest to the enemy and hence is taking the most risk.
These two orders can be changed independently. The walking order can be
changed outside of combat without affecting the combat order by pressing 'L'
or 'R'. This causes the order to cycle forward or in reverse. The combat
order can be changed via the main command screen: use Swch, then Order.
Whenever the combat order is changed, the new combat order becomes the
walking order. All combat order changes are done by a series of position
flips: character A and character B exchange position. Whenever the game
requires a given character to be in the lead, that character's position is
flipped with the one currently in the lead. The walking order is also
overwritten by the combat order whenever you load a saved game.
The combat formation is independent of both the walking order and combat
order. It can be changed in and outside of combat with the 'Swch' option.
The role of position and formation is explained if the 'Damage algorithms'
section - it modifies damage dealt and taken from physical attacks. For
every extra party member in your group, the number of formations you can do
increases by one:
party members formations available
-------------------------------------------------------------
1 Normal
2 Normal, Scramble
3 Normal, Scramble
4 Normal, Scramble, Defense, Parallel
The dragon god also allows you to save your game's state in the slot which
you are currently using. BoF2 does not allow cross saving (saving to
another slot). This minimizes the chance of overwriting a different saved
game by accident, but can be a major pain when you want to try out
something new and not be stuck with the consequences. To save to another
slot, you must copy the data in one slot to another and then you may play
each separately. Thus, to experiment, you must save and copy often, or
know beforehand when to do so, so that you will have a fairly recent copy
with which you can experiment. BoF2 is pretty bug-free; there doesn't
seem to be anything that can go wrong that will screw around with your
saved data (unlike the 'Relm sketch' bug in FF3). Only you can do that....
As for items - they are held in two inventories, a 'Spcls' list, and
equipment lists which are personal to each character. The equipment lists
exist whether the character is in your party or not, but you may only
access the equipment of party members.
The stuff in 'Spcls' can't be used, moved, dropped, destroyed, sold, bought,
consumed, worn, eaten, abused, switched, appraised, or anything else except
for being looked at. For all practical purposes they are not really items.
'Spcls' merely symbolize that you have passed a certain point in the game.
A special item grants its powers automatically.
The two inventories are the party and the bank inventory. The party
inventory has 48 slots, and into each slot may be placed either one single
item, or from 1 to 9 of the same type of a groupable item. Single items are
limited to names of up to 8 characters, and groupable items may have up to 6.
The bank inventory is much bigger - it has 126 slots. Items can be shuffled
back and forth between the party inventory and the bank inventory at no cost,
but ONLY at bank outlets (no exceptions). Bank outlets are typically next to
item shops.
The party inventory is accessible at all times and is independent of who is
in your party. This scheme has the potential to produce nonsensical
situations, but luckily, BoF2's plot does not have to explain a situation in
which your party members change without everyone in the party meeting up in
a common area. So, unlike FF3(6j) (Final Fantasy III (VI), also for the SNES),
this
is a plausible model. (You don't have a situation in which character A buys
a Herb and then the game switches to character B, who strangely enough has
the Herb available to use in his inventory even though A and B haven't met
since the time A bought the Herb).
Items may also be kept in the equipment slots personal to each character.
These slots are specialized:
1 weapon
1 armor \
1 helmet > slot(s)
1 shield /
2 etc.
Movement in and out of these slots is restricted (you can't wear an Herb as a
helmet - sorry, it's just not that kind of game :) ). A slot can BEGIN by
being filled with an item that doesn't belong there, but once you remove it,
you can't ever move it back. This turns out to be even a bigger restriction
than it first seems to be, because the white space item (the code for a slot
which is empty) is not a valid piece of equipment, except for the etc. slots.
So, once a non-etc. slot is occupied, it can never be made empty again. In
other words, you can't unequip things in BoF2, except for the stuff in the
etc. slots. You may only replace an item with another, and the character
must be able to equip the new item in that slot. This is made easy outside
of combat because you are only shown the set of items which can replace the
current one. In combat, it is a little more of a pain. You CAN change
equipment in battle, but only the non-etc. stuff. To do this, use Item,
and select the piece of equipment. If the character can wear it, you will
be able to 'Use' or 'Eqp' instead of just being able to 'Use' it.
What is in these equipment slots is not affected by the process of the
character leaving and joining the party. If character A leaves, he takes the
items in these slots with him, and when he returns, he will be wearing
exactly the same stuff that he had when he left.
This brings me to using items. The method is different for combat vs.
non-combat situations, since in combat you are giving orders about what the
party members are going to do in the following round, without necessarily
knowing the order in which actions are going to be taken. All items produce
the same effect in or outside of battle, except that some effects are only of
benefit in certain situations - what varies is whether the item may be used
in a given situation, not the effect that it has.
Outside of combat, if use of an item will produce no effect, BoF2 will not
let you use it. This is as opposed to combat, where there is no such
restriction (BoF2 lets you go ahead, knowing that by the time the character
takes an action, the item's effect might be useful - or it may not - there is
no way to tell ahead of time). When you give an order for an ally to use an
item, it is seemingly removed from the inventory. It is still there, but
you can't see it. The item does not actually get removed until the
character uses it, and only if it is a 'consumable' item (in this way, items
are not wasted, but in the sense that they may be used for no effect,
they are).
Finally, if your inventory is full, you will not be able to buy new items or
unequip etc. type equipment. If you find an item but your inventory is full,
you will be told what item was found but you will not be able to take it. It
will remain there until to try to obtain it when your inventory is no longer
full (except in the case of food placed on the carpenter's table in TownShip,
which disappears). Also, if your inventory is full, you can't win items in
battle.
Your party has 2 money reserves - a party supply, and a bank reserve. The
party supply can hold a maximum of 9,999,999 Z (coins). The bank can hold up
to 16,777,215 Z. Coins can be moved between these two reserves at no cost,
but only at bank outlets. Only money in the party supply can be used to make
purchases or be reduced / increased as part of the plot. The bank reserve is
secure - nothing can affect your money in the bank except for you making
withdrawals and deposits.
This brings me to the subject of losing. when all party members are either
dead or zombies, you have lost. When you lose, your party money is halved
(just like the old Dragon Warrior games) and you are sent back to the last
place you saved your game at. Everything else remains the same: you keep all
the EXP, items, spells, etc., that you had just before you died. When you
wake, all party members are restored to mHP and mAP (no restoration for the
other characters in your party). The state of the world also remains the
same; items you removed from treasure chests remain removed (so that you
can't come by and obtain them again). There is a point of strategy to be
noted here - if you know you're going to lose, don't waste your items in a
vain attempt to save yourself for a few more rounds (unless you're also
going to reset the game and start over from a previously saved version).
Just keep the stuff, die, get a little more pumped up, and come back to kick
some ass (hmm... just like the energizer bunny).
Another thing that stays constant when you lose is the moods of all of the
characters. All characters have moods which scale from 0 (black) to 63
(rainbow). The lower the mood, the more that character desires to purge the
world of your presence. 255(rainbow) means that you're their bestest buddy
in the whole world. The hero's dragon tear is orange only because this is
how he feels about himself. A hero should be humble, above all.
A character's mood is visible when the dragon tear is applied to the
character's profile. The correspondence between color of the tear and
mood is:
[Mood/16] Dragon Tear color
------------------------------------------
0 Black
1 Dark red
2 Deep red
3 Magenta
4 Reddish orange
5 Orange
6 Orangish yellow
7 Yellow
8 Greenish yellow
9 Yellowish green
10 Deep green
11 Bluish green
12 Light blue
13 Blue
14 Deep blue
15 Rainbow
If you save, do an action which makes a character more friendly to you, die,
and repeat that action again, you can apply to bonus again to the character's
mood - which still remembers the previous bonus! I haven't yet found a use
for this however, since I haven't been able to measure any benefit that a
perfect (rainbow color) or worst case (black) dragon tear confers. The value
of the dragon tear seems to be only for storytelling. Also, a character's
mood is often initialized to take a certain value during the game, which
totally erases the effects any cheesy things you have done to change it.
BoF2 will not let you create a situation in which all party members are dead
outside of combat. This is assured because in any instance in which you
change party members composing your group, all dead characters are revived to
1 HP (although this does nothing for AP).
There are some exceptions to being sent back to the last placed you saved at:
If you lose when... You get sent back to...
You have not yet saved your The totem in HomeTown
game at all
Fighting Barubary (in the **
prologue)
You are in SkyTower SkyTower's entrance
In the Queen ?
In the Whale ?
In Torubo's ?
At Highfort The totem at the entrance to
Highfort, or the one at the base of
Highfort (if you already defeated
Torubo)
In SkyCave before defeating
the Guardian The statue where Nina arrives alone
In SkyCave after defeating the
Guardian The statue where the rest of the
party waits for Nina
Fighting Tiga **
** means that this battle is one you are expected to lose, you do not get
sent anywhere necessarily - losing is part of the plot.
To go further, I will need to explain:
- - - - - - - - - - Basic Combat Mechanics - - - - - - - - - -
You can't win BoF2 without fighting - A LOT. All situations in BoF2 can be
divided into combat and non-combat. Combat can be entered in two ways:
You are walking about some place that has monsters, you take a step, and
suddenly you're face to face with a bunch of dudes you never met before.
This doesn't mean they don't want to kill you however (duh!!). This is
called random battle.
or: Your party leader visibly interacts with an enemy figure and battle is
triggered through contact, proximity, or as part of the story. This results
in a battle to the death. 'To the death' means that the battle must be
played out to its conclusion - you can't Run, or make the enemy Runaway. In
battles to the death, many actions that would normally succeed will always
fail. For example, you can't do anything that would cause lethal damage to
an enemy or deal it any fraction of its maximum hit points worth of damage,
either. All actions which are so limited are noted on a case by case basis
with an explanation of the action. The opposition, however, is not limited
in this way, and may use any and all actions for their normal effects (rest
assured that they won't be using their actions to Runaway!).
There are several concepts I've been talking and will talk about more that
deserve immediate explanation:
- Combatants - Runaway
- Rounds of combat - Actions
- Opposition - Enemies
- Party members - Allies
- Run - Lead-off round
Combatants are all of the characters participating in a combat. Combat in
BoF2 is played in rounds. Before each round, each combatant chooses an
action for that round, order of action is resolved, and when the time comes,
each combatant performs the action chosen. Combat then proceeds to the next
round. Opposition refers to the guys in the upper left of the combat screen.
Party members are in the lower right corner. 'Enemy' and 'ally' refers not
really to a classification, but a relationship between two combatants. If
both combatants are in the same corner, they are allies. If they are in
opposite corners, they are enemies. Combat is cut short (action stops) if at
any time:
0) All opposition has Runaway.
1) All opposition has either died or Runaway, with at
least one of them dead.
2) All party members are either dead or zombies.
3) The party has successfully Run.
Case 0: They chickened out ('The monster fled.'). Combat ends immediately.
Case 1: You win. The objective of all battles. You receive a money and EXP
reward, and an item if you're lucky (items can be won
randomly in both battles to the death and random battles).
Case 2: You lose. Sometimes this is fate, but these cases are few and far
between, and not one such case is a random battle.
Case 3: You chickened out. Or, you were just too bored to fight the battle.
No guts, no glory, no penalties. Just like case 0.
Runaway is an action used only by the opposition. Run is not an action - it
takes the place of all action for a round. When you Run, a roll is made to
check for success. If so, combat ends immediately and your party is safe.
If not, the opposition gets a lead-off round on you! Run always fails in
battles to the death - you will get the message, 'Can't run'. In random
battles, failure to run gives the message, 'Won't Run'.
In a lead-off round, one side gets a free round of actions while the other
side sits there and looks pathetic. Whenever random battle is triggered, a
random(?) roll is made to see if you can get a 'lead-off attack'. If so, the
party members get a lead-off round on the opposition. The opposition has no
such luck (except when you've failed to Run). There are no 'lead-off
attacks' in battles to the death.
The order of action in a round of combat is totally determined by the Vigor
ratings of the combatants at the beginning of the round. Enemies' Vigor
ratings are determined differently than party members' Vigor (since enemies
don't wear equipment). In random battles, an enemy's Vigor is chosen at the
beginning of the generation of the enemy to be Agi + (0..7), to a maximum to
511. For battles to the death, Vigor = Agi (no random variation).
(For your information, this special case for battles to the death was a hack
imposed so that cinematic battles like the Palo/Peach/Puti fight would be
sequenced properly.)
The order is a sorting of Vigor ratings: the combatant with highest Vigor
goes first, followed by the next highest, down to the lowest. When two
characters have the same Vigor, the following priority scheme is used:
1st: Party member in front
2nd: Party member in 2nd position
3rd: Party member in 3rd position
4th: Party member in back
Last: Opposition
So we see that in BoF2, order of actions is independent of what the action is
- it doesn't take any more time, so to speak, to cast Missile, than it does
to attack. There are a few exceptions to this, such as 'Defense' and 'Dare',
which forfeit the party member's action in return for bonuses throughout the
round. We also see that all opposition is in principle able to be preempted
if Vigor is high enough. However, to take an action before opposition with
Agi of 511, it is necessary that you also have Vigor of 511. And this
means, as we shall see later, that the party member's armor must have a
weight of 0.
The method by which random battle is triggered in fairly straightforward, but
first I must take yet another digression and explain:
- - - - - - - - - - Basic Mapping Mechanics - - - - - - - - -
There are two different flavors of non-combat overhead view in BoF2: the
overworld, and the area. Both views use the same graphics, but the
overworld is a heck of a lot bigger. There are no battles to the death on
the overworld. The overworld also 'wraps-around'. If you move off the edge
of the world, you come back on the opposite side (the view conceals the fact
that there is any break. You can take this to mean:
1) The world of BoF2 has the topology of a doughnut.
2) BoF2's universe has an 'above' and a 'below', and the
surface of the world separates the two. Some kind of
funky spacewarp links the opposite edges of this surface
together like an endless reflection.
or 3) Just try not to think about it too hard.
I recommend 3. Most RPG players choose 3. 3 is a good number. Mmmm,
doughnut... Excuse me, what was I saying? Ah yes, the question is, why do
you care?
The answer is, mapping determines the type of enemies you will fight in
random battles. Both the overworld and area views are composed of tiles.
Each tile is 8x8 pixels. 4 tiles combine in square formation to make a map
spot, 16x16 pixels. All movement in BoF2 is done on the spot level - that is
to say, each step move you a distance of one spot (as opposed to Chrono
Trigger, also for the SNES, where movement is done on the tile level in
overworlds, and on the pixel level in areas). The main overworld of BoF2 is
the world's surface. It is 256 spots wide by 256 spots tall.
Now apply a coordinate system to the spots - since the world wraps around, it
is difficult to say exactly where the edges are, but a good guess is that at
the edges, there's nothing but water for miles around. Now notice that there
regions where the monsters you're fighting are fairly constant and places
where you take one step, and the monster types change. You've just found a
map section boundary. A map section is a region of the map where the
monsters capable of being generated for random battle does not vary. Find
several such boundaries and note that all map sections seem to be composed of
blocks 16 spots tall by 16 spots wide. Coincidence? (I think not.) Redefine
'map section' to be one of these blocks. Note that the entire overworld is
composed of these blocks. Redefine your coordinate system to reflect this.
This is the coordinate system I have come up with:
[letter][number](x,y). Letter and number determines the map
section, and (x,y) determines the
spot within that map section
Following the computer graphics standard, X-coordinates increase as you move
down, and Y-coordinates increase as you move right. The first map section
is A0 in the upper left, with spot A0(0,0) in the upper left of that upper
left. The last map section is P15 in lower right, with P15(15,15) in the
lower right of that lower right section. I have drawn an HTML format map,
accurate to the tile(!), of BoF2's main overworld. Refer to it often - it
helps a lot, IMHO. This map is color coded:
Spot color... What it is...
------------------------------------------------------------------------
White Entrance to a location
Magenta FishSpot
Light Blue Lake
Dark Blue Ocean
Green Grass/dirt
Black/Brown Anything untraversable
Dark Green Forest
Yellow Beach/bridge
Pink(boundary) The imaginary boundary between
different types of map section
The colors in the above table also give information about terrain type.
Terrain for a spot on the overworld map is the background you see when you
fight a random battle on that spot. This terrain is chosen from one of
several types. For example, battles fought on grass randomly result in
either dirt plains or lakeside terrain, and battles in the forest randomly
result in either a dense or sparse forest terrain. Terrain throughout
an area is constant. There are several types of overworld terrain:
name color on map how to recognize
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dirt plains Green or Area is sparsely covered in grass.
yellow Where there is no grass, the ground
is cracked and dry.
Lakeside Green or Area is covered in grass, and is near
yellow the edge of a lake.
Sparse forest Dark green Open area in the midst of a forest
which is lined with tall narrow
trees.
Dense forest Dark green Like the sparse forest, except trees
are fat and rounded, and there's
lots of shrubbery and flowers.
Desert Green It's all sand and cactus plants.
There are also a lot of different area terrains:
Name How to recognize
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dense forest Same as the overworld version
Cave A well-lit cave with walls of dirt
Underground lake A cave with a lake inside of it
Waterfalls A cliffside passage with a waterfall
Mountain pass A ledge on the side of a mountain
...
Terrain is important for spells that deal damage and the special action
'Ntre'. When the description of a spell lists 'native terrains', this means
that if the spell is cast in that type of terrain, it is more likely to be
'well-cast' (refer to 'Damage algorithms' for an explanation of this). If
the spell is well-cast in such an area, you will see extra graphics in the
casting of the spell.
Another useful map you can access while on the overworld you can get by
pressing 'Select'. This will show you all the places you have visited so far.
The map section concept doesn't apply to areas - each area is a map section
in itself, so to speak. Monsters don't vary from one end of an area to the
other. They, CAN vary however, between floors of a given location - this is
because a location (such as a town, for example), is not an area, but a
collection of areas linked appropriately to fit together logically to behave
like a maze, or town, or whatever. By the way, a location refers to the
place name that the main command screen tells you you're in. Where this
name is a blank, I have made up place names, and put the name in parenthesis.
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