Vagrant Story - Strategy Guide (Page 07)

Below are the cheat codes, hints and help for Vagrant Story - Strategy Guide (Page 07).

This trick follows on from the Confusion status, and is the discovery of Daniel 
Day. I have got it to work by his method, but I think it's simpler than that. 
Essentially, you need to heal an enemy - possibly several times - so that you 
rescue it from a critical or near-death situation. You'll know if it works, 
because the enemy will start following you everywhere, while displaying a little 
thought bubble with a big, red heart! 

Daniel's method gets enemies to ally with you by taking advantage of the 
Confusion status mentioned in the previous section. Repeatedly position yourself 
so that one enemy gets hit by its colleagues three times in succession. Then 
keep casting Heal on that enemy until its wounds are healed (it may take more 
than one Heal spell). If it works, you'll win the friendship of this enemy. The 
loyal converted unit will fight other enemies on your behalf, and may be 
targeted for attack by those enemies instead of you. 

The state will be cancelled if you subsequently attack your enemy, but they seem 
prepared to ignore the fact that you attacked them previously. If you try to 
make friends with an enemy by healing them before they've taken three hits, 
you'll need to start again from scratch to get another three enemy hits on them 
before they'll be amenable to this technique again.



-----------------------------
(f) Status Ailments
-----------------------------

Enemies will try to react intelligently to status ailments, either on you or on 
them, but there are a few loopholes in their AI that you can learn to exploit.

For instance, creatures that use Silence will abandon spellcasting after 
Silencing you, as they know this will cancel your Silent status. Spellcasters 
are the most powerful enemies in the game, so they will view the maintaining of 
your Silent status as a priority. All you need to do, then, is Paralyse them 
physically with the Paralysis Pulse chain. This denies them their only 
alternative course of action, and effectively befuddles them into doing nothing. 
You'll see them stumbling backwards, '!' thought-bubble at the ready as they 
wait for the Paralysis to wear off but don't know what to do in the meantime.

Likewise, if you're Poisoned, Paralysed or Numbed by an enemy that's desperate 
to see its major attack take effect then they may keep trying the same attack 
after you counter it. So restore yourself and squeeze in an extra attack every 
time they try it on. 

Creatures with Sorcery spells often like to keep the odds in their favour. So 
if, for instance, you hit them with Degenerate or Tarnish, then often they'll 
keep trying to counter it with repeat castings of Herakles or Prostasia on 
themselves. This wastes their time and their MP, and stops them turning their 
attention to hitting you. Even when this technique fails then, at worst, you'll 
be hit by an enemy whose equipment or attributes have been reduced in power.


-----------------------------
(g) The Spoils of War
-----------------------------

Enemies often have lots of great kit that you can steal by killing them. But if 
you're after a specific item that they're carrying, the surest way to obtain it 
is to repeatedly target the body location to which that equipment is attached. 
Perhaps you'd like the weapon that they're carrying? Then try to kill them by 
attacking the arm in which they're holding that weapon. The basic probabilities 
for item acquisition rest on attacking the following locations with deadly 
force:

Right Arm    - equipped weapon, right arm armour
Left Arm     - equipped shield, left arm armour
               (equipped weapon for left-handed enemies)
Head         - head armour, accessory
Chest / Body - body armour, items from all adjacent locations
Legs         - leg armour

This isn't a guaranteed system, and you can often win unexpected items that were 
nowhere near the location you targeted. All it does is positively influence the 
probability of you getting the item you wanted, rather than determine it. Bear 
in mind that there's also a probability of you winning a rare item associated 
with that creature, rather than anything you can see on them. Getting the item 
you really want may take many, many fights, so there's a lot of luck involved 
too.

In some areas, the items you win will be predetermined. In the first three 
levels of the game, for example, all of your wins are pre-scripted by the level 
designers.

If the enemy only has one or two pieces of equipment attached, you might as well 
hit them anywhere you please. The limited choice of booty you can win greatly 
increases the chance of the prize being exactly what you were after, by default, 
so you might as well get the job done quickly and keep fighting them until it 
turns up.


-----------------------------
(h) Traps
-----------------------------

TRAPS CANNOT KILL YOU. At worst you will be reduced to 1 HP, although that can 
be enough to introduce the risk of death in a room with at least one enemy left 
alive. 

Being killed by a bat you hadn't noticed would be bad enough. It would be more 
embarrassing still if, in an empty room, you were reduced to 1 HP and then fell 
into a river / hole / abyss for the loss of 20 HP... Traps can also be 
reactivated by jumping up and down on them, so for both of these reasons it's 
safer to walk off a trap rather than jump to be sure of getting clear.

To spot traps in advance, spend an Eye of Argon item or cast the Sorcery spell, 
Eureka. Using either of these methods will reveal the room's traps to all 
occupants, though, so note that some traps can snare enemies too.

Traps attack with an elemental affinity, so your armour bonuses will be taken 
into account for the final damage total. That includes any Enchanter spells you 
might have active at that time.

TRAP            EFFECT
Gust            Air affinity attack
Inferno         Fire affinity attack
Terra Thrust    Earth affinity attack
Freeze          Water affinity attack
Death Vapour    Light affinity attack
Diabolos        Dark affinity attack
Eruption        Physical affinity attack

Poison Trap     Causes "Poison" status
Paralysis Trap  Causes "Paralysis" status
Curse Trap      Causes "Curse" status

Heal Panel      Restores HP, reduces RISK to zero
Cure Panel      Cancels Poison, Numbness and Paralysis status
Trap Clear      De-activates all trap panels in the room


-----------------------------
(i) Interface Options
-----------------------------

THE STATUS SCREEN
The options available under this sub-menu are woefully undocumented, and you may 
have been playing the game at a disadvantage by not understanding just how much 
helpful data it can provide.

When you first call up the screen, you'll see Ashley and his basic stats 
displayed. You can use the D-pad to move the arrow cursor from entry to entry 
for extra information on what each particular stat means.

As shown, pressing the SQUARE button calls up some status info on creature-class 
and elemental affinities. You can keep pressing the SQUARE button to cycle 
through the available lists.

But if you press the CIRCLE button instead, you'll get a list of Ashley's 
equipped items. Select any one of these with the arrow cursor and you can cycle 
through the individual status screens with the SQUARE button. Aside from the 
useful Creature / Element / Type details, do you see those + and - signs at the 
end of each entry? These figures tell you all of the bonuses acquired since you 
last saved or swapped items, with overall pluses shown in blue and losses shown 
in orange. If you really want to keep track of the progress of your items, this 
is where to check.

You can use the X button to backtrack out of both of these modes.

But here's the piece de resistance. Whenever you enter a new room, call up the 
Status screen and use L1 & R1 to cycle. All of the monsters in that room are 
instantly revealed and displayed. If you wish, you can immediately check the 
items they're carrying by using the CIRCLE button. Successfully using the 
Analyze spell merely fills in the ??? entries with firm details, enabling you to 
check creature status info on elemental / type rating defences with the SQUARE 
button, or individual equipment info with the CIRCLE button followed by status 
info cycling.

For extra fun, you can hold the L2 collar button and use the directional pad or 
the controller's other thumbstick to manipulate the 3D representation of the 
creature shown, whether that's Ashley or his enemies. It works just as it does 
in the Encyclopedia.

THE SHORTCUT MENU
Accessed by holding L2, this is one of the finest and most intuitive pad 
shortcut menus I've seen since Secret of Mana's 'torus' GUI. The full menu will 
fill in as you acquire new options, and after a while your hands will learn to 
find the desired sub-menu without the need to read it.

With judicious use of the L2 button, you can also achieve a pseudo-'frame-by-
frame' advance in the heat of battle. Hold L2 while an enemy's attack animation 
is underway and wait for the menu to pop up, indicating that you have regained 
control. Now release and hold again, release and hold...


-----------------------------
(j) Tricks and Tactics
-----------------------------

DRAGON BREATH
Once you've mastered the guard timing for the tail whip, the deadliest special 
attack in a dragon's repertoire is its multiple-target breath weapon. So here's 
the tip: the dragon can only use its breath when you're beyond a certain range. 
If you run in close at the start of the battle, staying under its head and neck 
even when it tries to back off, then the dragon will be forced to resort to a 
lunging bite or tail swipe instead.

STAT ROULETTE
When you beat a major boss, you'll be given the chance to increase your stats 
with a little lottery wheel of possible upgrades. Simple HP bonuses are most 
common, with high STR, INT and AGL modifiers being rarest. As soon as you can 
read it when the wheel starts to turn, look at the second prize to roll down 
through the window. If it's something you wouldn't mind having, start jamming on 
the button immediately for all you're worth and you'll get it. Likewise, if it's 
completely undesirable, you should let the wheel roll on a little before you 
press. It would seem that the bonus highlighted in the window when you press 
really is the one you get, but being able to pick out a good one at such high 
speed is no better than sheer luck.

SAVE FILES AND ELIXIRS
I thought this was too obvious to mention, as surely you must have used it 
before in any game with the same mechanisms, but people keep sending it in... 
Use your elixirs after you've saved. If you get a string of +1 results, reload 
and try again for those +4s before saving again. Though if you find yourself 
replaying boss battles for better results, please bear in mind that your time on 
Earth is desperately short and you still have much to achieve.

CHECKING CHESTS
If you open a chest, then decide that you haven't got inventory space to take 
advantage of its spoils, you can opt to close the chest immediately with the End 
(X button) option. The chest will close again and retain its treasures. If you 
take so much as one item, though, anything you leave behind will be lost.

Prizes marked in yellow text are impossible to ignore, as these are key items 
required for the game to progress.


==============================================
6. WEAPONS
==============================================

Getting to know your weapons intimately is the mark of a successful Riskbreaker, 
and this 'technical' side of gameplay carries more tactical weight in Vagrant 
Story than in most of Square's recent RPGs. 


---------------------
(a) BLADE ATTRIBUTES
---------------------

WEAPON STR
When you arm yourself with a weapon, its STR, INT and AGL values are added to 
your own for the purpose of resolving combat. So the relative powerfulness of a 
weapon is determined by its attributes -- the higher they are, the better.

STR determines your base damage for melee combat, so the stronger the weapon, 
the more damage it will cause. As you progress, you'll discover that 'better' 
weapons are those that start with a higher STR value.

WEAPON INT 
Your capacity for magical damage rests on your INT, and some weapons have better 
INT ratings that will improve your spellcasting potential. The staff, 
especially, is designed to be used by budding wizards.

WEAPON AGL
Your AGL determines your attack speed (among other things) so you'll find that 
heavier weapons have a lower AGL - which may even be negative for very slow, 
cumbersome hammers and the like - while faster, lighter daggers can actually 
improve your combat AGL.

WEAPON RISK
As weapon designs improve to deliver greater STR or longer range, the pay-off is 
always a higher RISK rating for the blade. Every time you make a first strike 
with a weapon, the amount added to your RISK bar will correlate directly to the 
RISK of the weapon you're using.

--------------------------
(b) WEAPON TYPE
--------------------------

As for the kinds of weapon you designate, the Type rating is far more important 
than you may initially realise. All creatures and armoured foes will have a set 
resistance to various types of weapon. At the start of the game, when your 
weapons have no exceptional bonuses, Type carries even more importance in 
dealing damage than creature-class and elemental affinities put together.

There are three Type ratings for weapons: Blunt, Edged, and Piercing. Blunt 
weapons rely on bludgeoning foes for damage; Edged weapons cut through the 
enemy; and Piercing weapons rely on the focus of energy on a sharp point to 
deliver a puncturing attack. 

In short: if you draw a weapon against a foe and suddenly discover a prospect of 
zero damage or 0% chance of hitting, the chances are that you're using the wrong 
Type of weapon. Try swapping to a different weapon type, even if you've 
dedicated that weapon to fighting a different class of creature, and see if it's 
suddenly better against that creature. Eventually, you may discover that you 
need to nurture a different Type of weapon against the class of creature you're 
fighting. The workshop can help here, letting you turn a rapier with Phantom 
bonuses into a hammer, and so on.


----------------------------
(c) EXPERIENCE FOR WEAPONS
----------------------------

While Ashley Riot doesn't gain experience in any conventional RPG sense, his 
equipment does. The more you use a particular item, the better it gets at its 
job.

The most important rule in Vagrant Story is that you should never discard 
anything you've used successfully.  Instead, upgrade it and reforge it when the 
opportunity presents itself. The central principle of the game's system is that 
everything you equip will improve with use, so an old bronze helmet that's been 
through the wars will offer more head protection than a brand new iron one 
you've just discovered. This is where the Workshops come in: by combining that 
old bronze helmet with the iron one, you'll create a brand new helm in superior 
hagane alloy that will boast the strengths of the iron and the accumulated 
experience of the bronze.

The way that the experience system works is very simple. If your bronze helm is 
frazzled by a fireball, its resistance to fire stands a chance of increasing. 
This would equate to an increase of +1 in its Fire statistic, but may also lead 
to a decrease in a different statistic. When such changes occur, they are 
displayed in the lower left corner: a blue message indicates a stat increase, 
while an orange message reports a stat drop. You can disable this Weapon Status 
display in the Options menu.

BASIC WEAPON DEDICATION
The simple version of this tactic is to choose a weapon that you'll use solely 
and exclusively against a particular class of creature, then stick with it. In 
other words, reserve a weapon that's solely for use against Humans; carry a 
different weapon that's solely for use against Beasts; and so on. Perhaps you'll 
decide, early on, that the Rapier makes a great zombie-bursting tool: in which 
case, stop to equip the Rapier whenever you fight zombies or any other form of 
Undead creature. By doing so, you put that weapon on the fast track to becoming 
a zombie-slayer, accumulating bonuses against all creatures in the Undead class 
and improving its performance dramatically. This can mean a lot of fiddling with 
your inventory in areas with mixed class foes - personally, I'm not averse to 
swiping the odd zombie with a dragon-spear for the sake of an easy life - but if 
you're reasonably diligent then you'll soon establish an arsenal of powerful and 
dedicated weaponry.

The other bonuses you'll start to clock up are those of elemental affinity. In 
the Wine Cellar, for instance, you'll be hitting both Silver Wolves and Bats. 
Bats have an Air affinity, being weak versus Earth, while Silver Wolves are 
Dark-aligned with a weakness to Light. So while both will give up Beast bonuses, 
you'll also get Earth+1 / Air-1 and Light+1 / Dark-1 bonuses attaching 
themselves to your weapon too. 

Such bonuses for weapons are only possible on the first hit of an attack, and 
subsequently chained moves will not accumulate any further bonuses. So if you 
want to advance a weapon quickly, stick with single hits instead of combos.

ADVANCED WEAPON DEDICATION
It's also possible to 'double up' quite efficiently, so that you can get a 
weapon to be effective against more than one class of creature, and the way to 
do that efficiently is to consult the Quick Manual on the relatively 'safe' gaps 
between class affinities. Essentially, the best combinations are Human and 
Phantom, Beast and Dragon, Undead and Evil. Instead of having six different 
weapons, you could try to get by with three. If this is hurting your head then 
that's all you need to know, and you can move on now.

Although this is explained in the Quick Manual, it doesn't really tell you how 
to exploit it. I've got more space available to me than the poor manual writer, 
though, so here goes.

When you win a bonus of +1 on your equipment through use, there's also a chance 
of a -1 being applied to another of the equipment's attributes. With the 
elemental modifiers, that's easy to guess. If you get a Fire +1, then a Water -1 
is most likely to balance it out. But with creature classes, there's a more 
complex system of priorities.  It looks like this, and you're welcome to pull 
faces of anguish at this stage.

EVIL-> HUMAN-> BEAST-> UNDEAD-> PHANTOM-> DRAGON-> EVIL-> HUMAN->...

Say you've got a Dragon-slaying weapon. That means for every time you get a +1 
against Dragons, any -1 modifiers are mostly likely to come from the next 
immediate classes in the list, in that order of priority. Here, Evil follows the 
Dragon so that means Evil is the class most likely to get a -1 for every Dragon 
+1. Human is next most likely to see a -1, and so on. (This list actually wraps 
around, too, so Beast, Undead and Phantom would follow after Human). Go check 
against your weapons now and see how it's already worked on your gear.

To take advantage of this, you could actually use one weapon against two 
creature classes. Now, if you used your Dragon-slayer to kill Dragons then your 
weapon's Phantom affinity would hardly ever be affected. But every time you then 
killed a Phantom, you'd almost always be losing Dragon points. So you need to 
balance out the probabilities to find the classes that least interfere with each 
other.

In this instance, the Dragon-slayer could happily deal with Beasts too and only 
occasionally would you lose some of your hard-fought points. An Evil weapon 
could be doubled to fight Undead, and a Phantom weapon could be doubled for 
Humans.

In the long term, this system is *slightly* slower than creating weapons 
dedicated solely to one class, as sometimes you will exchange points between the 
two classes. Also, your weapon's elemental affinities may advance more slowly 
because of the broader range of creatures you're attacking. Then there's the 
issue of gem attachment, that reintroduces the menu-fiddling you might have been 
hoping to avoid... Nevertheless it's something to consider, especially if you're 
fed up with weapon-swapping or want to free up your inventory for greater 
carrying capacity.


----------------------
(d) EQUIPMENT TITLES
----------------------

When looking at the information on weapons or items you possess, you might have 
seen some described, variously, as a "Knightly Weapon" or "Prestigious Shield".

To understand this, look at the stats that the item possesses. The rule that 
governs an item's calibre or 'title' is determined by the two highest values it 
can boast in either creature class or elemental affinity. Both values need to 
reach the next plateau to advance: so you might have a weapon that has almost 
100 vs Human-class opponents, but perhaps the next-highest value in either 
creature-class or elemental attributes is 55. This would still mean you have no 
more than a Warlord's Weapon, because the secondary factor is still only in the 
50-59 range. It's only when these attributes jointly achieve a certain minimum 
attribute level that an item's fame or 'title' is allowed to advance.

Minimum Attributes      Title
Below 10                Weapon / Shield / Armour 
10 to 19                Warrior's Weapon / Shield / Armour 
20 to 29                Knightly Weapon / Shield / Armour 
30 to 39                Prestigious Weapon / Shield / Armour 
40 to 49                Brave Weapon / Shield / Armour 
50 to 59                Warlord's Weapon / Shield / Armour 
60 to 69                Champion's Weapon / Shield / Armour 
70 to 79                Glorious Weapon / Shield /Armour 
80 to 89                Legendary Weapon / Shield / Armour 
90 to 99                Supreme Weapon / Shield / Armour 
above 99                Divine Weapon / Shield / Armour 

The two highest values can be drawn from either creature class or elemental 
affinity, so a Glorious Weapon could be Dragon 76 / Fire 71, or Dragon 76 / 
Beast 71, or Fire 71 / Light 76, and so on.

The title applies to the finished weapon, not the Blade, so you may also raise 
its prestige by adding gems that boost the final stats.


------------------------
(e) CHOOSING WEAPONS
------------------------

Picking the right weapon for the job is never easy to predict when you first 
pick up Vagrant Story. By way of example, a mental association with frilly 
duelling shirts and bodkins meant that I made the mistake of reserving a Rapier 
for use against Phantoms, and only later did I discover that I was inadvertently 
hindering myself. I've compiled the following to help you avoid my mistakes, but 
please bear in mind that it inevitably includes a certain measure of personal 
taste, too. If you want to use a dagger when I've recommended a two-handed 
sword, look at the advantages and disadvantages entailed. As long as you 
understand the factors involved, your choice should hopefully be as informed as 
it is personal.

HUMAN CLASS WEAPONRY
The majority of human-class opponents wear additional pieces of armour, so Blunt 
weapons enjoy many advantages here. On the other hand, you'll be fighting more 
human-class opponents than anything else, so for this class it's more important 
to pick a comfortable weapon that you really enjoy using. My own attachment to 
Fandango meant that, bar an upgrade to Hagane, I stuck with it for the entire 
game and eventually beat Asura with it. 
Recommended Gems: Haeralis, Orlandu
Recommended Accessories: Titan's Ring, Lau Fei's Armlet

BEAST CLASS WEAPONRY
The majority of beasts are skin and fur, and the first creatures you meet will 
be susceptible to Edged and Piercing weapons. The armoured shells of Crabs are 
weak versus Blunt weapons but your most testing Beast battles will be against 
Ogres and Ogre Lords, whose leathery hides possess a natural resistance to Blunt 
weapons, so that's another reason to stick with the other types.
Recommended Gems: Orion, Ogmius
Recommended Accessories: Swan Song, Pushpaka

UNDEAD CLASS WEAPONRY
Piercing weapons deal well with reanimated flesh, but a Blunt weapon exhibits 
bone-shattering power against skeletons. You'll also meet zombie versions of 
creatures from the other classes on occasion, so there's no perfect choice. 
Since the Dead Who Walk tend to do so quite slowly, you can be sure of getting 
near enough to use a close-quarter sword or dagger. Silver weapons come with 
automatic bonuses against Undead: I used the early find of the Soul Kiss dagger 
and honed it on zombies, later reforging it into a more powerful type of silver 
blade.
Recommended Gems: Iocus, Balvus
Recommended Accessories: Rood Necklace, Edgar's Earrings, Cross Choker

PHANTOM CLASS WEAPONRY
Generally speaking, Piercing weapons are the most ineffectual against Phantoms 
(some kind of ectoplasmic property, no doubt). Their ability to materialise in 
and out of range similarly rules out very short daggers, unless you want to do a 
lot of running around. But this class includes Elementals, whose attacks are 
magical in nature, so you should still lean towards one-handed weapons that 
would allow the simultaneous use of a shield decorated with protective gems. 
Consider an intelligence-boosting staff to help you engage in magical battles: 
granted, it's a low-STR club, and difficult to chain for physical attacks, but 
the INT-boost is a good defensive measure.
Recommended Gems: Trinity, Beowulf
Recommended Accessories: Ghost Hound, Rune Earrings, Beaded Anklet

DRAGON CLASS WEAPONRY
If you want to get into the dragon-slaying business on a professional level, you 
can't beat a scale-piercing spear or two-handed sword. Reach is very important 
if you want to be able to locate weak spots other than the head, and the dragon 
will make every effort to stay facing you. Build up your blade by practising on 
the copious numbers of Lizardmen, as you'll only meet dragons in a boss 
capacity. Since Lizardmen can't use spells or special attacks, a shield is less 
important anyway.
If you would rather have a one-handed weapon and then have to face off a fully 
grown dragon, a neat trick is to get in under its head and stay close. The 
dragon can't use its breath attack if you're practically hanging from its neck, 
so you'll only have to fend off its less serious bite attack instead.
Recommended Gems: Dragonite, Sigguld
Recommended Accessories: Dragonhead, Faufnir's Tear

EVIL CLASS WEAPONRY
The majority of Evil creatures you'll meet will be able to fly or teleport, so 
the extreme range of a crossbow can prove useful here. To take on more fearsome 
creatures, such as those suits of animated armour from the Dullahan upwards, a 
stronger melee weapon and shield combination needs to be invested in too. Look 
for a good sword or hammer to complement the crossbow, or you'll be rendered 
ineffectual towards the end of the game.
Recommended Gems: Demonia, Angel Pearl (for Dark enemies only)
Recommended Accessories: Agales' Chain, Rune Earrings, Balam Ring


----------------------
(f) WEAPON CATEGORIES
----------------------

DAGGERS
The advantages of the dagger reside in its speed, its friendly agility modifiers 
and its low RISK. This class of weapons actually encompasses all forms of short 
blade, up to short swords: only a few are genuine Piercing weapons, with heavier 
blades featuring a curve or hook and thus counting as Edged weapons. The payoff, 
as you can guess, is that the range remains resolutely short, and this can 
greatly reduce the choice of hit location when trying to catch up with a fast 
opponent.

Nevertheless, more advanced designs like the Khukuri and the Baselard also offer 
extreme weapon STR and damage potential, even though the base RISK remains 
consistently at 1 (even the Stiletto and Jamadhar, the most powerful daggers, 
have a base RISK of only 2).

SWORDS
The stalwart sword is likely to be the weapon of choice for some players, 
allowing the simultaneous use of a shield for a balanced measure of offence and 
defence. With later grips providing spaces for up to three gems, this set-up can 
really benefit the player who enjoys using both magic and fighting skills in 
combination.

There's a definite Eastern bent to Vagrant Story's one-handed swords - literally 
- as most of them feature the innovation of a curved blade to focus the force of 
the cut at the point of contact (historically, many European designs had 
straight edges with a tapered point for 'cut and thrust'). The Rapier appears to 
be the only form of Piercing sword in the game, but if you fancy sticking with 
one for its unique bonuses against certain creatures then your own increase in 
strength will gradually overcome the shortfall in the blade itself.

AXES & MACES
The reason for grouping both weapon types in this category is that they share 
the same grips, to which you may fit either Blunt or Edged heads. As with the 
sword, these one-handed weapons allow the use of a shield for both offence and 
defence in equal measure. If you had to choose between sword or mace and axe, 
the difference would rest not just on the attributes of the available blades and 
grips but also in the usefulness of the various Break Arts against your intended 
foes.

STAVES
The purpose of the staff is to improve your spell-casting ability by raising 
your intelligence rather than your strength. It's your opportunity to play a 
proper wizard rather than the warrior-mage that sums up Ashley's normal 
disposition.

To act the part, you should also look to equip other items that improve your 
intellect. Look for accessories with a high INT rating, and also keep an eye out 
for gems like Hellraiser, Polaris, Manabreaker and the myriad high elemental 
gems with an INT boost of 6. The bonus of higher intelligence means that a staff 
also provides magical *defence* as well as offence, so it can be worth taking a 
bit of time to cultivate one. By the time you come to replay, you'll be hurling 
stronger fireballs than Ifrit can muster.

The physical strength of a staff is lousy, by way of balance, but you can still 
improve its performance dramatically by building it up against enemies. It's 
remarkably tricky to combo at first, thanks to some very sudden and unexpected 
timings attached to its animations, but in the context you should never perform 
more than single hits or short special effect chains anyway (Gain Magic can be 
useful when the Drain Magic spell is unavailable or ineffective). RISK is a real 
probability-killer, so you want to keep it in single figures to maximise your 
potential for offensive Warlock spells. On the other hand, note that Sorcery and 
Shaman spells thrive on RISK. 

GREAT SWORDS
This category of two-handed weapon covers everything from the Scottish Claymore 
to the Japanese Nodachi, but straight-edged European designs are dominant. In 
exchange for the loss of your shield, you gain the advantage of superior range 
and immense damage. That extra reach can mean the difference between being hit 
by a killer spell and being able to cut down a materialising Lich Lord before he 
can open his gob, so the best tactic for using this weapon is to adopt a 'first 
strike' mentality. The slow attack rate can make it less intuitive to combo for 
long periods, but the principle here is that you shouldn't need more than a few 
hits to slay anything.

GREAT AXES
Much the same goes here as for Great Swords. An occasional advantage is that the 
Runkasyle, Bhuj Type and Elephant grips have slightly better Edged or Blunt 
ratings over the sword's Side Ring and Power Palm hilts. It can be a less agile 
weapon than the Great Sword, by way of pay-off.

HEAVY MACES
If you thought one-handed maces were fun, wait till you have a swing on these 
stars. This class culminates in the deadly Destroyer, which is as much fun as 
you can have with a big stick (unless you manage to swipe a Minotaur's club - 
consult the Secrets and Extras section for details on how to do this). Although 
the game's descriptions portray many of these hammers as being effective against 
armour, that's a little misleading: it really depends on the armour, and whether 
it's weak or strong versus Blunt attacks, rather than the blade itself. There 
are plenty of armour and shield types designed to withstand Blunt attacks.

POLEARMS
Range is the selling point of the polearm. It gives you a full choice of enemy 
hit locations from a long distance, and you should be able to polish off most 
enemies before they can get near enough to raise their weapons. With only 
slightly less reach, the damage is also more respectable than the crossbow. 
Fortuitously, there's none of the real-world drawback of wielding space either 
(consider a man with a dagger standing one step away from a man with a polearm - 
who'd win, do you think?). These melee weapons are also useful against large 
bosses, with practically every dragon in the game having a weak spot versus 
Piercing that the polearm is best placed to find. It's not exactly a magical 
weapon, and pole grips tend to be short on gem slots in comparison with other 
classes, leaving you with little beyond the brute force of the blade. That's 
often sufficient to get the job done, though sometimes you'll wish you'd been 
carrying a shield.

CROSSBOWS
This projectile weapon possesses an extreme range that is balanced by its low 
damage potential and high base RISK. Crossbows are remarkably easy to combo, 
though, and one way to exploit them is to use them for special effect chains 
where damage isn't the priority - silencing or paralysing enemies, for instance 
- before you move in with a melee weapon. Different models of crossbow will fire 
either Piercing bolts or Blunt bullets, so it's important to find a grip with 
ammunition that matches the attack type of the 'blade'. If you're about to 
upgrade a crossbow through combination, move the cursor up to the result 
beforehand to check that you're not about to create something for which you 
don't possess an advantageous grip. This reflects the historical difference 
between crossbows that were used to hunt game (the 'prodd', or stone-bow, 
wouldn't tear huge holes when you wanted the fur) and those that were used to 
hunt people (a pointed steel tip could punch through armour).

UNARMED COMBAT
This is incredible fun for the accomplished player, rather than a serious combat 
option, but still worth investigating when you've mastered your core arsenal. 
There's nothing quite like smacking a dragon in the jaw and seeing it collapse, 
or humiliating thousands of years of esoteric magical wisdom by dropping a Lich 
with a gut-punch, to prove to yourself that you've beaten the game.

Martial Art attacks rely on bare fists, and you won't gain any class or affinity 
bonuses for your hands by using them, so advancement is purely a matter of 
scoring kills to earn those Break Arts. The fastest way to do this, therefore, 
is to return to the early levels - Wine Cellar, Catacombs etc. - and to start 
duffing up bats, wolves and zombies (when starting out, a cheap blast of Heal 
magic will soften up Undead opponents for a quick killer punch). The advantage 
of your hands remaining 'neutral' is that you won't even need to swap weapons 
for this task. Martial Arts moves are just as effective when carried out with a 
shield equipped, as your left hand will simply pummel the victim with the 
shield's blazon.

SHIELDS
Not strictly a weapon, but it enjoys more active use than the rest of your 
armour. It's easy to underestimate the value of a shield when you see the damage 
attached to those big two-handers, but the difference it can make is phenomenal. 
Like weapons, shields improve through use: so if you stick with one and let it 
soak up the fractures and fireballs of a hundred battles, perhaps reworking it 
or upgrading it occasionally to take advantage of some new item's positive 
modifiers, you'll end up with a shield that can deflect the lightning of the 
gods themselves.

When you cast a spell on yourself in Battle Mode, the shield's bonuses will 
count against you. If you happen to have a Manabreaker equipped, that means 
there's a 20% chance of your own spell failing to affect you. Your best bet is 
to disarm and cast the spell, but this isn't always possible in the heat of 
battle. In such circumstances, using an item with the same effect as the spell 
would be the surest course of action. 

A point about gems intended for shield use. For one thing, the modifiers for 
gems like Manabreaker and Nightkiller don't seem to be cumulative when doubled 
or tripled up, as you might expect. A Shield with three Manabreakers still seems 
to possess only a 20% chance of a causing a spell to miss (and in practice, it 
seems like far more than four in five spells cast by enemies hit their mark: but 
when *you* really need a Heal spell to take effect on yourself, and can't afford 
to let your shield drop, sure enough...). One way to counter Manabreaker's -20% 
is to have a Hellraiser gem (+20% spell success) equipped to your weapon: I'm 
not keen on this technique, though, as both Hellraiser and Manabreaker possess 
lousy stat increases for the space they take up. When your shield is powerful 
enough, do away with Manabreaker and find something better to put in its place.



==============================================
7. RISK
==============================================

Admittedly, RISK is an odd game concept. The premise is that if you spend a long 
time attacking one enemy with chain combos or defence abilities, you'll have 
spent your concentration and will have less focus for dealing with further 
attacks or defending against other enemies present. But in reality it's more of 
an artificial balancing mechanism for the idiosyncratic combat system, to ensure 
that you can't afford to just rattle off chains indefinitely. The more you try 
to fit into each attack by using battle abilities, the less effective you become 
in subsequent attacks.

So the clever fighter learns when to use RISK moves and when not. If you've 
found the game incredibly tough without knowing why, the chances are that you've 
been letting your RISK run riot by assuming that it's all about chaining hits. 
It is not.

Low RISK: chance to hit is greater. Damage done is greater. Enemy chance to hit 
is lower. Enemy damage done is lower. This applies to Warlock spells, Special 
Attacks and Break Arts for both sides as well as ordinary melee combat. (NB the 
chance of success for both Sorcery spells and Shaman spells is *lower*, 
however). 

High RISK: chance to hit is reduced. Damage inflicted is reduced. Enemy chance 
to hit is higher. Enemy damage done is higher. This applies to spells, Special 
Attacks and Break Arts for both sides as well as ordinary melee combat. (NB the 
chance of success for both Sorcery spells and Shaman spells is *higher*, 
however).

The solution is to restrict yourself to single hits and short combos. If you 
can't seem to hurt the enemy with normal attacks, check first that you're using 
the right weapon type for the job. If you read the Chain Abilities tips then 
you'll find a few pointers for causing more damage against tough creatures. 
Using long chains is a fighting style rather than a necessity, so don't assume 
you can't avoid a high RISK. Use long chains only when your enemies are either 
extremely tough to dent, or if you think you have a chance of finishing off the 
main opponent by persevering with the chain you've initiated. Breaking down your 
combos is another technique: RISK starts to accumulate additionally through 
'persistence', so two six-hitters will incur less RISK than one 12-hitter.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(a) USING AND REDUCING RISK
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

USE YOUR VERA ITEMS
I finished my first playthrough with almost a hundred Vera Roots unused. This 
made me feel remarkably stupid about all the times I'd spent waiting for my RISK 
to fall before entering the next room. When you need these items, the game seems 
to provide them in the form of spoils from enemy kills; so don't be afraid to 
make use of them when you have them.

RISKBREAK
The second Staff Break Art, Riskbreak, has RISK-reducing powers. It still needs 
Vera help on occasion, though -- see Break Arts.

HEAL PANELS
If you know you're near one, a Heal Panel cancels all RISK immediately.

THE PASSAGE OF TIME
RISK falls naturally over time in any case, but the process is faster when you 
don't have your weapons drawn in Battle Mode.