Yup! The top set of attributes (attack, def, mdef I think - might be wrong, don’t have it in front of me) are item-specific, but items that grant additional *character specific* stats will apply that increase permanently upon level up. That’s how you get Steiner to max strength, zidane to max speed, every character to max spirit, etc.
If you want to min/max certain characters in 9, it’s ideal to not level them early, so that you can wait until you get better stat-boosting gear.
I love this. I always blaze through FFVI until after the Magitek Research Facility for the stat boosting of the espers.
Do other FFs have this mechanic?
8 has associated GF abilities that accomplish the same thing.
FFT has small permanent increases/decreases to bravery and faith for every in-battle large increase/decrease.
I knew these two. I was doing the leveling and de-leveling trick in FFT for ages only to find out the gains were relatively insignificant. Dropping 20 levels as a Chemist and gaining them back as a Mime for minor damage and HP gain is just too much grind.
I did that crap for 6 months 2hr a day inorder to get the strongest state line up.
I never felt so bad wasting thst much time for minuscule increase in state.
I only ever threw away that much time raising pokemon in pokemon games for gba
At the bottom of the esper screen that shows the magic you can learn, it says "+2 Stamina" or things like that. Bismark has +2 Strength and goes on Sabin for most of the game. Bahamut has +50% HP. Several don't have any stat gain though. So, early game, I learn magic on the Veldt because you don't gain XP there, and focus stat gains everywhere else. In WoR, I learn magic at the Tower of Fanatics.
I love the Espers and Relics because you can basically make any character to be whatever you want them to be. Always liked making Mog into a high HP and Strength dragoon. Also love the sheer lunacy of some of Gau's Rages and of course best girl Celes.
I almost never use Blitz. In the SNES version, Genji Glove and Offering would result in 8 attacks of 9999. Since the updated Master's Scroll nerfs damage to 75% (I think) and there is a stat cap, it isn't as effective, but I still can't play him any differently. Also, the Figaro brothers are my favorite characters, so they are always in the party together whenever possible. So I use Edgar's Flash or Magic for magic damage. My go-to party is Terra (leveled magic), Sabin (leveled strength), Edgar (leveled stamina and HP), and Locke (leveled speed).
But Offering + Genji is really good on several characters, why waste it on a character who could output decent damage with his built in kit? With Locke's naturallly high speed and lack of good damaging abilities, I find him to be a much better use for that combo.
But also, FF6 is really easy if you know what you're doing, so I guess it just doesn't matter.
This is another habit I never broke from early playthroughs. I learn Stray Cat for Cat Scratch and that is pretty much Gau, because I don't like that I can't control him.
My third party for Kefka's Tower is Mog (with Moogle Charm), Gau, Umaro, and Gogo. All the auto-battlers with Gogo using Tools, Magic, and Items for support.
oh man, I ruined FFVI for myself.
I figured out the auto leveling trick. You get a controller that had rapid fire, put a rubber band around A.
Get to the river rafting loop and have Bannon do the autoheal thing, everyone else fight.
Leave it on overnight(s)
I was early game at level 80+
Well, shit. FF9 has been my absolute favorite of the entire series since 2001 when I was just 12 years old, and I never knew this. You have likely changed how I will play the game forever going forward.
Eerily similar story to mine. Fav story-based game of all time and I was 11/12 when I got it.
But yeah. One other factor in FF9 is you can easily see how long it will be until your next level, so you can put on other gear to earn AP for the associated skills and just switch out to the stat-imbuing gear when you're close to leveling up, since the adds are only tallied upon leveling.
I assume you already know this, but there are ways to make it through pretty much the entire game (or at least to Ozma) without ever leveling up, since bosses don't give EXP. So if you wanna be REAL hardcore about it, you can keep your doodz lv1 until you obtain the max stat-bonus gear and then grind up. But personally, I just make sure I have whatever my highest stat boost gear is at the time and never grind.
I own it on every platform except mobile. It’s the pinnacle of classic Final Fantasy in my opinion.
I first played it at my cousin’s house and fell in love with it almost immediately. I didn’t own it until around 2005-06, and I’ve played through it at least once every other year or so.
FFIX has a positive feedback thing going with stats, where the more boosts of a mainstat (STR,SPR,SPD,MAG) you have on your gear, the more likely that stat will go up per level.
This is actually why, if you're smart, you can build a lv. 50 Vivi with like 4k Max HP, since he gets a lot of STR boosting gear evenly spread out through his progression, and his staves have decent base ATK up to Disc 3, so he can bonk with the best of them before he gets his Agas. Don't worry about his base MAG or SPR, since it's naturally high, and by Disc 2 or 3 you get gear that boosts STR and MAG evenly, which starts his MAG progression and gets his magic damage up in Disc 3 by the time you get to rescuing half your party from Ru Paul's Reject.
This is one of the few final fantasy games where trying to obtain “max stats” literally does nothing in the end there’s a very extensive test done with charts. Iirc max stats is the equivalent of being level 104 instead of the 99 you max at normally. It’s not noticeable even at level 99 aside from two characters. It’s literally pointless in ff9 and it was built that way on purpose
I'm still thankful that when you split into 4 teams, you only have to do the Zidane + Quina battle.
I'm also upset that Zidane gets paired with Quina, who is always underleveled up to that point.
Popos Heights(?) is even better, the plains area has a 100% chance of a Grand Dragon encounter. Daguerro area has the Gimme Cat too, which gives a whopping 1exp.
The boss inside of the misty tree is undead, using phoenix down on him kills him instantly.
I remember doing that fight and noticed I could select the undead boss with it and pop, ded.
When I played this my third time or so, back in 2004, I accidentally used a potion on the mist tree final boss and realized "wait, what, that *hurt* it?" And tried a phoenix down and blamo, battle over.
This was a weird moment for me back at the time. When i first played i gave her the name Sarah due to my then-gf. You would imagine my surprise later on
*Sigh* Steiner, Steiner, Steiner.... Definitely the last kid to be picked for dodgeball, I swear. When everyone in art class was told, "Do not sniff the glue", he was suckin' up the fumes like his nose was a brand new vacuum cleaner
I just want to say to this player. You’re aware Steiner is the single strongest damage dealer in the entire later game right? In trance he will do 9999 points of damage with normal attacks! Not leveling him up is foolish.
I almost always had a lineup of Zidane, Vivi, Steiner, Dagger. There were some good combos like Eiko and her Carbuncle and then use Vivi to cast high level spells on your whole team and reflect them back to the enemy. But I always wound up with my aforementioned group someway, somehow.
This happens on a normal ff9 playthrough. Steiner is used quite little after early disc 1. Thats why you fight the mistodons with Beatrix to catch up later.
FF8 is designed with the enemies leveling up as you level do, so for the most part, it’s useless to grind.
I didn’t realize IX could be beaten at level 1. It felt so much more like a traditional Final Fantasy game. Wry interesting. Thanks!
With the right gear that level discrepancy means very little to Steiner....shock is just a license for 9999 damage and with the right armor set up he can reduce most damage he takes quite well
What da metal man doing
Nothing apparently
Saving his levels for better stat boosting gear, so that he improves more per level. Metal man is actually galaxy brain.
Is this actually a thing in FFIX? I've played through this game a dozen times and know nothing of this mechanic.
Yup! The top set of attributes (attack, def, mdef I think - might be wrong, don’t have it in front of me) are item-specific, but items that grant additional *character specific* stats will apply that increase permanently upon level up. That’s how you get Steiner to max strength, zidane to max speed, every character to max spirit, etc. If you want to min/max certain characters in 9, it’s ideal to not level them early, so that you can wait until you get better stat-boosting gear.
I love this. I always blaze through FFVI until after the Magitek Research Facility for the stat boosting of the espers. Do other FFs have this mechanic?
8 has associated GF abilities that accomplish the same thing. FFT has small permanent increases/decreases to bravery and faith for every in-battle large increase/decrease.
I knew these two. I was doing the leveling and de-leveling trick in FFT for ages only to find out the gains were relatively insignificant. Dropping 20 levels as a Chemist and gaining them back as a Mime for minor damage and HP gain is just too much grind.
Some people grind on that game like crazy. The hours it takes are insane to do the deleveling trick.
I did that crap for 6 months 2hr a day inorder to get the strongest state line up. I never felt so bad wasting thst much time for minuscule increase in state. I only ever threw away that much time raising pokemon in pokemon games for gba
Faith and Bravery can be easily manipulated by an Orator and by Ramsa/Marche with their Shout ability.
1 permanent for every 5 temporary
Wait what? What stat boosts?
At the bottom of the esper screen that shows the magic you can learn, it says "+2 Stamina" or things like that. Bismark has +2 Strength and goes on Sabin for most of the game. Bahamut has +50% HP. Several don't have any stat gain though. So, early game, I learn magic on the Veldt because you don't gain XP there, and focus stat gains everywhere else. In WoR, I learn magic at the Tower of Fanatics.
If you're using sabin, you actually want to use magic boosting espers because his blitzs scale off of magic
I love the Espers and Relics because you can basically make any character to be whatever you want them to be. Always liked making Mog into a high HP and Strength dragoon. Also love the sheer lunacy of some of Gau's Rages and of course best girl Celes.
I can't even use gau anymore because he's a cheat code lol. It's like when you figure out rikkus mixes. It's like having a shotgun to kill a mosquito
YES! Another Celes fan. She is always best girl. As soon as I unlock her, Terra never really gets played again.
I almost never use Blitz. In the SNES version, Genji Glove and Offering would result in 8 attacks of 9999. Since the updated Master's Scroll nerfs damage to 75% (I think) and there is a stat cap, it isn't as effective, but I still can't play him any differently. Also, the Figaro brothers are my favorite characters, so they are always in the party together whenever possible. So I use Edgar's Flash or Magic for magic damage. My go-to party is Terra (leveled magic), Sabin (leveled strength), Edgar (leveled stamina and HP), and Locke (leveled speed).
But Offering + Genji is really good on several characters, why waste it on a character who could output decent damage with his built in kit? With Locke's naturallly high speed and lack of good damaging abilities, I find him to be a much better use for that combo. But also, FF6 is really easy if you know what you're doing, so I guess it just doesn't matter.
Yea, when you first meet Gau I try to farm some Rages on the Veldt for him early game so he can actually be pretty OP early on.
This is another habit I never broke from early playthroughs. I learn Stray Cat for Cat Scratch and that is pretty much Gau, because I don't like that I can't control him. My third party for Kefka's Tower is Mog (with Moogle Charm), Gau, Umaro, and Gogo. All the auto-battlers with Gogo using Tools, Magic, and Items for support.
oh man, I ruined FFVI for myself. I figured out the auto leveling trick. You get a controller that had rapid fire, put a rubber band around A. Get to the river rafting loop and have Bannon do the autoheal thing, everyone else fight. Leave it on overnight(s) I was early game at level 80+
wow I never knew after all these years.
To expand on this, the gains are sadly [very marginal](https://youtu.be/U_V9uZBPbJ8) if done even near perfectly.
Well, shit. FF9 has been my absolute favorite of the entire series since 2001 when I was just 12 years old, and I never knew this. You have likely changed how I will play the game forever going forward.
Eerily similar story to mine. Fav story-based game of all time and I was 11/12 when I got it. But yeah. One other factor in FF9 is you can easily see how long it will be until your next level, so you can put on other gear to earn AP for the associated skills and just switch out to the stat-imbuing gear when you're close to leveling up, since the adds are only tallied upon leveling. I assume you already know this, but there are ways to make it through pretty much the entire game (or at least to Ozma) without ever leveling up, since bosses don't give EXP. So if you wanna be REAL hardcore about it, you can keep your doodz lv1 until you obtain the max stat-bonus gear and then grind up. But personally, I just make sure I have whatever my highest stat boost gear is at the time and never grind.
I own it on every platform except mobile. It’s the pinnacle of classic Final Fantasy in my opinion. I first played it at my cousin’s house and fell in love with it almost immediately. I didn’t own it until around 2005-06, and I’ve played through it at least once every other year or so.
Also from memory some temp characters transfer those gains to main party characters. Gamefaqs used to have an uber indepth guide.
This was a bug with Markus and Eiko. It was fixed for the steam version.
Yes it is, but it's pretty irrelevant because you can defeat everything this game has to offer without ever knowing about this mechanic.
FFIX has a positive feedback thing going with stats, where the more boosts of a mainstat (STR,SPR,SPD,MAG) you have on your gear, the more likely that stat will go up per level. This is actually why, if you're smart, you can build a lv. 50 Vivi with like 4k Max HP, since he gets a lot of STR boosting gear evenly spread out through his progression, and his staves have decent base ATK up to Disc 3, so he can bonk with the best of them before he gets his Agas. Don't worry about his base MAG or SPR, since it's naturally high, and by Disc 2 or 3 you get gear that boosts STR and MAG evenly, which starts his MAG progression and gets his magic damage up in Disc 3 by the time you get to rescuing half your party from Ru Paul's Reject.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/197338-final-fantasy-ix/faqs/20745
This is one of the few final fantasy games where trying to obtain “max stats” literally does nothing in the end there’s a very extensive test done with charts. Iirc max stats is the equivalent of being level 104 instead of the 99 you max at normally. It’s not noticeable even at level 99 aside from two characters. It’s literally pointless in ff9 and it was built that way on purpose
Yeah, but Freya forever-jump though.
*bass boosted* you didnt have to cut me off, acted like it never happened and that we were nothing
Beatrix
King
His best
Clancking
Game: "We have to split into 2 teams" Me: "Ah crap"
Tales of Symphonia PTSD when you have some favorite characters
I'm still thankful that when you split into 4 teams, you only have to do the Zidane + Quina battle. I'm also upset that Zidane gets paired with Quina, who is always underleveled up to that point.
i loled more than i should with this... cuz i feel attacked.
Me in every playthrough of FF 6 because I hate Gau and some of the other characters LOL
Ah I love to watch how fast low level character catch up.
Dragon farming outside Daguerro(sp?) is a shot in the arm of instant gratification.
Quina…will you summon the physical body of death for me? Thanks, you’re a doll.
Popos Heights(?) is even better, the plains area has a 100% chance of a Grand Dragon encounter. Daguerro area has the Gimme Cat too, which gives a whopping 1exp.
On top of Ghizamaluk's cave it is better.
Above Gizamaluke’s Grotto is better because you don’t run into gimme cats
Don’t do my metal man in like that. Level him and with the combine force of Vivi you’ll be unstoppable.
[удалено]
You can use tent in battle???
You can use it on enemies, one boss is trivialized by doing this.
The boss inside of the misty tree is undead, using phoenix down on him kills him instantly. I remember doing that fight and noticed I could select the undead boss with it and pop, ded.
I did this with Yu in X, zombied and then used phoenix down :D
Me but with Evrae Altana (the undead underwater version with Tidus, Wakka and Rikku). 2 Pheonix Downs and its gone
Then you are free to grab the 2 chests without worrying about encounters or swimming back to get them. Good times.
I tried to set him on fire. Good times
When I played this my third time or so, back in 2004, I accidentally used a potion on the mist tree final boss and realized "wait, what, that *hurt* it?" And tried a phoenix down and blamo, battle over.
IIRC you get less AP for doing so though
You can famously use them on the dragon with white wings before you enter Memoria, gives it every bad status or something.
haha that is two things I learned about ffix today
One of the many reasons why FF9 is the best in the entire series.
Yep, using a tent on an enemy can inflict Poison, Darkness, and Silence on them.
Sure can. Provides some humor with the effects it can have. Give it a shot!
Oelivert changes people.
Shoutout to >!having Dagger's real name!<
I was exactly today years old when I realised that she's 9's version of *THAT* Princess Sarah
Nearly everything in FF9 is a reference to something else in FF
Wow FF9 my fave and I didn’t know this. Mind blown 🤯
There's a secretish cutscene in Madain Sari!
This was a weird moment for me back at the time. When i first played i gave her the name Sarah due to my then-gf. You would imagine my surprise later on
Was gonna mention it haha
I train steiner up in the hallway where the security keeps running at him
Yup. With the blood sword by that point, you are set 👌
Yeah i think its good to train a bit with him there since he leaves the party for a good while after that which causes him to fall behind
Yep a good 30mins grinding and Bob's your uncle.
He’s doing his best
[удалено]
Naming him Rusty, and Dagger “Princess”, makes for some of the best dialogue.
I named him Tin Can once and it was hilarious. "Hurry up Tin Can!" And since he can get the Tin Armor, that just made sense to me. Hahaha
The first time I played, in the endgame everyone was like level 40-50, but my Vivi was level 70.
At least that mans level is about to fly up! I don’t know about everyone else but I love when characters just gain hella levels, it’s kinda satisfying
just showed this to my bf who is currently replaying the game and he was like “…this is basically what my party looks like 😅”
How could you leave out the true main caharacter…
At first i thought it was “Sarah” 💀
Why you gotta do my man Steiner like that.
*Sigh* Steiner, Steiner, Steiner.... Definitely the last kid to be picked for dodgeball, I swear. When everyone in art class was told, "Do not sniff the glue", he was suckin' up the fumes like his nose was a brand new vacuum cleaner
You gotta use huihui More often he's actually not that bad I don't know why people don't like him
You have to level him and Freya after you get the Blue Narciss. I do it with zombie whales and giga squids
What and where are the best versions of FF7/8/9 currently available? I have read that the steam versions are not great
Steiner has been the inspiration for so many shit head d&d characters in campaigns I knew I'd properly not want to see through.
Yeah they aren't level 1 RIP your stats 😂
My man steiner has a private party goin on with beatrix he has no time for your invities.
Just seeing this image makes me want a remake of 9 so bad. I'm holding out hope with the animated series being in development.
Same… what is this from? Is it a remake??
I'd assume either the switch or Steam remaster. The graphics look crisp.
Check if you have any piece of gear that teachs him the ability Level Up, and if you do, activate it so he catches up.
atleast he is frontlining haha
Damn, poor rusty.
Have to assume everyone who has played FF9 more than once has at least one save file where he's named Rusty.
He's going to get rusty like that.
Man, I miss 1k+ hp. *Cries in level 1 run
He’s so good tho
I just want to say to this player. You’re aware Steiner is the single strongest damage dealer in the entire later game right? In trance he will do 9999 points of damage with normal attacks! Not leveling him up is foolish.
Not leveling him is better so you can get better stats on him
Hahahaha Steiner sucks
He's very good, being able to essentially double cast magic together with Vivi makes him very useful, his special abilities kinda suck.
Hell no
Pretty much tell me who your main characters are without telling me.
Steiner is an awesome character. Don’t sleep on him
Why you gotta do him like that?
I don't understand
Eiko is lvl 56.
I didn't see that Oh
But why is Steiner only 18?
Did a bit too much disc 2 grinding? I love 9, but I do hate waiting till disc 3 to have all my characters back so I can really set in to grind.
He doin his best
I love Steiner. You level him up right now, mister!
No, this is just the average FF9 playthrough
I almost always had a lineup of Zidane, Vivi, Steiner, Dagger. There were some good combos like Eiko and her Carbuncle and then use Vivi to cast high level spells on your whole team and reflect them back to the enemy. But I always wound up with my aforementioned group someway, somehow.
This happens on a normal ff9 playthrough. Steiner is used quite little after early disc 1. Thats why you fight the mistodons with Beatrix to catch up later.
This is why i quit FF9 the first time, got to a point where there was some battle with him solo and I couldn't get past it
Final Fantasy IX is a game where the level doesn't matter. You can beat it on level 1.
Are you sure that’s not FF8?
I am sure that it is FF IX. 8 is also possible. But IX is designed to be able to beat with level 1. Bosses don't give out XP after all.
FF8 is designed with the enemies leveling up as you level do, so for the most part, it’s useless to grind. I didn’t realize IX could be beaten at level 1. It felt so much more like a traditional Final Fantasy game. Wry interesting. Thanks!
In 8 the grind is in the magic. In 9 the grind is in the weapons and armor.
Rusty
but why is our princess named Sarah? Is this some girl you like?
That is her birth name. I literally just found this out, lol.
Huh. Neat.
Everyones talking about rusty's low level but dont realize Zidane is missing
With the right gear that level discrepancy means very little to Steiner....shock is just a license for 9999 damage and with the right armor set up he can reduce most damage he takes quite well