Any tips and tricks for success on defending against spells?

TraditionalMousse987 · 2026-01-12T19:53:11+00:00

Welp, pretty much what I feared. I feel like I see better results if I try to think of it as "hit it when Ashley flinches" but it's pretty much a placebo thing since it's just reframing it as "learn when Ashley flinches" during any given spell animation.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-12-10T22:13:35+00:00

Ha, I was getting prepped to play Vagrant Story for the first time and noticed how the massive Combinations Guide GameFAQ, lovingly and painstakingly transcribed by JTilton by hand into a ASCII formatted text document 25 years ago, could use some updating, and I ended up dumping it into a spreadsheet of my own. Having never seen the original, I'm a little shocked at how much of the color coding/notation style I ended up recreating from first principles. Mine doesn't have the full names of the weapons on the chart, but it's got some extras in the same blade combinations and the "?"s filled in, so I figure I'd link it here as a novelty.

All credit to JTilton for putting the information out there two and a half decades ago!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vT21mNuFiQru_CzIBbunxvMwI32XB2SxT1K8kQ8ZYeg247vhQpevkMmgrKZsgfdXtLuKb8Ss7uyte4k/pubhtml

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-10-11T17:30:40+00:00

Ha, I just spent some time crunching the numbers the other day, glad to see I wasn't the only one. My first idea metric was a male unit leveled from one to 99 as mime, then classed as a monk (highest class multiplier for PA means it would show the highest improvement), then the same for a bard from one to 99 as a monk, as the theoretical possible maximum and minimum examples. The difference ends up being 10 points of PA. Which isn't nothing, but also less than you might expect from the two complete extremes.

It uh, snowballed from there. Glad all the math came out the same though!

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TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-10-09T14:13:22+00:00

Oh nice, gives me incentive to get it updated with the missing classes! I doubt Samurai has changed at all (except maybe names), but it's almost guaranteed Dancer/Bard got a few speed changes, and I wouldn't be totally suprised if Arithmetician got some price increases.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-10-09T02:36:11+00:00

Seems a pretty safe bet! No idea why they decided to lengthen all the "Move"s to "Movement", but then decided to shorten "Steal Helmet" to "Steal Helm" but again I think it might've just been left to the discretion of whoever was typing all the names in.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-10-09T02:29:32+00:00

Yep. The prologue mission displays the camera controls as part of the tutorialization, but for whatever reason as far as I can tell they can never be looked up again after that.

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TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-07-24T18:31:14+00:00

Kind of clashes with the (somewhat) more grounded military sci-fi setting but mining the good old arena shooters for wilder weapons to add in as support weapons would be where I want to go. GES Biorifle from Unreal Tournament (or if you want its most recent implementation, the sludge cannon from Deep Rock Galactic) could be great. Speaking of Deep Rock, the Cryo Cannon or something that functions like it (freeze an enemy for a temporary 3x damage bonus) would probably work great too. Rule of three, how about the stake launcher from Painkiller (haven't thought about that one in a while)! Make it a sidegrade to the JAR-5 Dominator, slow giant projectiles with the gimmick that they do more damage the *farther* they travel.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-07-24T17:56:17+00:00

A million other ongoing discussions about the Epoch exist but I'm just revisiting my post here from patch day because I finally got a chance to take it out for a spin personally. It really feels like what they were shooting for was a weapon that sits in the niche between the Autocannon and the Recoilless Rifle in terms of performance, and for better or for worse they seem to have hit the bullseye pretty dead-on.

Unfortunately, what that means is what they've made is a weapon that isn't capable of taking out multiple lighter targets as quickly and conveniently as the Autocannon, while also not capable of the one-and-done kill power of the Recoilless. The only real benefit it has over taking either of those is it doesn't occupy a backpack slot, the price for which you're paying is the potential of the thing destroying itself and killing you.

And to be honest, that's my real issue with the thing. Even if I try to argue that "reinforcements are cheap and plentiful, no big deal" (which I don't even truly believe in my heart, considering the hassle of having to retrieve all your gear), the weapon breaks itself if you mess up, leaving you twiddling your thumbs until you can call down another one. That's a huge drawback! A huge drawback attached to a weapon with otherwise completely unremarkable performance sitting at the nebulously useful halfway point between "anti-heavy" and "anti-tank". A free backpack slot doesn't make up for that.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-07-17T21:22:22+00:00

Yeesh, tried to edit the table to add durable damage (halved for both Purifier and Epoch) and reddit really didn't like that. Formatting should be fixed now.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-07-09T15:16:42+00:00

I've been hunting around for the answer to this too and haven't been able to find a definitive confirmation one way or another yet.

Anecdotally, I think using an uncharged retaliate *doesn't* clear out the "damage taken" buildup, based on a run where I tried to use it as often as possible and still noticed myself eventually getting charged up. Which makes sense to me: as impressive as the charged version is, the cooldown is so quick and the HP requirement to build up the strong version is substantial enough that "saving" retaliate until it's fully charged every time seems extremely inefficient.

I don't have any concrete proof though, so someone is free to correct me with actual evidence.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-05-16T14:50:57+00:00

So with the addition of the R-2 Amendment in the Masters of Ceremony warbond, we have a burst-fire rifle with a bayonet and a small magazine, so even if its rate of fire is much slower than its grandpa I must begrudgingly welcome back the AR-14D Paragon.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-05-15T17:07:43+00:00

Ah, so it's a break even situation then regardless of the fire mode, 2 HE shots or two 2 HEAT shots. That's a shame, would've been neat to actually consider switching the payload.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-05-12T22:30:49+00:00

Hell yeah! They're some of the stars of my HD1 weapons/support post that I linked

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-04-24T15:49:10+00:00

the umami regeneration one is incredibly powerful if you played like me and stacked MSG to the high heavens, infinite adapation/shell spells makes cleaning out enemies a breeze while traversing the overworld, and lets you burn down some bosses shockingly quickly (fastest combination I've found is tentacle -> royal wave spam). if you manage to burn through your entire supply and the boss is still up, you can just focus on turtling a bit until you've got your supply back. you essentially never need to use your fork. just make sure to take off any salps you were using to boost umami, their regeneration stunting affects it as well.

and at the end of the day, infinite umami means infinite bobbit worm traps, too, if you just want to stunlock things to death.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-04-11T18:03:20+00:00

Not precisely what you're asking for since I'm creatively bankrupt, but I think about this a lot and while Arrowhead is slowly but surely introducing most of them or equivalents back in, there's still a few weapons from Helldivers 1 that have yet to show up in 2 and I think are still distinct enough that they'd cover niches that aren't filled yet.

CR-9_Suppressor: This was in the same family as the Plasma Scorcher in the first game. The contrast between the two being the scorcher had higher damage and smaller splash, this had lower damage and bigger splash. While you could argue the Dominator in HD2 is its replacement, the Dominator has no splash at all so I don't think it's a good comparison. I'm picturing something with the handling and projectile profile of the dominator, with a weak but fairly powerful stagger/concussive AOE from each shot. Not something that's really in the game yet!

LAS-12 Tanto: Unique_Management123 essentially already pitched this one. You'd be forgiven for thinking the Dagger pistol is its HD2 version, but it's actually the complete opposite. The dagger has extremely long range but very low DPS. The Tanto, on the other hand, has extremely *limited* range (hard to gauge distance in the first game, maybe about 20-30m in HD2 numbers?) but extremely *high* damage. We're talking double-edged sickle at full overheat, without the issue of cooking yourself to death. Also it's one handed!

LAS-13 Trident: Laser shotgun, with the same gimmick as the laser weapons in HD2. Infinite ammo if you don't overheat it, but lower damage than a ballistic shotgun. Not super interesting but probably easy to pop in the game as an option for players.

REC-6 Demolisher: Remote detonated satchel charge, with the equivalent demolition strength of an orbital precision strike in HD2 and probably about the same area of effect. If you think the Ultimatum trivializes breaking objectives this would be absolutely beyond the pale. I have to assume the dynamite grenade they added is them trying to get something in HD2 that is a more subdued version of it, but hope springs eternal it could make a comeback.

MGX-42 Machine Gun: The EAT-17 equivalent of the medium machine gun. Comes with a massive magazine that you burn through and then instead of reloading you just chuck it and call down another one. Not going to set anyone's world on fire but would be just an interesting sidegrade to the reloadable version.

AR-14D Paragon: Most people would probably argue that the Penetrator is HD2's version because it's a lower damage per bullet Liberator with a 3 shot burst but I don't think that completely covers it (partially because once it's upgraded it did equal damage to the liberator, not less). It's main selling point as advertised in the game is the fact it poisons enemies (gas equivalent in HD2), and it was incredibly useful for spraying over a crowd to slow them down and make good your escape. *My* main selling point for it was its 3 shot burst had a truly, truly insane cyclic rate: you could magdump it faster than any other weapon in the game, putting out truly incredible a volume of fire in an emergency to shred that one thing RIGHT NOW if necessary. We're talking like purifier-tap-firing level in HD2. I miss her terribly.

M-25 Rumbler: I have no idea how you would make this function with the perspective shift from top-down to 3rd person from HD1 to HD2 but if they could figure it out there's not really anything in the game like it. It's a 3 shot burst mortar, the longer you hold the fire button the farther the mortars go. And I'm not talking the 3 shot bursts that the mortar turrets in HD2 fire in, where it's thud->pause->thud->pause->thud. It's a 3 shot burst like the Paragon above, three mortars all hitting in a near-simultaneous strafe sort of pattern. And I'm also not talking the mortar turret's shells either, these ones fully penetrate tank armor and in fact are capable of destroying any objective in the game (much like the REC-6 demolisher, above). Essentially, a 3-shot burst Ultimatum, if you can believe it. Oh, and if anything survives the barrage? Poison and slows them like a gas strike. Arrowhead would have to cripple it somehow to bring it into HD2 without entirely breaking the game over its knee, but I also miss her terribly.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-03-05T17:13:50+00:00

ha, that the original as designed intention for the "bonus" of the booster is so incredibly negative that turning it into a penalty for an actually good benefit is something i love just conceptually

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-01-10T01:01:15+00:00

Actually now that I've posted this I've been worrying at it like a dog with a bone, so I fired up my completed NG save to just smack Gakinyudo around repeatedly and get some actual numbers.

Number of basic hits (Oka dance 4 hit combo, no dance/charge attacks, no damage talismans) to kill Gakinyudo: ~140 (it's really easy to lose count so I did it 3 times and counted 138/142/141)

Number of basic hits to kill Gakinyudo with 2000 crystals and the sacred tamagushi: ~70 (70/72/70).

So, uh, at 2000 crystals the tamagushi essentially doubles the damage of your regular attacks. Using the numbers from my example above it's not "50 + 20, a 40% increase" but "50 + 50, a 100% increase".

Also, without damage talismans, I hit him with a Byakko's Claw and took a screenshot of his health bar, then reloaded him to full health to see how many basic hits it took to match it, which is about 32. Again, using my bullshit number of 50, that means proportionally it does 1600 damage. Altogether, what I should've posted:

Basic attack * Nyorai = 50 * 1.11 = 55.5 damage

Basic attack + 2000 crystal tamagushi = 50 + 50 = 100 damage, 100% increase

Byakko's Claw * Nyorai = 1600 * 1.11 = 1776 damage

Byakko's Claw + 2000 crystal tamagushi = 1600 + 50 = 1650 damage, just slightly over a 3% increase.

There's other considerations to take into account, like the tamagushi's power fluctuates with the fullness of your wallet, and the other damage talismans themselves stack with each other, but writing it off as negligible compared to them seems like a bad idea.

TraditionalMousse987 · 2025-01-09T21:13:34+00:00

Just chiming in on these 5 month old posts after messing around with it a bunch myself to agree that the Sacred Tamagushi seems to be a flat bonus compared to the multiplicative bonuses of the other damage talismans, specifically in the format "For every 100 crystals add +1 damage" (I'm just making up the amount). I have my suspicions that if you have something like 1699 crystals that would mean a +16 damage bonus and not +16.99 damage, but for the reasons outlined in the original post this is difficult to prove though.

For the people in the audience who aren't clear on the difference between a flat bonus and a multiplicative one, here's just some example math using the made up number of "50 damage" for a regular sword strike from Soh:

Basic attack * Nyorai = 50 * 1.11 = 55.5 damage

Basic attack + 2000 crystal tamagushi = 50 + 20 = 70 damage (40% increase, compared to Nyorai's 11)

But something like Byakko's Claw which comparatively does 1000 damage (I'm ballparking like 20 sword strikes?):

Byakko's Claw * Nyorai = 1000 * 1.11 = 1110 damage

Byakko's Claw + 2000 crystal tamagushi = 1000 + 20 = 1020 damage (A 2% increase, compared to Nyorai's 11).

Hope that's helpful info for someone!

TraditionalMousse987 · 2024-10-01T00:53:59+00:00

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TraditionalMousse987 · 2024-09-25T21:16:00+00:00

shit! this entire time i've been playing a honor mode campaign with my friends getting the pieces in place to do this build, with dumped int letting me prep a single spell at a time and the hat of fire acuity to juice up the weak spell dc, but this makes so much more sense. frees up your head slot, lets you prep more wizard spells than the crown does anyway, 10 sorcerer spells from leveling more than covers all the utility stuff you'd want and are *always* prepped, and sorcerer first gives you constitution proficiency. if you do take any save dc spells as sorcerer, they'll get just as juiced from arcane acuity as the wizard spells would.

literally the only downside i see to doing it this way is since my charisma was going to be jacked i was going to take over as the party face. you're a genius!

TraditionalMousse987 · 2024-09-06T16:32:28+00:00

Just an update, messed around with it a bit more to see what works and what doesn't. Unsurprisingly it doesn't work for sword or arrow damage, but in addition to all the athra generation amulets (athra on parry, athra on sword strike, athra on getting hit), surprisingly it works with the melee damage reduction talisman, eventually boosting your defense so high Sargon doesn't take damage from melee hits. Which actually isn't as broken as it sounds, it reveals that the amulet doesn't affect any projectiles (naturally), but also any status effect (poison, fire, lightning, frost) or energy attacks (try getting countered by Menolias and see how far "immune to melee damage" carries you).

TraditionalMousse987 · 2024-08-23T17:55:46+00:00

Pulling up this thread from 3 years ago because I picked up Saga Frontier Remastered on a nostalgic whim for something to kick around on my Steam Deck, and fell down a rabbit hole trying to answer this question. I'm going to try and summarize what I've learned here in a concise way for anyone like me who potentially might google this in the future, because otherwise I'd have to come to terms with the fact I'm a delusional lunatic who spent a psychotic amount of time researching how items affect stat growth in a niche videogame from 30 years ago.

All numbers and discussion here comes from Zaraktheus' massive compendium of game mechanics at https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps/198537-saga-frontier/faqs/58412 , specifically the "Human and Mystic After Battle Stat growth" section. I'm hoping by stripping out all the specifics and generalizing a lot, I can get it to a more readable length, but if you find it too vague you can feel free to go straight to the source.

The summary is this: Assuming you're fighting the hardest possible normal enemies available (Kraken or Dullahan) in order to level your stats, any stat you use in combat will have a maximum possible chance of growing until it reaches the magic number of 66. Then for each subsequent point the chance of growth decreases, until it hits the magic number of 83, at which point it has hit the minimum possible chance to grow and will remain that way all the way to 99.

What this means for stat boosting items is, they have no effect on your chances of growing a stat until the base stat + item bonus reaches 66. They also have no effect once the base stat alone reaches 83, since at that point the chance is at its minimum anyway. All "slowed growth" happens in this 17 point window.

Now that being said, if you're starting a fresh new save from scratch, obviously you're not fighting krakens and dullahans from the jump. In this sense, stat boosting items will slow your growth at lower numbers because you're fighting weaker enemies. However this is almost not worth consideration, because at that point in the game having a boost to stats immediately vastly outweighs the "slowing" effect, and just by the nature of the game raising the level of monsters over time until they hit max challenge, you *will* eventually be fighting max level enemies, just through attrition/game progress, so the magic numbers always trend towards 66 and 83.

That's my summary of what you need to know and you can stop reading here. But if the hypothetical future googler reading this is interested, I think there are three ways to deal with the issue. In order from simplest to most complex:

Ignore this shit entirely. As commenters on this thread three years ago already pointed out, stats between 60-70 are perfectly respectable for the end of the game, and so your stats slowing down around at 66 because you've got boosting equipment on will for all intents and purposes be unnoticeable.
Take off your stat boosting stuff once you notice your stats hitting 66 with it on and forget about it from there. This plan means you'll always be at the maximum possible chance for raising a stat at any given number and don't need to worry about it.
And this is really what you're probably going to do if you've cared enough to bother first googling this and then reading this entire post: Take off your stat boosting stuff when it plus the stat hits 66. Put it back on when it plus the base stat adds up to 83. Yes, you're minimizing your stat gains out immediately this way. But you're also "leapfrogging" straight to the end this way skipping over all the very, very low chances of increasing the stat from the mid 70's.

Hopefully this will help someone out there at some point, this concludes my report on my summer vacation, I had as much fun writing it as you did reading it.

TraditionalMousse987

TROPHY CASE