Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen Mechanics FAQ -- draft version 0.2 -- 06.11.2001 by Locke N. |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| A few words about this FAQ: This is a draft version. It is likely to contain some poor grammar, etc. It may even contain some bad information (though I certainly believe, it doesn't), so if you find anything that doesn't seem right, let me know. If you think something should be added, or if you would like to contribute send me an email. New to this Version (0.2): Questions 12, 13, and 14 were added. Questions 4, 9, and 10 were updated. Locke N. |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| Contents About this FAQ Q1) What does the FAQ cover? Q2) Where can I get this FAQ? Q3) What if I have a question not answered here? Q4) Who helped write this FAQ? Mechanics Q5) What are STR, INT, and AGI? What do they effect? Q6) What is ALI? What does it effect? Q7) What is CHA? What does it effect? Q8) How can I raise or lower CHA and ALI? Q9) How can I raise or lower my reputation? Q10) What is LUK? What does it effect? Q11) Is it true that certain classes work better together? Q12) Is there a limit to the number of enemies? Strategy Q13) What are some good ways to get lots of money? Q14) My liberated towns keep getting recaptured, what can I do about that? Bonus FAQs Q15) How do I recruit Canopus and Gilbert? Q16) I'm doing everything right but so and so won't join my army. Why? |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| About this FAQ Q1) What does the FAQ cover? A1) This FAQ has been written with the intention of answering frequently asked questions about the mechanics of Ogre Battle. Often times on the GameFaqs message boards people ask questions like, "Why does my reputation always go down?" or "How can I fix my alignment?" The goal of this FAQ is to answer questions like these. This FAQ is not concerned (at this time) with questions about character classes, hidden treasure, recruiting characters, how to get the best ending, etc. Perhaps in the future these issues will be addressed, but most of these subjects are already handled by other FAQs and resources. For now, consider this FAQ a companion for the other FAQs that are out there. A few non-mechanics questions are thrown into the bonus section, simply because they are asked so often. Q2) Where can I get this FAQ? A2) This FAQ is available from GameFaqs . Q3) What if I have a question not answered here? A3) If your question concerns ogre battle, please check with other FAQs at GameFaqs before sending email to the author of this FAQ. Another good resource is the message boards located at GameFaqs. Many friendly and knowledgeable players answer questions there. Finally, if you really want to contact the author of this FAQ, email your questions to . Q4) Who helped write this FAQ? A4) This FAQ was written by Locke N. Direct contributions have also been made by: Soap The answers provided by writers other than Locke N. are attributed, as appropriate, in the body of this FAQ. A full list of credits would likely include the dozens of people who have contributed to the GameFaqs Ogre Battle message boards over the years. To those people: Thanks! You know who you are. |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| Mechanics Q5) What are STR, INT, and AGI? What do they effect? A5) The in-game abbreviations STR, INT, and AGI stand for Strength, Intelligence, and Agility, respectively. These are the stats that primarily effect a character's fighting ability. Generally, characters that use physical attacks (fighters, knights, etc) will benefit most from elevated STR. Characters that use magic attacks (back row wizards, valkyries, etc) will benefit most from a higher INT value. Both physical and magic attackers stand to benefit from higher AGI. Agility effects both hit percentage and attack order. So a high agility character will have a better chance of hitting the enemy as well as dodging the enemy's attacks. Further, the highest agility character will also go first in battle (usually). Having the first strike can sometimes be pivotal. Q6) What is ALI? What does it effect? A6) In Ogre Battle, ALI stands for Alignment. Each character's ALI is on a scale between 0 and 100, where 0 represents pure evil and 100 saintly goodness. Alignment has several important effects on game play. Firstly, a character's ALI has an effect what classes will be available to that character. For instance, if a knight's ALI falls too much he won't be able to become a goody-two-shoes paladin later in the game--unless of course he can bring his ALI back up to a suitable level. Secondly, ALI has a large effect on a character's battle effectiveness. High ALI characters are at their peak during the day, while low ALI characters are at their best during the night. Middle of the road, neutral characters are at their peak during the twilight between night and day. Thirdly, ALI has an effect on your army's reputation. This effect will be discussed in detail in Q9) How can I raise or lower my reputation? For discussion on how to modify ALI, check question Q8) How can I raise or lower CHA and ALI? Q7) What is CHA? What does it effect? A7) CHA stands for charisma, and represents each characters leadership merit. The more charismatic a character the better they'll perform in a leadership role. Charisma doesn't have nearly the same effect on game play as ALI does, but it is still important. Like ALI, CHA has an effect on what classes a character will be able to become. As a rule of thumb, classes that are capable of being leaders require a generally high level of charisma. The more advanced the leader class, the higher the requirement for charisma usually is. For example, knights can be leaders and as such require a certain level of charisma. Later when knights can become the more advanced paladin class, it is required that they have still higher CHA. Further, the author of this FAQ has a, largely unsubstatiated, theory that the CHA of a unit leader has a drastic effect on the stat growth of characters in that unit. If a unit leader has low CHA the other characters in that unit will eventually become inferior statistically to characters who were under high CHA leadership. This change is most noticeable in high level "death squads". A death squad is a unit of offensively powerful characters who are used to kill the bulk of the enemy armies at most stages. Death squads will usually end up with a lot of 0 CHA characters (see Q7 for the reason why) including the leader. In one game where I had a death squad they finished the game 6 levels higher than most of my other characters. They were under 0 CHA leadership for many of those levels and despite being at higher levels they had inferior stats (STR, INT, AGI) to many of my other units. While, the above is only a theory, it is generally accepted as a good idea to use high CHA characters in leadership roles. Q8) How can I raise or lower CHA and ALI? A8) Charisma and Alignment typically only change in two situations, when certain tarot cards are drawn and whenever a character kills an enemy character. Changes in CHA and ALI due to tarot cards are so small and infrequent that they aren't worth paying attention to. For this discussion I'll refer to your character who does the attacking and killing as the "attacker" and the enemy character who gets killed as the "target". Alignment and Charisma will go up in the following circumstances: 1) The attacker is at a lower level than the target. 2) The attacker has higher CHA/ALI than the target. Think of it like this, in situation 1) the attacker is the underdog and as such is considered the good guy (so ALI goes up) and everybody loves the underdog (so CHA goes up). In situation 2) if the attacker has higher ALI he is perceived as the good guy vanquishing the bad guy. This reinforces the attackers status as being the good guy so his ALI goes up even more. Notice that class does not matter. If a Lich (usually considered evil) has 100 ALI and attacks and kills a Monk (usually considered good) that has 85 ALI, the Lich is playing the role of the good guy. Also in situation 2) if the attacker has higher CHA he is going to come off looking better for killing the low CHA target. So the attacker's CHA will go up. Think of two politicians going at it in a debate. If one is far more charismatic than the other, who's going to come off looking good? The higher CHA character just reinforces the fact that he is very charismatic. The corrolaries to the above are also true. Alignment and Charisma will go down if: 1) The attacker is at a higher level that the target. 2) The attacker has lower CHA/ALI than the target. Also, notice that in 2) it is possible that CHA could go up and ALI could go down from the same kill if the situation is right. Another thing to note in 2) is that the difference in CHA/ALI has to be fairly large. In fact, only 1 point of CHA/ALI will be gained or lost for every 20 points of difference in the attacker and target's CHA/ALI. So how many levels of difference is enough to make an adjustment to the attacker's CHA/ALI? One point is gained or lost per level of difference. However, levels of difference are calculated from equal levels. The exact formulas for CHA/ALI change look something like this: Change in CHA = (targetLevel - attackerLevel + k) + (attackerCHA - targetCHA)/20 Change in ALI = (targetLevel - attackerLevel + c) + (attackerALI - targetALI)/20 Where k,c are some constants that I don't know at the time of this writing. If I had to guess, I'd say that k is probably 2 and that c is probably 1. This would mean that if the attacker and the target had equal levels and equal CHA and ALI, the attacker would get 2 CHA and 1 ALI for the kill. Hopefully, by the next update of this FAQ I'll have pinned down the actual values for k and c. Q9) How can I raise or lower my reputation? A9) Reputation is the feelings of the common people of the Ogre Battle world for your army. A high reputation is needed in certain circumstances while a low reputation is needed in other cases. Reputation has an effect on story events, recruiting characters, and the which of several endings you'll receive when you've completed the game (there are other factors that effect the ending, though). Reputation is a value between 0 and 100. However, the actual value is not shown numerically in the game. Rather it is represented by an on- screen meter. The meter consists of 25 1-pixel thin bars where one bar represents 4 points of reputation. As a result of this, changes in reputation are not always noticeable. Reputation, like ALI and CHA, can change occassionally when you pull a tarot card. The effect of tarot cards on reputation, though, is minimal. Reputation can also change in response to story events. For instance, certain choices you'll be asked to make can have a positive or negative effect on your reputation. Also, in the City of Xanadu stage--before you complete the stage--everytime you liberate the townspeople, they will whine about how much they hate you and you'll lose reputation. Most story event changes to reputation are inconsequential. However, on the City of Xanadu stage they can add up to be a sizeable decrease in reputation. More will be said about this in a minute. There are several easy ways to lose reputation. One such way is to allow enemy forces to retake a town that you've already liberated. Another good way to lower reputation is to wait around on a stage for a large number of days collecting tribute. After a grace period of a certain number of days (4 or 5, though I'm not sure) you'll start to lose 1 point of reputation per day. Because of the way the reputation meter is set up, you'll only actually see this drop in reputation every four days. This is both a good way to lose reputation and gain large sums of money. However, be aware that reputation appears to effect the size of tribute paid by each town. The higher your reputation the more money the towns will hand over. Since you lose reputation per day you'll also get paid less and less as you wait around at the completion of each stage. The most noticeable changes to reputation come when liberating towns (temples don't matter). Depending on the average ALI of your liberating unit you will gain or lose reputation. They higher your unit's average ALI the more reputation you stand to gain. The lower your unit's average ALI the more reputation you stand to lose. The actual amount of reputation you'll lose or gain, though, depends on the town's morale (if you select the city, morale is the ankh icon). The higher the morale the more reputation you stand to gain with a high ALI unit. You'll still gain reputation if you liberate a low morale town with a high ALI unit, just not as much. Finally, since you can't do anything about the town's morale, you should concentrate on only liberating with your highest ALI units (provided, of course, that you want your reputation to go up). Q10) What is LUK? What does it effect? A10) LUK as you might expect, is each character's luck. It is on a scale from 0 - 100 with 100 being the most lucky. Luck primarily influences two situations. 1) When you liberate a temple they will sometimes give you a piece of equipment. The higher the LUK of the liberating unit's leader the more likely you are to receive a piece of equipment. This is really noticeable if you liberate a lot of temples with a 100 LUK led unit. The actual equipment you'll receive seems to chosen completely at random. 2) When you wipe out an enemy unit, it appears that the average LUK of the unit that did the wiping out determines whether or not you'll receive an item. The author of the FAQ hasn't tested this, but has seen enough anecdotal evidence to believe it is likely true. NOTE: Aside from these to effects of LUK, it is also stated in the game's instruction manual that LUK increased a characters evade rate in battle. In this author's view, this effect of LUK is not terribly noticeable. So how do you increase LUK? Well, some classes have naturally good luck. For instance, witches and pumpkin heads have fairly high LUK. Some special characters also have high LUK (Canopus, for example). Also, normal characters will get a LUK boost whenever a Fool tarot card is pulled. However, over the course of a whole game it is unlikely that pulling Fool cards is going to give you an awesome high LUK unit. What you really need is the MERCHANT item. It calls a mysterious merchant, called Anywhere Jack, who sells the stat raising items STR, INT, AGI, and LUK. Q11) Is it true that certain classes work better together? A11) Yes, although to be more specific, certain classes work better under the leadership of certain classes. Class compatibility works like this: Leadership of certain classes will give certain other classes a stat bonus. If a class doesn't like the leadership of another class you'll see a stat penalty. The bonus or penalty will be between 1 and 3 points to STR, AGI, and INT. Class compatibility is easy to check, just change leaders. Or create a new unit. If a character is not in a unit (just in reserves) you can see their raw stats. When you add him to a new unit, their stats will change based on class compatibility. Be careful though, because there is another form of compatibility at work. If the leader is has superior stats (STR, INT, and AGI) the characters in his unit will all receive a bonus to their stats. If the leader has lousy stats, the characters in his unit will all receive a penalty to their stats. Again, the bonus and penalty is small and requires a large difference in stats. Also, if a leader had stupendous strength but is dumb as rocks, the characters in his unit will likely receive a bonus for STR and a penalty for INT. For this reason it can be a bad idea to have a wizard leading a strong character like a dragon. The dragon might get an INT boost, but it needs STR and that will likely be penalized. One final note, every leader receives a +1 bonus to STR, INT, and AGI while they are a leader. Q12) Is there a limit to the number of enemies? A12) Yes, though some times it might not seem that way. As an example the Borders of Sharom stage has only 8 enemy units. The reason that the number of enemies can sometimes seem infinite, is actually because you are probably facing the same units multiple times without realizing it. Under certain circumstances enemy units will retreat, only to return later for more punishment. For example, if you do a large amount of damage to the enemy leader, he or she may choose to retreat to the nearest enemy held town. The unit will then sit on that town until the leader's HP has been refilled before coming at you again. Similarly, if the enemy leader is alive, but other characters in his unit have been killed, the enemy leader may take his unit to a town or temple to get replacement troops or bring his dead troops back to life. Finally, if you kill the enemy leader in a unit without killing all his charges, they will return to the enemy base. The stage boss will then replace the leader and send the unit back out. So what's the moral of the story? It is always best, unless you want to rack up tons of experience, to completely wipe out enemy units. If you don't, you'll be forced to fight them again and again. For this reason, you should always consider whether or not you'll be able to catch the enemy unit if they decide to retreat. I've found it useful to have one or two high sky units on the battle field with the sole purpose of finishing off retreating enemy units. |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| Strategy Q13) What are some good ways to get lots of money? A13) This answer has been contributed by GameFaqs user Soap. a) Make cost efficient groups... just because you can fit 5 small units in a group, this will make your groups expensive, usually make the smallest and/or cheapest group that you think can survive. b) Liberate all of the towns in a level before you start liberating R. Temples... it might not seem like much of a tip but in the larger levels this will definitely help save cash and I would also recommend having two high sky movement type liberating groups so you can get as many of your towns liberated as possible before you get your first income notification. c) When revisiting old areas, here's what you can do to save money: In your opinion leaders group, put a Griffon in it so the group will be high flying. When searching for hidden treasure/towns/temples don't deploy any units (this costs you money and you don't recieve money from levels you have completed)... just use your Opinion Leader's group to search and when it comes close to the time when you will get your income notification, just use the return to map option and then go back into the level and continue searching for your hidden treasure, etc. d) Money making trick... Step 1 - Buy about 4-7 SUNSHINE and MOONBEAM items. Step 2 - After you get these go into a level and wipe out all of your opponent's units (see Q12). Step 3 - Once this occurs send all of your units back except the team you plan on using to beat the boss. Step 4 - Ok, now, go into your item menu and use a MOONBEAM. Step 5 - After using it, get out of your menu... even it it's just for a second. Step 5 - Go back into your item menu and use the SUNSHINE. Step 6 - Get out of your menu and you will recieve money from all of the towns you have liberated.. and since you sent back all of your units you should get a large amount of Goth. Step 7 - Repeat steps 4 - 7 until you have the desired amount of money or you run out of Moonbeams/Ray of Sunshine [Editor's Note: If you are patient you can just let time flow normally, collecting tribute for serveral days in a row without the use of SUNSHINES and MOONBEAMS, though it does take quite a bit longer.] Note: After four or five days you'll start to lose reputation at a rate of 1 point per day (see Q9). [Editor's Note: It appears that the amount of tribute you receive is related to your reputation. The higher your reputation, the more tribute you'll receive. Therefore, this trick is most useful when your reputation is full, and the longer you wait around at the completion of a stage, the less effective this strategy becomes.] Q14) My liberated towns keep getting recaptured, what can I do about that? A13) This answer has been contributed by GameFaqs user Soap. If you have plenty of money look into purchasing quite a few 7 League Boots (BOOTS). The first stage where they can be purchased is the Kastolatian Sea. These boots will allow you to instantly teleport one of your units to any town (that you've liberated). Please be careful, BOOTS will only teleport your units to towns, not temples. So if your team is beaten you will get pushed away from the enemy. A message will appear that says "So-and-so's unit has finished moving". DO NOT hit the button to get rid of the message... instead hit the start button and proceed to access your item menu and use the 7 League Boots to transport your beaten unit (or any other unit for that matter) to the town that will soon be taken over. |--------------------------------------------------------------------------| Bonus FAQs Q15) How do I recruit Canopus and Gilbert? A15) A lot of people have trouble with this one. Just keep in mind that if at first you get turned down, revisit cities until you get it right. The order you liberate the cities in the Sharom stage does not matter. It is the order you visit the cities in, that matters, and you can keep revisiting the cities until you get it correct. The actual steps you'll need to recruit Canopus are: 1) Visit the shop town (as of this draft, the name of the town escapes me). They'll tell you about the Wind Rider Canopus. 2) Visit Canopus. (again the actual name of the town escapes me) He'll ask you some questions, it doesn't matter how you answer. 3) Re-Visit the shop town. This is the step a lot of people skip. They'll tell you that Canopus has a sister. 4) Visit Yulia. If you've done everything else and you've liberated all the cities in the stage, she'll give you the Wings of Victory. If she turns you down, retrace your steps and try again. She'll forget the harsh words and still give you the Wings. 5) Re-visit Canopus. At this time he'll offer to join your army. 6) Defeat Gilbert. At which time, Canopus will talk you into sparing his life. It is a common misconception that you have to fight Gilbert with Canopus, you don't--though it doesn't hurt. That's it. Q16) I'm doing everything right but so and so won't join my army. Why? A16) If you believe you have all the CHA, ALI, Reputation requirements met and all the items needed, check the number of units you have in your army. There is a limit (100) and if you don't have room for the new character and any characters they join with, they'll turn you down. If you delete enough characters to make room for them, they'll join.