Glitches and observations, mainly related to leveling and certain statistics in RPGs

Glitches and observations, mainly related to leveling and certain statistics in RPGs

Here's a list of glitches mainly related to leveling and certain stats that occur in certain RPGs... The glitches range from being completely harmless and curious to being mildly annoying to game-breaking and terrifying. There are also a few random observations that aren't glitches or programming bugs, but rather stat-related things that I found interesting. I will update this as I play more RPGs and find out more.



Examples below the break/this line

-As many powerlevelers found out the hard way in Phantasy Star IV, once your characters reach level 99, weird things start to happen... Wren and Demi start gaining TP and a Mental stat, people's skills and stats start getting switched around, etc.  Characters are effectively reduced to being around level 40-50 stat-wise. You can STILL level up until you get to 9,999,999 EXP. Apparently, the reason for this is the fact that the characters' levels weren't properly capped, and so once certain characters gain a level after 99, the game starts reading the stat tables from the next character listed in the game's code, causing them to lose stats and gain skills they can't normally learn. Thankfully, while this bug is incredibly annoying, it can be averted by having your characters reach level 99 in a certain order. Also, there's a handy patch that fixes this bug, for those who play using emulators.

-As for the Level 99 Glitch in Lufia: Ruins of Lore... Once you hit level 99 in this game, you suddenly lose ALL the stats you've gained from levels (you still get to keep any stat boosts you've gained from the Ancient Cave or using stat-raising items), effectively being reduced to level 1 all over again, with no chance of getting those stats back unless you use a bunch of stat-raising Sources. It is effectively a far more drastic version of the PSIV Level 99 Bug with no workaround whatsoever. Thankfully, level 99 is so hard to reach in this game (it takes about 25 million EXP to reach level 99; EXP gained at the end of battle is capped at 32767, and is split between party members, of which you can have up to 8), that this should NEVER happen with anyone who isn't an unhealthily obsessive powerleveler. I'm not sure if this glitch just affects Eldin, or if other characters have their stats reset upon reaching level 99. Monsters have their own individual level caps which are far below 99, so they're exempt from this glitch.

-Also from Lufia: Ruins of Lore, a stat glitch... Once Eldin's AGL hits a certain point (around 480, I believe), most enemies start getting 6-8 moves on HIM before he acts, when it should be the other way around. Gaining or losing a few points in AGL should correct this glitch.

-Also another observation related to Lufia: RoL... Damage can go beyond 999. So can healing. Once, I tried casting Regenerate on Goldiark, the final boss (who has 8000 HP) when I was close to beating him, just out of boredom, and he healed 4,000 HP, though the counter only showed 999. Also, for the first and only time in Lufia history, stats CAN'T go beyond 999 in this game. At 999 ATK, Eldin can do around 520 damage to most enemies. I tried increasing his ATK by removing his weapon and feeding him Power Sources and then reequipping him, and he still did the same damage.

-There are plenty of statistical observations and oddities for Lufia and the Fortress of Doom... Instead of taking up a huge amount of space talking about it here, you can read about it in an earlier blog post.

-In the Disgaea series, though I'm not sure if this is a glitch or intentional (probably intentional since they never changed it), it takes about 3 times as much experience to progress from level 99 to 100 as it does to go from 100 to 101. It isn't until about level 300 that characters start requiring that much EXP normally to gain a level. Since enemies give EXP and HL based on how much EXP they need to advance to the next level, level 99 enemies end up giving significantly more experience and HL than enemies of the same type that are level 100-300 or so.


 
-In Breath of Fire 3, you can use stat-boosting items to boost your stats to above 999 (though the status screen says those stats are still at 999, the functional cap for each stat is actually 65,535). However, once you use a skill in battle that would normally boost your stats, those stats are automatically truncated to 999, though the stats should correct themselves at the end of the battle. HP and AP actually ARE capped at 999, except in the case of Ryu's Dragon transformations, which have their HP capped at 9990.

-In the obscure but fun PSX RPG Guardian's Crusade, the level is capped at 9999 normally... However, if you gain enough experience in a single battle (through a process that entails fighting 3 level-scaling enemies, using the Living Toy, Generosity, and being very, very close to reaching level 9999), you can get to level 10,000 or 10,001. Regardless of your final level, you're not going to gain any more levels from there, no matter how much EXP you get. Also, stats are normally capped at 32,767, but if you feed Baby the correct items, you can bring his stats above 32,767. Of course, when he levels up, his stats are automatically corrected to 32,767. Unless you're an incredibly dedicated powerleveler, or you just really, REALLY love this game (this game IS pretty fun), don't expect to get anywhere near these stat maximums.

10/1/17 EDIT: The level cap is actually 65535. Apparently the level being capped at 9999 was due to a code some people used to speed up the leveling process. Of course, the game is easily beatable at level 40-45, so leveling up to this point is extremely unnecessary, but hey, some people have fun leveling up to the max.

-In Lufia: The Legend Returns, and possibly, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (citation needed, never checked this myself), if you try to use a stat-raising source on a character with 999 or greater in the relevant stat (most likely ATP), the game won't let you use it. However, if you reduce that stat somehow, most likely by unequipping whichever item increased said stat to or above 999, you can continue raising the stat in question by using the relevant sources on that character. In the case of Lufia II, I believe Life and Magic Sources are immune to this glitch... You can raise HP and MP above 999 all the way up to 65,535 if you want to.

-In Lufia & The Fortress of Doom (aka Lufia 1), you can use stat-raising potions to increase any stat above 999. If you spend several hundred hours grinding stat potions, which rarely drop from certain enemies, you could theoretically have characters with 1,000+ in all stats except AGL (though this is only because no monster appears to drop Speed Potions). HP and MP can also go above 999 if you're willing to grind enough stat potions to do so.

-In the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI (erroneously dubbed Final Fantasy III), if you do something that would cause more than 65,535 damage to an enemy were the damage cap of 9999 not in place, it causes the damage to roll over, often resulting in a very low number (like 100-2000). This is most easily accomplished by raising Magic to a high number (over 100) on a character, having him or her at a very high level (80+), and having him/her either cast Ultima or use a high-level elemental spell on a single enemy with low magic defense and/or a weakness to that spell. This glitch is fixed in later versions of the game. 

-Also in Final Fantasy VI, the maximum EXP any character can attain is 15,000,000. However, in the GBA version, if you gain more than 10,000,000 EXP, only the last 7 numbers will show on the status screen. For example, if you have Terra with 10,853,327 EXP, the status screen will say she has 0,853,327 EXP (this includes the 0). If Locke has the maximum EXP of 15,000,000, it will say he has 5,000,000 EXP. I'm unsure if this glitch applies for the SNES and PS1 versions, but it probably does.

-Though this hasn't been personally confirmed, apparently, in Final Fantasy IV (SNES/GBA versions), an interesting and infuriating glitch occurs if you fight a monster that can summon more enemies, and you somehow end up killing more than 255 monsters in any single battle. This glitch severely reduces the EXP and Gil you get for that battle. For example, if you fight 257 monsters in one battle, you will only get EXP and Gil for the last 2 you killed. If your powerleveling strategy involves fighting monsters that summon more enemies, it's still a perfectly viable strategy. Thankfully, since such battles become boring after a certain point, most players will never even come close to accomplishing this, even if they are avid powerlevelers.

-Also in Final Fantasy IV (SNES version), a particularly odd glitch occurs where if an enemy heals more than 16,383 HP, possibly by having the single-target version of Cure 4/Curaja cast on it, its MP gets fully restored as well, as if someone used an Elixir on it. Of course, this doesn't really matter, because you'd have to have Rosa cast it on such an enemy, and there's no way to check enemy MP in this game otherwise, but it's interesting nonetheless. In fact, enemies never use their MP in any way, shape or form. They can just cast any spells in their repertoire, free of charge, even if you drained their MP to 0. Their MP basically only exists for you to drain it using Psych/Osmose.

-Also in Final Fantasy IV (all versions except DS and possibly GBA, which removed the 65,535 HP cap), apparently, Zeromus DOESN'T actually have ~130,000 HP as many originally thought. He doesn't even have two "lives", either. He only has 65,498 HP, which heals to full automatically the first time he hits 12,000-16,000 HP, after which he switches to another phase. If you reduce his HP from above 16,000 to below 12,000 in one action, you might cause him to skip the healing phase, and he'll end up dying without ever switching phases, causing the final battle to be somewhat anticlimactic.

-In Final Fantasy I (NES), the level cap is 50, and the max EXP is 999,999. In all later versions, the level cap has been increased to 99 and the max EXP is set to an arbitrary cap of 2,000,000, possibly due to the fact that the easy mode of FF1 Origins (the Playstation version) requires about 1.9 million EXP to reach level 99. In the Mod of Balance version of FF1:DoS, the max EXP has been increased to an equally arbitrary cap of 5,000,000 to scale with the new experience curve. Why it wasn't increased to 9,999,999 or whatever the true allowable maximum was, I have no idea.

-In Final Fantasy I (GBA version, Dawn of Souls), when you do more than 32,767 damage, random symbols pop up in place of the actual number, though it still does whatever damage it would have done, rather than killing the enemy outright (although very few enemies have enough HP to survive an attack like that). Of course, achieving this glitch on the regular version of FF1:DoS is impossible, to the best of my knowledge... The most I've ever done in vanilla is somewhere around 22,000. There's an awesome mod for FF1+2:DoS, called the Mod of Balance, that makes the game harder, but also increases the stat caps from 99 to 255, making achieving this glitch significantly easier. If you have a GBA emulator, and you want to play the Mod of Balance, download it at http://jeffludwig.com/ .

-In the FF1:DoS Mod of Balance, Attack, Accuracy and Defense can go beyond 255. Only Monks and Masters can achieve attack and defense beyond 255, but most characters eventually go beyond 255 accuracy naturally, and can have their accuracy further boosted with Speed Pluses. Enemies still have all of their stats capped at 255, though, so if you feed a Monk or Master enough stat boosts, even monsters with max defense will take 5-digit damage on the regular. Evasion and Magic Defense are still hard-capped at 255.

-A similar glitch to the above is the Damage Overflow Glitch of Final Fantasy VII, where when you do something that would cause more than about 262,144 damage if there was no damage cap, the game shows symbols in place of the actual number, and the enemy dies instantly (this works on all enemies except Ruby Weapon, whose defense is simply too high to achieve this glitch on). This could most easily be achieved by Vincent's and Barret's ultimate weapons, the Death Penalty and the Missing Score. The Death Penalty does damage based on the total number of enemies Vincent has killed, and the Missing Score does damage based on the total AP of the combined materia Barret has equipped.

-In Phantasy Star Zero (for the DS), an odd glitch appears where the EXP display doesn't show when you beat Dark Falz on Super Hard difficulty. Rest assured that you DO get EXP for beating him, though. You get 10,000 EXP for beating Dark Falz after a normal run through SH Dark Shrine, and 12,500 EXP for beating him during a quest. Apparently, making it so the game shows 5-digit EXP rewards was too difficult.

-In the obscure Japan-only Super Famicom/SNES RPG known as Eien no Filena (Eternal Filena), while reaching level 99 doesn't cause any bugs by itself, you can level up AGAIN after fighting a few battles. Gaining another level after reaching level 99 makes the game glitch HORRIBLY to the point of becoming absolutely unplayable. Meaning, characters suddenly start gaining hundreds of levels, relearning techniques several times, causing the victory screen to often hang forever. If the victory screen does, at some point, end, allowing you to play the game as normal, and you check the menu, you might find your character suddenly dropped to level 4 or something, with a random amount of HP and 6000+ TP (TP typically caps at 999), and if you try to check the status screen for that character, the graphics start glitching severely, often causing the game to crash. You can't even check your items anymore without strange things happening. This means the game effectively ends once you reach level 99. This game can be beaten fairly easily at level 50-55, and while this game does have a fairly interesting story, it doesn't really have much replay value, so unless you're a dedicated powerleveler that enjoys playing obscure JRPG's on your spare time, you probably won't discover this glitch on your own. I'm unsure whether this glitch has something to do with the translation patch, or it was a mistake on the programmers' part.
 
-In Shining Soul II, HP, SP and damage are seemingly capped at 999. However, that's only a visible cap. While Vitality is capped at 333 and Intelligence at 500 (each VIT point adds 3 to HP, each INT point adds 2 to SP) meaning base HP and SP are limited to 999 (SP might be capped at 1000; though the screen will only show 999), I can at least confirm that HP can go higher if boosted with equipment. Stats that are maxed out can also be increased further with equipment that boosts those stats. Damage can seemingly go higher than 999 in a single hit as well, though it will only show 999 on the screen. Elemental resistances are capped at 200. They also work somewhat oddly. For example, a resistance of 100 reduces damage of that element by about 90%, and 200 reduces it by about 98%. Poison resistance is horribly bugged. While it reduces the damage of poison-elemental attacks as planned, it does nothing to reduce the damage from being poisoned. In fact, higher poison resistance not only increases the chance of getting poisoned, but it also causes you take damage more frequently, meaning at 100+ poison resistance, being poisoned can easily be fatal.  Also, EXP stops increasing entirely when you hit level 200. You get full EXP for the kill that brought you to level 200, but you cease to gain anything else afterwards. Makes sense, I guess, but a slightly disappointing discovery nonetheless.

-In The 7th Saga, level-up stats are nerfed completely for the apprentice you play as. While the other apprentices maintain the stat gains that their counterparts in Elnard (the Japanese version of this game) received upon leveling up, the apprentice YOU play has his/her stat gains nerfed by 1-3 points apiece per level-up. Being that the other apprentices scale to your level, this has the uncanny problem of making the other apprentices nearly impossible to beat after you get to about level 40-45 or so.

-Also, a misconception about the Valsu apprentice battle... He will NEVER use Elixir, or even Heal 3 during his battle, no matter what level he is. The highest-level healing spell any enemy will ever use is Heal 2, which heals 90 HP. This is one of very few acts of mercy provided by the programmers of this game. However, he is still surprisingly adept at kicking your ass otherwise, so don't think he's going to be any easier for it.

-In Wizardry 1-3 and 5, there is NO level cap, or, at the very least, the level cap is incredibly high. I once thought the level cap was 999, but it's actually far higher than this (possibly 65,535), though any levels past 999 will only show the last three digits. it also looks like HP can go up past 9,999, though it will only show the last four digits. Theoretically, you could just keep leveling up and gaining HP until you reach 999,999,999,999 EXP, which is the cap, though both your level and HP will most likely roll over numerous times in the process, and your age will eventually increase to the point where your characters will lose more stats than they gain. You can beat these games at level 13 with a little bit of effort and luck, however, and will most likely beat it at around level 20, so this knowledge is pretty much just trivia. Reaching max EXP would take decades in Wiz 1-3... In Wizardry 5, it would take years at BEST, and more likely, it would also take decades. The level cap in Wizardry 8 is 50, 4 doesn't have a traditional level system, and I don't know anything about 6 and 7.



In Wizardry IV Gaiden: Throb of the Demon's Heart, the max level is indeed 999. Max HP is 9999, and max EXP is 4,294,967,295 (this is only a visible cap, however, you'll reach level 999 at 211M-440M EXP, so it's a functional cap as well). If you hack the game to increase the level and HP cap, it will only show the last three digits of your level, and the last four digits of your HP. I once thought age was capped at 99, but I did an experiment that involved hacking one of my characters' stats, and repeatedly changing their class until they reached over 1,000 years old. Age is most likely capped at 9,999 or 65,535 or some other utterly ridiculous number. 

-In Tales of Phantasia (PSX/GBA versions), max level is 999, max EXP is supposed to be 99,999,999, max Gald is 9,999,999, max damage is 99,999 in at least the GBA version, max HP and attack are capped at 9999 (not sure on attack), max TP is capped at 999, strength, size/constitution, luck, and agility are presumably capped at 999, and defense is either capped at 999 or 9999.

-Also in Tales of Phantasia (GBA  version, original SFC version doesn't have the option to change the difficulty and PSX version doesn't even have this enemy), a minor stat glitch involving the enemy Land Urchin. On Normal difficulty, the Urchin's attack power is listed as 9000. In Hard and Mania, its attack power is instead listed as 1250 and 3500, respectively. Yet, the Urchin's attack instantly deals 99999 damage to anything it touches, no matter what difficulty it's on. Either the Urchin's attack power doesn't actually roll over, and its attack power is actually 11250/13500 on the higher difficulty modes, or it DOES roll over as its bestiary entry advertises, and its 99999 damage attack is due to a special effect completely independent of attack power. Meaning, you could probably set its attack to 1 or whatever and it would STILL kill your team aside from Arche, who is immune to the Urchin's attacks by way of flying. Also, it can only be damaged/killed by Magic Tablets. It is completely immune to everything else, even non-elemental attacks.