Mystic Ark Tips and Observations

Mystic Ark Tips and Observations

-The male and female hero, or Remeer and Ferris, aside from having a slightly different appearance from one another, are different in stats and spells as well.

-The male hero (Remeer) has high Power but moderately low Magic, and learns mostly fire-themed magic, and he eventually learns Kill whereas the female hero can't. He learns his battle skills slightly earlier than Ferris. He looks uncannily like Griffith from Berserk, except he doesn't turn evil or anything like that. He is also subject to a bit of snark from a few NPCs throughout the game due to his pretty-boy looks, and innkeepers think he's cute, but this doesn't really affect anything. The 7th Saga character he corresponds to is Olvan.

-The female hero (Ferris) has high Magic and moderately low Power, and learns mostly ice-themed magic, and learns Speed and Hard in place of Power, and can also eventually learn Cure, whereas the male hero can't. She learns her battle skills slower than Remeer, but learns her magic a lot quicker. and gets more respect from certain NPCs, mostly owing to her attractiveness. She's also kinda hot as well, though this is more obvious in official artwork than it is in-game. The 7th Saga character she corresponds to is Kamil.

-Both Remeer and Ferris have moderately high HP and MP, pathetic Guard and fairly high Speed, and can equip the same weapons and armor. Ferris learns a few more support/healing spells, while Remeer learns more attack spells, including an instant death spell. Your call on whichever hero you choose, really. The difficulty of the game doesn't really change much either way.

-Reeshine is a Grappler. She has high Power, Guard and Speed, low Magic, no spells, and absolutely 0 MP, not that she really needs it. She can equip mostly nunchaku and boomerangs, and can only equip gis as armor. She's very good at what she does, and that's kicking enemies' asses with powerful physical attacks and skills. Her Kick does about triple damage to one enemy, with accuracy being cut in half. Boost her Speed up, and she will make quick work of bosses. Her Smash is another half-accuracy attack which does half damage to all enemies, making it an inferior clone of Flurry.  She can also buff the entire party's Power with her War Cry skill.  She doesn't really have a 7th Saga counterpart, though her closest would probably be Wilme, due to both of them having obscene Power and Guard.

-Lux is a Tetsujin (literally man of iron in Japanese). You might recognize him from 7th Saga, although he looks quite a bit different here. He has his own equipment set. He has high HP, Power and Guard, and moderate MP, Speed and Magic. He uses a few spells, most of which are exclusive to him, but his true power lies in his skills. He learns Atomic, which does high, level-based, unavoidable damage to one enemy at a cost of 10 HP to himself, and later, he learns Full Atomic, which does slightly lower, level-based, unavoidable damage to all enemies for just 20 HP. Aside from Full Power, all of his skills/spells are direct damage dealers, so if you're trying to collect enemy figurines, you might want to have Lux sit those battles out. The 7th Saga she corresponds to is, obviously, Lux.

-Miriene is a Witch. She has high MP and Magic, low HP, Power and Guard, and average Speed. She can use knives and staffs. mostly learns attack magic. Sadly, attack spells aren't very good against many enemies in Mystic Ark. She also learns spells like Draw and Slow, which reduce enemy Power and Speed respectively, Mirror, which negates magic damage, and eventually learns Blackout, which almost always kills anything that isn't a boss. She can also reduce enemy Magic with Alluring Eyes and steal enemy MP with Kiss of Death. The 7th Saga character she corresponds to is Esuna.

-Tokio is a Ninja. He has low HP, MP and Guard, moderate Power and Magic, and extremely high Speed. He can equip most weapons, but he's mostly proficient with katanas and bows. He can cast a few attack and support spells, and learns the instant death spells Kill and Death Flare. He can also use Deathguard to negate enemies' instant death magic. He can also use the skill War Cry to buff allies' Power, and the powerful Illusion Strike to physically attack twice. The 7th Saga character he corresponds to is Lejes.

-Kamiwoo is an Ogre. He has moderate HP and Speed, low MP and Magic, and high Power and Guard. He can equip axes, but his armor choices are quite limited. He can use a variety of attack magic, mostly of the Ice variety. He can also cast the death spells Kill, Death Flare, and the awesome Blackout, which usually kills non-bosses. He can use a variety of skills as well, like Flurry, which does 50% of the damage a normal physical attack would against all enemies, Breath, a powerful skill which does high Magic stat-based fire damage against all enemies, War Cry, which buffs the entire party's Power, and Threaten, which lowers one enemy's Power. The 7th Saga character he corresponds to is Wilme.

-Meisia is a Priestess. She has low HP and Guard, pathetic Power, moderate Speed, and very high MP and Magic. She specializes in healing magic, and can buff allies' Power, Guard, Speed and Magic with her spells. She can also cast the ultimate attack spells, Holy Emblem and Freezing Hell, but they're absurdly expensive, and in most cases not worth it. She can lull enemies to sleep with her Wish Song skill, and regenerate a little bit of HP/MP with her Prayer/Compassion skills. Compassion and Wish Song are always useful, Prayer sucks. The 7th Saga character she corresponds to is Valsu.

-Just carrying your partners' figurines around awards them 75% of the EXP the hero gains in battle, so you don't have to worry about them falling too far behind. Any partners that join you in battle get full EXP.

-There are no revival spells or items in this game. Instead, if one of your partners falls in battle, their figurine disappears from your inventory and gets transported back to the pedestal you picked them up from the first time. That's right... if one of your partners dies, you have to go all the way back to the Shrine and grab their figurine from the pedestal again. As for the hero, this being an Enix game, if s/he dies, you end up back at the place you last saved with half of your total gold missing. Try your best to keep everyone alive.

-Spells and most skills can't overkill enemies. They will never do more than the enemy's max HP in damage. If you want to test an attack's true strength, test it on enemies that can take more than one hit of it. Flurry is the only exception to this rule. It always does exactly 50% of the damage a regular attack would do to all enemies, even if it would overkill them.

-Lux and Kamiwoo's Full Power skill increases their Power and Guard by 50% for 3-6 turns, but then causes Fatigue, which reduces Power and Guard by about 40% for about 10-15 turns. Full Power and Fatigue both last multiple battles, until the required turn total for both to resolve is met. Also, Full Power can't be used again until Fatigue is resolved. It can be a lifesaver in boss battles, but is generally not worth it in random encounters.

-Certain monsters can be turned into items that permanently boost your stats by 1-4. WARNING: Abusing these items utterly destroys what little difficulty the game has, so I recommend that you play through the game and beat it once or twice before using these items. Here's the list...

-Undead Hearts can be transformed into Guard Figurines. They disappear after World 3 is cleared.
-Colored Orcs can be transformed into Speed Figurines. They disappear after World 4 is cleared.
-Beholders can be turned into MP Figurines. You can also get MP Seeds in World 3 for 1020G a pop, though you can only have one at a time.
-Stone Demons can be turned into HP Figurines.
-Cursed Warriors can be transformed into Power Figurines.
-Jasmine 49s can be turned into Magic Figurines.
-The hero's level is capped at 81. Your partners' levels are capped at 78. They reach this level at 99,999,900 EXP. Why the levels are capped in such an arbitrary fashion is beyond me. The hero reaches level 80 and your partners reach level 77 at about 43 million EXP. Meaning, you have to gain almost 57 million EXP just to reach that last level. Being that this game is fairly easily beatable at around level 35, this is less of a tip than an observation.

-Gold and Platinum are capped at 99,999,999. You'll probably never have to worry about hitting the cap for either, though.

-Another observation... The playtime on the save screen doesn't max out at 99:59. It rolls over to 00:00 and keeps going from there. This affects absolutely nothing.

-When stat buffs increase a certain stat by over 100 points, it tends to either only show the last two digits or combine the first two digits into one number somehow. This is merely a graphical glitch. You will still get the full stat boosts. This only applies if you have over 500 in the stat you're trying to boost, though, and unless you've used tons of stat-boosting Figurines or are very close to max level, you're not going to have over 500 in any stat.

-Contrary to what many FAQs and message boards say, stats are NOT capped at 999. You can have four-digit stats if you're willing to spend hours farming Figurines, or if you have over 500 in the stat you're trying to boost, and cast the spell that boosts that stat enough times. When stats increase beyond 999, it just shows the last three digits of the stat. For example, if you have 1,016 Power, it just shows 016. Theoretically, you could just keep abusing Power Figurines until you're strong enough to one-shot the final boss. Stats are most likely capped at 65535, though if you were psychotic enough to put forth the effort to get your stats that high, they would most likely just roll over back to 0.

-HP and MP aren't capped at 999 either. If you use enough HP/MP figurines to have your HP/MP go above 999, it just keeps going to 1000 and beyond, with only the last three numbers showing. And no, if you have exactly 1000 HP, the game won't somehow go derpy on you and trick itself into thinking you're at 0 HP and autokill you the instant you go into battle or whatever. It just says you have "000 HP" when you really have 1,000. In fact, HP and MP are capped at 65535. If you somehow get your HP above 32,767, your life meter starts doing weird things. It might start decreasing from left to right instead of right to left like it normally does. Or, it might wrap around the screen. This little tidbit is irrelevant for people who aren't using cheats or who haven't spent thousands of hours grinding HP figurines, and even so, it's only a graphical glitch.

-Power, obviously, affects the damage your physical attacks and skills do. Physical attacks deal 75-125% of your Attack stat - the enemy's Guard stat. Flurry and Smash hit for half the damage of a normal physical attack. Kick does 3x the damage a physical attack would do, at about half the accuracy.
-Guard affects the damage you take from physical attacks. Damage is reduced by 1 for every Guard point the receiving character has.
-Speed affects how often you hit enemies and evade their attacks. It also affects your chance of running away from random encounters.
-The Magic stat appears to be completely useless in terms of altering magic damage... with one exception. Magic affects the amount of damage Kamiwoo's Breath does. For everyone else, swording at things is the most effective strategy for maximum enemy killage. Rather, the Magic stat basically serves as your magical speed stat. It dictates magical accuracy and evasion. The higher your Magic stat, the more likely it is your spells hit enemies, and the less likely it is enemy spells hit you.