Welcome to my first guide, this will cover up the general basics of a good force.
This guide is more for people who are having trouble with this class and mostly avoided it.
When u are quite familiar with FO’s this guide will not be full of surprises. Feel free to
add a comment or tell me your thoughts. (constructive comments are apreciated) As you will see,
I m quite a fan of reducing TP use cause I think using a trifluid every 5 min is too much.
Important: Find ur own style, and u do not have to agree with me on all parts
Introduction
Before you attempt to make and level-up a Force, it’s recommended to have another character
that can collect good gear for your FO. HUcasts go fast through the game and are an excellent
choice for beginners and experts. Pick up Fo weapons, tech disks, mind materials, mindboosting
units and meseta as these will come in handy for your starting FO.As you start a quest, always
carry at least 9 tri- and difluids in your invent.
First things first
Playing a FO is completely different then playing another class (even for a melee FOrce).
They lack on ATP/ATA and many other stats when they start off.
Most important stat when you want to use your techniques alot, is without a doubt MST (mental strength, determines the effectiveness
of your tech’s ) followed by TP(Technique Points, determines the amount of spells you can cast
(the blue bar) ) for non-melee FO's. This brings us to
the first reason why a FO is a tad harder to play than other classes.
Change your mind
For the technique-casters and nukers among us :
Try to boost up your TP/MST as high as possible, for obvious reasons :
- More TP = more techniques with less (tri)fluids
- Higher MST required for high techniques (more effectieve)
- More damage
- Better FO equipment
It’s important to have a high amount of max TP as it fills up at much occasions.
(like leveling up, being revived, using trifluids,… )
How do I boost it?
- Feed your mag so that its mind goes up as much as possible. Try to get at
least 150+ mind as this would give you 300+ more max TP. (you can raise a mindmag on other chars as well).
- Look for a 4 slotted armor so you can equip mindboosting units. (angel, god and heavenly minds )
When u start off, those are the most important basic-units(mostly on lower difficulty’s).
- Some weapons give high MST/TP boosts (Clio, solferino, … ).
- As for shields, spirit garment or regenerate shield B.P. will make your TP go
up a little while playing (this is not very much, but all bits help).
Later you will be wanting techboosting merges/weapons to make your spells more effective.
What kind of force?
There are roughly 3 main ways to play Forces : Melee FO’s, Support FO’s and Battle FO’s.
Melee FO’s are more concentrated in ATP/ATA and
actualy fighting with weapons.
The support FO, who is the most loved by other
teamplayers but is also more reliant on the team.
And the Battle/Tech FO
who will mostly use techniques to blast up the enemies, he’s a good solo-er and,
when played right, he can clear up rooms at a very high speed (especially episodeIV).
Recommended support FO’s are
FOnewearl and FOmarl, recommended melee forces, all but FOnewearl’s (FOnewmans are not the best choise either ) .
And recommended battle FO’s are FOnewm and FOnewearl. But most mages can play all roles, it’s just an advantage with bonuses and stats.
Melee FO’s
The melee FO, quite a challenge here but you can be very effective with this playstyle. For dealing
high dammage with your ATP, take the FOmar, as he has the best ATP out of the FO-familly. Followed
by FOmarls who have a little more ATA and some better support bonuses. If u wanna take a newman FO
u'll have to demon and hell those pesky ragol monsters.
Either way, boost ur ATA to the max asap on all ur melee FO's, try to get weapons with hit and when
using ranged weapons (like Slicer of fanatic (SoF), Bringer's rifle,... ) wear a 'SMARTLINK-unit' to.
increase even more your ATA. Ofcourse, if you can afford a Red Ring(RR) it will boost out your ATA even more
Remeber to wear a v502 when using hell weapons as it doubles your effectiveness to instantkill. And another
winning unit is the ADEPT, as it lowers your TP usage by 25% and increases all other stats (even 20, mighty ATA!).
Recommended weapons to deal high dammage :
- Excalibur (Berserk and hits up 3 ennemies when close togheter)
- Vivienne, female only (high atp, can also steal some TP)
- Gyrasole, if you can't use a vivenne, it has lower ATP but looks way more awesome xD
- Tyrell's Parasol (it uses charge and boosts ur support-tech range)
- Charge vulcan's (preferably with 50% hit or more)
- LK38 COMBAT (since its combo unlock, it is more accurate but still slow)
- Master raven/last swan (to hit and run)
- Soul eater (its berserk power makes it a good multihit close combat wep)
- Diska of braveman (with the smartlink and its easy obtainable hit%, making it a strong zerk weapon)
Recommended weapons to demon and hell :
- Slicer of Fanatic (high range, 4 targets and good accuracy. Use SNS-combo)
- Bringers rifle (u can easily get 50 hit on it, good for Dorphons and other though bastards)
- Hell raygun (reduced, but with enough hit and a v502 it is a free megid lvl 30)
Don't forget to Zalure/Jellen the ennemies to make your attacks stronger. Also, you can carry
multiple mags with u, one for melee and one for techniques (At falz for example).
Support FO’s
Making a good support FO, is important later in the game. Your main job is to help your
teammates with buffs, debuffs and healing.
Helping the team is above all helping yourself. You don't want finding yourself dying all the time and slow down your team. This means, protect yourself from dangerous situations/status alts. Most annoying ones are : paralyse, shock and freeze. All others can easily be auto-cured with anti. To avoid those, you can :
- Wear protecting units like cure/freeze,shock & para or an armor that prevents status effects ( sacred cloth,... ).
- Use sol atomizers, always try to carry them around with you.
- Heal rings or the medical room, however this is out of the question when time attacking.
So now you've taken care of yourself, lets move on to your role in the team :
- Buffs : you need to cast shifta and deband on your team and on yourself.
Shifta makes the physical attacks of your team stronger, while deband strengthens up your
defense against physical attacks. Note : Elemental attacks are magically based and will not
be affected by DFP or ATP. They also will not “miss” unless u cast it the wrong way.
- Debuffs : pretty much the opposite of buffs, you’ll be casting jellen
and zalure on spawning enemies. The faster they have it on them, the easier the team
can kill them. Note : u get experience when an enemy dies that u debuffed, so no need to cast
another spell on them. Very handy against bosses aswell.
- Healing : there are 3 healing spells : resta, anti and reverser.
The one you will cast the most when your team is having a tough time, is resta.
It will recover HP from you and your nearby teammates. The higher the level, the wider the
range and amount of recovered HP. Try to keep everyone’s HP above ½. Anti, will be handy
to banish negative status-changes like : poison, paralyze, shock, confuse, slow and even at higher
levels, freeze. This can be very tricky, so keep your eyes open and if your anti range is too small,
go to the players to make those unwanted status-changes disappear. When you failed above roles,
there is the handy reverser spell who will revive a fallen teammate like a moon atomizer.
Note, like I said earlier : it's important to carry some sol atomizers so you can cure yourself from paralyze and such.
A scape doll can be a literally ‘life-saver’ for you and your team. A resta merge is also extremely usefull.
Remember, you are not the one who will kill the monsters so stay back and stick to your
teammates. TP wise, you will not encounter lots of problems, support spells are relatively cheap.
When you mastered this role, people will gladly offer you their fluids when you burned out of them.
Additional, if your team is doing fine, u can still be useful after the basic support jobs.
U can crack open the boxes, hit the switches, disarm traps and stun attacking enemies with gifoie or rabarta. Again, only do this when ur team is doing fine. And perhaps when you're feel confident, combine it with another FO role.
Battle FO’s
This role is pretty fun once u get the hang of it. Most important here, u will have to change
your weapons and spell customization depending on the enemies and areas. This might be a little
confusing at first, but again, you ‘ll become used to it. This is mostly because enemies have resistances
and weaknesses to elemental spells. For example : Booma’s are weak against FOie techs, while Gobooma’s
are less resistant to ZOnde. You’ll find out pretty fast witch enemy is weak against a specific spell.
Try to get your technique levels asap to lvl 30 so they get very efficient.
note: Casting barehanded is still the fastest way to spam techniques
The trickiest part of being a Battle FO, is that u will burn your TP fast. It’s completely normal
to run out of TP after several well-filled rooms. Here are some ways to handle this problem.
- God invented fluids, use them! Try to give other stuff to your mag and pick up armor
from the ground. Trifluids aren’t cheap so you’ll need to make some quick cash by selling trash like armor, non-rare weapons, ... in the shop.
- Max out your TP bar, the higher it is, the more techniques you can cast with one full bar.
And don’t forget its restored every time u level up, find a heal ring or healing yourself at the medic centre.
- Newmans recover TP by standing still, the higher the level, the faster it goes. This is however not recomended as it is to slow to be any good.
- Use the right techniques, keep the resistances and weaknesses in mind and cast spells
that can hit multiple enemies when the room is rather filled. (think of moths, claws recons who can
become overwhelming when not dealt right with). Sometimes running around can be good to
get the enemies close to each other.
- Equipment, there are lots of different weapons who will boost up your techniques,
meaning you’ll have to use less TP to make the same amount of damage. Try to always have weapons that
boost an elemental type. (Like ice staff : dagon, fire scepter : agni and storm wand : indra ).
As you level up, those bonuses will become more important than the stats of a weapon.
Don’t forget units that cut off TP use, like adepts or armor and weapons with the same ability. (Mother garb, psycho wand, dark bridge,… ).
- Grants and Megid are force only techniques that come in handy in higher difficulty’s.
Grants is costly but powerful, concentrates on 1 enemy. While Megid can instant kill an enemy (like a hell weapon). U can
also make megid penetrate (so it hits more enemies in one strike) with a demonic fork. FOnewearls have this capacity by nature.
A tech FO is a rusher in episode IV, meaning u can clear levels and stages at high speed.
Making it a good solo force, but you can also help out your team with some devastating techs.
More technique explanation will follow later.
In a team
Battle FO’s are less wanted in teams because of the so called ‘damage-cancelling’.
Whenever you use a multiple target hitting technique (also called a Nuke – most Ra an GI techniques- ),
all enemies in the room will get some recoil. This can cause other team-members to 'miss' their attacks and
deal less damage. So use with caution or when your teammates get overwhelmed.
Casting Megid is not a problem and will speed up the monster killing process in episode 2.
Suggested customizations
An example of a good support customization (anti,
reverser, shifta/deband and ruyker on the numbers)
Note :it’s very enjoyable to play with a controller instead of the keyboard.
Also, train urself on casting spells from the quick-menu, one big cheese and 2 burgers
if u play with the keyboard its ctrl + end, u can also sort them to acces
your favorites faster.
Handy equipment
- A solferino, its special is free resta lvl 4 what is really helpful to recover wounds
without losing TP. Very good when fighting amongst berserk-using teammates. Also handy when u use a
HP draining item, like the Psycho wand. It also doubles your resta range (but cannot combo).
Works great with FOnewearl's. Only recommended when u find urself low on TP by casting lots of resta.
- Glide Divine, this handy tool doubles your jellen/Zalure range and when worn 10 minutes
(equipped) u can use it to fully recover TP (it will bring your HP down to 1 so use it carefully).
- Psycho wand, halves down your TP cost but drains full cost of your HP. Boosts RA techniques by 20%.
- Range expending weapons/shields : clio (doubles zalure range and gives a nice 100+ TPmax boost)
, striker of chao ( doubles shifta and deband range), all kind of merges who will boost range and effectiveness of your techs.
Principal's gift parasol will als increase your Resta, Anti, Shifta, and Deband range (double).
- Like said earlier, tech damage boosting merges and weapons like ice staff : dagon,
fire scepter : agni/ hildebear's cane and storm wand : indra, must not be forgotten if you wanna max out your blasting power ^^
- Units : A v801, increases your casting speed or you can choose to cast unarmed.
Adepts, like mentioned earlier, they reduce your TP cost by ¼. Heavenly/technique helps to
upgrade your techniques that aren’t lvl 30. Smartlink for the melee FO as it gives 20 extra ATA for ranged weapons.
- Some weapons can steal enemy TP, best would be a geist weapon with some high hit (Vivienne).
- Some weapons cast techniques as a special, like hildebear/hildeblue's cane, elyson, ... This is ok if the enemies are weak
but as the difficulty rises, u won't have the time or the power to be effecient with it. Not recomended on ultimate.
- Manny more… There are so much items and combinations that work out well,
just do some look up and try things out for yourself.
Note: It's perfectly possible to combine those 3 roles, but it's more depending on your team and stats.
Most people will always ask you for shifta and deband, especially droids. The more different
roles you want to play, the more equipment you'll need to carry along, so be carefull to not "get lost" in all your stuff.
So now go make your own force, use my guide, find your own strategy’s and have fun ^^
It’s a challenge but If you give it a shot, I’m sure you’ll like it.
© Written by Chuk (corrected/completed by ultima community)
