"One to be born from a dragon..." -- Let's Play Final Fantasy II

I'm sure I don't know what you're mis-remembering. Easy enough to test though: tell us what level each character is hard-coded to rejoin at. I'll let you know if they match my playthrough.

Or, more to the point, what happens if you level a character up beyond the hard-coded point before they leave the party? (Hint: I already know the answer.)

Are we taking bets? Because I'd totally put some fictional money on Brickroad.

Dude knows what he's talking about, he has a monocle.

Fictional money nothin'. I'll put real money on it: characters do not rejoin the party at fixed levels.

$100. Any takers?

Unless Squaresoft radically changed how they code their games between FF4 and FF5, I can't see why they'd suddenly go from the more efficient "update an existing character's data" method to "just overwrite the relevant data with info from a template". No seriously, that's how FF5 handles Krile: it just copies over the relevant data from her database entry and brute-force pastes it over Galuf's. Same with the Moogles at the start of FF6 and the entire cast of FF6 later.

So, bet's on then?

Not for money, no. I don't have money to bet. And besides, you've already lost; the duplicate database entries very obviously exist since characters never rejoin with the same equipment you left them with when they parted before, and if their level wasn't on par with what your level is when they rejoin, they always have the exact same boosted level and stats upon rejoining. You think they hard-coded what items to put on the rejoining characters and exactly what experience and level they need to be at in the source code instead of just calling from a database?

Incidentally, I know why you think it works the way you think it works. If a character is "over" the par level when they leave, the game does in fact not overwrite their stats, experience, and level since the sanity check code recognizes that they'd be getting "leveled down". HOWEVER, unless you cheat or specifically try for that, this will NOT be the case. Under normal circumstances (ie. characters don't leave the party 20-30 levels too high), their stats get overwritten upon rejoining.

Huh, Brickroad finally updated his LP--

*glare*

If this hypothetical bet did go on, how long would it take until we could find a character to test it on?

Kain is basically the only one you can. Tellah's re-join happens too soon after he leaves for a meaningful measure (in fact, I seem to recall he doesn't even HAVE a duplicate entry in the database; it's that short a span), but Kain re-joins far enough away from when he first joins up that he's pretty much guaranteed to have been fully database-updated.

....Rosa?

(Granted she's at the same time as Kain)

Rosa should work too, yes.

You lack the courage of your convictions, sir!

...and a good thing, too, as it turns out. Like I said, this is easy enough to test.

I started up a new game and plugged in a Game Genie code that makes Imps give thousands and thousands of EXP. After cranking up the emulator to 450% or so, it only took a few minutes to get Kain up to L45:



Now, I'll be honest: I don't precisely recall what the average party level it at or around the time Kain rejoins the party. However, I'm positive it is less than 45. Do you agree? If you're right, and Kain's rejoin-level is somehow hard-coded, he'll lose experience when we get him back.

We'll come back to Kain.

After killing Mist D. I turned off the Imp code and added two new ones. One removed all random encounters. The other skipped boss battles completely. The result is pretty clear: no character would ever gain any EXP whatsoever, except Kain.

Here's Tellah when he joins in the Waterway:



And here's Tellah when he rejoins on Mt. Ordeals, at the exact same level:



Tellah's kind of a weird case though. Because he's so overleveled when he joins you at first, it's entirely possible (if playing conservatively) that he could join, leave, re-join and re-leave without ever gaining a single experience level. (Although that is quite tricky to do!)

So let's look at Rosa and Yang, when they join in Kaipo and Mt. Hobs, respectively:



Both join the party at L10. If their rejoin stats are indeed set in stone, we would expect them to come back at a level higher than 10. Yes?



Bzzrt! Nope, here's Yang coming back on board in Baron, still L10, exactly as we left him. And furthermore:



Here's Rosa and Kain, rejoining the group in [SPOILER]. Rosa's still L10 and -- lo! -- Kain is right where we left him, at L45. Nobody's level has been altered up or down, whatsoever, nor has anyone defaulted back to some fixed value.


Look, dudes, I'm always willing to admit I'm wrong about something in my own LP. It's always exciting to learn something new about a game you've played a million times! Like, that little tidbit about Weak working on the Mad Ogres? That shit blew my mind. (And also: it totally works! I tested it and everything!)

But I'm not wrong on this. I know more about FF2 parties and the EXP acquisitions thereof than any mortal should. I know how FF5 and FF6 do it; FF2 is neither of those games. (FF6 actually has it both ways, loading and overwriting templates or re-averaging character levels as needed! But that's someone else's thread.)

I think you're both kind of right. Or rather, I think Sky Render is right but Brickroad doesn't see what he's saying.

No, characters do not rejoin the party at "fixed levels". I believe the game tracks the experience gained and uses it as a basis for assigning levels for characters based on this experience. Hence, that's why when you get Yang back his level is boosted relative to the amount of experience you've gained since he left.

Yes, new characters (such as Rydia or the twins) start at fixed levels, but it doesn't sound like it would be all that hard to simply track the total experience gained and add it to some "fixed" value. heck, for someone like Kain you could easily just track the XP gained and when you get him back simply add it to a copy of his level 10 state (or whatever). Add custom equipment and BAMF.

Although an easier way to check might be to see if there is a duplicate database entry for Rosa, who herself "gains" new equipment when she rejoins.

- Eddie

Your test kinda fails since you're intentionally breaking the game's code. In fact, you did something that the game was quite literally not programmed to handle: you kept Cecil at a fixed (and very low) level.

Try boosting only Cecil to a ridiculous level instead and see what happens then.

I know what I know about this subject specifically because I've done it legitimately. On a console. Several times.

Haha okay. What level would you like him at?

Eddie, your guess is pretty close to what the game actually does.

Characters start at fixed levels, which explain why (if you don't gain any xp) Rosa and Yang don't start at a higher level; they won't gain any of the xp Kain gained beforehand. I mean I could be wrong, but I think it works like this (I have not looked at the code, this is based off of what I read).

Every character has an ongoing exp total that goes up as you fight battles, whether they are in your party or not. You can "visually" think of it kind of like this:

Dark Knight Cecil's exp = level 10 + (exp gained from Baron to Mist Cave) + (Kaipo to Waterway) + (Damcyan Castle to Antlion) + (Curing Rosa to Karate) + (Karate to Karate Castle) + (Karate Castle event) + (post Karate Castle Event to ship 5 blocks away) + (journey to becoming a Paladin)

hence someone like Yang would look like this at the same point:

Karate exp = level 10 + (Karate to Karate Castle) + (Karate Castle event) + (post Karate Castle Event to ship 5 blocks away) + (journey to becoming a Paladin)

Hence all the exp gained before you get Yang is meaningless as far as Yang is concerned.

It would not be difficult to adjust a "new" instance of a character this way; simply call up some experience point value from a different database entry.

- Eddie

Oh wait, FF2US does have a form of experience scaling, doesn't it? That's right, now I remember. The database entries for the rejoin points with the alternate stats and experience are in fact placeholder values; only the equipment data gets copied over, and the average current party experience is used to determine rejoining characters' levels (with the aforementioned sanity check to prevent leveling down, as your super-boosted Kain there demonstrates). FF5 must've thrown me off; it doesn't have any system like that, mostly because it really doesn't need one (Lenna and Galuf always join at level 2, Faris always joins at level 3). Somehow I translated "FF5 doesn't need experience averaging" to "FF4 doesn't have it either", which of course is not the case.

So yeah, technically we're both right: there ARE duplicate database entries, and they ARE used, but the exp/level/stat data is NOT; only the equipment data is used.

His initial statement was "No" to everything I said about there being database duplicates. That's what I was referring to.

And I won my fictional bet! Hooray!

No, it doesn't. Sorry, Sky Render, but I learned more about this subject through elbow grease and experimentation on an actual SNES than you did with your data-mining with whatever emulator you were using.

Eddie is very, very close to the real answer.

This is going to be the topic of one of the future update endcaps. =)

Whatever. Quite frankly, I don't even care any more.

Here's a question: would Yang have more, less, or the same experience upon joining if when you got to Mysidia, you killed off the twins and Tellah and continued, assuming you gained exp during this? That's my lingering question. I suspect "more" but I'm not sure if the programmers would have bothered to take into account dead party members.

Regardless, the original question was why Kain could do Crits. And if I'm almost right like Brick said, then combining it with SkyRender's info provides the answer.

- Eddie

I cannot answer this yet. I mean, I can, but I won't.

I'm saving it for after the Dwarf Castle boss. It's an interesting tale both of the inner workings of FF2, and of my personal gaming experience with it.

I still don't know the answer to the crit question, though. Nobody has gotten one in the LP since I brought it up way earlier.

You know it's a bangin' LP when even the emcee gets caught up in a derailment.

During the last page and a half, I kept hearing the Bass rift from the game in my head. Try it yourself! It makes it much more fun!

I think I read something once that said Rydia's rejoin level is Tellah's departure level. Anything to that? I never tested it or anything but last aborted playthrough I tried to powerlevel Tellah right before he leaves to boost her level. But then I never got up the guts to face Dwarf Castle Boss, who terrorizes me to this day.

Okay, I did some testing on a whim. I boosted Cecil, Tellah, Palom, and Porom's exp to 9999999 in turn and decided to see what would happen when Yang joined up.



Somehow he was always level 18 when he joined up. So I decided to check the experience, and I noticed a small discrepancy in each case. A small experience amount roughly equal to the experience difference between each run's experience gained from fighting/not fighting certain battles. It seems that once characters join up with the party for the first time, they gain exp from then on even when they're not in the party. And of course, since I modified the base experience of each character instead of experience gained after each fight, Yang didn't get to super-godhood levels of strength from doing this.

Wow. That is amazing. Hamtaro really has a hold of you, eh? I'd argue that perhaps Fend-D would be more appropriate for Cecil, and I am appalled that you did not give Tellah Stickie. (though Tack-Q is hilarious in its own right)

Oh, and while I'm here, Brickroad, great LP from what little I've seen, I haven't read it all since that would take about 8 hours and I wanna go kill a Long Gui ._.

.... but I did read your Suikoden LP! All the way through! Because that game is awesome!

Not that FFIV isn't awesome, and yes, I will call it IV, because I'm too young for your SNES hijinks, so there.

I named them that way for comedic purposes. Cecil's name gets yelled out as a single-word utterance so much, you often have conversations start with "Hamha!" that way. I named Kain Hifhif so Cecil could sniff him out after he disappeared, Rydia is comically called BlashT, Rosa's Gasp-P (she gets kidnapped often enough for that to be appropriate, I'd say), and Edward is of course Jamout. I couldn't dub Tellah Stickie because that's 7 letters (though that was my main pick).

We speak English in this thread, not Hamster. >:[