Name codes - type in either "Music/on" or "Fireseal" to access the sound test or the secret level Dragon's Haven. Beyond this, all you really get is a bunch of helpful hints to go along with your game.
Tip #1 - Watch your cash flow. You can't wage a war without money to provide for your army. The only person who crusades across the land for free is your Lord. Everyone else, no matter how noble, demands to be paid for their work. The plus side to this is that your squads in the barracks aren't charging you anything (maybe they just want combat pay). So take a look at the budget chart that's on your toolbar to see if you are getting more tribute than you're paying in fees. If you aren't, try to finish the stage before noon of the next day. But this usually isn't the case until later in the game where your groups actually become costly. Most of the time the tribute you recieve is much higher than the amount of money it takes to deploy your groups. Because of this, collecting tribute is an excellent way to gain money. However, sticking around means that you have to continually fight off enemy troops. In the early stages, there are few enough enemy groups that you can actually kill them all off, return all your deployed troops back to your base (so you don't have to pay them), and then wait around as you collect tribute. But in later stages, there are just too many enemy groups for this to be feasable. This is where you can use the Sunbeam/Moonbeam trick. These items turn the clock to noon and midnight respectively. You can force a day to pass by using the Moonbeam to make it midnight, wait a few seconds (you MUST wait a few seconds or it won't work), then use a Sunbeam. This will simulate a passage of one day and you'll collect tribute. Obviously do this when you've liberated most or all the towns for you to collect maximum money. Note that the more tribute you collect, the less bonus Goth you'll receive for beating the stage. But this is really irrelevant, as multiple tribute collections more than makes up for one bonus pay. Also note that the 4th and subsequent tributes you collect will also decrease your reputation bar.
Tip #2 - The power of pause. Pausing the game is very important in this game. Why? Because if you don't pause and you're sitting there idle trying to think about what to do, enemy units are still on the move! Make it a habit to pause the game as soon as a stage starts so you have all the time in the world to decide which groups to deploy where. Also, make it a habit to push the "cancel" button when the message, "[Character X]'s unit has encountered the enemy." By doing so, you'll pause the game before the battle starts, allowing you to check the enemy's stats, check your stats, heal, exchange weapons, whatever. Whenever you need to select a lot of things, move a whole bunch of units, or just think things through, PAUSE your game!
Tip #3 - Jokers wild. You may have noticed how obscenely powerful and useful tarot cards can be. But you can only collect them from liberating towns and temples. So how to collect more when you already liberated everything? Let the enemy recapture your towns and temples so you can reliberate them again for more cards? HELL NO! Your reputation will suffer way too much if you do that. Instead, stock up on Joker cards so you have a healthy supply before each stage. You can use them to get a random tarot card. Keep the strong ones, and ditch the stupid ones. You'll find out as you progress that you almost always want a World and Fool card before fighting a boss, and strong attacking cards are equally important.
Tip #4 - Fly me to the moon. Flying units are very, very useful in this game. Why? Because they can move anywhere on the map very quickly and don't suffer from any kind of terrain. I highly suggest you make most, if not all, your units have either low or high sky movement. You can do this by either putting a Hawk Man-class character in your group, or using a flying monster (Wyvern, Wyrm, Gryphon, Cockatris) in your group. Having them in a group usually makes that group have sky movement.
Tip #5 - Boot me away. The 7 League Boots, or "Boots," item is very useful. They allow you to teleport one of you groups to any liberated city, but it doesn't work with liberated temples. There are so many situations where this can be helpful. You can teleport a group to a city that is about to be taken over by the enemy. If the enemy has just beaten a city protecting unit and they are about to take it over, you can use the Boost to teleport another group back onto the city. If a much stronger enemy group is about to fight a weak unit, you can teleport one of your stronger groups in between them and have the strong group face off with the enemy. Finally if you want a specific character to face off with a specific boss, you can liberate a town close to the Boss's base, then teleport the special character there. From there, you can either let the special character march off to the boss, or you can switch them into a unit you're really planning on using. Either way, you save a hell of a lot of time and effort.
Tip #6 - Only the best treasure for me please. There is hidden buried treasure in every stage in the game. What you pick up is completely random, so you may get a really powerful weapon or you may get crap. Because of this, it is much better to collect buried treasure one at a time, after the stage is completed. This way, if you don't like what you got, you can reset (or reload if you're using the ROM) and try again. A list of what are the only items I think are worth keeping can be found here.
Tip #7 - Class reversion. For the Fighter and Amazon classes, remember that most class changes are not permanent and you can revert back if you need to. You may have to do so if you think a character isn't progressing very well as his or her current unit. For instance, Gilbert joins as a Beast Man, but he unfortunately joins with fairly high ALI, making it very difficult to upgrade him along the Beast Man path. If you feel his ALI is too high to reasonably continue with the Beast Man upgrades, why not change him into a Knight and then turn him into a Paladin? Same thing with your Wizards who have gotten their ALI too high. If you know they can't turn into Mages, don't let them stay as Wizards! Turn them into Doll Mages and pursue the Doll Master class. Keep this class reversion in mind as you try to optimize your army.
Tip #8 - The wonders of neutral undead. The easiest way to manipulate a character's ALI and CHA values is by fighting neutral undead characters after the stage is completed. Why? Because it's so easy to kill them; all it takes is one hit with a white magic attack. The Pogrom Forest is the first place you can take advantage of this. The only neutral encounters you'll face while roaming the large forest area are undead characters, all at level 9. Destroying them should give the killing character a nice boost in ALI and CHA that early in the game. Later when you reach Antalia (the stage you find Yushis), you can also fight level 20 neutral undead. Killing them should give you a very high ALI and CHA boost. Just make sure the character you plan on using is capable of doing some kind of white magic attack. Fighting neutral undead is also good way to gain levels for units you DON'T want their ALI and CHA to change. Say you got Warren's ALI and CHA to meet the requirements for the mage class after the second stage, but he's not at the right experience level yet. Rather than risk continuing to use him in battle, where he could possibly kill more enemies and alter his ALI and CHA, stick him with a character who you plan on using to kill the neutral undead. Make sure Warren CANNOT kill the undead. The character you want to kill the undead will do so and gain the ALI/CHA boost you wanted him/her to, and Warren will get part of the experience points for being present in battle. But since Warren can never kill the undead, this ensures that he will gain levels, but his ALI and CHA values will remain constant. Get the idea? Fighting neutral undead can be useful for characters you don't want their ALI and CHA to change as well. Finally, killing off neutral characters in general will sometimes net you free items they randomly drop. It could be crap items, or you could be really lucky and nab some extra Royal Crowns, Undead Staves, Undead Rings, Stone of Dragos, ALI. potions, etc.
Tip #9 - No overkill. What does that mean? Well later in the game, you'll probably recruit many characters who are much stronger than your generic troops. Characters like the Generals (Tristan and Debonair), the 3 Dragoons (Slust, Fenril, and Fogel), the Mage Saradin, the Muse Rauny, etc... they are all very powerful. Please don't put them all in one kill-bot unit! That's such a waste of attack power that can be more equally spread out across several units. Do you really need all 3 Dragoons in the front row? Make each one be a leader of his or her own powerful group. It's more effective that way.
That's it for tips, check out my other sections to learn what charcters can do and the road to the best ending.
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