Damage in Vagrant Story

Question

In Square Enix's Vagrant Story there is a massive engine for crafting your own weapons out of components of current weapons, merging weapons, adding gems, etc etc.

I never actually made use of this as it was too confusing and I figured that the game would supply me with decent enough equipment to get through the game.

After the first 3-4 hours of the game (where I deal an average of 50 damage) I find that all my equipment does 1 damage. The only way I've been able to make my way through the game (particularly boss fights) is to use two chains that will slowly develop the damage. This eventually got too frustrating because if I missed a chain, the boss would turn around and kill me in one strike.

I started another game and actually tried to make use of the blacksmithy engine, but with no luck..

Am I missing something obvious or are your weapons meant to be this feeble beyond the first 10% of the game?

Answer 1

The crafting and damage systems are extraordinarily complex in Vagrant Story. It doesn't surprise me that if you didn't craft new weapons frequently you'd have a tough time doing damage. Even if you are, but you're not doing all you can to have optimal gear, it's still very tough.

The "Risk" concept in Vagrant Story is a bit weird too. The more you combo, the higher your risk goes - and this means that you'll hit harder but miss more often and be at greater risk for taking damage. I remember some of the last bosses in the game I had to max out my risk completely and do 99-long chains in order to do hardly any damage, and I was crafting and improving my gear frequently.

If you're keen on taking this challenging game on, I'd suggest following a guide and using some extreme patience :)

Answer 2

the whole crafting is there to give you the ultimate material in both weapon and armour to defeat the last boss with ease beside it with crafting you can get the ultimate type of both weapon and armour available in this game. if you have no idea about materials I have to say there are different type of materials that weapons and armours can be found during the game. the first is Leather represented with "L", Wood with "W", Bronze with "B", Iron with "I", Hagane with "H", Silver with "S" and finally Damascus with "D". you can find better performance from two same weapon with different material, for example: D>S>H>I>B>W

that was about material, now about the quality of the tool itself. we have many weapon and armour class in this lovely game. for example dagger, if you combine two daggers together you have a chance to upgrade your dagger, yes of course it's not based on random, it will follow a very beautiful rule. but you have no idea about bunch of names if I write them here. you should finish the game or at least proceed till last boss, then you should go to farm and upgrade your weapons and armours.

the most important thing in this game is the elemental rules. you should get to know about what boss you are fighting, with what element that boss damage, and what element is it's weakness, then pick the right armour to avoid boss damage and the right weapon to defeat that boss. this rule is about all Units that are in this beautiful game include bosses.

Answer 3

I've picked this game up again on the PSVita the last couple of weeks (with much more luck) and thought I would add to the other answers the importance of switching weapons throughout the game so that you're building the class affinities appropriately.

As a bare minimum, you want to have at least 3 weapons specializing in a maximum of two adjacent class affinities, which should be swapped around depending on the enemy types you're fighting against so that the affinities will rise and become more powerful against those enemies. What I found the first few times that I played was that I was using a single weapon the entire time, which was causing all of the affinities to average out at between -2 and 2, making them useless against everything.

Elemental affinities are just as important, but the issue of having the wrong element for a weapon can normally be mitigated or dissolved by spells that raise more appropriate affinities temporarily, and / or adding jewels that increase certain elements.

Weapon type again is important but on a much smaller scale. The type also seems to depend on which part of an opponent you are hitting, which gives you more breathing room. For example, Dragons don't like Edged weapons against their tails but they also don't like Piercing weapons against their heads.

As for crafting - I've realized the main goal here is to retain the affinities that you've built up on older equipment made of lower grade materials like Bronze and try combine those high-affinity blades with superior materials that you've found more recently. For example, I've been using a Bronze Polearm as my Human weapon up until now, which I first combined with an Iron sword to convert it to an Iron + Edged weapon (better against Humans). I was then able to combine that with a Hagane sword that I recently found to create a Hagane Greatsword with 40+ Human affinity.

As mentioned at the beginning - as long as you're switching weapons every time you encounter a different class of enemy and sticking to those weapons for the classes you've allocated them to, gameplay becomes much, much easier. I've been doing 40-70 damage the entire way through now instead of 0-2 and Vagrant Story is really enjoyable.