Shining Force
Maximum Statistics Guide
Version 1.1
7-01-01

This guide is a strategy for the following games:
Shining Force

Contents:

1.      Version history
2.      Why max out characters?
3.      Statistics...what are they?
4.      Level 10 vs. Level 20 Promotions
5.      Maxing out your team
6.      General vs. Custom Characters
7.      Locations to level-up
8.      Comparison Statistics
9.      Beyond Promotion
10.Thanks



1       Version History

Version 1.0- First version of guide.
Version 1.1- Added "Beyond Promotion" section and moved "To Do" list to
section 8.  Added certain sites to Thanks section.



2.      Why max out characters?

This guide is useful to those people who absolutely must be a
perfectionist when playing an RPG.  If you want the best, most powerful
Shining Force team out there, you want to be sure that your team has
the maximum statistics possible.  You will find that by waiting until
level 20 to promote your team, and by having the patience to follow the
strategy presented in this guide, that you will be well rewarded for
your efforts.

This guide is NOT a walkthrough for Shining Force.  It is NOT a
character guide.  You will not find me writing about which character is
good, or bad, and why.  There is enough of that in other guides out on
the web.  To date, the strategy mentioned in this guide has not been
posted anywhere (as far as I know), and I felt it was something worth
sharing.  The actual comparison of level 10 to level 20 promotions has
not yet been discussed in detail with statistics backing them up.
These are unique to this guide.



3.      Statistics: what are they?

There are 5 basic statistics in this game that can change when you
level up a character: attack, defense, agility, HP, and MP.

Attack: How much damage the character can deal to an enemy.  This stat
can also be modified with weapons or items (such as the power ring or
power potion).

Defense: How much damage a character can absorb without losing HP.
This can be modified with items (such as a defense ring or defense
potion).

Agility: How quickly a character's turn occurs.  May also influence
evade. This can be modified with items (such as a speed ring or legs of
haste).

HP: How many hit points a character has.  When this reaches zero, the
character is dead and can not be revived until you find a priest. This
can be modified with items (such as the bread of life).

MP: How many magic points a character has.  When this reaches zero, the
character can not cast spells.  Some characters do not have MP.

Characters also have a Mobility stat, which is the number of steps he
or she can take in battle.  Land terrain can lower this, while the
mobility ring can raise this.  Since this stat is not influenced by
level-ups and stays fairly constant throughout the game, it will not be
discussed here.



4.      Level 10 vs. Level 20 Promotions

There often is some confusion as to when to promote a character.  In
general, the longer you wait to promote someone, the better that
character will be after promotion.  The minimum level you can promote
someone is Level 10; the highest a character can go before being forced
into promotion is Level 20.  Getting a character to level 20 may be
frustrating, but after promotion it is well worth the effort.



5.      Maxing out your team

This is the guide's main purpose: to provide the reader with a strategy
to boost your team to level 20 with your stats as high as they can go.

In battle, when a character is about to gain a level, select the "end
game" command.  This saves your game and when you start the game next,
you will still be in the battle and it will be that character's turn.
What does this mean?  This means that if your character gets a level-up
and gets a poor level (few or no stat bonuses), you can opt to reset
the game and get the level over again.  This method is tedious but
effective.  In this manner, you can control how your characters can
increase their stats.  For example, if Zylo gets a level-up which
provides 1 Defense, 1 Speed, and 1 HP, you could reset the game and get
the level again.  The second time he gets the same level, Zylo may gain
2 Attack and 2 HP instead.  Keep resetting until you get a level you
are satisfied with.

Before Promotion: As a general rule of thumb, I tend to require that my
non-magic using characters gain at least three points total per level,
and magic-users gain at least 4 points total per level.  By total stat
points, I mean you add up the stat points you get at a level-up (2
Attack, 1 Speed, and 2 HP would be 5 total stat points).  Usually I try
to get far more than 3 or 4 points (except for Hans who seems dead set
at getting 1 Agility for his first few levels) per level.  Often I can
get 5 or 6 points per level-up.  I'm not usually picky about which
stats go up.  If I have a choice between 2 Attack, 1 Speed, 1 HP; I
would pick this over a 3 Attack, since 4 total points > 3 total points.
See the next section (General vs. Custom Characters) for picky players.
This rule of thumb should hold true all the way to level 20.  Sometimes
this means resetting the game 20 times before getting that good level,
but that's the price you pay for perfection.  Only in rare
circumstances do I accept levels below the 3 / 4 minimum, but sometimes
this is unavoidable.

After Promotion:  After promoting your characters, get them to the
point where they're about to gain a level, save, then get their level a
few times to see what types of stats you can get.  Often after
promotion, you will see a great increase in stats at a level-up.  Try
not to be tempted into accepting that first level-up you get (which
almost always is far above the 3 / 4 stat point minimum you've been
used to at this point) and reset anyway to see what else you can get.
While a 3 Attack, 2 Defense, 3 Agility, 1 HP may look impressive at
first, there are usually much better level-ups out there lurking about.
I've seen some characters gain 10+ points in a single stat alone after
promotion!

By the time your post-promotion characters reach level 20, they tend to
be unstoppable if you take the time and have the patience to follow the
above strategy.



6.      General vs. Custom Characters

The strategy I have posted above is a way to have your characters
generally be a good team.  If you choose to, you may customize your
characters.  Take Tao, for example.  Most people would probably use Tao
for her magic and not for her attack power.  Thus, Defense and MP may
be important to you for Tao, but not Attack power.  Thus, to customize
her, you may ignore the rule of thumb mentioned in the previous section
and only accept levels that boost her Defense and/or MP.  For example,
you may gain a level with Tao that yields 3 Attack and 1 Speed only.
While this is 4 total stat points, a player customizing Tao may prefer
a level that gives 1 defense and 2 MP.  Despite the fact that this
level is only 3 total stat points, Tao gained stat points in the
important attributes and thus this level would be preferred over the 4
total stat point level.  In short, while leveling up, you may wish to
focus on some stats and not others if the other stats are not important
to you.  The Tao described here would eventually have an excellent
Defense and a lot of MP, but would likely have a lower-than-average
Attack power, Agility, and HP.



7.      Locations to level-up

Getting your team to level 20 too much work?  Hacking up a Dark Priest
only giving you 4 experience points?  Here are a few places where you
can really up your team before promoting them.

Chapter 3- Forest battle on the way to the bridge.  This battle (the
one right after you can get Zylo) is a great place because of the new
enemy: the Pegasus Knight.  By fighting these enemies, casting Egress,
and then fighting them some more, you can get your unpromoted party up
to level 12-13 with little difficulty.

Chapter 4- Castle battle.  This is another battle where the Silver and
Pegasus knights yield great experience for low-level people.  By this
time you've acquired enough new characters that need leveling-up where
Egressing a few times from this battle will leave everyone at level 13-
14.



8.      Comparison Statistics

This section provides you with the statistics to many of the Shining
Force Characters leveled-up in the fashion described above.  I used the
general strategy for all of these characters.  You may wish to compare
your team with the characters shown below to see how much of a
difference this method makes.  First a select group of the Shining
Force is presented at level 10 unpromoted.  The parentheses next to
each stat is what that stat would look like if the character was
promoted at level 10, weapon still equipped.  Below the character is
the same character at level 20, with their stats after promotion in
parentheses.  Thus, you can compare each character at level 10 and at
level 20 and see the difference.  Not all characters are shown since my
current team has many of them at level 13 and above.  Also, characters
who already join the group and are promoted (like Domingo) are not
shown.

NOTE: The level 20 comparisons will be coming soon, as soon as the team
gets there.

Select characters around level 10:

Level 10 Ken w/ Power Spear
Attack: 30 (26)
Defense: 10 (7)
Agility: 12 (9)
HP: 31 (23)

L. 10 Kokichi w/ Power Spear
Attack: 29 (26)
Defense: 11 (9)
Agility: 13 (10)
HP: 21 (15)

L. 10 Gort w/ Middle Axe
Attack: 28 (23)
Defense: 16 (13)
Agility: 11 (8)
HP: 21 (16)

L. 10 Guntz w/ Power Spear
Attack: 33 (29)
Defense: 22 (16)
Agility: 14 (11)
HP: 18 (13)

L. 10 Khris w/ Power Staff
Attack: 23 (20)
Defense: 11 (8)
Agility: 10 (8)
HP: 18 (14)
MP: 19 (16)

Level 11 Amon w/ Long Sword
Attack: 25 (22)
Defense: 14 (10)
Agility: 15 (12)
HP: 22 (17)

L. 11 Hans w/ Steel Arrow
Attack: 23 (20)
Defense: 9 (6)
Agility: 13 (10)
HP: 18 (13)

L. 11 Diane w/ Elven Arrow
Attack: 30 (27)
Defense: 11 (8)
Agility: 14 (10)
HP: 21 (15)

L. 11 Lowe w/ Power Staff
Attack: 24 (21)
Defense: 11 (8)
Agility: 11 (9)
HP: 20 (15)
MP: 25 (19)

L. 11 Anri w/ Power Staff
Attack: 21 (18)
Defense: 10 (7)
Agility: 14 (11)
HP: 13 (11)
MP: 27 (19)

L. 11 Luke w/ Middle Axe
Attack: 28 (24)
Defense: 18 (13)
Agility: 11 (8)
HP: 18 (14)

L. 11 Vankar w/ Power Spear
Attack: 29 (25)
Defense: 15 (11)
Agility: 14 (11)
HP: 34 (26)



Level 20 Characters before Promotion

(To be completed)



9.      Beyond Promotion

This section gives the stats of random characters who have been
promoted and gained some levels.  These characters are NOT from the
same file as the characters in section 9, so these simply represent one
possible future.  Remember, these levels are AFTER promotion.


L. 20 Arthur w/ Valkyrie
Attack: 76
Defense: 61
Agility: 69
HP: 81
MP: 30

L. 22 Zylo
Attack: 82
Defense: 64
Agility: 61
HP: 69

L. 22 Hero w/Chaos Breaker and White Ring
Attack: 85
Defense: 75
Agility: 52
HP: 77
MP: 13

L. 33 Bleu
Attack: 79
Defense: 88
Agility: 61
HP: 99



10.     Thanks

Thanks to www.gamefaqs.com for posting my guide.

Thanks to www.gamedirectory.f2s.com for posting my guide.

This guide was created by me, Crono LV99, and may be used at any site
with my permission.  Just ask first.  Contact info: [email protected].

End of Guide.

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