Riglord Saga 2 FAQ
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Written by timchen, August 2010
If you have questions, contact me at [email protected]
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Content:

I.      Overview
II.     Battle System
III.    Characters and Skills
IV.     Story and Walkthrough
V.      Treasure and equipment
VI.     Special Study
VII.    References and Thanks

--------------------------
I. Overview:

Riglord Saga 2 is a turn-based strategic RPG published by Micro Cabin
as the sequel to the original Riglord Saga on Sega Saturn.
Unfortunately this game is not translated into English and is never
published in North America. It is an old favorite of mine, and since I
cannot find an English FAQ anywhere on the internet I decided to
contribute one.

In the game you start playing as Mieu and Rusty (not a great name is
it?) Your home land is attacked by some mysterious guy and in no time
you are sent for help. Can you gather a force to stop the conquest and
save the world?

The game mainly consists of two parts: battle and exploration. In
battle you and the enemy move alternatively. The goal of the battle
can either be to defeat certain boss, to reach a certain place, or to
kill all the enemy. The exploration consists of moving on the map or
in town, getting information, and shopping.

The game is almost linear but not strictly; there are side quests
which can give you items and characters that need not be completed in
strict order or even be completed at all. The plot, however, is
predetermined and one can only follow it.
----------------------------
II. Battle System:

The battle field consists of plaquettes. Every unit occupies one
plaqutte. In the battle, you can control all your characters (up to 8
of them) in any order in your turn. You first move the character (the
maximum distance is determined by the move power of the character) and
then you can choose an action. The action must be from the character's
skill trees and some of the skills would require some remaining move
power to be used. Any skill must have a target in range in order to be
used.

The effect of the actions can either be immediate (such as an attack),
lasting until the next turn (defensive skills), or durational
(supportive magic). The skill can take effect on either the party, the
opponent, or in the rare case both. Some skills affact the ground as
well. The range of the action can be classified as follows:
1. single: a single target within a certain distance from you.
2. surrond: all targets within a certain distance from you.
3. straight line: multiple targets on a straight line with a certain
length, in one of the four directions.
4. 3 straight lines: 3 straight lines instead of one.
5. bomb:  first you choose the landing point of the bomb within a
range, then all targets within a certain distance to the landing point
will be affected.
6. self: only act on the character himself.
All the distances mentioned above are given specific to different
skills.

Another factor which affects the range of the skill is the level of
penetration. There are three levels:
A. up to an enemy: the range stops at an enemy.
B. up to an obstacle: the range stops at treasure boxes or walls.
C. throughout: the range does not stop.

One last factor that affects everything: the height and slope. In the
battle field every point would have a height index. It would require a
larger amount of move power to go across a larger ascend/descend. It
the slope is too great then it can be either that only flying units
can go through or even nobody can go through. If you stop on a
plaqutte with too large a slope you will slide down after you finish
the action. Sliding down will hurt ground units. (Interestingly flying
units would also slide down but they would not be hurt.) There are
falling regions as well, where flying units can just traverse and
ground units are forbidden. If a ground unit somehow ends up in the
falling region, it will fall and results in instant death. A flying
unit will fall as well if it is frozen. The height and slope can
sometimes be altered by supportive magic and certain skills. For some
skills the damage, hit rate and the range are also affected by the
height.
-----------------------------------------------------
III. Characters and Skills:

All skills belong to some skill tree. Every character has a number of
skill trees and they are free to use the skills in the skill tree up
to their technical level in that skill tree. There are two levels
associated to a skill: the learn level and the use level. The former
is the level that the skilled can be learned. If a skill is learned by
any party member then it can be used by other party members who share
the skill tree and have a technical level equal or higher than the use
level. In the game only the use level are explicitly shown.

There are also skills which do not have a learn level; those skills
cannot be learned. Some of them can be stolen from enemies (using the
female thief), while the remaining has to be created via "fusion".

Fusion is the process to combine one physical attack and one magical
attack to form a new skill, each with a certain elemental property.
One can try and error, or take advantage of the "skill combination
books" that one can found throughout the game. What the book did is
that it told you the right combinations which can produce fusion
skills and also keep some skills off if they have already been used.
With the skill books the time spent trying can be significantly
reduced. Although in the end the combination is fixed and can just be
provided here, I found it more interesting for one to try out
themselves. Here I would just list the right combination of elemental
property (the former would be the property of the physical attack
while the latter would be the property of the magical attack.)
---------------
Wind+Thunder
Thunder+Water
Water+Earth
Earth+Fire
Fire+Wind

Light+Darkness
Darkness+Spirit
Spirit+Mind
Mind+Star
Star+Light
---------------
As one can see they form two independent cycles. All the strongest
attacks are fusion skills so one should spend some time to get them.
Also, Note that the attacks without any elemental property cannot be
used to fuse.

Now let me turn back to the skill trees. I will list all the every of
them and comment:
-----------------------
Sword skills
user: Mieu, Hawkeye
Short range physical attack. Range is ok. Hard to train in the initial
stage. The most useful attack probably is the stolen "the dance of
swords" which has a range of surrond 4 and penetration B.
-----------------------
Archery skills
user: the female thief, Nazuna
Long range physical attack. The hit rate depends a lot on the relative
height. The damage is in general lower than the short range attacks
but the coverage is a lot better, especially at higher levels.
-----------------------
Ninja skills
user: Asuka
Short range physical attack. Easier to train than the sword skills
(see chapter VI, however) The range of the skills are comparable to
the sword skills, but Asuka seems to have higher strength and thus
making the Ninja skills appear more powerful.
-----------------------
Dragon skills
user:Mieu
Short range physical attack. The range is among the smallest. Due to
the nature of the dragon it is pretty powerful. Mieu's attack is far
more powerful using the dragon skills than the swords.
-----------------------
Bird skills
user: Camue, Hawkeye
Mainly short range physical attack, but some supportive/healing skills
as well. Not as powerful as sword or ninja skills.
-----------------------
Bear skills
user: Camue
mainly short range physical attack. It is weak and the hit rate is low.
-----------------------
Thief's skills
user: female thief
stealing and supportive skills. One can steal items, skills, money,
HP, MP, and even level from the enemy. One can also throw items or
money at an enemy to cause damage. Last but not the least, one can
throw HP or MP at other party members to recover.
-----------------------
Cannon skills
user: Tatara
Ranged attack and some mind attack. I never feel that mind attack is
useful in anyway (kill them all is quicker and harder to miss); the
ranged attack does good damage but is somewhat easy to miss. It
requires a lot of moving power as well.
-----------------------
Book skills
user: Anju
Hybrid, with both attack/healing magic and physical attack. The
physical attack is not impressive (due to the STR of Anju) and one
mainly uses the magical attack.
-----------------------
Spirit spells
user: Camue
Hybrid, with attacks and healing/supportive magic. Camue can use it to
transform to either a bird or a bear. Not really useful as Camue is
better in his animal forms.
-----------------------
Attack Magic
user: Rusty, King
magical attack. Unlike physical attack, magical attack has a 100% hit
rate (unless the target uses the magic shield then the hit rate is 0%
for any magic.) Also, you never need moving power to perform magic. In
general it is quite powerful, but very hard to level up in the
beginning (due to low earned exps per use and the limitation of MP)
and the starting range is nothing to brag about. However, the range of
the higher level skills are the best in the game. The hell fire, for
example, learned at LV 20, has a range of surround 6 and penetration C.
Nevertheless, in the later stage of the game, as the power of magical
attacks are determined by adding up a certain amount tp your magical
attacking power, will start to appear to be dominated by physical
attacks where the power is your strength multiplied by certain factor.
(physical attacks can often kill the un defended enemy with one single
hit whereas magical attack requires two hits.)
-----------------------
Holy Magic
user: Rusty, King
Healing and some magical attack, with light elemental property. It is
the only efficient way to recover multiple characters' HP at the same
time. The magical attack has good power as well. It's easier to train
as exps are given more generously and you can use it on your own party.
-----------------------
Support Magic
user: Mieu, Nazuna, King
Some mind attacks and supportive magic. In my opinion, the most
important skill in the game that often get ignored. The mind attacks
are of no practical use, but the protect shield and the magic shield
are very effective defenses when your characters are busy
killing/recovering. With the help of enlarge (or even better, multiple-
enlarge), the enemy can hardly hurt you and non-boss enemy is very
likely to be killed by a single hit.

Let me elaborate. Enlarge is a very unbalanced skill. It make your
character into the "big" status, where strength, defense, magical
attack, and magical defense are all boosted. There is a even better
version, multiple-enlarge, which works on plural party members. It is
a skill which I would use from the start to the end.

The support magic is comparatively easy to level as the usage of MP,
unlike other magic, does not grow as you get to higher-level skills.
-----------------------
Defense
user: all
Defenive skills, only works on himself. There are 4 types of them:
physical defenses, magical defenses, attack booster, and recovery.
The only magical defense, the magic shield, is 100% effective, but all
the physical defenses either works partially or by chance. The best
physical defense, speedy dodge, can only be stolen from the enemy. The
attack booster works in the next turn.
-----------------------

Now let me list the characters and discuss what they are supposed to do:
-----------------------
Mieu
skill tree: sword, dragon, support magic, defense (omitted from here on)

She cannot use the sword skills when being a dragon and vice versa.
She has much higher HP, strength and defense being a dragon (although
she can't wear either weapon or armor as a dragon so this might level
a bit at late stages) and moves better, so the dragon form is almost
always preferred. The problem is that with half of the HP gone she
would be forced to transform back to human, so she is still not good
as a tank. I would say she is a main attacker+supporter.
-----------------------
Rusty
skill tree: holy magic, attack magic

He's physical defense is weak and magical defense is strong. Under
normal play (see chapter 6) the main use of him would be healing. The
attack magic would be useful if properly trained, though.
-----------------------
Asuka
skill tree: ninja

He's physically capable and will be one of the main attackers.
-----------------------
Nazuna
skill tree: archery, supportive magic.

Her strength is not so good and I often find myself using her mainly
for the supportive magic, enlarge to be specific.
-----------------------
Female thief (sorry don't know her name)
skill tree: theft, archery

She is the better archer, and large range physical attack has its
uses. The more obvious reason of carrying around would be that she is
the only person who can steal skills from the enemy, which is very
important when facing new enemies. She can provide some MP in
emergency as well.
-----------------------
Camue
skill tree: spirit spells, bird, bear

He is a druid. He can only use one of the skill trees (except
defense), depending on which form he is in. He is meant to be a scout
in the bird form and a tank in the bear form. While for the former he
did a decent job, the latter didn't really hold up. Again with half HP
gone he would be forced to transform back to human, and he cannot wear
any armor or weapon in animal forms. Adding those together, the attack
power of the bear is mediocre, and the durance is not so good either.
The only benefit of using him as a tank could be that he will recover
some HP (like 20% or so) every turn in animal forms.
-----------------------
Tatara
skill tree: cannon

He's strength and defense is quite good, but has a weakness of fire
which is horrible. He does not move well, either.  The cannon skill
tree has a lower hit rate than the sword or ninja, thus make him less
usable. He's range is better though, if you don't move him much.
-----------------------
Anju
skill tree: book

She is more toward a sorcerer than a warrier. Her magic attack power
is decent, with some healing she comes in handy. She's never a
decisive role of any battle, though.
-----------------------
King
skill tree: attack magic, holy magic, support magic

He's magical attack power is among the best. In addition, he can use
all kind of magic, what else can I say?
-----------------------
Hawkeye
skill tree: sword, bird

He's a good attacker with some supportive skill from the bird's skill
tree. He is usable and balanced, but since his appearance is late one
may not bother.
-----------------------

Among all the characters, I think Nazuna, Tatara, and King are
optional. They may not join the party if certain action are done
differently. See the walkthrough for details.

IV. Story and Walkthrough:
Here I would outline the battles and the story. Let me divide them
into chapters.

1. Departure from home land

1A. practice battle for Mieu and Rusty:
Mieu and Rusty are practicing under the supervision of Mieu's father.
An easy fight meant to make the battle system familiar.

1B. Fight at the border
Some soiders at the border hold them up. Time to illustrate how to
take advantage of the terrain! (see chapter 6)

1c. on the leave
Talk to the woman/captain in the port to be transported to the
Japanese contry.

2. Save the ninja
2A. Battle when arriving the ninja village. Save Asuka.
2B. On the road to the ninja house, there is a canyon in between. Use
the "float" magic to go through or use the dragon to carry others.
2C. Battle in the ninja house. Be careful to the traps and the mind
attack.

3. Gathering fellow team members
Here the order can be chosen at will. One can go west and get the
druid or go east to get the thief. The cave which Nazuna sleeps in can
be explored any time too.
3A.(i) The druid village: save Camue and his girl friend. The women
and childen of the village are kidnapped. Let's go up the mountain and
save them!
(ii) the mountain road. Beware of the falling region.
(iii) the star fortress. Be sure to get all the treasue boxes before
killing all the enemy or rescue the hostage. Enter again for the kids
and boss fight.
(iv) talk to one of the villager to get a skill combination book.

3B. (i) go to the pub and talk. You would be drugged and get prisoned.
The female thief would come to rescue.
(ii) fight in the courthouse. Be sure to steal the "bounce back"
defensive skill from the boss.
(iii) fight on the bridge. The bridge is set on fire. The party has to
break out in limited time.

3C. Nazuna's cave. Use the float magic. one of the treasure box
contains another skill book.

4. The hidden village and the cannon man
4A. go through the mountain road near the courthouse. This time a
female ninja would show up. Defeat her to get the necessary item to go
through. The treasure box at the far south contains "Jade of the
Gods", which would replenish 10% HP at the start of every turn.
4b. fill the water bucket
Talk to the girl in the village and she would ask you a favor. Fill
the water bucket in the weapon powder warehouse.
4C. The enemy sneak attacked the warehouse and set up a fire. destroy
the bucket and set off the water before the fire hit the big
explosive. If succeed, Tatara would join. If you retreat in this
fight, Tatara would die in the factory and he cannot join. One of the
treasure box contains another skill book.

5. Go through the barrier and face the first big boss!
5A. the cave of barriers contains three barriers. They can be broken
by beating the 3 bosses from the ninja house, the courthouse, and the
star fortress. Therefore technically one can completely ignore the
previous chapter and come here. Notice the reinforcement points. It is
the nastiest thing in the game, as enemies coming in can move
immediately, making staying close to those points very dangerous.
5B. Fight against Galzard
The first floor of the fortress shouldn't be hard. Go upstairs and
face Galzard, the bad guy attacked the dragon kingdom in the
beginning. With protect and magic shield on it should be a piece of
cake. Remember to steal the speedy dodge from him.
5c.walk to the port, talk to the same female captain and sail to
another continent. After the fight, Galzard was called and escaped,
while Mieu followed him on her own and was captured.

6. Run away from the seven wise men's tower.
In the prison she met Anju, the daughter of the curator of the great
magic library.
6A. Escape from the tower. Easy fight.
6B. Another mountain road. Ignore the left side for the time being as
we would come back later. Among those treasure boxes there may be a
skill book, but I am not sure.
6c. Go to the port and have the reunion.
6d. Go to the library. Anju would have a fight with her father.

7. The legendary sorcerer
Here we have some freedom as well. The main storyline tells us to go
back to the tower. Nevertheless, we can find another companion which
would strengthen the party quite a bit before that.
7A. The deadly desert
Here everyone loses 10% HP at the start of the turn. Note the dragons
here have high defense and have strong defense against fire, so be
prepared to have some dog fight. They would also use the concave magic
and make it very hard to walk. Try to make to the exit at the South
end as fast as possible.
7B. The maze of the magician
There are some constraints about this battle. Firstly, the legendary
sorcerer is somehow trapped here and is transformed to look exactly
like the evil magician, so you cannot hit all the dummies as they may
just be him. In fact, what always happens is that you would kill him
when you killed the second dummy. On the other hand, the rule
specifies that you cannot go outside the track that was scammed
through before the battle begins. If you do that 4 times you are also
out. You can retreat any number of times you want though. To beat the
challenge is actually very easy. You just wait in the beginning
position, maybe move forward a little bit (on the track of course) and
wait for the real magician to come. Use the magic shield (the defense
skill) all the time than he has no way to hurt you. Once he isn near
enough, use arrows to finish him. Don't worry about his magic skill;
you have plenty of time to steal it from others later.
7C. The deadly desert... again. Just go back to where we are from. As
soon as possible.

8. Final fight against Galzard!
8A. the mountain road
Now you can push the trunk and go to the left side.
8B. The 7 wise men's tower, front entrance
This may easily be the hardest fight in the whole game, if we
disregard the trial dungeons. 4 reinforcement points, all at the
position that can directly do damage, with archers on the aisle on the
second floor, shooting down. Slowly moving forward with patience. I
would use 4 members of the party just to block the reinforcement
points and use the remaining to get to the treasure boxes, all after
cleaning up the archers of course.
8C. Facing Galzard, one last time
This time his skill are boosted quite a bit. Be sure to steal "the
dance of the swords" from him, as it is easily the most useful skill
in the sword skill tree. Again with both shields on, it shouldn't be
difficult.
It happens that the 7 wise men have just left for something, and
Galzard is what we could get here. However as we went out, all the
people in the port are killed. How can we catch up and what are they
aiming at?

9. Awaken the Wing of Light
9a. look out in the library. We would find there is a secret passage
in his office, behind the bookshelf. down stairs, we can find a skill
book in the treasure box, and another one on the near book shelf. just
look at the book shelf for a couple of times. The surprising here is
that there is another dungeon/secret passage in the library.
9B . Walk through the secret passage
Head in and walk through. All the switches here would turn on a bridge
connecting various islands. You have to use a flying character to get
to the switch though. The easiest way, still, is to use float again.
9c. At the other end of the tunnel we returned to the world map. There
is a town near by. Talking to the Elder in the town, he would give you
information about the Wing of light, which is supposed to be a flying
ship, and an ancient key, which can open the door of the pyramid.
There is a magic ball or something hidden in the pyramid that is
essential to start up the Wing of Light.
9D. The deadly desert again... now head to the right.
9E. The pyramid... it seems to me that one has to enter the pyramid
two times to get the treasure, as try to open one of the door would
open the other instead. Inside the treasure box there is another skill
book. On the upper middle part of the map, there is a steep stair step
and nobody seems to be able to go across. Use either the concave or
convex magic near by and see how it can work. On the second floor you
will have to face eight statue at the same time. Now you can see how
enlarge can be a very troublesome magic for the opposing side...
destroy them with care.
9F. Hurry back through the library, enter the temple of the seabed.
In the temple there are a few  floors which can move up or down by
adjusting the corresponding devices. The quickest way to get to all of
the treasure boxes and through would be to align all the floors at the
height above the entrance. Try a bit and you would know what I mean
quite easily. Put the magic ball on the avatar and the Wing of Light
is awakened!
As a side note, there is one very interesting creature here, which
uses a dark attack magic that affects both sides. It seems the effect
is to kill anyone within the range with the lowest HP. Nevertheless,
unless some party member is somewhat injured, what we could see is
that the creature is killing its companion or worse, itself. How funny.
As another side note, you may already find out at this point that
there is no single dark magic that could be learned. Indeed all the
dark magic has to be stolen from the enemy. Since the fusion skills
need those magic one had better get them all.

10. Getting back the dragon castle!
10a. with the Wing of Light we immediately fly back to the Riglord
continent. However, there are some strange things happening, a door
appearing on the top of the mountain, and the Wing of Light loses
power and crashes. On the way back to the castle, villagers just hate
us as they thought we were traitors, or at best, cowards who escaped.
10B. Fight in the castle
Notice the girl there won't take any magical damage, even skills with
elemental properties. Other than this the battle should be quite
straight forward. In the basement we meet a boss we don't know. Just
get the treasure and get rid of him.

11. Meet Hawkeye and going across the canyon
11A. Go through the canyon, you would find very few enemies and at the
end of the battle, you ended up at the port and Hawkeye showed up and
explained the illusion. He has a way to clear it but we must get back
the port first. (Nowadays there is indeed something called Hawkeye...
quite intriguing)
11B. Fight at the port
Nothing special, just remember to get to the treasure. One skill book
resides here.
11C. Go through the canyon again. Now it becomes a little bit more
challenging. Beware of the large range mind attacks.
11D. East and west forest
There are just some treasure boxes in them. Go and get them and
retreat if you like. in the west forest there is another skill book.

12. Recovering Queen's land.
12a. Go into the Ragrose tower through the town. Talk to the people in
the house and you can get another skill book.
12B. Beat Ragrose! This one is actually easier than the 7 wise men's
tower as the reinforcement points are pretty far away. Get the
treasure (another skill book) and go inside. Inside there is a real
tower. You can try to make the archer fall as it is pretty fun.
Anyway, Ragrose, the green guy, is good at magic, so take out your
magic shield (the magic one, not the defense) and it should be a piece
of cake.

13. Fixing the Wing of Light.
In order to get to the 7 wise men who are at the strange door, we need
a way to get there. We had a way some time before... As Hawkeye's
brother is a scholar expertised in ancient magic, we might as well
find him for help. He is now in the ancient remains.
13A. The ancient remains Fight in (and steal the skills!) You can take
several looks at the statue inside but nothing interesting seems to
happen.
13b. we found Hawkeye's brother and brought him to the Wing of Light.
He said he needs the blue print of the ship which should resides in
the library. Get to the library, read the shelf where previously we
found the skill book, and it would say that it requires two
constituents. One we can found in the secret passage (just walk in, no
fight) and the other one, after getting back to Hawkeye's brother, is
at the Samorsa island. Go to the port and take a ship there by, again,
talk to the same person.
13C. Samorsa island
get all the treasure boxes, then enter the cave at the top. Inside the
cave remember to go to the deepest place and get the second constituent.
13d. Go back to the Wing of Light and boom! it is now revived and
fully functional! One can press x to call it and press c to land. two
secret towns with trial dungeons and one secret mine are now available
to explore. One can also set to find the best weapon for Asuka.

14. Hunting down the 7 wise men
14A. If you are ready, go through the door of dimensions in the
mountains. The graphics here is really ugly so we should try to leave
as soon as possible. Here the enemy are quite strong and it is best to
attack their weakness. Find it out by using the female thief's failed
fusion skill.
As yet another side note, there is a monster which uses the great
dragon shock waves, which only affects ground units. In this
battlefield normal people would be floating. How funny.
14B. Path to the altar (two parts)
Nothing special, just collect the treasure, steal the skills if you
haven't already.
14C. The chaos avatar
The seven wise men conjure up 7 monsters to fight. They are somehow
linked as you kill the monster, the corresponding man dies. Notice
that the monster knew the strongest attack magic skill which has a
range of surround 7 and penetration C. It is a must-get, although we
won't have much use for it...
The last side note: those monsters can only use one physical attack:
the earth-cracking punch from the ninja skill. It only affects ground
units so...

15. The real bad guy and the final fight
15a. for some unknown reason after coming back saving the world, Anju
suggests us to go to the library. This is really the only place where
she suggests anything. Go to the library, and we would find the
curator is actually behind the seven wise men! (Oh my, who cares?) As
he jump into the lava, strangely he didn't die and became a spirit. It
turned out the 7 wise men are not dead enough and the force of chaos
is out of control. We must go back into the chaos crystal and finish
them once and for all.
15B. The final fight
Again 7 bosses. But now they can use both the strongest attack magic
and the strongest holy magic. Fortunately they can't do omegahealing
otherwise it could be a long fight... (well, even that may not be a
problem if you finish the trial dungeon and get all the treasure. With
the items and proper training Asuka can kill them in one hit...)
With both shields on, this can only be a lengthy battle, not a hard one.
And congratulations! You 've just beat the game!
---------------------------------------------
V. Treasure and Equipment
In this section I would discuss the generals of buying equipment and
hunting for treasure. It turns out that most of the treasure are found
in the treasure boxes in the battlefield. Only a few of them are
obtained via talking with someone or investigating certain places, and
I shall list them here:

1. Talk with a villager in the druid village after rescuing the women
and children. You can get a skill book.
2. investigate the book shelf in the secret room in library (ie, the
room with treasure boxes) and after several times of investigation you
can get another skill book.
3. Talk in one of the houses in queen's land just before entering the
Ragrose tower and you can get another skill book.
4a. Get the treasure box in the courthouse on the apex. You cannot get
it unless you have all three flying units in your team. use grab and
drop to put people up and line your men to avoid sliding down.
4b. Talk to a guy in the druid village. He would say he can make the
legendary sakura snow samurai sword from the metal you get from the
treasure box, but he would need a burning stove with high temperature.
4c. Now go to Tatara's village and investigate the stove. Go back to
the druid village and talk to the same guy again. The samurai sword
will be ready.

Note that all the item listed above has some time constrait; before or
after the time frame the item would be gone forever.

Now we turn to equipment. The first thing to notice is that the dragon
and the bird/bear can only equip the special item-- armor and weapon
are meaningless for them. Therefore, when you consider purchasing, put
them to the lowest priority.

On buying equipments, I would recommend not to buy any if possible.
The worst thing to do is to upgrade whenever you can, as this depletes
your cash too quickly. While the cash is not useful unless you use it
to buy something, it is better used later, on the armor that you could
use toward the end. If you must buy something, buy the most expensive
ones instead a bunch of crappy armor for everyone. Chances are you
would be throwing them away very soon.

In general, if we have to make a choice, I would recommend that we
equip to boost the stats that are already strong for any character,
instead of making up their weaknesses. I usually find that if a
character, say, Rusty, who's defense is weak in the first place, does
not benefit much even if we try to boost his defense. However, if we
boost his magical defense further then many magical attacks just
cannot hurt him and we can focus his defense strategy on physical
defenses. However, if a character has an elemental weakness (for
example, Tatara is afraid of fire), it is best to find an equipment
which enhances the defense to that element. Otherwise, he would be
very likely to be killed in one turn with an attack of that elemental
property.

Some armor contain special effects. Sometimes they boost magical
attack, sometimes they boost magical defense, sometimes they even
lower your stats. Beware of those cursed items. Some weapon have
serious side effect that we can only tell from the description (or by
experimenting.) Be sure not to use them any more if you accidentally
wear them. (Some drain your life as you attack and some make you fall
asleep... lol)

If you find a certain battlefield hard, it may be worthwhile to change
all the equipment to be of the elemental property that is common in
the attacks of the creature there. I think it is a 50% reduction or
something like that, so it is very effective.

Now we come to the special item. In the early stage of the game, you
may find all the special item mediocre and does not make much
difference. However, as the story goes on you would get some useful
items. Let me list them below:
Dragon fang: +20% critical hit
The heart of an expert: +20% hit rate
The Jade of Gods: recover 10% HP every turn
The Stone of Sages: recover 10% MP every turn
Bracelet of the Rapid: +30 speed
Substitute talisman: would be destroyed as a substitute when you die
Something I can't read #1: immune to mind attack
Something I can't read #2: enemy would escape from you
foot trainer: when you move ten times your speed increase by one
permanently
hand trainer: when you defend ten times your strength increase by one
permanently
There are +str, +def, +matk, +mdef items as well. There is always the
common version and the rarer, better version. Many of the good items
can only be found in the trial dungeons.

Note that speed is an attribute that very easily gets ignored. It
increases the dodge rate and the rate of critical hit. It seems to me
that the dodge rate increases by one for every 5 points of speed and
the critical hit rate 3 for every 4 point of speed. Unfortunately the
speed attribute is capped at 127 points.
-------------------------------------
VI. Special Study

I have been avoiding hinting on what level or skill level one should
get to at certain stage of the game in the walkthrough. I did this for
a reason. I feel that if I give the advice it would change the gaming
experience completely, and it would be better if one can manage the
pace on his own in the first time. So this part is a real spoiler. I
recommend reading it after you at least have played the game for some
time.

So, what would be the optimum way to level up, both in character level
and skill level? To answer this question, we have to understand how
the game react to the levels. Firstly, the enemy would adjust their
level correspondingly in a certain range, so it won't do you too much
good unless you really level your character a lot, and be higher than
the upper cap. On the other hand, the exp you get from the battle
would significantly decrease if the enemy are at a lower level than
your characters. Those are reasons that you shouldn't level your
character too much, if at all. However, as you may experience in the
game, that some battles would be hard and it really helps to level up
a little bit. This is because that the damage of the physical attack
skills scales better than HP with character levels, and at higher
level you can do more damage, despite that the enemy are at higher
level as well. Therefore the normal strategy invoves minimum level
ups, only required if you found some battle too hard.

On the other hand, how about the skill levels? There is no penalty in
game for leveling up the skills, so in principle one should level up
as much as possible. However, of course, the price is time. It is even
more time consuming to level up skills, compared to characters. But
here is a catch. The game would adjust your companion's skill levels
to match yours when they join your party. Therefore, if you train even
before Asuka joins, your load would be significantly less.

Of course, before one really does that, one has to question what
really is the benefit, as training in that early stage is indeed quite
boring. The answer lies in the magic. The attack magic and the support
magic. As mentioned earlier, the high level attack magic has an
incredible range. (specifically, hellfire, and thanks god it is
learnable!) What we should realize is that it also have incredible
damage if our character level stays low. The damage of the magic is
calculated by adding a given amount to your matk, insted of a
multiplier, so when the amount is much larger than your matk, the
magical attack would dominate. There are very strong support magic at
higher level as well.

This is really the solution to everything. With the high level attack
magic at hand, you cannot feel that the battle is too hard in early
game. Therefore you don't have to raise the level. And the magic stays
strong. Also by leveling up your skills early, every new companion
would have nearly all their skills available and you don't need to
train any more.

In some sense, the powerful long range attack magic breaks the balance
of the game. The mechanism in the game to keep this from happening is
to make the attack magic extremely hard to train. Well, at least under
normal circumstances. The attack magic drains MP very quickly and if
you didn't train on purpose you can hardly level it up. Even if you
practice it as hard as other skills the progress is slower due to the
lack of exp.

What I propose, therefore, is to train at 1B. Retreat whenever you
have killed 5 enemies. You should be able to use the attack magic to
take out 2-3 of the 5 soidiers. You should also practice other skills,
including the dragon skill and the support magic. The ideal case would
be to max out the support magic and get the attack magic to lv 20 and
learn hellfire. If at the same time you can manage to get the dragon
skill to lv 20, good, otherwise it doesn't hurt. It should take 5-6
hours of training here. But think you won't really have to train any
more later!

With hellfire at hand, all the early battle becomes very simple. Take
the boss fight in the ninja house for example. One just has to use the
protect shield or defend the first turn, then enlarge-hellfire kills
all the enemies at once. Now we can maintain our low character level
and play more efficiently. This way, one can beat the game, maximizing
all the skills in 30 hours (without finishing the two trial dungeon),
or finish everything in 40 hours.

For the trial dungeons, try them out yourself. It would be fun. :)
----------------------------------------
VII. References and Special Thanks
I should say thanks to a strategy guide that I own a long time ago.
Although I didn't have it with me any more, I can still remember some
of the combination of the fusion skills. Also,
http://www.geocities.co.jp/Milkyway/2027/saturn/riglord1.html
here contains some interesting/useful information I can't find
anywhere else. I am not sure I understood everything as I read it
using a translator.