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LOREN THE AMAZON PRINCESS (PC/Mobile)
Game Mechanics FAQ
by Slartifer
(GameFAQs handle: Slartifer)
v 1.0
November 22, 2016
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You can't judge a game by its cover art. Loren the Amazon Princess offers an
enjoyable and varied combat system, despite the amount of skin visible on most
of its characters. This FAQ presents some difficult-to-deduce information on
its game mechanics.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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The damage formula used in this game is pretty complex. I've been able to
piece together a lot of it, but there's enough going on (and still a little
uncertainty in my model) that I think this guide is better served by making
some generalizations.
The most important thing to note is that the in-game description is a bit
misleading: Strength, Skill, and Will affect damage DIRECTLY in a way that
depends on the type of attack you use, and not based on your class. (They do
also affect it in the class-specific way shown in game, but that effect is a
bit smaller.)
Melee attacks:
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* DAMAGE (including any from armor) is base damage.
* STRENGTH increases base damage by 40% of its value
(in addition to boosting Attack for Warriors and Thieves).
* MULTIPLIERS inherent to the skill used (if any) multiply base damage.
* The proportion of attacker ATTACK and defender DEFENSE can magnify or
diminish damage, making it anywhere between 0% (if Attack is 0) to 200%
(if Attack is twice Defense).
* If you are attacking from the back row, your Attack is reduced by 40%.
(Exception: if you are using a polearm, it is only reduced by 25%.)
Missile attacks:
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* DAMAGE (including any from armor) is base damage.
* SKILL increases base damage by 50% of its value
(in addition to boosting Attack for Thieves and other classes).
* MULTIPLIERS inherent to the skill used (if any) multiply base damage.
* The proportion of attacker ATTACK and defender DEFENSE can magnify or
diminish damage, making it anywhere between 0% (if Attack is 0) to 200%
(if Attack is twice Defense).
* If you are attacking from the front row, your Attack is reduced by 25%.
* If you are attacking a TARGET in the front row, it is also reduced by 25%.
These can stack!
* There is a somewhat weird "soft cap" on damage that reduces any damage
calculated above, beyond the first 80 or so points, by 40%. This took
a while to figure out.
Magic attacks:
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* DAMAGE (including from armor) is base damage.
* WILL increases base damage by 50% of its value
(in addition to boosting Magic directly).
* MULTIPLIERS inherent to the skill used (if any) multiply base damage.
* The proportion of attacker MAGIC and defender DEFENSE can magnify or
diminish damage, making it anywhere between 0% (if Magic is 0) to 200%
(if Magic is 1.5 times Defense). Note the different scale from melee.
* The proportion of attacker MAGIC and defender MAGIC can magnify or
diminish damage. This effect is much weaker than the above effect and
hits diminishing returns very quickly (in either direction).
* There is a somewhat weird "soft cap" on damage that reduces any damage
calculated above, beyond the first 150 or so points, by 50%. (This can
actually boost damage slightly if the initial calculation is just a bit
over 100. If you ever see discrepancies in predicted MT spell damage
from one enemy to the next, this is probably the culprit.)
Finally, for all attacks, there are some effects applied after the above
calculations:
* There are various general multipliers (like Karen's Focus effect, certain
status effects, etc.) that can impact final damage.
* Critical hits scored by party members increase final damage by 25%.
For all attacks, equipped weapons NOT relevant to the attack being made are
ignored for purposes of Damage, Attack, and Magic stats. (Note also that
magic attacks only use the first equipped weapon, so Chambara gains no damage
bonus to her spells from equipping a second dagger.)
Finally, note that the three leftmost sets of Thief skills are considered
magical attacks. This is pretty irrelevant considering how weak all the thief
skills are to begin with, but there you go.
Speed can increase the frequency of your attacks, with some limitations.
Here's how it seems to work.
Combat is broken up into segments. During the first segment, every character
gets to act. When multiple characters are scheduled to act in the same
segment (as in the first one), they act in order from highest to lowest Speed.
After a character acts, it schedules its next turn. By default, it has to
wait a number of segments equal to the DELAY of the action it used. Base
delays vary for skills (and are visible in-game), but some common delays are:
Having high or low Speed can decrease, or increase the number of segments that
character has to wait before acting again, beyond the displayed delay value.
(It will never increase below 1.)
Basically, if your Speed is near 100, you'll use the default; after that, for
every 15 points, all your delays are decreased by 1. To lay it out:
It is possible to reach even higher speeds if you invest in Skill and use
several Speed buffs (Haste and Invisibility). You can also reach lower speeds
if you wear a lot of heavy armor AND are hit by a Slow or Frozen effect, but
the delay from armor on its own will never be that much (if you even hit -1
at all).
Altogether, this setup has the somewhat ironic result than investing in Speed
is a very SLOW strategy. First, because the biggest gains in attack frequency
come when you've invested a LOT into Speed -- the gains earlier on are fairly
small outside of a few isolated low-delay skills. Second, because if you have
a moderate damage skill that you can repeat very rapidly, you can still only
use it once before the enemy gets their first action in; whereas if you have a
heavy damage skill and a more modest investment in Speed, you can get a ton of
damage in before the enemy gets to act at all.
Your PC's stats mostly do what the in-game descriptions state, but there are
some key differences. The biggest omission: that Strength, Skill, and Will
all directly add to base damage for melee, missile, and magic attacks,
respectively. The tooltips that tell you about Attack "formulas" for each
class aren't inaccurate, but they only describe the Attack rating, not your
base damage. The result is that a melee Thief who focuses on Skill will do
MUCH less damage than a melee Warrior who focuses on Strength, even though the
displayed formula would suggest they have equal power. Likewise for the other
options.
To simplify this list, I've listed what you get for 60 points of investment,
rather than having everything be fractional. Where three numbers are listed
below, those are the values received by warriors, thieves, and mages,
respectively.
60 STRENGTH OFFERS:
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* +300 HP
* +24 Damage for melee attacks
* +60/30/0 Attack
* +60/60/45 Stagger Threshold
FRONT ROW: Loren, Amukiki, Main Character (Warrior)
BACK ROW: Draco, Apolimesho, Myrth
Although this game has some nifty buffs, it is easier *and* safer to just kill
things quickly, even on Hard. Mages are very good at this if you boost Will
and stack a bunch of equipment damage bonuses on them. Mages also have the
benefit of being able to take advantage of elemental weaknesses (which are
ubiquitous) without having to swap out their equipment constantly.
Although Defense does reduce damage a little bit, investing in HP is a far
easier and more efficient way to survive, especially since it also increases
the power of healing spells. This means investing in Strength. Warriors get
slightly more out of Strength, and also have good defensive armor options, and
that nice HP bonus passive, so they are the obvious choice for your front line.
You may wish to consider dipping into Strength on the mages: in part for
survivability, and in part because extra Will becomes less useful once you
run into the soft damage cap. You may also wish to find ways to boost Speed,
for everyone, so you can consistently act before the enemy. Speed items are
probably the least painful way to do this, especially for the mages. Enemy
stats seem to rise with the party's levels, so the less you grind, the less
you'll need to invest in Skill to get the first action.
Amukiki is nearly as functional on offense as the other warriors, and his
Shield Wall ability offers an extremely strong defensive buff that is
especially helpful in protecting Loren (who sadly cannot equip a shield,
for Normal resistance). Ramas would be an acceptable alternative, though.
The bonus "warriors," Sauzer and Trouble, are crippled by their lack of
equipment.
For the mages, Draco and Apolimesho have the best attack spells, and they
each have a decent utility spell as well. Myrth versus Chambara is a closer
call. Myrth's damage spells are weaker, but affect more than one row.
However, her third level Earth spell also causes Slow at a 60% rate, and she
gets a very expensive MT heal. Chambara, on the other hand, is the only one
with Dark element magic, which is nice in the first half of the game, but
nearly useless in the second.
Why no thieves? Start with the ironic slowness of the Skill strategy,
outlined in the Speed chapter. Add the painfully low soft damage cap on
missile attacks... you're left with a Dora or Rei who, even when you have
everything maxed out the way you want, will be generally outclassed by the
mages. Mesphit is interesting, but doing anything with him is ultimately
just slow.
There's some argument to be made for using Karen as a front line warrior,
boosted mainly by Strength: Focus Attack can make her quite deadly, and with
the right shield she won't be too frail. Unfortunately, using Focus Attack
also creates a delay at the start of the battle, and any time she has to
change targets, too.
That said, all the characters are functional, so there's nothing stopping you
from trying out unusual strategies. (Well, Sauzer and Trouble are a little
lackluster, but hey, whatever floats your, um, royal griffon.)
By far the most enemies are weak to Fire or Water attacks, followed by Air
(which has a lot of overlap with Water). Early on, almost everything is weak
to Dark attacks, but later in the game you fight lots of demons, who all resist
or are immune to Dark damage.
The biggest danger to back row characters are often attacks that hit both
characters in a column, or that push the front row character back. The AI
seems to target these by picking on the weakest front row character, so you
can use that to your advantage when arranging the party.
Melee attacks have one advantage, which is that they are not afflicted by a
soft damage cap. This means that if you stack a lot of damage bonuses and
multipliers on a warrior, and use the right weapon to hit an elemental
weakness, they can do a boatload of damage. The obvious choice for this is
Loren, with her dual-wielding passives. It may not be worth the time either
to invest in all those elemental weapons, or to switch them out in battle, but
it's definitely an option.
I said "warrior" but that also applies to Karen or another thief on the front
line. Mesphit is tempting, but his demon form's big bonus is to Attack, not
damage output, so the impact is not going to be as high as with Karen's Focus.
Draco's Invisibility spells have a very low base delay of 3. If you get his
Speed up to 123, you can cast a lot of them in very short succession. Useful
in longer battles to protect weaker party members.
Loren's Rally buff only works on physical attacks. Since you also give up
one attack from your strongest fighter in order to use it, it's probably not
worthwhile unless you have a back row full of archers.
In chapter 3, the Cyclopes area is a pretty amazing source of cash.
Some of the best items for the strategies I've discussed in this guide are
(only key stats are listed here):
Necklace of the Mighty (10 Damage, 5 Attack) - 750 gold
Sandals of the Mercenary (7 Damage) - 300 gold
Specialist's Leggings (5 Damage) - 200 gold
Raven's Bandana (5 Damage, 2 Attack, 2 Magic) - 200 gold
Morte's Mantle (5 Magic, 5 SP Regen, 10 Defense) - 1500 gold
Ring of Quickness (5 Speed, 2 Damage) - 350 gold
* You can get two copies of Zachary's Wedding Ring if you either attack him
right away, or leave, then come back without the diamond and choose to attack
him. If you do the latter, you'll still be able to access the diamond mine
area -- though why anyone would go there by choice is beyond me :P
Once you get the diamond, if you haven't already killed Zachary, you'll no
longer be able to get both copies of his ring.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS & HISTORY
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Acknowledgements:
Thanks to the dev for his posts on the Winter Wolves board, which were a great
starting place for this guide. Also, thanks for making this enjoyable game.
