Put together by Trucidation. Since HegemonKhan found it too troublesome to
write this up in FAQ style, here's the Capsule Monster feeding FAQ.
Version 1.0 - July 2009 - original release
1.1 - July 2009 - fixed soonest vs economical
- other magic fruit locations
- confirm: long swords for class 3?
- todo: shop items feed table
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overlaps, they're the same place, sortof. If you need to get hold of me,
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I've had that mailbox for several years now so it's safe to say it's not
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and similar crap.
Replies may be longer in coming though; that's not the only mailbox I
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rest assured that I do eyeball it pretty frequently; at least once every
2-3 days. Also, using an appropriate subject line will prevent your mail
from being immolated by the filter.
Insert obligatory copyright notice here. Please don't rip this off,
because we can immediately tell this came from GameFAQs. Not interested in
your advert-ridden hobby site or your slick corporate portal. No thanks.
GameFAQs is where it's at. Not a diss, merely a statement of fact.
This is one of the shorter guides I've assembled so you can probably
scroll through the whole thing to find what you want, no problem. If you do
want to navigate easier, though, just search for the appropriate section
tag listed in the table above.
In Lufia 2 you can collect up to seven sidekicks called Capsule Monsters
(CMs). Although they appear beside your party in battle, they are however
not counted as a party member and are accessed separately in the game menu.
They fight independantly of you (i.e. you can't give them direct orders)
and will often run away when they take too many hits.
You can't target them with items or spells (thus no buffing or healing),
but they are immune to most status effects, and they start each battle with
full hp. They have no mp to drain and do not use it to activate their
skills, which are used in a pretty much random fashion.
Finally, you can only have one CM active at any time, although you may
switch between them freely using the menu whenever you are not in battle.
So what good is an uncontrollable ally? For one, their attacks can be
quite strong. Not being able to cast on them also means they aren't an
additional drain on party resources, i.e. casting a healing on everyone
will not further dilute the heal points to include the CM. They also
present the enemy with an additional target, potentially drawing fire away
from hurt characters.
By the way, this guide will only cover the feeding aspect of CMs. If you
need any pointers on how to actually obtain the CMs in the first place, or
what their skills are, their stats, elemental affinities, strengths and
weaknesses, etc... those are all covered in other guides available on
GameFAQs. This is just meant to be a quick-and-dirty lookup for CM feeding.
Capsule Monsters start off at class 1. Instead of just having levels, a
CM also has classes - these classes determine what skills a CM has at any
particular point in their evolution. There are a total of 5 classes for
each CM, from 1 to 4, then a Master Class form.
Generally speaking a CM increases in strength the higher class it is in.
Not just "strength" though, all base stats are improved by evolving your
CMs. Also, each class evolution usually comes with an additional ability
for the improved form. This means it is almost always in your best interest
to advance your CMs as much as possible.
To advance from one class to another, you need to "feed" the CM with an
item. Think of them as somewhat finicky item disposal units (haha). In
essence, this is what this guide is all about - what items to feed your CMs
together with some explanation of the mechanics of the process. Read on :)
There's no pressing need to "max out" your CMs. In fact you can plow
through the entire game easily enough on your own, and just give them the
leftover items your party no longer needs. That's perfectly fine. However,
since you're reading this I assume you've got more than just a passing
interest in the evolution of your CMs.
Since this is a feeding guide, I won't go into the details of each CM's
forms and skills available in what particular form. All that information is
available in the walkthroughs available here on GameFAQs. Here I will just
be explaining how exactly feeding works, and comparing between efficient
and economical ways of going about feeding your CMs.
Economical? Yes, that's right. It's certainly possible to just feed your
CMs with the most expensive, "tasty" items to quickly fill their feed
meter - but common sense makes it obvious that you will need to give them
rare or very expensive items to do so, and that the availability of such
items will almost certainly be limited to later in the game.
The final way is to use the earliest available items - this will appeal
to the type of player who likes to get things finished as fast as possible
with less regard to cost and tediousness.
Let's get some things cleared right off the bat, it'll make things
easier. One, all CMs follow the same feeding guidelines. Although I haven't
personally verified whether each CM wants different things to eat at
different stages in their evolutions, others have already confirmed that
all CMs adhere to the same rules when it comes to satisfying their hunger.
That is, you won't have CMs craving for wildly different things. In fact,
we can use a single progression list when outlining what our friendly
neighbourhood sidekicks should be fed.
Naturally, this simplifies things greatly as you won't have to start
worrying about collecting separate piles of "favourite" junk food for each
CM. The only item they differ in is the final item which allows them to
advance into their Master Class form. Fortunately, you only need one of
these and it's a pretty much fixed requirement, so we can simply list it
down after we've disposed of the other feeding requirements.
Alright, first things first. When you access the menu, you can view what
the currently selected CM desires to eat, as well as a gauge indicating how
much left until it has eaten enough to evolve into the next form. We shall
refer to the item it wishes to eat as what it is "craving". The gauge, if
you look closely, is made up of 32 separate indicators, which we shall
refer to as "bars". So basically the feeding gauge is made up of 32 bars,
and to feed your CM is to "fill" these bars.
Simply put, feeding an item to your CM will fill several bars, and once
all 32 bars are filled, the CM will evolve to the next class. When the 4th
class of evolution is reached the CM's craving will not show any item but
say "I am no longer hungry" instead. Only when this "not hungry" condition
is reached can you feed it the unique item which will allow it to evolve to
its master class.
Not all CMs evolve into master class at class 4, but since they have to
be full (that is, no longer hungry) you still have to feed them up to class
4 in any case.
With that out of the way, the only question that remains is what to
feed the CM at each class. Fortunately, this isn't a very complicated issue
either.
When feeding a CM something, depending on the quality of the item it
will fill anywhere from 1 to 8 bars. From this you can infer that you need
at most 32 of the least craved items (32 x 1 bar = 32) or 4 of the best
items (4 x 8 bars = 32). This is what it boils down to, basically.
Depending on how many bars a particular item fills you will get a
reaction from your CM.
If you look at your CM's feeding screen you will see that it lists the
item it is currently craving. This doesn't mean that it will only eat that
item; it merely means that feeding it this specific item will guarantee
some growth, that's all.
There's a catch though (there's always one...). If you feed your CM with
something that fills several bars, it's craving will increase to a higher
quality item than what it is currently craving. So, you can't simply feed
it with an 8-bar item and then follow that up with a 1-bar item: as an
analogy, having tasted prime rib your sidekick will be unwilling to show
much enthusiasm for a mcburger.
Anecdotal experience from players shows that it will crave an item of
similar quality, i.e. once you start feeding it 8-bar fillers your CM will
demand no less than 8-bar items. In all likelihood, this is something you
want to avoid - unless your party is rich and has access to high quality
stuff - like an endgame town's item shop.
So how do you go about lowering your CM's craving? Simple, feed it low
quality items until it craves the lowest possible quality item for that
class.
Note that I said "for that class". You can't lower the craving to as
low as the previous class' craving. For example in class 1 CMs will settle
for battle knives, while class 2 CMs will want apple ciders at the minimum.
You can't fill any bars for a class 2 CM with battle knives - they'll only
give you the "Ughh - Yuk!" reaction.
The lists below are of the earliest available / lowest quality items
with which to feed your CMs with right off the bat, so "overfeeding" and
the subsequent necessary craving lowering should not be a concern.
This is most likely only an issue when feeding CMs in the Ancient
Dungeon, where you won't have bunches of low level stuff on hand to feed
them. This makes it nearly unavoidable to raise their cravings while your
party is adventuring in there.
And now for the actual item lists. We'll start with the earliest
available item option, i.e. the fastest route. This will appeal to you if
you're aiming to max out your CMs as early in the game as possible. Of
course, it entails quite a bit of tedium especially considering how tight
money is so early on - meaning you've got to grind for it. On the bright
side, you'll be gaining exp as well.
Class: 1 to 2
Item : battle knife
Where: buy in Sundletan ($200 ea)
Cost : 32 x $200 = $6,400
Note : Sundletan is the second town; yes, the price is outrageous at this
point, but seriously... an evolved CM is overkill here.
Class: 2 to 3
Item : apple cider (no, the $800 long knives don't work)
Where: buy in Sundletan ($1,000 ea)
Cost : 32 x $1,000 = $32,000
Note : 32k isn't something to sneeze at this early on. You may probably
want to delay feeding just a little further.
Class: 3 to 4
Item : bee rock
Where: Ruby Cave
Cost : 32 x low drop chance = x_x
Note : These are a 5% drop chance, and yes it's a pain to collect 32.
However, this is a somewhat decent spot to grind for the $32k you
need to buy apple ciders, and having two class 3 CMs this early in
the game is more than good enough.
(alternatively)
Class: 3 to 4
Item : bronze sword
Where: buy in Bound Kingdom ($5,000 ea)
Cost : 32 x $5,000 = $160,000
Note : If you grinded some levels to defeat Gades prior to reaching this
town, I daresay you'll have more than enough money.
(alternatively)
Class: 3 to 4
Item : war rapier
Where: buy in Narsysus ($7,600 ea)
Cost : 32 x $7,600 = $243,200
Note : You may be thinking omfgwtfbbq, this is more expensive than bronze
swords! Narsysus is a couple of towns after Bound Kingdom though,
and according to some players it works out cheaper here since the
battles here are tougher and therefore award more loot.
Class: to Master
Item : (unique)
Where: see master class section below
Cost : 1 x drop = free
Note : Each CM wants a different particular item for its master class. The
CM must also no longer be hungry.
This is easy. Magic fruit. It works for any class CM. Be prepared to
keep feeding it more magic fruit though, or an equivalent 8-bar item (which
I haven't, unfortunately, figured out yet - testing pending).
Class: 1 to 4
Item : magic fruit
Where: drops
Cost : (4 + 4 + 4) x drop = free
Note : these only drop from Groupies, which are one of a boss' "call
companion" summons. However, magic fruits are also a recurring
Ancient Cave treasure. Therefore, we can infer from this that
magic fruits are mainly how to raise your CMs while going through
that dungeon.
P.S.> It's come to my attention that there are several monsters on the
unnamed islands accesible later in the game that drop various fruit. I see
drops for the other types of fruit, not "magic fruit" - so I'll need to
cross-check this with some other guides. Certainly, I'll confirm with my
own observations when I get the chance to do so.
Without taking the master class requirement into account (drops are
free anyway):
32 battle knives + 32 apple ciders + 32 bronze swords
= (32 x $200) + (32 x $1,000) + (32 x $5,000)
= $6,400 + $32,000 + $160,000
= $198,400 per CM.
Some players may prefer to purchase the class 3 feed items at a later
town because, even though it looks like it costs more, you get more loot
from battles at this point so it actually works out easier.
32 battle knives + 32 apple ciders + 32 war rapiers
= (32 x $200) + (32 x $1,000) + (32 x $7,600)
= $6,400 + $32,000 + $243,200
= $281,600 per CM.
Of course, it's easy to see the bulk coming from the 3rd requirement. If
you are hardcore enough to grind for the drop, the cost is reduced to:
32 battle knives + 32 apple ciders + 32 bee rocks
= (32 x $200) + (32 x $1,000) + drops (i.e. $0)
= $6,400 + $32,000
= $38,400 per CM.
Definitely cheaper (and is actually the earliest option, to boot!), but
I am obliged to caution you that trying to obtain that many drops at the
given low rate may be hazardous to your mental health. Keep sharp objects
and annoying siblings away when attempting this.
As mentioned earlier, each CM has a specific item requirement in order
to access its master class form. Also, not all CMs transform to master at
class 4. This is shown in the following table:
CM Item req. Class Transform back
----- ------------ ----- --------------
Jelze Secret fruit 4 Secret fruit
Blaze Charm fruit 3 Flame fruit
Flash Dark fruit 2 Holy fruit
Gusto Earth fruit 4 Wind fruit
Zeppy Flame fruit 3 Charm fruit
Darbi Holy fruit 2 Dark fruit
Sully Wind fruit 4 Earth fruit
Why do we need a "transform back" item? Simply put, CMs in master form
are "locked" in that form - you cannot freely change them to their previous
class forms at will like you could before. So to change them back, feed
them the item from the "transform back" column above.
You may not need to do this often, but occasionally you may have a use
for an ability not present in a CM's master class form.
To obtain these items, refer to the following table:
Drop Monster Location
------------ --------------------- ------------------------------------
Secret fruit Wood Gorem Treasure Sword shrine
Charm fruit Evil fish, Merman Tower of Sacrifice
Dark fruit Black dragon "Fruit Island"
Earth fruit Sand Gorem, Behemoth Northern Labyrinth
Flame fruit Pug Tower of Sacrifice
Holy fruit White dragon Tower of Truth, "Fruit Island"
Wind fruit Green Clay, Serfaco Northern Labyrinth
...and that's it. Yep, told ya it was gonna be short. I only assembled
this guide. The information was already out on the forums and guides on
GameFAQs.
I know I left a lot of detail out, but I didn't think the extra examples
or the superfluous mathematical detail would be interesting to everyone. I
threw in the "total cost" thing as a concession to that, but that's about
as far as I think the average player will be interested in.
If there are any inaccuracies or mistakes in this guide please don't
hesitate to contact me with the corrections. Your contributions are greatly
appreciated!
I put this thing together in PSPad, a kickass freeware text editor,
while listening to the Tokyo-3 Middle Daughters on Winamp.
Ironically, no food was consumed during the creation of this feeding
guide. I did, however, nibble on the rear end of an indigo UniBall Signo
Bit 0.18mm pen. For the curious, no, it did not fill any of my bars.
>_>
Thanks goes to HegemonKhan for contributing those feeding guide threads
(I dipped from all 3 of 'em), as well as further corrections.
- www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=588451&topic=49984802
- www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=588451&topic=50106174
- www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=588451&topic=49978737
Thanks to _Clinton for the summing up in one of the threads mentioned.
Thanks also to Iron Knuckles, the fruit tables were sourced from his
walkthrough/FAQ.
A shout out and thanks to the regulars on the Lufia 2 message board.
It's always nice to know other people who have the same great taste in
games ;)
My humble apologies if I forgot to mention anyone.
