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RD Transfer File, a Great Journey


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Well, I've done a couple of fixed mode, normal difficulty runs to examine how to the stats transfer, and then tried the file out on RD's normal mode. I felt it was a relatively interesting study for those interested in fixed mode, and how useful those particular stats are in RD. Lets get some generalities out of the way first. Laguz and pre-promotes will cap nearly nothing, so its pointless to use them for transfer runs. The bulk of the Greil Merc levels are fairly simple, so there's very little reason to overemphasize them. On the other hand, there's a reason why part one is considered the hardest part of the game.

All right. Why should you do a fixed mode run for transfer? First off, its relaxing. No counting stat gains during levelup, no constant resetting for better stats, and much faster gameplay because after the initial planning there's very few things you have to keep track of. The final upside is you get a surprisingly decent amount of transfers. The downside of fixed mode is your selection of characters is much smaller, like the pre-promote issue I talked about. Below, I'll introduce which characters I think are worthy and what planning you need for them.

As a quick reminder, I will often say, "maybe this stat booster or that blah blah blah." Why is there a maybe? Mostly because of enemy modifiers. Different enemies give different growths, so stats can be skewed. Plus there are weapon/item modifiers you may have forgotten or ignored. So not all runs are identical, but they should be close.

Jill - potentially caps STR SKL SPD DEF

Jill is an ugly one to start with, but she's also the first noteworthy returning character. Why ugly? Because she naturally caps nothing. It is possible to cap STR and SKL naturally depending on what you fight, but due to weapon/enemy modifiers that's not even a guarantee. My suggestion is to equip an Archer/Thief Band as soon as you get her and that will take care of most of the problems.

STR - using Steel Weapons will allow you to usually cap STR. If not, feed an Energy Drop. They're not important, no one else needs them.

SKL - Thief Band should take care of this. If not, Secret Books are fine.

SPD - This is the ugly one. With Thief Band, hopefully you will only need 1 Speedwing to cap. Thankfully you get 3 through the game, so it may come down to using 2.

DEF - I didn't cap this, but I do have a theory. If you equip the Wyvern Band, use a lot of Silver Weapons, and feed all the Dracoshields, you can cap DEF, but you might take a hit on STR SKL and SPD. Of course then you can feed her more boosters. Could be worth it.

Is Jill worth it? Yes. She's a monster. She can probably do away with the STR and SPD and gain them naturally in RD, but the +2 SkL is so good. If you want to transfer, I strongly suggest at least capping SKL so she doesn't miss every other shot.

Zihark - caps STR SKL SPD.

You can't screw this up, especially if you use a lot of Steel weapons. Boring, no analysis needed.

Is Zihark worth it? Mostly yes. Zihark is a great character, and giving him extra stats is cool. The minor downside is the +2 str makes it so he has problems just weakening the enemy early on and he tends to outright kill them in RD, even with Bronze weaponry. Not a problem in the long run.

Marcia - caps STR SKL SPD.

Pretty straightfoward. Caps them naturally, no effort required.

Is Marcia worth it? Yes. 2-Prologue is easy enough, but 2-3 and 2-Endgame is when a boosted Marcia shines. Her availability is poor, so the extra boosts go a long way.

Nephnee - caps STR SKL SPD.

Again, pretty easy. It doesn't look like Nephnee caps STR normally, but a combination of a Fighter Band, Steel weaponry, and fighting non-mage enemies rocket up that STR growth.

Is Nephnee worth it? Bare. She is already a great unit, easily one of your best lance users. 2-1 is really tough on her though, and every bonus you get makes that stage that much easier. After that, her normal growths easily smooth over any bonuses you obtained. Useful, but if you want to transfer a lot of other units or do some obscure run in RD, its not very painful to ditch her in PoR.

Brom - potentially caps HP STR SKL SPD DEF

Brom is my choice for the amazing Knight Ward. With it, he will cap SPD. His STR and SKL caps fairly naturally, no worries there. Maybe an Energy Drop and/or a Secret Book, but you get quite a few of those. Needs a single Angelic Robe for HP.

Is Brom worth it? I say yes. He comes in early in part 2, and stays around till the end. Unlike Gatrie, who is easily overshadowed by the rest of the Greil Mercs, he comes at a time where you have no choice but to use him quite a bit. The bonuses do stand out, especially the SPD.

Largo - potentially caps HP STR SKL SPD.

Caps HP STR SKL naturally. Will always be 2 SPD short of capping. Enter Speedwing.

Is Largo - ahem Calill worth it? Barely. Her availability is worse than Marcia. The +2 SPD is fairly pointless since you can't double anyways, its really easy to be safe in 2-E where it matters the most, and her skill is not entirely lacking. Her endgame potential is mediocre as well. I only mentioned this because Largo caps a lot of stuff and is easy to use.

Ike - potentially caps HP STR SKL SPD DEF RES

Caps STR SKL SPD naturally. is 2 away for DEF, enters Dracoshield, unless you want to use both of them on Jill. HP is possible but not recommended, since you need both Angelic Robes. RES is the fun one. He's about 7 away from capping. Enter the awesomeness of stat augmentation.

RES - first off, equip a Priest Band ASAP. When you have the chance, buy 3-4 Slim Swords - they add RES. You could also kill every mage and priest you come across with Ike, but that's a bit of overkill. After this, its simple. Ike has enough brute force to use Slims and stay useful. The +10% RES gain from Priest Band + Slims will push Ike up 3-4 points of RES, at which point you feed him the 2 Talismans.

Theoretically, it may be possible to cap all those I listed. Level up with a mix of Priest Band and Fighter Band. Use Slims. Intentionally save most mages/priests for Ike. You might just get enough HP and RES to need only 1 robe and 2 talismans.

Is Ike wor-- YES.

Soren - caps MAG SPD SKL RES

Easy peasy.

Is Soren worth it? I suppose so. At least he caps a lot. Too bad mage caps in RD are a tad low. The only other point I should recommend is to level up Soren using staves. Saves EXP for the others.

Disappointing Characters

Ilyana. You would think she'll be useful, recruited on one of the hardest stages in RD. Sadly, her growths suck. She'll cap RES, and nothing else. You need the Mage Band PLUS Spirit Dusts to cap MAG, and she'll need Secret Books for SKL. And after all that work and carrying around this dead weight, you get only 1 marginally useful stat - SKL. Yes, my Ilyana won't miss every other shot, and misses every fourth shot instead. Whoopee. The only upside is Ilyana has the funniest support convos every. What a sad joke.

Sothe. Hey, I don't have to cap stuff, and I profit! What's the problem? Well, Sothe kind of sucks. Hard to level up, sucks up EXP because of Blossom, blah blah blah. The kicker is his lvl1 stats in RD are spectacular compared to PoR. You're hard-pressed to get anything out of it, even harder to get anything useful. Plus his caps are fairly low in RD anyways, so it doesn't help with the issue of BEXP. If you do feed him every stat booster in the game, sure, he'll turn out decent, but then, YOU JUST FED HIM EVERY BOOSTER IN THE GAME.

The Paladins. They got slightly shafted in RD. I suppose everyone realized how ridiculously godlike an all paladin team is in PoR. Geoffrey's team handles their mission just fine, and Ike's team, well, they're overpowered enough already. A boosted Marcia already helps Geoffrey's team quite a bit, esp. in the stage Marauders (forgot number).

Final thoughts? I found Fixed Mode enough for transfers. I had a fun time doing it, and I would imagine constantly resetting for better levelups will suck all that fun out. Thanks for reading.

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Maybe you shouldnt do fixed mode. Ilyana is pretty hard to cap stuff, but I've capped everything but HP ad luck with her so its possible

For Sothe I shoved 4 levels of BEXP on him when i got him so he could damage the ravens then raised him a level every chapter, getting him in the 90's of EXP at the end of every chapter

Random mode does require a lot of reseting and patience, but you get quite a good amount of transfers, though. I've done it 5 times already, so I know it's tiring, but I like the boosts :D

EDIT: Btw, I've done it without using stat boosters or using very little

The ones i always use are:

Both goddess icons for sothe since no one else will cap it and for him it transfers directly

I also give Sothe a seraph robe, the other one goes to Ike AFTER promotion

Also, Nephenee, Marcia and Brom are worth it because they're in the hardest part of the game

Edited by CGV
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I myself used a random, normal mode file to transfer people, and I managed to get 15 with capped stats with a lot of boss abuse and bonus experience abuse.

On the top of my head, I had:

Ike: All but Luck and Magic.

Tormod: All but Hp and Luck

Gatrie: All but Resistance, Luck and Magic

Oscar, Shinon, Kieran, Zihark, Volke: Str, Skl, Spd, Def

Soren, Rhys, Elincia: Mag, Skl, Spd, Res

Mist: Str, Mag, Spd, Res ( came 1 close of Skill )

Boyd: Hp, Str, Skl, Spd

Reyson: Mag, Skl, Spd

Giffca: Str

Some choices are questionnable ( mainly Tormod and Shinon ), but I mostly went with favorites. Also I only abused Ena, Haffedd and Ashnard (weapon exp for Sages and Healer experience for Rhys and Elincia ), while other bosses are quite easily abuseable if you want to forfeit drops ( Petrine and Bertram come to mind ).

Even if you don't want to use them, try to promote the Mages and give them staves so the can abuse experience with Ashnard. This way you'll have all your healers at 20/20 with little effort.

If I had to do it again, I'd probably add a few more characters, namely Brom ( I'd actually switch Gatrie for him ), Nephenee and Marcia. Bertram's chapter also lets you bring a large number of allies, so I could've tried with people starting at a high level with high chances of capping stats, like Stefan and Largo. With bonus experience, Haar also seems like a nice idea. If you can manage to cap speed with this guy, little will stop you.

Edited by Captain Falcon
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The most worthwhile characters to transfer over I think are

Sothe, Zihark, Jill these three make the DBs adventure a lot easier. Sothe would benifit the most from getting his defensive stats up since most of his offensive stats start at 20 anyway in RD.

Zihark is pretty much like your said, and so is Jill. Though I must say despite not having transfered Jill the deference from doing so is quite noticable just looking at the numbers.

I've been lucky with Ilyanna and transfer bonuses help her out though the caps of the mages make it not very useful, though a transferred Ilyanna with Strength, Magic, Skill,Speed, Resistance is really helpful for the dawn brigade.

Part 2 Nephenee and Brom can make use of it, though I don't use Brom much after part two so I'd likely only get transfer bonuses for Nephenee. Marica could be pretty good with it I reckon.

In part 3 Ike definitely could use it for speed, he's likely to max out str,skl, and def as well so it makes him pretty awesome and even easier to Bexp abuse so he can kick even more ass.

Boyd could use some in speed though thats a bit iffy to max out, Oscar could be great with some transfer bonuss... he's maxed out str,skill,spd,def on more then one experience thoug i know he's str is supposedly even shaky in PoR

Mia is helped out a bit since it makes her better for bexp abuse since speed will start out maxed for her... though in the end its not really needed for any character in part three unless you like a character and wanna make em better.

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Is this just a guide of the people you used? From my Fixed run, I found a few more people who cap a couple stats or do with help. E.g. Astrid, Stefan, Tormod (Mage Band+Spirit Dust), probably Makalov, Shinon, and I guess Volke but I've never 20/20'd him.

Obviously this can be calculated but I'm a little lazy for that. I haven't played RD either.

Edited by YokaiKnight
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Really? The difficulty isn't any different. >__>

If your using someone like Boyd you'll have a hard time getting past Mages. :(

I usually prefer using Random so none of my stats are bad like resistance.

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If your using someone like Boyd you'll have a hard time getting past Mages. :(

I usually prefer using Random so none of my stats are bad like resistance.

I play random too. Boyd usually gets speed blessed in my game. His resistance is still horrible but it's easy to get around that.

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If your using someone like Boyd you'll have a hard time getting past Mages. :(

I usually prefer using Random so none of my stats are bad like resistance.

I don't do BEXP abuse, so my Boyds end up with shitty resistance anyway. Maybe not always as bad, but low enough to not make a difference.

And he got enough speed in fixed mode for as long as I used him.

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I don't do BEXP abuse, so my Boyds end up with shitty resistance anyway. Maybe not always as bad, but low enough to not make a difference.

And he got enough speed in fixed mode for as long as I used him.

I don't bexp abuse either (I'm too impatient for that). My Boyd usually ends up with less than his average resitance but it doesn't bother me. He was major defense blessed on my last playthrough. He ended with 23 defense at 20/20 so I gave him a dracoshield to cap his defense to transfer over to RD. He's also maxed speed on my last 3 playthroughs without bexp or speedwings. I'm really lucky with Boyd on random mode. Maybe I'll try fixed mode one day.

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I think there was only one time ever used fixed. My Elincia was a god, getting 2+ for health constantly and 1+ for about 5 other stats constantly. lol And I didn't know anything about what weapons or enemies give what type of support or penalties....

Everyone else were well balanced. Ike was or could take on maps himself with HP, Str, Def, Skill, and Spd capping out. I made Oscar my second Petrine as his magic (15) and spd (25) were superb at lvl 8 Paladin. Mist was at or above 20 in all her stats by endgame. Everyone else was just well balanced all together. Meh, maybe I should have went with Fixed instead of Random going by that play through. But I think it may be safer with Random though...

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Actually yes learning what weapons give stats up and all that it bleh

It really doesn't make a difference, unless you're deliberately trying to increase certain stats. I didn't realize that until I played it, though. You should do it. It's a lot less daunting once you just try.

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  • 6 months later...

So whenever you recommend bands for other characters and say they should meet the requirements for the bands, are you saying that assuming we put the bands on them right away, or just as soon as we can? With Ike for example, would I have to hold him back and not let him fight at all until he gets Slim Swords in order to cap Resistance with Talismans, or can I still use him normally and just get him on Slims when I can?

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Unless you're cheating, I'm pretty sure it's never worth it to transfer for Sothe's sake (absent heavy abuse). He still is saddled with Blossom (you need this if you want him to have even remotely good stats at all), so there's that to deal with, and then his average at 20 in PoR is:

HP -2.5 / STR -1.5 / MAG -1 / SKL = / SPD = / LCK +1.5 / DEF -2.5 / RES -2.5

To make him any better, you'd have to basically give him a booster for everything. I suppose on Fixed you could neglect his SKL and SPD (since he kinda cap-rams those in RD anyway) and try to play up his STR, HP, and DEF, but it's still fairly questionable. And you don't want a weaker Sothe, it just doesn't advantage you any (especially before Zihark/Jill/Tauroneo join, since the DB won't be getting any transfer bonuses and Ilyana's are wasted by being first-tier).

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