[Guide] Skills

A forum for people who have played the game concerning the Sun Rune War to answer gameplay questions.
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KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

Rooks, have you noticed what effects Incantation actually has?
i feel like spells are cast at their normal SPD--they come out at the character's normal attack would come out. if that is true, my guess is that Incantation actually increases your effective SPD when casting a spell... so a super-slow person with huge Incantation boosts will cast a spell early in the round instead of last. again, i've never equipped Incantation skills so hopefully you can shed some light on this! (and maybe it'll be useful for slow magicians)
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Rooks
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Rooks »

I can agree to that. Incantation above an A-rank -or an S-rank for epics- will always allow the spell to be cast before the enemy has their turn.

Here is an example I remember from writing the walkthrough: In the Battle while fleeing the Sun Palace against Dolph and Childerich, Sialeeds with Incantation C-rank, will cast LV 2 Healing Wind after Childerich but before Dolph gets to attack. Her normal attacks will still come last, after Childerich, Dolph, Lyon, and the Prince. Needless to say, this helps win the battle. Without the Incantation skill equipped, Sialeeds' spells always come last in the round, after the other four characters have had their turn. This makes it much more difficult to heal effectively with Sialeeds' magic during that battle.

Sialeeds has slightly low Speed, so in a battle with those set characters, she would usually come last.

Also, I have found that on the Sun Rune incarnation an A-rank incantation skill will allow any character regardless of their speed and magic stats to cast before the Incarnation attacks. Beyond that, Incantation can help order your spells as well. For example: Give Levi a Mother earth rune and A-rank Incantation, and Bernadette a Flowing Rune and S-rank Incantation. This allows Bern to heal at the beginning of the round, before Levi casts Canopy Defense, making it so you can heal and cast defensive spells in the same round without having to rely on Gale Runes.

If you want a quantified number value, the best way would be to compare to fighters and their regular attacks. So, if a spell goes off before the Prince but after Lyon with a D-rank incantation, you can begin to get a speed stat for spells. I do believe you are correct in saying that Speed effects spell speed. It did in Suikoden IV for sure. But even a low-speed mage like Alhazred can cast spells faster than Urda can attack with an S-rank Incantation. I have noticed that Zerase, who has decent speed, casts earlier than Levi or Kisara when none of them have the Incantation skill equipped.

The real problem is this: That the later game makes Incantation mostly pointless. Divine Right and Sacred Oath both contain enough Incantation to make the caster go before any enemy. And for characters like Jeane -who have no epics- Magic Power is preferable to incantation speed. Characters like Bernadette, with two open skill slots, should use and Epic plus either Magic or Magic Defense, because having Incantation would be completely redundant, as they would already be going first.

I tend to use Incantation for casting what I call "Absolute-Value" magic. And the Magic skill for casting "Dependent-Value" magic. So, spells like Kindness drops heal the same amount of HP regardless if the caster has a Magic Power of 1 or 999. This is an "Absolute-Value" spell. These spells are not helped by magic power, so you might as well cast them more quickly. "Dependent-Value" spells depend heavily on MAG stat for their effect, like how Eresh's Charm Arrow is listed as 50+ DMG by the game, but deals more like 550 DMG when used.

Also, individual Rune and Elemental affinities have an effect on incantation speed. This is why Kyle seems to cast Water magic before he would commit a normal attack. He has a natural A-rank in water.

That is about all I know about how Incantation works. I'm not so good at crunching numbers, I'm more of a liberal arts guy than a math/science guy haha. But a formula might look like this:

(Speed) + (Elemental Affinity) * (Incantation Skill) = Spell Speed (correlates directly to regular speed)

Hope that helps.
KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

thanks Rooks! i agree the individual Incantation skill is going to be mostly useless, but of course it's in some epics, so it's good to know what kind of effect it has. speeding up "absolute effect" support spells (most Water/Earth, all Shield, some Wind) would make a slow magician more useful with Incantation or the epics with Incantation equipped.

update: i suspect the formula could be similar to Magic Sword damage, something like SPD x affinity x skill1 x skill2 because i don't see how an affinity would add translate to a flat value for increasing speed...
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SirYuber
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by SirYuber »

Magic have different casting speeds depending on which lvl magic you cast. I think S5 have a similar system as S3.
Incantation makes more difference in casting a lvl 3 or 4 magic than a lvl 1 or 2.
Lets say a character have 200Spd as an example.
Lvl 1 magic casts at 200Spd.
Lvl 2 at 170Spd
lvl 3 at 140Spd
lvl 4 at 110Spd

With Incantation SS (reduce casting with 30)
Lvl 1 magic casts at 200Spd.
Lvl 2 at 200Spd
lvl 3 at 170Spd
lvl 4 at 140Spd

And the affinity affect both Spd and Dmg. Maybe even make the character cast faster than their "Spd value".
This is just speculation based on my own experience. But for sure the lvl of the magic affects how fast it is casted.
So more like this (Speed * Elemental Affinity) + (Incantation Skill * Lvl of spell) = Spell Spd.... or something :lol:
~~~I am Grahf, the seeker of power. Doth thou desire the power? My fist is the divine breath,blossom, o fallen seed, and draw upon thy hidden powers.Grant unto thee the power of the glorious 'Mother of Destruction'~~~
KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

are you sure? i'm pretty certain Incantation is allowing slow mages to cast spells faster than most fast characters can attack.
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SirYuber
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by SirYuber »

KFCrispy wrote:are you sure? i'm pretty certain Incantation is allowing slow mages to cast spells faster than most fast characters can attack.
Nono, attack command is always faster. . Turned on my PS2 to do some tests.

From Rpg Dueling site:

Incantation

Reduce casting by
C: 10
B: 12
A: 15
S: 20
SS: 30

if in epic skill:
C: 7
B: 10
A: 12
S: 15
SS: 20

Alot of shoot incoming.
Tested Kyle cast his lvl 1 flowing rune with Zen Sword SS and a 202Spd.
Lyon(234Spd), Killey(294Spd) and Hazuki (325Spd) with normal atk all acted faster. Zerase with 231Spd casting a lvl 1 magic did not. Same happened with both casting a lvl 2 spell.
Changed Zerase to a A in incantation, she won against Kyle with both lvl 1 and lvl 2 spells. Both have S affinity btw.

Lastly i changed Kyle to a A in incantation and SS in Zen Sword (Spd 187), i had Zerase still with A in incantation (Spd 231).
With lvl 1 magic Zerase won, when casting a lvl 2 spell Kyle won.

Zerase 236Spd lvl 1 magic vs Lyon 235Spd normal atk. With Incantation A Zerase was faster without Lyon was.

Lorelai 240Spd (A affinity) Zweig 185Spd (A affinity) no incant, Lorelei won even with a lvl 4 spell vs Zweigs lvl 1.
Yahr 230Spd using normal atk was slower than Lorelai casting a lvl 1 spell, but faster than her with a lvl 2 spell.
Bernadette with Dark S, and Divine Right S using lvl 1 pale gate with 164Spd did not act faster than Nick 181Spd using normal attack.

Another test. This was the order from fastest to slowest. (Lun-Flowing, Lyon-Twilight, Zerase-Star)
1.Lun lvl 2 magic 235Spd C affinity.
2.Zerase lvl 3 magic 240Spd S affinity with A incantation.
3.Lyon lvl 4 Magic 238Spd A affinity.

use lvl 2 with all of them Zerase fastest, Lvl 3 with all of them Lun fastest.

So,what can you make of that? :)

1. Still not sure if you can act faster than your Spd stat.
2. Using magic makes you slower than you Spd stat, I.O magic has "casting time"
3. Incantation will reduce that casting time
4. The higher lvl of magic, the longer casting. (A guess is lvl 1 -> 5spd, lvl 2 -> 20Spd, Lvl 3 -> 35spd, lvl 4 -> 50Spd or something similar.)
5. Spd is much more important that Incantation.
6. Affinity does nothing or VERY little about casting time.
7. Advanced runes seems to be faster somehow.
8. There is no way in hell Alhazred even with a SS in incantation can cast magic faster than right about anyone.
9. Trying to test Incantation made me more confused about it than i was before.
~~~I am Grahf, the seeker of power. Doth thou desire the power? My fist is the divine breath,blossom, o fallen seed, and draw upon thy hidden powers.Grant unto thee the power of the glorious 'Mother of Destruction'~~~
KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

haha thanks for the testing siryuber!
KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

going over Rooks's posts and SirYuber's.... there are some pretty different sets of information about Incantation. i think SirYuber's tests would have been better the same runes/spells were compared, and getting uniform SPD and affinity would be a good place to start. Suikoden II and III gave each spell a different chant speed, and Suikoden II seemed to give support spells a big speed advantage so that they would often cast before anyone attacked even though the character would normally be one of the last to attack.
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Punkaiser
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Punkaiser »

Combat Teacher/Tutor/Rune Sage: Is there any confirmation or even rumour about those giving out bonuses in combat (reminding of S3)? if there's none, what'd be the meaning of skill grades for them?
eldrasidar
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by eldrasidar »

well, they can only train you up to the highest level of skill they have as trainers. So for example if your best combat teacher has a C in Combat Training, then you'll only be able to upgrade physical skills to a C. Now of course you find various items throughout the game that increase their ability to train, so there's not a catch 22 on that, and it does mean that by the end of the game, their skill level is somewhat irrelevant.
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Punkaiser
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Punkaiser »

That theory could be right for Combat Teacher and Tutor, but about Forge skill let's say SS grade means the skill allow us to enhance weapons to max 16 level but still an awkward argument though. Then it runs out of logic to explain how Jeane's Rune Sage skill works at SS grade which was the point of my question above, by that way, there's no difference between Runesage grade SS and E, right?
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Hirathien
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Hirathien »

Well, Jeane is supposed to be an excellent Rune Sage, managing to fix a rune to a person who shouldn't be able to have it. I think it was the Twilight rune she managed to attach to that Godwin woman, maybe the dawn rune, my memory is vague.

Her ingame stat might just want to show that, I dunno.
Antimatzist
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Antimatzist »

I might be wrong, but isn't Jeane the only character with the Rune Sage skill? Also, she's talented at that, so that's why SS. But since she's the only one, they could have given her B or anything what they wanted, since you cant compare her to anyone.
KFCrispy
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by KFCrispy »

yeah the way the game is presented, we can't tell what a different grade the Rune Sage stat does. i think we confirmed it doesn't boost magic damage, but not sure about a global incantation boost like it provides in S3. another thing that's possible is pricing, where SS is the cheapest service charge.
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Punkaiser
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Re: [Guide] Skills

Post by Punkaiser »

Service fee checked as you suggested, she charges at same tarif as any generic rune master, and her runes aren't cheaper neither.
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