Wild Arms: 2nd Ignition

A unique aspect of Wild Arms 2 is that all characters, despite their various powers, share access to a pool of common abilities called Personal Skills. In fact, wise selection of Personal Skills can have a major impact on the game. The problem is, not all of the skill names are vary descriptive, likewise the 1-sentence explanations are mostly useless. This writeup simply explains the effect of some of the more puzzling abilities, and gives some general advice on how to select abilities for your game.

One note, it is based almost exclusively on my own experience with comments from just a few friends (including Hydrus, who has a translation/walkthrough of the game on Gamefaqs). If you have an insight into the Personal Skills not recorded here, feel free to drop me an email at nightman@provide.net with it.

Additionally, a few of the more puzzling Force Abilities are briefly explained at the end.

Personal Skills

The skills are listed below in the following format:

Name of skill (cost in PS points) x (number of levels you can gain in it) --
tagline the game gives you by selecting help
Comments: My explanation & comments
Conclusion: my recommendation regarding the power

• Cut FP Use (2)3 -- Cuts special ability FP use by -1
• Comments: This skill is pretty straightforward. For each level of it you buy, the cost to use Original Powers such as spells is reduced by -1. It's commonly selected, but upon completing the game I have to conclude it's not actually as useful as you might think. Admittedly, it's nice to be able to start a round of combat already able to use a spell, but Force Points build up very fast, but so do levels. Later in the game, very expensive spells are available; again, having immediate access to group attack spells at level 47 (as opposed to level 50) is handy ... for about one dungeon. Finally, mini-carrots add exactly 25 force points to a character's meter. So if your character can use a spell with 47 force points and you feed him 50 force points in carrots... it's clearly a waste to have lowered the spell cost.
• Conclusion: buy this early on if your spellcasters can't get off critical spells like restore and heal, otherwise let it go. In fact, a better strategy is to have the magicians DEFEND for their first action; it will reduce their damage from physical attacks to almost nothing, and give them about 16 force points. Don't bother with it for the fighters, ever.
• Restore HP (4)3 -- Restores HP when Force level goes up
• Comments: My observation of this indicates that for each level you get of the skill, the character will regenerate about 5% of their maximum hits every time you raise a force level (25 point increment).
• Conclusion: I bought this for the first time late in the game and quickly wondered how I'd ever gotten by without it! Very helpful for low-hp characters as well as your stronger fighters if you're going up against tough bosses such as the Sealed Monsters. Try to start buying it as soon as monsters can actually knock out party members after your initial group forms.
• Critical (2)3 -- Ups the critical attack probability
• Comments: Critical hits do big damage (about 4x) and are extremely valuable against bosses. Don't bother teaching this to the spellcasters though.
• Conclusion: Buy this for all your fighters, and make it a high priority.
• Counter (2)3 -- Ups the counter attack probability
• Comments: another straightforward skill. The more levels you have of it, the higher the chance of getting a free counterattack. I wouldn't make it as high a priority as critical though. Stealing from random encounter monsters is quite helpful midgame and too much counterattack skill will get them killed before you're finished.
• Conclusion: a worthwhile skill for fighters, but not a super-high priority.
• Convert HP (3)3 -- Converts remaining FP into HP
• Comments: converts FP left over at end of combat into HP.
• Conclusion: healing spells are cheap to cast, and with a little planning you can finish off most combat rounds restoring any seriously wounded party members. Also, you may be using Restore HP personal skill. In the rare cases neither is available, the healing items are also cheap and readily available. Skip this one.
• FP Up (2)2 -- Ups FP when near death
• Comments: I couldn't gage how much was gained by the use of this skill as by the time a character was 'near death' he had been battered so much he was close to 100 points already, and the blow that took him to critical status would probably have kicked him to Green Status anyway.
• Conclusion: Probably not worth bothering with.
• Down Guard (2)2 -- Ups sudden death attack resistance
• Comments: Enough monsters use instant death attacks to be a significant concern midgame and beyond.
• Conclusion: This is almost like one of the status resistance skills (see below). It's more costly, but probably worth it later on disk 1 when such attacks start showing up. Basically, once you encounter quick-kill attacks, buy this skill.
• Up M Attack (3)3 -- Ups damage from magical attacks
• Comments: Theoretically you could give this to Ashley and Brad to increase the effect of their Combine moves, but I wouldn't bother. The spellcasters, on the other hand, could certainly use this.
• Conclusion: Buy it for your spell-casters a bit at a time; it's quite useful. They're strong enough to not need it early on, but starting midgame if you increase their attack power it'll help against bosses.
• Up M Defend (3)3 -- Cuts damage from magical attacks
• Comments: Since the fighters have poor magic defenses, buy this for them. It's a lot easier than wasting an item having them equip a magic book.
• Conclusion: Buy it for your fighters as a medium priority; your mages could use some too but I'd increase their attack first.
• Up Hp (3)3 -- Ups hp for going up levels
• Comments: This is an invaluable skill for your lower hp members (i.e., the mages). Even with it, and without the fighters taking it, the fighters were way ahead of the mages in my party. But here's a tip: while it's certainly possible to finish the game without the fighters getting bonus HPs, it's not possible to finish off the toughest of the optional "sealed monsters" without ludicrous amounts of HP. The toughest of them can deal out 6,000 hp to everyone in the party with a single attack, and at 60th level, only Brad in my party even HAD 6,000 HP. So, if you plan to take on the Sealed Monsters, buy this skill.
• Conclusion: Buy this skill as early as possible to maximize the effect of getting extra hit points. It only applies as you actually go up levels.
• Up Param. (4)3 -- Ups param. when force levels go up
• Comments: One of the more mysterious skills. It increases "parameters" (in other words, attributes). How much the character's parameters go up is unknown. I bought a single level for Ashley early on; he did seem very strong in combat but then he's the main character... I have no idea also whether the bonus occurs every time a force level is gained or if it maxes when the character has reached 100 FP (in other words I don't know if there is a benefit to reaching 100 FP and discharging the points and rebuilding. My guess is that there is not.) One FAQ author stated that he bought Brad 3 levels and the damage he took from fighting a boss was reduced to about a quarter by the time Brad's force meter was maxxed but I haven't been able to test this for myself.
• Conclusion: Need more imput on this one, but probably the trick is to max the skill for real noticeable benefit. It is one of the more expensive skills and it would be in keeping with Wild Arms 1 for it to be an effective, if subtle, skill.
• Adv. Guard (2)3 -- Ups the advanced guard probability
• Comments: Advanced guard is a pre-emptive parry of incoming physical attacks. It's very useful!
• Conclusion: a good skill for all characters to get. Three levels of this will give you a good chance of blocking attacks too.
• Restore HP2 (1)2 -- Restores HP when going up levels
• Comments: Oh please. Like you need to heal after you fight a boss monster and gain a level.
• Conclusion: As mentioned before, healing out of combat is easy to achieve. You don't need this skill.
• RES Up (2)3 -- Ups RES when near death
• Comments: [haven't tried this... I'm dubious... I never need that much more speed, Tim's First Aid always goes off first...]
• Auto Guard (1)2 -- Defends when near death
• Comments: When characters defend, damage IS reduced significantly. However, once a character is in critical status (they appear to be sitting on the ground) they are so low in HP that defending probably won't save them from a tough monster or boss.
• Conclusion: Another one you can skip.
• Up P Attack (4)3 -- Ups damage from physical attack
• Comments: Don't bother with this for your mages, but the fighters can benefit from this. I would work on buying it up over gameplay, as time allows. You won't need it too much at first but as the game goes on the monsters get tougher; by the end you really want to dish out as much damage as you can, as quickly as you can.
• Conclusion: All your fighters need this maxxed by the end of the game, but your mages never need this.
• Up P Defend (4)3 -- Cuts damage from physical attack
• Comments: Your mages need this skill, a medium-high priority. Your fighters can also benefit from it but they are a bit tougher and have more hit points.
• Status Resistance Personal Skills [all are (1)3]:
• The following statuses occur in the game, and PS can make the characters more resistant (but not immune) to all of them. Their effects and commonality are:
• Disease (no HP restoration) - somewhat common, annoyingly so at the end of the game.
• Blocking (original power abilities are blocked) - uncommon, but fortunately curable with an item; especially bad if you are counting on Tim and Lilka for healing.
• Confusion (character acts randomly) - somewhat common, particularly bad because you can't control your characters and thus cure themselves.
• Paralysis (character cannot act) - somewhat common, can be very dangerous.
• Poison/Vile Poison (character takes damage/lots of damage each round) - very common (vile at endgame) but survivable (vile does about 10x the damage).
• Forgetful (character gets no experience at end of combat) - annoying but in a random encounter not a big deal. Horrible waste against a boss though.
• Downhearted (character's force meter raises only 1 point at a time, even from items) - gets somewhat common about mid-game, disk 2 and on.
• Sleep (character is sleeping and takes no action) - somewhat common but unless the characters are frail, not a big deal as they wake up in 1-3 rounds usually.
• Petrify (character is petrified, counts as death) - lethal, if your party is petrified its as bad as if they all succumbed to a death spell attack.

It should be noted that equippable items which render characters immune to statuses DO exist in the game. There are however only 1 of each. The manual does recommend getting these skills first but I can't agree. Status items are cheap; Lilka can learn a spell to cure conditions early on. It does make it a little easier in the short term to be resistant to some of these conditions but even at three levels the status attacks still work on characters a lot of the time.

The basic attacks of the fighters are effective by themselves, but not so for the mages. I would recommend that you have the mages learn resistance to Blocking, and everyone learn resistance to confusion and paralysis. I would tough out all the other statuses unless you find you are really having a problem with something. Admittedly, near the end game Brad, who had all resistances maxxed, was shrugging off most status affects in random encounters and that was handy, but even he was getting affected by boss attacks.

Recommended Skill Purchases

If your characters are going down a lot, increase the priority of Restore HP and the Defend abilities. If you are getting overwhelmed by status attacks, buy those. If you want to play with Parameter Up, try buying it as early as you can - right after Up HP.

Force Abilities

The following force abilities are somewhat puzzling. Here's what they do:

Lilka

1) Mystic - this ability lets Lilka use an item on the whole party at once. This includes force carrots and healing berries. Additionally, Lilka can use elemental rings to cast basic elemental attack spells (this does not consume the ring).

3) Extend - this increases the damage of Lilka's spells and ups the area of effect 1 category: single -> group, group -> all.

4) DualCast - the point of this ability is that if Lilka uses the first and second level versions of one of her elemental spells (or healing or 2 sabres) it casts a 3rd level spell instead. These third level spells are area-effect and do 125%+ of the damage of a second spell. Note that if you are fighting a single foe it is much better to simply cast two second level spells (you'll get 200% of the damage!) instead.

Tim

3) Divide - this should have been called "Devolve." It doesn't cut a monster's hp in half. It mutates the monster into a different, lower level monster. Some monsters can only be encountered this way, and a few of the lower level monsters are actually tough as bosses!

Kannon

Gatling - in order to use a Gatling attack of a certain level, you must have Bionic Arm moves of that level. And the level 3 and 4 Bionic Arm moves are VERY hard to get unlocked. Use of each of her first two level 1 Bionic Arm moves unlocks 1 level 2 move, her third level 1 move unlocks two level 3 moves; her level 4 move is unlocked by the level 3 move 'Phalanx.'