Strategy Guide - Guide for Farland Saga: Toki no Michi-shirube

Farland Saga: Toki no Michi-shirube (TGL, Strategy RPG, Win95J)
Spells listing, info, and some other stuff
V1.1  2/1/99

Compiled and written by: Richard Uyeyama (ru e ama best.com)*

* Instances of the letter "y" and the "at" symbol have been removed
  (replaced with spaces) from the above e-mail address in order to prevent
  unscrupulous UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail) bot processes from
  adding to the amount of e-mail I already get...

The latest version of this file can be found at:
  Fire Mage from Entrihi Visits the Big City
  http://www.best.com/~ruyeyama/win95/fmfevtbc.html


Document formatting, organization, and wording Copyright 1997, 1999 by 
Richard Uyeyama.

Permission granted by author to duplicate (unaltered) this document in its 
entirety for non-profit purposes only.  All other rights reserved.  Author 
reserves the right to rescind specific or general permission, if he sees a 
reason (such as loophole abuse) to do so.

Farland Saga: Toki no Michi-shirube is a trademark of and is Copyright 
1997 by TGL (Technical Group Laboratory).  All rights reserved.



Table of Contents:

0. Document History
I. Basic Stuff
   1. Purpose of this Document
   2. Info on Magic Points
   3. On Experience Cheating
II. The Spells
  (0. Key)
   1. Karin
   2. Al
   3. Alice
   4. Sara
   5. Radish
   6. Sophia
   7. Lulu
  (8. Sorn)
III. Other Stuff
   1. Quick Mode
   2. Hidden Treasure
   3. On Money Cheating
   4. On HP/MP Cheating
   5. BGM Select Option
   6. CD Music Option
   7. .bmp files!
IV. Thanks and Stuff


-------------------
0. Document History
-------------------

V1.1  2/1/99
      Sections 0, I, and III added
      MP regen general info added
      Added info on experience cheating
      General spell notes added to "Key" section
      Lv.obtained info added for all spells
      MP regen data (init. Lv, and +10/turn) added for all characters
      Effect area +1 and +2 info added for Healing and Recovery (Alice)
      Effect area +2 info added for Purify (Sophia)
      Sorn spell info added
      Info on quick mode added
      Info on hidden treasure added
      Notes on money cheating and HP/MP cheating added
      Notes on BGM Select option and CD Music option added
      Info on .bmp files on game CD added
      Thanks section added
      Minor editing in a few places

V1.0  10/9/97
      Unreleased first version


--------------
I. Basic Stuff
--------------

I.1  Purpose of this Document

     This is an informational guide for the Win95 version of TGL's 
Strategy RPG Farland Saga: Toki no Michi-shirube (note: this game is 
designed for the Japanese version of Win95; running it on English Win95 
may cause the game to crash during the intro sequence (and in other 
places)...).  Mostly, I'll be covering spell info for each of the 
characters, but I'll also include information on some other things as 
well, including experience cheating (by casting spells), money cheating, 
and BGM tricks... =)


I.2  Info on Magic Points

     At the beginning of most battles, your characters will start out with 
half (rounded down) of their total MPs (later on in the game, there are 
some "consecutive" battles, where your characters' conditions (HPs, MPs) 
will carry over from one battle to the next...).  Each turn, a character 
will regenerate a certain amount of MPs determined by his/her maximum MPs, 
as follows:

        Max MPs        +MPs/turn
        1-10               1
        11-20              2
        21-30              3
         ...
        91-100             10
                (etc.)

     Thus, for every 10 a character's max MPs goes up, his/her MP 
regeneration rate will go up by 1.  For basic references purposes, in the 
spells section (below), I've included character Levels at which I've 
gotten 10MP/turn regeneration... but do note that since max MPs do not go 
up at a constant rate (there's some randomness involved), these Levels 
should only be taken as approximate guidelines...


I.3  On Experience Cheating

     The higher a character's Level is, the less experience he/she will 
get for damaging enemy units.  However, spells which affect party members 
(as well as *some* spells which affect enemies...) will always grant a 
standard amount of experience, regardless of Level.  Thus, if a character 
keeps casting spells on party members, he/she can gain a ridiculous amount 
of experience, if you're just willing to sit there and go through the 
(repetitive) process for long enough.
     Generally, a spell that affects one party member will grant 7 points 
of experience; a second target will grant 3 more (10 experience total); 
and for each additional target, 1 more.  So by casting a spell that 
affects, for example, 5 party members, a character can gain 13 points of 
experience per turn (a new Level is gained at every 100 experience)...
     Oh, in case you're wondering, Lv.99 is the highest Level attainable 
in this manner (a character can earn no experience past 9899 points).  
However, a character *can* actually achieve Lv.100 or above (!) via 
assigned experience (the experience you're given at the Guild, to assign 
to whichever party member(s) you wish)...
     Lv.99 (or above) is overkill, however.  The boss creature in the very 
last battle of the game (during Day 17) is at Lv.40.  If everybody in your 
party is at Lv.45, the last battle shouldn't be any significant problem... 
though it is possible to finish with characters lower than that.
     Speaking of which...

     I would definitely recommend playing through the game normally at 
least once (i.e. without cheating), in order to get the most enjoyment out 
of the game, and especially out of the "strategy" aspect of this Strategy 
RPG.  After all, what's the fun in building up a party of invincible Lv.99 
characters and just breezing through the rest of the game?  ^^;  Well... 
I guess there's maybe some inherent amusement value in that, but... ^^;;

     Oh, one last thing.  In the first battle Alice appears in (where 
she's stuck standing on top of some boxes for the whole battle), any 
experience she gains will *not* count towards her experience total, once 
the battle is over.  Between this battle and the next, Alice will 
"officially" join the party, and will automatically be advanced (or 
regressed) to Lv.6.  (Side note: Interestingly, her equipment (weapon and 
armor) will also be assigned anew at this point, so if you want to make an 
easy 250 gold, you can sell Alice's equipment (double-click on the piece 
of equipment to bring up the menu) during her first battle...)  In other 
words, don't waste your time trying to experience cheat with Alice during 
her first battle, as she'll end up a Lv.6 character before the next 
battle, no matter what you do...


--------------
II. The Spells
--------------

Note: Not all of the info below has been double-checked, so it's possible 
that there may still be some discrepancies or inaccuracies or missing 
info...  So if do you find anything of the sort, please let me know at the 
e-mail address at the top of this document...


Key:

Character  (Lv at first battle)
Lv.obtained   Target*   Spell Name   Cost   Effects

(* P = party, E = enemy, S = self,  m = multiple targets possible,
   c = centered around caster, o = cannot be cast directly on self)

Notes: The targeting fields for P spells will appear as blue on your map, 
while those for E spells (as well as E/P spells) will appear as red.  The 
area of effect (as well as the range and effectiveness) of some spells may 
increase with the character's Lv, so some spells which don't start out as 
"m" spells, for example, will eventually become "m" spells (and even those 
spells that are already "m" spells may increase their area of effect); the 
spell info below reflects the maximum potential of the spell.


Karin  (Lv2)

Lv.2    E,m    Flame Burst   10     Fire damage to enemies
Lv.3    P,o    Melt           4     Unfreeze party member
Lv.5    P,o    Heat Blade     8     STR UP - greater weapon damage
Lv.12   E,mc   Explosion     40     Radius fire damage to enemies
Lv.8    E      Flash          8     Stun magic with some damage
Lv.25   E,mc   Efreet        80     Massive radius fire damage

Notes: Use Melt or Heat Blade for experience cheating.  Flame Burst must 
be cast at least 2 squares away from Karin.  Unfortunately, Karin has no P 
spells that affect multiple targets.  Karin regenerates 3 MP per turn at 
Lv.2 (init); Karin regenerates 10 MP per turn at ~Lv.23.


Al  (Lv2)

Lv.25   S   Death Moment   40     Next weapon attack does massive damage

Notes: Use Death Moment for experience cheating (it's the only spell he 
gets!) (takes a long time for experience cheating, though, since it's a 40 
MP spell...).  Death Moment is a fairly useful spell against some of the 
later boss creatures (Sara and Sophia have similar spells)...  Al has no P 
spells that affect multiple targets.  Al regenerates 2 MP per turn at Lv.2 
(init); Al regenerates 10 MP per turn at ~Lv.38.


Alice  (Lv3/Lv6)

Lv.3    P,m   Healing         6     Heals party members
Lv.8    P,o   Resurrection   20     Revives/heals unconscious party member
Lv.10   P,o   Magic Shield   10     MGR UP - resistance to enemy magic
Lv.4    P,m   Recovery       10     Cures character status (stunned, etc.)

Notes: Use Recovery for experience cheating.  Resurrection cannot target 
someone who's not unconscious, and so cannot (effectively) be used for 
experience cheating.  Note that Recovery, in addition to removing unwanted 
things (stunned, charmed, etc.), will also remove status markers you may 
want to keep (such as FLY)...  And do note that unlike most spells, 
Healing will not give experience for targets it does not affect.  Healing 
gains +1 effect area at Lv.11, and +2 effect area at Lv.21; Recovery gains 
+1 effect area at Lv.14, and +2 effect area at Lv.24.  Alice regenerates 3 
MP per turn at Lv.3 (init1); Sara regenerates 4 MP per turn at Lv.6 
(init2); Sara regenerates 10 MP per turn at ~Lv.26.


Sara  (Lv7)

Lv.20   E,m    Petri-cloud      30     Petrification magic with some damage
Lv.10   E      Hold             12     Stun magic with some damage
Lv.12   E      Puppet           20     Charm magic with some damage
Lv.25   E,mc   Dark Force       50     Radius damage (& effects) to enemies
Lv.25   S      Metsujin Ranbu   40     Next weapon attack does massive damage
Lv.14   E/P,o  Life Steal        8     Steal health from enemies or friends

Notes: You can use Life Steal for experience cheating, but you'll probably 
want to use it on someone of decently higher level (3 or more levels 
higher should be fine, I think) than Sara, so she doesn't steal *too* many 
HPs each round.  Unlike most spells, Life Steal *can* actually be cast on 
a location where it will have no target(s), so be careful to place it 
properly.  You can also use the Metsujin Ranbu (note: not quite sure about 
the first kanji in this spell name...) spell for experience cheating, but 
since that's a 40 MP spell, that'll take much longer to recharge...  
Unfortunately, Sara has no P spells that affect multiple targets.  Sara 
regenerates 2 MP per turn at Lv.7 (init); Sara regenerates 10 MP per turn 
at ~Lv.43.


Radish  (Lv11)

Lv.12   E,m    Lightning        10     Lightning damage to enemies
Lv.14   P,o    Haste             2     AGL UP - increase agility (dodging)
Lv.12   P,o    Aid               6     Heal a party member
Lv.16   E      Mute             10     Makes enemy unable to cast spells
Lv.18   E      Lullaby          12     Enemy falls asleep (no damage)
Lv.20   P,o    Cheering         20     Friend gets another set of actions
Lv.25   E,mc   Thunder Dragon   80     Massive radius lightning damage
Lv.22   All    Silence          40     No one can cast spells

Notes: Use Haste for experience cheating (cheap spell cost).  Aid, like 
Healing, gives no experience unless it has an effect.  Lullaby is a useful 
spell; note that a sleeping enemy may awaken if attacked.  Lightning 
damage may stun an enemy.  Some boss creatures are not affected by Silence 
(or Mute), so be careful.  Cheering can be used strategically in offensive 
or defensive ways; make sure to cast it *after* the character has used up 
his/her actions...  You can also use Cheering to supplement experience 
cheating, effectively doubling the rate at which a single character will 
gain experience...  Unfortunately, Radish has no P spells that affect 
multiple targets... (well, I guess Silence does, but after Silence is 
cast, you have to wait for it to wear off before you can cast further 
spells for experience...)  Radish regenerates 5 MP per turn at Lv.11; 
Radish regenerates 10 MP per turn at ~Lv.29.  Beginning at around Lv.40 
(+13 MP/turn), I've found that Radish can cast Cheering every turn and 
make it to the next Lv (and thus get full MP again) before dropping below 
20 MP...


Sophia  (Lv16)

Lv.16   P,mo   Purify           2     Cures poison
Lv.18   E,m    Freeze          18     Damage, w/chance of freezing
Lv.16   P,mo   Restore         14     Cures character status
Lv.25   S      Macabre Dance   40     Next weapon attack does massive damage
Lv.25   E,mc   Snow Dragon     80     Massive radius damage (poss. freeze)

Notes: Use Purify for experience cheating (cheap spell cost!).  Note that 
Restore, in addition to removing unwanted things (stunned, charmed, etc.), 
will also remove status markers you may want (such as FLY)...  Also, even 
though Sophia cannot cast Purify or Restore directly on herself, she can 
affect herself with either spell via its area effect.  Purify gains +2 
effect area at Lv.21.  Sophia regenerates 6 MP per turn at Lv.16; Sophia 
regenerates 10 MP per turn at ~Lv.28.


Lulu  (Lv16)

Lv.16   E,m      Stone Edge   10     Stone damage to enemies
Lv.16   E/P,mc   Order         4     Units face same direction as Lulu
Lv.16   P        Earth        10     Healing
Lv.18   P,o      Protection   10     DEF UP - reduces damage from enemies
Lv.22   E,m      Gas Cloud    30     Damage, w/chance of poisoning
Lv.16   P,o      Levitate     20     Target character can fly
Lv.25   E,mc     Meteor(s)    80     Massive radius meteor damage

Notes: Use Order for experience cheating; it affects both party members 
and enemies, so you can get more experience each round that way!  Earth, 
like Healing, gives no experience unless it has an effect.  Lulu 
regenerates 7 MP per turn at Lv.16; Lulu regenerates 10 MP per turn at 
~Lv.25.


Sorn  (Lv25)

Lv.25   E,m    Lightning   10   Lightning damage to enemies
Lv.25   E,mc   Banish      40   Radius lightning damage to enemies

Notes: You only get to command Sorn for one battle, but I thought I might 
as well include his spell info here.  Note that Sorn cannot move from his 
initial location in this battle.  However, if Sorn takes enough damage to 
render him unconscious, the ghost of Viper will appear and heal him back 
to full health.  At Lv.25, Sorn regenerates 14 MP per turn.


----------------
III. Other Stuff
----------------

Just some various other (not necessarily spell related) items of possible 
interest I thought I might as well mention here...


III.1  Quick Mode

     By holding down almost any key on the keyboard, you can quickly 
scroll past text and dialogue (i.e. if you're disinclined (or unable) to 
read through it all... or if you've seen it all before).  I usually use 
the Shift or Ctrl key, since in most situations, those are rather unlikely 
to overflow the keyboard buffer.  =)


III.2  Hidden Treasure

     In certain battles, there will be items of hidden treasure (they 
won't appear on the F3 map overview).  The first such battle is the 
haunted house (doppelgangers!) battle, I think.  Hidden treasure appears 
on the normal map view as a small sparkle.  By stopping one of your 
characters on such a tile, or on a tile adjacent to it (diagonals don't 
count), you'll reveal whatever the treasure is.


III.3  On Money Cheating

     As it turns out, if you Restart your game (lower right corner, Load 
menu), your party's items (herbs, potions, etc.), for some reason, will 
actually carry over to your new game (!).  So if you're willing to expend 
a *lot* of time (this takes longer than experience cheating, imho, since 
you have to wait through the OP sequence each time you Restart...), you 
can play through a couple (or however many you want) battles, sell all 
your equipment for money, stock up on items, Restart, and repeat, until 
your initial stock of items is suitably impressive... then sell your items 
for money at the beginning of the game you plan to play through.
     If you've already beaten the game, you can take fairly easy advantage 
of this "feature" by loading from a save point in town, near the end of 
the game (there's a spot near the beginning of Day 17, actually, where 
you're free to do some shopping in town), selling everybody's equipment 
for money, and buying up items with all the money you have.  Then, if you 
start a new game, you probably won't have to worry about money for the 
entirity of this new game.  I've actually tried this, and managed to start 
a game with a little over 140,000 gold... ^^;


III.4  On HP/MP Cheating

     When a character achieves a new Level, his/her max HPs and MPs are 
increased by a random number within a certain range.  So if you want to 
cheat with your maximum HP and MP numbers, all you have to do is save your 
game just before someone gains a Level (a Level is gained at every 100 
experience points; you can check current experience via the F2 character 
data section...), then gain the Level, load, gain the Level, load... until 
your max HP and MP gains are to your satisfaction.
     Note: You can also do something similar with assigned experience, by 
saving at the city map, just before your characters enter the Guild...
     Note2: I've never actually tried this trick for any extended amount 
of time, so I'm not sure if it's really worth the extra time it'd take...


III.5  BGM Select Option

     After you've finished the game, a new option, called "BGM Select", 
will become available in your future games.  This option allows you to 
select which piece of music you want for whichever section of the game 
you're currently at.  There are 25 BGM selections available, numbered from 
00 to 24.

     Tech Note: The "finished the game at least once" piece of data is not 
kept in the game directory, but rather in the your Windows' Registry.  You 
can examine (and edit) your Registry with the regedit program (which 
should be in your Windows directory).  The data is kept at:

        HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\TGL\FarlandSaga2\Main

     The flag is called "CompleteFlag", and is set to 1 once you've 
finished the game (if it is set to 0, or removed entirely, it will no 
longer be in effect).  Hmmm... I suppose if you wanted to, you could 
simply insert this flag (DWORD value) with a value of 1 (before you've 
actually finished the game) with regedit, in order to release the BGM 
Select option...  Do note that there *are* some sensitive areas in the 
Registry that you probably don't want to be messing around with (unless 
you know exactly what you're doing)... though the above Farland Saga 
section should be safe enough to do this sort of minor editing in...


III.6  CD Music Option

     If you set the Music option to CD Music (rather than MIDI), the game 
will play BGM from the game CD.  There are 25 playable CD tracks on the 
game CD (tracks 2 through 26), which correspond to the 25 selections (00 
through 24) in the BGM Select option (see above).

     ** WARNING - track 1 on the game CD is a DATA track, so don't play it 
     on a regular CD player (the CD Player program which comes with Win95, 
     however, should be programmed to filter out data tracks...), lest you 
     risk damage to your speakers, your system, and/or your hearing! **

     IMHO, the CD music is a bit better than the MIDI versions of the BGM, 
but you can listen to both and decide for yourself.  =)
     Oh, one interesting thing about the CD Music option... you don't 
actually have to use the game CD!  As a matter of fact, you can use any 
music CD you want...!  The game will use tracks 2 through 26 (which will 
correspond to BGMs 00 through 24) from the music CD; if the music CD has 
less than 26 tracks, it will use the highest track available for all 
higher numbers.  Note: the only (minor) problem I've encountered with this 
feature is that with one of the CDs I've tried, once a music selection was 
over, it wouldn't automatically repeat (as it's supposed to)... but this 
has only happened with one of the CDs I've tried... and if you have the 
BGM Select option availabe, you can always "manually" restart the track 
with that...
     Caution: I don't know what'll happen if you give the game a DATA 
track to play... however, I'd definitely recommend *NOT* trying... ^^;  
Just stick to music CDs (or the Farland Saga game CD).  =)


III.7  .bmp files!

     Yep, there are actually some Farland Saga .bmp files on the game CD!  
If you look in the Omake subdirectory, you'll find both 256 color (in the 
"256" subdir of Omake) and full color (in the "Full" subdir of Omake) 
versions of 12 .bmp files, named "Kabe01" through "Kabe12" ("kabe" = 
"wall"; bitmaps = wallpaper).  11 and 12 are 800x600 .bmp files, and the 
rest are 640x480.  Here are some very basic descriptions:

       Kabe01   Farland Saga
       Kabe02   Sara
       Kabe03   Alice
       Kabe04   Radish
       Kabe05   Al
       Kabe06   Lulu
       Kabe07   Sophia
       Kabe08   Karin
       Kabe09   monsters
       Kabe10   Farland Saga
       Kabe11   Karin and Al meet (humor)
       Kabe12   Al and cat (feed me! feed me!)


--------------------
IV. Thanks and Stuff
--------------------

Thanks to:
   Kent Keltner, for a bit of help with the Win95 regedit program...