War Battles List and Recommended Levels

If you are stuck in the Flame Champion War; or wish for more details on gameplay issues, ask your questions in this forum.
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ninjaluc79
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War Battles List and Recommended Levels

Post by ninjaluc79 »

Hi everyone. I'm planning to play Suikoden 3 once I have my nephew's PS2 fixed.

Well, many people say that S3 is one of the hardest in the Suikoden series, since you will control 3 pairs instead of 6 individuals, and success in army battles depends on how strong your party is, unlike other Suikodens, which army battles solely depend on your strategy in the battlefield, regardless of how strong or weak your combatants are in-game.

While engaging in S3 Army Battles as well during random and boss battles, I'm thinking of these following set-ups for units:

Attacker - Tank - Magic
Attacker - Offensive Magic - Supportive Magic
Attacker - Attacker - Supportive Magic

I would like to ask 3 questions:

1. What are the army battles do I have to win in S3?
2. What is the recommended level for each army battle?
3. Do I really have to pump up all the characters for army battles, or do I need to have to get stronger recruits before an army battle?

It's not like I want to be spoiled or anything, but I don't want to kiss the Destroyers' asses everytime I do an army battle against them. In short, I want my army units to be strong enough to easily beat a normal enemy unit, while my main units will take care of the four main Destroyer units.

I do want to present myself a challenge, though. Using characters that most people don't pay attention to would be quite a challenge. I'm going to level up as many characters as I can, so that I can see whether these characters have a potential to be in my final party.
It's not all about knowledge, but it helps.
eldrasidar
Posts: 565
Joined: Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:53 am

Re: War Battles List and Recommended Levels

Post by eldrasidar »

1. with the exception of the first two army battles in chapter 4, you can win every army battle, and you are expected to win all the others except for the first one in Chris Chapter 1.

2.
For the two Thomas war battles, anything over level 20 is definitely enough. You shouldn't have to do much grinding to win either. for the war battles in Chris chapters 1-3, the lowest level I've ever won the first battle with was 34, but that was after I lost it once, leveled up in the area after it, died and reset. It might be possible with some luck, and fully maxed out skills to win it at level 25-26, which is the highest level you could reasonably grind to prior to the battle. The second battle can be won pretty easily if you won the first one, since again you should be around level 35, which you can easily reach after the first battle. the third battle is doable from about level 42 and up, which again should be fairly easy in the natural progression of play.

the first two war battles in chapter 4 aren't winnable, so you don't have to worry about your level, although, you can kill every enemy unit(including the destroyers), they just keep on coming though until the game decides you've had enough. before the next battle, you can't really do a whole lot of grinding/leveling up as the monsters in chapter 4 at this point are the same as chapter 3, and your flame champion only has access to their recruits as of chapter 3(so if you recruited Edge with Geddoe in chapter 2, and Hugo was your flame champion, Edge still wouldn't be playable). so to grind for this battle requires you to have had forethought in chapter 3. generally level 45+ is what you are looking for, although you still can't do anything about the clan leaders yet.

for Chapter 5's war battles, generally, you are looking to be around level 55-8.

3.
No you don't need to pump up all your characters for any particular battle. You only really get a choice of who you can fight with when you are in Chapter 5. That being said, you can move at most 7 units a turn, so make sure at least 28 stars are leveled up(7x4). Also keep in mind that some characters are not available for all wars. Watari for example, can be used in Thomas' war battles, but not in any of the others. Other characters are never available for wars. So probably have 36 or so characters leveled up by the end of the game, which is only double the amount of characters you need to actually beat the game.

Getting stronger recruits before a fight is nearly impossible. Assuming you are doing do diligence in training, recruits you acquire won't be all that much stronger than those you already had. More importantly, you almost never have the option to select your forces in war, until chapter 5, at which point, you should have recruited everyone. The sole exception to this is Duke's team, which you get before the first war battle in chapter five, they aren't crazy good, but they are leveled up, and you can upgrade their skills, weapons, and armor before the war. Considering that Geddoe's team and Chris's team won't be available for that fight, having Duke and crew is pretty nice, especially if you hadn't been leveling up other characters as much.

some tips:
1. make use of war skills like valor, surprise, and rune magic. using those skills in combination with the appropriate terrain is often critical to success and will often give you the edge in combat.

2. equipping the proper runes. If a character has a A or better in a magic skill, and has a title like Mage, Magicn, Priest etc., make sure they get an appropriate magic rune, often this will allow them to use the rune as an out of combat special attack, in addition to possibly using the rune in combat. all other characters appear to refrain from using anything other than command runes and true runes in wars, so plan that appropriately.
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