Luck is a poor man's skill!

A forum to ask questions if you are stuck in the The Gate Rune Wars; or wish for more clarity on the gameplay systems.
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CameoChic444
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Luck is a poor man's skill!

Post by CameoChic444 »

What exactly does luck do? In my experience characters with a high skill but relatively low luck don't suffer an awful lot ( Camille hardly ever misses, counters a lot and does strong attacks often). Meg doesn't seem to benefit that much from her very high luck and Rubi who has exceptionally low luck but very high skill does very well. I know that luck may affect other things (dodging, use of some runes etc) but I would much rather have skill than luck.
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Ced The Lad
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Post by Ced The Lad »

It's also supposed to determine the amount of critical hits you can do. However, since unites, and runes are mostly used in this game, it's tough to see it work. The only time I would see it is when I use Hix (who's a required SOD in Neclord's castle) to fight. He has a high amount of luck and always seems to do a critical every other round.
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KFCrispy
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Post by KFCrispy »

supposdly, both luck and tech are involved in critical hits rate. if you have high tech and normal luck, it's going to be kinda significant. if you have normal tech and high it'll be equal. if you have both, then it's going to happen a bit more. hard to tell, but when i was testing with killey who was running on 270 tech (max 255, master garb +15) and 255 luck, he was criticalling very frequently.

soul eater has observed that it probably affects counter-attack rate--but you must dodge an attack first! so this is also hard to see. something i can point out is that McDohl frequently counter-attacks when he dodges..

luck may also help with "supernatural" out-of-battle happenings, such as (rarer?) item drop and winning Goppu.. but these are even harder to observe.
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CameoChic444
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Post by CameoChic444 »

At the end of the game if you make Camille defend she dodges and counters practically every time! - This was outside of the last town when she had skill of over 200 at around lvl 60 and a luck of just over 100.
KFCrispy
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Post by KFCrispy »

oh sorry, here's what he wrote:
LUCK affects the amount of criticals that you get, the amount you dodge attacks (but not counter) and item drops.
Soul Eater
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Post by Soul Eater »

KFCrispy - I think it is different in suikoden 1 and 2, I think your tests with Killey may not be true for suikoden 1.

From my experience of things, dodging attacks and countering attacks are completely seperate things. A character with high luck will evade an attack but not hit the enemy back. A character with high skill with counterattack but rarely just evade attacks. A character with both skill and luck with either evade or counter, and will be hit much less overall.

As for item drops, as KFCrispy said it is hard to observe, but I have some anecdotal data that would suggest that it helps:

To reach level 99 I sometimes set my controller to auto and wedged the right or left button down on the D-pad in places where you would continuously walk. This lead to the game constantly fighting for me and leveling up my characters while I went to do something else. I could leave it like this for 1-3 hours (depending on where I was fighting, as some enemies drop more items than others), after that my items would become full and the game would give up things that I didn't want to lose. I remember at one point I was doing this trick on a low luck party containing Crowley, Clive, Pesmerga, Lorelai and Viktor. With this party my items became full after 2.25 hours (on average, after being repeated many times). Later on I tried the same thing but my party was Hix, Tengaar, Meg, Humphrey and Futch, so overall it had higher luck. With this party I repeatedly also gave up my equipment, so I had to start checking every 1.5 hours (to be safe). Even then I often became almost full. I didn't notice any difference in the actual items that were dropped, so the high luck party didn't proprtionally get more rare items than the unlucky group, it got roughly the same ratios of items but in greater amounts.

The above data is only one example, so isn't very accurate. In the end it doesn't matter that much, it won't hurt to use a lucky party when looking for items, they will get more criticals and dodge more.

As for the luck affecting the dice game, I've never heard of that, but it seems that if Gaspar was a playable fighting character he'd have a luck stat of 20 or something, judging by how easy he is to beat, so your luck when against him seems high enough not to worry. Why would he have that profession anyway? He may as well burn his money, that way it'd last him longer.

My other post on stats that was referenced is here, if anyone is interested.
Ayemelek
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Post by Ayemelek »

I never sat down and tried an extensive investigation of Gaspar's ineptitude, but in my general experience low Luck will give Gaspar a fairly even shot at you while a fairly high Luck will increase your chances of winning big. I say fairly high because when I go all out with a very high-Luck party (Meg, Gon, etc.), Gaspar seems to have a distinct upper hand.
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Black Fang
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Post by Black Fang »

Well he obviouslly doesn't share his stats as a character and as a mini-game attendant. And yes higher luck DOES affect the dice game. Tested it myself.

I also did a little experiment with fighting monsters for items with high luck teams and Soul Eater is right. Items come in a higher quantity but not quality, which cannot be said for Suikoden II. In two, with a high luck team you are more likelly to get those rare and ultra rare items as well as more items.
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RiceBowl52
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Post by RiceBowl52 »

Im not sure but doesnt luck alos have something to do with the amount of random battles that pop up?
Jowy Atreides
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Post by Jowy Atreides »

Nope, not even in the slightest.
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Black Fang
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Post by Black Fang »

Jowy is right here. I tested this out with an emulator, don't worry I own every Suikoden so far asides from 4 which I'm getting as soon as PAL hits the shelves, maybe even NTSC since I got my PS2 chiped for Suiko 3, I even have 2 copies of II, anywayz the enemies are pre-set at certain times at certain locations. Bascially what this means is that if you step at a certain spot in the game, if you hit the right timing you'll encounter that specific enemy. I tested this using the save/load slot so yeah.
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RiceBowl52
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Post by RiceBowl52 »

oh ok thatnks for clearing that up :D
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