[Glitch] Characters joining at lvl 99

[KFCrispy]

even a quick 5 level increase could make it valuable though. you can be at a point where you recruit a character and an available area will quickly bump the character 3-4 levels, 5+ in a few minutes. then die and do it again. in an extreme case you can probably wait until near end-game to recruit a character who was designed to join early so you can like gain 30+ levels in just a few fights. if you're patient you can raise all or almost all stats to their allowable growth maximums (probably 255 for all?).

and of course, if you can initiate a Fortune Rune trick that gains 50+ levels in 1 battle, it could be pretty fun to see how much you can pump the stats before getting bored.

this can be tested pretty easily. just save before getting a playable character, fight until you gain at least a level and record those numbers, die/continue/recruit and compare the level/exp and stats.


hell, the same idea should be tested on characters who join based on the hero's level, to see if either method allows us to abuse the system for stats.

another possibility is that the recruitment script itself (that gets the character to the fixed level or Hero+X level) is saying "add X levels" to the character... so recruiting someone twice might add like 14 levels each time if he's supposed to join at 15. just a thought!

worth a look for S1 and S3 as well.

[Pyriel]

It's slightly tautological, but characters that join at a fixed level are scripted to join at a fixed level. It doesn't assume the character is level 1 and then add 28 levels when Chaco joins. It just uses a command to set him to level 29, whatever that might mean. If, due to the design of the game, you can recruit a character, increase their level by ten, die, and they retain what they gained if you don't give up, they'd keep those levels like everybody else. When the script tries to set the character's level again, it just won't do anything.

I'm thinking they'll retain what they gained, but that's it. The game doesn't load an initialized set of stats as a starting point that I know of. The characters are initialized when you start a new game, and from there on, it uses what's in the array.

There'd have to be a special case for newly recruited characters to have their level reset but not their stats in order for this to work as you're hoping. That would fall under the heading of a bug. You can try it. I just don't think it will work that way. There's no retention of who has been recruited since the last save that I've ever seen.

As for the people that join based on the hero's level, you'd need the same bug. If the hero is level 52 the first time, and Pesmerga comes in at 57, then you die after leveling both of them up a few times, the game would just adjust the level the second time. It'd either do nothing, or you'd gain a couple of levels for your effort, assuming the hero gained more. In that event, you could just as easily have waited to recruit him. If you really need another partner, it might be worth the trouble. It'd be worthwhile (maybe) if you could exploit it early in the game, but I think Hoi is the first available recruit that does this. He's Hero minus 10 levels, and by then you can have 50 or 60 recruits, and at least 20 better people are forced on you.

[KFCrispy]

yeah but unless the developer put A LOT of thought into this save-continue stat abuse system, i can imagine that the script to get them to a specific level HAS to "add X levels" by leveling the character from the assumed level of 1 because each level gain has random stats - the best way to do it is to actually run the level-up routine X times... meaning a level 15 recruit's script probably levels the character up 14 times. So if it does this, it might be an easy level 99 trick.
However, one way to code it could be "level character up until the character's level is at least X" (and if it's not AT LEAST and character level is already above X, the script/game would crash!)

Anyway it shouldn't take too long to test if someone is playing.

[Pyriel]

That's what I'm saying. It just runs the increase routines until the character's level is no longer less than the value indicated.

Evidence? Chaco starts as level 1, and the Set command has 29 in it. If that meant, ADD 29 levels, he'd join at level 30. Same with the squirrels, and every other character I've looked at. When the Set To Level (0x73) command is issued in a script, it calls the level manager subroutine with option 3. The first thing option 3 does is check to see if the character's current level is less than the requested level. If it's not, then it just exits and does nothing. There's an outside chance that there's a bug somewhere that could be exploited, but I'm not just guessing here.

There isn't a command to add levels in an active script. There might be one for the background script handler, but I can't imagine why.

Edit: In the interests of being scientific, I put my predictions to the test. I recruited Gantetsu, took him to the Tigermouth pass and gained 12 levels, died, and recruited him again. It worked out pretty much like I expected. The series is left to right, of course. As you can see, he came out identical when I picked him back up.


The only possible advantage I see is the one I mentioned earlier. If you play a lot of the game, and then die, you could pick people up earlier and maybe have an easier time of it, or take on some optional bosses, like Rowd. I'm pretty sure that little trick is already well-known, though.

[KFCrispy]

cool, well thanks for showing it!

[True Griever]

I was indeed wondering what you guys discussed. I wanted to know because that would make a level 99 playthrough from the start legit. You could now use codes, because you know you could get everyone to 99 by doing it the hard way. I have played it so many times, but if I use codes I only use them for what is already attainable in-game. Having 5 violences is not normally possible, so I won't use that code. But if lvl 99 is from that early on, I won't feel like a cheater.

[KFCrispy]

there's always the legitimate rubber band + auto-fire trick. there are probably some spots on the map that forces the character to keep moving up/down or left right if you're walking into it.

[Crna Strela]

well one day I played this and things went normally when I recruited Hoi and LCC
but for some reason georg and pesmerga was level 99 when I recruited them

then on the another play I recruited Hoi, Georg. Pesmerga and LCC at lvl 99

I guess there is some pattern on the emulator, perhaps it has something to do with our hero level (not more than lvl 50?) if we want them to be normal (considering the fact they should be several level higher than hero when we recruited them)

but yea this game is full of bugs
I wonder if the psp one clear

[wataru14]

Anita can be affected by this glitch as well? Her level when she joins at Muse is always 16. I've been testing recruitment levels and no matter what level Riou was (all the way up to 99) she always joined at level 16. Would they really code her to be a static level in one location and a variable in another?

[Pyriel]

No reason why not. I'd have to check the scripts to be absolutely sure, but what is generally described is that she joins at some offset of Valeria/Kasumi's level if you recruit her later in Banner Village. It might be the Hero's level. It's been a long time since I've waited that long to recruit her, so I'm just going off of half-remembered stuff here.

[wataru14]

Ah. Give me a day or two and I'll check it out. I'm still in Muse City in my current game.

[wataru14]

OK, I figured out Anita's starting level and it's fairly strange. She joins at a fixed level of 16 if you recruit her in Muse. If you pass her up in Muse and recruit her in Banner, that's where things get hairy. If you recruit her without Valeria in your party (either because you chose Kasumi or you simply don't bring Valeria along), Anita will join at a fixed level of 43. If Valeria is in your party when you recruit Anita, then Anita will join at Valeria's current level (provided it is higher than her base level of 43). Thus, a level 40 Valeria will recruit a Level 43 Anita, but a level 59 Valeria will recruit a level 59 Anita. Riou's level is not checked and does not matter when calculating Anita's starting level in Banner.

I should be getting up to Vincent in a day or so, so I will experiment with changing Riou and Simone's levels around when I recruit him to see what happens.

[KnightOfTruth]

Whenever that occurs in my games (when emulating vs. original PS1 copy) I just hex edit the character back to what they SHOULD be, stats and everything (though obviously there's some guess-timation involved there). I prefer to do it this way to maintain the "legitimate" feeling of the game (ironic I know). I also hexedit the other glitches/errors such as McDohl's name etc.

[JeaneIsMyWaifu]

Hi, this may be an old topic but I'll just put this in case future players might want to use it.

The level 99 glitch is annoying because I think it kills whatever fun the game had left if your characters are way too strong for the enemies. Personally I'd love to utilize Wakaba and L.C.Chan together (master-student combo) while Georg & Mazus are two very strong and very fun characters to use. You might also miss out on Anita if you recruit her with Valeria. The way to circumvent this is (unfortunately) by using a cheat device, gameshark in this case. (For example the code for Georg is 3006AE1B 0007)

The other day I was playing around with a save game and trying different stuffs just for fun so I tried to get Viki & Tessai by using gameshark way before I was supposed to get them (because walking is a bit*h) and she started out at level 1. I was worried it might crash the game but when I reached the Mathilda forest she appeared like normal. I checked back at HQ and she's still lvl 1 instead of the 30+ she usually appeared at. Then I tried using it on characters with the lvl 99 glitch and voila, they all appeared at lvl 1!!! The only exception is Pesmerga because for some reason he appeared at lvl 50 even if you use cheat device but it still leaves room for you to play him at Rockaxe at least. Oh and no crash either, I got Anita at lvl 99 so I reset and used the cheat device, I checked back to Banner Village with Valeria and she already disappeared as if I've already recruited her. Btw characters you recruit this way would also appear at the stone tablet (and they'll be at the part of the castle they were supposed to be, e.g. Mazus at the library) and count as Stars of Destiny since I recruited Bob with exactly 80 stars of destiny, which included all the hacked characters. Getting them to a decent level is as easy as using Blinking Mirror to get back to HQ too. Hope this helps!

[Pyriel]

That's not weird really. The scripts usually check the recruit flags that those codes set, and don't place the character, or don't let recruitment take off, if they're set. The only exception would be if the script that does the checking has already run before you activate the code or send it in through your emulator's cheat menu or plugin, and you haven't left the room.

Most or at least many of the characters start at level 1 before you recruit them. Scripts that run as you do the recruitment will bump them up to the necessary level, whether it's fixed or relative to some other character. The big exceptions are Pesmerga, Viktor, and anybody else who's eligible for bonuses when you import a Suikoden save file. They can be set at the beginning when you do the import, and if I remember right, they are set to the defaults even if you don't (Pesmerga defaults to 50).