Rune of Armor Piercing

[ThebigJA]

I don’t understand the Rune of Armor Piercing.

Doesn’t Grapple inherently bypass armor? The game says as much.


I almost gave up on this game, what with the slow start and some characters I wasn’t feeling at first, but by the time I’d just barely lost that amazing duel on the bridge, I was won over. I left off after exploring the area around my new castle once I realized I’d stayed up FAR too late, always a good sign of a game’s quality, lol!
I just wish it was better at explaining certain things.

(While I’m here, at least once when Nowa died in a fight, Lian suddenly had flame effects all around her. Idk what this was or what effect it had. It seemed like something triggered, but no runes she has say they do anything like that, so I’ve no idea what makes it happen and couldn’t tell what it changed.
Can someone explain it?

[Julian]

Armor pierce is a 1.25x multiplier attack that *ignores 100%* of armor. Grapple attacks by default only ignore 25%.

Some characters have compatibilities with others.

Lian, for example, will get Fiery Spirit for 3 turns after Nowa or Perrielle die in battle. She will also cover both of them. Fiery Spirit increases attack power by 50%.

[patapi]

It's a similar effect that can be observed in Suikoden titles as well, i.e. closely related characters gaining the Fury effect when someone gets KO'd.

Surprisingly mages get the magic-equivalent instead (which I've not seen in Suikoden), which is a great now that ECHH introduced magic-based basic attacks for some character. For example. Isha gaining magic boost when CJ gets KO'd.

[KFCrispy]

Armor pierce is a 1.25x multiplier attack that *ignores 100%* of armor. Grapple attacks by default only ignore 25%.

This information isn't available anywhere. I hope you can get this info posted about Grapple and the special skill rune damage details ASAP!

[Julian]

Working on it. Maybe this week, if not then next week. Did some PoCs trying to automate the fishing pages, and it worked out well. Abilities are a lot more complex than fish, though.

Do need to be getting back to my other projects, though. Juggling has been a mess.

[KFCrispy]

Also, how much physical damage does armor actually mitigate? Do higher grades reduce more?

[Julian]

The grade is just a... display. There is an actual underlying armor amount.
D: 1-30
C: 31-60
B: 61-90
A: 91-130
S: 130+
Someone could have 40 armor, and someone else could have 60, they would both display C.

It doesn't reduce a lot. It's a straight damage reduction towards the end of the formula. iirc it's armor/10. It's basically only really effective against multi-hit attacks, and earlier game, as armor clearly doesn't scale as well as damage per hit.

[KFCrispy]

Ah, that explains why there are 2 shields with each letter grade but one is always more expensive.

So the damage reduction for a 130 S shield is just -13 from a single attack? Not % reduction? Seems strange!