Brigandine (e)

The unorthodox guide to playing Brigandine Version 1.00

Wong Chun Houe
eonian@pacifc.net.sg
Xu Yang'en
michealxye@hotmail.com

Before you read on, I'd like to tell you that this guide contains many 
spoilers, and that I do not own a Playstation. Whatever you find in this guide, if 
you find it useful, its all thanks to Wong Chun Houe whose house I have visited 
regularly to complete the game.


NO I am not going to give any details on how to play the game and all 
that. There're other wonderful FAQs around (by people like Zhou Tai An) 
which contains more than enough information on questing and gameplay and 
characters and all that, so if you want info on them, just ask them.
What i will share, however, are some of the tricks that i found from 
having completed the game 4 times. You can do whatever you want with 
this guide. No need to tell me. I believe that knowledge should be shared.ok
enough of crap talk. Let's get down to basic stuff that people have 
problems with.There's a short contents here. Whatever you don't need, just skip it.

1)Raising Level Of Rune Knights
2)Raising Level Of units
3)About Generals
4)Spells
  area effect spells
  power 
  React  
  Halo
  Petrify
5)General Classes
6)Capturing Units


1)Raising levels of rune knights
As far as I'm concerned, there's only one way of raising level...gaining 
exp. Its how you gain the exp that's hard. I know only of 2 ways of doing it. 
A)Sending your whole army to battle and hope to get your Rnue Knight 
some kills in the fight itself...OR
B)Using one Rune Knight to guard a whole city all by himself to gain the 
200 bonus exp.Personally, I prefer the 1st method. When I played Leonia hard, I  
managed to turn Kiloph into an Avenger in 3 battles. Not too hard if you 
know what to do.All you need is a whole army of rocs, about 5 unicorns, 
and a lot of good luck to do that. In case you haven't noticed yet, rocs 
have the ability to stone, and if you haven't probably guessed, my 
Kiloph had a history of killing a stoned Dinidan, the stoned Salam1A, a 
stoned Gerient, a stoned Meleagant, and had about 10 more other kills. 
Of course he was haloed before that. Something worth remembering, I'm sure. 
The only problem you ever have doing this is how to keep the knight 
alive. 

Its easy, really. The battle scene is played in hexes, and 
wherever you stand, there are always 6 hexes of space surrounding you.
So, if you put him in between 2 rocs (and your whole army behind you), 
the enemy will now only have 2 hexes of space to attack you with. 

Now, If you move one of the rocs such that its partially in front of him, 
there's only one hex of space left for the enemy to attack him with (not 
counting archers, centuars, and spells). By now you probably have a V 
like thing, and the poor idiot that stands right in front of your rune 
knight has to be killed in the next turn by the rune knight himself. 
Simple stuff. Practise a little, and it'll come to you in no time.All 
the more better still if your knight can cast holy word or some geno spell. 
This formation also happens to be my meteor doom formation. Keep that V 
in mind. I'll explain later.

About using one general to guard a whole city. Its when you're short of 
generals and there's this level 1 fella who needs the exp boost. All you 
have to do, is to equip him with some shoes or any of the sort (speed 
boots, flipper boots, bla bla bla) so that he can move a lot, and when 
the battle starts, START RUNNING!!!!!!!!Just run around the whole map. 
When its turn 12 (hopefully you move last), just barge into the midst of 
them and do a debar knuckle on that stupid unicorn that's pestering you 
or something. Just hit anything, and you'll get your 200exp, and you'd 
have defended your town. I learnt that when i played Cai, and i sent 
Gush to defend one whole town by himself. He actually managed to outrun 
Zemeckis and Cador put together. =_

However, I must warn you that you knida get tired running around, 
so...use this move sparingly.and it also helps if you equip speed boots or flipper 
boots if the terrain is very watery


2)Raising the level of regular monsters
Well. this is a little harder. They just hafta get into battle and get 
as many kills as posssible. The roc method still works, but then, if 
you're trying to raise a team of 4 salamanders, then i suggest you send 
all four dragons into battle. When you take over a town, move away the 
next turn and let someone else take over it again. This way, you'll 
fight a lot of battles, and (hopefully) get a lot of kills.


3)About generals
One thing that I found useful in my playing is never to put top generals 
together. i.e. never put Guinglain with Vaynard, never put Cai with 
Dinadan, never put Coel with Gerient bla bla bla. Somehow it doesn't 
work for me. Rather, I prefer to spread out my generals so that i can 
have 2 attacking parties both of almost equal attacking strength. 
Nothing wrong with putting them together. It just doesn't fit my style 
that's all.of course if you are a power gamer and delight in seeing enemies cower 
in fear of your 3 most powerful knights then go ahead but don't say I didn't warn 
you about weakening either the defence party or the other attacking unit.


4)Spells

AREA FX SPELLS
The best spells in the game are the area-effect spells, namely Holy Word, Geno 
Flame and Geno Frost. These spells have a pretty big attack radius, all the more 
useful if cast in the frontline of battle.That's why Vaynard is so cool.....at 
least I thought he was until I found the meteor doom formation (refer to 1). Place 
a meteor doom caster (eg. Necromancer or Witch) at the base of the V, and there's 
one particular spot where its possible to cast meteor doom without hitting any of 
your own characters.(directly 3 hexes ahead of spell-caster). So if you think that 
meteor doom is pretty useless cos it hits your own people, think again. If you play 
Cai, he has a knight called Cierra who, at level 26, has enough MP to cast 2 meteor 
dooms. Combined with a react spell, a Loki, a Lucifer, a fairy, and a Pegasus 
(which was what i gave her anyway), she singlehandedly wiped out Dryst, Iria and 
Camden all in one round. Total annihiliation..and for the record this single unit 
totally eradicated Zemeckis, Esmeree and Soleil in 1 turn and the whole line of my 
knights didn't take a single hit...Zemeckis was the only thing left standing 
through all 4 meteor dooms and he had only 3 hp left so he got killed by a stick 
tap...I rest my case!!!

POWER
This is the best (IMHO) spell in the whole game. When cast on Cador, he can take 
out a Pegasus in just one hit (693 damage)...but I don't use them on Generals. One 
thing about Breaths in Brigandine is that they never miss, so if you power up a 
tiamat(2 blue 1 black), and blow through a fafnir(2 red 1 white), its possible to 
go up to about 500 damage just in one breath. With this, killing Cador no longer 
becomes a headache. One thing though. Never ever cast power on someone who has a 
low hit rate coz its really irritating to see your level 10 Loki miss, especially 
when you've haloed it. The MP can always go somewhere else.

REACT
React React React...I guess you know how I feel about the spell.imagine 2 turns in 
the place of your standard 1...2 meteor doom from the same person..2 geno thunders 
from Cai and more..but more importantly this spell is best used to help movement or 
to catch stupid knights who try to run away or to just get in that extra hit to 
decimate Salam1A ..excessive use of this spell is recommended but its downside is 
that it consumes 126mp per casting (Faeries and Wizard have this spell) be 
innovativewith this spell with like 2 react casters in one army you can pull off 
some really scary moves like having a Lv 28 Shogun called Layoneil run up to your 
full hp tiamat and in 2 Tsukis and 1 Shadow Moon, that 758hp 5 headed overgrown 
snake became a pile of steaming ofal...
I think you get my point by now right.

HALO
Halo your GHOUL before he KILLS Dinadan and watch the result..personally I saw a Lv 
1 ghoul go to lv 13 after chewing Dinadan up and he went to 14 with the extra 200 
exp. So I guess you people know what this spell is for so USE IT

PETRIFY
Unfortunately this is a exclusive spell for ninja masters (I Think) so if you have 
Shinraha raise him to Lv20 and let him cast it on say Lance and watch what happens 
to him...oh look a statue after that systematically wipe out all the other units 
and then go and kill him (with a ghoul of course.just for the insult)



5)General Classes
In all the FAQs that I read, no one has talked much about this. Let me explain. 
When a Gerenal gains 1 level in one class, he gains 1 star in that class (other 
than ninja class). After gaining 5 stars in that class, the general becomes expert 
in that class and is now qualified to up class into the next higher class in that 
class mode (fighter, cavalier etc.) However, class changes only happen at LV10 and 
20 for generals, so if you start at Level 1 with 1 star in a particular class, at 
LV 5, when you're expert in that class, you can choose to continue raising level in 
that class, or to turn your General into another class so that he can master more 
abilities.
What's so special about expert? Well, for one thing, you got to keep all your 
spells and your bonuses..think about it.a fighter who can cast meteor doom, or an 
avenger with 10% hit rate, 5% HP recovery
One more thing about changing classes..if you downgrade yourself from a 2 star 
class to a 1 star class, it'll take less exp to raise level, so if you're trying to 
turn Cierra into that long awaited witch, then turn her into a cleric first, at LV 
21 (expert cleric class already) turn her into a witch, and at LV26 turn her into a 
Lector, and lo and behold! A level 30 Lector who can cast meteor doom...or if you 
haf a cardinal called Paternus who starts at LV20, at LV 25 turn him into a 
fighter, and at LV 30 turn him into a Samurai..a Samurai who can cast Holy Word is 
pretty devastating, cos he casts it in the front line..and he gets more HP per 
level up too..
I'm not very sure about class changes, but if you start off at LV10(or 11 with 1 
star, or 12 with 2 stars etc.) you can, in theory, attain the abilities of 2 3-star 
classes, if you change class every 5 levels. So it is possible to have a champion 
who can cast meteor doom (Hyude'll make the mark, if you bother trying to raise his 
level.I don't)
So the point is that.as long as you've mastered a class, change the person's 
class!!!!!
One thing though.never turn yourself into mystics, cos once you're a mystic you're 
stuck as a mystic until you reach LV20 and experted mystic class.
See..generals aren't that boring after all
=_


6)Capturing Units
ever Wondered what the rune area is for..and more importantly what that darn blue 
patch of your and red patch of his in battle is??? Well that's your rune area and 
its very important, cos if you die, it decides whether your monsters go with you or 
not. So, if you really want that Salam1A, then all you need is someone whose level 
is higher than Salam1A's level to cast dimension on Salam1A, followed by the 
killing of the general of which Salam1A is registered in, and tada!!!! Salam1A is 
yours (I did it, not only for the Salam 1A, but for tons of other creatures as 
well... fantastic stuff you can get.allyou need is a Wisdom seed and a bit of level 
raising). Dimension does have its use, but do remember that you have to KILL the 
general who holds the creature after you dimension it. If the general retreats, 
then all his characters go with him (doesn't work sometimes though...I'll look up 
on more info soon.) 
The next thing is force retreats, I'm not too sure how this works but as far as I 
can see if a general Force Retreats voluntarily he usually leaves units behind..and 
I mean ALL his units.


-Epilogue-
That's all we have for you for now Version 1.0x will be coming up soon so wait for 
it.
Any problems, questions or queries just email them to us 
Wong Chun Houe : eonian@pacific.net.sg
Xu Yang'en : michealxye@hotmail.com 

Now go catch that bloody Salam1A and that moronic Vamp1E