Millennial Fair – Breath of Fire IV Strategy Guide

Breath of Fire IV

Basic Guide
Walkthrough

 

Basic Guide:
Controls (Top)

Directional Pad: Move Character, Move Cursor
Triangle: Cancel, Use Character Action
Square: Open Menu, Show Enemy Statistics (battle)
Cross: Talk/Check/Search, Accept
Circle: Dash (when held), Toggle information on Status Screen
Select: Open Help Menu (during battle or fishing)
Start: Pause
L1/R1: Move camera to the left/right
L2/R2: Change character order

Menu Options (Top)

Pressing the Square button will call up the game menu. You can see your total game time as well as your current amount of Zenny (currency). The menu options are:
Item: Use/Sort/Drop/Key Item
Special: See all special abilities of your characters, such as Magic, Skills
Equip: Equip weapons, armor and accessories
Status: Character statistics for
Change: Change battle order or character placement
Setting: Change the Game Options
Save: Save your game on the World Map or at a Diary.

Status Explanation (Top)

When you go to the Status screen, you will get the following information about your characters.
Level: Growth is measured in levels. Each character starts at a set level and can grow by earning experience in battle. Every time you go up a level, the experience requirements will go up. Each time your level goes up, your other statistics will increase, depending on the character and on the Master he/she is studying under. The minimum level is 1, and the maximum is 99.
HP: Health Points indicate the state of your character’s physical condition. HP will go up as your levels increase or when you use certain items. There is a Maximum HP, and a current HP. If the stats read 70/100, it means that your maximum health is 100, but your current health is 70. When your HP reaches 0, your character will be unconcious, but can be revived with magic or items. If all characters in a battle reach 0 HP, the game is over and you will need to restart at your save point. Traps in dungeons cannot kill you, but can lower your current HP to 1. If there are characters with 0 HP when the battle ends, they will revived at the end and will have 1 HP. However, their Maximum HP will drop with a certain amount. To restore that, you must sleep at an Inn, sleeping at camp will not restore the Maximum HP, only the current HP.
AP: Ability Points are used for abilities such as magic and skills. Like with HP, there is a maximum and a current AP. When AP runs out, it can be repenished with items, or it can be replenished by putting that character in the back row during battle. The amount of AP you regain in the latter way will not stay after the battle because it is only a temporary replenishment, when items are used though, it will stay that way after the battle.
CP: Charge points are used when a character is in the back row during a fight. Whenever a turn passes, the amount of CP will replenish the character’s AP. So if your CP is 3, you will regain 3 AP each turn. AP replenished in this way is only available during battle and not aferwards. Some items will increase CP.
Pwr: Power indicates the physical attack strength of that character. Power stats are influenced by weapons, accessories and masters. The higher your power, the more damage your physical attack will do in battle.
Def: Your character’s defensive capabilities. Defense is influenced by your armor and accessories, as well as Masters. High defense will reduce the amount of damage taken from physical attacks, and will increase the probability of blocking an enemy attack.
Agl: Agility determines the speed at which your character will act in battle. The character with the highest agility will always move first unless he/she is not the first person in the attack order. Agility also influences your ability to dodge attacks.
Wis: Wisdom determines the strength of your character’s magic and defense against magic. Wisdom can be influenced by items and Masters.
Exp: This indicates the level of experience that your character has. Total indicates the total amount of gathered experience, and Next tells you how much you need for the next level.
Encounters: A group status, this indicates how many times you have encountered enemies. This will determine other things like criteria set by Masters.
Max Hits Combo: Whenever you use a combo, the game records it. The more combo attacks you pull off the better this stat will be. The maximum is 255, while the minimum is 2. This will also be a status that will influence your performance towards masters.
Master: This indicates the current Master you are studying under.
Equip: This indicates your current equipment.

Battle System (Top)

You will encounter enemies at random in this game. When the combat swirl is green, you will get a normal battle. When it is blue, you surprised your enemy and you get one turn before the enemy. If it is red, the enemy surprises you and the enemy will have one turn before you. You will fight in two teams, one front row and one back row. Since there are 6 maximum characters, there will be three in each row. Rows are not available when your party has less than 4 characters. Before you start the actual battle, you have to chose which characters will attack and which will wait in the back. You can only attack with three characters. The characters in the back will use their CP to charge their AP. When the battle starts, you can select several actions. First chose a character with your directional button. You can:
Attack: Attack with your weapon, the amount of damage done and the amount of times you will strike depends on your weapon and other equipment.
Special: Use a Skill or Magic, or for Ryu/Fou–Lu change into a Dragon
Use Item: Use one of the items you stored or use your equipment
Guard: Gurad against physical attacks from enemies, during Guard, your character is able to learn enemy skills. When an exclamation mark appear above your character when an enemy uses a skill, that character will learn it. Only one person can learn one skill at the time.
Charge: Use Attack for your front row. This can be done by holding L1. Cancel this mode by pressing Triangle before the next turn.
Escape: Flee the battle with your party. Only the exp from slain enemies will be taken, you cannot run from boss fights. You can use this by pressing R1.
Pressing Square during battle will allow you to see information on your enemy, such as Exp, items, skills and zenny. Some enemies can inflict status changes. They are:
Poison: Poison will drain a person of his/her HP every turn. You must cure poison or it will kill you.
Sleep: The character falls asleep and is unable to execute commands. Sleeping characters will go to the backrow, and will recover HP as they sleep. It will wear off eventually or when the character is hit with a physical attack.
Confused: While confused, characters will randomly act. They can use every command, but they can also use it on your party! Confused members cannot be switched to the backrow. Using an item or a physical attack on them will cure this.
Blind: The character will be blinded and hit rate goes down. This can be cured with an Eye Drop or Panacea.
Mute: Character is unable to use Magic and skills. Some skills and Dragon Transformation are still available.
Fallen: The character has 0 HP. He/she can be revived with magic or items. If this status is not cured before the end of the battle, your character will be automatically revived afterwards with 1 HP. However this temporarily reduces Max HP untill you rest at an inn.
Egg: When in egg form your character cannot do anything and defense will drop to 0. You cannot cure this but your character will hatch after 3 turns with full HP and AP. Winning the battle also cures this, but HP and AP will not be restored.

Walkthrough
I: Awakening (Top)

Start by naming your character (here after referred to as Ryu), you will see how Nina and Cray are attacked by a Sand Dragon. After the crash with the sandflyer, Cray gives Nina the King’s Sword and tells her to head for Sarai. Exit the area. On the world map, go right to the Cliff, underway you will see a huge exclamation mark, so press X to take a look. A Dragon will appear, and Nina finds Ryu.
On the world map, make sure you train first by walking around the map and enterting areas with a question mark. Here you can fight enemies, and every spot has a treasure bag with an item for you to pick up. The skills you can learn in this area are:
Burn: Magegoo
Blind: Scorpion
Distracted: Cap
Rest: Eye Goo
The name after each skill is the name of the monster with the skill. Use Guard to teach your characters each skill. You can camp and rest if you need to on the world map, so you can regain your HP. Using Blind on Goos will double the EXP you get from them. Scorpions only appear in the area between the Cliffs and Sarai.
On the world map, go down to the Cliff and enter. Go down the slopes and follow the road, cross the rope bridge, when you come to the piece of wood over the crossing, go right and follow the ledge up to find a bag with 1 Ammonia. Go back down, cross the piece of wood, Nina will show you how to jump, jump over the ledges, Nina falls down, Ryu jumps down (crazy guy) and falls on his face, now enter the cave to set up camp. The game will switch to Fou–Lu.

Fou–Lu’s Tomb (Top)

You are now in control of Fou–Lu. You can pick up items with him here, or you can pick them up later with Ryu. I recommened picking them up as Fou–Lu so that he has some good items for use against the later enemies. Go down the stairs and exit the screen. Through the gate and up the broken pillar, jump over the other pillars by standing near the edge and pressing x, go down into the woods where you will find two guards, when they are dead go left to leave the are. On the world map, go left to find another spot with a question mark. Go into the forest and follow the path left, take the road up and you find Yohm, sunsequently leading you to your fist boss fight.
Boss Battle: Kham
One of Yohm’s servants: has a powerful Fire attack.
HP: 15,000
EXP: 16,000
Item: Ambrosia
Zenny: 2100
Strategy: Use Meditate to transform into Astral, using Frost Strike should take off 6,000 HP, so three or four should kill him.
You are ambushed, but you escape. The woods are set on fire, go up into the woods, there is a section to the right with a hidden Supervitamin, no exit up to reach a bridge, cross it and Fou–Lu will be attacked. You switch back to Ryu and Nina, just exit the cliffs.

Sarai (Top)

On the World Map, just go down to find the town of Sarai.