Dungeon Antiqua 2: Classes, Stats, Formulas, and Other Info

Character Creation
Create 4 Male Fighters. You can immediately change class to whatever you want, but Strength is far and away the most useful and impactful stat. (And yes, there are a few scenarios where you likely want 4 physical attackers.)

Priest spells and Thief skills are convenient for exploration, but unlike in DA1, they aren’t really necessary at any point. If you’re minimizing jobs/grinding, buyable consumables can replace most of the key priest spells.

Damage spells aren’t worth the fuss unless you can hit a weakness (x4), and often you can’t.
Mages do however have excellent buffs and status (Haste, Slow, Armor Break; Sleep, Poison Claw) that are useful in many circumstances.

Doing Damage
There are four main ways to deal strong physical damage (Two-Handed, Dual-Wielding, Barehanded, and Double Shot). Early on, Fighters w/ innate 2H are the easy winner (and the class is worth mastering for its stat bonus). Samurai w/ innate DW are the most versatile and often the strongest once you unlock them.

Defense
The Defense and Evasion stats are both potentially strong if you pump them up — and you can pump both on the same character. Once you have access to strong heavy armor (around 25+), classes that can’t use it become a liability, especially in the front row. This is more good news for Samurai. Paladins, Archers, and Ninjas can also fit this paradigm, though they each rely on lategame equipment in a way that Samurai do not. It is particularly bad news for Monks.

The Ninja Decoy3 passive is really strong. It’s worth the slot, and the 200sp to get it, on anyone who isn’t using a shield (and no one really wants to be using a shield, unless maybe you’re a caster-turned-Paladin and going thin on skill points). Against bosses, combine this with 2 layers of Haste to be particularly hard to hit.

Mastering Classes
If you want Mage or Priest casters, it’s worth mastering the class, as you can then slap M5 or P5 on a class with better armor and fighting ability, without any loss in spell power. However, there’s no rush to do this.

Fighter is the obvious first master for all physical attackers. If you have time, Monk is nice for its passives and the extra Str/Vit, but it’s not necessary. Archers will want to master Archer (for Double Shot), which is fast anyway. Ninjas will want to master Samurai (to dual-wield Shurikens).

Bishop is a trap and is frankly quite pointless. Just like in Wizardry. (That 999sp passive might be an homage to FF5, but it’s nowhere near as good as doublecasting.)

You start out with 11 in each stat, but at character creation, you have 2 choices that permanently add to stats:

Gender
Male = Str +2, Vit +2
Female = Agi +2, Wis +2, Pie +1

Starting Class
Fighter = Str +1
Thief = Agi +1
Monk = Vit +1
Mage = Wis +1
Priest = Pie +1

You can immediately change class for free, so this really is just a choice of which +1 you want.

Unlike in the first game, stats do not go up at level up. Instead, each class comes with a set of stat modifiers. These apply while you are that class. Additionally, if you master a class, the positive modifiers become permanent. e.g., if you master Fighter, you will retain the +3 Str and +1 Vit even if you switch to a different class. (You cannot “double up” on this bonus by remaining in Fighter.)

Class Stats

As you can see below, each stat has a primary effect where the stat itself is a multiplier. This makes it easy to see what they are worth to you. For example, a Vitality 11 charcater will always have 10% more HP than a Vitality 10 character.

Strength
Base Damage = (Weapon + LV * 0.6) * Strength / 10
Accuracy = +1 per Strength (+2 when bare-handed)

Accuracy determines whether or not you hit, but it also adds to crit chance, and “excess” accuracy (beyond what you need to hit) adds to damage. So although Strength has a relatively small impact on accuracy, this still gives it 4 different ways it affects your damage output. Hugely significant stat.

Agility
Turn Order = (1..2) * Agility
Evasion = +2 per point of Agility above 15

Agility also determines how much the Haste and Slow spells alter your Accuracy (see below under Damage). As noted above, this affects damage output in a few different ways. When those spells aren’t active, however, Agility will not affect Accuracy or damage for most PCs.

Vitality
Max HP = (LV + 6) * 0.5 * Vitality

Wisdom
Mage Damage = Spell Power * Wisdom / 10
Max MP = (LV + 6) * 0.12 * Skill * Wisdom

If you have Mage 5 or Priest 5 casting ability (which includes anytime you are a Mage or Priest), Skill = 100%. If you just have a subskill equipped, Skill = 50% + 10% per Skill Level (so 60% with Mage 1, 100% with Mage 5). This works the same way with Bishop subskills, which also means base Bishop gets 90% (unless you have an M5 or P5 subskill equipped).

Piety
Priest Damage = Spell Power * Piety / 10
Base Resistance = 1 * Piety

Base Damage = (Weapon + LV * 0.6) * Strength / 10

Endgame weapons are in the 44 to 54 range.

For Monks (and others with the Barehanded skill), the weapon value for each fist is (LV * 0.6) + 7. This will typically be lower than endgame weapons — you’d need to be LV 60 to 80 hit the same base attack. Of course, there are other pros (and cons) to using your fists.

Two-Handed: 1.5x multiplier
Dual-Wielding: damage for the second hand is reduced to 80%, for an effective 1.8x multiplier overall.
Bow Mastery with Double Shot: effective 2.0x multiplier overall. (No Double Shot, 1.6x.)
Barehanded with Power Knuckle: 1.25x multiplier, for an effective 2.5x multiplier overall. (No Knuckle, 2.0x.)

Inner Steel with <25% HP: 1.5x multiplier. In practice, tricky to use consistently.
Pin Shot: 0.5x multiplier.

Accuracy = Weapon + Strength – 10
Fist Accuracy = 80 + (Strength * 2)

Each weapon has its own base Accuracy. This is 100 for most swords. It’s 120 for Excalibur and 130 for the Ancient Blade. Bow Mastery increases weapon (only) Accuracy by 25%, moving most bows from 80 to 100, and the best bow from 100 to 125. Fist accuracy can also reach as high as 122, if you master every Strength class as a dude.

Base Accuracy is also affected by the Haste and Slow spells. If Haste pushes Agility above 20, you gain +5% per point above 20, so at 30 Accuracy, it’s a 1.5x modifier. If Slow pushes it below 10, you lose -10% per point below 10.

Finally, Slash increases Base Accuracy by 60. Pin Shot reduces it by 25. Attacking while Hidden increases it by 100, as does attacking an incapacitated enemy.

Accuracy has three effects:

– Hitting: enemy evasion reduces Accuracy (on a percentage basis), so if your Base Accuracy is 110 and the enemy has 50% evasion, your Modified Accuracy is 55. Evasion is ignored if the enemy is incapacitated, if you are hidden, or you have Aim. What remains is your chance to hit.

– Accuracy Overkill Damage: Any “leftover” accuracy that you didn’t need in order to hit instead increases your damage. This is somewhat complicated, but in essence, each extra point of accuracy adds about 0.5% to your damage, compared to what you’d deal with no extra accuracy.

– Critical Hits…

Crits deal double damage and ignore flat damage reduction from armor, and increase your odds of inflicting ancillary status effects.

First, if you strike a racial weakness with a weapon (e.g. Dragonslayer) you get an automatic crit.

By default you have no chance to crit otherwise. There are three categories you can use to enable random crits:
1) Attacking while Hidden or while the target is incapacitated
2) The Power Hit passive
3) Weapons with Power Hit built in (if dual-wielded, does not apply to the other hand)

If one category above is active, your crit chance is:
10% base
+10% Battlemind passive
+5% Two-handed weapon use
+5% Slash command

If 2 or 3 categories are active, multiply the odds above by 2 or 3, respectively.

Your crit chance is also increased by your Accuracy, if it’s over 100. For example, Accuracy 120 will multiply your crit chance by 1.2x, so 20% would become 24%. Note that this does include accuracy from Haste, Slash, Hide, and attacking incapacitated enemies, which can be quite significant.

Armor is applied two ways: first as a flat subtractive reduction, then as a percentile reduction.

For example, you are hit for 200 damage and have 40 armor.
200 – 40 = 160
160 * ( 60 / 100 ) = 96
Thus, you take 96 damage.

Crits deal double damage and skip the first armor step, so a crit in the above example would deal 240 damage.

Resistance works exactly the same way for magic damage.

Other armor and resistance modifiers:
x0.5 for the Guard command
x0.25 for resisting an element
x4 for being weak to an element

As noted above,

Magic Damage = Spell Power * Stat / 10

Magic Damage also grows with level. There’s some rounding at various points in the formula, but basically it goes up 2% per level, from 104% at level 1 to 300% at level 99.

Initiative is determined the same way a lot of old Dragon Quest games did: everyone rolls a number between Agility and 2 * Agility.

Most enemies have Agility in roughly the same range as PCs (10-20) so it can make a difference in who gets to act first. However, this is unreliable. How much it improves your odds of acting first varies: it’s most significant at lower Agility, and when you are very close in Agility to the opponent.

Improving your Agility by 2 points (i.e., being female), when facing an enemy with Agility in the 10-20 range, increases the odds you act first by 10-15% on average.

However, this is pretty much irrelevant when Haste or Slow are active, as you quickly hit territory where you’ll always (or never) go first. And you want Haste up against bosses for other reasons anyway (improved damage, accuracy, and evasion).

Additionally, this is completely irrelevant for physical attackers using the Initiative passive or the Falcon Dagger.

It seems that only the last enemy that is defeated can drop items.

* – the shop won’t stock the item even if you sell it to them

Unique Chests
Bragi’s Helm
Rod of Discord
Soul Slayer
Wizard Bangle
Power Knuckle

Chest Item only in Final Pool (second half of Demon’s Gate)
Murasame!*
Yoichi’s Bow*
Shurikens*
Auroral Armor*
Gale Bangle

Chest Item in early Demon’s Gate (including starting room)
Tyrfing
Blessed Shield
Robe of Angels
Black Belt
Fortress Plate
Miracle Ring
Death Ring*

Unique Boss Drops
Rune’s Arcanum* – Rune
Excalibur* – Behemoth Zombie
Ordeal Ring – Ittosai, Ancient Demon
Wand of Poison+* – Hel
Garb of Fairy* – Fairy

Unique Enemy Drops
Ean Si Meat* – Ean Si
Devil Dagger* – Gargoyle, Incubus, Belial
Winter Mittens – Frost Gigas
Wand of Wizard – Necromancer
Pro-Magic Cap – Dark Witch
Silver Gloves+* – Gold Dragon

Other Useful Drops (eventually found elsewhere)
Snake Cap – Basilisk
Flame Ring – Fire Gigas
Hero’s Armor – Siegfried
Blessed Shield – Wyvern
Cursed Necklace* – Vampire
Lilith’s Circlet – Lilith
Wand of Fire – Sorcerer
Rod of Reviving – High Priest, Frau
Gold Hairpin – Lamia
Black Cowl – Master Ninja
Death Ring* – Vampire Lord
Gale Bangle – Greater Demon

Ean Si Killing
Archer, Beast Killer, Double Shot, Initiative, Aim

Endgame
Samurai, 2x Murasame!, Power Hit, Battlemind, Decoy3
Archer, Yoichi’s Bow, Double Shot, Battlemind, Decoy3
Ninja, 2x Shurikens, Dual-Wielding, Power Hit, Decoy3
Paladin, Excalibur, Two-Handed, Power Hit, Decoy3

Casting ability: swap M5 or P5 in for Power Hit or Battlemind (which aren’t central).

Most of the endgame bosses are demons, and therefore vulnerable to Excalibur and Shurikens (and protected against by Elven Leather). The final boss, however, is undead, and so vulnerable to the Ancient Blade (and protected against by Auroral Armor).

Postgame
Elder Dragon:
Samurai, 2x Dragon Slayer, Inner Steel, Slash, Retaliate

Start at 24% MHP to activate Inner Steel, apply Armor Break, and hope for as many retaliate hits as you can get.