Video game glitches related to stats and leveling

Glitches and observations, mainly related to leveling and certain statistics in RPGs

Here's a list of glitches mainly related to leveling and certain stats that occur in certain RPGs... The glitches range from being completely harmless and curious to being mildly annoying to game-breaking and terrifying. I will update this as I play more RPGs and find out more.

-As many powerlevelers found out the hard way in Phantasy Star IV, once your characters reach level 99, weird things start to happen... Wren and Demi start gaining TP and a Mental stat, people's skills and stats start getting switched around, etc.  You can STILL level up until you get to 9,999,999 EXP, but any subsequent level actually causes your stats to DROP as if you were losing a level. Thankfully, while this bug is incredibly annoying, it can be averted by having your characters reach level 99 in a certain order.

-As for the Level 99 Glitch in Lufia: Ruins of Lore... Once you hit level 99 in this game, you suddenly lose ALL the stats you've gained from levels (you still get to keep any stat boosts you've gained from the Ancient Cave or using stat-raising items), effectively being reduced to level 1 all over again, with no chance of getting those stats back unless you use a bunch of stat-raising Sources. It is effectively a far more drastic version of the PSIV Level 99 Bug with no workaround whatsoever. Thankfully, level 99 is so hard to reach in this game (it takes about 25 million EXP to reach level 99; EXP gained at the end of battle is capped at 32767, and is split between party members, of which you can have up to 8), that this should NEVER happen with anyone who isn't an unhealthily obsessive powerleveler.

-Also from Lufia: Ruins of Lore, a stat glitch... Once Eldin's AGL hits a certain point (around 480, I believe), most enemies start getting 6-8 moves on HIM before he acts, when it should be the other way around. Gaining or losing a few points in AGL should correct this glitch.

-There are plenty of statistical observations and oddities for Lufia and the Fortress of Doom... Instead of taking up a huge amount of space talking about it here, you can read about it in an earlier blog post.

-In the Disgaea series, though I'm not sure if this is a glitch or intentional (probably intentional since they never changed it), it takes about 3 times as much experience to progress from level 99 to 100 as it does to go from 100 to 101. It isn't until about level 300 that characters start requiring that much EXP normally to gain a level. Since enemies give EXP and HL based on how much EXP they need to advance to the next level, level 99 enemies end up giving significantly more experience and HL than enemies of the same type that are level 100-300 or so.

-In Breath of Fire 3, you can use stat-boosting items to boost your stats to above 999 (though the status screen says those stats are still at 999, the functional cap for each stat is actually 65,535). However, once you use a skill that would normally boost your stats, those stats are automatically truncated to 999. HP and AP actually ARE capped at 999.

-In the obscure but fun PSX RPG Guardian's Crusade, the level is capped at 9999 normally... However, if you gain enough experience in a single battle (through a process that entails fighting 3 level-scaling enemies, using the Living Toy, Generosity, and being very, very close to reaching level 9999), you can get to level 10,000 or 10,001. Regardless of your final level, you're not going to gain any more levels from there, no matter how much EXP you get. Also, stats are normally capped at 32,767, but if you feed Baby the correct items, you can bring his stats above 32,767. Of course, when he levels up, his stats are automatically corrected to 32,767. Unless you're an incredibly dedicated powerleveler, or you just really, REALLY love this game (this game IS pretty fun), don't expect to get anywhere near these stat maximums.

-In Lufia: The Legend Returns, and possibly, Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (citation needed, never checked this myself), if you try to use a stat-raising source on a character with 999 or greater in the relevant stat (most likely ATP), the game won't let you use it. However, if you reduce that stat somehow, most likely by unequipping whichever item increased said stat to or above 999, you can continue raising the stat in question by using the relevant sources on that character. In the case of Lufia II, I believe Life and Magic Sources are immune to this glitch... You can raise HP and MP above 999 all the way up to 65,535 if you want to.

-In the SNES version of Final Fantasy VI (erroneously dubbed Final Fantasy III), if you do something that would cause more than 65,535 damage to an enemy were the damage cap of 9999 not in place, it causes the damage to roll over, often resulting in a very low number (like 100-2000). This is most easily accomplished by raising Magic to a high number (over 100) on a character, having him or her at a very high level (80+), and having him/her either cast Ultima or use a high-level elemental spell on a single enemy with low magic defense and/or a weakness to that spell. This glitch is fixed in later versions of the game.

-Also in Final Fantasy VI, the maximum EXP any character can attain is 15,000,000. However, in the GBA version, if you gain more than 10,000,000 EXP, only the last 7 numbers will show on the status screen. For example, if you have Terra with 10,853,327 EXP, the status screen will say she has 0,853,327 EXP (this includes the 0). If Locke has the maximum EXP of 15,000,000, it will say he has 5,000,000 EXP. I'm unsure if this glitch applies for the SNES and PS1 versions, but it probably does.

-In Final Fantasy IV (SNES/GBA versions), an interesting and infuriating glitch occurs if you fight a monster that can summon more enemies, and you somehow end up killing more than 255 monsters in any single battle. This glitch severely reduces the EXP and Gil you get for that battle. For example, if you fight 257 monsters in one battle, you will only get EXP and Gil for the last 2 you killed. If your powerleveling strategy involves fighting monsters that summon more enemies, it's still a perfectly viable strategy. Thankfully, since such battles become boring after a certain point, most players will never even come close to accomplishing this, even if they are avid powerlevelers.

-In Final Fantasy I (GBA version, Dawn of Souls), when you do more than 32,767 damage, random symbols pop up in place of the actual number. Of course, achieving this glitch on the regular version of FF1:DoS is impossible, to the best of my knowledge... The most I've ever done is somewhere around 22,000. There's an awesome mod for FF1+2:DoS, called the Mod of Balance, that makes the game harder, but also increases the stat caps from 99 to 255, making achieving this glitch significantly easier. If you have a GBA emulator, and you want to play the Mod of Balance, download it at http://jeffludwig.com/ .

-In Final Fantasy I (NES), the level cap is 50, and the max EXP is 999,999. In all later versions, the level cap has been increased to 99 and the max EXP is set to an arbitrary cap of 2,000,000. In the Mod of Balance version of FF1:DoS, the max EXP has been increased to an equally arbitrary cap of 5,000,000 to scale with the new experience curve. Why it wasn't increased to 9,999,999 or whatever the true allowable maximum was, I have no idea.

-A similar glitch to the above is the Damage Overflow Glitch of Final Fantasy VII, where when you do something that would cause more than about 262,144 damage if there was no damage cap, the game shows symbols in place of the actual number, and the enemy dies instantly (this works on all enemies except Ruby Weapon, whose defense is simply too high to achieve this glitch on). This could most easily be achieved by Vincent's and Barret's ultimate weapons, the Death Penalty and the Missing Score. The Death Penalty does damage based on the total number of enemies Vincent has killed, and the Missing Score does damage based on the total AP of the combined materia Barret has equipped.

-In Phantasy Star Zero (for the DS), an odd glitch appears where the EXP display doesn't show when you beat Dark Falz on Super Hard difficulty. Rest assured that you DO get EXP for beating him, though. You get 10,000 EXP for beating Dark Falz after a normal run through SH Dark Shrine, and 12,500 EXP for beating him during a quest. Apparently, making it so the game shows 5-digit EXP rewards was too difficult.

-In the obscure Japan-only Super Famicom/SNES RPG known as Eien no Filena (Eternal Filena), while reaching level 99 doesn't cause any bugs by itself, you can level up AGAIN after fighting a few battles. Gaining another level after reaching level 99 makes the game glitch HORRIBLY to the point of becoming absolutely unplayable. Meaning, characters suddenly start gaining hundreds of levels, relearning techniques several times, causing the victory screen to often hang forever. If the victory screen does, at some point, end, allowing you to play the game as normal, and you check the menu, you might find your character suddenly dropped to level 4 or something, with a random amount of HP and 6000+ TP (TP typically caps at 999), and if you try to check the status screen for that character, the graphics start glitching severely, often causing the game to crash. You can't even check your items anymore without strange things happening. This means the game effectively ends once you reach level 99. This game can be beaten fairly easily at level 50-55, and this game doesn't really have much replay value, so unless you're a dedicated powerleveler that enjoys playing obscure JRPG's on your spare time, you probably won't discover this glitch on your own. I'm unsure whether this glitch has something to do with the translation patch, or it was a mistake on the programmers' part. Probably the latter.