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Bit of a necro, but I think it's worth it:

KorganBloodAxe wrote: ↑

November 2nd, 2018, 2:55 pm

When I originally played back on the c64 version - I think after killing Brilhasti (and other farming) about 20-30 times I had a party around level 25 or so with some archmages, not sure about other versions. The next few worlds were a decent challenge.

I've been replaying 3 on a C64 emulator, and recently dealt with Brilhasti, and can give specifics on what happens when you beat him.

First, the fight itself gives somewhere around 21k XP.

However, when it's the first time you've beat him, some interesting things happen:

1) If the character is not a mage and is below level 35, their XP is set to 9 million XP, which brings them up to 35.

2) If the character is a Chronomancer, they follow the same rule (XP set to what's needed to level them to 35).

3) If the character is a Magician, Conjurer, Wizard, or Sorcerer, they are automatically turned into a level 1 Archmage (with 0 XP) with all the spells from Magician, Conjurer, Wizard, and Sorcerer. They also have their HP and SpPts raised if below a certain minimum.

That said, the 3 is a little weird. When I beat Brilhasti with my party, my non-Chronomancer was a level 1 Wizard who had finished Magician, Conjurer, and Sorcerer. He became a level 1 Archmage as expected, but he also had BASP, which is a level 2 spell.

Thus, my level 35 Paladin that started with pretty junk stats, now has: St: 21, IQ: 15, DX: 11, CN: 15, Lk: 18, HP: 428

My Chronomancer (who only went through Magician and Conjurer) has: St: 27, IQ: 22, Dx: 26, CN: 20, Lk: 19, HP: 428, SpPts: 412

My Archmage: St: 23, Iq: 20, Dx: 22, Cn: 20, Lk: 20, HP: 375, SpPts: 350 (I think those HP and SpPts are the minimum).

(Random side note: at level 35, the Hunter's crit chance is 78%, while all Rogue abilities are between 95% and 99%, and a level 35 Chronomancer has 11,800,000 XP, compared to 9M for most and 9.03M for the Monk)

Again, I didn't do any rerolls with these characters, so they started with pretty bad attributes, but the powerlevel up to 35 smooths over much of those issues, and had they started with good attributes, they'd be even better off. However, a party taken through 1 and 2 will probably not get much of a bonus from Brilhasti, which... was pretty much the point, I wager: it's a way to "quickly" bring a brand new party up to parity with carryover characters, since the meat of the game is post-Skara Brae.

Technically, it would be possible to get yourself a Geomancer before beating Brilhasti, since the Old Man skips ahead to the fetch quests once you have a Chronomancer; killing Brilhasti is actually 100% optional. Mind, without that free powerlevel, it would either take a lot of grinding or a transferred party. Anyway, if you didn't kill Brilhasti until you had a Geomancer and then killed him, my assumption is that the Geomancer would, like the Chronomancer, get the required XP for level 35. Which is probably quite substantial; they either level the slowest, or it's just that you get them so late in the game, you can't rely on too many 600k boosts from turning in quests.

Thanks for the Info Drool. That behaviour is exactly what I experienced when I played the PC version and I thought it was a bug as it was so different from what I remembered when I played in on c64. I wonder if my play through all those years ago had a bug or whether my memory is just faulty. I certainly remember having to farm Brillhasti using APAR and phase door just to get an archmage and a team that ready for the first world. I only ever played BT3 (till now) and I remember grinding out each caster life on brilhasti on the way to archmage. Oh well, i'll never know for sure since it was more than 20 years ago...

Drool wrote: ↑

November 18th, 2018, 2:07 pm

1) If the character is not a mage and is below level 35, their XP is set to 9 million XP, which brings them up to 35.

Although I really like BT3, the experience points were a bit absurd. 9 million XP after a single fight that takes place early in the game?? I had forgotten just HOW absurd it was.

miasma wrote: ↑

November 20th, 2018, 10:00 am

Although I really like BT3, the experience points were a bit absurd. 9 million XP after a single fight that takes place early in the game?? I had forgotten just HOW absurd it was.

Well...

That XP was only the first time. The fight itself is only worth about 25k, which is 2 or 3 big fights in Unterbrae-4, which is pretty reasonable for a boss.

The whole Brilhasti fight is a bit of a kludge, but I can see why they did it as they wanted a way to balance the game for both brand new parties and parties carried over from the earlier games. The Brilhasti fight is all about gatekeeping the rest of the game, so when you beat it, they wanted to be sure you were ready for the bulk of the game, so they balance Arboria to level 35 and just make sure that you're that level when you unlock it.

If you're grinding normally without fiddling with abilities, you're probably going to be level 25 or so when you can beat him, which means you're getting about 10 levels which isn't too huge in the grand scheme of things. It also means that, if you've replaced a couple characters along the way, everyone's all even again with their leveling (at least for non-Monk, non-mage classes).

Also, while it's taking place early in the game as a matter of percentage of the game completed, it's a helluva slog for a new party. At an estimate, I would say his fight is probably a good 20-30 hours into the game. Expected another 20 hours of grinding to be able to survive Arboria seems a pretty tall order. And, even with all that XP and stomping around Arboria at level 35, you can still get your ass handed to you. Overland isn't too bad (since it's, like, 80% Ape Grunts), but the dungeons have some very nasty customers. To say nothing of the boss Mages you'll face next in Gelidia.

So while it seems like an outrageous amount of XP, it's very much necessary based on the level of foes you'll very quickly be facing in the rest of the game. And, again, if you've carried over a party from the previous games that is higher than level 35 (which seems likely if you've done both previous games), you won't get any bonus XP.

KorganBloodAxe wrote: ↑

November 20th, 2018, 1:48 am

That behaviour is exactly what I experienced when I played the PC version and I thought it was a bug as it was so different from what I remembered when I played in on c64. I wonder if my play through all those years ago had a bug or whether my memory is just faulty. I certainly remember having to farm Brillhasti using APAR and phase door just to get an archmage and a team that ready for the first world. I only ever played BT3 (till now) and I remember grinding out each caster life on brilhasti on the way to archmage. Oh well, i'll never know for sure since it was more than 20 years ago...

Little bit of both? Honestly, I didn't think the C64 did that, but, yeah, it's not like 12 year old me was focusing on the effects. I was just cheering as I kept leveling. What you might be remembering, though, is leveling up your new Archmages, as you're given a bunch of level 1 Archmages, but you can't change class until level 5, so if you didn't make a Chronomancer before killing him, you had a lot of grinding still ahead of you. At 25k per fight, that's... somewhere between 10 and 15 refights.

Drool wrote: ↑

November 20th, 2018, 2:17 pm

Little bit of both? Honestly, I didn't think the C64 did that, but, yeah, it's not like 12 year old me was focusing on the effects. I was just cheering as I kept leveling. What you might be remembering, though, is leveling up your new Archmages, as you're given a bunch of level 1 Archmages, but you can't change class until level 5, so if you didn't make a Chronomancer before killing him, you had a lot of grinding still ahead of you. At 25k per fight, that's... somewhere between 10 and 15 refights.

I think you are probably right. I would of then probably leveled up the chronomancer a bit as well. I still can't reconcile how on PC I steam rolled right through the first 3 worlds when I remember having a difficult time in the first world on c64. Then again, that was probably just teenage me probably not fully understanding the mechanics and tactics behind the game.

Excessive use of Sir Robin's Tune? Heh.