======================================= C L A S S O F H E R O E S Affinity Guide Version 1.0 By Kazamu Last Updated on June 12, 2009 ======================================= 1. TABLE OF CONTENTS [TOC] =============================================================================== To quickly jump to a section, perform a search (Ctrl + F in most browsers and text editors) with the Section Code. Section Title Section Code 1. Table of Contents [TOC] 2. Version History [VER] 3. Introductory Notes [INT] 4. What is Affinity? [WAI] 5. What is Affinity not? [WAN] 6. Base Affinity -- Races [BAR] 7. Base Affinity -- Character Alignment [BAA] 8. Modifying Affinity -- Gambits [MAG] 9. Modifying Stats -- Satori [MSS] 10. Credits and Thanks [CRE] 11. Contact Info [CON] 2. VERSION HISTORY [VER] =============================================================================== Version 1.0 (June 12, 2009) --------------------------- - This guide was started 3. INTRODUCTORY NOTES [INT] =============================================================================== This guide is dedicated to all Class of Heroes players. I hope that it will enlighten players to get a better understanding of the affinity system and how to use it to their advantage. On another note, I remember reading a post on GameSpot about people choosing a Drake first and basing their team around that. Personally, I chose 2 Drakes at the start because they greatly resemble the 2 main characters in a story I've been writing (and drawing the characters for). So, that's my reason. 4. WHAT IS AFFINITY? [WAI] =============================================================================== Affinity is a system in Class of Heroes that governs how "well" characters in a party can work together on the field of battle in a few different ways. Firstly, affinity affects the stats of your party members. The higher a character's affinity, the more their stats are amplified (to a maximum of 200% of the character's base stats as far as I am aware, i.e. the stats they started with, plus any additional bonus points you distributed, plus/minus any stat fluctuations). However, having affinity lower than 100% does not mean a degrade in your stats. So don't worry about have sub-standard stats when you start off with members below 100%. Secondly, affinity affects the size of your Tension Gauge. The Tension Gauge is a bar for special attacks called Gambits. These Gambits are key to increasing affinity. Affinity levels less than 100% will have no effect on the length of the Tension Gauge, but levels higher than 100% will cause an increase in the length of the bar, allowing your party the capacity to perform more Gambits. Thirdly, affinity affects how much your Tension Gauge increases when actions are performed in battle. There are several factors that can change affinity amongst party members. Characters races and alignments play the biggest initial role, while the use of Gambits plays the largest role of all. 5. WHAT IS AFFINITY NOT? [WAN] =============================================================================== Affinity was once rumoured, or hoped, to affect actions off the battle field, such as interactions between characters, choices that could be made, etc. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for some people), this is not the case. Affinity only truly affects character stats and the length of the Tension Gauge. As far as I am aware, affinity does not affect the random fluctuations in stats when a character levels up. Despite having a very high affinity level, characters were still sometimes reporting stat losses when they leveled up. So I believe it's more of a separate system and not so much one controlled by affinity, if at all. 6. BASE AFFINITY -- RACES [BAR] =============================================================================== Creating a party that can work well together starts with the choices of races and alignments. Some races can naturally work well with one another, while others simply hate one another's guts, and yet others are indifferent. Below is a chart of the different races and how they view characters based on race. Hum Elf Dwa Erd Hal Spr Fel Dra Dia Cel Human 0 -2 -2 +4 +2 +2 0 -3 -3 +2 Elf -2 0 -5 +4 +4 -3 -1 0 -5 +1 Dwarf -2 -6 +2 +4 +4 -5 -3 0 -3 +2 Erdgeist +2 +2 +2 +4 0 0 +2 +2 0 +2 Halfling +2 +2 +2 0 +4 0 -3 -1 -5 +2 Sprite +5 -3 -3 0 0 -4 +1 -4 -1 +1 Felpier +1 -1 -5 +4 -1 0 +4 0 -3 +1 Drake -5 0 0 +2 0 -5 0 +1 -1 0 Diablon -3 -5 -3 0 -3 -1 -3 -1 -1 -6 Celestian +2 0 +2 +4 +2 +1 +1 0 -5 0 If you examine the chart carefully, you'll notice that there is no pattern to it. You cannot simply take one half of the chart and mirror it to get the values on the other half. In order to understand this chart, you need to look at each character individually. The character you want to know the effect on the affinity level with is the one along the left side. Those you plan to place (or have placed) in your party are along the top. Let's say you chose 2 Drakes, a Felpier, Halfling, Elf and a Celestian. The "Base" will always be 100, as you start at 100%. Races in the party effect this base amount by adding or subtracting from it. Drake1 Base + (Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Drake2 Base + (Drake1 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Felpier Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Halfling Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Elf + Celestian) Elf Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Celestian) Celestian Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf) Now to substitute with the effects Drake1 100 + (1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0) = 101 Drake2 100 + (1 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0) = 101 Felpier 100 + (0 + 0 + -1 + -1 + 1) = 99 Halfling 100 + (-1 + -1 + -3 + 2 + 2) = 99 Elf 100 + (0 + 0 + -1 + 4 + 1) = 104 Celestian 100 + (0 + 0 + 1 + 2 + 0) = 103 At first glance, this doesn't look like a very good party. 2 characters are below 100%. Let's move on to character alignments now to see how it can change things. 7. BASE AFFINITY -- CHARACTER ALIGNMENT [BAA] =============================================================================== Similar to the real world, people looking to do good, like priests, can't get along well with people looking to do evil, like serial killers. It's pretty much the same principals here. Luckily, in Class of Heroes, we have mediators as well, otherwise known as the "Neutral" category. Good Neut Evil Good 0 +2 -8 Neutral +2 0 +2 Evil -8 +2 0 This chart, unlike the previous, can be read in any way you want to, because they are symmetric. Continuing on from the previous example, the 2 Drakes and the Celestian are Good and the others are Neutral. Here, the "Modified Base" is the value that we calculated previously. Drake1 Modified Base + (Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Drake2 Modified Base + (Drake1 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Felpier Modified Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Halfling + Elf + Celestian) Halfling Modified Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Elf + Celestian) Elf Modified Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Celestian) Celestian Modified Base + (Drake1 + Drake2 + Felpier + Halfling + Elf) Now to substitute with the effects Drake1 101 + (0 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 0) = 107 Drake2 101 + (0 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 0) = 107 Felpier 99 + (2 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 2) = 105 Halfling 99 + (2 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 2) = 105 Elf 104 + (2 + 2 + 0 + 0 + 2) = 110 Celestian 103 + (0 + 0 + 2 + 2 + 2) = 109 As you can now see, we were able to redeem everyone of sub-100% affinity levels simply by varying their alignments between Good (or Evil) and Neutral. This does not mean that you cannot have a party with at least one Good and one Evil character and expect to always get sub-100% affinity levels though. If you make one character Good and one character Evil, they subtract 8 from one another. However, if the other 4 characters are made Neutral, they can make up the 8% lost, resulting in no change in affinity. Of course, to do this and expect to still have 100%+ affinity, the races in the party need to do the bulk of the work in keeping it above 100%. Any more than 1 Good and Evil in a party (e.g. 2 Good, 1 Evil) will definitely lead to disastrous effects on affinity. 8. MODIFYING AFFINITY -- GAMBITS [MAG] =============================================================================== Once you've created your party, do not be afraid that you may be stuck with any sub-100% affinity levels that may exist in your party. With continued playing, and the vast use of Gambits, the affinity levels of characters in any party will ultimately rise. There exists a hidden system in Class of Heroes that cannot be viewed. That is, aside from the already mostly-hidden affinity system (Yes, you can see a percentage on each character's Status page, but it's limited to showing you percentages UP TO 100%, meaning that you can't actually see if you've got 101% or 102%, or higher, for that matter). In the Japanese version of the game (Ken to Mahou to Gakuen mono), this hidden system that I am now mentioning was called "Con EXP" in the debug menu and below it was a value called "Congenial", which showed a crude calculation of the current affinity rating. "Con EXP" is a special type of experience that can only increase through the use of Gambits. Gambits use up a certain amount of Tension each time they are performed. This amount is the number of "Con EXP" awarded to the characters involved in the Gambit (some Gambits can be performed between as few as 2 characters, i.e. casters, but all others require the whole party). Like any type of level in an RPG, the "Con EXP" required to add an additional percentage towards a character's affinity level increases. Even with 77,890 "Con EXP", I've only gained 71%. 9. MODIFYING STATS -- SATORI [MSS] =============================================================================== For those looking to spend hours and hours of button mashing and roaming through the dungeons, Class of Heroes features an additional way to increase the stats of your characters. The Satori ability is an ability learned very late in the development of every major, so it is available to everyone. What is does, basically, is reset a character to level 1, meaning that they also lose their current Max HP. However, everything else is kept. Their affinity levels, "Con EXP", stats, etc. all stay as they were before using the ability. Now, what good is Satori? I haven't even mentioned it yet. Satori not only resets your level, it also adds a total of 3 stat points to any number of stat categories (i.e. STR, VIT, AGI, etc. etc.). These stat point gains are completely random and cannot be controlled in any way, other than perhaps reloading and trying again. You can gain a maximum of 10 points to each and every stat category, just like with bonus points during character creation. What this means is that after 20 uses of Satori (i.e. leveling up to the high-80s to 99, using Satori and doing the process all over again), the benefits of using it stop. You can use Satori up to 24 times, but you will not gain any more stat points during the last 4 uses. Rather, the character's Evade rating will increase by 3 during the 21st to 24th reincarnation. *** SPOILER WARNING *** Note that Satori is not a skill that can be used in battle. It can only be used at one location, the floating island of Zeifair. In order to get to Zeiphair, you must first complete the main story ("Into the Labyrinths", and "Defeat Demoria!" are the last 2 story quests). After you complete the "Defeat Demoria!" quest, you will return to Particus automatically and Nina will tell everyone that she's started her own school on the floating island which will open up the quest "To Zeifair". Once you get this quest, the way to Zeifair will be open. To get there, return to Sky Gate and go the long trek (11 floors) to Zeifair. The option of "Reincarnate" will be available at the Infirmary in Zeifair. Note that this option is ONLY available here. No other Infirmary has this capability. They also have the Donate option for some quick leveling to get your team back up on their feet. After using the "Reincarnate" option for the first time, you may notice that the character will have an "a" by their race. This is the Greek letter "alpha". As I said earlier, you can perform reincarnation for any character up to 24 times, which basically goes through the Greek alphabet. 10. CREDITS AND THANKS [CRE] =============================================================================== Big thanks goes to Atlus, Acquire and ZeroDiv for making this game, and making it available to English players in a form that the greater population ENJOYS Japanese games (i.e. English text, original Japanese voices), unlike MANY OTHER localization companies... <_< Thanks goes to the Japanese code wizards for giving me access to the debug menu in the Japanese version of the game (Ken to Mahou to Gakuen mono). Hopefully someone can figure out how to access it in the English version too. Thanks to CWCheat for creating such a wonderful tool that I could use in order to activate the debug menu in the first place. Thanks to the Japanese wiki for this game for the initial insights into the affinity system. This guide was written by yours truly (Kazamu). 11. CONTACT INFO [CON] =============================================================================== You can contact me by sending a message to Kazamu on GameSpot, or sending an e-mail to [email protected]