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The most impressive feature in Legend of Mana is probably the smith. As
you know it exist different weapons, armours and other accessories. If
it’s true that you can buy some of them in the different towns, their
power won’t be very high anyway. If you want strong equipment, you’ll have
to find it on monsters, which is awfully hard to do; it’s purely a
question of chance: you randomly get an object depending on the type of
monster, and it’s often materials for blacksmithing. But you can also
create it with the different materials you collected… Here is the role of
the smith.
First, you choose the type of object you want to create (we’ll take a
weapon for a simple explanation, the others are protective pieces of
equipment and it’s just that you boost their defensive powers and bonuses
rather than their offensive power). Once it’s done, choose the material
you want to use for your weapon (most of the time, you’ll create your
weapons with different metals: VizelGold, LorimarIron, GranzSteel, etc…).
Your weapon is created. Simple.
But this is not the most interesting thing in the blacksmith concept. We
could say that it’s just the beginning. Once your weapon is created,
bought or found, you can temper it. By tempering a weapon, you’ll use
different materials to upgrade its offensive power and the bonuses it give
to the wielder.
If it looks simple, the problem is that you have a huge variety of items
and depending on which one you use, the effect can be good or bad. For
example, a Dragon Breath is an extremely valuable item which greatly
increases the offensive power of a weapon. But it’s pointless to use five
of them on the same weapon since it won’t change anything after the first
one. You have to use others materials to keep on upgrading the weapon and
sadly, some items are not very good and will only make your weapon
decrease.
When you find a correct combination, a card may be created. Theses cards
represent the power inside the weapon. There is a huge variety of them:
Crescent Moon, Raven, God of War, Mirrored World, etc… They affect the
parameters of the wielder when he’s wearing this weapon. The Elemental
Coins can be used and affect the element of the weapon, creating a card
named Gnome, Dryad, … depending on the Coin used. A weapon cannot take
more than three cards. The oldest disappears if another card is created,
but the effect is still here.
The items and cards have different effects. Some simply boost the
offensive power, others add an elemental essence to the weapon, others
boost the stats of the wielders, others create resistance to different
negative effects or create negative effect when attacking (to be able to
inflict the negative effect poison or fire is very interesting against
enemies on No Future Mode…). This way, you can be sure that your weapon
will be unique whatever happens…
The quest for the ultimate equipment is not a mission you can do, you’ll
have to find the materials and experience different combination. A
wonderful system.
- This section was provided by Wilhelm |
