Frequently Asked Questions

Table of Contents
1.Control Issues
2.Items and Equipment
3.Healing
4.Leveling up and fighting
5.Magic
6.In-Game Specific Questions

Control
The control is very simple in this game. Fighting, talking is all done with the control pad. My only grip is: Why the heck can't Adol JUMP? I mean, with all the potholes, lava pits and other dangerous floor tiles, it would be really useful! Anyway, talking is done by walking into a person. Merchants are talked to in the same way. Simple, eh? Fighting is basically the same but there are a few finer points in it which will be discussed in the next section. The other buttons function as follows:

A-Confirming, progressing through text.
B-Automatically selects no, can progress through text also.
Y-Uses selected item.
X-Uses magic while standing still.
L and R-NONE

All these keys can be customized from the option menu. Oh, and START pauses the game, SELECT brings up the in-game menu.

Items and Equipment
Items are very easy to manage. You can only have one of each item, so be careful. Talk to respective merchants to buy their wares. When buying items, try to buy every healing item you can get your hands on. You'll need these for some of the dungeons, because you can't auto-heal there. More on that later. When buying equipment, buy the whole set, i.e.,buy all of the Leather Equipment. Equipment is very important here because you'll need every ounce of strength for the later bosses. Note that you can't sell.

Healing
Healing is not often an issue. You can use the auto heal feature of the game when you're not indoors, which is almost 60% of the game. The only time you're going to touch that Antidote, Herb or any other healing item you may have is when you're in a sticky situation as in you're poisoned and you're inside a dungeon. In dungeons try to conserve the heals by levelling up until you can get by mostly unscathed. In most dungeons this is easy to achieve. When you're in a real pickle, use the Hero's Sword magic to heal yourself by about 65 HP. Also there's only two places you can rest to recover MP, that's Gazok's house, and the inn at Casnan. At Gazok's house, it's free but at Casnan it costs 10 gold. And note that Gazok's house disappears later in the game...

Levelling up and Fighting
The battle system of YS 4 is unique in its own way. It's easy to do but hard to master. The idea is to touch with your opponent to kill it. Simple, right? Wrong. Touch at the wrong place and you're the one who'll end up dead. So what do you do? Don't rush the enemies directly. It's like this:



Instead do this.

You should also fight all monsters in the general vicinity until they only give 1 Experience. Why? Because that means it's smooth sailing through the game. Trust me. Sure, you can breeze through the first half of the game without levelling up much, but the latter bosses cannot be defeated unless your strength level is at a certain no. For ex. I fought Bami at Level 26. Could hardly do damage to her. Reload, level up. Fought Bami again at Level 33. Piece of cake. Do the level up strategy on every area, except for the Iris Tower, because it's the last place you can level up because the last dungeon doesn't have any enemies except for the last 2 bosses.

Magic
Unfortunately, with the great battle system, Ys 4 also pays a price with magic. Alas, you only get 5 swords that can use magic(out of the game's 10) and the 4 of those are really useless. These are the 5 swords and effects. Remember, you can only use magic while standing still.

Flame Wind Sword - Shoots a fireball directly in front of the sword.
Thunder Sword - Shoots 2 thunder balls in spiraling fashion in front of the sword. Costs 2MP.
Ice Wind Sword - Shoots 3 ice balls in three different directions. One in front, one diagonally up, and one diagonally down. 2MP.
Hero Sword - Heals about 65 HP for 50MP.
Violent Light - Same as Ice Wind Sword. Costs 5 MP.

See what I mean? If you don't, try using it. For the first part, you have to be still to use it, so that means while you're fighting monsters in front, others are stabbing you in the back. Secondly, it's not that powerful. It's your choice, but I only found the Hero sword magic useful. Also, you can find 3 ornaments for the elemental swords which when fused by the blacksmith in Selrey SUPPOSEDLY raises the magic power, but I have not seen anything to that effect.

In-Game Related Questions 1. The dungeons are hard! And you haven't detailed the directions in the walkthrough! Help!
A: If you have a bit of trouble with the dungeons, that's normal. I also get stuck once in a while. If you're really lost, that's bad. I don't thing map designing was one of the game's strong suits. It's really easy. If you've played the Zelda series, this one's easy. But if you're in real trouble, just contact me.

2. Where do I find the 3 ornaments?
These are not required to finish the game, but here they are anyway:

Topaz Ornament of the Thunder Sword - right before you enter the ice cave, go west and you'll find it in a chest.
Sapphire Ornament of the Ice wind Sword - It's inside the ice cave.
Ruby Ornament of the Flame Wind Sword - It's inside the Flame Mountain/Cave.