So. Today, let's look at the random encounter system. The Dangerous Forest... Every step you take increases the risk of being attacked. This risk is called the Danger Level. When you enter a level, it begins at 0. But every step increases it. The amount it increases by depends on the exact tile you step on. Each tile has its own unique Danger Value. For instance, the tiles near the entrance of 1F have a Danger Value of 0, and thus you are completely safe there. However, as you take the first corridor to the east, the tiles in that corridor each have a Danger Value of 2. So your Danger Level increases by 2 as you walk along that corridor. The tile entering the clearing at the end of the corridor has a Danger Value of 4, so when you step on that tile, your Danger Level increases by 4. By the time you reach this clearing, you will have walked over five tiles that each had a Danger Value of 2, and one tile that had a Danger Value of 4... this would be enough to push your total Danger Level to 14. You encounter enemies when the Danger Level exceeds the Trigger Level. The Trigger Level is created when you enter a floor and recalculated after every battle, and is a random number between 16 and 64 inclusive. This means you could see an enouncter after as few as 2-3 steps, or as many as 32+, depending on the Trigger Level and what tiles you walk over. You can tell how close you are to getting an encounter by the coloured circle in the lower right. It pulses a pure dark blue at 0%, but gradually fades to green by 45%. By 60%, it will have turned dark orange, and will hit red by 75%. There is no further change in color until you either reset your Danger Level or you exceed 100%: at which point the encounter will occur. The use of abilities like Stalker adjusts the Danger Value of each tile you walk on, rounding down. As an example, L1 Stalker only adds 70% of the Danger Value to your Danger Level, while L10 Stalker adds only 20% of the Danger Value per tile. Because of rounding, it would take a Danger Value of 5 or more to increase your Danger Level when you're travelling with maxed Stalker - so rounding often gives you far less encounters than the percentage drop would indicate. The Troubadour's luring song, on the other hand, multiplies the Danger Value by 120% at L1, increasing to 200% by L5 - doubling the rate at which you meet encounters. Finally, when you get an encounter, what enemies you meet depend again on what tile you're on. Each tile can point to its own table of monsters, of which a table has 5 possibilities with a percentage chance of each. So on a particular tile, you might have a 3% chance of meeting a certain group of enemies, while having a 40% chance of another group. But on another tile, the groups may be different again. Floor 1 of the Labyrinth uses 9 different tables itself depending on the tile you're on, so you may find certain places more dangerous than others. (Note: I haven't isolated whether there are different groups at different times of the day or under other circumstances yet, but this should do for the basics. In general, there are only 5 groups of enemies possible per tile, and certain tiles increase the encounter rate/Danger Level more than others.) Ambushes Whether you ambush your enemies or are blindsided yourself depends on your stats and skills for the most part. There are exceptions (for example, sneaking up on FOE from behind would be an automatic ambush), but in general, it's based on stats. In order to figure out the chance you have of earning either, we must calculate the Ambush Rating of both the party and the enemies. Party Rating = (Party's Highest AGI + 10) * (Party's Highest LUC + 10) Enemy Rating = (Enemy's Highest AGI + 10) * (Enemy's Highest LUC + 10) So if you had two characters, one with an AGI of 10 and a LUC of 5, and the other with an AGI of 7 and a LUC of 15, you'd have a Party Rating of (10 + 10) * (15 + 10) = 500. All that matters is the highest stat for each, and it doesn't matter if this is split among different people. The base Ambush Chance is equal to: [5 * Party Rating / Enemy Rating]. This is rounded down. So if your Rating was around double the enemy's, you'd have a base 10% chance of getting an Ambush, as an example - but on average, the chance would be around 5%. The Survivalist's Ambush skill then adds its value to this base chance. The increases are +10% at L1, +13%, +17%, +22% and finally +28% at L5. So if you had a base Ambush Chance of 10%, a L5 Ambush skill would increase that to 38%. In addition, multiple Survivalists would further increase that with their own Ambush skills - they all stack. However, after all this is calculated, the chance is capped between 1% and 25% inclusive. This means you can never have more than a 25% chance of ambushing your enemy. As such, anything more than one person with L5 Ambush is wasted (and because of the base chance, there's very often no difference between L4 Ambush and L5 Ambush). If your ambush fails, then there's still the chance of you being blindsided by the enemy. The base Blindside Chance is equal to: [7 * Enemy Rating / Party Rating]. Again, this is rounded down, giving an average 7% chance of being Blindsided. This chance is again capped between 1% and 25% inclusive. Your Survivalist's Aware skill can reduce this, however. An L1 Aware will reduce it by 5%, then it increases to 7%, 11%, 17% and finally maxing at 25%. However, it cannot reduce the Blindside Chance below 1%, no matter the stats. So a L5 Aware would reduce the Blindside chance to 1% no matter what. On average though, unless you're facing a vastly superior enemy, a L1 or L2 Aware skill would be sufficient to minimize the chance of being Blindsided. If you neither Ambush the enemy nor are Blindsided, then the battle starts just as normal. === Escaping Sometimes, you'll want to run from battle. Your chance to escape comes from three factors: Stats, Skills and Persistence. For Stats, your base Escape Chance is equal to the following: Escape Chance = [10 * (AGI + LUC + 5) / (Enemy's Average AGI + Enemy's Average LUC + 5)]% The average AGI and LUC of the enemy party is rounded down after being worked out. On average, this gives you a base 10% chance to escape from an enemy party of similar strength to you. This Escape Chance is increased further in one of two ways. First, if you have the Escape Up skill learned (max level is 1, so it's not like it's a big expense), then the chance is increased by 30%. Note that this only applies to the character currently trying to Escape. Finally, there is Persistence. For every failed Escape attempt you make in the same battle, the chance is increased by a further 10%. Your chance to Escape caps at 90% maximum. Only one person needs to succeed in escaping in order for the entire party to get away.