Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door is an RPG-lite. It includes leveling, but each time you hit a new level, you are given the choice of three stats to upgrade. That’s still quite the commitment with huge consequences. So, which ones should you pick for maximum efficiency?
For clarity, the three stats are:
- HP: Health points for how much damage you can take.
- FP: Flower points used for abilities
- BP: Badge points used for equipping badges.
FP and HP rise 5 points, while BP rises 3 points when selected during a level-up.
For obvious reasons, you need FP. Unless you are just going to keep on downing honey to use your skills, you’ll want some sort of stockpile. You might think that HP is also important, but probably not as much as you think. That’s because, in truth, BP gives you the most flexibility.
Backing up for a moment, the first three times you level up, you don’t have many options for badges. The most helpful ones come a little bit later in the game. An early investment in BP isn’t the worst idea, but it would be better spent elsewhere. To be more specific, I’d advise spending one or two levels upgrading your FP. The amount you start with doesn’t allow for the use of many abilities.
However, once you get up there in levels, BP is the best place to focus your points. Keep in mind that your attack power and skills don’t increase with each level. Beyond getting new shoes and an updated hammer, badges are the only way to increase your damage output. It’s also the best way to improve your defense. You can even double-up badges to further increase their effectiveness. You can also get more badges by using Ms. Mowz to steal them from enemies who are holding items in battle.
While badges are important, you probably don’t want to entirely neglect your HP and FP. Some players recommend doing an alternating pattern of HP, BP, FP, BP, HP, BP, and so on. However, I found that once I hit around 25 or 30 points in HP and FP, that was enough for most of the game. Everything else I mostly put into BP.
Then, it’s a matter of finding the best badges and equipping them. There are plenty of both attack and defense badges (Power Plus and Defend Plus), and you can stack ability badges on top of each other to increase their strength. The important thing is that you have enough Badge Points to hold them, so that’s why investing in BP is so useful. It lets you adapt more readily.
If you find your build isn’t working well (or if you discovered this guide several levels in and it makes sense to you), then you can talk to Chet Rippo after Chapter 5 to re-allocate your points. He’s found beneath Rogueport. Take the pipe down from in front of Professor Frankly’s house and use Bobbery to blow open the cracked wall. Go down that pipe and talk to Chet Rippo. He’ll reallocate points for 39 coins each.
