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Who gave me this avatar, how did this happen
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Jan 8, 2018 05:22
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corn in the bible posted:Who gave me this avatar, how did this happen A true hero.
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Jan 8, 2018 06:21
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Ugh, I had a terrible play session yesterday. So, there is this dungeon and I'm gonna spoiler it because due to the way this game is structured, it might be the next sidequest corn in the bible shows off, or it might be completely exclusive to Laura's story, I don't know. It's called the Legendary Gear of Water or something, and that's one of four story quests available to me now (no sidequests nowhere atm), I decided to do it first because it promises to make Henri's special knife better which is indestructible and I like that. So, the gimmick is Armic (new recruit for this quest) has an orb that changes colours as you progress through the dungeon but because Armic is a moron he doesn't actually know what the colours mean so you're stuck having to figure it out on your own. I realized quickly that the orb starts green and after a couple of steps turns red, and when it's red, there's some monsters that otherwise you can ignore that will attack you instead; those are not an issue, so whatever. You can also turn the orb blue by cooling it off with water in some dead ends of the map, or make it red instantly by pouring lava-heated water onto it in other corners. It has to turn green on its own. There are Lion sigils (?) in some other map corners which have a hole in them. The first of them I found was just "a Lion sigil", and when examined, it asked me if I wanted to put my (then green) orb into it. I did, and without commentary a tentacle monster showed up and I had to fight it. This thing attacks like 6 times (or 8 because of tentacles? Never counted) per turn and has about 10 LP, both numbers that are way higher than I'd seen before, so I'd count it as a mini-boss at the very least. That was a rough 15 minute fight but I manage to punch through it, losing like half my total LP in the process. That gave me zilch so I must have done something wrong. I cooled off the orb and went back to the sigil, but again, when inserting the blue orb, without commentary the monster attacked AGAIN so I had to fight it for 15 minutes AGAIN and was left almost completely without LP for most of my party. Fun. I decided to leave the sigil the gently caress alone because apparently this was only getting me destroyed and explored some more. Had to fight some (less hard) monsters on the way because the red orb was attracting them, found another sigil, but this one was called the ROYAL Lion sigil, not just Lion sigil. Insert the orb tentatively...Laura says "doesn't work", but NO monster fight. So with the adjective sigil, I can just try things? Cool? Explore some more, find another sigil called the REGAL Lion sigil and insert my red orb and THIS one works, just accepts my orb offering and I'm done with it. So now I realize that I have to probably go back to the Royal sigil and insert a blue or green orb, and maybe find a third adjective sigil to put the missing color into. I go back on a different route, cooling my orb down so that the monsters don't attack, and find a fourth Lion sigil, and try my now green orb on it. Only to realize a little too late (it was also getting late in the day, so blame that and my frustration) that this sigil also didn't have an adjective, so it's probably just plain wrong to try anything with it. Sure enough, tentacle monster time! And now my LP are definitely to low and it wipes me out. Overall, about an hour of gameplay completely wasted because the dungeon is 100% trial and error, literally designed that way because Armic told me jack poo poo on how it works. I realize that I made the final fatal mistake myself and that I should really have just left it midway and come back for another fresh try (CAN you do that), but it still pissed me off. I'll do it again and probably just not fight any of the tentacle monsters now (or one, to spark stuff?) and push on, but that was really frustrating. Also, other gripes: I keep getting poo poo panels (Sword panels for people who I've never even touched a sword with, Spear panels for my sword people etc.), and while I finally got a Wood Arts armlet for Henri to cast his wood stuff with, I don't know what ANY of the spells actually do or of they're useful at all. I have Detect Vegeplasts (which I know from the thread will reduce plant enemies' defenses, so lol), Wood Veil and Overgrowth both of which claim to strengthen wood spells, but idk how because I can't test it with a damage spell because I don't have any, and Life Boost which apparently makes people who "rest" recover HP more, so I thought it was a field skill, but I JUST after thinking about it some more realized it means you cast it one someone, then don't use them next round, and while they're not in the active fighting team they'll recover more HP than usual.* Right? That's one delayed-rear end healing spell, but maybe it's secretly super good in this system...I don't even know... *I also at the same time figured out that this is actually a mechanic which I vaguely remember being discussed here and I probably should have used it all the time to circle people in and out and mitigate LP damage during fights this way. I literally didn't get how you'd recover HP in a fight without spells before and figured you'd just need to rest up to full and hope to damage race every single encounter...which worked, until now. This loving game.
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Jan 8, 2018 11:17
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That quest sucks, yeah. The adjectives are supposed to tell you where the orb goes (violet goes in the one that starts with V, etc) but it's not... clear. It hosed me over the first time too. Not a fan. You can leave some quests by just walking out, and others by running out of time. But you can't leave story quests, like that one is for Laura.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:00
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corn in the bible posted:That quest sucks, yeah. The adjectives are supposed to tell you where the orb goes (violet goes in the one that starts with V, etc) but it's not... clear. It hosed me over the first time too. Not a fan.
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Jan 8, 2018 16:17
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Ok, let's say I'm crazy enough to try this. Any advice? Either personal or direction to internet places that have information that I'd want/need?
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Jan 8, 2018 21:29
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Crazy enough to try and play the game? If so, I personally was fine with just info from the thread (and a few questions along the way). You'll always find out more tiny things, though. Today I saw that when I went to the blacksmith to repair a Silver Sword, when going over a Carnelian I had in my inventory, it'd show me a Platinum Sword as a result - but when I scrolled past, it would no longer be there and just show a Silver Sword as result with higher durability. After the second time that happened, I decided to go for it and indeed got a Platinum Sword (even though it was no longer in the list) with higher attack than the Silver Sword. Yay! My advice after playing for 4 hours-ish: You will never get the game to do what you want. If you use exclusively a bow with one character, the game will give him two Familiars and Road Guide and a Spear Panel. If you Locksmith like 20 times per mission, your reward will be a Dagger panel (this character has never used a Dagger). Also, you might Defuse a Trap which apparently had a Needle, a Poison Gas, an Explosion AND a Mimic trap on it (and then you're mad that it got defused because Mimics apparently drop Magic Tablets). You will then have to unlock the chest which is fine because you got a character with Locksmith. Then you find out that it's ALSO magically locked, and I cannot open that. For the UI: It's terrible and you'll hate it until you finally figure out where everything is. Getting your weapons repaired is a nightmare because different blacksmiths in different towns offer different repair options, so after you've unlocked a few towns, you'll jump from one to the next trying to remember which loving one had Bows and which had Swords. You'll not find the correct Armlet for your Magic of "choice" for three quests and therefore shop rotations. You'll have checked every town three times by then. If you're told on the map that something is there, use "Skills" to open the menu and you'll see the normal background above, and next to it - small, shadowed - the thing you were just told is there. This is very hard to notice at first. Go to the right to select it (e.g. a treasure chest), then you can use skills on it - Action (to open it), Defuse (if you have it) etc. Always defuse chests if you can. The list of your skills scrolls down, and I don't think there's an indication or it's hard to see. I did 10 quests until I realized that Laura DOES have Locksmith and I could have tried to open so many doors. Do some story quests first because they tend to be easier and you'll get more characters, and expand shop inventories, and if there's a boss you can spark skills of it. Good luck, this poo poo is driving me insane but it's also somehow fun. I just hosed up the Cemetery quest because I could not succeed in searching the graves and eventually I reached the (invisible? Hard to see?) turn limit and got kicked out. Sparked a bunch of skills, though. RIP my magic tablet which randomly and luckily dropped, though. As you can see, this game creates STORIES.
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Jan 8, 2018 22:01
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The turn limit is on the map. press the square button to check it out. magic locks are... instead of picking LOCKSMITH you scroll down to the item they have equipped with magic arts on it, and then selecting that lets you pick a spell to cast. has to be a damage spell though, so fire arrows works well. you can cast spells on other things this way too! also, if you press the triangle while in the skills thing it switches to targeting your party. you can cast spells on them too, or use items (like the herbs, for example) also, magic tablets actually stick around if you run out of time or fail; they'll just sit around and then show up when you actually do finish a quest. tablets are only lost if you get to a panel screen and then still choose not to assign them. similarly, people still get credit for the actions they took when calculating HP growth and the panels they're given. and of course any skills they sparked or magic they learned sticks around too. e: ChrisBTY posted:Ok, let's say I'm crazy enough to try this. I tried to explain how stuff worked over the course of Mythe's story. If you're playing and you really don't understand how something works you can always check this FAQ which basically covers how everything works: https://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/561939-unlimited-saga/faqs/39002 It is, I think, too comprehensive, and if you constantly look up items and poo poo you'll get really bored and won't get to explore or discover anything. that's no fun, imo! but if you're just like "how the hell do I open a magical lock" or "how do i learn a spell" it'll tell you. e2: you can go wherever and still get the HP growth and tablets. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jan 8, 2018 |
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Jan 8, 2018 22:17
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corn in the bible posted:The turn limit is on the map. press the square button to check it out. 2) well that is SUPER loving obvious 3) oh, that's great news! I'll just get right back to the same quest then*...thanks for the advice, again! Btdubbs: I did actually throw away a Tablet one quest back because gently caress making more than one mage (it's enough of a hassle) and it was a SECOND Wood Tablet and the one Henri has fully unlocked is useless enough already... Actually, the guy you get from the Wood main quest could have used it...I did that quest for a tiny bit until I realized that I had forgotten to repair my weapons. Whoops! So I reset and I don't have him currently. *is that actually necessary for the HP growth and panel reward thing, or can I go wherever else?
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Jan 8, 2018 22:37
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corn in the bible posted:It is, I think, too comprehensive, and if you constantly look up items and poo poo you'll get really bored and won't get to explore or discover anything. that's no fun, imo! but if you're just like "how the hell do I open a magical lock" or "how do i learn a spell" it'll tell you. This sounds great. Except isn't the whole thing with this game that I'll get punted if I just faff around?
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Jan 9, 2018 00:33
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Unlimited Saga, Part 16: Regina Leone, Again Last time, we did the metal dungeon and picked up Edel. This opens up a fair amount of stuff we can now do, and some more items to go collect.  When you finish one of Armic's story quests, it opens up some new cities on the map. The Mine Adventure got us access to Zomar, Longshank, Vaftom, and maybe somewhere else, I forget. Zomar is the most important, right now, because that's where the Abandoned Castle is.  This guy's already got a diamond! Maybe Armic could have just stayed home.  Armic, let's work together for the good of the Chapa Village. That Merito sure is something! I'd better stay out of his way.Zomar's Inn has a new party member, as well!  What brought you here in the first place? We were looking for these "Obsidian Boots." Those look uncomfortable. I hate anything painful...The big guy is named Vearst, and despite his appearances he is completely incapable at anything physical. He's not actually good at anything, in fact; his best stats are Magic and Spirit, which would be OK except he's got awful elemental growth so he's not good at casting either. He does, however, have 22 LP, so he's quite good at standing in front of people and getting hurt a lot. He'll be our healer, since while he won't be very effective at it, he also won't ever die. We could certainly go get the Obsidian Boots, but I'd like to wait until we have more party members and a higher market rank. Remember, the market rank goes up when you buy or sell lots of things, and then finish a mission. It cannot increase until you do that. So let's make that happen. First of all, I bought as much stuff as possible, regardless of if I'd ever want or need it. After that, we're broke, of course, and we want money, so I went and did the cemetery quest. It's short, easy, and has several high-level chests as the reward, plus all the extra gravestones drop basic crafting materials -- helpfully, this is stuff we need to collect for our quest.  Also, here's Vearst showing off his raw, physical strength: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/OccasionalCoordinatedIberianemeraldlizard-mobile.mp4 With all that money, we can buy lots of Opal and Carnelian, which helps fill out the left side of the list. It also helps in making Faerie Silver, which is on the right. By combining silver with elemental stones, you have a 20% chance of getting Faerie Silver -- that is, Platinum.  Yes, just like that. Unlocking the dungeons seems to be based on which items you get enough of, which means that this puts us over the limit and Yun calls us in again.    I deciphered the item for Earth! It's Behemoth's Chain, and it's in the Cavern of Murals. Oh, the Cavern of Murals...We give Yun the order to work on Fire next, and it's off to the caves.    No, no, I can't read it. I'm not skilled enough yet. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I'll join you to find out what it really is.This guy is Kong Ming, and he is a specialist in Earth magic. Comes with some nice high-end tablets on the subject, much like Norff. He'd probably be pretty good, but keeping lots of mages up to scratch at once is kind of a pain, so I never really did much with him. So this dungeon is the Cave of Murals, and as such it has lots of murals in it!  You can examine them, and they will do this:  And then you get a fight. Some, like this one, will leave behind a passageway.     In this case, it reveals our eventual goal, which is the weird starry cave across the way. Of course, it's all the way at the other end of the dungeon, but there you go. Also, maybe it's just me, but I think Nuage looks silly when he holds a weapon. Dude always holds his arms out like he's looking for a hug.  This is a good dungeon for Armic, because you can access lots of areas only by swimming, and of course he's good at that. Unless you got rid of his Swimming panel, which would be fair. Also, it has lots of fish, which is basically the only thing Armic cares about at any time, ever. Like so:   I'm very good at dealing with fish.As far as I can tell, he says this every time you fight a fish. The dungeon can be kind of annoying, since not every mural is useful and some of the enemies are quite strong. Thankfully, there's also a lot of treasure, mostly hidden behind Swimming checks, and that helps pad out the item list.   One mural literally turned into the bird from Deities' Table.  It seemed weaker, but was still a difficult fight. Eventually, the path leads back to the start, into that cavern we revealed.   There is almost nothing to say about this boss. It has, like, 4 LP? All it can do is generic physical attacks, too, so it's not even dangerous. Armic and Edel punched and slashed it to death and it died in like, two combat rounds. Pathetic. And we get our second item! Hooray! As I told you. Hmm, the flow of energy has weakened a little...Here's how our characters are doing. Armic is mostly using martial arts, relying on his weight to inflict damage. Right now, it works fine; it's hard to do more than 1 LP with martial arts, but that's plenty for random encounters and ensures he never uses up durability. Hasn't picked up any cool techniques yet but I'll show them when he does. Norff just spams Thunderbringer every time I bring him out. A one-note character, but an effective one. I'm working on getting him some familiars so he doesn't use up so many armlets with his casting. Nuage has a spear, and has learned how to fire lasers from it somehow? So that's cool. Edel is our Skill character. He has a bow, and I've been giving him all the lockpicking/defusing stuff to keep him busy. Kong Ming's damage output isn't great right now, but another caster is appreciated and he's helpful when I need to switch the big hitters out but still do some damage. Vearst is present in the party. He... exists. Since we've got two of the four magical artifacts, we get a special scene. It's also time for the Festival! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHuyD7snH7M Whew! I finally got two. So that means two more to go. I just want to go home.https://thumbs.gfycat.com/EmotionalGloomyGazelle-mobile.mp4 I... yes. Sure. Ok.
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Jan 9, 2018 15:36
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So does everyone just blow off Ruby at the festival?
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Jan 9, 2018 16:05
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I hope Judy has "Giant Jumping Frog" as a panel when you play as her. It seems only right.
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Jan 9, 2018 19:15
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To be honest, given the sheer amount of variance in this game innately, it feels like you just pick whatever characters you like and then run with it. With the exception of some absolute dick moves, the average difficulty of this doesn't actually look all that high.
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Jan 9, 2018 20:52
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Keldulas posted:To be honest, given the sheer amount of variance in this game innately, it feels like you just pick whatever characters you like and then run with it. With the exception of some absolute dick moves, the average difficulty of this doesn't actually look all that high. If this is on par with other SaGa games, then corn is making it look easy. I only played 10 minutes of Unlimited before, but when I did I distinctly remember constantly taking LP damage even at full HP, plus all the reel-based mechanics can make it feel like smoke and mirrors even if it’s more transparent than most games. If this is even half as populated as other games in the series, too, then corn is cutting out like 90% of the random battles and all of them are as touch and go as the ones that are mentioned.
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Jan 9, 2018 21:10
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I don't think there's as much dangerous combat in this one, partly because some enemy types will outright ignore you unless deliberately attacked and partly because the encounter scaling seems less harsh. Early on, random enemies still pose a serious danger because you've got very little LP to spare (and, of course, this comes back if you have to do the Vale of Swords and split the party up), but I think the main danger comes from scripted encounters and bosses, which are always the same strength regardless of your own. These can really blindside you. But yeah I don't include all the random battles because, like, what would I say? So far all of Armics have been him doing a kick combo and killing them immediately, or Norff killing them with thunder, or whatever. The mural fights were tough, but not the regular stuff in the caves. e: I could probably put together a short video showing off the characters doing their combat thing, I just couldn't figure out how to make that interesting... corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Jan 9, 2018 |
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Jan 9, 2018 21:38
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From my experience as a newbie, it's not hard per se as it can grind you down after a long dungeon, or if you don't get a gimmick. Also, you kind of make your own difficulty. I guess I could just murder everything with Laura and the strongest Martial Art/Axe (I switched after getting a Lvl 3 panel), but I wanna spark stuff! And get panels for my other dudes that make sense! And have their HP grow! And train Henri's magic because he finally got a Fire (aka The Useful Element) tablet! So I'm using all of them in sometimes decidedly imperfect ways and that causes them to eat poo poo a lot. But I'm getting a better sense of what to do when now. Piercing attacks late to kill enemies only after everyone got a turn. Or early if that poo poo needs to die. Beefy people take first action to soak up hits, even though I really want to make sure Henri gets off at least one spell per combat - it's not worth it to let him lead. Don't use 0 HP people, rest often. Etc., nuances like that, it's made combat go much smoother. Now that I got a full party too, things flow much more easily. The start is the roughest part, when you have one or two people, don't know at all what you're doing, everything is super confusing...it gets better quickly, though. I do have constant dread that I'll gently caress up characters somehow though and the final boss will be super impossible. We'll see, we'll see...
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Jan 9, 2018 23:49
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Simply Simon posted:From my experience as a newbie, it's not hard per se as it can grind you down after a long dungeon, or if you don't get a gimmick. Also, you kind of make your own difficulty. I guess I could just murder everything with Laura and the strongest Martial Art/Axe (I switched after getting a Lvl 3 panel), but I wanna spark stuff! And get panels for my other dudes that make sense! And have their HP grow! And train Henri's magic because he finally got a Fire (aka The Useful Element) tablet! So I'm using all of them in sometimes decidedly imperfect ways and that causes them to eat poo poo a lot. SaGa.txt right here, so I guess Unlimited works perfectly as an entry in the series. Basically every single SaGa game (except the third gameboy game, not counting its ds reimagining) you either figure out exactly what the system wants you to do (and doesn't tell you) or you kinda stumble your way along until you hit a brick wall with one of the bosses, often one of the later bosses. And they all seem to also be about long term planning in spite of the random elements that are the trademark of the series.
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Jan 9, 2018 23:59
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If there was more explanations in game in the way that corn is describing, I think this game would have been better appreciated upon release.
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Jan 10, 2018 02:54
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Alas, to be SaGa is to be intentionally vague and half-explained. One of the things that Unlimited does that other SaGa's don't is that it adds an extra layer of RNG to stat development by tying it to panels awarded at end of mission. In other SaGa games, if you want to be better at swords you just use swords and the relevant stats'll go up. Here that's not the case and it's probably one of the instances of 'too much RNG' that Unlimited has. Heck even then it doesn't matter too much because equipment and sparked techs are the real path to victory. Having to rely on the wheel for what techs you use is another 'too much RNG' factor that Unlimited one-ups every SaGa with, since they're your main source of awesome damage. On the other hand, you don't get knocked out at 0 HP and there's no permadeath at 0 LP except for the main characters so there's a bit of mercy there at least 
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Jan 10, 2018 03:10
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But the reels in combat have set patterns and move slow enough that you can do things fairly reliably, with good timing and a high level panel. That's because higher level panels change the reel to make the timing easier! Like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LosvRfL8Cng Alternatively, just use really powerful attacks, burn through your durability, and deal LP damage regardless of what happens. That's from a late-game save, because all my LP footage is recorded at 15fps to save on space (and make gifs!!) so it may spoil you on the fact that Edel is very good or that a lady will join the party someday. something like that, anyway. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 03:32 on Jan 10, 2018 |
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Jan 10, 2018 03:27
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EponymousMrYar posted:Alas, to be SaGa is to be intentionally vague and half-explained. somebody hasn't played the second gameboy game where stat ups are pseudo-random as well
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Jan 10, 2018 05:49
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I too am a Hulking Goon
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Jan 10, 2018 06:14
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Choco1980 posted:somebody hasn't played the second gameboy game where stat ups are pseudo-random as well Getting a stat is pseudo-random. What you do to get those stats isn't. Most weapons in that game allowed for stat ups of some sort and while nothing told you what those stats were (or that AGI was the god stat because it determined accuracy in addition to the power of AGI-based weapons) they were decently consistent on what weapon raised what stat. HP was more of an issue there since it was still heavily based on 'getting targeted/hit by attacks' and if you were especially killtacular you'd be robbing yourself of some important HP ups. Not all of them (they learned from the first game) but still a bunch of them. If your spear character doesn't get a spear panel at the end of the dungeon despite only doing spear things, that's getting RNG screwed and a case where Unlimited has too much RNG. I can totally see giving characters panels based on the stats of what they're using, which unfortunately falls into the secondary case where SaGa will mess you up by giving you things it thinks you needs but they're not the things you really want/need. 'c'mon game let me spark a tech off of this high end enemy. yeah. c'mon. i'm doing the thing. YES A SPARK oh dangit it's knee split THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT. ok ok, gotta keep trying YES HERE WE GO IT'S... parry. thanks game. thanks.'
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Jan 10, 2018 06:23
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 Oh hey I found an accurate summary of Laura's story.
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Jan 10, 2018 12:48
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Choco1980 posted:somebody hasn't played the second gameboy game where stat ups are pseudo-random as well The second gameboy game had robots. Why you aren't taking at least one robot, loading it up with enough armour and guns/axes and swords so that it is literally the party tank (and in the case of guns, Tank is an actual gun) and pointing it at the enemies is beyond me. Monster stats were determined by their current form, and while there was some RNG to meat-drops, it was consistent on which monster class you would change into when you ate a class's meat and was biased towards increasing the rank of monster if there wasn't one of the equivalent level. And humans and mutants were pseudo-random but I remember it was weighted towards specific stats for each race (Str and Def for humans, Agi and Mana for mutants). The first gameboy game had Humans who got their stats from drugs. Yes, I'm serious.
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Jan 10, 2018 15:06
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By the by, what am I missing with the mansion of Folgar (sp?) quest? I mean it's hilarious: the butler says "okay there's a party soon but I misplaced Folgar's favourite jewelry, help me search it quickly" and apparently the doors and drawers of the mansion are sealed with a special technique (?) so hey gives you a KEY-AXE (???) to make you be able to open them. The doors literally are almost-broken pieces of poo poo and you use and overdesigned gaudy axe-thing to smash them in, it's mental. So I smash the first door but it takes like 8 tries because the reel system is great for things like this especially when failure has zero consequences except a turn of the limit wasted; there's not even any randoms as far as I could tell! After the door, there's six drawers, and because Unlimited Saga is amazing, it goes "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" "There's a Drawer (Lvl 1)!" And you have to click through each message individually. Then do the reel for each drawer, but I found out that just mashing the button is fine because it always hits a green dot then. I think the Lvl 1 means it's a very easy drawer to get open? It's still ludicrous in concept. Anyway I have to click through these messages then: "The drawer pops open!" "...but the jewelry isn't inside." "The drawer pops open!" "...but the jewelry isn't inside." "The drawer pops open!" "...but the jewelry isn't inside." "The drawer pops open!" "...but the jewelry isn't inside." "The drawer pops open!" "...you found the jewelry!" "Better bring it to the butler!" Butler: "Ah, fantastic, you saved me! Now I can keep my boring-rear end job which I hate.* Toodles!" Quest over! And I get terrible lovely panels for everyone in the party which I have to distribute, because I didn't actually do anything during the quest except hit some furniture with a KEY-AXE. I guess it's an okay way in the early game to get some quick panels for fresh characters??? Exploration panels????? Maybe there's tons of treasures in other rooms and a secret boss and I just "lucked out" by finding the jewelry so quickly? Anyway that was a reset because gently caress that. *That's not a joke, he literally says that the job is boring and he doesn't even like it but it pays the bills or something. As I said, it's hilarious but also weird and pointless. Saga!
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Jan 10, 2018 18:04
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Post should be here shortly. Accidentally posted the WIP one so just give it a mo
corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 02:51 on Jan 12, 2018 |
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Jan 12, 2018 02:35
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Unlimited Saga, part 17: Let's Go Shopping Completing the mines quest unlocks a few more towns, including Iskandaria and Wanda. We could go check out Pharos, but since we do not have Silver Girl or Iskandar with us it's most inaccessible. As this random guy says,  That's fine, though. The important thing is that we unlocked Wanda, which has another party member for recruitment. Before we can do that, though, the last of the Chapas turns up to do some trading.  I actually have some extra stuff right now -- particularly copper, which I'm positively loaded with.  The numbers here don't reflect stuff that's equipped, so I actually have even more lying about. But this dude doesn't have anything extra, so I don't know why he bothered to show up at all, or why he feels smug enough to say this when we leave him:  Armic's doing better than everybody else right now, dude! Anyway, the Inn in Wanda has an important character hanging about.  Buck up. At least you're still alive, aren't you? The Dragonscale Knife is among the Regal Lion's riches. It might be useful in rebuilding Escata... I'm Armic of the Chapa tribe. Let's look for those riches together! Thank you. I am Henri.Henri is one of the main characters in Laura's quest, and he's pretty cool. He even has the Blade of Escata with him, which is that thing Laura showed to Mythe way back when. It is a dagger which features infinite durability, meaning he can use it forever with no ill effect.  However, since he is meant to be a starting character, he has 50 -- yes, fifty -- HP right now, and terrible panels as well. Plus we can't get the magical armor that strengthens the Blade, so it's stuck at a terrible 11 attack. Still, if you want to use him he's at least got an easy way to spark stuff without worrying about durability or repairs, I guess? On the other hand he comes with an armlet made of Ash, which means we now have two Ash items! Neat. If you managed to miss the Spirit Bow, this could be a nice secondary source of it. Also, I managed to pick up some ironstone in the shop there, which means it's time to do some smithing. Remember, with enough wood and some luck, we can make damascus; even if that doesn't work right now, we'll still get steel. So we got o Longshank and  Go away Spry, nobody likes you. Anyway, we make a dagger out of a mullock spear and some carnelian.  Ironstone and wood gives iron.  Iron and wood is steel, and then steel and wood gives steel also, like this:  But sometimes it gives steel that looks like this:  And when you combine the weird weaker steel and the fortified mullock, you get a black weapon, which is made of damascus.  So that's another thing from our shopping list done! I gave the black knife to Henri, in the hope its power would make up for his lack of stats right now. Of the rare items, we now have Ash, Faerie Steel, and Damascus! Making money is very important right now, so if you really want to farm for money in Unlimited Saga (something you basically only need to do for Armic) here's how you do it: buy silver, then shove every bestial stone you have into it until it becomes platinum. Then sell it for lots of money and now you're rich. Feel free to repair it with stuff you don't need for extra value! Of course, this is problematic in Armic's story because he also needs bestial stuff for his list. Fortunately, there is always going to be more of that stuff in the shops, so it's no big deal. Also, it's good to have extras of the rare items lying around, so if you're doing Armic's quest feel free to make lots of platinum and keep it spare in case the Chapas want to trade. Since Platinum, while annoying to make, is at least created from easily obtained materials, it's a good choice for this.  Let's go get the Obsidian Boots.  You know the drill from last time, of course. Since we just want the boots, we only have to follow the quest up until we find them. We hear the old man, follow him to the basement, Henri stabs some books, and we find the Obsidian Boots. Huzzah!  I could probably have finished the quest -- we have a full party now, and they're reasonably strong -- but I did not want to do that for reasons I will explain later. However, we can't leave the castle without clearing the quest or running out of time, so we spend our turns looking for loot and teaching people magic. Vearst is on his way to learning fire arrows!  He will do upwards of 100 damage with them! This is because Vearst is terrible. Also, because I didn't realize it at first, here's what Diplomacy is for:   The towers of the castle have plenty of cash for us, which is nice.  Normally a round table would simply be some Arthurian reference, but given who we fought in Mythe's story it could also mean the castle is related to them. Who knows? Back in town, we can actually trade with one of the Chapas:  Because he has extra snake skin, he'll trade it for any regular items he's missing. Sadly, he has enough Copper and thus won't take ours, but snake skin is kind of annoying to find so I still got as much of it as possible with other things. Now, the reason I did not want to clear Abandoned Castle is that shops refill when you clear a quest, and I had seen that the shop in Vaftom had a meteorite dagger on sale. It was pricy, and I couldn't afford it, but if it got replaced I might have to wait a while to find another. Since I need two meteorites -- one as itself, and another to make meteoric iron -- that would be bad. So I deliberately farmed for money and items in the Castle without finishing it, and thus got rich enough to buy the thing outright.  Now we have four rare items. Six to go, in addition to a bunch of random shop items. Henri gave us a hint to where we can find Dragonscale, but that quest is too tough, so right now the best course of action is to simply go do some quests and make some money, and buy up everything on the list we can. Sidequest: Monster Extermination. The quest is to wander around the herb field from Armic's story quest and fight a bunch of random encounters until the boss appears, which is this:  You can do this right from the start, as soon as you clear the herb gathering quest, which is suicidal. Our much stronger party is still vulnerable to their attacks, as depicted by Vearst getting torn to pieces by them here:   Unlike the random encounters, this boss is scripted, so it's the same whether you come here with Armic and Norff alone, or with a full party of end-game fighters. And that's why I say that it's the bosses which are the real danger in this game. They also have a full-party attack which can stun, so basically they're just huge bastards. After the quest, I bought everything I could, again.  We're doing pretty well now. But the money has run out, and so it's time to go get some more cash from a very nice place to farm indeed:   Starship Anchor is probably the coolest Wonder. It's neat for a variety of reasons, but it's also great for getting money and items because it has a ton of treasure everywhere and you can just walk out the front door when you're done. We will clear it eventually, because it's cool, but for now it's just a way to get some more cash and buy more stuff.  The anchor itself is surrounded by a forest. Not much to be found there, though there's some monsters to fight if you feel frisky. However, there's a few outbuildings off in the woods which do have treasure in them, which means we're heading to those first.  The lock on this chest was too hard for Edel, who failed so many times that monsters showed up and attacked. Fortunately Henri picked up a nice dagger panel when we did the monster quest, and so even with his shoddy Blade he can do an appreciable amount of damage.  I was hoping he'd spark some good skills while using it that'd transfer over to a better weapon later, but it didn't really happen. Anyway, when I eventually opened the chest it had a snake-skin armor inside! Awesome! The main building is to the East.    This thing is, I think, the same as the wyvern from the Abandoned Castle. I'm not 100% sure, though. Anyway, it's a boss, and you can spark stuff on it, which is cool. Armic learned a new throw!  Henri picked up a few dagger skills, as well. It did a lot of damage to the party, but fortunately it's the only boss we're going to face during this visit. Killing the wyvern reveals a stone, which causes stars to appear in the dome.  This is necessary for progressing through the dungeon, though it won't come into play for a bit. But with that done, we can go downstairs,  and into the Starship Anchor itself. Like so:  The party starts at one end of the constellation, and to unlock the next area they have to follow it (as helpfully indicated by the line to our right). However, the outlying stars are full of treasure, so it's a good place to get rich! I like the combat area used for this area, too.  It's just a cool dungeon generally, and, like Nakle Lines, uses the 2d top-down design to good effect. But we're not here to finish the dungeon, merely to loot its upper floor. Which we do quite easily!  By using this new-found wealth, and by stripping the entire party naked, we are finally able to trigger the next Yun scene and unlock the fire dungeon.  But that will have to wait for next time! Stay tuned!
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Jan 12, 2018 02:51
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Simply Simon posted:
ACK! Spoilers!
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Jan 12, 2018 03:29
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These money-earning tricks are super useful. Good to know for when I dive back into this bizarre game.
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Jan 12, 2018 06:46
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I've hit a bit of a wall in my attempt to understand US. I started with Ventus and beyond the complicated stuff...it's just boring. Is this a problem with the mail delivery quests specifically or does the entire game feel this unrewarding? Also, among other things there really needed to be a world map or something. Getting a delivery to a city I've never heard of only to realize that I couldn't get to that city UNLESS I had the delivery but having no idea what road opened up or whatever is very...probably symptomatic of people's issues with this game.
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Jan 13, 2018 07:25
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ChrisBTY posted:I've hit a bit of a wall in my attempt to understand US. It is true that the delivery jobs are pretty uninteresting, but if you're not into it you probably won't be later either. That's OK!
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Jan 13, 2018 09:30
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Thanks. I may play around with it more. I may try RS 3. I'm not sure. Good job with the LP though.
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Jan 13, 2018 10:54
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Unlimited Saga, part 18: Lots of Volcanoes Last time, we got Yun to unlock the third dungeon -- in our case, that's the fire one. As you read this update, however, please remember that you're free to do it first, in which case you would have to do the entire thing with four people and almost no equipment. Good luck with that.  So, as you might expect, we're going to get another party member in this dungeon. That means we have to leave somebody behind, and I went with Nuage. He shall be replaced with Rebecca, as seen here:  Hello. What are you doing here? Go home. It's too dangerous. I bet your parents are worried sick about you!But not yet, because she runs off and leaves us alone. But it's a straight path until we reach her again -- I don't even think enemies can appear at this point.  I'm Armic of the Chapa Tribe. I don't want to go, but my village asked me to. Oh, I see! Your parents should be so proud of you! Let me come along! I'm Rebecca, nice to meet you.I don't know how old she thinks Armic is -- he's definitely not a kid, so regardless she's wrong -- but, hey, she's in the party now. Rebecca is a mage, and she's pretty good with fire. She is Judy's mom, too! As you'd expect she is skilled in fire magic but, weirdly, she does not know any good magic. But she comes with lv4 Familiars, so we'll just use those to make her useful. Importantly, however, she does know a few water spells, which is important for this dungeon. Also, if I seem to be skipping over random encounters, that's because they all end like this:  Anyway, the reason it's important to realize Rebecca knows water magic is that this dungeon is a volcano, and it's full of magma flows which will damage you if you walk through them.  However, if you cast a water spell on them, like so:  You can clear out the magma and proceed unopposed. Otherwise, the magma will deal massive damage and by the end of the dungeon everyone will be dead. That's sort of the main gimmick here, and there's a lot of magma about, but if you know how to handle it you're fine. Rebecca even comes with an accessory that lets her cast the spell, so you're not going to be caught out by it; the trick is simply remembering you can cast magic on stuff and figuring out what to do. The party proceeds into the volcano, and crosses a rickety bridge.   If you come here as a sidequest, this prevents escape, but of course since this is for a plot we can't leave anyway. No big deal. There's a lot of powerful demons in this dungeon. Those demons from the Nakle Lines can appear now, for example, and they're just as liable to deal LP damage. Thankfully we have Vearst to soak up the damage, and Edel and Henri to kill it afterwards. Everything is fine.  If you just follow the path and clear out all the magma, the dungeon's not so bad -- though the boss may pose an issue. However, there's optional paths with great treasure, like this:   If you did the fire dungeon first you probably wouldn't have a way to pick this lock, but on the other hand you wouldn't be able to kill these demons. There's three of them, but how bad could they be?  Ah. Ok. Still, the room is full of treasure chests, and so the prize was worth it. Even random encounters can drop a lot of money now, which is nice. The level of chests that enemies drop depends on the global encounter level, so if you really want you can deliberately kill lots of enemies and boost their level. I don't think that's really necessary, though.   The second floor is more of the same. There's a fork in the road, and the top route leads to more demons and treasure chests. Near the end, there's a pool of magma even Rebecca can't clear. But fortunately, to the north there's a boulder we can push into the lava.  You pushed the rock! The rock rolls off the cliff, drops into the magma, and breaks into pieces!  Right after that, the dungeon ends. And that's pretty much it!  Something may be found here... It must be a magic tablet! Oh no, it's a dragon! Hopefully, this'll be a good fight. Vearst's LP has been cut down drastically, mostly by those demon encounters, but we do have a full party. I can't imagine this being doable with just four people. The problem with our party, however, is we have two mages without good single-target damage output. Vearst can heal, which is nice, but he can't do any damage; Rebecca doesn't know anything but Bubble Blow, which she is predictably weak in casting, and Shock, which doesn't do too much damage because it's a target-all spell. She can certainly chain a few together to deal some damage, but it's not as much as someone else would.   So she's useless in this fight, or so you would think -- however, the fact she knows Purify at all is very helpful because the dragon's roar paralyzes people. Paralysis works weirdly in this game: it doesn't prevent action, but instead replaces a bunch of panels on the reel with paralysis panels which deal reduced damage and can't trigger special attacks. So it basically does nothing to mages, but is a real problem for physical attackers. This dragon is just generally very powerful, though. https://thumbs.gfycat.com/DeliriousSparseCowbird-mobile.mp4 Even the legendary suplex cannot defeat it! https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ElaborateSnoopyBarbet-mobile.mp4  Thankfully it's also a good way to spark attacks. Here's one that Edel learned: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/ThoseSimilarImago-mobile.mp4 And in the end it was Edel who prevailed, dealing the final damage to the dragon and killing it for good. We did find one. It wasn't a magic tablet after all... You'll find one soon. Right. I'll keep looking! One more to go. Maybe I can do this after all! But then again...So, that's that. The final dungeon opens up when we finish the list, so let's see how that looks.  We do have obsidian, too; it's just equipped to someone so it doesn't count. Similarly, a fair amount of stuff on the left is missing, since it's being worn by the party. As for the rest, well, I checked the shop in Vaftom and found a Hydra Skin on sale there. Nice! I couldn't afford it at first, but I sold Henri's spare Ash Armlet and thus got enough money together to buy the thing. I realized I was short on cash, so I used up some of our bestial materials to turn silver into platinum. And this paid off magnificently, because look at this:  Now, I knew that I could get a dragon scale somewhere else, and that I had enough obsidian, but a diamond for my platinum was an excellent deal. I made the diamond into a spear for Nuage, who I decided to swap in for Henri because he was, frankly, not holding his own. Not because Henri is a bad character, but simply because he joined too late to keep up with the others. So, Henri told us about a dragon scale in the treasure of the Regal Lion. But to get that, we have to do a different quest first, because the two together form a story -- ironically, more of a story than Armic seems to have at this point. So we have to do this one:   Oh... Where did it go?...This mission's super simple. Follow the mountain path to the Regal Lion's hideout, as seen here:   There's a bunch of rooms here. For example, to the north is a storage room. You can try to search it, but you probably shouldn't!    However, you can also find various rooms dedicated to other Lions. For example, here is the Golden Lion's room:  This must be a woman's room.Who is the Golden Lion? Well, it's not explained here, but it actually will be later, so we'll leave that for now. Searching the room reveals a secret passage to the big room on the west, which is Regal Lion's bedroom. It's got a spooky skeleton in it!  I don't wanna do this... but...The body, rid of the weapons piercing it, starts to rise.  Hurts too much... What hurts is... the betrayal of my followers. Can't stand it any more!!!   Open your eyes, ultimate form. Savor every bit of what my sword can do to you.Not the dreaded EDGELORD! He's going to make fun of Armic on Twitter! He must be stopped! This guy is a notoriously difficult boss. Because his quest is so simple and easy, you can reach him quite early. And I guess his fight is pretty simple, too. He only has two attacks, both of which are identical in all but appearance. What he does is this: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/PlumpLikableCuckoo-mobile.mp4 Which he does five times every turn. So, uh... good luck? But the thing is, he's a one-trick pony; he can't inflict status effects or attack the whole party or anything like that. He will deal 7-10 LP to your party every turn, and that's about it. As long as you've got a full party he's not a big deal. We took the rusty swords from his hands, and marked his grave with them. Engraved on each handle was the name  Please don't frighten the mayor anymore...Let's report back to the mayor, now that the wandering soul is at peace.   I should have known it was him...The mayor started crying. Long ago, there was a legendary thief named Regal Lion... His three loyal followers were Blue-eyed Vernal Lion, Green-eyed Gold Lion, and Scarlet-eyed Elder Lion. Together, we almost had the world in our hands! I.. I mean in THEIR hands. But one day, they got into a heavy argument over Regal Lion's treasure. The remaining three tried to find the hidden treasure, but none of them could disarm the booby-traps Regal Lion left behind. The fools were forced to give up on the treasure. They then separated, never speaking to eachother again. If you want to prove yourselves, go to the cavern. Here, take this with you. So we'll be going after the treasure ourselves... next time. This is the notorious ORB QUEST, which is very annoying and poorly-explained, but it does have a dragon scale for us to find. After that, we'll be doing some Wonders, make some money, and open up the final dungeon. Should be fun! By the way, if the Gold Lion sounds familiar, by the way, that's because we met her in Mythe's story. Remember Pharr?  She's got green eyes, too. Though even if you do bring her to this quest, she doesn't mention anything, because... well, I don't know why. But whatever, it's her. So there you go.
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Jan 14, 2018 22:17
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I'm not exactly impressed with the Lions if so far it's Pharr, a cowardly mayor and a self-proclaimed edgelord
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Jan 14, 2018 23:48
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The Edgelord is the best title. Good update. With Armic suplexing a dragon, and those anteater things are adorable.
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Jan 14, 2018 23:54
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NOW HEAR THIS, I AM THE EDGELORD. That's pretty amazing in all ways.
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Jan 15, 2018 01:15
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corn in the bible posted:By the way, if the Gold Lion sounds familiar, by the way, that's because we met her in Mythe's story. Remember Pharr? Here I was expecting a SaGa Frontier reference.  Then again, I could maybe see it.
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Jan 15, 2018 03:03
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KataraniSword posted:Here I was expecting a SaGa Frontier reference. I forgot about that, but it's certainly possible they chose the name as a Frontier reference. In terms of the game's setting, though, they seem to be referring to Pharr -- there's not really any plot relevance attached to that, but she's introduced to Mythe as the Gold Lion and she's an adventurer who raids ancient ruins, so this quest seems to offer a bit of backstory on her you might otherwise miss. Pharr is actually a potential party member for Armic (she's the one you get in the Wood Adventure), but I don't think she gets any special dialog in that quest regardless.
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Jan 15, 2018 04:17
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