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 What is it? The Atelier Series is developed by Gust and published by Koei Tecmo Games. You play the role of an alchemist, who uses materials to craft items using alchemy to accomplish various tasks, like the story's goals, items for yourself to use in battle, or fulfilling requests from different people. The atelier series is very popular in Japan, and they have a number of games that weren't localized. Almost all the Atelier games are self contained stories. This game is the first in its series. You don't need to play the others to understand this one. You don't even need to play this to understand the second game in the series (Atelier Firis), because outside of returning characters and some references, the story of the previous game doesn't matter in any way. But you do enjoy a little more if you know the characters and their stories from the previous game. In Atelier Sophie, you play as Sophie, and you're running a small Atelier in a town. The story is about Sophie's growth as an alchemist, and about the mysterious book. Which I'm sure the title helpfully tells you. The LP This is a screen shot LP. With my commentary of course. Spoilers Do not spoil anything. Well, I've already beaten the game, but because character events are a major part of Atelier, please don't discuss anything not shown in the LP. Table of Contents Update 1: The kind of Alchemist, Sophie Update 2: The mysterious book Update 3 Update 4 Update 5: Kirchen Bell at night Update 6: Requests and Rumors Update 7: Evil Puni Update 8: Kirchen Bell shops part 1 Update 9: Shops part 2 Update 10: Alchemy Update 11: Simple Sweets Update 12: Plachta memories 1 Update 13: Pamela and more Simple Sweets Update 14: The Odd Pair Update 15: Events Marguerite and Pamela Update 16: Logy Update 17: The very amazing cauldron Update 18: The Blacksmith Update 19: More Requests and Vouchers Update 20: Elise and Plachta Update 21: Pilgrim Road Update 22: Hide and Seek Update 23: Tess' Shop Update 24: Meeting Elise outside Update 25: The clockmaker Update 26: Time to do our Day Job Update 27: The Blacksmith part 2 Update 28: Paper Update 29: Reading at the Cafe (Elise Event) Update 30: The real reason we do alchemy Update 31: It is a Mystery Update 32: Rocky Mountain Update 33: The Clock(?)maker Part 2 Tutorial: Atelier Tutorial: Synthesis Advanced Tutorial: Date and Time Tutorial: Equipping Items Tutorial: Field Mechanics Tutorial: Battle Basics Tutorial: Learning Recipes Blademaster_Aio fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Sep 20, 2019 |
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Apr 6, 2017 04:48
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Apr 6, 2017 04:48
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Update 1: The Kind of Alchemist: Sophie The start of our game.  Okay, break time's over! Sophie runs inside her Atelier.   Sophie: Yeah, this is going well... Now I just have to mix it a little and...  A boom sound happens in the background. This is... actually pretty normal for an Atelier protagonist. At first. Narrator: This is Kirchen Bell... A small town brimming with greenery and the sound of church bells.  N: Her name is Sophie.     *Sigh* ... At this rate, I'll never be as good as grandma was... Aaah, if only there was a way to suddenly get really good at alchemy. Then I could make amazing medicine and stuff, and everyone in town would rely on me... Ehehe....I wouldn't have any problems if that was the case. *Sigh*... Guess I should clean up.A knock is heard on the door. Sophie: Oh, yes! It's open!  Guys, meet Monika, one of Sophie's friends.  Hello, Sophie... What's that smell? More importantly, why are you here Monika? Do you need something?Yes. There's something I'd like to ask of you.Huh, it's unusual for you to have a request. What do you need?I just met with Mr. Horst. He was asking for some Berg Medicine, but...I've gone to every shop, and I can't find it anywhere. So I thought you might know something. By the way, the game pronounces it as Meister Horst   Don't worry Sophie. Everyone is kind of an alchemist when they first start alchemy.  But Berg Medicine, huh... I've never tried making that... I saw grandma making it before, so I should be able to make it too... It's a request I decided to accept. You don't have to force yourself if it'll be difficult.No, it's fine! I can't just ignore someone in need! Leave it all to me!Oh, but... I'm still not confident about it, so I should go look for grandma's book. --//-- We now have control of Sophie. Of course, we can't do much at this point. If you check your save point journal you get this exchange: Sophie: Oh, this is...! These are grandma's snack recipes! Waffles, and financiers... Uu, I'm getting hungry just looking through this... Monika: ...Sophie? Sophie: Huh!? Oh, no, it's nothing. This was the wrong book. Ahahaha...  This is part of Sophie's character. Sophie and food are friends. -/- A book should be in your bookshelf right...?  S: Waah, Monika. I can't find it. M: That's because you don't keep this place organized. I'll help you clean up again on another day. Just keep looking. Or not. /-/ This is the spot you need to search. It's north of your cauldron.  Hmm... I can't find it... Wait, what's this book? What's wrong?It's just that there's a book here that I don't recognize...It has a very elegant binding. I wonder what's inside?Let's take a look. Hmm...I see, I see. Ah, this is a reference book for alchemy. But only the beginning is... The rest of it is all blank pages. Maybe grandma was writing it? Hm, I see...Yeah. Anyway, Monika. After looking at this, I suddenly remembered!Huh? Remembered what?How to make the Berg Medicine! The thing you were asking about!Really? You think you can make it?Of course! I have enough materials, so I can mix it up real quick now!Yes, please do so... Just be careful not to make another mistake, okay? We've got this. No problem. After that is a bunch of tutorials. We'll go over them one by one. Feel free to post. Blademaster_Aio fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Apr 6, 2017 |
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Apr 6, 2017 04:50
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Looking forward to this. The delivery seems pretty effective.
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Apr 6, 2017 09:46
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I really like how they did the start of the game there. You click "New Game", the text disappears and the scene in the background just immediately starts moving, no loading or fading out or anything. ...Then you get a loading screen 10 seconds after that, when she runs into the house, but at least that one transition was nice.
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Apr 6, 2017 11:30
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Is the watermark part of the game because it's pretty annoying and over the text at some places. Otherwise, I've heard a lot of good about these games but I never played them, looking forward to this.
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Apr 6, 2017 14:04
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Fredrik1 posted:Is the watermark part of the game because it's pretty annoying and over the text at some places. No, the watermark isn't part of the game. It just shows up on the screenshots you take. This is same for all my VITA games.
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Apr 6, 2017 15:24
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I would recommend putting a space in-between your screenshots because it looks cramped. Otherwise I think you're doing alright.
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Apr 6, 2017 15:49
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Hey, I know that username, sup LoH Buddy. Anyone know if Slyphid has said anything about doing this though?
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Apr 6, 2017 16:17
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Tutorial: Atelier The Atelier is our workshop, and where we will spend quite a large part of the game. It has some basic functions for us to use. Saving your game  This is where you'll save your game. It's also where you can reload your game, go to the title screen, change your outfit (if you have any), access the options and change the bgm. This menu is also accessible from the world map. The Bed  You sleep in the bed. What a shock, right, who knew. There isn't any time limit in this game, and you can take you time doing everything. It won't matter, the game will wait for you (it has always waited for me, at least). However, there are some events that only take place on certain days of the week, some locations are day-specific, and enemies are different depending on if you come during the day or night, and also weather specific. The bed can be used to fast forward time. Also, the shops aren't open at night, so if it's night and you want to go shopping, you can just sleep until morning. Synthesis  And here we are, the bread and butter of our game. The game explains synthesis in parts, so I'll explain it in parts as well. 1. Recipe selection  To make something you need to learn the recipe. There will be more on that later, for now, we can only make Berg Medicine. The symbol to the left is a circle. This means we can make it.  If it is a triangle, that means we can't make it right away. But we can synthesize its ingredients and then make it. And if it's an 'X', then we can't make it, we need to buy the materials or gather them.  Those are a lot of question marks. We haven't made the berg medicine before, so we don't really know what it does. Once we make it, those question marks will fill up. 2. Ingredient Selection  Under the 'material' part you can see the materials you need to make berg medicine. So the first material is 'Magic Grass'. This is a named item, and we need this to make berg medicine. So if we don't have magic grass, we can't make it. It doesn't matter how many other items you have; you need magic grass. And that's not all. It says 'Magic Grass x2', so you need two of them to make one Berg Medicine. The (Animal) part means any animal ingredient will do. It's the same with (Water). If an item is that category, we can use it. I'll explain this more in the item section.  This is what the ingredient selection screen looks like while synthesizing. You press 'L' and 'R' to go through your materials. If you select all the materials in a category, the game automatically takes you to the next category. We have to select magic grass.  We can select any material that has the (Animal) category... but we only have one right now.  Again, we can pick anything that has (Water) as its category. We only have well water right now. Then we select synthesize and we're done. You can re-select your materials as many times you want during the synthesis. 3. Category Values  So let's look at our items in a little detail.  First, let's talk about color. So we have the picture of our material, magic grass. There is a green circle in the top right corner of it's picture box. That means it gives a green color bonus. That is all for now, I'll add more detail as the game will explain it. Now for the actual values. Below the category, you can see magic grass has (Plant) and (Medicine Mat). Berg Medicine asked for (Animal) and (Water), but if a recipe asks for (Plant) or (Medicine Mat), we can use magic grass for it. Now the numbers in front of the values. Magic Grass gives you 10 points if you use it as a (Plant) and 10 points if you use it as a (Medicine Mat). Take a look at the right part. That box (with quality, use count, size and the three bars) shows what our end product will look like.  So next to the picture of the magic grass, we see the bar filled party with green, and 10/50 written at the end of it, and HP recovery XS on top of it. Selecting one magic grass adds 10 points of category value to our end product. That's what the '10' is. The /50 part means you need 50 points of category value for the 'HP recovery XS' to change into another effect, in this case 'HP recovery S'.  This is what our bars look like when we have added all our materials. You can see the second and third bars have none on top of them. You need at least 25 points of category value for that 'none' to change into something. Also, the color doesn't matter. You can mix and match colors. If you have say, 10 points of red color, and 10 points of blue color in the same bar, the total will still be 20. The color is for an entirely different thing. Also, you can see while selecting your materials, which materials are used for which bar using their pictures.  So we can see, in the top section, from 0 - 49, the effect will always be HP recovery XS (extra small). Yes, this means if you have 49/50 points, it will still be HP recovery XS. For the rest of the question marks to unlock we need to actually make a berg medicine with the category values in that range. 4. Size, Use Count and Quality  Effect Value is the same as Category Value Let's talk about quality. So we made the Berg Medicine using:  A magic grass that was decaying  Worthless monster feathers  And impure Well Water Our three materials have terrible quality, and so our end result quality is...  ...really terrible. Quality has a hidden effect on the power of your items, but early game it won't matter much, because all the stuff you find will be bad to average. Size is basically how big the item is. I'll talk more about size in the advanced synthesis, but for now, here's what the game says about it:  The obvious thing, just like quality, is that the bigger your materials, the bigger the end result will be. Use count is the amount of uses our consumable items have. You can increase the use count, but since I can't do anything at this point, I'll just leave it at that.
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Apr 6, 2017 16:48
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MythosDragon posted:Anyone know if Slyphid has said anything about doing this though? I asked them about it a while ago, the answer was "probably not."
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Apr 6, 2017 16:52
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Mraagvpeine posted:I would recommend putting a space in-between your screenshots because it looks cramped. Otherwise I think you're doing alright. Okay, I will keep that in mind. MythosDragon posted:Hey, I know that username, sup LoH Buddy. LoH is a great game
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Apr 6, 2017 16:52
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Update 2: The Mysterious Book All right, let's make the berg medicine for Monika.  Hehe, good luck, SophieLeave it to me!Accessing the cauldron gives you the synthesis tutorial. So we used: ...not what I'd use to make medicine. Quality. I'm talking about the quality. The game probably gave you the worst quality it could find. And we made:  Our alchemy level didn't increase though.  This is our recipe book. The game will explain it in detail later, but you can see that making the Berg Medicine filled in the first spot. Alright, done! Monika, it's ready! Thank you, Sophie. You really helped me out.Sophie: Don't worry about it. We're friends right? Hehe, right. Anyway, I'll take this over to Mr. Horst now....Hey Monika. Do you mind if I go along?Huh? I don't mind... But why?I'm the one who made this medicine. If it turned out to be no good, it would mean trouble...Because it's really not well made. Hmm, I think it's fine, but... Well, it couldn't hurt. Let's go.Yeah... Oh, just a minute! I should write the recipe into the reference book, while it's still fresh in my mind.Sophie writes the recipe into the book.   We all know that writing into books you've never seen before in video games makes strange stuff happen. Like getting sucked into them. I wasn't able to get a better screenshot of the shiny, but yes, the book is shining. Meanwhile, we will go deliver our Berg Medicine.  Mr. Horst! Mr. Horst is a very useful person. He gives us jobs, and is our main source of income for a large part of the game.   Horst: Oh, thank you very much for bringing it so quickly, Monika. Monika: Well... Actually, Sophie made it. I couldn't find any Berg Medicine myself... Horst: Sophie, you made this? Sophie: Yes. Um... Is there something wrong with it?  Either Mr. Horst is a super chill guy, or Berg Medicine around these parts is pretty awful.  It seems your skills with alchemy are improving quite a bit, Sophie. Ehehe... You two have been very helpful. Here's your payment.  Yes, we get money! Success! We have now graduated to 'alchemist' instead of 'kind of alchemist'.Wow, thank you so much, Mr. Horst!Um... I didn't really do anything. I can't accept this... Monika: ...Very well, I'll accept it gratefully.  Monika: If you're ever troubled by anything, just ask. I'll do whatever I can to help. Anyway, I'll get going now. Have a good day Mr. Horst, Sophie.  /-/ Back to the Atelier we go!  The sound of flapping wings can be heard in the background. CG:  ???: ...You just got home, and you're already so loud. Sophie: Oh, sorry! ...Wait, what? Did the book just... Talk? ???: Yes, I talked. Sophie: Whaaaaat!? The book...! The book is talking!? ???: Please just calm down. People are able to talk. It's not strange for a book to talk too. This book didn't get the memo that books don't talk normally Sophie: Huh? U-um, I don't think that's how it works...   Yes. I'm Plachta. This is our 'Mysterious Book'  Sophie? I shall remember that. Um... Miss Plachta?Just call me Plachta.Uh, okay. Um, Plachta... What exactly are you?A book.Obviously. I can see that, but... You're a book, yet you're flying, and talking... It's really strange...It's true that I'm different from an ordinary book. That's because I...I... That's strange, I can't remember. What exactly am I? A book, right? Um, that's what I want to know...Wait, Plachta... Do you not have any memories?It seems so. I can remember that I'm related to alchemy, though.Alchemy!? Then I might be able to help! I'm actually an alchemist!Yes, I know. A novice alchemist who doesn't even know how to produce Berg Medicine.Wow, this book is rude  Plachta: Even a child could make that if they studied a little bit. Sophie: Gah! B-but, but! Mr. Horst praised me for it, saying it was really well made! Plachta: From my point of view, it didn't appear particularly excellent in any way.  ... Yeah, I'm terrible at alchemy. I make lots of mistakes, and I can't make lots of things. ...Do you wish to become better?...Huh? Sophie: Of course I do. I would, if I could... Plachta: There is a device called the "Cauldron of Knowledge". It allows anyone to use the power of alchemy. With that, you would be able to make free use of alchemy, as you so desire. Sounds really overpowered and gamebreaking  Plachta: The "Cauldron of Knowledge" is... This is strange.  Well, she has no memories. ...It seems so. Whaaaaat!? Are you serious!? That's terrible! You got my hopes up, only to crush them!...I'm very sorry. But I can't remember at all.Of course the game wasn't gonna give it to us. ...As compensation, I can teach you alchemy myself. I may have lost my memories, but I'm confident that my knowledge of alchemy exceeds yours.But we get a book as our teacher instead. Which is pretty cool Hmm, you do seem pretty smart, and you probably do know more about alchemy than me...If you'll teach me, I'll gladly accept... Sophie: Yeah! I look forward to it, Plachta!  Anyway, next time we shall go gathering. And learn things from the book. How is the spacing between screenshots now?
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Apr 7, 2017 05:31
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The spacing is much better. And now I wonder if there's a talking cauldron out there.
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Apr 7, 2017 16:30
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Tutorial: Date and Time The day is divided into 4 parts: Morning, Day, Evening and Night. Materials change based on the time you gather them, so some materials are only found at night. Also, the shops are only open from morning - evening, and they close at night. Mr. Horst's bar is open all the time though. Also, the vegetable shop has top tier quality items in the morning, and slightly below average items in the evening. The prices even match. The biggest change is monsters. Monsters are different depending on day and night, and also on the weather.  These are the days of the week. The red days mark the weekend, and lots of events trigger on those days. Plus, there is a certain npc who is only in town during the weekend, in Mr. Horst's bar. Finally, there is a dungeon you can only enter on the right day. But that's far into the future. For now, in early game, the biggest thing days do for you is trigger friend events. A month in this game is 30 days, after 30 days the date becomes '1' again.
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Apr 8, 2017 10:18
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Tutorial: Equipping Items To explain, the items you make using alchemy (or if you just find items while exploring / buy them from shops) can be used by your characters. All characters can use items, but there are conditions. First of all, only a max of five items can be equipped. This doesn't matter much early game, but late game you have to pick and choose which items you want to equip on your characters. For Sophie, this is the only condition. Which means Sophie can equip and use any item in the game. The second condition is for the rest of your party. There is a 'cost' to equip the item. The cost = item level. Berg medicine is level 1, so it has a cost of 1. Uni bag is level 4, so it's cost is 4. Naturally, you can't exceed your equipment cost. The game won't let you. There are ways to decrease the cost of an item, and your max cost limit rises with your level. The final condition, for the rest of your party is:  Your party members can't use all the items in the game. For example, Monika can't equip bombs. Every character has different things they can equip. Naturally, Sophie doesn't care about this stuff, she can equip and use anything. This is important, because you'll find Sophie is weaker than the rest of the party, both in offense and defense, especially in the early game when your equipment isn't upgraded. Her main way of causing massive damage is using items. But that's not all; Sophie can fill in almost any niche you want her to. She can be your attacker, the support unit, the healer. It all depends on the items you equip on her. This means the more you work on your alchemy, the better Sophie gets. Also, remember that items have a use count. They'll be used up if they reach '0', but there is a way around this later in the game.
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Apr 8, 2017 10:57
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Tutorial: Field changes and Item gathering That sprout shows a gathering spot. It's marked as green on your mini-map. The game explains it really fast, but this is one of the most important parts of the game. You can't synthesize without materials, you know. Your gathered materials go to your basket. If you run out of space, you'll have to throw away something. You can eventually increase your basket / backpack capacity.   Hitting an enemy with your swing allows Sophie to go first. And the rest of your team, but Sophie will go first. If you don't hit them with your swing, it's entirely possible that another party member will be higher in the turn order (which I'll explain in the battle tutorial), or the enemies will be higher, it all depends on your level and speed.  And here we come to another mechanic. Every character has LP. Higher LP = buffed stats, Lower LP = debuffed stats To be honest, I didn't notice the effects all that much. Early on, the game eats your LP, however you can also unlock an item that cuts down LP consumption pretty early as well.  Monsters always change at night / day time. Either their numbers, or their formations, something usually changes. The weather also causes some monsters to show up that normally doesn't show up around there.  Finally, this mechanic. See those three dots? When you enter a field, there is always one dot, and as you gather and fight, the dots eventually increase. The max is five. However, early on the max for me was always 3. I didn't see 5 till round mid game or so. That being said, there is an item you can make in the early game that raises these dots very quickly. So you can also see 5 in early game. Now let's talk about the effects. The more dots you have, the better items you find. Better items mean you'll either find more, better quality, or rare items, or items with better traits. Traits will be explained later in synthesis tutorial. You'll also find more powerful monsters. They increase their levels, which raises their HP and stats, and upgraded versions of the monsters start showing up (for example, you might see Green Puni with the Blue Puni), and some rare monsters might also show up. There is a pretty noticeable difference between the 1 dot monsters and the 5 dot monsters. Their levels make quite a difference, and the upgrades are obviously more powerful. And the less we talk about the rare monsters, the better. They're very unforgiving if you're unprepared. They can wipe your party in one hit. ...well, you just get kicked back to your atelier, and lose some of the items you gathered in that trip, so no big loss. But you have to be careful when fighting monsters at the higher dot levels.
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Apr 8, 2017 12:50
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Tutorial: Battle (Basics) The actions are as follows: 1. Attack (center): Perform a normal attack 2. Item (top): Use an equipped item. Yes, it has to be equipped, so don't forget it in your container. 3. Skill (right): Use a skill. Different characters have different skills 4. Defend (left): Defend ups your defense and cuts down all incoming damage. 5. Run (bottom): Run away. This can fail.  Each enemy and ally performs one action in a single turn. Exceptions are there. Anyway, the higher your speed, the faster you'll get to take your turn, and also the action you select will determine when you take your turn. Defend usually activates at the start of the turn... usually. Also, the enemy will select their actions before you, so you can plan accordingly. The turn begins once you've picked all your ally actions.  There are two stances in battle: Offense stance increases your attack power, and Defense stance increases your defense. There's more to this which we will eventually unlock. Different support actions happen depending on which stance you are in. The offense stance will have support action follow ups, and the defense stance has support guards.  The gauge increases as you take and deal damage. It's not too special at first, since you have to fill it up to 100% in one battle, and it decreases to 0% after the support action has been taken. Later on, the game keeps the gauge at 100%, and you get support actions with every character, so it becomes much more useful then. We'll unlock that when we get there. But for now, it's just 'kind of there'.  So the enemy picks their actions before you. They let you know if they're picking a normal attack, a skill, or their strongest skill. This lets you plan ahead and pick your actions accordingly. Of course, sometimes the enemy is too strong that their normal attack can one shot you, other times the enemy is so weak, that their strongest skill deals 1 point of damage or misses you.
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Apr 10, 2017 10:34
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Blademaster_Aio posted:Also, the vegetable shop has top tier quality items in the morning, and slightly below average items in the evening. Do items decay in your inventory once you buy / find them?
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Apr 10, 2017 16:32
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Mzbundifund posted:Do items decay in your inventory once you buy / find them? No. Nothing decays, and materials last forever till you use them or throw them away. Material quality also lasts forever. Items haven't decayed for a while in the Atelier games. They took out that mechanic... which works for me. Now if only they had 999999999 storage. I'll show you in game what I meant about the vegetable shop. Blademaster_Aio fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Apr 10, 2017 |
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Apr 10, 2017 23:22
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Yay! Someone decided to LP Atelier Sophie  ! I love Sophie and it got me back into the atelier series after I did a stupid and chose an Xbox 360 over a PS3, meaning missing out on all the PS3 ateliers. If I could have a recommendation, would it be passionless to take an avi of the official artwork and use that to indicate when the characters are talking? It probably would help the read better  .
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Apr 13, 2017 02:33
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jimmydalad posted:Yay! Someone decided to LP Atelier Sophie Well, that option does exist, but I don't like some of the official art, plus it doesn't show their expressions. If nobody cares about the expressions, I can always use the small face icons (the ones that show up in the encyclopedia) for the talking. Or I can use the official art, if people really want to see those instead. Personally I think some of the expressions are great, because you can see their thoughts written on their face. Anyway, I'll have the next update up soon, so you can see for yourself what you prefer. My vote will always go to the way I'm doing it now.
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Apr 14, 2017 11:28
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Update 3: We fight Puni and gather stuff  This is what we did last time. And now the book will teach us stuff!  You're quite enthusiastic.Yeah! I don't want to be a novice forever!Hehe... Very well, try Synthesizing something first.Synthesis? I can do that! What's wrong? Then it seems you need to gather some. Is there a place nearby where you can do that? Sophie. Why are you scared of Puni? Oh, but we might have some newcomers with us. Well then, we should go see this fearsome Puni together. Oh, right. I can have Monika come with me.Monika? Is that the girl who was with you yesterday?Yeah. She's actually really strong!I see, then you should be safe. Very well, please be careful. As you can see, even if I was to go, I wouldn't be able to fight. Seeing how I'm a book and all.Except, books in this universe can fight. You know, monster books? Oh, that's right. Okay, I'll be off then!Yes. Try to come back quickly. Time is finite, after all. If you take too long, I won't have as much time to teach you alchemy.Ahaha, you're right. Okay, I'll try to hurry back!Except, there is no time limit in this game. The quest is complete because I forgot to screenshot it earlier. Anyway, this is our goal for now.  Also this. Let's get it done.  This is outside our Atelier. We can draw water from the well... but not right now. Sophie is strictly business right now. And she already has water of terrible quality in her container.   Stay strong, lady.  We can see Kirchen Bell from our hill. That tall building is the church.  The edge of town.   Enough fooling around, let's go see Monika.  Monika: Hm? Why are you asking all of a sudden? Sophie: I don't have any materials for Synthesis. I want to go gather some, but I'm scared to go alone.  Ah, I see. Of course I'll go. Alright! Thanks, Monika!No problem. By the way, Sophie. Have you outfitted yourself properly? That's not what I meant... You need medicine and other supplies, right? We're going to a place where monsters appear. You need to prepare properly.Oh, you're right. I'll be sure to bring some stuff. Our goal has been updated. To the Chick Woods! Which has no chicks or chickens, or birds, but that's another story. Before that, we'll equip some stuff we have. So the game actually gave me some extra stuff that some people might not have. The average quality Uni Bag, Simple Sweets, and Sotea are 'gifts' from the game. For what, I don't know. We don't really need them, but I'll equip them anyway. Let's see what the game actually gives us.  We have two Soggy Uni Bags, to help us defeat Puni.  We have an average Uni Bag. It's a little better than the Soggy Uni Bag. It's quality is better, plus it also has the "bursts" property, which causes additional damage.  We have some sweets which restores HP.  And finally, an item that restores MP. By the way, Sotea rhymes with Sophie. It's pronounced 'So-tea'. We'll look over the item encyclopedia later, where the game 'names' this item.  Here is Sophie's starting equipment and stats. I'll talk about equipment in a later update, so let's talk about stats. But before that, let's see Monika's stats.  As you can see, Monika has more attack, defense and HP than Sophie. Monika can also equip heavy armor. Not for this update, but the next time we go gathering, I'll talk about our allies one by one. There's a lot more to talk about in this update anyway.   Monika only has a 10 limit on her equipment cost. So I gave her an Uni Bag. Not that she'll need it.  Please Come Back after Plot Event.   The main street is where almost all the shops are. It's a place which we'll visit a lot. I put the mini map there to bring your attention to the arrows. They show the paths you can take to leave this place. There are actually three paths, however we can't go back the way we came, and Sophie won't allow us to waste time right now. So we can only take one path right now.   Oh, Mrs. Marguerite. Yes, I'm going to help Sophie gather materials. Right, Sophie? Sophie sounds like vegetables are the most delicious thing ever. Actually, she's like this with almost all food. Sophie is not very picky.  Ahaha! It seems Sophie is charmed by my vegetables again.Sophie?Huh, oh, right! Yeah! We're going to go gathering! I see, I see. Make sure to be careful.Yes, thank you for your concern.  If you see him, tell him I'm looking for him.Got it! I'll let him know if I see him!Anyway, we'll be going now.Yes, take care. Here we are. The red arrow leads to the map exit, which will take us to the world map. There is one near Sophie's atelier too, but since we had to go pick Monika, the game didn't show us that one.   First of all, Sophie and Monika live here. Secondly, you have never guided me. I had to learn the directions on my own.  Welcome to the world map. We can only go to the Chick Woods right now. The red dot in our path is a mini event that takes place on the world map. Sometimes you find money, sometimes you gain / lose HP/MP/LP, sometimes you fight monsters. This time it was: Monika: What could that be? Obtained 100 Cole. Monika: Hehe, so things like this happen too. I should just add that this is quite a bit of money this early in the game.  Once we actually fight and gather stuff in the Chick Woods, the information will update and it'll show us what monsters are found / what materials can be found. You only need to find the material or fight the monster once for it to show up. And it doesn't have to be in the Chick Woods. So even if you gather or fight in some other area, if that monster or material is found in the Chick Woods, the game will show it to you.    Sophie, you need to be more careful. We have no idea when monsters could appear.I know... Wait? Is someone over there...?  Oskar is one of my favorite characters. He is also Mrs. Marguerite's 'foolish son'. And Sophie and Monika's childhood friend. Together with Plachta, these guys are our protagonists for this game.  Oh, Sophie and Monika. What are you doing out here? We're here to gather alchemy materials. What about you?I came to observe the plants. The plants here tell some interesting stories. Oskar, don't tell me you were talking to plants again?That's exactly what I was doing? What's weird about that? To me, it's weirder not to be able to talk to plants.  That sounded vaguely like an insult...Oh, right. Oskar, Mrs. Marguerite was looking for you. Gah, oh crap! I totally forgot about my delivery! Mom's going to scold me!This is your own fault. Just accept it, Oskar.And face the wrath of your mother.  It's here! The Puni that Sophie was scared of! The evil creature of doom that will eat us all!  ...or not. Everyone, meet Tutorial Puni. It is a blob. It's a Blue Puni. Tutorial Puni: Puni puni! Translation: I will roll over you giant humans. Muahahaha! For I am the evil puni of this forest, the bane of level 1s everywhere! Eeek! Puni!?Sophie, stand back! Oscar, you can fight, right?W-what!? W-wait a second! I'm not prepared for this... Our heroes look all worked up. The tutorial puni has a fearsome aura, despite being the weakest monster in the entire game. Anyway. To battle!  Monika's battle sprite.  Monika has the attack skill light edge. It costs 8 MP and Monika only has 30 MP. That means she can only use it 3 times. Normally I wouldn't use it, but this is the only fight we're fighting here, so why not.  Sophie's gonna use her attack skill. Sophie isn't all that great, and she's better at throwing items, but I refuse to waste items on this fight. Even the free ones.  The Blue Puni has 18 HP and is Level 1, like our heroes.  Oskar doesn't have attack skills just yet. So he'll just attack the Puni.  Oskar bashes in the Puni for 11 damage. Yes, that is a shovel. Oskar's weapon of choice. You can see the max damage in the corner. Sophie did 6 damage with her skill. The puni has 1 HP left. Now that the Puni is broken, Monika hit it with a critical skill for 18 damage. Yes, it's entire HP bar. Overkill. Sadly, the vita doesn't let you take very close back to back screenshots, so I couldn't show it to you. But we'll have a lot of chances to see that.  Our spoils from the battle. It's a puniball.  Sophie, the puni didn't even touch us. It's a puni. It's a squishy blob. It can't kill you. Ten year olds can beat up blue puni if they try hard. You both appear uninjured.Yeah, somehow... I didn't think they'd attack all of a sudden like that...Hey, Oskar. Do you want to come with us? It's dangerous to be alone, monsters could attack again.You're probably right. Alright, I'll go with you. I wouldn't want to get hurt, after all. What!? I never said I'd do that...We won't tell Mrs. Marguerite we saw you here. Okay? I don't understand how this helps you Oskar. Your mom is already mad, that ship has sailed.  Yay! Now that we've blackmailed Oskar, let's gather. Before that, let's take a look at Oskar.  As you can see, Oskar has more HP and LP than Sophie and Monika. We'll talk more about him in a later update.    Our gathering results. Yes, we will make Berg Medicine again. This is the last time the game so conveniently hands you the materials you need. Otherwise, you always need to gather a bit more to get what you want.   *Cough* *Wheeze*... Talk about using people...Isn't that's what childhood friends are for? What should we do, Sophie? Want to look around a little more? But you have way more LP than both Sophie and Monika. And if we stick around too long, some dangerous monsters could appear.Hm, Oskar might be right... Oskar is very much right. He's talking about a gameplay mechanic. But the most dangerous things in the Chick Woods are Green Puni. They're like Blue Puni, except green. And with more HP and one more skill. Yeah. Oh, both of you should drop by the atelier. I'll make tea for you.Oh really? Then we'll take you up on that offer. Right, Oskar?Y-yeah... But first, let me catch my breath...Oh come on. We barely did any gathering. Just you wait till next time.    As you can see, now the chick woods shows us the monsters we can fight, and the items we can gather. They showed up here because we fought and gathered the stuff. Not only that, no matter where the blue puni shows up, it'll show up on the monsters list if it can be found in that area. Fighting something once or just gathering / obtaining the item once is enough. Anyway, next time we will learn more advanced synthesis from our new alchemy teacher. Also, the game has four difficulty levels. For this LP, the options I'm giving you are normal or hard. The other two are easy and despair, but we won't be playing those for this LP. Anyway, please choose the difficulty you want. The only thing that changes are the battles. The rest of the game is the same.
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Apr 14, 2017 15:06
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Tutorial: Synthesis Advanced We're going to start by learning about this screen. First, you can see five colored circles on the top. Red, Blue, Green, Yellow and White. The panel is 4 x 4, that means there are 16 spaces for us to use. The 16 spaces all have a colored border. The four corners have a blue border, and the rest of them are green border spaces. Size and Color  You can see the picture of the well water. The blue circle shows you that the color is blue. And the size shows you a L shape. So on the panel, the well water shows up as a blue L-shape piece, made up of 3 blue circles joined together. Percentages and placing materials  Now that we placed the well water, you can see the blue color circle has 18% next to it. This means 18% of the panel is being covered by blue circles. Naturally, the more you cover with the same color, the more the percentage will rise.  The magic grass is a slightly different shape from the Well Water. But it also is a 3 piece shape, and covers 3 spaces. Again the percentage rises to 18%.  So the game has us place it on the magic grass.  If you look at the circles now, the green has 0% again. Red has 18% next to it. Basically, the percentages show how much of the panel you are currently covering with a certain color. So what do percentages do?  We don't have a majority this time, since our three colors are all 18%. So they'll all gain an 18% increase. Let's see it in effect. We can see on our bars, HP recovers XS (47/50), None (16/25), None (24/25).  So what happened is that the green 47, the red 16, and the blue 24 got increased by 18% due to them being the highest percentage, and changed into 55, 19 and 28. To give you an example, 18% of 47 is 8.46 and 47 + 8 = 55 So that's what happened. This is just a basic tutorial, I'll be showing off more of this in the LP. Synthesis is something you understand better the more you do. Bonus lights So there are 4 squares with colored lights in them. 3 of these are green, and one of them is blue. These are there from the start, and will always be there. When you place materials in the panel, the surrounding panels gain these lights. If the lights are already there, they'll grow larger. The lights give you bonuses. Normally well water will give you a '20' in the category value, but because we placed it on a square with a bonus light in it, we got a 24 instead. The amount we get depends on the cauldron we are using, and it's different for every cauldron, which I will explain in another update. As you can see, placing the material next to already present colored lights makes them grow larger... Till they reach their maximum size. It's obvious, but larger lights give bigger bonuses. And if the lights are the same color as your material, it grants even bigger bonuses.
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Apr 16, 2017 04:52
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Update 4: Learning Alchemy from Teacher Book Plachta Before we begin, I'll talk about one of our party members. Let's start with our protagonist, Sophie. All of our party members suffer from early-game-equipment syndrome. Early game equipment is always bad, but Atelier games suffer more because you can't just buy your equipment. You actually have to put some effort and make it, or in our case, the materials. And of course, the 'equipment' shop isn't even unlocked yet, so we're stuck with our terrible equipment for quite a while. So I won't be talking about equipment at all, even if it is a very important factor in determining the usefulness of your characters. Sophie doesn't have a lot of attack or defense. Her HP isn't great either, which means she'll get knocked out pretty quickly if every single enemy decides to attack her. Naturally, her normal attacks and skill don't offer much in the way of damage, but that is irrelevant. Sophie is an alchemist. Her main source of damage, healing and support should be items you synthesize. Items you make are really powerful, enough for Sophie to be your best damage dealer and healer for a long time. Or in our case, she's our only viable healer early game. There really isn't much else to say about her. I don't use her skills all that much, because Sophie is always busy throwing out items in battle. You can never remove her from the party, but why would you? Sophie is your most useful party member after all. Depending on the items you give her. Yeah, that means she's pretty bad without items. Now then. Let's learn some Alchemy from Plachta.  Ah, welcome back. That took a long time. T-that book is floating!? And talking!? I never thought I'd hear the voices of books in addition to plants...N-no, Oskar, it isn't just you. I can hear it too, this time...So it looks like plants talk with Oskar the same way Plachta talks with us. Sophie, it seems your friends are just as loud as you are.Ahaha... I'm pretty sure anyone would be surprised if they saw you, Plachta... Um... Both of you, this is...  You wrote something in a reference book, and it started talking? Sounds more like a dream.Alchemy is the power of dreams, after all. I never thought that book would turn out to be something this amazing... I don't think it's that shocking...No, it is...So um... Miss Plachta?Just call me Plachta.Oh, okay then, Plachta... What, or who are you? Really?Yes. The only things I know are my name, and a little knowledge of alchemy.Right. That's why I want to figure out a way to get her memories back.Memories, huh... Maybe they'll come back if you found some sort of clue?A clue... Hmm... Oh, Sophie. I just thought of something! Plachta started talking because you wrote something in the book, right?Yeah, I think that did it.Then maybe her memories will return if you write more recipes into the book?Wow, that makes sense! You're pretty sharp, Monika!What do you think, Plachta?It doesn't sound far-fetched. I think it would be worth trying.Okay, in that case, I'll study lots of alchemy, and write lots of recipes into you! Yeah, I'll help with whatever I can do.Thank you both!Whoa, it's getting late. I need to get home or mom will scold me again.I'll be leaving as well. See you later, Sophie and Plachta.Yeah, see you!I need to work hard, for Plachta! Yes, I have high hopes, Sophie.Okay, time for some synthesis.  This message shows up every time you return from gathering. You don't have to check anything. But the option is there. It's just checking, the items are sent to the container, regardless of your choice.  Sophie won't let you waste any more time. Oh well.  Yeah, yeah, I got it. Let's make something. More like, let's make the only thing we can make: Berg Medicine.  Alright, time to start Synthesizing!Plachta, teach me whatever you can.Okay, I understand.  I won't be showing off this synthesis because I already explained it in the tutorial. But I will show the synthesis I do myself.  Our result, and as you can see, it's better. Even the quality is better.   We even leveled up!  Yes. Even with the same recipe, the way you make it can greatly change the results.It's simple, but this alone gives the synthesis system a lot of depth. Alchemy is based on creativity and ingenuity. You should remember that. ...By the way, Plachta. I want to try making something else now...Hehe, that also depends on your creativity.Huh? What do you mean?There are various things you experience during your daily life. Things you see, hear, and feel. If you base your creativity off of that, you may come up with new alchemy recipes.Hmm... So you're saying I should do all kinds of things?I suppose that would be putting it very simply.Uu... Okay, I get it. I'll just try whatever comes to mind.Yes, you should try that. At the very least, the experience will be good for you.I'll explain learning recipes later. First, let's look at what we made!  This is our menu. We're gonna look at our encyclopedia, which contains information about everything in the game.  The tutorials are also here, under 'help'. We're gonna go in the 'item' section this time.  And under usable.  We got the greyed out items from somewhere, but because we haven't made them yet, they're greyed out.  Next time I will explain recipes, and we'll explore Kirchen Bell a little.
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Apr 17, 2017 08:58
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I picked up the PC version of this after seeing the LP, and the main thing I have to say is that the keyboard controls are terrible.
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Apr 17, 2017 13:15
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Gnoman posted:I picked up the PC version of this after seeing the LP, and the main thing I have to say is that the keyboard controls are terrible. Why are they terrible? Atelier games have always been PS3/4 Vita based, so their controls are really nice on those controllers / vita controls. I don't know how they're on the PC though.
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Apr 17, 2017 16:23
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Movement controls are WASD. The action buttons are OKL;, camera is 4862, menus are up/down/left/right arrows. It is incredibly awkward, and it is clear they expect you to use a controller.
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Apr 17, 2017 18:04
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Gnoman posted:Movement controls are WASD. The action buttons are OKL;, camera is 4862, menus are up/down/left/right arrows. It is incredibly awkward, and it is clear they expect you to use a controller. Isn't there a way to customise the controls or something? That does sound awkward.
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Apr 17, 2017 23:40
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Tutorial: Learning Recipes  In this game, you learn new recipes by doing various stuff. Let's look at our recipe learning screen.  The games tells us we can learn the recipe for Uni bag 'from Uni'. Basically we need to get an Uni from somewhere. Anywhere will do. Buy it from a shop, or gather it, receive it as a gift. It doesn't matter where you get it from as long as you get it. Once we learn the recipe for Uni Bag, the other two recipes to the next of it will open up and show us their conditions.  Recipes with a lock on them are the ones you need to unlock to advance the main plot. The game very clearly points them out. It's up to you how quickly or how slowly you want to advance the main story. In this case we need to to beat monsters or complete requests or both. Whatever. The requests will make the bar fill more quickly. You don't need to know the condition for unlocking a recipe to unlock it. All recipes before Plachta's memory recipe can be unlocked if you fulfill their conditions, even if you don't know what they are. I'll demonstrate this in the next update. However, the recipes after Plachta's memory lock cannot be unlocked, even if you complete their conditions. Plachta's memory lock comes first. There are some recipes which you can't unlock or learn the conditions for even when you unlock all the recipes next to them. This is because those recipes are special, mostly taught to you by other people, or Sophie learns them during an event, or she thinks it up as a response to an event.
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Apr 18, 2017 11:02
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If you fulfill the conditions for a recipe you normally can't get because it's behind a memory lock, do you just get it immediately when you unlock the lock, or would you then have to fulfill the conditions again?
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Apr 18, 2017 19:31
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Son Ryo posted:If you fulfill the conditions for a recipe you normally can't get because it's behind a memory lock, do you just get it immediately when you unlock the lock, or would you then have to fulfill the conditions again? You must fulfill the conditions again. I think there are some exceptions. There are very few recipes that require you to get a key item to unlock. It's possible to get the key item before you unlock the recipe. But you can only get one of the item, so for those recipes, I'm assuming you don't, or rather, you can't fulfill the conditions again so it unlocks automatically when you get to that part. But for evey other recipe, you must fulfill the conditions again. Blademaster_Aio fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Apr 18, 2017 |
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Apr 18, 2017 20:34
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Update 5: Talking a Walk at Night Let's check out our recipe book. By the way, it's evening in game. It's actually pretty late. I was planning on going to the shops, but this puts a stop to that plan. I could sleep away the hours, but why do that, when we can do so much more. We won't accomplish anything by standing around here, so let's go. But before that...  Sophie's thoughts on her atelier. Don't worry Sophie. We'll get there, someday.  Shortcut! Fast travel. Now we don't have to walk everywhere. But time still passes if you use it. Basically, the same amount of time it takes you to walk. So you might find that the map shows you the location of people somewhere else at the start, and when you select your location, the people change their position. This is because time passed and morning changed to afternoon or to evening or whatever. Anyway. Let's draw water from the well.  We learned a recipe. 'Beginner Recipes Sotea can be Synthesized.'  As you can see, the conditions to unlocking Sotea weren't shown yet, but we unlocked it anyway by fulfilling them. In this case it was gathering well water. Speaking of Well Water, let's see our encyclopedia regarding that.  There's another green dot on our map. Green dots show gathering spots. Why don't we go see what it is?  The back of our Atelier.  There it is. Unlike the Well Water, this spot isn't always here. As for what it gives us:   It's of pretty low quality, but it's useful I suppose. This is one of the spots you can find Kaen Stones, which can be used as gun powder. The times passes to night, so for the first, and probably last time, I'll show you how the town looks at night.  The back of our Atelier.  And the front looks like this:  The scenery of Kirchen Bell looks better at daytime, but whatever.  Let's go somewhere else.  Nobody is here.  The plaza isn't empty though.  The yellow dot is an npc, so let's talk with him.   He never opens up his shop. Or more accurately, Sophie never buys anything from this guy.  The church isn't open. This is true of all shops. None of them are open at night. There is one place that is open at night, and we'll go there in a bit. The plaza has two other paths we can take. One takes us to the street, the other to the Old Town.   We'll be coming here later, to see the book store.  The Old Town connects to a nearby forest.   I'm sure it's past your bedtime. Unless you're the type of person who sleeps all day and is awake all night.  And that is something important.  That's all for this part of town. Now we'll go to the street.  Using fast travel, of course.  Places that you can't visit will be greyed out.  To the street!   You never tell me the weather.   This guy is sleeping on the wall. Must be pretty wide. Mr. Horst's cafe is the only place that is open at night. Mr. Horst sleeps when you sleep... which is never, I guess. Or maybe off-screen. Before we go there, I'll show you the rest of the town.    I should just point out the fishing enthusiast is an old lady.   That's not entirely true. Monsters at night aren't always dangerous, but it's true that they are different. You should explore an area at daytime and at night as well.    A final look at Kirchen Bell. Next time I'll talk about request, rumors and Mr. Horst's cafe.
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Apr 19, 2017 14:52
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Update 6: The Cafe, Requests and Rumors Oh no, it was nothing. If there's anything else you need, feel free to ask....In that case, may I ask now?Huh? Is there something you need?Yes. Many people come to this shop, so I naturally receive many requests. I'd be grateful if you were able to take care of some of those requests.Um, would it really be okay if I did them...?You were able to make something like that, after all. I think you would do just fine. Also, I'll make sure to only give you requests that I believe you can handle.I should just point out as a heads up that if you turn in E quality stuff to your requests, Mr. Horst will pay you less. So... don't do it. That Berg Medicine was not well made. I understand. In that case, I'll try it.Thank you very much. I receive much more information than just requests, so just ask me if there's something you wish to know more about. Yay! Requests are the way to earn money in this game. The only way to earn money for a long time. Late game, people have different opinions on what is the best money maker, but requests are always a good way to earn money. Before we look at the requests, and the rumors, lets chat with the people here.   Is it apple juice? Or coffee?   What part of that line makes him 'wise'? Maybe we'll run into him in town and he'll be wiser.    Okay, back to work.  Let's check the requests first.  I'll tell you something nice. The only thing that truly matters in requests is quality (well, mostly). The use count doesn't matter. Stuff like Uni Bags have 5 uses, so you can use it 4 times, and then just turn in the 1 use Uni Bag and get your reward. ...or you can just make one and turn it in, whatever you prefer. At least, I've never noticed a difference in turning in a 5 use item vs a 1 use item, so if someone has, they can just point it out.   If you think about the request, Sophie will tell you if she can make it, can't make it, or doesn't have the materials.  This is a timed request. After 20 days the request expires. Only monster hunting requests are timed. The other thing to know about monster hunts is that the more you hunt them, the greater your reward. We'll get 72 cole for beating 1 ghost, but if we beat more, the reward increases. The reward has an upper limit, of course.   If it's a monster you haven't fought yet, this is what Sophie says. I know where the monster is though, but generally, you should accept the monster hunts for the monsters you know the locations off, to save you stress.    If you have the stuff you can turn it in right away. I didn't do it this time. Because I wanted to use the Berg Medicine when I go out. Like I said, turning in a Berg Medicine with one use doesn't change anything.    Uni are a plant in this game so yes, they are living. In some atelier games they looked very similar to a sea urchin.  Anyway, I accept them all. Turn in a high quality item, and Mr. Horst will give you more money. The reverse is true. Low quality items net you less money. Now let's look at rumors.  Some rumors give you information about gameplay mechanics. Those rumors are mostly really cheap. If you buy a rumor, the cursor is actually set to 'don't buy'.  So you can't buy a rumor by button mashing.   Well... it's just better to knock the enemy out before they do anything, but defense stance has its merits.  Basically, requests will show up again, and so will rumors. But rumors like this one won't ever show up again after you buy them. This information is only useful to you once, after all. So the game won't let you waste money on it.  We haven't seen group requests yet. Rumors also unlock stuff for you. But I'll explain that in just a bit.   This is actually a way to unlock a recipe. Really. But not right now, of course.  Okay, so this rumor... this is basically the main purpose of rumors. Sometimes, rumors make materials and enemies spawn in a certain area. Sometimes they're materials with a specific trait. Sometimes they're rare materials. There are some materials you can only get using rumors. And of course, rumors also spawn some enemies. We'll see all of them in due time. Now early on in the game when you're poor, you shouldn't waste your money on this stuff. Uni isn't rare, and whatever this rumor will give us, 300 cole isn't worth it because we have other things to spend our money on. After you do some requests, feel free to accept it. ...but for the purpose of this LP, I accept the rumor anyway.   I'll show you rumors in action in the next update. However, remember that rumors like these end after a while. So purchase them just before heading out. Okay, now, we shall go to the Chick Woods! ...in the next update.
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Apr 19, 2017 15:45
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Tutorial: Resistances and Status Ailments It's exactly how it looks like. Different monsters have different resistances. When you fight one and get their encyclopedia entry, you can check for their weaknesses / resistances.  Ah, yes, ailments. They are far more deadly in the enemy's hands than in your hands. I'll just go over them one by one, in order. 1. Immobile or No Action Sleep, hold, stop... the game has many names for it. It basically skips your turn and doesn't let you take any actions. A variety of actions and skills can cause this ailment, and on paper it might sound useful, except player ailment infliction rates are just not great in the game. And the bosses can just be outright immune to it. 2. Poison Take damage every turn. It's there, I guess.  3. Slow Slow would be a lot more annoying if you could take more than one action per turn. Which you can't. Even if you go dead last, you still get to take your turn. I should add that in past Atelier games you could actually take more than one action in a row, and slow was very painful in that game. In this game it just exists. 4. Curse You take damage when you heal. Basically, if you use a healing item or skill while you're cursed, you'll take damage instead. There is this one boss in this game, and I seriously had to grab curse resistance. My healing items were literally killing me. And as you would expect, curse is a lot more dangerous if the enemy inflicts it on you. Mostly because annoying healer type enemies aren't all that common.  5. Blind Annoying. But hey, it goes both ways. Blind on the enemy works as well as blind does on you. One of the ailments you can make use of, if the enemy isn't immune. 6. Weak It's the same as blind. It reduces skill power, and just like how it's a hindrance for you, it also hinders the enemy. The debuff ailments in this game are actually useful.  7. No Heal A lesser version of curse. It's still pretty annoying to get hit by, especially in a tough battle, and like I said, enemies usually don't have a super annoying healing move that you need to block... but if you ever wanted to, inflict no heal. 8. Seal Cripples you. Well, in normal battles or if you just spam attack, it doesn't matter, but in some battles not having access to skills and items is a major, major pain. Again, you can seal away enemy skills, which is useful. But just to be clear, this is far more annoying to be hit by.   Break is very useful. Very, very useful. It makes your next attack a critical, there are items you can make that do massive damage to broken enemies, and as a bonus, the enemy skips their next turn (and then break ends). But break is great, I assure you. ...naturally you don't want the enemy to break you. The ailments in this game have one major problem - their affliction rates. On bosses, the boss might be immune, and that's where you need them the most. Secondly, ailments are far more deadly when you're being hit by them. Also, they get overshadowed by debuffs in this game. Debuffs, like lowering attack and defense are much more useful. Also, there is one other thing. Instant Death (or just death) exists in the game. It is extremely useful. You can trivialize all normal encounters by making an item with instant death on it. Which we will make later in the game.
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Apr 21, 2017 02:50
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There are quite a lot of tutorials to go though. I hope we're close to finishing them.
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May 5, 2017 03:34
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Update 7: In which Green Puni are evil Monika has more attack, defense and HP than Sophie. Her LP is a little low, but that doesn't matter much. In terms of items, Monika can use healing items and food. She can't use bombs, but her normal attacks are good enough, so that's fine. As far as her skills go, Monika actually gains some healing skills. She also starts out with a single target skill and an area skill. The actual problem with her skills at first is that it costs 8 MP. Monika has 30 MP at first. Basically, you can cast the skill 3 - 4 times before she runs dry. This is a problem at first because enemies in this game can spawn endlessly. We're going gathering in this update, so I'll show you what I mean by that. But that aside, Monika still does good damage with her normal attacks, and that will hold her over till we get her better equipment. Putting aside the MP cost, Monika's skills are strong. Anyway.  So, remember when I said 'don't forget stuff in your container'? Well I, uh, forgot the Berg Medicine in my container. I would go get it, but it's night and if I go back, the game will force-sleep to morning. I've activated a rumor and I want to get the most of it. The blue border around chick woods means a rumor has been activated. It's okay, we'll be fine. Probably.  Sophie, is there a reason we're going gathering at 1 a.m. at night? Aren't you interested in the Uni Mr. Horst told us about?I am, but do we really have to go see them now?Yes. See those sparkly gathering spots? Those are because of the rumor. Day and night have different encounters, and luckily for us, the night time enemies spawn in a section of the map that's not near us. Unlike, you know, the puni.  Getting our hands on Uni was a recipe requirement. Unfortunately, night turned into day, and puni spawned everywhere. And then they chased me. I didn't notice this one. AHH! Puni! On your guard everyone! This won't be easy! If the enemy's level is higher than yours, the opening line of battle will reflect that. In this case, I picked Monika's line. The Green Puni is a tougher version of the Blue Puni. You really shouldn't underestimate them. At all.  We'll have Monika use light edge on the Green Puni. Oskar will normal attack it. And Sophie is gonna use her Uni Bag the game generously gave us on a blue puni.  How are these squishy puni so tough? This is the Uni Bag in action. At this point, it can one shot the blue puni.  The green puni takes revenge. This is puni press by the way.  As you can see, light edge did 15 damage, compared to Oskar's normal attack 5.  For the next turn, Monika and Oskar will attack the Green Puni, and Sophie will use an Uni Bag on the Blue one. Also, the chain link is at 100%.  Oskar goes first, and breaks the puni with his shovel. Sophie attacks the puni with her uni bag, killing it.  And Oskar followed up her attack. To explain, when the gauge reaches 100% and you're in offense stance, a follow up attack will happen. You need two people at least. In this case, Sophie triggered the follow up and Oskar (because he went before Sophie) did the follow up attack. Follow up attacks aren't anything special right now. Later on, they'll become much, much more useful. Anyway, Monika dealt the killing blow.  Good work, everyone.We also gained a few level ups from that fight! Everyone has a unique line when they level up. I'll just show off one this battle.   I can apply this experience to the future.  The spoils of our victory! Puniballs and puni fluid. Let's look at what we fought.  The blue puni. It's weak.  I'm pretty sure it's not trying to camouflage itself. As you can see, the green puni is a pretty big step up from their weaker blue cousins. They also hurt a lot more in the early game.  The early game is filled with puni everywhere, so I usually end up with a lot of puniballs. What are you even going to do with this?Hey, I can use this for a lot of synthesis!Like what?Like sweets. And food.Wait, is this even edible? Puni fluid can also be used as water. I prefer well water, because well water gives more category points.  As you can see, fighting monsters raised our memory bar. We still have some rumor materials to gather.  The rumor ended, and with that, the normal gathering spots respawned on the map. Also, the dots are now two, which means enemies are slightly tougher.  Ugh, there are puni everywhere...They chase you all over the place. It's annoying. Even without rumors, you can find uni easily enough.  The '????' means that the Uni has a trait you haven't seen before. I'll explain traits when they become relevant. For now, we can't do much with them, because our synthesis level is too low. We need to be at least level 10 at alchemy before we can make use of traits. Any item with undiscovered traits will be greyed out, like the Uni we gathered from the rumor. The Uni we gathered normally don't have any traits and are just normal.  The next gathering just got me more uni.   The Unknown egg was called 'some egg' in some of the previous games. As in, it's just some random egg.  I don't think Puni lay eggs though. So now is a good time to explain how gathering spots and monster spawns work in this game. If you look at the map, you'll see one green dot. That's the only thing we haven't gathered yet. After that, the gathering spots won't be on the map anymore. So to get more gathering spots to spawn, we need to fight more monsters. For every monster you defeat, a gathering spot will appear. There is an upper limit, of course. If the map has a max of say, 7 gathering spots, beating more monsters won't add more gathering spots. The reverse is also true; if you defeat monsters and then gather stuff, more monsters will spawn. In a sense, the map is never really 'exhausted'. When you first enter a map, gathering points and monster spawns are at the maximum number. So it doesn't matter if you gather or fight first, because no new stuff will be added. I vastly prefer gathering to battles, so I always gather first. Monsters are a real pain in this game. They just don't ever stop chasing you.  I really don't want to fight this thing right now.  The last gathering spot got us this thing.   By the way, we didn't gather any monster feathers and magic grass. That's just how it is. You can get both of these stuff from other places much more easily. Anyway, I still have 39 spaces in my basket left. The 'empty' shows how much space you have left. We're gonna get more gathering stuff to spawn, so it's time to fight.  Before that, I heal up Monika.  We're gonna squish the blue puni.  Except, the game decided to throw a green puni in there. There is nothing noteworthy about fighting puni. Exceptions exist. I just had Sophie throw Uni Bags at the green puni and Monika and Oskar attacked.  Multiple puni fights later, plenty of gathering spots spawned, so it's time to gather.  When night falls, monsters change. The day monsters will fade out, into black, like you can see. Night monsters take their place.  The night monsters in Chick Woods are ghosts. And yes, they are the quest monster. I still have gathering spots left, but ghosts are night only, and I want to beat a lot of them, so time to get to work.  Ghosts have low HP. ...but that's their only 'weakness'.  That really hurts!Not only do they hit seriously hard, even with their normal attacks...  Their defense isn't bad either.  This is how much Monika's light edge did.   Our new items.  So we can report this now, but if we beat more, we'll get more money.  The game says the defense is 4, but it also resists physical attacks. Most of our attack options at this point are physical. And of course, Sophie is scared of ghosts. Which reminds me, that quest giver was also scared of ghosts.   What do you want to do, Sophie? We can go back, but if we fight more, Mr. Horst would reward us better. Die, ghost! ...wait, isn't it already dead? Eh, who cares. Die again, ghost!  The ghost did a lot of damage to Oskar using flame gaze.  Oskar took his revenge, however. Time to go back to observing plants. I heal Oskar up. I guess I'm missing the Berg Medicine now. A little.   There is one more ghost on the map, so we go after that. But you can see the dots are 3 now.  The ghosts are level 5 now, which makes them tougher. One of them is preparing a warning level skill. So I'll just have Sophie destroy it with an item before it does anything.  'Bursts' adds a little more damage.  The ghosts are gone, so time to gather some more.  Sophie, we already know that plant is Sunset grass.  More ghosts spawned so let's take care of them.  That's enough I guess. The reward increase gets lesser and lesser the more you kill stuff, till it caps out. This is good enough.  This can only be found at night.  I gather at all the gathering spots.  It's time to leave. I have no healing items, and my basket space is low and I'm dying.
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May 6, 2017 03:53
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About the red uni, I've only ever found them at night, so that's why I think they're a night item. They could also be connected to the dots, because more dots nets you rare items.Mraagvpeine posted:There are quite a lot of tutorials to go though. I hope we're close to finishing them. We are almost there. There is one really important synthesis tutorial that unlocks at level 10 alchemy. Traits. It makes and breaks your items and equipment. And we haven't unlocked the equipment shops yet, but that might take some time. Atelier games have a very cutscene heavy opening, but that's because they lay the premise of the entire plot and game play in the beginning. So now you know your game is going to be about you writing recipes into Plachta. And of course, they need to explain the core game play in the beginning too.
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May 6, 2017 04:06
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Update 8: Kirchen Bell shops I leveled up and filled up the memory bar quite a bit in our last trip. Time to go back and explore the town a bit. Before that however, let's talk about Oskar. Oskar has pretty good LP, HP and attack. Because Monika and Oskar are your early game allies, Oskar is useful because he's good at two things you need: He has the HP to absorb a few hits, and he has the attack to make his normal attack useful. Which is good, because Oskar has really low MP. He has a single target healing spell, which isn't so useful because items are better, but he also learns an area attack very quickly. Which would be good, except his MP is really bad and after two casts, he'll be out of MP. Naturally this gets much better with time and equipment. Item wise, Oskar can use bombs, so he has more damage potential that way. He can also use food.  This is the Uni we gathered from the rumors by the way. Enhance finisher ++ is a trait that deals more damage to broken targets, a trait that we won't be using for a long time.   We can probably synthesize stuff, but first we'll explore around town. I still haven't shown you the shops yet.  We'll do our requests next time. We're really poor right now.    Random npcs. There is always an uni kid who thinks throwing uni is the best thing ever in every game. Today is a holiday, so these guys are here. Anyway, I gathered a Kaen Stone and some well water. Talking to random npcs isn't interesting at all, so let's just go to the church.  Huh, Monika? What's wrong?Do you have some time right now?Yeah, I do...That's good. Then can you help me?With what?Cleaning the church.   Sophie is actually very bad at cleaning. Monika cleans up her Atelier for her.   Pamela is a returning character of sorts. She's in a lot of Atelier games, but she isn't the same Pamela in each one. So the Pamela in the Arland series (Rorona, Totori, Meruru) is different from this Pamela. Basically, same name, looks and personality but different character. There is also one fact about Pamela that people who have seen her before know. It's not a big secret, but it will come up in an event later, so look forward to it. By the way, Pamela is a nun.  Oh my, it's been a while, Sophie. Thank you so much for coming.No problem. I'm sorry I couldn't come here lately, Pamela.Oh don't worry about that. You're right. Then let's begin.We've cleaned up quite a lot.Indeed... Although I feel as though there's still a lot left...That's enough for today. Thank you both.Oh right, Pamela. Are you going to throw away the stuff here?Let's see... None of it is really usable, so I suppose so.In that case, can I get some of it? I might be able to use it for alchemy.Feel free to take as much as you want. In fact, you can just take it all. U-um... That's... All of it would be... I'd feel kind of bad...You could pay for it, then.Oh, you really don't have to worry about that.N-no! I'll pay!Well then... In that case, do you mind if I take it as a donation for the church?A donation?You can leave a donation in exchange for taking some of this stuff. Does that sound okay to you?I see... It sounds like you'd both benefit from this arrangement.Yeah, I think so too! Okay Pamela, I'll be donating lots of money from now on! Talking to npcs in this game isn't all that interesting, but still.   Playing hide and seek by yourself sounds super boring. Whatever floats your boat, kid.  The shopkeeper greeting changes depending on what time of day it is.  An interesting thing with Pamela's 'shop' is that you can't sell stuff to her. You can only donate to the church. Pamela has events based on the amount of total donations you make. I haven't really kept track of it. I think she has events not related to the donations, but I can't be sure because I always buy stuff from Pamela since she carries stuff you can't gather from anywhere else.  The text is blue because I don't have this stuff in my inventory. I'll show you the items when I actually buy them, and we will be buying them... but not now. I'm broke and we don't need them right now anyway. Oh and, you can see two church talismans. That's because they're different.  Not a whole lot, but still.  We have pendeloch in our container, so it's text is black. Limited goods are a one time purchase only. Once you buy them, they're gone forever. So you can only buy them once. The shop won't restock them. It's up to you to decide if they're worth your money or not though. For example, this one here - it's nothing special. It has size, but that's about it. But hey, it might just be useful. I haven't actually explained this to you, because it's easier to show you than explain it; items that are bigger in size give more category points. Items that are smaller give less. I'll show this to you during synthesis.  Monika hangs out in the plaza on the weekend. Fruit and seed, the red days. There's a shop in old town. Let's go see it.     Welcome, Sophie. Thanks for coming. What do you need today? Are you looking for anything in particular.No, I just wanted to ask you something.What could it be?Do you remember if my grandma bought any strange books in the past?I don't think Plachta was in a bookstore, really. Your grandmother? Hmm, I don't remember.I see...Did something happen? I bet Plachta will be sad if you called her strange.  I see. Thanks for telling me, Elise.I'm sorry I couldn't be of any help.Oh no, it was still helpful.By the way, what kind of book is it?    Hey, you don't believe me!?Don't act like you weren't freaking out back then. You thought it was strange. Everybody did. A talking book sound like something straight out of a fairy tale.Then come over to my atelier sometime. I'll introduce you.Okay, I will.It's a promise.Yes, I promise. Also, since you're here, why don't you browse some books? Some of them might have useful information for you.Okay, I'll take a little look.Some of the npcs here are strange.  Aren't all books are like that?  ...no.   You never explain monsters to me.   The sell option is in every other shop.   Elise's shop doesn't have consistent traits. But anyway, I want defense enhance for later, so I'm gonna buy this.   I should point something else out.   This stuff can be used in the magic item and secret power category. It's just something to keep in mind for later.   Random house in old town.  Old town tree.  Let's stop here. Next time I'll show off Mrs. Marguerite's grocery store. And there is another character who is only in town on the weekends, we're gonna meet them next time too.
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May 10, 2017 12:49
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| # ? May 8, 2024 18:48 |
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Haven't got much to say yet about the game but at least you know that you have another reader in me 
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May 10, 2017 13:19
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