Breath of Fire IV

2011-04-10 05:26:11 am

With BoF 5 out of the way, I think the next game will be my personal favorite of the series BoF 4. I checked out the speedrun request thread and did not see any requests for this game... Sad

So is there any interest? If there is, its going to be the PC version, because this will make the game faster (and I tried and personaly prefer my ps1 version but I have problems with recording it), but its a long game so the faster the better. I do prefer PS1 version a little bit more because the PC version has some bugs in it, mainly mini games and Ershin. If Ershin counter attacks there is a chance the game freezes, the same with some mini games...

Ok I have some casual test runs in the endgame phase. And im around 8-9hours ingame, and this is right before the final dungeon. This is my strategy so far:
At the beginning of chapter 3 my chars are around level 13-15 is (maybe lower, cant remember), There is a spot where i can get Ryu(13), Nina(14) and Ursula(20) to level 35 in Two fights(this took me total 30 minutes, but is not optimized yet). With the master equiped abbess that will boost my AP +2 and wisdom +4 for each level gain. This will give my characters a sick amount of wisdom in a short period of time and they will be OP this will last till the endgame part. The great thing about this, it seems that the runaway mechanic depends on the level or agillity in this game, I can flee easely with OP chars.
With that said, my test run has the controlable Kaiser form, to get to that stage it will cost a lot of time in total(speedrunterms), and I never used it(same for the special dragon breath attacks). So if I beat the game w/o it I wont go visit those dragon gods.

The primary endgame Skills are Inferno (ursula), Whayeh(Ryu, Fire attack Weyr form), and Nina her Typhoon, this combo can wrack up to 11k damage on Won-qu(dog boss at fou-lous tomb). 3 of these and he would be dead.

There are some glitches I know that work in the PC version but they arent usefull for the speedrun, Breath glitch (level 1 Ryu can 1 shot endgame bosses, this can only be achieved by cheating), and the defendending charge attack.

I will drop the speedrun if there is no interest at all, because these older games are long and the cutscenes cant be skipped it could be a boring watch.
Any tips, tricks or moral boosts are welcome!

Thread title:

With BoF 5 out of the way, I think the next game will be my personal favorite of the series BoF 4. I checked out the speedrun request thread and did not see any requests for this game... :(

So is there any interest? If there is, its going to be the PC version, because this will make the game faster (and I tried and personaly prefer my ps1 version but I have problems with recording it), but its a long game so the faster the better. I do prefer PS1 version a little bit more because the PC version has some bugs in it, mainly mini games and Ershin. If Ershin counter attacks there is a chance the game freezes, the same with some mini games...

Ok I have some casual test runs in the endgame phase. And im around 8-9hours ingame, and this is right before the final dungeon. This is my strategy so far:
At the beginning of chapter 3 my chars are around level 13-15 is (maybe lower, cant remember), There is a spot where i can get Ryu(13), Nina(14) and Ursula(20) to level 35 in Two fights(this took me total 30 minutes, but is not optimized yet). With the master equiped abbess that will boost my AP +2 and wisdom +4 for each level gain. This will give my characters a sick amount of wisdom in a short period of time and they will be OP this will last till the endgame part. The great thing about this, it seems that the runaway mechanic depends on the level or agillity in this game, I can flee easely with OP chars.
With that said, my test run has the controlable Kaiser form, to get to that stage it will cost a lot of time in total(speedrunterms), and I never used it(same for the special dragon breath attacks). So if I beat the game w/o it I wont go visit those dragon gods.

The primary endgame Skills are Inferno (ursula), Whayeh(Ryu, Fire attack Weyr form), and Nina her Typhoon, this combo can wrack up to 11k damage on Won-qu(dog boss at fou-lous tomb). 3 of these and he would be dead.

There are some glitches I know that work in the PC version but they arent usefull for the speedrun, Breath glitch (level 1 Ryu can 1 shot endgame bosses, this can only be achieved by cheating), and the defendending charge attack.

I will drop the speedrun if there is no interest at all, because these older games are long and the cutscenes cant be skipped it could be a boring watch.    
Any tips, tricks or moral boosts are welcome!

Rakuen

2011-04-11 10:57:11 am

Weegee Time

More Breath of Fire is always welcome in my book.

I'd say focus on beating Fou-lu without using the Kaiser, because cutting all the Dragon Gods out of the run would be an easy way to save a lot of time. Also, what exactly are you doing to get that power leveling to happen?

Reeves

2011-04-11 11:32:27 am

Breath of fire series being close to my heart, I'd personally love to see this run. I'm intrigued by the power levelling tactic you mentioned in chapter 3, can you elaborate? And yeah, skipping the dragon gods would be a major timesave, since I doubt you need it for fou-lou. If you need any help or owt, I can try my best to contribute with a bit of theorycraft or whatever.. Might play through the game again myself actually Smiley

Cosmos

2011-04-11 12:11:55 pm

Great to hear there is interest!!

Ok i finished my test run today and i am sub 10 hours(I could have used Kaiser or the special breath they are not needed the endboss isnt that hard, but I still dont have a special plan for him, I think the 3 bosses took me 20~ mins total) this was an very helpfull chaotic run, next run will be much cleaner because of the planning.

But I still have some open strategy slots to experimentate in my next run, these are the DICE I & II boss(the ''physical' dice is irritating), using drangon punk endgame instead of Weyr, and using another combo instead of 2 fires and wind, 11K damage is alot, but higher is awlays welcome. And some other minor things.

Well about the power leveling, I learned it about 4 days ago actually, and I must say this makes the game much easyer and give a whole new level of OP usage to the player...
Here is the deal(quote from the source where i learned it from): ''Sinchon. Face Bots (yellow ones, not the red ProtoBots). Do an elemental combo attack, and they give double the experience, as well as burst open, leaving them defenceless. Three turns later they'll go back to normal, which is when you can do another elemental combo attack, doubling their exp worth again. Use the two turns when they're defenceless to heal them.

You can get up to 65535 (the absolute maximum per enemy) exp per bot this way. As you get stronger, you may wish to use Barrier to reduce your damage (as well as use the eath+fire elemental combo attacks in place of the others due to the Bots resistance to earth). It will eventually get to the point where they will die even with these preparations to extend their longevity, but by that point, you should be strong enough to handle the endgame enemies.''

If you are lucky you can get 3!! of these in 1 battle after 8 ''combos'' they are maxed exp this will give you 196K or so, if you kill the party members you dont want to get exp, you boost your needed chars to extreme levels, if I kill avreybody except ryu, and hes level 14 he will be like lv 40 in 1 fight... such a fight can go very fast, if I am just casual doing it can done in 15 min a fight.. (I need two of these)

For an example 26 levels x 4 wisdom is 104 extra wisdom and Ryu his Weyr form will dubbel this, he has 200% wisdom, thats just awsome for an passive stat! It can also be done with lets say power... but the problem is, most master that give power give low AP lets say -2 Ap each level, if you let Ryu do this power leveling you have a chance he doesnt have enough AP to use his dragon... even if he has, you need wisdom fruit to really make it usefull, thats to much of an hassle. Punk will give 250% wisdom, but he has no initial magik attack skills... I can learn lets say Fire pillar from Rwolf and use this, but dont know if it really will speed up the game that much.

Owyeah in the endgame Rwolf is the best Master, beacause of HASTE skill, it will make my party faster then the endboss, and with harmonic ring my combos will always connect... Cheesy

Great to hear there is interest!!

Ok i finished my test run today and i am sub 10 hours(I could have used Kaiser or the special breath they are not needed the endboss isnt that hard, but I still dont have a special plan for him, I think the 3 bosses took me 20~ mins total) this was an very helpfull chaotic run, next run will be much cleaner because of the planning.

But I still have some open strategy slots to experimentate in my next run, these are the DICE I & II boss(the ''physical' dice is irritating), using drangon punk endgame instead of Weyr, and using another combo instead of 2 fires and wind, 11K damage is alot, but higher is awlays welcome. And some other minor things.

Well about the power leveling, I learned it about 4 days ago actually, and I must say this makes the game much easyer and give a whole new level of OP usage to the player...
Here is the deal(quote from the source where i learned it from): ''Sinchon. Face Bots (yellow ones, not the red ProtoBots). Do an elemental combo attack, and they give double the experience, as well as burst open, leaving them defenceless. Three turns later they'll go back to normal, which is when you can do another elemental combo attack, doubling their exp worth again. Use the two turns when they're defenceless to heal them.

You can get up to 65535 (the absolute maximum per enemy) exp per bot this way. As you get stronger, you may wish to use Barrier to reduce your damage (as well as use the eath+fire elemental combo attacks in place of the others due to the Bots resistance to earth). It will eventually get to the point where they will die even with these preparations to extend their longevity, but by that point, you should be strong enough to handle the endgame enemies.''

If you are lucky you can get 3!! of these in 1 battle after 8 ''combos'' they are maxed exp this will give you 196K or so, if you kill the party members you dont want to get exp, you boost your needed chars to extreme levels, if I kill avreybody except ryu, and hes level 14 he will be like lv 40 in 1 fight... such a fight can go very fast, if I am just casual doing it can done in 15 min a fight.. (I need two of these)

For an example 26 levels x 4 wisdom is 104 [b]extra[/b] wisdom and Ryu his Weyr form will [b]dubbel[/b] this, he has 200% wisdom, thats just awsome for an passive stat! It can also be done with lets say power... but the problem is, most master that give power give low AP lets say -2 Ap each level, if you let Ryu do this power leveling you have a chance he doesnt have enough AP to use his dragon... even if he has, you need wisdom fruit to really make it usefull, thats to much of an hassle. Punk will give 250% wisdom, but he has no initial magik attack skills... I can learn lets say Fire pillar from Rwolf and use this, but dont know if it really will speed up the game that much.

Owyeah in the endgame Rwolf is the best Master, beacause of HASTE skill, it will make my party faster then the endboss, and with harmonic ring my combos will always connect... :D

Arkive_UAE

2013-07-30 07:39:09 am

First time in the forums and I was wondering where are the Breath of Fire IV strategies, and voila found it with cosmos in the lead with discovery!! That is awesome, I love the game and I want to speed run it for some time but my thinking in these type of games is always inside the box :'(. Thanks to you guys now I could expand my thinking! Grin

Cosmos

2013-08-03 05:18:59 am

Cool, there is another who was interested in running this game as well. I personally put it on hold (maybe even cancelled) but I would be glad to do suggestions such as:

- Getting a moonsword as early as possible will boost ryu's attack in early game, especially in combination with dragons buff.

- Ginsengs early game could be nice (+20%attack power)

- When helping the fairy colony by defeating nightmare monsters healing them does damage, or using scias in low health condition(actavation of defense-> attack pwr last resort skill) and shadow walk could be destructive early game.

- If power leveling battle (3 robots) is used, its important to think about which chars and which masters (attack or magic) are used. Maybe Ershin could be very interesting (PC version ershin crashes the game a lot so i never tried him, but his high level stats are pretty good)

- Maybe reversal is an intersting skill,.

- If going for magic, there is an accessory that will give +20 wisdom near endgame (wisdom ring i Believe)

- if going for physical strengt the multicombo skill is awsome, where as I believe the time input bar lengtthens when it connect as last in a combo, double attack sword only do 1 extra attack and maybe speed/agi stat could increase the length of the imput time? (never tested this)

Thats what I can come up with at this moment.

If your really going to take a shot at it, good luck!, I think this game is possible to beat in 5-6 hours, but i am not sure.

Cool, there is another who was interested in running this game as well. I personally put it on hold (maybe even cancelled) but I would be glad to do suggestions such as:

- Getting a moonsword as early as possible will boost ryu's attack in early game, especially in combination with dragons buff.

- Ginsengs early game could be nice (+20%attack power)

- When helping the fairy colony by defeating nightmare monsters healing them does damage, or using scias in low health condition(actavation of defense-> attack pwr last resort skill) and shadow walk could be destructive early game.

- If power leveling battle (3 robots) is used, its important to think about which chars and which masters (attack or magic) are used. Maybe Ershin could be very interesting (PC version ershin crashes the game a lot so i never tried him, but his high level stats are pretty good)

- Maybe reversal is an intersting skill,.

- If going for magic, there is an accessory that will give +20 wisdom near endgame (wisdom ring i Believe)

- if going for physical strengt the multicombo skill is awsome, where as I believe the time input bar lengtthens when it connect as last in a combo, double attack sword only do 1 extra attack and maybe speed/agi stat could increase the length of the imput time? (never tested this)

Thats what I can come up with at this moment.

If your really going to take a shot at it, good luck!, I think this game is possible to beat in 5-6 hours, but i am not sure.

Arkive_UAE

Edit history:

Arkive_UAE: 2013-08-05 02:18:49 am

Arkive_UAE: 2013-08-05 02:15:55 am

2013-08-05 02:15:40 am

Thanks Cosmos... I'm going through the game normally and figuring out the stuff... I'm going to try to the tips you just provided and see how it will work out. One of my concerns is that some of the skills will take time to get form specific types of mobs, we need to look into that too. Thanks for the response! Grin

Arkive_UAE

2013-08-12 01:33:21 am

Hey guys, I did some research and the setup for the power leveling is kinda precise which involve a few elements of the game such as monopolize from Marlock and Ershin having a specific breath attack to actually work which is time consuming. Any thoughts on how to develop a route the we can use to get there and which "learned" skilled are required for the run?

Rakuen

2013-08-12 08:25:41 pm

Weegee Time

Well to start, what are all the pieces you need for the current power leveling solution? Are there any alternative ideas that don't seem to make sense in the plan right now but might still have some use, such as things that led up to the current solution?

bobswiftfoot

2013-08-12 08:32:43 pm

For the powerleveling no specific ability is needed. All you need to do is do a combo on the bots and they will switch forms and double exp. I use Burn/Sever or Burn/Quake. Pretty much any of the basic lvl 1 spells. I started routing this a few months ago but real life happened and I haven't got back to it yet. I know ChiBizer0 has a finished run here: http://www.twitch.tv/chibizer0/b/387367078

emanthebarbarian

2013-08-30 04:48:00 pm

i've been coming back to SDA every so often specifically to look for a speed run of this game because BoF 4 is my personal fav of the series as well. best of luck and i am very excited to know someone is working on it!

wzl

2014-03-24 10:39:57 am

Hey there,

I picked up BoF4 recently and started routing it. I didn't watch chibiz3ro's RTA yet, but i don't wanna get spoiled on some of the strats yet.

I'm mostly through routing the first act, although there are still a few things i'm considering. I made a post on gamefaqs aswell, since there are a lot of chaps that are very knowledgeable about the game.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/196818-breath-of-fire-iv

Here's my basic Chapter1 outline so far <snip>:

Quote:

-Have ruy not gain any XP yet. Flee all battles. (this is getting more problematic when getting underleveled)

-Learn Rest and Burn for ruy as early as possible and combo with heal to get the first Rwolf spell immediately.

-Learn Chlorine from Gasser in chamba or alternatively in Astana base dreamworld.

-Use firewind/molotov to kill the skulfish. Have ruy die before that.
At the dam learn Snooze for cray. Combo with rest and heal for 10+ combo (15+ possible at that point already? not sure if/how but it would be awesome to get FirePillar at that point!)

-I'd love to learn shadowwalk from the army bats at this point since it would help tremendously with boss fights, BUT everyone is around lvl 2-5 and they pretty much oneshot people, i want to prevent people to gain levels so killing them is not favorable, and the chlorine>riskyshot combo is terribly unreliable (i had about 6-7 tries and either everything just died or the poison missed), i tried to combo chlorine with protect but it didn't go off.

-Maman: use apples with nina and molotov spam a bit. when molotov run out, plateau and sever/eddy(ershin/cray) to kill him off (again, ruy should be dead at the end of the fight)

-Apprentice everyone to Stoll (bonus agi! this will be the point where ruy will start getting levels. I am currently pondering if ruy should go to Rwolf until this point, to get 3-5 levels for the hp boost and i'm currently unsure if physical or magical will ultimately faster/more effeicient in a full run)

-Warf: i realized if you align the barrels and vases in the pattern shown when you visit the warf later, you gain extra points. I'm not sure whats the maximum total is you can get there. i screwed up the vases so it totaled in 3900 i think (incl time bonus). it *may* be possible to get 10k gamepoints pretty soon after that. Also, if you have worse results you get a spoon from Marlok. I believe you can use it as lure? i accidently traded it in my last playthrough so i couldnt check. is it worth going for that?

-Ymechaf
Use nina and ershin to combo sever/eddy. Ruy focuses (using scramasax). Dont attack Ymechaf unless he's recovering, or ruy with focus3 (deals around 1500k damage) This is the fastest and most reliable method to not get whirlwinded, as it will likely wreck your party at this point.

For escaping, agility seem to play a big role, although maybe it's the overall level. i didn't find any specific info on that, so that's why i'd choose stoll for the time being. You don't get any stat penalties with him either so it's a good master to have for the beginning.

I'm still pondering who's gonna learn by what master, especially for powerleveling in synchon as everyone is at least gaining 10+ levels there. I wonder if a magic run will be more effective than physical damage. I'll probably trial that at some point. Overall it seems physical deals more damage, but the setup(might/focus) takes a long time and probably isnt viable in the end boss fights (sanctuary removes all buffs, making your setup go to waste), otherwise some bosses could be dealt with really quick.

There are some fishing strats i wanna go for, especially farming for the Holy Mantle (will take around 10minutes perhaps but it should redeem itself by the end as it cuts down encounter rate) and the Firangi (Best sword to get your hands on without much rng, good damage +1 hit). Other than those two i dont think there's anything mandatory yet. Maybe a second firangi for scias, because he cannot equip the Flame Sword and will be stuck for a crappy one for quite some time.

The final boss takes a long time to fight, so unless i can come up with a quick kill strat, i'd go for the bad-ending (joining the evil and killing your party) as it takes probably 2 instead of 45 minutes Tongue

It doesn't seem like there are any major glitches or skips found in this game yet, so the whole run will probably take around 10hours. Mostly due to cutscenes though which is a bit of a let-down. Anyone has a clue about the japanese version text being faster? There's no actual textscrolling, instead there's a short delay before you can skip to the next dialogbox, so i'd assume it makes no difference(?)

I'm streaming every other day and i'm experimenting with different strats, so if you wanna join, feel invited Cheesy

Hey there,

I picked up BoF4 recently and started routing it. I didn't watch chibiz3ro's RTA yet, but i don't wanna get spoiled on some of the strats yet.

I'm mostly through routing the first act, although there are still a few things i'm considering. I made a post on gamefaqs aswell, since there are a lot of chaps that are very knowledgeable about the game.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/196818-breath-of-fire-iv

Here's my basic Chapter1 outline so far <snip>:
[quote]-Have ruy not gain any XP yet. Flee all battles. (this is getting more problematic when getting underleveled)

-Learn Rest and Burn for ruy as early as possible and combo with heal to get the first Rwolf spell immediately.

-Learn Chlorine from Gasser in chamba or alternatively in Astana base dreamworld.

-Use firewind/molotov to kill the skulfish. Have ruy die before that.
At the dam learn Snooze for cray. Combo with rest and heal for 10+ combo (15+ possible at that point already? not sure if/how but it would be awesome to get FirePillar at that point!)

-I'd love to learn shadowwalk from the army bats at this point since it would help tremendously with boss fights, BUT everyone is around lvl 2-5 and they pretty much oneshot people, i want to prevent people to gain levels so killing them is not favorable, and the chlorine>riskyshot combo is terribly unreliable (i had about 6-7 tries and either everything just died or the poison missed), i tried to combo chlorine with protect but it didn't go off.

-Maman: use apples with nina and molotov spam a bit. when molotov run out, plateau and sever/eddy(ershin/cray) to kill him off (again, ruy should be dead at the end of the fight)

-Apprentice everyone to Stoll (bonus agi! this will be the point where ruy will start getting levels. I am currently pondering if ruy should go to Rwolf until this point, to get 3-5 levels for the hp boost and i'm currently unsure if physical or magical will ultimately faster/more effeicient in a full run)

-Warf: i realized if you align the barrels and vases in the pattern shown when you visit the warf later, you gain extra points. I'm not sure whats the maximum total is you can get there. i screwed up the vases so it totaled in 3900 i think (incl time bonus). it *may* be possible to get 10k gamepoints pretty soon after that. Also, if you have worse results you get a spoon from Marlok. I believe you can use it as lure? i accidently traded it in my last playthrough so i couldnt check. is it worth going for that?

-Ymechaf
Use nina and ershin to combo sever/eddy. Ruy focuses (using scramasax). Dont attack Ymechaf unless he's recovering, or ruy with focus3 (deals around 1500k damage) This is the fastest and most reliable method to not get whirlwinded, as it will likely wreck your party at this point.[/quote]

For escaping, agility seem to play a big role, although maybe it's the overall level. i didn't find any specific info on that, so that's why i'd choose stoll for the time being. You don't get any stat penalties with him either so it's a good master to have for the beginning.

I'm still pondering who's gonna learn by what master, especially for powerleveling in synchon as everyone is at least gaining 10+ levels there. I wonder if a magic run will be more effective than physical damage. I'll probably trial that at some point. Overall it seems physical deals more damage, but the setup(might/focus) takes a long time and probably isnt viable in the end boss fights (sanctuary removes all buffs, making your setup go to waste), otherwise some bosses could be dealt with really quick.

There are some fishing strats i wanna go for, especially farming for the Holy Mantle (will take around 10minutes perhaps but it should redeem itself by the end as it cuts down encounter rate) and the Firangi (Best sword to get your hands on without much rng, good damage +1 hit). Other than those two i dont think there's anything mandatory yet. Maybe a second firangi for scias, because he cannot equip the Flame Sword and will be stuck for a crappy one for quite some time.

The final boss takes a long time to fight, so unless i can come up with a quick kill strat, i'd go for the bad-ending (joining the evil and killing your party) as it takes probably 2 instead of 45 minutes :P

It doesn't seem like there are any major glitches or skips found in this game yet, so the whole run will probably take around 10hours. Mostly due to cutscenes though which is a bit of a let-down. Anyone has a clue about the japanese version text being faster? There's no actual textscrolling, instead there's a short delay before you can skip to the next dialogbox, so i'd assume it makes no difference(?)

I'm streaming every other day and i'm experimenting with different strats, so if you wanna join, [url=http://twitch.tv/megaweezl]feel invited[/url] :D

sshplur

2014-03-24 12:51:40 pm

Chibizer went for the good ending and got 10:52:28. Nice. I stopped the clock when the finishing blow hit the final boss. Back in 2007 a guy got 8:01 with the bad ending on the PC version. Unfortunately he dropped his account and the whole thing is gone, including an improvement with detailed comments he was working on. I managed to download his entire 8:01 but they're all in mpg format converted from youtubes flv files so the whole thing is fuck off massive. If I can get the whole thing up after compressing it I'll let you guys know. Good luck with your runs!

wzl

2014-03-24 04:52:25 pm

hey sshplur,
awesome, would love to see it. 8h is a great incentive since i was expecting more like 9h+, although i still haven't gotten far enough to deliver a good estimate.
My first sloppy run of chapter 1 got up to 3 hours with a bunch of backtracking involved. Chapter 2 should be a tad shorter, and not sure about chapter 3's length as it has a lot of cutscenes too. 4 is pretty short as it is mostly the empire capital only.

I didn't find any records on it apart from chibiz3ro's run and the 8:01 you just mentioned so i'd like to assume there's some room to improve it even further.

wzl

2014-03-25 07:10:05 pm

I was able to make some decisions regarding some general strats.
Right now i'm thinking to have ryu nina and ershin learn at Rwolf immediately. I'll still go with no-xp ryu strat until he has a master for a couple extra stats. It is only for the skulfish at this rate anyways, since i will be skipping every random encounter.

I'm still thinking how to distribute stat items. power items go to scias. i'm thinking ap aswell, since he wont gain any while being with una. Later on i'll have transfer on ershin or nina so AP are no problem any more. HP goes to ryu, since he makes the most use of it with his dragon forms increasing by a percentage of his hp. wisdom for ryu aswell and might aswell give him defense too. I'm really uncertain about agility at this point though. Everyone benefits from it. I'll need to compare the level graphs.

Quick note on chapter 1: In the junkyard, besides the sandflier parts there is a magic shard and a staff for nina with considerable damage and active sever ability. Might come in handy. The items are on fixed positions and dont vary at all

Ok so for chapter two highlights:

- when nina fights with the sparrow only guard. You'll get the bamboo rod as a reward. It will come in handy later on.

- Kahn: guard first round to get a high evasion against his tiger fist. use focus on scias and shadowblade him. easy win

- apprentice scias and cray to una. they'll be the physical attackers. I wanted for ryu to go physical aswell, but i think with the dragon forms magical might have a more consistent result. Also getting shadow walk from the army bats is unrealiable and would be necessary (or more than helpful at the very least). So scias takes his role.

- golden plains: i briefly tried shortcutting to mt glom on the golden plains, but it appears like you need to get close enough to the big rock to progress further. i'll confirm that in another practice run.

- in my casual run the nightmares in fairyvillage were fairly easy. this time around they were quite tough. i had to figure their strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly. Boss strats from here on get considerably riskier.

- back in ludia get the artemis cap in the castle. Not sure if its absolutely necessary, but hit% bonus can never hurt. especially since scias missed shining blade on one of the bosses today. that almost cost me the fight. Also dont forget to trade the treasure at night. Not sure if we have room to miss it. It could throw us back some time. also trade at the shrine while passing through.

- not much in windia. you can trade the fork in the manor for 16 aurum. that will solve all your aurum needs for pretty much the remaining game. Otherwise there's the windring in the castle and the prisoner will trade your treasure.

- in the area towards the oracle theres a fisherman teaching you a river spot. Fish for 3xrainbowtrout (a few more help, as well as trouts for earlygame) and 6xbrowntail, to get the holymantle for nina (encounter rate down) it will take up to 10minutes but it pays off, especially the spare fishes (trouts refresh ap, helpful for scias early game to spam shining blade). while in shyde, trade the treasure.

- In the wind tower pung'tap you can learn douse from the giant roaches. i only realized that today. It decreases fireresistance, and since ruy is a fire person, and fu lou is ice, it could get a couple of nice synergies. aswell with wong-qu and a-tur which are both water elemental as well as other bosses. I need to test if it misses a lot on bosses though.

- The pillar bosses (ershins seal) are pretty tough when underleveled. Scias can take them out with shining blade, and if necessary buff him with a rainbowtrout(+50%attack).

So far the second chapter is pretty aweful to play though. Lots of dialog and cutscenes, not much to play or optimize in that respect.

I was able to make some decisions regarding some general strats.
Right now i'm thinking to have ryu nina and ershin learn at Rwolf immediately. I'll still go with no-xp ryu strat until he has a master for a couple extra stats. It is only for the skulfish at this rate anyways, since i will be skipping every random encounter.

I'm still thinking how to distribute stat items. power items go to scias. i'm thinking ap aswell, since he wont gain any while being with una. Later on i'll have transfer on ershin or nina so AP are no problem any more. HP goes to ryu, since he makes the most use of it with his dragon forms increasing by a percentage of his hp. wisdom for ryu aswell and might aswell give him defense too. I'm really uncertain about agility at this point though. Everyone benefits from it. I'll need to compare the level graphs.

Quick note on chapter 1: In the junkyard, besides the sandflier parts there is a magic shard and a staff for nina with considerable damage and active sever ability. Might come in handy. The items are on fixed positions and dont vary at all

Ok so for chapter two highlights:

- when nina fights with the sparrow only guard. You'll get the bamboo rod as a reward. It will come in handy later on.

- Kahn: guard first round to get a high evasion against his tiger fist. use focus on scias and shadowblade him. easy win

- apprentice scias and cray to una. they'll be the physical attackers. I wanted for ryu to go physical aswell, but i think with the dragon forms magical might have a more consistent result. Also getting shadow walk from the army bats is unrealiable and would be necessary (or more than helpful at the very least). So scias takes his role.

- golden plains: i briefly tried shortcutting to mt glom on the golden plains, but it appears like you need to get close enough to the big rock to progress further. i'll confirm that in another practice run.

- in my casual run the nightmares in fairyvillage were fairly easy. this time around they were quite tough. i had to figure their strengths and weaknesses and act accordingly. Boss strats from here on get considerably riskier.

- back in ludia get the artemis cap in the castle. Not sure if its absolutely necessary, but hit% bonus can never hurt. especially since scias missed shining blade on one of the bosses today. that almost cost me the fight. Also dont forget to trade the treasure at night. Not sure if we have room to miss it. It could throw us back some time. also trade at the shrine while passing through.

- not much in windia. you can trade the fork in the manor for 16 aurum. that will solve all your aurum needs for pretty much the remaining game. Otherwise there's the windring in the castle and the prisoner will trade your treasure.

- in the area towards the oracle theres a fisherman teaching you a river spot. Fish for 3xrainbowtrout (a few more help, as well as trouts for earlygame) and 6xbrowntail, to get the holymantle for nina (encounter rate down) it will take up to 10minutes but it pays off, especially the spare fishes (trouts refresh ap, helpful for scias early game to spam shining blade). while in shyde, trade the treasure.

- In the wind tower pung'tap you can learn douse from the giant roaches. i only realized that today. It decreases fireresistance, and since ruy is a fire person, and fu lou is ice, it could get a couple of nice synergies. aswell with wong-qu and a-tur which are both water elemental as well as other bosses. I need to test if it misses a lot on bosses though.

- The pillar bosses (ershins seal) are pretty tough when underleveled. Scias can take them out with shining blade, and if necessary buff him with a rainbowtrout(+50%attack).

So far the second chapter is pretty aweful to play though. Lots of dialog and cutscenes, not much to play or optimize in that respect.

wzl

2014-03-27 05:42:59 am

I did finish Chapter 2 yesterday. There is not much going on after freeing deis. Mostly a lot of dialog you have to go through.

One possibly important factor is in the fou-lu segment is to get the Ebonfire spell from the black goos, and possibly Blitz from the bilbao. I haven't evaluated their usefulness yes, but since ebonfire is actually not elemental it can come in handy for killing. Blitz might be useful aswell, but that too needs to be tested. It is one of the few AoE physical attacks, but it is not relevant for bosses, and the only grind is in sinchon.

Speaking of which. The first time you go to sinchon you can just head straight through without picking up any items. When you're in chapter 3 shortly after and got your full party back (ershin and ursula) you can head back there, grab the items while you look for bot encounters. Safety strat here is to kill one bot in the first sinchon run so you see their hp and xp in the next encounters (probably use shiningblade with scias to get rid of him quick and escape the encounter). This is helpful if you loose track of counting in the grind.

For the grind i chose cray to use rockblast since bots have earth resistance and cray's wisdom is low, and use burn with ershin who has low wisdom aswell. You can do two cycles before you heal them with herbs.

If you hit a bot with combo elemental magic they will burst open, doubling their xp to a max of 65k (8 cycles). They will usually take 2 turns to recover, so thats where you can heal them and replenish AP for cray. You can use Rest/Snooze/Heal on cray to replenish a few ap but that is fairly slow as you need 3 people casting. The faster way is to grab some trouts while you're fishing for the holy mantle, which replenish 10ap.

One thing that happened only once to me is that the bots recovered after only one turn. I am not sure if that is random or if it is triggerable somehow. That would be an important speed up since the first grind can take up to 15minutes, depending on your magics comboing, or your characters actually getting rekt, which is quite the possibility since you're low on agility and the bots physical attacks hurt a lot. I got lucky and they didnt hit the same char in one turn so that helped.

There are two bot encounters you should look for, either 2 bots or 3 bots without any additional mobs (and no protobots). You cannot get 3bot encounters consistently, so dont waste time looking for that encounter as that will waste a lot of time. Instead go for 2x 2bot encounters, they happen a lot more regularily.

With a 3 bot encounter your characters will get around 10 levels each, sometimes more depending on their start level (cray was 10, and got to 23, so thats cool). Every character ended up in the mid20 range but i dont think this is enough for the endgame, so it might be necessary to take another grind. I'll confirm that when i go through chapter 4.

I did finish Chapter 2 yesterday. There is not much going on after freeing deis. Mostly a lot of dialog you have to go through.

One possibly important factor is in the fou-lu segment is to get the Ebonfire spell from the black goos, and possibly Blitz from the bilbao. I haven't evaluated their usefulness yes, but since ebonfire is actually not elemental it can come in handy for killing. Blitz might be useful aswell, but that too needs to be tested. It is one of the few AoE physical attacks, but it is not relevant for bosses, and the only grind is in sinchon.

Speaking of which. The first time you go to sinchon you can just head straight through without picking up any items. When you're in chapter 3 shortly after and got your full party back (ershin and ursula) you can head back there, grab the items while you look for bot encounters. Safety strat here is to kill one bot in the first sinchon run so you see their hp and xp in the next encounters (probably use shiningblade with scias to get rid of him quick and escape the encounter). This is helpful if you loose track of counting in the grind.

For the grind i chose cray to use rockblast since bots have earth resistance and cray's wisdom is low, and use burn with ershin who has low wisdom aswell. You can do two cycles before you heal them with herbs.

If you hit a bot with combo elemental magic they will burst open, doubling their xp to a max of 65k (8 cycles). They will usually take 2 turns to recover, so thats where you can heal them and replenish AP for cray. You can use Rest/Snooze/Heal on cray to replenish a few ap but that is fairly slow as you need 3 people casting. The faster way is to grab some trouts while you're fishing for the holy mantle, which replenish 10ap.

One thing that happened only once to me is that the bots recovered after only one turn. I am not sure if that is random or if it is triggerable somehow. That would be an important speed up since the first grind can take up to 15minutes, depending on your magics comboing, or your characters actually getting rekt, which is quite the possibility since you're low on agility and the bots physical attacks hurt a lot. I got lucky and they didnt hit the same char in one turn so that helped.

There are two bot encounters you should look for, either 2 bots or 3 bots without any additional mobs (and no protobots). You cannot get 3bot encounters consistently, so dont waste time looking for that encounter as that will waste a lot of time. Instead go for 2x 2bot encounters, they happen a lot more regularily.

With a 3 bot encounter your characters will get around 10 levels each, sometimes more depending on their start level (cray was 10, and got to 23, so thats cool). Every character ended up in the mid20 range but i dont think this is enough for the endgame, so it might be necessary to take another grind. I'll confirm that when i go through chapter 4.

Alventenie

2015-08-25 05:03:55 pm

If you are still running this game for Ershin's pillars, use an icicle (you should get on in that instance) and follow up the non water pillars with strong attacks (shining blade and shadow walk). Icicle does 1400 to the fire pillar (one shot), and 700 to wind and earth. With strong attack you can kill 3 towers in 1 round (more like 2 towers in round 1, which makes the fight much easier).

Also for the bots if you learn burn and eddy, they are cheaper and can be given through skills to faster characters. Ryu/Scias or Scias/Ursula have low enough wisdom on the grind to not kill the bots and also not need trouts for ap.