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Speed > Safety
@Nitrodon, do you still have all that data about Alchemy levels and what the %'s were for call bead damage from them? If you do, could you post that data or link me to where it's posted at? I either skipped over it a few times or just can't find it. Thanks in advance.
I never posted the data anywhere (mostly because I can never decide where to post things).

For the call bead spells Heat Wave, Storm, Flare, Shock Wave, and Electra-Bolt, the power listed below is a minimum.  If you have an attack alchemy (excluding Corrosion and both Drain spells) whose power (alchemy power * level multiplier) is higher than that minimum, the call bead power will be equal to the highest such power among alchemy spells you have.  The same mechanic applies to the healing call bead spells Life Spark and First Aid, which use the power of both Heal spells.

Step 1: Power = (Alchemy power * level multiplier) / (1 + number of targets) for alchemy.
Power = (Call bead power * 2) / (1 + number of targets) for call beads.

Step 2: Power = random number from ceil(Power/2) to Power-1.

Step 3: Damage dealt = (Power * (64 - target mdef)) / 64 for stuff that deals damage.  I'm too lazy to check right now, but I assume healing and buffing don't use this step.

Acid Rain: 17
Atlas: 25
Barrier: 25
Call Up: 0
Corrosion: 25
Crush: 62
Cure: 0
Defend: 15
Double Drain: 50
Drain: 25
Energize: 0
Escape: 0
Explosion: 87
Fireball: 62
Fire Power: 112
Flash: 27
Force Field: 0
Hard Ball: 21
Heal: 32
Lance: 50
Levitate: 0
Lightning Storm: 87
Miracle Cure: 37
Nitro: 112
One Up: 0
Reflect: 0
Regrowth: 2
Revealer: 0
Revive: 12
Slow Burn: 1
Speed: 25
Sting: 75
Stop: 0
Super Heal: 62

Level 0: 2
Level 1: 4
Level 2: 7
Level 3: 11
Level 4: 15
Level 5: 20
Level 6: 26
Level 7: 32
Level 8: 39
Level 9: 46

Life Spark: 200*
Heat Wave: 225*
Storm: 225*
Flare: 150*
Time Warp: 0
First Aid: 400*
Confound: 12
Regenerate: 0
Aura: 50
Shock Wave: 281*
Shield: 62
Plague: 40
Hypnotize: 62
Disrupt: 200
Restore: 12
Electra-Bolt: 331*
Speed > Safety
Thanks, this will be tons of help for optimizing the TAS for max damage ranges. Much appreciated! Cheesy

In regards to where to post stuff, TASVideos threads are always nice to have formulas and data lists. Or just throw it on here and someone else will post (and they should credit you...) on the TASVideos thread.

Either way, that's a pretty interesting formula. I assume you got all this from looking into ROM data in some fashion. There's an address 00FD0 that repeats the sequence: 0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40 indefinitely, changing to the next number in the sequence every frame. Any idea what this could relate to? (This might be better suited for the TAS thread, but whatever, it helps all the same)
It appears to be used only when handling something that involves the bytes 0FD2-1001.  When all of those bytes are 0 (as they are in the saves I have), it does absolutely nothing.  I can't really say any more with the information I have.
Edit history:
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-14 12:18:55 pm
Speed > Safety
Ah, well if I discover anything else I'll be sure to post it, maybe it'll lead to something. Omnigamer found what we think is the RNG for the game as well. Seems it's frame-based and based on what it pulls from the dog. That info is on the TAS thread if you're curious about it. Also, when you say minimum power for those specific bead spells. What would be the maximum? Storm for example, it's got 225 as the minimum power. Is the maximum basically whatever your highest alchemy spell is? Say if Hard Ball were level 3, the max power for Storm would be whatever Hard Ball's power ended up being?

Edit: Making a calculator on the excel with my guides with this formula (proper credits given of course) for the people that actually use it.
I'm saying that Storm's power is 225 if you don't have an alchemy better than that value.  If you have level 3 Hard Ball (and nothing better), Storm will have 21*11=231 power.
Speed > Safety
K, got it, just wanted to clarify. I've almost finished getting a calculator set up for it that shows min/max damage (As opposed to random). Should be able to just put in the monster name, target amount, alchemy/callbead name (and level for alchemy), and it'll spit out all the desired data long as people know how to spell things.

Appreciate the info/help Nitrodon. Smiley
Edit history:
MetaSigma: 2013-07-14 05:26:03 pm
MetaSigma: 2013-07-14 05:25:54 pm
Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ
Quote from Nitrodon:
I'm saying that Storm's power is 225 if you don't have an alchemy better than that value.  If you have level 3 Hard Ball (and nothing better), Storm will have 21*11=231 power.


Thanks for clarifying this. I was totally confused about it was well. Seeing Sting have a higher power than Crush makes me wish there were more ingredients available to use this instead. It's not even out of the way but Vinegar is only available in 2 spots and I don't think making a detour to talk to Horace's pal is really that useful :x
Speed > Safety
Ingredient pickups are still an option so long as it's quicker than casting crush. There's also manipulating the ingredients, i can think of 15 vinegar already off the top of my head. There's definitely more, it's just a matter of taking the time out of the day to actually get something done. I'm busy with guide(s), TAS, and testing other things so someone else can tackle this one.
Edit history:
MetaSigma: 2013-07-14 08:11:03 pm
Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ
I've thought about that as well (Ingredient pickups) but I'd have to find at least another 30 Vinegar. That'd be enough to get it leveled to level 2 (Which should be more than enough as level 2 would be

75*7=525 Power (Sting level 2)
vs.
62*7=434 Power (Crush level 2)

So then I'd figure (As a rough guess as of now) we'd want another 10 to 15 casts. This should be high enough to take out Aquagoth on just 8 sting+5 beads. I'll do some testing when I get a chance and really see what I can do with this. While I doubt we'll ever find enough Vinegar to pull this off, I'll def see if there might be a way to make this work.

Also I'm not 100% sure but I think Sting has a faster cast animation meaning you could do 8 can menu cancel it much faster than you could with Crush.
Edit history:
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-15 12:03:33 am
Speed > Safety
I'd go as far as saying there's definitely that many scattered throughout, your real concern is if they're on the way and if they're worth going out of the way to get. To be honest, timing the talk time with horace/revealer dude might actually be quicker than leveling/buying crush. I'd start there, assuming they sell the ingredients required. The other thing I'd do is just not talk to blimp at all, you guys seem to be convinced that cave skip can be done reliably so go for it, i personally don't like the frame window on it (if it isn't frame perfect), but you can AI loop across the gap both ways if you get a little creative...

Regardless of all that, I suggest making a baseline run of each screen before picking up vinegar locations and be sure to pick up ingredients you'd get naturally throughout the route as well on said baseline. Once you have that, enter it into some sort of document like word (use a graph feature) so you can keep track of what you have already and if any of those picked up things are triggers for different pickups (like the 2 wax after the roots being a 3x trigger). Once that's done, run a "speed collection" of all the places in the area, note the negative time then compare it to the above theory (buying from horace camp vender) and see where you stand, I'd be surprised if it weren't relatively close by the end of it. Crush should be slower than either option since Sting 2 has nearly 100 extra power. Anyways, once all this is done, compare the timings to the most recent WR run for those areas (which obviously include Crush) to remove the whole... "you" factor, which will give you an average time save/loss per screen across two players (to an extent at least, best you can ask for atm).

Also keep an open mind about stuff, how else could we utilize talking to that camp guy? is there a way the dog can cut down time while collecting? etc...

That's how i did my limestone/wax timings, whether or not you choose to go into such detail is all you, but I'd expect lots of questions once you post results. And i do hope you will post the results, otherwise it's fairly pointless. :/


EDIT: Important thing to use when searching for ingredients via emulator... Use a Ram Watcher of some sort (DL bizhawk tbh if you don't already have it...) and use the following addresses:

004ea5 - Vertical Position
004ea3 - Horizontal Position

Thank Omnigamer for the addresses.

If you find any ingredients we can pick up during the emulator run just write the coords down for where they were on the map. Makes referencing and comparing distances MUUUUUCH easier.
Edit history:
MetaSigma: 2013-07-15 06:46:27 am
Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ
The only two places you can buy Vinegar is from Horace's friend while he's still in the camp and from Strongheart (Back in Prehistoria) once you get the flying machine. Actually I'm suddenly wondering if falling in the pit at mids after you beat it might not be a bad idea. If Madronius is even there still after you get both diamond eyes, but before you fight Aegis (This is key!). if that is the case then suddenly it's not so far fetched to fall in a pit, buy vinegar from JUST him instead of moving around picking it up everywhere, and then do the skip. Also this brings up the other part of this issue. Water...it's 2 water per cast and Blimp is the only guy that sells it. (The Drain Alchemy guy sells it as well but you'd have to get it post mids as you need the axe and there is another extra transition.)

Suddenly Sting isn't as far fetched as I first though...If I'm right about Madronius (I'll know soon) then the only REAL issue will be where can we pick up a TON of water because we'll need ATLEAST 80 to 90 water.

I will post the results once I do it. You are right that it is pointless to do that kind of research and not show it to others who might have a completely different point of view, idea, etc.
Speed > Safety
Water isn't a problem, I can figure out water pickups/purchases... just find the vinegar.
Edit history:
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-19 01:47:04 pm
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-19 11:06:06 am
Speed > Safety
Any update on the vinegar locations yet? I've already found a way to easily implement 60 water (all we need?). In the process of doing so i've found mutiple vinegar locations to mess with, most of which are available during the 14 mins timer. Realistically we're looking at whether or not the total time of the pickups/conversation/screen transitions is higher than casting crush 25 times, or 24, whatever. Given how the screen transitions function, that's not a lot of time to be worked with. What this means is that 90% of whatever we do HAS to be during the 14 minutes, as that's our dead time for both factors we're analyzing right now. So far, I know of 18 vinegar you can pick up during said time. So this brings up the question of talking to the guy at Horace's Camp...

I don't think talking to the guy at the camp is a good idea, regardless of when or how you do it. Time we aren't moving = time lost. That being said, we could very happily acquire vinegar as we move through the areas, but that comes with it's own set of problems. The way the game is laid out, Crush worked because we could just buy everything at some point then rapidly increase it's ability by transitioning screens at key points for a minor time loss for casting. This is somewhat the opposite of how Sting would function in the route, in which we would just use it as we go and when we have 8 casts possible (ie; every 8 vinegar) we would cast the ability. This obviously sounds slower, but it will be a matter of optimizing pickups and managing time between said pickups to even get us a fair assessment of the average which we would use to compare vs Crush.

Another options is to utilize both to an extent, it may end up that Sting saves time, but we're just short of damage on aquagoth. Likely we'll still have to talk to Blimp at some point so we'll have crush available. If we're short by ~100 damage for whatever reason, simply using Crush paired with the excess Sting we have would solve the problem while helping us achieve our goal of Sting 2 pre-verm, even though we didn't get it pre-aquagoth. There's definitely enough vinegar on the way to verm.

All in all, I think that when the pickup locations become available, I can figure out pretty quickly whether or not this will be quicker or not. It's not like I can really continue the TAS without knowing this stuff anyways.

edit: If you can't tell from the overall tone of the post, I don't exactly have high hopes for this strategy. I think leashing the dog over pits is more fun personally.
edit2: The more and more I think about this, I really don't see a well optimized crush setup being slower than a well optimized vinegar setup. The pickups as I can tell are too far out of the way, either in form of actual distance, or from screen transitions. Would really like to be proven otherwise personally, but I think essentially 3 8x crush casts is faster than the extra transitions. I'm basing this off the pickups I've found while searching for water, they're as follows:

4 vinegar on the beach during 14 minutes, bone right of tunnel entrance, vinegar south of tunnel exit

4, 3, 4 (+9 water) in the upper market area (arena exit location), the path of pickups are:
-Oil (pillar near rock), Water (Right pool), Crystal (center-right tree line), Vinegar (top right lower vases), Crystal (center-left tree line), Vinegar (canvas near bottom-left exit), Vinegar (near chicken @ top-left), Clay (top-left corner), Water (left pool), Water (center pool)
-This is all during 14 minutes, so really you're just losing the 2 screen transition times, this is/was our best bet unless we buy after mids via pitfall and convo (which takes a while...)

3 (and 6 water) River area, pickup path:
-Ethanol (north of right bridge), Vinegar (bottom-left of right bridge section), Limestone (south of gondola pole), Water (near river...), Roots (north of Western Beach exit), Water (bottom right of left bridge section)

This is what I've found so far that's even remotely "on the way." I don't expect much else to be found. The last places you can really check are pickups in the ruins (if there are any?) and heading TO aquagoth, which would actually be nice. Another thing that absolutely HAS to be tested is how long (average) that convo is compared to the crush conversations with blimp.

I imagine this situation as such:

Sting Route:

-lose time when picking up ingredients
--screen transitions (4 extra)
--actual distance pickups (~3s assuming things don't go wrong)

-gain time when buying
--if buying things, the above becomes 2 transitions and 0 pickups
--generally faster buying than crush, Act 1 helps MASSIVELY with this

-lose time via conversation
--Horace absolutely talks too damn much
--Blimp is a caveman and doesn't have a great vocabulary so he can't talk that much


Now, give that info, we also have to think about Verm... if we're leveling crush, we have crush available at that point. I suppose the same could be said of Sting, but that changes routing and buying because we're absolutely FORCED to buy after mids at the very latest. It also changes the water required, which is likely to be obtained by changing two things in act 1 (I've already figured this out from back in the day when I considered acid rain for some funny tricks vs salabog).
Edit history:
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-21 10:53:15 am
TheAngryPanda: 2013-07-21 10:24:38 am
Speed > Safety
did some testing with Sting's route and it's looking to be a slight bit faster than Crush, but this comes with the cost of time in Act 1... most people's times are going to increase by ~3-5s depending on your execution and other nonsense involved.

As for Act 2/Vinegar... Basically it's beat Rimsala/Megataur, doesn't matter the order (ruins is faster though because of spear). Drop into any pit after the 2nd of the 2 areas and you'll not get the horace cutscene but the ingredient vendor will still be there, give you revealer, and then sell you Vinegar at 100J/5. Obviously because we've killed so much shit before getting to this point, we have plenty of money... what this also means is that as i've said time and time again, grinding during the 14 mins is absolutely pointless in all aspects. So don't bother, just use the 14 mins as a relaxing/screw around time.

I'm not sure precisely how much faster this is, but it's definitely not a miracle worker in terms of going sub 1 hour or anything like that. The Crush route was very optimized and not exactly the easiest thing to beat. Our net time loss comparably is only 1 8x cast faster it would seem, which is next to nothing given how screen transitions work.

Also keep in mind that you have to buy/obtain enough water vinegar for both aqua AND verm.

EDIT: Some clarifications...

1) The Sting method is pretty much 1 8x cast faster, so swapping over to it isn't exactly a super high priority unless you just want to.

2) The TAS will still use crush because the inn skip is faster than 1 8x cast, unfortunately.

3) More testing could be done, if Sting is classified under the same spell class as Storm, perhaps we can get away with Sting 1 since money is very plentiful. This would improve the time saved because we wouldn't need to buy from the vendor at camp.

4) Initial testing by me is on emulator, i'm terrible at playing this game on emulator so it's possible the time gained is more than what I've said but I'm also adding time gained to make that comparison so it's somewhat accurate but also not. Individual testing by each person will give us a real average on the time saved.

5) You lose time in act 1, sub 10 is not possible with this strat so that "goal" is basically gone now for people.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Quote from Nitrodon:
When determining whether an attack will hit, the game code subtracts 30% from accuracy under some condition,


see this:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/snes/588645-secret-of-evermore/faqs/36535

for what that condition is.
Edit history:
assassin17: 2013-07-22 10:11:02 am
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
Quote from TheAngryPanda:
Ingredient pickups are still an option so long as it's quicker than casting crush. There's also manipulating the ingredients, i can think of 15 vinegar already off the top of my head.


as in picking them up in certain order on a screen to try and maximize the desired ones?

i wonder how many Antiqua ingredient sites use the post-setting of the incrementor variable (as described here):
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/588645-secret-of-evermore/63622683

or at least, sites that don't use the pre-setting of the incrementor variable.

there's a bug in this game (that you might already be familiar with) where if you get a prize (from enemy remains, iirc), then very quickly open a nearby treasure, the quantity of the first prize will apply to the latter treasure.  it's advantageous to first get a prize with a high quantity (e.g. cash from enemy remains, which is often 40+), though receiving that in the first place will rely on luck, since you're not doing a TAS.

i suspect that the bug can be used for hidden ingredients, not just treasure chests.  if so, ones that pre-set the incrementor will be immune, as they'll give a fixed quantity, but others will be game-able.
Speed > Safety
Oh assassin, you just made my day... I am working on a TAS.  XD

I might have to try manipulating some things for that now, particularly getting a bunch of crystals/clay. Time for some more testing, just when I thought I was done messing with Act 1, lol.
Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ
I've heard of people saying they've had stuff like this happen before with like a call bead chest in the swamp where they quickly grab the remains and got talons and picked up the goard right after it and got like....40 call beads or something. Now will it say like you picked up 40 call beads? Or will it not show that?
Speed > Safety
I'm actually really interested in how exactly this works and why it works regarding the coding in the game, if you know that information. If not, I'll just brute force test stuff on the TAS to find out a frame window that's workable. Still, you basically just created a situation of "If this happens in a run, do this instead of anything else." Smiley
If that pickup glitch works with ingredients too, then there might be a way to manipulate that during the 15 minutes in act 2 in a normal run.
Speed > Safety
That's actually a really damn good idea... lol
Edit history:
MetaSigma: 2013-07-22 05:09:13 pm
Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ
That's actually what I was going to suggest XD (Bangagong beat me to it :P)

Sting is a no go as far as it's constructed. The man we were going to buy from is NOT there until you talk to horace. I got both diamond eyes and he was not there when I went to the camp BEFORE skipping the diamond eyes scene and killing aegis.
I love YaBB 1G - SP1!
ok, it does work on ingredients.  i lured enemies so they were just above the Limestone on Blimp's cliffs, to the left of the pots.  after killing one, i positioned myself so i was below its remains and more to the right side of them, grabbed the 75 coins, then immediately turned down and took a fraction of a step, and tried to pick up the Limestone.  it told me that i couldn't carry any more, even though i only had a quantity of 88 beforehand.  this means it's trying to pick up more than 11 (and would have, if i had the space).  iow, success!

but that leads me to a sucky thing: this game's all-or-none nature in rejecting multiple quantity ingredients if you are unable to accommodate the full amount.  it'd be nice if they pro-rated instead.  now, the effects aren't as frustrating when this bug isn't in play, but you can still get screwed out of ~3 ingredient pieces at a time.

as for the cause, picking up prizes with nonzero quantities from remains will set the aforementioned incrementor (7E/2461) to a nonzero value.  it eventually gets zeroed on its own, but there's a slight lag.  act quickly enough, grabbing treasure/ingredients that don't do a pre-set of the incrementor, and you'll be able to get them in a quantity of incrementor+1.  the weird thing is, the delay of zeroing it seems to be about half a second.  but let's say i fetch the second item merely rather fast -- instead of super fast -- after about 1/3 of a second.  instead of the logical behavior of getting the quantity i want, the incrementor zeroing actually gets expedited, and thwarts me.  that's just weird.  so while you don't have to be in _perfect_ position to pull off this trick, you do have to be pretty damn close.

anyway, i should say that i didn't discover this bug; it was posted on GameFAQs years ago.  can't remember whether the initial example involved ingredients, or some other type of treasure, but i think it was from a pot/pod.

something else that can be exploited for more subtle quantity manipulation, from the above-linked thread:
"that variable is set to 0 when you enter a new screen, and it's changed by retrieving an ingredient (or trying to, and failing because you already have full inventory of it) from a given site."

so let's say you've maxed out on water.  try to grab the Water from the wall on the right side of the Nobilia palace (i.e.  the screen with the groundskeepers).  you won't get the Water, but it will still post-set your incrementor to 3.  go use it to grab a non-Water ingredient.  return to the Water again and repeat.  this requires a lot of walking back and forth, but if you're able to visit this place during the time-burning market phase, that might not be a problem.
Just tried it out with the vinegar on the cliff near blimps cave, got a 75 jewel drop from the mad monk, and picked up 75 vinegar too, the timing didn't seem too crucial, the drop and the ingredient were about a half step away from each other and I got it on the first try.  Even though it's easy to do during the 15 minutes, you still have to go through screen transitions to respawn enemies to get a drop from them, but it didn't take many tries for me to get it the first time.