Suikoden II

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2013-03-27 10:58:58 am

2013-03-27 10:58:29 am

All the things

Yes, that's what I suggested. You'd only need one group to shoot her up 30 levels. They should be killable with Dancing Flames though; no need to waste the L4. She only actually needs 10-15 for her to survive, but more levels help for escapes. By the way, in case you missed it, I believe the formula for Let Go to appear are as follows:

if (maxLevel(party)>maxLevel(enemy))
if (levelSum(party)>levelSum(enemy))
Let Go;

The notes I posted a few pages ago are outdated and no longer the notes I'm currently working off of; I will post my updated notes soon. I also encourage you to stop importing S1 data since it could make some unrealistic expectations.

Another thought: if you're just using Jowy to demolish Double Head, Kinnison and Shiro are completely skippable. Reducing party size will also help to shorten the killing off process where necessary. Still something to investigate further.

Vaslof

2013-03-27 11:19:46 am

Yeah, but that means you can't transition to the old strat. Salamander strat needs to be consistent to consider dropping Shiro and Kinnison.
Also you then need to recruit 2 extra stars for lvl2 castle. That's on top of the two extra you might have to get if Gilbert and Emilia troll.

If that Formula is correct, we should always take a full party with us. With maybe the exception of Greenhill, where extra members have dialog, and there aren't any fights you can't Let Go

Omnigamer

2013-03-27 11:51:58 am

All the things

More party members are generally better, but sometimes it can be excessive. If you're going to a region with only 1 type of x6 encounter, it may not be necessary at all. But yes, I set up my new parties so that the level will generally exceed the level of the enemy parties, with maybe a couple exceptions.

You don't need a L2 castle if you skip Stallion, which is the way I was leaning anyway.

For that part of the game, I'd say it's better to commit to a strategy than not. Fire Lizards aren't the only enemy types around that can give big level boosts, and you don't necessarily need all of the levels from it. Some more testing will be needed there, but if introducing a luck element for certain types of encounters makes the following battles more consistent, then I'd be on board with it. Just scanning over the encounters that I remember right now, 4 (of about 8-9) of them will pump Jowy up to 20+ is he's solely alive at the end of battle. On a couple of them, he may be able to survive with Gengen and still get enough levels (to about level 18).

If having a smaller party decreases the escape rate (can't be sure yet that it does), you could just use the inescapable battles to whittle down HP while keeping Jowy healed inbetween. Still a lot to play around with.

Savings:
-No picking up Shiro & Kinnison (~1 minute)
-No visits to Runemaster in Muse, or equipping rune prior to Sindar
-Maybe quicker battle against double head?

Losses:
-Hunt for specific encounters
-Potentially more inescapable battles

More party members are generally better, but sometimes it can be excessive. If you're going to a region with only 1 type of x6 encounter, it may not be necessary at all. But yes, I set up my new parties so that the level will generally exceed the level of the enemy parties, with maybe a couple exceptions.

You don't need a L2 castle if you skip Stallion, which is the way I was leaning anyway.

For that part of the game, I'd say it's better to commit to a strategy than not. Fire Lizards aren't the only enemy types around that can give big level boosts, and you don't necessarily need all of the levels from it. Some more testing will be needed there, but if introducing a luck element for certain types of encounters makes the following battles more consistent, then I'd be on board with it. Just scanning over the encounters that I remember right now, 4 (of about 8-9) of them will pump Jowy up to 20+ is he's solely alive at the end of battle. On a couple of them, he may be able to survive with Gengen and still get enough levels (to about level 18).

If having a smaller party decreases the escape rate (can't be sure yet that it does), you could just use the inescapable battles to whittle down HP while keeping Jowy healed inbetween. Still a lot to play around with.

Savings:
-No picking up Shiro & Kinnison (~1 minute)
-No visits to Runemaster in Muse, or equipping rune prior to Sindar
-Maybe quicker battle against double head?

Losses:
-Hunt for specific encounters
-Potentially more inescapable battles

Vaslof

2013-03-27 12:37:45 pm

There are more savings: Let Go after Jowy levels up. Works vs Sindar encounters, vs map encounters, vs border encounters.
You will still have to visit a rune master to purchase a Fire rune, so you only save on one visit.

Things to consider if you have leftover potch early game:
- Sharpen Jowy's weapon for Double Head (and just "auto" after you've used lvl3 and lvl4 spells)
- Bribe Creepers and Cards in Sindar (cheap bribe, long attack animations if run fails)

Omnigamer

2013-03-27 02:10:01 pm

All the things

You can purchase the Fire from the runemaster in White Deer, which is what I was planning on. Visiting a runemaster in a room you start in is quite a difference in time as opposed to going there in the city.

Note that I was assuming Jowy is level 10 for Sindar. It's a tossup whether you'll be 9 or 10 after the soldier fights in the Fort, but I've seen 10 more often. From doing some quick math, it doesn't look likely that he'll have his L4 unless you get extremely lucky with stat ups and the x4 Salamanders (Level 25). On average he won't hit that point until Level 28, but you could buffer that slightly with the Stone of Magic. If you get him there at level 9, the 4x Salamanders will bring him up to Level 29, which is somewhat safe to have a L4. While you could get him there lower than that (skipping Jowy for Fort battles), I would worry about his survivability against the mobs, even with the best available equips. Unfortunately you can't attach Fire to him either since his slot doesn't open up until 15, but you could reasonably put Fire on his weapon for a bonus 50% damage from each attack.

You can purchase the Fire from the runemaster in White Deer, which is what I was planning on. Visiting a runemaster in a room you start in is quite a difference in time as opposed to going there in the city.

Note that I was assuming Jowy is level 10 for Sindar. It's a tossup whether you'll be 9 or 10 after the soldier fights in the Fort, but I've seen 10 more often. From doing some quick math, it doesn't look likely that he'll have his L4 unless you get extremely lucky with stat ups and the x4 Salamanders (Level 25). On average he won't hit that point until Level 28, but you could buffer that slightly with the Stone of Magic. If you get him there at level 9, the 4x Salamanders will bring him up to Level 29, which is somewhat safe to have a L4. While you could get him there lower than that (skipping Jowy for Fort battles), I would worry about his survivability against the mobs, even with the best available equips. Unfortunately you can't attach Fire to him either since his slot doesn't open up until 15, but you could reasonably put Fire on his weapon for a bonus 50% damage from each attack.

Vaslof

2013-03-27 02:38:35 pm

There's no blacksmith in White Deer Inn, can't attach Fire to his weapon unless you take a detour. And it's only 25% damage increase with Fire rune.
Great idea on skipping Jowy in Fort. Equipping Riou with a full Fire Arrows scroll should make the fights quick.

Omnigamer

2013-03-27 03:51:41 pm

All the things

25% but it's a weakness of Double Head. But yes, missed out on no blacksmith. I guess you would have to buy it and attach it earlier, like at Muse and during Coronet. No idea how much actual bonus damage that is, but something on the order of ~100 total per turn might be reasonable.

I don't think the Fort route is good because of three things:
-If you skip Jowy, Riou gets all the experience. He will be around level 11 after.
-Fire Arrows kill the small guards, but you'll need 4-5 additional turns on the Captains unless you use a second Flaming Arrows. They also do a non-trivial amount of damage, but you do have a fairly good chance to dodge and counter.
-Jowy has somewhat poor HP/DEF growth. He could very easily be knocked out at a lower level from the Sindar mobs if he goes in at only level ~7.

Vaslof

2013-03-27 04:00:42 pm

Then we'll just have to make sure Jowy is lvl9 after Merc Fort fights.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2013-03-28 08:20:45 am

2013-03-27 04:22:08 pm

All the things

Some mathineering:

Entry at Level 7:
-Fight first group, gain 1900 exp per char. End up at Level 8/9 depending on residual experience.

Entry at Level 8:
-Fight first group, gain 1100 exp per char. End up at Level 9.

2nd Group:
-If fighting at level 8, screwed, see above. Will guaranteed be level 10 after.
-If fighting at Level 9, will gain 690 exp per char.

This means that you need to enter the first fight at level 7 with between 100 and 409 experience, or at level 8 with between 0 and 209 experience in order to achieve level 9. Could be tricky if you don't math out your levelling encounters in the Forest.

EDIT: I guess I should also mention that it's possible at Level 6 with between 0 and 9 experience. But yeah; that would be risky for the Flik duel. It would be pretty difficult to wind up in that window.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2013-03-28 09:29:20 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-28 09:27:15 am

2013-03-28 09:24:47 am

All the things

Not sure how this will come out on the forums, but here's an experience "cheat sheet" for hunting groups in the various areas where it matters. I didn't calculate anything for North Sparrow since that will always be variable until the appearance of Double-Beat. All values are per character. In order: Jowy and Riou at Forest, Jowy Riou Tsai at Forest, just Jowy in Sindar, and full party of 6 at Sindar. These are just the notable encounters off the top of my head; I know there are others, but probably not many more that are worthwhile to fight for any of the situations.

Code:

Sp: 7	Br: 10	Bd:5	Sn:8				
J+R	FOREST						
Level	3Sp	5Bd	5Sp	Br	3Sn	2Sn	
4	2400	1000	4000	2550	3900	2600	
5	1350	500	2250	1950	2400	1600	
6	600	400	1000	1300	1350	900	
7	300	300	500	800	600	400	
							
							
J+R+T	FOREST						
Level	3Sp	5Bd	5Sp	Br	3Sn	2Sn	
4	1600	667	2667	1700	2600	1733	
5	900	333	1500	1300	1600	1067	
6	400	267	667	867	900	600	
7	200	200	333	533	400	267	
							
							
MW: 14	C: 12	Sala:15	NM:13	MV:16			
J	SINDAR						
Level	2MW3C	5MW	4Sala	3Sala	3NMMV	3C	2C
9	12600	19500	20400	15300	13800	4800	3200
10	7900	13000	15600	11700	9900	2700	1800
11	4400	8000	10400	7800	6600	1200	800
							
							
P6	SINDAR						
Level	2MW3C	5MW	4Sala	3Sala	3NMMV	3C	2C
5	5500	6250	5333	4000	4867	3000	2000
6	4850	5750	5000	3750	4333	2550	1700
7	3950	5000	4600	3450	3800	1950	1300
8	3000	4250	4000	3000	3100	1300	867
9	2100	3250	3400	2550	2300	800	533
10	1317	2167	2600	1950	1650	450	300
11	733	1333	1733	1300	1100	200	133
12	400	750	1067	800	633	100	67

Not sure how this will come out on the forums, but here's an experience "cheat sheet" for hunting groups in the various areas where it matters. I didn't calculate anything for North Sparrow since that will always be variable until the appearance of Double-Beat. All values are per character. In order: Jowy and Riou at Forest, Jowy Riou Tsai at Forest, just Jowy in Sindar, and full party of 6 at Sindar. These are just the notable encounters off the top of my head; I know there are others, but probably not many more that are worthwhile to fight for any of the situations.

[code]Sp: 7	Br: 10	Bd:5	Sn:8				
J+R	FOREST						
Level	3Sp	5Bd	5Sp	Br	3Sn	2Sn	
4	2400	1000	4000	2550	3900	2600	
5	1350	500	2250	1950	2400	1600	
6	600	400	1000	1300	1350	900	
7	300	300	500	800	600	400	
							
							
J+R+T	FOREST						
Level	3Sp	5Bd	5Sp	Br	3Sn	2Sn	
4	1600	667	2667	1700	2600	1733	
5	900	333	1500	1300	1600	1067	
6	400	267	667	867	900	600	
7	200	200	333	533	400	267	
							
							
MW: 14	C: 12	Sala:15	NM:13	MV:16			
J	SINDAR						
Level	2MW3C	5MW	4Sala	3Sala	3NMMV	3C	2C
9	12600	19500	20400	15300	13800	4800	3200
10	7900	13000	15600	11700	9900	2700	1800
11	4400	8000	10400	7800	6600	1200	800
							
							
P6	SINDAR						
Level	2MW3C	5MW	4Sala	3Sala	3NMMV	3C	2C
5	5500	6250	5333	4000	4867	3000	2000
6	4850	5750	5000	3750	4333	2550	1700
7	3950	5000	4600	3450	3800	1950	1300
8	3000	4250	4000	3000	3100	1300	867
9	2100	3250	3400	2550	2300	800	533
10	1317	2167	2600	1950	1650	450	300
11	733	1333	1733	1300	1100	200	133
12	400	750	1067	800	633	100	67
[/code]

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2013-03-31 10:18:08 pm

Omnigamer: 2013-03-31 12:42:33 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-30 10:38:18 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-30 01:12:57 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-30 01:00:12 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-30 12:51:47 am

Omnigamer: 2013-03-30 12:29:43 am

2013-03-29 11:20:15 pm

All the things

So I'm spending some time revising for poor conditions and also chopping some items out of the very early game. For Mist Monster, I think I'll transition to using the following:

Equip Riou with Fire Wall and Flaming Arrows in place of glove and Medicine. Skip Brass Armor. Formation: Eilie Bolgan Riou, then Rina Jowy. Rina and Riou can be one-shotted, but Riou not useful after casting Fire Wall anyway. Preserve the Flaming Arrows for the following soldier battle, or keep it around as a "just in case" measure if Eilie somehow gets taken out. Should be applicable for both Riou lvl 2 and lvl 3, although lvl 3 is safer due to additional SPD and MAG. It only takes one Rabbit battle to hit lvl3, so I would assume most times it will happen.

If you happen to get Hazy from the Kyaro fight, it's worth 2500 potch which can bolster a bit. I don't expect to rely on it for anything though. The Old Book in Genkaku's house cannot be sold.

I'm working on coming up with a better table of "If experience is xx, hunt for yy". It's still pretty rough, but I'll post it when it's ready. It is mainly for Ryube Forest hunting; anything in Sindar should be a one-off anyway so it doesn't really matter.

EDIT: I finished a script that instead lets you know whether or not a particular amount of experience will get you to a "good" amount of exp or if it will prevent you from ever getting to decent amount. Just from scanning through quickly, it looks like you want to be above 440 Exp at level 4 after getting double-beat in order to have a one-battle progression to a safe amount of experience. There are several potentials at level 5 as well, but assuming level 5 means that something has gone wrong earlier.

EDIT2: Expanded it a bit since the remaining Flaming Arrows can one-shot the Snails if equipped on Jowy. Seems like you should have a decent option in almost any situation. I will put into a google doc at some point so the rest of you can make use of it. The worst-case scenario is being level 4 with some exp ranges in the 300s and 400s, which is a pretty narrow window. I'll take those odds.

EDIT3: My spreadsheet mayhem can be found here. Check it out and play around with it; try not to modify anything too much though. The main thing is the stat calculator on sheet 2 and the encounter hunter on sheet 3.

EDIT4: I feel like there's one other potential issue with following the "Destroyer Jowy" route: if Riou never gets any other levels, he can't be guaranteed to be faster than the Highlanders at the Camp. The fastest type (archers) have 41 SPD; he will on average have 42 at level 10, and at the worst 40. I don't know how ties are broken. This is a problem since he needs to heal before taking out the remaining guards, or else it could easily end in a wipe. The real issue is when he goes in at Level 9, where you will have to be quite lucky to have SPD above 41. It's somewhat unlikely that both Jowy and Riou will end up level 9 after the Fort, but not something that can be completely ruled out. I guess the solution would be to quickly hunt a mob in the surrounding Muse area and hope that it puts you up to 10/11. I don't know those mobs well enough to calculate anything though. Alternatively, a weak mob in post-Jowy Sindar might also do the trick.

EDIT5: Correction: equip Gengen's or Tsai's Feathered Hat on Riou and all your problems should be solved.

So I'm spending some time revising for poor conditions and also chopping some items out of the very early game. For Mist Monster, I think I'll transition to using the following:

Equip Riou with Fire Wall and Flaming Arrows in place of glove and Medicine. Skip Brass Armor. Formation: Eilie Bolgan Riou, then Rina Jowy. Rina and Riou can be one-shotted, but Riou not useful after casting Fire Wall anyway. Preserve the Flaming Arrows for the following soldier battle, or keep it around as a "just in case" measure if Eilie somehow gets taken out. Should be applicable for both Riou lvl 2 and lvl 3, although lvl 3 is safer due to additional SPD and MAG. It only takes one Rabbit battle to hit lvl3, so I would assume most times it will happen.

If you happen to get Hazy from the Kyaro fight, it's worth 2500 potch which can bolster a bit. I don't expect to rely on it for anything though. The Old Book in Genkaku's house cannot be sold.

I'm working on coming up with a better table of "If experience is xx, hunt for yy". It's still pretty rough, but I'll post it when it's ready. It is mainly for Ryube Forest hunting; anything in Sindar should be a one-off anyway so it doesn't really matter.

EDIT: I finished a script that instead lets you know whether or not a particular amount of experience will get you to a "good" amount of exp or if it will prevent you from ever getting to decent amount. Just from scanning through quickly, it looks like you want to be above 440 Exp at level 4 after getting double-beat in order to have a one-battle progression to a safe amount of experience. There are several potentials at level 5 as well, but assuming level 5 means that something has gone wrong earlier.

EDIT2: Expanded it a bit since the remaining Flaming Arrows can one-shot the Snails if equipped on Jowy. Seems like you should have a decent option in almost any situation. I will put into a google doc at some point so the rest of you can make use of it. The worst-case scenario is being level 4 with some exp ranges in the 300s and 400s, which is a pretty narrow window. I'll take those odds.

EDIT3: My spreadsheet mayhem can be found [url=https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Apwy18nyqQoidHpUU2FfYzBxaHR5WFF5U2V0WTM3bXc&usp=sharing]here[/url]. Check it out and play around with it; try not to modify anything too much though. The main thing is the stat calculator on sheet 2 and the encounter hunter on sheet 3.

EDIT4: I feel like there's one other potential issue with following the "Destroyer Jowy" route: if Riou never gets any other levels, he can't be guaranteed to be faster than the Highlanders at the Camp. The fastest type (archers) have 41 SPD; he will on average have 42 at level 10, and at the worst 40. I don't know how ties are broken. This is a problem since he needs to heal before taking out the remaining guards, or else it could easily end in a wipe. The real issue is when he goes in at Level 9, where you will have to be quite lucky to have SPD above 41. It's somewhat unlikely that both Jowy and Riou will end up level 9 after the Fort, but not something that can be completely ruled out. I guess the solution would be to quickly hunt a mob in the surrounding Muse area and hope that it puts you up to 10/11. I don't know those mobs well enough to calculate anything though. Alternatively, a weak mob in post-Jowy Sindar might also do the trick.

EDIT5: Correction: equip Gengen's or Tsai's Feathered Hat on Riou and all your problems should be solved.

Omnigamer

2013-03-31 10:37:48 pm

All the things

OK, I'm on board with the Jowy Destroyer strat. The biggest potential for wipes with it are against 5x MegaWatt and getting very unlucky, or if you get extremely poor stat growth and/or don't get to level 10 with Riou. Having Gengen's Feathered Hat is a small but necessary boost to SPD, so you can pretty much always move faster than the Highlanders. Fire Lizard is still necessary though. Skipping Shiro and Kinnison saves 1 minute and then it also cuts down a bit on preparation. The Double Head battle is a bit quicker, but you may get unlucky and have to hunt down the proper mob. In my practice this only cost a couple minutes at most, but in truth it's not so different from the previous strat. This still requires getting there with Level 9 Jowy though, which can be iffy. As a rule of thumb, higher experience amounts generally have more options for battles in Ryube, but it all depends on whether the Rabbits behave. Using the spreadsheets to target the right battles should help with efficiency and on-the-fly planning for that part. Bonus Nanami deaths help too.

BadPotato

2013-04-03 04:06:48 pm

I've watched your previous stream and getting Riou lvl55 at the highlander camp certainly look good. Using fire lizard to avoid being "defended" by jowy/nanami was a great idea. At some point I still wonder if it's still important to level up nanami as well. But since "Battle Oath"(from the bright shield rune) is usualy useful in the end game...

I guess the risky part of the setup is probably to get Jowy at high level in the sindar ruin(getting a good battle for jowy, etc..) and survive to the Flik duel.

Also I think on one of your old testrun(somehow I can't check back your must recent pratice) you tried to do a "rune unite" glitch with Viki using a Shredding "magic scroll" in order to kill some random highlander faster(somehow it actually backfired but anyway). I don't know if what you tried could actually work since Shredding is only a lvl2 wind power according to suikosource. While looking at this video, I think it only work on the last power of some rune.

I've watched your previous stream and getting Riou lvl55 at the highlander camp certainly look good. Using fire lizard to avoid being "defended" by jowy/nanami was a great idea. At some point I still wonder if it's still important to level up nanami as well. But since "Battle Oath"(from the bright shield rune) is usualy useful in the end game...

I guess the risky part of the setup is probably to get Jowy at high level in the sindar ruin(getting a good battle for jowy, etc..) and survive to the Flik duel.

Also I think on one of your old testrun(somehow I can't check back your must recent pratice) you tried to do a "rune unite" glitch with Viki using a Shredding "magic scroll" in order to kill some random highlander faster(somehow it actually backfired but anyway).  I don't know if what you tried could actually work since Shredding is only a lvl2 wind power according to [url=http://suikosource.com/games/gs2/guides/runes.php]suikosource[/url]. While looking at this [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOmNyjSP-is]video[/url], I think it only work on the last power of some rune.

Omnigamer

2013-04-03 04:16:26 pm

All the things

You misunderstood my setup for the Rune Unite glitch, I believe. The occurrence with Shredding on Viki was unrelated. My current route uses Rune Unite glitch to go through Lucia Rd 3, Seed & Culgan, and Beast Rune. It works pretty well and is consistent, although I may still tweak one or two things about it.

As for Nanami, the current plan is to level her up by destroying mobs on the way to Kindness Early. She only needs to get up to about ~25 to be safe against the immediate bosses, and all the ones following Pest Rat are safe due to the plethora of Highlander battles. One battle with the DoReMi elves will get her up to level 35, however.

Setting up Jowy is tricky, but I think we have a pretty good handle on how to do it now. Check out my most recent posts for more information on the strategy and timing. To summarize, he needs to have a certain amount of experience when the two Fort battles start, so we hunt specific mobs in Ryube forest.

Omnigamer

2013-04-14 10:36:28 pm

All the things

I kept forgetting/revising my notes, so I'll post my most up to date stuff here. Note that it's not 100% consistent, most likely anything relating to the Bearer may be off. In general it should be fine though. The very early game is also wrong, but you can read the more recent posts to get that background.

OPENING: Say to go to sleep, then change message speed at the first opportunity. Go straight North to the wall, then fight the battle. Select bottom option when Jowy asks.

NOTE: For watching game time, check 0006AA52-56 for time. Hours:Minutes:Seconds

FORT & CHORES: Push the crates 2 at a time. Take 3 of everything. Get all the oil spots. When Jowy comes, elect not to resist. When questioned, choose bottom choice. Escape as normal.

RYUBE: Go over to circus act, elect to move right to end sooner. Check store if Flame Arrows available, don't heal. Head to North Sparrow.

NORTH SPARROW: Only fight Bunny groups. Pick up Escape Talisman, Flame Wall, Brass Armor. Hero only needs to be Lvl 3 for fight. BOSS PREP: Take Angry Blow from Rina, give Jowy extra boots, brass armor, angry blow. Give Flame Wall to Hero, and Flaming Arrows to Eilie. Heal before starting battle. CONSIDER: Alternate strat that may take 3 turns, saves Fire Wall.

KYARO: Go in from bottom, unequip troupe. Go through to house on left, take middle pot. Use Flaming Arrows on guards. Just use top choices. Don't save Nanami (after Viktor walks back).

DOUBLEBEAT: Farm for it on the way back. Hopefully should get it on the way, but not always a possibility. Once back, go to Toto and raise Pilika counter. Appraise Vase. Do Pilika stuff, head for Muse.

MUSE: Go left to shop. Choose 2nd option, then check for Flaming Arrows rare finds. Return to Toto. Be very careful of Sickle encounters. Go to Coronet and raise weapon level to 5, then return to Toto for scenes.

FORT++: Go to Fort, after scenes go up and talk to Flik & Viktor, then go to Ryube. Go into forest, pick up nest, advance to Tsai's house. Pick up Tsai, walk back, pick up goods. Somewhere along the way, fight groups of spiders as available to get to level 7. Leave, choose bottom option. Go get Shiro & Kinnison. Return to Fort, go up and choose bottom option to duel Flik. Make sure to heal first. Should be strong enough at lvl 6 w/ weapon lvl 5, but can be instant fail if Flik attacks thrice. Go south to start next sequence.

BATTLES: Hitting Solon Zhee doesn't end the battle, so just run away or end turn. In next battle, go to entrance, then move away on 3rd turn. Fight battles and should get up to lvl 10. NOTE: game time goes at very slow speed during movies, and at times after battles. Go upstairs, go through scenes. After, go to Ryube and pick up Kinnison & Shiro. Then go to Toto and get Runes. Leaving the Fort should be at around the 1 hr mark.

RUNES AND STUFF: Get Hanna, get Runes. Then go to Muse, reunite with Nanami. Don't change formation. Go to White Deer Inn. After sleeping, try to go down immediately, Alex comes in. Choose bottom option. MAYBE do some prepwork here, might not be necessary. At least put double beat on Shiro.

RUINS: First room has Stone of Magic to left (meh). Go Up, up. Go up, across bridge, down and left, and then up. Go left, push, grab shoulder pads and circle. Go back to door, enter. Go left over bridge, get Fire Lizard and Triangle. Then go up, right. Trigger top of waterfall. Go back and then up, get Chain Mail across river. In riverbed, go down one screen, then left to get square. Go all the way back to initial riverbed entrance, then cross bridge to the left for Double Head.

5x Creeper gets all chars to level 11/10 if all alive. Not safe with minimal equip; need at least double beat and extra flaming arrows to stand a chance. Can get to ~1700 dmg without.

5x MegaWatt very dangerous, can hit back row and one-shot several of the chars. Bright does not 1-shot. Can clear with 2x AoE. Gets Heros to 12, everybody else 11.

4x Drake requires 2 AoE spells, and will raise Jowy/Hero levels as well (13). Gets remainder to 10/11.

3x Creeper and 2x MegaWatt is somewhat safe, one person may die but rest will jump to 12/11. ONLY APPEARS BEFORE PLACING TRIANGLE.

2x Creeper in first phase will get everybody to 7, winnable in one turn with Auto. After, 3x MegaWatt will get to 10s for all. 3x Creeper gets all to lvl 8. Basically any grouping in first part will allow easier fighting in 2nd and have roughly equivalent results.

Fighting Double Head with just 11s/12s and no other setup difficult; at least hook up Shiro with Double-Beat. With extra flaming arrows, can play it a little more risky. Watch damage closely; keep a calculator around? Take equips off Riou; he'll be fine without. NOTE: Need level 12, not 13. 13 does not give enough to level on the slugs.

After battle, go through scenes, return one room south and Escape Talisman out. Go through rest of scenes, don't adjust formation. Head for Muse.

MUSE: Argh. Go to Muse, go through scenes. Top option is fine. After getting out of jail, go straight to Runemaster and take double-beat off of Shiro, then drop Pilika off with Leona. Go to Muse Hall and go through scenes, then talk to Jess. Bottom option. Go to blacksmith and put Fire Lizard on Riou. Go back to Inn and talk to Leona, then leave for Highlands border.

BORDER LEVELS: Progress through the forest quickly; fight rabbits when available, and take all equip from Nanami. Try to have Nanami killed off x4, and weaken Riou as much as possible. Armadillos not good to fight. Go into camp when sufficiently low, go into far tent and select top text boxes. After scene, go into big tent in center. Choose more top options. Then go straight down and left. In battle, kill off Riou then finish with Jowy Lvl 2. In following battle, either have Nanami or Riou use Medicine on Riou to jump to level 48 with a Shining Light and Nanami killed off. Afterwards, return to Muse.

MUSE: Go up to the City Hall, try to enter room, then leave. Go to blacksmith, remove Fire Lizard. Go back to Leona, get Fliktor, go back to City Hall. Bottom option probably faster. Back in Inn, choose either, go out to front of Muse. Choose bottom option. Go through scenes, then go to Jowston Hill. Go through events, then go back to Inn. Bottom option. Remove good stuff from Jowy, then head down and talk to Viktor, top option. War battle start! Just end turn x7. Game Time should be around 2 hours for decent run.

MUSE PT2: Go down and talk to Nanami, either option. Go down to scenes, then City Hall for more scenes, then back to Inn. Watch scene, talk to Nanami, bottom option (may need to wait a bit for scene to not trigger). Scenes, then go to City Hall. More scenes. Go left and into door. Then run to Inn and leave city.

KINDNESS EARLY: Instead of going to Coronet, go to do Kindness Early. In the forest, look for slugsx2 or x3. Finish any you find with Shining Light. Also any RaggedOnes if you run into them at less than lvl 25. Grab Kindness, return to Coronet and trigger scene with soldier. Then back to Inn. After scenes, go to Tai Ho and win dice game. Then back to Tavern. Do not change formation. Go back to Tai Ho and head to Kuskus.

KUSKUS: Head down, attach Kindness to Nanami (make sure she has adequate deaths from earlier; 4-5). Leave and go to South Window.

SOUTH WINDOW: See Viktor, go to Inn. Then go to Mayor. On the way back, pick up the Friendship Rune. Go to Rune Shop and attach Double Beat to Nanami, also buy 1 Lightning, 1 Fire. Head back in to Inn, then leave for North Window (don't arrange). In North Window, choose bottom option, go to Cave of Wind.

CAVE OF WIND: Right, Up, Right, Up-Left, Left, Right, Up-Right, Up-left, left (rock puzzle). Wind Puzzle; push rock forward one tile and cross. Next room, push top rock forward one tile past first wind, then go over the top to cross. Third room, push bottom block forward just past furthest left, then push up all the way to access blue gate rune in top chest (3k potch in right). Continue to exit, Up, Down, Up-Left. Kahn, choose bottom option, don't change formation. Up, Right, Up. SD Sword fight. Just attack with Nanami on first and second turns to end battle.

NORTH WINDOW: Go up, take left passage, left. Keep going left, then down to first puzzle room. Move statue to center, go up. Light torch in next puzzle room (probably no need for Blue Ribbon?) then continue up. Grab Chain Mail from top chest (maybe?), make sure Nanami and Hero are equipped. Go in, watch scenes, fight Boss.

ABOMINATION: Open with attack, and charm arrow. If Kindness gets berserked, over in two turns. Even if not, Charm Arrow should make over in 2. Should always be 2 turns, no danger.

SHU: After scenes, choose bottom option, or else. Then walk to Radat. Talk to Shu. Go to bar, then leave. Scenes, go to Richmond. Bottom. Inn. Sluice, bottom option. Talk to dude in upper left. Bottom option, bottom, bottom. Fight Amada. Go down and find coin. Return to North Window. Go to War Room, bottom option. Go back to War Room, talk to Shu. Bottom option.

NORTH WINDOW BATTLE: Move your junk unit two squares forward and make him fight solon jhee. Then just end turn until it finishes. After battle, in war room just do all top options. Afterwards, just go back to bed and choose bottom option. Go back in to War Room, choose top options. Whichever name. After scenes, go back to entrance for Fitcher, bottom option. Go back to War Room again, choose bottom option with Fitcher. Then go to Radat, fight Amada, come back to War Room. Can choose members; just take Nanami.

TWO RIVER: Head to docks, then to Lakewest and finally Two River. Don't have to go to entrance; just head straight to Winger town. Chase Chaco, and then head back to Mayor. Go to Inn. Upstairs, then back to Mayor. Top option, then bottom. Go to Kobold side, then down and chase Chaco some more. Enter Sewers.

SEWERS: Right, down, cross bridge and head to bottom right. Down, left, far upper left. Enter door to fight Pest Rat. Strategy: Nanami attacks 1st turn, then Hero uses Oath 2nd turn in case of damage. 2x cieling crumble will potentially kill if some minor damage, so equip Jizo on Nanami ahead of time as a precaution. Should be dead by third turn; 2nd if berserk'd. Level 34-35 after battle. Go up and talk to Ridley, any options. Then go back to human side, Mayor, and then Inn (bottom option for Fitcher). Head outside, battles start. Destroy first wave with Shining Light, then go get Ridley. Top then bottom. Shining Light last wave. Go to Mayor, then leave city and pick up Chaco. Back to Castle.

GREENHILL: War Room. War Room again, talk to Shu. Only take Nanami and Luc; go to Greenhill through Two River; give Luc Water and Blue Gate on the way. Go up through Nina scene, into Academy. Talk to Emilia, then follow her to middle. Go to dorms, talk to secratary, 2nd floor bottom. Bottom option to sleep. Leave, go into town and to Inn in bottom left. Any option. Go back to dorm, go to sleep. Go into academy, then left to Nina. Go out and then into town. Back to dorm, either bottom option to sleep. Then go upstairs and down, then back to 1st floor, then into secret passage. Take secret entrance out to backyard.

BACKYARD: When in doubt, go left. Top options. Back in dorms, leave to town, choose any option. Fight Highlandsx5 twice on way to backyard. Highlandsx4, Highlandsx4 in backyard. Talk to Theresa, walk back (Escape Talisman does not work). Highlandsx5, Highlandsx5 if top choice. After scenes, Highlandsx4, Highlandsx4. Scene with Jowy, then go South some more. Head back to Castle. Go to sleep. Scenes, then pick party for Matilda. NOTE: Nanami optional, but forces way into party if not selected. Take Flik, Luc. Buy 3 Waters on way through Two River.

MATILDA: Go there through the forest and go through scenes. At Rockaxe, go through more scenes, enter throne room to hear about border stuff. After Miklotov leaves, choose bottom option. Hope that the refugees die quickly; seems more likely if they align horizontally. After, go South to Appraisal shop and check back shelf for Violence; use Runemaster to put on Nanami, Water on Flik and Luc and Riou, and Lightning on Riou. Go down to Border, bottom option, then continue to Muse for movie. Enter Muse, then go to upper left, fight Highlandx5. Then leave Muse and go to Rockaxe, castle, then after scenes end up back at your Castle.

HEADQUARTERS: go to War Room. More scenes. Back to War Room, Viktor joins. Use Viki to go to Radat. Choose bottom option, go down, then top option. Get Adlai now. Return to War Room. Deploy troops. In WAR BATTLE: move two dog troops and Flik + Viktor up. This will force enemies into forest. Move Gilbert to left once as well. On 2nd turn, move Viktor up one more step, then end turn until end of battle. Should minimize time spent moving vs attack animations. After, go to room and sleep. Scenes. Back to War Room.

KIBA BATTLE: Ends after a certain number of turns, or after Kiba's unit is killed. Can only be attacked for third hit after Ridley appears? Look into formulas for misc attacks; hopefully there's an easy way to damage him. Otherwise set up Luc with massive ATK units and pray. In any case, running away into trees seems like best bet for a good time. Still takes 7 minutes though. Use Fire Spears and Luc magic to take out weakened units, but otherwise just run away.

HEADQUARTERS: Select top option twice, then bottom option. Go through scenes. Go to entrance of Castle, see scene with Sheena, then LEAVE CASTLE in order to trigger lvl 2. Then go back in through bar and add in Nanami, Luc, and Flik (for easier runs) and up to War Room. Put Sheena in party. Viki to go to Radat. Go to sluice (right side) and take boat to Banner Village.

BANNER PASS: Go to the Item Shop and pick up Jizos (6ish) and one escape talisman. Go into Pass. For each fork: SE, S. Ladder area, take far ladder, right. 2 screens, the straight E. Worm on next screen; just use Nanami attacksx3. A crit will shorten turns by 1. Continue on to Gregminster.

GREGMINSTER: Go talk to Lepant, all top options. Leave back through the Pass. W, NW, SW, talk to Ridley and Apple AFTER unequipping everything from Flik and putting JIZOS on Nanami.

HEADQUARTERS: Go to War Room. Talk to Nanami, then sleep and scenes. Now War Room, go through Ridley event. If lucky, he will die before you even arrive; move right to help this. After scenes, go up to your room, and ignore Tsai with either option. Then sleep. Go to War Room. Make sure to arrange Hanna and Shu and Valeria first, and put Chaco and Tsai on Flik. In the battle, just wail on him with Flame Spear and Valeria and pray. After battle, go down to main Hall and pick up Ridley. Back to War Room.

NIGHT RAID: put in Nanami, Luc, and Kinnison or Sheena. Stallion and Viki optional. Just auto with Flik and Viktor and hope they die. For Nanami, put her in back row behind Riou. Heal her when necessary. Jizos break Violence effect, kind of, but leave you in Berserk even if you aren't marked as Berserk. Also can be dodged sometimes. On 2x soldier battles, wipe them with Luc. Fully heal before battling Luca. ALSO: JIZO only breaks berserk, not Violence.

HEADQUARTERS: Scenes. Wake up, go with Nanami to get Templton first, then straight to Kuskus. Do Culgan stuff. Go back to War Room, then bottom choice with Teresa. Then go to Muse, bringing Stallion, Kinnison and Luc. Can't teleport to Muse or Coronet, so just take boat as normal. Also, Blacksmith in Coronet. Go to Muse, then Jowston Hill. Bottom option. Viktor joins, can go in convoy. One battle of Highlandx6, can run into other x6 battles randomly. Go to main hall for scene with Shu, then walk back to entrance. Bottom choice, bottom. Put Koyu in convoy. Add in Nanami, Stallion.

MOUTH VILLAGES: First take detour to Fort and get Templton. Then go to Toto to complete. Finish by going to Two River, recruit Jeane. Talk to Gijimu in the mountains, and grab Master Robe. Go straight to Tinto.

TINTO: Go straight up to Gustav, pick up Power Ring in cart on the way. Top options for all. Back to Gustav's room, then city entrance. Back to Gustav's room. Scenes, talk to Gustav. Go to bed. Scenes, then talk to Nanami. Top choices, then go down to Gustav's room. Go to city entrance. After scene, go to mine and go inside. Just defend for 3 turns, run away (his lightning can do high damage). Scenes, end up in Crom. Add Luc, Stallion back into party. Go straight to South Entrance to pick up Kahn; put in convoy. Go to Drakemouth, fight Sierra. Very easy fight, just use one Bearer attack and use Shredding with Luc. Put Sierra in Convoy. Return to Crom, center building in back. Go to bed. Scenes. Go through back exit to Tinto Mines.

TINTO MINES: NE, NE, W, NE, W, N, grab Master Garb on hill and exit E. Go through a couple, then W at fork. Go through loops and exit NE. E, far right chute, right again, go down to bottom for doublestrike if needed, then up ramp and down chute to get to final area. Push box. Go in to fight Golem. Kindness does 1800 first turn, then with a normal attack and Master Robe, Violence should trigger. Golem will fall after that. Also make sure to get levels up of Bearer if necessary; should be higher 30s. Escape Talisman out and use Tinto glitch to get by first zombies; can't dodge second group. Fastest way is to go long way and take elevator up, but one less zombie group. Should be all level 45 just before Neclord.

NECLORD: Gets 2 attacks per turn and is pretty fast. Use Stallion+Bearer for first hits. Bat form is weakest, but other attacks can hurt quite a bit. If uses AoE, should trigger Violence. Otherwise just beat on him. Restore any used Jizos. After defeating, go outside and talk to Gustav near entrance. Use top choices. On the way, level up Riou's weapon as high as possible. Leave and TP back to HQ. Sheena will join at stairs; put him in place of Viktor or Bearer.

HEADQUARTERS: Go to War Room, then your room. After scene, walk down stairs to Chaco, then go back to room. Fight Lucia. One Thor Shot and one Bolt of Wrath will end her. Top options good. Back to War Room. Top option first; put Templton + Chaco on Flik, then top, top. WAR BATTLE, run away as best as possible. Put all Cavalry to left wall, and move Gilbert down 3 tiles.

GREENHILL: Choose bottom option when Teresa asks. Add in Luc, Bearer, and Stallion. In Forest, Highlandx6. NOTE: King's Road does not one-shot. When in doubt, take left path. Next screen, grab Winged Boots (maybe?) on right path. Then continue on middle path. Highlandx6. Left path, then up and left. In Lucia battle, dispatch Karayans with Shredding, then just have Bearer dispatch her. Take left path all the way left. Highlandx6. Highlandx6. Into university. Outside, talk to student in red for full heal. Highlandx5, Highlandx5. Head straight down to start battle with Bone Dragon.

BONE DRAGON: Dragon Fireball attack does ~384 damage. Just enough for Violence at level 49. Flame Breath does ~260, also enough. Bite does 470 without armor; with armor should be just right. 2-turn wonder.

MUSE: after battle, bottom option. Leave, go into academy. Do switchover to new Bearer here. Follow Lucia to backyard, scenes. Just Rush Flik to Muse entrace. Should be done in 4 turns. Put Viktor in convoy. Go straight to Muse Hall. Fight Wolf; should be easy. Just run straight down center to escape. After, go up to Shu's room. Talk to Shu after scene. Top option. Top option again. Scenes. Return to War Room. Bottom option. in WAR BATTLE: Move into woods, then just end turn until reinforcements appear. Put Luc & Stallion in, and top option.

ROCKAXE: Follow path. Skip treasure. Left. Up for Crimson Cape, otherwise Down ladder. Right. Up through door. Right to pick up EARTH SHIELD (for Sheena). Otherwise down ladder, down for Power Glove, then right. Enter castle. Flame Helmet in upper portion of room (can go through middle room) otherwise continue left. M-Knightx5. Go right, then upstairs. Outside, M-Knightx5. Try to go upstairs, then continue to scenes (NOTE: Can still get encounters on this screen). Choose nothing.

GORUDO: Use Hungry Fiend and Thor Shot, then Bolt of Wrath. Hungry Fiend only takes 9 seconds in game time. Piercing One takes 6 seconds game time. In scene after, wait for exactly 30 seconds for followup to trigger. Go talk to Shu, top then bottom options. Leave for more scenes. Leave towards Shu's room, scene, then go back to sleep. Back to War Room. Before continuing, make sure VIKI has LIGHTNING, Flik has FIRE and WATER, LUC has WATER, and HERO has WATER.

L'REN: Go through many scenes. When in front of Border, only a few lines before you gain control. If you haven't, rearrange CHACO and TEMPLTON on FLIK now. Then go to battle. Move Flik 3 frames forward to manipulate Han (maybe?). Otherwise just hope he doesn't move left. Continue and enter city when possible. Take Viki, Flik, Luc, Bearer, Stallion.

LUCIA: Not too much of a problem. Just attack with bearer. If she lands a phys attack, will instantly trigger Violence. Flame wheel will not; explosion might. Probably shouldn't worry if have excessive Jizos. Alternatively: can one-round with 3 Thors and bearer if magic users specced with it. After battle, equip Luc with Shredding scroll from Neclord.

L'REN CASTLE: Left, all the way left, then up. Highlandx6. Continue Up, then follow path. Highlandx6. NOTE: Blinking Go! takes 6 game time sec. Go up through door, get to Han battle. Make sure Hero is equipped with stuff. Um... Try to make Hero as powerful as possible? Otherwise could take a while and be very dangerous. Grab Power Gloves and Crimson Cape in Rockaxe to help, also Power Ring in Tinto. He does roughly double damage to you even with them. After duel, head up either stairway, go straight down, Highlandx6, then left door, then up, left door, Highlandx6. Go up at fork, then after stairs go up, Highlandx6 and Left. Follow left path to outside, Highlandx6. Go around, enter and head right for Highlandx6. Follow path up and then right. Highlandx6, then in next room go all the way right, then up. Then all the way down, then up. Seed & Culgan after stairs, top option. NOTE: Unite glitch targets based off of Thor Shot. Thor takes 8 game seconds, Blazing takes 8ish.

SEED & CULGAN: Two different strats: start up, remove Dream Robe from Bearer, cast Silent Lake with Flik. If lucky, will attack Bearer and trigger Violence. Other strats is to Unite Glitch focused on Seed and then demolish Culgan. Second strat more consistent, but slightly (10 s) slower. After battle, top option, scenes. Go back and heal at save before beast battle.

BEAST RUNE: Gets 3 actions per turn across all parts. AoE spells do ~165 each, two will trigger Violence. Left Head can do AoE or single target, right head does the Swordfall. Right Leg can revive stuff, but does so only rarely. 2nd turn should have Rune dead and some damage on everything. If status effects were used in turn 1, heal with either Hero, Luc, or Flik, whoever can heal. Eventually, will be able to attack with Bearer and finish off heads. TURNS: 1st turn have Viki do Thor, Bearer attack, Flik Explosion, Stallion attack, Hero Mother Ocean/Silent Lake, and Luc Mother Ocean/Silent Lake. 2nd Turn, if Luc up, do Shining Wind. If Hero up, use Battle Oath. If Flik up, do Kindness Rain (if needed). Next turn Violence should be active, and have Bearer annihilate. Otherwise just attack as normal. Focus on Left Head. Note that even if Right Leg revives Rune, Shield won't be active on first turn coming back.

FINAL: Scenes, top option. Go to War Room, any option. DONE. Consider stopping and saving at crystal to show game time. ALSO: Greenhill is final scene before starting Stars of Destiny stuff. Even fades into the Muse waiting scene too. Very likely that some wrong trigger will cause this. In any case, DONE.

Also, I did a 6:46:37 earlier. Still plenty to come off, but it's at least starting to resemble a reinforced route.

I kept forgetting/revising my notes, so I'll post my most up to date stuff here. Note that it's not 100% consistent, most likely anything relating to the Bearer may be off. In general it should be fine though. The very early game is also wrong, but you can read the more recent posts to get that background.

[hidden]OPENING: Say to go to sleep, then change message speed at the first opportunity. Go straight North to the wall, then fight the battle. Select bottom option when Jowy asks.

NOTE: For watching game time, check 0006AA52-56 for time. Hours:Minutes:Seconds

FORT & CHORES: Push the crates 2 at a time. Take 3 of everything. Get all the oil spots. When Jowy comes, elect not to resist. When questioned, choose bottom choice. Escape as normal.

RYUBE: Go over to circus act, elect to move right to end sooner. Check store if Flame Arrows available, don't heal. Head to North Sparrow.

NORTH SPARROW: Only fight Bunny groups. Pick up Escape Talisman, Flame Wall, Brass Armor. Hero only needs to be Lvl 3 for fight. BOSS PREP: Take Angry Blow from Rina, give Jowy extra boots, brass armor, angry blow. Give Flame Wall to Hero, and Flaming Arrows to Eilie. Heal before starting battle. CONSIDER: Alternate strat that may take 3 turns, saves Fire Wall.

KYARO: Go in from bottom, unequip troupe. Go through to house on left, take middle pot. Use Flaming Arrows on guards. Just use top choices. Don't save Nanami (after Viktor walks back).

DOUBLEBEAT: Farm for it on the way back. Hopefully should get it on the way, but not always a possibility. Once back, go to Toto and raise Pilika counter. Appraise Vase. Do Pilika stuff, head for Muse.

MUSE: Go left to shop. Choose 2nd option, then check for Flaming Arrows rare finds. Return to Toto. Be very careful of Sickle encounters. Go to Coronet and raise weapon level to 5, then return to Toto for scenes.

FORT++: Go to Fort, after scenes go up and talk to Flik & Viktor, then go to Ryube. Go into forest, pick up nest, advance to Tsai's house. Pick up Tsai, walk back, pick up goods. Somewhere along the way, fight groups of spiders as available to get to level 7. Leave, choose bottom option. Go get Shiro & Kinnison. Return to Fort, go up and choose bottom option to duel Flik. Make sure to heal first. Should be strong enough at lvl 6 w/ weapon lvl 5, but can be instant fail if Flik attacks thrice. Go south to start next sequence.

BATTLES: Hitting Solon Zhee doesn't end the battle, so just run away or end turn. In next battle, go to entrance, then move away on 3rd turn. Fight battles and should get up to lvl 10. NOTE: game time goes at very slow speed during movies, and at times after battles. Go upstairs, go through scenes. After, go to Ryube and pick up Kinnison & Shiro. Then go to Toto and get Runes. Leaving the Fort should be at around the 1 hr mark.

RUNES AND STUFF: Get Hanna, get Runes. Then go to Muse, reunite with Nanami. Don't change formation. Go to White Deer Inn. After sleeping, try to go down immediately, Alex comes in. Choose bottom option. MAYBE do some prepwork here, might not be necessary. At least put double beat on Shiro.

RUINS: First room has Stone of Magic to left (meh). Go Up, up. Go up, across bridge, down and left, and then up. Go left, push, grab shoulder pads and circle. Go back to door, enter. Go left over bridge, get Fire Lizard and Triangle. Then go up, right. Trigger top of waterfall. Go back and then up, get Chain Mail across river. In riverbed, go down one screen, then left to get square. Go all the way back to initial riverbed entrance, then cross bridge to the left for Double Head.

5x Creeper gets all chars to level 11/10 if all alive. Not safe with minimal equip; need at least double beat and extra flaming arrows to stand a chance. Can get to ~1700 dmg without.

5x MegaWatt very dangerous, can hit back row and one-shot several of the chars. Bright does not 1-shot. Can clear with 2x AoE. Gets Heros to 12, everybody else 11.

4x Drake requires 2 AoE spells, and will raise Jowy/Hero levels as well (13). Gets remainder to 10/11.

3x Creeper and 2x MegaWatt is somewhat safe, one person may die but rest will jump to 12/11. ONLY APPEARS BEFORE PLACING TRIANGLE.

2x Creeper in first phase will get everybody to 7, winnable in one turn with Auto. After, 3x MegaWatt will get to 10s for all. 3x Creeper gets all to lvl 8. Basically any grouping in first part will allow easier fighting in 2nd and have roughly equivalent results.

Fighting Double Head with just 11s/12s and no other setup difficult; at least hook up Shiro with Double-Beat. With extra flaming arrows, can play it a little more risky. Watch damage closely; keep a calculator around? Take equips off Riou; he'll be fine without. NOTE: Need level 12, not 13. 13 does not give enough to level on the slugs.

After battle, go through scenes, return one room south and Escape Talisman out. Go through rest of scenes, don't adjust formation. Head for Muse.

MUSE: Argh. Go to Muse, go through scenes. Top option is fine. After getting out of jail, go straight to Runemaster and take double-beat off of Shiro, then drop Pilika off with Leona. Go to Muse Hall and go through scenes, then talk to Jess. Bottom option. Go to blacksmith and put Fire Lizard on Riou. Go back to Inn and talk to Leona, then leave for Highlands border.

BORDER LEVELS: Progress through the forest quickly; fight rabbits when available, and take all equip from Nanami. Try to have Nanami killed off x4, and weaken Riou as much as possible. Armadillos not good to fight. Go into camp when sufficiently low, go into far tent and select top text boxes. After scene, go into big tent in center. Choose more top options. Then go straight down and left. In battle, kill off Riou then finish with Jowy Lvl 2. In following battle, either have Nanami or Riou use Medicine on Riou to jump to level 48 with a Shining Light and Nanami killed off.  Afterwards, return to Muse.

MUSE: Go up to the City Hall, try to enter room, then leave. Go to blacksmith, remove Fire Lizard. Go back to Leona, get Fliktor, go back to City Hall. Bottom option probably faster. Back in Inn, choose either, go out to front of Muse. Choose bottom option. Go through scenes, then go to Jowston Hill. Go through events, then go back to Inn. Bottom option. Remove good stuff from Jowy, then head down and talk to Viktor, top option. War battle start! Just end turn x7. Game Time should be around 2 hours for decent run.

MUSE PT2: Go down and talk to Nanami, either option. Go down to scenes, then City Hall for more scenes, then back to Inn. Watch scene, talk to Nanami, bottom option (may need to wait a bit for scene to not trigger). Scenes, then go to City Hall. More scenes. Go left and into door. Then run to Inn and leave city.

KINDNESS EARLY: Instead of going to Coronet, go to do Kindness Early. In the forest, look for slugsx2 or x3. Finish any you find with Shining Light. Also any RaggedOnes if you run into them at less than lvl 25. Grab Kindness, return to Coronet and trigger scene with soldier. Then back to Inn. After scenes, go to Tai Ho and win dice game. Then back to Tavern. Do not change formation. Go back to Tai Ho and head to Kuskus.

KUSKUS: Head down, attach Kindness to Nanami (make sure she has adequate deaths from earlier; 4-5). Leave and go to South Window.

SOUTH WINDOW: See Viktor, go to Inn. Then go to Mayor. On the way back, pick up the Friendship Rune. Go to Rune Shop and attach Double Beat to Nanami, also buy 1 Lightning, 1 Fire. Head back in to Inn, then leave for North Window (don't arrange). In North Window, choose bottom option, go to Cave of Wind.

CAVE OF WIND: Right, Up, Right, Up-Left, Left, Right, Up-Right, Up-left, left (rock puzzle). Wind Puzzle; push rock forward one tile and cross. Next room, push top rock forward one tile past first wind, then go over the top to cross. Third room, push bottom block forward just past furthest left, then push up all the way to access blue gate rune in top chest (3k potch in right). Continue to exit, Up, Down, Up-Left. Kahn, choose bottom option, don't change formation. Up, Right, Up. SD Sword fight. Just attack with Nanami on first and second turns to end battle.

NORTH WINDOW: Go up, take left passage, left. Keep going left, then down to first puzzle room. Move statue to center, go up. Light torch in next puzzle room (probably no need for Blue Ribbon?) then continue up. Grab Chain Mail from top chest (maybe?), make sure Nanami and Hero are equipped. Go in, watch scenes, fight Boss.

ABOMINATION: Open with attack, and charm arrow. If Kindness gets berserked, over in two turns. Even if not, Charm Arrow should make over in 2. Should always be 2 turns, no danger.

SHU: After scenes, choose bottom option, or else. Then walk to Radat. Talk to Shu. Go to bar, then leave. Scenes, go to Richmond. Bottom. Inn. Sluice, bottom option. Talk to dude in upper left. Bottom option, bottom, bottom. Fight Amada. Go down and find coin. Return to North Window. Go to War Room, bottom option. Go back to War Room, talk to Shu. Bottom option.

NORTH WINDOW BATTLE: Move your junk unit two squares forward and make him fight solon jhee. Then just end turn until it finishes. After battle, in war room just do all top options. Afterwards, just go back to bed and choose bottom option. Go back in to War Room, choose top options. Whichever name. After scenes, go back to entrance for Fitcher, bottom option. Go back to War Room again, choose bottom option with Fitcher. Then go to Radat, fight Amada, come back to War Room. Can choose members; just take Nanami.

TWO RIVER: Head to docks, then to Lakewest and finally Two River. Don't have to go to entrance; just head straight to Winger town. Chase Chaco, and then head back to Mayor. Go to Inn. Upstairs, then back to Mayor. Top option, then bottom. Go to Kobold side, then down and chase Chaco some more. Enter Sewers.

SEWERS: Right, down, cross bridge and head to bottom right. Down, left, far upper left. Enter door to fight Pest Rat. Strategy: Nanami attacks 1st turn, then Hero uses Oath 2nd turn in case of damage. 2x cieling crumble will potentially kill if some minor damage, so equip Jizo on Nanami ahead of time as a precaution. Should be dead by third turn; 2nd if berserk'd. Level 34-35 after battle. Go up and talk to Ridley, any options. Then go back to human side, Mayor, and then Inn (bottom option for Fitcher). Head outside, battles start. Destroy first wave with Shining Light, then go get Ridley. Top then bottom. Shining Light last wave. Go to Mayor, then leave city and pick up Chaco. Back to Castle.

GREENHILL: War Room. War Room again, talk to Shu. Only take Nanami and Luc; go to Greenhill through Two River; give Luc Water and Blue Gate on the way. Go up through Nina scene, into Academy. Talk to Emilia, then follow her to middle. Go to dorms, talk to secratary, 2nd floor bottom. Bottom option to sleep. Leave, go into town and to Inn in bottom left. Any option. Go  back to dorm, go to sleep. Go into academy, then left to Nina. Go out and then into town. Back to dorm, either bottom option to sleep. Then go upstairs and down, then back to 1st floor, then into secret passage. Take secret entrance out to backyard.

BACKYARD: When in doubt, go left. Top options. Back in dorms, leave to town, choose any option. Fight Highlandsx5 twice on way to backyard. Highlandsx4, Highlandsx4 in backyard. Talk to Theresa, walk back (Escape Talisman does not work). Highlandsx5, Highlandsx5 if top choice. After scenes, Highlandsx4, Highlandsx4. Scene with Jowy, then go South some more. Head back to Castle. Go to sleep. Scenes, then pick party for Matilda. NOTE: Nanami optional, but forces way into party if not selected. Take Flik, Luc. Buy 3 Waters on way through Two River.

MATILDA: Go there through the forest and go through scenes. At Rockaxe, go through more scenes, enter throne room to hear about border stuff. After Miklotov leaves, choose bottom option. Hope that the refugees die quickly; seems more likely if they align horizontally. After, go South to Appraisal shop and check back shelf for Violence; use Runemaster to put on Nanami, Water on Flik and Luc and Riou, and Lightning on Riou. Go down to Border, bottom option, then continue to Muse for movie. Enter Muse, then go to upper left, fight Highlandx5. Then leave Muse and go to Rockaxe, castle, then after scenes end up back at your Castle.

HEADQUARTERS: go to War Room. More scenes. Back to War Room, Viktor joins. Use Viki to go to Radat. Choose bottom option, go down, then top option. Get Adlai now. Return to War Room. Deploy troops. In WAR BATTLE: move two dog troops and Flik + Viktor up. This will force enemies into forest. Move Gilbert to left once as well. On 2nd turn, move Viktor up one more step, then end turn until end of battle. Should minimize time spent moving vs attack animations. After, go to room and sleep. Scenes. Back to War Room.

KIBA BATTLE: Ends after a certain number of turns, or after Kiba's unit is killed. Can only be attacked for third hit after Ridley appears? Look into formulas for misc attacks; hopefully there's an easy way to damage him. Otherwise set up Luc with massive ATK units and pray. In any case, running away into trees seems like best bet for a good time. Still takes 7 minutes though. Use Fire Spears and Luc magic to take out weakened units, but otherwise just run away.

HEADQUARTERS: Select top option twice, then bottom option. Go through scenes. Go to entrance of Castle, see scene with Sheena, then LEAVE CASTLE in order to trigger lvl 2. Then go back in through bar and add in Nanami, Luc, and Flik (for easier runs) and up to War Room. Put Sheena in party. Viki to go to Radat. Go to sluice (right side) and take boat to Banner Village.

BANNER PASS: Go to the Item Shop and pick up Jizos (6ish) and one escape talisman. Go into Pass. For each fork: SE, S. Ladder area, take far ladder, right. 2 screens, the straight E. Worm on next screen; just use Nanami attacksx3. A crit will shorten turns by 1. Continue on to Gregminster.

GREGMINSTER: Go talk to Lepant, all top options. Leave back through the Pass. W, NW, SW, talk to Ridley and Apple AFTER unequipping everything from Flik and putting JIZOS on Nanami.

HEADQUARTERS: Go to War Room. Talk to Nanami, then sleep and scenes.  Now War Room, go through Ridley event. If lucky, he will die before you even arrive; move right to help this. After scenes, go up to your room, and ignore Tsai with either option. Then sleep. Go to War Room. Make sure to arrange Hanna and Shu and Valeria first, and put Chaco and Tsai on Flik. In the battle, just wail on him with Flame Spear and Valeria and pray. After battle, go down to main Hall and pick up Ridley. Back to War Room.

NIGHT RAID: put in Nanami, Luc, and Kinnison or Sheena. Stallion and Viki optional. Just auto with Flik and Viktor and hope they die. For Nanami, put her in back row behind Riou. Heal her when necessary. Jizos break Violence effect, kind of, but leave you in Berserk even if you aren't marked as Berserk. Also can be dodged sometimes. On 2x soldier battles, wipe them with Luc. Fully heal before battling Luca. ALSO: JIZO only breaks berserk, not Violence.

HEADQUARTERS: Scenes. Wake up, go with Nanami to get Templton first, then straight to Kuskus. Do Culgan stuff. Go back to War Room, then bottom choice with Teresa. Then go to Muse, bringing Stallion, Kinnison and Luc. Can't teleport to Muse or Coronet, so just take boat as normal. Also, Blacksmith in Coronet. Go to Muse, then Jowston Hill. Bottom option. Viktor joins, can go in convoy. One battle of Highlandx6, can run into other x6 battles randomly. Go to main hall for scene with Shu, then walk back to entrance. Bottom choice, bottom. Put Koyu in convoy. Add in Nanami, Stallion.

MOUTH VILLAGES: First take detour to Fort and get Templton. Then go to Toto to complete. Finish by going to Two River, recruit Jeane. Talk to Gijimu in the mountains, and grab Master Robe. Go straight to Tinto.

TINTO: Go straight up to Gustav, pick up Power Ring in cart on the way. Top options for all. Back to Gustav's room, then city entrance. Back to Gustav's room. Scenes, talk to Gustav. Go to bed. Scenes, then talk to Nanami. Top choices, then go down to Gustav's room. Go to city entrance. After scene, go to mine and go inside. Just defend for 3 turns, run away (his lightning can do high damage). Scenes, end up in Crom. Add Luc, Stallion back into party. Go straight to South Entrance to pick up Kahn; put in convoy. Go to Drakemouth, fight Sierra. Very easy fight, just use one Bearer attack and use Shredding with Luc. Put Sierra in Convoy. Return to Crom, center building in back. Go to bed. Scenes. Go through back exit to Tinto Mines.

TINTO MINES: NE, NE, W, NE, W, N, grab Master Garb on hill and exit E. Go through a couple, then W at fork. Go through loops and exit NE. E, far right chute, right again, go down to bottom for doublestrike if needed, then up ramp and down chute to get to final area. Push box. Go in to fight Golem. Kindness does 1800 first turn, then with a normal attack and Master Robe, Violence should trigger. Golem will fall after that. Also make sure to get levels up of Bearer if necessary; should be higher 30s. Escape Talisman out and use Tinto glitch to get by first zombies; can't dodge second group. Fastest way is to go long way and take elevator up, but one less zombie group. Should be all level 45 just before Neclord.

NECLORD: Gets 2 attacks per turn and is pretty fast. Use Stallion+Bearer for first hits. Bat form is weakest, but other attacks can hurt quite a bit. If uses AoE, should trigger Violence. Otherwise just beat on him. Restore any used Jizos. After defeating, go outside and talk to Gustav near entrance. Use top choices. On the way, level up Riou's weapon as high as possible. Leave and TP back to HQ. Sheena will join at stairs; put him in place of Viktor or Bearer.

HEADQUARTERS: Go to War Room, then your room. After scene, walk down stairs to Chaco, then go back to room. Fight Lucia. One Thor Shot and one Bolt of Wrath will end her. Top options good. Back to War Room. Top option first; put Templton + Chaco on Flik, then top, top. WAR BATTLE, run away as best as possible. Put all Cavalry to left wall, and move Gilbert down 3 tiles.

GREENHILL: Choose bottom option when Teresa asks. Add in Luc, Bearer, and Stallion. In Forest, Highlandx6. NOTE: King's Road does not one-shot. When in doubt, take left path. Next screen, grab Winged Boots (maybe?) on right path. Then continue on middle path. Highlandx6. Left path, then up and left. In Lucia battle, dispatch Karayans with Shredding, then just have Bearer dispatch her. Take left path all the way left. Highlandx6. Highlandx6. Into university. Outside, talk to student in red for full heal. Highlandx5, Highlandx5. Head straight down to start battle with Bone Dragon.

BONE DRAGON: Dragon Fireball attack does ~384 damage. Just enough for Violence at level 49. Flame Breath does ~260, also enough.  Bite does 470 without armor; with armor should be just right. 2-turn wonder.

MUSE: after battle, bottom option. Leave, go into academy. Do switchover to new Bearer here. Follow Lucia to backyard, scenes. Just Rush Flik to Muse entrace. Should be done in 4 turns. Put Viktor in convoy. Go straight to Muse Hall. Fight Wolf; should be easy. Just run straight down center to escape. After, go up to Shu's room. Talk to Shu after scene. Top option. Top option again. Scenes. Return to War Room. Bottom option. in WAR BATTLE: Move into woods, then just end turn until reinforcements appear. Put Luc & Stallion in, and top option.

ROCKAXE: Follow path. Skip treasure. Left. Up for Crimson Cape, otherwise Down ladder. Right. Up through door. Right to pick up EARTH SHIELD (for Sheena). Otherwise down ladder, down for Power Glove, then right. Enter castle. Flame Helmet in upper portion of room (can go through middle room) otherwise continue left. M-Knightx5. Go right, then upstairs. Outside, M-Knightx5. Try to go upstairs, then continue to scenes (NOTE: Can still get encounters on this screen). Choose nothing.

GORUDO: Use Hungry Fiend and Thor Shot, then Bolt of Wrath. Hungry Fiend only takes 9 seconds in game time. Piercing One takes 6 seconds game time. In scene after, wait for exactly 30 seconds for followup to trigger. Go talk to Shu, top then bottom options. Leave for more scenes. Leave towards Shu's room, scene, then go back to sleep. Back to War Room. Before continuing, make sure VIKI has LIGHTNING, Flik has FIRE and WATER, LUC has WATER, and HERO has WATER.

L'REN: Go through many scenes. When in front of Border, only a few lines before you gain control. If you haven't, rearrange CHACO and TEMPLTON on FLIK now. Then go to battle. Move Flik 3 frames forward to manipulate Han (maybe?). Otherwise just hope he doesn't move left. Continue and enter city when possible. Take Viki, Flik, Luc, Bearer, Stallion.

LUCIA: Not too much of a problem. Just attack with bearer. If she lands a phys attack, will instantly trigger Violence. Flame wheel will not; explosion might. Probably shouldn't worry if have excessive Jizos. Alternatively: can one-round with 3 Thors and bearer if magic users specced with it. After battle, equip Luc with Shredding scroll from Neclord.

L'REN CASTLE: Left, all the way left, then up. Highlandx6. Continue Up, then follow path. Highlandx6. NOTE: Blinking Go! takes 6 game time sec. Go up through door, get to Han battle. Make sure Hero is equipped with stuff. Um... Try to make Hero as powerful as possible? Otherwise could take a while and be very dangerous. Grab Power Gloves and Crimson Cape in Rockaxe to help, also Power Ring in Tinto. He does roughly double damage to you even with them. After duel, head up either stairway, go straight down, Highlandx6, then left door, then up, left door, Highlandx6. Go up at fork, then after stairs go up, Highlandx6 and Left. Follow left path to outside, Highlandx6. Go around, enter and head right for Highlandx6. Follow path up and then right. Highlandx6, then in next room go all the way right, then up. Then all the way down, then up. Seed & Culgan after stairs, top option. NOTE: Unite glitch targets based off of Thor Shot. Thor takes 8 game seconds, Blazing takes 8ish.

SEED & CULGAN: Two different strats: start up, remove Dream Robe from Bearer, cast Silent Lake with Flik. If lucky, will attack Bearer and trigger Violence. Other strats is to Unite Glitch focused on Seed and then demolish Culgan. Second strat more consistent, but slightly (10 s) slower. After battle, top option, scenes. Go back and heal at save before beast battle.

BEAST RUNE: Gets 3 actions per turn across all parts. AoE spells do ~165 each, two will trigger Violence. Left Head can do AoE or single target, right head does the Swordfall. Right Leg can revive stuff, but does so only rarely.  2nd turn should have Rune dead and some damage on everything. If status effects were used in turn 1, heal with either Hero, Luc, or Flik, whoever can heal. Eventually, will be able to attack with Bearer and finish off heads. TURNS: 1st turn have Viki do Thor, Bearer attack, Flik Explosion, Stallion attack, Hero Mother Ocean/Silent Lake, and Luc Mother Ocean/Silent Lake. 2nd Turn, if Luc up, do Shining Wind. If Hero up, use Battle Oath. If Flik up, do Kindness Rain (if needed). Next turn Violence should be active, and have Bearer annihilate. Otherwise just attack as normal. Focus on Left Head. Note that even if Right Leg revives Rune, Shield won't be active on first turn coming back.

FINAL: Scenes, top option. Go to War Room, any option. DONE. Consider stopping and saving at crystal to show game time. ALSO: Greenhill is final scene before starting Stars of Destiny stuff. Even fades into the Muse waiting scene too. Very likely that some wrong trigger will cause this. In any case, DONE.[/hidden]

Also, I did a 6:46:37 earlier. Still plenty to come off, but it's at least starting to resemble a reinforced route.

Lag.Com

2013-04-15 02:40:51 am

sda loyalist

So glad my ancient thread is finally bearing fruit, though I'm not sure how much of a help I've been :p

I can't wait to see Viki explode during a run.

DrDoobie

Edit history:

DrDoobie: 2013-04-15 12:12:39 pm

DrDoobie: 2013-04-15 12:09:47 pm

2013-04-15 11:55:56 am

Omni, you are a boss for putting those notes up. I'm about a month away from graduation but after that my summer is gonna be pretty free to start streaming and your notes help a lot. Hopefully my new desktop will be built by the middle to end of May (can't stream on my dying laptop, hell I can barely emulate PSX games on this thing).

BTW: Just noticed that Suikoden 1 is on PSN. Holding hope that Suikoden 2 finally pops up there someday

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2013-05-12 11:37:39 pm

2013-05-12 11:36:40 pm

All the things

So from my run today, I want to try to quantify how much time can be saved from certain things.

-About 4 min can come off from all of the early game, up through Double Head. This is with perfect double beat luck and getting the encounters I need quickly, and no unescapable battles. 3 minutes is realistic here.
-I can save something like 3 minutes from misc things throughout the South WIndow/Two River/Greenhill/Matilda sections. 40 seconds can come from a better Chinchirorin, 30 from more optimized trek through the Matilda forest, and about 30 seconds can be saved with perfect refugees battle.
-Killing Kiba on the first turn Ridley appears would net me around 3 minutes.
-Getting a better Night Raid alone can save 3 minutes.
-Misc improvements for the rest of the game can save another 3 or so. This includes 2 min from getting trolled in the L'Ren battle.
Total: ~16 minutes of time to save.

So an ideal run would put me sub-6:30, but I'm not nearly crazy enough to hope for that. I think hitting a 10 minute improvement over my current PB would be enough to submit though. If I'm forgetting anything, do let me know.

So from my run today, I want to try to quantify how much time can be saved from certain things.

-About 4 min can come off from all of the early game, up through Double Head. This is with perfect double beat luck and getting the encounters I need quickly, and no unescapable battles. 3 minutes is realistic here.
-I can save something like 3 minutes from misc things throughout the South WIndow/Two River/Greenhill/Matilda sections. 40 seconds can come from a better Chinchirorin, 30 from more optimized trek through the Matilda forest, and about 30 seconds can be saved with perfect refugees battle.
-Killing Kiba on the first turn Ridley appears would net me around 3 minutes.
-Getting a better Night Raid alone can save 3 minutes.
-Misc improvements for the rest of the game can save another 3 or so. This includes 2 min from getting trolled in the L'Ren battle.
Total: ~16 minutes of time to save.

So an ideal run would put me sub-6:30, but I'm not nearly crazy enough to hope for that. I think hitting a 10 minute improvement over my current PB would be enough to submit though. If I'm forgetting anything, do let me know.

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2014-01-24 01:03:36 pm

2014-01-22 11:40:00 am

All the things

Long time no post, folks.

Randomly did some war battle stat-collecting last night. I think I have it pretty well figured out, but still have to zero in on proportions.

Basically, war battle effects (Luc's Wind, Adlai's Invention, Jeane's Lightning, Fire Spears) are directly influenced by that unit's atk stat. They do not take into account the enemy def at all though, so it is very useful against Kiba, for example. The formula is basically the same as a normal attack in war battles, except replace the enemy def with a fixed "offset" value that depends on the type of attack.

if((atk+4)-offset)>=random(0:19) then damage

I've been working on estimating the offsets so far, and this is what I've come up with:

Luc: 12
Adlai: 0
Jeane: 5
Fire Spears: 4

So this is where it gets to be very theoretical and route-y. The goal is to come up with a configuration of characters such that you have the highest chance of defeating Kiba (that is, 3 or more successful hits of anything). I built a program to calculate the chances for a set of given probabilities, but the tricky part is figuring out where to place your attack-boosting stars.

It's annoying to calculate because there's also turn optimality to consider. I could feasibly pop Tsai and Shu on Luc to give both Wind and Fire Spears an attack rating of 14 (giving probabilities of .3 and .7, respectively), but this means that it would take until turn 5 to exhaust all attacks. Combine this with Luc's limited mobility and the advantage is not as helpful. The Japanese notes mention something about not being able to deal the third hit on Kiba until after Ridley appears (turn 3 of normal sequence), but that deserves a confirmation. My chances of landing 3 successful hits rises significantly if I have Jeane around, but recruiting her requires the level 2 castle at an additional time cost. I'll look into it eventually.

My current character set thoughts are below:
Luc 14, Tsai 14, Adlai 11 - Overall success rate of 69.2%, but not turn optimal. Luc lacks mobility with this configuration. Miklotov goes on Ridley+Adlai for added mobility.

Luc 13, Tsai 12, Adlai 11 - 56.9%. Gives some more mobility to everybody while putting Shu with Tsai and Viktor/Riou. Turn optimal so that all attacks are used within 3 turns, but most are within 2.

Luc 15, Tsai 10, Adlai 11 - 59.7%. Prays that Luc is successful in getting wind hits in. Odds are that one will get through, and one spear + adlai will finish it out. Only problem is that Luc is still not mobile, so he will have difficulty getting to Kiba in some instances.

Add on about 10% to any of the above if Jeane is involved, although that requires further reshuffling.

This also helps a bit for the Luca battle since I can just stack Adlai on Valeria and get a 75% chance to hit.

One last thing I need to check is whether Ridley keeps the same units from the prior mission in the Kiba mission. Probably a good thing to account for.

EDIT: Update on that last point - Ridley does NOT carry over units from the prior mission, he comes in completely fresh. This is unfortunate, since that means my highest atk is on Luc at 10 and then only two units with 8 under that (Riou & Viktor). Without Jeane I will be just under 60% for the best configuration, and with Jeane it still doesn't quite breach 70%. Jeane is an extra assurance, but I still need to calculate the total time associated with getting her. Also under consideration: Inf Potch glitching and blitzing Tai Ho and Yam Ku. Theoretically it's faster, but so much more unlikely in a run.

Long time no post, folks.

Randomly did some war battle stat-collecting last night. I think I have it pretty well figured out, but still have to zero in on proportions.

Basically, war battle effects (Luc's Wind, Adlai's Invention, Jeane's Lightning, Fire Spears) are directly influenced by that unit's atk stat. They do not take into account the enemy def at all though, so it is very useful against Kiba, for example. The formula is basically the same as a normal attack in war battles, except replace the enemy def with a fixed "offset" value that depends on the type of attack.

if((atk+4)-offset)>=random(0:19) then damage

I've been working on estimating the offsets so far, and this is what I've come up with:

Luc: 12
Adlai: 0
Jeane: 5
Fire Spears: 4

So this is where it gets to be very theoretical and route-y. The goal is to come up with a configuration of characters such that you have the highest chance of defeating Kiba (that is, 3 or more successful hits of anything). I built a program to calculate the chances for a set of given probabilities, but the tricky part is figuring out where to place your attack-boosting stars.

It's annoying to calculate because there's also turn optimality to consider. I could feasibly pop Tsai and Shu on Luc to give both Wind and Fire Spears an attack rating of 14 (giving probabilities of .3 and .7, respectively), but this means that it would take until turn 5 to exhaust all attacks. Combine this with Luc's limited mobility and the advantage is not as helpful. The Japanese notes mention something about not being able to deal the third hit on Kiba until after Ridley appears (turn 3 of normal sequence), but that deserves a confirmation. My chances of landing 3 successful hits rises significantly if I have Jeane around, but recruiting her requires the level 2 castle at an additional time cost. I'll look into it eventually.

My current character set thoughts are below:
Luc 14, Tsai 14, Adlai 11 - Overall success rate of 69.2%, but not turn optimal. Luc lacks mobility with this configuration. Miklotov goes on Ridley+Adlai for added mobility.

Luc 13, Tsai 12, Adlai 11 - 56.9%. Gives some more mobility to everybody while putting Shu with Tsai and Viktor/Riou. Turn optimal so that all attacks are used within 3 turns, but most are within 2.

Luc 15, Tsai 10, Adlai 11 - 59.7%. Prays that Luc is successful in getting wind hits in. Odds are that one will get through, and one spear + adlai will finish it out. Only problem is that Luc is still not mobile, so he will have difficulty getting to Kiba in some instances.

Add on about 10% to any of the above if Jeane is involved, although that requires further reshuffling.

This also helps a bit for the Luca battle since I can just stack Adlai on Valeria and get a 75% chance to hit.

One last thing I need to check is whether Ridley keeps the same units from the prior mission in the Kiba mission. Probably a good thing to account for.

EDIT: Update on that last point - Ridley does NOT carry over units from the prior mission, he comes in completely fresh. This is unfortunate, since that means my highest atk is on Luc at 10 and then only two units with 8 under that (Riou & Viktor). Without Jeane I will be just under 60% for the best configuration, and with Jeane it still doesn't quite breach 70%. Jeane is an extra assurance, but I still need to calculate the total time associated with getting her. Also under consideration: Inf Potch glitching and blitzing Tai Ho and Yam Ku. Theoretically it's faster, but so much more unlikely in a run.

Omnigamer

2014-03-12 11:51:18 pm

All the things

Somebody mentioned this video in chat, and it is the only known video of a Japanese run of the game. It's about 17 minutes behind my time with equivalent timing, but I don't know the console, whether it was emulated, turbo, etc. so there are a lot of unknowns: http://www.twitch.tv/koppa__/c/3852030

I skimmed through and compared splits with my run's splits and a rough comparison is listed below, starting at Double Head. I tried to keep track of significant differences in routes, but as I was skimming a lot is missed. As best I can tell it follows mark's route pretty closely, but substitutes our Sindar Ruins strats (either by luck or design, I'm not sure). I'll probably re-check the early game prior to Sindar soon, but it doesn't look like it does anything we don't know about. On the other hand, it does give something to compare against as far as loading or otherwise goes. May need to investigate a little closer where the time changes by a minute or more, but I'll worry about it closer to when I'm ready to do runs again.

6-8 minutes behind after Double Head
4 at SD Sword - Goes back to South Window after
6.5 after Abom
6.5 after Shu
6.5 after NW Battle
6 after Amada - no recruiting in SW on way back, but goes after back at NW? gets zamza, Alex, Hilda, Adlai. Guess he just forgot.
10.5 after Pest Rat - fetches Ridley after
10 after Sturtheim
~10 after Theresa escape
12 mins behind after Refugee, gets Stallion, Jeane on the way. Really bad refugee battle that is played off somewhat by having Stallion
11.5 at Knights - made up a little from Stallion
12.5 at Kobolds battle - didn't skip cutscene in Radat
6.5 mins behind after Kiba - good fight, killed right after Ridley appears via Jeane crit @ ATK 9
8.5 after worm
9 after Luca War Battle - makes mistakes in party selection for Luca Battle? Sets up prople in Flik's group for Luca damage. Everybody with spells, 2k damage to end. Viktor alone. Riou on clean-up, Lightning spells for most of damage.
7.5 after Luca Duel - Not quite sure why this one picked up time. Maybe my Luca fight was bad?
6 after Muse conference
7 after Sierra
7 after Golem
8 after Neclord - no zombie skip
10 after Lucia Rd 2
11.5 after Bone Dragon
10 after Rockaxe Battle
9.5 after Gorudo
10 min after L'Ren Battle
10 min after Lucia Rd 3
13 min after Seed&Culgan
17 after Beast Rune

Somebody mentioned this video in chat, and it is the only known video of a Japanese run of the game. It's about 17 minutes behind my time with equivalent timing, but I don't know the console, whether it was emulated, turbo, etc. so there are a lot of unknowns: http://www.twitch.tv/koppa__/c/3852030

I skimmed through and compared splits with my run's splits and a rough comparison is listed below, starting at Double Head. I tried to keep track of significant differences in routes, but as I was skimming a lot is missed. As best I can tell it follows mark's route pretty closely, but substitutes our Sindar Ruins strats (either by luck or design, I'm not sure). I'll probably re-check the early game prior to Sindar soon, but it doesn't look like it does anything we don't know about. On the other hand, it does give something to compare against as far as loading or otherwise goes. May need to investigate a little closer where the time changes by a minute or more, but I'll worry about it closer to when I'm ready to do runs again.

6-8 minutes behind after Double Head
4 at SD Sword - Goes back to South Window after
6.5 after Abom
6.5 after Shu
6.5 after NW Battle
6 after Amada - no recruiting in SW on way back, but goes after back at NW? gets zamza, Alex, Hilda, Adlai. Guess he just forgot.
10.5 after Pest Rat - fetches Ridley after
10 after Sturtheim
~10 after Theresa escape
12 mins behind after Refugee, gets Stallion, Jeane on the way. Really bad refugee battle that is played off somewhat by having Stallion
11.5 at Knights - made up a little from Stallion
12.5 at Kobolds battle - didn't skip cutscene in Radat
6.5 mins behind after Kiba - good fight, killed right after Ridley appears via Jeane crit @ ATK 9
8.5 after worm
9 after Luca War Battle - makes mistakes in party selection for Luca Battle? Sets up prople in Flik's group for Luca damage. Everybody with spells, 2k damage to end. Viktor alone. Riou on clean-up, Lightning spells for most of damage.
7.5 after Luca Duel - Not quite sure why this one picked up time. Maybe my Luca fight was bad?
6 after Muse conference
7 after Sierra
7 after Golem
8 after Neclord - no zombie skip
10 after Lucia Rd 2
11.5 after Bone Dragon
10 after Rockaxe Battle
9.5 after Gorudo
10 min after L'Ren Battle
10 min after Lucia Rd 3
13 min after Seed&Culgan
17 after Beast Rune

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2014-03-20 08:34:58 am

Omnigamer: 2014-03-19 03:12:43 pm

2014-03-19 03:07:01 pm

All the things

Did some number crunching today to work out the range of levels that work for Luc using Blue Gate lvl 4 to trigger Violence on Nanami. Unfortunately it's a tradeoff between Luc's MAG growth and Nanami's MDEF and HP growth. The results are in the picture below, but the summary is that lvl 40 is the magic level where Pale World may or may not do enough damage to trigger Violence. This is just about right with where a regular party will be at Luca, but it means that I forego having Nanami at a super-high level by by this point. I looked into ways to lower Nanami's MDEF or raise Luc's MAG, but the items to do so are not available at that point in the game. On the other hand I could still get Nanami to 50+ and just hope that Luca does the remaining damage to trigger Violence, but more consistency would be nice. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's any way to have Luc be faster than Nanami or we could rework strategies to be 1-round instead of 2-round.

HOWEVER: This is also important to know should the route change to skip Double Beat. Instead of grabbing Double Beat, you could travel to Rockaxe early and grab Violence on the way to Kindness. This would be the power combo to annihilate the bosses until Koyu joins up and you can loot Double Beat from him.

About the graph: +1 etc indicate a level difference between Luc and Nanami. So Nanami+1 means that if Nanami is 40, Luc is 39. The Y scale is percentage of HP the attack will remove, so anything above .5 means Violence will trigger. This chart assumes average values, so there's still some luck at play.

EDIT: First chart had a bug, second in the following post because attachments don't work in Edit mode.

Did some number crunching today to work out the range of levels that work for Luc using Blue Gate lvl 4 to trigger Violence on Nanami. Unfortunately it's a tradeoff between Luc's MAG growth and Nanami's MDEF and HP growth. The results are in the picture below, but the summary is that lvl 40 is the magic level where Pale World may or may not do enough damage to trigger Violence. This is just about right with where a regular party will be at Luca, but it means that I forego having Nanami at a super-high level by by this point. I looked into ways to lower Nanami's MDEF or raise Luc's MAG, but the items to do so are not available at that point in the game. On the other hand I could still get Nanami to 50+ and just hope that Luca does the remaining damage to trigger Violence, but more consistency would be nice. Unfortunately it doesn't look like there's any way to have Luc be faster than Nanami or we could rework strategies to be 1-round instead of 2-round.

HOWEVER: This is also important to know should the route change to skip Double Beat. Instead of grabbing Double Beat, you could travel to Rockaxe early and grab Violence on the way to Kindness. This would be the power combo to annihilate the bosses until Koyu joins up and you can loot Double Beat from him.

About the graph: +1 etc indicate a level difference between Luc and Nanami. So Nanami+1 means that if Nanami is 40, Luc is 39. The Y scale is percentage of HP the attack will remove, so anything above .5 means Violence will trigger. This chart assumes average values, so there's still some luck at play.

EDIT: First chart had a bug, second in the following post because attachments don't work in Edit mode.

Omnigamer

2014-03-20 08:37:03 am

All the things

Updated chart below. First one didn't take HP differences into account for level differences, so now the level impact is a little wider.

Attachment:

nanami.PNG

Omnigamer

Edit history:

Omnigamer: 2014-03-28 11:51:52 pm

2014-03-28 11:50:02 pm

All the things

Ignore my war ability analysis several posts up. I spent the evening digging through the game's code to unravel the mysteries.

Fire Spear - 50% chance per target.
Adlai - 50% for all targets.
Luc - 30% chance to hit.
Jeane - 2 30% chances to hit. This is why it will occasionally "crit".

All of them ignore attack and defense values and work purely off of the RNG. For whatever reason, Fire Spear hits on values 51-100, but Adlai hits on 1-50. If you want to be really technical, Fire Spear has a very slight advantage in that all 0s (1/65536 chance) will also trigger a hit. Luc and Jeane both trigger on 1-30.

I did not test out critical hits or bombard in great detail. My guess is that Bombard just acts as a regular attack with extra range. Critical hits probably work similar to Jeane, in that you have a chance to hit twice. If you happen to hit both times, it will just give the critical hit message. However, this means that it could also double up your chances... I don't know. At the very least there wasn't a clear constant in the code like for the spells above.

What this means for the run is that I don't really have a way to buff my chances against Kiba (or Luca). Without Jeane, I have a 48.75% chance to get all 3 hits on him if I include two Bombards. With Jeane this chance rises to about 66%, but at the cost of several minutes worth of recruitment. So at this point my plan is to go Jeane-less and just pray that the RNG is kind. The savings from a fast Kiba fight is around 6 minutes. The cost to recruit enough characters for Castle level 2 before Kiba is around 3 minutes. So it's not yet out of the question, but I have to time things out better one way or another.

Ignore my war ability analysis several posts up. I spent the evening digging through the game's code to unravel the mysteries.

Fire Spear - 50% chance per target.
Adlai - 50% for all targets.
Luc - 30% chance to hit.
Jeane - 2 30% chances to hit. This is why it will occasionally "crit".

All of them ignore attack and defense values and work purely off of the RNG. For whatever reason, Fire Spear hits on values 51-100, but Adlai hits on 1-50. If you want to be really technical, Fire Spear has a very slight advantage in that all 0s (1/65536 chance) will also trigger a hit. Luc and Jeane both trigger on 1-30.

I did not test out critical hits or bombard in great detail. My guess is that Bombard just acts as a regular attack with extra range. Critical hits probably work similar to Jeane, in that you have a chance to hit twice. If you happen to hit both times, it will just give the critical hit message. However, this means that it could also double up your chances... I don't know. At the very least there wasn't a clear constant in the code like for the spells above.

What this means for the run is that I don't really have a way to buff my chances against Kiba (or Luca). Without Jeane, I have a 48.75% chance to get all 3 hits on him if I include two Bombards. With Jeane this chance rises to about 66%, but at the cost of several minutes worth of recruitment. So at this point my plan is to go Jeane-less and just pray that the RNG is kind. The savings from a fast Kiba fight is around 6 minutes. The cost to recruit enough characters for Castle level 2 before Kiba is around 3 minutes. So it's not yet out of the question, but I have to time things out better one way or another.

Vaslof

2014-03-31 09:06:37 am

Hey, good to see this run still being improved. Did anyone ever try Riou as kindness rune bearer with modern strats? Farm deaths at sindar or highland camp forest while he's at 1 HP anyway.

Omnigamer

2014-03-31 03:06:16 pm

All the things

Riou's Kindness value is incapable of dropping, so he's the only one that can't take Kindness at all. Otherwise he'd be a good fit.

I'm still toying with a lot of ideas that might save small amounts of time. 6:15ish is possible with plenty of cleaning and practice, but we'll see how much we need to commit the run to luck.