according to your psiv website, that would only give him TWO crosscuts...
Here's my on-the-fly math:
Sa-Lews is 35000 exp, which is 8750 per person if all four survive.
Chaz current has ~350 experience, I think?
The Sa-Lews fight would bump him to level 11. You're right, that's only two uses of Crosscut. It's also ten points of strength. It might still be worthwhile, but I guess I exaggerated.
janus wrote:
thanks for the saner trick, I should save one round. does it work for other stats? with shift, shadowblade chaz can to 120 damage
Shift should also only need to be used once, and that would go for Elsydeon or Shadwblade. Death doesn't cause the attack stat to reset to its base value. Could be a good investment!
Looks great, and the end really shows the power of level 4 Chaz. However, two major things stick out at me after one viewing:
1) Rika uses Saner during the final form of PD, but you had already used it against one of the first forms. It doesn't do anything because the party's agility is already boosted. Dying doesn't make Saner go away. You'll see this if you use my lua script.
2) If Chaz is going to be physically attacking with Elsydeon, which is definitely the best plan with Demi, then it makes sense to have him survive Sa-Lews and gain a few Crosscuts. That will make ~130-points-per-use difference in damage. As a bonus, Crosscut can't miss.
For Profound darkness : I think I need to keep chaz dead. after the courage tower, Rune gets nafoi AND is less than 9k EP from getting nawat. However, without ataraxia, his magic is going to be limited. Should I still get the malay dagger? Should I fight monsters inside elsydeon cave? Chaz will be soooo slow
I think if you're using Raja, the Mahlay Dagger will be worthwhile (for Chaz or for Raja). I also think this has potential to be way faster, if Chaz can use Tsu 9-15 times depending on Ataraxia, and with Rune having Nafoi or Nawat. The average damage difference between Nafoi and Nawat is only 8 points (unless an enemy is weak or one or the other) so I wouldn't worry about that.
Fighting enemies in the Elysdeon cave is more relevant if Chaz is going to stay alive and use Elsydeon - obviously if he gains any levels his 255 mental goes away. That strategy seems better suited to Demi, who can revive people faster. You may want to level a little if you do it this way so Rune can get Nafoi (at a minimum) and it won't hurt Chaz's damage either. This way you either have to take time to level or forego Nafoi, and (without actually running a test) it seems like that will be slower to me.
I think I had a dream last night where you and I were talking about this. Strange.
I will try and finish the game first. then, I think i will (finally) opt for Demi and get the repair-kit from kuran. finally, I will go for the plasma-sword, more accessible AND not get the napalm shot, unless it does awesone damage to PD
Plsm-Sword might be a good idea if only for De-Vars. You basically need a factor 2 weapon, and it's certainly the closest option; the only other ones are Lasr-Sword, Laco-Sword and Guardsword, and the first two of those definitely won't help.
Napalm-Shot will do better damage than Wren's base weapon against PD, but not a huge amount - it is kind of out-of-the-way, so skipping it seems pretty reasonable. The only reasons to get it are Lashiec, or if Wren runs out of Flare a lot.
If you're going to use Demi at the end of the game, you won't have Ataraxia, so using Elsydeon will probably be faster than using Shadwblade (with only 3 Tsu). That means Chaz can gain experience freely from De-Vars and Sa-Lews, which might help. He'll gain some Crosscuts, at least.
To respond to Solon, I still doubt fighting other battles to level up will be worthwhile. Suppose Chaz gained 20 levels, even in a really good case that is only going to make a 30-damage-per-turn difference, and those are turns where he's not healing or using an item.
But, again, I could totally see an exception to this if a major tech or skill was within reach for any character.
However, I fully understand that this is probably slower since Lashiec only uses Reinforce when he's already quite weak.
no again. I gained frames at every fight including lashiec
Sorry, I meant the concept of reviving Chaz only once was the slower option. I think your Lashiec fight was quite well done and clearly faster than the previous movie.
The reason I thought you could keep Chaz alive for three turns was because he had three turns that went like this: Possession, Reinforce, Possession. He didn't use Thndhalbrt for three turns because he uses Reinforce once he hits 1/4 HP or so. But like I said, I imagine it would still be slower to do this because Lashiec is almost dead when he uses Reinforce.
I like how you managed the Lashiec fight and got Chaz to use his three shots of Tsu. But it does involve him being brought back to life with Rever twice. Since Chaz was able to be alive during a Posession turn, his Reinforce turn, and another Posession turn, that makes me think that it's possible to only revive Chaz once.
However, I fully understand that this is probably slower since Lashiec only uses Reinforce when he's already quite weak. Good job on those last few fights! The planning seems well done.
I guess the Eclpstorch didn't help at all for DF2, but it doesn't seem like you really needed it for damage.
Napalm Shot should mean slightly higher damage to everything except De-Vars. You don't want to use Flare against De-Vars so you'll probably want another weapon for Wren during that fight.
Against Lashiec, Wren's normal attack with Napalm Shot will be stronger than Flare.
I could see Blue and Lute both being published. The other ones would take a lot longer and we would also start to see a lot of overlap between the different stories. A full run would be (A) ridiculously long and (B) um, pretty awful.
For now, I'd say to judge this one for what it is. It completes the game using one of seven possible characters.
If the Blue run is submitted then we can talk about whether it should be rejected, obsolete the current run, or be published beside it based on their respective merits.
I missed Solon's question. Prophallus is immune to all forms of status/instant death except the element shared by Explode, Crash and Negatis. He's partly resistant to that element and he has really high stats, so it may be statistically impossible for that to work. Not enough known about status effect calculations at this time.
But yes, that would be pretty awesome.
Keep in mind that in the current run, Chaz is dead for the entire Lashiec fight. The fight will probably be about the same speed regardless. Actually, with this new strategy, the whole party will have slightly higher levels so it will probably be at least a little bit faster.
Personally, I think janus is right and that any intentional levelling is going to be slower. He's done an awesome job with the in-battle manipulation and I think you'd need a few big fights to make any significant difference.
However, if he DID want to level the party in general, or even just Chaz, the best plan would be to kill the Phantoms in the Elsydeon cave while Chaz is alone. They're 1000 exp a pop, they die to a single attack, and because Chaz is alone every single other character also gains 1000 exp.
Lifedeletrs are worth a lot more (10000) but that'll be divided among survivors, they're harder to kill, and they're really far out of the way.
Levelling could maybe be worthwhile if someone is really close to learning a big ability, like Rune learning Nafoi or something.
That is awesome that you don't need dimates. This run is going to be pretty radically different from the current one!
As you suspect, Hahn, Gryz, Demi, Raja and Kyra will rejoin at higher levels if Chaz is dead. Anyone you have already met who is outside your party basically gains experience equal to the amount gained by the surviving members of the party. I'd guess the endgame partners will have roughly the same amount of addtional levels as Rune has (compared to your previous run).
You can get the ram offsets for everyone's experience from that lua script. Basically Chaz's experience is 00FFF50A through 00FFF50D (4 bytes), Alys' is 00FFF58A through 00FFF58D, Hahn's is 00FFF60A through 00FFF60D, and you keep adding 80 to go through each character. You could set up a ram watch for this if it becomes important.
The rest of this post is endgame stuff:
Only Hahn can equip the Mahlaydggr, but anyone can use it for an itemcast. Laco-Rod and Eclpstorch do useful holy damage but their base power is pretty low. Laco-Rod will only do maybe ~48 damage to a vulnerable enemy, and Eclpstorch marginally more at ~72. You lose the Eclpstorch automatically when you get the Hydrofoil but it might be useful for DF2.
Mahlaydggr's itemcast is something like ~160 damage to the endboss. Chaz can do more than that with the Elsydeon and a regular attack, even at level 4... but he loses his 255 mental Tsu thing without the Shadwblade. Of course if you were planning to use Chaz with the Elsydeon at the end of the game you might as well let him survive De-Vars and/or Sa-Lews and collect some exp. He should be able to gain a few Crosscuts from just that one battle.
Strategy 1 - Elsydeon: ~200 damage per turn, maybe a few crosscuts for ~360 each (these numbers will be higher if Chaz gains some levels)
Strategy 2 - Shadwblade: ~450 damage per turn for three turns (times at least three if Ataraxia is used), followed by ~160 damage per turn if Mahlaydggr is available
I'm not sure which is better right now. The second strategy will do more damage faster, but you need to unequip Shadwblade when you collect Elsydeon, you need to get the Mahlaydggr, and reviving after Megid will be slower. Demi might work better with the first strategy.
Pretty awesome so far. Gy-Laguiah looked especially good (and really fast). Juza, a bit less so. Rika even missed with an attack - not sure if that cost any time or not, of course, it just looks weird.
I guess you'll probably be doing that part again anyway because you need fewer dimates.
Two questions:
1) Are you sure it's faster to get that Wave-Shot? It seems like it's probably a good idea based on how much Demi contributes in the fight, I was actually more suspicious about the Wave-Shot in the previous run than this one, but just wondering if you tried it both ways.
2) Do you need dimates at all? Suppose instead of three dimates, you have Gryz take a hit and die, Chaz take a hit and die, Rune take a hit and live, Rika take a hit and live, Demi use Medic Pw, Gryz take a hit and die again, and maybe have Rika use Res once or twice to get Rune able to take one more hit. It could skip the trip and maybe be faster due to fewer healing actions (although Medic Pw takes a little longer to animate than dimate).
4000 frames already? I was expecting the time saved against Juza to be maybe breaking even!
You'll definitely need fewer dimates, but I'm not sure how many fewer.
I also think Genesis Phantasy Star IV (USA) by janus in 1:35:58.8 ought to get a shot at this one. The luck manipulation wasn't perfect or approached mathematically like Shining Force has been in the past, but it avoids all encounters and beats enemies at ridiculously low levels.
EDIT: Heh, I forgot there was a Shining Force update this year too. Seems weird for same author/same game from a previous year to be in this, but it's definitely lucky! Genesis Shining Force (USA) by DarkKobold in 1:59:59.05.
Unfortunately I don't know the specifics there. The enemy item drop stuff is just sort of being looked at the for the first time recently (and I myself haven't done anything with it yet).
As far as I know whether there's a drop could even be determined at the start of the battle.
I made a little proof-of-concept video for level 4 Chaz with Shadwblade. It uses a hacked savestate. You can see it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LHCvs8Q_0I
It looks like it will work nicely. I actually thought this was going to run into complications when I saw that Chaz's reduced mental makes his hidden magic defense stat roll over backwards to 65534... I was worried it would make bosses unable to kill him. Oddly it didn't seem to affect the damage he took from techs - I guess that value is signed. I tested this against Juza.
In concept, this Shadwblade idea will work. It's still hard to say whether it will save any time in total (due to slower fights near endgame), but it seems probable.
I'll be uploading another video shortly that's just sort of a demo of the Lua script mentioned above as well.
I made a Lua script today (my first!) for this game. It's probably pretty badly coded, but at least it looks nice.
I put it here:
http://en.pastebin.ca/1733426
With some screenshots available here for the mildly curious:
http://img96.imageshack.us/img96/8058/phantasystar4theendofth.pnghttp://img121.imageshack.us/img121/8058/phantasystar4theendofth.pnghttp://img189.imageshack.us/img189/8058/phantasystar4theendofth.png
I'd upload them to a better spot but unfortunately I'm not able at the moment.
Basically, when capslock is active it displays a big GUI with a lot more information than the game typically provides, including current/max HP and TP, and in-battle/equipped/base attack, defense, magic defense, strength, mental and agility. It's designed to match the game's in-battle GUI but it can also be used outside of battle. It could be somewhat useful for quick reference while TASing, and also just nice in general.
It only includes information about your party right now, seems like it would be more useful if the enemy stats were included. I'll probably add to it later.
Suggestions/feedback welcome.
EDIT: Youtube video demo of the Lua thingie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTzsYigByrs
No, that's not true. All stat gains are completely fixed, but there's erratic behavior that occurs at level 99.
The level 99 bug is not because of a rollover bug, but (presumably) because the character stat tables aren't bounded somehow. When, for example, Chaz reaches level 99, if his experience is higher than his requirement for level 99 but below Alys' requirement for level 99, he will copy Alys' level 98 stats, including having only 3 skills available.
Interestingly this has been fixed on the Wii's VC port with a very small patch included with the ROM file.
There's a full chart of all character stats at every level available at http://www.wrftpb.com/psiv/ .
If this track doesn't get you guys excited about this TAS, nothing will.
I'll say! That was pretty crazy, I liked what happened at the end. I guess we'll be seeing a lot of that in the TAS.
I watched Switcher and Monster today, both were great.
