![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Beyond the Beyond: Update 114: Bonus material, pt. 6
Welcome back to the long-running post game extra content. We're moving right along to our next highlight.
So here we've got Finn, Annie, Percy, and Domino. Their target, having chosen to accept this mission, lies deep within the Water Shrine. I skipped Edward and Samson because I need Domino for this. Our quartet has been promoted so they've got some levels under their belts. They will need the stats.
As first seen back in Update 35 entering this part of the water shrine reveals Domino lying on the ground in front of a pool of water. Presumably he tried to take the Vase of Life and the Water Demon wrecked him. Samson and Edward poof into the scene but not into the actual roster.
After some talk the boss battle begins. This is why I went to the trouble of promoting these four. The Water Demon doesn't really stand a chance against them now.
They took an Ice 2 and kept on attacking just to get the fight over with as quickly as possible. I didn't bother to heal since they had plenty of LP to just tank their way through Ice 2 spam. If a battle is short then the enemy doesn't get much of a chance to pile on more damage.
Bosses in Beyond the Beyond give a pathetic pittance in experience and gold when defeated. The real reward? The event flag, of course! Just don't expect to replace any supplies used during the battle.
Immediately after the battle Domino remembered he was supposed to be lying on the ground and returned to his spot. That or it's his stunt double. The Water Demon didn't object what with being in the process of dying.
Then the game tried to reform the party and got a little glitchy. Samson and Edward didn't move since, not actually being part of the party, the game suddenly found itself unable to remove them from the screen. Annie's sprite is just barely visible stacked under Finn in the screenshot above but Domino (or his stunt double) decided that rather than standing up he was just going to slide along the floor. Oh, let's say he's using his Wind magic... just to mess with Samson.
Once he reached Finn he and Annie's sprites were unloaded.
Note that at no time does Percy appear. It's normally impossible for him to be in this scene so the game isn't programmed to load his sprites. He's still technically in the team throughout all of this. He just has no lines and does nothing of any interest.
Samson and Edward cannot be interacted with in this state. They're just sort of dummy objects still present only because of a logic loophole.
I walked around a little bit searching things. The Vase of Life just brought up the message "The vase emanates a mysterious glow. It is full of water." A few more steps triggered a random battle since I seem to always forget that the game doesn't disable random encounters in this part of the shrine.
That would be rather embarrassing - barely defeating the Water Demon only to take five steps and get wiped out by what would otherwise be a forgettable group of wandering enemies.
That unfortunate Ice Warrior had no idea what it was getting itself into.
That random event was fortuitous. As the battle ended the game had to reload the dungeon around Finn and company. That made it remove the two dummy characters and place Domino on the ground where he was supposed to be. The scene cannot progress until Finn tries to talk to Domino and if Domino isn't where he's supposed to be he can't be talked to.
In theory I could have just gone downstairs but that means having to deal with an auto-follow statue.
So of course Samson and Edward immediately poofed back into existence once Finn interacted with Domino... or Domino's stunt double since he suddenly doesn't know who Finn and Annie are.
Domino has nothing new to say and there weren't any visible glitches so here's a screenshot of our resident Captain running off.
Don't worry. He was only kidding. Domino's still in the party.
Finn! Unless you take the flask you can't retrieve the Spirit Water!
Here's something I forget to check in the first act. I never thought to even attempt to place the Flask that Sir Galahad gives Finn in the item box in the basement. I'm so used to games not allowing key/essential items out of a player's inventory it simply never occurred to me. Beyond the Beyond doesn't work that way - as evidence I present shoving Ancient Tablets and the Statue of Gaea into the box to free up inventory space. Key items cannot be discarded but the storage box isn't technically discarding.
Trying to leave the house without the Flask prompts Steiner to stop Finn, display the dialogue transcribed above, then force the party one step north.
Okay, okay game I'll go back downstairs and retrieve the single water container in all of Isla! I get it. Some games would handle this purely via event flags. Text would reference an item but no actual change in inventory would occur. Beyond the Beyond instead went with using an item.
Alright time for another test. This one was actually prompted by that little fiasco of Samson being permadead that I ran into on previous tests. The only way to get to the bottom of it is to go back... back in time.
When he first appears Samson is level 15. As anyone with any familiarity with the game should know he gets cursed down to level 1 and spends the first third of the plot in that cursed state. As I've already demonstrated the game has a script it calls when that curse is finally broken to restore him to level 15 should he be at a lower level. After getting a level 0 Samson I started to suspect the game wasn't running a "boost to level 15 if level is lower than 15" script but in fact storing the level Samson has when he's cursed and running the check against that.
There's no way for Samson to get a level in between his join point and when he's cursed so I used an item code to generate an endless supply of Sources of Courage.
Level 30 was a nice round number so that's where I stopped.
Then I spawned the Prison Key. I wanted to keep as close to script as possible regarding every event that can affect Samson's level in this part of the game so I made sure to release Edward, have Ramue curse Samson, split up with Samson and Edward in the tunnel, then run over to the Border Church to get the pair back. After that is was off to Arawn's Tower. I skipped the battle with the guards just to save time.
And lo and behold Samson's back to level 30. I didn't even notice at the time that his stats were exactly the same.
I re-ran the test a couple more times from a savestate made in the Tower of Arawn including using stat boosters to see if the boosts would be preserved. Check out that 13 MP! They weren't preserved. Samson was set back to level 30 with the exact same stats he had when he was cursed. At this point it was clear to me that the game was loading a full set of values and overwriting all of his stats.
Bad news for any player who reaches the cleansing ritual with a Samson below level 15 who they've given stat boosters to. Those one-use items will be wasted!
There's also a second issue with this. There are two points in the game where it will generate Samson's stats for the first time. Obviously the one that players run into most of the time is in the prison but, as I did show long ago, skipping that block of events and going to the Border Church will generate a level 1 Samson who isn't cursed. This has the downside of skipping the script that stores Samson's stats. I tested and running the Tower of Arawn in this state will result in a level 0 Samson. Bummer.
Over in the Abyss I had a look around out of bounds. Here's the central shaft connecting the north and south sides. Like the exterior of the Tower of Arawn it has a spooling effect but this map has no hidden extras once fully unspooled. Finn up above has reached the edge of the map. The door above him cannot be entered and is just a useless bit of scenery.
There are in fact seven floors to this shaft but only floors two through six have doors. Floors one and seven are only part of the map in order to give a sense of immense scale to this part of the Abyss - that is, to give the illusion that it goes up and down further than it really does. Below the bottom floor is just darkness. There's nothing of interest.
Here we have a reference screenshot to provide a bit of context for what is to follow. This is the room with the angel and devil statues at the top of the Abyss. Having taken both orbs down to the bottom both statues are empty-handed.
Directly to the north are partial copies of both statues with orbs in their hands.
Just over to the east however are another two partial copies of the statues: with and without orbs. I can understand having one copy on hand for block-copy commands but two? Oh well. They're still nifty looking.
Up in the entrance chamber there are some things hidden off in the darkness. Up near the eastern corner are the lasers needed for the door unsealing scene. These are fully animated in game.
To the south is a bit of floor and what looks like a tiny bit of wall. The real find are the four frames of the door opening. I'm not quite sure what the symbols on the closed door are supposed to be. There's what looks like a crescent but the rest is unclear.
In the lower left corner is another patch of floor and a bit of wall. I have no idea why. It seems to have no function and part of the floor is flagged as impassable. I also must add that if I walked off the top, left, or right sides of this area and got into a random encounter I wouldn't get a warp glitch. Instead upon exiting the battle the game would get confused and go into a soft lock. If I walked off screen far enough to the south and got a random encounter the team would get warped to the room beyond this entryway which has the stairs down.
The caveat was that if I didn't go far enough I'd get dumped back in this area but a bug would be tripped causing no further random encounters (or perhaps just the step counter so messed up it would take a huge number of steps to get another) until I returned to the overworld. Then I could re-enter the Abyss and whatever values were messed up would be restored.
In the bottom of the Abyss I walked around and found nothing out of bounds. It isn't even a large area. I did have Finn sneak up behind Shutat and poke him in the back but our resident horned Vicious One didn't react. Oh and I suppose I should mention that Finn cannot speak to or interact with Shutat or Ramue. Not much of a surprise there.
Just a couple steps south and the game grabbed Finn to initiate the cutscene with Shutat and Ramue. Silly game! How am I supposed to crack a bunch of jokes about the party talking to people they can't even see when Finn's actually positioned in a good spot for this dialogue? Oh, yeah, that's right. Finn's a silent protagonist and has nothing to say. The lines go to Annie who's still downstairs. The absurdity of it all is spared.
Oh and when the question pops up the game moves the camera over to where Finn's supposed to be standing. I like to think Shutat's figured out that Finn never has anything to say and has moved on to tempting the rest of the party.
In the upper right corner of the last room before the void between the worlds is another copy of the orb statues and the frames needed for the door opening animation.
Over in Leaf Village there are door frames and cauldrons out in the darkness beyond the forest canopy. Two of the cauldrons are fully animated.
Those same items are also over in the out of bounds zone of Jonowan Village. In addition the two frames of the monument activated by the Statue of Gaea are also waiting for a block-copy command to put them to work.
Let's Enter the Weirdness Zone
The next item on my list is something I stumbled on entirely by accident. I opted for a different screenshot format for this one because it involves random encounters and the specific spots on the overworld where said random battles were triggered. In the upper left corner is where Finn and crew were on the overworld. This team is actually not my end game crew. Instead I loaded up a save at the Shrine of Discipline. This predates raising the Flying Palace.
Okay, that explanation out of the way the team parks Steiner in Marion Kingdom and uses the walk-through-walls code to enter the valley holding the Dragon Shrine. It is there that they encounter an Ekidona and a Hippogriff.
Back across the mountains via walk-through-walls the team encounters a Mirage Dragon and a Lich. Wait a minute. This is in Marion Kingdom! In fact the Mirage Dragon is a giveaway that this is an encounter most commonly seen around Zeal Village.
I dispatch those monsters and continue walking up and down hugging the mountains. Up pops a trio of Green Dragons.
Inside the Dragon Shrine is a dragon who claims to be Steiner talking about being shot. The party is thoroughly confused because they clearly recall leaving Steiner safe and sound in Marion. (Really this is just for reference to mark where this party is in the game's plot.)
A reset later and I'm back to the loading screen to choose a save. I pick that 55 minute file in Marion Town.
The party leaves Marion Town and heads east to the mountains. There they encounter slimes. Even though these are weak enemies the team is so low level that they actually have some trouble dispatching them.
A quick walk-through-walls jaunt across the mountains and the team finds more slimes in the woods surrounding the Dragon Shrine. There are also nefarious fiends like Tumble Rabbits wandering about.
Another quick walk-through-walls jaunt east and the team is on the western border of Zalagoon. There be Amazons and the team needed cheating to help them win in a timely manner.
Back in the Dragon Shrine the kids find a huge golden dragon muttering about being shot. He claims to be Steiner but with the little dragon fluttering about behind Finn the kids say nothing and hope the big dragon doesn't kill them. It flies off to take up a spot by Isla Village. The kids won't be taking advantage of that though. Just keep in mind that the Dragon Shrine's default state is the wounded Steiner ready to get back to work. That's why there are invisible walls preventing Steiner from reaching this shrine - to keep the plot on the rails.
As soon as the kids return to the forest they are ambushed by a Minataur Lord and a Green Dragon. Good thing they have heinous cheating to save their butts or this would be a party wipe!
The next random encounter is a mama Green Dragon and a Young Dragon still learning the ropes.
Once again the kids walk-through-walls their way across the mountain range. Their hopes of escaping the monster horde that has suddenly materialized are immediately shattered.
DRAGONS HAVE INVADED MARION! WHAT APOCALYPSE HAVE WE UNLEASHED?!
So what in the world is going on? Well the game makes a silent swap of an encounter zone on the overworld due to event flags. This encounter zone pokes into Marion just a tiny bit. At the beginning of the game it is exactly the same as the random encounters in Marion. Sometime around the Trial of Discipline (and subsequent event flags) the flip is made. This could be useful for grinding experience. As I mentioned earlier the Mirage Dragon is usually seen around Zeal Village and that isn't accessible until after the Flying Palace is raised. It's a toss-up whether this or heading north from Leaf Village make for a better experience grind in the mid game but regardless there's no getting completely away from Void. Necromancers and Liches can cast it. Extracting one's self from this spot is far easier though since the actual danger zone is tiny and borders one with the weakest monsters in the game.
Next time on Beyond the Beyond - the last bits of weirdness to dig out of this game.
