Phantasy Star 4 Rika Solo - Dark Force 3 & Beyond

[ladyabaxa]

So, this is it. Rika has to defeat the final incarnation of Dark Force and press onward to finish the game. It's not going to be easy for her!

After clearing the Garuberk Tower I returned to Meese and bought 5 Sol-Dews, as many as Rika could afford, then headed to Gumbious, listened to the High Priest for the necessary event flag, then returned to Motavia. Since DF3 comes right on its predecessor's heels its only marginally stronger and I decided to try the fight with my remaining stock of Trimates. When I arrived on Motavia I headed to Krup, saved, then went straight to the Soldier's Temple.

I then ran 1 fight against DF3 just to see how bad the debuffs were. Rika didn't get far before being put to sleep by Mind Blast, then Shadow Bound, then killed by 2 shots of Corrosion while still sleeping. This wasn't unexpected, however, so I then went to Termi to pick up a suit of Psy Mail. This gear setup worked after several attempts but the loss of defense by swapping to the Psy Mail hurt pretty bad as any two back-to-back rounds of Corrosion could be lethal if Rika couldn't heal in between.

The following is a very technical and math-oriented part of the post. Feel free to just skip this if you're not interested in the number crunching.

Corrsion      4D  2835CC  01  02  09  40  07  01  00  00
-deals damage, modifier is Mental, hits all player characters, base power of 64, checks against magic damage, factor 1 physical attack

The following damage formula isn't from disassembling the game but is accurate enough to get started with. (source)

A) Damage done by magic attacks: the average damage inflicted on an enemy by magic Y can be predicted by

damage= [(Y-base + 1/2 caster's ib mtl) * enemys Y-factor] - enemys ib mdfs

However, it seems Ceuthonymus made an error when trying to parse out Corrosion's damage. Zie states "corrosion has a base value of 72, and uses dfs in place of mdfs in the above formula."

Y-base in this instance is the spell or ability's base power. For Corrosion this is listed as 64 in the game code (which I checked for myself). Here's part of Dark Force's 3's stats - the stuff that's important for this post. Rika currently has 55 mental in base + item bonuses, plus 22 magic defense from her gear.

DF3 282F7C  20  30  01  00  41  AC  28  D5  01  2B  23  19
-Mental of 172 important stat here

So (64 + [172/2] * 2) - (22 + 55)  = 221

However I played around with my savestate from before the DF3 fight and the damage popping up was consistently in the 150 - 180 range with her standard gear setup. This is still quite dangerous when you've only got 330ish hit points max! This damage would be reduced by Demi's Barrier and also by using the defend command. (Defending sets the character's factor 1 resistance to 01 for that round.) Instead, let's move the defense reduction part of the equation.

(64 + [172/2] - 77) * 2 = 146 which is much closer to what I've seen in my tests and would be a reasonable assumption for the damage floor.

 

Corrosion, however, is only half the danger. DF3 also uses physical attacks and will always critical them but unless he rolls exceptionally well the damage will be in the 90 - 120 range per hit with Deban up. That is, quite honestly, pretty small potatoes and well within acceptable limits. The big threat is the same thing Lashiec and DF2 could do: sleep. However, DF3's Mind Blast ability is a factor 11 attack and all the Psy gear provides resistance to that factor.

Mindblst      51  2835EC  07  02  09  A0  02  0B  00  00
-inflicts sleep status, modified by mental, targets all player characters, has a power of 160, checks against the target's mental attribute, factor 11 ability

(160 + 172 - 55) = 277 * 2 (if applicable) = 554 using the modified formula stated above instead this is (160 + [172/2] - 55) = 191 * 2 (if applicable) = 382

Oddly, however, with F11 gear this was regularly resisted. Is it falling prey to rollover? Using the first formula, before subtracting defense comes up with 332. If this is stored in one byte it will roll over so 332 - 255 = 77 after said rollover and subtract Rika's mental of 55 and you get only 22. That would mean it only works 1 out of every 5 attempts which is about right in my experience. Aargh! Without some hard formulas all I can do is make an educated guess. If this is true than the base power of Mind Blast was likely set so high specifically to get the rollover effect.

Suffice it to say that status effects continue to be a pain the butt to deduce from what I see happening in game.

Mind Blast, like all sleep effects, resets Agility when it lands. Combined with Shadow Bind, that made for a tense fight. I was hoping to block Shadow Bind at least part of the time but that didn't work. Every time DF3 used it, it worked without fail.

Shadowbind    4B  2835BC  06  02  09  40  02  0B  00  00
-reduces Agility, modifier is user's Mental stat, targets all player characters
-base power of 64, checks against the defender's Mental stat, factor 11 ability

64 + 172 = 234 - 55 = 179

Even without the multiplier the result is more than 100 and is less than 255 so isn't subject to rollover speculation. In order to have any chance of resisting this ability the defender must have an over-capped mental of 137+ (Barrier is useless here because it doesn't check magic defense) or be an android with their factor 11 resistance of 00. An interesting fact along those lines, if an android piece of gear had F11 resistance it would actually make the android vulnerable. The way resistance is applied via gear is that there are 2 bytes in the character data. The first is the character's permanent resistance - generated at the beginning of the game. The second is their current resistance. Rather than adding or subtracting using the permanent stat whenever something is equipped the game reads the resistance byte in the piece of equipment's stat array, does some math if it finds a value, and sets the address it ends up at to 01.

Okay END OF TECHNICAL STUFF! Onward to the actual battle and pretty screenshots!

Anyone who watched the video already knows I challenged and beat DF3 with 2 different gear setups: the hard way, swapping out the Reflect Mail for Psy Mail and the easy way by swapping out the Genocyclaw for a Psy Shield. Rika's pretty flexible in her gear choice for this. She could also equip a Psy Crown for F11 resistance. The shield route, however, maximizes defense and is thus the better choice overall.

Since Shadow Bind was always going to work  I would just have to grin and bear the speed hit. Loss of Agility has no effect on critical hit rate - controlled by Dexterity - but having the turn order flipped forced me to fight defensively. The base question was still the same: How do I survive until the next turn? Unable to react immediately to DF3's high damage rolls I fell into a pattern of Attack - Nares/Trimate - Attack trying to anticipate when the big damage hits were incoming. With my risky 1st setup this didn't always work. Rika could take a 190 Corrosion hit, Double Slash, then die in the next round before she could cast Nares.

Mind Blast was always a big danger but if it landed and immediately broke Rika would be restored to her original Agility (just another reason not to bother with Saner in this fight). After several attempts I did beat DF3 using the Psy Mail. Then I reset and went back to Termi for a Psy Shield instead. This setup, of course, worked immediately.

And down goes another hurdle! Goodbye Dark Force. You were a worthy foe while you lasted. You certainly threw me into plenty of fits trying to understand what you're doing under the hood.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIIm2EUBIBI

With that settled it was off to Rykros to face two pesky tower guardians. Rika didn't have much trouble with either of them so let's skip to the video of the fight.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tAlPtjdFWU

I also put together a failure reel for DFs 2 & 3 since I tend to be one of those "show your work" players when doing challenges. I expected to die more than what I ended up with. Maybe after 3 times through the game I've got a good handle on these two bosses?

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJC7PVkeEqY

That just left the final boss and here's I'm just going to paste all the stuff I wrote for the video.

So... Rika still had that pesky final boss to solo kill which I put off for quite awhile because it involved grinding. After many short sessions of running amuck in Vahal Fort Rika was level 90 where planning and test fights against PD1 tempted me to try actually winning. It only took three serious attempts since opting for Deban rather then Shift against PD3 worked better then I expected.

PD3 does have a base attack power of 352 so those energy bolt thingees hurt!

Also...

SOLO CHARACTER ENDGAME PREPARATION IN EASY TO FOLLOW STEPS

1.) Do the Silver Soldier job while it is available. Vahal Fort can only be opened by doing that job and it is the best place for high level grinding. All the non-robotic characters WILL need Sol-Dews - a full inventory of expensive Sol-Dews. The Vahal Fort enemies provide lots of XP and meseta. Except the Vopalspheres. Just run from those.

2.) Grind until your character stands a chance against the Profound Darkness's first form. Yes, the first form. It has Shadow Breath which is the hardest hitting attack in the game. Sure, Megid does more overall but not to a single target. If you can't handle Shadow Breath you don't have a chance of ever seeing Megid anyway. It deals magic damage so you want your magic defense (that's Mental + the magic defense bonuses of your gear + Barrier if you can use Barrier) to be as high as you can get it. You have to be able to take the brunt of Shadow Breath + at least one other attack otherwise you'll spend too much time healing and burn your resources too quickly.

3.) Acquire the ocean of Sol-Dews or Repair Kits you will require to keep yourself alive in what will be a long fight. Don't count on Nares/Recover to keep you sufficiently healed. It can help but it is not a replacement for Sol-Dews/Repair Kits.

4.) The Mahlay Shield can cast Deban. It is a weak version of Deban compared to what Rika and Raja can do but it can help on PD2 and PD3. Just remember your buffs will be dispelled often by PD3 and you can only feasibly recast one. Choose that buff (if any) wisely.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLoM9a-DKKE