ladyabaxa ◾ ◾ PS4 Seth Solo Part 1

Fresh off the heels of Hahn's (mis)adventures I decided I wanted to tackle one of the... more forgotten characters in the game's roster.

That's right. It's time for the mustache to shine. Well, figuratively speaking as I'm sure Seth does not actually glow in the dark.

Anyway a glance at his starting stats and equipment in the party select hack speaks volumes of what he can do - and why I chose to play him after Hahn. Seth's profession is given as 'scholar' just like Hahn but he's actually an archeologist with a silly headband and very yellow clothes. He has an equipment selection nearly identical to Hahn. The only difference is that Seth cannot equip the Mahlay gear set.

So Seth has some severe weapon limitations. In addition to that his tech point count that is currently 0 is not going to budge... ever. He does pick up some skills but well we'll see. His damage output is thus pretty limited. He also doesn't get a big pile of hit points but he will get more than Hahn does which makes up for the no techniques thing a tiny bit. Keeping him alive in boss fights is going to be tricky given the combination of no Gires/Nares and limited gear options.

The news isn't all bad though. Taking a look at Seth's resistances we find he has some advantages.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
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02	02	02	02	02	02	02	00	01	01	00	00	00	02

They reveal no weaknesses and that he shares some immunities the androids have. First up is an immunity to factor 11 so all those annoying psychic debuffs and sleep effects like Possession and Evil Eye automatically fail when used on him. Secondly he's also immune to factor 13 which is what is used for St. Fire and Efess. No enemies can actually cast either of those spells so I was initially scratching my head as to how that would help. Then I took a close look at how enemy abilities are classed and found the following enemy abilities listed as factor 13: Poison, Poison Mist, and Stasis Ball.

You mean I have a biological character totally immune to one of the most annoying attacks in the game? Sweet! That's irrelevant for boss fights but it will make travel and grinding much easier. That's good because Seth requires the most experience of any character in the game per level. He was going to see many, many random encounters before the game was over. (As an aside, this is why I use numbers instead of just calling resistances fire, ice, gravity, etc. Sometimes they line up that it would work out fine and other times the game does weird stuff like this.)

In terms of other stats Seth is pretty robust. His priority stat is Mental (starting at 10) followed closely by Agility (starting at 9). For those who have not read any of my previous runs or who have forgotten here's the quick lowdown on what each stat does as best as I understand.

Strength: this is the character's base attack power. Strength + the attack power of any weapons = final base attack power. Strength is the modifier on android skills because Wren and Demi do not have any points in Mental.
Mental: Mental is used as the modifier for all player techniques and most skills and is commonly checked as part of resistance against status effects. It also is sets character's base magic resistance. Mental + the sum of all magic defense modifiers on equipped gear = total base magic defense.
Agility: Agility determines turn order (which is moderately randomized to keep players on their toes), whether the party is ambushed when an encounter is triggered, whether enemies successfully land effects (poison, paralysis) when they strike the character, and is the character's base defense power. Agility + the defense power of all gear = final base defense power.
Dexterity: Dexterity controls hit rate and critical hit chance.

This run is definitely going to test whether all those little tricks I've accumulated over the other runs really can be used to maximum effect. To put it bluntly if Seth can clear the game any character can.

I started up the game, sped through the intro, then swapped to Seth. He then went and bought 5 monomates. Seth starts with a skill. It wasn't critical for his starting survival but I played around with it anyway. Shadow does the same thing that Shadowbind does and tries to lower the agility of all opponents. Since Seth was already a speedy character this was essentially pointless.

Grinding was slow with many trips back to Piata's inn but Seth was never in much danger.

At level 5 he had managed to increase his savings by 133 meseta, had 6 monomates stocked, and stared at Igglanova ready to throw down.

With only his one meager dagger for offense it was not a quick fight.

Igglanova is the only boss in the game not outright immune to factor 11. Zie just resists it. Seth was able to land Shadow for a pointless if amusing agility debuff. The battle was not at all difficult. A third of the enemy attacks missed outright (what, a boss missing? Yup, Igglanova is that much of a warm up/tutorial battle although Igglanova itself missed only once. It was the Xanafalgue who had spotty accuracy.) and those that did hit only dealt 1 damage. Seth used only 1 monomate in the battle.

He bought a Hunting Knife (yay a weapon that has more than a piddly +2 attack power!) in Mile. Normally at this point I'd go straight to Krup for grinding but Seth was having so little trouble running away from everything he encountered I decided to head to Zema instead and from there through Birth Valley. I normally don't do this because it is impossible to rest in Zema what with the town turned to stone so if anything goes wrong there is a dangerous run back to Mile. Once Seth found out the professor had also been turned to stone he headed to Krup, stopping in Molcum to flag him as having met Rune. A few steps to town he was ambushed by a Locusta but when it hit him for only 3 damage I decided to knife it to death. Seth needed a monomate to stay alive but was otherwise fine.

Once he was rested he stepped out of Krup, preparing himself for bio-monster hunting, and noticed the little island in the lake by the village. Odd thing. Oh well. It will surely be of no importance.

Having bought a Carbon Suit and Carbon Shield in Krup Seth faced a slow but rather safe grind. When his health ran low I went back to Krup to use the inn rather then use monomates. It was cheaper that way. I decided to grind to level 12 where I would then see how he was shaping up and decide from there if he could press on. At level 11 he picked up his first charge of his Corrosion skill.

Almost 16k experience and Seth is only level 12? Yup, grinding will be time-consuming for him. Oh well. It can't be avoided and it isn't that bad when it's just him in the party. At least his stat growth is respectable.

He left Krup and headed north to Tonoe.

With his Agility of 23 he had no problems with random encounters so long as he didn't actually try to stick around and fight them.

When he reached Tonoe I bought a Titanium Knife. It was a little better than his Hunting Knife but I didn't expect he'd get much use out of it. He ran from almost everything in the Basement. With the Alshline in hand he escapiped out then telepiped straight to Zema. The developers did think to put a chest with an escapipe right next to the Alshline. It would be rude not to use it.

Against the second Igglanova Seth could deal a whopping 28~ish damage per hit. That's kind of sad, yet still double what he was hitting for at level 5. Damage machine he is not.

Seth was tough enough to manage the entire Valley Maze - Tonoe - Basement - Zema Iggy segment in one go. I wasn't worried. The cutscene of the party relaxing just before the Igglanova emerges from the Bio-Plant also restores the party to full so Seth was certain to enter the fight at full health with his one charge of Corrosion restored. After the easy fight he bought a Circlet and sold the Leather Band he started with.

Almost immediately it was obvious the Bio-Plant would be another run-straight-to-the-end affair as a pair of Gicefalgue in the very first random encounter tore him up pretty good.

I did have Seth stop and fight a few times when he ran into lone bio-monsters he could handle. Half their attacks missed anyway. Not even Ismounos speed lines could hit Seth.

With the Bio-Plant a fading memory the bridge to Aiedo was magically fixed and Seth could press on to Nalya and Aiedo. They were ultimately only stepping stones to Kadary but I knew Seth was in no condition to handle anything past Aiedo.

He did try to fight a lone Scorpirus but died as I didn't want to use monomates. Too much defense, attack power, and risk of poison for him to bother with. Instead he went to Aiedo to buy a Ceramic Knife and Graphite Suit. Then he headed north to Nalya to reach the wreckage of the crashed worldship.

Predictably enough the Warren286s were generally instant death but Whistle formations were manageable. Seth would dodge around 40% of their attacks.

He still had only one charge of Corrosion but it was an instant win button against one formation. I was a little worried about money since I expected lots of inn trips and dimates/trimates by the barrel for later encounters. There was also the nagging knowledge that the moment Seth got the Ice Digger (assuming he could get that far) he would need a big pile of meseta for all the upgrades and use-as-item weapons he would need to buy.

This is all a roundabout way of explaining that inn trips were still cheaper than using monomates. While in the wreckage Seth would generally knife down one (maybe two, if dodges were on his side) groups of Whistles then use Corrosion to eliminate a second formation. Then he'd run back to Nalya to rest.

There are two versions of Corrosion in the game. This is actually true of any ability a player character has versus an ability of the same name an enemy has. There are two independent tables laying out the stats for all of them. Here's Seth's version:

Corrsion 13 2A9DB8 01 02 12 90 06 01
--deals damage, mod = user's mental, targets all enemies, 144 base power, save vs. defense, factor 1

Conversely here's the version in the enemy abilities table:

Corrsion 4D 2835CC 01 02 09 40 07 01
--deals damage, mod = user's mental, targets all player characters, 64 base power, save vs. magic defense, factor 1

Huh? So the enemy Corrosion spell does inflict magic damage. I always thought it checked against physical defense even though all my fights against Zio only make sense if his Corrosion deals magic damage. I must always be thinking of DF3's sword-arm slug fest whenever I think of the spell. They both use the same Corrosion but gearing up defense is a necessity against DF3 to avoid being cut in half.

Actually though it is relevant. Seth's Corrosion does check against physical defense. Against most enemies physical and magical defense are values so close together it doesn't matter. What does matter is that Seth's version has 80 base power over the enemy version. A base power of 144 is actually equal to St. Fire! Corrosion, however, will always be inferior because there is nothing in the game weak to factor 1. It's also not as impressive as it initially sounds due to how the damage equation appears to halve base power and the modifier before summing them. Oh well it was still worlds better than what little damage his knives could do.

With all this running back to Nalya Seth encountered a palette glitch I've run into before but forgot about. Whenever he stayed at the inn the palette values would get messed up after fading back in. Although a bit disconcerting the first time it happens it is temporary and harmless. The palettes correct themselves on the next screen change.

I'm not sure what causes this particular glitch but it will happen from this point on any time Seth stays at an inn, not just the one in Nalya. I've played the entire game essentially in one go using rotating savestates. This is my usual procedure whenever I play a game for the internet. Occasionally a problem pops up while playing that reverting to an older savestate can fix. One hard rule of playing games for the entertainment of others: something WILL eventually go wrong. All you can do is try to be prepared.

In this case it meant using the hard save I had been updating at each rest point. I rarely see PSIV's load screen any more. Too bad this game doesn't record the play time. Oh well we still get to laugh at how Chaz gets continuously stuck at level 1.

Moving right along Seth did claw his way to level 15. He wasn't that much stronger but I wanted to press on so I bought a second Carbon Shield in Aiedo and headed to the cave to Kadary.

Fortunately Seth only encountered a single Speard formation (pictured above) and had no trouble running from it or the oozes in the passage. Rebased in Kadary Seth then ground to level 16 using Corrosion. He broke 100 hit points at that point and had a second Corrosion charge so I decided to head into Zio's Fort to at least pilfer some treasure.

After a couple quick jaunts inside I decided to attack Juza just to see how things would go. I had no plan. Seth was just going to wing it and see how things went.

Before being killed by Forceflash Seth had managed to deal 860 damage to Juza's 1523 hit points. Considering he used one Corrosion charge on the way up that was promising.

Still that is a big chunk of health to grind through with just one knife. Instead I ground Seth up to level 20 bringing his max hit points to 130 and his Corrosion charges to 4. Since Juza didn't have anything serious to threaten him with I opted to go with two Ceramic Knives. I didn't want Seth to lose just because he ran out of dimates and once those Corrosion charges are gone one knife would barely move Juza's health bar.