PS4 Seth Solo Part 2

[ladyabaxa]

It's time for part two of Seth's quest to save the world, one stab at a time. The last time we saw him he had just killed Juza and was heading up to find the missing android, Demi.

First though I'll post a map since I figured actually making one would probably help make sense of all the directions I've been giving for those who don't have Motavia's layout memorized. All of the map labels were added in Photoshop but this is otherwise a pixel accurate version of the in-game map scaled up x2. I did check and make sure all my place names are spelled as they are in game which is why the town I usually call 'Miles' is listed as 'Mile' on there.

Zio's Fort/Nurvus is the white dot between Kadary and Mile. The Machine and Rappy Cave aren't marked on the map (neither is the spaceport or the various caves scattered around). The entrance to the Rappy Cave is just above the R in Rappy while the Machine Center is around the ac in Machine. Furthermore the map doesn't mark the quicksand patches. Those are between Mile and Nurvus, that big open patch south of Monsen, and the bottleneck north of Termi.

After finding Demi the party (which really was a party since I had to have at least 3 characters because two would be yanked) was confronted by Zio and by cutscene magic were teleported to Krup. From there Seth assumed command again, stuffed the other characters away, and headed south to the Machine Center to get the Land Rover. From there he could reach Monsen and the Plate Center. I had no desire to complete the Plate System to stop the earthquakes (eh, Demi will take care of that once we get Nurvus back under control) but Seth could use the Laser Knife and Laser Barrier.

From there it was off to Termi. Seth swapped his old Circlet for a Psy Circlet. This was a bit of a risky decision. The Psy Circlet grants factor 11 resistance and since gear resistances null innate resistance values while equipped it actually made Seth more vulnerable in that regard. It was still the better choice overall. By the time he runs into a boss with a factor 11 ability to worry about he will have upgraded that slot. There were no random monsters with factor 11 attacks that he was going to stick around to fight anyway.

I just had to be absolutely sure to NEVER equip a Psy Shield. None ever drop from enemies or are acquired from treasure chests so this was as simple as simply not buying one in Termi. The +Mental boost would hurt but Seth would just have to live with it.

Seth then drove back to Aiedo to accept the sandworm job. He hit level 21 on the way to Aiedo. The sandworm in Mile (typing it as 'Mile' neither looks nor sounds right, no wonder I've always been typing it as 'Miles') was tedious but Seth had just enough dimates to survive chipping the beast to death with papercut-level knife strikes. That put him at level 22 with enough experience he hit level 23 just driving back to Aiedo.

Freshly armed with a 5th charge of Corrosion Seth headed into Ladea Tower to pilfer treasure and get back out in one piece. He learned Mind Blast at level 24. I didn't need a test fight against Gy-Laguiah to know he still wasn't anywhere near ready.

This brief bit of grinding in the tower made it clear fighting was going to be extremely tedious. Seth still had only Corrosion for serious damage output and just like with Hahn his gear options had stagnated leaving him with a widening gap between his defense power and enemy attack power. Hahn could get around this by using two shields and relying entirely on techniques - being able to insta-kill things with Vol/Savol can make up for a lot. Seth had higher Agility so his defense power was higher than Hahn's had been... but he needed to keep a knife equipped thus losing the defense bonus of the second shield and putting him right back in the hole.

Aargh! Well, he just learned a new skill in Mindblast. I already know the version the third Dark Force has so I looked up Seth's version:

Mindblst 25 2A9E48 07 02 12 40 02 0B
--inflicts sleep, mod = user's mental, targets all enemies, 64 base power, save vs. mental, factor 11

DF3's Mindblast is identical save the targeting value (it hits the entire player party) and it has a base power of 160. Since sleep break checks are run in between rounds both versions suffer the same problem: unless you can go first the sleep effect is likely to have no real effect unless it's being used as an Agility/Dexterity debuff (sleep effects don't lower Agility or Dexterity but they do silently reset them to their unbuffed values). AI sleep powers are more effective because their higher base values make it harder for player characters to pass the resistance check between rounds.

In a group setting, with his high Agility, Seth could use Mind Blast effectively to neutralize all enemies for one round while his allies attack. In solo play what usually happens is the same thing that happens when using Chaz's Earth skill or the Moonshadow effect (from the skill or from a Moon Slasher). Even if the effect takes hold it usually only lasts until the end of that round. Then you start the next round having accomplished diddly squat.

This is why I never bother with the Dream Rod.

Taking a page from Raja's game, Seth had another option for grinding. He could hop in the Land Rover and drive in circles near the Plate System. This is really the only point in the game where using a vehicle to grind is efficient. The Ice Digger on Dezolis can mostly pull the same thing off but LW-Addmer formations are dicey. On Motavia Seth's time out in the field was limited only by the Land Rover's ammo since all vehicles auto-heal between fights. Everything but the Forced Flys can be killed by just spamming attack and even Forced Flys go down in one burst of either of the Land Rover's special weapons. Kill those annoying Flame Bolt-slinging flys first and the only time the Land Rover is ever in any real danger is if the game rolls a Forced Fly x4 formation.

At level 28 Seth picked up the last of his skills: Death Spell. It is essentially Holy Word except it's a factor 10 ability.

At level 30 Seth was sitting at 193 max hit points. I wanted at least 200 before facing Gy-Laguiah so he wandered back to Ladea Tower having upped his maximum Corrosion charges to 10. It was satisfying to see Corrosion do 190 - 200 damage to entire enemy formations.

Death Spell even got to see some use.

At level 32 Seth had 208 max hit points. He stocked up on dimates in Monsen, equipped two Laser Barriers, then ran up the tower to face Gy-Laguiah

2580 hit points, basic attacks are factor 1, 100 strength, 26 mental, 23 agility, 227 dexterity (auto-crit range), 150 attack power, 20 defense, 15 magic defense, resists factor 3 (x1), weak to factors 5, 6, and 13 (x3), immune to factors 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14

During breaks while grinding I crunched the numbers for Gy and they didn't look promising. At the time Seth had 7 Corrosion charges which would deal an estimated 1050 damage (assuming an average damage of 150 per corrosion). That would leave approximately 1530 hit points to chew through with piddly little knife swings. I estimated it would take 51 such attacks to win at 30 damage each. Going two knives was out of the question. By the time Seth could survive that fight he would have leveled up enough to Corrosion Gy to death.

So my approach for the fight was thus. I wanted Seth to have at least 200 max hit points. That would afford him a decent buffer against Gy's critical hits. At the same time he needed Corrosion charges because that was the only real way he had to deal any damage. A quick back of the envelope estimate of Corrosion damage using Seth's level 32 stats puts it in the 180 - 190 damage per charge range. A total damage estimate for that range is 2520 - 2660 for 14 charges. As long as Seth doesn't get a long string of minimum damage rolls (which is extremely unlikely) he can win provided he can stay alive.

Thus began the fight against Gy-Laguiah. Most of the pest's physical attacks were not as bad as the 100 damage crit in the screenshot above but the threat of that sort of damage meant lots of rounds using dimates.

Corrosion dealt damage in the range I had estimated it would. (Yay!)

This time I remembered to check the debug menu to see if enemy encounters are disabled after Gy-Laguiah appears. They are not so it is entirely possible to die in the time span between defeating Gy and picking up the Psycho Wand. With only two tiles to cross I don't think it is actually possible to trigger a random encounter. I'm not sure what the minimum number of steps are but there definitely is a minimum before a random encounter is possible.

Back in Krup Seth showed off the one dimate and one star dew he still had after his victory. There are two star dews in Ladea Tower but he had to use one. That's ok, though, since we're going straight to Nurvus and star dews are farmable there.

Everything in Nurvus is easily handled with Corrosion. Even Float Mines, which resist factor 1, will go down in two blasts. Since Corrosion is a magical attack it doesn't trigger their self-destruct counters.

I didn't set out to find Float Mines (or any other formation) for farming but when a Float Mine formation did appear I had Seth destroy it in hopes some dynamite would drop. I had a couple of ideas where any dynamite gotten this way could be used but for the moment they were packed away.

Seth was about to face Zio and still only had 65k meseta. That bout of Land Rover-fueled grinding hurt his finances. He was getting ever closer to that Ice Digger and I was genuinely worried there wouldn't be enough money to buy everything he would need. There's no way to grind cash in PSIV without getting experience but selling gear looted from treasure chests would help.

All the running around and blowing up Float Mines (and killing Greneris) put Seth at level 33. He went back to two Laser Barriers and then challenged Zio.

As with Hahn Zio's Corrosions and Hewns dealt little damage and could largely be ignored.

On that first attempt Seth ran headlong into an insurmountable problem. This is one of the worst things that can happen. He ran out of Corrosion charges, had no weapon equipped, and having dealt 2616 damage total that one stick of dynamite wasn't going to finish the job. The fight had gone well with few attacks from Zio but it was over. Seth couldn't deal any more damage.

2889 hit points, attacks deal factor 1 damage, 35 strength, 38 mental, 25 agility, 219 dexterity, 164 attack power, 35 defense, 38 magic defense, resists factor 5 (x1), weak to factors 6 and 13 (x3), immune to factors 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14

Those are the stats for when the game finally lets the player fight Zio. He has two other sets of stats. One is for the encounter on top of his fort where he has a specific set of actions he's scripted to take before using one version of Black Wave for a cinematic finish. When the official fight with him in the depths of Nurvus starts he begins the fight with a second set of stats identical to the first except the only action he can take is a second version of Black Wave. This version insta-gibs player characters. When the Psycho Wand is used the game loads a third version of Zio quietly replacing all his stats, resistances, AI options, and behavior flags. This version has a third version of Black Wave.

That version is survivable. Seth couldn't entirely ignore being hit by it but the hit point grind for Gy-Laguiah had prepared him.

2616 damage out of 2889 hit points was good news. Seth just had to have some way to take out the remaining 200~ish hit points. A Laser Knife could do that just fine.

After pummeling each other for awhile Zio finally fell to stab wounds. Doing most of the damage with Corrosion was still quite satisfying.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0kbBgLiAzo

Here's Gy-Laguiah and Zio in one video.

When the excitement was all over Wren stood alone by the spaceport waiting to be stuffed away so Seth could take over again. This is why I use androids for character slot placeholders. They are guaranteed to be alive after a fight.

On the shuttle Seth cursed about Death Spell not working. He got the sorceror on the 2nd Death Spell.

Then I decided to show off screenshots of the androids in their newly-bugged state. Note that Demi has never been in a battle she has actually survived. I've only used her in the fight against Zio where she and Wren were immediately KOed. The Chaos Sorceror saboteur was worth 18,380 experience. Obviously her experience was gained in that fight, which she wasn't a part of! Yet she gained a level and the required experience for her next level is shown as 4,949,041. Clearly something strange is afoot. Given how much experience she was awarded she should have gained more than one level. This inconsistency seems to confuse the game's attempt to calculate how much experience to display as needed for the next level. It's also possible to do this with a hex editor if you crank up the amount of experience a character has past what they need to level up.

I didn't need to do anything to actually fix this. After the Zio fight the game put them in a list of characters to apply all experience awards to which they will stay on until some point in the late game that I'm not sure of (probably getting Elsydeon). I wanted to show this off though so I put them into the party with Seth and fought one battle in the Ice Digger (which would ensure their survival). Sure enough they both jumped to level 13 and values displayed for next level corrected themselves. (Note that if you hex edit a character's experience the game will award them level ups at their next experience gain without a fuss although sitting through some 40 odd level up messages requires... patience.)

Part One | Index | Part Three

Comments

[shining-armour.livejournal.com]

Very nicely done, also, can Zios walk sprite move in those directions ? That time you see his walking sprite before you fight him normally, he only moves downwards a little, I've never seen him move the other ways.

[ladyabaxa.livejournal.com]

The game loads his sprite set into VRAM the one time it needs his sprites. There's no reason he couldn't walk around as it is a complete walk cycle. The other sprites simply weren't needed and there was no reason to delete them.

This isn't the only instance in the game of unused sprites. The bishop/cleric/caretaker in Gumbious Temple who watches over the Eclipse Torch also has a full sprite set but never walks around. He will turn to face the player when talked to so at least his standing still sprites are used.

The Xe-A-Thouls always load their teleport in sequence when they're on screen even though that only gets used once. Sprite sets can seem a bit illogical when you start poking around! The D-Elm-Lars in the Climate Center just has the one facing forward sprite while the two Gi-Le-Farg who attack De Vars are a distinct set for raising their hand and casting Tandle. These are all the same sprite/enemy with different palettes.