ladyabaxa ◾ ◾ PS4 Seth Solo Part 3

Part Two of our murderous adventure across the Algo solar system saw the death of Motavian miscreant Zio and our dubious protagonist crash landing on the planet Dezolis.

I posted a map of Motavia so I might as well do the same for Dezolis (there will be no map for Rykros but that planet doesn't need one). First and foremost, unlike the quicksand on Motavia the ice drifts on Dezolis are clearly marked. The only two locations that don't have dots on this map are the spaceport which will be just south of Tyler once Seth claims the Landale and the Esper Mansion which is around the 'sio' of the word mansion.

There's also a lot of noise in this map.

Well there's also noise in the Motavian map but it has to be vertically scrolled to see it. Since the Dezolisian map can't be vertically scrolled at all I am inclined to believe the noise is because the map item has specific instructions on what the dimensions for the map graphics are but the landmass developed for Dezolis is smaller than that. Since the game has to generate graphics of the instructed dimensions it fills in the rest with what is essentially junk.

After crushing Raja's temple Seth headed north to Ryuon to talk to Gyuna, buy a Silver Circlet, sell off obsolete gear, and stuff gear he wanted to keep for later into the hands of Party Members Not Appearing In This Run. Then it was off to claim the Landale.

Seth then ran around Kuran gathering treasure to sell and gaining enough experience to reach level 36. He also got to laugh when Command Balls ordered Float Mines to blow up all over him for miniscule damage.

Corrosion continued to make short work of just about everything he encountered. When the looting was done he returned to Tyler to offload the haul. With 18 Corrosion charges and the Plasma Field he then made his way to Dark Force to see for himself where the situation stood.

It did not go well. Things would not work out as initially planned for reasons I'll get to shortly.

I suspected Seth would need star dews so failing to kill Dark Force was a mild disappointment but it didn't surprise me. The only place to get star dews is back in Nurvus so Seth flew back to Motavia. He then went to the room seen in the screenshot above. This is the area closest to the surface where Greneris can appear. After a rather boring series of excursions Seth had 20 star dews total and had reached level 40. I wasn't sure if that was going to be enough but no other character needed more than that so I decided to make a serious attempt at Dark Force.

4540 hit points, basic attacks do factor 1 type damage, 100 strength, 1 mental, 20 agility, 32 dexterity, 230 attack power, 5 defense, 5 magic defense, resists factor 1 (x1), weak to factors 6 (x4) and 13 (x3), immune to factors 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14, has three abilities:

Flare Shot: deals damage to one player character with 16 base power modified by the user's attack power, subtracting the defender's defense power and checking against their factor 2 resistance.
Phononmaser: deals damage to all player characters with 88 base power modified by the user's strength, subtracting defense power and checking against their factor 1 resistance.
Burst Rockets: deals damage to all player characters with 72 base power modified by the user's strength, subtracting magic defense and checking against their factor 1 resistance.

Seth has a number of serious problems going into this fight. Dark Force resists factor 1, Corrosion is factor 1, thus the main attack method will only deal about half the damage it otherwise would, in this case around 1800 damage for those 18 charges. Seth therefore must find some other way to deal 2700 damage. I've mentioned before that factor 1 resistance is handled a little differently than other factors and while that is true it is because of differences programmed for the player's side of things. For all enemies factor 1 resistance is handled like any other. For player characters the resistance is set to 02 at the beginning of each round when the game prepares to allow the player to enter commands. This means factor 1 resistance from gear only ever applies if the player is surprised - which is nice for characters that can get that resistance. The reason it is set up this way is because all the defend command does is set factor 1 resistance to 01 for the round. This means that player characters can defend themselves from attacks that seem utterly counter-intuitive to be able to defend against (Shadow Breath, anyone?).

Anyway, returning to Seth, the damage gap will have to be made up with knife attacks so Seth's light gear limits will be exacerbated by the loss of one shield. With tight inventory limits Seth needs to start the fight at or near full health. One random encounter on the way through Kuran can sink the entire attempt. At least with the Plasma Field equipped that 230 attack power is largely neutralized. Seth also has good Agility and Mental which will make up for the stagnant gear a little bit - hopefully enough to make the difference. Seth made the trip through Kuran to Dark Force.

However before the fight even began Seth ran into a problem. On a single random encounter he failed to run away until the second turn and was mauled for half his health. I decided to press on, using one dimate just before attacking Dark Force, but that still put Seth down by 30 hit points.

It was not a particularly nice, or easy, or clean fight. Phononmaser and Burst Rockets hurt pretty badly but could never deal 50% or more of Seth's maximum health. There were still far too many rounds of continuously healing than I wanted.

Corrosion, as mentioned, was lackluster. Seth still wanted to use all his charges since the damage per Corrosion was still better than what he'd get by attacking. With his knife he'd need a max damage roll on a critical to match.

Before unleashing the Corrosion barrage Seth used what he had also farmed during the search for more star dews: 6 doses of dynamite. This was actually the most damaging thing he could do.

Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGe3IEC0GNo

I won't spoil how things went but at the end I was gritting my teeth hoping I wasn't consigning Seth to a grisly death. Obviously Seth could have further optimized his inventory by farming more star dews and selling off the extra Plasma Dagger that dropped during the initial period of clearing Kuran of treasure. There's also a trimate in a chest on Motavia and of course not getting mauled on the way there would help.

Back on Dezolis Seth had a shiny new Ice Digger bringing the contents of his inventory to a whole three items.

He had shopping to do and his first stop was Zosa to drop 29,700 meseta on a Flame Sword, a Thunder Claw, and a Tornado Dagger. Then it was off to Meese to advance story flags and buy a Laco Circlet, a Cyber Suit, 1 Reflect Shield, and 10 trimates.

The carnivorous trees are never hard to run from. With Kyra rescued it was off to Jut to buy the last thing on Seth's shopping list. He traded in his Plasma Dagger for a Laconian Dagger. By that point his money was almost gone so when he went to the Esper Mansion he looted everything: 10k meseta and a Reflect Robe for cash, while the Laco Rod and sol dew were taken to use later. In Gumbious he grabbed the trimate and sol dew in chests before watching the Eclipse Torch be stolen. On the way back to Tyler he made sure to stop at the Climate Center and smash the second Gy-Laguiah just on principle.

Seth snapped up treasure in the Air Castle then had no trouble at all with the Xe-A-Thouls. Between his natural high agility, the Plasma Field, and Corrosion he won easily on the first try. He didn't even bother to swap out his Laco Dagger for a Reflect Shield. When it was over he went to collect the sol dew in that part of the castle before escapiping back to the entrance. He needed to offload his pilfered treasures, buy more trimates, and think about how he was going to fight Lashiec.

6383 hit points, basic attacks inflict factor 1 type damage, 35 strength, 91 mental, 34 agility, 46 dexterity, 228 attack power, 25 defense, 25 magic defense, resists factor 5 (x1), weak to factors 3, 6, and 13 (x3), immune to factors 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 14, has three abilities:

Thunder Halbert: deals damage to all player characters with a base power of 0 modified by the user's attack power, subtracting defense power and checking against factor 7 resistance
Possession: puts one player character to sleep with a base power of 32 modified by the user's mental, subtracting mental and checking against factor 11 resistance
Another Gate: deals damage to all player characters with a base power of 148 modified by the user's mental, subtracting magic defense and checking against factor 1
Lashiec has a 4th ability, Reinforce, that he uses once when he reaches 25% remaining hit points to boost all his stats by 20 (I think, been a long time since I checked) points.

Lashiec is a big pile of hit points and that's bad for someone with low damage output and strict healing limits. Corrosion isn't resisted so 18 charges of that would take out half of that hit point pool. I seriously considered farming more dynamite as one dynamite would do slightly more damage on average than one use of the Flame Sword but the Flame Sword has infinite charges. I resolved to try with the Flame Sword first, keeping dynamite farming as an option.

Obviously this meant Seth would be using two Reflect Shields with the Swift Helm for added +Defense against the frequent Thunder Halberts Lashiec would inevitably use.

First, though, was the problem of the Spector in the fake Eclipse Torch treasure chest. Seth had no way to hurt it except to use the Flame Sword several times. Thankfully the Spector couldn't do anything in retaliation. I usually don't bother to mention this fight because the characters I've soloed with have had ways of dealing with it easily (Chaz has Tsu, Wren is immune to everything it can do, Hahn has Wat, Raja has Holyword, Rika has the Silver Tusk, etc.)

So Seth progressed to Lashiec and found out that Another Gate wasn't taking any prisoners. An attack for 140~ish damage is manageable with 260 max hit points but as the above screenshot demonstrates death was never far away.

300 max hit points seemed a better bet against big Another Gate damage rolls. Seth fought for awhile at the entrance of the Air Castle right by the first healing circle but that proved too slow for my liking. Dimension Worms and Spectors required tiresome scrolling for items (the Laco Rod and Flame Sword, respectively). I flew back to Dezolis to kill wildlife instead. When Seth hit level 47 he had exactly 300 max hit points so he returned for another bout.

During the grind I noticed Seth's skill charges weren't increasing. They continued to not budge, proving he had truly hit a cap. Oh boy 13 Mind Blasts! Yeah those never ever got used. They just sat there merrily taunting me with their uselessness.

So the fight began and both sides settled into a barrage against one another. Seth chained Corrosions and Lashiec chained Thunder Halberts until after 6 Halberts Lashiec broke the string with a shot of Another Gate. He certainly likes his boom stick as he used it another 29 times for a total of 35. If I was using a party, especially one without Barrier, that would be cause for alarm. For Seth it meant using less trimates than I had expected.