Part 6: Soulserker

Zerky! the Omniserker

Part 5 - Soulserker



Last time we crossed the first big roadblock for the solo Berserker, and this time we cross the other one.



Rocket Launchers are a non-issue because all they cast is Missile. Missile reduces your current HP to 1/4 and confuses you, except Berserkers can't be confused so you can never die.



Easy stuff.



Flame Throwers only use a fire attack.



If I had the Flame Ring, this would be a joke. I don't, though.



I switch to Equip Sword and then use the Coral Sword to kill them before they kill me. Still requires some luck to win since the front guy needs to go down quickly since the other's in the back row until then.



I had twelve deaths between the two sets before I beat them both.



But who cares about those guys. We've got the next big boss for Zerky!, the Soul Cannon.

code:

Soul Cannon (Heavy)
HP: 22500 (effectively 12500 HP)
Weak to Lightning.
Immune to Water, Air, Poison.
Vulnerable to Slow.

AI Script:
Condition:V00=01{
     Display Text: Filling Multi-Surge Beam energy
     Nothing
     Display Text: Explosives pressure increased
     Nothing
     Display Text: Energy Level 128-
     Nothing
     Display Text: Fire!!!
     Surge Beam
     }
Display Text: Filling Multi-Surge Beam energy
Nothing
Display Text: Cross Gauge luminosity set to 20
Nothing
Display Text: Safety Lock released
Nothing
Display Text: Explosives pressure increased
Nothing
Display Text: Anti-Shock Anti-Flash Shield on
Nothing
Display Text: Energy Level 128-
Nothing
Display Text: Fire!!!
Surge Beam
Set V00=01
Nothing
Condition:HP Damage & HP < 10000{
     Change Target:All Enemies
     Punishment
     }

Soul Cannon starts with a slow charge-up before releasing Wave Cannon, which does Max HP/2 damage. Then it repeats the process except a bit more quickly in future iterations. The future iterations are irrelevant since it will flat-out kill us if it hits twice. And since it always hits, that means we have to kill Soul Cannon quick.

It technically has 22500 HP, but the code has it die once it's under 10k HP to trigger its fancy explosion. So we have to burn through 12500HP quickly.



That's not the only issue, though. There's also two Launchers involved.

code:

Launcher (Heavy)
HP: 10800 (effectively 800HP)
Immune to Water, Air, Poison.
Vulnerable to Stop, Slow.

AI Script:
Valiant Attack
React:HP Damage & HP < 10000{
     Change Target:Self
     Punishment
     }

Both Launchers will use Valiant Attack. Valiant Attack inflicts Old, which steadily decreases Zerky!'s stats. Not a big deal, pretty much every solo variant besides one or two need an Angel Ring to deal with that. No, the big deal is that it deals Current HP/2 damage. Which means just one hit will leave Zerky! weak enough to die to one Wave Cannon. This gives Zerky! a whopping four hits to kill Soul Cannon. Luckily, it's impossible for Zerky! to die before Wave Cannon hits.

Zerky! could evade Valiant Attack since it only has a 75% hit rate, but he'd need to evade at least two, and even then he may not have enough time. Also, that hit rate is actually higher because the hit rate formula incorporates both user and target levels, and since the Launchers are L50, that boosts the hit rate up to 91%. On the other hand, after that Zerky! has a 10% chance to evade it thanks to the Angel Ring, which grants 10% Magic Evade (which is a hidden stat in this game). The only other item to give Zerky! evasion is 5% from a Plumed Hat. I think the Ribbon also gives magic evade but at the cost of an offense-boosting passive.



At any rate, the Coral Sword is not close to enough to win even if Zerky! hit the Cannon itself all four times.





Like, not even close. I try a variety of passives, like Artful Dodger, Equip Ribbons, Equip Swords, nothing helped. Zerky! had no real defense against the Launchers, so his only hope was to find the biggest damage boosting passive and go from there.



Unfortunately, as many options as I tried, there was no way around it. Zerky! needed some levels, both to increase his damage, and to slightly raise the odds of dodging Valiant Attack.



I bought a Plumed Hat to boost my Magic Evasion to 15%. Not much luck, sadly.

After ten attempts, I resort to leveling.



First I try grinding Prototypes.





Not a good idea.



So I go to Crescent until I can afford a Flame Ring.



To mock me, I end up getting four more Death Sickles in three levels worth of grinding time.



Luckily they helped me get to 50k and get a Flame Ring. This will be helpful in World 2, and also let me grind one of the highest EXP-yielding encounters in World 1.



Out of the way, old man.



Minidragons use either weak physicals or an ice move that the Flame Ring renders Zerky! immune to. It takes awhile to wear them down because five targets are a handful for Zerky! at his current level. But if he's fully healed at the start of battle he's in no danger.



They're also worth 4500EXP a battle, which is nice. Especially combined with a certain ability.



One of the abilities for the GBA version is EXP Up. Damn straight I'm gonna use it.



I get up to L38 to get another multiplier and try again.



Barehanded ended up being the most reliable, but even with 1.2k a hit it still wasn't close to enough. I even had a run where I hit Soul all four times and got one crit, and it still wasn't enough, though it was very close.



I tried all sorts of things. Thunder Bow granted me five attacks before Wave Cannon due to having the Ranger's good agility, but the bow's too inaccurate and that'd still be only 10k total before death. Dual-Wield and Two-Handed were also lame since Death Sickles aren't reliable to begin with.

After some more attempts, I realized my best bet was L43. Then I'd get another multiplier for fists, taking me to a minimum of 1.4k per punch after Soul's defenses. Since most of those punches would be much higher, I'd only need one crit to kill Soul Cannon. On one hand, it's pretty unlikely, but I've already seen those exact circumstances happen in a previous run, so I knew it was possible with enough attempts.



It's all about balancing level and RNG. Sure, I could probably win with ridiculous circumstances at L38 or even L34. But it would also take hundreds of attempts, hoping to get four or more criticals from punches at an 8% chance or so each on top of the 1/81 odds required to hit Soul four times. Going above L43 would grant me much better odds, but at that point the higher levels also trivialize much of the rest of the game. I wasn't happy getting as high as L43, but it's still reasonable.

Especially since, despite beating Sandworm at L62, Sulla still needed to grind twenty-one more levels to beat Soul Cannon, taking potentially even more attempts than Sandworm (he didn't count the attempts on Soul Cannon, which is probably for the best), and even then he needed a lot of luck to pass the attempt he did. As a Berserker run, I knew luck would be required, but the whole point of the Omniserker challenge is to eliminate as much luck as possible, if even just from significantly boosting the Berserker's damage beyond those horrible axes.



Anyway, eventually I hit L43.



The damage output was what I predicted. So it became a matter of Zerky! scoring four hits and one crit on Soul Cannon.





...Or so I thought. On my third attempt at L43, something else happened. Zerky! ended up killing both Launchers without taking a single Valiant Attack. This means he dodged at least two, possibly three of them. This is also big because this means Zerky! will actually live through the first Wave Cannon, giving him more time to survive.



There's one.







Zerky! got three more attacks to kill Soul Cannon, which is exactly what he needed. I didn't get a crit in the first eight punches, but luckily I had the time for one more punch.

My extra levels meant Valiant Attack's accuracy was now only 82%, but I certainly wasn't expecting to win dodging two or three. I'll damn well take the win, though!

[video type="youtube"]vbW2oeTLhB4[/video]

Video

FINAL LEVEL: 43
DEATHS: 26

At this point, it's most likely smooth sailing to the final boss. And it's not because I vastly over-level the rest of the encounters either!



Well, I still over-level them, but it's not the cakewalk that Sulla obviously had.





Golden Armor, Shield, and Ancient Sword are all nice additions.



I can't even remember the last time I stepped into this thing unwittingly. I usually walk into it as a shortcut after looting stuff, but never accidentally.



For the next boss I go Barehanded with Flame Ring.

code:

Archeoaevis (Heavy)

Fuck this he has five different forms and I'm not going to write them all out since I can one-shot each one anyway, one of the other solo runs can show him off better.

Archeoaevis has five forms. Two punches are enough to kill a form.





I didn't put any effort into this one because this is a long drawn-out boss with lots of nasty attacks and the best way to take care of it is killing it ASAP. Fortunately Zerky! can do that because he's a bit over-leveled. I beat freaking Soul Cannon, I earned cheesing this guy.

[video type="youtube"]dpIiXwdPtuc[/video]

Video

FINAL LEVEL: 43
DEATHS: 0









THE END

Nah, next time I'm gonna fight Purobolos. This will be one fight where I'll be at a severe disadvantage compared to Sulla and OFS's runs. Maybe this will make up for my relative ease so far?