Part 46: Update 41 (special not-so-plot update)
Update 41 (special not-so-plot update)
: Oh man, my head really hurts. I remember... Martel?
I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. This is one of the most powerful items in the game and they just sell it. Even if I wasn't bringing a ton of gold with me I might be able to scrounge up enough for two or three. For those of you playing at home, it's at the accessory vendor in Flanoir.
While on the way back, I dropped by the hot springs.
: Oh, the Chosen! By all means, please enjoy the waters of our Church's prized hot springs.
: Wow! A hot spring is like a big bathtub, right? Let's go in!
: Hehehe. The water here is marvelous! Come on, let's go in! I'll show you around. <3: Ta-dah! This is the pride and joy of the Church of Martel, the Kharlan Hot Spring!: Kharlan? I remember that... I remember Martel. Am I Martel? No, no I'm not. For a bit there I forgot who I was. I'm really out of it I guess.
: ...Hey, didn't this place used to have separate baths for males and females before the renovation?
: Now that you mention it, there's only one bath!
: ...You've got to be kidding me! I'm not going in there with you guys!
: Humph. You're no fun....
: Whatever! Let's just go in!
: Ahh, this feels great!
: It's too bad Sheena and the others could not enter as well....: Oh, yeah. The girls should just come in here by themselves after we're done.
: ...
: Good idea. Then they can come in without worrying.: Hehehe. Yeah!: ?: Welcome to the House of Guidance. Will you be using the hot spring today?: Yes.: Who will enter? Males or Females?
: Please go right in.
: Heh heh. I'll wash your back later, Sheena.: That sounds good. I'll do yours, too.
: I feel like I could just forget about the fight that we are currently involved in.
: It's important to relax sometimes. Also, having fond memories like this will get us more attached to being alive.: ...Yes. I'd like to stay alive. And I wish everyone could be happy.: Yeah. Let's hope that will happen.: Yes....
: Hey, where are you going?
: Where else? To the bath.
: But...but the girls are in there now!: That's why I'm going to peek. Who can resist?
: ...Oh? I'm very ordinary compared to Sheena.
: S...stop it! It's not all that great, I swear!: So it is important to have a nice figure?
: I'm like an ironing board....: Hmm, I see....Colette obtained the title of "Ironing Board."
Sheena obtained the title of "WOW!"
: Let's see, which hunny can I see from here?...
: Whoa, no! Stop!!!
: Who's there?!
: Uh-oh...
Note the HEARTS above Zelos's head.
: Whoa, Sheena, how can you come out looking like that?...: Lloyd! I can't believe you! I'd understand if it was that stupid Chosen, but I never thought you'd stoop so low....
: Lloyd...it's not true, right? You have a reason, right?: N...no, I didn't come here to peep.... Zelos just...: Lloyd...You're disgusting.
: ...I'm so disappointed in you.: You peeping tom!Lloyd obtained the title of "Peeping Tom."
: OW!If you send the girls in again...
: Welcome to the House of Guidance. Will you be using the hot spring today?: Yes.: Who will enter? Males or Females?: Females.: Please go right in.
: What would I wish for now if I saw a falling star cross the night sky? The promise I made with you as you left on your journey is always in my heart.: I want to hear your voice on nights I can't sleep, we talked all night until dawn.: Your face shone brightly as you spoke of your dreams.: The light of the stars shines down upon both you and me. You follow your dreams and I watch over you protectively. I held back my tears as you left, not wanting you to look back.I really hope that's a bit more musical in Japanese.
: Welcome to the House of Guidance. Will you be using the hot spring today?: Yes.: Who will enter? Males or Females?: Males.: Please go right in.
: ... I have to say, this isn't a very sexy view.: Really? ...Hmm, now that you mention it...
: Zelos, I bet your brain is pink.: ...No, perhaps purple.
: Don't take it seriously!: Why am I perceiving the area around these guys anyway? I'm nowhere near them, am I? It's like an out-of-body experience.
OK you godforsaken Arena, I'm back!. Team Battle: Advanced Viddler download
YouTube stream.
My team is once again Lloyd/Presea/Raine, however I'm playing as Presea. I decided I cared more about how aggressive she is than anyone else, since she has the best area physicals. If I'm hoping to lock down enough of the enemy force to keep Raine out of danger, I figured I'd need to be aiming Presea. The massively inflated HP is due to the effects of the Black Onyx - Presea is wearing two and everyone else has one.
: Now, the team lead by the Deadly Flower, Presea, enters the arena!: ...Idiot...: All right, here's the first battle! Ready...go!
Status: Still a joke.
: Team Presea wins the first battle!: ...No problems noted.: On to battle two! Ready...go!
Status: Bacon.
: Team Presea wins battle number two!: Our strategies are working. Let's do our best.: We're going to keep right on going to battle number three! Ready...go!
The increased health makes a real difference against these guys. While it's still possible to lose this fight due to the AI suddenly making the best possible moves and also getting a lucky landing of poison, there's not nearly as much difficulty anymore. Status: Defeated.
: Battle three won by Team Presea!: You are all with me... so I know we can win the next one, as well!: The tension is rising! Battle number four! Ready...go!
These guys' primary threat was their ability to oneshot Raine, which doesn't work so well at 130% of her previous health total. I'm not sure if wearing two increases your HP by 169% or 160% since Presea has a seperate HP modifier that I'd need to do math on. My gut says 160% though. Status: Overcome.
: Team Presea wins the fourth battle!: The next one is the final battle....Let's hang in there.: We've finally reached the last fight! Will the goddess of victory smile on Team Presea?! Final battle! Ready...go!
This is a pretty sad final battle. The dragon has a lot of trouble hitting people who are too close to it and the Druids are the same casters we faced in round one. Status: Joke.
: I am proud to have been able to fight with you all.: Team Presea will be given 50,000 Gald and a recovery set! Then, let us meet again at the next exciting tournament! Good-bye, everyone.... Hmm? Please wait just a moment.Oh shit son.
: Today, our audience is very lucky! We would like to start now...an exhibition match! Are you ready Team Presea?! Here we go! HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT HOLY SHIT Viddler download
YouTube stream.
So yeah, after that I took a bit of time to contemplate. I was sidetracked by real life and other stuff that took priority over playing games for the internet, and after a bit of a delay came back and thought really hard about that fight. There's a few annoying aspects to it. The third most annoying aspect is that you have to fight your way through the first five rounds to get to it each time.
Anyway, a few words about our opponents. Garr is from Tales of Destiny, which is being LPed here. Farah Oersted and Meredy are from Tales of Eternia, marketed in the US as Tales of Destiny 2 due to He-Man's lawyers. Garr is an archer/swordsman. Farah is basically a shorter, more feminine Regal. Meredy is a combined healer/mage, with spells from both Raine and Genis, as well as Pronyma's Acid Rain. The weird blue thing is Meredy's pet, named "Quickie." I am not making that last bit up. All of them are little bitches and need to get the shit beat out of them.
IT IS TIME, MOTHERFUCKERS Viddler download
I seriously recommend downloading it from Viddler and watching, it's pretty crazy.
YouTube stream part 1.
YouTube stream part 2.
Since this battle was absolutely the hardest one I've fought yet, I figured I'd give you guys as good a breakdown as I could. This will take a lot of images, though.
What makes this different than a normal arena match is that you can use the "Item" and "Equip" menus. You will need to. I swapped Lloyd's elemental attack gem (I was using it to hit weaknesses on the round three fight, burn in hell you damn bugs) for another Black Onyx.
Meredy must die first. In addition to having the lowest HP, she can cast Resurrection. Yeah, you read that right, an enemy that can throw our own tactics back in our face. Unfortunately she has some kind of super-concentration, it's virtually impossible to knock her down while she's casting.
Garr spends most of his time attacking Raine. You can see one of his ranged attacks going off there.
I changed up the Unison Attack to actually work with this party. Lloyd/Presea and Presea/Raine have NO unison attacks in the US version, and Lloyd/Raine only have Photon Tempest. So Photon Tempest it must be.
One of the best things about Unison Attacks is that they give you a chance to "pause" the battle briefly since everyone starts from a "neutral" position, even if they were in the middle of an attack. Here I use the pause to fire off Energy Tablets - I start this battle with over 20 of them.
That's a fair chunk of HP.
Yeah, she's got Holy Lance. See what I mean about having Genis and Raine's spells?
At this point I'm finally comfortable devoting enough time and attention to using a magic lens on her. She has no elemental resistances (expecting these guys to have a weakness? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH) and decent HP. Not a lot by boss standards now, but then again there are three guys here.
Oh dear.
Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention to running for my goddamn life. Fortunately I'd used an Energy Tablets recently, and with ~160% of normal HP I can take that. Technically I could take it with my normal HP if it was absolutely full. Not sure Lloyd could.
Time for an Energy Tablets.
Presea raises her arm to lift the item in the air, as part of the "use item" animation. Wait why's Meredy raising her arm...
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF ENEMIES SHOULD NOT DO THAT. That's the second most annoying aspect of the fight. They'll toss out an hourglass when you're weak and ruin your shit while time's stopped. I lost several fights to that. They'll pop out an hourglass while you're really low and then boom kill two of your guys. Then you lose.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
OHGODOHGODOHGOD - thanks to the timing of commands, the instant time resumes I'll drop an Energy Tablet and we'll be healed 30% of our maximum HP. If we can make it until then, Raine should have time to finish her current heal and...
... fuck.
This looked like a loss. That Indignation could oneshot Lloyd.
Karma pays me back for Raine's demise, though. Lloyd's opponents aren't in the circle, so he runs to them, just out of reach of blazing electric death.
And now I am FUCKING ANGRY. An hourglass's effect lasts longer than the item cooldown, so I can fire one off, get in some free damage, and then pop a life bottle. If I'm lucky Raine will use the time while they're still frozen to move away from them or something.
I am literally not wasting a second.
C'mon Raine, get that heal off.
Wait, what? WHAT?!?!?!?!
Yeah. Bitch just healed 54800 damage! Some of that might have been overhealing (I doubt we've done 16,000 damage to Garr but who knows), but I know for a fact that was 100% healing on Meredy.
Subtract 12800 from that and you get 5982. Yeah, this is going to take a bit longer.
And now, the most annoying aspect of the fight. Raine is now in the thick of things. Everyone is bunched up inside area attack radius. If Raine dies, we lose pretty much instantly unless I do something drastic or get really lucky.
I blow an hourglass, hoping Raine will heal us up, then run out while she's not needed for healing.
No such luck.
I SAY THEE NAY.
Unison attack cancels spell. And thank god it does.
I'm really glad I didn't MISS that unison attack. It can happen, and it sucks balls.
Farah is right next to Raine and hits like a truck that's attached to the front of a freight train that's hauling another freight train on flatbed cars.
On the other hand, THEIR healer is about to drop too. C'mon Raine, hang in there.
It's not all bad. We kill their healer and they kill ours pretty much in the same instant. Unlike them, we get a cool "body flies through the air" effect. I claim moral victory on that basis alone.
I was really confused why I couldn't use the item command until I realized that I gave Lloyd an order to use an Energy Tablet. He didn't execute it fast enough to save Raine, though, because he was jumping in the air at the time, and then his AI decided to continue the combo with a new attack rather than carry out my orders. Fuck this AI, fuck it bad.
What I needed to do was get them to run over to me, THEN Life Bottle Raine. Otherwise she'd revive with low health and promptly die again.
Instead I did this. I guess I was hoping she'd run away and then heal, but no, AI is dumb.
WAIT WHAT??!?!?!?! They can DO that? Meredy is back in the battle.
And so is Raine.
And now Raine's not.
Adrenaline has me repeating bad plans. I don't want to bring up the menu just to sit and think.
Annoying thing about stopping time is that enemy spells aren't affected.
Remember how Absolute can stagger unstaggerable enemies? It works in reverse too. Ordinarily Presea's "Glory" skill will prevent anything from staggering her, enabling her to just attack attack attack
. Not so much when you're frozen in a block of ice eh?
Will Raine get healed in time?
Nope. Also note Presea's low on TP right now. I can't spare item cooldowns to bring it up though. I can get one TP per swing for hitting enemies, but Presea has the slowest swing of any of our non-casters.
On the plus side, Meredy is about to eat some re-death. Maybe Raine will stay up this time?
HAHAHA FUCK NO. Look at how the Energy Tablets are healing us just as Raine collapses to the floor, a fraction of a second too soon to get healed. I really hope Genis isn't watching this fight. Dude is going to make Mithos look like a pacifist if he finds out.
I want to kill her, but not quite yet. Gotta avoid anyone else dying.
Raine is finally really up.
STAY DOWN!
I SAID STAY DOWN DAMMIT!!!!
This one is a bit close, but a quick lemon gel saved Raine.
And a Miracle Gel was a great help on Presea, restoring her HP and TP.
This one is going to be down to the wire. Will Garr kill Raine before the lemon gel lands?
No. And FUCK YOU!
I swear to god if you have another life bottle I will make you eat it.
No they do not. On Mania they get two life bottles and one hourglass and that's thankfully it. Meredy can cast Resurrection if you don't kill her first for some retarded reason.
Sometimes Garr's Decisive Slice is an absolute ton of damage and will nearly kill you.
Sometimes you block it and it's not shit.
This actually isn't that far after I finally finished off Meredy. These guys have been taking damage from Lloyd and I think Raine actually cast Photon at some point.
That blue squirrel isn't an enemy so I can't get rid of it too. Apparently it served as Meredy's weapon, similar to how Cupil serves as Fina's weapon in Skies of Arcadia.
Holy shit that guy has a lot of elemental resistances.
2 Bye Harder
Dammit, he's still barely alive.
It's a bit anticlimactic but I'm not going back in order to generate "more climactic" footage.
That is a lot of items. Mumbane is an armor for Lloyd and Zelos that protects against Earth, Lightning, Ice, and Darkness. Star Cloak has a ton of defense and also protects against Fire. Krona Symbol protects against every physical status ailment (which I think includes Petrify as well as Poison, making it effectively status immunity).
We also get two levels for everyone from the XP. The poor grade is a combination of using a lot of items and having Raine die a lot. Incidentally the time for the fight movie is 11:51 so that means that I spent literally half the fight in menus of some kind. Because this in-depth fight analysis took so damn long, there's a ton of images so I cut this update short here. I'll try to have the next actual segment ready soon.
In the final analysis, this is a pretty damn hard fight due to the sheer damage output of our foes, their hourglass
, their healing/rezzing, and the fact that there's as many of them as there are of us. If you kill Meredy first and never let her get a heal off you have to do 131,200 damage, which is more HP than the final boss. Meredy's heal healed for 54800 damage. If we assume that none of it was overheal, we dealt 186,000 damage. That's still not quite the most HP of any optional boss, but it's pretty close. Sorry about doing a whole update for one fight, I'll get back to the plot as soon as possible.