[scratchmonkey]

You're missing a URL there bro.

I got this in the mail earlier this week; I haven't had the time to really sit down and check it out though. Will maybe do so this weekend.

[scratchmonkey]

If you aren't careful to clear out the area where you first find him, Ostrava can wander into one of the nearby rooms (one where they want to teach you to throw firebombs at barrels) and get killed. He won't go beyond the fog, though.

The Asian version is also awash with the evaluation requests.

[scratchmonkey]

Been trying my first character with a missile attack, boy, doesn't that make a difference. Cruised through 1-1, 1-2 and having a bit of difficulty with 2-1 just because I haven't memorized enemy placements yet and thus will get hit hard from ambushes (and all my stat bumps have gone into Strength, Dexterity, Will and Magic). This is such a fantastic game.

[scratchmonkey]

Oh yes, I've got a question: everybody says don't consume the unique souls that you need for upgrading certain weapons/attaining certain spells; however, I'm not even sure how you would go about consuming them as they don't show up in your inventory. Or am I missing something?

[scratchmonkey]

For some reason, I never even noticed the Inventory tab as I was always in the Equipment tab instead. My fears that I'd just eaten all the unique souls were gladly unfounded. They're safe(r) in storage now.

In terms of missile weapons, is it worth it to wait to find a Compound Long Bow or should I just go ahead and buff out my Compound Short Bow?

[scratchmonkey]

You remember how early/late in 4-1 it is? I've only scouted up to the point where they reuse the guy from the tutorial.

[scratchmonkey]

Or you can farm some grass -- the best place is loading the 1-3 archstone, then heading back into 1-2. There are two Blue-Eyed Knights there, facing away from you. Since you're a Royal, you should have no problem offing them with a combo of the Thief Ring and Soul Arrow. If you get them both, you should get ~800 souls and four grasses of a combination of Half Moon Grass and/or Late Moon Grass. I was doing this for a while purely for the souls and I have around 150 Half Moon Grass and around 80 Late Moon Grass.

Finding a different strategy would probably help too, in that learning how to not get hit is the majority of the challenge in the game (or at least it is for me). Not getting hit not only keeps you from taking damage/losing stamina, it sets you up to be more effective offensively.

[scratchmonkey]

I find the Thief's Ring to be indispensable. The only time I take it off is for facing a boss like Flamelurker. (Oh, and I hope you're using Watery Veil against him.)

Belthegor -- Thanks! I actually wound up getting it shortly after posting, I hadn't realized how short 4-1 really is when you get down to it. Now to get my Dex up to reasonable levels.

[scratchmonkey]

I usually drop the Cling Ring for the Thief Ring in non-boss situations because I feel like the whole point is not getting hit, it's a lot more helpful for me to avoid situations where mobs can gang up on you than it is to be able to survive 3 hits instead of 2 when they do. Then again, I haven't pumped my HP much at all, so maybe I'm not in a situation to see much of that advantage.

[scratchmonkey]

Over the weekend I cruised through 3-1, 4-1 and 1-3, which is a bear of a level, especially if you keep dying at the point right before you unlock the level's main shortcut. I'm having trouble with the beam-shooting shadowlurkers as well, my houseguest managed to bull right through them with his character; I don't have a melee weapon to match his though -- the trick with them is to get them to fire when you're fairly high up from them and then rapidly close the distance between you and them and hack them down, something I haven't worked out the timing for yet. The aforementioned houseguest is using a Dragon Long Sword +3 and it's far better against those guys than my Moon Winged Spear +2.

I've also spent a lot of time trying to farm spiderstone in 2-2. I think I really need to make a Large Sword of Searching in order to really do this, as I average 1 Splinter of Spiderstone for every 8 trips through the level, more or less.

[scratchmonkey]

I'm playing with the Asian version which didn't have the Halloween event (or at least it never seemed to be in effect, in fact for a while I had White WT for the Shrine). I do still have the Swollen Demon's Soul, so I'll just make the Meat Cleaver.

[scratchmonkey]

He's tough when he starts going berserk, especially if he corners you and winds up doing multiple of those explosion-type attacks in a row. I wound up finishing him off by judicious use of constant rolling and Soul Arrow when I felt safe enough to get a shot off.

I got a Kilij up to +8 last night after Firestorming the Gecko Nest a few times, so now I just need to get through 4-2 so that I can turn it into a Large Sword of Searching (it's a tough call between that and One-Time Revival; I don't really know how I'll get all that Spiderstone for my bow otherwise).

[scratchmonkey]

I'm getting my hash handed to me repeatedly by 4-2. I've probably managed 40 deaths on it over the last three days. 50% of the time it's the two gold skeletons on the narrow path because one of them (usually the second) will catch me in a repeated stagger loop and then kill me or I'll kill myself rolling off the cliff to avoid a stagger loop. 49% of the time it's the first beam-phantom directly after those gold skeletons. I just can't seem to figure out a way to kill him without taking the beam to the face, which will kill me. One time I managed to do it and that's the other 1% of the time, when I actually avoided both beams and got to the second reaper, where I died because when I dealt him the killing blow, I flew off the cliff he's standing in front of.

Phuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

Finally put 4-2 to bed tonight, after going to 3-2 and grabbing the Rune Shield you can find there, it made the beam guys trivial, meaning the major threats in that level are the second reaver and the backstabber shadow right next to him (since you can cheese the third reaver really easily).

I have to go back and farm the slug pool at some point, I ran straight through to deal with the boss. Once I got the soul, I made a Large Sword of Searching out of my +8 Kilij and almost immediately found enough Spiderstone to get my Vicious Compound Long Bow to +3. Fuming a little bit that I missed 3 Chunks of Moonlightstone (too encumbered at the end of 3-1) and the piece of Perfect Clearstone that you're supposed to get from Ostrava (I didn't realize you were supposed to find him after you've rescued him). I'd like to make a Quality Knight Sword so that I can have something to use on creatures that are strong against magic; that will involve finding a Knight Sword though.

(Spears are pretty great. I'm using a Moon Winged Spear +2 right now.)

[scratchmonkey]

Turns out Ostrava just hangs out in 1-3 after you rescue him, so I was able to get that Clearstone after all. I'm 3 Chunks short of getting my Quality Knight Sword to +5, I broke down and bought it off of the vendor in 1-3 after finding out that the treasure that I thought was a Knight Sword was actually a Penetrating Sword. So, still to do: 1-4, 3-2, 3-3, 4-3 and all of world 5.

[scratchmonkey]

They urge you to do it in offline mode because I believe that there are known glitches that happen online that will cause your world tendency to reset to Neutral. Two of these that they mention are using the Miracle Evacuate and getting killed as an invading Black Phantom.

If you screw up and die, you'll retain World Tendency for sure so long as you never go back to the Nexus -- all the associated NPCs will still be in the level. I know this from experience as I got World 1 to Pure White Tendency (I'm not sure how) with one of my early characters and I died to Miralda something like two dozen times until I figured out a trick to cheese her.

If you Quit in the middle of the level, everything should save exactly the way it is. I haven't tested it with World Tendency, I haven't seen anything to indicate that it doesn't work that way.

ETA: One of the folks on the wiki claims that even loading a game that was in the middle of a level eventually caused the world to reset to neutral.

So I guess your plan is to get to Pure Black, kill the NPCs, PD and Boss and thus get Pure White? Good luck if this is the case -- Pure Black makes everything extremely nasty, I've seen the most basic monsters (miners in 2-1, 2-2) one-shot a soul level 80 character on Pure Black.

[scratchmonkey]

Honestly, it's hard to tell, I've actually gotten two worlds to Pure White (1 and 4) in two different games without even trying (and without getting Pure Black first, so none of the Pure Black BPs or PDs). Which would seem to indicate that killing bosses and the BPs that show up normally should be enough to do it -- a lot of the worlds have BP NPCs that show up in normal difficulty*, so if killing those counts toward Tendency, that would be relatively doable.

* - In 2-2, there are two BP barbarians next to the Gecko Nest, there's the BP before the boss in 3-1, the BP where you rescue Urbain in 4-2, etc. etc.

[scratchmonkey]

You might still be able to get it to PWT in that situation, it's an unconfirmed rumor that killing an invading BP gives you a boost to WT. It makes sense with the way the rest of the game works; I don't think it would work well on the Asian version right now just because I'm not sure the player base is big enough to get reliable invasions, I have no idea what it's like online on the US version.

[scratchmonkey]

Supposedly he's one of the hardest BPs in the game as it's really difficult to kill him before he manages to heal himself.

Also reading around on GameFAQs, there's so many divided opinions on what affects WT/CT or not (specifically nobody can seem to agree whether killing invading BPs has any affect on WT/CT or not), it makes it really difficult to tell if there is any reliable way one way or another, which is why I've largely been ignoring it.

ETA: Oh, just found out about this, all the way at the bottom: http://www.atlus.com/mediawiki/index.php/Tendency

Which is probably why people are saying doing WT offline, if this is true, if you're online, your WT will constantly be drifting toward the "general" WT taken from the average of the online population.

It also seems to indicate that defeating invading BPs does affect WT, to the point where defeating 3 of them should be enough to get back to PWT.

[scratchmonkey]

It's probably more worth your time to get good at not getting hit in the first place rather than trying to improve blocking. Everybody that I've seen who fights with two weapons or with a two-handed weapon relies on positioning and judicious use of rolling, which can be very effective (if you're good at it) since that stamina that would otherwise be used for blocking can instead be used to rain down more blows.

[scratchmonkey]

There were two parts to my statement. So while rolling pell-mell doesn't work really well in those situations you mentioned, you can avoid getting hit relatively easy just through the use of basic positioning (and I've seen somebody go through 4-2 with a double-handed meat cleaver, so it's definitely possible even in less than ideal situations). If you feel like you have to block, I don't really see a way around using a shield in your off-hand unless you get really good at riposting, which seems far too tough to me, especially since a fair amount of attacks can't be parried at all.

The lock-on and camera are probably the most annoying things about the game, yeah. That said, I've found them to be pretty minor. I think I've died to rolling off of a narrow bit of architecture when the lock-on went the opposite way I expected a handful of times; you can chalk that up to the inherent danger of rolling in an area where you can fall though.

[scratchmonkey]

Did it do anything for World Tendency?

I was trying Blue Phantoming tonight before Flamelurker, killing him 4 times out of 4. I got 3 Ss and one D, possibly because his finger slipped, possibly because he's a dick. It didn't seem to do anything for either Character Tendency (which stayed Neutral) or World Tendency (which stayed tantalizingly white).

This is all on the Asian servers -- how active are the U.S. servers? I've been thinking that I should pick up the N.A. version to a) support Atlus and b) to try and get in on a more active multiplayer scene, as my experience with the Asian servers lately has been rather sparse (got summoned 4 times with one drop in 45 minutes of hanging around).

ETA: Also, how many souls did you get? I was guessing that there's some sort of diminishing returns with blue phantoming because I got 59K souls the first time, 22K the second, 12K the third and 5K the fourth.

[scratchmonkey]

Thief's Ring does.

[scratchmonkey]

Had a good run yesterday afternoon, taking out Leechmonger (Firestorm does a ridiculous amount of damage to him), Maneater (another cheese-fest as I poison-clouded him and then played ring-around-the-brazier until he fell over, poor chap) and Old Monk (after dying going up the stairs twice against BPs, I got up there only to face the CPU opponent, who went down very easily). Also managed to get my bow up to +3 and I just need some moonlight shards to get my spear to +4 as well.

After killing Old Monk, I decided to do some blue-stoning by the Maneater A.S. First go, I wound up as the Old Monk and had a very tense 5-minute battle with an obviously fairly experienced guy who switched between a Large Sword of Searching and Keel Smasher. I almost got him except that he cleverly used Death Cloud to obscure his position while he healed and eventually got me right before I Firestormed him. Then I wound up with two Blue Phantom sequences. The first was with a guy in full Brushwood and the Dragon Long Sword, we wound up winning fairly easily. The second was a guy in the Old King's armor who had this hilarious method of mashing buttons while walking that gave him this weird jerky-gliding motion. We wound up facing off against a BP armed with a halberd who was obviously pretty good in a horribly lagged-out battle. When I walked in, I noticed that there was something on the floor and thinking that my partner had dropped it (this has happened before), I picked it up, only to find out that it was the Monk's Headdress and it had obviously been dropped by the BP who probably had multiple ones. I felt like a bit of a dill for grabbing it, especially because I got wiped out fairly quickly. Halberds are no joke in the right hands.

[scratchmonkey]

Yeah, it's pretty much a freebie that's almost entirely worthless. I didn't even notice when it came up the first time I fought as the Old Monk.

I do a fair amount of hand-to-hand just because there's a lot of stuff that magic isn't effective against and I also like saving my mana for bosses as I'm one of those people who like to hoard consumables. I admit that not having done pure melee against Tower Knight, Flamelurker and Maneater makes me feel a little less hardcore, I find it hard to resist taking the easy way out against tough creatures, even eminently beatable once like Leechmonger and Armor Spider. I have a couple of alternate characters that I'll probably move onto rather than get really into NG, I'd rather try and experience another way to play the game.

[scratchmonkey]

I think people complain about Tower Knight because he's the first boss that you fight where you figure out that if you play sloppy in any way, you will die (and you will die quickly). You'd think that people would figure that out with the Blue-Eye Knights; however, I think that Tower Knight's greater amount of health, intimidating size and range of attacks makes people panic and once you panic, you're dead. He's a great second boss in that he teaches you that you need to play the game with control (not that you don't get that earlier, especially with the archer-Blue-Eye-Knight bottleneck right before TK; he's probably just a more extreme example).

Regarding beating Leechmonger with a Royal, your best bet in terms of taking him as-is is to load up your melee weapon with turpentine and learn his attack pattern, which is pretty slow and easy to read, so long as you can reliably dodge the leech balls. You have to be really overpowered to be able to overcome his healing ability with ranged magic. I wasn't able to do it with a character with a +2 Kris Knife and a 30 in Magic using Soul Arrow (although I've since picked up the Monk's Headwrap and a Ring of Magical Sharpness, so I wonder if that would have put me over the top). The same is true for arrows. If you're going to beat him with magic, Firestorm is the only way to go. If you don't want to beat Flamelurker, I would suggest getting to 2-2 and picking up the Dragon Long Sword that's in the tunnels. It makes World 5 way easier.

[scratchmonkey]

All the canonical bosses are dead aside from False King and I'm contemplating whether I want to do PBWT, primarily to get more Colorless Demon's Souls (I only have the two from the crow, which I've used on my Kris Blade). I saved World 5 for last and aside from just being annoying, it wasn't that bad difficulty-wise, especially in terms of the bosses. I managed to get stuck in the swampy bit of the Dirty Colossus battle for around half-a-minute and still had no problem taking him out first try.

[scratchmonkey]

Started a Thief on the American game last night and plowed through 1-1 in about half-an-hour, dying once from a stupid flurry attack that dropped me down the middle of the tower where you raise the first portcullis and get the Cling Ring. I keep forgetting that you can't backstab if you've got your shield up. Currently using the Crescent Falchion from 4-2, thinking about forging up a Tearing Shotel, just for the heck of it.

[scratchmonkey]

Just had somebody dc to keep me from getting souls from a boss when helping as a BP for the first time. It was especially galling as I'd done most of the work as well. Worth noting that was also the only time I've BPed on the American version, this wasn't something that happened on the Asian version at all.

ETA: Actually I had dropped sessions four times tonight, twice when the Knight died, so it could just be my connection/Atlus' servers being horrible.

[scratchmonkey]

I have heard that the American version is way more disconnect-y than the Asian version, it's a real pity if that's the case.

[scratchmonkey]

Played a bunch of the American version over the weekend, started with helping as a Blue on Tower Knight, then grabbing a couple folks to do him myself, after going through 2-1 fairly rapidly, I went down to Flamelurker. I helped out a guy along with another Blue only to have him get us all once he went aggro after I stupidly got stuck in snipe view accidentally. I ran back down to join up with another group and knocked him off relatively quickly, only to get a message from the first guy asking if I wanted to try again. I felt bad for the stupid death earlier, so I suicided in the Nexus, ran back down, got summoned by the first guy along with a very helpful Blue wearing the Monk's Headdress and we made short work of him. Then I stupidly died in Body form (with PWWT, gah) going down the pit. Blue Phantomed Flamey again to get my body back and then summoned Mr. Headdress to finally put him down.

Hopefully this means that I regained PWWT and can nab Keel Smasher; I didn't check out if this was the case though. I've pumped up Dex and Luck with the current equipment of the Black Leather Set that Thieves start with, a Quality Uchikatana +4 and the Adjudicator's Shield. The high Luck stat means that I get drops at a much higher rate. I haven't been able to verify one way or the other that it doesn't affect what gets dropped; that said, even if it doesn't affect that specifically, you're still going to get more rare drops simply because you're getting more drops in general, which means more dice rolls.

[scratchmonkey]

It doesn't, and if I know the Tendency math, being at PWWT (I knew I was there because I saw WP Scirvir), dying in Body Form then killing Flamelurker should be a net neutral move, so I should still be at PWWT (with Dragon God still to go, so even if I'm not, I can get there either by killing him or killing invading phantoms).

[scratchmonkey]

[scratchmonkey]

Took out Leechmonger with my American character using a two-handed Quality Uchikatana +4 and a single dose of turpentine. Then I cleared out pretty much all of 5-2 except for the boss. Did have one embarrassing situation where I was sniping the four giant goblins on the hill in the middle of the second swamp sequence from the elevated walkway that's the major shortcut through the level and they all ran away. I figured that they were over on the other side of the level, trying to figure out how to get to me, so I dropped down. Only to have all of them charge out of the murk at me and destroy me horribly. I think they're my least favorite enemy out of the entire game. Fast, strong attacks that knock you down, seems like they have an excellent range of vision and they appear in areas where they have a significant advantage over the player in mobility.

[scratchmonkey]

I knocked off Dirty Colossus, Maiden Astrea, Penetrator and Old Hero yesterday. I used the Pureblood Soul to get the Blueblood Sword and that thing is pretty amazing, I mainly use it two-handed with an Adjudicator's Shield +3 in the offhand slot.

I got invaded twice by the same Black Phantom while going through 1-3. They were dual-wielding katanas and wearing the Magician's Gear with Yuria's hat. The first time went comically bad for them as we ran smack into each other at the bottom of the big stairs and I got off a series of two-handed strikes with the Blueblood before they could react. The second time was far more tense, I was further into the level this time and we wound up meeting in the middle of the stairs. Their strategy was to get me bleeding with an initial strike and then go for the backstab, which they pulled off twice. Unfortunately for them, either they stunk in dealing the finishing blow or my evasive maneuvering is somewhat effective, as both times I was able to roll away and down an herb. Still, they were doing more damage than I was healing and soon I had about a quarter-inch of health and they went for the kill. In fact, a little too aggressively, as I was able to pull off a couple of two-handed counter strikes and it was goodnight Irene with only the regen from the Adjudicator's Shield keeping me alive. Afterwards my heart was pounding, something that hasn't happened with a game in a long time.

Ostrava glitched out after giving me the Pure Clearstone, so no Old King for me this run.

[scratchmonkey]

Oh most definitely, Luck is 32 right now and I think the damage output in the Status screen is about 340 for the Blueblood right now. Makes for a lot of drops as well, I'm never low on herbs and it makes things a lot easier in terms of farming stones.

[scratchmonkey]

I'm feeling similarly positive about my high Dex/Luck character with the Blueblood. The combination of that and a +4 Sticky Compound Long Bow has proven to be very powerful at least in the first runthrough, although I am also using Blue Phantoms a lot more than I have on previous characters as I'm no longer completely scared to be running around in Body Form most of the time. I haven't even been using weapon buffs yet, although I expect that will change in 1-4, as I remember that enemy toughness goes up by a lot.

One thing that I do like about having high Luck is that getting the Pure stones from geckos seems to be a little easier, I have three Pure Darkmoonstones so far.

Looking at the shields, there's almost no logical reason to not use the Purple Flame Shield, it's ridiculously good in almost every aspect in comparison to any of other nice shields. I imagine Cuba feels similarly to myself; I'm just tired of using it all the time and would rather look at something else.

ETA: I started writing this before Cuba posted and obviously missed his point re: magic damage. I still feel the same regarding both shields and armor: there isn't enough diversity in terms of truly useful equipment.

[scratchmonkey]

Which is what I'm going for with the BBS and the Adjudicator's Shield -- I'm hoping that once I get it up to +5, it'll reasonably effective in PvP used off-hand while I two-hand the BBS. I'm not sure whether it'll offset poison and plague at the same time or even whether it'll regen enough health to make a difference in a heated melee; it's definitely something I want to find out though.

[scratchmonkey]

Yeah, those have the advantage of incredible reach as well as staggering/tossing anybody who gets hit with them, I just don't have the Faith to wield the Cleaver (or the Large Sword of Moonlight) and I've never managed to get PWWT on World 2, usually I do something incredibly stupid like falling down the pit or plunging down the elevator while in Body Form.

[scratchmonkey]

Just had Ostrava glitch out on me in 1-4 in 2 out of 2 games. Next time I'm just killing him in 1-1.