|
The other problem with the size of Reuben's flail is that while a flail of that size is effective against humans, we are going up against monsters, many of which are quite large.
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2014 17:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 22:34 |
|
|
Waffleman_ posted:The other problem with the size of Reuben's flail is that while a flail of that size is effective against humans, we are going up against monsters, many of which are quite large. And you think a longsword or a claw is going to be any better?
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2014 18:51
|
|
|
Waffleman_ posted:The other problem with the size of Reuben's flail is that while a flail of that size is effective against humans, we are going up against monsters, many of which are quite large. You're just not thinking creatively enough. It's a suppository.
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2014 19:04
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:Reuben's morningstar also does Axe-type damage for some reason Well of course, that's just how blunt weaponry works. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 13, 2014 20:19
|
|
|
8. Like Father, Like Son The thread has spoken and Reuben will keep his Fire resistance. Here are his normal stats. At Tuxedo Ted’s request, we’ll be switching back to the scale for our life meter. It’s good timing because I assume Reuben has a tough time with numbers or anything that’s not smacking something really hard.  I also totally lied about saving Reuben’s dad. We’ve got cool stuff to get first. It’s not like he’s going anywhere! The prize for this Battlefield is 900GP and that’s great now that we can buy seeds. I’m also pretty far behind as far as level goes so it’d be a good idea for me to power Shrug up.   Our first enemy du jour is the Jelly and they’re about as threatening as their Level Forest cousins. Dissolve can hit pretty hard if it’s a critical, but otherwise it’s pretty forgettable. They’re weak to bombs, but frankly that’s a waste of a Mega Grenade when Reuben can take them out in one hit. These guys don’t actually get a field sprite. These Battlefields are the only place you’ll find them! Truly, the crème de la crème of Mystic Quest monsters. That actually applies to a fair number of enemies here and a couple from past areas.  The prize here is interesting, to say the least.  Up next is the Sting Rat. If you didn’t pick up the Noble Armor, then they could poison you with their new Poison Sting, but that’s also the least of your problems if you didn’t get that armor. They’re Battlefield exclusive.  Here they are once they’ve been shaved or something, I guess.  We can access more of those teleporters in temples and get consumables so...hooray...? Like all Battlefield items, I don’t think this is actually essential to finishing the game but without it our items list wouldn’t be complete and we can’t have that.  The prize here is 800 some EXP. No thanks.  But there’s a new enemy here so we’ll pop in for a bit. Plant Men are about as easily killed as their Level Forest lookalikes. I think they can poison you? They never live long enough to actually do anything. This goes doubly so because Reuben’s mace counts as an axe-type attack for whatever reason. These are Battlefield/enemy group exclusive. Seriously, you’d have to try really hard to lose here.  The prize here is 1200GP, or 24 seeds in other words.  Flazzards are fire Basilisks, basically. They have a Flame attack, which could probably hurt Shrug a bit and can paralyze Reuben. Like everything else here, though, Reuben takes them out in one hit. They’re one of many enemies here that’s weak to Blizzard.  Blizzard is pretty cute.  This is a very good Battlefield. If you’re going to do any of them in the area, make it this one.  It also introduces the Brownie’s second palette-swap, the Red Caps. These are one of the more annoying enemies to face. They have their usual physical repertoire along with being able to confuse you, but now they can put you to sleep. Reuben’s still taking them out in one hit, so there’s that, and they’re weak to Blizzard.  Shrug can now rightfully call himself a wizard. I’m not sure if it’s stronger than Blizzard when it’s damaging weaknesses, but this is nice nonetheless. Thunder is unique in that it’s the only Wizard spell with which you can actually select a specific enemy to attack.   All right, that’s enough distraction for now, let’s go save Reuben’s idiot father. I don’t like the Mine. The Falls Basin music is nice, but I just left Aquaria and I’m over it. Compared to Wintry Cave, which was basically a straight shot to where you needed to go, treasure included, the Mine is tedious and sends you on a different path that you wouldn’t normally go to to get the treasure. It’s not easy to get really lost or anything, I just kinda don’t feel like going out of my way like that. I’ve never not picked up the Charm Claw so I wonder if there are any repercussions for when we get the last claw. I doubt it, but who knows.  Anyways, Red Bones are pretty much reskinned Skeletons. Or would it be re-unskinned? I don’t think they’ve picked up any new tricks. They’re weak to Blizzard as well. Just assume everything here is weak to Blizzard unless I mention otherwise.  Yeah, looks like just tossing them works fine. There’s a gauntlet of enemies blocking heal potions and cure potions if you’re a fool, but otherwise nothing else in there.  The other gimmick in the Mine, aside from the conveyor belts, is one-way elevators scattered around the area. I’m not really sure if this is can be called an elevator but whatever. Those two skeletons are guarding the way to the treasure, so let’s take them out.  Mummies are interesting, I suppose. They can actually multiply if there are any spots open on the battlefield. They can counter with para-touch, which is pretty useless since Shrug is immune and Reuben will kill them in one hit. They can also poison you on occasion but it’s not like Shrug has to worry about that.  They really pile on the new weapons in this section of the game.  Thankfully, this is a fun one. That’s a whole lot of status effects up there! While it’s certainly the weakest weapon we have, being able to poison, blind, paralyze, confuse, and put enemies to sleep is pretty cool.  It also makes the scratches a nice shade of blue so the Charm Claw is alright by me.  That’s the last side room. If you’re hurting for bombs, then you can pick some up in there.  Getting the Charm Claw means that we basically have to go back to the beginning. Taking the southernmost path will get you to this conveyor belt. After that, as long as you don’t take any detours, the conveyor belts will guide you towards the boss.    The  You’re going to want to hope he casts Fire, preferably at Reuben, for the most part. Reuben is going to tank these Fire hits nicely and he has like 23 casts of Life, which is a full heal in case you forgot. I think it’ll be okay.  It was that this point in the fight that I realized that Shrug was falling pretty far behind. Thunder wasn’t hitting for much, Blizzard even less. Beam took off more than half of his health in one shot with 331 damage. He didn’t use it in this fight, but the Jinn also has Flame Sweep which will hit both party members. I’m not sure how much damage it’d do to Shrug at his level but Reuben will only take like 120.  In case you ran out of explosives or something, the game gives you 20 here so you don’t have to go all the way back. It’s pretty convenient!    Uh, who said you could have one of those?  Wow. Great work, Reuben. I don’t see how that could have gone badly at all.  He tells the two to be careful and heads on his way.  Oh god, please, get me the hell out of here.    No! Who would have thought?! Before we head off, let’s check out the temple that we can get to with the boulder dislodged.  ...what are you doing here?  Whoa whoa whoa, hold the loving phone.   Are you sure that was an allowance and not just spare change you found on the ground? Next time: The Crystal of Fire really is in the Lava Dome
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 00:43
|
|
|
Are you not fighting every battle? I get every enemy in the dungeons and I'm never lacking for firepower when playing.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 00:55
|
|
|
He definitely isn't. I think he even pointed that out in the first update. If he were, I think he'd be on par with or slightly past Reuben in levels at this point.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 01:07
|
|
|
He's skipping a LOT of Battlefields if that world map .gif is any indication. I'm 90% sure the entire point of those things is to provide you with some exp outside of dungeons as you move through the game. They're grindy as hell, sure, but it keeps you from falling behind so badly if you're not trying to do a low level run.
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 01:12
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm basically fighting the bare minimum in dungeons. I'm skipping the majority of the Battlefields unless I need GP for something but I think I'm good on money for the rest of the game so I might just stop doing those. It's sort of disingenuous for me to say that Shrug is falling really far behind since he's still two-shotting every enemy, his health is the only real problem. I'm mostly just doing it for a little extra challenge since my only actual death thus far, not counting being petrified because that's really out of my hands, was Flamerus Rex. Battlefields are definitely supposed to be a shot in the arm if you're feeling a little weak. Speaking of Battlefields: I guess the artist of this wasn't told you only had two party members at a time. We haven't seen Shrug's character artwork yet since I'm saving it for a rainy day but you can catch a glimpse of him here. E: vvvv Yeah, Reuben's honestly not that bad. He's just noticeably less versatile than Phoebe and it's fun to pick on him. Tristam and Kaeli also only had Life and could hit only one enemy, after all. The difference is that Tristam and Kaeli weren't with us for nearly as long and never had a chance to be obsoleted nor in a position to be surpassed so quickly by Shrug. cardinal direction fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Jul 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 01:33
|
|
|
Carbolic Smokeball posted:Hmm. When I was a kid and paid no attention to stats I always really liked Reuben. I haven't played this game in years and had no idea he was so objectively terrible. He's not, everyone is overreacting. It's not like we're all hating on Kaeli, who is Reuben + two or three spells. It's that Phoebe has a lot more spells than anyone else and is thus way more versatile (and thus better) than everyone else. After she leaves you get Reuben, who can cast one spell: Life. Life is the only spell you need, but that big hit to action diversity means that Reuben has a lot less to offer and can't hit bosses' elemental weaknesses. Given the game's difficulty it's hard to say that's a loss in real terms. You're going to win, it's just that Reuben wins slightly less. He's also the only companion who gets a flail, which is a cool looking, under-used weapon in video games. MartianAgitator fucked around with this message at 02:13 on Jul 14, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 02:10
|
|
|
I remember why I liked Reuben as a kid thanks to that gif. The satisfying "FFOOOOMP" of the flail swing. (I think it's the same as the axe, but a flail is just so much more  )
|
|
#
?
Jul 14, 2014 02:27
|
|
|
9. Volcano Climbing Before Shrug heads out for the Volcano, we should probably stock up on seeds. Magic is going to be immensely appreciated for taking out enemies quickly because our old buddy petrification is going to come back with a vengeance. But why are these dopes “buying” zero?  Can one truly have zero seeds?   It looks like you can!I’m not entirely sure if this glitch has a name or anything. If you don’t have any of a consumable and you buy 0 of them, you still get an item icon with a value of 0. Using it turns the count over from 0 to 255 or some other shenanigans with binary. That’s why it overflows and glitches, because as you can see the normal limit is 99. Keep in mind that this can really screw up your inventory—those Refreshers have been transmuted into seeds, for instance. I’ve also heard that random items can appear or disappear but that hasn’t happened to me. I’m not totally sure what happens if you overflow into the key items but I have a feeling it’s not that good. Maybe you could somehow sequence break the game with this? Realistically, I’m never going to use most of these seeds so I’m not going to keep them. Plus if I accidentally pick up Refreshers then something terrible might happen and I’m not going to chance it. Not now, at least! In the interest of not totally eliminating any difficulty I might have with the game from here on out, I’ll only pick up 5 seeds.  Anyway, back to business. This Battlefield nets you 1200 EXP so we’re just going to skip it. I have more than enough money for the rest of the game so I might only do one or two more Battlefields period. In any case, the new enemy here is in our actual destination anyway.   Say what you will about this section of the game, at least it has some pretty awesome music. The Volcano is interesting. Out of all the dungeons we go through that could be called filler, this is one is definitively filler. I guess it’s tangentially related to the plot because we have to climb it to get to the Lava Dome? It has good music, it’s short, and we’re going to get what is possibly the best spell in the game here so I can’t complain too much.  Here’s that first new enemy that I mentioned. Ghosts are really just kind of a hassle. They’re not particularly threatening because they do pitiful physical damage, Coldness isn’t really a worry, and they can reduce your attack but when has that ever mattered? They can counter with confusion and multiply similarly to Mummies but that’s really all they have going for them. Since they have Coldness you might have assumed they’re strong against Blizzard and you would be right.  Take the top path and you’ll see that chest “hidden”. That chest is where the Volcano redeems itself.  But these guys are blocking the tunnel to reach it, and that’s just not gonna fly. Unfortunately, they’re also really annoying. Nitemares, like Centaurs, can confuse you but they’ve thrown sleep into their bag of status effects. They seem pretty weak physically though, so all they’re good for is being obnoxious. Werewolves like to use Quake and confuse you, so they can also be pretty frustrating to deal with. Have you noticed everything getting confusion? Yeah... that’s not going to change any time soon.  Here they are flying a white flag and Shrug not giving a gently caress.   Oh boy,  Shrug almost did 700 damage to both of them. Reuben’s hitting single enemies for 660 or so. I’m going to be honest, I have a hard time using anything else after this spell because it’s so powerful. It’s really good, you guys! It also makes one of the best sounds in the game so there’s that too.   The enemies here are invisible so that must be some horribly thick ash. Like the Ice Pyramid, we’ll be getting an item almost immediately that defeats the point of this. There’s also only like two screens worth of enemies that are invisible so I’m not even sure what the point of this is. There’s also nothing of value here so I’m not sure why I came here. Let’s head back to the westernmost path.   At least the Volcano makes something of an effort to have the enemies in interesting places instead of just giving you a narrow path and they block the door. There’s a Nitemare right here.  And a Werewolf here. This is preferable because at least you could feasibly avoid them even if you didn’t pick up the item.  See? We could actually finish up the Volcano right now and never bother with the item. So why have it in the first place?   You have to go out of your way and fumble through one of the tunnels to even reach it.  I guess it’s a gas mask and that lets you see enemies again? I dunno.  I mean, look, there aren’t even a lot of enemies that were invisible. Seems sorta pointless, if you ask me. Altogether, there’s only like 5 of them.   It’s a good thing we picked up White because Medusa is definitely a tough fight if the cards aren’t in your favor. While you can sort of muscle your way through the other “tough” fights in the game, Medusa is throwing status effects at you left and right. Of course, being Medusa, petrification is one of them. She’s also strong to Blizzard in case that’s your go to spell once you’re out of wizard spell charges.  You’ll want to take out the Werewolves, which is easy enough. Confusion is basically the worst thing that can happen to you here and getting rid of them makes it less likely. She can poison, paralyze, and confuse as well, but thankfully Shrug no longer has to worry about two of those.   Look at how much damage she did to Shrug in one hit with Snake Head. Of course, all six hits of it connected, but still. I wasn’t entirely forthright when I said Shrug was falling behind, in retrospect. He’s still effectively killing every enemy in two hits. White is just incredibly powerful either way. His health is the only actual concern and even then it’s not too severe a problem.  This fight went really well for me because she mostly threw Poison Snake, her least damaging attack, at Reuben so Shrug was free to do heavy damage with White. If she’s too busy throwing around the more painful status effects like petrification and paralysis, it can be a bumpier ride. That’s especially true if she’s faster than whoever’s healing and you end up fighting solo.  The Volcano is honestly really short so I can’t be too upset with it. It’s only about three screens big, the loot is awesome, and now you’re killing enemies considerably quicker. Next Time: First they climbed it, now they’re going to the bottom of it? Sorry for such a short one this time, but I think the Lava Dome deserves its own update. Otherwise this one may have gone for way too long.
|
|
#
?
Jul 15, 2014 20:08
|
|
|
cardinal direction posted:
I always thought the field sprite and the white flag sprite for the dogs were pretty cute  And yeah, White is  . As a kid I always saved magic and consumables because "WHAT IF?!?!?!" but with a decent amount of seeds you can pretty much spam it. It's very satisfying.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 11:23
|
|
|
Bregor posted:I always thought the field sprite and the white flag sprite for the dogs were pretty cute The field sprite of the dogs always looked like a jiggling pile of chocolate donuts to me as a kid and I still can't not see it to this day.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 13:49
|
|
|
Rabbi Raccoon posted:The field sprite of the dogs always looked like a jiggling pile of chocolate donuts to me as a kid and I still can't not see it to this day. And when you put it like that, now I see it too.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 14:37
|
|
|
Rabbi Raccoon posted:The field sprite of the dogs always looked like a jiggling pile of chocolate donuts to me as a kid and I still can't not see it to this day. I always saw it as a mobile mountain -- just a vaguely triangular brown blob. CRT displays don't really handle that level of fine detail very well.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 14:52
|
|
|
cardinal direction posted:Next Time: First they climbed it, now they’re going to the bottom of it? Nah, the map in Lave Dome wraps around left to right so you're climbing around inside of the volcano. Not sure if that's spoiler-worthy but just to be safe.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 17:37
|
|
|
Geshtal posted:Nah, the map in Lave Dome wraps around left to right so you're climbing around inside of the volcano. Not sure if that's spoiler-worthy but just to be safe. That's a level of detail that I honestly wouldn't have expected from a game like this. But then... this LP just made me feel really dumb because I never really made the connection that the end of Volcano is the entrance to Lava Dome and that Lava Dome is literally the inside of it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 17:44
|
|
|
Rabbi Raccoon posted:The field sprite of the dogs always looked like a jiggling pile of chocolate donuts to me as a kid and I still can't not see it to this day. Looks kinda like flan to me.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 18:16
|
|
|
I can see the three dog heads, but at the same time... Shrug, why are you fighting a giant piece of candy corn?
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 18:27
|
|
|
Starting a LP during the World Cup... how mean! Now I missed most of it! I really like this game. Though Mystic Quest will always be Final Fantasy Adventure in my mind, since that's what it was called in Europe. It's a great game, even if it's a bit simple. Still, there are a ton of neat little details that make it charming. It also has some really good music. I actually liked using the temple teleportation once I got enough crests. And you are right about Spencer's tunnel being much too long. Funnily enough, the protagonist in Final Fantasy Adventure made something out of a habit of riding waterfalls, I don't know why Shrug is different.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 20:37
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Starting a LP during the World Cup... how mean! Now I missed most of it!
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 21:21
|
|
|
FactsAreUseless posted:In the U.S., Final Fantasy Adventure was what we called one of the Secret of Mana game boy games. Yeah, sorry for not being clear. That's the game I mean. The game boy game Seiken Densetsu (Japan)/Final Fantasy Adventure (USA) was called Mystic Quest in Europe. The game that's LPed in this thread, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was called Mystic Quest Legend in Europe. So my very first game with the name Mystic Quest was the game boy game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 21:28
|
|
|
Torrannor posted:Yeah, sorry for not being clear. That's the game I mean. The game boy game Seiken Densetsu (Japan)/Final Fantasy Adventure (USA) was called Mystic Quest in Europe. The game that's LPed in this thread, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was called Mystic Quest Legend in Europe. So my very first game with the name Mystic Quest was the game boy game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2014 21:30
|
|
|
It's telling that one of the major changes done in the hard mode hack for FFMQ is to remove all seed vendors and most seed chests, and also moved the White chest to a bit later.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 14:54
|
|
|
MaskedHuzzah posted:It's telling that one of the major changes done in the hard mode hack for FFMQ is to remove all seed vendors and most seed chests, and also moved the White chest to a bit later. Of course there's a hard mode hack for FFMQ. Why wouldn't there be?  I have trouble believing that there's all that much depth to eke out of the combat system, though. This isn't like, say, FF6 where there's tons of weird little
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 16:59
|
|
|
There's really not. The hard mode hack is not a well-done one (to the tune of "play cleverly and you still win, derp along and it's a crapshoot") but is instead more along the lines of "pray to the RNG to make it through trash encounters, and really pray to the RNG to make it through bosses". I tried it, got up to the wind crystal area (spoilers: there's a wind crystal area), but eventually said gently caress it. Mystic Quest just doesn't give you enough strategic options to raise the difficulty while still being fair, so raising the difficulty too much simply makes it unfair and luck-based. Limiting your money income to cut you off from seeds so you have fewer tactical options in battle is just adding insult to injury: a better way to rebalance that would simply have been to make magic weaker in general, but still have it be useful when hitting a weakness.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 18:09
|
|
|
10. Lessons on Fire Safety by Shrug and Reuben  I can’t really place my finger on why, but I like the Lava Dome. The music from the Volcano is worlds more engaging and interesting to me than Wintry Cave/Ice Pyramid. Then again I’m willing to forgive a lot if the music is good. There’s some cool treasure to be found here, there’s some jumping, there’s no dumb gimmick like invisible enemies here... and it’s actually pretty short if you don’t go down all of the optional paths. While the treasure here isn’t as cool as the Ice Pyramid, it’s still pretty neat, but we’ve picked up a lot of good stuff in this zone. If you’re looking at the map (thanks to Gamefaqs again), then our destination is that blue circle. We’re going to hit up Room 1 first though.  And we’re already running into new enemies. Hot Wings are more or less Stony Roosts that picked up Flame Sweep and a fondness for 80s music. They’ll only heal once something is in its injured state and they seem to have lost their petrifying counter so they’re not too much to worry about. Reuben also has a chance to shine here since you chose to keep his Fire resistance. For reference, Shrug is taking almost 170 damage from their Flame Sweep while Reuben takes 36 or so.  We’re actually only going to Room 1 for some new enemies.  Fangpires are capable of confusing you with Sonic Boom and draining a little health away with Drain. They also have Tornado. They’re really not a big deal unless they confuse Reuben...  ...and he decides to attack you.  How can you not love a dungeon where you haphazardly leap across lava to beat up monsters for explosives?   Adamant Turtles are nothing. Shrug, even at his lower level, can kill them in one hit with the Battle Axe. Reuben just smashes them into paste. They’re still weak to Thunder, but why bother with that? Referring back to the map, we’re headed to Room 10.  I have no idea why Ninjas would just hang out in a volcano, but well, here you go.  I’ve also never understood what the hell is going on with their injured sprite. Are they falling through a hole in the floor? Bowing for forgiveness? Did Shrug basically just destroy everything from the neck down? They’re weak to Blizzard and Thunder, but again, sort of a waste to use magic on them. They can blind you and use purely physical attacks so they’re pretty easy to deal with.  That insignia in the floor is what we’re trying to reach but this is actually out of the way of where we should be.  Avizzards have the honor of being the first and one of two enemies that Reuben won’t kill in one hit. They’re pretty boring enemies. Like everything else they can confuse you, but they’re really just walls more than anything.   Back on track. That nice chest is guarded by a lot of monsters and that’s sort of the Lava Dome’s ‘thing’: A whole lot of enemies. Sometimes they’re clustered together and you really only have to fight one, other times you just have to fight throw narrow corridors. You stand to gain a lot of levels here if you want.  Their Japanese name seems to be Cyclops so that’s a thing, I suppose.  Dang, looks like we’ll have to pass on that treasure for now until we have something that can solve such a dastardly puzzle.   It’s sort of backwards that Stheno is the trash enemy and Medusa was the more dangerous one but hey. She’s nowhere near as bad as her sister considering that Reuben can one-shot her, but she can counter with petri-touch so keep that in mind if you attack her.  Barring any deaths by petrification, we’re pretty much assured to never get another game over after this. Considering that we can now bring party members back to life, and they all have Life themselves, we’re good to go.  There are just perfect gold bars in the volcano, I guess?? Past these two is Door 11. Giving you a choice between enemies to fight is another thing the Lava Dome does so there are a few spots like this.  There are also a lot of “one-way” drops like this.  Next up is Door/Room 2.  I’m pretty sure fighting all of these guys would bring Shrug more than halfway to another level and he just got one.  But before we go deeper in, we’ll want to take this staircase that’s off to the left.  Lo and behold, the Lava Dome’s second treasure.   The Moon Helm makes this dungeon a lot less threatening. Where Shrug was taking almost 200 damage from fire attacks, he’ll take about 70 at the most now. Avizzards were only doing 12 damage with Fire so you won’t want to miss out on this. Shrug is on his way to becoming an unstoppable death machine. Unfortunately, the next helmet isn’t as cool but you can’t win them all, I guess!  Alright, time to take the right path. That leads us here and the rest of it is basically a straight line.  It ends at this switch, which opens up the big door on the left. Now it’s on to Door 3.  And that gets you to the second half of room 2. From here on out there will be a lot of narrow paths with mandatory encounters. Ugh.  Like so. This is one of two rooms like this in the dungeon and it’s about as fun to go through as you might expect.  And I’m not sure why they didn’t just put Flazzard here but this is the last of the Basilisk line. Salamands have picked up Thunder and they can hit pretty hard but that’s about it for them. Everybody say goodbye to the Basilisks!  I remember hating these rooms as a kid because I felt like it took me forever to get through them. I guess that’s not really the case but you really notice getting funneled into enemy encounters here.  This place seriously has a lot of battles, if you haven’t noticed. I’m fighting the bare minimum and Shrug’s already gained two levels. Granted, Shrug is a pretty low level so he’s gaining them faster than he normally would at this point, but if you need to grind or something then this might not be a bad place to do it. The boxes contain Cure Potions but it’s unlikely that you’ll need them.  We exit out of Door 4. You could climb up that cliff to a side room in Door 6 but there’s nothing of value in there so we’re going to head up the staircase to Door 7 instead.  And we find ourselves in another of these rooms. They’re much shorter than I remember.  The “challenge” is getting around those inconveniently placed gold bars. There are two exits here and we want the one furthest to the right, Door 8. This has nothing to do with directions but I find myself not paying any attention to health with the life scale so it was a bit of a surprise for me to find Reuben as low as he was.  And that will lead you to this door. I was always sort of curious why this boss got a special door and the others before it didn’t. I guess it doesn’t really matter but it’s the little things.  After a jumping ‘maze’, you’ll find this dancing machine.    The Dualhead Hydra is a much rougher tumble than the Ice Golem. Where the Ice Golem was a straight damage race, this is more along the lines of a war of attrition. It’s not weak to Blizzard, just like every other boss in this section of the game. And as with Medusa before it, you can’t really just force your way through here because of all the status effects flying around. White is going to be your best friend for this fight because it’s almost three times as more powerful as Shrug’s normal attacks.  Good thing we got the Moon Hel-  met. The Hydra hits very hard, in case you couldn’t tell. This is with fire resistance, I’m not sure Shrug would survive without it here. Juggling between casting White and keeping Reuben’s sorry rear end alive can be a challenge if you want that spell to be your main offense.  It’s not a horrible strategy to just keep healing while Reuben plinks away at him. I mean, it’ll take you forever, but it’ll get you there.  It has quite an arsenal at its disposal and nearly every single one of its attacks hits incredibly hard. Poison and paralysis are thankfully ineffective against Shrug, but Reuben... and as you’ve seen, Thunder and Flame Breath are pretty powerful. There’s also Stone Gas, which is guaranteed to put a stop to your offense. These aren’t even the physical attacks, and those can hit for up to 400 damage. Dualhead Hydra is pretty scary compared to Ice Golem.  This could cause some tension if you have some low health. Scrunch can really hurt. I’m pretty sure if that was a critical hit then it would have just killed Shrug then and there. By the way, this is a pretty crummy hydra considering it hasn’t grown back any heads.  For reference, it would take about 10 Whites to put this guy down but he’s on the ropes now. You might benefit from keeping Reuben on manual and just curing with Life rather than using Cure. I typically just keep my party member on auto because I don’t really care and they usually do what I want anyway, but the AI’s not smart enough to use Life as a healing spell in my experience.  And then this happened.  Petrification is the worst. Since Shrug is the last to move, it’s pretty much lights out if Reuben gets petrified and the boss decides to throw out another Stone Gas. The speed bonus from the Knight Sword is enough to where he’ll occasionally move second, for whatever reason, so it’s a good idea to have that equipped for healing duty if you happen to be playing along and are also underleveled. Sort of wish I had done a low level run but Shrug would have been dead almost constantly and that wouldn’t be very fun to watch if you ask me. I believe I’m like 5 levels ahead of doing a low level run so I’m actually not as weak as I could be.  But as with all of the Vile 4, it falls to some tenacity and a couple of plucky youths.   What? When was this? Who just talks about this?  The ellipses here make it like Reuben delivered that line with a whole lot of  , like “uh, the southeast, you idiot, gosh” And then the volcano erupts and kills them both, the end  Nah, just kidding. Next time: The Life and Death of Reuben If this hard mode hack is Mystic Quest Reborn, I was thinking of showing a bit of that later on because it is just totally unbelievable garbage. I mean, I guess it has a handful of good ideas but proceeds to execute them in the worst way possible. I wouldn't do all of it because it is a ridiculously huge slog but I'm not sure if there'd be much interest in what is basically Kaizo Mystic Quest but let me know if I'm wrong about that?
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 20:35
|
|
|
cardinal direction posted:I have no idea why Ninjas would just hang out in a volcano, but well, here you go. My interpretation was that they were hiding in a convenient trapdoor or shadow or something. They're ninjas from the early 1990's, they can do whatever they want. quote:If this hard mode hack is Mystic Quest Reborn, I was thinking of showing a bit of that later on because it is just totally unbelievable garbage. I mean, I guess it has a handful of good ideas but proceeds to execute them in the worst way possible. I wouldn't do all of it because it is a ridiculously huge slog but I'm not sure if there'd be much interest in what is basically Kaizo Mystic Quest but let me know if I'm wrong about that? I'd be interested in seeing some of it, but based on what people are saying, I'm not gonna demand you play through all or even a significant portion of it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 20:51
|
|
|
Got a link handy to the "hard mode" hack? I'll take a stab at it, see if any of it's actually worth showing off.Vil posted:Mystic Quest just doesn't give you enough strategic options to raise the difficulty while still being fair, so raising the difficulty too much simply makes it unfair and luck-based. Limiting your money income to cut you off from seeds so you have fewer tactical options in battle is just adding insult to injury: a better way to rebalance that would simply have been to make magic weaker in general, but still have it be useful when hitting a weakness. This is the one thing that I'm actually going to disagree with. Once you hit that seed vendor in Fireburg, the game is literally over, because you can spam White at literally anything and come out ahead. It doesn't matter if you overextend yourself or waste charges, because you can pop a seed and never have to worry about running out of charges. Making it so that you actually have to pick and choose when to drop your Whites is far more interesting, although I admit that taken in a context where enemies also get huge buffs sounds like it's more of a slog than anything.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:07
|
|
|
cardinal direction posted:
I don't know, but this is my new headcanon. It's likely they just open a trapdoor to escape though...though why they don't use it to escape is beyond me. Also I'd be interested in seeing how bad that hack can get. Also also, any chance we could get back to numbers instead of those HP bars? They're really confusing to me for some reason. Blaze Dragon fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Jul 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:29
|
|
|
Haha holy poo poo this is bad. CD, do you mind if I field this one? I'm probably not going to LP the entire thing but goddamn does it need to be shown off as "This is NOT how you make Mystic Quest more interesting."
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:34
|
|
|
Artix posted:Got a link handy to the "hard mode" hack? I'll take a stab at it, see if any of it's actually worth showing off. (Link contains spoilers) http://www.jce3000gt.com/mqr.php (Link contains spoilers) - I've only bothered with the Hardtype and haven't touched the Reborn. I didn't feel like the enemy buffs were all that bad or that it was all that RNG dependent. There's also a much harder cap on gold, if memory serves - enough to get all of the equipment upgrades but very little else. MaskedHuzzah fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jul 17, 2014 |
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:35
|
|
|
Oh, I actually got the Reborn patch instead. Even better! I can't wait to see what kind of interesting "new" content he came up with.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:38
|
|
|
If you're interested in it, go for it, Artix! If you need commentary or something along those lines, let me know. From what I've seen, Reborn gets dumb as hell so I'm interested in seeing more of it myself. On the off chance some of you haven't played Mystic Quest before and are really invested in its gripping narrative, that link spoils virtually the rest of the game so don't click that if you want it to be a surprise.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:40
|
|
|
Jesus christ I just read through the list of "tips" if you're struggling that're down at the bottom of the page. The first three are as follows: -If you find yourself too weak to kill Minotaur, the boss of the Level Forest, try manually controlling your partner. Sometimes she likes to make wrong decisions which can get you killed. -It will take about ~20 seconds per trip but you can get the Potion treasure chest in Kaeli's house to quickly build up Potions for the Bone Dungeon. This is also the fastest way to accumulate Potions at any point during the game. -Inns are a waste of GP. Spend some time and back track to Foresta and use the free healing bed, don't forget to grab some Potions while you are there. I stopped reading after that. "There's a free healing spot at the very beginning of the game, have fun" is neither good advice nor good faith on the hacker's part when his strategy for beating the game specifically takes it into account.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:51
|
|
|
Artix posted:Got a link handy to the "hard mode" hack? I'll take a stab at it, see if any of it's actually worth showing off. http://www.jce3000gt.com/mqr.php (e:f;b) HardType and Reborn are the same thing except Reborn changes item names and music. Including the battle music.  (Well okay, regular is only slightly remixed, but boss is replaced with a song from FF5. A good song from FF5, mind you, but still.)Artix posted:This is the one thing that I'm actually going to disagree with. Once you hit that seed vendor in Fireburg, the game is literally over, because you can spam White at literally anything and come out ahead. It doesn't matter if you overextend yourself or waste charges, because you can pop a seed and never have to worry about running out of charges. Making it so that you actually have to pick and choose when to drop your Whites is far more interesting, although I admit that taken in a context where enemies also get huge buffs sounds like it's more of a slog than anything. That's a good point. I still maintain that a better way of balancing magic would have been to let it remain functionally infinite, but take away the fact that it's always far and away the best option. The way the hack handles it is not so much "you can't buy seeds" as it is "money is not infinite, so will you buy seeds or upgrades or potions or bombs or inn stays?". Besides, you can find them in one or another wooden chest. And they're still a full refill. It's not so much that you can't abuse infinite magic, it's that you have to do more tedious legwork to abuse infinite magic. (The money thing along with the hack's increased emphasis on grinding also means that you have to hoof it back to Foresta all the drat time, instead of the nearest town. It's not that there's any threat on the trip to Foresta or anything, it's really just padding things with tedium. e:f;b on this point too, apparently. I should type less.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 21:56
|
|
|
Man, the battlefields are already horrible slogs. I can't imagine why he thought it would be a good idea to make you do 20 (or 25, or loving 99) battles to get stuff. Maybe he's operating on the assumption that you have a fast-forward button on your emulator for a reason?
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 22:00
|
|
|
Browsing the website reveals the guy's made other hacks, both to make games harder and easier. This includes, among other things, an EasyType hack for Mystic Quest as well:quote:-Increased the Hero's stats to 99 each at level 1 ... I'm getting the feeling that subtle but reasonable balance changes are not this dude's strength.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 22:06
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 28, 2024 22:34 |
|
|
Vil posted:http://www.jce3000gt.com/mqr.php (e:f;b) I've also heard of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Remastered, it a remake of the game in RPG maker. All I’ve found of the game is an LP that I am not willing to watch so I can’t say much about it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2014 22:22
|
|
