|
That animation and model combination is perfect.  The Dragonsbane Seed Boss can't run. It's AI just forces it to attack.
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2022 22:34
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 09:50 |
|
|
Now that looks like someone ready and excited as heck to slay dragons. Can't wait to see what ridiculous class skills pop up next to break the balance further.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2022 23:05
|
|
|
BraveLittleToaster posted:Now that looks like someone ready and excited as heck to slay dragons. If there's not a skill that's like, "Instakill enemy if easy X condition is met"... I won't do anything cause I ain't risking it but it sounds like the easiest way to top the powercreep so far.
|
|
#
?
Jul 16, 2022 23:50
|
|
|
Duelist: This deck is not tournament legal.      The first VFD-original, the Duelist is a bit of an odd duck. Their reliance on card draw RNG means that they can do some absolutely monstrous damage if things line up, but they can just as easily end up with a dead hand and require several turns to search out the cards they need to get going. Stats  Duelists, fitting for literal children, are more on the fragile side with the 2nd lowest LF and DEF. To make up for that, they have the 2nd highest MN, MAT, MDF, and 3rd highest SPD. Innate Ability Draws 1 card at the end of the turn. Tier 1 Skills Draw Bonus  The user begins battle with a certain number of cards. You don't really have much choice with this one. More cards means more chances of getting something good. (read: as many Fire cards as possible) Level this up the moment you have enough SP. X Burn  User applies a buff that inflicts ranged MAT-based fire damage to all enemies at the end of the turn. Damage increases based on how many Fire cards the user plays during the duration of the buff. Damage formula for this attack is [(User's MAT * Total Card Power) - Target's MDF] * Damage Multiplier. Total Card Power is equal to 1 if no Fire cards have been played. Other Duelists cannot contribute to someone else's X Burn. Cannot trigger Destiny React. Initial buff has priority. The Duelist's first Continuous Spell, X Burn is kinda loving nuts! It needs a hand full of Fire cards to get the most out of it, but the damage it can deal ramps up to an insane degree. It also gets better and better as the game goes on, as the Duelist gets access to more expensive skills to play more Fire cards in the two turns you have available. The most expensive fire-based skill costs 3 cards, so if the stars align and you have a full hand of Fire cards ready, a max level X Burn hits a monstrous 25x multiplier on the Duelist's already high MAT! The flipside of all this is that two turns is a tight time limit, so having to stop and play a searcher or heal someone is going to tank the damage significantly. Summon: Fire I  Summons a Hell Cloud to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based fire damage and a chance to inflict Burn. Summon: Ice I  Summons a North Crown to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based ice damage and a chance to inflict Freeze. Summon: Ltg I  Summons an Air Grass to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based lightning damage and a chance to inflict Paralysis. All of the Duelist's Summon skills are identical for damage and infliction rate, but on their own merits I'd say Summon: Ltg fares the best with a 40% chance to lock out the enemy if it connects. That's on par with 2020-II's Frostburn, and that was an endgame skill! Of course, the Summons aren't standing on their own, so Summon: Ice and Summon: Ltg have the crippling flaw of not boosting X Burn. They're still worth using if you don't have any Fire cards in a short fight. The devs clearly knew just how stupidly powerful X Burn is, as every fire focused skill is pegged at a much higher SP cost compared to their Ice and Lightning counterparts. Trap: Pitfall  Places a buff on the user. If the user is hit with a melee attack from an enemy not weak to aerial damage, the user will counter with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Null Action. The target's size influences damage. Small enemies take 0.8x, Medium 1x, Large 1.3x, and Extremely Large 1.5x Trap: Barbed Wire  Places a buff on the user. If the user is hit with ATK-based damage, the user will counter with ranged MAT-based aerial damage and a chance to inflict Bleed. Trap: Fire Whirl  Places a buff on the user. If the user is hit with MAT-based damage, the user will counter with ranged MAT-based fire damage and a chance to inflict Blind. The Traps, meanwhile, are extremely eeeeeeeeeeeh. They cost two cards to play, but they deal incredibly low damage for that kind of cost. Sky high infliction rates (80% chance of Null Action!) for this early in the game is bonkers, but they all have incredibly specific activation requirements (a lot of things have a weakness to aerial, which automatically locks out said Null Action) and the Duelist has no way to draw enemy attacks to reliably set them off. They aren't entirely useless, as there's a later skill that needs them on the field, but you'll never play a Trap for the sake of playing a Trap. Also, fun fact: these are the only skills that use different colors of cards to use. All other skills use multiples of the same element. Field: Volcano  Hits all enemies with ranged MAT-based fire damage and inflicts a debuff that increases fire damage taken. Field: Glacier  Hits all enemies with ranged MAT-based ice damage and inflicts a debuff that increases ice damage taken. Field: Storm Cloud  Hits all enemies with ranged MAT-based lightning damage and inflicts a debuff that increases lightning damage taken. The Field Spells are a great source of early AOE damage (provided you can swing the two card cost) and further boost damage of the same element for the rest of the party! X Burn loves Field: Volcano, as it both feeds it two cards and boosts the damage it deals by 30%. Supply Draw  User draws a number of random cards from their deck and adds them to their hand. Search: Fire  Adds a number of Fire cards to the user's hand. Search: Ice  Adds a number of Ice cards to the user's hand. Search: Lightning  Adds a number of Lightning cards to the user's hand. The Searchers do nothing on their own, but are a godsend if you've run your hand dry and need to fill up. There's some data in the code suggesting that the dedicated Search skills originally had 5 levels planned, letting you draw almost an entire hand worth of a single element in one shot, but got cut down to just three. That's why the SP costs suddenly take a massive leap from level 2 to level 3. Tier 2 Skills MANA Gain  Places a buff on the user that restores the party's MANA at the end of the turn. If no ice cards are used, the party recovers the base amount of MANA. Otherwise, the formula used is Base Mana Restore + [((Base Mana Restore * Restore Power) – Base Mana Restore) * # of Ice Cards Used]. Other Duelists cannot contribute to someone else's MANA Gain. X Burn's counterpart, MANA Gain trades off the damage from fire and instead gives ice ludicrous levels of MN restoration. You use three Ice cards at max level? Everyone in the party gets 80 MN, and that's just a single turn. Even at a bare minimum, you're looking at 51 MN over the full three turns to the entire party if you never use an ice card. There's zero risk of ever running dry with this much regen! The 2020s were notoriously stingy with easy sources of restoration, with Hacker's noiztank.exe being the only real way to get some, but VFD just switches track entirely and gives you several methods of turning the party into a perpetual motion machine. Strangely, there's no Continuous Spell for Lightning. I guess the devs figured the Paralysis chances were good enough on their own. Summon: Fire II  Summons a Death Worm to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Fire damage and a chance to inflict Burn. Summon: Ice II  Summons a Snow Familiar to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Ice damage and a chance to inflict Freeze. Summon: Ltg II  Summons an Alien Luzelo to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Lightning damage and a chance to inflict Paralysis. These all act exactly the same as the tier 1 summons, but with all the numbers bumped up. They feed two cards to X Burn or MANA Gain. Lucky Roll  At the start of battle, the Duelist has a chance to roll a die that gives a beneficial effect. The effects and their odds are as follows:
Eh. Eeeeeeeeeeeh. Like, yeah, boosting EXP/SP/drops is nice, sure, but when you're only allowed a single starting AUTO, I'd rather it be something that can actually kill the enemy and let me move on to the next fight. A full MN heal is also handy, but you also get MANA Gain this tier, which does effectively the same thing. Also, the animation of throwing the dice and waiting for it to land takes aaaaaaaages, and I'd rather not have to watch it for the rest of the game. Destiny React  Places a buff on the Duelist that gives them a chance to gain an extra turn every time they deal an odd number of damage. Counters can activate this. X Burn cannot activate this, however, as it goes off at the end of the turn. That damage requirement effectively gives this a 40% chance of going off every time you attack, which is kinda bad, honestly. That's on par with 2020-II's Destroy React, except a Duelist can't make several attacks a turn like a Destroyer. The Traps can set this off, sure, but why would you ever actually us- Judgement  When all three Traps are set at once, melee MAT-based damage is dealt to all enemies at the end of the turn. All Traps are dispelled after Judgement activates. ... This is Tier 2???? What the actual hell are these numbers!? I called God Hand's EX skill insane for having an effective damage of 33x, and Judgement both outdamages it at level 2 (for less SP than an EX Skill!) and nails every enemy on the field! Maxed out, only a very small handful of moves can hope to reach 50x on their own, and those are both single target and have extremely harsh requirements to use. It isn't all upsides, however, as Judgement requires commitment to bring out. All three Traps need a total of 2 of every type of card to bring out, and each has a 4 turn duration, giving you exactly one turn of leeway if you need to pop a Search to fill out your hand part way through. You're also incredibly vulnerable to disruption throughout the entire process. Need to stop and clear a status ailment or revive someone? Hope your hand is already perfect! Boss uses Power Charge to prepare for a big hit? Hope the Duelist can tank it with their pitiful defenses! Get hit with Null Action, Skill Seal, Paralysis, Sleep, Confusion or just straight up die? Well all that effort you put into it goes right out the window! Destiny React can give you a little leeway if a Trap sets it off, but that requires the Duelist to actually get hit, which isn't entirely likely if you have a God Hand or Rune Knight on the field. Tier 3 Skills My turn!  The Duelist has a chance to extend any buffs on the party by 1 turn at the end of the turn. Does not work on X Burn, MANA Gain, or the Traps. Does not work on any buffs that only have a single turn left. This is actually a bit of a weird skill, because Duelists just... don't really have any buffs of their own that this works on? I mean, My Turn! is a great skill if you have other people tossing out buffs, but the Duelist themselves get practically nothing from this, aside from, like, Destiny React. Summon: Fire III  Summons a Criminal Dragon to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Fire damage and a chance to inflict Burn. Summon: Ice III  Summons a Blizzarus to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Ice damage and a chance to inflict Freeze. Summon: Ltg III  Summons a Lightning Dragon to hit an enemy with melee MAT-based Lightning damage and a chance to inflict Paralysis. Same as the first 2 tiers, but holy poo poo that 82% chance on Ltg III to just utterly shut down an enemy! The Fire and Ice summons are also the biggest single turn way to feed X Burn and MANA Gain. EX Skill Summon: Titan  Summons a Stun Deku to hit all enemies with melee MAT-based damage. Capping things off, the Duelist EX is... kinda pitiful, really. Like, yeah 14x base damage is good, but that only slightly outdamages a level 1 Judgement, and that's been available since Tier 2. Even as an AOE EX Skill, Samurai's Earth Splitter is only a small bit behind, and they can easily overtake it with all their buffs. Duelists just don't have any natural way to boost their own damage. The only thing it has going for it is the fact that it doesn't have a card cost, making it something you can slap an enemy with if your hand doesn't line up. All things considered, you'd probably be better off using EX on Summon: Ltg III to double the odds of landing Paralysis. Team Skills Charge Time: 3 turns Duelists are the only class that needs 3 turns to charge the support bar, which slows things down a fair bit. Buddy Deals 2.1x melee ATK-based damage, and gives 5% of the damage dealt to the Buddy's MN. A free MN restore is nice, yes, but that 3 turn charge time means you can only break this out once every 6 turns. That's way, way too long to wait for a piddly 5% MN leech off a class that's focused on MAT. Oh, all the Buddy skills are ATK-based, by the way, so the magical classes deal jack for damage. Support Dispels all status effects from the party. This, however, is much more useful. A full party, full status heal every third turn is extremely handy, as it lets you patch up the party with no action cost, letting you keep the pressure on. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 07:28 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2022 03:41
|
|
|
I love how the Duelist gets an Exodia-style instant win combo in Judgement, and it's probably not an EX skill because it's already hard enough to pull off without also tying it to the EX meter.
|
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2022 06:40
|
|
|
Duelist is a really interesting class and probably one of my favorite classes in the entire game. A unique take on the mage archetype, that's for sure. And my god they're fun to play around with if you know how to use them right. The card RNG can be annoying to deal with (all cards have an equal 1 in 3 chance of being drawn) but if you put this class in any of the previous 7th Dragon games, they would utterly shatter the game over their knees. Unfortunately it pains me to say this, but Duelist is the worst class in the game despite all that for a few simple reasons. They require effort to use. VFD lets you poo poo out so much damage so effortlessly with any other class that actually having to put thought in how you play is a massive setback for this class when any other class is just so much easier to play. The RNG aspects doesn't help either, and while Duelists can potentially end a fight in 4 to 5 turns, which would be loving broken in any other 7th Dragon game, in VFD... you can end fights even faster than that with other classes. Another more understandable reason for people disliking them is that their backup team recharge time sucks. It's not a massive deal right now, other than delaying support skills to every 3 turns instead of 1 or 2, but this disadvantage becomes a massive setback later on for reasons I can't specify at the moment. But enough negativity. Despite the disadvantages they have, there's still quite a bit you can do to get some real mileage out of your card gamer, and if you aren't speed running, there's a lot of fun to be had with them. First important thing to note, is that while the tier 3 summons are very powerful, they're also not as reliable to use compared to a tier 1 summon since you need more elemental cards to help tribute summon them. So don't neglect the lower tier skills and beef them up to help a Duelist be generally covered for all sorts of situations. A Duelist can only hold 6 cards in their hand, and they'll just automatically discard the leftmost ones when drawing more cards. There are a couple of different playstyles they can follow. Going with Ice cards pretty much puts them in a more supportive role with the mana restoration, but this build isn't super popular. Lightning cards have the benefit of being really simple but effective, as you only have to worry about the summons. And the Paralysis chances are handy. An 82% lockdown chance is just absurd, since no other game had Paralysis be that strong before! (Even in DS Paralysis causing turn loss was locked to a 30% chance.) Fire is one of the more popular builds as X-Burn just shits out damage. Nothing much to say here other than stuff as many Fire Cards as possible into your hand, and let em rip! Now we've got the Judgement build and hoo boy, those numbers do not lie! In Etrian Odyssey numbers, that would be a 5000% damage skill! Yeah, power creep does not even begin to describe VFD, more like power leap! Do you see why we throw that term around? Nothing in the previous games lets you do this kind of bullshit to the games! Nothing! loving ridiculous how this lets you set up actual OTKs in a 7th Dragon game. At any rate, you have 4 turns to set up 3 traps, so you only have a 1 turn of leeway here. There's a way to optimize for Judgement spam, and that's to leave the deck searching skills at level 2. It's one of the few times where maxing out a skill is not something you want to do. 1 card draws aren't enough, and 3 card draws just overflow the hand along with giving you excess cards you don't need, since you only need 2 cards of each element to trigger Judgement. And once you've set it up, everything should die horribly. I've done a run with this build and it's hilariously powerful. The traps by themselves... unfortunately, much like their real life counterpart, the traps suck here. Mostly. Don't knock Pitfall though, that Null Action rate is absurd! The reason it doesn't work on flying weak enemies is that's how the game decided to track if an enemy was "flying or not." As how would pitfalls trap a flying enemy? But yeah the damage on it is terrible, but the Null Action can trivialize so many dragon and boss battles. It's generally the first trap I try to set up immediately when going for a Judgement if possible. Destiny React is a bit situational, but there are some builds it can really help out. As was mentioned, it can help set up traps more quickly due to letting you lay down another trap card, or deck searching to let you set them up more easily. But it's also great in X-Burn builds, as you can follow up an attack with more Fire card consumption, or by deck searching for more Fire cards. In fact with the right RNG and if you play your cards right, this can potentially let you spend up to 10 cards to power up X-Burn. Which means the Duelist's MAT is multiplied by 45x! X-Burn is really loving stupid! Wanna know of a funny hypothetical scenario? Reacts are limited to giving you 3 extra turns to not give infinite feedback loops. But if the extra turn chance was guaranteed and reacts didn't cap at 3 turns, you would actually be able to perform the equivalent of a Yata lock in the game. 1 damage counts as odd damage, so you would just need to equip the shittiest weapon possible, set up the react, and then just have your Duelist attack dealing only 1 damage. Nothing would be able to counter this, but this isn't actually feasible to abuse since reacts are limited to 3 turns. Just a fun little what if. Lucky Roll is a skill I actively avoided taking on a recent playthrough because the animation on that skill is so loving obnoxiously long and I wasn't willing to sit through that every single time for a mild benefit! You can't skip battle animations in any of the 7th Dragon games, which isn't a problem in DS, as that game's animations were really brisk. But 2020 onwards had much longer unskippable animations. Which brings me to a more general complaint about this game. Playing it is so slow due to all the hangs and load times in the game compared to 2020-II which is just lightning fast on that end. And these longass animations do not help one bit! Araxxor fucked around with this message at 08:37 on Jul 17, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 17, 2022 08:33
|
|
|
Update XV - Featuring: Aiden Pearce from the Watch_Dogs series Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Alright, Team 2 can take point on this.   Hey... You're not gonna save that old man, are you!? You idiot! What's the point? His lifespan is almost up anyways! C'mon, just leave him! Grrr... Let me make myself clear. You are here to save the present day of UE 77... It is not to become the mystical hero of Atlantis. Just get the True Dragon specimen so you can save Tokyo. Is that really so much to ask?I'd like to point out that Nagamimi is telling this to Valerie, who lives in Cladeon. She probably knows this guy! The game really, really does not like it when you change who the team leader is, but you have no choice but to do that if you ever want to use your backup teams! Anyways, Valerie shakes her head at the notion of leaving her own countrymen to die. *sigh* Whatever happens, I'm not involved. I take no responsibility for this poo poo.  Dragon!!! Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator  Valerie demands your blood.   And Team 1 is ready to assist.  Several turns of MANA regeneration is exactly as good as it sounds.   While Lightning Sword hits hard, has a good chance of inflicting Paralysis, and the Paralysis itself has rather good odds of going off.  I used Aria's share of the grinding DLC rewards to get both her Poetry skills to level 2. This lets Moonlight Poetry restore 6 MN a turn. If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed that nothing this team has costs more than 6 MN. This means that we effectively have infinite MN whenever Moonlight is up.  Forest Poetry, meanwhile, is our first actually useful healing move.   Provoke is extremely handy against dragons.  Now, keep Inoue's damage in mind for later.  This is his hardest hitting move.  And this is how much Forest heals everyone for. The only thing that can hurt the party right now is Poison, and that's only because it ticks after regen. Unlike Hacker's Regenerator, Forest heals everyone for a fixed amount +10% of the Fortuner's MAT, so it has some power right out the gate and stays useful later on as Aria's MAT gets higher and higher.  Now, you'd think a support class like the Fortuner would have bad personal damage to make up for all their tricks.  You'd be wrong. Aria is dealing 80 damage plus 3 turns of 40 damage from the Bleed. She's outdamaging Inoue backed by Red Flame and hitting a weakness. The Atlantis classes are where the devs threw what little semblance of balance the Tokyo classes had right out the window.  Oh look, poison.  However, three turns have now passed, meaning Team 1 is ready for a Support. This notice will pop up at the start of every turn provided everyone has one bar. If you decline to use it at first and then change your mind, you can back out of the first party member's action to get another chance to use it.    And just like that, everyone is fine.  And since the big guy is currently bleeding...  Aria can hit him that much harder.  He then dies to Bleed at the end of the turn.  Might as well show off a few more moves while I'm at it. Music: Battlefield - Atlantis  You may think that Sleep would be a mediocre ailment to inflict.  But you'd be wrong again. The move itself has surprisingly high infliction rates, and Fortuners are the fastest class in the game. Combined, this gives you a good chance of just locking out a dangerous enemy at the start of a fight while you deal with any flunkies. And as a bonus, (and never mentioned in-game to my knowledge) all of the Fortuner's Revelation skills have an effect that increases infliction rates if any other ailment is already on the target. This means Aria can land Sleep on turn 1, then seamlessly transition to Bleed on turn 2!  Ice Sword, meanwhile, is sorta pointless when Lightning Sword is right over there. With lower damage (even when I'm not slamming into resists) and a worse ailment, the only saving grace it has is that it costs 3 MN compared to Lightning Sword's 6. However, we just got Fortuner, and she can easily recover 6 MN a turn, so even that's a wash. Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Other than that one dragon, this right side area only has a few chests.  SP Ups are a lot less potent in VFD, now that they have to be split six ways.  With that section cleared out, we now head to the left.       A bit further ahead is the exit to this area, but I still have a dragon here to kill, so I head back.  Oh wow, a treasure chest behind a waterfall, how original.  Ah, the bridge is out.  I'll probably have to loop back from the next area.  Heading left and down sounds good.  Jackpot.  And there's our dragon. Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator  Our next victim shall be...  A Megamouth Dragon, finishing off the set of dragons we fought during the DLC! This also means that, on top of the DLC Megamouth having 3K HP, you're missing both two classes and the backrow system if you try the DLC as soon as it opened. And that's on top of just having so many less levels compared to now.  Valerie's going for an EX-boosted Lightning Sword to try and land Paralysis.  It fails, but it certainly hurts. All the random encounters means that the new guys are pretty much fully caught up with the starting members at this point.  Everyone else spends this turn and the next setting up.   Could you maybe not?  Compared to the Aquaria, a Megamouth's poison is much more deadly. That's almost outpacing Aria's regen!  Inoue's damage.  Valerie's damage. Lightning Sword is stupidly good, you guys.  Hehehehehehehe...  You fool.  You absolute buffoon.  You're not allowed to play by the same rules as me! So yeah, as if VFD's change to buffs were bad, but at least they were even. I get to buff up and break things in half, but enemies could do the exact same back. The introduction of Buddy skills, however, means that said change is now entirely one sided. I get to buff up all I want, and all my enemy's buffs get instantly broken because I have someone with a 1 turn charge on both teams. The only way an enemy can make use of buffs now is if they do it on the very first turn, and even then they'll only have one turn to use it before I break it. Welcome to VFD.   That was his big charge move, twice in a row, and I didn't even have to block.  Opal manages to join in.  And it falls. Music: Finish Them Off  Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Intelligent Boy: Me? Well, I wanted to research dragons, but I got trapped here instead. Thanks for saving me! That's the map cleared out.   Oh, more rewards when we get back!  And there's the chest right next to him.  I head back and take a path to the right.  And run into a new enemy on the way.  Despite being covered in grass, this thing isn't weak to fire damage. Pokemon lied to me.  There's some rubble between us and another civilian.  And a dragon right after it!  Strangely, it's a Hammer Dragon, which we've already fought as a barrier dragon. Barrier dragons in the 2020s were always their own dedicated thing, letting them be a cut above the normal dragons you fight in the dungeon. Letting them mingle in the general dragon pool means that barrier dragons will have to be a fair bit weaker to account for how they can be fought at any point in the dungeon.  I believe you know how this team works by now.  There's a chest behind some more rubble.  Moving ahead, we get this nice shot of Cladeon's water.  There's a chest at the end of this path, but more rubble forces us back.  We also run into a Crab palette swap on the way.  There's a dragon blocking off a civilian.  Fun fact: Only the front row team can use their skills in the field. No getting cheeky and using Opal as a backline healbot or something.  Let's give Team 1 some fun. Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator   Holy poo poo Aiden, this is your first serious fight! Clearly being freed from Ubisoft's clutches has given him a massive power boost.  Shame I forgot that madstrife.exe doesn't work on pre-emptives. And that I got the wrong TROY for Yuno to exploit.  Oh well.  Second time's the charm.  Yuno finally gets a chance to show off her other Field Spells.  While the Hammer is forced to deal 140 damage to itself.  I'm pretty much showing off as much as possible at this point.  Because he doesn't last long. Music: Finish Them Off  And as an extra level of power creep, the ability to freely swap teams means I can switch from one the moment they start to tire and let the rested backline team take over. By the time the new frontline team runs dry, odds are that everyone in the back has gained a level and fully refilled their LF/MN. So now I can basically ignore attrition in dungeon crawls. Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer   Turns out the civilian was down a different path.  While the dragon was guarding a chest.  And like that, we've circled around to that chest from before.  Oh. This one's aggressive.  Oh no.  poo poo.  Save me, Aiden!   Okay, I have some distance between us now, everything should be fi-  What.   What is your loving damage, dragon???   Jesus Christ, he's finally calmed down.  Team 2!  Kill.  Thank you, Team 2. Next time: Unit 13 hits the books. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2022 03:37
|
|
|
BisbyWorl posted:
I dunno, Atlantean Torterra seems like it could be Grass/Rock.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2022 04:34
|
|
|
This game looks like a pretty fun time with the busted moves and weak balance to play around with. More dragon blood for Valerie. And once again the magic of teamwork/friendship is shown to be overpowered.
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2022 04:39
|
|
|
It should also be noted that being able to break buffs was completely impossible in the 2020s. While DS operated on EO rules where a debuff could cancel out a buff of the same type, that's not how it worked in the 2020s onward. All buffs and debuffs just stack. There's no way to manually clear out buffs. Then VFD went ahead and reintroduced that mechanic. And only gave it to the players. Enemies cannot get rid of your buffs because they do not have the power of friendship. quote:This notice will pop up at the start of every turn provided everyone has one bar. You only get the one notice for this, if you back out and change your mind later you'll have to wait until next turn to use it. Not true. You can go and use a support skill if you change your mind. Just press B on the first party member's turn. Epicmissingno posted:I dunno, Atlantean Torterra seems like it could be Grass/Rock. That would line up because it's actually weak to ice. 
|
|
#
?
Jul 19, 2022 05:02
|
|
|
I can see why you'd wanna include the ability to dispel buffs, but man, making it free in both MN cost and turn cost... 
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2022 02:45
|
|
|
LiefKatano posted:I can see why you'd wanna include the ability to dispel buffs, but man, making it free in both MN cost and turn cost... There actually is a weakness aside from eating up team meter. The break is RNG and not guaranteed to break the buff. This isn't stated anywhere in the game and something players find out the hard way. That being said, the chance is tied to each buff and most buffs have the break chance set to 100%, like the Megamouth's Power Charge. So it's guaranteed in a lot of cases, but in a few cases (namely boss battles) it's not guaranteed.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2022 07:57
|
|
|
I'm scared of this imaginary woman 
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2022 21:53
|
|
|
You know I could have sworn I remember people thinking that Fortuner was weak, at least from the circles I knew who talked about this game.
|
|
#
?
Jul 20, 2022 23:48
|
|
|
Slaan posted:
Why are you so scared? Can't you see that big, beautiful smile?  That aside, my personal head canon for why everyone treats whoever's leading the party as the main character is that you've been mucking up time so much, that time essentially went "screw it, I ain't dealin' with this poo poo, whoever's upfront has ALWAYS been the leader". That kid who could pass as the lead protagonist of a card game anime? Now the protagonist of this game! A humble butler or maid who's taken up fisticuffs? Protagonist! Creepy cat lady? Haha, now that's no way to talk about your big sis, who's ALWAYS been there from the beginning, leading the way with a smile.
|
|
#
?
Jul 21, 2022 01:22
|
|
|
Update XVI - Featuring: Studying Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Just past that incredibly angry dragon is the exit.  Retired Blacksmith: Try not to overwork yourselves, alright? But first, we have to grab this old man and kill one more dragon.   Said dragon.  It dies. On top of everything else Buddy skills bring to the table, they also deal a respectible chunk of 100% free damage on their own. Granted, Buddy skills are all ATK-based, so magic classes get screwed on that, but still.  This place is cleared out, on to the next.  A heal spot means that we're probably halfway to the forge.  Hey look, another dragon!  Most of these guys are taking just three turns to kill, and I'm walking out with barely any damage on my own forces. We haven't even gotten to the really broken stuff yet.  This makes, what, three Guard Rings we've obtained in this dungeon so far? I guess the devs had to ramp up how many accessories they give you, now that I have to fill out 12 slots instead of 6.    There's not much I can really say about this outing.  7th Encount was entirely ripped from 2020-II. Atlantica, despite its baffling lack of dragons and absolutely no boss, was at least pretty to look at.  But in general, the dungeons in VFD just feel like a step back from the 2020s. Like, the first dungeon in 2020 was an inverted building, with a bit where you're traversing the exterior while falling 'up'! 2020-II had a transit station trapped in loving hyperspace!  Cladeon is just... generic caves with pretty water.  Oooh, I can have people make bentos now!  Well the Hammer Dragon is already in the general pool, so what's our next barrier fight? Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator  A Megamouth. We've already killed several Megamouths. There was one not even 30 feet back. Why even have barriers if there isn't going to be a challenging fight to take it down?  Aiden gets another Quick Hack proc on a dragon, but it fails to land this time. He still gets MN for it.  On the plus side, I finally bought the right TROY.   Now when Yuno sets up  We get the tiny initial hit.  They the TROY goes off. With an ideal hand, this means that every TROY will get 5 procs from Yuno: 3 from meteors and 2 from Yuno herself. Even with the TROY at level 1, that adds up to a free 400 damage with every TROY.  And then everything was fine.  Totally. Fine. Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Less fine, however, is the return to all these samey caves.   We finished this area, at least.  Oh thank god we're nearly there.  As nice as having the map on the touch screen is, it does make it hard to keep track of where we are with these top screen only shots, which is why I've been showing the full screen every time I hit a point of interest.  Also Land Anglers start showing up. Poor guys were full on dragons in 7D1, only to get demoted to normal enemies ever since.  And in case you were wondering, despite the map being on the touch screen like 7D1, they did not bring back the ability to tap a dragon icon on the map and have it list what dragon it is. Which is actually kinda annoying, now that any dragon can be in any spot and have any behavior pattern.   While all this has been going on...  Aiden has been using scapegoat.exe every time Quick Hack goes off.  Which restores 20 MN with every use. While Aria may have Moonlight Poetry, it still requires multiple turns to make use of. Aiden can slap someone with this on turn 1 if Quick Hack lands. Fortuners may be better at MN restoration while in boss fights, but Agents are the undisputed kings of mid-dungeon recovery.  Ahead is a wandering dragon.  Look at this, we're at the start of the game and the dragons can do nothing to us! It sorta puts us in an awkward spot where nothing can really challenge us, but all we have to use are the boring starter moves. We'll be getting the actual fun toys later.  Get to that barrier dragon on the left.  This one also chumps.  Wandering Lucier: I hope my mom and dad are OK... Man, how bad is your luck when a dragon puts up a barrier entirely to trap you?   With all that cleared, we take the right path.   One final barrier dragon between us and Mayhem.  Aiden makes it kill itself with madstrife.exe.  A cutscene starts just past the barrier.  A dragon roars.    Yuma, this dragon shouldn't pose a problem with your power, but don't let your guard down. I know. Now, let's hea— Ngh... Oh look, the guy who can one shot High Dragons suddenly falls ill at the 11th hour, forcing the plucky new recruits to face it on their own. What are the odds? I-It's nothing, Admiral. ... All members, prepare for battle. We've almost reached the High Dragon Mayhem. Press on!The entire team nods.  We have a save point and two chests, but no warp point to head back.   For whatever reason, the devs want you to use this Escape Kit to head back if you need to, then use the Camouflage to cut down on random encounters while you run back. Now, I could go fight Mayhem now...  But I got a pocket full of Dz and a reward to go get. Music: UE77 Tokyo  With that, Mayhem is the last dragon in Cladeon. Music: The Daily Grind  Kino: Oh! You've saved 13 people! As promised, here's your reward! Thanks a lot!  Oh hello. A second EXP booster will never go amiss.  Now to build stuff. Music: UE77 Tokyo        The Lounge in the 2020s was pretty much a way to try and unwind while the literal apocalypse and end of humanity was going on just outside. In VFD, you get to make it for funsies.       All this also opened up some sidequests.  Including a heart quest? This early? Heart quests are quests dedicated to the quest giver that'll eventually lead to them giving you their number and a great piece of gear in the end game. I guess Nodens is the type of place to not have any policies against bosses and employees dating. ...Considering Allie, that makes a lot of sense.  7th Encount is currently down for maintenance... One of the bug testers has been so overworked that she literally passed out from exhaustion... My stomach hurts just thinking about having to do that much work... Anyways, our profits have gone down 75% since we closed 7th Encount for maintenance. If it stays closed, not only would our research budget get slashed, but our wages would, too... Please log into 7th Encount right away and help out with the bug testing. I need all the money I can get... Haha you guys get paid? Unit 13 has to harvest the organs of whatever they fight to get pocket money.  This is a request for participation in employee training... To be a resource worthy of working here at Nodens, you must know history... We will start with the basics: the history of this company... Nodens Enterprises began fifteen years ago when President Allie bought a game company... The company had been on the brink of bankruptcy, but with the release of 7th Encount, we had a huge hit... In the blink of an eye, the employee count shot up and Nodens morphed into a multinational corporation. Anyways, for this quest, you'll need to talk to the living history book of Nodens, President Allie... She'll be waiting for you in the War Room...  It's totally leftovers. Music: Let's Get to Work!!  We get the usual batch of upgrades.  I then realize that I completely forgot about that Rune Knight weapon we got right before we unlocked them. The price of having to wait a month between recordings, I guess.  Also we get two new items.  And seriously, what is up with the cat food? Music: The Daily Grind  I'm sorry Valerie, I know we're just a few steps away from killing the dragon that's been making a mockery of your forge and all, but sidequests take priority.  The textbook you'll need is in the Reference Room, so go ask the librarian, Asuka, about it. Do some studying by yourself for a while. After that, come report back to me. But don't slack off just because you don't have me breathing down your neck! *chuckle* Now that I think about it, why does Nodens have so many unused basement floors?    You do know that there are more accessories than just Guard Rings, right, devs? ~ Asuka: Ah yes, you came for the training. President Allie told me you'd be coming. The first session will involve a book called “The Sunken Kingdom”. Nobody has it checked out at the moment, so it should be somewhere in here. Please go retrieve it.  Minato: Though it'll likely be difficult to clean the blood and dirt off of some of them... h- has nodens been robbing atlantis while we aren't looking  And now we aren't even trying to hide all the Lucier we've been taking in.  Mortzich: It's way too difficult for me. I couldn't understand much... Here, you can have it. Good luck.   The door up top is locked.  Asuka: The key parts are Chapters 1, 5, and 8. Please study them carefully over at the desk.  The table glows now that we have the book.    Ch. 1: A Rare SpeciesSystem Message: Compared to land-based societies of the time, Atlantis was quite an advanced civilization. However, no genetic discrepancies have been confirmed between the Lucier and the modern man. Some people believe that humans developed a mutation that allowed them to form the sea kingdom. However, some schools advocate the theory that the Lucier are in fact the progenitors of mankind itself. That doesn't explain why the guys have elf ears and the girls have cat ears, though. Ch. 2: The Voice of the StoneSystem Message: One key feature of the kingdom of Atlantis was their knowledge of minerals and smithing techniques. Their prosperity would have been impossible had they not known the secret of the alloy orichalcum. However, both orichalcum and even Atlantis itself were previously believed to be mere legends. That is, until the Dragon Calamity of 2021, when ancient Lucier genetic data was discovered. Researchers were then able to bring Lucier clones to life using this genetic code as a basis. Their ability to create orichalcum in turn provided the first actual proof of Atlantis's existence. The clones have since joined the World Relief Corps and now assist those affected by the Calamity. The World Relief Corps is the official translation for Sharon's organization from the 2020s. Nice to see that she pretty much adopted all the clones.  Ch. 8: The Hero and the QueenSystem Message: Around 12,000 years ago, Atlantis faced imminent destruction at the hands of the True Dragon Nyala. However, they chose to fight Nyala in hopes of protecting the other land-based world civilizations. Ultimately, though Atlantis was destroyed, Nyala was repelled by Queen Ulania and a legendary hero. Without this sacrifice made by the people of Atlantis, modern prosperity would be impossible.   *nods* OK OK★ Now then, Valerie... What do you think of Atlantis?lmao she's asking this to an Atlantis native. God the multi-team system really could have used some work.  Ancient civilizations are amazing. Indeed, who doesn't like a good ancient society complete with geoglyphs and buried treasure? I'd love it if we could find other ancient civilizations to study★~ I appreciate what they did. ...Indeed. Modern civilization was only able to develop to this point because they were able to stop Nyala. But the one who actually defeated Nyala... Who could that have been? *chuckle* What a mystery★~ Could the hero be... Did you act according to legend, or was the legend born according to how you acted...? Who can say? It's truly a chicken and egg situation.... Di- ~~ You clearly studied quite hard, meaning you've officially completed Employee Training 1! This is your reward! Be sure to use it wisely~! You obtained Medis II x3. You obtained SP Up 100 x3. Let's study some more when we get the chance★ Did we just create a stable time loop??? Next time: Nodens Enterprises creates something from nothing. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 03:59
|
|
|
Ahh, time traveling. It never ceases being a crock of weird bullshit. Can't wait to see more of how Nodens casually screws around with reality without a care in the world, next time.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 04:13
|
|
|
Ah, so the legend is... Long ago, in a distant land... Nyala, the first True Dragon, unleashed an unspeakable evil! But a foolish Lucier Rune Knight, wielding an oricalcum sword, stepped forth to oppose. *sounds of battle clashes* Before the final blow was struck, Nodens tore open a portal in time, and plunged the Rune Knight into the future, where video games are law. Now, the fool seeks to... bump into a green-haired sickly girl and play 7th Encount, ignoring the past that is Atlantis? ...I think we lost it near the end there. Oh well!
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 04:56
|
|
|
BisbyWorl posted:Did we just create a stable time loop??? There was once a time such a thing would have blown my meeting mind, much like it did in the first Final Fantasy years ago, now I can only go "oh, neat" before moving on. Though...some implications and revelations in a certain side quest DID give me pause, forcing me to wonder, just how badly AM I screwing up the time stream?
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 06:28
|
|
|
While most works featuring time travel follow the Back to the Future model, where a time traveler's interference introduces new data into the time stream, resulting in changes to established history, branching, very similar to the many worlds interpretation, there is the predetermination model of time travel in fiction, in which all time travel turns out to already have been accounted for by the existing reality, and it's only after "changing" the past do the characters find out it was their own actions that created the current timeline (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure is an example of this model, where all they needed to do to obtain needed items is make a plan to go back and leave them there later). Depending on how one interprets the nature of time, this may actually be closer (though still a ways off) to how time actually works. If one considers that time is just another dimension to our universe, one possible interpretation is that much like the height, length, and width of an object are all evident facts, the "shape" of time also just exists. To put it more clearly, by this interpretation, everything that has or ever will happen already exists, like paint on canvas, and the only reason we can't see or access it is because we're part of the timeline, and beholden to move at its pace. A theoretical four-dimensional being could view our universe and freely browse through every moment of time, and because such a being would be achronal from our perspective, any changes it made would have always been there, as far as we're concerned. To tie it back in, what this interpretation would mean is that, if time travel ever became possible, that point in time already exists, as do any points the hypothetical time traveler visits. From outside the timeline, all of those moments exist simultaneously, even if they take place at different times for us, meaning their effects already took place. This is an interpretation in which paradoxes are impossible by way of tautology. You can't stop or alter past events (thus risking paradoxes), because they already happened. Anyone setting out with the goal of changing history already failed. In the event that the time travel were achieved by the time traveler becoming four-dimensional or just able to affect the timeline from outside in an equivalent fashion, this is the way they could make real changes (from their perspective, anyway). However, because that theoretical "space" is outside of time, from our perspective, all such changes would essentially occur simultaneously and have always have happened. A hypothetical time traveler from the year 3000 would be affecting things at the same "time" as a time traveler from the year 4000 in such a scenario. In other words, if such alterations to time were possible, everyone already had their say, and we're living in the result. So, to conclude, the "time loop" in VFD is actually valid in this model, because the only real time travel, by those rules, is time travel to do something you already did. Of course, this interpretation is unlikely to fully apply to the real world, due to the interconnected nature of time and space, such as how time dilation works (if you move far enough and fast enough, less time will pass for you than for people on Earth, though at the moment the only concrete, confirmed examples are measured in milliseconds at most, though assuming a consistent framework, the Voyager probe has gained around two or three whole seconds on its way out of the solar system). Anyway that's about all I got for this completely needless effortpost about theoretical temporal mechanics as they relate to a goofy RPG for children about murdering dragons and playing card games. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
|
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 11:38
|
|
|
This game's story does not like it whenever you swap teams, which creates a ton of weird moments. While the game lets you do it freely, story wise it's basically intended to never use the team swap mechanic at all. Which is a very weird bit of dissonance if you want to put some variety in your playthrough. The time traveling in this game gets... weird, and this is an example I already forgot about til now. Kind of an odd example, though not outright nonsensical I suppose. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Jul 22, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 22, 2022 12:05
|
|
|
Agent: 30 GOTO GUN      A hybrid of 2020's Hacker and Trickster's Gun skill tree, the Agent can choose between dealing high damage with their gun skills, or utterly debilitate enemies with their hacking skills. Stats  The Agent, as you might expect from Trickster's successor, has middling numbers in everything except SPD, including the lowest MN count out of all eight classes. Innate Ability Normal attacks hit twice for 0.55x damage. EX Gain is multiplied by 0.75x per hit. Tier 1 Skills Hide  Places a buff on the user that increases crit rate and evasion, and decreases the chances of being targeted for attacks. Changes from 2020-II: Crit chance buff reduced from 100% to 30%. Evasion buff reduced from 21% to 20%. An unfortunate casualty of the crit rate rework, Hide's crit chance boost has been cut by 70% to keep it from being a permanent 1.5x damage increase to everything an Agent can do. You'll still be using it to mitigate your Agent's fragility, but it makes any crit-focused strategies much more inconsistent. Bush Trap  Only usable when Hide is active. When any member of the party is attacked, user will counterattack with ranged ATK-based aerial damage with a chance to inflict Null Action. Changes from 2020-II: Can now counter if user is attacked. Base infliction rate increased from 20% to 40%. Attacks are no longer guaranteed to crit. Bush Trap itself, however, is a mixed bag. Going off when the Agent is hit means that bosses that spam AOEs can no longer skip around the counters, but the loss of auto-crits means the damage it deals takes a noticable hit. On the plus side, the 40% chance of landing Null Action means you'll have, at worst, a 16% chance to stop even the strongest bosses in their tracks. Jump Shot  Targeted enemy takes ranged ATK-based aerial damage every turn. This move is canceled if the user dies or is petrified. EX only applies to the turn an attack lands, and not the initial turn. Attacks have priority. Changes from 2020-II: Damage is no longer reduced every turn. Effective damage increased from 11.2x to 16x. Here, have a nearly 5x boost to a mid-game 2020 skill right off the bat! As the Agent doesn't have nearly as much time to actually attack compared to the Trickster, squeezing this in between hacking attempts can add in a good bit of damage over the course of a fight. Aiming Shot  Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based aerial damage. Cannot miss starting at level 5. Can inflict Blind starting at level 6. Your basic attack skill. Blind has always been a bit of an eh ailment to apply, but not missing once you have it half leveled will give it a use against the evasive Queen Rabi. Knee Break  Hits one enemy with ranged ATK-based aerial damage and a chance to inflict Stun. Has priority. Changes from 2020-II: MANA cost reduced from 6 to 5. Just like with Samurai, Stun is a trash ailment. Knee Break doesn't even get a token attack boost like what Hidden Shadow got! Hack  Attempts to inflict Hack on all enemies. Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies instead of just one. The real reason an Agent won't have much time to spare for shooting things. Multitarget Hack is insane! Even if you don't bother setting up a TROY first, throwing out a Hack against a group of enemies has a sizable chance of at least one target getting nailed. madstrife.exe  Forces all Hacked enemies to target random enemies, including themselves. Does nothing against Sleeping enemies. Effects carry over into any extra turns the target may obtain. Attack is flagged as ranged ATK-based damage. Self-attacks cannot crit, but attacks against other enemies can. Has priority. Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies. Damage reduced from 7.5x to 6x. MANA cost reduced from 4 to 2. A small cut in damage from 2020, but being able to lock out a boss' moves for a turn is still just as much of a godsend now as it was back then. An enemy hit with Null Action or Sleep takes zero actions for the turn, so any turn based strategies the AI has will go on pause for the turn. madstrife.exe, however, lets them choose those moves properly and advance their AI, but still cancel them out. Properly timing a Hack can let you bypass a deadly move a boss has if you know exactly when they'll use it. Sadly, Curse infliction got shuffled to another class, so an Agent can't inflict ludicrous damage with the old Curse -> luvshock combo on their own anymore. It isn't entirely dead, but you'll have to dedicate two party slots to pull it off. scapegoat.exe  Deals ranged MAT-based damage on one Hacked target. Restores MN based on damage dealt. Has priority. Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 1.5x to 3.2x. MANA cost reduced from 4 to 3. I mentioned this earlier, but that damage buff effectively buffs scapegoat.exe twice over compared to noiztank.exe, as doubling the damage also means doubling the MN restoration. This makes it trivial for an Agent to keep a party topped up over the course of a dungeon run. TROY: Fire  Places a debuff on one enemy that deals ranged MAT-based fire damage with a chance to inflict Burn every time the enemy is hit with a fire attack. Also applies Hack Weakness. (odds of Hack succeeding increased by 2.2x) Changes from 2020-II: No longer deals fixed damage. Base infliction rate increased from 18% to 75%. Burn damage increased from 61 to 141. TROY: Ice  Places a debuff on one enemy that deals ranged MAT-based ice damage with a chance to inflict Burn every time the enemy is hit with an ice attack. Also applies Hack Weakness. (odds of Hack succeeding increased by 2.2x) Changes from 2020-II: No longer deals fixed damage. Base infliction rate increased from 18% to 75%. Freeze damage increased from 61 to 141. TROYs in 2020-II had a hilarious oversight where they could insta-kill any Seed in the game, thanks to their fixed damage, so the change to a normal damage formula just fixes that. In practice, it actually heavily boosts the damage of every single TROY proc! Granted, you'll need a team that actually makes use of fire or ice to make use of this. Now, Hack Weakness going from a 1.5x boost to a 2.2x boost looks like normal VFD powercreep, but a big change made to Agent is that Hack Weakness is no longer applied from anyone landing crits/weakness/ailments; the only things that apply it are the TROYs and an Agent's Buddy skill. The intent behind the bump was to make it actually worthwhile to use compared to just using Hack twice. In practice, however, you can now just combine Hack Weakness with EX to get something like a 400% infliction rate on Hack, effectively making it guaranteed to land. Withdraw  User attempts to escape with 5x better odds compared to running normally. Boost is applied to all allies that attempt to escape that turn. Has priority. This basically gives escaping a fight a 100% success rate. And even if it doesn't work the first time, the other two party members can also run! Trick Hand  Improves the effect of items for the entire party. The increase stacks with EX. In terms of pure numbers, Trick Hand is unchanged from the 2020s. However, this is your daily reminder that items have priority in VFD, so anything that makes them better is buffed by default. Trick Hand is good. Quick Hack  The Agent has a chance to attempt to inflict Hack on a random enemy at the start of battle. Targets all enemies starting at level 4. The Agent restores 15% of their MN per target on use. Changes from 2020-II: Targets all enemies at level 4. Now restores MN. Oh, so clearly the multitarget Hack wasn't good enough, so now we get free MANA restoration to go with it. And that's not even considering the fact that you can follow this up with scapegoat.exe for even more MN. Agents have the lowest MANA pools in the game because they don't need more. Tier 2 Skills Air Assault  Hits all enemies with ranged ATK-based aerial damage. Has priority. Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 2.1x to 5x. EX Gain increased from 0.5% to 9%. Now has priority. The damage has been more than doubled, and it builds 18 times more EX. You know, for funsies. lostpower.exe  Deals ranged MAT-based damage to all Hacked targets and applies a debuff that reduces ATK, MAT, DEF, and MDF. The debuff is separate from other debuffs and can be stacked. Changes from 2020-II: Now targets all enemies. Damage increased from 4x to 5.5x. ATK/MAT debuff increased from 0.8x to 0.6x. DEF/MDF debuff increased from 0.8x to 0.75x. Hehe. Hehehh. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! How many times have I said it!? Stat changes in VFD are extremely important, and this slaps some unlucky son of a bitch with some of the biggest debuffs in the game! The 60% attack modifier alone can push an enemy into dealing chip damage against tankier party members! And that's before you start using other debuffs to drive things down even further! One of the most cracked skills in an Agent's kit, maybe even the entire game. Surprise Hunt  At the start of battle, there is a chance to force the fight into a pre-emptive attack. Negates ambushes starting at level 3. Cannot force a pre-emptive against bosses or dragons, but ambush negation still works. Don't want to deal with ambush RNG or ornery dragons? Take this to level 3 so you're always a single Withdraw away from safety. Cheetah Burst  At the end of the turn, the Agent has a chance to give all allies priority 3 for next turn. Actions above priority 3 are unchanged. Changes from 2020-II: Gives priority, instead of maximum SPD. Giving priority is a niche change compared to just maxing SPD, but the end result is still the same. Take this so occasionally you just don't have to worry about speed. Assassin's React  Applies a buff that gives the Agent a 100% chance to gain an extra turn every time they land a critical hit. In a sort of reverse Trick Hand, Assassin's React is unchanged from 2020, but is significantly worse in comparison. Hide being cut down to a 30% boost means landing crits is now inconsistant, and you won't have a lot of chances to actually attack if you're focused on hacking the enemy. Considering you need 3 turns for a hacking play, (TROY -> Hack -> any .exe) you're saying goodbye to half of this skill's duration for a single hack. I honestly would have prefered Hacking React. Tier 3 Skills Rush Shot  Deals a number of ranged ATK-based aerial damage attacks to a single enemy. Critical hits from this skill deal 1.1x damage instead of 1.5x. The crit bonus still being reduced here is weird, considering every other skill gets the standard 1.5x bonus. I guess Hiding makes it almost guaranteed to crit at least once for Assassin's React? sleepmode.exe  Attempts to inflict Sleep on all enemies. Hacked targets are guaranteed to be afflicted, bypassing immunities. Changes from 2020-II: Duration increased from 2 turns to 4 turns. Base infliction rate reduced from 80% to 75%. Can bypass immunities again. You know what's better than shutting down anything in the game for 2 turns? Shutting them down for 4. Want to safely set up? Want to kill time to let your backrow build support charges? There is not a single thing an enemy can do to stop you. And if you want to get really degenerate, Hack resistance caps out at 0.3x on a single DLC boss, and 0.35x everywhere else. This means you can slap a boss with this, set up a TROY on the now sleeping boss, and have, at worst, a 66%-77% chance without EX of Hacking them again, letting you follow up with another sleepmode.exe the second they wake up! EX Skill Indra's Flames  Deals ranged MAT-based damage with a chance to inflict Hack to all enemies. Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 7x to 16x. Chance to not act increased from 30% to 80%. Hack duration increased from 2 turns to 3. So on top of more than doubling the damage it deals, and giving the Agent two turns to hack with instead of just one, Indra's Flames also acts as Super Paralysis. The boost to Hack's duration isn't that much of a buff, honestly, as losing Hacking React means that this is the only way the Agent can get two .exe skills off in a single Hack aside from Quick Hack. Team Skills Charge Time: 1 turn Agents are unique is that they're the first class to have a blisteringly fast charge rate on their Team Skills. This means that they're ready for a Support in just one turn, and can break buffs with a Buddy skill in two! Buddy Deals two hits to the target. Each hit deals 1.5x ranged ATK-based damage and has a base 40% chance to inflict Burn for 5 damage and a base 40% chance to inflict Freeze for 13 damage. Inflicts Hack Weakness. (Chances of Hack succeeding increased by 1.8x.) All ailments last for 2 turns. So, being able to dispel enemy buffs every other turn is already godlike, but everything else here makes the Agent's Buddy skill the best in the game, hands down. First, each hit rolls their own chance to break buffs, so stronger bosses with harder to dispel buffs still have a sizable chance of losing them. Second, and most importantly, while the damage on the DoTs are pitiful, it doesn't change the fact that they still apply stat debuffs. That's two chances at cutting all stats by a sizable chunk, and by the time they wear off, the Agent is ready to do it again. The smaller Hack Weakness, however, is bizarre, as the only possible way to make use of it is if you intentionally run two Agents in your party. An Agent in the front can't use a Buddy skill to inflict it, and an Agent in the back can't use Hack to exploit it. Support Increases party SPD by 1.2x for 1 turn. Their Support skill, meanwhile, is far less impressive. Speed just isn't really a stat that gets a lot out of buffs. Most classes are either fast enough that they'll be going first anyways, or so slow that a 20% boost won't make a difference. Treat it as more of a way to always make sure the Agent is ready to fire off a Support with other, more potent party members. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Jan 9, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2022 03:39
|
|
|
Agent's innate ability got buffed from Gun Trickster from the 2020s as the EX multiplier for those attacks was 0.55x instead of 0.75x. Agents are kind of looked down upon and are considered to be one of the worst classes along with Duelist, though that's because people don't know how to use them. Which you can't really blame them for, as the game doesn't really give out enough info on how they work. Like how often enemies resist hack, or that EX doubles infliction rates. When you know how to boost Hack's chances, they can turn into real monsters. Hide is unfortunately not quite as good with the react, but in terms of actual DPS, it can be pretty absurd. Of course Hide had great synergy with Bush Trap in the previous games, which isn't there anymore as Bush Trap can trigger no matter what instead of having the user avoid being targeted. Bush Trap actually got mega buffed in VFD imo. In 2020 it was just a counter skill, couldn't inflict Null Action. 2020-II added in the Null Action proc rate, but it was capped at 20%. Also a lot of things heavily resisted it, down to a 0.2x rate, so the rate son dragons and bosses was just a measly 4%. And that's only if the Trickster didn't get smacked. Here, it goes off no matter what. A 16% chance at worst to stop dragons and bosses in their tracks for 2 turns is huge! And if they attack twice, that's a 29.44% chance per turn for them to get inflicted with Null Action. Those rates may sound low, but considering how strong free turns are in any RPG, those are actually genuinely absurd infliction rates! Especially when you can just spam Bush Trap for some free damage no matter what. Not one of the best gun skills, but certainly not a weak one for more gun focused builds. Jump Shot got super buffed as well. It was a late-game skill in the 2020s but they just give it to you from the beginning here. In the 2020s "damage over time" skills had their damage decay for each passing turn by a fairly significant amount. VFD just removed this mechanic entirely, so some huge buffs all around here. While Freeze is a better ailment than Stun, Stun is considerably easier to inflict in more cases, so it's not entirely outclassed. Some speed control can be nice for a few cases, so learning it can't hurt too much. Hell in an SP system with the post-DS games, investing in skills isn't as consequential as it is in EO. In EO, SP is a finite precious resource, but that's not the case in the post-DS 7th Dragon games, so grabbing some skills to cover some odd situations really doesn't hurt that much as mis-skilling in EO does. And for the most part, skills in the 2020+ games tend to be pretty good starting from level 1, where in EO they can be utter trash without levels, so even grabbing just 1 level is more beneficial more often than not. Hack is loving stupid. In the 2020s, Hacker had the weakness where Hacking was incredibly strong and let them control the flow of battle if you knew how, but if Hacking didn't land due to bad RNG, they'd be set back. VFD's overall changes let Agents Hack guaranteed if you know how. Unless an enemy is outright immune to Hacking (there are very few of these), you are guaranteed to get a 100%+ Hack rate with the right setup. It's so ridiculous. By the way, you don't need to set up on random battles, as mooks are super weak to ailments compared to dragon. Like early on, enemies have a 2.5x multiplier to hacking, so a level 1 verison is guaranteed to hack them. It's very important to know that madstrife.exe works like an AI overwrite. Agents literally basically hack into the enemy's AI and changes up their queued action to "use a regular attack" and "target my own team". This means that using this on preemptives or on turns where the enemy cannot act is entirely wasted. But on the other hand it means that dragons and bosses will smack their own side around 2 times since they can act more than once per turn. Do be warned it combos very poorly with lostpower.exe if you're intending on using madstrife.exe for damage, as the damage is affected by stat boosts and debuffs. madstrife is also AOE now instead of single target, which pretty much synergizes greatly with Hack being AOE. You can pretty much unleash chaos if there's a troublesome group you're dealing with. The TROYs are absurd. They didn't exist in 2020, and were added in 2020-II to make the Hacker more consistent, as the only way for Hack Weakness to be inflicted in 2020 was if someone struck a weakness (which basically meant requiring a Psychic in the party), or if someone happened to land a crit or inflict specific ailments. The TROYs let the Hacker set up Hack Weakness without having to rely on a specific party setup, but Hack Weakness's bonuses were 1.5x in the 2020s. Here it's 2.2x which lets Agent set up Hack super easily, or guaranteed if they're using EX. Oh and if you're using a Samurai/Agent/Duelist team, TROY: Fire can help deal so much damage since that party has a lot of fire damage on their side, which is pretty strong in the earlygame. Withdraw is not actually guaranteed to cause an escape, it can actually fail, but that requires sending a very low level Agent into a high leveled area. Aside from that it's pretty much a get out of jail free card. Unfortunately I have no idea how escaping works in the post-DS games. Quick Hack's mana restoration gets more absurd as the hacking attempt doesn't need to succeed for it to restore mana. This also means if it procs in a fight against 3 enemies, you get 45% of your mana back. Not sure why they got buffed like this honestly. Another important thing to note is that Hack only gives you 1 turn to follow up on it, but if Quick Hack succeeds, you get 2 turns to do whatever you want to the enemy due to how turn counts work in this series. Air Assault was very lackluster in the 2020s. Here it's basically a "delete encounters' button. More absurdity of course. HOO BOY, lostpower.exe! Yeah this is basically "enemies can't touch you" the skill. The effect is classified as a unique effect so it stacks with other debuffs. However not only that, it's AOE in this game. Which matters for one big thing. Look at the EX gain. +15% EX per hit. In a random battle with lots of enemies, you can use Hack and then lostpower.exe to basically refill the Agent's EX meter very very fast. And considering how important EX is for them, this lets them be far more effective more often! Rush Shot having the lower crit damage is a holdover from the 2020s where only skills could crit, but yeah it's weird. It is a way to generate lots of EX with Mind Boosters at least. sleepmode.exe was already strong as hell in the 2020s when you could stunlock enemies by alternating between Hacking and putting them to sleep. Now you're basically able to stunlock them even more with this! Why did this need to be 4 turns!? Oh and it bypasses immunities again, so nothing other than the stuff immune to Hack is safe from this. And it can be used to set up for a big strategy safely. God. Aaaaaand we're back to the "I win" EX skills after the Duelist's somewhat disappointing showing here. Yeah. 80% chance over 3 turns to deny the victim their turns. The extra turn is pretty significant since this is essentially a super stun and basically doesn't need the TROYs to have a good chance of landing (though they do make it guaranteed.) Now there is one bug with this class that kind of sets them back a bit. In 2020, Hackers sucked at gaining EX. Which was a very big setback considering how important EX was for them. 2020-II tried to buff this by granting more EX gain to their support skills. Unfortunately, the implementation was bad, as EX isn't gained if the skill doesn't deal damage. So there were a bunch of hacking related skills that were intended to grant +15% EX, but couldn't. Apparently they had no idea this bug existed in VFD, because they buffed a few of the Agent's skills to have higher EX gain, like sleepmode.exe having +15% EX gain, but like in the previous games, skills can't grant EX if they don't deal damage, so functionally the +15% buff they gave it did absolutely nothing. Sadly this includes madstrife.exe, which is classified as a support skill even though it makes enemies punch themselves in the face.
|
|
#
?
Jul 24, 2022 05:51
|
|
|
Update XVII - Featuring: Unit 13's first High Dragon Music: The Daily Grind  Welcome back. Last time, we learned that the reason Nyala lost at Atlantis is because Nyala lost at Atlantis.  This guy doesn't give us our reward for building the Lounge, but he does handle dates.  Since we currently have no numbers to hit up, Unit 13 is limited to dating amongst themselves.  The game has this sort of affinity system between your party members that raises as people fight in the same team. As far as I know, it has no impact on gameplay. Music: Re:Vanishment (code：VFD Ver)    Behold: The sensual face of romance.   Music: The Daily Grind  This is the guy who gives us our reward.  AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ~ Mark: Welcome to the Skylounge. I'm Mark, the manager. I guarantee excellent drinks for all guests.  Maki: I haven't been home for two weeks! It's like they're running some kind of sweatshop here!  And a quick look out the window. This would have been unnoticable on a tiny 3DS screen, but that sure is a flat texture slapped up just outside.  ...How the hell has Julietta not noticed all the Lucier we've been saving?  Kuroki: Oh, I'm not actually playing. I pretend to do stuff, but the sound comes from a hidden speaker.  Up next, before we finally go kill Mayhem, is dealing with those bugs in 7th Encount. Music: Tokyo - Cascading Ordeals  Time for your enthralling bug check adventure to begin. Doesn't that just sound oh so exciting? You're gonna be doing a bit more than have a staring contest with source code, though. There's a dragon in there that just came outta nowhere. Seems like it's from a bunch of bugs. So... you get to fight it. Just make sure you record the error code so we can analyze the cause. Now hurry up and kick that dragon's rear end!How do you gently caress up at programming so bad that your bugs combine into a dragon? Does this take place in the Battle Network universe or something?  7th Encount is the exact same as the last time we were here.  Right down to the enemies that give jack for rewards  The dragon is on Stage 3, for reference. Music: Battlefield - Furious Predator  Sega is clearly implying something here, as we have to kill the embodiment of an old exclusive JRPG on the 360.  And despite showing up in Chapter 2, the Blue Dragon is only about as strong as the dragons in Atlantica.  So it dies like a chump.  If only actual debugging was so ea-How the gently caress did it give Dz. We are in a video game. If virtual dragons can just give Dz, why can't Julietta make a batch of level 1 dragons for us to mulch to get infinite Dz? Music: Tokyo - Cascading Ordeals  Hurry along and bring it over to Kirk on the Development Floor. He'll make it all better.  Music: The Daily Grind  Developer Kirk: Hm? Error... code? Ahhh, yes, yes. You must be our new bug tester. Well, can you show me the report? Hmmm... I see, I see... There seems to be an endless loop forming in the battle protocol under particular circumstances. I should be finished fixing up the code by tomorrow. Can you go report that to Doctor Julietta? Bro, Julietta's office is like 30 feet away just tell him yourself.   *giggle* I'm just kidding. You came to tell me about the bug check issue, no? Thanks for the help. You really saved our butts. Hm, I think I'll give you a passionate kiss as a thank you! Oh, wait! I had spaghetti with garlic in it for lunch today... Alas, it'll have to wait. I'm sure you're disappointed, but how's this instead? You obtained Paral-Aid x3. We got 375 Az from the digi-dragon, for comparison.   You obtained High-Grade Bento x1. But we also get a free 140 LF party heal from Julietta, so it works out.  And since we got those ingredients back in Cladeon...  We can have our teammates make food!    The odds on which bento you get are a simple 6/10 chance for a Low-Grade Bento, 3/10 for a Handmade Bento, and 1/10 for a High-Grade.  And now we can finally complete our mission.  Having no warp point for the forge is infuriating. Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  As it means I have to run all the way back.  And the free camouflage we got doesn't last nearly long enough to get there. Between the running and the random encounters, it took about 10 minutes to make it.  And there it is.  Since this is her home and all, Valerie gets to do the honors. Music: None  Is it just me, or are Mayhem's back legs completely off the platform?   Aaaaaand Yuma drops right on cue. Music: Destructive Curse  Yuma! Is this a side effect of the installation...!?  You have my thanks...!Valerie's face certainly isn't saying no! Hey, Unit 13! This thing is gonna harden to increase its defense against your attacks. If you wanna beat it, you'll need to use Buddy Skills to break its defense! And then we get a random Buddy skill tutorial?   Video: Unit 13 VS High Dragon Mayhem Music: Battlefield - No. 7 Incursion    3 months, 17 updates, and 3 dungeons into VFD, and we have finally hit the first actual boss of the game.  Everyone sets up.  Mayhem's normal plan is to poison everyone.  The damage on his normal attacks, for comparison. Lol his tail is clipping into the ground.  Between the initial hit and the poison, Dragon Fog is nasty. That's outpacing the regen from Forest Poetry!  Inoue uses EX on Maple Tear to land Burn.  While Valerie does the same with Lightning Sword for Paralysis.  And Aria patches everyone up.  Paralysis is so good in VFD you guys.  At the start of turn 3, Mayhem always uses Dragon Action as a priority action. This is the defense buff Nagamimi warned us about.  And by 'defense buff.'  I mean it cuts all damage, ATK and MAT, by 100% for 5 turns. This is basically the game telling you to use Buddy skills or die. So the High Dragons have been reduced from game spanning bosses to literal tutorials.  Note how Opal is just shy of her second bar. If I didn't keep a 1 turn charger like Aiden in the back for this, I'd be forced to plink for two full turns before I could break Mayhem's shield.  The defense buff also applies to the Buddy skill that breaks it, but Aiden's is two hits. That lets the second shot deal full damage like normal.  And then Aria landed an EX boosted Revelation: Bleed. Look at that status bar! Burn, Freeze, Paralysis, Bleed, and Hack Weakness all at the same time.  He looked at his status bar too, sadly, and decided to cleanse all his ailments.  Oh no, the entire party got hit with Poison! Whatever shall I do?  Oh wait.  I just keep chipping away at him.  And just like that, I'm back to having my crippling ailments back on.  Mayhem's last trick is a basic single target attack.  Mayhem is nearly dead.  Aiden's current guns have a chance to inflict poison, which can still go off even on Buddy skills. Did you know that there are only two weapons in the entire game with added ailments? This is one, and we'll be seeing the other next chapter. The devs just decided to practically ditch the whole concept, I guess.  And then Aria steps in and finishes Mayhem off. Look at our current stats at the end of this fight. Everyone is fully healed and has only lost a tiny amount of MN. Even the bosses are barely a threat in VFD.  Music: Finish Them Off  Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer   Everyone in Unit 13 nods. Ad...miral...  Ah, right! Where is the High Dragon!? You needn't worry. Unit 13 handled it. I mean, we do have six people on the team now. ... I apologize for being useless at such a vital time. I don't know how I can make it up to you... We're teammates. It was nothing. Teammates, hm...? Thank you. How strange. I feel... relief. ~ Are you sure you're OK? You are quite kind... Thank you. Your concern brings me... relief.~~ However, I assure you... I will never commit such a grave error again. Heyyy! You guys alright?  The rocks have been making a hell of a lot of noise, so I came to see what was going on. I left the rest of my troops in charge of the town while I was gone. The rocks were... making noise? Oh yeah... You're not a Lucier, so I guess you don't hear them. All Lucier have the power to hear the voices in the stone. That's how we're so good at smithing. I grew up in this mine, so I can immediately tell if the rocks are acting up. Anyways, I can't believe you guys actually beat Mayhem... I'm speechless... And all I've done up 'til now is look down on you. I'm real sorry. Please... forgive me for being so rude earlier. You're surprisingly honest. D-Don't make fun of me! poo poo... I should never have apologized...~ The real battle starts now. You can't be serious...~~ Oh yeah...! There's something I need to ask you guys. Hm... That's fine, but let's head back to the village. You surely need to report to the chief. Oh, that's right. OK, we can talk details once we get back!Music: None  We then cut to right nearby.  With this fellow watching us.   Such meager experience... And yet, possessing the power to defeat a High Dragon... Could these be... the dragon hunters...? Who then swiftly teleports away. Next time: The 'I' in ISDF stands for 'Idiot.' BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 12:39 on Oct 4, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 03:34
|
|
|
Why, hello there mysterious robed fellow. Here to watch the power creeping ever higher too? The images of Valerie interacting with the affinity system and the date are hilarious. She's just happy to be there!
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 04:14
|
|
|
Can we just make Valerie the main character now
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 05:11
|
|
|
Valerie Faces Down a Vaguely Fish-like Dragon
|
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 06:18
|
|
|
Oh my god. Mayhem is. Yeah. First time playing through the game I didn't think much of it. But after playing the rest of the games in the series, seeing a High Dragon (which are supposed to be major bosses in the other games) being relegated to a tutorial boss caused a good bit of whiplash to me. Especially considering that the first High Dragons in the 2020 games can be real fuckers, Tiamat especially. quote:-Dragon Fog: Non-elemental Ranged attack to all party members. MAT-based. 1x damage. Has an 80% chance to inflict Poison for 3 turns. The poison ticks for 30 damage. Has a crit rate of -100% (This skill cannot crit.) Mayhem's skillset isn't particularly impressive either. It's most threatening attack is Dragon Fog, and that's because of the poison proc really. But you can make it so your entire party is immune to Poison at that point, which pretty much defangs that skill, and this boss. The song is a nice remix of Seven Threats from DS at least. Imperial Wrath is only broken out whenever Mayhem has an ailment, and can only be used on the first action of a turn, or if Dragon Action doesn't get in the way (it's the very first thing the AI checks for, so there's basically no way to stop it from coming out short of disabling Mayhem). So if Paralysis locks that turn away, it can't use it for its 2nd action. Likely to hammer in the buddy skill tutorial further. It does waste one of its turns at least. Funnily enough Mayhem's AI doesn't give a poo poo about Hack, Hack Weakness, or G-Depth. But Imperial Wrath will clear them out if you trigger it anyways. It also uses it on its own right before it loops its attack pattern. A free turn at least?  Interestingly enough, there's an unused version of Mayhem in the code. The first one in the picture is what you actually fight. The 2nd version was apparently meant to be fought earlier, but not sure what it was supposed to be for. Judging from the fact it doesn't pay out DZ, it might have been a hopeless boss fight before the story details got finalized? What with Mayhem having the "you do 1 damage to me" skill. Would probably explain the bizarre out of nowhere tutorial for a mechanic players have already figured out due to the sheer length between getting the backup team and reaching Mayhem. Araxxor fucked around with this message at 06:52 on Jul 26, 2022 |
|
#
?
Jul 26, 2022 06:43
|
|
|
Leraika posted:Can we just make Valerie the main character now Whatever do you mean? She's always been the main character. Always.
|
|
#
?
Jul 27, 2022 01:35
|
|
|
Update XVIII - Featuring: Probable Ethics Violations Music: Chant for Sanctuary (code:VFD Ver.)  And with that, our first mission to kill a High Dragon has come to an end.  This was also the only mission to kill a High Dragon. From here on out we're killing All True Dragons, All The Time. I mean, High Dragons will still show up every now and then, but they'll be more of a momentary roadblock rather than a dedicated chapter focus.  We're still four True Dragon samples short of our quota, after all.   Chief Toglau: *chuckle* This is Cub. He is the last remaining blacksmith in this settlement. As I mentioned, almost all of our experienced blacksmiths lost their lives in battle. The only ones left with any experience retired long ago. That leaves Cub as our blacksmith. That means...Chief Toglau: The heart of Cladeon lies in the forge. However... forging the Dragonslayer will be impossible.    ...King Utrello entrusted me with it as he died. He said a hero would come along to slay Nyala... So, where is it? Once I got back from battle, I handed it over to Consul Tallieri. With it, I passed along Utrello's request... For the Dragonslayer to be given to the hero... I don't think it'll be that easy. Tallieri's always been skeptical of the Dragonslayer's power. Plus, he hasn't listened to a word anyone's said since King Utrello passed. On top of that, he insists that his suicidal plan is the only way to defeat Nyala. I just can't accept that! poo poo... All these people are so quick to give up on living! I should never have entrusted the will of King Utrello to that coward!Chief Toglau: I understand why you feel the way you do, Eigur, but you must calm yourself. Nrgh... Sorry. I got carried away. I guess it's not like getting the Dragonslayer back's gonna help us much anyways. Hm...? What do you mean? That thing's no ordinary sword. To bring out its true power, we need an expert blacksmith, too... One with the will to protect this planet at all costs. Then, that will can pass to the hero... That bond is really important. The sword won't have power if it doesn't hold the will to protect. Maybe that's why it didn't work before... Why it didn't respond to King Utrello's wishes. Anyways, it's prolly pointless to ask people from the capital to help us down in Cladeon...Wait, did they just... skip that step the first time? Did Utrello knowingly walk into Nyala's lair with a half-cocked Dragonslayer? Chief Toglau: Hm. The blacksmith must wish to defeat the dragon, and the wielder must then inherit that will... Only upon the connection of those two will the Dragonslayer's true power be unlocked. But if we can find a blacksmith like that... Maybe we can get the Dragonslayer to show itself. There has to be someone in Cladeon who can— No. Even separate from the will part, we need someone who can hear the voice of orichalcum. But only members of the Royal Family are able to do that. I sure as hell can't...Chief Toglau: There are none of the Royal Lucier Family who remain in Cladeon... It will be impossible. No... We'll just have to find one. ... Unit 13, I do not believe we have the time for aimless searching. No, but... Hm? Do you have someone in mind? Yeah, but I don't think she'd be willing to help us.~ What about in the capital? Unit 13...? Do you have someone in mind? Wait... There is someone. I don't think she'd be willing to help us, though.~~ If there's any chance of success, we need to request their aid as soon as possible. Who is this woman you speak of? Oh hey, the one noble we already know! The Atlantis Royal Family is the oldest group in the whole Lucier Lineage. The blood of our ancestors is rich in their veins... Not like the people of Cladeon. Novice Smith Cub: Back in the day it used to be a sacred task carried out only by the elites. Chief... What should we do?Chief Toglau: I doubt the Royal Family will hear the pleas of lower-class citizens like ourselves.  We'll never know unless we try. You're... probably right. Alright, the tide's turning in our favor. Let's do everything we can! ~ I'm sure she'll listen. Hm? Do you know Ulania, too? Haha, you guys are full of surprises. That means there's a glimmer of hope now!~~ Please, Chief. Let us negotiate with Queen Ulania!Chief Toglau: We must go through Consul Tallieri first. Be sure to honor his word. Tch... Fine. We appreciate the help, Chief. Come on, let's go back home for now. We will gather here again tomorrow before heading over to the Royal Palace to negotiate. Sounds good to me. But you lit a fire inside of me when you went and took back the forge from that High Dragon. I... want to thank you for helping us. Valerie... I think you may be the one to wield the Dragonslayer. Somehow I have a feeling that you are gonna be the one who beats Nyala and saves this country... Is that wierd? *chuckle* Anyways, I'll see you tomorrow!Sorry, Valerie, but Opal's the one getting the godslaying job.  We're going to leave you behind if you don't hurry up, Unit 13.  Don't forget about tomorrow, OK? We'll be waiting! Music: Cladeon - An Undersea Shimmer  Allie and Julietta are thrilled, too. The mission's not over 'til you're home, though. Hurry up! Now, I could leave...  Rude Militiaman: You're not gonna be so arrogant when I'm done! Got it!? But killing Mayhem and reclaiming the forge has given everyone here something new to say. ~ Young Militiaman: Y-You are incredible! With your powers... we may be able to return to the peaceful days of yore! ~ Novice Smith Cub: Holy crap! You guys managed to beat the High Dragon without divine protection...! I really underestimated you land dwellers! ~ Blind Smith Auroth: I heard the rumors, surface dweller. It sounds as though you've defeated the High Dragon. I wish I could have witnessed that with my own two eyes... ~ Chief Toglau: We must go through Consul Tallieri first. Be sure to honor his word.   Inept Militiaman: I'm glad nobody's gonna get hurt now. I-I'm still ready to fight, though! I-I p-p-promise! ~ Anxious Old Woman: Y-You really managed to defeat the High Dragon? I just... can't believe that...  Positive Old Man: You young'uns can overcome any hardship! Anything is possible when you still have your youth! ~ Negative Old Man: Even if we can defeat the High Dragon, our fate will remain unchanged... The capital is never going to help us... All we can do now is accept our impending doom...  Vigorous Old Man: I'd check your power levels if my hip wasn't hurting so much.   Determined Girl: I wanna be strong, too! Like Eigur! Can you guys give me lessons!?  Longing Lucier: That means... this place can once again be my safe haven! Now all I need is my fated love...  And done. Music: UE77 Tokyo  Look at those zeroes! ...why isn't there a notice about clearing out Cladeon? Music: The Daily Grind   Let's go check in with the boss first. Music: UE77 In Ariake  Seriously! Such hard work earns you a big sloppy kiss as a reward! The game actually plays a cartoony kiss SFX as Julietta steps up.  Don't be too hasty. Our chances of success are still only at a mere 50%. We will still have to convince the queen of a powerful monarchy to lend us her aid. I don't expect she'll be as open to persuasion as you'd like. *chuckle* So you think we should just give up on going after the Dragonslayer? No, but it is not as though that is our only option. Well, we can take care of that when the time comes. For now, let us hope she accepts our request. Now then, it's time for us to head back to ISDF HQ. And as promised, we'll be taking a portion of the Mayhem specimen with us. Please, go ahead. We like to actually keep our promises, unlike some people. Stop that, Julietta★ This mission was only a success due to the cooperation of Unit 13, ISDF, and that boy Eigur. That's the kind of synergy I can really get behind! It was quite successful, I will admit. Plus we got our hands on some precious Dz. Yup yup! We'll keep working together and take down Nyala! *sigh* You're seriously too excited about this. I'm heading back to the lab. OK OK★ Well, that's it for today! Unit 13, ISDF guys, we'll see you all tomorrow! Excuse us.  I really need to get into the habit of swapping to Opal for these cutscenes, Yuma hasn't known Valerie nearly long enough to request a private meeting out of the blue like this.  Music: The Daily Grind  Better late than never!  I guess we'll see if that ends up being good or bad... Sheesh... You're such a goddamn softy...~ Oooh... I heard you and Yuma are going to have a secret meeting? *chuckle* I love watching a young relationship blossom★~ Look, guys that seem sincere are sometimes the most dangerous. Just be careful, OK? The terrace is that outdoors area on the Rest Floor, if you forgot. Music: Re:Vanishment (code：VFD Ver)     *nods* *chuckle* I'm sure you don't know how to react to that, but... I need you to listen.Well that, uh, certainly is a way to create a dragon killer.  My body is that of a young adult, but in fact... I was only created twelve years ago. Shocking, no? I'd expect that it's also rather... creepy.It also sounds wildly unethical. *shakes head* The reason for my existence is to kill dragons... and to become the strongest soldier alive. If I were able to achieve that... I would have no need for friends or lovers. Hence, watching you continue to grow stronger and stronger... I...Yuma's budding inferiority complex is kinda funny when you consider that Unit 13 needed six people to take on a High Dragon, which he can kill in a single punch when he's not dealing with Dramatic Anime Moments. My apologies. I do not know how to express this emotion... I simply... do not want to lose. The one who will defeat the 7th True Dragon must be me. It must. That is how I feel. Ah... I'm sorry. I don't know what I wished to achieve by telling you all of this. It's as though I cannot control my emotions when I'm around you...  Okay, 1) Rude, 2) I'm still on Tier 1 skills you jerk, say that again once I hit Tier 3. Hence... I request that you refrain from assisting me from now on. Accepting aid from one who is weaker than you... That is just unacceptable, right? Perhaps I'm strange. You can refuse my wish, but at the very least, do not obstruct my mission.  I won't abandon you. But... I was so rude to you just now... What...? Th-This response is incomprehensible...~ Aren't you overthinking this? Hm...? Overthinking...? ... ...Ah! N-Not at all! That's complete nonsense!~~  What I wanted to say is... I'm not going to lose to you. Never. Well then...  Music: The Daily Grind  Get down to the Entrance Lobby immediately! You have two seconds!Oh hey, sounds like Mio's making another visit!  It stays sunset even out of cutscenes, which is a nice touch.   U-Um... Can you call Ms. Allie- I mean, the president down, then? I really need to see her...Receptionist: The president? I'm sorry, but do you have an appointment? I'm surprised Allie even does appointments, she strikes me as the type of lady to be happy to do a meet and greet at any hour. Hell, I'm more surprised she isn't down here already. I-I don't... Sorry...Receptionist: Then I am unable to help you. No...   Yes, she's a good friend.Receptionist: I see... My apologies. Th-Thank god~! Thank you so much, Opal!~ Hmm, maybe she's a fan?Opal even shakes her head, just to be extra mean. Receptionist: I see. I will call the guards at once. What!? W-Wait, Opal! It's me, Mio!!~~   Oh gently caress Nagamimi is in full PR mode. We're dead. I am well-acquainted with this girl, so you may leave her to me!Receptionist: I... see! If the chief says so...   U-Um... Oh thank god they stopped. I'm so sorry! Man, you caused a hell of a lotta trouble down here. What do you want? It better not be something like, “Oh I just wanted to come for a little visit. Teehee!” U-Um... I'm actually here to see Ms. Allie... Allie? What for...? I want to become a navigator so I can help Opal.Just in time for us to go prepare for Nyala! Oho? So you've decided. ...Yeah. I want to try my hardest to be the best person I can be. I'm just following Opal's example, though... *giggle*~ Isn't that too much for you? ...Yeah, it probably is. To tell you the truth, I've been... afraid. But I've been too much of a coward. I thought... I should stop running away from my problems.~~ ...I also have another reason. I'm looking for my dad. My grandpa told me both my mom and dad died in an accident, but... I've never been able to believe that. I remember... I can remember my dad's big hands patting me on the head. That's why I still have hope... Maybe he's still alive somewhere but just can't come home for some reason... Do you think that's... delusional? Not at all. *nods* *giggle* Thank you... ~ You'll find him soon. *shakes head* When you say it like that... it feels like it could really happen.~~ I... was actually looking for him when I first met you here at 7th Encount, Opal. I remember hearing something about Nodens from my dad when I was little... My memory's pretty good, so that stuck with me all these years. So I thought if I came to work here, maybe I'd be able to find him... B-But that doesn't matter anymore. They didn't hire me...Considering she has Dragon Sickness and probably won't make it to her 20s, Mio choosing to spend her final years looking for her father is actually rather tragic.  I know a way. R-Really!? Please tell me how! ... I think that would be crossing the line a little bit... B-But I'll use it as a last resort if I need to! *nods* Want me to help you? I appreciate the gesture, but... Mmm... I'm gonna do this on my own... Yeah! I've got this! I'm not going to run away anymore! *nods* *giggle* Thanks!~~ See you, Opal!  C'mon, you guys should get to bed. Crybaby Girl: It's cause of you guys that I'm here... Thank you. First, I want to see if any other Lucier are around. This girl is by the Portal floor elevator.  While this is the storage room on the same floor.  Waiting Woman: I'm sure he would have come to me... And this is at the end of the hallway. Julietta is so bad at making sure we aren't fiddling with the timeline.  We're not allowed to drop in and say hi.  There are almost certainly more Lucier scattered around, but that can wait until tomorrow. I won't be missing dialogue either, NPCs update at odd intervals in VFD.  Remember the other room on Unit 13's floor?  The backrow teams sleep here.  Opal, I am 95% sure Nagamimi would kill you if they saw you do that.  Good night, everyone!  Music: Destructive Curse  But first, we get another scene with the ISDF.  Did you hear me ask for opinions? I will repeat myself if I must.  ...I'm sorry, what? ... Oh my loving god they're serious about this. Did they stick Fomalhaut's data into Yuma? All the while enhancing the body as well so it can perform up to the specimen's specifications... This technique is assuredly making Yuma stronger, but— We have already seen some severe side effects after installing the Fomalhaut specimen into Yuma. Installing another, let alone two more, would be a great burden to him. We have no idea how this will affect Yuma. Don't you think we're being a bit hasty?How can they be so bad at this? Like, this is basically a piecemeal version of the Dragon Chronicle, and that ended with Takehaya going berserk shortly after. Do they honestly expect loading Yuma up with True Dragon bits to go all hunky-dory? The future of humanity hinges on the completion of this plan. Do you not understand, Yoritomo? But, Sir... They need an overwhelming power capable of defeating the 7th True Dragon. Our plan will grant that. And once we succeed, we can continue on to produce second and third waves of Yuma units. We will wipe all of humanity's enemies off the face of this planet. You see, don't you, Yuma? Ah, one more thing. If there are any more malfunctions, you shall be replaced... permanently.Wow, what a dick! ...Do they even have time to make a replacement for Yuma? Because Yuma just said that he's twelve years old and from the sounds of it, VFD's arrival is extremely close. Ensure the installation is complete by morning. You must be ready for your battle with Nyala. ...Do not fail me, Yuma.   Yes, but... I'm used to this. And... I want to become stronger. I want that with every fiber of my being. I see... ...I understand.  ...Is it just me, or does that thing look like a dragon?  Next time: Julietta learns exactly how much authority he has over Unit 13. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 02:47
|
|
|
The ISDF is making quite a few bad decisions and the fallout will be either hilarious or painful to watch. And Unit 13's probably going to have to beat up Yuma.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 03:21
|
|
|
You would think their first priority would be to figure out why Yuma had a goddamn blue screen error when he was about to beat a dragon to death with its own spine, which is something that never occurred to me any of the times I played this game myself. Better to make sure your BisbyWorl posted:
It's not just you. If I remember concept art I saw correctly, that is exactly what it's supposed to look like. Sadly I don't remember where I saw that particular bit of art, or if it had anything potentially spoilery in the same image.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 04:53
|
|
|
The sheer amount of blatant unethical and haphazard procedures in that scene is kind of hilarious.
|
|
#
?
Jul 29, 2022 05:04
|
|
|
Fortuner: They made Sacrifice good.      Another 2020 hybrid class, the Fortuner reaches out a bit farther for their inspiration; grabbing a few bits of Hacker and Trickster the Agent missed, then dipping a toe into Psychic, Idol and even 7D1's Princess for good measure. Overall, Fortuners specialize in drowning their enemies in status ailments and their allies in buffs. Stats  Surprisingly for a support class, the Fortuner is actually first in MN, MAT, and SPD, letting them hit hard and almost always go first! To balance it out, however, they have the absolutely lowest LF and DEF of any class and their MDF is middling. A Fortuner can get some serious work done, but is liable to explode from a pointed glare. Tier 1 Skills Revelation: Sleep  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Sleep. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 40%. Can target groups starting at level 3, but the damage is reduced. Sleep is normally a decent ailment at best to throw around, but the Fortuner manages to make it a respectable part of their kit! The high base infliction rate means it stands a good chance of landing, and the Fortuner's sky high SPD means they'll almost always go first. Combined, this means that the Fortuner can just shut down a dangerous enemy at the start of battle, leaving it defenseless while the team either buffs up or deals with any other enemies on the field. And while the damage on it looks low, being backed by such a titanic MAT means their output will be surprisingly decent. As a bonus, this also means that the Fortuner can take advantage of that infliction rate boost when you do move to deal with the sleeper, making it easy to transition to a more relevant ailment! Revelation: Bleed  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Bleed. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 40%. Can target groups starting at level 3, but the damage is reduced. An extra 300 damage is nothing to sneeze at, but the main draw here is having a good infliction rate to start with so you can get those boosted rates on everything else for 3 turns. Oh, and while damage is reduced when targeting groups, infliction rates are not. Oracle of Spirit  Attempts to hit all enemies with melee MAT-based damage and heals the user for a portion of the damage dealt. Skill only affects enemies inflicted with Sleep, Curse, Blind, Paralysis, or Downer. Oracle of Power  Attempts to hit all enemies with melee MAT-based damage and heals the user for a portion of the damage dealt. Skill only affects enemies inflicted with Bleed, Poison, Burn, or Freeze. The two Oracles are effectively identical, with one focusing on debilitating ailments and the other focusing on DoTs. They hit hard, keep the Fortuner on their feet, (provided whatever damage they took didn't break them in half to begin with) and fulfilling the requirements are easy as pie. Funnily enough, even though Oracle of Spirit lists Downer as a valid ailment, there's exactly one way for a player to inflict it on an enemy, and it does absolutely nothing to an enemy even if you do pull it off. Dynamic Negate  Places a buff on the party that reduces all ATK-based damage taken. Has priority. Not nearly as good as it sounds, as it's effectively a 2020-style buff that only hits the final damage. It can stack with DEF buffs, however, so you can put them together to make the party even tankier. Mana Float  Reduces MN costs of all party member's skills for this turn. Has priority. This is... a bit more useful than Psychic's version? Like, a support-focused unit like the Fortuner will be more likely to have a spare turn, but with all the sources of full party MN restoration in VFD you might as well just use that and have them help kill stuff instead. Forest Poetry  Places a buff on the party that heals LF at the end of the turn. Has priority. Changes from 2020: Healing changed from %-based to fixed totals. Duration reduced from 6 turns to 5. A small change from Hacker's Regenerator, the shift to flat numbers means that Forest Poetry has a bigger impact early on when everyone has smaller health pools, and scales nicely into late game thanks to having such a high MAT. It struggles a bit if all the damage is being focused on one person like with God Hands or Rune Knight, but spread out damage will be mostly taken care of automatically, and items can cover single target work. Moonlight Poetry  Places a buff on the party that restores MN at the end of the turn. With this, Mana Float is even more useless. As long as you're using less than 15 MN a turn, this makes the party run MN-postive, so why bother burning your Fortuner's action on Mana Float? This makes three classes to have easy access to stupid levels of MN restoration. Keeping the party topped off is trivial. Tier 2 Skills Revelation: Blind  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Blind. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 30%. Can target groups starting at level 3, but the damage is reduced. Blind is still an eh ailment, and the infliction rates are slightly dropped for the T2 Revelations, but having one more turn of duration gives the Fortuner more time to slap on as many ailments as possible. Revelation: Poison  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Poison. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 30%. Can target groups starting at level 3, but the damage is reduced. This, however, is useless. Venom Boost has been scrubbed from player hands, so you can't amplify it into the stratosphere, and the base damage on the DoT is worse than Revelation: Bleed! You can stack it with Bleed if you have free time, but don't make it a major priority. Gift for You  Transfers all ailments on the user to one target. Bypasses immunities. All ailment properties such as DoT damage or paralysis chance carry over. Changes from 2020-II: Can now ignore status immunities. Here it is: The one way to stick an enemy with Downer for Oracle of Spirit, provided you're fighting an enemy that can inflict Downer in the first place. Being able to load up an enemy with ailments is nice, but the real crippling ones like Sleep, Confusion, or Paralysis make it hard, if not impossible, for the move to go off in the first place. It costs pretty much nothing to get, though, so take it for a rainy day. Magic Negate  User places a buff on the party that reduces MAT-based damage. Has priority. This is just Dynamic Negate but for another damage type. I wonder why they waited until Tier 2 for this? Ichor  Places a buff on the party for this turn. Any dead party members with this buff active will be revived with 1 LF at the end of the turn. Has priority. Can you keep one person alive through the worst a boss can throw at you? Congrats, you can no longer Game Over. Grace of the Sun  User has a chance to restore the party's MN at the end of the turn. So on top of Moonlight Poetry, Fortuners also get a second source of MN restoration! And this one doesn't even cost them an action to use! Grace of the Moon  If any party member gets inflicted with an ailment, there is a chance for it to be automatically cured. Slightly less important if you have a backrow Duelist for ailment clearing Support turns, but still good to have, albeit incredibly expensive for when it unlocks. Following React  Places a buff on the user that gives them a 50% chance of gaining an extra turn every time another party member gains an extra turn. Changes from 7th Dragon: Activation rate reduced from 100% to 50%. Much like Princess in 7D1, Following React heavily depends on what party your Fortuner is in. Classes that can reliably set theirs off like God Hand or Samurai will gives the Fortuner oodles of free moves, while someone like a Hack focused Agent will render this useless. Tier 3 Skills Revelation: Curse  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to inflict Curse. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 30%. Can target groups starting at level 3, but the damage is reduced. Are you running an Agent with your Fortuner? If yes, congratulations, you can chain this into madstrife.exe and shred whoever got cursed! If not, Curse runs into the usual issue where the damage you do to an enemy and the damage an enemy does to you are on entirely different levels, so the backlash damage will never equate to much. Revelation: Death  Hits one enemy with melee MAT-based damage and a chance to instantly kill the target. If the target has any ailments, infliction rate is increased by 20%. It doesn't work on dragons or bosses so it can't be used on them, it can't be multitargeted so it's barely useful against crowds, and it needs another ailment to max the infliction rate so you need a turn of setup. The one thing in this skill's favor is that Death resistance is a binary 1x or 0x, so at the very least the odds of this working exactly as listed. Sacrifice  Hits all enemies with ranged MAT-based damage. Kills and inflicts Lost on the user. Lost prevents the user from being revived for the rest of the battle. Lost does not prevent the user from gaining EXP/SP at the end of battle Changes from 2020: Damage reduced from 40% to 15%. Changes from 2020-II: Damage increased from 5x to 15%. No longer drains all MN on use. Oh Sacrifice, Sacrifice, Sacrifice... This skill has had a... colored past in the 7th Dragon series. In 7D1, Sacrifice would instantly kill anything not immune to Death, or deal 70% of max LF in damage if they were. In 2020, it would deal 40% of all enemies max LF in damage. In both games it would also fully heal the party, but had the crippling cost of permanently killing the user. This made using it actively counterproductive, as you'd now have to grind up a new Rogue/Trickster from scratch. In 2020-II, they changed it so Sacrifice just perma-kills the user for that fight alone, at which point they could be revived out of combat like normal. They also completely removed the party heal and dropped the damage to a measly 5x, making the move just regularly useless instead of impossibly useless. You couldn't even use it to try and finish off a boss, as it would make the Trickster lose all EXP/SP they would have gotten. In VFD, they kept the change to Lost, but went back to dealing percentile damage. Do you have a Fortuner? Do they have Sacrifice? You can now instantly end any boss in the game the second their health dips below 15%. And unlike Death, nothing resists it. But wait, you don't actually have to wait for 15%, as Sacrifice works with EX, bringing it to a whopping 22.5% damage! Decide to bring two Fortuners? Well now you can insta-kill a boss at 45%! And to top it all off, the changes to EXP/SP gain for dead party members in VFD means that the Fortuner loses nothing from this kind of suicidal playstyle, as they'll still get full rewards! Solve all your problems with explosions! Grace of the Stars  At the start of battle, there is a chance to apply a buff that increases SP gains by 1.5x if the party wins within 2 turns. Changes from 2020-II: Now has a duration of 2 turns. Duelist's pre-battle AUTO has a good chance of tripling SP gain, and I still called it bad. This one has half the impact while also putting you on a timer. At the very least, 2 turns is far more time than you would expect in VFD. EX Skill Yggdrasil's Wind  User fully heals the party, cures all status effects, and revives all dead party members. A panic button that brings the entire team back to full. What more do you want me to say? Although, fun fact: the healing from this is still run through the normal equations. This means that despite the LF being capped at 500, and despite heals being capped at 999, this skill attempts to add on 10% of the Fortuners MAT and double the final result. Team Skills Charge Time: 4 turns To make up for their kit, Fortuners have the slowest charge speed in the game. If you have one in the backrow, have fun waiting four turns for a single Support. Buddy Hits one enemy for 2.1x ATK-based damage and a 40% chance to inflict Blind for 2 turns. The Blind modifies accuracy by 0.75x. It keys off of ATK on a MAT focused class, has a pitiful chance to inflict one of the more mediocre ailments available, and it takes 8 turns to charge. Never use this. Support Revives all dead party members with 1 LF. In exchange, however, their Support is pretty much an on-demand Ichor. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2022 03:46
|
|
|
Ha ha, I hope Yuma punches that prick's head off when he inevitably goes berserk and [THE FOLLOWING HAS BEEN REDACTED DUE TO POSSIBLE SPOILERS, DESPITE NOT HAVING FINISHED THE GAME MYSELF] becomes VFD. I mean, c'mon, slotting in all those dragons who could've been at one point been considered gods, and you DON'T expect him to become the final dragon? Idiots.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2022 04:54
|
|
|
Fortuners are basically a support class, and by support class I mean they basically chokeslam their enemies with raw magical power all while making them weaker through ailments. The Atlantis classes are where balance really went out the window and Fortuner is the less busted of the two, believe it or not. You can pretty much make them snowball by just setting up ailment skills to make it easier to inflict other ailments and then going to town with the Oracles. As long as your Fortuner can't die (which there are a lot of ways to ensure that!) they can pretty much just go nuts. Those stats and numbers do not lie, they hit really hard. Yeah you can stack the damage reduction buffs with defense increasing buffs, as if it wasn't easy enough to make your party ubertanks. Mana Float does carry over into the extra turn phase, so that's something at least? But yeah Mana overall isn't a problem in this game. Probably worse than Dark Ether from EO3, because that skill at least had uses, where this, Mana is just even more accessible that lowering the costs to 0 isn't a huge deal. Ichor is a bit situational, but if you know a big kill move is coming out and you don't have any other tools to do anything about it, this can end up saving you. Can't prevent game overs though, those get checked for if your party goes down, even if Ichor would have saved them. Though that would make it outright impossible to lose the game if that was the case since all your Fortuner would have to do is spam it to ensure you can't game over. Curse and Poison are situational ailments, but hey, damage over time is damage over time. It doesn't have the EO or 7DS problem of only being able to use 1 ailment, so you can at least stack up multiple ailments to really debilitate enemies. Though that is a really slow strategy by VFD standards, up to you all if you wanna engage in that. Grace of the Stars is another rare case of a nerf, as the equivalent skill in 2020-II, Colorful Stage, just lasted forever, though Duelist does have Lucky Roll, so they probably didn't want too much overlap. In most games, infinite duration down to 2 turns would be a sledgehammer nerf. The bizarre part is by VFD's standards? This is somehow a small nerf. Because of VFD's increased power levels and power leaps, killing anything in 2 turns is absolutely trivial if you know how! Very few bosses wouldn't live past that limit if you decided to go all out. I don't know how this game managed to turn a sledgehammer nerf into a small nerf, but good job I guess??? Yggdrasil's Wind is a handy panic button. Nothing much to say about it. GiantRockFromSpace posted:If there's not a skill that's like, "Instakill enemy if easy X condition is met"... I won't do anything cause I ain't risking it but it sounds like the easiest way to top the powercreep so far. Does VFD's version of Sacrifice count? Because instant death in this game is actually kind of just outright doodoo. Dragons and bosses are all outright immune to it, no getting around it. Only mooks can be tagged with it. And mooks in 7th Dragon games are ultra pathetic, they're not like Etrian Odyssey mooks which can ruin your day. Which make Revelation: Death rather poo poo to be honest.Funny thing is only DS and VFD let you have access to instant death. It's better in the former, and can be used on dragons, but they have an innate attribute that prevents any instant death calculations from succeeding until they're below 10% life. In the 2020s, only enemies had access to it. In fact, if you hacked it in on player skills, it was completely non-functional and wouldn't work on enemies as there's no code for instant death on enemies. Now Sacrifice on the other hand... Oh god. This skill was utter poo poo in all the previous games for various reasons. DS and 2020? lol permadeath in a long JRPG. Yeah sure, binning 1 character forever to win 1 battle out of hundreds is totally a worthwhile trade! In 2020-II it's just poo poo because it's so underpowered. VFD hit a very happy middle ground that uh, ended up making it rather useful. I've used it a few times unironically to end some boss fights fast. Lopping off the final 22.5% of their HP is nuts when that's the time bosses are the most dangerous. But it's not even "kill under X threshold" as you can use this at any time, so it's a flexible skill in that regard. Of course there's generally little reason to use this at the beginning of the battle when Fortuners are pretty heavy hitting units, though there is 1 boss battle I know of where using it ASAP can really help in certain strategies. If anything is an exhibit for this game's power creep, it's probably the fact that they made the shittiest skill in the entire series actually unironically good! The punishment is so minimal, just revive and heal outside of battle and that Fortuner is ready to go again.
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2022 05:23
|
|
|
Araxxor posted:Does VFD's version of Sacrifice count? Yup, counts for me. Reminds me of Fate EXTRA/CCC, where Gilgamesh's ultimate attack is "deal 9999 damage if the enemy is under 30% health", which made sense given the lore and how he's meant to be easy mode. Effectively reducing enemy HP by 22% is ridiculously strong!
|
|
#
?
Jul 31, 2022 08:30
|
|
|
Update XIX - Featuring: Complete disregard of the timeline Music: The Daily Grind     Construction is now available for Skill Development Lv. 1. Oh hell yes.  And clearing out Cladeon left me with more than enough Dz to pick one right off the bat!      Don't mind if I do!  Researcher Mitch: Here, this is another shot for you! I'll just slip it in~! You can handle it...  You obtained 1,000 SP! You obtained SP Up 300 x1.  The Tier 2 skills are a sizable step up in power, but they're rather pricey. Even with that shot, I can barely afford anything.  Everyone else has had their class writeup, but Rune Knights get an attack with LF leech, an attack with MN leech, the ability to add an element to the party's attacks, 2020's Rage Bomber, and an attack that scales based on how many party members are dead.  With that taken care of, we can go check in with everyone. Music: UE77 In Ariake  *giggle* As I'm sure you can guess... This girl will be helping us out with Operation Code: VFD from now on! Introduce yourself★ U-Um, my name is Mio Nagumo. I've been hired as a new navigator here... I look forward to working with all of you! Woah, is that it? Tell us more★ How old are you? What's your favorite food? Um, I'm 14 years old... and my favorite food is, um... dried fruit, I guess... Dried fruit, hm? I prefer them fresh and juicy, myself★ Oh well! Let's give her a warm welcome! Hooray! *giggle* It's strange having to reintroduce myself like this... I'll make sure I don't hold everyone back! This girl is quite amazing. I had her take another aptitude test before I hired her... And it turns out her memorization, analysis, and observation skills are all perfect! Th-That can't be true! It must be some kind of mistake... *cough* *cough* Okay Allie, I think you're pushing her a bit too much here. Although... her physical ability scored in the lowest possible bracket★ *cough* Unh... Anyways, she'll be joining you on your missions from now on★ Take good care of her, Nagamimi! ...Does Nagamimi always hide behind the desk like that?   Eeheehee... You don't get it, do you? Listen, brat! You're the lowest of the low! You're gonna be my personal subordinate from now on! Subordinate...? Y-Yes, Sir! You don't have any real experience, so I'll spell this all out for you. A subordinate must follow any order their superior gives them, no matter what! Y-Yes, Sir!  Looks like you're catching on. Now then, next will be... Grr... Things were just about to get interesting, too... Yuma's looking well after the D-Install.   Ooooooooh poo poo, what gave it away? Was it the Lucier on the Portal floor, or the Lucier chilling in the lounge? Did a Lucier stroll into your office, maybe? Ah, the cat's out of the bag... I knew it... Listen, that's not why I made the spatio-temporal transfer device. Getting the True Dragon specimens is our top priority. Don't go getting all sentimental on me. But I can't just leave them. I understand your feelings... but~ But Nagamimi said it was OK. Y—You bastard! Don't throw me under the bus! You lovely little rabbit... I'll teach you not to mess with me later...! Listen, Unit 13...~~ Atlantis is destined to fall. We can't change that. Trying to save people like that is just going to make things seem futile in the end. It will be tough at first, but you'll get used to it. I hope you can understand. Anyways, just forget about trying to save Atlantis. We can't change fate. I prohibit you from rescuing any further citizens! Please promise me, Unit 13. Opal... In that case, I'm leaving.Unit 13 getting told off for saving people and threatening to quit (which means leaving mankind to die) is honestly one of my favorite bits in the game. Because, honestly, what can Julietta even do to rein us in at this point? Fire us? Nodens is short on dragon hunters as it is, he doesn't exactly have a backup team on hand to take over. Force us? Opal (and by extension the rest of the Tokyo classes) quits, and the Atlantis cast will probably follow suit if Julietta tells them that he won't lift a finger for their people while he gets to sit in a perfectly safe time period. Have the ISDF take over? He's already stated how much he hates them at this point, plus now Yuma's starting to malfunction in combat so even that might not work. Julietta doesn't have a single card to play, so Opal can effectively hold the entirety of mankind hostage just to keep saving people in need and there's not a drat thing he can do about it. Wh-What!? H-Hold on just a minute! ~ Killing dragons changes fate... You've gotta be kidding me...~~ *nods* ... The Atlantis that you've seen is very close to its inevitable plunge into the sea. Even if you defeat Nyala now... that kingdom will sink into nothingness. ...I'm sorry?  loving what? Why is 12,000 years perfectly fine, but 12,001 years turns things into multiverse theory? Like, if you're adding something as devastatingly powerful as time travel into a story, you have to make sure the rules behind it are ironclad, otherwise the audience will react to any given threat with 'well why don't they use more time travel?' There's never any reason given to why this restriction is here, so rather than feeling like a natural consequence of the system it blatantly comes across as the writers just haphazardly slapping stop signs on the thing. Eigur and the others will still die in this world. I know how you feel, but their fate is sealed. Please do★ We've joined forces now. You're no longer an outsider, Yuma. In that case... I agree with Unit 13. I believe we should do what we can to save the citizens of Atlantis. Yuma... Even you... Do you know what you're saying!? Yes, I understand fully. This is not the result of me sympathizing with their people. It is simply that this could prove beneficial to our plan. Hmph... Explain yourself. It is not a stretch to say that the success of this plan depends on our having the Dragonslayer. The key to obtaining it is Queen Ulania. If we promise to save her citizens... Then she'll agree to help us forge the Dragonslayer. That's what you're saying, right? *nods* Exactly. It is a simple threat. There would be no reason for her to reject us. A threat... That kind of rational military approach makes me sick. It is up to you how you wish to interpret it. But... I would like to hear your thoughts on the idea, Director. Th-That's... Well... Why are you so conflicted, Julietta? It's a great plan★ *chuckle* This way we can make everyone happy, you know? B-But in that case, we'd have to save every single citizen of Atlantis! Just one or two would be way too flimsy as negotiation material.Look on the bright side, Julietta, there aren't that many survivors left.  I agree. Um... How about we bring everyone here...?~ I intend to save everyone.This one just skips Mio's line. ~~ By everyone... do you mean every last person!? You're freaking insane... *chuckle* I see. Bringing them here wouldn't exactly represent a change in history. Atlantis will still crumble, and the Lucier will still vanish after its destruction. Maybe, but that race is based on a completely different societal system. And they look... different. Do you think they'd really be able to survive in modern day Japan?Bro, we already have Lucier around, Sharon adopted them all and everything!  They'll manage. You... Unit 13 seems to understand the capabilities of the Lucier people, and I must agree. They'll be OK.~ We can protect them here. Well, I'm sure the Nodens staff wouldn't have any problem helping them out, but...~~ Hm... Now that I think about it, Nodens does have a lot of empty floors. Yeah, but we can't use them as is. We'll need to construct some new facilities if we're gonna do this. H-Hold on! Do you guys really want to take an entire kingdom into our building!? Don't be dumb! We're not some philanthropic enterprise! We don't have the budget for that! So... that means the construction would be possible if we had more materials? *shakes head* Arghhh! I can't take this anymore! Allie, you're the president! You handle this ridiculousness! *chuckle* It'll be nice to have some more friends★ As long as Unit 13 can get the Dz we need for the construction, I'm all for it★Welp, the boss has spoken. Unit 13 now has carte blanche to mess with the timeline. *sigh* You're so easy to convince... Fine, fine! I lose! Do whatever the heck you want! *nods* However, our objective remains the 3rd True Dragon Nyala specimen. Be sure not to forget that. Sounds like that's that. Now then, let us enact the plan. OK OK★ Ah, wait just a second! This is our new navigator, Mio★ I hadn't introduced her to you ISDF guys yet right? Hmm, I wonder why Yoritomo sounds so surprised about this. I'm, um... Mio Nagumo. I look forward to working together, Mr. Yoritomo. ... U-umm... Oh wait, he's almost certainly Mio's long lost father. I-I'm sorry... Unit 13, meet us in front of the Star Crystal in Cladeon. Let's go, Yuma. Understood.  ...Music: The Daily Grind   *chuckle* Sure, let's keep it at that. Anyways, you're one to talk, Yuma. Are you referring to my rescue plan? I don't think it was wrong of me to suggest it. It is as you always say: The more options, the better. It stands to reason that such a plan would indeed work, but... threats are unlike you. Have you really thought this through, Yuma? I have. This plan was formulated with the utmost logical and rational thought. Hm... Are you sure you're in prime physical condition? Have you seen any side effects to the D-Install? You worry too much. I'll prove my physical condition to you... when I kill Nyala. Hmph. As you wish. Remember, if you feel anything wrong, you must report to me. That is an order. Understood. And Yuma... You're not as good a liar as you think you are.  I guess all you gotta do is hunt down a shitton of those dragon bastards. It's just... something else is on my mind... Hehe...Now that she's working for Nodens, Mio's set up in the War Room.  That girl is the most timid little mouse around, but she's a great navigator. That discussion went smooth as butter. Looks like you can get back to rescuing people. Good for you... isn't it? Eeheehee... Good luck, Unit 13! I'll be rooting for you! Who said you could use the mic, brat!? Get out of here! Sheesh... Those ISDF bitches are already in Cladeon, so you better hurry up. No. Also a new quest has shown up.  So many people coughing... There's been a huge increase in the number of Dragon Sickness patients lately... We've been giving people medicine, but our stock has gotten really low recently... More sick people means more work for the healthy people... My stomach hurts just thinking about it... Anyways, that's why I need you to go talk to Nurse Maimai on the Medical Floor and figure out a solution. I’m counting on you! More importantly, a new chapter means new things for people to say!  Maniacal Man: I'm still way better than them, though! I've been going every day! Hahahahahahahahahahahaha!   Talkative Young Man: Honestly, this generation's anime is pretty sugoi, too. It's not quite the 2000s, but close! I wonder if he used random English words in the original Japanese?  Envious Woman: I bet you know the secret to how you get picked. Can you tell me? ~ Bartender: Has good luck come from the path you chose? Even if things are good now, you may regret it later on. Try not to let it affect you too much. ~ Skilled Man: It's good to exercise when you can. I feel like I play better when I'm more active physically.  Wandering Lucier: It feels like the dragons are going to fly right out of the screen! How exciting! ...This Lucier is in public. Does no one have any questions about all the Lucier that have been pouring out of the building lately?  Lonely Girl: He found out I was lying to him before... He's even scarier than a dragon when he's mad... Okay, at first glance this looks like the stereotypical 'haha she has an overprotective brother,' thing, but uh... Dragons sorta invaded just a few days ago. A High Dragon even attacked Nodens. Wanting to know where your family is seems kinda reasonable after something like that.  Nodens Receptionist: Hm? She isn't going to be a receptionist? I see... What a pity.  Job Seeker: Hm? Why am I so particular about this place? It's because I'm obsessed with 7th Encount!  ~ Aaron: Hm? You think I'm ditching work again today? Well, not quite... They increased my workload so now I have to work while I'm slacking off... What a pain.  Iori: I'm simply taking a break! Even Picasso took breaks sometimes! That's when inspiration strikes!    Ray: They told me I had to redo some of my monster graphics... They said they were too disgusting...  Lionel: I thought myself a prominent programmer, but I'm starting to lose confidence...   Some people just... don't update their lines with the new chapter. If you don't see someone in a walkabout like this, assume that they had nothing new to say.  Retired Blacksmith: And don't mistake that for sarcasm. I'm serious!  Jane: I've been getting distracted a lot lately... and I haven't really been motivated, either...  I actually completely forgot about this sidequest until I walked in here. Nurse Maimai: No matter. I've got an extra large needle with your name on it either way. *giggle* Just kidding. You're here about the Dragon Sickness medicine, right? There's no cure for Dragon Sickness, but we do have a way to suppress the symptoms. Recently, though, there's been quite the increase in patients. We're almost completely out. Do you think you could negotiate with the higher-ups to get some more medicine for us?  Sick Employee: There are a lot more patients coming in, so they'll need all the beds they can get. I will now proceed to completely forget about the sidequest again for a while.  Well-Bred Boy: I can barely breathe anymore. A-Am I going to die? *cough* Hey, its the boy we saved in Atlantica!  Minato: It's almost impossible to find something specific when there are just so many books in here.     Researcher Mitch: Strengthen, strengthen, strengthen! This story is yours! These skills are yours! ~ Director Yoshida: The best of the best of Nodens are all part of the development team for 7th Encount! However, I am the only one capable of uncovering the secrets of EX Skills. EX-pect greatness! Haha! I looked at VFD's staff list, and the guy in charge of systems is Yuko Yoshida, making this a small little author insert.  ~ Ami: Despite my looks, I'm an esteemed dragon researcher. Learning about other monsters is key to my work.  Marco: Knowing that my research will help you guys is what pushes me on! ~ Amanda: No, no, no! You fight, we research. That's how this goes! Soooooo, if you aren't authorized to be touching things, please stay away♪  Lucas: Having said that, there are still many secrets to uncover. Brace yourselves. ~ Intelligent Boy: My friends all got super jealous when I told them that you were the ones who saved me.    Rick: However... how do you feel? Are you sensing any pain or discomfort?  And that's everyone, so time to go win over some royalty! Next time: Unit 13 breaks into the royal palace. BisbyWorl fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Jun 13, 2023 |
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2022 03:43
|
|
|
This scene is funny. All the eggs were in 1 basket, and Unit 13 is also just going "I mean save everyone."
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2022 04:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 27, 2024 09:50 |
|
|
Unit 13 takes no poo poo and mulches dragons. I really like these guys.
|
|
#
?
Aug 2, 2022 04:25
|
|