LP Beach

ThomasFub wrote: ↑

Tue Dec 08, 2020 6:00 am

Hey, arent those elvish runes around the edge of the label.

Wait, and dont they spell out Im not in love with you anymore?

How very unorcish.

I think you might be in the wrong thread

Due to computer issues (my current rig decided to basically die and is nearly unusable now) and further complications in my life, preventing me from getting another computer easily, this let’s play is officially abandoned.

Okay those computer issues and complications have been dealt with. Let's get back to work.

We encounter a unique foe. Welcome to 7th Dragon.



Incidentally I also took this time to really dig through and organize the data and my back end stuff for the LP. One of the big misconceptions I had was that conditional drops in this game were based off of getting the killing blow with them. They're not. Unlike in Etrian Odyssey, 7th Dragon conditionals don't care how you kill an enemy. They just track that you hit them with the correct damage type at some point. Ice resistant enemy has an Ice damage conditional? No need to time it so you kill the enemy with Ice. Just smack the enemy with Ice at some point and you qualify.

On the flip side, this also makes it easy to get disqualified from certain conditional types, such as not using a specific damage type against an enemy for the entire fight.

On the other other hand, conditional drops are mostly just used for meat drops. There's like 1 or 2 cases where this is used for actual rare drops. So if you don't have a Fighter, you can mostly ignore this mechanic entirely, as it's basically sort of a flavor thing really.

I've heard of rainbow dragons before but this is ridiculous.

Also that sure is an approach to handling conditional drops alright. At least the game doesn't make you kill stuff with curse damage or useless mage sticks.

Okay been doing some more research. I actually went and learned how to use a debugger (thanks Ghidra) so I can actually extract formulae and stuff like that from the game instead of guesstimating out of my ass and trying to "reverse engineer" that way with prodding at the game's RAM or files.

I was slightly wrong with critical hits. They reduce the target's DEF by 1/3, not 30%. Which makes them slightly better than I expected. More relevantly, it turns out the critical hit rate is... 5% for players, 3% for enemies. And no stats influence it either. Yeah uh, great deal. (Really more relevant for enemies than for you really.) Micro and Macroanatomy don't stack additively with this. They're separate rolls. (So a 22.1% chance for a crit with 1 at max level. In random encounters only.)

Looked into a bit of the damage formula and found some nuances I missed. Not done looking into it though but here's a bit of what I found. (Assume all formulae in the game round down aggressively whenever they can.)

Guarding reduces physical attack damage by 50%, or 75% if you're using an EX guard. For spells, it's reduced by 30% instead, or 65% if you're using an EX guard. Melee attacks have their damage reduced by 50% when attacking from the back row, or trying to deal damage to the back row.

Damage Variance:
-If damage is 20 or less, damage ranges from -2 to 2.
-If damage is 100 or less, damage ranges from -5 to 5.
-If damage is greater than 100, the damage will be randomized in a range from 95% to 105% of the final damage output.
-If you dealt 0 damage, then you instead deal 8% to 12% of your ATK as damage instead.

Also fun fact that's not really relevant unless you are overleveled or severely underleveled for an area. If your damage output is less than 10% of your ATK stat, it has a 25% chance of missing. (Same applies to enemies.)

Speaking of accuracy, I finally dug out the entire thing. Almost.

Spell Attack Accuracy wrote: Accuracy = (100 * (Attacker Level + Attacker INT + 400)) / (Target Level + Target SPD + 400)

Yeah turns out level is a part of accuracy as well. Also to those of you familiar with EO1 or at least the completed LP of it on the forums, this formula should look familiar to you. Yeah it's basically the EO1 accuracy formula only with the 500 constants replaced with 400s. So yeah, accuracy matters slightly more in 7th Dragon, but ultimately not much of a factor to worry about in most cases. Mages almost never need to worry about accuracy due to their INT providing a big boost.

As for physical attacks, it's slightly more complicated. If you're a Bow Rogue. Otherwise it's pretty similar.

Physical Attack Accuracy wrote: Arrow accuracy = Arrows Fired * -3 + 100
If Arrow accuracy is below 50, set it to 50.
If user is not using a Bow or is an enemy, Arrow accuracy = 100.
Accuracy = (Arrow accuracy * (Attacker Level + Attacker SPD + 300)) / (Target Level + Target SPD + 300)

Accuracy matters slightly more for physical attackers due to the lower constants. It's something to keep in mind, but not really something to worry about as everyone has 100% innate accuracy and unless there's a drastic difference in SPD, it's not too much to worry about. Unless the enemy uses a SPD buff, then it's something to worry about cause that can actually have an effect.

Bow Rogues on the other hand, actually have to worry about this mechanic, as they actually lose 3% accuracy per arrow fired (Fortunately the first arrow shot doesn't suffer an accuracy penalty), but that takes place during the accuracy formula, not the end of it. This means it can actually take a while for Bow Rogues to start missing due to their high SPD stat. Though thankfully the accuracy multiplier can't go below 50%, which will be hit after 17 shots. But you really should have used Seeker before that happens.

Also I was wrong about EX. It doesn't bypass the accuracy check (It does in the later games) but it doubles your accuracy instead. Granted in most cases that's enough to gain surefire accuracy, but there are a few cases where that can still miss.

Blind on the other hand, reduces your accuracy by a whopping 70%!

To give an example in action, take the update with the Dragonflies, those enemies with 200 SPD. It turns out that Ark, the most accurate of the bunch (before firing arrows would tank her accuracy.) had 69% chance of hitting one. With poor Stella having a 67% chance.

There's no upper cap to accuracy. (Though that doesn't really matter as RNG rolls out of 100 for it.) However accuracy can't go lower than 1%. Thanks? Though I can't think of any situation where you could possibly reach that as that would require you to be severely underleveled and blind.

Oh and for the record, no ailment in 7th Dragon affects accuracy or evasion. While this mechanic exists in EO, it's not something that exists in this series. Not that there's not really a lot of reason to utilize such a thing here. Unlike the EO series, everyone starts with 100% accuracy by default. Big inaccurate attacks don't exist in this game.

As for the "almost", well there's actually one thing in the formula that can influence the target's SPD but I have no idea what it is. Like I just said, ailments have absolutely no effect. Buffs and debuffs already apply their effects to the stats before it even gets used in the formulas. So for now I'm chalking it up to "unused unless something surprises me later."

More sidequesting and dealing with a troubled federation.

Okay I did a bit more digging and I'm going to have to make a correction to my ailment findings. Unfortunately the effects of EX are far less powerful than I stated. All using EX on ailments does is just essentially give you 2 attempts at landing the ailment in 1 turn. My previous findings were due to a result of a series of lucky coincidences and faulty assumptions.

The stuff with the bad luck mitigation was true though.

And there's a calculation glitch because of course there is. For some reason if the infliction rate reaches a multiple of 100% exactly, the game kind of goes nuts and randomly adds or subtracts 1% or 2% from the final infliction rate. I don't know why this happens.

Turns out the game just aggressively rounds down whenever it can. Basically assume that the game utterly despises decimals whenever it comes to combat math and will annihilate them on sight.

Guarding multiplies the infliction rate by 90%.

I did discover one other oddity though. If the attacker is trying to inflict instant death and they are 20 or more levels above the target, their infliction rate is doubled. I'm not sure why this is there, but it is. It doesn't affect Purge or Perfect Dark's LIFE thresholds.

Also dug out escape rates, which is also pretty simple.

If the party member trying to run is on their 5th (or higher) escape attempt, the escape will automatically succeed.

Otherwise:

Escape Rate = ((Escape Attempts * 10) + 30 * (Player Level + Player SPD)) / (Enemies' average Level + Enemies' average SPD)

If EX is active, multiply the Escape Rate by 2.
If a Rogue used Ready to Run, multiply the Escape Rate by 2.
Escape rate is then capped between 20% and 100%.
Roll a number between 0 and 99. If the result less than the calculated number, the escape succeeds.

Basically with dead even stats, you have a base 30% chance to run, with each failed escape attempt adding on 10% to this chance. This is then heavily influenced by your level and SPD as it is directly proportional to any living enemies' average level and speed stats. This actually makes it so that you're pretty unlikely to run from stronger encounters, and the 30% extra damage you take trying to run won't help matters. Using Ready to Run will double your escape rates (stacks with EX to quadruple escape rates) and get rid of that extra damage.

Also an utterly bizarre finding that won't affect anyone's playing experiences, and is just some programming related oddity. For some reason the game runs the escape formula calculation 12 times for each party member trying to escape. Said results are never different between all 12 calculations, so I have no idea what the hell is going on there aside from wasting computer cycles.

love escape commands that are actively worse in multiple ways against the things you need to run from

e: I mean this doesn't sound FF3o bad from what I remember of that game's escape command but yikes

While doing some research for the Knight writeup, I've discovered... quite a few things.



Congratulations Buront, you've now graduated to DPS.

Anyways, it's been a while since we've had an official game mechanics update. So here's one on the enemy targeting systems. It'll be a bit relevant for one of the Knight's skills in the class showcase that's coming soon.

Game Mechanics: Aggro

When an enemy decides to attack, it has to decide who will be on the receiving end of it. There’s a lot of steps involved in this process, and this update will be covering just how enemy aggro works in this game.

Enemies have an AI routine they follow to determine how to behave. Each enemy has its own individual routine, and their AI also tells them who they should be targeting when performing certain actions. While the action the enemy takes is determined at the start of the turn after all speed calculations are finished, who they target is determined the moment it’s their turn.

Attacks that hit multiple times but can hit different party members during the entire attack will have the aggro determined for each hit.

The first thing checked for is if the enemy should go after a specific party member, such as one with the highest amount of current LIFE. If that’s the case, they’ll always target that party member, no questions asked, and they can’t be persuaded otherwise. Certain attacks are always hard-coded to go after a specific target no matter what, like everyone in the front row.

That won’t always be the case and most of the time enemies will go after a semi-random party member. This is the part of aggro calculations that’s the most involved, as this is pretty much what this entire update is about. Some general rules to keep in mind is that enemies will try to go after the party member with the highest amount of current LIFE and they like to target the front row more often than not. When checking for current LIFE, they check the raw number, not a percentage of it. This means that a party member with 100/200 LIFE will be targeted more often than a party member with 50/50 LIFE.

When an enemy decides to go after a random target, they first decide which row they want to go after. The chances of this depends on the enemy’s AI. More often than not, this is weighted in favor of the front row. Once an enemy has decided which row to target, they cannot be persuaded otherwise outside of one case.

After the enemy decided on a row to target, the game then checks to see if the Provoke buff is active on anyone in that row. Provoke is a skill that Knights and Princesses have access to. For the Knight, it gives a 35% to 70% chance of forcing the enemy to go after them depending on the skill level. And for the Princess, the chance is 35% to 60% instead. If this chance succeeds, that party member is targeted and that’s the end of that.

In the case of multiple Provoke checks succeeding in a row, the enemy just randomly decides which party member they wish to go after among the ones that have the Provoke buff. However, because Provoke cannot influence which row gets targeted, this means that Provoke does absolutely nothing if the party member with Provoke active is the only person in that row.

If the checks fail or no one has Provoke active, the game then checks to see if the Hide buff is active in the chosen row. Hide is a skill exclusive to Rogues. What it does is grant a 30% to 50% chance to delete the Rogue from the enemy’s aggro calculations, and shrinks the row count by 1 in said calculations.

Unlike with Provoke, multiple Hide checks in the same row cannot succeed at once. The moment one Hide check succeeds, the game will immediately move onto the next step. The same also goes if all Hide checks fail, or the Hide buff simply isn’t active.

However, remember what I said about shrinking the row count by 1? If the Rogue is alone in that row, that will cause the enemy to think there are 0 party members in that row if their Hide checks succeeds. In that case, the enemy will then target the other row and repeat all these procedures so far. That's the only possible way to force an enemy to change their mind about what row they go after.

But what if you only have 1 Rogue on each row and both of their Hide checks succeed? In that case, the enemy will think there are 0 party members in the battle, and will just randomly go after any party member, overriding any successful Hide checks.

If the Hide checks fail or no one has a Hide buff active, the game will then sort the current LIFE stats among all valid targets and ranks the party members accordingly. With party members with higher amounts of current LIFE being more likely to be targeted. If multiple party members have the exact same amounts of current LIFE, then they’re sorted randomly.

If 2 party members are in that row:
-60% chance to target the party member with the highest current LIFE.
-40% chance to target the party member with the lowest current LIFE.

If 3 party members are in that row:
-60% chance to target the party member with the highest current LIFE.
-30% chance to target the party member with the 2nd highest current LIFE.
-10% chance to target the party member with the lowest current LIFE.

If 4 party members are in that row:
-50% chance to target the party member with the highest current LIFE.
-25% chance to target the party member with the 2nd highest current LIFE.
-15% chance to target the party member with the 3rd highest current LIFE.
-10% chance to target the party member with the lowest current LIFE.

If there's only 1 party member in that row... they obviously get targeted. The targeting routine is then terminated, and the game goes on to other combat related calculations, such as accuracy and damage.

The reason the game handles things this way is to make it so that party members with lower amounts of LIFE are less likely to be ganged up on, and this helps spread out the damage your party takes more since the party member with the highest current LIFE will constantly change.

Incidentally this isn’t possible in normal play, but if you somehow cause the enemy to target an invalid party member after everything is said and done, the attack will be ignored by everyone and disappear into thin air.

Araxxor wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 09, 2021 9:07 am

However, remember what I said about shrinking the row count by 1? If the Rogue is alone in that row, that will cause the enemy to think there are 0 party members in that row if their Hide checks succeeds. In that case, the enemy will then target the other row and repeat all these procedures so far. That's the only possible way to force an enemy to change their mind about what row they go after.

But what if you only have 1 Rogue on each row and both of their Hide checks succeed? In that case, the enemy will think there are 0 party members in the battle, and will just randomly go after any party member, overriding any successful Hide checks.

So much for theorhetical Rogue SCC cheese. Not that the rates on Hide would make that very reliable anyways but still.

"What exactly are Knights good at?" "Everything."

So long as you don't include "having mana" in that everything I guess. Still, imagine defensive classes being able to make a contribution when you don't need to be defending, why couldn't EO2 Protectors/EO3 Hoplites be more like that.

Been doing some more digging through the game, and glad I did cause it turns out I missed quite a bit. For one thing, there's no "enemy type", it's a value I misread as something else. It's actually a series of flags that give the enemy in question additional benefits... or penalties. And that's basically 31 updates I have to comb through and correct later. :shepface: Oh well, at least going forward the info should be correct and I can make updates without worry. Maybe.

Boss?: Only bosses have this. Function is unknown.

Has a Shadow?: Checks if the enemy's sprite displays a shadow underneath it or not.

Acts Twice Per Turn?: Allows the enemy to act 2 times in 1 turn if enabled. Only 1 boss in the entire game has this flag. (And it's not even a dragon.)

Disables Escape?: Prevents the escape option from succeeding if enabled. If all enemies with this flag are dead, escape attempts can succeed again. Escape attempts failed in this manner do not count as failed escapes.

Small?: Microanatomy can activate against enemies with this flag enabled.

Large?: Macroanatomy can activate against enemies with this flag enabled.

Incidentally there's only one random encounter that counts as Large. Most dragons and bosses actually fall under this so Macroanatomy can activate against them. That being said the conditions to activate that skill can seem... inconsistent. Generally by large they mean "fills up the entire screen." And even then some averagely large sprites count as large enemies, while other sprites of the same size actually count as medium sized and won't activate either skill.

Dragon?: Checked for under 2 conditions: If the battle was not started through a random encounter and the enemy is a dragon, a 0.95x to 1.3x multiplier is applied to their damage and ailment multipliers. This depends on how much of the surrounding Bloom outside of the dungeon or area on the world map is gone.

The other condition is if a monster is joining an on going battle. If the monster is a dragon, the game will say "Oh no! A Dragon!!" Otherwise, the game will instead say "A new monster jumped in!"

Death Resistant?: Prevents Instant Death effects from activating until the enemy's LIFE is below 10%. Once that condition is fulfilled, Instant Death inflictions are calculated normally. Only bosses and dragons have this flag.

I also found the encounter tables and how encounters work. Which also relates to an odd bug no one had any explanation for.



So each encounter formation is grabbed into a small little table and is assigned a weight on how often you'll be running into that formation on the assigned tiles. You'd think all those encounters would have an equal chance of being chosen, right? Wrong. Instead of rolling out of 250, the game rolls for a number out of a fixed 255. Fortunately the game has a failsafe for this. If the RNG rolls a number that surpasses all the weighted values, it just defaults to the last encounter in the list, making that encounter typically the most common one you'll see. (Also on a related note, the game also accepts 0 from the RNG as a valid input, meaning that the first encounter has +1 added to its weight, making it slightly more common.)

That relates to this aforementioned bug:

blizzardvizard wrote: I ran into one. No overworld sprite, just in a regular random encounter. It was a Triceratops, incidentally. I did have frameskip turned on at the time, though, so maybe it had to do with that RNG screwage thing you mentioned.

See normally dragons aren't supposed to be loaded up into a random encounter table. They're only supposed to be called when you run into a dragon on the map. But a mistake was made here that dragged those 2 dragons into the Rorakka Cavern encounter table on the Kazan entrance screen.

Fortunately they have a weight of 0 so they shouldn't be encountered... except that's not what happens. Due to the "extra RNG" oddity I mentioned earlier and that said results default to the last encounter, that actually means the Triceratop has a 5/256 chance to be encountered (1 in 51.2 encounters or a 1.9~% chance.) Making it rare but not outright impossible to run into.

You'll never see a Gryphonus in a random battle on that screen though.

Also I found the gathering node data at long last, so you can see those in the updates from now on. (Not that gathering is exactly much of an interesting or helpful mechanic in 7th Dragon.)

So how about that one Ore Node on Mt. Jomaron that has a chance to give out Dragon Eggs, huh? I'm sure more sources of EX replenishment will always be welcome-

-Dragon Egg: 1%
-Tamafite: 60%
-Aquamarine: 39%

Um.

Erm.

Yeah please don't farm for these from that node.

Are you all ready for yet another surprise mechanic? While fiddling around with things I noticed something was off with one of my assumptions from before which led to new discoveries. First, the basic rundown.

Every time you exit a battle, or enter a new location that has random encounters, a counter is set to 100. Each tile you step on in an area subtracts a number from 0 to 6 (It’s random, but certain tiles have certain ranges that could possibly be subtracted.) When the number goes past 0, you get into a battle. Oh and if said number dips past a certain threshold, the petals on the flower fill up. The counter’s numbers corresponds to these number of petals:

100: No petals
99: 1 petal
89: 2 petals
79: 3 petals
69: 4 petals
59: 5 petals
49: 6 petals
39: 7 petals
29: 8 petals
19: Orange petals

Yeah that's completely and utterly wrong. This is actually describing the percentage of how much the encounter meter is filled. The encounter rate actually works differently from this.

What the game actually does is generate a random number from 4000 to 5999 and sets that as your encounter meter. Each tile you step on subtracts a certain number from this.

Most overworld tiles subtracts 180. Overworld forest tiles on the other hand, subtracts 300. Tiles in dungeons are a little more specified, but generally they'll either subtract nothing, 80, or 130. If you're playing the USA patch, just halve those numbers.

Now here's where the actual surprise mechanic comes in.

Araxxor wrote: Oh yes, Pokeytax, I believe I discovered a bug with the USA patch. In some odd circumstances (No idea when exactly this triggers, but it seems to be consistent with a fresh load?) Whenever you teleport using a portal, or save your game at a portal, (Simply interacting with the portal or save location and then cancelling will not trigger the bug), then go back to the overworld, the encounter rate goes back to the original version's levels. (Address of the encounter meter is located at 0x0217C146, in case you didn't know.) This lasts until you get into a battle, or just enter a new location, at which point the encounter rate goes back to the USA patch's intended values. Bloom damage appears to be functioning normally, at the very least.

For the rest of you that are playing with the patch, this bug can be circumvented by just simply reentering the portal location and exiting again. The encounter rates go back to normal then.

First things first, the address stated is for the visual of the encounter meter and is actually irrelevant. The actual address for the encounter rate is located at 0x02188A5C. (And is also a 2 byte value, not a 1 byte value like with the other address.)

Anyways, this is actually not a bug! It is a surprise from the game itself. You see, each time the game refreshes the encounter rate, it has a 5% chance to sucker punch you and set the encounter rate to a mere 1500! Meaning that you'll get into an encounter ultra fast. On the other hand, there's is another 5% chance that the game will decide to be generous and set the encounter rate to 10000. Meaning that in those cases, it can take twice as long to get into an encounter.

The RNG used here for the encounter rate is not frame based and is basically static until something advances it, which explains why I constantly got sucker punched after a fresh load. Pokeytax's patch works perfectly fine. It was actually the game itself silently playing a practical joke on me.

My goodness, that is some obscure behavior that's easy to confuse with a bug caused by certain actions by association. Not sure why anyone would implement that in the first place but so it goes.

Learning new techniques, going grave robbing on archaeological digs, there's quite a bit here! On and there's a party vote in this update at long last!

Never before have I been more disappointed by an exhaust skill.

Also Stella, Nila, and Edward for the party. Bonks for the bonk god, explosions for the explosion throne.

I'm going with Edward, Stella, and Ark.

Votes so far:

Stella: 6
Nila: 5
Edward: 5
Ark: 3
Haru: 2
Buront: 2
Dia: 1

My choice: 3

Voting is closed! Final results:

Stella: 7
Nila: 6
Edward: 5
Ark: 3
Haru: 2
Buront: 2
Dia: 1

My choice: 6

Looks like the party will be Stella, Nila, Edward, and Ark!

Araxxor wrote: Oh yes, Pokeytax, I believe I discovered a bug with the USA patch. In some odd circumstances (No idea when exactly this triggers, but it seems to be consistent with a fresh load?) Whenever you teleport using a portal, or save your game at a portal, (Simply interacting with the portal or save location and then cancelling will not trigger the bug), then go back to the overworld, the encounter rate goes back to the original version's levels.

Araxxor wrote: The RNG used here for the encounter rate is not frame based and is basically static until something advances it, which explains why I constantly got sucker punched after a fresh load. Pokeytax's patch works perfectly fine. It was actually the game itself silently playing a practical joke on me.

I did some more digging and can elaborate on just why exactly this happens.

For whatever reason, the RNG used for that part of the game doesn't start out with a different seed every time you boot up the game or perform a soft reset, it always gets set to 0 and advances from there. This means that things involved with that RNG will play out the same way every single time in a sense. The only thing that advances that RNG is triggering a screen transition (Using a Portal does not count), getting into a battle/getting out of battle, generating Bloom tiles, and the actions of NPCs. And Portals typically don't have NPCs.

And because the RNG started out at a value of 0, this meant that the random encounter rate generator always uses that value to saddle me with the low low value of 1500 for the encounter rate upon a fresh load. Thanks game, really appreciate that.

This also means if you use a save point in the middle of a dungeon, you'll be immediately stuck with an almost instant random battle upon booting up the game from there, as the encounter meter is like the very first thing checked for.

Of course because it's fairly static, it can actually be exploited. As it turns out, this bit of RNG also controls the types of Bloom tiles that can spawn. Including Bloom Seed Bloom tiles. A few exploits were discovered that can guarantee the spawn of a Bloom Seed in certain screens because of this which can lead to super easy power leveling. I'll talk about those later when we get to those places.

Speaking of the Bloom, I looked into its generation mechanics as well. The actual Bloom tile generation is simple. The game is just told where to place the large Bloom tiles and the small Bloom tiles whenever the Bloom spawns in that location. That's it. It's basically a secondary map overlaid on top of the game maps.

As for the special Bloom tiles, it's also pretty simple. When the game loads the overworld or a new dungeon map, it runs an RNG roll for every single Bloom tile loaded. The following applies to both overworld and dungeon Bloom.

A random number is generated between 0 and 65535 inclusive. If the number is equal to 1310 or above, the Bloom tile is normal, nothing special. Essentially a 64226 out of 65536 chance, or a 98~% chance for the Bloom to be normal. (1 out of 1.02 Bloom tiles.)

If the number is between 655 and 1309 inclusive, then the Bloom will be set to the kind that takes 8 steps to destroy and gives out 2% max EXP. Resulting in a 655 out of 65536 chance, or a 1~% chance to generate as that type. (1 out of 100 Bloom tiles)

If the number is between 65 and 654 inclusive, then the Bloom will be set to the kind that takes 12 steps to destroy and gives out 1% max EXP. Resulting in a 590 out of 65536 chance, or a 0.9~% chance to generate as that type. (1 out of 111 Bloom tiles)

If the number is between 0 and 64 inclusive, then the Bloom will take 20 steps to destroy, and have a Bloom Seed hiding in it. Resulting in a 65 out of 65536 for those to generate, or a 0.1~% chance. (1 out of 1008 Bloom tiles.)

Also regarding the bad luck I ran into on item drops, it seems that's also the result of a fairly static RNG where the game is basically stuck on a bad series of rolls upon booting.

Also here's a bit of an update on some technical stuff. These kinds of updates will most likely not be necessary to understand just how to play the game, so if you're looking for advice on the game, feel free to skip these kinds of updates. At least this one maybe. I don't know who here could even make use of this information, or if the people that could even make use of this information are even reading this thread, but I might as well document it anyways and lay it all out.

Resources: The Inner Workings of the Random Number Generator

Just a disclaimer that there may be several things I have missed, as I didn't look super deeply into this, and I may add more to this update as more discoveries are made.

Random number generators, or RNG for short, are pretty much in just about every video game to introduce randomness in various factors of the gameplay or even just doing something mundane like making visual effects less repetitive. There are a bunch of other resources that can explain this concept far better and in more detail, but the basic rundown is that computers can't actually generate random numbers. They can only simulate such a task. So how people went about faking randomness in computers was to essentially come up with a math formula that would continuously generate a sequence of numbers that seems random.

Of course said formula or whatever other techniques used to make such a sequence has to start from somewhere. The value that kicks this off is known as a seed. Generally that's also where the biggest part of the randomness comes into play and helps disguise the fact that random number generators truly aren't random is by starting off with a different seed each time so the sequence of events that results from it is hard to replicate as possible, but if you somehow started out from the same seed from another play session, you would find that the events would play out the same time if you followed the same triggers as the other session.

That does leave a bit of a chicken and egg situation where the starting seed would have to be random in order to induce randomness. A common technique to work around that limitation is to fetch the current date and time at the time on the system upon booting the software, and then converting it to a value to start off with essentially a random seed, as time constantly moves forward and each moment is different from the last. Of course generally nothing is stopping you from just setting the time and date to the same value as another session to start off with the same seed.

7th Dragon does not do this. Instead all of the random number generators it uses has the same starting seed of 0. It only tries to disguise this by triggering the RNG roll, also known as advancing the RNG, several times before settling on a starting value. And even then the value is consistent on booting. (Though for some reason the starting value can be different between different emulators for some reason.) This pretty much means you can be stuck in a predictable sequence of events if you're on the lookout for them, and if you know how to, you can exploit this to get the results you want.

The game actually has multiple RNGs it makes use of during the game, not just 1.



The game has 5 RNG values it uses during the game, all of which are 4 bytes long and are unsigned values. That means the number cannot be negative, and the value caps at a maximum of 4,294,967,295, or 0xFFFFFFFF in hexadecimal. The 4 addresses that are seen here are where the RNG values for the first 4 RNGs are located in the game's memory. The 5th one on the other hand is only loaded during battle, and its location is shuffled around quite a bit, which is why it's not listed here.

Now as for the formula used for advancing the RNG sequence, the following is used for all of the random number generators in the game. The randomly generated number is run through this formula every time the RNG is called and used for a function, and this can happen every so often, or several times within one frame.

RNG = (RNG * 1,566,083,941) + 2,531,011

The resulting value is cut off at the last 4 bytes in hexadecimal, with all digits past that being completely ignored. If the RNG is equal to 0 (Like at startup), it'll just add the value of 2,531,011 and continue on its merry way.

If the game only needs a 2 byte value to work with, it has a couple of methods for truncating the generated 4 byte value. It will either take the generated value and add 1 to it, and then perform a modulo operation on the number with an operand of 65535, or 0xFFFF in hexadecimal. This means that the number is divided by 65535, but the actual result of the operation is ignored. The remainder of the value is what the game cares about. Since the remainder can't be equal to 65535, as that would set the remainder to 0, it can be used as a way to effectively shorten the range of the random number rolled for.

Alternatively the game just shifts the RNG value in binary to the right 16 times in to shorten the value to a 2 byte value. If you're wondering what that means...

Imagine 32 people on a mountaintop. All of them have information that adds up into a blob that you can't exactly decipher in that state. So you ask them to organize into a line from left to right, each with a bit of information you can actually work with. The first 16 people from the left all have the bits you want. You care not for the other 16 people on the right side of the line, as they are all useless. So in order to get rid of them, you go to the left side of the line, and shove the line 16 spaces to the right, which causes them to fall off the mountain's peak to their doom. You can now ask the remaining 16 people for the information they have, and proceed to convert that back into into one big blob of information that's relevant to the task at hand.
And then after you're done with that information, you shove the remaining 16 people off the peak to make a decorative crater at the mountain's base. You can then repeat the process with the next set of 32 people.
...Couldn't you have explained that in a less morbid way?
Why couldn't you just have asked the first 16 people for the information in the first place!?
Because computers are jackasses.

At any rate, here are the functions each of the listed RNG values are used for, and how often they're advanced.

RNG 1: Handles most of the gameplay RNG that happens on the field. This RNG is called for generating special Bloom tiles, generating the encounter meter, determining what direction NPCs and dragons will walk in if they're set to random movement, and what formation of monsters you'll run into on a random encounter. This RNG is easily the most static of the bunch, as it is the only RNG value that is not rolled several times on booting the game, and that the events that call for the RNG only occur under certain conditions and only advance the RNG once for each trigger.

The actions that advance it are getting into a battle or getting out of battle, triggering a screen transition such as going into a town our out into the overworld (using a portal to teleport to another portal doesn't count), generating Bloom tiles from going into a Bloom infested area or using a Bloom Seed, and the actions of NPCs which dragons also fall under. This includes changing directions, though their idle animations can also advance the RNG.

RNG 2: I have absolutely no idea what this is even used for. It's advanced quite a bit on boot and then stops. But past that point it never seemed to change or be used for anything as far as I could tell.

RNG 3: Handles graphical effects such as particle effects and sprite animations. Not advanced on boot, only once the game is loaded. This constantly advances during the field, though is mostly paused during battles. During battles it only really advances if the character uses an action with an animation, or an enemy dies and they spawn particle effects as the sprite disappears from the battle.

RNG 4: Another primarily gameplay related random number generator. Primarily used in combat related functions that have random outcomes, such as accuracy, and infliction rates. This also includes preemptives and surprise attacks, as well as item drop rates. Entirely static in the field, though it's advanced for quite a bit on booting and is paused until combat is initiated, at which point it's advanced once whenever an action that requires the use of RNG is called.

RNG 5: No idea what this is used for. Only loaded during battle, and is constantly advancing. Once the battle ends, it falls into disuse or outright removed from the game's memory until the next battle.

Because RNG 1 and 4 are fairly static until called and control some of the more important parts of the game, this actually opens them up a lot to RNG manipulation if you know what you're doing. Though only a few methods for manipulating RNG 1 are known at this time. Manipulating RNG 1 and 4 would basically be theorycrafting at this point.

Ark gets a change in career.

Oh and we start an Imperial Dragon extermination for some jerk.

I'm not sure if I should rescind my earlier statement because Ecstasy Kiss being that terrible is a level of impressive all on its own.

Hopefully shutting off the regen doesn't involve having to fight the inventory limit boss *shudder*.

Things die. Lots of things die. Said things are dragons. Also Ark is a fucking monster, goddamn!

Araxxor wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 20, 2020 8:15 am

Addendum to the soft cap mechanic!

Yeah, so I was wrong in my previous post. I found out how it actually worked when I looked into things more. And it's not so much a soft cap so much as the game switching over to a different damage formula in certain circumstances.

Damage = [(User's INT / 2) * Spell Power + (Base Damage * Mastery Power) – (Target's DEF / 2) – (Target's INT / 2)] * Damage Multipliers * Concentrate Factor * EX Factor

It's a little more complex than the more straightforward physical damage formula, but everything works as you would expect. Concentrate and EX stack fully here.

However, if at any point the result from this formula is equal to or greater than INT * 10, the game swaps over to this formula instead:

Damage = (User's INT * 8) + [(Spell Power * (INT / 10)) + (Base Damage * Mastery Power / 5) – (Target's DEF / 10) – (Target's INT / 10) * Damage Multipliers * Concentrate Factor * EX Factor]

I overcomplicated this. As it turns out the check is pretty simple.

Softcap Mechanics:

If Damage <= INT * 10, take no further action.
Else, Damage Difference = (Damage - INT * 10) * 0.2
Softcapped damage = INT * 10 + Damage Difference

Also discovered an... interesting design decision. When taking damage from INT based attacks, the target's INT is capped at 100 if it's above that. No such thing happens for DEF. This basically means Mages could not care about the target's INT past a certain point (cause it does start getting ridiculously sky high later) and remain very consistent damage dealers throughout the game.

We deal with Flame Eater once and for all. And of course, there's a party vote in this one for the next mission.

Good job, 7th Dragon mechanics, you bought Flame Eater one extra turn. Funny how close a four mage party would've come to just ending it in a single turn if not for those bits of weirdness, though.

God, fuck that innkeeper though.

Ark, Haru, and Dia, I guess.

I vote Edward, Buront, and Haru because the concept of going to the country that bans men with as many men as possible is amusing to me.

Votes so far:

Dia: 5
Haru: 3
Nila: 3
Ark: 2
Buront: 2
Edward: 1
Stella: 0

Lowest Leveled Characters: 3
My choice: 2

Voting is closed! Final results:

Dia: 5
Haru: 4
Nila: 3
Buront: 3
Ark: 2
Edward: 2
Stella: 0

Lowest Leveled Characters: 3
My choice: 2



Funnily enough, the entire top 4 are actually the lowest leveled party members in the guild, so that secures their place.

I will try to get an update out before the 26th, as there is a lot releasing on that day. However I make no guarantees, and if I don't get a non-gameplay update out before then, uh, don't expect one for a while.

Game Mechanics: Turn Order

During a battle, the game has to decide what order the units in the battle will attack, with faster units being more likely to get the first strike in. How the game calculates this is pretty simple, so let’s just get right into it.

Turn Speed

Turn speed is the statistic the game uses to determine who gets to move first. The game calculates it in this way:

Turn Speed = SPD * 20 * Skill Speed Factor * Mastery Speed Boost * Random Factor

The units with the highest turn speed gets to move first, and the game moves things along like that to the next highest turn speed until it reaches the unit with the lowest turn speed.

This formula does result in some rather comically large numbers. A unit with 80 SPD and using a skill with a speed factor of 100 will end up with a possible turn speed from 144,000 to 176,000. Oh well, whatever works. As for what these factors actually mean...

SPD: The user’s SPD stat. This is directly affected by SPD buffs and debuffs. The only SPD buff players have access to is the Samurai’s Iai Arts, which only affects the user, and they have no SPD debuffs they can inflict. Enemies on the other hand, have quite a few ways to buff their own SPD, or lower the players’ SPD stats.

Skill Speed Factor: The Speed Factor from the skill the user is casting. A Speed Factor of 100 is generally on the high end of things, with very few skills going above that value. Most player skills tend to have Speed Factors of 80 or 100, averaging out at around 92. And most enemy skills tend to have Speed Factors of 80 and 90, averaging out around 88.

With those statistics in mind, 80 is generally the average Speed Factor, with skills that go below it being rather slow, and skills that go above it being pretty fast.

Using a regular attack, swapping rows, using items, and escaping all have a Speed Factor of 100. Guarding technically has a factor of 100 as well, but more on that a bit later.

Mastery Speed Boost: Some mastery skills come with a speed boost that increases the casting speeds of skills tied to that mastery. Enemies don’t have such a boost, so this is always set to 1 for them. This can make learning masteries give quite the speed advantage, especially since there’s only 1 buff the player can use to boost their turn speed.

Random Factor: A random number between 0.9 and 1.1 inclusive, in increments of 0.01. So you can get multipliers of 0.93 or 1.07, but no nonsense such as 1.034243 or anything like that. This pretty much makes it so that units with close speed stats and speed factors aren’t guaranteed to have one unit outspeed the other in all cases. You’d have to have a big enough speed advantage to be guaranteed to outspeed something.

If there happens to be a tie in turn speeds, then the game just picks the units with the same turn speeds to act in a random order.

That being said turn speed isn’t the only factor that determines how fast a unit acts. Some actions have priority and allow a unit to act sooner, regardless of turn speed.

Priority

Priority is the other part of turn order calculations, and can let units with bad turn speeds act first if needed. The mechanics of priority are as follows:

If any unit is guarding, the guard will instantly take effect at the start of the turn. The actual message saying that the unit is guarding has a speed factor of 100, but it doesn’t matter as the actual effect has absolute priority and cannot be stopped or disrupted.

Then the game checks for setup skills. Setup skills are things like defensive skills like Shield Front, counterattacks, or even the Fighter's Link skills. The priority and speed of any active setup skills are calculated as well. Though no setup skill has innate priority, but can be given priority through the use of EX.

Priority brackets are checked for next. There are 4 priority brackets checked for, with units in earlier ones getting to act sooner than units in later brackets. Anyone within each priority bracket will have their turn speeds checked for. Then the game checks to see if anyone within that priority bracket got Stunned, and will have them act last. Then the game goes onto the next priority bracket to repeat the process, until all the priority brackets have been checked for.

Then all of those steps are repeated, this time with the units that didn’t have any setup skills active. If you had a little trouble keeping track of that, here’s a little chart that illustrates how the game goes about checking the order of actions.

Active Setup Skills
-Priority Brackets
--Turn Speed
---Stunned Units
No Setup Skills
-Priority Brackets
--Turn Speed
---Stunned Units

Now as for the priority brackets themselves...

1: Priority
2: EX Active
3: Default Speed
4: Goes Last

No enemy in the entire game has access to priority brackets 1 and 2, as they don’t have any skills or mechanics that allow them to be placed there. So that’s a pretty big advantage player units have over enemy units. That being said, enemies do have access to setup skills, so they can outspeed player units using priority in that regard. Something to be very mindful of if you’re up against an enemy that can use counterattacks.

Priority: These skills will act first. They can only be outsped by setup skills, so you can’t bypass counterattacks or other defensive skills with these. Only Rogues, Samurai, and Princesses have access to skills with priority. No enemy in entire the game has access to a skill that has access to this priority bracket.

EX Active: Using EX will give skills priority, though not as much as skills that have innate priority. The effects of EX does not stack with priority brackets 1 and 4, and in fact, are overridden by those. Only skills in the priority bracket of 3 can be placed in this priority bracket of 2. Enemies obviously don’t have access to EX, therefore they don’t have access to this bracket.

Default Speed: Basically what most skills will be placed in. Most enemy skills are stuck in this bracket as well. You can raise the priority level of these skills by using EX.

Goes Last: Pretty self explanatory, but it’s not really a priority bracket that sees a lot of use. Only 2 skills in the entire game are placed in this bracket (Out of a whopping 670, mind you.) Said skills are the failed attack from the Rogue’s Sonic Shot if the initial setup fails to counter anything, and one skill belonging to an enemy.

Now as for the remaining mechanics that can interact with turn order...

Hustle is a skill that has innate priority and forces the party member the Rogue targets with it to immediately act after they cast this skill, no matter what priority bracket they are placed in. This is the only skill that has the ability to bypass priority brackets entirely, essentially dragging any skill in the game into the priority bracket of 1, and can let a party member who doesn’t have EX active that turn to outspeed a party member who does.

Stun is a status effect that doesn’t deny a unit their turn like in Etrian Odyssey, but instead forces them to act last within a given priority bracket. Stunned units are not shifted down a priority bracket, as Stunned units in the priority bracket of 3 will still act before any non-Stunned unit in the priority bracket of 4.

Stunned units don’t even have a turn speed rating. Whatever turn speed was calculated for them before is completely discarded in this step. And no, that doesn’t mean turn speeds are set to 0 for them. A non-Stunned unit with a turn speed of 0 will still act before a Stunned unit. Instead after all non-Stunned units have acted, the order that Stunned units act are prioritized from left to right. Stunned party members are also prioritized first and will always act before Stunned enemies.

Sorry for not having an update out for a while (on the plus side, I've updated more times this year compared to last year? ) NEO TWEWY came out and ate all my free time. I'm done with that now, so back to this LP I go. I don't have an actual update ready yet, so have a quick writeup about some unused stuff in this game while I work on that.

Resources: Unused/Debug Items

7th Dragon has quite a few items that are in the data, but never really got used in the final release. Some of these items appear to be scrapped concepts, while others appeared to have been debug items to test certain mechanics that never were intended to actually see serious use. We’ll be looking through said items in this update.



Items are coded as skills, so most of these effects were dug out by looking through the skill data. However, these were never actually implemented as items, and attempting to hack them in your inventory will just grant you an unusable “Junk” item that comes with no description, and cannot be used at all. The only thing that can be done with said items is selling them. Despite that, I’ll list out the item ID for each given item in case someone actually wants to do something with this information. Said item IDs will be in hexadecimal. (Instead of the numbers 0 through 9 being stored in one digit, it functions as 0 through 15 in one digit, with the numbers 10 through 15 being represented by A through F instead. This allows for a far greater range of numbers to be stored in fewer digits, like 256 numbers can be stored in 2 digits instead of only 100 like in the decimal system.)

Major Mend
Item ID: 002

Restores 200 LIFE to one party member.

First cut item and it’s basically a heavy tier single target healing item. Given that LIFE stats don’t get particularly high in this game, going up to a base of 300 at most with a max level Knight, it’s pretty easy to see why this got scrapped, given that Miracle Medicines essentially do the same thing with their full heal properties and with the item availability in this game. However, as to why this was made in the first place...



Here’s a prerelease screenshot of the game. A few things stick out. One is an impossible enemy formation that does not actually exist in the final game. The main thing I want to bring attention to is the LIFE and MANA totals. Just look at the sheer amount they have! You can’t get anywhere near that much in the final game, so the power curve most likely changed at some point in development, resulting in smaller numbers overall, and thus, no need for this heavy healing item. The difference between 200 LIFE restored and all LIFE restored would have been far bigger in that environment, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

Major Mend All
Item ID: 005

Restores 175 LIFE to all party members.

Medium Mend All
Item ID: 006

Fully restores all party members’ LIFE.

And next on the docket are these cut AOE healing items, which left only the Heal Aerosol as the sole AOE healing item you could use in the game. Who knows why these were cut, but they may have figured incredibly easy AOE healing on demand would be pretty strong. And might have obsoleted the Healer. Which can be a problem in certain games, where healing items can make a medic type party member useless to drag along because they were too strong. That and well, LIFE totals in this game doesn’t get really high compared to the beta version. The middle tier version would be fantastic even at endgame, so the issue of these items being overkill was also likely a factor in their removal.

Also yes, the item names are reversed in Japanese as well. Not really sure what happened there. The names themselves are also rather blunt in their function, so it’s likely they designed the functionality before deciding on how the item names and descriptions would work out flavor wise, which does give a small bit of insight as to the order things were developed in.

Major Mana
Item ID: 008

Restores 40 MANA to one party member.

Medium Mana
Item ID: 009

Fully restores on party member’s MANA.

Mana Water was supposed to have stronger versions as well, however we got stuck with only the lowest tier version. The higher tier versions were likely cut for the same reasons the other higher tier restoration items got cut. Considering that the actual raw MANA pools in this game don’t get particularly high, and that MANA costs in general are pretty low in terms of raw numbers, these items would have likely been overkill in the final game. They were most likely meant for when the party members had much bigger stats, but 40 MANA restoration is just incredibly efficient and powerful, let alone a complete restoration. Combine the fact that healing springs are frequently seen throughout your adventures, and MANA is basically a complete non-issue. The 15 MANA restore (which can be doubled to 30 with EX) is honestly enough for the entire game.

Minor Refresh
Item ID: 00A

Restores 80 LIFE and 20 MANA to one party member.

Medium Refresh
Item ID: 00B

Restores 160 LIFE and 40 MANA to one party member.

Now here’s an interesting bit of info. Silver Water was meant to be the final product of a line of simultaneous LIFE and MANA restoration archetypes, instead of being the only item of its archetype. We can only speculate as to why these got cut. The Medium Refresh likely got put on the chopping block for being too powerful due to the lower numbers in the final game. And the Minor Refresh would have completely obsoleted Mana Waters due to the higher Mana restore and functioning as a substantial heal on top of that.

Minor Revival
Item ID: 00D

Revives one party member at 1 LIFE.

Medium Revival
Item ID: 00F

Revives one party member at full LIFE.

In this case we didn’t get stuck with the lowest tier consumable, but the middle tier. The Hypno Crystals are pretty powerful as is, even in the endgame where 100 LIFE is still a respectable amount of LIFE to be revived at. As for why the Minor Revival was removed, they may have wanted to limit how available revivals were, as you can’t revive on the field early and if someone goes down, that’s a forced backtrack to a clinic since healing springs can’t revive party members. Also again, adds more value to having a Healer on a team since they come with revival skills in their skillset.

Minor Revive All
Item ID: 010

Revives all party members at 100 LIFE.

Med Revive All
Item ID: 011

Revives all party members at full LIFE.

Now here’s an archetype of items that did not have a single item of its kind make it into the game. AOE revivals. Those of you familiar with the second entry of the Etrian Odyssey series (not the first for once) and the severely powerful Nectall items should probably be well aware of why such an item was very likely to be cut.

For those that aren’t, let me put it this way. Imagine having most of your party members taken down, with only 1 or 2 party members hanging on, and then just on demand as long as you had one of these babies, you revive all of them and reverse a disastrous situation instantly. Yeah. Also would have taken away from how powerful the Healer’s Miracle Cure skill is.

EX Gauge: 1
Item ID: 012

Restores 1 segment of the EX Gauge.

Debug version of the Dragon Egg. (The Japanese name for the record, is EX Recovery: 1.) It does come right before the Dragon Egg in the item ID and skill ID list. So maybe the Dragon Egg was originally intended to be a full EX restore or something stronger, which would have been completely absurd if that was intended to be the case. Though we can never say for sure.

Status Cure
Item ID: 016

Dispels Confusion from one party member.

Curse Cure
Item ID: 019

Dispels Curse from one party member.

Fear Cure
Item ID: 01A

Dispels Fear from one party member.

Skillseal Cure
Item ID: 01B

Dispels Skill Seal from one party member.

Status Cure was Confusion Cure in Japanese. Not that a mistranslation here really matters since you can’t use these items.

Most of the other ailment curing items had unused versions in the code. Interestingly enough, Sleep and Charm are the only ailments that specifically do not have an item that cures them. At any rate, perhaps all these got cut down, and they let Somanels take on the role of dispelling the rest of the ailments to reduce clutter.

Resistance Burst
Item ID: 02E

Specific data unknown. Would have increased one party member’s resistance to ailments for 5 turns.

In Japanese, this was known as “Status Resistance Up” if you’re wondering about the rather nondescript name. But anyways, this is pretty much the first of several skills that has undefined skill data, which is why I said that specific data is unknown for this and several of the later items. It flat out doesn’t exist. The only things I have to go on are the skill parameters, and the item name, which is the only indication of how the item functions. Not sure why this item got cut, but there really aren’t that many sources of ailment resistance you can really use in this game, so they may have just wanted to cut that down.

Caustic
Item ID: 035

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Blind to one enemy.

Total Paralysis
Item ID: 036

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Paralysis to all enemies.

Total Sleep
Item ID: 037

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Sleep to all enemies.

Total Poison
Item ID: 038

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Poison to all enemies.

Total Envenom
Item ID: 039

Inflicts the Venom Boost effect on all enemies.

Total Curse
Item ID: 03A

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Curse to all enemies.

Total Skill Seal
Item ID: 03B

Specific data unknown. Would have had a chance of inflicting Skill Seal to all enemies.

Caustic was “Blind One” in Japanese. I’m not sure if these were intended to be usable items that could inflict ailments on demand, or if they were just a way for the dev team to test how ailments worked, as their skill data was entirely stripped from the ROM. Certainly would have made Masked Pain builds far stronger if every class had the opportunity to inflict ailments though.

Fruit
Item ID: Unknown

Restores 10 LIFE to one party member.

Yep. That’s the final item and skill in the data. Fruit. Might’ve been an earlier version of the Paro Fruit item, but that’s all I can really say about it. I don’t even know what the proper item ID for this item was supposed to be.

What, did they just port EO2's item list over and go from there? Not that there's anything wrong with that but it does kinda seem like it'd be in line with the whole "having EO stuff for the sake of EO stuff" thing.

Sorry for not having an update out for a while (on the plus side, I've updated more times this year compared to last year? ) NEO TWEWY came out and ate all my free time. I'm done with that now, so back to this LP I go. I don't have an actual update ready yet, so have a quick writeup about some unused stuff in this game while I work on that.

As it turns out more video games came out and continued to devour my free time. But back to the LP.

We start dealing with Dreadnought's roost.

We unlock some very powerful music for the Two-O Duo.

Update 37.5: Tower of the Gods Bloom Seed Exploit



You can consider this update to be a part of update 37, though I cut this section out into its own update in case anyone wants easy to access instructions on how to replicate this.

7th Dragon’s RNG for whatever reason, tends to be very static and predictable. You can read the update on the Random Number Generator I wrote to see more details on why it works. Because it’s so static and predictable, we can exploit it to get the results we want. In this case, generating a guaranteed Bloom Seed encounter for easy level ups. For those that read the update, RNG 1 will be the function we’ll be exploiting here. Let’s get started!

Video: Tower of the Gods Bloom Seed RNG Exploit

Here’s a video on how to this, though I’ll write this out in screenshot form as well.



There are a few preparations you’ll have to make. Make sure you have ways to reduce the encounter rate on hand. Either with Bamboo or Ronam Flutes, or the Healer’s Invisible skill. The Samurai’s Evil Eye skill doesn’t work for this. If you’re playing on the USA patch, you don’t need those tools.

Also make sure to save at this save point on the 4th floor of the central tower of the Tower of the Gods. It’s also very much ideal to have killed all the Tyrannosauruses on the floor below, though it’s optional. Doing so just severely reduces the likelyhood of this exploit going wrong.

If the Tower of the Gods is free of Bloom, you can just use a Bloom Seed item to restore the Bloom to allow the use of this exploit.



7th Dragon does not have a soft reset function, but it doesn’t matter. A fresh boot will accomplish the same thing as 7th Dragon’s RNG functions don’t check for the system date and time to get its RNG seed, and the seed is always set to a value of 0 on booting.





Upon loading the game, immediately use an encounter rate reducer. The RNG advances every time the encounter rate reaches 0. Unfortunately, because the RNG seed starts out at 0, the encounter meter is always set to 1500, the lowest possible starting value, and it’s not possible to reach the stairs heading down in time before you get into an encounter. Evil Eye doesn’t work here because the RNG will advance the moment the encounter meter hits 0, even though it can prevent a battle.

If you’re playing on the USA patch, this isn’t needed as the encounter rate is lowered enough to not need a reducing item or skill.

Also do not try to use the staircase leading up to reset the meter, as that advances the RNG a different number of times than the staircase leading down, screwing up this exploit.





The next step is to head on over to this staircase and walk down and up the stairs 8 times each. Or witness 16 screen transitions.

This is the reason I recommended that you kill every last Tyrannosaurus, as their movements advance the RNG. If you immediately head up upon heading down you can avoid this, but it’s just better to have that room for error.





After doing all that, walk down the stairs one last time. Don’t walk back up here.



Then immediately head over to this Bloom tile and trample it.







It will produce a Bloom Seed battle.



Use EX here, or some other form of priority, as it’s very likely the Bloom Seed will run on the first turn.









And presto! An easy kill with lots of experience awarded to our party!



You can then head on back up to save and immediately repeat this process for very fast level ups. Rinse and repeat as needed. Since Bloom Seeds always give out a maximum percentage of the experience needed to reach the next level, you only need around 2 Bloom Seed kills per level to level up.

This results in very easy ways to power level if you want. This isn’t the only known Bloom Seed exploit, but it’s one of the easier ones to pull off. I’ll cover the other ones when we get to those.

Now next time, we’ll finally take on Dreadnought.

Well that certainly is an interesting unintentional visual glitch.

Also WTF at Angelic Cage, if it just added a set amount of vulnerability and stopped above a certain point it might be fine but "delete immunity, replace with significant weakness" is just absurd if you can at all exploit it. I'd ask what they were thinking but sadly I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is "they weren't."

Ahoy there! Time to take down Dreadnought!

Ah, of course the battleship dragon boss had a Yamato Cannon.

In fact that concept art looks like it literally came from Space Battleship Yamato.

No more Imperial Dragons left to kill, so it's time to just sit back, relax, and clean up the rest of the dragon infestation!

HE ARRIVES.