Part 15: Even Towards Death, Valiantly || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
Live your life without any regrets.
7th Dragon 2020 ~ Sympathy for Chisa Inomiko (an LP EOV Anniversary Project)
Part 15: Even Towards Death, Valiantly || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
Live your life without any regrets.
Yeah this game does not fuck around in its tone, which can be a real stark contrast if you're coming off of VFD which is very oddly really lighthearted in comparison to the rest of the series. (DS while being more along the lines of a traditional fantasy JRPG in terms of tone, did have its share of some fucked up shit.)
Chapter 1 was sure something but chapter 2 is where the game really got my attention and drew me into the setting. A cage made out of railroad tracks and trains and train stations is a pretty memorable setting.
Koron should be very glad the game being played is not 7th Dragon DS. There are far more out there dragon designs in that game. (I don't even know how something like Eclipse would have worked as a 3D model for one.)
Ah Tower Dragons. They... certainly existed in DS. Then 2020 turned them into something the entire playerbase despises because they're so annoying to fight. There's absolutely no way to pierce that Jump, as every attack, even the ones flagged as "can't miss" are instead flagged as "auto-miss" so don't even try. (VFD added in the power of friendship to knock them out of that state at least.)
That Railgun is a scripted miniboss. By which I mean it's innate accuracy stat and the accuracy of its skills are set to 0% so it's nearly impossible to lose. (There's a lower bound of a 1% chance of being hit so you could theoretically lose the battle if you really tried for some reason.)
Wish granted.Commander Keene wrote: ↑Mon Nov 02, 2020 11:34 amIt's great and really sells the Imperial Dragons as forces of nature and beings from not here rather than just "the next boss". This one inverted a tower and created a mess of floating debris orbiting a singularity just by deciding to live here. Looking forward to seeing if they keep up the trend or just kind of drop it like a hot potato in the future.
Chapter 1 was sure something but chapter 2 is where the game really got my attention and drew me into the setting. A cage made out of railroad tracks and trains and train stations is a pretty memorable setting.
Koron should be very glad the game being played is not 7th Dragon DS. There are far more out there dragon designs in that game.
(I don't even know how something like Eclipse would have worked as a 3D model for one.)Ah Tower Dragons. They... certainly existed in DS. Then 2020 turned them into something the entire playerbase despises because they're so annoying to fight. There's absolutely no way to pierce that Jump, as every attack, even the ones flagged as "can't miss" are instead flagged as "auto-miss" so don't even try. (VFD added in the power of friendship to knock them out of that state at least.)
That Railgun is a scripted miniboss. By which I mean it's innate accuracy stat and the accuracy of its skills are set to 0% so it's nearly impossible to lose. (There's a lower bound of a 1% chance of being hit so you could theoretically lose the battle if you really tried for some reason.)
Last edited by Araxxor on Sun Mar 14, 2021 11:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Welcome to 7th Dragon 2020! Needless to say we're not getting out of the dracopocalypse alright and we don't have a very good boss.
There really is nothing good to say about Tower Dragons, they're not even particularly dangerous, just overly chunky and can just decide to not take damage whenever they feel like it and also easily thwarted by a psychic or cheap consumeables. Being able to knock them out of the sky in VFD made them a bit more tolerable but not much more. Why do people love dragoons (well ok EO5 dragoons are cool but they're also not Kain cosplayers.)
There really is nothing good to say about Tower Dragons, they're not even particularly dangerous, just overly chunky and can just decide to not take damage whenever they feel like it and also easily thwarted by a psychic or cheap consumeables. Being able to knock them out of the sky in VFD made them a bit more tolerable but not much more. Why do people love dragoons (well ok EO5 dragoons are cool but they're also not Kain cosplayers.)
Part 17: Triple Laser Phase (Vs. Jigowatt) || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
Fuck railguns, all my homies hate railguns.
Trash Pickup is truly and utterly absurd and is easily one of the biggest selling points of a Hacker. The other selling point is luvshock + Feedback which turns your Hacker from a support class into an outright carry. Fun fact it was supposed to be called Garbage Collection in the fan translation but, Pokeytax ran into character limitations.
Unlike Etrian Odyssey titles past 2 or 7th Dragon DS, ailment duration isn't RNG based. Each individual skill defines how long an ailment lasts if it lands on your party. And Trash Pickup dumpsters on most of it. The other big selling point of Trash Pickup is that it means that as long as your party is fast enough, several ailments will do literally nothing if your party moves before they get inflicted. This also means that ailment defensive accessories are a complete and utter waste with proper usage of TP, and that means you can use stat accessories instead to finish fights considerably faster due to the DPS increase they give. Or to hugely neutralize big attacks with defense accessories. Trash Pickup is completely and utterly broken.
Jigowatt can be a bit of a toughie, and it's something of an infamous boss in the playerbase. While no means impossible, it's kind of a notable difficulty spike where it's placed at and demands you know what you're doing to get past it. It can take a few tries or you might have to grind up a a bit to get past it. Though the artbook and game data might provide some insight onto why this was the case. According to how the artbook organized the area and enemy art, it's likely that Jigowatt was intended to be fought later instead of in Chapter 2. Jigowatt's stats are also kind of a little odd.
War Cry's ailment resistances are set at 0.9 (meaning ailments are only 90% as effective relative to their base infliction chance), and for bosses, this gradually lowers to 0.5 with each boss fight as the game goes on in order to provide a bit of a difficulty curve regarding ailment usage. The chapter 3 boss has their multipliers set to 0.65. Jigowatt on the other hand? Its ailment resistances are set to 0.5 instead, while all the other bosses drag the number down gradually, meaning that only Jigowatt breaks that pattern. This suggests that it was dragged from elsewhere in the game, and they just didn't finish rebalancing the boss fight in time for the final release which could explain the rather large difficulty spike for most players.
Also another bit of an oddity. Bosses are unique in that they have 2 different basic attack animations for the purposes of the tier 2 Destroyer counters, and well to also add some more flair to them as only bosses and very few dragons have this unique privilege. As counters don't check for the damage type, but rather the animation flag (Melee, Ranged, Claw, Fang, and Breath), which are only used to activate counter skills. (This was sadly dropped in VFD since the tier 2 Destroyer counters were thrown out in that game, and the only animation flags used are now Melee and Ranged.) However Jigowatt is a bit weird in that both of its attacking animations, where it shoots at you, and where it headbutts you with an electro ball, are flagged as Ranged, despite it visibly making contact with the party member. There are a few other cases where the animation flags got screwed up and the counter move you're supposed to use doesn't match up with the enemy's attacking animation though fortunately not too many enemies and skills have mismatched animations and flags.
Unlike Etrian Odyssey titles past 2 or 7th Dragon DS, ailment duration isn't RNG based. Each individual skill defines how long an ailment lasts if it lands on your party. And Trash Pickup dumpsters on most of it. The other big selling point of Trash Pickup is that it means that as long as your party is fast enough, several ailments will do literally nothing if your party moves before they get inflicted. This also means that ailment defensive accessories are a complete and utter waste with proper usage of TP, and that means you can use stat accessories instead to finish fights considerably faster due to the DPS increase they give. Or to hugely neutralize big attacks with defense accessories. Trash Pickup is completely and utterly broken.
Jigowatt can be a bit of a toughie, and it's something of an infamous boss in the playerbase. While no means impossible, it's kind of a notable difficulty spike where it's placed at and demands you know what you're doing to get past it. It can take a few tries or you might have to grind up a a bit to get past it. Though the artbook and game data might provide some insight onto why this was the case. According to how the artbook organized the area and enemy art, it's likely that Jigowatt was intended to be fought later instead of in Chapter 2. Jigowatt's stats are also kind of a little odd.
War Cry's ailment resistances are set at 0.9 (meaning ailments are only 90% as effective relative to their base infliction chance), and for bosses, this gradually lowers to 0.5 with each boss fight as the game goes on in order to provide a bit of a difficulty curve regarding ailment usage. The chapter 3 boss has their multipliers set to 0.65. Jigowatt on the other hand? Its ailment resistances are set to 0.5 instead, while all the other bosses drag the number down gradually, meaning that only Jigowatt breaks that pattern. This suggests that it was dragged from elsewhere in the game, and they just didn't finish rebalancing the boss fight in time for the final release which could explain the rather large difficulty spike for most players.
Also another bit of an oddity. Bosses are unique in that they have 2 different basic attack animations for the purposes of the tier 2 Destroyer counters, and well to also add some more flair to them as only bosses and very few dragons have this unique privilege. As counters don't check for the damage type, but rather the animation flag (Melee, Ranged, Claw, Fang, and Breath), which are only used to activate counter skills. (This was sadly dropped in VFD since the tier 2 Destroyer counters were thrown out in that game, and the only animation flags used are now Melee and Ranged.) However Jigowatt is a bit weird in that both of its attacking animations, where it shoots at you, and where it headbutts you with an electro ball, are flagged as Ranged, despite it visibly making contact with the party member. There are a few other cases where the animation flags got screwed up and the counter move you're supposed to use doesn't match up with the enemy's attacking animation though fortunately not too many enemies and skills have mismatched animations and flags.
Oddly enough I never had any issues with Jigowatt, what with it just being a straightforwardly murderous that sometimes paralyzes you like Warcry. The third boss, on the other hand, is where I started eating resets on my first playthrough.
...was that a KH2 Tron reference there? "I'm back in the game!" is Tron's revive line
Also the screenshots after Railgun goes off seem a bit out of order
Ok a lot outta order
Nice work though, Jigowatt might not be complex, but its easy to underestimate how much fucking DAMAGE he throughputs and have a damage control loop like that turn into a straight loss
Also the screenshots after Railgun goes off seem a bit out of order
Ok a lot outta order
Nice work though, Jigowatt might not be complex, but its easy to underestimate how much fucking DAMAGE he throughputs and have a damage control loop like that turn into a straight loss
huh, I had way more trouble with Warcry then Jigowatt, the railgun attack seems like a complete joke, sure it hits extremely hard, but taking three turns (and six actions) makes it utterly garbage for something that can be pretty safely survived by defending (and when something is that telegraphed why wouldn't you?) and negated with a heal aero (maybe EX boosted if you're not confident in your speed)
Paralysis adds a wrinkle. but the game gives you plenty to prepare for that and it's not rocket science to expect the lightning dragon to use the "electric ailment"
Paralysis adds a wrinkle. but the game gives you plenty to prepare for that and it's not rocket science to expect the lightning dragon to use the "electric ailment"
Addendum III: Richter Esslinger (Unit 13's Secretary, Class: Hacker) Tactical Overview Part 1 || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
Apoptosis, huh? You mean they contain cells that are created for the purpose of self-destruction?
Really regretting unfairly dismissing hackers when I first played. Now if only Richter could build his EX gauge...
Oh god Hacker. This class is just so completely and utter absurd. They do have a considerable knowledge floor though, so it can be extremely easy to write them off as "worst class in the game" (in fact they are considered that by the playerbase overall.) due to the fact that they are a support class in a game with a 3 man party, so losing one DPS class is a huge setback in offensive power.
Then you look at the internals and the hidden mechanics and the way they interact with each other and realize "this class is fucking broken holy shit."
The stat boosting buffs essentially upgrade your equipment by 1 tier on top of amplifying their effects, so they're super good and make up a bit for the lack of damage Hacker brings to a party. And the flat stat buff stops them from being worthless at the beginning of the game. Oh sorry did I say lack of damage, cause as you all have seen, luvshock + Feedback is completely ridiculous! And basically turns the Hacker into a DPS class on top of just stopping the enemy from doing anything. That combo is what truly makes Hacker completely absurd, and separates the bad Hackers from the good ones.
Regenerator is also a fantastic defensive buff to lay on top of that, and an A-Skill Caller boosted Airsoft Training also stacks with that, forcing your opposition to basically one shot you to truly take you down, and means you have to heal way less often, which means more opportunities to deal damage.
You all already know how amazing Trash Pickup is.
Feedback is legitimately nuts and seeing Curse actually be an unironically good ailment instead of something purely reserved for cheese strats was quite a bit of culture shock. (Except in 7th Dragon DS. Curse still sucks ass there.) Discounting immunities, the multipliers against Curse in the big fights are either 0.75 or 0.8. Which means you have a 71.25% or a 76% chance of landing it without any boosts! Which is really fucking absurd, and generally means you're good at fishing for Feedback procs without having to use it on a Hacked target first. Course if Quick Hack procced on an important fight that just guarantees Feedback will land and is one less thing you have to worry about.
Poisnjam probably won't see much use, but if you're using a a triple Hacker team (Yes it's possible to beat the game with one, I managed to 100% the game with it. It was a fucking absurd trip as Kinu can verify.) it's pretty much the main way for such a team to deal damage, as multiple luvshocks sadly do not stack due to it just being an AI overwrite.
Yes Buffer Overrun works on Hacking too, and its effects are dynamic, so you don't have to time it to only land on a Hacked enemy.
Oh god Shutdown. There's a reason this skill is locked behind tier 4 and it's because it enables the Hacker to straight up stunlock the enemy! Hack > Shutdown > Hack > Shutdown, rinse and repeat as needed. This combo gets even more absurd with multiple Hackers because as it turns out if a luvshocked target is asleep, they will attack themselves without waking themselves up! Not only that, enemies resist sleep far less than they resist hacking! So if you just need to buy yourself time to work that hacking magic, you can use Shutdown as an opportunity to fish for Hacks. It's nuts.
gg.bat is yet another bit of absurdity, only real weakesses are the Hackers can't build up EX for shit in 2020, and that it doesn't dispel existing ailments on cast, meaning stuff like Poison and such will still deal damage to you.
That being said, even though Hacker is the 2nd most broken class in the game, they do have their weaknesses. Their core hacking mechanics are pretty heavily RNG based, so if Hack fails to land, that does reduce what they can do. They're also incredibly terrible at building up EX and that would help a lot since it doubles infliction rates to give them more reliable Hacks. They have a lot of fantastic skills that they can be using, but they are ultimately only 1 party member, so they can oftne be choice locked in what they can be doing. Not only that, but they are easily the most SP hungry class in the game. With the way the skill system works from 2020 onwards, generalizing your skillset is encouraged more over min max specializing. And most skills are good from level 1 anyways, with further levels just being further optimizations. Not for the Hacker, due to the way their mechanics work and their skills scale, they heavily benefit from max level skills far more than most other classes, so they'll flounder quite a bit early on. Should probably let them guzzle down all the SP boosts you can find to alleviate that problem.
Then you look at the internals and the hidden mechanics and the way they interact with each other and realize "this class is fucking broken holy shit."
The stat boosting buffs essentially upgrade your equipment by 1 tier on top of amplifying their effects, so they're super good and make up a bit for the lack of damage Hacker brings to a party. And the flat stat buff stops them from being worthless at the beginning of the game. Oh sorry did I say lack of damage, cause as you all have seen, luvshock + Feedback is completely ridiculous! And basically turns the Hacker into a DPS class on top of just stopping the enemy from doing anything. That combo is what truly makes Hacker completely absurd, and separates the bad Hackers from the good ones.
Regenerator is also a fantastic defensive buff to lay on top of that, and an A-Skill Caller boosted Airsoft Training also stacks with that, forcing your opposition to basically one shot you to truly take you down, and means you have to heal way less often, which means more opportunities to deal damage.
You all already know how amazing Trash Pickup is.
Feedback is legitimately nuts and seeing Curse actually be an unironically good ailment instead of something purely reserved for cheese strats was quite a bit of culture shock. (Except in 7th Dragon DS. Curse still sucks ass there.) Discounting immunities, the multipliers against Curse in the big fights are either 0.75 or 0.8. Which means you have a 71.25% or a 76% chance of landing it without any boosts! Which is really fucking absurd, and generally means you're good at fishing for Feedback procs without having to use it on a Hacked target first. Course if Quick Hack procced on an important fight that just guarantees Feedback will land and is one less thing you have to worry about.
Poisnjam probably won't see much use, but if you're using a a triple Hacker team (Yes it's possible to beat the game with one, I managed to 100% the game with it. It was a fucking absurd trip as Kinu can verify.) it's pretty much the main way for such a team to deal damage, as multiple luvshocks sadly do not stack due to it just being an AI overwrite.
Yes Buffer Overrun works on Hacking too, and its effects are dynamic, so you don't have to time it to only land on a Hacked enemy.
Oh god Shutdown. There's a reason this skill is locked behind tier 4 and it's because it enables the Hacker to straight up stunlock the enemy! Hack > Shutdown > Hack > Shutdown, rinse and repeat as needed. This combo gets even more absurd with multiple Hackers because as it turns out if a luvshocked target is asleep, they will attack themselves without waking themselves up! Not only that, enemies resist sleep far less than they resist hacking! So if you just need to buy yourself time to work that hacking magic, you can use Shutdown as an opportunity to fish for Hacks. It's nuts.
gg.bat is yet another bit of absurdity, only real weakesses are the Hackers can't build up EX for shit in 2020, and that it doesn't dispel existing ailments on cast, meaning stuff like Poison and such will still deal damage to you.
That being said, even though Hacker is the 2nd most broken class in the game, they do have their weaknesses. Their core hacking mechanics are pretty heavily RNG based, so if Hack fails to land, that does reduce what they can do. They're also incredibly terrible at building up EX and that would help a lot since it doubles infliction rates to give them more reliable Hacks. They have a lot of fantastic skills that they can be using, but they are ultimately only 1 party member, so they can oftne be choice locked in what they can be doing. Not only that, but they are easily the most SP hungry class in the game. With the way the skill system works from 2020 onwards, generalizing your skillset is encouraged more over min max specializing. And most skills are good from level 1 anyways, with further levels just being further optimizations. Not for the Hacker, due to the way their mechanics work and their skills scale, they heavily benefit from max level skills far more than most other classes, so they'll flounder quite a bit early on. Should probably let them guzzle down all the SP boosts you can find to alleviate that problem.
Hackers are such a weird class. they're stupidly powerful, but they need all of that power. when every turn is precious the risk of wasting a turn failing a hack can be extremely dangerous, their buffs are extremely strong, but they need to be. using a hacker means that a third of your party isn't able to deal damage most of the time. hacking is immensely strong, but it comes at a significant cost; it's unreliable and unless you spend more actions setting up react, you only get one action out of it.
they're also pretty action starved, between their buffs, hacking, and status inflictions they simply don't have the actions to keep up with the classes promise.
I'm also going to make a special note of 119 for a well hidden trap; it's a gamble when you can't afford to be gambling, sure it's a revive that makes sure that the target wont get knocked back down, but you only have two bodies to take hits and if the caster dies then it's nothing. and if someone died in this fight, it's dangerous enough that 119 could easily be an express ticket to the retry screen.
the potential to revive two targets exists, but unless the target is asleep then your gambling on an opponent that's killed two people (probably in one turn) not simply putting down the third. I suppose it's less futile then defending?
they're also pretty action starved, between their buffs, hacking, and status inflictions they simply don't have the actions to keep up with the classes promise.
I'm also going to make a special note of 119 for a well hidden trap; it's a gamble when you can't afford to be gambling, sure it's a revive that makes sure that the target wont get knocked back down, but you only have two bodies to take hits and if the caster dies then it's nothing. and if someone died in this fight, it's dangerous enough that 119 could easily be an express ticket to the retry screen.
the potential to revive two targets exists, but unless the target is asleep then your gambling on an opponent that's killed two people (probably in one turn) not simply putting down the third. I suppose it's less futile then defending?
119 has very good use cases, yet its worse then you're saying, it only revives targets that were dead AT THE TIME OF PREPARATION, not at the time of resolution, still an amazing skill to keep in your pocket because sometimes its just what you need(and look, T/D/H does not have a revival option other then items anyway so may as well have it)Gespenst wrote: ↑Mon Apr 12, 2021 2:46 pmHackers are such a weird class. they're stupidly powerful, but they need all of that power. when every turn is precious the risk of wasting a turn failing a hack can be extremely dangerous, their buffs are extremely strong, but they need to be. using a hacker means that a third of your party isn't able to deal damage most of the time. hacking is immensely strong, but it comes at a significant cost; it's unreliable and unless you spend more actions setting up react, you only get one action out of it.
they're also pretty action starved, between their buffs, hacking, and status inflictions they simply don't have the actions to keep up with the classes promise.
I'm also going to make a special note of 119 for a well hidden trap; it's a gamble when you can't afford to be gambling, sure it's a revive that makes sure that the target wont get knocked back down, but you only have two bodies to take hits and if the caster dies then it's nothing. and if someone died in this fight, it's dangerous enough that 119 could easily be an express ticket to the retry screen.
the potential to revive two targets exists, but unless the target is asleep then your gambling on an opponent that's killed two people (probably in one turn) not simply putting down the third. I suppose it's less futile then defending?
Part 18: All My Pride || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
An unexpected detour leads us to a lesson from Mama Fudoji. Thanks, Mama Fudoji.
Part 19: World is Mine || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
In this one, there's a Very Special Guest Appearance.
Yeah I remember some of the sidequest instructions being annoyingly inspecific and misleading now that the whole cult subplot started.
Good Koron face though.
Good Koron face though.
Part 20: Demon Ruination || SSLP Test Poster mirror.
It's Chapter 3. Let's have a trip with Mama Fudoji.
Speaking as someone who isn't usually big on that particular aesthetic, Yotsuya Evernight is pretty rad.
The gimmicks a bit less so.
The gimmicks a bit less so.
Part 21: The Place Where I Used To Be || SSLP Test Post mirror.
Sorry about the wait, everyone—some technical miscommunications resulted in this update being delayed... like a week? Anyway, today let's go meet some people Youka knows.
Destroyer Dragons are real fun when you're unlucky and wind up with everyone stopped by multiple Muscle Eyes lemme tell you. Pretty sure my first wipe in this game happened because of one of those jerks, and that most of my wipes on my first playthrough happened in this dungeon.
Yotsuya Evernight is fun and full of friends.
Yotsuya Evernight is fun and full of friends.
Destroyer Dragons do make me wonder if there’s a whole series of dragons that rip off one of the classes.
Maybe not Hacker Dragon though.
Maybe not Hacker Dragon though.
The song for this area is pretty sick, give it a lesson. Sets the mood pretty well!
Oh and don't bother in trying to "pre-fill" the minimap while it's disabled, it annoyingly doesn't log that info for when it gets re-enabled.
That Destroyer Dragon is kind of a notable motherfucker. Muscle Eye can't miss and has a 35% chance of inflicting Stop. And just hits pretty hard too.
Oh and don't bother in trying to "pre-fill" the minimap while it's disabled, it annoyingly doesn't log that info for when it gets re-enabled.
That Destroyer Dragon is kind of a notable motherfucker. Muscle Eye can't miss and has a 35% chance of inflicting Stop. And just hits pretty hard too.
Mama's right Chisa, the story sure did change in a very specific way once you got involved... a mysterious figure, shedding an old life of fakeness for a new life, why, if the team didn't know better, they'd think it was becoming about you and your anxieties and issues
Also oh lord Venom Swamp, I wish Venom monsters were better, and Reptiles in general, Vennominaga is dopus but like, uhh, yeah good luck using her
Also oh lord Venom Swamp, I wish Venom monsters were better, and Reptiles in general, Vennominaga is dopus but like, uhh, yeah good luck using her
From a boss fight for a quest of fetching food for a gourmet to a random encounter. What a downgrade.
Then again the series kind of stopped having non-dragon boss fights after the DS game.Enemies do have a natural evasion stat as SPD no longer affects accuracy or evasion whatsoever unlike in the first game, but it's set to 0% for most of them. Wraiths have it set to 25% so it doubles to a coin flip after their buff skill. All Bloom Seeds incidentally have 20% evasion on top of 999 defenses.
A very nice change with these from EO and 7th Dragon DS is that weapon effects can proc on ATK-based skills! Granted Richter doesn't have any, but a pretty welcome change from seeing small attack weapons with a bad effect. 7th Dragon DS at least had the courtesy to stick those effects on pure upgrades at least instead of horrible stat sticks.
HP thresholds are like the one thing I know DS's AI checked for (and from what I can tell it's pretty basic in that game. I think 2020 gave upgrades to the AI though.) So that probably makes the AI get all weird since dealing too much damage causes them to swap over to different behavior.I can't really explain this—there must be some condition in the Destroyer Dragon's AI that causes it to use Muscle Eye on Turn 2 if something happens, because it doesn't usually. Maybe it's because I damaged it too much.
Right, so, for those that don't know the Bloom in this game, and the rest of this series, is just purely decoration for scenery. You see some red flowers here and there, but touching them does nothing and aside from plot, the Bloom itself doesn't do anything. (That I'm aware of.) This was a very big change from how the Bloom functioned in the first game.Yo, I've got some people who haven't played 7th Dragon DS or aren't reading Araxxor's LP—you know in that game the Bloom was all damage tiles that you had to manually cut down in order to keep the dragons less powerful? All of it! It's fucked up!
In the first game, they were damage tiles. Walking over them made them disappear at least, but they dealt 2% of your maximum HP as damage for each one you walked over. How many of them were there?
A lot. All of the red squares you see on the bottom screen are Bloom tiles. There are 16,172 of these things. This unsurprisingly made the field skill that negates damage tiles completely and utterly meta defining, and Knights basically skyrocketed in usage because they were the only class who could deal with the Bloom. Not having a Knight meant having to menu every few seconds to heal up. (The fan translation has a version of the patch that lowers it to 0.8% max HP as damage which makes Knights nowhere near as mandatory as in the base game.) Also these tiles could regrow on the overworld every few days.
They also had a bunch of other secondary effects. They made it more likely to be blindsided, and if a town was surrounded by too much Bloom they would skyrocket their shop prices so that you were paying a premium for their gods and equipment until you lawnmowed enough of the area the town was surrounded by.
The effect Kinu was talking about was a hidden effect that pretty much nothing aside from a very vague hint from an NPC told you about. Lawnmowing the Bloom around dungeons in the overworld also weakened the dragons in said dungeons, making them take up to 30% more damage from all attacks, and made it up to 30% easier to inflict ailments on them. I know for sure this mechanic does not exist in the rest of the series. The stats the dragons and bosses have, are actually the stats you will always be fighting them with.
I definitely remember that despite dragons having very heavily patterned AIs some weird curveballs cropped up every now and again, but I can't for the life of me recall turn 2 Muscle Eye being one of them.
Also jeez, I forgot the Lv2 Industrial Area upgrade cost a whopping 27 dragon zorkmids, definitely makes this dungeon a bit rougher, especially if you spring for unlocking Diva Mode.
Also jeez, I forgot the Lv2 Industrial Area upgrade cost a whopping 27 dragon zorkmids, definitely makes this dungeon a bit rougher, especially if you spring for unlocking Diva Mode.
Lore-A-Lua is indeed an absolute fucker of a boss if you don't have a setup that can deal with status, probably the hardest short of the final boss in that case because prolonged blind/downer is just terrible, seven or so wipes to it sounds about right from my first playthrough.
Pretty intense update.
Lore-A-Lua is one of the spots I had in mind with 7th Dragon 2020 being wonky with ailment balance, and essentially forces the usage of ailment accessories or Trash Pickup or you're going to have a very tough time. Her bleeds have a 75% chance to land, Downer has a 99% chance to land, and Second Harvest has a 100% hit rate. Only mercy is that Blindness Whisper hits 55% of the time, which is a very small comfort as its version of blind multiplies your hit chance by 0.
Never try to "face tank" the blind, you'll just grant her extra turns. Instead, either cure it ASAP, or come in with Blind protection, which is probably the best course of action to take, really. The Downer and Bleed suck to be hit by, but it's way better than granting her extra momentum and opportunities to destroy your party. Don't be afraid to use EX to double the healing from Heal Aerosols and whatnot if you have to. Doing this heavily defangs her and makes the fight much easier to deal with. (Come in with Downer protection on supports if you're not having them attack.) Also do not try to bank on outspeeding her before she comes in with Blindness Whisper, as she has a SPD stat of 45, and you'd need at least a SPD stat of 61 to outspeed her guaranteed. Which is not really happening at this point in the game.
Evasion Reacts fortunately only checks for attacks missing. It doesn't care about ailments missing and such, so feel free to fling those out. Also fun fact, luvshock carries over into extra turns. You can set that up, deliberately trigger the react, and watch as Lore-A-Lua wastes her extra turn and speeds up the entire fight by smacking herself for big damage.
Crimson Scythe is also another one of the few places in the game where the animation flag doesn't match the actual animation, as it's flagged as a melee attack, but is clearly a claw swipe attack visually.
Bleed got massively reworked from the first game. There it lasted forever instead of a set amount of turns, and took off 3% of the victim's max HP at the end of each turn. This made it an incredibly strong ailment to use from the player's end, but laughably worthless from the enemy's end, since you'd lose like 9 HP per turn. At 300 HP. Yeah. Here it deals a set amount, but increases in intensity by 20% per turn. Sort of. The difference between the current damage and the last turn's damage is increased by 20%. So going off of a damage of 100, it'd go to 120, then 124 and uh, taper off after that. Yeah in practice the "intensifying damage" doesn't really come into play much, since you'd see a slight increase from turn 1 to turn 2, and maybe like 1 point of damage after that eventually. In practice it's really a palette swap of Poison. Can still be dangerous to deal with, but not all that much different from it.
Kinu mentioned that this was the only fight that Blind was truly relevant as an ailment. This also functions for Death, and you get Death protection accessories just a bit earlier. Lore-A-Lua is literally the only enemy in the entire game that can use the Death ailment, and that's only if you ever trigger Swaying React, as she will never use Second Harvest during the normal turn phase. This functionally means that Blind protection does the exact same thing as Death protection, and that Death protection accessories are completely obsoleted by those.
Lore-A-Lua is one of the spots I had in mind with 7th Dragon 2020 being wonky with ailment balance, and essentially forces the usage of ailment accessories or Trash Pickup or you're going to have a very tough time. Her bleeds have a 75% chance to land, Downer has a 99% chance to land, and Second Harvest has a 100% hit rate. Only mercy is that Blindness Whisper hits 55% of the time, which is a very small comfort as its version of blind multiplies your hit chance by 0.
Never try to "face tank" the blind, you'll just grant her extra turns. Instead, either cure it ASAP, or come in with Blind protection, which is probably the best course of action to take, really. The Downer and Bleed suck to be hit by, but it's way better than granting her extra momentum and opportunities to destroy your party. Don't be afraid to use EX to double the healing from Heal Aerosols and whatnot if you have to. Doing this heavily defangs her and makes the fight much easier to deal with. (Come in with Downer protection on supports if you're not having them attack.) Also do not try to bank on outspeeding her before she comes in with Blindness Whisper, as she has a SPD stat of 45, and you'd need at least a SPD stat of 61 to outspeed her guaranteed. Which is not really happening at this point in the game.
Evasion Reacts fortunately only checks for attacks missing. It doesn't care about ailments missing and such, so feel free to fling those out. Also fun fact, luvshock carries over into extra turns. You can set that up, deliberately trigger the react, and watch as Lore-A-Lua wastes her extra turn and speeds up the entire fight by smacking herself for big damage.
Crimson Scythe is also another one of the few places in the game where the animation flag doesn't match the actual animation, as it's flagged as a melee attack, but is clearly a claw swipe attack visually.
Bleed got massively reworked from the first game. There it lasted forever instead of a set amount of turns, and took off 3% of the victim's max HP at the end of each turn. This made it an incredibly strong ailment to use from the player's end, but laughably worthless from the enemy's end, since you'd lose like 9 HP per turn. At 300 HP. Yeah. Here it deals a set amount, but increases in intensity by 20% per turn. Sort of. The difference between the current damage and the last turn's damage is increased by 20%. So going off of a damage of 100, it'd go to 120, then 124 and uh, taper off after that. Yeah in practice the "intensifying damage" doesn't really come into play much, since you'd see a slight increase from turn 1 to turn 2, and maybe like 1 point of damage after that eventually. In practice it's really a palette swap of Poison. Can still be dangerous to deal with, but not all that much different from it.
Kinu mentioned that this was the only fight that Blind was truly relevant as an ailment. This also functions for Death, and you get Death protection accessories just a bit earlier. Lore-A-Lua is literally the only enemy in the entire game that can use the Death ailment, and that's only if you ever trigger Swaying React, as she will never use Second Harvest during the normal turn phase. This functionally means that Blind protection does the exact same thing as Death protection, and that Death protection accessories are completely obsoleted by those.