207 replies to this topic

[Russ]

Edit: Also, is it normal for BB and Sylvia to not have any inventory screen dialogue? As far as I can remember, they're the only characters with story modes that lack it.
Edit2: Wait, Lumen and Bastille don't have it either. Maybe it's not a bug on their parts then.

Yeah, I couldn't come up with decent dialogue for either group. I think there's like... >800 total subscreen skits, so I hope you'll forgive us for leaving a few groups without.
 
 

There are 8 conditions in total. I don't believe any of them are more hidden than others.

Worth noting that one of them isn't a condition proper, just a promise of what you'll find.

Ether replied to the rest of the stuff already, but man, how am I just now noticing the soul hunt subscreen is messed up with the addition of the X to swap button? Gotta fix that...

[Cyberventurer]

Ah okay, thanks. I'll keep plugging away at them whenever I do a run. Feels like I keep finding the same 4 hints so far, but admittedly I hadn't been paying attention to them before learning they had a meaning so the "pool" I've been exposed to is still small.

 

Right after you hinted at them, I thought I could be sneaky and save my game before grabbing a cursed soul, then quitting out after grabbing one to try "rerolling" them, but it looks like that was planned for in advance because whether or not souls have alternate messages seems based on the number you find, as well as those messages being predetermined at the run's start.

 

Edit: Stuff like this is why I don't mind redoing her quest.

 

- I kept forgetting to ask if this is a bug or not, but is it intentional that Reikon's bubbling poison still damages you if you're using Float? The spell seems to let you ignore the damage of other floor-emanating traps, but not that.

- Jandra's boss room seems to switch up on you when she changes phases to drop her big ultima attack, regrowing the grass and placing the spikes in different positions. I don't know if this is intentional or not, though.

- Also, I noticed that the way Dracus and Holm regenerate magic over time isn't consistent. Holm's is interrupted even if you're casting free primary attacks but Dracus's will ramp up as normal.

- Hover lets you float over gray razor blades in Challenge Styx and the Factory zones.

- While technically not a bug, I think this hidden spot feels a bit unreasonable to access, as you have to be vertically pixel-perfect to find out there's water you can swim through to reach the item inside. Using Hover will auto-align you with the corridor if you happen to have it, but it's weirdly difficult to squeeze in if you don't.

 

 

I suppose that's why the ice is there, but I imagine a first-timer in this room wouldn't know there's water to push against in the first place, so the ice would be misinterpreted as a simple floor hazard.

 

- Also, you can hang the game when trying to form a Fragmented run by setting your seed to 0 0. I noticed regular maps don't allow you to do that, but there's no block in place for fragmented ones.

 

- Putting this one in a spoiler window because it might be a bit nauseating, but when holding down the attack button when you step on these debuff-stacked red thorns, the effect can loop for a considerable amount of time like this.

 

 

- If Maria takes the form of a stationary enemy while standing on a recovery tile, you become stuck and have to F6.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 26 May 2025 - 09:40 PM.

[Cyberventurer]

I'm afraid I got myself another another seed where spells are locked behind each other. While it's still finishable without the missing spells, if I hadn't been playing as Maria, then I think both Flake Shield and Quake would be impossible to obtain because, well:

 

 

The seed also placed Shadow Magnet behind a shadow block check in Lac D'amour, although both Conduit and the elemental canister are accessible so that's *technically* within some logic; I don't know if the item placement takes that into account. I have no checks left that don't require one of those three spells without sequence breaking. Fragmented, no labyrinths banned altogether but:

 

Seed: 1 1, Yuu Rand mode

Hash: EDAB AACA CECA JAAT ACQA C2AAA TBAEG

 

 

 

Probably unrelated but I've never actually done this puzzle legit before. I know there's some kind of elemental orb at the end, but the red cross blocks above and below negate both PK Thunder and Photon. I assume it's a light check because Thunder doesn't break the orb either.

(I've always blinked past the diamond block to cheat it before, but I think Yuu Rand mixed Blink behind what would've been one of the Quake / Flake Shield checks this time)

 

I'm wondering if something about ZC 2.55(.?) is affecting things like this? Since one game bug was already related to it, it sounds more plausible than the quest somehow never creating these situations by chance until one player pulls a hat trick of them several years later.

 

Edit: Came back in the morning to finish the seed and it didn't assign Nightwaves anywhere at all either, which I've never seen happen before.

 

Edit2: Another couple of bugs. One major, another funny/minor.

 

- In Lunar Tower C, if you have both a gold and regular key when you try to unlock the gold barrier (doable with Blink), a regular key is consumed instead and the other gold barriers will remain up forever, preventing access to the solar side's boss. Presumably the purple lock has the same problem, but you can blink into the lunar side's boss room anyway so it's not a problem there.

 

 

- If you reflect or catch Naira's bubbles to use against her, they split into many Wills on impact.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 29 May 2025 - 07:05 AM.

[Russ]

Man, sorry for the late reply, was on a trip and away from my computer for a bit. Let's see.
 

Ah okay, thanks. I'll keep plugging away at them whenever I do a run. Feels like I keep finding the same 4 hints so far, but admittedly I hadn't been paying attention to them before learning they had a meaning so the "pool" I've been exposed to is still small.
 
Right after you hinted at them, I thought I could be sneaky and save my game before grabbing a cursed soul, then quitting out after grabbing one to try "rerolling" them, but it looks like that was planned for in advance because whether or not souls have alternate messages seems based on the number you find, as well as those messages being predetermined at the run's start.

They are predetermined, yeah. It's guranteed to show you all 8 after you first get the achievement, but then it's random after that. FWIW, one is completely unnecessary, and you can get the sense of what you need to do after a few.
 

Edit: Stuff like this is why I don't mind redoing her quest.

Mission accomplished
 

- I kept forgetting to ask if this is a bug or not, but is it intentional that Reikon's bubbling poison still damages you if you're using Float? The spell seems to let you ignore the damage of other floor-emanating traps, but not that.

That one's intentional. In Reikon, since you're guranteed to have float there, Aevin wanted some way of enforcing floor damage still. The bubbling was meant to indicated that it still splashes upwards/there's vapor in the air.
 

- Jandra's boss room seems to switch up on you when she changes phases to drop her big ultima attack, regrowing the grass and placing the spikes in different positions. I don't know if this is intentional or not, though.

Yup. it's intended. Back in original pre-update Yuurei, before power creep took over, it was a big deal even.
 

- Also, I noticed that the way Dracus and Holm regenerate magic over time isn't consistent. Holm's is interrupted even if you're casting free primary attacks but Dracus's will ramp up as normal.

Not fully intentional but I don't think I mind it.
 

- Hover lets you float over gray razor blades in Challenge Styx and the Factory zones.

Now that one is unintentional.
 

- While technically not a bug, I think this hidden spot feels a bit unreasonable to access, as you have to be vertically pixel-perfect to find out there's water you can swim through to reach the item inside. Using Hover will auto-align you with the corridor if you happen to have it, but it's weirdly difficult to squeeze in if you don't.
 

 
I suppose that's why the ice is there, but I imagine a first-timer in this room wouldn't know there's water to push against in the first place, so the ice would be misinterpreted as a simple floor hazard.

There's another way in two rows south, just above the shutter. This room actually is a mirror of the first room of the area.
 

- Also, you can hang the game when trying to form a Fragmented run by setting your seed to 0 0. I noticed regular maps don't allow you to do that, but there's no block in place for fragmented ones.

Whoops...
 

- Putting this one in a spoiler window because it might be a bit nauseating, but when holding down the attack button when you step on these debuff-stacked red thorns, the effect can loop for a considerable amount of time like this.
 

Is it bad this one's kinda funny, if not epilepsy-friendly?
 

- If Maria takes the form of a stationary enemy while standing on a recovery tile, you become stuck and have to F6.

Welp, that's a problem...
 
 

I'm afraid I got myself another another seed where spells are locked behind each other. While it's still finishable without the missing spells, if I hadn't been playing as Maria, then I think both Flake Shield and Quake would be impossible to obtain because, well:
 

 
The seed also placed Shadow Magnet behind a shadow block check in Lac D'amour, although both Conduit and the elemental canister are accessible so that's *technically* within some logic; I don't know if the item placement takes that into account. I have no checks left that don't require one of those three spells without sequence breaking. Fragmented, no labyrinths banned altogether but:
 
Seed: 1 1, Yuu Rand mode
Hash: EDAB AACA CECA JAAT ACQA C2AAA TBAEG

Yeah... I am strongly suspecting the item placement just outright broke a while back and has been placing them logicless, and we just haven't noticed. Or, well, I should say one of the item placement logic arms. Separate branches deal with progression items in Fragmented on an labyrinth-wide level (no putting fire behind an exit you need fire to get through) and screen-specific checks (no putting shadow magnet behind a dark block), and I think the latter must not be working for some reason. Not looking forward to that...
 
 
 

Probably unrelated but I've never actually done this puzzle legit before. I know there's some kind of elemental orb at the end, but the red cross blocks above and below negate both PK Thunder and Photon. I assume it's a light check because Thunder doesn't break the orb either.
(I've always blinked past the diamond block to cheat it before, but I think Yuu Rand mixed Blink behind what would've been one of the Quake / Flake Shield checks this time)

It's a photon check, yeah.
 

I'm wondering if something about ZC 2.55(.?) is affecting things like this? Since one game bug was already related to it, it sounds more plausible than the quest somehow never creating these situations by chance until one player pulls a hat trick of them several years later.

I think it's probably more that I broke something with it somewhere along the line, and the items in Yuurand allow for enough creative spell usage that it wasn't noticed until you came and stress-tested it so thoroughly.
 

Edit: Came back in the morning to finish the seed and it didn't assign Nightwaves anywhere at all either, which I've never seen happen before.

... Man. That worries me. Unless wait. If it's a soul hunt or Ayn Yuurand seed, I think I know what's happening.
 

- In Lunar Tower C, if you have both a gold and regular key when you try to unlock the gold barrier (doable with Blink), a regular key is consumed instead and the other gold barriers will remain up forever, preventing access to the solar side's boss. Presumably the purple lock has the same problem, but you can blink into the lunar side's boss room anyway so it's not a problem there.
 

Oh, this is the same issue you had with the colored locks before. Easy fix at least.
 

- If you reflect or catch Naira's bubbles to use against her, they split into many Wills on impact.

Sword Beam weapons are magical creatures. I don't think I can actually fix this one without reorganizing all enemy weapons in the tile pages, and we're short on tile space and have a bunch of hard-coded tile checks. Man.

[Cyberventurer]

It's guranteed to show you all 8 after you first get the achievement

Which told me I could make a new file, import a password, and then blitz through challenge areas to get them all instead of running across Sadistic, Storyless, and Swiftly ten billion times. and now I have all 8 keywords.

 

Oh no.

 

It's a photon check, yeah.

Repeating just in case (since I buried the lede the first time), but Photon didn't work in that area because the adjacent barrier blocks would instantly destroy the projectile, at least in 2.55.9.

 

One more bug(?) and I think I also caught on to a dev shortcut!

 

Gale's revolving whirlwind barriers can be reflected with Holm's Mirror Shield, which probably isn't a problem by itself, but they appear to root in place and have an indefinite duration when you do so. It's very easy to fill the room with so many bounced tornadoes that the boss has basically nowhere to go without hitting himself. I had to let up after starting to experience slowdown.

 

I also found these hollow spots that I initially thought would have contained an item, but realized I could blink-chain across them into the east screen to grab a key. I think it's meant to be inaccessible during daylight.

[Russ]

Which told me I could make a new file, import a password, and then blitz through challenge areas to get them all instead of running across Sadistic, Storyless, and Swiftly ten billion times. and now I have all 8 keywords.
 
Oh no.

Clever...

Oh no indeed.
 

Repeating just in case (since I buried the lede the first time), but Photon didn't work in that area because the adjacent barrier blocks would instantly destroy the projectile, at least in 2.55.9.

Oh, I missed that. Dumb question, but. Are you holding a direction when you fire it? Sometimes block alls behave differently if you're holding left vs firing straight.
 

Gale's revolving whirlwind barriers can be reflected with Holm's Mirror Shield, which probably isn't a problem by itself, but they appear to root in place and have an indefinite duration when you do so. It's very easy to fill the room with so many bounced tornadoes that the boss has basically nowhere to go without hitting himself. I had to let up after starting to experience slowdown.

Yeah, I know why this happens and fixing it would be... challenging, to say the least. If I built a whole engine around reflecting projectiles, it'd be more doable, but tacked onto the hellish Rude Goldberg script engine that is Yuurand, I think I just gotta cope with it.
 

I also found these hollow spots that I initially thought would have contained an item, but realized I could blink-chain across them into the east screen to grab a key. I think it's meant to be inaccessible during daylight.

Huh. I didn't actually know those were there. That seems like the kind of thing Moosh would hide though. There's some goofy shortcuts in his labyrinths. Wild that I'm still learning new things.

[Cyberventurer]

There's one keyword that scares me. I think I can make an educated-enough guess that:

Swiftly refers to completing a run in under 2 hours. Sadistic, Storyless, etc. are self-explanatory. But what I imagine Safely could be is... wildly difficult. I HOPE it's "only" expecting "take fewer than 75 hits" because my alternative reading to that would be to complete a labyrinth without getting hit. Period.

 

I think it'd be too hand-holdy to just give me the answer but at the very least, am I overshooting the requirements or reading too much into the hints? I remember you saying the final challenge isn't *as* extreme as my "bossless sadistic bad times final boss" joke but my hypothesis sounds frighteningly doable, if aggravating.

 

 

Oh, I missed that. Dumb question, but. Are you holding a direction when you fire it? Sometimes block alls behave differently if you're holding left vs firing straight.

Now that you mention it, I probably was. I always hold a direction before firing the two aiming spells out of habit, and I wouldn't have thought to try casting it stationary. Next time I end up in that area, I'll give it another test for you.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 30 May 2025 - 06:44 PM.

[Deedee]

There's one keyword that scares me. I think I can make an educated-enough guess that:

Swiftly refers to completing a run in under 2 hours. Sadistic, Storyless, etc. are self-explanatory. But what I imagine Safely could be is... wildly difficult. I HOPE it's "only" expecting "take fewer than 75 hits" because my alternative reading to that would be to complete a labyrinth without getting hit. Period.

 

I think it'd be too hand-holdy to just give me the answer but at the very least, am I overshooting the requirements or reading too much into the hints? I remember you saying the final challenge isn't *as* extreme as my "bossless sadistic bad times final boss" joke but my hypothesis sounds frighteningly doable, if aggravating.

Both Swiftly and Safely are more lenient than you're thinking; the actual number attached to Safely is less than the number for Evasion but the thing that number is checking for is more lenient. You would fail the Evasion challenge before failing "Safely" unless you're deliberately trying to fail one before the other.

[Russ]

There's one keyword that scares me. I think I can make an educated-enough guess that:

Swiftly refers to completing a run in under 2 hours. Sadistic, Storyless, etc. are self-explanatory. But what I imagine Safely could be is... wildly difficult. I HOPE it's "only" expecting "take fewer than 75 hits" because my alternative reading to that would be to complete a labyrinth without getting hit. Period.

 
I think it'd be too hand-holdy to just give me the answer but at the very least, am I overshooting the requirements or reading too much into the hints? I remember you saying the final challenge isn't *as* extreme as my "bossless sadistic bad times final boss" joke but my hypothesis sounds frighteningly doable, if aggravating.

Let me address this in... as unspoilery was I can.

Regarding Swiftly (less spoilery)

You're mostly (but not exactly) correct about the goal, but the limit is more lenient

Regarding Safely (mid spoilery)

It's not measuring hits taken.

Regarding Safely (more spoilery, here if you need it but don't feel compelled to click)

It's measuring your death count.

 

[Cyberventurer]

I ended up feeling like I needed to click all three spoilers but thank goodness, because I actually needed to read that.

 

I was this >< close to wondering if I needed a "no hits taken" run and to give up because trial and error on requirements would be too demoralizing on failures. I damn near drove myself bonkers taking on a Tyre + Will boss (it stings to stack buffs on yourself on a limited magic bar just to take a hit less than one second into a fight), and I had already felt a bit discouraged in that half-informed guess run when a sub-1 hour Pall kill didn't do it, after abandoning a lesser-geared sub-half hour run just getting to him. Reikon's surprisingly compact for pulling that off when you know where you're going.

 

I even planned my character around it and everything, heh; Holm for boss projectile denial, as well as his incredible magic regeneration to let me use Halt on every room if needed, or to "spam" Meteor Storm from a distance. I might revisit my character choice now, since the goal is more defined.

[Cyberventurer]

I think this just killed my secret message run. :/ I can't leave Challenge Masquerade without ending up here, and F6 puts me back into the Yuurei map with the same bubbly music playing.

 

 

The only thing I can think of as the cause is that it's the same "use a warp pad too early after loading your game" bug, except this time it was because I activated the orbs to enter the challenge area instead of entering the bad labyrinth through the map teleportation system.

 

I don't know what will happen if I try to continue the run in the wrong labyrinth anyway, if the requirements are still technically completable or not since now my number of accessible bosses is different than what a seed is based around, if I can disqualify myself by killing too many, or if the trigger (should I fulfill them) is even wired to go off here instead of where it's supposed to be.

 

In case the info is necessary: Normal run, sadistic mode, Hitodama map selected, seed is 208 42.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 31 May 2025 - 10:49 AM.

[Cyberventurer]

[Cyberventurer]

Oh I am not beating this boss without F4 hahahahaha.

I'm going to give it my best attempts first, but so far my furthest go was only able to take off barely 20% of the life bar and I doubt I've still seen most of the fight.

 

Edit:

I think I made it to another phase, then the screen flashed red and I got hadoken'd.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 01 June 2025 - 12:07 PM.

[Russ]

For what it's worth, getting to that phase is a milestone. If you abort the run, you'll be given a password to allow you to return back without completing the normal requirements for entering, in case you want to change your character.

[Cyberventurer]

I might need to, as Holm's defense penalty is working against me here. On the other hand, his magic regen is pivotal for me getting out most of my damage without actually getting too close to him, even if I still manage to feel starved of it in between trying to keep up double Enhance buffs, an attack bonus, and Poison rolling at once. Dracus might be a better compromise if I give up using mana on Laser (since his primaries don't interrupt his regen) if I devote it entirely to keeping my speed buff going, but I liked the faux-poetic theme of me starting my Yuurand journey with Vanice and ending it with Holm.

 

I haven't given up yet, though. I'm still pleasantly surprised I even got that far without resorting to pause buffering.

 

The boss's self-healing is massive, and seems to happen entirely before it's possible to end the intermission. Am I correct in thinking it's a way to thematically lengthen the first phase without simply piling more onto the HP bar? I got the sense that the boss's "real" health is determined by the number of projectiles that turn gray instead.

 

Since I was still nervous about the requirements to enter Eden's End, I micromanaged the entire run up to that point such that I got 100% collection and the labyrinth master dead with "0 deaths" in a hair under 1 hour (quit without saving, also done if I felt I spent too much time doing stuff between saves). I initially didn't know what would trigger the final area, so I copied the save file and ended the run, saw it didn't work, reloaded and beat Pall on his hard mode, copied and aborted again, went back and spent another half hour collecting all 8 skulls and killing *those* bosses just in case they counted too, and only then did I think to tap the flower. Played the new area the same way too just in case deaths (or too many) could evict me, though clearing it added another hour. So TECHNICALLY it's currently a deathless 2:30:00~ run as far as the save file knows, but it was anything but in practice!

 

Edit: Oh, I think I needed to have saved my game after getting that far into the fight; since I didn't want to increment the death count, no password for me.

Edit2: Got the password after another 15 attempts.

 

Wait is that password a pun...?

Edited by Cyberventurer, 01 June 2025 - 02:31 PM.