207 replies to this topic

[Hari]

Yeah, the animation itself isn't really the problem, it's mostly the fast sporadic flashing between bright colors that's the problem. I think changing it to just one color but still the same animation would probably be sufficient.

[Cyberventurer]

I feel kinda stuck here in this Yuurand map. As far as I can tell, all of the remaining secrets require either water or shadow magic, and neither seem to be available to me. There's a shadow spell in the rightmost remaining marker on the map, but that's locked behind a water trigger. Selected Will at the start, story mode on, seed 119 142.

 

There's also a teleportation bug I spotted in a previous run. While playing any map other than Yuurand, if you load up a saved game or continue on a screen with a warp platform and hop onto it too quickly, your cursor will be desynced off of your actual map and let you choose warp points on Yuurand anyway. It's a one-way trip if you aren't paying attention and happen to use it.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 30 April 2025 - 04:23 PM.

[Russ]

... Yup. That sure is a logic bug. It looks like all the spells that could get you through there are tied up in a complex web where A is behind B, B is behind C, C is behind D, and D is behind A. With story mode, you could switch to Naiya and use her signature to get past the bubble check... except it looks like Naiya is the one who got kidnapped. Man. Somehow everything came together just wrong to make the seed unwinnable. I'm sorry about that. What I can do is send you a copy of the quest that has Shadow Magnet manually placed at the entrance to Venter Mortis. If you replace your Yuurand.qst with that, you'll be able to finish the run up fine. I'd just swap the files back when the run is over so that Shadow Magnet doesn't always spawn there for you.

 

The teleportation bug is a bit annoying. I think I see why it happens and I should be able to fix it up. It also gives me an opportunity to add in a failsafe to return to the starting screen from the map that Aevin had suggested to avoid potential softlocks like that that arise from bugs. I'll work on those. Thanks for bring it to my attention.

 

I'll PM you a link for the fix right now. Sorry again about that.

[Cyberventurer]

Hahahaha that's actually kinda awesome to hear. Personally I love it when unlocks happen to daisy-chain together and I started to suspect Naiya was my missing link after I posted, but I didn't want to rule out user error. At least I didn't appear to overlook something silly. Thanks for the fix!

[Cyberventurer]

Okay I hate doing this again so soon but:

 

 

I felt around in all of the clouds, Thunder-tested it and all of the adjacent rooms, and Blink's range is one tile short so I can't cut in from the corner. I can't remember which labyrinth this is; something below Reikon at least, and it had a Zelda 1 start screen parody screen in its grassy fields zone. Seed is 77 245.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 02 May 2025 - 03:14 PM.

[Russ]

... I don't even have an explanation for that one. That site is explicitly blocked from float spawning, and yet there it is. That makes me worry the logic is more deeply broken than I thought and has just worked up to this point with dumb luck? Man. I'm really sorry you keep running into these. I just updated the quest file uploaded on the link I PM'd you before to move float to the right side of the screen. I'm really sorry again.

 

I do notice you're on BB and Sylvia's story, so this is at least your fourth run then? Who have you played and what labyrinths have you played on so far?

[Cyberventurer]

Off the top of my head, my first playthrough was with the bonus character I got from testing the codeword I got at the end of Reikon, I THINK on Yuurand. Then I played through the Rivieres as Rhone on Hitodama, the wisps as Will on Yuurand (didn't know about the party reordering mechanic before Naiya was nabbed, which is how I missed the early on-screen Shadow Magnet), Jandra back on Hitodama, skipped ahead to Autimecia on Living, then went back up to BB on Solstice. Runs 2, 3, and 4 were full completions including the secret areas, and I started dipping into them on BB's before posting. And other than the first run, all have been on story mode. I haven't had any softlocks aside from what I've already posted about, and the wrong warp happened just a couple of minutes into a run so I lost basically nothing from that.

 

Edit: All on Relaxed difficulty setting, and I think runs 3 and 4 were on Ayn Yuurand mode, but the rest seeded normally.

 

Thanks again for the quick fix!

 

Edit2: Since I just encountered it, I guess I should also mention that the cutscene that plays the first time I entered the Equinox tier of the tower (after having done all the other bosses) still has enemies populated, so I take damage during dialogue as they run into me.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 02 May 2025 - 05:52 PM.

[Cyberventurer]

I feel bad asking for help so many times but I'm stuck trying to access a remaining screen in the Lifted map.

 

 

I can tell that the two tiles south of me are special because Wind Blade travels under them, but Thunder doesn't reveal anything, leaving me to believe there's a sandy whirlpool I use to dive underneath, like I've done on similar screens.

 

There are a couple of dive spots a few screens over to the left, but neither of them seem to reach here. I'm only missing a final coin so I'm not softlocked this time, but I think I've officially failed this puzzle and I wonder what I overlooked.

[Russ]

This one's kinda tricky, so I hardly fault you for missing it. Three screens to the left, there's actually two whirlpools. If you haven't already, go to the upper right screen of the area and use the vent there to power up with an electric charge, then stand next to the blue device on the screen three left from your screenshot to activate it. That'll lower a block to let you reach a sand whirlpool. From there, you can go right, traveling under the buildings along the top of the screen, to get to the screen you're on and go under the trees and get your final coin. That's incidentally also how to get the item north of here, but as you found out, blink works too for that one.

 

This area, as a side note, was the one area I made for the Lifted Labyrinth. I think it's still the area I'm most proud of from the pool I made. This whole section makes maximum use of screen real estate in a way I don't think I've been able to repeat since.

[Cyberventurer]

Yes, I am a Blink addict. I had forgotten about the electric charge in the upper right of that zone but when Thunder and PK Thunder didn't work on it, I wrote off electricity. Oops.
 
I think I'm almost done with all of Yuurand's content now, and I've enjoyed it a lot. The only quest I feel stumped on is Mirr's request to "bounce like a bouncy ball", which is a situation I don't remember encountering anywhere in all my time playing. I picked up the quest before I encountered my first electric leap pad so I don't think it could be that, and I even tried mashing the Float spell to jiggle up and down really quickly and that wouldn't do it either. What am I supposed to do to solve that one?
 

And a couple of harmless visual bugs I spotted too: Ava's subscreen dialogue has her sprite solid white while talking, and using your custom character as your party follower represents them as a garbled image, kinda like how I remember Zquest objects looking funky if you don't remember to assign them a sprite.

Also since I'm here, I have a story theory/question about Reikon:

IIRC, Flect wanted Holm to kill Mirr to "get stronger" so he could stand up to Vanice. Am I correct in assuming that Mirr is Holm's human attachment and she was trying to trick him becoming a yuurei, in the same way Naiya did it by breaking her mirror and how Vanice inadvertently did it herself when Flect died to save him? I know the game's subscreen dialogue lays it on pretty thick that Mirr is likely Holm's childlike innocence made manifest, and in the bad ending, Holm's clearly gone mad and talking to himself in a corrupted goal to "save everyone" (leaving me to think it's implied Mirr dies at some point), but I guess I'm looking for confirmation that I understood the story properly.

 

Edit: I also reported what I thought was a seed generation issue but it turned out to be a massive user error on my part. I think I got distracted after getting an invalid seed warning and then pressed ahead with a Fragmented Partner run anyway, which is why I ended up finding nothing but Hearts with a character's name tagged to them and a dupe of Wind Blade as my only items. My bad.

 

Edit2: Wait, I figured it out. After I got the error message, I tried another seed number from the main options menu, and the game let me through without checking it. You can replicate this by intentionally creating an invalid seed, then when you're dumped to the main options menu, hitting B when the cursor is over Seed to automatically roll another number. You'll see the map selection below default to Yuurand, but if you start the game from there without changing anything, you'll start in one of the selected maps and only dummy "Heart (Seine)" items appear.

 

You have to hit B to do this. Manually going through the two seed options with A in the final step properly defaults the map to Yuurand.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 08 May 2025 - 08:27 AM.

[Ether]

(Reikon)

Spoiler

Mirr, Flect and Naiya's mirror are conduits; killing/breaking them powers their yuurei up further and makes killing them an even bigger problem. But Holm, Vanice and Naiya were already yuurei anyway.

 

Flect's plan of turning Holm crazy and unkillable isn't very good. Presumably she figured that Holm successfully killing Vanice without the power boost was an even longer shot.

[Russ]

Adding on to what Ether said about plot stuff:

 

Spoiler

Aevin explained to me that yeah, every Yuurei has an object that ties them to their past like, and destroying it, aside from preventing them from being killed (Holm's rules lawyering to kill Vanice aside), makes them go a bit madder by eliminating any connection to humanity. Pall is actually a case there - he destroyed his object, which is why he's locked away in the Forgotten Void. Of course, Pall's whole existence is ambiguously canon as is. I think Aevin's current stance is that the Yuurand stories are non canon, but that Pal does actual exist, but that might change as he continues the series.

 

I think I'm almost done with all of Yuurand's content now, and I've enjoyed it a lot.

Nice! Done with the house conversations then? How many fragmented-exclusive areas have you seen? What's the achievement board look like? Yuurand's big enough that I'm always interested in seeing when people consider it done.

 

The only quest I feel stumped on is Mirr's request to "bounce like a bouncy ball", which is a situation I don't remember encountering anywhere in all my time playing. I picked up the quest before I encountered my first electric leap pad so I don't think it could be that, and I even tried mashing the Float spell to jiggle up and down really quickly and that wouldn't do it either. What am I supposed to do to solve that one?

Have you unlocked Maria yet? Her signature allows her to transform into any enemy in the game. She's the key to that quest.

 

And a couple of harmless visual bugs I spotted too: Ava's subscreen dialogue has her sprite solid white while talking, and using your custom character as your party follower represents them as a garbled image, kinda like how I remember Zquest objects looking funky if you don't remember to assign them a sprite.

Ugh, both those are issues I thought I'd fixed in the past. Ava's is an annoying one caused by characters you haven't unlocked just showing up as silhouettes on the character select screen - the system needs to change her internal sprite back and forth and apparently I'm missing a check somewhere. The custom character's... yeah lemme just look into that one.

 

Edit2: Wait, I figured it out. After I got the error message, I tried another seed number from the main options menu, and the game let me through without checking it. You can replicate this by intentionally creating an invalid seed, then when you're dumped to the main options menu, hitting B when the cursor is over Seed to automatically roll another number. You'll see the map selection below default to Yuurand, but if you start the game from there without changing anything, you'll start in one of the selected maps and only dummy "Heart (Seine)" items appear.

Man, I know exactly why that happens and I'm surprised nobody caught it before. Nice catch, thanks!

[Cyberventurer]

Nice! Done with the house conversations then? How many fragmented-exclusive areas have you seen? What's the achievement board look like? Yuurand's big enough that I'm always interested in seeing when people consider it done.

 

 

This is what I've got so far, and I still have half of the Fragmented zones left to see. Initially I was only going to play for as long as there was story content (even if the characters were unrelated or just had pre-boss dialogue) but as I got deeper into it, I switched to a goal of seeing all of the areas at least once. But now that the achievement square is so filled out, I might see it through to the end.

 

This also meant that on the whole, I avoided characters that didn't have a story mode, so I completely overlooked Maria. Oops. I've only recently started experimenting with the others so I'll be sure to use her next. But aside from 3 quests (Mirr, Emily, and Quinn's), I believe I've seen all of the house dialogue by now. Even if it's all treated as non-canon, I really enjoy how they've made the trilogy characters feel more fleshed out. Jandra's "They were concerned about unimportant things, like food" got a good laugh out of me as well. I've seen the 3 hidden monologues north of the Fragmented warp hub, too.

 

All of my runs have been on Relaxed mode, except for a single Sadistic to knock out the achievement. That run ballooned my average death count of ~30 (half of which due to careless frameskipping to speed up travel) to 370+, 70 of which were me trying to take out Pall's extra hard mode on top of that before I finally had to concede defeat and beat him on "just" Sadistic.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 08 May 2025 - 03:21 PM.

[Russ]

Oh dang, that's some really nice achievement progress! Looks like the remaining ones are mostly the really tough ones (evasion, minimalist, NBD, and reality collapse) or luck based (three final bosses, stalker, Autimecia). I also wanted to say congrats on unlocking Tartaros! Unlike Pall (and like Venser), his statue mode (Total Eclipse) doesn't respect difficulty - he turns it up to hard if the statue is pushed. So for primarily playing on relaxed, that's an impressive win!

 

This also meant that on the whole, I avoided characters that didn't have a story mode, so I completely overlooked Maria.

I mean, it's entirely fair! There's so many story modes that it makes perfect sense to start there.

 

But aside from 3 quests (Mirr, Emily, and Quinn's), I believe I've seen all of the house dialogue by now.

That's also impressive! Emily's is one of the tougher quests cuz one of the areas she wants to see is fragmented exclusive. Out of curiosity, when it came to Autimecia's quest, were you kind to her, or did you trick her?

 

Even if it's all treated as non-canon, I really enjoy how they've made the trilogy characters feel more fleshed out. Jandra's "They were concerned about unimportant things, like food" got a good laugh out of me as well.

I'm really glad to hear. That was our intent with the whole system. Aevin wrote the majority of the dialogue for his characters (that is to say, all the trilogy characters, robots, Eli) in the house (and Jandra's was also one of my favorites), but he did let me write a few of them (Rhone, Hito, Jack) and that was a whole lot of fun.

 

I've seen the 3 hidden monologues north of the Fragmented warp hub, too.

This one was especially fun cuz these were viewable prior to Reikon being released. Drip feeding hints about the plot was a blast.

 

That run ballooned my average death count of ~30 (half of which due to careless frameskipping to speed up travel) to 370+, 70 of which were me trying to take out Pall's extra hard mode on top of that before I finally had to concede defeat and beat him on "just" Sadistic.

Yeah, sadistic does not play around. I find the difficulty curve for it is a bit wonky, with it being REALLY tough at first, then getting a bit simpler as you get a bunch of spells, then getting tough again for the true final boss. Also high five for careless frameskip deaths!

[Cyberventurer]

I told Autimecia the truth about her message because I'm a sap who always gravitates toward the good options in games. Hers is actually a story I'm considering playing a second time on another map because the dialogue was hilarious. "Shh shh, go back into hell now" and gently pushing the final boss back through his portal stuck with me all day. And her boss battle is incredible, too; I think my jaw dropped the first time I saw her break the fourth wall to open my inventory screen and steal a bunch of my spells throughout the fight. Coincidentally, it was on her story where I first encountered her as a boss too.

 

The difficulty being largely upfront was my experience on Sadistic as well, though I half-expected it. I can't remember their names, but I did it on the last story characters I had left, which was maining the guy with cleaning OCD and his laid-back, starseeing friend as the follower. I think that decision ended up being a blessing in disguise because his cheap, indefinite-duration electric shield special was crucial in (relatively) minimizing the number of deaths I would've taken since I could use it to partially stunlock enemies in the early game.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 08 May 2025 - 04:50 PM.