207 replies to this topic

[Cyberventurer]

It doesn't come up too often but I love being able to solve a puzzle in a likely-unintended way. If you curve your Magic Stream to the left and then shoot Wind Blade right, you can activate both orbs in time without needing Metal Blade. Chaos has been good for this sort of thing too, if I'm still missing one or more of its primary elements by the time I come across it. I think I'm only so-so at using it in combat but I love how flexible it is.

 

 

Also Maria's awesome, and hahaha I love how you even emulate enemy movement quirks with it. That's the kind of effort that I'd think nobody would fault someone for skipping with its implementation, but that extra touch really adds to the ability's "personality". I did notice that playing this character has also added a temporary buff item in the pool; is that taking the place of life orbs? I saw that they seem to go up as I "collect" enemies per life but I'm unsure exactly how this works, or if there's a trade-off to it.

 

Edit: Trying the hard mode version of Vesner and I can kiiinda almost reliably get past phase 1, but I'm being stonewalled by his elemental hands. PK Thunder can take out his water hand but I have no idea what element is strong over thunder. I was testing out all of my spells on a nearby lightning spirit but nothing feels effective against them, and it's exhausting effort to chew through a phase and a half just to begin experimenting with the other one.

 

Edit2: Ugh, I think I need a cheat sheet for the elemental vulnerabilities. I somehow outdamaged the first set of hands and interrupted the one-shot only to get stuck with the wind hand.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 09 May 2025 - 01:49 PM.

[Russ]

It doesn't come up too often but I love being able to solve a puzzle in a likely-unintended way. If you curve your Magic Stream to the left and then shoot Wind Blade right, you can activate both orbs in time without needing Metal Blade. Chaos has been good for this sort of thing too, if I'm still missing one or more of its primary elements by the time I come across it. I think I'm only so-so at using it in combat but I love how flexible it is.

Yeah, the metal blade checks are tons of fun cuz a lot of them have unorthodox solutions. Deedee showed off using Leroy to solve volcano's enhanced metal blade check with just wind blade and that was kind of something.
 

Also Maria's awesome, and hahaha I love how you even emulate enemy movement quirks with it. That's the kind of effort that I'd think nobody would fault someone for skipping with its implementation, but that extra touch really adds to the ability's "personality".

Yah, Moosh spent a LONG time implementing her, and it paid off. Some of the enemy movements crack me up.
 

I did notice that playing this character has also added a temporary buff item in the pool; is that taking the place of life orbs? I saw that they seem to go up as I "collect" enemies per life but I'm unsure exactly how this works, or if there's a trade-off to it.

Okay, so there's potentially two different elements at play here. The booster items only exist in fragmented runs. They're placed if the combination of areas has too many item locations, basically as filler to pad out the pool. Similarly, if too few items exist, a couple of double coins will be placed (though double coins are also placed in partner and soul hunt runs). Separate from that, Maria has a mechanic where each enemy transformation has a set amount of health overlaid on top of her own health. That might be what you're seeing with the health bar.
 

Edit: Trying the hard mode version of Vesner and I can kiiinda almost reliably get past phase 1, but I'm being stonewalled by his elemental hands. PK Thunder can take out his water hand but I have no idea what element is strong over thunder. I was testing out all of my spells on a nearby lightning spirit but nothing feels effective against them, and it's exhausting effort to chew through a phase and a half just to begin experimenting with the other one.

Edit2: Ugh, I think I need a cheat sheet for the elemental vulnerabilities. I somehow outdamaged the first set of hands and interrupted the one-shot only to get stuck with the wind hand.

You're not the first person this has been an issue for. On most difficulties, the elementals in Prismia are only vulnerable to their weaknesses, to teach you the weakness system, but that doesn't happen on relaxed. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake - by trying to make the area easier, we made the boss harder. The elemental system goes like this:

Wind->Earth->Thunder->Water->Fire->Ice->Wind
Light<->Dark

The thunder hand is one of the hardest to take out. Enhanced quake when it stops moving is probably your best bet. The light hand is also tricky. I usually bring in dark conduit to take care of it. Though I'm noticing you have Bastille in your party. His lance explosion is both light and dark, so that could also help. Also, keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to completely break both hands. Each hand has two levels of charge. They drop an mp pickup when the first is broken, and lose their element altogether when the second is. That means you've basically got 4 total "levels" of shield you can remove from Venser for the rainbow attack. While it's definitely easiest to stop the attack when all 4 are down, it's possible to stop it with only two if you hit him with really strong attacks combined with laser for direct damage. Not what I'd recommend, but it can save you in a pinch if you mess up.

[Cyberventurer]

Wind->Earth->Thunder->Water->Fire->Ice->Wind
Light<->Dark

I dropped the run to turn in the Mirr quest and to try knocking out <75 hits, master without bosses, and minimal upgrades in one go (it's a bad idea; I'm doing it on Reikon, which is a worse idea), but I really appreciate this. Thanks!

Though I remember specifically trying earth Conduit on the hand without any luck, so I assumed earth wasn't the answer either. Maybe giving up when I had Bastille as an option wasn't the best idea, but I'm pretty bad at aiming his special in the middle of combat anyway. If I get lucky enough to end up with Venser as a final boss again, hopefully I'll have an easier special to lean on. Maria was super fun but I think I messed something up mid-run with Blink because at a certain point, using it would auto-morph me into her saved form with every teleport and I wouldn't always get to keep the form into the next phase because of it.

 

On another note, School of Stars is a beautiful zone with those background effects.

 

... Also I keep misreading Autimecia's name as Auntie-mecia.

 

Edit: Also I don't know if this is a bug or not but Holm's Mirror Shield doesn't seem to reflect ice projectiles from those one-eyed walker enemies.

Edit2: Master in the Silent Seas is stonewalled by a boss, even in Soul Hunt mode set to 0. The final lock isn't accessible unless the boss in the way is defeated. That achievement's impossible on the Reikon map.

Edit3: lmao I think I bit off more than I could chew by doing these three all at once anyway.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 09 May 2025 - 08:04 PM.

[Russ]

On another note, School of Stars is a beautiful zone with those background effects.

Thanks! This was the final area I made for the quest (and I think the final area made for it period), one I'd had in mind for quite a while. Moosh helped me with the background effects, and I'm really happy with how it all turned out.
 

... Also I keep misreading Autimecia's name as Auntie-mecia.

Okay but I kinda love this.
 

Edit: Also I don't know if this is a bug or not but Holm's Mirror Shield doesn't seem to reflect ice projectiles from those one-eyed walker enemies.

Hrm. It should reflect them, but I'm not surprised that it doesn't. Ice, under the hood, is a ridiculously stupid weapon type cuz of some limitations of the older version of ZC it's built in.
 

Edit2: Master in the Silent Seas is stonewalled by a boss, even in Soul Hunt mode set to 0. The final lock isn't accessible unless the boss in the way is defeated. That achievement's impossible on the Reikon map.

Yeah, sorry, I should've warned you. Living, Hitodama, Reikon, and Lifted all require you to kill a boss to reach the master, so you can't do a no bosses down run on them. The double battle in Solstice can be bypassed by thunder, so you can often but not always do an NBD run there (you can buy a thunder voucher to make sure). Schrodinger has a very goofy sequence break of sorts that lets you skip the double battle for an NBD run.

Edit3: lmao I think I bit off more than I could chew by doing these three all at once anyway.

Yeah, doing them all at once is not advised. The master with no bosses down can be very hard. I might advise using a password to ensure you fight an easier one (like Tyre).

[Cyberventurer]

Yeah, doing them all at once is not advised. The master with no bosses down can be very hard. I might advise using a password to ensure you fight an easier one (like Tyre).

I ran on Soul Hunt so the master didn't get any bonuses, but I did end up fighting a tier 3 Mirr with no reliable way of hitting him before he teleports, unless I get right up in his face. I did buy Chaos for the run and it ended up coming in clutch because I could time its regen effect to keep myself going beyond the 6 life orbs I went in with. It took some getting used to, approaching a boss "backwards" from the usual stick-and-move gameplay but eventually I got the hang of it.

 

On the bright side, that frees up a boss-less master run for me to load up on gear for the next time.

[Cyberventurer]

I think I have another bug to report? Sorry if I'm being a pain about all of this. But I think that the random item spot in a Fragmented run's warp zone has a chance not to spawn, leaving my current go at 99/100 coins. Not that I'm particularly bothered; just reporting it for its own sake. But I believe I've been thorough in scouring all of the zones, as well as using the in-game map catalogue to ensure I haven't missed any marked circles. The warp zone is the only place that shows a 0/1 coin count on the inventory screen.

 

If I haven't missed something, and for some reason it's not the warp zone location, the only other thing I can think of is the Temple of Serpents treasure room, which is unique among all of the screens I've played in it featuring 3 item locations on the same screen, and a double coin spot may have been intended to go there.

 

Seed is 149 87, Fragmented hash:

A899BAATKD019HAAAA

AAGL2CE38R5RV

 

I'm also including the save file for an in-game look, if you're curious. If you do want to check it out, there's no need to update the save for me, since it's not a softlock and I'm not exactly worried over a 50 point completion bonus or something.

https://www.mediafir...uurand.sav/file

[Cyberventurer]

One last post, I think, since other than encountering Autimecia in the normal labyrinth, I've finished the game. I know Yuurand's 7 years old and finished, but maybe sharing these bug reports could help in later projects?

 

These are about Maria's jellyfish she can spawn when using the medium or adult-sized version for her possession ability:

-She spawns hostile variants, rather than allied ones, if her ability is activated and then canceled on a screen that has no enemies on it.

-Her allied jellyfish spawn are susceptible to your Poison spell, which sounds like a negative at first, until you see that the small ones you make have a chance of dropping health or magic refill items anyway.

-Something about the Blink spell interferes with her possession ability, such that teleporting instantly makes her assume your currently-copied monster form. This can combo with the poison oversight to fill a boss room with little guys, then killing them all to somewhat-quickly create a bunch of refill items during battle.

-While, ahem, aggressively taking advantage of game mechanics this way, I also saw that immediately spawning some allied jellyfish in a boss room before the boss activates will causes one of your minions to inherit the boss health bar instead. I don't know if this interferes with the boss itself but since allied jellyfish will auto-die in a few seconds if there aren't any enemies on-screen, I'm guessing no.

-But something about allied jellyfish DOES have a chance to interfere with Pall's final phase, keeping all of his eyeballs immune after his 6 shots are made. This will likely stall the fight for several rounds until it randomly works right again. Maybe the jellyfish get on the list of "RNG decides which eye becomes vulnerable"?

 

And an unrelated thing:

Something about this *specific* Phlegethon challenge room's stone floor will periodically damage you. At first I thought maybe it was hidden or mismarked spikes, but I think it's something about rubbing up against the walls in the middle that do it.

 

Also, sidenote, I'm curious as to the names of the songs for Reikon's City of Grief, Neon Corridor, and Silent Seas zones, if anyone happens to know. I tried poking around myself, and saw that someone compiled a list of tracks used in Reikon on Youtube, but a number of the videos have since been marked hidden, which include those two tracks.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 15 May 2025 - 05:11 PM.

[Russ]

I think I have another bug to report? Sorry if I'm being a pain about all of this. But I think that the random item spot in a Fragmented run's warp zone has a chance not to spawn, leaving my current go at 99/100 coins. Not that I'm particularly bothered; just reporting it for its own sake. But I believe I've been thorough in scouring all of the zones, as well as using the in-game map catalogue to ensure I haven't missed any marked circles. The warp zone is the only place that shows a 0/1 coin count on the inventory screen.

Hrm... This has been a recurring issue, but I thought I'd gone through with a fine-toothed comb and gotten all of them. I'll have to take another look at all the roaming bosses.

One last post, I think, since other than encountering Autimecia in the normal labyrinth, I've finished the game.

Congrats! Wild that you haven't found that one yet. Each doppel you find has a ~1/6400 chance of being her, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you figure how many doppels you see per run x the number of runs you've done, it's crazy it hasn't come up yet.

These are about Maria's jellyfish she can spawn when using the medium or adult-sized version for her possession ability:

While this may technically be a bug... I gotta be honest, this is the kind of exploit I find hilarious. I'm almost leaning towards not fixing it.

-But something about allied jellyfish DOES have a chance to interfere with Pall's final phase, keeping all of his eyeballs immune after his 6 shots are made. This will likely stall the fight for several rounds until it randomly works right again. Maybe the jellyfish get on the list of "RNG decides which eye becomes vulnerable"?

This is the only one that I feel particularly like it might be worth fixing... but it's also kinda funny...

Something about this *specific* Phlegethon challenge room's stone floor will periodically damage you. At first I thought maybe it was hidden or mismarked spikes, but I think it's something about rubbing up against the walls in the middle that do it.

Oh, I bet there's a spike accidentally placed under the block. Should be an easy fix.

Also, sidenote, I'm curious as to the names of the songs for Reikon's Neon Corridor and Silent Seas zones, if anyone happens to know. I tried poking around myself, and saw that someone compiled a list of tracks used in Reikon on Youtube, but a number of the videos have since been marked hidden, which include those two tracks.

I don't immediate remember the source of them, but you could ask Aevin; I'm sure he knows. You can PM him on the forums here, but he's not all that active anymore, so you might have a better chance of joining his Discord server and asking him there.

[Cyberventurer]

Edit: City of Grief had track information in the file that I forgot to check. It's from FF12 - The Forgotten Capital by Hayato Matsuo.

 

Probably a long shot, but is it possible I've been killing or scrolling off the Autimecia "doppelganger" in the normal labyrinth before she reveals herself, skipping over the chance at the achievement? What does the achievement unlock, anyway?

 

I guess I have a few more questions just for the sake of curiosity:

I saw that Tartaros and Venser had alternate costume options that weren't unlocked; since there's no more room on the achievement board to unlock stuff, did those end up being cut content? I also don't think I ever figured out what Venser's Strong Non-Element did, or what Tartaros's directional inputs for Void Hedgemon were.

 

Also I have to confess, I didn't really do those two nightmare modes legit, as much as I tried to. I needed to do some pause buffering to deal with Tartaros's attacks since his debuffs would quickly cause a cascading failure into a wipe and also because I never really figured out how to safely navigate his wavy projectiles, but Venser's hands broke me to the point that I had to resort to using Zelda Classic's F4's frameskip to micromanage my movements to get them down. Those fights were backbreakers, and I couldn't begin to count how many times I got knocked backward into a death rune.

 

Wenter Mortis was a very funny zone to stumble across. The only Fragmented area I was unable to force into my runs ended up being whatever is right above it in the ban list. What was that one like?

 

But all in all, this was an incredibly enjoyable quest and I'm really happy to have played through it.

 

Edit2: Speak of the devil, I FINALLY spotted Autimecia in the normal labyrinth, but I feel this soft-confirms what I thought; I had to let her use her fedora attack on me before I got the achievement. I'm 99% certain I've seen her show up before but I always knew to beeline straight for her and kill her before the attack would complete, after first experiencing her in one of the challenge areas. It's a bummer that I never got the palette swapper until I was done with the game since I would've loved the feature.

 

Edit3: Uh-oh, I think I found another randomization error. I specifically disabled Wenter Mortis from appearing in my next fragmented run (blocked all except the one missing one, even) but this seed gave it to me anyway.

 

Seed is 149 76, partner mode, normal difficulty (if it matters), hash is ELAC2EAAAACHAAADAAT9994, Hitodama, Reikon, and the (1) Fragmented map enabled as the only labyrinths to random together. Use the north exit from the starting zone (Reikon's Lac'damour) and you pop up in Wenter Mortis, despite being disabled.

 

Playing through it, it feels like the randomizer has treated it as a "real" zone with properly-placed items, and not like invalid seeds that I've intentionally experimented with, IE no dummy heart items and more coin colors than just dark ones.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 15 May 2025 - 10:52 PM.

[Russ]

Edit2: Speak of the devil, I FINALLY spotted Autimecia in the normal labyrinth, but I feel this soft-confirms what I thought; I had to let her use her fedora attack on me before I got the achievement. I'm 99% certain I've seen her show up before but I always knew to beeline straight for her and kill her before the attack would complete, after first experiencing her in one of the challenge areas. It's a bummer that I never got the palette swapper until I was done with the game since I would've loved the feature.

Oh, yeah, I can understand why you'd try to kill her. Sorry you didn't get to play with the palette swapper, but congrats on all achievements!

I saw that Tartaros and Venser had alternate costume options that weren't unlocked; since there's no more room on the achievement board to unlock stuff, did those end up being cut content? I also don't think I ever figured out what Venser's Strong Non-Element did, or what Tartaros's directional inputs for Void Hedgemon were.

The costumes are special unlocks for beating them under no bosses down conditions. Basically trophies for doing something really difficulty that we didn't put on the achievement board because actively encouraging people to hurt themselves felt irresponsible. Tartaros's is the bee outfit he appears in at the end of the UC Spirits story (it's a long story, but ultimately a joke based off a certain user who classifies difficult quests as "Type B"), while Venser's is a set of robes based of Baphomet, the final boss of an old game called Eternal Daughter that was a big inspiration for Evan in making the fight.

Tartaros's directional inputs... let's see. He's got the three levels of charging without input (bubble shotgun, flame wheel, and death breath), then I believe he has left->right->down->down->down to drop the spears from the sky on all enemies onscreen, then doing two counterclockwise circles starting from up will release a whirlwind that homes in on enemies. Strong non-element boosts the power of sound wave, magic stream, metal blade, and Venser's orbitors and homing shots. Basically all "standard" damage sources as far as enemy defenses go that aren't wind.

Also I have to confess, I didn't really do those two nightmare modes legit, as much as I tried to. I needed to do some pause buffering to deal with Tartaros's attacks since his debuffs would quickly cause a cascading failure into a wipe and also because I never really figured out how to safely navigate his wavy projectiles, but Venser's hands broke me to the point that I had to resort to using Zelda Classic's F4's frameskip to micromanage my movements to get them down. Those fights were backbreakers, and I couldn't begin to count how many times I got knocked backward into a death rune.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. They're both quite difficult fights. For Tartaros, the way I see most people who struggle with him succeed is to use Tyre, since he can ignore the status effects. Venser is a lot tougher without any obvious cheese character, but doing story mode and playing Caelan with Lucas partner (extra speed, extra defense, and three strong elements to break the hands) or a combination of Wan and one of the other robots (super charge shot for breaking the rainbow attack, cheap enhance, plus either strong metal to drop on top of the body or strong ice for breaking the wind hand) are probably the easiest routes. But even then, he's a legitimately tough fight. I still struggle with him. The death glyph is the bane of my existence and I've been tempted to just remove it from the fight from time to time, but have begrudgingly accepted Evan's wishes for his boss.

Wenter Mortis was a very funny zone to stumble across.

It was born from a stupid joke, but man did it end up being an actually pretty great area.

The only Fragmented area I was unable to force into my runs ended up being whatever is right above it in the ban list. What was that one like?

Oh that one's a fun one. I can explain it, but it's one that's really best experienced yourself. Here, I was able to force a seed to generate it if you want. 156-90 with only Living, Solstice, Lifted, and Fragmented enabled, and the area ban list hash FJAAELAACDAAC. It'll start you in Leadstone, and it doesn't take too long to find the new area.

Edit3: Uh-oh, I think I found another randomization error. I specifically disabled Wenter Mortis from appearing in my next fragmented run (blocked all except the one missing one, even) but this seed gave it to me anyway.

This is a new one... How odd. I'll have to look into it.

[Cyberventurer]

Oh that was a good one, thanks for the seed! Admittedly I wasn't too keen on the other Lunar Towers because I got turned around in them so easily, but the solar/lunar gimmick in this one was nice and straightforward for me. The seed also reminded me that I hadn't actually gotten to explore Tetlaliloc and that I had mistook it for seeing the others, so that was a treat too.

 

Also since I forgot to bring it up before, the rocket zone's gimmick really wowed me the first time I went through it. When you first go inside and you see the screen shake, I thought "oh cute, it's supposed to be lifting off". But going farther up, I didn't expect part of the screen to ACTUALLY detach and drift away, without interrupting the trap gimmicks too. How did you do that? I think I was doing Ava's story at the time I first saw it, so it was also a really nice touch for some of the inventory screen dialogue to poke fun at her for being too eager to go back into space after having recently been rescued from it.

 

But with that, I think I'm finally "100%"-explored this game, outside of the no-bosses Bad Times mode of Venser and Tartaros which I'm fine skipping, since I felt bad enough resorting to pause buffering / frame skipping for them. The baphomet robes does sound interesting, though.

 

It's still impressive how jam-packed the game is with abilities that help open up the labyrinths in different ways; I still think Maria's is my favorite overall, since it double-dipped on the collectathon itch when suddenly most of the enemy roster is a potential ability to try out, like a better Conduit that's not beholden to the order you find coins and making you second-guess picking one up VS holding onto your current element for the purpose of unlocking secrets early. Partner mode ended up being my favorite of the special modes just because of the mix-and-match nature of party members, although Ayn Yuurand got a good chuckle out of me for making a gameplay mode out of a pun. The altered dialogue about leeches made me doubletake as well. But speaking of puns... Barb Bushland, lol.

 

The death glyph is the bane of my existence and I've been tempted to just remove it from the fight from time to time, but have begrudgingly accepted Evan's wishes for his boss.

 

Yeeeaaah that felt a bit much to me. I think it fits in normal mode, because the fight's not THAT hectic after some practice and it doesn't come up that often. But when it's seemingly every second glyph in the challenge mode, when your attention is split on so many moving parts of an extended-duration fight, it felt a bit mean-spirited. But I guess to be a little fair, I was playing as Tartaros when I did it, and the shadow aura around his sprite often concealed enough of the sigil that many times, I didn't even know it was there when it'd kill me. I guess it's an unfortunate tradeoff to his mega-high end-game defense making the periodic health drops go a lot farther in sustaining you, along with his death wave negating the boss's ultimate spell with even minimal hand disruption.

 

Edit: Do no-boss master runs include avoiding the roamers?

Edited by Cyberventurer, 16 May 2025 - 02:15 PM.

[Russ]

Oh that was a good one, thanks for the seed! Admittedly I wasn't too keen on the other Lunar Towers because I got turned around in them so easily, but the solar/lunar gimmick in this one was nice and straightforward for me. The seed also reminded me that I hadn't actually gotten to explore Tetlaliloc and that I had mistook it for seeing the others, so that was a treat too.

Yeah, I was in the same boat. When Mani approached me about a third Lunar Tower, I was initially skeptical, then when she outlined it I was more enthusiastic. Her plan initially didn't have the double battle fakeout, but when she sent me the area, I had to add it for extra fun. Tetlaliloc's also a really fun area. I'm a fan of the mashup of Aztec mythology and space tech.

Also since I forgot to bring it up before, the rocket zone's gimmick really wowed me the first time I went through it. When you first go inside and you see the screen shake, I thought "oh cute, it's supposed to be lifting off". But going farther up, I didn't expect part of the screen to ACTUALLY detach and drift away, without interrupting the trap gimmicks too. How did you do that? I think I was doing Ava's story at the time I first saw it, so it was also a really nice touch for some of the inventory screen dialogue to poke fun at her for being too eager to go back into space after having recently been rescued from it.

Yeah, the whole area is impressive (it's another Moosh area). The screen detatching was done (it looks like at least, as I'm reading over Moosh's script now)with bitmap draws, basically drawing the section of the screen that falls away to a bitmap, then moving the draw location for the bitmap down over the screen. The traps moving was done by just pushing them down a pixel each frame and making sure the no enemies flags were set to keep them bouncing properly as they fell. And yeah, I loved writing all the dialogue for this area, and Ava's dialogue is always a blast to write. She wasn't initially part of Quinn and Kaveri's story, but man, adding her to it was one of the best decisions we made.

But with that, I think I'm finally "100%"-explored this game, outside of the no-bosses Bad Times mode of Venser and Tartaros which I'm fine skipping, since I felt bad enough resorting to pause buffering / frame skipping for them. The baphomet robes does sound interesting, though.

Congrats! Not many people have fully cleared the achievement board, house dialogue, and all areas, so props to you! I don't blame you for not going for those costumes - they're really only there for the clinically insane (I think only Evan and Deedee have unlocked Venser's legitimately). I'm really glad you enjoyed it!

It's still impressive how jam-packed the game is with abilities that help open up the labyrinths in different ways;

This was one of the most fun parts of the quest. Every time we made a new character ability, we'd have to stop and think about potential ways it could break things and how okay with that we were. There's some really goofy ways to clear certain triggers.

Partner mode ended up being my favorite of the special modes just because of the mix-and-match nature of party members,

Yeah, this one seems to be a common take. It is a fun way to get to mess with a lot of characters at once, and some of the combinations of powers are a bit goofy (in a good way).

although Ayn Yuurand got a good chuckle out of me for making a gameplay mode out of a pun.

Yeah, we ended making a lot of Ayn Rand jokes for a while and then it suddenly hit us in a moment of inspiration.

The altered dialogue about leeches made me doubletake as well.

I had probably too much fun writing it. I was worried people would just skip the message altogether and not notice it.

Related to that, have a goofy Ether fanart based on Atlus Shrugged's cover:

For that matter, I should probably just link to the thread that's her master repository for Yuurand and Yuurei trilogy fanart: https://www.purezc.n...showtopic=76708

But speaking of puns... Barb Bushland, lol.

Would you believe it was entirely unintentional? Mani's Swedish, and when she made the area, she had no idea about Barbara Bush. But we had fun with it. Moosh initially called Dubious Dunes "Dubya Dunes", but that was hard vetoed by Aevin.

Yeeeaaah that felt a bit much to me. I think it fits in normal mode, because the fight's not THAT hectic after some practice and it doesn't come up that often. But when it's seemingly every second glyph in the challenge mode, when your attention is split on so many moving parts of an extended-duration fight, it felt a bit mean-spirited. But I guess to be a little fair, I was playing as Tartaros when I did it, and the shadow aura around his sprite often concealed enough of the sigil that many times, I didn't even know it was there when it'd kill me. I guess it's an unfortunate tradeoff to his mega-high end-game defense making the periodic health drops go a lot farther in sustaining you, along with his death wave negating the boss's ultimate spell with even minimal hand disruption.

Oh yeah, Tartaros definitely has a worse time with them. I believe they only show up when you're under 1/3 max health, but with Tartaros's mechanic, he's basically always at that point.

Edit: Do no-boss master runs include avoiding the roamers?

No, roamer is fine to kill. It's only the main bosses that display a message about the master being weakened that matter.

[Cyberventurer]

DUDE

IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BAD TIMES MODE TO UNLOCK THE COSTUMES

 

I did no bosses regular relaxed and still got Tartaros's bee and without having to pause buffer. I think I can get Venser's if this is "all" I need to do.

 

Okay so maybe I'm not quite done with the game yet.

 

Edit: Do seeds factor in item vouchers when placing items? Because I think this would've been blocked by acquiring Chaos otherwise.

 

 

Seed is 208 125.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 16 May 2025 - 05:38 PM.

[Russ]

DUDE
IT DOESN'T HAVE TO BE BAD TIMES MODE TO UNLOCK THE COSTUMES
 
I did no bosses regular relaxed and still got Tartaros's bee and without having to pause buffer. I think I can get Venser's if this is "all" I need to do.
 
Okay so maybe I'm not quite done with the game yet.

Oh, right, sorry, should have clarified that. Now with that said, Venser's is still quite difficult even without pushing the statue, fair warning.
 

Edit: Do seeds factor in item vouchers when placing items? Because I think this would've been blocked by acquiring Chaos otherwise.
 

 
Seed is 208 125.

I have this awful sinking feeling the standard item placement logic is just actually broken and I'm afraid to check.

[Cyberventurer]

And without intentional pause buffering! (Only pausing happened for weapon switching when the hands would fall idle)

I know technically it's not legit because my unlocking Venser wasn't legit in the first place, but I still got him down. Even with having a better idea of how his fire and ice hands attacked due to the previous kill's F4 method, it still took me a little over 30 attempts before enough of it came together.

 

Now I'm done-done. Thanks for replying to all of my inane posts along the way. It was fun to read some behind-the-scenes dev commentary as I went through the game.

Edited by Cyberventurer, 16 May 2025 - 10:34 PM.