Category Archives: PS2

No Suicide This Time

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Whoops, I’ve been falling a bit behind on updates, so these are going to be quick ones…

I finally got around to starting Persona 4, and I think it’ll be my main RPG for now (Drakensang just hasn’t really hooked me enough). It’s a lot like Persona 3, except that you enter the shadow realm through a TV and use cards to summon your personae instead of shooting yourself in the head. Once inside, there are multiple dungeons instead of one large tower, you can control the other party members directly, and they don’t end your run by getting fatigued. Instead, you’re limited by your spell points running out, since they no longer fill up when you return to the entrance.

The random card game at the end of fights is also different, and I think it’s a lot more annoying now, and it’s much harder to get the card you really want. It’s also much harder to sneak up on shadows and get in a first strike.

I’m not too far into the story yet — people are getting sucked into the TV world and then dying on foggy days, and the first few bosses I’ve faced have been the shadow halves of people I then recruited into my group. I’ve fused a few personae, including a Lilim with three elemental attacks, but there’s still a lot of experimenting to go.

A Little Late To The Party

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After EQ, I actually spent most of the day in WoW, though. I finished off most of the quests in Netherstorm, a couple I’d left hanging in Blade’s Edge, and finally headed off to start the Wrath of the Lich King zones in earnest. I’ll focus on Howling Fjord first, where I’m cleaning up some quests around Angmar, but haven’t decided where to go after that.

I was a bit surprised at how much money I made, going from something like 350 gold at the start of the day to nearly 700 at the end. I’m going to need at least 2000 sometime in the near future, for the dual specialization and cold weather flying abilities.

Back To The Coast

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I figured I’d try somewhere new in EQ today, so I headed to the areas of the Buried Sea expansion. Unfortunately it’s a lot smaller than I expected — there are two main zones, but then the rest of them seem to be LDoN-ish mission areas that need a group.

Oh well. I picked up a bunch of tasks in the Barren Coast zone and worked on them for a bit, though they were fairly simple ones that only awarded xp, cash, and faction. A few of them took me into the Buried Sea zone and I hunted there for a while to work on one of them, though the xp wasn’t all that great. I did pick up a bunch of miscellaneous items that might be good for twinks, though.

Best of all though, I managed to see a level 76 named basilisk spawn twice, and just barely beat him both times (first time with my animation, second time with a charmed basilisk), and got both of his drops, including a rather nice 33% haste belt with decent stats. My monk will love that when/if he hits level 68.

Zzzz…

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Nothing exciting in EQ tonight, just more exping in Halls of Honor. I hit level 68 and nearly all of the mobs there turned light blue, but the reduction in xp wasn’t as dramatic as I feared. A full clearing of a basement still gave me 6% of a level, versus the ~7% I was getting the level before. I could conceivably hit level 69 or 70 here, or maybe even 71.

If the boredom doesn’t kill me first… Unfortunately I won’t really get any new spells until I reach 71, since the 66-70 ones are such a pain to get, so I can’t really explore other areas safely for now. Without the new spells, I can’t even charm anything over level 64 anyway (the HoH mobs are mostly 62-63).

I Claim This Land In The Name Of Thunder Bluff

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Back in the Old World of WoW, I did a bunch of exploring and some old quests, gathering ore along the way.

I died a bunch of times, sometimes from falling, sometimes from zealous city guards, and at one point the durability on all of my items was down to zero from having to resurrect at the spirit healer a bunch of times due to inaccessible corpses. But in the end I did manage to get the exploration achievements for both old world continents, and a couple others like the fishing diplomat one.

I only got enough ore to raise blacksmithing seven points, though. I still need another 13 before I can start using all the fel ore and adamantite I have saved up.

And then I got back to Nagrand, finally finishing off most of the quests there. It took a lot longer than expected to do them all, thanks to the large number of them and the zone’s size. Now I’m not sure whether to go to Shadowmoon Valley or Blade’s Edge next…

I Don’t Get All The Girls In RL Either

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I hurried through remaining days in Persona 3, mainly working on finishing off the social links I could and a last few weapon fusions. I maxed out the link with Bebe; I didn’t really want to help him sew a kimono, but his was the only one I had a chance at maxing out, and I had to abandon the links with Mitsuru, Chihiro, and Aigis. I was a total of 19 ranks short, out of about 220 total, but I screwed them up early on by spending too many school days working on non-school links when I could have left those for holidays instead.

With Bebe maxed I could get the Yurlungur persona, and I realized that I was also still missing Masakado, and with them the compendium is now 97% complete, and that’s as far as it’s going this time. I also couldn’t do any more of Elizabeth’s quests, since the only ones left are the joint skill ones, and I can’t get past the current one because I can’t make Metatron.

I popped back into Monad for one last grind session to earn cash, since that carries over to a New Game+, but I’ve saved on the day before the final battle, and that should only take one more day to go through.

Okay, Maybe Now I’m Slightly Overpowered

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I found some lists of good fusions in various forums and FAQs, but most take a lot of time, effort, and money in merging a whole lot of steps together, often requiring low-chance combinations that you have to keep retrying over and over and over. So, I just put together a good Helel one, with Victory Cry and Spell Master.

That’s pretty powerful as it is, though; when I also have the Satan persona around, I can cast the Armageddon spell that does 9999 damage to all enemies, which is good enough to kill them all but one special one (which I can’t fight on the first playthrough anyway). Normally Armageddon has a mana cost equal to your entire mana pool, but Victory Cry replenishes all of my health and mana after each fight, so I can keep casting it in every fight. And Spell Master halves the mana cost, so I could spend some mana out of combat and still be able to cast it in the next fight. So, yeah, I’m pretty much unstoppable now.

I also got tired of farming heart items from Messiah, since I kept getting the same ones, but I did at least get one Omnipotent Orb out of him, which blocks all physical and magic damage. Which isn’t quite full invulnerability since I can still take ‘almighty’ damage, but it’s not like they’re going to get a turn to attack after Armageddon…

Anyway, I could continue futzing around with personas for ages. Tomorrow, I start heading for the endgame in earnest. Oh, and apparently Chidori is alive again now, but has amnesia. Original!

Exploiting Jesus For Protection

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I finished off the last grinding session in Monad, which got my character up to level 93. After that I maxed three social links in quick succession: the photography club, the rival athlete, and Fuuka. Maxing the social links with the girls always seems to wind up in their bedrooms…

Anyways, with that I was now able to fuse more personas, and got the compendium up to 96% complete. That’s about as good as it’s going to get this run, unless I can max out more social links before the end of the game, but that looks unlikely at this point. Most of these personas are still fairly basic, too; I need to redo them properly in order to get better combinations of skills on them, but that’ll take more time and money.

One of the personas I could finally make was Messiah, and I spent a while farming his heart items, since he produces good pieces of armour. And I found it way too amusing that I managed to fuse the Die For Me! skill onto him as part of the preparation for heart piece farming…

The Reaper Better Fear Me

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Back in Persona 3, I farmed Tartarus a bit more for exp and finally got a few of the ice immunity items. With them, and a bunch of healing items picked up at the antique store, I was finally ready to take on The Reaper.

It turned out to be rather anti-climactic, though. I used a strategy found on some forums where I used Thunder Reign to keep him vulnerable to criticals, put crit rate up weapons on everyone else, and told them to knock him down. That caused the Reaper to keep losing his turn getting back up again while we got in the occasional all-out attack. There was one turn where I missed with Thunder Reign, but Akihiko still managed to crit him that turn. I never even had to use a single item in the battle.

And then I realized that I hadn’t actually accepted the request to kill him, so he hadn’t dropped the item I needed. Whoops. I had to do the fight over again, but this time it didn’t go as smoothly since Yukari kept attacking when she should have been healing, as I’d set her to Heal/Support, and that screwed up the attempts to keep him knocked down. By the time she’d stopped doing that, the Reaper was second in the combat order and Thunder Reign wouldn’t help since it would wear off immediately.

After that the battle was just a matter of healing and reviving as necessary (a Megidola would often kill Yukari even at full health, or the occasional light/dark spell would hit), and attacking with high-damage spells (Ragnarok seemed best) when the opportunity arose. I used a handful of items this time (mainly Bead Chains and Balms of Life), but still had plenty left over. There was one annoying stretch near the end of the fight where he kept using AE attack after AE attack though, and I just had to keep wasting Bead Chain after Bead Chain since Yukari was dead at the time.

That opened up Monad, which is another set of floors much like Tartarus, but with tougher enemies. It’s worth it though, since they give out a lot more experience as well, so this is where I’ll be grinding from now on. I went from level 83 to 88 just going through the first few floors, and the rest of the group gained a bunch as well.

I’ll have plenty of time to grind too, since there’s still 18 days left until the final battle.