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By heide, May 10, 2009 11:42 pm

I was plagued by internet issues again today, so I started out by getting back to an offline game — Disgaea 3. Four new chapters centered around Raspberyl had been released recently, so it was as good a time as any to finally do them. They were fairly short though, with only four maps per chapter rather than the 6-7 or so of the main story, and I was able to steamroller through them with my rather overpowered characters. A nice little diversion, but not as substantial as I’d hoped.

I made it into EQ long enough to earn another 13 AAs, and would have gotten the final 30th one in the bank except for getting completely disconnected just as I was working on it. I got dropped just as I was in the middle of looting a nice twink weapon, too. But fortunately my internet access was restored just before I had to head to bed, and when I logged in the weapon was still on my cursor. There was also an angry fire goblin standing right next to me, but he was easily placated and I quickly finished off that 30th AA.

Next stop, level 77.

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By heide, May 6, 2009 7:20 am

I went through the usual motions in EQ yesterday and got another handful of AAs and another rank of the research mastery skill, but what I was really after was some horticulture.

Plants Vs. Zombies is kind of like a tower defense game, though it’s a bit more restrictive in that there are specific lanes that the zombies follow and you have to defend each lane separately by placing plants with various attacks and defenses. And, of course, there are different kinds of zombies with various attacks and weaknesses. Some plants are only usable at night, when you have less ‘sunshine’ to spend, and you can only take a limited set of them into each battle.

So far I’ve made it through the first two chapters, which take place in your front lawn first during the day and then at night, and now I’m in the middle of chapter 3 in the back yard, which adds a pool in the middle and some new plants and zombies to handle it. There are also some minigames at certain points, like zombie bowling, where you launch ‘wall-nut’ plants to try and knock them over as they shuffle towards the house.

It’s fun so far, though it’s a bit more frantic than I expected since you have to react quickly to which zombie types appear in each lane, while collecting falling sunshine drops and trying to develop your ‘economy’ without leaving yourself vulnerable by not building enough attackers in time. It’s trickier than it looks.

I also tried out Puzzle Kingdoms, a more traditional fantasy-based sequel to Puzzle Quest. The focus this time is more strategic though, as you command a group of troops and attack buildings rather than do quests. Combat involves matching by sliding entire rows and columns rather than switching spots, and your goal is to build up attack points for each of your troops that will let them attack and do damage when you’ve finally collected enough.

It’s different enough from the original Puzzle Quest to be interesting, but it feels a bit unfinished. You can do things like garrison troops at buildings you’ve conquered, but there’s no point to it since the enemy never counter-attacks.

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By heide, March 31, 2009 10:55 pm

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).

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By heide, March 24, 2009 11:13 pm

I was out of town for a while, but I still managed to get some gaming in during the trip:

Izuna 2: It’s essentially a roguelike for the DS, similar to Pokemon Mystery Dungeon in the overall ‘feel’ to it but starring a rather excitable young female ninja and her friends instead. It relies heavily on using special items with effects when thrown as you find them, and you’re encouraged to use them often since you have very limited inventory space. Nothing really special so far, but it’s competent enough.

Final Fantasy Tactics: I’d been meaning to get to this one for quite a while now, but I’ve only made it through a handful of battles so far. I don’t know if I’ve screwed up or what, but my characters haven’t really progressed very far, I don’t have any options for improving them yet, and I’m just getting my ass royally kicked in the current battle since the enemies are numerous and much higher level. Kinda stuck for the moment.

Eets: I’ve already played the 360 version, but I also picked up the original PC version a while back. It’s largely the same gameplay, with different levels, but I’ve made it farther into it than I did on the 360. I’ve gotten 100% on the first four areas and at least unlocked all of the others, with new things like the gravity-changing aliens, the marshomech, and appearances by Penny Arcade’s Merch.

Puzzle Quest: Galactrix: Essentially Puzzle Quest in space, but with a new hex grid instead of the old Bejeweled-style grid. The hex grid makes things a bit tougher since I haven’t gotten the hang of seeing how the board will change with each move yet. Hacking leapgates is annoying due to the time limit on them, but I’ve managed to do a handful so far and I’m up to level 8.

Sins Of A Solar Empire: I started off a couple of games teamed up with an AI so that I wasn’t completely on my own. For an RTS that allegedly plays at a slower pace, I still found myself falling behind on various things like choosing research and keeping construction drones busy. I haven’t finished a game yet since I keep feeling like I screwed up too early on and need to start over, so I still have to come up with a decent starting strategy.

EverQuest: I finally got net access at my mother’s place, so I spent a bit of time in EQ as well, mainly making sure my daily xp bonus period didn’t get wasted. All I really did was pick up some more AAs via Halls of Honor again, though, finally maxing out Hastened Gathering and Innate Run Speed, and starting to pick up Doppelganger and Persistent Casting. Hopefully the latter will let me use better hastes on my charmed pets and still be able to get the stuns and recharms off reliably.

I’m getting really tired of HoH, so I’ll probably just bank a handful of more AAs for future use and start concentrating on exploring and leveling again. I also need to start working on the 10th Anniversary quests before they go away…

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By heide, March 12, 2009 5:09 pm

In today’s round of Disgaea 3, I wound up making a “perfect” Baal Sword for Laharl, except that its defense rating is even just slightly better than what the guide said it should be for some reason. Hey, I’ll take it… The sword made a bigger difference than I thought it would, taking his ATK from around 50 million to nearly 88 million, and he now does 1.4 billion damage with his Dark X Slash skill.

That’s the best his equipment can possibly get, and any further improvement will have to come through raising his aptitudes and buying more skill levels. It seems kind of unnecessary now though, now that he can pretty much kill anything in one hit.

Next up for improvement was my own fist fighter character, so I leveled up another Trapazohedron, this time focusing on SPD. Technically I could have just duped more of the ATK ones I’d already made, but SPD helps both attacks and defense for fist users. I managed to make a perfect one this time, duped it a few times, and put them on my fist fighter.

He’s still not as powerful as Laharl, since I hadn’t raised his aptitudes nearly as much (that part is way too tedious) and he doesn’t have his leveled-up rank 40 weapon yet, but he can still do 140 million damage per special attack, up from around 12 million before I made these Trapazohedrons.

With two powerful characters, I could finally take on the Baal fight in Land of Carnage, taking out each pair of guards before they had a chance to attack, and then sacrificing my fist fighter to draw Baal out so Laharl could get in the killing blow.

And…that’s about it. That’s the toughest designed fight in the game. There are still other things that could be tougher, like floor 100 item gods in LoC, or trying to steal the obscenely-powerful magichange weapons, but it’s all random stuff from here on, so this might be where I finally consider Disgaea 3 “finished.” And it took a mere 130 hours, according to the save screen…

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By heide, March 11, 2009 11:33 pm

Tonight was a variety of things, starting off with Crystal Defenders, a Final Fantasy-themed tower defense game just released on XBLA. It looks fairly simple, but it’s harder than it looks, and I haven’t successfully completed a wave yet. That looks like it’s intentional though, as there’s only 6 maps in total, plus a hard variant of each. I’m not sure if it was really worth the money, but it’s still kinda fun.

Next up I was inspired by a forum post to play another Hinterland session. There have been a couple patches since I last played, but nothing revolutionary. I took an Outlaw on long/hardcore, which starts you off in a fame debt that you have to pay off within four days or lose, but that attempt was cut short by some rather hard-hitting monsters instead. I tried again and managed to win that time, though it took about four hours. I really had to be careful since my equipment and town growth was awful for a long time, but in the end things evened out.

And finally I gave Unreal Tournament 3 a whirl. It was cheap and I was curious about modern shooters, but I only had time to play through the tutorial match. There’s a ‘campaign’ mode to it, but I imagine it’ll just be a series of bot matches, much like previous versions and Quake 3… There’s a fast pace to it that I’m not sure I’m comfortable with yet.

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By heide, March 11, 2009 3:39 pm

Back in Disgaea 3, it was time to level it up the Trapezohedron for a rather dramatic improvement in stats. I duped a few of them first, so that I had fresh copies I could level up in different ways, and then tried to follow a guide to creating “perfect” items, which requires passing certain bills early on, double-killing bosses, finding enough level spheres, reverse pirating, etc.

I thought I followed it pretty strictly, but in the end I wound up with stats slightly lower than what the guide said they should be. I think I might have found a level sphere too early, before all of the ATK bills had been passed, so that some level ups didn’t get the full effect. Oh well, it’s only something like a 0.1% difference, so it’s good enough as is.

I then wanted to dupe more of them, of course, and discovered the hard way that someone equipped with one of these is tough to beat. I had to rearrange my equipment and give Laharl the Puppy Paw Stick before I could reliably beat the dropouts. And, in the end, Laharl now has a complete, rarity-matched set of these Traps and his rank 40 weapon, and in total he now has over 50 million ATK and does over 207 million damage with some of his special attacks. The only improvement left for him will be to level up his weapon as well, though that’ll make a smaller difference.

I then finally went back and defeated Baal easily, now that his 47 million HPs wasn’t so intimidating anymore. Baal was also available in the Land of Carnage afterwards, and I took a shot at that, but…one of his guards killed Laharl in one hit. No matter how obscenely powerful you get, the game always has something worse to throw at you…

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By heide, March 10, 2009 5:47 pm

In yet more Disgaea 3 (I’ve really got to do something else with my vacation time so far…) I managed to get a legendary Arcadia, thanks to a little druid trick involving changing the bonus table. I entered its item world and stole the Trapezathingie from the item god, and this will be important since it’ll be the replacement for the Testaments everyone has in their accessory slots right now. I even managed to get a rarity 0 one first try.

I then spent a while looking for more rank 39 items and eventually found the axe I was missing before. I still need a rarity 0 Barefoot X, though. I have a few of them already, but wouldn’t get the rarity match bonus with them. Oh well, I’ll just continue working on the Trapezamabobs and hopefully run into one along the way.

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By heide, March 9, 2009 10:38 pm

I started off in Disgaea 3 today by duping more sprinter specialists, while also working on the class worlds of various story characters. I eventually got enough of them to fill Laharl’s equipment, and with a full set of sprinter-enhanced Testaments, he now has an ATK rating of over 11 million. The number doesn’t even fit in the screen’s field anymore.

I cleared more of the X-Dimension maps, though I had to skip a few since they were too tough, annoying, or needed things I was still a bit weak at, like long-range non-special-based attacks. All I needed was to complete 25 of the 43 total though, and it didn’t take too long, finally unlocking the Land of Carnage.

The Land of Carnage is…well, it’s just like the regular world, really, except that the monsters are much higher level. But higher levels means more xp, and after filling Mao’s equipment with Statisticians, a single round in the LoC version of HoO4 took him from level 1 to 6645. It only took three rounds to get to level 9999. I could probably do it in two if I put statisticians on his weapon as well.

I spent a while repeatedly reincarnating Laharl and getting him back up to level 9999, to maximize his reincarnation stats bonus, but that’s only part of what’s needed. I then spent some time reverse pirating to farm for legendary weapons from green chests, and when you do it in LoC you can find the rank 35-39 weapons. The monsters are extremely tough, often with dozens of millions of HPs, but all you really need to do is run in and smash as many chests as you can before dying.

After a bunch of aborted attempts (you can only reverse pirate items a finite number of times, so there’s no point in saving if you don’t find anything good that run), I eventually wound up with the rank 39 versions of the bow, sword, gun, fists, staff, and spear. I also found a pair of Barefoot X shoes, the best you can get and with a whopping movement bonus of 3, but I’m still missing the rank 39 versions of an axe and an emblem. The emblem will be particularly important, to replace the Testaments I’m using now.

The rank 39 weapons aren’t really important by themselves, though. Instead you have to enter their item world to get the ultimate rank 40 weapon of that type, and I started in on it on the sword I found. I skipped most of the levels, as usual, but it became tougher later on. The monsters started getting to the point where I couldn’t reliably kill them in one hit, so I had to start relying on using martial arts specials to knock them off the exit gate.

Around floor 80 it was getting too tough to continue, so I went back to the regular world and undid all of the Stronger Enemy bills I’d passed earlier. Even with the enemy difficulty back down to normal though, they were still quite difficult and couldn’t be killed in one round. I eventually made it to level 100, where the Item God is, and managed to steal a rarity 0 Baal Sword, the rank 40 sword, from him (though it took a few reloads to get that particular rarity — it’ll be important later on when trying to make a matching set).

But it’s still not over — now I have to do the Baal Sword’s item world, and then reverse pirate it and capture the level sphere all five times, trying to ensure I get the sword to level 200, before it can be considered “finished.” And then repeat that for all of the other weapon types as well. But at least once I’ve done it once for each type, I can then dupe them for other characters that use the same type, and I’ll probably actually do the fist weapon first, since most of my main characters use that.

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By heide, March 8, 2009 9:02 pm

It was another day of duping in Disgaea 3, as I spent a few hours duping mastery residents and statisticians. Despite some slow stretches, I’ve got enough now to fill up one person with statisticians and cover the weapon masteries of my main characters, so I think I’ll stop there for now. Along the way I also remembered to enter the hidden 10th floor portal (opened by clearing all the geos on the 10th floor) and use it to increase the sizes of clubs and get the legendary skills. I only saw the legendary skill trainer once though, so all I have is one of the sword skills so far. I also swapped roles and used Laharl to work on my character’s class world for a bit, getting him the movement and throw range increases.

I tested some of the new mastery specialists out on my personal character, and, the results were rather, um, dramatic:

Just the addition of the Fist Fighter and Guardian specialists were enough to quintuple my ATK rating.

I then filled Laharl up with Statisticians after one round in HoO4, he shot straight from level 1 to 1849. Soon afterwards I used them to level myself, Laharl, and my female ninja all the way up to level 9999 fairly quickly, though still slower than how I’ll be doing it in Land of Carnage…

Speaking of which, it’s almost time to start delving into LoC. I just need to dupe up some more of the dual-specialists to fill out more accessories (I only have enough for one right now) and beat enough of the X-Dimension maps. I started on some of them tonight, beating enough of them to get the Naive Glasses reward (makes you guaranteed to hit), and although they reuse the same chapters and names from the story missions, they’re definitely a lot trickier and tougher. I gave up on them for the night when a stray shot from an enemy archer destroyed the geo block I absolutely needed to complete the map.