Insane Difficulty: Boss Strategies - Insane Difficulty

ronlyn, on 05 December 2016 - 01:05 PM, said:

Try using only level 1 techs and buffs. If you're a mage team, focus on only one golem at a time. Do NOT use any AoE moves or you risk a triple counterattack

I think THAT fights needs a lot more input then just that tiny piece of "common knowledge" >.>
only thing I can add right now:
a) when they want to physically attack you (which is 95% of the time) and noone is in range for their regular physical attack, they WILL shoot their drill missile and then move towards somebody.

b) try to pile them up during the starting lag before they get off their alpha strike, then start dancing

I finally got them. Best tip? Just choose one of your characters and let them kill the other two: buff that one to the sky (I also manage to debuff their p.attack) and voila. Of course, when only one remains just revive those lacklusters that spend most of the battle taking a dirt nap

ronlyn, on 06 December 2016 - 04:05 PM, said:

Funnily enough, this is exactly how I beat them last time. Except I didn't even bother to revive the others

Well, since no one's talking, I guess it's now my turn:

Bill & Ben: angst aside, just go against them following these basic rules:

- Please: DO NOT USE ANY OFFENSIVE/DEBUFFING MAGIC/ITEM AGAINST THEM

- Choose someone to be your main (aka the one you're controlling) and put some protect earrings on said person so he can be your designed healer (I suggest you also get some item seeds/poto oils to make your life easier)

- Finally, if you have any buff items/spells on your side, use them to make things go faster

Tzenker is really giving me some problems.
She just oneshotted my lvl 19 Gladiator Duran. 239HP @66/57 DEF/MDEF.
I am not sure if this is intended however, since I did not see any damage numbers pop up. She just grabbed me and it said that Duran fell asleep, but instead he simply was reduced to 0HP.

UPDATE:
Now I am SURE something is wrong with that fight.
This time she grabbed my Duran, the game switched me to Hawk, so I knew she was gonna make Duran sleep. I already saw Duran's HP go down to ~116 and immediatly threw a Candy before he even fell. When he fell I briefly saw 999 Damage pop up, but Duran's HP did not go down at all but they didn't get healed by the candy either. I couldn't wake him up nor heal him and the only thing that damaged him were Tzenkers spells. My Hawk and Lise died a bit later, but Duran still layed there sleeping and no spell of Tzenker could reduce him below 1 HP, so basically the game soft locked.

What have you equipped?

Duran had Gladius/LeatherVisor/HardLeather/Vambrace/JewelRing.
IIRC Duran was under the effect of a Matango Oil and was currently casting a diamond saber on himself, which was interrupted by tzenker.
Maybe something with the whole "don't die before your casting finishes" and the sleep status or Tzenkers "picking you up" Animation led to that strange softlock, though that would not explain the 999 damage pop up briefly.

I sadly wasn't smart enough to create a savestate in the soft-locked state, but I can see if I can replicate it and get savestates before and afterwards.

saryakan2, on 10 December 2016 - 04:36 PM, said:

Good, I see nothing suspicious here.

saryakan2, on 10 December 2016 - 04:36 PM, said:

Did you patch over an older version of the hack? In an much older version I accidently set Tzenker's pick up move to death (=999 pop up) instead of sleep. Patching over that would not reset this because sleep was the original value.

Actually, you shouldn't even be able to receive status effects while in casting stance. Let me guess, they made exceptions for Tzenker...?

saryakan2, on 10 December 2016 - 04:36 PM, said:

Probably wouldn't help me anyway; this smells like RNG reliant BS. And for some reason RNG is different whether the debugger is on or not. That drove me crazy while working on chest drop rates....
That is, if I even have an emu can can use that savestate

Praetarius5018, on 11 December 2016 - 02:02 AM, said:

I used a clean unheadered SD3 (J) rom, applied the english patch and then the 0.815 sinofmana.
So no. There still seems to be some rare occasion where she outright "deaths" you.

Quote

Well, I know firsthand that most gamedevelopement work is a constant process of trying to band aid a sieve, especially back then with all the limitations of the tech. <_<

Quote

It very likely is RNG BS. I tried for about an hour to replicate it and couldn't do it. D:


Balancing Feedback aside from any glitches:

At Level 19 it was the first fight I somewhat disliked. Does Tzenker have any counter actions? She regularily seemed to squeeze in 2 Attacks/Spells in a row without me being able to get into the menu between them to throw a candy, sometimes even three. The other 3 Bossfights so far only ever did that when a counter or scripted action was timed badly. (Got wiped by double Diving Attacks on FMH once since his eye broke right after one.)
Being picked up and then picked up again before I could even go into the ring menu despite spamming the button is really frustrating, even if it doesn't do that much damage. This probably is much less frustrating in Coop, since P2 can at least still access the menu while P1 is being thrown around.
She once was even able to use Super Sonic -> ST Airblast -> ST Airblast before I could open the menu (luckily on two different characters so everyone survived).

All in all this was the first fight that felt less "challenging" and more "frustrating" since you are deprived of your actions/control so often and you constantly have to reposition yourself.
I have no Idea how I should beat her without grinding the money for 20 Earth Coins.
I like the idea of factoring in accessibillity to the black market for balancing, but (as the first Boss after gaining BM access) I think this fight should ideally 'require' ~5-8 Coins as support for whenever she is out of reach.
As the fight is right now though it felt like constantly throwing coins was all I could do for 95% of the fight.

I have no Idea how much control over her AI you have, but I'd probably make her less aggressive and bump up her damage a bit to compensate.
I get the theme of her being a fast Wind/Bird Enemy and thus feeling different from the bosses so far and making the battle more about action economy. Still I think having her this aggressive is frustrating because of her pick up/throw move.

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Let's be honest, this game is a buggy mess; I've seen attacks that should have dealt 180 damage deal only 16 because somehow a pointer was shoved into that damage address instead of the damage value
maybe this was a similar case, just here it was a "high value" address, so capped down to 999.

Fixing everything... is down right impossible, and I'll not hunt down every single thing. If it is something easy/obvious, I'll try, but somethings I'll just have to say "nope" to.
Like a UI glitch I got twice versus Mispolm; it seemlingly requires a perfect time of poison ticks, reflection from thorns damage and him casting a spell to trigger - yeah, no thanks.

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

She counters Special Attacks, Projectile Weapons, Earth Magic Items, Non-Earth Magic (Incl. Items) with Lift Up.

counters are one of the things I have a very hard time changing, so just assume they are still 70% like vanilla;
as a reference, original AI notes from DragonScholar:
www.angelfire.com/realm/dragonscholar/files/Seiken3Bosses.txt

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

This would mean she skipped at least 9 steps in her AI.
relevant sequence:
Supersonic
wait/move
Air Blast (all)
Feather or Lift
wait/move
wait/move
Air Blast (all)
wait/move
Feather or Lift
wait/move
Air Blast (one)
Air Blast (one)

and I thought jewel eater skipping individual steps was bad >.<

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

That, and she is a glass cannon; low defense, weak to physical+earth, low HP also. Duran with Diamond Saber would probably kill her in 3 Lv2 techs.

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 04:55 AM, said:

Obviously, not enough.
And it even varies a lot by each boss.
On one side there are "huge" bosses that (sometimes...) follow a linear script, e.g. FMH, Jewel Eater, Tzenker, ..., final bosses. Theoretically, I would know how to change the reaction to counter triggers, what element they counter, what their linear script looks like, even which spells they "know". Theoretically.
For Mispolm and Fiegmund I could easily find and change what spells they know; Giga Flare Fiegmund, yo. But on Genova no dice, can't change it.
On the flipside, I've only been able to edit Genova's wait time in idle time in "wait actions", for everyone else, I couldn't edit it. Targetting of spells was so far fairly consistent. Adding a MT version of a known ST spell was so far doable.
Adding/editing non-spells... not really successful. They have what they have, I can move them to different spots in their script, but that's about it.
The script itself;
at its base it is a sequence of commands, on FMH I could increase the list length, but on some other try I couldn't...
commands could be like:
-wait
-wait or move to a random spot
-cast spell X or spell Y on target(s) Z (all, random one, self)
-always cast spell X on target(s) Z (all, random one, self)
-perform a physical attack
-summon ally of type X
-...

which commands are usable depends on the boss himself.
And they are not copyable/reusable. I can't give Tzenker FMH's spells for example. The game would just crash.
"Add enemy" has usually interesting side effects when it works on unintended bosses.
On the minor side just graphical glitches, up to AI deletion.
For move commands, I've so far NO influence where they go/how long they take.


Zable Fahr - worst thing so far; it is a mess of three entitites that try to coordinate their turns with eachother... so I settled for just a passive effect and that's it.



The rest is "small"-type enemies, they are... random. For Bill/Ben I could change which spells they'd use; adding a new "case" hasn't succeded so far. Exchanging non-spells was more successful here; I couldn't add "new" versions but use dummied out ones, ask Lugar later. It usually goes like:
calculate minimum distance to target:
if "far" perform action 0 (wait almost 0 frames) then action 1 (run there)
if "close" perform action 0 (wait almost 0 frames) then action 2 (walk there)
if "next to me" and "random 1" perform action 3 (punch it)
if "next to me" and "random 2" perform action 4 (punch it in a different way)

what happens if action 0 is changed... ask Golems Mk2

Praetarius5018, on 11 December 2016 - 06:07 AM, said:

That might be where my problem with the fight stemed from. In Vanilla I usually have Angela in my Party and simply bombard Tzenker to death with Diamond Missile which she does not counter. Thus I operated under the assumption it would be the same for EarthCoin. So whenever she started flying out of reach I started peppering her with Coins - no wonder I was constantly getting thrown around. Will refight her with a different strategy then to reevaluate my assessment.

On an Interesting note there was one fight, where I somehow were able to get in my remaining 15 Coins without her countering once. o_O
(And I still lost that round )

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 09:12 AM, said:

Nope, two different things; they don't even share their spell power.
Each has their own entry. In vanilla it just happens to have the same power as the spell but it is not set in stone.

saryakan2, on 11 December 2016 - 09:12 AM, said:

Well, if in doubt, just assume SD3 is broken
that would be the most accurate assumption ever.
Also, counter is afaik just a chance - 100% on some bosses obviously, but not on all.
And for extra confusion, things like Hawk's spells don't count as spells at all.

Fought Genova.
The fight is a complete joke if you stocked up on Water Coins.
Throw 2-3 everytime he spits out shit and you are gonna be done very soon.

Bill and Ben absolutely kick my ass.