Insane Difficulty: Advent's Adventures in Risen Star - Insane Difficulty

Title says it all, folks. I'm going to be trekking through Risen Star since this morning I stomped Deadbeard and beat Fallen Star, so this thread is going to contain all my misadventures and imminent rage.

First, the intro. Oh my fuck, the intro. Out of my probably 3+ times going through Vanilla, this is the first time I've died on the first series of battles -- and to be honest, I didn't even know there was a special scene if you did.

These battles are pure luck. If you don't get Fume to proc, you're gone. The second battle I got so unlucky with that proc that it gave me more game overs than the entirety of Crossbone Isle and Venus Lighthouse combined. The sheer lack of options is what made it irritating for me, though I'm told what lies ahead is much more difficult.

We shall see!

Advent's Adventures of Advents? Should be... Aventful

ID Bot, on 15 August 2012 - 01:41 PM, said:

lul

Advent, on 15 August 2012 - 02:54 PM, said:

Weird I beat them without them without relying on fume to proc. did you try Heat vein? It is pretty decent for that fight imo.

Alright, Kandorean Temple.. Time to get lash and save those two little bastards stuck in the shrine.

This is where I quickly -- and painfully -- realize that the Priest and Universalist classes given by the White Stone and All Stone respectively, vastly overshadow the Flame and Wind Seer classes, at least for the moment.

First fight in here was a Mimic, which I made the unfortunate mistake of taking on without using either of these classes. I got raped. Hard. The damage was just too much to keep up with via Aura and Zeal, and I die a painful death within the first three turns.

I'll take this opportunity to weigh in on the two new classes in Risen Star.

While they both overshadow the two aforementioned base classes, Priest shines brighter than Universalist simply because of the survivability it gives my party. The ability to revive, buff, and heal everyone at once, not to mention two turns and awesome agility is indispensable. Did I mention Holy? Holy is awesome. It's the most powerful attack I have right now, the trade-off being that it costs roughly 1/5 of Jenna's maximum PP, thereby making it unsustainable when used repeatedly.

Universalist is a really good class in its own right, adding 40 elemental power across the board and giving you viable damage options for both single target and AoE damage from every element. It doesn't give you Holy or healing options like Priest does, but for elemental damage it's amazing.

My only real complaint right now is I feel that -- for the moment, at least -- Felix is lacking in usefulness. He has no PP recovery (I only bothered to buy a Long Sword from Daila, but I'm going back there now since I got 6,000 coins from that Mimic) and at one point I honestly had 0 PP so I couldn't even use Move. I'm sure this will change as I get more Djinni and such, but just something I wanted to mention.

I have to say though, that I do like his new psynergy, the plant-based ones being no exception; Thorn is very nice for reducing agility. I thought Demon Night was kind of cool too, a somewhat nice AoE at this point with a Haunt proc. Grand Saber is a nice addition, serving the same purpose as Growth in battle with 50% of its damage being added to your HP. I'm really liking Poison; I actually killed an enemy with the DoT damage and it doesn't seem too low, which is what I would've thought. Odyssey has always held a special place in my heart ever since Vanilla, so you won't find any complaints there. Rockfall I thought was decent too, if only for the cool animation and another HP restoring offensive psynergy, only this one is AoE.

Anywho, onto the enemies here. Everything was more or less pretty simple, but due to an enemy in here that has Tornado -- which has a PP stealing proc -- I found Felix to have low or downright 0 PP most of the time I was in here. This made him more dead weight than actually useful, sadly, but I'm sure this will change when I get more Djinni, as I mentioned earlier.

Because of this, there was really only one encounter that was kind of annoying to me. It was a group with two Giant Bats -- the things that have Tornado -- and a Wild Wolf. The Wild Wolf has a move called Fatal Fang that, as the name implies, has a death proc on it. It only procced once on me, but I thought it was worth mentioning. What made this encounter so annoying is that I was trying to conserve PP, and the Bats kept fucking getting that proc on Tornado, and the Wolf has the most HP out of anything in here -- almost three times as much as the bats -- the boss and Mimic excluded. I generally just ran from these encounters since you're already level 50 to start with and it usually did me more harm than good. Some of them I did take on, though.

Once I got through the minor puzzles in here (and nabbed that Mysterious Card for later) I finally came face to face with the first boss, three Chestbeaters, though it wasn't anything special and I'm told the first "true" boss I've yet to encounter. The only thing that made me think twice about them honestly is when they buffed their attack it made me worry a little bit, but no one went down at all, so meh. It was rather uneventful.

The Mercury Djinn in here -- Fog -- was decent though. Harder than the boss, to say the least. The psynergy seal from the Froth series of psynergy is a pain in the ass, especially at this stage of the game. I swear that Sheba was sealed for a solid 6-7 turns, and was still sealed at the end of the battle. From one seal. Felix's wore off about 3 turns after it got put on him. Jenna, by the grace of the elements, never got hit with that psynergy seal, because if she did it could have well been game over. Ply Well was a nice addition that added a lot of difficulty to this Djinn, though the fight was still rather straightforward.

More to come when I go save those little shits at the Shrine of the Sea God and continue forth!

Vanish Mantle, on 15 August 2012 - 08:00 PM, said:

I did but it wasn't doing nearly as much damage and it wasn't proccing all that well either. I just found Fume's stun proc to be far more valuable to my survival.

Are you trying the Hard Mode Beta challenge? The Ruffians aren't normally as deadly as you claim they are, in my experience.

M.H.Regulus, on 15 August 2012 - 11:20 PM, said:

No I'm not, and I'm not exaggerating.

In the entirety of Crossbone Isle and Venus Lighthouse I got a total of I think three game overs tops. Those bastards gave me like four or five. If I didn't get that stun proc I got raped because switching to Zeal forced me into sandbagging because since they have two turns, they inflict something like 90-100 damage at the end of my one turn that I just used to heal myself for 110 HP. Poison made it worse.

It should probably be mentioned that you can equip anyone with the White Stone and All Stone, so Felix could if you so choose become a Priest or Universalist. Making Jenna the Priest and Sheba the Universalist is my personal preference since Jenna serves a supportive combat role, similar to Mia in Golden Sun, while Sheba functions similar to Ivan, and is unsurpassed at her immense skill at dying.. and offensive psynergy.

Good read man. I can almost feel your hate for certain things in this game. Buy some Psy Shards when you can it will help with your bat issue.

Dehkan Plateau. I had a far easier time in this place than I did in Kandorean Temple. what with the lack of PP drain. I decided to change my lineup a little bit and instead made Felix into my Universalist. He doesn't have very good PP regen, but Sheba's Psy Storm helps with that.

I have to say, this place was a lot more uneventful with the exception of the Mars Djinn, Cannon. He wasn't difficult really, but still more difficult than the normal mobs here. Sheba got downed once, but other than that it was pretty straightforward. Have Jenna cure or buff, with the occasional Holy, have Sheba use Thunderclap for the damage and possible stun proc, and have Felix use Aqua Strike/Flow/Void.

After that, I headed toward Madra and spotted a cave on the overworld, so I decided to check it out. Indra Cavern.. it's been a while since I played Vanilla, so I thought about checking online to see what was inside, but decided against it. Why spoil the surprise?

Turns out it was a good thing I decided to explore, because it was a small cavern, with only one thing inside: Zagan's summon tablet.

Now, on to Madra. Not much to do here, really.. except come visit Piers and watch him scare a guard shitless. Can't say I blame him, honestly. I think he was too soft on the guy. Anywho, we go outside and.. apparently middle-aged women like Felix. He has "kind eyes".. yes, kind. The kind that you get when you watch your buddies die in Venus Lighthouse and slaughter helpless monsters to farm stat increasing items.

But I digress, she allows us to pass over the Madra Bridge I think it's called (I'm writing this like an hour or so after doing this, so bear with me) into the Osenia Cliffs so that we can actually cross over into Osenia.

Sadly, we cannot help Piers at present, but I believe first we have to find the Elder of Madra, who as it happens, has run off to find the pirates to confirm Piers's innocence. Now we have to find him. Wild goose chase, anyone?

As I play RS I'm looking at an overworld map from GameFAQs just so I don't miss certain things.. such as the Venus Djinn nearby! Joy! I hear that Venus Djinni in Risen Star are like Mercury Djinni 2.0. In case you haven't played through Fallen Star (which you should; Risen Star is designed as a followup to Fallen Star. I don't just mean the story, I mean the nature of fights and whatnot, you'll have a much easier time with if you play Fallen Star first, and it's a really good mod besides), I'll put things into perspective for you.

Mercury Djinn are the most hateful and annoying little sons of bitches ever to walk on Weyard. They are the Spawn of Algus, the sons and daughters the likes of which would make Satan himself seem as an Angel in comparison.

However, the Venus Djinn I find on the overworld, Iron, falls short of this, but then again it is the first Venus Djinni you fight, so I'm left to assume there are much worse Venus Djinni than this one.

One thing I will say about Iron is that it lives up to its namesake and its unleash: It has some unholy defense and resistance going on there. I didn't check the editor for its stats, but seeing as how Felix's jupiter element attacks were doing roughly 60 damage to it, its defenses are pretty high. Even Sheba can barely scratch it with her high jupiter power (Thunderclap doesn't proc either, go figure). Holy, however, with its summon damage formula, shines brighter than the Golden Sun itself in this battle. Holy does not give two shits what your defense is, because of its damage formula; Its damage is fixed. Holy hits this guy for a whopping 365 damage per cast, and thanks to the PP regen equipment I picked up from Madra, Jenna can sustain casting it once per round infinitely.

Now it's time to head over that bridge and the cliffs towards Alhafra. Before that, however.. I have to trek through the Yampi Desert (or Air's Rock, but there's no way I'm touching that hell hole yet), where certain death awaits in the form of Risen Star's first real boss: King Scorpion. To be continued.

Vanish Mantle, on 16 August 2012 - 11:40 AM, said:

Such as Mercury Djinni. Yeah I've been considering that honestly, but with Sheba to serve as Felix's PP battery it's not as much of an issue.

Edit: I kinda forgot to mention the Jupiter Djinn I fought and obtained in the Shrine of the Sea God in between my first and second write-up, so yeah..

Advent, on 16 August 2012 - 12:48 PM, said:

no worries. I may have to go back and buff the first ones a bit since those were made fairly early.

As I'm heading through the Osenia Cliffs to get to the Yampi Desert, I find myself a Pirate's Sword. It's a light blade that's really nice; 2 turns, a really nice unleash, but as a trade off it lowers your defense by 40 points. Despite the unleash rate being 35% I've been unleashing it almost every attack to devastating effect: It does nice damage and as a bonus it has a sleep proc. Dreamtide is now my second most powerful tool at my disposal next to Holy.

Just for the hell of it, I try to skirt the outside of the desert to see why I can't get to Alhafra that way. After running for about a minute, I see why: the damn bridge is out. Reminds me of Vault in Golden Sun when the Kalay bridge is out. So, my dreams of avoiding the King Scorpion crushed, I slowly drag my feet back to the cliffs, and go southeast, then northeast into the Yampi Desert. After going for everything in Fallen Star, I have developed a hatred for deserts. If you have played Fallen Star and gotten to 50, you know why.

Five steps into the desert and I can already see -- or remember, whichever word you want to use -- that Pound is going to play a key role here. Not too far in I find a treasure chest blocked by a poundable shaft (stop giggling you sick bastards). I pound the shaft into the ground and find a Guardian Ring. It's not a.. bad piece of gear, just not one I can in all honesty see myself using. It gives you 20 defense and 100 more HP, but drops your PP by 75 points. I tend to be much more psynergy heavy than just regular attacks, so it's really counter productive for me.

Oh look.. in the next area I find the townspeople of Madra along with the Elder. Oh, what's that? One of you is thirsty? You want water, you say? Well, fuck you. This is my water, and you're not getting any because you won't let Piers out of jail. Felix then proceeds to torture the poor bastard by drinking it in front of him. At least, that's how I envision it.

They tell me I can't get through the desert, however being an Adept, my powers are far beyond that of mere mortals. Knowing this, I go forward onto the next screen where I am greeted by many, many poundable shafts (can someone come up with a less euphamism-ish term for these? Like, seriously) that I suspect are strategically placed. I go to work pounding the many shafts I come across, trying to find a way up to the cliff. When I finally find it after getting a chest with a Psy Shard in it, I find that they were indeed strategically placed, and that I cannot proceed. So, knowing which shafts to pound, I reset this puzzle to try again.

I try again, and seem to solve it.. but I get to a point I can't cross because I pounded the wrong damn shaft. So I decide to scout around and see if I can figure out exactly which shafts I'm supposed to pound.. and I see a Jupiter Djinn. Well, I know that's one of my goals. Time to reset the puzzle.

This time I realize that there really is no puzzle to continue, but the puzzle is only for the Djinn, which I am not willing to pass up. I proceed to pound the ever living fuck out of what I believe to be the correct shafts this time, and proceed to the cliff to hop over them. This time, I get to the Djinn, and proceed to engage it in mortal combat.

This guy is no joke. Out of everything so far, this little guy has given me the most trouble by far. He drains PP like no tomorrow, which is in itself irritating as all hell (Tempest procced and drained away all of Felix's PP two times in a row, neutralizing him completely since he goes before Felix and I had Felix casting on both turns each round). Jenna actually ran low on PP as well for the same reason, while Sheba actually died and stayed dead for around half of the battle because Raise loves to miss when I use it for some reason.

I was hitting him for 300 damage with every Stone Strike, which was really nice, but out of the probably six or seven times I casted Shell (since Sheba died I wanted to get her resistance back up) it only hit Felix one time, and therefore this guy hit Felix like a damn truck. Jupiter being Venus's weakness didn't really help matters, but fortunately being a Universalist gives you a huge HP boost. Felix has over 1,000 HP, and thus, was able to endure the punishment. Without checking the editor I'd have to estimate this guy had upwards of 2,000 HP, which is huge -- way more than anything up to this point has had.

My gut instinct tells me that this is where the game begins to get harder. I would soon find that my instincts were correct.

In the next area, I see something that is so perfect. A Psynergy Stone, at a point where Jenna and Felix both had nearly no PP. Glorious.

Next area, the first thing I hear is the noise of what I will come to recognize in the very near future as death. I then see what death incarnate looks like.. when it's buried underneath the sand. It's deceptive cuteness as it scurries beneath the golden sands is a vain attempt to hide its true nature, which I've heard much about.

I pound the shaft, it scurries to the next area. I give pursuit. This follows for about one or two more times until it retreats to its aureate throne of sand, surrounded by rocks that I can only assume are the skulls of the poor souls that happened to cross the path of this deceptive predator. I steel myself, and walk up to its throne, when my fears are realized.

This is the first real boss battle of Risen Star.

This is death.

This is King Scorpion.

Right off the bat, Jenna takes a whopping hit for half her health, and ends up dead by the end of the round. Getting a taste of his power, I quickly realize his title of King is well earned. However, it's not simply killing power that makes him such a threat; He is the first creature I've fought with three turns per round.

His Majesty absolutely rips through my team. As I revive Jenna, he kills Sheba in that round, then Jenna the next as I'm trying to cast Raise on Sheba. As I speak Felix is staring death in the face with a mere 300 HP, his sister and the charge he has sworn to protect lying dead at his feet.

The next round marks my defeat, as the King attacks twice before Felix, completing the evisceration of my party of Adepts. His den is now my grave, and the skulls of my party will soon join those that surround his throne, trophies to him and a testament to his power.

It is clear that I will have to revise my strategy in order to topple this behemoth of power. I will have my revenge.

To be continued.

Advent, on 16 August 2012 - 03:12 PM, said:

This made me lol so hard. It was like "Oh my-" and then death ensued .

Vanish Mantle, on 16 August 2012 - 03:39 PM, said:

Felix, Jenna, and Sheba are having trouble walking straight. I hope you're proud of yourself.

Advent, on 16 August 2012 - 03:53 PM, said:

You have no idea.

My last post told in great detail my crushing defeat at the.. claws and tail of the Lord of the Desert, King Scorpion.

Each time I fought him I got ripped to shreds, however with each defeat I learned more and refined my attack strategy further. Three times I died. Three times the King stood over my party's lifeless corpses.

But that third time would be his last.

After my first crushing defeat I decided I needed to lower his agility, so I moved the All Stone over to Sheba, making her my Universalist instead of Felix. When the fourth battle started, I thought about a possible flaw in my strategy before, and then looked at his abilities in the editor.

My strategy had been flawed; All of his most-used attacks were Venus elementals, meaning that raising my defense as I had been wouldn't be nearly as effective as raising my resistance. Armed with this nugget of information, I head into battle.

I decide to have Felix release Iron to boost my party's defense once every two rounds. He would start the battle off by casting Briar to lower the King's agility to the point that he took his turns after all of my warriors, then unleash Iron. I had Jenna cast Shell twice to raise everyone's resistance to max (she ended up casting it more than twice, but the idea is the same). Then I would have Sheba cast Aqua Void continuously.

Now, you may ask, why Aqua Void, when the King is weak to Mars? The answer is simple.

Aqua Void has a sleep proc.

I would have her spam Aqua Void until the King was lulled to sleep by the crashing of the waves against his carapace, then switch to Ember Void to cook him alive.

Once I had Felix lower his agility, I would have him set Iron every turn and then release him once more, with the second turn in the round (he has two turns because of the Pirate's Sword) spent attacking, since Dreamtide -- the Pirate's Sword's unleash -- has a sleep proc.

If there was no healing that needed to be done, I simply had Jenna use Holy over and over again. I happened to get a good amount of sleep procs off of Aqua Void, enough to keep the battle under my control. I had to use a Psy Crystal at one point since Jenna ran out of PP (I placed the Guardian Ring on her to make her more tanky, at the cost of 75 PP), but other than that, no items were needed.

I should also mention that though I did keep him asleep a fair amount of time, the King was awake for most of the battle. This was not an easy fight, and my eventual victory that came to me on the crashing tidal wave of Sheba's Aqua Void tasted ever so sweet.

I take solace in the fact that I have now avenged all those poor souls that His Majesty had murdered, probably making the children watch as he slowly killed their parents. As if rewarding me for my valiant effort, his corpse transforms into two items before me: the Burst Ring and Scoop Gem.

The former granting me the power of the King himself, bestowing me with his signature move, Burst Edge. Ironically, he never used this on me, but I'll count my blessings.

The latter of the two, obviously granting me the power of Scoop -- the psynergy that allowed him to force me into his domain in the first place.

With both of these rewards in hand, I walk forward, my head held high, knowing I have done a good deed this day.

And so, I backtrack a few rooms to the same screen the oblivious townspeople are in. Oh, if they only knew the glory I have achieved.. Anyway, I go south of them to the curious pool of sand surrounded by four rocks -- skulls of those His Majesty murdered, really -- and use Scoop in the hopes of finding the remains of these poor souls so that their families can be at peace. This must surely be his burial site. But no, all is not as it appears. It's.. a ladder, one that leads down into a cave and back up to another area north of them on the same screen.

As I go to leave, they spot me. The oblivious sheep that have no idea of what's been going on in this very desert. Oh? You think you can get out of the desert now? No no, I packed that passage back with san... What? No. No! You can't come this way! This is my secret hideout you assholes, get your own pathway! Oh, fine old man. You can come through. But only because you want to help Piers. Poor Piers.

The rest of you can die here for all I care.

On to Alhafra!

Such a good write-up man sooooo good.

Vanish Mantle, on 16 August 2012 - 06:00 PM, said:

Thank ya.