[spoilers] Ni no Kuni discussion thread

[Dracos]

Drac's adventures in ni no kuni:
I have encountered the city of Perdidas.  And though I cannot enter, their valley is full of wealth of all kinds.  XP, Gold, and rare resources.

I have farmed this pretty thoroughly.

I suspect I am not supposed to be approaching level 70 before I get the magic stones.  I still haven't gotten everyone to tier 3, but I did get Lumberwood to Tier 3.

Lumberwood got Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies.  That amused me, but was ineffective.  What was effective was that his Defense is now over 500 when the next closest (Megalith) is still under 400 and everyone else is waaaaaaaaay lower.

Bone Baron be making the transition from 'gains no stats' to 'gains some stats'.  Soon he will be at 'gains lots of stats'.

Tonight I think I'll continue plot, just to avoid the 3 monsters melting by being looked at.  The Lemur is now the only given monster still in the party.  Both Drongo and Smitey have been left to languish in the reserves with their mighty tier 3 powers.  They are both still quite badass, but since the game doesn't provide a way to build up others without someone taking the backseat, someone had to sit in idle while everyone passed them by.


Edit: Added spoilers tag, just in case.

[Brian]

Weirdly enough, the lemur's main benefit is his resurrection ability.

[Dracos]

Also, I can totally see how Dinoceros has a 1 hit kill everyone move.

His earsplitter attack right now hits every enemy around perdidas for over 300 damage.  That doesn't have to raise too much more to be just a 1 hit kill on random encounters.  I don't know if it beats Olivers top tier AoE spell, but basically, Oliver will eventually have two:
"Combat Starts."
"Everyone on the enemy side takes outrageous amounts of damage."
"Mop up if necessary."
Options of different Elemental type (Physical and Light).

Clearly this kind of silliness is what axes were built around. They're basically for Physical 'spellcaster' units.  Tinman and Dinoceros both definitely qualify.  The other axe guy I've looked at has been Hoo-ray, and I suspect he'll actually be so high Accuracy that the option is: Hit hard or Crit frequently, which do you want?  But then he's not listed on the high accuracy guys so maybe I'm wrong.

[Brian]

Oliver has two massive AoEs at the end of the game.  Well, three if you count the dark elemental one.

The higher tier ones hit pretty hard, but that's weighed against the fact that they have very long casting animations.  The weaker one has a built-in debuff that doesn't land very often, but casts in slightly less than 1/2 the time, so you can get around 150% to 180% of the 'good' spells by using the weaker and cheaper one twice, in the same frame of time.

[Dracos]

Mega-Overleveling~.

I've finished every quest before Perdidas now.  I'm supposedly about 30 levels overleveled.  I've beaten B-rank and I think I didn't even equip the prize.  It probably should be.

I'm going to probably go get mornstar and recover Mantaray's power (He tiered up to Tier 3:Grimray) before I go challenge A-rank.  Maybe do Oliver's True Power too.  Hoping to solidly beat it before end game and therefore be lined up for challenging the mighty S-Rank silliness.

[Dracos]

Steal actually has a longer animation time than a lot of the AoE high tier spells and attacks.

Since those interrupt it, it's kind of annoying in late game since you can start a steal on the very first moment of combat and still not finish it before a character uses a do tons of damage to everyone skill.  Interrupt or not.

Sure, it can be worked around with tactics, but I think the root problem is really that steal just has twice as long an animation as would make sense.  It really could've done with a very fast action and a long cooldown.  Instead, its cooldown is shorter than its use.

[Dracos]

HUm.

Capture could really do with a brief Invulnerability window.  Just from "Capturable" to when it lands on the ground at least.  I've twice today killed a capturable  with just a split glimpse of the capture heart before it died, long before it managed to get blown back from my attacking horde.

At least the capture rate up merit is super-effective.

[Dracos]

It's kind of neat that there are min damage levels for spell effects.

Pointless really, but neat.

[Brian]

Hmm, I thought the AI was smart enough not to attack capturable monsters.

[Dracos]

There's 2 really valid ways that a captureable monster can get killed without any intent:

1)Player finishes off existing monster, retargets to last monster and hits attack...just as NPC does final attack.  *Wham->Capturable->wham->Dead*  Had this only happen once but I basically got one frame to realize that it happened and the monster was dead before it even got blown away from the monster that struck the final blow.

2)Any monster has an in progress AoE spell prepped before the monster is turned capturable.  I threw the lemur out of the party after he twice accomplished casting a spell right after someone else cast a spell...Just enough for me to see it coming but not enough to do anything about it as he promptly kills the capturable unit.

Basically, any Field effect that's in progress will finish and then kill it on finish.  They're smart enough not to start any of those, but if moves get stacked (2 monsters casting Field effects at the start for instance), it isn't able to cancel the still charging effect and blasts it out even if the only remaining target is captureable.

Or :

3)if someone is casting a damage over time spell while you're attacking a creature.  :\  That can do it too.

I think I have to add a 4th:
If oliver is really STUPID.

*swaps to Esther on a monster he'd been waiting to grab for a while.  Esther starts serenading...

Oliver interrupts with Cloudburst.  Monster is killed before the serenade can finish.

[Dracos]

99  of 100 hidden chests.

WHEEEEEERE IS THE LAST ONE? ;_;

Went all around the world this morning and didn't find it.  Will repeat tonight.

[Dracos]

I thought I saw it before, but I've now seen it enough times to be sure:

The player's monster sometimes ignores new targeting data.  It can detect that you did select a new one and then still go circle a different monster and use it.  Usually canceling and retargeting and reacting solves it, but I'm certain there's a bug there :\

[Dracos]

You know, beyond the food system being a pain, chocolate in it is a mega-pain.  It's probably the most common stat I'd like to raise...but chocolate items 3-5 are all ingredients for chocolate item 6.  Since chocolate 6 is more effective and efficient, I always am waiting on that last next ingredient to make it.

Meanwhile it is still super slow to do anything with.  Oh well :\

[Dracos]

Can Gold Glim Powers be a liability?

It turns out yes.

Characters can get hit mid-gold glim, which both damages and disables the effect.

And any supercharged boss effect that is interrupted by a gold glim will instantly go off on completion, even though it sounds like its already going off in the background.

Most important thing for uberboss?

High crit rate.  Interrupts moves and provides long vulnerable segments.