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Post by Josh Devlin on Mar 16, 2021 16:20:16 GMT -6
"I guess this is as good as it will get. Just be careful!" Josh advised Jae; many games with RPG elements balanced the enemies' difficulty around having the most current equipment. At least they were able to replenish their supply of Angel's Grails, but it did not come cheap; the party had spent nearly every lucre they had. "It looks like there have been some graphical improvements from the original release; this descent looks a lot more smooth and impressive," he noted aloud, admiring how multiple background layers moved at different speeds during the trip down. "Amazing that this even works on 30-year-old hardware."With a loud thud followed by a click, the elevator had reached the bottom of the shaft, letting the party proceed to where Gnome was being held. Except the town music was still playing. Even after three screen transitions into the dungeon, it was still playing. Furthermore, there were no baddies anywhere! "Well, this might be a bit boring of a walk," Josh sighed as he switched over to his side device he was taking notes on. "Sounds like another event flags issue; someone clearly didn't double-check their work."Jae TsukudawAw1woEq{WC: 193} {PC: 16}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Mar 18, 2021 10:59:28 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Mar 20, 2021 17:07:49 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae Tsukuda Nothing happened!All rolls were failed.After passing the first Golden Statue room with a save point, whatever issue that was causing enemies to not load seemed to fix itself. They were out-leveling the party by one or two levels, though. Perhaps Josh was right, and an event flag was not properly cleared? The answer to that question was well above their pay grade. Regardless, everything else seemed to be functioning normally.
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Post by Josh Devlin on Mar 20, 2021 18:34:17 GMT -6
Josh blew right past the save point and found himself, and the rest of the party, trapped in a room with handaxe-throwing goblins and swarms of bats. One of them left Angela confused; with her being AI-controlled, the compromised spellcaster walked straight toward them and began swinging her staff in the exact opposite direction. With three goblins dogpiling her, it did not take long for her to fall. Rather than use an Angel's Grail, Josh thought it better to just defeat all of them using Kevin's strong punches and kicks. It took him a while, mostly due to not having Angela's ability to snipe them one at a time with spells, but he managed to plow through most of the goblins. That left Hawk to take care of the bats swarming them. "Watch out for their confusion," Josh said to Jae as he guided Kevin toward Hawk to assist. "It reverses your controls. And don't use an Angel's Grail - there's a healing point and a save point right past where we went."D6vFv|EyJae Tsukuda {WC: 172} {PC: 17}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Mar 23, 2021 8:39:21 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Mar 29, 2021 22:23:52 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae TsukudaA random event has occurred!Everything seemed to be operating normally for a while, Kevin taking on swaths of goblins and other cave-dwellers with little trouble. The occasional Round Drop was needed to maintain his health, sure, but he was doing well at the job of keeping the rest of the party protected. The two had managed to pick up a couple of levels on the way to the end of the dungeon, and ran into Amp the Blacksmith close to the end. After a brief cutscene, the dwarf agreed to head back to the village, slowly dragging barrels of gunpowder offscreen. Nothing unusual yet. Following this, there was supposed to be another Gold Statue room the two could heal and save at. Instead, the Jewel Eater - a mole-like beast serving as the boss inside the Cleft of the Earth, appeared inside the cramped room! Furthermore, the statue appeared to not be working. The clawed monster appeared to be climbing through the cave walls rather than climbing up the holes on the sides of its normal lair; it was as though it was ignoring the collision of the walls as it popped in and out of view. This would make the already hard battle quite a bit harder!
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Post by Josh Devlin on Mar 29, 2021 22:38:27 GMT -6
As Kevin and Angela gained levels throughout the cave, Josh selected Strength and Intelligence to raise at every opportunity he could. He wasn't a big fan of making well-rounded characters in games like these, especially where offense often mattered more than defense. With each stat ranging from only 1 to 31 in value, every point made a big difference. The encounters started to get easier and faster once the party had made up the level disparity. "Wait, his name is actually Amp?" Josh blurted out when meeting the dwarven blacksmith for the first time. "That has to be a translation mistake." When the boss monster appeared without warning, Josh pulled up Kevin's battle menu and hovered over the healing items. "Uhhhhhhh..." he trailed off, letting the music play while he took notes of the anomaly. "Well, this might be a problem," he continued, using enough healing items to at least fully recover the party before the fight kicked into gear. The giant mole, easily taking up a fifth of the screen, was clipping in and out of the wall, making it impossible to hit when its hitbox was beyond the wall. He patiently waited for the monster to emerge from beyond the wall before smacking it with some of Kevin's martial arts moves. After a few volleys, including some finished by level 1 techs, the mole began countering with some magic of its own, starting with the Defend spell to reduce damage taken from physical attacks. The moment this went up, Josh switched control to Angela, then proceeded to pelt the boss with Holy Ball spells, as rapidly as she could cast them until either the mole was defeated or her magic was depleted. Once it had been struck by a few spells, the mole climbed through the west wall and stood in the center of the small screen, partially blocking the party's movement. Raising its clawed arms, it loosed offensive magic of its own; projectiles shaped like sharp diamonds formed a circle around the boss before homing in on the three party members, dealing quite a bit of Earth-based damage to the entire party. This triggered the game's low health siren for Kevin. While it didn't play long, it was piercing enough to get the players' attention... --- Jae TsukudaWHnVv0LL{WC: 378} {PC: 18}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Apr 5, 2021 9:10:53 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Apr 7, 2021 17:44:46 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae TsukudaA random event has occurred!
In the heat of the battle, things were starting to break down; Kevin's ring menu was inaccessible, and Josh could not target him with a healing item. The game was treating Kevin as dead, despite having a small number of hit points remaining. Hawk's quick blows were landing, at least until they became interrupted by the boss monster's spellcasting. Kevin couldn't be targeted by healing items because he was being interpreted as dead, but he also couldn't be targeted by revival items because he still had hit points remaining. He was in limbo! Hopefully the players would be able to finish the fight down a character...
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Post by Josh Devlin on Apr 7, 2021 19:02:57 GMT -6
When Josh pulled up the battle menu to attempt to heal Kevin, he noticed that the werewolf-monk was unselectable. Shortly after closing the menu, their third character had turned into a ghost! He pulled the battle menu back up to revive Kevin, but the game was not allowing him to use an Angel's Grail at all. "Jae, any idea why I can't heal Kevin? It's like the game thinks he's dead but not dead." With their tank down, Josh pushed for as much damage as quickly as possible, positioning Angela at the bottom of the battleground and firing off Holy Ball spells, one after another, until her supply of mana was depleted fully. While Angela remained immobile, Josh added to his bug report that he discovered a critical bug that left a character in limbo. That one was a high priority and needed to be fixed in the following build. Either way, the battle was all in Hawk's (and Jae's) capable hands now... -- Jae TsukudaSKwPT_vo{WC: 163} {PC: 19}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Apr 9, 2021 2:08:54 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Apr 11, 2021 15:54:55 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae TsukudaA random event has occurred!As Angela's staff struck the final blow on the Jewel Eater, explosion visual and audio effects covered the mole's body. They didn't stop there; they kept spreading, eventually engulfing the entire screen. Just before the screen started to fade to white, the game's visuals froze in a chaotic mess of reds, oranges, and yellows, and the sound was stuck on part of the explosion sample. The controls were completely unresponsive, too! Looked like another serious bug that needed to be fixed in the next build!
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Post by Josh Devlin on Apr 11, 2021 16:04:14 GMT -6
Josh couldn't help but laugh when Angela struck the finishing blow with her staff for a single-digit amount of damage. He had hoped the automatic full-heal at the end of the boss battle would fix the problem with Kevin - this would be a lot of experience for him to miss out on. He couldn't help but laugh again when the explosion animation from the boss being defeated started to spread beyond the screen. When the entire game started to hang, though, it wasn't so funny. Their last save wasn't too far back, but it would still be a bit irritating to retrace his steps to the fight and do it all over again. This might even happen again. As Josh was adding to his lengthy bug report from today's session, he look at the time on the device he was given to do so; it was already mid-to-late afternoon! He set his controller down entirely. "I dunno about you, Jae, but I'd be down for a late lunch about now. Didn't realize we'd been here all morning and afternoon!" With that, he stood up, walked over to the console, and unplugged his controller, his other hand hovering over the power switch. He wanted to make sure his partner wanted to clock out, as well... --- Jae Tsukuda{WC: 214} {PC: 20}
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Post by Jae Tsukuda on Apr 12, 2021 6:47:59 GMT -6
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Post by RaikouRider on Apr 12, 2021 17:27:39 GMT -6
Josh Devlin Jae TsukudaDuty Complete!Your thread has been completed and will now be locked. Josh receives the following: 550 Pen (250 universal + 100 job + 200 events), 18 Rare Candies (10 universal + 3 job + 5 bonus), +1 Dexterity, and +1 Stamina. Jae receives the following: 575 Pen (250 universal + 100 job + 225 events), 18 Rare Candies (10 universal + 3 job + 5 bonus), +1 Dexterity, and +1 Stamina.
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