Dark Blast Update Infodump

Just gonna note down whatever useful stuff people have found out about this update. It’ll include info on new gear and Dark Blasts in particular. If any new info is dug up later I’ll probably add it to this post.

Detonation Weapon Series

These new collection files are primarily progressed through Buster Quests. You can only earn credit for Omega Hunar’s part through the Endless Belligerence Emergency Quest, which for now is also the only place in the game he spawns anyway.

Special Abilty Factor

Its SAF is Modulator, so even if you don’t plan on actually using these weapons it may be worth grabbing the files just for some useful fodder items down the road.

Weapon Potential:

The potential works a little bit like the old Ares one in that its power scales based on your Dark Blast gauge (instead of Photon Blast). It also boosts the rate at which you build your Dark Blast gauge and increases the amount of time you can use it for.

• Lv1: Increases damage depending on your Dark Blast gauge (up to 15%), increases Dark Blast gauge accumulation rate by 10% and increases transformation time by 5 seconds.
• Lv2: Increases damage depending on your Dark Blast gauge (up to 16%), increases Dark Blast gauge accumulation rate by 15% and increases transformation time by 6 seconds.
• Lv3: Increases damage depending on your Dark Blast gauge (up to 17%), increases Dark Blast gauge accumulation rate by 20% and increases transformation time by 7 seconds.

It seems that the damage bonus will persist after you’ve activated Dark Blast, which considering it’s not far behind Qliphad in terms of attack power actually makes these fairly decent weapons as at full power they have a 17% damage mod versus Qliphad’s 14%.

What I don’t know yet is what resets the potential’s power, such as:

• Does it persist through weapon swap?
• Does it persist through area change?

If the answer to both of these is yes then these are actually good weapons even if they do take some warming up to get to full power. Outside of low-attack weapons these ought to be competitive with Clifford weapons in overall performance (at max power, of course).

For now it only covers a few weapon types, but it feels like a safe bet that we will be getting other Dark Blast types at a later point. The weapons released so far are based on the current Dark Blast (Elder type) in appearance, so the others may be based on their respective Falz types as well. There are 18 weapon types in the game, so 13 more to cover which could easily be spread out among the remaining three Falz types.

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Alta Barrel

A brand new weapon that has a low chance of dropping from Advance Quests included in the current Arks Boost Road (which is Skyscape, Ruins and Facility). It’s essentially the Twin Machinegun version of Altacray, complete with the same Hero-focused potential.

Weapon Potential:

• Lv1: Boosts power by 5%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge
• Lv2: Boosts power by 7%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge
• Lv3: Boosts power by 10%, additional 12% power increase for 10s after a successful Hero Dodge

Considering it has slightly more attack than Qliphad, this is a pretty powerful weapon if you’re able to pull off a lot of Hero counters in a given fight.

Special Ability Factor:

Its SAF is Spirita VI (+7 PP), the same as Altacray.

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Elder Pain: Omega

The brand new 14-star sword which you’ll probably never see. However, unlike Elder Pain in its day, which was more a gimmick than anything, this weapon is actually solidly practical. Also, unlike Elder Pain, you don’t need to break Omega Hunar’s sword to get a chance of it dropping.

Its Special Ability Factor is Ability IV, like the other 14*s so far.

Its potential is the classic Vampiric Blade, which recovers 4/5/6% of damage dealt in health. That alone isn’t what makes it practical; it’s the massive 2,201 S-atk the weapon boasts at +35! This is 221 attack higher than Demonia Saber and 224 higher than Akatsuki, the other 14-star swords.

Now the thing with S-atk that high on a weapon is it benefits from elemental bonuses much more than lower attack weapons. For example, Qliphad Calibur at 60% element gains an additional effective 997 S-atk before applying modifiers (element only includes base attack, it doesn’t include affixes so Antithesis Trainer has no effect here) where as Omega gains a whopping 1320.

Below is a chart made with the damage calculator (with credit to RoboArks for the original chart. I’m trusting their numbers on this as it worked out similarly to calculations done by a friend).

So it slightly beats out Qliphad but also has the benefit of making you near immortal while using it. I’d call that a practical weapon! So unless you’re lucky enough to be sporting a Demonia or Akatsuki then Elder Pain: Omega is definitely worth using if you manage to get one.

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Weaponoid Potentials

A few old weapons gained Weaponoid potentials with this update; Ideal Scissors, Astral Riser NT and Avenger NT.

Ideal Scissors

• Lv1: Increase damage to bosses by 18% and attack PP recovery by ?%
• Lv2: Increase damage to bosses by 19% and attack PP recovery by ?%
• Lv3: Increase damage to bosses by 20% and attack PP recovery by 20%

Remember Ideal weapons? I do, I have fond memories of Challenge Mode at its prime.

Anyway, the new potential makes it a sort of decent weapon if you don’t have a Zeinesis or Qliphad but it’s weaker than them overall mostly due to Ideal weapons having the lowest attack power of all 13*s. The damage comparison works out to something like this (with thanks to NextTime000 for running these numbers). So it’s helpful if you don’t have a 13* Wired Lance already and have the weaponoid stones to spare.

Astral Riser NT

• Lv3: Increases damage dealt by 13% and reduces PP consumption by 13% while special bullets are loaded

Not at all convinced by this potential, seems kind of garbage.

Avenger NT

• Lv1: Increase damage on non-weak points by 22%
• Lv2: Increase damage on non-weak points by 24%
• Lv3: Increase damage on non-weak points by 27%

This potential is sort of curious but perhaps not that useful on a Rifle. For the most part, Rifles tend to hit weak-points on enemies but I mean if you’re against enemies that don’t have weak-points and you also don’t have Weak-bullet loaded that is an awfully meaty damage boost (since the rebalance, a weakbulleted hitbox counts as a weak point regardless of the resulting damage modifier). It just might be too awkward to satisfy its condition with this particular weapon type.

Incidentally, Avenger NT is the only new weapon out of this batch and much like Yamigarasu NT its Special Ability Factor is Soul Receptor. So even if you don’t plan on using it, it might be worth getting to help with affixing future weapons.

Bluesy Requiem NT

• Increases power and PP recovery for every successful Just-Guard. Bonus is lost when you take any damage.
  • Lv1: ?% Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of ?%
  • Lv2:  % Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of ?%
  • Lv3: 5% Power and PP recovery for every Just Guard, max of 15%

An interesting potential mechanically but one that has to be maintained actively. On the plus side, if the enemy has lots of multi-hitting attacks you could actually max this potential out quickly though Charge Parry as each hit counts as a Just-Guard. Overall, due to Bluesy NT’s low base attack even if you keep the potential up this weapon is a little wimpy compared to other options.

Like Avenger NT, its Special Ability Factor is Soul Receptor.

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Dark Blast: Elder

I’m not going to make a comprehensive guide on Dark Blasts as you can already find that over on Bumped here, but I can go over some quirks about it that might not be immediately obvious.

Overall

It functions essentially like Nanoblasts did in Phantasy Star Universe, only anyone can use them and you’re limited to using it only once per quest. Unlike Nanoblasts however, if you’re defeated while transformed you just lose the transformation instead of dying.

To unlock it for your characters, either clear Episode 5 Chapter 2 or clear the Endless Belligerence quest on Super Hard or above at least once. This unlocks it for your account.

EXP Gain

Dark Blasts gain a portion of your EXP in a similar way that Skill Rings do. They will only gain EXP from enemy kills which is totaled up and added to your Dark Blast’s total EXP at the end of a quest. As such, don’t bother chugging EXP tickets.

The proportion of your EXP gained depends largely on what enemies you’re killing. It’s 10% for most enemies in the game while it’s 30% from Aquatic Darkers (of all types, aside Phantom), Dark Falz and any enemy in Buster Quests taking place in the Verun Empire.

This means aside catching Endless Belligerence or any Falz raid the most effective way to level up this particular Dark Blast is by hitting up the Ruins Advance Quest on either difficulty.

Dark Blast Gauge

So how do you progress the gauge? The short of it is “no one seems to know”.

The gauge seems to have a different rule set to the likes of Compounds, Hero Gear and Photon Blasts. As far as is known, it’s based on the amount of damage you do to enemies (but it may not be relative to their max HP as is the case with other gauges like this).

It also seems like there’s a timer that has to expire before you’re allowed to make progress, as often you might see your Photon Blast is full before your Dark Blast even has its first bar.

Ultimately, this gauge isn’t actually that well understood for now. Hopefully it’s worked out soon and I’ll replace this section when we know for sure how it works.

Other Tidbits

Exp you earn will go into an account-wide EXP pool. Note that this the total amount of EXP that each of your characters gets to spend on their respective Dark Blast skill trees, so you won’t have to earn more to cover your alts. The displayed amount of EXP in the Dark Blast skill menu is that particular character’s unspent EXP, not your total.

You’ll need a total of 225,555,190 Exp in order to max out every Dark Blast skill, which works out to earning 2.25Bn-751M real exp from enemies and quest clears depending on which enemies you kill. Swiki works this out to be the equivalent of getting 9 classes to lv80 + another class to lv34 to 27 classes to lv80 and one class to level 65. Considering there’s a chance that other Dark Blast types might be released in the future these seem pretty darn insane requirements, but at least they had the mercy to make this account-wide.

Thoughts

It’s nifty but it feels kind of weak compared to my regular attacks, at least in the early levels. Between that and only having a minute every quest to learn how to play it has made exploring this feature awkward. It gets some crazy air with its double-jump however and between its jump-kick and Physical Dash it can cover an enormous amount of ground quickly.

My early impressions are that Tyrant Strike is your gap-closer with pretty respectable AoE to boot. Infinity Rush is for wailing on single targets, like bosses and raidboss weakpoints (particularly if they’re static as its DPS raises over time). Punishment Knuckle is a pretty good frontal AoE attack useful for dealing heavy damage to piles of enemies at once. So I mean, in terms of Photon Arts it covers what it needs to and as its Photon Arts keep you airborne combined with its incredible jumping power aerial targets shouldn’t be an issue either.

One thing to be aware of is even though it has a lot of HP, Dark Blast: Elder is surprisingly fragile, with a meager amount of defense stats. It really can’t take a lot of punishment, so be wary about going gun-ho against particularly dangerous enemy attacks (such as Omega Hunar’s ground slam attacks) and from going too deep into a pile of enemies.

Towards The Future

As I said earlier, it seems pretty obvious to me that they’re going to release additional transformation types in the future. We have 4 Falz types afterall, the 4 kingdoms of Omega are all based on the different Falz types and so much of the current Dark Blast’s aesthetics, moves and mechanics are based on one of the Falzes.

That said, there’s been no official confirmation that that’s the plan and so far all we’ve had is that Dark Blast colours will be customizable at a later date. There’s also nothing in the data that supports additional blast types yet, aside inferring it via the internal name specifically referencing Elder.

Whatever their plans are, they’re keeping their lips sealed for now so we can only speculate.

Deus Esca Infodump

All I’m gonna do in this post is collect data related to new content that arrived with this update. A lot of this data is still being discovered, so expect the post to change in the coming days and possibly weeks.

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Phantom God of Creation

The raid functions much like the Yamato raid; you’ll need to carve your way through a large pile of regular enemies before you get to the big boss itself. You’ll also come up against two different forms of Deus Hunas along the way. I’m just gonna summarise what happens at each part of the raid; this isn’t a guide for the best tactics to defeat him quickly.

Deus Hunas

Beware of his lightning attack; it functions much like Falz Hunar’s ground slam in that it spawns multiple projectiles at once. If you’re in the center of them, unless you time a dodge or guard well you\ll be instantly incapacitated.

He doesn’t have a lot of HP so this part should be over quickly.

Esca Angel Squad and Vines

Not much to say about this section. Don’t run into the vines and kill anything that stands in your way.

Deus Anges

It’s Hunas again but with a hat and a new selection of attacks. Most of them aren’t terribly noteworthy though, so just hit him until a cutscene plays.

One attack to watch for is when he teleports into the center of the arena. The ground will start glowing; you’ll want to move to an area of the arena that isn’t glowing! These are typically at the edges closest or furthest away from him but the attack is also fairly easy to dodge with a step or mirage or any abusable i-frames.

Deus Esca: Part 1

Damage snake-heads until their heads are covered in bramble at which point they’re immune to damage. Once all heads are immune to damage, they’ll begin charging an orb. Attack the orbs to stun the heads. Once all heads are stunned, you can jump onto them and traverse them to attack Deus Esca’s core.

Unlike a certain anime, you can’t fall off this road and end up in hell but the boss will occasionally fail to create this road properly leaving you stuck on the main platform…

Beware, once Deus Esca recovers he’ll split the arena in two; if you’re near the attack use i-frames or you’ll take around 3000 damage.

If you see Deus Esca holding hiw weapon up like this don’t be where the idiot pictured is standing.

This attack splits the MPA up; each side will have to work on their own snake heads. Once they’re down you can attack the core again

Deus Esca: Part 2

In this phase Deus Esca will start to use more aggressive attacks on the arena itself. However his core is permanently exposed, so attack it whenever he’s between attacks.

Deus Esca: Part 3: The DPS Check

Deus Esca will blow up the moon, which is rather rude of him. This signals the final part of the raid which starts a 5-minute countdown. This is a DPS check; you\ll need to defeat Zephyros before this timer expires or else you’ll immediately fail!

Break the snake heads first to make him use attacks similar to the 2nd phase, then hit his core as hard as you can when you can to bring this god to its knees.

At some point you’ll deal enough damage to make the boss pass out on the arena. This is actually a secondary DPS race in that you’ll need to defeat the boss before it gets up again or else it’ll use a move that kills everyone in the MPA.

Rewards

Clearing the raid gives you shots at 14* weapons, a 13* Rappy and any Zeinesis item. For the most part though you’ll be getting Nox weapons and 10* trash.

The boss drops special exchange items named Qliphad Fuses. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we’re back to the stone-age. The boss typically drops 1-3 of them so you’re looking at an average of 60 runs to be able to afford the 120 Fuse fee for Qliphad exchanges or to unlock a potential. 90 if you want a full set of Qliphad units. That’s pretty rough…

Deus Factor

The S-Atk factor finally arrives. It’s otherwise exactly the same as the other two factors.

It provides 20 S-atk, 10 R-atk, 10 T-atk, 20 HP and 1 PP.

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Weapons

The difference between Zeinesis and Qliphad weapons is entirely cosmetic. You will need 120 Qliphad Fuses and the corresponding Zeinesis weapon in order to obtain a Qliphad weapon. Like the Ray series update, the weapon retains its grind, element, potential level and affixes.

Unlike the Ray upgrade however, it seems the weapon will force you into the Qliphad potential when you upgrade.

Potentials:

The names here are not translations of the actual affix names, just placeholders.

• Affix Booster
  • Lv3 Boosts success rate of affixes by 10%
    • Only applies to this weapon, not if it’s an ingredient item.
• Party Booster
  • Boosts power by 12%
  • Heals 10% of each party member’s HP every 30s
    • The timer for the heal starts on area change.
  • Boosts party attack power by 2%
    • The attack boost is like a small, passive Shifta that applies as soon as you enter an area and re-applies every 30s.
    • The buff lasts for 30 seconds
    • Note that it’s like a Shifta buff, so its only raising your base attack by 2% not the amount of damage you do.
  • The heal ability will pulse for all party members, meaning if all 4 people have the potential you get a 10% heal 4 times.
  • The attack boost is fixed, however. It’s always 2% regardless of how many people in your party have it.
  • The attack buff persists even if you swap weapon.
• Qliphad potential
  • 14% Damage bonus and doubles the stats of your affixes.
  • This seems to include most kinds of affixes, including HP, PP and Resists. It’s not known if it affects things like Phrase.

The “Qliphad potential” potential requires 120 Qliphad fuses in order to unlock. I’m not sure which of the three this is at the moment.

Special Ability Factor

Zeinesis’ Special Ability Factor is “Sentence Triple”. It boosts all attack stats by 30, so it’s essentially equivalent to Modulator and can of course be stacked with it. It presumably cannot be stacked with other Sentence abilities.

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Units

Unlike weapons, there are in fact differences beyond the cosmetic. Qliphad units will require 60 Qliphad fuses each as well as the corresponding Zeinesis unit. For the other way round, you only need the corresponding Qliphad unit.

Stats

• Zeinesis:
  • 120HP, 4PP, 15Atk
  • Rear: 3% S-Res, 3% R-Res, 2% T-res
  • Arm: 2% S-Res, 3% R-Res, 3% T-res
  • Leg: 3% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 3% T-res
  • Each unit also offers 2% all element resist

• Qliphad:
  • ??HP, ??PP, 35Atk
  • Rear: 2% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 1% T-res
  • Arm: 1% S-Res, 2% R-Res, 2% T-res
  • Leg: 2% S-Res, 1% R-Res, 2% T-res

So it seems that Zeinesis units are more defense oriented where Qliphad offers more PP. The values for Qliphad likely aren’t going to be known for a few days as people collect enough Qliphad Fuses.

There does not appear to be a set bonus.

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14* Weapons

There’s very little information about them currently, as very few people have been lucky enough to obtain one then go on to share data about them. As such it may be some time before we know the full capabilities of these weapons. To put it into perspective, there’s still some confusion about the Escafalz Mother 14*s and she came out a few months ago..

Lavis Cannon

• Potential: 未知なる魔杖
  • Boosts the power of normal attacks. Fires a shock-wave on the third part of the combo.

Interestingly, this Wand comes with kinda low S-Atk. Kind of wierd when the potential seems focused on normal attacks and we know from the reveal that it’s innate ability is to speed up Step and Normal Attack speed. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how much it boosts normal attack damage by to judge this one properly, as well as how the shockwave functions (as in, does it function like Form Wand’s?)

Rykros Staff

• Potential: 闇の一瞥
  • During Alter Ego, your Pet’s Sympathy requests are automatically fulfilled.

A fairly handy innate ability, as you won’t need to interrupt your own attacks or lose PP to heal/buff your pet when it requests it. We also know from the trailer the staff will auto-cast Megid whenever you issue commands to your pet.

Kuvele Scarlet(?)

A double saber that turns DS whirlwinds into firey tornadoes.

• Potential:  緋炎の両刃
  • Increases the power of DS Kamaitachi. Increases power by ??%

DS Whirlwind is already how Double Sabers do a heck of a lot of damage (thanks to the DS Whirlwind Skill Ring) so the fact it boosts the power and duration of those is already enough to make this a potentially seriously powerful weapon. We’ll know for sure once the potential’s numbers have been worked out.

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Episode 4’s Astral Soul

As the subtitle suggests, Episode 4 has gained its own version of Astral Soul. What’s more is it could stack with Astral Soul making for some potentially obscene affix loadouts.

The affix is named “Ether Factor” and it boosts all stats by 30, HP by 10 and PP by 6.

You’ll need to do the following to obtain it:

1. Fuse Yamato Factor + Mother Factor + Deus Factor = Factor Catalyst 10%
2. Fuse To’ou Soul + Full Vegas Soul = Ether Soul 10%
3. Fuse Factor Catalyst * 4 + Ether Soul = Ether Factor 60%

So suddenly the likes of Yamato Factor become relevant again. Ether Soul shouldn’t be a problem as those souls are readily available; but supply of the factors will only occur when the relevant raid is up.

While you could combine it with Astral Soul it won’t be easy, however having both would give you 65 in all stats as well as 45 HP and 11 PP. That’s pretty nuts for just 2 affixes!

This would also make Astral Soul, Ether Factor, Returner V and Ability 3 the most solid all-round 4-slot affixes in the game. Getting it would be nearly impossible for most players, mind. For clarity, that would be:

• 110 all attack, defense and dexterity
• 75 HP
• 16 PP

Obscenely good for 4 slots but err… good luck!

I mean if we went completely nuts and shot for the stars you could go for Astral + Ether + Returner + Modulator + Doom Break + Ability  + MutaII. That would give:

• 170 all attack
• 110 all def and dex
• 90HP
• 18PP

The ultimate all-rounder unit. Or you could throw out the MutaII and put Stat V and Elegant Stat if you want to focus on one attack stat. This is so far into crazytown though I don’t want to contemplate it any..

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New Recycle Shop Addition : Class Cube Shop

This shop offers Grind Limit +1 items for specific weapon types. The exchange rate is one Weapon Specific Grind Limit +1 for 300 class cubes.

Pretty nasty… You get 5 class cubes every level up at 80, which is 9.8M exp per. So each of these items costs 60 level up bonuses at lv80, or around 588M Exp per item. I’m speechless.

ARKS New Year Carnival 2017

A little more than a week into 2017 sees the addition of 2017 Weapons Badges and a brand new web-panel event. Just gonna go over some potentially useful data and share a couple thoughts here and there. Because some stuff is still being discovered some of the post contents might change over time.

Limited Quest

It’s your standard run about and kill monsters from various fields affair. The most interesting parts about the selection this time is it is for now the only reliable source of Esca Darkers in the game. The quest advances based on E-trial clears and ends on a titled Dark Falz Dourumble with either Giguru Gunnegam or Zeta Garanz.

Unlike previous years, where you could get Weapon Badges from drops and Etrial clears this one only gives you them for clearing the quest. How many you get depends on your rank and the current difficulty.

Known values:

• Normal: 1 for S-Rank
• Hard: 2 for S-Rank
• Very Hard: 3 for S-Rank
• Super Hard: 4 for S-rank
• Extra Hard: 10 for S-rank, 8 for A-Rank.

You’ll need to clear the quest within 15 minutes for an S-Rank.

Like Riding Quests, all drops are pooled together into a crystal that spawns in the center of the map. You aren’t warped there however, you’ll have to get there by foot. Do not take the telepipes that spawn, because if someone breaks the crystal while you’re on the Campship you won’t get any drops at all! This actually has a negative effect when Emperappy shows up, as its drops end up having to compete with the rest of the drops which can potentially drastically reduce the number of Emperembrace items you’d normally get.

It’s an alright enough quest it just really needed some additional polish to help it out. Like I don’t know why they didn’t just warp you to the drop crystal at the end like they do for Riding Quests. The quest is kind of easy with enemies like Anga Fundarge having severely reduced HP but the primary purpose of the quest is to grind out items for welfare weapons anyway so I didn’t expect the quest to be terribly difficult.

They did seem to do a good enough job of covering as much ground as they could with run-boost rings and jump-pads to make the map as painless to navigate on foot as they could. I’m kinda glad they took this approach with the map, because I like that I get to run around and appreciate Vegas more than I could saddled up on a Rideroid.

 

Xie’s Back!

It’s been a little while, but that woman that stands around in the lobby wearing outfits from the future has returned. She has a brand new selection of utterly useless items.

2017 Badges

This year, there are no Silver Badges. They’ve done away with the latter tiers entirely which I don’t really fault them for. Fewer items taking up space in my inventory is appreciated.

What’s curious is so far they haven’t added any kind of exchange to turn in older badges for 2017s. They also haven’t updated the Pyroxene exchange, which still offers 2016 badges in exchange for 100 of any Pyroxene. They also took Levelup Quests out of circulation, which means for now the only source of 2017 badges is the current Limited Quest.

I guess they wanted attention focused entirely on the event quest, so all alternative ways of getting badges might be being put off til after it’s over.

Weapons

Boasting as much attack power as Ray weapons, these are fair sight behind the Astra series on offer from Escafalz Mother. They require 200 gold Weapon Badges each and come with 30% element. This means you’ll need 400 for each 60% weapon and 1200 if you want to +35 them. The question is of course, would you want to?

Potential

Boosts power and chance to inflict status effects as well as deals extra damage to enemies suffering from status effects. At lv3 it’s a 10% base power boost and an additional 10% if the enemy has an SE. Allegedly, it boosts the infliction rate of status effects by 70-75% which if true does potentially make Chase a more reliable skill while using these weapons. The power boosts are multiplicative, so if an enemy is suffering from a status effect the total damage bonus is 21% which is pretty solid!

While a strong boost, it’s still a situational potential as it can only be used at its fullest against enemies that can have proper status effects inflicted on them which makes the potential worthless on every boss in the game! So it’s primarily going to be useful for mobbing (particularly on Ultimate) and against most mini-bosses. Assuming this works with techs, classes that have access to more status effects at once get better mileage out of them (classes that can use Techs really), where classes that have to rely on a status effect being affixed to the weapon might have to get one for each of them.

The wand may be useful for those running Te/Fi who make use of Wand Gear Element and Chase Advance skills but aside that I can’t really see these being useful for anyone. Combined with their low-ish attack power Xie’s weapons kind of continue this trend of being kinda useless overall.

What’s also a shame is the weapons have a kind of neat aesthetic to them. I kinda like them and once again I’m sad that there’s no mechanic in PSO2 that lets you take any weapon and turn it into a camo or else I’d grab a few weapons just for their skins.

Curiously, it was hinted this weapon series would make the solo Emergency Quests a little easier. Given the only known one is Profound Darkness and Dark Falz Double I’m not sure how a Chase Advance potential is meant to really help. Being able to inflict Panic more reliably would help out a little bit I suppose…

Special Ability Factor

At +35 you’ll unlock Phrase Chase, which boosts the effectiveness of Chase Advance by 5%. So really much like similar Phrase SAFs it just boosts the effectiveness of the weapon potential. Unlike the others I’m not sure you’d want to transfer this to another weapon though.

Units

Xie offers two units at 50 gold each. Like the weapons, their usefulness is questionable.

Stats (+10):

• 257 def
• 80 HP
• 5PP
• 2% all resist
• +10 all atk

That said, they are 12* units so if for whatever reason you absolutely must have some budget units you can stick some Skill Rings into then I guess these are OK.

Skill Rings

This update saw the addition of quite a few Skill Rings.

L / Step JA Combo

Adds a Just-Attack circle during a Step.

This also works on Bouncer’s Mirage Step. The main use of a ring like this would be to reduce the amount of time before you can do a Just-Attack out of a dodge and in cases where doing a step into Just-Attack would be faster than doing a normal attack or some other ability into one.

So does it do this? Well it’s kinda hard to call. The JA circle appears very late into the Step, later than even Braver’s Snatch Step JA. Here’s a video demo posted on Twitter:

とりあえずステップJAリング試し。ちょっとディレイかけないといけないのはスナステと違うのかな？慣れれば必須かも… レベルは全く関係ないから即ユニットに付けちゃって問題なさそう　#PSO2 pic.twitter.com/2PZCzTZd62

— めれんげのアンスールのすがた (@MelengeLocal) January 11, 2017

Still if it does shorten the time to a Just-Attack it’s a potentially extremely useful ring which has the added bonus of being usable at lv1.

L / Mag Excite

Increases the power and frequency of your Mag’s normal attacks.

• 150% and 80% internal attack cooldown at lv1
• Unknown final numbers, 220% and 58% at lv12

This has no effect on trigger or SP actions. Mag normal attacks do so little damage that even if the numbers work out 300% power and 50% cooldown at lv20 (effectively 6 times the damage output) it’s going to make no noticeable impact. This ring seems like a complete waste of space.

L / Just Reversal B

Damages enemies around you when you pull off a successful Just Reversal.

• 100% power and 100% attack range at lv1
• Unknown final numbers. 450% power and 160% range at lv13.

This works with L / Air Reversal.

L / Another Rod Shoot Mode

Changes rod shoot to fire a slow moving projectile instead. This projectile will speed up and home in on a target after 1s. On contact with an enemy it explodes, dealing damage to all enemies in range. The hitbox seems to roughly match Launcher normal attacks in range at Lv1.

• 50% power and 100% Explosive range at lv1
• 110% power and 150% Explosive range at lv20

Swiki notes that due to how slow the projectiles are, in an MPA most enemies may be dead before they get to do anything. As such, this ring may only be practical solo.

R / Poison Guard, R / Panic Guard, R  / Mirage Guard and R / Shock Guard

Like the other Guard rings, reduces the likely-hood you’ll be inflicted with the specified status effect. Presumably to 100% at lv20 like the others but it hasn’t been confirmed.

Useful but very situational. The specific status effect would have to be a significant enough threat to warrant wearing one over a more useful ring.

R / Critical Field

Works the same way as Bouncer’s Critical Field. Creates a field around you, boosting yours and anyone else’s critical hit rate by a certain amount. Cannot be used by Bouncer main or sub.

• Boosts critical hit rate by 10%, lasts for 20 seconds and has a recast of 120 seconds at lv1
• Unknown maximum, but is 22%, 30s uptime and 100s recast at lv13
• Seems to cap at 30s up and 100s recast, so has a 30% uptime

Could be helpful to classes that need the additional crit rate. Fighter/Hunter springs to mind, though they can also utilize the class rings for a permanent 10% crit rate boost.

R / Quick Mate

Works like Braver’s Quick Mate. Boosts the speed of using healing items.

• Boosts use speed by 2% at lv1
• Unknown maximum, but is 28% at lv12. Possible max of 140% but it could spike up towards lv20 so we’ll see

The effect stacks with L / Mate Lovers. If you want a build around extremely fast healing item use time the pair of rings could work well but honestly I feel like Mate Lovers does the job well enough on its own. Having both would be excessive in my opinion.

So yeah a couple of interesting rings here and one or two kind of useless ones. There’s been a better selection but there’s been worse too. The thoughts I’ve shared on them are mostly first impressions so they could change as people work out their nuances or any other details change my perception on them

The Profound Update

Episode 3’s finale finally arrives with the showdown against Dark Falz: Double and the Profound Darkness.

Progeny of the Apocalypse

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Let’s go over the quest briefly. This will not be a breakdown of tactics and mechanics, as its too early to make an exhaustive list of what the boss does to you and you can do to it. So instead it’s going to be more of an overview.

As was stated in promotional material, the quest works just like the “Utterly Profound” quest where players face off against Dark Falz Elder and Dark Falz Loser in succession. It’s slightly more complicated in its cutscenes and one quest directly leads into the other with Double’s arena shattering upon defeating it.

Double’s attacks are fairly nippy for such a large boss, it’s also invulnerable everywhere apart from its weakspot attached to one of its “legs”. Melee classes might have issues keeping up with the weakspot due to how quickly it can move, where forces should have the easiest time with their tracking attacks. Beyond this, most of its attacks are well telegraphed enough that they shouldn’t really cause a problem for most players. Its wall and sweeping attacks can hit pretty hard, but it lacks a raid-wipe move like Falz Loser.

Profound Darkness itself has at least 4 phases. Mechanically, there isn’t really a lot to the fight, as it throws attacks at you and you can throw attacks at it as long as it’s next to the arena. There’s no complicated order to things like there is with Dark Falz Loser or arguably even Magatsu. During phase 3 your raid will need to defeat some floating balls it sends into the arena however, as much like Anga’s bits destroying them all will stun the Profound Darkness, allowing you to freely DPS it.

The part of the fight that I thought was the coolest was the part where players are separated into their own spaces and they have to challenge themselves. It’s much more than clone fight however, as your alternative self behaves much more like an enemy with its own unique movesets and abilities. This is seemingly Profound Darkness’s raid-wipe mechanic, as failure to deal enough damage to your alternative self will result in the Profound Darkness dealing massive damage to the entire raid. Once you pass this DPS check the boss is seemingly motionless until you defeat it.

For both parts, Weak Bullet is significantly weaker than it is in the rest of the game. Instead of a 250% damage mod it’s around 120%, which is nice to have but it won’t make or break a multiparty (hooray!), . It really doesn’t matter much, as both bosses have much less HP than the other raid bosses meaning you won’t need to worry about your multiparty failing, especially as they give you an hour to complete it. You’re also given a stacking bonus to your stats (PP regeneration and HP at least) which all but trivialize an already easy but definitely cool fight.

So what does Episode 3’s final boss give you?

Nero/Caligula Rate

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For the gear hunter in all of us, this is probably the most interesting part. That is to say it isn’t terribly interesting but whatever.

Judging from posts by players and my own experience with the quest it seems to give roughly 6 Caligula stones on average, with a varying amount of Nero stones (I’ve seen reports of 0-2).

At this rate, it would take at worst around 67 runs worth of Caligula stones in order to obtain a 60% Austere weapon. Given they probably aren’t going to typically do more than 2 rounds per day (more at the moment because they tend to do additional rounds of freshly released emergency quests), but of course this is just taking Caligula into account. Why not count the significantly more scarce Nero? Well let’s talk about that…

Nero stones can drop from any Dark Falz and Dark Falz humanoid. This means Angel, Dourumble,Hunar and Apprentce Doppleganger can all drop them. While this is great, what isn’t known is what the drop rates on them will be. The jury’s out on this one, as people haven’t done enough runs to really establish how good or bad the rate is. It’s assumed however that it only drops in the lv76-80 tier, which does severely limit your options for hunting them. This essentially restricts it to any Extra-Hard Emergency Quest featuring any of the Falzes and Super Hard Advance Quests at +12 risk or more, with Ruins being the one most likely to give you a Falz to fight. Data collected so far suggests the rate isn’t particularly good, which isn’t surprising.

Austere weapons will take a long time to obtain as a result; at least a month assuming you manage to catch every instance of the quest. Those with multiple characters parked on multiple servers with enough friends to assist may get the weapon more quickly if they’re willing to transfer characters to pool their resources. The quest is limited to once per ship, not once per account. That isn’t an approach I recommend, but doubtlessly some of the richer players in more organised teams will be doing this. This isn’t the most unreasonable of grinds they’ve presented to us even if we assume that currently observed rates are the standard.

When you clear the quest you may be given a number telling you which position you came in on your ship. It has absolutely no effect on your drops or your mission rewards, it’s purely for ego stroking and nothing else. It’s OK, we all like a good stroking now and then.

Drops

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So what about general drops? An average if running the quest with +250% and +100% boosters seems to be around 30 10*+ items. Pretty decent. It’s a pale shadow of the Excube pinata that is Magatsu but Double and the Profound Darkness can drop a much wider selection of weapons and has the largest pool of 13* weapons to pull from than any enemy in the game.

It seems to be able to drop any Dark Falz 13* weapon as well as significant 11*s from other bosses (including Gran Fol). It can also drop the Invade series weapons, which will significantly reduce the Caligula stone requirement should you get the type you want, it’s just an inventory space waster otherwise. What’s more, the boss can drop Austere weapons, allowing players to potentially skip this item grind entirely.

Invader and Austere Weapons

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So you go through the trouble of getting all those materials together, or maybe you’ve got some gear gaps to fill in and Invade weapons look promising, how good are they really?

Invade weapons will only be +10, 60% with no potential if you purchase them from Zieg for 100 Caligula and 100 Excubes. Apparently they have a potential which boosts critical hit rate by 40% at level 3, which isn’t a terribly useful latent for most builds but it could be worse. Essentially if you’re hurting for gear, Invade weapons even with no latent could be an excellent stopgap, as they still provide a ton of attack power. At the rate discussed earlier, you should be guaranteed an Invade weapon after about 17 runs.

Austere weapons however are the strongest weapons in the game right now. Their potential is 12% bonus damage with a 10% bonus to passive PP regeneration, which combined with their superior attack and the fact that their damage bonus is unconditional makes them stronger than Ares weapons. That said, they’re not a massive improvement over them, so those with finished Ares weapons might not really miss them.

New Affixes

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Surprisingly, this update added three new affixes, two of which we had no idea about.

Darkness Soul: +15 all attack, HP+15 and PP + 2

Soul Catalyst: HP+10, PP + 1

Astral Soul: +35 all attack, HP + 35, PP + 5

Creating these affixes requires some significant investment on the part of the player. Darkness Soul can simply be obtained from anything that drops from the Profound Darkness. Soul Catalyst and Astral Soul both need to be synthesized from other affixes however.

To make a Soul Catalyst, you will need to combine any four of Elder Soul, Loser Soul, Double Soul, Apprentice Soul and Persona Soul. This will grant a 10% success rate for creating a Soul Catalyst. Yes you read that right, 10%. Once you manage to succeed with this, your job isn’t over yet, as if you want Astral Soul you’re going to need to use four Soul Catalysts together with a Darkness Soul in order to create Astral Soul. The transfer rate on Astral Soul currently isn’t known.

That sure is a lot of gambling steps on top of a system that is already absolutely riddled with gambling steps! It’s a lot of work for +5 PP per item, but it is 20PP if you manage to get it on all of your units and your weapon. That’s a pretty significant amount, so min-maxers are likely going to want to go for it. For the rest of us, frankly it might be too much effort and you’ll be better off sticking to certain Ultimate souls instead.

40% Affix Success Rate Booster

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Hey! Related to the previous section, don’t fret about those abysmal transfer rates because if you’re willing to put up 100 Excubes for a 40% booster you can bring Soul Catalyst creation to a nifty 50%! More likely this is an item intended for regular affix synthesis to cover things that may cap out to less than 100% with the 30% booster. Given it’s 5 times as expensive as the 30% booster, it really isn’t worth using unless failing a 90% would incur a significant Meseta loss. There are certainly affixes out there that this is a genuine concern for (hello, Modulator).

Thoughts

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This was already a fair amount to go over so I’ll try to keep my thoughts brief.

The Austere/Invade weapon grind on the surface doesn’t seem that bad a grind, though you need to consider that Caligula stones are entirely restricted to the quest. This is not a quest that is available at all times, or one that can even happen randomly. This means that the rate at which you could obtain the weapons from it is almost entirely dependent on whenever Sega fancies allowing you to do the quest. If it’s twice per day, you might obtain an Invade weapon in a week or an Austere weapon in a month and a half. There could be weeks however where the quest only occurs once or not at all, in which case who the fuck knows when you’ll ever have enough materials for a weapon! Essentially my issue with it isn’t that it’s a grind, as a grind suggests its something you can work towards when you want to. This is something you can only work towards when yours and Sega’s schedules happen to be convenient for each other…

My other problem with this quest is that it’s the conclusion to the story. As such, to me it just feels kind of strange to have it confined to a quest that happens occasionally. If it was something that happened on a rotation both my main issues with the quest would be largely gone.

That said, I do overall really enjoy the quest. It’s not particularly challenging, however it is fun in a lot of ways which for me makes up for the lack of difficulty. It’s visually very appealing and technically quite impressive for them, both of which make me eager to see what content they have in store for us down the line. It also feels like a satisfying way to end Episode 3, particularly with the story events that lead up to it which I also enjoyed even if I couldn’t understand them. Ignorance might well be bliss in this case, who knows… Roll on Episode 4, I say!

Potentials Time!

Today’s the day! We finally get to stab er… I guess that’d be spoilers so I won’t say that yet. Play the story, you’ll see what I mean. Enjoy it.

This is also the day we get a few new weapons and potentials. So how were the guesses in the previous post?

• [心気一意の閃光] – Deal 14/16/18% additional damage while HP is above 70% and PP is above 40% went to… Nox Liffel (12☆ Rod) and Nox Prasis (12☆ Jet Boots)
• [勇勢疾走] – Deal additional damage while HP is above 30% went to… Daggers of Serafi. Which additionally is a 13☆ weapon.
• [絶対破砕圏] – Deal 25/27/30% additional damage to enemies at close range went to… Adys Bunker!
• [清明なる加護 ] – Recover 30/35/40% additional PP on attack, regenerate PP 15/17/20% faster and deal 10/12/15% additional damage went to… God Hand! Shame I haven’t got one to sell.
• [幻精共鳴] – Increase the power of photon blasts and [滅壊の光刃] – Deal 21/23/25% additional damage to Darker Aberrations both went to… Coat Dublis, a 12☆ Double Saber similar to Persona’s.
• [天輪滅砲] – Boosts the power of Sphere Eraser went to.. Sparkling Shower. A new 12☆ Launcher
• [廻転翔踏] – Reduces the PP costs of Grim Barrage and [????] reduces recast time on Chain after a successful Chain Finish depending on the chain count went to… Jack Wisp, a new 12☆ seasonal Twin Machinegun from Latan Rappy.
• [龍の威光] increased damage dealt to non-dragonkin went to… Kanarop! A new 12☆ Rod. It also has  [雷鳴結晶] which boosts Lightning Technic Damage by 12% and a latent that boosts damage dealt to airborne enemies,

“A bit off” barely covers it, they didn’t get a single one right! More importantly, Coat Doublis got both of the latents I guessed might go to the Austere series, so it’s OK I got egg on my face too. In this case I’m fairly happy to be wrong, but this new data does mean that the actual potential the Austere series will end up getting is a complete mystery.

Additionally, we seem to have gained the following:

• Nox Kuvel (12☆ Sword) –  堅甲錬陣 – A new Guard Stance latent. Don’t yet know the details.
• Nox Shooter (12☆ Rifle) – 暗心舞踏 – Increases attack power when PP is <50%
• Lilipiece (12☆ Double Saber) – 追の衝撃 – Boosts damage dealt to enemies suffering a status effect by 17%/?%/?%
• Nox Destim (12☆ Knuckle) – 心血万全の剛力 – When HP is over 60%, deal 10%/12%/15% additional damage to enemies
• Nox Shudix (12☆ Gunslash) – 星点弾 – 0.3% of damage dealt returned as HP (Max of 50 per attack)
• Sax Piece (12☆ Katana)- 弧月蝕 – Fixed rate of damage is absorbed as HP
• Nox Lexio (12☆ Bullet Bow) – 業風跳法 – Boosts the power of Snatch Step damage by 100%/?%/?%, boosts the power of Snatch JA Combo by 5%/?%/?%
• Nox Jiraak (12☆ Wired Lance) – 暗心舞踏 – Increases attack power when PP is <50%
• Celestial Laser (12☆ DF Gunslash) – 閃く瞬刃 – Power of Just-Attacked PAs and Techs increased by 28%/30%/32% if the current Tech/PA being used is different to the last one used. (A stronger Tech-Arts JA Combo)
• Grigoros – (12☆ DF Wired Lance) – 連刃蛇咬 – Power of Just-Attacks increased by ?%/?%/?% for successful consecutive Just-Attacks
• Ignis – (12☆ Matterboard Dual Blade) – 零の襲 – Close range striking damage increased by 9%/11%/13%

Thanks to EspioKaos and Mewn for help with translating things, this post would have basically not existed without them. Let me know if I got anything wrong.

Sources: 

PSO2News – (Banner potentially NSFW) and @kawakamiwanko

Datamining: New Potentials

Just a short post having a ponder about the new latents discovered in the latest pre-patch data.

Here’s the list:

1. [幻精共鳴] – Increase the power of photon blasts
2. [天輪滅砲] – Boost the power of Sphere Eraser
3. [廻天輪滅砲] – Reduce the PP cost of Sphere Eraser
4. [廻転翔踏] – Reduce the PP cost of Grim Barrage
5. [絶対破砕圏] – Deal 25/27/30% additional damage to enemies at close range
6. [滅壊の光刃] – Deal 21/23/25% additional damage to Darker Aberrations
7. [龍の威光] – Deal bonus damage to enemies that are not Dragonkin
8. [心気一意の閃光] – Deal 14/16/18% additional damage while HP is above 70% and PP is above 40%
9. [清明なる加護 ] – Recover 30/35/40% additional PP on attack, regenerate PP 15/17/20% faster and deal 10/12/15% additional damage
10. [勇勢疾走] – Deal additional damage while HP is above 30%

First impression is that a number of them certainly appear to be similar to the Photon-Booster potentials that are already out, suggesting that some of these will be going to Dark Falz weapons. If I were to guess, I’d say 5, 8, 9 and 10 are the Photon Booster latents.

This leaves us to speculated about the rest, which is especially relevant given a certain weapon series is coming up; the Austere series. There is a worry that they could end up with latent 1 or 6, making their hefty material cost a lot more off-putting. If it got 6, it’d be strange given the materials require playing multiple areas of the game, making such a restricted potential feel kind of inappropriate. Right now, it’s too early to say for sure as not only is data-mined content not really confirmation of anything we also can’t rule a fair number of the other latents out yet.

For now, it’s better to wait until the next update before speculating. It’ll let us rule out any latents that went to other weapons, giving us a smaller pool of things that may end up going to the Austere series. I still feel that the first person who gets an Austere weapon and discovers its potential is a brave soul indeed and potentially taking a big hit for the rest of the playerbase…

Also what the heck is up with number 7 there? An inverse racial potential? Notably its labelled as “DamageBonusRaceUlt4_1” which may suggest it has something to do with the as-yet unannounced Ultimate Amduscia. If it is a latent associated with the inevitable 13* weapon series to be released with that quest, then they could potentially be the strongest series yet as long as your target isn’t a dragon!

A post on 2chan, screencapped at pso2uploader here, lists 3 additional latents:

• Deal 20% additional damage to airborne enemies
• Increases the power of Ignite Parrying
• Reduces recast time on Chain after a successful Chain Finish depending on the chain count.

I don’t see these in the data I have seen myself, so not sure where these have come from. This same post also speculates that these and the earlier latents will go to the following weapons (forgive me, I can’t transcribe Kanji from imagery):

• Bardiche -> Unknown. It’s one of the latents that doesn’t appear to be listed.
• Grigoros -> Unknown. Again, one of the latents that doesn’t appear to be listed.
• Saika Hyouri -> Deal 20% additional damage to airborne enemies
• God Hand -> [勇勢疾走] – Deal additional damage while HP is above 30%
• Celestial Laser -> Reduces recast time on Chain after a successful Chain Finish depending on the chain count. (Hahaha)
• Shooting Drive -> Sphere Eraser latents
• Divine Raikou -> [清明なる加護 ] – Recover 30/35/40% additional PP on attack, regenerate PP 15/17/20% faster and deal 10/12/15% additional damage
• Edel Arrow -> [心気一意の閃光] – Deal 14/16/18% additional damage while HP is above 70% and PP is above 40%
• Lind Wurm -> [龍の威光] – Deal bonus damage to enemies that are not Dragonkin

I think I’ve gotten that correct. I only list these for curiousity’s sake. I’m not really sold on any of their guesses. They seem to include some Magatsu weapons in this list, which is fine however it doesn’t take into account that we’re going to be getting a new selection of the Nox-series weapons. We’ll know for sure in a few days, so let’s see how right this random post on the internet turns out to be because I have nothing better to do I guess.

Let me know if I’ve gotten anything wrong in this post, thanks.

Class Rebalance coming 14th October

As the title says, a class re-balance is on its way and it will be arriving on the 14th. We’ve known for a while that Gunner and Braver were getting tweaked but the finer details weren’t revealed until today. It seems that they’re not the only classes to be getting some adjustments, as others will be too. Let’s go over them, shall we?

Gunner

Normally I’d do Hunter first but I feel Gunner’s been in the most need of attention since the start of Episode 3. So cutting to the chase:

• High Time will gain its attack boost more quickly than it does now.
• Normal attacks will make you start to fall later than it does now.
• Stylish roll will have the first two parts sped up, there will be no loss in invincibility frames
• You will be able to change your facing during Sattelite Aim.
• Shift Period will be sped up and deal more damage. The time when you start to fall will be pushed back.
• Aerial Shooting, Dead Approach, Messiah Time, Elder Rebellion, Reverse Tap and Heel Stab will be adjusted at a later date.

Being able to change direction during Satellite Aim is more a convenience change than a buff, but a pretty welcome one. It’s also nice to know that invincibility frames won’t be lost in light of the sped up Stylish Roll, making this change an overall buff in my opinion.

Shift Period could arguably have crafted Bullet Squall as its main competition, currently. The area of effect of Shift Period is much higher though, so with its increased speed and damage it may have a use if it doesn’t currently. If it isn’t the case already, I feel like the wider reach of Shift Period would help a lot with Gunner’s mobbing capabilities.

I am surprised to see that Infinite Fire won’t be seeing any adjustment, given how under-used a Photon Art it seems to be currently. It’s a fair shot more obscure than it was back in Stylish Roll Just-Attack Up’s meta days at least!

Hunter

• Sonic Arrow will have faster Just-Attack timing and grant more points towards the Gear Gauge. The time when you start to fall from mid-air will be adjusted too.
• Sacrifice Bite: Parts of the attack will be faster and it will also contribute more points towards the Gear-Gauge.

Something to help sword-users stay mid-air I guess. The boosts to Gear-Gauge acquisition rate are always welcome for Sword seeing as its arguably the most dependent weapon in the game on it. This is likely to be more helpful to Fi/Hu or other x/Hu combinations using swords, as they don’t have access to Fury Gear boost.

Ranger

• Weak Bullet something about making it easier to land it?
• One Point: Damage will be increased and PP consumption reduced.
• Sneak Shooter: Just-Attack timing will be adjusted and the bullet sped up.
• Diffuse Shell and Parallel Slider will be adjusted at a later date.

Sneak Shooter was always kind of rough to hit anything with it due to the slow bullet, so that;s a welcome change at least. The weak bullet changes are harder to pin down, it may be a faster bullet or there may be other changes that make it easier to land it, not sure.

Fighter

• Double Saber shift action will have its Just-Attack timing adjusted and its cancel timing sped up.
• Quick March will have its damage increased and its cancel timing sped up. It will also stun enemies instead of launching them.
• Surprise Dunk will have its damage increased and its hit-stop reduced. The enemy will also be launched slightly by the hit instead of stunned.
• Deadly Archer will have the timing between each hit adjusted?
• Orchestra, Illusion Rave and Acro Effect will be adjusted at a later date.

Braver

• Katana damage will be higher based on current gear-gauge level
• Reducing SP required to max out Katana Combat, Rapid Shoot and Rapid Shoot Mastery
• Rapid Shoot will no longer have a “wind-up” time.
• Rapid Shoot Advance requires less points to unlock
• Bullet Bow Step-Attack will be sped up and have its Just-Attack timing adjusted
• Stance Critical and Stance Charge have had their places on the skill tree adjusted. You no longer need to put points in Critical to take on Charge.
• Tsukimi Sazanka will have its PP cost reduced and its ground animation sped up
• Gekka Zakuro will have its PP cost reduced
• Sakura Endo will be faster, have its JA timing reduced and have its non-charged damage boosted.
• Torrential Arrow will have a larger area of effect
• Million Storm will have its damage increased and its PP cost reduced.

The changes to the skill tree are mostly good, freeing up SP to support more hybridized builds than is currently possible, I’m not sure you’ll be able to max out both Katana and Bulletbow trees while also having a stance still, but having access to more than half the class at a given time will be nice.

The buffs to Torrential Arrow and Million Storm could be an attempt to improve the mobbing capabilities of Bullet Bows, which is something they do need assistance with definitely. They’re already great bossing weapons.

Bouncer

• Jet Boots Escape will now apply to the shift-action of regular attacks. providing invulnerability during it.
• Justice Crow will deal more damage and cost less PP
• Kestrel Rampage will deal more damage
• Strike Gust will deal more damage
• Gran Wave will have its hit-stop reduced

Gunslash

• Weapon shift action will be sped up and the time when you will start falling will be pushed back
• Regular attacks will have quicker Just-Attack and cancel timing
• Step attacks will have reduced hit-stop
• Serpent Air will be sped up, have its Just-Attack timing adjusted and be cancel-able
• Regenschlag will be sped up and have its Just-Attack timing adjusted

Another attempt to make Gunslashes viable weapons. Good luck, developers and bless you for trying I guess.

Of course, this change will come with free Skill-Tree Reset Passes for all.

Please let me know if there are any inaccuracies in this post.

Maximum Attack: PSO2’s Third Anniversary

The web-event site for PSO2’s 3rd Anniversary event (of which Maximum Attack is a part) is now up here. Reposting the trailer below:

The update page can be found here. 

The event is set to kick off on the 10th of June and ends on the 22nd of July.

Ah the Maximum Attack event, a long tradition of the Phantasy Star Online series. It started with Max Attack in the original PSO and would go on to appear a total of 4 times in PSO and 4 more times in PSU. It occurred an extra time on the US version of the game due to issues with the login/billing servers during the first event, preventing a large number of players from taking part at all (Error 56!). That said, the US never got Maximum Attack: Infinity so I guess that makes them even!

Anyway with that bit of nostalgia out of the way, let’s look at what’s coming up.

What We Know

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Details are still being revealed. The main quest of the event will be a Limited Quest set in the Darkers Den. Like Limited Quests before it, it seems to be a run-around-in-circles style Multi-Party Quest which features enemies from various places in the game, including bosses such as Snow Banther, Blu Ringahda, Chrome Dragon, Gigur Gunnegam, Varder Soma and Big Varder. Big Varder in the Darker’s Den is something I have to witness. Imagine if that spawned with the infected gunship Emergency trial? Missiles everywhere! Alas, the trailer seems to indicate that it doesn’t but a man can dream… Also what is it with Sega and putting the Fang/Snow Banthers in all the cross-planet quests lately?

While there is a web-panel and that points can be earned for it like in previous events, we don’t know what all the panel rewards are yet. I feel like it may be a safe bet that an affix and grinding boost period will be on the table, however. Certainly an EXP, Rare drop, Meseta and Rare enemy boost at least. The preview of the event appears to show bonus daily login stamps and a 1000 FUN points ticket, though that could change.

Points are earned by defeated targeted bosses for the event. Details are scarce, aside that the amount of points rewarded per kill may scale with difficulty (as in a boss killed on normal will be presumably worth less than one killed on Extra Hard). Interestingly, PSO2es players will be able to contribute towards the event as well which is a first in the game’s history.

Given there’s an exchange shop for them, it seems safe to assume that Weapons Badges can be obtained from the quest.  Exactly how is anyone’s guess at this point, they could be random drops, given at the end of the quest or given out as Client Order rewards.

More information is set to be revealed when the event begins, but I wouldn’;t be surprised if we hear more in the meanwhile. It won’t be during the 32nd Broadcast however, as that’s scheduled 4 days after the event has begun!

Update: And just like that, new information surfaces a day later. According to Gheaven’s post here we’ll be getting the badges like so:

• Bronze Badges will be area drops
  • All difficulties
• Silver Badges will be boss drops
  • All difficulties
• Gold Badges will be rewarded for clearing e-trials and the quest itself
  • Super Hard and Extra Hard only.

Unsurprisingly, you’ll need Gold Badges if you want the Yozakura weapons.

New Weapons (Kinda)

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There are two series of weapons to be aware of for this update: additional Nox-series weapons (12★) and the “new” Yozakura-series of weapons (13★).

The Nox-series are going to be random drops. The Yozakura-series weapons can be obtained by exchanging Weapons badges for them at the Third Anniversary Exchange Shop.

The Yozakura series are essentially re-coloured Extreme Quest weapons much like the Live-series. Quite why the Extreme Quest re-colours have been repurposed like this I don’t know, going to go with “laziness”. Whatever the case I like the way they look, although I am slightly disappointed that their on-attack effect isn’t as pretty as their old sun-god counterparts.

As for their potential abilities, it was revealed during the 31st Live Broadcast that the striking weapons would have a 6% damage boost whereas teching and ranged weapons would have a 3% damage boost. Additionally, all weapons reduce PP consumption on using a Photon Art or Technique, though as far as I’m aware it isn’t known exactly how much this reduction is.

Stat-wise, Yozakura is the weakest 13★ series yet, so anyone who has an Ares weapon can pretty much ignore these entirely. Those with Ideal weapons might want to think about these as they will be better for mobbing, though some weapon types might have better options.

I can’t help but be a little cynical about the weapons, given previous exchanges have required a ludicrous amount of a material or grant a low element percentage (or both!), however I understand that these are quite powerful weapons in their own right. It’d be bad for the game to hand these weapons out too quickly, but I’m still dreading the potential effort.

Come on step it up!

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The 3rd Anniversary also coincides with the Sonic lobby. The lobby will be adorned with statues of various Sonic characters like last year, however this year you’ll also be able to run around and get rings. For what purpose? I have no idea but it’s kind of nifty I guess.

It also has.. this… thing

Urgh

No please go away

:(

I really did not want to know what the love-child of Sonic and Tails would look like. That’s for the shippers, those gross fuckers.

There’s also some collaboration stuff but no one cares about that.

Additionally, some details about the PSO anniversary set to take place in July have started to be revealed, but I may cover that in a separate post.

New Extreme Quest 11*s

As was revealed during the live broadcast earlier this year, this March will see some additional floors being added for Extreme Training: Tundra & Machines (極限訓練：凍土と機甲). Specifically floors 51-60, which will pit players against lv70 monsters.

Along with this, some additional weapons will be available in the Refine Spell-stones shop, where currently you can buy a number of still near best-in-slot or currently best-in-slot weapons. In case you’re unaware, this will cost you 13,500 of the lowest tier stones you can get from the quest, however the title gives you the equivalent of 8100 kind of for free.

Anyway, thanks to Shougai for posting them up, re-posting them below. Romaji is raw, I make no attempt to localize the names (because I can’t!). Unfortunately, their stats are unknown for now.

• バイオグリオン – Baiogurion

• バイオゼクト – Baiozekuto

• バイオトライナーBaiotoraina

• バイオベルド – Baioberudo

• バイオリアス- Baioriasu

The common factor here is the first 3 Kana of each name, “ba-i-o”, which is used for “Bio”. (example).

You can see the weapons in motion here. Their animation gimmick seems to be that they’re hidden as something that resembles a card on your hip while they’re sheathed.

It’s plausible that these weapons will be stronger than the other 11* weapons currently in the exchange, which also means they could cost more Spell-stones too. Shougai seems to be guessing they’ll cost 6 each but I have a nasty feeling they may cost more than that.

And I’ve only just managed to save enough Spell-stones up to afford one of the current weapons too. Guess I’m waiting until March the 5th to check these out!

Really I’ve explained my opinion on the acquisition rate of these weapons before, which is to say unless you’re in a position to pay for other players’ Extreme Passes it will take you a very, very long time to obtain even one of them. So long in fact that if you began collecting the Spell-stones back when they were released you may have only recently been able to get one of the current weapons and that was WITH the help of 3/5ths of the materials being given to you by the titles. Just in time for them to possibly be made entirely obsolete by a new tier of them that may require even more Spell-stones than the last ones. There will be no help from titles this time, either!

Yes, of course obtaining them too quickly would be a very bad thing. Having them take so long to obtain that they’re in theory obsolete before you even get one however might be a tad overkill…

2012, PSO2 and You

Nah no one cares about you this time either, sorry.

2012 was the release year of PSO2, but it was also the year in which the testing phases began in earnest. This was the year that we got to experience the game for the first time. As such, many players have seen the game grow in a number of visible ways and fans close to the series have had the pleasure (as well as some discomfort) of seeing this game evolve. Some areas of the game grew faster than others and some parts disappointingly didn’t grow much at all.

This post, much like the equivalent for 2011 will take a look at this past year’s happenings with PSO2. Much like last year this post is also huge. As such, this time I’m actually going to use one of those “more” tags so you’re not scrolling forever to get past it on the main feed, so let’s just place that here.