El Socko

Hmm... Cyane, you say you are not going to add hit to Dark Weapons. What about certain non-rares like Calibur or Arms though?

Do GMs actually need any luck?

Why "more on FOmar" when he is the one with the worst ATA? You'd need either a lot of hit on the weapon and/or Godric's Cloak. Even then it won't combo, but I haven't seen a FOmar using an L&K38 so I have no idea how great it is. Do you have any numbers (damage etc), Wilson?

Socks/Luck strikes again ... this dropped on Very Hard:

Yellowboze Ult Barba Ray: L&K38

Redria Very Hard Saint-Million: Rambling May

Redria Very Hard Kondrieu: Kunai

It'd be nice if you could come back with those drop charts within the hour, mmmkay. That'd be great.

Well, for you guys doing PoD for Shambertin I'll add another hint. S-Beat's Blades. Easy to obtain and you can add up to 50 hit with Photon Crystals. My weapon of choice for Dorphon Eclairs and other single targets weak to hell. Unreduced hell and 6 strikes per combo, need I say more?

This topic hasn't had any new posts in a while but since I've done so many PoD runs for STA there's one tiny little snippet I'd like to add here. It will save you a few seconds each run. In the 2nd phase where he first goes to the north-east cave, after you destroy enough neck crystals for him to move back to the big area, sometimes Shamby will instantly do this cutscene (the one where he swirls his tail around the green orb and fires that big laser). During this cutscene, you can still move your character though most people probably aren't sure which direction works. After some experimenting, I figured out that you need to move up/up-left. So just push up for about 1/4th of a second, then up-left, repeat both motions until cutscene ends. You should be roughly at the cave exit when the cutscene has ended. Also, as Fyrewolf has pointed out, be disciplined in the cave. If you think you won't get all 4 crystals in the same attack, it is safer to simply not attack at all. Or just using Normal instead of Hard attack if accuracy might be an issue. Losing a few seconds is a lot less annoying then having to backtrack back to one of the three caves.

Yeah, it's a shame there aren't more quests with this unique property. Imagine a Tower quest with gigantic Delbiters and Ill Gills "towering" over you ... as Private Hudson from the movie "Aliens" would put it: fuckin' A!

Cheers under. About time too. It is weird how most people, all of whom certainly didn't find 5 last year already (I wasn't even playing at that time), found theirs a lot earlier than you this year. It almost seems like some kind of fucked up karma where the game is a sentient entity thinking "hey, this guy got so many last year, let's punish him for a while and grant the drop to other players first" ...

Before I'm off to bed, I wanted to leave this here. Got this time soloing as RAcast with FO only coming for S/D 30 ... was a very lucky run where just everything fell together, but I won't be able to improve this too much, as now I'm limited by my weapons ... no Native or Abeast on the PR, the (borrowed) DM is great of course but the lack of Native shows in some spawns. Also don't own a Charge Yas 9k. So I can't really close the gap between my times and those of my benefactor aka under

Again, not a proper 2P submission because the FO was there to provide SD before the actual quest (we cast it on P2 in regular Crater), but Sylph wanted to get to the boss NPC in under 6 minutes so we just did that, funny thing is we got this exact time twice in a row even though things went a little differently. Still, nice to be able to do it quickly enough for SD last just long enough to kill all enemies en-route. Could probably have scratched at 5:30 with more Hell activation luck and if I actually had Native on PR/DM - I'm currently using a borrowed DM with Abeast and Dark and my PR only has Dark. Sylph (HUcaseal), Roboflop (RAcast) regular SD level 30/no PB 24"19

Yeah, and some of those useless weapons are even on some of the higher tier enemies, like the infamous Final Impact on Viridia Epsilon. Enemies like this should only have good drops, not 9 star junk. On another ID Epsi has Secure Feet which is also pretty lame because almost no RA would ever use it when they can use Ranger Wall (disregarding RR) plus it is a Ep2 Mil Lily drop on Yellowboze ...

Not on every class though. Spill the beans, sir. What class and equips?

Level 100 in "one hour at most"? I mean, I know how to level quickly (depending on class) but seriously, one hour ... care to elaborate?

Interesting post but how on earth would the Newman FOs with their measly 150 materials acquire the 400/200 MST on top of their already extremely hard to max stats? The problem are still the enemy resists. MST doesn't add that much damage, I think it is 1 damage per 5 MST before resists are factored in.

I know there have been topics for Xpadder on the forums, but not all of them were very in-depth in regards to PSO. A very good topic was this one by Nyookami which helps you getting started if you are not familiar with Xpadder, though I found it strange he didn't use a background image of the controller he uses, it is so easy to google image search one (e.g. "xpadder 360") I've been using this little beast for years now, it is really useful for many games or applications. In fact, I even use it for programs like Winamp, Photoshop and various emulators. Before that I used joy2key which was nice for sure, but Xpadder is much more powerful. The other night I was chatting with makaveli and he mentioned he cannot use his right analog stick to move the cursor in menus. Well I'm not sure about that and I don't even know which controller he uses - I forgot to ask. Anyway maybe this post here will help him?. As you can see, I use the Xbox 360 controller. I know other people will prefer the PS3 controller, and that's all good. I simply got used to this one, and I prefer the left analog stick to be in this position. Here's a picture of my main config. There are two sets, the second set becomes active only when I hold down the L trigger. For the most part the second set is identical anyway. More on that later. You can see what the hotbar buttons will do on my RA and FO (I don't have a HU on Ultima), here's a rundown with my comments. Generally speaking, I want to avoid having to reach for the keyboard as much as possible when playing PSO, and this works really well. 1 to 3: Mates and/or Fluids Many people don't put them here as they prefer to use them from the quick menu. I just don't like to use the item quick menu in the heat of battle, I only use it to buffer Trimates or Stars after I've been knocked down. Also it can make the difference between life and death to have a fluid on a button (digital stick up or down) and be able to cast techs again right away, like during ROCT when a Meri plant has just set your TP to 0 and you have very little time to react. 4 to 6: Traps or Support Techs right analog stick left, down or right. What is interesting here is that number keys will do absolutely nothing in menus so you can navigate all your menus with it - the only exception being the customize menu, where you will have to use the keyboard as otherwise it will assign 4 5 6 9 to everything you move your cursor over. Not good for challenge mode initial setup, but otherwise no problem. Very nice for trap shooting with a Handgun. Just push the stick down (Freeze trap, 5) and immediately press the normal attack to detonate. Works like a charm with a little practice - I use my left thumb to push down on the stick, using the right thumb for both actions would be too slow or unreliable. Of course doing this via the quick menu will be even faster, but personally I don't like having to cycle through it again to get back to the weapons. 7: "Heal others" button Star Atomizer on RA, Resta on FO, 'nuff said. Just keep your finger away from that when playing with a DF user! 8: Pipe or Gifoie On my FO I usually just cast Ryuker or use a Telepipe from the quick menu so Gifoie goes here. But its not on Set 1. 9 and 10: Sols, Moons No comment needed Yeah, no Shifta and Deband on the hotbar for me, I don't know why almost everyone has it there. I have those at the bottom of my quick menu (or at the top for some quests like ROCT). Though I replace Zalure with Deband when I do a purely tech spam solo hunt on a FO. A few words about set 2 then. I only need it when I want to revive someone with a Moon (0 replaces F2 on the Back button) or spam Gifoie on my FO (8). Notice the little purple bar at the top of the right analog stick UP direction, aka 8? That means there is an advanced property assigned, in this case it is autofire. So if I keep my L trigger pressed and the right stick pushed up, my FO will just keep spamming Gifoie. For some reason I can't remember, the D-Pad is different in set 2, no idea why I did this, must have been ages ago. Also strangely enough the left direction on the D-Pad doesn't seem to work properly so I don't use it. Finally, in set 1 the right analog stick has "4 Enter" assigned to the center (that means when you press the stick itself rather than a direction). In theory that means Damage Trap > detonate on RAcast, but I never use it as it is awkward to press that stick in without hitting a direction instead. There is something else I could put into set 2, but I prefer not to when playing with any class that fights with weapons (rather than tech spam), and that is "Enter" with autofire property on the A button (action palette middle in PSO) to quickly skip through any chat bubble dialogue. Sounds good but I noticed that it can fuck up my combos if I happen to center my camera as I fight (pure habit), since it will switch to set 2 and thus cause my normal attack to have autofire, so the combo will stop. This happened a few times recently, so I had to get rid of it. I have some other specific PSO configs where it is present though, nice to have for quick "remake the room after a few minutes" hunts like PW4 first room or Luck Material farming. Another useful thing is that you can assign commands like "/lobby" to an F button via the chat shortcut menu in PSO, then use that F button in Xpadder. /lobby is F12 for me and it is on the set 2 back button in my hunt config. Any feedback, insight or your personal config? Feel free to post!

Nice, but I'd say if you do only Mop Up 3 it is still better to hunt on Purplenum for the Heaven Striker drop on Pyro Gorans. They drop Revival Cuirass instead on Oran, sucks. If one was looking for a Vivienne Oran would be better but I don't think there are a lot of quests with many Detonators AND Zus to make it worthwhile. Haven't really looked at the monster count for War of Limits 4 ...

Good job maka. As we discussed in the lobby before, it is fine with me that you won't accept this for 2P because Roboflop, the Purplenum host who didn't actually join the battle at all, is present as a 3rd, I'll just leave it here anyway so people can see what is possible - players: Sylph (HUcaseal) and Wizard (FOnewm). Well, it's mostly down to Sylph, I merely provided the S/D and was mostly Rafoie nuking, but I also gave him some small suggestions to shave off a few seconds here and there. And I'll be honest, we do the first S/D and HP lowering for Dark Flow special in the regular area before starting the quest - it's just Sylph's preference even though it wastes more real-life time, but it's all about the quest timer ... Good thing is though, we actually beat the time of a certain pro solo FOney ...

http://abload.de/image.php?img=unbenannt-2b6sty.jpg Haha, beat me to it, but I was gonna edit this anyway, because if I had first I was not going to accept a win. I'll explain in a few minutes. Edit: Well cyane, this kind of thing is too easy for people who use Photoshop or similar software as they can cheat. You even provided two separate pics. So all was needed to put one layer over another and then keep toggling the upper one on/off over and over to easily spot any differences. The only reason I was barely beat by magictrick then was because I wasn't aware round 2 had begun for about 2-3 minutes so I lost time.

I'll have to try again. I hope RAcast doesn't have a larger hitbox than FOnewearl though. I didn't make him the slimmest either.

So how do you deal with those Shambertin tornados if you have high HP (I'm playing RAcast, but other classes have to problem too)? If I run into the section with Shamby in it and I'm barely halfway in as he starts them, I run back as there is just enough time to get back to the entrance safely. No problem, just needs patience. However, sometimes he does them even later or after launching some missiles and usually I'll just have to accept that I'm gonna die even if I hug the wall on either side. So, do you guys just take the death and carry on, or is there a 100% sure way to survive? I have tried a few things, usually running to the far right side, but the tornados often reach far enough to pummel you into submission just as fast as a Baranz missile volley. I'm carrying 2-3 Scape Dolls with me for now as Shamby might just do the same after you got revived ...

Interesting. Must be some kind of display/update bug in PSO: I had both a God/Technique and Hylian Shield equipped (because I've just kept the God/Tech on for ages, put in on way before I even hit level 131), obviously techs showed up as level 30. Then I unequipped the God/Tech and it only showed them as 29 so I thought the Hylian +1 isn't functional. Finally un- then re-equpping Hylian did the trick. Thanks for clarification.