Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Interdimensional Observer]

16 hours ago, Armagon said:

In regards of how you get them, Aux Cores simply require exchaning certain enemy drops for them at any Aux Core seller. Exchange the quantity of items (an Aux Core can ask for multiple items but you can just give it one kind of item multiple times until the meter fills up) and the Aux Core is yours. I've heard Augments are gotten the same way but i'll let @Interdimensional Observer explain the specifics since he's replaying XCX right now.

It's very simple to make Augments:

• Warp to Armory Alley, go to the purple AM Terminal.
• Select "Engineer Augments".
• Choose the category: Weapon, Armor, Skell Weapon, Skell Armor, or Skell Frame; and the type (such as Stat, Enemy Exploit, Art Mod, Overdrive, Soul Voice to name a bunch for Weapons) to find the exact Augment you're looking for.
• Pick the quality of the Augment you want to make. Augments can be crafted in I, V, X, XV, and XX qualities.
  • Intermediary numbers cannot be crafted, but you may find a few of them from Basic Missions or Treasure Chests. And the intermediary values can be found in Traits on gear, Traits are the same as Augments, just pre-built into and irremovable from its gear.
• Provided you have the items in sufficient qualities needed to make the Augments, always a combination of some Materials dropped by enemies, a Precious Resource earned passively from FrontierNav, and quantity of Miranium earned from FrontierNav the same, you can then make the Augment.
  • Higher qualities demand more Materials, more Miranium, and different Precious Resources.

After you make the Augment, you must insert it into your equipment. If a piece doesn't have Augment Slots, you can add them via after Chapter 5 and the completion of a Normal Mission involving L, all you have to is survey 30% of Oblivia, merely activating the FrontierNav sites in the region can get you to that point. Adding a slot requires a hefty amount of Miranium (a level 10 weapon costs 5k) and the amount increases with higher-leveled gear (all gear has levels in XCX- a piece of lvl 25 Sakuraba Heavy Wear will offer more Defense and have higher quality Traits than a lvl 5 version- but you have to be at lvl 25 to equip it).

Weapons can have up to 3 Augment slots each, Armor can have only 1. Augments on your Ranged Weapon will help your Melee Weapon and vice versa, unless it explicitly says otherwise (Ranged Accuracy Up for instance) Skells have 3 slots on their weapons, 1 on their armor, and 3 on the Skell Frame itself. The fact that Skells pack 8-10 weapons except for the Ares means you can deck them out in a lot more Augments than your characters on foot.

The in-built Traits of gear can be upgraded a limited number of times (the limit is shared by all Traits- if you use one upgrade on Ether Attack Plus, it, that's one less upgrade you can use on Insectoid Criticals Up on hypothetical weapon with both of these in it), each upgrade increasing the Trait by one leve. This costs Miranium and a few of the materials you'd need to make an Augment of the same boost. Upgrading Traits isn't worth it unless you really want to get your mileage out of a piece of nice equipment- one or three ranks isn't a big deal, and you might be better off saving it for crafting an Augment of it instead.

 

The big issue with Augments isn't the process of creating and adding them to stuff. Whereas XC1 Gems had fairly easy acquisition of the components that became the Gems and an RNG crafting process that could've been explained better, the chore and bore of Augments is in getting the components.

For some Augments, it ain't so bad- lackluster Melee Accuracy Up or some resistance to an obscure debuff? Those come easy. Some middle-ground quality Augments aren't bad too, Slayer.INSECTOID XX (more damage dealt to Insectoids, not bad if you know you want to fight some of these) needs only 12 Tatty Insect Wings and Max HP Up XX calls for 10 Succulent Meats, the weakest of Blattas and Suids near Starfall Basin where you start the game can give you those quickly, as can Blattas and Suids anywhere on Mira.

For some Augments, the Materials required for the I and V qualities differ from the higher levels and aren't as rare, for Extend Overdrive I and V, you need Silver Progen Wings and Terebra Paw Stamps. For X and up these get replaced by Red Brandy and Fine Red Belts, the first from Arenatects and the second from Marnucks in Cauldros- aka the land of mostly higher-leveled enemies and hence you can't farm Fine Red Belts early.

But want a top-tier Augment at XX quality? How about Potential Boost XX to make your Tension Arts deal ungodly damage? That'll be 48 Nutritious Microbes, 48 Clear Gerrid Soups, 48 Gularthian Everflames (Gularths are those magma giants in Cauldros), and of course 18 Bonjelliums from Cauldros + 2000 Miranium. Thats for one Augment, if you want a full set of Potential Boost XX for OHKO superbosses level of damage, you'll have to multiply those 48s by 5. XCX doesn't prevent you from using multiple of the same Augment, nor does it cap the cumulative boosts like Gems in XC1.

The Miranium and the Precious Resources aren't the problems, once you set the probes these will come to you automatically as you do other things. I currently have a 8000k Miranium income and that's without probing Sylvalum or Cauldros, still having FrontierNav unfinished elsewhere, and not setting up elaborate probe chains and duplicators either. It's the enemy Materials, you have to farm those, and even if you can break an appendage to get one, the chance is almost never 100% that the enemy will give up what you want. It's tedium, lots and lots of tedium, albeit brainless with a strong setup to farm things in the first place.

The Enemy Index is half-helpful and half-not when it comes to getting Materials. The helpful half of it is that, provided you've killed the enemy and obtained the drop before, the Material will be listed on that enemy's entry, and it'll be listed even on enemies you haven't defeated if they can drop the same stuff. As long as you've aggro'ed an enemy at least once, its data, albeit incomplete, will be listed in the Enemy Index, you run away or die and it'll be added. The unhelpful half is finding the enemies- the Enemy Index only tells you which of the five regions the enemy is in, which is like telling you "Joe lives in America"- thats not very helpful in what is roughly the third largest country on Earth, and unlike Canada doesn't have 90% of it's people living within 100 miles north of the southern border and the rest is uninhabited taiga/tundra.

Two other issues with finding the Materials come to mind.

One, not all of them make it clear which enemy drops them, where could I find an "Opaque Mirror", would you believe it's Grexes of all things? And what about all these mechanical drops like Genuine Cranks- the Ganglion have no shortage of differing robots and mechs that sound like they could drop them. And some only give you half an answer, an Oc-Serv Southern Crest tells me to find Oc-servs, but how am I supposed to tell which drop Southern Crests instead of Eastern Crests? The Material descriptions definitely could afford to say something the same generic and meaningless sentence every time and instead inform you more about how you got them or where you get them.

Two, while all Augments are listed at the AM Terminal from the Prologue and beyond, if you select an Augment, all you'll see is "???" for every quality of it if you haven't ever obtained 1 Material of one of the components to make it- the Precious Resource doesn't count.

 

But! The minor and totally ignorable online component of Xenoblade Chronicles X offers an alternative solution to your headaches of trying to find Materials.

Squad Tasks and Squad Missions provide you with Reward Tickets, which can be exchanged at the Network Terminal in the BLADE Barracks for any Material in the game! You could be level 12 and exchange them for some Millepod Ice Rocks a level 91 Tyrant is the only source of. The Reward Ticket price of the Material varies with its rarity, for a highest-end case, a Crude Neilnail Mask, 12 of which are needed for your postgame Ares 90, cost 210 Reward Tickets apiece. Thats gonna be a lot of Squad Tasks and Missions.

Luckily the two Global Nemeses exist, ready to provide you with plentiful Reward Tickets. To fight a Global Nemesis, you must spend 1 Blade Medal every fight, these are earned from Squad Tasks, Missions, and maxing out the gauge that replaces Class Rank on fellow players whose avatars you've hired ingame via leveling them in battles.

• The first Global Nemesis is the Planet's Guardian- the level 30 Telethia Plume, it might be doable before the postgame (I didn't try) and it doesn't matter if you don't survive the full 15 minutes- you can flee or run out of lives, you'll still get rewarded. It comes and goes every week for several days, or until players have drained it of all its Resurrection Points- every time you deplete it's lifebar, it uses up an RP to full heal itself right in the middle of the fight.
• The second Global Nemesis is the Final Menace- the level 60 Yggralith Zero. This is definitely postgame-only, but I guess you can farm it earlier if you have friends in the postgame and you have them fight it for you as you just die and watch them slay it. The Yggralith Zero is what that blue circle meter on the Squad Selection menu is for, it appears only when enough Squad Missions (which require Squad Tasks to unlock) are completed worldwide. It lasts for a week or until its RP is exhausted.

In both cases, surviving the entire 15 minute fights can give some Materials to the Global Nemesis, The Yggralith can give you a Holofigure for outlasting it too, and the Telethia can reward your endurance with a hibiscus you can wear on your head as gear. For every Resurrection Point you removed from the Global Nemesis up to a certain listed number, you will be rewarded when it runs out of RP/flees with Telethia Stem Cells and Yggralith Gold respectively. Telethia Stem Cells are used to craft a few bits of gear- the bunny suit and Celica's and L's outfits. Yggralith Gold is used to craft some versions of *cough cough WHEEZE!*.

Both the Plume and Zero have like 7 appendages, each of which can drop Appendage Fragments. You can exchange these right after a round against a Global Nemesis for Reward Tickets. If I broke all the appendages on the Plume, I could rake in upwards of ~250 Tickets per run, and about double that for the Yggralith.

Because a Global Nemesis's appendages aren't resurrected when it resurrects mid-fight, if you want to farm Reward Tickets, you should go into a battle, break all the appendages, and then immediately retreat, this factoring in load times b/c it's online will mean about 5 minutes per optimized Ticket run.

Don't forget before the Global Nemeses arrive to recruit three scrub avatars at low levels and drag them to high-leveled enemy location for a few kills. Once they've instantly got ⭐s on their status fire them and hire new scrubs, that way you can get Blade Medals as quickly as possible if you want brutal efficiency.

Although this demands time and some effort, Reward Tickets can still be seen as less tedious and more mindless than going off to hunt a plethora of enemies across Mira for the sake of getting the Materials.

Of course, with XCX so old and forgotten at this point, the online is very dead, so Yggralith Zero takes months to appear, and meanie hackers kill it in an hour or three of it showing up too.

 

This begs the question- do you need top-tier Augments? The answer? For the main story- no, you don't need any Augments for the main story. For a 100% Mira Survey- yes, you need some for the Endbringer and ideally a Materials-intensive Ares 90/level 60 Skell + lvl 60 Skell Superweapons too. But the Endbringer is the only postgame superboss for required for the survey, nothing else is. Therefore, anything besides what the Endbringer demands is strictly superfluous. 

Yet, I guess there is an appeal for some in crafting uber Augments for brokenly deadly character builds. This would be no different from grinding in an FE to get someone to the level cap with an assortment of amazing skills and all stats all glowing green at their maximums. Do you need that much power to complete an FE? Nope, and you could've done it faster too, but numbers porn is the rock-hard fetish of some humans out there.

Edited July 20, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[DragonFlames]

Thanks, @twilitfalchion

 

[Ika Musume]

Wha-wha woah! This is really thorough!

Ninjad

Edited July 20, 2020 by Ika Musume

[Shrimpica]

speaking about the direct, apparently the jp one was much much better

Edited July 20, 2020 by Shrimperor

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

Seeing Radiant Dawn talk reminds me that I haven't played this game for more than over a year. I'm really glad I was able to finally resist this game. I mean I loved it, but I was so obssessed that I didn't try out other series by that. Still I will replay this game sometime in this year again. Nothing can dethrone Radiant Dawn as my favorite videogame of all time.

[null]

Speaking of, a friend of mine sent me these pics of the games in the JP direct.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Shrimpica]

1 minute ago, twilitfalchion said:

Speaking of, a friend of mine sent me these pics of the games in the JP direct.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

images bugged btw

[Interdimensional Observer]

Just watched the minute & a half-long SMTV trailer. Lucifer in his classic angry version shown this early? Has Atlus gone reactionary and is responding to some backlash against his IV appearance by saying "Look, that abomination isn't coming back!"?. As for the setting, hellooooooooooooooooooo Nocturne! Is Tokyo going to be turned into another Vortex World?

*Notices as I'm typing this that Japan is getting an HD Remaster of Nocturne on Switch, coming Spring 2021 next year.*

That explains it! Nocturne is back in vogue, not that fans ever stopped revering it (to be fair, it was SMT's "coming-out party" in the West).

 

Can Digital Devil Saga 1&2 get bundled into an HD remaster while we're at it? The story is a bit rushed later in DDS2, but I like the duology.

 

Boss theme from Nocturne just for a little celebration on my part to this news.:

BTW, Nocturne is called "Lucifer's Call" for you Europeans, and in Japan it's "Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne Maniax Edition".

[null]

These are the images uploaded from Imgur. They're still pretty blurry though.

Spoiler

 

Edited July 20, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[Shrimpica]

2 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Crap, well let's try that again. If they're blurry, that's because that's how they looked when they were sent.

  Hide contents

 

try reuploading to imgur xD

[Sidereal Wraith]

*Puts down the book and takes a swig of whiskey*

Holy shit...

Edited July 20, 2020 by Wraith

[Interdimensional Observer]

Oh, and looking at it, the SMTIII we're getting HD remade is the formerly Japan-only Chronicle Edition. Chronicles contains all the bonus content Nocturne Maniax added that the original SMTIII that released only in Japan didn't have.

The one difference is the agreement with Capcom to use Dante from Devil May Cry in SMTIII had expired, so Atlus added Raidou Kuzunoha from Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army and SMTDS Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abbadon- two PS2-era Action RPGs in Tales format except very primitive with awful stiffness (or so the first game was, couldn't be bothered to try the second). Every scene that Dante was in had been altered to feature Raidou instead, and because he's a silent protagonist like every SMT lead, he has his talking black cat companion Gotou besides him. Dante can be recruited near the end of the game and has the same skills as Dante, except his replacement for Son's Oath- Raidou the Aeon- includes a Pierce effect on all Phys attacks.

Sorry for the Dante fans out there, but he wasn't truly important anyhow, just a cool little bonus.

[null]

Radiant Dawn Ch. 1-3 on normal is probably one of the most challenging chapters I've tackled in an FE game in a long while (mostly because I forgot about battle saves being a thing). But the higher challenge is nice after tearing my way through the latter part of Path of Radiance. Most units can die in two (or one, in some cases) hits but Sothe is amazing (his animations are pretty neat as well). It's interesting having a thief Jagen instead of a paladin or similar unit.

[Strullemia]

20 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

I see, I see.
I'll see if I can make use of that somehow. Thank you!

I didn't know monsters only obey at 20 wisdom, either. I just thought Leo (what Saber's name is in my playthrough) disobeyed me because he's still young.

One advantage he has is that he can make multiple of them.
You know... for reasons.

---

This will never not be awesome.

The first time you hear that chant is just amazing.

[DragonFlames]

1 hour ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Oh, and looking at it, the SMTIII we're getting HD remade is the formerly Japan-only Chronicle Edition. Chronicles contains all the bonus content Nocturne Maniax added that the original SMTIII that released only in Japan didn't have.

Ooh, sounds great!

Though I'm honestly split on SMTIII, since Atlus is one of those companies that really progresses with each game, so going backwards in a franchise of theirs is seldom a good idea, I've found, even if it is a remastered version.
To wit, Strange Journey Redux was... and this is putting it as diplomatically as I can, not great, Persona 4 Golden is... vastly inferior to Persona 5 (to me), Etrian Odyssey IV doesn't have half the QoL that Untold does etc.
With that in mind, I think I'll wait until V comes out.

2 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Radiant Dawn Ch. 1-3 on normal is probably one of the most challenging chapters I've tackled in an FE game in a long while (mostly because I forgot about battle saves being a thing). But the higher challenge is nice after tearing my way through the latter part of Path of Radiance. Most units can die in two (or one, in some cases) hits but Sothe is amazing (his animations are pretty neat as well). It's interesting having a thief Jagen instead of a paladin or similar unit.

As a heads up: An upcoming boss has a Discipline scroll that you might want to steal. It's a really helpful skill to boost weapon ranks.

Just now, Strullemia said:

The first time you hear that chant is just amazing.

Indeed it is.

---

@Shrimperor, @Caster, @Strullemia
I found something neat in Extella Link:

Though this raises one hell of a lot of questions, now that I think about it.

[null]

Just now, DragonFlames said:

As a heads up: An upcoming boss has a Discipline scroll that you might want to steal. It's a really helpful skill to boost weapon ranks

Thanks for the tip! 👍

[Shrimpica]

4 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Though this raises one hell of a lot of questions, now that I think about it.

Canon in Fate is fickle as a piece of wet paper

[Shrimpica]

9 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

It's interesting having a thief Jagen instead of a paladin or similar unit.

Thief Jagen + Mage Lord.

We didn't get any other interesting combinations in the series except in Thracia (Swordmaster prepromote) and Fates (Dragon Lord + Healer prepromot)

[DragonFlames]

7 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Thanks for the tip! 👍

You're welcome.

Oh, and skills don't vanish if you take them off of characters, which means you can take some useful skills off of units you're not using and instead give them to units you want to use. You can do some pretty crazy stuff with that, so I thought you should know about it.
This of course also means that you can take the Discipline skill off of someone and give it to someone else, so don't be afraid to use it on anyone you like.

4 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Canon in Fate is fickle as a piece of wet paper

Ayup. And that's far from everything:
Lancelot uses the jet fighter he hijacked in Zero for his Noble Phantasm, and Gilgamesh and Iskandar mention their meeting, as well.
Not to mention, Medusa, Archer, and Cu Chulainn know each other... and Gil and Artoria have a conversation, as well...
while this takes place in a timeline where the events of Fate/Stay Night could not have happened. My head hurts.

Edited July 20, 2020 by DragonFlames

[null]

5 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Thief Jagen + Mage Lord.

We didn't get any other interesting combinations in the series except in Thracia (Swordmaster prepromote) and Fates (Dragon Lord + Healer prepromot)

True. It'd be nice to have a bit more variety in future FE games.

3 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Oh, and skills don't vanish if you take them off of characters, which means you can take some useful skills off of units you're not using and instead give them to units you want to use. You can do some pretty crazy stuff with that, so I thought you should know about it.
This of course also means that you can take the Discipline skill off of someone and give it to someone else, so don't be afraid to use it on anyone you like.

Ah, that's right. I remember hearing that RD changed that aspect of how skills work. Thanks again.

[Shrimpica]

RD's skill system is pretty sick yeah

5 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

while this takes place in a timeline where the events of Fate/Stay Night could not have happened

Multiverse

the explanation of everything

[Shrimpica]

2 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

True. It'd be nice to have a bit more variety in future FE games

Well, you will have alot of variety in RD itself 😉

[DragonFlames]

1 minute ago, twilitfalchion said:

Ah, that's right. I remember hearing that RD changed that aspect of how skills work. Thanks again.

No problem! Always happy to help out!

Just now, Shrimperor said:

Multiverse

the explanation of everything

Too true.

---

What could he be referencing I wonder?
Must be Zero.

[Acacia Sgt]

I'll just say... the writing thread never dissapoints.

[null]

6 minutes ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I'll just say... the writing thread never dissapoints.

Have they gotten into disputes like that in the past?

Edited July 20, 2020 by twilitfalchion