New Nyarlathotep's Dungeon Topic, Updated 10/1/14 with new rules

[dude789]

I just beat Suikoden 1 so I've had a lot of ideas based on the Suikoden 1 options floating around in my head for a while. Most recent is this.

Crowley with Body Charge (3.0)
Geno (3.0)
Crono (2.0)
Jack (2.5)
Party Slot Nall (.5)

Idea is to abuse Nall's revival at the end of the battle with Crowley's Shining Wind. Body Charge makes Crowley really fast but Geno is just a hair faster which lets him drop a Geno Boost boosting Crowley's damage to pretty disgusting levels. Crono and Jack bring even more speed and damage to the table as well as some things like ID and emergency revival. Thoughts?

[Magic Fanatic]

Keep in mind that Crono's Life spell is fairly late.  I wanna say...  F4 or F5ish?  Anyway, not the point.

Body Charge Crowley will carry you through some floors, but earlygame MP charges are a bit worrying - I don't think Shining Wind (like most of your strategy necessitates) pops up until at least F3 if not later, and even then, MT stuff is going to be really limited early on.  That said...

Your team is fast enough to blitz almost anything that comes along,  I seriously doubt I need to set out any actual worries, other than the fact that your healing is all late (except for Crowley's Healing Wind, and the problem with that is its severely limited), ST when you get it, but generally serves multiple uses.  The entire team is mostly status bait, so you're going to have to ask yourself if you're fast enough to deal with those that throw status before it becomes a problem.  I'd say yes, but it depends on where in the dungeon.

I can see it going far.

[dude789]

Crowley joins really late and at a high level so I don't think charges will be that big of a problem. I want to say that he already starts with 2 or 3 level 4 charges.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Personally I would definitely see Crowley levelling up like any other character, so yeah, he'd have to wait until floor 3-4 for Shining Wind. I honestly don't see a strong argument otherwise.

[dude789]

Personally I would definitely see Crowley levelling up like any other character, so yeah, he'd have to wait until floor 3-4 for Shining Wind. I honestly don't see a strong argument otherwise.

I guess the main argument is consistency since there are a late joiners who most people take as being compared to when they join early on. Either way it's not a tremendous problem. He's essentially trading Shining Wind for even more powerful damage early on. The Shredding is probably going to be brushing up against OHKO damage with the boost from Body Charge.

[SnowFire]

dude: It looks like a cool team at least.  Nice blitz potential certainly, always amused when Nall gets used well.

Re Crowley: Suikoden is a little weird in the Dungeon.  For other games, I would unambiguously say that characters start with the set they have when the join up, BUT have the MP they would have at the appropriate level.  So Strago has an uber Aqua Rake on Floor 1 and Floor 2 but only enough MP to cast it once or twice.  Unfortunately that doesn't work for Suikoden with everyone theoretically knows every spell on their rune at lvl. 1 but MP to cast it is limited, so yeah, I'd not let Crowley start out with the MP/charges to cast the uber stuff on early floors.

[Dark Holy Elf]

But that's pretty silly in a game like Suikoden where you can extrapolate characters to lower levels so easily. Yes, they lose skills, but so what? I don't consider "has Shining Wind" to be a defining trait of Crowley, but rather, "has Cyclone Rune". If you somehow managed to keep your levels down (might be possible with some weird party shuffling and killing Tir off in boss fights) then you could even recruit Crowley before he gets a L4 and see this for yourself, but you hardly have to since all Suikoden characters gain spell charges in an utterly predictable way based on their mag growth.

Now, as dude observes, he gets lots of shots of The Shredding really fast and those hurt insanely badly for the early floors. So he's still pretty good of course. Just as a matter of principle I don't see how you can allow late-joining Suikoden characters their entire skillset, because they just don't have the MP for it. (Your comment on Strago applies pretty well here.) How on earth would you scale the damage, anyway?

[dude789]

In a case of late joining characters I'd compare them to characters when they joined. So using Crowley as an example. He joins at floor 5ish so he'd compare to characters from when you acquire him in game. The end result being that he pretty much stays the same until floor 5 or six when he finally starts to pick up those last few levels and rune charges.

[Dhyerwolf]

I thought joining generally as they start in game and compared to other PC stats at that time was pretty standard. Generally the simplest solution, which is good for dungeon.

[SnowFire]

Dark Holy Elf: I'm not sure you understood what I was saying.  If not obvious, yes, I agree that F1 Crowley shouldn't be able to cast Shining Wind.  I was merely making the point that if Konami had made a character who had an L4 charge at lvl. 1, and they were equipped with a Cyclone Rune, they *would* be able to cast Shining Wind, since you can cast all the spells on a rune MP permitting.

I also have no problem with dude & Dhyer's interps and use it myself sometimes if it's not obvious how a character would perform in a hypothetical low-level situation, or the result is obviously silly.

[074]

Given that my team's pretty clearly not making it through, I feel it's safe to do a team analysis at this rate.

Rika: More than earns her cost.  Saner and Elim aside, -Deban- of all things grabbed a win against Emo and Melfice.  Life is a double-edged sword with her, since it does cut down her healing a bit, but gives her access to revival in exchange.  Flat-out amazing in a team setting, proving that you don't need to be a Project Character to make it into the 4.0 rank.  Antiphysical to a degree that can only be considered stupid, and in a team-friendly manner at that.

Celes: Status, status, and more status.  By the end of the dungeon she was packing just about every non-Charm FF6 status one could throw out, and it proved rather effective.  X-Zone was there as well, which is just...ow.  But the point is that she's effective for how you build her, though it's admittedly very tempting to take her down the route of statuswhore.

Lucian+Shiho: Hilariously, these two were my only real good damage option for most of the run.  Might Reinforce Lucian is a thing to behold, and when you can ID or status most of the others beforehand, that ST doesn't really look so bad anymore.  A bit of a niche pick, probably more comparable to a Nei that has solid healing options in addition to the stupid physical buff, but really, Might Reinforce is the big reason you take her.  Lucian being a competent physical fighter before Reinforce just adds to it.

Rand: Not gonna lie here, he was filler that had more revival.  Could beat more people down once Reinforce kicked in, but the big thing is that he's another body and he had Revive.  His below-average speed kind of kept him as an extra for the most part.

So overall?  Team well outperformed my expectations.  Celes helped deal with the earlygame more than well enough, with Imp in particular ripping everything and its mom a new one.  Once the team hit F4, it started to steamroll enemies all the way through to the end of F6--where of all things, DEBAN HYPE saves the day.

and then I panic over F7 selection and leave the choice to Hatbot.  GJ.

[Yoshiken]

Press Turn Sealstone:
Edgar (3.0)
Popoi (2.5)
Rand (0.5)
Raja (1.0)
Blue (4.0)

Edgar/Blue is a ridiculous combination as is, if only because Edgar sweeps earlier floors while Blue sweeps later ones. Popoi's range of elements alongside Edgar's Debilitator means Edgar doesn't just disappear after a few floors. Rand/Raja are cheap, effective healers, and Blue is Blue. I originally wanted to build a Press Turn Sealstone team, but Amarant is way too expensive for what he offers, so I ended up with only Edgar on that front. I tried picking up good elemental options, but most ended up way too frail/slow and I had pretty much no way of beating MT fights. (I still don't, but not the point.) I also died after I got to, like, Floor 6, because Edgar was doing nothing and Purim/Popoi weren't enough to carry the team, not to mention the speeeeeeed. So, yeah, Blue. Not expecting this to ever work, but what the hell, let's try it.

[dude789]

Press Turn Sealstone:
Edgar (3.0)
Popoi (2.5)
Rand (0.5)
Raja (1.0)
Blue (4.0)

Edgar/Blue is a ridiculous combination as is, if only because Edgar sweeps earlier floors while Blue sweeps later ones. Popoi's range of elements alongside Edgar's Debilitator means Edgar doesn't just disappear after a few floors. Rand/Raja are cheap, effective healers, and Blue is Blue. I originally wanted to build a Press Turn Sealstone team, but Amarant is way too expensive for what he offers, so I ended up with only Edgar on that front. I tried picking up good elemental options, but most ended up way too frail/slow and I had pretty much no way of beating MT fights. (I still don't, but not the point.) I also died after I got to, like, Floor 6, because Edgar was doing nothing and Purim/Popoi weren't enough to carry the team, not to mention the speeeeeeed. So, yeah, Blue. Not expecting this to ever work, but what the hell, let's try it.

I think you might want to change your team up a bit, because as of now the team looks really really bad early on. In particular, everyone's speed falls between average and slug like and they don't have the durability to withstand repeated assaults from faster opponents. Popoi is also bad early on and your team doesn't really have any way to protect Raja especially since he actually has a weakness (fire) which opponents can use to take advantage of the press turn sealstone. Blue and Edgar are both clever choices for the sealstone due to Debilitator and Saga element wonkiness but Debilitator isn't for a few floors and again your teams speed and durability are both too bad for me to see them getting past floor 2 or three.

[Yoshiken]

In all honesty? I'm pretty much relying on Edgar to get me through the first couple of floors. That said, Raja having a weakness is a very big problem. That said, is there anyone reliable to replace him with? :/ Tear, maybe?

[dude789]

In all honesty? I'm pretty much relying on Edgar to get me through the first couple of floors. That said, Raja having a weakness is a very big problem. That said, is there anyone reliable to replace him with? :/ Tear, maybe?

Edgar is good early on, but he doesn't have the speed to carry a team by himself and the point where Blue and Popoi really come into their own is after Edgar starts to decline. As it stands now I think G1 Feena might actually beat your team by herself on floor 2 depending on interpretation.

[SnowFire]

Fun fact: End of the World, despite requiring Fire Magic to learn and being a gigantic shower of exploding fireballs, is apparently non-elemental according to Dhyerwolf in some ancient match where this mattered awhile back.

Feena still gets a free GT Fire Whip that will hit Raja + somebody else if she wants the press turn, of course.

I approve of somebody doing a Press Turn team - in retrospect my team would actually not be so bad at such a thing, since Feena and Red blitz really well with elemental variety whenever there's a weakness to exploit, but agree that Edgar should be included strictly for style points if nothing else.  I would say that including anybody who has an elemental weakness themselves is chancy unless they have hax elemental choice themselves (Yuri2, who can also modify his weakness once he gets a turn) or already have the Press Turn disadvantage baked into their price (Yukari, Yukiko, etc.) since Press Turns don't stack.  So...  yeah, can Raja, definitely.

[Dhyerwolf]

The problematic thematically without someone like Edgar is that elemental weaknesses? There's Shana/Miranda that I can easily think, and uh...Worker 8? Of course, Edgar is slow, and therefore that's not really a strategy either. That's not an also seal stone to get any mileage out of.

[Yoshiken]

Mm, that was the problem. I wanted to make a Press Turn team, but options to grant weaknesses for a decent price are... Edgar or Amarant. More than enough ways to abuse them, but nothing to actually get to that stage to begin with.

[dude789]

Mm, that was the problem. I wanted to make a Press Turn team, but options to grant weaknesses for a decent price are... Edgar or Amarant. More than enough ways to abuse them, but nothing to actually get to that stage to begin with.

Edgar and Popoi is a neat combo since I think Popoi can hit every weakness Edgar can inflict except for holy and poison which Edgar himself can handle but it takes a while for it to become really effective.  There are a couple others who can inflict weaknesses. Virginia can but that's later than Edgar's even but it does give you a bit more control over which element you make the enemy weak against.  Riddle from Chrono Cross can do it and she's pretty cheap but she has a weakness herself (granted it's a rare one and she can change her element with the same Turn element she's using against the enemies.)

[SnowFire]

On the Amarant note, I proposed dropping his price before - he's a 2.5 but that seems way overcosted, and nobody's ever used him.  He can definitely go to 2.0, maybe even 1.5...  not sure if he has a place anyway since Edgar is a stronger pick in general, but might make it more interesting.

[Nephrite]

I will be doing some major point renovation over this weekend.

[074]

Keep in mind that for a PT team, you'd have to be very careful about speed.  Edgar's TERRIBLE for this specifically due to his poor speed and inability to do damage to the status-immune aside from inflict weakness and/or use Drill.

And at this rate, you'd need either a fast weakness-granter or an extremely fast person (ATB/CTB Fast, not TB Fast; we're talking the ability to 3-2 average at the least) who can hit these weaknesses.  And to my knowledge, there aren't any abilities that grant weakness to multiple targets.

In a setting where you have to be able to disable several targets quickly.

Preferably before they act.


Might want to consider your strategy a bit more closely is all I'm suggesting.


sidenote: Yay point renovation!

[Nephrite]

Jane might work rather well with Edgar, on that note.

[superaielman]

Edgar's ability to grant weaknesses is spotty since he can't pick the element, and he is dead weight past floor 4 anyway. He goes from MVP to LVP literally at that point.

[Talaysen]

fun teams > efficient teams

Yoshiken doin' it rite.