Ni No Kuni: Wrath of The White Witch Catch-all

Oh I am not arguing that its a good thing. The fact that they added such an easy mob to farm makes it all even dumber.

Re: Island mob. I tried this. Ran around for half an hour, fought lots of other critters but only saw a single XPinata.
On the flip side, hanging out in the hills north of Ding Dong Dell there roam the vicious Ulk. They put up a fight, but don't seem to have any of the vicious attacks that make other boss battles such a pain. They are easy to spot, don't run away, and spawn fairly regularly. I got a much larger sense of accomplishment fighting them. Also you get almost 3k XP and over 1K gold, plus a decent chance for a Nostrum or Tonic drop/steal.

Edit. Eep. Just ran into the version that roams below Perdida. Yup. I can see how that is a bit gamebreaking.

Coffee? Check. Breakfast? Check. Time to do some stupid grinding for whatever reason and then hit the final boss again. Please be prepared for more ranting and raving.

Oh quest that involves killing beachheads until a quest item is dropped, you may be responsible for me never playing again..........

2 straight hours with no drop.

Cobble wrote:

Oh quest that involves killing beachheads until a quest item is dropped, you may be responsible for me never playing again..........

2 straight hours with no drop.

Is it to get the gustplums? I think it's easier to get them from Major Byrde on Skull Mountain.

Cobble wrote:

2 straight hours with no drop.

Are you using mugshot?

IUMogg wrote:
Cobble wrote:

Oh quest that involves killing beachheads until a quest item is dropped, you may be responsible for me never playing again..........

2 straight hours with no drop.

Is it to get the gustplums? I think it's easier to get them from Major Byrde on Skull Mountain.

Very this.

Rezzy wrote:

Are you using mugshot?

And this.

Or, if you can wait until after you've gotten all three gems, there are several enemies that have gustplumes as their standard drop/steal on the winding path up the mountain in Autumnia, as opposed to the rare one.

I'm starting to get the hang of managing the AI. The trick? Don't let them manage themselves. Whenever they start acting weird and performing questionable actions, take over. Hit All Out Attack/Defense or switch and fight with them for a bit. Also, status effects actually work in this game so set Tactics to "Attack Leader's Target", have Swaine's Ex-GirlFiend cast Rock-a-Bye-Baby, switch to Oliver and have Mitey & Friends pick 'em off one by one. I'm in a pretty tough area right now and this is how I've been surviving. If I don't do this, the enemies hit too hard or heal themselves too often and the AI goes INSANE.

So yeah, my advice on the AI: Get into a habit of taking control of the AI. Do it often. In boss battles, do not trust them.

One more thing about All Out Defense... Yeah, they don't defend quick enough. The AI switches to defensive familiars and may not defend in time. I find that I have to anticipate an attack from a boss before it starts showing any signs of an incoming attack. You know it's coming but the boss hasn't started prancing around the battlefield yet? Just hit AOD. If you're wrong, hit AOA. If you're right, YEAH DEFENSE!

Cobble wrote:

Oh quest that involves killing beachheads until a quest item is dropped, you may be responsible for me never playing again..........

2 straight hours with no drop.

Check your inventory if you haven't already. I spent a half hour on this one with no drop. Checked the Journal and it's like " Hey, return the gustplume!" and I'm all "What gustplume?" Turns out I had obtained a single gustplume at some point and didn't realize it.

Rezzy wrote:
Cobble wrote:

2 straight hours with no drop.

Are you using mugshot?

Gustplumes aren't one of the steal drops from beachheads.

So, I've spent the day leveling up doing quests and whatnot. Still haven't gone back to the final boss. The weirdest thing just happened. My characters were around level 63. I was working on the Perdida scientist-wants-these-familiars quest. So, I took the low level versions up to the sky castle to level them up quickly. I go through a few fights and they were leveling up pretty quickly. I get about 1000 EXP per fight. Probably a bit under that, actually. Then, I happened to get in 5-6 "Nice!" moves. I get a whopping 26,813 EXP. Everyone levels up. I have never done that before. Have I been missing something? I haven't really been worrying about timing my attacks because it has always felt like a terrible risk/reward option. Just attacking as fast as possible seems to do the most DPS, which is what I'm concerned about. Apparently getting those "Nice!" moves gives you ridiculous multipliers on your EXP earned.

Picture:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/UBa7rwsl.jpg)

Needless to say, my jaw dropped, and I pulled out the camera.

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

So, I've spent the day leveling up doing quests and whatnot. Still haven't gone back to the final boss. The weirdest thing just happened. My characters were around level 63. I was working on the Perdida scientist-wants-these-familiars quest. So, I took the low level versions up to the sky castle to level them up quickly. I go through a few fights and they were leveling up pretty quickly. I get about 1000 EXP per fight. Probably a bit under that, actually. Then, I happened to get in 5-6 "Nice!" moves. I get a whopping 26,813 EXP. Everyone levels up. I have never done that before. Have I been missing something? I haven't really been worrying about timing my attacks because it has always felt like a terrible risk/reward option. Just attacking as fast as possible seems to do the most DPS, which is what I'm concerned about. Apparently getting those "Nice!" moves gives you ridiculous multipliers on your EXP earned.

Picture:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/UBa7rwsl.jpg)

Needless to say, my jaw dropped, and I pulled out the camera.

I suspect you killed a specific enemy that (only?) shows up in the last area of the game. Worth a lot of XP.

Tyrian wrote:

I suspect you killed a specific enemy that (only?) shows up in the last area of the game. Worth a lot of XP.

Oh really? What enemy was that? It was just an easy, normal battle, and I wasn't paying all that much attention. Probably should spoiler tag the answer.

Edit: I had already cleared out the final area before and am pretty sure I didn't encounter anything like this before. It was only upon return after grinding a bunch.

It was a

Spoiler:

coldtoko

. If you have all the EXP upgrades those battles are worth around 29.2k EXP. They usually show up with others in the final dungeon, not as the displayed enemy, and they run away really fast, so it's not unlikely that it's the first time you actually beat one.

Their prominence is how I wound up being level 90 by the time I got back to the final boss a 2nd time. :/

EDIT: also, you're still using Hurly? Man. I don't envy you.

Cool! Thanks for the info. What a weird thing to do.

Edit: Ha, yeah, I ran into another one just now after working on some other stuff. That's a hilarious band-aid mechanic. How awful.

It's kind of a JRPG tradition >_>

From Metal Slimes to Magic Pots to Nu, a LOT of the most well-regarded JRPGs have had similar enemies.

Aaaaaand finished. Yeah, there are massive problems with the last boss. I could forgive the rest, but that was pretty ridiculous at the end. All in all, I spent about 80 hours to get to finish up. I will definitely put some more time into it trophy hunting.

Spoiler:

Just grinding made the last bit pretty easy. Didn't have any trouble with it this time. Still couldn't really block the chaos blast, but I had enough hit points and resources to recover very quickly.

Rolled the credits last night. My experience follows tuffalo's pretty closely. After running around for a while collecting creatures and leveling (party leaders in the high 70's) I only had to replay the final battle once (made a tactical error and got lazy).

Spoiler:

For the final phase I basically just avoided the satellites and spammed Thunderstorm. The cast-time on that is fantastically small, and it does a great job interrupting other attacks. Did that until the satellites died and then brought out my heavy hitters.

I think I'm going to give it a rest for a couple of days and then dive into the end-game stuff.

My girlfriend watched me play quite a bit of this, and she seemed a bit disappointed with the ending.
And I can't blame her.

Spoiler:

Basically we clobbered a sad girl and then told her to just accept that life can be sh*tty. The end.
It would have been maybe a hair more meaningful if the Final-Final-Final boss wasn't just a delusion manifested, but an actual incarnation of the initial Council... feeding their poisonous visions to Cassiopia and sealing away her heart to drive her deeper into despair despite the world around her healing and regrowing. To me it felt like it was being set up like that... that she was driven into madness. That the strings that she had tied around Shadar were mirroring the ones controlling her.

Does anyone have any familiar or evolution recommendations? I'm not having any trouble with what I've got going on at the moment, but I'm a bit sick of a couple of them and if there's some optimization I can do, that'd be neat.

I just unlocked Tengri and I'm mopping up sidequests before I

Spoiler:

start tracking down the gems.

My current lineup is:

Oliver: Mermite, Bighorn, and Puss in Boats. I'm thinking of replacing Bighorn with a Dinoceros once I can capture one. Also, I'm considering swapping Mermite out for Chloroboros.
Esther: Griffy (Ice version), Fluorongo, and Wishing Whambat. I know Griffy starts to fade soon.
Swaine: Bone Baron, Elegantiger and Dumbelemur

Are there any "can't miss" types that I should hunt down?

While I'm at it, has anyone experimented with Draggle much?

For Ollie, you could replace Mermite with Dinoceros. Mite is not very good past the mid-game. Bighorn is pretty good later, but if you want to swap him out, a Naja or Blessie, or Sillymander would be good choices that you can get now. I didn't mess with Draggle, but it looks like he's on the weaker side of the dragons.

For Esther, you could try using Hooray and Lumberwood. Hooray's 3rd evolutions are quite strong, and Lumberwood has a crazy high defense stat for soaking up hits. I'm past the section you are starting, and Griffy is weaker but still fine. I don't think he will be sub par until the super late game.

For Swain, Monolith's 3rd evolution is his Lumberwood equivalent, crazy high defense stats for soaking up damage. Bone Baron scales really well into the late game, so hang on to him. Inphant also makes a great tank, but he also has very high attack at high levels. The 3rd evolutions for Girlfiend have very high magic attack and make great casters for Swain.

Thanks, Dyni!

rolled credits on this at ~70hrs. played on easy so some of that was ultimately not necessary over-levelling judging from how relatively painless the last boss went.

Anybody still playing? Took time off for Tomb Raider and Bioshock Infinite, so I'm pretty far behind.

Spoiler:

Recently got Tengri, got the first gem, thinking about taking time out for the huge pile of hunts and subquests I'm sitting on.

I've done the very first level of the Colosseum and spent a little time, but not much, in the casino. Being somewhat completionist and with so much to do, I can see myself playing this for another month or two, easy.

I spent a few HOURS trying to grind for that high-XP mob and it just would not show up. I got it once. I did try an Ulk but it whooped me pretty hard; had to go through a lot of provisions for those XP. So grinding is not coming easy for me.

Rolling with Puss in Boats for Oliver. Backed up with evolved Mite and Draggly but never using them; seriously considering just evolving him a Puss In Bouts as a second. Maybe I should put something I can use for status effects or healing on him, now that Healing Touch is starting to get a little underpowered...?

Really struggling with Esther who won't seem to use any other familiars but Flurongo, switching to her songs for healing instead of using a familiar's healing spells. I'm going to have to look into Dyni's suggestions. Just browsing the Wizard's Companion, I was thinking Dinkey looked good too; anybody try that?

Swaine's got a Bone Baron and working on evolving a Grrrlfriend, so, at least I'm on track with him. Also has a Gold Tin-Man because it seemed like a shame to stick all my gold guys into storage...

Played a marathon session yesterday, I'm about to enter the final area, and figured some things out. Suddenly I'm thinking MMORPG style.

Oliver pretty quickly picked up some new spells that made me feel like he just needs a good physical attacker. Anything beyond Puss In Bo*ts is arbitrary. (The AI likes to swap in Draggly sometimes, presumably for elemental/celestial weaknesses.) He's my DPS man.

Swaine had an evolved Tin Man and I'm really glad about that now. (I abused Platoon a little to get the ticket for a gold Tin-Man if I recall correctly. Boy the Idler is disappointing though.) Can't do much damage, but he's a great tank.

Esther I'm still sticking with Flurongo; although I suspect I'd be happy with any familiar(s) with high magic who can equip Shining Scales for her. Give them light-based attacks and healing spells and not only can they heal, but they'll occasionally contribute to damage, especially against the endgame's numerous darkness-weak enemies.

Spoiler:

Has anybody used Macassin? When I picked him up he was underlevelled and he didn't really fit any special role in the party. His magic and affinity with other familiar types seems nice, but not "swap someone out and grind up ten levels" nice.

Also, has anyone done much with the AI tactics? I'm generally keeping Oliver (for the rare times I don't control him) and Esther as "Keep Us Healthy" and Swaine on "Support" to try to encourage him to steal. I feel like different tactics might make sense for boss battles. Maybe put Swaine on healing too, or let them "Do What You Want," or...? Of course I still think it would be nice if we could have slightly finer control over AI tactics...

Finally, anybody ever serenaded a Toko? It seems extraordinarily difficult (given their rarity on top of the low chance to recruit) but if I'm reading this right, they're an amazing familiar.

EDIT: Anybody agonizing as much as me might want to check this out, which should have been in the print guide: http://www.primagames.com/games/ni-n...

Wow. I'm not using any of those ,familiars. I'm still doing well though. Had a marathon last night too and got done with the third to last big plot point.

Spoiler:

just finished putting they and back together

. I'm n love with the game again though. I think hitting up the level island for a bit helped. Got me into the grinding and leveling aspect of mfamiliars. I normally don't go for completion on stuff, but I might have to do all the badge quests.

So, 125 hours and I think I'm finally done. Got 250 familiars, killed the Guardian of the World, got a familiar to like me fully and raised one to 99, though I still don't have the trophy!

Counted the number of things I had alchemized thinking I may be close to the trophy, only to find I needed to create about 30 more with items I would have to grind more for. So that isn't going to happen now.

Overall I really liked the combat in this game. It felt like I had control over 12 different characters, albeit it one at a time. It's shame there weren't more options for the AI as I found I put them on 'Don't use abilities' most of the time and switched between them if any healing was necessary otherwise Esther used all her MP in one battle. It's a shame I couldn't give her some 'Restraint' like I could some of the NPCs!

By the way, anyone still trying to get the 250 familiars trophy - don't forget to DL the two free familiars from the store. Levelled up these provide another 6 towards your goal!

Now onto Persona 4 golden........

I've tried to find the version of The Fairgrounds music that plays when inside the fairy mother. But cant find it anywhere for the life of me. Any help here would be greatly appreciated...

Edit: Turns out its on the soundtrack, not sure how I missed it: http://ninokuni.wikia.com/wiki/The_F...

I've kind of slowly let this go... I intended to do EVERYTHING but there is one post-game quest that requires grinding a bunch of incredibly rare ingredients. I'll tell you what: I've never met a crafting system I liked. That's part of what ruined Rogue Galaxy for me too, Level 5.

I did end up catching a Toko eventually and they are interesting. Their max levels are in the single digits, but they require an enormous amount of experience for each level. I ran into a general problem I have: it requires so much investment to really level familiars that one is discouraged from experimenting a lot. Especially when you start feeding them some of the rarer gems with really nice skills on them. On the bright side, I think this also meant you couldn't make a really terrible choice of familiars; they could all be powered up with enough time.

Anyway, I hope this did well enough that we'll see another Studio Ghibli RPG, maybe correcting some of the less-than-stellar stuff.

I also got to thinking: if Disney is distributing Studio Ghibli properties, does that mean some of them might pop up in Kingdom Hearts?

beeporama wrote:

I've kind of slowly let this go... I intended to do EVERYTHING but there is one post-game quest that requires grinding a bunch of incredibly rare ingredients. I'll tell you what: I've never met a crafting system I liked. That's part of what ruined Rogue Galaxy for me too, Level 5.

I did end up catching a Toko eventually and they are interesting. Their max levels are in the single digits, but they require an enormous amount of experience for each level. I ran into a general problem I have: it requires so much investment to really level familiars that one is discouraged from experimenting a lot. Especially when you start feeding them some of the rarer gems with really nice skills on them. On the bright side, I think this also meant you couldn't make a really terrible choice of familiars; they could all be powered up with enough time.

I hope that you are right with the statement that I can't make a really terrible choice--I haven't done much experimenting at all and I'm

Spoiler:

just starting to look for the three gems

. I am still winning most battles with ease but I barely made it through

Spoiler:

the second level of the arena thing.

Maybe my tactics aren't very good?

This game is definitely one where I am regretting not buying the guide with the Wizard's Companion printed out.

walterqchocobo wrote:

I hope that you are right with the statement that I can't make a really terrible choice--I haven't done much experimenting at all and I'm

Spoiler:

just starting to look for the three gems

. I am still winning most battles with ease but I barely made it through

Spoiler:

the second level of the arena thing.

Maybe my tactics aren't very good?

This game is definitely one where I am regretting not buying the guide with the Wizard's Companion printed out.

If you mean you barely made it through

Spoiler:

the second level of the "Solosseum," don't sweat it; the difficulty ramps up considerably. I didn't bother going past the second level until the endgame.

Although you can't make a terrible choice, it's not too late to switch things up if you want. In general, I'd make sure Oliver has a primary familiar with a high attack rate (Mite, Puss In Boots); Esther has a good healer; and Swaine has a good tank (most of the Automata, like Tin Man, are good for this) that you eventually give "Yoo Hoo" if it doesn't have it. If you want to nerd out a little, Prima did some "familiar spotlights" that aren't in the guide but are free on their website: http://www.primagames.com/games/ni-n... Reading them mostly served to make me go "oh gee, even the ones I overlooked have strengths," and feel more confident not to worry too much.

The strategy guide does not have the Wizard's Companion printed out. Besides, advance knowledge of alchemy recipes and stuff wouldn't help much; for most things, you won't have access to the materials until you already have the recipe.

However, the guide does help considerably with some of the more obscure sidequests; you can't miss anything really worthwhile (they always pop up on the boards), but it has advice on where to hunt rare materials or the answers to trivia questions or what have you. I mostly ignored it for the dungeons and stuff, but every time I got a quest where some villager lost his sandwich in "a forest to the north," I'd crack it open.

beeporama wrote:

Anyway, I hope this did well enough that we'll see another Studio Ghibli RPG, maybe correcting some of the less-than-stellar stuff.

Honestly, I'd like Studio Ghibli keep working on games so I can give them to my children in the hopes of introducing them to their Final Fantasy VII. It may sound condescending, but given the grind and generally shallow story in these styles of game, I think I'm out. They're just so beautifully crafted I think it's something I could take a casual interest in as something to share with my children.
But who knows, maybe they'll hate video games.