The Legend of Dragoon - Research, Analysis & Opinions

Shademp · May 12, 2016

- I can throw away my theory about the female characters not getting speed-boosting items, because they finally get such items on Disc 3. :monster:

In the Forbidden Land there is a treasure chest with the "Dancer's Shoes" to give +20 SPD. The same area has the enemy "Puck" which has a 2% chance of dropping the "Dancer's Ring" accessory which also gives a +20 boost to your SPD. Both these equippable items are female-exclusive.

Meru is already OP with her speed of 70, but if you equip the Dancer's Shoes and the Dancer's Ring (which is fitting because Meru is already a dancer) she has a whopping speed of 110. During battle, cast Speed Up to DOUBLE her speed for three turns and you will have a dancing death machine of great destruction at your disposal!

- Highlighting two Ongansan videos today as a way of transitioning again to the topic of TLoD's lack of fast-travel.

Albert in Marshlands

Wood Chopper (with choppy animation)

Both of these moments are examples of why there should be fast-travel options in TLoD, even before you acquire an "airship" on Disc 4. I say "airship" because it's more like a flying, fat stingray. Points to TLoD for, at least in its airship department, going with something a bit more original instead of just reusing your typical J-RPG airship.

As your journey goes on, NPC dialogue will change in the towns. In particular on Disc 1, if you don't backtrack to Bale and Hoax after every progression in the plot then you will miss out on a lot of the game's script. Going all the way through the Dragon's Nest, Volcano Villude, the Marshlands and the world map is way too much work for most players to bother though. For good reason too because it's not like a great item or other great reward is awaiting the player who decides to backtrack like a maniac.

How would a fast-travel system in TLoD work? Well, I don't know if you've noticed but our main characters CAN FUCKING FLY!

The game likes to ignore this however. To some degree you can justify that the main characters don't fly over every obstacle, be it a small jump or crossing entire landscapes in Dragoon form. If gameplay is true, then a character can only stay in Dragoon form for a finite time. They have to conserve their Spirit Points for when it is really necessary.

There are also situations where using the Dragoon form for fast-travel would be dangerous. In Volcano Villude, the team is attacked by a Fire Bird and they have to take narrow paths where the Fire Bird can't easily follow. Later on they end up fighting and defeating the Fire Bird, but they do so on land and not while flying hundreds of feet into the air. Keep in mind also that at this point in the story only two out of four characters have Dragoon Spirits, with our main character Dart being very new to his powers as a Dragon Knight.

The game itself rarely brings up the fact that our characters could use their Dragoon forms to fly great distances. On Disc 2, when you have entered a magical realm (behind a painting) to save Princess Emille, the following scene happens as the team ponders how they might jump the magical crack separating them and Emille.

Albert: "She is right in front of us... How can we..."

*If the player speaks to Shana before finding the teleportation switch*

Shana: "I got it! We can help her if we turn ourselves into Dragoons!"

*Shana attemps to transform but fails*

Dart: "Are you all right!?"

Rose: "It's hard to transform myself into a Dragoon unless it is during battle. Besides... This magic is rejecting the Dragoons..."

When speaking to Rose on the Queen Fury, Rose starts talking about what Dragoons draw their power from.

Rose: "Do you know what is the source of the power of Dragoons? War is not in human nature. Humans fight by making themselves enter insanity. It is...the same for revenge."

*Rose's Dragoon Spirit glows*

Rose: "This is a tool to amplify the insanity. And this insanity is the source of the power of Dragoons, the Dragon Knight."

Dart: "I didn't know that...."

Considering that Dart has not personally felt this "insanity", which is probably meant to be translated to mean something more like "chaotic rage" I reckon, then Rose's previous statement that she has trouble turning into a Dragoon outside of battle probably doesn't hold as true to Dart.

Another moment when the player is left wondering "why don't they just fly to safety" is when Rose and Dart fall from the Queen Fury and into the sea.

It is yet again left to the player to be apologetic and find reasons as to why they didn't fly back onto the boat. Maybe they had already run out of Spirit Points in the battles on the Phantom Ship? Or *maybe* in Rose's case, Dart's calming effect on Rose makes it difficult for her to transform.

Rose: "Dart and Zieg... They are so much alike... Not only are they Dragoons recognized by the Red-Eyed Dragon, but there is something else, something that attracts me.... After 11,000 years of time... I now feel the strength and tenderness of Dart...and even...his frailty. These tame the insanity of the Dragoon for me..."

So there are ways to apologize on the game's behalf as to why our heroes don't become airborne even when it would be a very helpful tool. All those excuses aside, I STILL think that the Dragoon powers of flight could and SHOULD be used as a fast-travel feature on the world map!

Certainly, there could be arbitrary limitations set. I imagine that fast-travel across the world map would consume spirit points and that if too many in your team don't have dragoon spirits, then you can't fast-travel because it's too difficult/demanding to carry the non-dragoons. How I wish that the modding tools existed for TLoD to implement these features. But unlike with Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Dragoon does not have countless editors created by fans to dig around in and change the game. Currently, you can only rip some content (like with jPSXdec) and use GameShark, Hex Editors etc to painstakingly catalogue and affect the game's code.

Shademp · May 12, 2016

- Occurred to me today that Zieg may have become attracted to Claire because she reminded him of Rose. Both women are fighters with black hair and purple clothing. Zieg clearly had a type. :monster:

I would almost bet money on Rose's and Claire's similarities being intentional.

Claire is sparring with her friend Lotta and is being tutored by her father Haschel. In a sparring match Claire accidentally kills Lotta, leaves her hometown and within two years she births Dart. It is not clear when Claire meets Zieg, as far as I'm aware.

Claire says goodbye to Zieg who runs back into the burning village to try and defeat the Black Monster. Soon after Claire says goodbye to five-year-old Dart (blonde kid to the right) and she follows Zieg into the village, where she is assumed to have died.

We see young Dart in two flashbacks. The first we see is one of a slightly older Dart, protecting Shana from a hound. (In Kazas you face these dogs in battle and there they are called Hell Hounds)

The second flashback is the aforementioned one from when Dart's hometown Neet burned down. This flashback is shown in two variations: The first version on Disc 1 which has the flashback narrated by present-time Dart and the second version on Disc 3 which actually shows us the dialogue of Zieg, Claire and Dart.

I bring this up because young Dart is blonde while his adult self is brown-haired. There is nothing unusual about that. Many people, me included, start out with blonde hair and then gradually it gets darker as they age. But what's of interest here is that a beta/bootleg/early model of Dart has him with blonde hair. Yet again I refer to the wonderful videos uploaded by Ongansan.

It makes you wonder, coupled with the blonde Dart of the flashbacks, if Dart was originally intended to be blonde. Perhaps the developers saw that Dart already had too many similarities to Cloud of FFVII, so they went with brown hair instead of blonde. Now, it could easily be that blonde kid-Dart is in no way a remnant of that hypothesized period of TLoD's development, but I bring it up anyway to show what got me speculating in this direction.

Shademp · May 13, 2016

Finally reached Disc 4. The biggest spoiler of The Legend of Dragoon still tugs at my heart strings.

The fact that Rose is the Black Monster. For 11000 years, Rose has killed the Moon Child(ren) and everyone in their immediate vicinity. A Moon Child is born every 108 years. So if we assume that exactly 11000 years has passed since the end of the Dragon Campaign, then Rose has killed...101 babies. The absolute terror of this plot point affects me way more now than it did when I last played TLoD in 2009. Rose kills babies. Holy shit this is dark. How did she not, for 11000 years, find a different solution for saving the world than to repeatedly kill the Moon Child, who is born into the world of TLoD to summon its destruction?

For every Moon Child, countless untold civilians have been killed by Rose: The Black Monster. Let us assume that for every Moon Child, fifty civilians has died. That's 5050 casualties. What a kill count.

There are many problems with TLoD's plot, as I have said many times before and will say again. How did Rose not figure out that Shana was the Moon Child? It appears extremely daft of Rose considering the knowledge she is supposed to have. True, we can assume that no Moon Child before Shana has aged to maturity and gotten a chance to show their powers as a Moon Child, but surely Rose would have made the connection by now after seeing how Shana reacts to the Moon That Never Sets.

Despite all of Rose's knowledge, she also STILL does not object to the Moon Objects being handed over to Emperor Diaz (who she probably never even believed to be the actual Diaz). They exchange the Moon Objects for the abducted Shana, who he ends up taking with him anyway, but why is Rose so calm about the whole thing when surely she must know the importance of the Moon Objects?

Even so, my heart is moved by the revelations and drama of TLoD. The writing is far from perfect but the drama is most definitely there, at least for me. It goes to show that when a world is able to pull you in, you can become apologetic of all its flaws.

***EDIT:
More is revealed/reminded as I play through TLoD.

First of all, Charle Frahma, the older sister of Melbu Frahma, mentions that Rose has saved the world "at least 107 times". She is referring to the destruction prevented by Rose killing the Moon Child 107 times. With the Moon Child appearing once every 108 years, that means she 'saved the world'/'killed 107 babies' over a span of 11556 years. With the most recent Moon Child being born 18 years before the game begins, that means the first Moon Child was killed 11574 years ago. It is not clear how long after the end of the Dragon Campaign that Moon Children began being born, but it probably wasn't long after. I really enjoy that the game bothered to give us this way of calculating exact numbers!

Also, it turns out when you visit Ulara that Rose was not aware of the importance of the Divine Moon Objects.
***

Shademp · May 14, 2016

The Turbo Controller is your friend!

Spell Items

Years ago I bought a PS1 Turbo Controller for the purpose of auto-farming in FFVII. Using rubber bands and weights I was able to make the game farm the perma-stat-boosting "Source" items in the Gelnika. Much fun was had.

Even greater joy came to me when I turned to TLoD in 2009, which was either the second or third time I played through the game since 2001/2002. There are many magic-attack items which become more powerful by mashing the X button when you use them on enemies. When you cast a "magic item" the counter starts out at 100% and then as you mash the X button then the magic animation will become more and more fierce. Usually, I will end up at around the 200% mark, slightly higher if I'm really trying. With the Turbo Controller, getting to the 250%-268% ranges is easy and satisfying!

I say satisfying because I consider the "Mash X Button to Make Magic More Powerful" mechanic to be a lazy way of involving the player in the battles. The Additions which require timed input from the player is much more involving and satisfying. With the Additions you memorize the timing for each attack, when an enemy might provide a counter to try and stop your attack, and you have the reward of once you've used an Addition enough times then it is permanently levelled up to be more powerful and supply more SP.

With the Magic Items there is nothing of the sort. No memorization, no timing, just MASH THE X BUTTON UNTIL YOUR FINGERS BLEED. Is it a skill to be able to mash a button faster than most? Yes. Is it fun and engaging? Not in the long run. That's why I think a remaster of TLoD should include some element to diminish the button mashing fest that defines the spell items. A spell item when cast maybe doesn't have to always start out at the 100% mark, but particular equipment, Dragoon level or past performance in the button-mashing will set the starting-power at higher than 100%? The player would be rewarded for the button-mashing by in the end not having to do nearly as much button-mashing.

That's sort of the general rule of J-RPG design. You go through random encounters and level up so that in the long run you will be able to get less random encounters (or greatly diminish the time it takes to get through each fight). Equally, one should be rewarded for button-mashing by in the end not having to do nearly as much of that menial task. I remember that when pondering the FFVII sequel I wanted to make in RPGMaker, it was among my desires to make it so that after a particular amount of random encounters in a given area, you would get more control of a gauge to increase or decrease the encounter rate. Either that or do it like Bravely Default did and let you adjust from the beginning whether to have a high- or a nulled encounter rate.

Anyway, let's proceed with the actual TLoD stuff of this post.

Minigames

The player will also be rewarded for having a Turbo Controller when they play the pointless (yes, even the game itself admits that this minigame is pointless!) "Monster Conquest Game Stand" minigame. In this game you throw balls at monkey-looking creatures but without a Turbo Controller there is no rapid fire feature! This minigame will destroy your thumb, much like if you were playing Silver Surfer for the NES without a Turbo Controller.

The same holds true for the vegetable-chopping minigame on the Queen Fury. You'll lose some control because in this minigame it is actually important to not chop away at all times, but I much rather use Rapid Fire/Chop than to have my thumb destroyed.

I'll devote a lengthy post at some later date to rant about all of TLoD's minigames.

Auto-Levelling

Pretty much any area where enemies spawn from the environment, rather than being random, are excellent for setting the game up to play itself for some grinding. How about hanging some laundry and washing some dishes while the game is playing perfectly well without your input? :monster:

Probably the two most popular spots are The Phantom Ship (Disc 2) and The Death Frontier (Disc 4). By equipping the accessory "Ultimate Wargod", an Addition will always be 100% successful without any input from the player, meaning your attacks will be powerful enough to end each battle quickly and prevent game overs from accumulated party damage. You can find an Ultimate Wargod on the Phantom Ship and you can buy them in Lohan for 10000 gold each. If you've been productive like me, you will already have three Ultimate Wargod rings ready for the auto-levelling in the Death Frontier.

Keep in mind though that the item inventory maxes out pretty quickly and once it does, your game will loop at the "Replace/Throw Away Item" screen after battle if all you've done is put a weight on the X button of the Turbo Controller (for rapid fire). Make sure to check your game at regular intervals, depending on item drop rates and your free space in your item inventory.

In The Legend of Dragoon, the max level of any given character is Lv60. Disc 4 starts you out on Death Frontier and when I began this segment Dart was Lv39 and the other characters were at Lv34. Now when I finally left Death Frontier for The Home of Gigantos, Dart was Lv47 and the rest were Lv40. Doesn't sound like much? Well, at the start of Disc 4 the total playtime was at 79 hours and when I left Death Frontier the total playtime was 93 hours. Fourteen hours (some time in there for cutscenes and exploration) to move Dart up eight levels. Blessed be the Turbo Controller and the frame-skipping of emulators!

Letting the game play itself until everybody reaches Lv60 would not be demanding at all but I wish to have TLoD saves for each level progression and I'm going to leave some natural levelling for the dungeons and bosses of Disc 4.

THE GAME'S JUST PLAYING ITSELF JON! <---Warning: Loud Volume

Shademp · May 14, 2016

- Though I haven't figured out the mechanics yet (or even tried to read it up online), turns out that when you return to Ulara it may be either day or night! Usually a city is stuck at day or at night depending on the game's plot, but here there seems to be a random element at play if you return to Ulara after the important plot-related scenes there are over and done with.

The NPCs present and the game script in Ulara will be different depending on if it is day or night. At daytime, the weapon and item shop exist on one and the same floor. The lower floor is hinted at in daytime but you can't access it. At night, the weapon shop is on the upper floor and item shop is on the lower floor.

Ulara's weapon shop at nighttime displays a rather humorous error...

Selecting "Take a look." actually does NOT lead you to the shop menu.

Selecting "Don't buy" DOES take you to the shop menu!

An error of the same type exists with the clinic in Kazas.

Select "Do you want to try?" and you don't get healed.

Select "Walk away" and you DO get healed!

:lol:

Absolutely lovely.

- When you play any game on an emulator and you use save states, you tend to discover some things about the game's RNG. If you are already familiar with how Waiting Time Battle (WTB) J-RPGs tend to be programmed, then it will come to no surprise that TLoD, which is a WTB J-RPG, has the Random Number Generator in battle be decided by your Turn, not by the Frame in which you decide to perform an action.

When playing FFVII, a game that by default is set to be an Active Time Battle type J-RPG, and loading save states you will notice that different results come from performing an action at different frames. If you want to successfully steal from an enemy, you will allow different amounts of time pass when you load a save state and then redo a character's Steal command. After many tries, you may succeed. The same is true for when trying to make an enemy drop an item after battle, or when trying to make your weapon/magic/summon deal the highest possible damage by happening to pick the correct frame when the RNG is in your favor.

In TLoD, matters are a little more strict and less complicated. Say for example that it is Dart's "Turn" in battle. He hits an enemy with a Successful Addition and then the enemy runs away. If you are battling a unique monster in TLoD that can provide great spoils, you don't want this enemy to run away! So you load a save state from when it was still Dart's Turn.

Because of the way TLoD is programmed, the enemy will ALWAYS run away here if Dart decides to attack the monster with a Successful Addition. The RNG has already been set by Dart's Turn. That's why it doesn't matter if you wait one second, one minute or one hour to make that decision to attack the monster. It has already been decided what will happen! But maybe if you don't complete a successful addition, or if you use Guard, or if you use an item, or if you transform into a Dragoon etc then the result may be different!

The same is true for Item Drops in TLoD. Whether an enemy drops an item is not decided at the start of the fight or at the end of the fight. Nope, it is decided by if any action at your character's Turn has been preset to lead to this item drop.

The enemy "Piggy" in the Home of Gigantos has a 2% chance of dropping a Sachet (or 1%, the wiki page contradicts itself). If you're playing TLoD on an emulator then you can use the save states to your advantage to get the Sachet from ONE battle against a Piggy, rather than triggering battle after battle for potentially hours!

The process went like this for me just now.

1) Created a Save State while in a battle against Piggy.
2) Killed Piggy.
3) Did not get Sachet.
4) Loaded save state from before killing Piggy.
5) Used Guard or other action so that a new Turn (be it the same playable character again or a different one in your party) could be generated.
6) Created a new save state.
7) Killed Piggy in this loaded save state.

In short, Piggy's death is postponed until you get the rare item drop.

Through this process it only took me three minutes to finally get a Sachet! Its 2% drop rate is absolutely brutal and when I did it the natural way, without save states, it took me at one point three hours to get one!

Sachets are extremely useful because they can instantly kill the otherwise elusive and escape-prone unique monsters which provide great rewards.

Rainbow Bird has something like a 15%-25% chance of dropping a Rainbow Dress. This drop rate is my estimation based on experience but it could be way off. I think Yellow Bird has about the same chance of dropping an Elude Cloak and there too there doesn't seem to be an official number.

With help of save states I can now easily acquire Sachets to kill Rainbow Birds. On top of that, by using save states (or "turn-manipulation" in the case of a WTB game like TLoD) I can make sure that the use of the Sachet results in a Rainbow Dress being gained instead of me getting *only* 3000 EXP from the colorful bird.

Shademp · May 15, 2016

- Switching between "Nighttime"- and "Daytime" Ulara so far only seems possible when you enter the city from this teleportation device:

If you don't get the desired half of day when you teleport to Ulara, just keep teleporting back and forth until you get the desired result. I estimate that there's a 50/50 chance for daytime or nighttime. No need to leave for the world map, enter the menu or do some other shindigs when you repeatedly teleport and try to get either cycle. The RNG on this one appears to be frame-based (and not rely on some arbitrary circumstances), unlike the battle RNG which is turn-based and thusly very strict.

I have never managed to trigger Nighttime Ulara when I teleported into the city via the other gate/teleporter. It has always been Daytime when I take that route.

- Since I started playing TLoD on ePSXe certain animations have not been displayed. The screen-bleeding transition into battle was always nothing but blackness, some battle animations had intermediate moments of the screen being composed of only one color and the same happened with some battle cutscenes.

Turns out that the setting you need to change is the "Framebuffer effect". Reminder: I am always using the "Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9" video plugin for ePSXe.

Configure the plugin, go to Compatibility -> Framebuffer effects.

If the aforementioned animations aren't showing, chances are that the option
"0: None- No framebuffer effects will be emulated"
is selected. Change the selection to 1 or higher. 1 is good enough and I didn't notice anything in particular being improved from picking number 2 or number 3.

Now the battle-transitions of TLoD will be properly emulated as well as a number of in-battle animations and cutscenes.

An example of a difference between the not emulating versus emulating framebuffer effects:

Setting 0:

Setting 1:

That's quite the difference, ain't it?

- Rapid Fire through Turbo Controllers is great but keep in mind that if you use frameskipping (in other words, having the game play at 120-200 fps instead of the usual 50fps for PAL or 60fps for JP & US) then the Rapid Fire won't be as effective because, indeed, frames will be skipped and so barely any button mashing can occur. For the most part you'll be fine with using Rapid Fire while emulating the game at super-speed, but if you are trying to increase the strength of Item Spells then you'll barely see any successful button mashing if you use frame-skipping along with Rapid Fire.

This got me thinking. What if I set the game to play at a ridiculously low framerate and THEN used Rapid Fire? Maybe then I would be able to reach higher Power% values for Item Spells than is possible in the game's natural framerate?! So I set the game to play at 10fps when I used an Item Spell, I held down X while the Turbo function was on, and...nope, no gain in Power% through Turbo cheating.

Clearly the game only allows so many button inputs per frame and so lowering the framerate from 50fps to 10fps will not make it possible for your Rapid Fire to be abused with even greater results for Item Spells.

However, setting the game to play at 10fps at your will makes it easy for you to achieve the highest possible Power% results from just mashing the X button (or corresponding key on your keyboard) WITHOUT the use of an actual Turbo feature. So setting a low fps limit to be triggered at your will is a great substitute here for a Rapid/Turbo Fire feature.

Shademp · May 16, 2016

- Rose's "Death Dimension" will only be emulated properly with the Framebuffer Effects setting 2 or 3. Turns out that minimum emulation (Setting 1) was not enough!

A transcribed list of the Framebuffer options shown in my previous post:

0: None - No framebuffer effects will be emulated
1: Minimum - Emulates most frame texture effects
2: Standard - Emulates frame textures and buffer moves/reads
3: Full - Emulates everything, causes overall slowdown

So what is it in Death Dimension that will only be emulated via Setting 2 and 3? The enemies are trapped inside a 2-dimensional wall, this wall spins until Rose appears to pull a lever that shatters this wall into black pieces. The enemies appear again and receive damage.

It is this 2-dimensional wall that will not be shown at all if the Framebuffer Effect setting is at 1 or 0. There won't even be a mono-colored wall to obscure the battle background, there simply will be nothing emulated at all (though you'll still hear the sound of the spinning wall). The black pieces that fly off when the wall is shattered will still be emulated though.

I will play the remainder of TLoD (English PAL version) with Setting 2. When I play the US version, I will play with Setting 3 to see if more content turns out emulated or if the game will be identical to Setting 2.

Battle background of Aglis the Magical City.

Seen below is the battle background generated when Rose has used "SPECIAL" (the yin-yang symbol) to transform herself and the whole party.

I have forgotten to mention just how frickin' cool Rose is. A transcribed quote below showcasing Rose's awesomeness.

Miranda: "It's too depressing to be born just to do one thing..."
Dart: "The Virage Embryo, the god of destruction, was born for destruction only. Its existence might have the same sorrow..."
Rose: "Then let's try to make it feel better. By making sure it'll never be born..."

- The Dragoon wiki brings up in a passage that the Divine Dragon can drop a Dragon Shield, but the Enemy Stats window does not list this. Went back to redo the Divine Dragon fight and it indeed turns out that this boss can drop a Dragon Shield! I estimate the odds are something like 15-25%, just like with the Elude Cloak from the Yellow Bird or the Rainbow Dress from the Rainbow Bird.

The Divine Dragon is composed of three parts in the battle. "Divine Dragon" (head), "Divine Ball" (its chest area so NO don't indulge any naughty notions) and "Divine Cannon". The spell items Flash Hall and Gravity Grabber are dropped by the Divine Ball and Divine Cannon respectively, with 100% probability if they are defeated.

The battle ends when the head of the Divine Dragon is defeated and so it is possible to miss out on the Flash Hall and Gravity Grabber, but you only get EXP, Gold and (potentially) the Dragon Shield from the head so you won't be missing out on any EXP and Gold if you ignore the Ball and the Cannon.

All three targets of the Divine Dragon defeated:

Only the head of the Divine Dragon defeated:

To repeat, I estimate the probability of the Dragon Shield drop to be roughly 15-25%.

Unless you wear overpowered equipment, use maxed out Additions and/or you're overlevelled, the Divine Dragon boss can be a tough one. Add to the fact that the fight begins and ends with cutscenes, meaning that a player who redoes this fight over and over again to get the Dragon Shield may experience quite a bit of frustration. Is the reward worth it though?

The Dragon Shield halves physical damage done to the wearer. It can be bought for 5000 gold in Lohan or you can acquire it from the Divine Dragon with a given percentage. I do not know yet if the rematch in Mayfil can also grant you a Dragon Shield. But you can buy a Phantom Shield for 10000 gold in Lohan and this accessory will halve BOTH physical and magical damage. If you're dealing in expensive purchases anyway, chances are you'll want to focus on the Phantom Shield instead. On a sidenote the Lohan weapon shop also sells (for 5000 gold each) the accessory "Angel Scarf" which halves magical damage.

As one can expect, the Dragon Shield sells for 2500 gold. So the Dragon Shield drop from the Divine Dragon is mostly worth your trouble if you want to collect every piece of equipment and/or if you want to save/gain money. By acquiring the Dragon Shield via battle you save on the 5000 gold of buying it. If you're not obsessed with getting a complete inventory, you can sell the Dragon Shield for 2500 gold and thusly get closer to buying any of the ultimate equipment which costs 10000 gold each, be it Legend Casque, Phantom Shield, Ultimate Wargod or Armour of Legend.

Shademp · May 17, 2016

I solved the mystery regarding why some characters get a boost in their Dragoon Addition/Attack strength from using the SPECIAL icon and some don't.

I was wrong in thinking that this feature is a character-specific one. The way it works is that if a character has equipped a weapon with an elemental attribute, THEN the character will have their Dragoon Additions/Attacks become 1.5 times more powerful than they otherwise would have been. Curiously this effect ignores the element of the enemy you are fighting. No matter if the enemy is of the Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, Darkness or Non element, the character who used SPECIAL and who also wears an elemental weapon will have their Dragoon Attacks be 1.5 times stronger than they would be through normal transformation (or if they transformed when somebody else used SPECIAL).

It's obscure enough that a Dragoon who uses the yin-yang symbol gets their magic attack power increased with a factor of 1.5 (I should test out to see if this changes with equipment) but the game has so few elemental weapons that you can easily miss the potential 1.5 boost to physical attacks. The elemental weapons are...

Heat Blade for Dart (Fire)

Twister Glaive for Albert (Wind). Lavitz never gets a chance to use this weapon

Sparkle Arrow for Shana/Miranda (Light)

Shadow Cutter for Rose (Darkness)

Thunder Fist for Haschel (Thunder)

So far it seems that Meru and Kongol have no elemental weapons. I'll keep an eye out though because it wouldn't surprise me if the game forgot to add a description of any elemental qualities to one of their weapons. The elemental weapons for Dart, Shana and Albert are gained on Disc 1. Rose's Shadow Cutter is gained on Disc 2 and Haschel's Thunder Fist can be bought in Ulara on Disc 4. In other words you may only benefit from the boost to Haschel's Dragoon Addition very late in the game.

Splintered · May 17, 2016

I have forgotten to mention just how frickin' cool Rose is. A transcribed quote below showcasing Rose's awesomeness.

Rose kind of stole the spotlight by being the best character in the game. The cast was pretty okay, not the best but certainly serviceable. But Rose really was a standout character.

Shademp · May 17, 2016

- In the Magical City of Aglis, the party faces the trials of courage set by the ancient wingly Savan so that their courage might be poured into the making of a powerful magic spell: The Psychedelic Bomb. Alright, let's get the joke out of the way. XD

I wonder if the wingly's name "Savan" is based on the word "Savant" and that the name was chosen out of his genius in magic.

Anyway, each of your seven characters face a trial inside a locked away space and you must show your courage by picking the correct dialogue option. Fail and the screen goes black with a sound like something falling, succeed and the screen goes white with a positive "magical" sound rising in the background. After each trial you see Savan and Lulu (one of his magical robots) commenting on the results of the trial.

However, because Rose is so BADASS her trial doesn't include a dialogue option. Her trial is merely a cutscene where she absolutely trashes Savan's attempt at testing her courage, because there's not even a way to make her feel hesitation. I absolutely love that the writers made this (and similar) choices for Rose. Given that she is just below or slightly above 11600 years old, it makes sense that Rose has already reached a buddhist/hindu-type of enlightenment. Rose is not divided against herself and she is a complete individual who lives for the present and the "next" present.

Rose stands with her back facing Savan.

Savan: I would often think about it. The thing we are doing... namely, Charle creating the Signet Sphere to seal the Everlasting Moon, and Rose continuously killing the Moon Child... I prepared for the coming evil day with a new signet, Moot, and the Psychedelic bomb... And waited... until the moment.
The road to destruction laid by the creator, Soa was supposed to be absolute. But evolution was stopped by us, Winglies. I would often think about it. Whether our deeds were the right thing... And will continue forever... I am afraid. Whether I will be myself until the day my body perishes and becomes dust... Will our intention be engulfed by the intention of the creator, Soa eventually...? Is everything...meaningless...?

Rose turns to Savan.
Rose: You go too far. We are neither immortal, nor gods. We are mere people.

Rose walks past Savan.
Rose: People should just live in the present. Because it means...living for the "next" present. I have been that way. And I won't change.

Rose turns to Savan.
Rose: When is my challenge?

Savan silently faces Rose and the trial is ended. Unlike with the other trials, there is no commentary by Savan and Lulu after Rose completes her challenge.

BOOYAH ROSE DID A MIC DROP!

GOD BLESS THE CONTINENT OF ENDINESS!

- Fourteen-fifteen years ago, in my first playthrough of TLoD, there were naturally a number of treasures I did not get and a number of challenges I did not get the best result in. For example I did not buy (or even discover) Kongol's Dragoon Spirit in Lohan so instead I got it automatically on The Moon, which is after the Point of No Return on Disc 4. I also missed a number of Repeat Items: These are items that will respawn in your inventory after battle even when you used the item(s) in said battle.

In Savan's Challenges of Courage, I failed one or more trials which led to me only getting the "Psychedelic Bomb" and not the much better spell item you get from completing all six challenges correctly, "Psychedelic Bomb X". The primary differences between the two is that Psychedelic Bomb X is a Repeat item, so it will respawn after use once the battle is ended. The normal "Psychedelic Bomb" can be used once and then it's gone.

Naturally I tested out to see what would happen if you failed ALL the challenges of courage. To my surprise, there was no new script variation and you still got the same "Psychedelic Bomb" that you get if you don't end up triumphant in all the challenges. I was expecting the Bomb to not be created at all and for Savan and everyone to be sad, but that did not happen. I guess we have Rose to thank for the courage she supplies no matter what the player does! :awesome:

Shademp · May 17, 2016

Martel has Dart and friends collect Stardust so that she can cure her sick daughter, Lil. On Disc 4, in Rouge, you finally have the Stardust and the opportunity to see Martel cure her child. However, the scenes unlocked and the use of Stardust here is a little more complicated than that so before I describe a certain scene glitch, I have to describe the scenes and their order as was intended by the developers.

When I arrived in Rouge I had 49 Stardust. The 50th exists in Rouge. I talked to Martel and instantly (even without giving away my recent catch of Stardust) the scene is triggered where Martel cures her bedridden child. Cue emotional scene. The Dragoon wiki claims that this scene will happen if you have 48 or more Stardust.

If you return here before collecting the 50th Stardust, you will see Lil running around joyfully. As soon as you get your 50th Stardust though, Martel will be watching over Lil who is once again sleeping in bed. The game doesn't claim that Lil has fallen ill (I wonder if the name "Lil" was chosen because it is an anagram of the English "ill" :lol:

) so maybe Lil is just randomly sleeping.

Martel receives the final Stardust from Dart and wishes happiness and a bright future for her daughter Lil. Lil wakes up, expresses great happiness, and a brief emotional scene happens similar to when Lil was cured of her illness. Dart and team then receive the Anti-Apparition Agate from Martel which can be used to open the way to the optional superboss Faust.

There is actually a scene choreography glitch that can happen when you cure Lil of her illness. It happened to me seven years ago when I played TLoD and it got me somewhat confused.

The scene will play out correctly if you have not collected the 50th Stardust before having Lil be cured. Lil will rise out of bed and be hugged by Martel.

But if you have already collected the 50th Stardust by the time you go to have Lil cured, then Lil will not rise out of bed! The same script is triggered and all the other character models act the same, but Lil doesn't move. Well, Martel stands slightly more to the right in the "50 Stardust" version, which is the same position she is setup to have when she wishes for Lil's happiness (not when she wishes for Lil to be cured).

Martel is hugging the air and Lil remains in bed, all because the game is waiting for programming cues from the "50 Stardust Scene" and not the "48/49 Stardust Scene". This is the scene choreography glitch I triggered back in 2009 and it made me assume that I had watched a failed attempt at curing Lil. It doesn't help that when you return to the room, Lil will still be in bed because the true "50 Stardust" scene is now setup to happen, where Martel wishes for Lil's happiness and bright future.

TLOD DEVELOPERS, DO YOU EVEN PLAYTEST?! :wacky:

I wonder if Martel's name is meant to be pronounced like "Martle" or "Myrtle". Will get back to everyone when I transcribe the Japanese name. The reason I bring this up is because Game of Thrones has made me compulsively pronounce Martel's name like you do with the Martell family of that TV show (and presumably in the book series as well). You know, with a Spanish accent to it. I doubt that was the intent of the TLoD writers.

Shademp · May 17, 2016

So which Magical Ring do I equip? The Magical Ring or the Magical Ring?

It wasn't until today that I noticed this particular mistake in the TLoD menu. I'll devote more time on another day to rant about the game's menu (there is A LOT of room for improval) but right now I just wanted to bring up the Magical Ring because it gives +30 to MAT. Well, one of the rings anyway! :hohum:

I was looking to check how much damage I could inflict on the Last Kraken boss in the Magical City of Aglis, using the Psychedelic Bomb X. Like many other Spell Items, Psychedelic Bomb X will cause greater damage to the enemy the more times you press that X button.

Meru, despite being on Lv43 and so nowhere near Dart's Lv50, has the highest Base MAT which makes sense given that she is a Wingly.

***EDIT: Correction! Apparently Shana/Miranda has the highest MAT, much to my surprise. I don't know how I managed to miss this. >___> I must have been playing so much TLoD that my mind goes blind because I notice I keep making small mistakes, like when I mistook "Total Vanishing" for "Vanishing Stone".***

Legend Casque grants +50 to MAT and Magical Ring grants +30 to MAT, adding a formidable +80 to an already magically gifted Meru. At Lv43 her base MAT is 156, so her final MAT stats were 156 + 80 = 236.

With this preparation and the Turbo Controller in my hand I entered the Last Kraken battle.

Without using any stat-changing items during battle, I cast Psychedelic Bomb X and had the Turbo Controller give me a whopping 250% damage in contrast to the mere 190-210% I could have achieved by mashing the button myself. This led to 2830 dmg on the Last Kraken.

Next up I cast the Repeat Item 'Power Up' on Meru. For three turns, the character who receives Power Up causes more physical and magical damage by a factor of 1.5. You would be forgiven for not catching on to the fact that Power Up does indeed increase magical damage too, as the item description only says that it "increases power" and for the longest time I assumed that this referred to only physical power.

With Power Up, Meru now caused way more damage with Psychedelic Bomb X. The Turbo Controller gave me 260% to damage, 10% more (or five more presses, since one press of the X button adds +2% to the counter) and so the final dmg on the Last Kraken was 4409.

Continuing my experiment, I cast the Repeat Item 'Power Down' on Last Kraken, while still having the Power Up effect on Meru. Just like with the Repeat Item Power Up, you may not initially think of the fact that Power Down decreases both the DF and MDF of an enemy. ...Or maybe that's just me because I focus so much on physical attacks in TLoD. :lol:

Attacks, both physical and magical, now cause an additional 1.5 times damage. So with this setup I cast Psychedelic Bomb X, got 268% on the button mashing counter, and caused 6067 damage!

Last Kraken's total HP appears to be a mere 10000. It was alive when I had caused 9996 damage and then it died when the total dmg was 10002. The Dragoon Wiki lists Last Kraken's HP as being 12000 in the US version and 15000 in the JP version. I wonder if Last Kraken's HP of 10000 in the PAL version is a version difference or if the HP value listed for the US version is false?

But what's up with the Turbo Controller not always getting the same results in the button-mashing? Well, it might be a mix between the game's varying loading times, bugs in the emulation and/or the inherent limitations of the Turbo Controller. If the the DAM% counter for the spell items takes only slightly longer to appear, then that dramatically changes how high the final DAM% can get. I also confirmed that this is not a matter of Turn-Based RNGs, as the DAM% could get very different even when reloading one and the same battle turn.

I am not a stranger to the rapid fire function of Turbo Controllers giving different results per try, as I vividly remember having the same experience when I played button mashing minigames on Pokémon Stadium (for my Nintendo 64) with the help of a Turbo Controller.

Just for kicks I listed the damage to The Last Kraken over the full range of DAM% values I was able to get. All of these DAM% values were achieved by always holding down the X button when Rapid Fire was active, so as you can tell there is a lot of luck involved even when using a Turbo Controller.

DAM% -> Final Damage caused by Psychedelic Bomb X
246% -> 5569
248% -> 5614
250% -> 5660
252% -> 5705
254% -> 5750
256% -> 5795
258% -> 5841
260% -> 5886
262% -> 5931
264% -> 5976
266% -> 6022
268% -> 6067

A difference of 498 in damage between the worst- and the best possible outcome. :monster:

Shademp · May 18, 2016

- Though I like to point out the mistakes and flaws in the Dragoon Wiki, make no mistake in that it is still a good source for official artwork and for general info. It is just an unavoidable consequence of TLoD's relatively small fanbase that the wiki is not in a better shape. So why don't I add stuff to the wiki? Mostly probably because I have never actually tried myself to update any sort of wiki. But part of it is that I prefer to contribute data to fan-sites where not just anyone can edit the content. The appeal of TLS to me was both that not just anyone could go in and edit my work and that there were (and still is) a wider range of article design options in the TLS wordpress format. Wiki articles have a pretty fixed, agreed on style. I just don't think that the FFVII Unused Text Series would have looked good on the Final Fantasy wiki or in The Cutting Room Floor (TCRF) wiki.

I am yet to search for a TLoD fansite that has the same appeal to me as TLS does but if I ever find one then it is not unlikely that I will contribute with my knowledge over there.

- Just now I fought the four optional bosses in Vellweb. These are four of the seven Dragoons from the Dragon Campaign that took place roughly 11600 years before the game starts. Their fates are very tragic and I find myself feeling genuinely sad for three out of four characters.

Damia, the 15-year-old who is a cross between a human and a mermaid, was bullied before she found her Dragoon friends. Possessing the Blue Sea Dragoon Spirit didn't save her from an all too early death sadly enough. Many presume that she died in the fights leading up to the final battle in the Wingly Capital of Kadessa, since she is nowhere to be seen in this FMV (link to Japanese cutscene just to switch things up). I greatly enjoy the Mermaid aspects of her design.

Syuveil is another Dragoon who is not seen in this FMV (as far as I can tell) but nothing is implied as to when he died. Considering his fear of death, I reckon that if he had survived the Dragon Campaign then he would have sought immortality along with Rose. So yeah, I surmise that he died at some point during the Dragon Campaign. It's great that the wiki provides official art of what both Damia and Syuveil looked like when not in their respective Dragoon forms, since the game itself only ever shows them as Dragoons.

Belzac. Poor Belzac, who stood up in his final moments despite his upper spine being completely destroyed. :monster:

To see his sadness at the realization that his sacrifice did not save Shirley... Dammit TLoD, why do you have to be so full of feels? ;___:

Kanzas is probably the scariest Dragoon there ever was. It is clear that the Dragoon Spirits don't always pick noble, good guys as their hosts. This was clear on Disc 1, when Greham, who murdered Lavitz's father and who was only interested in gaining more power, possessed and wielded the magic of the Jade Dragoon Spirit. Kanzas is way worse however, being obsessed with killing for the sake of killing and then making clay figurines of his defeated foes. The only saving grace of this character is the reveal that's made after you defeat his ghost in Vellweb. Script transcription in the spoiler tag below.

Rose: I was surprised when you joined the Campaign by being persuaded by Shirley... But after all it was to kill...?

Kanzas: Yes... that's right... But, it wasn't the only reason... I thought the nobleness of Shirley, which I could never have, would take me somewhere I could otherwise never know... Some bright place I couldn't know... So... even after death... I have been looking for... that place...

*The ghost of Kanzas vanishes*

Rose: The "bright place"... I hope you can reach there.

If the player explores the home of Kanzas they will observe a statue that used to resemble the Divine Tree.

"Kanzas was seeking salvation. That's the reason why he decorated the Divine Tree this way..."

- Okay, that's some story stuff out of the way. What observations did I make while fighting the four Dragoon ghosts? Well...they fucked up Damia's name in battle. :monster:

DABAS?! DABAS?! That's not Dabas. THIS IS DABAS! The comic relief guy who is directly related to the Japanese-exclusive PocketStation feature of The Legend of Dragoon! In every version and every disc of the game there is even a file called "DABAS" and its placement highly suggests that it handles the PocketStation feature.

Outside of battle the game never uses the name "Dabas" for Damia.

A less lulz-worthy difference is that the Max HP of these four bosses have been decreased for the PAL version. We're getting flashbacks to the Last Kraken, because just like with that boss, we have now seen the Max HP of bosses being decreased in two steps: First when crossing the sea from Japan to the US and then again when crossing the seas to Europe, Australia etc. Assuming, again, that the Dragoon wiki is correct here in its Boss HP info. The PAL HP values listed below are what I managed to deduce by hitting the bosses with attacks of varying power and by taking great advantage of save states.

Damia (Dabas)
PAL: 9000 HP. Narrowed down the value to 9000-9003.
US (and JP?) : 9500 HP. The Dragoon wiki does not specify what version this HP value applies to.

Belzac
PAL: 16000 HP. It's either 16000 or 16001. XD
US: 20000 HP.
JP: 25000 HP.

Syuveil
10000 HP. Yes, I actually managed to pin down the exact number for this boss fight! The Dragoon wiki does not specify the version for this HP value, but it is at least true for the PAL version. Maybe this is the one of the four optional Dragoon bosses that they didn't change the HP value for between versions? Time will tell when I get to playing the US and JP versions.

Kanzas
PAL: 12000 HP. Narrowed down the value to 11997 - 12003 HP in my research.
US: 14400 HP.
JP: 18000 HP.

- What else? I had some fun and I was reminded that the damage cap in TLoD is 9999. At least as far the visible counter goes. I have not yet confirmed if more damage is dealt but the game just doesn't show it. Yes, I think this sort of paranoia is justified when it comes to TLoD!

I corrected in my previous post that Meru does NOT have the highest base MAT stats. It is Shana/Miranda. It blows my mind that I did not see this when I compared the stats. On Lv44 Meru's base MAT is 160 and Miranda's base MAT is a whopping 208! Meru is only second to Shana/Miranda.

The sad thing is that in-universe, this high MAT stat only makes sense for Shana since she is the Moon Child. Plot-wise Shana IS a magical powerhouse, though she never controls the full extent of her Moon Child powers. When Miranda replaces Shana, everything about her stats and equipment will be the same as Shana's. This setup is practical of course. Shana's/Miranda's physical attacks are so weak, due to lack of Additions, that without their super-high MAT stats there would be almost no reason to ever use these characters. The high MAT value of Miranda simply clashes with the plot slightly.

Since Belzac has the lowest MDef of the four Dragoon bosses, I went in with preparations to kick his ass with magic. Had Miranda in my party due to now realizing that she is the strongest magic user, cast Power Down on Belzac, cast Power Up on Miranda, then I used my Turbo Controller to make sure that the Psychedelic Bomb X packed the biggest possible punch.

Thanks to my discoveries surrounding the Elemental Weapons of TLoD, I now see the value of equipping even the low-stat elemental weapons when you do battles late in the game, if the enemy is weak to the element of that weapon.

Belzac is an Earth element boss and so he will be weak against Wind. My options when picking Albert's spear was either...
Partisan: +56 Attack
or
Twister Glaive: Wind element and +28 Attack

Surely the wind-weapon is not worth equpping here? Wrong!

With my equipment, levels and stats, the Partisan only inflicted 1076 dmg to Belzac compared to the Twister Glaive's punch of 1405 dmg!

Damia is a Water element boss and I had essentially three choices when equpping a weapon for Dart.
Heat Blade: Fire Element and +18 Attack
Fairy Sword: +39 Attack
Soul Eater: +75 Attack, 10% of Dart's HP is drained for his every turn

How much damage did these swords inflict on Damia?
Heat Blade = 2700
Fairy Sword = 2066
Soul Eater = 2520

If you equip the powerful Soul Eater, chances are that you will want Dart to equip a Therapy Ring to counteract the effect of the HP that would otherwise be drawn from Dart. However as we can clearly tell in the matter of the Damia fight, it only makes sense to equip the Heat Blade and then use the accessory spot for something better than to merely make Dart NOT lose HP for every turn he gets.

The same holds true in the Last Kraken fight, since that boss is of the Water element. Don't forget that not only does Heat Blade pack a greater punch, but if Dart uses Special Transformation then his Dragoon Addition/Attack will be 1.5 times more powerful than it would have been via Normal Transformation.

Shademp · May 18, 2016

I just realized a big miscalculation/misinterpretation I made when counting back to when the first Moon Child was born and killed. Here is again what Charle said:

Charle: Since the soul of the Virage Embryo, the god of destruction was released, you have saved the world ... let me see... at least 107 times.

I counted the most recent incarnation of the Moon Child as that 107th time Rose prevented the destruction of the world. If Charle means exactly what she said though, Shana is in fact the 108th Moon Child.

When the Black Monster appeared 18 years before the start of the game, she/it killed the wrong child.

So if Charle meant exactly what she said, referring only to Rose's successful attempts at killing the Moon Child, then it was on Rose's 108th killing spree that she failed to kill the god of destruction who is born into a human body every 108 years.

The Virage Embryo is the 108th fruit of the Divine Tree and its soul is born into the physical world every 108 years. Isn't it a funny coincidence that Rose failed to kill the Moon Child on her 108th attempt?

So when was the first Moon Child killed? Well, the 107th Moon Child, marking Rose's 107th time of saving the world from that particular brand of destruction, was born 126 years before the start of the game. Count from Neet's destruction 18 years before the game and just add 108 years to that.

107 Moon Children were born over a period of 11556 (107 times 108) years.

11556 + 126 = 11682. So the first Moon Child was born 11682 years before the game starts. If we assume that the first Moon Child was born almost immediately after the end of the Dragon Campaign, that means Rose is roughly 11700 years old.

We don't know however if the first Moon Child was born immediately after the end of the Dragon Campaign or if perhaps it waited 108 years first. So keep in mind that while we can be somewhat confident when calculating Moon Child stuff, Rose's age is more speculatory.

Of course I have to admit here that maybe Charle did not mean exactly what she said and that she was referring to the number of times Rose became the Black Monster, rather than the number of times she successfully killed a baby who was unfortunate enough to be the host for the Virage Embryo's soul. I will also not be surprised if the Japanese version of Charle's line holds some nuance or difference that will change my analysis.

Shademp · May 18, 2016

- The optional superboss (or at least TLoD's equivalent of a superboss) Faust has 60000 HP according to the wiki, though it does not specify the version this HP value belongs to. In the English PAL edition, I have discovered that his total HP there is 25600. Strictly speaking I was only able to pin down his HP to the 25597-25601 range but I'm pretty confident in that he has exactly 25600 HP.

This is quite an HP decrease in comparison to the 60000 HP assigned to him in the wiki. Looking forward to comparing with the US and JP versions.

- Sometimes an enemy will set up a "Physical Attack Barrier" or a "Magical Attack Barrier". The barrier will make the enemy completely immune to said attack type until the enemy makes another move, unless that particular move is to raise the barrier yet again.

Really? Capitalizing the 'b' in 'barrier' was too much work? XD

One such enemy is the Aqua King (see spoiler tag above) of the Magical City of Aglis and I discovered something neat quite by accident when I was playing that section. When Aqua King's physical barrier was up, I had Rose attack him. Aqua King received zero damage...and then died! Rose's weapon "Gladius" has a small chance of instantly killing an enemy and that is indeed the weapon I had equipped at the same. (The Gladius rapier is acquired in Death Frontier because INSTANT DEATH yes TLoD I see what you did there!)

The reason that I was surprised to see that the Physical Attack Barrier did not make Aqua King immune to Instant Death is not because it would have made sense, but because the infliction of status effects on enemies so rarely enter into the TLoD gameplay. I learned that Physical Attack Barrier does not make Aqua King immune to Stun, Fear(ful) and Instant Death. The same is probably true for all the other status effects Aqua King doesn't already have default protection against.

However the odds of landing these status effects can be ridiculously small. Through use of Turn Manipulation (or 'save states', in other words) it took me over a hundred tries before Meru's Heavy Mace inflicted Stun on Aqua King and then it took me about two hundred tries before I finally landed Instant Death on Aqua King for the second time using Rose's Gladius.

That Instant Death can bypass the Physical Attack Barrier is not a useful fact due to the extremely low probability of landing that effect. You are better of just waiting for the barrier to fall but it's still another neat piece of knowledge about the game. I have not tested to see if Magical Attack Barrier adds immunity to status effects.

The animation for Instant Death/Kill by use of the Gladius is the same as when you throw a Total Vanishing on an enemy. The red fade-away of the enemy is covered by black lines crossing one another.

As you can see above, Aqua King doesn't dissolve until Rose has retreated back to the party after her attack. She attacks, causes zero damage due to Aqua King's barrier, retreats, then the game loads and the enemy finally dies. Normally the enemy will die and fade away as the playable character's Addition is completed.

To this day, Final Fantasy X is the best WTB J-RPG I have ever played. It ignored Final Fantasy and general J-RPG tradition of status effects having a very low probability of happening (more specifically, a low chance of the player landing status effects on the enemy) with no physical damage to accompany the status-inducing attack and with Poison removing merely 1/10 of the enemy's max HP per turn.

To play Final Fantasy X was such a wonderful experience because not only were the status effects powerful, but you were extremely likely to land these effects and they were always coupled with decently powered physical damage. DAMN it felt so awesome to land Poison on a monster and see 1/4th of its max HP being depleted per turn, instead of a measly 1/10!

Sadly, The Legend of Dragoon is nowhere near the excellence of FFX's gameplay. I prefer the characters, world and the story of TLoD but the gameplay in Final Fantasy X is leagues beyond TLoD.

To nobody's surprise then, if I were to mod The Legend of Dragoon I would change it so that status effects are more relevant. Instead of Poison taking away only 1/10th of the enemy's max HP per turn, I would increase the strength so that AT LEAST 1/5 of the enemy's max HP is depleted. Maybe 1/4 of their max HP per turn at the highest. With how weak of a tool Poison is in current versions of TLoD, the ability to inflict Poison might as well not be there.

Shademp · May 18, 2016

- Zenebatos, the Law City, is such a wonderful place!

It is a haven of automized bureaucracy where laws are treated as commodities!

Even when playing TLoD at 120fps there is the tedium of moving from one area to the next, but the ability to change the "laws" of this location is a satisfying feature. As you roam the area, robots inform you about various Wingly Code Articles. Keep them memorized or write them down, then go to the Legislation Center, wait in line, then request to have the law changed.

You can even change "Wingly Code Article 640" so that you don't have to stand in line at the Legislation Center anymore to request a law revision.

But the process is, naturally, a bit more complicated than that. After requesting a Law Revision, you get a Law Production License that you must take to the Law Factory. After a tedious trek you get to the Law Factory, where you hand in the Law Production License ("Law Maker" in the key item menu). There you get a Law Launching License ("Law Output" in the key item menu) to hand over at the Law Launcher, where the law revision will finally be issued and take effect. Naturally, the path to the Law Launcher is quite tedious.

In short, Zenebatos gives me certain..."British" vibes. :awesome:

Normally I would be furious at a puzzle that encourages you to pick up a pen and write down numbers. Chances are after all that you will forget some of the Wingly Code Articles and then have to backtrack even more, in a location where travelling from one spot to the next is very slow even if you're not playing the PAL version.

But the humour of a J-RPG Bureaucracy Dungeon makes me unable to hate this place. That and it is so very wonderful to revise the law so that robots no longer hunt you. Later on, after the Signet Sphere has been destroyed, Martial Law will no longer be in effect and at that point you can even change Wingly Code Article 666 and completely remove random encounters. Large areas of Zenebatos are already without random encounters but just the fact that this option exists makes me want to hi-five the TLoD designers.

- Observed more boss fights where the PAL version has significantly reduced the max HP of the bosses in comparison to the US and JP versions. Let's start with the three winged bosses you fight, all at the same time, in Zenebatos.

Selebus
PAL: 3000 HP (Assumed value after pinning it down to the 2980-3002 range)
US: 6400 HP
JP: 8000 HP

Vector
PAL: 4000 HP (Assumed value after pinning it down to the 3996-4005 range)
US: 5600 HP
JP: 7000 HP

Kubila (Referred to as "Kubera" on the map, but as Kubila in battle)
PAL: 3500 HP (Assumed value after pinning it down to the 3480-3522 range)
US: 4800 HP
JP: 6000 HP

Next up, the bosses of Mayfil, the Death City. Turns out that the three Dragon Spirits you fight, which are the spirits of Feyrbrand, Regole and the Divine Dragon, have the same HP in the PAL version as what is assigned as the US value in the wiki.

Dragon Spirit (Feyrbrand)
The page doesn't mention which version the value of 8000 HP belongs to, but at least it matches the PAL version.

Dragon Spirit (Regole)
US & PAL: 12000 HP
JP: 15000 HP

Dragon Spirit (Divine Dragon)
US & PAL: 16000 HP
JP: 20000 HP

I can with some confidence say that the spirit version of the Divine Dragon does NOT drop a Dragon Shield. TLoD remains consistent in that no single target can drop two items. The spirit of the Divine Dragon is only ONE target, not three targets like in the battle on disc 3, and the 100% drop here in the Mayfil battle is the spell item Flash Hall. No room for a Dragon Shield.

When the battles turned to "Lavitz's Spirit" and "Zackwell", version differences between English PAL and US turned up again.

Lavitz's Spirit
PAL: 5000 HP (Pinned down to the 4998-5001 range)
US: 6400 HP
JP: 8000 HP

Lavitz has a 50% chance of dropping the Halberd, the most powerful spear for Albert. The frustration of not immediately getting the Halbert after defeating Lavitz's Spirit and Zackwell may be greater than the frustration of not getting the Dragon Shield from the Divine Dragon on disc 3. There are more cutscenes before and after battle that can't be skipped here. If you don't have the patience to acquire the Halberd here, you can buy it later in a shop on the Moon.

Zackwell
PAL: 8000 HP (Pinned down to the 7997 - 8001 range)
US: 12000 HP
JP: 15000 HP

The short story here is that the PAL version appears to be a cakewalk compared to the US and JP versions. Especially so with the "Selebus - Vector - Kubila" boss battle in Zenebatos, where good preparation and equipment means that you can end the battle with just one powerful use of the Psychedelic Bomb.

Shademp · May 19, 2016

I remember watching this commercial online 14 years ago... Oh my. XD

Shademp · May 19, 2016

- Lesson relearned: Don't ASSUME anything with TLoD. XD

In the first field of the Home of Gigantos, arrows will continuously fire away at Dart. In a story-specific moment, the map beyond the stairs also has this happen to the player.

The first trivia to mention here is that when Dart is struck/pierced by an arrow, the "UGH!" sound he makes is a Japanese voice clip even though you are playing the English game! Believe me, the difference between the English- and the Japanese voice for Dart is QUITE distinct. There's no mistaking that what you are hearing is the JP voice.

Second trivia: How much damage do the arrows cause when they land on Dart? ...NONE! That's the surprise! I had previously assumed that a small amount of HP would be taken away from your active party for each hit by an arrow, just as would happen in any J-RPG where the situation implies damage from the environment (like, say, when you walk in poisonous water). To make sure that the arrows never do any damage I made sure to equip the worst possible equipment for all my playable characters. Even with a really low defense and even on your very first visit to this location, the arrows still don't deplete any HP (or any other value for that matter).

The arrows only increase the value that decides whether a "random" encounter happens or not. If you stay still and let the arrows land on Dart, the triangle on Dart's head that indicates the danger level will turn from Blue to Yellow to Red. If the Encounter Value is zero, it will take six arrows to generate a battle without Dart moving an inch.

This makes the Home of Gigantos into a spot where the player could easily employ a combination of rubber bands and a Turbo Controller to have the game play away on its own. However in the PAL version it takes 20 seconds for a new encounter/battle to generate if you stand still and let the arrows do the work for you. (I estimate thusly that in the JP and US version the waiting time is just below 17 seconds.) It would be many hours before you see any results from this auto-levelling.

The Phantom Ship is much better for auto-grinding purposes, seeing as the wait between environment-generated encounters is no more than 3 seconds. The Death Frontier is one step up, where the waiting time between newly generated battles ranges between 0.5-3 seconds. Most commonly you don't even have to wait one second though!

Not to mention that when you first reach The Home of Gigantos you are unlikely to already have the Ultimate Wargod accessory, thus making it difficult to auto-battle in such a way that enemies are defeated quickly and easily through the mashing of the X button. :hohum:

It's still nice to observe where the player COULD do auto-battle. There is a spot in Volcano Villude where Magma Fish will be jumping over rock platforms. If a Magma Fish happens to jump over you, a battle is triggered. Get ready to let the game play itself for a loooooooong time though if you decide to do auto-battle here. The Magma Fish jump over a total of five spots randomly, one at a time, which means that the waiting time between battles can be anything from one second to several minutes!

One can see then why the Phantom Ship and the Death Frontier are much more effective for auto-grinding.

- After Kongol joins your party on Disc 2 and after you retrieve Dart's Dragoon Spirit, there are two short scenes with Kongol that can be triggered in the Home of Gigantos.

The player observes the mummy of a Giganto defeated in battle.

Kongol: "20 years ago. Bad humans attacked here. Gigantos fought. But Gigantos lost. Everybody died. In front of Kongol. Kongol almost killed. Then Emperor Doel's military came. Bad humans gone. Kongol only survivor. Everybody became like this. Kongol thought. Leader of the world is needed. Kongol thinks you are able. That's why Kongol follows you."

The player observes another mummified Giganto, though it's unclear if this Giganto was embalmed by its friends or if he was mummified by the elements after death in battle.

Kongol: "Chieftain..."

Kongol bends his knee in respect.

Kongol: "The strong man next to Kongol's brother. Kongol admired him after Kongol's brother. Rest in peace...."

I have known about these scenes for a long time but what I noticed today is that these scenes are available INDEFINITELY. Once you leave the Home of Gigantos, the flags for these scenes will be reset and you can trigger them again by investigating the mummified Gigantos. I wonder if it was always intended that the scenes should be there indefinitely, or if this is just another case of lazy/bad programming?

Remember the enemy Crafty Thief you can encounter here and who can steal 50 gold from you, but when the game claims that you retrieve said money what you actually get is a Bastard/Long Sword? It amuses me greatly that not only does the Home of Gigantos provide us with that battle glitch, but also the unexpectedness of arrows that DON'T ACTUALLY INJURE YOU and then the less dramatic but still interesting observation that two Kongol scenes are always available (until you leave for The Divine Tree and The Moon on Disc 4, that is).

Shademp · May 19, 2016

- Correction where correction is due! The Julienne Vegetable Match minigame on the Queen Fury does in fact have a built-in rapid fire/chopping feature! I was just so convinced of TLoD's incompetence that I never bothered to check if you would keep chopping if you held down the X button. The discovery that you'll chop away by just holding down X was made quite by accident.

Before starting a match you can select any of your playable characters to be the chopper. So far I have found no distinguishable difference in their chopping capabilities. If you hold down the X button from start to finish, ALL characters unfailingly end up with 450 chops.

and so on...

It would have been fun if characters chopped vegetables at different speeds. Those who chop slowly would have been considered "Easy Mode" characters because you are less likely to chop so much that you prevent the sailor from handing over a new vegetable. Those who chop super-fast would have been "Hard Mode". But no such difference has been spotted.

- Of course after this discovery with the Julienne Vegetable Match I had to go back and check the "Monster Conquest Game Stand" to see if it ALSO had a rapid fire feature, contrary to what I previously believed.

...It does NOT have a rapid fire feature, so the post in which I ranted about this minigame is still relevant. XD This godawful ANIMAL ABUSE minigame is still just as terrible as I remember it.

Once Dart gets hit by a pebble thrown by the monkeys, the minigame is over and the monkeys gang up on Dart with a storm of pebbles. Serves him right for abusing those poor animals!

I mean COME ON what is the deal?! Who designed this poor excuse of a game? The man at the stand even admits that he has NO PRIZES to give! He seriously wants you to spend one Ticket solely for the pleasure of throwing pebbles at monkeys and then at the end getting gang-pebbled by said monkeys!

NO IT IS NOT SO MUCH FUN! IT IS IN FACT NOT FUN AT ALL! :wallbanger:

- Another happy accident is that I came across this old artwork for Minintos...

...and I was blown by the realization that those guys to the right are indeed ALSO of the Minintos species! I never realized this before. They appear in the minigame "Who Is The Man" in Lohan, where you have to guess under whose hat a bird is hiding.

Had I checked out the Minintos page on the Dragoon wiki, I would have been enlightened sooner that those odd-looking men in the Lohan minigame were Minintos as well.

- In ePSXe 1.7, if you try to play with Sound NOT Enabled, the game won't load. Thankfully, ePSXe 2.0 has no problem playing the game without sound.

Shademp · May 20, 2016

By Soa's beard! "Smoke Ball" and "Pandemonium" are repeat items!

Items will hold different descriptions when comparing Battle Menus and Shop/Main Menus.

Smoke Ball's item description in battle is
"Escape a minor enemy."

This was the only description of the item that I bothered to check. I kept the item in my inventory out of a collector's compulsion, also I had no interest in exploring the use of this item because my rule is to never escape from battle (unless I'm looking for the rare Rainbow Bird between Death Frontier and Ulara and instead that blasted (Un)Lucky Jar pops up!) NEVER GIVE UP! NEVER SURRENDER!

Then I saw the shop/main menu description for Smoke Ball...
"100% sure escape from minor enemy (repeat)."

Say WHAAAAAAT?! Smoke Ball has been a Repeat Item this whole time?! That's...absolutely wonderful! Although the earliest point you can find this item is late in Disc 3, by defeating the optional boss Polter Armour, it is great design to include an item such as this. Those going for a Low-Level playthrough will, after this point, no longer have to rely on the random luck of the Escape command or have to stock up on Charm Potions to reset the Danger Level (or "Encounter counter").

If I were to mod TLoD (without making drastic changes such as giving player the option to adjust Encounter Rate from None to High at any point in the game, Bravely Default style) I would make it so that the Smoke Ball can be found early on in Disc 1. This would be a godsend for those doing Low-Level playthroughs, who will naturally wish to avoid most battles.

Simultaneously I was surprised to see that the Charm Potion is an actual in-battle item! When used on the Field, you will reset the Danger Level. When used in Battle, the Charm Potion will make minor enemies avoid the person who received the Charm Potion. This is meant to last for 3 turns, but I have not confirmed yet if this applies to the turns by the playable character(s) or by the minor enemies.

Charm Potion battle description:
"Avoids minor enemy 3x."
Charm Potion Shop/Main Menu description:
"Reduces risk of encounter."

Let's talk about Pandemonium though, a missable item found in your second visit to Hellena Prison. This item and Charm Potion are the only items to share this particular "blue glass vile" item icon.

As you can see inside the spoiler tag above, Pandemonium completely lacks a description in the Main Menu! This is true for the Shop Menu as well. I am convinced that we will find an item description here in the Japanese version of TLoD.

For the longest time Pandemonium confused me. It does have a description in-battle but that one still confused me.
"Allow minor enemy attack 3x."

The Dragoon wiki helped me learn that the item grants a lure effect, making enemies attack the Pandemonium receiver for three turns. Again, I have not checked whose "turns" these refer to.

After the discovery that Smoke Ball is a repeat item, I just had to check if Pandemonium was a repeat item as well...AND IT IS! The Dragoon wiki page about Pandemonium fails to mention this fact, but the Items list does include Pandemonium in the Repeat Items category. I think I'm FAR from the first person to be surprised that Smoke Ball and Pandemonium are indeed repeat items.

All these discoveries are wonderful because they can greatly affect your battle strategies against normal enemies (not bosses), most of all in a low-level playthrough. You can use the lure effect of Pandemonium or the deterrent effect of Charm Potions to decide which characters will receive or not receive damage for a number of turns. Maybe you don't want the low-HP characters like Shana/Miranda and Meru to be attacked, so you make sure that fire is focused on the rest. Or maybe your enemy is only using magic spells, so you wish that all those spells are directed towards Meru or Miranda due to their high MDF stats.

There are accessories that will make MP or SP accumulate when the character receives physical or magical damage (depending on the accessory). When you are trying to gain SP over a long period of time, to increase your Dragoon Level, it can be a small help to use Pandemonium and/or Charm Potions so that a particular character receives damage and thusly gain SP as well.

Same method applies when you want to restore MP but without using items, resting at an inn or if you don't have an instant-heal available to you in the current location.

TLoD's battle design is not without depth but you have to dig hard and deep to uncover it, unfortunately. (See also my discovery of the esoteric 1.5 times strength boost to Dragoon Additions).

Shademp · May 20, 2016

Thank you Dragoon wiki!

I would never have noticed on my own that you can retrieve Lynn's Letter after you show it to the Mayor of Donau!

On Disc 2, Lynn leaves a letter to Kate (his soon-to-be-wife) saying that he's left to meet the Gehrich Gang. This is the gang that terrorizes Tiberoa during Disc 2. Dart and friends show this letter to Lynn's father, the Mayor of Donau. The letter leaves your Goods menu (that's the Key Items menu in TLoD) when you do this.

However, when you leave the Mayor's house and then return, the letter can be picked up from his dining table.

The letter will remain on the table for you to pick up until the Point of No Return on Disc 4. After the PoNR it will be too late.

A key item that is completely optional is Kate's Bouquet. If you don't return to Donau just after rescuing Lynn, you will miss the wedding between him and Kate and thusly miss the chance of getting the bouquet.

When the bride throws the bouquet, Shana will catch it if the player presses the X button in time. If no button is pressed, Meru will do some impressive acrobatics and catch it instead. Either way, you get the item added to your Goods inventory.

Apart from Lynn's Letter being a necessary item for advancing the plot, both key items have no purpose other than being collectibles for the completionist players.

EDIT: When considering what items you want in your Goods inventory after the point of no return, remember the key items "Law Maker" and "Law Output" that one can generate indefinitely in Zenebatos. However you may only carry a Law Maker, a Law Output or none at all. You can't own both key items at one and the same time. So it's really up to you if you want neither of these items in your Goods inventory after TPoNR, or if you'd like to keep either the Law Maker or the Law Output until the very final save point of TLoD.

Shademp · May 21, 2016

- There are those who sometimes believe that they have found a difference between the "Black Label" version of a game and the "Ultimate Hits"/"Greatest Hits"/"Platinum" version that has the aforementioned 'top-seller' title attached to the game casing.

Ultimate Hits = Japanese
Greatest Hits = American
Platinum = European

Every claim of this category of version differences that I have come across have so far been refuted. At this point I would be surprised to see any changes to in-game content between BL and UH/GH/P releases.

However I can not deny the possibility that somewhere out there is a game where an edit was made between the BL and GH editions. The distribution of media, quality control, etc is a chaotic process. A change to in-game content in this part of the distribution process is not an impossibility.

For this very reason, despite my relative conviction that I will find no discrepancies, I have acquired both the American BL and American GH editions of The Legend of Dragoon! I will make sure that the files of these two releases are listed and sized up with one another, to see if anything was changed. If a file differs in even the smallest amount of byte size, we may know where to look for an in-game discrepancy.

One neat difference between the BL and GH releases here, though not in the actual game content, are the discs. The BL casing holds colored versions of each disc (scroll down in this Dragoon wiki page to see what said discs look like) while the GH discs are silver and glisten beautifully from incoming light. I say this with the acknowledgement that I have no idea if I actually bought the real deal, or a homemade copy where the person didn't bother to print colored versions of the four discs. Hopefully when I create images from these discs I will gain some greater confidence as to whether I have bought the real deal.

- Finally got Dart to LV60!

To my disappointing reminder, Dart still accumulates EXP even after he has no higher level to reach. Why is this disappointing? Well, TLoD has the annoying mechanic that EXP gained from monsters is divided between your party members. So the menu will say "600 EXP" but in a party of three each character will only get 200 EXP. The characters not in your party will receive half of the divided EXP, so in this example they will each receive 100 EXP.

This is why, when you start up the game, it is very useful to grind some while you still have only Dart as the active party member. No amount of EXP is divided and shared with the other active combatants, so it is easier to level up Dart at this early point. Levelling up some when you only have Dart and Lavitz in your party may also be recommended. After this section of the game you won't get many more opportunities to grind or receive EXP with only one or two active combatants in your party.

When Dart reaches LV60 he does not need any more EXP and so I think the game at that point should have stopped dividing and sharing the EXP by three, and instead started sharing the EXP between the two active combatants who have not reached Max LV. You are already overpowered if you've spent all those hours getting Dart to Max LV, so you might as well quicken the levelling process for the remaining characters. =/

MAYBE this will happen once Dart's EXP is maxed (You reach LV60 at 382000 EXP and the counter is maxed out at 999999 EXP), but even if that's the case everybody will already have reached LV60 by that point. XD I will be happy if it gets easier to max out the EXP of everyone once Dart is finished maxing his but it will still be pretty useless.

Like I've said before, levelling in TLoD takes a huge amount of time. When I first reached Mayfil, the final area before The Point of No Return, Dart was LV54, the others were LV47, and the total playtime was 112 hours and 25 minutes.

When I finally decided to go past TPoNR in Mayfil, the playtime was 129 hours and 35 minutes! That is 17 hours devoted to raising the characters, both Dart and the rest, by six levels. Very little of this saved game time was spent on cutscenes and exploration.

Usually I will play the game at high speed by using the frame-skipping feature. On the normal, non-battle maps the fps goes up to 120 while in battle it goes up to 200fps. But as for my "personal" playtime, and not the saved amount seen in my save files, I've still definitely spent 100 hours on this game since I first started this binge almost four weeks ago. I have spent many hours backtracking in order to find any and every change that happens to NPC dialogue as the plot progresses. Even with the game at 120fps, backtracking is a time consuming task. Then once I am done with the backtracking, I reset the game (or load a proper save state) so that none of those countless hours are saved into my total playtime.

Small piece of advice for those who are grinding levels, be it manually or with help from a Turbo Controller: Once your characters become powerful enough, make sure to select their weaker Additions. Usually these Additions will take fewer seconds to execute and once you are overlevelled they will be enough to kill enemies in one hit (which is naturally what you prefer when auto-grinding with the use of Ultimate Wargod + Turbo Buttons). Picking the faster-to-execute Additions will save you many minutes in the long run!

No need for Albert to use the lengthy "Flower/Blossom Storm" when he can simply use Spinning Cane for the same killing result!

Shademp · May 22, 2016

Ripped the textures from Disc 1 of TLoD (PAL version) using jPSXdec, the same software I use to rip the FMVs. With FFVII, jPSXdec can't rip viewable images of the game's maps/fields. It might be possible with help from bin-unpacking software, but anyway... The game maps/fields are contained in the FIELD folder in FFVII, while the various menu and battle textures are kept elsewhere.

In TLoD, the game's maps and menu- and character model textures are contained within the folder "SECT". It is very straightforward to rip all of this content from TLoD, using jPSXdec, and instantly have viewable files on your computer. What you will find is that many textures and maps are broken down into pieces, meaning you will be provided with tiny jigsaw puzzles if you want to see the complete pictures.

Here is one example of me manually putting together a Lohan map.

Files 1281-1284 in the DRGN21.BIN of the SECT folder:

The green-colored areas represents where the map can obscure the view of the 3D models, thus adding a great sense of depth to the map when you roam it.

File 1285 in DRGN21.BIN, with Foreground material for the Lohan map to be imposed over the green sections.

With some Adobe Photoshop magic, I piece together the map.

But what is this? To the upper left there are three new green dots and to the upper right there are two new green dots. None of those were there originally. Turns out that you have to mind the settings in Adobe Photoshop. Go to 'Image -> Mode' and make sure that RGB Color is selected. I originally had the setting on Indexed Color, which would corrupt and change the colors from what they were in the original rip.

Redo the puzzle with these settings and you get a more properly reconstructed version of the Lohan map, with no corruption to the colors!

Though it may not be immediately clear to the naked eye, I discovered while completing this jigsaw puzzle that the foreground objects are bigger than the green sections on which they are meant to be imposed. The consequence being that when I am MANUALLY inserting the foreground objects, I can't be certain if I'm 1-2 pixels off in any direction. A perfect recreation of any map will require that you emulate the game's own map-recreation commands. I have not yet found any map viewers/editors for TLoD, so for now the best reconstruction I can get of maps is by playing the actual game!

Just for kicks I also pieced together a Bale map and a Kazas map.

Lavitz refers to this place as his 'treasure'. As a boy he would sit there and stare at the castle, dreaming of becoming a knight. Compare with this snapshot from when Lavitz shares his story with Dart.

Most of the map is indeed visible in the final game, roughly 95% I'd say. The game wouldn't have to zoom out far to reveal every last detail.

When messing around all over TLoD before I went past the Point of No Return, I paid closer attention to how much of the game's maps we are ever allowed to see.

In the case of Kazas I made the neat observation that whenever you leave the underground fort (implied in the image above with the glowing windows in the dark depth beneath the bridge) then you'll see WAY MORE houses. You'll even see the landscape outside of the city, which you won't ever see when you approach the underground fort entrance from the southwest of the map.

Allowed perspective when approaching from the southwest:

Perspective when leaving the underground fort:

Thanks to ripping the map with help of jPSXdec, we can see even more of this Kazas map than we ever do in-game!

Even though the Dragoon wiki had already reconstructed the unused Seles map, I decided to combine its pieces for myself.

That is A LOT of sky that you will never spot when you visit this area using a cheat device. That's roughly 2/5ths of the map!

A curious fact about the unused Seles map is that when reconstructing it there are no big, green areas carved out to place foreground objects on. That doesn't mean they didn't put any foreground objects there though! We see in the video uploaded by Ongansan that Beta-Dart is obscured by the well, the cart and the burned wood. This is consistent with the presence of a 'foreground objects' image for this Seles map:

Will the reconstructed look different at all if you impose the foreground objects on it? Well, mostly no. The objects all have the same shape, down to the last pixel, but the foreground objects have the black color adjusted with sliiiightly more grey than what the map looks like without foreground objects imposed over it. You have to look hard and with intent to spot the difference, so in essence there's no need to use the foreground objects when puzzling together the map in photoshop.

In the unused department I did spot something small, yet neat, while browsing the ripped textures. Remember that before entering a location from the world map you get a preview image of said area? Well, there are some preview images that were never used.

"dummy" Seles

Enlarged preview for ease of viewing:

The background image is exactly the same one as is used for Seles in the final game, except that here we have the "dummy" text slapped on front of it and the image has a dark filter.

I was hoping that maybe this preview image might be unlocked by entering Seles from the normally inaccessible part of the world map, but sadly this does not appear to be the case.

Aglis the Magical City

Zenebatos the Law City

The Divine Tree

All of these are locations used in the game but you never enter them on foot, ergo why they never get used as preview images. You first enter Aglis with help of a small boat in Rouge (not on the world map). From Aglis you teleport to Zenebatos. You can then leave and re-enter Zenebatos by flying on the wings of Coolon, so in a way you can enter Zenebatos from the world map but selecting map locations via Coolon's fast-travel feature never shows preview images for said location.

From Zenebatos you teleport to the Death City of Mayfil. Curiously enough, Mayfil doesn't have an unused preview image. From Mayfil, you then go past TPoNR and thusly you get to the Divine Tree and the first map is indeed the one you see above in the preview.

Then there is an unused preview image that is really the odd one out for me...

Endiness

It is on disc 4 that you finally get to enter world map areas that carry the title "Endiness", which covers the whole peninsula shaped continent that you roam throughout The Legend of Dragoon. The world map is called Endiness when you travel on the Queen Fury between Fletz and Rouge, as well as in the intermediate "teleportation scenes" on the world map between Aglis <-> Zenebatos and Zenebatos <-> Mayfil.

Presumably then the preview image for THE WHOLE CONTINENT was inserted with the above scenarios in mind, just in case they might ever be used. Another odd thing out is that the Endiness preview has a duplicate. The first is file DRGN0[6551], between previews for Zenebatos and Aglis, and the second one is file DRGN0[6555], which is the last preview image after the penultimate preview image which is that of the Divine Tree [6554].

**EDIT: SILLY ME! The above preview image is not unused!

Shademp · May 22, 2016

Here is the 2D Coolon animation from TLoD, using frames ripped from the game.

I took the liberty of increasing the size of each frame by three, moving the size from 32x16 to 96x48 pixels per frame. Here is the miniscule 32x16 version:

Coolon has four frames, but I copied the frame where its tail is at its lowest, so that we get the pause effect seen above. It's not an effect I would have gone with, but I was trying to mimic the look of the animation as it is in-game. The animation speed is close to the actual game but I haven't tried to copy it exactly.

This flying, cuddly-looking manta ray is TLoD's version of the J-RPG airship you gain once you've been to most places in the game. I interpret Coolon as being a sentient magical creature created by Savan, much like the other magical robots he created in the Magical City of Aglis, except Coolon is strong enough to keep on living even after his master is gone. But as the Dragoon wiki admits, Coolon's origins are unknown.

TLoD has its fair share of silly names. I wonder what Coolon is meant to be a reference to, if anything? I'm in a weird position where I really like saying the name...

COOLON. COOLON. FLY US AWAY, COOLON. IN A COOL FASHION. :neo:

...but I can't help but think that if you removed just one letter, his/her/its name would be "Colon". Ewww.

Coolon is a good transition for raising the fact that TLoD's promotional material tends to outshine the actual art and movies of the game.

Take a look at this promotional art of Dart and friends on Coolon, flying with great determination towards the Moon as Virages swarm the skies.

That's some epic imagery. I even enjoy the tiny, potentially gross detail that Rose's foot is sunk into Coolon. Perhaps Coolon generates sockets so the characters can strap in their feet and hands? That'd be an unconventional but cool safety belt/measure.

Now look at how this scene is rendered in the actual Disc 4 FMV.

View the video at 1:23 and 2:26.

I'd like to quote what Dart says in the FMV, but add a question mark to it.
"THAT'S IT?!"

The actual FMV is such a disappointment compared to the promotional art. A remaster of TLoD with upgraded (perhaps even completely remade) FMVs would be a wonderful thing. At least then they could render more than just the three characters (Dart, Meru and Kongol) on Coolon!

Shademp · May 23, 2016

After careful testing I have confirmed that none of Meru's and Kongol's weapons hold elemental attributes. I consider this to be an oversight by the developers and it is my wish to one day have the knowledge required to hack the water element into one of Meru's hammers and the earth element into one of Kongol's axes.

Here are the elemental weapons that exist in current versions of TLoD:

Dart's Heat Blade (Fire)
Albert's Twister Glaive (Wind)
Shana's/Miranda's Sparkle Arrow (Light)
Rose's Shadow Cutter (Darkness)
Haschel's Thunder Fist (Thunder)

Six out of eight elements work so that they are powerful against the opposing element and have great defense against the same element. The opposing elements are...
Fire - Water
Wind - Earth
Light - Darkness

So when opposing elements are pitted against each other, like for example Dart fighting against the ancient water Dragoon Damia, received elemental damage will be high on both sides. Neither element is superior to the other, you simply get a more dangerous game of catastrophic damage to both parties.

Thunder and Non-Elemental (which I still count as the eighth element) do not work this way. Thunder and Non-Elemental have no opposites, so when Thunder attacks a Thunder enemy, the damage is halved. The same is true when a Non-Elemental attacks happens on a Non-Elemental enemy.

The consequence being here that Haschel's Thunder Fist is actually a penalty. For much of disc 4 it will be his strongest physical weapon, but damage against Thunder enemies will be halved. One enemy, Maximum Volt, is even immune to Thunder and so any hits Haschel lands here will result in zero damage.

In three cases when an elemental weapon is pitted against an enemy of the opposite element, the game communicates this effect by adding flashy, colored lines to the attack animation.

Heat Blade against Water element Aqua King.

Twister Glaive against Earth element Triceratops.

Shadow Cutter against Light element Unicorn.

Try as I might, it appears that when Shana's/Miranda's Sparkle Arrow lands on a Darkness enemy, nothing is changed or added to the flashes that usually appear when an arrow lands on an enemy. This I also consider to be an oversight. I have seen that the elemental effect in terms of damage numbers IS still there, as Sparkle Arrow is the best weapon Shana/Miranda can use against a Darkness enemy. This is an important reminder that when looking for elemental effects, one should look at the numbers and not the presence- or lack of flashy, appropriately colored lines that cross each other in a perpendicular fashion.

Since Haschel's Thunder Fist does not actually provide any elemental advantages, it is no surprise there that no "Thunder Animation" has been spotted whenever Haschel attacks an enemy of any element.

TLoD's game design is thusly appearing more and more incomplete. Meru and Kongol don't have elemental weapons and the Sparkle Arrow doesn't display any Light Animation when striking a Darkness enemy. In a mod or a re-release, all these matters should be amended in my opinion.

I wonder if the "Element Animation" (the flashy lines that cross each other) are derived from TIM images. If so, then they could all derive from the same image except with different color palette settings. The unused settings for Water, Earth and Light elemental effects could very well be inside the game data then. I hope that one day somebody will unlock any unused Element animations or create their own and then add elemental attributes to one of Meru's hammers and one of Kongol's axes. Maybe TLoD rom-hacking titan Zychronix has already done so?

The perpendicular lines described and shown here are similar to the black lines that appear when you land an Instant Kill. Maybe these effects all come from the same TIM file, maybe they don't.

The Legend of Dragoon - Research, Analysis & Opinions

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