Soul Grinding

Whew, finally finished 100 online matches in Soul Calibur V (SCV) today and got my last trophy. I'm now rank 9 on PSN! Yay me! 

For people who have been wondering if matches in the Global Colosseo count towards the number of matches fought on PSN trophies in SCV (Mercenary of War, Strategist of War & Hero Carved in History), yes they do count. Any match played to completion (i.e. all rounds played and a victor is determined) in Ranked Match, Player Match and Global Colosseo count towards the trophies. The guides online conveniently left out the Global Colosseo, which is where you will find the majority of players since SCV is considered an old game now.

Looking for Long Term PSN Friends

Before I forget, I would like to announce that I'm looking for active or semi-active friends who have access to PSN. Whether you have a PSP, PS Vita or PS3, as long as you have an online connection to PSN, that's all I'm looking for. That, and if you're interested in making new friends. ^_^ In particular, I'm looking for players who regularly log on to PS Home and do the daily stuff like Aurora 5.1 and Novus Prime. I'm also looking for long term PS3 players as well as trophy partners (i.e. we help each other get trophies). I am also interested in meeting other RPG fans, but if you aren't really an RPG person, that's okay, I play other genres too, just very specific titles. Finally, if you meet none of the descriptions above but are still interested in meeting new people, you're always welcome to add me. I live in the Malaysian time zone of GMT+8 and currently I'm on graduation break so I play everyday but at irregular hours. You stand the best chance of catching me online after 9PM (GMT+8).

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your friend requests soon. My PSN ID is after this paragraph. <3

PSN ID: Demirincar

Soul of Lag

So today I started my trophy run in Soul Calibur V (SCV). The easy creation trophies were no problem. In fact, I got carried away and spent the next two hours fiddling around and creating female anime and game cameo characters like Tifa (Final Fantasy VII), Chifusa (Manyuu Hiken-cho), Saeko (Highschool of the Dead) and a few dozen more. I still prefer the equipment choices in Soul Calibur IV (SCIV) though, the undergarment choices here leave a lot to be desired. In the end, I managed to come up with 11 beautiful custom characters that I can be proud of.

The online trophies are near impossible to even attempt. Firstly, to find a room takes close to 30 minutes of non-stop searching in every region due to the extremely low online population. Next, eight times out of ten when you do find a room, you either can't join due to poor connection or the host kicks you for lagging up his room. Of the four hours I was online, I only managed to get in 30 online matches (but that was enough for one trophy).

Here's why I hate playing fighting games online - out of the 30 matches, I won once and lost 29 times, Basically, it is impossible to win if you're not the host because you will suffer severe lag so all your character does is stand there taking hit after hit.

Looks like I still have a long way to go. the final online matches trophy required 100 full matches, I'm not even halfway to that mark. 

Sackboy the Second

I just obtained 18 new trophies from Little Big Planet 2 (LBP2) today. Most of them are much easier to get than LBP, but you really need a good connection for LBP2, otherwise you'll be at a disadvantage when playing online versus levels. Also, be prepared for jerks who will let you join and instantly kick you out so they qualify for trophies without you interfering.

But overall LBP2's pin system does a good job of tracking your progress towards trophies. You can check your pins from the Me tab in your Pod.

The trophies in LBP2 are a mix of incredibly time-consuming trophies (spend 5 active hours playing community levels?!) and ridiculously easy ones (take a photo and upload). Most of these trophies are well described in the pins tab.

I still prefer LBP over LBP2 for its simplicity and lag-free online gameplay. Tomorrow I'll either do a trophy run through Soul Calibur V or ModNation Racers.

Easy Trophies Courtesy of Sackboy

While waiting for Guild Wars 2, I thought I might as well run through my older PS3 games and get those easy trophies. Today, I started with Little Big Planet (LBP). Most of the trophies are pretty self-explanatory via their descriptions on your trophy collection on the XMB. Most trophy guides online will tell you exactly how to get them efficiently too. However, I notice that a lot of people are having problems with two particular trophies. I would like to clarify these two - Expert Creator (bronze) and Share (gold).

Little Big Planet's Misleadingly Difficult Trophies

Expert Creator (bronze)

• Firstly, there are more tutorials than just the ?s in your Popit so follow this checklist to make sure you do ALL tutorials.
• Go to your Moon and pick any crater to create a level.
• Once you're in Create mode, open your Popit and you will see an ? in the top row of your Popit menu. This ? is a tutorial so do this tutorial TO COMPLETION. 
• When the tutorial is finished, another ? will replace the completed ? in your Popit, Repeat the previous step and do this until an ? no longer appears in your Popit. That means you will have finished all the basic tutorials.
• It is very important to make sure that you FINISH each tutorial (you will receive a bucketload of new prize bubbles when you complete a tutorial) and DO NOT SKIP OR QUIT A TUTORIAL BEFORE IT IS COMPLETED. There is no way to track which tutorials are unfinished so you will have to redo all of them if you skip one.
• Next, go to your Goodies Bag and click on every item there. Some new items not covered in the ? tutorials will have tutorial videos. Watch all these videos TO COMPLETION. I cannot remember if there are any interactive tutorials in the Goodies Bag; I think they were mostly videos but in general, FINISH any tutorial.
• Now go to the Tools Bag at the bottom row of the Popit menu. when you open it up, you will see alot of new tools that weren't covered in the ? tutorials. Go to each tool with a green star on its corner and access it. You will be prompted to do the tutorial regarding that tool so accept. 
• It is highly recommended you do each tool in a methodical fashion so you don't miss any tutorials. Some tutorials are videos and some are interactive. Watch each video TO COMPLETION and FINISH each tutorial (you will receive more new prize bubles when you complete these tutorials too). Some tutorials explain several tools at the same time so when you click on those tools later, there will be no tutorial prompt. It is safe to ignore these tools but click on them to check just in case.
• Upon completing your last tutorial, you will unlock the Expert Creator (bronze) trophy while you're still being awarded prize bubbles in the last tutorial. Congratulations!

Share (gold)

• Expect to take at least 5 hours of non-stop grinding to unlock this trophy. A lot of people are very impatient when it comes to this trophy so I just indicating the time i took to get this trophy.
• You must be connected to the Little Big Planet servers to get this trophy.
• Go to Community -> Search -> Search text. Type "PS3T" without the "...". Doing this will show you all the levels that people have created since the game launch that caters to trophy grinding. These community levels can be empty instant wins to reduce grinding time for the Share trophy, or they can have a variety of features that help you unlock most of the other trophies.
• Once you've found a level you want to play, follow this checklist.
• Heart the level.
• Play the level TO COMPLETION (if you leave early it won't count towards your trophy progress).
• Once you're back in your pod, rate the level and tag the level with any description word (these are also requirements for the Share trophy).
• Some levels can be copied by other people. Tab right once and if the level can be copied, there will be a Copy option. Copy the level to your Moon, edit the name, description and icon if you want, then publish the level.
• You can have 20 levels published at any given time. Doing this early in your game lets people play your level and give you hearts (both of these are required for other trophies). Just wait and check your profile every time you play LBP to see if you've reached the required hearts and plays for those respective trophies. 
• Repeat the steps above 150 times for the Share trophy (you would have met the other requirements for this trophy along the way if you followed my checklist).
• If you want to gauge how many more community levels you need to complete for the trophy, go to your Hearted Levels and click More.Keep tabbing right until you reach the last page. By the time you have this trophy, you should have at least 5 full pages of hearted community levels. Each hearted community level should also have a golden sackboy head (denoting completion without dying) and a golden spade (denoting all prizes found) next to the heart. If a hearted level does not have a golden sackboy head, it has not been completed and DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS YOUR TROPHY PROGRESS. Also, your hearts and plays on your own published levels DO NOT COUNT; you must play other people's published levels. Repeated completed plays on the SAME community level count as ONE completed play; each of the 150 completed plays for the trophy must be on UNIQUE levels.      

My First Platinum Trophy

Today will be remembered as the day I obtained my first platinum trophy on the PS3. *bow* Tales of Graces f 100% trophy completion. The last trophy I had to get before unlocking the platinum trophy was Fodra Queen in 60 Seconds (silver), arguably one of the most discussed trophies on Tales forums. I took 16 seconds to destroy the Fodra queen. Yes... 16 seconds. There are many ways people have found to achieve this feat, many of which can be found in Youtube guides and forums. Most of them use what is known as the piggyback method. I defeated her the standard way. Here's the summary of how my battle went; hopefully this will inspire anyone going for the trophy to defeat the Fodra Queen without cheating.

Fodra Queen in 60 Seconds

Difficulty: Easy

Party: Asbel, Cheria, Hubert, Sophie

Parameters: All level 200, all parameters 1000+ except Cheria's PATK and ACC, all HP 9000+ (Asbel 9999 HP) except Cheria at 7100HP.

Titles: 

• Asbel: Malik costume
• Cheria: X2 hourglass duration
• Hubert: B-arte critical rate +30%
• Sophie: mystic arte damage +40%

Artes: Toggle off all artes that do not have an ailment associated with it. Set 1 healing arte and 1 revival arte to party members with access to those artes and fill the rest of the shortcuts with ailment-inducing artes prioritizing petrify, paralyze, freeze, burn, poison then slow.

Equipment: All have ultimate armour, Hubert and Sophie have ultimate weapons while Cheria has strongest main arc weapon and Asbel has strongest Lineages & Legacies weapon. All weapons and armour have been improved via cooking (Beef with Red Wine Sauce) dualized repeatedly to achieve these effects when equipped alongside respective gems (all gems are either P or Q quality).

• base PDEF, CDEF and EVA of all armour are 400+.
• base PATK, CDEF and EVA of all weapons 300+ except Cheria.
• all weapons and armour have rank 7 qualities with only positive effects and have at least +15% damage dealt on weapons and at least -15% damage taken on armour.
• all party members have 15+ minimum CC to 30 maximum CC.
• all party members have 70%+ Reinforce effect (including bonuses learnt from titles)

Strategy: All leader's target, all B only, all aggressive, Asbel and Hubert  never defend/heal while Cheria and Sophie rarely defend/heal, all accel mode upon near-death.

Mixer (9999 capacity, 13 slots):

• Baked Potato
• Beef with Red Wine Sauce
• Mabo Curry
• Book of Suppression
• Book of Preemption
• Book of Metabolism
• Book of Satiation
• Book of Exchanging
• Book of Expansion
• Book of Friendship
• Book of Partnership
• Book of Frugality
• Book of Awakening 

Food: Funny story, I completely forgot to eat Mabo Eggplant prior to the battle. Remember to eat Mabo Eggplant to start the battle with immunity to all ailments.

Preparation:

• Have 15 arcane bottles and 15 hourglasses on hand.
• Fight the hulks on Hard or Evil (Chaos might K.O. some characters or force them to activate accel mode prematurely) to near the final save point to charge all accel gauges to maximum.
• Save.
• Set the Book of Solitude, enter a battle in Lhant Hill, use an arcane bottle to boost the eleth gauge to near maximum then escape form battle.
• Make your way back to the final boss checkpoint but DO NOT TOUCH ANY SAVE POINTS on the way (this resets the eleth gauge thus wasting an arcane bottle).

Summary of my actual battle against the Fodra Queen:

1. As soon as the battle begins, Cheria uses an arcane bottle, triggering eleth burst (twice as long due to Book of Awakening).
2. Hubert spams Aerial Barrage to petrify the boss with the help of Sophie and Asbel (in Malik costume).
3. Within 2 seconds, the eleth gauge hits level 3 and the combo meter reaches 96 hits.
4. Before I can activate Hubert's mystic arte, Cheria uses Punishing Blossom (level 3 mystic arte) and send the combo beyond 120.
5. At this point, the Fodra Queen alters form to melee. Cheria uses an hourglass (twice as long due to Cheria's mastered title).
6. Hubert activates Arrow Squall (accel mode) and spams A-artes while Malik and Sophie are still casting B-artes.
7. Eleth burst and the hourglass end simultaneously. Fodra Queen immediately uses Dual the Sol. Due to my shock and panic, I forgot to hold the buttons to activate the string of QTEs that lead to Blue Earth combined mystic arte.
8. Hubert is K.O'ed and the other three are left with 20% HP but all are immediately healed to 70%~HP from the Mabo Curry that was activated in the mxer upon Hubert's K.O. Asbel (in Malik's costume), Sophie and Cheria all activate their accel modes together.
9. Due to the combined Harsh Lesson instantly bringing the reset combo counter back up to 149 hits, EX Boost which instantly recovered all of Sophie's CC and Temporal Rift which stopped time for the Fodra Queen, one last Aerial Barrage from Hubert ended the battle with 169 hits.

Final battle time: 16 seconds

A Feast for... Vitality?

There are many ways to improve your party's parameters in Tales of Graces f aside from leveling, and this is especially important to further build your party after reaching the level cap of 200. These include:

• Herb bonuses from herbs e.g. Verbena, Chamomile, Red Sage etc.
• Plus skills from titles e.g. Mind Plus, Aim Plus, Evade Plus etc.
• Dualizing equipment repeatedly (each shard dualized to an equipment increases its parameters) to a maximum of +99
• Food (specifically Tuna Bowl, Beef with Red Wine Sauce, Eel Porridge, Sweet and Sour Eel)

Today, I will be covering the use of food to boost your party's maximum HP and equipment parameters with four often overlooked dishes.

Beef with Red Wine Sauce

Post-battle: mixer's eleth < 50%

Improves armour ability

I just learnt this today. If this dish triggers after battle, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 boost to either PDEF, CDEF or EVA on their currently equipped armour. This is a very good way to build your party's armour and is way cheaper than dualizing. Best of all, it's easy to trigger! Just don't refill your eleth mixer unless it is completely drained. This is more suited to people who have acquired the Turtlez Flute and have a mixer with considerably large eleth capacity since the dish itself is very high on eleth consumption.

Eel Porridge

Post-battle: someone levels up

Max HP +1

HP is obviously not the most important parameter in Tales of Graces, but the difference of 1 HP can have life and death consequences.To trigger this dish, someone must level up at the victory screen after a battle from gaining EXP. If triggered, each party member who participated in that battle and was still alive at the victory screen will get a +1 maximum HP. Monitor your party's EXP closely after battles and swap this dish in whenever you feel that someone is going to level upon the next battle.1 HP may sound irrelevant, but considering the level cap is 200, and you have 8 party members to choose from, you're looking at a +1600 max HP boost if you time every level up with this dish on New Game +.  Set this dish when you are attempting the upper floors of the Zhonecage (floors 6 - 10) as those floors give so much EXP that you can be guaranteed a level up almost every other battle. Warning: this dish will lose its usefulness once you reach level 200 so start using it as soon as you can afford its eleth cost even during your first playthrough.

Sweet and Sour Eel

In-battle: when landing 50 or more hits in a combo 

Max HP +1

This dish works just like Eel Porridge, except that it is triggered upon landing a 50th hit in a combo during battle. As soon as you are confident enough to land consistently long combos, this dish should always be in your eleth mixer, especially just before a boss fight. Setting the difficulty higher will give monsters more HP and allow them to tank your combos. A very efficient way to boost your max HP when you are at extremely high levels is to challenge the Rockgagong on Easy, land a 50-hit combo and escape. Rinse and repeat. This requires you to have Cheria in your party to heal your attackers in case you can't land a 50-hit combo before the Rockgagong attacks. Control and move Cheria to the bottom left corner of the battlefield where she can't be hit by any of the Rockgagong's attacks. There is a small blindspot where she should stand but it's hard to explain so try it out a few times. Once you reach level 200 and are strong enough to kill the Rockgagong, you can do this max HP farming but instead of escaping, defeat the Rockgagong to earn 88k gald. This is a good way to grind arte usage (with the Book of Striking and duplicate titles), gald and max HP at the same time. On average, to defeat the Rockgagong with a fresh level 200 party with minimally improved equipment takes approximately 4 minutes.

Tuna Bowl

Post-battle: party's HP < 30%

Improves weapon ability

This dish works just like Beef with Red Wine Sauce, except that it gives a +1 boost to either PATK, CATK or ACC on your party member's weapons. However, this dish is considerably harder to trigger.If you can consistently end battles with less than 30% of your party's average HP remaining, then set this dish. I regret to announce that I have not devised a scenario where this is possible, though I think it can be done Inside the Rockgagong (the toxic pools deduct HP) and the Eleth Research Facility on Fodra (the gas cloud deducts HP).