One Sword Man: Let's Play Valdis Story: Abyssal City!

They're all listed as global.ex_XX, so find the appropriate lines and change them to the following:

You probably want to set these all to 1, unless you really know what you're doing. It's not too hard to figure out the higher levels, but you screw with this at your own risk.
global.shell_lv
global.seraphic_lv
global.raven_lv

I call it: Wyatt in a Nutshell.

Okay, let's tackle the story as it currently stands, because it's kind of hard to know what exactly is going on and what we should really feel or do about things with as little info as we have. So, a refresher. (Some of this can be found in the Books of the Old Gods, specifically in Reina's story.)



Before the game begins, the goddess of death Valdis Morana, who had saved humanity from the Tyrant Gods of old, gave birth to twin daughters, also goddesses. One was Myrgato the Dark Lady, the other was Alagath the Mother of Light. Those who swear to serve these goddesses (or are born to parents who did so) are demons and angels respectively.

Myrgato is a goddess of combat, treachery, and brutality. Her view is that the only truth in the world, the only thing deserving of respect, is power. Demons in her service are compelled to seize power and crush the weak whenever possible. In fact, Gilda's story reveals it's a literal compulsion; not a very strong one, but a constant presence, so only stronger-willed demons can disobey them. Fittingly, demons are the enemies in the game most likely to rely on minions, or to sacrifice themselves to do even more damage.

Alagath, on the other hand, values order, purity, and justice, at least on the surface. As Reina and Vladyn can both attest, the higher rankings of the angels do some pretty shady stuff involving soul manipulation, which basically entails gathering the souls of slain foes, human or demon alike, and binding them to one service or another. I don't believe there is any element of compulsion in becoming an angel, so Alagath relies on good old fashioned propaganda to keep her people in line.



Valdis, unlike her daughters, didn't really seek worship. Being a human from the start, she mostly just wanted to hang out among other humans. In particular, she came across the Goibniu tribe of warrior monks, and found their culture interesting enough to make her home among them, in the city of Sitheil. However, this wasn't to last, as Myrgato eventually attacked with a full complement of demons. In the process, Valdis was slain (although her soul's whereabouts are unknown) and Sitheil vanished under the ocean.



Wyatt and his crew get wrapped up in this mess when sailing over that same ocean, hunting down the demon Gernot, last of the Hyogokun Knights. In the process, a feral, larger than any we've seen in-game, attacked Wyatt's ship, sinking it to Sitheil and scattering them to the winds. Gernot's location is, at present, unknown.



Sezzi adds another element to the story. Surprisingly (to no one), Valdis saw the attack from Myrgato coming a mile away, but was completely blindsided by Alagath's ambush, which cut her defenses out from under her. The daughter goddesses were all set to claim Valdis' soul, when her right-hand woman, Moira Goibniu, used the Life Blade technique to fight them off. Though Moira routed their forces and cut an eye out from each goddess, her life was extinguished in the process.

This sets the stage for our immediate goal, alongside finding our crew and tracking down Gernot. If Myrgato or Alagath gets a hold of Valdis' soul, the immense power it would grant would end the stalemate between the two and grant whomever claimed it total superiority. So we just have to get to it first. Since we got Sezzi's hammer without shoving him off a ledge, he will help us out by making a Divine Key, necessary to access where Valdis' soul remains, but he needs components first.

Originally Posted by Kalir

We need the Divine Dust

Originally Posted by Kalir

SEZZI ALSO UPGRADES OUR GOIBNIU GEAR. Again, the Great Blade Purgatory has an incredibly flexible upgrade path, and it's even fully detailed in the game's manual if you have a certain type of sword you want to shoot for. BEAT starts down the Razor Blade path but lacks the steel to take it further. We can fix that.

Kalir was drawing a blank for this week's IN-DEPTH FOCUSED WRITEUP part of the update, because there's only so many elements of this game to talk about, some of which won't be appropriate until we get little deeper into the playthrough. Because he's a good, considerate Let's Player, he asked me for my opinion on his options. Because I'm ME I told him to not do any of them, and just let me vomit nonsense into the spoilerpop this time. It's a testament to his politeness that he said "okay", and then sat patiently while I spent an entire week not writing anything. But now I've got notepad open, a self-imposed 20-minute deadline, and I'm hoping I'll have something long enough for him to properly reject by the time I finish off this Heineken.

I don't usually drink Heineken. My dad dropped by on new years weekend and brought with him all the beers that my brother left at his apartment, so now someone's gotta drink em.

Where was I? Oh right, Valdis story.

It's okay. You know decent. I like it.

But it doesn't like me.

Note that I didn't say it HATES me. The distinction is important because I love games that hate me. I consider IWBTG an underappreciated masterpiece. I wrote a fucking novel about the Hotline Miami Series. I spent years on talking-time telling everybody who would listen that DMC3 was perfect. I'm currently playing through Wings of VI and the only complaint I have is that it's death reset isn't as fast as Super Meat Boy's. Games that HATE me are my fuckin JAM.

But Valdis story doesn't HATE me, it merely dislikes me. It would never do anything as openly hateful cruel as say, suddenly throw you into Cave Story's* WELCOME TO HELL or I Wanna Be The Guy's MEGASPIKEROOM or anything like that. It just does little things that it knows will annoy or inconvenience you in little ways.

And I honestly think that's worse.

It's the difference between making a single mistake and getting IMMEDIATELY WRECKED, and making a single mistake and getting stuck in a 15 hit combo at the top of an attack that's hitbox seems just a LITTLE too big and not being able to get away because your dash (Which they call a skill cancel for some reason) never seems to recharge QUITE fast enough and you'll still have like 60% of your health when it's over but your score's shot to hell so there goes that exceedingly useful skill point you should probably just reload.

It's not a cruel "HAHA FUCK YOU!" screamed from the heavens. It's a soft-spoken "ohhh that's too bad you were this close" that feels ever so slightly condescending. It's a half-measure, Perched on the midpoint between Metroidvania and Masocore.

It looks awfully uncomfortable up there.

*Cave Story does not hate you. In fact, it loves you! It loves you so much that it's super secret ending absolutely must kill you, as we all must destroy that which we love.

Originally Posted by BEAT

Originally Posted by ACTUALLY BEAT

I'm betting I'll have something long enough for him to properly reject by the time I finish off this Heineken.

I don't usually drink Hineken, but my dad gave me all the beers that were at his place this new years, and someone's gotta get rid of em.

First, the thing I was going to throw in last video, but didn't quite feel like it stood on its own. Edgar is one of four crewmembers who will teach Wyatt and co. a new Focus Finisher, and his signature move is Hurricane Rage. Each NPC has certain stat thresholds you need to meet before they teach you the next level of their finisher, but everyone can pick up the basics. Hurricane Rage is an Agi/Int finisher that creates a whirlwind around the user, persisting for a pretty long time. The fact that you're not locked into place while the finisher executes is great, but it requires twice as much focus as most people's basic finishers, so it's hard to recommend it unless you're going full Agi/Int.



Second, this update I'm going to talk about limited items. As I mentioned earlier, there's items that are limited in number, and those that SEEM limited but only drop rarely, and distinguishing between them without knowing beforehand is basically impossible, so this update's gonna focus on these items.

• First and most importantly is Tamahagane. There are 10 pieces of Tamahagane in the game, all located in treasure chests. Tamahagane is used in crafting high end weapons, with a level 3 upgrade for a weapon taking 1 piece and a level 4 upgrade taking 2. There's another use for them, but that's filed under the aforementioned super secret thing. If you want the super secret, don't spend Tamahagane, ever.
• There are Arch Demon Spirits, Arch Angel Spirits, and Arch Feral Spirits you can get for taking down bosses, provided the boss doesn't drop anything else. That second qualifier is the tricky part, because even if the totals for angelic/demonic enemies are equal, there are only 2 Arch Demon Spirits and a total of 5 Arch Angel Spirits. These are mostly used for upgrading spells to their max level, although a handful of accessories call for them as well. Arch Feral Spirits, like Tamahagane, fall under "super secret", but they have no uses aside from it, so that's "nice".
• Similarly, Grand Agates and Spell Lanterns are largely used for upgrading spells, yet there are only 6 of each in the game. Additionally, the Treasure Hunter's Gimcrack sold early on requires a Grand Agate, despite the Grand Agate otherwise being used for the exact same recipes as the Spell Lantern. I understand the reasoning behind these sharply limited drops, but why tie so many to spells, except for the one thing that doesn't get tied to them?
• Finally, there's four of each of Rogue's Cowls, Warrior's Plates, and Magician's Capes. In addition to Daemahn's training, these can be used to upgrade armor types. You need 1 Rogue's Cowl to increase the level of Raiments, 1 Warrior's Plate for Armors, and 1 Magician's Cape for Vestments. There's more than enough of each type that you can max out your favored armor and get training from Daemahn, so hey, that's nice at least, but you need to be happy with using that armor primarily.

There are other items that are unique and only used to craft one thing, like the Snow White Mane, but those I won't discuss here because they're usually really dang obvious.

Originally Posted by Kalir

Magus is another boss like the Raven, where you can technically fight them way earlier than is reasonable, but doing so will get you eaten alive.

The two crewmembers you get here, Sir Pancakes and Ben McSteely, provide you with access to new Focus Finishers. Ben McSteely's finisher of choice is Banana Fishing, in which you throw a banana at your opponent to distract them while you go in for a brutal attack. It's actually pretty dang powerful, and it charges slightly faster than most default finishers (except Buster Lion) but requiring both Agi and Luck to improve it makes it hard to recommend to most. It is good enough on its own that anyone running Agi and Luck together will be using it, though.



Sir Pancakes, meanwhile, grants Fate Roulette. Unlike most Focus Finishers, this one isn't a direct attack, but instead randomly gives you an effect when used. The table improves with Luck, which is also the only stat that this Focus Finisher uses. At worst, you'll drop your MP to 0, but every other effect is incredibly powerful and useful (provided you can decode what the symbol above means). There's an XP gain buff, a drop rate buff, boosts for attack and magic, rapid health regen, and a lightning attack to every enemy on screen available. It also recharges incredibly quickly, faster than any other Focus Finisher in the game. If you're running pure Luck like my Reina file is, you'll want to run this as much as possible.



As for actual stuff to discuss: how about Mesmer the hypnotist? Hiding out at the east end of Tagrum Village, this weirdo is your respec option. He can let you reassign stat or skill points whenever you like... provided you have the resources. I think it's two each of Polished Stones, Demon Rubies, and Angel Sapphires. I'm not sure how I feel about tying your respec option to random drops, as I much prefer games where respecs are far more fluid, ESPECIALLY in a game like Valdis Story where spending your stats in the wrong way can make many fights damn near impossible.

Originally Posted by Kalir

As for actual stuff to discuss: how about Mesmer the hypnotist? Hiding out at the east end of Tagrum Village, this weirdo is your respec option. He can let you reassign stat or skill points whenever you like... provided you have the resources. I think it's two each of Polished Stones, Demon Rubies, and Angel Sapphires. I'm not sure how I feel about tying your respec option to random drops, as I much prefer games where respecs are far more fluid, ESPECIALLY in a game like Valdis Story where spending your stats in the wrong way can make many fights damn near impossible.

Originally Posted by Kalir

If you're running pure Luck like my Reina file is, you'll want to run this as much as possible.

Axen is the assist character hiding out lierally under where Wyatt begins the game. She's incredibly useful, since she attacks far away from the main character's position with a backstabbing blast of lightning, letting her get past Force Guards without burning a Skill Cancel. She's also the only character who gets stronger if you have a very specific type of buff up: namely, the Volt Aura spell for the Lightning soul we don't have. She is arguably essential for one of the three main optional bosses.



Shunaffy's Phantom Soul Focus Finisher, unlike the rest of the crew-taught finishers, improves not with stats, but by spending souls at Shunaffy to upgrade that specific finisher. When used, you summon up to three of those little phantom things. They follow enemies around and harass them with magic, but I rarely see them being that effective compared to most other finishers. The big problem is that it NEEDS to be leveled to be effective, and you need a lot of souls for Shunaffy to dole out higher levels of the finisher. It is usually not worth it unless you're trying to run extensively based on summons.



So, as the video showed, once you have access to fire magic you can get into Le'Roy's Millinery. Here, she will make you hats. (She also makes the flowers you can put on Peche's grave, if you are so inclined.) The hat she gives you is completely random, with four possible outcomes. These hats have a chance to fall off, being completely lost, whenever you get hit, based on your Luck score.



Again, most of the hats we don't care about, but the Laurel Crown is worth mentioning. The hats have no listed stats in game, and it took quite a bit of community spading to determine exactly what they did, so for a long time nobody knew exactly what they did. The Captain's Tricorn we're wearing here, for example, speeds up cooldowns for assists and increases their power. However, the Laurel Crown doubles (not triples, like I said in the video) any rewards you get from defeating bosses with a high ranking.

This in and of itself isn't a terrible thing to do, rewarding players for challenging themselves. But honestly, the entire rigmarole speaks of a really weird mentality on the devs' part about how exactly to do this. For starters, the hat you get both costs resources to craft (albeit ones you can grind back up if needed) and is entirely random, so it may take an incredible number of tries to actually get the hat you want (i.e. the Laurel Crown). Second, you have to get to a situation where the hat is actually worth using, without it falling off, which usually means at least partially investing in Luck and knowing enemy patterns like the back of your hand. And finally, you have to go through a full boss fight, again minimizing the times you are hit, while doing the best you possibly can for rankings' sake to get a reward worth actually doubling (remember, low ranks award less XP than the cannon fodder enemies that are spawned midfight!)

And yet, despite all of these monumental setbacks, not only do a lot of dedicated players of the game do this, they contour entire runs around being able to abuse the extra missable stat and skill points from S ranking bosses with the Laurel's Crown, to the point where Vladyn is arguably the strongest character in the game because he can get to the Guardian Temple to open up the Millinery before anyone else.

My first assumption is that the devs are being na�ve about this, and didn't really think through exactly what the ramifications of the entire hat mechanic, much less the Laurel Crown, meant for the game. But the fact that they looked at the boss ranking mechanic, which I will always be on record as saying is a bad idea in practice, and said "we want to emphasize this" is a bit jarring.

Originally Posted by Mogri

Alternatively, if you don't use focus finishers, you'll also want to run Roulette because it charges so quickly.

Originally Posted by Regulus

Certain builds Anyone who wants to fight the major optional bosses benefit a lot more from Focus Mode than the actual finishers, so a finisher that has a quick charge time is desirable.

Gernot's Soul of the Void is the last dark-type magic soul, focused on void magic. As the Ziggurat has plainly demonstrated, Void magic inflicts stun, which prevents the victim from doing things and slightly increases the damage they take. It used to last even longer, instead of having the damage boost. As aggravating as things here seem, remember that it used to be WORSE. Void magic tends to have a high number of attacks, in exchange for those attacks being very awkward and indirect.

• The air spell for this soul is Dark Ray, which creates a small orb that fires a ray shortly after casting. While the range is excellent, the fact that it has a delay before it actually does things makes this a hard move to maintain combo pressure with. Still, it's solid enough for what it does.
• Up spell is Warp Blade. In older versions, this gave every physical attack you performed a chance to hit another time, which was, uh... really really broken. Warp Blade is still good, but in a different way, in that every crit you land while it's active summons a phantom blade for a follow-up attack. These blades have high amounts of Spell Ruin, making this an excellent spell for Agi/Int builds.
• The side spell, Black Hole, is the mobility option you get for this soul set. The first cast fires a large orb that deals multiple hits to enemies in its path. Casting the spell again while it's active will warp you to the orb's current position, reversing your facing. It's a good way to get behind enemies without consuming a skill cancel, but most enemies you'd want to do this for have Force Guard anyway, which blocks the Black Hole outright, so it's hard to make a case for it in combat.
• Finally, we have Shadow Seeker for the down spell. This creates a number of tiny orbs that seek out enemies. The fact that they're all homing and each have stun chance is nice, but the spell is very expensive and does very little damage. For this reason, I'm hard pressed to recommend this spell to anyone unless they're running affliction abuse and want to stunlock everything they face.

Chan Lap Kin is a pretty solid assist character for how late you get them. They first show up by causing a quake that briefly stuns all earthbound enemies, then follow it up with a viciously powerful cannon blast, dealing plenty of fire damage. The delay on the cannon blast is the weakpoint here, as with Dark Ray. It's not easy to guarantee a combo will continue with Chan Lap Kin, the way it would be with most other assists.



Anyway, this update's gonna focus on accessories. See, unlike weapons, which you craft at very specific vendors requiring unique boss drops, or armors, which you find in chests throughout the game, accessories are things you can craft from the detritus that every enemy drops, usuallly not consuming limited things in the process. These accessories universally combine both incredible strengths and drawbacks, and the stuff required to craft them all can be costly, so it's unlikely you'll get to use most, if any, accessories in the game. This is a damn shame, because some of them are INCREDIBLY STRONG and change things up to the point that some builds (like pure Luck) only exist because of these accessories.

I'll take them sort of in order. First one most people are going to see in any given game is the Treasure Hunter's Gimcrack. Ziggy offers this in Tagrum Village, and while you might THINK it's meant for pure Luck, you'd be wrong. It's better suited for people who HAVEN'T invested in Luck and want to catch up on Ancient Coins and all the treasure chests they've been missing. Of course, crafting it requires a Grand Agate, so getting this means missing out on a spell upgrade, but maybe that's worth it to you, I don't know. The downside hurts for sure, but you're not going to be using this where that downside really counts: namely, boss battles. For Regular exploration and item farming, it's tolerable.



In Ishk, Micia Micia runs her own shop that offers four accessories. Again, this is likely to be one of the first encounters with accessories most players ever get. She has four to offer, and Reina begins play with one of them, so here we go.

• First is the Bloodletter Crest. One thing to note about all of these accessories is that they can also impact your Soul Affinity. The Bloodletter Crest shifts it towards dark, which somewhat undercuts the benefit it offers, in which critical strikes grant life leech. This one's great for highly aggressive pure Agi builds, where you'll be getting crits almost constantly, but the defensive cost hurts. Again, this one requires an Arch Demon Spirit, which there are two of in the game (and if you spared Dhistahn, you've locked yourself off from the second one).
• Next up, the polar opposite in the form of the Crusader Amulet. This boosts Str, Int, HP, and attack speed, all really nice. It also renders you immune to Magus' mana steal effect if that's your biggest problem with her. However, it lowers the bonus damage you get from critical hits to the point where they may as well not exist. This is technically better than its older incarnation, which straight up prevented critical hits, but so many things depend on actually securing crits that it just wasn't worth it. Still, if you're not running Agi at all, you could do worse than the Crusader Amulet. (It also requires an Arch Angel Spirit, but that's not a real barrier.)
• Reina starts with the Weighted Bracelets, which is somewhat necessary since they're one of the things that let your unarmed attacks gain weapon effects (i.e. brand spells). I don't know WHY that's a distinction the devs thought to have in the game, but it is. (Gilda has no unarmed attack, so this instead gives her Scepter Relic extra spell ruin.) Anyway, it's certainly not bad, it provides some extra Str and more attack power with level, but lowering your base combo makes it a really tough sell. Reina only really makes it work early on due to her base armor giving her +1 combo to cancel out the penalty here.
• Finally, the Templar Bracer is a nice fit for characters trying to combine unarmed attacks with spells. Like the Weighted Bracelets, it grants weapon effects to unarmed attacks, and it gives you some mana steal and bonus max MP per character level. Only big problem is that it reduces your attack damage by 5%, but hey, long as you're keeping your brand spells up, there's no problem, right? (Again, Gilda gets a unique effect with her Sacred Relic, getting +25% crit chance.)

There are quite a few other accessory vendors around, but the only one BEAT has access to is Honest Davion. He sells each of his accessories for 2 gold apiece, and rescuing him should be the first priority of any build centered around Luck.

• First and most importantly is the dark-aligned Jester's Watch. This increases all of your other stats by one third of your Luck score. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RUN LUCK BUILDS WITHOUT THIS. The only major downside is that having the watch active drains your HP constantly, so you'll need to be constantly keeping an eye on your healing. My Reina file mostly does this by abusing her Dark affinity and leeching life constantly. That said, the really nice thing about Luck builds is not the raw stat power, but that you have a bit of room for versatility and trying out other things, not least from item drops.
• While it's really obvious that the Jester's Watch is built for Luck builds, it's hard to recommend the Bloodmage Manuscript to anyone. The penalty to weapon attack damage is huge at 50%, and the stat boosts to Luck and Int are consolation prizes at best. The main feature of the Bloodmage Manuscript is that all of your spells now use your HP instead of your MP. I think the main thing that would make this viable is the fact that recovering HP is far, FAR easier than recovering MP. With enough spell leech and healing, this could work for a character who never wants to stop casting spells, but I still don't think it's worth the downsides.
• The Fighter's Bandages are the last thing he sells, and secretly are the other piece of equipment pure Luck builds want. These not only grant unarmed attacks weapon effects (or for Gilda, grant her Reaper Relic bleed on crits) but also boost unarmed attacks by 10% of your max HP. The cost is that your max MP is halved, which is sometimes acceptable, but remember, every 5 points of Luck you have on a neutral-aligned character grants extra max HP. You can very easily get your max HP to ridiculous heights on a pure Luck build, which the Fighter's Bandages can then turn into serious firepower.

Originally Posted by Kalir

MARK OF VALDIS. Half of what Sezzi needs to craft another Divine Key!