Topic: FF2/4 The Buggy Avenger Sword

[Deathlike2]

I've gotten to like this sword after a previous discussion with JCE over it. It makes battles mindlessly easy if you aren't doing any sort of "controlled" attacking. If this weapon ate Dragons alive, I'd use it all day.

 However, this weapon is indeed buggy. Part of this is probably oversight, but then again this game was still somewhat unfinished to begin with... oh well.. to detail the issues..

1) Equipping the Avenger Sword while in combat doesn't change the attack power... you will have the attack power of the previously held weapon. If you were to have Cecil at max stats (99 STR and 96+ AGI at level 99), swapping the Crystal Sword for the Avenger Sword will allow you to deal an average of 9000 damage. This bug goes away after the battle is over. In theory, this tactic is relatively overpowered. This is fixed in FF4A AFAIK.

2) If the Avenger Sword is equipped before the battle with Zeromus, particularly on Cecil, he is forever stuck in that battle. AFAIK, FF4A has this bug "fixed" where "Berserk" status is uninflictable until post-Zeromus change.

On a related FF4A change, if Charm is inflicted on the wielder, Berserk status is removed... though this seems specific to FF4A. Also, Black Hole removes this status completely in FF4A. FF2/4 continues to reapply the status under both instances...

3) There are some peculiar properties with the Charm status, especially when afflicted on the Avenger Sword wielder (this doesn't apply to Berserk since it is not possible otherwise). The first attack made while under Charm actually hits the enemy... sometimes continues for a longer duration but eventually follows proper Charm targeting...

It is worth documenting this anyhow.

[JCE3000GT]

I'll always love my Avenger sword.   

[Deathlike2]

Another bug...

The guy wielding the Avenger Sword will not attack until the characters preceding him in the attacking order (which was documented in another thread) executes a command. After the preceding character executes a command, the Avenger Sword user attacks like a normal Berserked user.

The only exception here though is if the wielder of said weapon is in the first attacking slot (middle).

This bug does not occur in FF4A (not sure if it was still borked in the US version/Jap v1.0 version of the game).

[Deathlike2]

Addtionally, if the Avenger Sword wielder is coming off Charm, the character is reberserked when his turn comes up... so they may be stuck doing nothing for several turns.

[JCE3000GT]

Here's a bug I noticed with the Avenger sword and the first Zeromus battle (the one where Cecil needs to use the Crystal), when there are more than 2 characters berserked with Kain equipped with the Avenger I would have Cecil cast a spell and Kain would go into his casting animation.  I haven't been able to reproduce this bug, in 10 years.  That's how I knew Kain even HAD a casting animation.  It was on my cart, and this is probably more of a berserk bug--but the fact that Kain was the recipiant of this interesting bug while equipped with the Avenger I suspect it has something to do with it.

Hopefully someone else can reproduce this.

[Deathlike2]

Which version of the game are we talking of?

I would suggest you tinker with the battle order and see if that changes the situation.

[Deathlike2]

Ok.. I managed to do this.. twice on FF2 v1.0.

Here's some screenshots:



What happened is that Cecil was coming of a Cure2.. and Edge was starting on Flame.



The second time around, I wasn't as successful, but got lucky.





Cecil came off a Cure.

It seems to me the bug is caused when there is no shaking by Zeromus. Part of the shaking process is inflicting a multitargeted Dispel on everyone, making Kain stop from attacking further. When he fails to do it before Kain's turn, it seems that something goes haywire and the Berserk is reinstated and that spell effect comes up.

However, Kain doesn't look to have a spell casting stance.. but for sure he was meant to have some spells before this game was finalized.

[JCE3000GT]

It was FF2us 1.0 cart that I did it on.  That is exactly the glitch. 

[Dragonsbrethren]

I had something very similar to that happen to me a day ago, I was doing some testing for my hack and after Cecil used the Crystal Kain proceeded to use it as well.

No clue how I triggered it, wish I had made a savestate because my attempts to reproduce it today failed.

Edit: Got it to happen again, seems to happen anytime anyone is casting magic when the crystal is used.



Almost makes me wonder if the Avenger was supposed to make Cecil auto-use the crystal in this battle...probably just a glitch caused by berserk being removed and reapplied constantly though.

[bond697]

so, i can't sleep, and this thread looked pretty neat.  anyway, i got this glitch working. interesting to see kain's casting animation.  as soon  as cecil, et al were revived, i had cecil cast cure2. right after he finished casting, kain took a shot at casting. . anyway, the orbs around him weren't glitched, they were perfect.  let's see if i can do it again.  i think it has to do with kain's turn being directly after cecil's.

edit: got it to work 4 more times. just have the other 4 members keep casting magic, and eventually it'll happen. grabbed a couple pics of the last one, but i'll add the one different-looking one from death's set:


this was after rosa, but before edge, obviously.

granted, i'm late to the party, but it's nice to finally see a "reproduction" of the picture of kain using magic that dkk made reference to from the that ffiv ultimania book. i wonder what other actions this glitch can cause kain to copy. you just have to catch kain just right, it doesn't necessarily have to be with cecil.

[Deathlike2]

I had something very similar to that happen to me a day ago, I was doing some testing for my hack and after Cecil used the Crystal Kain proceeded to use it as well.

No clue how I triggered it, wish I had made a savestate because my attempts to reproduce it today failed.

Edit: Got it to happen again, seems to happen anytime anyone is casting magic when the crystal is used.



Almost makes me wonder if the Avenger was supposed to make Cecil auto-use the crystal in this battle...probably just a glitch caused by berserk being removed and reapplied constantly though.

Perhaps, but the latter explaination (which is the same one I came to) seems to be the issue. The auto-use thing is usually done for an entire battle (auto-battle)... so it's not possible.. and I don't think anyone checked the Avenger Sword for the buggy behavior (I've only tested one version, but I'm sure it lingers in other versions.. and there was a specific fix for it in FF4A as an obvious hint to its overpoweredness). The best you can do is like the Golbez-Rydia summoning situation and "summon" Rydia out of hiding...

I do think the auto-Berserk effect while retaining the previous weapon's attack power is arguably the best abusive thing you could do for this game (free Cecil Berserk ignoring Crystal Armor's Berserk resistance late game == insane damage dealing).

[Deathlike2]

Mega 

I guess it's worth following up on the Avenger duplication bug.

For reference, the process is to equip Cecil with a Bow+Arrow setup.. Bow in the bad hand, arrow in the good hand.

In battle, remove the arrows from the good hand, and right afterwards, you select the Avenger and equip that on the bad hand.
Apparently, the game has poor code regarding 2-handed weaponry as you can perform this with other 2-handed weapons (such as the Poison Axe).

Then, you finish the battle.

Once you get out of battle, you will see a number right next to the right hand, signifying the bug was successfully performed.

In further testing, you can do the same for shields, by putting the bow in the good hand, and arrows in the bad. You would remove the arrows as normal and put the sword in the good hand.

Anyways, the issue is that the Avenger (via the aut0-Berserk effect) prevents the proper decrementing of the arrow removal. This is fixed in FF4ET for the duplication part.. not the bad 2-handed check part.

[Deathlike2]

Ok, the Zeromus-Avenger casting bug was analyzed a bit more. Apparently this bug occurs in FF4, FF2US 1.0, and 1.1.
This bug is fixed in FF4ET.

You can do this with other characters and their spells.

The message only appears depending on the targeting and success... if it targets a living ally, it displays the message.
If it targets Zeromus, it doesn't (because it would auto-fail on his invicibility status).

It seems to me that the Avenger Sword tries to get/repeat the last thing you did which happens to be casting a spell, but it selects the very first spell, which does absolutely nothing. This might be interesting for exploiting it for a hack.

 
Some pics:

[Deathlike2]

Looking to Clet's FAQ links... I found this: http://web.archive.org/web/20061129021254/www.parabox.or.jp/~takashin/ff4ura.htm

This list of bugs isn't really surprising, though it brings up some fun filled bugs... it seems to refer to the Avenger for one.

Expanding on the Drain-Avenger bug, basically, it's the same thing as the attack power bug.

When you swap weapons with the Avenger, the current attack power/stats are not properly updated, so the attack power and elemental attributes are "saved".

Now, obviously it's not that much different than casting Berserk on a character, but in Cecil's case, you can work around the Crystal Armor's Berserk resistance.

[Deathlike2]

 
The WSC version of this bug is really strange. It is a hybrid between the SNES and GBA versions.

The character equipped with the weapon usually goes first, based on Agility, but not on preemptive strikes.
I'm not sure if the ATB bug is affecting it.. but attacks with the Avenger Sword tend to wait on other characters taking their turn.
It can take from 1-3 (sometimes 4) characters turns before the character with the Avenger attacks.
Usually, a second attack is made by the time every other character on the field has their inputted command...
Otherwise, the Avenger user does nothing, while the enemy keeps attacking...

How the hell did this bug get through testing?