Topic: FF4PSP - Journey Log

[Deathlike2]

I believe I'm halfway finished with Rydia's Tale.

Anyways, the dolls are more useful than I thought. If hopefully level alters the skill usage of the Jive command, it would make things nice.

The damned Wall monster seems to target Brena a lot. Brena's in the last slot. At the very least, that's an improvement from virtually all monsters attacking the middle slot (which Luca occupies).

I forgot to mention that the Calcabrena band also randomly casts Cura... as if Brena couldn't randomly do that on her own.

I think there was a point where the Calcabrena band didn't kill the stronger version of the rat with needles monsters - it retaliated with Needles... hmmm (I have to double check if that happened).

Jive is considered a magic attack... the Naga type monsters reacted to a non-damaging attack in kind with Slow.

"Magic" level notes:
Calca @ level 12 for 8 agility
Luca @ level 17 for 8 agility
Calca @ level 22 or something for 32 agility when equipped with the Clown's Clothes

The Horned equipment is technically evil. +3 STR with -3 INT and -3 SPR sucks. Not that Luca has a lot of Spirit, but that causes her to be crippled under Paralysis (the snake monsters will use that if you leave them alive long enough).
Battle Axe falls under the same evil... at least the Tomahawk does not (straight +5 STR).

Big Throw is essentially giving the "ignore row" ability to Luca's weapon. This allows for Luca to stay in the back row indefinitely if you wish. This is not a bad thing, considering she's a slightly weaker Cid clone, so the heavy armor is beneficial. Even then, it allows her to hit things in the monster's back row... which sometimes is your intended target.

Clown's Clothes > Warrior's Clothes. Despite the +20 STR crack that the Warrior Clothes provides, it neuters magic stats (-5 INT and -5 SPR). Clown Clothes gives +20 AGI for a major defensive improvement (and when you get to 32 AGI, magic evasion increase).

It seems like the developers did take some time to provide multiple options for the dolls. You could go with the classic route with the Angel's and Mage's Clothes to keep the dolls pro-magic/command based, or you could make the dolls offensive with the Warrior+Clown's clothes.

Mage's Clothes for Rydia for a nice boost (Gaia Gear has limited uses), +3 INT AND +3 SPR is good for her magic evasion.

The Healing Rod is a black wizard version of the Healing Staff, which does slightly stronger healing. 3x spell multiplier (rod) vs 2x spell multiplier (staff). Then again, you get better bonuses (+3 INT and +3 SPR vs... nothing). Somewhat lame, but needed.

There is some legit thought to balance in the game... now only if they redid the crappy goblin's spell (and its spell power).

In attempting to use the Go! Go! Calcabrena band vs the bats, it seems to still work vs them, despite Lightning absorption. It seems to lessen the damage to the bats with the elemental absorption to lightning. This is not a bad thing, but worth paying attention to.


There aren't that many TrapDoors (seems to be like 4?) - Half of them summon the Goblin Caption (or the Dark Goblins - usually the normal underground monster version) and the others summon Sorceresses. Unfortunately, the game (US version) seemed to not want to record their deaths in the Beastiary. I don't know why.

Racial compatibility with weapons is simply a 50% bonus, as noted earlier (used Mythril Knife vs Souls and Spirit). It's not that bad a nerf. It might be bad if there was elemental resistance applied. On average, doing +87.5% average additional damage, is close enough to doing double damage (+100%).

 
Small update before sleep:
My last save was made in the in-game time of 4:44, with 33333 gil. How nice!

Ice Rod got an INT boost (+3). Should have been done in the original game in the first place!

Tomahawk has the nifty ability to be back row friendly (ignore row). Unlike the original Dwarf Axe, it has the Wind elemental attribute! Great... someone figured to add this "feature".

It's been a long day, when you decide to prefer the Ruby Ring over the Iron Gloves. 2 defense vs 3 magic defense + pig resistance.... before adding the fact that 10% additional evasion is better than 0%. I don't think I've ever had to make such a decision like that ever...

 
Level 26-27 for Rydia and Luca Agility @ 16

A nice "feature" in TAY is to not see anticipated retaliation attacks while under statuses like piggy that would normally prevent the counter attack. For instance, seeing the Lilith not being able to Slap under Piggy or the Naga casting Slow under Mute... in the normal game, you would see the counter message. In this game, you miss it.

It seems to me that the port of FF4 could use some "cleanup". When Pollen can potentially dish 0 damage in FF4PSP (outside of the Sap affliction), the damage is highlighted in green. Although this is cosmetic, this is not displayed in TAY, where 0 damage is not highlighted in green. The same could be said for Osmose damage where the damage is highlighted in blue when 0 damage is applied (to self or to targets that have 0 MP like Kain).

 
Fortunately got 2 Cursed Ring drops, and the Mindflayer summon. Apparently, the Cockatrice appearances are difficult in the rare slot formation in the Sylph Cave....

The Mindflayer sucks... if your target is immune to Paralysis (or happen to be a boss), it automatically fails. When it does work, the summon is not too bad.

The Plate Armor really sucks. It is possibly the only armor that provides negative evasion (-10%). Sometimes, it is smarter to play with more evasion than boosting defense.

The Lightning Hammer attack (Rydia+Luca band) is very sweet. It's effective a combo of Thunder (the basic version) plus Luca's base attack (so spell power+attack power) and multiplied by 2. It seems to deal less damage if you have a higher magic defense though.

 
Bomb summon is da Bomb! Being able to target single monsters sucks, but it has the benefit of not causing a ruckus when you don't want it (see original CPU battle). It's definitely fire elemental, but I'm unsure of the spell power. It has been reported to be around 120, but I haven't had a chance to crunch the numbers. It's more powerful than Bio.. but it won't be more powerful than Firaga. It would've been nicer if the spell was non-elemental... At least damage spells are reliable (looking at you squid Mageflayer)...

Easily maxed out levels in just one long run (with the occasional leaving the dungeon initially, as it would've been nice as a save spot). Ended up with 2 High Potions left (started with 50, having bought 40 or so before heading there). Ended up with 2 at the very end.... This feels kinda like the Tower of Zot in my early FF4 gaming... where Potions were used quite a bit.

I don't know if racial resistances are working... but my initial thought is that the behavior may have been changed. Giants Gloves don't seem to help too much vs the Mad Ogres... My guess is that there may have been reduced accuracy or something. I have Luca in the back row, but that doesn't quite help matters.

Those Walls seems to target Rydia now, having lost the dolls. It is almost as if it has reverse row targeting (Luca is in the middle slot, Rydia in the top slot, both in back row).

Those Goblins... are the joke. I think the endurance part of the challenge dungeon is the focus.

Like Titan's final Quake attack on the characters, a lot of this is scripted spell scheming. Instead of reducing HP by a certain portion, it's reducing HP TO a certain percentage or value like with the Interlude's final battle with the machines. The intent is to put characters into critical to tell the story "accurately". The only issue is how the machines at the end of the Interlude have "hidden Edge" casting Blitz dealing TWICE as much damage as Edge normally would be able to. The math doesn't add up correctly... at least with the hidden Rydia with the underground Golbez battle in the original game, the damage isn't accurate to the Mist Dragon spell, but it's "accurate" to how much HP she should have when she gets back with the team if you base it on the spell data.

I like Luca better than Cid... just based on skills alone.


 
I need to get around to testing Mad Ogres vs Lightning Brain Buster...

Team Monk is simple... just let them all Kick the opponents to oblivion when monster # is greater than 2. Otherwise, you can just punch them into oblivion.

It's interesting to note that Kick falls under the Attack Power alteration stuff... which is technically true since Kick damage is literally based off of that. However, Focus is not highlighted as such.... I haven't tested it yet (since last I checked, that command dropped Yang's magic evasion to 0, which it is already), but I anticipate that it is affected by the Attack Power changes. Understandably it is not affected by Special Command changes...

Cover Counter (or was it Counter Cover) is probably affected by the Attack Power changes... since it is literally what it is (if anything, you should be seeing red in Yang's command list).

Chakra is affected by the Special Command moon stuff... and I think it might be loosely be based on Spirit (unsure, but will need further observation). It doesn't heal Paralysis from the damned TinyMages, but it does heal Blind from the damn butterflies. I will have to observe further for the other status affects (probably Poison is the only other one, since it is probably based off of FF5's !Chakra command).

 
Got testing done. Apparently, my initial thought of Magic Defense was wrong... since Lightning Brain Buster doesn't seem to affect the Mad Ogre's immense magic defense...

However, defense was the actual factor it seems. It didn't stop it from kicking the Purple Bavarios's ass. However, the damage was far weaker than a monster that had no weakness, but weak defense.

Also, Gradual Petrify is not healed by Chakra (and by extension, Stone, which is the final state - works like Gaia Gear resistance when you think about). The only reason why I believe Poison is healed by it is because Focus (as defined by the original game) is disabled under Poison status.

[Deathlike2]

I believe the Spell Power of Chakra is 80 (could be 72, but I need to do more math). The healing "range" is not that high (probably some added number added to the healing). It is powered solely by Spirit (so, the Rune Armlet in the forests of hell is useful for Ursula).

Auto-Battle is not exactly like holding the A-button. If you kill a target, and another character selects the same target, the usual behavior is to see an retargeted attack to a different monster and that is not necessarily the next monster in line. However, that character may still be randomly targeting, instead of the next monster in line (there is an order after all), so weird targeting can happen.

If I forgot to mention this, the Egg that houses the Green Dragon in Ceodore's Tale is not recorded when the Egg is revealed and the monster is killed. It feels like one of those FF4A bugs again... (kinda like the TrapDoor->Sorceress one).

Chakra does not heal Silence or Curse (from the Lilith's Slap).

I think the Blaster attack from the "cats" is simply instant death across the board (perhaps Paralysis is applied, if the target has Death resistance?)

When the full party of Monks gather, the monsters seem to hate on Monk A (at the bottommost slot).

During the Adamantoise Battle, the Monks are "reshuffled" IIRC (if not, I forgot) back to Monk A, B, and C in the back row... the monster targets them from C, B, A, Ursula, then Yang in that order... the retargeting only occurs when the characters in that order die. I know there's code to be able to react to characters that are critical, but this is ridiculous in terms of fixing it in such a way. It makes sense to be prepared to Revive and Heal a character with two consecutive turns in order to reduce the possibility of having to revive again.

The Monks stats are rigged... the fastest Monk has the least defense and HP whereas the slowest Monk has the best defense and HP. They all suck... none of them will exceed a 5x Attack Multiplier and 1x Defense Multiplier without the good stuff (Power Armlet and/or Charm Claw). Maybe these monks should have names...

IIRC, Monk C is average, and Monk B is the fastest...

 
Confuse and Sap status is not healed by Chakra.

Tenketsu seems to do 25% more damage than attack (it's hard to get the moon cycle that gets them neutral. However, it seems to just "ignore" defense when it comes to that Armored Tunneler monster in the challenge dungeon (which, may make this attack a Flan killer). Note that Tenketsu is affected by a command delay and not primarily affected by the Special Attack bonus/loss instead of the Attack Power bonus/loss.

Focus is definitely affected by attack power moon cycles.

Tenketsu does seem to react to the Lamia Matriach monster as a "magical attack", unless they changed the monster's behavior (it reacts to magic attacks).

Five Star Crimson Palm is simply the combined regular attack with Ursula+Yang, and applies Slow (it's a somewhat more expensive version of it, but you get the damage).

Twin Wing Frenzy is simply the combined regular attack with Ursula+Yang, multiplied by 2.

Back row and Kick makes life easier on the trial run.

Charm status is overridden by Sleep status. This can be done with Fairy+Cat Claws in addition to magic.

 
Tenketsu allows for critical hits.. which is nice.

Band seem to ignore elemental properties of equipped weapon (possibly racial ones too). I used both bands that Yang+Ursula on the Red Dragon, and they both had Ice Claws (that the Red Dragon should be weak against)... it didn't increase damage. This is very useful...

Chakra Band (Monk? equipment) - +3 STR, +3 AGI, +3 SPR, +10% Evasion - really nice for Ursula

Silver Breastplate... +15% Evasion... This FF5-like light/medium armor for Monks is an slight improvement over the original game.

Rose Twin Dress for Ursula +35% Evasion, +3 all stats - this is crack

Boosting Ursula's Spirit makes the Chakra skill a nice in between healer (better than Cura, worse than Curaga) and very useful as a whole. Frankly... most of the "children" (psuedo-clones) of the original characters are that much better, despite having limitations. The "exception" so far is Ceodore (getting a nice host of White Magic, but being weaker than Cecil).

Luca is better than Cid... with the back row command option to increase defense while not having as much HP, will benefit long term.
Ursula is more complete - semi-healer, faster, which produces a much stronger monk, despite having less HP to work with...

 
Forgot to mention, most of the HP based attacks are generally based off of the monster's HP, not the targets. The Flamebeast/Icebeast/Chimeras have their primary annoying attack be based off their own HP. This allows for some limited balance, but doesn't scale the same way that the character/target's maxHP attacks would.

Also, monster spells (I don't mean black/white magic, but more like monster specialty spells) are affected either by Black Magic changes or Special Skill changes.. I'm learning towards the former, but yes, these are affected by the moon.

[Deathlike2]

I'll try to grind for Yang's Tale for the tail... apparently the developers couldn't spend a little bit of time doing pixel art for the tail icon (is it too hard to ask?)

I will need to get more of Ceodore's Challenge rare items plus the Blue Dragon... but I'll do the next tale first (Palom's Tale I think).

Some more notes:
Status resistances are displayed differently in the FF4 PSP port (and Interlude) than in the TAY portion. Why this cannot be consistent is a mystery... ineffective statuses due to resistance is displayed as "Miss" instead of the PSP's ports "it hits, but doesn't do squat".

A dangerous enemy is the Coeurl as seen before... it reacts when you do damage to it and uses Blaster... and Blaster in this version is strictly instant Death. When this is a summoned beast, it does its revenge by literally using Blaster. It seems that it "remembers" that you killed it (with HP), so when it gets the chance after the revive, it will take you down immediately. This is probably related to code which "delays" counter attacks when a monster is put into a statuses like Sleep, Confuse, or Paralysis. Monsters that react to magic or specific magic (like Holy elemental for Zemus's Mind - the purple being in the Lunar Core lowest level) tend to "delay" their counters after they are put into a different status that would prevent them from using it... this is why Zemus's Mind/Malice "remembers" to use Shell when the Lightbringer Sword does the additional Holy attack that doesn't kill it... it casts Shell after casting Protect (Protect is the reaction to the physical attack). Anyways, the point is, this is not cleared from the death of the Coeurl, making a very nasty monster, a very vengeful one.

Elemental weakness from Ice/Fire elemental equipment has been removed. I haven't tested the weapon elemental part, but I'm pretty sure the magical side reflects this (and was tested with Libra and actual magic). Great... nice to be different than the original game.

The Spirit Ring was design moreso for Luca (and others like her) than Rydia... +15% evasion and +5 AGI is nice, but the magic defense bonus can cure some deficiencies in her armor set. Rings tend to favor wizards, which tend to have good/great magic defense... Fighters do not get much in the way of magic defense, but get plenty to show for in raw defense.

Note: Oh, if you plan on using any of this in a Walkthrough or something like that, please give credit where credit is due. I'm sure most of this info isn't new, but some of it, I don't think has been looked into thoroughly.

 
The drop rate for dropping money seems to be rare.. not that it matters (maybe it is level based now?)

There are a number of formations that were already in the game, but went unused... like 2 Bomb and 2 Greybomb formation where the positions are switched a little bit. There has been a reasonable concerted focus to integrate the monsters with the environment... but more importantly, to make the best use of the characters that were added and already there. I don't think I've used Palom like I have in the original game.. where no magic needed to be used. Despite there being no "fighter" (it's an all-mage party), a number of monster formations do not allow for "one hit kills"... on the other hand, there are also "magic overkill" formations.

I wonder what Palom's Boast is doing... since it seems to affect monsters. There is existing code from the older game that allowed monsters to react to commands, like Jump, but you could mod it to react to Steal and Sing... or whatever command you wished. It is good that this was taken advantage of further...
My initial guess is that it inflicts "blind", since that is the act of "cringing". I think it is still doing the 16 point INT boost... but I'm not entirely sure.

The band "A Little Black Magic" is limited but great if you're bored. For 10MP for Palom+Leonora, she will randomly cast the following:
Blizzard? (2MP) = 1/2 the power of Blizzard - 8 spell power
Blizzard - 16 spell power
Blizzara - 64 spell power
Blizzaga - 256 spell power

It targets all monsters on the field.. and it isn't always great. The weaker the spell, the higher chance it will occur. The treasure in all of this is when she casts Blizzaga... a lower cost version. Unfortunately, the spell is based on Leonora's INT and as you know is pretty bad. The Boast aspect is Palom "encouraging her" to cast the spell. It's easier to get Palom to cast Blizzara than to weigh in on the randomness. However, if you feel like wasting MP and/or are targeting Ice elemental monsters, you might as well try. If only the MP consumption was closer to 7MP, it would be appreciable.

The ? magic (Fire? Blizzard? Thunder?) are simply 1/2 as powerful versions of the original (? spells have 8 spell power, regular versions are 16). Additionally, they have slightly different graphics (Blizzard? looks more like the original Blizzard version in FF4). They all cost 2MP, so it is a smarter idea to pretend they didn't exist.

I'll have posts about equipment soon. +1 SPR for the Staff and Healing Staff is nice, but disappointing. Psycho Staff (or whatever it is called) should have been a Staff instead of a Rod in the first place (it is white magic after all).

IIRC, the Rune Armlet is not magnetic.. as it is more of a "rock".

The accuracy of the Great Bow has greatly improved (aka rebalanced) to 75% acc (+3 STR). This makes the Bow+Arrow very usable, unlike the semi-usability of them on Mt. Ordeals when Cecil and the twins climb it (using the low accuracy Crossbow).

Lenora statistically looks like Porom in the magic growth... but is actually a stronger Palom... but not as fast. It makes her the ideal candidate for Bow+Arrow weaponry before Palom (his STR growth is surprisingly slower). Then again, it's similar to the Monk ABC phenomenon. I do like Leonora... except her black magic growth is only good for cheap cleanup. At the very least, she would hold up better than FuSoYa. Her black magic effectively works like Tellah at the moment... which isn't exactly high praise. I was fortunate to learn Poison (level 15) before I got the basic elementals. :P

I think I forgot to mention... the Brena doll is kinda like Porom, and the Calca doll is kinda like Palom.. without the consistent magic spell list.

Palom is given the spell Break initially (shouldn't he have it anyways?). You quickly learn how terrible it is... because when Rydia learns it in the original game, she actually has enough magic power to use it effectively (the accuracy of the spell is . At this point, it is pitiful... so wait until his INT is at an exceptional level first... It's actually Tellah-like initially...

Break's spell hit rate/acc is 30. It's slightly better than half of Sleep (50) but 3 times stronger than Piggy (10). You would need an INT of 50 to even have a 50-50 shot of Break working on its target. Spell accuracy is increased by INT/2... so an maxed INT of 99 will increase the acc of Break to 79, which is pretty good for the most part. Putting Palom in the middle slot should help (I'm not entirely sure if the code is still there, but that increases spell hit rate by 25% IIRC), which should put the effectiveness to near perfect.

The healing squid monster does not heal himself with Cure (or was it Cura?). I'm unsure if they are intentionally not targeting it, but consider the fact that using the spell would be pointless, and would probably heal 1 point. The reason for this is that monster healing themselves through Cure is not effective. It works AGAINST their magic defense. You would not have ever noticed it vs the Magus Sisters when Mindy (the big girl) is dead and Sandy (the tall girl) is alive. You would've never noticed vs Asura since Curaga has a pretty high spell power (144). I will have to look further into this.

Note: I wrote a small extension to the TinyMage script in my hack just casting Cura on the caster.. Cure is not effective vs the TinyMage because of its strangely higher than normal defense at the time.

[Deathlike2]

I'll try to reserve more of my thoughts of equipment later... I'm too tired to write them up.

It seems like monsters with Cure and magic defense has changed. When targeting the damned squid (Spirit Priest) with magic, its counter is Cure to all monsters, including himself. So... this notes the fact that the Spirit Priest's super high magic defense didn't actually hurt him... and targeting code that went unused/barely used (target every monster other than self).

Of course, this causes the Naga to cast Slow (counter vs magic).

It's amusing to see monsters counter attacks made by other monsters (like, a charmed monster attacking a Ghost Knight, causing it to cast Bio onto a random character). It's been there in the original, but more exposed to random lol by other craziness.

Leonora suddenly becomes really epic when she learns Osmose @ level 39 IIRC. Getting a Lilith Rod though, would help her weapon options for INT (Palom would probably hog the Polymorph Rod for various reasons.)

On the Flan Floor of the challenge dungeon, there are two hidden treasure chests in front of the pillars nears the exit. It is hard to see them, but they are there. There's some Blinding Arrows and a Remedy there.

Protect "works", but doesn't "work" and sometimes works weirdly. It might be the RNG, but the damage received from getting some Protect boost seems to be inconsistent at best. On the other hand, the Protect Staff seems to kinda work, and not work. I don't know how to explain or make of this. It's almost as if Protect gives a buffer to reduce damage, but then it loses its effect (damage goes back to increasing) and then you have to reapply it again. I don't know.

There's something clearly wrong with the RNG emulation or something... where the boss is stuck into weak vs Lightning mode and casting Fira... when my initial attack spell is Blizzara. Go figure. Then again, it keeps attacking Palom first all day.

[Deathlike2]

There's too many "magic levels" of note. To keep it simple, it is the stats that increase certain multipliers when combined with certain equipment. Usually a magic number is divisible by 8 (since, that is what contributes to most multiplier boosts).

Anyways, onto some notes.

The Gil Bird is annoying. It is like fighting Edward. The difference is that the time it takes for the bird to return, you can cast the nice Particle Bomb Band and let it do the dirty work. It doesn't one shot the stronger (and more generous) bird all the time, but it is close enough. Just input the command when the bird is returning. Then it gets blown up! It's one big chicken...

Particle Bomb is about twice the strength of Bio, but I'm not entirely sure, since Leonora's INT is not as high (it's probably some combined INT value or damage combination) and Palom's Bio is pretty strong. It reminds me of Chrono Trigger's Antipode epicness.

Mystic Veil is epic. +1 AGI (not too nifty), +7 INT, +SPR is really sweet. I need to find a way to test Holy resistance. (+8% evasion)

Talisman is nice... +5 INT, +5 SPR, but no mage resistance (considering what you face in the dungeons, you kinda need it, plus the Silence protection).... it's semi-heavy (+5% evade... note that having no armor in the head/body/arms is +10% evasion each)

It's interesting how the Lodestone Cave doesn't really affect you equipment wise... mages have pretty non-metallic equipment given what the game provides (the Rune Ring being the major addition/difference). So, you don't really have to do much, outside of ignoring the Mythril and Silver stuff.

The Red Robe is a new piece of equipment this is supposed to reflect Leonora, and what a Sage truly is... a Red Mage. I liked it in both FF1 and FF5... although FF5's Red Mage was only good early, and I wasn't a huge fan of Dualcast.. but that of course started the whole Dualcast phenomenon (unless some earlier NES FF added it).
+4 INT and +4 SPR... something Tellah would've been jealous of!

The info about the Single Star is correct... I guess they goofed on the description for the Wii.

Wizard's Rod looks pretty sweet in theory (+9 INT) . It kinda resembles FF5's Wizard Rod in some sense, but it's nothing to exactly write home about. The spell it uses is exactly the same as the Dancing Dagger, at the probably same spell power.

The Protect Staff's +10 STA and +5 SPR is nice...but the Lilith Rod for Leonora is better, since the MP you steal (particularly from Ogres) contribute far more, and you still get a boosted stat for magic evasion purposes. I'm wondering if the spell multiplier has changed, but it probably has not.

I thought I saw something crazy... like I casted Bio with Palom, and it didn't kill the Ghost Knight outright. The usual response is to cast Reflect on itself, which it did. Then it proceeds to cast it again unprovoked, as if the self-casting of Reflect also triggered the same response again, but that causes Reflect to bounce off itself and onto a character. Go figure.

 
Protect seems to work, but it doesn't exactly provide any sort of major impact. It decreases damage intake... it's either by some percentage (basically, damage * 3/4) or the defense by some small percentage (which in turn reduces damage). I'd have to look into it further. It's probably better than the original's slow-to-impact stacking, but it has minimal impact unless you stack it (4 times is it?). I have seen it reduce damage up to half, but that has required a bit of stacking... and it's annoying that the Protect Staff ONLY targets 1 character (no multi-target for it).

Magic evasion seems to be the root cause of status attack avoidance, like Blaster, the attack the Medusas do, and the Lamia's/Lilith's Lust attack. I guess that's better than "it always works".

Angel Arrows (dropped by the Lamia) seems to hold onto its "effective vs Giants" property. I'm sure the same would be for the Silencing Arrows or the Elven Bow.

Picked up a pair of Angel Arrows and whatever rarest drop the Medusas provide. Too bad I can't test them in this tale.

 
Started Edge's Tale...

I'm not sure if the moon is affecting the damage of Ninjutsu (though, I think only for the moon that affects special commands).

Flood's spell power appears to be 32. It's only twice as strong as Blizzard (half as strong as Blizzara), but doesn't suffer from split damage. The spell itself is what I would call Blizzard 1.5. It won't scale too well going forward, but I doubt that's Izayoi's main strength. She's a healer, but her Spirit growth is a bit weaker than a White Mage. I assume that the spell power of her Heal Ninjutsu will compensate for that (higher base healing), especially since the cost of casting it is much higher that Cure. Suddenly, the Bow+Arrow is more attractive than the whip.

Shinobi Gear is nice.. since Agility bonuses from any equipment was rare in the original game. +3 AGI beats the +1 AGI from the Foot Ninja Gear (don't even ask me about the equipment naming).

The Boomerang is the ninja's best companion weapon... you won't be effective in the back row w/o it.

Tsukinowa is like an early version of Edge somehow. Stats look crap, but seem to gain pretty quickly. Natural stat is AGI (of course, Ninjas are supposed to be fast), but not exactly the strongest kid. Of course, the entire mini-bit is hilarious despite the reuse of certain things. Now we know exactly why he is the "wind" ninja.

Gale is essentially FF5's Aera (Aero2). Finally someone decided that it was a legit element and made it magic. The difference is that it is more like a level 2 elemental (spell power = 64), and that is exactly what that spell is. It will not be that useful long term, but for the occasional flying unit, this might be an OK replacement over a Boomerang weapon.

I was amused at the message when Izayoi's Illusions command failed. In addition, her mini-convo with Palom is pretty funny.

[Dragonsbrethren]

You're making me want to play this again. I hate you.

What emulator are you using, by the way? I'll probably just play my Wii copy on the console, but I wasn't even aware there was a functional PSP emulator.

[Deathlike2]

You're welcome. 

I use JPCSP (yes, it requires Java). It seems to work better on NVidia video cards.. but there are certain issues like needing better optimizations and specific settings for the game. I suggest you look in their forums for the specific thread about it. The video card has to have shaders (SM3 based IIRC - Shader Model 3, with every DX9c compliant cards)

Ignore some of the initial messages when you play the game... they have to do with not having created save data for it. Once you save the game, it will go away.

The slowest parts are the "Crystal Breaking" effect and anything to do with Lightning (Fire is not as bad).

Zangetsu seems to be like some sort of jack-of-all-trades kind of ninja. Reasonably fast (but slower than most of the ninjas, due to implied age), but wielding Spears limits his options. No shield sucks for defensive purposes (I'm sure that is changed with the Adamant Shield), but Flying Kite is essentially another version of Jump (although, it could be not strictly 2 times the attack power... I haven't tested it thoroughly to be sure) and his magic is alright (built more like the poor man's Black Wizard). He doesn't excel, but doesn't outright suck either. If you needed the ninja version of Kain, here we are.

Gekkou is the true fighter of the ninja group... but that also means he's simply dumber than them all (he looks like a nice guy). His magic is barely "passable", but then again, you could say the same for Tsukinowa (but at least he's wicked fast). Axes seems to be his specific weapon of choice.. and it doesn't look like shields are an option, so you can kinda justify his existence,  compared to like Cid... except he gets better evasive armor... but not a good enough Agility to take advantage of it (which is a real downside). A true front row requirement, unlike the other characters that can get away with being in the back row. He does have very good HP growth as compensation.

Izayoi is a good substitute healer as far as I can tell, but not a true White Mage replacement.

I love, and yet hate how the game decides to rearrange the characters for you after adding them into your party. Sometimes its nice, but my alignment ALWAYS revolves on predictable turn distribution and how preemptive attacks affect order. On the other hand, the damage selection always seems to be very biased to the middle guy (through emulation bugs IMO), so I end up leaving Edge there.

Speaking of Edge, he's the best Ninja period (he's the original master after all). He's very much like what he was in FF4, but probably with better SPR growth. Having most of the useful spells cannot be ignored.

There's so many bands for the ninjas... they are potent I think...

[Deathlike2]

Playing through Edge's Challenge Dungeon, it seems to be a simple concept. It is simply a race to the end. So, it means a shitload of running away or kicking ass efficiently.

I'll briefly go over a few things about the bands in this party, as this has the most influence to success.

Wild Moon - This is simply hitting all monsters on the field with a combined force of Edge and Tsukinowa. I think it's just an average of both characters damages... heavily boosted when the Attack Power phase is in effect. Considering this is the fastest to execute, it speeds up battles significantly if the damage is right. It's a goto band for easier battles.
Note: It ignores the elemental properties of the weapons, but I'm not sure if it is affected by row (with regards to weapons that ignore row). It probably is affected by row.

Frozen Moon Dance - If you're played Chrono Trigger, than this should remind you of Ice Sword. That's what it is! It's not too useful unless the target is weak vs Ice... and it's only a solo target. Likely to be affected by row.

Gale Twin Break - It's a curious attack, as it does damage every monster on the field. However, all damage is not equal. It focuses on ONE monster, and then the other monsters essentially get an aftershock, which is usually less painful. This is a decent attack ONLY if you aren't going to trigger HP or physical based counters. Nothing good will come of it. It might not be affected by row, since Jump itself ignores row. The damage dealt seems to be close to just double what Edge does normally for the primary target. Damage is odd, and could simply be "spread" from the amount of damage dealt to the initial monster (the initial monster is the one that takes the most damage). Of course, this is effectively random. Useful if you need to deal double damage to one monster instantly.

Gale Rush - 12MP each for a multi-targeted Haste. If this is the only reason you add Tsukinowa (who is pretty damn fast) and Zangetsu (so you get Jump), this is a winning combo.

Blazing Moon Ring - Hey, did you remember Ice Sword? Well, this is effectively Fire Sword, but stronger! I don't know why this is stronger, outside of the fact that Flame is stronger than Flood, spellwise. Not a bad alternative to Gale Twin Break... and I don't think it consumes the ammo... just the "command".

Phantom Lightflies - I looked at this initially and thought it was kinda cool, but seemed impractical. However, it works very well for as a counter to a specific type of attack. The Chimera Brain is a very fucking annoying monster. The first thing it does is do that current HP ice elemental attack against all the characters. This bloody well hurts. This spell is specific to countering it. It is powered by three aspects... HP being lowered, and Gekkou, who is slow and not the brightest, will take the most damage... and his HP pool is LARGE. This band will effectively heal HP equal to damage dealt to both characters in the band (Izayoi and Gekko) and split that towards all the characters plus something like 25% or some fixed number that I haven't quite figured out yet. The additional number might just be how much Izayoi would heal with her normal healing spell (which then is split to all characters). This is VERY useful under the specific circumstance. Don't expect it to heal a lot, but it will heal enough to avoid potion turns.

Wheel of Elements - If you know that all the monsters on the field have some elemental weakness (this includes Wind elemental, I think), this spell is for you. It does work vs a number of enemies, but beware of the monsters that have high magic defense. It's then just a waste.

Advent of Phoenix - ONLY useful if the monsters are weak vs Fire. The actual problem with this band is that is locks up every character for a glorified fire spell. The only good, but potentially annoying feature is the entire... speech. When monsters have high magic defense, you really really want to cry about this band.

Also, I believe Heal Pill has a spell power of about 100 or so. It is powered by INT, so Edge's version is naturally stronger than Izayoi, and certainly Tsukinowa... but in reverse order, they characters are faster at casting it (through natural AGI growth).

I have not used Heal Salve enough, but it's probably good enough to be a single targeted version of Curaga. I will look into the numbers soon.

[Deathlike2]

Alright... I'm trying to simply grind for more Giant Gloves for the whole team. Unfortunately, the "best equipment" for the ninjas tend to eat any sort of magic defense that they barely hold onto.

Medusa Arrows... are very disappointing. They simply inflict gradual petrify. Lame. Angel Arrows are probably the best bet at this point.

There are some simple rules for myself when going through the challenge dungeon.

1) Run away if the monster or the group is tougher than you. Sometimes it's better to save that time.

2) Run away if the monster drops are pathetic. The Skulldier based monsters come to mind.

3) If you actually plan on fighting them, make sure you are able to kill them all within at most 2 complete party turns. If your battle can be dealt with "Auto Battle" or just holding the A button down, the better.

4) Wild Moon is your friend. Use it early and pretty much often. It'll clear out most of the enemies. DO NOT USE IT if there's one monster on the field, unless it's like those cat monsters (they'll kill you if you don't kill them first)

5) Wheel of Elements tends to clear elementally weak monsters efficiently. Not too many groups fall into that.

6) Use items for healing instead of Ninjutsu - you need all the MP you can hold onto.

7) Avoid counters and long animation attacks like the plague. If you fail to kill the Lamia, the animation for Lust itself takes like 2-3 seconds. It helps to weaken the monster in advance whenever possible w/o triggering its counter. The bats are a plague on your run... better off running away from them.

So, I think the basic Ninjutsu magic breaks down like this:
Heal Pill - 100 Spell Power (could be 92 or 96) - more effective than Cura, but remember the limited INT
Heal Salve - 256 Spell Power (could be 250 or something like that, maybe even 288) - there's good reason why it looks like Curaja, limited INT will limit overall healing (treat it more like Curaga from a White Mage)
Blitz - 48 Spell Power, can kill elementally weak monster instantly, like the PSP's Bug monster (it looks like the Waterbug)
Flame - 64 Spell Power - only because Gekkou is not so smart
Flood - 32 Spell Power - no split damage modifier, since it targets all monsters
Gale - 64 Spell Power - since Tsukinowa isn't that bright either

When you use Phantom Lightflies as a counter to the Chimera Brain's Blazing Cold attack, it will heal half the damage that was taken, assuming all characters started off at full HP. Remember  that healing increases as both characters take damage. So if you take the average of 900 or so damage from the attack, you will heal everyone 450. That's better than nothing and it does help to have the other two characters in critical after the Chimera Brain's attack.

If a monster is strong against a certain elemental, the damage dealt will be close to half as much at it could have been done (assuming the moon phase does not affect the attack properties). When using Frozen Moon Dance and Blazing Moon Ring vs the Chimera Brain, the damage dealt was reflected as such. When using Wheel of elementals, every elemental outside of Wind, reduced the damage collectively, so the damage dealt was 1/8 of the normal damage (= 1/2 * 1/2 * 1/2).

I read somewhere that Advent of Phoenix is affected by HP loss, which doesn't make it as bad, but it still has the same pro-Fire elemental damage limitation.

Wild Moon is effectively the combined attack of Edge and Tsukinowa times 3/4 (basically a 25% reduction of the combined attack), targeted at all of the monsters. It's great if you are targeting more than one monster... not so much when it is just one.

A great combo when engaging the Chimera Brain, is to use Gale Rush, followed by Phantom Lightflies after the ice attack. You are then better prepared to kick the monster's ass. However, the bigger issue IMO is that you have been collecting a lot of elementally based weaponry (Gaia's Hammer [fire], Cherry Blade [fire], Flame Spear) that does not help your cause. The alternative is to keep using the older weapon... or just plan on using other non-elemental or non-Fire/Water/Lightning bands). Gale Twin Break is actually optimal here as I think it allows Edge to deal some additional damage through Jump.

Trident does not have the Mech property, thus making it usefully limited in Zangesu's mini-story.

I forgot that Gekko's Shuriken command is like Throw - it ignores row, so load up on buying the weapons if you need him there. I guess that's good news (I know that all Ninja characters can equip a Boomerang type weapon, but since they are not all ambidextrous, it isn't that great offensively speaking).

The Malboro isn't too bad, using Gale Rush, followed by Frozen Moon Dance + Shuriken, or Blazing Moon Ring + Illusion (pray it works) is pretty effective. I like Blazing Moon Ring for its non-use of the actual item.

 
Blitz kinda seems to work like Curaja, in that the instant death effect (though, I wonder if Death resistance affects this) requires the spell to be single targeted. The comparison to Curaja is that the full HP aspect requires you to target one character.

The Behemoth is mostly the same, but it seems to counter elemental spells and bands like the Frozen Moon Dance and Blazing Moon Ring with Maelstrom (it doesn't react to Wild Moon or Gale Twin Break). It's great that Phantom Lightflies heals well (1000HP, with all characters at level 40).

Gale Twin Break probably isn't that great vs one monster, as the Human Kite (Jump) command and Edge's regular attack would do better. I'm not sure I like this band unless the collateral damage to other monsters is worthwhile (it's only good if they have low HP it seems).

 
Some equipment notes:
Goblin Mask - +3 AGI, +3 INT, +3 SPR - if you only wanted a smarter ninja...
Mist Wrap - +5 AGI, +45% evasion - literally built for speed... probably best on Gekkou since he needs all the help he can get speed-wise and defensively
Treasure Hunter - maybe it's the broken RNG related to emulation, but it doesn't seem to make a difference - I'm sure it is somewhat useful when it working

Kotetsu+Chakrum and Wing Edge+Ashura should allow you to deal the same damage with Edge and Tsukinowa.


Some additional notes:
1) To improve the speed run, fail speed runs that are for treasure grabs should attempt to collect as many of the monster-chests early. Getting the 2 special chests per floor will improve your future runs.

2) If you are on a true speed run, learn to pick up treasure that is not too out of your way. If they are completely out of the way, don't bother, especially if you're collected the monster-chests. It's worth getting the occasional Manji Shuriken (twice as strong as the regular Shuriken).

3) Learn where the intentional fights are. All of the unavoidable battles obviously change the monster frequency (and it seriously does work). The worst/best case may be collecting both monster frequency changes in one direction. I can only imagine if you double down on the increased monster frequency (although, it might be beneficial on the 3rd Floor because of the monsters that have good drops). Monsters barely show up (if ever) when you double down on the decreases monster frequency (I've experienced that).

4) The direct shortcuts on the 2nd and 3rd Floors are probably more counterproductive than anything on a speed run. It simply relies on luck - you are better off with a controlled/normal environment.

5) It's worth getting the healing on the 4th Floor before you finish the level. You need all the MP you can get for the Bands.

[Deathlike2]

Completed Porom's Tale - it felt like completing DK Cecil's journey up Mt. Ordeals, except w/o DK Cecil, and with Bows that have a min accuracy of 75% (even the lowly Bow has that much accuracy). All I did was grind for money (and essentially getting levels for the two mages). The Black Mage surprisingly gets the better stats, despite having less HP (what is the deal with having 30 less HP, but getting 15 more MP?) It sucks to have the White Mage stuck @ 15 Agility. Porom is a better version of the White Mage, although by comparison, her stats would naturally be inferior to it... but having more than enough levels will compensate for it.

From the monster battles, I've already picked up a Headband and Giant Gloves. Well, that was easy. Go generous RNG!

The "clone" Palom and Rydia for this tale are... just meh? I guess you find out why Rydia's MP pool is supposed to be huge. Sylph is a great summon for her small part of the tale (kill one target and heal everyone, how's that for being epic).

It's easy to nice how "new monsters" were added to the game... at least since Edge's Tale (the mini-tales, specifically starting with Mt. Ordeals). They did the same again... so I'll give credit for that, since there's not much to really add, outside of mixing it up.

It would've been nice if the Elder had Holy. I mean.... why not?

Porom's Pray is simply a multitargeted Cura (split healing math enforced). I guess that's better than the afterthought that was Rosa's Pray.

 
Done with pretty much the Challenge Dungeon... it felt like "wham, bam, thank you ma'am". Shortest overall tale period.

Jump really does seem to change targeting for monsters... for whatever the reason. Despite the main target is usually Porom (being in the middle slot), it's just odd the RNG seems to kick in like that...

The Special "Cat" monster loves to use its Lightning based attack on the Black Mage (or specifically, whoever is in the bottom spot).

The White Dragon battle is lame... maybe I need to wait longer for something to happen, but being threatened by Slow is... not scary at all.

Some tips:
1) Since Porom is required to use her magic for the old man, you are better off emptying out the White Mage's magic, if you plan to heal. If you wish to conserve MP for battle, then buy more items. I do not get how the old man needs multiple Esuna casts... as if he had a terminal disease. At least with the multiple Cura, you could imagine tons of HP to deal with. It must be that he is obsessive compulsive or something.

2) I hate the item taker. I should just refuse out of spite. Ether and Remedies are limited and you can't even buy any.

3) It is best to start or head towards the southwest corner... because the exit is at the northwest corner and the map design works out like that. I hate the White Mage spirit thing.

4) Because of #2 and #3, you are at least allowed to skip at most (?) helping one of the people there... occasionally #2 will trip you out (not having enough Ether or Remedies) and #3 (not having enough time to find the spirits). You will still get the best treasure.

5) It is OK to fight monsters during this time. Avoid fighting the group with the Lamia (pretty hard early on), Flan (waste of magic), and Blood Bats (too annoying and time consuming). All the other fights that resemble groups from the Lodestone Cave from the original game are easy enough with the Great Bow+Holy Arrow setup with your characters (most of those monsters are weak vs Holy). The special "Cat" monster group can be worth engaging occasionally. Fighting the special "cat" monster with its own elemental is... strange enough. There is one "new" formation that involves a Goblin Captain, Sorceress, and Horseman... you just pray a Ether drop is coming (well, you have a better shot at a Tent or Cottage).

6) The hardest monster is the Evil Dreamer. Stop is your best friend.

 
I was fortunate to get a White Tail... but Dark Kain hasn't gotten to level 40 yet, so I'll try to continue going after some Angel Arrows for Porom.

I forgot to mention that Izayoi is crazy.. but that's just hilarious. It's kinda only fitting.

This should have been apparent to me... the special monster in Porom's Dungeon is a "thundercat". How did I not get that reference initially?

Doesn't Porom look familiar to someone... like Maria/Celes in FF6? The sad part is that they gave her some additional background... kinda like Terra... the "will I love anyone" theme. I guess it depends on what she finds... it's not looking so hot at the moment.

[Grimoire LD]

Just want to let you know I absolutely love these logs! No one analyzes gameplay in this manner anymore sadly, so it's a refreshing change of pace.

[Deathlike2]

I try... I can't say it's all exciting new info (there are plenty of walkthroughs with already good ideas).

OK, back to Edward's Tale. I didn't get to do too much sadly (finally got Harley into the party).

For the sake of duh, those initial rings/relics that Edward+Harley initially starts with doesn't appear to be a coincidence. Too bad it limits you defensively (well, mainly in the magic defense area, since that is what you lose). All these rings feel like FF5 redux, in that the arm carries the special stuff.

Does Piercing Sight work? Maybe I'm forgetting rule #1 about magic vs physical resistance. Being able to absorb AND be weak to an elemental means that magic-wise, you can't use that elemental, but physically, you can. See Dark Elf/Dark Dragon.

Harley's initial weapon sucks... which is why I'm not ever fond with the early whips. Low hit rate/accuracy makes for a painful attacking experience, which makes the Bow+Arrow more appealing. When Rydia normally reaches a 4 attack multiplier, at least you have a shot with the classic Whip landing hits, despite them being painfully weak (which is why the Dancing Dagger  shares a lot of the workload until the Tower of Babil-Eblan side).

It is kinda ironic that I start with 5000GP, only to still not have enough for equipment I like. No, I don't mean the Iron Armor crap set. The Bronze Breastplate and Feathered Cap is overall better than the Iron equivalent, based on evasion alone (and magic defense). I mean, compare the following (note, I didn't bother getting the magic evasion #s):
Feathered Cap - 2 defense, 3 magic defense (+6% evasion), 330GP
Iron Helm - 5 defense, 1 magic defense (0% evasion), 800GP
Bronze Helm (initial) - 3 defense (0% evasion)

Now if you didn't get a headache reading that... look at this:
Bronze Armor (initial) - 4 defense, 1 magic defense (0% evasion)
Iron Armor - 7 defense, 2 magic defense (0% evasion), 1000GP
Bronze Breastplate - 4 defense, 2 magic defense (+15% evasion), 450GP

As much as I like grinding and getting money, I like evasion. It's not as useful until you get a greater defense multiplier (think Cid with his slowness), but when you do, it makes up for the loss of defense. For half the price (well, it's cheaper than half), you can get a decent upgrade to whatever crap/junk you have on the soldiers/guards you get. Why pay more when you get less?

I think most of Edward's Bardsongs are the same on the offense, outside of them being multitargetable. On your party, it's Cure, Cura, Haste, and Protect+Shell (favorably multtargetable). The spell power is based on Edward's stats, which seem to be more Spirit biased unlike the original game (he was kinda equally favorable on both stats, although his level 70+ stats favored Spirit IIRC)

Bardsong's usually pretty good, except when Edward fails to produce anything. This continues to disappoint me at times.

Edward's classic harps are probably better than the initial Silver Harp you can buy. You find one of those compatible monsters in the dungeon for the weapon (Silver Harp), whereas you can put every other monster to sleep, which is probably better.

The Adamant Turtle (or whatever it is called) probably needs its bestiary info fixed. Since this is the only version used in this chapter, it uses the same item drop info like the original. However, these are modded to drop the Bronze Tails (which another monster should be doing the same). I'm kinda not complaining because I'm getting those drops like candy. I get the feeling I'll make a note of the other monster pretty soon.

The great thing about Edward is the harp magic (which is simply a weapon with an added status effect). Too bad there was only two harps. He was really handy and this time around he seems to be more or less the same. A lesser known fact is that the original harp did not have the back/ignore row property. This was actually added to only the SNES  versions of the game (FF4 Easytype simply got a hit rate/acc boost). This doesn't appear to have changed in the PSP version of FF4 (let alone the GBA port) outside of TAY. It was so much more appreciable when I played FF2US... Of course, FF4A (GBA port) added back row compatible harps (although, the back row bugs that I've screamed about in the pre-PSP ports reared its ugly head then).

 
I'm was fortunate to get a free Silver Tail. I wonder if there's a treasure drop "overlay" in Edward's Tale. That would make a lot more sense. This "overlay" simply adds the Bronze/Silver Tail probabilities to the drops (fairly low, though the emulation seems to give me these tails like candy), but it makes life easier for you. I got a Bronze Tail from the Sahagin-Alligator combo and the Silver Tail from the Centepede+Desert Sahagin combo... so I think it's not enemy specific, but Edward encounters specific.

I should just write how the entire Ghoul/Spirit resistance is completely overrated, starting with the Silver Armlet. Consider that the monsters you would primarily use this against, lead off their attack with magic. This amounts to having armor w/o any special properties. It's really that simple. Maybe I'll write an article on it, but ultimately, there's no point to adding properties to armor that have little to no impact long term.

The whole point of the Antlion journey is to show you that Edward can handle himself. Finally, he doesn't suck so much... now only if he would sing successfully 100% of the time.

The point of the "lame robbery attempt" is to give you a break from traversing the damned map again. At least the devs did you a favor...

Having Edward being able to kill, if not confuse things with an attack multiplier of 4, is incredible.

It's worth mentioning that Edward's INT+SPR growth is faster than his FF4 stats....
Harley's stat growth reminds me of Palom's, except with better SPR growth.

The Gil Band helps out a lot with the equipment upkeep... 2000 for the Silver Breastplate is a vast improvement over the Iron Armor it is replacing. The Beret is not that much cheaper. The low evasion (+4%), not so hot.

The Economical Ring is nice for Edward (+2 INT, +2 SPR), but it's somewhat heavy (+5% evasion).

[Grimoire LD]

Interest info on the initial sets you can buy. As for your questions...

Piercing Sight does work, but only works on normal enemies (and seems to have a % chance to hit and miss, not sure what it's based on). It's a fun little skill but only works when you have another Actual mage in your party (and possibly then you could hit Dark elemental which you can just forget about exploiting it) It has a lot of potential, but the game never utilizes it properly sadly, I can confirm though that it effects both Magic and Physical Elements (Fire Sword and Firaga will both deal weakness damage, etc)

Every enemy in Edward's Tale has a chance to drop Bronze Tails (I think even Silver Tails) which is why there is no bestiary change. It seems to be a "global flag" so to speak.

[Deathlike2]

Piercing Sight does work, but only works on normal enemies (and seems to have a % chance to hit and miss, not sure what it's based on). It's a fun little skill but only works when you have another Actual mage in your party (and possibly then you could hit Dark elemental which you can just forget about exploiting it) It has a lot of potential, but the game never utilizes it properly sadly, I can confirm though that it effects both Magic and Physical Elements (Fire Sword and Firaga will both deal weakness damage, etc)

Well, there's no "miss" as far as I can tell, which doesn't exactly help me. The Beastiary item doesn't seem to provide additional info either.

It would've been nice to have an actual mage in the party to at least make people not think her skill is useless. At least let me know what weakness was added... that would be helpful.

Every enemy in Edward's Tale has a chance to drop Bronze Tails (I think even Silver Tails) which is why there is no bestiary change. It seems to be a "global flag" so to speak.

Well, I got a Silver Tail, so life is good. 

I forget what moon affects black magic negatively, but I saw Fire from the Soul monster miss... and it should never do that (it has a 100% spell hit rate) while Edward at the moment didn't have a magic evasion multiplier. This leads me to believe that this affects spell hit rate as well. Then again, I recall Stop not working so well during Porom's Challenge Dungeon during the same moon. So clearly, spell hit rate is "adjusted", not necessarily just spell power. I guess having a better stat (INT or the monster Magic stat) can compensate for the hit rate loss.

[Grimoire LD]

With Piercing Sight, it won't show "Miss!" unless it's a boss monster. Otherwise it will show nothing. How you can tell if it worked is if there is a bright flash. The color of the flash is the weakness that was added (this should be fairly self-explanatory but just for information's sake...)

Red - Fire
Blue - Ice
Yellow - Thunder
White - Holy
Purple - Dark

I don't Think you can make an enemy weak to Air. I could be wrong though.