Thyanura's Guide To Phantasy Star Online
or, My Life As A Force

by Thyanura, level 100 FOmarl
v1.2 - 24-Apr-2001

This document is released without copyright restriction.
Rip it off, sell it, whatever, it's your karma.

   web: http://www.ghoul.net/pso
 email: pso@ghoul.net

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Table Of Contents

Introduction
Character Attributes
Types of Forces
Basic Physical Combat
     Attack Types
     Combos And Recovery
     Targeting
More On Physical Combat, And Weaponry
     Melee Fighting: Hit And Run
     Technique Support
     Weapon Types
     Weapon Attributes And Extras
     Rare Weapons
     Mates Vs Resta
     High Defense As A Liability
     Avoiding Slowing To A Walk
     Fighting At A Doorway
     Calculating Damage
Techniques
     Simple Attack
     Normal Attack
     Hard Attack
     Heal
     Support
Customize Buttons
MAGs
Gear
Team Games
     How To Be A Good Teammate As A Force
     Communication
     Team Strategy
     Playing With Another Force
Money
Bestiary
     Forest
     Dragon (Forest Boss)
     Cave
     De Rol Le (Cave Boss)
     Mine
     Vol Opt (Mine Boss)
     Ruins
     Dark Falz (Ruins Boss)
Miscellaneous
     Section ID
     Photon Blast Assist
     Attacking Another Player
     Soul Eater Quest
     Frying Pan Quest
     Eggblaster?
     Backing Up Your Character Data
     Secret Costume Colors
     Problems Using Moon Atomizers
     Thieves
     Cheating
     Player Killing
     Sega's Attempts To Prevent Cheating
     Walking Through Closed Doors
     Escaping The Ruins' "Jar" Trap
     Picture Snapshot
     Change To Another Player's Camera View
     Other Hidden Quests
     Equipping Any Weapon
     Fooling The Swear Filter
Acknowledgements, Credits, And Other Useful Reading Material
Revision History & Future Updates


Introduction

A lot of players don't seem to like Forces. "They're too weak, it makes
them too hard to play" being the most common complaint. Not exactly true.
Forces are more difficult to play than Rangers and Hunters. They start off
physically weaker and can be much more expensive to play since MAG
development and Technique Point replenishing fluids are so important.
However, towards the middle levels, a well developed Force becomes quite
capable at physical combat, and will start to realize the advantages of
strong magic capability.  At high levels, the differences between the
classes becomes minimized, and a Force can hold her own with anyone.

In an online (team) game, Forces will initially be limited mostly to
supporting their other teammates rather than taking a leading role in
combat. If this doesn't sound very appealing, but you'd like to eventually
develop strong Techniques, consider playing a HUnewearl instead.

This guide contains just about everything that a new player might want to
know about Phantasy Star Online from the perspective of a member of the
Force class. However, there may be some things of interest to advanced
Force players, and even non-Forces who want to learn more about Technique
usage.


Character Attributes  (v1.2)

There are six main character attributes.

 ATP              How much damage physical attacks will do to enemies.
 Attack Power

 DFP              How much damage an enemy attack will do to you.
 Defense Power

 MST              Determines number of Technique Points and to some extent
 Mind Strength    how powerful Techniques are.

 ATA              Affects likelihood of a physical attack succeeding.
 Attack Accuracy

 EVP              Affects likelihood of evading a physical attack.
 Evade Power

 LCK              Definitely seems to affects chance of getting a critical
 Luck             hit.  May affect the chance of weapon Extra effects
                  occuring (instant death, freeze, % damage).  Rumored to
                  affect the probability of finding special weapons and
                  other goodies.  Probably does not affect Megid or barta
                  freezing in Technique usage.

There are, in addition three sets of "points":

 HP                 A gauge of how much damage can be sustained before
 Hit Points         death.

 TP                 A reservoir of magic available to be used for casting
 Technique Points   Techniques.

 XP                 A measure of character "experience" -- e.g. how much
 Experience Points  stuff you've killed.

For a Force, the highest attribute will usually be MST. ATP and ATA are the
most important attributes for attacking in physical combat. DFP and EVP are
the most important attributes for avoiding damaging in physical combat.

Aside from these six attributes, there are also five magic resistance
attributes. These are important to reduce damage from magical attacks.

When viewing attribute statuses, there are two sets of numbers. For
example, you might see "ATP: 500(400)". The number in paranthises is the
base value. If it is in yellow, it is at the maximum. The first number is
the modified value. In the case of ATP, the modified value is because of
the weapon equiped, or because Shifta has been cast, or a combination of
the two.

The first five main attributes and HP will be raised when you gain a new
experience level, or they can be raised through the use of "materials"
found during the game.

LCK can be raised only through the use of Luck Materials. For reference,
the other material types are: Power (ATP), Def (DFP), Mind (MST), Hit
(ATA), Evade (EVP), and HP (HP).

Maximum TP can be raised only by raising MST. MST that is boosted over the
character's normal MST (by use of a MAG, equipment, or a weapon) yields
less TP than natural MST.

XP can be raised by killing monsters. Doing a lot of damage or dealing the
killing blow to a monster will give you more XP than doing a little bit of
damage. However, even if you do 0 damage to a monster, you will get some XP
if someone else kills it. When you have enough XP, you will gain a level.


Types Of Forces  (v1.2)

FOmarl: human Force (female)
I'm a FOmarl, so maybe I'm biased, but I think this is the best type of
Force. FOmarls are definitely the most balanced. The FOmarl's max ATP and
ATA are the highest of all Forces, at the expense of slightly lower MST
than the newmen. The higher ATA of the FOmarl isn't all that significant to
hitting in combat, but it does permit the FOmarl to use better guns than
the newmen.
maximum base attributes:
ATP: 483 / DFP: 290 / MST: 650 / ATA: 132 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

FOnewm: newman Force (male)
Looking like Fairy Pimps, the FOnewm trade slightly weaker attack for
slightly stronger Techniques. I'm uncertain if that extra 20 MST allows the
FOnewm to learn higher level Techniques than the FOmarl.
maximum base attributes*:
ATP: 463 / DFP: 290 / MST: 670 / ATA: 121 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

FOnewearl: newman Force (female)
Winner of the stupid pants award, FOnewearls level up with better defense
and lower attack than the other Forces.  This is actually not that bad a
tradeoff, since the FOnewearl's lower ATP, ATA, and MST level increases can
be compensated for with a MAG.
maximum base attributes*:
ATP: 463 / DFP: 290 / MST: 670 / ATA: 120 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

For comparison, here are some maximum base attributes for some other
classes*:

HUmar: human Hunter (male)
ATP: 710 / DFP: 310 / MST: 590? / ATA: 142 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

HUnewearl: newman Hunter (female)
ATP: 710 / DFP: 310 / MST: 590 / ATA: 138 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

HUcast: android Hunter ("male")
ATP: 710 / DFP: 310 / MST: 0 / ATA: 150 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

The high ATP of Hunters makes them the most damaging class in the game.
Even though modified ATP (character base ATP+weapon+Shifta) only displays
to a maximum of 999, it can in fact be much higher.  Thanks to ChaosHunter
for pointing this out, and I've verified it with my HUnewearl.
HUnewearls gain more EVP when they level up, HUcasts gain more ATP and ATA.

RAmar: human Ranger (male)
ATP: 551 / DFP: 280 / MST: 500 / ATA: 165 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

RAcast: android Ranger ("male")
ATP: 553 / DFP: 280 / MST: 0 / ATA: 167 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

RAcaseal: android Ranger ("female")
ATP: 553 / DFP: 280 / MST: 0 / ATA: 167 / EVP: 450 / LCK: 100

RAcaseal's gain more DFP when they level up.  RAcasts gain more ATA and
ATP.

Although I attempted to get some info on maximum HP for different classes,
unlike the other statistics, maximum HP is based in part on level, so a
level 100 character has a higher maximum HP than a level 50 character.

* Note: Except for the FOmarl, I have to rely on other people to get the
numbers for the maximum attributes. So, I have no way to know if these
numbers are correct.


Basic Physical Combat

Attack Types

There are three types of attacks:

Normal: The normal type of attack. It is also the fastest attack.

Heavy: A heavy attack. Slower than a normal attack and less accurate, but
does about 190% to 200% of normal damage. A successful Heavy attack also
will push most enemy monsters back a short distance.

Extra: Not available for all weapons, but an extra attack generally has
about half the chance of hitting that a normal attack does, and will only
do 50% of normal damage. The value of doing an Extra Attack depends on the
weapon's Extra. For example, a Hell Saber's extra attack has a good chance
of killing an enemy in a single hit. A Blizzard Saber's Extra Attack will
also inflict cold damage to an enemy, plus may freeze it.

Any type of attack also has the possibility of being a "critical hit". This
is based on LCK (LCK appears to be a percentage in this case), and will
cause 150% of damage normally expected.

Combos and Recovery

After an attack, there is a recovery period during which you cannot do
anything and are vulnerable. You can reduce the overall amount of time you
spend in recovery by using combos.

As soon as you finish an attack, you can attack again, up to three times,
with very little recovery time in between each attack. A set of sequential
attacks is called a combo (presumably short for combination attack). The
timing on this is not particularly difficult, but new players may have
trouble getting the hang of it. As an example, if you have a cane and do a
Normal attack, when the cane stops moving, immediately press another attack
button to swing a second time. Heavy and Extra attacks have a slight pause
at the beginning of the swing.

I suggest you spend a little time practicing combos by yourself until you
are comfortable using them.

Combos can be comprised of any mix of three attack types. The second and
third hits have an increased chance of successfully hitting (I've been told
+25% and +75% respectively) so are better for using Heavy and Extra
Attacks.  You don't actually have to hit with a preceding blow for the next
one to gain the hit accuracy bonus.

Commonly used combos:

Normal -> Heavy -> Heavy: This is your bread & butter combo. Tends to be
optimal for the chance of hitting and maximizing damage.

Heavy -> Heavy -> Heavy: When your ATA increases (or you get a weapon with
a good hit % attribute) this maximizes the amount of damage you can do.

Normal/Heavy -> Heavy -> Normal: When monsters start to get faster (Normal
Ruins; Hard and Very Hard difficulties) ending the combo with a Normal
gives you a better chance of successfully completing the combo instead of
being interrupted by a monster's counterattack.

If you are weak or are using a slow weapon, you may not want to use the
third attack at all, since it seems that recovery is faster after the
second hit, plus monsters are usually a little farther away. Many times,
stopping after the second hit will give you a chance to move out of a
monster's range and set up a new attack sequence without getting hit.

Targeting

When a monster enters into your attack range, you will see a colored cursor
over it. This color corresponds to the color of the attack button which can
hit it. For example, let's say you're equiped with a cane and have Foie set
to the yellow button and Normal attack set to the red button. A Booma is
walking towards you. When you turn towards it and see a yellow cursor
appear over the Booma, it is in range to be hit by your Foie. As it gets
closer, the cursor will appear red, meaning it is now in range to be hit by
your cane's Normal attack. (Though if you wanted, you could also use Foie.)
A monster without a cursor on it is not targeted and usually cannot be hit.
However, for melee attacks against fast monsters, you can usually start a
weapon swing right before the monster enters your attack range and still
hit it. Learning this timing will become important at higher difficulty
levels.


More On Physical Combat, And Weaponry

Thyanura's First Rule Of Fighting As A Force: Don't Get Hit

Ok, on to the next section

Just kidding :) But unlike other classes, with the better attack, defense,
evasion, and hit points, you want to avoid situations where you can get
hit, and this should be your highest priority in a fight. The biggest
mistake I see most Force players make is pretending they're a Hunter and
trying to go toe-to-toe with a monster with some stupid stick. Running in
front of your Ranger buddy and poking a Sinow Beat with a twig won't do
much but get it mad and make you the target. Run away and leave rooms when
you need to.

Melee Fighting: Hit And Run  (v1.2)

As a Force, if you somehow end up as the main melee fighter (or if you're
playing by yourself), you are almost always going to have to use a hit and
run tactic by the time you get to the Ruins on Very Hard. Attack with a two
or three hit combo, then run away, turn around, combo again, run, and so on
until everything chasing you is dead. After a combo, count out the minimum
number of steps you have to take running away before you have enough space
to attack again or use a Technique. Yes, you can learn to estimate the
distance, but by counting, you'll remove the guesswork if you have a bad
camera angle, and you won't have your timing thrown off if the game gets a
bad case of slow-down.

You don't actually have to run all out to make some space so you can get
another opportunity to attack.  You can let the monster enter your attack
range and then juke it so that it attacks and misses, giving you the
opportunity to attack while it's recovering.  If you finish your attack so
the monster is about a step from you, wait for it to swing, take a step out
of its range, spin, and attack.  If you're running, you can slow down to a
walk to let it almost catch up to you.  This is actually easier to do on
Very Hard, where the monsters move faster.  Basically, after you attack,
you can just walk away and back in a very tight circle to position yourself
for another attack.  I think most Hunters are familiar with this, but a lot
of other Forces have asked me how I manage to fight without having to run
away a lot and without getting hit.

It has come to my attention that there are way too many players who have no
idea how to fight properly with a melee weapon.  This includes not only
Forces, but also an astonishing number of Hunters.  (This probably explains
the large number of punk Hunters who upon hitting level 40 either start
begging for Spread Needles or fall back on the Gameshark crutch to make
one.)

The longest recovery time happens after the third attack in a combo.
Unless you kill, incapacitate (with an Extra weapon property), or are
attacking from the side or behind, most "grunt" enemies (Boomas, Sharks,
Sinows, Dimenians, Delsabers) are going to be able to hit you while you are
recovering from that third attack.  The solution should be obvious, but
apparently it's not: do not use a third attack in a combo.  If you attack
twice (Normal -> Heavy) you will have enough time to recover and dodge the
enemy counterattack.    With Dimenians on Very Hard, this is incredibly
easy because you don't even have to time the counterattack, it comes so
fast.  So, Normal -> Heavy, you walk a step back, Dimenian swings and
misses, you turn back around and combo again.  When you get proficient with
this, you will be able to use a Heavy attack instead of a Normal.  Keep
track of how much damage you are doing, so when you know an enemy will die,
you can do the three hit Heavy -> Heavy -> Heavy as a finisher.  With
Shifta and a fully ground (+35) Soul Eater, a Force should do about 220
damage per Heavy attack, more on critical blows.  This means even Online
Very Hard, doing Heavy -> Heavy, Heavy -> Heavy, Heavy -> Heavy -> Heavy
should be more than enough to kill any type of Dimenian.

And of course, the obvious.  Always try to keep the group monsters that
you're fighting in between you and anything else that is coming towards
you.  In other words, don't get surrounded, and let the monsters block each
other off (Rabarta if you must).  If you do get surrounded, your only hope
really is to get knocked down and use Techniques as you're standing up.  Or
I suppose you could hope you have a teammate who will rescue you...

Oh, and for what it's worth the God/Battle won't help you with this, so you
people who are hopping in and out of games and begging for them, you might
as well stop.  Even if someone is foolish enough to give you one, there is
no improvement that I can discern on final recovery time with any of the
Battle units.

Technique Support

You've got good magical power. Take advantage of it to help bolster your
physical combat.

Use Techniques to damage all the monsters before finishing them off with
melee attacks.  In a tight spot, use a barta Technique to freeze enemies.

Shifta is mandatory. Deband, less so.  At high levels, they will boost
their affected attribute (ATP and DFP, respectively) by about 25%.  This is
significant enough that you want to have at least Shifta active all the
time you are fighting.

I'll cover Technique usage more in the Techniques section.

Weapon Types

Each class (Hunter, Ranger, and Force) has weapons that can only be used by
members of that class. There is also a group of weapons that may be used by
all classes. All weapons have usage requirements which correspond to a
minimum attribute value that the player must have to use that weapon.

All weapons can be grouped into one of two types: melee (hand-to-hand) and
distance (guns and throwing knives).

All Force specific weapons are of the melee type.

There are two advantages of using Force weapons instead of generics. First,
usage requirements are based on MST, so a relatively high ATP weapon can be
used with no trouble. Second, certain wand type weapons will give MST
bonuses, so total TP is increased as well as damage done by attack
techniques.

That said, personally I find Force weapons to be useless. They're all short
range, slow, and can only hit a single enemy. Beginning Forces especially
are best off using a gun.

Handguns and mechguns are the two families of guns that can be used by all
classes. The usage requirement for guns is in ATA, so FOmarls have an
advantage over the newmen Forces. Hanguns have better accuracy and range,
mechguns do much better damage.

In my lower levels, my weapons of choice were handguns with TP recovery.
There are four types of these: Heart, Mind, Soul, and Geist, which
respectively recover 3%, 4%, 5% and 6% of your TP. It's debatable whether
or not TP recovery is all that important at higher levels (I tend to think
not), but it's useful at low levels when physical attacks are their weakest
and you have little money for TP restoration fluid.

Be careful with TP restoring melee weapons. Monsters tend to hang out in
crowds, and Extra attacks don't hit as often as Normal and Heavy. It's a
big risk to attack enemies for TP unless they're paralyzed, frozen, or
being stunned by another player.

Weapon Attributes And Extras  (v1.2)

There are a lot of players drooling over the thought of owning some very
rare weapons, but for the most part, having a common weapon with high
attribute percentages is a lot better.

Weapons can have any of five attributes. Four of these are percentage
damage to monsters in specific areas (Native, A.Beast, Machine, and Dark;
corresponding to Forest, Cave, Mine, and Ruins). The fifth is Hit %, and
affects overall hit probability.  I've never seen a legitimate percentage
higher than 60% or lower than -40%, or a weapon with more than three
attribute modifiers.  There are hacked weapons with all five attributes
set, up to 125%.  If you have an unidentified weapon (name is in blue and
starts either with ?Special or ???), by refusing to accept a Tekker's
evaluation, you can sometimes get better percentages on a re-evaluation (an
additional 10% on any non 0% attribute, and one step better of Extra
modified, are the best I've been able to do). Check your unidentified
weapon for percentages before taking it for identification otherwise you
won't know what attribute values you can expect.

Weapons can also have a Extra Attack effect. The known categories of extras
are:

 foie            Fire damage, "Burning" is best.
 barta           Cold damage & freeze status, "Blizzard" is best.
 zonde           Lightning damage, "Tempest" is best.
 confusion       May cause enemies to wander or attack each other but
                 confused monsters are still capable of hitting players,
                 "Chaos" is best.
 paralysis       Prevents enemies from moving or attacking, "Arrest" is
                 best.
 instant death   Causes enemies to die immediately, "Hell" is best.
 damage percent  Reduces enemy hit points by a percentage, "Demon's" is
                 best.
 TP recovery     Restores a percentage of the user's maximum TP, "Geist"
                 is best.
 HP recovery     Restores a percentage of the user's maximum HP, "Gush" is
                 best.
 XP leech        Gives a percentage of the monster's XP value, "King's" is
                 best.
 payment         Trades Meseta (Charge), TP (Spirit), or HP (Berserk) for
                 a "powerful attack". Meseta used is gone, but TP and HP
                 can be restored in the usual manners.

Monsters can have multiple negative statuses.  Any negative status for a
monster, except for Jellen and Zalure, will usually expire very shortly
after it is attacked by a player, otherwise the negative status can last
longer.

Weapons that can hit multiple times or multiple enemies have their reported
Extra Attack percentages divided by three for each individual hit.  For
example, a Geist Saber will restore 6 TP to a Force with 100 TP max.
However, a Geist Mechgun (which fires three shots per attack) will only
recover one third (2 TP) per successful hit.  A Geist throwing knife seem
to work the same (one third of the reported percentage, per hit, though
it's possible to hit 4 or more enemies with one throw).  I don't know if
Swords, Partisans, and Shotguns are the same.  I'm also not really sure how
these affect something like damage percent, or the status Extras like
paralyze and instant death. Probably these are cut in third as well;
there's definitely less chance of them succeeding than with a single hit
weapon.

These days, I don't really care about Extras too much for most weapons.
Generally speaking, for weapons which hit a single enemy, TP recovery and
instant death seem the most useful to me, maybe paralysis for those times
when you really need to stop a powerful monster like a Garanz or Chaos
Bringer. An Arrest extra really is pretty good at stopping a monster, but
overall, I think tossing off a few high level Rabarta is more effective
(better range than melee weapons, can affect multiple enemies, no need to
aim).

For weapons that can hit multiple enemies (which for a Force is limited to
throwing knives like the Diska), I would have loved to find one with TP
recovery when I was at a low level. Extras which stop enemies (Blizzard,
Arrest) are useful in general, and damage percent and instant death are
worth a shot.

The other Extra categories I think aren't too worthwhile, although payment
Extras can do amazing damage.  Some Hunters swear to me that a payment
weapon like a DB's Saber with the rest of the DB kit (DB's Armor and
Shield) can do a fantastic amount of damage, and I know a few android
Rangers who like Charge rifles.

Hallelujah, I am a believer in Charge weapons!  My HUnewearl with a Vjaya
50%m does about 900 with Extra attack, over 1500 on a critical Extra.  For
a Force with the relatively low ATA, Charge mechguns are amazingly
damaging, but without a high hit % attribute, you may miss the Extra attack
a lot.

Rare Weapons  (v1.2)

Thyanura's Second Rule Of Fighting As A Force: Melee Weapons Suck
(see Rule One)

There is only one melee weapon that I think is worth using on a regular
basis: the Soul Eater. This is one of the few rare weapons that all players
are guaranteed to get through normal play of the game, so it's easily
available to anyone who wants to use one. (See Miscellaneous section for
instructions on getting this.) Most Hunters and Rangers disparage the Soul
Eater, and for those classes, rightly so. The Soul Eater has good but not
great ATP (though it can be ground up to +35), it has a useless Extra
(Berserk -- the last thing a Force needs is to be in melee combat reducing
her HP), and it very slowly drains its user's HP. However, for a Force, it
is the only melee weapon I know of which can hit more than one enemy in a
single swing. Not only that but it has excellent range and a very wide arc
over which it will connect with those monsters. This ability to hit
multiple enemies is huge advantage over those crappy wands and canes. With
a Soul Eater, a Force can safely enter into melee combat and hold her own.
I recently got a Soul Eater from a Hildeblue!  Unlike the Soul Eater from
Kileek, from a Hildeblue, you can get a Soul Eater with an attribute
percentage.

The only other melee weapon (thus far) that I would consider using is the
Double Saber, and that only when fighting slow enemies (Forest, Mine). The
Double Saber has a 4% TP recover Extra attack, plus the large number of
potential hits and wide arc means that with the extra attack, you can keep
a number of enemy monsters pushed back. However, you won't be doing a whole
lot of damage with the Double Saber. Unless you really need that TP
recovery, it's more something to show off with, although these really
aren't all that rare to find.

I spoke too soon.  The Pan Arm's Blades are nice for a Force.  These are
dagger style weapons with a whole lot of ATP and a paralyze Extra.  Like
all single hit melee weapons, be careful if you use these.  They're fun to
use, but a three attack combo will move you forward quite far and can leave
you in a very bad spot.

The Varista (handgun), Vise (mechgun), and Justice (mechgun) are all very
common special guns for me (Purplenum). The paralysis Extra and range of
the Varista are nice, but these guns are generally pretty weak. For some
reason I tend to find Vises with good percentages, so for the Ruins on solo
or when there's already two good Hunters, I may use a Vise with high dark %
instead of my Soul Eater. The same Vise is also my preferred weapon to use
against Dark Falz. When I'm playing with very low level teammates or with
Hunters, I also prefer to use a mechgun in the Mine.  Gatlings and Vulcans
are the best of the normal mechgun family.  (I mistakenly said Repeaters
and Vulcans in an earlier version, oops.)

The Slicer Of Assassin is an instant death throwing knife, I think it's
essentially the equivalent of a Hell Diska. If I'm throwing one into a
large crowd, I'll give Heavy -> Extra -> Extra a try and usually kill a few
monsters.  As with all Diskas though, they are slow and don't do great
damage, so it's best to toss these from behind someone else.  Check the
Bestiary for Megid resistance to decide whether or not a particular monster
is worth trying to go for the instant death.

The Spread Needle is probably the overall best gun any non-Ranger can use.
The Spread Needle is a shotgun with a very fast fire rate and excellent
damage.  On top of this, its Extra is paralysis. This is one of the few
truly powerful rare weapons, and the number of times it's been cloned is
quite astounding. These days almost half the players I see in open games
(even level 20 and 30 players) are running around with a Spread Needle and
a hacked Opa Opa or Pian MAG. Which is a pity, because this absolutely
ruins team gameplay.  A number of people have written to me that this
weapon is not usable by Forces, and I've confirmed it.  Oh well, I'm not
shedding any tears over this..

The C-Sorcerer's Cane and Psycho Wand are two interesting wands.  The
C-Sorc's Cane can be obtained from a Chaos Sorcerer body party, and gives a
10% TP discount on casting Techniques and has a TP recover Extra attack.
The Psycho Wand is supposedly only available as a Japanese tournament
prize, and gives a 50% TP discount and has a Extra which will randomly cast
an attack Technique.  I borrowed a Psycho Wand to play with for a little
while.  It's not too great as a melee weapon but it is a lot of fun to use
one and go nuts with Techniques without feeling any TP pressure.  These are
getting to be fairly popular cloned and hacked items.

I don't really have much use for hanguns anymore, but the Holy Ray gives
range equivalent to a rifle, and has a paralysis Extra.  I mostly find this
to be useful against Dark Falz.  Another useful distance weapon that is
useable by a Force is the Inferno Bazooka, which is about equivalent to a
Devil's Rifle: long range, 50% damage Extra attack, though the description
indicates the Extra attack is not likely to hit.

A few people have written asking what I think of Technique casting wands
like the Caduceus (Foie), Technical Crozier (Barta), and Magical Piece
(Zonde).  I don't like them.  They're ok for Normal and Hard difficulties,
but Simple Attack Techniques are just too weak for Very Hard.

For other classes: Hunters, I like sword and partisan class weapons.  The
Vjaya, a partisan with Charge Extra, is my new favorite for Hunters.
Otherwise I have no preference for these, though generally speaking, swords
have higher ATP, and partisans have higher ATA.  Rangers, I like the Soul
Eater, and the Chain Sawd.  Both are multiple enemy hitting weapons.
Otherwise, I suppose its just a matter of taste for a Ranger.  Androids can
benefit greatly from a Crush Bullet (shot with HP recovery) but really need
a Battle unit for this (or any kind of shot) to be useful.

Mates Vs Resta

Normally you'll want to use Resta. Not only is Resta almost guaranteed to
refill your entire HP gauge, but it can also help your allies. However,
Resta (like all Techniques) has startup time and recovery time, whereas use
of Mates (Monomate, Dimate, Trimate) does not. When fighting extremely
damaging opponents (bosses, or that last room on the Mine where there are
two Garanz's), you may wish to have some Mates available on a customize
button.

High Defense As A Liability  (v1.1)

High DFP is usually not a problem, and in fact is desirable since it
reduces the amount of damage you will take from being hit. Occasionally
though it can be a liability.  Very powerful attacks from monsters will
normally knock you down. While you're on the ground and getting up, you
can't be hit. If your defense is very high, you won't be knocked down even
by a powerful blow. Against some monsters which have rapid multiple hits
per attack (Gillchics, Delsabers), or in a crowd, this can be fatal.

Don't discard your old armor until you see how the upgrade is going to
affect you. You can also reduce your DFP by not casting Deband on yourself.

If you are surrounded, aren't getting knocked down, and are in trouble, if
nothing else, you can use a Telepipe and escape that way.

Avoiding Slowing To A Walk

When you run near a monster or a trap mine, you automatically slow down to
a walk. The slowdown actually happens because you have something on a
customize button that causes the monster or mine to be targeted. To avoid
slowing down, you can either place no offensive capabilities on your
shifted customize buttons and hold the shift trigger (usually R) as you
run, or you can press Start and have the menu up while you run. Both of
these methods prevent targeting. This is a useful trick to let you run
straight down those mine filled hallways or weave through a big crowd of
monsters (or spikes).

Fighting At A Doorway

Doors are interesting, because they're like invisible barriers. When you
leave a room, any monsters chasing you immediate stop and will move to
reset to their original positions. You can't hit any monster inside a room
with a physical weapon from the outside, and you can't target monsters with
magic from the outside.

Sometimes strange things happen around doors. Certain monsters with range
attacks (Hildebear's foie, the Dark Belra's arm rocket, the Garanz's
rockets) can hit you outside the room, if they fire while you are still
inside the room. I've been killed once or twice by this, and I've seen it
happen innumerable times, so if you're low on health and fleeing a room,
don't immediately stop in the doorway and assume you're safe.

If a monsters that jumps, such as the Sinow Beat, makes a jump at you while
you're going out a door, they will get stuck in the doorframe. They'll be
capable of hitting you if you get too close, and very rarely, you might
have one follow you right into a hallway!

The worst effect of doorways is that when monsters have their "home" spot
right in front of one, it often seems that you are unable to attack them
until you've entered into the room a significant distance. (You can of
course determine when you can attack them by the appearance of a targeting
cursor.) Unfortunately in that "neutral zone" the monsters can still attack
you.

The good news is that Techniques that are untargeted can cross doorways.
Gifoie, Razonde, and Rabarta can hurt and kill monsters standing on the
other side of a door. Make use of this to clear a crowded doorway, or to
kill monsters that are chasing you.

Calculating Damage  (v1.2)

To figure out how much damage you should be doing to enemies, use the
following formula: total ATP (including Shifta affect) times weapon
modifier times attack type modifiers divided by 5.61.  Subtract the monster
DFP, and you have the amount of damage done.

(ATP * WeaponAttrib * AttackType / 5.61) - DFP = total damage

Attack Type modifiers are:
  .5 for Extra
  1.5 for Critical Hit
  2 for Heavy
  4 for Charge

So, let's say you're  HUnewearl with maxed ATP (710) swinging a Dragon
Slayer (+318) +40% doing a Heavy (x2 modifier) attack against a Very Hard
Booma (about 33 DFP) and you have level 15 Shifta cast (28% ATP
improvement).  That'll be... (710 + 318) x 1.40 x 1.28 x 2 / 5.61 - 33 =
624.  If it's a critical hit, damage will be about 950.  This isn't an
exact formula, but it's in the ballpark, and damage for physical attacks is
always a little random anyway.

Anyone who can come up with a better estimation of damage, feel free to let
me know.


Techniques  (v1.2)

Ah yes, the entire reason you wanted to be a Force

Techniques have levels of power. The higher the level, the more powerful it
is.

Before using a Technique, you must first learn it from a disc. Each disc
allows you to learn a Technique of a specific level, and has a MST
requirement you must meet before being able to use it. You can skip levels
-- there is absolutely no need to learn levels for a particular Technique
in sequential order. You can also use any Technique that you've learned,
even if your MST drops below the disc's requirement. (As opposed to
weapons, which automatically unequip if you stop meeting their equip
requirement.)

Technique levels range from one to fifteen. For support and healing magic,
level three and higher can affect other teammates. I have never seen a disc
above level 13 for Hard Attack Techniques for sale at the item shop, and it
is rumored that the only way to obtain level 15 discs for Hard Attacks is
to find them in a Very Hard game created by a PINKAL Section ID. Grants and
Megid discs also cannot be bought. I've only found these in Very Hard
games.  Aside from being more powerful, a higher Technique level also
results in your being able to cast the Technique more quickly.

Casting a Technique has three stages. During the whole time, you will be
immobile. First, there is a startup period, during which you are vulnerable
to attack. If you're hit during the startup, the interruption will prevent
the casting. Next is the actual casting, during which you are invulnerable
from attack. Finally there is a recovery period, also during which you are
vulnerable to attack. If you start casting a Technique immediately after
getting up from being knocked down, you will normally not be hit until
after the spell is completed. Make use of this especially when casting
Resta.  By the way, contrary to popular belief, casting Techniques without
a weapon equipped will NOT speed up the casting.

In Normal difficulty level, it doesn't much matter which attack magic you
use against most monsters except for bosses. For Hard and Very Hard,
monster magic resistance becomes important. Refer to the Bestiary for
information about what monsters are vulnerable to which Techniques.

Attack Techniques can be considered to be either targeted or not targeted.
A targeted Technique requires that there be a target in range and "locked"
with a targeting cursor. When a monster is targeted by an attack magic,
unless it moves out of range, it will almost always be hit even by
non-targeted Techniques. Likewise, a monster that is not targeted by a
non-targeted Technique will usually be missed unless it is an "area"
Technique.  Area Techniques will affect all monsters within the area in
which the Technique is used.

When you use a Technique, you will consume Technique Points. You can
replenish these points through the use of fluids (Monofluid, Difluid, and
Trifluid), by gaining enough XP to go up a level, by visiting the Medical
Center on Pioneer 2 (costs 10 Meseta, or free if you died), by dying and
being revived, by using a weapon with a TP drain, by the use of some types
of gear, or by standing within the occasionally found green replenishing
rings.

Simple Attack

 Foie   The Force shoots a single fireball in front of her. Higher levels
        do more damage and appear to have better range. This is not a
        targeted attack, but doesn't have a very good chance of hitting
        without a target.
        Level 15 maximum damage: 159

 Barta  The Force casts a slow moving and narrow cone of cold a short
        distance in front of her, in a path along the ground. (Yes, "along
        the ground" means that Barta cannot hit flying monsters.)  Any
        monster in this path will be hit and have a low chance of being
        frozen. Higher levels do more damage and have a wider spread. This
        is an area attack, but is not targeted.
        Level 15 maximum damage: 104

 Zonde  A bolt of lightning strikes the target closest to the direction in
        which the Force is facing, which includes boxes and traps.
        However, Zonde will also hit a monster to the sides or behind the
        caster if the monster is in range. When you cast Zonde, you will
        be turned in the direction of the monster that the spell targets.
        This even happens if you are immobilized by a Grass Assassin. This
        is a targeted attack.
        Level 15 maximum damage: 180

Normal Attack

 Gifoie   This creates a swarm of fireballs which circle around the caster
          for a period of time, hitting all monsters within range. Higher
          levels improve damage and area covered. Gifoie can be useful,
          but it can take a while for the fireballs to hit an enemy
          monster, and it seems to have a slightly longer recovery time
          than most other Techniques.  It is an area attack, but is not
          targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 141

 Gibarta  A more powerful version of Barta in every way: faster, larger,
          more damaging, higher chance of freezing. Gibarta is capable of
          hitting airborne monsters. Higher levels are more damaging and
          have better range. Gibarta is an area attack but is not
          targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 183

 Gizonde  A bolt of lightning strikes a target in front of the caster,
          then arcs out to hit other nearby targets. You can't target an
          enemy that's behind you like with Zonde, but if you're
          surrounded, casting Gizonde at an enemy in front of you will
          usually cause the lightning to strike anything to your immediate
          sides and rear. Higher levels improve damage and range. This is
          an area attack, and is targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 171

Hard Attack

 Rafoie   The nuclear bomb of the foie set. This throws a firebomb at a
          target in front of the caster that will explode and damage all
          enemies caught in the explosion. Higher levels increase the
          damage and blast radius -- the big orange ball doesn't get any
          bigger, but an orange ring of fire will spread out farther, and
          monsters that are touched by this ring of fire suffer the same
          damage as those caught within the main blast.  This is an area
          attack, and is targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 180

 Rabarta  Waves of cold flow in a ring off the Force's body, damaging and
          possibly freezing any monsters surrounding her. Higher levels
          extend the radius of the cold, and improve damage and the chance
          enemies will freeze.  Frozen enemies are incapable of attacking
          or moving, and this makes Rabarta the single most important
          attack magic for general use.  It should have a permanent home
          on your customize buttons.  This is an area attack, and is not
          targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 233

 Razonde  Lightning arcs out all around the Force's body. Any monster in
          range will take damage, and will also act as a conductor for the
          lightning to arc to targets near it. At higher levels, with
          enough intermediate targets, Razonde can arc across a fairly
          large room. With Trap Vision or TRAP/SEARCH, Razonde is the
          fastest way to clear out those pesky traps. This is an area
          attack, and is not targeted.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 211

 Grants   A beam of holy light shines down and strikes a single enemy
          target, usually for very high damage. Level for level, Grants
          has the longest range of any Techniques, and can be used to
          attack any monster within range, regardless of which direction
          the caster is turned, though target preference seems to be for
          the nearest target in the direction the caster is facing.
          Unfortunately, this Technique has a very long recovery time.
          Higher levels increase damage and range.  This is a targeted
          attack.
          Level 15 maximum damage: 513

 Megid    The Force shoots a scuzzy looking cloud towards a monster.  It's
          sort of like a Foie fireball, in that it can hit something
          without being targeted, but chances aren't very high. Either it
          will hit and kill, or it will miss completely.  Higher levels of
          Megid increase range and the probability of success, plus the
          size of the Megid ball.  I used to think Megid was completely
          worthless.  I've changed my mind.  High level Megid has a
          reasonably good chance of killing, and although I doubt it, this
          chance might increase as your luck increases.  Plus, as the
          Megid ball grows larger, it becomes capable of hitting more than
          one monster if they're in a tight group.  Megid seems to be more
          capable of killing monsters if they have been wounded already,
          and if the monster is not right in your face, but I haven't
          verified either of these feelings yet.  This is not a targeted
          attack.  This is an (extremely limited range) area attack.

Heal

 Resta     This is another Technique that should have a permanent home on
           your customize buttons. Starting with level three, the healing
           vibe will flow off you and heal your teammates. Higher levels
           of Resta increase the radius of effect and heal more damage.
           Like most healing and support Techniques, this is an area
           Technique, and though it is not targeted, you will be turned
           toward the nearest teammate affected.

 Anti      This acts to clear any negative status on yourself or your
           teammates, with the exception that you cannot cast it if you
           yourself are paralyzed or frozen. Starting with level three, it
           can affect your teammates. Higher levels of Anti have better
           range.

 Reverser  This will bring a fallen teammate back to life. You have to be
           fairly close, so be careful not to accidentally pick up his
           weapon and wallet. There are no levels to Reverser.

Support

 Shifta  Affected players will have a status with upward pointing red
         arrows, and will flash red. This can improve your attacks
         considerably.  At level three, Shifta can affect your teammates.
         Higher levels improve casting range, length of time Shifta will
         last, and the percentage ATP will increase.  Forces should not
         consider physical combat without this spell active! Shifta will
         counteract the affect of Jellen.
         Level 15 improvement: 28%

 Deband  Affected players will have a status with upward pointing blue
         arrows, and will flash blue. This can improve your defense
         considerably.  At level three, Deband can affect your teammates.
         Higher levels improve casting range, the length of time Deband
         will last, and the percentage DFP will increase. Be careful with
         Deband.  If it raises your DFP so that powerful attacks won't
         knock you down, it could do you more harm than good. Deband will
         counteract the affect of Zalure.
         Level 15 improvement: 28%

 Jellen  This will cause monsters to lose attack power. Affected monsters
         and players will have a status of downward pointing red arrows.
         Monsters will also appear an off-color with Jellen cast on them.
         I find Jellen to be mostly a waste of time. Higher levels will
         affect monsters in a larger radius with more power.

 Zalure  This will cause monsters to lose defensive power. Affected
         monsters and players will have a status of downward pointing blue
         arrows. Monsters will also appear an off-color with Zalure cast
         on them. Zalure can be useful if you otherwise are having trouble
         clearing out large groups of monsters. Higher levels of course
         have a stronger affect and wider range.  This spell is especially
         useful against enemies with very high DFP, like Pan Arms and the
         Dragon.

 Ryuker  This will create a telepipe back to Pioneer 2. It's quite useful
         to have (no more having to remember to carrying around
         telepipes), especially when adventuring alone. There are no
         levels to Ryuker.


Customize Buttons  (v1.2)

Time critical Techniques go on customize buttons. Learn to cast all other
Techniques from the menu system. It helps a lot if you learn where these
Techniques are and memorize the digital pad movements to use them. I prefer
to leave the menu selection on "remembered" and with Techniques selected
but you may not. For example, to cast Anti: Start, A, Up, Up, A, Down, A.

You can "stack" a second Technique to be cast immediately after the first
is finished by using the menu system by selecting the second Technique any
time after the startup portion of the first Technique. However, you must
wait until the startup portion of the second Technique before hitting Start
to close the menu, otherwise the second Technique won't be cast.

Configuring your customize buttons in a consistent manner will help you in
the heat of combat -- you won't be flailing around hitting the wrong key.
There is nothing more annoying than trying to use the red button when
you're surrounded by items. Do not put critical (healing) functions on this
button!

usual setup: Forest, Cave, Mine

 Standard:  Rabarta, Normal or Heavy Attack, Heavy or Extra Attack
 Shifted:   Resta, Rafoie, Razonde

Physical attack configuration is dependant on what weapon I use and if it
has a Extra. With the Soul Eater I use Normal/Heavy. With a gun or diska
with a Extra, I use Heavy/Extra.

boss setup: Forest, Cave, Mine

 Standard:  Mate, Heavy Attack, Attack Technique
 Shifted:   Resta, Reverser (in a team), fluid

The Attack Technique used is dependant on which boss I'm fighting. Against
the Dragon, Rabarta; against De Rol Le, Razonde; against Vol Opt, Razonde.

usual setup: Ruins

 Standard:  Rabarta, Heavy Attack, Grants or Extra
 Shifted:   Resta, Rafoie or Gifoie, Razonde or Grants

I prefer Rafoie in the Ruins to Gifoie because of range and damage, plus
nothing stops a Chaos Bringer quite like Rafoie. However, if I expect to be
doing a lot of fighting from doorways or on the run, Gifoie is the better
choice. I always want to have Grants available in the Ruins (useful for
killing Dark Gunners and for when a Bulclaw grabs you), so if I'm using a
weapon with an Extra, Grants replaces Razonde.

boss setup: Dark Falz (stage 1)

 Standard:  Mate, Normal Attack, Grants
 Shifted:   Resta, Reverser, Anti

boss setup: Dark Falz (stages 2 and 3)

 Standard:  Mate, Heavy Attack, Rabarta
 Shifted:   Resta, Reverser, Anti

boss setup: Dark Falz (stage 4)

 Standard:  Mate, Heavy Attack, Grants
 Shifted:   Resta, Reverser, Anti

In Normal and Hard, you can replace Grants with Rafoie, since it does
sufficient damage to clear out the spikes and is good to clear out a bunch
of them at once.  At Very Hard, you need Grants at a decently high level to
kill a spike in one hit.  Some people prefer Rabarta for killing spikes in
the first stage, but its range isn't particularly good, and on Very Hard,
it takes two hits to do kill a spike compared to one for Grants.  Rabarta
is better for the second stage, where it's used mostly just to keep the
spikes from getting out of hand, and for the third stage, where it's the
most damaging Technique available.  Anti is important to clear slow and
frozen status.

Unlike many Forces, I do not usually keep fluids on a button. Fluids aren't
time critical because you can tell in advance when you'll need to use one.
For fast fluid use, use the manual sort function to put Fluids at the top
of the item list. I always put Trifluid at the top with Difluid second.
Antiparalysis and Telepipes also get sorted to the top of the item list,
just in case.

Sometimes instead of trying to balance physical and magical combat, it's
fun to play either an all Techniques or all physical style.

technique setup

 Standard:        Rabarta, Megid, Grants
 Shifted:         Resta, Rafoie, Razonde
 Shifted (Cave):  Resta, Foie, Gifoie
 Shifted (Mine):  Resta, Zonde, Razonde

The use of weak and normal techniques will help stretch out your TP.  I
strongly suggest only trying to play like this in a group, or you will most
likely get stomped on very quickly.

physical setup

 Standard:  Zalure, Normal Attack, Heavy or Extra Attack
 Shifted:   Resta, Jellen, Anti

You can stick Rabarta in place of Zalure if you need the freezing,
otherwise Jellen and Zalure will make fighting a bit easier.


MAGs  (v1.1)

MAGs are the little floating creatures that follow players around. Aside
from being an aesthetic accessory, MAGs will help you out.  First, MAGs
will charge up for a Photon Blast as you dish out and take damage.  Second,
MAGs will help you under certain circumstances.  These circumstances are:
going to a boss fight, filling the PB gauge, going under 10% HP, and
dying.  Helpful actions include granting invulnerability, or casting Shifta
& Deband, Resta, or Reverser.  Finally, and most importantly for lower
level players, a MAG can be used to raise your attributes.  All of these
things depend on the MAG's attributes, which depend on what they are fed.

MAG attributes:

 SYNCH:  How "in synch" your MAG is to you.  Basically, how much physical
         damage is channeled into the charge for a Photon Blast.  Maximum
         is 120%.
 IQ:     How smart your MAG is, and affects how likely the MAG is to help
         you when you're in trouble. Feeding your MAG on a regular basis
         (even at level 200) seems to increase the likelihood of your MAG
         helping you.
 DEF:    For each level, your DFP is improved by one point.
         All MAGs start with level 5 DEF.
         Trimates and Trifluids will improve DEF, and usually at least one
         type of Atomizer will.
 POW:    For each level, your ATP is improved by two points.
         All mates will improve POW.
 DEX:    For each level, your ATA is improved by one point.
         All antis will improve DEX.
 MIND:   For each level, your MST is improved by two points.
         All fluids will improve MIND.

A MAG's overall level is equal to the sum of last four individual attribute
levels. The maximum overall level a MAG can have is 200. Based on the
relationship between the attributes, the owner's Section ID, the owner's
class, and the MAG's level, the MAG can evolve to different forms. The
first evolution occurs at level 10, to one of three types, depending on
class. The second evolution occurs at level 35. The third evolution may
occur at level 50.  Every five levels after level fifty, the MAG can evolve
again, depending on how the statistics are arranged. Every time your MAG
evolves, it can gain a new type of Photon Blast, to a total of three. Don't
worry if you don't have a third evolution, Photon Blasts aren't really very
important to a Force. If you have a level 200 MAG with only two Photon
Blasts and you really want that third Blast, you can give it to a friend
with a different class (or Section ID) and have him feed it at level 200.
The MAG will immediately evolve and get its third Photon Blast, at which
point your friend can give it back. If you feed the MAG again, it will
revert to its prior type, or you can leave it as it is.  However, if you
feed a MAG a MAG cell, it will permanently change to a special type.  These
special types will not evolve to other forms, and do not get photon blasts
of their own, so don't use a MAG Cell on a MAG with only two blasts (if you
care about getting a third, that is).

In my life as a Force, if I had one thing to do over again, it would be in
how I raised my first MAG.  I raised it (ultimately, a Kabanda type) with
the idea of having high Mind (MST boost). Whenever I got a better gun, I'd
switch to raising Dex (ATA boost) until I could use that gun. This made my
Techniques fairly strong, and gave me a fair amount of TP. However, my
physical attacks were very weak. Somewhere close to level 40, I realized
that I wasn't capable of hurting much of anything at Hard difficulty except
with Techniques, making solo play a long ordeal of hit and run or trips to
Pioneer 2 for TP recharge. So I set a five minute alarm and over the course
of a day of work and other things, I raised a second MAG (a Naraka type)
and feed it nothing but Moon Atomizers to boost Power (ATP) and Dex to the
point where my ATP and ATA stats were maxed. Having this put me to near
parity as a melee or gun fighter to many Hunters and Rangers of an equal
level, and superior to those with underdeveloped MAGs.

For a long while, I used the Naraka with Mind units when fighting the
normal monsters, and switched to the Kabanda for the bosses. I've raised a
few other MAGs out of curiosity, including an Andahka and a Bana, and I've
come to think that high defense MAGs are kind of a waste of time for a
Force. As you progress in levels, you will be able to obtain better defense
through body armor.

If I started over again, I would raise my first MAG for Pow and Dex, and
the second for Mind. Actually, that's maybe not true. Having a lot of TP is
quite useful on Normal difficulty, especially when playing with other
people. However, I definitely wish I had started a second MAG for power
much earlier. Physical combat is the beginning Force's biggest weakness. Do
not discount the importance of well raised MAG. The additional 250 ATP that
my Naraka gave me, Shifta, and a decent mechgun, along with an ever more
powerful array of Techniques, let's just say that an awful lot of Hunters
and Rangers who always complained about how weak Forces are suddenly found
new respect for my class.

Oh, and though I wish it didn't need to be said, I've played with far far
too many people who think nothing of making teammates wait while they feed
MAGs. If you can't do most of your MAG feeding during non-team play, please
learn to feed your MAGs while you're moving so you don't slow everyone
down. The single most annoying thing one of my friends does is stay in town
waiting the four minutes so he can feed his MAGs a second time.

Need a convenient way to keep track of MAG feeding time?  Use Shifta or
Deband as a simple timer.  At level 15, these are a few seconds short of a
MAG feeding cycle.


Gear  (v1.2)

Protective gear comes in two types: body armor and hand-held shields.
Forces are limited to Frames and Barriers, which have less defensive power
than the Armor and Shields that Hunters and Rangers can use. Body armor can
have up to four slots, in which you can place various types of status
boosting Equipment. Protective gear has usage requirements based on
experience level. As you play, you'll find gear with requirements above
your current level. Hold on to these for those times that you will be able
to use them. Having slotted body armor is actually more important than
having better armor, especially for a Force. Hold off on upgrading to a
better Frame type if it means you'll be losing all your slots. Always keep
Frames and Armor with three or four slots. Even stuff you're not going to
use, because there will always be other players who will want it. Many
Hunters and Rangers will hold good slotted Frames, and are happy to trade
for slotted Armor.

My highest priority for a slot Equipment Unit is a Trap/Search. These can
usually be purchased at your Armor Shop on Hard and Very Hard difficulty,
so keep checking there until you can buy one. They allow you to see all
traps in a room, just like a permanent Trap Vision. Aside from the merely
annoying traps which cause damage and poison, there are ones which can
freeze or confuse you. The negative status traps are often in rooms filled
with monsters and are the ones that will get you killed. As an alternative,
androids can see traps automatically and most RAcasts I've played with are
happy to shoot traps for you. Remember that you don't need a Trap/Search
when fighting a boss, so replace it with something more useful right before
you get into a boss fight, like a HP or DFP enhancer.

Other slots can be filled with whatever you find useful. If you take my
advice and are playing with a MAG that enhances ATP instead of MST, then
use MST boosting Equipment. Against bosses, DFP and HP boosting Equipment
is good. Photon Blast, HP, and TP regenerating Equipment I find to be
worthless since it takes so long for these to have any measurable effect.
Resist Equipment I also think is worthless, except for Resist/Saint, which
can make the difference between life and death when fighting Dark Falz on
Hard and Very Hard.

Of the rare Units, the more useful ones I've seen include Hero/Ability and
God/Ability, which boost all attributes, although by the time you find
these, many of your attributes will already be maxed.

I finally had a change to try a God/Battle.  Without a doubt, the ones I
used were hacked and/or cloned (does anyone have a God/Battle they found
themselves?), so it may be that a "legitimate" God/Battle behaves
differently.  All the Battle units (Hero, Devil, God) will improve the
speed of physical attacks.  Most significantly, they will improve the
startup time for Heavy and Extra attacks.  The advantage of a Battle unit
is that you can use Heavy or Extra attacks where you'd otherwise use a
Normal.  For example, if you're swinging a Sword at a VH Booma, you can use
Heavy -> Heavy -> Heavy even if it's standing right in front of you,
without worry about a counterattack interrupting you.  However, recovery
time is still just as slow!  I did some timing tests with two and three
God/Battles to see if there was really any improvement in overall speed.
My conclusion is that there is no difference between one and two
God/Battles, but maybe my timing is bad.  (The test comprised of firing a
standard handgun as quickly as possible for as many combos as possible in
one minute.)

Wizard/, Devil/ and God/Technique will raise all your Technique casting
levels by one, two, or three.  "EV-9>9.3" wrote me with a warning about
/Technique units.  If you use a disk with one equipped, the Technique
learned will not take into account the presence of the /Tech unit.  This
means the level will drop if the unit is unequipped.  (In other words, if
you use a Megid lv 15 disk with a God/Tech equipped, when you remove it,
you will only have Megid lv 12.)  I was wrong about the Technique units
giving levels above 15 -- 15 is the maximum.  It is only possible to have
Technique levels over 15 by cheating.

The most useful protective gear a Force can get is a Sacred Guard barrier.
Supposedly, Bulclaws on Very Hard are the most likely source (this how I
got mine). The Sacred Guard is a type of barrier, with decent DFP and EVP,
and good ELT. But what makes the Sacred Guard so desirable is that it makes
the wearer immune to all negative status. No more slowed, frozen, confused,
or paralyzed! Poison Lilies, Gillchics, Sinows, Dark Belras, and Dark Falz
all become much less threatening. Hunters and Rangers who regularly play
with a particular Force teammate should give first dibs on these to the
Force -- after all, she can't be very effective casting Resta or Anti on
them if she's paralyzed or frozen.  There is also supposed to be a Unit
called State/Maintain that prevents negative status, but I have not seen
one of these yet.

One piece of gear that I would like to try is the Force Field. Although
this is not particularly good armor by itself, when playing with a user of
a Ranger Field and Hunter Field, defense is dramatically improved -- or so
the rumors go

At earlier levels, the Invisible Guard (req: lv 17) is probably the best
barrier you can get. It's unlikely that you'll be able to find one yourself
(I've only found them on Hard and Very Hard in the Ruins). I've seen a lot
of higher level players join newbie games to give these away. While I
normally would discourage low level players from taking rare weapons,
Invisible Guards are obviously intended for low level people (there are
much better barriers, but they all have high level requirements), so don't
feel bad about taking one, or handing yours down when you outgrow it.

The following are hacked units, and can no longer be used in play (and
thank goodness for that): God/HP++, God/TP++, any/Technique++ or --


Team Games

Androids love playing with Forces, or at least the smart ones do. Androids
are all power and no Technique, Forces are all Technique and no power.
Well, maybe that's an over-simplification, but the point is, they
complement each other perfectly. When looking through open games, I'll pick
a team with HUcasts and RAcasts over a team of HUmars and RAmars.

Much of the appeal of Phantasy Star Online is that it is a cooperative
game. So, to get the most of out PSO, cooperate. And keep in mind that not
all of the following are applicable only to Forces. Common courtesy is
applicable for all classes.

How To Be A Good Teammate As A Force

Don't split the party. Try to stick with the other people in your group,
and avoid running off by yourself, even if you're capable of fighting
alone. If they're headed in the wrong direction, say so, don't just leave
them behind. After fights, even if you have no interest in picking up
items, show a little patience to your teammates. Otherwise if you really
wanted to play alone, then you should play alone.

During fights, keep an eye on where everyone is, and try to keep your
teammates in range of your support magic spells. This means in battles,
don't go running off to the corners to pick stuff up while your teammates
fight. It's very annoying when anyone does it, but it's worse when it's the
team's Force. If you have one teammate who is the guy running for the boxes
while your other teammates fight, support the guys who are playing as a
team first and take care of the other guy second. If everyone in your game
is a treasure hog, go find another team.

Always make sure you have enough TP to cast at least two Restas in a row!
If your teammates are expecting you to keep them healed, they will be less
likely to heal themselves. Often when the fighting gets close, my Hunter
and Ranger friends will attempt attacks to keep enemies off my back instead
of taking the time to heal or evade monsters. I don't want to let them down
and get them killed because I'm running around without the capability to
cast Techniques. If you do run out of fluid in the heat of battle, let
people know! You can hotkey "no TP" in the (what should be extremely rare)
event you run out of TP. Remember, if you don't put fluid on a customize
button, you should place your fluid stock at the top of your item list (use
the manual sort) so that you can use it from the Items menu as quickly as
possible. At higher levels, although you want to stretch those Trifluids
out, go ahead and use Difluids every now and then. You'll usually find
enough to keep you fully stocked.

Resta any player who gets injured. When I got over about 300 TP, I started
healing anyone who was hurt, no matter how lightly. Doing this might seem
like a waste of TP, but crowds of enemies or enemies which attack several
times in quick succession can kill an ally very quickly, and if you're
lagged, waiting might be fatal. Besides, healing quickly lets teammates
know they can rely on you to keep them alive so they can focus on
attacking. While you're actually casting Resta, you won't be hit.  So even
when you're surrounded by enemies, if you can get enough time to start
casting, you'll complete the spell. If you get knocked down, usually you
can Resta immediately when you get up.

Keep Shifta and Deband cast on all team members, all the time. These spells
have a huge effect on physical combat. For that matter, if you plan on
engaging in physical combat yourself, make sure you are Shifta'd in a solo
game. I personally find alternating Shifta and Deband bubbles to be
distracting. If you "stack" Deband to cast right after Shifta, the red and
blue bubbles will display simultaneously.

You should always cast Anti immediately for any negative status that
prevents a teammate from defending himself. Most important to Anti are
paralysis, confusion, and freezing. Less important are slow and poison.
This also means, always carry around Antiparalysis for yourself just in
case... If you run out of Antiparalysis and you're fighting a Poison Lily,
let it poison you. You can only have one negative status at a time.

Sometimes teammates die. Your goal is to have this happen as infrequently
as possible, but sometimes, especially if you're playing with new or greedy
teammates, it will happen. Reverser your teammates when it's safe to do so.
Usually, this means take care of that big crowd of monsters surrounding
your dead comrade's body before you Reverser, otherwise you might find
yourself dead as well. Make sure you're not too close when you try to cast
Reverser or you might inadvertently pick up someone's weapon -- a real
problem in the heat of battle. The exception is when fighting a boss, in
which case you want to keep all your allies alive as much as possible,
especially if the boss is close to expiring. Dead players receive no XP,
and there's nothing quite so disappointing as fighting a boss for 10
minutes with nothing to show for it...

Sometimes you might die yourself. I always carry at least one Scape Doll
just in case this happens, mainly because almost all the time when I die,
I'm the last of my group to have died. For the most part, my Hunter and
Ranger teammates tend to be fighting slightly ahead of me, so they take
damage before I do. Anything that kills me will usually have taken them out
first, and having a Scape Doll means we avoid the trip to Pioneer 2 and a
long walk back to our stuff. One tactic that a lot of early level Forces
have is to permit themselves to be killed a lot so that they can be revived
with a full TP meter. I think this is lame -- the idea is to learn how to
stay alive while fighting as effectively as possible. If you do this
though, let your teammates know what you're going to be doing before you do
it. It really sucks to rely on a Force who is always lying dead on the
floor.

Until you get some decent weapons or become more powerful, you probably
aren't going to be all that capable of destroying monsters by yourself. The
best way to fight early on is to provide backup to the more powerful
combatants. For example, line yourself up behind that Hunter and use Heavy
attacks to push back the monsters coming at him from the sides. Or watch
for when his attacks are over and attack the monster while he's recovering
to keep him safe. This isn't always too precise because of lag between
players. If you use a gun, try not to use Heavy attacks against targets
someone is attacking with a melee weapon, because you can push the monster
out of range (this is especially true of fallen Gillchics in the Mine).
Rangers are easier to fight with since they aren't running around so much,
but remember, you're supporting first, fighting second.

This doesn't mean you aren't capable of dishing out some punishment
yourself. Sometimes a good offense is the best defense. Use your offensive
magic to disrupt enemy attacks, knock down flying opponents, push back
crowds of enemies (especially zonde in the Mine), and most importantly,
freeze your enemies in their tracks. If you or a teammate is surrounded or
in danger of taking a pounding from enemies, you should let fly with a
flurry of barta spells. Regardless of whether or not the monsters are
susceptible to cold, high level barta (primarily, Gibarta and Rabarta) can
hit and freeze anything close to you. Any time you're feeling pressed for
space, or encounter an especially dangerous opponent (Hildebears, Garanz/s,
Sinows, Delsabers, Chaos Bringers, etc) go ahead and try to freeze it. At
higher levels especially, you have a pretty good chance of success for at
least a few enemies, and in a crowd, the frozen monsters will slow down the
rest of them from getting at you. Even if you're not in a good position to
take advantage of the frozen monsters, hopefully your teammates usually
will. For what it's worth, you do get XP for hitting a monster with a
Technique, even if it does zero damage...

Share treasure with your teammates and before you sell something good, ask
your teammates if they want it. This even applies to common weapons if you
find one with high percentages. Anything with 30% attributes or better you
might want to hold onto for a while anyway just in case.

Finally, after you become the world-class assbeater that Forces can become,
don't be an XP hog. It is really embarrassing to see a high level Force
join a Normal or Hard game with lower level characters for support, and
then zapping all the monsters before the other players can even come near
them. High level Forces should not be in Normal games at all; virtually all
offensive Techniques kill in a single hit. If you are going to enter a Hard
game, be aware of how much damage a monster can take before dying, and let
someone else kill it!

I much prefer to join teams with players of roughly the same experience as
I have. If you join newbie games when you're much more powerful, you
usually end up carrying the team, and you prevent the other players from
learning how to fight properly.

Communication

If you don't have a keyboard, you're missing out on a lot of the fun of
PSO. You can either buy the official Sega Dreamcast keyboard (retail is
about US$20 on this), or you can buy one of those multi-adapters for about
US$30. Those multi-adapters can let you use a ps/2 style keyboard or mouse,
or a Playstation or Saturn controller, but be aware that they do have some
problems, including imperfect key mapping. Letters are usually ok, symbols
and some punctuation may not be. Plus, although the Playstation controllers
generally work ok, the Saturn adapters I've seen don't work well at all
(missing buttons).

Even if you have a keyboard, it's useful to set up some "hotkey" shortcuts,
using the D-pad to send an assigned message. Try to avoid symbol chat
during combat. The large windows obscure vision and making fighting a
little bit harder. Common hotkey messages: "yes", "ok", "no", "thanks",
"take this", "follow me", "help". Many people also hotkey symbols for "hi"
and "hooray".

When entering a game, it's usually polite to ask if people already there
mind if you join.  Please do not arbitrarily join open games just to ask
people if they want to trade iems -- the lobby is much more appropriate for
that.

Team Strategy

There's really not much strategy to this game beyond what I've outlined
above. Stick near teammates, watch their backs. Be careful with Heavy gun
attacks pushing monsters out of the range of melee fighters, or into
another player.  Freeze large groups of enemies.  If you see a teammate
surrounded by monsters and in trouble, help that person out.

Sometimes its fun to play "Monster Roundup" also known as "pulling a
train". This is best with at least two players, and most useful in rooms
where monsters warp in from all sides. One player will act as bait and get
all monsters chasing him or her. The other players stand outside the room
and wait for the bait to come running towards them, with all the monsters
in tow. When they're all together in a group, the monsters can be easily
delt with, either through Techniques or with multiple enemy hitting
weapons.

Playing With Another Force

I rarely join teams that already have a Force. Normally, a team of four
only needs one Force. On Very Hard especially, physical attacks routinely
do more damage than magical, leaving the Force to use Techniques primarily
to heal, freeze enemies, and disrupt some enemy attacks. This means a
second (or third, or fourth) Force is mostly superfluous. Multiple Force
games tend to be of more value on Normal and Hard, where Techniques,
relatively speaking, are more powerful.

However, multiple Forces can be effective together if communication is good
and the players know what they're doing. To avoid duplication of effort,
the Forces should decide on who will perform what duties. For example, the
Force with the highest level Shifta and Deband will be responsible for
keeping those cast, or if levels are close, they can alternate. The Force
with the highest TP can be responsible for Resta, or if Resta levels aren't
high, then whoever is closest to the injured teammate will Resta. Or, if
one Force has high ATP and is mostly using melee attacks, the other is
responsible for Resta.

With three or four Forces, Techniques can be used to a greater extent than
if there were just a single Force. All Force players should be familiar
with what Techniques are most damaging to which monsters, and with about
how many Hit Points each variety of monster is likely to have (see the
Bestiary for a list of all monsters in the game and tips on fighting them).
Using a Monster Roundup strategy, each Force can cast the appropriate
Technique one or two times to take out an entire group. A well coordinated
group of Forces can make for an entertaining and spectacular game (picture
six or eight Rafoies going off at the same time), not to mention a very
fast one. Unfortunately if the Forces aren't so well coordinated, or tend
to scatter and run, you'd best have some decent physical attack capability,
or you may be in serious trouble.


Money

Forces are the most expensive class to play, and in the early levels, money
comes dear. Between an always pressing need for fluids and the pressure to
raise MAGs, you may constantly find yourself short of Meseta. Even at
higher levels, Trifluid is expensive, and there will come a time when
you'll be wanting to buy some very expensive high level Technique discs.

Since TP replenishment is the main cost of being a Force, learn to be
sparing in your use of Techniques. You won't need to use Techniques so much
if you have good physical power -- yet another reason to invest in raising
a power boosting MAG. Also when playing by yourself, obtain Ryuker as soon
as you can and teleport back to Pioneer 2 to replenish TP instead of using
fluid. Finally, when you come across fluid that you can't carry (or don't
want to carry) use it immediately -- even the mere 70 points that monofluid
replenishes will help a little.

Don't buy most types of Technique discs unless they're several (at least
three) levels above your current Technique level, or unless they are very
high. If you can use them, it's always worth buying the "Ra"'s, Resta, and
Shifta at level 12 or higher.

Don't ever buy frames or barriers. Even if it's slotted, defensive gear is
ridiculously expensive, and you'll almost always be able to find better. By
making a habit of holding at least two tiers of higher level gear for later
use, you'll never have to buy it until you can really afford it. Buying
weaponry is also a waste. You can find all types of weapons, grinders are
usually quite common, and the best weapons have attribute percentages,
which you can almost never buy anyway.

Still short on money? Solo play through the levels and in quests will
usually help your bank account. A trip through the Mine and Ruins will
almost always bring in lots of Meseta through sold items. When grabbing
stuff for cash, keep in mind that Armor and Frames are worth the most. (For
what it's worth the shops buy items for about 12.5% of what they sell at.)

If you still can't make ends meet, and you don't want to annoy your
teammates by constantly piping back to Pioneer 2 for trips to the Med
Center, ask your teammates for cash for fluids. I usually didn't ask for
cash, but let everyone else know that I was going to be grabbing everything
I could get to sell. If you are going to be an item hog though, offer your
teammates any particularly good items you picked up (for free please)
before you sell them off. What's good? Rare items, slotted armor, weapons
with high percentages, and weapons with powerful specials. Pluses don't
mean much.

Most Hunters and Rangers tend not to spend much money except on their MAGs,
so they're usually happy to help a Force out, especially if that Force is
keeping them healed and casting Shifta and Deband. This is especially true
of teams of androids, which otherwise have to endure the hassle of relying
on mates.

Don't worry Eventually you'll be like everyone else, with more Meseta than
you know what to do with. For what it's worth, you can put up to 999,999
Meseta in the cloak room, and you can carry up to 999,999 Meseta on your
person. Completing the Ruins by myself on Very Hard usually nets me
somewhere around 300,000 from sold items.


Bestiary  (v1.2)

Following is a list of all monsters and bosses, including tips on how to
beat them and what Techniques they are weak to.

HP and Techniques have been moved to a table, to make my life easier..

HP have been updated to be (hopefully) accurate through calculation with
either a Demon or Devil weapon.  I'm pleased to note that except in one
case where I was under by a few HP, all my old HP numbers (from versions
1.0 and 1.1 of this Guide) were reasonably close, and were over the amount
needed to kill the monster.  The calculations of HP were all done for
Offline monsters, so the HP are 75% of what the Online monsters have.  The
number in parens should be a little more than what the actual HP should be
Online (Offline x 1.34).

Technique damage percentage is fairly rough estimate, but 0% always means
no damage from that particular type of magic and 100% means maximum damage
for your level of Techniques in the elemental class.  I'm judging
percentage based on damage done compared to the maximum damage for that
Technique (level 15, 670 MST).  For Megid, I'm still compiling numbers for
success rate.  Since there's some randomness involved, your results may be
different from mine, and for the sake of not driving myself crazy right
now, I'm categorizing as "poor" (in the neighborhood of 25% kill rate),
"average" (50% kill rate), "good" (65% kill rate) or "excellent" (90%+).

I am not convinced that Technique resistance is based on a strict
percentage system, but it's close enough for legitimate players.

Forest  (v1.2)

All Forest inhabitants are of Native attribute.

 Monster               HP        foie  barta   zonde  Grants     Megid
 Booma             724 (970)     100%    0%     40%     80%      good
 Gobooma           756 (1013)     0%    40%    100%     80%     average
 Gigobooma         788 (1055)     0%    100%    40%     80%    excellent
 Savage Wolf       706 (946)     100%   20%    100%     80%     average
 Barbarous Wolf    730 (978)     100%   10%    100%     80%      good
 Hildebear         874 (1172)     0%    100%    50%     80%      good
 Rag Rappy         688 (920)     100%   100%    30%     80%    excellent
 Monest           1024 (1372)    60%    40%    100%     80%     average
 Mothmant          480 (643)     70%    50%    100%     80%     average
 Dragon          4700? (6300?)   10%    80%     20%     40%      never

Booma
Large apish badger. They are reddish brown in color and attack with a claw
swipe. Even on Very Hard they move slowly and are easy to beat down.
However, Boomas are unique of "footsoldier" monsters in that they have very
fast hit recovery on Very Hard.  You cannot do a Normal -> Heavy combo
against a Booma that is in range to attack you, because it will be able to
hit you before your Heavy attack comes out.

Gobooma
Yellow/tan colored Booma that is weak to lightning.

Gigobooma
Purplish colored Booma that is weak to cold.

Savage Wolf
Greenish striped wolf. These will leap into the field, and if you are in
the way, you may be hit. These will usually try to circle around behind you
before pouncing to attack. If you kill another wolf, a Savage Wolf may
become suicidally unhappy and cast Jellen and Zalure on itself.

Barbarous Wolf
Bluish striped wolf. These are pretty much just a tougher version of the
Savage Wolf.

Hildebear
Giant ape-bear. Hildebears will appear by jumping into the field. Once
there, they have three methods of attack. From a distance, they have a
tremendous leaping attack. From medium range, they spit Foie from their
mouths. From up close, they will swat you with one of their huge arms.
Hildebears are too large to push back with Heavy Attacks, and their punches
cannot be interrupted with physical attacks. Hildebears have a bad habit of
rearing up, as though to frighten you, that leaves them very vulnerable.
There is a rare type of Hildebear called a Hildeblue.

Rag Rappy
Yellow penguin. These are slow moving little flightless birds. In a crowd
they can be annoying. When you defeat a Rag Rappy, it will fall to the
ground. After a while (or immediately, when you move far enough away), a
fallen Rag Rappy will get up and scurry off. If you hit a Rappy while it's
very far away, it will run immediately. Hitting a running Rag Rappy will
cause it to drop something. It is rumored that on Very Hard difficulty,
Rappies will sometimes drop a MAG cell. There is a rare mutant Rag Rappy
called an Al Rappy which is blue, has quite a bit more HP, and is worth
about 10 time the XP as a normal Rappy.

Monest
Mothmant hatchery. These look like giant pitcher plants and are carried
onto the field by Mothmants. The Monest will spew Mothmants every so often.
Damaging a Monest will cause it to collapse to the ground, but it will
still hatch Mothmants until it is finally killed.

Mothmant
Giant wasp. These flying pests can be quite a problem if they get close. My
recommendation is to zap Mothmants and Monest with Gizonde or Razonde as
soon as you can.

Dragon (Forest Boss)

Like most forest denizens, the Dragon is not very fast or strong. Unless
you stand right in front of it and take a full blast of flame breath, you
don't have to worry much about taking damage. The Dragon initially is on
the ground and attacks with its flame breath, or by stepping on anyone
careless enough to be squished. The best way to handle the Dragon is to
avoid the breath and run around to its side, where it cannot hit you.
Hurting its legs will cause it to collapse to the ground -- be careful, it
can crush you when it falls. On Hard and Very Hard, physical attacks should
be directed at its head because other body parts have very  high defense.
Forces have it easy, because Techniques will affect any part of its body.
After getting up, the Dragon will fly. If it has not been damaged much, it
will just try to breathe fire on you from the air, then land again. If it
has been hurt a lot, it will dive underground and try to hit you with a
burrowing attack. It will charge at players three times from under the
earth. Avoiding these charges is usually a matter of sticking near the
walls and running. After, it comes shooting back up into the air, lands,
and the cycle begins again. Every time the Dragon burrows and reappears, a
hot lava spot is left on the ground. Running over this will hurt you.
Finally, be careful when finally killing the Dragon, it can fall and hurt
you.

Forces can very easily kill the Dragon with cold attacks. You can even
attack the Dragon while it is flying, and in fact if you do enough damage
to it while it is up there, it will land without doing anything to try to
hurt you.

Occasionally, the Dragon will leave a Dragon Slayer Sword after it is
killed. The Dragon Slayer is the best Sword I've seen, but unfortunately,
it cannot be equipped by Forces.

Cave  (v1.2)

All Cave inhabitants are of Altered Beast (A.Beast) attribute.

 Monster           HP         foie     barta    zonde    Grants    Megid
 Evil Shark    756 (1012)     100%      0%       40%      80%     average
 Pal Shark     774 (1037)     100%      40%       0%      80%     average
 Guil Shark    812 (1088)      0%       40%      100%     80%     average
 Poison Lily    738 (988)     100%     100%       0%      100%      good
 Grass
 Assassin      824 (1104)     100%      0%       40%      80%       poor
 Nano Dragon   900 (1206)      0%      100%      100%     80%    excellent
 Pofuilly
 Slime         774 (1037)     100%      0%       100%     100%      good

 Pan Arms         1400        80%       80%      80%      80%       poor
                 (1876)
 Migium         700 (938)     100%      0%        0%      80%        ?
 Hidoom         700 (938)      0%      100%       0%      80%        ?

 De Rol Le       15000?       80%       50%      70%      20%      never
                (20100?)     (80%)     (20%)    (40%)
 De Rol Le        450?
 (spike)         (603?)       50%      100%      100%     50%        ?

Technique % in parens for De Rol Le are damage percentage through its
"beak".

Evil Shark
Green colored shark beast. These are mutated Boomas with knife hands, big
teeth, and a fin on the top of their heads. Evil Sharks are weak to fire.

Pal Shark
Purple colored Shark.  Contrary to popular belief, foie Techniques are
better than barta against these.

Guil Shark
Yellow colored Shark. These are slightly larger than other Sharks, and are
weak to zonde.

Poison Lily
Poisonous white flower. The Lily is a stationary plant that will spit
poison at you from afar, or try to bite you when you get too close.
Fortunately the range of the spit is very short (a machine gun has better
range), and the Lilies aren't very smart since they will try to bite you
even if you are out of range. The real danger of the Poison Lily is that
occasionally, it will try to cast paralysis on you.  The paralysis attempt
seems to occur more often if you (or someone on your team) uses a Technique
on the Lily.  If you are close enough, you can hit the Lily while it is in
the process of paralyzing you, and prevent it from succeeding.  However, be
ready to use an Antiparalysis for yourself or to cast Anti for your
teammates when these are around.  If the Lily becomes very hurt, it will
"stand up" straight and start to spin while making a chiming noise.  If you
let it stay this way, it will spin faster and faster, until it explodes in
damaging purple smoke.  As a strange quirk, if you stand on the blood-spot
of a defeated monster, the Poison Lily will be unable to poison you.  I'm
not sure if this also prevents paralysis.  Another odd feature of the
Poison Lily is that hitting one with a Soul Eater or Sword, the first hit
of the attack sequence will strike twice.  There is a rare variant called
the Nar Lily, which is red in color.

Grass Assassin
Giant Mantis. From a distance, the Grass Assassin will rear up (giving it
temporary invulnerability) and charge headlong at its target. This charge
can be stopped by causing any damage to the Assassin. The Grass Assassin's
favorite tactic is to spit a white web that will root the victim to a spot.
From there, it will slash at its prey with its long forearms. If you are
able to hit the Grass Assassin while it is spitting the web, you will free
yourself. Otherwise, though you can attack, you are stuck to the spot.  If
you press the controller in a direction while using an attack, you will
spin to turn in that direction, for first hit of a combo only.  Thanks to
Archon Shiva for this correction (I thought you could not turn at all,
except by casting Zonde).

Nano Dragon
Small brown dragon. The Nano Dragon prefers to keep its range, and will fly
away if you approach too closely. It will attack with breath weapons. It
will shoot either balls of blue flame, or a very powerful blue beam. The
former will track the player and will almost always hit. The beam can be
dodged. The Nano Dragon will sometimes attack other monsters, and according
to Red Ring Rico's notes, the Nano Dragon becomes stronger as it kills
other monsters.  Nano Dragons are extremely annoying to fight with melee
weapons, because often they will decide to fly away as you approach them.
You must use a Normal attack as the first in a combo to keep them
grounded.  A Heavy or Special attack is too slow and will allow a Nano
Dragon to fly off.

Pofuilly Slime
These slime creatures appear in Cave 2 and 3 only, and are probably the
most annoying monsters in the game. They first appear in slime form, and
slither around the floor, immune to any attack. When they pop up, they can
attack by biting, hitting longer range with a "tail" of sorts. Slimes can
reproduce by spitting a new slime onto the floor (if this spit hits a
player, it will cause damage instead). When hurt, the Slime shrinks back
down into a little pool of ooze and slithers around the floor once more,
meaning that killing these things can take quite a while. Pofuilly Slimes
should not be attacked with Techniques or elemental weapon specials. Barta
will almost always cause the Slime to reproduce immediately.  Foie and
Grants will also cause splits but not as often.  Zonde will rarely cause a
split.  These creatures may be the best use I have for Megid, as Megid will
only kill them, not cause a split. When attacking physically, always be
prepared to use a combo, in a Heavy, Heavy, Normal pattern. If the Slime
evades your first attack, it's probably going to reproduce if you don't hit
it. Mechguns can hit a Slime twice if the first attack is evaded.  There is
a rare variant called a Poulyful Slime, which is red in color.

Pan Arms
Pan Arms are actually composed of two creatures. The purple Migium and the
red Hidoom. They will pop up out of the ground together, and attempt to
shoot either a red heat beam or a blue frost beam at the players from the
green spots at their "front". While joined, the Pan Arms have very very
high ATP and so are immunte to most physical attacks.  Use Techniques or a
weapon's magical Special to attack, or cast Zalure.  By staying behind the
Pan Arms, you will not only avoid being hit by its beams, but its inability
to hit you will cause it to split into the Migium and Hidoom.  Any damage
done to the joined Pan Arms will be divided equally to these.  They have
photon swords of a sort, and attack by dashing up to players and stabbing
them. When hurt, the Migium and Hidoom will face each other and cast
Resta.  When you are stabbed by a Migium, it will be as though Zalure has
been cast on you.  Likewise, being stabbed by the Hidoom will confer
Jellen.on you.  Pan Arms will occasionally drop an arm which can be used by
Montague to Pan Arm Blades, a type of dagger which is usable by a Force.

De Rol Le (Cave Boss)  (v1.1)

De Rol Le is a giant sewer worm with a variety of attacks. It starts by
flipping spikes onto the raft. These spikes will remain located around one
of the team members, making them difficult for that person to hit. Each
spike has about 600HP. If the spikes aren't destroyed, they will explode
and cause damage to players. This explosion will happen as De Rol Le is
passing by the raft to spray purple mist across it. Together this can do
considerable damage, but the spray can be dodged. Weak players should stand
behind stronger ones to let them absorb the hits. Following this, De Rol Le
will leap up onto the raft. He is very vulnerable to attack here, but will
pick a player to hit with a whisker/tentacle.  Usually you have time for
three combos before having to move to evade the first tentacle attack, and
then you can throw out one combo before having to dodge the tentacle.  De
Rol Le will then crawl across the cavern ceiling, dropping rocks on the
raft. These also are fairly easy to dodge but can cause a lot of pain.  If
De Rol Le's still alive, the cavern will grow dark, and De Rol Le will
spike the raft, shoot purple spray from the side again, then rear up in
front of the raft. From here he will shoot a purple beam across the raft.
By running from one side of the raft to the other before he does the beam
attack, you can usually get him to miss you. You can attack him while he's
reared up, though machine gun range is a little too short, and my Razonde
only hits four of his body segments from this distance.

As you hurt De Rol Le's "head", you'll crack off an outer shell. It'll
start grunting more when you hit it after that, and those hits will cause
more damage.

For a Force, Zonde is probably the best weapon against him. High level
Razonde does a good amount of damage plus has excellent range -- there's
almost no time when you can't be hitting De Rol Le. In addition, his long
segmented body all takes lightning damage, meaning you will really be
hurting him quite badly.  A number of people have written to me saying that
Rafoie is better than Razonde, as at equal levels, Rafoie does slightly
more damage.  However, it seems to me that Razonde is much more likely to
hit all body segments.  I'm not sure how De Rol Le's HPs work -- it's
possible to kill him just by smacking hit head segment, and it's also
possible to kill him by just hitting the tail portion.  Using all Razonde
and totalling up the damage to all segments, I came out to about 50000 HP.
However, my HUnewearl friend Isepic can clear out De Rol Le with about
15000 HP(?) of damage just to the front three segments.

Occasionally, De Rol Le will drop "Parasite Wear: De Rol Le", a frame with
good defense (10 higher DFP and 40 higher EVP than an Ultimate Frame), but
which essentially poisons the wearer. It also has the disadvantage of
having no resistance to Elemental Light (ELT) attacks, which is terrible
against Dark Falz. Parasite Wear can have slots, but it's more common to
get it without any.  According to a HUmar I played with (whose name I
forgot, sorry), De Rol Le can be induced to drop the Parasite Wear by
smacking him in the neck behind his head shell to break off the armor there
before breaking off the head shell.  After "calling" the appearance of
Parasite Wear the first time, we fought De Rol Le again, and sure enough,
another Parasite Wear.  Make of that what you will.

Mine  (v1.2)

All Mine inhabitants are of Machine attribute. Machines (except for the
boss) can be paralyzed with electrical attacks.

 Monster                 HP        foie   barta  zonde   Grants    Megid
 Gillchic            812 (1088)     20%    20%    70%     100%    average
 Dubchic             838 (1122)     20%    20%    80%     100%    average
 Dubwitch            300? (400)    100%   100%    100%    100%   excellent
 Canadine            824 (1104)     0%    100%    60%     40%     average
 Canane              900 (1206)     70%   100%     0%     40%    excellent
 Sinow Beat         1100 (1474)    100%    0%     60%     40%    excellent
 Sinow Gold         1000 (1340)    100%    50%     0%     40%       poor
 Garanz             1500 (2010)     80%    40%     0%     40%       poor
 Vol Opt               10000?
 (stage 2)            (13400?)      40%    55%    80%     50%      never

Gillchic
Black robots. These are very slow and will get knocked down and back by any
kind of hit (be careful if you hit one while its back is turned to you --
it will fall towards you). While knocked down, you can hit the Gillchic,
but while they are getting back up, they are invulnerable. Despite being
slow, in a large group they can still be dangerous. From a distance, they
will shoot a very damaging laser. From up close, they have a fast and
powerful two hit "one-two" punch that can cause slow status. Because of the
flurry of fast attacks, letting a bunch of Gillchics crowd around you can
be fatal.

Dubchic
Grey robots. Dubchics are essentially indestructible Gillchics.

Dubwitch
The Dubwitch is a small hovering disk with yellow spikes protruding from
it. Normally, these hover in an out-of-the-way location near the ceiling,
invisible to your radar. When a Dubchic is destroyed, the Dubwitch will
regenerate it, but at the same time, the Dubwitch will drop to the floor
where it can be reached by melee weapons. Destroying the Dubwitch will also
cause the Dubchics to fall apart (you will only get XP for the Dubchics
that you've hit).

Canadine
Flying horseshoe. Canadines can be very annoying for users of melee
weapons.  In their first mode of attack, they will float up out of striking
range, and target a player with a reddish laser. A few seconds later, they
will attack with a lightning strike. It's pretty easy to avoid the attack.
The second mode of attack, the Canadine will zip around at player level,
until it is close, at which point it will move up and deliver an electric
jolt.  I believe both of these electrical attacks are capable of causing
electrical paralysis to androids.

Canane
Red controller of Canadines. Occasionally you will see a formation of
Canadines surrounding a Canane.  Destroying the Canane will cause any
remaining Canadines to freak out, drill into you, and explode.  This can
hurt, but the simplistic action makes the uncontrolled Canadines incredibly
easy to destroy.  Hurting a Canane a lot without killing it, or killing
most of the Canadines, will cause the Canane to disappear and take any
surviving Canadines with it.

Sinow Beat
Purple attack robot. The Sinow Beat is one of the more dangerous
inhabitants of the mine. Beats warp in near the ceiling (you can see their
shadow before they appear) then drop to the floor. From a distance they
have a leap attack, otherwise from up close they have a two hit punch that
can cause confusion. Occasionally a Sinow Beat will jump backwards and
create four illusions of itself. The illusions can be destroyed with any
attack and aren't dangerous, but they can surround and trap a player.

Sinow Gold
Gold attack robot. The Sinow Gold is similar to the Sinow Beat, but
considerably less dangerous and it's magic resistances are different. When
it jumps back, instead of doing illusions, it will cast Resta on all
monsters in range.

Garanz
Rocket launching tank. The Garanz is probably responsible for more deaths
in the Mine than all other enemies combined. It is large and tank-like, and
will launch slow moving rockets at a player. These rockets will home in on
players, and hit for considerable damage. The danger of Garanz's is that
when you attack them, their shells break off and they start launching more
rockets. Meaning, less defense but a heck of a lot more offense. The
Garanz's rockets can damage other enemies, including the Garanz itself,
which sometimes can be useful.  To attack the Garanz physically, use a long
range gun, or run around behind it (running in circles around a Garanz can
cause it to hit itself with rockets).  Techniques only, if you can take an
eight rocket hit, you can alternately cast Rafoie and Resta. My usual
tactic with these is to cast Rabarta until the Garanz freezes, then kill it
with a mechgun.  If you're in between two Garanz's and you have teammates
attacking both, just cast Resta as fast as you can.

Vol Opt (Mine Boss)  (v1.2)

This is kind of strange one. There are two separate forms that must be
beaten to defeat Vol Opt.

STAGE ONE: The heroes are warped into a hexagonal room with what looks to
be a chandelier in the center and six sets of video screens in the walls.
You can attack Vol Opt by hitting the "chandelier" (recommended: a gun).
His "head" will also travel around the walls, in the video displays.  While
his head is on a screen, you can attack that bank of displays either
physically or with Techniques.  Oddly enough, when the head is travelling,
you can hit it with untargetted Techniques like Rabarta or Razonde.  To
attack you, Vol Opt will pop up some cones from the floor that will zap you
with lightning every so often.  The red cones appear to be the ones that
are responsible for the lightning attack.  Do enough damage to various
stuff, and you move on to stage two.  The best Techniques to use here seem
to be Rabarta and Razonde.

STAGE TWO: Vol Opt itself appears in the center of the room and uses
various attacks to hurt you. A lot of people consider Vol Opt's second
stage to be ridiculously easy, and it is, in a group. However, it can still
be dangerous. At its back, Vol Opt has a rocket launcher. The rockets are
very slow, but they do track you, and they do a considerable amount of
damage. To the sides, Vol Opt will put tracking a tracking laser on you.
This is a cue to run, or you will be smashed by a large pillar that drops
from the ceiling (you will be attacked up to three times sequentially by
the pillars). In front, Vol Opt will occasionally spit a green ball which,
if it hits, will imprison you in a circle of rock. This "jail" can be
broken by a teammate, otherwise you are stuck until Vol Opt attacks you or
dies. Incidentally, while imprisoned, you cannot use Techniques or attacks,
but you can still use items.

Although Vol Opt is weak to Zonde, the easiest way to defeat Vol Opt's
second form is to use physical attacks. Doing a significant amount of
damage to any section will cause that section to break and drop off, so for
a Force, a good mechgun with machine % bonus or the Soul Eater are your
best bets.

Ruins  (v1.2)

All Ruins inhabitants are of Dark attribute. As you might expect, the Ruins
is the most difficult area in the game.

 Monster                  HP         foie   barta  zonde   Grants   Megid
 Dimenian             988 (1323)     100%    0%     30%     80%      good
 La Dimenian          1024 (1372)     30%   100%     0%     70%    average
 So Dimenian          1064 (1425)     0%     30%    100%    60%      poor
 Chaos Bringer        1212 (1624)     85%    20%     0%     10%      poor
 Chaos Sorcerer       1024 (1372)     70%    0%      0%     20%      poor
 Bee                  838 (1122)     100%   100%     0%     100%      ?
 Dark Belra           1275 (1708)     0%     20%    70%     100%   average
 Dark Gunner          924 (1238)      50%    50%    50%     100%   average
 Claw                 838 (1122)     100%    0%     70%     100%   average
 Bulclaw              900 (1206)      80%    80%     0%     100%   average
 Bulk                 180? (240?)    100%   100%?    0%     100%      ?
 Delsaber             1150 (1541)     0%    100%     0%     40%      poor
 Deravant             225? (300?)     50%    70%     0%     100%    never
 Dark Falz
 (form 1)           9200? (12300?)    30%    0%     0%?     30%?    never
 Dark Falz
 (form 2)           8600? (11500?)    0%     60%    0%?     25%?    never
 Dark Falz              15000?
 (form 3)              (20000?)       30%    0%     10%     15%     never

Dimenian
Mutated Shark, with blue throats and knife hands. At Very Hard difficulty,
Dimenians move as fast as you can when running. Be careful that you don't
get surrounded by them or trapped in a corner.  When attacking, the
Dimenian will swing its arm once, and if the attacks are not interrupted,
they will alternate between left and right hands.  Use this to pick a
direction to when dodging.

La Dimenian
Purple colored Dimenian. Similar to regular Dimenians but weak to cold.

So Dimenian
Large yellow colored Dimenian. These are weak to lightning.

Chaos Bringer
Ghostly centaur. This will warp into being, rear back, and then attack. If
far away, it will charge at the player very quickly, stopping when it hits
a wall. This charge will hurt anything in its path, including other
monsters, and can confuse players.  If close, it will swing it's sword.
When near death, a Chaos Bringer will charge up its rifle by sucking TP
from all nearby users, and then fire a ball which will does considerable
damage if it hits.  Hitting the Chaos Bringer while it is rearing to charge
will prevent the attack; foie is best for this. As with many other large
monsters, hitting the Chaos Bringer with a physical weapon while it is
swinging at you will not interrupt its attack. Rarely, the Chaos Bringer
will drop an arm which can be turned into a C-Bringer's Rifle (rifle with a
Demon's Special).

Chaos Sorcerer, Bee R, Bee L
Ghostly magician. This has two floating diamond "Bees" floating next to it.
The Chaos Sorcerer will warp in and out. When attacking, a Bee will rise,
turn color to blue or red, and then will cast either Gibarta or Rafoie
(depending on the color of the Bee).  If the Chaos Sorcerer is hurt, the
Bee can turn green, and then the Chaos Sorcerer will cast Resta.  I'm
uncertain, but I believe the Chaos Sorcerer cannot do anything without a
Bee.  If a Bee is destroyed, the Chaos Sorcerer can regenerate it by
warping out & back in. Rarely, the Chaos Sorcerer will drop a piece which
can be turned into a C-Sorcerer's Staff.

Dark Belra
Giant iron golem. These are very slow moving but have two dangerous
attacks. The first type of attack, the Dark Belra will shoot one of it's
claws towards you, doing a fair amount of damage. The claw will damage
everything in its path, including other monsters, so occasionally this can
be used to your advantage. The second attack is for when you are close. It
will strike with both arms for considerable damage, and a good chance of
paralyzing you. If you must fight one with a melee weapon, run around
behind it where it cannot hit you.
VH 1100HP?, 100% grants, 75% zonde, 25% barta, 0% foie

Dark Gunner
Laser equipped waterbugs. These skitter about quickly and randomly, but
tend to end up in corners (moving in a completely random direction does
have its drawbacks). They cannot be attacked physically unless they are
frozen/paralyzed or when they stop to attack. They attack simultaneously by
each popping up a little ball shaped turret and firing a beam shot. Dark
Gunners mostly have green balls, but every shot cycle, one will have a red
ball. Damaging this one when it stops to attack but before it shoots its
laser will prevent all the Dark Gunners from attacking.  The beams that the
Dark Gunners shoot are capable of hitting other monsters.  It is rumored
that there is a rare variant called a Death Gunner, but I don't know anyone
credible who has ever seen one.

Claw
Flying claws. These look a little like flying fish. They slowly drift
around, and behave very much like Savage Wolves in that they're much more
likely to attack if they get behind you. By themselves, they are not
particularly dangerous, but in a large group, they can cause trouble by
preventing action. If you're in a room with a large number of Claws and
Dimenians, you're best off getting behind the Claws, as it will make it
difficult for the Dimenians to reach you.  Hitting a Claw with a Heavy
attack will knock it pretty far away.  Due to their motion, the third hit
of a three attack combo will usually miss, so I recommend using a two
attack Normal -> Heavy combo against these.

Bulclaw and Bulk
Claw pack. These are four Claws held together by a Bulk, and appear sort of
like an upside-down cup. A Bulclaw will attempt to grab and enclose you,
whereupon it can't be hit easily with melee weapons. If it is permitted to
remain locked onto a player, it can cause poison, and the four Claws will
be released surrounding the player.  The remainder of the Bulclaw is now
just a Bulk, which most of the time will float around waiting to be
killed.  If you leave a Bulk and its released Claws alone for too long,
they will gather together, the Bulk will glow purple, and it will one more
be a Bulclaw with all four claws.  If the Bulk separates again, it will be
considerably tougher than the first time.  Most attacks will kill a Bulk,
but be careful.  If you seriously damage a Bulk without killing it, it will
head towards one player and explode, leaving that player with only a single
remaining HP.  Be very cautious if you've damaged the Bulclaw before it
separates into Claws and Bulk -- a damaged Bulclaw will result in a damaged
Bulk.

Delsaber
Ghostly dark knight.   These are purple knights with large purple swords.
In their left hands, they can raise a shield which makes them impervious to
frontal melee attacks. While the shield is active, you must either attack
with a Technique or from the side or back. Delsabers warp in when you enter
their zone of space, and will disappear when you leave the room. When at a
far distance, they will perform a leaping attack.  Delsabers are very
dangerous to players who have high enough defense to prevent being knocked
down by their attack, as in each attack sequence, they can swing their
swords for a three hit combo.  After a Delsaber makes use of its shield for
invulnerability, the fire in the left arm will go out.  It won't be able to
use the shield again until it hits a player with the left arm (single
hit).  Rarely, when killing one, you may find a Delsaber's right arm, from
which Montague can make a Delsaber's Buster.  It is also theoretically
possible to get a left arm, from which Montague will make a Delsaber's
Shield.

Dark Falz (Ruins Boss)  (v1.2)

There are four phases for Dark Falz (you only need fight the first three in
Normal). I'm going to go into some detail about how to fight Dark Falz
since so many people don't seem to know what they are doing when it comes
to him. Unfortunately it's difficult to tell how much damage you're doing
to Dark Falz with Techniques due to some weird bug in display (the numbers
sort of appear inside of his body).  I'm doing a very loose estimation of
DF's hit points and then working backwards to determine Technique damage by
counting the number of times it takes to kill Falz with repetitions of only
one type of Technique.

STAGE ONE is the spike field. You must destroy a number of spikes. The
higher the difficulty level and number of players, the more spikes that
must be destroyed. The safest way to navigate the spike field is to
IMMEDIATELY run to the outside edge, and then maneuver your way around the
edge.  You can only hit spikes that are smoking purple, but the purple
smoke changes from spike to spike, making low powered attacks almost
worthless. If your Grants is strong enough to kill a spike in one casting,
I suggest you use it to clear these out, as you don't have to target for
that spell. It's also possible to freeze or paralyze spikes, not that this
is always a great idea. With a small amount of practice, it is very easy to
avoid spikes, so I don't bother trying to Reverser people who die in this
stage. Chances are they foolishly stayed in the center and died there.
Going after them almost guarantees you'll get yourself in trouble. Any
Force with decent level Grants should be able to take this stage by
herself, but make sure you have Dimate or Trimate on a customize button in
case you get surrounded by spikes.  Having no attacks on your shifted
customize buttons makes it much easier to handle this stage.  According to
an email I received from PumaTwins, the spikes are called Deravants.

STAGE TWO is the Dark Falz sitting on a three headed dragon. The three
dragon heads spit out spikes, and are the target points for your attacks.
Although using attack magic which requires targets don't appear to have any
affect, the visuals are hidden in the center of Falz's body, and you will
hear him grunt when you successfully attack.  I find it easiest to beat
this stage with a gun, preferably with a good dark %, but for Techniques,
Grants is the most damaging.  Many people have written to me to suggest
making sure Rabarta is on one of the Customize buttons, and I agree, this
makes life a lot easier even though Falz is immune to barta in this first
form.  Two blasts of good level Rabarta should destroy any spikes that are
hovering about nearby, and can keep a big group of them from getting out of
control.  Grants is the most damaging Technique you can use against

STAGE THREE is Dark Falz sitting on a big blob of flesh (or something, I
dunno). He moves around the outer edge of the field, mostly casting spells
but occasionally taking a swipe with one of his big arms. The spells he
makes use of are Rabarta, Rafoie, and Grants, all in massive quantity. By
not standing directly in front of him (between his arms), there is less
overlap from the Rabarta and Rafoie spells, meaning you can avoid taking
quite so much damage, and in the case of Rabarta, have less chance of being
frozen.  Again, you can do the most damage with a gun, but Rabarta and
Grants will both hurt him.  For stages two and three, Forces playing in a
team should shoot some, but mostly concentrate on keeping teammates healed
and revived, as well as clear of status problems (freeze and slow).

STAGE FOUR clears the center of the field, where a floating Dark Falz
dashes about doing his evil. It's never happened to me, but I've talked to
players who complain that if they're dead in the center of the field when
stage three ends and four begins, they will permanently lose their dropped
weapon and Meseta. In stage four, Dark Falz has four attack patterns.
First, he will dash around trying to chop players with a physical attack.
It's not too hard to avoid this by sticking to the outer edge of the area,
but it does quite a bit of damage if you get hit (to me, it does about 450
HP but my DFP isn't that great). Next, he will suck rocks up into the sky,
fly up, and then shoot a swath of glowing boulders at one of the players.
These can be avoided quite easily -- when you know it's about to happen,
get in the middle of the ring and run in a curved path slightly turned
inward to the center. If you get hit by one rock, you're going to get
tagged by any others that are still coming.  Third, while he's still flying
around in the sky, Dark Falz will cast Grants on everyone. To me this does
about 400HP of damage. This damage can be reduced with Resist/Saints units,
but since you need to survive that arm swipe, you're better off equipping
HP units instead. You can't avoid the Grants attack, so if you are
routinely killed by this, don't bother trying to beat Dark Falz by yourself
until have improved your attributes. Finally, after Dark Falz has taken
some damage, he will start using players as a shield. When this happens he
locks onto a player and starts sucking their soul. Player selection for
this occurs in sequence, skipping over players who are dead when it is
their turn to be victim. On the radar, you will see Dark Falz's blob in the
color of the player affected, and attached to that player with a wide
colored bar. If you get close to Dark Falz, you will see that player's
image standing in Dark Falz's mouth. During this time, Dark Falz can be
hurt, but damage to him is also transferred to his victim. Do not attack
Dark Falz while he's eating someone's soul! You will be hurting your
teammate, and quite possibly might kill him. You can even hurt allies who
have invulnerability from their MAGs!  Unfortunately, because of lag,
sometimes you won't see Dark Falz latched onto someone until after you
start attacking, so be careful and pay close attention to his patterns.
You can also almost always hear that he's attached to someone, even before
you see the link on radar.  Near the end of this attack, Dark Falz will
attempt to Megid everyone (which in my experience always fails), will cast
Grants on everyone, and then comes back down to start his attack pattern
over again. In the fourth stage, Dark Falz can only be attacked with
physical attacks when he appears "real" -- that is, a sort of solid
purplish color. On the radar, his dot will look a dark tan, without
flashing. Other times, such as when he's up in the sky, or when he's
shifting colors, physical attacks will do no damage, but magical attacks
will. Most of the time he is not vulnerable to physical attacks at all so
he's annoying to fight. When he can be attacked physically, try to do so.
Again, guns are the most effective way to attack, as with a good mechgun,
you can do close to 2000 points of damage in one 9 round burst. At all
other times, I keep casting Grants or Foie, neither of which do very much
damage, but its better than nothing.

A Force on this final stage should do what she can -- keep players healed
and revived to as great an extent as possible, and make sure teammates have
Shifta cast on them during times when DF is vulnerable to physical attack
(usually during first attack pattern and coming out of the fourth). By the
time Dark Falz is trying to eat souls, he's going to be pretty weak, so be
more vigilant with Reverser when he starts this up.

Some players either cannot comprehend how Dark Falz's soul suck transfers
damage or they simply choose to ignore how this affects the other
teammates. I strongly advise that if your party is weak and one of your
teammates keeps hurting the rest of you, stop healing & reviving him, and
kill him off when it's his turn to be the victim. People who attack Dark
Falz while he's locked on to another teammate are a serious liability. Be
careful when playing with unfamiliar people. Dark Falz is a favorite time
for weapon thieves to strike.

Finally, especially if you are playing with android teammates, before you
trigger the boss, drop mates and moon atomizers in ones and twos around the
edge of the field. These can come in handy during the fourth stage,
especially if an android is the strongest member of your team.


MISCELLANEOUS

Section ID  (v1.1)

When you create a character, it is assigned one of ten Section IDs. This ID
is based on the letters and characters in your name. Your Section ID
affects your MAGs' evolutions, and the types of items that are likely to be
found in games that you create.

For a Force, the best Section ID to have is Pinkal, since Technique discs
are more commonly found with this.

To calculate, take the units digit of  the sum of the ASCII values for the
characters in the name, and then for that result:

 Value  Section ID   Items Found

   0      Viridia    frequent: shots, partisans
                     rare: slicers
   1     Greenill    frequent: rifles, daggers
                     rare: swords
   2       Skyly     frequent: swords, rifles
                     rare: mechguns
   3     Bluefill    frequent: partisans, rods
                     rare: wands
   4     Purplenum   frequent: mechgun, daggers
                     rare: swords, partisans
   5      Pinkal     frequent: canes, wands, technique disks
                     rare: rifles
                     supposedly only class that can find Hard Attack disks
                     at level 15
   6      Redria     frequent: armor, shields, slicers, shots
                     rare: daggers
   7       Oran      frequent: daggers, swords, wands
                     rare: rods
   8    Yellowboze   frequent: meseta
                     distribution of items is equal
   9      Whitill    frequent: slicers, mechguns
                     rare: shots

Credit to NOFXXX for posting item frequencies to the GameFAQs bulletin
board.  Also take a look at Exploder's Section ID Items FAQ.  It contains
some misinformation, but overall is a good source to see what types of
things you can expect.

Photon Blast Assist And Combos  (v1.2)

When a teammate does a Photon Blast, you can hit the Y button to send 10
points of your PB power over to him for each time you press Y.  This will
make his Photon Blast stronger, and give him a little bit of PB meter after
the blast is finished.  Apparently doing the assist may also trigger a MAG
assist from your own MAG.

If you do your own Photon Blast immediately after your teammate, it will be
placed in queue as a combo, and the order will be shown by a number next to
the player name.  If you use the same type of PB, only one will occur but
it will be stronger than normal.  You can still assist if you combo your
Photon Blast.

Although I don't recommend it, it's possible to save your Photon Blast "for
later" without accidentally triggering it.  When your MAG's PB meter hits
100, remove it, and while the yellow meter is clearing, hold the R (shift)
button.  This will cause the shift keys to remain blank, though you can
equip another MAG and start building PB meter again.  The only purpose I
can see for this is to be able to keep a MAG charged while still being able
to do PB assists.  When you want to use the charged MAG's PB, equip it and
immediately trigger the Photon Blast.  Going to Pioneer 2 will clear the PB
charge for all your MAGs.

A couple people who I consider to be credible have told me that you can do
a double Photon Blast by charging the second MAG, doing the blast, quickly
swapping to the first MAG while the PB is still happening, and then
immediately do another Photon Blast.  I haven't been quick enough to do
this myself, so consider this to be unverified.

Attacking Another Player  (v1.2)

The Japanese version of PSO has a strange quirk in that it will allow one
player to attack a teammate. This can be done by placing a support magic or
Star Atomizer on a shifted customize button that shares the same button as
an unshifted attack. (For example, R-Yellow has Star Atomizer, Yellow has
Normal Attack.) Press the attack button and shift, and the attack will
target the teammate. It's possible to knock someone down (or cause them to
go into "block stun" if they have high enough evade), although it doesn't
do any damage. For benign purposes, this can be used to build up another
player's Photon Blast. For less benign purposes, this can be used to
disrupt a player's ability to fight and escape from monsters.

The US version of PSO will allow you to target another player in a similar
way but with a Technique.  I've done this with Zonde and Grants.  For
example, Resta on shift-X, Zonde on X.  Hold shift trigger to target
teammate, release and press X, press shift trigger again.  This will ad
maybe three or four to the victim's PB meter.  Be careful when doing this.
Apparently, targetting someone who is activating a Telepipe can cause the
game to lock up.

If someone is hitting you this way, it is deliberate. I suggest you leave
the game and play with someone else.

WARNING: If someone has magic enabled in lobby/Pioneer 2, they can cause
your game to lock up ("FSOD") by targetting you on the Pioneer 2.  The
frozen screen problem may cause you to lose your character or any items in
your inventory that aren't equipped.  I have not experienced this myself,
but several people have told me that it's happened to them.

Soul Eater Quest

WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILER INFORMATION ABOUT QUESTS

To get the Soul Eater, you must play through several quests.

First is the quest Dr. Osto's Research, during which you will join up with
a HUnewearl named Sue. When she asks you your name, do not tell her. If
you've already done this quest and told her your name, you will not be able
to get the Soul Eater on this difficulty level, even if you replay the
quest. Make sure you talk to all the NPC's in this quest.

Next is the quest Unsealed Door. Sue will show up here as well, make sure
you talk to her, and complete the quest.

Next is Waterfall Tears which is actually an earlier Cave based quest, if
you've already done this one, you can redo it after you complete every
other available quest, thus making them all reselectable. Sue is hanging
out aboard the Pioneer 2 during this quest. Talk to her here then go do the
quest. After beating Anna (which completes the quest), continue onward, and
find and defeat Kireek. You will be able to see him on the Area Map.

After doing Waterfall Tears you will unlock Black Paper. Kireek is hanging
out in Cave 2, find and defeat him here, then complete the quest.

Finally, do the quest From The Depths, which is the last available quest in
the game. After completing it, Ash will leave you. Go back to Ruins 2 and
find Kireek. After beating him you will automatically take the Soul Eater.

Frying Pan Quest

WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILER INFORMATION ABOUT QUESTS

This isn't a great weapon, but if you want it, start in the quest Secret
Delivery. Answer "!!" to the man outside of the Hunter's Guild who talks
about the "ultimate weapon". You will get a WEAPONS badge. Complete the
quest. You will find the other WEAPONS members aboard Pioneer 2 in the
quests Value Of Money, Gran Squall, Claiming A Stake and Lost Bride. In
this last one, the correct response is "Enthusiasm". After talking to the
WEAPONS member, you must complete the quest. Once you've collected all the
badges, do the quest Secret Delivery a second time.  Talk to the original
WEAPONS member, who tells you to talk to the big boss.  Talk to the woman
outside of the Shops and you will get the Frying Pan.

Eggblaster?  (v1.2)

Oops, Celes Chere wrote to tell me that this is "Eggblaster" not
"Eggbeater"   :)

According to Lord Galacian from the GameFAQs PSO message board, to get the
Eggblaster gun you will need a Sonic Adventure save with all emblems, and a
Sonic Adventure 2 Demo save with an S Class ranking.

Judging from the amount of damage I see being done with the Eggblaster,
it's not really that great, even when ground to +99.

I've been told all Eggblasters (and fwiw, also "Nei's Claws" and "Sonic
Knuckles") are now considered to be illegal items and will cause you to be
booted off the servers immedately.  Can anyone confirm?

Backing Up Your Character Data

PSO creates a file on your memory card named "PSO______SYS". This contains
your character data. You cannot copy this with the Dreamcast's built in
tool, but you can make a backup of it (and for that matter, any other
"uncopyable" file) by using the Planet Web Browser v2.0 and emailing the
file to yourself as an attachment.

In an attempt to stop item cloners, Sega has recently changed their server
software to no longer permit users to revert to an old backup file. So if
you play online, your old backup will probably no longer work.

Why make a backup? Because PSO is buggy, and if there is a network problem
while you are performing some action that affects the memory card (using
the Check Room, your Item inventory, or changing your Equiped items), the
game may lock up, and you can lose your items and even your character.

You can also use the backup as a storage method to let you save multiple
characters even if you have only one VMU.

If you don't have an email account that properly handles attachments, you
can also make a backup through Booyaka.com.

WARNING: According to GODFREE from PSO World, Planet Web Browser v2.6
occasionally flashes the DC internal memory, and thus can wipe out the PSO
registration info. You will have to reregister your PSO, with a new serial
number and key, which you can obtain by calling 1-800-USA-SEGA.
Unfortunately, your saved characters will be lost.

Secret Costume Colors

There are two additional secret costumes colors for each class which can be
unlocked by using a special code for the character name. From MeTh0DiX on
the GameFAQs message board comes a universal code: SHUGRADJYT

Problems Using Moon Atomizers  (v1.1)

Owners of imported Dreamcasts who are playing the US PSO (or as I've talked
to, owners of a European Dreamcast who have imported a US PSO) may find
they are unable to use Moon Atomizers, and Star Atomizers and support
Techniques will not affect teammates.  In addition, Guild Cards may not be
accepted properly from other players.

This happens when you boot using the Utopia Boot Loader. Using the Action
Replay demo CD (available free from some UK magazines), CDX (for Japanese
DC), or some "mod chips" will permit Moon Atomizers to work correctly.

Thieves

This gets much more discussion that it warrants.

When you die, you will drop the weapon you have equiped and any Meseta that
you are carrying. Any other player can pick these up. Most PSO players have
respect for other people and won't take your things on purpose, and will
give them back if they picked them up by accident. However, there are some
people who will steal your weapon if you die, or worse, will attempt to be
disruptive to you in order to try to take your weapon. (It doesn't even
have to be a good weapon, there are some people who simply want to steal
from you to be annoying.) If you have something that you really don't want
to lose, don't equip it if you think you might die and don't trust the
people you're playing with.

The people who are most likely to be thieves are those who play in an
anti-social manner. The most common examples: constantly putting up garbage
messages during fights (attempting to obscure your vision so you will die).
Triggering a boss pad before all team members are aboard. Running off to
pick up treasure and taking everything while leaving you to fight. Running
straight through you while pulling a train of monsters. Even if the people
who do this aren't trying to steal from you, playing with unpleasant people
isn't a whole lot of fun, and I suggest you leave the game and play with
someone else.

Trading guild cards immediately on entering a game will usually cut down
the chances of negative behavior -- if people know they can be tracked (and
a guild card lets you do this even if they change characters), they are
less likely to act like jerks. While it's true that this can also let some
losers stalk you, it's easy to ignore these fools. I am unwilling to play
with anyone who is unwilling to trade guild cards.

Again, the majority of PSO players are decent people. Use a little caution,
but don't let fear of thieves or a bad experience with a thief ruin your
enjoyment of the game. And remember, it's just a game -- you haven't lost
anything real.

Cheating  (v1.1)

There are two common ways to cheat.

Cloning items used to be easily done by all users through data file
duplication. Make a backup copy, drop off items in a friend's game, restore
the backup, and you've doubled your items.  You can still clone or hack an
item with a Gameshark, or you can do what most people do and let someone
else do it for you.  Trading for or otherwise taking a high powered, very
rare weapon is cheating: you're obtaining something you didn't earn.  I
have less respect for people who trade for their cloned and hacked crap
than for the ones who are making all the duplicates that have flooded the
game.  People who want to cheat but can't do it for themselves are just
stupid.

Alteration of the game engine, via Gameshark codes, is the other method.
There are Gameshark codes to do quick level ups; quick MAG raising; break
the MAG level limit (the source of all the "level 999" MAGs); prevent the
HP, TP, and PB gauges from decreasing; equip any item; and one hit kills.

Normally, I'm in favor of allowing players to cheat at games. Anyone who
has purchased a game can decide how they want to play. Even if they're
doing something that would devalue the game to me, I can still play how I
want.

Unfortunately, since much of the enjoyment of PSO comes from playing with
other people, if you are playing with a cheater, their actions do affect
you. The most obvious form of cheating, that of playing with hacked and
cloned items, can greatly unbalance the game. All those very low level
characters with the Spread Needles and a hacked Opa Opa MAG are ruining the
game when they join a team with other new players. They're preventing other
players from learning how to play, and worse, they're ruining the fun for
everyone else by killing all the monsters before anyone else can even touch
them. Some cheaters rationalize this dislike of cheating as "player
hating", which is ludicrous. There is no skill involved in trading for and
then using an unearned, overpowered weapon.

I dont recommend surprising cheaters by taking their weapons when they
die. Stealing is stealing, and it's an abuse of someone else's trust. If
someone's choice of weapon bothers you, ask that person to change their
equipment.

A warning to cheaters: the same server patch that will prevent you from
using an old backup will also prevent save files containing some hacked
items. The hacked MAGs seem to be ok, but stuff like the hacked God/Battle
(which appears to everyone else to be a Priest/Mind) are not.

Player Killing  (v1.2)

For a couple weeks, there had been a huge problem with a bug exploit
allowing one play to kill another.  This made use of a hacked
Devil/Technique-- item which caused a player's Technique levels to be a
negative number.  When a player equipped with this hacked unit casted
Resta, it would take HP away from other teammates, instead of adding them.
This would usually result in the teammates' death.

Users who attempt to equip or possess a Devil/Technique-- are now
disconnected immediately from Sega's servers.

There are also rumors that it is possible to kill players with a physical
attack through a Gameshark code, or via hitting them with Megid through the
player targeting glitch.  As far as I know, both of these rumors are false.

Beware, getting hit by a Technique aboard Pioneer 2 or while going into a
Telepipe may cause your game to lock up.  Also, it is rumored that the
Resta PK is possible through use of a Gameshark code used to modify a MAG's
stats to negative numbers, or by modifying a user's Technique level
directly to a negative number.

Sega's Attempts To Prevent Cheating  (v1.1)

Because of the large number of cheaters that infest PSO, Sega's attempted
to do a few things to get things under control.  To try to stop duping,
Sega no longer permits character backups to work.  Now, to stop hacked
items, Sega's servers check for known "hacked" items and will immediately
disconnect a player who attempts to use one.

However, there is still no way to stop item duping or character stats
inflation that are done offline.  (For example, the Gameshark hack to pump
XP per monster killed will allow a user to almost instantly create a very
high level character -- Sega has no ability to detect or prevent this type
of falsely generated character from being used.)

Walking Through Closed Doors  (v1.1)

A whole lot of people have written asking if I could explain how to do
this.  It's fairly simple, but please do not abuse this -- I recommend
walking through closed doors only when you're the sole player in an online
game, and you need to open a locked door that needs people to stand on
switches.

First, you must have a melee weapon equipped or no weapon at all.  You do
not have to have a double saber, and you do not have to unequip your weapon
unless that weapon is a gun or throwing knife.  Now, walk to the edge of
the door.  Make note of where your shadow is, and try to get it as far to
the edge of the door as you can.  Turn slightly away from the door, and do
a Normal -> Normal -> Normal combo.  You should notice that your shadow has
scooted back a little, and probably away from the edge of the door.
Maneuver yourself to the edge, and repeat.  You'll keep going backwards
into the door a little at a time, until you're all the way through.

In the Ruins, you can walk through beam fences by going through a post at
the end of the beam (meaning, the post can't be in the middle of the
fence).  I've heard a few people claim that they can move through any of
the fences without having to do the backwards-walk, but no one has been
able to demonstrate this to me.

Escaping the Ruins' "Jar" Trap  (v1.1)

If you get caught and have no one available to free you, go the menu system
and drop an item.  You can then walk out of the trap, though you cannot
perform any actions until the jar explodes, and if you remain too close to
the jar, as usual, you will sustain damage.  This is more useful in online
play, since offline, these traps explode very quickly.  Thanks to Gen2000
from the GameFAQs bulletin board for this one.

Picture Snapshot  (v1.1)

Please take a look at pso.donut.dhs.org.  The basic steps: place a
controller in slot d, and a VMU with 195 free blocks in the second slot of
the controller.  Press A and Start for a closeup of the center of the
screen, Press X and Start for a picture of the full screen.  The image will
be saved to a file "PSO______IMG" which is apparently a 16 bit uncompressed
bitmap, at 256x192 resolution.  Pso.donut.dhs.org has an online conversion
utility that will turn the image into a jpeg.

Change To Another Player's Camera View  (v1.2)

Have a second controller plugged in (I use the second controller port),
hold the D-Pad to the left or right, and while holding the D-Pad, press the
Left and Right triggers at the same time.  Your view will change to the
perspective of another player's.  You must be in the same area as another
player for this to work.  You can return to your own view by repeating this
until the camera cycles back to you.

Kind of neat, but in my opinion, useless.  Thanks to Switchblade for
telling me about this one.

Oh, if you want to see something very trippy, watch someone as they go
through a teleporter :)

Other Hidden Quests  (v1.1)

WARNING, CONTAINS SPOILER INFORMATION ABOUT QUESTS

It is possible that there are some other hidden quests in the game.
Talking to the ranger aboard Pioneer 2 and to Elenor in the Magnitude of
Metal offline quest both give event chimes, although nothing seems to come
of it.

Also, telling Sue your name in the Dr. Osto's Research quest leads to
another set of dialogue with her and Bernie.  Nothing seems to come of this
either.

Anyone with information about concluding either of these, please write to
me.

Equipping Any Weapon  (v1.2)

There is no such unit as "GOD/EQUIP", or at least not that anyone has ever
found.

That being said, it is possible to equip any weapon, aside from using a
cheat loader.

Boy did I screw up the instructions for this in the revision 1.1 of the
Guide.  Sorry about that.  Here's how it should be done:

First, place a weapon that you can equip above the weapon that you want to
equip but cannot.  (For example, if you are a Force, sort your items so
that there is a Sword underneath a Cane.)  Go to the Item list, and press
A, down on the D-Pad, and A again, very fast, but not simultaneously.  Be
prepared to waste a lot of time on this, but it does work.

A couple people have written to me saying that Artiic is full of beans and
one of the worst trolls on the GameFAQs bb.  Yes, I know this, which is why
I took the time to verify that it works myself before including it here.
It does work, but it is hard as heck to do -- I've only gotten it to work
once after literally weeks of trying, although a few other people on the
GameFAQs bulletin board claimed it only took them about 45 minutes to get
it done.  Even though the game allows you to do this without any external
cheat loader, I do consider this to be a form of cheating!

Credit to Artiic for posting about this on the GameFAQs bulletin board.

Someone asked me if the game can be saved like this.  I don't know.

Fooling The Swear Filter  (v1.2)

You can create a shortcut with your language setting on Japanese.  After
typing a Roman letter, press the spacebar twice.  The text will appear
larger than normal, and the swear filter will miss whatever juvenile
comment you want to make (you can also toggle the key palette to the larger
letters if you don't have a keyboard).

Credit to Cloud Playa for posting this on the GameFAQs bulletin board.


Acknowledgements, Credits, And Other Useful Reading Material  (v1.2)

The official Sega of America site for PSO
(http://score.sega.com/games/phantasystaronline/pc/index.html) is quite
useless, but it is an "official" Sega site.  Like that's supposed to mean
anything, but here it is anyway.

Sonic Team (http://www.sonicteam.com) are the developers of PSO and PSO
v2.  All the neat stuff for PSO is in the Japanese language section.  Of
primary interest (unless you can read Japanese I suppose) are the pictures
of v2.  I've been told there's also a snapshot conversion utility but I
haven't looked around for it.

PSO Jazz's MAG section (http://www.jeha.org/pso/mag/dic_e.html) is a great
reference. Not only do you get information on how MAG's evolve and what
they will do, but you also get pictures.

Another really nice MAG guide is the Scene51.com MAG Database
(http://www.scene51.com/mags.htm).  This is a good visual summary of MAGs
and how to raise them.

PSO World (http://tomeeboy.com/pso) has a pretty good listing of rare
items, with pictures. It's a good way to check out what some of the more
esoteric items are, so you'll have an idea of what it would be useful to
find, and you'll have some idea what the latest overpowered fad is when the
cloners get their hands on it.

GameFAQs.com (http://www.gamefaqs.com) is probably the overall best source
of game related information available on the net. Worth taking a look at
there are NoZedive13's MAG FAQ, Khaotic's Item List, and Miyuu's Section ID
FAQ. There are also very active message boards there for general discussion
of PSO and for trading items.

pso@ghoul.net (http://www.ghoul.net/pso) will always have the latest
version of this Guide, and also has a convenient Section ID calculator
written in QuickBASIC. (Ok maybe it's not that convenient.)

Booyaka (http://www.booyaka.com/games/vmu) is probably the best source for
Dreamcast VMU saves available. For PSO, there's currently a Downloaded
Quest available there called "A Letter From Lionel".

PSO Snapshot Transfer (http://pso.donut.dhs.org) will automatically convert
your PSO snapshot to a jpeg.

Game Software Code Creators Club (specificly,
http://www.cmgsccc.com/dc/pso.shtml) has all the codes you need to abuse
the hell out of PSO.

Getting PSO To Work With The BBA
(http://www.daytonsmisc.com/article14_default.htm) is a very detailed
explanation of how to get the US release of PSO to work with a Broad Band
Adapter.

Credit to the following GameFAQs message board members for supplying
information about max base stats -- blame them if these are wrong :)

Aenya, Arleas, Aurora Revolution, AzNGamer, dvdashot, faceless, FireX,
Hylozoist, Legionnare, Mark, pipsqueak, and plageron.

Thanks to the following who have written with corrections, suggestions, or
just to say hi: Ian M, Max Fuse, EV-9|)9.3, Archon Shiva, PumaTwins, SHORT,
Tom C, Gary C, Sebas, Atwight G, Josh S, Josh D, Peter J, Henry H,
Answer42, Kelvin L, Celes Chere, ikem o, Warpath :P, Lilibat, Gouki, Jason
V, Shoku, John-Micheal M, SykusStar, CV, Joe L, Halfyhatr, Rubblish, Rich
C, Reno Rude, Adam N, and Tim.

Very special thanks to the following players, most of whom I have spent
quite a bit of time playing with, and all of whom are good teammates. (If I
missed your name, my apologies. I accidentally overwrote my guild card data
file with that of a new character's.)

Bob and Zed, my RAcast buddies with whom I've spent more time on PSO than
with any other players, combined.
Bull, RAmar
D8Vid and JakeZero, RAmar and HUmar
Helena Sue, HUnewearl, good friend and inveterate MAG feeder
LLDOWSER, HUmar
Magdelena-69, FOnewearl, and proof that I'm not the only one who tries to
play a Force "the right way".
Warpath, RAmar, who has demonstrated that it's possible to own a Spread
Needle without abusing it.


Revision History & Future Updates

v1.2  24-Apr-2001
Some grammar corrections (if you see any other errors, please let me know),
more on how to fight with melee weapons, various corrections God/Battle, a
correction to the contradictory language of the "Equip Any Weapon" section
in miscellaneous, fixed up the Bestiary with accurate HP, other nonsense.
Future revisions will include corrections (if necessary), monster DFP's (if
I feel like it), and an improvement on the Megid success rating as I gather
more statistical information on this.

v1.1  5-Apr-2001
Wow, a whole lot of people wrote to me with corrections and suggestions.
So here's version 1.1.  Also included are some more odd things about the
game.
To make the new stuff easier to find, I've placed a version number next to
the topic header where changes have been made.  For the next revision, I'd
like to add a "Megid success rating" to the Bestiary for the monsters on
Very Hard.

v1.0  23-Mar-2001 first and most likely last version.
The Bestiary section on the Mine is missing a little information., and in
the far, far, future, I may play through Normal and Hard again with a new
character to expand the Bestiary, but considering how much time it took me
to finish the section on Very Hard, this is unlikely.  Otherwise I think
this is pretty much complete.

Suggestions, corrections and comments are welcome. Send via email to
pso@ghoul.net.
