SDN computer RPG questions

[Shroom Man 777]

You can also do NPC Valdemar and Jaerimuse's sidequests of beating the breadlines and getting the first bread before everyone else! You have to fight all of the people who are lining for bread though. Valdemar will let you keep the bread to survive the oncoming oil collapse that will ravage SDN City and bring forth the apocalypse! Jaerimuse will give you stock market advice so you can earn more Gil and buy cars!

Help Starglider beat back the robot uprising! Bleep-bloop-bloop!

[MKSheppard]

I can't believe you people missed the most important sidequest of them all:

Phong's!

In which you take a sidetrip to Tranquility Base to recover the Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera left behind by Neil and Buzz on Apollo 11. When you give it to Phong, he provides you with the most important 1960s GRAPH of them all, which unlocks both Stuart and Shep's most important attacks.

[TimothyC]

I can't believe you people missed the most important sidequest of them all:

Phong's!

In which you take a sidetrip to Tranquility Base to recover the Hasselblad 500 EL Data Camera left behind by Neil and Buzz on Apollo 11. When you give it to Phong, he provides you with the most important 1960s GRAPH of them all, which unlocks both Stuart and Shep's most important attacks.

The only catch is that you need to get either

• the Juno VI

or

• The Titan 34C

launch codes first, which means going and getting the Launcher GRAPH from Shep, which isn't easy. To get it, you have to complete the Secret Museum Plans Side-quest (described above), and then go to the museum archives (The Elevator in the IMAX theater is the only way to get there).

Because most people don't know about the Museum Plans Side-quest, they don't know about this one

[Simon_Jester]

Another thing to remember about the Physics Lab: the Particle Cannon sidequest comes in two stages. Most people only complete the first stage, which is why they think the Particle Cannon sucks.

1) Simon the Jester will first ask if you have any Cable Spaghetti; the Physics Lab's research accelerator uses a lot of these, as you can see from this screenshot.

2) This is the part everyone knows about: collect 18 Cable Spaghettis.
2a) One option is to round up Wild Cable Spaghettis from 'abandoned' areas like the Ruins of ASVS. This gets you more XP, but Wild Cable Spaghettis can put up a surprisingly tough fight.
2b) The other option is to steal Domesticated Cable Spaghettis from inhabited areas. These can most easily be looted from Fundietown, where people will blame the failure of their computers on the wrath of the machine-spirits and ignore the fact that they aren't plugged in. In most other areas, attempting to round up people's Cable Spaghettis forces you to fight them, so be careful who you take them from- this is a good way to get beaten up by powerful NPCs or to mortally offend plot-critical ones.

3) Return the Cable Spaghettis to Simon, who will thank you and incorporate them into his lab apparatus.

4) Simon will then give you the Particle Cannon. However, this is the cheap version which does only a small amount of radiation damage. Like all forms of radiation damage it has a percentage chance of giving the target cancer, but the probability is very low. Not very useful.

5) After giving you the Particle Cannon, Simon will grumble about how long it's taking to get the Custom-Made Energy Analyzer Parts from the Machine Shop.

6) Go to the Machine Shop and talk to the Machinists. You have several options here: you can persuade them to moving Simon's job order to the front of the list (difficult challenge unless you have an optimized charmer in your party), you can bribe them with a "crash priority fee," or you can threaten them into finally getting some %$%# work done- though this may mean a confrontation with Campus Security if you aren't careful. Alternatively, you can go upstairs to the Departmental Secretary and charm her into assigning Simon's job priority. She is much easier to charm than the Machinists, but this requires you to sit through some very lengthy dialogue cut-scenes and there is at least a 50% chance she'll be out to lunch on any given visit to the building.

7) Return to the Physics Lab one day later and pick up the Custom-Made Energy Analyzer Parts from the Machinists.

8 ) Give the Parts to Simon. There will be a short cut-scene where Simon does his happy dance. Afterwards, he will make modifications to the Particle Cannon, converting it into the upgraded version: the Beta Ray Blaster!

9) The Beta Ray Blaster does large amounts of fire and electrical damage to a target, along with significantly more radiation damage. It also does extra secondary radiation damage to metallic targets. This is great for fighting the Überwanked Panzer Designs in the Mystikal's Revenge sublevel, because of the high probability of hitting them with the Cancer status effect, which increases the panzers' already extremely high risk of mechanical failures.

[RogueIce]

1. In the Square SDN game how does one beat Thanas in the boss fight?, I've even tried copy pasting Shep's Nuclear Attack

In addition to the advice given, make sure you do not have Bounty in your party. Thanas has an instant KO attack he can use against him, resulting in a wasted party slot (because Thanas is in a permanent 'Blitz' state, he'll attack Bounty before he can do anything even if you revive him)

[Thanas]

Bad form to wank about oneself, Simon.

[Steve]

According to my experience, Steve is a pretty cool optional PC to have. I mean, he has higher physical attack and defense stats than even Dalton, though aside from "Foot Stomp" and "Foot-to-Ass Kick" none of his technique skills are anywhere near Dalton's stuff.

Though you have to find the Universal Catalogue of Space Lesbian Babes to unlock him. That's a particularly rare item in the game. Your choice as to whether it's worth it.

[Thanas]

Bad form to wank write about oneself, Steve.

[OmegaChief]

You know, I always got stuck right in the tutorial and gave up, but this thread has inspired me to go back and try and finally get into the game proper, any of you more experiance players have any tips to help?

[phongn]

I'd highly recommend picking up the Surlethe-Kuroneko Axioms, which have an exceptionally high probability of stunning enemies for at least one turn. However, you must complete a variety of side-quests, including:

• Persuade the village idiot that 0.999... = 1
• Build furniture for Surlethe so he can work on this thesis instead
• Acquire the Shroom in occupied Math-Magic Land
• Successfully train in math-fu under Grandmaster Kuroneko

Bad form to wank about oneself, Simon.

Bad form to wank write about oneself, Steve.

Be warned: Thanas has a special field that neutralizes the Self-Promotion buff acquired after winning at least on of the Fanfic Challenges.

[Thanas]

You know, I always got stuck right in the tutorial and gave up, but this thread has inspired me to go back and try and finally get into the game proper, any of you more experiance players have any tips to help?

Your best starting point would be to enter the instance called announcements and complete the Board Policy quest. Sure, it is a bit dready, but it gives you a great deal of tips, makes you near flame-proof and decreases the likelihood of a boss using the banning attack by 50%.

[RogueIce]

makes you near flame-proof

That's actually not true, as the flame-proof stat doesn't actually work. It's supposed to, but there's a glitch in the programming and you'll get full-flamed no matter what you do.

[Steve]

Bad form to wank write about oneself, Steve.

Eh? I made fun of myself (the Lesbian bit) and pointed out only that A) I have big feet and B) I'm bigger than Dalton.

It was hardly a long list like Jester.

[Steve]

You know, the best character for dealing with the Georgia random encounters is Mayabird. Her Flame abilities come in real handy.

[Thanas]

makes you near flame-proof

That's actually not true, as the flame-proof stat doesn't actually work. It's supposed to, but there's a glitch in the programming and you'll get full-flamed no matter what you do.

Not true, this only happens when the hidden ability "INT" is not activated via the logic spell or your enemy belongs to the jerk class.

[Civil War Man]

Not true, this only happens when the hidden ability "INT" is not activated via the logic spell or your enemy belongs to the jerk class.

Unfortunately that spell is not available to certain characters and jerks comprise a fairly large percentage of the random encounters and at least a third, maybe half, of the boss battles.

It's one of those abilities that looks great in the manual, but actually has remarkably limited use in the game.

[OmegaChief]

Is it just me or is the Occams Razor wepaon broken? It's supposed to be super effective against the enemies that attack using the Needlessly Complex Rationaisation abilties, but it just doesn't seem to do anything at all.

[Questor]

Is it just me or is the Occams Razor wepaon broken? It's supposed to be super effective against the enemies that attack using the Needlessly Complex Rationaisation abilties, but it just doesn't seem to do anything at all.

It only works against enemies of the type "educated". Its actually absorbed by the others.

Don't try it against a fundy.

[Surlethe]

I'm stuck near Kurzweil Mountain. I heard that the game branches there --- the easy way is to go around the mountain, but if you completed the Prefect's Quest earlier in the game you can follow the Starglider_AI to the peak (one of the GameFAQs walkthroughs says that there's a singularity there which, if you do the Starglider_AI quest right, lets you max all your stats). So I did the Prefect's Quest and tried following the Starglider_AI up but I keep dying about halfway up to more and more difficult random encounters with pretty vicious software programs. What's the deal?

[Surlethe]

You know, I always got stuck right in the tutorial and gave up, but this thread has inspired me to go back and try and finally get into the game proper, any of you more experiance players have any tips to help?

Your best starting point would be to enter the instance called announcements and complete the Board Policy quest. Sure, it is a bit dready, but it gives you a great deal of tips, makes you near flame-proof and decreases the likelihood of a boss using the banning attack by 50%.

It's only useful because the game has a really tight learning curve. After two or three boss encounters the probability of a boss using a banning attack drops to near zero (it's actually inversely proportional to the sum of your characters' exp), unless you use a really, really stupid strategy in a boss fight. Apparently there were some complaints about that in the beta version.

[Civil War Man]

By the way, am I the only one that thinks some of the character mechanics are total BS? I mean, I understand that the game setting gives you party members that are from rival factions, but the party conflict system seems programmed to activate at the most inopportune moments. I can't even count the number of times I've had to reload a save file because half my party would go ballistic every time Stark uses Scoff Rays.

That being said, this game does have what I consider to be the best cutscene in video game history. Put behind spoiler tags for people who haven't finished Act IV yet. Spoiler

The one where the Senate burns to the ground. Lots of production value, and an almost seamless blend of tragedy, dark humour, and slapstick comedy.

[Mayabird]

Thanks Shroom! I can't believe I missed that candle trick before.

And this has reminded me: does anyone know exactly why we have this thing where there are characters in game that are both PCs and NPCs? I thought maybe it was some joke and that something funny would happen if you had the PC in your party while talking to the NPC, but I've had Stuart in my party while talking to NPC Stuart, and the same with Stark, and there's absolutely no change in it. They say the same things, do the same things, etc. It's only a little surreal, but I was hoping for something special and I got nothing. Was it an intentional thing (and if so, why) or did the game designers just screw up majorly? Looking online for answers hasn't helped me one bit.

[phongn]

And this has reminded me: does anyone know exactly why we have this thing where there are characters in game that are both PCs and NPCs? I thought maybe it was some joke and that something funny would happen if you had the PC in your party while talking to the NPC, but I've had Stuart in my party while talking to NPC Stuart, and the same with Stark, and there's absolutely no change in it. They say the same things, do the same things, etc. It's only a little surreal, but I was hoping for something special and I got nothing. Was it an intentional thing (and if so, why) or did the game designers just screw up majorly? Looking online for answers hasn't helped me one bit.

Time constraints. Some guys decoded the scripts and it looks like they intended for not-crazy things to happen but they ran out of time to make the holiday season

[Questor]

Thanks Shroom! I can't believe I missed that candle trick before.

And this has reminded me: does anyone know exactly why we have this thing where there are characters in game that are both PCs and NPCs? I thought maybe it was some joke and that something funny would happen if you had the PC in your party while talking to the NPC, but I've had Stuart in my party while talking to NPC Stuart, and the same with Stark, and there's absolutely no change in it. They say the same things, do the same things, etc. It's only a little surreal, but I was hoping for something special and I got nothing. Was it an intentional thing (and if so, why) or did the game designers just screw up majorly? Looking online for answers hasn't helped me one bit.

Square had two different teams working on the game. One did PCs and the other did NPCs.

They got different versions of the design document. It was too late to fix it, so they tried to make it a "feature, not a bug"

Course, this is square. the only character that matters is the viewpoint character, all the others are ignored except for combat.

[Enigma]

Go to Internet Tryhard Town and find the NPC Norade and get him to teach you the ability "Backseat Modding", then perform this ability to any wandering NPC and you are sure to find the Daltonator.

As for acquiring him, well... that's another matter entirely. There is a fifty percent chance that he will acquire you instead.

But if you have some GPs then you can easily find the Daltonator. Just go to the nearest "Dunkin' Ye Donuts" and purchase a box of donuts. Make sure the box is open when you step outside. Wait for a turn or two and the Daltonator will appear.

*WARNING* Make sure you get the best donuts as purchasing inferior donuts will cause the Daltonator to become enraged and transform into his Champion form as "The Librarian" and will attack you while yelling his war cry "ROB SMASH!". And if you instead offered bran muffins then he'll go from his Daltonator form to his Ultimate form as "The Wookiee". If he transforms into The Wookiee, then it is best for you to run and hide.

Remember, buy the best donuts and he'll join your party.

:):)