Excalibur II Help Needed

[Sona]

So I have no shame about using boosters and such to get this hellhole of an achievement, and I was wondering if the veteran players of this community could help me with the unmentioned shortcuts for boosters, speeding up the game, disabling encounters, etc.

[IHNN]

If you're playing a controller, pause the game and press the shoulder buttons.

If you're playing on a keyboard, press F1 through F4.

Each booster as its own icon- you'll want to have the 9999 booster, the fast forward, and no encounters (as well as level 99 from the menu, for HP). Those first 3 are represented by a 9999, two rightward facing arrows, and a "no sign" (circle with line through it).

You don't want battle assistance on- it wastes a lot of time with trance animations in every forced battle.

Finally, getting to the Excalibur II in less than 12 hours is nowhere near as bad as it sounds. There are some very nicely put together speedrun notes that can be followed with lots of saving to get there with upwards of 4 hours to spare- without skipping the FMVs. Granted, I did use the boosters to get it on this version, but since I've done it on the console version, I felt like trying a boosted romp through the game.

[Sona]

Originally posted by IHNN:

If you're playing a controller, pause the game and press the shoulder buttons.

If you're playing on a keyboard, press F1 through F4.

Each booster as its own icon- you'll want to have the 9999 booster, the fast forward, and no encounters (as well as level 99 from the menu, for HP). Those first 3 are represented by a 9999, two rightward facing arrows, and a "no sign" (circle with line through it).

You don't want battle assistance on- it wastes a lot of time with trance animations in every forced battle.

Finally, getting to the Excalibur II in less than 12 hours is nowhere near as bad as it sounds. There are some very nicely put together speedrun notes that can be followed with lots of saving to get there with upwards of 4 hours to spare- without skipping the FMVs. Granted, I did use the boosters to get it on this version, but since I've done it on the console version, I felt like trying a boosted romp through the game.

Would you happen to know of any of these said notes off hand? Even if you don't, thank you very much for the advice!

[IHNN]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q0sAJBWoNyW85DlZBd2N8JxZyoylO6_mgVGefrW2e0c/edit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7oqLHWirXOJdUN5aElNZTdLTms/view

There you go!
Both of these routes rely heavily on physical attacks and the many ability multipliers you can get with them (killers, MP Attack, elemental up) and in the endgame, Charge!. The first uses a party of Zidane, Steiner, Freya and Amarant to have 4 physical attackers, and the second defeats Tantarian for early Auto-Haste, and uses that to squeeze in extra attacks while cycling Night (using Quina instead of Amarant). These routes are pretty close in terms of potential, but the first route is much more user-friendly.

It's worth noting that the Valia Pira strategy may not work due to a difference in reflect mechanics from the NTSC-U PS1 version, and the Japanese version and this version. It's been a while since I've looked through, but Valia Pira isn't really a threat anyway if you get all bloodstones. While I'm on the topic of the Desert Palace, if you eat a Whale Zombie before the trip to learn Level 5 Death, literally all enemies in the Desert Palace are susceptible to it.

You can also elect to get Quina on Disc 1 instead of Disc 2, and eat a Mandragora to learn Limit Glove. Then kill Quin in a random encounter, revive with a Phoenix Down (reset unless 1 HP) and OHKO some early bosses- this is handy for Gizamaluke, and potentially the first Beatrix fight, too.

Overall, the routes can look a little daunting (they are, if you're trying to pull it all off at once) but since only the in-game time matters for the sword and you get a ton of leeway, with saving frequently it's not too bad at all :)

[Sona]

Originally posted by IHNN:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q0sAJBWoNyW85DlZBd2N8JxZyoylO6_mgVGefrW2e0c/edit
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7oqLHWirXOJdUN5aElNZTdLTms/view

There you go!
Both of these routes rely heavily on physical attacks and the many ability multipliers you can get with them (killers, MP Attack, elemental up) and in the endgame, Charge!. The first uses a party of Zidane, Steiner, Freya and Amarant to have 4 physical attackers, and the second defeats Tantarian for early Auto-Haste, and uses that to squeeze in extra attacks while cycling Night (using Quina instead of Amarant). These routes are pretty close in terms of potential, but the first route is much more user-friendly.

It's worth noting that the Valia Pira strategy may not work due to a difference in reflect mechanics from the NTSC-U PS1 version, and the Japanese version and this version. It's been a while since I've looked through, but Valia Pira isn't really a threat anyway if you get all bloodstones. While I'm on the topic of the Desert Palace, if you eat a Whale Zombie before the trip to learn Level 5 Death, literally all enemies in the Desert Palace are susceptible to it.

You can also elect to get Quina on Disc 1 instead of Disc 2, and eat a Mandragora to learn Limit Glove. Then kill Quin in a random encounter, revive with a Phoenix Down (reset unless 1 HP) and OHKO some early bosses- this is handy for Gizamaluke, and potentially the first Beatrix fight, too.

Overall, the routes can look a little daunting (they are, if you're trying to pull it all off at once) but since only the in-game time matters for the sword and you get a ton of leeway, with saving frequently it's not too bad at all :)

One last question. Why does the guide mentioning offing your characters? I thought all characters get the same EXP, no matter who's alive.

[IHNN]

At the end of a battle, only the characters alive at the end get XP, and the XP is evenly distributed among them. So if the battle gives 100 XP total, then if all 4 characters are alive, they each get 25 XP. Killing one character off means the other 3 get 33, 2 alive gives them both 50, and one character alive will get all 100 XP.

In the route, Garnet doesn't need XP, and Vivi doesn't need much either, so in the early-game Zidane and Steiner get more XP, meaning an extra level or two which really helps for the first stretch of the game.

Even near the end (such as the Pandemonium sequence) this makes a difference of a few levels, which again makes things a little easier.

Of course, for a casual EX2 run you can always level 5 death a few Grand Dragons for more levels on the endgame team.

[gandhi_the_peacemaker]

I'm half-sure you can get away with just using the boosters in this version of the game. Via the game manual (which can only be found, as far as I can tell, on the store page in what is yet another oversight on the part of the devs), it's the following:

F1 / R1 = high-speed mode
F2 / L1 = ATB gauge/HP/MP always full, Trance always active (probably the least useful)
F3 / L2 = attacks do 9999 damage
F4 / R2 = no random encounters

The next three are one-time toggles:

F5 = Automatically master abilities after getting relevant items
F6 = Max out Level and Ability stones
F7 = Max out gil

I could be wrong about the controller buttons, I play on keyboard exclusively.

But just keeping the "no random encounters" and "attacks do 9999 damage" boosters on and turning on high-speed mode during long stretches of travel should get you where you need to go. Maybe turn on the three one-time boosters for simplicity's sake, so you don't have to worry about HP and such.

Skipping cutscenes is at least made simpler; you press whatever your Cancel button is and choosing to skip them.

Best of luck.

(Alternatively, you can use cheat engine to modify your game time to <12 hours.)

[Sona]

Thanks to everyone for the massive amount of help with this. Once I beat the game normally, I'll make sure to use the info to get this dreaded achievement!