King of the Beasts Achievement

[robthebob11]

Was looking through the achievement list. They all seem pretty standard, but then I saw this one. "You learned all of Gau's Rage commands."

Seems simple in theory, but in my dozen or so playthroughs over the past twenty years I've never actually managed to pull this off because of the random nature of the Veldt. Given, it's been a while since I've tried so I'm sure there are tricks.

Any advice on pulling this off?

[Davoodinator]

WorthyD の投稿を引用：

I had a six page list of all the monsters in the game as a kid. I would check off whenever I got a new rage. Every character had every magic and I never had the patience to get more than 25% of the rages.

You don't get XP on the Veldt. Farming is going to suck. I'll be checking out GameFAQs or other old site for guides.

wait waht. no xp???? weird never noticed that

[Gestahl]

How the hell do 14% of players have that achievement? Less people have the achievement for all Sabin's blitzes.. That makes no sense whatsoever.

[Davoodinator]

literature review stronlgy indicates steam achievement manger (SAM.exe) . i wouldn't recommend it though. you can get banned for cheating

[markulous]

I have never been able to do this, but I also never followed a guide. I just always tried to blindly do it.

[robthebob11]

Gestahl の投稿を引用：

How the hell do 14% of players have that achievement? Less people have the achievement for all Sabin's blitzes.. That makes no sense whatsoever.

Internal achievement testing, perhaps. As real gamers start playing, that number will plummet.

Davoodinator の投稿を引用：

literature review stronlgy indicates steam achievement manger (SAM.exe) . i wouldn't recommend it though. you can get banned for cheating

Only in VAC protected games, which is mostly just Valve games and a few games that liscence the service. Many people use Steam Achievement manager to get around broken achievements which will never trigger otherwise.

[8BitBox]

Can anyone verify the number of beasts needed to complete this achievement? I'm trying to reconcile against the SNES version, and it looks like I count 252 after removing: Tonberries, Siegfried, Typhon, Proto armor, and Death warden (and of course including the bestiary-unlisted: Doberman, Eukaryote, Specter, and Darkside).

[-Drezz-]

JeffreyBox の投稿を引用：

Can anyone verify the number of beasts needed to complete this achievement? I'm trying to reconcile against the SNES version, and it looks like I count 252 after removing: Tonberries, Siegfried, Typhon, Proto armor, and Death warden (and of course including the bestiary-unlisted: Doberman, Eukaryote, Specter, and Darkside).

I think you need to look at the GBA version (bonus dungeon, more bosses and espers), which is what the PC version comes from.

[8BitBox]

-Dresden- の投稿を引用：

JeffreyBox の投稿を引用：

Can anyone verify the number of beasts needed to complete this achievement? I'm trying to reconcile against the SNES version, and it looks like I count 252 after removing: Tonberries, Siegfried, Typhon, Proto armor, and Death warden (and of course including the bestiary-unlisted: Doberman, Eukaryote, Specter, and Darkside).

I think you need to look at the GBA version (bonus dungeon, more bosses and espers), which is what the PC version comes from.

I guess I could have simplified my question. Lol. Are there additional rages? Can you link me to a list?

[Zunnoab #931]

So there are 64 "blocks" and each battle rotates through a random formation from each, and if you don't have an encounter unlocked and it wins the random roll the block is skipped entirely and you move onto the next. That is very interesting.

This looks very useful:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/930370-final-fantasy-vi-advance/51923197

Some of the names may be different and I don't know if there's a version with any changed names for this version but knowing how the Veldt works is huge.

It's interesting that it's enemy formations it remembers... meaning the more formations you miss the more likely you are to skip an entire block's enemies?

It makes me wonder if completing the early game list before moving on past the major spoiler is more efficient or if it's more efficient getting them later. I have most of them from early game done now.

Frankbrodie の投稿を引用：

robthebob11 の投稿を引用：

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I'll be using the guides you provided and am currently looking for the closest thing to a "perfect walkthrough" I can find that points out when to go for what. Same with missable items, lores, that one accursed Mog dance you have to go way out of your way for, etc.

If you follow the Djibriel guide suggested, (which seems the most up to date) he lists all monster formations by area as you go through.
Make sure to flag all these monster formations and everything will be able to appear at the Veldt.
Actually getting lucky with stuff you want showing up there is another matter.

Now I'm paranoid about the formations I may have missed. I wonder what it looks like in the save data or if the save data is scrambled. I have no desire to cheat by altering it but it would be neat to be able to see.

[Zunnoab #931]

Thanks to a very helpful post here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/930370-final-fantasy-vi-advance/68510232

And the information they linked to here:
http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/930370-final-fantasy-vi-advance/51923197

I figured out how to double check your formations if you're worried, or even likely how to cheat if you really wanted to go that far (I'm 10-30 min away from the Veldt in my closest file right now so I can't check off hand):
Pack 1's flags are at...
Steam's Install Location\userdata\YourSteamIdNumber\382900\local\data (no file extension, data is the file's name containing all the save data)

Pack 1's flags are at the location...

File 1:
0000085D

File 2:
00005A6D

File 3:
0000AC7D

File 4:
0000FE8D

File 5:
0001509D

Quick Save:
0001A2AD

Each file is 5210 (hexidecimal) apart in the save data though I do not know where each starts and each ends, nor how to calculate checksums or where those are stored (if you edit the file, it will say it's corrupted and erase it). Back up your file obviously. This is useful to see which formations you have unlocked though, and you can definitively see if you've missed something important.

I found the locations by finding the "seen formation" storage in Cheat Engine, and I'm sure it's trivial to cheat with that if you wanted. Simply setting all flags to "1" (FF for each of the 64 sets) is not wise since there are empty slots and people on GameFAQs spoke of game breaking bugs like getting transported to the World of Ruin near Maranda if you activate some of the unused sets.
Pack 24 was located at FF6.exe+105B5B0, and the rest of them can be easily located from there in the memory editor. I'm not suggesting people cheat, but that's where I found it.

So for example if you were looking in your save data with a hex editor such as the free HxD and you were worried about the red Magna Rider thingy:
Looking at that GameFAQs topic the red Magna Roaders are located in slot 7 of pack 51 and slot 5 of pack 15.
I'll use my file as an example of how to check.
Pack 1 is at 0000085D

That means pack 15 is at 85D + E (14), so 86B.
My value there is DB, or 11011011 binary.
You read the slots counting down from left to right starting at 7, so slot 7 of pack 51 is the first of the eight numbers in binary there, so that 1 means I encountered a red Magna Roader of that formation.

Then Pack 51 is at 88F + 32 (50), so 88F.
My value there is F0, or 11110000 binary.
That's slot 5, so again I got super lucky and encountered that one too.

I'm sure it's possible to make a program to automatically list out what is in each save file, but that's beyond my immediate understanding.

Edit: Okay yeah I tested editing the RAM with Cheat Engine to make sure I understood it right and deleting everything but one bit... a Peeper encounter, and it worked. I don't intend to cheat this way but it confirms the way to read which have been encountered.

[8BitBox]

These links are exactly what I needed. Thank you. The only other thing I'm trying to find out is whether or not the rages you CAN'T get but DO appear on the Veldt are necessary for the achievement. For example, a "Proto Armor" pack appears on the Veldt, you can leap but cannot acquire the Proto Armor rage - do you need to do this in order to obtain the achievement?

[Zunnoab #931]

8-BitBox の投稿を引用：

These links are exactly what I needed. Thank you. The only other thing I'm trying to find out is whether or not the rages you CAN'T get but DO appear on the Veldt are necessary for the achievement. For example, a "Proto Armor" pack appears on the Veldt, you can leap but cannot acquire the Proto Armor rage - do you need to do this in order to obtain the achievement?

It is an interesting question. A definitive answer would be to find Gau's rage data in RAM and/or the save file and see if it changes when Proto Armor is the only missing rage when leaping on its formation.

Once the rage save location is found it will be trivial to isolate it by clearing it and forcing the necessary encounters by setting thier single bit in the 'seen encounters' data. I suspect not though. It is awfully close to 255 rages which is a nice round binary number meaning the rage data is likely 32 bytes in size. It is a matter as well of finding out what happens if you activate the unused bits from a full vanilla rage list to see if they even add or crash anything.

For those confused it is actually simple. A single number even zero must use at least 8 bits typically, a byte. Zero is 00000000. Each of those can be 1 or 0, on or off... so that is why Gau's rage number suggests 32 bytes of data since one byte can track 8 rages. I strongly suspect the bit order matches his menu order. That info is almost certainly known. I do not have time to look right now though.

I better remember to use offline mode and force kill the process though. I do not want an illegitimate rage achievement. Actually that worries me. If I test this to see if Proto Armor even activates anything with leap I will intentionally delete some early rages.

[Zunnoab #931]

8-BitBox の投稿を引用：

These links are exactly what I needed. Thank you. The only other thing I'm trying to find out is whether or not the rages you CAN'T get but DO appear on the Veldt are necessary for the achievement. For example, a "Proto Armor" pack appears on the Veldt, you can leap but cannot acquire the Proto Armor rage - do you need to do this in order to obtain the achievement?

I can definitively answer this now: No, not only do they not count the game doesn't even have memory allocated to check if you've used leap on them.

The very, very long answer on how I confirmed that (in hindsight simply seeing that it's 32 bytes of storage all accounted for I should have known the answer without directly experimenting):
There is no recording for Leap on Proto Armor, only its Onion Knight companions.

In this example, I have Cheat Engine open showing the memory location of Gau's rages.

https://i.gyazo.com/1a3f0892c594b12b91e162aea6c3709d.png
As you can see, just as the final "Gau returns" battle chatter message finished the memory location updated there with 4, in that case it was the bit representing the enemy Brain Pan. The memory updates on two occasions: Once as you leap it adds the bits to any enemies in the formation you are missing pretty much immediately even before the screen finishes fading. Then after Gau returns after his speech is done it updates any bits for enemies in the formation for which he returned. Interestingly, the game outright crashes in the main menu or as soon as a random encounter triggers if you remove all of Gau's rages. He has to have at least one... but he start with some so that's a freeze that never happens unless you mess with the RAM or save data.

Using this method I made the Onion Knight his ONLY rage and made the Proto Armor encounter the only one marked being seen. Now the game doesn't crash if you delete the rage data after a battle is already started, so I deleted ALL rages and again, only the Onion Knight bit updated (that is the 02 (00000010) you see in the screenshot, coincidentally next to Brain Pan's 04 (00000100).

Interestingly this means with a complete file and the achievement you will be missing rages that you actually CAN technically get from enemies that never appear on the Veldt! A complete rage list without cheating has gaps (the list in the main menu in fact does exactly match the bit order in the RAM and save data). I feel sorry for people with bad OCD.

There's another interesting fact: there is a rage you can learn but never use called Tonberries (not Tonberry). It is stored in the very last bit in the 32 bytes that store his rages, and in fact that bit DOES get added in game when leaping on the Tonberries encounter on the Veldt. You just can't ever get to it in the menu. The guide I was reading says there were bugs with it so it was disabled even though technically you do earn it in the game data.

This means Gau in fact has 256 rages. The achievement is for 253 of them. Now I'm sure the (Edit: I'll just leave this mess here since I found it hilarious proofreading and seeing how my train of thought just evaporated when the Sabin achievement popped up.)

BAH, I confess I mistakenly screwed up RAM locations while examining this and triggered Sabin's blitz achievement. Oh well at least that one is hilariously easy. I want my Gau one to be real (well I wanted all of them to be real but that's what I get for spamming FF carelessly). Whatever they do for the achievement is impressively aggressive to instantly notice my misaligned FF spam.

I am having a heck of a time trying to figure out where 253 comes from.
Okay so there are 32 bytes, and the last one is Tonberries which you can never see in your list.

Guides say these never appear on the Veldt so cannot be normally obtained:
Typhon, Siegfried, and Death Warden

So if there are 256 bits (8x32), 256-4 (Tonberries plus the other three) is 252. Does the achievement count Tonberries I wonder? If I remember to, I will consciously avoid leaping on that encounter whenever I get that far.
Edit: I didn't look hard enough. Starting with FFVI Advance Death Warden can be legitimately gained since it can appear in the Soul Shrine and unlocks on the Veldt from that battle. Typhon and Sigfried however remain only accessible through cheating. This means Tonberries doesn't count even though the game does track if you get it through Leap or Gau returning.

The rages are at FF6.exe+105B4E8 and 31 more bytes after that stored in the exact same order as the menu with one bit per rage. I'm not advocating cheating the rages, but that's where they are.

In the save file:
I found File 4 for sure. The others are based on the space between save slots I found earlier.

File 1: 000007AC
File 2: 000059BC
File 3: 0000ABCC
File 4 (for sure for my check): 0000FDDC
File 5: 00014FEC
Quick Save: 0001A1FC

Do not attempt to edit the save file especially without backing up all files in the save data folders. I'm sure there's a way to generate the checksums or whatever but if you mess with it, it WILL delete your save since it will detect the data's integrity being corrupt. Again I don't advocate cheating it but I don't want to be responsible for anyone destroying their data.

[8BitBox]

This makes sense. It's actually interesting - apparently in Advance, non-rage enemies like "Tonberries" WILL show up in your Rage list outside of battle in the menu, but not in battle (http://bit.ly/1KO6bMW). I don't believe this is the case with the Steam version. If you Leap on an enemy that doesn't have a rage, it won't appear in your menu inside or outside of battle. It's inconsequential though, because if the game/achievement tracks it... then it tracks it. If not, then no need to Leap.

[Zunnoab #931]

8-BitBox の投稿を引用：

This makes sense. It's actually interesting - apparently in Advance, non-rage enemies like "Tonberries" WILL show up in your Rage list outside of battle in the menu, but not in battle (http://bit.ly/1KO6bMW). I don't believe this is the case with the Steam version. If you Leap on an enemy that doesn't have a rage, it won't appear in your menu inside or outside of battle. It's inconsequential though, because if the game/achievement tracks it... then it tracks it. If not, then no need to Leap.

I'm pretty sure Tonberries is the single example of this. Typhon and Sigfried do show up in battle. That's interesting that it appears in the menu in the Advance version though.

The author of this guide:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=583222214&tscn=1454198201

...also just responded that it would be quite a powerful rage if it actually worked too.

Edit: Sheesh Typhon is extremely dangerous, spamming Tornado (hitting everyone with % based HP attacks). Siegfried used Flare and physical attacks. I'm sure the actual behavior of them is well documented despite them not being normally obtainable.

I'll reiterate the backing things up if messing around too. I accidentally saved over my normal file experimenting but thankfully I had a backup. (I had wiped the Veldt encounter data and Gau's rages experimenting.)