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Shin Megami Tensei IV |OT| The Dark Souls of Persona

Soulhouf

Member
Finally managed to find and fight Red Rider, and...kinda disappointed, since I beat him on my first try. To be fair, though, I got lucky with him never using or getting to use Antichthon. I read that you can get away with bringing at least two demons that null, repel, or drain fire, so I kept Uriel and Michael around for that, with Seth set for my fourth demon without any fire protection (I only brought him since mine had Doping, but I completely forgot my Michael had it too), then swapped out Seth for Demonee-ho on my second turn, who only resists fire. The only real problems I ran into were War Cry and Purple Smoke (along with a critical with one regular attack), but I had Flynn deal with the latter with Salvation and the former with a Dekunda Stone by the time I had my Uriel w/Dark Energy+Charge ready, using Demonee-ho to hit Red Rider's ice weakness with Breath (having had Michael use Archangel's Law on him for that on the third turn), with Flynn also hitting him with Antichthon a couple of times during the fight. By the fourth turn, I had my chance for Kannuki-Throw with a smirking Uriel, so I went for it and that was it.

That said, even if I didn't have something as overpowered as the same Uriel that I used to beat Masakado's Shadow on my team, I didn't consider it a particularly difficult fight based on how things were going for me. I wanted to beat the crap out of Red Rider after all of the trouble I went through to finally get him to show up, but I'd be lying if said Kannuki-Throw+Dark Energy+Charge+Smirk didn't take some of the fun out of it, as cathartic as it was to see.

You got really REALLY lucky I think.
I fought that guy over 30 times (for incense grinding) and he was using Antichthon every time (sometimes more than once per turn).
With that said, since you already did the DLCs, even with a bad pattern, I don't think he is a lot worse than Ancient of Days for example.

Anyway, congratulations!
 

Korigama

Member
You got really REALLY lucky I think.
I fought that guy over 30 times (for incense grinding) and he was using Antichthon every time (sometimes more than once per turn).
With that said, since you already did the DLCs, even with a bad pattern, I don't think he is a lot worse than Ancient of Days for example.

Anyway, congratulations!
Thanks. Yeah, definitely can't rule out good fortune being a factor. For me, Ancient of Days went a lot worse, as I lost count of just how many times I had to fight him (pretty sure it was more than ten). Getting hit with Brand, in addition to having to inflict Brand on him as well just to prevent him from healing up with Diarahan whenever hitting his weaknesses, having to hope the Brand wouldn't wear off by the time he healed...not fun.
 

Korigama

Member
Finally found and fought Trumpeter. This one...was actually fun for me. The fight anyway, not the search, which took several days, and I spent hours at a time whenever I bothered. The only endgame Fiend to actually kill me so far, so it also led me to actually pay Charon to bring me back for the first time (had plenty of Play Coins, so I just let him have 14 of those). Wound up relying mostly on Flynn and Michael for this one (Doping and Heaven's Bow with Michael, a #1 Bazooka w/Shinno Rounds and Salvation with Flynn) but did manage to get in two Antichthons with the former and two casts of Luster Candy between a Titania I used as bait and a Sarasvati I returned before the end of another turn.

Debating whether to bother hunting down the other Fiends, as I wanted to get Red Rider out of the way due to being Neutral-only and Trumpeter because the only other path I could find him on would be Law, which I don't plan on spending more time on than I need to should I get around to it. Will likely go for Mother Harlot on Chaos NG+, though.
 

Soulhouf

Member
Finally found and fought Trumpeter. This one...was actually fun for me. The fight anyway, not the search, which took several days, and I spent hours at a time whenever I bothered. The only endgame Fiend to actually kill me so far, so it also led me to actually pay Charon to bring me back for the first time (had plenty of Play Coins, so I just let him have 14 of those). Wound up relying mostly on Flynn and Michael for this one (Doping and Heaven's Bow with Michael, a #1 Bazooka w/Shinno Rounds and Salvation with Flynn) but did manage to get in two Antichthons with the former and two casts of Luster Candy between a Titania I used as bait and a Sarasvati I returned before the end of another turn.

Debating whether to bother hunting down the other Fiends, as I wanted to get Red Rider out of the way due to being Neutral-only and Trumpeter because the only other path I could find him on would be Law, which I don't plan on spending more time on than I need to should I get around to it. Will likely go for Mother Harlot on Chaos NG+, though.

Well done! Trumpeter was the last Fiend I fought so he was really easy when I was there and all my party members where immune or resistant to insta kill.
Don't expect anything from the Harlot since she's a normal boss battle and don't come even close to the other fiends unfortunately.
Also, if you want to fuse her, you need all the other fiends.

I somehow forgot to reply to your previous post, so here it is:
Ancient of Days gave me a lot of trouble too. I fought him in my first run before the fiends and the main reason he kicked my ass so many time wasn't his ability to heal because I never saw it actually (I don't use elements, physical/almighty all the way since my first late game). He was the one who taught me the importance of Doping, Draconic Reaction and physical demons who have high HP because he kept killing me with his Spirit Focus + a very strong almighty attack which name escapes me.
 

Korigama

Member
Well done! Trumpeter was the last Fiend I fought so he was really easy when I was there and all my party members where immune or resistant to insta kill.
Don't expect anything from the Harlot since she's a normal boss battle and don't come even close to the other fiends unfortunately.
Also, if you want to fuse her, you need all the other fiends.

I somehow forgot to reply to your previous post, so here it is:
Ancient of Days gave me a lot of trouble too. I fought him in my first run before the fiends and the main reason he kicked my ass so many time wasn't his ability to heal because I never saw it actually (I don't use elements, physical/almighty all the way since my first late game). He was the one who taught me the importance of Doping, Draconic Reaction and physical demons who have high HP because he kept killing me with his Spirit Focus + a very strong almighty attack which name escapes me.
Hm, only a normal boss battle huh? Oh well. I do have some of the other Fiends I could look for when I get to that point in NG+, at least (Chemtrail, Matador, White Rider, and Pale Rider remain unfought for me).

Yeah, Ancient of Days had a couple of powerful Almighty attacks (Damnation inflicting poison for everyone, and Stigmatic Gleam branding everyone).
 

Regiruler

Member
Is it possible to return to areas other than Naraku? I want to head back to Kiccigiorgi Forest to get ingredients for a special fusion but I can't seem to find an option to go there.

EDIT: I'm a dumbass who doesn't look very hard. There is an option but it won't let me take it. Currently on the Black Samurai Naraku hunt.
I'm assuming the option opens up later?
 

Nimby

Banned
Is it possible to return to areas other than Naraku? I want to head back to Kiccigiorgi Forest to get ingredients for a special fusion but I can't seem to find an option to go there.

EDIT: I'm a dumbass who doesn't look very hard. There is an option but it won't let me take it. Currently on the Black Samurai Naraku hunt.
I'm assuming the option opens up later?

You get to go back eventually, so yes. I'd assume maybe once you get to the bottom of Naraku.
 

Regiruler

Member
I need to rant.

So I'm a big angel/holy/divine nutjob so naturally to try and remain "faithful" to the angels, I'm going for the full Divine evolution chain (although I had fused away my Angel into Tam Lin via Pixie since I didn't know about evolution at the time, but level 3 to 12 is such a pain in the ass to redo I decided to overlook it and start with Archangel). I had a nice fused archangel with both resist fire and resist gun, although since Principalities stats are much more magic-focused, I was a bit confused when adapting the formerly physical moveset (although I kept both resistances). I did not give it a healing spell at the time of evolution, but when Media came up I removed resist gun for it.

Now comes the frustrating part.

Principalities normally has a gun weakness. I did not know this, as MY principality had the resist gun skill. I merely thought it's weakness to gun was normal (as res Light weak Dark) as I never bothered to look at its fusion or compendium entries seriously. This is also partly because I didn't know a resistance skill would outright give something resistance, instead of "stacking" with the species weakness (i.e. I thought if it was weak to gun, the resistance would make gun damage normal). So now here I am, with a principality that had the resistance skill to its one weakness (as annoying as OHKs are I barely count dark) now replaced it with media, and I didn't realize this until about an hour after the fact, because gun is a relatively rare attack type and I was dealing with lower level enemies to finish a few quests.

Fuck my life.
Even media isn't that useful considering my protag has both media (+1 I believe, although the one benefit out of this is that principality's media will make it +2 when it whispers) and mp recovery.
 

MudoSkills

Volcano High Alumnus (Cum Laude)
First post in this thread. EU player here, so only started playing this in mid-November, and have loved every minute of it. Finished Neutral path yesterday, having accidentally ended up on Law during my first run, and going Chaos on my second run.

I don't really want to stop playing, but I'm not sure I can be bothered with the nonsense performance that encountering the fiends seems to be. I actually ran into the black rider first time going into the Tennozu shelter, but had no idea at the time how fiend encounters worked - lost all my Macca, got killed in the fight, loaded my game and avoided the back of the shelter on the assumption that the fight would kick off again every time I passed a certain point.

He's the only one I've encountered, in three play-throughs. I'm not sure I have the patience to keep exiting/entering areas on the off chance one of them turns up.
 

Soulhouf

Member
First post in this thread. EU player here, so only started playing this in mid-November, and have loved every minute of it. Finished Neutral path yesterday, having accidentally ended up on Law during my first run, and going Chaos on my second run.

I don't really want to stop playing, but I'm not sure I can be bothered with the nonsense performance that encountering the fiends seems to be. I actually ran into the black rider first time going into the Tennozu shelter, but had no idea at the time how fiend encounters worked - lost all my Macca, got killed in the fight, loaded my game and avoided the back of the shelter on the assumption that the fight would kick off again every time I passed a certain point.

He's the only one I've encountered, in three play-throughs. I'm not sure I have the patience to keep exiting/entering areas on the off chance one of them turns up.

You mean Toyosu :p
Matador is in the Tennozu shelter. He's actually the only one I ran into by accident and he kicked my ass the first time because I wasn't prepared.
I ended up beating all the Fiends but it was a long and a tedious process that required a lot of patience.
Good luck if you're planning to hunt them all!

@Regiruler: you make it sound a lot worse than it actually is. Just fuse Principality again with the skills you want and continue the evolution that way. The fusion search is very handy.
 
I need to rant.

So I'm a big angel/holy/divine nutjob so naturally to try and remain "faithful" to the angels, I'm going for the full Divine evolution chain (although I had fused away my Angel into Tam Lin via Pixie since I didn't know about evolution at the time, but level 3 to 12 is such a pain in the ass to redo I decided to overlook it and start with Archangel). I had a nice fused archangel with both resist fire and resist gun, although since Principalities stats are much more magic-focused, I was a bit confused when adapting the formerly physical moveset (although I kept both resistances). I did not give it a healing spell at the time of evolution, but when Media came up I removed resist gun for it.

Now comes the frustrating part.

Principalities normally has a gun weakness. I did not know this, as MY principality had the resist gun skill. I merely thought it's weakness to gun was normal (as res Light weak Dark) as I never bothered to look at its fusion or compendium entries seriously. This is also partly because I didn't know a resistance skill would outright give something resistance, instead of "stacking" with the species weakness (i.e. I thought if it was weak to gun, the resistance would make gun damage normal). So now here I am, with a principality that had the resistance skill to its one weakness (as annoying as OHKs are I barely count dark) now replaced it with media, and I didn't realize this until about an hour after the fact, because gun is a relatively rare attack type and I was dealing with lower level enemies to finish a few quests.

Fuck my life.
Even media isn't that useful considering my protag has both media (+1 I believe, although the one benefit out of this is that principality's media will make it +2 when it whispers) and mp recovery.

For what it's worth, I've noticed in sticking with a few demons for far too long, that some demons (in my case, Deity Thoth and Dragon Long) will start changing existing skills to skills that just happen to null or resist their natural weaknesses.

Now my Thoth and Long are about 20-25 levels higher than their base level before this started happening, so I don't know if this knowledge is of much use to you. Nonetheless, it seems that any demon can become viable in this game, provided you're willing to level them up as such.
 

Soulhouf

Member
For what it's worth, I've noticed in sticking with a few demons for far too long, that some demons (in my case, Deity Thoth and Dragon Long) will start changing existing skills to skills that just happen to null or resist their natural weaknesses.

Now my Thoth and Long are about 20-25 levels higher than their base level before this started happening, so I don't know if this knowledge is of much use to you. Nonetheless, it seems that any demon can become viable in this game, provided you're willing to level them up as such.

There are an app which becomes available when you reach Shinjuku and that makes skill mutation more frequent and favorable.
 

Regiruler

Member
You mean Toyosu :p
Matador is in the Tennozu shelter. He's actually the only one I ran into by accident and he kicked my ass the first time because I wasn't prepared.
I ended up beating all the Fiends but it was a long and a tedious process that required a lot of patience.
Good luck if you're planning to hunt them all!

@Regiruler: you make it sound a lot worse than it actually is. Just fuse Principality again with the skills you want and continue the evolution that way. The fusion search is very handy.

In the end it wasn't, but mostly because power doesn't have a gun weakness so it essentially became moot.

Recently however I made some nice fusions. Two of my favorites are a Karasu Tengu set with both Resist Elec and Beastly Reaction (not through any particular effort: it just happened that the skills climbed up from Kuso and something I can't recall) creating a nice all-around beater, and a convoluted fusion line from Tan Lin to Baldur, while sticking with male light-based creatures to be thematic (Tam Lin -> Narcissus -> Baldur). The end result is actually fairly nice: it has Purple Smoke as a bring-up from Tam Lin's mutated Estoma Sword, Healing Knowhow and Rakukaja for defensive properties (the combination of the two saved my ass on countless occasions) and Baldur's native Hamaeon as the OHK utility (and is also my first high accuracy OHK among my entire party).

Probably not impressive by end-game standards, but I am proud of them.
 

Regiruler

Member
Sorry for the bump, but I have a technical question.
What base stats influence the amount of hits for a multihit attack? I've read it's luck but I'm not sure, and I want to make use of
Alilat
's high luck and magic.
 

Soulhouf

Member
Sorry for the bump, but I have a technical question.
What base stats influence the amount of hits for a multihit attack? I've read it's luck but I'm not sure, and I want to make use of
Alilat
's high luck and magic.

Unfortunately there is no such thing. The number of hits is completely random.
Luck stat has a huge benefit on multi hitting physical attacks though. Since a dice roll is performed for each hit, there are a much higher chance to land a critical hit with multi attack when you have a high luck. At some point it becomes almost guaranteed.
 

Regiruler

Member
So I'm on the law path endgame and I think I have every law exclusive for non-ng+. I beat
Mastema
and I can't find anything else other than the alignment-less stuff like
Beelzebub
and
Yaso Magatsui
.

Is there anything else I'm missing, bar the fiends?
 

RonianAT2

Neo Member
I am on the fence if I should buy this game. I have never played a mainline SMT game. Devil Survivor was the only game I have played, but I was a little bit underwhelmed by it.
 

Regiruler

Member
What exactly does the expert difficulty change anyway? I swept through everything up to Long but David is kicking my ass again and Berserker (ng+ boss I believe) is serving it on a platter.
Granted I had both Repel and Drain Force (Chagrin and Fortuna respectively), so Long was probably easier than normal.
 

Protag

Banned
The ratio of battles:story is better in SMT4 but maybe you should check out Nocturne first. That one has a pretty minimalistic story.

Yo shiina, does Devil survivor have extra content? (Side things for the player to do)

I liked what i played and i was just wondering.
 

Regiruler

Member
Yo shiina, does Devil survivor have extra content? (Side things for the player to do)

I liked what i played and i was just wondering.

Do you mean side content in general or additions from the base game?

If the latter I read that there's a few new demons (only one I know offhand is Mahamayuri) which tie in to SMTIV and some streetpass nonsense (that can use play coins instead in the western version).
I know nothing about the former.
 

Shiina

Member
^ Overclocked has an entire new day for every route which helps flesh out the endings a lot better and offers a bunch of new battles and bosses, some of which can be pretty tough on your first playthrough. Other than that Overlocked has redrawn backgrounds, a compendium and a NG+ system where you gain points by fulfilling certain objectives (not letting x person die, finding a hidden subboss etc.) with which you can buy yourself certain perks like carrying over existing demons, removing the fusion level restriction, unlocking superbosses and stuff like that.

If you just mean sidequests then the game doesn't have that many worth talking about. 4 or 5 hidden sidebosses, one of which is ng+ only and has to be unlocked and that's pretty much it.

v You may be right.
 

NeonZ

Member
I'm pretty sure all hidden bosses in Devil Survivor Overclocked are New Game + only. Of course, you still get many optional events and minor battles that can't be seen in a single playthrough, even not counting the route split at the end.
 

Protag

Banned
Do you mean side content in general or additions from the base game?

If the latter I read that there's a few new demons (only one I know offhand is Mahamayuri) which tie in to SMTIV and some streetpass nonsense (that can use play coins instead in the western version).
I know nothing about the former.

Hold on, does devil survivor take place in the same universe as IV, acting as a loose prequel of sorts? You mentioned that certain demosm tie into IV from DS
 

NeonZ

Member
Hold on, does devil survivor take place in the same universe as IV, acting as a loose prequel of sorts? You mentioned that certain demosm tie into IV from DS

All extra demons from Devil Survivor Overclocked are in SMTIV too, but it's just a coincidence.

The human characters are completely different and, although it has a similar conflict to SMTIV's backstory in a way (demons appearing, god judging humanity), there's no conclusion that leads to something like SMTIV.
 

Protag

Banned
All extra demons from Devil Survivor Overclocked are in SMTIV too, but it's just a coincidence.

The human characters are completely different and, although it has a similar conflict to SMTIV's backstory in a way (demons appearing, god judging humanity), there's no conclusion that leads to something like SMTIV.

Thanks for the clarification.
 

ElFly

Member
What am I supposed to do in the neutral path
during the great spirit of hope quest?

I already
became champion, but now masakado is saying I have to show my great personage across the lands?

The hell?

e: wait, I just...walked around...it activated a scene.
 
What am I supposed to do in the neutral path
during the great spirit of hope quest?

I already
became champion, but now masakado is saying I have to show my great personage across the lands?

The hell?

e: wait, I just...walked around...it activated a scene.

Just revisit every town, you should get a scene in each one
 

Bulbasaur

Banned
So I started this game on my commute this morning. From the get go its definitely strange and not like what Im used to. And thats just the dialogue! I stopped just before where I assume the comabt starts. I gave the inventory / skills table etc a cursory glance and was pretty confused, I hope its all clarified as the game progresses.

But all and all I'm intrigued and I look forward to getting deep into this game!
 

Regiruler

Member
Stupid question: do Drain and Repel (attack type) stack (i.e. attacks both repel and drain damage)? Or does drain simply overwrite Repel?

I ask because I found it weird for Mahamayuri, who already had Rp Force, to learn Drain Force.
 

Regiruler

Member
drain > repel > null > resist.

It's strange because only repel is not pierced by the pierce attribute. You'd think it would overwrite drain but it's not the case.
I don't think piercing is even a major factor in IV. I saw it listen on some of the basic rounds as well as in the description for some fire attack michael gets (haven't actually played the DlC yet though).
 

NeonZ

Member
I don't think piercing is even a major factor in IV. I saw it listen on some of the basic rounds as well as in the description for some fire attack michael gets (haven't actually played the DlC yet though).

Each archangel has a piercing elemental attack. But, the archangels aren't very strong and they're DLC only, so, yes, Piercing is pretty much a non factor against the player.
 

NeonZ

Member
Does anyone have a quick recipe for a demon with Estoma?
I'm doing the Normal path and Tokyo's map is driving me bananas.

This faq has a list of demons and their learned skills that can be checked fairly quickly

http://www.gamefaqs.com/3ds/672441-shin-megami-tensei-iv/faqs/67780

It seems like the lowest level demon that learns Estoma Sword is Tam Lin, a special fusion of Fairy Pixie , Fairy Spriggan and Yoma Centaur. You still need to level him up a bit to get the skill though.
 

Regiruler

Member
Does anyone have a quick recipe for a demon with Estoma?
I'm doing the Normal path and Tokyo's map is driving me bananas.
Tam lin, a special fusion, learns it. Archangel as well I believe.

Both, as stated above, require levelup
EDIT: archangel learns it 20. It has a poor mana pool itself but most of it's evolutions (bar power iirc) have decent mana.
 

Lagamorph

Member
I'm in Shinjuku and fuck me, I'm going to have to knock the Difficulty down. Game seems to have just taken an insane difficulty spike all of a sudden.
Sure, previously I've had a few deaths or close calls. But now I just seem to be getting wiped out. Playing through the Phantom of Madness quest and the hordes are childs play (When the AI isn't cheating and giving itself the first move despite me getting in a surprise attack), but the boss that appears afterwards? Holy crap....

Not like I'm under-levelled either. I'm level 27 and my demons are around the same.
 

Regiruler

Member
I'm in Shinjuku and fuck me, I'm going to have to knock the Difficulty down. Game seems to have just taken an insane difficulty spike all of a sudden.
Sure, previously I've had a few deaths or close calls. But now I just seem to be getting wiped out. Playing through the Phantom of Madness quest and the hordes are childs play (When the AI isn't cheating and giving itself the first move despite me getting in a surprise attack), but the boss that appears afterwards? Holy crap....

Not like I'm under-levelled either. I'm level 27 and my demons are around the same.
For story opponents, priority is determined with an agility-based RNG, IIRC. First strike is irrelevant.
 

Lagamorph

Member
Well I wasn't paying much attention to the whole alignment thing until way too late, and I ended up locked on the Law alignment ending since I couldn't bring myself down fast enough.
But now, I'm at the point where
I'm entering the Yamato reactor and having to fight Isabeau....and I've found my enthusiasm to continue kinda sucked away. I'm really not onboard at all with the idea of wiping out Tokyo, and now having to fight Isabeau is pretty much sapping me away from the game

I've got a save file
At the B3F of Camp Ichigaya, before activating the reactor for the first time. Is that point too late to change my alignment? Am I able to do Challenge quests to chip my alignment bit by bit towards Chaos? I also made the mistake of going full law choices during the path at Ginza, so I'm worried I'm pretty much unmoveable by now without restarting
 

NeonZ

Member
Does any one have or know of a list with all the unmarked quests?

It's just the camera quests.




Well I wasn't paying much attention to the whole alignment thing until way too late, and I ended up locked on the Law alignment ending since I couldn't bring myself down fast enough.
But now, I'm at the point where
I'm entering the Yamato reactor and having to fight Isabeau....and I've found my enthusiasm to continue kinda sucked away. I'm really not onboard at all with the idea of wiping out Tokyo, and now having to fight Isabeau is pretty much sapping me away from the game

I've got a save file
At the B3F of Camp Ichigaya, before activating the reactor for the first time. Is that point too late to change my alignment? Am I able to do Challenge quests to chip my alignment bit by bit towards Chaos? I also made the mistake of going full law choices during the path at Ginza, so I'm worried I'm pretty much unmoveable by now without restarting

It's hard to know your situation, since there's nothing keeping track of the points, but there are still quite a bit of law/chaos questions in the story at that point at least.

Have you met the woman who asks if you're a human or a demon in Ikebukuro? You can get 10 chaos points if you answer that you're a demon.
 
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