Shining Force III: Scenario 3: Final Chapter

[DomingoRules!]

When I defeated Skull Mage in Scenario 1, I felt compelled to ask about how much HP he has, which I thought was a lot, but now holy crap how much HP does Taros have? I felt like I was pummeling him with my entire force for a half hour (didn't actually time it) before his HP finally dropped below 500. And when it finally happened, I was never so happy to see numbers on a screen. No wonder you can't defeat him in Shining Force 2 without the Achilles Sword if he can take that much of a beating from other weapons and magic.

Also, did anybody else hope-when they first fought Taros-that when he attacked, they'd hear a glorious remix of the SF2 boss theme, only to be disappointed?

[ZethaPonderer]

Imagine the Skull Mage's HP which was 1000 except this time multiply it by 5 for Taros. Yep... he has 5000 HP. Pretty much on the same HP as Colossus (6000 HP) for the Japanese version of SF3 - Scenario 1, although he was made invincible in the US version. Yes you can actually fight and defeat the Colossus in the Japanese version which is awesome IMO.

Here's the thing DomingoRules! If you're stuck anytime on SF3 or you just want to know the little details for each and every scenario you can look it up on the Jumesyn website. It's basically a dedicated website walkthrough of SF3.

Here's the link to the site if you wish to know most of everything about this game.

http://jumesyn.celestialdamnation.com/guide/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[DomingoRules!]

I'm not stuck, and talking about things is more interesting than simply looking it up. I managed to defeat Taros without any casualties. Besides, until I've beaten a game, I rather not look up information because doing so can inadvertently wind up revealing things I don't yet want to see. For example, looking up a boss strategy can result in also seeing story elements one hasn't yet reached because of eyes catching words you're not after, or even seeing a spoiler or two simply in a Table of Contents when trying to figure out where in the guide, or whatever the information you seek is located.

[ZethaPonderer]

Fair enough on your part. I was just curious and wondering if you were aware of there being a detailed walkthrough of SF3. Carry on

[DomingoRules!]

Even if I weren't, I'm sure such a thing wouldn't be too difficult to discover. A simple Google search would probably do the trick, and if nothing else I imagine that information could also be found over on Gamefaqs. I'll save that kind of stuff though for my second play through, in particular for recruiting characters I missed.

Sadly though, because of the lack of extremely deadly spells, I actually felt Taros was a bit easier than Skull Mage. It's just a matter of being strong enough, having enough healing, and outlasting a massive endurance round. Yeah, that's kind of the same thing with Skull Mage, but I feel like having to deal with Soul Steal, and being considerate of your formation to mitigate Tiamet's damage made for a bit more of an interesting, and threatening encounter. Then again, I was playing on Normal, and I can only imagine how many hits Taros can take, not to mention the damage he can dish out with his sword, on Insane.

[MCRT]

Yeah he is a sturdy little lad
I actually also find him quite really disappointing after the Necromancer and the Skull Mage, especially as they put him into this pit. You can just let him Zap away all his MP and slay him with ranged attacks.
The biggest danger (especially on higher difficulties) on this level are actually the grouped arch demons that want to tear your poor low defense team members with focussed attacks apart.

regarding JuMeSyn: it is a good page in general, but unfortunately does miss a few items here and there (like the protect milk the grandparents from Medion give to Julian), give wrong recommendations (increasing casters luck for higher soul steal success) and also includes some errors in the special/magic/weapon/enemy tables.
But otherwise a good page to get a general overview.

I want to patch the japanese disc to be able to finally fight and beat the colossus

[DomingoRules!]

Funny how you call one of the largest enemies in the game little, since compared to his SF2 body he's like a chihuahua.

As for tactics, I did consider cheesing him with MP depletion, and arrows, as I did the same to deal with two of the Colossi, but going in I had no idea how much HP he had, whether or not he had some MP regeneration implemented, and the fact that it would take a very long time for him to run dry. Besides, I honestly assumed the greatest difficulty of the battle lied in trying to survive the Arch Demons with enough strength to then combat the group of Colossi while also being zapped by Taros from a distance; so when I managed to defeat the demons without a single loss, and then circumvented most of the difficulty in battling the Colossi with abusive utilization of ranged attacks, I charged Taros buffed with both Support and Resist thinking I had it in the bag. I'm just glad I brought along a few Goddess Tears, as well as a ton of Healing Drops, otherwise I don't think I would've survived.

From what I've heard about JuMeSyn, it sounds like a solid site, but probably a bit outdated. Like it thought it knew a lot of what it was talking about back in the day, but since then hasn't been updated with newly discovered knowledge. That would be my guess, anyway.

[ZethaPonderer]

regarding JuMeSyn: it is a good page in general, but unfortunately does miss a few items here and there (like the protect milk the grandparents from Medion give to Julian), give wrong recommendations (increasing casters luck for higher soul steal success) and also includes some errors in the special/magic/weapon/enemy tables.
But otherwise a good page to get a general overview.

I want to patch the japanese disc to be able to finally fight and beat the colossus

Interesting. Thanks for letting me know upfront. When I wish to get all the items and weapons in the game or just wish to know more about how the new mechanics work in SF3 I always consult on this website. That was a close call on my part since I had a hard time buying the higher luck = high % Soul Steal success since I was just about to give my Lucky Cookie to Hagane, but I decided to give most of my stat boosters to my main character Synbios who is a walking death machine. Either way, JuMeSyn comes very close to me when reading a 'detailed' walk-through of SF3 in case I want to find every single item and character in the game.

[DomingoRules!]

I was curious about the Luck stat influencing spells cast by oneself as well until I dug around a bit on here when wondering whether or not to give a Lucky Cookie to Rollie to improve Sleep and Charm.

[ZethaPonderer]

I do know that the luck stat is meant to defend your character from status effect spells if it reaches a certain number (8 or more is better). However, I'm skeptical if it works the other way around.

[DomingoRules!]

From what I found on a thread somewhere here, each level of Luck basically amounts to a certain resistance against each status effect, with a certain value granting immunity. For example (with no accurate numbers, since I'm just making them at random for the example), a Luck of 4 may give a 30% resistance to Sleep, 35% to Charm, 50% to Soul Steal, etcetera, with the numbers going up or down as the Luck stat changes, with nearly all effects eventually hitting 100% resistance by Luck 9. That's my understanding of it from what I recall reading, anyway. I guess it mostly applies to spells though, since I think special attacks are pretty much guaranteed to work unless the enemy is completely immune to the effect.

*Edit: As for the original topic subject, having now reached the Taros battle (but not yet played it) with Synbios Army, it made me realize how well designed the dungeon is as a whole, at least on Normal. Starting with a freshly promoted party of level 1 characters, it feels like playing through the dungeon built up my characters about to just the right levels for taking on Taros (based on the levels I had with Julian Army). Makes it feel like they really did put thought into the dungeon's length, the number of enemies, and the EXP acquired from start to finish.

Well, with an Aura-using healer, that is.

[MCRT]

From what could be confirmed from experimenting, luck does not help in the offense.

The explanation DomingoRules summarized from what he could find in the other topics is correct. But as most enemies use special attacks (which all have a freaking high success rate) to inflict status ailments, you will normally not notice any differences until your luck stat reaches 8.

In addition to being the protection stat against status ailments, luck also influences how long a not-permanent status ailment lasts and in case of paralysis if you get affected by the effect or not.

A colossus for example has luck 8, you can still inflict paralysis on him, but it will (almost?) never cause him to lose a turn.

At 8, you become immune to soulsteal and not permanent ailments will last only 1 turn in most cases.

Once you reach 9, you are immune to most status ailments and those that still affect you (illusion/frozen feet) will last only 1 turn.

[DomingoRules!]

Speaking of this topic, and high luck giving immunity to Soul Steal, when fighting Taros with the Medion Army, at one point Medion attacked using Centurion. As he started stabbing Taros, I was like, "I don't even want to imagine how long this animation would go on if the instant death effect could trigger."

[MCRT]

Speaking of this topic, and high luck giving immunity to Soul Steal, when fighting Taros with the Medion Army, at one point Medion attacked using Centurion. As he started stabbing Taros, I was like, "I don't even want to imagine how long this animation would go on if the instant death effect could trigger."

That would be pretty sick, maybe someone should giva a normal enemy the HP stat of Taros via Editor to find this out

[DomingoRules!]

Well, at least I'm done grinding, which I have to say took quite some time, but I didn't really mind it too much. Not only because it's for getting the main characters' best weapons, but also because it was incorporated into the game. I normally hate grinding in RPGs, but I think the fact that it was actually worked into the story with the characters themselves stating that they needed to prepare for the final battle made it more bearable. It felt like I was doing it for the sake of legitimately moving the story forward, not simply because I was stuck and needed to cheese my way to progress by getting stronger.

[Lord Kane]

The explanation DomingoRules summarized from what he could find in the other topics is correct. But as most enemies use special attacks (which all have a freaking high success rate) to inflict status ailments, you will normally not notice any differences until your luck stat reaches 8.

Right, this "freaking high success rate" is 100%.

In addition to being the protection stat against status ailments, luck also influences how long a not-permanent status ailment lasts and in case of paralysis if you get affected by the effect or not.

A colossus for example has luck 8, you can still inflict paralysis on him, but it will (almost?) never cause him to lose a turn.

Are you really sure about this? I remember having the same thought some years ago and doing some tests which falsified this theory. So did you test it, too?

At 8, you become immune to soulsteal and not permanent ailments will last only 1 turn in most cases.

Did you test the latter issue?

Once you reach 9, you are immune to most status ailments and those that still affect you (illusion/frozen feet) will last only 1 turn.

Same question for the last statement.

[DomingoRules!]

Well, I don't know about most cases, but when doing the Taros battle, I dealt with two of the Collosi by sniping them with arrows and spells from up above since they would just sit there after running out of MP, so long as I didn't send anybody into the inner circle. The reason I bring this up is because when doing it with Julian's army, Kate blasted Colossus with Hypno Arrow several times (literally only one or two of her shots weren't Hypno Arrow, and she took out one entire Colossus solo), and every single time he awoke immediately on his next turn. Could be a coincidence since sleep doesn't seem to normally last very long anyway, but it still may be something.

[MCRT]

The explanation DomingoRules summarized from what he could find in the other topics is correct. But as most enemies use special attacks (which all have a freaking high success rate) to inflict status ailments, you will normally not notice any differences until your luck stat reaches 8.

Right, this "freaking high success rate" is 100%.

Yeah, was not sure if it is and therefore decided to describe it that way
But only for the status attacks, as instant death specials do not always trigger I would guess their success chance is comparable to soul steal (or maybe a bit higher)

In addition to being the protection stat against status ailments, luck also influences how long a not-permanent status ailment lasts and in case of paralysis if you get affected by the effect or not.

A colossus for example has luck 8, you can still inflict paralysis on him, but it will (almost?) never cause him to lose a turn.

Are you really sure about this? I remember having the same thought some years ago and doing some tests which falsified this theory. So did you test it, too?

How did you test it? From my part it is mostly the good old fashioned observation and some playing around with the editor (e.g. inflicting status ailments on my luck 8 characters).

But the Colossus is kind of strange anyway. While your luck 8 characters still skip a turn every now and then, I have never seen that it affects him, no matter how many turns I waited.

Does something like a hardcoded immunity against the paralysis effect exist in SFIII ? In this case my statement about paralysis would become obsolete

At 8, you become immune to soulsteal and not permanent ailments will last only 1 turn in most cases.

Did you test the latter issue?

Same as above, I actually have never seen that a non-permanent status ailments lasted longer than 1 turn on a character with luck 8, while characters without increased luck stat can sleep longer (enemies too, see Spiriel), being blinded for more than 1 turn or do rampage for multiple turns when charmed/confused by a succubi/harpy.

While thinking about it, I guess the actually threshold to let non-permanent effects last only 1 turn could be lower than 8, as almost all my remember examples were from characters with initial luck stat of 4 (ninja's/birdmen's). But as I never tested any lower luck stats, therefore I cannot confirm anything about lower luck stats.

And about soul steal: good old fashioned tests against the skull mage after reading your test results about soul steal

Once you reach 9, you are immune to most status ailments and those that still affect you (illusion/frozen feet) will last only 1 turn.

Same question for the last statement.

I tend to boost my leader luck to 9 therefore I could verify this in multiple playthoughs with attacks against bosses as well as being hit by dominion ray/yasha's ice spell

[Lord Kane]

The explanation DomingoRules summarized from what he could find in the other topics is correct. But as most enemies use special attacks (which all have a freaking high success rate) to inflict status ailments, you will normally not notice any differences until your luck stat reaches 8.

Right, this "freaking high success rate" is 100%.

Yeah, was not sure if it is and therefore decided to describe it that way
But only for the status attacks, as instant death specials do not always trigger I would guess their success chance is comparable to soul steal (or maybe a bit higher)

Yes, instant death specials don't work 100%. I also guessed, that chances are the same as soul steal, but don't know for sure either.

In addition to being the protection stat against status ailments, luck also influences how long a not-permanent status ailment lasts and in case of paralysis if you get affected by the effect or not.

A colossus for example has luck 8, you can still inflict paralysis on him, but it will (almost?) never cause him to lose a turn.

Are you really sure about this? I remember having the same thought some years ago and doing some tests which falsified this theory. So did you test it, too?

How did you test it? From my part it is mostly the good old fashioned observation and some playing around with the editor (e.g. inflicting status ailments on my luck 8 characters).

But the Colossus is kind of strange anyway. While your luck 8 characters still skip a turn every now and then, I have never seen that it affects him, no matter how many turns I waited.

Does something like a hardcoded immunity against the paralysis effect exist in SFIII ? In this case my statement about paralysis would become obsolete

I wrote down every outcome, when someone was paralyzed for every possible luck value, at least 20 times (per luck value). I don't think I have my notes anymore, but the result was that luck didn't seem to significantly influence the chance of being succumbed by paralyze. I don't know anything about hardcoded immunities. It would be weird, but I naturally can't rule this case out.

At 8, you become immune to soulsteal and not permanent ailments will last only 1 turn in most cases.

Did you test the latter issue?

Same as above, I actually have never seen that a non-permanent status ailments lasted longer than 1 turn on a character with luck 8, while characters without increased luck stat can sleep longer (enemies too, see Spiriel), being blinded for more than 1 turn or do rampage for multiple turns when charmed/confused by a succubi/harpy.

While thinking about it, I guess the actually threshold to let non-permanent effects last only 1 turn could be lower than 8, as almost all my remember examples were from characters with initial luck stat of 4 (ninja's/birdmen's). But as I never tested any lower luck stats, therefore I cannot confirm anything about lower luck stats.

And about soul steal: good old fashioned tests against the skull mage after reading your test results about soul steal

Once you reach 9, you are immune to most status ailments and those that still affect you (illusion/frozen feet) will last only 1 turn.

Same question for the last statement.

I tend to boost my leader luck to 9 therefore I could verify this in multiple playthoughs with attacks against bosses as well as being hit by dominion ray/yasha's ice spell

Alright. Very interesting. On my next playthrough I will keep my eyes open and see, if I can confirm this.