Well, hello there, fellow Keyblade Masters! It's Alex*Sora*89 here. I'll describe my help-seeking situation as briefly as I can, but not before a little disclaimer: if there's any thread like this, then I'm sorry but I had little-to-no-clue there ever was one in the first place. I mean, I checked.
Here's the summary: as it happened in my Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep saved games (as in, game sessions), I've done the same in Kingdom Hearts 3D - namely, beating the final bosses without actually unlocking the abilities, only to start unlocking the stuff in the postgame. I rushed through the final phase of the game as soon as I got to the second-to-last save point in The World That Never Was (Verge Of Chaos) and stopped playing after saving the "clear save data" (at 4 AM. That's how addicting the game is). To clarify, the stuff like EXP Walker, Once More, Second Chance and the like isn't something I equipped early in Birth By Sleep, if only because I had no clue about how to do it. After the BBS endgame, I finally started understanding how Command Melding works. In my playthrough of KH3D, more or less, the same happened. However, there's a lot of stuff that's even trickier than it used to be in BBS, hence this very thread (current status: level 33 Riku at the time of this writing, for those curious).
1) First things first, the Drop Gauge. That's the one problem I have with the game which I would like to solve. I don't mean the Drop mechanic by itself, but the way it is forced on us. What does the number written on it mean? Like, "1.0", "1.1", et cetera. I went nuts as soon as I found out there was a "Drop-Me-Never" command among the abilities in Drak Quack's Ability Link grid, only to be disappointed upon said command's nature as an item. So, is there an ability meant to freeze the gauge, or to slow it down considerably? Or maybe a command similar to the Drop-Me-Not and Drop-Me-Never ones, only working as a Magic command (akin to, say, Cure compared to Potions or the newly-introduced Esuna compared to Panacea)? Because the fact players can also Drop back and forth at will doesn't solve the problem with each characters' playtime being reduced to what ultimately amounts to a glorified timed mission, let alone the effect of dropping during boss battles.
2) The second question concerning the Drop system is more or less a paranoia-related issue. Does the Drop counter (number of Drops so far) seen at the top of the Save/Load screen (as well as at the top of the main menu itself) have any unfortunate side effects I'm unaware of? Maybe side effects triggered as soon as the Drop count reaches a certain number? Or is it there just to mess with players just as it is messing with me? If - as I hope it is the case - that Drop count is just there to screw with me, then I'd feel less nervous about Dropping deliberately (41 drops with a Clear Saved Data game file at the time of this writing).
3) The Ability Link system. By now, I've gotten the hang of how it works, but I'm afraid I can't say the same about using it to unlock more stuff. I think a list of each Spirit's ingredients (without the need of any recipe), its abilities and commands would come in handy, especially when it comes to unlocking Support abilities (the ones in the center row and that don't need any Spirits in the party) or the aforementioned anti-dropping Command (or, even better, Ability) I'm hoping for. By now you can guess that, to me, once I get rid of forced Drops, the rest of the game's difficulty courve would just go downhill.
4) Given my questions about the Ability Link, there's the fact that Spirits need to be created in the first place. Some of them, like Ryu Dragon, have really neat abilities (Superglide in Ryu Dragon's case) but happen to need really rare ingredients. So the question is, pure and simple, provided I have to go and look for some of these ingredients, which one is the fastest way for gathering everything I need for any given Spirit (with information concerning which world, which enemies and which moves are needed for each ingredient, provided anyone who answers this knows enough not to need doing any further research, as I don't like to bother others generally)? As you can guess, I haven't unlocked Ryu Dragon yet.
5) About the abilities, I've managed to unlock Once More before even knowing which not-unlocked-yet Spirit has Second Chance in its Ability Link grid. But I managed to equip Once More anyway and dared to challenge the-bonus-boss-of-Fountain-Plaza-who-I-am-not-gonna-spoil, hoping that no forced Drop would get in my way when fighting such a hard and long boss fight (unsurprisingly - yet contrary to what I feared - the boss killed me first instead, anyway), which prompted me to ask: wasn't Once More supposed to be an upgrade for Second Chance, and therefore requiring the latter to be equipped? Because it seems Once More has the same features as Second Chance, but it also supports combos. I always thought that Second Chance shielded the player from 1-hit-KO attacks, while Once More provided the additional insurance against combos and nothing else. Am I missing something?
... and I guess this is it. Sorry for bothering you with these questions, especially given I could have worded them in a more laconic way. If it's okay with you, we might use this thread to do some brainstorming for any eventual Drop-and-Ability-Link section of KH13's upcoming KH3D guide.
Going to sleep now, as it's 2.15 AM here in Italy. *drop*
*Drop results*
*choose a bonus: Drop decelerator*
*starts playing as Riku*
Hi there, it's Alex*Riku*89 here. I have to ask... oh, nevermind. Looks like Alex*Sora*89 did it first. See ya!
Well, hello there, fellow Keyblade Masters! It's Alex*Sora*89 here. I'll describe my help-seeking situation as briefly as I can, but not before a little disclaimer: if there's any thread like this, then I'm sorry but I had little-to-no-clue there ever was one in the first place. I mean, I checked.
Here's the summary: as it happened in my Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep saved games (as in, game sessions), I've done the same in Kingdom Hearts 3D - namely, beating the final bosses without actually unlocking the abilities, only to start unlocking the stuff in the postgame. I rushed through the final phase of the game as soon as I got to the second-to-last save point in The World That Never Was (Verge Of Chaos) and stopped playing after saving the "clear save data" (at 4 AM. That's how addicting the game is). To clarify, the stuff like EXP Walker, Once More, Second Chance and the like isn't something I equipped early in Birth By Sleep, if only because I had no clue about how to do it. After the BBS endgame, I finally started understanding how Command Melding works. In my playthrough of KH3D, more or less, the same happened. However, there's a lot of stuff that's even trickier than it used to be in BBS, hence this very thread (current status: level 33 Riku at the time of this writing, for those curious).
1) First things first, the Drop Gauge. That's the one problem I have with the game which I would like to solve. I don't mean the Drop mechanic by itself, but the way it is forced on us. What does the number written on it mean? Like, "1.0", "1.1", et cetera. I went nuts as soon as I found out there was a "Drop-Me-Never" command among the abilities in Drak Quack's Ability Link grid, only to be disappointed upon said command's nature as an item. So, is there an ability meant to freeze the gauge, or to slow it down considerably? Or maybe a command similar to the Drop-Me-Not and Drop-Me-Never ones, only working as a Magic command (akin to, say, Cure compared to Potions or the newly-introduced Esuna compared to Panacea)? Because the fact players can also Drop back and forth at will doesn't solve the problem with each characters' playtime being reduced to what ultimately amounts to a glorified timed mission, let alone the effect of dropping during boss battles.
2) The second question concerning the Drop system is more or less a paranoia-related issue. Does the Drop counter (number of Drops so far) seen at the top of the Save/Load screen (as well as at the top of the main menu itself) have any unfortunate side effects I'm unaware of? Maybe side effects triggered as soon as the Drop count reaches a certain number? Or is it there just to mess with players just as it is messing with me? If - as I hope it is the case - that Drop count is just there to screw with me, then I'd feel less nervous about Dropping deliberately (41 drops with a Clear Saved Data game file at the time of this writing).
3) The Ability Link system. By now, I've gotten the hang of how it works, but I'm afraid I can't say the same about using it to unlock more stuff. I think a list of each Spirit's ingredients (without the need of any recipe), its abilities and commands would come in handy, especially when it comes to unlocking Support abilities (the ones in the center row and that don't need any Spirits in the party) or the aforementioned anti-dropping Command (or, even better, Ability) I'm hoping for. By now you can guess that, to me, once I get rid of forced Drops, the rest of the game's difficulty courve would just go downhill.
4) Given my questions about the Ability Link, there's the fact that Spirits need to be created in the first place. Some of them, like Ryu Dragon, have really neat abilities (Superglide in Ryu Dragon's case) but happen to need really rare ingredients. So the question is, pure and simple, provided I have to go and look for some of these ingredients, which one is the fastest way for gathering everything I need for any given Spirit (with information concerning which world, which enemies and which moves are needed for each ingredient, provided anyone who answers this knows enough not to need doing any further research, as I don't like to bother others generally)? As you can guess, I haven't unlocked Ryu Dragon yet.
5) About the abilities, I've managed to unlock Once More before even knowing which not-unlocked-yet Spirit has Second Chance in its Ability Link grid. But I managed to equip Once More anyway and dared to challenge the-bonus-boss-of-Fountain-Plaza-who-I-am-not-gonna-spoil, hoping that no forced Drop would get in my way when fighting such a hard and long boss fight (unsurprisingly - yet contrary to what I feared - the boss killed me first instead, anyway), which prompted me to ask: wasn't Once More supposed to be an upgrade for Second Chance, and therefore requiring the latter to be equipped? Because it seems Once More has the same features as Second Chance, but it also supports combos. I always thought that Second Chance shielded the player from 1-hit-KO attacks, while Once More provided the additional insurance against combos and nothing else. Am I missing something?
... and I guess this is it. Sorry for bothering you with these questions, especially given I could have worded them in a more laconic way. If it's okay with you, we might use this thread to do some brainstorming for any eventual Drop-and-Ability-Link section of KH13's upcoming KH3D guide.
Going to sleep now, as it's 2.15 AM here in Italy. *drop*
*Drop results*
*choose a bonus: Drop decelerator*
*starts playing as Riku*
Hi there, it's Alex*Riku*89 here. I have to ask... oh, nevermind. Looks like Alex*Sora*89 did it first. See ya!
Edited by Alex*Sora*89