Friday, July 11, 2014

More RPG glitches, observations, oddities, and other trivia


-In Dragon Warrior III (NES version only), it is possible to raise HP and MP beyond 999. Also, stats raised beyond 255, which can only be achieved via the use of stat-raising items, automatically roll over to 0. In the case of Vitality and Intelligence, you can apparently use this to raise HP and MP far beyond normal values, though I haven't verified this yet. Again, this only applies to the NES version, but it's still great knowledge for anyone who wants to attempt a solo character challenge. Also, anyone who's playing a hard-mode hack of this game will probably appreciate this knowledge as well.
-Also, the vault in Luisa's Place is bugged. It can safely hold up to 120 items, and normally you won't be able to put any more items in there after you've hit the storage cap. However, there is one way to put more items in the Vault, and that's by doing the New Town sidequest. The Merchant will put all of his/her stuff in the Vault when he/she leaves the party. Now, here's where the game-breaking bug occurs... If the vault is full, any of the last items stored in the Vault are overwritten by said Merchant's items. Any items that were replaced permanently disappear from the game entirely. This can include key items needed to progress through the game like the Thief's Key,  Final Key, The Royal Scroll, Vase of Drought, The Ball of Light, the Rainbow Drop, etc. The game gives absolutely NO warning about this. So, be careful not to put too many items in there until after the New Town sidequest is over and done with. Again, NES version only. All future versions have a bag that can hold 99 of every item in the game.
-Deleting too many characters from the Registry in Luisa's Place can mess up your hero's spell list. It apparently causes your hero to learn spells he/she's not supposed to, and spells learned this way are all only usable in battle, even the ones that are normally capable of being used on the field (namely, Heal and Return). This is more annoying than outright game-destroying, but still, don't create too many characters you're not going to use. Again, NES version only. All future versions correct this.
-In the SFC and GBC versions of Dragon Warrior/Quest III, HP/MP are properly capped at 999, and all other stats properly cap at 255. Trying to use a seed on characters with their stats already maxed out will warrant the message "But nothing happened.".  Without LifeAcorns or MysticNuts, the max HP/MP is somewhere around 520.

-Enix seems to have learned from the above programming error by the time they released Dragon Warrior IV (NES version)... HP and MP are hard capped at 999, and Lifeforce Nuts and Mystic Acorns won't increase this further. When you level up, it SAYS your Maximum HP and MP have increased by so-and-so points, but you still really only have 999 HP. Stats are also hard capped at 255, and are in no danger of rolling over. If you try to use seeds on maxed stats, it will simply say "But nothing happened." and your seed disappears from the inventory. Of course, you will never naturally achieve 999 HP or MP through normal gameplay, and only Taloon is likely to even approach 999 HP at level 99 (He usually attains 900-950 whereas Hero, Alena and Ragnar usually only get around 600-700, and Cristo, Brey, Nara and Mara get 300-500). To put it in perspective, the game is typically and fairly easily beaten at around level 35-40.
-Also, EXP is capped at 10,000,000. Taloon's commissions (at the shop he works in at the beginning of Chapter 3) are also capped at 10,000,000 gold, even though realistically, you can only ever attain up to 580 gold from a single day with the best possible conditions being met. The max gold the vault in Endor can hold is 999,000. I'm personally slightly disappointed that it can't hold more than that. I am not sure how many items the vault can hold, or what happens when you exceed the maximum. Does it say that the vault is full and that it can't hold anymore, or does it glitch up and start randomly deleting items like in Dragon Warrior III? I might try to find this out one day.
-Though this is already well-known, most late-game bosses and a few random enemies secretly regenerate HP at the end of each round. Swingers (end-game enemy) restore 100 HP every round. Master Malice, Ogrebasher and Radimvice, enemies who seem like they should have HP regen, DON'T restore anything at the end of each round.
-Healus appears to have a chance of fully healing all characters when it is cast. DW4 is the only game where this chance occurs.