Totori+ Othogalaxen Boss guide (patch 1.02)

First of all, I am not sure at this time of post whether other versions outside the Japanese one received patch 1.02. If you have been following guides that promotes Dark Water, I am afraid to say that it no longer works. In 1.02, I think the bosses' resistances were increased to the point where Dark Water is impossible to land.

So obviously I have been following those guides (including Japanese ones) without considering that 1.02 screwed all of them. With the absence of Dark Water, this means that you cannot lame out bosses with Sleep/Poison effects. It also means that you other end game items need to be stronger.

For end game equipment, this guide still works.  The most important part is getting as high defense as possible, as well as at least 1 Shadow band on Totori. The Shadow Band is, of course, to be used in conjunction with a very good Dimension Egg. You will get 6 turns in total if your Egg is built right. Also, I find that on Totori, it does not matter if the Shadow Band has high quality (higher quality Bands drain more health per turn) since it does not kill. It's nice to have it as low quality as possible, but not THAT neccecery.

For characters, it does not really matter as long as they are well-equipped and around level 45-ish. I manage to beat the bosses with Sterk and Mimi, which shows that you don't really need Rorona and abuse her ability to use items. All you really need your party to do is to defend Totori as much as possible. If Totori dies, you will lose.

Now let's talk items. I won't go so much into details on how to transfer traits because that's the fun part of the game. All items list are more or less equally important so try not to compromise them.

Elixir

This item is what keeps your party alive and healthy. You cannot compromise this item at all in my opinion. Drache's guide's Elixir covers it perfectly so I'm just reiterating it. Effects needed are HP Recovery from having it made high quality (so that Shadow Band isn't that painful), HP Healing L from a high quality Nectar, and MP Recovery L from a LOW QUALITY Sage Herb. The MP Recovery is really important, I cannot stress that enough. I personally made one without it and it was hell wasting turns to drink Mind Waters and having my party members out of mana after using their skills a few times. MP Recovery ensures that your party will ALWAYS be able to use their skills, and ensures that Totori do not waste TONS OF TURNS drinking Mind Water JUST to duplicate stuff (especially Dimension Egg).

Traits are also the same as Drache's guide. Healing Essence from Forest Dew, so that it automatically revives your members should they randomly die for being unlucky (it happens). Cure-All will naturally be there with Sage Herb, so that it heals everyone. Also Source of Life from Bless Stone to restore LP. Having low LP is pretty much one of the causes of death due to the reduction of defense. And of course, what else to spend on the last two traits? Simply, Effect Boost L and Rank Boost L.

Totori Brunch
This item is especially useful if bosses hold the threat of one-shoting your characters. Most (if not all) the bosses notoriously tries to lower your characters' attack and defense by a good amount. Feeding them this Totori Brunch would mostly likely negate the effect. Again, not as essential as the other items, but still occasionally useful when all else fails.

Effects are:
Final Strike L
Rank Boost L
Beginners OK
Lone Slayer L
Boost Effect L

Dimension Egg
You probably heard this item tons of times. With Shadow Band, this essentially gives the user 6 turns (I confirm that it's 6) at the expense of depleting all available mana (this is where and should be the only time Mind Water comes in). It lasts for 2 rounds, so on the second round you don't have to waste 2 turns duplicating Dimension Egg and then drinking Mind Water. You might be able to compromise this by giving it lousier traits somewhat, ending up with less turns but still able to function. Keep in mind that less turns might give you more trouble against bosses that regen or heal. For the purpose of this guide, I'm using my 6 turns Dimension Egg.

Effects are:
Effect Boost L
Boost Effect L
Rank Boost L
Final Strike L
Lone Slayer L

Himmelstein
Othogalaxen bosses have retarded elemental resistances so N/A supposedly won't work on them (unless they changed their resistances this patch which I didn't check). Either ways, this bomb is non-elemental damage so patch or no patch, this is a reliable source of damage. I made 2 versions of this, one to debuff enemies (so that I don't really need to make Magic Chains like some guides do), the other for pure damage. The pure damage Himmelstein should be doing around 2000 damage after debuffing enemies and bugging yourself with Ether Ink. It can critical for even more!

For the damage Himmelstein, effects are:
Beginners OK
Rank Boost L
Effect Boost L
Lone Slayer L
Giant Slayer +

For the debuffing Himmelstein, effects are:
Soul Steal
Giant Slayer +
Rank Boost L
Effect Boost L
Strength Steal

Ether Ink
This item just boosts all your items when you use them! To top it off, it is relatively easy to make a good one.  You just have to get it to a quality where it has the Item Effect + trait. It's an easy to make item which you spend 1 turn using which increases your Himmelstein damage by around 400 (this of course depends on how good your Himmelstein is in the first place). You can live without it though.

Mind Water
Simple item. It's best, of course, to make it such that it has MP Recovery XL but as long as your Elixir is giving MP too, MP Recovery M is enough since you are going to use it only when you totally run out of MP (after using Dimension Egg, or if you miscalculated and don't have MP to use duplicate). Wholesale THIS. You are not going to duplicate this. Wholesale and buy. Bring a bunch to Orthogalaxen. You don't really have to give it crazy effects and stuff so don't waste too much resources working on it.


Strategy
With these items, the strategy for all bosses is pretty much the same, with only a few minor notes to take care of.

Basically your team members will keep using their most damaging skill on the boss(es). ALWAYS choose to protect Totori. If Totori dies, the team is as good as dead (unless the boss is down to a pixel). I repeat, ALWAYS protect Totori, if Totori dies, party dies.

So obviously the main focus of the fight is Totori herself. With Dimension Egg and Shadow Band, you will have 6 turns. The first turn goes something like this:
1) Ether Ink
2) Duplicate Dimension Egg (this will wipe your MP)
3) Mind Water (this will restore some MP)
4) Duplicate Elixir (this will heal the whole party, give them regen and give tons of MP)
5) Duplicate Debuffing Himmelstein (this will weaken your foes by a ton)
6) Duplicate Himmelstein

Then the second turn goes something like:
1) Duplicate Elixir
2) Duplicate Himmelstein
3) Duplicate Himmelstein
4) Duplicate Himmelstein
5) Duplicate Himmelstein
6) Duplicate Himmelstein

Then third turn goes something like:
1) Duplicate Dimension Egg (this will wipe your MP)
2) Mind Water (this will restore some MP)
3) Duplicate Elixir (this will heal the whole party, give them regen and give tons of MP)
4) Duplicate Himmelstein
5) Duplicate Himmelstein
6) Duplicate Himmelstein

After doing it awhile, you will get used to the strategy. Then you can start being flexible about the decisions like maybe throwing an extra Himmelstein, or using Totori Brunch, etc. BASICALLY the big picture is:

1) Debuff enemy (Debuff Himmelstein)
2) Buff with Ether Ink
3) Dimension Egg
4) Regain mana
5) Bomb the crap out of the boss
6) Go back to step 3 and repeat

This will more or less work for ALL the Orthogalaxen bosses. The only problem I had was Blood Element, where she has the potential to wipe my team easily. If I survived her first round, I did the following instead for my first turn:

1) Duplicate Totori Brunch (on first member)
2) Duplicate Dimension Egg (this will wipe your MP)
3) Mind Water (this will restore some MP)
4) Duplicate Elixir (this will heal the whole party, give them regen and give tons of MP)
5) Duplicate Debuffing Himmelstein (this will weaken your foes by a ton)
6) Duplicate Totori Brunch (on second member)

This will ensure that her attack will be reduced and your party member's defenses will be greatly increased to the point where her attack can potentially (for my case) deal 1 damage per hit. After doing so, it's pretty much smooth sailing.

Well that's all I have to share. Good luck!

My [Fallout: New Vegas] Unarmed/Melee build

NOTE: For those coming here to look for the pure Melee build, you can skip all this to the bottom of the post. This is specifically an Unarmed-Critical build. The pure melee build I came up with is actually more straightforward and is posted all the way below.

I've been playing quite a bit of Fallout: New Vegas this weekend, and again I'm tempted to make a pure unarmed/melee character despite how much I love shooting people down. Seems that all Fallout games have this weird effect on me...

Anyway, I followed the basic rules of assigning stats I have for all the Fallout games I played:

1) Never put 10 in any stat. 8 is usually good enough. 9 if you can afford. AGI might be an exception.

2) Check if CHA is useless in the game. In Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it's so bad you might as well dump it no matter what character you play unless you like seeing your companions being badass instead of you.

3) Never EVER dump INT unless you are forced to.
4) END is not as important in most builds, including this unarmed/melee build. It's good to have, not bad to lose it either.

5) AGI should be 8 or above for FO1 and 2. For Fallout 3 onwards, depends if you want to screw your VATS AP or not.



So here's a simple breakdown:

S - 8 (+2 from power armor and implant)
P - 5 (+1 from implant to qualify for Better Critical perk at level 16, enough time for you to play around the world before entering The Strip)
E - 5 (For Toughness perk)
C - 1 (crappy stat)
I - 4 (I wish I had the old Gifted trait to turn this into 9 =/, 4 for Comprehension/Educated perk)
A - 8 (I like VATS)
L - 9 (For the love of critical %)

I probably metagamed abit, like finding out if certain implants are available (especially for my 5 Perception). I could probably drop -1 INT for +1 AGI to be REALLY REALLY min/maxing, but that would involve me running to The Strip at level 2-3.

This build though, is very similar to most of my Unarmed/Melee character builds in all the Fallout games I've played, but they are usually very easy to screw up and shoot your own feet by wasting 1 stat point or picking the wrong perk.

In New Vegas, perks for Unarmed/Melee should be very straightforward. Plan ahead, make sure you have 45% into Melee Weapons to qualify for the Super Slam perk by levle 8 (yes, even if you are making a pure Unarmed build). The rest should be no-brainer:

2: Confirmed Bachelor/Intense Training
4: Comprehension/Educated
6: Toughness
8: Super Slam
10: Finesse
12: Piercing Strike
14: Purifier
16: Paralyzing Palm/Action Boy (I haven't decided yet)
18: Ninja
20: Action Boy/Toughness (anything you want really)

The rest should be more or less up to you because by then you should be one-hitting Deathclaws (or so I heard :p). Anyway, once you are in the game, do NOT piss off Caesar too much. You need to get the Legion Assault Kung-Fu move from one of his lackeys in his tent at The Fort.

Before I forget, my tagged skills are: Unarmed, Sneak and Speech. Tagging isn't as important in Fallout 3/New Vegas, but with your INT at 4, every bit really helps. Especially since you are spending some on Melee Weapons if you are playing Unarmed.

I'll just sum up my build by saying that it's mostly a crit-fisher unarmed build, taking advantage of the fact that Unarmed's crit damage is through the roof (2x I think). If you are playing a Melee Weapons build, you might be better off dropping luck and dumping perception so you can have more points to spend somewhere else.

My hardcore playthrough was pretty tough at the start, like more melee characters in all Fallout games. The good doctor gave me a boxing glove for a weapon and I thought it was a joke item that can be thrown away when I saw it at first. I didn't realize the developers were serious about making me wear that crap and try to do damage. I hardly did do any with it btw.

Hey but look at the bright side. I don't have to carry ammo, so that can be reserved for food, drinks and other wonderful drugs out there. Keep all your drugs, you'll never know when you need them. Keep the Buffouts, Med-X, Rad-X, RadAways, Jet, SuperBombs, Psycho and even Mentats. All these will turn you into the HULK that even makes Super Mutants pee their pants.

Your first breakthrough will be Freeway. Run to Mike and at his shop and beg him to show you his secret wares. There you will see the Power First, everyone's favorite unarmed weapon in FO1 and 2 (then again, back then there were only 4 unarmed weapons in the game, not counting boxing gloves). From thereafter, everything should be smooth sailing.

Then we come to the 4 main factions of the game. I initially wanted to help NCR but after going to all its camps, it felt like a dog place to be in, mostly because it reminds me of National Server =/

So I wanted to help House, but realized he's too screwed up as a person to help. Caesar is...well...I thought the wasteland setting is bad enough, but crucifying people openly? Turning towns into ghost towns? Not happening. I love the robots House has though, so that really gives me one option, which is to help Yes Man who will help me take over New Vegas. Neat!

Besides look at how happy he is!



*updated 24/12/10*
Melee Build?
The main reason for crit-fishing for an Unarmed build is that Unarmed does 100% extra damage on critical (as far as I know when I posted this). I have one/two hit a Deathclaw before with this build so I don't think it's far from the truth.

The melee build is in fact much simpler and you can build it with ease since it isn't worth it to look for high crits; it's more important to get better raw damage. Melee is essentially almost as easy to build as a gun character imho:

S - 8 (+2 from power armor and implant)
P - 1 (don't need this imo)
E - 9 (+1 from implant to make it 10)
C - 1 (crappy stat)
I - 8 (to make the game really easy)
A - 8 (I like VATS)
L - 5 (you can actually drop this further since there is a +1 luck implant...)

As you can see from above, it's really easy to build a melee character. Your strength and endurance stats are max out, allowing you to be the ideal melee tank you would expect to be. High intelligence means you have a ton of skill points to distribute for other skills. And since you are no longer looking for Better Criticals perk, you really don't need perception at all. The rest of the stats are just flavor.

The stats above aren't the best SPECIAL for melee build, but I'm just showing that you can have more freedom of allocating points wherever you wish as compared to the crit-fishing Unarmed build. Also, with that many skill points, perks should be incredibly easy to qualify. As for the perks themselves, you basically pick everything that increases your damage and survivability. You can even choose to branch your specialization and try a bit of throwing/lockpicking/whatever.

For the unarmed-critical build, not so much...