TA Time - Episode 2 - Blue Burst

[Sitka]

It's time for some TA on Episode 2 Blue Burst - USA.

We've revived the old "Team Awesome" from the days of xbox with Mo and Shigecki (don't see Sanzo or Asia Skyly around anymore)and we've got Notos and myself playing a bit.

The 2 x exp thing kinda pre-empted the c-mode run, but it's time to get some serious action going.

I have a Hucast and Hucaseal for TA and can play my Fonewm for force, but would prefer Notos or someone else to use their fonewearl. I can use the Fonewm for a multiple force strategy (c'mon gizonde/gibarta).

Refer back to Yellow5's strategies and maps.

Five Stages:

1 - Temple - easy, just need to decide who takes which route - I like Hucast or Hucaseal.

2 - Spaceship - easy, decide routes, remember ports - I like Hucast or Hucaseal.

3 - Gal da Val - my favorite - we can do this in 12 minutes if we get a lucky drop or two - I like two forces here - I prefer playing Hucaseal on this one.

4 - Seabeds - my second favorite - I hope the sinow/squid trick works on BB - anyone got the guts to try Flow's right foot strategy? - I love a Hucast on this one.

5 - Towers - Where's my pallasch? - Watch out for those stupid flowers/delbiters/ill gils - I like Hucast on this one as well.

Our old team of Curacklin, Shigeki, Merovigian and myself with occasional drop ins from Yummy, Sanzo, Liquid Bacon, Snow, Pajamaz and others had a lot of fun with this on xbox.

I'm not sure where everyone else left off, but I was about 4 minutes shy of cracking 3 hours and I want to smash that time on BB.

If you've done/are interested in TA, please send me a note. I'd like to get a group of serious players meeting up regularly to get this thing going.

Thing about episode 2 TA, the maps are always the same. What you play for are the drops and the hopes of getting to the Boss with most or all of your scapes. Once everyone has learned their roles and knows what the others are going to do, it's easily the best part of PSO in my book.

The way we played it, we would run the first few rooms trying to be mistake free and get a good drop. If you make a mistake or have lousy drops, quit and reset. Not uncommon to take the first hour or so just perfecting the first few rooms and then finally going for it.

Yellow5: get a BB account and join us for a bit - could be fun and I'd love running this with you.

Hope a few of you out there want to get this going again.

[Curalkin]

Hey Sitka, we got the time to 3:00:02. lol

[Sitka]

We had a couple of runs last night and it was fun, just running through some ep 1 - felt rusty as hell. Nothing like running up to a monster and "miss-miss" BLAM!!

Got a mail from HNIC, but had accidently deleted his card so when Mo and Shigecki freed up, I was unable to get ahold of him. Bless joined and it was fun running with a team again. Next time, meet up and share cards so I can mail when it's on.

We're looking for nights and some weekend runs.

Curacklin, you back on xbox trying to crack 3 hours or you leaving it just short?

[Shigecki]

You know I'm up for TA on ep2. While getting my srank, I was trying to get knocked down in the first room on c4, but no success. Thinking that they might have fixed that little glitch.

The maps are a little different on C1 too. Well the map is the same, but a few of the rooms have changed. One being where the second scape doll is. It's by a switch that opens a door, this switch wasn't here before. I don't remember which area, only area I remember in c1 is 4, just because of switches. The room after that used to contain a healing ring that would be used to well kinda cheat lol, that is gone now, no more using all freeze traps and healing up to kill belras.

We got through all of ep2 in 3'34", so that is a good start. 48 c1, 41 c2, 22 c3, 1'07" (ouch) c4, and I think a 27 c5.

Looking forward to doing more.

[Sitka]

Damn Shigecki - I'm salivating.

No sinow trick - that sucks.

I kinda sucked on the four switch thing in e2c1 anyway - might as well memorize the new map.

How did you battle Flow? Mechs? Pallasch? Behind the right foot or duck and cover? Team makeup? Who played the force?

I want to give that e2c3 a run with Fonewearl, Fonewm, Hucast, Hucaseal - could be fun.

We have to run these in order, right? No more jumping in on any stage like the old xbox days.

[Shigecki]

Lag is going to be a big issue on C4. Well not so much lag as it slows down so much.

As far as Flow, right foot baby, no duck and cover. We(Mo and I) tore flow a new one, second form didn't take long at all. His first form took a hell of a lot longer, no lockgun for the caseal.

I think the time was so bad because basically I was the only one who knew the whole run, and w/o voice had to stop and give instructions.

Bless played the fo. We had 2 casts and a hucaseal, with MO playing the other cast and Chiyo playing the caseal.

[Curalkin]

I wish I could get it under 3 hours. I'm seriously thinking of going to PSOBB for c-mode...

[SLON]

I played an Ep2C1 game over the weekend with 3 Japanese, who unfortunately didn't speak English, so I was left out of any discussions. The Hucast had a time of 30 minutes, which is what I'm really writing about!
The basic team tactic was to ignore all boxes (even those on the way), and just kill/run. All the Hus dropped their scapes at the start, and the Fo TP died whenever required. Alas, the Humar died at some point in the game (not in the same room as me, so I don't know what happened), and they didn't retry, which happens quite a lot with Japanese players, so we never finished the game.
Sitka, I think you need to get your team fluent in playing together before you start retrying for weapon drops. Get used to who goes where and what tactics you need at each stage - who gets what weapon/switches etc etc. I'm not flaming any of you guys (and I hope to play with you at some point in the future), but I think 3 hours is a pretty easy target to get on Episode 2. I've hardly played any Ep2 cmode at TA level, but I've still got a time of 2 hours 50 mins; there are many Japanese players with times of around 2 hours on Ep2, and with those sort of times you can see the need for Genkai. Of course a decent weapon drop is going to help you, especially in C4, but good team play/tactics is going to help you most of all.

[Saiffy]

I got about 3'15 just clearing with my FOnewearl, never bothered to increase the times that could've needed it.(Trying to add onto what Slon said).

The thing that made me most comfortable with TAing episode 2 wasn't whether or not we got good drops, since we were gonna do multiple runs, usually. It was because I knew my team very well(CCL, Rubicon, sometimes Slon or two other people whom I can't remember). You'll never get a good time of under 2'30 or so if you don't know your team good enough.

Persistence, and I'm sure you can do it.

[Sitka]

Good advice and well taken.

C'mon over Curacklin - your force support would be most welcome.

Slon - I'd love to do some serious runs with you on the team. In the few games I had a chance to do on Gamecube, I noticed that the JP players flew through rooms ignoring boxes and the forces were killing machines - not there for support.

We had one run on xbox on E2C3 where we got to the Gryphon in around 5:50 and I was so excited about getting a true TA time, then we got a couple of unlucky crits on his stomp and failed the challenge. I'd love to have that one over again.

I agree that we need to know the team, and ourselves, well enough to really nail this thing down. I'm hoping that the lag and the lack of the sinow trick on bb doesn't make it too difficult to TA that fourth stage.

Shigecki, do you know if you can bypass the gates on E2C4 (i.e. avoid teleporting to unpleasant places) using the same trick that we did on xbox?