(Wow, Tumblr did a thing with their input fields... didn't see that until now)
Anyway, I attempted 'XII in a day' again a couple of weeks ago and it all went to shite, the final blow ending on Bergan. I've since then cleaned up my notes, and if everything goes according to plan, I'll stack up on water bottles, microwave pizzas and a giant bowl on oatmeal porridge this following Saturday, starting at around 10 am Amsterdam time. The event will be streamed on my Twitch channel. I'll be emulating, but not using save states. I'll be counting game overs when they start happening.
And I’m sorry I couldn’t jump into your stream yesterday! Australian Internet is bad and I was also about to go to bed, haha.
AH! We need to work out these time zones! Weekends are our only option I assume - I won't be streaming this weekend, but I probably will the next! So if you're available Saturday or Sunday morning there's a chance we'll 'meet' :D
Problems loading the stream are harder to solve though :/ I stream at 30 fps 720p, and some people encounter problems with that kind of load, which might be ISP or computer related (or both).
I'm listening to my desktop torrenting XII undubbed and I can't believe I never thought of looking for it earlier! The only reason I did so now is because I bought XIII PC off Steam yesterday and played the two first chapters with Japanese audio and HNNG - there's just something to it, you know? As wonderful as the dubs are for both XII and XIII, there's just something about playing with the original audio that reminds me of watching subbed animes back in the 90's. (Dubs done by US manga corps felt so... alien to me, that if I couldn't get British dubs, I skipped it altogether.) Also, just as important, nothing is ever dubbed in Norway (except children's show) and so I'm so used to watching stuff in their original language that dubbing almost always feels like the second choice for me.
I just had a sudden urge for XII streamy replay. So: If I can get this download done and working today, there will be Japanese XII in my stream. (And if it's IZJS... well, that might be my first attempt at IZJS. We'll see.)
I really need to figure out if I want to keep Basch/Vaan/Ashe for this run, or if I should swap the team for Ashe/Vaan/Penelo instead. I use a lot of crit/reflect in this run - but I have a feeling using Basch as Decoy/ the extra hitpoints (plus his Quickenings) has and will save me a lot of pain. (Cid at Draklor, being the major blocker so far - I can't imagine doing him with Pen instead of Basch.) I only have Pharos to go and so far my theory that you don't really need to grind for EXP in this game is proving itself right considering the problems I'm NOT having. Giruvegan was a joke - most bossfights up until now has been, which surprises me. The Great Crystal is going to be a bit more trouble once I reach those pesky cats, but what makes them awful is their AOE and debuffing - meaning you can pretty much just keep one person in your party at the time and you should be able to run through those areas just fine.
Going for 3x Swiftness and the +500 and +200 HP Augments really helps out, so Augments > levels.
All I need to to now is to find away to skip a round of Panther farming, because that part is extremely dull to watch. One is more than enough - but I really need to get gil to upgrade my equipment for Henne/Tiamat (the latter being the second hardest fight so far, IMO.) After Tiamat you get access to Fira and can Jelly grind. One round of Jellies takes 20 minutes, so there might be four of those rounds in total in this run - depending on the gil. I've spent money on a few items I don't really need, such as the Golden Staffs. Complete waste of money. So if I can calculate my gil need a bit better, I might just need the one Panther round. The problem is I need to do one round just to be able to afford the Golden Amulets, and then I need some LP. I don't know what saves me more time - one round of Panthers, or twenty~ish zonings of dragons in the Stilshrine of Miriam (they give you 2 LP each, = 12 each round with the Golden Amulets, and with a good Blizzard strategy you can make LP fast as respawning them takes about 25 seconds. Boring to watch though.)
Re: staffs - for this run I've come to realize how incredibly useful the Flame/Storm/Glacial staffs are in this game. Particularly the two latter. I'll be using the Storm Staffs for all of Stilshrine of Miriam, Bergan, Sochen and Draklor. (Plus lightning preettyyy!)
...ohey, turns out you CAN in fact convert .flv to .mp4 with VLC! Orsm, that's two Fran&Balthier Only fights I can edit and post very shortly - one is Rafflesia, the other Daedalus, both done with Decoy/Crit+Berserk. Plus I have a video from one of my recent runs (full party) where I take down Mateus in 10 seconds.
I gained even more followers on my Twitch stream last night!!
(Boring stream rant below cut)
Maybe it's the switch from just fiddling around doing random stuff while commenting on characters, lore etc (I still do that as well thought!) to focusing more on gameplay & strategy that makes more people interested in my stream? (I'm trying to do some sort of... if not speedrun, then at least moving a lot quicker through the game.) Or maybe it's the posts on Tumblr? Either way it's awesome to share the XII experience with other viewers and it makes me want to get even better at planning out my streams, using text on the screen plus voice to inform the people watching/listening what I'm doing and why. I often feel awkward going on voice without having at least one person in the chat I'm already having a conversation with, because it feels strange talking to just 1 or 2 people that might not even be listening. But my regular viewers always request a mic if I'm not voicing, so... idk, I find it really strange that people would find it interesting listen to me stumble over words in my Scandinavian accent, but either way it's awesome, amazing, fantastic etc and I love some of the strategic talk - and the jokes!! - that often happens in the chat.
I wish I could shout out to some of my viewers right here and now, because some of them have brightened my day significantly with their awesomeness. But so few of them are on Tumblr! (That I know of, at least!)
Should you want to check out my stream by the way, it's here! I stream at 720p 30fps so the quality is pretty decent for a stream, but light enough that most users should be able to load it, no matter their bandwith and computer - at least I hope so!
