I've been working on several updates at once, and I'm proud to announce that they're finally ready.
To start with, I've updated "Super Hard" with a new feature: for the first time ever, you can use your EDK to resist Mericarol's attacks in Ultimate. Instead of causing guaranteed death, I have updated the Mericarol series of enemies to use attacks within the normal EDK range of Megid, which means that you can use EDK gear to prevent yourself from dying.
Rather than force you to guess how much EDK you need, I will simply tell you: the spit attack on Mericarol, Merikle, and Mericus now requires 80, 90, and 100 EDK respectively (level 20, 25, and 30, in Megid terms) for immunity, and the purple Megid mist attack on Mericarol, Merikle, and Mericus requires 100, 90, and 80 EDK respectively for immunity. Of course you have a good chance to survive if your EDK is close to these values, but these are the EDK values you need for a 100% survival rate.
All online quests with "Super Hard" and Mericarols have been updated with this change, and the offline editions of ET/WT/TT have been updated as well. The EDK requirements for immunity in offline mode are 10 below the EDK requirements in online mode (i.e. 70, 80, 90 for the spit, and 90, 80, 70 for the purple mist). As always, remember to delete the old ET/WT/TT files before you download the new ones.
In addition, Maximum Attack 2 Ver.3 and Maximum Attack 3.2a/b/c have all been updated with survivable Mericarol attacks, too. Mericarols do still spit more frequently in Ultimate, though, so don't get overconfident.
Special thanks go to Ralf for providing me with the extra data I needed in order to figure out how to finally "fix" Mericarol's attacks.
The second update has to do with Garon's Scheme. "Super Hard" is now available in this quest, so you can challenge yourself with more robust Forest enemies offline. Of course, an NPC such as Alicia doesn't stand a chance against these more powerful enemies, so I've made some additions to help her out.
If you play "Super Hard" in Garon's Scheme, Alicia will be able to use my new Smart Mates™ system. Since NPCs are too stupid to heal themselves during battle, even when they don't have enough HP to take another hit, Alicia will now use a Smart Mate™ if her HP drops below 50%, unless her HP is low enough for her to use a Trimate or cast Resta (or you heal her first). As with Trimates, Alicia can carry 10 Smart Mates™ at a time.
In addition, if Alicia dies, you will no longer fail the quest. Instead, both of you will get sent to the hospital, where Alicia will revive, thus allowing you to continue with the quest. Reviving in the hospital will also restore her supply of Smart Mates™.
Finally, Alicia's respite period after getting hit is extended to 10 seconds in "Super Hard", so she has extra time before she will take damage again.
Note that Alicia will now revive in the hospital whenever she dies, regardless of the difficulty setting, but Smart Mates™ and the extended respite period are only available in "Super Hard".
The second part of this update relates to the Photon Ticket system: it is now possible for you to receive multiple tickets from a single run of the quest, and the tickets you earn will carry over into the next time you play the quest. You get 1 Photon Ticket in Normal, Hard, and Very Hard, 2 Photon Tickets in Ultimate, and 3 Photon Tickets in "Super Hard".
In order for these tickets to have some value, I have also replaced the prizes in the quest. I found out a while ago that GAME MAGAZINE used to be available in the quest Singing by the Beach, which was the reward quest for Famitsu -Maximum Attack- on GC, but to my knowledge, there is unfortunately no longer any copy of these quests on any current PSO server. As a result, GAME MAGAZINE has been unobtainble on Sylverant, until now.
You can now trade your Photon Tickets for CHU CHU FEVER, GAME MAGAZINE, and FLOWER BOUQUET, which cost 9, 6, and 4 tickets each, respectively. You will now also have access to your Photon Tickets (assuming you have any) in the Quest Board as soon as you start the quest, and you can buy multiple items in a single run of the quest, assuming you have enough tickets for both items. Note that you can carry a maximum of 10 Photon Tickets at one time. At last you can obtain the terrible CHU CHU FEVER frame without having to waste a Heart of Chu Chu and a bunch of hours raising a Mag to use the cell on.
Of course, assuming anybody actually played the old version of the quest, this creates a slight problem, in that Disc Vol.4 and Disc Vol.5 are unobtainable again. To rectify this, you can now buy all seven types of music discs in Garon's Shop.
Phew! I think that's everything. Please post if you discover any bugs...
![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)