Assassin's page

[Mnrogar]

Assassin's page, 2 locations:

http://www14.brinkster.com/assassin17/
http://home.comcast.net/~assassin17/

February 2 2012, Lores Acquisition Guide was updated to version 1.7. first update in early 6 years!

there are many changes, mostly minor. here's a list of most of the bigger ones:
- revamped Section 5 to change the ubiquitous and terse "Uses randomly" descriptions to "M% on Turn X of Y". that's far more detailed, yet without taking much more space. (thanks, Lufia_Maxim)
- no longer wrongly claim that Roulette can be aimed if you're careful with the cursor selection; it's still random after that. (thanks, Djibriel)
- added Berserk to list of statuses in Section 3 that stop lore-learning. (thanks, JIM12306)
- added 7-7-BAR as a L.5 Doom teacher in Sections 5 and 6, and how to avoid annihilation from it. (thanks, Novalia Spirit)
- all from ebmid2 (yes, he was very helpful way back when):
a. added Innoc as way to learn L? Pearl in Sections 6 and 9, as it's better than Dark Force.
b. in three sections, added a first party room to meet Dark Force, which is better than the Party #2 place i already had.
c. in Section 9, added Red Dragon as way to learn L? Pearl, and Intangir Rage as way to learn Pep Up.
- added a method of casting Dischord to avoid Sketch misses (and thus the Sketch bug), mainly useful for EarthGuard and Pipsqueak. also added Beret for the same goal.
- added Crawler to Section 9 for an alternate to learn Dischord.
- before the Kefka's Tower steps in Section 9 walkthrough, provided a more specific recommended lore-learning sequence. the main steps have some redundancies because i don't know how people are going to play the tower (or what they did before it), so the recommended sequence is there to avoid some of that for readers who want to follow my guide to the letter.

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as for the last update post:

note that Djibriel made 3 more patches for this game, which i plan to upload eventually. one should be up in the next couple of days, another within a week or so. the third could take a bit, depending on whether i follow through with some planned changes..

two of those are since up. we'll see on the third.

[Mnrogar]

Updated August 22nd with a patch to fix Step Mine's missing digit bug which caused the middle digit of step mine's MP cost not to be displayed in battle when the cost was between 100 and 109.

[Mnrogar]

Updated September 24th 2004 with a brushless sketch patch. What this does is make Sketch act like Runic and Swd Tech in the sense that you can't use sketch without a brush equipped. Note that you need to apply Assassin's "Auto Swordless Runic" patch in order to use this one.

[Mnrogar]

Updated September 29th 2004 with version 1.4 of the Lores Acquisition Guide which now has a "lores acquisition walkthrough" and a mysterious reference to assassin's love life...

[Mnrogar]

Updated October 14th 2004 with a new Capture patch. This patch fixes the fact that some weapons with special effects will lose these special effects when used with the capture command, Atma Weapon, Valiant Knife, Dice and Fixed Dice being prime examples.

[Mnrogar]

Updated October 28th 2004 with "Randomosity" documents! Assassin's explanation follows:

They deal with how the game's random number system prevents you from ever encountering many monster groups in certain attack formations (specifically Back and Pincer) if you have a certain number of party members.

[Mnrogar]

Assassin's page, 2 locations:

http://www14.brinkster.com/assassin17/
http://assassin17.home.comcast.net/

Updated november 14th 2004 with the brand new "Mute steals Rage statuses" fix.

Description from Assassin's site:

When a spell of nonzero original MP cost is attempted by a Muted character via the Rage command, the character wrongly won't gain statuses of the Raged monster. These monster statuses are of two types: removable (e.g. Dark, Poison, Clear) and permanent (e.g. Safe, Haste, Reflect). Application of the removable statuses is delayed until some entity next makes a working move (i.e. one that doesn't abort from Mute or Imp). An aborted spell thwarts the would-be permanent statuses, but only if it happens as the first turn of the Rage. In that case, the Rager is also locked out of those statuses for the remainder of the Rage because the game still gave him/her immunity to them in an attempt to make them unremovable.

A prime victim of the bug is a deliberately Muted Intangir Rager.

This fix separates the giving of the Raged monster's statuses from the actual Rage attack; you'll inherit them regardless of whether the attack aborts, just as already happens with the monster's other acquirable properties (such as elemental tolerances and status immunities). In the process, the patch also fixes some other Rage and status bugs, which are mainly just an issue with monster hacks (see the Readme for more info).

Comes with two pairs of patches and anti-patches: one for FF3us (either version) and one for FF6j. Also includes detailed disassemblies of Square's bad code and my fix.

[Mnrogar]

Updated december 12th 2004 with the brand new "Control attacks ignore MP cost" fix.

Description from Assassin's site:

Straight from Master ZED's Bugs and Glitches Guide:

Control attacks ignore MP cost in use - Whenever you use an attack with a MP cost via a Controlled monster, the game will ignore the cost entirely, not taking it from the Controller or the monster. The menu doesn't do the same, however, though it's kinda slow at actually noticing a change in MP under certain circumstances (see Control menu responds poorly to MP change under 2. In battle - Miscellaneous).

The Control menu already disables access to any attacks which cost more than the monster's remaining MP. That's a strong sign Square didn't want Control to render spells free.

This fix bills controlled monsters for the MP costs of spells they cast, since there's no good reason hypnosis should provide infinite resources.

Comes with two pairs of patches and anti-patches: one for FF3us (either version) and one for FF6j. Also includes detailed disassemblies of Square's bad code and my fix.

[Mnrogar]

Updated december 26th 2004 with the brand "That Damn Yellow Streak" fix.

Description from Assassin's site:

Straight from Master ZED's Bugs and Glitches Guide:

The red/yellow streak in Gogo's command options window - There's a red/yellow streak in Gogo's command options window that shouldn't be there. About the only thing I can elaborate on is the cause, which is that the line comes from the very last line in Gogo's subscreen portrait. This portrait is mysteriously reprinted behind the window, and the last line comes out from behind the window due to a sprite priority bug.

Square put code in FF6j to deliberately give Background 2 tiles priority over the sprite in the Status screen's right-hand command list, which is why you don't see any of the portrait in that version, nor most of it in FF3us. The reason FF3us has a problem is that the portrait was shifted down from FF6j; its bottom line entered another row of tiles, but the code that modifies the tiles' priorities was never updated.

This fix makes the necessary adjustment to that code. Tada; no more accursed streak!

Comes with a patch and an anti-patch for FF3us (either version). Also includes detailed disassemblies of Square's bad code and my fix.

[Mnrogar]

Updated january 8th, from Assassin:

Fixed revision of "Control attacks ignore MP cost fix" uploaded! The first release screwed up battles with certain events or animations: Whelk wouldn't go into its shell, and Kefka wouldn't appear during Terra's MagiTek Slave Crown flashback.

Thanks, j_ugnick!

Mark the fateful day of January 5, 2005 on your calendars kids, because ol' Assassin is about to start another ~2-year bugless streak!

[Mnrogar]

Updated february 19th, from Assassin:

Partial excerpt from Master ZED's Bugs and Glitches Guide:

Statuses such as Stop, Reflect, Sleep, and Freeze eventually wear off after awhile unless, in the case of Reflect, they can become permanent. The game does this through the use of individual timers for each status, for each target. Stop makes all other timers, along with Regen, Poison, and Seizure, halt execution for its duration since it is supposed to be a time freeze. The bug here, however, is that if you remove the timed statuses with a spell such as Dispel, the timers will not be reset and will still count down on their own, not even checking to see if their respective status still exists. While this doesn't affect anything with most of the statuses, Stop's superceding of Regen, etc. and other timed status can cause problems such as prolonging timed status and [temporarily] keeping Regen and co. from doing any HP healing/damage. [Proper behavior doesn't resume until Stop's timer expires.]

This fix zeroes a status' auto-expiration timer *whenever* it's removed, meaning the timer for any entity who doesn't have the status will now correctly be zero. As a result, the game won't trick itself into partially thinking an absent status is still present.

Comes with two pairs of patches and anti-patches: one for FF3us (either version) and one for FF6j. Also includes detailed disassemblies of Square's lacking code and my fix.

[Mnrogar]

Updated march 18th, the new and aptly named "Control menu responds poorly to MP change", from Assassin:

Straight from Master ZED's Bugs and Glitches Guide::

Control menu responds poorly to MP change - This bug deals with the fact that Control takes a turn, two at most, to notice a change in a monster's MP rating. Once you have Controlled a monster, wait for the Controller's gauge to fill up, then try something like zeroing the monster's MP. Take a look at the menu, and you'll see that all MP-dependent attacks are still available. Not only that, you can still use them for one turn since attacks initiated from the Control menu ignore MP cost in practice. This also works in reverse; for example, Control a Sprinter after you have zeroed its MP. Now use its Special (Drainbeak) to replenish 20+ MP. On the Controller's next turn, Cyclonic, the only MP-dependent attack in Sprinter's Control menu, will still not be available even though it gained sufficent MP from the previous turn.


With this fix, Control menus are updated more often, and will correctly reflect their associated monsters' current MP. To be specific, the same types of cases that make the game re-determine availability of spells on Esper, Magic, and Lore menus for a character will now make the Control menu regenerate for a monster.

Comes with two pairs of patches and anti-patches: one for FF3us (either version) and one for FF6j. Also includes detailed disassemblies of Square's lacking code and my fix.

NOTE: Help wanted. See the Readme for a chance at a staggering reward!

[Mnrogar]

Updated april 24th 2005, with a brand new Monster Statistics Guide for the SNES game Secret of Evermore.

[Mnrogar]

Updated may 9th 2005, with a brand new "Erratic levelling fix" for the SNES game Secret of Evermore.

[Mnrogar]

Updated may 17th 2005, with the new "Infinite Bazooka Ammo fix" for the SNES game Secret of Evermore.

[Mnrogar]

Updated september 6th 2005, from assassin:

"Jump Megafix uploaded!! You can now cruise the friendly skies with less fear of bugs (though you may have to look out for ice picks and throwing stars..). Five fixes for the price of one! One fix for the price of zero! 16 months in the making!"

[Mnrogar]

Updated october 3rd 2005, from assassin:

"Item Icon Expansion for Arrange patch uploaded! A boon for hackers that want to add new item types (i.e. items with different leading icons)! A snooze for everybody else!"

[Mnrogar]

Updated october 24th 2005, from assassin:

"i've added a Zelda 3 section to my website! i'll upload the Monster and Attacks Guide to GameFAQs within the next few days. all questions and suggestions are welcome."

[Assassin]

March 25th 2006, Lores Acquisition Guide was updated to version 1.58.

List of the main changes from assassin:

- Some factual corrections. A notable one is that I'd wrongly claimed Cactrot can't be Charmed. Another is fixing Muddle/Charm chances for a number of monsters, as I'd assumed the game behaved differently than it does.
- Muddle/Charm chances are now given as percentages rather than fractions (MalcolmMasher was ahead of his time!).
- More compact, easier to read tables.
- Got rid of pointless footnotes, and added meaningful ones when needed.
- Added Harpiai as a "recommended" way to learn Aero.
- Added new situations where you can't learn lores due to how the battle ends (see the latest three list items in Section 4).
- Fixed various small oversights and made various formatting improvements.
- Now sports world's second longest revision history. :/

[Assassin]

April 10 2006: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time page added to website!!

Turtle Time fix uploaded!! the code that displays your playthrough time at the end of the game is broken, usually claiming the duration was shorter than it really was. this fix gives an accurate display of the timer, so when you speak of how quickly you tore through the game, you can be truly honorable, like ninja.