Interesting boost for Geddoe

[eldrasidar]

I'm in the middle of a new playthrough of suikoden 3. I've discovered that you can actually leave Caleria at the start of chapter 2 when Geddoe is by himself before going to go see the fruit salesman. If you're high enough level you can go and tackle the rock golem in the mountains by yourself. As long as you have all 4 levels of lightning spells, and several sacrificial buddhas, you can take it, and as a reward, you get a boost up to a mid-40's level. if you're not leveled enough, you can pick up Aila and Ace in the tavern, and give all three of them a decent boost. nothing special really about this, it's just the only point in Geddoe's chapters where you can play with other characters besides the other mercenaries. Unfortunately, though, since queen is unavailable, you cannot get Nadir(the only woman available would be Nei, assuming you recruited her, unlike the end of chapter 1, where you could have the 3 men, 2 women, and 1 child once Ace leaves, but you can't reach Nadir. cruel fates.) I just found this interesting.

cheers

[gildedtalon]

I once did a solo playthrough of suikoden III, I ended up facing him with the best equipment. I don't even improve my Lightning magic as I focused heavily on his capability to dish out damage quickly and armor defense. That boss is horribly weak by the time I encountered him

[KFCrispy]

yeah i did that myself when i was speeding through to see if it was possible for Geddoe to recruit Nadir at the end of chapter 1 / beginning of 2. i died several times and don't remember what i did to win, but you can obviously add some levels with the random encounters and head back to town and upgrade skills. i remember trying different strategies to finally win because it still wasn't easy... but once i got a good strategy (probably just get the best equipment possible, maybe an Earth rune protection, and heal items) it was just some kind of attack, attack, heal when necessary type of thing.
another part where you can venture out when it's not obvious is when you start Chapter 4.. you can just exit the Flame Champion's Hideaway and you will be able to go to Kuput Forest to fight the area bosses and also go to Alma Kinan to reconfigure runes and skills!

and you probably know early in Geddoe 1 when you pick up Shiba you can head out and do some training to outfit Shiba and prepare for the boss battle (the enemies just before the boss battle are relatively high level).

[eldrasidar]

yeah, I know about doing that with Shiba. I usually do it, just to get queen up to level 27 to get her a wind rune attached, which makes the fight with Chris really easy, since first turn you can unleash a blazing wall, soaring bolt, and the shredding.

As for dealing with the rock golem, what I did was have Geddoe at level 37, at which point he had 101 magic skill(which is more important than the level, and you can boost with the magic stone). He was equipped with blood armor, blessed casque and 3 sacrificial buddhas, lightning and counter runes, and all of his skills were maxed out. I just starting casting spells every turn from furious blow(1050ish damage), to soaring bolt(2x950ish), to berserk blow(4x250ish) to one last direct attack for 140ish damage. the battle took exactly 8 rounds, and I used 2 of the 3 buddhas, although I ended with 40ish hp, so if I hadn't avoided one hit, I would have needed that third buddha. regardless, when the battle was over, Geddoe had soared to level 45. the only thing I might change is equipping a lightning magic ring, as the rock golem has some serious magic resistance, although that might only have made the battle a single round quicker.

note that before this battle, I had fought the rock golem with a full party at the end of chapter 1, which is how i got the blood armor and a lightning magic ring.

[gildedtalon]

How do you use these buddhas? I can only equip sacrificial jizo before the battle, even then it only increases the amount of HP you heal. It does not let me use it 3 times

[eldrasidar]

when equipped, a sacrificial jizo will automatically restore your hp to 1/3 of full whenever you would drop to 0 hp, in doing so using up the sacrificial jizo. by equipping 3 of them, you can do this three times.

[gildedtalon]

it's not, it will only increase the amount of HP it restores and not letting you use it two more times. i know coz I tested it back when I used Geddoe and the dogs to tackle the final boss. it's gonna be a walk in the park if what you said actually works, i could just stack those sacrificial jizos and win without any trouble.....

[eldrasidar]

I don't know why it didn't work for you. I assure you it really does work. I've used it lots of times for solo challenges, and it's always worked for me, including the one I described above. I didn't do anything special, I really did just equip them, and started the Boss fight. just to check though, I did another test, with a a level 58 solo hugo from chapter five.

All he had equipped is a Champion's orb, a Double-strike orb, a Flame Casque, TrueThndrbltLthr, and 3 sacrificial jizos, so I have no way of healing other than sacrificial jizos. I started a fight with the Twin Snake Boss with only 17 hp. Immediately, the boss did it's special attack, and instead of dying, I gained 141 HP, I checked my items at the start of the next turn, one Jizo was missing, I still had two. Next, I got brought down to 47 from a Shredding, followed by another shredding, which instead of killing me, restored 141 hp, and again another Jizo was missing. After another 2 shreddings, 141 hp was once more restored to me, and at this point, I had no more Jizos equipped, so I killed off the Boss to end the fight. So yeah, I'm 100% positive you can stack Sacrificial Jizos. Are you sure you aren't confusing it with another item?

[gildedtalon]

perhaps the item didn't work on the dogs? now i'm confused. i'll go check, let's hope my suikoden iii still works

hey, you're right. i swear it didn't work on the dogs. now i remember i wasn't trying it against the final boss, at that time i decided to check first whether sacrificial jizo in suikoden iii works like the ones in suikoden v. so i equipped the dogs with sacrifical jizos and to my disappointment, they all disappear after dying once

i just tried it on koroku and it worked just like you said. could it have been a bug on that time in the last dungeon?

[eldrasidar]

are you sure they didn't almost die 3 times in a single round? I've never felt obliged to bring the dogs to the final boss fight, or even bring more than a single Sacrificial Jizo, so I have no idea if there's a bug there. I also don't have a save conveniently right before the final boss fight, so I'm not gonna test it. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bug; Suikoden 3 has plenty of them.

[KFCrispy]

i remember another rule, dealing with overkill--if the damage is way too high, the character will not revive. at least, that's what i read about in the old threads dealing with the Chris level 99 trick.

[highwind44029]

Yeah, maybe the dogs had too little HP so it used up more than one Sacrificial Jizo when they were damaged.