Crystal Story 2: Skill Guide

Here's a list of all the skills for Crystal Story 2 for each character (as of v1.20). A character can pick two specializations for each class tier, and a third after two Class V specialization trees are completed (after around 365k SP total), as well as a fourth specialization at 1.1 million SP, although by this point it's mainly for upping your stats.

D has Slayer I selected at the start of the game, Lina has Thief I, and Mari has Elementalist I.

D	Class I	Class II	Class III	Class IV	Class V
Base SP Cost (per Node)	25 / 40	120 / 210	560 / 840	2000 / 2400	3600 / 3600
Slayer	Fire Attack Bash	Frost Attack Cleave	Barrage	Shockwave	Berserk
Guardian	Guard Attack Up Attack Down	Magic Up Magic Down Recovery	Attack Up All Transfer MP	Concentrate Attack Down All	Magic Up All Reinforce
Thief	Throw Burst 1 Steal	Quick Attack Flee Hide	Haste Throw Burst 2 Sprint	Pilfer Blur	Throw Burst 3 Quicken All
Elementalist	Fire I Water I Lightning I	Earth I Flame Wall I Blizzard I	Storm I Quake I Fire II	Water II Flame Wall II	Blizzard II Fire III
Trickster	Armor Down Poison Silence Sleep	Blind Spirit Down Slow	Poison All Silence All Sleep All	Spirit Down All Armor Down All	Slow All Blind All
Healer	Heal Cure Armor Up	Spirit Up Raise Heal All	Regen Quick Heal Armor Up	Spirit Up All Raise All	Greater Heal Auto Raise

Lina	Class I	Class II	Class III	Class IV	Class V
Slayer	Earth Attack Bash	Lightning Attack Cleave	Barrage	Berserk	Shockwave
Guardian	Guard Attack Down Magic Up	Attack Up Magic Down Recovery	Magic Down All Transfer MP	Concentrate Attack Up All	Magic Up All Reinforce
Thief	Throw Burst 1 Steal Quick Attack	Flee Sprint	Quicken Throw Burst 2 Pilfer	Hide Blur	Throw Burst 3 Quicken All
Elementalist	Earth I Lightning I Water I	Fire I Quake I Storm I	Blizzard I Flame Wall I Lightning II	Storm II Earth II	Quake II Lightning III
Trickster	Armor Down Poison Silence Sleep	Blind Spirit Down Slow	Poison All Silence All Sleep All	Spirit Down All Armor Down All	Slow All Blind All
Healer	Heal Cure Armor Up	Spirit Up Raise Heal All	Regen Quick Heal Armor Up	Cure All Raise All	Greater Heal Holy Light

Mari	Class I	Class II	Class III	Class IV	Class V
Slayer	Lightning Attack Earth Attack	Bash Cleave	Barrage	Shockwave	Berserk
Guardian	Guard Magic Up Attack Down	Attack Up Magic Down Recovery	Magic Up All Transfer MP	Concentrate Magic Down All	Attack Down All Reinforce
Thief	Throw Burst 1 Flee	Hide Quick Attack Steal	Throw Burst 2 Sprint Quicken	Pilfer Blur	Throw Burst 3 Quicken All
Elementalist	Fire I Lightning I Earth I	Water I Quake I Flame Wall I	Storm I Blizzard I Fire II	Earth II Flame Wall II	Quake II Earth III
Trickster	Spirit Down Poison Silence Armor Down	Slow Blind Sleep	Spirit Down All Silence All Sleep All	Blind All Poison All	Slow All Armor Down All
Healer	Heal Cure Spirit Up	Raise Armor Up Heal All	Regen Quick Heal Cure All	Spirit Up Raise All	Greater Heal Regen All

Kaz	Class I	Class II	Class III	Class IV	Class V
Slayer	Bash Cleave	Frost Attack Lightning Attack	Barrage	Shockwave	Berserk
Guardian	Guard Attack Up Magic Up	Attack Down Magic Down Recovery	Transfer MP Attack Up All	Concentrate Magic Down All	Attack Down All Reinforce
Thief	Quick Attack Steal	Throw Burst 1 Sprint Hide	Throw Burst 2 Flee Quicken	Pilfer Blur	Quicken All Throw Burst 3
Elementalist	Lightning I Water I Fire I	Earth I Storm I Blizzard I	Flame Wall I Quake I Water II	Lightning II Blizzard II	Storm II Water III
Trickster	Silence Blind Poison Sleep	Armor Down Spirit Down Slow	Poison All Silence All Sleep All	Blind All Armor Down All	Slow All Spirit Down All
Healer	Heal Armor Up Spirit Up	Cure Raise Heal All	Regen Quick Heal Cure All	Spirit Up All Armor Up All	Greater Heal Holy Light

Notes:

• Base SP Cost only displays the cost of learning the first two specializations, and rises as you go though the skill path. Skill cost is 1.2x base SP. There are 20-23 stat increasing nodes per specialization, and the amount of stats gained from a node varies slightly per character.
• Anything in cyan are skills unique to the character.
• Fire Attack, Frost Attack, Lightning Attack, and Earth Attack deal elemental damage based off the ATK stat instead of the MAG stat.
• Guard, Recovery, Concentrate, Berserk, and Reinforce targets self.
  • Guard: Reduces the damage of next attack by half
  • Recovery: Casts Regen (late game this is pretty much useless)
  • Concentrate: Gives ATK Up and MAG Up
  • Berserk: Gives ATK Up, MAG Up, and SPD Up
  • Reinforce: Gives DEF Up and MDEF Up
• Throw Burst 1, 2, 3 are the only skills which allow you to use offensive weapons in your inventory.
• Hide prevents enemies from chasing you when used on the field map for a while (you can still start an encounter if you run into an enemy), and Sprint doubles your movement speed on the map.
• Lightning actually inflicts Wind damage. Don't ask why.
• Holy Light applies Greater Heal to all allies.
• Auto Raise gives the party Auto-Life status, fixed in v1.3.

A good strat would be to get a dedicated buff/debuffer with high speed with the Start SPD accessory (one is obtainable after completing Mercenary Defense Lvl 3) to allow multiple turns at the start of battle to buff the party's defenses and speed, and the other party members for offensive attacks and possibly debuff the enemy.

Focus less on stat gains and more on desired skills when deciding what class to give your character. When choosing between two stat gains always go for the HP/MP increase, since the other stats are easier to get via equipment + upgrades and the only increases to DEF or MDEF are accessories or buffs (in the latter case it's a 25% damage decrease). Bosses (and many enemies scaled up when Wanted X Quests / Hard Mode is activated) are capable of one shotting you / entire party otherwise, sometimes before you can even make a move.

I don't have exact specifications at the moment on how many of each upgrade are present when going through each class specialization. The table might be more useful on the wikia for this game, but the visual graphic that will soon replace the above tables will remain here.

One Cent Book at Fry's

I don't think I need to explain this further.

At first I'm like 'there's gotta be some strings attached', like the other software in the discount pile scattered around Roseville Fry's claiming a total cost of zero dollars... after the mail in rebates. There's that discount label on the book, so it's legit. No tax on this either.

Meanwhile, there girl's dolls in areas where books would normally go, and men's cologne products in the children's book aisle.

Delta College Book Swap

Hosted by the Writers' Guild of SJDC, at Danner Hall today.

Thought it was going to be a look-only as the flyer seemed like you need to trade in books in order to obtain others, but apparently this was not the case - all of the books were free, and they were hauling in more boxes of used books every few minutes. There weren't any ebooks around though at the time I visited.

I decided to grab a few books related to the CS area, especially those focusing on the (new obsolete) certification tests, as they might be useful later.

Returning to the Stateline... again

A year ago, I was doing film work for GSKA. However this year they did things a bit differently; my position to film is no longer required, so I was free to explore for the day. But I was prepared for that. Couldn't make it to either the beach or mountains, but I'll find another time for that.

Notes:

• If going in October, the gondolas (or the ski hills, for that matter) will not be available.
• Restaurants in the Stateline area are quite expensive, but at least try them once. Recommended: Base Camp Pizza (they are $12 for 8", $17 for 12", and $25 for 16").
• The Nestle Tollhouse Cafe's cookie prices are too high; you'd probably find something better at the nearby Raley's.
• At Harvey's at the arcade you can trade 1 token = 20 tickets, this is actually better than any arcade game that dispenses tickets there on average. (It works vice versa, so if you can find a way to make more than 20 tickets per game, you can use that to your advantage)
• The Heavenly Shop at Harvey's doesn't accept comp money. Neither does Cinnabon and the food court items at Harrah's (although it's more obvious).
• There's a car show during this time at Heavenly Village.

Review: McDonald's Mighty Wings

Short Review: They're by all means cripsy and good, however its small size leaves a lot to be desired. KFC would be a better choice in this case, since they offer larger wings for a slighly cheaper price.

Its price is quite high (at least in Stockton anyways) at $10.99 for ten of them (15.49 w/two drinks + medium fries), making this by far the most expensive item on the menu.

Had some trouble getting most of it dipped due to the bone in the middle and the size of the dipping sauce, which seemed more suited to dipping Chicken McNuggets.

(Updated the city where the pricing was, since the prices varied between cities. Still expensive however)

Handling Diagonal Movement in Tactical RPGs

Ignore the Battle GUI - it is a mockup and therefore has incorrect information.

Normally Tactical RPGs do not allow diagonal movement, however I propose a system that handles this while factoring in obstacles.

While designing the war system in Americana Dawn, there were previously a few issues about the move range on a character; because the shoot distance is calculated by absolute distance from the character (instead of grid squares) it would create a disadvantage for some units. Also, it creates movement range more like a circle.

If a melee attacker was hit from a diagonal, it would normally take two turns for it to reach the target. The extra turn is a huge difference - the attacker that could otherwise defeat the enemy may not survive the second turn.

I had a few choices, either restrict attack range, or include diagonal movement. Moving based on absolute distance was considered, but it was ruled out since it can get messy at times and might not find the optimal route when tiles are weighted. So a diagonal is calculated as 1.5 movement points. (It might be 1.4 movement points later if the game requires more precision.)

But this is not factoring in the weights of the various tiles, so this is achieved by taking the weight of the diagonal square that you move to, plus the two adjacent squares that you cross getting there, and dividing by two. Thus the formula is:

Movement Cost = (Tile Weight for upper right tile + upper tile + right tile) / 2, relative to the character.

There's situations where a diagonal move takes up more move points than moving two spaces instead, but the game automatically calculates the shortest distance to a tile anyways so it isn't a real problem.

The drawback is being able to get to normally inaccessible tiles via a diagonal move. Consider it as an advantage - the 'creative designing' process should ensure this happens only when it needs to.

I think more of the creative designing should be the AI script for these battles, which is mostly based on the enemy commander's personality, although it usually looks ahead at least a turn and makes decisions only based on what it can see, and will find cover and ambush if possible.

Bubble Lady @ Troke Library

While working as a tutor for MathSmart, I knew from the intercoms that there was going to be a show at 6:30pm, but I didn't expect it to be so loud and so busy when I came out to look after my shift had ended.

It was quite a crowd there.