ASCII art sucks. [ Brave Soul Loser's Paradise FAQ v. 1.2 ] Last modified 10/06/05 By: PenguinCandy (or, if you insist, Steven Roberts) =========== 1. Contents =========== 1.Contents. You're sitting in it now. 2.Disclaimer 3.What is/isn't in this guide 4.Please read (game stability issues) 5.Loser's Paradise And How to Cruise Through It (All the gameplay stuff is in these subsections) Subsections: -The Layout -Unlocking It -Recommended Equipment -The Star Blade Attack -Uber Levels -Seeds -Characters Spoiler Sub-sections: Huge blank spaces below = SPOILERS AHOY. -Loser's Paradise memos -Recruiting Clare -B101 Puzzle -Ending 0: Brave Soul 6.Version History 7.Copyright Info (like it matters) 8.Contact Info 9.Thanks ============= 2. Disclaimer ============= You probably know this if you're reading this FAQ in the first place, but Brave Soul is a hentai game. Basically, porn. So, uh, watch out for that. ========================================= 3. What's not in this guide, and what is: ========================================= Not in this guide: How to keep the girls happy and/or get with them like mammals on the Discovery Channel. Liliput's guide provides info on that. For all other aspects of gameplay, there's Davzz's FAQ. If you're interested in the RPG aspects over the dating sim aspects, read it. In addition to mine, I mean. In fact, if it's in his guide then I've probably left it out of mine unless I disagree with something he wrote. In this guide: This guide's focus is on Loser's Paradise and how to make slogging through it fairly painless, plus a few things I didn't see covered in the other guides. Most importantly, I've transcribed the memos from LP. Skip down to the Spoilers section for those as well as the solution to the statue puzzle on B101. What could be better than getting to read the backstory to Brave Soul? Why, not having to play through Loser's Paradise, of course! Seriously, Loser's Paradise sucks. ========================== 4. Please read. Seriously. ========================== You really ought to download the patch for this game. Go to: http://www.peachprincess.com/Merchant2/support.mv?show=bs Note that Brave Soul will still be slightly buggy -play it for long enough and it'll eventually crash. This isn't normally a big deal if you save often; you generally don't go more than five minutes or so without being able to save. However, Loser's Paradise is different. This is FLAVOR COUNTRY. LP is 101 floors deep, each floor is huge and full of enemies, and you only get to teleport out from every tenth floor. If you tried to play through it all in one sitting the game would crash on you and a little part of your soul would die from the sheer tedium, so take it in small intervals. Plan on five to ten-ish trips to finish LP. The worst part about the crashes is that they seem to happen *after* the game calls up text, so it's quite likely you'll make it back all the way after a really long session, talk to the innkeeper and be seconds away from saving your game before it crashes on you. Is there anything worse? P.S. No. No there is not. ================================================ 5. Loser's Paradise and How to Cruise Through It ================================================ It's an optional dungeon. As I mentioned above, it's ginormously huge. It's also the key to unlocking Ending 0, which sucks, and the backstory to this game, which is surprisingly good despite the half-assed translation. ---------- The Layout ---------- B1- Portal down ten floors, stairs down. B5- Memo. You can't miss it. B10- First boss, memo, ruined stairs down. To leave this level, you first have to kill the boss. If you leave the dungeon and return, you'll reset any enemies you've already killed- this holds true both for bosses and normal enemies. B11-20- The next ten floors, and every ten floors after that, will repeat the same ten floor layouts you just went through. There are some changes in what you'll find on those floors, however. B11-A treasure chest at the center of the level. Stairs down. Treasure levels never feature locked doors, so you don't have to kill any enemies here. You cannot take ruined stairs up, so you can't return to boss levels from the level beneath. Portal in the northwest leading to the next boss level. One in the northeast leading out of the dungeon. B12-B14- Locked doors appear. You have to kill all enemies to reach the next floor. B15-Memo. It's right at the beginning, so you can just snag it and leave unless you want to head down. B16-19- More locked doors. B20- Boss level. Same layout as B10. All subsequent sets of ten floors follow the same pattern as B11-B20. B101- The exception. You have to push the switches on the statues here in a certain order to gain access to the boss. If you screw up, you'll have to leave and come back down ALL the way for another crack at the puzzle. Either way there's a portal to the surface in the southeast corner. This brings me to the second big problem with LP. You need info from the memos to solve the puzzle. LP's structure makes it much faster to simply warp through it, since you'll only run into treasure and boss levels that way, but you'll miss half the memos this way. That's why I'm transcribing the stuff you find in those memos. I'm not sure anyone will read a specialty FAQ for such a niche title that was released so long ago, but if it saves some poor bastard from having to slog through the boring parts of LP then it's worth it. I highly recommend just reading what I've transcribed instead of actually hunting down the memos yourself,which is Not Fun. If you insist on doing it the real way, however, for the love of god at least do yourself a favor and activate the portals (see next section). Oh, and beating the game once lets you bring up a map from the pause screen. Not only can it show you where stairs and doors are located (in most dungeons; the murky color scheme of some levels makes the map useless in them for me, though you may be able to fix this by adjusting contrast or something). Also, friendlies show up as green dots on the map and hostiles as red ones. This last feature is essential to clearing locked-door levels of LP with your sanity intact. Also, note that the structure of LP means you only have to do like five floors out of every ten. For instance, you can just run through Floor 11 (snagging the treasure on the way down), fight your way through Floors 12-14, and read the memo on Floor 15. Since it's right by the entrance you can run back up right after reading it, then take the portal down to Floor 20 from Floor 11. You can then repeat this pattern for every subsequent set of ten floors. The first ten floors are an exception in that I don't remember them having any locked doors. You can just run down to Floor 5 with no hassles. -------------------------- Unlocking Loser's Paradise -------------------------- After you've beaten the game once, the Staff Room will be accessible from The Border in the Minstrel region. For our purposes, we're interested in the barkeep, the zombie, and the shadowy figure (all found in the Staff Room's basement.) The bartender sells tons of equipment. His inventory is extremely rad- do check it out. The shadow will ask you a question. Tell it 'Yes' and you'll unlock LP. *If you tell it 'no' then it'll vanish.* I'm pretty sure doing so makes it IMPOSSIBLE to access LP on that playthrough, so don't. Note that my first time through, I told it 'no' then managed to talk to it again while it was in the middle of fading. This caused its question to pop up again and I was able to answer 'yes' to it, unlocking LP. Close call. You might want to bear this in mind, just in case you give the wrong answer by mistake. Then there's the zombie. He's the key to not having to fight through 101 freaking floors. Once you've unlocked LP, talk to him and he'll mention a girl in Souvenia who sells matches. One of the vendors in the market there does indeed sell matches. Buy 99 of them at once then go back to the zombie with them in your inventory. Now ALL of the portals in LP will be active without your having to get them working yourself! Now we're on the groove train! ---------------------------------------------------- Recommended Equipment: *cough cough* THE FASTEST *cough* ---------------------------------------------------- If you have The Fastest, equip it. If not, the barkeep in the Staff Room sells it. It's expensive but well worth it. There are two benefits from increased speed. Higher attack speed increases damage output by a percentage, which outstrips flat bonuses by far at high levels. This applies to Rudy's Star Blade and Wind Slash as well as his normal attacks, so it's useful no matter what your strategy is. Other swords may offer miscellaneous bonuses like faster regeneration, but none of them can match the speed bonus, especially once you factor in that... Higher *movement* speed might be even more helpful. I can't overstate how awesome it is to run around auto-attacking everything with The Fastest equipped and the speed-up key held down. It saves you a lot of time- in fact, fighting your way through all 101 levels of Paradise wouldn't be nearly as painful that way. It would still suck, mind you, it just wouldn't take *soul-crushingly* long. Really, this speeds up every long dungeon-dive...use The Fastest. Do note that this assumes you're strong enough to blithely auto- attack your way through everything in your path- don't even think of trying to play for real at this sort of speed, unless super reflexes are your mutant power or something. The Fastest, of course, is still the best sword in the game even if you do plan on fighting for real (i.e without speedup) against a boss or whatever. While they're pretty sucky in terms of combat, the Becoming Hero Cast and Sword of Desire will double your experience gain and change experience gained to gold, respectively (meaning you stop leveling while the sword's equipped.) Yes, you can combine their effects. They're good for powering up, I guess, but don't feel you HAVE to have them. I prefer simply hacking away with The Fastest when I want to level- enemies aren't worth more, but you kill them more quickly, plus if you wouldn't normally be strong enough to really take advantage of a level-up spot The Fastest might well put you over the top. Also, you need the Speed Limiter equipped if you're going to use the Becoming Hero Cast, or your speed will be harshly reduced while the cast is equipped. You can buy the Sword and Cast in the Staff Room. The Cast can also be found at the bottom of the Friendship Ruins. I don't remember the Speed Limiter being available for purchase anywhere; you'll probably have to hunt down the catmen-looking monsters if you want it. Talking to 'Beccy Beefer' (...) in Minstrel's bar while you're A-ranked unlocks a special arena where you can choose what type of monster you want to fight. Talking to him while you're B-ranked unlocks the Friendship Ruins. Like I said, though, I wouldn't bother with them...though I suppose at *insanely* high levels where you're one-hit-killing monsters you could gain experience and money more quickly with them rather than with The Fastest. If you actually want more levels by that point. For some reason. No single other piece of equipment will help you that much compared to The Fastest, but you should bear a couple things in mind when equipping your cohorts. If a weapon's damage type is listed as 'Special' then it's not resisted by any enemy type in the game. Also, while I make it seem like speed is the greatest thing ever in a weapon, that's not *necessarily* true of the girls' weapons. I highly recommend the Moonlight sword for Clare, since I seem to remember it turning her normal attack into a projectile attack. This is perfect for her. Basically, the best weapons for the girls are all found in Loser's Paradise. ------------------------------------------------------------------ From Ratralsis: Ruby has a weapon called "Quick Needle" that boosts her attack speed by 30 points. Give her a pair of Haste Rings along with that, and she can shoot off a damn impressive continuous attack stream. ------------------------------------------------------------------ R also finds that only Ruby really takes advantage of having a high attack speed, so I wouldn't worry about that stat for the other girls...except for Marin, I guess. (Please don't use Marin.) The other characters rely on either spells or potions (Shell) for much of their usefulness. The 31st floor of LP is where Rudy's best armor is found. You can snag the Rockslide Talisman on the 51st. The other treasures are all equipment for the girls, except for Rudy's Excalibur, which I wouldn't bother with. One last thing. Rudy gains the ability to use certain spells as long as he has the right items equipped. Some of them suck, but there are one or two you might find useful (don't stress if you don't have 'em, you shouldn't need them.) The Light Ring's 'Shooting Star' ability *might* make a decent alternative to the Star Blade attack, if you missed out on that. Not worth buying, though. The Rockslide Talisman does basically the same thing. I've never used either extensively, but they're there in case you want to; useful to know for hard difficulties, perhaps, since projectile attacks are so important there. No other equipment is really important enough to worry about, though it certainly won't hurt. Basically, The Fastest + Uber Level and you're good to go. ---------- Star Blade ---------- What was it I said about projectiles a couple paragraphs back? Well, the Star Blade move is, AFAIK, your best bet as far as projectiles go. Rudy learns it from a mission Jim pretty much forces you to take *if you've earned an S-Rank by a certain point in the game.* I've heard some people claim it's difficult or requires 'luck' to unlock, while others claim they did so easily. I definitely fall into that second camp- I always try to take as many missions as I can without making whoever I'm going for unhappy, and I've *always* gotten this mission. I suspect anyone who's had trouble getting it is either trying to keep two girls in the party at all times or just not taking many missions. Don't try any fancy crap like that if you don't have Star Blade yet. Basically, take every mission you can without pissing off the girl you're into and you should earn S-Rank a little bit ahead of the time period when Jim offers the Master Hunter G mission. Remember, you retain acquired spells on subsequent playthroughs. ----------- Uber Levels ----------- Because this game's so shallow, odds are you'll eventually want to just destroy everything with as little effort and strategy as possible. Not only is it a matter of convenience, you really do need good stats for the tougher battles- gameplay skills only count for so much in this game. I read a BBS post once by a guy who'd made it down to floor 80 in Loser's Paradise but couldn't kill the boss there (the one with massive endurance and weak attacks). Evidently he left the game on all night with the party auto-attacking it and when he came back the boss STILL wasn't dead. Extreme example, but in theory it could happen to you! You want those levels, ace. That's where paperweights come in. The ctrl key causes Rudy to home in on nearby enemies and melee with them, the shift key speeds up the game by up to ten times, and enemies respawn endlessly in the Monster Endurance Battle and Growth Cave. You see where I'm going with this. There are a couple of wrinkles here. First, you want to actually be strong enough in the first place that you can leave Rudy auto-attacking, unattended, forever. Ideally, I'd advise you to use The Fastest and the best other equipment you can afford from the Staff Room (assuming this is a replay, of course; you can level more quickly on harder difficulties anyway). If you need money or experience to get strong enough for this, one area I've found that delivers a lot of exp/cash for comparatively little trouble is the Crystal Cave, unlocked by taking the 'Find the Crystal' mission. Your mileage may vary. The other wrinkle is that Rudy could end up 'stuck' while uber-leveling in the Endurance Battle or Growth Cave. In Growth Cave, you've got Rudy, your party members and the slimes all chasing each other around, and in my experience Rudy eventually ends up randomly being pinned by his allies against a wall, or something like that, such that he gets stuck and no longer closes with enemies to auto-attack. This will at the very least slow down the rate at which you level, and is why I advise against leveling there. I don't know if there's anything you can do about this problem, though taking melee characters instead of ranged attackers might work (since they'd be moving around constantly while attacking enemies). Plus different slimes have different elemental immunities, which the girls' AI seems too stupid to correct for- I've seen Clare do nothing but spam her lightning attacks when surrounded by yellow slimes. BLAH. If you do still want to look into Growth Cave, I think you can actually level *faster* here once your party is capable of killing the slimes quickly enough. The Endurance Battle's problem is different. Enemies attack you one at a time here, and sometimes when they spawn they'll hide at the very edge of the screen instead of entering the arena proper. You won't be able to auto-attack them as long as they're doing this. You can weigh down your right mouse button so Rudy constantly fires a projectile attack up into their hidey-hole, though. I find it easier to map the move to my keyboard, since it was more convenient for me to weigh down my keyboard's keys instead of the mouse. For what it's worth: oddly enough, I once left my PC on overnight milking the Endurance Battle this way without taking any such precautions, and it worked fine (gained over 100 levels this way). If the enemies were going to hide, you'd think at 10x speed over the course of hours one of them eventually would, right? Either enemies always turtle and simply waiting long enough will cause them to throw themselves at Rudy eventually, or enemies have different AI at higher difficulties and avoid hiding at all (I believe the difficulty was set to either Super or Special.) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Helpful info from Ratralsis, king of scary-high levels: In the Growth Cave, you mention how Rudy tends to get stuck against a wall and stops auto-attacking the slimes. I noticed this myself, but it's actually very easy to fix. If you click one square southwest of Rudy, he'll snap out of his little daze and go back to squashing slimes at an insane rate (assuming that you're using The Fastest, which you pretty much have to if you want to exploit the Growth Cave to its fullest). Since slimes move so slowly, you can actually click and hold with your mouse one square southwest of Rudy forever, and he'll just keep walking over to slimes and killing them, because they're always close enough for him to reach. This works in the first six difficulty levels (up to Special), at least. I haven't played Wander or Nightmare, but I've noticed that in Crazy mode the slimes are able to get away too quickly for Rudy to reach them with his auto attack; he winds up stuck in the southwest corner of the room while the slimes wander off. Rudy can still reach about half of them, and hopefully the other party members can get the other half, but even if they can't you're getting ten times the experience for each kill that you would get in Special mode. The easiest way to force your left mouse button down is to use a rubber band. Then you also hold down the tab key and the control key with a couple of weights, and presto! Your keyboard and mouse look kind of silly, but in about ten hours on Special mode you should be level 1000. (Holy god. Uber enough 4 j00?- PenguinCandy) You can also use the Sword of Desire on Crazy mode with this trick to easily make enough money to buy an obscene number of seeds. It's not that hard to get every party member's stats up to 3,000 each if you've got a couple of hours (although it is very boring to feed everybody several thousand seeds). Naturally, Haste Rings, Speed Boots, and Assult Bracers help a lot, since you're not using The Fastest's awesome speed boosts. -------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Seeds ----- Level enough and you won't need them. I prefer simply to level, since you can literally gain hundreds of levels while you sleep. If you insist on attaining the insanest stats possible you'll eventually want to use seeds and fruits, though. A-Rank hunters who talk to Beccy Beefer in Minstrel's pub will earn access to the poorly spelled but useful 'Collosium Backdoor.' As with all of Beefer's bonus areas, you need to talk to him before your ranks gets TOO high, or he'll stop offering access to it. This is probably the most convenient way to get fruits, which boost your stats more quickly than seeds do. Since drop rates get pretty crazy at higher difficulties, this may be the best way to increase your stats to pointlessly excessive heights. I only remember the catmen dropping fruits, but it's possible other enemies do as well. Of course, you can simply buy seeds...and use them one at a time. Hundreds and hundreds of them. This is even more boring. ------------------------------------------ Update: Davzz corrects me! "I would like to mention that you don’t have to use the seeds one at the time by clicking on the characters until you have wrist clamps or something. If you select the seeds (or fruits), move the cursor over your character and then hold down the enter key, you’ll be able to consume seeds at a rapid pace, which makes stat boosting through seeds much faster than leveling up (you’ll have tons of gold with no items to buy anyway), as the stat growths from leveling up in on an “n” curve (basically, the stat increases you gain per level rises until a certain point, then it starts decreasing) -------------------------------------------- I still prefer the arena; while it takes a lot more time, you don't have to spend that time actually playing the game. But yeah, Davzz's way is definitely better for maxing out your stats. Bear it in mind if you're serious about Crazy mode. As for what stats to boost, it depends on how you're planning to play. First of all, I advise against giving boosters to the girls- it can help, but not nearly as much as boosting Rudy's stats. Your top priority is keeping Rudy from being KO'd; you can always revive your allies if they get knocked out. If you just want to cruise through and the game's not set to too high a difficulty setting, you want to melee. Auto-attacking everything in your path is much, much less troublesome than using magic, especially with The Fastest and the speedup key. If you want a challenge, though, the higher difficulties are pretty rough on melee characters. You'll want to go with magic there. For melee characters, simply boost Strength. End of story. Extra damage, more HP, and the gains from other melee stats tend to stop being useful after a certain point (critical chance tops out eventually, you're hitting enemies 100 percent of the time and don't need more accuracy, etc.). High Strength also makes it easier to gain uber levels, since you'll want to be able to auto-attack through hordes of enemies for that. For ranged attackers, I'm not sure. Magic will give you more MP and increase your attacks' effectiveness- but is that necessary? I mean, have you SEEN how quickly you can pump out Star Blades once your attack speed really gets up there? Plus you should be able to afford all the potions you want if you've done any serious leveling, and that's assuming the leveling itself hasn't maxed out your potion supplies already. Between the speed at which you do damage and your ability to recover MP, I'm not sure the benefits from increased magic outweight the benefits of having more HP. The tougher bosses on advanced settings can take away *significant* amounts of damage per hit, remember. So you may want to go with Strength or you may want Magic. There are defensive benefits you lose by sticking exclusively to one or the other, like the lower dodge rate you'll have since you didn't increase Luck or Agility. However, my impression is that these never outweigh the benefits from Strength and Magic. If anybody feels differently, go ahead and email me and tell me how things worked for you. ---------- Characters ---------- So who should you take with you into Loser's Paradise? If you know how to recruit the secret character Claire, she'll be more helpful than Shell would be (she basically replaces Shell, if you didn't know. Don't worry, Claire's much much cooler.) Beyond that, it's up to you- though Marin, for instance, won't be nearly as helpful as, say, Alicia. If you really want that extra edge, I recommend taking good buffers and setting their AI to the support setting. This should be more helpful than the extra damage, at least in boss fights. At least, I think so; your companions' AI is kinda flaky, but if you find their attacks helpful use whatever strategy you feel is best. This is all moot if you're at an uber level relative to the difficulty setting, naturally. Anyway. Character info follows. ------ Alicia ------ She joins you quite early on and she's the only healer who *doesn't* rely on potions to heal you. You really should go for her ending on your first playthrough, or ASAP otherwise, so she'll start out with her resurrection spell on subsequent playthroughs. Her healing spells are a huge, huge asset. They simply eclipse any other benefit the other characters might offer you. She makes the game *much* easier. A note on Alicia. As awesome as she is, in really tough battles where the enemy has massive attack power, I think you're better off pausing to use a potion when you get hurt rather than risking waiting for Alicia to heal you. She's still far and away the best ally, though, since she can resurrect you if you're KO'd. Your henchwomen will very rarely win fights if you get knocked out and can't be revived. You also need her to unlock Clare, and Alicia's ability to read certain stone tablets makes some missions much easier; most of the girls' non-combat abilities offer minor enough bonuses that they're not worth examining at length, but Alicia, like Ruby, can save you a lot of hassle on the rare missions where her specialty comes into play. I can't see any real pattern to the missions where she shows up, so watch out if you plan on having her leave the party. ----- Shell ----- You begin with Shell and she never leaves. As the game notes, the actual damage she's capable of doing is kind of low. She won't be turning many battles around, but it's not like you have a choice in using her or not. Note that her impressive Strength score means little; her attack relies on her crappy Magic stat, IIRC. Her HP do benefit, though. She'll leave if you recruit one of the secret characters, and you can never get her again. I'm probably the only person who actually considers that 'Kyuu' noise cute, so remember that you can turn off individual character voices in the options menu. ------ Caroll ------ A well-balanced character with no standout strengths or weaknesses. Her ranged attacks mean she generally stays out ot trouble, but if she *is* caught in melee she likes to cast Explosion- it's like a fire-elemental version of Rudy's Power Strike, but faster. So she can take care of herself fairly well. Also, her support spells are pretty helpful. She's also really cute. You'll run into a little combat if you go for her events. Be prepared. If you plan to use her much, I recommend taking the 'Recover Artwork' mission to get her haste spell (behind a locked door; with Caroll you'll be able to open it) and using an AI setting that uses more support magic. Being hastened boosts both attack and movement speed (IIRC) and is quite convenient. Like The Fastest, it also makes Loser's Paradise less unbearable. Shame 'bout her personality. ----- Marin ----- She likes to melee. This is a Bad Thing on higher difficulties. She can probably get away with it on easier settings, though. Similarly, her summons aren't bad for constantly pelting the enemy on easier settings but gradually become less and less useful until they mainly serve to distract *you*. The manual notes that she 'has natural bad luck.' I'm not sure whether this just refers to her luck statistic and plot or actually affects the game in other ways. I believe the former, but I'm not sure. Marin earns no new spells, ever. Also, the missions she appears on and the missions she refuses to take seem pretty random to me. She leaves if you take any missions that are too complicated for her, but in practice that's a pretty mixed bag. Oh, and did I mention that she's dumb? But, uh, she's really cute! Cat girls, am I right? Mee-yow. So yeah. Don't recruit her. ---- Ruby ---- I love Ruby. First of all, she's really hot. Second, she can do a little of everything. She has a ranged attack, a little support magic, some summons, some attack magic, and she even has the ability to teleport away from enemies if she's forced into melee. Third, she, like Alicia, has an out-of-combat ability that can save you lots of trouble on certain missions: she specializes in disabling traps. Trap missions are pretty annoying without her, in fact. Fourth, the missions she dislikes are the same as Karen's. It's not a big deal, but this is the only case of overlap in that area, so they make a pretty good team. Last of all, she's just cool. Yay Ruby. Three caveats. Her events involve some combat. Be prepared. While she helps a lot on trap-filled missions, they're not necessarily the ones where she'll join you. You also won't be able to do one of her later events (and thus get her ending) unless you have an S-Rank. *Ratralsis has done some looking into attack speeds. If you're willing to put some work into getting equipment that boosts attack speed, I suspect Ruby could be the best fighter of the henchwomen- R finds that, of the henchwomen he can boost to 119 attack speed, Ruby is the only one who really benefits from raising that stat- the secret characters prioritize their special attacks over normal attacks, and the others either don't use normal attacks or aren't much good at them. I like Ruby even more now!* ----------------- Secret Characters ----------------- You may want to avoid looking at this section- thus the blank space. ----- Karen ----- Beat the game once and she'll be recruitable on subsequent playthroughs. Karen needs to lose the glasses and those stupid shoulder pads, but otherwise she's alright. Her big thing is her luck. Not only is her luck stat really high, her main attack strategy is to chuck random stuff at opponents. She could end up doing very little damage or up to 9999(!). Unfortunately, without knowing the equation the game uses to determine how much damage she does, I can't say whether it's possible to exploit this (i.e. so she'll do massive damage all the time.) Presumably higher luck means better odds of high damage, but don't quote me on that. I also *think*- I'm not at all sure- that her luck may affect the game in other ways. When I played through going for her ending, i went from the top floor of the Dice Dungeon directly to B20- BOTH times. If that's a coincidence, it's a fairly unlikely one. I can't prove a connection, though. Conjecture aside, Karen's luck in combat makes her a solid choice. However, it's her only real strength, since she's basically all about the direct attacks. Karen and Ruby dislike the same missions, so it's easy to keep them both with you at the same time. ----- Clare ----- Recruiting Clare is somewhat complicated. It's covered in the Spoilers section. Clare replaces Shell, and she's much better than the latter, so she's a great ally. Her greatest assets are the buffs and attack spells. Unfortunately, she's a melee character, and while she doesn't go down as easily as Marin she's still not a tank or anything. Clare gets some good equipment from her events. Since the other girls' benefits mostly come from spells learned and those transfer to replays, going for Clare's ending is arguably the best in terms of strengthening your party for that playthrough. Not a big deal, though. Shell's only real advantage over Clare is her *very* high strength score, which means high HP. While Clare has the advantage of being able to wear armor, this doesn't really obviate the disadvantage; I just checked my save with characters around level 200, and Shell had almost *twice* as many HP as Clare. Not good for a woman who wants to tank. It's possible to fix this, however. One of the treasures found in Loser's Paradise is a weapon for her that replaces her normal attack with a ranged attack, IIRC. Definitely equip the Moonlight once you get it. She's also hot. ---------------------------------- Spoilers: Where Your Eyes Don't Go ---------------------------------- --------------------- Loser's Paradise Text --------------------- The memos from LP as well as the words from the stone tablet on the first floor. I went through LP freaking TWICE to transcribe all of these after my save data was lost. Appreciate this section or I WILL KILL YOU. Loser's Paradise Stone Slab "Paradise for the people who fought with the King and lost, and the King himself who died from sickness. I who took over Caraile's will provided a paradise for the ones who lost. Drama Chaos Emblem 1 Once upon a time, there was a King Caraile who reigned over the territory. He has an ambition of unifying the entire continent. Also, it was his wish to have his name pass on for future generations. 'I cannot die yet until my name remains in history.' That was the start of his ambition. Drama Chaos Emblem 2 He falls down by a incurable illness at the age of 32. He was upset that the illness cannot be cured at all, therefore he summons the oracle for advice. The oracle said that the King was cursed by his fallen enemies' souls, and recommended to build a shrine under the castle to grieve the souls so that the curse can be removed. Drama Chaos Emblem 3 The King then builds several floors under the castle under the oracle's advice, but he died before the construction was completed. Actually this is the oracle's plan, because if his words had failed he would be killed, and therefore he suggested the impossible. After all, the oracle's plan went as expected so he could still live. That oracle was my ancestor. Drama Chaos Emblem 4 The construction continued, because the new King's duty is to finish the wishes of the previous King. The new King continued building the shrine dedicated to Caraile's dead body, and the funeral room. On Caraile's death bed, the grieving room was named 'The Losers Paradise'. It was an irony because his life went downhill with this shrine. However, nobody realized that Caraile's soul was gathering evil powers. Drama Chaos Emblem 5 Years passed and prosperity florished after Caraile died. The King was a peace lover, and even though he has the largest army, he did not engage in any acts of aggression. So it has been very peaceful for a long time, but there were some who did not like the peace. It was GilGai and Carbine who would become the Heroes. Drama Chaos Emblem 6 GilGai realized that Caraile had been gathering evil power, and tempts Carbine to help Caraile's revival. Although Carbine was a bit hesitant, in order to fulfill his own ambitions he decided to join in. Yet, they still felt uneasy since there were only the two of them. Carbine then asked Hardin, his best friend, and therefore Hardin could not refuse. GilGai asked Lambult who was interested in the ancient magics to help in exchange for the books which were found in the ruins. Drama Chaos Emblem 7 The four noticed that Caraile's revival needed dark power, so they took Caraile's body to the place where there was full of evil energy, The Losers Paradise. The Losers Paradise, a place where the losers are grieved, became a dungeon nobody wanted to enter. Less than a year after they put Caraile's body, Caraile absorbed the evil power and revived. There is only one thing the revived King wants to do, and it is unifying the entire continent. Drama Chaos Emblem 8 The revived King came up to the castle, and nobody was able to stop him. The castle fell down overnight. The present King and family ran away to a nearby fortress and assembled the army. After that, it went on as Carbine expected. Caraile lost his body of their effort, and his soul sealed into a pot. The seven people who helped to seal Caraile were called Heroes and became an object of admiration for the people. Drama Chaos Emblem 9 The castle was rebuilted and the nation seemed to be revieved. However, there were strange happenings. Borgnine, one of the Seven Heroes and a genius gunnery man, became missing. After, Gilgai, Lambult and Hardin became missing as well. It was said that it's Caraile's curse but the truth was that Borgnine, who realized that Carbine and his friends were responsible for Caraile's revival, was killed by Carbine and was thrown into the lake with a weight attached so that his body would not float up. Drama Chaos Emblem 10 Carbine was afraid of being exposed so he also killed GilGai who was the most unslippery man, and threw his body into the Losers Paradise. However, the person who leaked the secret was Lambult. He was regretful of his actions and told me the truth. After telling me the truth, he created a barrier and killed himself as his atonement. Drama Chaos Emblem 11 Carbine could not no longer trust anybody, and Hardin, his best friend, was no exception. Carbine tried to kill everyone who knew the truth, so he killed Hardin and threw the dead body into Losers Paradise. Just as he thought everything was over, he heard about my drama which I just started working on. He felt upset that I would write the truth of the Heroes Legend, and so he plotted a plan to kill me. When I went to Losers Paradise for some references on my drama, Carbine appeared. Drama Chaos Emblem 12 Carbine attacked me with his magic sword, but his sword was stopped by another sword. It was Reinert Shell's. Shell asked Carbine if the rumor was true. Carbine answered 'So What?!' and attacked Shell. The fight became endless. Finally, Shell's sword penetrated Carbine's chest and the fight ended. However, Shell realized he was also one of the people who belonged to the Heroes Legend. Therefore he killed himself. After I saw everything, I made their graves and went back to the castle. Drama Chaos Emblem 13 There was no successor, and people's voices that one of Heroes should become the new King. I was the only one who was left among the Seven Heroes, and I could not refuse the people's voices so I became the King. This was the start of the Minstrel regime. I became King, got my Princess and built Shell's statue at his birthplace because he saved me from being killed by Carbine. However, I was not happy. I felt I had something in my mind. I realized thatI should complete the drama so I decided to visit the Losers Paradise once again. Drama Chaos Emblem 14 Just then, mysterious happenings occurred. Borgnine's body, which should be kept sunken, floated on the lake, and Lambult's armors which should be buried deepyly in the dungeon were found. I thought they were saying that they wanted to go with me. I went to the Losers Paradise with their armors and my incomplete drama script. A person was waiting for me here, and it was Carbine, who should have died. Like Caraile, he revived using evil power. Drama Chaos Emblem 15 When he held me, he took my drama, and torn the drama into pieces. Then he attacked me. I realized that I was the only person who could stop this monster and I sealed him in the room at the last floor wiht rest of my power. However, the seal will be broken sooner or later. Before that, I hope someone will finish him. To open the seal on the door, it's the order in which the Heroes fell... The lines are ended here..... Bloody Heroes Legend 1 At first, the Heroes were just normal soldiers. Even though they were normal people, each of them had special abilities. Yet, the abilities were useless in the world of piece, so some of them did not like the world of peace and looked for the other world where they could make use of their special abilities to rise to make themselves famous. At that time, one heard about the rumor that an ancient king was reviving by gathering evil power. Bloody Heroes Legend 2 They sticked their necks out. They would end their lives as normal soldiers if there was peace, even if they had special abilities. Then why don't we let the King revive, and then we defeat him? They had the King absorb evil power, and made his revival faster. As a result, the King revived and the world was in chaos. There was a country which was associated with this story and there were seven people known as the Seven Heroes. The Heros Guven Reinert Shell, the Sacred Swordsman Blood Vegz Carbine, the Magic Swordsman Clive Hardin, Spearman Harold Borgnine, the Gunnery Man GilGai, the Whirlwind Richard Lambult, the Silent Wizard Minstrel, the Troubadour Rag 1 After Borgnine's body was sunk into the lake, the water projects the true figure of those who are reflected by Borgnine's spirit. The Lambult Temple has a barrier that repels all evil forces. That is the best place to put the Dark Lord's sealed pot. Rag 2 All states are realized on blood. A world cannot be told only by beautiful things. Therefore our Nation's emblem is composed by the color of black which represents evil, and the color of red which represents bloods. Please keep in the mind the meaning of the colors. The emblem indicated that our nation was composed from a lot of sacrifices and chaos. If you push the switch by mistake, you'll have return to the ground and retry, otherwise Carbine's...... ---------------- Recruiting Clare ---------------- I have no idea how she's so much hotter than her sister when they look exactly alike. Anyway. Last time I checked, the other FAQs on gamefaqs were a bit vague regarding Clare. Recruiting her is pretty easy, but if you want to follow up on her romantic subplot, there are one or two non-obvious things that might give you trouble. If you just want to recruit her, talk to the librarian in Souvenia after your battle with Possessed Cobden in the Duel With Cobden mission. Now read the books you just got access to. This unlocks the Ancient Capitol area. You need to have Alicia with you now. Head for the bottom of this dungeon and read the stone tablet there. That's it. But you also want to get romantic with her, 'cause she's COOL. This is trickier. There aren't that many chances to earn 'love points', or whatever they're called, with her, since she joins so late in the game. First of all, you should probably avoid doing anything that makes Shell unhappy, just to be on the safe side. IIRC, lying about the torn scroll in the 'Recover the Ancient Scroll' mission early on in the game makes Shell unhappy. So does that Dark Lord Statue mission that all the girls hate. There may be other such things. Second, I seem to remember the number you get to do with her around being really small- I think you only get to choose two of them. IIRC, what worked for me was using all the best ingredients in the gourmet food mission and leaving the dragon egg alone in the dragon's cave mission. Also make sure you have enough cash on hand, since her events involve shopping (instead of fighting or something, ironically enough.) I don't remember how much you need. It's not that much. I'd keep 10,000 gold or so on hand just to be safe (I'm sure that's more than necessary.) Of course, you could just reload if you don't have enough, earn however much you need, and THEN do the event. There are two cutscenes you can see before Clare joins the party which are fairly easy to miss. The first one starts as soon as you stay at an inn during the right time frame. Rudy meets up with the Moon Goddess yet again. I think this only works in Souvenia. The second one happens sometime later. This time you have to choose to stay at the inn, then talk to Shell in the lobby. I'm pretty sure this only works in Souvenia, too. Rudy will collapse and Shell will take care of him while he's unconscious. The first scene is optional. Make sure you get the second, though! I'm not sure what exactly triggers them, though I think it's just time-based, so I recommend checking to see if they kick in after every mission if you're going for Clare. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Rastalsis tells me the optional first scene can be triggered in towns besides Souvenia. He thinks the mandatory second one can only be done in Souvenia, "but I only think this because the innkeeper is called by name during that cutscene, and each innkeeper has a different name." ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ruby's still a little cooler than Clare is. Just saying. ---------------------- The B101 Statue Puzzle ---------------------- You want to push the switches corresponding to the Heroes in the order that they died. The trick here is that Carbine's switch is an exception; he's last, evidently because he came back to life. My numbering goes from 1-7, left to right. The order: Borgnine, 4. Gilgai, 5. "Rambult", 6. Hardin, 3. Shell, 1. Minstrel, 7. Carbine, 2. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Ending 0 (courtesy of Rastalsis) Transcript begins with the conversation when you face the 101st floor boss. >UNKNOWN: >So Mr. Rudy, you've come at last. > >RUDY: >How do you know my name!? > >UNKNOWN: >I've been watching the world from here. >I know of your world, your strengths...your... > >RUDY: >................ > >UNKNOWN: >But humans are so foolish. >There are still some who call me a hero, hundreds >of years after this has all happened. > >UNKNOWN: >It's funny. They still respect me because they don't >know the truth. > >(Rudy's face is shown on the left, but his name isn't): >(...........................) > >UNKNOWN: >Rudy, I can see your sharp eyes. >It reminds me of when I was young... > >UNKNOWN: >I've lived with anger and hatred for all this time. >Yes, my hatred still lingers. > >RUDY: >Hatred? Why do you... > >UNKNOWN: >I hate Minstrel for sealing me here, >and you for being free. >I still exist because of my hate. > >RUDY: >What good will it do if you still hate? >Get revenge? >That's so pointless... > >UNKNOWN: >...you're so naive. >You're naive, Mr. Rudy. > >RUDY: >What do you mean!? > >UNKNOWN: >Hate is also a driving force for people. >It's impossible to live without hating someone, >nor is it pointless. > >UNKNOWN: >You've told me before to not do something so >pointless...but do you think that you'll do >something that you won't profit from? > >RUDY: >...................... > >UNKNOWN: >Humans act according to their selfish desires. That >was something that I learned while I've been >watching over the world. > >RUDY: >So what? > >UNKNOWN: >That I wish to act selfish as well. >This body will not hold for much longer. >I wish for a new body... > >UNKNOWN: >And I shall take your body... > >(This is where the big fight happens.) > >UNKNOWN: >I, I've lost? >...Just when I finally broke free. > >RUDY: >You could've stayed free if you changed your >ways... > >UNKNOWN: >I don't regret what I've done. I've acted upon my >own will and was defeated by you...urrgh! > >RUDY: >................ > >UNKNOWN: >To be free means that you must be responsible for >your actions. I'm just taking responsibility for >what I've done. > >UNKNOWN: >Heh, but even so... > >RUDY: >What? > >UNKNOWN: >...this all seems pointless. >(Carbine vanishes. Return here later to meet Minstrel.) > UNKNOWN: >Thanks....... > >RUDY: >Why, you are here.........? > >UNKNOWN: >People can't live through only for dreams. >Therefore I'm here. > >RUDY: >Who the hell are you.........? > >UNKNOWN: >I'm a troubadour, called the Seven Heroes long time >ago... > >UNKNOWN: >Now only my soul which can not leave from this world >shows up as a reflection I was young. > >RUDY:
>So, you are Minstrel........... > >UNKNOWN: >People who did not know my name called me so. >I gave up my real name when I became a troubadour. > >UNKNOWN: >And Mr. Rudy.......... > >RUDY: >............ > >UNKNOWN: >Sometime coincidence makes me fearful... >It might be my destiny........ > >RUDY: >Sure... > >UNKNOWN: >Mr. Rudy, you should inform the true history, not >for the long past but for the eternal future... > >(Fade to map) > >In a world different from ours, where a mysterious power called 'magic' >exists. > >In this world where the king holds vast political power, peasants lived >under the burden of taxes. > >But even in this rough lifestyle, these people found numerous things that >made their life enjoyable. > >And those who excelled in fighting or magic became adventurers and lived >freely from the shackles of any single Kingdom.... > >An Adventurer..... > >The dream of every peasant. > >An Adventurer..... > >One who travels seeking new challenges. > >An Adventurer...... > >A figure which may sometimes suffer from extreme solitute. > >An Adventurer...... > >A general term that is applied to Hunters. > >An Adventurer.... > >The road that a certain man took. > >The continent of Valencia, which is located slightly south of the equator. > >The southern part of this continent is controlled by the Minstral Family. > >This story details the journey of you as a young man who was raised in >the countryside of that area. > >Ending 0 - Brave Soul > >(Credits. Same pictures scroll as if you got Ending 1.) ------------------------- (End of Spoilers section) ------------------------- ------- Enemies ------- I'm not going to cover all the enemies in this dungeon, since as I've noted the very best strategy you can use is to be at a stupidly high level so you can auto-attack your way through all the random enemies and most of the bosses here. Some of the bosses are worth mentioning, though. First boss Giant Slime: You don't have to kill the normal slimes once it's defeated. You can just leave. Second boss Uber-Demon: Remember those demon enemies who summon weaker versions of themselves? Same deal here, but a lot tougher. Since this guy's so strong, the 'weaker versions' here can be a handful themselves, especially since there doesn't seem to be any limit to how long he can keep on summoning them. If you can kill this guy very easily you're in good shape for the level 101 boss. Fifth boss Electric Starfish: It can't do much to you if you have high enough lightning resistance. You shouldn't even need that, though. Eight boss Robot: This is the boss that takes an unusually long time to destroy. However, he can't really hurt you much. Tenth boss Summoner: More summons. I recommend taking them out as they appear; this boss takes long enough to beat that ignoring them could get you killed. This essentially is an easier version of the battle with Dark Lord. Mister 101st Floor: He's super-strong, super-fast, and a monster in melee. Be ready to pause and use potions 'cause he can take your life gauge down quickly. If you aren't strong enough to out-stab him, which is entirely possible, there's always Star Blade. --------------------------------- How to Unlock New Difficulty Settings --------------------------------- Uh, I'm not really sure. The game doesn't tell you what exactly you did to unlock them, unfortunately. Beating the game once seems to earn you the Novice experience setting. Either that, or beating the game on Hard. Not sure. Wealthy will probably be the last one you earn. Beating Crazy seems to be the trigger here. As for the settings which adjust enemy strength, I'm fairly sure you have to beat the game on the Easy, Normal and Hard settings as well as Super, Weak, and Special to earn the "Wander" (Wonder?), Nightmare, and Crazy settings. I may be wrong about any of this. Now to what they do: Novice lets you start replays with half of the highest level you've earned. This means if you beat the game at level 200, you can restart at level 100. If you then beat the game at level 120, you can *still* restart at level 100 (instead of 60) because it tracks your highest level, not just the level at the end of your last playthrough. Very nice. Expert lets you start at the highest level you've earned, but I don't know how you unlock it. It came much later for me. Are they worth it? Well, enemies grant more experience and loot on the tougher settings. If memory serves, Crazy actually gives you a HUNDRED times the normal XP. This is the key to boosting your levels to stupidly insane heights. However, there's no real point to that. The only change is that the game gets harder as it becomes less feasible to maintain parity with enemies' increased strength. Eventually you'll probably want to switch from melee to picking enemies off from a safe distance with Star Blade, but you'll never really have to put much thought into your tactics. There's no real draw here beyond novelty value- go download Progress Quest if you just like pursuing increasingly high, yet meaningless, statistics. What I'm implying here- well, I guess I'm not really implying it anymore- is that you may as well blow through Loser's Paradise on the Weak difficulty setting. Or just read the memo text in this FAQ, since that's the best part of the dungeon anyway. Novice setting is pretty rad, though. Level up enough and you'll be able to auto-attack your way through future replays. This makes unlocking the different girls' romantic subplots, which are the really interesting part of the game anyway, much easier. ------------ Miscellany ------------ Random crap that didn't belong elsewhere. In case you're wondering why shops will only sell potions to you, you have to click on a character at the top of the shop screen to see what equipment they can purchase from that store. Don't laugh, I didn't realize that my first time through! I said stop laughing, you bastards. If traps are giving you trouble, you can sometimes avoid them by skirting the edges of a room. This doesn't always work, though... Are you still clicking on the screen where you want Rudy to go? It's faster and smoother to hold down the mouse button and move the mouse in the direction you want him to move. He'll control more like you're steering a truck than walking around, but oh well. The 'Recover the Dark Lord Statue' mission? It's a job from a noble to recover an evil statue of the Dark Lord from a haunted cave- every single one of the girls despises something about this job. You know how it pays 4444 gold? Four is an unlucky number in Japan, since 'shi' can mean either 'four' or 'death.' Turn off Cobden's voice in the options menu and you'll silence Caraile as well- they're voiced by the same actor (heh). In case you've never played the X-Change series, Takuya, who shows up in a couple cameos in this game, is the protagonist of that series. X-Change is a much pornier and much less gameplay-having h-game than this one, made and translated (like Brave Soul) by Crowd and Peach Princess, respectively. I missed it, but evidently Peach Princess once put up something on their website as an April Fools' Joke about a yaoi version of Brave Soul. Exceedingly droll! Anyway, now you know. I'd like to point out here that there IS an alternative to this game that *isn't* a Dragon Knight title: Mad Paradox. Sure, it sucked, but so did Knights of Xentar. Everyone forgets about Mad Paradox...ironic, since the entire genre of english-translated RPG hentai games basically consists of these three games. There are some wallpapers in a folder on the game CD. I think these are the same ones Peach Princess offers for download on its website, but still. There's a text file containing the game's lengthy, crappily- translated intro on the CD. Go to town. =================== 6. Version History: =================== v. 1.0: The Loser's Paradise memos are all in. Other stuff related to getting through Loser's Paradise also included. I've tried to avoid going into detail for stuff covered in other guides, though. Feel free to email me if you spot any mistakes. v. 1.1: A tidbit from Davzz. v. 1.2: A bunch of stuff from Ratralsis! Future Revisions- Any corrections, plus I should clean up this guide's sucky layout. Eventually. ================= 7. Copyright Info ================= I don't really care what you do with this FAQ. I guess you could steal it or something, but why would you? ====================== 8. Contact Information ====================== My email: loanfato@hotmail.com Please put 'Brave Soul' or something as the subject or I might delete it. You know, spam. Viruses. By all means, send me a line if you have questions, corrections, or whatever. If you want help regarding the game, though, I suggest you try asking at the gameplay forums on Peach Princess's website: http://princess.cybrmall.net/ubbcgi/Ultimate.cgi They'll probably be able to respond more quickly and accurately than I could, especially since I don't check my email very often. I may not remember what you want to know off the top of my head, though I'll help if I can. PROTIP: I HIGHLY recommend you use the search function before posting to see whether your question's already been answered on the BBS, because chances are it has been. You will very likely find this faster than posting and waiting for a reply! Seriously. I mean it, dude. Don't tell them I sent you. -------------------------- "She wasn't a girl, meow." -Marin -------------------------- ========= 9. Thanks ========= CJayC for being the man. Davzz for correcting me regarding seeds. Ratralsis for Ending 0 plus so many other things that I'm literally too lazy to list them all. Anybody who ends emails with "Keep on truckin'" automatically makes it into my good book, and if they happen to do my work for me on top of that...well. Your name could be here! ------ Finis. ------