Well, I sure got a lot of letters today. Lots of people responding to various different things... some good, some bad.. (warms up for a little bit of a 'talk'..)

This Q&A column is, under my personal belief and direction (which has been granted me by Mike Tidwell), an interaction section. It falls under that category in RPGamer, and as such, I let my personality bleed into it. Sometimes I let a LOT of personality bleed into it, as I did yesterday.

Guess what?

I'm a person. Hi.

Nice to meet you. I have feelings. Sometimes my days suck. Sometimes work isn't as much fun. Sometimes I'm excited, sometimes I'm just in a bad mood. We're all like that.. because we're all people. Hi.

The difference between this column and an FAQ is that you have a person answering these questions. If you don't like the fact that there's a warm body on the other side of this screen, then I urge you to go check out the numerous FAQs and other brilliant guides and information we have stored on this page. If you don't want to do that, then you've got to deal with the fact that I take this column on a ride each time I do it, and that ride is a walk out with a bunch of you guys, who are people too. We talk, we make jokes, we get to be weird, and it's a community. I kinda orchestrate it all, and while there's a lot of 'power' involved in that, I don't try to abuse it that much, I try to just have fun with this thing.

I got several people who emailed me saying, "What does this have to do with RPGs?" .. and hey, you're right. It doesn't have anything to do with RPGs. Last time I checked, though, I didn't write a Q&A column for RPG.com .. instead, I wrote one for RPGamer.com .. .. that little bit, the "Gamer" part, is where I come in. We're all gamers. Otherwise we wouldn't be here. But are we all JUST gamers? I'm sure you all have other portions of your life, and you go to different places to be those different parts of yourself. Well, I don't go other places. The gamer is a whole being, who has concerns about all kinds of stuff. If someone sent me a question regarding how to ask a cute girl to a school dance, there's a chance I'd post it.. if it were interesting, and I had something funny to say about it.. why? Is it about RPGs? No.. but does it concern at least one RPGamer out there? You bet! If it concerns one, may it not concern many? I'm sorry if this disappoints some of you all, I mean, it was hell enough when someone was answering Anime questions in here, but all I've got to say is, you know what days I write the column, and while I urge you to have an open mind, if you can't handle it, 1) Don't read my intro. I don't talk about games in my intro but rarely. It's only when I say something people disagree with that all the sudden I should leave my personal life out of the column. Oddly enough. 2) If you start reading a question and it has NOTHING to do with gaming, move on! Your life will be better, because you won't have to deal with it, and I won't have to hear about how much you hate reading it. It isn't like I print LESS letters because of the 'other' stuff. I print good letters. If I have 100 good letters to print, then 1) I'm not getting any sleep, and it is ALL you guys' fault.. ;D and 2) 100 good letters will be printed that day. There's no set limit as to the number, though I suppose if the HTML file got to be about 4 megs or so, questions would start comin' from up top. I might skip the quickies, if I get over 1000 emails tomorrow, just to let you all know. :) Anyway, we have an.. interesting column today. Garbage collection on the mess I made yesterday, (Which I am not apologizing for, I'm just recognizing it for what it is).. and all kinds of new and old goodies.

So here it is.

In Star Ocean 2
I am at the bottom of
The Hoffmann Ruins.

There are large monsters
Who take great pleasure in my
Gratuitous death.

I find myself quite
Unable to defeat them.
They move too quickly.

My levels are in
The twenty to thirty range;
Perhaps I need more?

Precis, Celine, and
Ashton have joined me; Rena,
Claude, and Leon also.

Please impart to me,
O Mighty Oracle of
RPG Knowledge...

The way to defeat
The boss at Hoffmann Ruins.
I'll be quite grateful.

By the way, Brad, this
is a serious question.
I am very stuck.

--
CX (Damn, that took me a while to do....)

Brad:
I am SO impressed.. that's awesome. As for the Hoffman ruins, I honestly didn't have much of a problem going through the first time. I think they stun your guys, so make sure to keep Rena back and able to do some status curin', as for the flame breath.. KEEP YOUR GUYS AWAY FROM THE FRONT.. that's really about as much as there is to it. Those Salamanders can be nasty, but keep going at them.. they're worth some really nice experience!

Weltall was stolen from Kislev by Elly and another Gebler soldier. They were shot down over Lahan village. As for no pilot, I assume he was injured and attempted to get away before kislev caught him. He probaly figured that if he left the gear they would not pursue him. Akin to how Margie was injured in Andvari, but the gear was still in perfect shape. Elly does speak about it to Citan in the forest and partialy explains it. Later Citan speaks with Fei about the event in Melchior's hut.

Moridin

Brad:
And the theories continue..

Geez, I was playing through XG last night, go figure. Weltall was piloted by that pilot that Fei was standing next to. You kow, all dead on the ground. He had fallen out, so Fei hopped in. It was Grahf that saved Elly, BTW. See all the nice wings on the gear? Yeah, I didn't catch it either till I went through the second time.

Max (Almost there!)

Brad:
This is probably what almost everyone said.. some other weird stuff out there.. but this was the most common.

You know, the one at the bottom of the cave. When you encounter it, it does nothing the first round, cures you the second, raises your strength the third, and then runs away the fourth. If you want to beat it, you have to do enough damage before that time to kill it. That's all. ^_^

-- Seed

Brad:
And more....

Well, when you get to level 99 and fight the slime, here's what you do.... First, any weapons with a hp fraction IP(reduce 1/2 hp) that you find, keep them. Things like the Dekar Blade and Deadly Sword, they work on the slime and cause several thousand damage. You want to use those straight off, and follow up with just plain powerful ones once they can cause more damage. The slime has 10,000 hp total, so with only three rounds to beat it, take off about 7,000-8,000 damage with fractions and just go nuts for the rest. For winning you can take the slime to the lady collecting Iris treasures, but more importantly you can get the GOOD stuff behind the old man at the entrance.

-Divine Id

Brad:
'course, it's not in Haiku, but well, still much appreciated!

hello Brad

When every you get to the bottom of the Ancient Cave on lufia 2. You're supposed to kill your self in the slime battle. After you kill your self, you get the slime as an iris treasure, and the key to the back room of the entrance. The room has a dragon ring and two or three other treasures.

Brad:
Hahahaha.. yes.. KILL YOURSELF.. do it! Take your life! .. er.. sorry. No more prozac for me!

Dear Thundara Maker,

I've managed to beat this giant gob of goo after about 2 tries.

Suggestions..

1. Level 99 code. It may be cheating, but it also saves asses in the cave.
2. An emu. It's SO great to have if you screw up.
3. Gades Blade. This is for Oct. Strike.
4. Dekar. Just use him.
5. Luck. It doesn't always work.

-EE

Brad:
Some repeated stuff, but then again, some more detailed stuff too..

Math problems, huh? All right, what's the volume of the figure formed by rotating the lines y=x^2 and y=x^.5 across the x-axis (sorry I couldn't find how to do the squared and square root symbol cause this stupid computer doesn't have the character map)?

Anyway, thanks for updating early. I have a lot of time left after class second period because I get done early, and the teacher lets us get on the internet. I've usually read the Q&A for the day already cause it's still yesterday's, but anyway...

Draklar

Brad:
Taking pi times the integral from 0 to 1 of (x^.5)^2 - (x^2)^2, we get 3(pi)/10. All that, at 2 in the morning. :D

Brad:
50933.23385962 . What's with you people's obsession with pi today?

I was wondering what you think of the new update for Asheron's Call ? I currently play a level 13 War/Life/Creature, and so far it just plain sucks. I was getting chased by 2 sandstone golems and 1 granite, before the patch i could easily taunt them, and kill them without dying, NOW they glide behind me and whoop me down ! Also what do you think of the new graphics enhancements and the new Golem And Drudge designs ? I think there totally cool ! Thanks for puttin' up with my little rant/question,

Moobuu"I don't have a last name"

Brad:
As for the golems and the druges, I'd say a definite improvement. The golems look AWESOME. Especially wood and water, from what I've seen, (so far, Mud/Limestone/Water/Ice/Wood) .. as for the sticky melee, well, it wasn't TOO bad.. I got killed about 6 times in a few hours runnin' solo outside of Qalaba'r, but that's only a bit more than normal.. I found by doing a crazy strafe-jump dance, I could get away from normal stuff.. now those Shadow Liuetenants, on the other hand... heh. Actually ran into a guy out there, and he was soloing a Shadow Lt.. and he killed it. I was so impressed. :)

I saw someone mention in the Q&A about the gas out last April 30... they claimed "it worked". Censor me if you like, but BULL SHIT.

I worked at Pioneer Gasoline here in my hometown of Brantford on that day... a few people mentioned the gas out, I read about it in the Toronto Sun... and that was about it. If memory serves me correctly, we did about $4000+ in gasoline alone that day. Gas out? Didn't work. Won't work. Won't EVER work. Because, you see, people NEED gas. The oil companies can charge what they want, our respective governments can put whatever taxes they want on oil, and us poor everyday schlubs have to fork over the dough to get the petrol, and there's nothin' we can do about it.

My advice for the tax hike? WALK MORE. Use public transit. Carpool. Gas outs flat out don't work out.

Direct from the Satellite...
TomServo

Brad:
This was pretty much my point too, though I clouded it up with some capitalistic propaganda, for the halibut. People try these things as some form of 'feel-good' measure to think they're doing something, but they really aren't. I'd be all for an EFFECTIVE protest... well, maybe I wouldn't be. But I'd be a lot less likely to make fun of one, that's for sure.

For starters, I'm with ya on the Prop22 thing. I'm not big into gay rights, but when a religion starts running your country, there's big problems. Hell, that's why the Pilgrims came here to start with, right?

Anywho, on to the point... About the gas out: Screw It! And not because of capitalism or anything else, but because it's not even the @&*%^ American companies' fault that gas prices are so high. For some reason, the high governing body of world oil (OPEC, I believe it is called) decided to stop selling oil to America, and that's why prices are so high. Know how I know? Because my family is in the offshore oil industry. And you know what else? If we just put up with it for a while, American oil companies will start more drilling, and the price will fall through the floor. Howdya like them apple?!? Anyway, sorry, just had to rant about that, since you printed that spammy crap and the subject of the gas out just generally pisses me off.

Um, RPG related thingy... Anybody know where to get a copy of FFT? The games rules, but I can't find the @*%& thing anywhere! Spent, like, ten hours looking around on the 'net. It's crazy... And, how many people do you think it'll take telling Square that we DO want the PSX remake of Chrono Trigger in NA before they believe us?

The TygerRose

Brad:
I'm with you on the gas thing.. down with those arab-- er.. j/k kids, heh heh.. as for FFT, I hear the auction sites might be able to help you out.. try those.. the copy at my local SoftwareETC went byebye fastlike.

Okay, remember yesterday when you said you were dishearted about the rumor that the PS2 wouldn't play some games? Yeah, that was great. Anyway, you shouldn't worry about it. I don't have the list on me, but it's only like 15 games out of the entire PSX library. Also, they're all obscure japanese titles and a horse racing game, so it's not like you'll pop in FFT and it's not gonna play. In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to even find a game that would glitch on the PS2. Well, that's about it.

-Chaos breaker

Brad:
Okay, this sounds good.. hopefully this is true, because I really don't have the desk space for more consoles.. I just bought that NES.. need to replace the SNES... ohboy ohoy.. thanks to the couple of people who sent this info in!

Not Treasure Hunter (Acty Art) Gradius Deluxe Pack (Konami) Aidoru Promotion -Suzuki Yumie- (Alyume) Toua Plan Shooting Battle (Banpresto) Oukyuu No Hihou: Tension (Vap) Wing Commander III (EA Square) Gallop Racer (Tecmo) Ongaku Tsukuuru: Kanadeeru 2 (Ascii) Monster Farm (Tecmo) - the Japanese version of Monster Rancher Dragonbeat (Map Japan) Susume! Kaizoku (Artdink) Tsuiridou Keiryu Kohen (Escot) Virtua Pachisuro V and EX (Map Japan) Konya Mo Senryobako! 2000 (Hearty Robin) Final Fantasy 7 and 8 ( its just a joke ! )

as you can see, most of those game where never relashed in english, and most of them are obscure/boring game. I really don't think someone wont buy the PSX2 because of this.Sony even said that those games WILL work, just not as good as a normal PSX.

Brad:
Haha, you think you're funny.. well, okay, that was funny.. and thanks for the information!

First off, just wanted to thank and applaud you for your rant. I couldn't agree more. It really hurts to see two people so deeply in love unable to marry. I would say that this ban on gay marriage (denying the existence of love, a miracle if ever there was one) is the greater sin. I'm sure you'll get a lot of flames for that rant, about how inappropriate it is to write about such things in a Q&A column dedicated to RPG's, or how wrong you are (you're not IMHO), but these things need to be brought to the attention of everyone. I've really come to deeply respect RPGamer and its staff and this has only deepened my respect. I just wanted you to have one more letter supporting you. Now we just need to get more gay characters in video games! (OK, maybe I'm the only one who would think that would be cool. Well, me and all my gay friends, but we're obviously not in the majority. Sigh.)

Next, I do have a question for the people out there if you feel like posting it. Does anyone know what I need to do to get my pocketstation working properly? Nothing will come up on the screen unless it is plugged into the memory slot on the Playstation. I thought it just needed a new battery, but that didn't work. Is there a way to fix this, or is painting it pretty colors and hanging it on the wall the only thing I can do? Maybe I'm missing something (I can't read Japanese yet), so I thought I'd ask if anyone out there had the same problem and was able to fix it. Thanks.

-Sulime "sadly lacking in the Japanese department" Athcart

Brad:
Thanks for the support, and that's not why I posted this letter, but it would have seemed to be odd without the top paragraph, I don't like to edit people's stuff at all, and when I have to, I make it as little as possible... but anyway, I don't know much about pocketstations, but I'll tell you what I do know: A lot of RPGamer Q&A readers know some stuff about these things. Of course, if I get 700 letters tomorrow with the "The ON switch is on the back!" .. then yer dead meat. ;D As for more gay characters in video games.. I hear that Suikoden3 is going to star Milich Oppenhiemer, and Germio as the boys wonder.. how's that? .. j/k :)

Oh Wise Oracle Brad,

I have a little dilema in Chrono Trigger. I played it about 3 years ago and I remembered I had the same problem I'm having now, and I don't remember how I got past it. Anyway, I just got kicked out of Zeal, and the gate was sealed behind me and I'm in Prehistoric times. My problem is I can't jump into the gate in the Mystic Mountains. If I recall correctly it asks you if you want to jump or not, but it doesn't even ask me that. I've looked and looked for an answer but couldn't find it. Your my last resort, otherwise I'm pretty much screwed. Oh yeah, I'm playing the ROM on my computer with ZSNES if that helps. Am I just stupid and missing something obvious, or is there something really wrong?

Little "Completely pissed off at this!" Goose

Brad:
Alright, well, I'm getting to this kinda late right now, (3:20am, now..) .. and so my memory is hurtin' me. I'm thinking that this is the time that you need to go to the 'other' village (north of Ayla's village) and you'll see it's kinda smoked out.. and then from there you'll be given more direction. Of course, if I'm wrong, I'll never hear the end of it...

~The "His condition was later upgraded from 'dead' to 'alive'!" Sack~

...Sorry, you asked for weird...

Brad:
Wow.. except for the monthish I took off, I've been doing this for six months on 03/13/00. Crazy. Does that make me the longest lasting? I don't know.. and I don't have near the patience to find out.. someone who's bored.. get the numbers. In weeks, who's been the longest RPGamer Q&A host?

How goes?

Well, in Wild Arms, before doing the final sequence to end the game, i have been doing all the little side quests, such as destroying the remaining golems, and collecting all the runes. ( Actully, i have beat the game, this is just the second run with it ) Anyways, the question. Now, i know there is a golem in the inner sea, because people in Ship Graveyard speak of a " monsterous mermaid " attacking ships. I have been completely unsuccesful in finding this " creature ". Is it even possible to find and destroy? Any responce would be greatly appreciated.

stan

Brad:
I don't remember HOW long it took, but it took a while for me to find that water golem. I swear.. getting those things to come out was a real pain. You know what bugged me more than that, though? Was smashing that damned transporter with my glove a billion times, to get a CHANCE at being beamed to the *naughty place*. grumble...