Lost Odyssey

I figured it was about time that I documented some of the more obscure tricks and oddities about this game for anyone who looks to run this game, or wants some information on the more exploitable mechanics the game has. This will just be for techniques, if you're interested in learning the whole route, send me a twitch PM on http://twitch.tv/potatohandle and I'll link you to an up to date run and notes if they're available.

Techniques

Gamble Usage

One of the most frequently used tricks in the run is the use of the Gamble spell. Gamble is obtainable by spending about 4 minutes doing a minigame in Tosca village. It's a Level 2 Spirit Magic spell, which costs 10mp, and has a long 1-turn cast time and can be cast by everyone with full effect. Gamble does a random about of damage based on your level, at around level 20 you can expect it to do from 1-1200, at level 40 you can expect it to do 1-2000, maxed out characters can hit gambles for around 4-5k.

The caster's level seems to be the ONLY factor for determining Gamble's damage. Magic Attack of the caster, Magic defense or GC of the defender are all irrelevant. This makes gamble a very good spell for melee attackers like Kaim and Seth to use, and is your only decent source of damage for fights later in the game when you're 20-30 levels lower than "intended" and fighting high-defense bosses, or creatures in the back row.

Glitches

Persistence Glitch

You can learn Persistence from Tolten on discs 3 and 4. When equipped, persistence allows you to survive at 1hp from a blow which would otherwise kill you. Normally persistence is only meant to work once per revive, but you can trigger it to work once per turn simply by changing any equipment in battle, this effectively makes you immune to certain bosses who can only hit each character once per turn.

You can change any piece of equipment, (weapon, ring or bracelet), and you can change, and then change back to the same piece of equipment that you started with and it will still work.

This glitch is useful through most of disc 4, on Luminous Magic Beast in particular.

Treasure Chest Climbing

Most of the game's treasure chests have very high invisible walls surrounding them. By running into certain chests at very acute angles you can get on top of this invisible wall and walk around in the air above the chest.

In some particular circumstances you can use the extra height you gain to fall out of bounds.

Ice Canyon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozWGztTRqvc

Ghost Town: http://www.twitch.tv/eekcast/c/1886416

If while falling out of bounds you're able to spin your character around (You can tell by the minimap) then you fell while moving, and will get encounters every few seconds and you will be stuck until you reload. If you fall and *can't* spin around then you will fall for about 2-3 minutes, and then Kaim will "fall" back in bounds and have a heart-attack. Totally pointless, but totally hilarious.

This glitch, despite being very cool and having a lot of potential, doesn't have any viable single-segment use yet. In theory it can save 5-10 seconds on disc 3 in the ice area, but that's almost certainly a segmented only strat due to the randomness of the chest climb, and the danger of falling out of bounds.

HP/GC Underflow

Most recently discovered tech is the HP/GC Underflow glitch; under very particular circumstances you can trick the game into thinking that you have infinite GC, which makes all the damage calculations for the back row go crazy.

The requirement is simple. Start a fight with everyone in the front row dead. Actually replicating this however is a bit trickier, because at the end of every fight when you return to the overworld, all dead characters get revived with 1hp.

However some fights happen back-to-back without any chance for the game to revive your dead characters. The artillery fights before the Armoured Train boss battle work very well for this. There are three fights in a row in this sequence, so simply have your front row character die and then progress to the next fight, and your back row character will be invincible until the end of the battle.

While under the effects of the glitch, your GC will display as Lv4, but with 0 GC. If the back row gets hit by any attack, it will appear to fully heal them at first, and from that point on they will have over 2 billion health and any subsequent attack will do nothing.

If you switch one of the glitched characters to the front row, they will retain their 2 billion health, but not the GC immunity. So they can be damaged "normally" from that point on.

A brief video explanation on this glitch can be found here: http://www.twitch.tv/potatohandle/c/3299480

Fights confirmed to work with this glitch.

• Artillery - Armoured Train

Fights Confirmed NOT to work with this glitch.

• Luminous - Gongora 1 (Dead immortals are revived with 1hp)
• Bogimoray 1 - Bogimoray 2 (Glitch doesn't trigger even with front row dead.)
• Obsidian Miasma 1 - Obsidian Miasma 2 (Glitch doesn't trigger even with front row dead.)

Fights with multiple parts still unconfirmed.

• Gongora 1 - Gongora 2 (Rinimt tested this, but got revived by Jansen and then Gongora immediately used Light Absorb. You can stall Light Absorb by dealing a very specific amount of damage to Gongora. So this could still be tested.)