Dragon Star Varnir RTA FAQ

Dragon Star Varnir FAQ

Q: What the heck is going on in this game?
A: I need you to be a bit more specific than that.

Q: Okay, wise guy, what is this game about?
A: This game is a story about Zephy (sword guy wearing gray), Minessa (girl wearing blue), Karikaro (BOOBA), Laponette (wears green; she spawns magic bridges across gaps which you, for some reason, can't fly over???), Charlotta (pigtails girl, pink hair, burns pink crystals to collect items), and Faria (girl wearing yellow; you'll only see her if I screw up a menu or while swapping through characters on the overworld) racing against time to figure out how to solve the "witch's curse".  Along the way, they run through lots of temples and abandoned stretches of wilderness and cast lots of elemental magic spells.

Q: What's the witch's curse?
A: In this branch of Anime Land, all witches have a dragon growing inside them.  When the dragon is fully grown, it forces its way out of the witch, killing her.  (Witches are supposed to only be female; Zephy's a special case, as are most JRPG anime boys.)

Note that the dragon also forces its way out early if the witch hits critical levels of starvation.  My current route makes one trip to the Little Sisters' room to shove a bunch of Dragon Meat down their throats so they don't starve, since all three of them need to live in order to get the True Ending.  (I think this can be taken out, but it needs testing.)  This also means that casual playthroughs of this game have an absolute hard time limit on how long you can take to get from the beginning of Chapter 4 to the True Ending Finale, because if you let the little sisters starve, you don't get the True Ending . . . but if you take too long and have to feed them too much to keep them alive, the dragons inside them come out and kill them anyway.  (Classic Compile Heart jank.)

Q: Alright, enough plot.  What are all these crazy menus flashing before my face?
A: That's the combat system.  Attacks have animations, but if you hold R2, you skip said animations, leading to the ultra-fast combat in the speedrun.

Q: Tell me a bit about the combat in this game.
A: That's not a question.

Q: *brandishes weapon*
A: Okay, fine.  There are two types of offense in this game: physical attacks and magic attacks.  Physical attacks are governed by the P-ATK and P-DEF stats, while magic attacks are governed by the M-ATK and M-DEF stats.  In the speedrun, I will almost exclusively use magic attacks.

Q: Why is magic broken and/or physical garbage?
A: Every enemy in the game is weak to one magic element and one physical weapon type, which results in additional damage per hit (think Pokemon).  A character cannot change their weapon type (i.e., Zephy isn't suddenly going to trade in his sword for a spear like Karikaro), but every character can unlock and use offensive magic of every type.  So magic is the superior option for attack spam, plus passive skills that buff M-ATK and M-DEF are more readily available than their physical counterparts.

Q: How do you unlock all these skills?
A: When I go to the "Dragon Core" menu, the game shows a list of the enemies each character has either (a) successfully used a Devour move on (examples will be discussed later), or (b) bosses defeated so far.  By using "Factor Points" unlocked through completing battles, the characters unlock skills and stat buffs.  If I want everything from one Dragon Core, I press Start and then Confirm; otherwise, I have to go one-by-one.  (Many of the early-game devours are one-by-one, but later on almost everything is Start-Confirm.)

Q: Okay, so what skills do you use in this run?
A: Read on!
-Elemental magic is the primary (virtually sole by Chapter 4) offensive strategy.  The elements in this game are Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Light, and Dark, plus a few special "non-elemental" magic spells that never get used in the run.
-Magic Healing/Big Healing heal one party member's HP, while Heal Party heals everyone (no false advertising here).
-Relief is a revive skill that resuscitates a character with 50% HP; later, you unlock Full Relief, which revives with 100% HP instead of 50%.
-Defense Crush is a skill that reduces the targets' P-DEF and, more importantly, M-DEF by 40% each.
-Soul Boost increases all party members' P-DEF and M-DEF by 40%.

Q: What about the other skills menu you dabble with sometimes?
A: In addition to magic skills, physical skills (which I never touch the whole run), and Devour skills (which I change once in Chapter 2, after unlocking Savage Bite, and then leave alone for the rest of the game; don't worry about it), there are passive skills.  These are even more important for getting through this game in the speedrun; if you forego them, you'll get walled by Chapter 4 or 5 at the very latest.

Q: So what passive skills do you use?
A: A bunch.
-Offense Enhance: P-ATK and M-ATK +15%
-Defense Enhance: P-DEF and M-DEF +20%
-Mage's Power: M-ATK and M-DEF +20%
-HP Support (for backline characters; increases paired frontliner's HP by 10%)
-Defense Support (for backline characters; increases paired frontliner's Defense by 10%)
-HP Super Enhance: HP +30%
-SP Super Enhance: SP +30%
-Offense Super Enhance: P-ATK and M-ATK +30%
-Speed Super Enhance: SPD +60%
-Dragon's Charm: HP, SP, P-ATK, P-DEF, M-ATK, M-DEF, and SPD +10%
-Secrets of Mages: M-ATK and M-DEF +40%
-Magic Boost: No stat increases, but applies a flat +20% to all magic skill damage
-Earth's Dragon Wings: P-DEF and M-DEF +30%; SPD +40%
-Note that the passive skills menu is governed by a point system; stronger skills require more points, and you can't pass 20 total points equipped.

Q: I understand why passives are so important now!
A: Again, that's not a question, but I'll let this one slide.

Q: *clears throat, pats weapon* What enemies do you need skills from?
A: Kind of a lot, but most of them are bosses, so it's quite manageable.
-All bosses for Zephy, Minessa, and Karikaro (plus Ragnard, optional boss; basically all of my elemental magic, Dragon Charm, and Earth Dragon's Wings come from this source)
-Chapter 2: Earth Dragon for Zephy, Minessa, and Karikaro (Savage Bite; Offense Enhance; Defense Enhance)
-Chapter 2: Ifrit for Zephy, Minessa, and Karikaro (Mage's Power)
-Chapter 3: Ice Dragon for Laponette (HP Support; Defense Support; Laponette promptly equips these and buffs Zephy for the rest of the game)
-Chapter 5: Aqua Dragon for Zephy (HP Super Enhance, SP Super Enhance; for convenience in Chapters 4-5 and necessity for final boss)
-Chapter 7: Lockjiran for Zephy, Minessa, and Karikaro (Secrets of Mages; Magic Boost)

Q: Why do you go back to a dungeon you already cleared at the beginning of Chapter 6?
A: I need to fight an optional boss named Ragnard to get Offense Super Enhance.  Speed Super Enhance helps too (and is mandatory for the final boss), but Offense Super Enhance is a huge game-changer and virtually mandatory to get through late-game bosses.  (You can actually get Offense Super Enhance and Speed Super Enhance from an RNG spawn enemy called the Gold Sun in Chapter 4, but you need three of them and the EXP from Ragnard helps out for the rest of the game.  Needs more testing.)

Q: Actually, back up.  Why are you using these three party members the whole game?
A: . . .
-Karikaro is the game's designated Black Mage (her weapons scale M-ATK more than P-ATK, and M-ATK is her natural best stat).  Since magic is better than physical in this game, she's a mandatory inclusion.
-For the same reason Karikaro is a must-add, Charlotta is a must-drop.  She's the designated physical attacker (her weapons scale P-ATK more than M-ATK), so she's not helpful in a game where magic rules.
-Minessa is the only character with a healing skill until far enough in the game that it's not worth taking her out at that point.
-Faria doesn't join until Chapter 7 and is too far behind in levels, equipment, and skills you would need to use excessively long menuing to unlock.
-Between Zephy and Laponette, Zephy has higher HP and a slight level advantage (Laponette joins at the end of Chapter 1, after a few fights), so he wins.
-Note: Karikaro is the best attacker, then Minessa, and Zephy is the third-best.  This means that I try to prioritize Zephy for healing whenever possible (and Minessa over Karikaro).

Q: What's this thing where you get a narrow shot of the character's eyes and they go Super Saiyan?
A: That's called "Dragon Awakening".  In that mode, your P-ATK and M-ATK are massively increased.  Each turn, party members build up a bit of their meter (the purple circle on the HUD that gradually fills up); when that meter is full, the character goes into Dragon Awakening on their next turn.  (The exact science of the meter filling up is a strange mechanic that's never explained, and it's not terribly consistent from run to run; variability in early game fights to get Devours, wildly different boss fights, as well as running from unwanted encounters ensure that any potential pattern to follow in RTA is out of the picture by Chapter 2.  Chapter 1 is fairly reliable to an extent, though.)

When a character is KO'ed while not in Dragon Awakening, their meter stays the same when you revive them.  However, when a character is KO'ed IN Dragon Awakening, their meter instantly drops to 0.  As a result, one of the worst things that can happen is a party member (especially Karikaro) getting one Dragon Awakening turn and instantly getting KO'ed.  That said, getting a quick Dragon Awakening is the quickest way to win a boss fight, and Karikaro getting an early Dragon Awakening and then not getting killed can be a substantial time save.  (At a theoretical level, gold splits in this game are technically fake due to each gold getting a super quick Dragon Awakening or two and wrecking the boss, which will not happen on every single boss in one playthrough, but practically speaking it doesn't really mean much since it would take tons of attempts to get in that neighborhood of optimization.)

There's also a rare variant of Dragon Awakening called "Dragon Rage".  Dragon Rage is randomly (low odds) activated when a character goes into Dragon Awakening at low HP (like <33%; again, the game never really explains this).  In Dragon Rage, the party member's P-ATK and M-ATK skyrocket (as in, about triple damage in some cases), but their accuracy plummets (every hit is probably a coin flip).  This is interesting because, other than with Dragon Rage, accuracy isn't really a thing in this game.  (Maybe for physicals, but those don't matter in speedruns, heh.)  If you want to see what Dragon Rage can do to a boss, watch the Chapter 10 boss fight in my 48:39 (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1638940495?t=0h37m14s) (that split was nowhere near gold pace until that fight happened).

Q: Alright, most of this makes a bit of sense now, but what the heck is going on with the final boss?  Zephy isn't even attacking!
A: Varnir (the final boss) is a real headache.

As you get further into the game, enemies start getting multiple attacks per turn ("difficulty balancing") to up the damage dealt to the party members.  By the last couple of chapters, bosses are getting four attacks per turn.  This results in needing to use Relief or Full Relief more frequently, especially if the boss decides to quadruple-attack one party member (which happens more often than you'd think).

This isn't a big problem on any other boss, but with the amount of damage Varnir puts out every turn, you need one party member to be a dedicated healer with higher HP, tons of SP, as much P-DEF and M-DEF as you can muster, and insane SPD.  That sounds a lot like Zephy (already the weakest magic attacker in the frontline) with Dragon's Charm, Defense Enhance, Earth Dragon's Wings, and Speed Super Enhance, equipped with the best defensive weapon, armor, and boots in the game, plus an item (the Natural Ring; acquired in Chapter 10) that massively buffs SP at the cost of a bit of HP (which Zephy already has enough of with that loadout, even without HP Super Enhance), AND with Laponette's HP and DEF buffs stacked on top.  Note that Zephy only has four passives on because any fifth with that config would exceed 20 points.

Additionally, I equip two elemental magic skills on Minessa and Karikaro: Great Horn (which hits all three levels) and Dark Zone.  Varnir is weak to Dark element (hence Dark Zone), but Great Horn hits all three levels of the field.  Many bosses occupy two or all three levels of the combat map; the top is always the main part that must be defeated to win, while the lower sections contribute additional skills until or unless they are incapacitated.  For most multi-level bosses, you can skip the lower levels because they don't do anything of note, but Varnir's midsection has a healing skill which needs to be taken off the board ASAP.  As a result, Minessa and Karikaro spam Great Horn until only Varnir's top is left and then spam Dark Zone.  I also equip a couple of defensive passives on Minessa and Karikaro over the weaker offense buffs because the risk of getting smacked with an unwinnable pattern is significantly higher if I don't (see next question).

With this setup, Zephy clicks Defense Crush turn 1 and then spams Full Relief, healing magic (Party All is a healing skill used only in this fight; think Heal Party but slightly better), and Soul Boost; he never attacks, even in Dragon Awakening/Rage.  Minessa and Karikaro spam elemental magic as described above; in a pinch, they can click Full Relief or Heal Party too.

Q: What about items and equipment?
A: That's two questions, but let's take them in order:
Items: The route includes buying 5 Panaceas (think Full Heals from Pokemon; cures all status ailments for one party member) at the start of Chapter 2, plus a handful more later on.  The only really bad status effect is Paralyze, which completely immobilizes a character until he/she is either cured or KO'ed.  Confuse is similar to Pokemon in that it sometimes ruins your turn and sometimes doesn't.  Other than stat debuffs (which generally don't matter against the player in the speedrun), those are really the only two you'll see in my runs.
Equipment: Character equipment in this game is pretty bog standard: One weapon, one piece of armor, one pair of boots, and one accessory.
-Weapons: I buy a few different sets of weapons in Chapters 5, 7, and the Interlude to keep my M-ATK stat moving along (new weapons plus several multipliers really adds up).
-Armor/Boots: The route gets through everything up to Chapter 10 just on items collectable in dungeons.  I buy endgame armor in the Interlude (although I do collect one superior set of armor in the final dungeon, because the Varnir fight sucks).
-Accessories: There are a few guaranteed items in Chapters 1, 3, and 5 to help in early game.  There are also some RNG drops you can get in Chapter 2, but they aren't especially significant in the grand scheme of things.  In Chapter 7, I get a bunch of accessories that buff damage from one element of magic by 20%, which promptly get set on Karikaro as applicable (multipliers!).  Finally, I get a few more endgame accessories in Chapter 10 and the Finale.

Q: And what about the "Witches' Workshop" and "Huntery" that you visit once or twice and never return to?
A: You must really be paying attention if you're asking this question, huh?
-The Huntery is this game's side-quest hub.  Side-quests are slow and always optional, and there are no good rewards for them in a speedrun setting, so this feature gets ignored entirely except for fighting Ragnard (I don't even report that quest after beating that optional boss LOL).
-The Witches' Workshop is a bit more interesting; as you get materials from overworld harvest points and enemy drops (well, not in a speedrun, but you know), you can combine them in the Workshop cauldron to alchemize stronger weapons and gear.  There are two main problems with trying this in a speedrun: first, what exact piece of equipment you get is subject to heavy levels of RNG, making a consistent route impossible (*Tron Bonne flashbacks*); and second, this game isn't nice enough to just hand you the item you created.  Instead, you have to throw down with some dragons to claim your item.  Why?  No idea!  In any event, the strength of the enemies is directly proportional to the strength of the crafted item, AND you can't predict the enemy weakness for the same reason you can't predict your item (RNG!), so even if you made some insanely OP weapon in, say, Chapter 5, you'd just get roflstomped out of the Workshop anyway and lose your materials and item.

Q: Are there any character-specific romance endings that accompany the True Ending?
A: Yes, but getting any of them requires a 50 second detour and changes nothing other than giving the player one bonus ending cutscene (unless you watch all of the affinity events, in which case you're losing several extra minutes), so I won't be doing that in runs.  If people really want to see the ending cutscenes, maybe I'll make a Yobby Points incentive to pick a character ending or something.

Q: What's with the random dialogue choices at certain points?
A: They affect something called the "Madness Gauge", which is important for determining the ending your playthrough will get.  Read: Speedrun categories!

Q: What other categories exist for this game?
A: There are three endings: True Ending (which I'm running), Normal Ending (exactly what it says on the tin), and Madness Ending (bad end).  I don't particularly care for Normal or Madness Endings, and for Normal Ending, you have to wait around until one of the little sisters starves to death before beating Chapter 10.  The other possibility for alternate categories is higher difficulties, but you get stonewalled by Chapter 10 on Normal without grinding, and I'm sure Hard and on are even worse.  Throw in the DLC variable, and there are theoretically tons of different categories one could run in this game, but most of them are meh at best.

Q: Any other important notes about this game?
A:
-There are a handful of bosses that can give you unwinnable patterns and end your run.  The main culprits are Great Horn (Chapter 8), Sofi Tear (Chapter 10), Corbelia (Interlude), and especially Varnir (final boss).  None of them are especially likely, but the game can veto your run pretty far in if it wants.
-One enemy type present in Chapters 6 and 10 will insta-First Strike you if it sees you.  I genuinely do not know if this is a feature or a glitch.  It's really annoying and sometimes hands me unnecessary encounters.
-Another enemy type present in Chapter 10, the huge orange dragon, has such a big hitbox that, if it's anywhere near where you need to go, you WILL get an encounter with it.
-One enemy spawn in the Star's Womb (final dungeon) can quickly wipe your party if it First Strikes you, and it chases you to a particularly vulnerable spot.  You might see me dancing around like a child who just stepped on embers near a Laponette bridge in that dungeon; if so, this enemy is probably why.
-Things I still need to test for the route:
a. Not feeding the little sisters (outrun their metabolisms!)
b. Gold Sun farming in Chapter 4 instead of fighting Ragnard in Chapter 6
c. Looking for Red Devils in Chapter 5 (they give you a passive that increases M-ATK and M-DEF by 30% but are rare, and finding three of them on the first pass through the dungeon is very rare, PLUS it costs one more point than the +20% buff which screws with your passive loadouts at some points)
d. Whatever other random ideas come up as I get more familiar with this game (I'm the only person so far to really dig into this category, so there's probably a lot I haven't thought of yet).

Q: What can I look at if I want to poke holes in your route/run?
A: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/ps4/243641-dragon-star-varnir/faqs/78087/introduction.  Knock yourself out!  I'd love to optimize this game more, and having multiple pairs of eyes is always good for that purpose.

Q: Who is Best Girl?
A: Power Rankings!
1. Karikaro (BOOBA; kinda aggressive and quick-tempered, and can't cook, but protective, caring, and has a good heart)
2. Charlotta (starts out as a jerk but really mellows out; also, this girl SLAYS the pigtails look)
3. Minessa (a bit boring, but she gives off a nice "mature woman" vibe and is the mother figure of the witch family in this game; if I, IRL, actually had to marry one of these women, I'd probably pick her)
4. Laponette (doesn't really have much personality; nothing really notable about her)
5. Faria (I'm not into children)

See?  I just summarized the whole plot AND the potential waifus for you in addition to giving you all the speedtech!  Never say I'm not all about the Twitch Viewers' Experience.

Q: If you're all about the Twitch Viewers' Experience, why haven't you bought a real mic?
A: . . .

Q: How much would I have to donate to get you to view Faria End on stream?
A: This FAQ has reached its conclusion.  Thanks for reading!