Warriors Orochi 3 Combo/Challenge Setup

Viewer Brandon Schmierer wrote the following e-mail to me a few days ago:

"Hey Wonderpierrot, I have been loving your videos and when you started posting Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate videos it encouraged me to re-buy WO3 for my ps3. However I haven't been able to find what attributes you use on your weapons. I have been doing the typical setups that people use on Tier lists: Bolt Wind Slay Agility Osmosis and Absorption with the remaining 2 slots being either Typhoon/Echo/Reach. However playing chaos with these attributes makes it too easy, so I was wondering if you had a medium level setup that could still clear chaos but not make it be too easy. Thank you for your time and I hope you continue to make awesome videos."

The Warriors Orochi series is in my humble opinion one of the best series in KOEI's game arsenal. This is especially valid because of its unrestricted combos, unrestricted weapon fusion system and high character level and stat ceilings. However, there has always been the iffy problem of these games being too easy and not challenging enough if you "do the right thing".

What I mean by "doing the right thing" is taking heed of your own judgement (and even others) and maximizing your characters to the best of their ability and potential possible in the game. Because, why would you not do that given the chance? You want your characters to be the most powerful right?

Well, when you start doing too much of that, the difficulty of the game suddenly drops downhill. Actual player skill and the unrestricted combos are significantly diminished, as enemies on the highest difficulty can be taken out in mere seconds, leaving no room for any real fun essentially. This is clearly an outcast from other games (even in the same genre), when 100% maximization still results in the game being plenty challenging.

"But the game difficulty is balanced!! Because the enemy are just as strong as you are LOLZ!!" is an argument against what I said can be made. True, the enemy can kill you as fast you kill them when you're uber strong, but you see... there's a big problem in that equation: Enemy AI. Yeah, the enemy AI is weak. So when your own brain wins in a landslide against the enemy AI, then their damage output doesn't matter too much. The game in the end is still easy.

Even if the enemy AI somehow were intelligent, who actually likes sudden death gameplay? That is the equivalent of uber you vs the enemy at the highest difficulty.

When it comes to maximization, that is, making your character the best s/he can possibly be in the game, veteran players will often lure you to the following setup:

* Max character level - this is quite obvious.

* Big-star weapon with max compatibility - also obvious; it's after all the best and highest damage weapon you can attain in the game.

* And a variety of weapon attributes, that usually involves the following (all max level, of course): Wind, Bolt, Slay, Agility, Reach, Osmosis, Absorption, Echo/Typhoon

If you indeed meet all these points for any character, the character will without a doubt be vastly overpowered regardless of moveset type. If you're the type of player who likes to run around slaying everything that attempts to get in your path in a few measly charges and consider that entertaining, then maximization would be right for you. Farmers and grinders, I'm including you too! But it gets worse, because the game actually has an attribute that can lessen the killing time further, called Brilliance. With this equipped in addition, you can pretty much one shot everything in any difficulty now. Brilliant.

So what if you're the player in between, who actually wants a challenge and doesn't like the game to be too easy, or even too difficult? What if you're the player who wishes to showcases as much skill as possible in doing flashy, ridiculous, lengthy tag team combos without over-killing? You know, the kind of thing this game was made for? Well, there is a way to get a very good balance of all of these, and I will show you how!

Character Level and Stats

Firstly, let's talk initially about the character level and stats. I'll be quick and efficient, max the level or don't max it, but don't let it sit below 50. Maxing the level and therefore raising your character's stats to max won't impact the game's highest difficulty by a lot. In fact, you'll need to be very high leveled in order to survive higher star stages in chaos. The last thing you want is the enemy taking you out in one hit. I suggest leveling to at least 70+.

Weapons and Weapon Attributes

Next and more importantly, let's talk about weapons and weapon attributes. Here's where you can predominately decide the game's overall difficulty. This suggested setup I often use gives you a difficulty that is just right (i.e. neither too easy or too difficult). It of course also allows you to be as stylish and lengthy in the execution of combos as your heart's content.

4 Star Weapon - 4 star weapons are preferred to big-star star weapons, as it requires much less grinding to max compatibility. The attack power + compatibility of 4 star weapons when maxed tends to also work best to balance difficulty.

Weapon Attributes:

Wind - You should always have this attribute on your weapons, but do not max it. Leave it at a very low level, i.e. level 1-5. Anything beyond that destroys the game's challenge and difficulty as it depletes too much of an enemy/officer health in charges. It is a necessity for guard breaking and to help speed up time killing officers in chaos, but not too much.

Agility - Max it. Attacking slow will be painful for a lot of combos.

Reach - Max it. See above.

Osmosis/Absorption - You should put these two on. Otherwise, you'll be scrambling to switch characters often or roam around to find recovery items because enemy damage is extremely significant on chaos. Put it to a lower level if you desire more challenge.

The following attributes are optional:

Flame - Flame isn't too powerful but it does add helpful additional damage to your charges. It doesn't hurt to put it on your weapons and even max it.

Typhoon - Adds a ton of range to your attacks. Useful for characters with low reach and essential for certain combos. Some characters may not really benefit from it. You will have to experiment.

Bolt and Slay - Bolt, slay and wind I don't recommend combining any of these together. All three of these attributes are damage scaled based on enemy health, so they are vastly powerful at high levels and even more so when combined. If you do put them on, leave them at a low level like with wind.

Never put the following attributes:

Brilliance - We don't need to say anything further about this little gem. It adds attributes (such as the already powerful bolt, slay and wind) to all your attacks when your musou bar is full. Turns the game into cheating mode, essentially.

Echo -  Unless you're not a combo enthusiast (why wouldn't you be?!), echo is not cool to put on your weapons. It totally, I mean totally ruins your combo potential for most attacks.

Any other attributes are up to you, but these are usually the main ones I utilize when I do combo based videos (or in other words, gameplay that doesn't feel easy and boring). Of course, you can adjust attributes and levels to your needs if you feel it is not challenging enough. 

Character Equipment

There are only two main things you need to take in consideration with equipment items. One is attack power and the other is defense. There are two items in particular that can raise attack and defense independently: Lion's Fang and Chimera Shell. Unless you feel like your damage output is poor, I would place Chimera Shell over Lion's Fang. The rest of the slots can be filled with a mix of Phoenix Wing, Charm of Alacrity, Amulet of Protection, Tengjia Armor, Iron Gauntlets and of course one of the horse saddles.

Defense, defense, defense is the key. You already have more than enough damage output, but enemy damage to you can still be a problem. You want to lower their damage as much as possible to help balance the difficulty better.

If you're willing to sacrifice some attack, then Shield of Sacrifice is a notable item to equip to boost defense.

Summary

By following this setup and guidance, I will guarantee you can get a lot more enjoyment out of Warriors Orochi 3 with increased challenge and difficulty. This setup is also mandatory for any kind of prolong combo on officers without unnecessary over-killing.

And regardless of what anyone says, that you may be "doing it wrong" or "being noob", shot back and say "YES, I AM handicapping myself so the game is no longer a cakewalk and actually requires skill!".

But what about Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate you say? Musou Orochi 2 Ultimate is another beast of its own, and I will be covering a Combo/Challenge Setup of that game at another time.

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Q&A All About HD Video Capture!

I'm going to do another brief questions and answers post. And because I still get asked quite often about HD video capturing—including what my setup and equipment are and my process, I'm going to dedicate this Q&A exclusively to HD video capturing!

Q: What are your current video game capturing setup and equipment? 

A: I have owned and used the same setup and equipment since I started uploading HD videos in YouTube, way back in 2008-2009. So right off the bat I won't say it's the absolute best setup and equipment, but it is still incredibly high quality and efficient till this day.

For capturing hardware, I use a Hauppauge HD-PVR. Not the HD-PVR 2, as there's really no difference between the two besides the added benefit of HDMI (which is mostly worthless to my videos anyways, as most of them are on PS3 and it has HCDP aka "copy protection").

HD-PVR Front

HD-PVR Back

 I also think owning the original HD-PVR opens up a lot more options for me. For instance, I can configure the HD-PVR so it can capture all my videos using a simple DOS command prompt. If you have ever used the supplied Total Media software to capture, you'll know how much of a strain it can put on your CPU. Capturing through the command prompt uses absolutely zero percent CPU use. Remember to hook up your component out to your HDTV of course, unless you want to do blind capturing. If you want to learn how to do this and have the first generation HD-PVR, e-mail me!

The HD-PVR is connected to a laptop with a dual boot of Windows 7 and Mac OS X.

For software, I use literally too much, but then again using that many allows me full control of everything. But the most often I use are the three of: DGAVCDec for demuxing the .ts output file; AVISynth to enable the opening of the video file in VirtualDub and for basic trimming/fades; and VirtualDub for filtering and encoding/compressing.  For more advanced videos where serious editing, filtering and joining is required, I will additionally use Sony Vegas Pro.

Sometimes I will also use iMovie and Final Cut Pro X, depending on how fancy I need things to be.

Q: What are your steps to creation of a video for YouTube? 

A: Here is a brief summary of what I usually do >

1. Capture footage using HD-PVR through rcTVCap (DOS based capture).
2. Demux the .ts output file in DGAVCDec.
3. Edit my AVISynth script file, add a fade in/fadeout if necessary, add trim points if necessary.
4. Open the video file using the AVISynth script file in VirtualDub.
5. Apply my filter and compression presets for all my HD videos in VirtualDub.
6. Encode/compress the video using x264 codec (H.264). 

 If you don't understand that, then it's perfectly fine. It's quite advanced!

Those steps however are only the case if the video in question doesn't require serious editing and filtering, in which the steps will be a little different. I usually will just encode the video file in VirtualDub as uncompressed and edit it further in Sony Vegas Pro.

Q: What would your future video game capturing setup and equipment be, or what do you suggest would be the best one out there? 

A: If you truly want the best; meaning the best quality, the best audio and the best efficiency, your only option would be capturing uncompressed through HDMI and perhaps optic audio.

At the moment, there are quite few video capture devices on the market that can capture uncompressed and these are usually ones that are tailored to the professional market. The only ones that springs to my mind are any of BlackMagic's Intensity products.

So why does capturing uncompressed matter anyways? It matters because when you capture uncompressed, you are actually capturing the footage in its pristine, pure, natural state, with zero added compression of any kind. That means ZERO compression pixelation! More popular consumer capture devices (HD-PVR, Elgato, etc.) will force your videos to all go through its hardware encoder/compressor (usually H.264).

H.264 is an awesome codec and should be used on every video, but it's not so awesome when you want to use it for editing and have to recompress again. Recompressing H.264 with H.264 over again can degrade your video quality.

On the other hand, if you upload your captured videos the instant it comes out and never need to edit it, then a H.264 type capture device would be an easier, more affordable and better option. Then again, you may not care too much about the quailty either.

After you captured your uncompressed footage, you can then bring it into a video editor, edit it and then encode/compress it to H.264 at a HIGH bitrate. This results in the most minimal amount of quality loss and compression pixelation possible. Don't try uploading uncompressed videos directly or even use them for long term storage, as they can take up as much as 180MB per second!

Another added benefit of using uncompressed videos is that video editors tend to work much better with uncompressed videos than compressed video. If you don't believe me, just try to edit a H.264 video file then an uncompressed video file in Sony Vegas Pro.

The biggest downside to capturing uncompressed is the significant demand on your PC/Mac hardware. If you don't have either a huge SSD or hard drive RAID setup, don't even bother.

To answer the actual first part of the question—yes, I will change to an Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt soon, along with a new desktop computer to meet the demanding needs of capturing uncompressed.

Q: Any thoughts on what you believe is the best video editing software? 

A: I have always liked and recommend Sony Vegas Pro or Sony Vegas Movie Studio to others. It's timeline based editor and interface is one of the best and easiest to use.

I also enjoy using iMovie and Final Cut Pro X on Mac at times, when I need to do some more cool looking visual effects and transitions (Sony Vegas doesn't come with a whole lot of awesome, jaw dropping visual effects and transitions).

Like I mentioned earlier, if you just want basic editing including trimming and light filtering, AVISynth and VirtualDub together makes an awesome combination.

Q: HDMI vs Component. Is there really a quality difference? 

A: Nah, not really. I tested both and at most you'll gain a 5% quality increase with HDMI compared to component, most being HDMI being a tiny bit sharper. Another benefit of HDMI is that its completely digital instead of analog like component. So if you live in an area that has a lot of analog interference, HDMI can completely get rid of these for you.

The only prominant reason to have the need to use HDMI is if you plan on capturing in 1080p. Then again, most PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii U games today aren't even 1080p native. What you are essentially doing is forcing the game to stretch to that resolution.

Capturing through HDMI with the PS3 also doesn't work because of the so-called HDCP copy protection. There are ways around this, but they usually involve converting the HDMI signal to component. What's the point?

Q: Any tips for HD video capturing? 

A: I have lots of tricks and tips in this post I made in July!

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How to Resign Xbox 360 Game Saves

Recently, I received an e-mail from someone (who I decided should remain anonymous here), asking if there was a way to resign game saves on the Xbox 360 as easy as the PS3 with no modding required.

I'm glad he/she asked, because just a few days ago I had to resign a Lost Planet 2 game save on the Xbox 360. But yes, resigning game saves on the Xbox 360 is just as easy if not easier than the PS3.

So here's how you do it:

Requirements:

• Game save you wish to resign
• Game save of your own from your own console and profile
• USB stick/drive (configured to Xbox 360 specifications)
• Horizon
• PC with Windows XP, 7 or 8

 

STEP 1: Format/Customize USB stick in Xbox 360 and copy a game save to it

The first thing you will need to accomplish is to configure your USB stick in order for the Xbox 360 to read and write files to it. This can be easily done by inserting a USB stick in your Xbox 360, going to System > Storage, select the USB stick and select "Configure Now".

When it's done configuring, copy any of your own game save to the USB stick from your profile. It doesn't have to be from same game as the one you're trying to resign.

STEP 2: Obtain game save you wish to resign

You will now need the game save you wish to resign. For this guide, I'll be using a Lost Planet 2 100% save I downloaded from a gaming forums.

The game save has to be a complete game save and not a character save. If you want to learn how to resign character saves, go down to the section labeled "How to Resign Character Saves".

Put the game save somewhere you can remember.

STEP 3: Download Horizon

Horizon is a tool set for working with Xbox 360 configured USB devices. It has a built-in save resigner tool and that's what makes it important and crucial for this guide.

You can download Horizon here. It is freeware.

Once downloaded, run the installer to install the program. Do not launch it yet.

STEP 4: Resign game save with Horizon

Plug in your USB stick to your PC and then run Horizon. Proceed to update the software if necessary.

When it opens, click on the "Tools" tab and then click "Package Manager". It should launch a new Package Manager window.

Click the blue "Open" button and select the game save file you wish to resign.

Click the "Device Explorer" tab on the right. It should spring load the explorer window with your USB stick contents.

Go to "Games" > "Your Game Name" > "Your Game Name Save", like below:

Double click the game save to open it up. It should launch another Package Manger window. Your screen should now look something like this:

Now, what you want to do is to copy the "Profile ID" of the game save from your USB stick and paste it to the "Profile ID" of the game save you want to resign.

Leave the "Console ID" and "Device ID" alone and do not copy it over.

Once that's all done, click the red button labeled "Save, Hash, and Resign".

Now, click on "Save to Device" and select your flash drive. Click "Yes" to the confirmation dialog.

All done!

STEP 4: Final moments

Remove your USB stick from your PC and plug it back into your Xbox 360.

You can either now just play your game and launch the game save directly from the USB stick or copy it back into your Memory Unit or HDD.

How to Resign Character Saves

Sometimes you may encounter or want to resign a character save rather than a complete game save. Character saves are usually labeled as SaveGame.sav while complete saves are Save0001.sav.

What you want to do here is to create and save a dummy character in your game, copy it over to your USB stick, then open the game save in Horizon.

Click the "Contents" tab. Right click the "Entry Name" and select "Replace". Select the character save you downloaded/obtain.

Don't forget to click "Save, Hash and Resign". Afterwards, you should be good to go.

NEED HELP?

Please post a comment directly in this post or send me an e-mail.

Other Posts You May Like:

How to Transfer Region on PS3 Game Saves
How to Resign PS3 Game Saves

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Upgrading My HD Capture Device Next Month

Okay, so I finally decided it's time to upgrade my HD capture device starting next month—that is, the one device that I've been using for all my YouTube videos since 2008!

Perhaps I didn't shed any light upon what I actually have been using. It's no other than the Hauppauge HD-PVR. I have the very first model of it, and I was one of the initial buyers to purchase it right when it came out.

Having gone through 5 years of model revisions and improved HD capturing technology, it was starting to feel as if my HD-PVR was falling behind the times. Although the quality was still there, I felt the ease of use was not prominent as it should be, and there were features on newer capture devices that I very much yearned for.

I especially desired a HD capture device that allowed me to capture in an uncompressed or lossless format, as opposed to forcing me to use its H.264 encoder. I always edit and re-encode my videos (never uploading the raw captured file), so once you start encoding a H.264 video with the same codec more than once, you're going to be losing a lot of quality. On the contrary, by having an uncompressed/lossless video file, I would have no worries of losing avertible quality when I edit and encode the video for YouTube.

Also, let's face it—HDMI is the way forward. Component limits your max capturing resolution to 1080i only, and you are additionally plagued to deal with analog interference, which can potentially ruin your footage.

So I decided my next HD capture device was going to be a BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt.

It's perfect for my needs. It has HDMI in and out, 1080p capturing, uncompressed capturing and high bandwidth thunderbolt connection. From just looking at the technical specs and features alone, this device far outclasses any other existing consumer HD capture device on the market today. It's also priced very aggressively, at $230 new and around $260 with a thunderbolt cable.

What about more popular HD capture devices such as the HD-PVR 2 and Elgato HD Game Capture? While those are a nice upgrade to my existing HD-PVR due to them being HDMI equipped, they are more or less the same box of yesterday—forced H.264 encoding with last generation USB 2.0 connection. I don't want more of the same; I want something with unlimited potential, something the Intensity Shuttle Thunderbolt can offer.

I did briefly use an Intensity Shuttle a few months back, but it was the USB 3.0 version. My laptop unfortunately was not able to fully utilize the USB 3.0 speed, so the capture device was not fully operable. I now own a desktop that has thunderbolt connections, which is quite a lot faster than USB 3.0.

In conclusion, what does this all mean? For you as my viewers, it simply means much better video quality for my videos on YouTube. And I'm even hoping to be able to start uploading 1080p videos (although none of the games I've been recording are 1080p native). You can also expect a review here on this blog once I get it as well.

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Fix for Slowdown Issue with DW8 on Xbox 360?

Earlier this morning, I received a message from one of my YouTube viewers Xenith Eyes. He alerted me of a possible fix for the atrocious slowdown issue apparent exclusively in the Xbox 360 version of Dynasty Warriors 8. My eyes lit up but were abrupt to die down again, after he quickly followed up with a response basically stating it doesn't work after all (he attempted it himself).

Yet, I still have found posts of other players online claiming this method does actually work, but you need to select the correct resolution (1280 x 1024) and turn widescreen off. More specifically, this post from GameFAQs.

So, being the curious self I am, I decided to attempt this method myself. What's there to lose?

What I found unfortunately was what Xenith Eyes has last declared—no difference whatsoever. Or if there was a difference, it was way too minor to be noticeable. I actually found at often times the default 720p settings (1280 x 720 with widescreen on) on my HDMI was smoother.

One thing I forgot to mention in that video I posted on YouTube about this issue was that the slowdown was much more prominent in certain stages. A few stages suffers no slowdown at all until you get in a semi-large group of enemies—which given this is a Warriors game, can happen a significant amount of time in all stages.

Chibi is the worst case of slowdowns. The frame rate of the game dwindles to non-existent nearly the entire time on the stage, even if you're fighting a single officer with no enemies around.

If you don't believe me that this method did not make a difference with my tests, check out these videos I recorded: the top with default 720p widescreen on and the bottom 1280 x 1024 resolution with widescreen off.

And I apologize for the low quality of the videos. I used my Canon EOS Rebel T3i (which is a mighty fine camera) to record the footage, as I'm too lazy to take out my HD capture device.

If you're wondering about lower resolutions such as 480p, that doesn't make a difference either.

Just so I don't end up calling a lot of people liars attempting to justify their purchases, I have to also throw out that I'm using an older non-slim Xbox 360 with the Jasper chipset. Newer slim Xbox 360s have better performance, so the slowdown may be less noticeable, and this method may work better. That I won't know for sure as I don't have a slim Xbox 360 to test.

To finalize: lowering the resolution and turning off widescreen doesn't seem to work. If you are finding the game unplayable due to the slowdown, there isn't going to be a good fix until KOEI releases one themselves.

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Wii and Xbox 360 Case Mods

I just finally got around to finishing modding the cases of my Nintendo Wii and non-slim Xbox 360. As you can see, the finalized design sort of compliments the consoles well. The Wii is seen as a friendly, cute console with the anime case. The Xbox 360 is seen as a more hardcore geek machine with its dark case and illuminating red lights.

Nintendo Wii

Xbox 360 - Regular Flavor

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