PSII: Self-replicating enemies

In PSII you can find "Slugmess" (mainly in Roron and Climatrol underwater passage) and "Blastoid" (Climatrol installation) enemies that can self-replicate, clone, split, whatever you want to call it. They produce a new enemy with the same HP as the one performing the action. I was wondering, does anyone know if there more of such enemies? I like them a lot. I spent the evening hunting them and then keep the fight going until I was out of tp's and healing equipment and simply had to finish the fight. Nice EXP and MES! And an excellent opportunity to level characters you rarely use in that stage (in my case those are Hugh, Kain, Anna and Shir). Especially Blastoids, they yield more XP and MES but their damage is laughable. I think with a four character party, fully stocked with trimate I would be able to last a full day in battle against those (with my current level for Rolf being 17, Nei 34 and Rudo 15, but he's at home now, taking some rest so Nei can get more XP).

Right now Rolf en Nei are hunting Blastoids alone in the Climatrol, I want to see if I can crank up Nei to level 50 before I go to Neifirst. With all the money that will be yielding I should be able to buy the entire laco arsenal for my troops at once, once I'm off to Dezo (especially because the dams still await before I can go there).

I just found out something funny. There is a maximum amount of XP you can earn in a battle, 65535.

I accidentally gained too many. I let Rolf die and finished the fight with Nei so she would get the full XP. Imagine my horror when after a battle of nearly or more than an hour (I forgot track of time) I only gained 500 XP. I got over the maximum amount and the counter reset to zero. Luckily I regularly save states when fighting, in case I make mistakes or something crashed (who knows what might happen). If I finished the fight right away I would stay under 65535 in case Rolf died, but I couldn't allow any other Blastoid to be spawned. Luckily Rolf was on the verge of death already. I had to load/save a few times, but then Rolf died without any Blastoid cloning and Nei could finish it. Gained three levels 37 > 40

Wow...wow...I would hate if I only got 500 XP for a battle that long. I'd probably quit and say, "THATS NOT FAIR!!!"

That's interesting! It'd be really annoying to run into it without save states, but it's neat to know that the counter resets there. I wonder if it does the same in PSIV. I haven't noticed any other self replicating enemies in PSII, but that's something I'll look for next time.

As the other Phantasy Star games go, I don't know if it's possible to gain such an amount of hitpoints in one battle. If I remember correctly, some droids in PSIV can summon others, so theoretically it should be possible.

I have searched through monster stats on the PSCave and only Blastoids and Slugmess have this special note, but it's always possible the site owner missed something.

If my memory isn't to hazy.. those are the only two enemies that self-replicate.

((2^16)-1) is the default max for Genesis integers. Going with bigger integers uses additional memory which sounds like a non-issue today. However, the Genesis only had 64K of RAM so you had to be conservative with it. That 64K had to fit: current game instructions, graphics, game variables, etc...

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If I remember correctly, some droids in PSIV can summon others, so theoretically it should be possible.

Yep. I ran into those the other day when playing. The trouble with them is that those droids and the ones they summon have a sacrifice attack. If they use that, they'll rush the party and explode. I think they only use it when there are three enemies on screen, so as long as you can kill the summoned ones within one turn it should work.

There are also some PSIV biomonsters that can replicate other weaker monsters. The very first boss can do so, and so can a copy of it that appears a little later in Zema.

Of course someone could be really really really really patient and keep the Piata basement fight up for a few days

Yeah. I kind of wonder how long that fight could really be dragged out. The supply of healing is so limited at that point. It would be hard to stock up on monomates unless someone did a lot of grinding before the boss and there's not a lot of TP for Res. The fight might eventually be forced to end by taking damage.

You could do some initial levelling before engaging it for sure. But I think you can actually draw it out infinitely since the mama beast (name escapes me at this moment) doesn't do damage and you are strong enough (at least as far as I recall) to keep killing the one spawn she spawns. You just have to be careful not using Alys and her slashers. And no, I'm not THAT patient. Reading back at this topic and my earlier posts from years ago I actually recalled the gruelling battle with those Blasters.

Then again, I started replaying PSI, this time on my Wii, and I grinded to be able to fight Saccubus. I actually went to earn enough money to buy a Diamond Armour by hunting Were Bats in Eppi Forest. If I can bring up that kind of patience, I might bring up even more patience.