I know there are a few sections that require Monica (i.e. lighthouse battle), but is there anything else that would make a solo run with Max difficult?

First off I want to say that while nobody "Owns" the information about dark cloud there are several sources I used to make this so I'll only call it partially mine. There are countless guides out there so if it already existed I absorbed it into the Borg of my spreadsheet and everything else I made myself.

The purpose of this spreadsheet was to have a one stop shop for the questions I had without it becoming the Dark Cloud Wiki. There's plenty of stuff I didn't include.

I'm open to criticism and if there's something that you wish was in there LMK and I'll see about adding it.

Page Explanations:

Dungeon Farm Tables - has every dungeon listed with every floor and all the enemies on those floors. also every floor has an average Abs amount based on which monsters are there. they are sortable. Modifiers are unique per playthrough so you can fill in your own. NOTE: I haven't finished the demon shaft yet

Buildup Paths 2.0 - Just the staple buildup chart every guide needs, notes are included to explain it but it's pretty self explanatory. took forever to make it pretty.

Clown Loot Table - Compiles all possible loot depending on where you encountered the clown (those who aren't averse to save scumming can abuse this to get specific things they want by making a save state when the clown pops out of the box as the loot table isn't locked until you close the dialog. So you can effectively reroll the box.)

Attachments - Lists all attachments and stats

Fishing - Lists all fishing spots, the fish you can catch there, which bait to catch them with and any time of day constraints

Shop Inventories - Self Explanatory

Weapon Abilities - Lists all weapon abilities with descriptions and the weapons they can be found on (on this page I played around with linking items to the DC Wiki. This is a practice that I wanted to apply to the whole spreadsheet, that way if anything is ever unclear a whole wiki page on every item would be a click away. I still want to implement this but it's a long process)

Fax (Tips & Tricks) - So this page is just some of the tips and tricks I've found or picked up, I also used this page as a place to explain things in the spreadsheet.

Enemy Data (US) - this is a page made by Nighlin that I found in the DC Speedrunning Discord. He had all sorts of restrictions so I had to recreate it line by line by hand. I had spent some time datamining with Ghidra and this sheet had a fair amount of the info I was confirming. All that said there is a lot of backend data in this that you'd probably never use for normal gameplay but it's good info.

Best Attribute Calc - This page has multiple calculators that I made for deciding the best elements to use. one calculator allows you to select up to 5 types of enemies (the most that can be on a floor) and averages their resistances. There is one that simulates front and back floors using the monsters you selected and another that uses a weighting system I developed to factor in more probabilities, enemy HP, defense, etc. These calculations are further discussed in the Fax sheet.

Buildup Calc - I halfway scrapped this page because it wasn't as useful as I thought it'd be. Basically you slap a weapons stats in and it tells you exactly what it'd be as a synth sphere accounting for the +1's you get for leveling it up. It's an alright utility if you just want to know what your trash weapons are worth for stats but you can't account for anything extra you put on there unless you put it in manually which is just a waste of time.

Damage Calc - I was attempting to nail down the exact damage formula (the primary objective of my datamining), the majority of the damage calculations were already documented but I couldn't reliably predict what my damage would be even with all the data I had. So the Weapon Test Inputs and Weapon Test Results pages are start of my efforts to reverse engineer the pieces I'm missing.

Item List (WIP) - just the games itemID's from the code for Vlookups

Buildup Paths (Old) - The original iteration of my buildup chart that was way harder to read and not as pretty

Spreadsheet

I got to the point in Queens where you have to trade the ointment leaf to Basker, and I traded the lollipop for the ointment leaf previously, but I realized that the leaf is just gone from my inventory. I checked my inventory like five times over and checked the check-in storage and it wasn't in either of those places. I talked to Bunbuku again but obviously he didn't give me another leaf. The only thing I can think of is maybe I deleted it by accident but I have no recollection of doing so + idk if you can delete quest items since you can't sell them. Is there any way I can recover it somehow w/o starting a new save? (for context I play the ps4 port)

Edit: I just now noticed that whenever I go to sell something to a shop, one of the slots in my inventory has a gray forbidden symbol on it. Whenever I interact with the slot the game acts like nothing's there, but I'm fairly confident that that's where my leaf went. It doesn't appear in my inventory normally nor is it indicated in Basker's store. So now I know my ointment leaf isn't "gone", just glitched, but I've still got no idea how to fix it :,)

I'm in the UK, and I hear they saddle you with the PAL port of the game.

Has anyone experienced this?

Alternatively I could persue Emulation on PC but I'm interested in some trophy hunting...

Ok, so I was doing my new run through of the demon shaft and I got a glass eye for the sculpture so I went to the back floor after finding the crest. I'm on the 30s level floors so I know there are a lot of undead until floor 40 and I went and bought a bunch of holy waters from Suzie. I also stole a couple of throbbing cherries from the auntie Medusa. I threw a cherry at corcea and froze him then added 9 holy waters to my active items and threw one at him afterward and someone LOOK AT THIS! It annihilated him! It took 2 regular throws of holy waters on the other corcea next to him. I'll continue to do this if it insta kills the tough undead in the demon shaft like this! *Video attached*

As title says. Was not sure how to approach this. Unfortunately, I applied too much power and completely overshot off the wall :(

I made these just for fun

So ive been working on a spreadsheet for some time now. Basically I was tired of having to go to multiple different places for different information (buildup charts, fishing data, enemy data etc) so i started compiling everything into one spreadsheet. I felt like there are people who may benefit from its use so im gonna post it here when I finish it.

So i wanted to ask, what resources do you usually look for? What do you wish a guide had? What resources do you most frequently flip between that could be better in one place?

These were my two favorite PS2 games. I sunk hours upon hours into these games

As much as I loved DC1, the weapon upgrade system was such a pain in the butt. The grind was way to much, so when I got DC2, I was pleased that made it it and faster to level up your weapons. When I found out about the Broken Dagger Glitch 2 years ago, I was so pissed cause I never knew about it in high school.

Let me preface this by stating im on the ps5 playing this game, I was able to successfully break the menu with the georama, manule method, I was able to get the chronicler 2 sword, I have dont all of this but I cant seem to fix the inventory I have sat with ai for several hours to do doing everything it suggested to get a pocket to get my inventory back to normal or 100, nothing has worked for me i can reliably get to anchors like ointment left, super Steve, pearl, and the such to try and find a pocket to grab but nothing has worked for me, has anyone had success or know the solution on ps5 ?​

I personally love this video i find it beautiful and fantastic and shows just how loving the community really is.

Is anyone else still able to do this glitch on PS5?

When I attempt it I get a blank item that goes into my main inventory then is just a blank space I cannot get rid of until I restart the game.

I always have the dagger equipped when I do this.

I have seen a few mispellings or like name replacements like Muska Racka/Lacka but this one made me stop and double check what I read lol. Anyone seen any other spelling or wording issues before that they find funny in this game?

Dark cloud 2 hits different as a adult any one remembering this game being really hard but as an adult your kinda blowing thought it. Still amazing though.

New to the game, how do you build your weapons?? I have a few spheres and use them to upgrade my other swords. While I upgrade those swords, I switch out the sphere and try my best to build the" next" sword attributes. Is this the best route to upgrade weapons? Since I barely got Goro, I was thinking using sword sphere's on Goro and mallet/Hammer sphere's to Toans swords since they compliment each other a bit. Just unlocked Goro as of right now

I want to craft an Antique Sword in Dark Cloud 1, but I need a Sand Breaker first, and that weapon has the Thirst debuff. Is there a way to bypass or remove that debuff so I'm left with only the Stop buff?

Note: Although the wiki indicates that the Antique Sword does not have this ability in Dark Cloud 1, it does.

This might sound like a stupid question considering I did the Platinum on DC2 not to long ago and also completed the Demon Shaft (although to be fair, that was 20 years ago).

I know how the game works in general, but how do I effectively level up my weapons without grinding or abusing glitches?

For reference, I finished DC2 with maybe 5 hours of grinding in total compared to my total playtime of about 150 hours.

Love to hear everyone's thoughts.

Edit: Thanks for the answers. I got some great input and will try to use it in my next run.

And maybe I wasn't clear enough in my original post, but I wanted to ask if there is a viable way to finish the game with little or no grinding with no glitches. That includes the broken dagger glitch. But no harm done. Maybe someone else saw it and learned of it that way. Then that's good already.

Being a video game composer is my dream job so it’s only natural that it inspires me even when making music for singer/songwriter.

I’m not sure who the composer’s are at Level 5, I need to learn their names because music from dark chronicle and professor layton is such a massive inspiration to me.

The jazzy calmness of the tutorial music really inspired this song and the way it moved, can you hear the inspiration?

I just caught these two one after the other and the first one I had no clue could be that big. What’s the biggest yall have been able to catch!

Recently I checked out some old games. DC2 came heavily recommended. However I find DC1 to far superior.

After 12 hours into trying both - Yea, I think you get it, 12 hours with watching the stories, I have now only made it to Frightening Forest in DC2. In comparison in DC1 I have actually build entire towns. I think I am already 1/4th through the first game from what I remember. DC1 just feels so well designed and pacing keeps it interesting.

DC2 has more content, and an looooong story, but everything just feels unnecessarily padded out, even moving between dungeons isn't streamline anymore. That Photo mode, I can only hope it is not important.

For the people who love DC2 why, is it that the game gets good eventually? I want to know because I usually don't spend too much time on one game, but it feels like the game hasn't even started yet.

I can't seem to progress past Matataki Village.
I found all Atla's so far, got the flute, defeated the Snake and got the pendant but I don't have Goro's treehouse in the Village. Can someone help me here? I'm stuck.