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Mini Guide!

Phantasy Star Online 2 Alpha Test 2 has begun. This post will include the more important parts of the manual as well as player feedback from the English Community. If you are in the alpha test and you want to post your uploaded videos, screenshots, and streams you can comment below and it will be added to the list.

The manual will update randomly throughout the weekend, as well as any little tidbits that were found.

TOC

• Player Relay
• Shop
• Item Pack NEW!
• Quest Counter
• Transferring to My Room
• Equipment and Subpalette
• My Room NEW!
• Visiphone My Shop NEW!
• Gamepad Bug
• Shader Settings

Player Relay

Enemy

• Boss enemies have their own entrance sequence, but they can also appear during quests. We had a case where 4 interrupt events featuring Rock Bears all spawned at the same time.
• Enemies can respawn if you revisit an area.

Environmental Hazards

• The forest area has lightning which can shock the player. This shock status effect makes the character trip and fall to the ground.
• Traps can randomly appear. You can deactivate certain traps by going near to them and clicking on their switch.
• Lots of hazards in the Volcano area, Stalactites from the ceiling can drop on the player, as well as lava hazards and random fire spouts.

Force Gameplay

• Forces use PP when they use Techs. I felt I ran out of PP way too quickly and had to rely on striking with the rod to do anything significant.
• The timing to Just Attack techs were a little cumbersome.
• It was a little awkward shooting techs in TPS style.

Low End Graphics

• The game ran well on Radeon HD 4250. Slowdown occured with Technics and too many enemies on the screen.
• Turning down the Shader setting in the options helped make the game go much smoother.

Bugs

• Numerous cases where Gamepads refused to work properly making the game unplayable. Please see workaround below.

Mini Guide Manual

Shop!

Press the [E] or “Chat” button on your gamepad to talk to a shopkeeper.

• アイテムを買う Buy Items
• アイテムを売る Sell Items
• 倉庫へアイテムを買う Buy Items to Storage
• 倉庫からアイテムを売る Sell Items From Storage
• 買い戻す Buy Back Item you sold
• ショップを出る Leave Shop

When you are buying items it will display a list of items currently purchasable. Use the + or – buttons to change what amount of items you want to buy at the same time.  Click the left button 購入 to purchase items.

Please Choose [はい] to purchase the selected
items at this confirmation screen.

If you are selling items, please choose アイテムを売る Sell Items or 倉庫からアイテムを売る Sell Items From Storage.

You will see this window in the above screenshot. Click the button 売却 to sell items, press [はい] to sell the items at the confirmation screen.

The second to last option in the shop menu: 買い戻す, lets you buy back your sold items. The repurchase price is different from the price you sold them at. In the manual screenshots, a monomate sold for 20 meseta, but the buyback price was 100.

 Item Pack

From the main menu, your item pack is the first icon to your left. When you open it up you will see your item list, by default it will list all of your items, until you sort them.

Item Options

• [使う]  Use
• [倉庫へ送る] Send to storage
• [ロック] Lock
• [置く] Drop
• [捨てる] Discard

Please note that you can not drop all items.

Quest Counter

At the quest counter, you can join or create parties and accept quests.

• クエストを選ぶ Choose a quest
• クエスト中のパーティーに参加す Join a Party in a quest.

First you will see a quest type, クエストタイプ一覧, choose アークスクエスト for Arks Quests. You will then see your available quests. If you click on one of them you will see :

• 新しいルームを作成 Create a new room
• クエスト中のパーティーに参加する Join Party in a Quest (to join other player rooms)

If you are creating a party you can set up the room by:

• [パーティー名] Party Name
•  [パーティーコメント] Party Comment
•  [プレイスタイル] Play Style
•  参加パスワード] Password
• [レベル制限] Level Restrictions
• [フレンド限定] Friends Only

Use the + and – signs to set the maximum player level first then the lowest player level second. The Friends Only button can be ticked on.

If instead you are joining a party, you can select whether you want to see a list of all parties or just your friends you registered on the friend list.

• [すべてのパーティー] All Parties
• [フレンドがいるパーティー] Friend Parties

You can see the list of parties that are active. Just press [はい] after you select them to join them. If a party requires a password, type in the password then press [決定]. When you join or start a party you can then head to the space port into your camp ship and into the telepool to start the quest.

But if you did not accept any quests, you can then start フリーフィールドの探索 Free Fields. Head to the space port and select a Freefield quest to start.

Transferring to My Room

When you are in the Arks Lobby, off to the side you will see the Block Teleporter that transfers you to different blocks. From here you can select to go to your room by choosing:

• マイルームへ移動 : Transfer to My Room

Additionally you can go to your room from the Quick Menu. The Quick Menu can be activated by pressing the [Middle Mouse Button] or [Select Button] on Gamepads. When you are here:

• Click  マイメニュー My Menu, 
• Then click 自分のマイルームへ行く Go to My Room.

Gamepad Bug > Direct Chat Setting

When your gamepad isn’t working, and you want to play with the keyboard, you must turn off Direct Chat. Choose the Gears Icon in the main menu, click オプション > Scroll down on the first page and look for ダイレクトチャット, and choose 使用しない.

Equipment

Open the Main Menu with the [ESC] key and click the second button for equipment 装備 menu.

When you open the menu you will have three choices to equip with.

• 武器装備 Equip Weapons
• 防具装備 Equip Armor
• サブパレット Sub Palette

When you click Equip Weapons, a weapon palette window 武器パレット will appear on the left. This lists your 3 slots of weapons you will use during battle. If you click on a weapon slot it will display your equipable weapons. Just  select one and it will be added to that slot. (You can also drag and drop  weapons into the slots.) You can remove weapons from slots by choosing [外す] on an already equipped weapon. You can see this button at the bottom of the window in blue.

Next to each weapon slot is the Photon Arts/Technic. It is indicated by 3 horizontal slots which represents 3 combos. Click an empty slot as highlighted in the screenshot to add a Photon Art.

The next window shows the available photon arts for that weapon. You can then apply these photon arts into the empty slots.

However  some photon arts work slightly different with Techs and Bullets. They will have a BL and BR slot. This is called the back palette. You can switch to the back palette by using the Extra Action button or SHIFT key during quests.

Equip Armor menu has three specific areas

• コスチューム: Costume
• リアユニット: Rear Unit
• アームユニット Arm Unit
• レッグユニット Leg Unit

Exactly like equipping weapons, you will click an empty slot, where a list of units will display, and you can drag those units into the correct spot.

The last menu is the SubPalette, again, just click an empty slot, which will open a new window and drag whatever icons you want into these slots. You can also add Skills and Technics by clicking on the respective tab icon in this window.

My Room

At the item shop you can buy room items, let’s go through the list of what reform items are available. The rest of the room items are self explanatory because the icons show you what they are! Neat!

First 4 Reform Items in order:

• ベーシク　スタイル Basic Style
• ゴシック　スタイル Gothic Style
• リモデルームＳ Remodel Room Small
• リモデルームＬ Remodel Room Large

After you visit your room, you can set your room items and change the style of each room.

On the left side of your main room, you will see the room setup terminal. If you access it, you open the My Room menu マイルームメニュー

My Room Menu

• ルームグッズ設置 Room Item Placement
• ルームカスタマイズ Room Customize

Either choose your Item Pack アイテムパック or storage box 倉庫, a new window, a list of your room items ルームグッズ一覧 will pop up. Choose the item you want.

After you set it down you can choose to:

• (Contextual Interaction)
  
• グッズを動かす Move the items
• 撤去する remove  them from the room.

If you are customizing the design of your room, choose the second option ルームカスタマイズ Room Customize, in the My Room Menu.

• 中央の部屋 Center Room
• 左の部屋 Left Room
• 右の部屋 Right Room

Choose which room you want to customize, by using your remodel items. Expanding the size of your room requires Remodel Room L. You can also use the Remodel Room items to add a left and right room. Use Basic or Gothic style to change the style of your room.

Remodel Room L

Gothic Style

Visiphone Shop

In the Arks Lobby, you can access your Visiphone ビジフォン, this will access your:

• アークスサーチ: Arks Search to search for a player by the ID name
• マイショップ: My Shop to sell items in your shop

In the My Shop menu

•  商品検索 Product Search
• ショップ検索 Shop Search
• フレンドのショップを探す Search Friend’s Shop
• マイショップ管理 My Shop Management
• ショップメニューを閉じる Close Shop Menu    

In Product Search there are various ways to search and filter search listings.

• アイテム名 Item Name
• カテゴリー Category
• サブカテゴリー Sub Category
• 属性 Attribute
• 属性値 Attribute Value
• 強化値 Grind Value
• 特殊能力数 # of Special Effects

The bottom portion lets you checkmark the minimum and maximum value. Push the blue button to change the price. In otherwords according to the picture, 100 meseta is the minimum and 10,000 is the maximum.

In the Shop Search menu you can search by:

• プレイヤーIDネーム Player ID name
• キャラクター名 Character Name
• 広告文 Advertisement

If you choose the フレンドのショップを探す, it will display your friend’s shop.

マイショップ管理 My Shop Management Menu

• アイテムパックから出品 Display items from the Item Pack
• アイテムパックへ取り下げ Put back item to the item pack
• 倉庫から出品 Display from the Storage Box
• 倉庫へ取り下げ Put back item to Storage Box
• 広告編集  Edit Advertisement
• 売り上げ確認 Sales

When you choose any of the options above to display an item, an empty list window will pop up. You will then choose which items you want to sell.

• 価格設定 Set a price for your item

If you don’t set a price, you can’t sell that item in the shop. Afterwards when you are done click the left blue button 出品する to sell your items.

Once someone buys your items choose the second to last button  売り上げ確認 Sales

You can claim your earning by pressing the bottom blue button 売り上げ金回収 Collect Money

Shader Settings

The game essentially has two major graphical modes. Complex and Simple Shader. If you can run complex shaders already there’s no point in reading this section. However those who may be mid-range to low end graphics may want to try out shader options.

Your shader settings is in the launcher on the 4th tab and right colomn. When setting shaders to complex, your FPS may take a considerable hit, but there are ways to lower the shader settings in game, as long as you can reach to the lobby.

テクスチャ解像度: Texture Resolution [Left Column]

• 高解像度 High Resolution
• 通常 Normal
• 圧縮 Compressed

シェーダー品質: Shader Quality

• 標準 Complex
• 簡易 Simple

The first blue button at the bottom of the window will save, and the last blue button will exit.

Click 2nd entry: オプション Options from the system menu.

This will open the options menu, on the left side you’ll see 4 major drop downs, the 2nd one in particular has three sub menus. They contain the following settings:

描画機能 Drawing Function

• エフェクト光源設定  Light Effect Setting
• 地形光源 Terrain lighting
• ブルーム処理 Bloom
• 被写界深度 Depth of Field
• ブラー Blur
• ライトシャフト Light Shaft
• アンチエイリアシング Anti-Aliasing

We found turning off terrain lighting had the most improvement to framerates

影設定 Shadow Settings

• 影品質 Shadow Quality [1 to 3]
• 自分のキャラクター Shadow My Character
• 他人のキャラクター Shadow Another person’s character
• その他のキャラクター Shadow Other Characters
• エネミー Enemy
• オブジェクト Object

表示設定 Display Settings

• 詳細モデル表示数 Detailed Models (5 ~30 )