Valkyrie Profile 2 - No leader item/bad drop rates

[The Planck Energy]

So the wiki article on Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria has the following to say:



So... I'm using 1.4.0 (maybe I should update) and I removed the pnach from the archive.  This instantly fixed the various menu crashes instantly.  However I'm only getting Leader Items (the result of a direct assault) once every 10 to 15 battles and drop rates for regular items are non-existent.  The only exception seems to be the first battle after I close and restart pcxs2 entirely, and load from an actual save.  Totally non-practical in the long run.

Has anyone else had this problem and resolved it?  Everything else seems fine so far, but this is probably a deal breaker for me

[CK1]

You don't need to remove the patch from the archive, you can leave it where it is.

[The Planck Energy]

Nothing else worked.

Btw ran into a new problem shortly after this post. Every battle froze right before beginning. Doing some searching this is a thing known to happen in the game, even on PS2, if it detected cheats being used. Except I've used no cheats and it doesn't usually happen until late in the game. I was at the first real dungeon. I'd been there like 2 hours fine then I leveled, swapped rooms, and then I just froze 50 times in a row.

Starting the game again because people said once it happens those saves/memory cards are basically corrupt... And so far I'm getting normal drop rates for whatever reason. Gonna keep on with this and see how it goes. Probably not going to use save states either.

What an interesting adventure so far. Painful though as I some how had 2 Koboldapaults despite the horrendous drop rates (very rare drop used to make an op bow early)

[CK1]

Please post the contents of the emulog.txt file after the problem occurs. The file can be found in "My Documents\PCSX2\logs" for the installer version or in "PCSX2\logs" for the portable/binary version.

[The Planck Energy]

Which logs? The freezes or the drop rates? Either way new file is having zero problems but I'll see what I can find

[CK1]

You said before you were having freezing before battles, how bad is it?

[The Planck Energy]

It feezes shortly after entering battle.  Right before you'd be given control.  100% of the time after it started (but it went hours before it did).  I seem to have somehow triggered an anti-cheat mechanism in the game.  That play/saves are useless now.  On a fresh file with zero problems (including no problems with drops thus far), but gonna grab the log from old card.  

Here is one where I opened the game, ran to a fight, and it froze.  This is an older computer I don't even have hooked to internet ATM and I'm stuck with just phone for this moment.  Btw this log looks identical to the normal file that's running without issue.  The log isn't recording anything after the freeze.

[smartstrike]

i was able to fight griffon on ancient forest and all random freezes on this game are gone....by using preset-2 and openGL renderer.

[The Planck Energy]

In my case I think the freezes are due to the actual game code, not faulty emulation. Though I'd like to know wtf triggered it. I have no idea why I wasn't getting direct assault weapons on that first file. It's working just fine on the new one.

[Ryudo]

Patches/cheats in this game can permanently ruin a save file. Even if you turn the stuff off. In that case all you can do is start over from the beginning or load a save from before you used them in the first place. Sometimes using cheats causes a freeze very late in the game as well during a particular boss fight, and there's no way to restore this issue.

tl;dr - this game sucks with any type of patch. Disable widescreen patches and use the built-in native 16:9 support, and don't use cheats either unless they are 100% properly tested to not cause freezes.