Bravely Default Nemesis Strategy: Early Spring; Teddy

This nemesis is three automatons that use Overclocking to raise their Aim, P.Atk, and Speed, and then on the next turn use Rocket Punch to knock off significant chunks of your party's health.  They have 200000 HP each, and if you can survive, you can get up to three Unearthly Buns, which can be used to raise stats.  This is another good candidate for a nemesis to send to others.  Keep one set to send, and then fight any others you get, just like with Mammon.  It's less common, but... it's still out there.

Recommended party setup:

• Two Vampire/Swordmaster
• Recommended support abilities:
• Absorb P. Damage
• Monster Ability Up
• Equipment:
• 2x Magic Knife
• M.Atk boosting equipment
• Recommended Genome Abilities:
• Thundaja
• White Wind
• Salve-Maker/Spiritmaster
• Recommended support abilities:
• Absorb P. Damage
• Equipment:
• 2x Falcon Knife
• Performer/Freelancer
• Recommended support abilities:
• Absorb P. Damage
• Hasten World

So.  Between Hasten World and the Performer/Freelancer, the Vampires and Salve-Maker will be able to use four actions every turn.  Absorb P. Damage isn't fully necessary, but it helps.

Thankfully, the automatons follow a set attack pattern, and we can use this to our advantage to minimize the damage taken.  Here is the cycle:

1. Attack (light damage, but if they gang up on someone it'll hurt)
2. Self Repair (each one heals itself for 9999)
3. Overclocking (each one gains P.Atk 150%, Speed 150%, and Aim 150%)
4. Rocket Punch (each one deals massive damage, twice)
5. Repeat from step 2

My setup actually kind of helps them in that they benefit from Hasten World.  Otherwise, there would be a turn of downtime for them after the Rocket Punches.  Hasten World may also be smoothing over other places where they would otherwise Default to gain BP.  Your mileage may vary.

The following set of actions is based on a level 99 party with mastered jobs and the recommended equipment.  If you're lacking in one area or another, it might take longer, but just remember to use Stillness on the turn after they use Self Repair and you should be fine.  Enemy action for each turn is in parentheses.

• Turn one: (Attack)
• Vampires use Free Lunch and then Thundaja three times
• Salve-Maker uses a Giant's Draft (Beast Liver + Dragon Fang) on everyone
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic
• Turn two: (Self Repair)
• Vampires use Thundaja four times
• Salve-Maker Default
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic
• Turn three: (Overclocking)
• One Vampire uses Free Lunch followed by White Wind to top up the party, mostly because there's nothing else to do, the other Defaults
• Salve-Maker uses Stillness
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic
• Turn four: (Rocket Punch)
• Vampires Default
• Salve-Maker uses Fairy's Aid on the Vampires, just to pass the time
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic
• Note that Stillness wears off at the end of this turn
• Turn five: (Self Repair)
• Vampires use Free Lunch and then Thundaja three times
• Salve-Maker Default
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic
• Turn six: (Overclocking)
• Vampires use Thundaja four times
• Salve-Maker Default
• Performer does My Hero followed by Mimic for funsies
• Win

When I originally wrote this post, I completely forgot about Stillness.  You have to cast it a turn early, just after they use Self Repair, because they raise their speed high enough that they'll go before you on the turn when they use Rocket Punch.  This works out better anyway, because after Stillness has completely nullified the damage we wanted it to nullify, it's gone and we can get back to business.

Even without Fairy's Aid, Thundaja hits for 9999 most of the time.  Fairy's Aid makes it pretty much guaranteed, but the difference is negligble.  With this setup, levels, and equipment, they die in 23 uses of Thundaja, the rest are just there for insurance.  Their use of Self Repair honestly doesn't matter.  It counteracts one Thundaja, and you can dish out fourteen in two turns.

Mangaka-san to Assistant-san to

When I saw one of the typical seasonal anime charts, this series intrigued me, so I checked out its manga.  Less than 24 hours later I'd caught up to where the scanlations were, and enjoyed every page.

I just got around to watching the anime, and it was pretty good.  It stayed true to the manga, which for comedies is something that studios kind of ignore.  The voices worked for each character, too, so no problems there.

Then I sat there and thought about it.  Given that the length of each individual episode was 13 minutes, and that it was a 12-episode series that was as true to the manga as possible, it made me think.  Particularly, that the project of animating this manga got put on the studio, and they didn't really want to do it.  So they put in the bare minimum effort, making a 12-episode show with short episodes, and in making it as true to the manga as they could, ensured that people would at least enjoy it.

My issue isn't the adaptation.  It was great.  But therein lies the problem: it could have been so much better.  The short episodes always felt as though they ended abruptly.  As a viewer, I was just getting going with each episode's viewing experience when the episode ended.  Also, looking over the chapters of manga, it looks like they picked and chose random chapters to animate, leaning more towards getting things that people who'd read the manga would expect.  It's clear they weren't trying to make a bad production of it, but at the same time...  I keep coming back to the word "effort", and pairing it with such descriptors as "minimal".

Moral of the story: just stick to reading manga?  That does seem to be the more enjoyable option these days anyway, since 90% of anime these days is moeblobs and fanservice.  It's kind of why I've stopped watching anime each season.  The only sure bets are comedies, but even then, you have to weed out the fanservicey ones.

Half-Life 2

There was a bit of a time delay between my post about the first game and its side stories and this post, wasn't there?

Well, I had some motivation to play Half-Life 2 recently.  An LPer that I follow is playing through the entire Half-Life series, and loves to talk about level design and various other things that can easily spoil the game.  Being that I hadn't played Half-Life 2 yet, I started playing it when he was about 75% of the way through Half-Life: Source, with the goal of staying ahead of him.  A success was had: I just finished Half-Life 2, and he's a mere few episodes in.

Half-Life 2 did a lot of things better than Half-Life 1.  The Source engine, first and foremost, is way better.  Second, there's that one checkbox, buried in the options, that enables fast weapon switching.  That option makes switching weapons in the middle of a battle so much easier.  I don't know how anyone could ever play with it off.

The graphics and music are amazing, and as far as controls go, it's a PC FPS, so you have all the configurability you need should you want to change something.  I took the experience a step further and played the entire game using my Logitech G930 headset's 7.1 surround mode, of course with the relevant option in the Audio options set, and it was amazing.  Being able to more precisely hear what direction enemies are coming from came in very handy towards the end of the game.

Half-Life 2's one major innovation in the FPS genre, the Gravity Gun, is quite the fun tool.  I imagine it was just as fun for Valve's level designers, being able to design parts of the game around providing things for the player to shoot at enemies with the Gravity Gun, as it was for me, the player, shooting sawblades and toilets at my enemies.  The upgrade it gets towards the end of the game makes it even more powerful, where it also becomes your only weapon.

The Gravity Gun is made possible by the game's physics engine.  Pretty much any object in the world around you is a "physics object", and can be affected by explosions, or impacts with other objects.  There are several spots throughout the game where you'll have to use objects to hold something down or lift something up in order to continue.  It all works pretty well.  I do have one minor complaint, though, and that's that you can't sprint when you've grabbed something with the Gravity Gun.

On multiple occasions, I found myself in a situation where I felt like the way forward wasn't clear.  Either I was told to go somewhere, or informed that a crate of rockets that I could use on the Striders was somewhere in the area, but I wasn't really set in the correct direction.  The resulting running around like a chicken with its head cut off, and in the latter case, the repeated deaths, was rather frustrating.  This is a hard one to suggest a fix for, because we don't want to hold the player's hand too much.

Overall, if you like FPSes and want something more heavily story-driven, but without the idiocy of the modern Call of Duty games, look no further than Half-Life 2.  It's an excellent experience from beginning to end.  Also worth noting, it goes on sale during pretty much every Steam sale ever, so chances are you can pick it up for cheap.

Bravely Default: Farming Megalixirs

Megalixirs are incredibly useful for NOPE-ing out of a bad situation since one of them will refill the entire party's HP and MP.  Wouldn't it be nice to have all of them, ever?  Well, I've arrived at a party build that can get you all of them, ever.

If you're in Chapter 5, you can do this.  You'll need to set down next to the keystone in Eternia.  The enemy you're looking for is a Guzzler, and comes in a pack of three.  They have two items available to be stolen, Eye Drops, which are common, and the Megalixir, which is rare.  Therein lies an issue: this process can be quick, or very slow.  It's all up to the RNG.  I have two possible solutions to this, but I need to get to Chapter 6 to set up the other one, so for now, this is the build I'm currently using.  This is an Auto Mode build, and as such uses no MP or items.

While I say "Alarm Earrings or Normalizer" under Equipment for everyone, I really mean that you want two of each equipped across the entire party.  Not a heck of a lot else matters equipment-wise.

Tiz (Vampire/Swordsman) - BP Denial

• Support Abilities
• Drain Attack Up
• Hasten World
• Speed 20% Up
• Equipment
• Alarm Earrings or Normalizer

Agnes (Salve-Maker/Spiritmaster) - Support

• Support Abilities
• Holy One
• Speed 30% Up
• Equipment
• Yggdrasil Staff
• Blessed Shield
• Alarm Earrings or Normalizer

Ringabel (Any Slow Job/Thief) - Thief

• Support Abilities
• Master Thief
• Rob Blind
• Equipment
• Alarm Earrings or Normalizer

Edea (Performer/Freelancer) - BP Battery

• Support Abilities
• Speed 30% Up
• Speed 20% Up
• Equipment
• Alarm Earrings or Normalizer

You'll notice that Ringabel has Thief as a secondary and is carrying Master Thief, eating up three support ability slots.  Seems a bit weird, given that I could just make him a primary Thief and have those three slots available to put other things in, but there isn't really a clear-cut choice, unless you want to run my other variation that I can't set up until Chapter 6.  I want him to be slow enough that Agnes can get Fairy Ward up before he does anything.

Once you're on the ground at the keystone, jack up the encounter rate to +100% and run around.  If you encounter enemies that aren't Guzzlers, have Tiz Brave three times and use Free Lunch, Firaja, Firaja, Firaja.  Set Ringabel to use Godspeed Strike, and Edea to Brave and use My Hero and Mimic, just in case.

Once you encounter the Guzzlers, it's time to begin.  This of course assumes that they don't get any pre-battle bonus.  It's possible to recover from them getting a pre-battle bonus, but it takes a while and you may have to revive people.

Also, since the Guzzlers do get their first turn, it's important to note that one of their moves is Run Away.  One or more of them may run away before you get the chance to get their Megalixirs, and there's not really a lot you can do about it.  If this happens to you, simply adjust the number of times Tiz uses Brave and Battle Thirst accordingly.  I've written this for the best-case scenario.  I did try to use Paralyzing Pollen on them in my opening turn, but that's still down to chance, even with Status Ailment Amp.

First Turn

• Tiz
• Brave 3x
• Free Lunch
• Individually target each Guzzler with Battle Thirst
• Agnes
• Fairy Ward
• Ringabel
• Brave
• Shake Down 2x
• Edea
• Brave
• My Hero
• Mimic

Once that's all set up, hit Go and see what the Guzzlers' first turn is like.  They'll get to have their first turn no matter what, but after that, as long as Tiz is alive they won't be able to act.

Recovery (optional if you heal between fights)

• Tiz
• Brave 3x
• Free Lunch
• Individually target each Guzzler with Battle Thirst
• Agnes
• Brave up to 3x
• Use Blessed Shield as an item as necessary to group-cast Cura and heal everyone back up (if someone's dead, revive them first)
• Ringabel
• Brave
• Shake Down 2x
• Edea
• Brave
• My Hero
• Mimic

You may need to repeat this, just to top off everyone's health.  You don't have to top off everyone's health, but you'll have to remember to heal between fights.

The Farming Begins

• Tiz
• Brave 3x
• Free Lunch
• Individually target each Guzzler with Battle Thirst
• Agnes
• Fairy Ward
• Ringabel
• Brave
• Shake Down 2x
• Edea
• Brave
• My Hero
• Mimic

Agnes doesn't really have to use Fairy Ward, but if she does, it'll be up when you transition to the next phase and you'll have less to worry about.  Anyway, set this up and press Y to engage Auto Mode.  Watch the top of the top screen closely when Ringabel uses Shake Down.  For each of the Guzzlers, it'll say "Eye Drops x 2 stolen!", "Megalixir x 2 stolen!", "You couldn't steal anything.", or "They weren't carrying anything.".  Let it go until it just says "They weren't carrying anything.".  Press Y to turn off Auto Mode, and once you can set a turn up again...

Kill 'Em All

• Tiz
• Brave 3x
• Free Lunch
• Individually target each Guzzler with Battle Thirst
• Agnes
• Fairy Ward
• Ringabel
• Godspeed Strike
• Edea
• Brave
• My Hero
• Mimic

Set this up and press Y to engage Auto Mode.  Ringabel will slowly kill off the Guzzlers one at a time, and then you're done.

As for how it could be made faster, I really don't know if this would work, because it's a big tradeoff.  If Ringabel is changed to a Thief/Freelancer, he can use the Freelancer's Prayer to boost his chance of successfully stealing.  Prayer does cost 8 MP, but the Conjurer support ability Steady MP Recover more than covers for that.  The big tradeoff is that you sacrifice one Shake Down to boost the chance for another to work.

At any rate, this build works perfectly well as-is, and since it got me a full stack of Megalixirs, it can do the same for you.

The Promised Find Mii 2 Files

Here are the Photoshop files I concocted using The Mystical One's image guides on GameFAQs.  I created them in Photoshop CS2 because that's what I have, so, you know, be aware about compatibility or something.

Within the zip file, you'll find a folder containing the two Photoshop files.  Unzip the whole thing somewhere, load them up in Photoshop, and it should be fairly simple to see where to go from there.  However, because I'm nice, I'll still explain things here.

Using them is fairly straightforward.  All the checkboxes have layers whose visibility can be toggled.  The first checkbox in each group is actually toggled just by enabling the group itself, but for the rest you'll have to expand the group.

There's even toggleable lines to cross out the entries under Traps, Solutions, and Keys once you've dealt with it or gotten the key.  Also, note that for Find Mii 2's secret quest, getting the gold key only requires that you use 25 Miis or less on the Dark Emperor fight, not 25 Miis on the entire playthrough.  I got it on my first playthrough, with a level 15 team and some random other guys to use Vials of Valor, and I kept using the aforementioned Vials of Valor to bring back my level 15 team.  I used a total of 104 Miis on that playthrough.

The route progress box instructions should hopefully be clear, but in case they aren't, use the marquee tool on the sequence of numbers that indicate each route, right under where it says Routes and has checkboxes and stuff.

The whole goal of these files was so that whenever I loaded them up, I could easily see where I was and what I'd done.  You can also save off a copy as a PNG to share on whatever social network is all the rage these days, and brag to your friends.

Enjoy!

Back to HomePassing

Yeah, that didn't take too long.  I've got the basics up and running.  Nothing fancy, because for that I need to use SQL LEFT JOINs, and they currently hate me and refuse to return the data I want.  I need to sit down and logic out all the stuff, I guess.

Anyway, I've got a simple stats page showing my progress in four different ways: breeds grown , breed-colors grown, and breaking down breed-colors by color and family.

Overall I'm a lot closer to being done than I thought I was.  I have a mere 63 breed-colors left to grow.  I just started in on the big one: I had 16 breeds left that needed to be grown in White.  Next time I get a brown Mii, which happens occasionally thanks to some random Japanese guy, I can plant all four of the breeds that I need in Brown.  The rest of it goes similarly: get a mii with a shirt color that I need, plant a bunch of stuff, grow it all, repeat.

This mess of PHP and MySQL is just to keep track of it all so I can stay headed in the right direction.  For one thing, the statistics I can pull out of the database give me a much better idea of what I have remaining than flipping through the journal does.  My original strategy of buying seeds from Poppy's Seeds, growing them, and then recursing through all the seeds that resulted in new colors got me a fair amount of progress before it suddenly stopped producing seeds that gave new colors.  Growing strictly by color is my new strategy that I'm taking to the end.

In Find Mii 2 news, I got the last hat, so now I have all the hats.  I also beat it for the tenth time, so I'm completely done with it.  In Find Mii 1 news, I'm following a guide I found on GameFAQs for getting the "Clear Find Mii in under 30 Miis" accomplishment.  It's going exactly to plan thus far, so we'll see how things go when all I have to do is hire random level 7s and spam attacks.  Because, you know, the whole "chance to miss" thing.

So now the number of games I need to play with each group of HomePasses is down to just one: Flower Town.  You can add a new Puzzle Swap panel anytime, Nintendo.  Or how about more StreetPass games, plaza tickets, and hats, so I can re-open the Exchange Booth?  It'd be neat to see a StreetPass racing game.  Just saying.

Small Break from HomePassing

I'm at the point where I have relatively little to do in the StreetPass games.  I've got one hat left in Find Mii 2 Secret Quest, and I'm working towards growing all breeds in all possible colors (which I refer to as breed-colors) in Flower Town.

With the former, I have an image guide that serves as a checklist, that I've loaded into Photoshop with a ton of layers that I can enable to check off individual things and easily track my progress.  Once I'm done, I'll see about uploading my Photoshop files somewhere.  However, with the latter, the game's best way of letting you gauge progress is flipping through the journal, which doesn't really provide me with the information I need to see what my next priority is.

I've been doing well with the strategy of just growing random plants and saving seeds that'll get me new colors, but it's reached a breakpoint where the returns are diminishing rapidly.  From here on out, I'll need to have Miis with specific shirt colors to plant seeds with.

That's why I'm taking a bit of a break from HomePassing.  During the break, I'm working on a small PHP/MySQL application to help me track which breeds I've grown in which colors.  With a database employed, it'll be really easy to write up a few queries for different reports on my progress, for instance, so I can find out how many brown breed-colors I have left so I can plant them all the next time I get a brown Mii.  Because brown is the rarest Mii color, and anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they're talking about.

I got kinda sidetracked with the idea of adding user accounts and making it multi-user in case I ever wanted to make it internet-facing, but I'm going to back out from doing that, erase all that lovely login code I wrote, and just stick to HTTP authentication.  It's far simpler, and I don't need the system to be multi-user anyway.

I consider the hard part to be done already.  I went through the Flowers/Items list FAQ on GameFAQs and entered all the breed color information using a form I wrote for the purpose.  One thing that made it a bit harder: I decided to order the colors going counter-clockwise around the wheel because of the nice gradient from white to pink.  The FAQ ordered them going clockwise.  However, being a database, I ran a few queries and am fairly certain I don't have any errantly-flagged breed-colors anywhere.  Or at least, if I do, I have a complimentary error elsewhere that offsets it, and the likelihood of that is fairly low.

It's definitely an uncommon thing to do, making an entire database and set of PHP scripts just to track progress in a game that's designed to be played in short sittings, but... that's how I roll.  This gold watering can is gonna be mine.

Making Mincemeat of Monster Manor

So, if you've been watching my Twitter, you'll have noticed that I beat Monster Manor finally.  If you weren't watching my Twitter, well, I beat Monster Manor finally.  So, here's my thoughts.

It's a really well-designed game, overall.  I like the puzzle aspect of having differently-shaped and differently-colored pieces that define how you explore the mansion.  It really makes you think about how and where to put each piece, or even if you want to use a piece from a given Mii at all.

The puzzle boxes further synergize with the puzzle-solving nature of the game, and have tangible gameplay rewards.  Beating the target time (or the other Mii's time) makes the item you get better, but still, a puzzle box is a guaranteed item of some description.

Weapon selection is graphically very varied, though within each element there's really only two choices, because only two weapons in each element can become rank S.

Team-ups are an interesting mechanic, and certainly useful early on while you're learning the ropes and levelling up a weapon, since they boost your stats and provide healing.  However, as the game goes on there's very little incentive to use them, as you'll usually want to get the Mii's item and/or puzzle box instead.  This could have been fixed by receiving the Mii's item when the team-up ends.  Puzzle boxes are good enough to warrant being mutually exclusive with team-ups, though.

The enemies are standard fare "spooky" enemies: ghosts, poltergeists (of the book and painting varieties), skeletons, animated suits of armor, mimics (for the uninitiated: a mimic is an enemy that looks like a treasure chest, and in most games, only comes alive and attacks you when you attempt to open the chest), and more.  The boss battles are challenging.

As far as the music goes, once again it's fairly standard fare "spooky" music themes: bells, organ, wind instruments with slow vibrato, etc.  It's good music and fits the atmosphere well.

Graphics-wise, they seem to have ridden the fence quite well and made a spooky atmosphere with the bright colors that Nintendo games typically have.  Anything that needs to stick out so you'll notice it sticks out so you'll notice it, and the rest provides plenty of atmosphere.

However, the game tries really hard to push this whole "certain weapons belong to certain elements, and enemies have an elemental weakness" thing on you, but doesn't follow through with it.  In the grand scheme of things, just pick a weapon that can become rank S, level it to 30, and you're good to go.  Ideally, you'll want a decent skill on it, but the skill doesn't really matter.  I beat the game with a rank S level 30 Jack-o'-Magnum +2, with level 3 Disable, which has a 40% chance of lowering enemy defense by 20% when you use a charged attack.  Supporting it, I had Strength +2, Defense +2, Battery +2, Charge Speed +2, and Skill +2 badges.  Even though it only has two batteries, they recharge really quickly, and the charge speed on the attack is really good.  I found myself able to land counterattacks most of the time.

The thing that really drives home how much the weapon elements don't matter: the floor 30 and floor 50 bosses don't have an elemental weakness.  Even with regular enemies, I was one-shotting them the vast majority of the time.

I'm not too disappointed that the elemental weakness thing isn't very well enforced, though.  Why?  Because of the access mechanism for the Extradimensional Box.  Any sane person would want to keep only one weapon in their inventory at a time, so they can take a couple recovery items and load up on badges.  All the rest would then go in the Extradimensional Box, which can only be withdrawn from when you find a mystic orb, whose occurrence is completely random.  So without guaranteed access to the box on any given floor, how are you to keep a stock of levelled up weapons in each element if you can't easily swap between them?

Overall, it's a really good game with a lot of gameplay and a nice atmosphere.

Dropbox, Passwords, and 2FA

So at first, Dropbox was hacked and everyone was told to change their passwords.  Then it ended up being a bitcoin scam.  After this, we have sites claiming the only way forward is to require the use of two-factor authentication, or 2FA for short.

The first issue I have with requiring 2FA is that it mostly seems to be implemented via text message.  Try to log in, they send a text message with a code, enter the code, now you're logged in.  However, not everyone who has accounts online also has a cell phone, not everyone with a cell phone can get text messages, and not everyone who has a cell phone with text messaging trusts websites with their phone number.  Furthermore, cell phones are easy to misplace and are a prime target to be stolen, meaning that the system can still be compromised.  Also, because cell phone companies refuse to standardize and interconnect their networks for the benefit of all humankind, if you're out of range of cell service, or in another country, you probably won't get the text message.

Steam has its own 2FA scheme, called Steam Guard.  However, this is implemented much more sensibly: You try to log in from somewhere it doesn't recognize, it sends a code to the email registered on your account.  You enter that code, you're logged in.  What's wrong with that?  There's still the same potential for compromise in the system, but email accounts are generally less lucrative targets than cell phones.

I've got 2FA enabled on Twitter, which I already use via text message anyway, but I refuse to give Google my phone number.  I'd be a lot more comfortable giving them a private email address, but they insist on having your phone number.

tl;dr scammers are assholes and 2FA needs to be implemented much more sensibly unless you can somehow guarantee that every user of your service has a cell phone and plan capable of receiving the required message.

Finagling Flower Town

Flower Town seems like it's just about growing flowers, but it's got a fair amount of complexity.  Embarrassingly enough I forgot about one of the breeding mechanics recently, that made getting the seed for my 80th breed take a lot longer than it should have.

The key mechanic to getting new breeds is referred to in-game as "Divergence".  Simply put, when you breed a plant with another plant in the same family, there's a chance of getting a seed that will grow a completely different plant from that family.

However, the color of the plant matters.  You know that color wheel that shows when one of your guests waters your plant and you harvest a seed?  Your plant's color will be lit up, their plant's color will be lit up, and all the colors in between on the shortest path will also light up.  If the two colors are directly across the color wheel from each other, all the colors will light up.  The result plant from that specific seed can be any one of the colors that light up.

If you're going for regular breeds, it's a bit easier since they typically have several possible colors.  However, for the single-color regular breeds, or any one of the rare breeds, you'll need to double-check that you have the correct color.  Especially if you're trying to use Divergence within one of the families of rare breeds.  It might not always be possible.

Another thing that you have to pay close attention to is seed shape.  Each individual breed will always have the same seed shape.  Using this knowledge and looking at the Planter's Preview, you can often tell in advance which of the plants it will grow into.  Don't forget to flip back and forth between the possible plants and the parent plants.  If you're trying to get a new breed, it will help you determine when you've got a seed that will grow that breed if you start with a seed of a different shape.  Consult your journal to see the shape of a seed for a breed that you've already seen one of your guests carrying.  This will also give you a starting point for the plant color.

New breeds always show up in silhouette, with the text "New Breed".  New colors will always have the text "New Color".  The preview for a seed will update with every plant you grow, so check back to see if you have any seeds that you can sell.  Also, each guest can help you grow a seed in the color of their shirt.  If the plant can grow in that color, it will grow in that color.  If it can't it searches along the color wheel for the nearest color.  Either way, it helps you influence the color of the plant.

When buying seeds from Poppy's Seeds, you can only buy seeds for breeds you've already grown.  However, the seeds from Poppy's Seeds will always grow in the same style and color.  There are a few jobs where you can simply buy the seed from Poppy's Seeds, grow it, and turn it in to get gold.

Jobs often require plants to have specific attributes.  While some of them, such as romantic, pointy, round, or fragrant, can be discerned just by reading the journal, the height of the plant isn't as easy to discern.  Every plant can grow in a variety of different styles and heights, that you simply have to breed into it.  To discern the plant's height, the first thing you'll want to do is always plant using the terracotta pots, at least initially.  Once you've grown the plant, update its picture in your journal.  Now look at the picture in the journal.  See how the pages have lines on them?  The plant gets scaled to fit neatly into the page, so the taller plants will appear to have a smaller pot than the smaller plants.  Generally speaking, if the pot is at least two lines tall, it's a small plant, and if it's less, it's a tall plant.  It might take two or three attempts to breed the proper breed, style, and color together, so keep at it.

You can sometimes use the sell price of a seed to determine what it will grow into.  Particularly with seeds that show a rare breed as one of the possible plants.  Seeds for rare breeds generally go for a lot more, though it's not always the case.  It's a good indicator of when a seed will grow into a rare breed, but not a good indicator of when a seed will not grow into a rare breed.

Using all of this breeding knowledge, it would theoretically be possible to get all 80 breeds grown with your first 80 seeds planted.  You'd have to get lucky, especially with the rare breeds, but it could happen.  Having a second 3DS that's already got all 80 breeds will significantly increase the chances, since you can just grow whatever you want on that 3DS and hold the plant when you want to get a seed on the first 3DS.

As far as making money goes, selling fully grown plants will turn you a profit.  You might find it worthwhile to grow a few seeds that won't get you anything new, just to sell the plant once it grows.  At a certain point in the game, you get a free shopping spree from Garden Grace, that can be exploited to get a pure profit.  Simply pick all the most expensive items that are available, and then after you check out, go back to Garden Grace and sell them all.

Bravely Default Nemesis Strategy: Level 80 Belphegor

Finally defeated this one, and it took a pretty specific party build for me to do so.  So here I am, being a bro, sharing that party build.

Party:

• 2x Quick Performer: Thief/Performer, Support Abilities:
• Speed 30% Up
• Speed 10% Up (if you have all five slots, take Speed 20% Up instead, we want these guys to go first)
• Support Healer: Spiritmaster/White Mage, Support Abilities:
• BP Limit Up
• Magic Critical
• Holy One
• Damage Dealer: Vampire/Swordmaster, Support Abilities:
• Monster Ability Up
• Magic Critical
• Critical Amp

Equipment:

• Boost INT on the Damage Dealer
• Boost MND on the Support Healer
• Boost AGI on the Quick Performers

Turn Flow:

• The Quick Performers will always use My Hero.
• The Support Healer will use:
• Group-cast Curada in most cases
• Fairy's Aid on the Damage Dealer whenever its effect runs out
• Enigma when Belphegor uses Sloth to put all the elemental weaknesses on the party
• Stillness if you need to panic heal or resurrect, and repeatedly until you recover fully
• The Damage Dealer will use Free Lunch followed by two of Firaja, Blizzaja, and Thundaja according to Belphegor's sequence, and then next turn use the full sequence.  The sequence is the same as the level 20 version.  If the damage dealer ever has 3 BP, they can do the entire sequence on the turn where they use Free Lunch.

If you don't have Firaja, Blizzaja, and Thundaja:

• Use My Hero on the Quick Performers just like normal.
• Use Stillness on the Support Healer until Belphegor's used all three of them on you, so that Genome Drain can give them to you.  Then wait for Stillness to wear off and begin attacking.
• Default on the Damage Dealer until you have all three spells and Stillness has worn off.

How it works:

• My Hero gives the entire party one BP per use, including the Quick Performers.  Two uses of this combined with the normal BP gain at the end of every turn means you can use 3 BP per turn, every turn.  My Hero is thus spammable, and your Damage Dealer can Brave twice on every turn.
• The Support Healer boosts your damage output and reduces the damage you take, as well as healing the party.  Since you'll be swimming in BP from the performers, that extra BP from the BP Limit Up support ability only serves to increase your flexibility and ability to recover from whatever Belphegor just did, and make it easier to resume your normal rhythm.  In my fight, my healer took their turn just after Belphegor, which made queuing up a group-cast Curada while the party was still at full health quite effective at keeping everyone topped off, with minimal MP waste.
• Since the Damage Dealer uses Free Lunch, the high MP cost of Firaja, Blizzaja, and Thundaja is nullified entirely.
• You can just ignore the spheres that Belphegor summons.  You'll hit their weaknesses eventually, and they die pretty quickly.  By the way, if you've used Examine on the level 20 version of Belphegor, you won't have to Examine this version to be able to see its weakness.  Take advantage of this.

I imagine that this party build would work pretty well pretty much anywhere in the game, especially on other nemesis fights.  It might not bring enough damage for some situations, though, so be mindful of what you're up against.  Dedicating two party members to BP definitely lowers potential damage output, but in this case, it makes the entire build work.