Dreamcast & PC Features

Altimira has many new quests, modifications to original Sega quests, and quests ported from other PSO versions back to V2. You can learn about these new features below.

Much of the information on this page was consolidated from various posts on the PSO Palace forum. You can find the original information here.


General Information

These topics apply to multiple quests.

PSO Ver.1

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Almost all of the information below applies only to V2; however, V1 does have a few new quests that you can play. These quests are:

Online Quests

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Quest Enhancements

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Photon Points

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Since V2 doesn't have Photon Drops, I created a new currency called Photon Points. You are awarded Photon Points upon completing quests in Ultimate mode, which you can then spend in a quest I created called Garon's Shop. You can hold up to 1000 Photon Points at a time. See the section on Garon's Shop for information on what you can do with Photon Points. The Photon Point rewards for each quest are listed below.

Insane Mode

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Insane mode is a special end-game difficulty setting designed to encourage teamwork. As the name suggests, it is more difficult than both Ultimate and Ludicrous modes, and it is in fact so difficult that it is specifically designed to be impossible to solo. As with Challenge mode, it is easier to play with a well-balanced team, but there are only three requirements to activate it in the quests that support it:

  1. You must be in Ultimate mode.
  2. You must have at least two players in your team.
  3. All players must be at least level 140.

The enemies are designed to be so difficult that you'll do zero damage without a Force to cast Shifta and Zalure, and you'll die in one hit without a Force to cast Deband and Jellen, so trying Insane mode without a Force is not recommended. On the other hand, Forces will deal minimal damage to the enemies, so you'll need Hunters and Rangers to make progress, too. The difficulty scales by area, so Ruins is considerably more difficult than Forest.

Quests that support Insane mode include:

To activate Insane mode, simply enter the hospital and talk to the NPC there. (If you don't meet the requirements for Insane mode, the NPC will be absent.) The NPC won't let you activate the side quest unless all players are in the hospital, so everyone must agree to play Insane mode by approaching the NPC. Additionally, you can only enable Insane mode at the beginning of a quest. If any player leaves Pioneer 2 before you have enabled Insane mode, you won't be able to activate it without loading the quest again.

For an added challenge, your ability to perform PB combos is also inhibited while you are in boss arenas. You may perform combos in the regular areas, but if you die during a boss fight, you'll need the Force to cast regular Shifta on you (and your teammates).

Note that Insane mode is not meant as a true successor to the regular difficulty settings. You do get extra EXP from the monsters, but the EXP boost is not proportional to the increased difficulty, meaning that Insane mode is not meant for faster leveling. If you want to level quickly, you should play Ultimate, since it's easy. If you want a challenge for you and your teammates with maxed stats who find Ultimate mode (or even Ludicrous mode?) boring, then Insane mode is for you. You also earn 50% more Meseta and Photon Points than usual for completing quests this way.

Tool NPC

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Most quests include an extra NPC in the Hunter's Guild who will sell all 13 types of tools to you, regardless of your level or the difficulty setting. This allows you to buy the items you want, even when the Tool Shop refuses to sell them. Buying items through the Hunter's Guild costs 50% more than buying them through the Tool Shop, however.


Updated Quests

These are original Sega quests that I've modified over the years, including quests brought over from Blue Burst.

"Lost Weapon" / Hopkins Series

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Lost HELL PALLASCH

This is a Japanese Blue Burst quest that I ported to V2 after Cranberry and I translated it into English. It takes place in Ruins 1-3.

Mop-up Operation Series

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Endless Nightmare Series

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Endless Nightmare #3

Fragments of a Memory

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This is a Japanese Blue Burst quest that I ported to V2 after Cranberry and I translated it into English. It takes place in Ruins 1-3.

Towards the Future

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Famitsu -Maximum Attack- v2

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Triad -Maximum Attack-

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These quests are adapted from Maximum Attack 4th Stage on Blue Burst and feature completely rewritten dialogue and mechanics. I've adopted the following naming scheme to make it easier to tell which quest is which:

Here are the details:

Challenge Mode

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Stage 9 has been fixed to be playable cross platform between DC and PC without crashing in Area 45.


New Quests

These are Altimira-exclusive quests that I've created.

Garon's Shop

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The most important new quest is Garon's Shop, which contains features previously available only on GameCube and Xbox. Since Garon's Shop uses Episode II on V3, I created a new Episode I Garon's Shop from scratch for use on Dreamcast and PC. The available features are similar to what you get on V3, but I've adjusted them for use on V2.

Garon's Shop is divided into vendors who offer various services. Most services cost Photon Points, but some cost Meseta, instead.


Arms Shop (Regular Weapons):

For example, if your weapon has 40% Native and 35% Machine, you can only add up to 15% to a third attribute, because 40 + 35 + 15 = 90. If you don't want Machine, you can erase it. At that point you could raise the 15% attribute to 30% and add another attribute up to 20% (40 + 30 + 20 = 90).

The goal of this system is to give you a strong incentive to hunt better equipment. A 5/15/10 weapon may not be very good on its own, but it saves you 300 points on the way to getting 30/30/30 compared to a 0% weapon.


Arms Shop (ES/S-Rank Weapons):


Guards Shop:

Click here to see the possible unit combinations.

Elemental Units

Physical Units

Special Units

Note that you will probably not want to upgrade your armor and shield DFP/EVP unless you already have decent stats. The price is high so that you still have a reason to hunt better equipment, rather than to just max out the first item you find.

WARNING: PSO PC players must have the Shield Fix Patch in order to upgrade shields! The game will erase the extra DFP if you try to upgrade a shield without the fix!


Tools Shop:

Garon vouchers allow you to store tools for later use. For 10000 Meseta, you can exchange 5 tools for a voucher. You can redeem the voucher later to get your items back whenever you want. You can have up to 20 vouchers for each type of tool, thus storing 100 of each item without needing mule characters for bank space. Garon vouchers are stored on the server, so you can deposit items on one character and redeem them on a different character, as long as both characters have the same Guild Card number.

The items you can store with Garon vouchers are:

The items you can buy are:


Principal:

You can earn Photon Points by selling unwanted rare items to the scientist in the Principal's Office. V1 (yellow name) rares sell for 1 Photon Point, and V2 (pulsing orange name) rares sell for 2 Photon Points.


Here are a few more items of note:


Resurgent Darkness

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This is the second quest I created in collaboration with Jodin: he created the Ruins 2 map, while I created the maps for Ruins 1 and 3 and wrote the script. Originally titled Lost HAVOC VULCAN and released in 2006, I reworked it in 2008 after Sega released Lost HELL PALLASCH on PSOBB.

Prospective Horizons

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This is the third quest I created and the first I created as a solo developer, back in 2010. It takes place in the Battle mode areas of Spaceship and Palace, which makes it the only quest in V2 where monsters of different attributes appear together. Since the Battle mode maps weren't meant to be used in freeplay, there are some problems, such as monsters not staying in the rooms where they spawn, and JPv2 players not being able to use Photon Blasts in Palace, but overall the quest works quite well and is probably the most popular one I've made. If you know the right people, you can also unlock an extra challenge...

Christmas Catastrophe

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This quest has the distinction of being the first quest with custom monster spawns ever created, and it's also a case study in why you probably shouldn't let teenagers make quests: it has too many monsters, annoying Megid traps, and juvenile dialogue, but it's also a small piece of PSO history. I created it in 2005 in collaboration with Jodin: he made the Mine 2 map, while I made the Mine 1 map and wrote the script. The quest is available on Altimira every December. You can also get various Mag items through a certain side quest...

Frantic Fauna

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This is the second event quest I created, back in 2011. It takes place in Forest 1 and 2, and your mission is to battle speedy monsters that have been enraged by the radiation from a crashed probe. The quest is available on Altimira in April and June. This quest has multiple side missions which allow you to get various items...

Halloween Horror

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This is the third event quest I created, back in 2012. It takes place in the Ruins, where you'll be chased by terribly spooky ghosts as you fight speedy monsters. If the ghosts catch you, they'll inflict various curses upon your character to impede your progress. The quest is available on Altimira every October. You can get certain Mag parts if you manage to unlock every door...

Acrid Aquifer

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This is the fourth event quest I created, back in 2014. It takes place in Cave 1-3, where you'll be battling speedy monsters as you try to secure Pioneer 2's water supply. Unlike the other event quests, this one is not tied to a particular time of year; instead, it's available whenever Frantic Fauna, Halloween Horror, and Christmas Catastrophe are not.


Download Quests

These are quests that you can download for offline play.

Garon's Scheme

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This is a Japanese Blue Burst quest that I ported to V2 (and V1!) after Cranberry and I translated it into English. It takes place in the Forest and sees you working once again with Alicia Baz to track down a Rappy's egg.

Unlike the default offline quests, Alicia will revive in the hospital if she dies, instead of causing you to fail the quest.

Hero & Daughter

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I released this quest in 2009 as an adaptation of the Government quests from Blue Burst. Many Government quests feature repeated areas, which V1/2 do not support, so I took various unique maps from those quests and compiled them into a single quest that spans Forest 1 - Ruins 3. The map for each area came from the following Government quests:


Quest Secrets

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Many quests contain special prizes, as well as secret side missions. I've documented the secrets and prize information that people have discovered over the years to ensure that the knowledge isn't lost, but if you're new to PSO, I encourage you to play without reading this information right away. PSO is an old game, and old games tend not to get new secrets added very often, so once you know everything, there won't be any surprises left for you to discover.

If you hate discovering secrets yourself or just can't figure something out, click here to view the list of documented quest prizes and secret side missions.