Part 8

Understand enemy AI behavior, support spell triggers, and hitstun mechanics including the No Guard skill in Star Ocean: Till the End of Time.

Enemy AI Behavior:

• Enemies are more likely to use unblockable (Major) attacks when they haven't hit you recently, and blockable (Minor) attacks when they have. They may switch to blockable attacks after breaking your guard.
• Enemy attack selection can be predicted by their proximity to you.
• Enemies may target spellcasting characters due to a 'magic attract' effect, slightly larger than the AOE (Area of Effect) of Explosion. This can be used to intentionally distract enemies.
• Some enemies, especially on 4D, are susceptible to stealth, having difficulty locking onto moving or action-performing characters.
• Enemy behavior changes when HP or MP falls below certain thresholds (usually 60%), often granting access to more powerful attacks.
• Most enemies have an 'anti-backstab' attack used when you are behind them or performing actions.
• Enemies are unlikely to cast spells if the damage is nullified or absorbed.
• On 4D, enemies hit multiple times rapidly enter a state where they primarily use blockable attacks and ignore stealth until they land a hit. This state can be referred to as 'miffed'.

Support Spell Triggers:

• Power Up & Angel Feather: Trigger when HP is less than 1/32 (Power Up) or 1/24 (Angel Feather) of max HP. These overlap, so both can trigger. Echo damage and fireworks are ignored. MP and MP damage do not count towards these flags.
• DFP Boosting Spells: Seemingly only triggered by attacks dealing MP damage. Few enemies have sufficient MP damage attacks to trigger this consistently.
• Acid Rain: Cast by the AI if the mage has Power Up and deals less than 1/30 mHP damage to an enemy. This is not consistent across all enemies.
• Silence: Cast on most enemies capable of casting magic, unless the fighter is set to AWAYM. The AI may cast this even if the target is immune.
• Gravitation: Cast on some fast enemies (Centaur Statues, Imps) but inconsistently.
• Acid Rain, Silence, and Gravitation: Only used by the AI if the enemy party is at a higher level than your party.
• Reflection has not been observed to be cast by the AI.
• Power Up, Angel Feather, and Acid Rain flags do not trigger from attacks dealing no damage. However, they can trigger from magical damage.
• Support spells do not take effect if the character is knocked down when hit by the spell.

Force of Impact & Hitstun:

• Hitstun interrupts actions and prevents targets from acting until they recover. Rapid, consecutive attacks could previously result in 'stunlock', where a target could not recover.
• Star Ocean: Till the End of Time uses hitstun RNG, with varying force values for attacks and varying force/hitstun resistance for enemies. Higher resistance makes hitstun less likely. Bosses always have high resistance, and normal enemies with high resistance become more common later in the game.
• An average normal enemy can still be stunlocked by a single character's chain until Fury is depleted, the chain is blocked, or another enemy intervenes. A single successful chain is often sufficient.
• Damage amount does not impact hitstun calculations (when above 0).
• Characters have no native resistance to hitstun. The 'No Guard' support skill allows a character to avoid hitstun from physical damage if the damage does not exceed 1/15 of their current HP. For example, with 15,000 cHP, physical attacks dealing less than 1001 pod will not cause flinching. This generally allows players to shrug off blockable attacks. No Guard has a CP (Character Points) cost of 5.
• No Guard always works for attacks that deal MP damage only.
• A Blue Talisman can help resist flinching even when HP is not high enough, particularly useful on higher difficulty levels.