More Final Fantasy

[Fenn]

And I've dropped any desire to solo FF IV again, well unless someone figures out a working Dark Knight method for Europe GBA.

I can help with that; I've been modding FF4a in my spare time. Here are the codes you need, in VBA's Cheat format:

0200607C: XXXX -Cecil's Max HP; 16-bit unsigned
0200607E: 0000 -Zero out Cecil's MP; 16-bit unsigned
02006082: 00 -Make Cecil a Dark Knight; 8-bit unsigned
02006083: XX -Cecil's Level; 8-bit unsigned

After the class change, use these codes to give Cecil his old class, his old level, whatever HP he had before class change, and 0 MP. His other stats will revert to his Dark Knight self once he gains a level, unlike HP/MP which must be reset manually.

I don't know how fun a DK Cecil solo would be since you're stuck with the Demon/Deathbringer gear (not even a Ribbon or the Adamant Armor!), but it's there...

[ChaosEnigma]

Nice. Have a working Dark knight Cecil now.

That HP code you have listed is also for MP, can't remember if it was current or max.

HP seems to be 02006078 and 0200607a, at least for Cecil.


Also wow, i had to actually beat Yang down because Dark Knight Cecil doesn't trigger the script. I know I'm going to need to change one of at least one of the party members to Paladin Cecil or the eventual Zeromus battle would softlock. Considering the fact I might do some of the Lunar Ruins trials, that would leave trying to change Fusoya or Tellah into Paladin Cecil. Yang could work also I guess after doing the Cave of Trials since his Lunar Ruins trial would be impossible(Crush spam at low health on Lunar Titan). That code for Cecil isn't that far off from the US one, but can't find the ones for other characters.

I'll definitely be switching a bit between Dark knight Cecil and Gau now.


Anyway, more Gau stuff.


Went to the Veldt to pick up the Trench enemy rages. This requires going back through every dungeon up to that point, but Giga Volt and Aqua breath are worth it.


After getting back to Narshe and looting the stuff there, went to Figaro Castle to go to where I needed next. North from there, you can get a Hero's Ring from the Dragon Neck Cabin.




This is a very useful relic because it boosts both physical and magic damage.


Reflect Ring + Hero's Ring was the setup of choice for Zozo. The Dancer enemies use spells, so Reflect Ring shuts them out. I just ran from the battles because some of the enemies throw stuff for a lot of damage.


For Dadaluma i switched to Hero's Ring and Earring and chose Aspiran for Giga Volt which is slightly weaker than Thundaga. Dadaluma will start using throw after you use the fight command 4 times, but which could be an issue with some characters. Gau thankfully mostly chose Giga Volt and I won.




Looking at the Bestiary after the fact, it's weak to Poison. Trillium's Bio would have been the better option, but as I said, I'm going to try to not look up boss stuff unless I need to. Was level 16 here unlike the 22 from my first try(I used Stray Cat there with physical boosting relics).


The Opera House didn't give me as much trouble as I expected despite my lower level. Equipped for magic damage setup and used Anguiform to help with the rats but ended up at level 18 for Ultros. Ultros has level 3 Confuse, but thankfully these spells actually respect your immunity here unlike in FFV, so Ribbon takes care of it(which I had on for his Imp inflicting attack anyway).


I tried Templar first but died. It was what i used on my first run, but that didn't work. Next try I went with Bomb because he does use fire in some of the spots. Ultros unlike some of the FFV bosses gets a full set of HP for every position but the battle ends when one of them runs out of HP. Bomb's Blaze takes care of him through his fire weakness.




The Magitek dungeon wasn't much of an issue with Anguiform. Was disappointed to find the Gold Shield then find that Gau couldn't equip that one. The first boss, Ifrit and Shiva, switch out occasionally and attack with spells and Blaze/Snowstorm. I can't be immune to both of these though. However, the boss fight ends when just 1 is KO'd so I could go with a fire rage or ice rage. I'd be weak to the other, but they don't use the special that much. Reflect Ring was used as one of the relics to reflect the spells back, Bomb rage was used to target Shiva's weakness.



Then I died to a Level 4 Flare on the way to Number 024. The enemy that killed me also has level 5 Death but I didn't get hit by that one since I noticed it after I had hit level 21.

For Number 024, I couldn't use an elemental rage because of barrier change. Ribbon to guard against Confuse and Reflect Ring to help avoid some spells. Tried Stray Cat in front row the first time then died. Then went with back row and raged for Stone(nonelemental Magic).

However, there was a fatal flaw with Number 024's AI Script eventually which I checked after the fight in the Bestiary FAQ to make sure it hadn't glitched or something.

If Timer >= 30:
Barrier Change (100%)
Increase Var3 by 1
-
If Var3 >= 3:
Display message: System error!
1st Turn: Target: Self
Sunbath (33%) or Arctic Hare (33%) or Libra (33)
2nd Turn: Target: Self
Sunbath (33%) or Arctic Hare (33%) or Libra (33)
3rd Turn: Target: Self
Sunbath (33%) or Arctic Hare (33%) or Libra (33)
Set Var3 == 0

He's supposed to switch variable 3 off after 3 turns, but the timer was triggering before the 3rd turn, so that part of the AI script kept looping. That meant once he was in that phase, the only thing he could hurt me with was the 33% counterattack, which was an issue because I was getting low on health. Still, I'd probably suggest just getting to level 24 for that fight since Number 024 is also level 24(which happened completely by accident the first time I tried this) and ended with an unexpected one shot. So I'm still lower in level than my first run, but that might change for Ultima Weapon possibly.




Went back to save because I forgot there was a save before the next part.

Aspiran was the choice of rage for Number 128, while Anguiform was used on the Cranes after the others that get revived during the cutscene were killed. Reflect Ring was definitely important against the cranes.

[ChaosEnigma]

So Dark knight Cecil,

Everything up to Scarmiglione was pretty much the same as any other solo Cecil. You're pretty much overpowered at that point of the game. Didn't take any pics of it.


Okay, so I was level 23 when I got changed to a Paladin then had to hack Dark knight Cecil back. 514 max HP at the time, though HP growth is a bit random regardless, so I don't know if that was low or high for my level.

Put in the necessary codes then searched Cecil's HP to fix it, and it says I need over 50k experience to get to level 24. I got the experience legitimately already, so i had to search the experience value then change it to where it should be. Grinding the 50k experience would have gotten me extra Gil I shouldn't have yet and possibly drops, plus take a while at that point of the game. After getting to level 24, the stats recorrected themselves as said before.


While the rows do not work properly in this version and I would do equal damage in both rows, I stuck Cecil in the front as he is meant to be a melee character. At least for most of the game.


For Baigan, I destroyed the arm that could paralyze, similar to the Edward solo, weakened the other, then destroyed the body.




Tried Cagnazzo at level 33 and it wasn't enough. Got to my next attack # and still wasn't enough. Got to the next one and was able to beat the fight. I had forgotten to grab the Bacchus Wine in Fabul, so I probably could have won without as much levels.





The Magnetic Cave was the next dungeon. Had to go naked during the run through, so I just ran from everything. Dark Elf was the standard of attacking and Hi-Potions. Hourglass was used to inflict Stop on the Dark Dragon, which gives enough time to do a lot of damage to it, which seems like it'd be a pretty standard strat for most solos.



I farmed Decoys yet again in the tower. Had a game over while trying it cause I pressed the direction to move to the summoned enemy too early, leading me to target a dead party member, which gets redirected to Cecil, which ended up with a Deathbringer KO proc against himself.

Outside of that, the tower wasn't any issue. Magus Sisters went down easily, though Confuse can be scary when you have a Deathbringer equipped. Barbariccia was the standard using Decoys for Image and making sure to cure Gradual Petrify.





Now, there's a huge problem coming up. Calcobrena has Confuse and Paralyze, while Golbez has Paralyze. Dark Knight has no way to be immune to status. However, status priority lets you be immune to lesser statuses, which include both of those. The Baron Guards in the waterway cast Mini when attacked by physical and Pig when hit by spells. Dark doesn't count as a spell, so I had to use an item to provoke it to cast Pig(which is something I had tested in my Edward game).




And with that, Cecil has a pseudo ribbon for a while. Pig protects against all statuses except Petrify, Death, Doom, Poison, and possibly a few other things that ignore priority. Pig does nothing to Cecil's attack power, though I think it might affect his defenses(or maybe that's only Mini/Toad, which would be unacceptable due to lowering attack)

Thanks to the confusion and paralyze protection, I was able to beat Calcobrena and Golbez.




Lugae required some more leveling to get by. Summoner battles were pretty much the choice for leveling Cecil for most of the game. It's a very safe battle with most enemies, and you can get a bit more decoys. Cecil still had the pig status, which protected him for Lugae's Sleep Gas counters, at least until Lugae cured it. But by that time, I had hit him enough to reduce laser damage to a more reasonable amount, so it didn't matter that I was getting hit by sleep. Had to use some Elixirs, but Lugae went down.


Rubicante was the next challenge. Scorch was not a good move for someone with no element protection, low magic defenses, and no way to hide/jump over it.

So i went and fought more summoning enemies to level up. This one was the enemy of choice here since it was the highest experience monster that could be summoned and could drop fangs which do damage based on your current/max HP.




Those dragons are vulnerable to death, actually most random battles until the moon and giant are with a few exceptions, which might make Dark Knight easier to level up despite being weaker than Paladin. Those Dragons are dangerous if left alone, so once I was ready to end a battle with it, I'd use an Hourglass to make things safe.


Got up to level 70 then managed to take out Rubicante. Used the fangs I got from the dragons as they did more than my physical attacks, but it would have been better to level up more and save those. Fangs won't likely be easy to get until I max out my HP and can fight dragons on the moon in the back row.




Went back to save then went to the next part. The lamias can drop curtains, so I planned to grind until just before level 71 in the hope of some. I accidentally hit level 71 though, but it was a good level up, so I grinded until just before level 72 and left the tower with 1 curtain.


Which obviously isn't enough. Dark Knight Cecil had more speed than Edward had at this point, but he was getting less turns against the trap door(This game makes no sense). I could get 2 attacks in regardless of battle speed with the last ones looking like just barely being close to a third turn. But I was too weak to do it even in 3 hits. I needed those curtains to get by this, so I was grinding in an area with an enemy that drops them.


Dark Knight Cecil's best level ups are

1/1/1/1/0 (2/8)
2/2/2/0/0 (1/8)

Which are actually pretty much the same as Paladin Cecil's except for the fact that Paladin Cecil actually gets Spirit Boosts. Both can max out Strength, Agility, and Stamina with equipment.

The stat maxing guide suggests 27 of the second one and 2 of the first. Actually it messes up and suggests the other way around, but with the stats listed, it's obvious it meant this one. This would give you max Strength, Agility, Stamina, 31 Int, 1 Spirit with equips. Except even that is wrong because the Deathbringer has a Spirit penalty.

The correct way is 3 of that first one and 26 of the second. This gives max strength without equipment, 96 Agility/Stamina without equipment for max attacks possible with or without weapon. It also gives you 32 Int with equip which gives you an extra magic defense multiplier(which is pretty much worthless with this character anyway), while if you went with the 27/2 on the level ups, you'd be 1 Int/Spirit point short of the Magic Defense multiplier(which is worthless)



So while grinding and futile attempts at trap door each level, I eventually got 2 more curtain drops letting me get through the Sealed Cave. I tried Demon Wall with the Spider's Silk followed by Bacchus Wine, not expecting much and



First try. No idea if my stats would be high enough on SFC, but it worked out here.



So next was the level and money grinding on the moon. Both Selene Guardian and Dark Sage in Bahamut's Cave are vulnerable to death. Selene Guardian only uses Embrace when alone, so I made sure to target those first. Note that for grinding, I pretty much used back row, the enemies die in one attack command thanks to Deathbringer, and I ran from the ones that were immune. Eventually felt confident and went to try the giant, except i didn't have enough Elixirs. Loaded my backup save and grinded some more levels and Gil for more Elixirs then tried again and got it.


For the four elements fight, I used Spider's Silk on the dangerous ones. Used a lot of Elixirs but got through. Barbariccia was handled the same way as before since Decoys make that part a lot safer since you can ignore your HP.




Time for the final dungeon. I ran from most of the monsters since I just could not fight them with my low HP, low defenses, and their immunity to death in most cases. Had to ignore most of the chests. Wiped to an Ahriman the first try because I couldn't get away from it. Got to the save.

I didn't have anywhere near enough Elixirs for the Zeromus fight, so I was going to need to grind some more Gil. I maxed my level out during this.

But I felt it was time to try out a few optional bosses. First, Plague was cheesed with a curtain again. Dark Knight Cecil just doesn't have the offense needed to win yet, but I reloaded after, so maybe I can try again and see if fangs would let me win once I max my HP from Lunar Ruin runs.

Lunasaurs was next and there was a possible problem there. Bad Breath requires immunity to the statuses or you're hit by all of them, status priority from Pig does not help there. You can physically attack them to start getting them to reflect Bios, but I can't hold up against 2 of those. So would I have to skip these?

Well for some reason, Bad Breath can be reflected in FF4. Not only that, but reflected monster specials ignore status immunities(this is why Reflecting the Trap Door's attack even works because it is immune to death). Not only that, but once the Lunasaurs cast Reflect once, that one will never do it again for the rest of the fight, even if it's hurting the other.




Obviously this was quite wasteful with the curtain use and the Elixir use, so I also reloaded after this fight to not save the items used.

Next up was to get more money. Flan Princesses drops a lot of Gil, enough to buy 2 Elixirs and most of a third. I would die if I tried the fight in the front row though, so for once I took advantage of the row bug(the other times I was at least instant killing the enemies), so in the back row I was able to beat them for the Gil. I used up the Sirens I had gathered then used Emergency Exit to get out to go buy more Elixirs.

I was also out of Spider's Silks, so I went to farm some from summoned enemies. Didn't get as much as I would like, but it'd be enough for the maingame at least.


I was worried about Zeromus softlocking or just crashing because supposedly you need a Paladin Cecil for the Crystal. I was thinking I'd have to hack someone else into paladin, and maybe that's the case with the SFC/SNES version and the Playstation one. Either the cheats posted allow Dark Knight Cecil to pass the check or GBA just checks for Cecil in general because my Dark Knight Cecil was able to use the crystal.


For the actual fight, I started by using Spider's Silk to slow him down. After that, I used physical attacks and Elixirs as needed. However, I did pay attention to his pattern a bit on the first try where I had died to a Big Bang that did more damage than I was expecting. I would use a curtain for reflect after a black hole when it would be able to reflect a Bio or Flare on one of Zeromus's turns. Also, remember how using a potion on Baron Guard triggered it's antimagic counter. Well using a Potion on Zeromus triggered his Flare counters, which actually do more damage than Dark knight Cecil does with his physicals. I didn't have too many curtains though, so I may need to get more for postgame stuff.




So that's maingame. I'll probably try to do some postgame stuff as well. I did skip most of the optional bosses. Brachioraidos won't be possible as it one shotted Edward with Scorch with Fire Resistance, which Cecil doesn't have as well as higher magic defense than Cecil has. Zeromus EG might be possible, but Cecil doesn't do enough damage as Dark knight to bypass Absorb. I will need to run Lunar Ruins a lot to max out his HP, then farm money for Elixirs, and farm Fang items to deal HP based damage, but that should be enough for Absorb. I took Rydia and Cid to the final boss since their lunar grimoires inflict statuses on EG, but didn't take Yang since while his does it as well, I don't think there's anyway to avoid Lunar Titan's Crush with Dark Knight.

So I'll attempt to do as much of postgame as I can, but I expect the prep time and EG's Whirl to be a bit annoying. Still, it was great to finally beat Solo Cecil and to do it on the weaker version too.

[System Error]

Motivation for challenge runs was low for a long time. But, now motivation is back! And ready for a new variant! Even though I really should beat FF6 Nudists sometime! Though this one I do intend to see through, even though I may break for a bit to get some stuff with a deadline taken care of.

##########

FFL2 Solo Monster is probably one of my favorite challenges in how it turned out. With this in mind, I decided to do one of the followups at last. This time, going through FFL2 with a Solo Mutant.

Humans and Mutants now both follow the traditional SaGa formula of gaining stats based on use of them. The exact stat growth formula is incredibly convoluted. The basic formula is (CONST1 + CONST2 * (EnemyDS -- CharDS)) / 200.

- CONST1 and CONST2 vary depending on character and stat. It's {10,15} for all human stats except DEF, {5.15} for mutant STR, DEF, and MANA, {5,7} for mutant skill learning and AGL, and {0,0} for human DEF.
- EnemyDS is the enemy's DS level.
- CharDS is calculated by S / ((S / 20) + 5) for stats and HP / ((MHP / 26) + 50) for HP

First mutant powers are checked for changing, followed by HP growth, and lastly stats. If a check succeeds, the game immediately moves onto the next character - you can only earn one thing per battle in this version. Furthermore, only the last stat a human/mutant "used" can grow - this corresponds to what stat it raises on a Robot (even if it's by 0, such as the Rune Axe and MANA), rather than what it uses for a damage formula The Whip being a good example, using STR to deal damage while raising AGL. Using is different from selecting the item; a command needs to actually executed to count. Furthermore, if the last used item uses no stats (like potions), then the human/mutant simply won't gain any instead of using what he or she used before that.

There's a couple bugs associated with this - namely, HP growth can bug out and cause you to stop gaining stats, and mutants can never actually gain STR despite being intended to. Those and the full story are covered here.


After searching for a name, I decided to become anime, especially because these are in a way considered both espers and mutants. Toma it is. I'm going with the male Mutant over the female. There's almost no difference, aside from starting with more max HP, a point more of STR, a point less of AGL, and having Blizzard instead of Flame - the former being just a bit better, I feel.


The early going was, as before, a bit tricky. Jaguars were huge threats, but I could at least strike certain groups down with Blizzard to gain stats without relying on luck. However, given the potential for growth, there wasn't much to it. Toma got some HP along with an Ice spell. Those two things plus BabyWyrm missing got me through the North Cave. Note that it was important to do this before Toma ran out of skill uses, as they cannot be replenished beforehand.


I bought a Bronze Gauntlet before heading into Hidden Ruins. This was a great time to have that Ice Spell. It was stronger than Blizzard, and could wipe out groups of Lizards and Flies instantly. Toma got a few extra points of MANA; that combined with the Mana Magi shot his damage output into the triple digits.


I used 3400 of the funds I raised from there to purchase a Gold Gauntlet. While not as awesome as they are for a robot, these are still very nice pieces of equipment to have and accessible in the first town.

Along the way through Ashura's Base, Toma lost the O-Poison he had picked up in favor of Cure. I guess I should take the chance to go over Mutant skills now. Mutants are capable of learning up to four skills, which can be less if you load them down with items (which I did). Randomly after battle, a Mutant may gain a new skill. If there's less than four and there's room for more, a new one will be learned. Otherwise, the bottommost ability will be replaced - this allows you to choose your skills. The skills you can learn in a battle depend on the DS level of the enemy group - you can learn the abilities that correspond to their level and anything below.

Of the DS-1 skills, Cure, Ice, and Fire all do what you expect. O-Poison grants immunity to the status and the element, and Warning will prevent surprise attacks. Notably, Flame and Blizzard can only be learned at the start, so if you replace them, they're gone forever. At least as far as this version is concerned. The remake adds them in as options, alongside mutant specialization to make learning certain skills more likely.


OUCH. I forgot the Rhino hits this hard. I could deal with him in one of three ways. First, gain enough HP to just tank this. Second, gain enough MANA to one-shot him and hope I go first. Or third, use Temptat or Sleep to lock him down and hope I go first. I had to run back, and decided to go with the last of these. That was enough to do in the Rhino.

Ashura's World brings forth DS-2 monsters routinely, allowing Thunder, O-Para, and O-Quake to be learned. Not much to say about it. I passed on Silver Armor because there would be a freebie in the tower. I thought that it had a free Psi Knife too, which is critically important, but it did not. I had to go back down the tower after freeing Mask.

The fights in here varied. Some of them could shred Toma in no time flat; when enemies are doing 30-40 damage a hit and there's 6-8 of them, you're just toast. Others were pathetic, such as Beetle groups.


Somewhat true to the game's saying so, Ashura sports O-Damage. He is immune to all forms of elemental damage. However, he is not immune to status magic such as Sleep or Temptat. These two can lock him down, until he wakes up or go "back to sane".


JESUS. And note that this is with almost the maximum amount of DEF a Human (and Mutant who can't build DEF through ordinary means) can have at this point! I had 8 instead of 11, but those three points weren't really going to make a difference. Even worse, I could barely damage him. 10 MANA wasn't going to be enough. 38 damage is just far too little.


So a bunch of grinding later and I get to 13 MANA. I kept trying to get more, but it was being incredibly stubborn, so I just went for it to see if it was plausible.


And it was, much more plausible! Toma could survive Axe and Flame, and it was possible for Sleep to miss. All I could do was Temptat him, attack with a Psi Knife, and hope he doesn't break out and use 6-Arms or it misses. He'll usually do nothing, but occasionally attack with Axe, Sleep, or Flame. He'll occasionally help by using the former on himself. Sadly, he will never use 6-Arms on himself.


On the second-to-last turn of the eventual winning fihgt, Ashura snapped out of confusion at long last. However, according to my damage counting, the next swing of the Psi Knife would do him in. Ashura went first...with Flame! Toma made contact on his swing and finished off Ashura. Unfortunately, it did come with a cost: losing Cure. For Warning. But it's a small price to pay, and despite Ashura having a DS level of 7, not worth farming him out for Toma to potentially gain an ability.


One good thing about all that grinding most of which was fruitless: Toma became filthy rich.


Just like that, his defense shot up - almost by fivefold and would be by the time I got enough for Giant Gauntlets (Getas being free in Old Giant's Town), which I did by the time I was ready to head to Ki's Body. Ability-wise, DS-3 isn't worth talking about. Blitz just reduces an enemy group's AGL by 10, Steal gives AGL*5 GP if it works, and X-Fire is a joke - giving yourself a weakness is bad!

I should also talk about my strategy in regards to stats. If you recall my solo monster, you'll remember Apollo was brutal in regards to turn order. The only way around it was an endless grind or hacking down my AGL. I'm not sure how much you need to go last every time - if I had to make an educated guess, it'd be less than half of his, or 40ish. And I forgot to check and don't have a save handy in which I can do so. So for solo human and mutant, I'll be keeping it as low as practically possible, just to legitimately get through at the end. Robot will 99% require an exception, however.

With STR being impossible to raise due to bugs, that leaves only MANA to inch up. DEF is not impossible to raise, but it requires specific setups on certain monsters or the Defense Sword, both of which are inaccessible now.


The rest of Giant's World and Ki's Body would've been total walkovers because of this if not for Amoebas and Plasma. Both could use Dissolve to bypass Toma's now absurd defenses, which absolutely nothing else could get through except occasionally ROBO-28's Rockets. Therefore, I blew through, picking up Thunder along the way while running from the dangerous enemies. The Phagocyts could thankfully use Wind Up, so bypassing them to deliver the Ice was easy.


The enemies in the Apollo's World were much of the same. Jellies and Phagocyts were obnoxious, but just about everything else could barely touch Toma. I hustled through, picking this up for more defense and potential AGL along the way, before heading to my goal...


Dunatis is infamous for having a DS level of B, allowing Mutants to learn any of their abilities after a battle with him. The most notable use of this is Teleport, which you can use in the Dragon Circuit to take your dragon out of the racetrack and through walls - although that said if I want to show it off, you can still get Teleport in the Circuit itself. What I usually get here is P-Blast - it's only slightly weaker than Flare and has 10 more uses.


See, take a look at both skills. Not that big a damage difference! And from both being here, you can tell that I got both of them. But neither of them are what I wanted this time. Touch was another option to drain HP, but it too was not what I wanted. And by the time I really want it, I'll be able to obtain it.

Battling Dunatis was nothing to talk about. He could not two-shot Toma, and Toma could two-shot him with Thunder. I chose Ice as the sacrificial ability, due to having Blizzard around to achieve the element. I usually don't open my Mutants' fourth slot until the end of the game, when Parasuit is accessible.


And finally, after roughly half an hour of running at 4x speed through innumerable battles, we got it. O-All does exactly what you expect - full immunity to all elements, full immunity to all status, and halving physical damage. Perfect for a solo character.


Let's take a look at Toma to close out this part. His equipment gives him 30 STR, 10 AGL, and 43 DEF. I can also swap in the Geta for an extra 5 STR, at the cost of the AGL and 2 DEF. He only has 19 MANA, which is barely on the threshold of good enough.

[Active_ate]

Hi RB! I am also a fan of RPG variant runs, and have read many of the runs by T-Hawk, Sullla, SirSystemError. I am finishing a FF5 Bard/Dancer combo for the holiday season and publishing the reports on Skirmishfrogs. Hoping to finally officially connect with the community.

[System Error]

Hi RB! I am also a fan of RPG variant runs, and have read many of the runs by T-Hawk, Sullla, SirSystemError. I am finishing a FF5 Bard/Dancer combo for the holiday season and publishing the reports on Skirmishfrogs. Hoping to finally officially connect with the community.

Welcome to RB. And very nice! Looking forward to reading that when it's done.

More FFL2 solo mutant, this time with 200% more bending the game to my will.

##########


The rest of Apollo's World was simple. In the Undersea Volcano, I picked up this goodie. With all the Giant's equipment, Gold Sword actually turned out to have some pretty decent numbers - around 300 damage on average. However, since Mutants can't raise STR due to a bug, its usefulness in the long term is questionable.


I actually ended up running out of skill uses around two-thirds of the way through Bright Cave. It had lots of easy encounters to farm out. Had to swap over to a Thunder Book I picked up, and even it was basically completely out of juice by the end.


Random commentary time: there is exactly one female Guardian in the game. All the rest are male. Therefore due to her position, the sprites of her facing sideways and up are unused.


Guardian's Base was a short and straightforward world as it is anywhere. It sells Stone books, but I didn't need them just yet. They're actually inaccurate, so it's often better to just go with attacking magic. I had no drops to get - no monsters to farm meat, no weapons to pick up, and with a mutant the Commando's Bazooka is of questionable use. Some enemies actually could punch through Toma's DEF, but they were small bug bites. Especially compared to these jerks.


I managed to get mana ups on three of the four bosses. When farming for one against the Commando, I instead ended up with this, which was very hard to push away. And so I didn't.


Funny thing about the Ninja: I tried streaming this briefly, only realizing what a pain it is to wrestle with random skill replacement and resetting for stat-ups on stream. So I stopped and reset back to Apollo's World. It's a good thing I did too, as I got tons of mana ups on the reset. Anyway, going back to the stream: I ended up with X-Ice. What happens when you resist an element and are weak to it at the same time? Well, things like Blizzard won't work on you as normal, but physical weapons, say, his Ice sword, will do the extra damage and potential to instantly kill you. After a while of the thing being stubborn to change back, I just went for it and won without incident. The real playthrough didn't have this, of course, so there was zero threat involved.


Venus' World had absolutely nothing to buy. The Psi Sword may have been a possibility, being the natural upgrade over the Psi Knife. It also did far more damage than the Gold Sword with equal attacking stats (the STR weapon doing 277 on this same enemy), so I could now forgo that idea altogether. However, I knew there was a free one in the sewers, so there was no need to buy it.


More importantly, our good friend the Hermit is here. Being DS-7, it allowed Toma to raise his stats far more easily than anywhere else. Having Thunder around allowed me to take him out no problem, too.


Another free item the world served up was this thing. Mage Staff does MANA*8 in Fire-elemental damage, affecting all enemy groups. But with Blizzard still around (albeit MANA*5), and Fire Books to deal elemental damage at MANA*10, I never actually used it.

I noticed/remembered properly around this world that books are actually stronger than rechargable abilties. Fire/Ice/Thunder books do MANA*10, and Fire/Ice/Thunder spells do MANA*7. Still, with stats this high, it was best to only use these when an enemy group needed to be dead as soon as possible - such as O-Bake groups who could toss out Touch.


Venus was preposterously easy. What, is that too cheap? Well in that case...


RUN BACK ACROSS THE PILLAR OF SKY.


GRAB ONE OF THESE FROM APOLLO'S WORLD BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON THEY'RE NOT SOLD IN VENUS' WORLD.


AND RUN BACK TO FIGHT HER. O-All made Charm, Erase, and Flame all futile efforts on her part, leaving only Blitz Whip. It was indeed a threat, however - winded the whip is a special condition that O-All does not cover, effectively stunning the victim for a round. After dying a few times to this, I noted that Cure had to be used after any damage. Even though Toma could take three hits before dying, if he was damaged and Venus winded the whip, he'd be dead.

The Psi Sword did very respectable numbers here, although due to his low AGL, was prone to missing. Also, I did some image splicing because its hit effect is pretty neat. Thankfully, this should be the last time I have to put up with it. With this, I won easily...then had to do it a second time because Toma lost Thunder for O-Quake.

Dragon Circuit would ordinarily be the point where I grab Dragon Armor. However, O-All already gives all of its resistances, and Dragon Armor itself only gives one more point of DEF over Giant Armor (21 vs. 20). Better to skip it for now, I can get a freebie later and the stronger Battle/Arthur Armors. Similarly, Giant Helmet is the best up until Dragon Helmet, and Giant Gauntlets the best up to Ninja Gauntlets. Giant stuff is really awesome.


Of course, what kind of self-respecting person would I be if I did a playthrough with a Mutant without showing off the Dragon Warp? It's only one of the most well-known glitches in the game. I'm not going to abuse it to gain an advantage, but still!

It's simple. First, you acquire Teleport. The easy way is through a Mutant learning from Dunatis, Venus, or any of the non-Tortoise bosses on the racetrack itself. The hard way is through getting a meat drop after a bizarre memory corruption bug involving an enemy dying of poison after a defending/do nothing message appears in battle, upgrading a monster into the highest level. Hacking in the Pegasus MAGI or a Door will also suffice. Then you use it while riding your dragon.


Your Dragon warps with you, often glitching in the process. And outside of the racetrack, nearly all collision is null and void. The game is your oyster. You can find Ashura's base hidden in the mountains, and even enter it if you have a fifth party member besides Mr.S. Speaking of, you can recruit him again by returning to your hometown and attempting to leave. You can recruit party members before you're supposed to have them, and bring them places they're not supposed to be.

If you visit the Final Town, then for whatever failsafe reason, a switch is flipped that removes all MAGI in chests from the game. Of course, you can purchase all sorts of goodies from further on in the game. You can also exploit this on the track itself, getting 3 more MAGI than you're supposed to. That GameFAQs topic also goes over some of the more unusual things that can happen when Dragon Warping.


You can even go to the Center of the World to fight Arsenal. For whatever reason, there's a warp you can move onto below the nonfunctional teleporter. And if you move there, you can enter the final room of the game. The speedrun route abuses this, along with the poison bug to get Teleport and ultra-powerful robots, to beat the game just over half an hour.


I amusingly ran into a Haniwa, the only enemy you can run from down here. I of course fought it anyway. Toma could actually survive a round due to resisting its Quake. And then this happened. That was worth it to see!


Anyway, getting back into normalcy. So as I noticed when actually getting Teleport (which took ten thousand years), Toma's MANA was a bit on the low side. So I fought the Hermit repeatedly until I gained some more. On my way out after draining my stocks, this humorously happened. The uses are refreshed, but I decided to leave and try building DEF. I failed at this, and decided to do it later. There's still some ability farming to be done in the Dragon Circuit!


The preliminary encounters weren't bad. A bit of luck and an Ice Spellbook got me through the Adamants, the bugged Tortoises were roadkill, and Lamias weren't plentiful enough to do too much. Now it's the Watchers I want something from. That ability being P-Blast! Nothing in the items can really compare to it, unlike spellbook Flare which clearly outclasses mutant/monster Flare (more uses and power).


Fighting Watchers was just random. Most of their moveset was rendered useless thanks to O-All, but Toma could take at most one Beam before dying. He needed two rounds to kill them. I generally reset 4 Watcher encounters, but just as well, they could all use ineffective abilities and die. Similarly, a single one of the eyes could go Beam-Beam.

This was...an adventure. Two hours of 4x speed, Toma obtained every other ability at least once, no P-Blast. To reiterate that, every other ability showed up at least once. Its fellow DS-9 abilities (O-Change multiple times) both popped, Warning and Touch being two of the most frequent, O-Damage leading the pack at around 8-9 times, and X-Thunder being the last to show. Seriously, game?! Screw you!! This is why I don't really like playing Humans/Mutants in the original, the RNG can go on a nasty streak like this. But at any rate, I had a belligerent video game on my hands. I honestly thought about just hacking it in here to grease the wheels of time and have done with it. But I decided on trying a more creative solution.


I found address D906 to pull this off. It changed each time to the memory address for the ability being gained. Using that was the plan. But staging it...did not go as intended. This was too hilarious not to show. I could get it to display properly, but I had to turn on the code after it said Toma had lost Blizzard. However, it didn't actually change, it only changed the name displayed. C215 changed the ability proper, but hacking it in directly felt lame, so I stopped and mulled what to do. Some days of rest gave me more motivation. Still, no sane man would waste his time like this further.

So I checked the next best thing. The short of it is, address C0A5 determines what ability a Mutant will learn, and C0A6 in-part determines actually learning it. I found that value 0B would spit out P-Blast, as would 10. Also that it makes very little sense as to what value determines what result. It's certainly not linear; 09, 0D, and 0F all gave up Explode, for example!


RNG manipulation seemed way cooler than just hacking it in and way more logical than just throwing myself against a brick wall over and over and over again, so I went for it! However, a problem arose: I may have been able to manipulate the values within a margin of error, but getting the ability learn success to actually pop was another story. It's determined by the second value, which is much harder to manipulate. And of course, it feels unfair to keep track of it like this, so I need to find another way. Say, a consistent starting point for the RNG. Say, after a hard reset!


The bad news is, this varies by emulator. The good news is, bgb (the emulator I use when I don't need RAM watch for whatever reason) starts C0A5 close enough to what I want to make using it practical: F6! So how legal is this? Well, it's not like this is something you can't do on Gameboy either - it has fixed RNG on startup too. Most famously, the original thick-as-a-brick Gameboy has a fast method of encountering the Haniwa easily - after a hard reset, it'll be the fourth encounter. In fact, bgb seems to have the exact same RNG as the original Gameboy! I tried checking with Dragon Warp and sure enough, Haniwa was the fourth encounter after a hard reset. So I'd say "exploiting a fact of life, but not outright cheating."


I can kill Watchers in either 2 turns or 3 turns - using a spellbook and Blizzard respectively (they have 614HP). I can take up to one Beam from them in the battle. There are three practical ways to reach my destination
- A 3-Round battle with 2 Watchers with 0 Beams (reaches 0B)
- Two 2-Round battles with 1 Watcher with 1 Beam (reaches 10)
- One 2-Round battle with 2 Watchers and 0 Beams AND one 2-Round battle with 1 Watcher and 0 Beams. (reaches 10).

The first seemed very impractical, having to go three rounds with neither of them attacking. Since the second battle after the hard reset was a single watcher who I could beat with it using 1 Beam, I decided to follow that path first. The battles from there went: 2-4-instant random-4-3-4-3-1. This was a 2-round with 0 Beams. Not what I want. From here it was 2-1. Another 0B. Another 2-1, another 0B. 2-4-2-4-2-1. This was 1B! Which did not give up an ability. 3-4-3-4-2-4-2-4-3-4-2-1. 0B, no ability but Mana Up. Hmmm, it's looking as though 0B is far more likely than 1B at this point. It makes sense, they have a smaller chance of using it when factoring in that it can use all the other skills. Might be best to swap over to option 3.


So I do so. The order of encounters remained identical, interestingly enough. The third 2 Watcher encounter sets me up fastest with the 0 Beams I wanted. And um. I'll skip you the details of every single encounter from there. But from there on out to my destination, I had 67 encounters including the last one, 14 of which had 1 Watcher. Nine of those had 0 Beams, four had 1 Beam, and one had 2 Beams (aka dead). And in the end, I got what I was looking for. Now this game knows who's boss!

So yeah. What an update. Thankfully this should be the last time I have to do this and/or put up with the game's randomness, as I can't think of any other ability to get. So I'll probably actually stick with just three abilities the whole game. But if I change my mind, another fine opportunity is in the next world.

[T-hawk]

And of course, it feels unfair to keep track of it like this, so I need to find another way. Say, a consistent starting point for the RNG. Say, after a hard reset!

Ha. You actually documentably ran into the problem we were discussing with Sullla a while back: with an 8-bit RNG seed, there may be no possible value that gives you the random results you need. Can't say how I would have handled such a situation; FF1 and FF5 both allow RNG manipulation just through reloading a save-state and waiting a different number of frames.

I'm reading along, don't have anything to add on a game I last played 20 years ago, but I was quite into FFL2 back then.

[Fenn]

From what I recall of digging into the game's code, the bigger problem is that FFL2's RNG algorithm is poorly coded - on any particular system, it's always initialized to the same value after a hard reset as you noticed, and random numbers are only incremented as they are used, making combat results completely deterministic.

This has been an interesting read btw; I never really got into FFL2 challenge runs, I more favored the one-of-each party.

[System Error]

Ha. You actually documentably ran into the problem we were discussing with Sullla a while back: with an 8-bit RNG seed, there may be no possible value that gives you the random results you need. Can't say how I would have handled such a situation; FF1 and FF5 both allow RNG manipulation just through reloading a save-state and waiting a different number of frames.

Well the RNG seed is a bit more complicated than 8-bit, but yeah. Who knows how long it could've taken if this resource wasn't available and I didn't do this?

From what I recall of digging into the game's code, the bigger problem is that FFL2's RNG algorithm is poorly coded - on any particular system, it's always initialized to the same value after a hard reset as you noticed, and random numbers are only incremented as they are used, making combat results completely deterministic.

This has been an interesting read btw; I never really got into FFL2 challenge runs, I more favored the one-of-each party.

Glad you're enjoying this, and you'd recall correctly. Different hardware/emulators give up different results. In a similar vein, Haniwa will always be the 52nd and 73rd battles if you play on a GBA. The enemy data guide on GameFAQs has a list of the exact order of encounters, though is tuned to no hardware's particular order.

Moving on!

##########


I'll open the third part of this report by showing off the fruits of my labor! P-Blast is fantastic, doing nearly double the damage that Blizzard would do. It was so worth it. Here's a stat checkup as well. Toma's HP was lagging a bit, though his MANA was okay.


But Echigoya's place in Edo offered something even better than P-Blast. The Flare spellbook is the strongest attack a Mutant can do in this game. It's also ridiculously expensive and a limited resource, so at this point it's more of a tactical nuke. He also carries Dragon Helmets, which are the best in the game, sporting 7 more DEF over the Giant Helmet, so Toma naturally purchased one. Although despite this picture showing both in my inventory, I reset and elected not to buy a Flare Book just yet.


So that opportunity I was talking about to possibly learn an extra skill? Right here. The Hatamotos in Edo are of DS-B. Just like Dunatis, a Mutant is capable of learning any ability in the game from them. Why didn't I use them instead of the Watchers? Or why not use them in tandem? Well, these guys are MUCH harder for Toma to take down, is the main reason. Their individual attacks do 100 damage apiece, so I'd have to hope to roll only a few and/or a lot of them to use X-Cure. The other reason being, screw doing more ability grinding.

But really, aside from another shot of P-Blast (you can get duplicates!), what really is there? There's no need for any other O-Ability due to O-All. Status stuff is situational. Flare is inferior as discussed. I though Touch would be nice, but it needs AGL to hit which we can't have yet. Recover (heals 10% MaxHP after each round) might be useful for Apollo, but even at this Mana level, Toma is already recovering almost enough HP without Mana MAGI. He definitely would be by the time I get to Apollo. And of course I'll be winning most randoms in one round anyway. The basic elemental spells of DS-1 and DS-2 are actually quite solid to keep around.


I tried for a while anyway, and did indeed come up with Flare within a few minutes. Classic. Another P-Blast would've been amazing. I gave keeping this result some thought. The power of Thunder was waning a bit. It couldn't even consistently wipe out groups. I more than likely would be throwing out P-Blasts at every random that isn't a singular group moving forward, and using Elixirs to heal/restore its uses as need be. Flare ability effectively gives me five more slightly stronger shots of that. I can still use spellbooks if I want to conserve ability uses or hit singular groups. So there we go.


Two items were of note in the ship. The Hecate Shoes give a +15 to MANA! Very good item, but not something I want to have on all the time. See, remember how the chances of stat boosts are calculated? Well, they take your stat including equipment into account. In other words, this is something to equip for boss fights to give that extra kick, but not for everyday travel or when I want to see that number naturally increase. The other being the Tank, for reasons I'll get to briefly.


After the events of the ship, I went ahead and purchased three Flare spellbooks. That plus one or two free ones that are coming up should be more than enough until Toma reaches the Final Town, where he'll be able to buy more. One each for Magnate, Odin, and Minion. This left exactly one open slot in Toma's inventory. Since it really didn't seem practical to keep it that way, I had Toma use the three Power potions he had. No point in not doing so, given STR can't naturally increase for him. He kept the two Magic and two Speed in his inventory for now, however.


So the Tank. I only vaguely mentioned it in my four Robots playthrough, but Tank is one of several of its kind of weapons, like SMG and the like. They never miss, hit an entire group, and have a fixed base damage. However, Tank has another property. It blocks melee attacks at 70% odds. Against the nine Hatamotos that accompanied Echigoya, Toma would ordinarily not stand a chance. But crammed into this thing, he was safe from their swords. All he needed to do was hope they used Katana or X-Cure instead of Magnum or Bazooka (which are ranged, so Tank can't stop them).


With this, I bought three Elixiers, which I figured would be enough for Castle Edo. I used the first of these in the first treasure room, which had this Ninja Gauntlet (boosted DEF by 4 more over the Giant Gauntlet), a Body Potion, and a Missile. I didn't actually have the room for the last one. I'd been holding onto Revenge (a countering weapon) since I got it, and decided to give it a whirl. The results were better than they were for Mamizou as a Moaner, but still disappointing. So into the trash it went. Maybe for Solo Human, this tactic will finally get its chance to shine.

So one more slot freed up. I was also keeping the Giant equipment around, but I have a specific use for it in mind later. On the other hand, all of them can be rebought, and I presently have enough GP so that it'll just be a small sting. So those are next on the chopping block. But ultimately, I ended up leaving the Missile, the Dragon Sword, and the Samurai Bow behind. If I want to grab them later, I'm able to do that. May as well keep space for the important stuff for now.


This enemy group, as well as its variants with no Ninjas and Knights, was one of interest. It's pulled at the very start of the Castle as a fixed encounter, and so you can't run from it. This extends to the random encounter version later on, too. Too many of them could wipe out Toma and force a reset if his health was low going into the battle. Thankfully though he was destroyed by it a few times, saving frequently as so not to lose Flare set it up so that I never lost much progress when it did show up at the wrong moment.

Sho-Gun was as per the norm for any FFL2 playthrough, completely nonthreatening. Throughout Castle Edo, Toma was able to gain over 100 extra HP, in addition to the 100 he obtained through the rest of the world, putting him back on track. By contrast, he only gained 4 MANA total the entire world. Because of this, I wanted to farm an extra stat point off him and did. So boring that I didn't even take a picture.


Fighting a Dolphin wasn't too bad. Toma just used Flare and P-Blast, healing with a Cure Book - replacing the Hermes Shoes for this fight - when he was at low HP. The living statue tended to stick to using its physicals (which did around 60 damage for Fin and 135 for Tusk) and Blitz (which lowered AGL, pointlessly), rather than its Whirls which did 350. That was appreciated in getting the kill.


He broke out a Flare Book for Magnate, which put out impressive numbers. As for the villain's own damage output: Thunder did nothing thanks to O-All, Katana did around 200, Vulcan did 230ish, and Tornado did around 350. Toma's Cure healed about 550 each time. So as long as Magnate didn't use Tornado twice in a row, the mutant/esper could heal after every point of damage taken.


And then I got into an immediate battle after regaining control. Toma P-Blasted everything, and then this happened. I didn't save after Sho-Gun, so RESET. It worked out though, as Toma got a quick Mana Up against Sho-Gun, was able to score another on Magnate, and even had good enough damage rolls to get him in 9 instead of 10.

I quickly picked up the Pegasus MAGI in the Nasty Dungeon, choosing to save exploring it until shortly later. Moving onto Valhalla Palace, a particular weapon awaited Toma in the very first room...


So for the most part, Toma has simply been raising his MANA and HP. However, with this new weapon, he can officially start raising DEF. The bad news is, stat boosts take your current stat into consideration, equipment included. This is troublesome due to needing to equip the Giant equipment to deal damage with it (and is also why I haven't been having Toma use the Hecate Shoes), though the Power potions helped in that regard. The good news is, Defend Sword blocks melee attacks at 80% odds on its own.

Note that there exist only two fixed Defend Swords in the game. The other is deep in the Nasty Dungeon. This one is much more accessible, needless to say. More can be obtained as drops from Paladins in the Center of the World.


Our good friend the Hermit was the punching bag of choice. A fixed encounter with a single enemy with a DS of 7. With an extra Power Potion from the Nasty Dungeon, Toma's natural STR was 17. Each piece of Giant equipment gives 10 to STR...but 37 plus the Power MAGI was enough to one-shot the Hermit (392HP), so I had Toma forgo the Giant Armor. 23 DEF instead of 43 helps the chances of getting boosts! Toma could wear less armor, but getting the most out of each Defend Sword is more worthwhile in the long run than even higher odds of stat increase. Hermes Shoes provided AGL to actually hit with the weapon.

The other way to raise DEF - technically requiring no armor at all - would be via confusion, using shields while the enemy kills itself. If it ever does - a lot of them love doing nothing. Obviously the Defend Sword is much easier and more practical, but that method may see use if I feel like bumping it a few points after gaining them with the swords becomes impractical. With that in mind, Toma could still two-shot the Hermit with the Power MAGI and without any of the Giant equipment.


This was surprisingly not painful in the slightest. So much so I doubted for a moment whether the calculations for a stat-up factor in equipment. I checked the game's memory, searching for values matching Toma's raw DEF stat. After a boost I searched for the updated value and came up with no results. There is simply C20E, his full stat. So yes, it does factor in boosts. Even better relevant to the ease, just soft resetting the game respawns the Hermit. No need to go in and out of the room all the time.


When Toma hit 49 DEF total, I thought that would be it for the easy stat gains, or even stat gains altogether. According to the formula and integer math, his DS would be 7. And it did in fact slow down. But every time I went "okay time to say it slowed down in the report", he got another DEF boost. 56 is when it hit DS-8, and that seemed to stall it. I wrote that and it increased again after a bit more trying to make the number of remaining uses even.

To point out something the more astute reader may have already noticed: the effective DS level of a stat is not a constant increase due to how it's calculated - remember, S / ((S / 20) + 5). For example with 56, the denominator would be 7 (dropping all remainders in division). Making that calculation gives an even DS-8. But were it to hit 60, the denominator would be 8. 60/8 is 7.5, or DS-7. Here's a full list of the equivalent DS level for each stat value.

Anyway, with the stat still able to be pushed higher after all, I had Toma keep pushing it. We rode this crazy train this far, may as well go all the way. And eventually...


40 uses of the Defend Sword, 40 increases of DEF. With this, Toma could put on the proper armor and attain a grand total of 94 DEF. Now I felt ready to dive into my next objective.


As an aside, I had a suspicion confirmed here that Thunder is the most neutral attacking element. No enemy in the game carries O-Thunder - not even Thunder birds - compared to the 21 that have O-Fire or 6 with O-Ice. In fact, O-Thunder doesn't actually exist as an ability in the code. It's not perfect of course, since some do have O-Damage, but when it comes to hitting just about anything for damage it's unquestionably the best. I bring this up because I thought I was nearly caught having to run against a SnowCat enemy, when Toma was out of P-Blasts and Flares with an Ice spellbook equipped. I did take them out, without needing to use the spellbook, and checking after revealed that they actually don't have O-Ice.

But Thunder is not the best element, however. When it comes to hitting weaknesses, 19 have X-Fire, 33 have X-Ice, and 10 have X-Thunder. Of the monsters that do have O-Ice, two are Center of the World exclusive and two are player exclusive - the other two are Ghast and Ice Crab. So Ice is the best overall element. I am at the point though where those two enemies are relevant, so for now, Toma will be packing Thunder books.

Diversionary discussions regarding the effectiveness of elements aside and getting back to the task at hand, the Nasty Dungeon contains another Defend Sword. But more important than getting even more DEF was...well, still getting even more DEF. Due to limited inventory space, I chose to forgo picking up the majority of the items. Toma's use for the bulk of them was questionable anyway.


And here on the sixth floor is the Parasuit, the ultimate armor. This thing adds a massive 73 to DEF for humanoids. It has O-Fire, O-Ice, and O-Change on it. It even grants a bonus of +15 to STR and AGL. And it gets it all done in one armor slot. Non-Robots (who only get +32 and can stack armor as usual) must/get to unequip all other pieces of armor to wear it.

You might be thinking that there must be some sort of catch. Maybe it isn't as efficient? Well...not really. The best of the rest: Arthur Armor (+31, O-Stone), Dragon Helmet (+20, O-Para), Ninja Gauntlet (+10, O-Weapon), and Hecate Shoes (+6, +15 MANA) is only 67 DEF, and all the status immunities are granted by Parasuit. The only real reason not to use it is if you want some of the things that it can't offer, such as Dragon Armor's total elemental immunity, Hecate's MANA boost, or the Giant equipment's STR boosts. There's also two in the game!


This frees up a ton of inventory space for the character. More than I know what to do with! And yes, just like with Robots being able to pump their stats far higher than what is displayed, Toma actually has 113 DEF here: the 40 natural that he'd built up, plus the 73 from the Parasuit. Toma could theoretically have a grand total of 172, but this is still more than enough for now.


Also in this little alcove are two interesting weapons, both with 30 uses. The Psi Gun deals MANA*12 weapon to a group. Sadly a weapon that is truly limited in this game. The only ones you can get are here and in the Final Dungeon; no enemy drops them. The other is the Vampic Sword. It deals MANA*6 damage, and can absorb HP from anything that isn't a God, Plant, Hard, or Undead-type enemy. Just like with similar skills that served me well in past challenges, this will come in handy on a few specific bosses.

This feels like a good final breakpoint. Next time, I'll clean up what's left of this game and complete this challenge.

[System Error]

So before actually opening those two chests, it's inventory management time. The Giant equipment's time is almost through. I'll keep them and Hermes for just a bit longer. I will want to keep hold of the Ninja Gauntlet and Dragon Helmet - there will be at least a few points where I'll want to equip Hecate Shoes, so that means no Parasuit. On the other hand, they're not unique. That Vulcan was a random drop and can go, being weaker than the Tank anyway. Which itself is questionable. Its main purpose was to make up for the DEF deficiency against those Hatamotos. Yet its damage output is perfectly acceptable.


Of course, all that DEF I'd built up means nothing against the likes of these things. I sent Toma through what was left of Nasty Dungeon to help build MANA, but I couldn't see any piece of equipment in Nasty Dungeon that was immediately worth going out of my way for. He actually ran out of all magic at the end and had to rely on his Tank and that Vulcan for a bit, only for a Thunder spellbook to drop.

With not much else to do, Toma marched through Valhalla Palace to take out Odin. For whatever reason, the game was insistent that Flare be replaced with O-Stone here. I had to reset several times because of intrusive replacements.


Wizard Staff is an interesting weapon. It inflicts instant death on a group of enemies, powered by MANA. The odds of success seem fairly high. There's one here and one in the Nasty Dungeon. The rest have to be obtained from Wizards in the Center of the World. I never ended up using it.


Odin was a simple affair. Every Flare Book use now did over 1000 damage. The only thing I couldn't stop was Gungnir, which did around 300 damage a shot. That high DEF actually did help; with just Hecate Shoes on, Gungnir did 470ish. It did 385~ with 76 DEF. This meant it took Odin three shots - sometimes two depending on how much Sleipnir damages him - to take down Toma. Who could deplete his 3700HP in four Flares, not factoring in any use of Cure. Factoring in Toma's own, Odin could never kill Toma. In the end after several resets...


I ended up getting a nice bonus: a MANA up and a Gungnir to play with if I want!


Then it was back to the Nasty Dungeon for the second Defend Sword on floor 5. May as well go as far as I can practically go with this thing, if only for a laugh and to become truly immune to just about all physicals! I did this later rather than sooner because Odin drops a ninth Power MAGI, boosting Toma's STR by just a little more. With this I'd also finally be able to bid farewell to the Giant equipment.


But first, a chance to finish off Toma's HP leveling presented itself. First, let's talk a bit about how stat potions work at high levels. Unlike FFL1, you can't use these to blow right by the stat limit. However, you CAN use them to push just a bit beyond. Body Potions increase HP by 40, and Power/Speed/Magic increase their respective stat by 3. Also unlike FFL1, your stats won't drop if you roll a bonus when they're beyond the maximum, either in this way or through equipment stat bonuses.

This result (obtained when using Tank on Hermit to set up cursor position) is especially good. There's a bug in the game that makes the game consider your HP to have a very low DS level if it's equal to or greater than 1024. The game should move on automatically without checking if the HP is 999 or greater...except it checks after calculating for an increase.


With the two Body Potions in the game, Toma could achieve 1022HP. One short of the maximum safe value, and an extra inventory slot freed. I'll take it.

So my plan with the continued grinding was to strip off some equipment after hitting 72 DEF (DS-9). But...it still kept going up easily enough. What is this? Apparently 1/40 odds not being that bad to trigger. I got Toma's natural DEF so high that unequipping the armor wouldn't even make a difference anymore. Maybe this way is for the best, because he'd have to hit the Hermit and hope it doesn't use Shell across two turns instead of one.

Am I seriously doing this? Well, like I said. I rode the crazy train this far. What's it to go to the last stop, to the end of the tracks?


Just a bit of my time, that's all. This is very excessive to be honest, since most of the truly dangerous attacks (including the bosses from here on out) are based on MANA, are stopped by O-All, or otherwise blows through defenses.


How to gain the last 4 DEF from this sword? From Apollo's World! Most of the encounters here on its overworld are single enemies, and even those that aren't consist of single groups that have a chance to have a single enemy.

Toma now has a ridiculous 153 DEF combined with the Parasuit. Also five open spots in his list of items, wow! I didn't see him using the Giant's stuff anytime in the future, so I threw out the remaining two. I also got rid of the Hermes Shoes for similar reasons. All can be rebought should the need arise. As for his equipment, he's holding onto a Thunder Book, a Cure Book, the Vampic, and a Tank.


Minion was helpless. Only the rarely used Tornado could hurt Toma, the damage of which was easily healed away. Sadly, the loss of all MAGI as always means a loss of damage output. Giving a concrete example using Minion himself with his 57 MANA against Toma's 71/86, across a dozen attacks...

Flare Books
Hecate&MAGI: 1292 average (1258, 1267, 1274, 1275, 1278, 1293, 1303, 1303, 1305, 1310, 1313, 1329)
MAGI: 986 average (793, 798, 801, 803, 818, 821, 1155, 1163, 1166, 1168, 1169, 1174)
No MAGI: 687 average (662, 669, 672, 679, 687, 689, 693, 693, 695, 695, 703, 707)

P-Blast
Hecate&MAGI: 687 average (651, 656, 657, 679, 681, 685, 698, 702, 703, 705, 707, 715)
MAGI: 587 average (551, 555, 560, 579, 586, 586, 591, 600, 602, 605, 606, 607)
No MAGI: 476 average (457, 458, 460, 463, 463, 466, 469, 483, 492, 497, 500, 505)

Er, yeah. About that second result. Typical SaGa coding weirdness, I guess. There's supposedly a potential overflow in how MANA-based damage is calculated, but have no idea what the exact formula is. The explanation in the bugs thread is vague because people testing each other. It also seemed to vary by enemy: Ice Crabs in particular took a lot less than Cocatris with MAGI (842 vs. 1107), but without didn't drop off as much (702 vs. 625), although Watchers still took over 900 with the MAGI. In short, this game is broken and makes no sense. Business as usual. Regardless of that issue coming up, you can see how big a dropoff happens.


The damage reduction was so ugly, that using Tanks was actually better than using Thunder Books! Except in regards to gaining more MANA after battle...but the Final Dungeon decided it was going to be stingy in handing boosts out.


Two treasures were of interest here. The first was a set of Arthur Armor, the best in the game and part of Toma's equipment set should he want to use Hecate Shoes. The other being the XCalibr, an infinite use-Gungnir and one of the best weapons for any human/mutant. Even with his incredibly limited STR, Xcalibr still does insane damage on its own. And it even always hits! For similar statbuilding reasons, it was something Toma didn't use that often.


WarMach has a total of 120 (!) STR. Without the Parasuit, Toma took around 300 damage from each Bash...his only physical attack. With it, it was reduced to around 120. Missile was his most frequently used attack and could do wildly variable damage. I saw 220 at the lowest and 370 at the highest. NukeBomb was also variable, averaging around 500. But I saw as low as 400 and as high as 600.

Being a robot means he has 0 MANA, so every Flare book Toma used did about 970. By healing other every round except when ParaNail is used, the only thing that could kill Toma is if the robot used NukeBomb and rolled high twice in a roll. A book's 10 shots was just short of depleting the robot's 10000HP...except it apparently wasn't, but regardless I had him use a NukeBomb of his own he picked up along the way.


And now the reason for not building AGL at all for the whole game comes to fruition. Remember Mamizou's struggles with turn order against Apollo? That drove me to hacking it down manually because of how horribly unlikely it was to outlast him? Well, none of it here. Toma's complete lack of AGL made sure he went last to heal off all the damage from Masmune or Flare every single turn. No problem!

But we do have some work to do. Not building AGL period isn't going to cut it for solo Human, so we need to find the magic number not to exceed. I last checked 61 corresponding to Naga, which was still sometimes enough to make a character go first. My working theory is that 49 (less than half Apollo's 99) is the magic number, but I checked a few in-between.

55 was too much. 50 was also too much. What I had in mind, 49...was also too much! But the odds of going first were low, but with the amount of HP and MANA (73) Toma had, he could sometimes survive the one-two if Apollo used Flare (did around 400 without Hecate/73 MANA, and even less with Hecate to boost it to 88) instead of Masmune (520-580 regardless of DEF). That was definitely workable with repetition, and humans can build MANA too. And will be doing so. So nice to keep in mind, but not what we came here for. After extensive testing, I believe the magic, absolute safe number to be 40. Across eight battles (totaling around 168 rounds of combat), Toma never went first.


As an aside, I tried to see if Toma could beat him "manually". I believe you need to deal around 15000 damage for this. Toma could deal only around 10000 of that, getting in 5000 free at the start, but the constant healing factor made it impossible to deal the rest from there. Still, easy to win, and his insane DS of F/15 made getting a bonus after the fight easy.


Although...


YES!! WORTH IT!!

Originally going into this variant, I figured that after getting by Apollo, Toma would be free to raise AGL. And indeed, he is! And if I wanted to, I have the perfect weapon: the Samurai Bow is an always-hit fixed-damage group-targeting weapon that raises AGL. And if I want even more, Martial Arts will help. But...is it really worth it? O-All and absurd DEF give all the protection one really could ask for in regards to taking hits due to not moving first. Besides, it'd only serve a purpose for this final run down, and predictable action order is kind of a pleasant thing to have. I could use it for Touch or Vampic, but it's really not worth building up for them. At least, I hope not, because I chose to ditch the Speed Potions.


As another aside, one thing I hadn't noticed before until this playthrough or always keep forgetting: in the interval between taking all MAGI back from Apollo and talking to your father, you really do get all the MAGI back, including the last of the nine Defense MAGI. Useful if you want to do some last-minute activities with them.

More important anyway than that or building AGL is building up MANA. World-shaking disaster in the planet's core or not, we've come this far. We can't stop short of the goal! The enemies in the Center of the World are DS-A, meaning Toma will have a much easier time gaining more!


Getting up to 90 MANA (DS-A) wasn't too bad, except when it came to that last stat point being stubborn. The enemies all died in two blasts of either P-Blast or Flare, or a single Flare spellbook charge if I needed to kill them pronto. Most couldn't do much, although Paladins and users of attacks that ignore defenses could. Now there was two more things to do: first was to get the third Magic Potion in the Nasty Dungeon. Second was to get up to 92 MANA, so that Toma could have the maximum of 101. This came...very easily. I got one en route to picking it up and was going to use our good friend the Hermit for the second, only to get it from an enemy group on a reload.


And so here are Toma's final statistics before he heads down. Inventory-wise, he has his backup equipment, a Samurai Bow for building AGL if he needs to, the Hyper Cannon (instantly wins a non-boss encounter) that I went and grabbed because why not, two Elixiers if he needs them, five Flare books, a Cure book, and a Door to go back up if he wants to. Also an open space in his inventory for drops. Equipment-wise, he has a Flare and Cure book on-hand, his abilities, XCalibr and Vampic if needed, and the Parasuit - totaling 154 DEF. If this isn't enough to get the job done, then that's what Vampic and Samurai Bow and even more grinding are for. But it should be enough!


The way down was actually surprisingly tricky at times. It certainly didn't help that TianLung and Fenrir loved casting Tornado. G-7s (Laser Gun), Intrcepts (Beam, firearms), Moaners (Absorb), Evil Eyes (Beam), Pudding (Dissolve), etc. could kill Toma very easily, 154 DEF and 101 MANA or not. Was hoping to ironman the way down for fun, but between that and potential for ability loss, it wasn't worth it. However, winning the encounters was equally easy: a single Flare book use always worked, and often at this level so did P-Blast or Flare ability. It was just a matter of hoping enough dangerous attacks aren't thrown Toma's way...


I tried to encounter a Haniwa before fighting Arsenal, and did. Flare did over 1000 damage, just barely enough to overcome its regeneration! It could only harm Toma with its own Flares. Though he can't really win this fight normally, if only due to an inventory limit. Of course, I could just do this...


lol. 10/10, game. 10/10.


Toma took up some more Flare Books and Cure, preparing to face off against Arsenal. The first phase was easy, with Flare doing enough damage to one-shot all the cannons. If Mamizou's experience wasn't just a weird one-off, then the second phase shouldn't be much of a threat either.


Priceless.


That just left the third phase. Launching the Smasher did variable damage, and indeed there was a chance to get one-twoed into oblivion. But as long as that didn't happen, Toma could Cure it all away. Alternating healing and attacking was enough.


And that's the game! If you want to watch a video of how this fight basically goes, go here to check it out

So to admit something: this is the first time I've used a humanoid in a FFL2 playthrough - discounting the remake where a lot of the nuances are fixed - in years! I only vaguely recall those childhood playthroughs before my cart fell into the great abyss in my aunt's trailer, except for trouble spots. Whether it was subconscious recollection or my modern attitude, I just didn't want to bother with the randomness of their stats. And well, now I have the math to prove it! A pretty large problem for humans and mutants is exactly that.

While HP building isn't too serious an issue, the main four stats are another story. If their stat's DS level is greater than or equal to the enemy's, it only has a 1/40 chance of going up for mutants and 1/20 for humans. Just being one level of DS below gives mutants a 1/10 chance of a stat increase and humans a 1/8 shot. Going back to this chart shows how much things can stall out when you're in the DS-8/DS-9 regions, and how slow things can be to start. Which often is barely if at all acceptable. I mean, look back at Ashura. The 10 MANA Toma had at the stallpoint was nowhere near enough to damage him!

A few numbers on the exact odds depending on the difference, in order of human odds, mutant odds except AGL, and mutant AGL...
EnemyDS <= CharDS: 2/40 ~ 1/40 ~ 1/40
EnemyDS--CharDS = 1: 5/40 ~ 4/40 ~ 3/50 (12/200)
EnemyDS--CharDS = 2: 8/40 ~ 7/40 ~ 19/200
EnemyDS--CharDS = 3: 11/40 ~ 10/40 ~ 13/100 (26/200)
...

Not too bad, but again, the stalling when it's greater than or equal to the enemy DS is the thing. Meanwhile, Robots and Monsters get their boosts easily enough with the right meat or weapons. Two Robots/two Monsters is therefore more than ever one of my favorite parties for a casual playthrough.

Thanks for reading. Solo Human will be my next FFL2 project after a break and maybe some unfinished business.