More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

Actually have started solo Human - and it's incredibly creative, so look forward to it. But I am making progress on the aforementioned unfinished business, so let's talk about that for the moment!

----------


So it's been like half a year, but let's get back on Solo Monk for FF1 PSP. I decided to delve into one of the bonus dungeons next, specifically the Earthgift Shrine. These open up when you beat the fiends, and consist of various floors that are randomly ordered. Earthgift's four floors consist of remakes of the first two floors of first dungeon of FF3, a big wide-open desert, and this purple hellhole.

This goddamn floor right here. There's several guards blocking your path, and talking to them initiates an encounter. It's just one of the many random encounters that also plague this floor, nothing special. You need to fight 13 of them if you want to get through the area - and you need to fight. If you run, it doesn't count and the soldier doesn't go away. Add in all the random encounters, and you have the reason why I hate this place. This stupid place takes twice, if not thrice as long as the rest of the dungeon!

The good news is, that Earthgift Shrine doesn't have much in the way of unique treasure, so you're not missing much by skipping the chests - and our additional no armor restriction helps. What's in this chest is one of the things otherwise offered - Kenpogi is a 28 defense piece of armor for a Monk or Master that gives +3 to Strength. Not the strongest new equipment for them, but pretty good. However, there are four possible bosses at the end of it - all the Dark Crystal bosses from FF3. Which means you're going to have to go through this stupid place at least four times to get a completed Bestiary.


I did this part of the report back in May of 2015, so I forget how much of it went. I wrote stuff down, but not much. As for the dungeon itself, the regular enemies are new, but aside from the rare Abyss Worms in the desert (who actually do show up and wreck Sofia's face, just at look at this insane power!), just different flavors of punching bags. Discounting these anomalies, the enemies in the Sea Shrine are tougher!


I chose to have Sofia fight Echidna first. This was...uneventful. It loves instant death attacks, but its Earthquake (CRACK) and Death (RUB) both missed. It used a lot of physicals, which didn't hurt at all. And eventually, Sofia won just by mindlessly attacking, without even needing to drink Strength Tonics like she did with the others. Okay then.

Cerberus and Two-Headed Dragon are very similar to FF3. In former's case, it loves casting Thunderbolt, which can be handled with a Blue Curtain item (casts NulShock/ALIT). The latter is thankfully nowhere near as bad as he is in FF3 itself, or even those nasty randoms. It only did 253 with one attack, which quickly went down to 0 on average after a few uses of the Defender I wish I could remember more about Ahriman, but didn't write anything down. But I won, and that's what counts.

For a comparison of power to the main game, I'd gauge these things around or below the level of the revived fiends. They each have 4000-5000HP, have their trademark immunity to everything because good game design, and some nasty stuff but nothing unbearable.


And that's the extent of what I played before this huge break. Firing the game up after all this time, I was apparently sending Sofia to pick up the Chime, as well as trying to get a good level going from 51->52. I didn't stress this one too much, getting bonus HP and Agility in addition to fixed Strength, Intelligence, and Luck. Stamina was just too stubborn to show. The game happily welcomed me back on the way to the airship with a 1/64 that was promptly splattered all over the forest floor.

I'd done some of the Sea Shrine before, and not being 100% sure why I was headed to Mirage Tower, decided to do it now. In addition to the SLAB (Rosetta Stone), Sofia had the Mage Staff on her. The enemies here could sometimes hit hard, but were no big deal. Just touching them was lethal. Throwing out electricity was on the table specifically for the sake of a 9-pack of Sahagins not taking a over a minute and a half to beat (yes, I timed it). Somewhere along the way, she went up to 14 hits and continued to kill absolutely everything in one hit.

Sofia did gain levels on the way to Kraken, which I did pay attention to. Most notable was the last floor. After getting one level up, I got a billion encounters in the big room before the boss, giving enough experience so she had to grind out another level before this. The rate of leveling is pretty ridiculous, about one level every 4-6 fights, so there was a lot of resetting involved over the course of gameplay, with few breaks in-between.


The octopus itself was a simple affair. Either party would three-shot the other with nasty physical attacks (Kraken having 1800HP in this version), with catches to each side`s effort. Kraken as usual doesn't always decide to use his physicals, and Sofia could've gotten it done in two attacks depending on her rolls - that one in that stitched picture being on the lower end of the spectrum and not one of them, yet still a third of its 1800HP in this version. Easy fight.


Now before we move on, behold! One of the problems with the newly-unlocked Lifespring Grotto. See that orange dot hiding in the southeast? That's where I parked the ship. The Grotto is reached through a whirlpool in the ocean near Melmond. To be able to access it easily, you need to take the airship over to where the ship is, take the ship and park it near Astos' Castle, then make the trip all the way back to your airship. I went ahead and did this now, and found the trip to be amazingly painless. Didn't get swarmed by random encounters on the river or anything.

Then um, I somehow didn't save the whole way through, put the game down, had to reset on a bad level-up the next day, and had to do it again! Was a bit worse that time, but not too bad.


Mirage Tower, what's there to say? I collected the treasure, and made my way through. Vampires were surprisingly annoying. No Ribbons means no defenses against status ailments save for Magic Defense. Sofia did have as much of it as she could, yet lacked perfect protection. She got stunned and destroyed twice, also once getting wrecked by Perilisks. Still, no big deal, especially since I was resetting a lot for level-ups anyway. What's a good level-up, you ask?

- If the level-up does not contain a fixed Strength or Stamina gain, getting at least one of them randomly.
- If the level-up contains a fixed Strength or Stamina gain, either getting the other, or a bunch of the other stats.
- If the level-up has both, at least try to get at least one other thing. Agility is preferred, but anything is welcome.
- Who cares about HP, it'll be maxed soon anyway.

Is this incredibly extreme? Well, yes. There's stat-up items in the extra dungeons if I want to go excessively far or fix some deficiencies, but why not? Besides, those Stamina gains are important for providing defense and offense.

Yet another 1/64 greeted this variant, in the form of a Blue Dragon on F2 (which is what the shot is from). That and the fixed one both fell in one punch like any other random enemy.


The useful Black Shirt was claimed in the Flying Fortress to complete the trifecta of elemental items. Level 62 was reached on the first floor of the not as hi-tech looking in this version dungeon, and brought about 16 hits for Sofia. As you can see, she'd also gained enough HP to max it out by the point of this screenshot. The dungeon cranked the encounter rate up to 11, absolutely refusing to give me any quarter until the last two floors, when it gave a bit too much. Nothing was threatening - here's another one of those 1/64s for that matter.


Of course on that subject, is it really a System Error FF1 variant without this thing showing up uninvited? I did try to urge this along at first by trying to get two boosts when trying to go to Level 68 (Stamina and Agility for a five stat level-up). I didn't get it during it, although got 3/64'd like in the NES version - which are Dark Fighters in this version. Yet on my way there after the level after a couple foolish deaths to the boss (I for some reason didn't save next to it), it made its obligatory appearance. It was a preemptive attack, so Sofia punched it for insane damage. It actually survived this, since it has 2000HP in this version - also restoring 100 at the end of every turn, since enemy regeneration works. Sofia punched it down next turn for the flawless victory.


Oh, right. It gives 32000EXP. That was more than enough for a level, which only gave Sofia a fixed Stamina gain. Even when I kill it, it finds ways to screw with me! Then through fault of my own, I forgot to cap the victory so had to find another one so I could stitch it here (the original just being of the level gain).

That one did no better. Sofia preempted it too and it did get off a 240 damage laser, but fell in two turns as well. It gave up only slightly better results in the sense that it gave a Luck point too, but surprisingly did drop a set of Genji Armor - one of the new pieces of equipment in this game. It is notably the best armor a Warrior (not a Knight) can equip in the GBA version, although there's a new one here. Sofia couldn't equip it even if she wanted to, so this was just another reset.


Speaking of forgetting to take pictures, I picked up but otherwise forgot about the Giant Gauntlets in the Sunken Shrine. Unlike the NES version, these are perfectly functional. Saber boosts the user's attack by 16, and their accuracy by 10. The latter is capable of breaking the limit of 255, with a cap of its own that ultimately allows a character to get double the amount of hits. The Speed Drinks work the same way, for the record.

I employed them against Tiamat for fun. Sofia's attacks were doing around 800 damage at a minimum against the four-headed dragon without any bonuses. Four uses of these - the safest she could go in this fight, various deaths coming from trying to pump up too hard - and...


...she was up to 18 hits, and was able win in a single blow. Now granted, that took five turns compare to the three of just attacking normally, but it's the principal that counts! These will definitely be seeing use as I dive into the rest of the bonus dungeons.

[antisocialmunky]

All FF Ports on Steam are 50-75% off this weekend if anyone cares.

[English Language]

Thread necroing to report some progress on Blue Mage(as Freelancer) solo vs Omega I started waaaaaaaaay back.

Shield switching is the in strategy here, and I have a pretty solid strategy for taking him down.

First, his AI routine, followed by my response to each row in bold.

Equipment
Weapon: Chicken Knife(I go fast enough where I always get the first turn even without the Masamune)
Shield: Aegis Shield, swapping to Flame Shield occasionally.
Armor: Rainbow Dress (for confusion countering. No Bone Mail because I need Elixirs)
Head: Ribbon(obviously)
Accessory: Hermes Sandals(again, obviously)

With Chicken Knife+Haste, I can go 1 for 1 with Omega turn-wise.

First turn: Mighty Guard. Shell reduces Mustard Bomb damage and makes his spells less liekly to hit, Float to negate Quake.

{Atomic Ray,Delta Attack,Blaster}: Aegis Shield blocks Delta Attack, Sandals keep Blaster away. Atomic Ray might deal damage. I then swap to the Flame Shield, using White Wind if Atomic Ray hurt me, Waste Time otherwise.
Surge Beam: Heal.
{Rainbow Wind,Emission,Atomic Ray}: Harmless. Rainbow Wind does zilch, the other two heal me. I then swap back to the Aegis Shield and Waste Time.
Surge Beam: Heal.
No Interrupt{
{Delta Attack,Blaster,Surge Beam}:Surge Beams literally the only threat in this row.
{Maelstrom,Quake,Rainbow Wind}:Maelstrom is literally the only threat here. Virtually game over if it lands though
}: Only real danger is Maelstrom. If HP Sap from last beam wore off, an Elixir will save me unless the first row's Surge Beam comes in. If Maelstrom didn't hit, then this is my time to 1000 Needles him.
Targeting: Pointless. Swap to Flame Shield and Heal.
{Rainbow Wind,Emission,Atomic Ray}: Swap to Aegis Shield and Waste Time.
Surge Beam: Heal, go back to top.

As I mentioned last time, 1000 Needles is the Blue Mage's only means to damage Omega. Omega is in permanent Reflect, has 95% magic evade, a major level advantage, and absorbs all elements but Lightning(an element the Blue Mage doesn't have) 1000 Needles is auto-hit, does a set amount of damage(1000), and can't be reflected. Goblin Punch and Mind Blast can hit him, but the first does 0 damage and the other requires a Reflect Ring(giving up Haste) and won't out-damage the reflected Atomic Rays.

Unfortunately, Omega has about 55,500 hit points, meaning it'll take exactly 56 1000 Needles to kill him. This means I need to eat 56 iterations of his counter-attack script without Encircle landing. It's only a 1/3 chance of even showing up and has to land through both Shell and the Aegis Shield, but there's a very good chance it'll land eventually when running through it 56 times. Not even counting the fact I have to go through his normal attack script at least 56 times with it's own pitfalls.

Healing-wise, my general rule of thumb is if I have at least 2000 HP, use White Wind. Less than that is risky, so an Elixir is used, or if I somehow have too low MP to use White Wind. Because of this, MP is no issue in this fight.

Waste Time basically just means I do anything on that turn, be it using an item or just defending. The reason for this is swapping shields doesn't seem to "take" until I've actually taken my turn, so I just do something to keep it going.

There's a very clear path to victory here, it'll just take some time and luck to run through without the nasty stuff hitting.

I also realized I might be able to run the Magic Lamp down to Ramuh to get a free shot of Lightning damage. If it deals over 1500 damage, then that'll be worth using to lower how many cycles I have to run through. Also cycling the Wonder Wand for a shot of Thundaga can work too. Even moreso since Flare comes right after. I'll experiment a bit.

EDIT:Minor update

Decided to go with the Flame Shield most of the fight, only switching to Aegis before his 2-turn routine. Ribbon protects against Blaster, Delta Attack, and Rainbow Wind(not that Rainbow Wind is a threat anyways), and Flame Shield could absorb his opening Atomic Ray, saving me MP and Elixirs.

Ramuh's a no go. It dealt around 1200 damage to Omega, meaning it would still take the same amount of attacks to win. Bahamut is also out. Then i tried my brilliant strategy of Thundagaing him only to blow myself up on his Reflect. I realized I should bring the Magic Lamp to CARBUNCLE, then bounce a Thundaga off myself for my first attack. This dealt about 4800 damage, taking about 4-5 attacks worth of damage at once, making it extremely worth it.

Current record is 13-14 1000 Needles on Omega before dying to Maelstrom. Far cry from 56, but the fight is definitely doable. I realized I could probably survive Maelstrom if I'm in the item menu when it hits me, so I can use an Elixir immediately. Won't help if Maelstrom drops me to 1 HP though. I'll keep working on it.

[System Error]

So in honor of a fallen comrade in the speedrunning community, I'm doing the secret option in the Four Job Fiesta. aka the one that forces Four Berserkers on you, much like he got last year. Haven't started it up yet, but this'll be fun! And masochistic.

Small progress report on FF1 PSP Sofia Monk while we're here - I just need to find motivation to get the right seed when going through Whisperwind Cove, and I should be ready to finish the report off with an update of the bosses up to the superbosses, said bosses, and then styling on Chaos.

[System Error]

Not an update for Berserking (need to fire it up and automate Sandworm grinding some more) or Solo Monk PSP...but something else I've been sitting on forever that I've gotten inspiration to do!!

So two years later, let's continue Rosa's trip through FF4, through the postgame.


Though Yang's trial was the first I could go in, I chose to tackle Edward's first for reasons I'll get to when I actually do it. Nothing to report here. The Specters were one-shot by Rosa and slaughtered by Edward in stereo. Lunar Shiva got the usual treatment - two Slows for her, two Hastes for Rosa, and...a barrage of Fire Arrows, because they were slightly more reliable (and used much less resources) than Holy. I got some stupidly low rolls, that said...


The White Dress was between this floor and Rydia's floor. Rosa's ultimate armor, it isn't really anything special - +10 to Spirit, highest defense she can get aside from the Adamant Armor, and that's about it.


Also in this same floor, Rosa hit 99, so let's see where things went on that front of not monitoring her stat growths. Rosa's level 70 stats are 48/32/42/22/71. I got owned pretty hard here, really - 29 levels to increase, and I hit option 1 or 2 (0 Spirit) 8 times!! Even for displaying the difference between well-looked after stats and not, that's pretty surreal. The net result is 13 Strength, 16 Agility, 7 Stamina, 3 Intellect, and 21 Spirit. Supposing they were perfectly looked after, all of those would see increases of 29. This means less magic defense. Have I screwed my own ass? Let's continue and find out.

By the way, one thing I forgot to mention about the Platinum Toad from Palom's report. Just because you beat it doesn't mean you'll have been considered to have caught it, which happens at random. This is ordinarily a somewhat welcome thing, as it drops a Megalixir regardless of that result. It wasn't a factor for Palom or Edge, who had no trouble killing it. But in Rosa's case - who needed to use limited Hourglasses on it - it was. Caused a couple resets, because I didn't want to waste even one.


Lunar Odin turned out to be a hilarious fight. I was matching him stride for stride at first. Holy a bunch, Curaja every Zantetsuken except the first. Throw up Reflect just before his own Holy to avoid a horrible death. Happen to run out of MP right before the double Zantetsuken, so use an Elixir to heal. He got off the double Zantetsuken, but Rosa handily survived it. Risking just an X-Potion from here to survive the next one, which I get away with. He's low enough to win from there. Also, all this with the Artemis Bow on for not-99 Spirit. I reloaded and tried it again for kicks with Spider's Silk and the right equipment, and was able to beat the double if I wanted..


As gone over before, Lunar Asura has a pattern of rolling her head and performing a counter that depends on what color head she has and whether you performed a physical or magical attack. This is actually more convoluted than I initially thought due to the state of the faces after counterattacks.

Being in a state means having used its attack last. If the face rolls on its own, it will immediately use the color's associated attack and be in that state. If the face rolls as a result of a counterattack, it will be considered to be in a different state in spite of the color until it uses that color's associated attack on Lunar Asura's next turn.

- White State = Curaga. Roll to red naturally. If physically attacked, spin to white/blue state and use physical. If magically attacked, roll to blue face/red state and use Thundaga.
- Red State = Toad. Roll to blue naturally. If physically attacked, spin to red face/white state and use Mini. If magically attacked, roll to white face/blue state and use Restore.
- Blue State = Firaga. Roll to white naturally. If physically attacked, spin to blue face/red state and use Blizzaga. If magically attacked, roll to red face/white state and use Globe 199.

For example, if you attack the red face physically and trigger the Mini counter, and attack again before it can change, you'll get the physical/Thundaga counters despite the white face showing, since it's in the blue state. But if you wait for it to use Curaga, you'll get the white state set of counters. Or another way to tell which state the face is in...

- White State: Curaga, Mini, or Globe 199 last used.
- Red State: Toad, Blizzaga, or Thundaga last used.
- Blue State: Firaga, physical, or Restore last used.

Anyway, a convoluted explanation for a simple boss to execute. There were two different ways to go about this fight. Rosa could do like Palom did - that is, blasting with a strong spell when the face was in a white state, waiting for Lunar Asura to use Firaga, then attacking. Or she could catch her in a slightly faster, or at least much more fun loop - Reflect on herself, attack the blue face with arrows, Blizzaga gets reflected, wait for Firaga to be used/reflected, repeat. This cuts out a bunch of the waiting, as well as her Curagas.


The prize for this fight is the White Ring, turning Rosa's Pray command into Miracle. This is something that's generally more useful in a full party than in a solo variant. Statistically? Well, let's compare to the standard handy equipment for that slot, the Protect Ring.

- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +15 Sta, Resist Fi/Ic/Li
- White Ring's stats: 15 Def/18 Eva/20 MDf/15 MEv

Statistically stronger...if you ignore the other bonuses Protect Ring gives. Furthermore, it almost seems as if the Curaga/Esuna thing is a lot more rare than it should be, or I had the worst luck ever when testing. Either way, it's not reliable enough to substitute for proper healing.


A few floors later, I happened upon the floor with Rosa's ultimate bow. The Perseus's Bow gives a mere +10 to Spirit, but is otherwise statistically stronger than the stupidly rare Artemis Bow the game decided to cough up. And in the second town in the Ruins, there's Perseus Arrows!! ...which are really expensive!! I guess if I wasn't running from fights all the time

Now granted, there are moments where we'll run into enemies that absorb or respond negatively to Holy, including Lunar Dragon. But they shouldn't be "let's spend all our money on arrows!" dangerous - and it, after all, is still a Dragon. Something else did occur to me here though - in solo challenges, you can sell Megalixirs for a ton of money, and spend it on regular Elixirs. So I went ahead and bought 99 anyway, not anticipating much trouble on that front.

So this was the end of my first trip into the ruins. I was going to fight Brachioraidos here too, but its floor hadn't spawned - there's multiple floors in a set, and only three spawn each time.


After a solo exception to get the rest of the challenges ready, the next step was to get some more Artemis Arrows for Brach and Lunar Dragon. Unfortunately for me, the game was in one of those moods where the RNG is out for your head in a ridiculous way, and I only ended up with a couple drops across 80-90 kills of Selene Guardians. But I did however get three Soma Drops (and an Ogrekiller) which compounded the hilariousness.


So Yang's trial. The reason why I didn't do this in the first place was lack of resources. Rosa lacks an easy ability to target them all. They do at least have a fire-elemental weakness. With more Fire Arrows and some Fire Fangs from the lower floors, she was able to use the former on the Soldier Monks and Super Monks (with a bit of Slow and Haste), and the fangs on the Drillmasters. To contrast, Lunar Titan was a cinch. Ribbon blocked the instant death stuff, Float blocked Earthquake, and a few Protects put his physical damage in the double digits.

I would've done Rydia's trial, but defeating Brachioraidos is something that occurred to me. Being a Dragon, it's quite vulnerable to the Artemis Arrows, and I had an extra trip through on my hands anyway since I couldn't fit Palom, Porom, Edge, and Kain into the party all at once. So I just kept going, to at least test the weapons' effectiveness on it should I pass by it.


Something that would be interesting to talk about is this floor here. Similar to one in the final set (where Ivan Ooze 2.0 is), this area is full of monsters that resist physical attacks; namely Flans. Neither is really a problem for Rosa who can do both adequately, although of course we're running from everything...


...except these things! Who could pass up a chance to get the Pink Tail? The bad news is, these things aren't the rarest encounter here, so you can't use Sirens to manipulate them. The good news is, they are somewhat more common (although not common enough for me not to go on an annoying dry streak that sees enough Gil dropped in it to negate an entire fight of these things), and come in packs of 8 instead. When I ran into a second group after, I decided to give it a try.

Naturally, Rosa has a much harder/more tedious time of this than those who can multitarget and deal a ton of damage. The best shot she has is using Holy twice on each of them and beating them all to death. It costs 560MP a fight, but I did have a few fangs to use to deal the finishing blows, if I didn't want/in tandum with beating them with the Rune Staff to save on arrows.

The first fight gave up an Elixir, the second a Fuma Shruiken and Dry Ether. Liking my odds so far! The question is, especially after the dry streak, do good things come to those who wait...? Wait like two whole hours...


Oh, wow. I actually got it. The tenth try at these fights, which was going to be my stopping point. I also get plenty of money in the process, so that's no longer a concern if it still was one.


To talk a bit more about the ruins...this floor is full of bombs on the field to avoid. If you bump into the gray one there while doing a solo, you better be ready to smack it down enough to a point where you can tank it, or get ready to die instantly (it has 9999 health). Mercifully, you always get a preemptive against these. Best way of course, just dodge it on the map.

Lunar Ramuh, what's there to say? Blitz (used at random and to counter magic) and Lightning (used after charging) both do a percent of HP at damage, and Protect Ring reduced it to a mere 10% (764 for Rosa). Just needed to kill off Cid since he was automatically revived, and heal every now and then.


All right! Let's do this!


...all right, let's not. That Scorch is ridiculous, and that turned out to be a low roll, too.


Of course, we have that Pink Tail, so get owned. Once we get back to you! I took the time while I was out to buy 30 Elixirs, bringing my stock to 50. The Adamant Armor will render Scorch worthless. The other way would've been by buffing her HP with Apples, but even that isn't a sure thing as it can sometimes hit 9999, and the personality test floor being stubborn to show helped put a damper on that strategy.

I chose to go through with Edge's and the twins' trials for my third trip through. There was no point in arrowing either - Holy did so much more it was sad. Again a reminder that when at low HP, Lunar Ifrit actually gets weaker, charging up to do an incredibly weak Flamethrower rather than a somewhat stronger Flame than does a percent of max HP. Did they get it backwards or something?

I happened by the deeper leveled fairy fountain 3/4 times across my Lunar Ruins explorations. I also used them all those times, as they're a free MP restore and give up a Megalixir. Having to rekill my party is a small price to pay.


Lunar Leviathan...Palom needed the Adamant Armor to protect against its Entangle. Edge could just use the Assassin's Vest. Rosa did have the former, but didn't need it - the duration of the paralysis status is reduced by having a high Spirit. So even a situation like this wasn't scary. Rosa would just get another turn before him and I'd have her Curaja or Elixir.


Out one last time, and hopefully in one last time! None of the basic summon bosses were of any threat - just Holy away. The holy-absorbing Lunar "Dragon" was another story, and turned out to be a huge slog. A few shots from Artemis Arrows (as shown here) revealed that a guide lied to me, and this thing totally does not classify as a dragon. That meant falling back on the Perseus Arrows, and then later Yoichi Arrows when I ran out. No problem, right? We've done it before!

The fight wasn't that simple though. It casts Slow each time it turns into mist, and between the speed reduction and the 9999 HP Restore every second time, outdamaging its regeneration would eventually become impossible. The solution was simple - Haste/Hermes Sandals up, Slow/Spider's Silk the "dragon", and cast Reflect. The timing on it was easy - the wall was down and ready to be refreshed every time the dragon turned into mist. Just had to plink away at it forever.

Lunar Bahamut was of course elementary for Rosa. When an enemy has a single reflectable attack, and really not a lot of HP anyway, it's zero threat.

I thankfully saw the second town in the Ruins again, allowing me to spend some of that money/Megalixirs that was piling up on 198 Perseus Arrows and more Elixirs, bringing my stock to 65. I'm not running out, that's for sure!


With the Adamant Armor, Scorch only did a single point of damage. Brach is indeed a dragon, and does take a ton of damage from Artemis Arrows. The game's superboss actually has a simple pattern, as long as you don't attack him when he's counting down to Mega Flare: Scorch -> Physical -> Double Physical -> Scorch -> Double Physical -> Begin Countdown. So this means anyone who can survive the Scorches (very tough), can evade or tank the physicals (simple enough), and has enough Curtains (or Reflect) can keep him in this cycle endlessly. Rosa might've been able to do it if she had more magic defense...but again, demonstration led me to this.

If you do attack him when he's triggering the countdown, he uses Protect and Reflect, beginning a barrage of spells off his wall - the most dangerous being a Bio/Holy/Flare combo that kept on killing Rosa. So I just never triggered this phase. I'm not sure what happened back then with Palom that made him not do this, although I'm pretty sure he himself had enough magic defense to endure that nasty combo.


There. Of course, Rosa would only get to use this for three more rooms in the game, and would have to forgo a bow and arrow to do so, but it's always nice to have this thing.


So final battle of the bonus dungeon! The boss with an HP Leak/critical combo, which instantly kill you if your character ends up with 4 or less HP, like right there. Because I expected Holy to be the offense, I went in with Rune Staff and Hero's Shield. I also forwent the Adamant Armor, since that's a bit silly to be using - I never actually ended up using it except for travelling.

The strategy was the usual - slow the boss, haste Rosa, and go in. Zeromus EG does cast Reflect in response to magic, but a Curtain, self-Reflect, or Bestiary to trigger him giving you a Reflect off his own wall keeps you in-business (and he'll constantly refresh your Reflect). The difference between Rosa and Palom is that Flare is stronger with less of a charge time - it instead did like 2500-5000+ damage. This meant twice as many uses of it, which meant more chances for the HP Leak/critical combo to get me, and it eventually got me with ZEG at 60000/200000HP.

I was trying to do it without them, but even so, the status Grimoires are of questionable help - Rosa's damage output is too low to make a difference. What else? If it comes to it, Adamant Armor will give a bit more agility, but...


So remember how some of the Grimoires supposedly poison ZEG? Well...they don't. Okay, one of them does, but the others don't. I found out when using one to try to add some chip damage over the course of the battle is what these actually do is lower his stats. I used Grimoire LO, and suddenly, Rosa's Holy was doing a ton more damage. Double, in-fact!

- Grimoire LO: Halves magic defense, doesn't seem to wear off
- Grimoire LL: Slow effect, not sure how potent
- Grimoire LA: ???
- Grimoire LS: ???
- Grimoire LI: Inflicts Stop, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LR: Inflicts Silence, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LT: Inflicts Mini, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LB: Inflicts Poison, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LD: Inflicts Toad, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off

I haven't been able to find information on what LA or LS do, although they don't seem to lower its magic defense or physical defense (at least as far as I could tell). Nor have I seen this behavior of LO mentioned anywhere. At any rate, I'm not complaining, and glad I figured this out! Makes this much more doable!


So the strategy goes - Spider's Silk, Haste three times because I'm dumb and used all my Hermes Sandals, wait for Whirl, Elixir if not dead, Lunar Curtain, bounce Flare, Grimoire LO, and bounce Holy off Rosa's wall repeatedly! Wait for Whirl as needed. I could've indeed played it safe with the other Grimoires to buy more time, but I only needed that one Grimoire, and actually forwent the Hero's Shield too to see if I could. All it really adds is more agility. Zeromus EG never uses Black Hole until its second phase, so the speed adjustments are perfectly fine.

A hailstorm of these and one accidental Rune Staff bonk because the menus lag like crazy and made me accidentally click Attack later, when it was at way lower HP than it really should be, ZEG switched to the following pattern.

- Tidal Wave -> Tornado (non-critical HP)
- Five Physicals
- Five Physicals
- Fira -> Blizzara -> Thundara -> Absorb
- Black Hole


Rosa killed it before the physicals (which wouldn't have worked before Black Hole anyway due to Barrier status from the Lunar Curtain). And that's the postgame!

All in all, Rosa impressed me quite a lot. She's an incredibly versatile character, although her pure physical power starts to wane as the game goes on, forcing her to rely on Holy and racial damage modifiers to get through. I originally didn't do this dungeon with Rosa because I thought it would be uninteresting. Well, it still managed to be this time! I can't guarantee I'll be able to fully complete it with everyone, though. Brach and ZEG can be nasty fights. Still, if there is a path to victory, I'll find it.

Certainly the next character I'll do is sketchy in the former's regard. But it's worth it!!

[Boro]

I'm playing a living off the land styled variant for my first run of FFV. Styled because I still buy the white/black/summon/dimensional spells in shops, as to avoid locking myself out from one class or another.

It stops the game from being too easy at least, as I had no way of countering Flash from the Crew Dusts in the steamship without the ability to buy eyedrops in stores, aside from the Mantra skill of monks, which I forgot to read when I first got it and disregarded as just a mediocre heal.

Having a thief (glove + capture) is insanely useful for keeping my party more or less stocked on equipment. I got mythril swords/daggers as far back as Worus Tower! neat.

I also don't use ANY town services. So if I want to camp, I either have to break a tent out at a save point, or run back to the ship graveyard to "catch a few Z-s". It's good I can always choose to stock up on some ethers/hi-potions in the steamship instead

[Fenn]

I've always wanted to do a run like that. It seems like it would become easier later on, as unique equipment found in chests becomes more prominent and common than storebought gear, but there's still important things like Flame/Coral/Angel rings and Black/White Robes that you can't really find multiples of. Not allowing yourself to use Inns is pretty brutal, it must discourage grinding since it takes so much longer than normal to stay topped up. Keep us posted!

Myself, I've had a concept for a FF1 challenge kicking around that I don't think has been done here before, I'm hoping to get around to it in a little while.

[Boro]

According to one faq/monsterlist that I've been using, there are dragons* that can drop the rings/have the rings stolen from, at some point in the game (I'm just past the ancient library), and enemies in the library have ethers/potions/hipotions that can be stolen, so it's a rather manageable now that I'm past the karnak escape and picked up Heal. (I was well advised to these fights thanks to T-hawk/Sullla's solo reports, so I even redid the liquid flame battle until I got the flame bow, because why not? I love looking at weapon collections.)

The garkimasra were done after/around that part as well, as I wanted to have Shiva for the ifrit battle (just for the sake of having her, I didn't change anyone to summoner) and I somehow gotten into my head that she's past the garkimasra, sitting there with the elf cape. The solution to those basement-dwellers was ninjas tossing mythril swords / shurikens, and one character being bare to equip the heal staff and the ribbon (to be able to control him), with some blue magic (aqua rake) to help in between healing. 40-70 damage (Once berserked from the moon flute)eventually did the bastard in, no running was required. Their moon flute was the key to their own demise)

Once looting worus castle basement I actually found Shiva sitting behind that waterfall (on the bottom floor of the dungeon behind the waterfall actually). oops. At least the ice soldiers are a renewable supply of tossable mythril swords.

one thing to note is that I don't have as good access to speedup/pause as most people here, because I'm using my tablet and it's touch interface for playing this game. Hence my retries of liquid flame.

*red dragons have flame ring as rare steal
*Yellow dragons rarely drop coral rings
*Bella Donnas have coral rings as rare steal
*Bardandel, Druid, Silvune have angel ring as rare steal

[System Error]

Interesting. Heard at least of one person trying that for FF5. It doesn't seem like it'd be that bad, especially considering how much you can steal and such.

Also, interested in what that FF1 challenge. Completely out of ideas as to what it could be - maybe a solo something that isn't Black Belt or Black Mage.
__________

So completed my latest FF4 solo. Just a mini analysis for here.



Yang Fang Leiden (carrying his daughter from the sequel there, couldn't find anything better) is of the Monk class, and as an aside has some of the most awkward-looking sprites in the game - right up there with pastel-haired hobo Paladin Cecil. Much like in many earlier Final Fantasies, his strength comes from training/leveling up. His sole weapon class, Claws exist to boost his accuracy and give his attacks elemental or racial properties. Much like Edge, he's ambidextrous, and capable of equipping two at a time. When he has two on at once, he takes the average of the accuracy bonuses.

He has three battle commands. Gird is a self-cast Protect. It can sometimes fail to be applied, however. Power is similar to Kain's Jump, minus the invulnerability. In fact, it lowers his defense until the attack is made. And while this is not a factor for this version, Power also ignores Yang's row in regards to calculating damage. Usually not worth it except in certain circumstances, due to that defensive reduction and the charge time - it's almost always more efficient to just attack twice. It is nice to have against counterattackers, of course.

And finally, Kick damages all enemies. No elemental/racial effects from Yang's weapons are applied. What seems to happen and what the Algorithms Guide says doesn't quite jive, though it could be an observational error or GBA difference. What may happen: the attack multiplier is halved, rounded down. What the guide says happens: the attack power is halved. Whatever the case, it's a decent, if quirky command when facing down groups.

Because Yang fights with his fists/claws, his attack power is not calculated by his weapons, but by the formula (Level+1)*2 + Str/4.


Compared to the other solo monks I've seen and done, Yang definitely is the most consistent. He's fairly solid for the whole game, not being pathetically weak at the beginning nor brokenly strong at the end. Still, a lot of boss battles came down to using the appropriate elemental/racial claw (he can use all four normal elements, and hit Mechs, Ghouls, Undead, and Dragons for effective damage), using Elixirs when needed, and/or just holding A. Under the right circumstances, he can kill insanely fast. Still, if you're willing to grind (had to do 279 fights for that tail there...) and fight for it (Brach), he can get a pretty hilarious setup.

You can read the actual report itself on my journalblog. The next character I'm doing is the total opposite of your average solo Monk/Black Belt, though!!

[Fenn]

Some time ago I completed the NES version of Final Fantasy for the first time. Soon I was thinking about variant runs, and settled on something I'll call the Half-Mage Challenge. My party will be two White Mages and two Black Mages; out of each pair, one will be restricted to HP restoring and damaging spells, and the other can only cast 'indirect' magic: status inflictions and removal, buffs, debuffs and the like. It's kind of like running a BM/WM duo, except with their powers spread amongst four people.

I'm also going to be using this bugfix/restoration mod, so the report will be a bit of a showcase of that too. The important changes for this run are:
-Intelligence adds to spell accuracy (spells cast from items and by monsters don't use INT though)
-All bugged spells function as they should (Monsters with <80 max HP may stay sleeping, TMPR/SABR boost Attack etc)
-Weapons use their intended crit rates; crit rates are slightly higher earlier on, but much lower overall
Plus some other minor bugfixes and enhancements, like being able to buy 10 Heal Potions at once. These bugfixes, especially the INT fix, will probably make the game easier, so this party will take on some additional restrictions: I will not use spellcasting items, and I will not cast TMPR or SABR more than once on the same character during battle. I may reconsider the first rule when I make it to the final dungeon, but the mages' physical frailty is a part of this challenge; buffing them up to superhuman levels feels wrong somehow.



I went with a "complementary" naming for our four heroes; Alpha and Nova will specialize in direct magic, while Gamma and Terra take up indirect status and buff spells.

With only 400G to start with, we couldn't afford both spells and weapons; accordingly, Gamma skipped Cure for now, letting us buy Hammers for the White Mages, while the Black Mages took a Wooden Staff and Knife. The rest of the gold went towards Blink for Alpha, Sleep for Terra, and Fire for Nova. Now to kill some Imps..


Er, Goblins. At level 1, this party was hardly towering over these weaklings; Alpha would usually begin by casting Blink (RUSE), Gamma would attack, and the Black Mages would either cast Fire and Sleep or swing their weapons - they often couldn't muster up even the 8HP of damage needed to kill a Golbin, so they'd gang up on one just to make sure. The party had to retreat to an Inn every two or three battles as they ran out of spell charges or Alpha got low on hitpoints. Fortunately we had some gold left over from the first round of purchasing, or we might have been in danger of bankrupting ourselves from Inn visits!

After a while of this, the team reached Level 2 and we had enough money to purchase Cure for Gamma along with Clothes for everyone. These offered a pitiful 1 Absorb, but it was the best the magely group could manage. At this point we were strong enough to venture farther afield and challenge stronger monsters near the Temple of Fiends. They could even handle a Gigas Worm x2 encounter thanks to Sleep and Fire, but limited spell charges meant that the party couldn't hang around long. After saving up for HARM for Gamma I ducked in to retrieve the Leather CAP; this doubled Alpha's Absorb to an earth-shaking 2, and frying a Ghoul along the way earned another level for the party.


On the way out, however, the party was ambushed by another Ghoul who paralyzed Alpha right off, then paralyzed Gamma before she could let off a Dia, finally felled Alpha with a 22-damage hit on Round 3 before we finally killed it. What awful luck! I made it back to Coneria and revived Alpha without further incident, but that battle served as a reminder of how fragile this party really was. Without Blink up the White Mages were a punching bag for monsters, and let's not even mention the Black Mages.


Garland was handled like other moderately tough encounters: Blink, Protect and beat him down. Sleep stuck to Garland twice, although of course he woke up immediately. Soon enough, the mages emerged victorious - feeble as they were, it was four of them versus one of him.

The party ran into some trouble with with Crazy Horses on the way to Pravoka - including two seperate 2x Crazy Horse ambushes that fortunately were escaped without anyone dying - but we managed the trip on our first attempt, albeit passing the detour to Matoya's Cave as being too dangerous.

After visiting the Inn, I had the team try to fight the Pirates just to see if they could win. The Pirates dished out a lot of damage on Round 1, but didn't KO anybody, and Terra's Sleep spell locked down 8 of them in one go! From there it was trivial to mop them up one by one, with only a couple of the Pirates waking up before the end. The fixes to Intelligence and Sleep's duration made a big difference here: without at least one of those factors I'd probably have had to fight random battles to reach Level 4 and buy the Dark spell. This would likely be Sleep's last hurrah, though, as most monsters from here on out will have close to 80HP or more.

Now with 433G in hand, I had enough to buy Gloves for everyone - just 1 Absorb like Clothes, but it was the only armor they could use. After that it was time for some cash grinding to pick up Level 2 and 3 spells for everyone (this has always been a weak point of FF1 for me - there's so many new things to buy, and the Marsh Cave is a big enough bump in difficulty that you do want to get most of them). At first the group fought around Pravoka, retreating to the Inn after every battle - two Ogres were about as much as the mages could handle if they went all out. With the addition of Dark to Terra's arsenal the party could more easily handle large groups of enemies, so it was off to the seas and Elfland.


At this point, Nova is far and away my best damage dealer, being the only one capable of doing more than about 20 damage at a time, but Terra's been quite useful too; Dark and Sleep can together shut down entire encounters, preventing all those horrid physicals from getting through. Admittedly less useful now that I have Thundara, but still helpful for conserving those charges. Alpha is a semi-effective tank thanks to Blink (later I bought a Copper Bracelet for him, once again doubling his Absorb to a colossal 6), and Gamma's curing let me avoid some deaths. None of my party members have stood out as being useless thus far.

Anyway, much level grinding later the party earned enough gold to outift Alpha with a Copper Bracelet, Gamma with Heal and Diara, Nova with Thundara/Fira and Terra with Hold (mostly so she has something to do with her L3 charges), and the BMs with Large Daggers. The team headed for the Marsh Cave at level 8.

I ran from most battles down there, as almost all of our offence came from Nova's and Gamma's limited L3 magic, and I had only 20 Heal Potions to last for the whole expedition. Lots of Ghoul encounters happened while I cleaned out the north wing, but luckily we managed to run from them all before things got out of hand. The trip to the third floor was similarly uneventful, but disaster struck while looting B3 when four Scorpions ambushed the party. We managed to run on the second round, but not before they killed poor Alpha. Could the mages see off the Wizards without a tank (of sorts) in front? I was going to find out. No more collecting treasure; I beelined towards the Crown room and found:

Only two, nice. Nova's Lit2 killed one outright, and a Lit on the second round finished off the other one. That was easy, but I still had to get out of there, which looked much less likely after some Gargoyles had their way with Gamma. Indeed, halfway back through the second floor the Black Mages got stunlocked and killed by two Ghouls and some Zombies. Bad luck, but I knew it was possible, so it was back in for another attempt. This time I knew where to go on B3, and snagged the Iron Armor/Cottage/Copper Bracelet without much fuss. But the Crown chest was guarded with four Wizards, who flattened Gamma and used up all of Nova's L3 and L1 charges. The party had better luck with the random encounters this time - although several large groups of Ghouls appeared, the mages managed to run from them all and avoid the paraplinking menace.

After making it to the surface, the party Tented up and trekked to Elfland. Terra had used almost none of her status magic in the Marsh Cave - didn't have Slow for the Gargoyles and most everything else resisted Dark/Sleep - so she let loose on the various overworld creatures on the way back. They managed to defeat an Ogre/3x Gigas Worm group with thorough use of Dark, Hold, Sleep and their piddly physical attacks! Not very efficient, but it was fun to watch three wizards beat down mostly helpless monsters.

Against Astos, my plan was to blast him with Nova's Thundara charges, or alternatively cast Hold and Mute until one of them stuck, then Temper three people (remember, I can't stack Attack buffs per variant rules) and take him out from there. The first attempt at this ended in failure, but on the second attempt Hold landed and we got to work. Nova had eaten the Death spell at the beginning, but between the attack boost from Paralysis status and Temper the mages were dealing about 1-30 damage on each attack, which sufficed to whittle down Astos's HP total. Score one for status spells! Not that Nova's attack spells couldn't have removed Astos's 186 HP on their own..

The Mystic Key brought enough gold to purchase FAST,ICE2 and CONF, and long-delayed weapon upgrades, as the Mages handed in their worn-out weapons for arms of Mythril. The Mythril Hammers were especially powerful, being able to overcome enemy abosrb without the aid of TMPR, but the Mythril Knives brought the Black Mages within a few points of 32 Accuracy and 2-hits, which would give them credible physical offense for the first time.

Here are the party's spell lists as they sail into Melmond (everyone at Level 9):



Nova's been the most essential member so far with his damage spells, but Terra's status magic has been useful in its own right - Dark was handy for sea encounters before I could afford Thundara; Hold is a useful, accurate spell when I want to save Nova's charges; and Temper was essential in the Astos battle. Alpha's main claim to fame so far is Blink, but I expect the Bar-spells to see some use later, and Invisara/Protera are sure to be gamechangers. Gamma's mostly used for Dia/Diara, though her healing spells are sometimes handy in battle when Heal Potions can't cut it.