More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

So more or less as I figured. But huh, interesting. They still need to take another turn to "die" even after playing the explosion animation?

In other update news...since I was uploading some stuff to my journal including my first article in the form of the FF5 Status Bug, and since FF4 was brought up in the thread, I'd figure I'd do something I've thought about for some time but never got around to until now. A guide on FF4's drop-only items, the madness of the 1/64s which are actually 5/6272s. Probably the silliest things to ever grace a Final Fantasy game when it comes to obtaining them, and I'm counting the Zodiac Spear from XII.

Will probably play some more of mindless jobless rodbreaking hobos tomorrow. Hopefully get out an update the day after.

[RifleAvenger]

In other update news...since I was uploading some stuff to my journal including my first article in the form of the FF5 Status Bug, and since FF4 was brought up in the thread, I'd figure I'd do something I've thought about for some time but never got around to until now. A guide on FF4's drop-only items, the madness of the 1/64s which are actually 5/6272s. Probably the silliest things to ever grace a Final Fantasy game when it comes to obtaining them, and I'm counting the Zodiac Spear from XII.

Wow, I actually got a number of those items on my single playthrough of FF4 w/o grinding at all.  Had no clue they're so rare.  I must of been incredibly lucky.

[Sullla]

I went ahead and uploaded the final version of the FF5 Tier List to my website. The last three jobs were exactly what everyone expected, White Mage and Geomancer and Berserker in that order. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback during the process, and I hope you enjoyed reading along during the process.

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

I went ahead and uploaded the final version of the FF5 Tier List to my website. The last three jobs were exactly what everyone expected, White Mage and Geomancer and Berserker in that order. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback during the process, and I hope you enjoyed reading along during the process.

It's nice to see the final updates!  The "existential crisis" line in the Berserker ranking was funny.  Maybe Beowulf the Berserker should team up with Jesse the Thief to help him deal with the pathos about not being able to use stolen items.


These challenges inspired my solo Exorcist playthrough in Bravely Second.  Using a single character forces you to learn more about the game mechanics and boss patterns.

Why wasn't Geomancer on the original "Insanity Challenges" list?  "Oddball Jobs" is a too kind for a class only one step above Berserker.  Maybe you were expecting it to be easier when you started that playthrough?

[T-hawk]

Oh come on, you bail out from here right as you get to the White Mage. Of course I wanted to see that writeup, although you didn't have any insight that I didn't already. Just to be clear, all those numbers of healing against Byblos and comets from Atmos are approximations, and the five hours against Byblos was in-game time, about 90 minutes of real-world time on fast-forward. The interminable parts of many hours of real time were leveling up (two characters) in the Ronka Ruins and grinding the Elixirs for Atmos. Finally, I admit to cribbing that line "angry Old Testament God smiting the sinners of Gomorrah" from somewhere else, long lost to memory by now but I think not game related.

What I never shared was what drove me into that variant in the first place. I was having a very stressful time in real life (job related) and my best escape for those few weeks was to plow into some brainless game tedium. That was past when I got to the Red Mage a month later and that's why that report and the Necromancer read so much more bombastically.

[System Error]

Heh. Totally agree with Geomancer at 25. I actually think that it is the worst pure job in the game, not Berserker. The latter might not have flexibility, but it does have good damage output - T-Hawk and Sofis' Three Berserkers variants showed that they can become decent with support. Geomancer meanwhile can get reduced to item support against some bosses. Of course a solo changes things: having control is enough to allow Geomancer to squeak by, whereas Berserker is just screwed.

What I never shared was what drove me into that variant in the first place.  I was having a very stressful time in real life (job related) and my best escape for those few weeks was to plow into some brainless game tedium.  That was past when I got to the Red Mage a month later and that's why that report and the Necromancer read so much more bombastically.

Huh. Always interesting to read about the backstory of things. I noticed that difference in writing, though attributed it to being used to solo games not to mention playing easier ones than White Mage.

Speaking of stuff like that, busyness is getting in the way of my varianting, but have been working on another article. It's by no means complete at the moment, need to do more research, but
_____

The mobile port of Final Fantasy V - and by extension the Steam port and other derivatives - is an unusual one to be sure. People seem to love or hate the new graphics - mostly hate. A lot of unwarranted hate from people who prefer the SNES version...and would likely complain even if it was a straight port of that.

Regardless of that, the mobile version makes multiple changes to the game. Some that help the player. Some bugfixes or interesting things. And some that makes your life more miserable. In particular several changes that affect the final battle make the game significantly more variant unfriendly. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but as much as I could find has been listed here.

BENEFICIAL CHANGES:
- !Defend now doubles the user's defense AND halves the enemy's M.
- !Kick now ignores row. Makes it a bit more useful.
- !Animals Bee Swarm now inflicts Poison.
- !Sing can increase stats to 255, rather than capping at 99 as in previous versions.
- !Jump now only costs 10AP to obtain, rather than 50A. Small favor.
- !Condemn works on targets with the Heavy Flag, besides Salienta, Doom, and Still Wing.
- Twin Lance now counts as a lance when used with !Jump. Furthermore, it will apply its double-hit effect with !Jump, !Focus, !Mineuchi, !Rapid Fire, and Sword Dance.
- If the Thief Knife triggers !Mug and the character has two weapons equipped, both weapons will be used.
- Berserk status was buffed. Character inflicted by the status will always target front row enemies if possible, and due to changes in the ATB, will attack more often.
- Most attacks that deal percent-based damage, such as Breath Wing, may be evaded. Great unless you're Beastmaster.
- Magic Lamp's Catoblepas summon targets all enemies.
- Magic Lamp's Chocobo summon is always Fat Chocobo.
- When shopping at Karnak for the first time, you can buy more than one of an item at the discounted price before getting arrested.

NEGATIVE CHANGES:
- !Blue magic Vampire misses heavy targets.
- !Focus can not longer deal critical hits.
- !Mix Dark Sigh is no longer unblockable.
- !Mix Death Potion is no longer unblockable.
- !Catch and !Release with Ironback has been nerfed, the damage is about halved.
- Dark Bow appears to blind less often (?)
- Defender can no longer be used as an item to cast Protect.
- Lamia enemies in the Ronka Ruins originally exclusively charmed males. This is no longer the case on mobile.
- Catoblepas' Drain spells are stronger.
- Necrophobe's Hurricane now hits all allies.
- Tree Exdeath's evasion has been increased (?)
- Resisting the death or petrify effect from White Hole will not resist the other effect.
- Almagest cannot be blocked with Aegis Shield
- Grand Cross will now ALWAYS have an effect, inflicting a status the target does not resist.
- In a bug, most enemies that have multiple forms - such as LiquidFlame, Metamorphas, and most notably Tree Exdeath - are always considered to be in the back row.

OTHER CHANGES:
- !Scan does not work on Omega Mk.II, although reflected Libra still does.
- !Sprint no longer works exclusively in towns and dungeons, it works in the overworld and even on vehicles.
- !Gaia always functions as though the characfer were Lv99 on SNES/GBA.
- Most !Dark Art spells have been made reflectable, besides Drain Touch, Dark Flare, and Doomsday.
- Lilith Rod works differently. On SNES/GBA, attacking with it uses !Flirt, followed by a 25% chance to cast Osmose. On mobile, it has a 2/3 chance of !Flirt and 1/3 chance of Osmose.
- If the Dancing Dagger triggers !Dance and the character has two weapons equipped, the other weapon will not have its strike replaced.
- Setting Confuse/Berserk no longer zeroes ATB.
- The trigger for Tyrannosaur's Poison Breath counter has been changed from Wind/Earth/Water/Holy element attacks to !Blue/!White/!Summon/!Time/!Black spells.
- The random encounters on the first few floors of the Sealed Temple are now enemies and formations exclusive to it rather than lategame encounters.
- Characters' turns can be temporarily skipped, like in FF6 and later games.
- Status ailments are visible on enemy sprites.
- Optimize no longer equips "cursed" items (Thornlet/Bone Mail/Cursed Ring).

BUGFIXES:
- !Blue magic Vampire is back to using the SNES formula of half the caster's missing HP.
- !Catch and !Release with Gel Fish and Moss Fungus now properly casts Banish on enemy targets rather than the caught monster.
- !Calm now only works on Magic Beasts as intended.
- !Mineuchi is functional, dealing half damage and setting Paralysis on the target.
- Power Drinks are functional.
- Switching equipment in-battle does not remove certain !Mix effects or refresh Mirage Vest's Blink.
- Archeoaevis now drops all five !Drink items as intended.
- The Pantera battle was broken on GBA, this has been fixed.
- Dragon Pod now has Auto-Regen as intended.
- World 2 Exdeath now has Auto-Regen as intended.
- Galuf can't use instant death effects on himself to end the plot fight with Exdeath early.
- Fighting Gogo no longer causes glitched messages to appear as in GBA after his triple Meteor.
_____

Though speaking of mobile stuff...wonder how good Final Fantasy Dimensions is for solo class variants? Given the nature of the game, probably "not very".

[rho21]

From the berserker:

the Sumer Famicom version

I know we're into retro gaming around here, but that's getting ridiculous.

Thanks for writing these up. Well worth a read even though I've never played a FF game.

[JTWilson]

Not only did they gratitiously buff White Hole and Grand Cross, Neo Exdeath also seems to move through his scripts a lot faster..and Almagest isn't telegraphed at all, from what I could see.  I didn't have much trouble with a nonvariant party (Hard to fire Grand Crosses when getting slammed with 9999s from a massively Bardsong buffed, ultra fast party..) but yes, almost any variant at all is going to have an even harder time with the final battle in the most recent versions.

I happened to be flipping through the algorithm guide (for no real reason) when I noticed that Part 3 of Neo Exdeath is at level 81.  Naturally, Dark Shock -> Level 5 Doom suggested itself as a method to take it out and I quickly glanced at the notorious Part 1.  Level 83..so it would need 2 Dark Shocks.  Parts 1 and 3 have 75 and 76% magic evade, respectively, so it would likely take several tries (at best) to get them all to land.  It definitely seemed more plausible than trying to hit Shinryuu with it, and then they could be taken out simultaneously after taking out 4 with Magic Lamp Odin or Condemn and 2 with Break.  So I gave it a shot (fortunately, I had done an all Blue Mage variant and just had to load their save file) and it only took a few test runs (and a whole lot of unsuccessful Dark Shocks) before it was working consistently (if slowly); I was taking out Neo Exdeath without inflicting a single point of damage.              

Then I thought..what about the tree part?  Level 77 doesn't lend itself to being exploitable with Dark Shock/Level 5 Doom but I remembered reading somewhere that, since Level 2 Old drops levels as well, Level 5 Doom will work as long as the timing is right.  That's when I got the idea to win the final battle using nothing but Level 5 Doom to dispatch all of the parts..



After 3 tries, Dark Shock lands and Tree Exdeath is at Level 38.  After casting Level 2 Old, there are 7 chances to strike with Level 5 Doom.  Without Libra to check the level (I wonder why they made !Scan useless against bosses..) it's a matter of guessing the timing.  Fortunately, with 4 Blue Mages, the chances are very much in my favor.  And sure enough..



Cara turns him into purple mist!  I had wondered if this unusual end for the tree would mean Neo Exdeath could be skipped, but instead..



Hey!  Where'd Exdeath go?  Who's chewing the scenery right now?

So after the Void devours nothing, Neo Exdeath makes his usual appearance.  First order of business; get two Dark Shocks on Part 1 and try to minimize the number of Grand Crosses.



Luckily, I got some extremely favorable dice rolls and it took just 3 attempts to connect with the first Dark Shock..and only one more for the second!  No Grand Crosses whatsoever!



Next step: take out part 3 with just a single Dark Shock/Level 5 Doom.



This one took 33 tries..that's more realistic.  Fortunately, with Part 1 gone, the only threats were physical attacks, spells, and Almagest, all of which a Blue Mage party can easily handle.



Halfway there..interesting placement on that skull though, hmm..

Now, as for parts 2 and 4..part 2 is level 67 and has an 80% magic evade, so 2 more Dark Shocks are going to be needed to drop it to level 16 and make it vulnerable to Level 2 Old.  However, there's only 3 chances to hit it before it drops to level 1.  (As a side note, it is possible to use !Mix for a super cheesy strategy..use Old to drop anything non-undead and/or auto-reflective to Level 1, then cure the aging status so it doesn't just drop right back down after using !Mix.  Use the +10 level mix, then Dark Shock, then Level 5 Doom.  For some reason, when I tried this on iOS, it wasn't consistently raising the monster's level back to 11 or 21, but to 4-5 or 16-17..very strange.   I only tried it on Tree Exdeath, but I wonder if that's another change they made..)



I was fortunate again, though, as this only took 12 tries; 3 for the first, 9 for the second.  In between, it cast an Almagest that only hit for ~550 damage between Shell and having its level reduced.  As for part 4, it's at level 86 and thus can be hit with Level 2 Old immediately.  So now, it was time to age the two remaining parts and try to hit them with a simultaneous Level 5 Doom.  Since their levels both ended in 6 now, so long as both their levels drained at the same rate, it should work..



Level 2 Old inflicted..spam Level 5 Doom!



Wait..it only took out part 4..if I miss my chances on part 2, is a Level 1 enemy going to flatten the Blue Mage Brigade with Meteos? 



Instead, on the next turn, Bartz says "I got this" and not a single Meteo was cast.




Thanks to all for the tremendous amount of information (and entertaining commentary!) on this thread and all of the reports..it got me back into FF5 about 20 years after I'd played and beaten it, staying up all night in my college days..</nostalgia>  I somehow still have that save file and it's funny to look at it and see all the equipment/spells I missed..I had no idea that there was a Chicken Knife, let alone where to get it and how to power it up, for instance.  I'm going to do the Four Job Fiesta this summer and use what I've learned..should be a blast!

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Congratulations, JTWilson!

When I did my 4 Blue Mages playthrough, I think I cast Aero 3 in the Neo Exdeath fight instead of anything creative like Level 5 Death.

You can scan bosses in Bravely Default and its sequel Bravely Second, so Square Enix must have been listening to players complaining about it not working in Final Fantasy!

The mobile version of Neo Exdeath sounds more like Necron from Final Fantasy 9.  You can stock up on status immunity abilities in that game, but Necron often finds ways to give you a Game Over no matter what you do.

[JTWilson]

Congratulations, JTWilson!

When I did my 4 Blue Mages playthrough, I think I cast Aero 3 in the Neo Exdeath fight instead of anything creative like Level 5 Death.

You can scan bosses in Bravely Default and its sequel Bravely Second, so Square Enix must have been listening to players complaining about it not working in Final Fantasy!

The mobile version of Neo Exdeath sounds more like Necron from Final Fantasy 9.  You can stock up on status immunity abilities in that game, but Necron often finds ways to give you a Game Over no matter what you do.

Thanks! 

It's Four Job Fiesta time again and I'm excited for my first time running it.  I'm going with Pure Chaos/Natural (similar to Sullla's run last year) though I'm wondering whether I should use the all jobs code and just roll with what I get from the very start or have each character freelance until their job unlocks legally.  The latter seems more challenging at face value but I've seen here just how useful/versatile Freelancers can be..hmm, maybe I should wait until I see what jobs I'm getting before deciding either way.  And either way, it should be a lot of fun..

EDIT: I got a team of Hunter, Black Mage, Ninja, and Freelancer (of course!)..this is Team Glass Cannon; lots and lots of strong single and multi-target offense, no healing/buffing aside from the Freelancer's bag of tricks, and not much physical defense..this party is going to have to win battles quickly but they'll have the means to do so. Having a Black Mage should carry the party from the Wind Crystal to the Fire (I want to avoid rod breaks if at all possible) and then they should be just fine, so I'm going to try this without the all jobs code. I can't think of any of the normal bosses this group could have trouble with; if there's no elemental or status weakness to exploit, there's more than enough physical damage.

Since there is a Freelancer, though, it makes the Brave Blade/Chicken Knife decision a lot tougher..I'm going with the latter as I figure that either the Ninja with the Double Lance/Chicken Knife combination or the Hunter with X-Fight will ultimately do more damage than a Brave Blade wielding Freelancer due to their lack of Strength. (It's probably pretty close either way, though..)