More Final Fantasy

[Sullla]

The equipment weight is not an issue. I have the minimum weight already, and it doesn't help much. I've already had the solo Berserker kill both Launchers without getting hit by "Valiant Attack", therefore allowing him to survive two Surge Beams. The problem is that you still need to deal 12,500 damage in five attacks. Even with a Doom Axe, averaging 2500 damage per hit is not realistic unless your level is crazily high. Also remember that you only have 85% odds to hit, so even if the Berserker hits all the right targets in the right sequence, odds are that you'll miss at least once. Not very likely.

If you roll the absolute maximum damage possible on every Doom Axe attack, and never miss on all five attacks against Sol Cannon, you can kill it at Level 62. If you want some sort of realistic chance of winning that doesn't involve 1000 repetitions of the battle, you need to be substantially higher. Yes, all of this is still in world one.

Also please remember that Berserkers are extremely slow, with by far the lowest Agility in the game. They get far fewer attacks than normal characters. This is why your math is off, majora; one round from Sol Cannon (speed 55) does not equal one round for the Berseker (speed 16). Someone really had it out for them in this game...

[Amelia]

So how did other solo Berserkers kill Sol Cannon? Powerleveling?

I assume that restarting until you hit Sol Cannon only and the launchers do not target you at all is out, since that will take like 10,000 restarts...

[T-hawk]

Yeah, so what is your plan? Seriously going to go to level 62 or higher in world one? Or adopt an Atmos-like workaround, like keep a second character alive just to feed an Elixir or two?

[Sullla]

T-Hawk, I am *ALREADY* at Level 62. I had to get that high to beat the Sandworm, and that was on attempt #637 at the battle. (Not joking: I've been tracking this stuff in Excel.) And that's because I "limited" myself to 150 attempts at the Sandworm between each round of power leveling. Needless to say, I'm rather suspicious of those online claims where they beat bosses at the absolute theoretical minimum level possible using the solo Berserker. I've actually run the hundreds of trials. It's not easy.

Right now, I'm taking some days off from this. The Sandworm was so unbelievably draining from a mental standpoint. I can't confront Sol Cannon immediately. I'll run 100 or so attempts at my current level, see how close I'm getting, and figure out where I need to be for a reaslistic shot at victory. Personally, I think you need at least a 5% chance or so. Just because you might get it done at 1/1000 odds doesn't make it worth the repetitions (and that's not even taking into account repetitions in the RNG, which definitely do happen, such that it might not even be possible to get a "winning" sequence of random numbers!)

Not going to do any cheating though. I can beat these bosses eventually with enough levels. If I have to go into the 70s, well, so be it. I'll have to be that high for Atmos anyway.

[majora4]

It turns out my math was flawed, because I somehow got the idea that the Berseker has 21 agility. That messed up all of my other calculations rendering my solution invalid. Plus, as it turns out, killing the Launchers in one hit isn't as important as I had first thought.

With revised math, the Sol Cannon must take a total of 22 turns before he fires the second, lethal, Surge Beam, and that takes 1430 ticks of the ATB. In that same amount of time, a Berseker with a speed of 16 can get in exactly 13 turns. Because the Sol Cannon gets his final turn at exactly the same time the Berserker gets his, I would assume that the Berserker would die before getting in that 13th hit.

You have 8 turns to actually attack the Sol Cannon (that is 12 turns minus two to kill each Launcher) and you need to deal 12500 damage to win. That amounts to only 1563 damage needed per attack. At level 66, equipped with the Guardian Dagger, the minimum damage you can deal is 1540 damage. I'd say that falls within a reasonable chance of victory, wouldn't you?

[Iainuki]

Do you expect you'll need to be 99 for NeoExdeath? Is it possible even at level 99?

[T-hawk]

The problem is that you still need to deal 12,500 damage in five attacks.

With revised math, the Sol Cannon must take a total of 22 turns before he fires the second, lethal, Surge Beam, and that takes 1430 ticks of the ATB. In that same amount of time, a Berseker with a speed of 16 can get in exactly 13 turns.

These don't reconcile. 5 attacks or 9 after killing the launchers? I'll give the edge to Sullla, since he's actually playing it rather than mathing it up in theory. Anyway, I can't help but think we're all still missing something regarding the mechanics of speed. I've seen several situations where monsters acted faster than my character even though it seems that shouldn't be true. I don't buy Sofis's explanation that monster ATB continues to tick during the animations for character action; it doesn't seem that using slow stuff like Flare or summons makes it any worse.

At level 66, equipped with the Guardian Dagger, the minimum damage you can deal is 1540 damage. I'd say that falls within a reasonable chance of victory, wouldn't you?

Is that damage calculation from the GBA version with the knife damage bug fixed? I get M = (49*66)/128+2 = 27 from strength; the damage value for a Guardian Dagger vs Sol Cannon's defense is 36*1.5 - 5 = 49, making the total damage 49*27 = 1323 without figuring in agility.

Needless to say, I'm rather suspicious of those online claims where they beat bosses at the absolute theoretical minimum level possible using the solo Berserker.

It's believable if they're using emulator rewinding and save-states, which seems to be the default assumption much of the time. Possibly even input recording as well, having the emulator automatically play back the controller input to walk to whichever boss and begin the battle. And having the emulator wait exactly one more frame on each attempt to ensure using a new untried RNG seed each time.

[Iainuki]

Is that damage calculation from the GBA version with the knife damage bug fixed? I get M = (49*66)/128+2 = 27 from strength; the damage value for a Guardian Dagger vs Sol Cannon's defense is 36*1.5 - 5 = 49, making the total damage 49*27 = 1323 without figuring in agility.

Does the GBA version fix the knife damage bug? I was running some damage calculations the other day for the GBA version on the Full Moon (Moonblade Ring is what the GBA calls it, IIRC) and when I included the factor for agility, the math turned out different from in-game testing but using Strength only matched the in-game testing. A discussion on the bugs fixed and introduced in the GBA version on the GameFAQs forum backs me up on this point. I've heard arguments that fixing the bug actually makes knives overpowered, because Square never noticed the bug itself in testing, but noticed that knives did too little damage and so boosted their damage values to compensate. I have to say that after running the numbers, it looks like knives are often the best weapons without the bug, which seems... odd.

[majora4]

A realization dawned on me today that the main problem of trying to predict the outcome of this battle may not be math related, but rather a logic error. The math says a Berserker should attack 13 times, but the reality is that you only get 7. I also ran the numbers for a Knight, with an agility of 26, and predicted 15 attacks, and then I tested it in the game and got 8 before dying.

Now, the actual number of attacks is roughly half the expected value, so my conclusion is that the Sol Cannon takes half as many turns as we previously thought. I guess displaying text on the screen doesn't actually reset the ATB of a monster.

In any case, that means that the required damage to win this battle is 2500 per round for five rounds. In the SNES version, due to the knife damage bug, the problem is that a dagger just can't produce the necessary 2500, even at level 99. The Doom Axe is highly unpredictable as far as damage goes, but it seems that's the only option.

[Sullla]

Yep, pretty much. If the Berserker doesn't avoid those Valiant Attacks, you get 4 attacks before dying. If you do avoid them, then the Berserker gets 7 attacks... but you need 2 of them to kill the two Launchers, so it winds up being 5 attacks against Sol Cannon. 5 attacks means 2500 damage needed to win. I suppose you could dodge a half dozen Valiant Attacks, and hit Sol Cannon itself 7 times in a row at 1/3 odds, and also never miss on the 85% hit chance... but that's really stretching the math to nearly impossible levels.

I'll definitely get this done eventually. Might be a while though.