More Final Fantasy

[English Language]

More Nostra fun.


In the process of farming for gil to buy a Flame Ring, I gained another Oracle rank and obtained APB Up, which gives me 1.5x normal APB after battle. Handy I guess, but not so much for a single class run. The rank-up also took Condemn's timer from 10 to 7.


And lo, the Flame Ring.

Story events continued, bringing me to....


Everyone' favorite giant Sandworm boss, the Sandworm.
Condemn is out due to heavy flag, so !Predict is my main tool, and I had a way to make it more useful. My Mp starts at 135 for this fight, making the !Predict here a Divine Judgement....


Dealing respectable damage. I used it at Rank 2, however, to bring my MP to (135-3=)132....


and a 2 digit triggers the Eruption, dealing fire damage to everyone. However, the Flame Ring let me absorb it instead of die horribly. Using it at rank 3 bring my MP down to (132-7=)125...setting my next !Predict right back to Divine Judgement.


Spamming those two in cycle made for an easy fight. Hilariously, I actually screwed up this fight and used Eruption at rank 2, bringing my MP to 119 and cycling !Predict to Pestilence, a Poison element attack that carries...well, Poisoned. However, before I got a chance to break out the Flail and resolve for simply beating the boss to death, he up and died suddenly from Eruption's HP Sap. Game, you are too good sometimes.

Interestingly, despite hitting everything on both sides of the field, !Predict does NOT trigger the Hole's Demi counterattack for whatever reason. Strange, but I won't complain.

Ronka Ruins went fast, and on to...




Crayclaw, who's fight can be summed up by the images. I lost once from his Tailscrew/Mucus lose combo, but the second try he used Mucus once and it missed, and Healing Staff was more than enough to counteract Tailscrew. As for Adamantoise...


No Heavy flag or Death immunity means dead. I actually forgot to snap a picture of him alive. Heh.

The 4 turrets before Sol Cannon are zero threat with Healing Staff and Flame Ring, and Doom took care of them quickly. And now to farm for Angel Ring gil.

[Sofis]

Condemn is out due to heavy flag, so !Predict is my main tool, and I had a way to make it more useful. My Mp starts at 135 for this fight, making the !Predict here a Divine Judgement....

Dealing respectable damage. I used it at Rank 2, however, to bring my MP to (135-3=)132....

and a 2 digit triggers the Eruption, dealing fire damage to everyone. However, the Flame Ring let me absorb it instead of die horribly. Using it at rank 3 bring my MP down to (132-7=)125...setting my next !Predict right back to Divine Judgement.

You can also do the same thing with Cleansing and Blessing. Less damage, but doesn't require the Flame Ring.

No Heavy flag or Death immunity means dead.

Doesn't Condemn bypass Death immunity? I think it's only being Heavy or Undead that protects against it. I believe it functions identically to the Blue spell, just with a different timer.
On tat note, one thing I remember finding out is that having a Condemn timer on you makes you immune to Doom (is that what it's called? I think it's different between the fan translation and the GBA version), apparently those go in the same slot. Not terribly useful, since you won't have time to put one on during the first round against Exdeath, but interesting.

[English Language]

Excellent, this should be easy. Angel Ring, then spamming my usual....wait, that's right Angel Ring, so no Flame Ring for absorbing Eruption as I rather painfully discovered. So my usual Eruption->Divine Judgement cycle is out due to that. However, my max MP is 310, the 0 triggering Cleansing, which doesn't hurt me, and can be cycled with either Starfall(which can inflict Death and is therefore ignored), and Blessing, which is a powerful Heal that can apply Regen. And in need of an Elixir, it won't mess up the cycle. Guess it's a good thing I got those extra levels. Looks good, let's do this.


Here's Cleansing in action, and it dealt heavy damage to both Launchers and Sol Cannon, but not quite enough to kill then. No matter,a quick blessing followed by another Cleansing will do it. And BAM, 2 thousand damage all around, not bad...but why are the Launchers still attacking? And where is the explosion animation? What the hey?

Checking the algorithm, !Predict does not trigger counterattacks at all, hence why I never ate a Demi during the Sandworm, and apparently the self-terminate the Launchers use at <10,000 HP is considered a counter . So I had to whack them with the Flail, downing 3 Elixirs to stay alive.




All-in-all, pretty routine aside from the Elixirs needed. Did have to give SolCannon a whack with the Flail too once it's health was low enough to trigger the self-terminate.

The ruins themselves were pretty routine. Grabbed the treasure for selling later even though I can't use the majority of it.


Then brings me to ArcheoAvis. My plan is to do a use the same strategy of using the Fire form as a heal point that some of Sullla's solos have done.

Needless to say, it started out perfectly. The Undead form is trickier as always, though had one moment where I was Confused, then hit by maelstrom, then smacked myself with the Healing Staff in confusion. Oh Nostra you card. I tried to be smart and Healing Staff him to add extra damage, but apparently he doesn't have the usual Undead property with that, so nevermind.


And after dodging an abnormally large amount of Maelstroms, Entangles, and managing to avoid other shenanigans, Nostra defeated ArcheoAvis without too much trouble. The timer over Nostra's head was a Rejuvenation ready to go off in case something happened.


Titan died without issue.


The Puroboros were difficult. Cleansing->Blessing->Cleansing was a no-go, eventually one would Self-Destruct for survivable damage, causing it to be revived, then it could revive the others. However, I had a plan...


Which worked! I cycled !Predict to Divine Judgement which has a chance of also damaging the enemy's MP. It sadly didn't do so on the first shot, so I used Hurricane which i barely survived and killed 3 of a Puros, and a 4th exploded for 15 damage. I used Divine Judgement against and it damaged the last 2 to near-death, and nailed one's MP. I used Condemn(Doom) on that one kill it and let the other one use a 300 damage self-destruct.

Chimera Brain went down without issue. I didn't even get a pic of the fight.

Abductor ate a Doom.

Galuf went the way of the Samurai as per usual solo strategy.




This is, to date, probably the silliest fight I've had against Gilgamesh in a while. I INTENDED to wipe out his MP with Divine Judgement so he couldn't buff himself, but it didn't take. So I was forced to eat a Hurricane and Healing Staff myself back up. I tried a second Divine Judgement..again, didn't take. So I then had to go ahead an use Eruption(I has the Elven mantle on, so I would get damaged). Gilgamesh is dropped low enough to go into his buff stage. he goes into his speech, uses Jump...then immediately drops dead before Jump actually lands. As the second picture shows, had Jump managed to land, I would have died instantly. This fight did take a few tries even then.

I equipped my new Wizard Hat and made my way across the rest of the bridge.

More later.

[English Language]

You can also do the same thing with Cleansing and Blessing. Less damage, but doesn't require the Flame Ring.

Yeah, whenever I need another accessory equipped, that's my go-to combo. if I have the Flame Ring however, I try to stay with the more damage set-up :P.

Doesn't Condemn bypass Death immunity? I think it's only being Heavy or Undead that protects against it. I believe it functions identically to the Blue spell, just with a different timer.

From what I've been trying, it won't even apply the timer to the enemy if they have an immunity to the status. Not sure if it's different with Death though, but Frog wouldn't take on a Frog-immune nonHeavy boss. I'll try it out later though and double-check.

[English Language]

After having to reset due to not having money for Holy Waters and my entire dead party being zombied, I made it to the forest area past Regole to the Underground Waterway.


Tyrannosaurus was cheesed with a Phoenix Down. Didn't feel like dealing with ????.


After getting lost like an idiot and beating up a Sandworm(showing off Starfall in the process), I grab the Dancing Dagger and extra Elven mantle for selling later since I can't use the first and already have the second(and let me tell ya, wasn't easy selling a great weapon like the Dancing Dagger)

The Abductor outside of the castle died from Condemn(Doom). Sadly Doom at this stage of the game is generally the only one worth using, since it only works on enemies without the Heavy flag anyways.

Going through the mountain, grabbed the Bone Mail(that I can't equip! Seriously Oracle, you're fun, but you're killin me here), and eventually making my way to the Dragon Pod...oh boy.


Without the Bone Mail, the Angel Ring is needed here to stop Old from destroying my speed(my other stats are actually fine being dropped, as AFAIK, Oracle's level and Magic don't affect his abilities at all).
The 4 and 5 flower are, as always, the biggest threats here(Blind and Poison mean little to me). However, I have a plan.


As you can see, I have !Predict pre-cycled to Starfall. Starfall does pretty good nonelemental damage. It carries, however, Death as a status effect. If I can get the first turn and kick off !Predict, then being Paralyzed or Confused won't matter since, as I demonstrated against Karlabos, once !Predict is set in motion it cannot be stopped. All that needs to happen then is Death is inflicted on Dragon Pod and not on Nostra(Starfall also hits both sides).


Things didn't quite work out as I hoped. However, I was able to get a second turn before the Dragon Pod could revive the flowers, which I used to Condemn(Doom) it. The Dragon Pod did manage to go and did NOT revive Flower 4. Excellent! With the Healing Staff equipped, Flower 5's Confusion meant nothing! I Condemn(Doom)ed it next anyways to be safe, then Condemn(Doom)ed the remaining 2 flowers.


And Nostra defeated Dragon Pod on the first attempt, and got some kicking shades out of the deal.

Plot ensues.


Bringing us to Dark Gilgamesh....or just Gilgamesh being snapped during his attack flash. Death Claw is likely going to be the big killer here for me. Elven Mantle for his physical attacks, so I'm going to be using the Cleansing/Blessing cycle, though if Death Claw gets too out of hand I can go for Flame Ring+Divine Eruption cycle to try to blast his MP.


The first Cleansing nearly one-shots Gilgamesh right off the bat with over 7k damage. Gilgamesh has 8888 HP right at the start, and that 8 digit gives Cleansing a gigantic M. Enkidu comes out right away and eats a Condemn(Doom) for his trouble. I Blessing myself to recycle to Cleansing.



And not to disappoint, Cleansing follows up with another 7k damage for a hilarious amount of overkill. Gilgamesh nailed me with Missile right before the fight ended, but other than that he stuck exclusively to physical attacks, not that I'm complaining.

While hunting for a Reflect Ring, I discovered the Magnitite enemies have the Heavy Flag, so I couldn't just Condemn them . So I ended up just !Predicting fights with them in it. Luckily getting one to drop was rather painless, only taking about 6-7 Reflect Knight fights. Afterwards I used the Flame Ring and Healing Staff to beat up the Red Dragon for kicks(and a sellable Blood Sword) and moved on.



This on the other hand might be tricky. The most common status for neutering Atomos with caster classes is Sleep...a status Oracle has no way of inflicting. His speed makes it impractical to Divine Judgement his MP away, and using Blessing, while helpful for the heal, is time I'm spending NOT trying to deal damage to Atomos. Can't break rods either since I can't equip them. Might be trouble. I might just end up having to just kill my party off one at a time that way...though I should level some more anyways, my max health is pretty low.

[English Language]

So after farming for a while and finding I STILL can't do enough damage fast enough, I decided to just go with the "kill one character at a time" bit, Atomos isn't worth holding the game up for and he's terrible for solo games anyways. I went with Cleansing/Blessing cycle, since Cleansing is the strongest !Predict, and any other cycle would prematurely kill the other characters.


During the farming I mastered the Oracle class, dropping the Condemn timer to 5 and unlocking the Read Ahead ability, which greatly, and VERY noticeably, cuts down the encounter rate(I got zero encounters from the sub up to the second save point in the Barrier Tower). This will be rgeat if I don't need to cycle !Predict for anything.

After Atomos and ran to Moore to upgrade my armor and made my way to Ghido's Cave where I beat up Metamorph's until....


I get my first weapon upgrade since the Healing Staff way back in Tycoon . I then put Read Ahead on for now and I'll come back to farm more for later. Afterwards, I find the Morning Star in the Forest of Moore. I'm just swimming in weapons I tell ya. I grab the Aegis Shield and Flametongue out of habit and move on.


On to the Crystal Seals that is. The Seals are very well-known for being vulnerable to various instant death methods...


Condemn(Doom) is no exception. The Galuf vs Exdeath fight went as usual for solo characters.

And now I go to farm Staves of Light.

[English Language]

With that stuff out of the way, I blaze through Exdeath's Castle thanks to the very few random encounters.



I was actually doing well until Gilgamesh hit me with Hurricane...oh, his followup attack missed and I was able to Elixir myself fine...except the Elixir filled my MP which cycled !Predict to Rockslide, which killed me instantly. That out of the way, Condemn(Recuperation) is hilariously useful here to get rid of Frog, Mini, and Old.Healing Staff is wanted for healing, though once Discord and/or Old ruin your stats, Condemn(Rejuvenation) is the better healing option, if delayed. Elven Mantle for the physicals. Not TOO difficult a fight, but gotta watch out for the Elixirs. Discord wasn't as bad as normal since !Predict deals damage independent of level, but still annoying. After using a few Cleanings, I remembered !Predict won't trigger form changes and had to unequip the Healing Staff so I could whack him into changing forms. He nearly killed me during the dialogue with Hurricane followed by a physical, but Elven mantle was right on the money.

Now for Exdeath...


I finally get to let that great Magic stat flex it's muscles. Also, I learned to note use the Healing Staff with the Reflect Ring on. This still took a while because of Doom(from what I can tell, oracle's Condemn SHOULD cancel it out since it cancels out Condemn...but Exdeath always goes before me and he never reaches a second Doom one way or the other) or from Exdeath hitting like a truck and needing me to spend too much time healing to stay alive. Unfortunately, even his easier AI cycle is hard as hell since his high damage and speed let him shred me with physicals between turns.

Think I'll go grind out a few more levels before trying again.

UPDATE:


As predicted, the low health was the problem. After leveling to add some health, the second try that he didn't open with Doom was a winner. The fight ended when I used !Predict for Divine Judgement(Holy element) for a whopping 9000 damage. I could have won the first try, but I started the Predict up at a bad time when I should have used an Elixir and got rocked in response to my poor choice.

[English Language]

Piece of cake. Power Staff(drop from Exdeath's castle) to berserk him, then dodge with Elven Mantle and wear him down with the Cleansing/Blessing cycle. Only issue was the lack of random encounters before this fight means I can't cycle !Predict beforehand, and my max MP ended in 6, meaning I had to cycle through Healing Wind(6)->Divine Judgement(5)->Eruption(2)->Deluge(1) before I could reach Cleansing.


The Gargoyles were cake, just bop em with the Power Staff then Cleansing them to death. The Pyramid itself was pretty easy due to the lack of random encounters from Read Ahead, and the MachinHeads went down to Condemn(Doom).(Reading the Algorithm guide shows MachinHeads as immune to instant death, so I guess you were right Sofis, it does seem to bypass the immunity). I ended up skipping most of the equipment simply because I can't use it.



Melusine was cake. Flame Ring nulled a third of her spells, Cleansing/Blessing cycle avoided hitting her absorbing, and Healing Staff caught whatever Blessing didn't. To add insult to injury, I also won while Confused.


Wendigo was tricky, but only because Mind Blast+Hurricane is deadly. I originally went with the Flame Ring to avoid the counters only to remember !predict doesn't trigger counters. So I went with the Hermes Sandals to react to Hurricane better, and doing so saved my life once, so guess that was a good choice.

[English Language]

Moving on.



Neither of the Fork Tower bosses were particularly noteworthy. Both died to Cleansing/Blessing spam(!Predict doesn't trigger their dangerous counters )

The Triton, Nereid, and Phobos were dealt with in the usual manner(weakening them, then Magic Lamp Bahamut to finish them), though the varying numbers on Cleansing meant that it took a while to get the numbers to add up properly. I forgot to snap a picture of them too, oh well.


Leviathan was relatively simple as well.

[English Language]

As expected, Calofisteri was a joke.


What WASN'T expected is how difficult Apanda was. I tried Flame Ring with Eruption/Divine Judgement combo, but I didn't realize how utterly devastating Magic Hammer was to an Oracle, throwing my !Predict cycle out of whack. I needed the Hermes Sandals to counter the slow and I needed to hope Divine Judgement wrecks his MP before I get hit with too many Magic Hammers. Eventually I was able to avoid enough Magic Hammers to get the cycle to kill him, but man, that was much more difficult than I was expecting.


I rather painfully found out that Oracle's Condemn doesn't stop Doom. What happens is that the Doom spell essentially hijacks your counter and applies the Death affect at the end of whatever time was left(and I tried to see if the reverse was true, your Condemn hijacking the Doom counter, and that doesn't work either), so that's sadly a no go here and I'm back to praying it simply doesn't show up. Reflect Ring to counter his spells, then I mostly hope nothing bad shows up while I blast him away with a Divine Judgement/Eruption cycle. Oracle DOES have a Poison-element !Predict, but I painfully found it out it only targets the party, so that's out.


On my winning run, he opened with DarkShock and Level 2 Old, both reflecting back to him. This slowed him down considerably, and he never used Doom or ???? and eventually died.


Catastrophe was easy as long as he didn't use Evil Eye. Hermes Sandals, plus Healign Staff and good timing of Divine Judgement were more than enough to outpace his Earth Shaker spam.


Halicarnassus went down tot the usual Holy reflection, plus a lot of Divine Judgement and Eruptions.



Twintania was only difficult because I needed to time my Condemn(Doom) exactly right. Too early and I'd get her before the form change, too late and Giga Flare will go off first, which instantly kills me. If the "Charging for Giga Flare" message comes up, it's too late.

Afterwards, the Magic Lamp was cycled to Golem in preparation for Necrophobia..later.