More Final Fantasy

[English Language]

.....yeah, I have nothing interesting to say here. Chocobo completely flattened him and he dealt 1 damage a hit.


Oh hey! Was leveling up before ascending Mt Hob and got this off a Goblin. Nice.


The damage, not so nice. Glad to have a fuller list I guess. I leveled up a bit more and moved on.


Threw a Blizzard on Yang, then had him off himself. The Mom Bomb part of the fight is pretty easy. I got rocked by the 6 Bombs that spawned afterwards. Apparently they have decent Magic Resistance as well...sigh. I was kinda hoping to blast them down all at once, but guess it's more Chocobo spam. Second try I fell when the Gray Bombs Self-Destructed. Third try I took them down first, the regular Bomb's Self-Destruct is much less menacing and the fight was done.

After that, did the Fabul defense(ignored the Captains to conserve MP), Kain stuff, got on the boat and took a break.

[English Language]

So after leveling up a little, the first Fiend is up to bat. I can one-shot his spooky skeletons with Fire if I single-target it, so I go ahead and clean out his minions. I left one because Scarmiglione occasionally has them use Drain...which hits me for piddly damage, so letting him waste as many turns as possible having them do that is fine by me. Fire wasn't quite as effective against the boss himself. Luckily Chocobo continues being a boss smasher and deals a little over double the damage of Fire on him.


A quick Tent pre-fight and switching rows mitigates his back attack advantage. With his new undeadness, he also gains a Fire weakness....however, Chocobo still ends up doing more damage so I stick with it. That said, even from the back row and with updated equipment, Undead Scarmiglione hits like a truck. I leveled up again for an extra HP buffer. I traded out the Healing Staff for a Crossbow and the Holy Bolts I've picked up so far. I spammed Chocobo at him and tosses Cure out whenever I dropped below 120 hit points(as mentioned, hits like a truck). When I dropped to about 15 MP, I started plinking at him with my Crossbow to save MP. I needed to use an Ether anyways, but not doing so might have been 2.


This was actually quite an intense fight that used up my entire Antidote stock(of 11), but I only used 1 Ether so that's fine by me.


Pretty silly here. I didn't realize Cecil has to land the killing blow here and blew my entire MP count throwing Chocobos at him wondering how many hit points this guy had.

After that, sold my party's excess weapons and armor, then ran to Mist Village to grab a Whip and Dancing Dagger just in case, and in Baron upgraded my armor to the Kenpogi, holding onto the Gaia Gear for future use.

Baigan, like Undead Scarmiglione, hits like a truck with his physicals, even when I'm in the back row. I'll need to level a little to add on some extra HP. I don't see Cagnazzo being much of an issue since I have access to Thunder and won't have to deal with his Tidal Wave attack.

[System Error]

If only you knew what you've gotten yourself into. Welp, good luck and have fun~

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I made a solo exception to kill Zeromus a second time, opening access to the rest of the trials without having to go through the hassle of beating him three more times. Since Edge will be going over Level 70 in this final leg of the game, it seems appropriate to open with his post-70 stat growths.

~ -1 Str, -1 Agi, ±0 Sta, -1 Int, ±0 Spi
~ +1 Str, ±0 Agi, +1 Sta, ±0 Int, ±0 Spi
~ +1 Str, ±0 Agi, ±0 Sta, ±0 Int, ±0 Spi
~ ±0 Str, +1 Agi, ±0 Sta, ±0 Int, ±0 Spi
~ +1 Str, +1 Agi, ±0 Sta, +1 Int, ±0 Spi
~ +1 Str, +1 Agi, ±0 Sta, +1 Int, ±0 Spi
~ +2 Str, ±0 Agi, +2 Sta, ±0 Int, ±0 Spi
~ ±0 Str, +3 Agi, ±0 Sta, +3 Int, ±0 Spi

The last two are definitively the best. The first and the two identical ones are acceptable, though. Edge's base stats are kind of lacking, though. For the maximum strength alongside his upcoming equipment, we need at least 25 Strength. On the other hand, our offense against ZEG will (probably) consist of thrown items, and if we go with that, we can use a Hero's Shield for leniancy.


This time, I decided to get all the leveling and collecting out of the way before jumping into the bosses. Two new legendary katanas can be found in the ruins. The former gives +10 to Agility and Stamina, and the latter gives +10 to Strength and Spirit, and also casts Blink when used as an item.


In the second town in the ruins, these are accessible as well. Assassin Vest is very nice. It not only bestowes 90 Evasion, but has decent pure defenses as well. Protecting against Paralysis is very nice, as the Ribbon does not do so.for some reason. The Rising Sun is the next level up from the Full Moon, and gives +10 to Agility, because why not?

Note the Assassin Dagger. This is not something Edge can equip, strangely enough - despite the fact that he can use its unused variant. It's about what you'd expect, but it can be used as a ridiculously overpriced thrown item.

It's worth noting that attack caps at 255. This could be reached even with the Rising Sun and one of the new katanas.


Here's Edge's raw stats once I hit level 99. His stats at level 70 are 59/54/47/34/25. He thusly gained 26 Strength, 32 Agility, 14 Stamina, and 31 Intellect. It's nice that he hit 64 on that last one, as it gives another offensive multiplier. Shame about the Stamina, though. With equipment, the first three stats would be 99/99/88 respectively, and Spirit is upped by 10


The Monk Brigade meant pulling out the Blue Fangs again. Their high magic defense rules out Blitz as an option, but these do just fine. Edge had 99% evasion, and much like Alice in FF2, absolutely nothing could touch him physically.


Nothing special about Lunar Titan. Lunar Shiva got taken out with the Fire Claw. Note that just about every boss saw a combination of Masamune and Spider's Silk get used. This includes Lunar Dragon, who casts Slow on you. Before that, Ifrit and Shiva got elemental claws. The other two have no special tricks, so they just got beaten up.


After Edge got taken out by a Holy from Lunar Odin, I decided to take the easy way out for the sheer thrill of it. This is what it looks like, since I didn't show it last time. Note that Lunar Asura, unlike her counterpart, is not a Mage. She also has different counterattacks when it comes to physical blows. As long as Edge stayed away from the Blizzaga counters, he had no problem.


Just like Lunar Shiva, Edge's own boss, Lunar Ifrit, was able to be victimized by a claw.

The reward for defeating him is the Hanzo Gloves. Many of the Lunar Ruins items upgrade certain characters' commands, and for Edge, this changes Steal into Plunder. If a Steal is successful, Edge will execute an Attack command after. This isn't very helpful, in some cases even counterproductive. And what's worse are its stats.

- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +10 Sta, Resist Fire/Ice/Lightning
- Hanzo Gloves' stats: 15 Def/0 Eva/8 MDf/6 MEv

5 extra defense is not worth all that.


Edge simply had enough HP and defense to tank anything Lunar Bahamut tried to do to him. Mega Flares only did this much, and physicals around 100. Total walkover. What was not a walkover was Lunar Ramuh, who would counter with Thundaga for 1000 every time Edge attacked. He had to dip into the Elixir stash every now and then on both fights.


Lunar Leviathan was another victim of the claw.


I didn't run into Brach when heading to ZEG, and didn't feel like going for him this time. Edge was finally able to make use of the items he'd been saving up to throw against ZEG, including two Assassin Daggers. The Grimoires locked him down and made sure he couldn't do anything, ever. Check out the video, which apparently made my computer throw a hissy fit with the audio. They really are brokenly powerful, though given the alternative is the HP Leak + Critical combo, it's kind of a wash.

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[04:51:23] <darknil> honestly soloing that game with anything that isn't Tellah or maybe Edge is going to steamroll it.

Well, I guess I disproved the latter notion, eh? Edge genuinely surprised me with his versatility. He can do a bit of magic, stealing lets him easily do things no one else can, he can stall out physical attackers with Image, he has high speed and the ability to give himself Haste and the enemies Slow at will...and when all else fails, just start throwing things.

I knew full well going into Edge that he was anything but a suicidal choice. Up next is a character who may or may not be suicidal. There's also a reason to do it on PSP that I've brought up vaguely before...if I'm not lazy, that is.

[English Language]

I'm sure I'll find out :P. Though I think my biggest mistake is never having played this game before the solo Rydia run(no progress yet btw, gained one level and took a break), but that didn't stop my FFV Solo Blue Mage and FF1 Solo White Mage runs.

[System Error]

Before jumping into my next FF4 solo, have a bonus: the differences post-70 level ups can make

Compared to how he developed in his own playthrough vs how he developed in Edge's, Palom ended up with 4 less Strength, 9 less Agility, 17 less Stamina, and 24 less Spirit.


Edge didn't hit 99, so these stats are slightly inaccurate. Taking them regardless, Edge has 6 less Strength, 18 less Agility, 2 more Stamina (wat), and 20 less Intellect. It may not seem like much, but every point counts when you're solo.

___________



Rosa Farrell is one of Final Fantasy IV's two White Mages. A damsel-in-distress for two portions of the game and Cecil's lover, she is nonetheless quite an interesting character. She also has traits of the series' archer classes, due to her talents with the bow.

White Magic is much like you would expect - a variety of support and healing spells, along with the Holy spell learned very late. Next up is Pray. It has a 50% chance of casting a Cure spell on the party, and a 50% chance of doing nothing at all. This is...not a good command, generally speaking. Later on in the Lunar Ruins, this becomes more useful when it gets upgraded to Miracle via the White Ring. It gets a 50% chance of casting a Cura spell, and a 50% chance of casting Curaga and Esuna in one package. This is a decent command!!

Finally, there's her signature ability - Aim. This command executes a physical attack, but sets the target's evasion to 0, and Rosa's hit rate to 255. This is very important for Rosa in this version of the game, due to the bug with the back row I was talking about. Bows, despite being a back row weapon, will suffer the back row penalty anyway - whether you're on 1.0 or 1.1. 127% against 0 evasion is still essentially a perfect hit rate, fortunately. Really, the only bad thing is that I have to scroll to it each time.


Just showing this picture to show off how the first few scenes aren't programmed to handle having characters besides Cecil showing. It's even more broken if I try to take Rosa into the bedroom scene, and actually softlocks the game!!


Rosa's stats...her Strength isn't half-bad. She's certainly capable of using it. But her limited amount of ammo for this stage of the game and no way to get more arrows until reaching Kaipo, meant she had to run away from more than a few battles.


And indeed. The simple Mist Dragon fight, featured plinking it for 20-25 damage at a time each time. She actually ran out in the middle of this fight, and had to finish them off with her bare hands. Luckily, Hold made this trivial.


Rosa's iffy attack continued into the Kaipo waterway. It took 3-4 arrows to kill even the most basic of enemies for this stage of the game. Not worth fighting. What she had no problem with, however, are these Zombies. Simple healing spells spelled the end of them.

Also, I lied earlier. Pray came in handy when traveling to conserve MP. Even if it was MP Rosa wasn't really using anyway.


Interestingly, the Octomammoth's losing its tentacles is based on the number of hits it takes, rather than the damage it has taken. This meant Rosa would have to deal with a slow (especially after-slow), hard-hitting beast.

This is a good time to talk about the Protect spell. It's pretty simple: each cast increases the user's Deefense by 5, up to a maximum of 255. It's just worth noting it took more casts than you may expect to make her completely invulnerable to almost any physical attack.


Rosa picked up upgrades for her weapons in Damcyan, although preferred to save the Arrows until a later period of time when she would be able to make better use out of the limited 20-of-them.

Antlion was not one of those times. In order to get the Sand Ruby to cure her own desert fever, Rosa had to deal with this thing's counterattacks. On the SNES version, her Aim would not provoke its counters due to a bug. That's fixed on this version, so she had to plow through its...16 or so damage Counter Horns. Absolutely pathetic.


This time, I had a character who didn't have it in them to win before the bombs could start exploding. Rosa cast Hold on one of the Gray Bombs after weakening another, and was easily able to outlast them.

Rosa busted out the Holy Arrows for the Fabul battle sequence. They were highly effective on the Leshies in particular, due to their getting extra racial damage against Spirits. For some reason, the marines (but not the generals) resist the Holy element, so Rosa switched over to Iron Arrows agianst them.


If you were expecting anything less than complete domination from a white mage heading up the undead heavy Mt. Ordeals, you don't know anything. Rosa's preferred method of attack, however, was her arrows. They gained a racial bonus against the undead/spirits AND an elemental bonus for hitting their holy weakness. Cure spells weren't preferred, due to the Spirits actually being healed by them.

Liliths were the only thing that did not get two-shot by Rosa. They also had a problematic counter in their paralyzing Slaps. Rosa could deal with them by casting Berserk. Although classified as a buff spell as far as targetting is concerned, it's perfectly usable on the enemies.


Scarmiglione part 1, Rosa double cast Slow for maximum effectiveness, then took out three of the Skulnauts before setting on him. In Part 2, he's weak to both Holy and Wind. So Rosa's arrows hurt like hell.

The Baron Guards before Yang threw an unexpected wrench into the plans. Rosa had to go in with status magic to prevent them from countering her attacks with Mini. The Old Waterway beyond was interesting for the Electrofish, who are inexplicably weak to Wind. Rosa's arrows were highly damaging to them.

Nothing fancy about Baigan. Slow before he can get his Reflect up, take out the Left Arm to prevent Entangle, plink away at him until he falls, then survive the Right Arm's explosion.


And back the truck up, it's Cagnazzo. Being familiar with Cecil and Kain's games, we know full well what he's capable of. Survival wasn't the problem for Rosa. A Cura easily washed away the damage from Tsunami, The problem was outdamaging him when he reached just over 600HP, where he would retract into his shell and began restoring HP, 531 at a time. Her average damage was 130. At least Aim mitigates his increased evasion.

Using Slow/Spider's Silk and a Hermes Sandles didn't help. Rosa was still left unable to do enough damage in enough time to get by. What's a girl to do?


Well, how about this? These Hydras in the Waterway drop Poison Arrows, both as their semi-rare and rare drop. If we get our miracle worker hands on some, we should be able to do more damage and take him out before he can heal! The increased power Poison Arrows bring to the table help; throw in the attack multipliers we'll be getting from the extra levels, and it should be enough.

Fighting the Hydras was somewhat tricky, due to their using Entangle. They could endlessly lock Rosa in a cycle of paralysis. She countered this by using Confuse, which would make them attack themselves. Both resetting their AI pattern and letting her kill them with an arrow from there.


A few levels later, Rosa had an attack multiplier of 6 if she equipped a Twist Headband and Kenpo Gi. The Poison Arrows eventually did drop; they nearly doubled her attack.


And that's all there was to it. After triggering the shell switchover the first time, Rosa threw a couple Spider's Silk at Cagnazzo. She then continued to shoot until Tsunami was doing just over 30 damage - representing his HP. She then switched to the Poison Arrows and let loose.

With the airship come new places and things to see. A new bow - the Great Bow - and three new flavors of arrows - Fire, Ice, and Lightning - were available in Troia. Coming off Edge's game, you should know what the last three are capable of doing for us.


There were two ways to proceed through the Magnetic Cave. The easy way, which consisted of shooting Holy Arrows at most of the opposition (something I actually didn't catch on to until the walk out). And the ~_♥-FUN WAY♥-_~ where she would, for example, throw out Confuse on the likes of those Cait Sith to get them to Blaster their team, and Mini on the Ogres to cripple them


Holy Arrows made a fatal mockery of the Dark Elf and Dark Dragon.

On the way out, Rosa got a Power Armlet drop from an Ogre. This gives +10 to Strength, but sadly, she cannot use it.


These enemies of were particular interest on the way up. Their semi-rare drop is the Rune Staff, which is actually the strongest staff in the game. Good for other white mages. Notsomuch Rosa, who prefered to use her bow.


Rosa had made a trip to Eblan Castle in order to pick up a set of 10 Mute Arrows. She broke them out against the Magus Sisters, taking Cindy out in three and the others out in two.

Barbariccia was rendered completely impotent by protecting against Ray with equipment, protecting against her physicals with Blink, and completely ignoring her high evasion with Aim.


Rosa got off to a slow start with her lowish attack, though has since caught up to some degree. So far, she's proven to be an interesting character, as a friend of mine suggested she would be. I was genuinely surprised that Pray had an actual use, although it did indeed quickly outlive any usefulness. Rosa is permanently in the party from here on out, so this actually features the most "normalcy" outside of Solo Cecil.

[I have no name]

Alright, been following some of these FF challenges for a while and figured I'd try one of my own. The question was what to do that wasn't already done to death, and for an FF game I really liked? It didn't take long to determine FFV was the game of choice, and the restrictions didn't take too long to come up with a unique set that should prove an interesting experience.

No Items and No Money are the big ones, ruling out most methods of healing/status/reviving, removing Mix and GilToss and locking out most spells, since they have to be purchased. Of course, X-Fight was still around, so I threw in No Freelancer and No Class Mastering, to very leniently put a cap on grinding and use of the same class.

I'm only through Siren so far, but it's been quite enjoyable. I'm uploading videos of forced fights and some dungeons (though most future ones won't be included due to easier healing), and putting further notes/archiving the videos elsewhere here. Check it out if interested, and keep on doing the insane :P

[T-hawk]

Hey, welcome aboard. Neat stuff, No Money is something we haven't done in FF5, although Sullla did "Living off the Land" in FF1.

[Wild Halcyon]

I know 3 berserkers and a nanny has been done before, but what about 1 berserker and a nanny? Or even a thief-bard run with no reviving allowed.

If you look at some of the more difficult solo classes you see that the levels had to be increased enormously to compensate, having a little friend along to compensate may help get the characters through where they otherwise failed.

Although Atmos will always be a problem.

[Plus C]

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack! Sorry for the delay, had a lot of uni work of late. All finished now though!

I'm liking the sound of both of the new runs, it's always interesting to see a new take on things . The only no items experience I have are my LLNIS and LLFCNI runs and it wasn't a major restriction in either, but you're welcome to check the archives/ ask me for any of my insights I gained from them if you get stuck! 2 characters a spice sounds interesting, I look forwards to seeing how it goes!

So I optimistically hope that at least 1 person wants to know how the LLNES has ended. In a word; positively. On attempt 2,105 Lenna gained victory over Exdeath. Well she also did on attempt 1, but that was with Mix and using HP Leak to bypass the second stage of the fight. So it doesn't count :P

The tree form wasn't too difficult. He needed to use a physical attack, and Shirahidori had to activate, to survive round 1. This isn't as bad as it sounds, and has been quite common in this run. After that, Haste, Slow, Meteor and Mimic, using Blink as necessary. When he gets to the lowish HP range, I cast Reflect, restore my MP and then finish him off with Meteor spam. My notes say that of the 241 attempts that got past the first round, 127 of them beat the tree form. When you have no protection at all (like, if he used it I'd die) from White Hole, this is very surprisingly high. 110 of these failures were to White Hole, 3 to Condemn and one to a stray Flare.

But how to beat the Tree Form? Well firstly, I need to keep Blink up. I had 73 attempts that failed thanks to badly timed Dispels! Magic Lamp for Odin is an obvious start, but of the remaining parts, how could I deal with them? One melee attack would be instant death, but Shirahidori takes care of 1/3 of those. Grand Cross is a toss up, but would most likely be fatal. Almagest... Definitely fatal. The Almagester dies first; but how? For a while I was convinced there was no way. And then I had an idea. Shoat from the Magic Lamp! Yep, this run boiled down to a 1/60 die roll for that to target the Almagester and hit. On attempt 2,105 this happened for the first time, and I very carefully kept my self buffed for the rest of the fight. I thought to set up Golem whilst I was on that side of the Magic Lamp, and a good thing to, as I'd have died without it!

In true low offence fashion, I tried to finish them off with a Titan from the magic lamp, once they were less than one Holy each from dying... But it failed quite disastrously. Ramuh... Also failed to finish them off. Seriously Lenna? Ifrit finished the job and I cleared the run.


I traditionally write a summary of the run in the last post, and I find this run is best summed up briefly; Don't ever do a Low Level No Equipment Solo.

Thanks for reading for... 9 months? Damn that took a while. I might do something with the Four Job Fiesta, but ultimately I think I'm done with this game. Make way for the new blood!

[System Error]

Sweet, congrats. Been a while. But let's press through and finish this off.

Hourglasses were employed against the dolls. I temporarily gave Rosa a Ribbon to protect against the Black Fang attack of the Shadow Dragon, mostly out of laziness. It was a slow and easy fight with Holy Arrows, anyway. The Dwarves' Shop carried a weapon upgrade for her in the Darkness Arrows.


And in Babel, Rosa would find a new Bow. This thing has an increased critical hit rate, or so it says. What's the formula on crits? I dunno, algorithms guide doesn't say.


Lugaeborg and Barnabas are Mechs, meaning they take insane damage from Thunder Arrows. Lining up the first fight was a little annoying, as was finding the right attack pattern so Laser didn't instagib Rosa in the second fight.


There's not much to say about the leadup to Rubicante, other than getting Poison Arrows proper, and that I didn't fight most of the fights in the cave as usual due to them containing obnoxious bats with attacks that take ages to animate. Status was the order of the day in Babel part 2.

Against Rubicante himself, Rosa Shelled up to protect against Scorch. She could funnily enough use Reflect to bounce back the Firas. Rubicante doesn't absorb fire...and actually responds to nonreflected castings with Life on your party.


More upgrades. The Mute Arrows are highly effective against Mage enemies. The Rune Staff is one of the more common drop-only items. It has that property as well. Mostly pointless for Rosa with her arrows being superior more often than not, but it has its uses. And in the Land of Summoned Monsters is yet another arrow upgrade: Angel Arrows destroy Giants.


So Asura. Easy fight, right, just use the Reflect strat and body her with Mute Arrows? Not exactly...Asura casts Life on herself as part of her routine. In other words, she messes with the solo challenge!


The rather unorthodox solution was to go out and get the others petrified by the Black Lizards. They have a drop for us in the Medusa Arrows - otherwise weak weapons which can occasionally do the same. But unfortunately, it never triggers against party members.

Reflect was also the best way to deal with Leviathan. Reflect on Rosa to protect against Blizzara, and Reflect on it so she can heal herself. Thunder Arrows for offense.


The only real thing of note in the Sylvan Cave is the Elven Bow. This lets you attack any Mage for high damage, regardless of the Arrow you use.


Sealed Cave? Ha! Reflect for the doors. ALL THE DOORS. Despite this, it still wasn't enough for Rosa to get her last spell, which she needed to beat the Demon Wall. A bit of grinding later, and it was done.


The Behemoth brigade before Bahamut provide an interesting challenge. They spit Maelstorm out in response to Holy-elemental spells. Rosa instead Protected up, Berserked herself, and beat them to death with the Rune Staff. Bahamut itself was dealt with by Reflect, no big deal.

Everything in the Babel Giant is a Mech, so Rosa had a field day with Thunder Arrows. She was actually able to gain a couple levels!!


What a stupid fight. Everything but Barbariccia absorbs Holy. She's weak to it. Rosa could mess with Scarmigilione with Curaja, but had to beat down the other two with Arrows. Protect and Shell stacking helped to mitigate their attacks.


The CPU is also a stupid fight. I decided to just down it with reflected Holys in a risky strat. The game agreed to this on the first try somehow...