More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

I promised a hack that drastically went down the drain in quality, and so I shall deliver.


So beyond Rubicante is the Cave of the Eblan's living quarters floor. Yang leaves you in order to lead the armies of Eblan. The enemies in here are from the same part of the game as they would ordinarily be, and are a bit painful. Which makes you wonder why he replaced them on the overworld and not here. Nothing really of note in the shops, aside from Shruikens being 100GP apiece. I pick up a good stock of them for Edge's use.


So you go through, and then you end up in the enemy stronghold: the Tower of Zot. Which is somehow the Tower of Babil in this complete with the Babil music, but it has the same enemies as Zot. Enemies that are weaker than the ones in the cave leading there. Why he felt it necessary to do this fusion, I have no idea. Rydia learned Sylph during this excrusion, but the treasure really wasn't much to talk about.


The Magus Sisters weren't hard at all. They only got a chance to get off a single Delta Attack, between Cecil/Cid's attacks, Rydia's Bomb summon, and Edge throwing Shruikens, before Cindy kicked it. Sandy did throw out a Comet, but Mindy and her fell shortly thereafter.


In this hack, instead of there being mind control, Kain is just pretending to be loyal to Golbez. This bugs me in a bit of a weird way, though I'm not sure why


Barbariccia is up next. Somehow, Rosa tricked her into untying her, overpowered her, and tied her down in her place. Cecil fails to notice until he's untied Barbariccia, because I guess all blondes look the same, and so Kain teams up with us to take her down. She was an easy fight. In addition to Kain's jumping, Edge's throwing as in my solo challenge with him could pierce through and deal damage. Rydia's Sylph is Wind-elemental, and also worked to deal with her effectively.


Hey, stupid ROMhacker! When you write dialogue like this in an attempt at humor, get your facts straight! There's two moons in the sky in the world of FF4! Faulty dialogue - or more commonly, reference-laden, especially just for the sake of making a reference - is one of my biggest pet peeves with ROMhacks. In less crazy news, apparently the tower does leads to the moon, rather than summoning a giant robot or anything. But yeah, I was watching a friend play this before I got here, and my exact reaction was

[06/29][00:50:17] <SystemError> "The moon. As in, the one in the sky."
[06/29][00:50:30] <SystemError> bluntness aside, THERE'S TWO OF THEM :^)


All right, so we go back down. To the floor where you entered, there was a locked door. You can enter it with the Tower Key, and it leads to a Crystal Room. By the way, it's possible to encounter enemies from the second version of vanilla Babil in the brief walk between there and the crystal room. I got a preemptive here, so it wasn't that big a deal, though.


And suddenly, Rosa? This scene has some of the strangest original dialogue so far, not counting any forced references. Rosa goes around greeting everyone; kissing Cecil, saying hi to Cid who wants her to call him Grandpa for some reason, thanking Kain for being a spy, acting motherly to Rydia, meeting Edge, and generally acting cutesy. Also, I guess how she did it was she wooed Barbariccia into playing some hardcore BDSM but then ran off, the same Barbariccia who's implied to want Kain, but okay.

We get ready to go to the one and only moon by placing the Crystals on their respective altars, when suddenly, it's not working! What could be missing? Rydia guesses Heart, and I reach through the internet and strangle the ROMhacker for that stupid reference. Golbez reveals the second set of Crystals and the Underworld, and I guess in an act of being too demonstrative, drops us in a trapdoor to it. We somehow lose Rydia during this, ending up at the base of the Tower of Babil.


We can't go in there because Kain stops us, but we can go to the Dwarves' Castle, where Palom and Porom somehow ended up in after casting Warp on the ship earlier. The Dwarves offer them as help, and for once, the ROMhacker does something good with Cecil's reaction to them being Mysidian. Cid leaves us to help upgrade the tanks, and also a random airship lying around. It's red, and it's from the dwarves, so the twins come up with the name the Red Dwarf. So in the course of a few dungeons, our entire party save Cecil has been replaced.


So Porom is an interesting character. She can strangely equip Hammers now, and needs one to use her new ability, Bonk! It has a 25% chance each of casting Arise, Haste, Blink, or Esuna. While of questionable use, it's at least leagues better than the original Cry. Her defenses are still low, as is her attack multiplier, so this is more of a cute gimmick than something you can really rely on. They're also two handed, so you'll give up an armlet if you use it.

Palom has been given his Bluff command back, renamed Focus. Unlike his sister, he has nothing drastically special equipment-wise. So he has to do what Black Mages do best instead. Both of the twins suffer from Edge syndrome - they come at a much lower level than the rest of your party would normally be at.


With the Airship, you now you get a choice: the Feymarch, Bahamut's Lagoon (GET IT??? :D :D :D) - which replaces the Sylph Cave, or the Ice Mines - which replaces the Sealed Cave. This is where the game starts to get a bit more open-ended, ridiculously hard, and also quite hilarious in the wrong way. Each of these has a crystal, and props for actually giving them locations which vanilla and even The After Years is noticeably evasive on; they likely just ran out of time and never bothered to explain it. They house the Shadow, Holy, and Ice Crystals respectively, with the Dwarves' Castle having the Bolt one.

As for easily-accessible shopping, the castle doesn't have much of anything. Some of the stuff in Tomra is ridiculously expensive. I decide to skip out on most of it aside from grabbing some Ice Arrows for Rosa, due to a shortage of money and hoping I'll be getting even better stuff in the various dungeons.


Also, as it turns out, King Santos of Tomra is literally Santa Claus. Dwarves say Lali-Ho. He says Ho-ho-ho. Since when does Santa live in the geographical equivalent of Hell?!


I decide on the Feymarch first, to check out that last shopping locale. And it is brutal. You have no access to Float, and you're fully expected to cope with it by buying a billion healing items, soldiering through, and opening the menu every few steps over the damage tiles under penalty of having to run from random encounters. That are very capable of one-shotting some of your party members, because your equipment and levels aren't anywhere near what's practical for these enemies. Having to catch up the twins doesn't help this much, either...


I can cope, though. And the best part about coming here is, I get this thing from a trapped chest. The five Warriors in guarding it weren't a big deal, and fell to DarkWaves and Tornados. Here's Cecil's stats with it on. Though it has a penalty of -5 to every stat, it is extremely powerful and quite accurate.


Rydia takes Yang's role of being saved by the Sylphs, who have relocated here due to their cave being taken over by a reference. The boss, who attacks after you get the Shadow Crystal...


Not only is it a palette swap of Scarmiglione, it's the exact same fight! There's a bunch of Zombies, there's him in the back, he counters every time you hit him (with Stop), and he orders the goons to attack with RedFeast. Except they are way too powerful and leave my party completely crippled after just one of them. Apparently, these repeats may be in-part due to engine limitations making it difficult to insert new AI routines...but still.

I can't seem to kill him before he can get it off, and when I do kill him to stop those attacks, I still have to deal with the vicious Reapers. They have a ridiculous 6000HP, which Demi can at least cut into, but their physicals alone hit hard. So I have no choice but to turn back and leave Ciriatto for later.


The Lagoon's enemies are somewhat more manageable. Most interesting was a trapped chest with this guy in it. He actually was kinda like a mashup between FF1 Astos and his appearance in this game. He opened with a Fire2/Lit2/Ice2 combo, and would throw out Death and a party-wide Slow as part of his script. While I didn't have the equipment from later on in the cave that would deal insane damage to him, this wasn't too difficult an encounter. Each Shruiken throw did 1000 damage in particular.


The Avenger was the prize from the Wizard fight, but also in the same room of six was this thing. The Mystic Hammer was enough that Porom could actually do semirespectable damage when fighting in the front row. Specifically, it's extremely effective on mechs and mages - which included the ToadLady enemies and her TinyToads (speaking of, Cecil's and the twins' equipment helped stave off that and the Malboro's Breath). It can randomly silence on a hit, and gives a +15 to Wisdom and Will. The Rune Bow also was highly effective.


Completing a trifect was the Mage Masher, guarded by this ugly-looking thing. Flame Sword, Fire Arrows, and Fire2 took care of it quite handily.


A Rubicante palette swap who goes by Draghinazzo was the boss here. He even restores your health. He claims to be a prophet for Bahamut, but a slip of the tongue and we get to fight him.


He hits like a goddamned truck, but then again, so does Cecil with the Avenger. It seems the sword is Dark-elemental. Because of it, this one didn't last too long. He opened with Holy to flatten someone, then closed his cloak and used Blink. Had Edge and Palom attack to disperse it. His only other real move was a double physical combo concentrated on Porom. If I had Bio on Palom, this would've been a total stomp.

The Black Shirt and White Shirt were in the chests behind him. They were an interesting choice. The Angel Robes the twins had on do give +5 to Wisdom and Will (as well as Vitality), resisting Mute, Pig, and Toad. The others give +15 to their respective stat, and the White Robe resists the basic three elements. Seems situational.


I went to the Ice Mines next. It is literally the Ice Cave from FF1 in layout. Good creativity. The encounters here seem to be easiest of the trio, but their payout and the encounter rate are both low.


There was another Wizard-in-a-box here. It took 3184 from Edge, 2322 from Porom, then flopped over dead. The Chaos Blade was the reward from this, another Dark Swrod for Cecil, but the Blood Sword was coming out stronger even factoring in the stat drop.


Interestingly enough, the same Warp trick as would work in FF1 to get to your destination works here, though I explored the lower floors anyway. There was a huge cache of gold down there and an IceBrand.


Sheesh, now he's even recycling dialogue and circumstances on the palette swaps. Or making fun of himself/engine limitations.


The latest palette swap, Alichino, was a straightforward affair. His Ice3s hurt, but were not really lethal. When he raised the ice (with another stupid reference), he did throw up Reflect, but it didn't stop Cecil's Flamesword or the two Fire Arrows Rosa had on her, both of which could do over 1000 each. Despite getting owned by the Reflect, this one was a simple affair. And Palom and Porom find the real king alive and well in the ice after the battle.


Now for this guy proper. A couple of Yaguu Darkness and some extra attacks did indeed kill him before he could order the RedFeast brigade. I decided to get a few more levels beforehand, on seeing what was waiting when testing Bio for curiousity purposes later. And holy crap, Harm did not disappoint. Despite this, it was still better to do this than to save the Yaguus for later.


And naturally you fight undead Ciriatto too. He opens by telling you to hear the song of the fallen angel, uses Angel song on you, and reduces everyone to critical HP. Luckily, Porom had Cure3, but she was still my primary damage dealer with Harm, making this really awkward. Rosa's Holy Arrows did 1600. The first time, I got smacked by DarkWave and killed off from there. The second time, I prepared for it.


With a few Palom Focused Fire2s (for lack of anything better, he wasn't weak to it), thrown Shruiken or Edge attacks, and healing potions when needed, I got the kill. He had 16000 HP total.


So back to the Castle. I do a bit of inventory management, and unequip Rosa because she leaves. Cid upgraded the tanks, and even used the Bolt Crystal to generate an anti-Warp field. But then the Red Wings attack, Cid's fortification is put to the test, and Rosa leaves to help for some reason. Now, it's known that FF4 actually was indeed going to have two sets of archfiends. Calcabrina is one of the remnants of this, named after one of the Malebranche in Dante's Inferno much like the rest of them and the archfiends here. Is it finally time for its sort-of official promotion?!


Of course not! Meet Malacoda of the Thunder. She'll be able to bypass the electric barrier stopping Golbez from just Warping in and taking the Crystal. Now see? In-universe references are the kind of thing you should go with.


Meanwhile, we still do need to deal with those...that one doll. It's ridiculously easy. Palom's Bio and Porom's regular attacks could do over 2000 damage. It has 10000HP, and accomplished nothing significant before falling to pieces. It even had its HP run out.


Then Golbez shows up, beats us down in a cutscene because he's a cheater, takes the three Crystals we garthered, only to fall prey to his only other weakness besides Meteo: getting literally stabbed in the back by Kain! Malacoda shows up, and now we have to fight her.
.

As with the last three, this is the same deal as with her palette swap. She goes into a spin, Kain needs to Jump on her to get her out of it. This was really annoying at first, because she used Magnet to Stop him. She also hit Porom with it, which was dangerous and forced me to heal with HiPotions with everyone else, and Palom, who had been Focusing to power up his Ice2s while waiting on Kain. It seemed she had an Ice weakness.

I reset and got Kain a Blizzard Lance, but it didn't contribute anything other than heightened offense - his Thunder Spear was perfectly capable of hitting her due to a Wind weakness from her floating (weaknesses override absorption when it comes to physical hits). After a while of fighting, her 30000HP was all gone.


So status report? Golbez has 7/8 crystals, but it's useless without the last one we hold. Because Cid is an engineer and Rosa is a fucking badass and heavily damaged their airships with nothing more than her bow and sharpshooting skills, they get to lead the frontal assault on the tower. Meanwhile, everyone else will enter, using Kain's knowledge of the tower's layout, Edge's Ninja skills, Palom and Porom's magic, and Cecil's pretty face, and take back the rest of them!

[ChaosEnigma]

So I finished my latest fiesta run on FF5, but I'm kind of burned out on the game at the moment. Wanted to run a variant on FF IV or FF VI, but I figured FF IV would be the better option since I don't think it'd require as much knowledge to do right. It's been so long since I last played VI that I'd need to do a Normal run to check where stuff is, while I don't recall FF IV having hidden treasures and stuff.


I chose the Europe GBA version for this. All of the GBA versions are broken, but the ATB bugs in the US/AU one would make things a lot easier. Both have bugged back rows(everything has a penalty on US, everything but Bows are back row okay on EU, bows are bugged in both).


I hacked my chosen solo character into the party then grinded him up to Cecil and Kain's starting level.



I have no idea if I'll actually be able to finish this, but I'm going to try.





I actually got an Hourglass drop during that small grind. I obviously unequipped Cecil and Kain except for their weapons so that they die faster. Still took a while because you can actually miss yourself in FF IV unlike in FFV. Also when I had gotten a tent drop, I saved and checked if it revived in this game. Looks like it doesn't, so tents will be better than in an FFV solo where you have to rekill everyone.


Mist Dragon went down without much trouble. I missed the death picture because I wasn't keeping track of HP(plus I didn't know the HP anyway of any of these bosses). Had to use a few potions, but not too much because Edward is quite evasive apparantly. Maybe i should do the same thing I do to make sure I grab the Shinryu death pic for the fiesta on later bosses( I savestate often in the Shinryu fight but will not reload the state if I lose. Once the death happens, I'll reload the in battle state then spam pause/unpause so I can catch the death animation)


These were Edward's stats after the fight(I had fought it at level 10 though.




I checked the Bestiary after the fight too



It sure felt like it had a lot more HP than that.


Edward was even fast enough to hide against Rydia. Run is still deathless(not that this one counts as a game over obviously), though it won't stay that way for long I'm sure.




Entered Kaipo at level 13. Cecil gets revived in the cutscene, so I waited until he was dead to start attacking the soldiers. I made sure to defeat the General for some more experience. Checked the shop to see what was there and looks like Edward can actually use bows(I never paid attention to his equips before), so I bought one and some arrows, though I doubt I'll use it much due to bows being affected by the back row penalty.


That's as far as I am right now.

[ChaosEnigma]

Found this room in the cave leading toward Edward's castle. Don't remember if I knew about it before or just found it while exploring. Don't remember whether it had anything useful, but it's one I'll definitely go to if I solo again.




Octomammoth proved to not be any threat with back row and plenty of Potions. Was worried that getting Edward would glitch somehow, but thankfully nothing happened.



In Antlion's Cave, I finally found a weapon upgrade for Edward. This harp confuses enemies instead of sleeping them. Both harps have nice status for random battles, so I might use them again later. So far I've been fighting most of the random battles, though I've had to run from ones that have Flans in them due to the high defenses. Also run from some of the more dangerous back attacks. Basilisk enemies are in this cave, which I'm sure can petrify, but it thankfully didn't happen.





Antlion is a counterattacker mainly, so as long as you heal, it really isn't dangerous.




Mount Hobbs wasn't too hard either. The cockatrices can petrify, but thankfully I only saw it happen while they were confused from the Lamia's Harp. For the boss fight, I just attack and healed. Obviously took advantage of Hide to avoid the explosion then had Edward appear. The enemies that appear after the explosion are vulnerable to confuse, so thankfully it was manageable without having to grind for much HP.





Stats with equipment before Edward leaves the party(then has to be rehacked into the party)




At Mysidia, I check the shop to buy the important Gaia Gear, just to find out Edward can't equip it . Guess I'll need to stock up on a lot of items to cure gradual petrify for the Barbariccia fight.


Mount Ordeals wasn't too hard. I could still fight most battles with back row, confusion from the harp, and healing items which now include Hi-Potions. The first boss wasn't too difficult. Just use Hi-Potions on all but one of the enemies with the boss(Drain from them is weaker than the boss's Thunder) for one hit kills, then just attack the boss and heal as needed.



He's KO'd there in that pic but hasn't done the death animation yet. After that got rid of the last enemy then saved. Switched rows before the next fight. It wasn't difficult either.





Reactivated the code so that Edward could help Cecil become a Paladin. It wasn't an issue for Edward to actually win the fight.




Went back to Mist to buy the Dancing Dagger. It does some decent damage when used as an item and can be used infinitely. This replaced Edward's harps for now since it is currently stronger. The Baron Guard was no issue for it. Spamming the Dancing Dagger and healing items, Edward was able to avoid making the solo exception here.




Of course this was completely stupid and took way too long, so if I do another solo, I'll just make an exception and do it the scripted way.


Got the Twist Headband from the shop(immune to confusion is great) and Kenpo Gi(Strength boost is nice for anyone).


For Baigan, I just needed to get rid of the arm that paralyzes then the rest would be easy. Of course, I didn't remember which arm did it, so I ended up with the first game over of the run




Next try, I destroyed the arm that does paralyze then destroyed Baigan. Then hid from the remaining arm's self-destruct.




Tried Cagnazzo, but I'm currently underleveled for it. I tried using Spider Silk and Bacchus Wine on the part where he heals, but still couldn't put out enough damage at level 32. Hermes Sandals are way too important to waste at the moment(though maybe I could win with all 3 items used?), so I'm going to go level up a bit. Edward really needs more HP anyway.

[English Language]

And at the end of the FFVII Pseudo-Blue Mage run. On the way down to Sephiroth, you occasionally fight Dragon Zombies and Iron Giants. Neither are difficult. Dragon Zombies can be petrified with White Wind, and Iron Giants can be put to sleep(Frog Song, with me until the end).

+++++JENOVA-SYNTHESIS+++++


Jenova and both arms are separate targets. Jenova herself can slap you with her arms, drain health, and heal herself. Killing both arms in a single 2x Cut hit stops her from doing anything. I hit her with a bunch of Magic Hammers to stop her last attack. After being nearly killed, Jenova starts counting down to Ultima. Once it's cast, the fight ends. Jenova started at 5 for me, then died on the next attack, sending me to the final fights.

+++++BIZARRO SEPHIROTH+++++


Quick note, Bizarro Sephiroth has effectively infinite MP. He technically has a limited pool, but it auto-refreshes whenever he gets a turn. B-Sephiroth is a bit of a gimmick fight. He has 5 parts: Body, Head, Left Arm, Right Arm, Core. The Core does nothing but heal the Body, the Body can regenerate any dead part except the Core, and all 4 parts can attack independently of each other. The core is invulnerable to damage at the start. Killing the Left and Right Arms will drop this. Casting a single Pandoras Box did the trick for me, killing both arms and the head, and setting the body back a decent 5000 health. After that, I smacked the core until it died, then did the same to the body. Honestly, typing this paragraph about the fight took longer than the fight itself.

He did pull off one move at the end I wasn't counting on though. If the body and head are alive on every...8th turn the Body gets I think, he casts a move called Aurora Fence, which wiped out my Haste from Big Guard, Sadness, and revived my dead allies. Haste and allies being revived were no big deal, but losing Sadness was a pretty big surprise, considering I had no more Tranquilizers, meaning I was going to have to take full damage from everything for the next fight.

If you're strong enough like I mostly likely was, you can also forget that whole gimmick and just beat the Body down faster than the Core can heal it.

+++++SAFER SEPHIROTH+++++


First off, Safer Sephiroth has the same "infinite" MP thing Bizarro does.
Safer Sephiroth has a set pattern of attacks he uses.

1. Wall(drags the fight on longer)
2. Shadow Flare(deals almost my entire health bar, Big Guard is a must for this fight. Chance to learn Shadow Flare if you havent yet)
3. Wing attack(see above if it crits)
4. <Rises into the air>(chance to regain MP)
5. Pale Horse(some damage and statuses)
6. Super Nova(you know what this is, deals most of your current health in damage and inflicts some status effects)
7. Break OR Heartless Angel(starts as Break, dealing damage. Below a certain amount of HP, he uses Heartless Angel drop my HP to 1)
8. <Comes down>(heal and regain MP time)
9. DeSpell(Re-Big Guard)
10. Deen(party wide damage)
11. Wing attack(same as 3)
12. <Rises into the air>(heal and MP)
13. Pale Horse(see 5)
14. Super Nova(see 6)
15. Break OR Heartless Angel(see 7)
16. <Comes down>(Heal and MP)

And repeat. This makes deciding what to do easy. Doing damage by yourself can be difficult if you're spending most of the time healing and refilling MP since this guy hits pretty hard. Luckily, all these hard hitting attacks makes Meteorain charge up pretty quickly. Things actually get easier when he gets low enough to use Heartless Angel instead of Break, since Break can actually kill you. This fight isn't especially difficult either tbh, the fixed pattern makes countering what he does really easy. He was dead before the third Supernova.

Aand thats it. Aside from whatever sidequests need to be done, the game is done. I might go ahead and fight Ruby and Emerald Weapon later, but I'm not too optimistic on my odds against them.

EDIT: Yeah, chances are those two aren't happening without some serious levelling.

Emerald Weapon one-shot me the second the fight started.

Ruby Weapon is very doable. His attacks hit pretty hard through Big Guard, but Angel Whisper and Magic Hammer keep me alive. The real problem is the tentacles counter-attacking everytime I hit Ruby Weapon with anything. Tentacle B will always wipe out a majority of my MP. As long as I still have 3 left I can hammer again, and I can toss items on myself to heal, so it's not THAT big an issue. Tentacle A, however, drops me to triple digit HP(it deals a % of my current health), which makes it extremely easy for RW to kill me(the tentacles can be killed, but doing so is a terrible idea. It'll just have Ruby Weapon start throwing worse attacks out, then re-summoning them anyways.) A Ribbon is mandatory because all his worst attacks deal some sort of status effect. He has 3 attacks that are easily negated. Ruby Flame deals fire damage, so equipping a Fire Armlet makes it a good thing to see.

Shadow Flare and Ultima, however, are easy, but time-consuming to deal with. Ruby Weapon has 2560 MP. 26 Magic Hammers will remove that completely(minus one anytime he uses Shadow Flare). A Reflect Ring would negate the damage from SF(*and dealing ~300 damage to Ruby), but Ultima is still a problem, if rarely used. After that's eliminated, Ruby Weapon is left with only one attack that can actually kill me. Unfortunately, after Tentacle A's counter-attacks,k it can very easily do so.

I'll give it a few tries.

[ChaosEnigma]

Went back to Mount Ordeals and grinded Edward to level 40. The reason I grinded there was the chance of a Cursed Ring drop. It didn't happen obviously. I think this got me another multiplier, but I wasn't paying attention to it.


For Cagnazzo, I just gave up on trying to do it without the buff items and used one of my Hermes Shoes. Dancing Dagger item use doesn't do much damage, but physicals with it did some. With Haste, I also got enough turns to be able to to outrace the healing.




Didn't level any more for the Magnetic Cave. Despite the Dancing Dagger being metal, it didn't seem to do any more damage to the Dark Elf. The Dark Elf was a matter of keeping healed and attacking. Once the Dark Dragon showed up, an Hourglass can be used to stop it for a while(I think this is the only boss that's vulnerable to it for the same reason Tornado actually works on it), so Edward was able to get rid of it easily.





Next was the tower. I decided to grind a bit because Barbariccia is a terrible boss for a solo run. I stuck with the Puppeteer and Puppet encounters because of the Decoy drops. Got quite a few levels and enough Decoys that I could get away with not ever having to use any HP healing during the Barbariccia fight. Maybe I should have gotten more because Blink as an item is a very good thing, but I didn't want to get too overleveled. Looks like my next chance to get more would be Tower of Babel, though I'm not sure which visit of it.


Magus Sisters went down without any trouble, though I forgot to take a pic of the fight. Barbariccia was using Decoys and attacking while making sure to use Gold Needle to cure gradual petrify when I was at 3/4. I may have made some mistakes with doing it early(I'd have to check) and even a case of attacking when I was at 3/4(but thankfully I got the turn to cure it before the boss went).




Looted the remaining chests I could get to in Baron Castle. I then went around the first world map. Bought a Mythril Knife even though it's weaker than the Dancing Dagger for the +damage to one of the monster types. I then went and looted Eblan Castle. The trapped monster chests were easily dealt with by using an Hourglass to stop the enemies.

Went down to the underworld and then fought the dolls and Golbez.


The dolls don't combine until there's only one type left, so you can kill all but one of each, weaken them, then take both out before one gets their next turn. This is lame though, so I reset after doing it then fought the combined form. It has some very high potential damage due to FF4's multihit system over the 1 hit thing FF5 has. But this also means that the damage can be very low and not as consistent like in FF5. If you take too long on the combined form, it'll split back into the dolls, and if they combined again, it'll be fully healed. Due to this, I used a Spider Silk to slow it so that i'd have more time to heal and attack, but it may be possible even without using one.

Calcobrena follows a pattern of a few attacks, a confusion attack(which I had immunity to), a few attacks, then a paralyze attack. Paralyze is even worse here than it is in FFV, but Edward has the perfect answer to that by just hiding on the turn before it shows up.

After that, we have to deal with Golbez, who was one of those fights I was worried about. Considering that I'm solo and have nearly the levels that a nonvariant would have at beating the game, I guess my agility was high enough to keep up even without slowing him. Edward could even hide before the paralyze, then unhide and have ATB ready for when the Mist Dragon came in to get some more damage in.





Edward's stats at the moment actually seem pretty good. He's mainly being held back by the lack of HP and being stuck with Knives right now. I'm not sure when I actually get an upgrade from the Dancing Dagger, but I'm hoping soon.


Naked stats



Current best equipment stats




I also started recording some videos of this starting from Cagnazzo. I'll need to start up a new file to play up through Baigan again sometime, but for now it can wait. Some of the pics are from runs of the fights other than the one where I recorded, so the pics and video may not match up for some bosses.

[System Error]

So with Kain in our party, do we switch Porom to the back again? Oddly enough, she is about as capable with the Fight command as Kain is, so he gets to stay in the back and use Jump, while Porom gets to swing her hammer. He can also equip the Throwing Axe if I really do need the Fight command (if Jump is too slow, I guess). Also, check out this freaky quirk when landing.


Some of her survivability goes up when I pick this bad boy up. Despite an unassuming name, the Armlet, in addition to a +10 Vitality bonus, protects against physical attacks from every single enemy race in the game. Its only downside is that it can't be equipped by any class that wears armor. It was also possible to send Edge back and have him rely on Shruiken, but I decided that there was more to keeping him in the front row than there was to putting Kain there. I also got a Blk.Cowl drop as a bonus for him, a floor before I'd get it normally.


Nope, this hack does not let you have Alerts. Lame.


I think I briefly touched on the Steal glitch in my Solo Edge report, so here it is in action. Despite the novelty, it wasn't worth it for Porom to do this when her Mystic Hammer was extremely powerful on its own. Similarly, when I got a Rune Staff/Silence Staff drop further in, she remained with the hammer.


The biggest problem when climbing the Tower were those BlackCat enemies. Hit them with a nonlethal attack, and they counter with Blaster, to either paralyze or instantly kill a random party member. Things like Edge's throwing, Kain's jumping, or Palom's Bio/Quake could bypass it, though.

So we climb up the floors of the tower. Lugae is not there to obstruct us, leaving us free to proceed behind him to the basement floors behind him (from Babil when you're entering it from the Eblan Cave). Yeah, I'm not sure how that works either.


One time it was worth it to switch Kain in, though: these Mad Ogres were weak to the Ogre Axe I'd picked up. Knowing they were in this box, I made the switchover for this one battle.


Lugae is waiting before the Crystal Room. He wasn't that difficult. Porom could dismantle the robot with her hammer, and the others' damage was not to be sneezed at as well. I was able to quickly move on to the second phase of the battle.

This whole bit is one big speedrunning reference. Lugae underflows the robot's MP to cast Meteo, which would actually be funny and pretty par for ROMhacks if he cast the real one and not Zeromus' which is basically harmless. And similarly, if Barnabas explosion from lack of oil kills everyone (it's no different than before), forcing you to kill both at the same time. Then he uses the attack you glitch in to kill the final boss instantly in the 64 door glitch category, the Grenades' Chain Reaction. Which is dubbed upt Co because menus, and is called that here too because references. For whatever reason, this does not instantly kill you. No damage race before doom either. Wasted moments...


Similarly, Lugaeborg was just a giant beatdown. He got off one nasty Laser due to his inflated HP, but without Sleeping Gas counters to worry about, this was probably slightly easier than it would be in vanilla.


The scene before this is weird. Golbez places a Crystal down, then just walks up to you and attacks. It's actually pretty similar to his Dwarf Castle incarnation from vanilla. Two key differences being you can resist the paralysis (Kain and Cecil's Viking Helmet/Power Gauntlets allowed this), and there's no Summoner to show up to save you. Regardless, I was able to inflict heavy damage on Golbez between Cecil using the Avenger, Palom using Bio, Edge physically attacking and hitting his Light weakness, and Porom and Kain both attacking physically.

From here, it was a race to see if I could outrace his Demolishes and counters on being hit. I didn't bring enough Phoenix Downs, so this was a tight thing. Cecil continued to chip away while Kain and the others played revival duty, throwing out damage when all was right.


And a final Quake ended it, the encounter coughing up one hell of a drop. Cursed Ring, by contrast to vanilla, has its elemental absorption built-in, and only has a penalty of -5 to all stats.


What the FUCK? I beat him! And I beat his dragon! Why the fuck am I the one face down on the ground? Fuck this ROMhack. I'm not putting up with this garbage. We won. What's on the other side?


This room! Oddly, it is actually set up to have an exit back, unlike its vanilla counterpart. The door there is also functional. And it leads...


Um? Hello?


I can't put down any crystals. The altars don't even respond. But I can go in the middle to repeat the scene where I get sent to the Underworld, though without any ill effects other than having to go up the tower again.

Anyway, with that BS and winning a battle I didn't know you weren't supposed to win and yet was coded with those drops and yet was not coded with anything to either branch off into an alternate path or explain why you're suddenly facedown on the ground out of the way, the game REALLY opens up. We're told to find our friends and save the world! Just like in FF6, except not really! There's also a few other quests you can do, and a primary one is finding the Floater.


So I can finally go to Mysidia. Palom and Porom encourage him to see the Elder, who has forgiven him by this point for his being deceived. Though Cecil has yet to forgive himself, the Elder says to climb Mt. Ordeals to become a Paladin. It seems I can't get in, though...also, I need to find a Floating Stone to raise the Lunar Whale, because wishes/prayers are DEAD. Where is it? They have no idea, so we need to look.

Also, the Serpent Road is here, but it's apparently being haunted by evil spirits, so I still can't enter it. At least I have some sort of explanation now!


Baron seems to be the only other place where I can make headway that doesn't involve part members, and I can do that with a new airship. Apparently Red Dwarf is a reference, and that's the kind of thing that's okay - subtle but fitting in context. This is stupid and forced, though both at least keep with the theme of FF3/FF4 Airships coming from popular culture...

So this Floater. Hm. Maybe it's in the Ice Cave, because it's there in FF1?


Oh, fuck me dead, it is. King Santos gives it to the twins as a present.

Anyway, this unlocks the moon and Mt. Ordeals. Class change is optional in this hack. Well. I was orignally going to do this part of the game as an "as I explored it" kind of style, but I felt this flowed better and is more informative. Okay, so you can sort-of freely choose your party from here on out in the game. Because of cumbersome engine limitations, you can't add a character without losing one first. So I'll talk about how to obtain and lose every character and their advantages and disadvantages.


- Paladin Cecil: After getting the Floater, you can go to Mt. Ordeals. Cecil will have to fight a Zombie/Ghoul/Revenant group five times on his own. He'll lose whatever equipment he has on after class changing of course, but if you have a Flame Sword and some throwaway equipment, it's perfect. You face the Dark Knight at the end as usual, and then you're given one final test: to protect others, namely the rest of your party in a battle against the DarkMist. Honestly, Cecil (who still spawns at Level 1!) is the one who needs protecting here.

Go for it, or not? The obvious disadvantage is having to build him back up again, as well as losing access to some of the Dark Swords like Blood and Avenger. Dark Knight Cecil is still viable. But if you're not going to use Porom or Tellah, Paladin Cecil is very good. Like Dark Knight, he learns a variety of White Magic, and way more than he does in vanilla. This includes Cure3.


- Losing Kain: Go to Bahamut's Cave on the moon. The enemies in it are as dangerous as they always are, but you at least don't need to fight Behemoths. When you reach him, you face him with Kain alone. He greets Kain as the son of Ricard, and offers to take him up as an apprentice if he wins. To win, you simply jump over his Meganukes when they're at one; it's basically the Dark Bahamut battle from FF4a. Also in a fun glitch, Bahamut gives you a screwed-up message if you go back talk to him after.

Kain will automatically dispose of a boss if you lose him in this way, which is both a bad and a good thing. He can equip heavy armor (including the Dragon Armor found in Bahamut's Cave, which protects against the main three elements), can physically attack from the back row albeit with a few problems, and with his spears can deal air, fire, ice, lightning, and holy damage, as well as dealing racial damage to Mechs and Dragons with the Gungnir and Dragon Lance respectively. He can also equip axes, doing racial damage to Giants, Slimes, Reptiles, and Mages. He's extremely solid.


- Losing Palom/Porom: To lose the twins, you try to enter the Serpent's Road. You'll fight the EvilWall, who is weak to Light and despite starting really close dies really quickly. When you win, they petrify themselves to stop the wall from closing in further.

With Rosa and Rydia's abilities nerfed, they're the only characters to carry the full compliment of Black and White Magic respectively besides Tellah. Porom as you've seen is a capable front row fighter with hammers, dealing high damage on Mechs and Mages, as well as being able to hit with the Fire and Lightning element. Palom has his magic to rely on. Both good characters.


- Losing Edge: If you go to the Cave of Eblan, you'll find it infested with robots. The path that ordinarily leads to the castle's secret underground living quarters now leads to the Giant of Babel, where a surviving Lugae is. You fight the CPU at the end, and Edge leaves you to be with his people afterwards.

While Edge's Black Magic isn't too hot, he can throw things. Ashura, Kotetsu, and Murakumo can deal Holy, Dark, and Air damage respectively. Triton Dagger can deal Ice damage. Most interesting is the Assassin's Dagger. It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the hack from what I can tell, but it deals racial damage to Dragons, Reptiles, Giants, Slimes, and Mages, and may instantly KO a target. Fantastic weapon. Edge does suffer from low HP for a character that wants to be in the front row. He's also the only character who can't equip the White Robe, Dragon equipment, or Protect Armlet; he can't get resistance to the three basic elements. To him, the best defense is a good offense.

So oddly enough, I feel I want to keep this party. It's extremely solid, aside from the weirdness of Kain being in the back row.


- Obtaining Rydia: Speak to her in the Feymarch. You'll fight an upgraded Mombomb (explodes into GrayBombs and Balloons, or if she's strong enough, can outright kill it!) and the Baron Guards from her perspective and alone, both easy fights. She'll see her village being burned from her perspective, see the future, then join you - also because Cecil is the closest thing she has to family now.

Rydia continues to learn summon spells. Of the ones you haven't seen and their levels, 30: Mist/35: Flayr/40: Titan/45: Bird/50: Levia/55: Asura/60: Odin/65: Baham. The strongest is the last one at 60 power (and is even cast instantly), with Titan being 40 and Leviathan being 35. Rydia seems to shine at wiping out groups of enemies with her summons, but Black Magic seems stronger on single targets, like in FF5. To compare with some power numbers, Ice3 and friends are 64 power (and comes much sooner for Palom!) and Flare is 100 power. She can ignore Reflect with anything, which Palom only has Quake for.

Unlike what is claimed, she doesn't become a master of magic at any point to my knowledge. Her big flaw is the lack of any instant cast magic that's worthwhile up to Bahamut.


- Obtaining Rosa: Go to Bahamut's Lagoon. You'll see her trapped by tentacles, and then you have to face Octosoul. It has an 8-hit combo (laughable with Paladin's inherent Cover), and after using Search, will follow it up with the EvilWall's Crush. Oddly, she's the only character whose quest you can start without getting a WARNING. If you refuse her after the batlte, you can't get her.

Rosa can hit Mages and Dragons for racial damage, and can hit for all six elements. Her power is a bit on the low side, however, as aside from Yoichi Arrows, none of them have any attack value. She can't equip armlets with this setup, and staves are hardly acceptable damage-wise. Does get a decent selection of White Magic, at least.


- Obtaining Yang: Go to the Mythril Mines, which are a new dungeon with an original design! Most of its enemies are from the Sealed Cave/Ice Mines. Yang apparently went off to find the SeaRuby to cure the King of Fabul's poison, which randomly seemed to happen during the Fabul raid and only came up now. Beat the uncreative repeat palette swap Sealion near the end to obtain the SeaRuby, whose only real trick is a BigWave. The Thor Hammer is also in here, pretty useful hammer.

Yang punches stuff for consistently high damage, but has no elemental or racial properties with his fists due to the lack of claws, so his damage is a bit too consistent. As we went over before, Chakra is booty butt. Probably the worst character because of it. Two things of recruiting him or at least doing the quest and making him disappear forever, though: you receive the Save the Queen from the King, a neat Paladin sword that is weaker than other options but gives +15 Agility, and if Edge is in your party, she'll tell Yang to give the Cleaver to his ninja friend. Nothing that you'll miss, but still nice to have.


- Obtaining Edward: That body will finally be out of the way, so you can go into the basement of Damcyan Castle to find him with Anna, or rather an evil spirit possessing her corpse. He'll play music to calm the spirit while you beat it up and try not to get destroyed by its status magic. After Anna thanks you for freeing her, tells Edward to go out and love the entire world.

Edward performs as well as he would for that sucker above me as if it were the postgame, getting the fantastic Loki's Lute that deals racial damage on every race in the game. There's also the Blood Harp for absorption, the Requiem Harp for Holy (and Spirits), and Apollo's Harp for Fire (and Dragons). His harps do require a double grip which limits his use of armlets, which is a bit unfortunate. He can equip the White Robe for the resistances, but remains quite frail.

His later songs kind of disappoint. Dirge (25) damages and may inflict Count on all enemies, Magic (36) recovers ally MP, Image (49) adds Blink to all allies and is definitely useful, Angel (64) is the same as Ciriatto's, and Final (81) restores all allies HP/MP, at the cost of an ungodly charge time of 15 and getting to level 81 in the first place.


- Obtaining Tellah: Go to the Magnetic Cave. It's a much shorter dungeon than in vanilla, being only three rooms including the final one, but still has its gimmick. Beat the Dark Elf at the end to obtain him and have him learn all spells in the game. The biggest problem from the battle against him is Tellah himself and his variety of high-damaging and instant kill spells.

Despite his status as a magical jack of all trades, Tellah has two huge flaws. The first is Edge syndrome. The other characters will have leveled up in the meantime due to being part of the shadow party, but Tellah will rejoin at a mere level 20. This is compounded by his not really gaining a lot of HP/MP until like Level 40. He needs a lot of investment to be worthwhile but can do Palom and Porom's jobs if you get him. Not at the same time and with a stat deficency, but at least the latter is something you might really want.


- Obtaining Cid: After getting the TARDIS, speak to him in the Dwarves' Castle. Beat the Ship'sAI boss, which more or less acts like Ivan Ooze from vanilla with all the Reflect business.

Cid uses Hammers and Axes, wears heavy armor, and has a truckload of HP. His attacks can be of the three basic elements, as well as being effective on Mechs and Mages. He's a bit of a one-trick pony, but the high HP and heavy armor (Dragon equipment) helps a lot. He's solid on his own, though not as tanky as Kain or the Cecils due to inability to equip shields with his hammers.


There's interactions between characters as you go through with these. For example, if you have Telllah when getting Edward they'll acknowledge each other, Rydia will make a smart remark about a Rat's Tail before Kain fights Bahamut

There are a couple other side-quests not linked to anything. You can retrieve the Adamant from the Mythril Mines to obtain the Ragnarok from Kokkol the Smithy. You can also fight Odin, to learn a bit about Cecil's history and how he adopted him as a child. He'll comment on whether or not you changed classes, acknowledge Kain and Rosa if either is there, and bestow you his late wife's sword, Excalibur, after a battle.

And a few other item locations...
- Air Knife: Damcyan Basement.
- Sage's Staff: Mt. Ordeals.
- Break Blade: Magnetic Cave. Is notably not magnetic.
- Venom Axe: Magnetic Cave. Is magnetic!
- Defender: Giant of Babil.
- Yoichi Bow: Giant of Babil.
- Gungnir: Giant of Babil
- Thor Hammer: Mythril Mines
- Muramasa: Mythril Mines
- Blood Harp: Mythril Mines
- Triton Dagger: Mythril Mines
- Slasher: Mythril Mines.
- Apollo Harp: Lunar Passage
- Holy Lance: Lunar Passage
- Murasame: Lunar Passage


Anyway, I did class change. I was able to use the speedrunning method of grinding to get Paladin Cecil back up to speed, though I used MacGiants instead of D.Machines because Porom could one-shot them; the D.Machines are strangely not machines. This also levels up everyone but Tellah, should I change my mind on this party, since they'll get all that experience as well - unsplit!

I'll finish this off tonight ideally, then more FF4 solos.

[ChaosEnigma]

Okay, huge update.


For Lugae, you're supposed to weaken the robot down so that the explosion is weak then defeat the Doctor. I just opted to destroy the robot then hide from the more powerful form. I lost once cause I defeated the Doctor first thinking I'd have time to hide. I had forgotten the Prisoner's garb anyway.

For the second part, Edward can have Sleep Immunity from the Prisoner's garb. This gets rid of the threat of the counter. I lost to a Laser though because I thought he had a normal sleep move in the script, so I didn't hide from it the first time. Just made sure to hide from laser and it wasn't an issue.





Rubicante could 1 shot Edward with Scorch, but he telegraphs when he is going to do it, so it was easy to hide. The main threat were the counters since they do more damage being targetted against one character than it would against the team.




Then we get to the Trap Doors. I was definitely worried after seeing Sullla's comments about them. Not only am I doing less damage but I'm slower at the moment too. The Kain solo seemed to have some different experience with the amount of agility needed too. Trap Doors wouldn't be an issue anyway since you can farm for Reflect casting items. Demon Wall was the big one because you need to either kill it quickly or farm the extremely rare Ribbon drop.


The battle seems quite messed up on GBA or maybe there's some mechanics with enemy and character speeds that I don't understand. I even recorded something using savestates to show how the battle(only the trap door part plays out on all 6 battle speeds)



As for the Demon Wall. I also got more attacks in than what the reports suggested should be possible. Even at Battle Speed 3 and on Battle Speed 6 when I first tried it, I still got somewhere around 20,000 damage in. Still, I ended up having to grind.


Edward's two best post 70 level ups are ridiculous. 3/3/0/3/3 and 4/0/4/4/4

Got quite a bit of the first then switched over to the second for later levels. For the SFC version since there's no Lunar Ruins, you'd want to go for the first until you're capped on both Strength and Agility naked, then switch to the second. Here I went with what the max stats FAQ suggested and did 11 for the first then 18 of the second.


So after some leveling, then a Spider Silk + Bacchus Wine




At this point I had a lot of decoys from the level grinding. I also went and selectively leveled all the way to 99 to get it over with and to avoid possible bad level ups in random battles while fighting. I also looked up a guide and got the Elixirs I had missed. Bought some on the Moon too.


On the subject of that 3/3/0/3/3 and 4/0/4/4/4



Those are naked stats, not equipped stats. Obviously I could have opted to max Agility instead, but since this is the GBA version, equipment can handle that.

I didn't even need to use an Elixir during the Elemental Lords fight. The much higher stats, evasion, hiding, and decoys allowed me to do it easily.




I then had to use an Elixir during the CPU fight and still almost died to it somehow. CPU somehow managed to be harder than Elemental Lords.


Did the Trials dungeon to get Edward his new equipment. The bosses weren't too damaging.

I did the one for Edward's weapon first which wasn't an issue due to high stats. For Master Flan, I had to switch back to Dancing Dagger to use as an item because it does magic damage instead of physical. The boss itself(not being an actual flan) actually takes physical damage, so I was able to defeat it. I would have skipped it if I had needed to use the Dancing Dagger and who knows how many Elixirs to survive with such low damage output since it doesn't guard anything that Edward can use. Storm Dragon I didn't bother healing because I didn't want to use Elixir on that.


After, I went back and did Leviathan(had already done Asura), Odin, and Bahamut(who I was doing less damage to than expected).

The final dungeon bosses weren't too hard either. White Dragon is destroyed by Apollo harp's strength against Dragons. Lunasaurs were taken out due to Apollo harp's strengths too, though I did almost die. Plague was cheesed by using a curtain to reflect Doom. Dark Bahamut missed all his attacks and actually is considered a Dragon unlike Bahamut. Ogopogo was just using Elixirs when needed. Those double Tidal Waves are a pain.


I had way more than enough Elixirs for Zeromus.




Went through the final stuff again with the other party members then started Lunar Ruins. I took a kind of bad party the first time since Lunar Ifrit took a lot longer than I would have liked(the buyable Assassin Dagger comes later in the dungeon, so it would have been better take someone else for a different trial)


Lunar Shiva isn't bad with ice resistance.




Lunar Asura's AI was looped to avoid the dangerous counters




Lunar Ifrit took way too long due to no decent weapon for the fight. Not a huge threat with the high Elixir stock. At this point, I'm pretty much playing a weaker melee character with Hide.




Almost died to Lunar Ramuh but managed to get him.




managed to defeat Zeromus EG my first time going through the dungeon. Elixirs were able to keep me healed, and Edward is able to hide to avoid the Whirl into HP leak death thing.






I still need to go through Lunar Ruins and do the rest of trials. Cecil's was skipped because Lunar Odin's Holy currently 1 shots me. I need to get more curtains to reflect it with, but his can be done in any run. Didn't get the ultimate harp from that run, but Assassin's Dagger is still a great weapon, and Apollo's Harp is good for the dragon killing power.

I also tried Brachioraidos but got 1 shotted by Scorch before I could even do anything with fire resisting gear on. I haven't used any Silver or Gold Apples yet, but for this enemy I might have to(I did use something to boost MP despite it being useless for Edward because why not?). I was playing on default speed like the rest of the run, so maybe I could work out some strategy on a lower setting. It's either lower speed and possibly still need more, farm HP boosts, or get element absorb. Obviously the first 2 are my preferable choices considering the low drops rates of Cursed Ring.

[ChaosEnigma]

After the first run through Lunar Ruins, switched out the party then went through again.


Lunar Titan isn't an issue for any character that has the Ribbon. At low health it starts spamming Demon Wall's Crush, but Ribbon provides immunity. It's probably not possible without the Ribbon or Adamant Armor outside of Edward or Kain, and even then after how long the trial is, why would you ever attempt that? I think Dark Knight Cecil would have to skip this one unless there was some way to do enough damage to avoid Crush.




I didn't need to farm curtains for Lunar Odin. I really should have done it the first time through. I could hide from the Zantetsukens and the Holy because this boss like most others in the game follow a consistent pattern unlike in FFV where they follow patterns, but there's different attack possibilities per turn.




I ran into the Platinum Toad floor on this run of the ruins. Don't remember what trial section it was after exactly, but I was thinking I no longer needed my hourglasses so I stocked them at Fat Chocobo. I couldn't do enough damage to defeat it before it ran. Had to use one of the Lunar Grimoires for a 9,999 damage summon to kill it. I got the ultimate harp later in the run which has monster type damage bonuses for most monster types in the game, so in the next run I was able to just kill it with 2 attacks from that.



Lunar Leviathan's paralyze was no problem at all. Paralyze is a terrible status early game, but at this point it barely lasted any time at all.





Did not get the Brachioraidos floor this time, which was too bad.


Lunar Dragon took a while because it is one of those Dragons that isn't considered a Dragon type by the game.




neither is Lunar Bahamut




Thankfully Brachioraidos actually spawned this time, so i was able to do all Lunar Ruins trials and bosses in the minimum of 3 runs.

Okay, here's what little I know about this dragon's AI. Summons will set a flag that triggers Globe 199 counters, but the counters only start happening if you attack him while he's charging Mega flare. I'm not sure if that's only for Rydia or if Lunar Summons from grimoires would count. You should not attack during the countdown. It makes it go into a different AI script with triplecast spells and some other stuff.


Lowered the battle speed down so that I could get Hide off before the opening Scorch. Battle Speed 4 instead of 3 IIRC. After Scorch, unhide and toss Spider's Silk. You can then get into a pattern of attacking and hiding before the 2 scorches in the pattern. During the countdown, do nothing except use a curtain to get Reflect to bounce back Megaflare. Brachioraidos is actually considered Dragon type, so Edward's 2 bonus dungeon harps will do great damage to it.




With this, Edward was able to solo every boss in the game without using any HP boosting items, without elemental absorption, and with the exception of Brachioraidos on default battle speed. With elemental absorption, which I would have with the dropped Hero's Shield, even a default speed battle would be possible because Scorch would now be absorbed instead of 1 shotting Edward. Boosting HP could have potentially let me take the Scorch attack too depending on the damage roll though.


Also noticed something on the Mom Bomb boss while going back through for recording vids of the preCagnazzo stuff. The little bombs all self-destruct eventually. It is a lot better for Edward to just stay hidden and wait for that then to try to unhide then confuse stuff. It's actually a surprise I didn't die the first time I did that fight.


Assassin's Dagger, Hero Shield, Ribbon, Vishnu Vest, Harmonious Ring pretty much give Edward 99% physical evade(though he was dodging almost everything already), decent M. Evade(69%), Absorb All elements, immune to most status. Maybe M. Evade could be higher with one of the low drop rate accessories, but I'm not going to look it up. There's almost no way he'd be dying to anything as is with that set up unless you really messed something up.

[ChaosEnigma]

And I've dropped any desire to solo FF IV again, well unless someone figures out a working Dark Knight method for Europe GBA. The fact that Dark Knight actually gets deleted after class change ruins that. You need Paladin Cecil to use the crystal. There's a sprite swap code that lets you get him back by changing a character to him(but you keep that character's stats, so it's no good, but you would have Dark knight growth). The other dark knight code makes a glitchy one with no stats, also not good. So for a working Dark Knight run you would need to write down all stats before class change, find the code for the Europe version because the code I found is for NA to swap a character to Dark Knight, then you would need to hack their level and every stat to where Dark knight Cecil's should be, then hopefully have the stats stick afterward. I also was considering a Porom run, but I don't want to deal with long drawn out bosses(specifically Barbariccia and Cagnazzo), everything else while it may be a while should still be manageable without much trouble.

So I'm going back to FF VI. It's been around 7 years since I last tried playing through the game. I quit after the Ultima Weapon fight. That particular run was a solo run with Gau. I've finally decided to revive said run and try to finally finish it. Obviously I don't have my save still, so I had to restart entirely. Having been 7 years since I had last played FF6, I'm obviously using a guide to help me find relics and treasures. I don't want to miss any important relics that I may have found the first time I attempted this when I knew more about the game. Outside of that, I'm not looking up strats for the bosses, I'll try to figure out what rage is best on my own. I do remember the stuff for the WoB, but WoR is going to be an issue to plan for.


The run will be on the GBA version of course. It fixes the evasion bug, vanish/doom(which I couldn't use anyway), and some other things(only notable one I can think of for Gau is that he can't equip Merit Award, which I banned for Celes as well and would ban for any other solo i do). It also adds some extra optional stuff that I probably won't even attempt because it'd be impossible for me. I did do Dragon's Den on my Celes Solo, but Celes actually has the stuff needed for it in a solo setting. Gau could maybe do it with some luck, but I wouldn't even be able to unlock it with Gau anyway(Fanatic's Tower, maybe there's enough items I could use to kill Holy Dragon?). I'll try the optional stuff that I can access though, but no guarantee on completion of it.


Just like my Celes run, Natural Magic Game. Celes did have an exception for Espers or equips to learn spells earlier, but I made sure to not teach her anything she did not learn through levels. Well outside of Reraise and some other stuff for Kaiser Dragon(that I never actually used but had saved with). So that means No Espers for level stat boosts(Magic grinding for Celes was done on the Veldt to avoid these) and no magic will be learned, so Gau will only have Rage and Item.


So first thing I did for this redo was to get Sofis's save from his Strago report then hack Gau into the party. I leveled Gau to 6 then fought Ymir. Despite being in the magitek armor sprite, he only had Rage/Item here(maybe I could have hacked the status for him and did it normally, but that wouldn't have been fun). One of Gau's base rages has Stone which does more damage to targets of equal level. The head of the boss is also level 6.


So Rage for Stone, hope Gau chooses it and goes for the head. But there's the shell, and you can't control Gau once he uses a rage. Well, unlike previous game berserk characters, you can try to flee from the battle to delay an attack. Gau's target will be chosen right as the bar fills, not when he actually does the attack, but as long as the boss choose not to slow Gau, I would be have a chance of winning the fight if Gau chose the right stuff.

Eventually he did




Gau is then quickly replaced by a Moogle because I have no idea the codes to protect him. I'd rather not mess with memory editing programs, and then there's the issues with softlocking with wrong/more characters. I'll stick to fighting only stuff that Gau is normally available for, just like I did in the Celes solo. I only bothered to do this boss because there was a save file that let me. Considering the grind for this boss, I restarted the game so that I'd be lower level later on.


I then played normally until getting Gau. I'm not familiar with the LLG strats, so I did do a little leveling, but I think my levels were still reasonable. Sabin's scenario was saved for last so I could get Rages from the Locke and Terra scenario enemies. A Locke or Celes solo would want the Locke scenario last since you get some useful gear or levels from the others, while for anyone else, it probably doesn't matter.


Gau does have an exception related to his solo. You need another living character to leap him off in order to learn Rages. So I had to keep Sabin and Cyan alive at first. Some people might be crazy enough to try doing this with only base rages(and maybe it's possible at very high levels), but that kind of negates the point of playing this character. The variety you lose out on would make it a lot less fun, so allowing an exception to get more rages will be done.


I took these after the Kefka at Narshe fight, but here is Gau's current rage list. I took a look at the stuff from when I first attempted this and made sure to grab every rage I had used during that except for the ones I didn't have access to yet. Got a few I'll probably never use too.






That grind for rages got quite a bit. And of course 1 extra rage makes for another picture. Obviously, that is just to keep track of what I had. Most other rages should be able to just get a mention later on since I won't likely be grinding too many at once outside of maybe in WoR.


Serpent Trench did have a game over from Aqua Breath. I tried to just kill the enemies quickly then got killed instead.



There's the answer for Aqua Breath though, unless of course there's an enemy that can use electric stuff too in the same battle. I didn't see how much Giga Volt would do thankfully, but it's probably a lot with the fact that I'm sure it's one of the attacks with split damage when multitargetted.



That's more damage than Gau even has Max HP at the time that the screenshot was taken. But it was survived since rages transfer elemental properties of the monster.


For the Kefka part in Narshe, I quickly had 2 groups guard so that the enemies would have to get through them to get to their target. The groups were set up so that they could potentially win if an enemy got up there. The third group was of course solo Gau and rushed down and got to Kefka before the others even had to fight.

Stray Cat was the rage of choice for the Hells Rider for the 4x damage from Cat Scratch.


For Kefka, we have to worry about Blizzara not to mention other spells. Blizzara is his strongest attack, so I chose a rage that absorbs it because at Gau's current level it also does more damage than he has HP.




Relics were Ribbon and Hermes sandals, both of which are picked up during Locke's Scenario. First time I did this was Ribbon/Hyper Wrist. Gau's level was 13, 1 lower than the 14 I was at the first time I had attempted this variant.


Now I do need the rages from the Trench enemies, so it'll be back to the Veldt first before continuing the story next time I play.

[Coeurva]

When fighting the spell-slinging Kefka in Narshe, he is vulnerable to Silence, which you can inflict with the Acrophies Rage.

As I recall, this is about the only time that Numbclaw renders a boss completely harmless, though. The White Dragon will vainly cast Dispel on itself in an infinite loop when Silenced, but Rages are disabled in the Cultists' Tower.