More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

Whats the least amount of fights you can get on the Big Bridge section?

Just one - the one at the beginning. You can avoid the rest, depending on where you step - though there's some RNG involved.



So my next project involves the FF game from my childhood. The Advance version of it mind you - the European release of the Advance version for some bugfixes. I might be able to do it on the PSP, but I dunno. Might do something on that version for the novelty of it, if I can be arsed to do so.

Anyway, so we've seen a solo of Cecil. And with abuse of memory editing on Sofis' part, we saw a solo run of Kain. Now with just a simple change of memory address 02006068, we're going to see a whole lot of other solos. There's a good dozen of them in front of us. This game as we've seen, does not like solos in certain regards. But we'll be fine.

Nothing to report yet. Though if I were going to be renaming characters, I'd probably name the first character I'm doing a solo of Cirno. :>

[Plus C]

Whats the least amount of fights you can get on the Big Bridge section?

Only the Chariots and Gilgamesh; I'm pretty sure the rest are based on where you step.

So my next project involves the FF game from my childhood. The Advance version of it mind you - the European release of the Advance version for some bugfixes. I might be able to do it on the PSP, but I dunno. Might do something on that version for the novelty of it, if I can be arsed to do so.

Anyway, so we've seen a solo of Cecil. And with abuse of memory editing on Sofis' part, we saw a solo run of Kain. Now with just a simple change of memory address 02006068, we're going to see a whole lot of other solos. There's a good dozen of them in front of us. This game as we've seen, does not like solos in certain regards. But we'll be fine.

Nothing to report yet. Though if I were going to be renaming characters, I'd probably name the first character I'm doing a solo of Cirno. :>

Ooooh this is interesting; Edward solo should be fun!

[System Error]

So let's begin. Since I'm tired of punching things, and since the first two solos of this game were done with physical characters, let's shake things up and do a magical character.



Palom (on the left there in that picture I found) is a Black Mage from Mysidia, the Yang to the Yin that is his twin sister Porom. Together, they are capable of using Twin, which casts the Pyro spell roughly 3/4 of the time and the Comet spell about 1/4 of the time, with a 1/256 chance of failing. Later on in the post-game of GBA/PSP, they may equip the Twin Stars for a chance of casting Double Meteor. Obviously, this is out for our solo challenge.

His primary skill is naturally Black Magic. It's worth noting that his twin sister and himself learn their spells at different levels than that of Rosa and Rydia. For example, the last black spell Palom learns is Flare at level 52. The last black spell Rydia learns is Meteor at level 60.

Palom also has the Bluff ability. This simply increases his Wisdom/Intellect by 16 when used. How does this play a factor? The spell multiplier is determined by Int/4 + 1. With Palom able to pump his up to 99 just with this, he can hit the maximum multiplier of 25 right from the get-go, with a bit of buffing.


Palom's stats are much as you'd expect for a magely character. Low on the physical end of things, and somewhat disappointing Agility, but high on the magical end. Among his starting equipment is an Ice Rod. Unlike the SNES version, the Blizzard spell cast by this may only be used single-target. It did on average around 30 damage to most targets. That's one disadvantage to GBA/PSP...

The good news about rod magic in this game is that it has unlimited uses. The bad news about rod magic is that, as well as being weaker, it does not benefit from the user's intelligence - instead using a fixed spell multiplier (in this case, 2). Still, it was a better alternative to physically attacking.


Let's do some image stitching here to cut back on number of images uploaded. By gaining a single level, Palom obtained the Blizzara/Ice2 spell. Whereas the first levels of spells have a spell power of 16, second level spells have a spell power of 64. Nearly four times the power!

Combined with Bluff, the Mist Dragon never stood a chance. It couldn't even do much with its physicals; they only dealt single-digit damage to even Palom.


Apparently, the General and Baron Soldiers are vulnerable to Pig. Pig is a status exclusive to this Final Fantasy, and it prevents all magic besides Pig from working. It doesn't affect physical ability. Think the opposite of Mini, which disables that, but allows full use of magic.

It's also worth noting that due to how status priorities are handled, Pig basically gives an attacker immunity to several statuses. If you can see where this is going now, you get a cookie.

Oh right, the battle...this battle works by having the General cast a "spell" to make the Baron Soldiers attack. If the soldiers are defeated, the General will cast a Retreat "spell". If the General is defeated, the soldiers attack themselves. With Pig on them, they couldn't do a thing, so they were easy to mop up after Cecil was removed from the equation.


Apparently, it's a bad idea to attack these guys with non-lethal magic? Could've been my first wipe if I wasn't careful.


Palom blasted his way through the cave by mostly leaning on his basic spells, which were more than enough at this point. Just about everything had an elemental weakness to exploit. A notable exception were the TinyMages. These little guys not only had an impressive magic defense to thwart Palom's magic, but would also respond to them with Osmose. A nice spell that's in our future, albeit one we'll be waiting until level 40 for. Short of a ridiculous drop.


If you thought Cecil and Kain had an easy time with Octomammoth, you haven't seen Palom in action. The octopus attacks at a high speed. Its speed decreases as it loses HP/tentacles, and its power increases. Palom simply Bluffed his Intellect to the maximum, and cast a Thundara. Considering the thing only has 2350HP to begin with, this was a clear-cut case of overkill.

Partway through the next dungeon, Palom reached level 19, learning Bio in the process. This spell is non-elemental, has a base power of 128 (twice as strong as -ara spells), and is cast instantly when used. Needless to say, with this, Antlion didn't stand a chance. I didn't even bother with Bluff.


This thing is a scripted encounter with an ungodly amount of HP - 45672 to be exact. Nothing Palom the destroyer can't tear through, though!! But that's stupid and requires using some Ethers, so I don't do it.


Speaking of breaking things!! MomBomb has 11000HP, but after dealing a certain amount to it, it will inflate, and after a turn, use Explode to deal damage and split into three Bombs and three GrayBombs. It never got the chance to do this, as Palom was able to blow it away with three Bluffed Bios before it could even say it was going to explode.

Nothing to note in Fabul. I gave Yang a break during the battles, just in case. All of them were over in one Bio. I was hoping he would be able to abuse Kain in the same way he abused the Sahagin, but the encounter terminated immediately after Cecil had been jumped on, followed by Palom.


And so Palom joins proper!! I actually had to reset here, because he joined with different equipment. Including, for whatever reason, a Rod instead of an Ice Rod. He was also able to upgrade to better equipment anyway.

Palom hit level 23 along the way to Mt. Ordeals, and he learned Quake. This spell targets all enemies not weak to Wind, has a base power of 200, and targets all enemies by default. This means that it does not become weaker when targetting multiple enemies.


Compare - an unbluffed Bio vs. an unbluffed Quake. Nearly ten times the damage on a set of six enemies!!

This might be a good time to talk about the damage formula for spells. First, you start with the spell's base power, which is modified based on enemy weaknesses and resistances.
- If the target is immune to the element, multiply by 0
- If the target resists the element, multiply by 1/2
- If the target is weak to the element, multiply by 2
- If the target is weak+ to the element, multiply by 4

Finally, if you are multi-targetting the spell, and it does not automatically target all enemies (such as with Quake), divide the spell power by the number of targets.

Next, the number of "hits" is calculated, based on the caster's spell modifier. First, the attacker rolls a number of times equal to their spell multiplier to see if they land a hit. If so, the defender can roll to see if they can evade. For monsters, the magic defense multiplier is always equal to 0.

The base power on each "hit" can be from 1.0-1.5 times the power, subtracted out of the target's magic defense.


If that's too complicated to wrap your head around, you can either check the Algorithms guide, or just check this out. Scarmiglione did not last against the power of Quake assault. Even without Bluff, Quake was a one hit KO on him and his Skullnants. With Bluff, I did enough damage to override his dying message, which is actually a script that triggers at low HP.

I also went without Bluff for his undead form, just because I wanted to see if I could. Bio and Fira actually did the same amount of damage, but I went with the latter, because why not? Since earth isn't actually an element in this game, he doesn't actually absorb Quake when it's used. However, he has immunity to the spell via a weakness to Wind, so it still wasn't an option for this battle.


Kain might not have been able to do this, using a solo exception to sleek on by this scripted fight, but Palom could! By Bluffing to the maximum and unleashing Quake, he could chew threw Yang's HP, doing anywhere from 6000-7000 on average. It took some Ethers that were probably ill-spent, but eventually, the Monk was sunk.

The Old Waterway was actually slightly tricky for Palom. He could damage the enemies easily enough, but their damage was starting to catch up to his HP. He ran from more than a few battles when down here, preferring not to mess around too often

The body of Baigan casts Reflect on itself, in an effort to foil your mages' attempts to damage him with magic. Unfortunately for him, Quake bypasses Reflect. Whoops. Took two castings to down him, no need to mess with Bluff and risk an Entangle.


Cagnazzo is weak to Ice when he's inside his shell or not gathering water. He absorbs the element when he is gathering water, and is instead weak to electricity. Palom was easily able to handle this encounter. I didn't have him use Bluff here, except once in attempt to bypass the shell form. It didn't take, but Palom was able to outdamage its healing anyway with Blizzaras.


Palom officially leaves the party at this point, but what's that to us? This nice pickup in the Village of Mist gives a +5 to Intellect. This is about the only thing worth mentioning from getting the Airship. He could fight in Elban Castle aside from the Ogre Magi, but it wasn't worth it.

The Magnetic Cave...Palom had some problems in here. Namely, from Ogres, who hit hard even with the boastful black mage in the back row. Any back attack with them around was basically instant death. A mixture of Quake, and Bio for when it was good enough or facing the vampiress/bat groups served to get him through.


The Dark Elf at the end turned out to be an unexpectedly difficult battle, however. He actually has a fairly ridiculous Magic Defense of 254. Even with the maximum Bluff, Bio could only deal 1 damage on average. Quake wasn't much better. Palom was Level 30 at the time. I had him gain 2 more levels to pick up Blizzaga. He also had to keep the Ruby Ring on, to protect against Pig. With its power of 256. Palom was able to break through his massive defenses and move onto the second phase of the battle.

This is a good time to introduce the Boss Bit. This is a special flag set on a number of different monsters, the vast majority of which are bosses. If a monster has the Boss Bit set, any status a weapon can inflict will never be inflicted, and any spell with the bit will automatically fail - unless it is an enemy spell that inflicts a status. Spells with the Boss Bit include the vast majority of status inflicters. This is no FF5 - damage is what the game wants on almost every boss.


The one exception, however, is the Dark Dragon. It does not have the Boss Bit checked, more than likely by design due to it not being changed in remakes - however strange a choice it may be. Palom wasn't complaining in any case, as it allowed him to lock the boss down with Stop and destroy him with more Blizzaga.

The Tower of Zot had its ups and its downs. Palom could wipe the floor with the opposition with a Bio or a Quake, though they could easily defeat him - especially on a back attack. Had a few wipes here for no good reason.


The Magus Sisters are another boss who exploit Reflect. A couple Bluffs and a Quake saw Sandy and Mindy dying instantly, and a second one dropped Cindy. No sweat.

That brought us to Barbariccia, also known as a boss the game expects you to use a certain job for. The Dragoon Job by Kain. The bad news here was, magic evasion was included in the package of protection. To add insult to injury, Palom couldn't even get one off at the start of the fight due to what I'm presuming is a weird bug activating the magic evasion too early. So...what to do about her, who was a major roadblock for Cecil and even Kain to an extent?

Well, first!!! Something Sullla tragically overlooked when doing his Solo Cecil run was the Gaia Gear. This piece of equipment gives resistance to partial petrification, and by extension due to the game's code, instant petrification as well. This made a third of what Barbaricia had to do useless.

The only catch with this equipment is that only the mages and Cecil may equip it. Still, others have their way to go about this fight without too much pain.


His next job was to grab a Dancing Dagger - though this required a significant detour to Mist including another walk through the cave. This would be our source of damage, if magical attacks were out of the picture. As for the defensive line, he encountered these enemies, Bluffed once, and Fired every Puppet they summoned.

What for? It just so happens that every item in their drop tables is a Decoy. This useful spellcasting item lets you use Blink, which gives protection against two physical attacks.

So easy to stock up, right? Well, not exactly. Many guides tell you the drop rates on items, but what many fail to tell you is that before something can even be dropped, a check needs to be passed. There is roughly a 5/98 chance of this happening. So that Pink Tail? It doesn't have a 1/64 chance of being dropped, it has a 5/6272 chance. That's over one in 1250! Still, with the sheer number of them, Palom picked up a good dozen with no difficulty, also ascending to Level 40 in the process.

He also managed a Rune Armlet drop off a Puppeteer, giving him a bit of extra defense and magic evasion.


Long story short, this worked well. Palom was able to throw a Spider's Silk at the start, as well as Hermes Sandles for a big speed advantage. He chipped away for wildly variable damage, as low as 30 and as high as 350, but between the Gaia Gear, Decoys, and some Hi-Potions when the stock of those ran out, he was in no danger. Thanks to a bug in the game, he could stay in the back row with no harm done to his accuracy. I don't intend to abuse this for the melee characters, but why not for the ones who have trouble?

And that's the Overworld done, FF4's World 1. Next up will be the Underworld section of the game.

[System Error]

In preparation for the first battles in the Underworld, Palom went out and...cast Poison on himself? The point of this is related to status priorities, as I was talking about before. The Calcabrena dolls were destroyed in a single casting of Quake.

The battle against Golbez features a problem and what would be a solo exception for Rosa and Yang. He paralyzes you, then the Shadow Dragon kills everyone but Cecil, before Rydia shows up. Kain can jump out of the way, those two would have problems. Palom, however, is not targetted by this...yet the paralysis is still a factor. But because poison has a higher priority than paralysis, the status never triggers. Sneaky, right?


Golbez appears to be magically immune before the Mist Dragon appears, though physical attacks work as they should. But once it does appear, and with Palom having powered up in the meantime, he blows Golbez away with a single casting of Thundaga. Rydia doesn't even get a chance to appear.


A pair of Quakes drops Barnabas and Lugae together, taking out the explosion factor in the battle.

As for Lugaeborg, Palom had the Prisoner's Garb equipped to protect against his Sleeping Gas. He bluffed twice, then unloaded with Thundaga all over him. Each strike did over 5000 damage, separating him from his 9321 without incident.


The enemies in the Tower of Babel was more of the same as we've been seeing as of late. Enemies who are quite threatening with their physical punch to Palom, but who he can easily mop the floor with as well. To demonstrate, this is how bad things could turn out on a back attack - assuming we survive. Well, back attacks, and those incidents where we kinda sorta forget to shift Palom back into the proper slot after we switch Yang back in, just to be sure nothing screws up.

The Elban Cave was a nice break by comparison. Nothing here could really threaten Palom. He made a nice pickup in the underground shop in the Black Robe. He also had the option of wearing a Black Belt he had found, for increased evasion. I decided to give him the latter for defensive purposes.


The second part of Babel had some interesting enemy groups, including the Mad Ogres. It was rather interesting seeing them only able to hit Palom for single to double digit damage, when they previously destroyed him if he tried to open the chest with them inside in Elban Castle.

On the subject of breaking bosses you're not supposed to...Palom COULD'VE done so, killing King or Queen Elban before he finished their speech. It would've required grinding up though, so I decided not to undertake it.


As for Rubicante...um, yeah. Don't be turned around by that damage - Scorch did anywhere from around that to 1000, doing around 1500 on average. Palom's max HP was 1744. So several attempts could end just because of a bad roll on damage.

As for Palom's own damage output? Blizzaga produced a healthy 9999. Since Rubicante absorbs ice when his cloak is up, he took the opportunity he had in-between to fire Bios at the guy, which did just under 2000. He made sure to be at full health to ensure the best chances of surviving Scorches - he had no way of reducing the damage, unlike Cecil and Kain, who could slap on Ice equipment.

It took about a dozen tries before everything lined up, but the deed was eventually done.


And so Palom settled in the floor below, in attempt to farm Light Curtains. They were being incredibly stubborn to drop. Palom hit level 50 in the process, learning Meteor!! Look out. This spell has a spell power of 800, and hits everything on the screen. Though the massive downside is it takes ages to charge - it's 10, unless you're playing the Japanese EasyType, in which case it's 5.

Palom managed to pick up a single Light Curtain...but by that time, he hit Level 52. Then he didn't need them anymore.

So the next dungeon is the infamous Sealed Cave, bane of two solo variants thus far. I was farming those Light Curtains off a cue from Sofis. The catch of this place is the numerous Trap Doors. They use their first turn to pick a target, and their second turn to use Ninth Dimension, instantly killing the victim. The spell is reflectable, however, which can be exploited to kill the Trap Door instead.


Palom simply didn't care about fancy stuff like Avengers or Light Curtains. He could just blow them away with Nuke/Flare before they could even do anything!! Flare has a spell power of 400. It is single-target only, costs 50MP, and it is instantly cast when used. Fantastic spell.

But before I do that (actually, that image is from after I did that), I decided it was side-dungeon time.


The Sylph Cave was a nice time to be Palom, unless he got back attacked by Mammon treea and killed. If you resist one ailment inflicted by an attack that inflicts multiple, you resist the entire attack. This completely neutered the Malboros.

He also had a hilarious solution to the obnoxious Bog Witch encounters who cast Toad on you - casting Toad on the Bog Witch!! She actually does this on her own when all the toads are dead, but doing this early...well, her command to make them attack is much like the Generals from way earlier. It's a spell. So with Toad on, she can't make them attack. Even better, he could use Osmose on the toaded witches to drain hundreds of MP. Unless it was that formation. In that case, an oversight in the targetting system made it impossible to actually target her.

There was a good pickup here in the Fairy Rod. Giving +10 intellect, it casts Charm when used as an item. That all said, Palom had no problem getting through the cave.


Asura's hook is her constant barrage of Protect and Curaga spells. Both of them meant nothing to Palom, who could pump out 9999 damage with Flare or Meteor. She counterattacks every time you hit her, but the damage was negliable. Leviathan...is a problem.

Some gudies I see say that Asura is the hard fight and Leviathan is the easy one. In my experience, this simply is not true. Asura is just a gimmick fight with several ways to overcome. The traditional way is to cast Reflect on her, but besides simply outdamaging her with spells, going in with the Mage Masher works, and is particularly effective at low levels.

Leviathan's Tidal Waves are tuned to 1/4th your maximum HP. His Blizzaras did 400-600 points of damage to each casting on Palom. Even with a Spider's Silk, this was a tough fight. One that...I actually couldn't beat? I probably could've with Hermes Sandles thrown in, but I'd rather save them for the more dangerous fights. So what else can we do? Well, I didn't explore the Sylph Cave entirely...I left a few monsters in boxes inside. Each of them has 6 of a certain spirit enemy in it called an Evil Dreamer, and like all the spirit enemies, they have a particular drop.


The Cursed Ring is one of the game's many 1/64 items - which, again, are actually closer to 1/1250 factoring in the odds of an item actually dropping. It's by far the most interesting one, however. First off, it's the only piece of equipment a Dark Knight can equip that are not its armor.This is mostly useless. Second, it gives a number of reductions in base stats. -15 in each, actually!! So why would you want to use it?


All your elemental resistances become elemental absorptions when it is equipped. Palom is wearing a Light Robe here, which he picked up from the Land of Summoned Monsters. It resists lightning, which becomes absorption with the Cursed Ring.

Still, you REALLY don't want to understate those stat reductions, particularly in regards to Agility. Palom went into that demonstration fight with full HP, and those Hell Flappers damaged him near-death before he could get off the Thundaga. Definitely not an item to be ignored, but not one you can wear under any circumstance.

Still, there's a problem with my plan. Leviathan's assault is entirely ice-based. e.g. even level 1 Cecil could destroy him with a piece of ice-resistant equipment and a Cursed Ring, though it'd take ages. But...Palom can't get ice resistance on any headwear or bodywear. There's some that give it that are armwear, but then he can't equip the Cursed Ring.


So onto the Sealed Cave it was. As stated before, Palom could simply destroy each Trap Door that blocked his path in a single Flare. The boss was marginally more threatening. With Gaia Gear to protect against petrification, and Flare around to do 8000+ damage with an instant cast time. Chimera Brains are scary for full parties with their max-HP based icy Blaze, but a single Quake could settle it.


The Moon and the Babel Giant were by comparison NOT nice places. The...whatever the Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes are supposed to be, did heavy damage to Palom. At least the flans and bombs were a joke. Palom could even cast Thunder on the latter, making them respond with Chain Reaction which made everything on the field explode.

Speaking of Thunder, it's the most common weakness in the Giant. But Palom kept getting back attacked by enemies who could do insane physical damage to him. Trying to outsmart the game by putting him in the front row still didn't work, as Palom would still take heavy damage just from his lowered ATB bar.


The Four Elemental Lords/Archfiends was a fun fight, at least!! The hardest, strangely enough, turned out to be Scarmiglione. He would occasionally throw out a Curse - this status halves the physical attack and physical defense of the victim. Very, very bad. This was a frantic battle of healing with Hi-Potions while hoping he didn't do too much damage. As for damage, Flare did 9999 after a couple Bluffs, so it was the spell of choice against all opponents.

Rubicante would cast Fira (low damage), Firaga (heavy damage), and Scorch (less than Firaga and not too bad now) in order. Cagnazzo sometimes threw out a Tidal Wave for 1/4th damage, but he mostly ended up sticking to physicals. I used this opportunity to heal up, as he didn't really do anything dangerous. Finally, Barbariccia's attackss included a physical, Ray, and Maelstorm. The latter two never became a factor. Each archfiend took three Flares to defeat. Palom won on the second try...


...then died to a back attack so I had to do it over again.


Once that was that, that brought Palom to the CPU. He had it much trickier than Cecil and Kain. The CPU uses Reflect to protect itself from magic. Meteor goes right through this, but the problem is, it destroys the nodes as well. If the nodes are destroyed, the CPU counters with Globe 199, the strongest attack in the game. It deals 9999 damage. Invariably fatal. And no, I tested to see. There's no small interval in which you can hit it when Reflect is down. It'd be cool, but it just doesn't work.

So is Palom simply to beat the big ball to death with his little stick and hope for the best? Not necessarily. Remember, we picked up some Light Curtains, which cast Reflect when used as an item. The strategy is simple. The CPU has 30000 HP. First, we Flare the Defense Node. Then we use the Light Curtain (its Reflect lasts the battle), Bluff a bit, and reflect Flares off our own wall.

If we can hit it twice, we can do a physical, then cast Meteor for the victory. If we hit the Attack Node, we die. Simple, right?


This lined up on - amazingly - the first try, though I didn't have Palom Bluff enough and had to do a little extra damage with his physicals. Hi-Potions could outrace the 1/10 Max HP damage of the Attack Node easily. That's one advantage to low HP.


At this point in this version, you unlock the ability to switch in your old party members. So Palom can really be in the party for real at this point. Furthermore, a new dungeon opens that contains ultimate equipment for these characters. It'll be the first thing we do in the third update of this challenge.

[System Error]

The Cave of Trials opens up on Mt. Ordeals the first time you go to change characters. The enemies in it are quite tame - they're mostly from the Underworld dungeons, with a few exceptions.


Palom's first piece of equipment is beyond a hidden passage a short ways into the dungeon. The Coronet has 7 Defense and 16 Magic Defense. It protects against polymorph effects, has 18 on both evasion stats, and gives him a +5 to Intellect.


Sage's Robe is the next piece located a little later on. It gives +10 to Agility and Intellect. Check out Palom's stats now. Bluff has essentially outlived its usefulness. And it'll be fully obsolete at the end: the last room of the Cave of Trials has five weapons. If the coresponding party member is in your party, you can approach the item to initiate a boss battle.


Master Flan is the guardian of Palom's item. It's an interesting fight in the original release, due to it being given protection from targetting when at least one Flan is alive, but this is changed in the European release and Japanese 1.1.

His attack pattern is to first open with a permanent Reflect. Then cast Thundaga. Then cast Flare...and very probably kill me. Then cast Drain for like 1 damage.


Porom's boss is the T Rex. It actually has an interesting script where it counters elemental magic you use with attacks of the same element. It also casts Earthquake periodically, which did a pitiful 300~ Palom simply blasted it with Flare, taking that out of the picture. The Storm Dragon guarding Yang's weapon has a variety of wind attacks, including a damaging Tornado (not the spell version). Just like before, Flare got him through. Same for the Gigas Worm guarding Edward's Apollo's Harp.


Master Flan continued to be a problem, though. But I came up with something that worked.

So here's the plan: Palom began by throwing out a Spider's Silk before the Master Flan could do anything. He also threw up a Lunar Curtain. he healed after Thundaga hit, and had to hope Flare didn't kill him. If it didn't, he could heal, then fire off Flares off his own wall to finish the fight. Trying to heal more after the second Thundaga didn't work out. The reward for this was Triton's Dagger. While its 62 attack power is not that great, it does give +15 to Int, and casts Flood with a decent multiplier of 7 when used as an item.

As an aside, an uncommon encounter in the Cave of Trials was the Golden Toad. This behaves much like a Metal Slime from Dragon Quest - 65000 Gil and Experience, and it'll randomly run away. Palom could beat them by casting Flare, which caused them to respond with Reflect. Casting Quake caused them to cast it again, giving Palom a wall, which he could finally use to deliver a second Flare and win the battle.


I returned with Cid in tow to fight his boss, the Death Mech. It too, has a nasty array of attacks, including Globe 199. Palom just Flared away...


With the increased Agility, Palom was finally able to beat Leviathan. Same for Odin. Finishing off Rydia's collection of summoned monster kills ran into an unexpected roadblock, though...


The Behemoth bridage before Bahamut turned out to be a luckfest. They counter attacks, counter holy damage (Holy and Meteor) with Maelstorm, and occasionally throw out unprovoked physicals because why not? I think that behavior is exclusive to these remakes. There's really nothing to say about these battles. Either Palom would kill them, or they would kill him. He made a retreat after each one.

The rest of the monsters in the cave were simple enough, though Palom decided to run away from them in favor of conserving his power for the Behemoths.

Bahamut itself...if there's one thing Palom's good at, it's a damage race. And when the opponent isn't dealing damage and Palom can do 9999 every time...well. He won before Bahamut got to 1. Know that much.


That last venture got him up to Level 70. So now let me introduce you to FF4's way of making your characters brokenly powerful: the post-70 level-up system.

It's simple. For every level a character gains up to level 70, their stat gains (aside from HP and MP) are fixed. For every level a character gains over level 70, they randomly gain (or lose!!) stats based on one of eight possibilities, unique to each character. Granted, this is well beyond what you'd need to normally finish the game, and even with the post-game content in GBA/PSP, you'd barely be scratching the surface.

For a solo character though, and especially one who may or may not be doing said post-game, it's something we may as well pay attention to. Let's look at Palom's possible stat changes.

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

Skipping over the stat explanation, which do we want? Well, the 4th option, +1 to all, is obviously nice. the 7th also is beneficial for its large bonuses to Stamina and Spirit. The 8th seems nice, but Palom's weapons don't really have the power to support large bonuses to strength. 3 and 5 are acceptable, but not preferable if I'm near a save point.

So I kept this in mind as I advanced Palom through the Lunar Subterrane, running and being aware of Palom's statups at all times. I suffered some resets as a consequence, but hey, I came prepared with patience going into this quest. White Dragon just got nuked to death, nothing to write about.


Protect Ring!! FF4 breaks from the tradition made by the NES games by not having it protect against death, but this is still a damn fine piece of equipment for anyone but a Dark Knight. It gives resistance to the three basic elements, and a +15 to the Stamina stat.

Interestingly, I was able to pull out Break on several opponents here, taking them out at a cheap 15MP that would otherwise take more MP or multiple hits to pull off.


Here's the play-by-play of this fight: Palom uses Flare for 9999. Dark Bahamut uses Mega Flare and whiffs. Palom uses Flare, Palom uses Flare, Dark Bahamut uses Reflect. Palom charges Meteor. Dark Bahamut uses Flare three times in the duration, whiffs all three times. Palom casts Meteor, charges it again. Dark Bahamut whiffs three more Flares. Meteor resolves, and a Triton's Dagger stab ends it.


A silly solution to Plague is to throw up a Light/Lunar Curtain. Edward would even be able to troll by hiding; Plague would subsequently die from his own reflected Doom. Palom just went to work with Flare and won the race.

The Lunarsauruses only activate their Reflect/Bio AI script if they're attacked physically. Palom had little to worry about out of them. Bad Breath was neutered due to the Coronet protecting against some of its statuses, and Flame wasn't that damaging. Still, with their magic defense of 254, Meteor turned out to be the best spell to use against them. To compare the prize against winning to his current headwear.

- Ribbon's stats: 9 Def/12 Eva/12 MDf/12 MEv, immune to almost all statuses
- Coronet's stats: 7 Def/18 Eva/16 MDf/18 MEv, immune to polymorph statuses, +5 Int

Palom's Intellect was max even without the Coronet, so he decided to make the switchover.


Now then!! Palom had three Sirens. One from the Giant of Babel, two from the Cave of Trials. Shall we...? Looking ahead and SPOILERS, Palom doesn't get very much of note armor-wise in the postgame. He gets the Chocobo Suit.

- Chocobo Suit's stats: 28 Def/35 Eva/30 Mdf/15 MEv, immune to poison, +15 Agi
- Adamant Armor's stats: 100 Def/10 Eva/20 Mdf/12 MEv, immune to Fire, Ice, Lightning, and most statuses, +15 all

Going after this piece of equipment isn't always the wisest idea, even in solos that are going to do the GBA/PSP postgame. First off, Flan Princesses have 20000 HP and 154 attack. They don't have flan-like defenses, but their physical prowess is not to be understated. Palom could easily win the fights against them by casting four Quakes, but others may have a tougher time. Maybe it's worth it, maybe it's not. But hey, may as well.

Just remember, the actual odds of a Pink Tail drop are 5/6272.

I'm not sure how long this took. I was beginning to think it wouldn't be worth it. But eventually, I started keeping track of the numbers, after about 20-30 attempts. Things droned on, and I even started to notice a definitive trend in the battle RNG - though not necessarily representative of the drop RNG. But the 67th try after that...


BOOM!!

A trip back to Earth to pick up the armor from the guy, and back down it was. The Adamant Armor trivialized the random encounters. Well, most of them anyway.


The way down to the final boss has a lot of dangerous minibosses. My least favorite being these Ivan Ooze looking mofos. They cast Reflect on themselves, then Reflect on your party, and assault you with high-powered spells. And they take ages to run from. You can sometimes encounter them in pairs, too. Palom could fight them, but it was so not worth it.


Random - I actually live near where Ogopogo is supposed to be in real life. Was really mindblowing to move when I was 10 and hey, Ogopogo is actually a thing. That said, Adamant Armor + Cursed Ring could make this a joke. The sea serpent counters every Flare with a Blaze, that ordinarily did a fixed amount of damage around 450, but with the combination, healed Palom for 8000-9999!!

That was too easy, so I did it without, and won with a single Elixir.


Ogopogo falling meant only Big Z himself was left. He's a counterattacker, throwing back Flare at anyone who attacks him with black magic. Unless it's the Holy Meteor, in which case he tosses out Maelstorm. This is the strat I used when going in low level. With Solo Palom, it was just a contest of Flares vs. Flares.

Zeromus' could do wildly variable damage; anywhere from 300ish to 2000ish. Adamant Armor may have all the Defense you could ask for, but Magic Defense is a bit lacking.


Big Bang is also not a particularly pleasant attack. As you can see, the variable damage one-twoed Palom the first go at the battle. He was hit with a high-damage Flare, then splattered with Big Bang before he could react.

The second go down, Palom didn't even reach the final boss - he died to Ivan Ooze, who kept on casting spells as Palom was left unable to run. Third time was the charm, though!!


I was surprised at how quickly he died. The high damage meant Zeromus' pathetic and inaccurate Meteor spell never actually got a chance to be used.


And that's the game, but not the postgame. Palom heads into it, next time.

[Plus C]

Damn the EXP curve is very... generous? In FF4. I've never played the GBA version, I went straight to the DS so I'm looking forwards to the post game! Good work on this run it's been fun to follow, I was really underestimating Palom going into this. Won't do that again!

[Plus C]

Just thought I'd share this link; it's a speed run of FF5 and FF6. At the same time. As in, with the same button in puts for both of them. Crazy stuff; he even beats Omega and Shinryu! Well worth a watch/ flick through.


Did someone say "Update time"? No? Well they should have, because it is!

The end of World 2 is quick approaching, and I decided it was time to go boss hunting. Gil Turtle and Golem are both already down, so that leaves Shoat (Catoblepas in the remake), Carbuncle and Gilgamesh before Exdeath. Let's have a look at them all, shall we?

The first I fought was Shoatoblepas. Here's his stat block, with some useless lines omitted;

Code:

NAME: Shoat
LEVEL: 38                              EXP: 0
HP: 5000                               GIL: 0
MP: 500                                SPEED: 45
ATTACK: 55                             MAGIC POWER: 50
ATT. MULT: 10                          MAGIC MULT: 11
EVADE%: 0                              MAGIC EVADE%: 0
DEFENSE: 20                            MAGIC DEFENSE: 10
STATUS IMMUNITY: Dead, Stone, Toad, Mini, Float, Zombie, Darkness, Aging,
Sleep, Paralyze, Charm, Berserk, Mute, Image(2), Image(1), Wall, Armor, Shell,
Haste, Slow, Invul, Regen
AI SCRIPT:
{Fight,Fight,Drain}
React:HP Damage{
     Change Target:Last Attacker
     Demon's Eye
     }

Basically he uses a strong Attack, or a strong Drain each round. He also has whopping great defences... Well for Lenna anyway. The biggy is how he counters any attack with Demon's Eye- a near perfect accuracy Petrification attack. Lacking any equipment to block this, I'll need to one shot him.

Or bypass the counter AI routine all together!

   

Thanks to his level we can hit him with a Level 2 Old to neutralize his attacks, although it takes long enough that we still need to dodge at least 2 to survive! But what about Drain? Well the answer comes in the form of the Time spell "Mute"; the Shoat battle isn't excepted, so we can block out all magic.

And now we take down Shoat with Counter attacks; we'll need criticals to get through his defence but we're in no danger.

... Is what I would say if Shoat weren't in that special gang with Magisa and Tree Exdeath, who's attacks can't be Countered. D'oh.

   

I saw this a lot, and questioned majorly if this was possible.

Then...

   

2 Off Guards and an Ironback took him down. As punishment for resorting to using Catch, though, I didn't use the Shoat item, I just leave it gathering dust.

On to Carbuncle, right? Uuuuh no. Carbuncle outspeeds me and always one shots me. Never mind.

   

Gilgamesh died as on the ship; painfully.

Next up is Exdeath, I think I have a solid plan worked out so that I won't need to Hide stall or use Mix; watch this space!

[System Error]

Damn the EXP curve is very... generous? In FF4. I've never played the GBA version, I went straight to the DS so I'm looking forwards to the post game! Good work on this run it's been fun to follow, I was really underestimating Palom going into this. Won't do that again!

Thanks!! It's worth noting that Palom takes the second-least amount of EXP to reach Level 99, just behind Edge and just ahead of his twin sister. But yeah, the curve is balanced for full parties, so soloists can gain EXP like nobody's business.

Good luck on Exdeath, too. And yeah, I've seen that TAS before. Pretty interesting watch.

__________

Let's begin our descent, and I guess we'll get this done all in one gulp, so to speak. How the Lunar Ruins work is: every fourth floor, there is a chamber with Sealed Cave graphics. You need to have the corresponding character in your party AND have had them in your party when beating Zeromus in order to enter the room.

The three floors in-between can come from a pool of several possibilities. The first three are similar graphically to the Lunar Caves, and aren't anything special aside from some secret passages.


Yang's Trial is the first one we come to. This consists of six battles against enemy monks, some in a row. They actually have fairly respectable magic defense, but a Meteor is able to wipe them out. The last two sets, the Drillmasters, have 12000HP, so it takes two castings to get them.

By the way, I'm not relying on the Adamant Armor for bosses. Figured it might be more interesting this way, but I'm wearing it for the randoms, and it's on the table if I need it.


The Lunar Summons are the bosses of each trial, and for Yang's it is Lunar Titan who you have to face faces. LT has an attack pattern much as you'd expect: strong physicals, Earthquake, and he also has the Demon Wall's Crush. The latter is stopped by a Ribbon, the Earthquakes don't hurt that bad, leaving only the physicals to be of a threat to Palom.


One consequence of this trial: I can't effectually keep track of Palom's stat growths, due to all the multiple fights in a row and the absurd EXP they pay out! Palom gains five levels over the course of it. Four points of Agility across five levels isn't bad at all, though, so my first venture in is also my last


Also in the Lunar Ruins are these areas. Every Floor of Remembrance is based off part of a dungeon in the main game. This is the Antlion's Nest, and also in this set are the walkway in the Giant of Babel, the first Lunar Tunnel, the Black Chocobo forest, and a room from the path to Damcyan.


So next trial a solo exception time. The only battles in this boring trial of Edward's, taking place in a frozen alternate Damcyan Castle, are these spirits. As this tutorial battle shows, the only way to "win" is to kill the Specters (who are completely nonthreatening), then have Edward Sing.

Conveniently, he is automatically revived for this, and all the rest are only temporarily resurrected and moved around here.


Lunar Shiva is one of the nastier bosses, throwing out Blizzagas, Ice Storms which damage based off her max HP (could do over 2000 at the start of the battle, and that'd be to EVERYONE), and even healing herself with self-cast Blizzagas as a counter for about 2500! This was a nasty nasty fight when I tried to do it with lower levels. Palom could neuter her with Adamant Armor + Cursed Ring, but decided to give her a fighting chance. She didn't take it.


The next trek is incredibly dull. Some of the floors, such as this one, have no encounters and a "puzzle". There's also a counting minigame here, and a fairy fountain. Yes, that's right, just like in Zelda. More interesting is a psuedo-maze involving waterfalls.


Rydia's trial is next, and it's trippy. She turns back into a kid, and you need to go around fighting Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, and Titan before you can confront the Lunar Dragon. When each of them goes into their pose, it means they're about to use a strong attack.

Shiva and Titan behave similarly to their Lunar counterparts, but the former isn't nearly as brutal - checking in with Blizzara instead of Blizzaga, and not countering. The latter doesn't use Crush. The others also prefer -ara spells. No big deal.


The Lunar Dragon was more annoying than anything else. He gained magic invulnerability as mist, but even if he's hit was a physical, it only does around 1 damage at this stage of the game. He occasionally casts Slow as mist, or Restores 9999HP. The Dragon could barely scratch Palom, and died to a bunch of Flares.

Among the three floors in between are a town (nothing particularly special, but lets you restock), a weird Cave of Summons type area with fixed encounters, and...the infamous teleporter maze. There's no random encounters in it, and it's notsomuch a maze to overcome as it is RNG. Each teleporter may take you to a different place, and only thing I can think of that determines it is what the game feels like.

Cecil's trial is a Paladin test. You are presented with several tasks. For the best result at the end, you need to pass them as a true Paladin woukd. Some of these involve combat. Palom passed them all, because why not?


Lunar Odin OH GOD WHY. Okay, I guess we're using a Curtain on him to protect against that.

Other than that craziness, this fight is very similar to the first Odin. It's basically a damage race, until he casts Haste followed by a double Zantesuken. There's an interesting way to kill him involving casting Thundaga, which prompts him to die from "lightning coursing through [him]" before he can get it off. Palom just stuck with Flares, because why not?

Odin does open with a Zantesuken, and uses another at one point in the fight. The Lunar Curtain item prevents all physical damage for its duration. So Odin's physicals were of no concern.


That was all the trials I could do for the moment, so out it was to beat up Zeromus with more characters. I also took the time to get Palom to 99. Behold his stats, both base and with (current) equipment.

His stats at 70 are 33/30/40/75/23. He gained 21 points of Strength, 20 points of Agility, 31 points of Stamina, 22 points of Spirit, and enough Intellect to naturally max it out.


Another interesting floor on the way is this one. Remember the Golden Toad from before? Well, the Platinum Toad is much the same. So how can we stop it before it runs away?


With Stop, of course!!


I forgot this on the first trip through, but got it this time. Palom's real ultimate weapon, Asura's Rod gives +15 to Intellect (useless), and +15 to Spirit (very nice in terms of Magic Defense)

Rosa's trial is simply a race against time. To heal all the townsfolk before the three circling orbs close in around you. Five of them are Metamorphas in disguise. There seems to be no way to tell which are which, aside from seeing a petrified person moving. No problem.


But against Lunar Asura...we have a problem. She has a very similar pattern to regular Asura, but with more offense. In particular, she can counter with Restore to heal 9999 or Globe 199 to deal 9999. Either is not good news.

So are we just screwed? Well, no. There's a third counter, and a distinct pattern to it. Asura's head rolling is the key to success in this fight.

- White Face = Curaga, roll to white after, roll to blue and Thundaga when attacked
- Red Face = Toad, roll to blue after, roll to white and Restore when attacked
- Blue Face = Firaga, roll to white after, roll to red and Globe 199 when attacked

So Palom settled into a pattern, using one Elixir for every two Flares, and cycling her between white and blue repeatedly. With the Adamant Armor, this fight would've been trivial - since each -aga spell would do 1 damage.


Was even able to keep track of HP, and save an Elixir by killing her when her face was blue.

Edge's trial is mostly a puzzly-maze. It's full of Palace Guard enemies, who drop Keys that can be used to unlock certain doors.


Lunar Ifrit, what a joke for us. He charges up for Flame, which dealt a pitiful 1/10th HP damage thanks to the Protect Ring. He can counter ice-type attacks with Scorch, but Flare did close to 9999 anyway, so there was no point in using Blizzaga. His other spells, which included Fira (!?), Firaga, and Flamethrower (1 damage) weren't much more impressive.


This is a VERY nice floor. It's a personality test, and depending on your answers, you can get many great items. Every time I pass through, I decide on the Monk, which gets a Golden and Silver Apple. Very useful for a low HP character such as Palom.


Kain's trial is story-driven, is a very messed up plunge into his psyche, is done solo, and cumulates with a fight against Lunar Bahamut. He does his trial alone. Well, ordinarily of course. The way solo Kain beats this guy is by jumping after 1 to dodge a Megaflare. Lunar Bahamut counters when you land, and you repeat this until he dies or you need to heal for whatever weak-equipment related reason.

With Palom, the fight could be done one of two ways. A Lunar Curtain to render him invincible, or just by Flaring until dead. Lunar Bahamut has a mere 50000HP, His one Megaflare whiffed.


Cid's trial is basically Crazy Taxi. Except with an airship. Get the people to their destinations on time. Lunar Ramuh, who I somehow forgot to take a picture of, is at the end. Not worth talking about. Just the usual Flarefest against an elemental attacker.


The twins' trial features status-based puzzles and enemies from the first few dungeons (literally) that I just run from. Lunar Leviathan is a crazy fight. His attacks include Tidal Wave, Maelstorm, and Entangle. The latter was especially devastating since the Ribbon doesn't protect against paralysis.

I had to pull out the Adamant Armor here (it does protect against it), after Palom kept getting comboed by those three attacks. I also threw the Cursed Ring in too for healing, because why not? I got that drop back then...albeit very easily in comparison with the other 1/64 I picked up, but still! May as well take advantage of it, right? Use what you have and whatnot.


The Twin Stars are the reward here. They actually give very nice bonuses. Let's compare.

- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +15 Sta, Resist Fi/Ic/Li
- Twin Stars' stats: 10 Def/20 Eva/20 MDf/12 MEv

Almost strictly better as long as the Adamant Armor is being equipped. The only caveat is the Stamina decrease making for less defense. One point mind you. Without the Adamant Armor, the Protect Ring is the better option.
_________


On the final floors of the ruins, you have a chance of seeing this floor, featuring the game's superboss, Brachioraidos.

I'd write more about him, but I forgot much of the battle. He has Protect and Reflect as a counter though...in response to physical damage. So Palom just Flared away. He also has a Globe 199 counter when he begins a countdown to Mega Flare. It never happened though, and in fact the Flares stopped the count, making me think it's linked to Protect/Reflect being up. It was best to throw up a Curtain anyway, as the dragon could use a 5000+ damage Bio.

He actually has a lot of stuff in his AI routine, including Scorch and Maelstorm. With the Adamant Armor on, Palom had nothing to fear from the likes of the former. The latter could be healed with an Elixir.


Brach drops the Hero's Shield when beaten. This has the same special property as the Cursed Ring - that is, it changes all elemental resistances into elemental absorptions when equipped. Oh, and it gives +15 to all stats! Everyone but Dark Knight Cecil and...for some reason, FuSoYa can equip it. Palom's stats are truly terrifying with it and the Adamant Armor on...

Two of the other floors here feature Ivan Ooze 2.0, which Palom just runs from, and a whole bunch of dolls to fight. The Calcabrena palette swaps in particular have over 60000HP, but can be turned into statues.


That brings us to the final boss of the Lunar Ruins, Zeromus EG. Sporting his graphics from EasyType and 200000HP, he's one nasty son of a gun. But HA HA HA! We just tore the superboss a new one without breaking a sweat. How hard could this be?


Well let's see here. Big Bang inflicts HP Leak. Whirl sets HP to critical. He must've been taking lessons from Crayclaw or something. This is...a problem.

Okay, so let's back up here. ZEG casts Reflect in response to magic (our Flare barrage), but this is trivial to overcome. Either cast a spell that pierces Reflect (like Quake), or throw up a Curtain. He'll counter with Reflect, which will bounce onto you, and effectively give you an endless source of them.This is what ZEG can do to us without reacting, and in the order he does it.

~ Big Bang
~ Toad -> Mini
~ Whirl
~ Flare
~ Drain -> Drain
~ Osmose -> Osmose
~ Earthquake -> Blitz -> Flame

Toad, Mini, Drain, and Osmose are not worth worrying about. The last becomes 9999 healing with our broken equipment. Flare is reflected by our wall. But how to stop the devastating critical HP Leak combo?


Answer: We don't. Only thing we can do is pray Palom is left above 5HP. He loses 4HP with each tick. Any less, and he'll die before he can get the Elixir off.

And that set the stage for this battle. An RNG luckfest. Palom's Flares did wildly variable damage; they could do 5000, they could do 9500. More RNG. Over the course of the battle, Palom had to survive four of these. Eventually...


At low HP, ZEG switches his AI pattern. He casts "Absorb" (which doesn't actually absorb from anything) in response to damage, healing around 3000HP. He also throws out Tidal Wave and the non-critical HP Tornado. He also begins using some nasty physicals, which could not hit Palom with his 99% evade. It wasn't long before....

...so wait, before stamping this - can we do this without the broken equipment? Well, yes. The sooner the first phase is done and over with though, the better. There's also another equalizer you can throw out. Let's try, for the thrill of it. This required another trip through the ruins, for Palom to pick up the Chocobo Suit. You can buy it in another town area, but it never appeared on the first rip to reach ZEG.


So those Lunar summons we were facing? Each of them dropped a Grimoire with their initials on it. Use of these Grimoires does two things: first, it allows you to re-enter the coresponding trial. Second, the summon appears and attacks the enemy for 9999 damage. And it will always do 9999 damage. Unless the target is Zeromus EG.

Against him, they deal no damage, and instead inflict a variety of different and bizarre status effects, being different like this for no apparent reason. Several of them seem to have no real effect; supposedly they inflict poison. Lunar Ifrit's is especially strange: ZEG is hit with a Death spell, then a Thundaga spell, to seemingly no effect. But three that have a HUGE effect are Lunar Ramuh, Lunar Titan, and Lunar Dragon.


These hit ZEG with Silence, Mini, and Toad respectively. They force him to run alternative scripts, after which he recovers from the status and goes back to the start of his AI routine. In Silence's case, it causes him to attack physically. These hurt...but the Lunar Curtains give the Barrier status, which prevent all physical damage. Palom could laugh and just Flare to his heart's content.

So what Palom did; he reset until he survived the first wave of attacks, threw out the Curtain and the Ramuh Grimoire (the longest lasting) just as he was getting ready to Whirl a second time, and set to work. When it wore off, out came the Titan Grimoire, which similarly cripples ZEG. It didn't last as long, and Palom still had to survive one more Whirl. But by then, ZEG had shifted into his desperation phase.


Just to add insult to injury, or perhaps mild showboating, or maybe just wanting to see him suffer for his cheap combos, I saved the Grimoire LD for last, and killed him while he was a Toad.

Doing it without the Grimoires? Well, that'd just be a luckfest. Nothing to really prove by doing it that way, right? So that brings an end to Palom's adventures through FF4.

__________

Analysis: this definitely seemed easier than Cecil or Kain's solo challenges. It's very easy to overlook Palom as a character due to the presence of Rydia. In fact, a lot of guides I read pretty much say to hell with him, why bother when she can summon!?!?!?!! I mean, SHE CAN SUMMON GUYS. IT'S LIKE...well, I'll get to that craziness at the appropriate time.

Bluff can definitely carry its weight in the early game, allowing you to do some hilarious things. He doesn't stick around for too long in the main game to abuse it, sadly. The five-year-old mage is not without his flaws, however. His postgame equipment, as I mentioned, is a bit lacking, and his post-70 growths aren't that great. Still, Flare is very nice, and Break is surprisingly devastating against many encounters. He really is a solid character who can pull his weight.

Palom's got power, that's for sure. But next up: REAL ULTIMATE POWER!!

[Plus C]

Always nice to see allegedly super powerful enemies being so horrifically abused, good work. Ultimate power? My guess is... Yang?

Exdeath went down today, and fairly easily too!
I played around with a few things, and settled on a combination of Blue and Hide, using Blue for Level 2 Old, Magic Hammer (thanks Byblos!), Off Guard and Emission, with Hide for dodging the un-copable chunks of his attacks.

Let's start by having a look at his AI routine in what has come to be known as the "Sullla Method";

Code:

{Fight,Condemn,Condemn}
{Dynamo,Dynamo,Specialty}
{Gravity 100,Demi,Fight}
{Fight,Fight,Specialty}
{Earth Shaker,Earth Shaker,Fight}
{Flame,Fight,Specialty}
{Hurricane,Hurricane,Fight}
{Zombie Breath,Zombie Breath,Specialty}
{Fight,Bio,Fight}
{L3 Flare,L3 Flare,Specialty}

Becomes...

Code:

{Level 2 Old,Lethal,Lethal}
{Harmless,Harmless, Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}
{Lethal,Occasional Potion,Level 2 Old}
[b]{Level 2 Old, Level 2 Old, Level 2 Old }
{Float, Float, Level 2 Old}
{Occasional Potion, Level 2 Old , Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}
{HiPotion,HiPotion,Level 2 Old}[/b]
{Lethal,Lethal,Level 2 Old}
{Level 2 Old,Lethal,Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}
{Harmless,Harmless, Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}

I've bolded here a chunk of his AI routine I can safely jump out of cover for, in which to Magic Hammer/ Use Ethers/ Use Potions/ Deal damage. I opened with an Ether on Exdeath (thanks to System Error for this trick! Saved me a few Ethers/ hours of my life) and jumped in and out of hiding as needed to Magic Hammer him. When fully aged 12% of my Hammers hit Exdeath, so this took a while. It took 46 Ethers to reduce his MP, but...

   

Game Over for him, right? Hell no, now I have to KILL him. Lets re-look at that AI routine.

Code:

[b]{Level 2 Old,Harmless, Harmless}
{Harmless,Harmless, Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}[/b]
{[u]Lethal[/u],Occasional Potion,Level 2 Old}
[b]{Level 2 Old, Level 2 Old, Level 2 Old }
{Float, Float, Level 2 Old}
{Occasional Potion, Level 2 Old , Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}
{HiPotion,HiPotion,Level 2 Old}[/b]
{[i]Lethal[/i],[u]Lethal[/u],Level 2 Old}
[b]{Level 2 Old, Harmless,Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}
{Harmless,Harmless, Level 2 Old with occasional potion for HP Leak}[/b]

I've italicized the parts which are still issues. Namely, Zombie Breath and Gravity 100, which opens the path for Earth Shaker, and I have no Float. Though I guess that more just swaps one harmless for a lethal. I jumped in and out of cover, using Off-Guard to reduce his Magic Defence, then started spamming Emission wildly. I was left with a mere 26 Ethers, when...

   

Bam.

Now onto the fun part; Lenna is sucked away into the void and a the rest of the party have to scramble through the game. I originally planned on using the Level 1 Krile here, but it's simply impossible to get through Antlion with no AP, for reasons I'll put in a spoiler. It's not that interesting, so you can just take my word for it. Bartz at level 2 however can easily sleep + spell everything from now to Lenna's return to death, so I'll go do that now.

Versus Antlion-

Sleep; Black Mage (Sleep) Fire/Ice/Bolt cannot penetrate MDef. Krile has insufficient MP for anything else. Bartz can get kill with ~ 68 -ara's. Will have to get Elixirs for Exdeath battle to avoid running out.
Blue Mage; (Time Slip) Krile lacks MP to cast Time Slip. Bartz can and can kill with ~68 -ara's, so only ~33 Ethers. Most efficient.

Gimmick; Level 2 Old + Goblin Punch? Probably can't get through Def anyway.

Berserk; Krile lacks MP for Berserk.

Tame; Requires AP.

Gil Toss; Too low level to penetrate defence.

Water Scrolls; ~900 damage each, not fast enough to kill before Stomach Acid.

Jump; Jump over Stomach acid? Possible, but would have to dodge until kill. Jump damage = 0, but could get Crits between jumps at ~12 damage each. 3 attacks per cycle ~ 1 crit per 2 cycles, so 675 cycles; odds of surviving = 8*10^-323. Probably not gonna happen.

Drink; HP insufficient even with Goliath Tonic.

Time Mage; Old, Haste, Slow, but can't cast Comet. Not worth it.

Release; Iron Dress does ~ 4900 damage. No source of water damage available. Nothing stronger available

Opnly possibility is Dragoon, but...

Dist. to edge of Solar System 1.4*10^13

Min. Size of a particle 10^-35

Max No of particles in line to edge of solar system 1.4*10^48

Max No of particles in line to edge of solar system and back once for every particle in that line, 3 times ~2.8*10^288

Odds of surviving as Dragoon ~ 8*10^-323

Predicted number of attempts ~ 1.25 * 10^ 323

Before anyone says it, I already stole an extra 30 elixirs from Zuu's back in World 1 to get Bartz through the Antlion; I'm very organised!

Quick Edit; I just realised I never mentioned learning Emission. I nabbed it from a Prototype, with Mix for assorted buffs, including Absorb Fire, and then I caught it to avoid EXP. It wasn't actually as grand as I expected, so I never posted it.

[T-hawk]

odds of surviving = 8*10^-323. Probably not gonna happen.

There's a QOTM.