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Simply Simon posted:I'm pretty sure Chimearas can spawn from 1-4, another point proving that the devs had no idea of how difficulty works. I also think you got really lucky with the Big Horn, because that is another 1-4 boss if I remember correctly. Yup, you can get 1-4 Chimeras randomly, it's super dumb. This honestly seems a lot easier with only one character so far, building the ubermensch (or whatever the female equivalent is, I don't know German at all). Enemies haven't really started with any petrify/instadeath crap yet though so I guess that'll change soon.
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Aug 18, 2014 14:12
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 05:04 |
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"Mensch" is the gender neutral "human". It is well possible for a woman to be ein Übermensch  .
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Aug 18, 2014 14:21
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Chapter 11: On the Next Season of FF2... Now that we've done... er... I have no loving clue what we really accomplished. Anyway, time to report back in with... urgh... Gordon.  Oh, we actually have to talk to Hilda anyway.   Ah, now we're getting to the famous "Solo gets seduced by an evil-"  Wait, what?   what  ...I have so many questions.  Whatever it's boss fight time!  And we're basically already dead. You see, in this game, sleep doesn't wear off when you get attacked. It'll just wear off randomly, like any other temporary status.  Wow, uh... I was not anticipating this. I didn't even get off a single attack.  The Queen Lamia can also confuse you, but honestly that's the least of my worries. If Vivian's confused, at least she'll actually complete her last inputted command. No, it's her normal attack I'm concerned about. Okay, she has sleep touch, but why so much damage? Now, I don't usually look up anything while I'm playing, certainly not boss stats. But I had to here. Queen Lamia Rank 7, HP 1,290, MP 370, Attack Power 50, Attacks 8(!), Accuracy 95%, Defense 50, Evasion 2-75%, Magic Resistance 7-40% Oh. 8 attacks. That explains it. Okay, so we're going to have to do something about this.  Best I could do with what I had was the Mirror to block the confusion spell, and Thread to lower her number of attacks. While her magic defense is high, the thread casts Slow 9, and that should get through it.  All the prep in the world doesn't help if she kills me before I can do anything. We have to actually hope for her confusion attack, since her regular attack seems to always inflict sleep.  But I got it off! So we're home clear?  Not with 8 attacks we're not!  Oh, and if I even do manage to get a turn in she casts this. It's actually very rare, but when she does you can forget about attacking. Vivian actually does decent damage, about 200 or so, and magic doesn't come close to that. Dick move.  I'll admit I'm shooting myself in the foot a bit. For this attempt I didn't bring the Mirror in, and while Confusion isn't that big a deal, that means more turns where I can't hit the boss.  Okay confusion is occasionally a bit of a problem, although that happened less often then you'd think. The other bad choice I made was not wearing armor. I kind of figured that the evasion bonus was more important than 15 defense, but 15 defense matters a lot here. It lowers the lamia's max damage from 800 to 680. Not insignificant. Still, when the boss is incapacitating you every other round or so, taking less damage from it is prolonging your inevitable loss rather than preventing it. The problem with the thread/mirror is that it takes two turns to set up, where it was often hard to get even one action in. And at the end of that it's not even that reliable! If I could get blind or even curse to stick it would alleviate the problem significantly, but their levels are still pretty low and with the lamia's magic defense meant that was... unlikely. I was starting to get really frustrated. I've played this game before! I've played solo runs of this game before! Why am I having so much trouble with this boss? This is worse than the drat Captain, and the Captain was optional! I had to think up a better strategy. And then I realized; there was a very simple solution to the problem. Both sleep and confusion are mind elemental, which barrier protects against. There was a slight issue, though.  You need level 3 barrier to protect against mind, and I've only got level 2. It wouldn't take very long at all, but that would necessitate a bit of grinding. Yeap, I had to grind to get past the lamia. Less than ten minutes worth of grinding, but grinding none the less. I had to grind in FF2. My shame is endless.  Aside from a level in Barrier, I unceremoniously reached max evasion level. Honestly, it's not going to help as much as you'd think, but any help is more than appreciated. All right you bitch, let's dance.  Unfortunately, barrier has a chance of missing, and sometimes not all the resistances hit. One note about barrier in this version; the elemental resistances it displays are incorrect (there's no such thing as "critical hit" defense). It actually will work backwards; level 1 barrier shows as giving ice defense, and you're supposed to get ice defense from level 8 barrier. (Supposed to. You don't. It's bugged.) What you need to do instead is count the number of messages. I only got two messages, so only matter and fire defense. Yeah, I died on this attempt. You know, I wonder if the backwards messages of barrier are the game's fault or the fan translation's. I actually think it's probably the game. I've been looking through Mega64's LP, but I don't know if he actually used that spell in that LP. Hm. Well, at least it gives you some clue what resistances hit; the remakes don't tell you at all. Anyway, on my second attempt all three levels hit.  gently caress you. After using the thread to mitigate the damage, there's no more real threat in the fight. Thankfully, she never used blink, so victory followed pretty soon after. And what do I get from the fight?  You know what, gently caress you Final Fantasy 2. Yes, I know that this is the most statistically likely possibility, as it's a 60% chance to drop money. I also know that Final Fantasy 2 is a cold, unfeeling program and therefore cannot care if I call a bastard. But I don't care. gently caress you Final Fantasy 2. Do you know what else this fight can drop? A ribbon! A motherfucking ribbon! Or a protect ring! Or a diamond cuirass, which is not as good as those two, is a drat nice piece of armor. Instead you give a bunch of completely worthless money. Can't even buy a single elixir. gently caress you. ...I've written way too many words about this goddamn lamia.  Oh, and the princess wasn't secretly a necrophiliac lesbian lamia the whole time; the real one's being held prisoner by the bad guys.  And for her rescue we get Gordon back for two seconds because I guess he's her love interest now. Poor Hilda.  Gordon is somehow alive with 0 HP. I end up going to the inn before I leave, so Gordon gets his HP restored. No zombie Gordon, sorry. (And if we do get zombie Gordon he's not immortal or anything. One hit and he'll lie back down.) All right, where is Paramekia? Well, I've actually shown it to you before. Remember that giant desert south of Kashuon? It's in there. Fortunately, with a boat it's much easier to reach. Let's start by sailing east of Altea.  I will never get sick of cruelty to Gordon.  Unfortunately, no matter what we do it's a bit of a hike to the place. I could park the ship around Kasuon and ride a chocobo down to Paramekia, but I'd still have to walk back. Really, no time saved. So, instead I park right under the strait, right where there's a huge break in the mountains. Also, new enemies!  Antlion Rank 5, HP 370, Attack Power 50, Attacks 3, Accuracy 75%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50% Well, enemy. I only saw Antlions on the way. By now, those stats are really mundane. Apparently they have a paralysis attack, but with three attacks they never hit anyway.  And here's the arena! See, told you I've shown this to you before. We can now enter it.  It's the emperor quick get 'em!  Of course not. Instead, we must fight-  Oh that's adorable! I don't wanna kill it!  Behemoth Rank 6, HP 1,620, Attack Power 85, Attacks 3, Accuracy 95%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 4-50% Okay, less adorable. Funnily enough this game actually give you proper boss music for this fight despite it a) being an utter joke and b) not a unique monster. In all fairness, you'll only see the Behemoth around Mysidia, and it's a very rare encounter (I think I've only seen it once or twice in the wild).  All it can do is attack, so I went about piling on the status ailments. It's really unnecessary; even though it has high accuracy, with three attacks it's unlikely to hit. All I really need is Curse to make going through the behemoth's admittedly hefty HP go quicker. No, I think I just wanted to blow off some steam. I was gonna rip this fucker's head off.  Sometimes I've just to indulge myself...  The poor bastard only managed to hit me once.  Behemoths don't drop anything. So worthless.   WHO'S NEXT?! Uh... no one. You won.  What, seriously? Lame. Uh... you want Hilda now? Oh right. Fooled you. Well, nuts.  No bars can contain Vivian!  Scratch that, for once Solid Snake will break someone else out of jail.  I have no idea what Paul'd thank us for since every time he shows up he does our job, but whatever. We're free! This is actually kind of a dungeon area, but it's only two floors and super small. No big deal. There's some treasure to the right.   ...look, the joke isn't funny any more. Stop doing it!  Column Rank 4, HP 240, Attack Power 40, Attacks 3, Accuracy 70%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-40% I wouldn't bother showing this encounter, but there's a new enemy. A new enemy that also isn't worth talking about. But it's there, being new, guarding a worthless antidote.  There are several doors on the upper part. The one we need to continue is to the far right, but one of these contains some treasure. Unfortunately, I didn't remember which one.  Sorcerer Rank 4, HP 140, MP 60, Attack Power 25, Attacks 1, Accuracy 70%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-60% Wizard Rank 6, HP 540, MP 190, Attack Power 40, Attacks 1, Accuracy 75%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-70%, Magic Resistance 4-60% Oh gently caress me. Both of these new guys are nasty. Both of them know some horrible status spells, and 540 HP for a spellcaster? Ouch.  But it wasn't the sorcerers and wizards that gave me a hard time. It was the good old captain.  gently caress.  By the way, this was the correct door. All it has, though, is an ether, elixir, and a cottage. None of which I'm really lacking for...   They show you a bit of mercy in this room by putting a ton of secret passages in it. I'll be using them, as I'm pretty keen to spend as little time as I can on this floor.  This is why. I use the thread on them, and I managed to scrap out a victory.  And I got the death spell! Even if I wasn't doing a no insta-death spell run, I wouldn't bother with death. Weirdly enough, the death spell is your worst option for insta-death. Death has an element all to itself, and a lot of creature resist or are immune to it. Worse than it, it's really inaccurate. Why bother?   : Hey Hilda I've got your dead boyfriend! ...man, that's really a problem for you, isn't it? : ... ... ...look, just give him to me. We'll find our way out.: If you insist. Well, that was even more useless than normal, Gordon.  There's another secret passage here. All right, almost home free!  Almost...  drat IT.  drat IT.  Sucker Rank 4, HP 300, Attack Power 35, Attacks 3, Accuracy 70%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-50% On my third run through, I never ran any of those wizard and captain encounters. I did find these guys, though. Suckers actually have an MP draining attack. It works like drain touch, that is, each hit does 1/16 of your max MP (The base attack just does damage). Annoying, but thankfully they only get three hits. Pretty weak otherwise. They're weak to ice, so that's... something.  Point is, I got out of there alive. There's no random encounters on the top floor, so I can just walk out in peace.  SAVE.  Ray Rank 5, HP 450, Attack Power 40, Attacks 4, Accuracy 75%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50% Other than a new enemy, nothing else to say about the trip back to the boat. Next we... go back to Altea and report with Hilda and/or Gordon, I guess? That'll wait. Let's just end this train wreck.   Power +4, Soul +2, Magic Power +1, Evade +1, Bolt +1, Curse +1, Barrier +1, Blind +1, HP +42, MP +23 Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 00:59 on Sep 9, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 02:28
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So with Agility of 28, what are your odds of getting an AGL+ at the end of a fight? Seems like that's going to be more and more of an issue as time goes on...
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Aug 20, 2014 03:02
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Ahh, now this is what we were all waiting for with this solo thread. Lots of deaths and complete bullshit that would be relatively harmless if you didn't have just one character.
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Aug 20, 2014 03:17
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:So with Agility of 28, what are your odds of getting an AGL+ at the end of a fight? Seems like that's going to be more and more of an issue as time goes on... The issue is that, as far as I can see, no one actually has the formula. This romhack readme claims that it rolls a random number between 1 and 255, and if that number is less than one fourth your evasion % you get some agility. If that's true, with 28 evasion percent (this requires not wearing armor) one fourth of that is 7. 7/255 chance, or around a 2% chance. Not great. Although with 99 %, it seems to be around 9%. A significant increase, but not completely ludicrous. Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Aug 20, 2014 |
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Aug 20, 2014 03:18
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This is the first point where I got my rear end handed to me while playing alongside Mega64's LP. Wizards do not mess around and will ruin your day if you only have one reliable damage dealer (which in my case was also Maria/Vivian). What makes it worse is that some of the spell books that can be dropped in the fights with Sorcerers and Wizards are REALLY good and either can't be bought in a shop or are only found in a single treasure chest in a later dungeon. So if you want duplicates of certain spell books your best option for a decent part of the game is to come back to Palamecia/Paramekia, walk all the way down to the bottom floor where your jail cell was, walk into and out of one of the monster closets (there'll be no random fights otherwise if memory serves), walk back up until you reach the sections where Wizards and Sorcerers appear, then hope that you're strong and resistant enough to win the encounter without multiple casualties/statues/frogs.
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Aug 20, 2014 21:58
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This LP actually made me pick up the GBA version again. I ended up beating it in two days, mostly by spamming auto-attack and mid-level elemental spells when that failed. I Was this because of the "rebalance" in the GBA version, or was the game always so easy to break, even accidentally? The guaranteed HP gains probably go a long way towards making the game easier, but the stat system does allow getting stronger from virtually any battle, whether it's with a lone goblin or with eight demons all spamming instant death spells. Also, that guarded chest with an Antidote inside is still the quintessential FF2 for me. Just pure hatred of players distilled into code. 
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Aug 20, 2014 23:18
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Aithon posted:Was this because of the "rebalance" in the GBA version, or was the game always so easy to break, even accidentally? Little bit of both. Hitpoints and damage output are the two things that generally take care of themselves in the original, which are amped up even more by the remake. Magic defense is a huge problem in the original though, and what you were getting there was 100% remake.
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Aug 20, 2014 23:47
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I wonder if Palamecia has a city or towns or anything. Perhaps Emperor Bowie turned all his citizens into monsters. That Behemoth was just an innocent child!
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Aug 21, 2014 00:51
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Camel Pimp posted:You know, I wonder if the backwards messages of barrier are the game's fault or the fan translation's. I actually think it's probably the game. I've been looking through Mega64's LP, but I don't know if he actually used that spell in that LP. Hm. Well, at least it gives you some clue what resistances hit; the remakes don't tell you at all. I don't think I seriously used any magic that wasn't attack/healing/Esuna/Blink. It's neat to see an actual challenging boss at least, and to see a seldom-used spell get to shine. Wizards and Sorcerers are nasty though even with a full party, so fighting them solo seems like it'd be a nightmare. It's a shame too since they drop some useful spells but probably aren't worth grinding for.
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Aug 21, 2014 00:55
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Wouldn't it of been a better idea to just buy and use a barrier book instead of grinding?
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Aug 21, 2014 01:51
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Deathwind posted:Wouldn't it of been a better idea to just buy and use a barrier book instead of grinding? Possibly, but I already had the spell and it was pretty close to level 3 anyway. (Although honestly I don't actually see needing the mind protection in the future, but I have it if I need it.)
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Aug 21, 2014 03:34
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:So with Agility of 28, what are your odds of getting an AGL+ at the end of a fight? Seems like that's going to be more and more of an issue as time goes on... The big problem here is that Vivian's evade% is always going to be criminally low, because she's using her fists. Weapons and shields increase evade% in proportion to their skill level, and that's pretty much the only way to get a decent evade%. With just fists, it's just going to be (AGL - equipment penalty). Camel Pimp would have to grind his rear end off if he wanted to raise his agility.
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Aug 22, 2014 22:03
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There isn't a lot of armor that increases agility/evasion without also tanking white/black magic power either (the Gold Hairpin is a helmet that has +10 agility, a -2 evasion penalty, and no int/soul penalty; the Black/Ninja Garb has +10 agility, no evasion penalty, and a -1 int/soul penalty), so it takes a lot of work to have a good dodge rate while also being able to dish out physical and magical damage.
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Aug 23, 2014 17:33
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Oh and I also forbid and armor that increases agility as well because it's clear that I hate myself
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Aug 23, 2014 18:55
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Chapter 12: The Rebellion Finally Does Something So... this time do we go and talk to Hi-  Nope! So she gets rescued and immediately launches an attack? drat. Where the hell was this Hilda the whole game? Was Hilda a lamia the whole time, and this is the first time we've actually seen real Hilda? I'm liking this new, useful Hilda. Just kidding, this is the only proactive and useful thing she will ever do in this entire game.  And Hilda just took the rebellion and parked their asses here. It's actually up to us to go to the castle, and kill the leader inside. Well, they'd cleared the way, since you can't enter the castle until now. So point one for Hilda and the rebellion. The only point they get. (Well also the whole saving your life at the beginning of the game I guess.) So anyway there's no point in going into town unless I really wanna kill some Captains (and this is the last time we have this unlimited supply of Captains to kill) so let's just go to the castle and-  Oh. Thanks game.  Layla's back. Woo.  Flower Rank 5, HP 540, Attack Power 40, Attacks 4, Accuracy 80%, Defense 40, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 3-50% So this castle has random encounters, so it's kind of a dungeon, but not really. You can explore and get all the treasure now, but there's no point. Once we kill the leader, the encounters are gone, and we can grab the treasure unmolested. You'll still run into an encounter or two getting to the leader. Oh, and here is zombie Layla.  And there was zombie Layla.   Gotus Rank 6, HP 2,000, MP 80, Attack Power 70, Attacks 6, Accuracy 90%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-65%, Magic Resistance 5-40% Gotus is, at least, respectable as an opponent. He's better than a behemoth. He mostly just attacks. His attack power isn't bad, but curse and blind help cut that damage down (it also helps that his magic resistance, while good, isn't sky-high.)   Unfortunately, he can boost up his attack stats.  Gotus did spent most of his fight missing, but when he hit, he hurt. Fortunately, with Curse on him, Vivian does around 360 a hit or so, up to 500. Doesn't take too long.  Got a few nasty hits on me, but nothing too bad.   Now that we've won, encounters are gone in the castle, Phin has been liberated, the rebellions' purpose has been fulfilled, and Hilda has regained her throne. All from fighting an enemy that isn't even a unique enemy. Yeah, there are Gotuses later on the game. Oh FF2....   Oh course we're not done yet. Remember how the king asked Minwu to grab the totally awesome and useful (and not bugged and lovely) spell Ultima? Yeah, we gotta go check up on him. Which just means we're going on a quest to get the Ultima spell.  Hilda drops a ton of key words on us. If you remember, I nabbed a black mask earlier. Yes, this is what we needed it for. It's a little complicated; we need a white mask and a black mask to open a cave to get us a rod to enter the tower. At least we've already done a part of this quest. Where's the white mask, then?   And this is what we actually need from Hilda. Now Gordon will tell you if you talk to Paul, he'll tell you where this secret passage is. But if you already know, you don't need to ask. And also screw Gordon I'm not talking to him.  Before we go do that, let's check the town out. Since Phin is no longer occupied, it's a normal town (the last we ever see in the game) and the shops are fully functional now.  The weapons and the armor are mostly stuff we've already found before. The only thing worth buying is the Quartz Cuirass, but we're gonna get one for free later anyway.  The spells are nice... if we could have gotten them earlier in the game. Except Dispel; it's supposed to remove elemental resistances, but like in FF1, it's bugged and doesn't work. Mini is another insta-KO spell, but one of the few KO spells that are white magic. Fog casts permanent silence, which would have been nice, but soon enough we'll have a better solution. Slow we've already seen; reduces number of enemy hits. I grab Slow, mostly for shits and giggles. Honestly, while I get decent use out of the thread, I probably made a mistake here. Slow is kind of redundant with Blind, and it's in many ways worse since it's less accurate and gotten later. On the other hand, slow is white magic, which is good for Viv. It's been hard to gain much intelligence since every time she punches something a brain cell leaks out. But nothing reduces soul, and her soul score is quite decent. Also Blind is a flat 40% reduction to evasion, and Slow reduces number of attacks based on how many levels of it hit. If I get super grind heavy with Slow it's a more useful debuff. And then I realize the enemies I'd really want to use this on resist both. So who cares really? ...oh yay.  We also missed a buncha treasure in the castle, so let's get that.  And also admire the lovely Chekhov's mirror they had installed.    And enjoy this treasure room full of spells that do the exact same thing. At least Death works on a different element, but Break and Toad have the exact same element. Yes, Toad is a KO spell. No, it's not a KO spell when used on you, but it is when used on the enemy. It's a really good KO spell too; it's the most accurate one in the game. The only reason to have both Toad and Break in the same room is a) if you wanted to have two casters of KO spells (although they're both black magic) or b) to trick people into using the shittier spell. I'd be remiss to mention that in the remakes of FF2, they added a mini game similar to the one in FF1. In the snow fields, if you press a and b 22 times, you play a memory game. Why do I mention it now? If you play this game with level 16 toad, you can get the masamune and other nice stuff from it. Although if you have level 16 toad, you barely need a masamune.   Most of the treasure chest are trapped, and those monsters don't go away once Phin's been liberated. At least this chest is only trapped with trash monsters; the game devs are mean, but not that mean.  Also trapped, but with a team of far scarier Sorcerer's and Sergeants. Now Aura is an... interesting spell. I thought it was bugged and didn't work, but according to this site while the eighth level is bugged, the spell does work. It boosts your attack against specific enemy types. Honestly, I never use this spell and I never notice it's effects when I have. I sold it. I'll run into it again later in the game, though; maybe I'll play around with it? If nothing else, I doubt I'd have to put it on my special restriction list.  There's two secret passages on the second floor here, but they just have the werebane and the giant gloves, both of which are kind of not great this point. Since we've looted all we can here, let's continue on with the plot train.  And here's the secret passage. You can tell because it's the only piece of wall with a keyword/item prompt. Throw our relevant word at it, and move on through the secret door.  Right before the entrance to the dungeon, they sneak a little hidden path here.  Told you we were getting one for free. It gives 22 defense; pretty good! Also, free, so you can't argue with that price.  We also get the gold armor, which is both heavier and has worse defense. Just to rub it in on how bad heavy armor is in this game. (The other is a gold shield, which is okay.)  Anyway, dungeon!  The first two floors have nothing but really lovely treasure. None of it's trapped, at least!  Brain Rank 5, HP 240, MP 100, Attack Power 40, Attacks 4, Accuracy 75%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 3-50% Brains are basically grown up Changers. Same love of the Swap spell, although theirs hits more often. At least they leave you with a decent 100 MP, but I've still gotta spend a ton healing back up, so it's a major drain. I actually end up using an elixir because of these jerks. A faux pas I will never live down. Thankfully they only show up on the first two floors. Other than the brains, there's nothing else to say about the-   By this point, I was getting paranoid. I mean, I remember this dungeon not being hard at all, but if I hosed up at any point the game was certainly not going to be this generous the next time around. FF2 only seems to have two modes; bending over a bar stool presenting like a mandril, or bending me over that bar stool. Usually it's pretty clear when it's entering the second mode, but the game surprises me yet. ...yeah, I'm just going to deflate your gleeful, voyeuristic schadenfreude right now; I don't die. Sorry.  Mantis Rank 5, HP 750, Attack Power 60, Attacks 5, Accuracy 75%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% By the third floor, we finally get a tough enemy. Basically these guys hit you hard. They have an ice weakness, but I've only got level 4 ice. I would two of those to kill one. It's not that much faster than punching them to death. Other than the mantises, though, none of the random encounters are even remotely scary, and the mantises only show up on the third floor anyway. Honestly, maybe the tropical cave does fit after this dungeon. It's longer and more complicated, at least.  Man, this bar stool's getting a workout today.  First piece of decent treasure! It's got the same evasion bonus as the diamond shield, but protects against ice rather than lightning.  But the flame armor protects against fire. That's confusing as hell. Also it's heavy. Boo.   Oh the blood sword.... you funny little thing. It's trapped with a kinda trash encounter, but it's a great weapon. You know how drain attacks add 1/16 of your max HP per hit landed to the damage? The blood sword has the same property. Now the blood sword has some steep penalties; it has the worst base attack of any weapon, worst accuracy, no evasion bonus, will heal the undead, and it completely kills your int/soul. But give it to a dedicated sword user, and it wrecks any high HP enemy. Oh, and any HP drained (but not the base attack) is given to the attacker. The blood sword is well known for how absurdly powerful it can be. The blood sword isn't the cheapest way to get through the game, but it's up there.  The fang casts confuse 16. Honestly, it might be useful? I never use the drat things, and I'm pretty sure I sold this one, but there are some enemies later that drop it so if I really wanna use one I could.  Really, one of the few things to note about this dungeon is how most of the floors change color.   GChimera Rank 5, HP 750, MP 140, Attack Power 60, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% Hey, a new, actually interesting enemy. Hows about that? The, uh... well it's the orichalcum dagger so I'm calling it that. Anyway, it has better attack power than the main gauche, but it doesn't have the evasion bonus, so gently caress it. As for the ...Ghimera? Great Chimera? As for the red chimera, it's pretty much like the previous chimera with one major difference. It has a petrifying attack. Much to my surprise, it never used it. It is a rarer attack, but still. Actually, this encounter also can be from one to four. You know, one of the enemies guarding the blood sword can petrify as well, and it didn't, despite me loving around in that fight. I'm presenting so many opportunities for the game to gently caress me over, and it's not. It's a dangerous game we play, me and FF2.  Now it's time to play the guessing game, EXTREME edition! It's outta control!  Fortunately, this is one time I do remember the correct door.  And that's it. There's no boss; the red chimera/s are as close as it gets to a boss. There's a warp out at the end, and we're done. That was astonishingly painless. Next time, we found what the hell to actually do with these masks.   Power +5 (wait, seriously?), Agility +4 (seriously!?), Vitality +4, Intelligence +1, Soul +3, Unarmed +1, Magic Power +1, Magic Defense +1, Cure +1, Blink +1 Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 07:11 on Sep 2, 2014 |
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Aug 24, 2014 15:43
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With how nice this game has been to you I keep expecting some colossal fuckery around every corner. It hasn't happened yet, but please post it when it does 
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Aug 24, 2014 16:19
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PREPARE THY ANUS FOR WHAT WAITS AHEAD! THE GAME SHALL NOW BEND YOU OVER WITHOUT MERCY! Ah who am I kidding, you're nigh indestructible now.
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Aug 24, 2014 17:58
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Yeah, Vivian's weathered almost every serious challenge that can pop up in a solo run (the Chimaera fight, the Lamia Queen fight, Sorcerer/Wizard clusters in Palamecia). The only surefire ways to kill off Vivian now would require the RNG to roll against her favor when it comes to 'instakill' status ailments like petrification and toad.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:22
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Doesn't the late game have packs of enemies who have the drain-HP ability and like 8 attacks per round? Sure Vivian gets 16 dodge attempts per attack, but she still needs to get her AGI way up to be able to survive that kind of onslaught. 8 hits (which needn't all come from the same enemy) would mean a minimum of half her health is gone, and if she's taking at least half her health in damage each round, then she has to spend every round healing, which leaves no room for offense.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:32
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Death Knights/Riders/whatever are pretty dangerous but unless the RNG hates you there won't be more than one or two of them at a time. They also don't show up until the final dungeon; by that point Vivian would probably have a decent level Slow spell that would lop off some of those eight hits. Plus, outside of their high defense (120 points) Death Knights are pretty easy to deal damage to (1/70% evasion, weak to fire damage) so Vivian should be able to kill one well before she gets too beat up.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:55
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Falconer posted:Death Knights/Riders/whatever are pretty dangerous but unless the RNG hates you there won't be more than one or two of them at a time. They also don't show up until the final dungeon; by that point Vivian would probably have a decent level Slow spell that would lop off some of those eight hits. Plus, outside of their high defense (120 points) Death Knights are pretty easy to deal damage to (1/70% evasion, weak to fire damage) so Vivian should be able to kill one well before she gets too beat up. Death Knights resist body, which is slow's element.
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Aug 28, 2014 22:57
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:Doesn't the late game have packs of enemies who have the drain-HP ability and like 8 attacks per round? Sure Vivian gets 16 dodge attempts per attack, but she still needs to get her AGI way up to be able to survive that kind of onslaught. 8 hits (which needn't all come from the same enemy) would mean a minimum of half her health is gone, and if she's taking at least half her health in damage each round, then she has to spend every round healing, which leaves no room for offense. The drain-HP ability is mostly threatening as a sort of "gotcha!" to players who abuse the poo poo out of the HP leveling mechanic to stumble their way through the game by virtue of being more or less unkillable. Vivian's problem with evade rate is that both weapons and shields boost evade rate (multiplied by the level of the weapon/shield skill), which is a pretty big contribution that's not being gotten and because your agility skill up rate appears to be based on your final evade rate (after bonuses and penalties from gear), you've got the present situation.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:08
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Camel Pimp posted:Death Knights resist body, which is slow's element. Hrm, that's right. Well that just leaves punching, fire and hoping that Vivian's evasion percent isn't still below average by then.
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Aug 28, 2014 23:45
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Chapter 13: Ghosts All right, now we've got the masks, we've got to figure out what to do with them. Since Minwu headed off to Mysidia, this seems like a good place to check. Since we're a bit stronger now, it's no longer that big a deal getting there, as long as I don't run into Ghosts.  Vampire Girl Rank 5, HP 540, MP 100, Attack Power 40, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% I do run into a new enemy, though. Like all late-game undead, they have drain touch. They can also confuse you, although they use a multi-targetted, weaker form of it. Their attack is nasty, but not enough to overwhelm me, and their confuse hardly hits. Could be worse.  In order to find out what to do, you need to talk around in Mysidia.  There's also a bookcase, which will give you a bit of backstory for pretty much all of the key words in the game. Nothing mind-blowing, but at least the game's attempting to flesh out it's meager world.  Inputting "mask" gives you a strangely translated riddle.  So what does it all mean? There's a downward staircase in the middle of town. We go down and go to this statue.  Then throw the white mask on it. By the way, we don't actually lose the white mask. It will remain in the inventory, haunting me, making so I can't carry that one extra elixir... And so, what do we do now?  We head to dungeon a little south of Mysidia. Again, in this version the game does not mark it on the map.  Pudding Rank 5, HP 370, MP 80, Attack Power 40, Attacks 4, Accuracy 80%, Defense 210, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 3-50% I'm kind of surprised they took so long to show up. Puddings are the toughest slime enemies, with a pretty hefty HP total. They're also only weak to fire, so using anything else just prolongs killing them. Not difficult in any way, but huuuuge MP sinks.  Malboro Rank 5, HP 750, Attack Power 50, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% Yeah, I know it says "Molbor" but you know what this is. Actually, these Malboros aren't quite as bad; all they have is a paralyzing touch they didn't hit all that often. Beefy as hell, but nowhere near as nightmarish as you think. (Usually...)  And nothing else interesting happened along the way. Dungeon crawlin' time!  This dungeon is mostly a series of walkways, with rooms below. Also do I spy treasure?  I'm starting to kick myself for the "no agility boosting equipment" rule. The Black Grab is a fantastic, fantastic piece of armor. A defense of 40, agility +10, no weight, magic penalty of 1, and matter resistance.  Well, with no weight I guess Solo can have it so it can minimally impact my chances of getting ambushed/ambushing enemies. Yay.There's also a goldpin on the floor, just to rub it in. But where we want to go is all the way to the left, down, and to the right.  Solo, what are you doing here? I killed you.  No, it's an... evil doppelganger. Okay. Anyway, if you didn't put the white mask on the statue it would push you away. Since we did, it's immobile and we can put the black mask on it. And of course we don't lose the black mask either. Anyway, onward!  Cockatrice Rank 5, HP 370, Attack Power 35, Attacks 4, Accuracy 70%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50% Oh gently caress. Anyone who knows anything about Final Fantasy probably shares my sentiment. Cockatrices are known for petrifying you, and this game, their regular attack has petrifying capacity. Of course, I say that, but... it never happened. Once. They did hit me, but the stone effect never went off. Viv's not wearing anything that protects against matter, I never cast barrier with these guys, nothing. It just... didn't hit. They again, with only four attacks they usually only landed a hit if they landed a hit at all.  Oh, and I told you Red Soul's would show up later on. Slime type enemies are really common in this dungeon too; I started to get really liberal with the spells at this point. I stopped keeping track of how many ethers and elixirs I used.  This dungeon has a couple of secret passages, like you see here on the second floor.  Eh. Spears are okay, their main distinguishing characteristic is that their int/soul penalty is slightly less than swords while maintaining comparable power. It's still a -40 penalty, though, so it's still pretty bad for spellcasters. Although, you can buy a flame spear in Mysidia.  The Power Staff, by contrast, has one less attack power and only a 20 int/soul penalty. (The 20 penalty is actually really high for a staff; usually it's only 5.)  I forgot where the exit to the floor was, and just decided it was probably easier to warp out, save, rest, and go back in. Probably a little paranoid on my part, I'll admit.  By the way, the way to the third floor is behind a door in the bottom left corner.  Another secret passage!  Woo.  You know how I said the Malboro had a paralyzing attack that didn't connect all that often? Well, once in a while, it does.  And when it does, the results are... messy. Crap. Well, I'm glad my earlier decision was retroactively prudent.  Anyway, you want to go to the left, down, and then up around. Along the way you'll find this pretty good axe (but it's still an axe you can buy.)  It's just trapped with bombs. Whatever. Moving onto the fourth floor, it's pretty straightforward.  Although these fellows are now random encounters. Like with the cockatrice I was always afraid they'd petrify me, and like with cockatrices they never did. At least, as long as I manage to get one round in I can cast barrier for some peace of mind. It's nice that matter resistance is first on the list.  In addition to a single treasure chest with a potion (at least it wasn't trapped) there's some door roulette.  You wouldn't miss much by skipping it. Other than a (for me) useless gold needle and phoenix down, there's the silent bell. It inflicts silence... the temporary version. So, so useless.  Poison Toad Rank 5, HP 450, Attack Power 40, Attacks 4, Accuracy 75%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50% But and I found an enemy I hadn't seen yet. How about that? Also, why is the background a forest? Other than that, it's on to the fifth floor. Just rolling along, huh?    But there's the rub. I don't know if I've fully establish what bastards ghosts are. First off, they have pretty high HP totals at 540. They get 5 attacks, and they're draining attacks.  Also, they get tons of nasty spells. This is one of the few times I've ever seen my characters get hit with mini. Mini is like toad; when you cast it on the enemy it's a one-hit kill, and when they cast it on you, it reduces your stats significantly. However, mini is actually temporary, so that's not so bad.  But no, this is the real dick move. First off, it's level 16 and it's single targeted. Unless you have resistance to the element, you're gonna get hit with it. But what about getting resistance to stun? Well, stun is body elemental. Barrier doesn't protect against body until level seven. There's no equipment (yet) that protects against it either. It's not the most common attack they have, they have a 10 percent chance of using it, but with over 500 HP the battle is definitely going to last long enough that it'll happen a few times.  Oh and they have single target Aero 16 too. Lovely.  Time to do this all over again! Well, maybe if I try the ghosts again I can get lucky and win?  Ha ha. No. They killed me immediately. All right. Again.   On my fifth attempt through this cave, the game starting getting... generous.  You know what, FF2? I don't trust you. Yes, I know this will force another run through this drat cave. But that's fine; I've almost got this place down to a science. If this stupid game killed me after two agility gains I was gonna burn this whole thing down and I'm taking you bastards with me.  This time, I'm skipping the drain tome. Yeah, it's cowardly, but I don't really need or want it.  As a matter of fact, I'm skipping all this poo poo. The treasure chest on the bottom right is a mini tome, and the four up top are all potions. You can only access that area via secret passage, and I'm just not in the mood to go looking for it. gently caress it. Let's just get through this poo poo already. I'm almost to the end anyway.  Motherfucker.  Everyone's been talking about how the only thing that'll kill Viv is insta-death attacks. Here's the thing: at this point in the game, most insta-death attacks that enemies use are level 6 multi-target spells. Vivian has level 7 or 8 magic evasion, which means she has a decent, if not 100% chance of dodging it. Moreover, since barrier gives matter resistance on its first level, I can pull that out. No, stun kept killing me. While Vivian's evasion can keep her alive for a decent number of turns, in the right circumstances (say, an encounter with four hard-hitting enemies) the enemy will beat her to death long before the ailment wears off.   On my seventh run through, the game got generous yet again. At this point, I just want to be done with the cave. If I were to lose 2 agility, so be it. Wow, mood swing.  But lo and behold, I made it. So what's at the end?    Treasure! The Crystal Rod is what we need to open Mysidia Tower and continue with the game. We also get the Aspil tome and Drain tome, and I didn't even need to fight ghosts! All right, now let's warp out, save, and never discuss this again. I end up having Viv learn both aspil and drain, but aspil's the one I really want. Now, drain does what you think it does, and unlike drain touch it's not percentile based. Sad.  Aspil, or Osmose, absorbs MP from the enemy. Which is already a nice thing, but here's the kicker; it will steal MP from enemies that don't have any MP. You know how the only thing we really need to buy anymore is elixirs? We don't even need to buy those any more. Even more than having an unlimited MP pool, this spell is useful in other ways. In other FF games (I'm thinking 4 in particular) enemies cheat when it comes to MP. They can cast spells for free, even if those spells need MP when you use them. FF2 enemies play by the same rules you do. No MP, no casting. And, in case you needed a reminder, anything that's not a regular attack costs MP. The spell doesn't drain much MP now, but with a bit of training it'll get more potent. The maximum amount of MP an enemy has in this game is 540, so using Aspil to seal off spell-casting is a very viable strategy. It just needs to be leveled high enough. The only enemy it won't work against is the undead, since the effects are reversed like with drain. With this spell in my belt, I've pretty much got all the spells I want. There are more spells we haven't seen yet, but I really don't foresee needing them. Viv's only got one extra spell slot anyway. In any case, after going back to town and hawking off all the trash, it's time to sign off. Next time... Ultima?   Power +2, Agility +4 (Sweeeeeet), Vitality +5, Intelligence +5, Soul +3, Magic Power +5, Magic Defense +1, Fire +1, Blink +1, Curse +1, Holy +1, Barrier +1, Blind +1, HP + 343, MP +51 Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Sep 28, 2014 |
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Aug 29, 2014 01:20
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This game HATES you and it wants your balls on a silver platter it seems...despite the Agility increases. BURN THE WORLD! FOR OUR NEW FISTING GODDESS NEEDS IT NOT!
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Aug 30, 2014 03:25
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Kemix posted:FISTING GODDESS Phrasing! [/archer] This has been a fun one so far.  I wouldn't say that FFII is the best of its series, but it's certainly a more solid game than people tend to give it credit for.
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Aug 30, 2014 03:34
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The gameplay is only solid if you know the game mechanics, otherwise FF II can get rather grindy. For example, in most games defense triumphs evasion, but in this game it's the opposite. People who don't keep their evasion up may start to grind their HP. Then they hit draining enemies and now that doesn't work anymore.
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Aug 30, 2014 06:43
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Crystalgate posted:The gameplay is only solid if you know the game mechanics, otherwise FF II can get rather grindy. For example, in most games defense triumphs evasion, but in this game it's the opposite. People who don't keep their evasion up may start to grind their HP. Then they hit draining enemies and now that doesn't work anymore. That will work until the endgame, though. Honestly the first time I played the game, and I didn't really know the mechanics, it wasn't a hard game at all until the end. (The final dungeon actually made me quit my first play through.)
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Aug 30, 2014 06:49
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Even evasion has its limits though, especially in a solo character run, since magic doesn't care how high your evasion is. I'm a little farther in than Camel Pimp at the moment and the two hardest fights I've had so far were the Chimaera fight in Deist Cave (both attempts included four of them to fight, meaning healthy amounts of Fire 6 spam that were taking 60-80 HP per cast) and the Lamia Queen fight (I didn't visit Mysidia in order to pick up Barrier beforehand so each attempt came down to whether or not I beat myself to death while confused). At least the Lamia Queen was nice enough to drop a Diamond Cuirass on my successful attempt, which almost made up for how miserable an experience beating her was.
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Aug 30, 2014 14:31
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Chapter 14: Mysidia Tower All right you guys. No foolin', no bullshit, we're going to go to Mysidia Tower and get Ultima! We already passed the tower on the way to Mysidia; it's on an island surrounded by a mountain ring. Fairly easy to find. So let's-  But first, pointless ship wreck sequence out of nowhere.  Okay, it does have a point, mainly to shuffle a party member out.  This is a mini-dungeon with really nothing to it. Damage floors return from FF1, and they work the same way; you lose 1 HP per step, and you can't get into a random encounter while on a damage tile.  Manta Ray Rank 5, HP 870, Attack Power 70, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% Electric Fish Rank 5, HP 540, MP 80, Attack Power 60, Attacks 4, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 4-40% Also, new enemies! All the enemies here are new, and fresh faces are appreciated! The manta ray is kinda tough, and the electric fish absorbs bolt. That's all there is to say about these two.  Sea Dragon Rank 5, HP 870, MP 80, Attack Power 70, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40% Sea Dragons are a little more interesting. They're pretty buff, as their stats are pretty much the same as the manta ray.  Also, their wave attack is a damage spells that's actually kind of scary, at least for a characters with lower HP. At this point, you start seeing more damage magic that actually is worth a drat.   While this area's pretty short and uninteresting as a whole, at least there's some pretty great treasure. Both the power sash and the spiral headband are very lightweight, with the power sash having a -5% penalty and the headband having a -2% penalty, increase strength by 10, have very low magic penalties, and provide a resistance. The sash protects against body, and the headband against mind. Yeah, it's at this point that the game decides to vomit all the good equipment on you. Still, not the best we'll find this update.  You know how I said this area was short? It's three floors long, and the middle floor doesn't even have encounters; it's just where the people are.  And the game doesn't tell you this until now, but what happened is Leviathan swallowed us. Yeah, try not to think about any of this too hard. So I guess next time we see Layla she'll be mysteriously older and forgotten her white magic.  Oh, and another lightweight strength boosting armor to round out the set. This piece protects against poison, which is less awesome than body or mind protection, but still decent. For the first time, we have a full set of armor. While the total magic penalty comes out to about -5% or so, hardly worth worrying about, the total evasion penalty is -10%. Hm. I can live with that, but it's not... great. Eh, there's gonna be even more equipment down the line very shortly, so we're not wearing it for long.  Oh and hello important character blocking the way. You can throw some key words at him, but in order to progress we have to flash our crystal rod.   Meet our next party member/murder victim.   Uh, I'm right here...Hey, for once I don't have to write in Vivian being hideously insensitive.  Honestly, Richard's probably my favorite fourth slot party member outside of Minwu. Yeah, he suffers from being a front-liner when you really don't need another front-liner stealing previous evade experience from your permanent characters, and his own evasion is poor. But he's at least a decent front-liner with good weapon levels. Oh, and this fan translation is the only one I've ever seen get his name 100% correct. Character limitations make his name "Ricard" in the recent translation, which is perfectly fine. The Origins translation named him Gareth, and the NES prototype translation named him Edward. I do wonder if the prototype FF2 was polished up and released if FF4's Edward would have had a different name change. Huh. Anyway, moving onto the next and final floor of... Leviathan's stomach. (He has a tiered stomach? Yeah, again, try not to think about it too hard.)  I'm at the point where I really don't need to kill the new meat myself anymore, but...  It feels dishonest if I don't.  And the game really, really starts throwing a ton of awesome new swords at you all at once. There's also a diamond shield on this floor, and it's trapped with red souls for some reason.  Just for your information, I started really throwing around spells willy-nilly at this point. Mostly due to the fact that MP is meaningless to me now, and also because I wanna train my spells, mostly aspil. You may see a pretty marked increase in spell levels, and that would be why.  Anyway, here's the ship, and the boss we gotta fight.  Worm Rank 7, HP 2,000, Attack Power 120, Attacks 6, Accuracy 95%, Defense 100, Evasion 1-10%, Magic Resistance 4-50% The worm has no gimmick; it's just a beefy monster that hits hard. It gets a decent number of accurate attacks, so it will land a few goodly hits, at least before Curse and Blind. It's not really worth discussing otherwise.  Well, that was pointless. Even though that was a barely a dungeon, I went back to town if only to unload all the useless crap. I would really recommend doing that before Mysidia Tower.  After all that, all you have to do is walk up and you automatically use the rod to enter the tower. Now, you can freely enter and leave the tower, but the game does make you sit through that little animation every time you re-enter. A slight annoyance, but oh well.  Mysidia tower is a pretty memorable dungeon, at least it was for my first playthrough of this game. At about 9 floors it's the longest one in the game so far. It's also full of treasure and nasty ene-  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu- Wait, the Power Sash gives body resistance.  Hm. He he. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha. AH HA HA HA!!!!!  Anyway, for whatever reason the first floor has three chests with worthless canes. But in upper middle of the floor, behind a secret passage, there lies a true catch.  The White Robe may end up being endgame equipment. How awesome is the white robe? While it only has a defense of 30, which is good but not great, it's one of the few pieces that doesn't penalize magic at all; as a matter of fact, it gives a +10 spirit bonus. Most importantly, it protects from body, matter, mind, and death. The only status ailment it doesn't protect against is poison, but the power armlet does so I'm covered there. I'm now completely immune to status ailments. (Well, actually, I think there might be one exception.) Now, some people have been saying that with 16 dodges (and the game's random generosity with agility bonuses) that I'm unkillable. That's... not quite true, but not entirely false. Enemies start getting a lot more hits from here on out, and with low evasion percentage Vivian simply won't dodge every single hit that comes her way. But she'll dodge a great many, and even with high attack power most enemies shouldn't overwhelm her. Although, honestly, I may be surprised; even after all this time the game will sometimes still do that. That being said, draining attacks are still a major problem, and there are some nasty enemies with drain touch down the line. (Mainly Death Riders, but they're not the only ones.)  Moving on, the second floor introduces us to the gimmick of this tower: "themed floors." For the next two floors, the background is red, all the treasure is fire-related, and there are pools of lava. It feels like I shouldn't insult you by stating the obvious, but we all know what the theme is: the loss of innocence.  And speaking of the treasure, there's three pieces on the second floors; the other two being the flame lance and the flame shield in the northwest corner of the floor. We've seen all these pieces before.  I wasn't kidding about the pools of lava, and apparently neither were the creators. Well, hey, no random encounters. And as you can guess, another round of guess the door.  This is the door.  And it just teleports you across the room. Okay.   You know how I mentioned how the game loves to dump a bunch of swords on you at this point? Well, here you go, second new sword within twenty minutes of gameplay. There's also a flame armor across directly right of the helmet. Like the shield, the helmet provides ice resistance, not fire. But the flame armor provides fire, remember, and oh who cares you shouldn't use any of that crap.  After each set of themed floors, there's a miniboss.  Fire Gigas Rank 7, HP 1,800, MP 240, Attack Power 100, Attacks 6, Accuracy 95%, Defense 100, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 4-50% All of these mini-bosses are gigases, and they all follow the same template. In addition to a healthy attack score, they've got more up their sleeve.  Their fire spell is pretty drat nasty for a magic attack. They also get a spell called "Rock 9" but choose not to do it in this battle. One nice thing is that all of the elemental gigases are weak to the opposite element, in case you're having a hard time scratching them with attacks. But I only had level 4 ice to work with, so curse + punching was the faster combo. Regardless, I took the gigas down pretty easily.  And now we move onto the next themed set.  Guess the theme, children. The staircase below just leads to some more treasure.  On these floors, our damage tiles are just... water. Well, considering the whole ice thing it's probably really, really cold water.  Basilisk Rank 6, HP 750, MP 140, Attack Power 70, Attacks 6, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-65%, Magic Resistance 6-30% As the name suggests, the notable feature of these monsters is their ability to petrify you.  White robe, bitches.  Hey, finally a spear we couldn't have bought in Mysidia!    And now all the flame stuff you got from the previous floor is obsolete. Well, actually, it's not a bad idea to keep the flame sword for the ice gigas.  I guess I could have not mentioned there was an ice gigas and it could have been a surprise. Perhaps there might have been a... flamingo gigas instead.  Ice Gigas Rank 7, HP 2,000, MP 140, Attack Power 120, Attacks 7, Accuracy 95%, Defense 120, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 4-50% Yeap, this sure is a gigas.  Actually, it's a little different. For one, it actually used the rock attack! Also, the ice gigas's ice spell is lower leveled and multi-targetted, so it doesn't do poo poo for damage.  Although its attack isn't quite as crap. This is what I mean when I say Vivian isn't quite untouchable, but is unlikely to die. Now, the gigas has 7 hits, but not all of them are going to hit. Even three connecting is a bit rare, since usually one or two connect. If there were more enemies in this fight, and they all has similar strength and number of attacks, I could be up poo poo creek if I had some unlucky rolls. But with one the damage output is quite manageable. Also, I hadn't cursed and blinded it yet.  And Curse really helps; that would have been nasty otherwise. Basically, as long as I'm always careful, the battle should never kill this character. Since your fire spell is usually your highest level spell, and that holds true in this play through, fire is probably the best bet for dispatching this gigas.  After fire and ice comes... purple. It's supposed to be thunder themed, I guess, but at this point they seemed to be getting tired of their own gimmick. Which is appropriate, as this is the point the player is getting tired of this dungeon. Yet there's still a fair bit to go. This dungeon is really loving long you guys.  Yes, even around two-thirds of the way through this long-rear end dungeon, they felt the need to put in a gag chest.   Devil Flower Rank 6, HP 1,140, Attack Power 70, Attacks 6, Accuracy 85%, Defense 70, Evasion 1-65%, Magic Resistance 5-70% These guys can confuse you, have high HP, and are weak to fire. That's all there is to 'em. For some reason I keep thinking they're undead, but I think I'm confusing them with an enemy from FF6.  The Evil Stick here is an odd weapon. If used as an item, it casts single target Aero 16 on a random target. And I do mean random: enemy, ally, dead, doesn't matter. Not worth using.  Wait, no gigas here? Weird.  Now we've just given up on themed floored entirely.  Malboro Terra Rank 6, HP 1,000, Attack Power 60, Attacks 7, Accuracy 80%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-65%, Magic Resistance 6-30% I have no idea what the "l" stands for, so I'll just call 'em what they're called in the newer translation. Anyway, like their cousins these malboros would be scary because their attack inflicts stun, and like their cousins, having resistance to status ailments neuters the threat.  These floor mostly has a bunch of strange odds and ends. The Shoes (or Hermes Shoes, which is the name you're more likely to know) casts haste on the user. I don't know if I've talked about haste yet. Haste increases your number of attacks. It can be useful, but the reason why you do so little damage to bosses in this game is because your attack doesn't exceed (or barely exceeds) the boss's defense. Since the formula is (random value between attack and attack x2 - defense) x number of hits, having more hits often doesn't really help. We all know what happens when you multiply by 0. It's nice in conjunction with berserk, curse, or the blood sword, though. Considering it's not the best spell there's probably no point with putting on the restriction list, but it doesn't matter either way I guess. There's also a unicorn horn a thread on this floor, the latter of which I forgot to pick up. Not that it matters. I've still got two threads I never use.  Oh and now the gigas attacks you. Uh, okay.  Thunder Gigas Rank 7, HP 2,500, MP 370, Attack Power 150, Attacks 8, Accuracy 95%, Defense 150, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-50% Third verse same as the first... and second.  Although its thunder attack is nasty. Ouch. This is one point where the gold pin's bolt resistance would actually come in handy. And you know, I didn't think of it, but Vivian has barrier level 4, and at level 4 it grants lightning resistance. Eh, Vivian can keep up with this damage. Really, what's annoying is that this gigas's weakness is poison, and there's no goddamn way any sane player has a decently leveled aero at this point. Curse and then beatdown is the best choice.  And for the last two floors, again, there is no theme. Each of those pathways leads down to a door, and there six of them on this floor. And of course, only one leads anywhere.  At the very top of this whole mess, there's a chest with a spell I should be excited to get but I'm not.  And it's trapped. Hi Gotus! But yes, Flare is, like in most Final Fantasies, a powerful non-elemental attack. It has a base power of 20, five more than holy and one of the best base powers in the game. But it has the same problem holy has; magic, by this point, tends to do crap damage unless it's hitting a weakness. Holy, at least, you can get much earlier and you have a lot more time to level it up. The problem with all the spells you get at this point is that you're not going to want to level a whole new spell. There's not much of the game left, and flare just isn't a good enough spell to devote time to. Also it's black magic. Soul is a lot easier to level than intelligence, at least in versions with stat decreases, so white magic is generally better for Viv than black. Well, I do end up learning it, just to have a full spell list. The door right below the flare is the door we want. And from there, we move onto the last floor.  Well that's one way to translate that. Yeah, this is just an hourglass. Stop is a temporary status ailment, so this goes to be sold.   Dragon Rank 7, HP 2,500, MP 140, Attack Power 150, Attacks 6, Accuracy 95%, Defense 120, Evasion 1-75%, Magic Resistance 5-50% And finally, we have one last mini-boss to send us off. Actually, the game plays boss music for this, so it's supposed to be a boss fight, but it is completely optional.  This ice attack hits the whole party, but this is a case of a monster being scarier to a whole party than a solo character. Also it's weak to fire, so killing isn't too tricky. Another "boss" that's a complete chump, but at least it's scarier than the behemoth.  And there's one last door roulette before we're basically done with the tower. Honestly, it seems so weird that this was such a quick and easy run, relatively speaking. Mysidia tower is well know for being an absolute slog. But it's mostly difficult because it's such a drain on your resources; you do have aspil by this point, but unless you tried to grind drop the wizards, and the only place you can do that is in the coliseum, then you've only got one. And all the new armor with status resistances are great, but you only have so many. For a solo game none of that is a problem. I never said a solo run of FF2 didn't have some perks.  Oh there you are. Everyone's been looking for you. Have you been here this whole time? Maybe. Anyway so I'm gonna sacrifice my life to open this door so you can get Ultima. ...even I think that's a little excessive. I mean, do we really need to-   Well, uh, thanks for that. Sorry about your... life.Well that sure was a death of some description.  Oh look, shiny orbs! Now, this is kind of weird. Each of those four orbs surrounding the center give a random character +10 to a certain stat.  +10 strength to... Vivian! All right!  +10 soul to Richard. Ah well, I'm not really heartbroken over that. Vivian's got plenty of soul.  +10 intelligence to... Vivian! Well, that's nice.  And finally, the most important one, is agility. It goes to...  You're making GBS threads me. It went to Vivian. Vivian got almost all of the stat gains, with the exception of the one she was already pretty solid for to begin with. That is... wow. By the way, I am not abusing save-states for this game. I did not save-scum for this result. I... really have nothing to save about this. I'm just stunned.   And finally, we get the sealed spell, Ultima. Ultima is a piece of poo poo. This spell is famously bugged in this version of the game. It has a base power of 100, which is flipping insane, but it doesn't actually gain power as it levels. Now, in the remake, the spell's power is based on the levels of all your spells and weapons, which is probably how the spell is supposed to work. But it doesn't, and Ultima is worthless. Even in versions where it works, Ultima is still a waste of time. A decently leveled toad in capable hands can devastate a whole mess of enemies in a single turn, and when that doesn't work, a berserked fighter chews through single enemies effortlessly. Both of which are methods you are likely to already have at your disposal. Ultima requires grinding a new spell. Also, I don't know what the formula is for Ultima, but even in the remakes Ultima's power doesn't seem to grow that much. Again, it's based on weapon and magic levels, so maybe I never had high enough levels for it. Still, if you had Berserk 16 why would you need Ultima 16?  The game very nicely warps you out once you get the spell. By the way, make sure to get the other orbs before Ultima, because if you don't they're gone. Anyway, now that we've got Ultima, we... hm, what is next? Could it be something stupid? Of course it is, it's FF2.  Power +2 (+10 from equipment, +10 from sphere), Agility +0 (+10 from sphere), Vitality +5, Intelligence +3 (+10 from sphere), Soul +12 (+10 from equipment), Unarmed +1, Magic Defense +1, Cure +1, Fire +1, Blink +1, Curse +1, Holy +1, Blind +1, Aspil +3, Drain +1, HP +386
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Sep 6, 2014 04:56
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So, believe it or not, we're pretty close to the end of the game; there's only three dungeons left. And I was thinking, since no one else has done it for LP here, I could tackle the GBA only Dawn of Souls. However, this would necessitate playing through the game again. So, if I have to play through the game to see the optional content, how would you all like to see me play the game? Ideas for challenges, spells or weapons you want to see used, or whatever! Now, I'll have to add a disclaimer: I reserve veto power for any requests that are impossible or incredibly tedious. Also, while I don't play on any special gimmick for Dawn of Souls, Minwu, Josef, and Richard will all not be allowed to gain any stats whatsoever or have their equipment tampered with. So if what you want involves those characters, then sorry. Also, I need names for the protagonists. How does that sound?
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Sep 6, 2014 05:24
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Hmm. I'm not familiar enough with the GBA version's mechanical tweaks to suggest a good challenge. Hell, at this point, actually showing off said tweaks is probably enough. I do, however, feel that someone should be named Dracula. For no reason.
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Sep 6, 2014 05:31
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Make a party using the worst weapon types in the Heaviest Armor for that one. Name them Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde
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Sep 6, 2014 05:34
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Honestly, I'd like to see a full magic runthrough of the game. No attacking unless you're out of MP, showing off all the magic you can, and not using the insta-death magic
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Sep 6, 2014 05:37
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Senerio posted:Make a party using the worst weapon types in the Heaviest Armor for that one. Name them Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde Yup.
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Sep 6, 2014 05:43
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Camel Pimp posted:So, believe it or not, we're pretty close to the end of the game; there's only three dungeons left. And I was thinking, since no one else has done it for LP here, I could tackle the GBA only Dawn of Souls. However, this would necessitate playing through the game again. So, if I have to play through the game to see the optional content, how would you all like to see me play the game? Ideas for challenges, spells or weapons you want to see used, or whatever! Now, I'll have to add a disclaimer: I reserve veto power for any requests that are impossible or incredibly tedious. Also, while I don't play on any special gimmick for Dawn of Souls, Minwu, Josef, and Richard will all not be allowed to gain any stats whatsoever or have their equipment tampered with. So if what you want involves those characters, then sorry. Also, I need names for the protagonists. I suggest Charlie, Dee, Mac, and Dennis.
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Sep 6, 2014 06:16
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I played the Dawn of Souls content once and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. That said, I vote Snake, Kaz, Otacon, and Raiden.
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Sep 6, 2014 06:32
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Fister Roboto posted:I suggest Charlie, Dee, Mac, and Dennis. I think this can only end in tears. Needless to say, it gets my vote.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:27
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