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Kemix
Dec 1, 2013

Because change
This game must love you for some reason. Agility is usually a pain to level up and even then, you maybe see a handful of Agility ups over the course of an entire game spread through your party. This game MUST want you to win this time.

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Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔

Kemix posted:

This game must love you for some reason. Agility is usually a pain to level up and even then, you maybe see a handful of Agility ups over the course of an entire game spread through your party. This game MUST want you to win this time.
Time to revive Firion, off Maria and start the REAL challenge :getin:!

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!

Simply Simon posted:

Time to revive Firion, off Maria and start the REAL challenge :getin:!
Oh god, that's cruel.

I love it :getin:

Regalingualius
Jan 7, 2012

We gazed into the eyes of madness... And all we found was horny.




theshim posted:

Oh god, that's cruel.

I love it :getin:

No, the real cruel choice would be doing it after the Tornado appears.

Sketchie
Nov 14, 2012

Regalingualius posted:

No, the real cruel choice would be doing it after the Tornado appears.
Pssh, do it in the final dungeon. :getin:

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!
The obvious correct choice is all of the above :unsmigghh:

TheFattestPat
Dec 28, 2012

Santa Cat Says: Good deeds are the things to always do, just make sure someone is watching you
Put mythril armor on Maria, then she'll be a REAL MAN!

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
I don't how to break it to you guys but I've already played quite a bit ahead.

Still, I might make a slight change. It'll be a while until you see it, though.

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jul 29, 2014

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 5: Revenge

Welcome back to Final Fantasy 2! Now for you viewing pleasure, epic punch off: staring Josef's face!





The judges are unanimous: Vivian, best at punching.

So we actually have to go back to Semite Falls to get our new vehicle. Fortunately for us, it's right next to the entrance.



It's that weird blue thing!



And you still don't do anything with it. It's nice that Josef's ghost doesn't hold a grudge, though.

After we pick up the Ice Sled, we go all the way north.



And here's what we needed the ice sled for. Also, this is the only snow field in the game and the only time we will ever need the sled. Yup.


Snowman
Rank 2, HP 45, Attack Power 9, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 4, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-40%


Snowman, like their yeti cousins, are uninteresting. They have a weakness to Fire. Even a multi-targetted Fire 2 kills 'em.



The snow field is big, but the encounter rate seems to be very low. The only thing in it is a cave at the far right side.





The Ice Cavern is a small step up in difficulty.



However, unlike Semite Falls Exit is disabled here. That's actually a little unusual for this game, so something must be afoot. In any case, if I want to resupply I'd have to walk all the way out, so I'm doing it in one go. Since we're a lot stronger now, that's not a such a tall order.


Deadhead
Rank 2, HP 45, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 9, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-40%

Zombie
Rank 1, HP 30, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 0, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 1-50%

Ghoul
Rank 2, HP 60, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 4, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-40%


It takes a while, but we finally run into undead enemies. The undead changed a bit from the first game.



This was the first FF where Cure damages undead. Life is also an instant kill, drain spells are reversed, and all undead enemies are weak to fire. All these things became staples for undead enemies in FF.

Apparently the Ghouls have a chance to paralyses when they hit, but I never saw it. Believe it or not, even with only 22 percent evasion (17 when wearing armor) Viv dodges a decent amount of the time. Enemies tend to have low accuracy, and the absurd amount of evasion levels Vivian has tends to bolster her evasion. (I couldn't tell you the exact math going on, though.)

EDIT: I can't do math but Fister Roboto can:

Fister Roboto posted:

With 7 evade and 22% evasion chance, she has an 82.4% chance to evade at least one successful attack, and a 47.8% chance to evade at least two. Nothing in the dungeon has more than two attacks.


Icicle
Rank 2, HP 60, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 17, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 2-40%


They're kind hardy, so Vivian needs to punch them twice, and they're super weak to Fire.


Grenade
Rank 2, HP 60, MP 10, Attack Power 25, Attacks 1, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 2-50%


The Grenades never seemed to show up by themselves or even in a small group. They're always in these big groups. Of course, in this group only the Guard Goblin and the Grenade can do any damage. Unlike their little brothers, they're much harder to one-shot (right now anyway) and their explosion hurts a lot more. All these enemy types are weak to fire (yes, fire) and lightning though, so that helps.



And FF2's streak of giving you trash treasure goes on strong!



Hm there's a door we don't go through. HM.



Sadly I can't say I get four (I still can't believe it...) agility ups in this update, but even one is a welcome surprise.



And the pleasant surprise train keeps on rolling.


Dual Head
Rank 2, HP 80, Attack Power 25, Attacks 2, Accuracy 50%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


The real bastards here are the Dual Heads. They're one of the first random encounters that get two hits, and their attack power is pretty nasty.



This IceWind is on the third floor. It casts a powerful multi-target ice spell when used. This is actually useful for the "boss" at the end, but I can do better than to cheese a boss with an attack item.

The third floor actually has a branching path. The staircase in the upper right leads to treasure.



But it's all kind of not great. Axes aren't that great if only because most of the good weapons are swords anyway, and there are very few axes in the game all told. Although if you're using them, and can't afford a mythril axe, this is okay.



Although I fight a Dual Head not too long after that gives me another one anyway. Go figure.

Another chest is an antidote, which I'm really not needing, and the the last one is...







Since I just got that unarmed level, plus some strength, I'm back to mostly one-shotting everything. Not even a problem.

The Mythril item we got was the mace. Maces (or canes; the terms are kinda used interchangeably in the game) are surprisingly decent weapons, but still not the best.

After grabbing the treasure, back to the third floor, and we go down and to the left.



GUYS THERE MIGHT BE AN ENEMY WITH AN ICE WEAKNESS AT THE END OF THIS DUNGEON.



There's just a medley of weapons in this place, isn't there? Anyway, this mythril weapon is a spear, and spears tend to get overshadowed by swords too, although I'd say there's more good spears than axes in the game.




Shadow
Rank 2, HP 45, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 9, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-40%


On the fifth floor there's another weapon guarded by some undead, including a new face. Shadows can apparently inflict blind with their attack, but I never saw it.

The Ancient Sword is neat, I guess. It can inflict Curse, which is permanent and pretty useful, but its accuracy is poo poo.

And now that I think about I'm not even sure why I'm bothering to get everything when I know the bulk of I pick up over the game isn't going to help me. Habit? Speaking of which there was a mythril shield in the corner I forgot to get. Oops.





And suddenly, beavers.



This fan translation didn't put it in, but Loq is supposed to speak like Tarzan. It's because he was raised by animals or some poo poo. He's also supposed to have the ability to talk to animals, but this is the only time you ever see it. It's also the only time Loq will do anything interesting.



Or not. If you know there's a secret wall here you don't need that beaver to tell you. Besides, corpses can't talk to animals that'd be silly.

This leads us to the last floor. There's not much there.



I guess I could have saved my money? (Because 400 gil's breaking the bank...)



Anyway, boss!


Adamantoise
Rank 5, HP 450, Attack Power 50, Attacks 2, Accuracy 75%, Defense 60, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 1-50%


The Adamantoise is just a beefed up Land Turtle: same ridiculous HP, same weakness to ice.



It can hit hard, but at this point my HP is so high I'm just shrugging it off. What I was worried about was MP.



And I shouldn't have worried. Even with a mere level 2 Ice this battle's over very quickly. (Which is probably why I only got vitality out of it. Lame!)



It did drop a Diamond Shield, though. It's really too bad I'm not using shields; this is a nice get.



Believe it or not, I'm not gonna sell it. Why? Because of another aspect of Evasion I haven't mentioned yet. Evasion percent also determines chance of getting preemptive attacks, getting ambushed, and chance of running away. The thing is, as far as I can tell it's unclear whose evasion determines that. I've been told that Solo's evasion percentage, and only his, determines how often you get ambushed or ambush the enemy. Experience suggests this to be true, even when he's dead. I would think that I would get a massive hit to preemptive chance strike when Solo's dead, if that's how the game calculates ambushes/preemptive strikes. But I've played a few solo runs and I really, really think the game just counts his evasion and doesn't care if he's dead. At the end of the day I can't really prove it, though. Still, it couldn't hurt, so Solo will get any evasion boosting equipment that I'm not using. He'll be the prettiest corpse at the ball.



The area the Adamantoise was standing in front of has a plaque. Examine it and you just get the bell. Yeah, it doesn't say you got the Goddess Bell, but you do. Okay.





The game designers showed some mercy and put a one-way door leading to the first floor. Of course, if you forgot to get the bell (or didn't realize it was there) you gotta go through the whole dungeon again. Fun. The remakes at least make it so you have to get the bell before they let you walk through the one-way door.

Vivian's almost out of MP and I don't really wanna use the one Ether I swiped from Minwu, so I'm glad it's over. Time to walk out.



drat it.


Borgan
Rank 4, HP 240, MP 20, Attack Power 25, Attacks 1, Accuracy 75%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


Hey, it's the first boss fight who isn't a re-purposed random encounter. Good job. Too bad he's a chump.

I'd like to tell you that I killed him a single punch, but I didn't. Not that it was even remotely challenging; he never landed a single hit on me.



No, the bastard just kept healing himself.



But he can't hold out forever. Gravity bomb that, fucker.



But wait oh no




: *squish*



Well that was a stirring dramatic scene I guess. It occurs to me that the original doesn't tell you why there's suddenly a boulder out for your blood. In the remakes Borgan, right before he dies, pushes it. What a fucker.

Time to head back to Salamando, inn, sell off all the crap, and head to the item shop.



I have nothing to spend my money on for quite some time, so I figured the hell with it and picked up an ether and a cottage. Might as well.

We don't have to report back to Hilda; we can just go right to Kashuon. But where is it? If we pay Cid he'll just fly us there, and by this point the 400 or so gil he charges is chump change, but I'll just walk. First, we go to Bofsk, and from there head south.



Kashuon is the middle of the mountain circle, surrounded by water. It's a bit of a hike, but nothing we haven't done already. No new monsters along the way.



Next time, Castle Kashuon.




Power +4, Agility +1, Vitality +5, Intelligence -1, Evasion +1, Magic Defense +2, Magic Power +2, Unarmed +1, Fire +1, Bolt +1, Blink +1, HP +154

Hm, I feel like I forgot something.



Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Oct 16, 2014

Sketchie
Nov 14, 2012

You made a little typo with the VIT change. You only gained 5 VIT from the last update, not 25.

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Camel Pimp posted:

Apparently the Ghouls have a chance to paralyses when they hit, but I never saw it. Believe it or not, even with only 22 percent evasion (17 when wearing armor) Viv dodges a decent amount of the time. Enemies tend to have low accuracy, and the absurd amount of evasion levels Vivian has tends to bolster her evasion. (I couldn't tell you the exact math going on, though.)

With 7 evade and 22% evasion chance, she has an 82.4% chance to evade at least one successful attack, and a 47.8% chance to evade at least two. Nothing in the dungeon has more than two attacks.

Mega64
May 23, 2008

I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.

Camel Pimp posted:

Hm, I feel like I forgot something.





If it makes you feel any better, in the FF9 retelling of the story, not telling her about her dead father is apparently canon. That, and Vivian already murdered him earlier and just got tired of dragging his corpse around.

Also, holy crap at those Evasion/MDef levels. Those are pretty much what my Vivian had at the end of the game. Solo play really grinds those things up.

Crystalgate
Dec 26, 2012
The high evade number is carrying Vivian for now, but once enemies get a decent number of attacks, she's going to have a harder time without a decent evade chance.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.

Sketchie posted:

You made a little typo with the VIT change. You only gained 5 VIT from the last update, not 25.

Fister Roboto posted:

With 7 evade and 22% evasion chance, she has an 82.4% chance to evade at least one successful attack, and a 47.8% chance to evade at least two. Nothing in the dungeon has more than two attacks.

Thanks :)

Crystalgate posted:

The high evade number is carrying Vivian for now, but once enemies get a decent number of attacks, she's going to have a harder time without a decent evade chance.

Yeah, this is pretty on-point. It's pretty smooth sailing right now, but don't worry, it'll ramp up.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 6: Castle Cashew



Oh, well, there's the Sun Flame. But we can't just grab it with our hands. We have to get a special torch deep within the castle, light it, and then run it to the Warship. It's like the torch relay, but at the end instead of sports, people die.



We use the bell to unlock the door and-



Oh hi Gordon.



Bye Gordon.

The only thing he had on him that was worth a drat was a Bronze Shield and two potions. The rest of his armor is worthless. Hell, even on a normal run he's usually not worth keeping alive; his stats are balanced and quite decent, but he doesn't have any spells or weapon levels.

The first floors just has enemies that we saw in the last dungeon, and a Cure tome. The real dungeon starts on the second floor.


Ogre
Rank 2, HP 100, Attack Power 25, Attacks 1, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-20%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


If Vivian had less levels in fisticuffs or less strength Ogres might be a time sink, but she's one-shotting them without problems. They can hit for a bit of damage, I guess.


Wraith
Rank 2, HP 60, Attack Power 9, Attacks 1, Accuracy 65%, Defense 9, Evasion 2-20%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


I only encounter Wraiths once, however they have a drain touch attack, which is a very interesting and annoying mechanic in this game. But again, only saw them once and I don't think they ever hit me.


Wererat
Rank 2, HP 60, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 4, Evasion 2-20%, Magic Resistance 2-40%


Wererats would be utter pathetic if not for one thing.



They can poison you when they hit. And not that pansy rear end temporary poo poo. This translation doesn't actually give it a different name on your display, so that's really annoying. I think it does call it something different when it hits, but I don't entirely recall. (To be honest, I'm turboing through a lot of these fights, as they're mostly Vivian punching out each enemy one by one.) Poison would just be a mild annoyance if not for the fact that if you're inflicted with a permanent status ailment, and it's not cured by the end of the battle, you can't get any stat increases from the battle whatsoever. (I don't even think the battle contributes to weapon/spell levels.) This is why Heal is important, even if I had to cast it three times before it worked.



So, remember how I said they like to pull enemies from later on call them bosses? In this case, they pulled an enemy from the next dungeon. As random encounters they're rather annoying, actually. They require three Ice spells to kill, and I've only got 61 MP. They're also the enemy that can come even remotely close to killing us.

Yeah, I'll be honest. This dungeon is just kinda... there.



I did end up burning an Ether, though.





First piece of decent treasure is also trapped, but only with Wererats. Why?


Wizard Ogre
Rank 3, HP 140, MP 30, Attack Power 25, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


You might have noticed that this game really likes to palette swap. Oh and hi Land Turtle. Vivian can just punch those out now.



Wizard Ogre just like to bombard you with spells, generally favoring Ice 5, although they can cast some status magic. All of the spells they use are multi-targetted, and from here on out most enemies that cast magic will cast it on your whole party. (Even on a single target.) As you can see, the damage it does is pretty sad. Even for a full party, it's not terribly threatening. For most of the game, magic damage (not statuses) is more of an annoyance than a threat. If nothing else, it helps to boost your the HP of characters in the back row.

There is one oddity about getting hit with magic. There's a bug where if you're hit with multi-targetted magic, the game doesn't count it towards your magic defense. Instead Solo (and only him) will randomly gain Soul from it. The game designers did actually (kind of) compensate for that; magic defense has a large multiplier. Vivian's magic defense level is actually very high right now, all things considered. It's not uncommon to end the game with only level 4 or magic defense.

The remakes fix this glitch, and the remakes from Dawn of Souls onward change the formula for magic defense. The PSX remake, however, fixes the glitch but keeps the formula. You tend to get sky high magic defense levels in that version.



Remember when Vivian could barely give a Goblin a paper cut? Yeah, those days are long over.





There's a treasure room on the fourth floor. The other two are the Mythril Sword and Axe, but the Werebane (or Were Mace but it's called the Werebane in all the other versions) is a neat find. Unlike the original Final Fantasy special weapon properties work, and this is strong against were beasts. So... that's something. Also it sells for a goodly amount and that's what's actually relevant for me.



The Wizard Ogres can drop several different spell tomes, although none of them are that great. Sleep is a temporary status ailment, so it's automatically not worth the time. There's one I did want, but it never dropped. Oh well.



This is on the fifth floor. Again, Gold Armor is heavy and worthless, but at-


Mine
Rank 3, HP 190, MP 30, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 70%, Defense 25, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 3-40%


They just love their monsters in a box, don't they? Mines are a substantial upgrade to the Balloon type enemies. Single target Bolt or Fire still does the trick, but I'd rather not spend the MP. Vivian's attack can sometimes one-shot them, but it's not 100% reliable. Either spend MP or risk getting blown up.



There's another treasure room on the same floor, but all it has is an Eye Drop, Echo Screen, and an Antidote. Not great.


Ghast
Rank 3, HP 100, MP 30, Attack Power 25, Attacks/Accuracy 2-60%, Defense 9, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


Yup, more undead. They kind of end up running together, don't they? Other than their decent HP, and a chance to paralyze upon hitting (which I never saw), nothing else to 'em.

Shortly after getting the Gold Armor, we go to the next floor and find the boss already.




Red Soul
Rank 5, HP 540, MP 30, Attack Power 35, Attacks 1, Accuracy 80%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-40%


Red Soul is an odd little boss fight/random encounter they're calling a boss fight. It keeps throws out attack magic (multi-targetted, of course) every turn.



And it absorbs all elements. All of them. Including status ailment spells; if I cast Sleep or something it'd absorb that too.



It doesn't have a lot of MP, though, and it runs out in four turns. The Red Soul's attack power is not that great, and it only gets one hit, so there's no way in hell I'm dying to this thing.



The biggest stumbling block is the 40 defense. For armed fighters, even though you can finally get some decent weapons you're still not going to be doing a lot of damage. Spells are right out, although if you can get to Mysidia there's a spell that's non-elemental and can harm the Red Soul. But if you can get to Mysidia and back, you're beyond caring about a single Red Soul.

At least with Vivian's unarmed skill, she can do some okay damage. It's not a short fight, but she takes the chump out with little difficulty.



Of course I made it a longer fight by spending a few turns practicing magic. Got an MP increase at least.



All right! Warp out!



Now we have to walk aaaaall the way back to Poft to catch a ride back to Altea to report back to the princess, right? Not quite. From the castle, just keep going down.





Say hello to the first chocobo of Final Fantasy.



We catch it, and now once we exit the forest we can ride it. Unlike later Final Fantasies, instead of running around really fast the chocobo disappears and reappears.

Chocobos in FF2 are pretty limited; there's only one chocobo forest in the game, only one chocobo, and the chocobo is a one-way ride. Still, it's an easy way back to town that's random-encounter free. In this game they can't cross rivers, though, so I either have to get off at Palm to cross the lake, or go the long way. Ah well.



Before that, I grab two ethers and two cottages. That's a bit excessive, but I'm thinking I'll need them. Besides, that money ain't doing much else.





Ha ha, Hilda hates your stupid guts Gordon- wait, Hilda isn't actually supposed to be here. What did I- oh, I forgot to actually get the drat Sun Flame.

...

:sigh:



This LP is an astonishing monument to my forgetfulness.



And here's a short little cutscene I was supposed to get earlier. The Warship kidnapped Hilda and Cid, and then it parked its rear end somewhere on the world map. I was going back to Altea to get a NPC to tell you that, but you don't have to and I'm not going back again. Instead, we're hopping on the chocobo again.



There's two ways to get to the Warship. You can go north from Altea, past Finn into the area that would previously killed us. Or we can go south of Kashuon and past the desert. Normally you'd choose the first route; you're probably going to be in Altea when you figure out where the Warship is, and from there it's a shorter journey and the enemies along the way are easier. But from Kashuon it's faster to go by chocobo.



There's an arena and a castle in the desert, but we can't enter either one. The desert has much harder enemies than we have any business fighting, so there's no point stopping off here to check it out.



But the Warship is just a little ways past the desert. Next time, I do something incredibly foolhardy.




Vitality +4, Soul +1, Magic Power +1, Unarmed +1, Cure +1, Ice +1, HP + 135, MP +12

Mega64
May 23, 2008

I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.
Oh wow, didn't know Hilda had dialogue where she yells at Gordon over how horrible he is if you come back without getting the Sun Flame. That's actually pretty awesome since people don't yell at Gordon enough in this game.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 7: Time to Explode Things



Welcome back. We've got a Totally Not a Deathstar to blow up, so chop chop!



Oh right. We're supposed to show him that pass we got at Bofsk, but I didn't get it. Uh... quick, throw a key word at him!



WRONG KEY WORD.


Captain
Rank 5, HP 750, MP 30, Attack Power 60, Attacks 6, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 4-50%


We're, uh, not meant to fight this guy right now.



We're really not.



Okay, we need to do something about that. Does Blink help?



Nope! Well, maybe we can just go in, guns blazing and hope to win a damage race?



That is a hell no.



Eh, maybe we're just getting unlucky! Let's just keep trying! We can do this!



I'm not going to show you all my attempts (there was, uh, a lot), but suffice it to say; no, we can't do this.

The Captain can simply do too much damage, and Viv's Cure doesn't come anywhere close to healing her entirely. I can hope it chooses to do the Bow attack more often, or that its attack keep rolling fewer hits, but Vivian just can't do that much damage. As you saw, her fists do around 60 or so, and her magic does about the same. The battle is simply going to last too long and luck simply can't keep me going for that amount of time.

Hm. What to do? Do I go back and get the Pa- ha, no. That's quitter talk. Grind? Eeeh.... I'd really have to grind a long rear end time to stand a chance. I decided to walk back to the pitstop town right outside Altea. Mainly I did this to run into a specific monster, but it also gives me a chance to talk about some new enemies.


Big Bird
Rank 3, HP 140, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


These are birds that are slightly larger than normal.


Mage
Rank 3, HP 80, MP 30, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 65%, Defense 9, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-60%


And these guys like to cast magic.



Like their ogre brethren, they prefer weak attack spells, but they sometimes break out status spells. Vivian's got decent enough magic defense to resist it most of the time anyway.

Mages can drop some sweet spell tomes, but I'm not interested in what they have. What I need comes from a Wizard Ogre.



Bingo.

Blind is actually a decent spell to learn. Blind is permanent, and the spell is quite accurate. But I won't be learning it at this time. I have another use for the tome.

Anyway, this is what I was after. After I inn, it's right back to the warship.



Oh and I got this at some point. You use it and it casts a weak-rear end fire spell on all enemies. Worthless.

All right, time to try again.



We're already starting off on a good note.



If you use a spell tome in combat instead of putting the spell on a character, you can cast one-time multi-targetted level 6 version of the spell. This isn't great, but I didn't want to have to go out and grind this spell up to the point where it'd work. The chance of it actually sticking is a bit spotty, but I've just gotta hope.



And it loving worked.



This fight just got a lot more manageable. We're not home free, though. We've still got to start the tedious process of knocking off 750 HP about 60 HP at a time, and the Blind doesn't incapacitate the Captain's attack entirely.



Occasionally it can still land a nasty hit, so I had to be sure to keep my HP up at all times. I should have gone into this fight with full MP, now that I look back on it.



But I did it.



Oh this wasn't the drop I was hoping for. Well I think I can live with that.

Now let's WALK THE gently caress OUT AND loving SAVE!



We pop a cottage, and then once more unto the breach.



Unlike every other soldier, once we kill the guy protecting the entrance he's gone for good. What do you know, the game gave us an alternate solution to something. Good job FF2.

(In case you're wondering, no, if you kill any of the other soldiers here they immediately respawn like everywhere else.)



From the base floor, we've got three different areas we can go to. Going down here just leads to a single treasure chest.



You have to go through a secret passage. Just walk through the wall.

The Sleep Sword turns the enemies into pigs. Or it sends them to sleep, whatever. It has the same horribly accuracy as the Ancient Sword but inflicts a temporary status ailment. Lame.



And of course it's trapped. The blue one is the Sergeant we fought as a boss in Semite Falls. It can still do some damage, but we can one-shot 'em now.



Oh this breaks my heart. The mage dropped the Berserk tome, which some of you may recall is on my special restriction list. Berserk raises attack power. I may have mentioned that boss fights tend to have sky high defense; berserk is handy for getting around that. However, it doesn't take too many levels before single-targetted berserk gets drat powerful, enough to demolish bosses in three rounds or four rounds. That's not sporting, now is it?



After grabbing the sword, we go into the door in the top right corner of the base floor.


Stunner
Rank 3, HP 100, Attack Power 17, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


This might stun you but stunners stun you.



Thankfully with only two attacks they only managed to stun Viv once. Obviously stun can be awful for single characters runs, but fortunately for me Stunners aren't that deadly a foe.



I guess I never did mention that bows are the only weapon that lets you attack from the back row. Which is why the designers made them lovely, I guess. The Blind Bow has even less accuracy than other bows, so it's extra not worth it.



Oh I've been waiting for you.



The Thief Glove gives you +10 to agility! Weirdly, it has weight, so in practical terms it's actually a +7 to your speed. Either way, not shabby at all!

...but it does have a downside, one we haven't really seen for this whole LP. You see, the Thief Gloves carry a stiff Intelligence and Soul penalty. Wait a second, you may be asking, how can that be? There's no indication of any penalty anywhere. Ah yes, welcome to another FF2 design oddity: invisible Int/Soul penalties.

You see, all pieces of equipment, with a few exceptions, carry a penalty to intelligence and soul (it effects both equally). The Silver Armor we were wearing carries a -5 penalty. The Thief Gloves carry a magic penalty of -40. Yeah. Light armor, canes, and knives usually carry a very small magic penalty (although it's not zero), while swords, axes, and heavy armor carry a heavy penalty. Because the game makers hate you, the items that carry the worst penalty are shields and bows. One nice thing about going weaponless is that at least fists don't carry a magic penalty. Because a true wizard runs around naked punching things.

I understand why this mechanic is in place, but the fact that the game never tells you that your equipment can negatively impact your spell casting, and in fact none of the documentation will tell you, is really, really lovely. At least the later remakes removed the int/soul penalties from weapons and shields. They apparently didn't remove it from armor, but the only piece of armor you'd want to wear that has substantial int/soul penalties is the Thief Gloves.

All that being said, I'm still wearing them. I mean... +7% to evasion, man.



And just right across the Thief Gloves is the princess and the other jerk. Whaddya know.

In order to get to them, you just walk up to the bars and break through them. I wouldn't expect Vivian to solve a problem any other way.



Once we talk to Cid here, we can no longer walk out of the Warship. (Someone is blocking the way.)



Nor Exit out. We've gotta to see this through to the end.

There's two potions on the right end of this area, and after that it's back to the base floor.


Panther
Rank 3, HP 190, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 70%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


Panthers are a bit annoying. They're a little too hardy to one-shot right now.



Also they can poison you, the fuckers. And it's real poison, too. (I think I'll call temporary poison "venom" because that's what the remakes do.) Because Heal's only level 2 and Vivian's magic power is in the shitter right now, it wouldn't loving heal the drat poison. And I forgot to bring a antidote into battle. drat it. Wasted that all MP and I can't even get any stat increases from the battle...

Yeah, I had to drink up an ether not too long after. I only ended up using one, though, which isn't bad. Since you can't leave the dungeon after a certain point you really should bring at least one ether with you.



Anyway, the path to the engine is on the bottom right corner. It's probably obvious, but yes you do have to rescue Hilda and Cid before you're allowed the destroy the engine. It's always fun to walk all the way down to the engine room and then realize you forgot something. (Surprise of surprises, that didn't happen this time.)



There's a kind of nifty effect where it looks like you can see some soldiers on a lower floor. The effort is appreciated, if nothing else.



On the floor after the one, there's a cache of some pretty great treasures. The first one from the left is a Trident, a nice spear.



Oh and speaking of things that break my heart. The main gauche ("gouche" isn't a word, although urban dictionary will give you a definition) is a game-changingly good weapon. It's a knife that has the same evasion bonus as a low-tier shield. And since it's a knife, it has a low magic penalty like all other knives. It can be given to mages to let them have a source of evasion that doesn't kill their magic abilities. Or, if you prefer, you can dual wield it and make it a shield replacement. In this version, if you dual wield you don't actually attack with the off-hand weapon, but the evasion bonus will work just fine. Dual-wielding is fixed in the remakes, and it's pretty loving great, so the main gauche is still useful even when shields have no magic penalties. It's worth leveling knives just for this weapon. If this was a less restricted solo run, the main gauche would be end-game equipment.

And I'm gonna sell it for 750 gil.




Gigas
Rank 5, HP 750, Attack Power 100, Attacks 3, Accuracy 80%, Defense 60, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 4-40%


Of course one of these had to be trapped.

The Gigas is probably the closest this dungeon has for a boss. It may seem like the Gigas is worse than the Captain we fought at the beginning, but the Gigas only gets half the number of attacks. It's not easy, but we won't need any special preparation to kill the Gigas.



Although the Gigas does have better defense than the Captain, so attacking is a no go. The best Viv can really do is 100 damage with Fire 4. This'll take awhile.



Since it's only got three attacks, the Gigas usually ends up whiffing, but it pays to be careful just in case.



Still, it's a walk in the park compared to the Captain.



Oh, and the last is a helmet that increases strength by 10. It's heavy armor. Had to have at least one dud.



So this floor kind of weird maze. These soldiers act as blocks, so you have to walk around them. (No you still can't kill them and pass 'em that way. Only that one soldier.) It's pretty easy, honestly.


Eagle
Rank 3, HP 140, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


My heart skipped a beat when I saw these guys, but then I realized they were just eagles and not cockatrices. Eagles are chumps.



Oh, and I got this neat little tome from a mage. Aero is actually poison elemental (it's called Scourge in the remakes). Poison counts as a elemental category of its own. Aero, though, is not a status spell; it's an attack spell. It cannot fail to hit. The spell can cause poison, and that can fail. Enemies with a poison weakness are rare, but it's worth it to level this spell anyway.



Past the guard maze is the engine room. Not a moment too soon, since I'm completely out of MP.




I feel like I should know you... are you a 20th century Russian dictator?!
...no?
Well then I'm stumped.

And now exciting escape sequence.



By which I mean it just shows your stationary character teleporting to each floor, like it's a vacation slideshow. At least the game doesn't make you walk out.





In another show of benevolence, Cid apparently stayed behind and then drops you off at Altea. How nice.



:sigh:

After a selling off a ton of fantastic stuff, it's time to quit.




Power +3, Vitality +2, Intelligence +1, Soul +5, Evasion +2, Magic Defense +1, Fire +1, HP +115, MP +55

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Aug 16, 2014

Cainer
May 8, 2008
I remember playing a remake of this a long time ago but I can only remember two things. Making my characters beat the poo poo out each other to get more HP and getting stuck and quitting really early when I couldn't find the stupid snow sled. Very happy to watch someone else give the game a bloody nose. Thanks for the fun, I'll be watching.

theshim
May 1, 2012

You think you can defeat ME, Ephraimcopter?!?

You couldn't even beat Assassincopter!!!
That rank 9 evasion this early is just wonderful.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 8: Wandering the Earth

Now that we done the thing, it's time to fall back to our stand-by; go back to Hilda who won't even mention what just-



Oh, nevermind, the king is dying. Awesome!


Well I'm dying. Probably should do something before I croak. First off; Gordon I'm putting you in a position of authority.
...
...
...*ahem*
Oh, and Minwu, go get the Ultima spell. And, uh... you. Go find the Dragoons. They were soundly defeated by the empire and their home razed. Therefore they'll be invaluable allies. Well, that's all I do. Bye.



Bye-bye King What's-his-face. You will be... uh, remembered?

Wait, where the hell is Hilda?



I'm certain nothing will come of this.



So we're getting our marching orders from Gordon now. Lovely. He just repeats what the King said.



But now Dragoon and Hiryuu are keywords. Yeah, this translation calls the Dragons Hiryuu. I get why they did it ("Only Dragoons can understand Dragons," yeah, kinda awkward) but it's not the best solution. Later translations call them "wyverns" so I'll be doing that.

In any case, we have to make it to Dist. A townsperson will tell you it's on an island. Hm.



And conveniently there's some new chick in Poft offering a ride.



Surprise she's a pirate and wants to kill us.


Pirate
Rank 1, HP 45, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 4, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-40%


Oh honey.


Actually, you can help me. I want your ship.
So... you're sparing my life?!
...let's go.



Layla's not great, in some ways she's a little worse than Gordon, but out of all the temporary party members she's with you the longest. You kinda have to grow to like her. For us, she comes with something very nice.



The Goldpin gives an +10 to agility like the Thief Gloves, but unlike the Thief Gloves it doesn't give us a massive Int/Soul penalty. (It also resists lightning, but I don't care about that.) Since in this version bonuses from equipment do not stack, the Thief Gloves are worthless to Viv now. They move on to Solo.



So long and thanks for all the gear.


Buccaneer
Rank 2, HP 80, Attack Power 25, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


Seriously these random-rear end pirates are better than yours, Layla. You sucked at this.


Killer Fish
Rank 3, HP 100, Attack Power 25, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 2-50%


On the sea we finally start to see enemies weak to Bolt. Unfortunately, since our Bolt is still at level 2 it doesn't help that much. Time to grind out Bolt a bit, I guess.


Sea Snake
Rank 4, HP 300, Attack Power 40, Attacks 3, Accuracy 75%, Defense 40, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


Sea Snakes are a bit nasty. They're also weak to Bolt, but their high HP means that even a single-targeted Bolt won't OHKO them.



Oh! I missed you.



Getting to Dist is a bit of a pain. The ship starts in a enclosed area. In order to get out, we have to find this strait here and sail through it. Sail south from Altea, then sail east and you should find it soon enough.



From there you want to go south. Once you hit the top of the snowfield you're in the general area. Follow the coast east, and then south. Dist is really close by.



And here we are!







Inside there's a kid, his mom, and a dying wyvern. We have to grab a pendant so you can talk to it and do something for it, but we're not doing that today.



Instead, we're just raiding the castle. There's a lot of good stuff here, and no monsters to get in our way, so let's party!



Although for whatever reason there are still ambush closets in this castle. Why...?







Stop and Stone are just temporary status ailment spells (Stone is supposed to be "stun") so who cares, but the real prize is Curse. Curse halves the target's attack power and defense power. As you can imagine, this'll become very imperative for the bosses. If you're using Berserk it's pointless to level this spell, but Curse makes a half-decent replacement for it.



I wish I could tell you that we just got a unicorn out a treasure chest, but this a unicorn horn. Cures temporary status ailments. It gets sold.



drat.



It's a good sword. Does extra damage to flying enemies.



Again, I regret to say that the Wilson sisters are not in a treasure chest in FF2. It's an item you use in battle to temporarily raise your Soul to 99. Not bad, but...



So here's another annoyance with FF2.



Your inventory space is stupidly small. Oh, and do you see those items on the bottom? All key items. You never, ever get rid of them. Even the Sunflame and Egil's Torch which if you recall we threw into the engine of an airship. By the end of the game almost a third of our already small inventory will be clogged up with useless key items. This is why I fought the Captain rather than get the Pass; that's one inventory space that I get to keep.

Our dead buddies, at least, can help lighten the load. In addition to the two item slots everyone gets, I can also load the useless equipment onto Loq or my fourth member. So in a solo run the item restrictions aren't as bad.

Probably the nicest thing the remakes from Dawn of Souls onward do is remove the limited inventory entirely.



Does the same thing as the Heart, but for intelligence. And like the Heart, I just can't justify keeping it to clog up the inventory. Just not crazy on these items.

The rest are just status recovery items, including a Gold Needle which is immediately getting sold. There's also a Phoenix Down in the castle; another item in our vendor trash pile.

Thankfully Bofsk is really close by, it's directly west of the island, so let's go sell some poo poo off.



Look at all the money. I could buy an elixir now, but I'm gonna hold off.

Since we're not gonna do the wyvern stuff right now, what next? Well, it's popular to go to a town called Mysidia around this time, since the boat allows us to make a shorter trip. Unfortunately, this means we have to sail past the strait again. Oh well, at least the encounter rate is much lower on the ship.



And the RNG gods have once again decided to bless me.



I went and labeled the towns so it's a little easier to read. (Also this version of FF2 doesn't actually mark Mysidia on the map) Theoretically you can reach Mysidia once you get the canoe; you just go left from Altea, and then all the way down to Mysidia. You'd also have to be crazy to do that. (And I've never done that. Nope. Never.) Now, at least, we have a boat allows us to park a little closer to Mysidia so we don't have to travel all that way. We're still a little underpowered for this area, but as long as we don't get certain monste-


Ghost
Rank 5, HP 540, MP 140, Attack Power 35, Attacks 5, Accuracy 75%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


ABORT MISSION! ABORT MISSION!





Yeah.

All right, reload and try again.


Big Horn
Rank 4, HP 1,140, Attack Power 50, Attacks 4, Accuracy 85%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 6-30%

Flier
Rank 5, HP 750, Attack Power 60, Attacks 6, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-65% Magic Resistance 4-40%


Wow look at that HP.



Admittedly, I hosed around a bit casting some pointless spells, but I don't know I could have beaten this encounter. They have too much HP and do too much damage for me to keep up with. Time to roll the dice again.


Imp
Rank 5, HP 300, MP 100, Attack Power 35, Attacks 4, Accuracy 70%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-100%

Werewolf
Rank 5, HP 540, Attack Power 50, Attacks 4, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 4-40%


There we go. Imps and Werewolves are still stronger than the monsters we're supposed to fight, but they have manageable attack and HP scores. Also I got a preemptive on this. I can do this!



poo poo. Yeah, there's the hitch.



However, if you input a command and the character gets confused before they act, they'll still do what they were commanded to do. All right, now all we have to do is wait out the confusion.



It helps that Vivian's really confused. Or hates Loq that drat much.



Before long Viv gets her head back in the game. It takes a while due to the Werewolves' high defense, but their attacks aren't that bad and attacking is all they do. Winning was inevitable at that point.



After that, I got lucky and didn't run any more monsters along the way.



Coming to Mysidia right now is a teeny bit of a sequence break. All the mages talk about Minwu and the seal on Ultima, which isn't important for us yet. Still, the designers probably thought most players would explore here around this time.



If you manage to get to Mysidia much earlier, you can nab some Thief Gloves before you're supposed to. Not bad. The Giant Gloves increase strength, but they're heavy armor. The Knight Armor is also heavy.

The weapon shop also has some pretty good weapons. If you manage to get to Mysidia early enough, the weapons you get there can let you one-shot enemies until the Warship or so. It's not that infeasible to get to Mysidia before you get the boat, actually. If you copiously abuse the row system, and have one or two spellcasters with decent enough MP, it's difficult and luck reliant but possible. It's actually best to do this when you still have Minwu.

However, the real reason we're here is...



The magic shop! All the other vendors sell the spells in Altea, Poft, Salamondo, and Bofsk. The guy in the middle, however, has new stuff.



These are all neat spells. Barrier protects you against certain elements, depending on the spell level. I haven't full explained element system. There are eight elements in the game: fire, ice, bolt, poison, body, mind, matter, and death. The rest are self-explanatory, but body, mind, and matter are all for status spells. At level 7 barrier protects against all of them except ice. It's supposed to, but the spell's glitched. Still, at level one it protects against matter, and at level 3 it resists mind, and those are the elements for the most dangerous spells in the game. Yeah, the elemental system is wonky. For example all of the KO spells, except death, fall into the same element: matter. Why have so many spells that do the same thing in the same category? Barrier gets bought.

Wall blocks offensive spells of the equivalent level or lower. If you have a tolerance for grinding this can be useful, but at the end most enemies spells are level 8 or higher. Many are level 16. Despite what some people will tell you, there is no reason to grind anything to level 16 in this game. (Well, evasion is going to hit 16, but not through any special effort of mine.) However you can pull off an interesting glitch with Wall; cast it on a monster, then cast a lower level insta-death spell. While the game will say it fails, the animation will still display and the enemy will be die, regardless of whatever resistances the enemy has. We won't be doing that, sadly. I skip it.

EDIT: Thanks to Gabriel Pope for correcting my mistake!

Change, which you probably know as Swap, switches the caster's HP/MP with the target's. This has some applications for grinding; it's especially nice for grinding MP. But I'm not going to level a spell for grinding.

Finally, Holy is a white magic attack spell. It's actually a non-elemental spell, despite the name. Holy has a high base attack power, but since it's non-elemental it can never hit weaknesses and that's when spells are usually their most damaging. Honestly, most of the time I'd never bother with non-elemental spells, but I have a specific purpose for it later. So let's get holy.

And I believe that may be the last non-item purchase in the game. We've actually seen all of the towns in the game now. Finn will open its shops later, but other than that, there's only two other shops in the game and they're in dungeons. All the money I get from now on goes to ethers, cottages, and elixirs.

There's nothing else I want in Mysidia, so let's try to make it back to the ship.


Bomb
Rank 5, HP 640, MP 140, Attack Power 60, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 50, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 4-40%


Weirdly enough, the enemies right around Mysidia are much easier than the enemies a little further out.



The Bomb's attacks can do some damage, but their self-destruct is piddly. Honestly, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to just multi-target a Bolt or something and just let them all blow up in your face.


Revenant
Rank 4, HP 240, Attack Power 40, Attacks 3, Accuracy 70%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-40%

Specter
Rank 4, HP 300, MP 100, Attack Power 25, Attacks 3, Accuracy 75%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


And the good luck train keep rolling. While it takes a few fire spells to get them all down, none of them are as nasty as Ghosts. The Specter can cast some nasty stuff, but thankfully never even tried.



Made it to the boat!

So now are we getting the pendant the wyvern wants?



Nope!

There's a small island south of the strait. It's in the middle of nowhere, so you have to keep checking the map to make sure you're on the right track. No one tells you about this island at this point; it has something we have to get later. But we can now. This is the only real sequence break you can do in the game, and it's not much of one. But that's what we'll be doing next time. 'till then!




Power +2, Agility +2, Intelligence + 3, Soul +2, Evasion +2, Magic Power +5, Unarmed +1, Cure +1, Bolt +1, Heal +1, Blink +1, HP + 62, MP +19

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Aug 8, 2014

Edward_Tohr
Aug 11, 2012

In lieu of meaningful text, I'm just going to mention I've been exploding all day and now it hurts to breathe, so I'm sure you all understand.
Of all the LPs of this game that mention how this cave was clearly meant to be done before Dist, this is the first I've seen that actually does it.

Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
I'm trying to remember if I like this cave or hate it. I always did it asap, and I think it's here where the difficulty feels right for once. You're slightly early, but nothing has bullshit instant death or all-target Confuse or whatever spells, so you can have a decently hard time against randoms and still get nice rewards. Of course, this being FF2, the dungeon itself is pretty poo poo (I think) and becomes easier as you get more and more stats from the harder monsters. You win some, you lose some.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
Wall isn't quite that buggy; the Wall glitch only works on instant death spells, because they remove the enemy from the battle as part of the spell's animation (which gets played for spells blocked by Wall.) If you just cast Fire or whatever on a walled enemy it will just show the fire animation and do nothing.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.

Gabriel Pope posted:

Wall isn't quite that buggy; the Wall glitch only works on instant death spells, because they remove the enemy from the battle as part of the spell's animation (which gets played for spells blocked by Wall.) If you just cast Fire or whatever on a walled enemy it will just show the fire animation and do nothing.

Just instant death? I thought it worked for other status spells... I was a little foggy how the glitch worked, and I would have sworn that it worked for other status spells. I would have sworn I got it to work with curse or something, but my memory's probably off.

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Aug 8, 2014

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 9: Tropical Vacation



Welcome back! We're at some unknown tropical island, for no in-story reason, just because there's a thing I know we need later. Good enough!



Before we start, I want to make a little change. As nice as stuff like the Goldpin is, I've decided that getting agility bonuses will make this too easy. So, new restriction: no equipment that increases agility or evasion at all. The pin moves onto Solo (the restriction's only for Viv!), and the Thief Gloves are on the block to be sold.


Dual Zombie
Rank 5, HP 300, Attack Power 40, Attacks 5, Accuracy 65%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


Other translations call them Dual Deads, which is way more fun. Also five attacks gently caress me.



These formations are the most dangerous in the dungeon. With as many attacks as they get, it's not uncommon to eat around 100 to 200 damage for each Dual Zombie. In addition Vivian's attack power isn't quite enough to one-shot them, so it's best to take them out one by one with Fire.


Jelly
Rank 2, HP 45, MP 6, Attack Power 17, Attacks 1, Accuracy 60%, Defense 210, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 2-40%

Mallow
Rank 3, HP 100, MP 45, Attack Power 25, Attacks 2, Accuracy 65%, Defense 210, Evasion 0, Magic Resistance 2-50%


Really, this whole dungeon is an MP sink. Jellies are weak to Ice and Fire, spells you've probably got decent levels for, and have low HP. Mallows, on the other hand, have a bolt weakness and can't be one-shot with Viv's current level of the spell. Each of these battles are just going to require a goodly amount of MP.



Niiice.

You may wonder why I don't just run from those fights, or run from more fights in general. So FF2's also really annoying in how it handles running from battles. I've not seen any definite explanation on how running chance works, although it probably runs off Solo's evasion like preemptive strikes do. While I'm not sure else effects it, I do think enemy formations also impact run chance. I'm pretty sure certain formations, such as any with slime enemies, just forbid you from running entirely. This, right here, is why a no-magic run of FF2 almost impossible. (If you've managed to beat this game using no magic whatsoever, please, tell me.) You're gonna run into these guys, and you have to kill them somehow. With over 200 defense, though, attacks just won't do it, unless you have the masamune or max level fists.



There's not much on the first floor, mostly some rubbish treasure, but there's some gems in there.



And just some otherwise interesting items. Threads cast multi-targetted Slow 9. Slow does what it did in FF1, that is, it reduces the enemies number of attacks. Normally I end up selling this item, but I'm thinking I should reconsider. As you've been able to tell, the number of attacks the enemy gets is very important, so slow can downright cripple dudes. Unfortunately, we don't get the tome until much, much later, and I don't see the point in leveling slow and curse. But I could experiment with this item. Moreover, many attack items in FF2 have a random chance of being used up, rather than always being a one-shot. I'll have to think about it.

(Fortunately, there are actually two Threads in this dungeon, so while I sold one of them I can always try out the other.)



Up on the second floor, Vivian finally gets her subscription filled. Actually, this casts sleep on the enemy. I'll pass.

Right below the chest there's a staircase. This dungeon's quite sprawling, with lots of different paths. So let's explore this one.



On some parts of the dungeon there is this vine overlay. Considering how samey and cookie-cutter a lot of dungeons are in this game, I appreciate any effort to spice it up.



And at the end of this little diversion we reach... here.



The mask this dude mentions is actually what we can here to get, just so you know. Still no reason as of yet why we need it.

Now you don't have to come here, it's a dead end, and most of the masked dudes just say the same thing.



But there is a shop. The demon axe and spear are useless; we can get much a better spear or axe in Mysidia for only a little bit more. The ruby cuirass is actually pretty nice, though. It's only got five more defense than the silver cuirass, but it has the same small evasion and int/soul penalty, and it's very cheap. Might as well buy it. (Yeah, I lied; there was one more non-item purchase in the game. Sorry.) The Earth Drum casts Earthquake 10 on all enemies. You can't actually cast earthquake any other way, and it does decent enough damage. And like the thread, it has a random chance of disappearing after use. We're getting one for free later on, and I'll probably never use that one.

Since there's nothing else to do here, and I'm already out of MP (partially due to the slime enemies, and partially due to me trying to grind up all these new spells.) Let's exit out, save, pop a cottage, and start again.



And I immediately get into a losing battle with some dual zombies. Here we have a fine example of running not working.



Oops. Yeah, don't underestimate these guys.



Back to the second floor. Yeah, you'll notice this dungeon loves throwing duplicate items at you, even on the same floor. I guess I understand, you can't buy this spell after all, but do you ever need more than one Aero caster?



Same thing with Blind. I end up having Viv learn it; honestly I don't forsee it ever being that useful, but why not? At least the blind tome sells for a lot.


G. Toad
Rank 4, HP 300, Attack Power 35, Attacks 3, Accuracy 70%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


I have no idea what "g" is supposed to stand for. Giant, I guess. Anyway, they're weak to ice, and have kinda high HP. With three attacks they have better chances of hitting Viv, and they can poison you upon hitting, so they've got that going for them. Although they did hit Viv plenty, poison only hit once. A mild annoyance at best.



On the fourth floor there are four different staircase we can go through. The first one, directly south of where we can in, just leads to a single treasure.







....okay.

From this staircase we go directly right.


Tusk
Rank 5, HP 300, Attack Power 40, Attacks 3, Accuracy 85%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


Tusk! It's the big horn's little brother! And somehow, the little brother has a higher rank. Go figure. They're much like the toads; a mild annoyance at best.



And this is what's at the end of this path. Don't get too excited; it's just two valiums and an earthdrum. While that would make a rockin' party, not what we want.



One of them is trapped with toads and tusks, so that's... something.



It's a good something, that's what it is.

Back down to the fourth floor. This time we want to go to the top left corner of the floor.



I actually already picked up one of these from a toad. It casts fear. Yeeeaaaaah not tempted.


Changer
Rank 3, HP 140, MP 80, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 70%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-40%




Changer's big gimmick is casting Swap on you. With Viv's 6-48% magic defense it's fairly unlikely to hit.



It's not impossible though. The changers have 80 MP, so it's not an awful trade-off. Although I had to spend most of that healing up again.



Enjoy this rare shot of running actually working.

Anyway, back again to the fourth floor, and to the left. This time we're finally moving forward.



One last bit of treasure on the fifth floor. At least it's not another valium...





And we're at the end of the dungeon finally! You know, some people have mentioned that this dungeon's difficulty is more suited for this point in the game, which is why I'm doing it. (Also because I can.) While you can do the dungeon now, you're actually expected to do it after the cave at Dist, the colosseum after it, and the liberation of Phin. Hell, it probably expects you to do it after the castle dungeon. This... doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, it's rather long, full of MP-draining slime enemies (ended up using two ethers!), and the Dual Zombies can be kind of nasty, but right now it's only a slight bump up in difficulty. It's kind of weird that this dungeon is so easy. I'd venture to guess that this dungeon's difficulty is more suitable for this part of the because you can easily stumble upon it when you first get the boat. Which is what I'd guess if this were a sane game. Not in a game where you can easily fight mid to late game enemies right out of the gate. So I ain't got a loving clue. I think you might have guessed that the design of this game often makes no sense.

Anyway, our boss is an enemy we've seen before.


Big Horn
Rank 4, HP 1,140, Attack Power 50, Attacks 4, Accuracy 85%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Resistance 6-30%


Big Horns are a bitch to fight in a group, but by itself it's nothing. We've fought worse.



It's really not worth talking about.



And here is the thing we came for. And yet another inventory space that I'll never get back. Yay!



And once again the game designers give you a bit of a break, in case you had no MP for exit or something.

All right, now that we did... the thing, next time we'll finally go and do what we were supposed to do.




Power +2, Agility +2, Vitality +6, Intelligence +5, Soul +6, Evasion +4 (!!!), Magic Power +1, Fire +1, Ice +1, Curse +1, Holy +1, HP +340, MP +21

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Oct 9, 2014

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

Is that really 15 evade? Jesus christ.

Mega64
May 23, 2008

I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.
At this rate, you don't even need the Agility-boosting equipment until the point where it'd be outclassed anyway.

Crystalgate
Dec 26, 2012
15-22% evade gives an average of 3,3 successful evades. In practice, it translates to a bit worse than that. Enemies have already gotten the number of attacks needed to pierce that, but so far the evasion is enough to mitigate most of the damage. It's up to getting more agility now.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.

Crystalgate posted:

15-22% evade gives an average of 3,3 successful evades. In practice, it translates to a bit worse than that. Enemies have already gotten the number of attacks needed to pierce that, but so far the evasion is enough to mitigate most of the damage. It's up to getting more agility now.

You mention that, and it kind of gets me wondering whether or not Slow would be a better status ailment to level than Blind. I never usually bother with Slow because I never get it in a regular game, since you get it so late. Hm... anyone here ever use Slow much in a playthrough?

Fister Roboto
Feb 21, 2008

It's hard to say. Slow reduces a creature's number of attacks by 1 for each successful hit of the spell, whereas blind reduces the creature's accuracy by 40% if the spell hits even once. Slow's base accuracy is 30%, and blind's is 50%. They both have the same element (body), but slow is white magic and blind is black. Blind also has an added bonus of also increasing the accuracy of any attacks against blinded creatures by 40%, so it can be used offensively as well. I think I'd lean more towards blind.

Mega64
May 23, 2008

I took the octopath less travelered,

And it made one-eighth the difference.
According to this wonderful site, you add your Soul/Intelligence to your accuracy, minus penalties. With 30 in both, that boosts Slow and Blind to 60%/80% respectively, though I don't know how much Vivian's equipment will hurt it. As a bonus, Slow cancels out Haste if an enemy casts it on itself.

The tricky part is that many enemies resist Body-type attacks and thus are immune to those status effects, such as all undead.

Bellmaker
Oct 18, 2008

Chapter DOOF



I remember Aero being pretty decent leveled up, seeing as it's basically Bio from later on in the series (poison-elemental?). I know there's at least one "boss" in particular Aero tears to shreds.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

Bellmaker posted:

I remember Aero being pretty decent leveled up, seeing as it's basically Bio from later on in the series (poison-elemental?). I know there's at least one "boss" in particular Aero tears to shreds.

Aero is the same power as the other elemental attack spells, which by mid/late game isn't very useful except against elemental weaknesses. There are about 5 or 6 enemies in the game with a vulnerability to poison, so... yeah, not that great.

ManxomeBromide
Jan 29, 2009

old school

Fister Roboto posted:

Is that really 15 evade? Jesus christ.

At the end of the game on Gabriel Pope's LP, the best evade was only 9 (though admittedly 9-77%, so expected number of evades was still higher).

Given how little of the game we've played, I'm guessing this is the difference between being targeted by every melee attack and being targeted by every attack ever.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.

ManxomeBromide posted:

At the end of the game on Gabriel Pope's LP, the best evade was only 9 (though admittedly 9-77%, so expected number of evades was still higher).

Given how little of the game we've played, I'm guessing this is the difference between being targeted by every melee attack and being targeted by every attack ever.

There's only two enemy with more than 8 attacks in the game. One is the General with 10, and the another is the Iron Giant with 12, and that one's the "Warmech" of the game. If you have a really high percentage, you never really need more than 8 or 9 evasion.

And I'm not sure what you mean by that second sentence. Evasion only protects against normal physical attacks. Anything that's not a normal attack is classified as magic by this game. (Unless you meant something else?)

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 17, 2014

ManxomeBromide
Jan 29, 2009

old school

Camel Pimp posted:

And I'm not sure what you mean by that second sentence. Evasion only protects against normal physical attacks. Anything that's not a normal attack is classified as magic by this game. (Unless you meant something else?)

I might misunderstand the mechanics here, but I thought Evade got "practiced" by being targeted. As I understood the earlier LP, they had put a single melee character in the front lines, who would get all attacks that cared about line ordering. Here, there is only one character alive, so presumably attacks that formerly targeted guys in the back row are now, again, targeting the front-line fighter. Thus, she's getting more evade practice.

It's entirely possible I've got the advancement mechanics wrong here, though.

vvvv Aha, thank you! Makes sense.

ManxomeBromide fucked around with this message at 04:48 on Aug 17, 2014

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
The only attacks that target the back row are magic and don't train evasion (bow attacks, which are fairly rare to begin with, count as spells and train magic defense.) Vivian's accelerated evasion growth is because solo characters take longer to finish fights, so she gets targeted a lot more.

Camel Pimp
May 17, 2008

This poster survived LPing Lunar: Dragon Song. Let's give her a hand.
Chapter 10: Spelunking

Now that we've taken that little detour, let's actually go where we're supposed to go, shall we? Before we go to Dist Cave, item management time!!!



First elixir bought! Also two ethers and a cottage.

That out of the way, to the cave. It's directly north of the castle; can't miss it. Dist's enemies are mostly the enemies you saw around the Warship, but there's a new face.


Stalactite
Rank 4, HP 240, Attack Power 35, Attacks 2, Accuracy 70%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


Stalactite are one of the few enemies in this game weak to poison. With level 1 Aero that means nothing to me, and they're pretty uninteresting otherwise, but hey, poison weakness.



Cave time! Right from the get-go we've got three different staircase we can go down, so we're heading to the upper right first.



Seriously, someone on the dev team must have thought this was the funniest thing.



And we're done already! Well, not quite, but we do have walk back to Dist to talk to the wvyern, and come back. There's not really a point is Exiting out, so I just walk.



Oh, there is something I wanted to mention and I forgot to. We've seen Revenants before, another one of the nigh-indistinguishable undead, but they have a special property that I forgot to mention before. Now, Revenants have an attack power of 40, and Viv has a defense of 15. Even with a high roll, they should do 65 per hit, tops. What's going on? Drain touch, that's what's going on.

You see, physical attacks that drain HP work... interestingly in this game. For every hit that a draining attack lands, it does an additional 1/16 of your max HP in damage. That's added onto the base attack power. And that's max HP, not current HP. And the draining property ignores defense completely. One sixteenth of Vivian's HP is 69, so this would quite handily explain the numbers seen. With low numbers of attacks, this is hardly that big of a deal, but later on there are enemies with lots of attacks and drain touch. They make your life hell. This, this right here is why you can't just tank it in heavy armor and abuse yourself to astronomical HP.



Holy poo poo they really don't want me to leave do they? Once again, what was once a boss is now just a random encounter like it ain't no thing. Thankfully, we now have the curse spell, which, if it hits, makes these guys cake. Unfortunately, it's still only level two and Gigas's have 4-40% magic defense. Not quite foolproof yet. At least Viv can scratch them now.



Oh and this is what the wvyern wanted us to do. Anyway, let's get our cottage on and then back to the cave! This time, we head directly south of the entrance.



In case you were curious, this is how much damage Vivian can do when curse manages to stick. Normally she does around a hundred or so. Curse is quite nice.


Soul
Rank 4, HP 20, MP 80, Attack Power 35, Attacks/Accuracy 1-70%, Defense 25, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


These guys are pretty much just like their older brothers, the red soul (yes we're gonna fight red souls as a random encounter later, don't play coy.) They absorb all elements, so you have to kill them with attacks. Unlike the red soul these guys are far easier to kill. Also unlike red souls they have a half-decent amount of MP.



And that's all they do. They do nothing else, unless they're out of MP. One problem you could have is that all of them are going to cast the same spell, every turn, and if there's a lot of them in a formation they can wear you down. In this case, the only way I could lose to them is if I was not paying any attention whatsoever. I still lose more HP than I'd like, though.


Great Ogre
Rank 4, HP 300, Attack Power 40, Attacks 3, Accuracy 70%, Defense 35, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


These guys are, uh... the upgrade to the regular ogre, I guess. Yeah. They drop the winged sword sometimes. That's something.



This path basically just leads to a dead end treasure room. What goodies await us.



Heavy, worthless armor. Yay.



Guarded by a giant turtle army.

This isn't hard by any stretch, not anymore, but it's gonna be a long, tedious battle.



Curse alleviates that quite nicely. (In all fairness though, she can actually now do damage to this guys, although nowhere near a one-hit kill.)

The other chests have heart, elder IQ, and-



If you're crazy enough to fight the Captains in Phin early on, they can drop Flame Bows. They're really good if you can snag one that soon. Well, good for a bow, anyway.

Since this is a dead end, and I don't see the point in walking back, time to exit, cottage, and go back in. You know, I do feel it's wasteful to use so many cottages, especially when Bofsk is fairly close by. On the other hand... why should I care about being wasteful with purchasable items at this point?

On the third trip in the cave, we take the lower right stairs.



Wow this is outdated as hell. I can't imagine you'd ever have any characters still using mythril armor at this point, and even if you did, you'd probably have the helmet by now. (There's also some armor just a bit north to complete your lovely, outdated mythril set.)

Anyway, we have two stairs to choose from here. The one you see in the screenshot leads to treasure, so treasure we go for.



Oh, that little black smidgen on the bridge is a gap and you will fall if you step on it. I believe you land in the area with the Knight armor and the other poo poo treasure. No point in doing that now.

There's a chest with some mythril poo poo, and also-



Do you remember how I said Wall would be a good spell if you could ever be bother to grind it up to absurd levels? Yeah, this casts level 16 Wall. It only casts it on the user, but that's ideal for this run. The question won't be if I use this, but when.



You may be starting to wonder if I'm really going to show every single agility gain I get in this entire game. The answer is yes, yes I will.



Going back to the previous floor, we get a magic staff. It casts multi-target bolt 5. Yeaaah not that good, although magic procured from weapons doesn't break the weapon, so that's something.


Green Soul
Rank 4, HP 6, MP 60, Attack Power 25, Attacks 1, Accuracy 70%, Defense 17, Evasion 1-40%, Magic Resistance 3-40%


Also it's trapped with a monster that-



Heals you. Yeah. At least the dev's stupid sense of humor finally benefits the players. They will actually attack if they run out of MP, but they get one 25 power attack. Nooot scary.

Anyway, the exit we need is left of this chest.



This time, we're on the other side of the bridge.



On the next floor we get this... thing. It casts multi-target Aero 16, so I have no idea why the fan translator chose that name. Probably just gonna sell it.



And finally, we have the return of the beloved "guess the right door" game. I missed you.



It's this one. (Surprisingly I only made one wrong guess.)



But of course we need a boss.


Chimera
Rank 5, HP 640, MP 80, Attack Power 60, Attacks 4, Accuracy 75%, Defense 50, Evasion 1-50%, Magic Resistance 3-50%


How many of chimera spawn is a little random, between two to four I believe. Obviously, we hit the middle result.

EDIT: It's one to four.





This is all they do. Nothing too bad, but with their high attack power an unlucky roll could put me up poo poo creak. With their HP the battle miiight last long enough to let that happen.



Love you, curse.

Yeah, this gets won pretty easily.



And we're done!



And the wyvern is dead. I'm certain you cared greatly.

Not much to do at this point but sell off all that excess poo poo.



I don't know if I can stress how money has become such a non-issue. (Yeah, I buy another elixir, along with two cottages.)




Power +2, Agility +1, Vitality +6, Intelligence -1 (drat it!), Soul +4, Magic Power +1, Unarmed +1, Cure +1, Aero +1, Curse +1, Holy +1, Barrier +1, Blind +1, HP +232, MP +43

Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 22:17 on Sep 27, 2014

Edward_Tohr
Aug 11, 2012

In lieu of meaningful text, I'm just going to mention I've been exploding all day and now it hurts to breathe, so I'm sure you all understand.
15 Evades? Jeeeeeeesus.

Once her evade rate goes up, Viv's gonna be loving untouchable.

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Simply Simon
Nov 6, 2010

📡scanning🛰️ for good game 🎮design🦔🦔🦔
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.

Seriously, that is just nuts. It's like Dark Souls randomly decides that the bossfight is against The One King now.

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