FreshFeeling Gaming

September is often a busy time for my family and I! While my last play session was August 28th, I didn't get to play this again until September 27th.


There were some setup woes at the beginning, both because it had been a while and my machine had been set up to capture other things and because I had to alter the little tracker application I've been using. In particular, there had been some discussion about the proposed ban from FFTacticsKevin, "no abilities learned in WoB". I tried to modify this into something with less administrative overhead by suggesting it was easy to ban any items obtained in the World of Balance when you enter the World of Ruin, but, based on post #42, that didn't exactly satisfy him. :)
While I'd already beaten Ultima Weapon (AtmaWeapon), I still had to finish the Floating Continent before any of my new changes and most of the other rules could matter.

There was no particular issue here - I mean, besides the whole world destruction thing. As per Smash_Master's ban, I made sure to save Shadow.

Just for fun, I decided I would feed Cid medicinal fish! Nobody banned medicinal fish.


When we ended up on the shore near Albrook, I stripped Celes, I saved, I closed the game, and I pulled up the aforementioned save editor. Then, I carefully removed every spell, Blitz, and Lore I learned in the World of Balance. SwdTech/Bushido doesn't seem to be editable in this save editor, which given an earlier ban I'm just going to be okay with. As well, it feels like editing the Rage list doesn't work? This is something I may need to come back to.


An amusing note about so many characters un-learning their abilities is that I never taught any spells at all to several usable characters: Sabin, Shadow, Setzer, and Relm. They are all going to be blank slates who can still learn any spell from WoR espers later on.

I went into Albrook and sold every single item I had, literally - even the ones I was going to repurchase. I decided selling was better than using the save editor to straight-up remove the equipment, because the difference it would make was a few hours of fighting rare World of Ruin Leaf Bunnies. This is less agonizing.


Then, we re-purchased Albrookian equipment. They've at least got lots of things Celes can equip; I suppose it could be worse.


Before we continue discussing gameplay, given we're freshly into the halfway point and, in a way, starting over, it's probably a good time to review the elements of the game that are banned.

• Boldrin: "I ban Edgar from not dropping trou the second a woman is in his presence." - once Edgar joins, with Celes in the team, he won't be able to wear body armor. He might be able to put armor back on later, depending on the circumstances.
• VVagner: "I ban the back row." - unfortunately, my now-purely-melee Celes has to be in the front row. She is pretty fragile!
• VVagner: "I ban Gau from using Rages from monsters with first letter L through Z." - Unfortunately, the save editor I'm using doesn't seem to give me control over this, so I'm not sure what to do about this. I may just avoid the Rage command in general. Mitigating the issue here somewhat: I barely learned any Rages that aren't the starting ones.
• kingbob08: "I ban purposefully using status buffs/debuffs or curing them in battle." - This has been weird, but given Celes' very limited options it's not impactful at the moment. Frankly, as long as I'm editing spell lists I'm probably going to fully remove the ones that are strictly for status infliction.
• VVagner: "I ban having a full party of 4, unless needed for the story, or the final boss." - Because of this rule, I need to avoid recruiting Sabin in Tzen.
• Wyldstar: "I ban actions that require pressing the 'up' button in battle." - At the moment, this has an unexpected impact when it comes to Celes' ability to swap elemental swords. Between this and the status effect ban, fighting Phunbaba early to get Fenrir is more-or-less worthless - if it's even possible.
• CB_Archer: "I ban equipping an esper if you already have any of the spells learned 100% that it teaches." - Messing with my save editor is going to make this one a bit weird and complicated. I am still going to abide by this and not re-learn any unlearned spells or anything like that. If a spell had been learned, espers that teach it remain fully unavailable.
• Smash_Master: "I ban the doggo." - This will matter when I get Shadow.
• pumaloaf: "I ban any of Sabin's Blitzes that scale off of magic." - Amusingly, I think all of Sabin's Blitzes are permanently banned between this, the WoB ability ban, and the "no pressing up" ban... except Mantra? I'm not sure since they keep changing its inputs.
• MonadoGuy25: "I ban (optional) Moogles." - We can't recruit Mog or Umaro!
• Outl4w: "I ban Phoenix Down." - As long as Celes is solo, this certainly doesn't matter! It may matter later.
• Knight S. Hade / sierramadresquatter: "I ban not using SwdTech/Bushido." - I think to honour this ban, Cyan will need to be one of our first few recruits. Unfortunately, there's another ban relevant to that below.
• kingbob08: "I ban any relic that gives a stat boost." - I've come close on this a few times! No White Cape, no Prayer Beads, no Zephyr Cape, or anything like that!
• Smash_Master: "I ban natural magic." - Well, yeah. This could matter later. Celes learns something at level 26, I think.
• FFTacticsKevin: "I'm banning Dexter, no equipment is allowed to be used in the right hand." - Everyone can only use one hand. You can see in the image above that there was an issue with this. More on this later!
• Boldrin: "I ban Shadow not living out his dream of being a life-coach starring on hoarders." - This won't matter until we get Shadow back; it's just "if there's something to throw, Shadow must throw".
• Smash_Master: "I ban Team CES actively fighting together." - Once we get the Falcon, we'll be breaking up the team again and soloing a bit more.
• FFTacticsKevin: "I ban all abilities and items obtained in the WoB." - As noted above, this is sort of my fault, too. We've lost a lot of options!
• Wyldstar: "I ban reviving anyone by any means while in a multi-party dungeon." - This was proposed as a way to make Phoenix Cave and Kefka's Tower into Nuzlocke Challenges. It includes no using Tents if someone is dead.
• throva: "I ban Cursed Shield and Illumina." - it's about time someone straight-up cut out some of the overpowered options for late game!

With these bans, Celes has no magic, bad defenses, and is forced into the front row. She's limited to items for healing, so if she can't survive an encounter under these circumstances... well, that's that.

The Albrook equipment was adequate, I guess. I wanted to see what was in Tzen, but I didn't realize that once the crumbling house is triggered you've unable to leave. Since my rules prohibit recruiting Sabin, I'm unable to shop in Tzen.

I could go to Mobliz, but the Stop spell is banned and I can't summon Fenrir, so that's not going to do very much for me. Plus, I would have to beat Phunbaba and Celes has permanently lost access to the Bio spell - actually, everyone has, haven't they?
So, we're going on to Nikeah. I did a bit of shopping including getting two Enhancers and left. Selling all of my belongings in Albrook didn't actually provided an egregious amount of money in the World of Ruin's economy, so Celes couldn't afford Diamond Armor in South Figaro. She could, however, afford some Hermes Sandals - and I'm very thankful for that because I'm not sure how I could win against the game's next boss without these.

Outside of South Figaro, I thought I would be so damn smart to grind where there were Nohrabbits/Desert Hares since they randomly heal the team. These battles were still really tough. Sometimes the Desert Hare healing allowed me to defeat the Cancer/Maliga or other enemies in this area, but it was still hard to pull through and Celes could barely stand up to other enemies. After a short bit I decided I should gauge performance in the next area instead of grinding up to prepare for what's more-or-less an unknown challenge.

The cave and depths of Figaro Castle carry some risk - enemies have some bulk and some nasty tricks like confusion here - but running from everything Celes made it to the Tentacles in okay shape.

This fight was... intense. The odds are stacked against you with no magic, but when you've got Hermes Sandals and an Amulet you're immune to their poison and their slow/grasping effects. It was very hard to keep Edgar alive for any span of time, but Celes did okay. On the first attempt, I gave Celes a Flametongue and had her attack the bottom-left Tentacle to kill it, figuring Edgar could maybe help take out the one that absorbs fire. This approach had... many problems.
Thus, we really had to bet on Celes and use a non-elemental weapon. I experimented with the Rune Blade and its MP-powered criticals but its attack power is so much lower than the Enhancer that it wasn't a good strategy. Celes and Edgar would work together to get one Tentacle down quickly, Edgar would generally die around that point, and then Celes would either use Hi-Potions or attack. Sometimes we'd make progress, and sometimes the Tentacles were just mean. We were taking usually just under 500 damage from Bio and just over 200 damage from Poison, and there was one attempt where three Tentacles used, Bio, Poison, Bio is succession - so unless some very lucky dodges kicked in (which sometimes happened), that wasn't survivable even with full HP.

It probably took 10 attempts and ~60 Hi-Potions, but eventually, it came together.
 
I was so excited! The first thing I needed to happen was for Edgar to "drop trou" as per the very first ban.

Then I realized: Edgar has a shield on. Dexter is banned. Wait. Did Celes have a shield on the whole time?
Oh damn. That's why she had so many lucky dodges.

Augh!

Okay. That sucks. I completely disregarded an important rule, and clearly it had made a difference. I was going to need to try again. I loaded a save from before Figaro Cave, which was also before Celes had won any fights in the WoR (besides maybe a couple of Desert Hares).
Given the struggles I had barely eking out a victory against Tentacles with a shield at level 24, I thought I might need to get to level 30 to make this work. I ended up eventually getting to 29 - a while after realizing that Desert Hares don't even give experience points.
 
I wish there was another strategy I could lean on besides level grinding, but with no espers and severely limited equipment I didn't see myself with other options.

Five levels makes a really big difference in this game! Celes' HP and damage both went up considerably. It's worth a note, actually, that the game still thinks Celes is equipped with Zona Seeker even thought we don't have Zona Seeker, so she's still gaining Magic +2 per level. This is a foible of the save editor, and one that I've chosen to be okay with since, technically, I could've just grinded these levels back in World of Balance (much more easily, I might add!) - but I will fix this at the earliest opportunity.

Anyway: we went back to the Tentacles at level 29. It still wasn't easy and took a couple of attempts, but Celes won.
 
Finally, it was time for the actual, proper, ceremonial pantsing of the king:


We bought Autocrossbow, Drill, and Debilitator - but realized I couldn't use the other tools, since they inflict status ailments - and saved outside of Kohlingen. We'll be recruiting Setzer very soon and then team CES will have their last hurrah.

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This update is based on gameplay from August 18th and 19th. We had previously saved outside of the Rift, which we had never entered yet.

Consequently, this mostly feels like a boss rush. The enemies here weren't hard in general; as a reminder and for some personal context, my team last year was berserker, chemist, dragoon, bard. My team this year was berserker, chemist, monk, ninja. With two classes in common, there's a lot that isn't that different. The berserker is either dead weight or a damage beast and doesn't really carry much strategy regardless, and chemist shows up late but can carry boss fights in a variety of ways. Bard and chemist have a lot of overlap in their usage, really. The big, shiny difference between these squads is the ninja, of course, who just makes random encounters much, much quicker. I can't say for sure which of these teams was easier but the ninja certainly made things feel quicker.


For Calofisteri, we put on Dragon Defense and then a couple of Dragon Blessings and crushed her with physical attacks.
  

Next was... Omega! I decided not to mess around and just get things done in order this time. I chose to just look at the little chart I made for my final update last year and use that, but I tried to keep the team alive and also brought Hermes Shoes instead of Reflect Rings - so the strategy was remixed somewhat.
 
Hermes Shoes relative to Reflect Rings is a tradeoff. Haste is nice, especially to help the team keep up with healing between (frequent) Surge Cannons, but we lose immunity to certain things like Delta Attack. Every time someone got knocked out or petrified - which happened a lot - we had to reapply Dragon Defense and Levisalve. This was... repetitive, and annoying, but it worked. With Turtle Soup and some level buffs in play my three attackers had nice, strong attacks.
 
There was a toll with the frequent Surge Cannon healing, though: my best healing was X-Potion, a mix using Potion + Ether. I found, of all things, eventually my stock of regular Potions was getting very, very low. It got to a point where I had to weigh the value of reviving and re-buffing Bartz the berserker and eventually chose not to. Being lean on healing also meant Lenna the chemist died shortly after. Whoops.

I decided at this point, since my damage output on monk Faris and ninja Krile had been so high, to just go all-in-on offense. Faris threw one more Hi-Potion at Krile to ensure she'd survive another Surge Cannon and then we just wailed on the Attack command.
 
This actually worked. On what was probably Krile's last action, she managed to defeat Omega with the rest of the team down.
 
This was great! First try, even.

In retrospect, I think it was a huge mistake to even bother buffing and healing Bartz the berserker for this fight: I am not sure he landed a single physical attack, and even if he did the contribution was negligible compared to what everyone else was doing. That was probably the single biggest strategic failure: it would've saved a lot of actions and consumables to focus on the more useful characters. Perhaps last year's strategy of accidentally soloing Omega wasn't a bad one.

Unfortunately because of all of the X-Potion use, I had just 4 Potions left and a few other consumables on the low side. I decided to exit and do one last trip to normal shops before beating the rest of the game.
 

Next boss! Apanda was really easy. I think we just pumped a few Dragon Blessings and beat him up.


We got the Thor Hammer in the next area. I decided to use it and just keep the berserker in the back row for the rest of the game so we could heal less often.
Against Azulmagia, I put some Reflect Rings on (possibly more in anticipation of Catastrophe) and did sort of the same thing: boosted levels through chemistry and then smashed him with physical attacks.
 

You can see from Azulmagia that I had already applied Levisalve. Consequently, with Reflect Rings on, Catastrophe didn't even attack. I used Kiss of Blessing on Krile to speed things up. It was literally the easiest fight in the game.
 

These regular bosses were pretty formulaic. I only got one screenshot of Halicarnassus and it was when they died. It was a very fast and simple fight.


Twintania has been a bit of a challenge for me in the past. I had the foresight to wear Coral Rings - which is probably more important than usual when you're fielding a berserker here.
  
After applying haste and some defensive chemistry, I pumped the attackers' levels a bit and then just let them go while Twintania healed us with water. For maybe my first time ever, I didn't even see Twintania go into the Gigaflare charge!


Gilgamesh 5 was no big deal. I failed to steal anything from him but meh.
 

I said I was going to do things more-or-less in order but I wanted Necrophobe's save point before finding Shinryu. I wasn't too afraid of Necrophobe because I sort of humiliated him last year. This year was similar: I Death Potion'd three of his barriers before he even started monologuing.
 
With a standard set of buffs, the rest of the fight was no problem. When my friend Gilgamesh 6 showed up, I even managed to steal his armor.
  

It happened that my team was level 43 (with no purposeful grinding besides accumulating Turtle Shells and Dragon Fangs earlier in the game) and that's a pretty nice level for Shinryu. Let's rush it.

For the fight, I knew Krile the chemist wouldn't be able to contribute meaningfully with the Attack command at all, so I gave her a Main Gauche. The whole squad was also using Coral Rings.

The first attempt didn't go well, actually. Shinryu used a very successful Maelstrom as its first action after Tidal Wave, followed by Lightning before we could make ourselves immune to it.

The second attempt, however, was excellent. I followed a list not unlike last year so that I could make myself immune to everything he does except its very strong physical attacks. Speed Drink (Turtle + Eye Drop) for haste to keep up with the attacks, Goliath Tonic (Dragon Fang + Elixir, or Drink) to survive more easily while we get the elemental defenses up, Dragon Defense (Dragon Fang + Phoenix Down) for protect and shell status, Resist Ice (Phoenix Down + Antidote) so that we gain HP from Icestorm instead of losing it, Resist Thunder (Phoenix Down + Eye Drop) for similar but for Lightning...

...Lifeshield (Phoenix Down + Holy Water) and Dragon Kiss (Maiden Kiss + Dragon Fang) to negate Maelstrom and Roulette, and even Resist Poison (Ether + Antidote) to negate the weak Poison Breath attack, which did actually prove kind of annoying.

We tried applying Turtle Soup (Turtle Shell + Antidote) to reduce Shinryu's defenses but at least on GBA I don't know if it fails or just animates in a way that you can't see? I think maybe the tiny hammer in the animation might be appearing off the top of the screen because of Shinryu's large sprite. I also figured level 83 was also a safe level, so I gave each character 2 Dragon Blessing (Dragon Fang + Potion) mixes. The fight gets fun when you've applied all of this nonsense because you almost don't have to heal at all - and when you do, the best healing ends up being a Succubus Kiss.

We won! Once we'd done all of that chemistry the fight wasn't bad at all. Omega was considerably harder.
 

For the final battles, I figured I would basically tease him the exact same way. If I could get Lifeshield up, I could negate White Hole and neuter Exdeath's first phase, then buff to an extreme and steamroll the rest of the fight. That's exactly what I did. Against the very first stage of the fight, with Hermes Shoes on, we applied (in roughly this order): Lifeshield, Dragon Kiss, Dragon Defense, Goliath Tonic, Resist Ice, Resist Thunder, Resist Fire. The elemental resistances weren't very necessary: Exdeath's tree form doesn't use these at all, but one component of Neo Exdeath does. Before taking out Exdeath, we also pumped our level a ton: forgetting whether level caps at 99 or 255, I gave each team member at least 5 level boosts for at least 100 extra levels. The first form was... very simple.
 
Against Neo Exdeath, we weren't immune to everything: Vacuum Wave is still a pretty mean physical attack. Still, our healing needs were greatly mitigated, and we were very fast and strong. I had Bartz the chemist use the Magic Lamp a few times, figuring that using Odin to defeat the vulnerable target would be nice. The summon damage was also pretty nice despite our awful magic stats.
 
The elemental defenses I had set up were never relevant at all: we didn't experience a single Firaga, Thundaga or Blizzaga. That's a bit sad; absorbing attacks feels really satisfying.
One of the things we weren't immune to - that sort of surprised me - was Grand Cross. Faris ended up with a death sentence counter after the first one dropped.
 
I didn't recall whether Faris' heavy flag or Lifeshield status would negate the eventual death from condemnation, so the question to me at this point was: can I just kill this thing in 24 ticks?
 
It turns out, yes. That Succubus Kiss for 3068 was the finisher.

Bartz also ended up with a death sentence timer, but Faris still had 8 seconds on hers. I may have said this before, but this might've been the easiest Neo Exdeath fight I've ever had. The only touch of tension came from that countdown to (possible?) death.

Last year was my first time leaning heavily into chemist abuse, and this year... well, I got a little bit more used to it. I've heard a lot of people say chemist is a pretty broken job and I think I agree with that more than ever now. I don't love the way monk tapers off so much in the second half of this game, but otherwise I liked this team more than last year's. A monk with its level inflated by a chemist or bard is still a pretty fierce combatant! The one thing I truly missed from last year, strangely, was Equip Harps - which is frankly just an amazing secondary skill for berserkers giving them a substantial boost to both agility and magic. My berserker was noticeably less effective without Equip Harps.
 
Maybe in some future year I'll roll berserker, bard, and two non-chemists. That feels like it could be interesting.

I guess now we'll refocus on the Final Fantasy VI Ban Something playthrough.

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