Phantasy Star IV No Hands Challenge Part VI

[freshfeeling]

[This entry is adapted from the original GameFAQs posts written around the time the gameplay took place in December of 2015. It is actually being posted in March of 2023 around the origin of this blog. There may be minor edits.]

Before Soldier's Temple I decided to do Tinkelbell's Dog, since for some reason I had bought Shortcake already at one point and I didn't want it taking up inventory space.

 

Soldier's Temple

I got Seth, and then revised my macros. There were lots of macros that were now useless because they had involved Kyra. I made Seth's skills the focus of many macros; may as well use up all those uses of Dthspell. But then, y'know what? I didn't actually defeat a single enemy while Seth was in my party.

I had very few ambushes and very few failed run attempts here; maybe just the nature of these enemies? I got to DF3 in pretty reasonable shape.

 

Dark Force 33 1/3

This is a really interesting fight for this challenge because perhaps DF3's best attack is a physical that criticals, and he can use Shadow to lower your agility. On those Shadow rounds, it's kind of nice that I've got a free round to be on the offense but, at the same time, if I don't fix the agility loss, I'm going to have a bad time. So Rika has to re-Saner on those rounds.

Corrosion isn't too strong... and as a fun bonus, if Rika's defending, she takes 1 damage from Corrosion or a physical. Rika was sometimes able to get by with a regular Sar instead of Gisar after Corrsion, or just watching Rune. Wren started with Barrier and used offensive skills, Rune ran through Efess, then Tandle, then Nawat, Chaz spent all his TP on Nathu, and Rika of course was doin' Deban, Saner and lots of heals. Rune died once and I used a Sol-Dew, and I think I had to use one Star-Dew, too.

Chaz died a long way into the fight when I realized that was only going to make things easier; on free turns, Rika can defend and not require any healing. She can Gires/Trimate Rune and Rune and Wren can stay on the offensive.

It went really well, levels between 32 and 36.
 

 

Post DF3:

 

The game is moving quickly now.

 

Courage Tower

I chose Courage Tower arbitrarily first. Normally I recommend everyone do Strength first but in this case I didn't overthink it. Frankly, I expected to just raid treasure from both towers before proceeding.

I didn't fight a lot of enemies, but I often took out singles, like Deathbearr with a Diem. I had several emergency exits, including one where Wren was the only one alive. But eventually I had a great run, got the Guard-Mail and Guardarmor, exited and healed again, went back in and walked up to Sa-Lews.

 

Sa-Lews

This fight is kind of funny because the challenge conditions are almost irrelevant here; you want to fight with only Techs and Skills and defense doesn't matter. Wren used Barrier, Rika used Saner. Chaz still had his Crmc-Helm on so I rejoiced each time Wren and Chaz got hit with a Flaeli (those are really the best turns no matter who it affects). The Tandle rounds were bad but very survivable. I think I used one Star-Dew and a few Trimates.
 

 

Sa-Lews down:

(I had gained a teensy level or two from DF3 and maybe randoms)

Chaz 35, Rune 33, Rika 38, Wren 35.

 

Strength Tower

I felt so wrong picking up the Guard-Rod without being able to use it; it's absolutely my favorite equip in the game. I didn't spend nearly as long with Courage Tower, actually. I think I only had one run at it, though I may not be recalling perfectly.

De-Vars

I literally didn't realize until I started this fight that it might be pretty shitty. Without weapons, he uses Disruptarm every turn. I was expecting this to be a big hang-up but it was actually fine; healing Rune was tough but he needed much more healing than the rest so sometimes I was able to save some TP but just using Gires/Trimate on Rune and not using Sar. With Deban up, the damage wasn't bad.

Once again, Chaz died and I decided that, strategically, it made sense for him to stay dead once his TP is gone. Rika was able to heal Rune with single-heals or Trimates a lot of the time while he ran through Tandle and then Nawat. First try, and I never really felt like I was in danger, which I didn't expect.
 

 

De-Vars down:

 

I did Sacred Sword Cave. I let Chaz Nathu single Phantoms, and it otherwise went normally. I finally went to Meese to buy some dews and got a truckload of Sol-Dews and Star-Dews.

 

Ready for the end?:

Chaz 35, Rune 34, Rika 39, Wren 36.

 

So... which fifth party member? I think it pretty much has to be Raja or Kyra because Blessing/Warla are a huge benefit and the extra healing will help. I know Raja's great for healing but he's got no damage potential, and with no weapons it's pretty important to be able to attack.

 

I decided I should get Megid, recruit Raja and consider him a Megid/Nathu battery enabled by his Ataraxia skill.

Anger Tower

No big deal. There were a few things at work; I don't think the enemies here are a step up at all, and I know that most of my party wouldn't be needed for a boss so I could recklessly use abilities if needed. But I had forgotten that Anger Tower is only 3 levels tall and with only two chests, so yeah, it was easy.

Of course, I had to run it 4 times.

 

Ryre

That's its name in the code, so... yeah.

This thing kicked my butt. I guess I thought "all Chaz can do is Nathu", but it kept killing me, even when I took turns to Gires, partly because of frequent criticals. So I put my thinking cap on after a few tries and put on Chaz's Swift-Helm. I actually got to see Ryre miss once, which was very exciting.
 

 

Megid get.
 

 

The Edge

I decided to go with Raja, basically as a Megid battery, as I said. This definitely had pros and cons.

I haven't gained a single level since De-Vars, and Raja is level 37. Some curiosities in how my levels have worked: Chaz never got Nares or Nazan, Rika never got Nasar, and Rune never got Legeon.
 

 

I ran from encounters. I only had one of them that went poorly until the Prophallus corridor, when I ran into a Chaosbrngr. I guess you can't run from those? Rune used Diem; all taken care of.

 

TPD

Saner, Blessing, Barrier. I used Megid a couple of times in the early rounds - normally this kind of thing is worth saving for later, more dangerous phases, but when you have Ataraxia it's not such a big deal. Rune used Nagra, since it was his strongest tech and I knew Ataraxias were coming. I was liberal with healing for the same reason. Wren used Flares. The idea here, besides perhaps stupidly wasting so much of Chaz's TP in the early going, was that I would save all my best moves for part 3.
 

 

I think that was a good decision; forms 1 and 2 were easy. Besides the initial Megid barrage, Chaz just defended... which is awesome when he gets hit by Shadowbreath. Wren kept Flaring. Rune kept squandering TP. Rika kinda hung out... she mostly defended too. Getting to form 3 was really no issue at all. Someone might've died to a single target thing once, but I've got Regen and Sol-Dews all over the place.
 

 

For part 3, we went all-out. Chaz Megid, Raja St.Fire, Rune Efess then Tandle, Wren Posibolt then Burstroc then his last couple Flares. But there was a bit of hangup when Megid came out against my group about 6 times in the first 7 turns. I had that amazing bank of Sol-Dew and I really, really ate into it trying to get the party back together. They'd keep getting up and getting knocked down... but eventually, yeah, everyone was standing. There were some close calls.
 

 

When Chaz got low on TP, Raja would use Ataraxia; he was, as intended, a TP battery. Of course, this meant Rika and Raja could go bananas with the healing, which was nice. Miracle was pretty handy for those times when Wren was at half health or so and I'd rather have him attack than Recover (which makes a lot of sense when Raja has as little offense as he does).
 

 

I'm always wary of Cancelling, as a Cancelling followed by an early Megid could be disastrous, but somehow it never happened; after each Cancelling I managed to get Barrier, Blessing and Saner back up, no problem. Chaz got Evil Eye'd once and Rika did once, but it wore off fast enough to be a non-issue.
 

 

As you'll see from the image below, as the fight was wrapping up - and I had a feeling it was - I realized that all of my offense was gone. Wren had used all of his Flares, Posibolts and Burstrocs. Chaz was out of TP. Raja was out of St.Fire and Ataraxia. Rune had even used his Efess and Tandle. We were down to Rune using high-level techs, while everyone else was tapping their foot waiting for the root of all evil to keel over. But I was only actually in that position where Rune was the only contributor for about two rounds.
 

 

Final stats:

(Chaz 35, Rune 34, Rika 39, Wren 36, Raja 37)

Challenge Over:

 

Overall, the hardest part was definitely Air Castle; no surprise there.
 

 

I seem to have finished the game about 10 levels lower than recommended by any FAQ on this site, and that's without using weapons or shields. That's kind of nuts. But I also understand why that is; I ran from a lot of encounters both to keep my levels respectable and to save every drop of TP and skill use for the bosses. Fighting just the randoms would probably put anyone above 40.

 

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