Final Fantasy VI Classic Jobs Part XIV
Jul. 5th, 2023 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingWe are picking up at the Fanatics' Tower. This was played on December 9, 2017.
I knew that Fanatics' Tower with one defensive mage and one offensive mage was likely to be tough, so I took the time to uncurse the Cursed Shield. The Paladin Shield, known as the Hero Shield in this hack, doesn't have the advantage of teaching Ultima for obvious reasons, but is still very useful for evasion and its elemental properties. This was also a good opportunity for my mages (currently Strago and Mog) to learn any spells they needed. Strago learned our recently-earned Holy spell, which is certainly going to be useful.
Even with liberal use of fast-forward, uncursing the shield took about 25 minutes at the start of the stream. But we got it!
With the Force Shields reserved for the mages, the Hero Shield is the only shield thieves can equip besides a basic Buckler, so our thieves will be using this pretty consistently from here on out.
Because Strago and Mog had learned so much magic, I swapped the team around a bit. The new team was Cyan the knight, Locke the thief, Sabin the white mage, and Terra the black mage. Terra benefits from some of the female-only equipment such as the Mystery Veil and Minerva (Bust (ier?)), both of which offer some nice magic evasion.
We spent some time in the dinosaur forest, trying to steal from Tyrannosaurs in order to get a Black Robe. At least for Terra, it's not very important, but I thought it could be good for Mog and/or Setzer, so I held out until I had two of them. Probably because of the level differential with these strong enemies, stealing from the dinosaurs took ages.
I also took a little detour into the Ancient Castle under Figaro Castle again. I went with the exclusive purpose of changing Odin into Raiden, who teaches Slowga, Tornado, and Quick. Raiden is actually one of those espers that can be used by both white mages and black mages, too, as the Tornado spell doesn't appear super often and it's been a white magic spell in at least one game. Quick has only ever appeared as Time Magic in other games.
We did just about every abuse possible in this battle, and it almost ended too quickly to enjoy. And, by the way, we don't really gain anything from it. Oh well. One dragon left.
The tower had its usual shenanigans and slow battles. There was a nasty one where I wasn't prepared with Float for a Level 60 Magic who used Quake on us twice; the only thing that allowed anyone to survive was Gau's Hero Shield. Even applying Float in the battle wasn't really a great option because it was a pincer attack. But we managed that one.
I didn't want the Gem Box / Soul of Thamasa in this game as it didn't make sense for our job allocations, so as part of the hack I replaced it with the Ultima Tome, which is a relic with no function other than teaching Ultima exclusively to black mages.
For the battle with the Magimaster, I went in with a similar setup to the White Dragon, getting Gau berserked and having him attack with the defense-ignoring Valiant Knife. Sabin went to work pretty quickly trying to get Reraise (Life 3) set on the entire team. Setzer's non-elemental spells like Flare were doing ~3500 damage, and Gau's attacks varied with his HP. Gau's attacks also missed much more often than they hit; Magimaster has high evasion that you would normally never observe.
Mostly thanks to Setzer's attacks, we won. Everyone was revived automatically by Reraise after Ultima destroyed us.
It wouldn't be unheard of to accidentally get wiped on the way out of the tower, but the escape was pretty uneventful, thankfully.
Though I tried to come up with ways for everyone to contribute, besides those specific boss setups, Cyan and Gau were really just tanky observers through the entire tower. It wasn't completely uninteresting despite this; there were specific things I did to survive with the equipment constraints, manage Sabin's MP, and let Setzer carry the team offensively that I wouldn't think about in a more standard playthrough.
At the bottom of the tower, I noticed Setzer had 96% of Ultima learned from the Ultima Tome. I figured we should polish that off!
I knew that Fanatics' Tower with one defensive mage and one offensive mage was likely to be tough, so I took the time to uncurse the Cursed Shield. The Paladin Shield, known as the Hero Shield in this hack, doesn't have the advantage of teaching Ultima for obvious reasons, but is still very useful for evasion and its elemental properties. This was also a good opportunity for my mages (currently Strago and Mog) to learn any spells they needed. Strago learned our recently-earned Holy spell, which is certainly going to be useful.
Even with liberal use of fast-forward, uncursing the shield took about 25 minutes at the start of the stream. But we got it!
With the Force Shields reserved for the mages, the Hero Shield is the only shield thieves can equip besides a basic Buckler, so our thieves will be using this pretty consistently from here on out.
Because Strago and Mog had learned so much magic, I swapped the team around a bit. The new team was Cyan the knight, Locke the thief, Sabin the white mage, and Terra the black mage. Terra benefits from some of the female-only equipment such as the Mystery Veil and Minerva (Bust (ier?)), both of which offer some nice magic evasion.
We spent some time in the dinosaur forest, trying to steal from Tyrannosaurs in order to get a Black Robe. At least for Terra, it's not very important, but I thought it could be good for Mog and/or Setzer, so I held out until I had two of them. Probably because of the level differential with these strong enemies, stealing from the dinosaurs took ages.
I also took a little detour into the Ancient Castle under Figaro Castle again. I went with the exclusive purpose of changing Odin into Raiden, who teaches Slowga, Tornado, and Quick. Raiden is actually one of those espers that can be used by both white mages and black mages, too, as the Tornado spell doesn't appear super often and it's been a white magic spell in at least one game. Quick has only ever appeared as Time Magic in other games.
Finally, just over an hour into this stream, we equipped properly for the Fanatics' Tower. Cyan was using Lightbringer, Aegis Shield, Priest Miter and Force Armor for 131 MBlock%. Gau was using Man Eater, Hero Shield, Red Cap and Force Armor, along with a White Cape and Zephyr Cloak for 111 MBlock%. At first, Sabin and Setzer had Reflecting Rings on and Gau and Cyan didn't, planning to be able to inflict berserk on Cyan and Gau while having them resist the majority of spells. That didn't really work out and I ended up putting Reflect Rings on Cyan and Gau after all.
It wasn't too long before we decided to take on the Holy Dragon. Gau took off his Reflect Ring and put on a Valiant Knife. My hope was to inflict berserk on Gau. Gau's Hero Shield allows him to absorb the Holy Dragon's Holy spells, meaning there was nothing that could actually harm any of us at all. On turn 2, Sabin cast Berserk on Gau. We also used Silence on the dragon, so the battle was pretty darn trivial; I was technically able to win with the controller down, actually.We did just about every abuse possible in this battle, and it almost ended too quickly to enjoy. And, by the way, we don't really gain anything from it. Oh well. One dragon left.
The tower had its usual shenanigans and slow battles. There was a nasty one where I wasn't prepared with Float for a Level 60 Magic who used Quake on us twice; the only thing that allowed anyone to survive was Gau's Hero Shield. Even applying Float in the battle wasn't really a great option because it was a pincer attack. But we managed that one.
I didn't want the Gem Box / Soul of Thamasa in this game as it didn't make sense for our job allocations, so as part of the hack I replaced it with the Ultima Tome, which is a relic with no function other than teaching Ultima exclusively to black mages.
For the battle with the Magimaster, I went in with a similar setup to the White Dragon, getting Gau berserked and having him attack with the defense-ignoring Valiant Knife. Sabin went to work pretty quickly trying to get Reraise (Life 3) set on the entire team. Setzer's non-elemental spells like Flare were doing ~3500 damage, and Gau's attacks varied with his HP. Gau's attacks also missed much more often than they hit; Magimaster has high evasion that you would normally never observe.
Mostly thanks to Setzer's attacks, we won. Everyone was revived automatically by Reraise after Ultima destroyed us.
It wouldn't be unheard of to accidentally get wiped on the way out of the tower, but the escape was pretty uneventful, thankfully.
Though I tried to come up with ways for everyone to contribute, besides those specific boss setups, Cyan and Gau were really just tanky observers through the entire tower. It wasn't completely uninteresting despite this; there were specific things I did to survive with the equipment constraints, manage Sabin's MP, and let Setzer carry the team offensively that I wouldn't think about in a more standard playthrough.
At the bottom of the tower, I noticed Setzer had 96% of Ultima learned from the Ultima Tome. I figured we should polish that off!
