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Final Fantasy III Classic Jobs Part IX
Oct. 13th, 2023 10:40 pmThis part was played on October 19, 2017.
I started with some of the (relatively abundant!) optional stuff that is available after getting the Invincible that I hadn't already done. Notably, it was possible to do the dungeons where you earn the Leviathan and Bahamut summons. Those spells can't be used by my characters, but I figured I'd want to be a bit generally stronger for the endgame regardless, so it was sort of a way to gain experience points.
Bahamut's Lair had a fair bit of treasure but few things besides consumables. We got to the end easily. For the battle with Bahamut, I expected it to be quite a bit like Odin where if the battle proceeds long enough the attacks get meaner. In the first couple of rounds, Ingus applied Protect and Arc applied Haste to Refia and Ingus. After that, I had Refia and Ingus doing over 3000 damage per turn and Luneth's first few spells were no slouch either. I knew this wouldn't take too long and that we'd be fine as long as there wasn't suddenly a Megaflare out of nowhere. And there wasn't!
With the money we won in this dungeon, we visited the Invincible's magic shop and bought the last couple of level 7 spells for Arc and Luneth.
Next, we went to Lake Dohr where we could see Leviathan swimming. The first couple of treasures in here were Hi-Potions (which I said were "insulting"). Most treasures again, were just consumables, and the enemies seemed even weaker than in Bahamut's Lair. I was choosing battle strategies that were still aiming to have Ingus catch up in job levels relative to the rest of the team; his job level was in the 50s while Refia was already at 99. I tried having him use his special Defend command a bit more expressly so he would more reliably act in battle.
For the battle with Leviathan, I decided to play it exactly the same way I did with Bahamut, other than Luneth focusing on lightning-elemental attacks. Luneth's Thundaga did over 5800 damage!
Leviathan did seem to be a bit more dangerous than other recent boss fights. He was able to do pretty significant damage to the whole party by casting Blizzaga, and his Tsunami did heavy damage that hit Ingus and Refia the hardest.
I was a bit worried about my capacity to recover from this, particularly if a Blizzaga and a Tsunami came out twice or in quick succession... but Leviathan ended up being defeated by a Thundaga on the very next turn.
It ain't in too many Final Fantasy games that Leviathan can provide a more interesting battle than Bahamut and the majority of plot bosses!
Finally now we went back into Doga's Manor, and got teleported into Doga's Grotto. There's a treasure room early in the dungeon that contains both a Rising Sun and a Lust Dagger, which together I thought would make a pretty noteworthy difference in Refia's attack power. By the numbers, yeah, they were better! But it wasn't as observable as I expected.
At the bottom of the grotto, in a wonderfully scenic room, we had to fight Doga and Unei. We had Arc apply Haste to the attackers and otherwise just kept the heat on the way we normally do. Doga used Flare, which I could've expected, and it clobbered Luneth for ~2500 damage. Doga went down pretty quickly though, right after he took out Luneth.
Unfortunately, this scenario resulted in Luneth starting the battle with Unei at 0 HP. In round 1, I had Refia use a Phoenix Down to get him back on his feet, Ingus used the Defender itemcast on Arc (which was probably pretty dumb), and Arc cast Curaga on the party. The timing of this worked out fairly well! But then Unei targetting Luneth with Tornado, leaving him with 2 HP. Finally, she attacked Luneth physically; this could've been a terrible situation, but Ingus covered Luneth and thus we were still in an overall better state than how we started.
This battle was a little tougher overall, for sure. Luneth went down again a few rounds later when Unei hit him with Haste-empowered physical attacks, and we weren't able to get our own physical attackers buffed because we were scrambling to stay alive. Fortunately, she had much lower HP than Bahamut and Leviathan and Luneth took Unei out with a few strong spells, immediately after Refia got wrecked by a Holy spell.
With this, we were able to go to... Eureka, or the Syrcus Tower, or whatever they wanted to call it. All of the endgame areas kind of blend together for me. The map was labelled "Ancients' Maze" but I swear we already did that (oh, that one was Ancient Ruins).
Inside, we found the real Earth Crystal and had to fight Titan (who looks an awful lot like Hecatoncheir). I just did my usual pattern of using Protect on everyone, using Haste on Refia and Ingus, and then making a bunch of damage numbers appear. On the stream, I said aloud, "Well, we're into the damage portion of the boss fight..." and then this happened:
Inside the Syrcus Tower, there was definitely a big step up in difficulty from a random encounters. We had a few close ones with the Doga's Clones, among others. The treasure chests were pretty nice, with Refia really benefitting from her new Fuma Garb. Eventually, we found the door into the Forbidden Land Eureka. I summarized what I knew about this place a bit after I entered: "Here, I'm supposed to fight a lot of bosses and get a lot of good stuff, right?".
The first special item and boss we ran into was Amon guarding the Moonring Blade. Amon is a weakness-changing guy like Hein/Hyne, but my physical fighters still seem to be able to damage him fairly effectively. He wasn't too strong on the offense, either, so we beat him without much struggle and claimed a great new weapon for Refia.
Shortly after, we also found an Omnirod in a treasure chest, which Luneth chose to wield in one hand with the Wizard Rod in the other for their nice stat boosts. He can still use itemcasts from the rods in our inventory, so this is pretty useful.
The next boss and item combo we encountered was Kunoichi guarding the Masamune. The weapon wasn't useful, but naturally I figured we should do this anyway. She took three actions in a turn, and with some fairly strong Aeroga casts she presented some legitimate danger. We had to revive Luneth at one point, and defeated her shortly after.
Next up was the one I really wanted: General guarding the Excalibur. It was a pretty standard fight where Refia eventually took him out with an 8000+ damage critical.
The next thing we found was Scylla guarding the Elder Staff, which I couldn't really tell what it was on the map screen. Scylla has some spells and her attack has a chance to petrify (which Ingus learned quickly), so there was definitely some risk here. The petrify only seemed to take hold once and otherwise this battle was pretty standard.
Immediately after, we found Guardian guarding Ragnarok. We treated this battle like most of the physical-oriented boss fights we have lately. It went fairly well; the different part, I guess, is that he uses Reflect on himself but thankfully I was paying attention and that didn't end up mattering. He managed to hit both Refia and Ingus with a Tornado on the turn where we won though.
Each fight actually seemed a little bit faster and easier, which I have to at least partly attribute to the nice boost each new piece of amazing gear gave us.
At this point, I was completely terrified of losing and having to start over without of the awesome stuff I'd accumulated, which is probably a pretty normal feeling in this game's final areas given its lack of save points. I really just wanted to leave. It was quite a walk, but I made it back to the outside of the Syrcus Tower without issue.
At some point toward endgame, entering an area opens up the remainder of the Legendary Smith stuff. I intended to get this done for at least Refia, Arc and Luneth before going back in. After leaving, we travelled to Falgabard and met the Legendary Smith again, which gives us Ultima Weapon.
Doing this will also open up the other Legendary Smith weapons for my job level 99 characters... but I had to stop this play session for now.
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I started with some of the (relatively abundant!) optional stuff that is available after getting the Invincible that I hadn't already done. Notably, it was possible to do the dungeons where you earn the Leviathan and Bahamut summons. Those spells can't be used by my characters, but I figured I'd want to be a bit generally stronger for the endgame regardless, so it was sort of a way to gain experience points.
Bahamut's Lair had a fair bit of treasure but few things besides consumables. We got to the end easily. For the battle with Bahamut, I expected it to be quite a bit like Odin where if the battle proceeds long enough the attacks get meaner. In the first couple of rounds, Ingus applied Protect and Arc applied Haste to Refia and Ingus. After that, I had Refia and Ingus doing over 3000 damage per turn and Luneth's first few spells were no slouch either. I knew this wouldn't take too long and that we'd be fine as long as there wasn't suddenly a Megaflare out of nowhere. And there wasn't!
With the money we won in this dungeon, we visited the Invincible's magic shop and bought the last couple of level 7 spells for Arc and Luneth.
Next, we went to Lake Dohr where we could see Leviathan swimming. The first couple of treasures in here were Hi-Potions (which I said were "insulting"). Most treasures again, were just consumables, and the enemies seemed even weaker than in Bahamut's Lair. I was choosing battle strategies that were still aiming to have Ingus catch up in job levels relative to the rest of the team; his job level was in the 50s while Refia was already at 99. I tried having him use his special Defend command a bit more expressly so he would more reliably act in battle.
For the battle with Leviathan, I decided to play it exactly the same way I did with Bahamut, other than Luneth focusing on lightning-elemental attacks. Luneth's Thundaga did over 5800 damage!
Leviathan did seem to be a bit more dangerous than other recent boss fights. He was able to do pretty significant damage to the whole party by casting Blizzaga, and his Tsunami did heavy damage that hit Ingus and Refia the hardest.
I was a bit worried about my capacity to recover from this, particularly if a Blizzaga and a Tsunami came out twice or in quick succession... but Leviathan ended up being defeated by a Thundaga on the very next turn.
It ain't in too many Final Fantasy games that Leviathan can provide a more interesting battle than Bahamut and the majority of plot bosses!
Finally now we went back into Doga's Manor, and got teleported into Doga's Grotto. There's a treasure room early in the dungeon that contains both a Rising Sun and a Lust Dagger, which together I thought would make a pretty noteworthy difference in Refia's attack power. By the numbers, yeah, they were better! But it wasn't as observable as I expected.
At the bottom of the grotto, in a wonderfully scenic room, we had to fight Doga and Unei. We had Arc apply Haste to the attackers and otherwise just kept the heat on the way we normally do. Doga used Flare, which I could've expected, and it clobbered Luneth for ~2500 damage. Doga went down pretty quickly though, right after he took out Luneth.
Unfortunately, this scenario resulted in Luneth starting the battle with Unei at 0 HP. In round 1, I had Refia use a Phoenix Down to get him back on his feet, Ingus used the Defender itemcast on Arc (which was probably pretty dumb), and Arc cast Curaga on the party. The timing of this worked out fairly well! But then Unei targetting Luneth with Tornado, leaving him with 2 HP. Finally, she attacked Luneth physically; this could've been a terrible situation, but Ingus covered Luneth and thus we were still in an overall better state than how we started.
This battle was a little tougher overall, for sure. Luneth went down again a few rounds later when Unei hit him with Haste-empowered physical attacks, and we weren't able to get our own physical attackers buffed because we were scrambling to stay alive. Fortunately, she had much lower HP than Bahamut and Leviathan and Luneth took Unei out with a few strong spells, immediately after Refia got wrecked by a Holy spell.
With this, we were able to go to... Eureka, or the Syrcus Tower, or whatever they wanted to call it. All of the endgame areas kind of blend together for me. The map was labelled "Ancients' Maze" but I swear we already did that (oh, that one was Ancient Ruins).
Inside, we found the real Earth Crystal and had to fight Titan (who looks an awful lot like Hecatoncheir). I just did my usual pattern of using Protect on everyone, using Haste on Refia and Ingus, and then making a bunch of damage numbers appear. On the stream, I said aloud, "Well, we're into the damage portion of the boss fight..." and then this happened:
Inside the Syrcus Tower, there was definitely a big step up in difficulty from a random encounters. We had a few close ones with the Doga's Clones, among others. The treasure chests were pretty nice, with Refia really benefitting from her new Fuma Garb. Eventually, we found the door into the Forbidden Land Eureka. I summarized what I knew about this place a bit after I entered: "Here, I'm supposed to fight a lot of bosses and get a lot of good stuff, right?".
The first special item and boss we ran into was Amon guarding the Moonring Blade. Amon is a weakness-changing guy like Hein/Hyne, but my physical fighters still seem to be able to damage him fairly effectively. He wasn't too strong on the offense, either, so we beat him without much struggle and claimed a great new weapon for Refia.
Shortly after, we also found an Omnirod in a treasure chest, which Luneth chose to wield in one hand with the Wizard Rod in the other for their nice stat boosts. He can still use itemcasts from the rods in our inventory, so this is pretty useful.
The next boss and item combo we encountered was Kunoichi guarding the Masamune. The weapon wasn't useful, but naturally I figured we should do this anyway. She took three actions in a turn, and with some fairly strong Aeroga casts she presented some legitimate danger. We had to revive Luneth at one point, and defeated her shortly after.
Next up was the one I really wanted: General guarding the Excalibur. It was a pretty standard fight where Refia eventually took him out with an 8000+ damage critical.
The next thing we found was Scylla guarding the Elder Staff, which I couldn't really tell what it was on the map screen. Scylla has some spells and her attack has a chance to petrify (which Ingus learned quickly), so there was definitely some risk here. The petrify only seemed to take hold once and otherwise this battle was pretty standard.
Immediately after, we found Guardian guarding Ragnarok. We treated this battle like most of the physical-oriented boss fights we have lately. It went fairly well; the different part, I guess, is that he uses Reflect on himself but thankfully I was paying attention and that didn't end up mattering. He managed to hit both Refia and Ingus with a Tornado on the turn where we won though.
Each fight actually seemed a little bit faster and easier, which I have to at least partly attribute to the nice boost each new piece of amazing gear gave us.
At this point, I was completely terrified of losing and having to start over without of the awesome stuff I'd accumulated, which is probably a pretty normal feeling in this game's final areas given its lack of save points. I really just wanted to leave. It was quite a walk, but I made it back to the outside of the Syrcus Tower without issue.
At some point toward endgame, entering an area opens up the remainder of the Legendary Smith stuff. I intended to get this done for at least Refia, Arc and Luneth before going back in. After leaving, we travelled to Falgabard and met the Legendary Smith again, which gives us Ultima Weapon.
Doing this will also open up the other Legendary Smith weapons for my job level 99 characters... but I had to stop this play session for now.
<< Start | < Previous | Index | Next >
