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freshfeelingThis session, which starts at the Fork Tower, was played on August 7, 2017.
For not-the-first time, I put the physical attackers on the magical side and the magical people on the physical side. Reload.
Maybe I'm missing something that ought to be obvious but is there any kind of in-game indication about which side is which? I usually screw this up.
Against Minotaur, Bartzs used Guard while Faris attacked with the Chicken Knife. This wasn't perfect without Faris in critical, so I tried to get that range to work out. I actually got pretty lucky at the start of the battle, but that luck didn't continue. It took a minute or two of struggling with healing, but eventually we got Bartsz stable and Faris critical, which meant the rest of the battle slowly took care of itself.
Oh. Then Bartz somehow got caught between actions and we died.
I equipped a bit differently for attempt #2, including using a Rising Sun from the back row instead of the Chicken Knife. I used a "safer" rhythm, too: on Faris' turn, get attacked, switch to Bartz and immediately select Guard, then immediately select Attack with Faris. Honestly, I don't think any struggle I had here was anything to do with my designated jobs, rather it's just the difference between playing intelligently and not.
Omniscient's just a big loser.
I went into the Void next, which I guess was kind of exploratory... although frankly, my team would benefit very little from Istory Falls and the Deep Sea Trench, so maybe this is just the best choice. Even though it's the game's final area, there were few surprises or real hardships from the enemies here.
Against Calofisteri, we just attacked. When she used Reflect, Krile dispelled it so Lenna could keep blasting. We had no problem overpowering her Drain spells.
We narrowly avoided being petrified immediately after that battle and then we were able to save. Byblos has much stronger attacks and felt a bit closer, but went down to 7000 damage Firaga spells.
When I got to the basement of the castle, I didn't actually remember the details of which boss was which. It was only when I entered battle with Azulmagia that I said, "This is the blue magic guy". He used Level 2 Old on us, which is really unfortunate in that it worked very well. I wasted a few Magic Lamp uses to try to ensure I had Odin ready for subsequent battles, but they did paltry damage. After I healed some of the oldness, he used Level 2 Old again followed by Mighty Guard; I was having time hurting him substantially at that point. We managed, but he really prolonged the fight. With that, we got another save point.
Next was Catastrophe. We have no access to the float status without some kind of lengthy trip to confuse an enemy to use the Float spell on us, and Earth Shaker remains pretty darn damaging. But with a Curaga each turn, it wasn't that hard.
Before the next one - Halicarnassus - I remembered to turn the party into frogs before starting. That gave us a pretty big advantage at the start. Even though I recall this boss using some high-powered magic, it really just stuck with low-powered physical attacks. It was one of the easiest so far.
Finally, after several rather easy bosses, the next one was Twintania, who kicked the crap out of us. Actually, more corectly, it kicked the crap out of 3 of us and then took several turns to take Krile out. It used a Mega Flare on us that we couldn't really weather. Now, humorously, I had Krile use the Magic Lamp when everyone else died hoping for Phoenix, when Odin appeared. It was only after this that I remembered I could just use this to defeat Twintania, but only during that short charging window before Giga Flare.
On the second attempt, the whole team got stunned by Mind Blast until Twintania started charging and we couldn't unleash Odin in time to win.
Even on the third attempt, which I was feeling much more ready for, I couldn't quite get the Magic Lamp out in time.
The fourth one just went terribly wrong kind of like the first, because of an ill-timed Mega Flare.
We finally got him on the fifth!
We entered the last section, fled from two very unsuccessful battles with King Behemoths, and ran into Gilgamesh. We were easily able to steal a nice Genji Shield. That said, this battle wasn't easy! I think my low levels from skipping 50% of the merged world dungeons might be catching up, even if my equipment and abilities are in a great state.
I went back into the castle area to save and heal. I fought an Alte Roite/Jura Aevis while I was there, and then went back into the void. I went directly to Necrophobe and got wrecked dramatically before my team could really take action. The second went better, owing to a pretty effective used of Magic Lamp Syldra at the start of the fight. I got one Barrier down, and didn't realize that the next Magic Lamp usage would bring up Carbuncle, which mostly works against me in this fight. The end result was pretty similar to the first.
The third try, I think I may have been more ready. I gave Krile some Hermes Sandals so she could get Shell ready on all of us more easily (not to mention to speed of healing). I had this brilliant plan for Faris to activate Carbuncle via Magic Lamp and then multi-reflect Firaga onto the Barriers, only for Faris to die before using Magic Lamp and thus burn my own party's faces off.
On the fourth try, something cool happened. The strategy in general was similar to the previous time, including the use of Carbuncle and reflected spells. However, I had Lenna use the Magic Lamp and extra time after expecting some kind of damaging spell only for it to be a Catoblepas / Demon Eye that insta-killed two Barriers! With this fluke, we actually got all of the Barriers down with all four party members standing.
But dude's attacks are really hard! We got hit with the multi-target maelstrom and got picked apart by those rapid fire double physicals, including Vacuum Wave. This was pretty nearly the best set-up I could hope for, with Bartzs'z Excalibur doing that crazy 7000+ damage hit. Unfortunately it didn't feel like enough, particularly not reliably. I exited, thinking mainly that more Hermes Sandals might help.
For some reason, the thing I chose to do to gain some levels and money was the Phoenix Tower. For experience and money, uh, maybe. I don't think it's a particularly great grinding spot but at least there was sort of a goal to it, but the Phoenix doesn't help us at all. We also did Istory Falls. There's no spectacular treasure for this party, the Leviathan summon doesn't help (we actually left without it), and the additional tablet is pretty meaningless too, but the levels were perhaps making a difference; for Bartsz, these two dungeons were a difference of roughly 300 max HP. We were all level 37.
We descended into the Rift again, saved at the castle save point, and even took another shot at Necrophobe. This time, we had Hermes Sandals on Bartz, Faris and Krile (I had enough for Lenna but kept her Protect Ring on). I also put Faris in the back row. It went terribly, which I would attribute to bad luck with the random reflected targeting of spells.
Necrophobe attempt #6! I got Shell on most of the party before Barriers came down and generally focused on surviving. When we had our heads above water I used the Magic Lamp. I triggered Catoblepas again with two Barriers left and I actually said, "Oh yeah!"... and then those two Barriers died. I was, again, in excellent shape.
And we pulled it out! We multi-reflected spells for massive damage and it went well.
The only real downside is Faris didn't manage to steal the Genji Armor in time. I decided not to make a fuss about that (instead saying I'll keep a separate save file).
I decided to take a shot at Exdeath, too, forgetting to save after the big cutscene before the fight. Krile focused on buffs, as you may expect. The tree part was easy peasy. When Neo Exdeath showed up, I happened to have Golem ready on the Magic Lamp, so that was cool. I managed the start of the fight okay, but after Grand Cross most characters were old. I actually didn't see the visual evidence of Krile being old'd, which is unfortunate because shortly after her Curaga spell was doing ~800 healing instead of ~1500. We were no longer able to keep up with Almagest, Faris had a doom timer, and Neo Exdeath casted Dispel on someone; a lot of things went wrong at the same time. The next Almagest was a big ol' wipe.
It's too bad I couldn't pull that out but I couldn't do another run right away. There will have to be a next time.
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For not-the-first time, I put the physical attackers on the magical side and the magical people on the physical side. Reload.
Maybe I'm missing something that ought to be obvious but is there any kind of in-game indication about which side is which? I usually screw this up.
Against Minotaur, Bartzs used Guard while Faris attacked with the Chicken Knife. This wasn't perfect without Faris in critical, so I tried to get that range to work out. I actually got pretty lucky at the start of the battle, but that luck didn't continue. It took a minute or two of struggling with healing, but eventually we got Bartsz stable and Faris critical, which meant the rest of the battle slowly took care of itself.
Oh. Then Bartz somehow got caught between actions and we died.
I equipped a bit differently for attempt #2, including using a Rising Sun from the back row instead of the Chicken Knife. I used a "safer" rhythm, too: on Faris' turn, get attacked, switch to Bartz and immediately select Guard, then immediately select Attack with Faris. Honestly, I don't think any struggle I had here was anything to do with my designated jobs, rather it's just the difference between playing intelligently and not.
Omniscient's just a big loser.
I went into the Void next, which I guess was kind of exploratory... although frankly, my team would benefit very little from Istory Falls and the Deep Sea Trench, so maybe this is just the best choice. Even though it's the game's final area, there were few surprises or real hardships from the enemies here.
Against Calofisteri, we just attacked. When she used Reflect, Krile dispelled it so Lenna could keep blasting. We had no problem overpowering her Drain spells.
We narrowly avoided being petrified immediately after that battle and then we were able to save. Byblos has much stronger attacks and felt a bit closer, but went down to 7000 damage Firaga spells.
When I got to the basement of the castle, I didn't actually remember the details of which boss was which. It was only when I entered battle with Azulmagia that I said, "This is the blue magic guy". He used Level 2 Old on us, which is really unfortunate in that it worked very well. I wasted a few Magic Lamp uses to try to ensure I had Odin ready for subsequent battles, but they did paltry damage. After I healed some of the oldness, he used Level 2 Old again followed by Mighty Guard; I was having time hurting him substantially at that point. We managed, but he really prolonged the fight. With that, we got another save point.
Next was Catastrophe. We have no access to the float status without some kind of lengthy trip to confuse an enemy to use the Float spell on us, and Earth Shaker remains pretty darn damaging. But with a Curaga each turn, it wasn't that hard.
Before the next one - Halicarnassus - I remembered to turn the party into frogs before starting. That gave us a pretty big advantage at the start. Even though I recall this boss using some high-powered magic, it really just stuck with low-powered physical attacks. It was one of the easiest so far.
Finally, after several rather easy bosses, the next one was Twintania, who kicked the crap out of us. Actually, more corectly, it kicked the crap out of 3 of us and then took several turns to take Krile out. It used a Mega Flare on us that we couldn't really weather. Now, humorously, I had Krile use the Magic Lamp when everyone else died hoping for Phoenix, when Odin appeared. It was only after this that I remembered I could just use this to defeat Twintania, but only during that short charging window before Giga Flare.
On the second attempt, the whole team got stunned by Mind Blast until Twintania started charging and we couldn't unleash Odin in time to win.
Even on the third attempt, which I was feeling much more ready for, I couldn't quite get the Magic Lamp out in time.
The fourth one just went terribly wrong kind of like the first, because of an ill-timed Mega Flare.
We finally got him on the fifth!
We entered the last section, fled from two very unsuccessful battles with King Behemoths, and ran into Gilgamesh. We were easily able to steal a nice Genji Shield. That said, this battle wasn't easy! I think my low levels from skipping 50% of the merged world dungeons might be catching up, even if my equipment and abilities are in a great state.
I went back into the castle area to save and heal. I fought an Alte Roite/Jura Aevis while I was there, and then went back into the void. I went directly to Necrophobe and got wrecked dramatically before my team could really take action. The second went better, owing to a pretty effective used of Magic Lamp Syldra at the start of the fight. I got one Barrier down, and didn't realize that the next Magic Lamp usage would bring up Carbuncle, which mostly works against me in this fight. The end result was pretty similar to the first.
The third try, I think I may have been more ready. I gave Krile some Hermes Sandals so she could get Shell ready on all of us more easily (not to mention to speed of healing). I had this brilliant plan for Faris to activate Carbuncle via Magic Lamp and then multi-reflect Firaga onto the Barriers, only for Faris to die before using Magic Lamp and thus burn my own party's faces off.
On the fourth try, something cool happened. The strategy in general was similar to the previous time, including the use of Carbuncle and reflected spells. However, I had Lenna use the Magic Lamp and extra time after expecting some kind of damaging spell only for it to be a Catoblepas / Demon Eye that insta-killed two Barriers! With this fluke, we actually got all of the Barriers down with all four party members standing.
But dude's attacks are really hard! We got hit with the multi-target maelstrom and got picked apart by those rapid fire double physicals, including Vacuum Wave. This was pretty nearly the best set-up I could hope for, with Bartzs'z Excalibur doing that crazy 7000+ damage hit. Unfortunately it didn't feel like enough, particularly not reliably. I exited, thinking mainly that more Hermes Sandals might help.
For some reason, the thing I chose to do to gain some levels and money was the Phoenix Tower. For experience and money, uh, maybe. I don't think it's a particularly great grinding spot but at least there was sort of a goal to it, but the Phoenix doesn't help us at all. We also did Istory Falls. There's no spectacular treasure for this party, the Leviathan summon doesn't help (we actually left without it), and the additional tablet is pretty meaningless too, but the levels were perhaps making a difference; for Bartsz, these two dungeons were a difference of roughly 300 max HP. We were all level 37.
We descended into the Rift again, saved at the castle save point, and even took another shot at Necrophobe. This time, we had Hermes Sandals on Bartz, Faris and Krile (I had enough for Lenna but kept her Protect Ring on). I also put Faris in the back row. It went terribly, which I would attribute to bad luck with the random reflected targeting of spells.
Necrophobe attempt #6! I got Shell on most of the party before Barriers came down and generally focused on surviving. When we had our heads above water I used the Magic Lamp. I triggered Catoblepas again with two Barriers left and I actually said, "Oh yeah!"... and then those two Barriers died. I was, again, in excellent shape.
And we pulled it out! We multi-reflected spells for massive damage and it went well.
The only real downside is Faris didn't manage to steal the Genji Armor in time. I decided not to make a fuss about that (instead saying I'll keep a separate save file).
I decided to take a shot at Exdeath, too, forgetting to save after the big cutscene before the fight. Krile focused on buffs, as you may expect. The tree part was easy peasy. When Neo Exdeath showed up, I happened to have Golem ready on the Magic Lamp, so that was cool. I managed the start of the fight okay, but after Grand Cross most characters were old. I actually didn't see the visual evidence of Krile being old'd, which is unfortunate because shortly after her Curaga spell was doing ~800 healing instead of ~1500. We were no longer able to keep up with Almagest, Faris had a doom timer, and Neo Exdeath casted Dispel on someone; a lot of things went wrong at the same time. The next Almagest was a big ol' wipe.
It's too bad I couldn't pull that out but I couldn't do another run right away. There will have to be a next time.
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