Final Fantasy III Classic Jobs Part XI
Oct. 14th, 2023 02:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingWe're getting close to the end! This session was played on October 25, 2017.
We're starting pretty much ready for the game's final two areas, and three of our characters - Refia the thief, Arc the white age, and Luneth the black mage - have all attained job level 99 and earned their special Legendary Smith equipment that only exists in the 3D versions of this game. Ingus the knight is starting at level 91 and I figured we may as well get him boosted up so he can have his too... although it probably offers the least benefit considering the excellent weapons he already has. The knight's exclusive weapon, Save the Queen, has the same power as Ragnarok and little difference from Excalibur, but it has slightly different - arguably worse - stat boosts.
At around the 16:30 mark, Ingus hit job level 99. I went and got Save the Queen, but I prefer the stat boosts from Ragnarok. As expected this may have been a litte bit pointless. Well, it does offer a fairly nice Reflect itemcast. Maybe that will come in handy.
Now, back to the endgame areas. In the Syrcus Tower, I started running into some enemies I hadn't seen before that were palette swaps of the bosses in Eureka, like Glasya Labolas and Dark General. Glasya Labolas' confusion attacks worried me, but nothing ended up being too hard.
There were a fair number of treasures in Syrcus Tower, but they were mostly consumables like Phoenix Downs and Elixirs. Those are still useful, but not as exciting as the items I was gaining when I played through Eureka.
We got to a big mirror, we had friends help us with the power of love, and then we encountered Xande. Our physical attacks were pretty darn potent here, especially when Arc used a Rune Staff itemcast for the Erase effect to remove Xande's Protect buff. With Xande unprotected and Ingus hasted, Ingus actually landed a 9999 attack on him.
We're starting pretty much ready for the game's final two areas, and three of our characters - Refia the thief, Arc the white age, and Luneth the black mage - have all attained job level 99 and earned their special Legendary Smith equipment that only exists in the 3D versions of this game. Ingus the knight is starting at level 91 and I figured we may as well get him boosted up so he can have his too... although it probably offers the least benefit considering the excellent weapons he already has. The knight's exclusive weapon, Save the Queen, has the same power as Ragnarok and little difference from Excalibur, but it has slightly different - arguably worse - stat boosts.
At around the 16:30 mark, Ingus hit job level 99. I went and got Save the Queen, but I prefer the stat boosts from Ragnarok. As expected this may have been a litte bit pointless. Well, it does offer a fairly nice Reflect itemcast. Maybe that will come in handy.
Now, back to the endgame areas. In the Syrcus Tower, I started running into some enemies I hadn't seen before that were palette swaps of the bosses in Eureka, like Glasya Labolas and Dark General. Glasya Labolas' confusion attacks worried me, but nothing ended up being too hard.
There were a fair number of treasures in Syrcus Tower, but they were mostly consumables like Phoenix Downs and Elixirs. Those are still useful, but not as exciting as the items I was gaining when I played through Eureka.
We got to a big mirror, we had friends help us with the power of love, and then we encountered Xande. Our physical attacks were pretty darn potent here, especially when Arc used a Rune Staff itemcast for the Erase effect to remove Xande's Protect buff. With Xande unprotected and Ingus hasted, Ingus actually landed a 9999 attack on him.
He was defeated pretty quickly after that; it was perhaps 5 or 6 turns.
We suffered our plot-based loss to the Cloud of Darkness after this. It was a dramatic one; her lightning attack wrecked Refia pretty badly. With that, we entered the very small-sized World of Darkness and its wide variety of palette-swapped bosses.
We opened a box containing a Ribbon guarded by a Xande's Clone. Given how easy real Xande was, I thought it would be simple. This turned out to be true. We gave this first Ribbon to Luneth, since he was still wearing a hat from quite early in the game and Arc was already benefitting from his Angel Robe.
The first Dark World boss we encountered was Echinda. We approached the fight similarly to how we've done most lately; apply protect status to the team starting with the mages, cast Haste on Refia and then Ingus, and then kick its butt. One thing I know about the last several bosses in this game is that they use an awful lot of death-based abilities and other save-or-suck moves, but this one didn't get too bad. Refia and Ingus both did 9999 damage at different points in the fight. We took some serious damage from a Quake spell, but otherwise it was fine.
I am surprised by how often we get full heals in this game. When you get a full heal after every boss, it really means you can let loose in nearly every fight.
On the way to our second Dark World boss, we fought another Xande's Clone for another Ribbon. This one at least put up a bit of a fight by taking out Refia with a single, powerful spell.
"Oh, I hope it's not a giant floating eyeball. That would wreck my day. I don't like giant floating eyeballs. Oh, god dammit!"
Ahriman was up next. As with Echidna, my biggest concern was immediate death... but it didn't start the fight with any of that nonsense. Refia was petrified by its attack in turn 3 and again after I got her buffs back up. She was also killed, though it was by concentrated damage rather than death effects or anything like that.
The petrification made me extra excited to earn a third Ribbon - this one for Refia - on the way to the next boss.
The next boss was the underwhelmingly-named Two Headed Dragon. Refia dealt a cool 9999 at the first action of the fight and I kind of knew this would be a pretty quick and safe one.
Almost finally, we battled Cerberus. It's another one of the relatively rare enemies that can act three times per round. It happened to use this to drop Luneth pretty early on. We got him back up though, and the rest of the fight was fine.
Now we were ready to confront the Cloud of Darkness for real! In the scripted battle, physical attacks did 0 to the right tentacle; I didn't think that was going to carry over to the real one. The lightning attack did over 2000 damage to Refia still. I gave some serious consideration to what spellcasting items I could use since this is the final battle.
Later on in the same fight, for some reason, the lightning attack only did ~700 damage to Refia with seemingly no relevant defensive buff. I wasn't sure what was going on with damage formulas, but now I realize (I think!) that there's two different-but-similar lightning attacks.
The team managed to stay up for a good long time, maintaining buffs. About 5 minutes into the battle, things got worse, with Ingus being killed and Refia being in critical status. We were kind of juggling who was standing while we endured the assault, and I tried quite hard to persevere... but it wasn't in the cards this day.
I am sure this was at least partly strategic. I left the tentacles alive, including with buffs, and that may have been a serious error.
With this defeat, and this game's lack of save points, it set me back about two hours. It's kind of like this gameplay session never even happened. It was quite demoralizing. Not that I would ever give up so close to the end of course! But I had to be done for the day.
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We suffered our plot-based loss to the Cloud of Darkness after this. It was a dramatic one; her lightning attack wrecked Refia pretty badly. With that, we entered the very small-sized World of Darkness and its wide variety of palette-swapped bosses.
We opened a box containing a Ribbon guarded by a Xande's Clone. Given how easy real Xande was, I thought it would be simple. This turned out to be true. We gave this first Ribbon to Luneth, since he was still wearing a hat from quite early in the game and Arc was already benefitting from his Angel Robe.
The first Dark World boss we encountered was Echinda. We approached the fight similarly to how we've done most lately; apply protect status to the team starting with the mages, cast Haste on Refia and then Ingus, and then kick its butt. One thing I know about the last several bosses in this game is that they use an awful lot of death-based abilities and other save-or-suck moves, but this one didn't get too bad. Refia and Ingus both did 9999 damage at different points in the fight. We took some serious damage from a Quake spell, but otherwise it was fine.
I am surprised by how often we get full heals in this game. When you get a full heal after every boss, it really means you can let loose in nearly every fight.
On the way to our second Dark World boss, we fought another Xande's Clone for another Ribbon. This one at least put up a bit of a fight by taking out Refia with a single, powerful spell.
"Oh, I hope it's not a giant floating eyeball. That would wreck my day. I don't like giant floating eyeballs. Oh, god dammit!"
Ahriman was up next. As with Echidna, my biggest concern was immediate death... but it didn't start the fight with any of that nonsense. Refia was petrified by its attack in turn 3 and again after I got her buffs back up. She was also killed, though it was by concentrated damage rather than death effects or anything like that.
The petrification made me extra excited to earn a third Ribbon - this one for Refia - on the way to the next boss.
The next boss was the underwhelmingly-named Two Headed Dragon. Refia dealt a cool 9999 at the first action of the fight and I kind of knew this would be a pretty quick and safe one.
Almost finally, we battled Cerberus. It's another one of the relatively rare enemies that can act three times per round. It happened to use this to drop Luneth pretty early on. We got him back up though, and the rest of the fight was fine.
Now we were ready to confront the Cloud of Darkness for real! In the scripted battle, physical attacks did 0 to the right tentacle; I didn't think that was going to carry over to the real one. The lightning attack did over 2000 damage to Refia still. I gave some serious consideration to what spellcasting items I could use since this is the final battle.
Later on in the same fight, for some reason, the lightning attack only did ~700 damage to Refia with seemingly no relevant defensive buff. I wasn't sure what was going on with damage formulas, but now I realize (I think!) that there's two different-but-similar lightning attacks.
The team managed to stay up for a good long time, maintaining buffs. About 5 minutes into the battle, things got worse, with Ingus being killed and Refia being in critical status. We were kind of juggling who was standing while we endured the assault, and I tried quite hard to persevere... but it wasn't in the cards this day.
I am sure this was at least partly strategic. I left the tentacles alive, including with buffs, and that may have been a serious error.
With this defeat, and this game's lack of save points, it set me back about two hours. It's kind of like this gameplay session never even happened. It was quite demoralizing. Not that I would ever give up so close to the end of course! But I had to be done for the day.
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