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freshfeelingThis play session was played on February 22, 2019, roughly 4 months since the prior session and a bit over a year since the start of the run.
Honestly, I think I like Marty better. But he died here so maybe it's better that I didn't get too attached. Zalmo managed to revive several of his allies and eventually both Krile and Lenna were silenced, leaving us with relatively few options. I was starting to worry about having to repeat the fight. That didn't happen; Bartz slashed Zalmo down behind a tree.
Now it was time to head toward Bethla Garrison, starting with our encounter with Balk at Bed Desert. The novelty of this fight is that the party begins poisoned... and, to some extent, that Balk has an elemental gun. Normally it would be great to steal that, but other than stopping him from shooting us it wasn't valuable. His first shot against us was actually affected by Counter Magic, which was neat.
There was another interesting instance of Counter Magic but it was too hard keeping Lenna and Faris up without their death timers running out. We couldn't pull it off on this first try.
I realized that giving Bartz an ice Shield might be a great idea, but not confident enough that I could do it without any levelling... so I did some random battles. First we ended up in Doguola Pass. There was a battle with a dryad and panthers.
The stream got a bit frozen and weird here (thus the additional video), but this battle was quick and straightforward; within one round, we had one enemy dead, one as a frog, one critical, and one charmed. The amphibian-based carnage continued.
The next random battle we ended up in was at Grog Hill. There was a samurai, a chocobo, and some eyeball friends. Besides the fact that fighting samurais is a bit unusual there didn't seem to be anything unusual about this fight. Still, her well-positioned, well-timed Kotetsu effects were terrible and there was a point where the whole team was down except for Krile. We even got Meatbone Slashed once, but it worked out in the end, thanks to Chantage.
We ended up in a second consecutive random battle at Grog Hill while traversing the map. There were grenades, a knight and a black chocobo. In banter during this (relatively uneventful) fight I stated my new plan for Bed Desert: give Bartz an Ice Shield, give the mages each a White Robe, and give Faris the Chantage.
Out of concern for my levels, however, I did a third random battle at Grog Hill where we faced four bull demons, an archer, a summoner and an ahriman. The bull demons got charmed a lot and positioned themselves pretty stupidly, which made this fight fairly easy.
After that battle, we were next to Bed Desert and we began enacting our plan.
The intent here is to mitigate the Blaze Gun and some of the other elemental damage, and allow Faris to frequently revive theirself as needed. I didn't realize how strange it is having regen and poison at the same time at the start of this battle; these status normally negate each other.
Bartz got affected by Arm Shot/Don't Act almost right away, which is a shame after the careful planning. We needed to use Esuna to clear the poison anyway, so that didn't matter much. Faris charmed an enemy mage, and Krile aimed a Holy spell at Balk himself. She was killed because of that, but otherwise things seemed good.
Faris went a bit... kleptomanic in this battle and tried repeatedly to take Balk's hat and gun, and take the archers' bows, but even with moderate odds it took a long time for anything to happen. At least Faris got up after being knocked out every single turn! Eventually, Faris stole a bow from an archer with Concentrate, and that offered a pretty substantial reprieve.
Lenna eventually took out that knight, leaving only fully-equipped Balk and an archer with no bow. This allowed lots of time for Faris to loot their still-standing bodies. I think it took well over 20 attempts for Faris to get his Flash Hat off.
I decided I was also going to steal his gun, but strictly out of spite since nobody can use it. In the process, I delayed this battle for roughly another 15 minutes; perhaps we can consider this a form of useful level grinding? By the end, our party was mostly close to Balk's level, around levels 37-38.
That wraps up this session, and what seemed like another substantial obstacle for this variant playthrough was defeated - and thoroughly.
"Can you imagine? In the middle of a desert? He just wanted to poison an army, and they came right at him... bullied his team very, very gradually. He ran away, shooting at them again and again, saying 'no!', 'no!', 'no!', and they wouldn't listen! Ramza - that is to say, Faris - is a monster. You're right: my team is the bad guys."
We arrived in Zeltennia to speak to Delita, leading into our second battle with Zalmo. I reasoned that this battle with Delita helping out was a good way to get back into the game, neglecting to consider at first that Delita was a poorly-equipped chemist. An enemy oracle here affected Lenna with Silence Song, negating a spell she was preparing. It's pretty rare that I consider the impact of not learning Echo Herbs. Lenna was actually affected by silence twice!
This battle was very slow and contained. The enemies don't have highly damaging spells or anything, so it just took a while for it to resolve.
Faris kept Marty the knight charmed multiple times during this battle. Steal Heart itself had 67% odds and positioning worked out in such a way that Marty's allies weren't trying to flip him back to their team. Marty was actually quite strong, too. Things took a shocking turn when Delita betrayed Marty.
This battle was very slow and contained. The enemies don't have highly damaging spells or anything, so it just took a while for it to resolve.
Faris kept Marty the knight charmed multiple times during this battle. Steal Heart itself had 67% odds and positioning worked out in such a way that Marty's allies weren't trying to flip him back to their team. Marty was actually quite strong, too. Things took a shocking turn when Delita betrayed Marty.
Honestly, I think I like Marty better. But he died here so maybe it's better that I didn't get too attached. Zalmo managed to revive several of his allies and eventually both Krile and Lenna were silenced, leaving us with relatively few options. I was starting to worry about having to repeat the fight. That didn't happen; Bartz slashed Zalmo down behind a tree.
Now it was time to head toward Bethla Garrison, starting with our encounter with Balk at Bed Desert. The novelty of this fight is that the party begins poisoned... and, to some extent, that Balk has an elemental gun. Normally it would be great to steal that, but other than stopping him from shooting us it wasn't valuable. His first shot against us was actually affected by Counter Magic, which was neat.
There was another interesting instance of Counter Magic but it was too hard keeping Lenna and Faris up without their death timers running out. We couldn't pull it off on this first try.
I realized that giving Bartz an ice Shield might be a great idea, but not confident enough that I could do it without any levelling... so I did some random battles. First we ended up in Doguola Pass. There was a battle with a dryad and panthers.
The next random battle we ended up in was at Grog Hill. There was a samurai, a chocobo, and some eyeball friends. Besides the fact that fighting samurais is a bit unusual there didn't seem to be anything unusual about this fight. Still, her well-positioned, well-timed Kotetsu effects were terrible and there was a point where the whole team was down except for Krile. We even got Meatbone Slashed once, but it worked out in the end, thanks to Chantage.
We ended up in a second consecutive random battle at Grog Hill while traversing the map. There were grenades, a knight and a black chocobo. In banter during this (relatively uneventful) fight I stated my new plan for Bed Desert: give Bartz an Ice Shield, give the mages each a White Robe, and give Faris the Chantage.
Out of concern for my levels, however, I did a third random battle at Grog Hill where we faced four bull demons, an archer, a summoner and an ahriman. The bull demons got charmed a lot and positioned themselves pretty stupidly, which made this fight fairly easy.
After that battle, we were next to Bed Desert and we began enacting our plan.
The intent here is to mitigate the Blaze Gun and some of the other elemental damage, and allow Faris to frequently revive theirself as needed. I didn't realize how strange it is having regen and poison at the same time at the start of this battle; these status normally negate each other.
Bartz got affected by Arm Shot/Don't Act almost right away, which is a shame after the careful planning. We needed to use Esuna to clear the poison anyway, so that didn't matter much. Faris charmed an enemy mage, and Krile aimed a Holy spell at Balk himself. She was killed because of that, but otherwise things seemed good.
Faris went a bit... kleptomanic in this battle and tried repeatedly to take Balk's hat and gun, and take the archers' bows, but even with moderate odds it took a long time for anything to happen. At least Faris got up after being knocked out every single turn! Eventually, Faris stole a bow from an archer with Concentrate, and that offered a pretty substantial reprieve.
Lenna eventually took out that knight, leaving only fully-equipped Balk and an archer with no bow. This allowed lots of time for Faris to loot their still-standing bodies. I think it took well over 20 attempts for Faris to get his Flash Hat off.
I decided I was also going to steal his gun, but strictly out of spite since nobody can use it. In the process, I delayed this battle for roughly another 15 minutes; perhaps we can consider this a form of useful level grinding? By the end, our party was mostly close to Balk's level, around levels 37-38.
That wraps up this session, and what seemed like another substantial obstacle for this variant playthrough was defeated - and thoroughly.
"Can you imagine? In the middle of a desert? He just wanted to poison an army, and they came right at him... bullied his team very, very gradually. He ran away, shooting at them again and again, saying 'no!', 'no!', 'no!', and they wouldn't listen! Ramza - that is to say, Faris - is a monster. You're right: my team is the bad guys."
