Final Fantasy VII Classic Jobs Part IV
Jan. 14th, 2024 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingThe fourth session of my quest to beat Final Fantasy VII with the "classic" party was played on January 13, 2024.
We started from outside of Costa Del Sol. I was joined early on by user HiltEmUp for a while which kept the play a bit fresh with some discussion about what was happening. When I started the path up the Corel mountain, I brought Yufflee for the first time and got her to steal a Diamond Pin for Red XIII/Black XII, then retreated and switched to using Red XIII along with Cloud and Barret. I pointed out that I was likely to want to make use of Lunatic High through the game, since it's my only source of the valuable haste status.
I got all of the goodies in this area and proceeded to the Gold Saucer. I either remembered or lucked into going to the right venues in the Gold Saucer to get Cait Sith and then get thrown into Corel Prison pretty quickly. I didn't loggygag around the prison, but I accidentally wandered into the desert once. The nice thing was that we had a chance encounter with a Cactuar, which provided a lovely 10000 gil for our cash-stretched team.
Despite his white mage-y tendencies, Barret had no problem dealing with Dyne. I considered throwing magic items at him but figured I should save those.
Then we did a chocobo race! I am not sure whether my controller's shoulder buttons are working or not, actually - this is a controller that I fixed myself recently, so, uh, there's a legitimate possibility I messed something up. I wasn't sure the stamina recovery thing was working. But I won anyway.
We went to Gongaga, which is optional, but we grabbed a Mystify materia and the Deathblow materia which is legal for knights in 2024. We also got to fight Reno and Rude. We mostly focused-fire on Reno.
A funny behaviour happened, or maybe it's not as unusual as I think? But Reno left the fight and Rude stuck around for a bit.
Next up, we visited Cosmo Canyon. I dashed through the part where you need to run around talking to people to trigger events and got into the Cave of the Gi. I forgot to shop at the materia store, which is a bit annoying, but it probably doesn't matter too much. Some of the fights here were actually pretty tough! Particularly the huge spider fellows.
This area has little treasure that really benefits us. Things like Added Effect and Gravity were pretty exciting for me with my 2022 team, but they do absolutely nothing for us this year. Speaking of Gravity, here's the boss, who I gave a Phoenix Down to:
I decided to play through Nibelheim today, too. This may have been a mistake. I switched the party to Cloud, Barret and Yuffie because I wanted Yuffie to develop some limit breaks. That may also have been a mistake.
I wandered through town, playing Tifa's piano and grabbing items from cloaked people, and started into the mansion. I decided, while I was here, I ought to grab Cosmo Memory from the safe. I knew that Lost Number could be tough, but I severely underestimated how tough he can be with literally zero magical offense.
Lost Number's physical form completely wrecked us. I struggled for several minutes to keep up, throwing out several Phoenix Downs as I responded to his hideously powerful punches, dealing ~100 damage with Yuffie's Greased Lightning. Eventually we ran out of steam and got our first game over.
So I had to run through Nibelheim again! I got the rest of the loot from the mansion but skipped the safe entirely. The safe has three (normally very exciting) prizes: the key to the basement to recruit Vincent (who I am skipping), the Odin materia (which I cannot use), and Red XIII's Cosmo Memory limit break (which I can't use until much later, and might never use given Lunatic High is my only way to cause haste). At least for now I'll just skip it.
Mt. Nibel was frustrating. There were approximately ten thousand random encounters, followed by a bit of bad play against a Dragon who destroyed me with Flame Thrower. That was only after I had stolen some Gold Armlets, and when I was a few steps from the save point though. Urgh. A second game over.
I took a second run at it and actually flicked on the "no encounters" mode to get back to where I was just a bit quicker (but also a bit weaker, due to fewer encounters). I got all the goodies and even stole five (I think) Gold Armlets from those troublesome Dragons. We had still been using Shinra Betas as armor and those have zero magic defense, so the Gold Armlets help our survivability a fair bit.
Finally, there was the matter of the Materia Keeper. For some reason, I kept Yuffie in the group even though a black mage would probably have been more of an asset here. The crux of the battle was staying healed enough to survive Trine, which was really no issue at all.
The materia that the Materia Keeper keeps is a Counter Attack materia, which the 2024 version of the rules allows knight to use! That's actually quite nice. Cloud strapped that on, and then we saved just outside of Rocket Town.
<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >
We started from outside of Costa Del Sol. I was joined early on by user HiltEmUp for a while which kept the play a bit fresh with some discussion about what was happening. When I started the path up the Corel mountain, I brought Yufflee for the first time and got her to steal a Diamond Pin for Red XIII/Black XII, then retreated and switched to using Red XIII along with Cloud and Barret. I pointed out that I was likely to want to make use of Lunatic High through the game, since it's my only source of the valuable haste status.
I got all of the goodies in this area and proceeded to the Gold Saucer. I either remembered or lucked into going to the right venues in the Gold Saucer to get Cait Sith and then get thrown into Corel Prison pretty quickly. I didn't loggygag around the prison, but I accidentally wandered into the desert once. The nice thing was that we had a chance encounter with a Cactuar, which provided a lovely 10000 gil for our cash-stretched team.
Despite his white mage-y tendencies, Barret had no problem dealing with Dyne. I considered throwing magic items at him but figured I should save those.
Then we did a chocobo race! I am not sure whether my controller's shoulder buttons are working or not, actually - this is a controller that I fixed myself recently, so, uh, there's a legitimate possibility I messed something up. I wasn't sure the stamina recovery thing was working. But I won anyway.
We went to Gongaga, which is optional, but we grabbed a Mystify materia and the Deathblow materia which is legal for knights in 2024. We also got to fight Reno and Rude. We mostly focused-fire on Reno.
A funny behaviour happened, or maybe it's not as unusual as I think? But Reno left the fight and Rude stuck around for a bit.
Next up, we visited Cosmo Canyon. I dashed through the part where you need to run around talking to people to trigger events and got into the Cave of the Gi. I forgot to shop at the materia store, which is a bit annoying, but it probably doesn't matter too much. Some of the fights here were actually pretty tough! Particularly the huge spider fellows.
This area has little treasure that really benefits us. Things like Added Effect and Gravity were pretty exciting for me with my 2022 team, but they do absolutely nothing for us this year. Speaking of Gravity, here's the boss, who I gave a Phoenix Down to:
I decided to play through Nibelheim today, too. This may have been a mistake. I switched the party to Cloud, Barret and Yuffie because I wanted Yuffie to develop some limit breaks. That may also have been a mistake.
I wandered through town, playing Tifa's piano and grabbing items from cloaked people, and started into the mansion. I decided, while I was here, I ought to grab Cosmo Memory from the safe. I knew that Lost Number could be tough, but I severely underestimated how tough he can be with literally zero magical offense.
Lost Number's physical form completely wrecked us. I struggled for several minutes to keep up, throwing out several Phoenix Downs as I responded to his hideously powerful punches, dealing ~100 damage with Yuffie's Greased Lightning. Eventually we ran out of steam and got our first game over.
So I had to run through Nibelheim again! I got the rest of the loot from the mansion but skipped the safe entirely. The safe has three (normally very exciting) prizes: the key to the basement to recruit Vincent (who I am skipping), the Odin materia (which I cannot use), and Red XIII's Cosmo Memory limit break (which I can't use until much later, and might never use given Lunatic High is my only way to cause haste). At least for now I'll just skip it.
Mt. Nibel was frustrating. There were approximately ten thousand random encounters, followed by a bit of bad play against a Dragon who destroyed me with Flame Thrower. That was only after I had stolen some Gold Armlets, and when I was a few steps from the save point though. Urgh. A second game over.
I took a second run at it and actually flicked on the "no encounters" mode to get back to where I was just a bit quicker (but also a bit weaker, due to fewer encounters). I got all the goodies and even stole five (I think) Gold Armlets from those troublesome Dragons. We had still been using Shinra Betas as armor and those have zero magic defense, so the Gold Armlets help our survivability a fair bit.
Finally, there was the matter of the Materia Keeper. For some reason, I kept Yuffie in the group even though a black mage would probably have been more of an asset here. The crux of the battle was staying healed enough to survive Trine, which was really no issue at all.
The materia that the Materia Keeper keeps is a Counter Attack materia, which the 2024 version of the rules allows knight to use! That's actually quite nice. Cloud strapped that on, and then we saved just outside of Rocket Town.
<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >
