Final Fantasy VII Classic Jobs Part VIII
Jan. 21st, 2024 02:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingThe eighth session of my 2024 run of Final Fantasy VII with jobs, where I had a special arrangement to only use knight, thief, white mage and black mage, was played on January 20th. This particular session was entirely sidequests and minigames, including some rather rough treatment by the game’s RNG. 
Battle Square had its ups and downs. I used Cloud. His knightly tendencies allow him very high HP, D.Blow which can absorb HP, and Slash-All for pesky groups. After the first round, I remembered to equip him with a Ribbon. There was some tension, and a few shiny moments in this process but for the mostpart it was really boring, even at x3 speed. It didn’t help that I got the ½ Speed modifier in more than half of my attempts, and the broken weapon in several as well.
Still, there were lots of successful runs! Shortly, before I ended for the night, I did manage to get Omnislash for Cloud.
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As planned, I wanted to start with some chocobo breeding. I needed to get the starting, um, ingredients for proper chocobo breeding, including a “good” chocobo from the Gold Saucer region and a “great” chocobo from the Mideel area.
That went fairly well… although, after getting a female good chocobo named Food (f-emale + g-ood) the game wasn’t allowing my great chocobo to be male. I truly though the chocobo’s gender wasn’t determined until it was moved, but perhaps I misremembered this. After many attempts I decided instead to just catch more great chocobos, eventually getting a male named Meat (m-ale + gr-eat).
Food and Meat: a match destined in the stars.
That went fairly well… although, after getting a female good chocobo named Food (f-emale + g-ood) the game wasn’t allowing my great chocobo to be male. I truly though the chocobo’s gender wasn’t determined until it was moved, but perhaps I misremembered this. After many attempts I decided instead to just catch more great chocobos, eventually getting a male named Meat (m-ale + gr-eat).
Food and Meat: a match destined in the stars.
I really wanted a green chocobo first so that I could reach the Ancient Forest, and I figured doing so would allow enough time for Food and Meat to breed again. It didn’t take long for me to get a male green chocobo who I named Meen (m-ale + gr-een). Meen and I boarded the airship and entered the Ancient Forest.
The Ancient Forest is an optional sidequest that would be perfectly skippable for most groups playing this variant and for most casual players, but I thought it would be valuable for the sake of the Slash-All materia (for Cloud the knight), the Spiggan / Spring Gun Clip for Red XIII (which is fairly strong and has a large magic bonus), and the Apocalypse sword. There actually were two puzzle elements I had to look up while I was playing, which is somewhat shameful, but the trip was generally successful. It was frustrating at times fighting the twig enemies who have excellent evasion but all of the other enemies were easy.
I was going to proceed with chocobos, having in mind a personal goal of getting at least a black chocobo. This was really just about having a strong chocobo for racing rather than accessing materia caves, as none of those actually help me at all in this run. To this end, I intended to breed Food and Meat again to get a female blue chocobo but, after saving and resetting, all I ever got were male green chocobos, every time, over 10+ attempts with various sidesteps and tweaks used to attempt to alter the RNG. If the chocobo I wanted existed I guess she would’ve been called Flue, but sadly, she was not born into this timeline.
After all of these breeding attempts I eventually said, “eff this” and just chose to race Meen the green chocobo repeatedly to acquire prizes and GP to fund any other Gold Saucer action that was required. Chocobo racing, as ever, is rather repetitive and it makes me very thankful for this version’s x3 speed feature… but it was slow and mostly unexciting regardless. Between Food and Meat reaching A rank and Meen squeezing into S rank, I had a fair bit of GP and figured I should attempt what I wanted to do in Battle Square.
Battle Square had its ups and downs. I used Cloud. His knightly tendencies allow him very high HP, D.Blow which can absorb HP, and Slash-All for pesky groups. After the first round, I remembered to equip him with a Ribbon. There was some tension, and a few shiny moments in this process but for the mostpart it was really boring, even at x3 speed. It didn’t help that I got the ½ Speed modifier in more than half of my attempts, and the broken weapon in several as well.
Still, there were lots of successful runs! Shortly, before I ended for the night, I did manage to get Omnislash for Cloud.
Among other minor prizes from all of this chocobo and battling nonsense, we earned an Enemy Away materia, two Pre-Emptive materia, a Speed Plus materia, and a Gil Plus materia. Most of these are things that will help make our thieves (Tifa, Cid and Yuffie) more interesting and useful.
I saved outside of Junon; the Underwater Reactor quest is next. So far, I think we are in great shape to finish the game during the month of January this year.
