Final Fantasy VII Classic Jobs Part XI
Jan. 28th, 2024 01:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingThis eleventh and probably final session was played on January 27th, 2024. As a reminder, this was played for RevenantKioku's FF7 with Jobs charity challenge with the additional constraint of only using a knight, a thief, a white mage, and a black mage... and never more than one of each. It's a minor but interesting remix, I think, since the usual randomization algorithm doesn't allow duplicate jobs. With this, roughly half the game's materia have been useless to us.
The first thing I wanted to do was head over to the Chocobo Farm to get some greens for a trick. On the way, I happened to spot Ultimate Weapon, so I decided we should have a talk. He did not want to talk.
This encounter wasn't particularly effective. Cloud has no means to attack at long range, so unless he gets a limit break he can't attack Ultimate Weapon at all in any aerial battles. We dealt a bit of damage but it was practically a stalemate, and then he flew away.
I went and bought a few greens - a single instance of each - and also sold a few of my consumables to get down to 1. I also bought nuts but that would turn out to not be useful. I decided to try out a pretty easy stat-pumping trick that I had once demonstrated via Twitter where the video had been lost to time. I was doing this from memory, so it took a few tries and I did mess up quite a few times, but it worked nicely.
The trick is:
If you're using Morph for this trick, it only works when at least one extra enemy is present, as otherwise the battle would end when the enemy is morphed. Thus, you can't do it with the single large enemies in the Gelnika, but you can do it with the Poodlers and Bad Raps there. This means this trick can be used to get huge numbers of Power Sources, Guard Sources, Speed Sources and Luck Sources... but not Magic Sources or Mind Sources.
Eventually, we duplicated enough Power Sources to max out both Cloud and Barret's strength stats (although their attack stats were visually maxed beforehand) and also pump Yuffie's a little bit. This image here was just after the first round of 99 Power Sources:
I didn't want to keep grinding strength, but I thought I might benefit from pumping my defense a little bit. It was either that or doing the game's final area. I chose defense.
We got enough Guard Sources to max out Cloud's vitality and boost Barret's quite substantially as well. I expect that Cloud having buffed defense would synergize very nicely with his high rate of using Cover.
Cloud is forced into the team and Barret, who is well-developed and my only white mage, was almost certainly going to stay in play. Consequently, I went into the Northern Cave with stats like this:
And here we go:
The fights were pretty manageable. Cloud and Barret are very strong now, so they pretty much humiliated the Dark Dragons and Parasites here. It wasn't too long before we encountered a Master Tonberry. This had me nervous, but it was actually on the easy side..
Other enemies like Ahrimans were also not really big concerns. There was no particular reason to hold onto limit breaks so I let loose at arbitrary points sometimes.
I was also quite intentional about attempting to get multiple copies of the items in the split paths. This was funny because in order to get the best duplicated treasures, I had to make my party Cloud, Barret and Cait Sith the black mage... and Cait Sith has only been in about 3 battles in the entire game. We encountered a couple more Master Tonberries and their Everyone's Grudge attacks only did 10 damage to Cait Sith. I believe that means Cait Sith has defeated a total of 1 enemy in the game. In the course of this we managed to morph two Master Tonberries to acquire a couple of extra Ribbons.
In addition to generally good gear and such, I was able to get the last few materia that the characters were eligible to use: Counter materia for thieves, Magic Counter for black mages, and Shield for Barriert.
Even in the deep parts, fights remained manageable. I thought I should worry about King Behemoths, but perhaps I was channeling Final Fantasy X. They were trivially easy, going down in seconds from Cloud and Barret's strong attacks.
The first Dragon Zombie we encountered died a bit faster than I expected, which left me less-than-prepared for Pandora's Box. Oh well.
It's a bit sad as well that we don't get this for our Enemy Skill materia, but them's the breaks.
I put my Save Crystal near the top of the pit where the team meets up. We did successfully duplicate a bunch of items, including Imperial Guard, the Counter materia, the Shield materia, and Thiefa's Mythril that is actually a Mystile.
Well, no reason to lollygag around here, right? I don't know what I could do to further my build substantially, especially considering the ease with which we got here. Let's mosey.
I hemmed and hawed about whether to bring a thief or not, and ultimately brought Cloud the knight, Barriert the white mage, and Black XII the black mage.
The battles on the way down were a piece of cake.
Now I had a look between sessions about how to fight Bizarro∙Sephiroth with one party because it would make the split battle so much easier. I wasn't sure about my party's levels (even Cait Sith) so I knew I wanted to stall the Jenova∙SYNTHESIS battle for a fair number of turns. I meant to remove Cloud's Counter Attack materia and Red XIII's Counter Magic materia to make the stalling easier, but I forgot. This resulted in a bit of a stupid fight where I buffed the enemy, using Regen and Barrier on Jenova and its tentacles to help it survive my team's counters.
After a good handful of turns, I started attacking. We didn't have a ton of interesting options, but we're strong. It was simple.
As we proceeded into the Bizarro∙Sephiroth fight, I considered equipping ultimate weapons since growth is no longer a consideration and we're at endgame. However, I was worried about needing to keep Red XIII's MP full to keep Limited Moon strong, and about Barret having enough accumulated AP to make Missing Score worthwhile. I ended up keeping their equips as-is, although I did throw on a few more mastered materia.
The next "Classic Jobs" playthrough I did in the Final Fantasy series both numerically and chronologically was for Final Fantasy VIII.
The first thing I wanted to do was head over to the Chocobo Farm to get some greens for a trick. On the way, I happened to spot Ultimate Weapon, so I decided we should have a talk. He did not want to talk.
This encounter wasn't particularly effective. Cloud has no means to attack at long range, so unless he gets a limit break he can't attack Ultimate Weapon at all in any aerial battles. We dealt a bit of damage but it was practically a stalemate, and then he flew away.
I went and bought a few greens - a single instance of each - and also sold a few of my consumables to get down to 1. I also bought nuts but that would turn out to not be useful. I decided to try out a pretty easy stat-pumping trick that I had once demonstrated via Twitter where the video had been lost to time. I was doing this from memory, so it took a few tries and I did mess up quite a few times, but it worked nicely.
The trick is:
- have zero of the item you want to duplicate
- have exactly 1 of a consumable item near the top of your item list, above any spaces
- use Morph or Steal successfully to acquire 1 of the item you want to duplicate (i.e. Power Sources from Screamers)
- select W-Item with a different character before the Morph or Steal finishes
- select the consumable item you have 1 of, and target it, also before the Morph or Steal finishes; don't select a second item
- once the Morph or Steal finishes, select the second item to use (which can be anything)
- cancel targeting that second item, and re-select and cancel it as many times as you'd like
If you're using Morph for this trick, it only works when at least one extra enemy is present, as otherwise the battle would end when the enemy is morphed. Thus, you can't do it with the single large enemies in the Gelnika, but you can do it with the Poodlers and Bad Raps there. This means this trick can be used to get huge numbers of Power Sources, Guard Sources, Speed Sources and Luck Sources... but not Magic Sources or Mind Sources.
Eventually, we duplicated enough Power Sources to max out both Cloud and Barret's strength stats (although their attack stats were visually maxed beforehand) and also pump Yuffie's a little bit. This image here was just after the first round of 99 Power Sources:
I didn't want to keep grinding strength, but I thought I might benefit from pumping my defense a little bit. It was either that or doing the game's final area. I chose defense.
We got enough Guard Sources to max out Cloud's vitality and boost Barret's quite substantially as well. I expect that Cloud having buffed defense would synergize very nicely with his high rate of using Cover.
Cloud is forced into the team and Barret, who is well-developed and my only white mage, was almost certainly going to stay in play. Consequently, I went into the Northern Cave with stats like this:
And here we go:
The fights were pretty manageable. Cloud and Barret are very strong now, so they pretty much humiliated the Dark Dragons and Parasites here. It wasn't too long before we encountered a Master Tonberry. This had me nervous, but it was actually on the easy side..
Other enemies like Ahrimans were also not really big concerns. There was no particular reason to hold onto limit breaks so I let loose at arbitrary points sometimes.
I was also quite intentional about attempting to get multiple copies of the items in the split paths. This was funny because in order to get the best duplicated treasures, I had to make my party Cloud, Barret and Cait Sith the black mage... and Cait Sith has only been in about 3 battles in the entire game. We encountered a couple more Master Tonberries and their Everyone's Grudge attacks only did 10 damage to Cait Sith. I believe that means Cait Sith has defeated a total of 1 enemy in the game. In the course of this we managed to morph two Master Tonberries to acquire a couple of extra Ribbons.
In addition to generally good gear and such, I was able to get the last few materia that the characters were eligible to use: Counter materia for thieves, Magic Counter for black mages, and Shield for Barriert.
Even in the deep parts, fights remained manageable. I thought I should worry about King Behemoths, but perhaps I was channeling Final Fantasy X. They were trivially easy, going down in seconds from Cloud and Barret's strong attacks.
The first Dragon Zombie we encountered died a bit faster than I expected, which left me less-than-prepared for Pandora's Box. Oh well.
It's a bit sad as well that we don't get this for our Enemy Skill materia, but them's the breaks.
I put my Save Crystal near the top of the pit where the team meets up. We did successfully duplicate a bunch of items, including Imperial Guard, the Counter materia, the Shield materia, and Thiefa's Mythril that is actually a Mystile.
Well, no reason to lollygag around here, right? I don't know what I could do to further my build substantially, especially considering the ease with which we got here. Let's mosey.
I hemmed and hawed about whether to bring a thief or not, and ultimately brought Cloud the knight, Barriert the white mage, and Black XII the black mage.
The battles on the way down were a piece of cake.
Now I had a look between sessions about how to fight Bizarro∙Sephiroth with one party because it would make the split battle so much easier. I wasn't sure about my party's levels (even Cait Sith) so I knew I wanted to stall the Jenova∙SYNTHESIS battle for a fair number of turns. I meant to remove Cloud's Counter Attack materia and Red XIII's Counter Magic materia to make the stalling easier, but I forgot. This resulted in a bit of a stupid fight where I buffed the enemy, using Regen and Barrier on Jenova and its tentacles to help it survive my team's counters.
After a good handful of turns, I started attacking. We didn't have a ton of interesting options, but we're strong. It was simple.
As we proceeded into the Bizarro∙Sephiroth fight, I considered equipping ultimate weapons since growth is no longer a consideration and we're at endgame. However, I was worried about needing to keep Red XIII's MP full to keep Limited Moon strong, and about Barret having enough accumulated AP to make Missing Score worthwhile. I ended up keeping their equips as-is, although I did throw on a few more mastered materia.
I also had Red XIII/Black XII set to his level 1 limit break so that my team could benefit from the haste effect granted by Lunatic High.
I don't believe I have literally ever fought Bizarro∙Sephiroth with a single party before! Back in 2022 I think I had two parties; I'm much more used to having three. The whole format felt just a touch different to me, including the messages at the start of battle.
A single-party fight is so fast and easy though, despite this thing's elaborate animations.
We proceeded to the Safer Sephiroth fight. Honestly, with how things have been for this team I wasn't expecting much trouble. Some of Safer Sephiroth's nastiest tricks involve status effects, but the entire team was outfitted with Ribbons. This allowed us to approach this fight in a straightforward way: Cloud uses D.Blow (which has a very high hit rate since he got his Mystile), Barret either buffs or heals or attacks, and Red XIII casts strong spells. In this case, Red XIII mostly cast spells from the Contain materia. Limit breaks also came into play, of course.
It was somewhat fortuitous that Sephiroth chose to break out Supernova just when white mage Barret's turn popped up.
The reason I say that it was fortuitous because Supernova hurts and Barret was able to offer some relief quickly.
When Sephiroth ascended, Cloud had no way to damage him other than Omnislash. We happened to have one after Supernova, and that was enough.
For some reason the Switch stopped me from taking captures after this point, including during the victory lap fight with Sephiroth and during the game's ending. I'm not sure if that's an intentional feature or what... but it's all in the video anyway.
With that, we won!
This was nice. It was fun to play. I know that I skewed my stats like crazy at the start of play this day, but I was still generally surprised by the ease of the Northern Cave and the last several bosses; it wasn't this easy in 2022! As I've said before, I didn't do it in time in 2022 so it felt very good to complete this during the month of January, and with a couple of days to spare. That said, I don't think I've got the time to beat the optional superbosses this month. Maybe I'll do it eventually. Probably not.
As for my specific circumstances with the use of classic jobs: it was nice to continue this series and I ought to continue a little further eventually. It's funny though: in 2022, Tifa was my knight and she was awful. I thought Cloud was an excellent knight this time, but he was certainly helped by D.Blow, Slash-all, and having advanced limit breaks earlier. Cloud was my white mage in 2022, and he didn't shine; it was really my blue mage and mime that seemed to carry the team back then, and I didn't have those. Barret the white mage was a real linchpin for me in this whole run, and using my thieves was also quite fun. Altogether, despite the restrictions and the abundant materia that I had no use for, I think I liked this run a lot better than 2022's run.
Another game where, surprisingly, sticking to the most classic party formations can actually be quite cool, I guess.
I don't believe I have literally ever fought Bizarro∙Sephiroth with a single party before! Back in 2022 I think I had two parties; I'm much more used to having three. The whole format felt just a touch different to me, including the messages at the start of battle.
A single-party fight is so fast and easy though, despite this thing's elaborate animations.
We proceeded to the Safer Sephiroth fight. Honestly, with how things have been for this team I wasn't expecting much trouble. Some of Safer Sephiroth's nastiest tricks involve status effects, but the entire team was outfitted with Ribbons. This allowed us to approach this fight in a straightforward way: Cloud uses D.Blow (which has a very high hit rate since he got his Mystile), Barret either buffs or heals or attacks, and Red XIII casts strong spells. In this case, Red XIII mostly cast spells from the Contain materia. Limit breaks also came into play, of course.
It was somewhat fortuitous that Sephiroth chose to break out Supernova just when white mage Barret's turn popped up.
The reason I say that it was fortuitous because Supernova hurts and Barret was able to offer some relief quickly.
When Sephiroth ascended, Cloud had no way to damage him other than Omnislash. We happened to have one after Supernova, and that was enough.
For some reason the Switch stopped me from taking captures after this point, including during the victory lap fight with Sephiroth and during the game's ending. I'm not sure if that's an intentional feature or what... but it's all in the video anyway.
With that, we won!
This was nice. It was fun to play. I know that I skewed my stats like crazy at the start of play this day, but I was still generally surprised by the ease of the Northern Cave and the last several bosses; it wasn't this easy in 2022! As I've said before, I didn't do it in time in 2022 so it felt very good to complete this during the month of January, and with a couple of days to spare. That said, I don't think I've got the time to beat the optional superbosses this month. Maybe I'll do it eventually. Probably not.
As for my specific circumstances with the use of classic jobs: it was nice to continue this series and I ought to continue a little further eventually. It's funny though: in 2022, Tifa was my knight and she was awful. I thought Cloud was an excellent knight this time, but he was certainly helped by D.Blow, Slash-all, and having advanced limit breaks earlier. Cloud was my white mage in 2022, and he didn't shine; it was really my blue mage and mime that seemed to carry the team back then, and I didn't have those. Barret the white mage was a real linchpin for me in this whole run, and using my thieves was also quite fun. Altogether, despite the restrictions and the abundant materia that I had no use for, I think I liked this run a lot better than 2022's run.
Another game where, surprisingly, sticking to the most classic party formations can actually be quite cool, I guess.
The next "Classic Jobs" playthrough I did in the Final Fantasy series both numerically and chronologically was for Final Fantasy VIII.
