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freshfeelingI had made a lot of progress last time, but my party was still really just berserkers and bards (and a stand-in for a dragoon). In this session, on June 18th, I was sure to enable the remaining jobs.
We started out at Crescent because our next official destination was Catapult to talk to Cid and Mid. I happened to fight enemies here and found some Harvesters. I realized these enemies were the ones who drop Death Sickles (and that I had mis-remembered that the Bio Soldiers were the ones, because they also appear in this area). I fought a little bit until I had two Death Sickles.
This marked a pretty substantial jump in Faris' effectiveness as a berserker.
Next, we needed Adamantite and thus had to fight Adamantoise. With strong attacks and Romeo's Ballad in play, it should have been easy... but he kept targeting the bards over and over and I had left them in the front row to start. It ended up being a bit of a stupid fight where I wasted a lot of Phoenix Downs but still got carried through by my berserker.
Knowing that when I did the Ronkan Ruins I'd lose Galuf, I thought I should do any arbitrary tasks I could anticipate before visiting Galuf's world. I spent a bit of time grinding Wild Nakks in case I eventually needed Flame Rings, but I decided that two would be enough. I had no means to wipe these 5-enemy formations but the fights were fairly quick regardless.
I went up to the Ronkan Ruins... where I lost my first attempt against the Soul Cannon and had to start over from the beginning of this sequence.
The smaller launcher fights were actually not an issue at all! I spaced out my two bards singing Romeo's Ballad to keep the enemies locked down while my two Death Sickle wielders attacked. I usually took a little bit of damage at the beginning but otherwise it was sort of trivial.
My death against the Soul Cannon happened so quickly I barely noticed, but the main cause was certainly Wave Cannon. Bearing in mind that the only healing option I have that can heal over 50 HP at a time is the Healing Staff, it was impossible to keep up. The bards can help with launchers, but they don't help with the main cannon... so I needed a way to end it faster.
Well... I've still got a freelancer because of my assigned dragoon job, and I'll be losing that soon. I may as well chuck the rest of the rods I've got now, since none of dragoon, berserker, bard, samurai, dancer or chemist can use rods. It was still close, actually, but three Thunder Rods did the trick.
The Ronkan Ruins interior was fine. I made a general pattern of Romeo's Ballad with the two bards, lightly spaced out, and my berserker and freelancer wielding Death Sickles cleaning up enemies. This made battles slow, but extremely safe. In many cases I just used auto battle, which further sped things up.
Then Lenna and Bartz mastered the bard job, and things got interesting! I swapped Galuf to bard and made Lenna a freelancer with my newfound Blitz Whip in the back row, with !Sing and Equip Whips: this gives Lenna the somewhat improved magic and agility stats of a bard. Furthermore, I switched Bartz to a berserker and also gave him Equip Harps. This is a massive difference in Bartz' speed in combat! Honestly, the game felt much more fun very quickly: it's literally our first synergy of any sort.
We started out at Crescent because our next official destination was Catapult to talk to Cid and Mid. I happened to fight enemies here and found some Harvesters. I realized these enemies were the ones who drop Death Sickles (and that I had mis-remembered that the Bio Soldiers were the ones, because they also appear in this area). I fought a little bit until I had two Death Sickles.
This marked a pretty substantial jump in Faris' effectiveness as a berserker.
Next, we needed Adamantite and thus had to fight Adamantoise. With strong attacks and Romeo's Ballad in play, it should have been easy... but he kept targeting the bards over and over and I had left them in the front row to start. It ended up being a bit of a stupid fight where I wasted a lot of Phoenix Downs but still got carried through by my berserker.
Knowing that when I did the Ronkan Ruins I'd lose Galuf, I thought I should do any arbitrary tasks I could anticipate before visiting Galuf's world. I spent a bit of time grinding Wild Nakks in case I eventually needed Flame Rings, but I decided that two would be enough. I had no means to wipe these 5-enemy formations but the fights were fairly quick regardless.
I went up to the Ronkan Ruins... where I lost my first attempt against the Soul Cannon and had to start over from the beginning of this sequence.
The smaller launcher fights were actually not an issue at all! I spaced out my two bards singing Romeo's Ballad to keep the enemies locked down while my two Death Sickle wielders attacked. I usually took a little bit of damage at the beginning but otherwise it was sort of trivial.
My death against the Soul Cannon happened so quickly I barely noticed, but the main cause was certainly Wave Cannon. Bearing in mind that the only healing option I have that can heal over 50 HP at a time is the Healing Staff, it was impossible to keep up. The bards can help with launchers, but they don't help with the main cannon... so I needed a way to end it faster.
Well... I've still got a freelancer because of my assigned dragoon job, and I'll be losing that soon. I may as well chuck the rest of the rods I've got now, since none of dragoon, berserker, bard, samurai, dancer or chemist can use rods. It was still close, actually, but three Thunder Rods did the trick.
The Ronkan Ruins interior was fine. I made a general pattern of Romeo's Ballad with the two bards, lightly spaced out, and my berserker and freelancer wielding Death Sickles cleaning up enemies. This made battles slow, but extremely safe. In many cases I just used auto battle, which further sped things up.
Then Lenna and Bartz mastered the bard job, and things got interesting! I swapped Galuf to bard and made Lenna a freelancer with my newfound Blitz Whip in the back row, with !Sing and Equip Whips: this gives Lenna the somewhat improved magic and agility stats of a bard. Furthermore, I switched Bartz to a berserker and also gave him Equip Harps. This is a massive difference in Bartz' speed in combat! Honestly, the game felt much more fun very quickly: it's literally our first synergy of any sort.
I think I will be using berserker with Equip Harps a lot in the future!
I got pretty much all of the chests, I think, and encountered Archeoavis. This fight is complex, with the enemy having different forms with different weaknesses. I wasn't watching my berserkers' damage numbers closely, and I was using this literally final opportunity to break rods with my freelancer liberally. I was still surprised when the first form died; it was quicker than I expected.
I wasn't sure if it died after every form transition, and I thought based on the damage of its wind attacks we might not last long if it had like 4 other phases. But it turns out this signaled the final phase and we won almost immediately after.
A bunch of drama happened, and we unlocked dragoon (by the game's logic) and chemist (both in game and by the challenge's logic).
I decided that Galuf was off-screen as a berserker and set up my team like this:
This part of the game has you running around to different meteorites fighting minor bosses. I knew that one of them was Titan (I thought it was the first one) so I went to North Mountain and sand to a pack of cats to get access to Float. There's also a way to Mix to get the float status, but I don't actually have the !Mix ability yet.
I was wrong about Titan being first, though! The first minor boss here is Purobolos. I sang to them, too.
These enemies revive each other, so the main ways to win are to either defeat them all at once or to negate their spellcasting. I can't do those things... so I sang Romeo's Ballad with both Lenna and Faris to stunlock them and Bartz dealt every bit of required damage by jumping on each of these guys twice. It took a long time, but the enemies didn't get a single action!
Bartz jumped an awful lot in that fight and, fittingly, mastered !Jump afterward. This very successful fight also meant we retained our float status.
The next meteorite had Titan. He did get a couple of hits off, but it was still pretty easy. We fought him essentially the exact same way, actually. He didn't even use Earthshaker (or whatever it's called in this version) presumably because he was stunned by my song at the time.
Chimera Brain? Ditto.
We did get Aqua Breath'd but we were fine.
This has us ready to leave this world to visit Galuf's world. However, the chemist requires a bit of travel to be effective in the near future; I'll need some consumables, and Lix is a cheap and easy-to-access source of Ethers, so I had to squander my money there. I also needed Turtle Shells, which I believe are easiest to find near the Karnak Meteorite. I spent a bit of time gathering just over 30 of those, and I might actually grab a few more and then spend even more money at Lix before jumping in the portal.
Here's our status for now:
I'm looking forward to assembling the whole, complete team finally next time I play.
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I got pretty much all of the chests, I think, and encountered Archeoavis. This fight is complex, with the enemy having different forms with different weaknesses. I wasn't watching my berserkers' damage numbers closely, and I was using this literally final opportunity to break rods with my freelancer liberally. I was still surprised when the first form died; it was quicker than I expected.
I wasn't sure if it died after every form transition, and I thought based on the damage of its wind attacks we might not last long if it had like 4 other phases. But it turns out this signaled the final phase and we won almost immediately after.
A bunch of drama happened, and we unlocked dragoon (by the game's logic) and chemist (both in game and by the challenge's logic).
I decided that Galuf was off-screen as a berserker and set up my team like this:
This part of the game has you running around to different meteorites fighting minor bosses. I knew that one of them was Titan (I thought it was the first one) so I went to North Mountain and sand to a pack of cats to get access to Float. There's also a way to Mix to get the float status, but I don't actually have the !Mix ability yet.
I was wrong about Titan being first, though! The first minor boss here is Purobolos. I sang to them, too.
These enemies revive each other, so the main ways to win are to either defeat them all at once or to negate their spellcasting. I can't do those things... so I sang Romeo's Ballad with both Lenna and Faris to stunlock them and Bartz dealt every bit of required damage by jumping on each of these guys twice. It took a long time, but the enemies didn't get a single action!
Bartz jumped an awful lot in that fight and, fittingly, mastered !Jump afterward. This very successful fight also meant we retained our float status.
The next meteorite had Titan. He did get a couple of hits off, but it was still pretty easy. We fought him essentially the exact same way, actually. He didn't even use Earthshaker (or whatever it's called in this version) presumably because he was stunned by my song at the time.
Chimera Brain? Ditto.
We did get Aqua Breath'd but we were fine.
This has us ready to leave this world to visit Galuf's world. However, the chemist requires a bit of travel to be effective in the near future; I'll need some consumables, and Lix is a cheap and easy-to-access source of Ethers, so I had to squander my money there. I also needed Turtle Shells, which I believe are easiest to find near the Karnak Meteorite. I spent a bit of time gathering just over 30 of those, and I might actually grab a few more and then spend even more money at Lix before jumping in the portal.
Here's our status for now:
I'm looking forward to assembling the whole, complete team finally next time I play.
< Previous | Index | Next >
