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freshfeeling) wrote2025-07-23 09:33 pm
freshfeeling) wrote2025-07-23 09:33 pm
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Final Fantasy V Four Job Fiesta 2025 Volcano Part VII
I concluded my 2025 FJF playthrough on July 23. After having done a bunch of it consecutively, it had been like two weeks since my last play session!
The first thing I wanted to do was defeat Omega! I have beaten both Omega and Shinryu before, but never during one of my Four Job Fiesta playthroughs. I've done it two or three times casually, which usually means high levels and all kinds of wacky stats and abilities available. Since I've got access to a chemist, though, it seemed pretty attainable to try it now... especially after reading Sulla's solo chemist shenangians.
There were a few approaches I knew I could take here, including possibly just coming in with Hermes Sandals and singing Romeo's Ballad with three characters while the other does all the work. However, I thought it would be more fun to make myself immune to most of Omega's moveset, then buff, then take him down. Since I have a berserker, though, and since Omega has so many counters, I realized I'd need the berserker to be dead.
Unfortunately, Omega remains kind of hard. Even when you're immune to most of its moveset, Surge Beam / Wave Cannon takes out just over half of your max HP, and if Omega happens to get a double turn on you with that, you're just toast. On my first attempt, only the bard (Faris) was fast enough to heal to survive two rapid Wave Cannons. Really, I only need one person surviving to make this work so I tried to tough it out, but I left a gap in my healing and Faris lost.
On the next attempt, I was very quickly down to just Lenna the dragoon.
As I played, I kept referring to my plan. The plan was in a spreadsheet, sort of like this:
Basically, you need haste to keep up and Goliath Tonic provides some breathing room. Dragon Kiss nullifies a lot of the scariest attacks, including most of the counters. Levitate and Resist Fire nullify some other damaging moves, and Dragon Defense reduces a lot of what's left. You still can't do anything about Wave Cannon, so there's frequent healing.
Once I managed the buffs on this second attempt, Lenna's damage was still terrible.
Omega absorbs the Holy Lance, and is weak against the Trident (although that's absurdly weak). The Chicken Knife is an option, but I forget whether you might be able to run away. What I ultimately decided on was using Turtle Soup / Split Shell again and again to cut Omega's defenses.
If the bard barely outsped Omega, what hope would a dragoon have? Well, I just had to heal a bit more aggressively... but as a bonus, dragoons jump!
Once I was set up like this, things were pretty stable! And Lenna won.
Pretty cool!
After that, all of the Void bosses must be pretty simple, right?
We beat Apanda. I don't really remember anything particularly interesting about this fight. Most of our damage comes from Bartz as our berserker and Lenna the dragoon, so in a lot of these fights I had my supporters using Hero's Rime and Sinewy Etude to enhance their damage.
Next, we entered the castle. We got the Thor Hammer here, which is nice. It enhances the berserker's tankiness by allowing them to stay in the back row. Otherwise, nothing too exciting. I wanted to open up the save point here though, so I fought the optional Azulmagia.
This fight was kind of terrible. I was so happy to avoid things like Level 5 Death, only for multiple members to get affected by Level 2 Old or Discord and have their level altered to be killed. There was a lot of death! Thankfully, however, few of the strong attacks were multi-target so keeping up with healing was okay. It was on the sloppy side compared to the rigid plan I concocted for Omega, but we won anyway.
We fought a couple of those Aevis guys to get treasure chests but the dancer items aren't going to be doing us any good.
Next up was Catastrophe. I had wanted to be floating before the fight, but I forgot. The Levitate mix is Maiden's Kiss + Antidote, so I started using it right away... only to find that Catastrophe wasn't okay with that and kept using 100 Gs to remove my floating.
This resulted in one of these really stupid fights where - with auto-battle on - three characters just attacked while one levitated over and over again. Catastrophe was locked into removing the float status, and thus it didn't actually manage to use Earthquake. At all.
There was Halicarnassus. I kept talking about special strategies like coming in as a frog or reflecting the strong spells but it didn't matter at all. The fight was just a slugfest, and an easy one at that.
I was kind of nervous about Twintania. Despite clobbering a lot of bosses, including Omega (who is clearly stronger) there are a few things that can go wrong. Twintania uses Tidal Wave as a counter to many attacks, and Giga Flare isn't fun to be slapped around with.
I didn't rush, and threw on a lot of buffs. It would've been smart to put on Coral Rings, but I forgot. We had Dragon Defense up for Shell, and I used mixes to absorb a few elements, too. Still, when the message popped up that he was charging Giga Flare, I got scared and mixed up a Death Potion (Phoenix Down + Dark Matter).
It felt a bit cheap, honestly, especially after all of that preparation I put in. Oh well.
I didn't want to go all the way back to the save point and I wasn't very afraid of Gilgamesh or Necrophobe, so I just proceeded.
I happened to get a Genji Shield too, although my Aegis Shields are mostly better.
Necrophobe was just silly. Normally, he can be pretty hard; I've certainly struggled with him in the past. However, we've got Death Potion. It struck me as hilarious that he started bragging about his invincible barriers when three of the four were already dead.
With the barriers down, the rest was easy.
We managed to get the Genji Armor from Gilgamesh, too!
I thought it was a good idea to use this. Necrophobe was blocking the final save point, so we're up to the final bosses. The Genji Armor provides a couple of status immunities and I thought that would be useful.
My plan for the final bosses was to kill off the berserker and try to idle and throw out some mix buffs while the bard boosts our stats a whole lot. This happens to just be awesome, since the first form of Exdeath has very few attacks until his HP get low, and since the buffs all carry through into the final form.
The bad news is: White Hole is a pretty nasty attack. Instant Death and Petrify!
I knew I could mitigate this by getting my level very high with Hero's Rime, but that wasn't paying off, at least not quickly. I then tried using Dragon's Kiss and Lifeshield. Eventually I seemed to be able to avoid the effects of White Hole. I applied lots of buffs and pumped my level substantially before reviving Faris the berserker. Surprisingly, the level boost had clearly affected her as well.
The level boosts and Dragon Defense were going to help bigtime with Neo Exdeath! I didn't have a real plan here, although I did look up a diagram of the four segments of this final form.
Krile did a bit more singing here. I tried to spread around the damage so we wouldn't have to endure whichever segment was last for long. The Apollo Harp was incredibly strong against the dragon section on the back.
We were really strong! It wasn't very hard with all of the buffs we wandered in with.
Victory!
There's one more loose end though. I think I can beat Shinryu without too much effort. I saved a clear save.
Unfortunately, it turns out the clear save puts you back on the overworld map for some reason. Well, I did some shopping for consumables and went back in. I had the brilliant (not) idea of pumping experience and turning encounters off until the end of the Void, where I would hunt for Dragon Lances from Crystal Dragons.
Then things got dumb! I was going to save at the final save point only to find that Necrophobe was back.
Interesting. The Pixel Remaster version of the game allows you to get unlimited Genji Armor. I wasn't lucky enough with my steal, unfortunately.
I fought battles in the Void here, but didn't realize for a while that there's no experience points in the final sections. I barely ran into any Crystal Dragons and didn't get a Dragon Lance. I figured, after a little while, I'd be better off at least taking a crack at Shinryu. However, Shinryu uses a few level-based attacks so I knew I really wanted to be level 43, 47, 49, or 53.
You can count on me to get bored quickly though! 43 it is.
I didn't have a neat plan ready for fighting Shinryu like I did with Omega... so I made a new spreadsheet on the spot, which was like this:
...but really, the absorbed attacks, regen ticks, and Succubus Kiss met most of our healing needs. It was quite surprisingly stable.
The first thing I wanted to do was defeat Omega! I have beaten both Omega and Shinryu before, but never during one of my Four Job Fiesta playthroughs. I've done it two or three times casually, which usually means high levels and all kinds of wacky stats and abilities available. Since I've got access to a chemist, though, it seemed pretty attainable to try it now... especially after reading Sulla's solo chemist shenangians.
There were a few approaches I knew I could take here, including possibly just coming in with Hermes Sandals and singing Romeo's Ballad with three characters while the other does all the work. However, I thought it would be more fun to make myself immune to most of Omega's moveset, then buff, then take him down. Since I have a berserker, though, and since Omega has so many counters, I realized I'd need the berserker to be dead.
Unfortunately, Omega remains kind of hard. Even when you're immune to most of its moveset, Surge Beam / Wave Cannon takes out just over half of your max HP, and if Omega happens to get a double turn on you with that, you're just toast. On my first attempt, only the bard (Faris) was fast enough to heal to survive two rapid Wave Cannons. Really, I only need one person surviving to make this work so I tried to tough it out, but I left a gap in my healing and Faris lost.
On the next attempt, I was very quickly down to just Lenna the dragoon.
As I played, I kept referring to my plan. The plan was in a spreadsheet, sort of like this:
Basically, you need haste to keep up and Goliath Tonic provides some breathing room. Dragon Kiss nullifies a lot of the scariest attacks, including most of the counters. Levitate and Resist Fire nullify some other damaging moves, and Dragon Defense reduces a lot of what's left. You still can't do anything about Wave Cannon, so there's frequent healing.
Once I managed the buffs on this second attempt, Lenna's damage was still terrible.
Omega absorbs the Holy Lance, and is weak against the Trident (although that's absurdly weak). The Chicken Knife is an option, but I forget whether you might be able to run away. What I ultimately decided on was using Turtle Soup / Split Shell again and again to cut Omega's defenses.
If the bard barely outsped Omega, what hope would a dragoon have? Well, I just had to heal a bit more aggressively... but as a bonus, dragoons jump!
Once I was set up like this, things were pretty stable! And Lenna won.
Pretty cool!
After that, all of the Void bosses must be pretty simple, right?
We beat Apanda. I don't really remember anything particularly interesting about this fight. Most of our damage comes from Bartz as our berserker and Lenna the dragoon, so in a lot of these fights I had my supporters using Hero's Rime and Sinewy Etude to enhance their damage.
Next, we entered the castle. We got the Thor Hammer here, which is nice. It enhances the berserker's tankiness by allowing them to stay in the back row. Otherwise, nothing too exciting. I wanted to open up the save point here though, so I fought the optional Azulmagia.
This fight was kind of terrible. I was so happy to avoid things like Level 5 Death, only for multiple members to get affected by Level 2 Old or Discord and have their level altered to be killed. There was a lot of death! Thankfully, however, few of the strong attacks were multi-target so keeping up with healing was okay. It was on the sloppy side compared to the rigid plan I concocted for Omega, but we won anyway.
We fought a couple of those Aevis guys to get treasure chests but the dancer items aren't going to be doing us any good.
Next up was Catastrophe. I had wanted to be floating before the fight, but I forgot. The Levitate mix is Maiden's Kiss + Antidote, so I started using it right away... only to find that Catastrophe wasn't okay with that and kept using 100 Gs to remove my floating.
This resulted in one of these really stupid fights where - with auto-battle on - three characters just attacked while one levitated over and over again. Catastrophe was locked into removing the float status, and thus it didn't actually manage to use Earthquake. At all.
There was Halicarnassus. I kept talking about special strategies like coming in as a frog or reflecting the strong spells but it didn't matter at all. The fight was just a slugfest, and an easy one at that.
I was kind of nervous about Twintania. Despite clobbering a lot of bosses, including Omega (who is clearly stronger) there are a few things that can go wrong. Twintania uses Tidal Wave as a counter to many attacks, and Giga Flare isn't fun to be slapped around with.
I didn't rush, and threw on a lot of buffs. It would've been smart to put on Coral Rings, but I forgot. We had Dragon Defense up for Shell, and I used mixes to absorb a few elements, too. Still, when the message popped up that he was charging Giga Flare, I got scared and mixed up a Death Potion (Phoenix Down + Dark Matter).
It felt a bit cheap, honestly, especially after all of that preparation I put in. Oh well.
I didn't want to go all the way back to the save point and I wasn't very afraid of Gilgamesh or Necrophobe, so I just proceeded.
I happened to get a Genji Shield too, although my Aegis Shields are mostly better.
Necrophobe was just silly. Normally, he can be pretty hard; I've certainly struggled with him in the past. However, we've got Death Potion. It struck me as hilarious that he started bragging about his invincible barriers when three of the four were already dead.
With the barriers down, the rest was easy.
We managed to get the Genji Armor from Gilgamesh, too!
I thought it was a good idea to use this. Necrophobe was blocking the final save point, so we're up to the final bosses. The Genji Armor provides a couple of status immunities and I thought that would be useful.
My plan for the final bosses was to kill off the berserker and try to idle and throw out some mix buffs while the bard boosts our stats a whole lot. This happens to just be awesome, since the first form of Exdeath has very few attacks until his HP get low, and since the buffs all carry through into the final form.
The bad news is: White Hole is a pretty nasty attack. Instant Death and Petrify!
I knew I could mitigate this by getting my level very high with Hero's Rime, but that wasn't paying off, at least not quickly. I then tried using Dragon's Kiss and Lifeshield. Eventually I seemed to be able to avoid the effects of White Hole. I applied lots of buffs and pumped my level substantially before reviving Faris the berserker. Surprisingly, the level boost had clearly affected her as well.
The level boosts and Dragon Defense were going to help bigtime with Neo Exdeath! I didn't have a real plan here, although I did look up a diagram of the four segments of this final form.
Krile did a bit more singing here. I tried to spread around the damage so we wouldn't have to endure whichever segment was last for long. The Apollo Harp was incredibly strong against the dragon section on the back.
We were really strong! It wasn't very hard with all of the buffs we wandered in with.
Victory!
There's one more loose end though. I think I can beat Shinryu without too much effort. I saved a clear save.
Unfortunately, it turns out the clear save puts you back on the overworld map for some reason. Well, I did some shopping for consumables and went back in. I had the brilliant (not) idea of pumping experience and turning encounters off until the end of the Void, where I would hunt for Dragon Lances from Crystal Dragons.
Then things got dumb! I was going to save at the final save point only to find that Necrophobe was back.
Interesting. The Pixel Remaster version of the game allows you to get unlimited Genji Armor. I wasn't lucky enough with my steal, unfortunately.
I fought battles in the Void here, but didn't realize for a while that there's no experience points in the final sections. I barely ran into any Crystal Dragons and didn't get a Dragon Lance. I figured, after a little while, I'd be better off at least taking a crack at Shinryu. However, Shinryu uses a few level-based attacks so I knew I really wanted to be level 43, 47, 49, or 53.
You can count on me to get bored quickly though! 43 it is.
I didn't have a neat plan ready for fighting Shinryu like I did with Omega... so I made a new spreadsheet on the spot, which was like this:
...but really, the absorbed attacks, regen ticks, and Succubus Kiss met most of our healing needs. It was quite surprisingly stable.
I was really careful not to alter my level with Dragon Power and Hero's Rime! It would be tragic if I boosted my level to improve my damage only to get hit with Level 5 Death or Level 2 Old. Instead, when Krile the bard had time to sing she mostly sang Sinewy Etude. And, before long, we won!
Well, that's that!
It's my first time beating the superbosses in a Four Job Fiesta run, mostly enabled by the busted nature of the chemist. We did all of it at the not-profound-but-modest level of 43, as well.
It was fun having two jobs that are trivially boring, and two jobs that are rather game-breaking but harder to use. This was an interesting team and a good run. I'm glad I picked Volcano as my run "type" to get these freakier jobs, or at least to avoid knight and colour mages. Given this was also my first playthrough of the Pixel Remaster version of this game, I can say I've got no complaints about it.
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Well, that's that!
It's my first time beating the superbosses in a Four Job Fiesta run, mostly enabled by the busted nature of the chemist. We did all of it at the not-profound-but-modest level of 43, as well.
It was fun having two jobs that are trivially boring, and two jobs that are rather game-breaking but harder to use. This was an interesting team and a good run. I'm glad I picked Volcano as my run "type" to get these freakier jobs, or at least to avoid knight and colour mages. Given this was also my first playthrough of the Pixel Remaster version of this game, I can say I've got no complaints about it.
<< First | < Previous | Index