Final Fantasy Tactics OR4M Part IV
Oct. 19th, 2025 03:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingI started chapter 4 of my OR4M playthrough based on wpot's rules on October 18th. It was a fairly small start, but I guess I did enough that it might be worth summarizing now, especially considering how much material there is in chapter 4 of this game.
Chapter 4 opens up the map considerably, and by OR4M rules it also means you can use literally any monster other than the two higher tiers of hydra (I think they are Greater Hydra and Tiamat in this version). Right away, I noticed I now had access to Bervenia Volcano. I happen to know this is a good source of a few monster types, including Behemoths!
On my first trip in, I happened to encounter Aithon the Exploder and his skeletal pals. I managed to recruit him.
I've had Semele the Grenade sitting around at a pitiful level for ages hoping I'd get an Exploder, since AoE is pretty rare among monsters, but it hadn't come together yet. It was actually pretty excited for this guy. I promptly dismissed my Grenades.
On my very next time entering the volcano, I met Minyas the Behemoth! Behemoths are pretty great. I was excited for this, too.
Amazing. I also had my generics running errands all around Ivalice, and this had my monsters breeding more. As before, this is a nice opportunity to get more monsters at competitive levels and, in some cases, with better brave. While I am allowed to modify my brave and faith, spending a ton of turns on this isn't viable since it would creep Ramza's level too high.
Amid all of the errands and whatnot, I went to Goug.
This started a chain of events related to Beowulf and Reis, which is nice, because Reis is usable as a Holy Dragon. In the Ivalice Chronicles version of the game, these new events are all nicely indicated on the map. In this new version, Ramza still orders milk, so I guess that wasn't just some wonky mid-90s censorship.
Beowulf joined us and we started the Gollund Colliery events.
My monsters utterly crushed the battles in Gollund. I had the Behemoth pinning down a chemist and casting Gigaflare at one on a higher ledge. Finally, this is an attack that can hit arbitrary heights, and huge areas, and it casts instantly! This felt amazing.
I hadn't remembered that the second colliery fight had a couple of hidden monsters in it! I really wanted Ramza to recruit the King Behemoth here, because why not? King Behemoths are a little better than Behemoths statistically, and their Beastmastery ability is Twister which can be really nice against bosses. This seemed like a good opportunity.
That said... this was not an easy recruitment. Bad zodiac compatibility meant that Ramza was given a 20% chance to recruit this creature. I am sure he had to attempt it over ten times. At least the rest of the battle was very manageable. Beowulf kept coming close to killing the King Behemoth, too, requiring my chocobo have to cure it. I even aimed some Blasters at Beowulf! Those didn't end up working.
Eventually, it came together, with the King Behemoth as the last enemy on the field.
Yuck, this guy is going to need a new name.
The next battle was fine. The chemists were annoying but Erato the Vampire Cat petrified one of them early on. Gigaflare was the MVP.
For the underground battle in the colliery shaft, it was... weird. I thought I planned well, but it turns out Behemoths can't jump well and thus Minyas had some trouble contributing.
The Ahrimans here managed to inflict doom on both Ramza and Minyas. Reis didn't need a whole lot of help, though, and what was needed Boco and Erato were able to provide. Erato was able to inflict stop on the demon, which was pretty cool.
With this, we permanently recruited Reis and Beowulf! Beowulf we'll never use again, but Reis is pretty neat.
There's an optional rule in wpot's guide that you can uncurse Reis and use her as an alternate beastmaster. I am going to choose not to do this.
I noted in the shaft battle that Reis' breath attacks were awfully strong. I compared her stats to those of my blue dragons: their MA stats were in the low 20s, but Reis' is 31!
Despite having Reis the Holy Dragon on the team, I'm still looking forward to having a Red Dragon. I haven't recruited a Red Dragon, nor any the other newly available monsters yet other than Behemoths. The other new chapter 4 monsters are Red Dragon, Red Chocobo, Cockatrice, and Hydra. I should be able to get a Red Chocobo with relative ease nice and soon at Finnath Creek, so I might just wait for that.
We've done lots of preparatory tasks for chapter 4, including a significant part of the side quest chain. The rest of the side quest chain, like Worker 8 and Cloud, aren't actually very useful for us, so I might just skip all of that. Next time I play I'll actually get into the chapter 4 story battles.
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Chapter 4 opens up the map considerably, and by OR4M rules it also means you can use literally any monster other than the two higher tiers of hydra (I think they are Greater Hydra and Tiamat in this version). Right away, I noticed I now had access to Bervenia Volcano. I happen to know this is a good source of a few monster types, including Behemoths!
On my first trip in, I happened to encounter Aithon the Exploder and his skeletal pals. I managed to recruit him.
I've had Semele the Grenade sitting around at a pitiful level for ages hoping I'd get an Exploder, since AoE is pretty rare among monsters, but it hadn't come together yet. It was actually pretty excited for this guy. I promptly dismissed my Grenades.
On my very next time entering the volcano, I met Minyas the Behemoth! Behemoths are pretty great. I was excited for this, too.
Amazing. I also had my generics running errands all around Ivalice, and this had my monsters breeding more. As before, this is a nice opportunity to get more monsters at competitive levels and, in some cases, with better brave. While I am allowed to modify my brave and faith, spending a ton of turns on this isn't viable since it would creep Ramza's level too high.
Amid all of the errands and whatnot, I went to Goug.
This started a chain of events related to Beowulf and Reis, which is nice, because Reis is usable as a Holy Dragon. In the Ivalice Chronicles version of the game, these new events are all nicely indicated on the map. In this new version, Ramza still orders milk, so I guess that wasn't just some wonky mid-90s censorship.
Beowulf joined us and we started the Gollund Colliery events.
My monsters utterly crushed the battles in Gollund. I had the Behemoth pinning down a chemist and casting Gigaflare at one on a higher ledge. Finally, this is an attack that can hit arbitrary heights, and huge areas, and it casts instantly! This felt amazing.
I hadn't remembered that the second colliery fight had a couple of hidden monsters in it! I really wanted Ramza to recruit the King Behemoth here, because why not? King Behemoths are a little better than Behemoths statistically, and their Beastmastery ability is Twister which can be really nice against bosses. This seemed like a good opportunity.
That said... this was not an easy recruitment. Bad zodiac compatibility meant that Ramza was given a 20% chance to recruit this creature. I am sure he had to attempt it over ten times. At least the rest of the battle was very manageable. Beowulf kept coming close to killing the King Behemoth, too, requiring my chocobo have to cure it. I even aimed some Blasters at Beowulf! Those didn't end up working.
Eventually, it came together, with the King Behemoth as the last enemy on the field.
Yuck, this guy is going to need a new name.
The next battle was fine. The chemists were annoying but Erato the Vampire Cat petrified one of them early on. Gigaflare was the MVP.
For the underground battle in the colliery shaft, it was... weird. I thought I planned well, but it turns out Behemoths can't jump well and thus Minyas had some trouble contributing.
The Ahrimans here managed to inflict doom on both Ramza and Minyas. Reis didn't need a whole lot of help, though, and what was needed Boco and Erato were able to provide. Erato was able to inflict stop on the demon, which was pretty cool.
With this, we permanently recruited Reis and Beowulf! Beowulf we'll never use again, but Reis is pretty neat.
There's an optional rule in wpot's guide that you can uncurse Reis and use her as an alternate beastmaster. I am going to choose not to do this.
I noted in the shaft battle that Reis' breath attacks were awfully strong. I compared her stats to those of my blue dragons: their MA stats were in the low 20s, but Reis' is 31!
Despite having Reis the Holy Dragon on the team, I'm still looking forward to having a Red Dragon. I haven't recruited a Red Dragon, nor any the other newly available monsters yet other than Behemoths. The other new chapter 4 monsters are Red Dragon, Red Chocobo, Cockatrice, and Hydra. I should be able to get a Red Chocobo with relative ease nice and soon at Finnath Creek, so I might just wait for that.
We've done lots of preparatory tasks for chapter 4, including a significant part of the side quest chain. The rest of the side quest chain, like Worker 8 and Cloud, aren't actually very useful for us, so I might just skip all of that. Next time I play I'll actually get into the chapter 4 story battles.
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