Final Fantasy Tactics OR4M Part V
Oct. 28th, 2025 05:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingI worked through a large portion of chapter 4 on October 25th and 27th, 2025. As noted in the prior entry, I'd already done a little bit of chapter 4 recruitment including getting a Behemoth, a King Behemoth, and a certain Holy Dragon. The Behemoth had also proven itself quite useful so far.
The first stop was Daguerra Pass.
Oddly, I don't seem to have taken a single capture of this battle. It took three tries, I think? Often Ramza would go down a bit early when I positioned him aggressively to put some of the heavier units to sleep - it was a nice idea with a big potential payoff, but if anyone stayed awake it would generally mean Ramza was done for. The team I brought was Ramza, Boco, Erato the Vampire Cat, Thamyris the Sekhret, and Typhon the Blue Dragon. The low faith of this core group made the threat of the enemy black mage negligible.
Once again, I was bemoaning not having certain monsters: it was clear that a Cockatrice might've been an asset for this fight.
I did a couple of battles at Balias Swale, where I'm not even 100% sure what I was looking for - maybe a Hydra - when I encountered a Cockatrice and made friends with it.
The walking around trying to get tier 3 monsters and dropping the lowest-levelled ones again resulted in an abundance of monsters. This, again, resulted in an abundance of my kid renaming them for me. Rhakios the Cockatrice, unfortunately, became 1)(: ygniht drib.
Bervenia Free City was a rough one on my first attempt. I thought it would be easy with a Cockatrice, a Red Chocobo and a Behemoth all being able to use unblockable attacks at any height, but it turns out when you've got a squad like Melly's it isn't so simple. Still, this only took two attempts: the thing I had to remember was to not rush so that I could draw Meliadoul toward my team.
Finnath Creek is one of the rare mandatory battles that's still very randomized. I didn't get any kind of optimized setup.
This was a battle with three Red Chocobos, a Black Chocobo, a Chocobo, and a Pig. Three reds is not ideal. I could've reset to the map and gotten something better, but I chose not to. This is interesting because even though this took me about four tries, it was always this same setup, as if the random seed were preserved. I decided I really wanted to beat this exactly the way the game presented it.
The first step on the better attempts was Ramza using Entice on a Red Chocobo.
The Mindflayer always got knocked out on turn 1 and Ramza mostly went down shortly after, so then it was a matter of getting my powerful monster squad to beat these enemies before the rest of the team bit the dust. Given we had a new Red Chocobo buddy, this wasn't actually that bad. Thamyris mostly dealt with the Chocobo and Pig entirely by themself.
So can a Blue Dragon, a Red Chocobo, and a Behemoth take down two Red Chocobos and a Black Chocobo? The best answer I've got is... eventually.
The battle outside of the church in Zeltennia was kind of hilarious. I knew it would be easy, but with Ignore Height on Vampire Cats and Red Chocobos and with a flying unit, not to mention Gigaflare hitting arbitrary heights, I knew we'd be able to hit Zalmour very quickly and very hard.
Beddha Sandwaste was surprisingly easy. I will admit I got lucky with an early Mimic Darlavon. I've also kept my faith very low on my core units, so Barich himself wasn't very threatening at all. My Chocobo cleared most of our poison on turn 1, for what that's worth.
With Barich being mostly irrelevant and half of the other enemies indisposed, I actually completely ignored Barich and gradually took out every single other enemy.
For a change, this one was a very easy first try.
At Fort Besselat, I chose the South Wall. I did this without being very informed, I just vaguely remembered doing it before. (It turns out, I notice now, wpot strongly recommended doing the North Wall, and also said that Beddha Sandwaste is exceptionally tough.) Again, the multi-battle map was really cool here.
This south wall went really well. Between Erato the Vampire Cat and 1)(: ygniht drib the Cockatrice (sigh), we had a pretty big collection of statues.
Perhaps I got lucky. Everyone survived! Thrived, even!
The sluice battle did take more than one try. Ramza getting hit with charged shots by the archers was pretty nasty, resulting in some attempts that I cut pretty short. Gigaflare was very important here, as was Erato's Blaster. Again, the low faith on several of my units helped a lot: when someone trained a Firaga on Typhon, he would just stand next to them so the caster would incinerate themselves.
A thing that surprised me was that the battle ended when I defeated the last enemy instead of waiting for me to press the switches with Ramza.
Chapter 4 is very long. Really, the end of Fort Besselat is as much of an act break as there was between chapter 1 and 2 and between chapter 2 and 3. A lot of things happen.
Now we're proceeding to Limberry. First on that route was Germinas Peak. I didn't bother taking a break for any special preparation, although I generally bought the new items when the outfitter got an upgrade.
Germinas Peak was fine. I was worried about the archers getting up high and sniping us, but I actually had a few of my more acrophiliac units hog the high ground and somehow that worked out well for me. The petrification helped.
Next up was Poeskas Lake. This was fine. I decided to have Ramza Entice one of the Revenants and I'm sure that helped a lot.
It was actually a somewhat close call - 1)(: ygniht drib was going to die on their next turn, but I prioritized ending the battle, and it worked.
Okay, Limberry. I was dreading this, actually. The first attempt did not go well. Similar to Meliadoul, I figured the right approach might be drawing the enemies toward the team. I brought a Revenant as well, which ended up being useful. With a Drain Touch, two Choco Meteors, and a Feather Bomb we were able to get one assassin down.
What was really weird here is that Ramza was listed as top contributor. He literally got affected by Shadow Stitch before his first turn and never actually took a single action. It is unclear how "Greatest Contribution" is determined but somethin' fishy's going on.
I knew that to beat Elmdore, I was likely to need some proportionate damage and an offensive focus. Gigaflare, Feather Bomb and Choco Meteor are all delightfully unblockable. I thought Twister could be an asset, so I brought my King Behemoth. This took two tries, though, since my first formation was stupid, and when I set up the second time I accidentally picked my Behemoth instead of the King Behemoth but I decided to give it a whirl anyway. This turned out to be a good thing.
Sadly, this 549 damage Bloodfeast didn't work. Would've been cool though! And the odds weren't even that bad.
With the team on the ropes, I had options with Ramza. The best path was going to be reviving whichever monster could most effectively end the fight. I figured if I revived my Behemoth, who was coming up in the turn order, he'd get one more shot of Gigaflare.
This happened to be exactly enough firepower to take out Elmdore.
This battle is normally one of those ones that I know has a very different... curve to it. I sort of dread it, trying to find an approach that'll work. Needing just two tries where one failed immediately due to stupid formation choice is pretty awesome, really.
I didn't think the undercroft battle would be harder - and it wasn't - but it also took two attempts. My team included a King Behemoth, a Revenant, and a Gobbledygook here. I was really, really leaning into abuse of proportional damage as the key strategy.
With Nightmare affecting Ramza and generally putting him to sleep, it wasn't easy to use Twister or Bloodfeast. Meliadoul and Boco held off the enemies who were behind us while anyone else who could manage to stay awake was on the offensive.
Of course, what this really means is that Root Beer Float the Revenant was running the show. Root Beer Float did over 2000 damage in this fight!
Look at Zalera's funny little animated mouth at the end!
We won, and Root Beer Float was appropriately named the MVP.
Once again, beating Zalera is a pretty substantial act break. We're over halfway done chapter 4, and that's a nice time to stop, I'd say. Here's a look at most of the team:
I expect that in the next update, we'll beat this game.
It may or may not take place before Halloween this year, when I plan to finally start the Final Fantasy 1 Monster Party playthrough I've been talking about for ages!
<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >
The first stop was Daguerra Pass.
Oddly, I don't seem to have taken a single capture of this battle. It took three tries, I think? Often Ramza would go down a bit early when I positioned him aggressively to put some of the heavier units to sleep - it was a nice idea with a big potential payoff, but if anyone stayed awake it would generally mean Ramza was done for. The team I brought was Ramza, Boco, Erato the Vampire Cat, Thamyris the Sekhret, and Typhon the Blue Dragon. The low faith of this core group made the threat of the enemy black mage negligible.
Once again, I was bemoaning not having certain monsters: it was clear that a Cockatrice might've been an asset for this fight.
I did a couple of battles at Balias Swale, where I'm not even 100% sure what I was looking for - maybe a Hydra - when I encountered a Cockatrice and made friends with it.
The walking around trying to get tier 3 monsters and dropping the lowest-levelled ones again resulted in an abundance of monsters. This, again, resulted in an abundance of my kid renaming them for me. Rhakios the Cockatrice, unfortunately, became 1)(: ygniht drib.
My favourite was that an empty space is considered a valid name, and the Guildmaster thought it was fantastic.
Bervenia Free City was a rough one on my first attempt. I thought it would be easy with a Cockatrice, a Red Chocobo and a Behemoth all being able to use unblockable attacks at any height, but it turns out when you've got a squad like Melly's it isn't so simple. Still, this only took two attempts: the thing I had to remember was to not rush so that I could draw Meliadoul toward my team.
Finnath Creek is one of the rare mandatory battles that's still very randomized. I didn't get any kind of optimized setup.
This was a battle with three Red Chocobos, a Black Chocobo, a Chocobo, and a Pig. Three reds is not ideal. I could've reset to the map and gotten something better, but I chose not to. This is interesting because even though this took me about four tries, it was always this same setup, as if the random seed were preserved. I decided I really wanted to beat this exactly the way the game presented it.
The first step on the better attempts was Ramza using Entice on a Red Chocobo.
The Mindflayer always got knocked out on turn 1 and Ramza mostly went down shortly after, so then it was a matter of getting my powerful monster squad to beat these enemies before the rest of the team bit the dust. Given we had a new Red Chocobo buddy, this wasn't actually that bad. Thamyris mostly dealt with the Chocobo and Pig entirely by themself.
So can a Blue Dragon, a Red Chocobo, and a Behemoth take down two Red Chocobos and a Black Chocobo? The best answer I've got is... eventually.
The battle outside of the church in Zeltennia was kind of hilarious. I knew it would be easy, but with Ignore Height on Vampire Cats and Red Chocobos and with a flying unit, not to mention Gigaflare hitting arbitrary heights, I knew we'd be able to hit Zalmour very quickly and very hard.
Beddha Sandwaste was surprisingly easy. I will admit I got lucky with an early Mimic Darlavon. I've also kept my faith very low on my core units, so Barich himself wasn't very threatening at all. My Chocobo cleared most of our poison on turn 1, for what that's worth.
With Barich being mostly irrelevant and half of the other enemies indisposed, I actually completely ignored Barich and gradually took out every single other enemy.
For a change, this one was a very easy first try.
At Fort Besselat, I chose the South Wall. I did this without being very informed, I just vaguely remembered doing it before. (It turns out, I notice now, wpot strongly recommended doing the North Wall, and also said that Beddha Sandwaste is exceptionally tough.) Again, the multi-battle map was really cool here.
This south wall went really well. Between Erato the Vampire Cat and 1)(: ygniht drib the Cockatrice (sigh), we had a pretty big collection of statues.
Perhaps I got lucky. Everyone survived! Thrived, even!
The sluice battle did take more than one try. Ramza getting hit with charged shots by the archers was pretty nasty, resulting in some attempts that I cut pretty short. Gigaflare was very important here, as was Erato's Blaster. Again, the low faith on several of my units helped a lot: when someone trained a Firaga on Typhon, he would just stand next to them so the caster would incinerate themselves.
A thing that surprised me was that the battle ended when I defeated the last enemy instead of waiting for me to press the switches with Ramza.
Chapter 4 is very long. Really, the end of Fort Besselat is as much of an act break as there was between chapter 1 and 2 and between chapter 2 and 3. A lot of things happen.
Now we're proceeding to Limberry. First on that route was Germinas Peak. I didn't bother taking a break for any special preparation, although I generally bought the new items when the outfitter got an upgrade.
Germinas Peak was fine. I was worried about the archers getting up high and sniping us, but I actually had a few of my more acrophiliac units hog the high ground and somehow that worked out well for me. The petrification helped.
Next up was Poeskas Lake. This was fine. I decided to have Ramza Entice one of the Revenants and I'm sure that helped a lot.
It was actually a somewhat close call - 1)(: ygniht drib was going to die on their next turn, but I prioritized ending the battle, and it worked.
Okay, Limberry. I was dreading this, actually. The first attempt did not go well. Similar to Meliadoul, I figured the right approach might be drawing the enemies toward the team. I brought a Revenant as well, which ended up being useful. With a Drain Touch, two Choco Meteors, and a Feather Bomb we were able to get one assassin down.
What was really weird here is that Ramza was listed as top contributor. He literally got affected by Shadow Stitch before his first turn and never actually took a single action. It is unclear how "Greatest Contribution" is determined but somethin' fishy's going on.
I knew that to beat Elmdore, I was likely to need some proportionate damage and an offensive focus. Gigaflare, Feather Bomb and Choco Meteor are all delightfully unblockable. I thought Twister could be an asset, so I brought my King Behemoth. This took two tries, though, since my first formation was stupid, and when I set up the second time I accidentally picked my Behemoth instead of the King Behemoth but I decided to give it a whirl anyway. This turned out to be a good thing.
Sadly, this 549 damage Bloodfeast didn't work. Would've been cool though! And the odds weren't even that bad.
With the team on the ropes, I had options with Ramza. The best path was going to be reviving whichever monster could most effectively end the fight. I figured if I revived my Behemoth, who was coming up in the turn order, he'd get one more shot of Gigaflare.
This happened to be exactly enough firepower to take out Elmdore.
This battle is normally one of those ones that I know has a very different... curve to it. I sort of dread it, trying to find an approach that'll work. Needing just two tries where one failed immediately due to stupid formation choice is pretty awesome, really.
I didn't think the undercroft battle would be harder - and it wasn't - but it also took two attempts. My team included a King Behemoth, a Revenant, and a Gobbledygook here. I was really, really leaning into abuse of proportional damage as the key strategy.
With Nightmare affecting Ramza and generally putting him to sleep, it wasn't easy to use Twister or Bloodfeast. Meliadoul and Boco held off the enemies who were behind us while anyone else who could manage to stay awake was on the offensive.
Of course, what this really means is that Root Beer Float the Revenant was running the show. Root Beer Float did over 2000 damage in this fight!
Look at Zalera's funny little animated mouth at the end!
We won, and Root Beer Float was appropriately named the MVP.
Once again, beating Zalera is a pretty substantial act break. We're over halfway done chapter 4, and that's a nice time to stop, I'd say. Here's a look at most of the team:
I expect that in the next update, we'll beat this game.
It may or may not take place before Halloween this year, when I plan to finally start the Final Fantasy 1 Monster Party playthrough I've been talking about for ages!
<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >
