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freshfeelingThis update is comprised of gameplay from August 11th through 16th. Last time, we saved just before Exdeath's Castle.
The game really ramps up the AP per battle around this point, I find. Simple one-shot battles like a single Magic Dragon give 3 AP or more - which wasn't unheard of, but a few battles like the elemental dragons in this area give plenty.
I chose to fight several of those elemental dragons, actually - which may have been a matter of vengeance after this mess:
In subsequent dragon fights - at least a couple of them - I'd use mixes to gain absorption to the dragon's element. Why not? It's not that costly.
I accidentally found Carbunkle so I figured I may as well fight it. It was fine. This was approximately our state shortly before Gilgamesh 4:
Gilgamesh was fine. I gave some thought to over-preparation with chemistry but it wasn't a complicated fight. There were a few moves that damaged us a lot, but when someone needed healing the best thing was generally Succubus Kiss.
The Exdeath fight was... terrible. I mean, we won, but it was a slog. For one thing, I didn't remember that there are no save points between Gilgamesh and Exdeath (even though that's understandable, with there being one right before Gilgamesh). Not only did I fail to save, I was just kind of running upwards and didn't realize the fight was coming so I didn't put on any useful equips, like, say, Reflect Rings.
I figured we'd give it a shot anyway, of course. He must have cast Dispel on me 8 or more times in this fight, and between that and the dying I wanted to reapply my defensive statuses frequently.
This ended up in a situation where I had to be selective about it by the end, since I was down to a single Turtle Shell. I also hadn't specifically grinded Dragon Fangs, although I had a few from however many Zombie Dragons I ran into naturally. I couldn't buff or power up recklessly.
It turns out most of the team had levels that were multiples of 3, which was also an issue, but only once.
It was a rough one, but we were victorious.
Early World 3 was no big deal. To finish Antlion quicker, Bartz threw a couple of weapons.
Now we were ready to journey as a party of 3. The first stop was Moore to get the Chicken Knife and some healing items. Bartz is using a Twin Lance to negate the Chicken Knife's drawback.
In the Pyramid, I did the thing where I mostly rushed it and didn't collect treasures (mostly) figuring it would be faster and more helpful to come back with Lenna. Bartz's Chicken Knife damage made this area a breeze, including Mummies and Mecha Heads.
We got the Gaia Hammer here. While we weren't using a berserker at this point. Faris wasn't a very experienced chemist - with no access to Mix, Equip Axe was actually a pretty useful secondary. By the end I changed Faris over to having access to Throw, which was helpful for some groups.
We later fought a snake-clad lady in the forest. Between monk crits and the Chicken Knife we didn't have to be very strategic at all. We had Succubus Kiss, too. We set a couple of chemist buffs regardless, but it was an easy fight.
We had the team back together. We went and got the Assassin's Dagger, Sasuke's Katana, and the Sage's Staff - two of which are named after jobs and one of which is named after a specific person. Hm. We did some sidequesty stuff around Mirage. At this point I splurged on two Hermes Sandals.
We also grinded up plenty of Turtle Shells and Dragon Fangs. This process would also net us tons of job AP, but there's little enough synergy between these jobs that my job level progress really hasn't mattered very much.
This grind was made very easy between the ninja's offhand Chicken Knife and the Sage's Staff.
We fought Odin for no real reason and went to the Island Shrine. There wasn't much that was noteworthy here. I'm pretty scared of Tot Aevis (especially after watching Seer's incredible No Menu challenge video) but I threw out a Dragon Power or two and it was a cinch.
For Wendigo, I thought I'd be clever using an Ice Shield on the berserker and the Resist Ice mix on everyone. Unfortunately, the icy counter attacks I remember were specific to multi-target attacks, which I have quite few of, so while Resist Ice is fun it wasn't really important. I used Fire Scrolls a couple of times but we made faster progress by just attacking.
Next, I decided to do Fork Tower because a few of the rewards from Leviathan could be an asset for me against Omega and/or Shinryu. The berserker needed to go physical, and the ninja has the best attacks, so they went right (which I almost always get backwards but didn't this time!).
The physical team had a rough go against Minotaur. Lenna the ninja was down by the end, and Bartzeker probably only had one or two actions left when he won.
This left the chemist and monk, who are an unlikely magical duo. They would run from every encounter, and the plan was to berserker and blind Omniscient with chemistry.
To speed things up, I even berserked Krile.
With that, we now have all of our means of transportation available. I carefully saved up for 3 Coral Rings - we'll get one free one later.
...only to forget to put them on before fighting Leviathan! C'mon. Oh well, we can boost everyone's levels by 20 and beat the fight within seconds. With Mix and a big stack of Dragon Fangs, there's not much need to apply other strategies.
With that - and a minor shop for armor in Mirage again - we're saved parked and ready outside of the entrance to the game's last area!
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The game really ramps up the AP per battle around this point, I find. Simple one-shot battles like a single Magic Dragon give 3 AP or more - which wasn't unheard of, but a few battles like the elemental dragons in this area give plenty.
I chose to fight several of those elemental dragons, actually - which may have been a matter of vengeance after this mess:
In subsequent dragon fights - at least a couple of them - I'd use mixes to gain absorption to the dragon's element. Why not? It's not that costly.
I accidentally found Carbunkle so I figured I may as well fight it. It was fine. This was approximately our state shortly before Gilgamesh 4:
Gilgamesh was fine. I gave some thought to over-preparation with chemistry but it wasn't a complicated fight. There were a few moves that damaged us a lot, but when someone needed healing the best thing was generally Succubus Kiss.
The Exdeath fight was... terrible. I mean, we won, but it was a slog. For one thing, I didn't remember that there are no save points between Gilgamesh and Exdeath (even though that's understandable, with there being one right before Gilgamesh). Not only did I fail to save, I was just kind of running upwards and didn't realize the fight was coming so I didn't put on any useful equips, like, say, Reflect Rings.
I figured we'd give it a shot anyway, of course. He must have cast Dispel on me 8 or more times in this fight, and between that and the dying I wanted to reapply my defensive statuses frequently.
This ended up in a situation where I had to be selective about it by the end, since I was down to a single Turtle Shell. I also hadn't specifically grinded Dragon Fangs, although I had a few from however many Zombie Dragons I ran into naturally. I couldn't buff or power up recklessly.
It turns out most of the team had levels that were multiples of 3, which was also an issue, but only once.
It was a rough one, but we were victorious.
Early World 3 was no big deal. To finish Antlion quicker, Bartz threw a couple of weapons.
Now we were ready to journey as a party of 3. The first stop was Moore to get the Chicken Knife and some healing items. Bartz is using a Twin Lance to negate the Chicken Knife's drawback.
In the Pyramid, I did the thing where I mostly rushed it and didn't collect treasures (mostly) figuring it would be faster and more helpful to come back with Lenna. Bartz's Chicken Knife damage made this area a breeze, including Mummies and Mecha Heads.
We got the Gaia Hammer here. While we weren't using a berserker at this point. Faris wasn't a very experienced chemist - with no access to Mix, Equip Axe was actually a pretty useful secondary. By the end I changed Faris over to having access to Throw, which was helpful for some groups.
We later fought a snake-clad lady in the forest. Between monk crits and the Chicken Knife we didn't have to be very strategic at all. We had Succubus Kiss, too. We set a couple of chemist buffs regardless, but it was an easy fight.
We had the team back together. We went and got the Assassin's Dagger, Sasuke's Katana, and the Sage's Staff - two of which are named after jobs and one of which is named after a specific person. Hm. We did some sidequesty stuff around Mirage. At this point I splurged on two Hermes Sandals.
We also grinded up plenty of Turtle Shells and Dragon Fangs. This process would also net us tons of job AP, but there's little enough synergy between these jobs that my job level progress really hasn't mattered very much.
This grind was made very easy between the ninja's offhand Chicken Knife and the Sage's Staff.
We fought Odin for no real reason and went to the Island Shrine. There wasn't much that was noteworthy here. I'm pretty scared of Tot Aevis (especially after watching Seer's incredible No Menu challenge video) but I threw out a Dragon Power or two and it was a cinch.
For Wendigo, I thought I'd be clever using an Ice Shield on the berserker and the Resist Ice mix on everyone. Unfortunately, the icy counter attacks I remember were specific to multi-target attacks, which I have quite few of, so while Resist Ice is fun it wasn't really important. I used Fire Scrolls a couple of times but we made faster progress by just attacking.
Next, I decided to do Fork Tower because a few of the rewards from Leviathan could be an asset for me against Omega and/or Shinryu. The berserker needed to go physical, and the ninja has the best attacks, so they went right (which I almost always get backwards but didn't this time!).
The physical team had a rough go against Minotaur. Lenna the ninja was down by the end, and Bartzeker probably only had one or two actions left when he won.
This left the chemist and monk, who are an unlikely magical duo. They would run from every encounter, and the plan was to berserker and blind Omniscient with chemistry.
To speed things up, I even berserked Krile.
With that, we now have all of our means of transportation available. I carefully saved up for 3 Coral Rings - we'll get one free one later.
...only to forget to put them on before fighting Leviathan! C'mon. Oh well, we can boost everyone's levels by 20 and beat the fight within seconds. With Mix and a big stack of Dragon Fangs, there's not much need to apply other strategies.
With that - and a minor shop for armor in Mirage again - we're saved parked and ready outside of the entrance to the game's last area!
<< First | < Previous | Index | Next >
