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Let's play Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light! (Done, yay!)
- Thread starter Crooked Bee
- Start date
Mrowak
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2008
- Messages
- 3,947
Good job ridding the world of Satan. Nice battle. 
Love FF class system (when Square-soft implements it. All FFs should have it).
I've just 'acquired' that puppy (yeah,... 'acquired'... that's the right word). Should be fun.
At least after I tear myself from Freespace 2 and Way of the Samurai.
Love FF class system (when Square-soft implements it. All FFs should have it).I've just 'acquired' that puppy (yeah,... 'acquired'... that's the right word). Should be fun.
At least after I tear myself from Freespace 2 and Way of the Samurai.
Bump me!
Silellak
Cipher
Congrats on the end of Act 2!
^ Thanks Silellak and ghostdog!
INTERLUDE: BONUS TOWERS
You made me do it -- now watch me do it. Watch me suffer. Jerks.
Okay, folks, we'll be crawling through the optional dungeons before we kick Act III: The Grand Finale into motion. I totally hate you all for making me do all this, by the way.
But yeah, whatever. There are four bonus towers that we can unlock with our brand new Master Key received from Rolan. Each tower has a difficulty level assigned, from 1 to 4.
The dungeons are randomly generated each time you enter the dungeon, so there's no point in mapping them or anything -- which is definitely an
compared to, say, Via Infinita in FFX-2. I'll conquer the first tower first, which is supposed to be the easiest one, and then we'll see how it goes after that. The moment the difficulty becomes pointlessly high, I'm outta here. Still, I hope to be able to beat at least two of the towers. The strategy I have in mind for all of them is one and the same, and it's pretty simple: run away from most of the random thrash mob encounters to avoid too much grinding -- we'll need a Wayfarer in our party for that, set-up so that he or she could always act first during the turn -- grab all the treasure and defeat all the bosses with our awesome tactics. (As we are to see in this update, the "grab all the treasure" part didn't quite go as planned for me in the first tower, but meh, whatever.) So yeah, that's the plan. In order to make this part of the LP more "lively", I'm going to include some NPC chatter tidbits from the towns I visit, so be sure not to miss out on those if you feel like following the story. Let us begin, shall we?
Part 37: Moonsand Ruins
In which we crawl through 100 random floors and defeat five powerful foes.
(I apologize to spekkio-kun for the absence of filtering in this update. It's just that I made all this screenshots earlier. I totally promise to turn the filtering on for the next update!!)
Previously on this LP, we defeated the false king Horne a.k.a. Satan and the Schwarzwelt thingie -- the demons' dark world, realm of the mysterious Dark Lord -- appeared suddenly out of the blue of the sea. In a true RPG fashion, it's going to be waiting there for us until we get all the optional shit done. The Dark Lord can wait, whoever he is. I mean, if Dragon Age can get away with it and be replayed by Codexers 7 times, then why not this game?
But first we need to conclude our business at the Horne Castle.
As you may remember, we got a Desolator Tome from King Horne:
We also have the Dark Fencer crown now:
Here is Dark Fencer's list of abilities:
Darkside: Deal damage to one foe by sacrificing some HP.
Darker Side: Deal damage to all foes by sacrificing some HP.
Eye for an Eye: Attack damage increases with lower HP.
Amok: Use Darkside repeatedly until all your HP is consumed.
Sounds kinda cool, in a masochistic way. Maybe we'll try it out later.
Meanwhile a castle officer wants to hire us, it seems:
No way, dude. We, the heroes of light, are above such a lowly job.
Sorry to disappoint you, bro, but we're the one and only. Even that crybaby Rolan can't compare to us.
We also get a tower-crawling hint:
Duly noted. But the mere sound of "70th" and "90th" floors makes my little head spin. :dizzy:
Shoo yourself, yay!
...but dark things are on the rise again! And they're even darker than before!
In the future, you mean? Could be.
Duly noted! We'll be doing just that soon.
Okay, we won't be bothering you further, then.
Bah, we go where we please.
Awww, "fluff ball", how cute.
Oh, by the way. We change SMA into a Wayfarer...
...and upgrade her Wayfarer crown to learn a new ability that is sure to come in handy in the optional towers, Escape:
Now we'll be able to run from any non-boss encounter we meet.
But back to the chatting business.
Yup, pretty princesses sure love perfumes. All girls do!
Meh, it's just that the Apocalypse has been totally set in motion.
Grrrr. We are the heroes, not that pathetic Rolan.
Oh, she will, she totally will. Like being cursed into a cat form, for example.
Aww.
Sleeping on duty!? How dare you!
And so we're outta here. We pay a visit to the local sheepmaster on our way back:
Yup, sis, we know. The towers are random dungeons.
And we're back in Horne.
It looks like the monsters only grow more powerful no matter what we do.
Yeah, never underestimate the Apocalypse, folks.
Witches aren't all bad, of that I'm sure.
Oh really?
FUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Erm, good to know.
Yeah. :/
I wonder about that, too. :/
Codexer's mother encourages us:
SMA is full of resolve:
As is Volly:
As is BRO:
As totally is our dear Codexer:
ONWARDS TO GLORY!!
Before venturing into the tower, however, we totally need to upgrade our armour. I won't be describing the ways of farming for gems here, as I want to dedicate a separate short update to that later. But anyway, the goal is to go harvesting for gems -- stealing gems from monsters without killing them -- which is what we do. It's boring but necessary if we want to survive the increased challenge of the towers. Once we've got a lot of gems, we can go to Urbeth to do a little upgrading. OCD FTW!!
Some of the armor and weapons were already upgraded a bit. Anywayz. Finally we upgrade Volly's Sword of Light to +8...
...her Great Tree Shield to +8...
...and her Scholar Gown to +7:
We also upgrade Codexer's Shield of Light to +3:
And his Armor of Light to +2:
SMA's Spell Fencer armor is upgraded to +2 (I've actually made some screenshots of the upgrade process itself this time):
BRO's Shaman Robe is upgraded only to +1 (I've run out of patience in farming for gems):
And his Sacred Tree Staff is upgraded from +2 to +3:
Let's hope all this lets us survive whatever comes our way. I probably should've upgraded BRO's and SMA's equipment a bit more, but boy, it's booooring.
At the local storage office, we deposit the Fira tome and the Black Book and equip the new spell, Desolator:
We'll see if it proves to be of any use.
There are two new dark magic spells for sale at the Urbeth magic shop:
Suppress is a general debuff. I should've taken it with me at this point, but I forgot to. Perhaps later.
The news is, it turns out we can purchase some pretty powerful items at ... the Wireless shops around the world!
Yeah, yeah, I know. The catch is, we can only purchase those items with "multiplayer points", not with gold -- which is bad, as I don't have many multiplayer points, for obvious reasons. The good thing is that these points are earned not only in multi-, but also in single-player; my guess is they are awared for slaying monsters and maybe for our progress in the game or some such. But anyway. We've got 7585 points right now. Let's see what the Urbeth wireless shop has to offer!
First come the three pretty powerful spears. The Trident is especially powerful, but it sure is pricey, ouch! Worker's Clothes are totally useless at this point, of course.
In fact, all the clothes here are useless for us now. Gem Collector looks like a nice accessory, but it isn't particularly vital.
Hermes Sandals, on the other hand, looks like just what we need for our Wayfarer. They let the character always act first during the turn. So we buy them and equip on SMA:
Now ONWARDS to the tower!
The first tower is located to the north of Horne and the Witch's Mansion:
We land and enter it.
Approaching the entrance, we see a strange figure standing nearby. He's something like our guide to this mysterious place:
I really like the idea of a random dungeon. At least in theory.
Well, that's convenient. Still, 10 floors ain't that easy to clear in one go either.
Sure, we will be.
Good.
Oh-kay, like we need to.
Starting over from the beginning!? I hope not.
And yeah, this is the Level 1 tower, the easiest of the bunch. But the easiest != easy, amirite?
We unlock the tower entrance with our Master Key. It's time to step inside!
Oh-kay, so here we go. The first thing we do on 1F is wander into a dead end:
Oh-kay, two things already. First, I didn't expect this floor to be so large right from the start, and second, I predict a lot of frustration on our way to 100F.
Our first encounter, yay! It's a Bullking and a Neko!
We run away!
And that is the tactics we're going to be using throughout this dungeon -- we'll run away whenever we can, that is, whenever we aren't too low on AP. Otherwise we'll just be boosting our AP only to flee again. Good thing SMA's Hermes Sandals allow her to always have the initiative. All in all, sounds like a plan.
You know what? ... Where's the exit goddammit!?
Oh here it is. Good.
And we climb up to 2F:
It is here that I probably should explain my overall impressions of this tower, even if that means jumping ahead of myself.
1. The first thing you'll notice is that, well, the stairs down disappear: there is no turning back, no going back down to the previous floor.
2. The level layout is also random and usually non-linear; and by that, I mean totally non-linear, with a lot of twists, turns and dead-ends. It is incline, pure and simple.
3. The stairs up leading to the next floor seem to be randomly placed, so that you never know just which direction you should take. And since there’s no pattern behind it, you have a lot of running around to do in order to reach the next stairs. Sometimes you may get lucky and find the stairs quickly; sometimes you head in a totally wrong direction and, well, don't. Sometimes the stairs may be right next to you, and sometimes you have to crawl through the whole bleeping level and back again to finally find them. It's random; and there is no quest compass.
4. But the most FUUU-inducing moment is when you crawl through half of the level and back only to find out that the stairs were right near you, it's just that you took a wrong direction initially.
5. Levels tend to get larger the higher you climb. To say the later levels are "sprawling" would be an understatement; they turn into a freakin' maze. This reaches a point where every dead end and every random encounter makes you rage. All in all, this implementation of random dungeons is both nice and totally enraging. Hardcore, yay!
6. The enemies are significantly stronger here. Even the regular ones attack you for, like, 30 to 50 hp. Almost every of their attacks has a chance of inflicting some nasty status ailment. Many enemies – like, say, Hellhounds or Jack Lanterns or Medusae – get to attack twice per turn. Almost every battle feels like a mid-boss battle. Non-enchanted attacks are especially dangerous since Mysterio doesn’t help in weakening them. That's why you really should just run away from them most of the time.
But anyway. We get to 3F:
And then to 4F:
Dead end!
Etc.
Finally we reach 10F:
It looks like we can't "clear" this floor until we battle the boss we are facing. Oh-kay, we won't need the Wayfarer class for this battle, so we make SMA a Hero:
And then we approach the monster.
Boss #1: Behugemoth
It's our old pal, Behugemoth!
He has grown more powerful now, however.
His first attack -- before we are protected by Mysterio -- deals 50 points of damage to SMA and confuses her:
Volly uses Spell Focus, Codexer Dispensary, and BRO Mysterio.
Then Behugemoth strikes again:
Oh my gosh. It looks like Mysterio isn't helping much here. 120 hp + confusion FFS!
Then the fearsome beastie casts Lightning Bolt:
This time Mysterio does help us resist it, but... 30 and 45 points of damage, really!?
We are totally paralyzed, to boot. :/
SMA casts Lux now as she didn't have enough AP to cast it at the beginning of the battle:
Behugemoth attacks:
He hits Codexer for 43 hp even though Codexer is protected by Shield of Light +3 and Armor of Light +2! Luckily, Behugemoth doesn't attack BRO or SMA; they survive and Codexer can use Healthcare:
Another Lightning Bolt follows:
SMA gets paralyzed. :/
Let's try casting our new spell, Desolator, now:
Spell Focus + Desolator deals ca. 1400 damage to Behugemoth. Well, what can I say? It isn't quite as powerful as I expected it to be. Magic Might is more powerful, especially given that it doesn't need the Spell Focus to strengthen it.
And so it goes. The main problem in this battle, apart from Behugemoth's powerful attacks, is the Paralyzed status:
Oh, and the Confused status, too.
Well, at least Codexer cannot be paralyzed nor confused as his armour makes him immune to status ailments. Several turns later Volly recovers from paralysis and replenishes her AP enough to use Magic Might:
One boss dealt with, yay! We obtain 100 exp. SMA levels up:
SMA -> level 35: HP +5, STR +2, INT +1.
We've cleared this floor now. A teleporter appears, in case we want to exit the tower now, as well as a set of stairs in case we want to explore the tower further right now. We want the latter. But first we change SMA back into a Wayfarer.
On the other hand, the progress is saved every 10 floors, and so we may as well try exiting the tower now and then going back:
We choose "Yes" and get teleported outside.
We are also asked if we want to start it all over:
No! No way.
Good. We enter the tower again -- and find ourselves right on 11F:
Dead end!
On 12F, the next stairs are conveniently located right to the north of us:
But this happens only rarely. Usually you have at least some running around to do before you find the next stairs.
I think I should show you a random encounter that happened on 13F:
SMA has only 2 AP left, and so I decide to Boost for a couple of turns and then run away. Normally this kind of encounter shouldn't be a problem, as Lilith and Arp are just regular enemies. They are, however, much more irritating here, inside the optional tower. Arps, for example, can put us to sleep:
Lilith can cast Silence and Confuse...
...and Arp's regular attacks can paralyze us:
Just as SMA wakes up from her sleep -- she is put to sleep again:
Lilith can also cast Darkra. Etc.
But we finally manage to heal ourselves, boost and flee from battle.
Other enemy groups we encounter here include Ichthon, Vampire Bat, Arp, Imp...
...Nue and two Giant Moths...
...Nues can cast Quakra, by the way...
...two Imps and two Arps...
...three Kaiser Penguins...
...etc.
We make it to 15F...
...and then to 20F:
This floor has no boss battle. Phew.
We climb further up -- this is just 1/5 of the tower, after all.
On 21F I have to do a whole LOT of wandering around until I finally spot the stairs:
They are, however, separated from where we currently are by a wall -- and in order to reach them, we have to go back through half of the floor.
But eventually, and with quite a lot of frustration along the way, we reach 30F:
Another boss battle, yay! We change SMA into a Bard this time:
Hopefully her Motet, together with BRO's Mysterio, will allow us to lessen the amount of damage taken.
Boss #2: Demon Lord
Demon Lord!
No, of course this isn't the Dark Lord we are after.
He's so ... small.
of demon lords.
BRO uses Mysterio, and Demon Lord attacks:
No damage, but BRO is cursed. Good thing we have a Salve-maker in our party, and so can spam Remedy.
Volly uses Magic Might:
Nice.
Demon Lord uses a powerful attack called World of Dark:
Well, what can I say? Mysterio helps a lot.
The World of Dark is followed by a Bladeblitz:
Again, without Mysterio we would most likely already be dead.
SMA uses Motet:
And Codexer, Remedy + Healthcare:
And so it goes. Demon Lord continues using Bladeblitz and World of Dark, and his regular attacks continue to curse us --
-- which would be quite nasty if not for Remedy + Healthcare.
BRO tries silencing the foe, but misses:
Next turn, however, he suceeds:
Verily, verily I tell thee: no status effect is more useful in this game than Silence.
Volly uses Magic Might and...
...the enemy is destroyed!
We obtain 100 exp.
Yay!
30 floors cleared.
70 floors to go.
The first encounter on 31F involves Imps:
Arrrgh where do I go next!???
I hate.
Floor 40, here we come!
Who's that bastard over there? We switch SMA's crown to Hero, just in case, and approach the man.
Oh, so it's a bonus shop. Yay! Shopping time!
Four new items here:
So pricey, ouch!
I want to buy an Unyielding Shield for SMA, but we've only got 86116 gold pieces. So I sell 8 of my Amethysts:
I may regret this later, but hell, why not.
So how about we get some more money in Urbeth and come back here to buy, say, a Gungnir?
...Which is what we do. We come back with more money. But as we enter the tower...
...we find ourselves on 41F, not on 40F, grrrr!
That means we can only visit the shop once. Go away to fetch more money = no more shop. C&C, hell yeah!!
And so we go on.
Dead ends, dead ends everywhere!
And reach 50F:
Another boss battle, yay!
We switch SMA's class to Hero.
To be continued in the next post...
INTERLUDE: BONUS TOWERS
You made me do it -- now watch me do it. Watch me suffer. Jerks.
Okay, folks, we'll be crawling through the optional dungeons before we kick Act III: The Grand Finale into motion. I totally hate you all for making me do all this, by the way.
But yeah, whatever. There are four bonus towers that we can unlock with our brand new Master Key received from Rolan. Each tower has a difficulty level assigned, from 1 to 4.
The dungeons are randomly generated each time you enter the dungeon, so there's no point in mapping them or anything -- which is definitely an
compared to, say, Via Infinita in FFX-2. I'll conquer the first tower first, which is supposed to be the easiest one, and then we'll see how it goes after that. The moment the difficulty becomes pointlessly high, I'm outta here. Still, I hope to be able to beat at least two of the towers. The strategy I have in mind for all of them is one and the same, and it's pretty simple: run away from most of the random thrash mob encounters to avoid too much grinding -- we'll need a Wayfarer in our party for that, set-up so that he or she could always act first during the turn -- grab all the treasure and defeat all the bosses with our awesome tactics. (As we are to see in this update, the "grab all the treasure" part didn't quite go as planned for me in the first tower, but meh, whatever.) So yeah, that's the plan. In order to make this part of the LP more "lively", I'm going to include some NPC chatter tidbits from the towns I visit, so be sure not to miss out on those if you feel like following the story. Let us begin, shall we?Part 37: Moonsand Ruins
In which we crawl through 100 random floors and defeat five powerful foes.
(I apologize to spekkio-kun for the absence of filtering in this update. It's just that I made all this screenshots earlier. I totally promise to turn the filtering on for the next update!!)
Previously on this LP, we defeated the false king Horne a.k.a. Satan and the Schwarzwelt thingie -- the demons' dark world, realm of the mysterious Dark Lord -- appeared suddenly out of the blue of the sea. In a true RPG fashion, it's going to be waiting there for us until we get all the optional shit done. The Dark Lord can wait, whoever he is. I mean, if Dragon Age can get away with it and be replayed by Codexers 7 times, then why not this game?
But first we need to conclude our business at the Horne Castle.As you may remember, we got a Desolator Tome from King Horne:
We also have the Dark Fencer crown now:
Here is Dark Fencer's list of abilities:
Darkside: Deal damage to one foe by sacrificing some HP.
Darker Side: Deal damage to all foes by sacrificing some HP.
Eye for an Eye: Attack damage increases with lower HP.
Amok: Use Darkside repeatedly until all your HP is consumed.
Sounds kinda cool, in a masochistic way.
Maybe we'll try it out later.Meanwhile a castle officer wants to hire us, it seems:
No way, dude. We, the heroes of light, are above such a lowly job.
Sorry to disappoint you, bro, but we're the one and only. Even that crybaby Rolan can't compare to us.
We also get a tower-crawling hint:
Duly noted. But the mere sound of "70th" and "90th" floors makes my little head spin. :dizzy:
Shoo yourself, yay!
...but dark things are on the rise again! And they're even darker than before!
In the future, you mean? Could be.
Duly noted! We'll be doing just that soon.
Okay, we won't be bothering you further, then.
Bah, we go where we please.
Awww, "fluff ball", how cute.
Oh, by the way. We change SMA into a Wayfarer...
...and upgrade her Wayfarer crown to learn a new ability that is sure to come in handy in the optional towers, Escape:
Now we'll be able to run from any non-boss encounter we meet.
But back to the chatting business.
Yup, pretty princesses sure love perfumes. All girls do!
Meh, it's just that the Apocalypse has been totally set in motion.
Grrrr. We are the heroes, not that pathetic Rolan.
Oh, she will, she totally will. Like being cursed into a cat form, for example.
Aww.
Sleeping on duty!? How dare you!
And so we're outta here. We pay a visit to the local sheepmaster on our way back:
Yup, sis, we know. The towers are random dungeons.
And we're back in Horne.
It looks like the monsters only grow more powerful no matter what we do.
Yeah, never underestimate the Apocalypse, folks.
Witches aren't all bad, of that I'm sure.
Oh really?
FUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Erm, good to know.
Yeah. :/
I wonder about that, too. :/
Codexer's mother encourages us:
SMA is full of resolve:
As is Volly:
As is BRO:
As totally is our dear Codexer:
ONWARDS TO GLORY!!
Before venturing into the tower, however, we totally need to upgrade our armour. I won't be describing the ways of farming for gems here, as I want to dedicate a separate short update to that later. But anyway, the goal is to go harvesting for gems -- stealing gems from monsters without killing them -- which is what we do. It's boring but necessary if we want to survive the increased challenge of the towers. Once we've got a lot of gems, we can go to Urbeth to do a little upgrading. OCD FTW!!
Some of the armor and weapons were already upgraded a bit. Anywayz. Finally we upgrade Volly's Sword of Light to +8...
...her Great Tree Shield to +8...
...and her Scholar Gown to +7:
We also upgrade Codexer's Shield of Light to +3:
And his Armor of Light to +2:
SMA's Spell Fencer armor is upgraded to +2 (I've actually made some screenshots of the upgrade process itself this time):
BRO's Shaman Robe is upgraded only to +1 (I've run out of patience in farming for gems):
And his Sacred Tree Staff is upgraded from +2 to +3:
Let's hope all this lets us survive whatever comes our way. I probably should've upgraded BRO's and SMA's equipment a bit more, but boy, it's booooring.
At the local storage office, we deposit the Fira tome and the Black Book and equip the new spell, Desolator:
We'll see if it proves to be of any use.
There are two new dark magic spells for sale at the Urbeth magic shop:
Suppress is a general debuff. I should've taken it with me at this point, but I forgot to. Perhaps later.
The news is, it turns out we can purchase some pretty powerful items at ... the Wireless shops around the world!
Yeah, yeah, I know. The catch is, we can only purchase those items with "multiplayer points", not with gold -- which is bad, as I don't have many multiplayer points, for obvious reasons. The good thing is that these points are earned not only in multi-, but also in single-player; my guess is they are awared for slaying monsters and maybe for our progress in the game or some such. But anyway. We've got 7585 points right now. Let's see what the Urbeth wireless shop has to offer!
First come the three pretty powerful spears. The Trident is especially powerful, but it sure is pricey, ouch! Worker's Clothes are totally useless at this point, of course.
In fact, all the clothes here are useless for us now. Gem Collector looks like a nice accessory, but it isn't particularly vital.
Hermes Sandals, on the other hand, looks like just what we need for our Wayfarer. They let the character always act first during the turn. So we buy them and equip on SMA:
Now ONWARDS to the tower!
The first tower is located to the north of Horne and the Witch's Mansion:
We land and enter it.
Approaching the entrance, we see a strange figure standing nearby. He's something like our guide to this mysterious place:
I really like the idea of a random dungeon. At least in theory.
Well, that's convenient. Still, 10 floors ain't that easy to clear in one go either.
Sure, we will be.
Good.
Oh-kay, like we need to.
Starting over from the beginning!? I hope not.
And yeah, this is the Level 1 tower, the easiest of the bunch. But the easiest != easy, amirite?
We unlock the tower entrance with our Master Key. It's time to step inside!
Oh-kay, so here we go. The first thing we do on 1F is wander into a dead end:
Oh-kay, two things already. First, I didn't expect this floor to be so large right from the start, and second, I predict a lot of frustration on our way to 100F.
Our first encounter, yay! It's a Bullking and a Neko!
We run away!
And that is the tactics we're going to be using throughout this dungeon -- we'll run away whenever we can, that is, whenever we aren't too low on AP. Otherwise we'll just be boosting our AP only to flee again. Good thing SMA's Hermes Sandals allow her to always have the initiative. All in all, sounds like a plan.
You know what? ... Where's the exit goddammit!?
Oh here it is. Good.
And we climb up to 2F:
It is here that I probably should explain my overall impressions of this tower, even if that means jumping ahead of myself.
1. The first thing you'll notice is that, well, the stairs down disappear: there is no turning back, no going back down to the previous floor.
2. The level layout is also random and usually non-linear; and by that, I mean totally non-linear, with a lot of twists, turns and dead-ends. It is incline, pure and simple.
3. The stairs up leading to the next floor seem to be randomly placed, so that you never know just which direction you should take. And since there’s no pattern behind it, you have a lot of running around to do in order to reach the next stairs. Sometimes you may get lucky and find the stairs quickly; sometimes you head in a totally wrong direction and, well, don't. Sometimes the stairs may be right next to you, and sometimes you have to crawl through the whole bleeping level and back again to finally find them. It's random; and there is no quest compass.
4. But the most FUUU-inducing moment is when you crawl through half of the level and back only to find out that the stairs were right near you, it's just that you took a wrong direction initially.
5. Levels tend to get larger the higher you climb. To say the later levels are "sprawling" would be an understatement; they turn into a freakin' maze. This reaches a point where every dead end and every random encounter makes you rage. All in all, this implementation of random dungeons is both nice and totally enraging. Hardcore, yay!
6. The enemies are significantly stronger here. Even the regular ones attack you for, like, 30 to 50 hp. Almost every of their attacks has a chance of inflicting some nasty status ailment. Many enemies – like, say, Hellhounds or Jack Lanterns or Medusae – get to attack twice per turn. Almost every battle feels like a mid-boss battle. Non-enchanted attacks are especially dangerous since Mysterio doesn’t help in weakening them. That's why you really should just run away from them most of the time.
But anyway. We get to 3F:
And then to 4F:
Dead end!
Etc.
Finally we reach 10F:
It looks like we can't "clear" this floor until we battle the boss we are facing. Oh-kay, we won't need the Wayfarer class for this battle, so we make SMA a Hero:
And then we approach the monster.
Boss #1: Behugemoth
It's our old pal, Behugemoth!
He has grown more powerful now, however.
His first attack -- before we are protected by Mysterio -- deals 50 points of damage to SMA and confuses her:
Volly uses Spell Focus, Codexer Dispensary, and BRO Mysterio.
Then Behugemoth strikes again:
Oh my gosh. It looks like Mysterio isn't helping much here. 120 hp + confusion FFS!
Then the fearsome beastie casts Lightning Bolt:
This time Mysterio does help us resist it, but... 30 and 45 points of damage, really!?
We are totally paralyzed, to boot. :/
SMA casts Lux now as she didn't have enough AP to cast it at the beginning of the battle:
Behugemoth attacks:
He hits Codexer for 43 hp even though Codexer is protected by Shield of Light +3 and Armor of Light +2! Luckily, Behugemoth doesn't attack BRO or SMA; they survive and Codexer can use Healthcare:
Another Lightning Bolt follows:
SMA gets paralyzed. :/
Let's try casting our new spell, Desolator, now:
Spell Focus + Desolator deals ca. 1400 damage to Behugemoth. Well, what can I say? It isn't quite as powerful as I expected it to be. Magic Might is more powerful, especially given that it doesn't need the Spell Focus to strengthen it.
And so it goes. The main problem in this battle, apart from Behugemoth's powerful attacks, is the Paralyzed status:
Oh, and the Confused status, too.
Well, at least Codexer cannot be paralyzed nor confused as his armour makes him immune to status ailments. Several turns later Volly recovers from paralysis and replenishes her AP enough to use Magic Might:
One boss dealt with, yay! We obtain 100 exp. SMA levels up:
SMA -> level 35: HP +5, STR +2, INT +1.
We've cleared this floor now. A teleporter appears, in case we want to exit the tower now, as well as a set of stairs in case we want to explore the tower further right now. We want the latter. But first we change SMA back into a Wayfarer.
On the other hand, the progress is saved every 10 floors, and so we may as well try exiting the tower now and then going back:
We choose "Yes" and get teleported outside.
We are also asked if we want to start it all over:
No! No way.
Good. We enter the tower again -- and find ourselves right on 11F:
Dead end!
On 12F, the next stairs are conveniently located right to the north of us:
But this happens only rarely. Usually you have at least some running around to do before you find the next stairs.
I think I should show you a random encounter that happened on 13F:
SMA has only 2 AP left, and so I decide to Boost for a couple of turns and then run away. Normally this kind of encounter shouldn't be a problem, as Lilith and Arp are just regular enemies. They are, however, much more irritating here, inside the optional tower. Arps, for example, can put us to sleep:
Lilith can cast Silence and Confuse...
...and Arp's regular attacks can paralyze us:
Just as SMA wakes up from her sleep -- she is put to sleep again:
Lilith can also cast Darkra. Etc.
But we finally manage to heal ourselves, boost and flee from battle.
Other enemy groups we encounter here include Ichthon, Vampire Bat, Arp, Imp...
...Nue and two Giant Moths...
...Nues can cast Quakra, by the way...
...two Imps and two Arps...
...three Kaiser Penguins...
...etc.
We make it to 15F...
...and then to 20F:
This floor has no boss battle. Phew.
We climb further up -- this is just 1/5 of the tower, after all.
On 21F I have to do a whole LOT of wandering around until I finally spot the stairs:
They are, however, separated from where we currently are by a wall -- and in order to reach them, we have to go back through half of the floor.
But eventually, and with quite a lot of frustration along the way, we reach 30F:
Another boss battle, yay! We change SMA into a Bard this time:
Hopefully her Motet, together with BRO's Mysterio, will allow us to lessen the amount of damage taken.
Boss #2: Demon Lord
Demon Lord!
No, of course this isn't the Dark Lord we are after.
He's so ... small.
of demon lords.BRO uses Mysterio, and Demon Lord attacks:
No damage, but BRO is cursed. Good thing we have a Salve-maker in our party, and so can spam Remedy.
Volly uses Magic Might:
Nice.
Demon Lord uses a powerful attack called World of Dark:
Well, what can I say? Mysterio helps a lot.
The World of Dark is followed by a Bladeblitz:
Again, without Mysterio we would most likely already be dead.
SMA uses Motet:
And Codexer, Remedy + Healthcare:
And so it goes. Demon Lord continues using Bladeblitz and World of Dark, and his regular attacks continue to curse us --
-- which would be quite nasty if not for Remedy + Healthcare.
BRO tries silencing the foe, but misses:
Next turn, however, he suceeds:
Verily, verily I tell thee: no status effect is more useful in this game than Silence.
Volly uses Magic Might and...
...the enemy is destroyed!
We obtain 100 exp.
Yay!
30 floors cleared.
70 floors to go.
The first encounter on 31F involves Imps:
Arrrgh where do I go next!???
I hate.
Floor 40, here we come!
Who's that bastard over there? We switch SMA's crown to Hero, just in case, and approach the man.
Oh, so it's a bonus shop. Yay! Shopping time!
Four new items here:
So pricey, ouch!
I want to buy an Unyielding Shield for SMA, but we've only got 86116 gold pieces. So I sell 8 of my Amethysts:
I may regret this later, but hell, why not.
So how about we get some more money in Urbeth and come back here to buy, say, a Gungnir?
...Which is what we do. We come back with more money. But as we enter the tower...
...we find ourselves on 41F, not on 40F, grrrr!
That means we can only visit the shop once. Go away to fetch more money = no more shop. C&C, hell yeah!!
And so we go on.
Dead ends, dead ends everywhere!
And reach 50F:
Another boss battle, yay!
We switch SMA's class to Hero.
To be continued in the next post...
Continued from the previous post...
Boss #3: Sand Devil
This is another pal of ours, Sand Devil.
Again, he's grown tougher.
SMA casts Lux, and Sand Devil casts Quakra:
213 points of damage FFS!
BRO uses Mysterio. Good thing he's an Elementalist:
Volly uses Magic Might:
Way to go, sis!
Sand Devil uses Sandstorm, but we resist it thanks to Mysterio:
The Sandstorm can blind us, however:
But we don't rely much on melee attacks, so that isn't much of a problem.
SMA is still dead when Volly uses another Magic Might:
Black Mage + Salve-maker + Elementalist = pure win. SMA is just along for the ride.
We obtain 756 exp -- except for SMA who's dead. Volly and Codexer level up:
Volly -> level 36: HP +4, SPT +1, INT +1.
Codexer -> level 36: HP +5, STR +1, INT +1.
The level is clear, but what about SMA?
Oh. What a cute little ghost.
We use a Phoenix Down to bring her back to life. 51F it is.
Dead ends, I hate them!
Hmmm, what's that?
A treasure chest! Well, it's just a Phoenix Down, meh.
And so we crawl up to 60F:
Nothing of interest here. Movin' on.
As we climb up, new enemies appears -- for instance, Air Rays:
They paralyze us with Lightning Bolts, bastards!
70F, yay!
Hmmm, a treasure chest?
A Beastmaster Coat? Kewl.
Movin' up.
Vampire Bats get totally nasty up here:
67 points of damage FFS! Poor BRO. :/
It's time to run away!
Hellhounds!
They act twice per turn.
Poor SMA. :/
It looks like SMA is the most vulnerable of all four.
And then...
Totally decline! And that's with Mysterio on!
Codexer uses Phoenix Down + Healthcare:
Then we heal ourselves up and run away.
Another treasure chest on 77F:
Meh, it's just a potion.
A group of four Ichthons:
They also act twice per turn, and they can cast Water Blast -- which poisons us:
We use a Remedy + Healthcare and then run away.
And then finally reach 80F:
So it's a boss battle every 20 floors, eh? Well, not exactly, but almost.
Not much left to go now. But first we must defeat this boss. SMA will be a Bard this time.
Boss #4: Bahamut
We fought this beastie before, too.
SMA casts Lux, and BRO uses Mysterio. Volly uses Magic Might:
Nice!
Bahamut uses Fire Breath:
Not good! Without Mysterio it'd be totally deadly.
The first Fire Breath is followed by another one:
Poor SMA.
We recover some HP thanks to Lux, but then yet another Fire Breath happens:
Poor SMA indeed!
Codexer uses X-Potion + Healthcare, and everyone -- except SMA -- recovers their HP. Then we use Phoenix Down + Healthcare to bring SMA back to life with 13 HP. Volly uses Magic Might:
of Magic Might. It's the first time in this tower that two Magic Mights fail to kill a boss.
Bahamut can also attack in melee:
Fire Breath continues to deal very high damage, especially to SMA:
Volly uses Magic Might again:
What!? Not dead yet?
SMA, you're a pain in the ass.
Yay, finally!
We get 800 (!) exp and a new item, Orihalcon (some kind of rare material). BRO levels up:
BRO -> level 36: HP +4.
Floor 80 is clear!
Only 20 floors to go!
After more floors of pure rage...
...oh, and this is a totally sexy enemy combination, by the way --
--- we encounter Black Cat's favourite foes, Medusae!
Two at once. Hmm, this may be interesting. Let's not run away just now.
BRO uses Mysterio, but that doesn't help much against Medusa's regular attack:
Ouch!
This ain't no boss battle FFS!
SMA is confused, to boot.
We revive BRO, but...
Uh-oh.
Oh fuckity fuck.
Phew.
And after several more turns of frustration, we run away!
Then we finally make it to 90F:
A treasure chest, yay!
Remember the hint we received at the Horne Castle?
Well, it was totally correct!
Not bad. This Artemis Bow thingie looks pretty powerful.
We equip it on Codexer, replacing his Ranger Bow:
His attack power increases significantly. We may even use his Ranger crown again later down the road.
Movin' on!
New enemy here, Doppelganger!
We'd better run away from that bastard, I'm sure he's mighty powerful in this area.
And so ...
...finally...
...we reach 100F!
This is the last boss in this tower. He must be totally powerful. So I decide to change SMA into ... an Elementalist:
Since Elementalist is well-protected against magic, we can equip the Unyielding Shield on SMA to boost her physical defense:
Good.
So who's the boss?
Boss #5: Krinjh
It's Krinjh!
There is no in-game reason for him to be a boss, naturally. It's just a bonus gimmick. He is quite tough, however, indeed the toughest of all the bosses so far.
SMA uses Mysterio -- thanks to her Hermes Sandals she can do it right at the beginning of the turn, which will come in handy in this battle. Having two Elementalist will also help a lot, as we are soon to see.
Krinjh casts Silence but misses:
He can attack up to three times per turn.
Now that she's an Elementalist, SMA is finally p. resistant:
She's no longer the weakest of our heroes.
of SMA.
Volly uses Magic Might:
Meh, not much. I think this battle is going to be a long one.
BRO casts Lux, and Krinjh succeeds in silencing our pretty princess:
SMA uses Amplify to boost our elemental thingies:
Krinjh casts Watera:
Oops.
And then attacks:
Oh fuckity fuck.
Codexer uses Healthcare + Remedy, but it's already too late. Krinjh casts Quaga:
Thanks to Mysterio it doesn't deal any damage to us, however.
Neither does Quakra:
BRO tries silencing Krinjh but misses. Codexer uses Phoenix Down:
But then...
Lawl.
Er, I mean
It looks like Volly's the only one taking a lot of damage from Krinjh's spells. Too bad, since she's our only damage-dealer.
And then, next turn, BRO finally manages to silence Krinjh:
Take notes, dear readers: the Silence spell is a necessary thing to have in this game. Now Volly no longer has to be afraid of Krinjh's overpowered spells, yay!
Krinjh can also inflict various status ailments with his attacks, for example, blindness:
But that is really the least dangerous of all the things he can do.
Codexer brings Volly back to life -- but now, since she has been dead, Volly isn't protected neither by Mysterio nor by Lux. And that's where the need for the second Elementalist comes into play. BRO uses Mysterio:
Everyone except Volly already got protected by SMA's Mysterio last turn. That's why Codexer misses everyone but Volly. Which means that now we'll have to cast Mysterio twice for the rest of this battle: one for Volly, and one for the rest of our characters. That's what two Elementalists are for. (But not only for that, of course. For instance, Krinjh recovers from Silence every few turns, meaning BRO has to silence him again ASAP while SMA does the Mysterio thing.)
Volly's Magic Might continues to deal too little damage:
Codexer the Salve-maker can also use Poison Pill:
And then...
FFS!! You're freakin' ~silenced~, you bastard! I thought our problems are over!!
But anyway. We bring Volly back to life, and then we have to cast Lux and Mysterio on her, etc. The same stuff as we did earlier.
Volly's next Magic Might deals quite a lot of damage, by the way:
I've no idea why, really. It's just that sometimes the damage is low, and sometimes it's high. There must be some kind of pattern, but I haven't been able to see it. Oh, by the way. Whenever Volly is alive and isn't silenced, Krinjh wastes one of his attacks on silencing her -- which is totally useless against Magic Might which can't be silenced -- so we use it to our advantage. All in all, this battle is pretty nicely tactical, as far as this kind of game allows.
Also, we must always keep Volly's HP as high as possible for her to avoid dying by Krinjh's sword:
BRO keeps on silencing Krinjh, Codexer keeps on using Poison Pill, and Volly, Magic Might. Now that we have the battle under control, nasty things happen only when BRO's Silence misses its target:
As always in this battle, Volly is the one to suffer most from Krinjh's spells. But then BRO manages to silence Krinjh again, and everything is back to normal.
...At least for ten or so turns. When suddenly...
And so it goes again. This battle is getting really long. It must've taken no less than 35 turns, or maybe even significantly more. But finally...
We earn 756 exp. Volly, Codexer and SMA level up:
Volly -> level 37: HP +4, SPT +1.
Codexer -> level 37: HP +5, STR +1, SPT +1.
SMA -> level 36: HP +4, SPT +1.
Victory, yay!
We've beaten this freakin' sadistic tower!
SUDDENLY
EVERYTHING GOES NEXT-GEN AND THE CRYSTAL APPEARS!
Crystal: How mighty have you grown.
Crystal: To thee I grant this gift of Light, upon thy head a crown of might.
And we are presented with...
...the crown of the Ninja!
Ninja has been a recurring job in the FF series. In this game, it is an evasion crown:
Moving Target: Boost your ability to evade attacks.
Target Dummy: Create a copy of yourself to avoid physical attacks, makes two copies.
Counter: Unleash a counter-attack whenever you evade an attack. Lasts four turns.
Lightning Fists: Unleash repeated attacks. The better your evasion, the longer the chain.
Hmmm, not bad. But anyway.
Well, what can I say? Surprisingly enough, this has been dungeon crawling at its finest. As far as this kind of game is concerned, of course. And the bosses were fun. So stay tuned for more!
I wonder who the next tower's super-boss will be.
Boss #3: Sand Devil
This is another pal of ours, Sand Devil.
Again, he's grown tougher.
SMA casts Lux, and Sand Devil casts Quakra:
213 points of damage FFS!
BRO uses Mysterio. Good thing he's an Elementalist:
Volly uses Magic Might:
Way to go, sis!
Sand Devil uses Sandstorm, but we resist it thanks to Mysterio:
The Sandstorm can blind us, however:
But we don't rely much on melee attacks, so that isn't much of a problem.
SMA is still dead when Volly uses another Magic Might:
Black Mage + Salve-maker + Elementalist = pure win. SMA is just along for the ride.
We obtain 756 exp -- except for SMA who's dead. Volly and Codexer level up:
Volly -> level 36: HP +4, SPT +1, INT +1.
Codexer -> level 36: HP +5, STR +1, INT +1.
The level is clear, but what about SMA?
Oh.
What a cute little ghost.We use a Phoenix Down to bring her back to life. 51F it is.
Dead ends, I hate them!
Hmmm, what's that?
A treasure chest! Well, it's just a Phoenix Down, meh.
And so we crawl up to 60F:
Nothing of interest here. Movin' on.
As we climb up, new enemies appears -- for instance, Air Rays:
They paralyze us with Lightning Bolts, bastards!
70F, yay!
Hmmm, a treasure chest?
A Beastmaster Coat? Kewl.
Movin' up.
Vampire Bats get totally nasty up here:
67 points of damage FFS! Poor BRO. :/
It's time to run away!
Hellhounds!
They act twice per turn.
Poor SMA. :/
It looks like SMA is the most vulnerable of all four.
And then...
Totally decline! And that's with Mysterio on!
Codexer uses Phoenix Down + Healthcare:
Then we heal ourselves up and run away.
Another treasure chest on 77F:
Meh, it's just a potion.
A group of four Ichthons:
They also act twice per turn, and they can cast Water Blast -- which poisons us:
We use a Remedy + Healthcare and then run away.
And then finally reach 80F:
So it's a boss battle every 20 floors, eh? Well, not exactly, but almost.
Not much left to go now. But first we must defeat this boss. SMA will be a Bard this time.
Boss #4: Bahamut
We fought this beastie before, too.
SMA casts Lux, and BRO uses Mysterio. Volly uses Magic Might:
Nice!
Bahamut uses Fire Breath:
Not good! Without Mysterio it'd be totally deadly.
The first Fire Breath is followed by another one:
Poor SMA.
We recover some HP thanks to Lux, but then yet another Fire Breath happens:
Poor SMA indeed!
Codexer uses X-Potion + Healthcare, and everyone -- except SMA -- recovers their HP. Then we use Phoenix Down + Healthcare to bring SMA back to life with 13 HP. Volly uses Magic Might:
of Magic Might. It's the first time in this tower that two Magic Mights fail to kill a boss.Bahamut can also attack in melee:
Fire Breath continues to deal very high damage, especially to SMA:
Volly uses Magic Might again:
What!? Not dead yet?
SMA, you're a pain in the ass.
Yay, finally!
We get 800 (!) exp and a new item, Orihalcon (some kind of rare material). BRO levels up:
BRO -> level 36: HP +4.
Floor 80 is clear!
Only 20 floors to go!
After more floors of pure rage...
...oh, and this is a totally sexy enemy combination, by the way --
--- we encounter Black Cat's favourite foes, Medusae!
Two at once. Hmm, this may be interesting. Let's not run away just now.
BRO uses Mysterio, but that doesn't help much against Medusa's regular attack:
Ouch!
This ain't no boss battle FFS!
SMA is confused, to boot.
We revive BRO, but...
Uh-oh.
Oh fuckity fuck.
Phew.
And after several more turns of frustration, we run away!
Then we finally make it to 90F:
A treasure chest, yay!
Remember the hint we received at the Horne Castle?
Well, it was totally correct!
Not bad.
This Artemis Bow thingie looks pretty powerful.We equip it on Codexer, replacing his Ranger Bow:
His attack power increases significantly. We may even use his Ranger crown again later down the road.
Movin' on!
New enemy here, Doppelganger!
We'd better run away from that bastard, I'm sure he's mighty powerful in this area.
And so ...
...finally...
...we reach 100F!
This is the last boss in this tower. He must be totally powerful. So I decide to change SMA into ... an Elementalist:
Since Elementalist is well-protected against magic, we can equip the Unyielding Shield on SMA to boost her physical defense:
Good.
So who's the boss?
Boss #5: Krinjh
It's Krinjh!
There is no in-game reason for him to be a boss, naturally. It's just a bonus gimmick. He is quite tough, however, indeed the toughest of all the bosses so far.
SMA uses Mysterio -- thanks to her Hermes Sandals she can do it right at the beginning of the turn, which will come in handy in this battle. Having two Elementalist will also help a lot, as we are soon to see.
Krinjh casts Silence but misses:
He can attack up to three times per turn.
Now that she's an Elementalist, SMA is finally p. resistant:
She's no longer the weakest of our heroes.
of SMA.Volly uses Magic Might:
Meh, not much. I think this battle is going to be a long one.
BRO casts Lux, and Krinjh succeeds in silencing our pretty princess:
SMA uses Amplify to boost our elemental thingies:
Krinjh casts Watera:
Oops.
And then attacks:
Oh fuckity fuck.
Codexer uses Healthcare + Remedy, but it's already too late. Krinjh casts Quaga:
Thanks to Mysterio it doesn't deal any damage to us, however.
Neither does Quakra:
BRO tries silencing Krinjh but misses. Codexer uses Phoenix Down:
But then...
Lawl.
Er, I mean
It looks like Volly's the only one taking a lot of damage from Krinjh's spells. Too bad, since she's our only damage-dealer.
And then, next turn, BRO finally manages to silence Krinjh:
Take notes, dear readers: the Silence spell is a necessary thing to have in this game. Now Volly no longer has to be afraid of Krinjh's overpowered spells, yay!
Krinjh can also inflict various status ailments with his attacks, for example, blindness:
But that is really the least dangerous of all the things he can do.
Codexer brings Volly back to life -- but now, since she has been dead, Volly isn't protected neither by Mysterio nor by Lux. And that's where the need for the second Elementalist comes into play. BRO uses Mysterio:
Everyone except Volly already got protected by SMA's Mysterio last turn. That's why Codexer misses everyone but Volly. Which means that now we'll have to cast Mysterio twice for the rest of this battle: one for Volly, and one for the rest of our characters. That's what two Elementalists are for. (But not only for that, of course. For instance, Krinjh recovers from Silence every few turns, meaning BRO has to silence him again ASAP while SMA does the Mysterio thing.)
Volly's Magic Might continues to deal too little damage:
Codexer the Salve-maker can also use Poison Pill:
And then...
FFS!! You're freakin' ~silenced~, you bastard! I thought our problems are over!!
But anyway. We bring Volly back to life, and then we have to cast Lux and Mysterio on her, etc. The same stuff as we did earlier.
Volly's next Magic Might deals quite a lot of damage, by the way:
I've no idea why, really. It's just that sometimes the damage is low, and sometimes it's high. There must be some kind of pattern, but I haven't been able to see it. Oh, by the way. Whenever Volly is alive and isn't silenced, Krinjh wastes one of his attacks on silencing her -- which is totally useless against Magic Might which can't be silenced -- so we use it to our advantage. All in all, this battle is pretty nicely tactical, as far as this kind of game allows.
Also, we must always keep Volly's HP as high as possible for her to avoid dying by Krinjh's sword:
BRO keeps on silencing Krinjh, Codexer keeps on using Poison Pill, and Volly, Magic Might. Now that we have the battle under control, nasty things happen only when BRO's Silence misses its target:
As always in this battle, Volly is the one to suffer most from Krinjh's spells. But then BRO manages to silence Krinjh again, and everything is back to normal.
...At least for ten or so turns. When suddenly...
And so it goes again. This battle is getting really long. It must've taken no less than 35 turns, or maybe even significantly more. But finally...
We earn 756 exp. Volly, Codexer and SMA level up:
Volly -> level 37: HP +4, SPT +1.
Codexer -> level 37: HP +5, STR +1, SPT +1.
SMA -> level 36: HP +4, SPT +1.
Victory, yay!
We've beaten this freakin' sadistic tower!
SUDDENLY
EVERYTHING GOES NEXT-GEN AND THE CRYSTAL APPEARS!
Crystal: How mighty have you grown.
Crystal: To thee I grant this gift of Light, upon thy head a crown of might.
And we are presented with...
...the crown of the Ninja!
Ninja has been a recurring job in the FF series. In this game, it is an evasion crown:
Moving Target: Boost your ability to evade attacks.
Target Dummy: Create a copy of yourself to avoid physical attacks, makes two copies.
Counter: Unleash a counter-attack whenever you evade an attack. Lasts four turns.
Lightning Fists: Unleash repeated attacks. The better your evasion, the longer the chain.
Hmmm, not bad. But anyway.
Well, what can I say? Surprisingly enough, this has been dungeon crawling at its finest. As far as this kind of game is concerned, of course. And the bosses were fun. So stay tuned for more!
I wonder who the next tower's super-boss will be.
Graphicswhores, graphicswhores never change.
Stygian Lurker
Liturgist
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 577
great LP
also BUMP!
also BUMP!
Silellak
Cipher
This game's (or at least this NPC's) obsession with sheep kinda freaks me the fuck out.
You are truly hardcore for going through these optional dungeons. Never let anyone tell you otherwise!
Would be interesting to see if the Dark Fencer and Ninja classes are all at worthwhile. The Ninja's "Lighnting Fists" ability sounds like it could be especially useful. Poor SMA...she really needs to find something to do.
Stygian Lurker said:great LP
Thanks Mr. Lurker!
Silellak said:
This game's (or at least this NPC's) obsession with sheep kinda freaks me the fuck out.
Yeah, it's totally unhealthy. No Japanese game can do without some kind of perversion though.
Silellak said:You are truly hardcore for going through these optional dungeons. Never let anyone tell you otherwise!
Silellak said:
We'll see. If we make SMA a Dark Fencer, she could at least do something useful before going down.
As for Ninja, now I totally regret not buying the Hide Shield when I had the chance; without it, I'm afraid our Evasion stat won't be high enough for the Lightning Fists to be really useful.EDIT.
Also, whoever voted "No" after the last update: what, you didn't like this update?
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU- I thought the crawl was entertaining enough.
Silellak
Cipher
Crawl was awesome, you are a patriot, fuck the haters, etc.
Silellak said:
Cenobyte said:Crooked Bee
Awesome crawl
Azira said:
Oh wow.
Right click -> save as.
LusciousPear
Savant
I can award nothing but for being a bro and tolerating 100 floors of hack-n-slash.
Gg.
for being a bro and tolerating 100 floors of hack-n-slash. Gg.
Roger that!
Part 38: Holy Tree Tower
In which the power of money conquers all.
Previously on this LP, we made it through the first bonus tower, defeated super-Krinjh, and obtained the Ninja crown. Time to be movin' on to the second tower now!
But first here's the Ninja crown artwork:
Kawaii!
Ahem. So we exit the Moonsand Ruins.
(DISCLAIMER for spekkio: the next few screenshots are unfiltered. It should get fine after that though.)
Of course, before venturing forth, we mustgather our party prepare ourselves. As you already know, there's some good stuff being sold at Wireless Shops around the world, so let's check them out.
First we fly to Liberte.
Let's see what the local multiplayer abomination store has to offer:
First come three powerful books. Too bad Scholar is a p. shitty class.
Next come some useless clothes with stupid names.
And finally we have something good here: Old Shoes that let the character act last during the turn, and a mysterious item called Music Score. I don't think we really need the shoes, but let's buy the Music Score -- 'coz just what the hell "First, you have to know how to read music" means?
So we purchase it and...
...the Crystal appears!
And, after a bit of :blah: -- "How mighty have you grown", "Long, so long have we waited for this blessed day to come", etc. -- we are presented with a new crown, Musician:
Musician has the following abilities:
Serenade: Grant Regen to your party for three turns.
Nocturne: Boost your party's magic power for three turns.
March: Boost your party's movement speed for three turns.
Oratorio: Grant your party Regen. Boost attack, magic attack, and speed for five turns.
A Musician also has increased stats when in the presence of a Bard. But since we've got the Lux spell, which already includes Regen, we don't really need to, nor can really afford to, use this crown. There'd be more room for experiments if we had a 6-character party, but ... well, one could wish. *Sigh* (No, really, now that I have a lot of crowns, I see just how limited the 4-character party is.)
As you may remember, more than a half of Liberte was actually located on the back on the giant sleeping whale Cetus, and so it sailed away when the fishie awoke. We're in the other part of Liberte now, and the local NPCs are quite a bit worried:
They can't get to the other half of the town, poor fellers.
Oh.
Another NPC tells us that Cetus has, you know, a voice that humans just can't hear:
Meanwhile, the pirate captain Drake is getting ready for some x-treme action:
He's a good bro and means no harm to us poor little animals though:
As the Apocalypse draws near, the monsters get even more wild and numerous:
Another NPC is concerned no one's going to care about art once the Apocalypse hits:
A birdie gives us a (not so) useful advice:
And another bird is butthurt about whales:
And now we're off to the sand kingdom of Guera.
I know. The end times.
But doncha worry, the heroes of light are here to save the world!
You bet.
The wireless shop here in Guera has some totally powerful axes:
(I actually visited this shop before the Liberte one, but meh, who cares.)
Hercules looks particularly powerful. But there's no way for me to get those damn multiplayer points, it seems: I can't play no multiplayer games on an emulator. Hmmm.
Some useless clothes here too.
And some accessories we don't need.
The NPCs around Guera are completely satisfied with Krinjh being the new king, it seems:
A pig shares some advice:
Duly noted. (Not that it isn't obvious from the Dark Fencer crown description.)
An NPC can't wait to grow up and go out:
Oh, sure you will.
And yet another guy is all hyped about the bonus towers:
And we depart for Arbor.
Good for you.
Yeah, that's Beastmaster, and it's a pretty cool crown if you ask me. But it requires an all-furry party, ugh.
:twisted:
And now onto the Wireless shop:
Hmmm, two powerful staves and a p. interesting if risky accessory called Mana Screen. Plus a bunch of pointless clothing, a Growth Egg, and a pair of Old Shoes. I totally want that Sage's Staff, but there's no way for me to legally grind for multiplayer points...
...Hmmm, actually that gives me an idea...
...Voila!
(Sorry, folks, I hate cheating but this game basically made me do that. I mean, multiplayer-only items in my single-player RPG, what the fuck!?)
Anywayz. Movin' on.
Yeah, sure, you totally can handle everything yourself.
Duty, yay.
No wonder.
Scary!
Yeah!
:twisted:
What's with this elffaggotry bullshit?
Lol.
Well, the Dark Lord will have to wait until we crawl through the towers!
Oh my, we're in Invidia already!
Sure we can.
The bows here are totally cool.
There's also a new inventory for sale here, Energy Screen:
We buy Expunger for Codexer, for which I feel guilty.
(I shouldn't, however, as neither Expunger nor Hercules proved to be in any way useful. Oh well.)
Then we grind for gems like stupid and go to Urbeth's upgrade office:
Now that we've obtained Orihalcon from Krinjh, the upgrade bar increases from +9 to +19:
Yup, if we manage to obtain more Orihalcon, we'll be able to upgrade our items even further.
The second tower is supposed to be more difficult than the first one, and the only way to survive it with our low levels is to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. (Prerequisite: OCD.) Here's the result.
Volly's Sage Staff is upgraded to +7, her Great Tree Shield to +8, and Scholar Gown to +9.
Codexer's Shield of Light is now +4, and his Armor of Light +4.
SMA's Sword of Light is +9, Great Tree Shield +13, Unyielding Shield +3, and Spell Fencer Armor is now +3. I've upgraded her Great Tree Shield to +13 so that SMA could be more efficient as a Ninja.
BRO wields the Sacred Tree Staff +6, Great Tree Shield +2, and Shaman Robe +7.
And if you think we're properly upgraded, well, you're wrong. I should've put more effort into SMA's and BRO's gear, but meh, sometimes I get lazy.
We also enhance SMA's Dark Fencer crown:
And withdraw a debuff spell from storage:
Now we're all set for beating the 2nd tower!
We can't access it by land or air though; Cetus the whale is our only option.
I expected this to be an underwater cave or something, but...
Yep, folks, we enter a cave in the middle of the sea and find ourselves on a generic bonus tower island. The devs got really lazy here. (Yeah, I know I'm complaining about realism in a fantasy RPG, so the joke's on me.)
Just like with the previous tower, a guide is waiting for us near the tower's entrance:
Guide: Luckily, your progress will be saved each time you manage to clear ten floors. You can also leave the tower then.
Guide: If you manage to clear ten floors and save your progress, you can continue again from your last save point. Come talk to me and I'll tell you just how many floors you've made it through.
Yup, folks, difficulty = 2.
And so we enter the tower.
I'll keep it short since even though the tower looks differently, its design is the same I described in the previous update. The only difference is that the levels are larger, I guess that's because the difficulty is higher. Remember I told you the levels in the last tower were huge? Well, forget it. This tower's last twenty levels or so, now that's a huge pain in the you-know-what.
Here are some exploration screens for you:
And maaang, those dead-ends:
The monsters we encounter here include Gorgons -- who are even stronger than Medusae -- and Cockatrices...
(Gorgons confuse you with regular attacks, and both Gordons and Cockatrices petrify you.)
...Arch Demons...
...who use their favourite World of Dark spell...
...Cu Siths and Cait Siths...
...who can cast Quakra and Earth Blast...
...and attack for some p. high damage...
...as well as Gorgons and Wraiths (who are the stronger Silkies, basically)...
...Vultures and Muninns...
...Demon Rays and Ghouls...
...Wights and Cowpels...
...even more Cockatrices...
...Ikkakus and Cowpels...
...Chimerae and Silkies...
...Chimerae, Ikkakus and Wights...
...as well as Wights and Lamias:
Oh, and Greaps, who is now a regular enemy:
Getting to 10F, we face the first boss:
We change SMA's crown to Ninja...
...equipping the Hercules and Giant's Ring on her:
We give the Lux spell to Codexer since I want SMA to use her most powerful ability, Lightning Fists, straight away.
Let's see if it all proves useful.
Boss #1: Seadevil
The first boss we must slay is Seadevil. We've already slain him twice, by the way.
Seadevil gets to act three times per turn. He has a pretty powerful spell, Waterspray, at his disposal:
Luckily, we have BRO's Mysterio to lessen the elemental damage:
As well as Codexer's Lux:
Seadevil can also Confuse us:
And even his regular attacks, while not particularly powerful, tend to inflict some nasty status ailments:
We recover some HP at the end of the turn, but then another Waterspray follows:
SMA is paralyzed and silenced, and BRO gets poisoned.
Now BRO is cursed to boot. Sure a whole lot of status effects in this battle.
Codexer uses Dispensary, and we recover some HP. But Volly and SMA are both paralyzed. Next turn Volly can finally make Magic Might work:
Good.
Codexer uses Healthcare+Remedy to heal up the party a bit and remove the status ailments:
BRO silences the foe:
It looks like Waterspray is an ability, not a spell, and so can't be silenced. Oh well. So much for Silence being overpowered.
SMA uses Lightning Fists...
...but misses.
I hate crowns with abilities that can miss the target. It's what makes Scholar almost useless -- and, from the looks of it, Ninja too. Oh well. The problem with it is that you can only use the most powerful ability once per several turns, as it is highly AP-consuming, and if it misses, that means you've basically wasted quite a few turns for nothing, which is terribad and makes it a bad choice when you also have other, better abilities like Magic Might or Wrath to choose from.
BRO is now silenced and paralyzed, and SMA is poisoned. Seadevil attacks SMA and Volly:
He wakes Volly up, which is good.
Mysterio effect ends for our party, and Seadevil attacks Codexer three time in a row. Good thing his armour allows Codexer to resist the element effects and not take much damage:
Next turn Volly uses Magic Might and...
...Seadevil is slain!
We earn 100 exp and two Amethysts.
Oh, and goodbye Ninja, we hardly knew ye.
We climb further up, to 20F:
Nothing here. We press on.
As you already know from the previous update, we sometimes come across random treasure chests during our crawl. One containing a potion is on 23F:
The next boss is waiting for us on 30F:
I'm willing to give SMA the Ninja another chance.
Boss #2: Nue and Wraith
This is a Nue and a Wraith, but, being bosses, they are more powerful than their regular counterparts. The main problem is that they both can attack three times per turn = six attacks per turn.
The first thing Wraith does is hit our BRO...
...for 115 damage!
BRO's an Elementalist, but he doesn't resist the attack, and that means Wraith's attacks are pure melee. That doesn't bode well.
Indeed.
Nue casts Flame Blast:
And then attacks SMA:
Poor SMA. :/
Volly uses Magic Might:
Codexer casts Lux. Nue attacks Volly again:
Another Ice Blast follows shortly:
Uh-oh.
Wraith hits Codexer for 51 hp. And then for 45 more. And then...
Everyone is dead.
We respawn in Urbeth.
And make it back to 30F (from 21F). Let's make SMA an Elementalist this time, and BRO a Fighter so that he could get his HP high enough to survive:
We disequip BRO's staff so that he could fight bare-handed, and equip the Sacred Tree Staff +6, Hermes Sandals and Unyielding Shield +3 on SMA:
Oh-kay, here we go again.
SMA uses Mysterio, and then Wraith attacks her. Twice.
Nue curses our poor sis:
BRO the Fighter uses Chakra to boost his HP:
Nue strikes at BRO for 109 points of damage:
Uh-oh.
Volly uses Magic Might:
Good.
Codexer casts Lux. Nue attacks Volly for 66 hp, SMA casts Cure on herself, and Wraith hits Volly two times.
And then Nue attacks SMA two times:
Codexer uses Dispensary, and BRO casts Cura: SMA recovers 135 hp. Nue and Wraith continue hitting us and casting Flame Blast and Ice Blast. We make Codexer use Healthcare + X-Potion as often as possible.
Codexer's HP gets dangerously low:
BRO debuffs Nue:
SMA casts Raise to resurrect our pretty princess:
Several turns later...
With Codexer still dead, Volly uses Magic Might:
Wraith is destroyed!
This should get easier now.
SMA casts Raise to get Codexer back into action. Volly is cursed and so can't use Magic Might. She casts Desolator instead:
Meh, not enough firepower.
SMA has to cast Raise again. Nue continues to Curse, Suppress, and Silence us, as well as attack us in melee. But we somehow manage to keep Volly alive long enough for her to regain enough AP for a Magic Might:
Finally!
We obtain 200 exp and some gems:
BRO levels up -> level 37: HP +6, STR +1, SPT +1, INT +1.
Time to be movin' up!
There's a bonus shop on 40F:
It has some powerful Shurikens and a pike for sale:
We have no need of them, however, and so move along.
Up!
The third boss is on 50F:
Hmmm. SMA will be our Elementalist, and BRO... our Merchant!
Ransom + Money Talks should work pretty well considering the amount of jewgold we're carrying.
Continued in the next post...
Part 38: Holy Tree Tower
In which the power of money conquers all.
Previously on this LP, we made it through the first bonus tower, defeated super-Krinjh, and obtained the Ninja crown. Time to be movin' on to the second tower now!
But first here's the Ninja crown artwork:
Kawaii!
Ahem. So we exit the Moonsand Ruins.
(DISCLAIMER for spekkio: the next few screenshots are unfiltered. It should get fine after that though.)
Of course, before venturing forth, we must
First we fly to Liberte.
Let's see what the local multiplayer abomination store has to offer:
First come three powerful books. Too bad Scholar is a p. shitty class.
Next come some useless clothes with stupid names.
And finally we have something good here: Old Shoes that let the character act last during the turn, and a mysterious item called Music Score. I don't think we really need the shoes, but let's buy the Music Score -- 'coz just what the hell "First, you have to know how to read music" means?
So we purchase it and...
...the Crystal appears!
And, after a bit of :blah: -- "How mighty have you grown", "Long, so long have we waited for this blessed day to come", etc. -- we are presented with a new crown, Musician:
Musician has the following abilities:
Serenade: Grant Regen to your party for three turns.
Nocturne: Boost your party's magic power for three turns.
March: Boost your party's movement speed for three turns.
Oratorio: Grant your party Regen. Boost attack, magic attack, and speed for five turns.
A Musician also has increased stats when in the presence of a Bard. But since we've got the Lux spell, which already includes Regen, we don't really need to, nor can really afford to, use this crown. There'd be more room for experiments if we had a 6-character party, but ... well, one could wish. *Sigh* (No, really, now that I have a lot of crowns, I see just how limited the 4-character party is.)
As you may remember, more than a half of Liberte was actually located on the back on the giant sleeping whale Cetus, and so it sailed away when the fishie awoke. We're in the other part of Liberte now, and the local NPCs are quite a bit worried:
They can't get to the other half of the town, poor fellers.
Oh.
Another NPC tells us that Cetus has, you know, a voice that humans just can't hear:
Meanwhile, the pirate captain Drake is getting ready for some x-treme action:
He's a good bro and means no harm to us poor little animals though:
As the Apocalypse draws near, the monsters get even more wild and numerous:
Another NPC is concerned no one's going to care about art once the Apocalypse hits:
A birdie gives us a (not so) useful advice:
And another bird is butthurt about whales:
And now we're off to the sand kingdom of Guera.
I know. The end times.
But doncha worry, the heroes of light are here to save the world!
You bet.
The wireless shop here in Guera has some totally powerful axes:
(I actually visited this shop before the Liberte one, but meh, who cares.)
Hercules looks particularly powerful. But there's no way for me to get those damn multiplayer points, it seems: I can't play no multiplayer games on an emulator. Hmmm.
Some useless clothes here too.
And some accessories we don't need.
The NPCs around Guera are completely satisfied with Krinjh being the new king, it seems:
A pig shares some advice:
Duly noted. (Not that it isn't obvious from the Dark Fencer crown description.)
An NPC can't wait to grow up and go out:
Oh, sure you will.
And yet another guy is all hyped about the bonus towers:
And we depart for Arbor.
Good for you.
Yeah, that's Beastmaster, and it's a pretty cool crown if you ask me. But it requires an all-furry party, ugh.
:twisted:
And now onto the Wireless shop:
Hmmm, two powerful staves and a p. interesting if risky accessory called Mana Screen. Plus a bunch of pointless clothing, a Growth Egg, and a pair of Old Shoes. I totally want that Sage's Staff, but there's no way for me to legally grind for multiplayer points...
...Hmmm, actually that gives me an idea...
...Voila!
(Sorry, folks, I hate cheating but this game basically made me do that. I mean, multiplayer-only items in my single-player RPG, what the fuck!?)
Anywayz. Movin' on.
Yeah, sure, you totally can handle everything yourself.
Duty, yay.
No wonder.
Scary!
Yeah!
:twisted:
What's with this elffaggotry bullshit?
Lol.
Well, the Dark Lord will have to wait until we crawl through the towers!
Oh my, we're in Invidia already!
Sure we can.
The bows here are totally cool.
There's also a new inventory for sale here, Energy Screen:
We buy Expunger for Codexer, for which I feel guilty.
(I shouldn't, however, as neither Expunger nor Hercules proved to be in any way useful. Oh well.)
Then we grind for gems like stupid and go to Urbeth's upgrade office:
Now that we've obtained Orihalcon from Krinjh, the upgrade bar increases from +9 to +19:
Yup, if we manage to obtain more Orihalcon, we'll be able to upgrade our items even further.
The second tower is supposed to be more difficult than the first one, and the only way to survive it with our low levels is to upgrade, upgrade, upgrade. (Prerequisite: OCD.) Here's the result.
Volly's Sage Staff is upgraded to +7, her Great Tree Shield to +8, and Scholar Gown to +9.
Codexer's Shield of Light is now +4, and his Armor of Light +4.
SMA's Sword of Light is +9, Great Tree Shield +13, Unyielding Shield +3, and Spell Fencer Armor is now +3. I've upgraded her Great Tree Shield to +13 so that SMA could be more efficient as a Ninja.
BRO wields the Sacred Tree Staff +6, Great Tree Shield +2, and Shaman Robe +7.
And if you think we're properly upgraded, well, you're wrong.
I should've put more effort into SMA's and BRO's gear, but meh, sometimes I get lazy.We also enhance SMA's Dark Fencer crown:
And withdraw a debuff spell from storage:
Now we're all set for beating the 2nd tower!
We can't access it by land or air though; Cetus the whale is our only option.
I expected this to be an underwater cave or something, but...
Yep, folks, we enter a cave in the middle of the sea and find ourselves on a generic bonus tower island. The devs got really lazy here. (Yeah, I know I'm complaining about realism in a fantasy RPG, so the joke's on me.)
Just like with the previous tower, a guide is waiting for us near the tower's entrance:
Guide: Luckily, your progress will be saved each time you manage to clear ten floors. You can also leave the tower then.
Guide: If you manage to clear ten floors and save your progress, you can continue again from your last save point. Come talk to me and I'll tell you just how many floors you've made it through.
Yup, folks, difficulty = 2.
And so we enter the tower.
I'll keep it short since even though the tower looks differently, its design is the same I described in the previous update. The only difference is that the levels are larger, I guess that's because the difficulty is higher. Remember I told you the levels in the last tower were huge? Well, forget it. This tower's last twenty levels or so, now that's a huge pain in the you-know-what.
Here are some exploration screens for you:
And maaang, those dead-ends:
The monsters we encounter here include Gorgons -- who are even stronger than Medusae -- and Cockatrices...
(Gorgons confuse you with regular attacks, and both Gordons and Cockatrices petrify you.)
...Arch Demons...
...who use their favourite World of Dark spell...
...Cu Siths and Cait Siths...
...who can cast Quakra and Earth Blast...
...and attack for some p. high damage...
...as well as Gorgons and Wraiths (who are the stronger Silkies, basically)...
...Vultures and Muninns...
...Demon Rays and Ghouls...
...Wights and Cowpels...
...even more Cockatrices...
...Ikkakus and Cowpels...
...Chimerae and Silkies...
...Chimerae, Ikkakus and Wights...
...as well as Wights and Lamias:
Oh, and Greaps, who is now a regular enemy:
Getting to 10F, we face the first boss:
We change SMA's crown to Ninja...
...equipping the Hercules and Giant's Ring on her:
We give the Lux spell to Codexer since I want SMA to use her most powerful ability, Lightning Fists, straight away.
Let's see if it all proves useful.
Boss #1: Seadevil
The first boss we must slay is Seadevil. We've already slain him twice, by the way.
Seadevil gets to act three times per turn. He has a pretty powerful spell, Waterspray, at his disposal:
Luckily, we have BRO's Mysterio to lessen the elemental damage:
As well as Codexer's Lux:
Seadevil can also Confuse us:
And even his regular attacks, while not particularly powerful, tend to inflict some nasty status ailments:
We recover some HP at the end of the turn, but then another Waterspray follows:
SMA is paralyzed and silenced, and BRO gets poisoned.
Now BRO is cursed to boot. Sure a whole lot of status effects in this battle.
Codexer uses Dispensary, and we recover some HP. But Volly and SMA are both paralyzed. Next turn Volly can finally make Magic Might work:
Good.
Codexer uses Healthcare+Remedy to heal up the party a bit and remove the status ailments:
BRO silences the foe:
It looks like Waterspray is an ability, not a spell, and so can't be silenced. Oh well. So much for Silence being overpowered.
SMA uses Lightning Fists...
...but misses.
I hate crowns with abilities that can miss the target. It's what makes Scholar almost useless -- and, from the looks of it, Ninja too. Oh well. The problem with it is that you can only use the most powerful ability once per several turns, as it is highly AP-consuming, and if it misses, that means you've basically wasted quite a few turns for nothing, which is terribad and makes it a bad choice when you also have other, better abilities like Magic Might or Wrath to choose from.
BRO is now silenced and paralyzed, and SMA is poisoned. Seadevil attacks SMA and Volly:
He wakes Volly up, which is good.
Mysterio effect ends for our party, and Seadevil attacks Codexer three time in a row. Good thing his armour allows Codexer to resist the element effects and not take much damage:
Next turn Volly uses Magic Might and...
...Seadevil is slain!
We earn 100 exp and two Amethysts.
Oh, and goodbye Ninja, we hardly knew ye.
We climb further up, to 20F:
Nothing here. We press on.
As you already know from the previous update, we sometimes come across random treasure chests during our crawl. One containing a potion is on 23F:
The next boss is waiting for us on 30F:
I'm willing to give SMA the Ninja another chance.
Boss #2: Nue and Wraith
This is a Nue and a Wraith, but, being bosses, they are more powerful than their regular counterparts. The main problem is that they both can attack three times per turn = six attacks per turn.
The first thing Wraith does is hit our BRO...
...for 115 damage!
BRO's an Elementalist, but he doesn't resist the attack, and that means Wraith's attacks are pure melee. That doesn't bode well.
Indeed.
Nue casts Flame Blast:
And then attacks SMA:
Poor SMA. :/
Volly uses Magic Might:
Codexer casts Lux. Nue attacks Volly again:
Another Ice Blast follows shortly:
Uh-oh.
Wraith hits Codexer for 51 hp. And then for 45 more. And then...
Everyone is dead.
We respawn in Urbeth.
And make it back to 30F (from 21F). Let's make SMA an Elementalist this time, and BRO a Fighter so that he could get his HP high enough to survive:
We disequip BRO's staff so that he could fight bare-handed, and equip the Sacred Tree Staff +6, Hermes Sandals and Unyielding Shield +3 on SMA:
Oh-kay, here we go again.
SMA uses Mysterio, and then Wraith attacks her. Twice.
Nue curses our poor sis:
BRO the Fighter uses Chakra to boost his HP:
Nue strikes at BRO for 109 points of damage:
Uh-oh.
Volly uses Magic Might:
Good.
Codexer casts Lux. Nue attacks Volly for 66 hp, SMA casts Cure on herself, and Wraith hits Volly two times.
And then Nue attacks SMA two times:
Codexer uses Dispensary, and BRO casts Cura: SMA recovers 135 hp. Nue and Wraith continue hitting us and casting Flame Blast and Ice Blast. We make Codexer use Healthcare + X-Potion as often as possible.
Codexer's HP gets dangerously low:
BRO debuffs Nue:
SMA casts Raise to resurrect our pretty princess:
Several turns later...
With Codexer still dead, Volly uses Magic Might:
Wraith is destroyed!
This should get easier now.
SMA casts Raise to get Codexer back into action. Volly is cursed and so can't use Magic Might. She casts Desolator instead:
Meh, not enough firepower.
SMA has to cast Raise again. Nue continues to Curse, Suppress, and Silence us, as well as attack us in melee. But we somehow manage to keep Volly alive long enough for her to regain enough AP for a Magic Might:
Finally!
We obtain 200 exp and some gems:
BRO levels up -> level 37: HP +6, STR +1, SPT +1, INT +1.
Time to be movin' up!
There's a bonus shop on 40F:
It has some powerful Shurikens and a pike for sale:
We have no need of them, however, and so move along.
Up!
The third boss is on 50F:
Hmmm. SMA will be our Elementalist, and BRO... our Merchant!
Ransom + Money Talks should work pretty well considering the amount of jewgold we're carrying.
Continued in the next post...
Continued from the previous post...
Boss #3: Goblin Lord
An oversized goblin, yikes!
This fucker is pretty tough, but luckily he's alone and can only act twice per turn.
He hits SMA hard...
...and then casts Leafra, a non-elemental spell:
Poor SMA.
Volly uses Magic Might right away:
Codexer casts Lux, and BRO uses Money Talks:
Nice, yay!
Next turn Goblin Lord casts Leafra on BRO...
...and strikes at Volly:
Codexer uses Dispensary, and BRO casts Suppress but misses.
Then...
Codexer uses Healthcare + X-Potion, and Volly chimes in with another Magic Might:
Goblin Lord attacks Volly twice, for 63 and 75 hp, but luckily she survives. Codexer uses Healthcare+Phoenix Down to revive SMA and BRO...
...which is followed by yet another Magic Might:
BRO uses Ransom:
That should allow him to survive. Volly continues using Magic Might, and then BRO uses Money Talks again:
Cool. Let's be on our way.
Oh, by the way, using Ransom has cost us ca. 2000 gold.
50 floors to go!
Nothing on 60F.
70F has a treasure chest:
Meh, nothing special. (And by nothing special I mean nothing overpowered.)
73F has two random chests close to each other:
One contains a Potion, and the other, a Hi-Ether.
Finally we reach 80F:
Another boss here!
What if we make SMA a Dark Fencer?
I doubt it's going to work given our (pretty low) HP, this is most likely a crown for grindfags, but oh well.
Boss #4: Red Dragon
A red dragon, yay!
BRO uses Mysterio, and Volly Magic Might:
Codexer casts Lux, and SMA tries using Darkside -- "Deal damage to one foe by sacrificing some HP" --
-- but misses.
I hate.
Red Dragon acts twice per turn. And not only does he have a powerful Fire Breath ability...
...but he can also attack in melee for a good deal of damage:
Volly dies. :/
BRO attempts casting Suppress but misses. Red Dragon's attacks are elementally enhanced and so BRO resists them:
Codexer revives Volly, but Red Dragon continues using Fire Breath, and our little princess ends up dead again:
Meh.
BRO finally succeeds in suppressing the dragon:
Good.
Bad! Poor SMA.
What's wrong, girlz? Why are you both dead?
But anyways. Codexer revives SMA and Volly but...
Bloody Fire Breath!!
We finally do succeed in bringing everyone back to life AND replenishing their HP, however. Red Dragon doesn't have many tricks up his sleeve, all he does is spam Fire Breaths, but boy, he's good at it:
The damage is p. high. We must finish this shit asap!
Not dead yet!?
Poor SMA.
Poor Volly. Here we go again...
...and again...
...etc.
But finally, after God knows how many turns...
Phew, that was loooooooooooong. Neither Dark Fencer nor Ninja have proved particularly useful. :/ I actually googled it a bit and it looks like some people have put those classes -- heck, even Seamstress -- to good use. But, from what I've gathered, it required much more upgrading that I have the patience for. Or maybe I just suck at party-building.
But anyway. We get some Orihalcon for loot and 800 experience points.
Codexer levels up -> level 38: HP +7, SPT +2, INT +1.
We resurrect SMA and go on.
90F contains another treasure chest.
No comments.
After crawling through some huuuuuuuuge floors, we make it to 100F!
Hmmm, I wonder what kind of boss this is.
You know what? Let's use a four-merchant party.
No, I'm not joking. Ransom + Money Talks for everyone!
We've got 101023 gold, by the way:
We're going to have much less after the battle, I assume.
Boss #5: Torte
Yup, this is our favourite wizard mouse, Torte!
Let's all use Ransom in our first turn:
Torte can act four times per turn! (Yikes.) First he casts Shell and Magick:
Then he casts another Shell and, of course, misses. Lol. And then the mouse casts Leafaga:
Oh my! Without Ransom, that would've been an instakill to the whole party.
Next turn we boost to replenish our AP, Torte casts Leafaga again, followed by a Lefra:
Each and every one of Torte's attacks is deadly, yet we take no damage from them. At all.
Better to part with some of our money than with our lives, right?
SMA uses Money Talks:
Nice!
Torte casts Leafra:
Codexer, Volly, and BRO use Money Talks:
Torte continues casting Leafaga and Leafra, but to no avail. Talk about exploits.
Poor Torte starts healing himself up with Cura...
...but that doesn't help him much. We boost for a couple of turns, and then go on spamming Money Talks. After six more of them...
...we win this fight.
We earn 756 experience points and three diamonds:
Volly -> level 38: HP +5, INT +2.
SMA -> level 37: HP +5, STR +1, SPT +1, INT +1.
BRO -> level 38: HP +7, STR +1, SPT +2, INT +1.
Everything goes next-gen and the Crystal appears:
Crystal: How mighty you have grown. Long, so long have we waited for this blessed day to come.
And we are presented with...
...the crown of the Sage!
Sage has been a recurrent class in the Final Fantasy games. This game's Sage, just like that in Final Fantasy III, is a magic user proficient in both Black and White magic. Here are Sage's class-specific abilities:
Spell again: Casts spells until you have no AP left. Applies for one turn.
Diligence: Decrease Black Magic AP consumption by one.
Betterment: Decrease White Magic AP consumption by one.
Good and Evil: Summon holy light to damage all foes and heal all allies.
Hmmm, I wonder if Good and Evil is as powerful as Magic Might. If it is, we might as well switch Volly from Black Mage to Sage.
Oh, and we've got 82685 gold left after the battle with Torte:
Which means the fight has cost us 18338 gil.
So, to sum it all up, we've found the ultimate exploit, folks. I think I'd be able to do the next two towers with a four-merchant party without upgrading. But should I?
Boss #3: Goblin Lord
An oversized goblin, yikes!
This fucker is pretty tough, but luckily he's alone and can only act twice per turn.
He hits SMA hard...
...and then casts Leafra, a non-elemental spell:
Poor SMA.
Volly uses Magic Might right away:
Codexer casts Lux, and BRO uses Money Talks:
Nice, yay!
Next turn Goblin Lord casts Leafra on BRO...
...and strikes at Volly:
Codexer uses Dispensary, and BRO casts Suppress but misses.
Then...
Codexer uses Healthcare + X-Potion, and Volly chimes in with another Magic Might:
Goblin Lord attacks Volly twice, for 63 and 75 hp, but luckily she survives. Codexer uses Healthcare+Phoenix Down to revive SMA and BRO...
...which is followed by yet another Magic Might:
BRO uses Ransom:
That should allow him to survive. Volly continues using Magic Might, and then BRO uses Money Talks again:
Cool. Let's be on our way.
Oh, by the way, using Ransom has cost us ca. 2000 gold.
50 floors to go!
Nothing on 60F.
70F has a treasure chest:
Meh, nothing special. (And by nothing special I mean nothing overpowered.
)73F has two random chests close to each other:
One contains a Potion, and the other, a Hi-Ether.
Finally we reach 80F:
Another boss here!
What if we make SMA a Dark Fencer?
I doubt it's going to work given our (pretty low) HP, this is most likely a crown for grindfags, but oh well.
Boss #4: Red Dragon
A red dragon, yay!
BRO uses Mysterio, and Volly Magic Might:
Codexer casts Lux, and SMA tries using Darkside -- "Deal damage to one foe by sacrificing some HP" --
-- but misses.
I hate.
Red Dragon acts twice per turn. And not only does he have a powerful Fire Breath ability...
...but he can also attack in melee for a good deal of damage:
Volly dies. :/
BRO attempts casting Suppress but misses. Red Dragon's attacks are elementally enhanced and so BRO resists them:
Codexer revives Volly, but Red Dragon continues using Fire Breath, and our little princess ends up dead again:
Meh.
BRO finally succeeds in suppressing the dragon:
Good.
Bad! Poor SMA.
What's wrong, girlz? Why are you both dead?
But anyways. Codexer revives SMA and Volly but...
Bloody Fire Breath!!
We finally do succeed in bringing everyone back to life AND replenishing their HP, however. Red Dragon doesn't have many tricks up his sleeve, all he does is spam Fire Breaths, but boy, he's good at it:
The damage is p. high. We must finish this shit asap!
Not dead yet!?
Poor SMA.
Poor Volly. Here we go again...
...and again...
...etc.
But finally, after God knows how many turns...
Phew, that was loooooooooooong. Neither Dark Fencer nor Ninja have proved particularly useful. :/ I actually googled it a bit and it looks like some people have put those classes -- heck, even Seamstress -- to good use. But, from what I've gathered, it required much more upgrading that I have the patience for. Or maybe I just suck at party-building.
But anyway. We get some Orihalcon for loot and 800 experience points.
Codexer levels up -> level 38: HP +7, SPT +2, INT +1.
We resurrect SMA and go on.
90F contains another treasure chest.
No comments.
After crawling through some huuuuuuuuge floors, we make it to 100F!
Hmmm, I wonder what kind of boss this is.
You know what? Let's use a four-merchant party.
No, I'm not joking. Ransom + Money Talks for everyone!
We've got 101023 gold, by the way:
We're going to have much less after the battle, I assume.
Boss #5: Torte
Yup, this is our favourite wizard mouse, Torte!
Let's all use Ransom in our first turn:
Torte can act four times per turn! (Yikes.) First he casts Shell and Magick:
Then he casts another Shell and, of course, misses. Lol. And then the mouse casts Leafaga:
Oh my! Without Ransom, that would've been an instakill to the whole party.
Next turn we boost to replenish our AP, Torte casts Leafaga again, followed by a Lefra:
Each and every one of Torte's attacks is deadly, yet we take no damage from them. At all.
Better to part with some of our money than with our lives, right?
SMA uses Money Talks:
Nice!
Torte casts Leafra:
Codexer, Volly, and BRO use Money Talks:
Torte continues casting Leafaga and Leafra, but to no avail. Talk about exploits.
Poor Torte starts healing himself up with Cura...
...but that doesn't help him much. We boost for a couple of turns, and then go on spamming Money Talks. After six more of them...
...we win this fight.
We earn 756 experience points and three diamonds:
Volly -> level 38: HP +5, INT +2.
SMA -> level 37: HP +5, STR +1, SPT +1, INT +1.
BRO -> level 38: HP +7, STR +1, SPT +2, INT +1.
Everything goes next-gen and the Crystal appears:
Crystal: How mighty you have grown. Long, so long have we waited for this blessed day to come.
And we are presented with...
...the crown of the Sage!
Sage has been a recurrent class in the Final Fantasy games. This game's Sage, just like that in Final Fantasy III, is a magic user proficient in both Black and White magic. Here are Sage's class-specific abilities:
Spell again: Casts spells until you have no AP left. Applies for one turn.
Diligence: Decrease Black Magic AP consumption by one.
Betterment: Decrease White Magic AP consumption by one.
Good and Evil: Summon holy light to damage all foes and heal all allies.
Hmmm, I wonder if Good and Evil is as powerful as Magic Might. If it is, we might as well switch Volly from Black Mage to Sage.
Oh, and we've got 82685 gold left after the battle with Torte:
Which means the fight has cost us 18338 gil.
So, to sum it all up, we've found the ultimate exploit, folks. I think I'd be able to do the next two towers with a four-merchant party without upgrading.
But should I?
lightbane
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 27, 2008
- Messages
- 10,208
Jaedar said:I'd rather you tried some more cool party setups. You can always use the all merchant as a backup in case you can't win properly
This, give the game an opportunity to
Funny pic, fits BRO very well. Sages were the ultimate Nu Mou class in FFT Advance 1 and 2, it too was in Final Fantasy Tactics, a great class that was good at destroying your enemies, buff, debuff and heal, the only drawback was that it was a bit slow.
Lastly but not least,
for the update.PS: I wonder if you'll be able to fight Roland again in one of these Towers.
Edward_R_Murrow
Arcane
I like the flavor of the Merchant class. Use the power of jew gold the almighty dollah, dollah bill against the forces of darkness. Definitely a unique take on things.
Nice job crawling too, like a true patriot. How long does each floor take you on average? And will the last bonus dungeon have an obligatory Mega Man style fight all the robot masters...err demon lords over again type of deal?
Nice job crawling too, like a true patriot
. How long does each floor take you on average? And will the last bonus dungeon have an obligatory Mega Man style fight all the robot masters...err demon lords over again type of deal?
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