Ozma's that hard?

[kain_ex]

People seen to have difficulties at this enemy. However, I haven't fought him (her?) yet, so I can't say if it's hard. But it's the next thing I'm gonna do, so... any advice?

[Chris]

No he is not that hard, read this if you're going up against him:


Battle Preperation

You'll want to have as much auto regenerative ability stones equipped to your characters as possible. Auto-Life, Auto-Potion and Auto-Regen are must haves. HP increasing stones, such as HP+20% are also helpful. The strongest weapons and armor you have will need to be equipped. Equipping the add-on Pumice Piece to your party members is extremely important to protect against Shadow.

Ozma will attempt to silence your magic casters, so make sure they all have the Loudmouth stone equipped. He'll also try to inflict status damages as well, so equipping stones such as Antibody and Clear Headed are recommended.

It's also recommended you work your ideal attack party for this fight up close to their Trance modes, to take advantage of their skills.

Battle Engagement

Luck is a major factor in winning this battle. Although your characters may strike for powerful damage against what seems to be a small number of total hit points, Ozma will unleash a horde of attacks to eliminate you. The key is to keep on top of his attacks immediately after he inflicts them upon you. If any party member has at least half their HP, you can be sure they'll be the first the go down. Double magic attacks are extremely helpful and keeping your party fully healed at all times is necessary. Make sure you heal constantly with magic, skills, Eidolions, and items. This is the toughest battle in the game, so when it comes to using your items and skills, you definately want to splurge. If you have any Dark Matter in stock, use it as much as possible. It will deal a full 9999 damage.

[Xurts]

When I fought him my party was Zidane, Quina, Freya, and Eiko. Zidane was easily the weakest character since he didn't have any attacks that did a sure 9,999 like everyone else. So I had to have him one hit away from Trance so he wouldn't drag my party down.

Quina comes in highly useful in this battle because she has so many great Blu Magics. If you use her, then Angel's Snack, Mighty Guard, and Frog Drop are lifesavers and make this battle much easier. Especially if Ozma uses Curse. You should definately have characters that do 9,999 too, like Freya and/or Steiner.

Anything else that I add will just be repeating what Chris posted in the quotes.

[farplaner]

As a rule, I always steal as much as possible with Zidane from the beginning of the game. Each successful steal increases the damage done by thievery (gamefaqs can give you the formula). By the time you get to Ozma it should be no problem to have max damage with Zidane.

As Chris quoted, even with the best of everything there is still a little luck involved to survive Ozma.

[Xurts]

As a rule, I always steal as much as possible with Zidane from the beginning of the game. Each successful steal increases the damage done by thievery (gamefaqs can give you the formula). By the time you get to Ozma it should be no problem to have max damage with Zidane.

As Chris quoted, even with the best of everything there is still a little luck involved to survive Ozma.
The formula for Thievery is [Speed/2 * # of Successful steals], thanks to Shotgunnova.

The only times I ever stole was during boss battles, so my Zidane's Thievery only does like 1,100. Even if I did have enough time to spend hours on end stealing, it would just be too boring and dull.

[Zeromus_X]

You should also input your commands as its attack animations are going through. (Because it always gets a turn when you input a command, this will help against that.)

[Sefie1999AD]

Ozma's difficulty in a way that he usually starts the battle by casting Meteor, which usually kills almost everyone, unless they have Auto-Life. If that happens, I'd suggest resetting. Another dangerous attack he uses is Curse. It does a lot of damage and gives you many status ailments. Be sure you're protected against those. Ozma is also fast, I'd suggest casting Haste on everyone (I'm not sure if there was an ability called Auto-Haste, use that if you have it), and everyone should have Auto-Regen and Auto-Potion too. Make sure you're protected against Doomsday, even better if you can absorb it, so Ozma will just waste a turn healing your characters and possibly hurting himself. Have Eiko or Dagger heal.

If you want to deal physical attacks, do the quest of friendly monsters. I'd suggest fighting a lot of Dragons so Freya can use her Dragon Crest. It does 9999 damage even when she's under Mini status (Steiner's Climhazzard and Shock won't do 9999 when he's under Mini status). If you want to take a chance, you can have Vivi in your party and have him use Doomsday magic in Trance. Hopefully it will hurt Ozma and heal you, or you're in trouble. :D I never bothered stealing much with Zidane, so he's not that useful in the battle. I think I had him use a Dark Matter against Ozma, though, it does 9999 damage. Quina's Angel Snack is good, but I think Quina's too slow so I don't use him/her much. If you want, you can take Amarant to the battle when he's close to Trance, so when Ozma uses Curse, Amarant goes into Trance and gets the abilities to heal everyone, restore everyone's status etc.

Good luck. If there's two battles in the game where you'll need it, this is one of them (the other is the final battle since if Grand Cross does Death to 3 characters and Doom to 1, you're done for, and something like that has happened to me, like, twice).

[J.Raven]

For me I just went with brute force and levelled to 99, then change to Dark or Ninja gear to absorb the deadly stuff that Ozma threw at my party. Characters used were those which I had already intended to beat the final boss, namely Zidane, Steiner, Freija, and Garnet.

[Cid Vicious]

The best way to beat him is to keep attacking, dont heal. Buy some Dark Matter if you need too, and throw them at him. He only has a low HP so he'll be gone in 4-6 turns.

[Sefie1999AD]

The best way to beat him is to keep attacking, dont heal. Buy some Dark Matter if you need too, and throw them at him. He only has a low HP so he'll be gone in 4-6 turns.

Huh? Can you buy Dark Matter somewhere?

[Dell]

You can't buy Dark Matter but bid.
Attacking is not good either, since he hs nasty magic which can kill your party. Have Shadow Absorbing Armor for your party

I usually go with Zidane, Vivi, Eiko and Steiner. Zidane is my item user because he can't do anything, his thief skill aren't useful here so I think he sucks in this battle, shame you can't remove him. Just have him use Remedy, Elixir, Hi-Potion etc or you may want to attack with him.

Steiner Shock is a guaranteed 9999 damage so I use him and kick Ozma. Plus, Steiner's HP is high, just lacks of Magic Defense.

Vivi is not useful either but:
Return Magic
Double Black Magic

This will give you ultimate healing, whenever Ozma use Doomsday to you, it'll heal you, then Vivi will counter Doomsday with another Doomsday, it'll heal you. Perfect!

I just have Eiko in the party for safe play, Summoner aren't useful here so Garnet is useless in this battle, plus Eiko's White Magic is better than Garnet's. Full-Life, Curaga, Holy, that saves the day. Plus Double White Magic and Phoenix are extremely useful. The same goes for Auto-Phoenix.

[TheSpoonyBard]

Zidane is my item user because he can't do anything, his thief skill aren't useful here so I think he sucks in this battle
Thievery for 9,999 damage?


Steiner Shock is a guaranteed 9999 damage
Only if Steiner's normal attack deals 3,333 or more.

I'd use Zidane for Thievery, Freya for Dragon Crest, Quina for Frog Drop/Angel Snack and Eiko for Auto-Phoenix (99/256 chance, if I remember correctly) and throwing Dark Matters. You just need to hope Ozma doesn't use both Meteor and Curse in succession.

Completing the Friendly Creatures sidequest will make the battle much easier as well, as Ozma will become weak to Shadow instead of absorbing it, and can be hit with physical attacks (not that you should be using them, but it's useful if you have Counter, Eye 4 Eye and Bird Killer equipped).

[KoShiatar]

The best way to beat him is to keep attacking, dont heal. Buy some Dark Matter if you need too, and throw them at him. He only has a low HP so he'll be gone in 4-6 turns.


Low HP? Ozma? Are you sure we're talking about the same boss? :confused:

[TheSpoonyBard]

Ozma, Quale and the Friendly Yan have 65,535 HP, the highest in the game. This is very low compared to the HP of bosses in other second-gen FF games (e.g. Emerald WEAPON, 1,000,000, FFVII and Penance, 12,000,000, FFX).

[Dell]

Thievery for 9,999 damage?

Yeah, there are some people who can't be bothered to steal like me.

At that time, Steiner should have done good damage. :)

[Sefie1999AD]

Ozma, Quale and the Friendly Yan have 65,535 HP, the highest in the game. This is very low compared to the HP of bosses in other second-gen FF games (e.g. Emerald WEAPON, 1,000,000, FFVII and Penance, 12,000,000, FFX).

They have even less HP, the guides I have say 55,535 HP. And this is what I like about FFIX: It can make challenging bosses without artificial things to make them harder, such as the bosses having millions of HP. Just like in other old-school FFs (WarMech didn't have millions of HP, neither did Shinryuu and Omega, and still they were hard, especially the latter two).

[Xurts]

Thievery for 9,999 damage?

Yeah, there are some people who can't be bothered to steal like me.
And me.

It's too bad that FF9 can't be more like Chrono Trigger for the fact that you can take the main character out of your party. Unless you spend the entire game stealing over and over again, Zidane is worthless unless he is Tranced.

[Goldenboko]

What level where you facing Ozma for him to be supposedly easy? Well I guess it would be easier at a high level... but I went for a challenge and beat him at an average level of about 55 curse usually killed all of my party members (Auto-Life made Quina my most useful character) same with meteor. My party was so bad I basically beat him off pure skill cause Steiner was the only one that could do 9,999 unless Zidane went into Trance.
One more thing that makes Ozma annoying at all levels his/her speed isn't high... it's just that every time you do something (attack, heal, whatever) his ATB bar fills up and he gets to go before you! That's just unfair!

[Xurts]

What level where you facing Ozma for him to be supposedly easy? Well I guess it would be easier at a high level... but I went for a challenge and beat him at an average level of about 55 curse usually killed all of my party members (Auto-Life made Quina my most useful character) same with meteor. My party was so bad I basically beat him off pure skill cause Steiner was the only one that could do 9,999 unless Zidane went into Trance.
One more thing that makes Ozma annoying at all levels his/her speed isn't high... it's just that every time you do something (attack, heal, whatever) his ATB bar fills up and he gets to go before you! That's just unfair!
My party's Levels when I beat him where in the low 90s, except for Zidane, who was 99. It's easier the higher your level because you have more Magic Stones then.

[Zeromus_X]

He has the maximum the hex could hold on the 16-bit games. (65,353, apparently) Possibly for nostalgia.

And just because a boss doesn't have 10 billion hit points doesn't make it 'easy'. Don't know why people would think that. He has alot of HP for the game he's in, whilst bombarding you with powerful attacks.

[Goldenboko]

My party's Levels when I beat him where in the low 90s, except for Zidane, who was 99. It's easier the higher your level because you have more Magic Stones then.
Well then I saved before beating him perhaps I'll level up face him/her again and see what the difficulty is.

[H-Kazami]

I can't really say Ozma is challenging...This isn't really a hard battle comparing to other FF series like Endless Twilight said; however, some luck WILL be needed...who knows...he attacks fast sometimes...grrrrr

My party was Zidane/Garnet/Freya/Amarant
and only Zidane and Garnet surpassed 70s, while the other is around 50-60s. I didn't really bother with Auto-Life or Auto-Potion, instead, I had Auto-Regen with shadow absorbing armors or 100% against shadow attacks. My Amarant and Garnet were the support characters in the battle, I leave most damage to Freya and Zidane(after Zidean stole everything of course), my Thievery was around 9000+ damage. I use Amarant to give Auto-Life, and his Curse is useful. You can use Curse on Ozma until he is afraid of shadow attack, and I even equip Amarant with Return Magic; therefore, whenever Ozma used Doomsday, I can absorb shadow attack, while he hits himself with shadow attack, which can do around 9999.

[TheSpoonyBard]

They have even less HP, the guides I have say 55,535 HP
Ah, my apologies. I was looking at the EXP values. Nevertheless, Quale and the Friendly Yan have 65,535 HP. Ozma, along with Hades, Deathguise and Trance Kuja have 55,535 HP.

[Quindiana Jones]

I've heard a strategy of making Amarant cast Curse. Can't remember how it helps. Also wear shadow absorbing (absorbing is best, but if you can't absorb it, just null or dullify the damage) gear.

[TheSpoonyBard]

Curse makes the target weak to an element. Ozma is already weak to Wind, Holy and Shadow (if you complete the Friendly Monsters sidequest), two of which are the strongest elemental spells.

[Quindiana Jones]

Ah right. My thing woulda been better if I could remember the whole thing. It was a real good strategy, but I can't remember it. Woops.

[Dell]

Too bad, Vivi can't learn Aero.:(

Anyway, my Vivi's Doomsday and Return Magic is a real life-saver. Is it me or is anyone think Ozma cannot absorb Shadow? In my save files, Ozma always get hit by Doomsday.

[TheSpoonyBard]

Ozma absorbs Shadow damage if you do not complete the Friendly Monsters sidequest prior to battling him.

[kain_ex]

Ozma absorbs Shadow damage if you do not complete the Friendly Monsters sidequest prior to battling him.

ops, I haven't did that but I still could defeat him (after 64782089 tries) :D

Freya, Steiner, Garnet and Zidane. Zidane lvl 77, Garnet 46 (lol O.o), Steiner 67, Freya 72.

Incredible, Ozma didn't casted Meteor nor Curse in this battle, just Flare, Holy lvl 4, Death and Doomsday. The battle took forever bcuz of his/her Doomsday, I hadn't did that monsters quest... so it sucked and took me about 1 day of trying but I could do it :D

[Lynx]

my suggestion use armarant and by zidanes strongest weapon you can buy. buy 10 or so and throw them at ozma for an easy 9999 every time he's only got baout 56000HP so it shouldnt take too long ahve eveyrone else focused on keeping your guys alive. and by the way my armarant was only on lv 38 when i beat ozma so dont worry much about leveling him up.

oh and i dindt find all the friendly monsters its not needed.