"No Thanks, Edward. We Got This One. We Do, Right?"

So. I've been thinking about, and looking up info on the Dark Elf in the Magnetic Cave. Here's what I found:

1. If you don't have the whisperweed, you don't fight the Dark Elf. You merely enter a scripted battle with an invincible facsimile.

2. Invincibility is used for bosses you can't beat. Infinite HP is not a thing in this game.

3. If you have the whisperweed, and you don't have metal equipment on, you can do damage to the Dark Elf...

Therefore, it stands to reason, that if you keep your HP up, and you can take enough of his HP before he casts Tornado, you can beat the Dark Elf without Edward's help. Is there anything I'm overlooking that might make me wrong?

Yeah, you only have about 3-4 rounds to take out his 65,000 HP before he uses Tornado, if you don't have the Whisperweed though, he uses a modified Quake that hits for 9999 and gives you an instant game over. The Devs think of everything.

So, basically, you could, but you'd have to be massively overpowered?

You probably couldn't do it as you would need to be averaging 5k damage per character every round and what is stopping you is that Tellah doesn't have the stats or spells to pull that off, and Cecil and Cid are too reliant on gear and wouldn't be able to pull it off with what is currently available even at Lv. 99. It is not helped that with the exception of the DS version, your stats pass level 70 are randomized in growth making your max level party have an unpredictable build.

IV's stats don't work like the post-V games where having high levels or even high stats guarantee even 3k damage with the weakest weapons. Your fighters are actually far more reliant on gear than you think with the exception of Yang. Even if Yang was pulling max damage he would barely break through the halfway point before the Dark Elf would end the fight. The other problem is that the Dark Elf has incredibly high stats and thus his magic will crush your party pretty quickly even with high HP, you would still be taking ridiculous amounts of damage thanks to your crappy gear and Tellha has abysmal HP, so he would probably be killed nearly every round even with max lvs. Yang, who is your best fighter by this point is also incredible weak to magic normally so even though his HP would see him through he would still die quickly if someone wasn't constantly healing and restoring status to him.

Yeah... so basically you have no chance unless their is a bug in the game's A.I. that can be exploited or you use cheats. Funny enough, you can beat the Dark Elf form but you need to utilize the Second Form glitch by having Tellah cast Reflect on the whole party and just wait to have the boss kill himself. The only reason this strategy wouldn't work beforehand is because you don't have enough rounds to burn through his HP before he uses Tornado.

Can't Tellah cast Tornado on him? I can't recall if Tellah had that spell when I fought him, but I read somewhere he does.

Of course, if they want you to be reliant on Edward, they probably thought of that...

Tornado only works on his dragon form I'm afraid.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Tornado only works on his dragon form I'm afraid.

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Oh, indeed, that is scary. The devs must have overlooked something. They usually do.

For example, across all the Mario Kart games, they never once thought a player holding a blue shell could make it to first place without throwing it first. If you try it, the shell will glitch out and hit you on the rebound.

If they missed something that glaringly obvious throughout an entire franchise, they must have missed something here in this one battle in this one game... We can get to the bottom of this.

It would be interesting to see the battle with yourself being invincible. Not because you really want to cheat or anything but just to see it.

Note on not having the Whisperweed: guys, he doesn't cast any modified Quake. He just HITS you. For 9999 damage, everytime.

Now, in the DS version it might be different, I've only played through once.

I am willing to bet that if you beat the Dark Elf (cheating or no) when you aren't supposed to the game just continues on since the event flag activates that the boss has been cleared.