My Perfect Game File
Oh the joys of being really bored at work.
Ok, so I have done the Excalibur II challenge, and it turned out to be not so bad. But that was just the pure Excalibur II challenge, going through everywhere as fast as possible, disregarding everything in your path that isn't required and get to Lich and the Excalibur II in time. I did it in about eleven hours and ten minutes, and there was a lot of stuff I could have gone back and done better, but I got it and that's all I cared about. The girl who did it on speeddemosarchive.com got to the Excalibur II in about eight hours, so I definitely didn't do it as fast as it could be done.
Then, there were people talking about a "perfect file," a definition that has been refined quite a few times. First, it was getting everything in the game, including the Excalibur II. This involves getting every single item in the game, but gives no care to stats or leveling in any way, as at that time it was thought that there wasn't enough time to do anything about that. This intrigued me, so I did this one. It is quite a bit more involved than the above challenge obviously. You get every item in the game, but you just go through the forced battle however you need to, and when you are without Zidane in the Desert Palace you try to get as few battles as possible and just fight your way through the ones that you do get. I got to the Excalibur II in eleven hours and fifty-five minutes, extremely satisfied with my game. It was actually quite fun, despite being driven very close to the brink of insanity on multiple occasions.
Then there was someone who said something about a "mock level 1 Excalibur II" game. This involved everyone except Zidane being able to attain max stats by the end of the game. Basically, this is the above challenge, just with letting Zidane take all of the exp from the forced battles. He would level up to about 32, and he could start raising his stats with the good equipment from that points on, still giving him a formidable set of stats by level 99. This challenge didn't really interest me as there was almost nothing different about it than the last one. The only thing different to do would be to let Zidane take all of the exp and to run from or avoid all of the battles in the Desert Palace.....meh, I was satisfied with my last one.
That was the last I paid attention to this challenge. In this thread I thought that 1whoistornapart was simply recording the above challenge. I neglected to realize until I watched the surprisingly long Festival of the Hunt video that someone has again altered this challenge. Someone has found a way to actually incorporate the level 1 challenge into the Excalibur II challenge. So now all items and perfect stats can be attained with a little extra speed and some luck...well some more luck (except for 1 or 2 stats points for one character in exchange for another pair of Running Shoes, which I will be getting).
So I have decided to do this challenge again, the way that the Perfect Game File was intended to be. And, since I am doing a series of PCR reactions and cloning at work I have about fours hours of free time a day, and that's going to last for a few months at least. So, to tide over my boredom at work, I will write about my journey for all who care and don't care. And I'm having trouble figuring out how to download video from my tv to my computer, but I have a digital camera so maybe I'll take a picture every once in a while.
Also, I hope that it might be alright with a moderator that I double post every once in a while so that posts don't get overly long and unreadable or anything. Pretty please
So, to start, this will not a be just a dictation of 1whoistornapart's video's, I am to Dali and I have already done a few things differently than he does, and I can imagine I'll be doing several more as things get more complex. Besides, I've only watched like a quarter of them anyway. Since he was left with 32 minutes to spare, there will be time for a few things like getting a few more Blue Magic spells and doing a few friendly monsters sooner and things like that that I might do. But I will also be doing several of the things he does, as some of his time saving tricks are rather useful. He found by the end that there is actually time to do this challenge without skipping the FMVs, I will be skipping the FMVs. That just leaves some time to do other things.
Like his trick with pressing the start button before and after FMVs. I didn't really get what he was saying at first, but I get it now. Starting with the very first FMV, there are quite a few times already (remember I'm only to Dali) where an FMV stops and there's at least ten seconds where the game is loading and the timer is running. I don't really see lag before an FMV starts, but definitely after it finishes. So he presses the start button to let the game load but stop the timer. With all the FMVs in this game that will really start to add up. However, you only have like a quarter-second to press start after an FMV is finished, if you don't get it the game won't let you press start while it is loading. However, when you open and close the disc tray on the PS2, if you just press and hold the start button after it's closed, I find that it always pauses after it skips the FMV, so no need to try and get the timing on that, which is nice.
And there's one more thing to take into account, Tanitarian. This is where the challenge divulges depending on how you want to do it. Do you fight it in the first place? And if you do, who will get the exp from the fight? The answers: I will be fighting it, as I find missing the fourth pair of Running Shoes unacceptable. However, I have not yet decided who will take the exp. If Zidane takes the exp, he will lose 1 from his max potential strength stat. Losing this one point will lower his max HP by 90 points and lower his damage by about 180. However, his damage at level 99 with max strength stat -1 will still do more than the damage cap, and by that time he will have maxed thievery. But until then he will do that bit of extra damage. On the other hand, letting Freya take exp will cause her to lose 2 from her max potential magic stat. Losing these two points will cause her max potential MP to drop by 13 points, but it will still be over 400. Will she ever use 400 MP in a single battle? And do I not have Ethers? I don't know, I'm leaning toward Freya but I'm not sure.
Anyway, I'm a few discs away from there, so start the show:
Vivi's Bad Ticket to a lot of Treasure
-You'll know what that lag after an FMV is from the very first one, so holding down start after the tray closes and pausing for like several seconds not only lets the game load faster but saves you time. Also, this is my first time using the PS2 for this game, setting the PS2 to fast loading and smooth edges really makes a difference.
-If you attempt it enough times you can steal everything from Baku in the very first round. I didn't know that Cinna hits the same way that Quina does, in the times that I've tried this before he hit himself for like 13 damage and Baku KOed him, but this time he hit himself for like 300 damage. That would have been nice against Baku the next time you fight him.
-They say that since you won't be able to see the moogle letter about the jump rope in disc 4 that it doesn't count. That's rubbish, this is about completion and perfection. So while I'm treasure hunting with Vivi, I do 51 jumps. The guide for this says that you need to do 100, you don't, only 50 (or maybe 50+, thus the 51, don't want to chance it). I also got the Cactuar Card, which will come in handy when I enter a certain tournament later.
-All the treasure hunting went smoothly, although I can't seem to not run into people on the way back to the first screen. Ah well. Got all the items including the two in the house that the girl needs to run out of and the moogle letter.
Stage Fight
-So, in the fight against King Baku I got 3 Pyros and a Poly, which kind of peeved me. But I kept going, and luckily I did because....
-I impressed 100 Nobles.....THE FIRST TIME THROUGH.....ON MY FIRST ATTEMPT WITH THIS PART.....*Hallelujah*. I can't believe this happened, I always have such a hard time with this. The last time I did this segment it was my like 20th try with this part and I impressed 100 nobles on the third try with the fight. So very very happy.
-Got the moogle letterthat no one will see but I will know I got, the phoenix down and saved.
And here is the moogle letter that will disappear on disc 4:
Stage Bomb
-Apparently I was a little too happy about the last segment. I went through finding all of the knights and getting the elixir. I went through the part where I equip Zidane with the Mage Masher. I found that halfway through my last run with this that the Optimize function is much faster than equipping individually. Well luckily I did that this time and realized the there was no Moonstone equipped to my accessory slot, I forgot to get it. But it's ok, I just had to get it on the way out instead of the way in.
-I tried to get the first fight with Steiner so that Cinna got two turns so that maybe he could steal both items from Steiner. After many tries I decided it wasn't worth it. I stole the Silk Shirt and was done with it.
-Doing the FMV pause trick saves like 30 seconds in this segment, the equivalent of a random battle that I might give myself later if I'm really frustrated.
-All the battles went rather smoothly and quickly, yay.
Crash and Burn-Prison Cage
-And now with random encounters the challenge officially gets difficult. Since a level 1 challenge is being employed, random battles need to happen as little as humanly possible, the time they take is just too much to let them happen in any kind of frequency. Getting through this first screen with no random battles is annoying, but not as annoying as it is later.
-Prison Cage battles are simple, although always starting with an empty ATB is a little annoying. Still, no stealing needs to happen, so just kill and be done with it. In this first fight, Steiner could have not attacked, because he missed his attack and Zidane took Prison Cage out all by his tranced lonesome. Oh well, 5 seconds won't kill me.
-I got to the Ice Cavern before I realized that I missed the Rubber Helm in the screen where you fight Baku, which upset me greatly, so I had to do this area and the next again. Otherwise, treasure hunting went fine, although people kept getting in my way trying to go from screen to screen.
-I was tempted to steal the Iron Sword from Baku, but the timing and Potion needing just isn't worth it. Steiner's Fire Sword does more than enough damage against Plant Brain, which is the only fight he is in until I can buy an Iron Sword, so meh.
-Letter from Ruby.
Evil Forest and Plant Brain
-There's a reason this is called the Evil Forest, and it's because it won't let you not have a random encounter, it just won't. The first screen is again annoying, but then you have two more screens to get through. In the second and third screen I use the run-stop-run trick that for some reason sometimes seems to let you avoid getting a random encounter...sometimes. It took FOREVER, but I finally made it through with no encounters to the next moogle.
-Letter delivered, got one from Stiltzkin and saved triumphantly.
-Yet another FMV with a 12 second load time to be paused for. The final screen was being a bitch about not giving me a random encounter, but I finally got through.
-Worrying about the Plant Brain fight is irrelevant to worrying about the fight afterwards. However, on the attempt that led to a 2 Plant Spider fight, I got through the whole fight without Plant Brain getting a move. Yay
-The 2 Plant Spiders both took a whack at Zidane before Vivi killed them, but that's more than ok.
-10 second FMV load time saved (you get the point, I'll stop now)
-Getting through all of this speech is the first time I noticed how much the square+X mashing moves the dialogue along faster than just X mashing.
-I remembered how annoying the Ice Cavern was last time, so when I leave the Evil Forest I run to the Ice Cavern while the "Mist Continent" is still on the screen and I enter the Ice Cavern and let all of the introductory speech happen, then I exit and save on the world map. For future reference, taking a few steps back so that you all you need to do is press X to enter the next area and then saving is a wise move.
Ice Cavern Treasure Hunt of Doom
-And thank god I did that.
-So, the goal here is to get all of the treasure and get into only 2 battles, 3 is acceptable but I wanted 2 so that I could possibly save time. I finally got 2 with some interesting screen changing which I devised after noticing how close some of the chests were to the beginning of a screen.
-First screen, got the tent, to the second screen.
-Go to the right to get the chest behind the ice. Go back to the first screen to reset the random encounters and back to the second screen. Up and around to get the chest on the left, up and around and back to the first screen to reset. Back to the second screen and up to the third screen. SOMEHOW I got no battles. Had I had a battle while trying to get the chest on the left I would have just went straight to the third screen.
-Go to the chest on the right up high, then drop the ledge and get the chest down low. Then to the fourth screen. Got a battle on the way to the fourth screen.
-In the fourth screen, go the right and get that chest. Back to the third screen.
-Go knock down the ice wall in the upper left area, get that chest, and back to the fourth screen.
-Go left, knock down the icy wall, all the way down to the final chest, all the way back up and around and to the screen with the fork in the road. I was 2 steps from exiting this screen when I got my second battle.But, I wanted only two encounters, and after about an hour and a half of trying I finally got it. It just would have been cool to get only 1.
-Got a letter and finally saved.
2 on 1: Black Waltz No. 1
-After the text, the fight is pretty straightforward. Kill the Black Waltz and heal when needed. The part that can mess this fight up is Zidane being a bad thief. You need to steal the Mythril Dagger AND get a few hits in on the Sealion before you trance. Zidane's inability to steal can put quite a damper on all of that. I think on my sixth attempt I finally was able to steal the Mythril Dagger (and the Ether) and still get a hit a from the front and back row in time. Sealion goes from blue to dead with those two hits and a Tidal Flame.
-On the way out, got no encounters on the first go
-I saved in the little forest outside of Dali.
That's where I am now. When I get home I will go back and put times at my saving. I am not sure if I want to go ahead and use the friendly Mu here to get some AP, or if it's not worth it. Or maybe start doing the Ragtimer thing. I don't know, I'll probably just go to Dali. This level 1 thing is actually kind of fun. I will be going home in about 30 minutes, so more fun Final Fantasy IX-I currenlty have no life-action to come.
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hope you do well
streme Wheelie
