I was on the 4th floor of Paramekia Castle last night when I was defeated by two Sargeants. I didn't think they were that tough. :/
I was on the 4th floor of Paramekia Castle last night when I was defeated by two Sargeants. I didn't think they were that tough. :/
Hello Pika Art by Dr Unne ~~~ godhatesfraggles
Onward says I!
Yknow this is how Dubya got into power. You may have noticed something odd about this picture. Yes, there are indeed two Gordons. It seems the programmers didn't have the foresight to replace the "active" party member sprite with another should one of your members leave the party to walk about. This happens a lot since I tend to have only the last member slot active. So now Gordon has left us (the deserting bugger), we're off to sail the seven seas to save a serpent or something similar.
Yeah I mean what's the worst that could possibly happen? We get attacked by a bunch of NPC pirates?
Ah for fudge sake.
Pirates! Like many things in the world, it turns out they're weak to fire. As it happens Square got it wrong here, as Pirate are immune to fire. And any other element. Infact, if this was realistic the party should've lost automatically.
Static images cannot describe how cool this is, so let me try to use words; Pirates dancing on the poop deck. Awesome.
With Leila now in tow I spent a LONG time levelling her stats, namely her HP, in order to reach here; Mystidia. And look who inhabits this place. Red Mages....sort of. Well they're mages in red, but we all know they're just Black Mages whose clothes are at the laundromat. Still, Mystidia offers two very useful spells; Change, which is crucial for quick levelling, and Holy, which is the most powerful spell you can get at this point and allows you to grind Soul for a more potent Cure spell. Since it lowers Strength and I'm not using physical attacks it also has the benefit of leaving my Vitality stat intact, which would otherwise be ravaged by continued use of Black Magic spells.
So once I had the Change spell I could carry on using it just outside of Altae to get guaranteed HP and MP increases allowing me to reach the heady cap of...
9B5 MP? Yes, for those who know you're computing, this is a case of a display overflow. B is the hexadecimal representation of the value 11. So what I have here is 1015 MP. That means the cap may be 1024, at which point an MP increase could cause my MP to roll back to 0, which wouldn't be a good thing. Ergo I can only level my characters using this method so far.
So anyway, time to find dragons.
...I think that's a dragon. Kinda looks like Sloth from the Goonies. Wouldn't that be awesome though, if Sloth joined your party? He'd have a special spell that would play a digitised version of "HEY YOU GUYS!". Wickedcool.
Deist Cavern was an ARSE to get through. It took three attempts, not because it was particularly hard, but because my emulator has this annoying habit of loading the wrong save state by accident (I only ever use save states in places where I'd normally be able to save in the game i.e. the world map because the ROM takes an age to get past the title screen for some reason and it's quicker), so I ended up loading a save state before the dungeon was finished. Ergo I had to traverse it all over again. Thank goodness for the turbo button, otherwise I would have lost my rag.
Darn it, why does this always happen to me?
You'll notice my MP count in this battle. Yes, this dungeon was so hardcore, I used up over 800 MP just to get to the end. I have no idea how the later, decidedly longer and harder dungeons will go. Most likely I will have to stock up on Elixirs or get the Osmose spell to keep myself afloat.
Boom-chicka-waa-waa!
O look, it's Kary from FF1. I had to revive my other party members because the game wouldn't let me advance without doing so, but I just ended up killing them off with Guy's own Fire spell. This was a close battle due to Layla getting Conf. all the time, which I presume means confragulated.
Is there a cash alternative available? Yes Hilda needs saving, AGAIN. Also there appears to be yet more clones here.
And that's round about where I am. Right now I'm using the Chng spell to get Gordon as close to 9C4 MP as I can before taking on the Arena, which is the last of the "short" dungeons in the game. I've still got a loooooong way to go.
There is no signature here. Move along.
Ok, I'm in Cyclone.
My peeps just got two masks and I assume we're headed for this supposed tower in the middle of the sea now. How much further do I have left?
I'm rather enjoying this game this time through. Thanks, EoFF!
A piece of advice before you go, although it does contain spoilers:
(SPOILER)You should save right outside the atoll and remove Leila's equipment.
I've scoured Pandemonium and managed to find another 8 treasure chests, so my item completion is now at 99% with one treasure to go. I've got four monsters to add to the bestiary (I assume one of them is the final boss), and about three concept sketches (again I assume one is of the final boss).
Done about half of the tower of doom. Went back outside to train because Gareth is rubbish, Lucy is now a killing machine with osmose and drain
Pictures to come soon.
I was trying to warn oodler.
I can't believe people got through this game without quicksave.
As is becoming par for the course with me, I've hit a major snag. I've tried to go to the Arena with Gordon but the game demands that one of the three main characters are revived to advance since Gordon leaves when you find Hilda. The problem is that Guy, who would be replacing Gordon, is severely under-levelled to get out of the Arena (you have to hoof it out as Exit doesn't work) and head back to the boat and all the way back to Altea. In all honesty I don't think it's overly feasible. I will try it by buying an Elixir to heal Guy back up to full health/magic when I revive him and take a bazillion Holy tomes to hopefully burn through the enemies with them, but if that doesn't work....I'm really not sure if I'll be able to advance.
There is no signature here. Move along.
I don't think I'll be able to beat this game in time, but this has given me the incentive to play and end up beating this game, so I'm happy :P
You guys all do far better commentary then I'd probably have done had I bothered
I remember doing that tropical island much earlier than supposed to too, I think pretty soon after getting the boat - I thought it was some weird bonus dungeon when I first found it and didn't realise until much later what it was for when I was really meant to be getting the masks
I beat the game with 100% item completion and 97% for both Bestiary and Art Gallery. Not quite my goal but not too shabby either.
Pity I can't upload an image to prove it.
Also unlocked normal mode. Does that mean the old-style painful mode?
I found by the endgame I was raking in so much loot that buying Elixirs was actually cost-effective. Takes up a lot less inventory space as well.
Never used the Blood Sword. Too cheap.
Cid kicked the bucket (he too? -_-) and now I'm ready to take the Airship to Palamecia.