Okay guys I am sorry for being lazy with updates twice in a row. I hope you didn't lose all interest in this project yet, since I have a big update on both challenges again!


Level 1 Challenge:

I got really bored by powering up the Thievery so I moved a little bit on with the story. I went through the Desert Palace, dug up the two Chocographs on Forgotten continent and both cracks, getting Freya's ultimate weapon, kinda fun that she can't use the skill from it due to low max MP.

Ark took me around 40 tries because I needed to steal the Holy Lance and I wasn't too lucky with the steals even with bandit and master thief and even if I stole it, I was unlucky with Ark's attack killing me. Then I almost messed up the mini game and guess what? I forgot to save and died in the Desert Palace. I raged quite hard, good thing I was only one at home at the time. Thankfully though, the second time to get through didn't take more than 10 tries.

Now for the Desert Palace, I wasn't expecting this place to be really hard but oh I was so very wrong. This place is absolutely horrendous. Since with lvl 1 you basically can't run away without Zidane and Vivi's stop doesn't work much here. This place took me well over fifty damn tries to get finally through to moogle before the boss. The boss itself wasn't any problem and fell on the first try.

Aiming to Esto Gaza and Mount Gulug I bought new items (mainly Octagon Staff) and after getting all chests except those red dragon guarded and saved. There were two battles ahead now. Two Red dragons and Meltigemini boss. The red dragons were raped solely by Vivi, because they basically can't almost kill him. With Octagon Staff he absorbs Wind attacks, so only way they can kill him is hitting with basic attack two times (auto-life). It took only about three times to stop them both successfully and I saved again.

Meltigemini is one of the hardest bosses in level 1 challenge if you aren't power upping Dragon's Crest and Thievery to very high damage. Since I did though, having Dragon's Crest at 9999 and Thievery at 6700 at the moment, it took me only one try to take him down.

There was alot of plot again, Dagger got loli haircut and I gotten the Hilda Garde III. Which also means I now can obtain Running Shoes from Treno's monster and the flying chocograph so I did and I also found and dug up all the left chocographs found in Chocobo Air Garden and all the bubbles in the sea.

I paid a quick visit to Dagguereo to do some shopping in preparation for Ozma (namely Egoist's Armlet for immunity to Doomsday). Since I still haven't done the friendly monster quest I thought I might do as well now so I found them all and finished the quest fairly quickly, learning tons of abilities in the process.

There was one last thing left to do before taking on Ozma, power upping the Thievery to 9999. I had 300 steals left to do it so it still took few hours but I just finally managed to max it. I decided my party for Ozma will be Zidane, Freya, Quina for obvious reasons and Amarant for Aura (auto-life). I prepared Quina's HP to 1 for Limit Glove, equipped everyone with dark absorbing or guarding items and saved.

The Ozma was waiting for our showdown and I didn't make it wait anymore. Ozma has interesting AI changing possible moves between odd and even turns and also filling up ATB immediately if I enter any command while it isn't casting anything at the moment. Also after dropping to 40000 and 30000 HP it will cast Berserk on the character that took it under that HP and it has variable chance of casting Curaga on itself each time you target it according to some guide it's 13-50% chance depending on HP left. This won't take it's turn. Another thing is it will cast Curse on the party on it's second round which will kill whole party at level 1 meaning auto-life is absolutely mandatory.

Knowing this all it took me 9 tries to beat it, which I consider really lucky. The battle that I won went like this: Ozma casted Death on Amarant, he resurrected, then I casted Dragon's Crest, Thievery and Limit Glove for 3x 9999, Ozma casted berserk on two characters missing both. Then it casted Curse killing everyone. Everyone resurrected except Amarant whose auto-life was wasted first round. Before I got another turn, Ozma got it's third turn casting Doomsday missing/healing my team and damaging itself for 9999. I then casted another round of Dragon's Crest, Limit Glove and finally Thievery, killing Ozma. To be honest this battle was kind of weird, I never actually managed to throw Dark Matter at it for guaranteed 9999, and also very very luckily it didn't counter any attack with Curaga meaning Ozma didn't heal itself at all.

So while not planned, I managed to complete Level 1 Ozma Challenge as well! I will keep the save just before Ozma for possible rematch in the future. While I want to finish the game itself on lvl 1, I restarted the game after Ozma since it took my characters to 20+ levels and the items from it aren't needed to finish the game.

So far that's it. Now that I am thinking about it I made a mistake of not taking a screenshot after killing Ozma for proof for this journal which is a shame but I am not up to trying chances again just for it so I will just hope you'll believe me .

Time on the save before killing Ozma is just over 44 hours.


Excalibur II Challenge:

Last update was just after getting to Bran Bal. There were the three forced exp battles ahead of me and I didn't expect them to be hard. That was false assumption. It took me many tries and experimenting with equip to finally get through all three of the battles and afterwards I saved.

I ran back to the starting point, picked up Holy Mitter behind the chair, ran through the light lamp field and over then bridge in five seconds and set up the flying plateau to 4. There is a chest with 20k gils that you can get setting to 3 but it takes more time and much more real life time, because of much higher chances to get random encounters. I flew to the screen with portals and here I actually picked up two optional chests with Battle Boots and Carabini Mail since they are useful and I needed to get in battle anyway to prepare my party for upcoming boss battles. I needed to kill and resurrect everyone to get them to yellow HP range. I also equipped the needed items on everyone and saved by the Moogle.

There are now three boss battles in a fast succession without being able to touch the menu in between. Thankfully though, if you win the first one, you basically won them all since only Silver Dragon has party attacks, Garland and Kuja both can only kill one character at a time not posing any real danger. The Silver Dragon battle took me a few tries, he is one of the few bosses with maximal speed, meaning he's almost sure to get one and usually the first turn. Meaning you gotta get lucky for him not to use any of his all target attacks. But the funny thing is, it only takes one charge (all 4 characters with yellow HP, MP attack etc.) to take him down. Garland didn't even get a turn, all needed was for everyone to normally attack and Steiner cast a Charge. Last boss of the disc, Kuja is basically a little stronger and faster Garland. But to take him down it took exactly the same as for Garland.

Bam, another one of the best FMVs in the game play and then you just gotta run a little, mash through some plot to finally finish third disc!

Gamefaqs perfect FF9 file with skipping FMVs by Atomos199 time: 10:28:25
Youtube FF9 perfect game without skipping FMVs by rlouisw: 10:02:34
My time:
ff11-2.png

There isn't really much to do on the disc 4, basically few scenes, few screens and five bosses to get to the Excalibur II. It can be done in about 45 minutes and me having over hour and half left, I basically already succeeded on this challenge. All that's left is to actually get it! I am only waiting to catch up to fourth disc with level 1 challenge.

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And that's it for this update guys, as you can see, everything went better than expected. I also think that I'll finish both challenges by today so you should probably expect last final update later on today. Be sure to check this thread later for the great finish.