My FFIX Challenges journal

[Ergroilnin]

Yet next update is here!

Level 1 Challenge:

The village of Dali is really simple place, just lots of unnecessary text. It is important to prepare yourself for the cotton robe trick tho, meaning one has to buy as many wrists as he can. Since I didn't get the 10k gil from the swordfight, I couldn't really buy that much.

I went with the story, looted the underground, easily killed both waltz 2 and 3 and arrived to Lindblum. I must say that the FMVs on the ship are one of my favourites. Poor Vivi and also Vivi rules!

Since this challenge isn't time restricted, Lindblum is really easy going place. All I did was loot some optional chests and mainly, I did the cotton robe trick for making some money for my other purchases. As for the hunt, it is absoluely mandatory to steal the needle fork from zaghnol, else one can't pass gizamaluke's grotto without leveling up. I managed to get it on my fourth restart, my earlier tries failed on either tent not working, me not stealing, or me unequipping silk robe off Zidane and dying to thunder.

I also decided that I want Coral Ring as my reward, so I kind of exploited the wait ATB system. Once I successfully stole the fork, I simply entered some command menu and waited till the time ran out.

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Excalibur II Challenge:

This whole part from Dali to finishing Lindblum almost made me cry.

I ran through the Dali as fast as I could, bought tons of Wrists, made it to the waltz 2 only to realize that I can't win without Iron Sword that I didn't steal from Baku way back in the Evil Forest. This realization took me four or five resets alone.

Thus, I had to redo one earlier save. I had to redo the Dali and buy one Iron sword along the wrists, thanks god I only had to jump back so little. This was in the end only my own fault for rushing through things without thinking ahead.

Once I got back to the waltz 2... I couldn't somehow kill him anyway! He kept killing me with his Fira and I was really confused why, since he didn't use it on me at all on the level 1 challenge. After spending two hours retrying, I finally managed to solve the puzzle. He won't fira as counter as long as the character he targeted last time dies right before he drops below 50% HP. Seems like I was incredibly lucky on the lvl1 and he killed the character himself. So after I finally done him good, guess what? I died on waltz 3 because I didn't equip vivi with silk robe! I will make this short... I got there once again, only to die off a missclick.

Well it took me quite a while but I got to the Lindblum at last.

Now since this IS time restricted challenge, I couldn't simply take my time doing the cotton robe trick, I had to go and actually make my own shopping list for exact amounts of what each transaction. Like "sell 5 cotton robes, buy 8 steepled hats; sell 8 cotton robes, buy 16 steepled hats" etc. and then after the shopping is done, you also gotta get the game right before the festival in one go.

Since this was one of the parts that relied purely on skill and not on blessing of the RNG, I wanted to do this part as perfectly as I could, meaning I retried the shopping about twenty times and then settling for a little error anyway, cause my D-pad is so wobbly that I couldn't simply make no mistake. Damn cheap gamepads. After the run I was ok with, I had to redo this again because I was all text skip happy and I flew to bad district.

On the very next try tho I managed to get it done just fine and I saved before the festival.

Now I stood before the choice of spending about ten more minutes here and get the needle fork, or skip this. The needle fork is needed for lvl 1 challenge, but since this game is purely getting the Excalibur II, I can level however I want meaning even forced black mages in gizamaluke's grotto are ok.

Since I decided to save me the time, I suicuded in the first encounter possible, thankfully Freya wins the competition automatically if noone else has been announced yet, meaning I still get the awesome Coral Ring.

I went to the base level, picked up tent, sold the rest of cotton robes, bought few potions, phoenix downs and tents and saved a somewhere in first third of way between Lindblum and Qu Marsh on the world map.

Gamefaqs perfect FF9 file with skipping FMVs by Atomos199 time: 02:07:43
Youtube FF9 perfect game without skipping FMVs by rlouisw: 02:16:56 (estimated PAL time 02:29:19).
My time:
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Not bad I think. Still mad props to them having such times with perfect game. Crazy.

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Overall I am very happy with my progress on both challenges. Also the more maddening part, the better and more satisfying feeling after conquering it.

Look forward next update!