My FFIX Challenges journal

[Ergroilnin]

Okay guys, after today's share of playing, I finally hit the third disc on both challenges!

Read on to see it wasn't exactly easy too.

Level 1 Challenge:

I loaded last save just before Madain's Sari and did the necessary stuff here. I quite like this place since it's connected with Eidolons so strongly. But the scene with Zidane and Vivi pissing or six years old Eiko wanting Zidane's D so hard... Lel.

Now I had to get to Iifa Tree which wasn't a problem since I can easily Flee each battle.

But the place after moogle is pure hell I tell you. You have to prepare one of yours characters to zombie status to avoid the forced exp here. Most likely Zidane, because he can survive Zombie Breath with shell on. But getting it on him took alone about four tries after which I backtracked and saved at the moogle.

This place is very harsh because it is quite large with high encounter rate, one of the encounters is usually faster than you and one shots whole lvl 1 party and each time other encounters KO Zidane, it's also restart. It took me about twenty five tries to get to the elevator.

This is actually the reason you have to prepare zombie'd character, since you will be facing two forced battles here. First two or three zombies and then Zombie Dragon, both battles giving exp. What you have to do is throw Elixir at each of them (Elixir instantly kills any undead monster), but before you kill the last zombie or the dragon, you have to KO anyone who isn't zombified meaning you also have to hope enemies don't kill your zombie'd character.

I had luck first time I actually finally managed to get to this stage, the first encounter started with me ambushing the enemy, so I had plenty time to throw two elixirs, kill off my party members and finish it with Zidane. After the battle I resurrected them to take off attention from Zidane in next fight and sucessfully finished the Zombie Dragon without gaining any exp as well. At this point I ran out of Elixirs, I had four and used them on four enemies. Luckily you can find one elixir at the bottom, which is used right away on the easiest boss of the game, the Soul Cage. One elixir later I finally managed to pass the so far hardest place of this challenge and saved just outside the Iifa Tree.

Now I had to prepare myself for the next boss battle while going back to Madain's Sari. I had to get Zidane's HP to end with 7 once again and I saved outside the village.

Now this part could have been very frustrating if I had bad luck, but I had the greatest luck and passed it in one go. Once you enter the village, there is ton of text you gotta go through before the actual boss battle. It's the Zidane and Amarant duel. You need to first hit him for about 1300 dmg (which isn't hard to do, Exploda+MP attack+Man Eater+Front Row) and then kill him with Lucky Seven's 7777. He will attack you once in the meantime but you can't afford to get hit, so you have to be lucky enough to evade and hit him with 7777.

All that's left now is go to Iifa Tree once again for the series of forced battles giving exp, so you have to win purely with Stop to avoid the exp. And I tell you, it's not that easy. First you fight two Mistodons and then one more. They can easily kill the party members with various attacks, there are only few things that are survivable at all.

Each try is also very annoying because it's quite text heavy before you actully get to fight. After about ten tries I managed to win only to forget to save at the badly visible moogle and die to next forced battle. I raged hard. Took me another ten tries to get to the moogle and save finally. Now you simply run the incredibly long root where you are guaranteed to fight at least one (usually two) battles with either one or two mistodons. They are still very hard so I had to try many times, when I got through, I was lucky enough to get only one battle with only one Mistodon.

I watched the majestic FMV, where Bahamut runs wild and saved.

ff8.png

Phew.


Excalibur II Challenge:

Okay the start point was same so I did the story related stuff in the Madain's Sari and picked up the stelazzio coin there.

Now getting to the Iifa Tree I could've get the Moonstone by doing the sidequest with colored stones, but since this area has harsh encounter rate and it would take alot of time anyways, I decided to skip it. Moonstones are very rare but they don't really teach me anything new so I had no reason to torture myself over one.

Still it took about ten tries to run all the way from the Madain's Sari to Iifa tree, since it's quite a long way.

Now for the Iifa tree, the first part, getting to the moogle inside, is really stupid, there are lot of screens, each is hard to perfectly run through and the encounter rate is high here. It is possible to get through without an encounter but I settled down for one after about twenty tries, since I also had to reequip my party each time to get the most of the APs I get there.

The second part was lucky for me tho, it took me only one try to get to the bottom while getting only three encounters on the way to the elevator, each ending very swiftly with an elixir aside for the first encounter. Since I am not doing the lvl 1 for perfect stats here, I didn't have to bother with any zombifying quite on the contrary it would hurt me.

The whole path down was done with some more elixirs and after getting about 5 levels and tons of skills learned on each character, I saved outside the Iifa Tree.

Again the backtracking to the madain's sari took few retries cause of the long way between. Unfortnutely since I am not lvl 1, I can't easily and swiftly prepare Zidane's HP to end in 7, so I had to whack Amarant down using normal attacks. That wasn't really a problem but as was with Lani and Hillgigars, it took more time than lvl 1 battle, which I find quite ironic.

For the last time I had to backtrack to Iifa Tree which took another ten tries give or take.

But for the actual Iifa tree, I got very very lucky. I managed to run through the first part without any encounters at all on my first try, quickly killed the Mistodons with elixirs and saved.

Then again it took only two tries to get through the last area with only one Mistodon, quickly dying to another elixir.

Once more I watched the awesome FMV and saved on start of the third disc.

Gamefaqs perfect FF9 file with skipping FMVs by Atomos199 time: 06:17:31
Youtube FF9 perfect game without skipping FMVs by rlouisw: 06:17:23 (estimated PAL time 07:07:13)
My time:
ff8-2.png

Once again I am off by about 9 minutes of rlouisw's time but it's fine really. And as you can see, I am now over half of both the game and the time for Excalibur II.

____________________________________________________________________

Okay that's it for today. I am satisfied with wrapping both challenges to disc 3. Tho this disc will definitely be very hard for both challenges equally. We will see how I do.

Tune in again.