Final Fantasy IX UNleashed

[Forsaken Lover]

FFIX Mod Report if anyone actually cares to know about it:

So I've never used Quina unless I had to and I certainly never went around collecting Blue Magic. But given that this intended to be hard, I suspect the maker of the mod counted on you not only recruiting Quina as early as possible, but collecting all his/her abilities. Some of these early ones I know about because of LPs.

First one I got was Aqua Breath because it's right there in Qu's Marsh. It costs 15 MP.

Then I got Mighty Guard because those scorpion/lizard things are easy.. It costs 50 MP.

Next I got Angel's Snack from those dragons. Those things can be really easy or really hard. Their Flame attack is guaranteed party wipe except for Freya who has way more HP than everyone else. To beat them I started off by having Vivi cast Sleep. There's quite a bit of luck involved, such as hoping Vivi gets his turn first and that if the dragon gets its turn it does something else. Then I had Quina cast Mighty Guard to try and protect us from Flame. Only the dragon never did it...it used its weak ass physical attack or Thundara. Thundara still kills whoever it hits but one KO is nothing. Vivi's Blizzard does about 200 damage Dragon seems to have maybe a little more than 1000 health so no big deal. Angel Snack does Remedy on all which sounds pretty useful.

Finally I got Flare Star from the Axe Beaks. Now I thought Flare Star was just a move Trance Kuja used! I had no idea I could use it...unless this is a mod thing. I was outside Lindblum by Pinnacle Rock stealing Tents from the big insect things (because Tents cost an arm and a leg and Gil is a precious commodity so far. Also as far as I can tell, Tents only heal half your HP and MP so you need to use two of them to get back to full) and then I thought "I feel like these birds can teach me something..." And they did. It costs a whopping 80 MP though.

Level 9 Quina only has 61 MP so Flare Star is a bit out of my reach and Mighty Guard is a one time only deal. Unless I want to use my Ethers, and I'm never going to use my Ethers. Ethers are like Exlixirs, items I'm overjoyed to get because "I might need them in an emergency." Then, even if an emergency happens, I still don't use them because "what if I need them later?"

So far Vivi is the real damage dealer. He does great damage against monsters with elemental weaknesses obviously but Drain, which you get off Steepled Hats, does about 200 a shot and only costs 15 MP out of his pool of 85 MP. Of course, Level 11 Vivi only has 233 HP so that may be required just to survive, as opposed to its usefulness in terms of offense. Zidane and Freya have over twice as much HP as him while Quina had 407 HP. As I said before, first time playing this game in forever so I'm not sure if stats have been drastically altered in any way. I gave Vivi the Glass Buckle though as it ups his Magic Evasion to a whole 7. Isn't that amazing? It still beats the 3 everyone else has. I don't feel like making any more of the Buckles...maybe one more but I'm trying to conserve money. I'm not sure how useful Magic Evasion is anyway.

Testing it out just now on some random monsters outside of Lindblum, Zidane normally does about 120 with The Ogre. Freya does 140. With MP Attack, Zidane does 160. He got MP Attack off his starter Dagger. Still, I never have that on unless it's during a boss fight. The two of them do more damage than I first realized. I've leveled up a bit since leaving Lindblum and those two levels helped a lot. Thank god for that little spot with the rare coffee and the healing spring. Also thank you game for showing me that in an ATE.

I started Chocobo Hot 'n' Cold, which is as awesome as ever. I got a bunch of Chocographs I can't get to yet. Still, the first Chocograph is pretty great. The HP+10% off the Germinas Boots was a great thing to give Freya. I would have Freya using Cover to protect Vivi but right now we are surviving on Potions. If I had a dedicated Healer I wouldn't mind but if she keeps taking hits for everyone she's gonna die really fast.

Gizamaluke's Grotto was a wonderful home of Blue Magic and I think it's Blue Magic unique to the mod. I didn't even remember this from a guide, I just thought a couple enemies looked like they might yield skills to learn and they did. Firstly, some sort of skeleton thing taught Pyro, which is described as 'A weaker version of Flare." After that I ran into the Lamia which used Might on itself. I'm pretty sure Might is what I'm supposed to learn from it as well. But what I ended up learning was "Level 3 Def-less" which is pretty self-explanatory. All enemies with levels that are multiples of 3 have lowered defense. I don't know how useful that is going to be but it's there.

Now Gizamaluke itself was pretty easy. In fact, should anyone else play this, this is how you win. Focus 4 times on Vivi and then just keep using Drain. Does between 480 and 510 damage. Gizamaluke, at least in the mod, seems to have about 3000 HP. As I stumbled into the boss fight with Vivi about to go Trance, I can kill the guy in about 6 turns. The only complications arose, and I can't tell if this is a problem with the mod or not, is that Gizamaluke will sometimes counter with Silent Voice. Key word is sometimes. I don't know what determines it. Sometimes it felt like countering, sometimes it didn't. It seems like it should have been a constant counter which is why I'm wondering if the mod did it. Another problem is that, towards the end of the fight, Gizamaluke will choose to spam nothing but Water attacks on your entire party. Everyone should survive the first attack but he spams it so good luck surviving the third or fourth. As far as I could tell, the only way to survive with everyone alive is to kill it before it can wipe you out by constantly using that move. Luckily Quina had Pyro and that is my best attack by far, dealing 700 damage. It only costs 30 MP too so you can use it at least twice.

So the only reason the fight took me a billion attempts was I wanted the Ice Staff. I stole it on my first attempt but then I ended up dying because I was stupid and wasted Quina's MP on Pyro to start off with. What you should do is cast Mighty Guard to start off with. That is what I planned to do but then I decided to kill it fast and this was before I knew Vivi could win on his own. Anyway, on every subsequent try when I did start off with Mighty Guard, I could absolutely not steal the damn staff. Far from getting it on my first attempt, I couldn't even get it on my 10th. I killed Gizamaluke so many times without that staff so I just kept reloading. Sometimes it killed me because of its damn Water all move. On my truly successful attempt when I did get the staff, I save stated after getting it. I felt guilty but I had already won the fight. Vivi can win the fight all on his own. There's nothing wrong with save stating in such a situation.

But yeah, this is pretty fun and different from what I remember. I'm kind of dreading Beatrix because that fight is just running out the clock, right? You don't even have to do damage? The mod does not lend itself to long battles. I'll probably have to waste Ethers to get Mighty Guard up a second time at the very least. Freya does have her regen move but it's really not worth much. I guess I'll just have to keep everyone on Potion duty while Zidane steals and then wait until it's over with.

EDIT:

Luckily Beatrix wasn't too bad. Had everyone in the back row, started off with Mighty Guard and then just had Zidane steal from her and that was about it. Goth both items with only a single try each. Vivi kept dying because she used both her Shocks on him and even when I revived him she would immediately attack him again. It was kinda funny after a while. Still, it all went pretty smoothly. The fight was nice and short. I was afraid I'd have a longer clock to run out.