Edward - The Real A Bards Tale

[Captain Maxx Power]

Last night I had a vision. A prophetic vision no less. One that gripped my soul in throes of fear and joy and various of abilivant ways of feeling. Before me stood a giant figure, standing over me in my bed (I know what you're thinking, and no, it wasn't that). He stood with an instrument in one hand and looked down on me with terrified eyes.

"Maxx Power?" he said

"Only on t'internet" I replied, cowering behind my sheets. The figure loomed down further on me.

"I have a task for you. My name is Edward. Years ago I allowed my likeness to be made into a game of divine creation. You mortals call it Final Fantasy Four" the figure then went into a tragic stance while a chorus of voices were heard, whilst I tried to sneak out. "But my name was besmirched! I was seen as a weakling, unable to stand on my own feet! A pathetic person unable to fight even the weakest of monsters".

"But you" he said, pointing at me just before I got to the door "You can reclaim my glory! I want you to take the latest version of the game, the GBA Advance version. Take me and only me, and defeat every monster in the land. Truely then must everyone accept my divinity". With that he dissapered in a redish puff of smoke, leaving me feeling bewildered with only one thought in my mind.

"What the hell have I gotten myself into".

So with this divine inspiration I begin my Epic quest. To take the Character of Edward and achieve the following:

- Get "our Ed" to level 99 with near "maximum" stats
- Defeat Bahamut
- Defeat all of the Mountain of Trials monsters
- Defeat Zeromus

All of this must be done solo without any help whatsoever. I will only be using Edward from the first instance I can (after defeating the Giant of Babel) after which the only thing I'm allowed to do is have Cecil "crystalise" Zemus to initiate the final battle. I've heard of solo White Mage runs, Level 1 Ozma and No-Equip, No-Materia, Low-Level games, but never in exsistance has anything so mind-numbingly stupid and nigh on impossible has been attempted. But if anyone's going to do it, it'll be me. Apox on any who claim ownership to this covetted title, it shall be I who emerges victorious...



...then again maybe not.

[Memoria]

Well, I've seen people make strange FF quests before just to make the game more interesting, but this takes the cake. Good luck though.

I was thinking of actually taking care of Edward, but he's in bed. I just got to the point last night where... umm, I'm taking Cecil, Tellah, Cid, and Yang to defeat the Dark Elf. Wait, in the new one you can get Edward back?!!! OMG!

[Black Mage]

I believe this is one of the symptoms of clinical insanity.

[TurkSlayer]

I believe this is one of the symptoms of clinical insanity.

Sign me up theDo not despair, Maxx Power, for I too have taken this noble quest to return honor to the fine hero that is Edward Chris von Muir.Sadly, my efforts have proven difficult thus far, but I refuse to allow myself to fail!

...Who am I kidding, this is immpossible! ...Oh well. *Continues*

[Fireblade13]

I bet you guys loved it when he got thrown off the boat.

[Memoria]

I bet you guys loved it when he got thrown off the boat.

I was sad. He was the cutest guy there. I'm just kidding. Edward's not that bad of a character, it's just he's not that great in battle. Least he knows where his heart is. (He's so~ gonna get with Rydia.)

[Doomie]

I had no clue you can use any character you want in this version of the game.

[KoShiatar]

GO, AND TRULY EMERGE VICTORIOUS!

[Captain Maxx Power]

OK then so I found somewhere pretty nifty in order to level up. On the first floor of Bahamut's cave you can fight Dark Sages. Provided you have the Lamia Harp, they'll "Break" themselves to death for an easy 17k odd experience a battle. Of course Confusion (quite literally) is the key, since Edward's damage is pathetic. Of course this makes boss battles a scary prospect since confusion rarely, if never, works on bosses.

So here's my stats plan. From what I've heard the level-up bonuses are the same in this version as they were in the SNES. So going off a rather faberoo guide from Gamefaqs by CronoLV99 (blatant advertising but check out the guide, it's essential FF4 reading), Edward's stats at level 70 will be the following:

Str: 42
Agil: 41
Vit: 26
Wis: 28
Will: 28

(NB: In the GBA version, Vit is Stamina, Wisdom is Intellect/Intelligence and Will is Spirit)

So far, so average. Now onto some calcs. I won't be aiming for "max" stats of 99, since many stats become superfluous beyond anything divisible by 2 or 4. Namely the technical max for each stat would be:

Str: 96
Agil: 96
Vit: 98
Wis: 99/93
Will: 99/93

Due to Magic Defence Percentage calcs (Wis+Will / 4), if one stat is at 99, the other only gives benefit up to 93 and vice versa.

So onto his gains. As some of you may know after level 70 the gain rate of characters changes, become a series of random additions or subtractions to the base stats. For Ed these would be:

str, agil, vit, will, wis -1
str, vit, wis, will -1
str, agil, vit, will +1
agil, vit, wis +2
str, agil, will +3
str, vit, wis, will +4

scraping the first four, we get onto the real juicy gains. Since Will and Str are maxed automatically, we can disregard them. This means we have a toss-up between Agil, Vit and Wis. IMO, Agil > Vit, since Agility increases your Attack and Defense multipliers, so that'll get priority, followed by Vit and finally Wisdom. So it'll be +3 until Agility is at 96, followed by +4 to Vit and Wisdom.

But then again there's Ed's "uber equip" to take into account. These are the bonuses he gains from the side-dungeon equipment:

+30 to Strength
+30 to Agility
+10 to Vitality
+15 to Will

Adding those onto our original stats we can get our final "golden numbers", or the amount that that stat needs to go up to reach it's "max":

Str: 42+30 = 72 (24)
Agil: 41+30 = 71 (25)
Vit: 26+10 = 36 (62)
Wis: 28 (65)
Will: 28+15 = 43 (56)

So, starting on Agility we get:

8 Level-Ups of +3 to Str, Agi and Will
1 Level-Up of +2 to Agi, Vit and Wis (I did this since Agility would actually go over, plus this gives more points to Vit and Wis)

This maxes our Strength and Agility. We still need 32 points to max Will, 60 points to max Vit and 63 to max Wis.

20 Level-Ups of +4 to Str, Vit, Wisdom and Will

Which is more than enough to finish off the maxing out of the rest of the stats. Not too bad for an apparently "suxxor" character. Still I've got to get there first. I'm only up to level 55. Better get to confudling those sages again.

EDIT: Look what I just found:



Looks like life just got that much more easier for me

[Captain Maxx Power]

Hate to double post but seeing as this is an update then it's worth putting it on it's own.

Firstly, level 99 has been achieved. Unfortunately I screwed up one level and ended up with one of the - values. However if my calcs are correct I'm going to have 99 in every stat once I have my "ultimate" equipment on. For the record here's Ed's stats nakid at level 99:



Now onto some other notes. Firstly items. Since money is utterly useless at this point I'm able to stock up a lot on Hi-Potions. I'm also planning on buying a whole load of Elixir's for boss battles. At 100,000 a pop they won't be cheap, but I've already run up 1.2M just from levelling, so that's 12 right there already. I'm also going to be stocking up on Redemies, because quite frankly nothing else will do.

Now onto the first task, the Mountain or Ordeals. I wanted to head up there before taking on Bahamut, since I really could do with that Apollo harp. Anyways, the actual dungeon itself is easy enough. Thunder Dragons were probably my only concern since their Blitz attack shaves off half my HP in one go, so usually a "tactical retreat" is in order.

As for the bosses themselves I of course went for the Gigas Worm first, simply for the heart. It wasn't an easy battle by any means. Due to his "Behemoth" nature of countering with every hit I had to take a few rounds out to heal myself with Hi-Potions which made life a lot harder. But eventually, after about fifteen minutes of fighting...



Bingo! And boy what a harp! 146 Attack with 99% accuracy and 18 hits? Yes please! He's no Cecil by any stretch, but his days of doing two-digit damage are well behind him.

As for the other bosses, some were a cake-walk after the Gigas Worm. The Storm Dragon went down very quickly (almost 9k damage against him!) as did T-Rex and Death Mech. Master Flan is proving difficult, if only because of my complete lack of offensive spells. Plus I'd been stupid enough to trash most of my "castables" during the course of the game so the only thing I had left was 3 shots of Stardust. Enough to finish off the White Flans but no where near enough for the Black ones. So I'm going to have to carry on until later when I've got some more castable items again. Until then I'm off to beat a lizard with a wooden stick.

Other things I've learned:

- Characters off-party will gain the exact experience given. All my characters were in the high 90's when I returned with my level 99 Edward.
- The game counts stats over 99, but doesn't apply them. So a Strength of 104 would be 99, and a -number level-up would keep it at 99 since it would still be over that amount.
- You can run whilst "hidden"
- Confusion rocks on regular monsters rocks!
- The sing command can do three things : Inflict Sleep, Silence and Confusion.
- Edward doesn't use the "hide" command as much at higher levels automatically, leading me to believe it waits for a specific value rather than a % of maximum health.
- Bards get all the chicks:

[Memoria]

Your quest is strange, challenging, and tempting to try!

[Starboard Regulator FlareNUKE]

Edwards' face is ugly in the GBA version... the sprites look shiny... kewl... I though the SNES and GBA were equal in the graphic department....

[Captain Maxx Power]

Said lizard went down without a hitch. Subsequent invasion into the Lunar Dungeon proved successful, with all the side-quest bosses killed off (I have their relevant weapons stored for full screenshot use along with all the other uber-gear I'll be collecting as proof). As for Zeromus...



PWNED!

So much for the terrorisation of the world. Who said I couldn't complete the game with just Edward? Eh? Who I ask you? Now who's crying aloud with mirth and merriment? Me, that's who! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!

Sorry I've lost my mind a bit. I'll get onto the Lunar Ruins soon. I'm dreading taking on some of the "Dark Aeons" due to some claims that a full party can have problems against them. Best stock up on those Elixirs then.

[Memoria]

I notice that they did a horrible job with faces in the new FFIV. Cecil's and Edward's faces (the cutest guys on the original version, IMHO)... are just destroyed!! GAH!! The only one I do like is young Rydia...

Anyway, CONGRATS! Never said you could, just thought it was crazy.

[Darkone311]

not only does this seem impossible...... also how many shrooms did you eat to see edgar lol
DARK