[Classic] Manhogan Fantasy V: Because CHz really, really hates himself

Got my Earth Crystal job. This is my update. On the new world and that fancy stuff.

Rangers can finally deal elemental damage with bows but using their !Animal ability for group heals most of the time.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Back in the real world, Faris gets semi-naked.





Don't worry dude, it's not like she's a princess or anything. Oh wait.



MALE VICTIMS OF DOMECTIC VIOLENCE ARE VICTIMS TOO.



So the dragon waited until the planet got fused until heading home? Fucking stupid dragon.



He's dead, I'm sure he won't mind us going through his stuff. Strange how nobody who lives in a castle in a jrpg ever seems to have a bedroom door.



More shit we can't use, woot.



Fartz' care for his pets continues true to form.





Krile is still hearing voices. All that time away from her family appears to have done her no favours sanity-wise.



Was it a teenager?



Apparently not, and his days as a Ho are behind him too by the looks of things.



Laziest bit of story writing EVER.



Power.

I was speaking idiomatically.

These guys are like Purobolos except even worse because they won't run out of MP. Pretty much the only thing I can do in this fight is count their HP and get really lucky with my Dragoon/Berserker timing. Took about 15 minutes.







All right, so now we're going into an ancient pyramid untouched by man for hundreds of years with someone who indiscriminately attacks everything he sets eyes on, someone who jumps five hundred feet in the air on a regular basis, and someone whose job title is literally thief.

This is the best team of archaeologists ever.





Oh, she made it after all.

See, this is why I didn't say "GOODBYE FOREVER GEOMANCER" the last time, because every time I do the Geomancer always comes back.



Please let the demon keep her body please please please

Guys play it cool just walk away









Another boss with magic means it's Reflect Ring time again. She only uses spells that she'll absorb, but marginally healing her is way better than having to heal myself all the time. I've got a Berserker with the Dancing Dagger and a Dragoon jumping with the maxed out Chicken Knife so I'm good w.r.t. stabbing her in the face until she dies.





The team somehow managed to loot a tablet from the pyramid without Butz breaking it in half with his face or eating it, so that means we get three of these legendary weapon deals. Of course, I can't actually equip most of them, but I can sell the extras for delicious, delicious potions.









So this marks the end of Adventure of the Dancing Berserker. While the 4000 HP or so of damage that Sword Dance unleashes is totally hilarious, it only happens 1/8 of every attack, and 3/8 of the time he'll do one of the useless dances and waste his turn. The Rune Axe has a much higher attack than the Dancing Dagger, so on average he'll do more damage with it, even taking Sword Dance into account.

Besides, when I really need the extra oomph in battle, I already have a weapon that 3/4 of the time will attack with more power than Sword Dance: the Chicken Knife. The problem with the Chicken Knife is that 1/4 of the time it'll cause the party to flee, and I'd like to earn experience from battles once in a while. But during boss battles when you can't flee: look the fuck out.



I also grabbed the Holy Lance for my Dragoon. The lance is less powerful than the Chicken Knife, but when a Dragoon uses Jump, attacks with lances get a 2x damage bonus. That bonus pushes its attack slightly over the Chicken Knife's.

The last weapon I picked up was the Assassin's Dagger, which has a 25% chance of causing instant death, but I'm probably never going to use it except when it's exploitable. I'm leaving Main Gauches on my Thief and Geomancer for the 25% chance of blocking physical attacks, because I've gotta keep these bumblefucks alive.





Oh thank god, the next update will have more monsters and less essays about equipment.

Most amazing jew boots

To be fair, having you a short step ahead of me and explaining things is allowing me to progress smoothly without resorting to looking shit up on GameFAQS which always makes me feel dirty. I've been relying on a knight with cover to take hits for my weak-ass ninja when the going gets close but perhaps a main-gauche as weapon two might be a better option in terms of survivability? My samurai has the block incoming attacks skill so he's alright and I'll probably make him the ninja next and keep that skill active.

FELIPE NO

If you can wait until you unlock the first set of sealed weapons, grab Sasuke's Katana for your Ninja for sure. It's like the Main Gauche but with triple the attack power.

If you can't make it that far, the Main Gauche will do in a pinch, but its attack is pretty low for this point in the game and there are some other blocking options that won't hamstring your melee damage: Samurai's level 3 ability definitely, Elven Mantles, and also Ninja's level 2 ability will eat two physical attacks. Main Gauches work for me because those characters would do no damage even with the best weapons, so I'm basically trading their weapon slot for another armor slot.

Since the Ninja has the lowest Stamina of your jobs by far, you might consider moving it to the back row and using it as a support character. This isn't a bad idea if you use Throw a lot, since throwing does full damage from the back row.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Look, I'm not sure if you can help him or not, but just don't. Bird's an asshole.



This fight is pretty effortless thanks to a bunch of dangerous lunatics in domino masks feasting on his blood.



Decided to do Random this run, but got a Water job anyway. Sort of disappointed that I'm going to have access to Cure spells again.



"Let's wait to see if he comes back, first."



Destroying a Dog



Fuck you, you're not pinning this one on me.



Did I learn? Did I not learn? The question of whether I learned remains.



THROW ICE AT IT, THIS WORKS FOR SOME REASON.



Random means I can get jobs from the old crystals instead, and... do I. Do I ever. There may be a limit to how much access to Cura will help me.



ROYAL REJECTION

How ya doing, buddy?

Dude Pang, you might lap me. ;__;

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So this is where the game opens up. If I felt like it, I could jump into the rift and take on Exdeath now. But no. I intend to give this game the biggest of middle fingers by beating up everything I fucking can with this godforsaken party. As long as there's a boss I haven't socked in the face, my job here is incomplete.

Since Shin's using my posts as a walkthrough, I figure now would be a pretty good time to go grab a bunch of items and summons and do absolutely nothing to advance any part of the story.





First up is the Magic Lamp from Istory Falls. This thing is going to save my ass repeatedly in boss fights to come. But what does it do?



When you use it in battle, it summons a monster. Nearly every single summon in the game, in order. Finally, I have a use for Geomancer's absurdly high Magic stat.







Next up, there's this asshole in the Phantom Village. What the fuck do you even get out of this exchange?



And how the fuck can you even know that? I have an airship, maybe I took the biggest damn shortcut.





Anyway, so this Mirage Vest. When you equip it, you get a one-copy Blink effect when you start a battle. This means that the first physical attack that would do damage to that character will miss, and then that copy of the Dragoon you see there will go away.



Handy, although limited in utility because the effect only happens once. Well, until I do this.





Give her equipment a swap from the inventory menu like so...



... and armor effects reset.

Suddenly, my Dragoon is now invincible to physical attacks.





Went back to the Phantom Village to do some shopping. There's all kinds of useful stuff here for nearly every party build, so make sure to take time when you get here to explore the hell out of it.





DID SOMEONE SAY MORE SUMMONS



lawl Magic Lamp letting me use Bahamut on Bahamut



Real talk: this is the easiest time I've ever had beating Bahamut. It took like three turns with my Geomancer spamming the Magic Lamp, my Berserker hitting for 4500 HP per turn, and Mega Flare bouncing off a wall of Reflect Rings.

Skills, maybe you were right about Red Mage after all.





Aw yiss, the ABP Pleasuredrome.





Faris seems significantly more excited about this windfall than everyone else.



Oh and then there's also this thing, which I disappointingly didn't have to murder anything to get.





Man, second summon in a row I got without murdering. What's a guy gotta do to get his hands on some murder?





Now that's what I'm talking about. Had to give my Dragoon a weaker lance because Odin is one of a few annoying bosses that absorb Holy. Odin's Zantetsuken hits every character for like a billion HP, so the strategy here is pretty much to keep the Dragoon in the air and the Berserker at max HP for more than 45 seconds. Three or so Berserker hits, a couple of jumps, and a couple of Magic Lamp summons get it done.



Incidentally I think this is the first time I've ever beaten Odin legitimately without using the Break instant death trick. Breaking the game sure is neato.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Okay, I can't think of any other ways to stall this LP, so let's get back into things with the Island Shrine. Another tablet dungeon means another set of these annoying jerks to beat up.

Since the last time I fought these guys, though, I picked up a new toy.



HAHA EAT A DICK





Oh look, it's the boss with copies of itself where only the real one takes damage and every time you hit it it switches places. If you try to take the easy way out and attack all of them at once, they each counter with Frost.



Well, unless you use the Magic Lamp.

The lamp is actually not very useful in this fight beyond one use, because after Bahamut is Leviathan, which Wendigo absorbs, and then no other summons after that really do any damage. All I can really do is keep sending my Dragoon up and hope she hits the right target while Butz charges at holograms.







Oh look, it's the part where the party splits up and you have to go down two paths in the same dungeon. The left path monsters all require you to use magic against them, while the right path monsters you have to beat up physically.



So the right path is obviously not a problem for my troupe, as random outbursts of physical violence are all they're really good at. Well, that and healing Minotaur because he absorbs Holy and I left the Holy Lance on my Dragoon haha whoops

Anyway this battle was over in 13 seconds. Chicken Knife, you complete me.





But how am I supposed to beat the magic side without magic? If you try a physical attack on him, he casts Return, which resets the battle. For the purposes of this fight, using the Magic Lamp counts as a physical attack. As does Gaia. And he cures himself constantly, so bouncing his spells back with Reflect Rings won't do it.

He's vulnerable to Stop and Silence, which he occasionally casts on himself when they bounce off my shields. These provide an opening for one or two attacks, but even with the Dragoon in this battle I can't deal enough damage during these windows to keep up with his healing. Other classes could pull it off, but nothing I have access to.

Guess I'll just have to speed up my emulator and let him bounce spells off me until he empties his 30,000 MP.



ONE HOUR LATER



TWO YEARS LATER



Started reading a book.



Oh thank god.

Return only costs 1 MP, so he needs to be COMPLETELY out of MP before you start attacking him. Just because he doesn't have enough MP to cast a specific spell doesn't mean he's out of MP entirely. Luckily, one of his attacks is the 1 MP spell Libra, so you're looking for that to fail. When it does, go nuts.



Being shanked to death by a Geomancer has got to be embarrassing.

Let's see how long that took on the in-game clock.



I REGRET EVERYTHING

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

We leave Leonardo to his own devices and go for a stroll. First stop, whatever castle it is nearby with an entirely forgettable name.



Must be nice.



I'll keep an eye out, cheers.



IN UR BED, SLEEPIN ON UR PILLOW. Meh, he's dead, he ain't give a shit.



More like the Fuckalluseasa Guardian Tree.



Because Phoenix Downs are weirdly specific in their use?

We head into the desert and singularly fail to bump into any of whatever monster I was supposed to be looking out for. Went to the pyramid bit, threw some cash at some gargoyles, headed inside...



The man in the training hut knew his stuff after all.



Spotting a pattern here.



Angry face.



FUCK YOU CHESTS.

The encounters in here are all of the multiple enemy variety and only being able to hit one at a time is frustrating. Luckily...



ENTER THE NINJERKER.





She can hit everything on the screen sometimes, she can block attacks and she regenerates health. Fuck yeah!



Final Pacman V.

Bumped into this dude, he said something about his brother whilst scrabbling around for the last of the change on the floor, I had throttle on and skipped past without reading by mistake.



After a bit more tomb raiding, we reach the top and the team decide to celebrate with some LSD.















HEAVY SHIT.

The gang decide to ride out the comedown by chilling at the Guardian Tree.



Fuck off dragon.



I never knew dragons shit out princesses.





Run Leonardo, run!





Coming soon, boating trips on lake turtle.

The demon boss was a total bitch. Randomly not doing damage was kinda mitigated by having a reflect ring and flame shield equipped but this basically boiled down to throwing hi-potions at the Danceserker until he sword danced it to death.

Was going to call it a day there until I remembered something CHz said...



Time for some running away! Totally should have got this before fighting the demon...

I was speaking idiomatically.

Whattup, time for something new. Instead of unlocking a summon that I'll never get to use, this time I'll unlock a job that I'll never get to use.

Another puzzle boss fight here. As a mime, Gogo dishes out whatever you hit him with several times over, so the trick is not to attack, and eventu—





Wait Berserker what are you doing





Oh god damn it RELOAD SAVE STATE





Whattup, time for something new. Instead of unlocking a summon that I'll never get to use, this time I'll—

What, something seems different this time? Preposterous.





Mime is one of the best endgame jobs and is usually totally worth getting when you play the game normally.





Tablet dungeon #3 means you get another chance to destroy some Gargoyles. Take that, ancient stonecraft.

I'm not even taking a picture of them this time because fuck 'em.





These guys are yet another boss who revive if you don't kill them simultaneously, but unlike Gargoyles, you can't cheese this one with attack timing. If you don't kill them all at the same time, they instantly revive and then use a counterattack on you.

Even in a normal run of FFV, the easiest way to deal with them is to summon Odin, because they're not immune to instant death so Zantetsuken murders them immediately. Magic Lamp all day every day.





Last one of these means the last two Gargoyles. Goodbye, old friends. I'll miss you in a way that doesn't entail any longing whatsoever.





Tablet dungeon #4 boss is optional on account of it being a summon. Due to this guy's propensity to spam Tidal Wave at you, the only way to beat him without magic (besides getting really lucky with his RNG) is to flush 200,000 gil down the toilet in the Phantom Village for four Coral Rings. So if you don't have a Summoner, it's probably best to skip this one unless you have a major urge to waste your cash.

However, my policy of murdering everything demands that I show this guy what for. Plus, I'm going to need those rings anyway for a superboss fight I'm going to attempt (and wipe forever on).





Tee hee.





With everything else I can do now complete, it's back to Kuza to pick up the other nine legendary weapons that I'm never going to use. This doesn't do anything storywise, so since I don't need these weapons, I could've skipped this step and gone directly into the Rift. However, returning the tablets does something important for me later:



This guy comes up and hints you that the absurdly difficult GBA bonus dungeon has been unlocked. I'm going to give it a shot along with Shinryu and Omega after I beat the final boss. STAY TUNED FOR HILARITY

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

ChZ, in your Magic Lamp instructional picture, I thought you were fighting Shadow the Hedgehog on first glance.



There is zero problem with this.

FELIPE NO

DEMONS HATE ICE CUBES



Realized I needed to grab this when 3/4 of my party was level 20 and Lenna was like 16 XP away. MANY A QUICKLOAD KEY WAS PRESS'D THAT DAY.



QUIT FUCKING WITH MY HEAD FARIS



DON'T YOU EVEN KNOW THAT



Did you know if you put water on desert animals, they die instantly? They live in the desert because they hate water! It's true!



YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LENNA



Don't take care of them... as you... can not. So I should... continue to not take care of them... in the same way... that you didn't? That is, in the way that you didn't take care of them, not in the way that you didn't not take care of them, which you didn't, as you opted to not take care of them rather than avoiding not taking care of them. Or, like, you can't take care of them on account of being dead, so I can't not take care of them in that way specifically, but, in general, not taking care of them, sure, I can do that. Cool deal.



Sorry, I just promised a dying man I wouldn't take care of you. Word is bond.



And Random mode gets us our fourth job. Our. fourth. Oh man. Oh god, oh man. Oh god, oh man. Oh god oh man



Don't be good, but don't get into too much trouble either. Use your discretion. Like, if I see some graffiti and broken bottles when I get back, rad, but I'd better not have to bail you out.



OUR ALLIES DEMAND MAXIMUM HYPE



Plants also hate water. I'm solving pretty much all my problems by dumping buckets of water on them. Aqua Breath, you so dumb.



A-ha! Everybody else has blown it, but not me! But it's my big chance! I'll blow it real good, you wait and see!



(It's done with Dark Spark and L5 Death.)



Not really clear on your goals here, just gonna put half of you in the sub and let you figure it out on your own.



totally worth it



There are some problems Aqua Breath cannot solve. These problems are solved by dedicating half your party to full-time Desperate Healing. You may call Faris a Bard, but I'm sure pretty sure she's just a potion caddy.



Shut up grinding for those Reflect Rings was not a waste of time what do you know



Oh hey Exdeath can I cast Aqua Breath on you? Oh that's not doing much is it, huh. Hmm. Hmm. Why would you even have so much HP that's not okay!

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Christ, you are progressing quickly.

Also: ace name choice.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I take it there is some kind of official record for most number of times finished FFV in a month that Pang is trying to break here? You're gonna lap me in a day or so at this rate.

How ya doing, buddy?

In last year's Fiesta, someone completed 14 runs, so Pang has to pick up the pace a little bit.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Chapter V: The Earth Crystal

Spoiler:

We left our heroes stranded on an island full of jerks, but they quickly found their way to the only notable terrain feature.



Evidently, Galuf isn't much brighter than Biceps is, as we're in a Black Chocobo Forest. It is probably a black chocobo.



We quickly beat its innards out, and found prizes!



Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

Sidequest!:

Sidequest!


Ooh!

Spoiler:

Now that our bird can fly us over the mountains our wind dragon was unable to avoid, we can check out this tiny hamlet, cut off from the rest of the world.



The internet, ladies and gentlemen.



We learn some interesting things about Biceps' past, like the time he was locked on the roof for an entire week for misbehaving.



Meanwhile, Faris is kind of an insensitive jerk.



We learn about Biceps' father.



Who is Batman.



And we learn about the tragic fate of his mother, which could have been avoided if only the local store stocked Phoenix Downs.



Well, enough of that, let's see what we're supposed to do next.



Upon entering the desert, Galuf gives up after taking literally three steps.



Fortunately, Cid is on-hand with a genius suggestion!



We'll what?



This plan appears to have less to do with bridge construction and more to do with total party killing.



This is the worst fucking bridge I have ever heard of, and I've heard Sarah Palin's Treatise on Bridges.



Well, at least I have Rapid Fi-oh god damn it.



Sigh.



After some hardship, the desert was defeated! Thank god, just gotta head to that town a few steps awa-



Oh christ.



GOD DAMN IT.



I GET IT!



There's a puzzle in here, that starts with you pushing this switch and nothing happening.



You go on this little multi-step treasure hunt-



-the creator of which was undoubtedly a total jerk-



-only to find you just had to try pulling it instead. For real, if you say no to pushing it you immediately get the option to pull it.



Eventually all of this culminates in raising a lost city from the sands.



NOT AT THE MEET THAT'S FOR SURE LOL



"On my planet we grow the dankest nugz you've ever seen."



I say this to myself at least once a day.



After copious snacking, the crew decides to stop watching cartoons and continue their journey.



I didn't really have a good approach for this fight, on account of having basically no utility at all in terms of my job makeup. What I had to do was luck out and have only Faris hit with the Old status by the time I'd killed the launchers. She was basically just using Animals over and over in hopes of summoning Nightingale for heals, since my only other option for that is still Hi-Potions.

Once I was lucky enough for Biceps and Lenna to avoid the ravages of time, the fight was concluded without incident.


Yup.


This is where CHz started making fun of me because my party is already pretty absurd, and I didn't really need a bow capable of instantly killing enemies. But you know what? I wanted a bow capable of instantly killing enemies.



I proceeded to the Archeoaevis fight, again relying on Faris for multi-target healing, because the alternative of having to use 4 turns to heal everyone is really lame.



I was still using a Coral Sword on Lenna at this point, so I had to occasionally change elementals as the boss has shifting invulnerability as CHz mentioned. Nonetheless, things were going pretty well.



It was around this point in time that things took a sharp turn for the worse.




An inescapable march toward doom began when multiple characters started becoming confused, and my healing animal friends decided to abandon me in my darkest hour of multiple status effects.



In order to avoid Archeoaevis' elemental immunity, I had the Mystic Knights use status effects on their weaponry, like silence. Which they then began using to annihilate my own party. Biceps is about to obliterate Lenna in this frame.



Take two: VICTORY!



And, just as everyone was expecting, our buddy King has plans of his own that do not involve saving the Earth Crystal.



Yo brah you see the size of these things? I can take care of anything.



I still think it was kind of dumb how catastrophic geographical damage was the result of the destruction of all the crystals except wind for some reason.



With his efforts here an utter failure, Galuf returns to his own world in order to fail at saving it as well. Tally-ho!



Time to ROLL THE DICE.

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Here are most of the Rift bosses introducing themselves. From left to right: might suck (#3), definitely going to suck (#4), not bad (#1), probably the hardest required boss for this party (#7), not bad (#5), not bad (#6), might suck (#2).





#1: not bad. She casts Reflect on herself and bounces some poison spells at you, and she also counters with Drain a lot. She's vulnerable to Silence, but I didn't need to inflict it (I kept some Mage Mashers I stole during the Karnak escape just in case, but I've never used them). I even forgot to equip the Chicken Knife on my Berserker and still pummeled her into a fine paste without any issues.







WHY AM I EVEN GOING TO ATTEMPT THESE GUYS I AM THE DUMBEST





whoops i'm a boob and forgot to take a screenshot

anyway

#2: might suck. This is pretty much exactly like the Byblos fight but with stronger attacks. What I had to worry about here was him using Wind Slash more than once without being able to heal sufficiently in between. At one point I had only my Geomancer alive with about 45 HP, but I somehow survived.





#3: might suck. Azulmagia uses nothing but Blue Magic, so this fight is really dependent on which attacks he rolls. You'll laugh when he tries Level 5 Death and cry when he uses ???. I ended up with Krile Olded and Butz hit with Dischord so my damage output was awful and this took forever.





#4: definitely going to suck. Like Titan, this guy also spams the fuck out of Earth Shaker, but when he does it, it does 1000 damage to everyone. If you have characters Floating, he has the additional dick move of casting 100 Gs to cancel it.

The most hilarious way to beat Catastrophe is to put a Reflect Ring on a Floated character, because 100 Gs is reflectable. His AI script is pretty dumb, so every turn he'll notice you have a Floated character and cast 100 Gs to no effect. No damage flawless victory for the party.



Of course I don't have a way of Floating anyone so I'm totally fucked. Wiped four times before working out a healing strategy.

Earth Shaker killed Lenna outright, so she just stayed dead. I put Hermes Sandals on Krile and Faris and Artful Dodger on Faris too. Between them, they were able to get three turns in between every one of Catastrophe's, so they were able to get everyone's HP back to max with elixirs before the next attack. With that taken care of, it was just a matter of Butz poking it with a stick until it died.

Good thing I've been stockpiling these elixirs. Going to use every single one I didn't use here during the Necrophobe fight.

I was speaking idiomatically.

There are six of these guys milling around the same area as Azulmagia and Catastrophe. They play the boss BGM, but aside from their tendency to knock your characters out of the battle with Encircle, they're quite easy.



After you whale on them a bit, they turn into this guy, who is similarly a cakewalk. Much easier than Archaeoaevis.



Jura Aevis has a rare steal of a Dragon Lance, which murders the heck out of dragon-type enemies. These are more or less required for Shinryu, so I save stated my way to four of them.





#5: not bad. He knows Holy, which is pretty much an instant kill, but aside from that and occasionally turning your entire party into frogs, he's quite easily murdered.





#6: not bad, when fought correctly. He has a 1/3 chance of countering both magical and physical attacks with some nasty stuff, and he has some powerful normal attacks too. After a few turns, he'll start charging one of the most powerful attacks in the game, Giga Flare.

A book in the library room in the Rift hints you to his weakness: when he's charging, his defense goes way down and he becomes vulnerable to a few more status effects, including Break and instant death. Dropping an Odin on him in this state is instant victory, so all you have to do is heal and not attack until he starts charging and then Magic Lamp him.





One last Gilgamesh "fight," which only lasts for a couple of rounds before he scampers off.







So you get to Exdeath and he sucks more places into the Rift before you fight him. I'm taking some pictures because I don't think it's very well known what happens if you leave the Rift and return to the overworld after this cutscene.





LAWL TIME WARP

EVERYONE'S OKAY





#7: I'M FUCKED. Actually Necrophobe is not required at all, I'm not sure why I thought he was.

The main issue isn't with Necrophobe himself, but rather the four Barriers around him, which all reflect disgustingly powerful spells at you. The same problem I had with the Crystals comes up again here: I need to kill them off one at a time as quickly as possible, which is exceedingly difficult with a Berserker as my muscle.

The reason I left the Rift to take those last time paradox screenshots was to buy four Flame Rings from the Phantom Village. The Barriers will occasionally toss fire spells my way, so they'll be absorbed and heal my guys. I'm also giving Ice Shields to my Berserker and Dragoon so they'll absorb the ice spells too.



Still wiped because they also cast Holy, Flare, and Thundaga.



I beat him on my third try, but only because I got really lucky with their spell selection and my Dragoon's jump timing. I ended up getting her off screen right before they unleashed a round of spells that killed everyone else and would've killed her too. Also, the last Barrier ran out of MP (they only have 300 and cast high level spells), which helped a lot.

Even when you destroy the Barriers, Necrophobe himself is not a pushover, because he attacks twice per turn and has a really high offense. Ended up using 10 phoenix downs and 18 elixirs for the whole fight.





Okay fate of the world etc.

Like the last Exdeath fight, he uses a lot of physical attacks for which the Elven Mantles might have been a better choice to keep, especially at the beginning. When he starts casting spells, though, it'll make life so much easier.

Also like the last Exdeath fight, there's no real complex strategy here besides stabbing it until it dies. Just had to keep my HP up, because Meteor can very easily ruin my day.







Welp Almagested into oblivion. None of my characters have enough HP to survive it, so I've gotta go grind some levels and maybe pick up some equipment with higher magic resistance. Guess I'm not beating the game tonight!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

You can do it, CHz! I believe in you!

Spoiler:

Paula uses Pray!

How ya doing, buddy?

CHz, what emulator are you using? I notice you're on a Mac, and the emulator I have for it fucking sucks.

Hard drive died, so back to the beginning for me (haven't made much headway, hence no updates from me here). I would like to finish my run this week, even if its a bit late.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I use version 1.7.6 of the Mac builds of VBA, which is four years old and still the most recently updated one because that's how Mac emulator development works. http://sourceforge.net/projects/macboyadvance/

Jam it back in, in the dark.

And then I try again and Exdeath basically stands around scratching himself while everybody pours potions into Lenna, God's Own Aeroga Machine. Welp.



I TOLD YOU NOT TO HELP HIM



Yarr harr fiddle-de-dee.



Guess what happens when you Mug one of these jokers before performing The Aqua Breath Procedure? They become a tedious goddamn nightmare because their life totals refuse to ever sync back up! RAD!



Zephyrus is by far the worst enemy in the game. THE WORST. Not especially dangerous. Not especially complicated. Just. THE WORST. But they summon Tunnelers, which I need in order to learn L3 Flare since fuuuuuuck grinding Red Dragons back in Exdeath's castle. NOPE.



Melusine isn't immune to Confuse and that's hilarious.



And the Red Mage is practicing Doublecast
As the Blue Mages slowly get Doomed
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call Ether
But it's better than drinking alone

Most amazing jew boots

One of the best places to grind for experience points is in the uppermost room of the castle in the Rift, after Halicarnassus but before Twintania. You have about a 3/5 chance of fighting one or two Iron Giants, which drop 10,000 EXP (divided by the number of party members) apiece.








Grinding before and after. Why did I try to beat Exdeath at level 34 with this party what the fuck is wrong with me.





The final boss has four sections.

The middle section is the split in its bottom right corner. It knows the horrible, unreflectable attack Almagest, and you usually want to kill this part first. It's vulnerable to Break, so if you have black magic or Spellblade that's definitely the first thing you want to do.

The top section is the red horned beast thing at the top of its back. It knows Grand Cross, which inflicts a random status condition on everyone. Might get blinded, might get instant deathed.

The front section is the horned dude closest to Butz. It uses mostly physical attacks.

The back section are those skeletons in the bottom left. The back uses mostly magical attacks, every single one of which the Reflect Rings will bounce. Since it's the least dangerous, it's the one I'm going to try to keep alive until last. It's vulnerable to Odin's Zantetsuken when used from the Magic Lamp (summoning Odin won't work), so when it's the only one left it's an easy path to victory.



Wiped three more times. My Neo Exdeath strategy centered completely around my Dragoon.

With the section that casts Almagest alive, the only people I can keep alive are the Berserker, who has enough HP to take it, and the Dragoon, who can jump and avoid the attack. Neo Exdeath telegraphs Almagest by shaking, so as long as I don't take a turn immediately before he signals, the Dragoon will never be hit.

Since all of Neo Exdeath's magic is reflectable, my Dragoon only has to worry about two things: physical attacks and Grand Cross. With the Mirage Vest, most physical attacks will miss, and she has enough HP to survive them even when they hit. So as long as I have enough hi-potions and elixirs, I can keep her alive as long as I don't get unlucky with Grand Cross.

The Almagest section has 50,000 HP, which means it'll take 20–25 jumps to kill. That's an awful lot of Grand Crosses to survive, but there's a potentially faster way to deal with it.



Remember when I said that the Almagest section is vulnerable to Break? One of the back section's magic attacks is Delta Attack, which inflicts Break. It has a 1/3 chance of using Delta Attack every fourth turn, and then that has a 1/4 chance of hitting the right target, so there's a slim chance of it happening, but with my Dragoon I can just sit there and wait for it to happen.

With that section dead, it becomes far, far easier to keep everyone alive, because his attacks that can do damage are all single-target.

YouTube Video

THIS IS INCREDIBLY INACCURATE, GAIA WON'T ROLL STANDSTORM IN THE LIBRARY YOU IDIOTS





Final stats for this band of maroons.

But are we done? Oh no.





We've still got a bunch more deaths to add to the final montage. 8)

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

oh please please please tell me this is legit game dialog

"For Gilglamesh...it is morphing time!"

that said if you edited this in <3<3<3<3<3

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?