FFMQ Cheerleader Challenge Part IV
Last two parts of the Twitch VODs: here, and here
__________
After Pazuzu's Tower, you get Reuben back for a short dungeon. He comes with the White spell, which helps for wiping out groups of enemies.
Really not too much to say about it. Groups of two Thanatos were present here, but the only new monster were these Shadows, who multiplied from one accompanying a group of Gargoyles. They have Doom Dance, and could blind Reuben, but spells can't miss and Benny could just cover him if need be. If only he would've used White more often throughtout this dungeon.
There's also this goodie, for free and easily accessible in the final room! It adds Wind and Sleep resistance to the pot.
There weren't a lot of new enemies in Doom Castle. Most of them are the boss palette swaps, with Shadow and the new Cerberus being the only others. The last equipment upgrade was here, too. As is usual for the series, Aegis Shield protects again petrification! Yay!!
In Doom Castle, you fight palette swaps of the Vile Four. Normally, Skullrus Rex is roadkill. He only has 10000HP, and can actually be instantly killed by Dragon Claw petrification or Exit. Benny had a much tougher endeavor, and he actually managed to kill me a couple times. That's probably the first time in the history of...anything, really, discounting things like both Shadows Doom Dancing.
After the first time, I tried getting rid of all of Phoebe's White charges. Her Bow actually did less than Cure at only 280, but it did make her use her stronger spells. See, ordinarily, you'd just blow him away. Notso this time!
Fights like this one highlighted how bad the AI is with decision-making in regards to conservation. She would go after the Phanquid first with Fire, Thunder the Thanatos, and then Thunder the Shadow. Slow, but no problems so far. And I had like 50 Seeds, so not like I was worried about running out.
Stone Golem was somewhat annoying. Corrode Gas is an instant deaths spell, and its Stone Block special did heavy damage. Not much to this one.
An interesting note: Phoebe does not have Aero. Yet she can cast it on Auto. It didn't do spectacular damage here, but it's interesting.
Now here was an annoying enemy group. Phoebe would try to fight trios of Cerberus by casting Fire, which they're weak to. She would multi-target the spell, but it would take five casts to get them all! All the while, they could throw out instant death, petrification, and confusion. I came this close to wiping against a group of them.
Just had to show this animation, heh.
Twinhead Wyvern was the easiest fight here. He has no dangerous status spells, only damaging attacks most of which Benny resisted. Infinitely defending Phoebe worked perfectly as she set to work thundering him to death.
Zuh was a nasty fight, but not for he himself. He has a weakness to Phoebe's Arrows, and she was doing quite a few crits. No, getting by the two goons was tougher. Phoebe would shoot the Chimera, and the Thanatos would heal it. Repeatedly. I needed turn order to line up to get by.
After dying a few times to the Doom Dances, Phoebe was finally able to get rid of the two minions. The fight was easy from there. He too, uses Psycheshield, but since Phoebe only shot arrows, it was a non-factor. He also has a bugged attack where he attacks with Psycheshield, to no effect.
And with this, the fun could begin...
The Dark King proved to be a very difficult fight. He has 40000HP and tons of nasty stuff. He's infamous for being able to kill him via a bug with using Cure on him. Not an option here, as those Cures count as harming him!! In his first phase, he didn't do much.
He has four attacks in his first phase: the only notable one was Dark Cane, which did 521. Para-stare was useless since both Phoebe and Benny are immune to the status. Spark and Iron Nail are weak attacks that are stat-reducers. Spark in particular reduced attack, eventually making Phoebe do paltry damage, so I countered with Refreshers. Never thought they would be useful in a playthrough, heh.
Eventually, I figured the optimal strat for this portion was for Benny to endlessly defend Phoebe. He would want to pop a Refresher after the Dark King transformed to his next phase at around 36000HP, but no big deal.
Dark King's second phase has all sorts of attacks. In order of strongest to weakest of his blades and their damage on Phoebe: Mirror Sword (529), Ice Sword (633), Fire Sword (729), Dark Saber (849). None of these are elemental, despite their names. The other two were more interesting. Quake Axe did 489 to Phoebe, hitting both party members unless Defend was involved. The last and worst was Cure Arrow, not for the damage it dealt (which was also 489 on Phoebe), but for how it heals Dark King by about 1000 each time.
Worse was when critical hits happened. A Dark Saber critical hit in particular could flatten either party member, and if it happened when one was down, that was it. Nothing I could do. The more he used Cure Arrow, the longer the fight drags out, and the less likely I am to win.
The next changeover at around 22000HP doesn't make things much easier, with him revealing his true form as a giant spider. He has a ton of nasty moves here. Silver Web and Golden Web are his signatures, inflicting paralysis/poison and petrification respectively in addition to doing damage, though the latter doesn't if it petrifies. These were naturally worst of Phoebe. Spider Kids is his other special. Nothing fancy, just an attack that uses spiders for an animation.
Mega White and Mega Flare really weren't all that. Benny actually resisted the latter due to it being technically fire-elemental. Didn't even do half his HP. Mega White did, and hit both party members unless Defend. Lazer looked electrical, but did over 900 damage. It did 1758 on a crit.
8500HPish is when the final changeover happened. This phase, despite looking like an octopus, uses the same attacks as the previous phase. Anyway, in my first fight, I was doing spectacularly.
Then he pulled out around five critical hits in a row to murder me. Check at around 1:24:30 in the first VOD to see this happen.
I kept on trying from this point, but never managed to reach the octopus again. Sometimes I'd get one-twoed by crits, other times Phoebe would be Golden Webbed or Silver Webbed and things would get out of hand. There were many instances where I was critically hit, but survived! Yet nothing succeeded.
I pulled out to raise Benny's level a bit before heading back in, fighting in Battlefields. I left them at one remaining in case I needed to exploit a bug to save time later.
I also tried running Phoebe out of Arrows to see if she would use magic more. No luck. She did seem to crit a lot more often (like she did here), but it wasn't worth it. I proceeded to lose several more times at level 28.
Again, I never could reach the octopus. Fights died in much the same way, although Benny would now not be healed by Phoebe after being hit with Silver Web. I figured 1200HP for the next stopover point, as that's when Benny would not be healed after being hit by Mega White. I did come up with a new tactic here: defending Phoebe was more important to guard against Silver/Golden Web.
Before heading back, I added one last trick to the pile: running Phoebe out of Black spells to increase the chances of using White in the first phase. This meant I had to lock in the cutscene of the statue of hero, which I forgot to do. It worked well, at least! The best way to do this was go to the Pyramid and have her use Fire on Desert Hags.
__________
The best place to level was the first floor of Pazuzu's Tower. Phoebe could one-shot the Garudas, and all Benny had to do was guard against Blinder. I ended up going to 31.
There was one last piece to the puzzle: I had to fight some Shadows to get in. Phoebe would willingly Thunder them...unless I tried to run away, failed, she was killed, and they Selfdestructed! Because of this, I was able to get in with all 10 of her Wizard charges. Still, miscalculated a bit on my counting, but getting rid of the rest of the Black charges was easy due to those three Cerberus encounters.
Once again, this message was like the worst thing I could see. In the first attempt after this, Phoebe moved, Dark King went Dark Saber, critical hit, Benny dead. Dark King moved, Dark Saber, criitcal hit, Phoebe dead. Nothing I could do.
In the second and real fight - which was actually a test run I happened to be recording off-camera - the only thing that happened of note in phase 1 was a critical Dark Cane to open. It was completely smooth besides.
Second phase went off to a good start; I used a Seed instead of a Refresher. I didn't actually catch this error until rewatching after the fact. Even stupider, I really should've Seeded before going in. Thankfully, it didn't matter. The strat in this phase was to heal with Cure constantly. A few counts from this fight:
- 9 Cure Arrows
- 6-7 useless Benny Cures
- 5 Dark King criticals, all in a row
- 3 Phoebe criticals
- 2 Phoebe misses
- 2 Phoebe deaths
- 5 Whites
- 2 Thunders
- 1 near-death experience when Ice Sword crit a lone Benny. I started slinging Life spells at Phoebe at this point, calling any nonsense before it happened.
My Seed on Phoebe was mistimed; she had two Wizard charges left (using three Thunders after that), but it was probably the better option in the end.
As mentioned, the only thing to do in the spider and octopus phases were to constantly Defend Phoebe. Because of my lack of a refresher, Mega White was doing 613 instead of 593 (actually, every attack was doing around 20 more than usual), but due to Beny being Level 31, it still didn't trigger a Phoebe Cure. Benny ate floor tile a total of eleven times in this phase. But all eleven times, Phoebe went and revived him on the same turn.
I believed she was out of Wizard spells halfway into the Octopus phase. But I decided the safe option was to keep defending. I didn't want her eating a Golden Web or anything. It and Silver Web would wreck Phoebe with status, whereas they bounced off Benny. Mega White could even prove problematic, because if Benny died and Dark King attacked, Phoebe's chances of survival were lower.
And in the end, it was the right option. Phoebe eventually finished him off with one final Arrow volley. According to the hex data that I looked at, she had two uses of white magic left at this point. Two more than I needed!
Closing thoughts on this? The AI in this game is pretty stupid at times, especially with Cure vs. Undead. Yet it was amusing at times, and the fact that Benny was able to support it every step of the way without contributing too much effort until the final boss meant it was a worthwhile variant in the end.
And so Benny bids his female friends farewell to instead become the captain of a ship with an ninja adventurer as a crewmate who kinda forced his way on. At least he still has someone to cheer on as he sails off to parts unknown!
I have at least two more Mystic Quest variants in-mind for the future, both on the somewhat difficult side. Look forward to seeing them in the future!
Index
__________
After Pazuzu's Tower, you get Reuben back for a short dungeon. He comes with the White spell, which helps for wiping out groups of enemies.
Really not too much to say about it. Groups of two Thanatos were present here, but the only new monster were these Shadows, who multiplied from one accompanying a group of Gargoyles. They have Doom Dance, and could blind Reuben, but spells can't miss and Benny could just cover him if need be. If only he would've used White more often throughtout this dungeon.
There's also this goodie, for free and easily accessible in the final room! It adds Wind and Sleep resistance to the pot.
There weren't a lot of new enemies in Doom Castle. Most of them are the boss palette swaps, with Shadow and the new Cerberus being the only others. The last equipment upgrade was here, too. As is usual for the series, Aegis Shield protects again petrification! Yay!!
In Doom Castle, you fight palette swaps of the Vile Four. Normally, Skullrus Rex is roadkill. He only has 10000HP, and can actually be instantly killed by Dragon Claw petrification or Exit. Benny had a much tougher endeavor, and he actually managed to kill me a couple times. That's probably the first time in the history of...anything, really, discounting things like both Shadows Doom Dancing.
After the first time, I tried getting rid of all of Phoebe's White charges. Her Bow actually did less than Cure at only 280, but it did make her use her stronger spells. See, ordinarily, you'd just blow him away. Notso this time!
Fights like this one highlighted how bad the AI is with decision-making in regards to conservation. She would go after the Phanquid first with Fire, Thunder the Thanatos, and then Thunder the Shadow. Slow, but no problems so far. And I had like 50 Seeds, so not like I was worried about running out.
Stone Golem was somewhat annoying. Corrode Gas is an instant deaths spell, and its Stone Block special did heavy damage. Not much to this one.
An interesting note: Phoebe does not have Aero. Yet she can cast it on Auto. It didn't do spectacular damage here, but it's interesting.
Now here was an annoying enemy group. Phoebe would try to fight trios of Cerberus by casting Fire, which they're weak to. She would multi-target the spell, but it would take five casts to get them all! All the while, they could throw out instant death, petrification, and confusion. I came this close to wiping against a group of them.
Just had to show this animation, heh.
Twinhead Wyvern was the easiest fight here. He has no dangerous status spells, only damaging attacks most of which Benny resisted. Infinitely defending Phoebe worked perfectly as she set to work thundering him to death.
Zuh was a nasty fight, but not for he himself. He has a weakness to Phoebe's Arrows, and she was doing quite a few crits. No, getting by the two goons was tougher. Phoebe would shoot the Chimera, and the Thanatos would heal it. Repeatedly. I needed turn order to line up to get by.
After dying a few times to the Doom Dances, Phoebe was finally able to get rid of the two minions. The fight was easy from there. He too, uses Psycheshield, but since Phoebe only shot arrows, it was a non-factor. He also has a bugged attack where he attacks with Psycheshield, to no effect.
And with this, the fun could begin...
The Dark King proved to be a very difficult fight. He has 40000HP and tons of nasty stuff. He's infamous for being able to kill him via a bug with using Cure on him. Not an option here, as those Cures count as harming him!! In his first phase, he didn't do much.
He has four attacks in his first phase: the only notable one was Dark Cane, which did 521. Para-stare was useless since both Phoebe and Benny are immune to the status. Spark and Iron Nail are weak attacks that are stat-reducers. Spark in particular reduced attack, eventually making Phoebe do paltry damage, so I countered with Refreshers. Never thought they would be useful in a playthrough, heh.
Eventually, I figured the optimal strat for this portion was for Benny to endlessly defend Phoebe. He would want to pop a Refresher after the Dark King transformed to his next phase at around 36000HP, but no big deal.
Dark King's second phase has all sorts of attacks. In order of strongest to weakest of his blades and their damage on Phoebe: Mirror Sword (529), Ice Sword (633), Fire Sword (729), Dark Saber (849). None of these are elemental, despite their names. The other two were more interesting. Quake Axe did 489 to Phoebe, hitting both party members unless Defend was involved. The last and worst was Cure Arrow, not for the damage it dealt (which was also 489 on Phoebe), but for how it heals Dark King by about 1000 each time.
Worse was when critical hits happened. A Dark Saber critical hit in particular could flatten either party member, and if it happened when one was down, that was it. Nothing I could do. The more he used Cure Arrow, the longer the fight drags out, and the less likely I am to win.
The next changeover at around 22000HP doesn't make things much easier, with him revealing his true form as a giant spider. He has a ton of nasty moves here. Silver Web and Golden Web are his signatures, inflicting paralysis/poison and petrification respectively in addition to doing damage, though the latter doesn't if it petrifies. These were naturally worst of Phoebe. Spider Kids is his other special. Nothing fancy, just an attack that uses spiders for an animation.
Mega White and Mega Flare really weren't all that. Benny actually resisted the latter due to it being technically fire-elemental. Didn't even do half his HP. Mega White did, and hit both party members unless Defend. Lazer looked electrical, but did over 900 damage. It did 1758 on a crit.
8500HPish is when the final changeover happened. This phase, despite looking like an octopus, uses the same attacks as the previous phase. Anyway, in my first fight, I was doing spectacularly.
Then he pulled out around five critical hits in a row to murder me. Check at around 1:24:30 in the first VOD to see this happen.
I kept on trying from this point, but never managed to reach the octopus again. Sometimes I'd get one-twoed by crits, other times Phoebe would be Golden Webbed or Silver Webbed and things would get out of hand. There were many instances where I was critically hit, but survived! Yet nothing succeeded.
I pulled out to raise Benny's level a bit before heading back in, fighting in Battlefields. I left them at one remaining in case I needed to exploit a bug to save time later.
I also tried running Phoebe out of Arrows to see if she would use magic more. No luck. She did seem to crit a lot more often (like she did here), but it wasn't worth it. I proceeded to lose several more times at level 28.
Again, I never could reach the octopus. Fights died in much the same way, although Benny would now not be healed by Phoebe after being hit with Silver Web. I figured 1200HP for the next stopover point, as that's when Benny would not be healed after being hit by Mega White. I did come up with a new tactic here: defending Phoebe was more important to guard against Silver/Golden Web.
Before heading back, I added one last trick to the pile: running Phoebe out of Black spells to increase the chances of using White in the first phase. This meant I had to lock in the cutscene of the statue of hero, which I forgot to do. It worked well, at least! The best way to do this was go to the Pyramid and have her use Fire on Desert Hags.
__________
The best place to level was the first floor of Pazuzu's Tower. Phoebe could one-shot the Garudas, and all Benny had to do was guard against Blinder. I ended up going to 31.
There was one last piece to the puzzle: I had to fight some Shadows to get in. Phoebe would willingly Thunder them...unless I tried to run away, failed, she was killed, and they Selfdestructed! Because of this, I was able to get in with all 10 of her Wizard charges. Still, miscalculated a bit on my counting, but getting rid of the rest of the Black charges was easy due to those three Cerberus encounters.
Once again, this message was like the worst thing I could see. In the first attempt after this, Phoebe moved, Dark King went Dark Saber, critical hit, Benny dead. Dark King moved, Dark Saber, criitcal hit, Phoebe dead. Nothing I could do.
In the second and real fight - which was actually a test run I happened to be recording off-camera - the only thing that happened of note in phase 1 was a critical Dark Cane to open. It was completely smooth besides.
Second phase went off to a good start; I used a Seed instead of a Refresher. I didn't actually catch this error until rewatching after the fact. Even stupider, I really should've Seeded before going in. Thankfully, it didn't matter. The strat in this phase was to heal with Cure constantly. A few counts from this fight:
- 9 Cure Arrows
- 6-7 useless Benny Cures
- 5 Dark King criticals, all in a row
- 3 Phoebe criticals
- 2 Phoebe misses
- 2 Phoebe deaths
- 5 Whites
- 2 Thunders
- 1 near-death experience when Ice Sword crit a lone Benny. I started slinging Life spells at Phoebe at this point, calling any nonsense before it happened.
My Seed on Phoebe was mistimed; she had two Wizard charges left (using three Thunders after that), but it was probably the better option in the end.
As mentioned, the only thing to do in the spider and octopus phases were to constantly Defend Phoebe. Because of my lack of a refresher, Mega White was doing 613 instead of 593 (actually, every attack was doing around 20 more than usual), but due to Beny being Level 31, it still didn't trigger a Phoebe Cure. Benny ate floor tile a total of eleven times in this phase. But all eleven times, Phoebe went and revived him on the same turn.
I believed she was out of Wizard spells halfway into the Octopus phase. But I decided the safe option was to keep defending. I didn't want her eating a Golden Web or anything. It and Silver Web would wreck Phoebe with status, whereas they bounced off Benny. Mega White could even prove problematic, because if Benny died and Dark King attacked, Phoebe's chances of survival were lower.
And in the end, it was the right option. Phoebe eventually finished him off with one final Arrow volley. According to the hex data that I looked at, she had two uses of white magic left at this point. Two more than I needed!
Closing thoughts on this? The AI in this game is pretty stupid at times, especially with Cure vs. Undead. Yet it was amusing at times, and the fact that Benny was able to support it every step of the way without contributing too much effort until the final boss meant it was a worthwhile variant in the end.
And so Benny bids his female friends farewell to instead become the captain of a ship with an ninja adventurer as a crewmate who kinda forced his way on. At least he still has someone to cheer on as he sails off to parts unknown!
I have at least two more Mystic Quest variants in-mind for the future, both on the somewhat difficult side. Look forward to seeing them in the future!
Index