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FFL Solo Mutant Part I
Feb. 26th, 2015 01:41 amTime for one last trip through the Final Fantasy Legend with a solo character. Mutants are more of what you would expect from traditional SaGa. After every battle, they have a chance to learn a new ability or have one of their stats raised. This is how they work in the original. They're somewhat different in the WSC version, able to "upgrade" their abilities. Not a lot of data on them there, but they're generally less random. They're also known as Espers in the Japanese version.
For that reason, Kyra Tierney is our solo character today. She's an Esper in Phantasy Star IV. Four letters, it both works and fits.
As with Sada, Kyra started off with a Saber that she sold off to fund the purchase of a Rapier, Gold Armor, and Gold Gauntlet. She also got an Ice spellbook. Stealth is an ability that allows you to get surprise attacks.
A few battles in the field saw her gain one point of Agility, and eventually, 4 points of Mana! She would gain two more over the course of this before gaining her first ability.
ESP is one of the game's most notorious abilities. Namely, due to it being extremely unclear what it does. It certainly doesn't help that it's the most common ability for Mutants. You see the message, "Char used ESP" and that's it. Well, what it does is serve as a shield of sorts, increasing the user's evade. Fairly useless for a solo character, especially on these Lizards who actually couldn't damage Kyra through her armor. She did gain four more Mana points of it from this.
This was enough to two-shot the P-Frog Bandit with Ice. He got one turn, which he wasted on P-Skin. This meant the return of the King Armor. Kyra got another four points of Agility walking back. On the way to King Sword's Castle, ESP changed to Mirror.
What this one seems to do is increase evasion. Better than ESP for a soloist, but still does not increase it nearly enough to validate using.
King Sword wasn't a problem, and after the battle with him, Kyra obtained one of the game's best abilities.
Armor, unlike what we've seen so far, is very clear as to what it does.
It maximizes defense. This means even Genbu couldn't hit through Kyra's defenses. Note that the value cannot exceed 99 this way. Except the only problem from fighting him was Gas. Kyra still had only 52 HP, and a couple castings of that would end her quickly. I had to go out and gain more stats...
A bit more leveling later, and Kyra was able to beat him. Not through extra HP - she was only up to 63 - but by having 22 Mana. This was enough so Gas did no damage against her! It's like in the original Pokemon games, where your mana/special stat serves as both a means of offense and defense. She was thus able to move onto the tower
Only to run into Slimes and die horribly. With this, I had no choice but to reset and gain some more stats for Kyra. Didn't really want to do it, but I saw no other option.
Keeping a close watch over Kyra's abilities was critically important during this, lest I lose something useful. Such as Power, which is much the same as Armor, except it boosts Strength to the maximum!
I settled on 300HP as a baseline to move on. Mana ended up a lot higher than desired. Had to do a lot of resetting when I lost some abilities in favor of bad ones. There's lots of those out there, like Stench and Electro and - though I never saw it - xFire, which actually gives a weakness to the element. Kyra had lost Stealth in favor of Power, but regained it. Similarly, she lost and regained Armor a few times. It's even entirely possible to have multiples of a skill.
So Genbu for real. Thanks to Stealth, Kyra was able to get a surprise round. Made an easy fight even easier.
One final look at her before ascending the tower. Over the course of the world of continent, Kyra had gained 267HP, 10 points of Strength, 6 points of Defense, 28 points of Agility, and 90 points of Mana! Sadly, stats cap at 99, and HP at 999.
Sure, Slimes were still painful to deal with, but now, Kyra had a lot more HP.
Due to 99 Mana, the Big Eyes and Magicians were harmless to Kyra. They weren't priority targets whenever they showed up in groups; she preferred to off the other enemies first.
Silver Armor is better than Gold Armor, so Kyra made the upgrade. She also got her hands on some Wands here. They're slightly stronger than spellbooks, and have more uses to boot!
I didn't remember this place with Sada, but did with Kyra. This place sells Silver Gauntlets and Books, which function as a HARM spell. Not too helpful, due to the low number of undead in this game.
See, this is why I had to save often. Kyra's Ice spell disappeared in "favor" of Stench. This worthless ability lowers enemy strength by a low amount. Not worth using.
Random picture: what is this Octopus doing?!
The next battle in that room where the BLUEKEY is offered an interesting switch from Armor. Burning is a counterattack move. I unfortunately didn't get a chance to see how much it did, as the Octopus outside was unable to damage Kyra through her armor, and it was replaced by ESP after. Reset!
Keeping Ice was important due to these enemies. Wand is fire elemental, and these Shrimp (along with the Pirhanas outside) resist that element.
The Azure Dragon was useless. Kyra was already immune to his elemental spells and Strict due to her high mana. And his physical was rendered worthless due to Armor. Once she cast it, that was that.
Kyra gained an additional Power ability, but lost one of them for Forseen, which prevents surprise attacks. They're uncommon enough that I didn't mind resetting and fighting Seiryu again.
Stat checkup. Kyra gained around 50HP (need to remember to take a picture of the ability screen, not the equip screen!!), 22 strength, 1 defense, 13 agility, and her final 3 points of Mana. I bought her a couple of Cure Books for healing in the Tower and moved onto the next set of floors!
The Medusas were not deadly to Kyra, who could ignore their stone gazes like a champ. Again, she needed to save uses of Ice for the enemies immune to her Wands.
Luckily, just as she run out of uses of Ice, she hit this side-room in the tower. A random hospital/inn to replenish HP and abilities!
The P-Knife was also obtainable here. A basic melee weapon, except powered by Mana. I never actually used it besides here.
Of course, the World of Sky dished up the Dragon Armor again, making Kyra even more immune to magic than she was before.
Better still, but for now something merely on the horizon, was the Hidden Town's magic shop. Stone and Death books are quite potent in this game, though I skipped them for now. Flare books live up to expectations. It hits all enemies for around 400 damage each at max Mana.
There were two items of note in prison. A free Death book, and a Revenge Sword - which somehow ended up in jail. The latter will be fun to employ later, though I never actually ended up using the former.
After Armor, Byakko's Sword was doing weak damage to Kyra. Her Wands did a lot more to him, so she won out.
Solo Mutant is a bit more involved than Solo Monster (which was just prepare the right monster and go in) and Solo Human (which was prepare for the game and beat it). To compare, there's 70 images in this report vs. 48 for Jed's and 38 for Sada. And I tried pruning them too, but there's just too much to talk about! A bit too much for one page, so I've broken it into two parts.
Next | Index
For that reason, Kyra Tierney is our solo character today. She's an Esper in Phantasy Star IV. Four letters, it both works and fits.
As with Sada, Kyra started off with a Saber that she sold off to fund the purchase of a Rapier, Gold Armor, and Gold Gauntlet. She also got an Ice spellbook. Stealth is an ability that allows you to get surprise attacks.
A few battles in the field saw her gain one point of Agility, and eventually, 4 points of Mana! She would gain two more over the course of this before gaining her first ability.
ESP is one of the game's most notorious abilities. Namely, due to it being extremely unclear what it does. It certainly doesn't help that it's the most common ability for Mutants. You see the message, "Char used ESP" and that's it. Well, what it does is serve as a shield of sorts, increasing the user's evade. Fairly useless for a solo character, especially on these Lizards who actually couldn't damage Kyra through her armor. She did gain four more Mana points of it from this.
This was enough to two-shot the P-Frog Bandit with Ice. He got one turn, which he wasted on P-Skin. This meant the return of the King Armor. Kyra got another four points of Agility walking back. On the way to King Sword's Castle, ESP changed to Mirror.
What this one seems to do is increase evasion. Better than ESP for a soloist, but still does not increase it nearly enough to validate using.
King Sword wasn't a problem, and after the battle with him, Kyra obtained one of the game's best abilities.
Armor, unlike what we've seen so far, is very clear as to what it does.
It maximizes defense. This means even Genbu couldn't hit through Kyra's defenses. Note that the value cannot exceed 99 this way. Except the only problem from fighting him was Gas. Kyra still had only 52 HP, and a couple castings of that would end her quickly. I had to go out and gain more stats...
A bit more leveling later, and Kyra was able to beat him. Not through extra HP - she was only up to 63 - but by having 22 Mana. This was enough so Gas did no damage against her! It's like in the original Pokemon games, where your mana/special stat serves as both a means of offense and defense. She was thus able to move onto the tower
Only to run into Slimes and die horribly. With this, I had no choice but to reset and gain some more stats for Kyra. Didn't really want to do it, but I saw no other option.
Keeping a close watch over Kyra's abilities was critically important during this, lest I lose something useful. Such as Power, which is much the same as Armor, except it boosts Strength to the maximum!
I settled on 300HP as a baseline to move on. Mana ended up a lot higher than desired. Had to do a lot of resetting when I lost some abilities in favor of bad ones. There's lots of those out there, like Stench and Electro and - though I never saw it - xFire, which actually gives a weakness to the element. Kyra had lost Stealth in favor of Power, but regained it. Similarly, she lost and regained Armor a few times. It's even entirely possible to have multiples of a skill.
So Genbu for real. Thanks to Stealth, Kyra was able to get a surprise round. Made an easy fight even easier.
One final look at her before ascending the tower. Over the course of the world of continent, Kyra had gained 267HP, 10 points of Strength, 6 points of Defense, 28 points of Agility, and 90 points of Mana! Sadly, stats cap at 99, and HP at 999.
Sure, Slimes were still painful to deal with, but now, Kyra had a lot more HP.
Due to 99 Mana, the Big Eyes and Magicians were harmless to Kyra. They weren't priority targets whenever they showed up in groups; she preferred to off the other enemies first.
Silver Armor is better than Gold Armor, so Kyra made the upgrade. She also got her hands on some Wands here. They're slightly stronger than spellbooks, and have more uses to boot!
I didn't remember this place with Sada, but did with Kyra. This place sells Silver Gauntlets and Books, which function as a HARM spell. Not too helpful, due to the low number of undead in this game.
See, this is why I had to save often. Kyra's Ice spell disappeared in "favor" of Stench. This worthless ability lowers enemy strength by a low amount. Not worth using.
Random picture: what is this Octopus doing?!
The next battle in that room where the BLUEKEY is offered an interesting switch from Armor. Burning is a counterattack move. I unfortunately didn't get a chance to see how much it did, as the Octopus outside was unable to damage Kyra through her armor, and it was replaced by ESP after. Reset!
Keeping Ice was important due to these enemies. Wand is fire elemental, and these Shrimp (along with the Pirhanas outside) resist that element.
The Azure Dragon was useless. Kyra was already immune to his elemental spells and Strict due to her high mana. And his physical was rendered worthless due to Armor. Once she cast it, that was that.
Kyra gained an additional Power ability, but lost one of them for Forseen, which prevents surprise attacks. They're uncommon enough that I didn't mind resetting and fighting Seiryu again.
Stat checkup. Kyra gained around 50HP (need to remember to take a picture of the ability screen, not the equip screen!!), 22 strength, 1 defense, 13 agility, and her final 3 points of Mana. I bought her a couple of Cure Books for healing in the Tower and moved onto the next set of floors!
The Medusas were not deadly to Kyra, who could ignore their stone gazes like a champ. Again, she needed to save uses of Ice for the enemies immune to her Wands.
Luckily, just as she run out of uses of Ice, she hit this side-room in the tower. A random hospital/inn to replenish HP and abilities!
The P-Knife was also obtainable here. A basic melee weapon, except powered by Mana. I never actually used it besides here.
Of course, the World of Sky dished up the Dragon Armor again, making Kyra even more immune to magic than she was before.
Better still, but for now something merely on the horizon, was the Hidden Town's magic shop. Stone and Death books are quite potent in this game, though I skipped them for now. Flare books live up to expectations. It hits all enemies for around 400 damage each at max Mana.
There were two items of note in prison. A free Death book, and a Revenge Sword - which somehow ended up in jail. The latter will be fun to employ later, though I never actually ended up using the former.
After Armor, Byakko's Sword was doing weak damage to Kyra. Her Wands did a lot more to him, so she won out.
Solo Mutant is a bit more involved than Solo Monster (which was just prepare the right monster and go in) and Solo Human (which was prepare for the game and beat it). To compare, there's 70 images in this report vs. 48 for Jed's and 38 for Sada. And I tried pruning them too, but there's just too much to talk about! A bit too much for one page, so I've broken it into two parts.
Next | Index
