FF1 Hardworking Capitalists Part III

With this in mind, I did some leveling in the second floor of Mirage Tower as planned, It was one of the best ways to get cash that I could find, with relatively simple battles and good payouts. VAMPIREs gave 2000 apiece, CHIMERAs gave 2500 each, and there were big MUMMY/WzMUMMY (and COCTRICEs...) groups too. My level goal was 25 so the Fighters would get 4 hits with Silver Swords. In the process, the Capitalists made enough for a second Gold Bracelet, a Steel Armor, ARUB, and ICE3.


Everything was going well, until a group of MANCATs on the penultimate floor. I naturally had Mint use AFIR, but she went close to last in the turn order. Then they came in with SLOW. Ugh. I did win that battle, though. Then it was onward to-


WHAT THE F-NO!!


All right robot, YOU ASKED FOR IT!! I pumped up the Fighters and prepared to rumble! He retalitated on the first proper turn with a good 226 to Buck.


I can sometimes do a bit more than a single point of damage to it, but it's pretty much criticals or bust. Things were stable, at least. Mint used a RUSE in a spare turn, and Zeni turned to his spells after the Fighters had been FASTed (on that same turn, Buck did 7 and Rich 138). The good news was, it was spreading the damage around. The bad news was, a single NUCLEAR would be diasterous.


Because she was important, Mint CUR3ed herself, also on that same turn as that ICE3 above, before popping a HEL2. Good thing I had her do that too, because the NUCLEAR came. Rich took 104, Buck took 140, Zeni took 244 and died horribly, Mint took 170. The robot's at 392 HP at this point. Still got a chance.


Buck was smacked down to critical HP next turn as Mint CUR3ed Rich. It wouldn't be enough to prevent death by physical, but it'd allow him to take another NUCLEAR.


The robot did finish him off next turn. This is what it all comes down to!


Mint moves in with her hammer for a healthy 47...


...only to get flattened.


YES!!! BUCK FINISHES IT OFF!! VICTORY!! EAT IT, ROBOT.


All right! Here we go again! The White Mage is dead. Made it out once from a run-in with this SOB with a single party member once before! I didn't swap in the Steel Armor onto Buck, due to the threat of SORCERERs.


First up are AIRs and-oh god. I looked up where I am on the encounter table. This is bad.


THERE IT IS!! 190 AND 192. NO. NO!!! SCREW OFF!!! All right. Deep breath. We still got this. We can still run awa-


...








Unbelievable. You can't make this garbage up. Fuck this game, especially WarMECH. I swear that robot (and Sky Castle in general) has it out for me. The difficulty spiked as expected, but this? This is just insane. I just...I have no words for this. This encounter luck is just. Damn it all.


Okay, so I got more stuff after this. Next run met with petrification. I charged forth anyway! No WarMECHs this time, though I did see a few EYEs along the way. But I failed to defeat the big dragon at the end. I got up all the barriers, but didn't have the resources to tough through. Buck died, and that was more or less the end of any hope for that.

Next run was also a nope, beforehand featuring some annoying RockGOLs. Luckily, FOG2 was one of my new purchases, and that helped. TIAMAT moved before Mint with THUNDER, then used POISON to finish her off. Zeni did FAST the two Fighters, but they couldn't get the job done from there.


I picked up some SOFTs after this just in case. Next run: WarMECH again! Good lord. Four times unintentionally! 3/64 in this version or not, that damn thing is showing up far more often than it has any right to! This time, I just ran from him. He got off two NUCLEARs, one on the strike first and again before I could run, but I did run away and with Mint alive! I had to use every potion because of it, but by the end of that walkway, I was at the boss again, and...


...screw it. I don't have to put up with this! I figured. But the game said nay and had him kill off Zeni before he could move. Again, I failed to achieve victory. So uh, what's our attempt count at so far?

#1) Death by trying to fight WarMECH, had to retreat out and did.
#2) Petrification in the tower.
#3) TIAMAT survives at 1HP.
#4) TIAMAT kills Zeni before he can FAST.
#5) Fought WarMECH, lived, got jumped by a second one on the way out.
#6) Petrification on Castle 4F, one fighter was not enough to beat TIAMAT.
#7) TIAMAT turn order.
#8) Ran from WarMECH, Mint died early against TIAMAT.


TAKE NINE!! The tower was typical, no threat. On floor 4, I saw this group, and then this ugly situation came about. One of them actually ran, leaving me to deal with only four. Luckily, even with all the stunlocking, I made it out with only Rich getting snuffed.


FIVE TIMES. OH MY GOD. THIS IS HARASSMENT! These things really have it out for me. At least for once, I didn't get ambushed, as you can see by having close to max HP on everyone. I was on encounter 20 here. There would be another one coming up on encounter 24, but I crossed the bridge before it showed up. I was so rattled by it though, I ran from said encounters.


When Tiamat attacked on the first round instead of using THUNDER, I knew I had a good shot. Mint got off the ALIT to protect against the heavy damage. ARUB didn't stop him from pulling off 250 damage on Buck with POISON - I thought it might have at the time, but it does not. I still could heal any damage off, at least - things were under control with HEL2 and HEL3. But just when I thought I was going to win...









...I did.

__________

I actually went back into the tower after saving and restocking. I figured, you know what? That robot wants to show up and fight so badly? We're gonna give it what it wants, and what it deserves! I ran from everything up the tower. I forgot to buy an extra TENT though, so my menus were a bit screwed. When I reached the catwalk, the robot was indeed waiting for me. In fact, I just missed seeing him right away. I ran from a NAOCHO, I ran from an AIR, and...


Here we go. Or well, I'll skip to the end because this first attempt was not successful. It was super close, though. Got into a good loop, but a bad series of turns resulted in failure.


The next time, I had a bit of a wait on my hands before he showed up, but he did - again in slot 20. The battle played out much the same way as before. FASTs to the Fighters, and HEL2/HEL3 with Mint. It preferred physically attacking, and almost - but not quite - got Mint. When I got it down to 141 with everyone left standing, I knew I was in a good spot.


Of course, it didn't stop it from trying to end my hopes and dreams. It wiped out the weakened Rich and Mint with NUCLEAR, but it was too weak to finish the job. Two turns later, Buck finished the job. He was now able to equip the Silver Axe and still have 4-hits.


And after restocking, up the tower immediately to fight it again. I was off to an interesting start with no ambush, but had Mint heal anyway. But then she went down, with the robot has half its HP left. Soon again, I was left with a Fighter and a Black Mage, against a WarMECH with 354 HP. The good news was, the NUCLEAR he did next barely hurt. The bad news was, Rich barely hurt him, too. He then smacked down Zeni, but Rich retaliated. Anything short of a double crit would get me a win.


The pain from the attack was immense, but Rich delivered the final blow to win alone. One more. I arrived on 50, so I had to wait a bit to see the robot. This one was ugly slow at the beginning. When he was at 639, he had a very real chance to NUCLEAR everyone down, but went for Rich. Mint died AGAIN to a big attack, but he was at 113 at that point. He NUCLEARed, and brought Rich to 7HP, Buck to 242, Zeni to 56, while he stood at 32. He got a last word against Rich, Zeni brought him to a single HP, then Buck finished him off. That's an adequate amount of revenge, I think!!


All right, time for true suffering. Temple of Fiends Revisited. I decided to try it without doing any grinding first.

#1) Gas Ds. Yeah, it turns out ARUB doesn't protect against poison, though it does block earth (CRACK) and status.
#2) Mint died instantly to NUKE.
#3) Mint died instantly to NUKE, Lich was instantly killed in-turn with QAKE. That was just a gamble, but the numbers said it actually had a decent chance of success. I pressed on, making it past Kary after two good attack rolls and a STUN settled it in the second round, but at Kraken was out of potions. Beat him, but had nothing left healing-wise and one dead Fighter.
#4) Gas Ds.
#5) Mint died instantly to NUKE. Seriously? She has plenty of HP, and it keeps rolling high numbers.


#6) I survived Lich, though had to pop some HEL3s after. But my resources ran out. I ran into 1/64 IronGOLs on the air floor and had to take them down because you apparently can't run from them. They gave me a taste of what was to come on Chaos though, as they share his 100 defense. Tiamat did fall, but I had a dead BM and nothing left but a handful of CURE spells.
#7) Frost Ds near the entrance
#8) Gas Ds
#9) Tiamat BANE, fully party wipe.
#10) Gas Ds.
#11) QAKE on Lich, SLOW on Kary, Kraken was a slog that wasn't dangerous, then TIAMAT BANE killed Mint.
#12) Mint died instantly to NUKE.
#13) Frost Ds near the entrance
#14) ZAP! by PHANTOM
#15) Gas Ds
#16) Almost perfect Lich with no NUKE, perfect KARY, perfect KRAKEN, TIAMAT used BANE to kill Mint.
#17) BANE from TIAMAT. Mint survived the first burst, but Zeni kicked it. Came around again and got her, but I probably would've been out of resources anyway. Something also worth noting about this one (at least, I think it was this one): I got the multiple Red Ds encounter in the Fire Floor. Luckily, you can run from it, and I did so before the BLAZE swarm could come.


So let's talk a bit more about my strategy. I run from everything that I can. The worst things to show up in these situations are Gas Ds and WATERs. The best thing to do against both groups is to ICE3 with Zeni and attack one apiece with Buck, Rich, and Mint.

Against LICH, I try to go for a OHKO with QAKE - it works reasonably often and is a great way to avoid seeing NUKE. KARY, I tackle much the same as the Spellslingers: SLOW, AFIR, and chip away. KRAKEN can be a jerk, which is why I try to SLOW him too, as well as getting up ALIT and INV2. Eventually, I switch over to FAST, and would use it at the outset if the Fighters were stronger. TIAMAT's BANE is the big problem here. I have no protection against it, and no way to win quickly like T-Hawk's Berserkers could.

#18) I tried a new strategy here. MUTE on TIAMAT. It didn't matter though, because Zeni died to a first turn THUNDER - the idea is ALIT, then try to MUTE. LICH could've gone better but I survived, subpar KARY, perfect KRAKEN.
#19) Gas Ds.
#20) Gas Ds. It was only one, but wiith my limited resources, even one POISON could be damaging
#21) Gas Ds. This time, I had no choice, because Mint bite the dust.
#22) FrWOLFs? Being down to 64 potions before I even go down to LICH's floor is unacceptable.
#23) Gas Ds.
#24) Potion supply shattered by CHIMERAs and Frost Ds
#25) Gas Ds.
#26) Just took too much damage between a BADMAN group and PHANTOM
#27) KRAKEN got his first kill, smacking down Mint. To add insult to injury, SLOW landed after that.
#28) Gas Ds. These things show up in slots 3, 4, and 5 in the 3F of the temple. It's ridiculous.
#29) Gas Ds.
#30) Gas Ds.
#31) Gas Ds.
#32) PHANTOM's ZAP! got Mint.
#33) Frost Ds.
#34) Gas Ds.
#35) Odd, but welcome situation: Gas Ds yet again, but they played nice. LICH fell into crack, KARY was bad, I mixed it up on KRAKEN and just tried to violence him to death which worked a bit better than SLOW (it has a fair chance of success, but because of the Intelligence bug, it's not as big a chance as it could be), and TIAMAT's BANE only got Rich! It was slow, made harder by the time that I wasn't HP counting and couldn't STUN him properly, but I beat him.


For the very first time, I would have enough to hypothetically beat CHAOS. Then WORMs showed up and reduced my stocks. CHAOS quickly finished Zeni from here with ICE3, making the fact that I had absentmindedly had him use ICE2 against them irrelevant. Only one Fighter got to be FASTed. It was Rich.


Yup, this is pretty bad. HP at the time of that CUR4: 1294. Not even halfway. RIP. I decided to keep on trying from here before I resort to grinding.

#36) Gas Ds.
#37) Gas Ds.
#38) PHANTOM hit a GLARE on Mint
#39) Frost Ds.
#40) PHANTOM used ZAP! on Mint.
#41) KRAKEN got Mint, though I would've been out of resources anyway thanks to WATERs and KARY going ballistic.
#42) Frost Ds
#43) MAGEs and a FIGHTER ambushed and threw out spells on the running turn.
#44) PHANTOM hit a GLARE on Zeni
#45) Out of resources after KRAKEN. TIAMAT finished the job.


It seems at this point that any overuse of multi-hit spells can be disastrous. The odds are not in my favor, but I was determined to see CHAOS at least once more before I resorted to grinding. Besides, that wouldn't help against the hit-all skills and BANE. It seems now that I'm finally starting to feel the sting of no Ribbons or status-defending equipment besides ProRings. Thank goodness they exist, otherwise things would be even worse with the MAGEs and such.

It also occurred to me that though I bought Silver Armor for backups for Rich and Buck in SORCERER land, they're really not all that helpful. They're the 3/64 encounter on the air floor, so they're not that big a threat. I know, I know, says the guy who got WarMECHed five times.

#46) Frost Ds
#47) Gas Ds
#48) Frost Ds
#49) PHANTOM used ZAP! on Mint.
#50) Out of resources, TIAMAT got me.


#51) Out of resources before CHAOS. TIAMAT hit BANE. I did get the MUTE immediately after, sadly. It verified my theory that if it hits, it turns the battle into a complete joke. But I had no potions, and the only healing left was two LIFEs and three CUR2s. I kept Mint up front so that Buck and Zeni might have a chance to survive, but it didn't matter because he used ICE3. CHAOS was at 1901 when he used CUR4. Definitely bad.

It was barely an attempt, but it did show me that grinding would be needed, like it or not. Our final run killer count before we begin:

Frost Ds: 8
MAGEs: 1
Gas Ds: 17
FrWOLFs: 1
PHANTOM: 6
Various high damage too early: 2
LICH: 4
KRAKEN: 2
TIAMAT: 7
CHAOS: 3

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