FFL2 Solo Mutant Part IV

So before actually opening those two chests, it's inventory management time. The Giant equipment's time is almost through. I'll keep them and Hermes for just a bit longer. I will want to keep hold of the Ninja Gauntlet and Dragon Helmet - there will be at least a few points where I'll want to equip Hecate Shoes, so that means no Parasuit. On the other hand, they're not unique. That Vulcan was a random drop and can go, being weaker than the Tank anyway. Which itself is questionable. Its main purpose was to make up for the DEF deficiency against those Hatamotos. Yet its damage output is perfectly acceptable.


Of course, all that DEF I'd built up means nothing against the likes of these things. I sent Toma through what was left of Nasty Dungeon to help build MANA, but I couldn't see any piece of equipment in Nasty Dungeon that was immediately worth going out of my way for. He actually ran out of all magic at the end and had to rely on his Tank and that Vulcan for a bit, only for a Thunder spellbook to drop.

With not much else to do, Toma marched through Valhalla Palace to take out Odin. For whatever reason, the game was insistent that Flare be replaced with O-Stone here. I had to reset several times because of intrusive replacements.


Wizard Staff is an interesting weapon. It inflicts instant death on a group of enemies, powered by MANA. The odds of success seem fairly high. There's one here and one in the Nasty Dungeon. The rest have to be obtained from Wizards in the Center of the World. I never ended up using it.


Odin was a simple affair. Every Flare Book use now did over 1000 damage. The only thing I couldn't stop was Gungnir, which did around 300 damage a shot. That high DEF actually did help; with just Hecate Shoes on, Gungnir did 470ish. It did 385~ with 76 DEF. This meant it took Odin three shots - sometimes two depending on how much Sleipnir damages him - to take down Toma. Who could deplete his 3700HP in four Flares, not factoring in any use of Cure. Factoring in Toma's own, Odin could never kill Toma. In the end after several resets...


I ended up getting a nice bonus: a MANA up and a Gungnir to play with if I want!


Then it was back to the Nasty Dungeon for the second Defend Sword on floor 5. May as well go as far as I can practically go with this thing, if only for a laugh and to become truly immune to just about all physicals! I did this later rather than sooner because Odin drops a ninth Power MAGI, boosting Toma's STR by just a little more. With this I'd also finally be able to bid farewell to the Giant equipment.


But first, a chance to finish off Toma's HP leveling presented itself. First, let's talk a bit about how stat potions work at high levels. Unlike FFL1, you can't use these to blow right by the stat limit. However, you CAN use them to push just a bit beyond. Body Potions increase HP by 40, and Power/Speed/Magic increase their respective stat by 3. Also unlike FFL1, your stats won't drop if you roll a bonus when they're beyond the maximum, either in this way or through equipment stat bonuses.

This result (obtained when using Tank on Hermit to set up cursor position) is especially good. There's a bug in the game that makes the game consider your HP to have a very low DS level if it's equal to or greater than 1024. The game should move on automatically without checking if the HP is 999 or greater...except it checks after calculating for an increase.


With the two Body Potions in the game, Toma could achieve 1022HP. One short of the maximum safe value, and an extra inventory slot freed. I'll take it.

So my plan with the continued grinding was to strip off some equipment after hitting 72 DEF (DS-9). But...it still kept going up easily enough. What is this? Apparently 1/40 odds not being that bad to trigger. I got Toma's natural DEF so high that unequipping the armor wouldn't even make a difference anymore. Maybe this way is for the best, because he'd have to hit the Hermit and hope it doesn't use Shell across two turns instead of one.

Am I seriously doing this? Well, like I said. I rode the crazy train this far. What's it to go to the last stop, to the end of the tracks?


Just a bit of my time, that's all. This is very excessive to be honest, since most of the truly dangerous attacks (including the bosses from here on out) are based on MANA, are stopped by O-All, or otherwise blows through defenses.


How to gain the last 4 DEF from this sword? From Apollo's World! Most of the encounters here on its overworld are single enemies, and even those that aren't consist of single groups that have a chance to have a single enemy.

Toma now has a ridiculous 153 DEF combined with the Parasuit. Also five open spots in his list of items, wow! I didn't see him using the Giant's stuff anytime in the future, so I threw out the remaining two. I also got rid of the Hermes Shoes for similar reasons. All can be rebought should the need arise. As for his equipment, he's holding onto a Thunder Book, a Cure Book, the Vampic, and a Tank.


Minion was helpless. Only the rarely used Tornado could hurt Toma, the damage of which was easily healed away. Sadly, the loss of all MAGI as always means a loss of damage output. Giving a concrete example using Minion himself with his 57 MANA against Toma's 71/86, across a dozen attacks...

Flare Books
Hecate&MAGI: 1292 average (1258, 1267, 1274, 1275, 1278, 1293, 1303, 1303, 1305, 1310, 1313, 1329)
MAGI: 986 average (793, 798, 801, 803, 818, 821, 1155, 1163, 1166, 1168, 1169, 1174)
No MAGI: 687 average (662, 669, 672, 679, 687, 689, 693, 693, 695, 695, 703, 707)

P-Blast
Hecate&MAGI: 687 average (651, 656, 657, 679, 681, 685, 698, 702, 703, 705, 707, 715)
MAGI: 587 average (551, 555, 560, 579, 586, 586, 591, 600, 602, 605, 606, 607)
No MAGI: 476 average (457, 458, 460, 463, 463, 466, 469, 483, 492, 497, 500, 505)

Er, yeah. About that second result. Typical SaGa coding weirdness, I guess. There's supposedly a potential overflow in how MANA-based damage is calculated, but have no idea what the exact formula is. The explanation in the bugs thread is vague because people testing each other. It also seemed to vary by enemy: Ice Crabs in particular took a lot less than Cocatris with MAGI (842 vs. 1107), but without didn't drop off as much (702 vs. 625), although Watchers still took over 900 with the MAGI. In short, this game is broken and makes no sense. Business as usual. Regardless of that issue coming up, you can see how big a dropoff happens.


The damage reduction was so ugly, that using Tanks was actually better than using Thunder Books! Except in regards to gaining more MANA after battle...but the Final Dungeon decided it was going to be stingy in handing boosts out.


Two treasures were of interest here. The first was a set of Arthur Armor, the best in the game and part of Toma's equipment set should he want to use Hecate Shoes. The other being the XCalibr, an infinite use-Gungnir and one of the best weapons for any human/mutant. Even with his incredibly limited STR, Xcalibr still does insane damage on its own. And it even always hits! For similar statbuilding reasons, it was something Toma didn't use that often.


WarMach has a total of 120 (!) STR. Without the Parasuit, Toma took around 300 damage from each Bash...his only physical attack. With it, it was reduced to around 120. Missile was his most frequently used attack and could do wildly variable damage. I saw 220 at the lowest and 370 at the highest. NukeBomb was also variable, averaging around 500. But I saw as low as 400 and as high as 600.

Being a robot means he has 0 MANA, so every Flare book Toma used did about 970. By healing other every round except when ParaNail is used, the only thing that could kill Toma is if the robot used NukeBomb and rolled high twice in a roll. A book's 10 shots was just short of depleting the robot's 10000HP...except it apparently wasn't, but regardless I had him use a NukeBomb of his own he picked up along the way.


And now the reason for not building AGL at all for the whole game comes to fruition. Remember Mamizou's struggles with turn order against Apollo? That drove me to hacking it down manually because of how horribly unlikely it was to outlast him? Well, none of it here. Toma's complete lack of AGL made sure he went last to heal off all the damage from Masmune or Flare every single turn. No problem!

But I do have some work to do. Not building AGL period isn't going to cut it for solo Human, so I need to find the magic number not to exceed. I last checked 61 corresponding to Naga, which was still sometimes enough to make a character go first. My working theory is that 49 (less than half Apollo's 99) is the magic number, but I checked a few in-between.

55 was too much. 50 was also too much. What I had in mind, 49...was also too much! But the odds of going first were low, and with the amount of HP and MANA (73) Toma had, he could sometimes survive the one-two if Apollo used Flare (did around 400 without Hecate/73 MANA, and even less with Hecate to boost it to 88) instead of Masmune (520-580 regardless of DEF). That was definitely workable with repetition, and humans can build MANA too. And will be doing so. So nice to keep in mind, but not what I came here for. After extensive testing, I believe the magic, absolute safe number to be 40. Across eight battles (totaling around 168 rounds of combat), Toma never went first.


As an aside, I tried to see if Toma could beat him "manually". I believe you need to deal around 15000 damage for this. Toma could deal only around 10000 of that, getting in 5000 free at the start, but the constant healing factor made it impossible to deal the rest from there. Still, easy to win, and his insane DS of F/15 made getting a bonus after the fight easy.


Although...


YES!! WORTH IT!!

Originally going into this variant, I figured that after getting by Apollo, Toma would be free to raise AGL. And indeed, he is! And if I wanted to, I have the perfect weapon: the Samurai Bow is an always-hit fixed-damage group-targeting weapon that raises AGL. And if I want even more, Martial Arts will help. But...is it really worth it? O-All and absurd DEF give all the protection one really could ask for in regards to taking hits due to not moving first. Besides, it'd only serve a purpose for this final run down, and predictable action order is kind of a pleasant thing to have. I could use it for Touch or Vampic, but it's really not worth building up for them. At least, I hope not, because I chose to ditch the Speed Potions.


As another aside, one thing I hadn't noticed before until this playthrough or always keep forgetting: in the interval between taking all MAGI back from Apollo and talking to your father, you really do get all the MAGI back, including the last of the nine Defense MAGI. Useful if you want to do some last-minute activities with them.

More important anyway than that or building AGL is building up MANA. World-shaking disaster in the planet's core or not, we've come this far. We can't stop short of the goal! The enemies in the Center of the World are DS-A, meaning Toma will have a much easier time gaining more!


Getting up to 90 MANA (DS-A) wasn't too bad, except when it came to that last stat point being stubborn. The enemies all died in two blasts of either P-Blast or Flare, or a single Flare spellbook charge if I needed to kill them pronto. Most couldn't do much, although Paladins and users of attacks that ignore defenses could. Now there was two more things to do: first was to get the third Magic Potion in the Nasty Dungeon. Second was to get up to 92 MANA, so that Toma could have the maximum of 101. This came...very easily. I got one en route to picking it up and was going to use our good friend the Hermit for the second, only to get it from an enemy group on a reload.


And so here are Toma's final statistics before he heads down. Inventory-wise, he has his backup equipment, a Samurai Bow for building AGL if he needs to, the Hyper Cannon (instantly wins a non-boss encounter) that I went and grabbed because why not, two Elixiers if he needs them, five Flare books, a Cure book, and a Door to go back up if he wants to. Also an open space in his inventory for drops. Equipment-wise, he has a Flare and Cure book on-hand, his abilities, XCalibr and Vampic if needed, and the Parasuit - totaling 154 DEF. If this isn't enough to get the job done, then that's what Vampic and Samurai Bow and even more grinding are for. But it should be enough!


The way down was actually surprisingly tricky at times. It certainly didn't help that TianLung and Fenrir loved casting Tornado. G-7s (Laser Gun), Intrcepts (Beam, firearms), Moaners (Absorb), Evil Eyes (Beam), Pudding (Dissolve), etc. could kill Toma very easily, 154 DEF and 101 MANA or not. Was hoping to ironman the way down for fun, but between that and potential for ability loss, it wasn't worth it. However, winning the encounters was equally easy: a single Flare book use always worked, and often at this level so did P-Blast or Flare ability. It was just a matter of hoping enough dangerous attacks aren't thrown Toma's way...


I tried to encounter a Haniwa before fighting Arsenal, and did. Flare did over 1000 damage, just barely enough to overcome its regeneration! It could only harm Toma with its own Flares. Though he can't really win this fight normally, if only due to an inventory limit. Of course, I could just do this...


lol. 10/10, game. 10/10.


Toma took up some more Flare Books and Cure, preparing to face off against Arsenal. The first phase was easy, with Flare doing enough damage to one-shot all the cannons. If Mamizou's experience wasn't just a weird one-off, then the second phase shouldn't be much of a threat either.


Priceless.


That just left the third phase. Launching the Smasher did variable damage, and indeed there was a chance to get one-twoed into oblivion. But as long as that didn't happen, Toma could Cure it all away. Alternating healing and attacking was enough.


And that's the game! If you want to watch a video of how this fight basically goes, go here to check it out.

So to admit something: this is the first time I've used a humanoid in a FFL2 playthrough - discounting the remake where a lot of the nuances are fixed - in years! I only vaguely recall those childhood playthroughs before my cart fell into the great abyss in my aunt's trailer, except for trouble spots. Whether it was subconscious recollection or my modern attitude, I just didn't want to bother with the randomness of their stats. And well, now I have the math to prove it! A pretty large problem for humans and mutants is exactly that.

While HP building isn't too serious an issue, the main four stats are another story. If their stat's DS level is greater than or equal to the enemy's, it only has a 1/40 chance of going up for mutants and 1/20 for humans. Just being one level of DS below gives mutants a 1/10 chance of a stat increase and humans a 1/8 shot. Going back to this chart shows how much things can stall out when you're in the DS-8/DS-9 regions, and how slow things can be to start. Which often is barely if at all acceptable. I mean, look back at Ashura. The 10 MANA Toma had at the stallpoint was nowhere near enough to damage him!

A few numbers on the exact odds depending on the difference, in order of human odds, mutant odds except AGL, and mutant AGL...
EnemyDS <= CharDS: 2/40 ~ 1/40 ~ 1/40
EnemyDS--CharDS = 1: 5/40 ~ 4/40 ~ 3/50 (12/200)
EnemyDS--CharDS = 2: 8/40 ~ 7/40 ~ 19/200
EnemyDS--CharDS = 3: 11/40 ~ 10/40 ~ 13/100 (26/200)
...

Not too bad, but again, the stalling when it's greater than or equal to the enemy DS is the thing. Meanwhile, Robots and Monsters get their boosts easily enough with the right meat or weapons. Two Robots/two Monsters is therefore more than ever one of my favorite parties for a casual playthrough.

Thanks for reading. Solo Human will be my next FFL2 project after a break and maybe some unfinished business.

Index