FF4 Solo Rosa Part IV
So two years later, let's continue Rosa's trip through FF4, through the postgame.
Though Yang's trial was the first I could go in, I chose to tackle Edward's first for reasons I'll get to when I actually do it. Nothing to report here. The Specters were one-shot by Rosa and slaughtered by Edward in stereo. Lunar Shiva got the usual treatment - two Slows for her, two Hastes for Rosa, and...a barrage of Fire Arrows, because they were slightly more reliable (and used much less resources) than Holy. I got some stupidly low rolls, that said...
The White Dress was between this floor and Rydia's floor. Rosa's ultimate armor, it isn't really anything special - +10 to Spirit, highest defense she can get aside from the Adamant Armor, and that's about it.
Also in this same floor, Rosa hit 99, so let's see where things went on that front of not monitoring her stat growths. Rosa's level 70 stats are 48/32/42/22/71. I got owned pretty hard here, really - 29 levels to increase, and I hit option 1 or 2 (0 Spirit) 8 times!! Even for displaying the difference between well-looked after stats and not, that's pretty surreal. The net result is 13 Strength, 16 Agility, 7 Stamina, 3 Intellect, and 21 Spirit. Supposing they were perfectly looked after, all of those would see increases of 29. This means less magic defense. Have I screwed my own ass? Let's continue and find out.
By the way, one thing I forgot to mention about the Platinum Toad from Palom's report. Just because you beat it doesn't mean you'll have been considered to have caught it, which happens at random. This is ordinarily a somewhat welcome thing, as it drops a Megalixir regardless of that result. It wasn't a factor for Palom or Edge, who had no trouble killing it. But in Rosa's case - who needed to use limited Hourglasses on it - it was. Caused a couple resets, because I didn't want to waste even one.
Lunar Odin turned out to be a hilarious fight. I was matching him stride for stride at first. Holy a bunch, Curaja every Zantetsuken except the first. Throw up Reflect just before his own Holy to avoid a horrible death. Happen to run out of MP right before the double Zantetsuken, so use an Elixir to heal. He got off the double Zantetsuken, but Rosa handily survived it. Risking just an X-Potion from here to survive the next one, which I get away with. He's low enough to win from there. Also, all this with the Artemis Bow on for not-99 Spirit. I reloaded and tried it again for kicks with Spider's Silk and the right equipment, and was able to beat the double if I wanted..
As gone over before, Lunar Asura has a pattern of rolling her head and performing a counter that depends on what color head she has and whether you performed a physical or magical attack. This is actually more convoluted than I initially thought due to the state of the faces after counterattacks.
Being in a state means having used its attack last. If the face rolls on its own, it will immediately use the color's associated attack and be in that state. If the face rolls as a result of a counterattack, it will be considered to be in a different state in spite of the color until it uses that color's associated attack on Lunar Asura's next turn.
- White State = Curaga. Roll to red naturally. If physically attacked, spin to white/blue state and use physical. If magically attacked, roll to blue face/red state and use Thundaga.
- Red State = Toad. Roll to blue naturally. If physically attacked, spin to red face/white state and use Mini. If magically attacked, roll to white face/blue state and use Restore.
- Blue State = Firaga. Roll to white naturally. If physically attacked, spin to blue face/red state and use Blizzaga. If magically attacked, roll to red face/white state and use Globe 199.
For example, if you attack the red face physically and trigger the Mini counter, and attack again before it can change, you'll get the physical/Thundaga counters despite the white face showing, since it's in the blue state. But if you wait for it to use Curaga, you'll get the white state set of counters. Or another way to tell which state the face is in...
- White State: Curaga, Mini, or Globe 199 last used.
- Red State: Toad, Blizzaga, or Thundaga last used.
- Blue State: Firaga, physical, or Restore last used.
Anyway, a convoluted explanation for a simple boss to execute. There were two different ways to go about this fight. Rosa could do like Palom did - that is, blasting with a strong spell when the face was in a white state, waiting for Lunar Asura to use Firaga, then attacking. Or she could catch her in a slightly faster, or at least much more fun loop - Reflect on herself, attack the blue face with arrows, Blizzaga gets reflected, wait for Firaga to be used/reflected, repeat. This cuts out a bunch of the waiting, as well as her Curagas.
The prize for this fight is the White Ring, turning Rosa's Pray command into Miracle. This is something that's generally more useful in a full party than in a solo variant. Statistically? Well, let's compare to the standard handy equipment for that slot, the Protect Ring.
- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +15 Sta, Resist Fi/Ic/Li
- White Ring's stats: 15 Def/18 Eva/20 MDf/15 MEv
Statistically stronger...if you ignore the other bonuses Protect Ring gives. Furthermore, it almost seems as if the Curaga/Esuna thing is a lot more rare than it should be, or I had the worst luck ever when testing. Either way, it's not reliable enough to substitute for proper healing.
A few floors later, I happened upon the floor with Rosa's ultimate bow. The Perseus's Bow gives a mere +10 to Spirit, but is otherwise statistically stronger than the stupidly rare Artemis Bow the game decided to cough up. And in the second town in the Ruins, there's Perseus Arrows!! ...which are really expensive!! I guess if I wasn't running from fights all the time
Now granted, there are moments where we'll run into enemies that absorb or respond negatively to Holy, including Lunar Dragon. But they shouldn't be "let's spend all our money on arrows!" dangerous - and it, after all, is still a Dragon. Something else did occur to me here though - in solo challenges, you can sell Megalixirs for a ton of money, and spend it on regular Elixirs. So I went ahead and bought 99 anyway, not anticipating much trouble on that front.
So this was the end of my first trip into the ruins. I was going to fight Brachioraidos here too, but its floor hadn't spawned - there's multiple floors in a set, and only three spawn each time.
After a solo exception to get the rest of the challenges ready, the next step was to get some more Artemis Arrows for Brach and Lunar Dragon. Unfortunately for me, the game was in one of those moods where the RNG is out for your head in a ridiculous way, and I only ended up with a couple drops across 80-90 kills of Selene Guardians. But I did however get three Soma Drops (and an Ogrekiller) which compounded the hilariousness.
So Yang's trial. The reason why I didn't do this in the first place was lack of resources. Rosa lacks an easy ability to target them all. They do at least have a fire-elemental weakness. With more Fire Arrows and some Fire Fangs from the lower floors, she was able to use the former on the Soldier Monks and Super Monks (with a bit of Slow and Haste), and the fangs on the Drillmasters. To contrast, Lunar Titan was a cinch. Ribbon blocked the instant death stuff, Float blocked Earthquake, and a few Protects put his physical damage in the double digits.
I would've done Rydia's trial, but defeating Brachioraidos is something that occurred to me. Being a Dragon, it's quite vulnerable to the Artemis Arrows, and I had an extra trip through on my hands anyway since I couldn't fit Palom, Porom, Edge, and Kain into the party all at once. So I just kept going, to at least test the weapons' effectiveness on it should I pass by it.
Something that would be interesting to talk about is this floor here. Similar to one in the final set (where Ivan Ooze 2.0 is), this area is full of monsters that resist physical attacks; namely Flans. Neither is really a problem for Rosa who can do both adequately, although of course we're running from everything...
...except these things! Who could pass up a chance to get the Pink Tail? The bad news is, these things aren't the rarest encounter here, so you can't use Sirens to manipulate them. The good news is, they are somewhat more common (although not common enough for me not to go on an annoying dry streak that sees enough Gil dropped in it to negate an entire fight of these things), and come in packs of 8 instead. When I ran into a second group after, I decided to give it a try.
Naturally, Rosa has a much harder/more tedious time of this than those who can multitarget and deal a ton of damage. The best shot she has is using Holy twice on each of them and beating them all to death. It costs 560MP a fight, but I did have a few fangs to use to deal the finishing blows, if I didn't want/in tandem with beating them with the Rune Staff to save on arrows.
The first fight gave up an Elixir, the second a Fuma Shruiken and Dry Ether. Liking my odds so far! The question is, especially after the dry streak, do good things come to those who wait...? Wait like two whole hours.
Oh, wow. I actually got it. The tenth try at these fights, which was going to be my stopping point. I also get plenty of money in the process, so that's no longer a concern if it still was one.
To talk a bit more about the ruins...this floor is full of bombs on the field to avoid. If you bump into the gray one there while doing a solo, you better be ready to smack it down enough to a point where you can tank it, or get ready to die instantly (it has 9999 health). Mercifully, you always get a preemptive against these. Best way of course, just dodge it on the map.
Lunar Ramuh, what's there to say? Blitz (used at random and to counter magic) and Lightning (used after charging) both do a percent of HP at damage, and Protect Ring reduced it to a mere 10% (764 for Rosa). Just needed to kill off Cid since he was automatically revived, and heal every now and then.
All right! Let's do this!
...all right, let's not. That Scorch is ridiculous, and that turned out to be a low roll, too.
Of course, we have that Pink Tail, so get owned. Once we get back to you! I took the time while I was out to buy 30 Elixirs, bringing my stock to 50. The Adamant Armor will render Scorch worthless. The other way would've been by buffing her HP with Apples, but even that isn't a sure thing as it can sometimes hit 9999, and the personality test floor being stubborn to show helped put a damper on that strategy.
I chose to go through with Edge's and the twins' trials for my third trip through. There was no point in arrowing either - Holy did so much more it was sad. Again a reminder that when at low HP, Lunar Ifrit actually gets weaker, charging up to do an incredibly weak Flamethrower rather than a somewhat stronger Flame than does a percent of max HP. Did they get it backwards or something?
I happened by the deeper leveled fairy fountain 3/4 times across my Lunar Ruins explorations. I also used it all those times, as it's a free MP restore and gives up a Megalixir. Having to rekill my party is a small price to pay.
Lunar Leviathan...Palom needed the Adamant Armor to protect against its Entangle. Edge could just use the Assassin's Vest. Rosa did have the former, but didn't need it - the duration of the paralysis status is reduced by having a high Spirit. So even a situation like this wasn't scary. Rosa would just get another turn before him and I'd have her Curaja or Elixir.
Out one last time, and hopefully in one last time! None of the basic summon bosses were of any threat - just Holy away. The holy-absorbing Lunar "Dragon" was another story, and turned out to be a huge slog. A few shots from Artemis Arrows (as shown here) revealed that a guide lied to me, and this thing totally does not classify as a dragon. That meant falling back on the Perseus Arrows, and then later Yoichi Arrows when I ran out. No problem, right? We've done it before!
The fight wasn't that simple though. It casts Slow each time it turns into mist, and between the speed reduction and the 9999 HP Restore every second time, outdamaging its regeneration would eventually become impossible. The solution was simple - Haste/Hermes Sandals up, Slow/Spider's Silk the "dragon", and cast Reflect. The timing on it was easy - the wall was down and ready to be refreshed every time the dragon turned into mist. Just had to plink away at it forever.
Lunar Bahamut was of course elementary for Rosa. When an enemy has a single reflectable attack, and really not a lot of HP anyway, it's zero threat.
I thankfully saw the second town in the Ruins again, allowing me to spend some of that money/Megalixirs that was piling up on 198 Perseus Arrows and more Elixirs, bringing my stock to 65. I'm not running out, that's for sure!
With the Adamant Armor, Scorch only did a single point of damage. Brach is indeed a dragon, and does take a ton of damage from Artemis Arrows. The game's superboss actually has a simple pattern, as long as you don't attack him when he's counting down to Mega Flare: Scorch -> Physical -> Double Physical -> Scorch -> Double Physical -> Begin Countdown. So this means anyone who can survive the Scorches (very tough), can evade or tank the physicals (simple enough), and has enough Curtains (or Reflect) can keep him in this cycle endlessly. Rosa might've been able to do it if she had more magic defense...but again, demonstration led me to this.
If you do attack him when he's triggering the countdown, he uses Protect and Reflect, beginning a barrage of spells off his wall - the most dangerous being a Bio/Holy/Flare combo that kept on killing Rosa. So I just never triggered this phase. I'm not sure what happened back then with Palom that made him not do this, although I'm pretty sure he himself had enough magic defense to endure that nasty combo.
There. Of course, Rosa would only get to use this for three more rooms in the game, and would have to forgo a bow and arrow to do so, but it's always nice to have this thing.
So final battle of the bonus dungeon! The boss with an HP Leak/critical combo, which instantly kill you if your character ends up with 4 or less HP, like right there. Because I expected Holy to be the offense, I went in with Rune Staff and Hero's Shield. I also forwent the Adamant Armor, since that's a bit silly to be using - I never actually ended up using it except for travelling.
The strategy was the usual - slow the boss, haste Rosa, and go in. Zeromus EG does cast Reflect in response to magic, but a Curtain, self-Reflect, or Bestiary to trigger him giving you a Reflect off his own wall keeps you in-business (and he'll constantly refresh your Reflect). The difference between Rosa and Palom is that Flare is stronger with less of a charge time - it instead did like 2500-5000+ damage. This meant twice as many uses of it, which meant more chances for the HP Leak/critical combo to get me, and it eventually got me with ZEG at 60000/200000HP.
I was trying to do it without them, but even so, the status Grimoires are of questionable help - Rosa's damage output is too low to make a difference. What else? If it comes to it, Adamant Armor will give a bit more agility, but...
So remember how some of the Grimoires supposedly poison ZEG? Well...they don't. Okay, one of them does, but the others don't. I found out when using one to try to add some chip damage over the course of the battle is what these actually do is lower his stats. I used Grimoire LO, and suddenly, Rosa's Holy was doing a ton more damage. Double, in-fact!
- Grimoire LO: Halves magic defense, doesn't seem to wear off
- Grimoire LL: Slow effect, not sure how potent
- Grimoire LA: ???
- Grimoire LS: ???
- Grimoire LI: Inflicts Stop, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LR: Inflicts Silence, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LT: Inflicts Mini, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LB: Inflicts Poison, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LD: Inflicts Toad, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
I haven't been able to find information on what LA or LS do, although they don't seem to lower its magic defense or physical defense (at least as far as I could tell). Nor have I seen this behavior of LO mentioned anywhere. At any rate, I'm not complaining, and glad I figured this out! Makes this much more doable!
So the strategy goes - Spider's Silk, Haste three times because I'm dumb and used all my Hermes Sandals, wait for Whirl, Elixir if not dead, Lunar Curtain, bounce Flare, Grimoire LO, and bounce Holy off Rosa's wall repeatedly! Wait for Whirl as needed. I could've indeed played it safe with the other Grimoires to buy more time, but I only needed that one Grimoire, and actually forwent the Hero's Shield too to see if I could. All it really adds is more agility. Zeromus EG never uses Black Hole until its second phase, so the speed adjustments are perfectly fine.
A hailstorm of these and one accidental Rune Staff bonk because the menus lag like crazy and made me accidentally click Attack later, when it was at way lower HP than it really should be, ZEG switched to the following pattern.
- Tidal Wave -> Tornado (non-critical HP)
- Five Physicals
- Five Physicals
- Fira -> Blizzara -> Thundara -> Absorb
- Black Hole
Rosa killed it before the physicals (which wouldn't have worked before Black Hole anyway due to Barrier status from the Lunar Curtain). And that's the postgame!
All in all, Rosa impressed me quite a lot. She's an incredibly versatile character, although her pure physical power starts to wane as the game goes on, forcing her to rely on Holy and racial damage modifiers to get through. She also had somewhat of a rocky start, where arrows weren't readily available and couldn't do big elemental damage to targets. Still, once she was past Cagnazzo, it was relatively smooth sailing. I originally didn't do this dungeon with Rosa because I thought it would be uninteresting. Well, it still managed to be this time! I can't guarantee I'll be able to fully complete it with everyone, though. Brach and ZEG can be nasty fights. Still, if there is a path to victory, I'll find it.
Certainly the next character I'll do is sketchy in the former's regard. But it's worth it!!
Index
Though Yang's trial was the first I could go in, I chose to tackle Edward's first for reasons I'll get to when I actually do it. Nothing to report here. The Specters were one-shot by Rosa and slaughtered by Edward in stereo. Lunar Shiva got the usual treatment - two Slows for her, two Hastes for Rosa, and...a barrage of Fire Arrows, because they were slightly more reliable (and used much less resources) than Holy. I got some stupidly low rolls, that said...
The White Dress was between this floor and Rydia's floor. Rosa's ultimate armor, it isn't really anything special - +10 to Spirit, highest defense she can get aside from the Adamant Armor, and that's about it.
Also in this same floor, Rosa hit 99, so let's see where things went on that front of not monitoring her stat growths. Rosa's level 70 stats are 48/32/42/22/71. I got owned pretty hard here, really - 29 levels to increase, and I hit option 1 or 2 (0 Spirit) 8 times!! Even for displaying the difference between well-looked after stats and not, that's pretty surreal. The net result is 13 Strength, 16 Agility, 7 Stamina, 3 Intellect, and 21 Spirit. Supposing they were perfectly looked after, all of those would see increases of 29. This means less magic defense. Have I screwed my own ass? Let's continue and find out.
By the way, one thing I forgot to mention about the Platinum Toad from Palom's report. Just because you beat it doesn't mean you'll have been considered to have caught it, which happens at random. This is ordinarily a somewhat welcome thing, as it drops a Megalixir regardless of that result. It wasn't a factor for Palom or Edge, who had no trouble killing it. But in Rosa's case - who needed to use limited Hourglasses on it - it was. Caused a couple resets, because I didn't want to waste even one.
Lunar Odin turned out to be a hilarious fight. I was matching him stride for stride at first. Holy a bunch, Curaja every Zantetsuken except the first. Throw up Reflect just before his own Holy to avoid a horrible death. Happen to run out of MP right before the double Zantetsuken, so use an Elixir to heal. He got off the double Zantetsuken, but Rosa handily survived it. Risking just an X-Potion from here to survive the next one, which I get away with. He's low enough to win from there. Also, all this with the Artemis Bow on for not-99 Spirit. I reloaded and tried it again for kicks with Spider's Silk and the right equipment, and was able to beat the double if I wanted..
As gone over before, Lunar Asura has a pattern of rolling her head and performing a counter that depends on what color head she has and whether you performed a physical or magical attack. This is actually more convoluted than I initially thought due to the state of the faces after counterattacks.
Being in a state means having used its attack last. If the face rolls on its own, it will immediately use the color's associated attack and be in that state. If the face rolls as a result of a counterattack, it will be considered to be in a different state in spite of the color until it uses that color's associated attack on Lunar Asura's next turn.
- White State = Curaga. Roll to red naturally. If physically attacked, spin to white/blue state and use physical. If magically attacked, roll to blue face/red state and use Thundaga.
- Red State = Toad. Roll to blue naturally. If physically attacked, spin to red face/white state and use Mini. If magically attacked, roll to white face/blue state and use Restore.
- Blue State = Firaga. Roll to white naturally. If physically attacked, spin to blue face/red state and use Blizzaga. If magically attacked, roll to red face/white state and use Globe 199.
For example, if you attack the red face physically and trigger the Mini counter, and attack again before it can change, you'll get the physical/Thundaga counters despite the white face showing, since it's in the blue state. But if you wait for it to use Curaga, you'll get the white state set of counters. Or another way to tell which state the face is in...
- White State: Curaga, Mini, or Globe 199 last used.
- Red State: Toad, Blizzaga, or Thundaga last used.
- Blue State: Firaga, physical, or Restore last used.
Anyway, a convoluted explanation for a simple boss to execute. There were two different ways to go about this fight. Rosa could do like Palom did - that is, blasting with a strong spell when the face was in a white state, waiting for Lunar Asura to use Firaga, then attacking. Or she could catch her in a slightly faster, or at least much more fun loop - Reflect on herself, attack the blue face with arrows, Blizzaga gets reflected, wait for Firaga to be used/reflected, repeat. This cuts out a bunch of the waiting, as well as her Curagas.
The prize for this fight is the White Ring, turning Rosa's Pray command into Miracle. This is something that's generally more useful in a full party than in a solo variant. Statistically? Well, let's compare to the standard handy equipment for that slot, the Protect Ring.
- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +15 Sta, Resist Fi/Ic/Li
- White Ring's stats: 15 Def/18 Eva/20 MDf/15 MEv
Statistically stronger...if you ignore the other bonuses Protect Ring gives. Furthermore, it almost seems as if the Curaga/Esuna thing is a lot more rare than it should be, or I had the worst luck ever when testing. Either way, it's not reliable enough to substitute for proper healing.
A few floors later, I happened upon the floor with Rosa's ultimate bow. The Perseus's Bow gives a mere +10 to Spirit, but is otherwise statistically stronger than the stupidly rare Artemis Bow the game decided to cough up. And in the second town in the Ruins, there's Perseus Arrows!! ...which are really expensive!! I guess if I wasn't running from fights all the time
Now granted, there are moments where we'll run into enemies that absorb or respond negatively to Holy, including Lunar Dragon. But they shouldn't be "let's spend all our money on arrows!" dangerous - and it, after all, is still a Dragon. Something else did occur to me here though - in solo challenges, you can sell Megalixirs for a ton of money, and spend it on regular Elixirs. So I went ahead and bought 99 anyway, not anticipating much trouble on that front.
So this was the end of my first trip into the ruins. I was going to fight Brachioraidos here too, but its floor hadn't spawned - there's multiple floors in a set, and only three spawn each time.
After a solo exception to get the rest of the challenges ready, the next step was to get some more Artemis Arrows for Brach and Lunar Dragon. Unfortunately for me, the game was in one of those moods where the RNG is out for your head in a ridiculous way, and I only ended up with a couple drops across 80-90 kills of Selene Guardians. But I did however get three Soma Drops (and an Ogrekiller) which compounded the hilariousness.
So Yang's trial. The reason why I didn't do this in the first place was lack of resources. Rosa lacks an easy ability to target them all. They do at least have a fire-elemental weakness. With more Fire Arrows and some Fire Fangs from the lower floors, she was able to use the former on the Soldier Monks and Super Monks (with a bit of Slow and Haste), and the fangs on the Drillmasters. To contrast, Lunar Titan was a cinch. Ribbon blocked the instant death stuff, Float blocked Earthquake, and a few Protects put his physical damage in the double digits.
I would've done Rydia's trial, but defeating Brachioraidos is something that occurred to me. Being a Dragon, it's quite vulnerable to the Artemis Arrows, and I had an extra trip through on my hands anyway since I couldn't fit Palom, Porom, Edge, and Kain into the party all at once. So I just kept going, to at least test the weapons' effectiveness on it should I pass by it.
Something that would be interesting to talk about is this floor here. Similar to one in the final set (where Ivan Ooze 2.0 is), this area is full of monsters that resist physical attacks; namely Flans. Neither is really a problem for Rosa who can do both adequately, although of course we're running from everything...
...except these things! Who could pass up a chance to get the Pink Tail? The bad news is, these things aren't the rarest encounter here, so you can't use Sirens to manipulate them. The good news is, they are somewhat more common (although not common enough for me not to go on an annoying dry streak that sees enough Gil dropped in it to negate an entire fight of these things), and come in packs of 8 instead. When I ran into a second group after, I decided to give it a try.
Naturally, Rosa has a much harder/more tedious time of this than those who can multitarget and deal a ton of damage. The best shot she has is using Holy twice on each of them and beating them all to death. It costs 560MP a fight, but I did have a few fangs to use to deal the finishing blows, if I didn't want/in tandem with beating them with the Rune Staff to save on arrows.
The first fight gave up an Elixir, the second a Fuma Shruiken and Dry Ether. Liking my odds so far! The question is, especially after the dry streak, do good things come to those who wait...? Wait like two whole hours.
Oh, wow. I actually got it. The tenth try at these fights, which was going to be my stopping point. I also get plenty of money in the process, so that's no longer a concern if it still was one.
To talk a bit more about the ruins...this floor is full of bombs on the field to avoid. If you bump into the gray one there while doing a solo, you better be ready to smack it down enough to a point where you can tank it, or get ready to die instantly (it has 9999 health). Mercifully, you always get a preemptive against these. Best way of course, just dodge it on the map.
Lunar Ramuh, what's there to say? Blitz (used at random and to counter magic) and Lightning (used after charging) both do a percent of HP at damage, and Protect Ring reduced it to a mere 10% (764 for Rosa). Just needed to kill off Cid since he was automatically revived, and heal every now and then.
All right! Let's do this!
...all right, let's not. That Scorch is ridiculous, and that turned out to be a low roll, too.
Of course, we have that Pink Tail, so get owned. Once we get back to you! I took the time while I was out to buy 30 Elixirs, bringing my stock to 50. The Adamant Armor will render Scorch worthless. The other way would've been by buffing her HP with Apples, but even that isn't a sure thing as it can sometimes hit 9999, and the personality test floor being stubborn to show helped put a damper on that strategy.
I chose to go through with Edge's and the twins' trials for my third trip through. There was no point in arrowing either - Holy did so much more it was sad. Again a reminder that when at low HP, Lunar Ifrit actually gets weaker, charging up to do an incredibly weak Flamethrower rather than a somewhat stronger Flame than does a percent of max HP. Did they get it backwards or something?
I happened by the deeper leveled fairy fountain 3/4 times across my Lunar Ruins explorations. I also used it all those times, as it's a free MP restore and gives up a Megalixir. Having to rekill my party is a small price to pay.
Lunar Leviathan...Palom needed the Adamant Armor to protect against its Entangle. Edge could just use the Assassin's Vest. Rosa did have the former, but didn't need it - the duration of the paralysis status is reduced by having a high Spirit. So even a situation like this wasn't scary. Rosa would just get another turn before him and I'd have her Curaja or Elixir.
Out one last time, and hopefully in one last time! None of the basic summon bosses were of any threat - just Holy away. The holy-absorbing Lunar "Dragon" was another story, and turned out to be a huge slog. A few shots from Artemis Arrows (as shown here) revealed that a guide lied to me, and this thing totally does not classify as a dragon. That meant falling back on the Perseus Arrows, and then later Yoichi Arrows when I ran out. No problem, right? We've done it before!
The fight wasn't that simple though. It casts Slow each time it turns into mist, and between the speed reduction and the 9999 HP Restore every second time, outdamaging its regeneration would eventually become impossible. The solution was simple - Haste/Hermes Sandals up, Slow/Spider's Silk the "dragon", and cast Reflect. The timing on it was easy - the wall was down and ready to be refreshed every time the dragon turned into mist. Just had to plink away at it forever.
Lunar Bahamut was of course elementary for Rosa. When an enemy has a single reflectable attack, and really not a lot of HP anyway, it's zero threat.
I thankfully saw the second town in the Ruins again, allowing me to spend some of that money/Megalixirs that was piling up on 198 Perseus Arrows and more Elixirs, bringing my stock to 65. I'm not running out, that's for sure!
With the Adamant Armor, Scorch only did a single point of damage. Brach is indeed a dragon, and does take a ton of damage from Artemis Arrows. The game's superboss actually has a simple pattern, as long as you don't attack him when he's counting down to Mega Flare: Scorch -> Physical -> Double Physical -> Scorch -> Double Physical -> Begin Countdown. So this means anyone who can survive the Scorches (very tough), can evade or tank the physicals (simple enough), and has enough Curtains (or Reflect) can keep him in this cycle endlessly. Rosa might've been able to do it if she had more magic defense...but again, demonstration led me to this.
If you do attack him when he's triggering the countdown, he uses Protect and Reflect, beginning a barrage of spells off his wall - the most dangerous being a Bio/Holy/Flare combo that kept on killing Rosa. So I just never triggered this phase. I'm not sure what happened back then with Palom that made him not do this, although I'm pretty sure he himself had enough magic defense to endure that nasty combo.
There. Of course, Rosa would only get to use this for three more rooms in the game, and would have to forgo a bow and arrow to do so, but it's always nice to have this thing.
So final battle of the bonus dungeon! The boss with an HP Leak/critical combo, which instantly kill you if your character ends up with 4 or less HP, like right there. Because I expected Holy to be the offense, I went in with Rune Staff and Hero's Shield. I also forwent the Adamant Armor, since that's a bit silly to be using - I never actually ended up using it except for travelling.
The strategy was the usual - slow the boss, haste Rosa, and go in. Zeromus EG does cast Reflect in response to magic, but a Curtain, self-Reflect, or Bestiary to trigger him giving you a Reflect off his own wall keeps you in-business (and he'll constantly refresh your Reflect). The difference between Rosa and Palom is that Flare is stronger with less of a charge time - it instead did like 2500-5000+ damage. This meant twice as many uses of it, which meant more chances for the HP Leak/critical combo to get me, and it eventually got me with ZEG at 60000/200000HP.
I was trying to do it without them, but even so, the status Grimoires are of questionable help - Rosa's damage output is too low to make a difference. What else? If it comes to it, Adamant Armor will give a bit more agility, but...
So remember how some of the Grimoires supposedly poison ZEG? Well...they don't. Okay, one of them does, but the others don't. I found out when using one to try to add some chip damage over the course of the battle is what these actually do is lower his stats. I used Grimoire LO, and suddenly, Rosa's Holy was doing a ton more damage. Double, in-fact!
- Grimoire LO: Halves magic defense, doesn't seem to wear off
- Grimoire LL: Slow effect, not sure how potent
- Grimoire LA: ???
- Grimoire LS: ???
- Grimoire LI: Inflicts Stop, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LR: Inflicts Silence, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LT: Inflicts Mini, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LB: Inflicts Poison, eventually wears off
- Grimoire LD: Inflicts Toad, interrupts AI script, eventually wears off
I haven't been able to find information on what LA or LS do, although they don't seem to lower its magic defense or physical defense (at least as far as I could tell). Nor have I seen this behavior of LO mentioned anywhere. At any rate, I'm not complaining, and glad I figured this out! Makes this much more doable!
So the strategy goes - Spider's Silk, Haste three times because I'm dumb and used all my Hermes Sandals, wait for Whirl, Elixir if not dead, Lunar Curtain, bounce Flare, Grimoire LO, and bounce Holy off Rosa's wall repeatedly! Wait for Whirl as needed. I could've indeed played it safe with the other Grimoires to buy more time, but I only needed that one Grimoire, and actually forwent the Hero's Shield too to see if I could. All it really adds is more agility. Zeromus EG never uses Black Hole until its second phase, so the speed adjustments are perfectly fine.
A hailstorm of these and one accidental Rune Staff bonk because the menus lag like crazy and made me accidentally click Attack later, when it was at way lower HP than it really should be, ZEG switched to the following pattern.
- Tidal Wave -> Tornado (non-critical HP)
- Five Physicals
- Five Physicals
- Fira -> Blizzara -> Thundara -> Absorb
- Black Hole
Rosa killed it before the physicals (which wouldn't have worked before Black Hole anyway due to Barrier status from the Lunar Curtain). And that's the postgame!
All in all, Rosa impressed me quite a lot. She's an incredibly versatile character, although her pure physical power starts to wane as the game goes on, forcing her to rely on Holy and racial damage modifiers to get through. She also had somewhat of a rocky start, where arrows weren't readily available and couldn't do big elemental damage to targets. Still, once she was past Cagnazzo, it was relatively smooth sailing. I originally didn't do this dungeon with Rosa because I thought it would be uninteresting. Well, it still managed to be this time! I can't guarantee I'll be able to fully complete it with everyone, though. Brach and ZEG can be nasty fights. Still, if there is a path to victory, I'll find it.
Certainly the next character I'll do is sketchy in the former's regard. But it's worth it!!
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