FF4 Solo Yang Part IV

Before heading down into the Lunar Ruins, I took the time to fetch the Pink Tail and - after I realized those Siren drops put me in no better shape due to having to look after level-ups - took the time to level to 99 right then and there. This wasn't too rough. Ivan Ooze was the punching bag of choice. He was relatively common, gave a nice round number to boost experience in strides, and Yang could kill him before he could actually attack. Once I had reached a threshold, I went and leveled off something closer to the save point.


Also of note, when trying to get that final level, I ended up with this result. Twice in short succession. 10/10, game. I actually would've thought I'd discovered an RNG manipulation, if not for how Yang ended up with different stat growths each time.


So Yang's raw stats at level 99. He gained 29 points of Strength, Agility, Stamina, and Intellect. I took perfect care of them. Because of this, I've earned two extra magic defense multipliers - one from Intellect, and another from Agility. I could also get the last multiplier from Agility at 96 with the right equipment - Courageous Suit (+10) Hand of the Gods (+15), and Cat Claw (+5). This also maxed his attack multiplier at 19.


So fighting these guys, like I said, the extra Sirens were nice, because I had three more tries against these things before having to reset. Fighting them wasn't as easy as it was for Palom, but much easier than it was for Rosa. It's a familiar strategy - just hold A! Sometimes with help from a sped-up emulator. Was doing it on my own (with my usual speedup) at first, but my finger was starting to hurt. All this meant was having to pay attention to when fights were ending so I could get any screenshots of drops. Which I failed sometimes anyway. Also needed to pay attention to my HP. Fun fact, my one death occurred when I was typing this paragraph up. The Flan Princesses could do anywhere from 1000-4000 damage a fight.

This venture was not as speedy as the others. For interest's sake, I looked at some probability. To calculate the probability of something occurring within x number of attempts, use the formula Pr = 1 - (1-Pc)^x, where Pc is the chance of the event occurring. In this case, it's 25/6272 (since there's five in a battle) - or 1/250 if we want to make an estimate. (The other way, calculating x, is x = log(1-Pc) / log(1-Pr))


279 fights with these things, give or take a few because I lost track around 150. And it finally came around. A 2/3 chance of that happening by this point. More counts: 36 Dry Ethers, 22 Elixirs, 10 Fuma Shruiken, and 6 instances of getting two items from one battle. Yes, I kept track of everything. Unlike the random bored thought that worked out for Rosa (that I didn't even use except for Brach), or the conscious thought I did with Palom - this will be worth it in a hilarious way.

But again to reiterate, this armor isn't always worth it. Like Edge did just fine without it just relying on Evasion, and characters who can get Holy resistance from their Lunar Ruins armor generally are better off without this.


Also, hell yeah. Money!


Adamant Armor made little difference in Yang's trial. Whether he was wearing that or Courageous Suit, the enemies could not do enough damage to kill him by the time he killed them - and throw in Yang doing 9999 damage a shot thanks to hitting an elemental weakness in Fire, these were just snorefests.

It's worth noting that these guys act similar to Octomammoth. That is to say, as you damage them, more of the monks on the sprite disappear. They end up slower, but stronger - based on one test. They were still attacking enough to match Yang turn for turn, however, so it was slightly more efficient on my two stacks of 198 Hi-Potions total to just attack and one-shot everything, rather than using Kick at first.


Against the 10000 HP Drillmasters, the best thing to do was use one of Yang's Red Fangs, and unload with Kick to take them all out at once.


Lunar Titan's physical power is downright insane. He was doing far more damage than anyone has any right to against the Adamant Armor. Still, as discussed, I had so many Elixirs that regardless of that or the armor's presence, he was going down. Stone Gaze was of course no effect, and Yang now has a respectable enough magic defense (44, multiplier of 5) to shrug off those Earthquakes. And even if not...Elixirs exist!! Towards the end, he even stopped using these attacks in favor of using Crush over and over again. At this point, if you have anyone with instant death resistance in your party, you have won the battle.


The character-specific reward for this trial is the Discipline Armlet. When Yang equips this, the Power command becomes the Deadly command. This is identical to the Power command, except it triples attack power instead! It shares the same advantages and flaws of the Power command. It also helps make up for some of the deficiencies arising from its charge time. How about statistically?

- Protect Ring's stats: 10 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +15 Sta, Resist Fi/Ic/Li
- Discipline Armlet's stats: 15 Def/16 Eva/15 MDf/16 MEv

Yang has the Adamant Armor and naturally maxed stamina, rendering the Protect Ring's other bonuses irrelevant. The rest of the numbers make for an easy answer. In other situations...well, Deadly can be overkill much of the time. Note that there is an even better piece of armwear in the main game called the Crystal Ring. It's one of those 1/64 aka 5/6272 drops.

- Crystal Ring's stats: 20 Def/15 Eva/12 MDf/10 MEv, +5 Agi, Resist Charm/Sleep/Paralyze

This is interesting in the original, as the Ribbon does not protect against Charm or Sleep in that version, nor Paralyze in either version. However, if it's those resistances you're after, you may as well go for an Adamant Armor. In this version, Crystal Ring has far less merit - its only real advantage over the significantly more accessible Protect Ring is more defense. Some things are just not worth going for!!

Moving on. I variably fought and ran throughout these first couple runs of the Ruins. Nothing to say about Edward's simple trial. Lunar Shiva, I decided to give a fighting chance as I did before by taking off the Adamant Armor - and not even wearing the Protect Ring!! The fight was still ridiculously easy, with Yang able to do close to if not maximum damage with his Fire Claw infused punches. All not having the Armor on did was necessitate using one of my 51 Elixirs.


I happened upon this Floor of Remembrance, resembling the Sylvan Cave's final floor, as I was hoping to. In it is Yang's Dragon Claw, one of the two postgame claws for him. The bonuses aren't as great as the Hand of the Gods - +10 to Strength and Spirit. However, it still is Holy-elemental, and deals effective damage against Dragons!! See where this is going...? If not, you will shortly. Hopefully.

I promptly got to test this against the Crystal Dragons on the next floor. Then got owned against a second when it landed a Stop and proceeded to dismantle me alongside a Chimera Brain.


Lunar Ifrit fared no better than Lunar Shiva, also without Adamant Armor. And again, compare the damage between the two attacks - Flame which is used early into the battle as his charge attack, and Flame Thrower which is used later. He even uses Fira later on into the battle. I honestly do have to believe they got his script backwards.


I also got to test Deadly out against these things. They have no elemental weaknesses and flan-like defenses. Dive into the back row since it wouldn't matter for this command, and let loose.


This loop did give me a visit to the deeper town, and it has two new pieces of equipment for Yang. Neither are particularly good, with me mostly buying them for posterity. Tiger Fang gives +10 to Agility and Stamina and can inflict Paralyze, but has no other special properties. Battle Gear does what it says, but gives only +10 to Strength and Vitality, but...let's just compare.

- Courageous Suit's stats: 22 Def/35 Eva/8 MDf/2 MEv, +10 Str/Agi/Sta, Immune Curse.
- Battle Gear's stats: 29 Def/40 Eva/12 MDf/5 MEv, +10 Str/Sta, Immune Pig/Toad/Curse

I guess what really gets me here is the lack of an Agility bonus. Speed is always nice to have, after all.


I did have on the Adamant Armor for Lunar Ramuh, as I didn't see him being any different from the other two - just beat him up and use Elixirs every now and then.

Out of the ruins and back in with a new set of characters...Lunar Asura was nothing to write about. I used the same pattern as with Rosa - throw up a Curtain and get her stuck in the Blizzaga counter -> Firaga loop off a wall. Yang's Agility was just right, so this became another battle of just holding A.


As for Lunar Leviathan? Thunder Claw hit his elemental weakness. Paralysis was preventable with Adamant Armor (if I didn't have that, I would've used Funny Mask). Just needed to pop an Elixir every now and then.


All right, I was waiting for this. In fact, I'm so confident in my ability to win, that I'm going to give you a fighting chance - and not use the Adamant Armor!! Maximizing Magic Defense otherwise with the following equipment: Dragon Claw/Hand of the Gods/Ribbon/Battle Gear/Discipline Armlet

Well, I could do it. Scorch could still do 9999 damage just because it's that ridiculous. But Yang had enough Magic Defense to sometimes survive it, and was throwing out 9999s of his own thanks to the Dragon Claw. The strategy was Hermes Sandals, Spider's Silk, and go in! And after several tries, I did in fact win without it. So it's good to know this is very much doable without the Adamant Armor, under the right circumstances!!


So an interesting fact - in the original SNES version, shields can only be equipped on a recessive hand. This means that Yang and Edge would not be able to equip shields, assuming there were any they could equip. Note that characters with no dominant hand (only possible through data modification) can only equip a single shield in either of their hands.

This version changes at least the former restriction up, and allows both of these characters to equip shields. In both hands, if one wishes. While not a good idea for Edge due to it crippling his attack, Yang's attack is always determined by the formula (Level+1)*2 + Str/4, even if he were somehow able to equip a weapon with attack power. So this means the only downside to him equipping a shield is their lack of contributing accuracy.

Or...two shields!! That's right, we'll be paying this bad boy another visit later. This insane combination the real reason why I went ahead and got the Adamant Armor - it had nothing to do with beating this guy in the first place!!


lol. 11/10 game. 11/10.

So the last floor on this loop was the magically-resistant counterpart of the Flan floor, featuring Ivan Ooze 2.0. He has much the same pattern as the original, the key difference being he doesn't cast Reflect on you. He also has the same drops, including this bad boy - one of the game's "1/64" drops.

The Glass Mask bestows 30 defense, and no other defensive stats. It can be equipped by anyone but Dark Knight Cecil. And in the original SNES version, this piece of equipment has the Immunity flag set. What this does is turn elemental resistances into elemental immunities - the same way the Adamant Armor reduces elemental damage. The problem is...it doesn't work as intended - it does not combine with other equipment, like the Cursed Ring does. Therefore, this piece of equipment is relatively pointless aside from another programming problem allowing it to give 99% evasion. There's also a bug with the Adamant Armor that causes the character to have weaknesses if it's been equipped and removed.

So what about the GBA version? It fixes the weakness problem, thankfully, Unfortunately, the Glass Mask no longer has the Immunity property, nor does it give the evasion. So this is just one of many ultra-rare items that is not worth seeking out. I'll probably do a small article on drop-only items.

All I can say is...I certainly asked for something like this by fighting them in the first place. What a video game.


I went ahead and got the second Hero Shield after this, just a quick run through the Ruins which thankfully instantly cooperated. Check out Yang's stats now. Extremely high evasion and not-too-shabby magic evasion, although only his base accuracy. He's getting a +45 to all stats, which has a very pronounced effect on his Intellect and Spirit. Ironically for his Magic Defense deficiency for most of the game, he can actually achieve the second-highest base Magic Defense in the entire game, just one point behind Porom. Regardless, the multiplier on it isn't the highest (that would be a value of 9), with the magical stats just being heavily inflated by a singular post-70 growth and the +45 to each. He can equip a Rune Armlet to boost the multiplier to 7 at the cost of some Magic Defense, but this seems about even in practice.


With this in mind, none of the remaining Lunar Eidolons posed any threat. The quartet in Rydia's Trial all fell readily to just holding A with an elemental claw if applicable. I used a Spider's Silk on Lunar Dragon to level the playing field due to its own use of Slow. Had to use Tiger Claw here because it resists Holy, ruling out Hand of the Gods and Dragon Claw. Hermes Sandals, Spider's Silk, and Yang's high damage output made sure Lunar Odin died before he could even reach his Holy, and on one test even before his second Zantetsuken. And that was without Thunder Claw too (mostly because it was late when I was doing this and I forgot to equip it) - with it, just would've been a total slaughter. And Lunar Bahamut got wrecked. Yang ate the Mega Flare and then some, even evading the second to add insult to injury.

So that just leaves ZEG. What to do about those annoying HP Leak/Whirl combos? Well, taking a cue from ChaosEnigma(Chaos), I decided to try Hermes Sandals and Spider's Silk together. Unfortunately, this didn't work for Yang - his HP leaked too slowly, so it was still counting down by the time Whirl came around.


...but it did work if I threw in Grimoire LS, too! What this appears to do is cripple his agility for a period of time. This is different from using Slow, it's like a reduction of the actual stat itself. Unlike with Grimoire LO's zeroing of Magic Defense, ZEG does recover from this after a while, but it's still more than enough time to do horrible things to him and recover from the HP Leak before Whirl comes around if it's active at the time. In short, Yang only had to face one of these - when the second came around, he threw out LS and was able to survive the Whirl. Or he even could've faced none if I wanted - I could throw out Grimoire LT to stop the first, deal some damage, throw Grimoire LS, and...just hold A! He wouldn't get around to using it a second time.


ZEG is such a cheap and nasty boss solo. I have no qualms about being cheap in return!! 17:54 game time at the final save before him, by the way.

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Yang was a character who produced great results throughout the entire game. With access to every regular element and the capability to deal effective damage against ghouls, undead, mechs, and dragons, he can deal insane amounts of damage against just about anything. The ability to equip a Hero's Shield without sacrificing damage gives him more durability than Edge, to say nothing of his higher HP and natural defenses. Did he live up to the other solo monks? Not really, but in a good way. FF1-3 had slow starts that became all-powerful towards the end, and FF5 had a strong start that taped off towards the end. Yang was strong the entire game, and with a lot more versatility to boot.

Compared to his closest counterpart - Edge - I'd say they're about even. Edge has a bit more flexibility with stealing, throwing, and Ninjitsu, as well as natural magic defenses, whereas Yang has a lot more raw power and bulkiness. Of course, if you take the time to excessively power up like I did, Yang just blows Edge out of the water.

Next on my list of FF4 solos is the total opposite of Yang in numerous regards. Especially if we do presume he had a slow beginning and strong endgame.

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